Like sun bears and sloth bears / FRI 7-30-21 / Bull mascot of Houston Texans / Peak climbed in the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary "Free Solo" / Southern cocktail made with crème de menthe, crème de cacao and cream / Many a demoiselle d'honneur

Constructor: Eric Bornstein

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RAS the Exhorter (34D: ___ the Exhorter, character in Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man") —

One of the most memorable characters in the novel, Ras the Exhorter (later called Ras the Destroyer) is a powerful figure who seems to embody Ellison’s fears for the future of the civil rights battle in America. Ras’s name, which literally means “Prince” in one of the languages of Ethiopia, sounds simultaneously like “race” and “Ra,” the Egyptian sun god. These allusions capture the essence of the character: as a passionate black nationalist, Ras is obsessed with the idea of race; as a magnificently charismatic leader, he has a kind of godlike power in the novel, even if he doesn’t show a deity’s wisdom. Ras’s guiding philosophy, radical at the time the novel was published, states that blacks should cast off oppression and prejudice by destroying the ability of white men to control them. This philosophy leads inevitably to violence, and, as a result, both Ellison and the narrator fear and oppose such notions. Yet, although Ellison objects to the ideology that Ras embodies, he never portrays him as a clear-cut villain. Throughout the novel, the reader witnesses Ras exert a magnetic pull on crowds of black Americans in Harlem. He offers hope and courage to many. By the late 1960s, many black leaders, including Malcolm X, were advocating ideas very similar to those of Ras. (sparknotes.com)

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This was pretty solid. I struggled a bunch in the center of the grid, but I don't think my struggle will have anything to do with anyone else's struggle because in addition to the everyday comprehension struggles anyone might have on a Friday, I had an error that was, if not entirely my own, surely very rare. I dusted off the top of the puzzle with almost zero problems—NETS for NABS slowed me down a bit (19A: Hauls in), and I absolutely forgot that "LIDA Rose" was a song in "The Music Man" despite watching it earlier this year (2D: "___ Rose" (song from "The Music Man")), but nothing else up there caused any trouble. Then I descended into the center and lost my bearings pretty badly. I just could not get the long Acrosses from their back-end letters. I know very well what the format of "Family Feud" is, but even having -IKE at the end didn't tip me to THIRD STRIKE (31A: Last straw on "Family Feud"). Something about the term "last straw" just didn't resonate for me. I think of that term as someone's breaking point ("That's the last straw!") not as a simple limit. Would [Last straw for a batter] make sense for THIRD STRIKE? I don't know. Maybe. But the phrase just didn't translate. Worse, I had -CAN and no idea what Ivy League city dweller I might be dealing with. In retrospect, this is humiliating, as I live about an hour away from Ithaca and visit it frequently. I know that it's technically Ivy League, but for some reason when I see that term I go to Yale and Harvard first and then ... well, the others, I have to think "what are they? ... where are they? ... Penn? Is Penn Ivy? ... That's in Philadelphia, right? Wait, Brown? ... where is Brown? etc." 

But ITHACAN would've been a cinch if I hadn't made the catastrophic error I mentioned back in the second sentence of this write-up: see, I'd gotten GRASSHOPPER easy from *its* back end (42A: Southern cocktail made with crème de menthe, crème de cacao and cream), and since it was the only thing in the middle of the grid I checked all its crosses and hey, did you know that there are two rainbow (i.e. Roy G. Biv) colors that fit the pattern "____G_"!? Well, there are. And I, I took the one more traveled by (ORANGE!), and that made me fall on my face. All the wrong letters! So THIRD STRIKE and ITHACAN stayed hidden far far longer than they would have otherwise. Oh, I should also mention that I haven't read "The Invisible Man" since college (decades ago), so I had no hope for any of the letters in RAS. I rely so heavily on short fill to give me traction when I'm in trouble, and that was the short fill I needed the most, and it just didn't come through for me. Ah well.

Really loved PORCH SWING and COME AND GO and "HEAR ME OUT!" They gave the grid some pep (an odd thing to say about something as folksy as a PORCH SWING, maybe, but that's how it felt). I had no idea a coxswain STEERed, LOL, I thought they just shouted rowing commands (51D: What coxswains do). I also had no idea the French also had the concept of "maid-of-honor," so I just stared at 47D: Many a demoiselle d'honneur wondering what a "girl of honor" was ... sounded like maybe a euphemism for ... an old profession. So that was weird. Only worked out the wedding context once I got the ordinary French word for "friend" (f.). It seems a bit flippant and dismissive to call PETA's (or anyone's) objection to FURS a "pet peeve" (55A: PETA pet peeves). My "pet peeve" is when people talk loudly on their phones when they're out for a walk (just enjoy the walk—and the quiet—you ghouls), or when people spell it "woah" ... both things nowhere near as serious as torturing and then killing animals solely for fashion. "Pet peeves" is awful here. Something more straightforward, less diminishing is called for. That's all. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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