Valley where David fought Goliath / SAT 2-18-23 / Octave follower in a Petrarchan sonnet / Home to Sicily's Castello di Lombardia / Popular pubs for college grads / Ones spreading the gospel through rap music or graffiti / Alternative to Lunesta or Quviviq

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Shirley EATON (45D: Shirley of "Goldfinger") —

 

Shirley Jean Eaton (born 12 January 1937) is an English actress, author and singer. Eaton appeared regularly in British films throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and gained her highest profile for her iconic appearance as Bond Girl Jill Masterson in the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964), which gained her bombshell status. Eaton also had roles in the early Carry On films.

Preferring to devote herself to bringing up a family, she retired from acting in 1969. Eaton came out of retirement in 1999 to release her autobiography titled Golden Girl, which was a bestseller, and has released three more books throughout the 2000s. (wikipedia)

• • •

This began with a great coup on my part and then ended with a great faceplant—seriously, I just tripped over my laces two squares from the end, and then just stared at the finish line wondering how I was going to get there. But let's start with the coup. Couldn't make much sense of the first few Downs and Acrosses in the NW, but eventually I worked my way down to TV-G and SEES, which went in very easily. From there, I got OLIVE (2D: Fruit popular in salads, but not fruit salads), and it was at that point that I looked (re-looked?) at 13A: Popular pubs for college grads and, with only the "L" in place, wrote in ALUMNI MAGS. Now, I did so very tentatively, because I was sure it was wrong. Felt like a great work of imagination on my part—a nice guess, but probably a failed one. But as soon as I made TMI work in the cross (4D: "Just stop talking!"), I decided it was right, and I felt, well, prematurely exultant! I expect very tough puzzles from KAC, and any time I can just slap a long answer down like that, I feel happy/lucky. 

After that, the puzzle was just what I expected it to be—no whoosh whoosh around the grid, but a slow and steady grind with occasional bursts of aha! A proper Saturday, that is. The kind where you proceed tentatively because you expect to fall into a pit, or that some explosion will go off, or some other dangerous metaphor to occur. A DEATH TRAP is what you expect. You don't often get it these days, but if you're wise, you expect it. The main danger on Saturdays, aside from simply not knowing things (a constant danger), is getting tempted into wrong answers. I managed to avoid this, but there were times. Like "RIGHT ON ..." (6D: "Ni-i-ice!"). Hmmm. RIGHT ON ... SCHEDULE? No. THE DOT? THE MONEY? No. Luckily nothing wrong actually fit. This "how does it end?" streak continued with STREET... (14D: Ones spreading the gospel through rap music or graffiti) and DEATH... (48A: Fatal attraction?) and even "HAVE A..." (44A: "Until next time!"). None of these longer answers came quickly, all of them felt like they were tempting me to step off a cliff. But I worked my way through and around them, breezed through the SE corner, and finally zeroed in on the finish line, which for me was the NE. And it was here that ... well, whatever the opposite of that ALUMNI MAGS moment is, that's what happened. Started off by nailing an answer with only one letter in place ... ended up by failing an answer with only two squares to go:

[“cards” = comedians, “cutting” = scathing, critical]

Me, looking at [Art of cutting cards?]: "Ha, it's just like Kam to put some fancy French word for 'vicious banter' into the grid. What is it ... BARBEDAGE? BARBEDRIE? Wait, if that's AWE ... (34A: State that many are in when they visit a national park) ... yes, and that's APHASIA ... (37A: Condition treated in speech therapy) ... right? ... then ... what is BARBEDWIE!?!? That ... looks wrong." At least my instincts were correct there—BARBEDWIE was most certainly wrong. I kept looking for a word similar to BADINAGE to make that longer answer work, until I did a much simpler thing, which is just ignore everything after BARBED and think of *any* three-letter word that could follow it. Sadly, that didn't work, so I did the next most simple thing, which was remove the terminal "E" (which I'd picked up from ROUSES at 43A: Gives a rude awakening) and put in the "W" and "I," which really truly had to be right. And then bam. Or, I should probably say, thud—in went the "T" ... because it was never ROUSES at 43A: Gives a rude awakening—it was ROUSTS. A rude awakening, indeed. A spectacular two-square train wreck that was actually a three-square train wreck—it's always the square you're *not* looking at. Oof. Snagged by the barbed wire of BARBED WIT. Anyway, I'm probably exaggerating slightly how long those last few squares took, but that was the only moment of real stuckness I encountered, and I encountered it right on the brink of victory, so it stands out. Painfully.

["RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON!"]

I found the puzzle smooth and pleasantly surprising overall. The BLUEGRASS / BARBED WIRE pairing is colorful and sharp (and alliterative!), and GALVESTON DECADENCE suggests an undiscovered Tennessee Williams play. KAC is a film critic for Rolling Stone and often works film answers into the grid, which I love, but today there's not much of that. The great IRENE Dunne is here. But then there's just Shirley EATON, who baffled me. The only Goldfinger Shirley I know is Bassey. Oh, I guess there's Disney's Springtime With ROO as well, where movies are concerned, but that was direct-to-video, so I'm not counting it. 

I had DEATH TRIP (?) before DEATH TRAP (48A: Fatal attraction?). I handled the kealoa* at E--E IN like a pro, I must say (30A: Enter gradually). First instinct was EASE, but immediately saw that it could also be EDGE and just left it to get worked out by crosses (settled on EDGE after I worked GALVESTON from the bottom up). I had to root around in my Big Bag of Crossword Place Names to get a couple of short answers (ELAH, ENNA), but overwhelmingly the puzzle felt fresh. Exactly the kind of Saturday workout I enjoy. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Mares are *lunar* SEAS (though I think “Maria” may be the more standard plural). And “Def” = TOTES because both are slang for “absolutely, yes!” (from “definitely” and “totally”)

P.P.S. loved the clue on SAO, how often can you say that?? (8D: "Saint" elsewhere)

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]