Cretaceous critters / SAT 9-23-23 / Decluttering method featured on Netflix / Slaves away old-style / Sporting event that started as a religious ritual / National Park in southwest Texas / Classic song with the lyric "Girl you made me love you And now now now your lovin man has gone" / Dutch city with a palindromic name

Constructor: Robert Charlton

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ROBERT I (35D: Father of William the Conqueror) —

Robert I of Normandy (22 June 1000 – July 1035), also known as Robert the Magnificent and by other names, was a Norman noble of the House of Normandy who ruled as duke of Normandy from 1027 until his death in 1035. He was the son of Duke Richard II; the brother of Duke Richard III, against whom he unsuccessfully revolted; and the father of Duke William who became the first Norman king of England in 1066. During his reign, Robert quarrelled with the church—including his uncle Robert, archbishop of Rouen—and meddled in the disorder in Flanders. He finally reconciled with his uncle and the church, restoring some property and undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he died. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well we should probably start by discussing the elephant, or rather, the APELET in the room, because there's an APELET in the room, and what the hell? (8D: Small simian ... that's one letter away from a small computer program). This puzzle died at APELET. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to go on taking a puzzle seriously when it gives me APELET. And then the clue ... somehow it made it worse. Like, let me make up the word APELET based on [Small simian]. I'll get there. In fact, I got there, without reading the rest of the clue. I had the -LET suffix and wrote in APE half-jokingly. But it was a lot less funny when it ended up being right. And the latter part of the clue, where it tries to make make up for the obvious horrible non-wordness of APELET by doing a desperate wordplay tap dance, yeesh. "APELET ... it's one letter away from APPLET! Fun, right?!" Wrong. This puzzle had a lot of crummy fill—a Lot—but nothing to top the Olympic-level crumminess of APELET. How do you put that in a grid without cringing and going "uh ... what?" What duplicitous word list lied to you and told you APELET was OK? Even Eugene Tiberius Maleska, Will Shortz's predecessor and lover of all fill arcane and junky, only touched APELET once, and that was back in 1991—the last time anyone saw an APELET in the wild. Will Weng (the editor that preceded Maleska) liked APELETs a little better (he had two of them). Margaret Farrar (the NYTXW's first editor), by comparison, adored them. Four APELETs on her watch! But that was the cretaceous age of crosswords, there were only like 23 words in the whole Universe back then, so she gets a pass. This puzzle, today's puzzle, no, no pass. No pass for making APELET rise from the grave after (one two three four...) thirty-two years! You were APELET-free, Will Shortz! Why would you ruin your legacy like this!? smh ...

The highs weren't high enough today, and the lows were kinda low. In addition to the small simian who shall no longer be named, we had a bunch of olde-tymey crosswordese like EDE and STLEO and EDMEESE, then whoever ROBERT I is (there are so many ROBERT Is, it took some repeated googling to get the one I wanted), and then especially MOILS, oof, erp, uck, yuck (42A: Slaves away, old-style). I threw down TOILS and then thought "oh, no, that's not "old-style" enough, they're gonna try to perpetrate MOILS here, aren't they?" Indeed. (Sidenote: I'd keep "Slaves" out of my clues if it was at all possible, which it was). MOILS ended up being adjacent to what was, for me, the toughest part of the puzzle. It's bad enough that the puzzle keeps foisting "Star Wars" crap on me (second day in a row!), but please do not expect me to be able to spell these made-up names. I knew AMIDALA by sound ... but not be spelling, apparently, because AMADALA looked Just Fine. That apparently erroneous "A" corresponded Just Fine with the answer I had for 46A: Sounds of success. That answer: BANGS. "Hey, how was your daughter's wedding." "Oh great, it went off with a bang!" i.e. was very successful. This left me with BINOS for 46D: Cretaceous creatures, which ... well, I think (no, I know) I confused "Cretaceous" with "cetaceous," so I thought they were sea creatures, and I thought BINOS was just some cutesy name for a sea creature I couldn't think of. Some kind of bivalve? I don't know. BINOS looked wrong enough that I pulled it and stared ... and then pulled BANGS ... and then thought "... BINGS? PINGS? These all sound like 'success' to me." But it was DINGS, as in "ding ding ding, correct answer!" And DINOS, a stupid abbrev. no one says after age 8. All this because AMIDALA is spelled with an "I" and not an "A." What a dumb thing to trip on.

These tri-stacks are often unpleasant because the fill tends to suffer. Today's long answers are solid, but not exciting, except for ANTICOLONIALIST (54A: Like the writing of Chinua Achebe and Mahatma Gandhi), which I wanted to be ANTI-IMPERIALIST (it fit!) and then ANTICAPITALIST (it didn't). That was a good answer. CARBONATED WATER, less so, at least as clued (51A: Certain drink mixer). You use soda water or tonic water in mixed drinks. Yes, they're CARBONATED, but CARBONATED WATER is just not the term you'd use. Seltzer, maybe? Club soda? Answers should be appropriate to the context of the clue (and/or vice versa). The other 15s are shrugs. They fit. They're fine. They aren't remarkable. KONMARI is a fresh answer (named for its creator, Marie Kondo) (2D: Decluttering method featured on Netflix) . Also a harrowing answer, in that I forgot what it was called at first, and then remembered but wasn't sure, and so had to tiptoe through the crosses, praying that they were all indisputable (they were). Lots of mistakes today. TIRED for TRITE (4D: Banal). GIVE and then CAVE before CEDE (23A: Yield). AXE before BAN (6D: Deodorant brand). 

[I know I used this video yesterday for LIPS but it's even more fitting today so sorry not sorry]

Got my start on this one the way I always get my start in puzzles with banks of long answers—I worked the short crosses. Only there weren't that many, so it took some work to get going. I got a few (ETAS, DARTH, TRIS), but the answer that really got me going was KEYLESS (15D: Like some ignition systems). Wasn't sure about it, but I crossed it with GIVE at 23A: Yield ... which was wrong, but it led me to look at the clue for 23D: Rooster for roasting, which I was 83% sure was CAPON, so ... change GIVE to CAVE (still wrong), but then get ISO- MUSES MAGES STUPORS TILLS BLENDER all IN ONE GO (fittingly, the answer I got next). Eventually pulled CAVE, wrote in CEDE, remembered that "C.C. RIDER" was a song, and bang (I mean, ding), I had my first grid-spanner:

[Sincerely thought "McTwist" was a McDonald's breakfast sandwich at first]
[1A: McTwist, for one]

Once you get one, the crosses and then the other grid-spanners start falling like flies. Top section was done fast, but then had some of that same initial slowness getting traction down below. Luckily DEALTIN EDMEESE and RESORTS were all pretty easy, so despite not being able to drop into the bottom section of the puzzle in the SW or South, I was able to work those long answers from the back end. Not much else to say, except that 20A: Love, by another name was a cute (and tough) clue for NIL (it's tennisspeak for NIL). And is CORRIDA really a "sporting event" (33A: Sporting event that started as a religious ritual)? Tell that to the bull. Would you consider getting ritually and spectacularly murdered in front of a roaring crowd "sporting?" Seems doubtful. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. blog comments are great, but postcard comments are mwah 💋 perfect, please, never hesitate to deliver even your angriest commentary in postcard form, I will love you for it 🥰

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