Title that translates to great sage / THU 2-11-21 / Padmé Amidala's home planet in Star Wars / Cowboys QB-turned-broadcaster

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy 

THEME: plurals written as two singulars — familiar phrases that contain letter strings that spell out irregular plurals (i.e. not simple add-an-S plurals); those plurals are represented in the grid as two singular forms of the noun, side by side, in the circled squares. So COMEDIC EFFECT contains "DICE," but in the grid, instead of "DICE" we get one "DIE" and then another "DIE" ... and so on:

Theme answers:

• Comedic effect => COME DIE DIE FFECT (17A: What a pratfall may be done for)
• Twelve steps => TW ELF ELF TEPS (25A: Program followed in Alcoholics Anonymous)
• Name names => NA MAN MAN AMES (46A: Sing under pressure)
• Coffee table => CO FOOT FOOT ABLE (59A: Where magazines may be laid out)

Word of the Day: MAHARISHI (43A: Title that translates to "great sage") —

In Ancient India, Maharishi is a Sanskrit word, written as "महर्षि" in Devanagari (formed from the prefix mahā- meaning "great" and r̥ṣi meaning "seer"), indicating members of the highest order of ancient Indian sages, popularly known in India as "seers," i.e. those who engage in research to understand and experience (and therefore know) Nature and its governing laws. (wikipedia)

• • •

Normally not a big fan of gibberish in the grid, but the central idea here is so cute that I didn't mind. It's simple but ingenious—just represent a plural as two singulars. Of course that alone isn't too interesting, since representing "dogs" as DOG DOG or "roads" as ROAD ROAD wouldn't be that remarkable a transformation. But by making all the involved plurals irregular, i.e. plurals that don't follow the most common add-an-S structure, the devolution into two singulars is more dramatic somehow. In fact, ELVES is the only one with an "S" ending at all, and that one of course has the V-back-to-F change. The others are all truly irregular non-S plurals. The answers they appear in are all relatively straightforward and easy to get, or at least easy to get purchase on. Everything outside the involved theme squares today is extremely straightforward. Since it's Thursday, and I expect trickery, I just sort of sidled up to those circled squares without plunging in straight away. I surrounded them ... crossed them (to make sure the crosses were working properly; god knows what circled squares are going to do to an answer on a Thursday). Got the theme at "twelve steps" when I realized "elves" was embedded inside it, but there were six (not five) circled squares, and since I already had the first "EL-," I guessed I had a couple of ELFs on my hands (instead of the "elves"). COMEDIEDIEFFECT ended up being the hardest for me because my brain was thinking "DIE and DIE = DIES." But I got it sorted. The last two themers were totally transparent, but still enjoyable to uncover. The fill was solid enough. A pleasant surprise, overall.

Five things:

• 51D: Padmé Amidala's home planet in "Star Wars" (NABOO) — It pays to store grid-friendly "Star Wars" answers away somewhere in your brain, as they recur. There's this assumption that you'll just *know* the "Star Wars" universe (see also the Potterverse) (which is to say, see also 64A: ___ Scamander, protagonist of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them") (NEWT). I resent the "Star Wars" part of the NABOO clue, since the only "Star Wars" I recognize came out in 1977 and there was no Padmé Amidala in it, that I can recall. This is "Phantom Menace" territory ... no time to fall into this rabbit hole today. 
• 15D: ___ Shute, "A Town Like Alice" novelist (NEVIL) — a very popular novelist that, as far as I can tell, no one reads anymore. Shute was English and moved to Australia, which is where "A Town Like Alice" is set. If nothing else, today I learned the this song's title is (apparently) a literary allusion:

• 39D: Props, so to speak (CREDIT) — seems like a verb or plural noun, but it's slang for "proper respect," i.e. "due credit." It was "propers" in Aretha Franklin's "Respect," but in hip-hop slang it gets shortened to "props"
• 31A: Proper way to pass (ON THE LEFT) — assuming you don't live in the UK, Japan, NZ, etc. Not thrilled about this fairly arbitrary prepositional phrase, or about two ON phrases crossing (see 4D: Where we are (ON EARTH)). But as annoyances go, these are fairly minor.
• 29D: "That's nonsense" ("POOH") — POOH is a bear. Wanted POSH (from "pish-posh!"?), but that would've meant that the [May day celebrant] was the MSM, which seemed highly unlikely (common abbr. for "mainstream media," used primarily by paranoid nutters, please never ever put it in a grid, thank you)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. I blocked out APPARATS, possibly because it was traumatic (20A: Communist party systems). I somehow know the term "apparatchik" without knowing that its most literal, basic meaning is "a member of a Communist apparat." 

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