Delicacy also known as sablefish / SAT 1-2-21 / Milk slangily / Caribbean locale across the water from Morro Castle / Stopped a ship using the wind in nautical lingo

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe easier ... it's an oversized grid again (16x15), so if you're a little slow today, blame that)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Cape Verde peninsula (8D: Capital on the Cape Verde peninsula => DAKAR) —

Cape Verde Peninsula, French Presqu’île du Cap Vert, peninsula in west-central Senegal that is the westernmost point of the African continent. Formed by a combination of volcanic offshore islands and a land bridge produced by coastal currents, it projects into the Atlantic Ocean, bending back to the southeast at its tip. Exposure to southwesterly winds contributes to Cape Verde’s seasonal verdant appearance, in contrast to the undulating yellow dunes to the north. The cape is the site of modern day Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and its immediate suburbs. (britannica.com)

 

• • •

It's always weird to see things written out in letters that you never actually see written out in letters, like BTWO, ARTOO, or (today) EEQUALSMCSQUARED (36A: Noted relationship in physics). It looks freaky, but I can't decide if that's a plus or a minus. Anyway, today that answer is the reason the puzzle is 16 wide, so I guess everyone involved thought it was marquee-type stuff. OK. The rest of the puzzle is strong enough that it doesn't really matter if you're on board the EEQUALSMCSQUARED train or not. Lots and lots of haven't-seen-that-before, and most of it tolerable or better. The slang is mildly grating—HELLA COOL feels a WEE bit dated (in a way that its clue, "Dope!," does not), and MOO JUICE, ugh, all infantilizing kiddyspeak like this makes my skin crawl—but that, I realize, is probably a highly idiosyncratic and personal response. Both bits of slang have (or have had) currency, and give the grid a zing that keeps it out of Dullsville. I'll take grating colloquialisms over nautical lingo any day (LAID TO, bah!) (44D: Stopped a ship using the wind, in nautical lingo). This one had bite in nearly every section, but those super-long answers were all super-easy to get, so it was easy to at least get a toehold in every corner of the grid. I struggled a bunch, but in a very normal Saturday way, and on balance ended up with favorable feelings about this one.

[Had HELLA GOOD before HELLA COOL; I blame this song]

Broken record here: the slowest part was the getting started part, i.e. the NW. When you have nothing (yet), you are in the worst position you are ever going to be in, solving-wise, so while you might start a puzzle very easily and eventually hit a place where you are dead stuck, in general, if you solve a lot of puzzles, the place you are likeliest to be slowest is the beginning. Today, BLACK COD, LOL, OK. That may as well have been clued [It's a color and a fish, good luck]. And now I realize it very nearly *is* clued that way (1A: Delicacy also known as sablefish), but I was thinking of sable as a fur not a color. Worst mistake I made up there was SLAKE at 1D: Slow down. Now I don't even think SLAKE can be made to mean that, but at the time, after realizing it was KEA and not LOA, SLAKE felt good. You ever have an answer that just feels *good* and then it ends up not only being wrong, but never having made sense in the first place. I think that's what I had on my hands here. Wait, no, I was right! SLAKE does mean "Slow down" ... kinda ... it's just a bit, you know, obsolete:

Slake is no slacker when it comes to obsolete and archaic meanings. Shakespearean scholars may know that in the Bard's day slake meant "to subside or abate ("No flood by raining slaketh. . . ." - The Rape of Lucrece) or "to lessen the force of " ("It could not slake mine ire, nor ease my heart." - Henry VI, Part 3). The most erudite word enthusiasts may also be aware of earlier meanings of "slake," such as "to slacken one's efforts" or "to cause to be relaxed or loose." These early meanings recall the word's Old English ancestor "sleac," which not only meant "slack" but is also the source of that modern term. (merriam-webster.com)

So SLAKE is "correct" for the clue, in a highly-adjacent and obsolete sort of way. I will console myself with that. Or is it "condole?" I watched the new "Emma" on New Year's Eve and someone used "condole" and I thought "ooh cool word wait how is that different from 'console'?" Turns out, they're very similar in meaning, highly overlapping, but I've wandered away from the puzzle now, and it's getting late so...

Five things:

• 
  9D: "That's enough out of you!" ("SHUT IT!") — I assume other people wrote in "QUIT IT!" at first here too. That seemed exactly like where a "Q" would go, and this puzzle seemed so fond of "Q"s ... and yet no. 
• 35A: Actress/YouTube star Koshy (LIZA) — we all draw our lines, and here's one of mine: "YouTube star." I'm just out. Can't. Bridge too far. Be another kind of star. Can't even bother to look this one up. In this instance, I am an incurious bastard.
• 18A: Speed up (HUSTLE) — had the H and S and T before I saw the clue, so *of course* I wrote in HASTEN. That is some awful luck right there. Usually great to have a bunch of crosses before you see a clue, but not when they lead you right over a cliff.
• 50A: Euro forerunner (ÉCU) — so ... not the *immediate* "forerunner," then (this monetary unit officially died with the French Revolution). I might've gone with "ancestor" here, but OK. [see ***UPDATE, below]
• 11D: Like some exotic drinks at tiki bars (SET ON FIRE) — went initially with LIT ON FIRE, which, unlike some of my other errors today, is entirely excusable, imho. I just read a great French-Canadian comic called Les Ananas de la Colère which was set in and around tiki bars, which are not necessarily my preferred kind of bar, but at this point I would give Anything to go into Any bar and just sit off to the side and drink my cocktail and solve my crossword and enjoy the blissful feeling of being alone, yes, but In Public. Hoping 2021 has this in store for me. And you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

***UPDATE, it seems I had the "wrong" ECU in mind, though clearly the "right" ECU must have been at least winking at my "wrong" ECU, what the actual hell?: 

The European Currency Unit (French: Unité de compte européenne, German: Europäische Währungseinheit ; ₠, ECU, or XEU) was a unit of account used by European Economic Community composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979, and was assigned the ISO 4217 code. The ECU replaced the European Unit of Account (EUA) at parity in 1979, and it was later replaced by the euro(EUR) at parity on 1 January 1999. // As a unit of account, the ECU was not a circulating currency, and did not replace or override the value of the currency of EEC member countries. However, it was used to price some international financial transactions and capital transfers. (my emphasis)

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