THEME: "LEAVE ME / OUT OF IT" (45D: With 42-Down, "I don't want anything to do with this!" ... or a hint to the answers to the starred clues) — you have to ignore all the "ME"s in the grid in order to make sense of the answers in which they appear; that is, "ME" has been added to a number of words, creating phantom (unclued) words—if you "leave ME out of it" ... now all your clues make sense:
Theme answers:
LINEMEN (4D: *Flax fabric)
REMEDIAL (20A: *Call again, on a rotary phone)
MEAD (24A: *Promo)
MELEE (18: *Spike ___)
LO MEIN (26A: *Cut of pork)
MENORAH (37A: *Grammy-winning Jones)
EMENDS (22A: *They may be split or bitter)
FOMENTS (10D: *Courier and Papyrus for two)
DEEMED (48A: *Important closing document)
"I'M HOME!" (51A: *Lead-in to texter's perspective)
NAMES (59A: *#5 on Billboard's Best Rappers of All Time list)
MERV (64A: *One parked at a park, in brief)
Word of the Day: SERRA da Estrela (25D: ___ da Estrela (Portuguese mountain range)) —
Serra da Estrela (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈsɛʁɐ ðɐ (ɨ)ʃˈtɾelɐ]) is the highest mountain range in Continental Portugal. Together with the Serra da Lousã it is the westernmost constituent range of the Sistema Centraland also one of the highest in the system. It includes mainland Portugal's highest point at 1,993 metres (6,539 feet) above mean sea level (although the summit of Mount Pico in the Portuguese Azores islands is higher). This point is not a distinctive mountain summit, but rather the highest point in a plateau, being known as Torre ("Tower" in English). Torre is an unusual summit in that it is accessible by a paved road. The peak has a topographic prominence of 1,204 m (3,950 ft) and its parent peak is Pico Almanzor, in Spain. [...] The Cão da Serra da Estrela (Estrela Mountain Dog) is a breed of livestock guardian dog that takes its name from this region.
Queijo Serra da Estrela (Serra da Estrela cheese) is a soft cheese from the region of Serra da Estrela. The recipe is more than 2000 years old. It is made from cardoon thistle, raw sheep's milk and salt. The cheese is soft and gooey. The cheese becomes harder and chewier as time goes by. (wikipedia)
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One of those puzzles where I was tempted to go down and find the revealer early, just so I could get the gimmick quicker and move things along. Actually, I *did* go down to find the revealer, but I just looked at the clue, saw it was long and complicated and two-part, and just went back to hacking away at the grid up top. Puzzles with unclued answers are always (well, often) a bear of a challenge. You kinda sorta expect the clues to play fair, and for the answers to match the clues. The answers do, of course, match the clues ... eventually ... once you figure out the whole "ditch ME" angle. But getting started without any guidelines—rough. I knew something very gimmicky was afoot pretty early, as the NW corner was super easy and then ... nothing. Thankfully, the stars on the relevant clues let me know that the answers I couldn't get were tough *for a reason*. A truly tough version of this puzzle wouldn't have bothered to star the clues. I think I would've respected that version more, but it definitely would've taken me longer. As for the theme, well, there's a lot of it. I'd put this in the category of More Constructionally Impressive than Fun To Solve, though it wasn't a drag, by any means, and there was something ... original and engaging about the particular challenge of seeing around the ME's. Mostly adding ME's doesn't really add any enjoyment—it just changes the word—but there was one big exception: "I'M HOME!" I actually laughed at that one. That is some very creative, completely transformative ME-adding. You've really gotta break up the "real" answer (IMHO) and repunctuate it and turn the letters into actual words and everything. Just Add "ME" and watch your overfamiliar texting initialism take exciting new form! I also kinda liked the conversion (!) of NORAH Jones.
There are no uninvolved (i.e. non-thematic) ME's in this grid, which is nice. Gives the puzzle a nice consistency. A stray "ME" would be distracting. And this is one of the few times you're ever going to see clues for two-letter words—because they appear in the grid as ordinary-looking four-letter words (MEAD, MERV). So that's another interesting feature of this puzzle. Don't care much for the gotta-read-it-backwards quality of the revealer, so I'm currently just reading it the regular way, L to R, in Yoda-voice: "OUT OF IT, LEAVE ME!"
Almost all of the difficulty in this puzzle was in uncovering / discovering the theme. I don't know when I figured it out. Hang on, I took a screenshot shortly thereafter, let's have a look:
I must have seen that REDIAL was "hidden" or involved in some way in 20A: *Call again, on a rotary phone (REMEDIAL), and then seen that ME's were also involved in the NE part of the grid as well, though when I took this screenshot, I hadn't worked it all out perfectly (you can see I have AMENDS instead of EMENDS in there—probably just a hasty first stab). Once the theme dropped, the difficulty dropped as well. There were a few things I didn't know, but they didn't hold me up much. Never heard of that Portuguese mountain range, or of LOLA Kirke (50A: Actress Kirke of "Mozart in the Jungle"). LOLA had me slightly worried for a bit, since four-letter women's names can go All Kinds of Ways, and she appears in a thickly thematic area *and* crosses another answer I was having trouble seeing (48D: Put out = DOUSED). But it all came steadily together. I just circled that section until the letters were undeniable, and then finished up in the SE, where ... look, I know I have complained in the past about duplicate clues (where often one of them feels forced) and cross-references (which can awkwardly send you all over hell and gone just to find the second part of your answer), so this may sound weird, but I can't believe that the clue on ENVY didn't get the same treatment as the clue on EMMY (67A: Award that sounds like two letters of the alphabet). I mean, they cross each other. They both sound like two letters of the alphabet. That's a paired cluing opportunity made in heaven. But instead of [Sin that sounds like two letters of the alphabet], ENVY just gets the dullish [Member of a noted septet]. I can't believe the puzzle has me out here advocating for cutesy clue twinning, but times are strange, what can I say? See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Apparently I was supposed to see EMMY as some kind of "bonus" theme answer (?) (M + E). Not sure how that works, except to remind you of the relevant letters. Anyway, obviously the potential theme-iness of that answer never crossed my mind.
THEME: JUMP SUITS (58A: Garments similar to rompers ... with a hint to the shaded squares in this puzzle) — circled ("shaded" in your grid, maybe) squares spell out the "suits" in a card deck, and these "suits" "jump" up one row somewhere mid-word:
Theme answers:
there are none (just look at the grid)
Word of the Day: JIB (58D: Triangular sail) —
A jib is a triangular sail that sets ahead of the foremast of a sailing vessel. Its tack is fixed to the bowsprit, to the bows, or to the deck between the bowsprit and the foremost mast. Jibs and spinnakers are the two main types of headsails on a modern boat. (wikipedia)
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Basically a very easy themeless, but without the openness and wonderful fill that a true themeless generally brings. So, an easy and fairly boring themeless that is super-duper reliant on the revealer to stick the landing—you need it to be perfect to make the total lack of genuine theme answers seem worth it. But the landing is not great. Shaky. The suits do jump, but they are ... jumping suits, not jump suits. The phrase just doesn't hit the mark. Yes, I get it, we all get, but this is not a horseshoes / hand grenades situation. Close isn't good enough. You really need le revealer juste here, and JUMP SUITS just wobbles. It's one where you squint a little and go "ok, yeah, I SEE," but this theme needs its revealer to have a much bigger impact. The "suits" restrict the fill the way a normal theme would, but they don't give you any theme content. So you get all the fill compromises and none of the theme pleasure. It doesn't add up. Also, the fill could be better all over, particularly in that northern section. ALPE really has no place in an easy-to-fill Monday puzzle (15A: French peak). It's a very rough foreignism, the kind you only wanna trot out if you're desperate to hold something amazing in place. And that desperation just isn't called for here. I redid this section a bunch of ways—WAILS can go to WAITS if you need, LAPELS to all kinds of stuff, like INPUTS and REPELS and IMPELS etc. I didn't *love* any of my quickly de-ALPE'd efforts, but they were definite improvements *and* in every case I also managed to DITCH the incredibly depressing (as clued) BEACHED (21A: Stuck ashore, as a whale). And I wasn't even using software. Unbeach the whale, de-ALPE the puzzle, make everything cleaner and nicer, it's very possible.
I have "no no no" as well as "LOL" written next to K-TURN, what is happening!? (61A: Three-point driving maneuver). It's a three-point turn. That's what it's called. It's always been a three-point turn. It doesn't need new names. How hard is it to say "three-point turn"? You did not need to bring a letter into the mix. Three-point turn is easy to understand and more accurately describes what's happening with the maneuver. K-TURN, what in the world? That sounds like a bad drug reaction. Like when you take "K" (short for Ketamine, I believe) and things take a very bad "turn"—like maybe you fall into a K-HOLE (an actual term, not making it up, I swear). Anyway, U-TURN would've worked fine here (the UFC is very much a thing), and I'd rather see K-HOLE in my grid than K-TURN. Actually, scratch that, K-HOLEs sound scary. But at least K-HOLE is not a fake name for a thing that already has a perfectly good name. My god, when I search [define k turn] the first hit I get is literally titled "Three-point turn," perhaps because That Is The Correct Name For It. Sigh.
Notes:
28A: Dirty dozen? (BAD EGGS) — this term is slang for bad people, not a term describing actual rotten eggs (that term, funnily enough, is "rotten eggs"). So the cutesy clue kinda misses here.
6D: Big flaps in the fashion industry? (LAPELS) — Again, I want to like the "?" clue, but they're just flaps. LAPELS aren't inherently big. Like, in relation to what? Some LAPELS are big, but ... maybe specify the era? [Big flaps in '70s fashion?]. The internet is telling me that "the '30s and the '70s featured exceptionally wide LAPELS." Seems like that information could've been useful here.
34A: India's smallest state (GOA) — this was my favorite part of the puzzle, because I misread the clue as [India's smallest snake] and then, verrrrry reluctantly, wrote in BOA, thinking, "man ... how big *are* Indian snakes!!?"
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. K-TURN is, completely unsurprisingly, a debut entry. It's also known as a Y-TURN in some parts, apparently, so uncork the whole [letter]-TURN bottle, I guess! Go nuts!
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (*for a Tuesday*)
THEME: HEARTBROKEN (60A: Despondent ... as progressively suggested by 17-, 24-, 38- and 48-Across) — letter string "HEART" is found in first theme answer, and in each successive theme answer, the same letter string can be found "broken," with the "HEART" parts one square farther apart with each successive themer:
Theme answers:
"THEARTOFWAR" (17A: Classic work with chapters titled "Attack by Stratagem" and "Maneuvering an Army")
"INTHEAIRTONIGHT" (24A: Signature Phil Collins hit ranked among VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s")
SWITCHESPARTIES (38A: Changes political affiliation)
HEADFORTHEHILLS (48A: Flee to remote safety)
Word of the Day: SERIE A (5D: Top Italian soccer league) —
Loads of problems with this theme, both in concept and in execution. Let's start with the fact that once "heart" is "broken" ... it's broken. It can't be more broken. Or, rather, moving "heart" parts farther apart does not break "heart" more. It's the same amount of broken: just broken. I don't get the concept of moving the "heart" parts one square farther apart each time. What is being illustrated? Once you break "heart," you're HEARTBROKEN ... the rest isn't very meaningful. Also, technically "heart" breaks across two words even in the first answer (where HEART is supposed to be intact). That is, if I write out "THE ART OF WAR" with normal spacing, as you can see ... "heart," broken (between the words "THE" and "ART"). So the concept gets muddled further there. The worst part, though, was that the puzzle is trying to sell you on this idea of a "progression" in the theme, with the two parts of "heart" getting one square farther apart each time, but (huge "but") ... they're not the same parts. That is, the "heart" first breaks between "A" and "R" (in "INTHEAIRTONIGHT"), so there's an "HEA" part and an "RT" part. But in the next themer, those aren't the two parts at all—the "break" happens between the "E" and the "A"! So there aren't two "heart" parts drifting farther apart each time; there are three separate and distinct breaks, and while yes, each break is one square bigger, the whole idea of "progression" is destroyed when the initial breaking place is not maintained through all the themers. It's really wobbly all around, this theme.
Also, what is up with the Phil Collins clue? Who cares about VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s"—that info tells us absolutely nothing. "IN THE AIR TONIGHT" is noteworthy primarily for having one of the most famous beat drops in pop music history: two seconds of drum fill that have become legendary. Whole articles have been written about it. Maybe reference that in your clue; at any rate, reference something more specific and colorful than VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s," which is just a long-winded and not particularly revealing way of signifying "'80s hit."
The fill is also oddly ROUGH. Lots of overcommon stuff, and then HOLO- and AIRES and L'OEIL, which are unappealing stand-alone fragments. I don't get the fill choices in some of the smaller, easier-to-fill places. Like the east, what is happening there? A tiny 3x4 section you could fill a million ways and we are subjected to both THU and USD? Both of those are OK if you really need them, but you don't here. Actually, let's leave the innocuous THU alone. But my god, how is USD / HERD better than USE / HERE?? USE is not exciting, but at least there's a million different ways to clue it, and it's a complete, non-abbr. word, whereas USD (short for "the US dollar") is strictly a "break in case of emergency" ill option. Or HERA / USA! There's another better option. Just doesn't seem like the grid was filled with care. And what the hell is SERIEA doing in a Tuesday puzzle? You gotta push back on your wordlist sometimes, yeesh. This is a Tuesday puzzle and SERIEA will be totally unknown to huge swaths of the solving population (including me). Also, it's mostly uninferable. When I had all the letters in place, I guessed that it was SERIE [space] A and not SERIEA (one word), but I wasn't entirely sure. That is the kind of answer that wants to pass itself off as cool and new, but it's actually just here to provide an AIOLI-like number of vowels, to make filling the grid easier. SERIEA has never been in a grid before, ever, and you're debuting it ... on a Tuesday? This makes no sense. Again, there are so many little considerations that seem to have gone unconsidered in this puzzle. SRSLY.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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