Wellness product derived from an Australian bird / SUN 5-25-25 / Spot of madness, metaphorically / Melittologist's study / Battle of Normandy city / Spot of madness, metaphorically / Mammals with prehensile feet / Compound used to make synthetic rubber / Leathery-skinned hopper / Coatrack, in many a lodge

Constructor: Dylan Schiff

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Travel Bug" — answers "travel" through WORMHOLES (69A: Theoretical paths depicted by the circled squares), in two senses of the term: first, the answers enter the wormhole (i.e. the circled square) and then reemerge from a different such hole in the rotationally symmetrical position (i.e. on the other side of the grid); second, the wormholes themselves are rebus squares, and each of the three pairs contains a different kind of "worm" (INCHworm, BOOKworm, EARworm):

Theme answers:

• BRAINCHILD / STAYINGINCHARACTER (30A: Inventor's pride / 110A: Not breaking, as an actor)
• "WHO'SINCHARGE?" / BORNAGAINCHRISTIAN (3D: "Can I speak to your manager?" / 67D: Many an evangelical)
• OPENBOOKTEST / MACBOOKAIR (28A: Exam in which using notes is allowed / 115A: Lightweight Apple laptop)
• PREBOOKING / FACEBOOKPOST (15D: Making hotel reservations in advance / 90D: Certain social media update)
• ESCAPEARTIST / RICEARONI (43A: Harry Houdini and David Blaine, for two / 97A: Brand known as "The San Francisco Treat")
• "IHEARYA!" / AREARUG (33D: "Ain't that the truth!" / 85D: Floor covering in many a living room)

Word of the Day: EMU OIL (77A: Wellness product derived from an Australian bird) —

Emu oil is an oil derived from body fat harvested from certain subspecies of the emu, Dromaius novaehollandiae, a flightless bird indigenous to Australia.

Unadulterated emu oil can vary widely in colour and viscosity anywhere from an off-white creamy texture to a thin yellow liquid, depending on the diet of the emu and the refining method(s) used. Industrially refined emu oil is composed of a minimum of 70% unsaturated fatty acids. The largest component is oleic acid, a monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid. Emu oil also contains roughly 20% linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid) and 1–2% linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid). Fully refined emu oil has a bland flavour.

Emu oil has previously been wrongly promoted as a dietary supplement with the claim it can treat a variety of human ailments, including cancer and arthritis. (wikipedia) ["wrongly promoted as a dietary supplement with the claim that it can treat a variety of human ailments" is a longer way of saying "wellness"]

• • •

["The Son of Man," RENÉ Magritte (13D)] 

I've seen a version of this theme before*—answer goes into a (worm)hole and then comes out another (worm)hole elsewhere in the grid—but the Actual Worm twist is new, and clever. But for me this was yet another puzzle that is far more impressive as a feat of architecture than it was entertaining to solve. A very, very "Look what I did!"—one that is meant to be admired after the fact, but that wasn't so very fun to solve. Having to move clear across the grid every time I wanted to enter a theme answer ... and then having all the  theme answers look like nonsense as entered ... all this rig(a)marole ultimately took its toll on me as a solver. I found it wearisome. I am intrigued, I will say, by the answers that actually end up in the grid, and wish there had been some way to tap into their wackiness. I mean, ESCAPE-A-RONI!? Now that's wacky. How about [Rice-and-pasta dish that'll give you the energy to bust out of Alcatraz?]? Something like that. I guess the other "wacky" hybrid phrases don't quite rise to such wackiness heights, but I'm definitely having more fun thinking about how I might clue something like "WHO'S IN CHRISTIAN?" (!?) than I had actually solving the puzzle in real time. The colors of the squares were arbitrary and ultimately meaningless (i.e. there's no specific meaning to "pink" or "yellow" or "blue," they're just being used to differentiate the pairs from one another). Because the paired squares are symmetrical, I don't think you really need the colors at all, but I guess they are helpful to people who are truly baffled by the concept here, and if nothing else they liven things up, visually. Leaving the colors out would've made this puzzle at least somewhat harder. But maybe with an already complicated concept, you don't want to add layers of difficulty, which would only drag an already potentially unpleasant experience. The fact that the WORMHOLES are also rebus squares containing types of worms—that is applause-worthy, for sure. Museum-quality stuff. I definitely had an "aha" and "nice" moment when I figured that part out. But all the shuffling back and forth ultimately wore me down and tired me out.

Another problem with the puzzle, for me, was that you could really feel the "giant uncurated wordlist" quality of the fill. Like, why would you ever go for something like WATER GAS (?) (9D: Mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen) or ISOPRENE (122A: Compound used to make synthetic rubber) or for god's sake EMU OIL??? I am happy to concede ISOPRENE, despite its manifest ugliness, because it's got some grid precedence (fourth NYTXW appearance in all time) and seems like it's probably a real enough thing, but WATER GAS and EMU OIL are debuts For A Reason. Who'd want them? Ick. Anything that has to be clued with "Wellness" is not well-come in my grid. "Wellness?" Tell that to the emu. EMU OIL is the new snake oil. Bah. Overall, though, the grid felt fairly smooth and nonirksome. My print-out is hardly marked up at all, which suggests that aside from the answers I just mentioned, and a ridiculous lot of "answers ending prepositions" (DRILLED IN, ACT ON, ICE IN, NEED TO, RID OF, GAGS ON), there wasn't much that was truly bugging me. I feel I should charge MISS A CUE with an "EAT A SANDWICH"-type violation, but MISS A CUE actually works as a standalone phrase, so ... not guilty. 

Before I got the theme, this puzzle played very hard, and very weird. Lots and lots of fumbling to understand the theme-affected answers in the NW. Totally inscrutable and semi-maddening. At some point, I could see that the circled square up there, the blue one, was going to be an "INCH" rebus, but even with that information, I was getting nothing but gibberish. The answers couldn't go through the circled square, and they didn't turn at a ninety-degree angle, as some theme answers have been known to do, so ... pfft. Here's how far I got before the penny finally dropped: 

Note the WATER___ answer, because, as I say, WATERGAS, WTF? Also note the early mistake of PUT for LAY (68A: Set (down)). You know I'm getting at least a little desperate when I break connectivity and just start trying to throw anything I can at the grid. I also kept reading 40A: Going on to say as [Going to say] and could think of no -ING word that would work there. But the theme breakthrough was a real turning point. Just after the above-pictured moment in the solve, I unfurled all four themers, which really broke the grid open, and I was off. I like that even after I "got" the structural gimmick, there was yet another element of the theme still to discover, i.e. why "INCH"? And what are the other colors going to be? Even though I would've described the circled squares as "WORMHOLES," I hadn't yet gotten to the revealer, nor really thought the concept through. So the connection among INCH, EAR, and BOOK was a nice discovery. And EAR and BOOK were a hell of a lot easier to uncover than INCH was, that's for sure. But that's typical theme stuff. The first one's always the hardest.

More stuff:

• 25A: Melittologist's study (BEES) — how is the study of BEES not something like APIOLOGIST. Puzzles made me learn APIAN ... but somehow the relevant -OLOGY has a totally different root? Aha! Turns out "Melittology" can, and I quote, "also be called apiology or apicology" (wikipedia). I feel (a little) better. Weirdly I had both BREW and BEER as the answer here, at different points (it was BREW when I thought SABER was SABRE :( (1D: Fencing discipline)). 
• 35A: Search around, as a truffle-hunting pig (ROOTLE) — when I went to bed last night after solving (on Sundays I solve the night before and then do most of my writing in the morning), my wife was solving the puzzle on her clipboard, and the first thing she said when she was done and I asked her how it went was "... ROOTLE?" It's a word I think we both recognize, but it is also a profoundly silly word, particularly if you are not a truffle-hunting pig.
• 82A: "Hang loose" sign (SHAKA) — I learned this term from crosswords. In case this "sign" is unfamiliar to you: "The shaka sign, sometimes known as "hang loose", is a gesture with friendly intent often associated with Hawaii and surf culture" (wikipedia). It looks like this:

• 106A: Battle of Normandy city (CAEN) — sometimes having solved crosswords for over three decades really comes in handy. CAEN is a place name I carry with me from the bad old days, when four-letter geographical obscurities ran roughshod over the grid. In the pre-Shortz days, you'd get six or seven CAENs a year some years. Shortz brought that number down pretty fast, to about 1.5 appearances a year, on average. Today is the first CAEN appearance in close to two years. 
• 130A: Spot of madness, metaphorically (DEEP END) — I know this "metaphor" only from the phrase "go off the DEEP END." It's a weird metaphor. If you can swim ... the DEEP END of the pool is not a place of madness. In fact, it's the only place you can dive safely. Maybe the metaphor came from a non-swimming people.
• 70D: Best place to go in London? (LOO) — I get why this is a "place to go," but "Best?" What's ... next best? An alley? Your pants? What's the worst? Please don't answer.
• 80D: What disbudding prevents the growth of (HORN) — so many ways you might clue HORN, and you went with... the maiming of animals for farming purposes? Why would you do this? Again, I direct your attention to the literally infinite more pleasant ways to clue HORN.

• 121D: "Miracle" product from inventor Joy Mangano (MOP) — what are we doing here? Did Joy Mangano (whoever that is) pay for product placement? It's MOP. As with HORN, billions of cluing opportunities. Come on. Make better choices. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*turns out there was a Fireball Crosswords puzzle with this *exact* theme (worm rebus and all) that came out a little over four years ago, constructed by Jordan Hildebrandt. That doesn't diminish today's puzzle—two different people come up with the same theme ideas independently from one another all the time. I'm just happy to receive confirmation that I had, in fact, seen something like this before (at least once).

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