Lucy Van Pelt's frequent outburst to Charlie Brown / THU 6-24-21 / Caro who directed 2020's Mulan / Plantlike growth held up by gas-filled bladders / Nickname composed of only Roman numerals

Constructor: Danny Lawson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (with one potentially lethal crossing)

THEME: "YOU BLOCK[HEAD]!" (55A: Lucy van Pelt's frequent outburst to Charlie Brown ... or how to fill some squares in this puzzle) — a rebus puzzle: you have to put "HEAD" into one square four times, so I guess this puzzle is calling that act "blocking" for some reason, so YOU (the solver) BLOCK (put into one square) HEAD (x4):

Theme answers:

• [HEAD]S OR TAILS
• SHAKING MY [HEAD]
• [HEAD]S WILL ROLL

Word of the Day: NIKI Caro (49A: Caro who directed 2020's "Mulan") —

Nikola Jean Caro MNZM (born 20 September 1966) is a New Zealand film director and screenwriter. Her 2002 film Whale Rider was critically praised and won a number of awards at international film festivals. She directed the 2020 live action version of Disney's Mulan, making her the second female and the second New Zealand director hired by Disney to direct a film budgeted at over $100 million. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very basic rebus, with a revealer that feels more awkward than clever. I've never heard of the act of putting something in a box being called "blocking." Maybe if you think of the box as a "block" that helps a little, but still, asking me to read the revealer as instructions ("how to fill some squares...") is asking a lot. This is a very sad use of "Peanuts," a comic that is beloved to me. Just a bunch of heads in boxes. I wonder if this started out as a "Se7en" puzzle (probably not—far too grisly for the NYTXW). 

Also awkward was the fully written out SHAKING MY HEAD. It's a very common social-media expression, but "common" now only in its abbreviated form, "smh." SMH would be *great* fill. SHAKING MY HEAD feels weirdly formal and impractical and not (in practice) a thing. Lastly, awkwardness-wise, there's a ton of theme-length fill that is doing absolutely no theme work. Those long Acrosses in the NE and SW are just as long as the first and last themers, but ... no [HEAD]s. Those answers do end up being probably the cleanest and most attractive fill, but it's still odd to have theme-length answers in what look like theme positions and then ... no theme. The biggest problem for me, overall, was how basic and plain and easy to untangle the whole [HEAD] rebus was. Got it here:

And then realized that it was just going to be [HEAD] after [HEAD] after [HEAD], with no other rebus answers coming into play, here:

This left nothing very interesting left to discover. The overall fill quality is OK, about average. But that means the theme has to shine, and it certainly tries, with that revealer, but doesn't quite pull it off. So not much excitement to be had, unless you count very nearly getting Naticked* "excitement." I was excited to "know" the [Indian rice dish] today—I've seen it in puzzles before. But when I went to write it in, I realized I was quite sure about one little letter. So I wrote in BIR-YANI (which is basically what it sounds like in my head) and trusted that the cross I was missing would be clear. And let me tell you, it was Not. I think NIKI is a *fine* answer for the crossword. I am pro-all things NZ, and it's cool to get an unusually spelled name, and a woman director's name, into the grid. But ... back to the "unusually spelled" part. If you don't know her name (I did not), then you have to infer things, and inferring that final vowel was, let's say, an adventure. So much of an adventure that I honestly was trying to decide only between "A" and "O" for a bit, before deciding neither looked right in the Indian rice dish, and then running the other vowels. I hit the "I" and thought "that has to be it: NIKI / BIRIYANI." And I was right. But that cross will break lots of people today. I guarantee it. Both answers are good crossword fare, but crossing them at that vowel ... that's rough. 

The only other issue I remember having came right up front, where I wrote in DAVID at 1A: Michelangelo's only signed work, but even as I wrote it in, I was thinking "it could be PIETÀ"—I tend to think of PIETÀ as a *type* of artwork rather than a single artwork, but I guess Michelangelo just did the one? Hmm, no, he seems to have done several works on the same theme (i.e. Mary holding the dead body of Jesus), but apparently the work of art in question is *The* PIETÀ. It looks like this.

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*A "Natick" is essentially a bad cross; there's a full explanation in the sidebar of this website

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