Clergyman known for his verbal gaffes / SUN 6-21-26 / Farm play area / Launch points in disc golf / Long, hooded cloak that's also an author's name / Debuted to stockholders, in Wall St. lingo / Hindu god with an elephant head / Physician specializing in reproductive health, informally / Mathematical constant equal to two times pi

Constructor: Hannah Slovut-Einertson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

[122D: "Star Wars" character whose species is never named]

THEME: "Big Draw" — apparently it's WORLD GIRAFFE DAY (???), and you get to celebrate the "big" animal by "drawing" it (76A: Annual June 21 celebration of the animal depicted in this puzzle by connecting the circled letters from A to T and back to A); additionally, there are seven more giraffe-related answers in the grid:

Theme answers:

• NECKING (21A: Fighting technique used by [circled letters] (as explained at 76-Across))
• "THAT'S A TALL ORDER" (67A: "Boy, you're asking too much" ... or what you might say after following the instructions at 76-Across?)
• SAVANNA (124A: Habitat for [circled letters])
• OKAPI (20D: Closing living relative of the [circled letters])
• TOWERS (39D: Term for groups of [circled letters])
• ACACIA (81D: Tree whose leaves are eaten by [circled letters])
• SPOTS (109D: Fur pattern on a [circled letters])

Word of the Day: Yani TSENG (25D: Golfer Yani) —

Yani Tseng (Chinese: 曾雅妮; pinyin: Zēng Yǎní; born 23 January 1989) is a Taiwanese professional golfer playing on the U.S.-based LPGA Tour. She is the youngest player ever, male or female, to win five major championships. She was ranked number 1 in the Women's World Golf Rankings for 109 consecutive weeks from 2011 to 2013. (wikipedia)

• • •

My actual feelings about this puzzle are more in two-star territory, but I want to give the puzzle credit for originality (i.e. weirdness), and for a few of the longer non-theme answers, which were strong and occasionally delightful (BEAR WITNESS, STORE CREDIT, "LEVEL WITH ME," COFFEE RUN). But the theme, yeah, no, what? What is even happening? Did people know this was a "Day"? Are you all "celebrating" this today? Is anyone? God love and preserve the giraffes of the world, but this is such (Such!) a weird puzzle to run on a day that is Notably A Holiday! A non-giraffe holiday. Unless your father is a giraffe, in which case ... wow, I have questions. Anyway, it's Father's Day. I don't need a Father's Day-themed puzzle, but to celebrate a different, and (I think it's safe to say) less popular "holiday" on Father's Day is bizarre. Not all bizarre things are bad, but this ... is child's placemat stuff. Connect the dots, draw a long-necked horsey. Mkay. Done and done, I guess, but why? It's not like there were any surprises here. There's one pun, which gives the theme a very (very) mild playfulness, but otherwise it's just giraffe trivia (mostly short answers you might see on any day), and then ... you draw. I knew I was dealing with a giraffe-related puzzle very early—as soon as I got OKAPI, in fact. At that point, I thought the "circled letters" were going to spell "GIRAFFE" somehow, so I got very confused as A B C D etc. started to show up. Eventually I realized that I was going to be asked to connect the circled squares in alphabetical order, which then made it pretty easy to find and fill in the circled squares. Here's what happened immediately after I grasped the connect-the-dots angle:

After this point, the puzzle was basically a tall and somewhat dull themeless. There are few things I like less than being asked to draw a picture on my puzzle when I'm done. Maybe the app did some cool giraffe-related animation, I dunno. Mine just sat there. Not that a graphic would've improved the solving experience. The puzzle isn't bad, it's just ... it's only interesting as a novelty. It has novelty dimensions. Wacky tallness. Beyond that, there's really not much to it. Oh, and one last thing about the theme, specifically the revealer clue: if you ask me to "connect the circled letters from A to T and back to A" (my emphasis), then I am going to assume that you want me to actually go back, i.e. retrace my steps, T to A (the long way). Just a little thought told me that my interpretation made no sense from a drawing perspective, but I still maintain that that instruction is clumsily worded.

Overall, it's a pretty easy puzzle. I had real trouble with TSENG / NOUN, and only wrote that "N" in at the very end. I still can't really accept that [Whatchamacallit] is NOUN. How? In the sense that any ... thing (whether you can remember its name or not) is a NOUN, I guess the clue is, at some basic level, accurate, but you'd never (ever) swap either of those words for the other. Absolutely insane cluing choice. My not knowing a golfer: not a surprise. My not knowing NOUN: strange. I had EYE-to-EYE before TOE-to-TOE (47A: Word on either side of "to"). Struggled with GANESHA because I really (really) thought the god was called simply GANESH ... which it is, though apparently GANESHA is the preferred / more common spelling (89A: Hindu god with an elephant head). It's the primary spelling at the wikipedia entry, at any rate. My trouble there was compounded by my uncertainty about neighboring ACES OUT (the "OUT" part, specifically) and by the tough clue on RANSOM, which crosses both of the aforementioned answers (78D: Price for a return, perhaps). I had ANNOY before ANGER (99D: Tick off). I've never heard of a CORN PIT and can barely imagine it. CORN MAZE? Sure. CORN PIT??? Weirdly, not an element of any farm I've ever seen. I assume they're real, or why would this answer be here, but ... yeah, I needed lots of crosses there. "BEATS ME!" I might've said (but didn't).


Bullets:

• 23A: Verify, as an editor (FACTCHECK) — I think of an editor and a factchecker as being separate jobs. I knew a factchecker for National Geographic, and she was not an editor. But I guess some editors do FACTCHECK, so, fine.
• 132A: Debuted to stockholders, in Wall St. lingo (WENT IPO) — awful. Just a horrible, ugly bit of "lingo." A total wordlist answer (i.e. one you use only because your software recommended it). No one wants this. 
• 106D: Small superhero whose catchphrase starts "Up and at 'em" (ATOM ANT) — had the first "A" and tried to make ANT MAN work, to no avail.
• 52D: R&B group Bell Biv ___ (DEVOE) — they were popular for precisely the years that I was in college. I don't remember hearing about them again after 1991. But they were pretty damn big in that '90-'91 window. I see now that they released other albums besides their massive 1990 debut (Poison). Bell Biv DEVOE (also known as "BBD," yes, really) was made up of three former members of the '80s boy band New Edition, whose other members included Ralph Tresvant, Johnny Gill, and (most famously) Bobby Brown. Bell Biv DEVOE are: Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe. So, if you didn't know about Bell Biv DEVOE, well ... now you know.

• 53A: Long, hooded cloak that's also an author's name (CAPOTE) — ooh, I forgot this name had a sartorial angle. I think I knew that. But I also think I would've said it was something a bullfighter wore. No idea how my brain ever made that association. 
• 119A: Clergyman known for his verbal gaffes (SPOONER) — if you don't know the Reverend, then you have probably never solved a cryptic crossword in your life. Man, those setters (don't call them "constructors") love their spoonerisms. A "spoonerism"is when you transpose the first sounds of two-word phrases, so ... uh ... a "cakewalk" would be a "wake cock" ... that's not really a good example, but it's the first thing that came to mind, sorry / you're welcome.
• 110A: Common holder of pens (MUG) — yes. In fact there's a MUG holding pens (and pencils) on my desk right now. But I got a bit screwed up by the alphabetical sequencing of the circled letters and thought that there should be a "J" where the "M" should be, which resulted in a JAR holding the pens. And then, however improbably, a JUG.

That's all for today. Happy Father's Day to all who celebrate. If that's not you, well then, Happy WORLD GIRAFFE TODAY. Today's got something for everyone!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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