Swing-era bandleader ___ Cates / FRI 3-15-24 / Dom maker / Region of Italy that lends its name to a pepper / Words from a paper pusher? / Bill originating in Texas / Vegetable whose name comes from Igbo / Bacteriologist Walter who conducted Yellow Fever research / Fish named for a weapon / Opposite of rubicund

Constructor: Daniel Grinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium if you knew PHILLIS WHEATLEY, Challenging if (like me) you didn't

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PHILLIS WHEATLEY (17A: "On Being Brought From Africa to America" writer, 1768) —

Phillis Wheatley Peters, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly (c. 1753 – December 5, 1784) was an American author who is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was kidnapped and subsequently sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America, where she was bought by the Wheatley family of Boston. After she learned to read and write, they encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.

On a 1773 trip to London with the Wheatleys' son, seeking publication of her work, Wheatley met prominent people who became her patrons. The publication in London of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral on September 1, 1773, brought her fame both in England and the American colonies. Prominent figures, such as George Washington, praised her work. A few years later, African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in a poem of his own. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Where my brain went when asked
for an Italian pepper]

This is a solid grid, but the editing felt off. The biggest issue for me (in fact the only answer I really remember now) was the way the puzzle handled PHILLIS WHEATLEY. She's a worthy answer, but when you have a name that a lot of people are simply not going to know, you have to be careful how you cross it. My main gripe with crossword editors, across the board, is that they aren't careful enough with their proper nouns. No matter what sphere or time period they come from, names that are not universally famous can be dangerous—they're gimmes for some and total blanks for others, and so already have the potential to create a very divided solving experience. So it's crucial that the less famous, and the more unconventionally spelled, the name is, the more you have to ensure that every cross is fair. To be clear, I think it's great to put names in puzzles that have never been there before, names that maybe aren't household, but that are of clear historical and artistic significance, which definitely applies to PHILLIS WHEATLEY. And I have no way of knowing exactly how many people know her name, but if I, who have spent my whole life around teachers of poetry, have only a dim recollection of her name, then it seems reasonable to think that some significant number of solvers won't know her at all, and so ... crossing her with a "Swing-era bandleader" who's even *more* obscure than she is? I do not understand that decision (5D: Swing-era bandleader ___ Cates). I also don't understand putting PHILLIS WHEATLEY right next to the answer describing what she is, but giving us nothing but a crossreference clue for help (15A: 17-Across, for one). If I don't know PHILLIS WHEATLEY, then I sure as hell don't know she's a POET (I can tell she's a writer from her clue, but POET, no). Her name also crosses a region of Italy / pepper I've barely heard of (11D: Region of Italy that lends its name to a pepper), an absolutely brutal clue for AT HOME (8D: Familiar (with)), and a flat-out incorrect clue for ESP (19D: Unlikely gift)—that "gift" is not "unlikely," it's nonexistent, please stop cluing ESP like it's real. There's also the OLE / RAH dilemma up there (12D: Scream for a team), and then a clue on ROSTRA (ugly word) that had me writing in RISERS (21A: Campaign platforms, perhaps). That whole area from OPIE to CALABRIA was a Saturday+-level hornet's nest. The rest of the puzzle was pretty standard, difficulty-wise.  So you can add "unevenness" to the problems created by not handling PHILLIS WHEATLEY crosses skillfully. 

The worst editorial decision was the absolute lie of a clue on CARELESS MISTAKE (32A: Forgetting to finish this clue, for examp). The attempted cuteness is absolutely murdered by the dishonesty. Nobody "Forgot" To Finish This Clue, It Is Unfinished By Design, There Is No Mistake At All, Let Alone A Careless One. Honestly, if you'd just changed "this" to "a," or went with something like [Forgetting to proofread a crossword clue, for exmpale?], you'd have something. But because you said "this" clue, boo, no. There are no CARELESS MISTAKEs in "this" clue. "This" clue knows exactly what it's doing, which makes the clue disingenuous, which makes it cutesy, as opposed to cute.

The grid itself has a lot of sparkle. Not big on three EXTRAs in a row (two is the gold standard, three seems excessive) (10D: Words from a paper pusher?), and ESPRESSO MARTINIs are an abomination, but REWRITES HISTORY, HALFTIME REPORTS, those have some pop. As usual, bizspeak and commercial stuff don't do for me what they apparently do for other people, so HITRATE (27A: Proportion of customers that make a purchase, in business-speak) and UBERED (36A: Got taken for a ride, in a way) were more EWW! than OLE! for me. The clue on TAX TIP has kind of grown on me, though, in the past half hour or however long it's been since I finished solving (47A: Bit of deductive reasoning?). And I'd totally forgotten about LIV TYLER's existence, so even though I think the "LOTR" franchise is a bloated self-important mess, I enjoyed seeing her name pop up (18D: "The Lord of the Rings" actress). 

Non-PHILLIS WHEATLEY-related trouble spots:

• 47D: Common additive to white rice (TALC) — wow, you got me there. I had SALT. Why is there TALC in the rice? To make it whiter? Hang on ... huh. I guess it was (and in some places still is) used in processing the rice, as a preservative, though a 1981 NYT article on the subject says that "While processors say that talc helps preserve rice, consumer groups argue that the coating is merely cosmetic" (TALC + glucose somehow makes the rice look shiny). Looks like TALC is no longer a "common" additive in US rice, but some imported rices still contain it. There were health concerns about TALC as a possible risk factor for stomach cancer, but studies don't seem to have borne that out.
• 56A: iPhone command (SYNC) — totally legit, but because of the TALC fiasco ... I wanted SEND, but then I had SALT instead of TALC, so I went with SENT (!?!), which is not a "command," so I just had holes down there for a while: S-N- for SYNC and -AL- for TALC.
• 49D: *grimaces, sticks out tongue* ("EWW!") — tried recreating this face as I was solving, in hopes that it would lead me to some kind of feeling, but it didn't help. Also, I had MELTS instead of WILTS (52A: Can't stand the heat, say), so my first thought for this "grimace" was OMG, which seemed (and WAS) wrong.
• 22A: Ground rule? (NO TV)—JEEZ, that is a stttrreettcchh, and absurdly hard to boot (I guess the idea is that when you are "grounded" you might be subject to the "rule" "NO TV!"). If you want to put a "?" clue on otherwise bad short fill, it's really gotta land.
• 29A: More trifling (MERER) — how would you even use this "word"? A comparative adjective? No. I got a bunch of crosses and then considered this "word" but then laughed at the idea because of how much of a non-word MERER is. Then it ended up being correct. MERER MERER on the wall, what's the dumbest answer of all? MERER ERSE is not a place I'd willingly revisit.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. from the OED’s June 2021 update:

Our earliest example of to do a person dirty, meaning to treat someone unfairly or badly, comes from evidence given in a court case heard in Texas in 1879, while to put the blast on someone (referring to criticism or reprimand) is first recorded in a story by Damon Runyon published in 1929, with the now more familiar to put someone on blast popularized by Eminem in his 2000 song The Real Slim Shady.

P.P.S. another editing issue

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