Spanish city famous for its oranges / TUES 11-25-25 / Hindu deity known as the "Destroyer" / Motown legend Lionel / Organizer of events for swingers?

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday of November! Hope everyone is having a good start to the holiday season. I’ve been settling back into a D.C. rhythm after a spur-of-the-moment trip to Barcelona with my sister, Shannon, a couple of weeks ago! (She was going for work and had a free hotel room for me to crash in😊) We ate lots of patatas bravas and drank some (OK, a lot of) sangria, and now I think I’m moving to Barcelona. I just need to practice my Spanish a bit. Or a lot. Sports are a bit meh right now (as my Steelers and Liverpool aren’t doing so hot), but, hey, at least Yale thumped Harvard in The Game. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: John Ewbank

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: DOOM SCROLLS (63A: Engages in a dispiriting online activity … or what happens in this puzzle's shaded squares?) — The shaded squares all use the letters in DOOM, and the positions of the letters “scroll” in order (with the final letter being moved to the front with each new appearance as you move down the puzzle)

Theme answers:

• VOODOO MAGIC (17A: Sorcery commonly associated with Haiti and New Orleans) 
• STORM DOOR (26A: Extra barrier to protect a house from bad weather) 
• TOM DOOLEY (38A: Traditional folk song that became a #1 hit for the Kingston Trio) 
• ZOOM DATES (54A: Romantic options for a long-distance relationship)

Word of the Day: TOM DOOLEY (38A: Traditional folk song that became a #1 hit for the Kingston Trio) —

Tom Dooley" (Roud 4192) is a traditional North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina by Tom Dula (whose name in the local dialect was pronounced "Dooley"). One of the more famous murder ballads, a popular hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, was in the top 10 on the Billboard R&B chart, and appeared in the Cashbox Country Music Top 20… In 1866, Laura Foster was murdered. Confederate veteran Tom Dula, Foster's lover and the father of her unborn child, was convicted of her murder and hanged May 1, 1868… Thanks to the efforts of newspapers such as The New York Times and to the fact that former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance represented Dula pro bono, Dula's murder trial and hanging were given widespread national publicity. (Wiki)

• • •

WELL, I SORTA (36D) liked this puzzle. The theme was well-executed, and it’s clever how the letters in DOOM shift as you go down the puzzle. But the theme felt like a long way to go for little payoff. There wasn’t anything particularly objectionable about it, but it took some minor sleuthing after the solve to understand the point the theme was trying to get across, and the letter combinations after the first one — MDOO, OMDO, and OOMD — just look awkward. 

I’m not sure VOODOO MAGIC (17A) works as an answer because it seems like it’s usually just described as VOODOO. The info I was finding had very few references to MAGIC (and didn’t combine the terms). The other theme answers seemed fine, though I didn’t know TOM DOOLEY (38A). [Side note: This song is about a Confederate soldier who was convicted of murdering a woman, and it was somehow turned into a folk legend? I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and it’s a pretty weird song.] I also think the clue for STORM DOOR (26A: Extra barrier to protect a house from bad weather) is somewhat wrong because the STORM DOOR is a glass door that protects the regular wooden door from weathering; it seems like a stretch to say it’s protecting the house. 

Beyond the theme, there wasn’t much that grabbed me about the puzzle. The longest downs were WELL SORTA (36D: "I mean, I guess …") and IPOD NANOS (5D: Music players discontinued in 2017), which, well, sorta, don’t inspire much excitement. TACO PIE (27D: Tex-Mex casserole with a crust) is blah. A LOT OF (58A: Many, many) doesn’t really match the clue and is an awkward-looking partial. And I can’t get behind that spelling of SLIER (9D: More cunning). 

I got a bit stuck on EBSEN (24A), having never seen “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and I had no idea that the STOOGES (43D) were Iggy Pop’s backup group. It also took me way too long to realize that LORES (52A: Like early PC graphics) was indicating LO-RES (as in, low resolution). I had _ORES for quite a long time before I could convince myself to put in the L, even though that was the only letter that made sense coming down. 

I liked ONE GRAM (13D: Weight of every U.S. bank note), as it’s a decent bit of trivia. PGA TOUR (11D: Organizer of events for swingers?) is clever. The clue for REVIEW (1D: "No" was a famously short one for the 1948 musical "Isn't It Romantic?") was incredible; I’ll be thinking about that for a while. The word BIZARRO (41D: ___ World, DC Comics planet of opposites) is fun. I don’t think RITA ORA (12D: "How We Do (Party)" pop singer) is a big enough name to be in a Tuesday crossword, but I thought it was clever to have ORA cross AURA (31A: Certain something). I love WILMA (29A: Flintstone with a red updo) in the puzzle. Yabba dabba doo! And OCCAM (10D: Philosopher known for his "razor") is fun.

Misc.:

• BTS!!! (41A: K-pop band that went on hiatus in 2022 when their members went into military service) You didn’t think that I’d forget about BTS, did you?! They’ve recorded some for their album coming in the spring and are rehearsing for their world tour next year!! Please prepare yourselves for the inevitable videos and tweets I will share. 
• 20A: U.K. : H.M.R.C. :: U.S.A. : __ felt like a tortured way of cluing just… IRS, but, hey, now I know that HMRC stands for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. 
• I’ve been reading my fair share of BRIT LIT (45D: Course that may cover Jane Austen and Emily Brontë, for short) this last month, as I rediscovered Agatha Christie novels. I read “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” which pioneered a concept used in mystery novels to this day, and it was phenomenal. I’ve now read (or listened to) 14 of her books in the last month. 
• It’s actually my dream to get semi-famous (or be related to someone famous — come on, Shannon!) so I can go on Dancing With the Stars and learn for a few weeks how to dance (for example, how to SALSA). 
• Speaking of SALSAS (53D: Engages in an energetic Latin dance), it did go nicely with TACO PIE (27D) and GUAC (68A: Burrito bar offering, informally). 
• I’ve been going on more, longer hikes with my pup, Red, though it’s getting a bit cold. Red’s brother Banjo (my mom’s dog) is visiting, and he and Red are quite possibly having the time of their lives. 

And that’s all from me, folks! I’ll see y’all again around Christmas.

Signed, Clare Carroll, whom you’ll find doomwatching Liverpool every weekend

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