Emotional assessment of one's surroundings in lingo / SAT 2-11-23 / Wheat variety for a grain bowl / Unlikely trait for a beekeeper / Sustainable engineering field informally / Expanse on a Spanish explorer's map / Capital known as Keijo before the 1940s

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: CIA WORLD FACTBOOK (39A: Reference work in the public domain that's updated weekly) —

The World Factbook, also known as the CIA World Factbook, is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is available from the Government Publishing Office. The Factbook is available in the form of a website that is partially updated every week. It is also available for download for use off-line. It provides a two- to three-page summary of the demographics, geography, communications, government, economy, and military of 266 international entities including U.S.-recognized countries, dependencies, and other areas in the world.

The World Factbook is prepared by the CIA for the use of U.S. government officials, and its style, format, coverage, and content are primarily designed to meet their requirements. However, it is frequently used as a resource for academic research papers and news articles. As a work of the U.S. government, it is in the public domain in the United States. (wikipedia)

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My wife and I were watching The Fabelmans a couple of weeks ago and afterwards she said, "That main kid ... he reminded me of somebody ..." and I had thought the same thing, but just couldn't place it. I had been thinking "I know that kid ... from somewhere." Then much later, after we got home from the theater, my wife shouts at me from the next room: "Sam Ezersky!" And I was like "oh my god that's it!" If you know Sam (today's constructor), or look at a picture of Sam alongside the young actor in question, Gabriel LaBelle, you'll probably think, "hmm ... I dunno ... not really seeing it. I mean, they're both handsome young men, but ... nah, seems like a stretch." But someday you will maybe be watching The Fabelmans, which you'd always meant to do but never did because there was book club and then "Real Housewives" was on and the laundry's not going to fold itself for god's sake ... and you'll be watching and Teenage Spielberg will come on screen and you'll notice, something in his affect, something in the way he speaks, and all of a sudden you'll be just like that Leonardo DiCaprio GIF, you know the one ... pointing at the screen is astonished recognition, and you'll say, "There it is ... oh yeah ... I SEE it ..." Anyway, The Fabelmans was a good movie and this is a good puzzle. [Nailed the landing, once again]

This one opened like a super-wide Friday for me; that is, it was very whoosh-whoosh, and there was an odd horizontality to the initial whooshing, which made me notice that the grid was horizontally oversized. This was the opening gambit:

That's a lot of traction, all over the top of the grid, very quickly. Really, no hesitation on those early answers, except when I stupidly wrote in EUROPE for E.U. FLAG (21A: It has a ring of 12 gold stars on a blue background). From the "V" in VAMPIRES, I got VIBE CHECK (talk about whoosh! couldn't believe it was right!). And then, despite finding a lot of little things kinda tough in that NW corner, I put it all together without too much trouble and then shot across the grid like a rocket with BIG TEN CONFERENCE (18A: What Minnesota and Michigan are part of, but not Missouri):

I'll confess, I completely forgot the HODGES part of Obergefell v. HODGES. I know the case as "Obergefell" and though I could not have spelled "Obergefell" without some hints, I would've at least known what the ballpark looked like. HODGES ... I had HOBBES in there at one point, maybe, I dunno. But luckily I had that answer pretty well surrounded so I didn't have time to feel too bad about my cruddy memory. No clue about the CIA WORLD FACTBOOK, though when you have the opening "CIA ..." there aren't really that many places to go. That is, no English words start that way (that I know of) so either I had an error, or it started with the initialism "CIA." The WORLD FACTBOOK part just came together from crosses. I can see how 60A: Web master, with "the" was supposed to fool me, but it didn't. It might have, but by the time I looked at the clue, I already had the "Z" in place so, like Spider-Man, "thwap," I soared across the grid some more. 

Or maybe it's not "thwap"—maybe it's "FTANNG!"

The most impressive thing about this grid to me is not the grid-spanners (although they're nice). It's the prodigious NW and SE corners. I left that NW corner thinking, "Damn ... that is a nice corner." If you'd told me yesterday, "hey, tomorrow, you are going to love a corner that's got EPODE CHOO and EBB" in it, I'd've said "who are you and how do you know this?" And I probably wouldn't have believed you. But VAMPIRES / VIBECHECK is a 1A/1D crossing for the Ages, and everything inside it is tight and bright—and there's just so Much inside it. The whole thing should creak under the weight of all that white space, but it doesn't. It holds up. More than holds up.

TO BE FRANK, I am not a fan of PSALM ONE (though I am a fan of "TO BE FRANK...")—you'd write PSALM ONE as "Psalm 1" and anyway there are a 150 of them, can we just put any number after PSALM now? But then right next to it, you've got LOWER G.I., which I loved. So the icky is offset by the ironically not-icky LOWER G.I. tract. I'm not too keen on having the feds in this puzzle not once but twice (CIA and FBI). Grid could use some more counterculture to offset the cops, not to mention the corporations (specifically Big PHARMA). Cops in SOFT ARMOR (sung to the tune of "Knights in White Satin")?—no thanks. The pronoun "I" appears at least three times in the grid, but it's just one letter so who cares? ("I SEE, I SAY, therefore  I AM"—Descartes's lesser-known See 'N' Say theory of being). I didn't have a negative reaction to very much in this grid. I guess I've heard / would say KILLING IT well before SLAYING IT. "SLAYING" in my limited vernacular experience often (usually?) occurs without the "it." But it seems valid, and anyway I got it easily. 

Had ORAL before ANAL because well because because because because because ... wishful thinking, I guess (49D: ___ stage (concept in psychosexual development)). Had me wondering when this tradition of people RAPping on Jan. 1 had started and how I had missed it (57A: Many people do this on January 1 => NAP). There were a lot of tricky, initially mystifying clues today. Worst, for me, was 42A: K, for Kay (KARAT). "Kay" here is the damned jewelry company!!!! So in the context of jewelry, specifically gold, yes, "K" stands for KARAT, aargh. Thought the "Ah" follower might be ... well, it's four letters, so think four-letter words, and you'll have some idea what I was thinking. Had HEEL for 56A: Stiletto feature (HAFT), and I can't believe I'm alone there. The stiletto here is the knife, not the shoe. The clue on LOWER G.I. was wicked, in that I thought "Colon" was a punctuation mark, a name, a geographical location ... all of those things ... before I settled on the body part (63A: Colon's place, familiarly). Nice little scatological gag (!) there, btw: crossing LOWER G.I. with ANAL. Grateful for my relatively recent bird knowledge, which didn't give me SKYLARKS right away, but did at least let me know that I was dealing with birds. Seems entirely possible that "pipits" are not immediately recognizable as birds to many people (66A: Pipit lookalikes). The sides of a square are STS because streets make up the "sides" of some (town) squares (53D: Sides of a square, maybe). Does anything else need explaining? Oh, EGOTS are sets of all four major entertainment awards: Emmy/Grammy/Oscar/Tony. Viola Davis just completed hers last week, winning a Best Audiobook, Narration, and Storytelling Recording Grammy for her memoir Finding Me. Now, you will find me ... in the kitchen, with the cats, making coffee. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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