Infamous presidential denial / THU 9-21-23 / Withered, climate-wise / D-F-A is one in music / Third-most common Chinese surname in America / Competitive poker? / Classic N.Y.C. cinema name

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: WINTER MIGRATION (40A: Seasonal phenomenon depicted six times in this puzzle) — the tail (!) ends of six answers are birds: that part of the answer turns down ... or "flies south," which is what many birds do for the "winter":

Theme answers:

• WES CRAVEN (1A: Director who said "Horror films don't create fear. They release it")
• "I AM NOT A CROOK" (37A: Infamous presidential denial)
• DICK CLARK (49A: "The $10,000 Pyramid" host)
• MOHAWK (6A: Center cut?)
• HALF INCH (9A: Length just over one centimeter)
• IN ESCROW (58A: How some money is held)

Word of the Day: ROOK (39D: Corner piece) —

The rook (Corvus frugilegus) is a member of the family Corvidae in the passerine order of birds. It is found in the Palearctic, its range extending from Scandinavia and western Europe to eastern Siberia. It is a large, gregarious, black-feathered bird, distinguished from similar species by the whitish featherless area on the face. Rooks nest collectively in the tops of tall trees, often close to farms or villages, the groups of nests being known as rookeries.

Rooks are mainly resident birds, but the northernmost populations may migrate southwards to avoid the harshest winter conditions. The birds form flocks in winter, often in the company of other Corvus species or jackdaws. They return to their rookeries and breeding takes place in spring. They forage on arable land and pasture, probing the ground with their strong bills and feeding largely on grubs and soil-based invertebrates, but also consuming cereals and other plant material. Historically, farmers have accused the birds of damaging their crops, and have made efforts to drive them away or kill them. Like other corvids, they are intelligent birds with complex behavioural traits and an ability to solve simple problems. (wikipedia)

• • •

I like birds. I never used to notice them, then I married someone from New Zealand who knew a thing or two about birds, then time passed, then the pandemic hit, and *then* I really started paying attention to the absolute Wild Kingdom that is my neighborhood. Now I'm that guy with his Merlin app open, standing on the sidewalk, wandering into the street, staring at the trees, trying to identify and see whatever bird is making that noise. Merlin (a bird sound ID app) said there was something on my block yesterday called a "brown-headed cowbird," what the hell? It's like a space alien was visiting. I didn't see it, but there's still time. Maybe. Anyway, birds, man. They're great. My main thought about this puzzle was "Whoa, so many corvids!" My first two birds were RAVEN and ROOK and I really thought we were gonna get some kind of spooky Halloweenesque black bird / murder of crows / quoth the raven-type of puzzle. And a CROW actually does show up eventually! But then a dang LARK comes along and ruins the party, but it's fine. And that's my feeling about the theme here: it's fine. It's an odd assortment of birds. Would've been cool if they'd all been migratory, particularly south-flying, but they're not. I mean, some crows migrate, but many don't, and anyway they don't "fly south for the winter." Finches, also, not terribly migratory. Again, the only thing that's important for the theme is that you've got bird names, and that those bird names "fly south," i.e. turn down. I like that those bird names were clued in non-bird ways, and so you had to figure out they were also the tail ends of Acrosses. I found this out very early, when the only horror directors I could think of off the top of my head were Hitchcock, Eli Roth, and WES CRAVEN. None of them fit ... until one of them did.

[Don't ask how many ways I spelled NEGEV before I hit on
the "correct" spelling—too many (17A: Desert near Sinai)]

I got the MIGRATION part of the revealer easily enough but had a Taylor Swiftian blank space where WINTER should go (Taylor SWIFT—missed opportunity!). Hard for me to think of WINTER MIGRATION because, well, it's not WINTER. Hell, it only turned fall ... [checks watch] ... [looks out window] ... [checks calendar] ... wait a minute, it's still summer!? Crazy. OK, so, it's really not WINTER, so the WINTER part threw me (one of the few parts of the puzzle that did). But I like the concept here, and the birds were fun and easy to pick up. The "flying south" aspect was subtle, i.e. implicit, not clumsily spelled out somehow. It's a phrase for you to discover in your own mind. I like that.

[Only just now learned that she isn't singing about 

"Starbucks lovers" (who'll tell you she's insane)]

I did not like the fill so much. ALAI AMOI ATNINE ORDOC IDIG etc. I'm not that surprised that a puzzle with six (6) themers (all of which go in two (2) directions), plus a grid-spanning revealer, would have fill that was, uh, compromised. In fact, given the thematic constraints, I'd say the grid actually looks halfway decent. Not much interest in the fill, but you do get a nice MINOR CHORD to bring you into a wintery mood (31D: D-F-A is one, in music). Watch the crows amass out your back window. Feel melancholy. Listen to sad music. Sip your coffee. Contemplate mortality. Get into the holiday spirit, basically. I DIG.

[45A: Desire for a lonely hart? (DOE)]

I got nice whoosh-whoosh feeling today when I hit "I AM NOT A CROOK," the very best of the theme answers. Just wham, straight across—and then down—the grid. My earliest political memory is seeing some guy dressed in a Nixon mask and a black-and-white-striped old-timey jailbird suit on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I was ... must've been four? Anyway, "I AM NOT A CROOK" was a much made-fun-of line when I was a kid (basically the go-to line if you were parodying Nixon), so that was easy, and fun, and thematic. It had everything. The other bird answers were a bit more cramped. Smaller spaces, less whoosh. But still a pleasure to uncover. Really glad I saw 6A: Center cut? very late, because that would've been very hard even without the turning-south trickery. Because I came it at late, I knew the theme, and had the HAWK part (8D: Peddle), which made the answer obvious. The idea that a MOHAWK was a hair "cut" that runs down the "center" of one's scalp ... would not have been obvious otherwise. Also tricky: the clue on ONES (24A: Capital of Washington?). "Capital" here is money, and Washington (the president) appears on ONES (i.e. one dollar bills). I had trouble understanding the clue on ALAI, since I've never heard of a "rhyming game" called Jai ALAI. I wasn't even sure what a "rhyming game" was supposed to be. Then it turns out that I was totally misreading the clue. They didn't want the name of a "rhyming game," they wanted a game with a rhyming name. Half of that. Half of Jai ALAI. So just ALAI. I see. Now. Hope you flew through this one, and had a good time doing it. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. WINGED MIGRATION!!! 2001 documentary! That should’ve been the title! 

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