THEME: none, unless the grid is supposed to look like Frankenstein's monster, such that the grid CREATES A MONSTER (17A: Isn't able to control the outcome of one's actions)
Word of the Day: CETE (5D: Pride : lions :: ___ : badgers) —
noun
a number of badgers together. [First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, of obscure origin; perhaps variant of Middle English cite “town,” a usage suggested by similarity of Middle English forms for borough and burrow] (dictionary.com)
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A very easy walk from AT ONE WITH NATURE to "IS THIS SEAT TAKEN?" That is the best spin I can give on this solving experience. Nice longer answer up top, a non-grueling journey down the grid, and another nice longer answer down below. If I describe it that way, I leave out some perfectly fine bits but also a bunch of winces and head-tilts and head-shakes and other general unpleasantness. The dangers with these grid-spanning 15 is always the cruddiness of the crosses, and while I don't think today's crosses were, on the whole, any cruddier than you usually get with stacked 15s, there also wasn't enough interesting fill in the grid to lift it out of humdrumitude. Further, there were some cluing moments that were a little "ugh." When your overall grid is stacked with great answers, a stray "ugh" in the clues for short stuff isn't going to mean much. But when there aren't a lot of highlights, then the lowlights shine forth with unfortunate brightness. The first jarring bit is of course CETE, which is the kind of "you'll-never-use-it-or-see-it-outside-crosswords" obscurity that used to be much more common back when I started solving in the early '90s. It's the kind of desperation you only bring forth when you have set yourself a challenging architectural goal, the kind of answer you convince yourself is OK but it's in the dictionary. See also "OH, ME," which is bad even in "AH, ME" form. As "OH, ME" ... oh my ("oh my" being an actual expression one might use). The rest of the short fill (except maybe -INI) isn't actually bad, but too much of the cluing either tries to be cute and misses or tries to get tough and just annoys. For example, the clue on INA (which is, actually, pretty bad fill). Cluing a two-word partial as a (singular) "preceder" (4D: Preceder of word or sense)!? Why are you going out of your way to call attention to a piece of fill you can't possibly want anyone to dwell on? Cluing OTTER as a paint shade? I think of odds being EVEN (no "S"), so the clue on EVENS (plural) feels particularly clunky (42D: Erroneous answer to "What are the odds?"). In what context would you even make that “erroneous answer”?? Again, if there were more whiz-bang answers in this thing, I probably wouldn't even remember this stuff. It would be a sideshow at best. But when there are few highlights, I tend to notice every little creak.
For me the puzzle missed with its marquee answer, CREATES A MONSTER. It's not just that the clue feels ... not quite on the money ("outcome of one's actions" doesn't really get at MONSTER), it's that CREATED A MONSTER is so so so so so much better as a standalone answer that I'm super-distracted by the fact that it isn't, in fact, the answer. "I've created a monster," that's the meaty phrase that everyone knows. CREATES (?) A MONSTER is ... well, a MEAT ALTERNATIVE by comparison. Speaking of MEAT, what the hell is up with the answer to that [Paleo, e.g.] clue!?! DIET FAD!? LOL, last I checked they were called FAD DIETs. It's this kind of tin-eared, close-enough, uncanny-valley quality that makes the puzzle less than fully enjoyable today. I google CREATED A MONSTER and I get all kinds of stuff: song titles, books, definitions, etc. I google CREATES A MONSTER and I get ... "Paper Mario CREATES A MONSTER"!? (four hits, all at the top of the results). What the hell even is that!?
There were some other moments that I liked, though. The "?" clues worked today. [Fed on the sly?] is NARC because a NARC is a federal employee who works undercover, i.e. "on the sly." Pretty good disguising of "Fed" there (with the capital masked by appearing in the first position, where all first letters are capitals). [Show up in labor?] also has good misdirection on both "show up" and "in labor" (OUTWORK). Not as thrilled with [Question asked without reservation?] since "IS THIS SEAT TAKEN?" is not a question you'd ever ask in a situation where one normally has a reservation. Usually you're in a movie theater or at an event of some kind where there's general admission, or maybe the bar, or maybe you want to take a seat from another table that doesn't appear to be using theirs ... I like the cleverness of the clue, but the contextual aptness isn't really ... precise. There was one other little cluing moment I liked, and that was the successive clues at 26- and 27-Down (26D: British ___ / 27D: Whitish). It's a small thing, but something about the way they echo each other suffixially made me smile.
Wanted DIALS BACK at 30A: Moves from 9 to 5, say. There doesn't really seem to be anything in the clue suggesting an "IT," but I do like the phrase DIALS IT BACK well enough. I also like the clue on SMALL TALK (33A: It's sometimes weather-related), as it is perfectly accurate while having nothing on its surface to signal its relationship to talk. Not a big aha there, but a fairly substantial "hey, that's true!," which is something. Wish there'd been a few more moments like that. Enjoy your Saturday, see you tomorrow.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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