Nirvana achiever / THU 3-28-24 / Shade-tolerant perennial / Dustin's sweetheart on "Stranger Things" / Songwriter Barry who once had six consecutive #1 hits / Iberian greeting

Constructor: Dominic Grillo

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: POTATO / HEAD (1D: With 58-Down, classic toy that dropped gendered titles in 2021) — circled squares contain the various "body" parts of (formerly Mr. or Mrs.) POTATO HEAD, all positioned in the wrong places because, as the puzzle says, on the toy, those parts are INTERCHANGEABLE (59A: Like the parts of this puzzle's toy, as depicted throughout the grid)

Parts:

• SMILE (up top where the HAT should be)
• NOSE and HAT (are these supposed to be EARs or HANDs, I cannot tell)
• EAR (I think this is the NOSE's place? Maybe EYES?)
• EYES (How did they get both EYES to go in the single NOSE hole? Or are the EYES one piece with this toy?)
• HAND (down below where the SMILE should be ... I think)

Word of the Day: "The Story of ADÈLE H" (57A: "The Story of ___" (1975 film by François Truffaut)) —

The Story of Adèle H. (French: L'Histoire d'Adèle H.) is a 1975 French historical drama film directed by François Truffaut, and starring Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson, and Sylvia Marriott. Written by Truffaut, Jean Gruault, and Suzanne Schiffman, the film is about Adèle Hugo, the daughter of writer Victor Hugo, whose obsessive unrequited love for a military officer leads to her downfall. The story is based on Adèle Hugo's diaries. Filming took place on location in Guernsey and Senegal.

20-year-old Isabelle Adjani received much critical acclaim for her performance as Hugo, garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role, making her the youngest Best Actress nominee ever at the time. The Story of Adèle H. also won the National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Award for Best Film, and the Cartagena Film Festival Special Critics Award. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess it's a joke. The body parts are in the wrong place. Or am I just not looking at it from the right perspective? I don't know. I haven't seen a (Mr.) POTATO HEAD in four decades. I didn't know they still existed (beyond the Toy Story movies). The black squares toward the center form a kind of potato silhouette, and then the circled squares are placed in relation to that. As a piece of grid art, it's inventive. As a puzzle to actually solve, it wasn't really my thing. I've never had much patience for puzzles that are architectural stunts, largely because the solving experience so often seems not to be a consideration, and the fill often seems to suffer (as it does, in many places, today). But my main problem here is I don't think the architectural element is that good. It's sloppy-seeming. I tried (half-heartedly, I'll admit) to figure out what body parts were supposed to go where, and I couldn't figure it out. No idea where the HAND slot is *supposed* to be. Where's the other EAR? The other HAND? Why are there apparently two EYES in (apparently) the NOSE place, a place that wouldn't (would it?) have two holes? (looks like the toy's EYES might actually come in one piece, but in the grid, that is not how they appear). There's an admirable stab at whimsy here, but visually it all seems a bit of a mess. I mean, beyond the intentional mess of mixed-up body parts. The mess is a mess, is what I'm saying.

Segmentation of the grid, particularly the extreme isolation of the center part (with only the narrowest of pathways in), made the puzzle somewhat difficult to travel through, and made that center section way harder than it would've been otherwise. You can only get in there via two answers: SEDIMENTS (which has a "?" clue, which meant that it was initially no help to me) (31A: Bank deposits?) and CHINESE YUAN (48A: Currency once pegged to the U.S. dollar). Luckily I knew the latter. I knew SEDIMENTS was probably something to do with river "banks," but SILT was the only word I had in my head, so I had to work from inside the potato before I got SEDIMENTS. And what do we have inside the potato? The plural of "poetry," LOL, I teach poetry (literally; later today, in fact) and I have never used the plural POETRIES in my life (I'm probably exaggerating, but not by much). If you were going to use it, you certainly wouldn't use it the way the clue has clued it, by reference to what are basically GENRES. [It can be epic or lyric] = POETRY. That would work. [They can be epic or lyric]? Hell no. Maybe (maybe) you might talk about the various POETRIES of the world—using it as a word for various poetic traditions. But mainly it's just poetry, man. No plural needed (or wanted). As for knowing names of poker guys, ugh, I remembered PHIL IVEY with a few crosses, but I can't say I enjoyed it (24D: Winner of 10 World Series of Poker bracelets). There's a dumb spelling game in here (37A: Synonym found after deleting half the letters of EXHILARATE) and a Britishly-spelled MITRE and the wholly underwhelming bonus (?) theme answer OVOID (46A: Shaped like this puzzle's subject). Also, I know PCP only as a drug and have never used that term to refer to my doctor, though I recognize that it's a valid abbr. (for "primary care physician"). So the middle part was the hardest part was the most unpleasant part.

But PHIL IVEY was not the fill that made me wince the most. That honor goes to ADELE H, truly the worst crossword name partial of them all. Let me tell you all the ways it is bad. First, it's a partial. It's not the movie's title—it's a part of the movie's title. It is hyperspecific—there is no other way to clue ADELE H, and no other ADELE H in the universe to help you as an analogy. Like, I might not know a particular TIM or BOB or SUZIE (13A: Dustin's sweetheart on "Stranger Things"), but I can at least recognize those names as names that humans have. ADELE H, not so much. Further—that movie is exceedingly Not famous. It's nearly 50 years old and somehow, though I watch hundreds of movies a year, most of them on the Criterion Channel, and I read lots of writing about film, this film never comes up. It's a 50-year-old minor film by a major director, but (I'm pretty sure) most solvers will not have heard of it (let alone seen it) unless (like me) they learned about it from crosswords. Further, and worst of all, if you're a solver who doesn't know the film, then you don't have any idea that ADELE H is actually two words, or two parts: an ADELE part followed by the initial "H." ADELEH looks like one name in the grid. "Who the hell is ADELEH?" I can almost literally hear thousands of solvers asking in unison today. This is only the fifth time ADELEH has appeared in the NYTXW, and only the third during my blogging tenure (since '06). And all because of a terminal "H" occasioned by the placement of the HEAD in "POTATO HEAD." Stunningly, all appearances of ADELEH come from the Shortz (now Shortz/Fagliano) Era. The 1970s, when this movie at least had some currency, didn't want anything to do with ADELEH a crossword answer, and neither should you. Delete it.


Other stuff:

• 57D: Pulitzer-winning author whose name is found in nonconsecutive letters of "page turner" (AGEE) — this may be the stupidest clue I've ever seen in my life. "Nonconsecutive?" I hope you wrote in PETE and just left it there in defiance of this stupid clue. 
• 25D: Deeply asleep, hyperbolically (COMATOSE) — one way to rescue your puzzle from excessive grimness (see also the clue on UZI).
• 38A: Taiwanese president ___ Ing-wen (TSAI) — really should commit this to memory, but so far no luck. Had THAI here (?!?!) until SIGNAL BOX helped me out.
• 15A: O-O-O part (TAC) — as in the game Tic-TAC-Toe
• 45A: "Be mindful when clicking," in brief (NSFW) — Not Suitable For Work. Clue isn't really specific enough, since you should be mindful when clicking in many, many situations, not just when your buddy sends you porn.

Off to teach the POETRIES. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Throw forcefully, in modern parlance / TUE 10-17-23 / Daniel who led a 1786-87 rebellion / 11-time sci-fi role for Anthony Daniels / "My word is my bond," informally / Absolutely inundated with work, so to speak / Thematic element in 2023's "Oppenheimer" / Irish name variant derived from John / Arizona city that hosts the Fiesta Bowl

Constructor: Dominic Grillo

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (harder than usual, maybe, if only because of that one anomalous square)

THEME: 3D PRINTER (61A: Modern manufacturing device ... or you, when answering 17-, 31-, 39- and 46-Across?) — theme answers are three-part phrases where all three parts start with "D"; so we, the solvers, “print” 3 D’s (!) when entering the theme answers:

Theme answers:

• DOT DOT DOT (17A: S, in Morse code)
• DOUBLE-DOG DARE (31A: Emphatic challenge)
• DING-DONG DITCH (39A: Bell ringer's prank)
• DRESS-DOWN DAYS (46A: Casual office occasions)

Word of the Day: SHAYS's Rebellion (38D: Daniel who led a 1786-87 rebellion) —

Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their trades. The fighting took place in the areas around Springfield during 1786 and 1787. Historically, scholars have argued that the four thousand rebels, called Shaysites, who protested against economic and civil rights injustices by the Massachusetts Government were led by Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays. However, recent scholarship has suggested that Shays's role in the protests was significantly and strategically exaggerated by Massachusetts elites, who had a political interest in shifting blame for bad economic conditions away from themselves.

In 1787, the protestors marched on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. The federal government, severely limited in its prerogatives under the Articles of Confederation, found itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion; it was consequently put down by the Massachusetts State Militia under William Shepard, alongside a privately funded local militia led by former Continental Army officer Benjamin Lincoln. The widely held view had already developed that the Articles of Confederation were untenable and needed amending, with the events of the rebellion serving as further evidence for the later Constitutional Convention. There is continuing debate among scholars as to what extent the rebellion influenced the later drafting and ratification of the Constitution. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well let's start with the most glaring problem, which is that a large chunk of the NYTXW solver base isn't "printing" anything when they solve the crossword, so the revealer is dead in the water right there. In the pre-internet days, this theme would've worked just fine, but it seems unfit for the digital age. Inapt, or unapt (I forget the difference), for all non-paper solvers. But let's just roll with it and allow that, for today, typing is a form of "printing," so we're all printers now. With that mindset, this theme is just fine. Take a "modern" device and redirect its meaning for punny crossword purposes—that's pretty much the brief. That's what you do. That's puzzle-making 101. The "3D" phrases here are ... fine. Well, half good, half less good. I literally stopped and slumped when I got to the first themer (DOT DOT DOT), internally howling, "oh no, we are not, in the year of our lord that is this year, going to do a whole-ass Morse Code theme! No. Absolutely not." And the gods heard me and made it so. DOUBLE-DOG DARE got the puzzle back onto my good side, and essentially gave me the theme (3 x D), although the revealer ... that, I did not see coming. As for the other themers, DING-DONG DITCH, good, DRESS-DOWN DAYS, oof, not good at all. I think they're called "Casual Fridays"? That's certainly the informal office-wear concept I'm familiar with. The only one I'm familiar with. Maybe when you wear jorts and flip-flops to the office on non-Fridays, this is what those days are called. The point is, it doesn't have the cultural resonance or on-the-money-ness of the previous two themers. Not a great way to round out the bunch. But half good / half acceptable is not half bad, and if I imagine it's 1988, then the puzzle's concept works great, and we've probably got ourselves an above-average Tuesday on our hands. Bringin' '88 back!

The puzzle's one architectural flourish was that "3" in the themer, the one that crosses "C3PO," which I was never gonna get without the "3" (55D: 11-time sci-fi role for Anthony Daniels). Of course I know the character—"Star Wars" blew my 7yo mind—but wow, 11 times, I had no idea they'd piled on that many garbage sequels to the original trilogy (not all of them! but most of them!), and also, when I've seen that droid's name written in my crossword, it's been the "informal" THREEPIO (see also ARTOO or the more "formal" ARTOO-DETOO). Speaking of formal v. informal, what the hell is going on with the "ON GOD"!? (13D: "My word is my bond," informally). How is "ON GOD" informal? Can you be "informal" and absurdly archaic as well? Who says "ON GOD?"** If you said that to me, I'd assume you were challenging me to a sword fight. Me: [brandishing sword at you]. You: [looking surprised]. Me: "Wait, didn't you say 'en garde'? ... no? ... [sheathing sword] phew, good, you had me worried there for a second." I don't know when this phrase is used "formally" or "informally." I know that Canadians stand "ON GOD" for thee, Canada*, but otherwise I don't know what's going on with the phrase, and I cannot believe that whatever is going on, it qualifies as "informal." The fill skewed slightly bad today, sorry to say. ALB IDEM DECI MESO all made me wince a little. THUNDERCLAP is fun, but BURIED ALIVE is grim, no matter how whimsically you try to clue it (26D: Absolutely inundated with work, so to speak). It's not bad fill at all, but neither was it THUNDERCLAP-fun. I've just seen too much rubble this week. Not the puzzle's fault, obviously.

I have to say that of all the modern coinages, YEET is the one I'm always happiest to see (71A: Throw forcefully, in modern parlance). It's such a fun little word. Half sound effect, half dynamic discarding action, there's something playful, succinct, vibrant, and enjoyable about this word. I don't use it, but I like hearing other people use it. It gives me the opposite of that "Get off my lawn! / In my day...!" feeling that is always threatening to bury me alive. Less tweeting, more YEETing. OMG the etymology on this word is crazy. From wiktionary:

Popularized in March 2014 by the "yeet" dance which went viral on the now-defunct video sharing site Vine. The earliest known yeet dance is recorded in a YouTube video uploaded on February 3, 2014. However, examples of the interjection can be [...] found much earlier, including a 1998 use by British presenter Jeremy Clarkson as well as a 2008 definition of "yeet yeet" on Urban Dictionary.

As an expression used when throwing something, apparently coined by Vine user David Banna in a Vine uploaded on or before March 28, 2014 in which he throws a CD and yells out "YEET!", as well as a Vine uploaded April 4, 2014 of a high school student hurling an empty soda can and shouting "This bitch empty! YEET!"

After the 2014 trend, the term faded into relative obscurity before resurging in 2018.

Well, if Vine gave us nothing, it gave us this. Let's all give thanks. And RIP, Vine. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*I’m being told Canadians stand ON GUARD for thee, O Canada, so apologies to my northerly friends 

**I'm being told "ON GOD" is current youth slang; my current-youth daughter let me down here. Actually, maybe it's too "youth" even for her (age 23). Anyway, I guess this answer is "current" after all. Great. Are the kids bringing ALB back too?

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