Danish restaurant with "Best Restaurant in the World" accolades / FRI 12-1-23 / California-based biotechnology giant / First name in California politics / Reality show whose cast appeared in the music video for Taylor Swift's "You Need to Calm Down"

Constructor: Jem Burch

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: GAVIN Newsom (43D: First name in California politics) —

Gavin Christopher Newsom (born October 10, 1967) is an American politician and businessman serving since 2019 as the 40th governor of California. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 49th lieutenant governor of California from 2011 to 2019 and the 42nd mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011. [...] During his governorship, Newsom faced criticism for his personal behavior and leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was followed by an unsuccessful attempt to recall him from office in 2021; he was reelected in 2022. (wikipedia)

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The marquee answers never reality got up enough marquee energy for this one to be particularly interesting to me. QUANTUM LEAP has the juice (34A: Massive step forward, so to speak), but the rest of the longer answers, while fine, don't really seem like things you'd seed your themeless puzzle with. They seem like the "... and the rest" of the cast list ... definitely below-the-title credits. No one's gonna criticize ROYAL PALACE. It's solid, it's fine. But it's not getting any gasps or "ooh, nice"s either. I don't dislike the long answers here, it's just that hardly any of them seem like something you'd build your puzzle around. So I get a grid populated by a solid but forgettable supporting cast, with very few stars. A couple of the longer answers also seem kind of quaintly wonky. You'd say WAY TOO EASY, not ALL TOO EASY (9D: A real piece of cake). The latter is fine, real, OK, you might, in fact, say it, but it's got ... yeah, a quaintly formal tinge to it. THANKS A HEAP also seems quaintly off (31A: Sarcastic expression of gratitude). If you'd given me "THANKS A ___" and asked me to fill it in (and I had no idea how long the remaining word was supposed to be), I wouldn't get to HEAP til like the 6th guess. Let's see. LOT, TON, BUNCH ... OK, maybe now HEAP. 4th guess. Also, STUNT PILOT feels way more in-the-language than STUNT FLIER (which, again, sounds quaint) (27D: High-roller?). So not only are the longer answers not exactly sizzling, they're kind of quaintly clanking a bit. The grid is overwhelmingly smooth, very very adequate, but it's not giving Friday Feeling much at all. I guess I whoosh-whooshed a little, but mainly I just meandered. The long stuff really didn't have much whoosh to give.

As for difficulty, it wasn't notably hard, or easy, just normal. The proper noun pair of NOMA / TOBIN, combined with the oddly clued "SHOO!" crossing (13A: Fly "away!"), was definitely the hardest bit for me. I half know NOMA (6D: Danish restaurant with "Best Restaurant in the World" accolades) and maybe a quarter know TOBIN (i.e. heard the name, but recognize it only in retrospect) (7D: ___ Heath, U.S. women's soccer star). The clue on "SHOO!" doesn't work (13A: Fly "Away!"). "Away!" is synonymous with "SHOO!" To SHOO is not to "Fly." To SHOO is to make something else (a stray animal, say) "fly." The "Fly" part is trying to be punny somehow, but it's just gumming up the actual sense of the clue. If the idea is that you are saying "Away!" to an actual buzz-buzz insect fly (and I now think it is), then this clue definitely needs a "?" Bizarre. I mean, I get it, "SHOO fly, don't bother me," but [Fly "Away!"] is too syntactically tortured to work for the insect meaning without the "?". You could not get away (!) with, say, [Dog "Away!"], so [Fly "Away!"] is also a no-go unless you "?" it. No other area caused noticeable trouble, though I absolutely kealoa'd* the LOA (37A: "Long," in Hawaiian). I knew "Mauna" was "mountain," but the KEA/LOA meanings ... I had not yet sorted. For the record, KEA means "White." KEA is also a New Zealand mountain parrot that will straight-up steal your camera ... 

It will also beat you at chess, and could almost certainly take you in a fight:

But enough about parrots. Back to puzzles. The problem with not having many truly sparkly answers in the grid is the less sparkly stuff becomes more noticeable. Very hard to like REEFING, a word only a wordlist could love (42A: Bringing in, as a sail). Very hard to like LOAN CAP or a random Chinese dynasty or AMGEN, oof, thank god I committed that horrid CorpName to memory the last time it darkened the grid (15D: California-based biotechnology giant). I still don't like it, at all, but at least I didn't struggle. You've already got a corporations up there in ALCOA, what the hell? So everything north and east of the always-horrid TEHEE (25D: [Snicker]) felt like it could be fruitfully sawed off and replaced with something else. A very throwawayable corner. But most of the rest of the grid is at least pleasant. I don't know if SASHA OBAMA has done any VOICEOVER work yet, but I like the idea, and there's something nicely suggestive about the juxtaposition of ROCKCLIMB and FLOAT ON AIR (and the fact that that they're way up at the top of the grid). SLOT CANYONS is also a cool answer. As geographical formations go, it has some pizzazz. So maybe I'm being a bit hard on the longer answers. I just think themelesses are best when at least a good half-dozen answers legitimately Pop. The bar is higher for longer stuff when you don't have a theme constraining the grid. Not much left to say except "Again with COE College!? That's twice in ten days!" and "Again with NRA!? Twice in two days! Just take NRA out of your wordlists already! You have every known name / term / word / phrase / abbrev. known to humankind in there, you can do without NRA in any form, give it a try! Cluing it as alphabet soup isn't a solution. Yeet it! Yeet yeet! No One Is Going To Miss It!" Have a lovely day. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.

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