Weakens in video game lingo / SUN 4-16-23 / 2020 movie lead-in to land / Flawed but relatable protagonist / Drum also known as a tumbadora / Giant things in the 1954 sci-fi film Them / One of Randall's daughters on This is Us

Constructor: Mike Hobin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Bring Your 'A' Game" — familiar phrases containing words that start with "A" are clued wackily, as if the the "A" were a standalone word [or ... familiar phrases containing the standalone definite article "A" are clued wackily, as if the "A" were not a standalone word ... sigh]:

Theme answers:

• AWARD OF THE STATE (24A: Lottery prize?)
• BRUSHED A SIDE (30A: Painted 25% of the house?)
• ABRIDGE TOO FAR (54A: Make one's long story overly short?)
• HALF A WAKE (66A: Just the refreshments, not the viewing?)
• ATONE POEM (68A: Ode to reparation for sin?)
• A CUTE TRIANGLE (85A: One darling percussion instrument?)
• AHEAD OF STEAM (104A: Where stealth is found in the dictionary?)
• SLOWLY GREW A PART (116A: Successfully used Rogaine?)

Word of the Day: ALPEN (105D: Muesli brand) —

Weetabix cereals in the UK created Alpen muesli cereal in 1971. Alpen is a whole grain muesli cereal consisting of rolled oats, fruits and nuts.

In the UK, Alpen has been a staple on British shelves since the 1970s, accounting for 3% of the UK and Ireland breakfast cereal sales in 2003. It appeared in the early 1970s in Canada and then in the US in the 1990s after Weetabix established a partnership with natural foods manufacturer, Barbara's Bakery.

In North America, Alpen No Added Sugar and Alpen Original are mainstays in U.S. natural food stores and Canadian grocery stores. In the UK, Weetabix sells Alpen in four varieties. Alpen is exported to other countries in several varieties. (wikipedia)

• • •

[120A: 2020 movie lead-in to "land"] 

OOF, indeed. Look, if you only solve the Sunday puzzle, I need you to know that Saturday's puzzle was good and Thursday's puzzle was good and that this outlet really does publish good puzzles on a reasonably regular basis. Just ... not on Sundays. I keep waiting for someone, anyone, to break the dismal streak of bloody Sundays, but ... looks like I'm waiting another week. I can't believe there's this significant a dearth of solid Sunday submissions. What even is this theme? It doesn't even follow its own rules, as far as I can tell. The things in the grid are supposed to be real answers, and the cluing is supposed to make them wacky, except ... several of the "real" answers are total cheats. TONE POEM is definitely a thing, but A TONE POEM is nothing at all not at all at all at all. You just threw an "A" in there to make ATONE ... whereas with something like BRUSHED ASIDE, yes, the cluing makes it wacky, but the base answer, BRUSHED ASIDE, is a completely solid phrase, not a solid phrase that has had an indefinite article gratuitously added to the front of it. I mean, A [space] TONE POEM, jeez louise that is terrible. You just can't do that. The "A" has to come organically (as in BRUSHED ASIDE) or Not At All. And yet here we have the "A" awkwardly welded onto not just TONE POEM, but HEAD OF STEAM and WARD OF THE STATE as well. ACUTE TRIANGLE, real! So the gimmick works there—you imagine "A" is separate from "CUTE" and bingo, wackiness. Actually, the more I look at these themers, the more confusing it gets. ACUTE gets wacky by breaking the "A" away, whereas "AWARD" gets wacky by fusing "A" and "WARD" together. So you get to wackiness either by imagining the "A" united with *or* broken away from the letters that follow it (the themers alternate "wackiness" methods as you descend the grid) ... and yet every answer is still supposed to look like a Real Thing in the grid, so my point about gratuitous indefinite articles, gratuitous "A"s, still stands. "A BRIDGE TOO FAR" earns its standalone "A," as that's an actual part of the title. But the other standalone "A"s, no way. Forced nonsense. It's a mess, this one. And there's nothing really funny going on here, either. The clues are often just sad. Rogaine helps you "grow a part"? No, it helps you grow hair—whether you "part" it or not is your own business. Simply finishing this puzzle felt like a chore.

Under the "+" column on my puzzle print-out, I have HOT FOR and MASK UP. These are cool, original phrases. They were also the only answers that provided even a modicum of joy today. The theme was ANEMIC, as I say, and the fill was just OK. Not terrible, not noteworthy. Fine. There weren't many trouble spots. Struggled briefly with the ELTON / BLONDS / BOAR bit up top (no idea re: ELTON (28A: Cambridgeshire's historic ___ Hall), and BLONDES, as a noun, is typically spelled with an "E," though perhaps that's because it's typically used as a noun for women. I guess I have seen ALPEN in the grocery aisle before, but yeesh, that seemed slightly obscure (and not at all good). The sides of tic-tac-toe are XS AND OS, not XANDO; no one would ever say that ever ever (77A: Tic-tac-toe sides). Which is why XSANDOS has appeared in the NYTXW ten times and XANDO ... well, this is the third time, but it's really the first time clued this exact way. It's bad. Crossing MOREY and EDENS (neither of them winners), it's especially bad. Could've just gone with LANDO Calrissian or really a bunch of alternative scenarios in that eastern section, but instead we get this awkward garbage, and for what? An "X"? It's bad to get enamored with high-valued Scrabble letters, it really is. 

EGOTISM before EGO TRIP (92D: Narcissist's indulgence). WEEP before WEPT (67D: Shed some tears)—that verb tense ambiguity really slowed me up. So did the STRUM / TURN / EMERALDS bit. TURN was well hidden (80D: Time to go), and EMERALDS, how the hell should I know, I'm not 12 (87D: Rare fins in Minecraft). What is a LECTOR? (49D: Class speaker). It's Latin for "reader," but it seems pretty archaic, especially for any schools in the U.S. I think the puzzle wants it to be a simple substitute for "Lecturer," but I assure you, no one uses that term. I truly hope you had more fun than I did solving this one. It would be hard to have less.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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