Flamenco guitarist ___ de Lucía / MON 7-7-25 / Mantra for many foodies / Long-running student quiz show / One might read "FASTCAR" / Singer Clark with the 1965 #1 hit "Downtown"

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. normal Monday) (solved Downs-only)

THEME: STILL ON THE TABLE (58A: Not yet decided ... or an "artful" description for the last words of 17-, 27- and 45-Across) — the last words of the themers are all things one might find on a table ... and in a still life painting??? (I honestly don't know what "STILL" and "artful" have to do with anything at this point)

Theme answers:

• STARTING PITCHER (17A: Player facing the leadoff batter)
• VANITY PLATE (27A: One might read "FASTCAR")
• COLLEGE BOWL (45A: Long-running student quiz show)

Word of the Day: PACO de Lucía (34D: Flamenco guitarist ___ de Lucía) —

[this guy looks cool as hell, god bless the '70s] 

Francisco Sánchez Gómez (Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ˈsantʃeθ ˈɣomeθ]; 21 December 1947 – 25 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía (Spanish: [ˈpako ðe luˈθi.a]), was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flamenco guitarists to branch into classical and jazz. Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar", and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists".

De Lucía was noted for his fast and fluent picados (fingerstyle runs). A master of contrast, he often juxtaposed picados and rasgueados (flamenco strumming) with more sensitive playing and was known for adding abstract chords and scale tones to his compositions with jazz influences. These innovations saw him play a key role in the development of traditional flamenco and the evolution of new flamenco and Latin jazz fusion from the 1970s. He received acclaim for his recordings with flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla in the 1970s, recording ten albums which are considered some of the most important and influential in flamenco history. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not a fan of this one, mainly because the revealer didn't really land for me. That is, I was left uncertain about what the puzzle was trying to do. I'm assuming, at this point, that the "artful" part of the revealer clue means that we are supposed to think about "STILL" in an art context, i.e. as a reference to still-life paintings, which frequently contain tables, on which might be found the items at the ends of the theme answers: pitchers, plates, bowls. It's just that still-life paintings contain so much more than dishware. There are usually lots and lots of things "on the table"—fruit, flowers ... dead animals of various kinds? Hang on, let me try to find a famous one. OK, here's Cézanne killing it with those peaches and pears

And Manet getting fishy with it

And ... lord knows what Braque is doing here ... I think maybe there's a violin in there somewhere (?)

The point is, some of these do indeed have pitchers or plates or bowls, but "bowl" and "plate" in particular don't feel definitely still-lifey. There's so much more to the still life. Also, you kind of have to connect the dots to get to the concept of still life at all from the available evidence. The revealer should land perfectly, like a pow, ta-da, clarifying all, in (ideally) a clever way. Today's revealer didn't really do that, so much as I love art in my puzzle themes, this one left me a little cold. 

The Downs-only solve was fairly easy and relatively uneventful, despite there being a couple of names that registered a "0" on the "Familiar To Me" scale. The first was Michelle AKERS, who is one of the greatest women soccer players of all time. FIFA's Female Player of the Century (the 20th century, that is). So why can't I remember her name? Very frustrating. Possibly because women's soccer's popularity in this country didn't really get going in earnest until the late '90s (or so my hazy memory tells me). This is her fifth time in the NYTXW, the third since '06 (when I started blogging), so I can't say I haven't seen her name. But I can say that I keep forgetting it. No question of her puzzleworthiness. It's just ... maybe if her name were more crossword-friendly (hello, MIA HAMM!), it would stick. The other name that I didn't know—and someone who is also a legend in his field—is PACO de Lucía. This is his third NYTXW appearance, but it's been 24 years since he's been in the puzzle (designer PACO Rabanne is still the PACO leader at four appearances—before Shortz, PACO used to be clued as a kind of ore (4 times) or as another word for "alpaca" (once)). I'm just glad the letters in PACO were eventually inferable—indisputable—because his name could easily have killed me. 

No other sticking points, though. Wasn't sure about the [Japanese computer brand] at first. Thought maybe ... ACER? ASUS? But those are Taiwanese. SONY is Japanese, but far more than a "computer brand." Eventually, VANITY PLATE gave me the "V" for VAIO. Had some trouble inferring the STILL part of STILL ON THE TABLE, and (relatedly) couldn't come up with EASEL for a bit (after TRIPOD, I couldn't not think of a [Three-legged support]). Still, I was never in danger of non-completion, so maybe I should've rated this something closer to Easy. Whatever. On Mondays, it's hard to differentiate Challenging from Medium from Easy. For me, it's a matter of 30 seconds one way or the other.

More stuff:

• 27A: One might read "FASTCAR" (VANITY PLATE) — that's the best example you could think of for a VANITY PLATE??? That's pretty weak. At least be imaginative or funny. This one doesn't even play with missing letters or numbers-as-letters or anything. To get at the real spirit of the VANITY PLATE, you gotta go big (and, if possible, dumb, or at least ill-advised):

• 43D: "OK, that's enough out of me, sorry" ("I'LL STOP") — this is probably the most inventive thing in the grid. A very real colloquial phrase that I can't remember seeing in the puzzle before ... yep, sure enough, it's a debut. It's amazing that after so many years and so many puzzles, there are still little phrases like this out there to be discovered and deployed.
• 46D: Kaplan of "Welcome Back Kotter" (GABE) — lot of names in this one, and they tend to skew old. Solidly 20th-century, anyway. I grew up in what historians now call the Peak Kaplan Era, which extends from the start of Welcome Back Kotter (1975) to the release of legendary Kaplan-starring basketball comedy Fast Break (1979), which I'm quite sure I saw in the theater (age 10). There are lots of interesting things about that movie (like ... how? and ... why?) but perhaps the most interesting (to me, right now, at this very second) is that it featured the hit song "With You I'm Born Again" by Billy Preston and Syreeta. Talk about transcending your origins. If you are my age or older and paid attention to pop music, you probably know the song, but even I didn't remember it originated in a 1979 GABE Kaplan basketball comedy.

That's it. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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