Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Alison Perch

Constructor: Alison Perch

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: TAKE ME OUT / MAKE MONEY (20A: Request regarding "the ball game" ... or instructions for answers the starred clues / 53A: Earn ... or what answering the starred clues will do in each case)— solvers have to omit "ME" from certain answers, which turns those answers into forms of money:

Theme answers:

24A: *Response to a knock on the door ("COME IN"--> COIN)
28A: *Their history is celebrated in March (WOMEN--> WON)
42A: *Neighbor of Saudi Arabia (YEMEN--> YEN)
45A: *Concrete component (CEMENT--> CENT)

Word of the Day: Alexis BLEDEL (44D: Actress Alexis of "Gilmore Girls") —

Kimberly Alexis Bledel (/bləˈdɛl/ blə-DEL; born September 16, 1981) is an American actress and model. She is known for her role as Rory Gilmore on the television series Gilmore Girls (2000–2007), and Emily Malek in The Handmaid's Tale (2017–2021). Bledel also had a recurring role in Mad Men in 2012 and reprised her role as Rory Gilmore in the Netflix reunion miniseries Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016). (wikipedia)

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Well that was ... odd. First, getting the revealer right up front, then having the gimmick be so slight, so thin, so easy, that it hardly felt worth it, then finding out there's a second revealer! It's the second revealer that really brought the Big Ambivalence out. On the one hand, thank god there was something more to this puzzle—the whole thing just wasn't adding up. On the other hand ... what? By which I mean, what (in the world) does MAKE MONEY have to do with "TAKE ME OUT"? It seems like the two revealers ought to have some relationship to each other—form part of a complementary set or echo one another or, really, just relate to each other in any way, but I don't see the connection at all. Like, if taking "ME" out had resulted in the names of ball games (to use one impossible hypothetical) that would've made sense: TAKE ME OUT ... to the ballgame! That's a phrase. There's a connection. If all the theme answers ended up being "ball games," well then dang, that would be perfect. Or you could take the phrase some other way. Like ... if you take someone out, you, let's see, go on a date with them, or on the town, or you pull them from a "ball game," or you assassinate them, whatever. Maybe there's a theme to be found in one of those meanings. It just seems like there should be some sense/meaning connection between revealer 1 and revealer 2, is what I'm saying, and there isn't one. They are distinct phrases, they give you instructions for a little trick and then explain the trick, but as phrases, as crossword answers, they have nothing to do with each other. It's weird. If you take me out "to the ballgame," you MAKE MONEY? How does that work? What kind of weird scam / long con are you working at the ballgame? It's a head-shaker. So I was grateful for the second revealer ... and then baffled by the second revealer. Not baffled by what it meant for solving the puzzle (that's OBVI), but baffled by what the snappy wordplay was supposed to be. I don't think there is any. And that's at least mildly disappointing.

There are stray "ME"s in the grid (in TIMELINE, ROME, ANIME), which is also disappointing. It's true that the "ME" only has to disappear for the starred answers, but in an ideal TAKE ME OUT puzzle, there are no "ME"s in the whole damn thing. More visually elegant that way. I'm also half-bothered by the fact that the MONEY is not of a piece—that is, it's half actual, specific national currencies (YEN, WON), and then half ... not that. You've got a word meaning "currency" (COIN), and a generic unit of currency (CENT). It's a motley lot. As for the grid, it's built with a lot of 4-5 action (i.e. a preponderance of 4- and 5-letter words), so it's a bit on the dull side, and A REAL is up there among the worst partials I've ever seen, but overall the grid is clean enough, and "GO FLY A KITE" livens things up nicely. This was shockingly easy for a Thursday, with BLEDEL being the only answer provided me with any resistance at all (her name was random letters to me—if you say "Gilmore Girls," I say "Lauren Graham" ... and then I have nothing left to say. "Yale," maybe?). I have hardly any notes on my grid because I don't remember any of it, it all went by so fast and seemed to be going out of its way to be straightforward and thornless. Looking the grid over now, I remember thinking that that's a nice way to clue AMMO (51D: Backing for an argument). I had just the "T" at first at 49D: Like a Pac-Man T-shirt and really wanted DATED, before thinking nah, it's probably gonna be the more positive-sounding RETRO (correct!). I had OBVS before OBVI, but I think that's literally the only misstep I made the whole time. Tough to see where anyone's gonna have any issues today (except perhaps, as I did, around BLEDEL).

There was one disturbing part of this puzzle that had nothing to do with the puzzle, but rather with the fact that I solved it the day after finishing a truly horrifying novel called Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. I won't spoil it for you, as I think it's fantastic (if you can handle very, very grim subject matter). But let's just say that the book is in large part about the processing of meat ("special" meat), and so having A HEAD of BEEF in the middle of my grid, along with stray tangentially related words like SHOTS, HONE, TIMID, and especially SUEDE—all of this was giving me dark flashbacks. I may be having these flashbacks a lot, and for a while. It was that kind of book. Again, highly recommended (short, very readable, great summer fare), but, you know, brace yourself.