Small appetizer in Turkish cuisine / SAT 6-1-24 / Popular news podcast since 2017 / Title woman in a 1968 Turtles hit / Catchy song, slangily / Inscribed Viking monument / Novel opening?

Constructor: Eric Warren

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "THE DAILY" (7D: Popular news podcast since 2017) —

The Daily is a daily news podcast produced by the American newspaper The New York Times, hosted by Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise. Its weekday episodes are based on the Timesreporting of the day, with interviews of journalists from The New York Times. Episodes typically last 20 to 30 minutes. (wikipedia)

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Promoting your company's own podcast in your crossword? Suddenly I feel a whole lot less bad about not knowing what the hell "THE DAILY" is. As if the subtle dumbing down and the gamification of the crossword weren't bad enough, now they're gonna use it as a self-promotion vehicle? Is this ... SYNERGY? Ugh. Today's puzzle on the whole wasn't bad—despite those sequestered NW and SE corners, it had much better flow than yesterday's, for me—but there weren't enough marquee long answers today, and what there was didn't reach the peaks it oughta reach in a late-week themeless. FREEZER BURN was the peak. SPACE CADETS was kind of a shrug, and none of the rest of it really got above middling. The whole thing just felt a little flat and tame. And once again, way too easy for a Saturday. "THE DAILY" (or, rather, the "DAILY" part of "THE DAILY") was my only sticking point, the only thing in the whole grid I didn't know and had any trouble getting besides MEZE, which I thought I didn't know, but when I got the "Z," all of a sudden I remembered (39A: Small appetizer in Turkish cuisine). I solved in perfect clockwise fashion, from NW all the way around to W, ending, tastily enough, with STRUDELS (27A: Pastries popularized during the Hapsburg Empire). I was a bit slow on the uptake with a couple answers—BACK PAY, for instance. I was 92% certain that the clue was doing some kind of thinly veiled wedding clue there, as the puzzle often uses "union" in that vague, potentially misdirective way. But no, the "union contract" is exactly the kind of thing you imagine when you hear "union contract," i.e. a labor union, and BACK PAY is just a straightforward answer. But that was sincerely the struggliest moment I had outside "THE DAILY." Saturdays really oughta pack more punch than that.

I kept expecting some bizarre or unfamiliar answer to leap out at me (or not leap out at me, I guess), but the hits just kept coming. I opened with PUPAE / AUTOS after I couldn't put together 1A: Five-star, as a hotel (POSHEST) (not a fan of that clue for that answer at all—there might be several five-star hotels in the area, but only one can be POSHEST—the superlative adjective there felt unwarranted). PUPAE was wrong, of course, but that didn't matter, as I went AUTOS to SERTA to PERVADE and by that point had enough momentum to blow through the rest of the NW and turn PUPAE to PUPAS, no problem. "THE DAILY" stopped me coming out of that corner, but then SPACE CADETS came along with the assist and from there I managed to swing up into the NE and continue my clockwise journey. From that point, it was a light jog around the crossword track, with no real difficulty and only a few unsightly moments awaiting me. ABRA is now and always has been terrible, full letter grade deduction for relying on it in any circumstance, esp. as clued (i.e. a CADABRA-less incantation). Hmm, I'm now in wiktionary looking at other possible meanings of ABRA and while they aren't crossworthy, they are fascinating:

1. a narrow mountain or mesa pass
2. a wooden boat used as a ferry in Dubai
3. maid (Latin)
4. creek, inlet, bay (Galician)
5. (Latin America) glade, clearing

If memory serves, I think it's also a Pokémon. None of these is endearing ABRA to me. Far less common in crosswords, but no less annoying, is HAYFORKS. They're called "pitchforks" and you know it (37A: Pitchers on a farm). You put "pitch" in the clue because you know it. Boo, overstuffed wordlist! 

Bullet points:

• 16A: Title woman in a 1968 Turtles hit ("ELENORE") — every morning, as I'm selecting videos for this blog, when I leave a video going, Youtube's autoplay algorithm will eventually take me to the Turtles. I don't know how it learned to do this, or why it won't stop. Perhaps because I don't turn them off. Turns out I love them, and they had way more hits than I remember. As for this hit (which has the truly classic lyric "ELENORE, gee I think you're swell / And you really do me well / You're my pride and joy, et cetera"), the one problem is spelling. Still don't have it down. Tried ELEANOR but KNEW that was wrong. ELINORE? Nope. Not sure I'll ever get it at this point. It's like EEYORE and ELSINORE had a baby—a sad Danish donkey named ELENORE, who is swell.

• 22A: Flighty sorts, in two senses (SPACE CADETS) — are non-metaphorical SPACE CADETS real? I've only ever heard the term used disparagingly of (allegedly) ditsy people.
• 10D: Britons and others (CELTS) — this answer and ERNIE (50A: Coach's first name on "Cheers") felt custom-made for me. Got CELTS off the "S" and ERNIE off the "E" and wouldn't have needed a starter letter in either case. The CELTS are part of my (early English literature) teaching regimen (see also RUNE STONE (29D: Inscribed Viking monument)), and I have watched every Coach-containing episode of "Cheers," multiple times, probably, so I can tell you that his full name was ERNIE Pantuso. He was a lovable SPACE CADET. When Nick Colsanto (the actor who played Coach) died in '85, Coach was replaced at the bar by Woody (played by Woody Harrelson).
• 41A: Kitchen concern with an oxymoronic name (FREEZER BURN) — I had the -EEZE- in place and, before looking at the clue, though the answer was going to be SNEEZE GUARD. Then, after looking at the clue, I still thought that, largely because "Kitchen" made me still think of restaurants. But then I couldn't see how SNEEZE GUARD was oxymoronic. And then the RE- of REMAP gave me the "R," which gave me FREEZER BURN, ta da.
• 53D: Novel opening? (NEO) — Never heard of a NEO-novel? That's OK, because that's not what this clue is suggesting. The prefix (i.e. "opening) "NEO" simply means "new" (or "novel").

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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