Shakespearean fairy queen / WED 2-21-24 / Rodin sculpture featuring a couple whose lips don't quite touch / Clay targets, informally / Commonly torn band, for short / First M.L.B. team to use artificial turf in its stadium / Virtue three-time ice-dancing champion

Constructor: Jeffrey Martinovic

Relative difficulty: Easy (puzzle is oversized, at 16-wide, so your solving time might not reflect the easiness)

THEME: TAUTOLOGICAL (63A: Like the names of 18-, 25-, 40- and 50-Across vis-à-vis the bracketed languages) — two-word geographical terms where both words mean the same thing if you read one of those words in their language of derivation (the "bracketed language" at the end of the theme clue):

Theme answers:

• SAHARA DESERT (18A: Region that spans 8% of the earth's land area [Arabic])
• LAKE TAHOE (25A: Body of water bordering Nevada and California [Washoe])
• MISSISSIPPI RIVER (40A: Landmark on which most U.S. radio stations base the starts of their call signs, with "W" on the east and "K" on the west [Algonquin])
• EAST TIMOR (50A: Nation that shares an island with part of Indonesia [Indonesian])

Word of the Day: TAUTOLOGICAL (63A) —

In literary criticism and rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea, using near-synonymous morphemes, words or phrases, effectively "saying the same thing twice". Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature. Like pleonasm, tautology is often considered a fault of style when unintentional. Intentional repetition may emphasize a thought or help the listener or reader understand a point. Sometimes logical tautologies like "Boys will be boys" are conflated with language tautologies, but a language tautology is not inherently true, while a logical tautology always is. (wikipedia)

• • •

[LAKE TAHOE in Out of the Past (1947)]

Do people outside of academia know this word? I'm imagining a lot of people finishing the puzzle and immediately googling TAUTOLOGICAL, or else just shrugging their shoulders and going about their day. I had the -LOGICAL part and then looked at the themers and thought "well it can't be TAUTOLOGICAL, can it? That ... doesn't seem like a Wednesday word, let alone a Wednesday revealer." But here we are. I guess the puzzle taught me a few things today. I knew what TAUTOLOGICAL meant, but I had no idea these well-known place names were, in fact, tautologies. As trivia, this is all interesting. As a crossword theme, it's kinda bland. The theme answers themselves were very easy to get, so it was like solving a very basic geography quiz ... and then getting a tough vocabulary quiz at the very end. The rest of the puzzle is choked with trivia too, namely names. Once again, the puzzle leans into them, heavily. In fact, for me, the only difficulty the puzzle offered was in this trivia—no idea who EMMA (27D: ___ Raducanu, 2021 U.S. Open women's tennis champion) or TESSA (8D: ___ Virtue, three-time world ice dancing champion) was, and only vaguely know LEAH Remini (2D: Actress and documentarian Remini) (she was Kevin James's co-star on the long-running sitcom King of Queens). And there were scads of other names I did know (MARIO EWAN ORR ASHE AESOP ITT etc.), a name no decent person ever wants to see (RON DeS*ntis), and then another answer that tries to hide the fact that it's a name by pretending to be coffee (JOE). Many of those names double as crosswordese. There just wasn't much that was fun about any of this. Lots of stale fill. Even the longer non-theme answers, which are usually the most colorful part of any themed puzzle, are mishandled. GO TO HEAVEN is grim, even (especially?) with the cutesy child clue, and also not really a standalone phrase. GO TO HELL, yes, that is damn sure a standalone phrase. GO TO HEAVEN ... no one says that without some kind of context. "When I die I hope to...," something like that. And ABS OF STEEL ... it evokes a certain 90s exercise videocassette trend, I guess. It's probably the most colorful answer in the grid, but "some workout videos" is not colorful at all. Too vague to be really interesting. So I learned some things about language and geography today. That's not nothing. But overall, there was little puzzling joy to be had.

ADUNITS, oof, this is the kind of answer that just saps your grid of all its power. A long answer given over to the most mundane biz-speak garbage. ADUNITS manages to be somehow worse than ADSPACE, which you see from time to time. UNITS feels even more ... adbizzy. Sales argot. Blech. And playground retorts, why? They are like a pest or a weed the puzzle can't seem to get rid of. SKEETS in the plural just looks weird (44A: Clay targets, informally). You shoot SKEET, not SKEETS. That is, the phrase is "shoot SKEET," which implies that SKEET can be understood as a plural, which is what's making SKEETS sound weird to my ears. SKEETS are what some people call posts on the BlueSky social media app (where some Twitter refugees have gone). This usage has not really caught on. Not with me, anyway. I gave in to TWEETS at one point in my life, I'm not giving in to another silly name. Line in the sand, drawn.

There was no real difficulty today beyond assorted names. The revealer itself seems like the answer most likely to provide difficulty today. I had trouble getting ALONG from the back end ("G"), wasn't entirely sure about DIG AT at first, but ... nope, don't see anything else that gave me more than token resistance, if that. Puzzle was easy enough that there were clues I never even saw. I don't remember even looking at the clue for LAKE TAHOE, so quickly did that area fill itself in. I also, thankfully, never saw the clues on SNOTS (ugly) and AEONS (alt-spelling ugly). Overall, a quick, forgettable experience. No, I take that back. I'm likely to remember seeing TAUTOLOGICAL in the puzzle, and that geography trivia might just stick. So there's that. There is that. That there is. Good day. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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