Cryptaesthesia, more familiarly / FRI 10-18-24 / Accommodates, in listing-speak / Eucharist plate / Attention-grabbing visuals / Artist whose full name anagrams to A MAN DETOURED / Juice provider / First pitcher, maybe / "Star Wars" planet that's home to womp rats / "There, there" accompanier

Constructor: Jesse Cohn

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: É-D-O-U-A-R-D MANET (27A: Artist whose full name anagrams to A MAN DETOURED) —

Édouard Manet (UK: /ˈmæneɪ/, US: /mæˈneɪ, məˈ-/; French: [edwaʁ manɛ]; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

[Un bar aux Folies Bergère, 1882] 

Born into an upper-class household with strong political connections, Manet rejected the naval career originally envisioned for him; he became engrossed in the world of painting. His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) or Olympia, "premiering" in 1863 and '65, respectively, caused great controversy with both critics and the Academy of Fine Arts, but soon were praised by progressive artists as the breakthrough acts to the new style, Impressionism. Today too, these works, along with others, are considered watershed paintings that mark the start of modern art. The last 20 years of Manet's life saw him form bonds with other great artists of the time; he developed his own simple and direct style that would be heralded as innovative and serve as a major influence for future painters. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one definitely got better as I went along. After that first corner, my main feelings were "RAGE ROOM? Again? Please stop" and "ESP is not real, why does it have a f***ing Greek name like it's an actual scientific phenomenon?" and "wait, not INSEAM?" (1D: Clothing line) and "really, you expect me to know the line-up of the Allman Brothers band beyond the Allman Brothers? This clue is Todd HAYNES erasure." So I was happy to get out of there. EYE CANDY is OK, but otherwise, happy to see that corner go. Then, instead of taking the obvious route (straight down the middle), I tiptoed across via ESPN (nice clue) (20A: It's often playing games), and up into the NE corner via Marc COHN, whose name I knew (though I did hesitate at COHN v. COEN) (8D: "Walking in Memphis" singer Marc). There I found Jamie Lee CURTIS starring in (well, on) a ONE-ACT play, as well as some soothing HOT TEA, a Star Wars reference I both knew and spelled correctly. Halloween (1979) and Star Wars (1977) made a perfect introduction to RETRO VIBE, which was the first answer that actually made me stop and relax and think "There we go! The Friday puzzle I've been waiting for has arrived. I don't think I actually BEAMED, but I was close. After that, I got the very quick trans-grid 1-2 whoosh-whoosh of PAINT-BY-NUMBERS* and "MYSTERY SOLVED!" which left me in a good position to polish off the remaining corners down south.

The SW corner was the one part of the puzzle that gave me real pushback. I dropped GINGER ALE in there OK, but neither AUDIENCE (33D: Market) nor POOR SOUL (32D: Sad sack) was computing—I mean, I got the POO- alright (!) but I wanted something like POOPER ("party pooper?"); even when I got the POOR part, SOUL did not follow intuitively. And I certainly didn't get CLAUSES off just the CL-. I forgot Sharon's first name (that's on me, grrr), I always suck at those "word before" clues, so USER was a bust (46A: Word before friendly or name), I thought the geometry figure was a literal figure, like a triangle or sphere or something, and, worst of all, I assumed that the [Checkout screen option] at 50D (TIP) was TAP. "Insert or TAP" [your credit card]—a very common option! All of that plus a tough (but very good) clue on SLEEPS (55A: Accommodates, in listing-speak) (as in "this Airbnb SLEEPS eight"). If I'd only remembered ARIEL, maybe this corner would've been a cinch, but as it was, it definitely leaned toward Saturday difficulty. Nothing else in the grid put up that much of a fight, but the grid was sufficiently scrappy overall to make for a very Friday-level Friday puzzle.

Please indulge me while I BOO AT some of these clues and answers... namely BOO AT, which I don't mind, or didn't, at first, until I hit POKE AT. Then I thought "too many blank-ATs!" It's appropriate, very appropriate, that BOO AT was directly underneath ROWR, because I definitely booed at that. The [Playful snarl] is RAWR. We've established this. There is ample crossword precedent for RAWR (four NYTXW appearances). Sadly, however, there is also precedent for ROWR, though not as ample (just two appearances before today). I hate that the crossword thinks you can go either way on this, when the correct spelling seems to me quite clear: RAWR is the playful snarl, ROWR is a typo. The more you bend the spelling, the more obviously you are in "playful" territory, so RAWR > ROWR by a country mile, case closed, stop using ROWR, it's ****ing awful. Another thing I would like you to NOT DO is NOT DO. Please do NOT DO that, and by "that" I mean "put NOT DO in your grid." NOT DO crossing NOVO (?) is making a mockery of the otherwise glorious NO NOTES (56A: "That was perfect—I don't have any feedback"), because notes ... I have them—for that corner, for sure. Here are some more notes:

Notes:

• 1A: Juice provider (CHARGER) — me, looking at the first clue of the puzzle at 4am: "uh ... JUICER?"
• 27A: Artist whose full name anagrams to A MAN DETOURED (MANET)  — such a bizarre way to clue him, but it's a bizarreness I like. You've gotta extract a last name from a full-name anagram. Anagram extraction! I pulled MANET out pretty easily, but then thought "wait, those other letters don't spell out CLAUDE" (that's because CLAUDE is the first name of MONET, not MANET, which I should know by now). This MANET is in my eyeline (in refrigerator magnet form) every morning as I write this blog:

[Devant la glace, 1876] 

• 12D: First pitcher, maybe (ICE WATER) — I see that you are trying to do that "identical sequential clue thing" with this clue and the next Down clue, 13D: First pitcher (STARTER), but it really only works for one of the clues (i.e. STARTER) (this is extremely typical with the "identical sequential clue thing," which is why it's a gimmick that should be used sparingly). The "First" part doesn't quite make sense for the ICE WATER pitcher. If you're talking about a pitcher of ICE WATER that might be brought out "first" at a restaurant ... I dunno ... "First" implies that there are going to be other, different pitchers to follow, and unless you are in a restaurant called "Pitchers" where all items on the menu come in pitcher form, I don't think more pitchers are likely. Do people drinking pitchers of beer typically open with a pitcher of ICE WATER? Maybe that's it. I admire the ambition and weirdness here, but when you have to lawyer your way to a defense of the clue, it's probably not a clue you should use.
• 21D: Eucharist plate (PATEN) — I knew this. How did I know this? Moreover, why has the word PYX just entered my brain? [Looks it up] Ha! PYX is the "small round container used in the Catholic, Old Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican Churches to carry the Eucharist, to the sick or those who are otherwise unable to come to a church in order to receive Holy Communion" (wikipedia). Hurray partial memory!
• 52D: This is what it sounds like when doves cry (COO) — now this is a perfect clue. Absolutely NO NOTES:

• 32A: Digital art? (PAINT-BY-NUMBERS*) — at first I was mad because I assumed the crossword was doing its whole "'digital' = related to the fingers, tee-hee, aren't we clever?" thing, and I was like "finger painting and PAINT-BY-NUMBERS* are not the same thing!" Well, of course they're not. The "digital" here refers simply to the numbers (or "digits") ... by which one ... paints. Assuming "digital" + "?" = finger-related ... that's peak crossword brain. 
• 42D: Scrolls from right to left? (TORAH) — because Hebrew is read right to left, as are Arabic and Persian. Together, these are the "most widespread RTL writing systems in modern times" (wikipedia).   
• 49A: Beethoven's "Hammerklavier," for one (SONATA) — lucked out here. I probably would've put together SONATA pretty easily anyway, but it helped that I've been listening to this specific SONATA a lot in the past month, in a new recording by Marc-André Hamelin. Enjoy.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*oof, looks like the actual answer in the grid is PAINT-BY-NUMBER, singular, not NUMBERS. The singular feels bad / wrong. My brain was clearly protecting me by having me misread it.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]