Miss ___ famed TV psychic / WED 2-10-21 / World capital that's home to Temple of Literature built in 1070 / Crop item grown in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Constructor: Kate Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (the "Medium" part was figuring out the themers)

THEME: STOUT (64A: Kind of beer ... or a multi-word hint to 18-, 22-, 37-, 51- and 57-Across) — familiar phrases with the initial "S" and "T" taken "OUT" (wacky phrases, wacky clues):

Theme answers:

• UMP SPEECH (18A: "Strike three!" or "Yer out!"?) (stump speech)
• EEL TRAP (22A: Way to catch a conger?) (steel trap)
• RANGE BEDFELLOWS (37A: The main characters of "Brokeback Mountain," e.g.?) (strange bedfellows)
• ALE MATE (51A: Drinking buddy?) (stalemate)
• ICKY NOTES (57A: Gross messages?) (Sticky Notes)

Word of the Day: Chinua Achebe (60D: Crop item grown in Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart") —

Chinua Achebe (/ˈtʃɪnwɑː əˈtʃɛbeɪ/; born Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe, 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958), often considered his masterpiece, is the most widely read book in modern African literature.

Raised by his parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria, Achebe excelled at Government College Umuahia and won a scholarship to study medicine, but changed his studies to English literature at University College (now the University of Ibadan). He became fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures, and began writing stories as a university student. After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) and soon moved to the metropolis of Lagos. He gained worldwide attention for his novel Things Fall Apart in the late 1950s; his later novels include No Longer at Ease(1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah(1987). Achebe wrote his novels in English and defended the use of English, a "language of colonisers", in African literature. In 1975, his lecture "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" featured a criticism of Joseph Conrad as "a thoroughgoing racist"; it was later published in The Massachusetts Review amid some controversy. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme type is old as the hills. See those hills outside your window? Or, whatever, that building or wall outside your window? Older. Anyone who's done puzzles for 10+ years has seen some (but apparently not all) the variants. The TROUT and the SPOUT and the CLOUT and possibly the GOUT BOUT LOUT I don't do every puzzle so I don't know. All I know is that I knew the revealer after I got my first themer. Blew past EEL TRAP without realizing it was a themer—an EEL TRAP is a real, honest-to-god thing, and thus not at all "wacky" like the rest of the themers (maybe you call it an EEL POT, but the crossword has historically been so OBSESSed with eels and eeliness that EEL TRAP feels like an old friend, or at least like someone you've seen before). Then I swung over and up into the NE, and once I pieced together UMP SPEECH, after taking a second to think about what the play on words was, I saw it: S, T ... OUT. And I immediately went to the bottom of the grid thinking, "Oh, no, please don't be that, it can't just be that." And while I didn't find STOUT at the very bottom (weird revealer placement, by the way), I did, sadly, find it nearby:

At this point I took a deep breath and sighed dramatically, for an audience composed solely of my cats, who didn't even look up. "He's sighing again," they probably thought. "Seen it." And then I went back to finishing up the puzzle.

A puzzle like this, being based on a well-worn wordplay premise, is only as good as the wacky themers it produces, and there are hits and misses. The good news is the marquee themer, RANGE BEDFELLOWS, is pretty dang good. I still haven't seen the movie, but my understanding is that it features two cowboys who sleep together. And Michelle Williams, of "Dawson's Creek" fame. Anyhoo, the wordplay is sound there, for sure. ICKY NOTES and ALE MATE come in 2nd and 3rd (really glad they didn't try to put an example of an icky note in the clue, god knows how that would've come out). UMP SPEECH is dull. And EEL TRAP is invisible. The fill is all short stuff, except PROVOLONE, which is great, and RECESSION, which is not (they're both fine as answers, I'm talking about lovability now). 

Five more things:

• 6D: Bulk up, as muscles (SCULPT) — took me forever because these are different things. Ask a professional bodybuilder (my trainer is one—she is not "bulky," and SCULPTing is its own art)
• 8D: Toggle on a clock (AM/PM) — the worst. "Ooh, is it AM/PM or AM/FM, I can't wait to find out!" No one thinks this! So, yeah, I messed up this one and AVER / AVOW, and I had T-BILL not T-BOND (50D: Long-term U.S. security). I did guess the correct "E" spelling of CLEO's name, though (26D: Miss ___, famed TV psychic). That's something.
• 6A: Line crosser, of a sort (SCAB) — in this economy!? I'd probably leave union-busting out of the puzzle, if I ruled the world. Also, no more flippant or wacky clues for COMA (7D: Out-of-it state).
• 67A: Slyly spiteful (CATTY) — this answer is where the revealer should be, in the last Across position. STOUT was likely elevated one slot because longer terminal-U answers are a drag to work with (really restricts your fill options), and that's what you would've had on your hands if you'd have STOUT flush with the bottom of the grid.
• 46D: Big, bushy-tailed squirrel (MARMOT) — here's a picture of a MARMOT to brighten your day:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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