Take fowl foully / MON 5-11-26 / Listened, poetically / Cameroon neighbor / Contents of l'océan / Movie production facilities with controlled acoustics / Winning a blue ribbon / Request from someone craving more

Constructor: Joel Woodford

Relative difficulty: Easyish (solved Downs-only)

[54D: Jabba the ___ ("Star Wars" villain)]

THEME: "OH, DEAR!" (45D: "Goodness me!" ... or a phonetic hint to 17-, 31-, 39- and 55-Across) — in four answers, an "O" ("oh!") is followed (many letters later) by a string of letters that spells out a type of deer ("dear!"):

Theme answers:

• BILLBOARD CHARTS (17A: Rankings of song popularity used as the music industry standard)
• HORS D'OEUVRE (31A: Canapé or deviled egg, for example)
• SOUND STAGES (39A: Movie production facilities with controlled acoustics)
• DROP IN THE BUCKET (55A: Insignificant amount)

Word of the Day: GABON (15A: Cameroon neighbor) —

Gabon (/ɡəˈbɒn/ gə-BON; French pronunciation: [ɡabɔ̃] ^ⓘ), officially the Gabonese Republic (French: République gabonaise), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and the Gulf of Guinea to the west. It has an area of 270,000 square kilometres (100,000 sq mi) and a population of 2.3 million people. There are coastal plains, mountains (the Cristal Mountains and the Chaillu Massif in the centre), and a savanna in the east. Libreville is the country's capital and largest city. // Gabon's original inhabitants were the Bambenga. In the 14th century, Bantu migrants also began settling in the area. The Kingdom of Orungu was established around 1700. France colonised the region in the late 19th century. Since its independence from France in 1960, Gabon has had four presidents. In the 1990s, it introduced a multi-party system and a democratic constitution that aimed for a more transparent electoral process and reformed some governmental institutions. Despite this, the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) remained the dominant party until its removal from power during the 2023 Gabonese coup d'état. (wikipedia)

• • •

What, no HIND? With three males to one female, the herd could use a little evening out. But then "hind" is not exactly an everyday word. The only reason I know it is that it appears in the first line of a fairly famous sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt called "Whoso List to Hunt..."

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me, hélas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,

Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

As well as I may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written, her fair neck round about:

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame. (poetryfoundation)

The more you read it, the weirder the deer gets. But back to the puzzle—it was bizarre, so I liked it. It's a nice, light, bright, quirky, easy puzzle. Yes, it involves non-consecutive circled squares, and those things often fail to yield very interesting results, but here, the double pun (on "oh" and "dear") makes the circled squares make perfect sense. And as a Downs-only solver, I was able to actually use the theme to help me get to the finish line, writing in BUCK in those last four circled squares as soon as I got the "B" in there. It's a charming idea for a theme and it was fun to solve (at least it was fun to solve Downs-only). Maybe it doesn't seem spectacular, but I honestly don't have any serious complaints about it. Didn't even find the short stuff that grating, perhaps because it was tempered by some interesting 7s and 8s and a boatload of 6s in the NW and SE corner. And then ACQUITS and UMPTEEN to boot. This one just has a lot more character than most Mondays.

There were precisely four Down answers that gave me trouble today. The first was "I WANT OUT!" (10D: "Don't involve me anymore"). Really wanted that one to start "I'M A..." (the "M" giving me SMEAR at S-EAR, which seemed more than plausible). But then ... stuckness. "I'M ALL OUT"? No, that makes no sense. "I'M A NO, BRO"? Oof, worse. Needed to get most of the crosses before I saw that the "M" was really supposed to be a "W," which made SMEAR into SWEAR (16A: Yell "#$%!"), and finally let me see "I WANT OUT!" The hardest thing for me to see today, though, was FIRST (23D: Winning a blue ribbon). Something about the ambiguity of the clue was throwing me; specifically, I couldn't tell what part of speech the answer wanted. "Winning" ... like, currently winning, in the process of winning? Or ... having won? I wanted AHEAD at first, but that implies the race (or whatever) hasn't been completed yet, and the clue specifically says "Winning." I kinda wanted an -ING word, but at five letters, that seemed unlikely. You wouldn't think a simple word like FIRST could flummox me like this, but ... that's what happened. I think the (apparent) unlikeliness of "F" as the correct start of "-ESS" also made FIRST hard to see. MESS BESS TESS LESS, all of them were in line before FESS. Another longer answer—in fact literally "ANOTHER!"—held me up for a bit down south (40D: Request from someone craving more). And then there was LIDS (52D: Tube tops?). I am a firm believer that tubes have CAPS, not LIDS. Jars have LIDS. Tubes (of toothpaste) have CAPS. So boo to that clue. My lone boo for the day.

[Swayze!]

Bullets:

• 15A: Cameroon neighbor (GABON) — got this from crosses, obviously (since I solved Downs-only), but I'm not sure I would've gotten it easily even if I had read the clue. My knowledge of African (particularly west African) geography remains pretty sketchy. GABON sits right on the equator (see map, above, under "Word of the Day"). Its capital, Libreville is the second-closest world capital to the equator (only crossword favorite QUITO, Ecuador—43 lifetime NYTXW appearances—is closer).
• 30A: Take fowl foully (POACH) — solving Downs-only means sometimes you miss fun clues. This one is funny to me not just because of the silly rhyme, but because when I think of poaching (as in illegal hunting), I think of ... deer! Wrote a whole chapter of my dissertation on the portrayal of poaching (deer) in late medieval England (specifically, in a poem called The Parlement of the Thre Ages). Looks like Parlement, like the aforementioned "Whoso List to Hunt...," also contains a "hynde" ("hind") in addition to a "hert" ("hart"). It's an appropriate poem for May. It opens:

In the monethe of Maye when mirthes bene fele,*    *many
And the sesone of somere when softe bene the wedres,*    *breezes
Als I went to the wodde my werdes to dreghe,*    *to try my luck
Into the schawes* myselfe a schotte me to gete    *thickets
At ane hert or ane hynde, happen as it myghte ... 

    (from The Parlement of the Thre Ages)

• 11D: French for "sea" (MER) — our second three-letter watery French answer. Surprised the clue for EAU wasn't [Contents of 11-Down] instead of [Contents of l'océan].
• 43D: Fashionable (CHIC) — I wonder how long it's going to take now before I look at the word CHIC without thinking of OHIO (see yesterday's puzzle...)
• 44D: Listened, poetically (HARKED) — [Listened, yuletidily]. If Parlement of the Thre Ages was appropriate for May, this song ... isn't. 

• 34D: Rapper ___ Rocky (A$AP) — Always Strive and Prosper. Good to know what the acronym means and get that dollar sign in there. Otherwise it just seems like Rocky is an efficient gofer or personal assistant: As Soon As Possible Rocky!

[starring Winona Ryder] [warning: profanity]

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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