Noted trans activist and actress / WED 10-20-21 / 1962 Paul Anka hit / Novelty brand with slogan Watch it grow / 2018 Pixar short about a dumpling boy / Polynesian crop with medicinal properties / Irene who's central to the scandal of A Scandal in Bohemia

Constructor: David W. Tuffs

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe slightly harder)

THEME: ORBITING — Words that start with OR- are clued as if they are multi-word phrases where the first word is "OR." The "OR" phrase is clued as the latter half of an imagined either/or question:

Theme answers:

• ORLANDO (17A: "Who's your favorite roguish 'Star Wars' character? Han ___?")
• ORALIST (18A: "How famous is that actress? Is she unknown ___?")
• ORANGERED (37A: "How do you handle losing? Do you feel calm ___?")
• ORDEALS (60A: "What's the best way to spend less on shopping? Coupons ___?")
• ORCHARD (63A: "What kind of greens do you want? Spinach ___?")

Word of the Day: DIURNAL (65A: Active during the day) —

Definition of diurnal

 (Entry 1 of 2) 

1 abiology : active chiefly in the daytime diurnal animals

b: of, relating to, or occurring in the daytimethe city's diurnal noises

cbotany : opening during the day and closing at nightdiurnal flowers

2a: recurring every daydiurnal tasks

b: having a daily cyclediurnal tides (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Or not. The concept seems theoretically interesting, but the execution here is weird and off. ORANGE-RED? That's just two colors. I mean yeah you can have an orangish red or whatever, but I put in "angered" and then kept doubting it because ... ORANGERED barely registers as a thing. And I don't know what an ORALIST is. I thought it was some kind of mouth doctor, but apparently it's a term from deaf education, specifically "a deaf person who uses speech and lip-reading to communicate, rather than sign language" (google). Happy to learn something, but weird to learn it in a wacky jokey Wednesday theme answer, where the "OR" jokes only really land if the answers are in common parlance. ORALIST / -ISM seems like a great word to have in a puzzle (it's been in the grid a couple of times before, apparently), but not so much as the answer in a wacky puzzle where your clue doesn't even indicate what it is. Further: coupons *are* "deals," what the hell?  "Every day we match hundreds of new coupons with sales and promotions to bring you the very best deals," shouts some random online coupon site I just found by searching [coupon deals]. Coupons *are* deals. "Coupons OR DEALS" is a meaningless choice. That clue is just desperate. And that's the problem with a theme like this: the words you have to choose from are very limited, and the wacky cluing gets very forced in order to make the limited number of available themers "work." I got a vaguely hopeful "oh, I see" boost when I went from "ORLANDO?" to "Oh ... OR LANDO?" but the rest of the themer set was less inspiring. The clue on ORCHARD works fine, but there was a repetitiveness and a clunkiness here that made the theme not really work for me.

I was also put off by how isolated the corners of this grid are. I just have this aversion to corners, especially biggish corners, that have only narrow paths in and out. This narrowness of entryways really affects the NE and SW corners (two ways in, each the width of only one letter), but that NW and SE are pretty cut off too. It makes the grid really choppy and makes it harder to get a nice flow going. There's a whole *feel* aspect to solving that is sometimes really hard to describe, but I do know that cut-off corners really kill the vibe for me a lot of the time. Or ... maybe not "kill" it, but bring it down. There's some weird Scrabble f***ing going on with the "X"s here, and honestly TXT and EXT really undermine whatever joy the "X" factor was supposed to bring. The LEX / COX one works fine because you don't have to sacrifice fill quality and you pick up the full name of LAVERNE / COX in the bargain (46D: With 64-Down, noted trans activist and actress). Fine. But the price of TXT and EXT is a little high. If they were the lone rough fill in their sections, fine, but their neighbors (EIS and UAE, respectively) aren't much prettier.  I like OVERDUB a lot (42D: Augment, as a musical track), and ... I don't know if I *like* DIURNAL, but I liked remembering it from some Wordsworth poem I read in college. . . [looks it up] ... OMG I'm right! My memory kinda works! That is *exactly* where I learned it: from the penultimate line of "A Slumber did my Spirit Seal":

A slumber did my spirit seal; 

I had no human fears: 

She seemed a thing that could not feel 

The touch of earthly years. 

No motion has she now, no force; 

She neither hears nor sees; 

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, 

With rocks, and stones, and trees. 

... and honestly, as far as I know, this is the only place I've ever seen it used. 32 years ago! It's bizarre and seemingly haphazard what my brain chooses to retain and what it forgets entirely. Whole courses I took, I don't remember even one class session, but "DIURNAL" ... bam. Locked in.

Bullets:

• 55A: Polynesian crop with medicinal properties (KAVA) — this is a fine answer, but seems like a dangerous cross with KAHN (55D: "Blazing Saddles" actress Madeline), since CAHN is definitely a name and definitely sounds right, as does CAVA.
• 41D: ___ polloi (HOI) / 48A: "Mazel ___!" (TOV) — HOI TOV? There has *got* to be a way to make that teeny tiny 3x3 section cleaner than HOI TOV.
• 43A: 2018 Pixar short about a dumpling boy ("BAO") — still surprised BAO isn't more common as fill. Heavy on the vowels, delicious to contemplate. Definitely pro-BAO.
• 53D: Olds of old (CIERA) — not a huge fan of the "car models of old" clues, especially if the models aren't like MODEL-T old. Classic old. CIERA doesn't count. I guess I should just be happy that that other [Olds of old], the ALERO, has been put out to pasture. Man, you used to see ALEROs everywhere. There'd be days when the whole grid was just an ALERO parking lot. "Why are there six ALEROs in this puzzle?" you'd ask, befuddled. Nobody knew...
• 1A: Museum wings? (EMS) — I hate that I am so good at these "letteral" clues (i.e. clues you have to read the clue literally to arrive at the answer, which is a letter). Here, the "wings" (i.e. ends) of the word "museum" are EMS (the letter "M," in the plural: EMS). To have this answer crossing SILENTD (with yet another jokey "?" letteral clue) is truly perverse (3D: Handsome trait?). 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Since there's a "Star Wars" movie called "Rogue One," I got thrown off a bit by the word "roguish" in the "Star Wars" clue (for ORLANDO) (17A: "Who's your favorite roguish 'Star Wars' character? Han ___?"). I thought there was some kind of play on words there, and I was going to have to know things about the "Rogue One" ... like maybe ORLANDO Bloom was in it ??? ... but no.

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