British Empire trade entity founded in 1600 / THU 3-23-23 / Mass method for seeking input / Weeper of Greek myth

Constructor: David Kwong

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Two's company, three's a crowd" — a rebus puzzle where the word "company" is replaced by two "ONE" squares (in two answers) and the word "crowd" is replaced by three "ONE" squares (in a different two answers)

Theme answers:

• ONE ONE COMMANDER ("company commander," where "two (1+1) is COMPANY") (16A: Officer in charge of a military unit)
• WISDOM OF THE ONE ONE ONE ("wisdom of the crowd," where "three (1+1+1) is a CROWD") (25A: Collective opinion)
• THE EAST INDIA ONE ONE ("The East India Company," where "two (1+1) is COMPANY") (41A: British Empire trade entity founded in 1600)
• ONE ONE ONE SOURCING ("crowd-sourcing," where "three (1+1+1) is a CROWD") (55A: Mass method for seeking input)

Word of the Day: NOBU (45D: Celebrity chef Matsuhisa, or his restaurant chain) —

Nobuyuki "Nobu" Matsuhisa (松久 信幸 Matsuhisa Nobuyuki; born March 10, 1949) is a Japanese celebrity chef and restaurateur known for his fusion cuisine blending traditional Japanese dishes with Peruvian ingredients. His signature dish is black cod in miso. He has restaurants bearing his name in several countries. He has also played small parts in three major films. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well holy cow. That's right, I'm earnestly exclaiming old-timey exclamations because I just had a good old-fashioned "aha" moment of the first order. It was something closer to an "o my god" moment, and it shook me precisely because it was sooooooo delayed. Basically, I had finished the puzzle, and I was frustrated because I had no idea what was supposed to be happening with all this "ONE" business. Was this code? Was I going to have to look up what two (or three) ONEs means in ... I dunno, some kind of binary code? The big problem—the huge problem—was that, if I'm being honest, I did not know exactly what words the first two sets of ONEs were replacing. I thought the "ONEONE" was "TROOP" and the "ONEONEONE" maybe "GROUP"? I probably considered "CROWD," but when I got to the end and knew that the last themer was *definitely* "CROWD," I figured all the replaced words would be different from one another, all of them synonyms for collections of people: TROOP, GROUP, COMPANY, CROWD. I got the "ONE" rebus very easily, very early on, and by the end I had my set of replaced words (I thought), but ... no idea how to get from those ONEs to ... anything. 

I started saying things out loud like "TWO TROOP" (could I get from "TWO" to "F" to "F-TROOP"!?). Oh, I should also say that initially I had written in WISDOM OF CROWDS (!!!!), which felt great, but then it was wrong, and I subsequently forgot the "crowd" part and replaced it in my head with "the group." Ugh. At some point in muttering to myself I was toying with adding the ONEs together and I actually said out loud "three's a crowd." And yet that was Not my "aha" ... that was my "ooh, that's interesting." I did not remember the *first* part of that phrase, and anyway, "two is a troop" wouldn't have helped me at all. So the "three's a crowd" bit felt like it was getting me nowhere, so I was about to write it off to coincidence when suddenly my brain was like "hey, what if it's not troop, what if it's ... [SOUND OF BRAIN EXPLODING IN BRIGHT LIGHT] ... Oh my god [looks at bottom half of grid] what if two's company and three's a crowd Oh my god." So I was either dumb or smart today, depending on where you sit. I don't care either way. I got my moment. The puzzle itself was fine—a ONE rebus with some interesting fill here and there—but that delayed revelation, that felt great.

Mostly the ONE rebus was easy, though on occasion I got held up. Weirdly had trouble with STONED (!?!) (1D: Very high). Just stared at ST-D, wondering how to get anything to work, even after the adjacent ONE in IRONED had gone in. Weird to glitch on something semi-obvious, but it happens. I also wrote in AL CAPP at 11D: Noted criminal whose name starts with the same first four letters as where he was imprisoned (AL CAPONE). I'm staring at "Noted criminal" and my brain, having seen the initial letters of the answer already in place, decides to read it as "Noted cartoonist," I guess (Al Capp was the creator of the comic strip "Li'l Abner"). So for a while I only had two ONEs in the second themers—and a "P" at the end oh my god no wonder I thought it was WISDOM OF THE GROU*P*—I must've thought that "ONEONE" replaced "GROU" somehow ... hoo boy, just out here inventing ways to get lost. It's a miracle I ever found the theme at all. Yeesh. 

Later on, I definitely struggled with CEYLONESE (!?). I didn't consider its rebusness and wondered if maybe CEYLONIC (nope) or CEYLONED (nope) was a thing. Neither fit. Only non-thematic trouble I had was in the SW, where I was only 84% of the spelling of SHERYL (46A: Crow known to sing) and then ... did you know there are at least three five-letter "S" words that fit the clue 46D: Bit of gear in Dungeons & Dragons?? It's true. And I had considered one wrong "S" word and then another before finally hitting on SPEAR. Oh, crud, SHIELD is six letters! Why was I considering a six-letter word for a five-letter answer? It's a miracle I solve anything. Anyway, ABE (58A: Whose sculpture faces a 2,000-foot-long reflecting pool, familiarly) + THE NBA (41D: Rockets frequently travel in this) got me sorted down there. I glided through the SE corner to finish up the grid, and then ... well, I've been over this part. I went from success (got the rebus!) to confusion (what the hell?) to success (finished!) to much more confusion (seriously, what the hell?!) to revelation. Quite a journey. Well worth it. David Kwong is a magician (no, seriously, literally, that's what he is), and while I'm not normally that into magic, I enjoyed the hell out of this trick.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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