Rhyming destinations for yummies / TUE 7-18-23 / Harvest goddess with a daughter in the underworld / Pal you might take fishing? / Chilly-sounding pod in a stir-fry / Muslim land with a monarch / Nonvegan fat in a pie crust

Constructor: Karen and Paul Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: GRECO-ROMAN (36A: Kind of wrestling ... or a hint to four pairs of crossing answers in this puzzle) — Greek gods cross their Roman counterparts four times:

Theme answers:

• POSEIDON / NEPTUNE (18A and 1D: Trident-wielding god of the sea)
• ARTEMIS / DIANA (19A and 8D: Apollo's twin who rules over the hunt)
• DEMETER / CERES (60A and 52D: Harvest goddess with a daughter in the underworld)
• DIONYSUS / BACCHUS (65A and 45D: God celebrated with wine, feasts and dancing)

Word of the Day: CHUM (4A: Pal you might take fishing?) —

Chumming (American English from Powhatan) is the blue water fishing practice of throwing meat-based groundbait called "chum" into the water in order to lure various marine animals (usually large game fish) to a designated fishing ground, so the target animals are more easily caught by hooking or spearing. Chums typically consist of fresh chunks of fish meat with bone and blood, the scent of which attracts predatory fish, particularly sharks, billfishes, tunas and groupers. In the past, the chum contents have also been made from "offal", the otherwise rejected or unwanted parts of slaughtered animals such as internal organs. [...] Chumming is illegal in some parts of the world (such as in the U.S. state of Alabama) because of the danger it can pose by conditioning sharks to associate feeding with human presence. (wikipedia)

• • •

Was humming along and not really thinking much about the theme at first. I noticed that gods were crossing, but I know my gods pretty well, so I was writing them easily as I went along, without even noticing that the crossing gods were clued identically, or that they were Greek / Roman counterparts. Early in the week, this is pretty typical for me—burn through the grid, vaguely notice that there *is* a theme, wait for that theme to jump out and loudly announce itself. So I'm enjoying myself pretty well, doo doo doo, and then I hit the reveal and have a very genuine aha! Actually, it was more like an "Oh!" but an excited "oh!" with an exclamation point, not a meh "oh" ["Meh oh! ... Meh-eh-eh oh ..."—Harry Belafonte encountering a so-so revealer]. The revealer did what it was supposed to do: grabbed my attention and got me to see the pattern at work. Now, if I'd been going slower and had cared to suss out the pattern on my own, I definitely could have, but that's just not how I solve a Tuesday, so ... great. The revealer was like a tour guide pointing out the side of the bus telling me to notice some building I could see in my peripheral vision but wasn't really paying attention to. Thanks, revealer. GRECO-ROMAN isn't the most ... acrobatic wordplay you're ever going to see. Yes, it is a play on a wrestling term, but it's also straightforward, literal description of the theme. But the fact that GRECO-ROMAN *only* evokes wrestling (that's the only time I'd ever use that term, or have ever heard that term) makes it wordplayish enough, I think. Structurally, it's pretty remarkable that the theme works out so nicely within the confines of a rotationally symmetrical grid. In fact, two of the crossings are perfectly symmetrical (ARTEMIS / DIANA, DEMETER / CERES). The other crossings find the gods shifted one column (and row) out of symmetry, but first of all, you probably didn't notice, and second of all, names cross where they cross ... they have the letter(s) in common that they have in common, so threading the needle can be very challenging. It's genuinely remarkable that the theme was doable at all in the confines of a regular Tuesday grid. That fact that the symmetrical counterparts of every Greek and Roman god are all the same length, and that it's always Greek in the Across and Roman in the Down, these features simply add to the elegance of the theme's execution.

The grid is 16-wide in order to accommodate GRECO-ROMAN in the center of the grid (an even-number-length central answer requiring an even-numbered grid width in order to sit true in the center), but the extra column didn't seem to add any time to the solve. Anyway, if the puzzle felt easy but your time was normal, the extra column is probably why. I was strong out of the gate on this one—unsure which org. was involved at 1A: U.S. intelligence org. (I wrote in CIA), but then getting NSA easily once I took one look at the clue for NEPTUNE. After that, very few hiccups. I smiled a few times as I was solving, and probably smiled most broadly at the clue for CHUM (4A: Pal you might take fishing?). Something about the idea of bloody chunks of flesh being your "pal" was funny to me. Same thing happened with the clue on TUMMIES—probably too easy, but something about the phrasing "Rhyming destinations"—and the term "yummies"—was bizarre enough to make me laugh (12D: Rhyming destinations for yummies). There's some pretty decent longer fill in here today, which is mildly surprising given how theme-dense the puzzle is. Loved "I'M SO DEAD" and MEDIA SHY, and UNBURDEN and "I'D SAY SO" are solid as well. I made one mistake today, but even that made me laugh: I had the "RE-" at the beginning of 24A: Capital of Saskatchewan and thought "ooh, ooh, I know this ... it's ... uh ... oh, it's RED HAT!" Uh, no. I think I was thinking of Medicine Hat (which is in Alberta). RED HAT is the software company where friends of mine work. REGINA is, of course, the capital of Saskatchewan. 

Had to fight through two little kealoas* today, at ATAD (not ABIT) (56D: Somewhat) and MDS (not DRS, which is what I wrote in at first) (62D: OB/GYNs, e.g.). I found the tide clue on RECEDES odd (66A: Goes out like the tide), since ... well, if you're gonna go tide-specific, I'd say the verb is (always?) EBBS. If you're gonna go hairline-specific, then RECEDES is definitely your guy. [Goes out] = "Ooh, that's pretty vague, I don't know." [Goes out like the tide] = "Oh, EBBS!" But no. Any other minor gripes? Not really. I do grow weary of DLISTER, and DLIST in general, as a term (8A: Very minor celeb). I feel like the term got currency a decade or so ago with the Kathy Griffin show "My Life on the D-List" and then constructors were like "cool" and just ran with it. Well, I discovered just now that the letter scale for celebrity status has a very specific origin. And a name! It's called the Ulmer Scale:

The A-list is part of a larger guide called The Hot List, which ranks the bankability of 1,400 movie actors worldwide, and has become an industry-standard guide in Hollywood. American entertainment journalist James Ulmer, the guide's creator, has also developed a version including directors, the Hot List of Directors. The Ulmer scale categorizes the lists into A+, A, B+, B, C, and D listings. Similarly, in India, there is three-tier strategy, tier-1, tier-2 and tier-3, which are based on the saleability and box office collection capability of a star. (wikipedia)

So I now know two Ulmers, the other being Edgar G. Ulmer, the director of the beautifully grim low-budget film noir classic, Detour (1945). It will surprise probably no one that ULMER has never appeared in a New York Times crossword puzzle. Adding him to the list of legendary directors that the puzzle continues to snub Justice for the OZU-VARDA-ULMER triumvirate! 

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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