Singer Mai with the 2018 hit Boo'd Up / WED 8-25-21 / This device makes prepping cherries a breeze / Word that comes from Lakota for dwelling

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Say what? — familiar phrases are reimagined as phrases describing a type of utterance, all of them clued as an alleged example of that kind of utterance; the second word in the theme answer is given a different meaning in each case; thus:

Theme answers:

• MASS APPEAL is clued as an appeal a priest might make at mass (17A: "Please continue your generous support of the church") (
• PITTER PATTER is clued as patter one might use to hawk cherry pitters (27A: "This device makes prepping cherries a breeze")
• ASSEMBLY LINE is clued as a line said by a principal or other school official re: school assembly (44A: "Students should report to the gym for a special presentation")
• FEVER PITCH becomes a pitch made for anti-fever medicine (58A: "This medicine will reduce your temperature in no time")

Word of the Day: ELLA Mai (41A: Singer Mai with the 2018 hit "Boo'd Up") —

Ella Mai Howell (born 3 November 1994) is an English singer-songwriter. Her musical career began at London's British and Irish Modern Music Institute in 2014, during which time she auditioned as part of a trio on the 11th season of The X Factor. In 2015, she uploaded a four-track solo EP of originals to SoundCloud titled Troubled, and was discovered on social media by American record producer Mustard and signed with his record label, 10 Summers Records.

From 2016 to 2018, she released three EPs on the label, including Time, Change, and Ready. Her self-titled debut studio album was released in October 2018 and featured the singles "Boo'd Up" and "Trip", which were released on 20 February 2018 and 3 August 2018, respectively. In 2019, "Boo'd Up" was nominated for two Grammy Awards: Song of the Year and Best R&B Song, winning for the latter, as well as Mai herself being nominated for British Breakthrough Act at the 2019 Brit Awards. At the 2019 Billboard Music Awards, she won three awards, including the award for Top R&B Artist.

• • •

It's not entirely clear why some very straightforward themes make me go "blah" and others make me go "solid workmanship!" It's an old theme type, this wacky reimagining of familiar phrases, where the second words in the theme phrases all change meaning in the same direction (i.e. from their original-phrase meanings into a shared category of meaning—today, utterances). But the oldness of the theme type doesn't mean the puzzle is bound to feel stale. You can execute this theme type well or poorly, and that's all that really matters. Today's seemed more than sufficiently clever to me. When I got down to FEVER PITCH, I nodded respectfully. "Yeah, OK, that works." Even though FEVER PITCH actually probably works least well of all the themers today—you're pitching anti-fever medicine, so using "fever" adjectivally in relation to "pitch" feels pretty tenuous. And yet FEVER PITCH is probably the most vibrant answer of the set, in terms of sheer grid appeal, so I can make some allowances for it. The most ingenious of these repurposings is probably PITTER PATTER, a fact I found out only after the puzzle was over—I had so much of the answer filled in from crosses that I eventually just wrote it in without ever looking at the clue. It would not surprise me if PITTER PATTER were the whole reason this puzzle came into being—sometime you notice weird things about a single phrase and then bam, an entire theme idea presents itself. At any rate, this theme works fine. I had a fine time. When I say this theme idea is sufficient, for once I am not damning it with faint praise. I liked it. This clears the bar for what NYTXW Wednesday themes should be.

I solved in a giant "U" shape (roughly, from the NW down the west coast along the bottom and then back up the east coast to the NE). This is an odd solving route for me, especially for an easyish themed puzzle—these usually follow a pretty predictable top-to-bottom pattern. I just kept working crosses and falling down down down. This is probably why I never looked at the PITTER PATTER clue. Just went right past it. I also somehow never saw the BLUE STATE clue (11D: It leans to the left). In that case, I didn't even guess the answer. I got it all from crosses without ever once checking in on it. Going over the puzzle just now I was surprised to see it there. Giant answer and I missed it completely. Only two answers gave me any real trouble today, both of them four letters, both of them sending out all their troublesomeness from the third letter position. I got 1D: Smartphone button down to HO-E and I swear to you I had no idea what the answer was. Just stared at it. "Does the new iOS update come with a HOPE button now?" Turns out it's just the button on the front of my phone that I press roughly one million times a day. It doesn't say "HOME" on it and I have never thought of it as a "HOME" button but that's what it's called. In googling just now, I learned that apparently the newest phones don't have HOME buttons anymore. I love how "old" my four-year-old phone is. You say "Planned obsolescence," I say "Instant vintage!" The other four-letter flummoxer was MAYA, a perfectly familiar name but I did not remember that that is the VP's sister's name (we have to know VP sisters now? Try playing that game with veeps of yore and let me know how it goes). So even at MA-A, I was not sure what I was dealing with. MARA is a name. MALA is a name. And the cross was a "?" clue, so I had a brief feeling of "uh oh," but then YEA seemed the only possible answer for [Passing remark?], so it all worked out.

Wanted BRASSIERE at 8D: Support on the shoulder but it wouldn't fit and then it turned out to be just the BRA STRAP, a much much better answer. Had BARD before LORD for Tennyson. I think that's it for missteps. And that's it for this write-up. Shout-out to OXEYE for the early traction (14A: Kind of daisy). In small doses, crosswordese is your friend!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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