Cigarette that's assembled by hand, informally / SAT 10-2-21 / Pearl Harbor her for whom a future U.S. aircraft carrier is scheduled to be named / Lawn game seen regularly on ESPN beginning in 2017

Constructor: Wendy L. Brandes

Relative difficulty: Easy—even though I finished with an error :(

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DORIS "Dorie" MILLER (20A: Pearl Harbor her for whom a future U.S. aircraft carrier is scheduled to be named) —

Doris "Dorie" Miller (October 12, 1919 – November 24, 1943) was a United States Navy cook third class who was killed in action during World War II. He was the first black American to be awarded the Navy Cross, the second highest decoration for valor in combat after the Medal of Honor.

Miller served aboard the battleship West Virginia, which was sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers during the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. During the attack, he helped several sailors who were wounded, and while manning an anti-aircraft machine gun for which he had no training, he shot down several Japanese planes. Miller's actions earned him the medal, and the resulting publicity for Miller in the black press made him an iconic emblem of the fight for civil rights for black Americans. In November 1943, Miller was killed while serving aboard the escort carrier Liscome Baywhen it was sunk by a Japanese submarine during the Battle of Makin in the Gilbert Islands.

The destroyer escort/Knox-class frigate USS Miller (reclassified as a frigate in June 1975), in service from 1973 to 1991, was named after him. On January 19, 2020, the Navy announced that a Gerald R. Ford-class nuclear powered aircraft carrier, CVN-81, would be named after Miller. The ship is scheduled to be laid down in 2023 and launched in 2028. (wikipedia)

• • •

There may as well be only one answer in this puzzle, as far as my solving experience was concerned. The entire puzzle was easy, even when familiar answers (e.g. ROLLIE) were given really unfamiliar clues (e.g cigarettes, not baseball). Easy ... except for one answer. One proper noun I had never heard of. A long one. And I came close. I really did. But I muffed one of the crosses right from the beginning, and the resulting answer looked sufficiently namelike to me, and so, ultimately, failure. I finished, but I didn't get the little "you have successfully solved the puzzle" message, which is how I know something's wrong—all the squares filled in, but no message. So I start scanning the grid like mad and everything looks good, so then I'm like okay, focus, go to the answers that you are definitely not sure about and check their crosses. Checked the ROLLIE crosses, nothing. Checked the whole SO GLAD / LAD area, nothing. Well, probably nothing. I still don't really get the whole [Sprout] = LAD thing. Is that a name you'd call a young boy? "Sprout"? In what year, exactly, would you do that? Weird. Anyway, didn't see any way SO GLAD / LAD could be wrong. GREEN TAX feels made-up, but it also feels like a thing the NYTXW would embrace (what with its whole ECO- obsession), so I figured it was probably right (17A: Penalty for a polluter). Then, finally, I went to the elephant in the room, the biggie, the one answer I definitely did not know. And I said to that answer, I said, "OK, Miss TORI S. MILLER, if that is indeed your real name, let's see if your crosses all check out." Reader, they did not.

I assumed TORI S. MILLER was in the puzzle for reasons of inclusiveness, to highlight a war hero who was a woman and not (as one might expect) a man. And even after I realized, D'oh, it's DORIS, not TORI S., still I thought I was dealing with a woman. But no. Doris is a man. "Dorie," more commonly. I was right about the inclusiveness part, just wrong about the kind of inclusiveness that was in play (DORIS MILLER is Black; see "Word of the Day," above). Apparently there were other answers in this grid, but the whole name change / gender change DORIS MILLER extravaganza really made the rest of the puzzle kind of disappear. What in the world (!) was I thinking with that Café du MONTE nonsense!? (5D: Café du ___ (landmark shop in New Orleans's French Quarter) (MONDE)). It's not even proper French. Café du MONTE ... if MONTE Hall had a café, maybe, but even then it's probably de MONTE, not du MONTE, and wow I am still thinking about this somehow.

The rest of the grid felt a little on the blah side to me, though EXIT INTERVIEW and CORNHOLE definitely had something going for them. Something ENTO and ERTE and OBIES and ORT just gave the grid a bit of a musty smell. ONLY ONCE is an odd stand-alone phrase, and ON RICE feels awkward on two counts: first, it's another odd stand-alone phrase, and second, it seems like the wrong phrase. "Over rice" feels like the more in-the-language phrase, though maybe chili has its own specialized vocabulary, I don't know (42D: One way to serve chili). I was getting my cab from a WINE ROOM, but then the server in the WINE ROOM went and got it from the WINE RACK (56A: Place to get a cab). I don't think there was any other struggle or excitement. In summation, TORI S. MILLER, I know you're out there, and I salute you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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