In-tents dining experience? / SAT 3-1-25 / ___ Aran, protagonist in Nintendo's Metroid / Lenny & ___ (California-based cookie brand) / Supernatural descendant of Cain, in "Beowulf" / Familiar injury in football and soccer / "Parasite" co-star ___ Woo-shik / Word often found near Roman numerals / Variable representing an angle in math

Constructor: Ryan Judge

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: IRWIN Shaw (32A: Author Shaw) —

Irwin Shaw (February 27, 1913 – May 16, 1984) was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: The Young Lions (1948), about the fate of three soldiers during World War II, which was made into a film of the same name starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), about the fate of two brothers and a sister in the post-World War II decades, which in 1976 was made into a popular miniseries starring Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, and Susan Blakely. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty LIMP, overall. The middle has something going for it—that central stagger-stack of POT BROWNIES, RULE OF THUMB, and BACON STRIPS is decent—but most of the rest of it just sort of lies there, not really distinguished or PUNCHY in any way, and even that center stack is somewhat tainted by the proximity of SAMUS, which is ... what is that? (30A: ___ Aran, protagonist in Nintendo's Metroid). Just the stupidest name I've ever seen in the grid (tapping the "Not All Debuts Are Good" sign, once again). I barely know what Metroid even is, and certainly never seen this "protagonist's" "name" before. The Nintendification of puzzles has gone way too far. Feels lazy and sad. Is this what you want your generational contribution to crosswords to be? Apparently. It doesn't even look like a name. I would have to guess at how to pronounce it. Just desperate, ugly fill. Also ugly—the two (2?) verb-A-noun phrases emerging out of the northern part of this puzzle. It's EAT-A-SANDWICH Day! RATES A TEN! SPIN A WEB! Clunk City. Anemic. The difficulty level on this puzzle was also bizarrely uneven, with the NW corner being legitimately hard, and everything south of SAMUS (SAY-mus? SAM-us? SHAY-mus? ... SAW Moose?) being a relative piece of cake. Would've been nice to have *every* corner of the grid involved in the fun today, the way yesterday's puzzle did, but ... hard to get excited by PARRED over COMMON AREA. The SW corner is giving me a little, I guess (PUNCHY, a wailing BANSHEE, and a RARE COIN, OK, you got something there...). But overall it was one corner of not terribly pleasant struggle, one bright spot there in the middle (Saw Moose notwithstanding), and then a lot of blah.

Yet another puzzle drowning in names. Crossing names, abutting names, names galore. FARRAH BANA! (fun to say). OHTANI IRWIN (unlikely team-up). ATAHUALPA LARRY'S ("come on down to ATAHUALPA LARRY'S for a great deal on wall-to-wall carpeting!"). Except for Saw Moose, the names were mostly gimmes for me today. Even IRWIN, who is very bygone and only wrote a couple things of note, was familiar to me as someone who collects old paperbacks and also grew up in the '70s, when the Rich Man, Poor Man miniseries was massssssive (only the second miniseries ... ever? Wow). Rich Man, Poor Man was 1976, Roots was 1977. Miniseries used to be Events. Anyway, knew that author guy, and FARRAH and the rest of the actors (BANA, ANYA), also straight-up gimmes, as was OHTANI, the greatest player in the entire history of baseball. The one active baseball player you absolutely should be required to know. LARRY'S, though, that's just bad fill. Any name you've tacked an "S" to, for any reason, is bad. And "California-based cookie brand"? Yeah, I don't know what that is. I grew up in California, but we didn't have these when I was a kid, and I haven't lived in California since 1991, so ... shrug. They're probably good. But LARRY'S, as fill, not good.

[Oh. These. I've seen these at gas station mini-marts, I guess.]

Lots of mistakes today. Like, lots. Wrong answers that I actually wrote in:

• SAXON for SAMUS (30A: ___ Aran, protagonist in Nintendo's Metroid)
• TORN ACL for TURF TOE (26D: Familiar injury in football and soccer)
• EN PLEIN AIR (!!?!?!?!) for STREET FAIR (16A: In-tents dining experience?) (this is the fanciest mistake I've ever made in my entire crossword-solving life)
• END for AIM (14D: Objective)
• FEED for FUEL (5D: Provide power to)
• EXTEND for EMBOSS (25D: Make stick out, in a way)
• ELY for EEL (44A: Northern California's ___ River)
• PURRED, and then PASSED, for PARRED (49A: Performed exactly as expected, in a way)
• CHOO for CHOI (51A: "Parasite" co-star ___ Woo-shik) (I think I was thinking of Shin-Soo CHOO, who held the MLB record for most career home runs hit by an Asian-born player (218), until he was surpassed by ... Shohei OHTANI!)

More bullet points:

• 1A: Like some healthful spice blends (SALT-FREE) — could not fathom how you could make "spice" more "healthful." Did not occur to me that you would've had SALT in there as a default ingredient that would need removing.

• 7D and 43D: Supernatural descendant of Cain, in "Beowulf" (ELF / ORC) — I have read Beowulf. A bunch. Taught it a few times, even. And yet this factoid, I didn't really remember. I assume it comes during the discussion of "where the hell did Grendel come from?" (besides the obvious answer: his mom, who, like Grendel, and unlike ORCs and ELFs, is a major character in Beowulf)
• 4D: Variable representing an angle, in math (THETA) — me: "I dunno, some Greek letter, sigh, guess I'll just wait for crosses"
• 30D: One putting on a show (SOLO ACT) — this clue is cleverer than it seems, I think, since the "One" here has an intensified meaning: not just "a person" but "a single person." I had SOLOIST here at first, so I should probably add this answer to the "Mistakes" list, above. 
• 40D: Feature of Mike Wazowski from "Monsters, Inc." (ONE EYE) — I'd've gone with [Polyphemus feature], but the infantilization of crosswords feels unstoppable, oh well. 

[Odilon Redon, The Cyclops, ca. 1900]

• 50D: Word often found near Roman numerals (ANNO) — as in "ANNO domini," "the year of our lord" (what "A.D." stands for). Years are often expressed in Roman numerals. So that's what that clue's all about. Not sure about "often" here, as ANNO is usu. abbreviated. But since there's no standard for what counts as "often" ... I guess I can't really prosecute here.

Happy March! See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]