Lumpsucker eggs / THU 7-30-26 / Developer of a geocentric model of the universe / Where Dante's path to paradise begins / Fripp & ___ (musical duo) / Bob who painted "happy little trees" / Balkan state that's been independent since 2008 / Seller of knickknacks / Like the name of former soccer star Mark De Man

Constructor: Joel Woodford

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (oversized at 16x15)

THEME: NATO ALPHABET (65A: Communication aid that helps make sense of the italicized clues) — clues must be read as [letter] + definition; in the answer, the [letter] is written in its NATO ALPHABET form:

Theme answers:

• CHARLIE SHEEN (18A: Cluster) ("C" = CHARLIE, "luster" = SHEEN)
• ALPHA MALE (27A: Agent) ("A" = ALPHA, "gent" = MALE)
• SIERRA CLUB (40A: Steam) ("S" = SIERRA, "team" = CLUB)
• GOLF RANGE (56A: Gambit) ("G" = GOLF, "ambit" = RANGE)

Word of the Day: DARIÉN National Park (32D: Panama's ___ National Park) —

Darién National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Darién) is a World Heritage Site in Panama. It is about 325 kilometers (202 mi) from Panama City, is the most extensive of all national parks of Panama, and is one of the most important World Heritage Sites in Central America. // The Darién National Park is a natural bridge spanning North and South America. It is located in southernmost Panama in Darién province and its southern boundary extends along 90 percent of the Colombia–Panama border. It lies between the Serranía del Darién range, which parallels the Caribbean Sea 16 kilometers (9.9 mi) to the north-east, and the Pacific Ocean coast. It is adjacent to the Los Katíos National Park in Colombia. // In 1972, an area of 700,000 hectares (1,700,000 acres) became part of the Alto Darién Protection Forest. In 1980, the area was declared a national park. In 1983, an area of 859,333 hectares (2,123,460 acres) became a UNESCO biosphere reserve. The park covers 5,790 km² (2,240 mi²). // The Darien National Park has myriad habitats, ranging from rocky coastlines to sandy beaches to mangroves. The park also has expansive swamps and large areas of tropical forests. It is rich in biodiversity and contains numerous threatened species. It has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International. // The park is one of the few examples remaining in the world of a protected area inhabited by humans. Two native tribes dwell in the park. [...] The park is notable for the Darién Gap, the only break in the Pan-American Highway on its intercontinental path from Argentina to Alaska. (wikipedia)

• • •

Just the other day I was solving a cryptic crossword with my wife, Penelope, and one of the clues contained the phrase "after golf" or something like that and the answer ended up being "hotel." Or maybe the answer was "golf" and the clue had "one in front of hotel" or something like that, I forget. The point is, I dimly remembered that "golf" was "G" in the NATO ALPHABET, but I had totally forgotten that "H" was "hotel." Of course, after I figured it all out, I remember the title of the Wilco album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a title I'd never given much thought, but one which, I now realized, contained three letters of the NATO ALPHABET ("Yankee" and "Foxtrot" were recognizable to me as such—"Hotel" was not). Penelope had no idea that "golf" = "G." Seems like one of the lesser known NATO ALPHABET members. Anyway, as with so many things you "never see," I have now seen "golf = G" not once but twice since then—that's three times total in under a week. Bizarre. If you solve cryptic crosswords, then this theme was probably easy for you to crack (as it was for me). Cryptic clues often make tricky use of words to represent letters. I will admit that I didn't see the theme at first, though. I got CHARLIE SHEEN entirely (easily) from crosses, and then stared at [Cluster] like "... huh?" I was trying to find shared letters or something, I don't know what. Whatever I was doing, it wasn't working. But when I got the second themer, ALPHA MALE (which I inferred from ALPHA alone), I saw it: "gent" = MALE! So that means "A" = ALPHA, and therefore [Agent] = ALPHA MALE. I looked back at CHARLIE SHEEN, said "aha!" to myself (quietly, Penelope's still asleep), and moved on. The remaining themers were a cinch. I enjoyed the little frisson of revelation, that "cracked it!" moment. That was fun. What I didn't like, though, was the revealer. It's so painfully straightforward and descriptive, and in my case, as someone who solved top-to-bottom and figured out the theme on my own before the halfway mark, it was completely unnecessary. Depressingly anticlimactic. I was hoping for either no revealer ("you're on your own, suckers!") or something involving clever wordplay of some kind. To end with a plain old explanation, one that I already knew, was a bit of a letdown.

Are you one of those people who jump down to the bottom of the grid to try to get the revealer when they encounter a mystery theme, or do you typically power through and let nature / fate take its course, hoping to work it out on your own? I've been both people. I'm kind of glad I was the latter kind of person today, though, because working it out on your own is a Great feeling, way better than being told. Part of the reason the non-theme parts of the puzzle are pretty easy today is precisely so solvers can hack their way to the theme answers without understanding the theme, and then try to work out the clue-answer connection for themselves. I thought the clues were pitched just right for that—easyish, but still, for the most part, interesting. You get a couple of nice, longer non-theme answers (TALK RADIO, CURIO SHOP), lots of 7s in the corners, and then short fill that rarely feels tedious or stale. The clues have some moments of real cleverness. I enjoyed most of the "?" clues—[Took one's breath away?] for EXHALED, and [Biblical second coming?] for EVE, and especially [Go for gold?] for TAN, which I had as PAN, because of course I did, you PAN for gold—at least you do if you're an olde-tymey miner during the Gold Rush days. Very little that was unknown to me today except for DARIÉN National Park, which I was really happy to learn about (see "Word of the Day," above). I'm now wondering if my commitment to birding will grow to such proportions that I will have to visit DARIÉN. It's apparently a legendary bird-watching spot, or, as I learned from wikipedia, an "Important Bird Area" (IBA). Put IBA in a puzzle, you wingless cowards! We all know what it means now, let's go, HOP to it!

Bullets:

• 26D: Org. leader (PRES.) — left that "S" blank at first because I thought they might try PREZ on me.
• 17A: Like the name of former soccer star Mark De Man (APT) — in soccer, marking your man basically means guarding him. It's a defensive strategy.
• 30D: Where Dante's path to paradise begins (HELL) — sometimes, it's possible to know too much about a subject. Me, today, in response to this clue: "... dark wood. DARK WOOD! Why won't 'dark wood" fit?! Selva oscura, dark wood, come on!" I would also have accepted "shadowed forest." These are the first lines of Inferno (i.e. HELL) (tr. Mandelbaum):

1 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
2 mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
3 ché la diritta via era smarrita.

[When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.]

• 47A: Bob who painted "happy little trees" (ROSS) — a crossword staple, a gimme. There were a lot of proper nouns today (AVA, CHAN, ERMA, all three of the 7-letter Downs in the NE corner, etc.), but they were generally familiar, easy to get, and generally inconspicuous. Again, DARIÉN was the only one I'd never heard of (I've probably seen it in a crossword before and just forgot about it ... hmm. Looks like for the past quarter century, DARIEN has appeared only a few times, and only as the Connecticut town. The very first clue for DARIEN, though (in 1943) was [Gulf between coasts of Columbia and Panama]. The Panama, non-Connecticut version of DARIEN also used to be clued via a line from Keats: the last line of "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," in fact (a poem I haven't read since 1989ish). In his awe at the beauty he beholds, Keats compares himself to the explorer Cortez beholding the Pacific for the first time, "Silent, upon a peak in DARIEN."

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien. (poetryfoundation.org)

• 63A: Fripp & ___ (musical duo) (ENO) — could easily have made Robert Fripp the "Word of the Day" (put FRIPP in a puzzle, you prog rock-phobic cowards!) (he was the founder of the band King Crimson, the paradigmatic prog rock band, although Fripp & ENO's music is ambient). 

• 7D: Joel follows it (HOSEA) — as constructor's self-references go ... I don't mind this one. You gotta use some biblical crosswordese, may as well have fun with it. Clue is accurate, which is all that matters.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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