Handbag fashion label from Madrid / MON 9-7-26 / Grammy-winning pianist with the Elektric Band / Playful knock on the noggin / Uplifting tunes? / Robes tied with obis / Dive offering slices / Kiss, symbolically / Dominate, in sports slang / Ukrainian seaport, in an older spelling

Constructor: Jeff Chen and Stephan Prock

Relative difficulty: Challenging (solved Downs-only)

THEME: ELEVATOR MUSIC (15D: Uplifting tunes? ... or a hint to the circled squares) — music genres "hidden" inside theme answers (in circled squares) go both up and down ... like an elevator:

Theme answers:

• ALL ATINGLE (3D: Electric with excitement) (Latin (going down...))
• CHICK COREA (29D: Grammy-winning pianist with the Elektric Band) (Rock (going up...))
• ERRAND BOYS (7D: Some gofers) (R&B (going down...))
• PIZZA JOINT (32D: Dive offering slices) (Jazz (going up...))

Word of the Day: CHICK COREA (29D) —

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and "Windows" are considered jazz standards.

As a member of the Miles Davis band in the late 1960s, Corea participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered one of the foremost pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.

Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He won 29 Grammy Awards and has been nominated for the award 79 times. (wikipedia)

• • •

The music goes up. The music goes down. It makes a kind of sense. But you don't turn upside-down when you ride the elevator down. The whole idea of inversion doesn't quite seem to fit the metaphor, somehow. But I guess if you just think of the phrase "going up," or "going down," then sure, it works. The music genres are an arbitrary set, but they are all major. The genres all break across both parts of two-word answers. It's all very competent. I don't know why it didn't do more for me. Maybe it's the fact that outside of the themers, the fill was only so-so. Or the fact I've never ever heard of a LOEWE handbag (I had PRADA there for a while, even though I was pretty sure PRADA was Italian, not Spanish ... not that LOEWE sounds all that Spanish to my ears). Maybe it's the slight datedness of ALL ATINGLE and the extreme datedness of ERRAND BOYS. And maybe it's (also?) because the puzzle seems wildly misplaced on a Monday. This feels much more like a Tuesday or even a Wednesday concept. Granted, solving it Downs-only made it much harder than it would've been otherwise. It's often harder Downs-only, but when the themers are themselves Downs, then it's even harder. Easy to infer long theme answers by crossing them with shorter stuff—much harder to get longer theme answers with absolutely no help from crosses. And the clues on the themers were, in most cases, very little help. That clue on CHICK COREA, yeesh. I know who he is ,but "the Elektric Band" did nothing to help me down the number of famous pianists I know. I think this is a pretty good puzzle, but I also think I probably would've been more warmly disposed toward it if I'd solved it on a Tuesday or Wednesday (with appropriately toughened clues, if that were required). 

EVADE and FERNS had me completely wrecked in the NW to start (1D: Deftly avoid = ELUDE; 2D: Plants with tendrils = VINES). I got all the shorter Downs across the upper middle, but it didn't help me much. Then there was the LOEWE I didn't know, so that made traction bad there. I wasn't able to infer a single Across answer until I was way on the other side of the grid—with DIM, ARIA, and SETH in place, I looked at the last themer (32D: Dive offering slices) and figured it probably started with PIZZA. Wrote that in, noticed that all the crosses worked, then noticed that the circled letters were "ZZA-" and figured the next one had to be "J"—so, JOINT. PIZZA JOINT. At that point, I could see that either music *or* NBA teams were going to be going backwards inside the themers. Or so I thought. Ugh. I wanted ERRAND BOYS but of course "BDNAR" is not a thing, so I rejected it. It took me way too long to realize that "BDNAR" was actually RANDB, i.e. R&B, the music genre, and so a. I was dealing with music genres, not NBA teams, and b. those music genres were only going backward some (half) of the time. Actually, the second themer I got was CHICK COREA, entirely because the SW corner was so easy that I was able to infer the -REA part, making the pianist suddenly obvious. ALL ATINGLE was the last thing I got and by far the hardest. Even once I'd figured out / guessed LATIN was the music genre, I stared at "--LATIN---" for a while, wondering what word that could possibly make. Answer: two words! 

Bullets:

• 65D: Kisses, symbolically (XES) — wrote in XXX and wondered where in the world ODEXSA might be.
• 60D: One of 26 in a marathon (MILE) — isn't it 26.2? Yes. Yes it is. I see people with boastful 26.2 stickers on their cars, that's how I know. Actually, I think I just know it. And actually, technically, it's not 26.2 miles, it's...

[Not sure why "Miles" is capitalized, or why it's not pluralized. Search engine results! They've come so far ...]

• 12D: Divisions in a tennis match (SETS) — I don't have much else to say about this puzzle, plus there is some horrible ongoing organized shout-chanting going on somewhere in my neighborhood, as well as fireworks (???) so I think I'm going to go watch the U.S. Open now, if only to put something else in my earhole. Since when did Labor Day become a fireworks holiday!? 

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

 

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