Enemy of Hop-o'-My-Thumb / WED 6-19-24 / Abolitionist senator Charles / Creatures that kill Laocoön in the "Aeneid" / Good guess for a single letter in a cryptogram / Rocket-shaped frozen treat / Gorilla who was said to have developed the vocabulary level of a three-year-old human

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: compound words clued via "[verb] + [verb]" phrases — clues are familiar "[verb] and [verb]" phrases; the first [verb] clues the first part of the answer, the second [verb] clues the second part of the answers, and you end up with a compound answer that is a familiar word entirely unrelated to the clue phrase:

Theme answers:

• 16A: Wait + see (STOPWATCH) ("Wait" = "STOP!" / "see" = WATCH) 
• 25A: Give + take (HANDHOLD) ("Give" = HAND / "take" = HOLD)
• 36A: Kiss + tell (SMACKTALK) ("Kiss" = SMACK / "tell" = TALK)
• 51A: Hit + run (SLAPDASH) ("Hit" = SLAP / "run" = DASH)
• 60A: Cut + paste (CHOPSTICK) ("Cut" = CHOP / "paste" = STICK)

Word of the Day: Laocoön (24D: Creatures that kill Laocoön in the "Aeneid") —

Laocoön (/leɪˈɒkoʊˌɒn, -kəˌwɒn/; Ancient Greek: Λαοκόων, romanized: Laokóōn, IPA:[laokóɔːn], gen.: Λαοκόοντος) is a figure in Greek and Roman mythology and the Epic Cycle. Laocoön is a Trojan priest. He and his two young sons are attacked by giant serpents, sent by the gods when Laocoön argued against bringing the Trojan horse into the city. The story of Laocoön has been the subject of numerous artists, both in ancient and in more contemporary times. [...] Virgil used the story in the Aeneid. According to Virgil, Laocoön advised the Trojans not to receive the horse from the Greeks. They were taken in by the deceitful testimony of Sinon and disregarded Laocoön's advice. The enraged Laocoön threw his spear at the Horse in response. // Minerva then sent sea serpents to strangle Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus, for his actions. [...] The story of Laocoön is not mentioned by Homer, but it had been the subject of a tragedy, now lost, by Sophocles and was mentioned by other Greek writers, though the events around the attack by the serpents vary considerably. The most famous account of these is now in Virgil's Aeneid where Laocoön was a priest of Neptune (Poseidon), who was killed with both his sons after attempting to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse by striking it with a spear. // Virgil gives Laocoön the famous line

"Equō nē crēdite, Teucrī / Quidquid id est, timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs"

[Do not trust the Horse, Trojans / Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts.]

This quote is the source of the saying: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." (wikipedia)

• • •

[Laocoön and His Sons]

About as boring a puzzle as I've ever done. It was even boring to describe. I guess it's a neat trick, in its way, but as a crossword theme, it did nothing. Solving those answers involved breaking the clue down into two clues, two very very ordinary clues for very very ordinary short answers. "Wait" = "STOP!," "take" = HOLD, blah blah etc. And then you could kind of infer the overall answer when the short definition parts were not completely transparent. Maybe it's very hard to find "[verb] + [verb]" phrases that you can do this with. I don't know. But what I now know is that I don't care. Just because a theme concept is extremely restrictive doesn't mean that it is at all interesting to solve. It's not that this puzzle is badly made. It's not. But like dry toast, it really needs butter, or peanut butter, or (as I prefer) butter and then peanut butter (Me to my wife the first time I saw her do this: "Geez, how much fat do you need?" Boy did I eat (and re-eat) those words). It didn't help my enjoyment that a couple of the theme answers felt backwards. Words made from reverse verb phrases. A couple might hold hands, of course, but "hand-hold" as a verb is less common / slightly more awkward ("handhold" is apparently also a dance concept, if that ... helps). I recognize that SMACKTALK is a thing, but I'm way more likely to encounter it in verb form ("to talk smack"). (Side note: as I look it up now, I'm seeing that SMACK TALK is not a compound word, but two words, which kind of wrecks the theme consistency). It's all technically defensible, but not exactly on the money. 

The fill on this one, also, totally run-of-the-mill and forgettable. Even though I don't particularly like the theme, I do like SMACK TALK and SLAPDASH as standalone answers. They've got great energy, and are fine additions to any grid. The only other answer in this grid I was particularly happy to see was SEA SERPENTS. I have taught the Aeneid more than probably any other single work of literature (except maybe Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), and that scene with Laocoön gets me every time. It is brutal in a way that the clue fails to capture, and perhaps cannot capture. It's one thing to get killed by SEA SERPENTS (I suppose) it's another, much worse thing to get killed by SEA SERPENTS as a direct result of trying to tell your fellow countrymen the truth (about the damned Trojan Horse, which he struck with a spear); and it's still another, much much worse thing to get killed by SEA SERPENTS after having watched those same serpents first tear both of your sons apart right in front of your eyes. Like, Minerva does not mess around. Just brutal. There's a reason Laocoön is such an iconic figure (in art and popular culture). He's like this mix of Cassandra (doomed to tell the truth and have no one believe her) + extreme paternal suffering. The Trojans watch all this serpent-induced carnage go down and are like "holy *$%! ... wow ... so ... uh ... be nice to the Horse, I guess?" Extremely violent. But entertaining. Kinda like MMA, but, you know, fictional.


Notes:

• 21A: Touch of color (TINCT)— I went with the much more common TINGE. This, plus the awkwardness of HANDHOLD and the trickiness of the BUTTONS (10D: Remote possibilities?) clue and the fact that I did not know Charles SUMNER (31A: Abolitionist senator Charles) made the NE the hardest part of the puzzle by far (not actually hard, just harder than the rest)
• 13A: "Never get involved in a land war in ___" (advice in "The Princess Bride") ("ASIA") — a line delivered memorably by the great Wallace Shawn:

• 53A: "Fiddler on the Roof" setting (RUSSIA) — if the answer hadn't filled itself in easily from crosses, if you'd just given me this clue and an empty six boxes, I'd've guessed SHTETL (crossword brain!). Very cute that this "Fiddler"-related answer crosses MATCHMAKERS (9D: Fixer-uppers, of a sort):

• 68A: Enemy of Hop-o'-My-Thumb (OGRE) — you know, I have absolutely no idea what Hop-o'-My-Thumb is, despite seeing him / her / it mentioned here and there my whole life. Looks like it's one of Perrault's classic fairy tales.

Hop-o'-My-Thumb (le petit Poucet) is the youngest of seven children in a poor woodcutter's family. His greater wisdom compensates for his smallness of size. When the children are abandoned by their parents, he finds a variety of means to save his life and the lives of his brothers. After being threatened and pursued by an ogre, Poucet steals his magic seven-league boots while the monster is sleeping.

• 11D: Good guess for a single letter in a cryptogram (AN "I") — hmm. Depends on context. I'd say "AN 'A'" is better, or at least as good ("I" and "A" being the only common single-letter English words).
• 38D: Rocket-shaped frozen treat (ASTRO POP) — These always looked so cool on the side of the ice cream truck! Turns out they look better than they taste, but on days like these (i.e. sweltering), I can't help but be nostalgic for mediocre brightly-colored frozen treats. The item that actually bears the brand name ASTRO POP is apparently a room temperature lollipop, booooo! When I see ASTRO POP, this is what I picture:

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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