Eyelike openings / THU 5-2-24 / Regal figure on a tarot card / The "toe" of Italy's "boot" / Wirelessly operated toy vehicle, informally / Romantic partner, casually / Martian who wears a green helmet and skirt

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: TEA LEAVES (56A: Divination aids ... or a phonetic hint to the shaded squares in this puzzle) — there are "T" squares that come pre-filled, and you have to make them "leave" if you want to make sense of the clues to the various answers that contain them:

[the "T"-less grid]

The "T"-less answers:

• EMPRESS (15A: Regal figure on a tarot card)
• RIG (15D: Fix) / BAE (3D: Romantic partner, casually)
• ALANIS (18A: Self-titled debut album released four years before "Jagged Little Pill") 
• LASED / MARINE (9D: Aquatic)
• FINESSES (34A: Manages with delicacy)
• PEAL (25D: Ring) / LEVIES (19D: Imposes, as a tax) / MARINE (9D: Aquatic)
• EXILES (50A: Banishes) 
• MARON (38D: Stand-up comedian Marc) / SALE (46D: It might elicit a "cha-ching")

Word of the Day: MAR(T)INE(T) (unclued) —

1. : a strict disciplinarian 2. : a person who stresses a rigid adherence to the details of forms and methods // When France's King Louis XIV appointed Lieutenant Colonel Jean Martinet to be inspector general of the infantry in the late 17th century, he made a wise choice. As a drillmaster, Martinet trained his troops to advance into battle in precise linear formations and to fire in volleys only upon command, thus making the most effective use of inaccurate muskets—and making the French army one of the best on the continent. He also gave English a new word. Martinet has been used synonymously with "strict disciplinarian" since the early 18th century. (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

This one doesn't really work, for what seems like obvious reasons. The "T is just ... there. As a solver, I have to solve around it. But the only way the revealer—the "leaving" part—makes sense, from a solver's point of view, is if you somehow absolutely did not see the gimmick before you hit the revealer. Maybe then you would say "Oh, the "T" leaves; I was wondering why none of my answers made any sense," but it's hard to imagine being someone who could, on the one hand, fill out this entire grid, and on the other, not have Any Clue At All how / why all the "T" answers work. I guess if you start with the revealer, then bang, you're in business, but if you solve top to bottom, then the "ignore the 'T's" gimmick becomes obvious fairly quickly, and TEA LEAVES ends up being a massive anticlimax. Basically there are a bunch of T-squares (which is what I thought the revealer was going to be!) and you just ... ignore them. So there is no real theme. Just "T"s that are in the way, and once you realize they're merely in the way, then they cease to present any kind of problem. You end up with a rather dull and basically themeless puzzle. I suppose (once again) you're supposed to be impressed by the architecture, i.e. the puzzle is built with answers that make sense with and without the "T"s (though the "T"-containing answers are all unclued). But ... I don't care about this if it doesn't enhance the solving experience, and it absolutely does not. It's a one-trick puzzle, and the trick gives itself up early, and then the explainer comes in late trying to explain the trick, like "it was a joke! TEA LEAVES! "T" ... leaves! Get it? It's a pun." Yeah, yeah, I got it. The only way to make this theme work is to force me to write the "T"s in—make them necessary for the Downs, but nonsensical for the Acrosses. Then maybe, maybe, the trickiness might actually be tricky, and the revealer might have some real revealing power.

The fill on this one kind of falters as well. I do love the (unclued) word MARTINET, and CALABRIA (12A: The "toe" of Italy's "boot") has a certain mellifluence, but GONE PRO and EMAILER have that regrettable oof-inducing awkwardness that crosswords occasionally and regrettably slip into, and much of the rest of the fill is shortish and dull and leaning toward crosswordese (OCULI and ABES are fairly representative). But the puzzle was very easy, and people tend to appreciate a very easy Thursday that doesn't actually go through the whole typical Thursday business of tricking you, so I imagine this puzzle will go over well at least with some contingent of solvers. I enjoyed remembering REBECCA and MARVIN the Martian, but most of the solve was a ho-hum fill-in-the-blanks exercise. The only trouble came with RCCAR (pffft, really? in my day, we'd go through the trouble of saying "remote control" out loud, every time. RC was for cola and "remote control" was for cars, and we liked it that way!). I also wanted to make "roughly a quarter of the world's population" live on ISLAnds or be ISLAnders somehow, but nothing island-y would fit ... then I realized it was ISLAMIC. Totally different pronunciation and concept and everything. Do ordering in and ordering out mean the same thing? Yes, yes they do. I just googled both:

• ORDER IN: to order food that is ready to eat to be brought to your home or to the place where you work: I think I'll stay home tonight, order in a pizza, and watch my new box set.

• ORDER OUT: to order food that is ready to eat to be brought to your home or to the place where you work: We stayed home, ordered out for pizza, and watched a movie on demand.

So ... the difference is in the way you watch your movies? Fascinating. Anyway, ORDERS IN wasn't hard (59A: Uses DoorDash, say), but it did lead to this slight in/out confusion, which turns out to be a revelation: no difference at all!

See you tomorrow. And thanks to Clare and Mali, as usual, for spelling me the past two days, giving me some much-needed time off during this hectic end-of-semester period (last day of classes: today!).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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