Dystopian horror film of 2013, with "The" / WED 10-16-24 / First British P.M. appointed by Queen Elizabeth II / Three tickets / Founder of the Pacific Fur Company, 1810 / Object of finger-pointing on "Fantasy Island" / U.S. immigration policy, familiarly / Onetime Houston athlete whose helmet featured a derrick

Constructor: Hanh Huynh

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BEGINNER SPANISH (39A: Introductory foreign language class suggested by this puzzle's theme) — what look like regular two-word clues are really two separate clues; the first word of the clue (i.e. the "BEGINNER") must be answered in SPANISH, the second in English, and together they form an unrelated compound English word:

Theme answers:

• TRESPASSES (17A: Three tickets) (Spanish word meaning "three" (tres) + English word meaning "tickets" (passes))
• CONTENDER (26A: With money) (con + tender)
• MASSACRED (51A: More revered) (mas + sacred)
• LOCOMOTIVE (60A: Crazy reason) (loco + motive)

Word of the Day: DACA (10A: U.S. immigration policy, familiarly) —

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a United States immigration policy. It allows some individuals who, on June 15, 2012, were physically present in the United States with no lawful immigration status after having entered the country as children at least five years earlier, to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and to be eligible for an employment authorization document (work permit).

On November 9, 2023, an appeal was brought before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to determine whether a September 2023 federal district court order that would terminate the codified form of DACA, based on its being a violation of federal law, will be upheld and implemented. Oral argument in the case was heard on October 10, 2024. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a great theme. Consistent, tight, clever. I balked, though, at the phrasing on the revealer. My ear / brain / heart wants BEGINNERS or BEGINNER'S or BEGINNERS' ... it wants the "S." It's weird how much the lack of this single letter bugs me ... I'm not mad at the puzzle; I can see that the "S"-less version exists online in many places. But my brain just keeps rejecting it, adding the "S," the way so many books and other resources do. Actually, it's a bit of a free-for-all out there, spellingwise. I can find all four versions (the puzzle's + the 3 "S" versions) without looking very hard at all, but the apostrophe-S or the S-apostrophe appear to be the most common. But then only BEGINNER SPANISH is 15, which is the width of a conventional American crossword puzzle grid, so here we are. I'm seeing some BEGINNING SPANISH out there too. What a world—five different forms of "begin" seem to be at least reasonably acceptable. But only one fit. My main point here is that I would have loved for the revealer to be tighter, indisputable, more on-the-nose. Conceptually, it works fine. It just clanks in my ear hole, despite its apparent validity. 

A heavy dose of pop culture and a few tricky clues put this one in fairly normal Wednesday difficulty territory. You've got the ROSS / JOEY conundrum right out of the gate (1A: Friend on "Friends") (recalling the MONICA / PHOEBE / RACHEL conundrum of a little while back ... which also appeared right out of the gate, in the NW corner, if I remember correctly). You've got the ordinary English word JET clued as a martial arts movie star, just as you've got the ordinary English word PURGE clued as a dystopian horror film of 2013 (15A: Dystopian horror film of 2013, with "The"), and the ordinary word EDEN clued as a bygone prime minister (43A: First British P.M. appointed by Queen Elizabeth II). Namification!—it means gimmes for some and bafflement for others. I know Dolly PARTON, obviously, everyone does, but that album title did nothing for me (18D: Singer with the 2008 album "Backwoods Barbie"), so I needed like half the crosses before I went "d'oh! it's just Dolly." The clue on SHADY was hard because of crisis-level ambiguity (38D: Suspect). Between the verb and the noun and the adjective meaning of "Suspect," that clue could've been annnything. So I got slowed down there. See also the clue on SHOPS, which sounds backwards (53D: Looks to sell). After all, if you "shop," you are (presumably) looking to buy. But here you have to see SHOPS as something an agent does for your book or screenplay or record—shop it around to potentially interested buyers (publishers, producers, record labels). 

I initially misspelled LOCAMOTIVE (thusly) and so had some trouble with DRONE (54D: It might go way over your head). I had -ANE and so wanted the answer to be PLANE. But the PLANE was already going over Tattoo's head on Fantasy Island (67A: Object of finger-pointing on "Fantasy Island"), so I bypassed PLANE and went for CRANE (?) (works for either the bird or the construction equipment!) before finally realizing my spelling error. I had ANYHOW before ANYHOO because the clue didn't seem to contain a clear indication of slanginess (42D: "Alrighty, then. As I was saying..."), but I guess "Alrighty" is the slang, so ... that's fair. So there was some stuckness, some of it caused by the puzzle, some of it self-inflicted, but in the end—a fairly typical Wednesday workout.

[shouldn't the answer really be DE PLANE?]

Notes:

• 41D: "The Office" role (PAM) — another sitcom role? You already got JOEY, maybe move to a different field of interest besides "nostalgic binge-watching" (I say this as someone who has watched every episode of both shows)
• 10A: U.S. immigration policy familiarly (DACA) — I knew about the policy but never thought about what the letters stood for. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. "Daca" in Spanish means "give it here!" or "give it to me!"
• 33A: Onetime Houston athlete whose helmet featured a derrick (OILER) — Look, I'm no fan of the "In my day..." people, but in my day, Houston's team had way better uniforms and helmets. Love that powder blue...

["The NFL in the Year 2000" LOL, nice predictions, 1979!]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]