Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: David Murchie

Constructor: David Murchie

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: NEAR / MISS (1A: With 65-Across, the starts of 20-, 26-, 43- and 51-Across taken together) — first words of four theme answers spell out the phrase "CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR"

Word of the Day: GATT (53D: Intl. commerce pact replaced by the W.T.O.) —

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (typically abbreviated GATT) was negotiated during the UN Conference on Trade and Employment and was the outcome of the failure of negotiating governments to create the International Trade Organization (ITO). GATT was formed in 1949 and lasted until 1993, when it was replaced by the World Trade Organization in 1995. The original GATT text (GATT 1947) is still in effect under the WTO framework, subject to the modifications of GATT 1994. (wikipedia)

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Why am I exhausted. I mean, it was only the first day of class. It's not like I actually *taught* or anything. And yet here I am, totally dead on my feet. Does not bode well. I better get my sea legs back quickly, or I'm in for a rough semester. Relaxing effects of yoga class undone by snarfing half a large pizza immediately afterwards, so ... honestly I have no idea what I'm doing right now. My fingers are moving over a keyboard, forming words ... the words are vaguely coherent, which I guess is a good sign. I was able to do the puzzle in below-average Wednesday time, so that must mean my brain is semi-functioning. Or else I've developed some kind of grid-filling muscle that doesn't require the rational, thinking part of my brain and just operates automatically, by some kind of primitive sense. Who can say? I am not normally a fan of the "first words spell a phrase"-type theme, but I actually like the phrases in this case (particularly "BUT SERIOUSLY..." and "CIGAR AFICIONADO"), so I'm mostly happy. There's a smattering of not-great fill, but it's well spread out and therefore not terribly offensive. LIAISES is a monumentally ugly word, but it's a real word, so I don't feel too good about the legitimacy of my complaint. In the end, this was a relatively fast, relatively fun romp, AROO and ELENI (27D: Nicholas Gage best seller) and INLA and UNIS and ABRA be damned.

Theme answers:

20A: Alien abductions, e.g. (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS)
26A: "All kidding aside ..." ("BUT SERIOUSLY...")
43A: Unwelcome sign for a sales rep ("NO SOLICITING")
51A: Magazine opposed to the Cuban trade embargo ("CIGAR AFICIONADO")

Only one section gave me any trouble, and that was the first one I dipped into (and the last one I finished): the NW. No idea on the theme-related 1-Across at first, no idea on 1D: "Why, of course!" (that's twice recently we've seen "NATCH," an expression I know of but never hear anyone say), though animal (not virus) on 2D: Jungle menace (EBOLA), and had DANG and DARN and who knows what at 4D: "Fiddlesticks!" ("RATS!") to begin with. Not having commanded plow horses in a while, I did not know HAW was a command. Weirdly, I saw HAWS in another puzzle recently, clued as something like [Sounds of hesitation]. That didn't come to me easily either. 3D: You might wait for it at a stoplight was GREEN before it was ARROW. I feel slightly bad hating on ABRA since it was about the only thing up there I got right on the first pass. Rest of the puzzle wasn't nearly as confusing.

Bullets:

15A: "Double" facial feature (CHIN) — that's about as polite as that clue, with that frame of reference, could've been.
39A: Ring around the collar, say (DINGE) — somehow I much, much prefer this word in adjectival form. This is perhaps because "DINGE" is a dated racial slur. "Slang: Disparaging and Offensive. a black person." I know this from reading lots of old crime fiction, I think.
40A: Chamonix setting (ALPS) — Chamonix was the site of the first Winter Olympics in 1924
51D: 2000 election scrap (CHAD) — thought "scrap" meant "tussle" or "fight" ...
31D: River in a 1914 battle (YSER) — a pretty standard YSER clue, I think. YSER and ST. LO are two ultra-common four-letter xword words brought to us (or made famous to us, at any rate) by World Wars (I and II, respectively). Actually, they were made famous to me by crosswords.
26D: Low man at the Met (BASSO) — and not, as you suspected, the guy who has to hand-wash Pavarotti's sweat-stained costumes.