Political journalist Berman / WED 10-6-21 / TV monster's catchphrase / FDR job-creating program / One literary source for Wagner's Ring Cycle / Brand with snow-covered mountain on its label

Constructor: Jules Markey

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (all of the challenge is in the theme discovery)

THEME: PIGEONHOLES (63A: Typecasts, in a way ... or a hint to four squares in this puzzle) — the pigeon sound, COO, can be found in four boxes in this puzzle:

Theme answers:

• KEEP A COOL HEAD / SCOOCHED (16A: Good advice during an emergency / 14D: Slid over a bit)
• OLD COOTS / "WHAT'S COOKING?" (29A: Geezers and fogies / 10D: "How are plans coming along?")
• COORS LIGHT / OIL TYCOON (49A: Brand with a snow-covered mountain on its label / 23D: Rockefeller or Getty)
• COCOONING / "ME WANT COOKIE!" (56A: Doing dinner and a movie at home, say) / 27D: TV monster's catchphrase)

Word of the Day: LASH (50D: Tie down securely) —

Nope, that's not it. Let's see ... (scrolls way down) ... ah, here we go:

merriam-webster.com

• • •

I was not on this puzzle's side for the longest time, first because ugh, put the rebuses on rebus day (i.e. Thursday), not Wednesday, this is just annoying, and second because the fill was, er, rough in many places, and third, because the rebus seemed absurd. COO and COO etc. I was actually dreading the revealer. But then the revealer came and I have to admit it's actually a very cute idea, and the execution is pretty nifty as well—those themers are By Far the best part of this grid. Usually I'm ugh-ing at a theme and finding something to like in the fill. Today, the opposite. The theme is a gem. Just, you know, put it on Thursday, make the clues somewhat harder, and maybe take another pass at some of the fill, and you've really got something here. It's really adorable and slightly brilliant to have the little bird sounds (instead of the birds themselves) inside the rebus squares. It gives the puzzle an auditory dimension that is both unusual and soothing. The puzzle has birds in it and they are cooing at me. I like this. I am not IRKed, nor do I look ASKANCE at this theme. It is well CRAFTED. I don't know that I'm in AWE, but I definitely think it's A-OK (why am I doing this, I don't like doing this, I'll stop doing this now). The real winner of the day is the Cookie Monster answer, which is also the answer that gave me the theme—I drifted down the west coast, got MEW- at the front of the answer, and realized it was going to be "ME WANT COOKIE," only at that point I didn't know what part of the answer, exactly, was going to be rebused. Then I drifted over and got OIL TYCOON, discovered its "COO" square, and everything was easy from there on out. 

I misspelled COMANECI (with an "E" on the end) (25A: Gymnast on Time's August 2, 1976, cover with the headline "She's perfect"). Not sure what gave me that idea. I feel like I've heard her name pronounced a bunch of different ways, with different vowel sounds at the end and even different syllable numbers. But that was back in the '70s, when no one knew how to pronounce anything ... or else the intervening time between when she was famous and now has just garbled my memory. I forgot WPA even though I think it was just in the grid. I wrote in DUH before D'OH (40D: "I'm such a meathead!"). I don't really know what COCOONING is... I think it's been replaced by "Netflix and chill: ... unless that too has been replaced, which seems very possible. Doing dinner and a movie at home just sounds like ... life. Like, every day. It's weird to think it needs a special name. COCOONING is when you never get old and you never die, like Wilfred Brimley, than whom I am now older (that is, older than he was when he made that movie about COCOONING ... I forget the title, but it was pretty famous). OK, that's all for now. 

This puzzle had so many answers ending in prepositions that it actually began to grate on me. MEW AT, GEAR TO, FED ON, EGG ON. AN ON. OK, not AN ON, but still, that's four, and four is a weird lot. Enough for me to notice. And as I said earlier, the fill could be fresher. You know, less OTT ESSE LAI EKE NOH D'OH EDT EDU LYRA TERR ESPY ETSY EDDA LEN ICH ODES IDES IPAD (not all of these are bad, most are tolerable, but this is an tidal wave of weak stuff). But as I say, the theme wins out, in the end. Hope you liked the cooing. I've rarely found pigeons so endearing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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