Bo tree meditator / WED 5-15-24 / Bondservant, often / Brewer's implement / Brownish-red shade / Blind, to a duck

Constructor: MaryEllen Uthlaut

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: HAPPY B-DAY (57A: "Best wishes for your once-a-year celebration!" (and a wish for solvers of this puzzle) — theme answers have multiple "B"s in them and all the clues start with "B":

Theme answers:

• BUMBLEBEE (17A: Buzzer you wouldn't want to hit?)
• BABY BOTTLE (25A: Breast milk container)
• BASEBALL BAT (35A: Brewer's implement)
• BUBBLE BATH (48A: Blissful soak)

Word of the Day: COCKLES (12D: Bivalve mollusks) —

A cockle is an edible marine bivalve mollusc. Although many small edible bivalves are loosely called cockles, true cockles are species in the family Cardiidae.

True cockles live in sandy, sheltered beaches throughout the world. The distinctive rounded shells are bilaterally symmetrical, and are heart-shaped when viewed from the end. Numerous radial, evenly spaced ribs are a feature of the shell in most but not all genera (for an exception, see the genus Laevicardium, the egg cockles, which have very smooth shells).

The shell of a cockle is able to close completely (i.e., there is no "gap" at any point around the edge). Though the shell of a cockle may superficially resemble that of a scallop because of the ribs, cockles can be distinguished from scallops morphologically in that cockle shells lack "auricles" (triangular ear-shaped protrusions near the hinge line) and scallop shells lack a pallial sinus. Behaviorally, cockles live buried in sediment, whereas scallops either are free-living and will swim into the water column to avoid a predator, or in some cases live attached by a byssus to a substrate. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a substandard puzzle. I feel bad saying this, but this just does not meet minimum requirements for thematic inventiveness or fill quality. Where to start? First, the theme, which isn't a theme at all, really. There are answers that are two-word (or two-part), where both parts start with "B" ... and then there's another "B" in there ... but then one time (BUBBLE BATH), there's two other "B"s in there ... so what? There's just not enough tightness to the theme. The number and placement of the "B"s is arbitrary. And there are other, non-thematic "B"s in the grid, stray "B"s in CRAB and BRUNO and AEROBE and such. You'd think if you were gonna make a "B" puzzle you'd have something to focus or anchor you, some parameters, some limits, *something*! But no, it's just "I dunno, a bunch of 'B's?" It's grim. To make matters worse, the theme answers are actually boring (there's a "B" word for you). You could've had BARN BURNER or BURT BACHARACH or god knows how many other answers, but instead we get this plodding set of very basic and not terribly colorful answers. But the main problem is the basic concept—there isn't one, or isn't enough of one. And then there's the clues. Truthfully: I did not notice that they all started with "B"s until I was finished with the puzzle and marking it up for blogging purposes. So that part of the theme was invisible, which is really the best thing I can say about it. Seriously, that you got me *not* to notice this feature is a feat. It should've made solving the puzzle awkward and painful, forcing this kind of severe and joyless limitation on it. But the constructor and editors managed to clue everything with "B" phrases *and* make the solving experience almost bump-free and natural-feeling. Good work there. But again, it was an idea that had no real merit in the first place. A self-imposed restriction. Why? That is the question. 

Then there's the fill, which took this puzzle from innocuous and bland to somewhat painful. This grid is a crosswordese tutorial. They brought ALEUT out of retirement and everything. ERE ÉTÉ EER? Yes, all three! TOGAS and BAHTS, a PAS d'ETUDE. Was it ... AESOP with the AEROBE in the ARAL? It was! (I'm pretending the puzzle is a game of Clue now, just for self-amusement purposes). The grid just TEEMS with tired fill. Then there's the severely improbable ASHIEST and the borderline unbearable "BE ME" (a partial not even BUDDHA could love) (25D: Bieber's "That Should ___"). 

Occasionally, the "B" gimmick in the clues led to some solving difficulty. [Big name is D.C.] was a very vague way to come at KAMALA, and [Blind, to a duck] was an unexpected way to come at RUSE. But sometimes the "B" gimmick led to clever misdirection like [Brewer's implement] for BASEBALL BAT ("Oh, the Milwaukee Brewers!"), and sometimes it imparted interesting trivia (see [Bo tree meditator] for BUDDHA and [By the 1980s, this sea had become two lakes] for ARAL). Oh, and the "B" clues also function as vocabulary builders. Bondservant! Beldames! I can't believe I'm actually more interested in this dumb cluing conceit than I am in anything happening in the grid, but here we are! And here I go, off to coffee and cats and Quordle (also Wordle, but that doesn't alliterate). See you all next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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