Hunks of plastic? / FRI 3-29-24 / Enlightened Buddhist / Sweet message bearer / Emoji that might be used in response to a funny text / One of the Minecraft protagonists / Computer acronym since the 1960s / Question asked while tapping

Constructor: Jake Bunch

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ARHAT (2D: Enlightened Buddhist) —

 

In Buddhism, an arhat (Sanskrit: अर्हत्) or arahant (Pali: अरहन्त्, 𑀅𑀭𑀳𑀦𑁆𑀢𑁆) is one who has gained insight into the true nature of existence and has achieved Nirvana  and liberated from the endless cycle of rebirth. [...] Mahayana Buddhism regarded a group of Eighteen Arhats (with names and personalities) as awaiting the return of the Buddha as Maitreya, while other groupings of 6, 8, 16, 100, and 500 also appear in tradition and Buddhist art, especially in East Asia called luohan or lohan. They may be seen as the Buddhist equivalents of the Christian saint, apostles or early disciples and leaders of the faith. (wikipedia)

• • •

We've entered the Age of ARHAT, I guess. This is the dawning of the Age of ARHAT. Age of ARHAT. Honestly had to stop and take a deep breath after writing in ARHAT for the second day in a row (!?!?). Six years since that word's appeared at all, and now we've got it on back-to-back days!? And today, it was the first answer I confidently wrote in, so the initial impression this puzzle made on me was far from favorable. ARHAT next to (not ASAP but) STAT, crossing PASSER, crossing (not NONET but) OCTET—that's two unrewardingly ambiguous short answers + ARHAT. Not exactly a winning opening number. Luckily, things improved. The marquee answers are solid (all the long Acrosses, I mean), but there aren't enough of them, so what you get as your primary experience is a lot of shorter and midrange stuff, which the puzzle tries to make interesting with a lot of try-hard cluing, especially cluing that tried to force a younger / pop culture profile on the whole thing. See clues on SKULL (9D: Emoji that might be used in response to a funny text)*, GOT ("Game of Thrones"), and especially STEVE, dear lord, what!? I thought you just built stuff in Minecraft, I didn't know there were "protagonists." Billions of STEVEs in the world (give or take) and this is what you give me? Could be any guy's name. FRANK. PEDRO. BILLY. Why not? No way I'm gonna know, no way I'm (ever) gonna care. In general, I think it's "good to learn things," but Minecraft, LOL, no. I know it exists. That's enough. On the other hand, the clue on KENS was outstanding (26A: Hunks of plastic?) ("hunks" as in "handsome / fit guys")—the best thing in the puzzle. Weirdly tough and then ... bam. Perfect. Big "aha," instead of [blank stare] or "ugh" or "oh ... [eyeroll]." Reminds me of a video I've watched several times this week—David Ehrlich's "Top 25 Movies of 2023," which is basically a giant music-video-style tour through all of his favorite films from last year. I actually saw 13 of his 25, so there were lots of good movie memories in there for me, but whether you've seen the movies or not, this is highly entertaining (and occasionally very funny) (trigger warning: prepare to have Celine Dion stuck in your head for days):

THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2023: A Video Countdown from david ehrlich on Vimeo.

Judging from where the blue ink is on my printed-out puzzle (I really need to get new green felt-tips...), looks like the bottom of the puzzle was much easier for me than the rest of it, but overall, and even down below, I had lots and lots (and lots) of initially wrong answers. WHIM before WANT (48D: Fancy). WAVED TO and WAVED AT before (ugh) WAVED HI (35D: Greeted someone across the room). The aforementioned ASAP before STAT (3D: "Don't delay!") and NONET before OCTET (18A: Large combo). HYPOS before KILOS (26D: Contents of a drug shipment). TIED UP before TOSS-UP (15D: Anyone's game)*. BARK AT before TALK AT (?!) (15A: Lecture). Hardest thing to parse, by far, was FELT UP TO (12D: Was ready for). "Was ready for" gets nowhere near the context implied by a phrase by FELT UP TO, which suggests you've been ailing in one way or another. It's not an inaccurate clue, but it's vague in the extreme. FELT UP TO was always going to be hard to parse, and the overly general clue just made it harder. The CANNIBALS joke didn't land because of the "you" (me?) part of it (13D: Ones who might roast you). None of us, literally zero solvers, will ever be roasted by CANNIBALS, so please stop. I get that you're trying to be funny, and that you wanted me to think of a comedy roast (mission accomplished), but the "you" takes this into preposterous territory. The cluing today ... sometimes it lands (KENS!) but too often you can feel the *effort*, which rarely leads to anything genuinely funny. 

I don't even know what [Drag racer?] is getting at. Because you ... drag your SLED up the hill? [I’m told this is supposed to refer to dog sledding. As with most things, this clue needs more dog-specific content] And [Place for bucks at the bar?]?? I understand the answer (a MECHANICAL BULL bucks and you might find one at some (Texas?) bar), but I don't know what the surface meaning of the clue was supposed to refer to. What wordplay or pun is that? Are "bucks" one dollar bills. Am I supposed to think of a cash register till? The "?" clue on SUN, on the other hand, makes sense (4D: High light?). It's playing on the term "highlight," but it's giving you a light that is actually high (in the sky). [Hunks of plastic?] also works, in that I know what actual "hunks of plastic" are ... but then "hunks" ends up having a different / unexpected meaning. Real hit-and-miss "?" action today.

ONLSD is somehow worse than ONPOT, largely because if you absolutely have to use the prepositional phrase, the only one that seems standalone valid is ONACID (20D: Tripping). Otherwise, you just open up the floodgate for any drug phrase: ONUPPERS, ONLUDES, ONSPEED, ONBENZOS, ONCOKE (can you tell I only know about drugs from '70s crime films?) ONSHROOMS, ONMDMA etc. ON ACID at least has some standalone currency. Unlike ONLSD. Or GON. I have nothing to say ONGON except I wish it were gone. In short, the thin stacks of long answers up top and down below work just fine (52A: Question asked while tapping ("IS THIS THING ON?"), in particular, is excellent), but there needs to be like twice this much marquee fill, and the rest of the grid, while mostly very reasonably filled, was clued in a way that too frequently felt off (off my wavelength or just off the mark). 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*I feel like the phrase "anyone's game" is mostly used adjectivally, roughly synonymous with "too close to call," so the noun "TOSS-UP" didn't quite track for me, though I see how it's defensible.

P.S. how in the world is this the top result when I search "STEVE" on Google???

Who the hell even is that?! (some financial crimes guy featured in The Wolf of Wall Street!?). How much is he paying to be First STEVE? What a degraded piece of junk Google is as a search engine.

P.P.S. OMG if you google [STEVE] (I can't believe this is my life, googling [STEVE]), almost all of the "Images" are Minecraft STEVE!? Just a wall of Minecraft STEVEs, with a smattering of Jobs and Harvey.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

*a SKULL 💀 emoji signifies that your joke was so funny that the listener has (figuratively, hopefully) died