Festival in Arabic / WED 4-13-22 / Parasite actor Woo-shik / Fictional character partially inspired by Mexican folklore / 1990s TV nerd / Poppable muscle informally / South American capital with the world's longest urban gondola / One name for the game depicted in this puzzle

Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (much harder to start than to finish)

THEME: ROSHAMBO (38D: One name for the game depicted in this puzzle) — the other name is ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS—all three potential outcomes of said game are depicted in the grid:

Theme answers:

• SCISSORS (3D: "Cutter") cuts "PAPER"
• ROCK (23D: "Breaker") breaks "SCISSORS"
• PAPER (54A: "Coverer") covers "ROCK" 

Word of the Day: PANKO (34A: Breading for tonkatsu) —

Panko (パン粉) is a type of flaky bread crumbs used in Japanese cuisine as a crunchy coating for fried foods, such as tonkatsu. Panko is made from bread baked by electrical current, which yields a bread without a crust, and then grinding the bread to create fine slivers of crumb. It has a crisper, airier texture than most types of breading found in Western cuisine and maintains its texture baked or deep fried, resulting in a lighter coating. Outside Japan, its use is becoming more popular in both Asian and non-Asian dishes. It is often used on seafood and is often available in Asian markets, speciality stores, and, increasingly, in many large supermarkets.

Panko is produced worldwide, particularly in Asian countries, including Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, China, and Vietnam. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one was hard until it wasn't. The hard part was the way the theme answers were clued. I had ["Cutter"] as a clue for a word that I had no idea was a themer, and since that NW section is pretty hard already, I struggled to get traction early on. Further, even when I had all of "PAPER" filled in, I didn't notice SCISSORS was "cutting" it. I just looked at "IT'S OK" running through the "PAPER" and thought "huh ... weird." I little bit later I found myself with the equally tough and equally baffling ["Breaker"], which I assumed was some kind of CB-related clue, e.g. "Breaker 1-9, breaker 1-9 ... come in, over" (or something like that), and suddenly I realized the circled squares over there spelled out "SCISSORS" ... and ROCK was the "breaker" of the "SCISSORS" ... and then I looked back and noticed that it wasn't "IT'S OK" but SCISSORS that was "cutting" "PAPER." At that point, everything was clear. The second half of the puzzle was much, much easier. I'm glad I didn't jump to the bottom of the grid and write "ROCK" in the circled squares down there because I would've put the letters in the wrong places, for sure. I just let the puzzle come to me, and the bottom half went down relatively smoothly. I think this is a very good visual representation of ROSHAMBO. What's most impressive is that the fill holds up as well as it does. What might be hard for a solver to appreciate is just how hard it is to make diagonal answers work in a grid. Those are fixed letters that affect every single answer in their vicinity. And when you combine those diagonals with regular theme answers, you have a lot of immovable stuff in your grid from the get-go. Building a smooth grid on that dense a framework is very, very challenging, so while I probably wouldn't say the grid "sparkles" under normal circumstances, under *these* circumstances it sure as hell does. I liked all the fresh short stuff like EID and MASA and PANKO and GO-BAG crossing GEOTAG. This was tough for a Wednesday, but never boring. Thumbs up.

I've said before that I really don't enjoy the Duplicated Clue gag, and I doubly didn't like it today, in part because it doubly happened—twice, in the same section, which was also the section where I was starting, which meant that annoyance compounded struggle compounded annoyance. Again, predictably, the worst part of the Duplicated Clue gag was that one of them just didn't work. Actually, the SERVER / VALET doubled clue is fine, I guess. I had WAITER before SERVER, but that's not really the clue's fault. I don't like the clue [One to tip] (awkward phrasing, somehow ... [Tipped worker] seems better ...), but the clue actually fits, so I can't really complain. I can complain, however, about the clue on OPTIMISM (1D: "That's good" thinking). Sigh. The clue on NEAT IDEA actually works (2D: "That's good thinking!"), but ["That's good" thinking] is forced and terrible and (thus) makes the answer much harder to get. It's not even accurate unless you squint and then call in a lawyer. OPTIMISM has to do with hope and looking forward. "That's good" is simply a judgment. About the present. It might (with some coaxing and a bunch of additional context) be made to relate to OPTIMISM, but not here, not like this. Big "ugh," not "aha." It's a credit to this puzzle that I ended up liking it as much as I did, considering it started in the hole due to this dumb clue. But things were bad even before that, as I wrote in OFF instead of ONS for my very first answer (1A: Ending with walk or run). Also, same section, I've never heard of "popping" a PEC (13A: Poppable muscle, informally). Is that where you make them dance? When you flex them one at a time? I dunno. It just sounds awful. You "pop" a wheelie or a zit. PEC shmeck. 

Was very pleased to spell Margot ROBBIE correctly on the first try. I was a little worried there was gonna be something ... strange or unexpected about the spelling. Something French-ish, maybe. I also couldn't remember if it was pronounced with a flat "O" like BOBBY or a long "O" like TOBY. But I just tentatively dropped ROBBIE down there ... felt like I was going fishing, quietly dangling ROBBIE into that section to see if I could get any other answers to bite. At first, none of the last three short Acrosses down there took the bait, but then ORB bit, and then ERASE and then GEEK, and I knew I had it right. Finished up in the SE, which was roughly 100x easier than the NW had been. Always nice to finish strong. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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