Novelty aquarium dweller / WED 6-21-23 / Tab found on many musicians' websites / Cocktails of tequila and grapefruit soda

Constructor: Jimmy Peniston

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: FOOD CHAIN (58A: Hierarchical system ... or what is formed when the answers to the starred clues are placed end to end) — theme answers form a "chain" of "food" if you place them end to end (and imagine new word breaks): "APPLE / GATEAU / TOMATO / NACHO / OLIVE / DATES"

Theme answers:

• APPLEGATE (17A: *Christina of "Bad Moms")
• AUTOMATON (22A: *Robotic type)
• ACHOO (37A: *Cause for a blessing)
• LIVE DATES (49A: *Tab found on many musicians' websites)

Word of the Day: PALOMAS (4D: Cocktails of tequila and grapefruit soda) —

The paloma (Spanish for "dove") is a tequila-based cocktail. This drink is most commonly prepared by mixing tequila, lime juice, and a grapefruit-flavored soda such as Fresca, Squirt, or Jarritos and served on the rocks with a lime wedge. Adding salt to the rim of the glass is also an option.

Alternatively, the grapefruit soda can be replaced with fresh white or red grapefruit juice (jugo de toronja) and club soda (sugar optional).

A simple paloma is a two-ingredient cocktail consisting only of tequila and grapefruit-flavored soda. A more complex variant of the Paloma is the cantarito, which in addition to lime juice, also has lemon juice and orange juice.

The paloma is more flavorful than its closest relative, the greyhound, which consists of grapefruit juice and either gin or vodka mixed and served over ice.

• • •

Well first of all I'm happy for the lovely Christina APPLEGATE, who is a NYTXW solver and will likely be thrilled to see her name here. She's been in the puzzle a few times before. Her name appeared in a Finn Vigeland-authored GATE-themed puzzle in 2016, where themers all ended in -GATE and were clued as imaginary scandals (her clue was [Scandal affecting iPhone users?]), but the last time she appeared with a clue that reference her directly was 2008. Anyway, seeing her name made me smile. The other thing that made me smile was the revealer—that is, the revelation that the revealer provided. I was not smiling a ton in between APPLEGATE and FOOD CHAIN, but the revealer really does pay off, in the sense that it gives you a genuine "aha" as well as an explanation for the seemingly disparate theme answer set, particularly the highly improbable ACHOO! ("Who put this five-letter 'word' in with the themers!?"). The foods make for an odd MENU. Four fruits (two sweet, two savory), not a cake but an oolala GATEAU, and finally a sad, lonely, singular NACHO, who wonders what he's doing with these other foods and why his fellow NACHOS have abandoned him. You wouldn't eat these foods together, but that's not crucial. They just gotta line up and be edible, and on those counts, they succeed. The only problem I have with the theme has nothing to do with the theme itself—it has to do with the glaring *inclusion* of another, non-thematic food in the Across answers. If you're going to do a big Food Reveal at the end, then there really shouldn't be any other foods in the grid. The only foods should be the ones revealed by the "Chain" concept. But here we've got this fat, delicious ECLAIR sitting right near the center of the grid (40A: Cream-filled pastry). Normally I'd be happy to see (and eat) an ECLAIR, but extraneous foodstuffs, today, are unwelcome, especially in the Acrosses. Detracts from the elegance of the theme.  But this is a minor point. Overall, the theme is cute, and was a delight to discover, finally.

Solving the puzzle, however, wasn't always delightful. The NW subjected me to THEEU UHURA URSA RENAL and then shot me out into the grid with the awkwardly redundant DADA ART (as opposed to, what, DADA COOKWARE?). And then, when I tried to get into the NE, the puzzle gave me ... IN PEN? Not even IN INK? A bunch of crosswordesey stuff followed: ENOLA EHS ONTV TTOP IDINA. Then there's the one, sad, lonely SEA MONKEY (eating one, sad, lonely NACHO, I presume). But the latter half of the grid seemed to pick up a bit. I don't love "I CHEATED" (54A: Confession from someone who had an ace up the sleeve) in that it doesn't stand alone well at all, and opens up the floodgates for any "I VERBED" phrase you want ("I LAUGHED," "I CRIED," "I MOWED THE LAWN," etc.), but it does give the puzzle a bit of a personality, a mischievous personality, which I didn't mind. And I really like FALL SHORT as an answer, especially "falling" down to the bottom of the grid like that.

Bullets:

• 21A: Honey and Sugar, for two (PET NAMES) — the "pet" here is metaphorical, but I knew a dog once named Sugar, so I think "pet" can work on two levels
• 35A: Intensity, metaphorically (HEAT) — I am bad at these "[comma] metaphorically" clues. I usually need nearly every cross to know what the clue is going for. I'm also notoriously (in my household) bad at "word that can go with ___ or ___"-type clues, even with something seemingly simple like 15A: Word with sight or speed (READ). Brain: "Light!" Me: "That only rhymes with 'sight.' Plus it doesn't fit." Brain: "Uh ... SOUND." Me: "... What?" Brain: "You read 'Sight & SOUND' magazine, don't you?" Me: "Yeah but ..." Brain: "'Sight & SOUND,' 'speed of SOUND,' come on, you gotta admit—" Me: "No, it's bad, and It Still Doesn't Fit! [Sigh], let's go find you a SEA MONKEY to play with, buddy..."
• 45A: Site of the first "Occupy" protests, in brief (WALL ST.) — I know this is the abbr. you might find on a street sign, but I still don't like it, esp. as clued, when I'm asked to imagine the whole phrase ("Occupy Wall Street") but then all I see is "Occupy WALLST"—I want to say it as one word: "WALLST." Where is WALLST, I wonder? Brussels? OSLO?
• 64A: "A Man Called ___" (2022 Tom Hanks film) ("OTTO") — I saw Tom's grumpy face on posters all over NZ when I was there in December. It's based on a book entitled "A Man Called Ove," but I guess they (probably rightly) thought Anglo/American audiences wouldn't know how to pronounce Ove ("Uh ... rhymes with 'stove'!?"), so we get OTTO for the Big American Movie-Star Movie Title. 

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. forgot to mention the (bad) SEA dupe (GOD/MONKEY). You get one SEA answer. That is all. Strict one-SEA limit. 

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