Interception returned for a touchdown / TUE 10-6-26 / Strategic disk game played on a vertical board / Feline adoption option / Bank with a lion in its logo / Coin dated with the year of its country's imperial era

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ACTION / FIGURE (67A: With 68-Across, posable plaything ... or a verbal hint to each half of 4-, 7- and 10-Down and 46-Across) — four familiar two-word phrases where the first word is an "action" and the second word is a "figure" (i.e. a number):

Theme answers:

• PICK SIX (4D: Interception returned for a touchdown)
• TAKE FIVE (7D: Break for a few minutes)
• HANG TEN (10D: Surf with one's toes off the front of the board)
• CONNECT FOUR (46A: Strategic disk game played on a vertical board)

Word of the Day: PEAKY (20A: Pale and sickly) —

• adjective Sickly; peaked. [emph. mine]
• adjective Characterised by peaks. (wiktionary, via wordnik)

• • •

Strange, but in a good way. From the concept to the execution to the grid shape, everything about this theme feels original, imaginative. It took me a few beats to understand it, though. I came down the west side and ended up at the revealer quite quickly. Despite the fact that I already had two theme answers in place at that point, I thought I had only one—CONNECT FOUR—and based on that alone, I couldn't figure out how ACTION/FIGURE worked. The "each half" part of the clue was throwing me—I was expecting both CONNECT and FOUR to be "doing" the same thing, but couldn't figure out how either one related to ACTION/FIGURE. I think the revealer would actually have been clearer if they'd just left the whole "half" part out of it. "... or a possible verbal hint to blah, blah, blah." The entire phrase "ACTION/FIGURE" is the "verbal hint." Yes, the first half is the "action" and the second half is the "figure," but you can see that. The "half" business isn't important. And for me, initially, it was a distraction. It was only when I went and found the other theme answers I had in place (PICK SIX), that the "half" business became clear. Not "both halves" but "each half"—each was relating to a different part of the phrase ACTION/FIGURE. One, the action; two, the figure. Got it. Liked it.

One thing I did not like—that made me literally stop and exclaim (in a whisper—my wife is still sleeping), "Noooo!": the clue on SENSE (24A: One of six, supposedly, for a seer). The clue itself is just fine, or would be, if the answer to that clue didn't cross the "SIX" in PICK SIX, and answer I had just written in. Bad enough to dupe the "six" in the clue, but to dupe it so close to the SIX in the grid—right on top of it. That seemed like such an editorial own-goal that I briefly thought there was gonna be some kind of "six" theme, or number theme. I guess I was right about the number theme, sort of, only duplication of the numbers had nothing to do with it. So that "six" in the SENSE clue was extremely jarring. Less jarring, but still disruptive, was "PEAKY," a word I've only ever heard preceding the word "Blinders" in a well-regarded TV show. I had the "PEA-" part and thought "OK ... why won't 'PEAKED' fit? Is there a rebus? An 'ED' rebus? That seems ... unlikely." I did not know PEAKY was a synonym for (bastardization of?) PEAKED, so I wrote in that "Y" with some trepidation at first, but YEN ended up rock solid, so ... PEAKY it is. "PEAKED" (pronounced with two syllables, like "NAKED") is a word I associate heavily, maybe exclusively, with my MOM. I think she's the only person I've ever heard say it—when I was a child, when either my sister or I didn't look well. "You're looking a little PEAKED." I like the word PEAKED. PEAKY, I like les, but is is, in fact, a word, nothing I can do about common USAGE, sadly. 

[My city weighs a TON (423D: Suffix in the names of many U.S. cities)]

There's maybe a little more gunk than I would like in the short stuff today (CSI ONO ARIA ING MAI NGOS SHH ASEA IFI), but it's holding together a theme that's pretty hard to pull off, architecturally—two 7s, an 8, and an 11 are not gonna fit in any kind of standard theme answer arrangement, so the puzzle gets creative. None of the gunk bothered me nearly as much as RIDES ON did (39A: Gallops into the sunset, say). Something about the clue just seems off. Riding into the sunset implies a conclusion (to a movie, specifically), whereas riding on is just ... continuing on one's way. Which, I guess, is technically what the person galloping into the sunset would be doing ... OK, maybe the clue is fine, on a literal level, but I still feel like there's some kind of temporal wobble here, a concluding vs. continuing incongruity created by the whole "riding into the sunset" image.   

Bullets:

• 46A: Strategic disk game played on a vertical board (CONNECT FOUR) — I was CONNECT FOUR champion in grade school (5th grade? 6th?). I would sometimes get to class early and play this game with whoever was around. I remember it being like a glorified tic-tac-toe, in that, if you played it right, it was possible to never lose—the worst outcome would be "no-winner." But it's been 45 years since I played, so maybe I'm misremembering how easy it was to master. It's also possible my competition was simply feeble. No offense, guys. We were 11!
• 35D: Spur-of-the-moment (IMPROMPTU) — when I got the FIGURE part of ACTION/FIGURE, I remember thinking "What the hell word are they gonna use for the terminal 'U' in the Down." Figured it would some phrase ending in "YOU." Then saw it was gonna end "-TU" and thought "oh that doesn't bode well ... what is that, some long Latin phrase?" but then pow, IMPROMPTU came along and surprised me. What a great word. 
• 45D: Starbucks keepsake, perhaps (MUG) — why would you shill for Starbucks like this? Who gets "keepsakes" from Starbucks? "Ah, this MUG reminds me of that time we went to Starbucks. Remember, honey?" "The one in the airport or the one in the mall?" "No, the one across from Walmart. I can't believe you've forgotten already!? Do our visits to ubiquitous coffee shops mean nothing to you!?"

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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