Cultured dessert option / THU 2-1-24 / Crown, in Persian / Cured Spanish meat / Like wood prepped for papermaking / Winged mammal with rust-colored fur / Artoo's well-spoken partner / 1957 hit by the Edsels with a nonsense title / Cue preceder

Constructor: Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Challenging (largely because of the tough fill / theme material mash-up in the middle)

THEME: LOOP-DE-LOOPS (61A: Upside-down parts of a roller coaster ride—represented twice in the answer to each of this puzzle's starred clues) — three answers loop twice, through the parts represented by circles in the grid:

Theme answers:

• THIS THAT AND THE OTHER (16A: *A little bit of everything)
• "RAMA LAMA DING DONG" (33A: *1957 hit by the Edsels with a nonsense title)
• WHEN THE TIME COMES (41A: *"Eventually ...")

Word of the Day: JAMÓN (32D: Cured Spanish meat) —

Jamón (Spanish pronunciation: [xaˈmon], pl. jamones) is a kind of dry-cured ham produced in Spain. It is one of the most globally recognized food items of Spanish cuisine. It is also regularly a component of tapas.

Most jamón is commonly called jamón serrano in Spain.

Jamón is the Spanish word for ham. As such, other ham products produced or consumed in Spanish-speaking countries may also be called by this name. (wikipedia)

• • •

Looks like the kind of thing where you write some code or find some program that will search a database for answers that contain an ABCDAB pattern twice, and then you use whatever turns up to make a grid. I assume this is how it works. How else is anyone landing upon a "1957 hit by the Edsels" (?)!? This is a puzzle that's enamored with form, but not exactly precise about form. Closed circles do not evoke LOOP-DE-LOOPS. And do LOOP-DE-LOOPS actually loop ... down?? I've been on the ones that go up back and around, but *down* back and around? How does that work?  I don't really get the downward loop part, as far as the roller coaster imitation goes. The puzzle crosses NILS and NIHILO right at square one, and it lost me there, fill-wise—that's basically a dupe, what with NIL deriving directly from Latin NIHIL. And it lost me again with the eternally dumb and miserable NOT PC. And then some wordlist animal called a REDBAT (5D: Winged mammal with rust-colored fur). And the horribly forced "?" clue on CROSS ([Sects' symbol?]—why are "sects" Christian, necessarily?). If you're going to make a roller coaster-based puzzle, there should be some kind of ... whoosh. Something that evokes the thrill of shooting through those loops. But "shooting" is the last word I'd use to describe what it felt like to move through those loops. Nothing about the look or feel of the puzzle suggested roller coaster ride. Just not for me, this one. Ambitious, but MESSY as hell, and no fun to solve. 

Brutal for me in the middle, where I had no idea TAJ was Persian (31A: Crown, in Persian) and JAMÓN, yikes, my god, I don't know where I eventually pulled that from (32D: Cured Spanish meat). French, probably—which is to say I got it by analogy with jambon. Forgot the OCHS guy (46A: Adolph who purchased The New York Times in 1896). I wanted HESS, but then remembered that's a Nazi (and his name is actually Rudolf). I had MASALAS early on (38A: Indian spice mixes), but mistrusted it when nothing in that (thematically dense) middle section wanted to come together, so I pulled it. Two foreign foodstuffs packed in there! Oof, and TCBY too??? (27A: Cultured dessert option). Do those still exist? I don't live where they exist. Had the "T" and when TOFUTTI wouldn't fit ... nothing. Didn't know BAL Harbour, Fla., though I'm sure I've heard of it. SAG was the only Harbor that was coming to mind. ASANA are *all* yoga poses, not a "sitting meditation pose," which is LOTUS, so that clue was particularly confusing and awful and wrong. Oh, and the worst obstacle in that center section: I had SETTLE instead of METTLE Absolutely Locked In at 25A: Resolve. So [Brotherly greeting]? No way. Not when you've got it starting with "S." "MY MAN" was among the last answers to fall, because SETTLE-to-METTLE was among the last corrections I made. 

Notes:

• 13A: Peak of revelation? (SINAI) — Moses, Commandments.
• 18A: Org. whose initials omit its "E" (for "Explosives") (ATF) — I tend to know initialisms for the initials that *are* there, so this was baffling.
• 26A: Exposes personal information about online, informally (DOXES) — an unpleasant thing to encounter in a grid. It's sometimes spelled with two "X"s, I think.
• 
  40A: Cue preceder (PEE) — if you want to PEE in your grid, hey, it's your grid, but could you do it some other way than pretending that anyone writes "Q" that way? Please.
• 59A: Risk-taker's mantra, in brief (YOLO) — you only live once
• 37D: Measure of energy savings, as when the meter runs in reverse (NEGAWATT) — my meter does not do that, but if you say so. Funny play on "megawatt," if nothing else.
• 12D: Gradual transition, in art (SOFT EDGE) — LOL what? I ... transition from what to what? One color to the next? This was the single most baffling answer in the grid. Again, I have to believe a wordlist coughed it up.
• 49D: Like 20, for Little League (TOO OLD) — So ... [Like 80, for Little League] too? Thanks for the completely arbitrary number, yeesh.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

PS The Boswords Winter Wondersolve online crossword tournament will be held THIS WEEKEND, Sunday, Feb. 4, from 1pm to 4:30pm. Boswords does great work and solvers of all levels love their tournaments. Here are the deets:

Registration is open for the Boswords 2024 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament which will be held on Sunday, February 4 from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.

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