1944 Pacific battle site / Home to Kotoka International Airport / Age at which you just learned something you should have realized before, facetiously / Mohamed ___, Egyptian soccer star / Subject of the Bouguereau painting "The Abduction of Pscyhe" / Image that's just over a foot, informally / Where much of "Brokeback Mountain" was filmed /

Constructor: James McCarron

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LEYTE (53A: 1944 Pacific battle site) —

Leyte (/ˈleɪti, ˈleɪteɪ/ LAY-tee, LAY-tay, Tagalog: [ˈleite]) is an island in the Visayas group of islands in the Philippines. It is eighth-largest and sixth-most populous island in the Philippines, with a total population of 2,626,970 as of the 2020 census. // The Battle of Leyte (Filipino: Labanan sa Leyte; Waray: Gubat ha Leyte; Japanese: レイテの戦い) in the Pacific campaign of World War II was the amphibious invasion of the island of Leyte in the Philippines by American forces and Filipino guerrillas under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur, who fought against the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita. The operation, codenamed King Two, launched the Philippines campaign of 1944–45 for the recapture and liberation of the entire Philippine Archipelago and to end almost three years of Japanese occupation. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's "ending on a sour note," and then there's "ending on LEYTE," which makes you yearn for a note that's merely sour. It clearly has some historical / military importance, but its familiarity to a North American audience ... I'm fairly confident that whatever that was, it has dwindled over the years. I'm old(ish) and I've never heard of this place. It smacks of the kind of geographical obscurity that used to be common currency in the crossword puzzle, before construction software came along and made filling the grid somewhat easier, and before the puzzle had an editor who explicitly sought to reduce the appearance of such things (i.e. before Shortz). And sure enough, the heat map on this one is, let's say, telling:

See that teeny tiny little blue segment waaaay over on the right there? That's today. The distance between that little blue segment and the next nearest little blue segment? Nearly twenty-three years. Twenty-Three Years. That is some real delayed back-from-the-dead action. I felt so much better after seeing how long it had been since LEYTE appeared in the grid. "How did I miss this answer?" Answer: I didn't. It hasn't appeared once in the soon-to-be two decades that I've been writing about the puzzle. The thing about LEYTE, the very bad thing, is that it isn't just the most obscure thing in the grid, it's the most obscure thing by light years. Look at the other geographical answers in this puzzle. ALBERTA. GHANA. CALI. Yeah, I've Heard Of Those. The eighth-largest island of the Philippines? Not so much. I don't know how LEYTE doesn't make you want to, need to, tear that part of your grid out and try again. If the grid were sizzling hot, loaded with bright and shiny fill, and needed a single LEYTE to hold it together, it would still be jarring, but it might seem worth it. But despite the fact that the long fill is quite good down there, overall, there just wasn't enough of it to justify LEYTE. I like parts of this grid, but all I see when I look at this grid is LEYTE. There's literally nothing else in this grid that I would insist has to go. Just LEYTE. Twenty-three years! Those were good years.

As I say, the long fill on this one is very nice, particularly below, where TODAY YEARS OLD made me smile (51A: Age at which you just learned something you should have realized before, facetiously), and "HERE GOES NOTHING!" wasn't too shabby either (48A: "Might as well give it a shot..."). Up top, DON'T POKE THE BEAR also gave the grid some much-needed playfulness and color (14A: Words of caution). But between the long answers above and the long answers below was a whole lot of ... fine. OK. Not bad. But nothing memorable, nothing marquee. I like how clean the grid is (mostly!), but there's just not a whole hell of a lot going on between the poles. In fact, some of the other longer fill, I kinda balked at. ANKLE TAT made me grimace. Yes, you can get a tat there, as you can get a tat most anywhere. I've seen FACE TAT and ANKLE TAT now. You can keep changing the body parts, but ___ TAT isn't going to get more interesting. GENE SET didn't excite me much either. Solid enough, but ... I needed more ATTACK AD energy (good answer, good clue) (26A: Spot likely to smear). I needed the puzzle to slap me with more fun stuff: "TAKE THAT!" the puzzle should have been able to say to me, many more times than it did. Instead, it just sort of handed me answers: more "TAKE THAT," without the exclamation point, without the spirit of vengeance. It's a solid grid, but it's not much more than solid.

The puzzle did set me up for some great mistakes today, though. These started early, with my assumption that what "might be on a rack" was a RIB (2D: It might be on a rack = HAT) (I eventually got my RIB meat with RIBEYE!). Later, I figured that shows were being stopped by RAIDS, not RAINS (15D: Show stoppers, sometimes). I like RAIDS way better, both because it creates a more vivid image and because plural RAINS here is ... awkward. "The shows were stopped by RAINS." Meh. Not great. Just clue it as a verb. My favorite mistake, though, was probably the one where I learned ("learned") that Ang Lee had filmed Brokeback Mountain in ALBANIA (45A: Where much of "Brokeback Mountain" was filmed). "Must've been more affordable," I briefly and sincerely thought. I eventually TORE that out when TORE forced the issue (46D: Raced). But I liked "knowing" that bit of movie trivia for a few seconds. ALBERTA is so much more plausible, and thus so much less interesting.  

Bullets:

• 11A: Can't-miss purchases? (SEASON TICKETS) — good answer, but I'm pretty sure you can miss. I'm pretty sure season ticket holders do, in fact, miss games (or concerts, or other performances sometimes).
• 21A: Subject of the Bouguereau painting "The Abduction of Psyche" (EROS) — I like how this clue assumes I know who Bouguereau is. "Oh, the Bouguereau painting, yes, of course, what a master... [sips cocktail, nibbles on canapé] ..." Literally first I'm seeing his name today. But EROS was easy. Psyche was the tip-off. Cupid (EROS) & Psyche pair naturally in my brain, not because of my knowledge of classical mythology or art or operas ... but because of the title of a mid-'80s Scritti Politti album. Anyone else? No. That's fine. Just gonna press "Play" now and briefly relive my junior year of high school... 

• 31D: Mohamed ___, Egyptian soccer star (SALAH) — could not retrieve his name. Sort of kind of vaguely knew the first four letters, but was in no way sure about that "H." SALAH is the only answer that approaches LEYTE in terms of obscurity today, and by "approaches" I mean "is not really anywhere near." The key word in the SALAH clue is "star."

Mohamed "Mo" Salah Hamed Mahrous Ghaly (born 15 June 1992) is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays as a right winger or forward for Premier League club Liverpool and captains the Egypt national team. He is widely regarded as one of the best players of his generation and one of the greatest wingers of all time. He is the all-time top foreign goalscorer in the Premier League and the all-time top African goalscorer in the UEFA Champions League. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

That's all for today. Keep those 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 coming. I'll be accepting reader pictures of their pets in holiday settings through Wednesday (rexparker at icloud dot com), and then I'll need to stop taking submissions and start posting. My Inbox is already pretty inundated with cuteness, which is exciting. Here's a little taste. 

[meet French bulldogs Audrey, Louise, and Hugo, seen here wearing the skins of their enemies]
[Thanks, Claudia!]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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