Waltz onomatopoeia / FRI 12-31-21 / Kitchen brand whose name is an ambigram / Colorful custardy concoction / Agatha Christie novel named after Death's mount in Revelation / Component of three of the five French "mother sauces" / Does laundry or pays bills in modern lingo / Double or triple drink / Melancholiac's list / Group portrayed in Slacker and Reality Bites familiarly

Constructor: Meghan Morris

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ambigram (19A: Kitchen brand whose name is an ambigram) —

: something (such as an image of a written word or phrase) that is intended or able to be oriented in either of two ways for viewing or reading // NOTE: The word was apparently introduced by the author and cognitive scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter (born 1945) in chapter 13 of the book Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York, 1985). (merriam-webster.com)

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Started and finished in the NW, which is by far the hardest and the weakest part of this puzzle, so let's come back to that later and start by saying that this is basically a solid Friday puzzle. Didn't have quite the flow or zing that I like on Fridays, due in large part to those very, very cut-off NE and SW corners, which played like entirely separate mini-puzzles and then were almost no help at all getting into the meat of the puzzle (speaking of MEAT, side note: that was my first [Ren Faire concession] (MEAD)). The cluing also felt harder than normal throughout, causing it to feel more like a Saturday fight than a Friday fling. Still, the anchor answers (those crossing 15s) are very strong and once you get into them and bring them down, they give you a framework to get into every part of the grid (except the aforementioned iso-corners) and work things out. I for one definitely needed the LETS from LETS THINGS SLIDE as well as the RATTLE from RATTLESNAKE BITE to even begin to make serious headway in that NW section. As with yesterday, I found the "modern lingo" a little off-putting, first because there is no bit of "modern lingo" I find more off-putting than "adulting"—it's not cosplay, it's just paying your bills, it's fine, you don't need to continue to infantilize yourself well into your 30s, come on. So while ADULTS (as a verb) was easy enough to get, it was not a joy to get (11D: Does laundry or pays bills, in modern lingo) (laundry!?! that's "adulting"? yeesh, that is a low bar). SLAYS (61A: Crushes it) was less irksome, and off-putting only in the sense that it is yet another instance of white mainstream culture appropriating a term from a subculture (in this case, Black / queer). I love the slang as slang, but as with "woke" yesterday, I just think the clue should give credit where credit is due—mention queer ball culture, or "Paris is Burning," or even Beyoncé. You can spare the ink.

Now about the NW corner. Maybe I'll start with -THS. I just ... I ... so ... this is ... *twenty-seven years*! That's how long it's been since -THS has been in the puzzle. It's so, so bad, and much worse than other bad answers because there's no easy way to clue it, so what we get is the Worst answer in the puzzle doubling as one of the toughest answers in the puzzle. Most weak fill you can just blow by. But this one, this one you have to sit with. You are forced to linger. And the thing is, you think the problem is *you*. "Why can't I figure this out?" you wonder, "What is wrong with me?" And *then* you get it, and it's ... -THS. And so now you're (rightly) mad at the puzzle, not yourself. -THS. Just say it out loud a bunch of times. I'm begging constructors—erase it from your wordlists. It's bad enough that we are going to have a wordlist-inspired "UM, NO" epidemic for the next 100 years; don't let -THS sneak into the modern crossword ecosystem like some Maleskan-era* invasive species. Stand firm! Ugh, not happy when I have to spend time on what should be an inconsequential three-letter answer, but -THS is a three-alarmer, so I gotta do what I gotta do. The other issues up here are APAT crossing APLAY—they are bad individually, but together they are a cringe tornado. I also wonder about "THE PALE HORSE," an answer I want to like, but ... that is a pretty obscure Christie title. I can rattle off a dozen or so Christie titles, but that is not one of them (it was apparently made into an BBC mini-series in 2020, but like so much of 2020, I don't remember that). The clue helps a little, but the THE remained recalcitrant for a bit (I had ON A...). I don't think that particular Christie title really rises to the level of crossworthiness, but then I also think "eh, it's gettable and it's kind of colorful, so it's OK." If it hadn't been gummed up in this already icky corner, I probably would've minded its relative obscurity much less. I had no idea who TAMARA was (5D: Actress Taylor of TV's "Bones"), or that there was custard in FRUIT TART (1A: Colorful custardy confection), but those are more *me* problems.

STEPSON before STEPDAD messed me up a bit (48A: Relative by marriage), as did the fact that I couldn't remember ELWOOD's name and only wanted ELROY, which wouldn't fit (43A: One of the Blues Brothers). "LAWD!" was very tough, but I like it (38D: "Heavens!"). Wanted VENUTO before VENETO (57A: Street featured in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" (that's also 50-Across)) (50A = IN ROME), and PLAYA before PLATA (49D: South America's Rio de la ___). The one answer that baffled me the most was probably GASPS (10A: Sudden inspirations). The misdirection on "inspirations" absolutely froze me. Was not expecting "literal intakes of breath" to be the meaning there. Clever, if ruthless. So this one wobbled a bit, but ultimately held up, I thought. Tough but fair, and pleasingly wide-ranging in its subject matter. A nice way to round out the year. See you in 2022, everyone. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*to be fair, even Maleska only used -THS once; -THS is much more of a Farrar-era thing, appearing twelve times between 1950 and 1968 before disappearing and then returning only spectrally, once every generation or so ...

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