Louisiana Acadian / WED 10-30-24 / Wrap on a roll / Symbols of electrical resistance / Father of, in Arabic / Classic soda brand / Rock singer Shirley / Naught, nil, nada / Popular music genre from Nigeria / Ghoulish character who appears after someone follows the instructions at 17- and 59-Across / Certain Disney princess-inspired Halloween costumes

Constructor: Josh M. Kaufmann

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BEETLEJUICE (29D: Ghoulish character who appears after someone follows the instructions at 17- and 59-Across) — a movie-promo puzzle (?). In the movie(s), if you say "Betelgeuse" (the character's actual name) three times, he appears (which may or may not be helpful, depending on the situation you're in); today's puzzle gives you instructions to make him appear, putting BEAT, ULGE, and OOSE in circled squares and then telling you: PUT THEM TOGETHER (17A: With 59-Across, instructions for the sets of circled letters) and SAY IT THREE TIMES (59A: See 17-Across)

Theme answers:

• AFROBEAT (30A: Popular music genre from Nigeria)
• INDULGENT (37A: Overly lenient)
• GOOSE EGG (49A: Naught, nil, nada)

Word of the Day: Shirley MANSON (47D: Rock singer Shirley) —

Shirley Ann Manson FRSA (born 26 August 1966) is a Scottish singer-songwriter, musician, and actress who is the lead singer of the Scottish-American rock band Garbage, who have toured worldwide and sold over 17 million records as of 2017. Known for her forthright style, rebellious attitude, and distinctive deep voice, her accolades include nominations for two Brit Awards and seven Grammy Awards.

Manson's musical career began in her teens, when she was approached to perform backing vocals and keyboards for the band Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. She was later approached by the band's record label with the idea of launching her as a solo artist, and recorded an album with her band Angelfish. She joined Garbage in 1994, and they achieved critical and commercial success with their self-titled debut album (1995) and Version 2.0 (1998). They followed this by performing and co-producing the theme song to the 19th James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999) and releasing their acclaimed third album Beautiful Garbage (2001).

Following the troubled production of Garbage's fourth album Bleed Like Me (2005), the group went on hiatus; during this period, they released a greatest hits album (2007). Manson began to write and record solo material in 2006, but nothing came to fruition. She instead pursued acting, playing Catherine Weaver on the science fiction television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008). Garbage reunited in 2010, and have since released three more albums: Not Your Kind of People (2012), Strange Little Birds (2016), and No Gods No Masters (2021). Manson also hosted the music podcast The Jump with Shirley Manson (2019–2021).

• • •

I can see how one might do something really good with this theme, but this ... isn't it. It has elements of "it," but in a couple of ways it simply goes off the rails. The first and most obvious problem is that the "character" is not actually named BEETLEJUICE. It's "Betelgeuse" (as in the star), which is pronounced (roughly) the same as "BEETLEJUICE." I realize that "BEETLEJUICE" is how people think of him, because that's the name of the movie. But the clue says "Ghoulish character" and the character's name is absolutely positively without a doubt named "Betelgeuse" (read the wikipedia entry for either the original or the sequel if you don't trust me here). "But most people won't know that!" Who cares? Get it right or go home. 

The worse problem, though, for me, from a pure solving pleasure standpoint, was the phrasing on the instructions. In order to get the instructions to come out to a perfect, grid-spanning 15 + 15, the instructions become super awkward. Grammatically tortured, even. PUT THEM TOGETHER ... but SAY IT THREE TIMES? Just "Say them together three times" would've been perfect, but here ... "it" has no referent. Well, there's the imagined referent, the entity that comes from "putting THEM together" (in your mind, or mouth) but oof, the phrasing, you would never say this particular set of instructions. It's clunky at best. I could see that the final part of the instructions was going to be "THREE TIMES" and I had No Idea what could go in the five squares preceding it. "SAY THEM" wouldn't fit, so ... "UTTER THREE TIMES?" The "IT" in "SAY IT" just bugged the hell out of me. Lastly, ANTAGONISTS is a surprisingly weak "themer." It's too vague a word, not closely associated enough with the movie to be truly meaningful. Plus it's in the plural. Plus, since he's sometimes helpful, "antagonist" seems like a not quite on-the-nose description of what he is. I'm no BEETLEJUICE expert, I just happened to see both the original and its sequel very recently (BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE was one of the movies my "Moviegoing" class chose to see earlier this semester), so the "Betelgeuse" thing in particular was freshly on my mind.

Even if the theme had been perfect, the fill ... I don't know why the editors don't insist on more polish. This was one of those puzzles where I stop before I've even exited the NW to take a screenshot of the grid because the fill is already ominously off:

SARAN ABONE (?) ABU NEHI and I haven't even really started!!? And then IFI right after that. And CAS ... and ENOL ... SSN ETO MCATS HTML all in one corner ... ELSAS in the plural (!?!). Nice attempt to rescue that last one via Halloween costumes (timely!) (43A: Certain Disney princess-inspired Halloween costumes). But no, this one was rough. The theme is pretty dense, and I understand how fill can suffer under those conditions. But still. SEEM MAD??? I think OTOLOGY (weirdly) was the only longer non-theme answer in this puzzle I actually enjoyed seeing. I do, however, really like all the BEAT / ULGE / OOSE answers. That's a really solid set: AFROBEAT / INDULGENT / GOOSE EGG. Again, the core concept of the theme was really good. I mean, it seems like a paid promo (BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE is still in theaters where I live), and I don't like that so much, but as movie-specific themes go, this had promise. But the execution just missed, imho. 

[AFROBEATs, a derivative of AFROBEAT]

What else?:

• 21A: The "lava" in a lava lamp (WAX) — I haven't seen one of these in so long. I don't think I ever really thought about what the "lava" substance was. GOO ... I think GOO was my first guess.
• 25A: Calculator symbol on a MacBook, e.g. (ICON) — so ... [Symbol], then. This one confused me because of all the specificity ("calculator," "MacBook") that turned out to be meaningless.
• 1A: Wrap on a roll (SARAN) — wrote in SUSHI, "confirmed" it with SAP (1D: Sentimental sort) :(
• 66A: What lives in a hole in the wall? (NAIL) — I did appreciate how hard the puzzle is trying to make this puzzle spooky. [Spooky mo.] (OCT), [Lake with a spooky-sounding name] (ERIE). And while the ELSAS aren't spooky, they are Halloween-y. You could argue A BONE is spooky (if you ignore the clue). It kinda suggests "skeleton." And if you are inclined to have nightmares about bad crossword fill, then it's definitely frightening.
• 26D: Louisiana Acadian (CAJUN) — this one (briefly) stopped me cold because my brain just went "'Acadian' ... 'Acadian' ... hmm, let's see ... [shuffling boxes around] ... 'Academy' ... 'Academic' ... we got an 'Arcadian' ... nope, sorry, not sure where we put 'Acadian,' boss." Sigh. I got CAJUN easily enough, but had to go to the dictionary to refresh my memory on "Acadian": "relating to the former French colony of Acadia in eastern Canada."

Hoping that a flawed Halloween puzzle today means a real sizzler of a Halloween puzzle tomorrow (which is actual Halloween, after all). See you then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. RIP to my favorite crosswordese—the only TERI I'm interested in, the only GARR there is, my beloved TERI GARR. Best comic actress of my lifetime. xoxo

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