Turkish title of respect / TUE 1-2-24 / Promotional event at a dealership / Player with a console / Party person? / Yard alternative

Constructor: Jeffrey Martinovic

Relative difficulty: Challenging (***for a Tuesday***)

THEME: DOUBLE NEGATIVES (38A: Some grammatical no-nos ... or a description of four pairs of answers in this puzzle?) — four pairs of two-word phrases are "opposites" of one another, in that each word in the phrase is *an* opposite of the corresponding word in its partner phrase:

Theme answers:

• "STAND DOWN" / SIT UP (16A: Cease fighting [opposite of 61-Across?] / 61A: Simple exercise [Opposite of 16-Across?])
• "HIT ME" / "MISS YOU" (17A: Request in blackjack [Opposite of 48-Across?] / 48A: Text to someone who's been away for a while [Opposite of 17-Across?])
• TAKE OUT / GIVE IN (27A: Some fast food [Opposite of 50-Across?] / 50A: Submit [Opposite of 27-Across?)
• GO DARK / STOPLIGHT (25A: Cut communication [Opposite of 63-Across?] / 63A: Traffic regulator [Opposite of 25-Across?])

Word of the Day: Kay IVEY (35D: Alabama governor Kay ___) —

Kay Ellen Ivey (born October 15, 1944) is an American politician who is the 54th governor of Alabama, serving since 2017. Originally a conservative Southern Democrat, Ivey became a member of the Republican Party in 2002. She was the 38th Alabama state treasurer from 2003 to 2011 and the 30th lieutenant governor of Alabama from 2011 to 2017. [...] In May 2017, Ivey signed House Bill 24, which would permit religious agencies to refuse to place an adopted child in an LGBTQ family. // In April 2021, Ivey signed a bill banning trans girls from competing in women's sports in Alabama. The bill, HB 391, sponsored by Representative Scott Stadthagen, bans K-12 sports teams from participating in trans-inclusive athletic events. It passed the Alabama House 74-19 and the Alabama Senate 25-5. // In April 2022, Ivey signed two bills related to transgender issues into law. One bans doctors from providing gender-affirming medical care to anyone under 19 and would subject doctors to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000 for providing such treatments. In a statement, Ivey said, "There are very real challenges facing our young people, especially with today’s societal pressures and modern culture" and "I believe very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl." The other law requires students to use the bathrooms of their birth sex. The bill was amended in the Senate to prevent discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through fifth grade, modeled after Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act. // In August 2018, after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that blocked the Alabama Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Act, Ivey reflected on her support for the state law while serving as lieutenant governor and said, "we should not let this discourage our steadfast commitment to protect the lives of the unborn, even if that means taking this case to the U.S. Supreme Court." She added that the ruling "clearly demonstrates why we need conservative justices on the Supreme Court" and expressed her support for the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (wikipedia)

• • •

First of all, though I care nothing for college football, I just want to say, today, as always: Go Blue.

As for this puzzle, it was pretty dismal right from the start. The fill alone made me stop, very early, and just take a deep breath to prepare myself for the onslaught of short junk that I seemed to be in for. AMAS?! Two tired acronyms (EPA PETA)? ADWAR? All to hold up ... what, LEMON SODA? I think ONTOE was the point (!) at which I really had to take a sip of water (I had had the "T" and wrote in LITHE, a much Much better answer for 14D: Like a ballerina, often—always hurts to find out that you're perfectly good answer is a wrong one, but it hurts even more when that "right" one is horrid). And this bad-short-fill feature of the puzzle mostly never lets up. ATIT SEEIT OVATE ONO UMS AGHA ADA TREYS ad infinitum. The theme doesn't offer much in the way of longer answers, and so the whole grid just feels choked with gunk. So the "oh no" feeling started early, well before I even got to the theme, which ... [more exasperated sighing]. The crossreferencing is so clunky, clumsy, annoying. And the crossreferencing comes with brackets and question marks and absolutely none of it is landing. Luckily, you don't actually *need* all that bracketed junk to solve the theme answers, but since it's there, cluttering up the clues, you do have to deal with it ("is this meaningful? what does this mean? why am I being pelted with cross-references?"). So many things not to like. Those theme clues kept trying to send me all over the grid, *and* they were cutesy, **and** it turns out I didn't even need to follow those cross-references all over the grid, since they don't actually help you get the theme answers—if anything, they just add confusion. All that [Opposite of such and such an answer, question mark?] nonsense was just so you would (ultimately) see the constructor's accomplishment. You can't use it to solve the puzzle. Not really. I guess you could, in theory, but the point is that all that bracketed [Opposite of] jazz is just decorative, from a solving standpoint. Although "decorative" generally implies pleasing adornment, and those bracketed bits in the theme clues were ... well, the opposite of pleasing. There was no part of the theme that was pleasing, beyond a brief "oh" when I (kinda? I think?) got what DOUBLE NEGATIVES was supposed to mean: each theme answer has two words that are (in other contexts) negatives of the words in another, corresponding theme answer. A long, awkward, clunky, confusing way to go for a mild "aha."

I would say that only an uncurated wordlist could cough up stuff like SELLATHON but then if you're using software ... that's supposed to help minimize all the cruddy short stuff. GESTE, my lord, it's a Tuesday in the year 2024, why am I dealing with not just bad fill but the bad fill of yesteryear? And then you had to go and stick the ghoulish Kay IVEY in there ... for good measure?? (see "Word of the Day," above). The two long Downs today are strong, and the theme concept *seems* viable, on its face, but in practice ... that cross-reference / bracketing / question mark avalanche ... it was so ungainly, so user-unfriendly ... I don't know. This puzzle seemed like it was built to show off what the constructor had done, not to be an enjoyable experience for the solver.

I had DEAL-A-THON before SELLATHON because why not, it's all made up, I've heard both, and to the extent that I "like" either term, I like DEAL-A-THON better, perhaps because it reminds me of DEAL-A-MEAL, which was a Richard Simmons-sponsored diet program from the '80s (not that I like diet programs, I just like thinking about goofy products of yore). SELLATHON sounds like "telethon," which is maybe the point. Looks like it's much more common than DEAL-A-THON. Honestly, I can't believe I've "researching" this right now, so I'm going to stop and move on. 

I got slowed down most by SELLATHON, and then the revealer, which I wanted to be SPLIT INFINITIVES and DANGLING-something-or-other before I finally parsed DOUBLE NEGATIVES. I also got held up by what seemed (to my mind) a weird clue for SOUL (23D: Inner self, in religion). I was looking for some technical term. Something less everyday. It's an ordinary term, but the "in religion" really seemed to scream "technical" or "specialized," so that threw me. I wanted something like, I dunno, ANIMA? Is your SOUL your "Inner self?" Somehow, that doesn't seem quite accurate for SOUL, and oh look, now I see why the clue feels awkward—it's because the puzzle thought it would be cute to do that Clue Twins! thing it does sometimes. That is, it decided to have the SOUL clue echo the EGO clue (20D: Inner self, in psychology). This Clue Twins! thing so so so so so often results in one of the clues being absolutely ill-fitting, and so it was today. MOPER! I am a MOPER because of how bad the fill is in this puzzle. ETNA! ALMA! REA! I'm developing a crosswordese-shouting tic. Gotta stop before my head starts to THROB. 

Gonna soothe myself with more Holiday Pet Pics now ("Holiday" has been extended through this whole week). Mostly dogs today, so let's start with the cat, whose picture comes with its own caption. This is Bella, who appears to be a train robber:

Here's a trio of dogs looking lovingly into your eyes, please give them your attention:

[Woody knows he has an irresistible woofy face and he uses it to his advantage, smart boy (thanks, Matthew)]

[I don't know this baby's name, but the verdict is: innocent (thanks, Janet)]

[Y'all are killing me with the smushy pupper faces today! This is Nami (thanks, Chuck)]

And now a pair of pairs. But don't call them DOUBLE NEGATIVES! If you do, they will probably bark sadly and then become MOPERS and you would not want that on your conscience...

[Lily & Henry! OMG so dapper. Just need two more for a Bark-ershop Quartet! (thanks, Carol)]

[Cadell & Sasha! The lab pureness here ... "We exist to be good and we are good and we will do what you say but one thing first, is that a ball? and also are there treats? Oh, was that two things? I'm a dog I can't count THROW THE BALL!" ... thanks, Bridget ... makes me miss my Gabby]

[Me & Gabby (2008-2020) my forever good dog]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]