Boston exurb / SAT 11-6-21 / Bell Labs development of the 1970s / Prominent attire for Jr. Pac-Man / Reciprocal of a siemens / Creature whose male incubates the eggs, during which it won't eat, drink or defecate for 50+ days / Toni Morrison title character who lives in the Bottom / Furry creature that Wallace becomes during the full moon, in a "Wallace & Gromit" film

Constructor: Brooke Husic and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (could play lots of ways, depending on your specific type of pop culture knowledge)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Diane ARBUS (5D: Photographer Diane) —

Diane Arbus (/diːˈæn ˈɑːrbəs/; née Nemerov; March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer. Arbus worked to normalize marginalized groups and highlight the importance of proper representation of all people. She worked with a wide range of subjects including; strippers, carnival performers, nudists, dwarves, children, mothers, couples, elderly people, and middle-class families. She photographed her subjects in familiar settings: their homes, on the street, in the workplace, in the park. "She is noted for expanding notions of acceptable subject matter and violates canons of the appropriate distance between photographer and subject. By befriending, not objectifying her subjects, she was able to capture in her work a rare psychological intensity." In his 2003 New York Times Magazine article, "Arbus Reconsidered," Arthur Lubow states, "She was fascinated by people who were visibly creating their own identities—cross-dressers, nudists, sideshow performers, tattooed men, the nouveaux riches, the movie-star fans—and by those who were trapped in a uniform that no longer provided any security or comfort." Michael Kimmelman writes in his review of the exhibition Diane Arbus Revelations, that her work "transformed the art of photography (Arbus is everywhere, for better and worse, in the work of artists today who make photographs)". (wikipedia)

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Much nicer, and weirdly easier (for me), than this week's Friday offering. This puzzle has the thing that I like in all puzzles but especially in more toughly clued puzzles and that is (a homonym of) FLOE. It FLOWS. Long answers flow into long answers flow into long answers flow into long answers flow into long answers. Clues stump you at first take, but the whoosh of answers all around you allows for crosses to build up and dislodge you from wherever you've gotten stuck, such that you're never stuck for very long. Or I wasn't, anyway. The worst parts of the solve by far were those teeny corners in the NE and SW. Harrowing, because they are sequestered, with only one tiny way in and no way out. Seemed like you might go into either one of them and never come out. In an early-week puzzle, I would not fear those corners, but on a Saturday, they're potential nightmares. So those corners not only seem like haunted spaces you might enter and never be heard from again, they also offer comparatively little upside. That is, if you're successful, the only really positive feeling you have is the feeling of having survived. It's all short fill in there—very little reward for the briefly harrowing experience of going in in the first place. And sure enough, they were toughish little sections where I felt like I was only ever one lucky guess or one "just happen to know that" away from failing. Guessed SALEM off the "M" and then knew "SULA" (9A: Toni Morrison title character who lives in the Bottom), so the NE was definitely the easier of the two wee corners. In the SW you've got two cross-referenced clues jammed in there together, which immediately makes things harder. Also, I don't know my animated films at all, really, so "IGOR" had to come together from crosses. But I didn't actually get stuck in that corner either. Those corners still seem potentially lethal, but I survived. And the rest of the grid, as I say, was a sparkling ODYSSEY, ending at the bottom with my favorite little section, the PLAZA HOTEL and "I OWE YOU ONE!"

There is a danger of alienation and exclusion when you rely so heavily on very specific, some might argue niche, pop culture fill. "IGOR" at least was gettable from crosses and is a name I already associate with "monsters," so it doesn't matter so much that I never saw or heard of the movie. It would've been a little more frustrating if I'd never heard of the WERERABBIT (16A: Furry creature that Wallace becomes during the full moon, in a "Wallace & Gromit" film). Again, you can pick it up from crosses, and eventually infer its parts from the clue. But my condolences to the non-Wallace & Gromit fans today. Don't get me wrong, it's a great answer and I loved seeing it (I feel like we have the DVD somewhere, though haven't watched it since our daughter was little). But that and PROPELLER BEANIE made me wonder whether there were solvers out there being baffled by stuff that was just not on their radar. Now that I think about it, though, even if I hadn't heard of Wallace & Gromit or Jr. Pac-Man (which I thought it was Pac-Man Jr. and honestly don't really remember well at all), I probably could've put WERERABBIT and PROPELLER BEANIE together. The latter is a thing you might associate with a "Jr." and is a reasonably familiar item that can ultimately be inferred from crosses if not from video game knowledge, and WERERABBIT has familiar parts to it that are tipped by the clue. So all's fair. Nothing particularly exclusionary about how proper nouns / pop culture went down today. Again, as with the small corners, there's horror potential, but ultimately there's a happy ending.

I don't think of TEXTS as being parts of threads—I think of threads as a Twitter thing—but that's just because I use Twitter a lot and I don't text often. Also, my texts ... I just don't think of them as separated into threads. The conversation just ... goes ... doesn't feel so much like a discrete unit. Maybe this is because I'm not in a bunch of different group texts. Whatever, I still like the clue a lot (20A: Thread count?). Harrowing to get a "?" clue right at the gate of one of the teeny corners, but I worked it out. Forgot what hush puppies were so was Surprised by PONE (not as Wordsworthian as being "Surprised by Joy," but I could maybe write an ODE about it: "Surprised by PONE [...] I turned to share the corn bread—Oh! with whom / But thee!" Etc.). I was picturing STEVE Harvey but still couldn't come up with STEVE 'til I got crosses (1D: Martin or Harvey). Wrote in Anouk AIMEÉ (!?) before Sophia LOREN (2D: Actress with an Academy Award for 1960's "Two Women"). ADHD before PTSD (30D: What cognitive behavioral therapy might treat, in brief). If you went to a Starbucks and tried to order just a "Grande," they'd be confused, I think, so I wanted the answer to be STARBUCKS SIZES, not ORDERS, but of course that didn't fit. [Pickup line?] is a pretty good clue for CABS—you always order cabernet if you wanna pick someone up at a bar. Trust me, I have picked up precisely zero people this way, or any way, it'll work!* Congrats to this puzzle for getting the word "defecate" into the clues (50A: Creature whose male incubates the eggs, during which it won't eat, drink or defecate for 50+ days). Now onward, into the grid! Let the defecation era commence!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*I know it's the vehicle kind of cab here, please don't email

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