America's first vice, so to speak / THU 6-29-23 / Old-time poker / Patagonian prairie / Clubby order for short / French clog and the root of an English word meaning disrupt / Sheath of connective tissue / Free to pursue other opportunities dysphemistically / European capital that uses the Cyrillic alphabet

Constructor: Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: EXCHANGING RINGS (37A: Sharing in a symbol of commitment ... or what four rows in this puzzle are doing to form new phrases) — if you "exchange" (i.e. swap) the two "rings" (i.e. circled letters) in each row that has them, and then mentally reparse the row (i.e. move the black square), you get four new phrases:

Theme answers:

• HORNET / RAISERS => HORSE TRAINERS
• GRAVE / LATENCY => TRAVEL AGENCY
• PITCH IN / GHOST => HITCHING POST
• BILLETS / LAPPER => BALLET SLIPPER

Word of the Day: FASCIA (30A: Sheath of connective tissue) —

noun: fascia; plural noun: fascias; noun: facia; plural noun: facias; plural noun: fasciae

1. 1. 

   a detachable covering for the front part of a mobile phone.
2. 2. 

   a wooden board or other flat piece of material such as that covering the ends of rafters.

   "a further piece of chipboard acts as a fascia to disguise the ceiling fixtures"

   • (in classical architecture) a long flat surface between moldings on an architrave.
3. 3. 

   BRITISH

   the dashboard of a motor vehicle.

   "the interior boasts a Mercedes-like fascia"
4. 4. 

   ANATOMY

   a thin sheath of fibrous tissue enclosing a muscle or other organ. 

   "the diagnosis of Dupuytren's contracture is usually very easy because the palmar fascia is obviously thickened" (google / Oxford Languages)

• • •

Well this is definitely a better-than-average use of circles in a puzzle, I'll say that. My first thought on looking at this grid, with its array of completely disconnected circles was "Uh oh. What dumb message are these going to spell out?" But then I dove in and promptly ignored the circles. Completely. Because I could. They have absolutely nothing, zero, nada to do with actually solving the puzzle. They spell nothing intelligible. HATSPING? PHASTING? STAPHING? PHANGIST? Nope. Nothing. The circles don't explain the theme—the theme explains the circles. That is, the revealer explains them. If the MUSTACHE puzzle earlier in the week gave us a revealer that essentially did nothing (i.e. only told us what we already knew), today's revealer does absolutely everything. The theme is unintelligible without it. Is this better? Probably. But still, it had nothing at all to do with the solve. From a pure solving perspective, this is an easyish themeless puzzle. It's just got the little trick at the end. And I like the trick—it's really clever. But as a themeless, this is just OK (I mean, compared to real themelesses of the kind you see on Fri. and Sat.—the ones with grids that are genuinely sparkly precisely because they are Not encumbered by a theme). It's not a bad grid, but it's mostly just something to get through. The puzzle's real reason for being only becomes apparent post-solve. Well, that is, unless you actually stopped after getting the revealer and tried to figure out what was happening mid-solve—but even then, I can't see how knowing the gimmick would have any effect at all on the remainder of the solve. The answers in the grid are still just ... answers in the grid. So there's a nice surprise waiting at the end of this one (or whenever you decide to look back and see how the revealer works) but the theme is disconnected from the solving process in a way that I always find mildly dissatisfying. It's like you made a puzzle so you could do a little wordplay magic trick. It's a neat trick. But I came here primarily for the solving experience, not the after show.

I'm underselling a bit how impressed I am by the trick, though. It's a bit of a double trick because nowhere does the revealer indicate that you'd have to mentally move the black square in order to make sense of the row, post-exchange. I mentally exchanged the rings in each row and just squinted confusedly until I got to HITCHIN GPOST. "Well, that kind of looks / sounds like 'hitching post' but ... ohhhhhh ... we have to move the black square!? Why didn't you say so? OK ... OK, that's pretty cool. That's an extra layer, for sure." I don't love how detached the theme is from the solving experience, but I do appreciate that the reveal is an actual reveal and not some totally sad let-down. Two things, though. First, where weddings are concerned, I think of "exchanging" as something done first and foremost with VOWS. Rings are definitely exchanged, so there's nothing wrong here ... it's just ... there's something odd about an "exchange" phrase not even being the most important "exchange" phrase in its specific wedding context. As I type this, I realize that this isn't a complaint at all, just a weird thing my brain is doing, calculating that most people, presented with the sentence "In a wedding ceremony, you exchange ___" would fill in the blank with VOWS. But maybe they wouldn't. And it obviously doesn't matter because the gimmick works as is so who cares? Well, tell that to my brain, is what I say. I also say that LAPPER is comically terrible as an answer, and gets a pass solely because it's doing real thematic work. In any other context, absolutely not. My cats lap water everyday, and of all the things I call them (and I call them more things than I could begin to list for you) I have never not once called either of them a LAPPER. Though now I'll probably start. Today. This morning. Because brain. 

The solve itself started hard, as solves often do, with lots of misdirection in the initial (i.e. NW) clues—[Runs through], [Catch, in way], ["Notorious" initials]—that last once may have been obvious to you, but my first thought for ["Notorious" initials] is always going to be B.I.G. (from the rapper whose name was the basis of the late Supreme Court justice's own moniker). I also didn't know the trivia up there. Blanked on SOFIA as a place (I can't remember the last time I heard Bulgaria referred to ... anywhere. I had to look it up just now to make sure it was still a country). TRUTV is always a shrug. Forgot HORNETS were genus Vespa, if I ever knew it. But once I got out of there, the puzzle got easier. Tail ends of the long Downs were elusive to me. I've somehow never heard of a BELLY BAND, so BAND required crosses. And as for SCRAP PILE ... OK, but the phrase I know is SCRAP HEAP (32D: Heap of junk). And then maybe SCRAP YARD? PILE never occurred to me until crosses forced the issue. SEA CABIN is ... what is that? That's something an overstuffed wordlist coughed up. "Emergency quarters?" If you say so. Nothing about that phrase really screams "emergency," but OK. Funny (sorta) to see LLANO so shortly after having seen LLANERO in the puzzle (when was that, earlier this week?—no, late last week, on Friday). I thought the clue on RAN WITH IT was clunky (19D: Reacted purposefully when handed "the ball"), but that is a great answer, and a great answer to have ... running ... through the middle of the grid. I don't love this puzzle enough to BEAR HUG it, but I do admire several of its features for sure. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. In [America's first vice, so to speak] (ADAMS) the "vice" refers to "vice ... president." You really have to abuse the language to make the joke here. No one calls the vice president the "vice." If you're shortening it, it's "Veep." And you don't really "poke" people with a LANCE, but the extreme euphemism is perhaps worth it for the clue's clever card-related misdirection (7D: Old-time poker).

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