Small building wing / TUE 6-21-22 / Muscle worked by kettlebell swing informally / Ninja turtle hangout / Self-description for many an expert hobbyist / German bacteriologist who lent his name to a kind of dish

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Very Easy except for one completely ridiculous outlier of an answer ... so, still Easy

THEME: SPLIT SECOND (58A: Instant ... hinted at four times in this puzzle's circled squares) — things that are "second" in a series are "split" across two consecutive Across answers:

Theme answers:

• "NOW WE'RE EVEN" / USE (second planet from sun)
• AHEAD / AMSTERDAM (second U.S. president)
• STATUES / DAYTONA (second day of the work week) (also, today)
• SNOWGLOBE / TARRY (second letter of Greek alphabet)

Word of the Day: ALETTE (9D: Small building wing) —

1Roman & neoclassic archit : the pilasterlike abutment of an arch that is seen on either side of the large engaged column and that carries the entablature

2: a wing of a building (wikipedia)

• • •

This is one of those themes that has no real theme answers. No thematic content. Only an architectural feature that you're supposed to ooh and/or aah at when it's all over. And I will say that today's architectural feature is very clever. So I had one moment of "that's clever" at the very end. And, well, as Tuesdays go, that's maybe enough. Tuesdays can certainly let you down. And between its somewhat-livelier-than-usual fill and its interesting theme execution, I guess I come out on this puzzle's side in the end. But I never really fully enjoy these themeless themed puzzles. I think of them as compromised themelesses—"themeless" because none of the individual answers in the grid have anything to do, meaningwise, with the theme, and "compromised" because the theme concept requires fixed seed answers and thus places limitations on what answers can go where, limitations that true themelesses don't have. I'm now realizing that one of the reasons this Tuesday grid is livelier than most is probably because the constructor had a LOT of different options for dividing up these "second" things. I mean, Tuesday was probably always going to force you into something to do with STATUES or, I don't know, VIRTUES, but with the rest of the theme-involved answers, there would've been a lot of leeway, so the grid ends up more colorful than a normal themed Tuesday might otherwise be. And that's good. I liked that. I liked BOWLER HAT and despite finding poker about as interesting as golf (i.e. not), I did like POKER ROOM as answer. IDEA MAN is pretty snazzy, if gender-exclusive, and "NOW WE'RE EVEN" is gonna be a winning answer wherever it shows up. I can even tolerate the "EAT A SANDWICH"-esque BLEW A KISS, since unlike other "___ A ___" phrases I've seen in crosswords, BLEW A KISS feels very coherent and stand-alone-worthy. So I do think this puzzle is better made, in general, than your average Tuesday. I really do. And yet I missed having genuine theme content. Also, there was one answer, one terrible, out-of-place, "what the hell?" answer that I encountered early on and that kinda ruined everything. It was so bad, so out of place, that I spent the rest of the solve semi-resenting it. That answer ... well, it hardly needs a drumroll introduction since you probably know very well for yourself what it is. Still, allow me to pause for suspense.

[LOL this game show looks terrible]

OK, the answer is ALETTE, which is sixteen kinds of gruesome, and particularly gruesome on a Tuesday. No one says ALETTE since we have a term for ALETTE now and it's "wing." If you say a building has a "wing" people are like "awesome, I know what that is." If you say it has an ALETTE, you are going to get, at best, confused stares. "An ... ALETTE? Oooh, is that like a bidet!? Fancy!" ALETTE is so bad, constructors have had the good sense to lay off it for over 10 years. ALETTE is so bad, this is what I had to say about ALETTE the last time it appeared (Sunday, Dec. 11, 2011) (that puzzle also contained the word OCOTILLO, for context): 

I think the only reason ALETTE follows directly on the heels of OCOTILLO is to make OCOTILLO look reasonable by comparison. "Yeah, we know you're already mad about OCOTILLO, so we're just gonna give you ALETTE now and hope you get over it quickly." ALETTE ... man, that is up there among the stupidest things I've ever seen in the grid. I'd like to buy a vowel, please. Two, actually: O and U. Then I can make "ALOUETTE" and sing a nice French song to distract myself from the #&!@iness that is ALETTE. 

If you're gonna give me ALETTE, then at least give it to me on a Sunday, where I expect some difficulty and where the word can lose some of its bitterness by being more highly diluted by the higher word-count. On a Tuesday, this word is absurd, bordering on inexcusable. And it's not even holding good stuff together. Yes, it crosses two themers, and anything crossing multiple themers is in a tough position, but That's the kind of answer you're supposed to work out Early—you can't really settle your themers in place until the Downs holding them together are sorted. BLEW A KISS and ODOR EATER go through three themers, and I guarantee you they were the first things into the grid (along with the themers). So ALETTE ... were there really no better answers in the universe that could go there? It's not like the answer helps us get good fill up there. FBILAB isn't particularly good. OLDELI definitely isn't good. Why you make the decision to bring ALETTE to your otherwise Monday-level easy puzzle, I'll never know. Can you not see / hear / feel how bad an outlier it is? Anyway, ALETTE absolutely ruined the mood. The puzzle is above average in terms of its basic concept and fill quality, but ALETTE stinks so bad that I did not enjoy my visit. In short, GALETTE, yum, ALETTE, barf.

I could've done without AGASP, which exists only in crosswords and the minds of people who make them (23D: Audibly astonished). OLD ELI also reeks of old crosswordese (and the fawning fondness for all things Yale that has plagued the puzzle lo these many years) (15A: Yale, to alums). Though the puzzle was very easy, I very nearly left a mistake in the grid when I assumed that 42A: "Ripped" meant STOLE (not SWOLE). Because "Ripped" does mean STOLE, in some contexts. Or it's at least adjacent (as in the phrase "ripped off"). But I had a feeling that the "cookie" in 43D: Place to get a cookie, maybe was gonna be web browser-related, and TEBSITE seemed highly implausible. (Somewhere in the shadowy realm of theoretical words, a lonely TEBSITE is crying "ALETTE!?! How'd he get in!? Why, he's no more real than I am!!!" [sobs enviously]).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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