Makes less powerful in video game slang / SUN 9-12-21 / Soul-seller of legend / Phenomenon such as the tendency to see human forms in animate objects / Savory Chinese snacks / Munch in modern slang / Ryerson insurance salesman in Groundhog Day / Martinez with statue outside Seattle Mariners' stadium / One who consumes a ritual meal to absolve the souls of the dead / Group dance popularized in the U.S. by Desi Arnaz

Constructor: Alex Rosen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "What a Character!" — there's an emoticon pictured in the grid, with the pieces of the sideways face composed of letters spelling out the PUNCTUATION MARK they represent (semicolon + hyphen + parenthesis); then we are told that to see it as a face we have to ROTATE CLOCKWISE (which is obvious); we are told the emoticon is a SMILEY FACE (it absolutely is not); and we are told that the tendency to see faces in animate objects is called PAREIDOLIA (which doesn't really apply to emoticons since they are *intended* to look like faces, sigh) (25A: Phenomenon such as the tendency to see human forms in animate objects)

Word of the Day: PAREIDOLIA (25A) —

Pareidolia (/ˌpær.iˈdoʊ.li.ə, ˌpɛr-/; also US: /ˌpɛr.aɪˈdoʊ.li.ə, -ˈdoʊl.jə/) is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none.

Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, seeing faces in inanimate objects, or lunar pareidolia like the Man in the Moon or the Moon rabbit. The concept of pareidolia may extend to include hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing voices (mainly indistinct) or music in random noise, such as that produced by air conditioners or fans. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was over fast. Got PUNCTUATION MARK early, and once I got the little "SEMI" part of "semicolon," I filled the rest of the circled squares in. Done. Just, done. What else is there to do? Well, apparently there is the completely unnecessary and anticlimactic instruction ROTATE CLOCKWISE. Then there is the completely erroneous description of the emoticon as a SMILEY FACE (this one is actually shocking, as the face in this puzzle is 100% without a doubt indisputably a WINKY FACE; a SMILEY FACE is made with a simple colon for the eyes, but a WINKY FACE is made with a semicolon, they are different different different, as you can see here in this "List of emoticons": totally different listing. Diff.Er.Ent!!). 

Then there's what I assume is the raison d'etre of this puzzle, the word PAREIDOLIA, which is a word I've never heard of before, which makes me think the entire damned puzzle is just to teach us the word PAREIDOLIA, but since an emoticon is a terrible example of PAREIDOLIA, since emoticons are *supposed* to look like faces (i.e. it's not like looking at the front of a car and thinking the headlights are eyes or whatever, i.e. you aren't "seeing things" when you see a face in an emoticon). So incredibly wrong and off and misguided on every level. Head-shakingly ill-conceived and -executed. I was literally saying to myself "Don't be SMILEY, don't be SMILEY" as I was filling out the pre-FACE part of that last themer. But it was SMILEY. And then the fill's really not that good (-SAUR ERATO ECOCAR ... and that's just in a tiny patch in the south, I don't really have the time / inclination to catalogue the rest). At best this is HO-HUM. I really wish the editor would reconceive, or at least ... think about? ... what the hell the Sunday's point is. It's the most visible puzzle, the biggest puzzle, the one with the most solvers (my traffic nearly doubles on Sunday). But no one who does the puzzle daily thinks the Sunday is the best. I have friends who skip it because it's just a big bore most of the time and there are sooooo many other puzzles in the world to do (there really are, if you look). Make Sunday Worthy Of Its Fame and Reputation. Because currently, and for years and years if we're being honest, it is sputtering.

Never heard of:

• PAREIDOLIA (as we've established) 
• SIN-EATER (81D: One who consumes a ritual meal to absolve the souls of the dead)
• ARI Aster (though I have heard of "Midsommar") (76A: "Midsommar" director Aster)
• NERFS (121A: Makes less powerful, in video game slang)
• OH, HELL (the card game; I'm familiar with the exclamation) (58D: Card game with a PG-rated name)
• FLEABANE (90A: Plant said to repel bugs)
• TEA EGGS (34A: Savory Chinese snacks)

The rest was no problem, though I had WOW at first instead of WOE at 13D: What "vey" of "Oy vey!" translates to at first. Thankfully, PARWIDOLIA looked very, very wrong, so I ran the alphabet for WO- and hit on WOE pretty quickly. I liked CONGA LINE. I wish this puzzle had circled squares that just twisted through the grid spelling out CONGA LINE. That would've been more fun.

The rest of the puzzle, IT'S A BLUR (which, by the way, is another good answer) (52A: "Everything happened so fast!"). One last thing: the title. Isn't an emoticon made out of *several* "characters"? When you say "What a Character!" what is the pun, exactly? Yes, the emoticon represents a human face, which you could call a "character," but I think the point is that the face is made out of characters, plural, so the pun just ... misses. What Three Characters! Not such a great ring to it. OK, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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