TV journalist Baldwin / FRI 7-9-21 / Biblical birthday gift / Journalist Ifill who was depicted on a postage stamp in 2020 / Move named for 19th-century skater Paulsen / Folk rock band with two #1 hits / Frozen character with antlers

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BROOKE Baldwin (10D: TV journalist Baldwin) —

Brooke Baldwin (born July 12, 1979) is an American journalist, television host and author who had been at CNN from 2008 until 2021. Baldwin hosted CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, which aired from 3pm to 4pm ET on weekdays. (wikipedia)

• • •

GOLD MEDALS (17A: Olympics
haul of fame?)

The only problem with a delightfully smooth puzzle is that there's not much more for me to say than OOH and AAH (or is it AHH?). This thing is EYE CANDY, has a great BEDSIDE MANNER, and I would definitely pay more than MARKET PRICE for it. It was very easy to GO WITH THE FLOW. In fact, the only problem I had was that I proceeded at the very opposite of a SNAIL'S PACE. I did not need the encouragement of "DON'T GIVE UP!" because the whole thing melted in my mouth like cotton candy ("look at all that cotton candy! [one minute later] the cotton candy is gone, I need more cotton candy!"). I solved in a pretty leisurely fashion, stopping to admire the gorgeous fill as it unfolded, but I was paying close attention as I was tooling along and the fact is that I did not look at a single clue to which I didn't know the answer until the grid was half-finished. Literally every clue I looked prompted a correct answer, including BROOKE, whom I've never heard of—I had enough letters in place to guess her name easily. It was not until the clue on CORKS (35A: Light brown seals) that I failed to get an answer at first glance (I had -OR-S in place and just couldn't come up with it). 

This is how things OPENED. Nice to get such a vibrant phrase like EYE CANDY as one of your first longer answers:

I thought I might not get 9D: Goes to hell? from just DES-, but I thought on it a few seconds, and bam, down it went (love that the answer itself literally DESCENDS into the grid):

From there, it was whoosh whoosh, from BEDSIDE MANNER to LESSER EVIL to the seemingly self-referential GO WITH THE FLOW, and I had stakes into the bottom of the grid, ready to finish it off:

The bottom half of the puzzle was definitely tougher, but only a little. I stalled on both the OPIATE and EPIPENS in the SW, but that was just normal gotta-work-the-crosses-to-get-traction stuff that might happen on any day of the week. The SE was the thorniest, because there, I made a couple of real errors, namely SOFT SIDE for SOFT SPOT (36D: Charming vulnerability) and HEEDED for HEELED (42D: Followed). That last mistake seems deliberately induced by the clue, as HEEDED is the far far better answer for that clue, HEELED meaning something much more specific than the general "Followed." But it's a defensible clue for HEELED, and again, it's not like it caused a real hold-up. SOFT SIDE caused much more of a problem, largely because it made everything in that corner invisible. Plus, I still don't know the NATO alphabet (see PAPA) and ICES aren't a thing I ever eat or think of (ICEES, yes, I solve crosswords, those I think of). The only thing I really didn't like was in this corner: the clue on TASK. Is TASK a "kind" of force? It's a word that comes before force, sure, but I'm not sure it's a "kind" of force any more than BLIND is a "kind of" spot or JUNIOR is a "kind of" mint. The clue [___ force] would've been *fine* with me, but something about "kind of" here just felt off. But, again, it's the only thing that felt off in a remarkably polished and entertaining puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]