Repository of genetic material / MON 1-29-24 / Relating to the bottom layer / Platter used to carry glassware

Constructor: Garrett Chalfin and Andrew Kingsley

Relative difficulty: No idea (as a Downs-only solve, brutal for me)

THEME: PALINDROMES (36A: What the answers to the starred clues all are when their first and last letters are removed) — exactly as described:

Theme answers:

• PEPE LE PEW (16A: *Amorous cartoon skunk)
• FAIR TRIAL (29A: *Impartial court proceeding guaranteed by the Constitution)
• "ONE MOMENT" (43A: *"Just a sec!")
• FLASH SALE (60A: *Short-lived store event)
• BAR TRAY (11D: *Platter used to carry glassware)
• DNA BANK (40D: *Repository of genetic material)

Word of the Day: PERSEIDS (10D: Summer meteor shower) —

The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle that are usually visible from mid-July to late-August. The meteors are called the Perseids because they appear from the general direction of the constellation Perseusand in more modern times have a radiant bordering on Cassiopeia and Camelopardalis. [...] The stream of debris is called the Perseid cloud and stretches along the orbit of the comet Swift–Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it travels on its 133-year orbit. Most of the particles have been part of the cloud for around a thousand years. However, there is also a relatively young filament of dust in the stream that was pulled off the comet in 1865, which can give an early mini-peak the day before the maximum shower. [...] The shower is visible from mid-July each year, with the peak in activity between 9 and 14 August, depending on the particular location of the stream. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky; however, because of the shower's radiant in the constellation of Perseus, the Perseids are primarily visible in the Northern Hemisphere. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was the hardest Downs-only solve I've had in a long time. And for what? So disappointing to learn (finally!) that the payoff at the end of the struggle was such a contrivance. My main reaction is "Why?" I have "Why?" written in big green letters at the top of my grid. Who cares that answers to this? They aren't proper PALINDROMES if you're arbitrarily removing letters? And (as always) the fact there's More of a DISMAL theme doesn't magically make it unDISMAL. Any time a grid is crammed with theme material, you can kind of smell the flop SWEAT. Like, the theme is weak, but maybe if we throw a lot of it in there, no one will ... notice? I had a bad feeling about the puzzle from the moment I worked out that rape-y cartoon skunk's name ("amorous"? LOL, OK). The whole thing felt like a rejected Thursday concept trying to remake itself as a Monday. Just ... bizarre. I miss last week's simple and elegant BIRDS AND BEES Monday theme. The grid overall seems fine, but the concept here does less than nothing for me. I'm madder than I would've been if I'd solved it like a normal person (i.e. using Downs *and* Acrosses), it's true. I'd just be merely puzzled and disappointed if I'd only spent three minutes on it. But I spent far more than three minutes on it, and so my disappointment grew three sizes. At least.

As for solving Downs-only, there were low-key screw-ups like VANISH for GO POOF (!) (6D: Disappear like magic), and AXE for SAW (61D: Lumberjack's tool). There was the stuff I just didn't know, like LIAR (24D: "A ___ ought to have a good memory": Quintilian), and the stuff I almost knew but couldn't quite remember, like PERSEIDS (I knew it was some kind of -EIDS but NEREIDS kept getting in the way, mentally) (there are no NEREIDS, meteorically speaking, though there are LEONIDS and PEGASIDS). There was the bizarre word I had no hope of getting (OUTLIE) (?) and the word I had mostly right but also plenty wrong (ADD-ON—I had ADDED) (30D: Bonus). There were the two theme answers, the only two Down theme answers, neither of which I could get (couldn't even conceive of the term DNA BANK, and had a TEA TRAY before I eventually got to BAR TRAY). But the wrong answer that was the most LETHAL to me, by far, was YULE, which is what I had instead of NOEL (37D: Christmas). That is because YULE does, in fact, mean Christmas. And it's four letters long. And crosswords have conditioned me to think of NOEL as a Christmas *song*, not Christmas per se ([Christmas carol], 8 times; [Christmas song], 7 times; [Winter air], 8 times, etc.). So I put YULE in there and ... oof. It took a while for me to pull it. Because my wrong answer went to the heart of the revealer ... well, the revealer stayed hidden, and without that revealer, I had little hope of getting DNA BANK and absolutely none of getting BAR TRAY. I finished the puzzle with TEA TRAY in place and everything looked fine except for TERAY at 18A. Nothing could make TERAY seem plausible. Because it wasn't. Finally I noticed that TEA TRAY couldn't be right, because the answer was a themer—so in went BAR TRAY, and that was that. I guess I did feel a sense of accomplishment at fighting my way to a successful solve, but the theme itself still seems pointless to me. There's no cleverness. No lightness. No humor. Nothing but a fairly unremarkable physical feature shared by the answers. Huge shrug. I mean, "ARTRA" and "NABAN" are "Palindromes" and that's supposed to be ... interesting? Exciting? I just don't get it.

[Bing Crosby, "The First NOEL (Attaboy House Party Mix)"]

That's it. See you tomorrow. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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