Model Miranda / THU 6-10-21 / Biological cavity / Most expensive spice in the world by weight / Professor Moriarty's first name / Legendary queen once depicted on Tunisian currency

Constructor: Sheldon Polonsky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: A to O — familiar phrases have long 'A' sound changed to long 'O' sound, with wacky results:

Theme answers:

• RENAISSANCE FOUR (17A: Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael?) (from Renaissance fair(e))
• MUSICAL CHORES (25A: Polishing the chandelier in "Phantom of the Opera" and laundering uniforms in "Hamilton"?) (from "musical chairs")
• NO TIME TO SPORE (44A: Result of a poorly planned invasion of the Body Snatchers?) (from "no time to spare")
• THE BAD NEWS BORES (58A: "I'm tired of all this negative media coverage"?) (from "The Bad News Bears")

Word of the Day: ANDY Richter (64A: Comedian Richter) —

Paul Andrew Richter (born October 28, 1966) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and late night talk show announcer. He appears as the sidekick for Conan O'Brien on each of the host's programs: Late Night, The Tonight Show on NBC, and Conan on TBS. He voiced Mort in the Madagascar film franchise and Ben Higgenbottom in the Nickelodeon animated television series The Mighty B!. [...] Since June 2019, Richter has his own podcast on the Earwolf network. [...] Richter currently holds the record for all-time highest one-day score on Celebrity Jeopardy!, winning $68,000 during a first round game of the 2009–10 season's "Jeopardy! Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational". His earnings were donated to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. (wikipedia)

• • •

After totally failing to understand what RENAISSANCE FOUR was trying to do, I eventually hacked through MUSICAL CHORES and then literally, disappointedly exclaimed "it's just a sound-change puzzle!?" And it is. That's what it is. It's way too simple a concept for a Thursday, and worse, the wackiness just doesn't land. None of this is funny. The closest to funny is NO TIME TO SPORE, but only because it's so bizarre, not because it's particularly great. It's at least trying, is what I'm saying, where the others are just "hello, we are reporting for duty and following the theme to the letter, sir." This should've run yesterday, with somewhat easier clues, if it was going to run at all. On a more technical level, changing the part of speech of the wacky word in the last themer is really awkward. Luckily I didn't really read the clue—just waited for some kind of "bears"-related phrase to become visible, but making BORES a verb results in a clunky spoken phrase that is both implausible and banal, and it's especially incomprehensible considering none of the other wacky words have their parts of speech changed (n, n, v, respectively). BORES can be a noun, clue it as a noun. It's not going to improve the overall enjoyability of the puzzle much, but at least it's one less rough spot. 

Next, we need to talk about the NE corner, specifically this truly terrible crossing:

[Model Miranda]? No. I know the puzzle wants me to know ~two thousand model names, but there's a limit, apparently, and I have reached it. But *that* is not the problem. Maybe she's famous and I don't know her, fine. But (as I've said a million times): crosses crosses crosses. With proper nouns of non-universal fame, you have to watch the crosses, particularly the vowels! So ALLE is a very bad choice here (16A: Everybody: Ger.). In the end, I figured since ALLA was definitely Italian, it *probably* wasn't also the answer here in German, but KARR is definitely a real last name (ask Mary). And since ALLA is a real word from another European language, this whole set-up is just unnecessarily precarious. And for what? It's not like ALLE is good fill. It's lowest-quintile stuff, for sure. Just redo the whole corner. Betcha I can do it in a minute or so. Bet you can too. I did this in roughly zero seconds:

Which means there must be a ton of ways to fill this corner better than it's currently filled. Even if you think my REDO is a lateral move where quality is concerned (you're wrong, but entitled to your opinion), still, there's now a much more famous proper noun there, and no foreign word in the vowel crossing, so much less possibility for confusion. Now that I think about it, the BARR cluing possibilities are all kind of repulsive to me, so I would probably go with Johnny MARR of The Smiths, who maybe you know and maybe you don't, but, again: Fair Crosses! 

Had STILTS before SNIPES (5D: Marsh birds) and SCANTY before SPARSE (42D: Meager), the latter of which definitely cost me, time-wise (made it look like that third themer was going to end in SCORE, which had me looking for phrases that ended in "scare"...). I remembered Port-SALUT cheese today after absolutely not knowing it at all in some earlier puzzle (last year? last decade? what is time?) (34A: Port-___ (French cheese)). The puzzle did give me three four-letter answers I like quite a lot to finish things off: ANDY Richter, DIDO, and PHIL Hartman. So I was grateful that things ended on a high note. But mostly this was a misplaced and pedestrian theme, with insufficient wackiness and a really bad cross in one corner. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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