Dance fad of the 1970s / TUE 3-18-25 / A wish might be made on a loose one / 1976 #1 novelty song by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots / Bourbon brand whose name originated from a hunting expedition / Tusked Ice Age mammal / Cardamom-spiced brew / Like someone with an "O.O.O." auto-reply set up, perhaps / Darth Vader's boyhood nickname / Like a person who might prefer platonic relationship, informally

Constructor: Larry Snyder and Jonathan Kaufman

Relative difficulty: Extremely Easy, even for a Tuesday

THEME: PARTY FOUL (65A: Knocking over someone's drink, e.g. ... or, homophonically, a hint to 17-, 27-, 39- and 54-Across) — familiar phrases that seem to describe "party"-ing birds (or "fowl"):

Theme answers:

• DISCO DUCK (17A: 1976 #1 novelty song by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots)
• SILLY GOOSE (27A: "You goofball!")
• FUNKY CHICKEN (39A: Dance fad of the 1970s)
• WILD TURKEY (54A: Bourbon brand whose name originated from a hunting expedition)

Word of the Day: FUNKY CHICKEN (39A) —

"Do the Funky Chicken" is a song written and recorded by American R&B singer and entertainer Rufus Thomas for Stax Records in 1969. The song was used as the title track of Thomas' 1970 LP, Do The Funky Chicken.

It became one of his biggest hits, reaching number 5 on the R&B chart in early 1970, number 28 on the US pop chart, and number 18 in Britain where it was his only chart hit. // The record was one of a series of novelty dance hits for Thomas. He improvised the song after performing with Willie Mitchell's band at the University of Tennessee, developing it further at a gig in Covington. Thomas said:

I did it in the middle of doing another song... and the words just started to come. I don't know how, they just came out of the blue. I just separated it. 'You raise your left arm up, and your right arm too.' When you're doing the funky chicken you use both arms. You don't just use one. It just happened I separated it. Then I put a little rhythm in between it. The same pattern that you heard on 'The Dog' is here on 'The Funky Chicken' but it is cut in half. That's how it came about.

Thomas added a spoken word section that he regularly used as a shtick as a radio DJ: "Oh I feel so unnecessary - this is the kind of stuff that makes you feel like you wanna do something nasty, like waste some chicken gravy on your white shirt right down front." The recording was produced by Al Bell and Tom Nixon, and the instrumental backing was by the Bar-Kays, featuring guitarist Michael Toles.

Reviewer Stewart Mason described the "Funky Chicken" as "the single goofiest dance craze of the 1970s... While Thomas clearly knows how silly the entire concept is – he starts the record off with his impersonation of a cackling hen – he doesn't let that stop him from getting behind those goofy lyrics and giving them everything he's got...." (wikipedia)

• • •

Slight case of Doja déjà vu this morning as I hit the revealer and got PARTY FOUL, the exact phrase used in a revealer clue just a few days ago. But instead of DOUBLE-DIPping, today's PARTY FOUL was actual partying fowl. Gotta say, I kinda like it, though man was it easy. Easier (and tighter, thematically) than the Monday puzzle yesterday. If your time wasn't the fastest you've ever seen, keep in mind that the puzzle is oversized (16 wide) so that may have something to do with it. Gotta have an even number of squares across so that FUNKY CHICKEN (12) can sit dead center. The themer set is fun and admirably coherent, and the revealer really did a nice job of tying it all together. Yesterday's revealer didn't really capture what was going on with the theme answers, but today's—right on the money, and with a "foul/fowl" pun to boot. The puzzle was way, way too easy, but at least the grid was clean. No groaning wincing or eye-rolling on my way from top to bottom. No real complaints about this one. I just wonder if maybe this played (much) easier for older (Gen X and up) solvers than for younger. Not one but two 1970s bird-based novelty songs!? That's ... well, all of them, probably (Morris Day and the Time did "The Bird," but that was in the '80s). Seems entirely plausible that people 40 and younger might never even have heard of DISCO DUCK or the FUNKY CHICKEN. If you're in that category, I hope you at least had fun learning that such greatness once existed.

Nothing flashy outside the theme answers, but as I say, the grid holds up very nicely. And though there aren't a lot of longer answers, FULL OF IT (39D: Talking sheer nonsense) and MASTODON (12D: Tusked Ice Age mammal) are both quite strong. The constructors wisely load up on cheater squares* in the NE and SW corner to take pressure off of what would otherwise be very open segments—lots of white space, very hard to fill cleanly. Today, your themer is the star—you don't want solvers getting bogged down in muck or distracted by awkwardness in the corners if it's not necessary, so put little black-square corner tabs in there and let the fill breeeeathe. The result is clean and even colorful answers, as well as a cool-looking grid with good flow. The puzzle felt slight, but I think the construction here is solid.

Bullets:

• 28D: A wish might be made on a loose one (LASH) — hardest answer of the puzzle for me. I couldn't get the image of a wishbone out of my head. Also, with no "EYE" in front of LASH, it was harder to see. Lastly, I've never known anyone who had this particular wish superstition. I've just seen it on TV and in movies.
• 59A: Like a person who might prefer platonic relationship, informally (ARO) — as in "aromantic." ARO was old-school crosswordese (clued primarily as [Orinoco tributary] or [Nigerian native]) until Shortz pretty much snuffed it out. Then it made a single appearance in 2012 as a character from Twilight ([Michael Sheen's character in "Twilight" (2015)]) before the sexual identity abbr. came along and took over ARO duties in 2022 (eight appearances to date).
• 54A: Bourbon brand whose name originated from a hunting trip (WILD TURKEY) — I was going so fast that I got complacent / cocky and just filled in the pre-TURKEY part of this answer with COLD. Sort of surprised that my brain defaulted to COLD and not JIVE (which would've been a great fit for this theme).

• 38A: Amount printed in red (LOSS) — had the "L," wrote in LIEN (?). This answer crossed 20D: Title pages? (DEEDS), which I also had a little trouble with. I also had issues with CFO (wrote in CEO) (62A: One managing a Fortune 500 company's fortunes, for short). So, besides trouble with LASH and trouble with COLD JIVE WILD TURKEY, all of my trouble was with short financial stuff. And all that trouble totaled up didn't amount to much trouble. The puzzle was still a flat-out sprint.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"cheater squares" are black squares that do not increase word count, usually added to make the grid easier to fill  

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