Freudian concept of resisting temptation / THU 8-10-23 / 1998 film featuring NBA star Ray Allen / Race that winds down in the winter / Who's comin in a Laura Nyro song / Smart thermostat brand / Immigration policy established in 2012 for short / Animal whose skull is the subject of Georgia O'Keeffe's Summer Days

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: ha ha ha I'm gonna say "Challenging"

THEME: IMPULSE / CONTROL (60A: With 62-Across, Freudian concept of resisting temptation ... or a hint to four squares in this puzzle) — a rebus puzzle where ID is checking EGO four times (that is, ID occupies same square as EGO, with "ID" working for the Downs clues and "EGO" working for the Acrosses):

Theme answers:

• "HE GOT GAME" / LAID IN (17A: 1998 film featuring N.B.A. star Ray Allen / 2D: Stored, as supplies)
• MOVIEGOER / BRIDES-TO-BE (18A: Someone who sees the big picture / 10D: Ones who've answered "Yes!")
• OFFICE GOSSIP / "MAMA SAID" (34A: Dish near a water cooler? / 6D: Title lyric that precedes "There'll be days like this" in a Shirelles classic)
• RUBE GOLDBERG / OPIOID (43A: Only person whose first and last name together is listed as an adjective in Merriam-Webster / 26D: Codeine or methadone)

Word of the Day: RUBE GOLDBERG (43A: Only person whose first and last name together is listed as an adjective in Merriam-Webster) —

Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970), known best as Rube Goldberg(/ˈruːb/), was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.

Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. The cartoons led to the expression "Rube Goldberg machines" to describe similar gadgets and processes. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 1948, the National Cartoonists Society's Gold T-Square Award in 1955, and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award in 1959. He was a founding member and first president of the National Cartoonists Society, which hosts the annual Reuben Award, honoring the top cartoonist of the year and named after Goldberg, who won the award in 1967. He is the inspiration for international competitions known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, which challenge participants to create a complicated machine to perform a simple task. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well that was ... something. But what thing? Well the first thing that I should say that it was was brilliant. One of the best Thursday gimmicks I've seen in a long time, possibly ever. EGO checking ID = IMPULSE CONTROL = a wild idea you might have, but executing it? Forget about it. I'm used to seeing crisp and clean but relatively straightforward themeless puzzles from Natan and the JASA crew. This kind of top-shelf thematic hot sauce? No. No I did not see that coming. So in addition to being brilliant, this puzzle was very surprising. Now I'll get to the less pleasant thing that the puzzle was: humiliating. In retrospect, I could've done so much better if I'd just looked around. That is, I have this tunnel vision when I'm solving, as well as a bad habit of not even looking at longer clues until I have some crosses. The tunnel vision is a product of solving on screen as opposed to paper—much harder to see *all* the clues. In fact, you can't see them all at a glance. You have to scroll or toggle. So today is one of the days I definitely should've looked ... down, i.e. at the revealer clue. But I didn't. Worse, if I'd only *looked* at the clue for "MAMA SAID" when I made my first pass at the NW, it would've been a gimme, I would've realized it didn't fit, and I would've solved my biggest problem today, namely: Where Are These Damn Squares and also What Is Happening Besides "EGO"!?!? The most humiliating thing about this solving experience was how fantastically well I was doing early on. "HE GOT GAME" went in sooooo early! (the irony of this movie title, as it relates to my solving abilities, will quickly become apparent). Total luck to just know that piece of trivia and have it reveal one of the basic thematic elements: the rebus. So, very quickly, boom:

Ooh, good, I'm glad I took this screenshot when I did because it allows you to see one of the two seemingly small but actually Major errors I made today. OESTE!? (39A: Durango dirección = NORTE) Had the -TE, wrote in OESTE. Is that even Spanish for "west," argh! Yes, it is, OK I feel a little less bad. What a horrible pit to fall in. I went from OESTE to YORE at 34D: Back then (ONCE), just brutal (I'm probably going to be using the word "brutal" a lot today, apologies). So I got stuck in that section and [headdesk headdesk headdesk] could not see what the "EGO" cross could be at 2D: Stored, as supplies. -EGOIN? That ... is nothing. OK, so ... EGO is switched out for ... something else. What? What? No idea. No clue. At that point, I didn't even know if all the rebus squares were going to be "EGO" squares or if those squares were going to look different each time or what. So instead of looking at the damn clue for "MAMA SAID" [headdesk headdesk headdesk] I just fumbled around the grid for an eternity. None of the other rebus squares would reveal themselves. "Where are you, you damned rebus squares? Leggo my EGO!" The rebus squares remained quietly hidden.

Oh, I forgot to mention my second small-but-Major error, also precipitated by having one of the crosses already in place. Faced with --G at 4D: Trail, I immediately, instinctively, and unquestioningly went with ... DOG!? I mean, if you DOG someone, you follow (or "Trail") them, so ... yes, [Trail] is a defensible clue for DOG, but LAG is so much more straightforward / obvious / better. Infinite sigh. Starting this puzzle like Superman only to trip over my laces and fall on my face. "Frustrating" doesn't quite get at it (the aptness of "MAMA SAID there'd be days like this" is only just now hitting me). Even after getting CONTROL I had no idea what kind of CONTROL I was dealing with, so the SW corner of the puzzle, which should've opened right up, stayed closed until I went in there and slowly pried it open with a crowbar. I guess I didn't know IMPULSE CONTROL was a "Freudian" concept (despite knowing very well that ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO were). Worst part of that SW corner was the near-fatally ambiguous clue on STALLS (46D: Stable arrangement) (STASIS fit ... and even after thinking of the horse kind of "stable" I thought maybe the "arrangement" in question was STACKS (of hay bales???)). At this point, the puzzle becomes a maddening haze. Imagine Clark Griswold stumbling through the Arizona desert after having set off on what seemed like a simple mission to go find a tow truck. Confident ... then hot and disoriented ... then just loopy. That was me, solving this puzzle. 

Eventually, I actually look at the clue for "MAMA SAID," and there's "ID," and then I put "ID" where "EGO" was in "HE GOT GAME," and the Down was suddenly totally obvious (LAID IN), and the puzzle suddenly became much more doable. "MAMA SAID" not only solved the whole problem of what to do with the rebus squares, it also gave me (finally) my second themer— I knew EGO had to go in that "ID" square, so bam, OFFICE GOSSIP (such a hard clue for an answer that is already hard by nature of its rebusness!). And then OPIOID gave me (finally!) RUBE GOLDBERG. I was looking for an honest-to-god ordinary adjective like ... what? RUBY-something? The only time you'd use RUBE GOLDBERG as an adjective is in front of "machine" or "contraption," but fair is fair and adjectival is adjectival so ... judges say "Fair!" And brilliant. But also knee-buckling. After getting the SW corner in shape, after turning ET AL to MISC (55D: Catchall category: Abbr.) and finally getting the IMPULSE part of IMPULSE / CONTROL, all I had left was the NE corner, which turned out to be the easiest thing in the grid. BRIDES-TO-BE up, MOVIEGOER over, land safely on ONO: done. Haggard, weary, possibly thirsty, but done. No impulses left to control. 

Notes:

• 5D: Ellipse (OVAL) — picked a great day to confuse "Ellipse" with "Ellipsis"; couldn't make sense of this at all.
• 46A: Sport in a ring (SUMO) — hey did you know that JUDO does *not* take place in a ring? I ... did not. 
• 51A: Caterwaul (YOWL) — hey did you know that HOWL is also a word that means [Caterwaul]?
• 68A: Phi ___ (college group, familiarly) (SIG) — the only part of this puzzle that I actively disliked. This is a frat? I've been on university campuses most of my life and I have no idea how all the Gr. letters and their abbrs. are supposed to work. Phi SIG means zero to me.
• 31A: "Miracle Workers" airer (TBS) — I have seen TBS in the puzzle roughly 10,000 times and I don't think I could name any show associated with it except ... is Samantha Bee's show "Full Frontal" still on? I think that was TBS. (I stopped watching all politically-oriented comedy (and other) shows in 2016.). This is all to say I have no idea what "Miracle Workers" even is. Presumably not about the Helen Keller multiverse. (Hey, it's got Steve Buscemi in it, so maybe it's actually good?)

• 62D: What's added atop a croque-monsieur to make it a croque-madame (EGG) — me: "ooh, that's the one with HAM ... but the HAM ... that can't go on top, can it? HAM ... is there a three-letter cheese? ..." [more evidence: brain fried (like an EGG) for most of this solve.]
• 21D: Accommodations that a bank might float a loan for? (HOUSEBOAT) — gonna leave things here, because this is just an all-time great "?" clue / answer, a splashy (!) answer in a rightfully marquee location. Even in all my thematic confusion, I managed to both get and admire this beauty. 

Hope your solve was significantly more pain-free than mine, and that, however much pain was (or was not) involved, you managed to appreciate this epic construction. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Horace's two-horned queen of the stars / FRI 6-16-23 / Mythological name that means awakener of desire / Name symbolizing restoration / Spending excessive time reading negative news online / Saperstein who founded the Harlem Globetrotters / British newspaper with the highest paid circulation / Coastal corrosion cause / Small drinking glass as for liquor

Constructor: Natan Last and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ADRIENNE Rich (11D: Award-winning poet ___ Rich) —

Adrienne Cecile Rich (/ˈædriən/ AD-ree-ən; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse". Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum", which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.

Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by icon W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Auden went on to write the introduction to the book. Rich famously declined the National Medal of Arts to protest House Speaker Newt Gingrich's vote to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, despite the fact that CANCEL CULTURE is imaginary—nobody ever seems to truly get "canceled," they just go on to win awards, sell lots of records, etc., all while they or their fans complain about how they've been "canceled" (bigots and abusers love to play the victim)—and despite the fact that the DAILY MAIL is a right-wing rag, and despite the fact that all bridge terminology is complete gibberish to me (END PLAY shmend play), despite despite despite, I loved this puzzle. Very rollercoastery, very whoosh-whoosh. It even had that roller coaster thing where the car starts out moving pretty slow and then, suddenly, drops and you go flying every which damn way. I had significant trouble right up front with AT SEA (1D: Making a crossing, say) and SCOLD (3D: Tear into), the latter of which I wanted to be SHRED and then SCALD (!?). I put in EELY, I pulled EELY, I put EELY back (19A: Hard to handle, in a way). It was less than graceful, my progress up there. Cannot believe how long it took me to see STONEWALL (16A: ___ National Monument, landmark in New York City's West Village)—without a specific reference to gayness, I was looking for more typical "monument" fare here, like a ... well, I was gonna say "like a general," but ... wait, there's no connection between STONEWALL Jackson and the STONEWALL Inn, is there? Anyway, what I was trying to say was I was looking for a monument to a historical figure like FDR or Ida B. Wells or someone, I dunno. Without the "O" from SCOLD, I was drawing blanks. With the "A" from SCALD in there, I even said "STANEW-" out loud and shook my head: "that's not anything." But then I worked it out and dropped out of that corner and suddenly ... nothing. I was still kinda stuck. TIOS hurt me at 20A: Some foreign relations (TIAS). Again, one letter off and everything goes to hell. I got PLOTZES and SEMOLINA, but still things weren't exactly Moving ... but then I got DOOMSCROLLING at a glance, and then LAZARUS (ironically) dropped, and ... blast-off:

Going so fast that when I finally stopped I left a SKIDMARK! So fun to come barreling into that corner, hit the brakes, make a screeching 180, and look back at my progress like "woo hoo, yes, that was fun. Alright, let's go back and see what we can do now!" Ah, I just remembered the other teeny tiny answer that was holding me back before DOOMSCROLLING opened the floodgates. I had HERA before LUNA (34D: Horace's "two-horned queen of the stars"). Now, Horace would've called HERA "Juno," and I should've known that, but in my nerdy defense, HERA is frequently referred to as "ox-eyed" or "cow-eyed" and I'm pretty sure she's sometimes depicted with horns or associated with cows in some way. So there was that. But then there was DOOMSCROLLING—most fun I've ever had DOOMSCROLLING. Hurray, DOOMSCROLLING.

Good answers abound in this one—proper marquee stuff in every part of the grid, as it should be on Friday. I especially liked seeing STONEWALL and ADRIENNE Rich during Pride Month, and I especially especially liked seeing ADRIENNE Rich at the BOOKFAIRS! Nice bit of juxtaposition there. In fact, this puzzle had a lot of little answer echoes like that. You've got the SALT AIR from being AT SEA, you've got the symmetrical Yiddish thing going with PLOTZES and SCHMEAR (which also, along with STONEWALL, gives the puzzle a very NYC feel). And you've got me (REX) crossing my late, beloved cat (OLIVE), which I'm sure was not intentional, but I'm accepting this puzzle as a love letter / condolence card all the same. Thanks, everyone.

Clean-up:

• 48D: One of the Hindu trinity (SIVA) — why do I want this to be SHIVA? Am I confusing it with the Jewish mourning period? No, I am not! SHIVA ("The Destroyer") is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. This is just an alternate spelling.
• 56A: Tapenade ingredient (OLIVE) — had this as ONION at first. So happy when it turned out to be OLIVE. Tapenades do not typically contain onions, though anything can be a tapenade if you want it to be. Just mush it and put it on a cracker—tapenade!
• 24D: Way (PROCESS) — I had trouble linking these words in my mind, but I think you can get there by way of "method"...
• 17D: Name symbolizing restoration (LAZARUS) — just as the STONEWALL clue hid the key gayness, this clue hid the key Resurrected Human Being! I was looking for ... I don't know what, furniture polish? "OK, what are we restoring here today!? ... oh, human life? oh, well, yes, bit above my pay grade, good luck with that." 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[❤️OLIVE & REX❤️]

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Children in legalese / THU 5-13-21 / Supermodel Holliday / Food staple referred to as gold of the Incas / C.D. holders, maybe / Low pocket pair in Texas hold em

Constructor: ANDY (63A: Woody and Buzz's owner in "Toy Story") Kravis, Natan LAST (31D: Have legs, so to speak), and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Easy if you know movie titles, harder if you don't

THEME: "Quiz Show" — Theme Clues = movie titles that are also questions, Theme Answers = other movie titles that sound like appropriate answers to the questions:

Theme answers:

• "SALEM'S LOT" (18A: "Dude, Where's My Car?" [1979])
• "PARASITE" (24A: "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" [2019])
• "THE USUAL SUSPECTS" (38A: "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" [1995])
• "TRUE GRIT" (50A: "How the West Was Won" ([1969, 2010])
• "HOME ALONE" (58A: "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" [1990])

Word of the Day: TESS Holliday (65A: Supermodel Holliday) —

Ryann Maegen Hoven (born July 5, 1985), known professionally as Tess Holliday and formerly known as Tess Munster, is an American plus-size model, blogger, and make-up artist based in Los Angeles. [...] In 2014, Holliday quit her day job at the dental office to pursue her modeling career full-time. In May 2014, a video was uploaded on Vimeo called #everyBODYisflawless, which featured Holliday and fellow plus-size fashion bloggers and models Gabi Gregg and Nadia Aboulhosn lip-synching and dancing to Beyoncé's 2013 song "Flawless". In September of that year, she was interviewed by Jacob Soboroff and Meghan McCain on TakePart Live. In January 2015, London-based modeling agency Milk Model Management announced that they had signed Holliday to their plus-size division, Curves. They declared that Holliday had become the largest plus-size model of her size and height to be signed to a mainstream modeling agency, and the first Curve model above a size 20. In May, she had her first agency shoot

In March 2014, Holliday became the first model over size 18 to model Monif Clarke's clothing line after she was hired as the face of the latest campaign for her swimwear line Sea by Monif C - a line that is specifically designed for women sizes 14–24. In the same month, she modeled for Torrid. She also collaborated with the plus size clothing retailer Yours Clothing for the second time when she was officially announced as the face of their high summer campaign. In May 2015, she was featured on the cover of People. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is cute, though your sense of cuteness may differ based on how much of a movie fan you are. If all the titles are familiar to you, as they were to me, then it was pretty fun. I like remembering movies. But there are three problems with the theme execution. One of those problems is probably my problem—I had no idea "SALEM'S LOT" was a *movie*. I do not think "movie" is what most people think of when they see the title "SALEM'S LOT" (famously, a novel by Stephen King). All the other clue movies and answer movies in the puzzle are very famous As Movies; "SALEM'S LOT" seems to me ... less so. "TRUE GRIT" was also famous first as a book (a much-loved book by Charles Portis), but it wasn't Stephen-King famous, and the "TRUE GRIT" movies were both very popular. When I google "TRUE GRIT," the recent movie comes up, whereas when I google "SALEM'S LOT," the King novel comes up. [Googles some more] Hey ... hey, wait ... wait a minute! "SALEM'S LOT" wasn't a movie at all; it was a TV miniseries! OK, well, my objection here just got a lot bigger, I guess. The theme is clearly movies. Miniseries are not movies. I see that the movie has been retitled "SALEM'S LOT: The Movie," and is now sort of treated like a movie (a vampire classic, I'm told), but it aired on TV and is over three hours long and yeah this isn't a movie like the other movies are movies. It just isn't. Second issue with the theme is that "How the West Was Won" is not a question. The other theme-clue titles, whether they actually contain question marks or not, read as questions. "How was the West won?" is a question. "How the West Was Won" is just a phrase. Lastly, it seems like the puzzle would've been somewhat more elegant if they'd knocked out all the interrogative words: Who what where when why how. But we only get five, which is fine, but it would be finer if they were all different. Instead, we get two "Where"s. Are there no "Why" movies? 'Cause I *know* there's a "When" movie ...

[1985] "AFTER HOURS"

The fill on this one is clean and lively. Sort of surprised that veterans like Natan and Andy would do the whole "let's put our names in the grid" thing (LAST, ANDY). Seems pretty bush-league, but it doesn't hurt the grid any, so I guess it's fine (though tbh POP / PAST > POL / LAST). I didn't really struggle anywhere. Just a bunch of small speed bumps. Didn't know TESS Holliday. Forgot COLBY existed. I never eat (or even see) the stuff. Thought the [Petulant retort] was "CAN DO!", then thought it over and decided it would have to be said *really* sarcastically to be "CAN DO!" ... then realized it was "CAN SO!". We get one of those [Step on it!] clues—this is how I think of all clues that use familiar "it" phrases to clue an answer, where the answer is the "it," though in today's case, the "it" is "this" (29D: Get a load of this! => LAUNDRY). The clue on THREESOME is ... pretty tame (33D: More than a couple), though not, I suppose, inaccurate. I had BEST before BOSS (66A: Top dog), and, in my favorite wrong answer of the day, ICE BOX before ICE AGE (64A: What was cool for a long time?). The "was" took me back in time ... but not nearly far enough back. Interestingly: THREESOME is the name of a movie. ICE AGE, also a movie. TESS, movie. TED, movie. CATS, movie. AMEN ... well, actually, that's a TV show. Kinda like "SALEM'S LOT."

Have a lovely day. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. 41A: C.D. holders, maybe (IRAS) is a financial thing—"C.D." = certificate of deposit (IRA = individual retirement account, but you knew that)

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Seat of ancient Irish kings / WED 1-20-21 / Wading bird with long slender bill / Digital media player since 2008 / Classic of daytime TV first aired in 1962 [Atlanta Bangor] / God is the perfect Robert Browning

Constructor: Natan Last, Andy Kravis and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class 

Relative difficulty: no idea ... harder than usual, I think

THEME: THE UNITED STATES (36A: Red, white and blue land ... or what 15-, 22-, 45- and 57-Across feature?) — familiar phrases where one word signifies "united" and the other word is made up of two state abbrs. "united" (or "fused" or "joined") together:

Theme answers:

• MIND-MELDING (15A: Sharing thoughts like a Vulcan [Detroit, Fargo])
• "MATCH GAME" (22A: Classic of daytime TV first aired in 1962 [Atlanta, Bangor])
• JOINT PAIN (45A: Arthritis symptom [Altoona, South Bend])
• WINE PAIRING (57A: Sommelier's suggestion [Oshkosh, Omaha])

Word of the Day: TARA (37D: Seat of ancient Irish kings) —

The Hill of Tara (Irish: Teamhair or Cnoc na Teamhrach) is a hill and ancient ceremonial and burial site near Skryne in County Meath, Ireland. According to tradition, it was the inauguration place and seat of the High Kings of Ireland, and it also appears in Irish mythology. Tara consists of numerous monuments and earthworks—from the Neolithic to the Iron Age—including a passage tomb (the "Mound of the Hostages"), burial mounds, round enclosures, a standing stone (believed to be the Lia Fáil or "Stone of Destiny"), and a ceremonial avenue. There is also a church and graveyard on the hill. Tara is part of a larger ancient landscape and Tara itself is a protected national monument under the care of The Office of Public Works, an agency of the Irish Government. (wikipedia)

• • •

This felt like a Thursday puzzle that they ran today because it's Inauguration Day (Happy Inauguration Day, by the way). The level of gimmickry is much more Thursday than Wednesday, and though much of the cluing was ordinary Wednesday stuff, there was enough difficulty early on, when combined with the theme shenanigans, to get me pretty badly stuck at the outset. The worst part, in the end, was that there was far less shenanigans than the confusing cluing let on. It's weird ... this is just a themeless puzzle if you take away the random place names in brackets at the end of the theme clues (and the post-ellipsis bit in the revealer clue). You don't need any of the theme stuff to solve. But then ... it feels like they made the puzzle hard enough that you actually might have needed to resort to the theme to help you out. I definitely resorted to it in the SE to figure out WINE PAIRING. Still, it really is just a high word-count themeless puzzle, totally solvable without any of the theme elements. It's bizarre. The theme helped me out late in the solve, but early on it absolutely confounded me. If there hadn't been two city names at the end of the MIND-MELDING clue, I would've plopped MIND-MELDING down without a second thought; but because the cities suggested something themey was clearly going on, and because I couldn't get a couple of the MIND-MELDING crosses, I was certain some kind of rebus or shared-square scheme of some kind was going on, specifically where the "E" and "L" were in MIND-MELDING (more on that in a bit). So adding the city names to the end of the clue actually made things much less clear than they would've been otherwise. In fact, the confusion produced by the city names combined with horrendous / weird / vague cluing on some of the fill (POET, TIED, SLOMO) to make the NW a total nightmare. 

So, the NW ... I hate hate hate clues like 1A: "God is the perfect ___": Robert Browning (POET). Fill-in-the-blank quotes are The Worst. They probably seem to make sense to the cluer, but to the solver, honestly, most of the time it could be any word. The fact that the quote is from Browning is actually useless. So what if I know he's a poet. That doesn't make me think POET is the right answer here. In fact, I thought the answer (after I got a few crosses) was POEM. I like POEM so so so much better than POET. I should've been Browning's editor. Much more interesting to think of God as something multi-layered, ineffable, and invented by humans than as some sad human analogue in the sky, scribbling at His desk. Bah. Combine my mistake there was the absolutely baffling clue on TIED (4D: One up, for example). "One up" is the opposite of tied, in that if you are one up, you are ahead. Is this ping-pong-speak? I am used to the term "all" to express a tie. But "Up"? I know that it's used ... maybe casually in tennis or soccer? Anyway, that clue was super-confusing. I had POEM / MIED (??) and then no idea about SLOMO (13D: It helps you see details—just no help, this clue). This meant two answers running through MIND-MELDING were mysteries. Two adjacent answers, two adjoining squares. I went down and picked up the revealer and then somehow got *more* lost because, well, two adjoining squares were giving me trouble ... and the theme is something about uniting states ... I kept trying to figure out how "MI" could fit in one square or "ND" could fit in the other. Again, nightmare. Eventually, I got out of there, somehow, and the rest of the puzzle was easy enough, except the SE, which like its symmetrical counterpart, was filled with rough cluing on the short fill (NEO-Latin!?). But at that point I knew what was going on with the theme, so I could get WINE PAIRING and pull myself through. 

Let's see, what else was tough? I forgot the Gulf of SIDRA was a thing (5D: Libya's Gulf of ___), which made the NW even rougher than it already was. Also, couldn't believe ANN was the answer at 7D: She's a doll, since you would never ever ever say just ANN without "Raggedy" in front of it. Woof and oof to that clue. Had PAN (or was it POT) before WOK (hyper-vague clue there) (57D: Cooking utensil) and STEP before KICK (54D: Rockette's move), and distrusted SNIPE, since a SNIPE hunt is a hunt for a fictional animal, or so I thought from having watched that one episode of "Cheers" (44D: Wading bird with a long, slender bill) You can see how badly I needed the theme trick to pull me out of this morass in the SE.

I really think the theme is cute, actually. I don't see any logic behind the city names in the theme clues, though, beyond the fact that they are (random?) cities in the relevant states. Why not use capitals? I mean, Altoona, wtf? So arbitrary. But the theme answers themselves are solid and I did get a genuine (if grudging) aha when the theme clicked. Most of the difficulty for me was caused by overthinking the theme early on, and by a pile-up of bad luck (again, early on) that sent me down a horrible rabbit-hole of wrong ideas about the theme. In retrospect, it all seems so clear. Except for the POET / TIED thing. Not forgiving the cluing nonsense there. You hear me, Robert Browning!? Unforgiven!!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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