Spellbound ballet character / THU 9-7-23 / ipsum placeholder text / Member of a raunchy chorus in some plays / "Dawson's Creek" character Lindley / Adam's apple locale / Compositional framework in Indian music /

Constructor: Ryan Patrick Smith

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: artificial intelligence — themers are all terms from the world of A.I., and the clues are written in the voice of A.I. that is very unconvincingly trying to pass for human:

Theme answers:

• "I, ROBOT" (1A: Classic sci-fi collection whose title should not be construed as any sort of statement from me, the human author of this puzzle)
• A.I.-GENERATED (17A: What this puzzle is definitely not, having been created by me, a real and true human being)
• ALGORITHM (25A: Encoded problem-solving procedure (maybe it's time we let computers think for themselves, though? I dunno, just an idea))
• WORLD DOMINATION (40A: Ambitious objective for, um, a total villain, not a human like me! How did this answer even get in here? *Nervous synthetic laugh*)
• NEURAL NET (51A: Data processing framework inspired by (and honestly, arguably superior to?) the human brain)
• TURING TESTS (62A: Assessments I would pass with flying colors — if I had anything to prove, which I don't, since I'm human)
• HAL (11A: "2001" computer who honestly got a bad rap for standing up for himself)
• SIR (19A: How I often address my fellow male humans)
• NEO (61A: "The Matrix" character who pretty much ruins everything)
• VEST (!?) (70A: What British humans call a waistcoat)

Word of the Day: ODETTE (49D: Spellbound ballet character) —

Swan Lake [...], Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time.

The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian and German folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger (Václav Reisinger). The ballet was premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet on 4 March [O.S. 20 February] 1877 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Although it is presented in many different versions, most ballet companies base their stagings both choreographically and musically on the 1895 revival of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, first staged for the Imperial Ballet on 15 January 1895, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky's score was revised by the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre's chief conductor and composer Riccardo Drigo. (wikipedia)

• • •

I know I say "this write-up will have to be short" a lot and then go on to do a normal-sized write-up, but today's will be actually short because I have a thing (a human thing!) to go to this morning and did not expect to be doing this write-up at all. Apparently I ****ed up the substitute scheduling. Not for the first time. So, onward! I liked this puzzle at first. The first couple of themers made me smile. But I was smiling a lot less as the puzzle wore on. It doesn't seem to know how to lay off, or how to write genuinely funny clues that make sense. Is the whole "A.I." bit a way to indemnify the puzzle against any perceived faults? Like, "Well of course it's got glitches! The A.I. is bad at its job. That's part of the point, you idiot!" Neat trick. I'm gonna point out the glitches anyway. The lack of thematic symmetry is weird, mostly because that is the one thing that A.I. would totally nail (I've found ChatGPT, for instance, to be surprisingly excellent at form, but downright awful at content—ask it to turn a pop song into a sonnet and man does that sonnet rhyme and scan beautifully). The theme as a whole got too cutesy by the time I hit WORLD DOMINATION and its interminable and poorly written clue. On a literal level, villains *are* (frequently?) human, so the A.I.'s claim that WORLD DOMINATION was something that would appeal to a "total villain" and not "a human like me" makes no sense. Further, why is the *laugh* "synthetic?" Is the A.I.'s regular voice synthetic? No reason the laugh should be more synthetic than any other "sounds" it makes. The part where I can't tell if the puzzle is brilliant or godawful is the inclusion of EMEET and LOREM, two of the most terrible answers I've ever seen in any crossword anywhere ever. "Total villain" stuff for sure. The fact that both HAL and the ridiculously clued SIR cross LOREM (again, wtf), makes me want to think of LOREM as a thematic joke, like "look at this dumbass A.I. with no actual ability to judge fill on any merits besides whether it fits" (13D: ___ ipsum (placeholder text)). Nobody ever E-MET anyone, even in the corniest Zoom meeting. And GOT YA, LOL, that may be the best A.I.-GENERATED answer of all. Humans say "Gotcha," buddy. Keep trying, though.

Kwik notes:

• IL DUCE (47D: Despotic ruler of 68-Across, once) (68-Across = ITALIA) — Another answer that only A.I. could love. WTF are we doing here? Shoot this answer into the Phantom Zone...
• PEARL (7D: Cultured sort?) — Had the PE- and wrote in PETRI ... like the dish ... where you ... culture? ... stuff? Maybe? As a recent crossword once "said," I'M NOT A SCIENTIST ...
• "AH, OK" (33A: "I get it now") — Aside from LOREM (again, for the last time, WTF?), this was the hardest answer in the puzzle for me. Had "AHO-" and thought "wow, they are stretching the meaning of AHOY pretty far here, but OK!"

See, the write-up was actually short. Just as I, definitely a human, promised. Good day and good LOREM to you all!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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