Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Kyle Perkins

Constructor: Kyle Perkins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: The WHEELS on the, let's say, bus (49D: What this puzzle's sets of shaded squares resemble) — four answers loop back on themselves following a path that vaguely resembles a "wheel," further, these same answers contain a word that indicates circularity (wheel-ness) in some way:

Theme answers (red letters appear in the shaded squares):

SHOOTS SOME HOOPS (18A: Practices on the court)
ROLLS ONE'S EYES (29A: Shows exasperation, in a way)
THROW FOR A LOOP (48A: Bewilder)
ROUND OF APPLAUSE (59A: Props for one's performance)

Word of the Day: DENEB (25D: Brightest star in Cygnus) —

Deneb (/ˈdɛnɛb/) is a blue supergiant star in the constellation of Cygnus. It is the brightest star in the constellation and the 19th brightest in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude slightly varying between +1.21 and +1.29. Deneb is one of the vertices of the asterism known as the Summer Triangle and the "head" of the Northern Cross. Its Bayer designation is α Cygni, which is Latinised to Alpha Cygni, abbreviated to Alpha Cyg or α Cyg.
Deneb rivals Rigel, a closer blue supergiant, as the most luminous first-magnitude star. However, its distance, and hence luminosity, is poorly known; its luminosity is estimated to be between 55,000 and 196,000 times that of the Sun. Distance estimates range from 1,400 to 2,600 light-years; assuming its highest value, it is the farthest star with an apparent magnitude brighter than 2.50. (wikipedia)

• • •

I've seen theme answers loop back on themselves like this before, so the trick didn't trick me much, but I was curious to see what the premise of it all was going to be and how the theme was going to be executed. Got the ROLLS part early...

... and wondered if all the shaded circles were going to "roll" or if some other words might be involved. Also wondered what the hook was going to be. Which is to say, I had questions / concerns about the execution of the theme. But at this point, after the first themer, I had reasonably high hopes. I was, you might say, a HOPER (you and I both know you would never say this, but let's table that for now). Sadly, my hopes were dashed pretty quickly, as soon as I got to the next themer: SHOOTS SOME HOOPS. This was the point at which you might say ... the wheels came off. To understand why my hopes were in pieces, go look again at ROLLS ONE'S EYES. See how the relevant word, "ROLLS," is contained entirely inside the shaded-square wheel. The "wheel" is made entirely of wheel-word (i.e. the letters in "rolls"). It's very neat, but also, I would argue, necessarily neat. It's what you expect with a theme that pairs wheel motion with wheel-related word—if those shaded squares "resemble" WHEELS, then those shaded squares should also contain the word that is wheel-related. ROLLS ONE'S EYES did this perfectly. SHOOTS SOME HOOPS!?!?!!? I honestly stopped to wonder (aloud?) how SOMEH was a circular thing. What, about that letter string, indicates rolling? I wasn't even thinking about the fact that HOOPS are circular because there's far more of "SOME" inside that "wheel" than there is of HOOPS. Your "wheel" should not be filled with SOME. That's not road-worthy. Your "wheel" should be filled (filled, I say) with HOOPS. Putting most of "SOME" in the "wheel," oof, absolutely not. Awkward as heck.

And the next two themers did the same dance—ROUND OF APPLAUSE, mwah, perfect. "Wheel" filled entirely with the letters from the wheel-word, "ROUND." And then THROW FOR A LOOP, where the "wheel" is filled with ... ORAL. It's an ORAL wheel. This is your fourth tire, basically:

Further, the revealer does nothing. There's no wordplay, no cleverness. Just a mere one-word description. If you're going to bother with a revealer, it should pop. It should give the solver a feeling of "oh, nice turn of phrase. That is a good concept to build a theme around." WHEELS just ... sits there. Asymmetrically. Pointing. "WHEELS ... eh!? eh!? Get it?" Got it.

Back to HOPER now (sigh) (52D: Optimist). The fill in this puzzle had real promise up front, with SEA LIONS and HAZELNUT doing a great job of giving extra zing to a pretty thematically dense grid. You don't expect to find ADORABLE GROTTOES in a grid where the theme is so dominant, but this puzzle manages to come up with some non-thematic flair. To be clear, "four theme answers plus a short revealer" does not sound particularly taxing, as themes go, but the wheel parts—the parts that elevate above the plane of the answer—make the puzzle much much harder to fill cleanly. They greatly reduce your leeway as a constructor. So driving a pair of fine longer answers through not one but two of the "wheels" was somewhat impressive to me. And yet ... ADORABLE GROTTOES may look good going down, but if you look at that "ORAL" "wheel" from an Across perspective, oof. LDRS!?!?! (43A: Those in charge: Abbr.). No one has used LDR singular in a puzzle since 2011. But plural? Yeesh. That answer has been used a small handful of times, but this is the first time it's ever appeared on any day but Sunday (Sundays being giant grids that you expect to get a little desperate around the edges). I could allow for one terrible abbr., but unfortunately the fill stays pretty bad down below. HOPER, blargh. Single KUDO, jocularly or not, blargh. ERAT, always blargh. DCUP PEE ADFREE ... the fill down below is wobbly in a way the fill up top (mostly) isn't. Maybe it's because there's this additional theme answer stuck down here—the sadly matter-of-fact WHEELS—that the fill is struggling to thrive. I dunno. I just know that between the anti-climax of WHEELS and the increasingly weak fill, this puzzle started much better than it ended.

Bullets:

42A: Make it (TAG) — in the game of tag, when you tag someone, you make them "It." "TAG, you're it!"

62A: Nonhuman source of spam (BOT) — Me: "Wait ... so you're saying Spam is usually made of .... humans?" The difference between a capital and lowercase letter has never been more colossal. Once you learn that humans are the source of Spam, it's hard to imagine what the nonhuman source might be. Could be anything. "I'm sorry—you're telling me Spam is made of people!?" "Not always. Sometimes we use RAT." "Ah. I see..." [obviously the puzzle was going for a different kind of spam]
69A: Subject discussed in—and also hidden in the name of —the 2019 documentary "Third Eye Spies" (ESP) — an elaborate clue that I might have liked ... if SPY hadn't already been in the grid (44D: One with secrets). "Spies" in a clue when there is SPY already in the grid (and nearby)? Boo. Jarring dupe.
11D: Actor J.B. of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (SMOOVE) — this was a gimme, though I'm not entirely sure why, as I have never watched a full episode of "Curb," to my knowledge. I just feel like once you know that a dude named J.B. SMOOVE exists, you don't forget that.

27D: Eerie forest sound (HOOT) — had the "HO-" and wrote in HOWL!
55D: Word aptly filling the blanks of this verb: SE___A_E (PART) — I don't normally love clues like this, but for whatever reason (maybe because by this point I was really looking for a bright side), I smiled at this one. I'm not sure how "apt" it is that a word just happens to contain the letters of its own synonym (esp. non-consecutively), but whatever, I still smiled.
28A: November honoree, informally (VET) — I wanted MOM. OK, I didn't actually want MOM, but MOM is informal, and it does fit, and (most importantly) it is my MOM's birthday today. Happy birthday, mom.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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