Onetime capital of the Mughal Empire / THU 9-25-25 / Traveler's aid, familiarly / "Pardon me," in Padua / Anaheim ballplayers / The Chicago Bulls had a pair of them in the 1990s / Shipwreck locales often / Replace the sod of / Property owner subject to a legal claim

Constructor: Jesse Goldberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: SKIM OFF THE TOP (20A: Illegally siphon funds) — you have to "skim" the FIRST TWO LETTERS (52A: What each Down answer needs from its clue in order to make sense) off the "top" (i.e. from the front) of each Down answer. The "skimmed" letters of every Down answer are identical to the first two letters of their respective clues. So, for example, 31D: Determined is ADSET (i.e. (De)ADSET)

Theme answers:

• all the Downs

Word of the Day: (Sh)INOLA (30D: Shoe polish brand) —

Shinola is a defunct American brand of shoe polish. The Shinola Company, founded in Rochester, New York in 1877, as the American Chemical Manufacturing and Mining Company, produced the polish under a sequence of different owners until 1960. "Shinola" was a trade name and trademark for boot polish. The suffix -ola is a popular component of trade names in the United States. It was popular during the first half of the 20th century and entered the American lexicon in the phrase, "You don't know shit from Shinola," meaning to be ignorant. The brand name was acquired by the retail company Shinola in 2011. [...] In 2011, venture capitalist Tom Kartsotis bought the rights to the brand name, and created a new retail company. The company was founded in 2012, and produces watches and leather goods. (wikipedia)

• • •

The SKIM OFF THE TOP bit is kind of cute ("white collar" crime pun!), but otherwise this one was a chore to solve. Not a particularly hard chore, just an unpleasant one. The missing letters aren't doing anything but missing. It was nice to find out (halfway through) that those letters could be found at the beginning of their answer's respective clues, but that just made the rest of the puzzle easier, not more enjoyable. The fill itself is very much on the dull side. LIENEE? (SH)ORTTONS? (RE)TURF?? Almost all the fill is short. None of the Across fill (besides SKIM OFF THE TOP) is interesting, and only a few of the longer Down answers are things I'd enjoy seeing in a regular puzzle (e.g. (ST)RAIGHTEN UP, (ST)EAMER TRUNK, (SH)RUG IT OFF). This was one of those puzzles where I thought, "this is getting tedious, I should just jump to the revealer down at the bottom so I can figure out what's going on," but I resisted and just plowed through until I came to that revealer "naturally" (i.e. without breaking (ST)RIDE, working off crosses the whole way). All I needed was the first few letters and bam ...

From there on out, as I say, the puzzle got a lot easier (because it just handed me the first two letters of every single remaining Down). There are no particularly hard parts in this puzzle, and no answers that really seem worth commenting on. It's a structural stunt with nothing much going for it, entertainment-wise, except SKIM OFF THE TOP; at least that answer involved wordplay. All the other theme business just involved word manipulation. Word chopping. And the revealer couldn't have been less playful if it tried. Literal in the extreme. 

I went through three stages of "understanding" this theme. The first was Wild. I could see that the Down answers wouldn't fit, but I didn't think they were missing—I thought they were contained in rebus squares. I should've known right off the bat that the [Onetime capital of the Mughal Empire] was AGRA (site of the Taj Mahal, as every longtime solver knows), but since I couldn't remember that immediately, I ended up with this insane answer there instead:

Ah yes, who can forget the ancient city of BLAANGSTRSTA! But when [TEM]PEST wouldn't work (because SKIM OFF THE TOP had to be right), I realized I wasn't dealing with three-letter rebus squares, but rather just two missing squares. Could not see how that was interesting, but thought, whatever, and just started solving Downs with the understanding that the first two letters of those answers would be missing. Weirdly, the puzzle was pretty doable despite my not knowing where or what those missing letters were. So first it was a rebus, then it was a "first two letters" missing, then (after the revealer), all was clear—first two letters found, rest of the puzzle easy, and bland. Paint-by-numbers bland.

Anything else?:

• 2D: Anaheim ballplayers ((AN)GELS) — this made me laugh, as many people in the comments section yesterday claimed never to have heard of this team or its abbrev. (LAA). And yet, here they are ... again! (AN)GELS is the "A" in LAA. Side note: LAA has been used as a baseball abbrev. ten times since 2013. In the Shortz Era, it's also been clued two other ways: ["___ note to follow..."] (toughie!), and [When doubled, one of the Teletubbies] 
• 15A: "Pardon me," in Padua ("SCUSI") — I wrote this in as "SCUSE" as you can see in that first partial grid I posted, above. I watch a lot of Italian films, but since the subtitles are obviously English, I don't get a chance to see how any of the Italian is spelled.

• 16A: Home of Minor League Baseball's SeaWolves (more than 350 miles from the ocean!) (ERIE) — this clue is weird. It seems to think it's doing some kind of "gotcha" or pointing out some apparent irony, but ERIE is on a Great Lake (guess which one!), and the Great Lakes have long been called "the inland seas." "Because of their sea-like characteristics, such as rolling waves, sustained winds, strong currents, great depths, and distant horizons, the five Great Lakes have long been called inland seas" (wikipedia). So since ERIE is on one of said "inland seas," the SeaWolves seems like a highly appropriate name, actually. They're not called the damned OceanWolves, after all.
• 26D: Traveler's aid, familiarly ((TR)IPLE A) — absolutely not. It's AAA. You say "(TR)IPLE A," but it's written exclusively as AAA. I will give you (TR)IPLE A as a baseball answer ((TR)IPLE A is the class of baseball just before the majors) (the SeaWolves are DOUBLE-A). Baseball and [Top credit rating], and [Narrow show width] are the only ways (TR)IPLE A has ever been clued ... before today. 
• 40D: The Chicago Bulls had a pair of them in the 1990s ((TH)REEPEATS) — when you win the championship three times in a row (for the Bulls, '91-93 and '96-'98) (Jordan took time off in between to try to play baseball; he made it as far as ... DOUBLE-A)
• 55D: Shipwreck locales often ((SH)OALS) — one of the few Down answers where knowing the first two letters didn't give the whole answer away. Had to wait for crosses here to make sure it wasn't (SH)ORES (which seemed plausible).

That's it. See you next time. Oh, and Happy 19th birthday to ... this blog! Although, technically ... though the Monday, Sep. 25, 2006 puzzle was the first one I ever blogged, I didn't blog it until Wednesday the 27th, LOL. Timely! Literally no one read that post, as no one knew the blog existed (how could they?). Anyway, that first post is an experimental mess written by someone with no expectation of an audience. You can "enjoy" it here—Lynn Lempel! (the comments on that first write-up are particularly hilarious)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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