Cocido or callaloo / THU 10-3-24 / Human-shaped board game piece / Major media campaign, say / Animal cry that sounds like a Greek letter / City that's absolutely gorges / Female friend, casually / TV character who said "Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but i have no wish to serve under them"

Constructor: Rena Cohen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: POLYGRAPH (53A: Test required for all C.I.A. applicants ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme) — three theme answers are visual representations of failed POLYGRAPH tests, with the letters "LIE" representing a SPIKE in the readout (52A: 53-Across feature, as seen three times in this puzzle); that is, "LIE" appears in a single box, elevated above the plane of its answer (up and over a black square).

Theme answers:

          [LIE]

WHILE SUPP     S LAST (19A: Disclaimer on a sale poster)

    [LIE]

CHAR     SHEEN (26A: Actor who played a character with the same first name of "Two and a Half Men")

     [LIE]

NONBE     VERS (46A: Skeptics)

"LIE" crosses:

• 5D: Metal marble (STEE[LIE]) / 23A: Contradict (BE[LIE])
• 7D: Singer/songwriter Goulding (EL[LIE]) / 17A: More slippery (EE[LIE]R)
• 33D: Half sister of Kim, Khloé and Kourtney (KY[LIE]) / 41A: First name in student loans (SAL[LIE])

Word of the Day: Girls, INC. (9A: Girls, ___ (nonprofit since 1864)) —

Girls Inc. (established in 1864) is an American nonprofit organization which encourages girls to be "Strong, Smart, and Bold" through direct service and advocacy. // The Girls Inc. (Girls Club of America) movement was founded in 1864 in Waterbury, Connecticut. The organization's mission was to help young women who had migrated from rural communities in search of job opportunities, experiencing upheaval in the aftermath of the Civil War. In 1945, fourteen charter Girls Clubs joined together to form a national organization. In 1990 the Girls Club of America changed their name to Girls Incorporated. // Rachel Harris Johnson founded the organization. In 1919, she became secretary of the Worcester Girls Club, which her mother helped found. She later became the club's president and in 1945 formed a national organization and served as its first president until 1952. (wikipedia)

• • •

Theme good, fill bad. That is the tl;dr review today. I don't know that this is the best visual representation of what a polygraph SPIKE looks like—I'm used to seeing not one but several "spikes" when the testee lies, but then again, I've only seen POLYGRAPH readouts in movies, so who knows—but it's close enough. Anyway, it just has to evoke the idea, not mirror it perfectly, and this theme evokes the lie detector readout just fine. Cleverly, in fact. The answers SPIKE when there's a "LIE"—what more do you want from your lie detector theme!? My only complaint about the theme is that there are just three theme answers. Seems light, especially since I had two of the themers knocked off before the puzzle had really gotten underway. Picked up the "LIE" fast at STEE[LIE] / BE[LIE], and once I got to WHILE S- in the NW corner (19A: Disclaimer on a sale poster), it was no trouble at all to extrapolate from there to WHILE SUPP[LIE]S LAST, even though I didn't yet know how the whole "LIE" thing was gonna work yet. So I just wrote in WHILE SUPP, then got USHER, then read the clue at 28-Across and saw it was just a "—" ... and that was when I realized I had a split-answer-type theme on my hands. STEE[LIE] / BE[LIE] made the "LIE" look like a regular old rebus square. No indication of answers spiking. It was only when I hit the [—] clue that I knew something else was going on, that answers were jumping, and then, in a blink, bim bam boom, I'm 2/3 of the way through the theme before I really know what's happening:

So I went from thinking it was a simple "LIE" rebus, to realizing that the "LIE"s were jumping over black squares, but still no idea what the concept was. It was a bit weird to back into it through SPIKE. That is, it feels like the better revealer, the primary revealer, is POLYGRAPH, but I got to SPIKE first, so the "revelation" felt odd, slightly backward, but no matter. The revealers did their job, and provided good justification for all the jumping rebus action.  

As I say, I would've enjoyed a fourth themer, but then I probably wouldn't actually want this theme to get any denser, as it would likely compromise the fill, which is already gunked up pretty bad. I was wincing throughout, from the cruelty of the ANTIBARK collar, to the avalanche of bad (overcommon and/or ugly) short fill (RELO IPSO POR YER PEI AER INOT AST DHS NAE HEH etc.), to the cloying quaint cutesiness of "OH, POOH," to ... well, a bunch of clues that just seemed off. I hate that MEEPLE is clued as a singular noun (6D: Human-shaped board game piece), when the word itself is clearly meant to sound like "people," which is (obviously) plural. I also just hate MEEPLE on principle, since it's also got a cloying cutesiness about it, but the singular/plural thing is particularly irksome. Who "commutes" via cab?? If you are a commuter, it seems highly unlikely that you could afford to get to work this way. Bus, subway, train, car ... all these things are likely "commuter" vehicles; cabs are not (the problem here is entirely with the clue, as SPLIT A CAB is otherwise a fine answer). And oof, PR PUSH (44D: Major media campaign, say), yet another unwelcome "original" / debut answer  (this has been happening more and more lately, as inflated and badly curated wordlists pollute the crossword airwaves). The crossword is already annoyingly awash in "PR" answers—PRMAN, PRMEN, PRTEAM(S)—just as the world is annoyingly awash in PR. I don't need or want more PR answers. Please refrain.

Bullet points:

• 51D: Longhorn's college rival (AGGIE) — an AGGIE is also a type of marble, and since this answer is symmetrical with STEE[LIE], I can't believe the marble angle didn't occur to anyone. Maybe it did, but seemed too dated / obscure (since no one plays marbles any more—even I (an oldish person) only know these damn terms from crosswords of yore)
• 6A: Animal cry that sounds like a Greek letter (MEW) — Speaking of old, I was 54 years old before I learned that the "U" in "Mu" was a diphthong. That is, I learned it just now. I'd been (mostly mentally) pronouncing it like a cow's "moo" for as long as I knew the letter existed. Oh, man, "Nu" isn't pronounced "nyoo," is it? Please say no. Or "Nyo," I guess. (phew, it's "new," crisis averted)

• 1D: Cocido or callaloo (STEW) — I had the "S" and went with SOUP ... so close! Just ... too thin.
• 9D: City that's absolutely "gorges" (ITHACA) — that pun is a whole thing up there. There's a t-shirt and everything. No "absolutely," but I can see why this clue went that way.

• 58A: When sudden death can occur, for short (IN OT) — i.e. "in overtime." "Sudden death" is a "first-team-to-score-wins"-type situation.
• 41A: First name in student loans (SAL[LIE]) — if the first two [LIE] squares came easy, this one ... didn't. I just ... forgot to be on the lookout. The other two were so obvious that I figured the next one would be too, but no. I got all tangled up thinking the Kardashian sister was just three letters and the student loan name was just four and [Skeptics] was just five *and* ended in "S," which made me question INSOLE (25D: It fits under a tongue). This was by far the hardest part of the puzzle for me, all because I forgot to look for the theme element that I already knew existed :(

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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