Italian dance form from the Spanish for "walk in the street" / SUN 8-21-22 / J.G. Ballard dystopia about a man stranded between motorways / Dance move that resembles a front flip / Portuguese city with a historic university founded in 1290 / Bongo-playing 1950s stereotype / Indicators of status in Maori culture / Symbol of longevity in Chinese numerology

Constructor: Brooke Husic and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Stacking Up" — I don't think there's a theme; I think the idea is there are a lot of big "stacks" (i.e. long answers running alongside one another). If I'm missing something, well, someone will tell me

Word of the Day: COIMBRA (56D: Portuguese city with a historic university founded in 1290) —

Coimbra (/koʊˈɪmbrə/, also US: /kuˈ-, ˈkwɪmbrə/, UK: /ˈkɔɪmbrə/, Portuguese: [kuˈĩbɾɐ] (listen) or [ˈkwĩbɾɐ]) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of 319.40 square kilometres (123.3 sq mi). The second-largest urban area in Portugal outside Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas after Braga, it is the largest city of the district of Coimbra and the Centro Region. About 460,000 people live in the Região de Coimbra, comprising 19 municipalities and extending into an area of 4,336 square kilometres (1,674 sq mi).

Among the many archaeological structures dating back to the Roman era, when Coimbra was the settlement of Aeminium, are its well-preserved aqueduct and cryptoporticus. Similarly, buildings from the period when Coimbra was the capital of Portugal (from 1131 to 1255) still remain. During the late Middle Ages, with its decline as the political centre of the Kingdom of Portugal, Coimbra began to evolve into a major cultural centre. This was in large part helped by the establishment of the first Portuguese university in 1290 in Lisbon and its relocation to Coimbra in 1308, making it the oldest academic institution in the Portuguese-speaking world. Apart from attracting many European and international students, the university is visited by many tourists for its monuments and history. Its historical buildings were classified as a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2013: "Coimbra offers an outstanding example of an integrated university city with a specific urban typology as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions that have been kept alive through the ages."

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It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog for any length of time that this type of puzzle—the Sunday 21x21 themeless—does nothing for me, and this particular incarnation, despite being loaded with what I'd generally consider good and sometimes great fill, is no exception. I just can't get excited about setting records for the lowest number of answers in a Sunday puzzle, or about oceans of white space, or about ... really anything. When you get a canvas this big, all the stuff that would seem impressive in a more restrictive 15x15 format suddenly feels cheap. Like, yeah, you have a huge wordlist and constructing software and two top-notch constructors, you can put a lot of debut long answers in a puzzle this huge. Lots of space. No theme restrictions. You can just go to town. The themeless form just loses meaning to me when the size gets this expansive. I'm not really gonna remember anything in this grid because there's just so much. It's like when I went to Westminster Abbey and there was so much interesting old stuff but it was all just crammed in there like some kind of medieval garage sale so none of it really made an impression (besides Poet's Corner, but that's just because I studied Chaucer). Like, yeah, NEOPRONOUNS is kinda cool, and FACE TATTOOS and "DO ME A SOLID" and a few others, but most of the rest is just, you know, pretty good, and there's just so much that ... nothing feels truly marquee. I didn't love the Friday puzzle, but I remember the marquee fill even 48 hours later ("SMOOTH MOVE, EX-LAX," "I WON'T MINCE WORDS"). Why? Because those answers occurred under more restrictive grid circumstances and also were not crowded, i.e. drowned out, by so much other longer fill. Again, this is a specific, personal distaste ... actually more disinterest ... that I have regarding giant themelesses like this. I doubt many people could do this type of thing better than Brooke and Will do it here. But it's decidedly not for me.

The hardest "stack" for me was easily HEADSPRING (?) (19D: Dance move that resembles a front flip) alongside PASSACAGLIA (!!??) (16D: Italian dance form from the Spanish for "walk in the street"), though the answer that slowed me down the most was definitely COIMBRA, which somehow I am just hearing about for the first time today and which looks like a string of random letters. I am a medievalist but my Iberian knowledge has always been poor, so no huge surprise there. There were some other things in here that I didn't really know, but nothing that gave me real trouble. I found the middle of this puzzle kinda gummy. CONCRETE over CONCURRENCE, and all of the Es and Rs through there, made the whole section feel like a monochromatic slab (except GAY PRIDE PARADE, which definitely brought some color and energy). Again, everything through there is solid, and the Es and Rs etc. are not surprising given just how many long answers are running through there—the fact that they got anything to work, let alone all unimpeachably solid answers, is really something. But from a solving experience standpoint, despite its architectural impressiveness, that just wasn't my favorite part of the grid.

Notes:

• 39D: Useless (OTIOSE) — I never use this word, but I like this word. I always forget exactly what it means, since it looks like a bunch of other words all mashed together, like ODIOUS meets OBESE meets TORTOISE or something. 
• 20A: "We must wait to see what happens" ("TIME WILL TELL") — seems like not such a great thing to repeat TIME in your grid (see 103A: KILLING TIME), but again, in a grid this massive, with this much white space to fill, who's really going to notice (except me)?
• 56A: J.G. Ballard dystopia about a man stranded between motorways ("CONCRETE ISLAND") — if nothing else, this puzzle has made me want to put this in my reading queue. I keep meaning to read Ballard and never quite get around to it. He wrote, among other things, "Crash" ("a story about a renegade group of car crash fetishists." (wikipedia)), and the 1968 short story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan." True story.

Hey, next weekend is the best of the annual crossword tournaments, Lollapuzzoola. I can't make it this year (I'm all traveled out, plus my semester will already have started so I'm gonna be beat), but I love that it's back in person, in NYC. I've never not had a great time when I've gone. Importantly, though, it's also *online*, so anyone can participate! Here's the blurb provided to me by tournament founder, my friend and fellow central New Yorker, Brian Cimmet:

Lollapuzzoola, the greatest summertime crossword tournament ever held on a Saturday in August, is taking place concurrently in New York City and online on Saturday, August 27. This year's extravaganza is hosted by Brian Cimmet, Brooke Husic, and Sid Sivakumar, and features puzzles and games from over a dozen different creators. The tournament constructors are: Ella Dershowitz, Francis Heaney, Brooke Husic, Will Nediger, Paolo Pasco, and Pao Roy; and there's bonus content from Kate Chin Park, Kelsey Dixon, Shannon Rapp, Carly Schuna, Sid Sivakumar, and Foggy Brume. Visit www.bemoresmarter.com for more information and to purchase tickets.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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