Slow-simmered stew of northwest Africa / SAT 11-4-23 / Paradise of the Beat Generation / deux vins tipsy Fr. / City nickname that includes its state's postal code / Title woman in a Beatles song

Constructor: David P. Williams

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy ... then one wrong answer in the SE corner stopped me cold)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TAGINE (15A: Slow-simmered stew of northwest Africa) —

1. : a slow-simmered stew of northwestern Africa traditionally cooked in a covered earthenware pot

   also  : the pot in which tagine is cooked (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

This weirdly had more whoosh than Friday, despite the obnoxious, highly segmented grid architecture, which would seem to impede it. Not a big fan (or even a small fan) of these grids where the corners are completely cut off from the body of the grid, such that they play like entirely separate puzzles. Flow > Segmentation! But everything *between* the corners played beautifully, with lots of crisscrossing action, sharp turns, and quick reveals, and all the answers coming in at least solid (HORSE TRADER), sometimes strong ("DON'T SWEAT IT"). The NW corner was like a diving board on which I took a little time to position myself before the plunge, and then, off the "LI-" ... 

As I wrote it in, I thought, "Well, if LIFE IS SWEET is wrong, I don't wanna be right. Let's take a screenshot and cross our fingers!" And it all worked out. FAIRS to STIRS to DEBTS and ITHACA, and at that point I was confident my first long Down was correct. Rather than work more of the LIFE IS SWEET crosses, I followed Odysseus to ITHACA and beyond, into North Africa for some stew, and the wheeling around the NE corner and shooting back across the grid with a dog (or yo-yo) I somehow picked up across the way:

[this is some top-level whoosh right here]

With two long answers driven straight through the heart of the puzzle, what had been a daunting amount of white space suddenly became a playground, where I romped around picking up every word and phrase almost as fast as I could look at the clues. Got that SW corner surrounded and finished off without too much effort, and then ... well, then it was time to go back into the damn cut-off corners again, this time in the SE. And that was where the (minor) misery started. I figured 46A: Take some hits probably had something to do with "SMoking" since I had the "SM-," but I only wrote in SMOKE. In retrospect, SMOKE POT seems obvious, but I don't hear "pot" much any more, and I forget how much the NYTXW loves to call it that, so ... "weed" didn't fit and I figured, just leave it, you'll get it from crosses. And in fact, that answer wasn't the real problem down there. No, the real killer was a three-letter wrong answer that spun me into a six-letter wrong answer that absolutely crashed my car. Namely: for 47D: Some bank deposits, with the "O" in place, I wrote in ORE, and *then*, for 51A: Value, with the (erroneous) "E" in place, I wrote in ESTEEM. Game Over. Well, temporarily over. The worst part about being stuck was mentally singing "on a cold winter's night that was so deep" in my head and having it turn into like a thousand different carols in my head: "O Come All Ye Faithful," "Silent Night," "Jingle Bells." I am out of carol training. Despite what the stores and your neighbor's yard might be telling you, It's Not The Season (Yet). Anyway, it's "The First Noel" and there is a line (-up) of NOELS in that song, for sure. "NOEL, NOEL, NOEL, NOEL / Born is the King of Israel," I think is the way it goes. The clue is playing with "line" (not the lyric, but the string of NOELS all in a line there). 

Annnnnyway, no luck there. Eventually I got real mad that I couldn't get 49A: It's a bad look with its first three letters in place (which for me were ERI-), so I tore out ORE and its "R" and that's when EVIL ... and then OVA (47D: Some bank deposits) ... became obvious. ESTEEM turned to ASSESS, and whoosh, the whole corner went down. All that hold-up because I thought OVA was ORE. UGH. These cut-off, isolated corners really do take the joy out of things. But still, my overall impression of the puzzle was good. Everything from NE to SW was a swirly delight.

Notes:

• 15A: Slow-simmered stew of northwest Africa (TAGINE) — foreign foods often flummox me, but not today. This wasn't a gimme, exactly, but I recognized the word eventually. A slow-simmered stew sounds good about now. The temperature fell through the floor here in Central New York this week.
• 19A: Acute ... or the opposite of acute (GRAVE) — OK someone clearly has studied French, because you've got ÊTRE there at 23A: To be overseas?, and then on top of it you've got this play on words that involves French accent marks: accent aigu goes up (like so: é), and accent GRAVE goes down (thusly: è)
• 22A: Appropriate word found scrambled in "pedantic" (NIT) — I hope it's not pedantic to say this is the stupidest clue I've ever seen. A hidden ... scrambled word? So ... not actually in the word at all. Gotcha. (Sidenote: I wanted NITS at 8D: They get under one's skin, informally (TATS), only to have NIT show up here later)
• 12D: War historian's tally (DEATHS) — look DEATHS happen, I have no problem with DEATHS at all, but you want to make the frame of reference a body count? From a war? Now? This seems like the kind of clue that should've been taken in a less gruesome direction. [Features of a tragedy's last act, often] or just [Ends] ... something like that.
• 41A: Paradise of the Beat Generation (SAL) — If there's one literary movement that I've never given one damn about, it's the Beats. Well, no: it's Kerouac, specifically (I think Capote's line about how On the Road "isn't writing at all—it's typing," really stuck with me). But I know enough about On the Road to know that SAL Paradise is the main character (narrator). 
• 4D: Pluck (NERVE) — I had VERVE.
• 39A: Square meal? (BENTO) — loved this one. Japanese meal conventionally packed / served in a box, hence the term "BENTO box." Boxes are "square" (-ish). Ta-da! Square meal!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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