Old-timey "Darn!" / WED 10-28-26 / Shuffling dance move popular in the 1990s / Group of antlered deer, humorously / Isolate, in corporate-speak / "Stop," as said to someone filling a cup / Pokémon critter with a yellow snout and short, pointed ears / Member of the genus Pongo, informally

Constructor: Daniel Grinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

[36D: Jedi of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (REY)]

THEME: SCARE QUOTES (66A: Indicators of irony ... or a way to describe the answers to 18-, 24-, 40-/44- and 54-Across?) — quotes from scary movies:

Theme answers:

• "HERE'S JOHNNY!" (18A: Jack Torrance, in "The Shining")

• "IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!" (24A: Dr. Frankenstein, in 1931's "Frankenstein")

• "BE AFRAID, BE / VERY AFRAID" (40A: With 44-Across, Veronica Quaife, in "The Fly")

• "I WANT TO PLAY A GAME" (54A: Jigsaw, in "Saw")

Word of the Day: The RUNNING MAN (12D: Shuffling dance move popular in the 1990s) —

The running man is a street dance, consisting of "shuffling" and sliding steps, imitating a stationary runner. The dancer takes steps forward, then slides the foot placed in front backwards almost immediately, while moving their fists forwards and back horizontally in front of them. [...]

Notable practitioners of the dance were MC Hammer, Janet Jackson, Five Star, Selena, Milli Vanilli, and Vanilla Ice during their live concert shows and in music videos. According to Janet, Paula Abdul learned and then taught her the dance. Abdul also choreographed the 1987 film The Running Man. Jackson further popularized the dance, when she performed it in her 1989 music video "Rhythm Nation".

• • •

I've only seen two of these movies (The Shining, Frankenstein), but all four quotes are familiar to me, even if I could've quite get the phrasing on the last one right at first—I kept wanting it to be an invitation, something like "WANT TO PLAY A GAME?" or "WANNA PLAY A GAME?" I think I was getting Jigsaw confused with the computer in War Games:

This reimagining of SCARE QUOTES is kind of cute, and the puzzle lands in an appropriate place—at the end of Spooky Season, in the week leading up to Halloween. So I think that thematically things are fine. But the fill. If anything was scary, it was the fill. Jump scare after jump scare. Sincerely, I was startled by how stale the fill was. In the NW corner alone, AREOLA BAHAI ELS RAJ and especially NERTS (oof) made for a very grim beginning. I took a screenshot, thinking that was going to be as bad as it got, but then the stale, crosswordesey fill just kept on going. On and on and on and on. I know that when the theme is dense and you run a lot of themers very close to each other, filling a puzzle cleanly can be a challenge, but yikes:

When I got to LEOI, I shouted (internally) "You've got to be kidding me." Uncle! Have mercy! I give! OLES LANAI ERNST OBVI OCHRE (you can see me pull up there, not knowing which OCH(ER/RE) it's gonna be), and then, after all that, LEOI!? The crosswordesiest answer of all? Brutal. Software is supposed to make it much easier to keep fill clean. I don't know what happened here, except that any enjoyment I might've had from the cute-ish theme was ruined by the pummeling I took from the dramatically subpar fill. It goes on: ABCTV IOTA INCA SOL OMNI ONIT ORANG ABRA. Things are somewhat better in the bottom half of the grid, though MEESE ... look, I appreciate the attempt to make the answer something fresh (60D: Group of antlered deer, humorously), but you and I both know, that's still Reagan's Attorney General, just as ABRA is still a partial magician's phrase, Pokémon be damned. (MOOSES!—now that's "humorous"). And then to top it all off, when we finally do get to non-theme answers that are longer than 6 letters (there are only two of them), well, one of them is fine—I'm always happy when the puzzle breaks into a silly dance (RUNNING MAN), but I that other long answer really EATS A SANDWICH (LANDS A DEAL). The theme was cute, but the fill really hurt. Palpably. From square one. Compare yesterday's puzzle—a superior Halloween-ish theme plus a grid full of interesting longer answers (though I sympathized with the people who didn't know KOOKABURRAS—or ANKE Huber or Olivia MUNN or LORI Greiner. Some brutal crosses in there).

Bullets:

• 22A: Top choices? (BRAS) — I think of "tops" as things you wear on the outside, but I can't deny that BRAS are the "top" part of a woman's underwear (or a bikini), so I suppose this works. Not the most scintillating wordplay I've ever seen, but it slowed me down a little, so mission accomplished, question mark clue! (with an assist from ambiguous OCHRE)
• 53A: "Stop," as said to someone filling a cup ("WHEN") — this, I like. Gives an otherwise pedestrian word a little personality, a lively, colloquial context. Thumbs up.
• 55D: "Knock my socks off!" ("WOW ME!") — I like this as well. Hard to find short fill that's not only tolerable but vibrant.
• 4D: One chasing the big bucks? (DOE) — do they do this? Do DOEs chase bucks? I'm no deer expert, but somehow this "chasing" thing doesn't sound right. The pun here isn't inspired enough for me to go along with the implausible representation of animal behavior.
• 31D: Popular band that had a 40-year gap (1981-2021) between its last two studio albums (ABBA) — initially went with Crossworld's other popular four-letter band that starts with "A"—AC/DC. Here's a little late AC/DC (2020!) for your Halloween season:

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️Upcoming Crossword Tournaments✏️:

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Philadelphia, PA, April 30-May 2, 2027)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)