Bankable vacation, for short / WED 1-22-25 / Italian anise-flavored liqueur / It follows ka in the Spanish alphabet / Mare/hare pair? / Horse-drawn party vehicle? / Former N.B.A. star Smits, the "Dunking Dutchman" / Eats that pair well with beer / Company that once sold the Magic 8 Ball / Humorous name for the largest player on your baseball team

Constructor: Landon Horton

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: MIXED DOUBLES (51A: Tennis format ... or a description of some of the letters in 20-, 31- and 38-Across) — three wacky answers created by taking three familiar answers and "mixing" up their "double" letters, i.e. moving each answer's double letters to a different answer: 

Theme answers:

• PLAYBOY BUDDY (20A: Jay Gatsby, to Nick Carraway?) (gets the "D"s from "drinking buddy")
• HORSE AND BUNNY (31A: Mare/hare pair?) (gets the "N"s from "Playboy Bunny")
• DRINKING BUGGY (38A: Horse-drawn party vehicle?) (gets the "G"s from "horse and buggy")

Word of the Day: SAMBUCA (7D: Italian anise-flavored liqueur) —

Sambuca (Italian: [samˈbuːka]) is an Italian anise-flavoured liqueur. Its most common variety is often referred to as "white sambuca" to differentiate it from other varieties that are deep blue ("black sambuca") or bright red ("red sambuca"). Like other anise-flavoured liqueurs, the ouzo effect is sometimes observed when combined with water. (wikipedia)  

The ouzo effect (/ˈuːzoʊ/ OO-zoh), also known as the louche effect (/luːʃ/ LOOSH) and spontaneous emulsification, is the phenomenon of formation of a milky oil-in-water emulsion when water is added to ouzo and other anise-flavored liqueurs and spirits, such as pastis, rakı, arak, sambuca and absinthe. Such emulsions occur with only minimal mixing and are highly stable. (wikipedia)

• • •

Took me way longer than it should have to figure out the theme because I got the first theme answer and then the revealer, so I had no theme answer *pattern* to look at. Just PLAYBOY BUDDY. And I was like "How are the 'doubles' ... mixed? There's one set of double letters ... there are also two 'B's ... there are three 'Y's, is that something?" Mystified. But I figured, it's Wednesday, it can't be that hard, just keep going. And sure enough, after I pieced the next themer together, the double-letter answers in both themers glowed neon (BUDDY / BUGGY), and so I realized what I should be focusing on, but I thought the "joke" was merely that a different set of double letters had been swapped in for the correct letters each time. Wasn't til I got all three themers that I could see that the "familiar" answers had all swapped double letters among themselves. A closed system. OK. The BU--Y pattern seems absurdly arbitrary—why not swap the doubles in BATTY BAGGY and BARRY? or PETTY PEGGY PENNY? or DIZZY DITTY and, uh ... DILLY? DIPPY? Whatever, you get the idea. It's always nice when there at least *some* logic to the choices a puzzle makes. I could also ask "why have a pattern at all?" That is, why not just swap double letters? Why do those double letters *all* have to appear within the same word framework (BU-__Y)? But having solved the puzzle, I kind of know at least one answer to that one—makes it a lot easier to see what's going on. When you're looking at BUDDY BUNNY BUGGY, you've got a clear pattern that stands out, which tells you where to look for the "joke." Also, probably much easier to construct a puzzle like this when you use the same word framework for the base—would be very hard to find three different word frameworks that could handle the letter swapping. Annnnnnyway, I kind of liked how my understanding of the theme grew in stages (though you can probably only get that experience if you solved the themers in the weird order that I did). Otherwise, the theme is kind of a shrug for me. The wackiness isn't wacky enough, not only because the answers themselves aren't inherently funny but also because the clues are just too tepid. [Mare/hair pair?]??? I see your little rhyme, but you're basically just saying "horse & bunny," literally. Not much fun in that.

The fill on this one ran toward the weak side, and this was especially obvious (and worrisome) at the very beginning of the solve;

An OLEO / ALKA opening bodes no good. I also don't love (i.e. actively dislike) when OKAY is spelled out in colloquial expressions. On its own, OKAY is a thing, but "OKAY" starts feeling oddly formal when you write it all the way out in slang expressions. "OK, BYE" is how it should look. I had "OK- and figured I needed a five-letter term to follow. Annoying. The fill got a little better, but not much—lots and lots and lots of 3s and 4 ensured a surfeit of overfamiliar stuff (EGOT EWE REN OBOE DES STYE TYCO) and some crosswordy but less familiar stuff (ELE), and then one bit of non-crosswordese that really feels like it should've been crosswordese all along—PTO (!?!?). That answer hasn't been in the puzzle in almost thirty years, and the last time it appeared, it was a [School grp.] (like PTA, I'm guessing, with "Association" swapped out for "Organization"). Before that, it was [Page instrn.]. No, no typos in that clue, "instrn."! LOL, that is the single worst "abbr." I've ever seen in a crossword clue, in that the editor (Maleska) appears to have completely made it up. All pre-Shortz appearances of PTO had a version of this "instruction" clue, but I could Not figure out what the "instruction" was supposed to be until I'd read *all* the various clues and finally inferred that it must stand for "Please Turn Over (the page)." Oof, you can see why PTO got sent to Crosswordese Hell (which is just Hell, only moreso). But now it's been loosed by a more modern initialism: Personal Time Off. Still don't love it! But it's better than [Page instrn.], that is for sure.

Not too much difficulty today. There was the usual slowness putting together the nonsense answers. And the usual slowness from unfamiliar names. TSAI Ing-wen still won't stick in my brain (this her fourth appearance in the past three and half years; first female president of Taiwan, you'd think she'd stick!). Actually, it looks like I knew the other names in this puzzle, including RIK Smits (32D: Former N.B.A. star Smits, the "Dunking Dutchman") (worth knowing for both his name parts). What I didn't know, or only kinda knew, was SAMBUCA. I wanted it, but then thought "no, isn't it SAMBUCO? or, no, wait, doesn't it have double 'C'? SAMBUCCO? no, I'm thinking of 'Prosecco.' SAMBUCA or SAMBUCO? ... pretty sure one of those is a Bon Jovi guitarist..." (nope, that's Richie SAMBORA). I didn't consider SAMOSA, but solely because I know exactly what those are. Just an absurd spelling journey (probably didn't take long, but it felt long in my head). Once I got out of the (roughly) upper left quadrant of the puzzle, it got a lot easier. Needed all the crosses for PTO, finished with PUB GRUB (30D: Eats that pair well with beer).

Bullets:

• 1A: Org. of the main characters in "The Americans" (KGB) — somehow read this as [One of the main characters in "The Americans"] and I *love* that show but could *not* for the life of me remember either of the main characters' names. "SAM? PAM? ... RIK?"
• 17A: It follows ka in the Spanish alphabet (ELE) — the letter "L"
• 3D: Get a party going (BREAK THE ICE) — was expecting something far more "party"-ish here. You can BREAK THE ICE in any situation where you're meeting new people. Unless you are literally breaking ice, for drinks. Yes, I like that better.

• 4A: What might rain down on opposing players (BOOS) — had BOO- and wanted BOOM (i.e. you lower the ... BOOM ... on opposing players???) (I know it's bad, I'm just saying my brain thought of it, and I thought you should know)
• 48A: "___ intended!" ("NO PUN") — was going to tap the "Not All Debuts Are Good" sign again, but turns out, "NO PUN" has been in the puzzle before. Once. Twenty-four years ago. I miss those twenty-four years.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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