Where Gandalf declares "You shall not pass!" / WED 8-24-22 / 1997 horror film with the tagline When you can't breathe, you can't scream

Constructor: Colin Ernst

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easier up top, Mediumer down below)

THEME: REAL ESTATE AGENT (56A: Source of the euphemisms found in the clues for 17-, 23- and 48-Across) — clues are real estate "euphemisms" for the following residences:

Theme answers:

• STUDIO APARTMENT (17A: "It's super-cozy, and a breeze to clean!")
• FIVE FLOOR WALK-UP (23A: "You can cancel that gym membership!")
• MAJOR FIXER-UPPER (48A: "The space has endless possibilities!")

Word of the Day: MORIA (48D: Where Gandalf declares "You shall not pass!") —

In the fictional world of J. R. R. Tolkien, Moria, also named Khazad-dûm, is an ancient subterranean complex in Middle-earth, comprising a vast labyrinthine network of tunnels, chambers, mines and halls under the Misty Mountains, with doors on both the western and the eastern sides of the mountain range. Moria is introduced in Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, and is a major scene of action in The Lord of the Rings.

In much of Middle-earth's fictional history, Moria was the greatest city of the Dwarves. The city's wealth was founded on its mines, which produced mithril, a fictional metal of great beauty and strength, suitable for armour. The Dwarves dug too deep, greedy for mithril, and disturbed a demon of great power: a Balrog, which destroyed their kingdom. By the end of the Third Age, Moria had long been abandoned by the Dwarves, and was a place of evil repute. It was dark, in dangerous disrepair, and in its labyrinths lurked Orcs and the Balrog. (wikipedia)

• • •

Maybe this is supposed to be of particular appeal to New Yorkers? It mostly missed me. Only one of these potential residences sounds like it requires a "euphemism" (the last one). The first two just seem like places one might live in a city. Maybe some people would find them undesirable, I dunno, but presumably you'd have some idea of the kind of apartment you were looking at before you looked at it. And about MAJOR FIXER-UPPER ... a few things. First, the MAJOR part felt a little wobbly. The expression that came to mind for me was "it's a REAL FIXER-UPPER." I needed several crosses to get MAJOR (and one of those crosses was MORIA (!?) ... this is partly why the bottom of this puzzle was more "Medium" than the "Easy" top). Second, MAJOR FIXER-UPPER seems like something you'd say about a house, or something you own, not (like the other two themers) an apartment or something you'd rent. So it's a bit odd-man-out. Third, MAJOR FIXER-UPPER *is* the euphemism here. The other residence types are just ... residence types. This one screams "euphemism." So the puzzle is telling me the *clue* is the euphemism, but the *answer* is actually way more euphemismy. Which brings me to maybe the off-est seeming thing about the theme: I usually (always?) think of "euphemisms" as specific words or phrases, not entire sentences, so that was weird. Here's the explanation of "euphemisms" from Merriam-Webster, and you can see that complete sentences are not really part of the discussion:

Euphemisms can take different forms, but they all involve substituting a word or phrase considered to be less offensive than another. The substituted word might, for example, be viewed as a less coarse choice, as when dang or darn is used instead of damn or damned. Or it might replace a word viewed as insulting to a religious figure, such as the various euphemisms for God (gad, gadzooks, gosh) or Jesus (gee, jeepers, jeez). A euphemism may also consist of an indirect softening phrase that is substituted for the straightforward naming of something unpalatable. Thus, we hear of people being “let go” rather than “fired”; civilians killed in war described as “collateral damage”; or someone who has died having “kicked the bucket,” “passed away, “given up the ghost,” or “joined one’s ancestors.” (emph. mine)

There's a kernel of an interesting idea behind this theme, but I thought the execution here was a bit rough.

The longer Downs add some life to the grid, with the pair in the SE being the real bright spot of the day, fill-wise (SCOOP NECK next to SHAKE ON IT). Sadly, that pairing also results in the gunkiest part of the grid, fill-wise: that tiny section in the far SE—CIVKTSTVS. Actually, TVS is OK, but it adds to the horrid pile-up of abbrs. there. The clues for CIV (62A: ___ engr.) and KTS (65A: Gold stds.) are themselves hard to look at, with [___ engr.] being about as ugly a clue as I can imagine. Elsewhere, the short fill is better but not by much. ASSAM is interesting because it's a real enough place but my brain flags it immediately as crosswordese because, well, it used to be everywhere. One of those geographical terms you'd learn very early on, if you didn't know it already, because you could count on seeing it regularly. Its popularity peaked in 1973—nine appearances in the NYTXW that year. But this is its first appearance this year, so ... especially since it's an actual point-to-able region, I can't really call it "crosswordese" anymore. Like, if ASTA showed up in the puzzle tomorrow ... is he crossworese anymore? Ten ASTAs the first full year I wrote this blog (2007), but just one last year (2021). If the crosswordese unwears out its welcome, is it even crosswordese any more? I realize I've wandered into some thorny existential territory here, but ... think about it. 

ASSAM aside, there seemed to be a lot of stale short words. AHS CLIO EDAM ACER AFTS IOTAS ELL ERM PAH (ERM-PAH!—the sound of the hesitant tuba! ERM-PAH lerm-pah derpity der, I've got some ugly short words for you!). I don't know what to say about MORIA. I've read "The Hobbit" and seen all those boring LOTR movies and somehow MORIA hasn't stuck. Never even appeared in the grid until 2014, but this makes four appearances now. We already have one fictional place down in this corner (AVONLEA), I'm not sure we really need another. I enjoyed seeing AUGHT again (25D: Zero), clued as a fitting retort to everyone who doubted its "Zero" meaning last Thursday. While this puzzle played easyish overall, there was one crossing that felt like a fastball aimed at my head. I could not process the quotation marks in 47A: "Practical" thing (JOKE). I was looking for some colloquial phrase, some ... saying ... or an actual quote or anything that might justify those quotation marks. No idea. [It might be practical] would've tracked, but this clue didn't. Cross that with the "?" clue  at 47D: Form of attachment? and you've got me in a bit of a pickle, esp. since there are contexts where you do indeed "attach" things with "pegs." Me: "What kind of weird bit of hardware am I dealing with here? T-NUT, L-BAR ... what letter goes before a PEG!?" But the "attachment" in question is just an email attachment, and a JPEG is just a run-of-the-mill electronic image. I never got truly stuck there, but I did have to work both words down to the last letter (the "J") before understanding either of them.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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