Female red deer / MON 9-14-26 / Crew building / Informal hoops game / Ancient Celtic priest / All-out boxing match / Dale who sang "Happy Trails" with Roy Rogers / Beatles song with the lyric "She promises the earth to me" / Disney's Ariel and her sisters

Constructor: Andrea Carla Michaels and Dena R. Verkuil

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: GO BANANAS (61A: Flip out ... or a hint to the beginnings of 17-, 27-, 39- and 51-Across) — first words of theme answers can follow "banana" in a familiar phrase:

Theme answers:

• BOATHOUSE (17A: Crew building)
• BREAD BOX (27A: "Is it bigger than a ___?")
• SPLIT DECISION (39A: Close boxing match outcome)
• SLUGFEST (51A: All-out boxing match)

Word of the Day: "GIRL" (32A: Beatles song with the lyric "She promises the earth to me") —

 

"Girl" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. "Girl" was the last complete song recorded for that album. "Girl" is considered to be one of the most melancholic and complex of the Beatles' love songs. [...] In early 1966, "Girl" was issued as the B-side of "Michelle" in several European countries, reaching number one in Finland. It was also released as the A-side of a single in Italy, backed by "Nowhere Man", which reached number seven on the nation's Musica e Dischi singles chart.

• • •

A very straightforward and old-fashioned theme with a mildly kooky revealer. I liked it fine. It's a little too heavy on the short stuff—so lots of nooks/crannies, lots of 3-4-5s, but there are also a bevy of long Downs to brighten up the grid, so ... things balance out a bit. The long Downs were the most challenging part of the grid, from a Downs-only solving perspective. Actually, a few of them were gimmes (I BEFORE E, MERMAIDS), but STEP COUNTER took me some time because I (stupidly) guessed CAMINO instead of CASINO—I mean, of course it's CASINO, why would it be CAMINO, that's so much less likely!? The toughest of the long Downs to get (with very little help from inferred crosses) was "I'LL START" (41D: "Let me go first!"). As you can see by the cursor placement in the grid printout above, "I'LL START" is the very last thing I got.  The "I" and the "S" and the "A" were the only things I knew for sure, and I kept wanting it to start "I'M" or "IT'S." Finally realized the only thing SHE- was likely to be was SHEL. SHEL helped me see "I'LL" as a possible opening, and from there "I'LL START" seemed obvious. My only other issues were minor. Wrote in ELKS instead of GNUS at first for 6D: African antelopes—again, a truly bad guess. That clue on HIND is a toughie (18D: Female red deer). I know the term from 17c. poetry, but yikes, you'd think on Monday you'd just go with [Rear] or [Posterior] or [___ legs] or something like that. In fact, that's what every constructor has done with HIND since 2005. This is only the third HIND-as-female-deer clue in the entire Shortz Era (and both the others were on Sundays). Bizarre choice. But the puzzle is still Monday-easy overall, so why not go with a deep cut for HIND, I guess.

Speaking of deep cuts ... I know this will come as a surprise to Baby Boomers, but not everybody knows every word to every Beatles song ever (anymore?). I never saw the clue on "GIRL" because I solve Downs-only, but if I had, I'd've been baffled. I know the song, it turns out, from years of classic rock radio-listening as a teenager, but that lyric, yeesh—it does nothing. "GIRL" was not even released as a single in the U.S.—it was the B-side of "Michelle," which I just learned was also not released as a single in the U.S. (!?!?!?!?!?!), which seems impossible, since it's iconic—also, it won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1967. But nope, not a single in the U.S. So "GIRL" was a B-side to a single released only in various European countries (not the UK!?) and New Zealand. If you had to name two dozen Beatles songs, you would not name "GIRL." No, shh, you would not, please stop. As with HIND, the clue on "GIRL" today is baffling. More baffling. But as with HIND, the crosses are all fair, and easy, so ... whatever.

Bullets:

• 47D: To be, in Barcelona (SER) — Spanish words have been a mainstay of U.S. crosswords for a while now, but ... how many is too many? I'm gonna say four (4!) is too many (SER, ISLA, ENERO, SI SI). If I left one out,  that means there are more than four (4!), which would still be too many. More so. 
• 34D: Word hidden, aptly, in "teen's language" (SLANG) — from relatively obscure deer terminology and minor Beatles B-sides to this—child's placemat-level gimmes. Boo. Also, if you really want your puzzle to seem old, make a quaint joke about "teen's language"
• 51D: Animal that sleeps upside down (SLOTH) — wanted KOALA. Actually wanted BAT but as you can see, doesn't fit. Doesn't a SLOTH do everything upside down? "[T]ree sloths spend most of their lives hanging upside down" (wikipedia). Let's  see if this is true ... yep, checks out.

• 51A: All-out boxing match (SLUGFEST) — it's a minor thing, but I think it would've been better to take this clue away from "boxing" specifically, since the preceding themer is already using "boxing match." A high-scoring baseball game is often called a SLUGFEST, you could go that direction.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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