Like some colors or Zoom users / WED 4-16-25 / Doing some breakfast shopping? / Delicacy in France and China / Neutrogena shampoo with a slash in its name / Sugary bulk breakfast purchase? / "You did a ___ job raisin me!" (punny Mother's Day card line) / Form of solitaire won when only the four highest cards remain / Old long-haul hwy. from Detroit to Seattle

Constructor: Kathy Bloomer

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging 

THEME: CEREALS AISLES (23D: Places to find items at the ends of 4-, 8- and 14-Down) — ordinary phrases turned into cereal puns:

Theme answers:

• ENDORSED CHEX (4D: Came out in favor of a certain breakfast product?)
• GETTING ONE'S KIX (14D: Doing some breakfast shopping?)
• WHOLE BAG OF TRIX (8D: Sugary bulk breakfast purchase?)

Word of the Day: "A Drop of Nelson's Blood" (60A: "Nelson's blood" = RUM) —

"A Drop of Nelson's Blood" is a sea shanty, also known as "Roll the old chariot along" (Roud No. 3632) The origins are unclear, but the title comes from the line: "A drop of Nelson's blood wouldn't do us any harm". Often described as a "walkaway" or "runaway chorus" or "stamp and go" sea shanty, the song features on the soundtrack of the 2019 film Fisherman's Friends. The chorus comes from the 19th century Salvation Army hymn, 'Roll the old chariot'.

Each line is sung three times and describes something that the singing sailors would miss while at sea for a long time. The last line is always "And we'll all hang on behind", although some versions say "we won't drag on behind". // Following his victory and death at the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson's body was preserved in a cask of brandy or rum for transport back to England. Though when news of Nelson's death and return to British soil reached the general public, people either 1. argued rum would've been the better alternative or 2. wrongly assumed the body was preserved in rum to begin with. ‘Nelson's blood' became a nickname for rum, but it can also mean Nelson's spirit or bravery.

The shanty was sung to accompany certain work tasks aboard sailing ships, especially those that required a bright walking pace. Although Nelson is mentioned in the title, there is no evidence that the shanty dates from the time of Nelson, who died in 1805. (wikipedia)

• • •

This played so slow for me, for a Wednesday. It's possible I just didn't get enough sleep—it's always possible I just didn't get enough sleep—and some of it also might be a general wavelength mismatch. But I think some of it is that the concept, and particularly the editing, is just a bit ... off. So many things about the theme just don't quite work. I'll start with the revealer, which ... again, it's DEF possible that I'm missing something, but I don't see how the AISLES part of CEREAL AISLES connects to these answers. Specifically, what does it have to do with the fact they all end in "X." The "X" part feels like a really important feature of the theme, but how does AISLES get me there? How does AISLES get me anywhere? Is the fact that the answers are Downs related? But then ... why couldn't AISLES just as easily run Across? Not getting the connection between Down-ness and aisle-ness. AISLES ... isles? ... I'm stumped. There must be something here, something to make that revealer a real bullseye, but I just can't see it. If there's some element I'm missing, please let me know.

I was having so much trouble with the back ends of the themers that I jumped to the revealer just to see what was going on, and while I got CEREAL easily enough, I couldn't figure out the next part. I wanted AISLE, singular, since that is certainly where you'd find all these cereals (in one AISLE), so AISLES seemed slightly preposterous. And even after getting the CEREAL part, I still found the 2nd and 3rd themers hard, first because there is nothing KIX-specific about that GETTING ONE'S KIX clue—you could be buying annnnnything—and parsing ONE'S KIX was brutal. I was like "GETTING ON ...  in years? GETTING ... One-A-Day? No, that's a vitamin..." And then WHOLE BAG OF TRIX???? I think this answer is confusing "bag of tricks" with "whole ball of wax." I can't remember hearing "whole" before "bag of tricks" before. "Whole bag of tricks" just didn't resonate with me. And then "endorsed checks" ... let's just say there are snappier phrases (side note: before I understood the cereal-specific nature of the theme, I had ENDORSED EGGO here, lol). "Getting one's kicks" is by far the best base phrase. The others, I dunno. There's a weird glitch in the cluing too (this is an editing problem): why is "Sugary" in the Trix clue? The other clues mention absolutely nothing specific about the cereals in question—they're just "breakfast" products. But, randomly, "Sugary" just gets thrown in there in the Trix clue. This is a sloppy inconsistency. The clue should just be [Bulk breakfast purchase] or the other clues should have elements that describe the cereals' specific features (Chex's squareness? Kix's sphericalness? ... something!). This inconsistency didn't hamper my solving enjoyment, exactly, but the editor / test-solver in me found it irksome, for sure.

As for the fill, it's not great, but it's not awful either. My problems were small but frequent. Neutrogena makes a T/SAL shampoo, so T/GEL was a rough kealoa* for me (3D: Neutrogena shampoo with a slash in its name). Speaking of kealoas ... hey, look, the locus classicus! The namesake clue! Right here in the puzzle: 16A: Mauna ___ (KEA). Ironically, there was no confusion for me today: I got it easily because I didn't even look at the clue until I had -EA in the grid. Back to my difficulties ... [Gag costume] could've been annnnything, so I needed many crosses to parse APESUIT. Never heard of "Nelson's blood" (though glad now to know it—see Word of the Day, above). Got totally flummoxed by I AM / HANG (43D: Words of affirmation / 46A: Word before tight or time). Just ... dead-stopped. I had I DO / HOLD. "I DO" seemed like definite [Words of affirmation] and "Hold tight" and "hold time" both seemed like legit phrases to me—your "hold time" is the amount of time you spend on "hold" before a customer service rep gets to you, isn't it?—ha, yes, it is! Moving on ... that GRAPE clue, oof, no hope (40D: "You did a ___ job raisin me!" (punny Mother's Day card line)). I can't imagine why in the world you would get your mom such a card? Does the card have a ... grape on it? A raisin? Are you from Fresno, the raisin capital of the world? Well, I am from Fresno, the Raisin Capital of the World, and I didn't see the "raisin" / GRAPE pun. Crazy. (Also, apologies to Selma, CA, a much smaller neighbor of Fresno, which I think is actually, officially, the "Raisin Capital of the World" ... am I remembering that correctly? ... [looks it up] ... wow, it's true ... the things you retain from childhood ...)

Further notes:

• 1A: Like some colors or Zoom users (MUTED) — clever, but very tough clue to start on. Needed many crosses.
• 34A: Form of solitaire won when only the four highest cards remain (ACES UP) — no idea. None. Never heard of it. Another reason the puzzle just played slow to me. I ended up with ANESUP here because of 27D: Fella (MAC), which I had entered as MAN. 
• 62A: Files taxes in June, perhaps (IS LATE) — very bad fill (random "IS + adjective" phrases? You can do that?). The attempt to cover up the badness with timeliness (tax day was yesterday) was noble but ultimately doomed.

• 21A: General Mills brand (TOTAL) — I guess this is supposed to be a wink at the theme (??) but it feels less winky, more sloppy. You've got a cereal theme, so keep cereals out of the rest of the grid. Or, if you're going to wink, really wink. This seems pretty half-hearted, as winks go.
• 55D: Products with peak sales before Easter, say (DYES) — another attempt at timeliness (it's Easter Week, after all), but surely DYES is a woefully partial answer for this clue. It's EGG DYES. To have this answer just be DYES is ... weak. There are lots of DYES in the world, DYES whose sales are in now way tied to Easter.  Hair DYES, for instance. Also, why is "say" in this clue? Again, the editing logic eludes me here.
• 69A: Old long-haul hwy. from Detroit to Seattle (US TEN) — why is it "old?" Does it not exist any more? It got clued as "old" back in '09, but it's appeared six more times since then without the "old" ... and now we get the "old" again. Confusing. Looks like US TEN (which no one but no one writes that way, it's US 10) is "no longer a cross-country highway, and it never was a full coast-to-coast route. US 10 was one of the original long-haul highways, running from Detroit, Michigan, to Seattle, Washington, but then lost much of its length when new Interstate Highways were built on top of its right-of-way." The wikipedia entry itself wavers between "is" and "was" for this highway, so the full highway, from Det. to Sea., doesn't exist any more, but some part of it still does? Yes, that appears to be what's up—the current incarnation runs only from Bay City, MI, to Fargo, ND.

That’s all. 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.    

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