Super Monkey Ball company / THU 5-27-21 / Minnie's promise / Madama Butterfly has four / Movement associated with crystal healing / Peppery salad ingredient / 17-time host of the Academy of Country Music Awards

Constructor: Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium

THEME: "... as SYLVESTER would say" — familiar phrases clued as is they were wacky phrases being lisped by the Looney Tunes cartoon character SYLVESTER the Cat (58A: Animated character who's the subject of this puzzle's theme):

Theme answers:

• URBAN MYTH (17A: Young woman living in a city, as 58-Across would say) (wacky answer to the clue is "urban miss," which gets lisped into ... URBAN MYTH)
• WORD OF MOUTH (24A: Minnie's promise, as 58-Across would say) (wacky prelisp version: "word of mouse")
• MOMENT OF TRUTH (35A: When an armistice is signed, as 58-Across would say) (wacky prelisp version: "moment of truce")
• IN GOOD FAITH (50A: Looking pretty, as 58-Across would say) (wacky prelisp version: "in good face")

Word of the Day: SYLVESTER (58-Across) —

Sylvester James Pussycat, Sr. is a fictional character, an anthropomorphic tuxedo cat in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Most of his appearances have him often chasing Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper. He appeared in 103 cartoons in the golden age of American animation, lagging only behind superstars Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck. Three of his cartoons won Academy Awards, the most for any starring Looney Tunes character: they are Tweetie Pie, Speedy Gonzales, and Birds Anonymous. [...] In many cartoons, Sylvester is shown intentionally sticking out his tongue while speaking, putting on emphasis that the lisp is intentional. He is also known for spraying people he is talking to with the saliva from his lisping, which is a trait rarely shared by Daffy. A common gag used for both Sylvester and Daffy is a tendency to go on a long rant, complaining about a subject and then ending it by saying "Sakes". (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, first of all, DAFFY DUCK fits at 58-Across, which was either a dumb coincidence or part of the "gotcha" Thursdayness of the puzzle or both. Since DAFFY DUCK is the much more iconic / popular lisping toon, in my toon-watching experience, he's the only name I considered at first. So I wrote him early, leaping down to write his name in as soon as the lisping thing became clear, well before I had actually worked my way down to that bottom portion of the grid. Lucky for me, once I did work my way down there, RESHOE was undeniable (39D: Do some farrier's work on), and it annihilated Daffy, so that screw-up didn't cost me badly. Even with -ESTER in the grid I couldn't think of SYLVESTER. He just disappears into a cartoon Uncanny Valley in my head somewhere between Daffy Duck and Foghorn Leghorn. Tweety Bird flies around freely in my head, but SYLVESTER ... he's sleeping somewhere, I guess. That is, I know he's there, somewhere, but I can't find him when I need him, apparently. The theme itself is very clever, though it's a bit weird to serve the bland part and hide the joke. The grid gets the plain phrase and the wacky phrase exists only in your mind. So the grid looks ordinary, but your brain does have to go through the lisping hoops in order to get you to ordinary, so you wackiness is still involved. It's just invisible. Invisible wackiness. Before my brain had fully grokked the way the theme worked, I wrote in WORD OF MOUSE at 24A: Minnie's promise [etc.] and thought it was cuteish. Then when crosses forced me back to WORD OF MOUTH, I thought, "huh, well that's too bad. Wait, what's going on?" Then I got it. All the lisped parts are at the ends of the answers, which made this one of those rare puzzles where solving from the back ends of the long answers was actually helpful, even if my brain was still misfiring on the theme and offering up potential answers like FAIR OF FAITH for 50A: Looking pretty, as 58-Across would say. In the end, I felt something like mild appreciation for this theme. It did some weird, original things reasonably well.

Outside the theme, it was verrrrrrrry easy. Writing in ACTAS instead of ARIAS created by far my greatest struggle (61A: "Madama Butterfly" has four), but eventually Reba MCENTIRE bailed me out there, so no big deal (35D: 17-time host of the Academy of Country Music Awards). My logic on the ACTAS screw-up was that in the clue, the title was written "Madama [instead of "Madame"] Butterfly," so I figured the answer was supposed to be an Italian word, and then I just guessed that ACTAS was Italian for "acts" (it's not; it's ATTI, if Google Translate can be trusted) (also, FYI, there are only two ATTI in "Madama Butterfly"). I don't know what else there is that could cause trouble in the grid. Proper nouns are few, and the vocabulary is pretty basic. I had that weird hesitation moment you get when you think "ugh, they don't want OCTAD, do they?" (7D: Eightsome). And WIRES took me a few beats because the clue looked like it was asking for a kind of poem (41A: Lines of power). But that's it. Extrathematic material was Tuesday-easy. I wasn't timing myself, so it's possible that this puzzle was very Very easy, especially when you put this Thursday gimmick alongside more typical, much-more-difficult-to-discern Thursday gimmicks. But I'm not complaining. This one came out smooth and I'll take it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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