Moroccan resort city on the Atlantic / SAT 7-17-21 / Boxer whose full name is made up of only three different letters / Endangered wetlands reptile of the northeastern U.S. / Ones exploited in a capitalist system per Marx / High-flying picnic game

Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy for me except the center (Medium) and the NE (yikes))

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "CRAIG'S Wife" (20D: "___ Wife," Pulitzer Prize-winning George Kelly play) —

Craig's Wife is a 1925 play written by American playwright George Kelly, uncle of actress and later Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and has been adapted for three feature films. // There have been at least three movies based on the play. The 1928 silent version was directed by William C. deMille, Cecil's brother, and starred Irene Rich in the title role. In 1936, Columbia Pictures made a film adaptation [directed by Dorothy Arzner!!] with Rosalind Russell as Harriet Craig. The 1950 film Harriet Craig, featuring Joan Crawford, was also based on the play. (wikipedia) // George Edward Kelly (January 16, 1887 – June 18, 1974) was an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He began his career in vaudeville as an actor and sketch writer. He became best known for his satiric comedies, including The Torch-Bearers (1922) and The Show-Off (1924). [...] Throughout his career, Kelly remained a realistic playwright, unaffected by the experiments of theatrical modernism. Novelist Edward Maisel described him as "a simple moralist using the theatre for simple moral purposes." Kelly's plays are often dominated by characters of monstrous egotism, and he casts a harsh light on their shortcomings. Uncompromising in his vision, he scrupulously avoided sentimentality and depictions of romance. Arthur Willis noted "Kelly appears to be anti-love, anti-romantic love, certainly, and distrustful of the tender emotions." [...] George Kelly, a "life-long bachelor," maintained a 55-year relationship with his lover William Eldon Weagley (27 November 1896 - 16 October 1975), the son of John Adams Weagley and Ella Frances Weagley, up until his death. Weagley was often referred to as his valet. That Kelly was gay was a closely guarded secret and went unacknowledged by his family to the point of not inviting Weagley to his funeral; he instead slipped in and sat quietly on a back seat. (wikipedia) (my emphasis)

• • •

Started so fast it made me suspicious. What day is this? Saturday? This is too easy ... surely some fresh horrors await me around the corner (true, more on this in a bit). That NW corner was like dry brush and I was the match, whoosh, goodbye. TYLER URIS SIA, one two three, and every Across from there. The one oh-so-brief pause came when I looked at SPATU--, wrote in SPATULA without even looking at the clue ("what else could it be!?"), then got BOW (22A: Pull (out)), which gave me SPATUB-, and then I looked at the clue (1D: Whirlpools) and, sincerely, for several seconds, I thought maybe the answer was SPATUBI ("a Latin plural?"). I don't think SPA TUBS is a term I've ever heard. There are spas and there are tubs ... and there are tubs at spas ... are SPA TUBS what we call "jacuzzis"? Or "hot tubs"? I guess SPA TUBS is vaguely familiar, but clearly it rang no bells today. Anyway, no matter, still came shooting out of that NW corner and then ... pfft. None of the central Acrosses clicked. The EMOJI part was easy enough, but what came after, shrug, and I could sort of see SLICE, I guess, but that didn't help much.The WA- on the Marx answer meant zero to me, CRAIG'S was likewise unknown, and the Down crosses all got too big from there, so I was just stuck. This is not the first time "stuck" would happen:

[This, then COW + DÉJÀ + nothing]

The most ironically funny thing that happened to me today was blanking on DRAPER—I watched every episode of "Mad Men" and discussed each one fervently with friends online (the first and only time a TV show created that kind of online connection to friends, and one of the only good uses of Facebook I've ever been a part of). Plus I just saw a picture on Twitter of John Hamm (Don DRAPER) walking two cute dogs in (I think) the Boston area yesterday morning, so DRAPER should've been there; it just wasn't. Sterling Cooper is the name of the firm in my head (as it is when the show begins) and so my own devoted viewership was zero help. I got another toe hold in this thing by going all the way to the other side of the grid and putting in COOS (attacking the short stuff first, a strategy I've discussed before, really did pay off today—it's how I started the puzzle, and then how I restarted). SLICE AND DICE seemed to fit, so I tentatively wrote that in. I knew Christine TODD Whitman, guessed that 24D: Like corduroy had to end -ED, and then guessed STONES (38A: First international rock band to play in Cuba (2016), with "the"). Figured I had enough to start looking at the long Down clues, and bam, RAGGEDY ANDY (14D: Inductee into the National Toy Hall of Fame five years after his sister) was right there and I was back in business.

But the hardest part (by far) was yet to come. I polished off the center, all the long Downs, and figured, awesome, I've got the front ends of all the Acrosses in the NE, I should be set! Well, reader, I was not set. Was I set? GOSH, NO! (just a brutal answer, that one). And I got RAINIER from just the "R"—how did I not blow through that corner? Well, I'll tell you: the boxer. Had the "LA-" and could think only of Jake Lamotta. If someone had just said "psst, think woman" it would all have been over. LAILA ALI is the crosswordiest boxer there is. But with the clue referencing nothing but the letters in her name (16A: Boxer whose full name is made up of only three different letters), oof, stuck. But the worst, stickiest thing up there was the cluing of LET, a perfectly good regular word that gets clued as a pig suffix (25A: Pig tail?). With the "E" from NELLIE in place, I looked at -E-, looked at [Pig tail?] and calmly and professionally and reasonably wrote in GEE (because the letter "GEE" is the last letter in "pig," thus "GEE" is "pig"'s "tail" ... this is cryptic / "?" cluing 101). Worse, much worse—the "G" from GEE was at the end of 10D: Having a gap, and since the clue was an -ing word, I figured parts of speech would line up, so I wrote -ING at the end of that answer. So, to recap: -ING + GEE = me absolutely stuck in the NE. 

Probably should've mentioned by now that despite having BOG in place, I had no idea what could come after. If I'd just thought about it a bit, TURTLE would've been a reasonable guess, but to my brain, that word after BOG could've been infinite things, so I just tried to cut into it with crosses ... and you can see where that got me. And oh, the bagel! Wanted ONION, but that wasn't working. Had OIL UP so then P-NI- for the bagel ... PANIC bagel!? Is that the bagel you stress-eat when your unpleasant relatives are coming over. It was all such a mess. The bagel is what eventually saved me ("PLAIN!" I literally exclaimed) and I crawled to safety from there. Actually doubled over laughing when, after getting HIATAL (yeeow), I finished the corner off with "GOSH, NO!" and finally the stupid horse clue (GAIT! I had MANE and then I was out of ideas) (7D: Dressage criterion). I felt like I'd survived a potentially fatal ordeal. 

The rest of the puzzle was a cinch. REDDI-WIP brought down the SE, PAPER COPY brought down the SW (so fast that I never even saw the clue for AGADIR, which I've never heard of, until just now, reviewing the finished grid: 36D: Moroccan resort city on the Atlantic). So, as I say, Easy for the most part, this one. Also, really excellent for the most part. That's a very creamy and delicious middle with almost zero compromises in the fill (CRAIG'S is the only even semi-iffy thing). Weird note on "CRAIG'S Wife"—I saw the clue, and something about Kelly must've made me think of Grace Kelly because my brain went "Ooh, what's the movie that Grace Kelly won the Oscar for ... I'm pretty sure that was originally a play ... I know it's "The *something* Wife" ... Oh, damn it, it's "The Country Wife," doesn't fit, oh well" ... then come to find that playwright George Kelly is actually Grace Kelly's uncle!?!?!?! So my brain's wrong turn ended up connecting two things that truly were connected (unfortunately, those two things were not Clue & Answer). Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did, and that maybe you died a little less in the NE. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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