Creature with over 200 tiny eyes along its shell / FRI 4-11-25 / Music genre that's experimental yet radio-friendly / Certain ephemeral social media post, informally / Makings of some homemade pipes / "Sort by" option in a credit card history / How Romeo dies, in the eyes of the audience / Simple question written with two question marks / Fitting name for a girl born in October

Constructor: Jesse Guzman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: step (in music) (31A: It's one step down from an F = E FLAT) —

In the language of music theory, a step is the distance between notes of different pitches. A half step, or semitone, is the smallest interval between notes in Western music. Notes that are directly next to each other—such as E and F, or A sharp and B—are a half step apart. Two half steps equal one whole step. The notes G and A are one whole step apart, as are the notes B flat and C. (masterclass.com)

• • •

Solid but a bit flat. Is the puzzle IRONICALLY flat if it opens with COCA-COLAS? (1A: Some pops). There just weren't enough pleasing marquee answers today. Again, it's all fine, but I don't think I ever smiled or said "nice!" while I was solving. Well, I take that back; I definitely smiled at least once, not because of something that was in the puzzle, but because of something that was not in the puzzle, something I wrote in the grid that was absurdly, ridiculously wrong. It may be the dumbest wrong answer of all time. I dare you to beat it for dumbness. I had the SEAS- at the beginning of 9D: Creature with over 200 tiny eyes along its shell and wrote in SEA SERPENT (a dumb answer, to be sure, but not the dumb answer I'm talking about); thankfully, it didn't take me long to realize that SEA SERPENTs, in addition to being maybe fictional (?!), is almost certainly shell-less. So I left that answer and came back to it. When I came back to it, I had the -ALLO- part, and after a split second of wanting SEA SWALLOW, whatever that is, I thought "oh, no, it's the seafood thing, the thing you never order at restaurants ... what's it called? ... oh yeah, shallot! It's SEA SHALLOT! (it was not, in fact, SEA SHALLOT, as a shallot is a kind of onion, as you likely know). In my defense, a shallot is roughly the size of a scallop (I'm just kidding, I have no defense, I plead insanity). 

[fearsome ... so many eyes ...]

I also wrote in ALT RAP instead of ALT POP (43D: Music genre that's experimental yet radio-friendly), which is not that great a wrong answer, but in its defense, all wrong answers are going to pale before SEA SHALLOT. Between SEA SHALLOT and ALT RAP, that's 90% of the difficulty I experienced today, and I think we can all agree, that difficulty was entirely (and extremely anomalously) self-imposed. I didn't know SNAP had STORYs, I thought just CHATs, so I needed some crosses there (59A: Certain ephemeral social media post, informally), and I whiffed at my first pass at the GROUP / BUN area (the only GRO- word that came to mind for [Party] was GROOVE, and having had no hair on my head to speak of since 2010 when I shaved it all off, I am not up on the latest BUN technology. I've got MAN BUN and then ... nothing. "Messy," you say? Cool). 

Who is making pipes out of COBS? (1D: Makings of some homemade pipes). This feels folksy/mythical. "Some homemade pipes"? Besides Frosty the Snowman, who is smoking these? COBS could have been more ... relatably clued. Corn cores! Male swans! "A crudely struck old Spanish coin of irregular shape"! "A stocky short-legged riding horse"! OK, don't use those last two, they're pretty obscure, I only looked them up just now, but ... something non-pipe-ish! The plural brands kind of soured me on this one early. COCA-COLAS was tolerable, but when you chase it almost immediately with GI JOES, now we've entered a realm of plural unpleasantness—pluralizing brand names that are not normally pluralized. And while you might say GI JOES, you'd never say COCA-COLAS, you'd say COKES (if you pluralized it at all). A whole lot of other plurals follow, OCEANS and SLAM POETS and PAEANS and TUTUS and RESALES and SEXAHOLICS ... speaking of, who uses that term? It feels like what sex addiction might've been called in the '70s/'80s. back when we were -aholic'ing everything. Remember "chocoholic?" I think that answer is supposed to be fun and fresh, but it felt odd and dated to me. Some of the mid-range stuff was fun today: "I'LL WAIT..." and DARKEST and DEAD LAST, those all hold up. But overall there's just not enough SPARK in this one, for me, for a Friday.

Bullets:

• 2D: Fitting name for a girl born in October (OPAL) — October's birthstone
• 15A: Richard Nixon or Mao Zedong, in a 1987 premiere (OPERA ROLE) — look at me, remembering that Nixon in China was an opera. I did not remember that it was by John Adams, but I remembered it, somehow.

• 20A: Like Iceland's weather most of the year (WINDY) — tried to cram WINTRY in here.
• 31A: It's one step down from an F (E FLAT) — I ignorantly took "step" to mean "a single key away on the keyboard" and so couldn't figure out how I would be on a black key. One piano key down from F is E. But one "step" (as defined, above) is two keys, taking me (you, us) to E FLAT.
• 57A: Simple question written with two question marks ("¿COMO ESTAS?") — so "simple" that even I, a non-Spanish speaker, got it pretty easily. The "two question marks" is a dead giveaway for Spanish, and "¿COMO ESTAS?" is the first question that pops to mind when I think of Spanish questions (which is not often, but ... here we are!)
• 4D: One into modeling at school (ART MAJOR) — not sure I get this. Obviously the people who pose for art class, those models, are not (necessarily) ART MAJORs. Is this a reference to ... sculpting? Or are ART MAJORs "into" modeling because they ... paint (or sculpt) ... from models? Seems like a misdirection attempt gone slightly awry here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sea to hunt the Great Onion Leviathan, the SEA SHALLOT, on my onioning ship, The Leekquod). 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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