Become absurdly outlandish as a TV show / MON 7-10-23 / Expressions of gratitude in texts / Snoopy's alter ego in sunglasses / Disposable parts of grocery purchases

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: verb the animal — theme answers are all colloquial phrases that follow a "[verb] THE [animal]" pattern:

Theme answers:

• POKE THE BEAR (17A: Antagonize a powerful figure)
• JUMP THE SHARK (27A: Become absurdly outlandish, as a TV show)
• SHOOT THE BULL (43A: Chat idly)
• FLIP THE BIRD (58A: Gesture rudely, in a way)

Word of the Day: The Fault in OUR Stars (34A: "The Fault in ___ Stars" (2012 best seller)) —

The Fault in Our Stars is a novel by John Green. It is his fourth solo novel, and sixth novel overall. It was published on January 10, 2012. The title is inspired by Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, in which the nobleman Cassius says to Brutus: "Men at some time were masters of their fates, / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings." The story is narrated by Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old girl with thyroid cancer that has affected her lungs. Hazel is forced by her parents to attend a support group where she subsequently meets and falls in love with 17-year-old Augustus Waters, an ex-basketball player, amputee, and survivor of osteosarcoma.

An American feature film adaptation of the same name as the novel directed by Josh Boone and starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and Nat Wolff was released on June 6, 2014. A Hindi feature film adaptation of the novel, titled Dil Bechara, which was directed by Mukesh Chhabra and starring Sushant Singh Rajput, Sanjana Sanghi, Saswata Chatterjee, Swastika Mukherjee and Saif Ali Khan was released on July 24, 2020, on Disney+ Hotstar. The American film adaptation and the book enjoyed strong critical and commercial success, with the latter becoming one of the best-selling books of all time. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty straightforward stuff, but very solid for a Monday theme. Solid premise, consistent execution, and colorful phrases. All the boxes ticked, thematically. The fill is also remarkably solid. All except TYS, that is, woof, inexplicably terrible. "ty" is definitely something you might text someone ("pls" and "ty" are just good texting manners, though I see—and use—"thx" much more), but the plural TYS, yikes, when where why and how? (A: never, nowhere, who knows?, in no way). Is there really no way to have fixed that. Seems like the fix would be easy. You might have to tear the corner down, but who cares, it's Monday, nothing up there (except that first themer) that couldn't be sacrificed. The ugliness of TYS is not counterbalanced by anything equally (or more) beautiful. I'm not sure such beauty exists. I never saw TYS, because I was solving Downs-only, so (thankfully) my solve was not marred by it, but it sure would've been if I'd been solving normally. I can handle MSDOS and SLRS and ROTC and ESP and all the other fairly to very common stuff, but TYS, woof, no. I probably said something like this the last time TYS was clued this way (which is the last time it appeared, in 2021). With every other appearance of TYS (save one), going back to 1964, the constructor / editors had the decency to just be honest about the fact that the only thing TYS can plausibly be is a plural name, e.g. [Cobb and others]. Fun fact: the first ever clue for TYS, going back to April 1964, is the one clue that refers neither to texting abbrevs. nor to names. Instead, solvers were confronted with this: [Northwest, Indian, etc.: Abbr.]. I ... don't even know how that works. What does that even mean? Indian ... trout yogurt? Northwestern ... tongue yoga? No idea. Also, when I look up [TYS abbr meaning] on google today, right now, I'm told it can mean either "thank you, sir" or "told you so," LOL. So even as a texting clue: bad. Don't let bad stuff persist just because someone once got away with it. Tear the answer out or clue it reasonably. TY. 

My only other (minor) complaint is that the clue on JUMP THE SHARK feels off (27A: Become absurdly outlandish, as a TV show). Yes, Fonzie's jumping the shark was "absurdly outlandish" but the term just refers to the point at which a show runs out of steam, runs out of ideas, and starts to go south, i.e. generally just ... gets worse. A show can JUMP THE SHARK without actually being "absurd" or "outlandish." 


The toughest part of solving this Downs-only was the NW, i.e the first part, which is (as I say all the time) not surprising. The part that's likeliest to be hardest is the part you start on, when you have nothing in the grid to help. I moved through those Downs up there OK, but FATEFUL was very, very hard for me, even with the FA- in place (5D: Momentous). FANTASTIC, FABULOUS, FATED ... nothing was working. And POKE THE BEAR was really hard to parse, since anything starting POKE- seems like it's going to have POKER as the first word. After I got a few more short Downs up there, I could see POKER was wrong, and that THE was probably gonna be the second word, so POKE THE BEAR, boom. Seemed like a phrase I'd heard before, all the crosses checked out, fantastic, moving on. The next hardest part of me was also up top: WRAPPERS (9D: Disposable parts of grocery purchases). Something about "grocery" had me thinking ... I don't know, but not candy bars, which would be the locus classicus WRAPPERS example. "Disposable parts" + "grocery purchases" just had my brain going "nope, doesn't compute." So that took work. But I got there. Nothing in the bottom half of the grid proved nearly as challenging. Longer Downs are frequently the most challenging part of the Downs-only experience, but most of today's longer Downs were straight-up gimmes. JOE COOL, for instance (27D: Snoopy's alter ego in sunglasses), and WORD SALAD (11D: Speech jumble), and OPTOMETRY (33D: Field of vision?), and CLEMENS (42D: Samuel Langhorne ___ (Mark Twain's real name)). All of them went straight in with no help from crosses. When most of the longer Downs are pushovers, you've got a good chance of a successful Downs-only solve. 

Had some trouble parsing LETS SLIP, but the -IP ending eventually gave it away. Had ROAM before ROVE (klassic kealoa*), but it ended up really clashing with its neighbors, so it didn't take me long to pull it. This is a grid with ordinary fill and few proper nouns, so there's nothing much that needs explaining. Thanks to Rafael Musa for filling in for me yesterday. My Saturday was so full that there was no way I was going to be able to blog the Sunday without extreme exhaustion and non-sleep. Picked up my wife from her writers workshop in Saratoga Springs, squeezed in coffee and conversation with friends (and crossword constructors) Erica Hsiung Wojcik and Mike Nothnagel...

...and then, after driving back to Binghamton, turned right around and headed up to Syracuse to see Elvis Costello play (again—this makes six times for me). While at the venue (The Landmark Theatre), I got recognized for the first time in my life (excluding crossword tournaments). This woman came down stairs and bounded past me, then did an immediate 180, pointed at me, and said, "I know you, do I know you?" I said, "I don't think so." Her: "Are you sure?" Me: "I look like every other 53-year-old in this place." Her: "You're ... the crossword guy, right?" Me: [staring wide-mouthed and wondering if "Candid Camera" is still on the air] "oh my god." Her name was Elaine and she's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Rochester and she couldn't have been lovelier! (not pictured: her sister, also lovely):

So it was a full day. My life is a whole lot of nothing and then one big day of everything. "July 8" is now gonna be shorthand for an impossibly full but also very good day. The concert was unbelievable, but I'll spare you the details. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc. 

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