City whose welcome sign features Mark Twain / FRI 3-24-23 / Dubious addendum to a snide remark / Saltado stir-fried dish with sliced beef / Manhattan thoroughfare named for New York's Dutch roots / R&B trio whose name is an initialism

Constructor: Blake Slonecker

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: NORA Barnacle (48D: ___ Barnacle, on whom Molly Bloom of "Ulysses" was based)) —

Nora Barnacle (21 March 1884 – 10 April 1951) was the muse and wife of Irish author James Joyce. Barnacle and Joyce had their first romantic assignation in 1904 on a date celebrated worldwide as the "Bloomsday" of his modernist novel Ulysses, a book that she did not, however, enjoy. Their sexually explicit letters have aroused much curiosity, especially as Joyce normally disapproved of coarse language, and they fetch high prices at auction. In 2004, an erotic letter from Joyce to Barnacle sold at Sotheby's for £240,800.

Barnacle and Joyce's life together has been the subject of much popular interest. A 1980 play, Nora Barnacle by Maureen Charlton, was made about their relationship. Barnacle was the subject of a 1988 biography, Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce, by Brenda Maddox, which was adapted into a 2000 Irish film, Nora, directed by Pat Murphy, and starring Susan Lynch and Ewan McGregor.(wikipedia)

• • •

I groaned just looking at this grid, before I ever started, and the puzzle never EVER overcame that initial sentiment. I don't understand making a grid like this. I guess you think it looks cool? Or you want an unusual shape or something? But if you thought at all about the solving experience you'd see that two bad things happen when you stick all these black bars all over the place. First, flow just dies. This is the grid where flow goes to die. You can't flow through tight corners and extremely narrow passageways very well, especially when you have to navigate 15s every two rows or so. Second: So Much Short Stuff. Just these dull little banks of 3s and 4s, all over the place. MAIN OSSO ISIT SESH / TACT IBET SIRE TESS / LBS OOP WOE TLC, just an out-and-out bombardment. And all so that we can get a bunch of 15s, none of which is particularly interesting. Am I really supposed to enjoy MOIST TOWELETTES? It's not a *bad* answer, but when you put it at the center of your puzzle because it's your *best* answer, that ... well, that says something about the rest of the grid. Are people really solving going "omg, yes! BOOLEAN OPERATOR! What a great answer!" Or ... ASSESSMENTS!!! 11 letters wasted on ASSESSMENTS!? That's the kind of thing you'd see in puzzles before everyone started using construction software, when the constructor would occasionally get desperate and require an answer with a ton of the most common letters in the alphabet. I mean, really, LOW TIRE PRESSURE!? These answers aren't just dull, they're depressing. I think "NOTHING PERSONAL" may be the one I like the most—the only one I like unreservedly (46A: Dubious addendum to a snide remark). Otherwise, overall, I genuinely don't understand the aesthetic on display here. I can't be very impressed by seven 15s when a. they aren't that vivid, b. they make the grid this choppy, and c. there's only two other answers in the whole grid longer than 7 letters, and one of those is ASSESSMENTS.

Because of the structure of the grid, the choke points really did choke me a couple of times. No idea what LOMO saltado is, or even what cuisine it's from, what LOMO means, etc. (it's Peruvian). And the crosses, yikes, they could've been anything. Never heard of NORA Barnacle (though I've read Ulysses). She was Joyce's wife? LOL this should tell you how little I tend to care about author's bios. I had T-MEN before G-MEN, COPS before the awful POPO. Everything gummed up in there. Also, because of the grid structure again, I couldn't easily turn into the SE corner; I had SAT- for 41A: Went nowhere and wrote in SAT IDLE. That whole SE corner was a bust at first glance. I think I had ELDERS and that's it. Had to sneak in there last. MEADOWS make hay? Uh ... I guess, literally, that is where hay comes from, but whatever "joke" is supposed to be there is pretty weak. (Yes, to "make hay" out of something is to make a big deal out of it, but ... it's not like that misdirection was very effective or interesting). My other slow-down / screw-up came early, when I wanted ELABORATE EXCUSE before ELABORATE DETAIL (12A: Potentially too much information). Oh, and I wrote in EYE before EWE, classic pronoun screw-up that happens any time the crossword asks me about me, i.e. "you" (31D: What could represent you in a rebus puzzle?). But LOMO and the HOME part of SAT HOME were the only serious sticking points. Everything else you can hack through quickly, if not particularly happily. This puzzle is what happens when you focus on looking cool instead of actually being fun. Saturday has been crushing Friday lately, which is sad. Well, sad for Friday. Great for Saturday. Looking forward to tomorrow. See you then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. laughed at the ELMIRA clue (2D: City whose welcome sign features Mark Twain) because, well, ELMIRA is just ... [points out the window] ... over there a ways, and their welcome sign? Well, it's a visual nightmare, a mish-mash of faces and poses featuring ELMIRA's most notable former residents, including two of Twain's most illustrious peers, Brian Williams and Tommy Hilfiger.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]