Comic Fields on old Ed Sullivan shows / TUE 12-15-20 / Annual video game competition for short / Nickname of 1967 NFL Championship Game famously played at about -15

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Easyish (untimed)

THEME: newspaper wackiness — familiar phrases are clued ("?"-style) as if they have something to do with famous U.S. newspapers:

Theme answers:

• AROUND THE GLOBE (20A: Where one might find Boston news reporters?)
• UNDER THE SUN (37A: Where a Baltimore news reader's desk might be found?)
• BEHIND THE TIMES (56A: Beaten to a news scoop in Los Angeles?)

Word of the Day: EVO (55A: Annual video game competition, for short) —

The Evolution Championship Series, commonly known as Evo, is an annual esports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games. The tournaments are completely open and use the double elimination format.^[1] As with Super Battle Opera, contestants travel from all over the world to participate, most notably from Japan. The first Evolution was originally held as a Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2 tournament called the Battle by the Bay. It changed its name to Evo in 2002. Every successive tournament has seen an increase of attendees. It has been held at various venues across the Las Vegas Valley since 2005. (wikipedia)

• • •

Woof. Tuesday. This is the kind of Tuesday that gave Tuesday its reputation as Tuezday, the puzzle day that couldn't. It's just nowheresville—a thin and ill-conceived theme, plus fill that made me wince repeatedly, audibly, starting at 1A: All-encompassing (ATOZ). It's a little hard to explain, but sometimes you get a sense *right* away that something is going to be wrong, and ATOZ was the red flag. It's fine, we've all seen it before (way more in crosswords than in real life, but whatever). It's just you really want 1-Across to be snappy or solid or at least not shout "Crosswordese!" at you. I knew it was ATOZ right away, or thought so, and then when I confirmed it with (Speaking Of Crosswordese) ZEBU (!?), well, I was no longer on this puzzle's side at all, and I was all of two answers in. Unfair, you say? Of course it's unfair. That's why you keep solving. But then that really didn't help. TOTIE fields was one section over—again, fine, but in keeping with the Older Crosswordese vibe that the puzzle was quickly picking up, and for younger people, not even close to a Tuesday-level answer (15A: Comic Fields on old Ed Sullivan shows ... are there *new* Ed Sullivan shows???). Speaking of not Tuesday level, EVO (55A: Annual video game competition for short). This feels like a clue the editors changed to make the puzzle more current / harder. But it's def not Tuesday. EVO is three random letters (shout-out to everyone who, like me, assumed it was an acronym and tried to make the letters stand for something) (it's short for "Evolution," see Word of the Day, above). I'm sure it's a big-deal competition in the world of eSport fighting games, but for the bulk of crossword solvers, this is a Saturday clue, not a Tuesday, and (more importantly) EVO is just bad fill. If you had to make a list of Top 5 Answers In This Puzzle That I'd Throw Into The Sun If I Could, EVO would be on the list, no matter what the clue (sorry, EVO Morales).

But on to the theme: Got AROUND THE on the first themer but struggled to get GLOBE, largely because AROUND THE GLOBE ... yeah, I hear it, it's a phrase, but so are lots and lots of AROUND THE phrases. Anyway, when I got it, I thought, "so the Globe here is ... the building? ... that the reporters ... work ... in? Huh." Then I got UNDER THE SUN and honestly had no idea what the clue meant. Had to actually stop and think about what the clue wanted me to imagine. "A news reader's desk" is the least evocative image ever. Who is reading news at their desk? Scratch that—of course people *might* read news there, but it's not exactly an iconic image. Breakfast table is a more likely place. The "desk" thing made me think we were in a newspaper *building* again, but we aren't. It's just that when you read The Sun at your ... desk, was it? ... your desk is literally UNDER ... THE SUN :(  And here's the problem—if Globe is the news building in the first themer (AROUND THE GLOBE), Sun is the ... actual literal paper newspaper in the second themer (UNDER THE SUN)? And then Times in the last themer (BEHIND THE TIMES) is just the abstract *entity* / corporation. This theme execution is a complete mess. Also, POST seems conspicuously missing. FIRST PAST THE POST is a grid-spanning 15. If you're gonna do this theme (which actually seems OK, in theory) then maybe really open it up and go for a Sunday. I dunno. I just know this was painful.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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