Blood of the gods, in Greek mythology / TUE 10-15-24 / Montana city nicknamed "The Richest Hill on Earth" / Actress Jeffries of "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" / Tennis champ Swiatek / Uncreative studio project, perhaps

Constructor: Lindsay Rosenblum

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: SWIPE RIGHT (60A: Show interest on a dating app ... or what 16-25-, 36- and 51-Across must do to be successful?)  — theme answers are things that involve swiping (the "RIGHT" in SWIPE RIGHT means "correctly")

Theme answers:

• CREDIT CARD (16A: Visa, for one)
• PICKPOCKET (25A: Thief at work in a bustling crowd)
• INSULT COMIC (36A: One might be found at a roast)
• MMA FIGHTER (51A: Modern combat athlete, informally)

Word of the Day: BUTTE, Montana (69A: Montana city nicknamed "The Richest Hill on Earth") —

Butte (/bjuːt/ BEWT) is a consolidated city-county and the county seat of Silver Bow County, Montana, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. The city covers 718 square miles (1,860 km²), and, according to the 2020 census, has a population of 34,494, making it Montana's fifth-largest city. It is served by Bert Mooney Airport with airport code BTM.

Established in 1864 as a mining camp in the northern Rocky Mountains on the Continental Divide, Butte experienced rapid development in the late 19th century, and was Montana's first major industrial city. In its heyday between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was one of the largest copper boom towns in the American West. Employment opportunities in the mines attracted surges of Asian and European immigrants, particularly the Irish; as of 2017, Butte has the largest population of Irish Americans per capita of any U.S. city.

Butte was also the site of various historical events involving its mining industry and active labor unions and socialist politics, the most famous of which was the labor riot of 1914. Despite the dominance of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, Butte was never a company town. Other major events in the city's history include the 1917 Speculator Mine disaster, the largest hard rock mining disaster in world history. (wikipedia)

• • •

I've definitely seen SWIPE RIGHT (or LEFT) puzzles before. In fact, there was a puzzle a few years back that had both SWIPE RIGHT and SWIPE LEFT as revealers (where either the "left" or the "right" word in a two-word phrase was a homophone for a word that could mean "swipe" ("steel" "kop" "knick" "Lyft"). I assume we will see future iterations where either an "R" or an "L" is dropped from a word to create wackiness (or to eliminate wackiness), if they haven't already appeared in some other outlet. The phrases SWIPE LEFT / RIGHT seem incredibly ripe for crossword exploitation. Punniness potential abounding. Today's version of the theme is cute; to make sense of the themer set, you just have to imagine that "RIGHT" means "correctly" or "properly" or "effectively." An MMA FIGHTER must swipe (i.e. punch) well, a good d is good at taking (figurative) "swipes" at people, a successful PICKPOCKET is good at swiping your wallet, or items from your purse, or whatever, and a CREDIT CARD is something you have to swipe correctly in order for it to work, although these days it's mostly "tap" (or "insert") ... I haven't swiped my card in a while. The CREDIT CARD answer is weakest, not because swiping one's card is (mildly) outdated, but because the CREDIT CARD doesn't do the swiping. A fighter swipes, a comic swipes, a thief swipes, but a card doesn't swipe—someone else has to swipe it.  But otherwise, I thought the theme worked fine—reinterpreting the revealer phrase lets you see a unity among the theme answers that you wouldn't see otherwise. A fine Tuesday concept.


The fill on this one ... that's another story. Felt like it should've been sent back for a revision or two. ICHOR on a Tuesday? And GESTS?  Hmmph. There's your usual regrettable repeaters (AGEE, ACETEN, LAH, IGA etc.) and then clunky small phrases like OFF OF and NO TIP. I let out an "oof wow that's bad" at the plural DASANIS, the same way I would at EVIANS or FIJIS or AQUAFINAS or POLAND SPRINGS (although I would accept FIJIS if the clue was apple-related) [update: Dammit, the apples are FUJIS, not FIJIS! Nevermind…] DASANIS is particularly grim as a plural, worse even than all those other water brand plurals. It just sounds awful and seems improbable (i.e. can't imagine a plausible context in which someone would say DASANIS (whereas COKES or SPRITES or something like that doesn't bother me nearly as much). Man, I hate DASANIS as fill. If you're a constructor, you really gotta talk yourself into that one, and if you're talking yourself into anything, chances are something's bad and wrong and you should stop.. Then there are the UPs. Three UPs, which might be ... tolerable, except two of them are crossing, which (to my eye / ear / soul) is a huge NOPE. If you need to use that many of the same two-letter word, spread 'em out. No crossing allowed. ADD UP crossing UP LATE made me wince almost as bad as DASANIS did. 

And then there's UPROSE (55A: Revolted) ... it's a word, sure, but you'd say "rose up," wouldn't you? "The people UPROSE ..." I just can't imagine someone saying / writing that. Sounds archaic. I also semi-resent OK CUPID being in the grid today. Is it supposed to be a themer? Do you "swipe" in that particular "dating" app? If SPECTRE were also a dating app, and you swiped in both dating apps, you'd really have something here, but as is, OK CUPID just seems stranded—like a would-be themer that doesn't have the courage of its convictions. In or out, OK CUPID!? [Update: looks like swiping l/r is a feature common to virtually all "dating" apps, so yes, there is swiping in OK CUPID ... there's also apparently an app called Down where you swipe up (!) if you're interested in more serious dating, and down (!) if you're just interested in hooking up, i.e. if you're dtf, or "down to f***," which is the whole reason the app is called "Down," I assume; you swipe left for "not interested" and apparently swiping right is simply not an option (this is not a paid promotion for Down, though if the good people at Down wanna send me cash, I''d be down with that)].

 

Notes:

• 44A: Dodge Charger, e.g. (SEDAN) — I really thought the Charger would be in a totally different class of car from, say, the Honda Accord. I think of the Charger as kind of muscly, less familyish than SEDAN implies. Looks like the Charger was originally created as a pony car (sporty, coupe or convertible, not a SEDAN), but then time passed ... twenty years, in fact. The Charger was not produced at all from the mid-80s until 2006, when it reappeared ... as a four-door SEDAN. Hence this clue.
• 10D: Uncreative studio project, perhaps (REMAKE) — look, I resent the glut of sequels and IP and REMAKEs as much as the next person, but there's no reason a REMAKE should be any less "creative" than any other kind of movie. Just because I have no interest in seeing most REMAKEs doesn't mean they're not "creative." Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1979), for instance, was a fantastic REMAKE. This clue needs to grab some popcorn and chill out.

• 37D: Actress Jeffries of "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" (LEAH) — speaking of movies I have no interest in seeing. No, wait. This is apparently a TV show. On Disney+. Shrug. Infinite shrug. Pop culture for teens and tweens is gonna be brutal for me from now to the grave.
• 69A Montana city nicknamed "The Richest Hill on Earth" (BUTTE)  — the word "BUTTE" always makes me laugh because of a story my sister told me about being on a road trip with her family and the GPS voice was set to "British lady" and she kept pronouncing "Crested BUTTE" as "crested butt," which, as you can imagine, made her small children crack up no end. 
• 62D: Tennis champ Swiatek (IGA) — I lumped IGA in with crosswordese (above), but I will say I like this IGA more than the grocery chain IGA. Hers is a name worth committing to memory. She has won five Grand Slam singles championships. Arthur ASHE, by comparison, won just three, and he appears in the grid seemingly every other day.  (True, his cultural importance transcends tennis, but still, IGA Swiatek is gridworthy and has a right to recurrence, is what I'm saying)
• 30A: Favor precursor? (POR) — as in the Spanish phrase "POR favor" ("please")
• 61D: "Wednesday's child is full of ___" (nursery rhyme) ("WOE") — as a Wednesday child myself, I always resented this particular "nursery rhyme"; I can never remember exactly how it goes. I can start it ("Monday's child is full of grace") but then I lose the thread on Tuesday and end up breaking into Madonna's "Vogue" ("Tuesday's child ... gave good face?"). Oh no, it looks like it's actually Tuesday's child who is "full of grace," and Monday's child is actually "fair of face" (so the "Vogue" thing, not far off, actually). Thursday's child has far to go. Friday's child likes pork & beans, Saturday's child makes horrid scenes, and Sunday's child goes "wee wee wee" all the way home ... something like that.*

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*nothing like that, actually  

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