Title woman in a classic 1973 breakup tune / WED 12-22-21 / Cold rice topped with wasabi and raw fish / Quizzical Quebec questions / 16th century folk song that inspired a carol / Fit of sullenness / Poet who coined term carpe diem / Fish also known as a bluegill / Walkie-talkie band briefly / When repeated slangy sound of eating / Fangorn forest dweller

Constructor: Noki Trias and Lawrence Barrett

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: MARTIAN MISSIONS (36A: NASA endeavors whose vehicles can be found at the ends of 17-, 22-, 51- and 57-Across) — pretty self-explanatory:

Theme answers:

• CHRISTMAS SPIRIT (17A: Jovial seasonal mood)
• LOST OPPORTUNITY (22A: Cost of not doing business, maybe)
• MORBID CURIOSITY (51A: Why everyone loves a good train wreck)
• YANKEE INGENUITY (57A: Uniquely American cleverness)

Word of the Day: BREAM (54A: Fish also known as a bluegill) —

1: a bronze-colored European freshwater cyprinid fish (Abramis brama)broadly  : any of various related fishes

2a: any of various marine fish (family Sparidae) related to the porgy

—  called also sea bream

b: any of various freshwater sunfishes (Lepomis and related genera)especially  : BLUEGILL  (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

If we just take the theme on its own, I think this is fine. I will just have to take your word that these are in fact NASA vehicles that went to Mars—it's not like that's a famed list, exactly, though some of the names sound familiar. Niña Pinta Santa Maria, Alvin Simon Theodore, George Paul John Ringo—this set doesn't have that level of coherence or fame. Mainly, the phrase I know is the "Mars Rover." But again, I trust that they are a set, I've heard of a couple of the names, so it all works. The revealer is a little straightforward, a little dull, but it definitely describes what the theme is, so at least it's doing its job. I don't think of MARTIAN MISSIONS as a particularly snappy phrase, so when I got MARTIAN I wrote in LANDINGS—thinking, probably, of the phrase "Mars landing," which is, like "Mars Rover," the phrase most associated with expeditions to Mars. I hate to tell you this, but MARTIAN MISSIONS, even in the singular, googles Terribly. It's always better if your revealer is the mot juste and not just a phrase that kinda works. But again, it does work. It's not terribly confusing or inapt. Just workmanlike. The most interesting thing about the theme is that the themers are grid-spanners one and all—a full set of 15s. Nice bit of work to get four solid phrases to fit the theme *and* fit the grid. The revealer is wobbly, as I say, but the actual theme answer set doesn't have a wobbler in the bunch. 

What I don't get about the theme relates directly to what I didn't like about the rest of the puzzle—and that is, I don't get why they went for mirror symmetry instead of rotational symmetry. Maybe you are just noticing this—I didn't really notice it either while I was solving. I was just aware that there was an eeriness, an offness, about the grid. Something just felt wrong. Later, looking back at the finished grid, it was obvious: the black squares at the center of the grid aren't actually centered. The grid instead has mirror symmetry; that is, it is symmetrical if you fold it along the vertical axis. But it's important to note that *the theme did not necessitate this move*. Usually, when rotational symmetry disappears in favor of some other kind of symmetry, it's because the theme answer set simply won't allow for arrangement of those theme answers in a rotationally symmetrical framework. But you can symmetrically rotate five 15s all day long, and you can build a perfectly workable grid around them. So what are you gaining by going to mirror? Maybe this grid was just easier to fill or make "work"? It's possible. But 15s are the easiest length of themer to deal with—no pesky black squares left along the edges to deal with (constructing really is "black square management," at its core). So I doubt ease of fill was the answer. But if that *was* the idea, then mission absolutely not accomplished. The fill made me grimace over and over in a way it really shouldn't have (see below). I think this choice of grid shape probably had something to do with creating those somewhat flashy longer Down pairs in the NW and NE (there's nothing else longer than 6 in the whole grid, outside the themers). But if *that* was the idea, then the results are definitely hit/miss, with SKINNYDIP / YORKIPOO being the hit and THRASHER / SOIL TESTS (!?) being the miss. Or, if not a total miss, at best a shrug. "I did it all... for SOIL TESTS!" is not a great explanation of why this grid is shaped the way it is. 

And the fill overall is off-putting from the start. REC ACH ALKA TOA OCTAL AMS and on from there, culminating in a gruesome heap at the bottom of the grid with ACTIII ECCE EHS ELD ENT. I think "UM, BYE" is supposed to be cute but I found it, uh, awkward, and really hard to pick up (41D: Awkward farewell). I guess you can put an "UM" in front of anything and make it "awkward," I don't know. I do know that it makes a "nice" (as in "slightly less unpleasant") symmetrical complement to the painfully quaint "MY EYE!" on the other side of the grid. The fill repeatedly left me cold. If you stripped everything back to the original theme concept and answer set, I think the puzzle looks nice. "Good bones," I think, is the expression. But the theme execution resulted in a puzzle that was a little dull and not terribly fun to trudge through, with more wincing than winning moments. Perhaps you feel AS DO I (ugh). If not, that's OK too. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Since OTRA means "OTHER," I'm not sure having both words in the same grid, let alone crossing them, is the greatest idea.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]