Literally "Three teeth" / SUN 9-24-23 / Reaction to the 1950s culture of commercial consumerism / Insurance company with a purple heart logo / First plant on earth it's thought / Marine character whose name has four consecutive vowels / Product once marketed with dancing silhouettes / Dutch explorer Tasman for whom an island is named / SNL characters who coined the term parental units

Constructor: Joel Fagliano & Christina Iverson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Rebrandings" — wacky puns on company names, clued as if they are "rebrandings":

Theme answers:

• 
  LITTLE SEIZERS (23A: We've rebranded! Now we sell tiny tongs!) (Little Caesars)
• WALL GREENS (We've rebranded! Now we sell ivy!)
• BUD WISER (35A: We've rebranded! Now we run an advice column on friendship!) (Budweiser)
• HOLE FOODS (49A: We've rebranded! Now we sell doughnuts and bagels!) (Whole Foods)
• BEST BYE (52A: We've rebranded! Now we help write breakup letters!) [probably shouldn't use "write" here since another of your themers is WRITE-AID (see below)] (Best Buy)
• AMERICAN HEIR LINES (68A: We've rebranded! Now we do genealogy for the U.S.'s rich and famous!) (American Airlines)
• PROCTOR / AND GAMBLE (84A: We've rebranded! Now, with 86-Across, we operate a test-taking facility/casino!) (Procter & Gamble)
• TALK O' BELLE (98A: We've rebranded! Now we produce a "Beauty and the Beast"-themed podcast!) (Taco Bell)
• WRITE-AID (101A: We've rebranded! Now we sell only pens and pencils!) (Rite-Aid)
• EMBASSY SWEETS (115A: We've rebranded! Now we sell candy to diplomats!) (Embassy Suites)

Word of the Day: MOE Berg (116D: ___ Berg, baseball player turned spy) —

Morris Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was an American catcher and coach in Major League Baseball, who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Although he played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, Berg was never more than an average player and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball." Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball".

A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke several languages and regularly read ten newspapers a day. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please, in which he answered questions about the etymology of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.

As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups which the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear weapons program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the OSS's successor, the Central Intelligence Agency. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm a bit puzzled out tonight, what with solving and blogging the Saturday puzzle early this morning, then going to Ithaca for the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition, where I spoke briefly and also solved a lot of puzzles and also served as a judge, which meant checking over lots of contestant grids. And now after a little break for dinner I'm back solving and blogging again. So when I say this seemed a little lackluster, it could be that I'm just a little burned out. I did have a little aha moment when I finally got my first themer—which was technically WALL GREENS, but I wasn't *entirely* sure that was misspelled, so I didn't really Get the theme until LITTLE SEIZERS. So yeah, uh, cute, but really it's just wacky puns. I've seen Sunday puzzles do this a million times. Today the theme is: companies. And you've got the whole "rebranding" angle, which adds a certain surface-level sparkle and cohesion, but basically it's just wacky puns, the bread and butter of Sunday puzzles since time immemorial. I wish more of them were genuinely clever. LITTLE SEIZERS was pretty good, but with some of them, I can barely see the rebrand, so the wackiness feels muted. I've mentioned WALL GREENS, which barely changes the spelling of the original company. Then there's the stretches, like BUD WISER (?). How do you get from "advice column" to BUD WISER? Has "BUD" been made into a verb here, meaning "to be someone's pal (i.e. bud)"? Like, "Read our advice column! We'll help you BUD ... WISER"? It's a grammatical wreck, that one. 

Then there's PROCTOR AND GAMBLE, which, right now ... honestly I don't know which part is misspelled (or "rebranded"). Is it PROCTER normally? Yep, that's it. Really hard to get excited about wordplay that tepid. I'm not even sure that counts as play. The most inspired answer may be TALK O' BELLE, but that one made me mad because it was the Only one to play the "rebranding" game in both parts of the company name. All the others just change one element (SEIZERS, WISER, WALL, HOLE, etc.) but both "Taco" and "Bell" get new looks in TALK O' BELLE. I don't know if I'm mad because it's odd man out or mad because the other answers are nowhere near as good. Probably the latter. Anyway, not really my thing, but as I say, It's been a long and very puzzly day.

Felt like I was getting assaulted by "?" much of the time, though I think that there are only eight such clues in total, so maybe I just had the misfortune of running into a bunch in quick succession. None of them was particularly bad, I just had that "oh cut it out already" feeling after I'd seen like what felt like one too many. I think they're all clear enough. Christmas (or Yule) ORNAMENTs might be "ball"-shaped. A person UNZIPS (or "drops"?) their "fly" (well, some people, sometimes, with some pants). You "roll" dice to win "dough" at a CRAPS TABLE. Bakers use whisks, so a BAKERY is a [Whisk-y business?] (pun on "risky business"). Etc. The only answers that gave me any trouble all seemed to be concentrated in NW. The POP ART clue was tough for me (1A: Reaction to the 1950s culture of commercial consumerism). If I'd know the "reaction" was aesthetic, that might've helped. I was looking for ... I dunno, some kind of movement, like, oh, the Luddite movement or something like that (but more modern). Maybe some kind of religious revival or consciousness-raising group or something. But no. It's Lichtenstein and Warhol. Tough. But not as tough as the clue on TEEN, my god (6D: Louis Braille, when he invented Braille). I guess the "when" part was supposed to clue me into a "stage of life" answer. but all I could think was nationality or ethnicity. "Uh, SERB? LETT? CELT?" I'd've been guessing all day without crosses. TEEN. That has to be the most esoteric way of getting at something as banal as TEEN that I've ever seen. Nothing else in the puzzle was nearly as hard as those two (crossing!) answers. Nothing non-thematic, anyway.

I had BULKY before BURLY (52D: Powerfully built) and PSG (Paris Saint-Germain!) before POR (Portugal) (59D: Cristiano Ronaldo's team: Abbr.). The latter mistake is what happens when you simultaneously know both too much and too little about soccer. Messi played for PSG, but Ronaldo never did, as far as I can tell. Oh well. Got confused by the clue on OTTAWA, / ONTARIO, mostly because I didn't understand "selected" (15D: With 22-Across, world capital selected by Queen Victoria). "Selected ... for what?" I wondered. But I guess she just .... chose that city to be the capital of the country? For some reason? Why? Did she just close her eyes and plunk her finger down on a map? I think that's what she did. I like the image, so that's the reality I'm going with. Over at Bluesky, the newish Twitter (now, stupidly, "X") alternative, posts are most commonly referred to as SKEETs, so look for that definition of SKEET to appear in crosswords ... some time. Probably. Maybe. For now, [Sport with clay disks] will have to do.

It's almost time for the Boswords Themeless League to start up again. Registration is open for the Fall League. It's a fun way to "compete" from the comfort of your home. If you love crosswords and want to add a new, entertaining dimension to your weekly solving repertoire, consider signing up. Here's the blurb from League co-ordinator John Lieb:

Registration for the Boswords 2023 Fall Themeless League is open! This 10-week event starts with a Preseason puzzle on Wednesday, September 27 and features weekly themeless puzzles -- clued at three levels of difficulty -- from an all-star roster of constructors and are edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to solve a practice puzzle, to view the constructor line-up, and to learn more, go to www.boswords.org. 

The constructor line-up looks good, and Brad is a wonderful, experienced editor, so these should be a treat. That's all from me today. And a mini shout-out to everyone at the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition who came up and talked to me and said nice things etc. I had a blast. I was particularly excited (literally bouncing on the balls of my feet at one point) when younger people (Cornell students! Several! Hi, Ben) would tell me they solved and read the blog on a regular basis. So cool (to me) to see people their age so enthusiastic, so ready to embrace their word nerdiness and hang out with their elders. I took pictures with people, signed autographs (!!!), it was great. Great. More than I deserve. This was the first tournament of any sort I'd been to in person since before the pandemic. The whole event had a laid-back and friendly vibe. I hadn't realized how much I missed being around fellow enthusiasts. Very wholesome. Very energizing. I mean, I'm tired right this moment, but energized overall, and very grateful to be doing what I'm doing every day. See you tomorrow, or next week, or whenever.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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