THEME: X MARKS THE SPOT (15D: Treasure hunt phrase ... or a hint to seven Across answers) — seven squares that have SPOT in the Across direction, X in the Down
Theme answers:
IN A SPOT
GUEST SPOT
SPOT OF TEA
DESPOTISM
"OUT, DAMNED SPOT"
SPOTIFY
SPOT ON
Word of the Day: MAT (2D: Hair clump) —
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Interesting concept, UNEVEN execution. It was weirdly easy to tiptoe through the grid without getting any theme stuff. AUEL ALEPH IPAD SHWA (...) AWASH, stall. Reboot with SUTRA RIFF ATTY TRAILMIX and then (drum roll) I hit -IFY and figured it all out. Thus, when I came to the "revealer," it didn't really "reveal" much. It was "redundant." "Unnecessary." I am surprised this theme hasn't been done before. The revealer has certainly been a theme answer before (a lot) but never quite in this way (that I can see, or remember). There are some good moments here ("OUT, DAMNED X!") but there's an awful lot of gunk. AGE ONE is just bad, and the repeated ONE (see ONE CUP) makes it worse. UNTUNE is pretty yuck, and yuckier for being in same corner with another longish UN-prefixed word (UNEVEN). You've also got the dreaded full-phrase ETALII and the awful-when-spelled-out ITEN. The density of junk is what's bad here—and there's not even a "X" in that section to deal with. ON A TEAM? Can you just put any prepositional phrase in a puzzle? IN A PUZZLE? There's just too much wince-y stuff here.
Once you crack the theme, there's not much to trouble you. I honestly had no idea that MAT was spelled with just one "T"—I've never had occasion to spell it and never gave it a thought. For a nanosecond, I thought there might be a "TT" rebus for some reason. For more than a nanosecond, I thought Japan might be a FRENEMY (43D: Japan, to the U.S. => EXENEMY). When I get an answer like TYE so easily, I feel like I'm cheating #crosswordese. I hadn't really thought out "Tum, t-tum-tum-TUMS!" but hey, yeah, that is the "Dragnet" theme (62A: Product whose jingle uses the "Dragnet" theme) ("Dragnet" ... what do you mean, 'What's 'Dragnet'? ... it was a show ... on television ... television ... tel-e-vis-ion! ... it was this box oh nevermind."
THEME: MIC DROP (42D: Dramatic ending to a performance ... or a hint to answering the six starred clues) —answers are real words but don't fit ... until you drop the "MIC":
Theme answers:
BALSA(MIC) (19A: *What may keep a model's weight down?)
(MIC)RON (15A: *Onetime White House nickname)
POLE(MIC) (11D: *Word after North or South)
CO(MIC)AL (36D: *Shade of black)
(MIC)KEY (51A: *Anthem writer)
FOR(MIC)A (39D:*Discussion venues)
Word of the Day:Frances Moore LAPPÉ(8A: Frances Moore ___, author of the best-selling "Diet for a Small Planet") —
Frances Moore Lappé (born February 10, 1944) is the author of 18 books including the three-million copy, 1971 Diet for a Small Planet that The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History describes as “one of the most influential political tracts of the times." She is the co-founder of three national organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty and environmental crises, as well as solutions now emerging worldwide through what she calls Living Democracy. Her most recent books include EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want[1] and World Hunger: 10 Myths.
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I've seen this concept executed better elsewhere, and honestly I've been subjected to that MIC DROP twit on the Verizon commercial so many times now that the whole concept of mic dropping feels as old as "phat" and "bling" to me already. The NYT is just ... belated. Here's a BEQ version of this theme from two years ago. And here's a David Kwong version from last year (from the best daily you're not doing, and possibly the best daily puzzle period, at the moment: the WSJ). This wasn't terrible fun to solve. I am not (at all) a big fan of randomly question-marked themers? I mean, if they're all "?"'d, great, but 19A: *What may keep a model's weight down? (BALSA(MIC)) was just awful, esp. as the first themer anyone's likely to encounter (in the NW). I was like "is this a fad diet? Is the vinegar making the model barf?" But then I saw the "balsa" in there and thought "pffft, I guess something's happening... I'll just keep going." Theme became obvious at POLE(MIC), and after that, there wasn't much more to do but slog through clues and enjoy/endure the fill (more the latter, though "GONE GIRL" was alright) (27D: 2014 psychological thriller based on a Gillian Flynn novel).
Do people know MBABANE? (1D: Capital of Swaziland). It's a world capital, so it's fair game, but I'll confess it was just a string of letters to me. Another string of letters (more familiar, far less pleasant) was OBLA, the kind of answer that makes me want to quit crosswords and take up, I don't know, whittling or something.
The LAPPÉ (who?) / ACHS crossing is truly atrocious, a. because LAPPÉ is the kind of name you should only use if your grid is literally on fire (i.e. in an emergency), and b. because the ACHS crossing is one of those terrible "ugh, which one is the Scottish exclamation and which one is the German?" "words" that makes the vowel a kind of a guess. I guessed right, but still: bad. KOED is also, even more, bad. Like, bad. Like, I keep looking at it, expecting it to suddenly look like a word to me, but so far no dice. Strangest moment of the solve for me was nailing MULEDEER with just -LED- in place (15D: Rocky Mountain forager). Ugh, INDC. I fought with my podcast cohost about this horrible answer recently. She's strangely enamored of it, whereas I wish it would (OBLA) die. It is absolutely ridiculous that ALKALINE was not clued as AL KALINE, especially with Opening Day of the baseball season just days away. As a Tigers fan, I reject this puzzle on the basis of that snub alone (though I also stand by everything else I said).
THEME: HIDDEN GEM (34D: Well-kept secret … or a hint to the answer to each starred clue) — the letter string "GEM" is "HIDDEN" inside five theme answers
Theme answers:
"INDULGE ME" (1D: *"If I may…")
LARGE MOUTH (18A: *Kind of bass)
DODGE MONACO (24A: *Model of the Blues Brothers' Bluesmobile)
I liked this one OK, but man it was over fast. There was a while there where I was cutting through this thing like it was Monday—from the NE right down through the middle to the SW I got every answer I looked at immediately. Not nearly Thursdayish enough, cluing-wise. The theme type is also standard—not the kind of thing I'm used to seeing on Thursday (typically the twisty / tricky day). I've seen this done a million ways. I did one once called "Inside Dope" where THC was "hidden" inside the themers. I have nothing against this theme type. Just feels more T/W to me. There was absolutely nothing unusual today. The envelopes all remained unpushed. And yet I enjoyed the five minutes I spent doing it. I think this is because a few of the themers are simply entertaining in their own right. "INDULGE ME…" is original, colloquial, nice. I don't think I've ever heard of a DODGE MONACO, but I enjoyed remembering "The Blues Brothers" (one of the first R-rated movies my parents took me to see, along with "Bustin' Loose" and "The World According to Garp"). GRUDGE MATCH is the big winner of the day—a fantastic answer I can't remember seeing before. Most of the fill was just average, with a few unfortunate moments, but the long stuff is good, and when the long stuff is good, the mediocre short stuff can't do much to ruin the party.
There were very few points of resistance. I had to think about 1A: "___ pass" for a bit. After getting LPS at 4D: Audiophile's collection, I went with "WE'LL pass." As in, "You guys wanna go contra-dancing with us?" "Uh, no. WE'LL pass." But that wasn't it. NEAP made that clear. Once I changed WE'LL to IT'LL, whole NW was done fast. I didn't rocket out of there because GARDEN City is meaningless to anyone outside NYC (i.e. me), and even with GARD- I wasn't sure. Also, I had BIOS at first for 21D: They may have kings as subjects (ODES). But CEDE was a gimme (5A: Turn over), and I got all the crossing Downs and then just Took Off. Once I changed EMOJI (!?) to ECARD (ick) at 6D: Gift with a GIF, maybe, I didn't miss a single answer until way down at 39D: Take (ANGLE), which proved so inscrutable to me that I just ended up solving around it. I get it now, but that is one ambiguous clue for ANGLE. I also had some issues with the equally ambiguous clue 43D: Beef (GRIPE). Confuse there was exacerbated by feeling 58A: Union busters? might be AXES and 55A: One getting the message? might be MAGE (can a MAGE be a seer or a medium?). After that slight delay, I rocketed across the bottom of the grid right down to the SE corner, where GEM actually didn't come quickly. Had to work it from crosses. But that was it. Too easy and straightforward, but pleasant enough.
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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