Charlotte's first draft for "Some Pig"? / TUE 10-8-24 / Name of Athena's shield / Genderqueer identity, informally / "Little Shop of Horrors" lyricist Howard / "Beware of this sausage!"? / Belgian town known for its mineral baths / Balaam couldn't move his / Two up quarks and a down quark

Constructor: Justin Werfel

Relative difficulty: Very easy

THEME: MAKE ENDS MEAT (62A: summary of the phonetic puns at 17-, 31-, 38- and 45-Across?) — familiar phrases have their final words ("ends") turned (homophonically) into meat:

Theme answers:

• "FEAR THE WURST!" (17A: "Beware of this sausage!"?)
• ON THE LAMB (31A: Like unshorn wool?)
• RAISE THE STEAKS (38A: Breed beef cattle?)
• "WHAT A BOAR" (45A: Charlotte's first draft for "Some Pig"?)

Word of the Day: Howard ASHMAN (46D: "Little Shop of Horrors" lyricist Howard) —

Howard Elliott Ashman (May 17, 1950 – March 14, 1991) was an American playwright, lyricist and stage director. He is most widely known for his work on feature films for Walt Disney Animation Studios, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Alan Menken composed the music. Ashman has been credited as being a main driving force behind the Disney Renaissance. His work included songs for Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Tim Rice took over to write the rest of the songs for the latter film after Ashman's death in 1991. [...] Over the course of his career, Ashman won two Academy Awards* (one posthumous) out of seven nominations. *[for "Under the Sea" (The Little Mermaid) and the title song from Beauty and the Beast] (wikipedia) 

• • •

Second day in a row with a 16-wide grid, second day in a row with a clever revealer. Yesterday's required you to figure out what was going on (TIME AND TIME AGAIN = both parts of the theme answers could follow "time" in familiar phrases). Today's pretty much spells it all out. You literally make the ends (of the familiar original phrases) into meat. I like that the revealer itself follows its own pun logic: MEET into MEAT. This is a tight and reasonably funny theme. I didn't LOL at "FEAR THE WURST!" but I came close. It's just absurd enough to be genuinely amusing. The LAMB and STEAKS puns are kind of ho-hum, but "WHAT A BOAR!" brings the absurdity roaring back. The clue on that one is somehow simultaneously my most and least favorite of the bunch. It's such a creative and unexpected way to come at "WHAT A BOAR!," via a Charlotte's Web-based parallel. Truly inventive. And yet ... would anyone, even a fictional spider, ever look at a piglet and call it a "boar"? I guess technically (if Merriam-Webster dot com is to be believed, and why not...) a "boar" is simply an "uncastrated male swine," and, I mean, while I don't have any specific memory of Wilbur's testicles, I'm going to assume he did fall in the "uncastrated" category. And yet BOAR to me is a much different animal, esp. the BOAR that you eat as meat (which is wild; otherwise it would just be called "pork," right?). Annnnnnyway, enough about Wilbur's testicles. I would never think to call Wilbur a "BOAR," but we're talking crossword puns here, and in pun world, absurdity pays. "WHAT A BOAR!" —ironically!—keeps the themer set from sliding into bo(a)ring territory. On the whole, I thought this was a solid Tuesday theme.

This puzzle really was gauged too easy today, even for a (typically easy) Tuesday. The puns were a piece of (beef?)cake and as for the fill, it was point-and-shoot the whole way. Hmm, that metaphor sounded good coming out of my brain, but I'm not sure it works on a technical level. But you know what I mean. It was easy. Point (my eyes at the clue), and then shoot (the answer into the grid). OK, now I do like the metaphor. Welcome to My Brain Writing In Real Time. This will not become a regular feature of the blog, as it is far too ridiculous. But back to the easiness. Too much of it. Too easy. Zero hesitation. Well, almost. There was one hesitation, which felt like a brick wall compared to the rest of the puzzle. I had no idea who Howard ASHMAN was. I'm sailing along with absolutely no resistance and all of a sudden this pop culture proper noun comes crashing into my puzzle. From outer space, or so it seemed, compared to the very ordinary and familiar contents of the rest of the grid. I had -MAN and absolutely no idea what to do with those first three letters. And that, ladies and gentlemen, constituted 100% of today's puzzle difficulty, just as AT A GUESS constituted 100% of my flinching at unpleasant answers. I have never heard anyone use that phrase, to my knowledge. "AS A GUESS," maybe, but AT A GUESS feels weird. AT A GALLOP, yes, AT A GUESS ... unless you are AT A GUESS clothing outlet ... no.

["Hey, man, I'm finished shopping, can you come pick me up?" "Sure, man, where are you?]

Notes:

• 21A: Balaam couldn't move his (ASS) — truly the Bible's worst dancer (though not its wurst dancer ... I don't think the Bible has one of those)

• 28A: Small drum (TABOR) — it was a good day for knowing your short crossword words. Would I know what a TABOR is without crosswords? Maybe ... maybe not. Would I know SPA was an actual Belgian town. Mmm, possibly. But I'm fairly confident I learned this fact from crosswords (where I get most of my SPA facts, having never, to my knowledge, been to a SPA ... although ... hmmm ... that may not be true. I've gotten a massage on vacation a couple of times, and those might have taken place in or around SPAs). AEGIS was another word that came easily because of crosswords (52A: Name of Athena's shield). I knew ENBY (from "N.B." i.e. "nonbinary") before I ever saw it in crosswords, but I know that every time that word appears, someone somewhere is learning it for the first time (20A: Genderqueer identity, informally). This is the third appearance for ENBY (there have also been two ENBIES). The term has only been appearing in the NYTXW since 2022, so if you're just getting the memo, don't feel too bad.
• 41D: Actor McGregor (EWAN) — coincidentally, just watched an EWAN McGregor movie yesterday—a 2011 Stephen Soderbergh flick called Haywire that I stumbled into while browsing The Criterion Channel (hallowed be its name). It's an action thriller starring real-life MMA star Gina Carano as an extremely badass black ops agent who gets in lots of beautifully choreographed and impressively violent fights with a lot of dudes, some of them big stars (Channing Tatum! Michael Fassbender!). EWAN McGregor plays Carano's employer/handler. To say any more would spoil it. It's a tight, taut, fun film. Very much worth it if you've got 90 minutes to burn.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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