Classic children's song about a lark / THU 7-25-24 / Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / Hit the ball well, in baseball slang / English town known for its mineral springs / Singer who coaches on "The Voice," familiarly / First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954) / Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / Major fantasy sports platform / Spanish region with a namesake wine

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy (as rebus puzzles go)

THEME: GOES OUT WITH A BANG (37A: Finishes in grand style, like the answers to the starred clues?) — theme answers are brand names and titles and slogans that end (or "go out") with a "!"; that "!" (which, like all punctuation, would normally not be represented in a crossword answer) is represented by the letters "BANG" in all the crosses. So, it's a rebus puzzle where you have "!" in the Across and "BANG" in the Down (“bang” being an informal term for an exclamation point): 

Theme answers:

• CHIPS AHOY! / SHEBANG (21A: *Nabisco cookie brand / 9D: The whole ___)
• YAHOO! / SLAM-BANG (25A: *Major fantasy sports platform / 14D: Exciting in a noisy or violent way)
• O, PIONEERS! / BANGLES (53A: *Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / 57D: Rigid bracelets)
• JEB! / HEADBANGS (61A: *Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / 44D: Rocks out to heavy metal, say)

Word of the Day: "ALOUETTE" (39D: Classic children's song about a lark) —

 

"Alouette" (pronounced [alwɛt]) is a popular Quebecois children's song, commonly thought to be about plucking the feathers from a lark. Although it is in French, it is well known among speakers of other languages; in this respect, it is similar to "Frère Jacques". Many US Marines and other Allied soldiers learnt the song while serving in France during World War I and took it home with them, passing it on to their children and grandchildren. [...] "Alouette" has become a symbol of French Canada for the world, an unofficial national song. Today, the song is used to teach French and English-speaking children in Canada, and others learning French around the world, the names of body parts. Singers will point to or touch the part of their body that corresponds to the word being sung in the song. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one mostly worked for me, though the nature of the theme made it Awfully easy. All the rebus squares come at the ends of their Across answers and all those squares are "BANG!"s. Once you pick up the gimmick (which was not terribly hard), you aren't likely to be tortured by the potentially destructive presence of hidden rebus squares. You know they're out there, and you know they're "BANG!"s, so if a corner isn't coming together as easily as it should, you just have to ask yourself, "could a 'BANG!' go somewhere in here," and voila! Actually, I never really had to ask. The "BANG!"s seemed to announce themselves, loudly, as you might expect (they're "BANG!"s, after all, not whimpers). I had CHIPS AHOY and then extra square—checked the cross on that square and could see clearly that the answer was SHEBANG. And that was that. Well, at that point, I didn't know the theme concept—I didn't know why we were doing "BANG!"s—but like 20 seconds later the revealer showed up, and that cracked it. "BANG!"s ahoy! There's something slightly monotonous about the theme, and the revealer was kind of anticlimactic (it explained, but it didn't surprise) ... and yet whatever slightly tired feelings I was having about the theme were all blown away by one glorious, bygone slogan; a mere syllable that sent my jaded heart soaring. That slogan, that syllable, that short burst of low-key energy that is perhaps the only amusing memory I have of the 2016 presidential race? Why, it's JEB!, of course. JEB! I laughed for real. The guts you gotta have to bring that one back. The confidence that anyone will remember! I am surprised by how much I loved remembering the delightful quaintness and completely ineffectual "enthusiasm" of that slogan. Man ... good times. Dude had no idea what hit him. Then the election happened and we were all JEB! Oof. See, I don't like remembering the whole 2016 SHEBANG. I prefer remembering *just* the plucky, go-get-'em slogan. The three letters least likely to precede an exclamation point. J-E-B! The little engine that couldn't, god bless him.

[it hurts to watch]

Oh, look at that, the puzzle is 16 wide. Didn't even notice. I guess your options were: go with GO OUT... and a narrow 14 or go with GOES OUT... and expand to 16. Wise choice. Give yourself room. 

I was a little disappointed in patches with the short fill, which ran a little olden, especially olden-namey: ALEC ESTEE IVOR LORNA, 20th-century stalwarts all. There was also APERS and ITTY and ATSEA and AGAR and ODED and other hardcore repeaters of various levels of irksomeness. But the theme was strong enough to carry the day, and some of the longer answers had real pizzazz. I do enjoy a MOCHA LATTE and I especially enjoy PETER LORRE (30D: First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954)) whose name I was happy to see in full today (Have you seen M, you should see M ... also The Maltese Falcon ... but I digress). I had no idea (or forgot) that "ALOUETTE" was about a lark. I think it was the name of a cheese when I was growing up, so the whole "plucking" thing didn't quite make sense in French class, at first. Yeah, here we go: a cheese spread, actually:

As for the song: it's an oddly jaunty and sunny tune considering the topic of the lyrics appears to be bird torture. Probably one of those things you're just not supposed to think too hard about. 

Bullets:

• 46A: Get more of the same, maybe (REORDER) — there used to be a kind of rule (a soft rule, but a reasonable rule, I think) that you weren't supposed to repeat letter strings of longer than, say, 4 letters. It's hard to imagine someone even noticing let alone caring about having PARAGON and AGONY in the same grid, for instance, but get over 4 letters and the duplicated letter strings can start to become conspicuous. I mention this because I found "ORDER" crossing "ORDER" (i.e. REORDER crossing BORDERED) kind of jarring. If they hadn't been crossing, I probably wouldn't have noticed. But they were and I did.
• 26A: Feature of "woulda," "coulda" or "shoulda" (SILENT L) — I love this clue. It's such great misdirection. Gets you looking at the slanginess of those "a" endings and then hits you with "Psych! It was the 'L' I was talking about all along! Yeah, I coulda (!) just used 'would,' 'could,' and 'should,' but where's the fun in that!?" Brilliant.

• 22D: Counsel: Abbr. (ATT.) — I was telling myself this was short for "attaché" right up until I started writing this bullet point, when I realized "oh it's just 'attorney,' duh."
• 35D: Oscar-winning Hathaway (ANNE) — as you know if you read the P.S. on Tuesday's blog, I was inspired by the puzzle to watch The Princess Diaries earlier this week and it was indeed enjoyable. Yes there are tiresome Disney qualities to it, and the treatment of high school is, like most movie treatments of high school, eye-rollingly simplistic and caricatured, but ANNE Hathaway and Julie Andrews and especially Heather Matarazzo (as the best friend) are all super charming and funny. Oh, and Hector Elizondo is in it! He makes everything better. And he and Andrews are kinda hot together (Andrews is the widowed queen of Genovia (!) and Elizondo's her bodyguard / driver who becomes a kind of low-key love interest ... they dance ... it's nice). Mandy Moore is also in it. Garry Marshall directs. There's lots and lots and lots of great shots of San Francisco. It's not Vertigo or Bullitt, but you could do worse.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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