Athlete tackling El Capitan, e.g. / THU 9-4-25 / Designation for some audio connectors / Jungian archetype / Lion keeper? / Locale for a couples cruise? / When ties get untied, for short / World capital in central Anatolia

Constructor: Colin Ernst

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "DOES IT SCALE?" (26D: Investor's question for a start-up, to which 3-, 8-, 35- and 49--7-Down) — people / things that "scale" ... things:

Theme answers:

• ROCK CLIMBER (upside-down) (3D: Athlete tackling El Capitan, e.g.)
• SPIDER-MAN (upside-down) (35D: Who popularized the proverb "with great power comes great responsibility")
• WINDOW / WASHER (upside-down) (49D: With 7-Down, worker who likely knows the ropes)
• GRAPEVINE (upside-down) (8D: A bunch of fruit may grow on it)

Word of the Day: Flying Wallendas (65A: Milieu for the Flying Wallendas = BIG TOP) —

The Flying Wallendas is a circus act and group of daredevil stunt performers who perform highwire acts without a safety net. They were first known as The Great Wallendas, but the current name was coined by the press in the 1940s and has stayed since. [...] In 1944, while the Wallendas were performing in Hartford, Connecticut, a circus fire broke out, killing over 168 people. None of the Wallendas were hurt. // In the following years, Karl developed some of their most impressive acts, such as the seven-person chair pyramid. They continued performing those acts until January 30, 1962, when, while performing at the Shrine Circus at Detroit's State Fair Coliseum, the front man on the wire, Dieter Schepp, faltered, and the pyramid collapsed. Three men fell to the ground, killing Richard Faughnan, Wallenda's son-in-law; and nephew Dieter Schepp. Karl injured his pelvis, and his adopted son, Mario, was paralyzed from the waist down. Dieter's sister, Jana Schepp, let go of the wire to fall into the quickly-raised safety net, but bounced off and suffered a head injury. // Other tragedies include when Wallenda's sister-in-law, Yetta, fell 50 feet to her death in 1963, after fainting during her act. Wallenda's son-in-law, Richard ("Chico") Guzman, was killed in 1972 after touching a live electric wire while holding part of the metal rigging. Nonetheless, Karl decided to go on. [...] On March 22, 1978, during a promotional walk in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Karl fell from the wire and died. It was between the towers of Condado Plaza Hotel, one hundred feet high. He was 73. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one started somewhat disappointing, and then got promising, and then went back to disappointing again with the revealer. I understand the phrase "DOES IT SCALE?" but I care so little about "investors" and start-ups and businessspeak in general that the phrase just leaves me flat. Worse, it's kind of off-putting. If the phrase were truly colorful or involved great wordplay or were particularly apt, my aversion would not have mattered so much, but something about "scaling" as the core concept was such a letdown that even if I *had* been a venture capitalism admirer and fervent Shark Tank watcher, "DOES IT SCALE?" would have landed with a bit of a thud. I really thought the theme was going to be about hanging. I think of a rock climber hanging from a rappelling rope

Or SPIDER-MAN iconically hanging upside-down

Or WINDOW WASHERs literally hanging outside a high-rise

But then there was GRAPEVINE, which, first off, isn't a person like the others, so boo, and second, doesn't really "hang." And that's when the revealer shows up and informs me that no one was ever "hanging," they were ... scaling. Well, the theme answers definitely go Up (i.e. "scale" the grid) instead of Down. So that part's literal enough. I think "scaling" is a word I'd associate with rock climbing and grapevines, but not so much with the others. SPIDER-MAN can scale stuff, sure, but mainly he's swinging around from building to building. Anyway, the theme "works" well enough, it just wasn't for me. Revealer phrase made me stick my tongue out with "ick," and the "scaling" idea just didn't fully land. Also, the puzzle was dead easy for the umpteenth time in a ROW—very depressing.

Also also, the fill was kinda weak in places. God spare me from any more "playground retorts," particularly long and contrived ones like "I CAN SO" (pretty formal for a playground—you'd think "CAN SO!" would do). Crossing SAO and 'TIS, blargh. Things are also a little blarghy in the ANIMA / "I'M ON" / KARO region. KARO is one of those crosswordese brand names that is well worth avoiding. Everyone knows OREO, but KARO ... bah. Looking over the rest of the grid, there's nothing particularly bad going on. An MSG here, and ESP there, a TBAR, an INOT. Once again I plead with editors and constructors not to clue TMC (The Movie Channel) as having anything to do with "cinephiles" (43A: Inits. for cinephiles). "Cinephiles" watch TCM (Turner Classic Movies). Whereas TMC is just a channel you get with your basic cable package that you probably don't even watch unless you're bored. I don't remember ever watching it. If I search [TMC] I get the weirdest assortment of hits and I don't get The Movie Channel at all, which should tell you the kind of clout that channel has with cinephiles, or anyone.

This puzzle presented zero actual solving problems. I got the theme early and easily...

I probably struggled with 5D: Down (BLUE) more than any answer in the puzzle. Not one not two but three wrong ideas there before alighting on BLUE. First was CHUG. Then GLUG (!?). Then I thought, "EUREKA, I've got it!" and wrote in ... GLUM 😞. Oh, and I don't know the expression "MATE in three." I guess it's something you say in chess when you know you are going to (check)MATE your opponent in three moves. Shrug. Chess and venture capitalism, really hitting all my passions today!

Bullets:

• 23A: Genre for "Sunset Boulevard" (NOIR) — directed and co-written by the great Billy Wilder. They play this movie a lot on TCM. Again, I have no idea what they play on TMC.

• 63A: Locale for a couples cruise? (NOAH'S ARK) — if you've done crosswords for any length of time, you've heard this one. A lot. A lot a lot. The phrase "couples' cruise" (or "couples' retreat") has been used multiple times, just in the past few years, in clues for ARK (also "couples' getaway," "ship that was double-booked," etc.). The ship that spawned a thousand puns (all of them basically the same)!
• 49D: With 7-Down, worker who likely knows the ropes (WINDOW / WASHER (backwards)) — coming back to this one because the clue really cries out for a "?" The specific play on words ("knows the ropes"), and the fact that it's not a phrase anyone would use to describe the specific professional abilities of a WINDOW / WASHER, means a "?" is called for. Wouldn't have made the answer any easier to get, necessarily, but that's not the point. The point is, if the clue doesn't really literally make great sense, if the literal meaning is being severely bent to accommodate some kind of wordplay, you should have a "?" on there.
• 62D: Lion keeper? (MGM) — what is the wordplay here? I've heard of "lion tamer," but "lion keeper," not so much. I know that MGM's logo contains Leo the Lion, that's obvious. What I'm asking is: why is the clue phrased this way? What's the "ha ha, good one" angle? (if you google "lion keeper" right now, the *only* hits you'll get are (cheap, ugly, borderline illiterate, severely ad-laden) automated crossword answer sites. MGM movies are seen frequently on TCM. Whereas what's playing on TMC, nobody actually knows.
• 64D: Start to count? (ONE) — uh ... I guess. Again, what is the wordplay involved? What makes this clever? I see the misdirection (I wanted to write in CEE, i.e. the letter that literally starts the word "count"), but I'm clearly failing to appreciate whatever is supposed to be clever about the clue phrasing. I cannot deny, however, that if (for some reason?) you "start to count" (to 10, say), you would likely start with ONE.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex "This Blog Does Not Scale" Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Apparel competitor of Playtex / THU 10-19-23 / Egyptian temple site / Tent with smoke flaps, in an anglicized spelling / Musicians that play with mallets / Shelfmate of Chips Ahoy! and Oreo / One hanging around a kennel? / How English poets wrote previously?

Constructor: Colin Ernst

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: [DO][UB][LE] [DO][WN] (57D: Gamble boldly, in a way ... or a hint to the answers to this puzzle's italicized clues) — verb phrases meaning (roughly) "gamble boldly" appear as "Down" answers with the letters "doubled" up (i.e. two letters to a square):

Theme answers:

• [UP][S T][HE] [AN][TE] (1D: Makes things more interesting)
• [BE][T T][HE] [FA][RM] (54D: Risk it all)
• [RA][IS][E T][HE] [ST][AK][ES] (24D: Make things more interesting)
• [GO] [FO][R B][RO[KE] (11D: Risk it all)

Word of the Day: KARNAK (47A: Egyptian temple site) —

The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (/ˈkɑːr.næk/), comprises a vast mix of temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I (reigned 1971–1926 BCE) in the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000–1700 BCE) and continued into the Ptolemaic Kingdom (305–30 BCE), although most of the extant buildings date from the New Kingdom. The area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut ("The Most Selected of Places") and the main place of worship of the 18th Dynastic Theban Triad, with the god Amun as its head. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes, and in 1979 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List along with the rest of the city. The Karnak complex gives its name to the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of El-Karnak, 2.5 kilometres (1.6 miles) north of Luxor. (wikipedia)

• • •

One of those puzzles where I admired the concept more than I actually enjoyed filling the grid. This was especially true after I discovered the basic conceit (two letters per square in the answers with italicized clues). I almost wish the theme answers had been neither italicized in their clues *nor* symmetrical, so at least there would've been some element of surprise, some thrill of discovery. Yes, the puzzle would've been much harder, but it also would've been less dull. Once you get one theme answer, you can infer that all the other theme answers are going to work the same way. This doesn't mean the answers are transparent (you still gotta work the crosses etc.), but there's not much thematically left to discover, except the revealer, which I pretty much guessed right away (that is, shortly after uncovering the double-letter concept). The theme is a dutifully literal representation of a familiar expression, which is the bread & butter of crossword themes. This one is obviously high-end, with an architecture that is showier and more complex than usual. But it felt oddly by-the-book. Everything doubled, everything down, everything symmetrical, tidy, in its place. You can't fault the cleanliness of it all. But my main experience while solving was ploddingly entering two characters per square, over and over again. After the first themer drops, most of what's left is just Work, not Revelation or Surprise or Fun.

The theme execution is orderly and mostly tight, but there's one little wobble. Well, maybe two little wobbles involving one themer in particular. First, the obvious odd-man-out change to third-person with [UP][S T][HE] [AN][TE]. You've got GO, RAISE, BET ... but then UPS, with the "S." Makes it slightly wonky, but it's a minor and probably necessary blemish. Symmetry gotta symmetry, so fine, UPS, not UP, that'll do. Less acceptable, to my eye, is the clue on [TE]E-PEE (23A: Tent with smoke flaps, in an anglicized spelling). Uh ... hmm. So ... TEPEE, which gets used in crosswords all the time, fits perfectly in those five spaces, and is also an "anglicized spelling." Here, I'll let wikipedia explain:

A tipi (/ˈtiːpiː/ "TEE-pee"), often called a lodge in English, is a conical tent, historically made of animal hides or pelts, and in more recent generations of canvas, stretched on a framework of wooden poles. The word is Siouan, and in use in Dakhótiyapi, Lakȟótiyapi, and as a loanword in US and Canadian English, where it is sometimes spelled phonetically as teepee and tepee. (wikipedia) (my emphasis)

So the puzzle pretends like it's telling us something helpful with that "anglicized spelling" bit, but it's telling us nothing. This makes the [TE]E-PEE clue weird and anomalous, in that a "wrong" answer (TEPEE) makes perfect sense, and fits. Every Single Other Rebus-Involved Answer is impossible to enter in any plausible way that doesn't involve the two-letter gimmick. You either get the rebus bit or you're stuck. But in this case: TEPEE is absolutely valid for the clue. I don't think I'd be nearly as annoyed by this clue if it hadn't appeared to be going out of its way to give me extra information, while actually giving me nothing. It also seems to imply that TEPEE isn't anglicized, which is wrong.

I could tell from square one that this was a rebus puzzle of some sort. The very first clue wanted to be UP TO but UP TO wouldn't fit (you know, the normal way). And after that, nothing fit. When you can't get Anything to work in a corner, and it's Thursday, there is a very, very good chance that you're dealing with a multiple-letters-in-a-single-square situation. This puzzle also basically highlights the trouble spots by italicizing the theme clues, so everywhere I was struggling, there was a theme clue cutting right through that section. Again, may as well have held up a neon "REBUS" sign. Even so, it took a little work to figure out the exact nature of the rebus. That didn't happen in and around the first theme answer in the NW, but once I started struggling in and around the second themer I encountered, I dug in and eventually dug up the trick:

[you can see my initial TEPEE there]

I think DI[ET]S was the first answer I attempted with the double letters (32A: Food regimens). Then [RA]CES (24A: Derbies, e.g.) and A[ST]OR (though I have no idea who this "historic" lady is) (45A: Britain's historic Lady ___). As is typical with the Thursday gimmick, once I got it, the rest of the puzzle got much easier. I can't recall any real trouble spots. I struggled a bit to remember KARNAK, and I wasn't entirely sure of the spelling of GARRETS, and HE[RM]ES was fairly elusive (69A: High-end fashion house)—certainly the most elusive of the theme-crossers, for me (that, and [AN]NEALED). But everything else, very gettable. I can see how the NE might've been the hardest section to get into, with the non-America CITROËN (22A: French automaker) and the somewhat unusual VIBISTS (9D: Musicians that play with mallets) being the main access routes to that section. But hopefully you, like me, found Abe VI[GO]DA to be a gimme. Or maybe BA[RB]IE was your gimme (not for me, still haven't seen it). I lucked out up there, in a way, because I've been listening to a lot of Milt Jackson records lately, and Milt Jackson ... plays vibes. So pretty quickly after reading 9D: Musicians that play with mallets, I was like "uh ... is VIBISTS a word?" And it is! VIBISTS VI[GO]DA AMEN(S)!

Given how taxing the theme must've been on the grid, the fill holds up very well today. The "UP"s cross in the NW, but again, small matter, made necessary by the theme, so forgivable. More partials than usual (UP TO, I'D BE, IN AT), and a couple of awkward two-word phrases (IS ONTO, AS FAST). But those were all theme-involved, so I'm not mad. The longer answers are solid, and I don't think I winced anywhere. The crosswordese (AER, ERSE) was infrequent and (therefore) tolerable. I expect the fill to be compromised somewhat by a theme this dense, so my main feeling today was "it's fine—could definitely have been a lot worse." Does anything need explaining? LONG U is the vowel sound in the word "prune" (67A: What's found in the center of a prune?). ID TAGs "hang" around dog's necks (43A: One hanging around a kennel?). English poets used to use the word "ERE" to mean "previously" (41D: How English poets wrote previously?). ROO is a character in the Pooh universe (Poohniverse?). Weird to call ROO a "critter" (64D: Critter that grows by leaps and bounds?). Hmm, now that I think of it, the clue probably wants me to think of 'ROO as a general term for "kangaroo" here. So nevermind. OLGA makes bras, MRS. Claus is married to Santa, Harry REID was Senate majority leader. Hopefully you knew the university staffers were RAS and not TAS (48D: Univ. staffers)—otherwise you'd end up with KATNAK. If you'd never heard of KARNAK, then KATNAK seems like a very plausible mistake. Would love to hear if anyone got KATNAK'd. I want someone to have been KATNAK'd. I just like the idea of someone saying "D'oh, I got KATNAK'd!" But you're all probably too smart for that. Alas. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Where Gandalf declares "You shall not pass!" / WED 8-24-22 / 1997 horror film with the tagline When you can't breathe, you can't scream

Constructor: Colin Ernst

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easier up top, Mediumer down below)

THEME: REAL ESTATE AGENT (56A: Source of the euphemisms found in the clues for 17-, 23- and 48-Across) — clues are real estate "euphemisms" for the following residences:

Theme answers:

• STUDIO APARTMENT (17A: "It's super-cozy, and a breeze to clean!")
• FIVE FLOOR WALK-UP (23A: "You can cancel that gym membership!")
• MAJOR FIXER-UPPER (48A: "The space has endless possibilities!")

Word of the Day: MORIA (48D: Where Gandalf declares "You shall not pass!") —

In the fictional world of J. R. R. Tolkien, Moria, also named Khazad-dûm, is an ancient subterranean complex in Middle-earth, comprising a vast labyrinthine network of tunnels, chambers, mines and halls under the Misty Mountains, with doors on both the western and the eastern sides of the mountain range. Moria is introduced in Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, and is a major scene of action in The Lord of the Rings.

In much of Middle-earth's fictional history, Moria was the greatest city of the Dwarves. The city's wealth was founded on its mines, which produced mithril, a fictional metal of great beauty and strength, suitable for armour. The Dwarves dug too deep, greedy for mithril, and disturbed a demon of great power: a Balrog, which destroyed their kingdom. By the end of the Third Age, Moria had long been abandoned by the Dwarves, and was a place of evil repute. It was dark, in dangerous disrepair, and in its labyrinths lurked Orcs and the Balrog. (wikipedia)

• • •

Maybe this is supposed to be of particular appeal to New Yorkers? It mostly missed me. Only one of these potential residences sounds like it requires a "euphemism" (the last one). The first two just seem like places one might live in a city. Maybe some people would find them undesirable, I dunno, but presumably you'd have some idea of the kind of apartment you were looking at before you looked at it. And about MAJOR FIXER-UPPER ... a few things. First, the MAJOR part felt a little wobbly. The expression that came to mind for me was "it's a REAL FIXER-UPPER." I needed several crosses to get MAJOR (and one of those crosses was MORIA (!?) ... this is partly why the bottom of this puzzle was more "Medium" than the "Easy" top). Second, MAJOR FIXER-UPPER seems like something you'd say about a house, or something you own, not (like the other two themers) an apartment or something you'd rent. So it's a bit odd-man-out. Third, MAJOR FIXER-UPPER *is* the euphemism here. The other residence types are just ... residence types. This one screams "euphemism." So the puzzle is telling me the *clue* is the euphemism, but the *answer* is actually way more euphemismy. Which brings me to maybe the off-est seeming thing about the theme: I usually (always?) think of "euphemisms" as specific words or phrases, not entire sentences, so that was weird. Here's the explanation of "euphemisms" from Merriam-Webster, and you can see that complete sentences are not really part of the discussion:

Euphemisms can take different forms, but they all involve substituting a word or phrase considered to be less offensive than another. The substituted word might, for example, be viewed as a less coarse choice, as when dang or darn is used instead of damn or damned. Or it might replace a word viewed as insulting to a religious figure, such as the various euphemisms for God (gad, gadzooks, gosh) or Jesus (gee, jeepers, jeez). A euphemism may also consist of an indirect softening phrase that is substituted for the straightforward naming of something unpalatable. Thus, we hear of people being “let go” rather than “fired”; civilians killed in war described as “collateral damage”; or someone who has died having “kicked the bucket,” “passed away, “given up the ghost,” or “joined one’s ancestors.” (emph. mine)

There's a kernel of an interesting idea behind this theme, but I thought the execution here was a bit rough.

The longer Downs add some life to the grid, with the pair in the SE being the real bright spot of the day, fill-wise (SCOOP NECK next to SHAKE ON IT). Sadly, that pairing also results in the gunkiest part of the grid, fill-wise: that tiny section in the far SE—CIVKTSTVS. Actually, TVS is OK, but it adds to the horrid pile-up of abbrs. there. The clues for CIV (62A: ___ engr.) and KTS (65A: Gold stds.) are themselves hard to look at, with [___ engr.] being about as ugly a clue as I can imagine. Elsewhere, the short fill is better but not by much. ASSAM is interesting because it's a real enough place but my brain flags it immediately as crosswordese because, well, it used to be everywhere. One of those geographical terms you'd learn very early on, if you didn't know it already, because you could count on seeing it regularly. Its popularity peaked in 1973—nine appearances in the NYTXW that year. But this is its first appearance this year, so ... especially since it's an actual point-to-able region, I can't really call it "crosswordese" anymore. Like, if ASTA showed up in the puzzle tomorrow ... is he crossworese anymore? Ten ASTAs the first full year I wrote this blog (2007), but just one last year (2021). If the crosswordese unwears out its welcome, is it even crosswordese any more? I realize I've wandered into some thorny existential territory here, but ... think about it. 

ASSAM aside, there seemed to be a lot of stale short words. AHS CLIO EDAM ACER AFTS IOTAS ELL ERM PAH (ERM-PAH!—the sound of the hesitant tuba! ERM-PAH lerm-pah derpity der, I've got some ugly short words for you!). I don't know what to say about MORIA. I've read "The Hobbit" and seen all those boring LOTR movies and somehow MORIA hasn't stuck. Never even appeared in the grid until 2014, but this makes four appearances now. We already have one fictional place down in this corner (AVONLEA), I'm not sure we really need another. I enjoyed seeing AUGHT again (25D: Zero), clued as a fitting retort to everyone who doubted its "Zero" meaning last Thursday. While this puzzle played easyish overall, there was one crossing that felt like a fastball aimed at my head. I could not process the quotation marks in 47A: "Practical" thing (JOKE). I was looking for some colloquial phrase, some ... saying ... or an actual quote or anything that might justify those quotation marks. No idea. [It might be practical] would've tracked, but this clue didn't. Cross that with the "?" clue  at 47D: Form of attachment? and you've got me in a bit of a pickle, esp. since there are contexts where you do indeed "attach" things with "pegs." Me: "What kind of weird bit of hardware am I dealing with here? T-NUT, L-BAR ... what letter goes before a PEG!?" But the "attachment" in question is just an email attachment, and a JPEG is just a run-of-the-mill electronic image. I never got truly stuck there, but I did have to work both words down to the last letter (the "J") before understanding either of them.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Old World blackbird / TUE 2-9-21 / Supply for an indebted tattoo artist / Goddess of spring

Constructor: Colin Ernst

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:19)

THEME: "[verb] YOUR [article of clothing]" — idioms in the imperative voice that follow this pattern:

Theme answers:

• KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON (17A: Stay cool)
• HANG ON TO YOUR HAT (37A: Get ready for something amazing)
• TIGHTEN YOUR BELT (58A: Don't spend so much money)

Word of the Day: FLORA (31D: Goddess of spring) —

Flora (Latin: Flōra) is a Roman goddess of flowers and of the season of spring – a symbol for nature and flowers (especially the may-flower). While she was otherwise a relatively minor figure in Roman mythology, being one among several fertility goddesses, her association with the spring gave her particular importance at the coming of springtime, as did her role as goddess of youth.^[3] She was one of the fifteen deities who had their own flamen, the Floralis, one of the flamines minores. Her Greek counterpart is Chloris. (wikipedia)

• • •

Quick write-up this evening. Not much going on here. There's a kind of unity, in that all the phrases are 15-letters long and all are in the imperative voice and all have YOUR in them and all involve an article of clothing. And yet KEEP and HANG ON TO, being precise synonyms, set up a pattern that the last themer, which begins TIGHTEN, breaks. You end up with the last themer feeling like a clunky outlier. Retain an article of clothing, retain an article of clothing, and then ... merely cinch up ... an article of clothing. It's a weirdly deflating climax. With this little theme pressure, the fill should be much Much better than it is. It's not bad, but this is about the easiest-to-fill grid that you're ever going to see. Only three themers, and since they're 15s, there's no pesky black squares hanging off the ends, complicating your grid-building (hard to explain in brief, but 15s are Really easy to deal with for this reason ... unless you stack them ... but I digress). There should be more long fill in a grid this simple, and certainly there should be sparklier fill. FRIVOLOUS and MONOLITHS are fine, but they're all there is today, interest-wise. Everything else is in the 3-to-6-letter range, and even for 3-to-6-letter fill it's pretty pale stuff. There's no way we should be dealing with obscure-ish, crosswordesey stuff like MERL in a grid that's this easy to fill (7D: Old World blackbird). Actually, if you'd wanted to use crossword constructing legend MERL Reagle as the clue, my objection wouldn't be so strenuous, though even that should be reserved for a later-in-the-week puzzle. Fill is flat and stale overall. 

Only struggle was in the center, where ... what in the world is going on with that FLORA clue? She's goddess of the spring!? Clue doesn't even bother mentioning that it's a *Roman* goddess, first of all. We're just supposed to know? Or assume?  Second, five-letter goddesses ... I wanted CERES and (for some reason) VESTA before FLORA, because I never wanted FLORA, because I didn't actually know she *was* a goddess, because she's so minor that even the first paragraph of her wikipedia page mentions how minor she is. Also, FLORA is just a regular word. Goes with FAUNA. The whole FLORA thing is from outer space, especially when compared to every other straightforward clue in this puzzle. 

I also had OWNS before OFFS (not sure what my brain was doing there) (29A: Slays, in gang talk) and had no idea what "swoooosh" was supposed to sound like at 34A: What a "swoooosh" sound may signal is on its way (EMAIL). So I stumbled through that center part, but beyond that, only BENDS (65A: Doesn't follow to the letter, as rules) and an -ER v. -RE hesitation at 53D: Cavalry weapon caused me even a moment's trouble. Oh, and the clue on ENSURE forced me to ponder a bit (51A: Nutritional drink brand). Somehow "Nutritional" was far too vague, did not quite capture ... whatever it is that ENSURE is. There's just not much here: not much good, not much bad, not much hard. Don't think anything really needs explaining. "?" clues are corny but not thorny. I'm gonna go spend some time with Dickens now. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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