Slushy summer drink portmanteau / TUE 8-22-23 / Vega's constellation / Sign in a gift shop around Mother's Day, maybe / Royalties from Barry's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" / Fidelity alternative for investors / One who might light altar candles in a religious ceremony

Constructor: Jay Silverman

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday)

THEME: SOUND CHECKS (55A: Royalties for any musician?) — puns where the familiar two-word phrases where the first word is a musician and the second word a synonym of "money"; each answer is clued as if the phrase meant "Royalties" for the specific musician in question (in order: Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Tom Petty, and Barry White):

Theme answers:

• WONDER BREAD (17A: Royalties from Stevie's "Superstition"?)
• YOUNG BUCKS (23A: Royalties from Neil's "Heart of Gold"?)
• PETTY CASH (34A: Royalties from Tom's "Free Fallin'"?)
• WHITE PAPER (50A: Royalties from Barry's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe"?)

Word of the Day: FROSÉ (15D: Slushy summer drink portmanteau) —

Frosé is a mixed drink made from rosé wine frozen to a slush, with strawberries, vodka, and lemon juice. // The Bar Primi in New York City is credited with inventing the drink, its name being contracted from "frozen rosé". It has since become popular as a summer drink across the US. // The rose wine is generally frozen and then ground in a blender, or made into a slush in a machine. Sugar is then added as a syrup or dissolved in water, strawberry without seeds or pulp, and lemon juice, blended together. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was comically hard for a Tuesday. Well, I was comical in my struggles to solve it quickly, that's for sure. Couldn't get any of the long Downs in the NW to start, even after getting ABE easily (1A: 1860s presidential nickname). Even after getting YOUNG, had no idea what phrase I was supposed to make to form some word for "Royalties?" YOUNG BUCKS is ... old-fashioned, maybe? It's just a term for young guys with a lot of ambition, or cockiness, is that right? Ooh, also a professional wrestling tag team. Anyway, really had to work the crosses there. After that, understanding the theme a little better, it was a little easier to come up with WONDER BREAD, but I had FOR MOM (lol) before FOR HER (!?) (15A: Sign in a gift shop around Mother's Day, maybe)—the latter sounds like a phrase out of an ad for intimate ... let's say, apparel, which you (probably!?) aren't buying your mom for Mother's Day. Maybe it's for your wife, who is also a mother, I don't know, I just know FOR HER was weird, as clued. Googling "FOR HER" in quotes will get you sex-related stuff fast. There's a brand of "body glide" (whatever that is) named FOR HER. Anyway, moving on ... I would not have spelled SUNBURNT with a "T" at the end, I don't think. "Sunburned" is how I would've gone. BURNT toast, yes. SUNBURNT human ... yeah, I guess it looks fine. Just another little thing that threw me. And then there was FROSÉ, an answer that I love in theory, but holy cow if ever an answer made you feel the lack of diacritical marks in crossword answers, this is that answer. Without that acute accent on the "E," FROSE looks like nonsense. I was like "FROYO is a portmanteau but ... is it a 'slushy summer drink'? That seems wrong." Indeed. Very. 

The big corners continued to be a problem in the SW, where again I could get none of the long Downs at first pass, even with the first *two* letters of all of them in place. This is because, after deciding it probably wasn't "Life BOAT," I went with what seemed like the only other possible answer in four letters ending with "T": "Life RAFT." Those float, right? Sigh. Nope, it's "Life VEST," yet another small failure to add to today's long line. DEALS IN before DEALS TO (44A: Gives a hand of cards), without hesitation, which led to the odd IN TWO (?!) at 45D: Doubly (TWICE). Still can't remember which crosswordese I-name belongs to ILENE Chaiken (I think I tried ILONA today). Misremembered the constellation as TYRA (19A: Vega's constellation => LYRA). CRITICAL was [Kind of thinking]!?! That is such a hard clue for a Tuesday. As for "AW, SNAP," that was not at all clear from the clue (29D: "Oh, dang!"). The clue phrase sounds like "oh, rats / damn / hell, I messed up," whereas "AW, SNAP" is more like "Whoa!" or "Wow, that was an impressive insult!" Google (Oxford Languages) has it as "an exclamation of agreement or acknowledgment, often used in response to an insult." "Oh, dang!" doesn't quite get there, somehow. Hard for me to get WHITE PAPER, both because I barely know what one is, and because "paper" is way way down the list of synonyms I'd use for "money" (though it definitely is a synonym for "money"). 

The core concept here is kind of clever, and SOUND CHECKS is a nice revealer. Well, it's revealer-ish, anyway. By the time you get down there, you've got the gist of the theme, probably, but that phrase feels like the reason this puzzle exists at all. Feels like the core wordplay that got this one started. This one was doable, but played more like a Wednesday, or even an easy Thursday for me. The musical acts in question are pretty old (all born between 1944-50, two already dead), which was great for me, but maybe less great for you (if you are, say, under 30). They're all inarguably famous, but it seems totally plausible that someone my daughter's age wouldn't know one or more of these names. This isn't a problem with the puzzle, except insofar as it seems to be drawing from an extremely narrow generational range. Overall, I was mostly entertained, despite the embarrassing struggle. Hope you fared better. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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