Movie with saloon fights, colloquially / FRI 10-6-23 / Bit of biodata / Nikki Reed's role in the 2003 film "Thirteen" / Friction to a physicist / Perennial with yellow flower clusters / What's shaken after the instruction Shake / Noted example of oligopoly in brief

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel and Tom Pepper

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Oligopoly (51A: Noted example of oligopoly, in brief) —

: a condition in which a few sellers dominate a particular market to the detriment of competition by others (merriam-webster.com) (legal definition) [olig- (from Gr. oligos "little, few") + -poly (as in monopoly)] 

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Solid Friday here. Some nice whooshing around the grid via vibrant longer answers. I especially enjoyed the SOUR GRAPES HORSE OPERA that sent me soaring down the west side of the grid. I liked that SMOG ALERTS was up in the air (with the smog?) though BUNGEE JUMP should probably have been plummeting rather than just sitting there up top. "Jump, you coward! Jump!" But no, instead of jumping, BUNGEE JUMP just pushed the SEAWEED SALAD over the edge instead. Bad form. The second half of my solve (the SE / NE) was somewhat less thrilling. Easy to go down, hard to get back up. I think the Sibyl said something like that to Aeneas before he went into the Underworld. And so it was with my puzzle: whooshing down, clawing my way back up. There were two major flow issues for me today. Could not get into the SE because I couldn't parse THIS END UP (29D: Instruction on some packages). For some reason, after THIS SIDE UP, my brain was out of ideas. Also, I wasn't *completely* sure that PRO RATE was PRO RATE and not PRO RATA. So I doubted the "E" in END. And since that "E" was a choke point—no SE access. Really hate when grids have such tiny passageways between sections. Really disrupts the whoosh. But then my whoosh was also interrupted in a much more wide-open part of the grid, as I tried to get into the NE corner from the upper middle. EL NORTE was easy enough, but BURIALS, yeeeeeeesh, that was probably the hardest answer in the puzzle for me (22A: Time capsule events). I can picture a time capsule ... but an "event," no I couldn't imagine what that was supposed to be. I can now. But I could not then, back when I was mid-solve. We did a time capsule in high school. I don't remember any BURIALS, and I don't know which reunion year got to open it. No idea what I put in it, but I'm pretty sure it would be horrifying / embarrassing and that most time capsules should, like the dead, be left in peace.

I got past the two blockages by riding FRONT ROW SEAT down to the bottom to TANSY and BUSY and building back better :( from there. Here is where things started to clank a bit: ADVICE GURU? (52A: Expert with tips). Huge wince from me on that one. Had the GURU and thought "hmmm what kind?" and then I needed Many crosses to get ... ADVICE!?!?! What the ... that's way too generic. Also, redundant—don't all GURUs basically give "advice"? Recent examples from the web (at M-W.com) include a "fitness guru" and a "Democratic PR guru" (!), and I can name a few self-styled "financial gurus," but ADVICE GURU, uck and yuck. I also balked hard at DEMO LESSON (11D: Part of a teacher's job interview). There are teaching demonstrations (or demos, sure) and there are sample lessons, but DEMO LESSON just does not hit my ear right. I teach (college), my wife taught (college, high school), and ... I dunno, I guess I just expected the teaching lingo to be a piece of cake. Instead, I had to scrape for it, and ended up with a Frankenstein's monster-looking answer. DEMOLESSON sounds like what you do when you have absolutely had it as a teacher and decide to blow up your career on the last day by smoking and drinking and complaining about your bosses in a smoky, alcoholic, profanity-laden tirade. "See you in hell, kids!" DEMOLESSON, accomplished.

Super-awkward clues on PAW (18A: What's shaken after the instruction "Shake") and FEARS (12D: They might drive you to a flight). In an attempt at misdirection, both clues get some ridiculous phrasing. I like the idea of shaking a dog's PAW, for sure, but "instruction" (!?!?). You give dogs "commands," not "instructions," they aren't building a model airplane or making a cake, come on. And as for FEARS ... They might drive you to a flight? (12D: They might drive you to a flight). *A* flight?! What's this absurd "a" business? It doesn't even make for good surface sense. Are you trying to evoke the image of someone taking you to the airport??? That would be "your flight?" FEARS drive you to flee, or maybe they drive you to flight (the way your awful in-laws might drive you to drink). But to *a* flight? No. Tin-eared, grammatically clunky garbage, that clue. I don't think I've hated an indefinite article in a clue this much in a long time. But that whole section was at least partially redeemed by PRIVATE EYE (10D: Spade, for one), subject of much of my teaching and beautiful symmetrical counterpart to HORSE OPERA (26D: Movie with saloon fights, colloquially). Mysteries and westerns, that's the stuff! More, I say, more. I guess [Spade] was supposed to be ambiguous in that clue, but when you've read and watched The Maltese Falcon as much as I have, Sam Spade is the expected Spade. Cards Schmards.

Had the TSA tracking baby names at first. Then the NSA (maybe they're tracking them to find some kind of pattern, crack some kind of code, I dunno what these people do!). But no, it's the Social Security Administration (SSA), that makes more sense. Other mistakes include ASIS (instead of FREE) for the sofa sign (15A: Sign on a sofa in the front yard, maybe), KNEW for KNOW (3D: Saint Paul, Minn., radio station whose format really should be all news), and LIMA for YUMA (2D: World's sunniest city, per the World Meteorological Organization) ... only to have LIMA jump out and surprise me at the end of the puzzle after all! (17A: City where the conquistador Pizarro was assassinated). Fun with four-letter cities. Nuisance names were few for me. Really just EVIE, to speak of (47D: Nikki Reed's role in the 2003 film "Thirteen"). I learned of ELIE Mystal the last time he appeared in the grid, and then I started following him on Twitter, so his name stuck (6A: Legal writer and political commentator ___ Mystal). I couldn't tell you anything ASHLEE Simpson has done *except* lip-synch on SNL, but that's all I needed today! (24A: Simpson who was caught lip-syncing "Pieces of Me" on "Saturday Night Live"). Some days, your puddle-shallow knowledge of places and events and people is enough. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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