Preceder of the Chen dynasty / THU 9-14-23 / Giant in chemicals manufacturing / Affectionate gesture that might get some blowback? / 2012 film centered around a hostage crisis / Low-pitched woodwind / Phrase that's a real game-changer? / Film character who takes the red pill

Constructor: Vasu Seralathan

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: SOLVE FOR X (59A: Common directive in 17-Across ... or what to do with five squares in this puzzle) — in five answers, "X" is symbolic, standing in for something it is commonly used to represent (KISS, TIMES (math), STRIKE (bowling), CROSS (as in "Ped Xing" or "to X something out"), and TEN); there are three longer answers that are math-related, which I assume are supposed to be thematic, though only one of them (VARIABLE) really seems applicable:

Theme answers:

• MATH CLASS (17A: Where students may be plotting)
• EQUATION (10D: Problem that may have several factors)
• VARIABLE (38D: Unknown quantity in a 10-Down)

The "X"s:

• AIRX (i.e. "air kiss") (14A: Affectionate gesture that might get some blowback?)
• XPAN (i.e. "time span")  (13D: 60 minutes, for one)
• RENTX (i.e. "rent strike") (35A: Tenants' collective protest)
• LAXE (i.e. "lacrosse") (55D: Sport with a stick)
• ANXNA (i.e. "antenna") (53D: Rabbit ears, e.g.)

Word of the Day: LIANG (2D: Preceder of the Chen dynasty) —

The Liang dynasty (Chinese: 梁朝; pinyin: Liáng Cháo), alternatively known as the Southern Liang(Chinese: 南梁; pinyin: Nán Liáng) in historiography, was an imperial dynasty of China and the third of the four Southern dynasties during the Northern and Southern dynasties period. (502-557 CE) (wikipedia) // The Northern and Southern dynasties (Chinese: 南北朝; pinyin: Nán-Běi Cháo) was a period of political division in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin dynasty. It is sometimes considered as the latter part of a longer period known as the Six Dynasties (220–589). Albeit an age of civil war and political chaos, it was also a time of flourishing arts and culture, advancement in technology, and the spread of Mahayana Buddhism and Daoism. The period saw large-scale migration of the Han people to the lands south of the Yangtze. The period came to an end with the unification of all of China proper by Emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty. (wikipedia)

• • •

I actually thought it was a little on the Easy side for a Thursday, but you never can tell how hidden theme elements like these are gonna &^$% people up, so let's just say "Medium" and leave it there. If you're like me (and why wouldn't you be?) your main and possibly only struggles today came around those "X" squares—specifically, came from from trying to parse what the hell the symbol-containing "X" answers might mean. This was made slightly harder by the fact that the "X" was sometimes symbolic in the Across, but sometimes symbolic in the Down, so you never knew quite where it was coming from. I picked up the theme (or the first element of it, anyway) very easily in the NW corner, with "AIR-" suggesting an obvious AIR KISS with not enough room. Turn "KISS" to "X" and voila. I figured the grid was just gonna be filled with "KISS"es, or maybe "KISS"es and "HUG"s (symbolic "O"s!), that would've been interesting (and challenging). But then I stumbled into a different "X" at RENT [STRIKE] and knew we were going on an "X" hunt. MATH CLASS didn't tip me off to anything and, as I say in the theme description, doesn't really add anything to the puzzle today. I wonder if the fill in this puzzle wouldn't have been (much) better if the longer "theme" answers hadn't even been a part of it. I don't think you need them. They seem to be there out of some sense of duty. The "X" hunt is good enough to stand on its own, thematically, especially with an adequate revealer (which today's is). 

The fill really did need cleaning up. I nearly took a screenshot after the very first answer I put in the grid ([Blackthorn] = SLOE), because it felt like an omen. A warning. A DANTEsque "abandon all hope" kind of deal. And after that NW corner came fully together, it seemed as if the omen was not altogether off track. SLOE and AGORA are particularly mothbally, and feel moreso when they're crammed in there with LIANG and ORTHO. In retrospect, this is (likely) entirely the result of thematic density. That is, AIRX and MATHCLASS are locked in up there, and so wiggle room is hard to come by, from a constructing standpoint. You can see this happen again in the EQUATION / XPAN section, where we are treated to the ridiculous, only-in-the-sundial-universe Roman numeral IIII. Basically the fill is holding on for dear life in this one. All the energy is in the theme stuff and the fill is just trying to maintain "good enough" levels. I think it's at its most interesting at the BASS SAX / SNEAK IN / TILE SAW nexus, but otherwise, it ranges from ordinary to lamentable. I do think the theme is strong enough to cover the infelicities in the fill, but I do wonder how much better things might've been without the thematic dead weight of MATH CLASS and EQUATION. 

The hardest "X" for me, by far, was [TIME S]PAN. This is the one time where the "X" stands for a word that is both hidden (i.e. not standing on its own, like "KISS") *and* divided—that is it runs across a break in words, between TIME and SPAN. I just stared at XPAN and then stared at the clue (13D: 60 minutes, for one), and then stared some more. I started doubting that St. LUCIA was right (19A: Saint ___ (West Indies nation)). Maybe it was St. LUCIE. Yeah, that does look like a plausible place name. Is it XPEN? No, it is not. I must have muttered the word "time" while thinking what the hell "60 minutes" could be (for one). Literally any span of time can be a time span, so the clue was almost completely useless. But I figured it out. The only other one that threatened to be mysterious was the hidden "TEN" in ANXNA (which sounds like a mental health condition, or a pharmaceutical treatment therefor). 

Notes:

• 20A: Customer service state? (ON HOLD) — I had this as ON HIRE at first—like a taxi available to serve a customer? Made sense to me. Seemed old-fashioned and possibly British, but made sense.
• 29D: Giant in chemicals manufacturing (OLIN) — Yet another corporate "giant" I've never heard of. The hardest non-thematic thing in the puzzle for me, by far. Nobody wants this OLIN. It's Ken OLIN or Lena OLIN or gtfo. 
• 28A: Early voting site (IOWA) — this refers to voting in the presidential primaries and caucuses (I assume). Is IOWA still "early"? I think the Democrats made them not the earliest any more. But then I try to think about presidential elections as *little* as possible these days, which is gonna get harder and harder in the coming months...
• 8D: Low-pitched woodwind (BASS SAX) — I wonder how many first-try BASSOONs there were out there. I know I tried BASSOON first. Seems like a solver could get pretty stuck early on with BASSOON rooted firmly in place. For me, the RENT [STRIKE] (ironically) evicted -OON in pretty short order. 

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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