Not the good stuff / WED 6-14-23 / Setting for "Make Way for Ducklings" / Bygone Apple messaging app / National airline of Poland

Constructor: Jennifer Hoelzer

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Not" — all the Across clues start with "Not" ... that's all I got

Theme answers?:

• Not really 

Word of the Day: MISHA Collins (25D: "Supernatural" actor Collins) —

Dmitri "Misha" Collins (born Dmitri Tippens Krushnic; August 20, 1974) is an American actor best known for his role as the angel Castiel on the CW television series Supernatural (2008–2020). [...] Collins is a published poet. His poems, including "Baby Pants" and "Old Bones", can be found in the 2008 edition of Columbia Poetry Review #21.

Collins has also co-written a cookbook, The Adventurous Eaters Club, with his wife, Vicki Collins. It is reported that much of the book's sales will go to charitable organizations who specialize in food nutrition.

Collins and Kathryn Leonard, together with several other collaborators, are authors of "The 2D Shape Structure Dataset", an academic research paper on a crowd-sourced database on the structure of shapes.

Collins's poetry book, Some Things I Still Can’t Tell You, was published on October 12, 2021 and is a full collection of poems at 144 pages. It reached the NYTimes bestseller list. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't see the appeal. In fact, I didn't *see* the theme at all until after I was done and had printed out the puzzle—hard to miss when you've got all those "Nots" lined up in front of you, but if you're solving in software, it's much harder to see—you can only see so many Across answers at a time—and anyway I never ever ever solve by reading the Across clues in order, so ... since nothing was obstructing my solving progress (at all), it never occurred to me to look around to see what the theme was. If you toggle between Across and Down answers a lot (which is the only effective way to solve), then the glut of "Not"s is going to be seriously diluted by non-"Not" clues. But this is all beside the point, the point being, "Why?" What is the point of this? How does it add any interest or pleasure to the solving experience. The grid is dull and lifeless by normal standards. I mean, the only thing resembling "marquee" answers here are ON THE FENCE and BLEARY-EYED—solid entries, but nothing to write home about. Everything else is workmanlike and, well, kind of ANEMIC. I'm having real trouble seeing the "up" side of any of this, and I'm sincerely trying. As always, it's possible there is some thoughtful aspect of this theme that I am straight-up missing. The puzzle has no theme *content*. You've almost got something going there with ON THE FENCE and YES AND NO—an ambivalence them? But even if that were something, it's AT ODDS with the resolute "Not"-ness of it all. June 14 ... is it National Not Day? Negative something? Help me out here. 

What *is* remarkable is that the "Not" clues weren't significantly more awkward. Usually, when you've got a gimmick that affects how the clues are written, you're gonna get some forced clunkers, but today there was just the occasional ungainly interloper. Needed several crosses to figure out [Not the good stuff] (HOOCH is low-quality liquor), and I definitely blinked once or twice at [Not yet two years old] (I could see it was gonna be ONE, I just thought "Wow that is a weird way to say 'ONE' but OK"). The most awkward of all is the one where they try to turn KNEELED into an adjective and decide that the best way to do that is to get cute with a "?" clue (20A: Not up for a proposal?). That would be a great clue ... for KNEELING. It's much less great for KNEELED. Hard to see KNEELED as anything but a past tense verb, and past tense verbs really aren't going to be amenable to "Not" clues. So we're pretending it's adjectival today. Not A Good Look.

Almost no resistance in the grid today. Had to decide between OGLE and LEER at 1A: Not a good look, but LICK made the decision easy and virtually instantaneous (1D: Taste, as a lollipop). Seems like the editors knew it was going to be Way too easy, and so a couple of the Downs are proper nouns that many solvers aren't likely to know. I sure didn't know the [National airline of Poland], probably because no sane person would ever clue LOT that way when there are ... lots ... of regular-old English-language clues for LOT, an exceedingly ordinary word. I barely know what "Supernatural" is, so I definitely don't know any actors involved. I feel like it involved very handsome brothers solving paranormal crimes or something? Aha, "two brothers who hunt demons, ghosts and monsters," bingo. Bingo-ish, anyway. Still, MISHA gets fifth billing on the wikipedia page for the show, so even if I knew the actors playing the star brothers (I don't), I'd still have been screwed. The show was always very low-ranked (never cracked the Top 100!?) and yet ran for 15 seasons and 327 episodes (!!??!). That's one devoted fanbase. I don't know who they are, but they're out there. (This Hollywood Reporter article on the history of the show's ratings over 15 years, through major changes in the TV business as well as major changes in viewer habits, is actually really informative and interesting). But even with LOT and MISHA throwing me curves, I plowed through the grid in what felt like record time for a Wednesday. Definitely seems like the Tuesday and Wednesday puzzles got switched this week. That's all, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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