Luxury brand known for its Rome-inspired designs / WED 11-4-26 / Magazine with "Decor" and "à Table" offshoots / She "dances on the sand" in a 1983 Duran Duran hit / Magical ally in "Argonautica"

Constructor: Peggy Sue Marlin

Relative difficulty: Hard (10:27)

THEME: ITS NOT A GOOD SIGN — "That spells trouble!" Literal signs that describe bad situations

Theme answers:

• SORRY WE'RE CLOSED for [56-Across on a store]
• OUT OF SERVICE for [56-Across on an elevator]
• EXPECT DELAYS for [56-Across on an interstate]
  

Word of the Day: HAIM (Rock band founded by three sisters) —

Sometimes I write a puzzle and complain about an entry like STAHL or ASTA or ESSO and commenters here tell me that I just have to memorize it and move in. Today I am here to tell you that y'all have to memorize HAIM. HAIM is going to appear in puzzles for the next decade, so let's all learn a little bit of info about them and commit them to memory. 

Haim, stylized in all caps as HAIM, is an American rock band, based in Los Angeles, composed of three sisters, Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim. The sisters grew up in a musical family, and began playing instruments from an early age. [wiki]

• • •

Hello, beautiful solvers! Solving music for me was Choosin' Texas. Today's puzzle was a little hard for me, but not because of the theme, which fell into place quite easily. For some reason, I got super stuck in the lower-left. I think it's because the term MAN PURSES is so foreign to me. I vaguely remember the term "murse" being used at some point, but never this terminology and certainly not in the last decade.

I truly thought, until tonight while solving this puzzle, that the second letter in this brand name was a V

I loved the chatty tone of this puzzle! People like to praise themeless puzzles when they have multi-word, conversational entries. I think they are harder to use in themed puzzles, so it is more of a treat to see them here. I really wanted the revealer to be "that's not a good sign," but since the word "that" was used in the clue, I knew that wasn't possible. (I'll have to take your word that the third theme answer is accurate, I haven't driven on an interstate regularly in years.) The entries here are a perfect example of how to utilize a word that has two meanings in the revealer-- "sign" meaning symbolic omen and "sign" meaning a physical display.

The chatty tone continued in some of the clues. I've been writing crossword clues for about seven years now (compared to a lot of people, that's not very long by the way!) and learned that in newspaper puzzles, I should aim for concise, tight phrasing. Clues like [A cyclops has one] or [A secret message might be in this] sound wordy to me. But I also think that as the Crossworld begins to contain more and more digital-only puzzles (where succint-ness matters less), wordier clues are spreading. Do you notice these types of clues, like I do? Or do they sound normal to you?

Bullets:

• [Lines at a supermarket checkout, for short] for UPC — This was new to me! UPC is apparently another name for a bar code, hence "lines"
• [She "dances on the sand" in a 1983 Duran Duran hit] for RIO — The song is about the city, which they personify, but it reminded me of a discussion that I had with a friend about how there are so few traditionally female names that end with an O and so few traditionally male names that end with an A. (We didn't count things like Jonah or Noah.)
• [Sourdough starter?] for ESS — The answer is a spelled out letter S, which "starts" the word "sourdough"
• [Foot joint sprain, familiarly] for TURF TOE — Totally new term for me!

xoxo Malaika

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