Monodon monoceros more familiarly / SAT 7-23-22 / First person to fly solo around the world 1933 / Gesture signifying perfection / Animal whose name literally means nose

Constructor: John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: WILEY POST (31A: First person to fly solo around the world (1933)) —

Wiley Hardeman Post (November 22, 1898 – August 15, 1935) was a famed American aviator during the interwar period and the first pilot to fly solo around the world. Also known for his work in high-altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits and discovered the jet stream. On August 15, 1935, Post and American humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post's aircraft crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow in the Territory of Alaska.

Post's Lockheed Vega aircraft, the Winnie Mae, was on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center from 2003 to 2011. It is now featured in the "Time and Navigation" gallery on the second floor of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. (wikipedia)

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Your sense of difficulty will likely depend heavily on your familiarity with the (considerable amount of) names in today's puzzle, but for me, this was a cinch. Far easier than yesterday's. Much easier (and more pleasurable) for me to work around a name I don't know (or in the case of WILEY POST, only vaguely know) than to have to wonder what a lot of trying-too-hard clues are doing with their awkward wording and trickery. I do think this one is mayyyyybe a little heavy on the names, though that may simply be because names are in such marquee positions (e.g. 1-Across, 2/5 of that center stack). In fact, it's really the stack of COTILLARD and WILEY POST, not far from EDWARD I and PANETTA, that creates the illusion of overall name-iness. I don't think the puzzle actually has any more names than your average puzzle. But today's are long names, in crucial positions, so they might've factored heavily in whether you sailed through the puzzle (like me) or didn't. I once wrote an article on "Braveheart," so EDWARD I was a gimme at 1A: "Braveheart" villain, and as so often happens, a 1-Across gimme heralded an easy puzzle. 

I did that NW corner about as fast as I've done any themeless corner ever. ILE RHINO NARWHAL and the whole thing just fell. Was not confident that the momentum would continue, given how utterly cut off that section is from the rest of the grid, but I just guessed the SCIENCE part of DATA SCIENCE, and then, as with EDWARD I, I just *knew* COTILLARD, and SOLFEGE, and I was off and (really) running. WILEY POST was by far the biggest stumbling block for me, but even there, once I got some crosses, despite not really knowing who he was, his name drifted into consciousness, and I never felt anywhere close to legitimately stuck.

Despite the fact that DATA SCIENCE crossing LOGIC GATE tried very hard to put me to sleep, I thought most of this was [CHEF'S KISS]! Front-page article about New York POT FARMs in my paper yesterday, so [Joint venture?] was totally transparent to me. I only know the phrase CABS IT from doing the NYTXW. Seems a very NYC thing. A very last-century NYC thing. But one of the perks of doing this damn puzzle over decades is you pick up a lot of regionalisms and slang and place names and what not, which you then end up encountering again solely in crosswords, which creates a kind of crossword-produced, imaginary, composite NYC, made up of all the NYCs that ever were since about the '20s. I wonder what would happen if I tried to draw an NYC map if I only knew about NYC from crosswords. Let's see, there's the BQE and MOMA and ... NEDICK'S on every corner, maybe? Anyway ... CABS IT! And if someone asks you to look after their cab while they're out of town, well then you CAB SIT. Sounds made up, yes, but so does NEDICK'S, so ... CAB SIT. "I was cabsitting outside the Nedick's at 88th and Lex when this pug* named Roscoe ..." — and all of a sudden you've got yourself a Damon Runyon story!

This puzzle could've used a little more oomph in the cluing, if only because it feels at times like a trivia test. There are a few "?" clues (a few is the appropriate number, btw), and they're solid, but most of what you get today in the clue department is exceedingly straightforward. I like that the "monodon monoceros" (NARWHAL) is crossing the RHINO(ceros). Horny-faced creatures of the world, unite! The weirdest moment of the solve for me was a malapop—this is a term for when you want an answer that ends up being wrong ... but then that wrong answer ends up being *right* elsewhere in the grid! I think Andrea Carla Michaels coined that term a long time ago. Sounds like a niche term, but it happens an Awful lot. Today, I considered "AW DANG!" at 4D: "Oh, darn!" ("AW RATS!"), and that "G" made me think DREG for 26A: Bottom of the barrel (LEES). Fast forward to—11D: Remnant (DREG). DREG is such a weird word to see in the singular that this particular malapop feels deeply strange. But there it is! Overall, I enjoyed this suitably Saturday-level solving experience, even if the trivia (right in my wheelhouse) failed to really put me through the WRINGER (3D: Metaphor for a difficult ordeal) (which I sometimes quite enjoy on a Saturday). See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*"pug" is old-timey slang for "pugilist" or "boxer," but if you want it to be a dog, I think the story still works.

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