Song words preceding "his kiss" / FRI 1-26-24 / Release of a new product to a limited audience / High-value ones are called "unicorns" / Passage that might be a mess after a rainstorm / Bilingual girl of TV and film / Work through seven stages, say / Like holographic Pokémon cards

Constructor: Sarah Sinclair and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Medium (slightly north of Medium, for me)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Skara BRAE (22D: Skara ___, Scottish site of Europe's most complete Neolithic village) —

Skara Brae /ˈskærə ˈbreɪ/ is a stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, the largest island in the Orkney archipelago of Scotland. It consisted of ten clustered houses, made of flagstones, in earthen dams that provided support for the walls; the houses included stone hearths, beds, and cupboards. A primitive sewer system, with "toilets" and drains in each house, included water used to flush waste into a drain and out to the ocean.

The site was occupied from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC and is Europe's most complete Neolithic village. Skara Brae gained UNESCO World Heritage Site status as one of four sites making up "The Heart of Neolithic Orkney". Older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza, it has been called the "Scottish Pompeii" because of its excellent preservation. (wikipedia)

• • •

Lots of lovely stuff here, though this was not on my wavelength, much of the time. Too many times (for my comfort / ego) I stared at beginnings of answers I couldn't get endings for, or otherwise struggled to finish off answers that were largely filled in from crosses. Most of this trouble was concentrated in the broader SW, where I came down out of the NW, got the first four (4!) letters of both the long Downs in the SW, and then promptly ... stopped. Cold. UNSU- suggested nothing to me at 24D: Pandemic health worker, say. It's been a long time since this country gave a damn about pandemic workers or the pandemic in general (those were a lovely cooperative four weeks or so, weren't they?), so the whole "They're heroes!" phenomenon was nowhere near the top of my brain. I was just looking for some profession (some kind of nurse?). Couldn't parse it, and then thought the "UN" at the front was going to be something to do with the U.N. Ugh. As for BALLERINA, well, when you've got a "?" clue like that (25D: Ones whose careers have turning points?), and you've got "careers" and "turning," and then you've got BALL up front ... well, what it suggested to me was some kind of professional BALLPLAYER, which fit, but which I didn't write in because I could feel it wasn't right. So UNSU- and BALL- just hung there a while. Getting into that corner from the other direction wasn't much easier, as LEDTVS proved an unparsable yikes for a good chunk of time (30D: Some Best Buy offerings). Had the LED- and ... no clue. Another no-clue: YELLED, yeesh, I needed every cross for that one (44D: Gave a hoot). The phrasing is obviously misdirective (suggesting caring, not yelling), but ... yeah, I don't like the "hoot" / "yell" equivalency. Owls hoot. They do not yell. Screech, maybe, but not yell. I guess there's the phrase "hooting and hollering," which suggests a lot of noises, one of which might be yelling. Anyway, more stuckness for me down there. Even GRIEVE and CHILLS didn't come easily (GRIEVE should've been a gimme, but with almost no crosses because of the above whiffing ... I just couldn't get it). So that corner played very much like a standard Saturday for me. The rest of the grid was normal Friday, but not whoosh-whoosh easy by any means. Just ... Friday. And a good Friday, for the most part. 

[was gonna play the original version, but the drummer's "dunedin" t-shirt here won me over (Dunedin is my wife's home town, and she went to school with and knew a lot of the "Dunedin sound" folks)]

I felt like I was swimming in "?" clues, but it looks like there were "only" five. It's just that said clues ended up crossing one another, twice (STAR WARS / HOTWIRES, BALLERINA / ENEMY TURF), so it felt like I was being bombarded, as toggling from one "?" to its crosses drove me straight into another "?" clue. I don't think any of the "?" clues actually work that well *except* the one on HOTWIRES, which is fantastic (4D: Starts off-key?). That one is beautiful. Elegantly compact, completely misdirective. Works perfectly on both the surface level (where it looks like a music clue) and the trick level ("off-key" = "without a key"). My favorite section of the grid was probably the NE, where SOFT LAUNCH and "I NEED SPACE" really shine, and the crosses (with the possible exception of "IT'S IN" (!?)), are all solid. I like DIRT ROAD fine, but that answer looked like a "mess after a rainstorm" for a bit, since "passage" wasn't suggestive of anything in particular to me, and my brain kept trying to parse the answer as a single word. DI-TR--- looked like DISTRICT, which is not a "passage" and no possible connection to "rainstorm" that I can think of. Luckily, in that case, unlike in the many other cases where longer answers wouldn't come (see above), the crosses in the SE behaved and I didn't spin my wheels on DIRT ROAD too long.

I had no idea the "handsaw" in "I know a hawk from a handsaw" was a HERON (!?!?). I can't say I remember that specific line, though. I'm about to reread Hamlet and watch several productions in preparation for seeing it this summer at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Minnesota, where my daughter will be Production Manager. Currently, though, all I'm doing is watching "Slings & Arrows," which is a very fine Canadian comedy about a production of Hamlet. Easing my way back to Shakespeare proper. Baby steps. I also had no idea that there was yet another form of ATTA (clearly the NYTXW word of the month for January). A Princess? Really?! (53D: Princess in "A Bug's Life"). I've forgotten everything about A Bug's Life beyond the fact that it exists and I was roughly contemporaneous with that other animated bug movie, Antz (both 1998). So if you're keeping track, there's ATTA boy/girl/way (!?) and also ATTA flour and now also Princess ATTA. Looks like it's also Kofi Annan's middle name. And ... well, if I go back to '90s clues I can find a reference to a HEINE poem (you used to see that dude's name a lot) called "ATTA Troll." I assume it is about a sad troll who needs encouragement.

Bullet points:

• 1A: Record label for Pink, SZA and H.E.R. (RCA) — I'm so bad at "record label" clues. Put Pink, SZA, or H.E.R. in the grid, I'm good! Ask me their label? Shrug. RCA? MCA? EMI? BMI? TMI? TWA? Who knows?
• 1D: World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy, for short (RPGS) — this just means "role-playing games," but mid-solve, for no good reason, even after I got RPGS, my brain kept trying to remember the answer I initially wanted, which is M-something... Massive Multi-Player ... something? OK, looks like I was thinking of "Massively Multi-Player Online Games" or MMOGS (also MMOS). Both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy are in this category. RPGS is a much broader category which, because I am old, I associate more with tabletop gaming.
• 36D: High-value ones are called "unicorns" (START-UPS) — over time, the business-related crap starts to sink in. Not sure how crosswords taught me the answer to this one, but they must've, because I mostly don't know jack about business-world terminology and I got this easily.
• 18A: Put off (DEFER) — back on Jan. 5, [Put off] was used to clue DETER, and some people were not happy about that. You don't have to like it, but you should learn from it. DEFER/DETER is, in this instance, a kealoa*, and you should treat it as such. I wisely left that middle letter blank and let the cross fill it in. Luckily, SOTT LAUNCH, not a thing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. [Show of Force?] = STAR WARS because it's a "show" wherein people use The Force

P.P.S. [Foe-run land?] = awkward pun on "foreign land" and it's ENEMY TURF because that is "land" occupied by your "foes" (whether you're a gang or a visiting sports team)

*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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