John who wrote How Does a Poem Mean / TUE 10-4-22 / Walking Dead actress Lauren / Great pope between Sixtus III and Hilarius / Anglican bishop's headwear

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Medium (parts played easy, parts played hard, not much in-between)

THEME: EYES ON THE PRIZE (57A: "Stay focused" ... or a punny description of the placement of this puzzle's circled letters) — circled "I"s sit "on" top (at either end) of a word meaning "prize"

Theme answers:

• ASTROPHYSICIST (15A: Neil deGrasse Tyson, for one)
• PLAYED CUPID (27A: Set up a couple on a blind date, say)
• ZOOMED ALONG (43A: Kept moving quickly)
• EYES ON THE PRIZE

Word of the Day: John CIARDI (55A: John who wrote "How Does a Poem Mean?") —

John Anthony Ciardi (/ˈtʃɑːrdi/ CHAR-dee; Italian: [ˈtʃardi]; June 24, 1916 – March 30, 1986) was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet and translator of Dante's Divine Comedy, he also wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, directed the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont, and recorded commentaries for National Public Radio.

In 1959, Ciardi published a book on how to read, write, and teach poetry, How Does a Poem Mean?, which has proven to be among the most-used books of its kind. At the peak of his popularity in the early 1960s, Ciardi also had a network television program on CBS, Accent. Ciardi's impact on poetry is perhaps best measured through the younger poets whom he influenced as a teacher and as editor of the Saturday Review. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was strange. First, it's undersized (14x15), so if it seemed like you finished more quickly than usual today, there's one reason. I, however, did not finish appreciably faster than usual, despite the fact that the puzzle was just giving "I"s away. Totally unknown-to-me COHAN (14A: "The Walking Dead" actress Lauren) crossing not-your-typical-Tuesday-fare PHILIPPIC (9D: Damning verbal attack) next to not-too-familiar-to-me CIGNA (25D: Big name in insurance) slowed me down enough that my overall experience actually felt like a toughish Tuesday, maybe even Wednesday. Then there's the theme, which actually took me a while to see. I finished and ... nothing. I wonder if the app somehow gives you more visual indication of how the theme works. Once I saw it, it was obvious, but it's definitely more of a later-week theme, conceptually. And while it did give me a definite "aha" moment when I finally saw how it worked, that "aha" did not end up feeling worth the journey. The grid felt creaky and musty right from the jump, with IPASS SHE'S MITRE and LEOI setting a tone and then CRU ENS ILE ESO EDSEL ... it just felt considerably less fresh and clean than a puzzle with this little theme material should feel. Now maybe we can blame the "I"s, which must have brought considerable pressure to bear on this grid; a stray "I" here and there may not seem like it should complicate matters, but every letter you fix in place makes the grid that much harder to work out cleanly. Every "I" really narrows the possibilities for both the Down and Across it appears in. The "I"s also explain why we get the bygone names we get, specifically the "I"-ending YANNI and CIARDI (apologies to YANNI, who is not actually "bygone," but I haven't seen a reference to YANNI outside of crosswords in thirty years, since roughly the time of the whole Acropolis concert thing). By the time I finished with that SE corner, with its CIARDI ETAS ADZES ESE, I was done. *I* CONCEDE. *I* PASS. AYE ay ay! Hook up my *I*V LINE and get me my *I*PAD ... the "I"s have it today, and by "it" I mean "a swarmy, exhausting quality." The wordplay involved in the revealer phrase is not without cleverness, but in the end, I don't think just setting "I"s on top of words meaning "prize" was worth it. Not in this incarnation, anyway.

[a YANNI update]

I'm stunned that the puzzle thinks CIARDI is a Tuesday answer. I teach Inferno regularly, so I know the guy's name (he was a prominent translator of Dante), but yeesh and wow he was never what you'd call a household name and I can't believe very many people under 60 would have any clue who he is. And yet it's not the first time he's appeared in the NYTXW, by a longshot—this is the 6th appearance in the Shortz era, but the first time he's appeared earlier than *Thursday*. He was probably a reasonably well-known public intellectual in the mid-20th century, someone whom college-educated, northeastern NPR listeners might know. But now, 50 years later, I dunno. If you need him on Saturday or even Sunday, I guess, but Tuesday? 

PLAYED CUPID is the weakest of the themers simply because "CUP" isn't broken across words in its answer. Probably very, very hard to split up "CUP," but still, these "hidden word" themes are more elegant when every word in the theme answers touches every "hidden word" somehow. Exception can be made for the final theme answer, since it's already doing double duty (as a revealer *and* a theme answer). But "CUP" just seems sad. Or, rather, PLAYED seems sad. Sitting there. Looking on. With no PRIZE of its own to hold.  Theme is executed best with ZOOMED ALONG—the PRIZE is broken across both words in the phrase, and the phrase itself is vibrant and fun. There are other good answers here as well. PLAYED CUPID is wonderful as a standalone answer, as is UP TO SPEED. And I actually like the word PHILIPPIC. It just startled me to see it on a Tuesday. PHILIPPIC: Good phil! Weird day to see it. This puzzle gets high marks for imagination, but falters in the execution.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Initialisms aren't always familiar to everyone, so to whom it may concern: RPGS = role-playing games (34A: Dungeons & Dragons and Diablo, in brief)

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