Akbar's tomb locale / SUN 3-12-23 / Stereotypical name for a female poodle / Brit's clothespin / Emulate Rockin' Robin in a 1958 hit / Many a 21st-century liberal / Dance move used to teach children how to limit spreading germs while sneezing / Start of many a T-shirt slogan

Constructor: David Tuffs

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "This and That" — familiar phrases that contain shaded letters and circled letters that (respectively) complete a familiar "___ AND ___" phrase (i.e. "[shaded squares] AND [circled squares]"):

Theme answers:

• GIRL SCOUT LEADER (22A: One in charge of Brownies and cookies? / Easy to understand) ("LOUD and CLEAR")
• FOLDING THE LAUNDRY (31A: Post-dryer chore / splendid) ("FINE and DANDY")
• WEDDING CRASHER (45A: One whom the bride and groom didn't invite / Steal a meal) ("DINE and DASH")
• HEAVEN ON EARTH (62A: Utopia / Occasionally, poetically) ("EVER and ANON")
• BLACK FOREST HAM (82A: German deli meat / Discussion) ("BACK and FORTH")
• LAST PLACE FINISHES (96A: They might result in booby prizes / Physical discomforts) ("ACHES and PAINS")
• TABLOID MAGAZINE (109A: Issue featuring celebrity issues / Repeatedly) ("TIME and AGAIN")

Word of the Day: MARY I (112A: "Bloody" English monarch) —

Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, and as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain as the wife of King Philip II from January 1556 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions.

Mary was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother, Edward VI, succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became terminally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed, correctly, that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had taken place during his reign. Upon his death, leading politicians proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary speedily assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was—excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England. In July 1554, Mary married Prince Philip of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556.

After Mary's death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor, Elizabeth I. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello and a Happy Daylight Saving Time to you all (it's the worst, I hate it, but I still wish you happiness on this miserable day). The first thing I should say about this puzzle is that my software doesn't do "shaded squares," which is why you can't see them in the posted grid, above. I just had to ... intuit that they were there. This wasn't exactly easy, given that CLEAR is a reasonable definition of [Easy to understand], for instance. That is, I had no reason to expect that a "LOUD" was involved as well. See also DANDY, PAINS, and AGAIN, each of which fit the clue just fine without any shaded square nonsense. But DASH, on the other hand, was clearly in need of a "DINE and," so I was left to wonder where the "DINE" was. I could see that the letters for "DINE" were inside the answer WEDDING CRASHER, but since they were not circled (and not shaded), I had no idea what the hook was. Turns out I was just dealing with a software shortcoming. The "real" grid looks like this:

Shaded squares give one half of the "___ AND ___" phrase, circled squares give the other. That "___ AND ___" phrase appears to have absolutely nothing to do with the larger phrase inside which it appears. Nothing "LOUD and CLEAR" about a GIRL SCOUT LEADER, for instance. So I guess I don't get it. I mean, I really don't get these puzzles where there's no real *meaning* to whatever structural / wordplay / letter play trickery is going on. The interest, insofar as there is any, is purely architectural: "Hey, I found these letter-string pairings inside these phrases ..." That's it. I mean, nice finds, but none of this means anything to me. It just seems fussy. I have no idea how hard / easy to find such answers, but I also don't care, since none of it has anything to do with solving enjoyment. The "THE" in FOLDING THE LAUNDRY is awkward, and now I see that it's only there to provide the "E" in the "FINE" part of "FINE and DANDY." But it's not worth it. None of this is worth it. These are structural curiosities, but there's just not enough thematic coherence or truly creative and enjoyable wordplay here to make the endeavor worth it. 

OBAMACRAT? Ugh, is that a thing? Who identifies that way?? [Many a 21st-century liberal]?!? Many!?!? I don't know one, and virtually everyone I know voted for Obama, so ... that's weird. Does the word just mean "anyone who voted for Obama?" Like, I'm deeply suspicious of this dumb terminology. I voted for Obama, but you must be HIGH AS A KITE if you think that makes me an OBAMACRAT. I refer you to this random quote I just found from a 2014 article in the Journal of Politics in Latin America:

Barack Obama received about 51 percent of the popular vote in his 2012 reelection – a far greater percentage than there are self-professed Democrats among US voters. In the United States, however, no one speaks of “Obamacrats.” Obama's votes came from his partisan base and from independents who nonetheless chose him over Mitt Romney. (my emph.)

Not all "words" you come across in life belong in your Wordlist. I'm looking around for things to love in this grid and after HIGH AS A KITE (66D: Three sheets to the wind), I don't see much. I don't think I'd spell TUSHY that way. To be (loud and) clear, I would spell TUSHY at all, normally, or use it, ever, but if I had to, I'd go TUSHIE. That seems to be the preferred spelling of most dictionaries, but lots of, uh, rear end-oriented products / sex stuff seems to prefer the "Y" spelling, for whatever reasons. TUSHY is a brand of bidet, it seems, and then ... well, there's some porn stuff out there you probably don't wanna hear about that has the "Y" spelling as well. Speaking of "Y"s, not a huge fan of the alleged contraction "Y'HEAR"—it's "YA HEAR"; that apostrophe is a lie; nothing is being elided. You still say the "A" so you may as well be honest and write the "A." A true contraction / elision would be "Y'EAR," and that's just silly. Also not a huge fan of I-BARS crossing "I HEART" at the "I" (not a fan of "I HEART" at all, frankly). And what the hell is up with that "CAN'T I?" clue (20D: "Pleeease"?). It looks like a plea from a kid, and no kid is going to say "CAN'T I!?" They'd say "CAN I?" Better clue would've been some more compact version of ["You doubt my ability to do so?"]. "I RULE" gives us god knows how many "I"s now, I'm tired of counting.

There are no tough parts to this grid. I solved it easily, and I didn't even have the shaded squares to help me out (did they really help that much, though?). I had trouble with MARY I despite teaching 16th-century English literature (for the next few weeks, in fact) (112A: "Bloody" English monarch). I wanted it to be MARY, of course, but MARY is four letters, as you can see, and I never ever think of her as MARY I, though, yes, she is. I don't think of her as MARY I because I never think of MARY II as MARY II either—she's just the MARY part of "William & Mary" (co-regents of England from 1689 until her death five years later). So I had some hesitation there, but that's all it was. I had one wrong answer that I can recall: DAP for DAB (30A: Dance move used to teach children how to limit spreading germs while sneezing). DAP is the fist bump, DAB is the crook-of-the-elbow-to-your-face move:

Not sure I've ever seen AKON and AKRON in the same grid before, so that's ... something. My wife's last name is in the puzzle. I'll let you guess what it is. Hint: it's not E-FILE. (though "Penelope E-FILE" does have a certain ring). I'll leave you with this brilliant card that one of my more creative readers sent me last month. It really speaks to me, and all of us, I presume:

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. here's a picture of ALFIE and IDA, just because:

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