Dandy accessories / FRI 1-14-22 / DoorDash designation / Headwear for many a barbershop quartet singer / Sith superpower

Constructor: Matthew Stock and Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: gunpowder tea (14A: Where to try out some gunpowder? = TEA TASTING) —

Gunpowder tea (Chinese: 珠茶; pinyin: zhū chá; lit. 'pearl tea'; pronounced [ʈʂú ʈʂʰǎ]) is a form of tea in which each leaf has been rolled into a small round pellet. Its English name comes from its resemblance to grains of gunpowder. This rolling method of shaping tea is most often applied either to dried green tea (the most commonly encountered variety outside China) or oolong tea.

Gunpowder tea production dates back to the Tang Dynasty 618–907. It was first introduced to Taiwan in the nineteenth century. Gunpowder tea leaves are withered, steamed, rolled, and then dried. Although the individual leaves were formerly rolled by hand, today all but the highest grade gunpowder teas are rolled by machines. Rolling renders the leaves less susceptible to physical damage and breakage and allows them to retain more of their flavor and aroma. In addition, it allows certain types of oolong teas to be aged for decades if they are cared for by being occasionally roasted. (wikipedia)

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***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** . Happy Newish Year! 2022! I hope you are holding up during these cold, dark days. It's early January, which means it's time for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. 

2021 was an important year for me, as my blog (this blog, the one you are reading right now) turned 15 years old! [noisemaker sounds!!!!]. That's a lot of years old. For a blog, anyway. 15 is also a pretty important crossword-related anniversary—maybe the only important crossword-related anniversary. The standard US crossword grid is 15x15, and now Rex Parker is also 15! Rex Parker, spanning the grid to give you the constant variety of crossword commentary: the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat (dum dum dum DUM!) The human drama of ... OK now I'm just channeling Jim McKay from the '70s-era introduction to "Wide World of Sports," but I do hope this blog has provided some insight, some entertainment, some commiseration, some solace, some sense of regularity during what are obviously pretty tumultuous and often lonely times. I hope it has enhanced your solving pleasure, giving you something to look forward to even (especially?) when the puzzle lets you down, and someone to celebrate with when the puzzle is wonderful. If it's also given you someone to shout at in disagreement, that's OK too.

A lot of labor goes into producing this blog every day (Every. Day.) and the hours are, let's say, less than ideal (I'm either solving and writing at night, after 10pm, or in the morning, before 6am). Most days, I really do love the writing, but it is work, and once a year (right now!) I acknowledge that fact. As I've said before, I have no interest in "monetizing" the blog beyond a simple, direct contribution request once a year. No ads, no gimmicks. Just here for you, every day, rain or shine, whether you like it or, perhaps, on occasion, not :) It's just me and my laptop and some free blogging software and, you know, a lot of rage, but hopefully there's illumination and levity along the way. I do genuinely love this gig, and whether you're an everyday reader or a Sunday-only reader or a flat-out hatereader, I appreciate you more than you'll ever know.

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address (checks should be made out to "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

I'll throw my Venmo handle in here too, just in case that's your preferred way of moving money around; it's @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. Last year's thank-you postcards featured various portraits of my cat, Alfie, designed by artist Ella Egan, a.k.a. my daughter. They were such a hit that I asked Ella to design this year's thank-you postcard as well, this time featuring both my cats. And this is the result. Behold this year's thank-you card: "Alfie and Olive: Exploring the Grid":

We went back and forth on whether she should add more black squares to make the grid look more plausibly fillable (that's a Lot of white space), but in the end we decided not to crowd the jumping (or hanging?) Olive with more black squares, and instead just to leave the card as is, with the idea that the cats are exploring a grid that is ... under construction. Anyway, this card is personally meaningful to me, and also, I believe, objectively lovely. I can't wait to share it with snail-mailers (and oh, what the hell, if you are a PayPal / Venmo donor and you want one too, just say so in the message). Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD."  Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Now on to today's puzzle...

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Well, this puzzle made me remember Macklemore, so that's one big strike against it. True, "SAME LOVE" is a song in support of gay marriage, so if you had to pick any way to remind me that Macklemore  exists, this would be the way, but still, pass (for those lucky enough not to know: Macklemore is the white rapper whose album "The Heist" (in)famously won the Best Rap Album Grammy over Kendrick Lamar's debut, "good kid, m.A.A.d. city," in 2014). Liberal piety doesn't make you good at rapping! So many great gay anthems out there, but we get Macklemore. Sigh. OK, sorry, anyway, the non-Macklemore portions of this grid were pretty good, I think. The cluing seemed to be trying very hard to be tricksy or hard, and while that can get annoying, esp. on a Friday, the tricksy impulse here seemed largely under control. NW was tough going at first, with only NSA and KHAN and AVIA and ERG being easily gettable. You'd think that would provide enough traction to get the long Acrosses, but somehow MOTH was the answer that unlocked 2 of those 3 Acrosses, and MOTH was hard as hell to get (5D: One who's light-headed?). It's a good clue, and it slowed me down bad. So did writing in BOWTIE at 1D: Headwear for many a barbershop quartet singer (BOATER). Me: "Since when are ties 'headwear'!!!?" Since never, it turns out (A BOATER is, of course, a hat). Is there a DoorDash designation isn't TOGO? I thought DoorDash was a delivery service, so ... do you have to "designate" that on the app? Seems redundant. But I don't use food delivery apps, which have a nasty habit of exploiting workers, so I dunno. OPRAH was buried in a clue that meant nothing to me, and the clue for GUESTS makes no sense (why would your GUESTS be unfriendly? I get that you're trying to do wordplay with "patronizing," but the context just doesn't work). But once I got out of that corner, the puzzle evened out a bit, while still maintaining a nice bit of bite.

Osaka is a TENNIS PRO so that's what I wrote in, obviously. It was easy enough to fix, but somehow TENNIS ACES feels weirdly bygone. "Ace" as an unreturnable serve, sure. But you'd call Naomi Osaka a pro (or possibly, at this point, a legend). But that's the only real error I made from there on out. Oh, except somehow I got cocky and, after getting -RCRAFT, wrote in AIRCRAFT without ever looking at its clue (30D: World of ___). Then I got briefly mad that AIRCRAFT was crossing AIR-something at 30A: Modern source of juice. I thought that answer was going to be some Apple-specific charging system, since Apple makes the MacBook AIR, but no, wrong allllll around, it's World of WARCRAFT and, in the cross, WIRELESS CHARGER. Much better. Two kealoas* today: first the TUT/TSK dilemma at 55A: When repeated, an expression of disapproval (TUT), and later, the old CHAR/SEAR conundrum at 13A: Burn (CHAR). I think my favorite clue in this one was 52D: Miroir image? (MOI), even though (or especially because) the pun doesn't work very well, except visually. I appreciated the effort. It made me smile. I also enjoyed the moment when I discovered that "gunpowder" was green tea and not actual gunpowder (14A: Where to try out some gunpowder = TEA TASTING). 

Additional notes:

• 51A: Sith superpower (EVIL EMPIRE) — tricky. Makes it sound like you're going to get some individual power like telekinesis or speed-reading, but it's "superpower" in the larger, political sense.
• 9A: St. Louis clock setting, briefly (CST) — if you absolutely have to give me a clock setting abbr., at least tell me what time of year it is. Getting "difficulty" into your puzzle by simply leaving out crucial info like that isn't going to make anyone happy. It's just more precious seconds I have to linger over a clue we all would like to ignore / forget / move past.
• 21A: Not allowed to go back (IN EXILE) — very hard for me; even with the front and back ends of the answer in place, I instinctively wanted the answer to be one word. Predictable mistake. 
• 
  15A: Italian verse form (RIMA) — huh. I thought this was just the word for verse, or "rhyme." I didn't know it was attached to a specific form. Dante wrote "The Divine Comedy" in terza rima (interlocking tercets with the rhyme scheme: aba bcb cdc etc.), but Petrarch wrote RIME (plural) and many of those are in sonnet form, so ... not sure what the clue is specifically referring to. Anyway, I like Petrarch and Dante, so I like RIMA. Even with this vague clue.
• 42A: Dandy accessories (CRAVATS) — so this puzzle does contain neckwear after all. Not BOWTIEs, but CRAVATS. I wasn't aware of their dandy association, but I guess that makes sense. Is Fred from "Scooby-Doo" a "dandy"? News to me. "Cravat" is part of one of my own favorite misheard lyric. I still have to think about what the words are every time I hear "You're So Vain," when she sings, "You had one eye in the mirror as / You watched yourself gavotte." My 6-year-old brain heard it as "You watch yourself go by" (how is a 6-year-old supposed to know what 'gavotte' is!!?). But somehow my later grown-up brain didn't fix it; it just changed it to the equally wrong "You watched your silk cravat." Bizarre.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = short, common fill that you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.

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