Sound of rejection on a 1970s variety show / SUN 5-26-24 / Famed Damascus product / "Embiggens" the English language / Charlie Chaplin started his career with this not-at-all-silent form of entertainment / It comes from the Greek for "indivisible" / Queen song from which a pop icon took her name

Constructor: John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Roughly Speaking" — familiar phrases clued as descriptions of insults (the clues are the insults, the answers an imagined description of those insults):

Theme answers:

• KNOCK ON WOOD (21A: "That rotted old log ain't even fit for termite food!") (insulting a piece of wood)
• KNITTING NEEDLE (31A: "Huh, I wasn't aware I was at an ugly sweater party") (insulting someone's knitting)
• BURN AFTER READING (45A: "The only mystery in this novel is why I finished it") (insulting a book after reading it)
• ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG (59A: "My dog could translate an ancient Mesopotamian tablet faster than you") (insulting a fellow academic)
• BLAST FROM THE PAST (75A: "Thou art a villainous knave") (insulting someone in a Shakespeare play)
• PUT DOWN ON PAPER (89A: "Dear John, I'm writing you this letter to tell you—it's not me, it's 100% you") (insulting someone in writing)
• FRENCH ROAST (101A: "Tu as le Q.I. d'une huître" ("You have the I.Q. of an oyster")) (insulting someone en français)

Word of the Day: "The GONG Show" (5A: Sound of rejection on a 1970s variety show) —

The Gong Show is an American television game show, that was produced in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was created and hosted by Chuck Barris. The show's name came from a gong used to shorten performances that were not liked. The gong was sounded by celebrity judges, who rated the performers. [...] Two versions of The Gong Show aired at first: A nighttime version, hosted by radio announcer Gary Owens, and a daytime version, hosted by Barris himself. Barris later took over the nighttime version also. Each version worked the same, but featured different judges and performers. A live band played music for the performances. Live audiences attended each show, and cheered on the acts they liked. When they did not like an act, they would call on the judges to "Gong 'em!" If a judge sounded the gong, the act had to stop, and lost their chance for a prize. The performer who rated highest with the judges won a cash prize. (The "prize" was mostly for show; all the performers were paid the same, whether they won or not.) // Many celebrities served as judges on the show, including Jaye P. Morgan and Jamie Farr. One well-known comedian, Murray Langston, performed on the show with a paper bag over his head. He called himself the "Unknown Comic", and told simple jokes when he appeared onstage. Langston won his round, and was invited back to appear other times. Many people wondered who the Unknown Comic really was. Langston later admitted he had appeared on the show just for some quick cash, because he needed money. He hid his identity so his performance would not hurt his comedy career, since he was already well-known. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was pretty tedious. I didn't even understand what was going on until about halfway through, and even then I'm not sure it fully registered. I think one of the problems was the title, which was not evocative of the theme at all. "Roughly speaking?" Is the idea that insults are a "rough" way of "speaking" to someone? All puns and wordplay could be construed as "roughly speaking," in that you are speaking obliquely or approximately or whatever, but I assume the title is also supposed to evoke the idea of "insult," and "Roughly speaking" just doesn't do it for me. Beyond that, the phrases themselves are varying degrees of on-the-money. Actually, they're all generally OK, except KNITTING NEEDLE, which seems highly contrived, grammatically (a "needle" about your "knitting?" "Needle" is much much more common as a verb than a noun, in this insult sense). I don't know what there's a "!" at the end of the KNOCK ON WOOD clue but not the others. But the overall problem for me wasn't that it didn't make any sense, but it just wasn't all that interesting, and the clues weren't nearly funny enough (and in a puzzle like this, they really need to be). Something about the I.Q. of an oyster? Is that a famous expression? Why oysters? Why I.Q.? (what is the puzzle's ridiculous obsession with I.Q.?). By the end I wasn't even really looking much at the theme clues—the rest of the puzzle was so easy that the themers just kinda filled themselves in: work the crosses until something like a familiar phrase shows up in the theme answer slot, and then just fill it in. Never even saw the FRENCH ROAST clue for this reason. Gotta be funnier, wackier, and much much loopier if you wanna stretch a punny theme across the very large area of a Sunday-sized grid.

As I say, the puzzle was very easy. Almost insultingly easy. I don't really remember much about it. Real basic fill, real basic clues. I remember thinking SEEN INTO was awkward (77D: Investigated). I remember thinking SCENERY was SCRIMS (wouldn't fit) (80A: Background in the theater) and that AMBI was OMNI (two letters in common! made for a rough start) (1A: Prefix with valent). I did not know that Damascus was famous for STEEL (20D: Famed Damascus product) or that Chaplin had started out CLOG DANCING (13D: Charlie Chaplin started his career with this not-at-all-silent form of entertainment). Turns out the meaning of "Damascus steel" is contentious; looks like the "damask" pattern in the steel (used specifically for sword blades) had at least as much to do with the name as the city of Damascus. "TikToker" looks exceedingly dumb, for obvious reasons ("... I'm a midnight (Tik) Toker!") (14D: TikToker's hope = VIRAL VIDEO). I don't think of "ACK!" as an "Oops!" equivalent at all (1D: "Oops!"). Has Cathy (of "Cathy" fame) been saying "Oops!" all these years when she stands on a scale or looks at herself wearing a bikini in the dressing room mirror!? 

Had to think for a second to get the first vowel in (Ryan) LOCHTE. Haven't thought about him since ... whenever those Olympics were ('08 and '12 were the big ones for him, looks like). COIN A PHRASE would work fine (TO COIN A PHRASE, even better), but COINS A WORD, oof, awkward EATS-A-SANDWICH vibes (even the "Simpsons" reference in the clue couldn't redeem this one for me) (16A: "Embiggens" the English language). Doesn't even look like very much needs explaining today. INSTA is the photo/video-sharing app INSTAgram, in case you Somehow didn't know that (41D: The 'gram). FOOT is "metric" in the sense that it's a term related to poetic meter (93A: Nonmetric unit ... or a metric unit) (I'd say a FOOT is a "metrical unit," but we'll leave that aside). The FOOT is like the ATOM of poetry (smallest meaningful unit) (yes, yes, there are units smaller than an ATOM, just play along, Seymour). With iambic pentameter, for instance, there are five iambs per line, and an iamb, as you probably know—from solving crosswords, if not from literature class—is a type of poetic "foot" (composed of two syllables, the first unstressed, the second stressed). SHOP is probably wood shop, but maybe metal shop also? (80D: Class where students learn about squares and planes). I guess they wanted you to think MATH, but were you really fooled? 

This puzzle is really giving me nothing to work with today. The fill seems solid enough, but it's all somehow remarkably dull. I'm gonna go now, and leave you to talk amongst yourselves. I'll leave you with this recent Elton John / DUA Lipa collaboration (82A: Pop's ___ Lipa). (I've fallen down a bit of an Elton John rabbit hole of late, and while reading his wikipedia page yesterday, I discovered that he'd had not one but two recent #1 hits (!!??!), one with Britney Spears (again, I say, !!??!), and another with DUA Lipa. I thought he'd basically stopped having hits some time after The Lion King soundtrack, but no, he just switched primarily to collabs and seems to be essentially unstoppable. He has an Apple Radio program where he promotes a lot of great young talent (here he is talking to Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff, for instance). I quite like him.)

See you next time!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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