Famous cryptid familiarly / SUN 12-26-21 / Demon of Japanese folklore / Baker's Joy alternative / Form of nepotism symbolically / Onetime collaborator with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre / Nickname for the French Alexandre / Devices with Nunchuks

Constructor: Christina Iverson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Pest Control" — you have to WORK OUT THE BUGS  (113A: Gradually fix something ... or what to do to understand this puzzle's italicized clues) (i.e. take the names of "bugs" out of the clues) in order to make sense of them:

Theme answers:

• HORSEBACK RIDER (22A: "One wearing chapstick, perhaps")
• MOTHER (21A: "Malice, more formally")
• NORTH POLE (32A: "Antarctic coordinate")
• PUBLIC HOUSE (51A: "Blouse and broach, perhaps")
• TRUE/FALSE TEST (65A: "It has many beet and beef options") 
• SPEARHEADED (84A: "Tickled")
• SOFT DRINK (96A: "Pop fly")
• CHEESE (116A: "Briefly, e.g.)
• GET HITCHED (37D: "Antelope, say")
• GOOGLE MAPS (47D: "Approach for directions")

Word of the Day: Emily OSTER (56D: Economist/author Emily) —

Emily Fair Oster (born February 14, 1980) is an American economist and bestselling author. After receiving a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 2002 and 2006 respectively, Oster taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She later moved to Brown University, where she is Professor of Economics. Her research interests span from development economics and health economics to research design and experimental methodology. Her research has received exposure among non-economists through The Wall Street Journal, the SuperFreakonomics bestseller book, and her 2007 TED Talk, among other media sources.

She is the author of three books, Expecting Better, The Family Firm,and Cribsheet, which discuss a data-driven approach to decision-making in pregnancy and parenting. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm writing this on Christmas evening. It's the second blog post I've written today, and while I'm more than willing to stipulate that this might have something to do with my impatience with this puzzle, I think that even were this a non-holiday on which I had to write but one blog post, the problems with this puzzle (and there are many) would still be problems. I might be less aggrieved by them, but problems they would remain. Let's start with what a dud the theme is from a solving perspective. Yes, you have that initial bit of confusion where you don't understand why the theme answers don't seem to work with their clues, but if you think about the title even a little bit, it shouldn't take you long to grasp the gimmick—remove "pest," get regular clue. Emphasis here on "regular." Because once you figure out  the pest elimination trick, the puzzle gets real dull and real straightforward real quick. The clues aren't clever or funny, they're just ... odd because they've had "pests" added to them, and when you know to look for "pests," then they are very (very) easy to find, and you're just left with plainness. [App for directions] = GOOGLE MAPS. Yep, that is what that app does. Nothing much going on there. And since the rest of the grid is so dense of short stuff, so void of any real interesting fill, once you drain the theme of any interest, you've got nothing left. You just trudge dutifully to the end. There's so much 3,4, and 5-letter fill, and the grid is sooo choppy and fussy, that there are no real opportunities for interesting answers, and it's hard to get any real feeling of flow either. The cluing is toughened up some, perhaps to make up for how easy the theme is, but toughening up short fill never adds much pleasure to the solve, for me. You can see how the fill really deadens the experience. Just stare at a patch like, say, the one in the south, the one that's got IOWAN LOOIE NOONE EKES ONI NESSIE NOTA ANTENNA. Or next door with LSAT AGRA AMEN-RA. There's just all these little crannies filled with RLSTNE letters. The puzzle never really opens up, so it never really gets ... fun.

There are other problems. Structurally, I always find it awkward when there are non-themers that are as long or longer than theme answers, and here this problem occurs in both directions, with SCHOOL TIES and MAIN THEMES (not-themers) being longer than NORTH POLE and SOFT DRINK (themers) and then AL SHARPTON and HEDGES A BET (not-themers) being just as long as GET HITCHED and GOOGLE MAPS (themers). The shortness of MOTHER and CHEESE doesn't bug me. They don't create visual confusion. It's the phantom themers, the ones that are as long or longer than the *long* themers, but aren't actually themers, they're the ones that bug me. They feel out of place. It's a minor inelegance, I suppose, but long themers shouldn't be equalled or surpassed in length by non-themers; that is my opinion (one born of longstanding precedent) and I'm sticking to it. More annoying was the fact that in the SOFT DRINK clue, the "fly" was hiding in the word ... "fly"!?!? All the other "pests" are hidden inside other words, but "fly" is just ... sitting there, not hiding at all. Weird. Less weird and more outright wrong was the fact that "bee" was the "bug" to be "worked out" in 65A: "It has many beet and beef options" (TRUE/FALSE TEST). The title of the puzzle is "Pest Control," but a bee is not a pest. All the other "pests" are common household invaders, and while, yes, sometimes you might find a giant beehive in your shower, mostly bees are just pollinators that live outside and are pests to NO ONE. They don't belong in this puzzle. I don't think MAIN THEMES is that great a standalone answer, but I *know* HEDGES A BET is terrible. It makes EATS A SANDWICH seem solid as a rock. You can hedge your bets. HEDGE ONE'S BETS is acceptable. I had HEDGES BETS, which is awkward, but still seemed reasonable. But A BET? Deep sigh. It's such an awkward verbs-a-noun phrase. I wish there were more good news here, I really do. But there's just the theme concept, which is cute in theory, but in practice, it ends up being boring. The wordplay never really arrives, the wackiness doesn't land. There are a Lot of theme answers, but more of "not great" is just "more not great."

Other things:

• 74A: Calling (NICHE) — "find your calling," "find your NICHE" ... I'm not sure these are good as synonyms, but horseshoes/hand grenades I guess. You can swap them out and get reasonably similar phrases, so OK.
• 89A: They can be graphic (TEES) — as in "t-shirts." I wanted ARTS here.
• 15D: Geek Squad members, e.g. (I.T. PROS) — oof, so hard to parse, so unsatisfying to finally get. That's a lot of abbreviation for an answer to have without there being *any* abbreviation indicators in the clue. To be fair, though, I don't think there's any clue that's going to get me happy about seeing I.T. PROS. 
• 23D: Echo, perhaps (APE) — pfft, even after I got this I didn't get it. They are both forms of imitation or copying or repeating. You "echo" someone, you ... "ape" them? These seem like really, really different activities, but again, you can probably lawyer your way into establishing equivalence.
• 114D: Demon of Japanese folklore (ONI) — I learned this word from comics—there is a comics imprint called ONI. That ... is how I learned it. I see now that it's not a very interesting story. But it is factual. 

This is the last Sunday puzzle of the year. Speaking of end-of-the-year puzzle-related matters, you should get your hands on the latest issue of The New Yorker (dated Dec. 27, 2021). It's a special puzzle-themed issue with lots of truly inventive puzzles by a small army of talented constructors, including an issue-wide meta-puzzle created by Patrick Berry, the ultimate solution to which is a cartoon caption. There's an acrostic, a cryptic, an "Impossible Crossword" by Megan Amram and Paolo Pasco (with both a "Hard" and an "Easy" set of clues), and best of all, there's a beautiful personal essay by Anna Schechtman that opens the issue. It explores the role of crosswords in her life, with particular attention to what it has meant to her to be a *woman* making crosswords. Best of all, from my purely selfish standpoint, she mentions this blog and enshrines the term NATICK in the crossword lexicon forever:

Sincerely, all vanity aside, it's a really wonderful issue. Do check it out. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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