Feature of a deerstalker / TUE 5-3-22 / Event first televised in 1953 with the / Metaphor for lies in a Walter Scott poem / Prize satirical scientific award sine 1991

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Challenging (way harder than typical Tuesday)

THEME: CHINESE / DYNASTY (39A: With 43-Across, historical period found in each set of circled letters) — theme answers start with circled squares, all of which contain dynasty names:

Theme answers:

• MINGLE IN THE CROWD (18A: Mix at a mixer, say)
• TANGLED WEB (30A: Metaphor for lies, in a Walter Scott poem)
• CHINESE / DYNASTY
• SUIT TO A TEE (50A: Fit perfectly)
• HANGING BY A THREAD (65A: Surviving, but just barely)

Word of the Day: CHOU / EN-LAI (36D: With 52-Down, 39-Across leader from 1949 to 1976) —

Zhou Enlai (Chinese: 周恩来; pinyin: Zhōu Ēnlái; Wade–Giles: Chou¹ Ên¹-lai²; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China serving from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and helped the Communist Party rise to power, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the Chinese economy. (wikipedia)

• • •

Short write-up today, both because I'm short for time this morning and because I'm just in a terrible mood, what with Roe v. Wade about to be overturned and all ("all" being "all of the other rights-revoking culture war carnage that is surely going to follow"). Also, I really didn't enjoy this puzzle and don't particularly want to dwell on it. The theme is fine, conceptually. It's a super-basic first-words (or in this case, first-letters) theme, with a very plain revealer. Really nothing terrible, but nothing exciting either. Chinese dynasties normally function as crosswordese, but now they're being used as an integral part of a crossword theme. Cool. There are lots of dynasties—how many, exactly, is apparently a tricky question—but at least a dozen major ones. I think I've seen these dynasties before. I don't know. But the point is, whether you're excited by or indifferent to CHINESE DYNASTYs, the theme itself was fairly basic. What wasn't basic, what was grievously off-putting, was, well, a couple of things. First, the difficulty level, which seemed way past Tuesday. Even little corners were playing very sluggish. My first pass at the NW yielded only DIMES and SEDAN. Never ever got any kind of flow going. Some of the "difficulty" can be explained by the fact that the grid is oversized (16 wide), but it really did feel more Wed. or Thu. at the cluing level. Which would not itself be So bad, but so much of the grid is filled with gunk. ATTABOY ETTA ETA EVO ENLAI ATON DOHS and on and on. So it was a slog the mostly turned up unpleasant stuff. But I think the thing that really did this puzzle in for me was the theme answers, specifically MINGLED IN THE CROWD. I ... what ... what kind of a standalone phrase is that? I wrote in MINGLE- and then thought "well, that's what you do at a party, you MINGLE ... 'let's MINGLE,' you say." The IN THE CROWD part feels so so horrible and tacked on and makeshift. Where the hell else are you going to MINGLE? The desert? TANGLED WEB doesn't stand alone either, though at least I know where that phrase comes from. SUIT TO A TEE only reminded me of the crosswordese "TOATEE" (sometimes stylized "TOAT"), so that was no good. HANGING BY A THREAD, I liked. But yeah, MINGLED IN THE CROWD just ran fingernails down the chalkboard of my heart.

I think the puzzle was in a kind of no-man's-land, forced into a Tuesday slot because it's really a Tuesday-type theme, but oversized and with hard-to-grasp longer answers. Maybe the circles are an attempt to make it more Tuesday (they certainly aren't necessary—you could've run this puzzle later in the week and left the circles out of it). OK, I've already gone on too long. This just wasn't for me at all.

Notes:

• 71A: Humble response to "How do you do it?" ("I MANAGE") — as I've said before, very recently in fact, this kind of "Humble response" is not "humble" at all. It's performative humility, and therefore the opposite of humility. You see this kind of posture on social media All The Time, and it's rotten. Usually we get "I TRY" as our "humble" response; today, it's the longer, harder-to-pick-up, and therefore worse "I MANAGE." I want fake humility out of the grid like I want ALITO out of the grid. I know I'm still gonna see both of them, a lot, but my feelings aren't gonna budge.
• 15D: Aboveboard (LICIT) — one of the absolute worst kealoas* there is. I had the "L" and went LEGAL and LEGIT before being forced into LICIT.
• 59D: "I'm glad that's over!" ("WHEW!") — another kealoa*! Had to leave that first letter blank and check the cross, because it could easily have been "PHEW!"

• 1A: Lines at the cinema? (DIALOG) — I have never spelled it any way but "dialogue," so this one missed me completely. 
• 32D: Needed further explanation (WASN'T CLEAR) — oof, WASN'T CLEAR is right. I sometimes lie awake nights thinking about how choked some wordlists must be with every single variant of various verb phrases ... WAS CLEAR WAS NOT CLEAR WASN'T CLEAR IS CLEAR IS NOT CLEAR ISN'T CLEAR ARE CLEAR ARE NOT CLEAR AREN'T CLEAR ad infinitum. Parsing this one, with its apostrophe and all, was not (wasn't) easy. Wanted WAS NO- something. I guess I don't mind the phrase itself, but it was one more thorny part in an already thorny and not terribly rewarding Tuesday.
• 53A: The first "O" of O.O.O. (OUT) — I hope to god that there are other solvers out there who struggled to get this and then just stared at it wondering "how?" Apparently "O.O.O." stands for "OUT of order." I've never seen this anywhere, except maybe crosswords. I've seen many "Out of Order" signs in my day (on video games, toilets, vending machines), but none of those sign writers were confident enough to believe that merely writing "O.O.O." was going to do the trick. This is the kind of sloggy short stuff that really killed all the flow and good vibes today.

Alas, this write-up wasn't any shorter than usual. Best laid plans etc. Please please please go pick up your "These Puzzles Fund Abortion" puzzle pack if you haven't already. It's a tiny thing you can do in the face of the whirlwind of political stupidity, cruelty, misogyny, and backwardness. Plus you get some excellent puzzles in the bargain. Take care, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = short, common answer 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.

UPDATE: I see (and love) you people :) Keep it up!

[THESE PUZZLES FUND ABORTION]

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