Turn follower in Texas Hold Em / SAT 2-25-23 / Slangy catchphrase of encouragement / Dessert portmanteau / Fictional student of the Lowood School / Nickname that's an alternative to Pat

Constructor: Trent H. Evans

Relative difficulty: Easy (seemed like it should've been hard and yet I never got stuck even a little)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Jennie GARTH (41D: Jennie ___, co-star of "Beverly Hills, 90210") —

Jennifer Eve Garth (born April 3, 1972) is an American actress. She is known for starring as Kelly Taylorthroughout the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise and Val Tyler on the sitcom What I Like About You (2002–06). In 2012, she starred in her own reality show, Jennie Garth: A Little Bit Country on CMT. Her memoir titled Deep Thoughts From a Hollywood Blonde was published by New American Library on April 1, 2014. (wikipedia)

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[the canonical spelling]

I liked this puzzle fine even though it was actively trying to make me not like it. And I thought *yesterday's* puzzle was not my vibe! Turns out that, as far as "out of my wheelhouse" goes, Millennial/Gen-Z Woman (i.e. Friday's puzzle) is way way Way closer to where I live (or want to live) than Conservative Middle-Aged White Man (today's puzzle). I mean, this puzzle's throwing all the "Things Guys Like That I Do Not Care About" stuff at me—stocks & bonds (YIELDS, RATE), welding (ARCING), poker (RIVER CARD), cars (CAR ENGINE), right-wing white-guy catchphrases ("GET 'ER DONE!"). It's a puzzle for the FRAT BOY-turned-suburban DAD. It's even got cruelty (MEANEST) and denial of responsibility ("IT WASN'T ME!"). And the LOL cherry on top: ROGAINE. Yes. This puzzle would use ROGAINE. I do believe that. Me, I just shaved my head. Anyway, this was a CERTAIN kind of man's puzzle and that man was not me. Plus, it has the grid structure I typically hate, i.e. highly segmented, deeply quadranted, such that it feels like you're doing four separate puzzles (five if you count the middle), and you can easily get well and truly stuck in every corner. Whatever the opposite of flow is, that is what grids like this have. It's dead end after dead end and good luck to you... 

And yet! Despite the "not my vibe" content, despite the deliberately unfun grid structure, I enjoyed the solve, largely because it felt like the puzzle was really trying to fight me but I was knocking down everything it could throw at me—all the junk I don't really care for, all the potential traps and dead-ends, and *alllll* of the "look at my tricky clue"s! I felt immortal walking through this one. Like Keanu at the end of "The Matrix"—nothing could touch me. I could feel that it was probably a "hard" puzzle—lots of tricky clues, lots (and lots and lots and lots) of names—but there was just no stopping me. And—the most important part—the fill was actually strong and clean. Not my thing, but not groan- or cringe-inducing either. Nothing forced or ugly (well, "GET 'ER DONE" is ugly, but it's unfortunately a very real thing). So this was a rare experience where I thought like the puzzle hated me, like it was saying "OH, IT'S ON!" the way some dumb fake tough guy might, but I managed not only to defeat it, but to make friends with it as well. This puzzle definitely voted for Trump, but we're still gonna have a beer later. It's fine.

My first thought for 1A: Dessert portmanteau was FRO-YO, but I discarded the thought because ... well because I somehow reasoned that a "portmanteau" needed to have the tail end of one of the words as part of its ... manteau? Skirt + shorts = SKORT. Turkey + Duck + Chicken = TURDUCKEN. But with FRO-YO ... where's the -zen!? Where's the -gurt, man!? Apparently my understanding of "portmanteau" was way too limited. But that corner was still easy to get into from ON TOE + ROBIN + AGLET + OBLIGES etc.

This was the part where I thought things were going to toughen up considerably, but I actually got one of those Downs to dip into the middle of the grid and whaddyaknow, I hooked something. RAN OVER went in, and then I kind of reasoned out the LOW (of LOW END) and the HOW (of "HOW ARE YOU?"), and then HIRE and bam, one of the long Acrosses bit:

[not pictured: GOAD before PROD (25D: Spur)]

The center came together from there. The path into the NE was easy because of THOREAU (not that I knew it, but there are only so many writer names ending in -EAU), and the SE was easy because I had GS- already in place and didn't even need to look at the clue (42A: Bit of attire that shares its name with part of a musical instrument) to know that it was G-STRING. SW looked like it might be harder to get into, but I knew GERE and GARTH, and we just had the word GENERA in the puzzle some time in the past couple weeks, so no problems there either:

[“Digital” refers to fingers here]

Mistakes? Well, I had SIDE before WIDE (8D: Far left or far right, maybe), of course, and GOAD before PROD (25D: Spur), but that's really it. Nothing I loved about this puzzle, but nothing I hated either, and it definitely provided that antagonistic Saturday energy, even if it didn't put up much resistance in the end. I think the NE and SW corners are probably the nicest parts of the grid—solid, bright stacks, without a cringey short cross in sight. Sometimes you can actually enjoy things that weren't meant for you at all. If the craftsmanship is there. Which it was. Time for coffee. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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