Real wowers / SAT 10-19-24 / "Anything goes" period in early Hollywood history / "Travel as a Political Act" author, 2009 / Block for "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" / Half of LV / Sustenance, slangily / Dialect in the Black community, in brief / Beyoncé's 2009-10 ___ Tour / Lab evidence, perhaps / Pumpkin substitute

Constructor: August Miller

Relative difficulty: No idea (felt hard, but I'm up late with a stupid stupid head cold, so everything feels hard)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RICK STEVES (58A: "Travel as a Political Act" author, 2009) —

Richard John Steves Jr. (born May 10, 1955) is an American travel writer, author, activist, and television personality. His travel philosophy encourages people to explore less-touristy areas of destinations and to become immersed in the local people's way of life. Starting in 2000, he hosted Rick Steves' Europe, a travel series on public television. Steves also has a public radio travel show called Travel with Rick Steves (2005−present) and has authored numerous travel guides, the first of which was the popular Europe Through the Back Door. In 2006, he became a syndicated newspaper columnist, and in 2010, his company released a mobile phone application called "Rick Steves’ Audio Europe" containing self-guided walking tours and geographic information. (wikipedia)

• • •

I didn't get a cold for *four years*—from the beginning of COVID to the beginning of this year—but now accounts are being settled, as I'm on my third this year and second in the past few months. The two from earlier this year just stayed in my throat, never resulted in the tissue tornado that so often attends the middle and tail ends of colds, but this one, this current stupid cold, jumped from throat to nose fast, so my breathing is all f'd up and I'm having trouble sleeping. Plus I just feel generally sicker than I have since that one bout with COVID however many years ago. Annnnnnnyway, boo hoo, poor me. The relevant info here is that I do not trust myself to assess the difficulty level, or even to assess the quality level much. I was definitely slower than usual, that much I know. And it really felt like there were a ton of names and other proper nouns, more than I'd expect or generally enjoy, possibly because I had never heard of so many. For instance, RICK STEVES. I have never not heard of a name more than I have not heard of RICK STEVES. Can't remember the last time I just flat-out hadn't heard of a name this long (a 10-letter entry). I kept thinking, "surely this next cross will help me see a name that is at least semi-familiar..." But no. And crossing ADA TWIST? ... so rough. I totally blanked on ADA TWIST. But at least when I eventually got it (after trying ADA SWIFT, ADAM WATT, and even, god help me, ADAM WEST), ADA TWIST did in fact ring a bell. Unlike RICK STEVES, who rang nothing. 

That SE corner was like a separate puzzle, 5x harder than the rest of it for me. Is it AUGER or AUGUR? Couldn't remember. That clue on MERIT, ugh, I have read and written about Pope (back in college)—no help. I thought it was MERIT, but it seemed a long, weird way to go for MERIT, so I left parts of it blank. I thought [Priors, e.g.] were part of a criminal record, so that was fun. I had BEAUTS (44D: Real wowers), but in trying to parse the answer for 56A: Plant matter? (so hard!), that "U" seemed impossible, so I ended up rethinking BEAUTS: "is it BEASTS???" (it was not). And then TEL. as a "C.V. listing" did not compute—I was thinking about education and work experience. So even though REST / AREA and ANKA and COVE and TACH and PEABODY were all really easy, that corner still murdered me. Once I got out, everything seemed easy, but not easy easy. Just normal "moving through a Saturday" easy.

This was one of those puzzles that opened with a total bust in the NW. Just ... nothing. I could do nothing. I was sure that the "Lab" in 1A: Lab evidence, perhaps (PAW PRINTS) was dog-related, but DOG HAIR or SHEDDING wouldn't fit, so ??? But the main issue was all those short Downs. None of them computed. Well, nothing from 1D: Premium outlet? to 5D: Hit with another water balloon, the latter of which I wrote in as REPELT, thinking "wow, that's awful" (note: RESOAK is not much better). Bizarrely, the very first thing I wrote in the grid was IPAD MINI. I was in no way sure, but it was the first thing that came to me and it fit. Could not remember the capital of Greenland, though, so I couldn't confirm IPAD MINI, until, magically, SUED led to KNEE and SUN-UP and DUES, and, well, here is my highly atypical opening gambit (who starts in the center?):

NUUK! There was a brief time I thought it was NYUK, but that's a Three Stooges laugh, I think. I got a few more things off of this chunk of answers, but then ended up stuck again and had to restart, which I did, with AUG-R (42D: Portend), which was my pathway into the SE, which ... see above. Eons later, I emerged from the SE. One of the weirder things about this solve was that I got the long answers in the NE easily, from their back ends, whereas the same (symmetrical) answers in the SW, I couldn't see at all despite having their front ends. Usually, it's much easier to get at an answer from its front than its back, but in the case of those long Downs in the NE/SW, not today. Got PICTIONARY off the "-RY" (12D: Game that involves drawing lots?), which got me MAPS, which then got me ABOUT-FACED (off the "A .... ED") (11D: Did a 180). The MACBETH / THANE pairing felt super-remedial—that "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" speech is one of the more famous in all of Shakespeare, and they say the word "THANE" roughly a billion times in MACBETH ("THANE of Glamis," "THANE of Cawdor," etc.). But in addition to having taught MACBETH before, I had another advantage today, as I actually saw a live performance of MACBETH just last week. 

[they did the whole thing with just five actors—very inventive]

I finished up ... where I began, in the pesky NW, which seemed a lot less pesky when I returned (via the back ends of all those long Acrosses). Still, UFO REPORTS was hard to parse (14A: Some tabloid fodder). As for PRE-CODE ERA, that was a highlight for me. I watch a lot (lot lot) of movies and "PRE-CODE" is a common term for anything made pre-1934—the year when the (extremely restrictive) Production Code went into effect. So I loved seeing this term today, but the clue (19A: "Anything goes" period in early Hollywood history) ... I don't know what the quotation marks around "anything goes" are doing. What is that a quote from? I've never heard anyone use that term to describe the PRE-CODE ERA. Because despite the fact that those early films could get pretty racy (compared to the movies of the subsequent 3+ decades (!)), "anything goes" is inaccurate, or at least a huge exaggeration. Restrictions on depictions of sex, violence, etc. were just ... laxer, and not officially imposed. Coincidentally, and somewhat ironically, the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes debuted in 1934 (the first year of the Motion Picture Production Code), but when it made its way to the big screen two years later, the PRE-CODE ERA was over, and guess what? Anything did not go: 

The film required revisions of Cole Porter's lyrics to pass Production Code censors. Only four of his songs remained: "Anything Goes", "I Get a Kick Out of You", "There'll Always Be a Lady Fair" and "You're the Top". "You're the Top" contained substantially revised lyrics, and only the first line (sung by Ethel Merman during the opening credits) was retained from the song "Anything Goes". (wikipedia)

So I loved PRE-CODE ERA, but the clue kind of threw me. Seems like a hard answer if you're not a cinephile. 

Bullets:

• 21A: Beyoncé's 2009-10 ___ Tour (I AM) — a fifteen-year-old tour name? No hope. Well, some hope—once I got the -AM, I figured it out. I mean, it's probably not gonna be the SAM Tour or the PAM Tour, right? JAM seemed off. GAM would be racy, in a PRE-CODE ERA sort of way, but unlikely. Beyoncé had a 2008 album titled I Am ... Sasha Fierce, so that's one way people might have known / remembered the tour name.

• 41A: Six-time U.S. Open champion, familiarly (SERENA) — was looking for a nickname here, not just a first name. Also, since there's a U.S. Open in golf as well as tennis, I was not sure of this answer until I got to "S---NA"
• 1D: Premium outlet? (PUMP) — "Premium" as in gasoline. The gas angle definitely occurred to me right away, but didn't get me anywhere near the answer.
• 48A: Dialect in the Black community, in brief (AAVE) — African-American Vernacular English
• 37A: Actress Day of "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" (ANDRA) — another tough name for me, despite the fact that I *know* I've seen, and possibly written about, her crossword-friendly name before. See, here we go—just last year, she was my Word of the Day (Sep. 15, 2023). Maybe this time, the name will stick.
• 24D: Parts of many science museums (PLANETARIA) — had "PLA-" and wanted PLAY AREAS or something like that. Then, when I got the whole thing (from crosses, mostly), I thought it said PLANET ATRIA and was like "what the hell are those?" Did I mention that I have a cold?
• 34D: Hit bottom, maybe (SANK) — it occurs to me that SINK would work just fine for this clue, which would give you ANDRI DAY, which, honestly, seems like a plausible name. ANDRA sems more namelike, for sure, but if you wiped out on the rocky shores of ANDRI, I sympathize, for sure.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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