First and only president of the Republic of Hawaii / FRI 4-23-21 / Oni in Japanese folklore / Scrubland danger / GranTurismo maker / Oleta of soul / Finish to an oenophile

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Oleta ADAMS (1D: Oleta of soul) —

Oleta Adams (born May 4, 1953) is an American singer and pianist. Adams found limited success during the early 1980s, before gaining fame via her contributions to Tears for Fears's international chart-topping album, The Seeds of Love (1989). Her albums Circle of One (1991) and Evolution (1993) were top 10 hits in the UK; the former yielded a Grammy-nominated cover of Brenda Russell's "Get Here", which was a top 5 hit in both the UK and the US. Adams has been nominated for four total Grammy Awards, as well as two Soul Train Music Awards. [...] In 1985, Adams was discovered by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, founders of the English band Tears for Fears, while she was performing in a hotel bar in Kansas City, Missouri, while they were on a US tour. Two years later, they contacted her to invite her to join their band as a singer and pianist on their next album, The Seeds of Love. In 1989, the album was released and the single "Woman in Chains", sung as a duet by Adams and Orzabal and with Phil Collins on drums, became her first hit. Adams embarked on a world tour with Tears For Fears in 1990, performing by herself as the supporting artist at the start of each show, and remaining onstage throughout the Tears For Fears set where she would provide piano and vocals.

• • •

Got my second shot today. My plan was to stay up until 10pm, solve and blog the puzzle as soon as it came out, and then do Nothing for roughly the next 36 hours. I didn't want to get up at 5am to solve (my normal weekday routine of late) because I figured any flu-like effects of the shots that I might have would start hitting me right about then, and it's hard enough writing clearly at 5am when I'm *not* achy and fatigued. Anyway, I came home, ate dinner, and of course promptly fell asleep (this likely had nothing to do with the shot). But then I woke up, mildly disoriented, with everyone (wife, cats) having gone to bed. So since I'm up, I figured I'd sneak my solving / blogging in tonight, as planned, despite having just-got-up-from-a-nap brain. The fact that I'm narrating the most mundane details of my evening to you gives you some idea of my headspace; there's no editor up there right now. So it was very nice to see Robyn Weintraub's name on the byline. Reassuring. And the puzzle turned out to be just what my sore arm and tired mind needed: easy enough to get through without terrible exertion, and entertaining enough (more than entertaining enough) to make the solving experience not just tolerable but truly enjoyable. 

If you're going to make a themeless puzzle, might I suggest one where the long answers shoot the solver out of the NW corner like a rocket? Such a thrill to put a corner together and then just come shooting out of that corner on the wings of answers like EARLY FROST and (especially) SLEEP-OVER PARTY. Zip, zoom! Follow that up with the zing! of HOT APPLE CIDER, and you've got yourself something close to an ideal opening experience:

Things did slow down after that, as "?" clues put up some speed bumps. FRONT ROW SEATS (27A: Ones best in show?) was hard for me to get, and without the word following FRONT, the middle of the grid got a little rough. Couldn't get from "bone" to BEEF at 34A: Bone to pick, had DIP for DIM (37A: Turn down), and while ARBITER occurred to me, my brain kept saying "ARBITERs don't dispute; something must be wrong." The clue says "involved in," not "engaged in," a dispute, and an ARBITER might act as a judge in a dispute, so ... fair. But putting all that together took effort. I *knew* 25D: It's measured in both feet and meters should be POEM, but I had DIP (not DIM), and just wouldn't let it go. This left me with P--P, for 25-Down, and neither PULP nor PUMP seemed like a thing measured in feet or meters. And thus I was, however briefly, in Stuckville.

Outside of that struggle in the center, there weren't many tough spots. FIBER was weirdly hard for me to get (51A: What meat and dairy both lack) (I think of meat as being fibrous, in its way ... so that was odd). Had NBC before CBS because lord I do not understand or care about corporate parent-company content-provider conglomerama drama (57D: Network with shows on Paramount+). Is Paramount+ yet another streaming service? I feel like it is. I cannot keep track of them. I guess Peacock, or whatever it's called, is the one affiliated with NBC. Sigh. Hate to spend any time thinking about random TV initialisms. But I was ultimately placated down there in the SSW by the poetic stack of "I DON'T CARE / TEDDY BEAR," and nothing else irked me after that. Just a lovely grid overall. OK, now I'm off to drink lots of water and watch Jean Arthur movies til I fall asleep (again). Happy Vaccination Day to me! Also Happy Shakespeare's birthday! Hope you are all staying healthy and making it a priority to get those shots in your collective arms. Take care.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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