Leisurely evening walk / SUN 11-23-25 / Mortal mother of Dionysus / Sargasso Sea quartet / Reminiscent of a certain French author's work / Like many of Horace's works / Number of ancient kings in pre-Republic Rome / Actress Conn who played Frenchy in "Grease" / Contrarian in a nursery rhyme / Canine frenemy of Garfield / Metaphorical place of indecision

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Second in Command" — familiar phrases where the second letter of one of the words has been moved to the first ("command"?) position, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):

Theme answers:

• SPANISH RAMADA (20A: Certain vacation booking in Madrid?) (from "Spanish Armada")
• OCTILLION DRESSES (28A: Billions and billions of boutique items?) (from "cotillion dresses")
• ACME TO THE RESCUE (44A: What Wile E. Coyote thinks before his new purchase backfires?) (from "came to the rescue")
• DANCING WITH THE TSARS (63A: Activity for a nimble-footed noble in Imperial Russia?) (from Dancing With the Stars)
• EGOCENTRIC MODEL (79A: Figure who might say "Look at me on the cover of all these fashion magazines!"?) (from "geocentric model")
• LESSER OF TWO VEILS (96A: What bridesmaids might point out as the inferior choice while shopping?) (from "lesser of two evils")
• UNCLEAR POTION (109A: Contents of a murky cauldron? (twice!)) (from "nuclear option")

Word of the Day: SEMELE (89D: Mortal mother of Dionysus) —

In Greek mythology, Semele (/ˈsɛmɪli/; Ancient Greek: Σεμέλη, romanized: Semélē), or Thyone (/θaɪˈoʊni/; Ancient Greek: Θυώνη, romanized: Thyṓnē), was the youngest daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus (her-own great-grandfather). [...] In one version of the myth, Semele was a priestess of Zeus, and on one occasion was observed by Zeus as she slaughtered a bull at his altar and afterwards swam in the river Asopus to cleanse herself of the blood. Flying over the scene in the guise of an eagle, Zeus fell in love with Semele and repeatedly visited her secretly.

Zeus's wife, Hera, a goddess jealous of usurpers, discovered his affair with Semele when she later became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her lover was actually Zeus. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semele's mind. Curious, Semele asked Zeus to grant her a boon. Zeus, eager to please his beloved, promised on the River Styx to grant her anything she wanted. She then demanded that Zeus reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his divinity. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he was forced by his oath to comply. Zeus tried to spare her by showing her the smallest of his bolts and the sparsest thunderstorm clouds he could find. Mortals, however, cannot look upon the gods without incinerating, and she perished, consumed in a lightning-ignited flame.

Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus, however, by sewing him into his thigh (whence the epithet Eiraphiotes, 'insewn', of the Homeric Hymn). A few months later, Dionysus was born. This leads to his being called "the twice-born". (wikipedia)

• • •

Some of these are kind of funny, I guess, but it feels a bit thin, as theme concepts go, and the fill ... I dunno, it just hasn't shined the way it ought to of late. Once again, I didn't even make it out of the NW before I was audibly groaning at the crumminess. This is a gruesome welcoming committee: ODIE ETH DER OPART TROU (have I mentioned how much I hate the answer TROU? It's a thing with me—that answer is my mortal enemy. My nemesis. I want to smash it every time I see it. I have never heard  / seen it outside crosswords, and every time I imagine someone using it it makes me angry; all the contexts in which one might use it seem juvenile and also Extremely Dated. I hate TROU more than is warranted, I grant you; sometimes certain answers just ggrrate). And then there's the GAMGEE / PASEO crossing, which is quite awful (23A: Samwise ___, companion of Frodo Baggins / 4D: Leisurely evening walk). PASEO is (again) a word I've never seen outside crosswords—extremely uncommon, likely to be unknown to many solvers. I think it was a Toyota model a while back (??) ... Yes! 1991-99. Can't believe I remembered that. Anyway, Samwise GAMGEE will be a gimme for many, but honestly I wanted to spell it GAMGES (like the Ganges?), and so I had PASSO as my [Leisurely evening walk], and it seemed plausible. I mean, "pas" means "step" in Fr., so ... sure, why not? Luckily my brain kicked in with PASEO at some point, and yeah, GAMGEE looked better than GAMGES, so I went with that, and was right. Still—that is one ugly crossing. And again, I haven't made it out of the NW corner yet at this point.

[42D: Metaphorical place of indecision]

I don't really know what an "octillion" is (besides a very large number). Apparently it is 1027 ; unless you're in Britain, in which case it's 1048; at any rate, not a number I use or hear often. But it works quite well with this theme, so why not? Looking these themers over, they are maybe mildly chuckle-worthy, but not much funnier than that. More "I see what you did there" than [genuine laugh]. I think the closest thing to a laugh any of these got from me was SPANISH RAMADA. I even chuckled a little just now. There's something so ... anticlimactic about it. So deflated. The once proud SPANISH RAMADA reduced to a mere SPANISH RAMADA. But the rest ... shrug. They're fine, they work, but they really gotta be funny to hold up over a whole 21x21 grid, and these just aren't up to the task. The fact that the fill is less than stellar means that the whole puzzle comes in on the mildly disappointing side.

There are some nice moments here and there. "HOW TRUE" and EXOTICA right-angling into SUCCEEDED and TRIASSIC PERIOD, that was a fun bit. I also like MADAME TUSSAUD'S—had a bit of a spelling adventure there, as my first pass at that answer ended up looking like MADAM TOUSSAUD'S. This made gibberish of two of the crosses, and luckily I noticed, because it made gibberish of only two of the crosses. A bigger mistake would've been obvious pretty quickly, but a mere two-letter mistake in a fourteen-letter answer I could easily have missed, esp. if the crosses had looked anything near plausible. No real tough parts today besides that PASEO / GAMGEE part. I balked at both THE EYE (?) (82D: A dirty look) and OUTFACE (!?) (54D: Stare down), two countenance-related answers that felt ... off. You give someone the ___ eye. Maybe evil eye, or stink eye? If you give someone THE EYE, sans qualifier, you're looking at them romantically. Flirtatiously. Or maybe outright ogling them. I don't hear the phrase a lot but if I do hear it, that's the context. Merriam-Webster's dot com has one definition of "give (someone) THE EYE": "to look at (someone) in a way that shows sexual attraction." As for OUTFACE ... huh. Are you giving them THE EYE when you do this? Sounds like you have more face than the other person. Or a better face. This is apparently a real word, but since Merriam-Webster's dot com doesn't provide any examples from around the web, I'm guessing it doesn't get used much. Its rarity is semi-confirmed by the fact that today is OUTFACE's NYTXW debut (!). Not all debuts warrant congratulations.

Bullets:

• 32D: Like many of Horace's works (ODIC) — my fingers leapt to write ODES, but then my brain was like "whoa whoa whoa ... sorry, fellows, but you're gonna have to write ODIC ... I know, I know, it's awful, but it says 'Like many of Horace's works,' not 'Many of Horace's works,' so it's gotta be an adjective." My fingers were then tortured into writing more unpleasant things, like IAMSO, OXO, RONI and CANI, one right after the other. A truly awful patch. The opposite of a soul patch. A soulless patch.
• 35D: Strengths (POTENCIES) — can you pluralize that word? I guess so. Marijuana strains have different POTENCIES. OK, I just needed context. I'm good now.
• 102A: Naked ___ jaybird (ASA) — I know this isn't clued as a person's name (ASA Butterfield, for example, or [Botanist Gray], that used to be a favorite), but if you imagine it as a personal name, then you have a nice little foursome in that row: ASA, MARY, REY, and TRISHA
• 72D: Reminiscent of a certain French author's work (ZOLAESQUE) — a word immortalized by the crossword documentary Wordplay (20 years old next year! Just like my blog! Not unrelated!). Trip Payne, solving on stage, upon finally getting ZOLAESQUE during the ACPT championship puzzle, disbelievingly: "Oh dear god!" (I'm either quoting exactly or paraphrasing)

• 109A: Contents of a murky cauldron? (twice!) (UNCLEAR POTION) — I keep reading this as UNCLE ARPOTION. Who would name their kid 'Arpotion'? You'd have to call him "Arpo." But then people would think you were saying "Harpo." Some names are better left to fantasy novels. 
• 114A: Parking spot? (SEAT) — I was thinking "seat" as in your ass, but think it's where you put your ass ... when you sit (i.e. "park," if you're being slangy).
• 116A: Sargasso Sea quartet (ESSES) — a "letteral" clue; the clue is self-referential, pointing to a letter in one of its words—or in this case, in two of its words: the letter "S" (ESS) appears four times in the name "Sargasso Sea." So there is a "quartet" of "S"s (ESSES). I had the first "S" in this answer and wanted to write in ISLES. "Just four? They must be a noteworthy grouping." 
• 84D: Approximately 33.8 fluid ounces (ONE LITER) — not sure why I got it into my head to give this one a British spelling (-RE), but I did. I also spelled RAZES with an "S" (RASES), which isn't even British, but kinda feels like it (you know, like how "-IZE" is spelled "-ISE" in Britain). Not sure where this British and pseudoBritish spelling instinct is coming from. Might be all the Guardian cryptics I've been doing.
• 65D: Goldie who won a 1969 Oscar for "Cactus Flower" (HAWN) — cannot see her name without thinking of the time I realized that my wife says "HAWN" just like she says "HORN," only she did not believe that she pronounces them the same way at all, so I tried to make a video of her saying both words, but mostly we're both just crying laughing ...

[Goldie HAWN vs. French horn]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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