Oratorio highlight in A-B-A form / SAT 10-28-23 / Superstrong redhead of kid-lit / Athlete prone to nerves, in slang / Princess with an LGBTQ following / Himalayan resting place / Cut corners, perhaps? / Scan in neuroscience research, in brief / Stretchers go on top of them / Tool used in meat pie preparation / Paddington Bear's place of origin before arriving in England

Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: MITERED (23D: Cut corners, perhaps?) —

MITRE—noun

1. the official headdress of a bishop in the Western Church, in its modern form a tall cap with a top deeply cleft crosswise, the outline of the front and back resembling that of a pointed arch.

2. the office or rank of a bishop; bishopric. 

verb (used with object)

7. to bestow a miter upon, or raise to a rank entitled to it.

8. to join with a miter joint. (dictionary.com)

• • •

A great Saturday grid, but one that was hard in (for me) extremely annoying ways, because I had not one but two single squares that I was not sure of. At all. Well, the FLAY / FMRI I was mostly sure of, since FLAY seemed to beat SLAY for plausibility (never ever heard of FMRI, nor could I even infer what the "F" stood for) (it's "functional") (???) (10A: Scan in neuroscience research, in brief). So I went with "F" and was right, but it's deeply dissatisfying to have an unusual initialism like that where one of the initials can't even be inferred. FMRI has appeared in the grid only once before, seven years ago, and I put a "(?)" next to it then, too. Whereas regular old MRI is in the grid every week, seemingly. FMRI remains a yikes abbr.—for me, anyway. But FLAY > SLAY (or any other -LAY word—believe me, I ran the alphabet). So fine. Bad square overcome. But the bad square barrage was not over. Well, I don't know if one more bad square constitutes a "barrage," exactly, but it sure felt like one. This square, much more baffling to me than the "F" square, was what turned out to be the "M" square in MITERED / MATS. I kept running the alphabet over and over on -ITERED (23D: Cut corners, perhaps?) and couldn't make sense of anything except TITERED. Which is apparently not even a word? I knew TITER had something to do with chemistry (related to the strength of a solution), so I figured a. it was also a verb and b. "cut corners" had something to do (metaphorically) with ... I dunno, dilution??? 

As for TATS as an answer for 23A: Stretchers go on top of them, I thought this was (like TITER) a technical term. Maybe stretchers "stretched" an existing tattoo into a more elaborate tattoo? Or maybe stretchers were some kind of equipment used in tattooing, something that provided a certain kind of coloring or helped with healing or god knows what? I have practiced yoga off and on for a long time, but I don't think of myself (or people in a yoga class) as "stretchers," though yes, of course, on a technical level we often are. I finally decided, because it made more sense in the Across, that "M" was the way to go, but MITERED? No idea what that meant, besides maybe "clad in a pointy Pope hat." A "miter joint," I probably would've been able to define, but MITERED, woof and yikes and yeesh, no. So all the happiness I was otherwise experiencing with this tough but lovely grid kind of got sucked out of the room, not once but twice, because of the single squares where I had to run the alphabet to get the letter, and even then didn't really understand why the letter worked. 

Also struggled mightily because I had WIND UP for 1D: Ultimately arrive (at) and would not let it go. I thought YEANED meant "gave birth to baby goats" (it does!). So I had that in there at 1A: Had kids on a farm? Because "kids" are baby goats, the idea that a "lamb" was involved never occurred to me. Anyway, WIND UP was so entrenched that when I (finally) beat it back to -AND UP and saw it had to be LAND UP, I just stared at LAND UP like it was an alien, like I'd never seen the phrase before. END UP, WIND UP ... LAND UP? I know that if I heard it in context, it would make total sense, but someone, sitting there all by itself in the grid, it looked nuts. Still looks half-nuts. Everything south of this puzzle's equator was So much easier. Twitter is now (allegedly) "X" so the clue on TWITTER RANT feels borderline wrong—in that such a rant is now a (technically) bygone thing (30A: Certain onslaught on social media). Newspapers are hilarious going with "X (formerly known as Twitter)" every time they mention the site, which is as good a reason as I can think of to never mention that site again. Anyway, despite its semibygoneness, it certainly *was* a thing, and makes a nice addition to that amazingly clean stack of longer answers in the middle. CHOKE ARTIST is the highlight (33A: Athlete prone to nerves, in slang), but everything works. No weakness, no sagging. Miter joints are notoriously weak, but this MITERED section is rock solid.

I kinda don't like MONSTER HIT, in that I kinda don't get MONSTER HIT. Is this a baseball hit? ["Sockeroo"] is, I'm afraid, unevocative to me. I do hear "MONSTER HIT" in baseball sometimes, but maybe "Sockeroo" means any kind of hit? I truly do not know. I kept putting in and taking out MONSTER HIT because it didn't sound quite real. What else is there to talk about? Let's make a list:

List!:

• 7A: Product whose main ingredient is canola oil (PAM) — it's a cooking spray? I haven't seen it since the '70s, except in the occasional crossword
• 14A: Oratorio highlight in A-B-A form (ARIA DA CAPO) — yeesh, more highly technical vocabulary. I don't really know what this is, but I know the phrase "DA CAPO," and I sure as heck know the word "ARIA," so I pieced it all together.
• 25A: "___-Raq" (2015 Spike Lee film) ("CHI") — I remembered this one. Rhymes with "Iraq" (kinda). Set in CHIcago.
• 39A: Comedian Eldjárn with the Netflix special "Pardon My Icelandic" (ARI) — no idea, got it all from crosses. ARI does not seem like the most Icelandic of names, so nothing about the clue helped at all.
• 52A: Nonsensical movement (DADA) — Thought of "movement" in physical terms at first. Not sure DADA itself, as a movement, is nonsensical, but DADA art definitely takes things into the realms of irrationality and nonsense, so OK.
• 34D: Himalayan resting place (CAT BED) — Sometimes I forget that cats have breeds, and I definitely forgot that "Himalayan" was one of them. I went looking for some kind of memorial structure favored by the Nepalese, or the Yeti.

Hope you had an easier time than I did. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. “Café” and “bazaar” are LOAN words

P.P.S. in the LAMBED clue, “kids” is being used as slang for “children”—nothing to do with goats. It looks like a “goat” misdirect but then … isn’t? 🐐 🐐 🐐

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