Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: John Nagamichi Cho

Constructor: John Nagamichi Cho

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging

THEME: BLACK OPS (65A: Covert missions ... or what's covert in eight of this puzzle's answers) — the letters "OP" are hidden behind black squares four times:

Theme answers (Downs):

CHROMOSOMES (21D: X and Y)
POPPED A PILL (22D: Dosed oneself)
"I'M NOT A ROBOT" (12D: Captcha test affirmation)
PET PASSPORT (13D: Document that may contain a microchip number and a veterinarian's signature)

Theme answers (Acrosses):

OPT FOR (36A: Choose)
OPEN CALL (64A: Baby eels)
SWEETSOP (19A: Sugar apple, by another name)
RAGTOP (38A: Convertible)

Word of the Day: Gulf of San BLAS (56D: Panama's Gulf of San ___) —

• • •

The theme is solid and generally well executed. The rest of it is genuinely a nightmare. I've not seen a puzzle this badly, laughably filled in ... I don't know when. Forever. I don't understand why this wasn't sent back to the constructor with a "Great Idea, love the way you handle the "OP" bits, please tear this down to the studs and rebuild it because the fill you've got here just won't work." If I'd had to suffer through a single ARMET, say, or MARKKA, I'd've winced, but I'd've thought "well, it's a demanding theme, the grid is gonna groan a little under the pressure, it's OK." But ARMET (9D: 15th-century headgear for a knight) *and* MARKKA (49D: Pre-euro currency of Finland) *and* BLAS *and* ASHIP (A?!) and IMAS and MEOR ***and*** something called a METOOER, yeeeeesh, that hits the ear real bad in the post-#MeToo era (39A: One favoring imitation over innovation). RPS? (not RPM???) (32A: Spinning speed: Abbr.). And on top of this total mess, there's the bizarre decision to ... go for the pangram by just forcing "X". and "J" and "Q" and "Z" into the choppy center of the grid. When your grid is buckling, the last thing you want to do is try for a pangram, a. because your first priority should be making the fill smooth, not shoving a bunch of high-value Scrabble tiles in there, and b. because no one should ever prioritize the pangram, it's not a value, it's not a feat, it's nothing but an unnecessary stress on the overall quality of the fill. I mean, if you can pull it off and still have the grid squeaky clean, great, but it's still a giant Who Cares? When the grid is on fire, you do not pour Pangram Gasoline on it.

Got the theme early, no problem. Was irked by the onslaught of proper nouns in the NW corner, but once I got out of there and found the theme, I thought "Oh, OK, letters in the black squares ... interesting." Having grown up in California in the '70s and '80s, I know "OP" as Ocean Pacific (a clothing brand), so I actually didn't guess the revealer before I got there. Then, when I got there, I could think only of the phrase "covert ops" and so (briefly) struggled to come up with (the obvious) "BLACK." I didn't love POPPED *A* PILL, especially after I parsed it as POPPED PILLS (the better phrase) and filled it in accordingly. But overall, the theme stuff didn't give me much trouble, and I liked the theme answers and the way they were handled. Of course I forgot that the "OP"s were there late in the solve and so struggled with RAGT and SWEETS (the latter of which actually works just fine as an answer without the "OP," if you imagine that "Sugar apple" is a pet name!) (19A: Sugar apple, by another name). Totally startled to see the city in which I currently am show up in a clue and the county in which I currently am show up as a damn answer. If central NY ever gets mentioned, it's usually ELMIRA or maybe OWEGO or OTSEGO or one of those place names. UTICA, possibly. But today: BROOME County, hell yeah, what's up, everyone!? (15A: New York county that's home to Binghamton). How are you? Pleased to meet you! The leaves are turning and the Susquehanna rolls merrily along, thanks for asking.

What else? I thought Doris Day sang "Que Sera, Sera" and that "whatever WILL BE, WILL BE" (48D: Words repeated in the title of a Doris Day hit) was just part of the chorus, but no, the "whatever WILL BE, WILL BE" part does indeed appear in the "title" (in parentheses).

Hope you knew MCQ (33A: 1974 John Wayne movie) because that clue on FAQ was pretty hard (24D: Doc to consult when confused). Confusing, even (the "Doc" there is short for "document"). Not a huge fan of the cutesy attempt to cover for the puzzle's double ASS (63D: 27- or 55-Down backward). Not even a real clue, just a "whoopsie, duped an answer, aren't I silly!?" Again, if the grid has been torn down and more carefully refilled, we wouldn't need to be dealing with this kind of clean-up. Since this puzzle seems like it's a debut, gonna close by repeating my admiration for the theme. It is good. But ARMET alone should've set off the Weak Fill alarms, and, well, ARMET was not alone. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. one very good (and tough) "?" clue today at 29A: Ones doing some heavy lifting before retirement? (JACKS). So these are jacks for jacking up your car when you need to ... "retire" it (i.e. put new tires on it). So "retirement" = "tire replacement." Yes, groan, but a real groan, none of this weak half-groan stuff.

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