Big shot on the internet / TUE 4-1-25 / Publication where this puzzle might be found / Chewing gum brand with red, white and blue packaging / Letter between "gee" and "eye" / Religion with 100,000 public shrines in Japan / One who works with ore or data

Constructor: Sande Milton

Relative difficulty: Medium? (Easy, but those pre-written letters might've confused you some)

THEME: Non-pristine IN-FLIGHT MAGAZINE crossword puzzles — grid is meant to resemble an IN-FLIGHT MAGAZINE crossword that has been partially filled in by a PRIOR PASSENGER; you would typically find such a puzzle in your SEAT BACK POCKET, and you might give up on such a puzzle once you are asked to RETURN YOUR TRAY TABLES ... (to their upright and locked positions, presumably)

Theme answers:

• IN-FLIGHT MAGAZINE (18A: Publication where this puzzle might be found)
• SEAT BACK POCKET (29A: Where the 18-Across is commonly found)
• PRIOR PASSENGER (49A: Person who may have ruined your puzzle)
• "RETURN TRAY TABLES" (61A: Announcement that could put an end to the misery caused buy the 49-Across)

The answers that needed correcting:

• 17A: Declare openly (AVOW) — not "AVER"
• 41A: Genetic material (DNA) — not "RNA"
• 44D: ___ power (SOLAR) — not "HORSE"

Word of the Day: BAZOOKA (11D: Chewing gum brand with red, white and blue packaging) —

Bazooka is an American brand of bubble gum that was introduced in 1947. It is a product of "Bazooka Candy Brands" (BCB), which was a division of The Topps Co. until the latter’s acquisition by Fanatics, Inc. in 2022. [...] Bazooka bubble gum was launched shortly after World War II in 1947 in the U.S. by the Topps Company of Brooklyn, New York. The gum was most likely named after the rocket-propelled weapon developed by the U.S. army during the war, which itself was named after a musical instrument. // The bubble gum was packaged in a red, white, and blue color scheme and originally sold for 1 penny. Beginning in 1953, Topps changed the packaging to include small comic strips with the gum, featuring the character "Bazooka Joe". There are over 1,535 different "Bazooka Joe" comic-strip wrappers to collect. Also on the comic strip is an offer for a premium and a fortune.

• • •

If this is an April Fools puzzle, it's pretty mild on the "fooling." I'll admit to tiptoeing around those pre-written answers, unsure of what to do with them or how "correct" they were supposed to be. Turns out ... somewhat correct (much like many partially-filled airline crosswords are). Since it never occurred to me that the pre-written answers were going to actually be correct, I never got fooled by the PRIOR PASSENGER's wrong answers. First pre-filled answer I encountered with AVER. Since TONI Morrison was a gimme (13D: Nobel winner Morrison), it was obvious that AVER was wrong—well, half-wrong. This is the one thing I like about this puzzle—the realism of the pre-filled grid. It's always these scattershot wrong answers, like the passenger had never solved a crossword puzzle before and was just poking at it idly and randomly. Plus, the answers that are filled are precisely the kind that would be filled in—the true gimmes. . . except for AVER. That is a word only a real crossword solver is going to enter immediately and instinctively, and even then, that solver is probably more likely to leap to the more common word, AVOW (or not enter it at all because it's a klassic kealoa*). To be clear, I assume many non-solver *know* the word AVER, I just don't believe that in a mostly blank puzzle, with no crosses to help out, that a non-solver would confidently write in AVER (not when they couldn't even manage Gilda RADNER, or ATHENA, or the OSSO in [___ buco]). Also, an inexperienced solver would write in DNA before RNA at 41A: Genetic material, 100% of the time. Still, the "I'll just put an 'S' at the end of this answer 'cause it's a plural" thing is very real (you may have tried it yourself), and I love that we get those stray "S"s in this grid. Twice. The concept itself is cute and visually interesting. And I love that the software worked! That is, I had to overwrite only the incorrect letters. I decided not to overwrite the correct letters, just to test if the software would recognize squares I could have filled in myself (but didn't) as correct, and was stunned when I got that "Congratulations" message at the end. Nice job, software people.

 The one thing about the puzzle that really truly does not work is that final themer. "RETURN TRAY TABLES" on its own is not an announcement I've ever heard. If the clue had just started "Beginning of an announcement...," that would've been at least plausible, but "RETURN TRAY TABLES" alone is absurd. You are either asked to stow your tray tables, or (more commonly?) you are asked to "RETURN YOUR TRAY TABLES to their upright and locked position." Oh, and this answer is doubly bad because the clue makes no sense. "Put an end to the misery caused by 49-Across?" What misery? I guess if you are as terrible at solving crosswords as the last guy, maybe you were confused by his partially incorrect answers such that you couldn't even make it through the puzzle by flight's end. But as partially filled-in puzzles go, this hardly qualifies as "misery"-inducing (I've seen way worse ... grids that look like a war crime by comparison). Also, was it "miserable" to solve this puzzle? Is that what the puzzle itself is trying to tell me? Also, since when does having to stow my tray table mean I have to stop solving. I have a lap, I'm good. The last themer fails to stick the landing. Very rough. Which is a shame, because as I say, the basic premise is original and clever.

When I first started solving today, I thought the theme was going to have something to do with the weirdly interweaving letter pattern in the NW corner. First three Downs in that corner start AMI, MIN, INF, while the first three Acrosses in that corner also start AMI, MIN, INF. I thought I was losing my mind. "How long can they keep this up?" Not long, it turns out. I don't really have much else to say about this puzzle. It was Monday-easy (if you take the pre-written answers out of the equation). There are no clear trouble spots. If I never see the word INFLUENCER again, it'll be too soon, but I'll probably see it again before the day is up because that is the (stupid) world we live in, so I'm pretty inured to it (3D: Big shot on the internet). Didn't make me fully grimace. More of a half-grimace. Like "Final outcomes," END RESULTS always seems redundant to me, but again, it's a phrase, people say it, whatever, it's fine (31D: Final outcomes). Nothing much else of interest today, but the theme is interesting enough that that's OK. All the grid has to do is be fairly clean, and it was.

Anything else?:

• 58A: E.T. arrived in one (U.F.O.) — E.T. would probably dispute this. Also, when we first see E.T.'s ship, it's very identifiable. It's a giant spaceship. Weird to just use UFO as a synonym for spaceship, since once you know it's a spaceship, the object is, by definition, identified.

• 20D: Letter between "gee" and "eye" (AITCH) — possibly the worst of the written-out letter spellings. At least it was easy to get.
• 55D: "___, meeny, miney, mo" (EENY) — OK, so the fill has some rough patches, but at least this wasn't TEENTSY, amirite?! (man, y'all were real angry about that one).

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]