Need for a greedy Swede? / WED 9-30-26 / God whose name has one "I," fittingly / Best and most awesome, in slang / Trig function that can output every real number / Movie with the record for the longest time between its release and the release of its sequel (63 years) / Isle that's the traditional burial site of Scottish kings / "___ Troyens" (five-hour French opera)

Constructor: Joel Woodford

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: sounds like it! — Theme clues are words ending in "-et" that must be read as two words (___ it!") in order for them to make sense: 

Theme answers:

• EXAM PAPER (17A: Market!) (mark it!)
• CHECK BOX (24A: Ticket!) (tick it!)
• SURPRISE PARTY (34A: Planet!) (plan it!)
• SUITCASE (47A: Packet!) (pack it!)
• FRONT DOOR (55A: Locket!) (lock it!)

Word of the Day: LES Troyens (22D: "___ Troyens" (five-hour French opera)) —

Les Troyens (pronounced [le tʁwajɛ̃]; in English: The Trojans) is a French grand opera in five acts, running for about five hours, by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself from Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid; the score was composed between 1856 and 1858. Les Troyens is Berlioz's most ambitious work, the summation of his entire artistic career, but he did not live to see it performed in its entirety. Under the title Les Troyens à Carthage, the last three acts were premièred with many cuts by Léon Carvalho's company, the Théâtre Lyrique, at their theatre (now the Théâtre de la Ville) on the Place du Châtelet in Paris on 4 November 1863, with 21 repeat performances. The reduced versions run for about three hours. After decades of neglect, today the opera is considered by some music critics as one of the finest ever written.

• • •

The answers are arbitrary and a little dull, but the theme concept is clever and the fill (despite some weak spots) holds up pretty well. There's something slightly meta about this theme: you take a common cluing conceit—the [___ it!] variety of clue, where the answer is whatever the "it" might literally represent (i.e. [Watch it!] might be MOVIE, [Beat it!] might be EGG, etc.)—but here you hide that clue inside one-word homophones. So you have to mentally unpack the clues to get to the [___ it!] version, and then you're good. It's not a tough theme, but it's got ... something, As I say, the answers are a little arbitrary. You can "plan" lots of things, just as you can "lock" lots of things—SURPRISE PARTY and FRONT DOOR just happen to fit symmetrically in the grid with the other answers. But that's the nature of the [___ it!]-type clue. [Step on it!] might be STAIR ... or FLOOR ... or SCALE ... there are usually many potential answers and you often have to work crosses to find out which. 

The theme answers end up a little lifeless today—SURPRISE PARTY makes a nice marquee answer, but the others just kind of lie there. So it's a good thing the fill has some pep. A whole troop of PEP BANDs in fact (36D: Musical promoters of school spirit). PANACHE has more PANACHE than most of the themers combined. I also enjoyed the KICK-BUTT SPARKLERS in the NE (though I could do without BUTT and ASS in the same grid—cluing it as a donkey isn't fooling anyone, mister! (53D: Burro). The fill definitely gets creaky in places: SSE, EKE, OPIE, XES, ETAS, OLEO, EENY—what is it with this EENY/EENIE obsession the NYTXW has. I mean, I know, it's the common letters, but oof, "counting rhyme" part is among the lowest forms of fill. And you notice you never see MEENY. Or MINY. Just EENY/EENIE. I don't really want to see any "counting rhyme" parts, but ... Justice for MINY! Let him come off the bench sometimes! He'd at least bring some novelty to the whole "counting rhyme" scenario. He's only ever gotten in the game once, and that was fifty years ago (Oct. 26, 1976). (So, for the record, that's one MINY, four MEENYs, and ... 210 EENY/EENIEs! And counting. And counting. And ...

There wasn't much today in the way of resistance or challenge. I think BAMBI was the hardest thing in the grid for me, largely because I had no idea there'd been a sequel (?!?!?!) (4D: Movie with the record for the longest time between its release and the release of its sequel (63 years)). Waaaaait a minute. Direct-to-video!? You can't count that. Booooo! A 2006 film that premiered in Argentina (!?!?!) before being released as a direct-to-video title in the States!? Boo to this "record." You should have to release it like a real movie and people should have to actually see it for it to count, esp. if you want to use it as a bit of trivia for your crossword clue. In case you were wondering, the sequel went through several titles (??) before producers finally alit on the highly imaginative ..

No "records" for you, BAMBI II. Pinocchio may have finally been transformed into a real boy, but you're not a real movie. Back to the IP forest with you!

Bullets:

• 9D: Feature (ASPECT) — another oddly difficult answer for me today. "Feature" can mean so many things, and it can be both noun and verb, so I needed almost every cross. Sadly, one of those crosses was CLERK, which also had a clue so vague I had no idea (21A: Administrative role). Real "watching paint dry" difficulty here.
• 51A: Need for a greedy Swede? (KRONA) — I see you're doing a little rhyme thing here, but the clue makes no sense. If the Swede is being "greedy," then by definition there is no question of "need." Just want.
• 53A: Nail a test (ACE IT) — the one moment of the solve where I winced—all of your theme clues involve [___ it!] phrases; there shouldn't be stray ones in the grid. Distracting. Inelegant. 
• 40A: Best and most awesome, in slang (ILLEST) — Hip-hop or rap slang, specifically. Context would be nice.

["We the ILLEST / Need a nurse / Here's the check / Grab your purse"][Warning: profanity by the truckload]

• 29D: God whose name has one "I," fittingly (ODIN) — ah we're doing more puns, I see, cool cool. (ODIN is a one-eyed god—he sacrificed the other for wisdom)

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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