Nonclerical at a church / MON 5-16-22 / Pita sandwiches of deep-fried chickpea balls / Roman garment of old / Big bird in Liberty Mutual ads

Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: verb like an animal— familiar phrases involving animal similes, all clued [verb adverb]:

Theme answers:

• DRINK LIKE A FISH (20A: Imbibe copiously)
• RUN LIKE A DEER (26A: Move speedily)
• WORK LIKE A DOG (43A: Toil arduously)
• WATCH LIKE A HAWK (52A: Observe intently)

Word of the Day: SOUR BALLS (33D: Tart hard candies) —

: a spherical hard candy having a tart flavor (merriam-webster)

• • •

Very easy, fairly dull. The repeated phrasing made the themers almost ridiculously easy to get, and 4xLIKEA is a lotta LIKEA. The theme is consistent enough, it's just not very playful or interesting. I will also say that RUN LIKE A DEER doesn't seem as strong as the other three. If you said DRINK LIKE, I'd say A FISH. I'd get WORK LIKE and WATCH LIKE pretty quickly as well. But RUN LIKE only makes me think of THE WIND. Further, I only really know the phrase RUN LIKE A DEER from the John Deere ad slogan "Nothing runs like a Deere." Anyway, to get a feel of how unintuitive the DEER answer is compared to the rest of them, consider:

A DEER doesn't even show up on the autocomplete menu, whereas the other options show up first or second in their respective searches. I'm sure RUN LIKE A DEER is a phrase, just not as much of a phrase as the others. Also, zero idea what SOURBALLS are. Had SOUR and no idea what might follow. I know of sour candies (e.g. Sour Patch Kids), but they aren't balls. I know ball candies (e.g. jawbreakers), but they aren't sour. I was just at a loss. SOURBALLS hasn't appeared in the puzzle in twenty years. Maybe they were more of a thing in tymes of yore. (Side note: probably should take "balls" out of the FALAFELS clue if you wanna put BALLS in the grid. It's a conspicuous word. BALLS!) (9D: Pita sandwiches of deep-fried chickpea balls) Everything else in this puzzle was straight over the plate. Very 20th-century familiar, for sure. Skews a little crosswordesey, but not egregiously so.

Wrote in MIATA before MAZDA, which was just stupid (that is, I was stupid) (1D: Japanese carmaker with a CX series). As for the [Noisy scuffle] back-to-backers, once again, as usual, one of the two felt forced and thus tougher than it might've been. ROW was easy, but FRAY ... doesn't really suggest "Noisy" except by inference, so that took multiple crosses to register. The fabric-related meaning of FRAY would've been more welcome today. The same-clue gimmick so rarely works, and I don't really know whom it's supposed to please or impress. But the puzzle was so so easy that no one is likely to complain or even care. Not a lot else to comment on here. We get another long animal answer with GOOSE EGGS, but no simile, alas. Nothing runs like a goose, that's for sure. But GOOSE EGGS is a pretty good answer all on its own. I like LAIT / STAT better than LAIC / SCAT, but I can't say my way's better. LAIC just seems more glaringly crosswordesey, somehow, as does the whole SCAT / SHOO / GIT / SCRAM industrial complex. Also, re: LAIC, what is up with the latter part of the clue? (53D: Nonclerical, at a church). At a church? Where else is something going to be nonclerical? At a 7-11? [Nonclerical] works just fine all on its own. OK, I need to go pet my cat. She really Really didn't want to swallow her pill earlier, and I had to be a little more forceful than I like, and now I feel horrifically guilty (whereas she has probably forgotten). So I'm going to give her a little bonus food and scritch her ears. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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