British pop singer Lewis / TUE 9-21-21 / Subject of a famous 1937 disappearance / Onetime Supreme Court justice Charles ___ Hughes

Constructor: Daniel Okulitch

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (*for a Tuesday*)

THEME: wacky law stuff — regular old legal phrases, clued wackily:

Theme answers:

• PRO BONO ATTORNEY (17A: Advocate for U2's frontman?)
• MOVE TO STRIKE (27A: Swing of a bowler's arm?)
• MOTION DENIED (49A: A little tied up at the moment?)
• CLASS-ACTION SUIT (65A: Attire for gym period?)

Word of the Day: GOJI (35D: Berry touted as a "superfood") —

Goji, goji berry, or wolfberry (Chinese: 枸杞; pinyin: gǒuqǐ), is the fruit of either Lycium barbarum or Lycium chinense, two closely related species of boxthorn in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. L. barbarum and L. chinense fruits are similar but can be distinguished by differences in taste and sugar content.

Both species are native to Asia, and have been long used in traditional Asian cuisine.

The fruit has also been an ingredient in traditional Chinese, Korean, and Japanese medicine, since at least the 3rd century AD. The plant parts are called by the Latin names  lycii fructus (fruit), herba lycii (leaves), etc., in modern official pharmacopeias.

Since about 2000, goji berry and derived products became common in developed countries as health foods or alternative medicine remedies, extending from exaggerated and unproven claims about their health benefits. (wikipedia)

• • •

Surprised this made the cut. This is some straight-up 20th-century corn. The most basic recipe there is. All you have to do is assemble phrases from literally *any* field in symmetrical fashion in your grid. You know, four or so answers of 8 or more letters in length. Then, just write some wacky "?" clues where you imagine the phrase means something else, something ridiculous. That is all. Done and done. It's the lowest theme bar of all. The theme ends up riding entirely on the theme *clues* (the interestingness of the answers is usually irrelevant), and those are usually groaners at best, tortured monstrosities at worst. Today it's a bunch of legal phrases, so there's no real interest there. I guess they'd be fine answers in a themeless puzzle; they're solid long answers. But it's not like you're exactly happy to see any of them, or like any of them feels particularly original. And then there's the clues ... which are awkward and forced in the case MOVE TO STRIKE and MOTION DENIED, pretty good in the case of CLASS ACTION SUIT, and, in the case of PRO BONO ATTORNEY ... well, that one had no shot, because the answer itself should've disqualified it entirely from this puzzle. One thing you'll notice about the other three themers is that when the clues wackify the answers, they take the alleged meaning of those answers Entirely Outside The Realm Of Law. That is what you're supposed to do with a theme like this—you hide the nature of your underlying theme by making the clues point elsewhere; today, that means no legal frame of reference, and 3/4 of the clues get that right, but the PRO BONO ATTORNEY clue *can't* get that right because it's got ATTORNEY in it and you can not not not redirect the meaning of attorney away from law. It is an impossibility. If PRO BONO had been the entire themer, bang, you're in business. [Wild about U2's frontman?]. Perfect. But here you have to frame the whole thing legally, putting the awkward "Advocate" in the clue. It just doesn't work. Understand the nature of the theme you're dealing with and craft your puzzle carefully rather than just saying "close enough, who's going to notice?"

The fill is also last-century and has nothing to make up for the stale theme concept. IONIA SAYST, AARP SIRI, ABO OBIT, and on and on. Overfamiliar threes and fours OVERRUN the grid. NEWSOM is timely because of that catastrophic and embarrassing attempt to recall the California governor last week or whenever it was (52D: Successor to Brown as California governor), but otherwise there's not much else here to make you sit up and take notice. Also, the worst clues, and hardest clues, for me, were the ones where someone thought it would be a good idea to shoehorn more legal stuff into the puzzle. That's how you know someone's anxious that the theme isn't substantial enough—you get clues like 55D: Onetime Supreme Court justice Charles EVANS Hughes. Died in '48, never heard of him, isn't even the first "Charles Evans" that comes up when you google (that would be a medical facility on Long Island called the Charles Evans Center). Do you need EVANS to be legal this bad? On a Tuesday? And the clue on NEED, oof, so awkward (37D: Lawyer, for a defendant, typically). I had no idea what that clue wanted, or what all those commas were doing, or ... anything. When I got NEED ... eyeroll, sigh, etc. Other sticky spots for me: RETORT and REBUFF before REBUKE (4D: Sharp talking-to); total blankness when confronted with the clue for ALDO (42D: Global shoe retailer) (I know ALDO as the titular proprietor of the pizzeria I went to in my childhood; the shoes remain theoretical to me); AONE before ARCH (5A: Primary). I also "get around town" IN A BUS, so that's what I went with for the (awful prepositional phrase) IN A CAB (51D: How many people get around town). Speaking of the bus, mine will be here in a couple hours, so I gotta go.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Happy Earth, Wind & Fire Day (and thus happy birthday to my best friend, who doesn't do crosswords :)

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