Connective tissues in the leg, informally / SUN 11-5-23 / Commit a holiday etiquette no-no / Bone insert following an accident / Totally phat / Potato, in Indian cooking / Air-___ (extra-secrure, as a computer) / Currency unit in Laos

Constructor: Rich Katz

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Double Talk" — words in theme clues have to be read as homophones in order to make sense for the theme answers:

Theme answers:

• JUNK IN THE TRUNK (21A: But wait!) (i.e. Butt weight) (!)
• STRING BIKINI (38A: To peace!) (i.e. Two-piece)
• TUCKERED OUT (55A: Holy week) (i.e. Wholly weak)
• CORONATIONS (77A: Air rights) (i.e. Heir rites)
• SUPER BOWL WIN (91A: Bare feet) (i.e. [Chicago] Bear feat)
• KINDERGARTENER (112A: We won!) (i.e. Wee one)
• ROBITUSSIN (30D: Flew by) (i.e. Flu buy)
• BEACH HOTEL (51D: See in) (i.e. Sea inn)

Word of the Day: KIP (112D: Currency unit in Laos) —

The kip (Lao: ກີບ, romanized: kib; code: LAK; sign: ₭ or ₭N; French: kip; officially: ເງີນກີບລາວ, lit. "currency Lao kip") is the currency of Laos since 1955. Historically, one kip was divided into 100 att (ອັດ).

The term derives from ກີບ kì:p, a Lao word meaning "ingot." (wikipedia)

• • •

[Extreme AC/DC voice...]

There's something perversely amusing about this theme. I mean, it's silly, yes, but there's something grandly, ambitiously silly about it. It took me an embarrassing length of time even to understand what the theme was. Wasn't until my third theme pick-up ([Air rights] => CORONATIONS) that I heard what I was supposed to hear: namely, the homophones happening in the clue. Coronations involve "heirs," frequently, so that was what did it for me. Before that, I was totally lost. I even looked around for a revealer, to no avail. I think the two first Across themers are actually the two where the punniness is the hardest to see / hear. I don't know if that was by design or by accident. If 112A: We won! (KINDERGARTENER) had been the first themer I encountered, I would've seen what was up right away. But JUNK IN THE TRUNK was welllllllll hidden in [But wait!], as was TUCKERED OUT in [Holy week]. Just inscrutable. But after the dime dropped at CORONATIONS, all became clear and the relatively easy puzzle got even easier. Do I love this theme? That's too strong, by far. But I've definitely seen cornier and more irritating Sunday themes, and there was something about having to translate the homophones that was mildly entertaining. The rest of the grid was pretty blah—there are no long answers that aren't themers, except for a few scattered and unlovable 8s (e.g. SKATE RAT, HD VIDEOS) (please cull your massive wordlists, people). And the short stuff was often oof-y. Three-letter foreign currency! Who doesn't love that? (A: me). A single MINUTIA! Wow, OK. We only get half of DUA Lipa, and half of a Lhasa APSO, but we get both MSN *and* AOL! And *both* Beethoven crosswordeses! (ELISE, EROICA). And once again we get AMIDALA (LA DI DA). I am ABLUSH with whatever it is that makes one go ABLUSH. Shame? Rage? VERMOUTH? This is all to say that I enjoyed the theme antics Way more than I enjoyed anything else about this puzzle (save VERMOUTH, I 'm sorry VERMOUTH, you know I love you, VERMOUTH).

Michel de Montaigne wrote ESSAIS. If you're gonna spell his name fully, all Frenched up like that, then the answer should be French. Mike Mountain wrote ESSAYS, Michel (LA DI DA) de Montaigne wrote ESSAIS. Here look:

[roughly what I would look like if I grew a mustache and lived in the 16th c.]

Speaking of AMIDALA (which I was ... somewhere back there), Once Again I have to pull up short at that mysterious second vowel, where that vague schwa-ish sound has no obvious spelling correlative. Gotta go to the crosses, but Once Again, that specific cross is opaque, this time because of one of the weirder themers: ROBITUSSIN. "Flu buy" is probably the second loopiest homophone clue of the day (after [But wait!]). So I had AM-DALA for a rather long time. Til almost the very end, actually. I was lucky enough to know Hermann HESSE (70A: "The Glass Bead Game" author), so I was able to build ROBITUSSIN from the bottom up without too much trouble, and that's pretty much where I finished. 

Hardest part for me was probably parsing REGIFT (26D: Commit a holiday etiquette no-no). Sincerely, I had REGI-T and assumed I had an error. Again, as with AM-DALA, the cross on my missing letter was no (initial) help, as FRAT BRO meant nothing to me (even though I teach at a university that has plenty) (50A: Classic Greek archetype?). It's not just that the clue is a "?" clue, it's that there's nothing in it to indicate the slanginess. In fact, it's the opposite of slangy. So I floundered in REGIFT FRAT BRO land for a bit, but only a bit. Overall, there wasn't much here to challenge the solver beyond the basic nature of the theme itself. 

That's all for the puzzle today. A few more puzzle-related things before I go:

• First, as I wrote earlier in the week, cryptic crossword lovers should rejoice at the existence of coxrathvon.com, an archive of every cryptic crossword put out by the legendary constructing team of Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon since they were making them for The Atlantic in the late '70s (!). I've solved a bunch of the earliest ones and they are ridiculously entertaining (and, given their age, surprisingly doable).  
• 
  Second, I had the privilege last month of getting an advance copy of Anna Shechtman's forthcoming book, The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle, and found it engrossing, informative, and (frequently) funny as hell. It's a mix of history and memoir, all about women's (including the author's own) relationships to crossword puzzles and crossword culture, and rather than being a mere cataloguing of The Unheralded Women Of Crossword History, it's an incisive exploration of the role crosswords have played in various women's (complicated!) professional and personal lives. Crosswords become a framework for understanding women's relationships both to language and to patriarchy. There's some truly incredible research in here. It's not out until March 2024. But you can (and should) pre-order it now.
• Somebody dressed up as me for Halloween. I repeat: Somebody. Dressed up. As me. For Halloween. Also, importantly: "No one got the reference." I have somehow peaked and nadired simultaneously. Life is long, and very weird (thanks, Julia, for sending me the picture, and tell your fiancé I'm ... well, startled, but also honored):

• Postcards! I've gotten so many in the past couple of weeks, including two from France (!) and two featuring Mexican movie posters from the Rancho Gordo collection (these arrived on the same day ... from two different people in different parts of the country???!):

 

And here's one of Kirk Douglas's "Footprint Ceremony" at Grauman's Chinese Theatre (1962) 

I really appreciate the additions to my postcard collection, as well as the kind sentiments that most of the card writers pass along. My address is in the blog sidebar. Feel free to send me a postcard any time. If you want one in return, just include your address. Thanks!

 See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]