Predecessor of a copter / FRI 4-7-23 / Whack biblically / City known as the cradle of Italian liberty / Locale depicted in three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder / Bag End resident / Title city in a 2017 #1 hit by Camila Cabello / What gets hit by a football in "Man Getting Hit by Football" in a classic episode of "The Simpsons"

Constructor: Lindsey Hobbs

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PAPILLA (17D: It's on the tip of your tongue) —

: a small projecting body part similar to a nipple in form:

a

: a vascular process of connective tissue extending into and nourishing the root of a hair, feather, or developing tooth  see hair illustration

b

: any of the vascular protuberances of the dermal layer of the skin extending into the epidermal layer and often containing tactile corpuscles

c

: any of the small protuberances on the upper surface of the tongue often containing taste buds (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Had trouble getting very excited about this one. It started out feeling very musty and old-fashioned, with phrases like HAM IT UP and TOP BANANA appearing where more interesting / current slang might have gone. And then once the other marquee answers started appearing ... they topped out at "fine," somewhere north of "just OK," but still, there was nothing eye-popping or surprising about any of them. MINDBENDER is too vague a thing to be exciting (to me), MOLTEN LAVA is ... you know, hot, in a literal sense, but that's typically how I think of LAVA (MOLTEN, that is) so the phrase as a whole feels just ... long (and semi-redundant, though I know that technically it's not). KID GLOVES is fine but also feels like it belongs in the old-fashioned category with HAM IT UP and TOP BANANA. SWEET TALK I like (36A: Charm). Then there are the central crosses. THAT'S A TALL ORDER is solid, but still no real zip, and then there's DODGED A BULLET, which is a fine metaphorical expression but (and this is admittedly a very personal and undoubtedly oversensitive reaction) this country has such a horrific (and utterly preventable) gun violence problem that the image of people "dodging bullets" just evokes school shootings for me right now (29A: Narrowly avoided disaster). I know it shouldn't. But it does. BULLET TRAIN wouldn't bug me one bit. It's the dodging part. My brain does what it does and that's what it did / is doing. But even without that bummer of a mental image, the grid felt more listless than a Friday should be. Just not enough high points in the longer answers. As for the rest of it... well, there are some problems there too. There was a lot of trivia. A lot. Some of it I knew, some of it I didn't, but the clues on TURIN and MIAMI and PLANO and HAVANA (you see a theme developing here...), they all gave me various levels of "shrug I dunno" (though I got PLANO weirdly quickly because I just wrote back to a couple of college students (aspiring constructors!) and their address was in PLANO). But it wasn't just geography trivia, there was KROGER and BILBO and KFC and BABEL etc. Felt like a lot. And then the fill was pretty weak in places, starting with HEP and ALBS (you can see why that NW corner felt musty, for reasons beyond the old-fashioned slang), and then that AHME DOER AOL stack in the bottom left. Definitely a rough spot. Overall the fill is solid, though. Solid. That's the word for today. Not a satisfying "Solid" for me, personally, but solid nonetheless. 

I had one serious trouble spot—a collision of baffling answers, the bafflingness of which was instigated by one long, wrong answer: EASY AS PIE (24A: "No problem at all" => EASY-PEASY). The cluing was hard enough in that NE corner without my having made the whole situation much worse with a wrong answer, an answer that drove through the two toughest things in the puzzle for me: PAPILLA and CYRUS. As for PAPILLA ... I have to admit, I just don't think I know that word. I'm looking at it and it seems slightly familiar, but no, I don't think I could've defined it for you (before I made it today's "Word of the Day"). I wanted something meaning "taste bud," but couldn't find the word. I also wanted ... well, every different kind of "tongue" I could think of, which mostly resulted in my thinking of shoes (to no avail). So I needed almost every cross to make a reasoned guess about PAPILLA. I should add that I was in no way sure about TURIN, which also ran through this PAPILLA CYRUS pairing, and that made everything in the section feel even dicier. 

As for CYRUS, wow ... by far the most baffling clue in the puzzle. And I have to tip my hat to the clue. It's perfectly accurate. But there was no way on god's green earth I was ever gonna pull Hannah Montana from my mental list of "Montana"s. I was thinking there must be a team in Montana (University of?) and I was supposed to be looking for their mascot (they're the "Grizzlies," btw). Then I was thinking of Joe Montana. And yeah, that pretty much did it for me, Montana-wise. I was finished with the puzzle, with CYRUS written in its proper place, and I still had absolutely no idea how it could be right. Was King Cyrus ("The Great") somehow involved? CYRUS Vance? Totally lost. And then somehow, finally, Miley CYRUS's name occurred to me and I had a giant "D'oh!" reaction. Miley CYRUS did indeed "play" Hannah Montana. You got me there. You really did. Wish that answer hadn't come at what was already the toughest part of the grid, but these things come when they come. 

[Rubens, "Head of King Cyrus Brought to Queen Tomyris"; I saw this painting
once, in Toledo (Ohio!), and it was awe-inspiring (~2 meters x 3.6 meters)]

I know I gave the puzzle a hard time for its overreliance on trivia, but I did appreciate the "Simpsons"-ness of this one, and liked getting not one but two fairly detailed "Simpsons" clues, first for "WOO-HOO" (37D: Exclamation that might be followed by "D'oh!" on "The Simpsons") and then again for GROIN—a deeper cut, for sure (46A: What gets hit by a football in "Man Getting Hit by Football" in a classic episode of "The Simpsons"). I would've preferred THE GROIN here, since it's more accurate, but GROIN will do :)

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Part of a religious title that means ocean / SUN 6-27-21 / 1966 Donovan hit / 1968 self-titled folk album / Cal's game-winning kickoff return against Stanford in 1982, familiarly / It's covered in paint in the Sherwin-Williams logo / Homemade headgear for pretend pirates / Pesach observers

Constructor: Ross Trudeau and Lindsey Hobbs

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (untimed)

THEME: "Gravity's Rainbow" — colors of the rainbow turn downward (because of gravity?) inside of otherwise Across theme answers. Plus, it's hard to see this the way the colors are situated in the grid, but if you read them from L to R, they do follow the correct rainbow order:

Theme answers:

• THE RED PLANET (95A: Mars)
• BLOOD ORANGE (56A: Fruit with crimson-colored flesh)
• MELLOW YELLOW (39A: 1966 Donovan hit)
• EVERGREEN TREE (6A: Spruce or fir)
• OL' BLUE EYES (43A: Sinatra, to fans)
• INDIGO GIRLS (60: Popular folk rock duo)
• ULTRA-VIOLET RAYS (100A: Harmful bits of sunlight)

Word of the Day: LYDIA Ko (64D: Golf's ___ Ko, youngest golfer to be ranked #1) —

Lydia Ko MNZM (born 24 April 1997) is a Korean-born New Zealand professional golfer. A former No. 1-ranked woman professional golfer, she achieved the top ranking on 2 February 2015 at 17 years, 9 months and 9 days of age, making her the youngest player of either gender to be ranked No. 1 in professional golf.

Ko has had much success from an early age holding many youngest accolades on the LPGA Tour. She was the youngest person ever to win a professional golf tour event and youngest person ever to win an LPGA Tour event. In August 2013, she became the only amateur to win two LPGA Tour events. Upon winning The Evian Championship in France on 13 September 2015, she became the youngest woman, at age 18 years, 4 months and 20 days, to win a major championship. Her closing round of 63 was a record lowest final round in the history of women's golf majors, but she lowered that record to 62 at the ANA Inspiration in 2021. She had previously won the ANA Inspiration on 3 April 2016 for her second consecutive major championship, where she also became the youngest player to win two women's major championships. Since turning professional in 2014, Ko has won 15 tournaments. In 2014, Ko was named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. In both 2014 and 2015, Ko has been named in the EspnW Impact25 list of 25 athletes and influencers who have made the greatest impact for women in sports.

In 2016, Ko was named  Young New Zealander of the Year, and in the 2019 New Year Honours, she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to golf.

• • •

There are two interesting features of this theme. One is the title / downward turn of the colors, and the other is the fact that the colors do, in fact, make a rainbow, if you "read" them in order L to R. Beyond that it's pretty paint-by-numbers, a variant of a theme I've seen a thousand times (well, a few times). I got to this point in the puzzle and thought it might be (yet another) rainbow rebus ...

... but it surprised me with the whole downward turn thing, so that's cool. Still, the colors are just colors, and once you get the gimmick (early, easily), there's not much going on here. The themers themselves are straightforward. It's all a bit BLAH, if not a total BORE. I just call EVERGREEN TREEs "evergreens," so the TREE part felt redundant ... and generally the colors were so literal (his eyes are in fact blue, the planet does indeed appear red, etc.) that there just wasn't much flair or surprise here. The rainbow is kind of Pride-ish, though, and since it's Pride Month, I guess that's a nice coincidence. Maybe I'll just enjoy it at that level. Yes, that works.

There were no real tough spots today, though I never really committed the song title "JAI HO" to memory (89A: Oscar-winning song from "Slumdog Millionaire"), so all those crosses were a bit dicey for me, with ON BAIL proving the most tenaciously resistant to completion (72D: Temporarily out). Also didn't know LYDIA Ko's name, but after the LYD- slid in there, the rest was easy to infer. Totally forgot LIT OUT was an actual expression, so I had LI- OUT and still no idea. LIP OUT is something a golf ball does on occasion, but you wouldn't say the golf ball "skedaddled" out of the cup, and anyway, LIP out is in the wrong verb tense. GRADATES is a weird verb (109A: Changes by degrees). Not sure I've ever seen it. "Gradated," sure. A rainbow is gradated! "Gradations," yup. But GRADATES as a verb feels less common. Nothing Wrong With It. Just looks/feels weird to my eyes/ears. Especially under DELIME, which I truly have never seen (105A: Remove calcium deposits from). Was prepared to be mad at RED ONION because it contains a color that does *not* turn down, but then the answer turned out to be RAW ONION, so: madness averted. I wrote in PLATE HATS (?) before PAPER HATS at 21A: Homemade headgear for pretend pirates, as I imagined the hats were somehow made out of ... paper plates, I guess. Not proud of that one. I actually had to think about whether it was CONGO or CONGA (71A: World's deepest river). Also not proud of that. Clue on RICH was good but tough (80D: Laughable). I wrote in "PFFT!" then took out "PFFT!" then finally wrote "PFFT!" back in. In other, completely coincidental news, I just watched the movie "PHFFFT!" for the first time this past week—it's a romantic comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday, who are one of the most underrated movie comedy pairs of all time (probably because they only did two movies together ("PHFFFT!" and "It Should Happen To You," both from 1954). Judy Holliday's movie career didn't last much longer, and she died of throat cancer in 1965. "Born Yesterday" (1950), for which Holliday won the Best Actress Oscar, is my favorite movie, no foolin'. Where was I? Oh, right. "PFFT!" I liked it because it reminded me of Judy and Jack.

[OLÉ!]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Hobbyists's knife / TUE 3-16-21 / Corn farmer at harvest time / Lumberjacks in unsafe working conditions / High-calorie bakery offerings / Like pandas yaks and snow leopards / Old car that's a homophone of another answer in this puzzle

Constructor: Lindsey Hobbs

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (somewhere in the low 4's)

THEME: ICED TEA (39A: Beverage with a phonetic hint to 17-, 26-, 51- and 63-Across) — familiar phrases that start with "T," only the letter "T" has been "iced" (as in "murdered" (!?), i.e. lopped off, omitted), resulting in wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):

Theme answers:

• APE RECORDER (17A: Jane Goodall, at times?)
• EAR JERKER (26A: Corn farmer at harvest time?)
• AX DODGERS (51A: Lumberjacks in unsafe working conditions?)
• URN OF EVENTS (63A: Caterer's coffee dispenser?)

Word of the Day: Glacier Bay National Park (27D: Capital near Glacier Bay National Park => JUNEAU) —

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is an American national park located in Southeast Alaska west of Juneau. President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the area around Glacier Bay a national monument under the Antiquities Act on February 25, 1925.^[4] Subsequent to an expansion of the monument by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) enlarged the national monument by 523,000 acres (817.2 sq mi; 2,116.5 km²) on December 2, 1980, and created Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. The national preserve encompasses 58,406 acres (91.3 sq mi; 236.4 km²) of public land to the immediate northwest of the park, protecting a portion of the Alsek River with its fish and wildlife habitats, while allowing sport hunting.

Glacier Bay became part of a binational UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, and was inscribed as a Biosphere Reserve in 1986. The National Park Service undertook an obligation to work with Hoonah and Yakutat Tlingit Native American organizations in the management of the protected area in 1994. The park and preserve cover a total of 3,223,384 acres (5,037 sq mi; 13,045 km²), with 2,770,000 acres (4,328 sq mi; 11,210 km²) being designated as a wilderness area. (wikipedia)

• • •

I like the weirdness of this one. It's a little gruesome, using the language of the hitman to refer to the simple omission of a letter. I probably would've gone with something like URN OF PHRASE instead of URN OF EVENTS, just so I wouldn't leave any "T"s uniced in those theme answers, but other than that, the theme seems to do what it sets out to do, and it does so consistently and elegantly (and wackily) enough. The nature of the theme made this one harder than a typical Tuesday for me. Figuring out what the base phrase is supposed to be and/or figuring out what the clue is trying to get at turned out to be a lot of work for me today. Weirdly, the first one (APE RECORDER) was probably the easiest for me to get; I came at it from the front end, and I managed to reason the answer from the clue, even though I still didn't know the gimmick (i.e. *why* the "T" was missing); would subsequent themers remove "T" or some other letter? Would that letter always be removed from the front of the answer, or might it disappear from somewhere else? No way to know early on. And that second themer, yikes, that clue was zero help and I couldn't find the base phrase (i.e. "tearjerker") until I figured out the very last crosses. Getting to the concept of "jerk" from farming / harvesting was ... uh, not intuitive to me. I can see the connection now, but then, no way. Also, having EAR --RKER I put in EAR MARKER, completely forgetting that the answers are supposed to be wacky, not legit. TORTAS seemed like a plausible answer for [High-calorie bakery offerings], so the only answer left that could get me off of EAR MARKER and over to EAR JERKER was the [Capital near Glacier Bay National Park], and wow JUNEAU took a long time to get without that "J" to help me along the way. I didn't know exactly where said "National Park" was, and I was frozen by the lack of specificity in the clue (i.e. what kind of "capital" were we dealing with? National or state? Or province? Is it Canadian? Sounds like it might be Canadian). I sort of forgot JUNEAU existed. 

Found AX DODGERS hard as well, as the base phrase eluded me and the clue had me thinking of DANGERS, not DODGERS (51A: Lumberjacks in unsafe working conditions?). Then after getting OF EVENTS in the last themer, the only way I could think to start that phrase was "(C)HAIN." But HAIN isn't a thing, and didn't fit anyway. So, as you can see, it was a struggle. As struggles go, it wasn't back-breaking, but compared to most Tuesdays, it played hard for me.

The fill wasn't doing me any favors either. I wanted my parishioners to "sit" in PEWS, of course, so NAVE had me all messed up over there in the west (29D: Where parishioners sit). I think of the phrase as "It'll COST you," not "That'll COST you," so that fill-in-the-blank was weird (wanted something like "That'll SHOW you!"). [Ancestry] is a fine clue for ROOTS, but I found it hard to get from clue to answer. Had GTO before REO (64D: Old car that's a homophone of another answer in this puzzle) (OK, first, don't make me go hunting through The Entire Grid to find your dumb "homophone," and also, make sure you know what "homophone" means, because R-E-O and OREO do not have the same initial vowel sound, wtf!?) (wait, is REO a homophone of RIO??? I always say the letters R, E, O, as in R.E.O. Speedwagon ... if the car REO is pronounced RIO, I ... I ... wow, I don't know). AUTONYM took some doing (50A: Name of self-identification, as "Deutsche" for "Germans"). Worst, though, was TIN CAN, which could've had an ordinary clue but instead got an olde-tymey automotive clue, thus turning TIN CAN into slang I've never heard of (68A: Jalopy). "Crate," "Heap," these I've heard as slang for "jalopy" (which is pretty old itself). A "tin lizzie" is a "dilapidated or cheap car" (slang from the days of the Ford Model T). But TIN CAN, nope, to me a TIN CAN is a TIN CAN. So, overall, theme works OK, felt like a Wednesday, the end. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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Instrument played using circular breathing / THU 10-15-20 / Language that gave us spunk slogan / Rebellion 1808 uprising in New South Wales / Autobahn hazard

Constructor: Lindsey Hobbs

Relative difficulty: Medium (high 5s)

THEME: DOWN UNDER (55A: Nickname for 18-Across, and a hint to how four answers in this puzzle are to be entered) — themers are all associated with AUSTRALIA (18A: Locale suggested by this puzzle's theme) and are entered in such a way that the answer turns first "down" then "under" (i.e. the answers fold back underneath themselves):

Theme answers:

• PLATY / SESUP (i.e. "platypuses")
• KANG / OORA (i.e. "kangaroo")
• VEGE / ETIM (i.e. "Vegemite")
• DIDGE / OODIR (i.e. "didgeridoo")

Word of the Day: Novelist Santha Rama RAU (47D) —

Santha Rama Rau (24 January 1923 – 21 April 2009) was an Indian-born American writer. [...] When India won its independence in 1947, Rama Rau's father was appointed as his nation's first ambassador to Japan. While in Tokyo, Japan, she met her future husband, an American, Faubion Bowers. After extensive traveling through Asia and a bit of Africa and Europe, the couple settled in New York City, New York. Rama Rau became an instructor in the English language faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, in 1971, also working as a freelance writer. // She adapted the novel A Passage to India, with author E. M. Forster’s approval, for the theater. The play of the same name was produced for the Oxford Playhouse, Oxford, United Kingdom, moved to the West End in London, United Kingdom, in 1960 for 261 performances, and then on to Broadway in New York City where it was staged 109 times. It was adapted by John Maynard and directed by Waris Husseinfor BBC television's Play of the Month in 1965. Although the film rights originally required Rama Rau to write the screenplay, director David Lean found her draft unsatisfactory and was able to reject it, although she is still credited in the titles because he still used some of her dialogue. // Rama Rau is the author of Home to India, East of Home, This is India, Remember the House (a novel), My Russian Journey, Gifts of Passage, The Adventuress, (a novel),  View to the Southeast, and An Inheritance, as well as co-author (with Gayatri Devi) of A Princess Remembers: the memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur. (wikipedia)

• • •

And a KOALA for good measure (31D: Dweller in a eucalyptus forest). Here's a Thursday where looking DOWN UNDER (i.e. looking at the revealer clue first) wouldn't have helped a damn bit, as the revealer points you to 18-Across and the 18-Across clue tells you nothing. So you've gotta get answers into the grid before you can begin to have even an inkling of what's going on, which is fine by me as I tend to plunge right into every puzzle, hacking away at what I can get until the theme just ... sort of ... shows itself. Today, it took a weird lot of time to do that. I made good progress, but for a long time just didn't know how to enter those themers. Would've picked it up much quicker, probably, if I just could've gotten TYPIFIED (5D: Embodied). Clue had me thinking of something much more ... corporeal, and without the "Y" or "P" I couldn't see it ... and without the "Y" or "P" I also couldn't see PLATY/PUSES, though, honestly I didn't stop to think about it too much. Again, I tend to plow ahead. It's not clear to me if stopping to think about PLATY/PUSES would've paid off or just been a time suck. My general philosophy is if you get stuck, even a little, and you can move on, move on. I think the first themer I tumbled to was VEGE/MITE, which was hard because there was no reference to AUSTRALIA in the clue, and nothing at all referring to VEGE/MITE's unique look / texture / taste. Just "brand of sandwich spread" ... yikes. And we not only eat VEGE/MITE in this household, we once stockpiled it when we learned our grocery store was going to stop carrying it (they've since reversed course on this decision, thank god). Anyway, once you get the trick, the puzzle is not hard—typical Thursday, in that regard. And, much to my surprise and delight, getting the theme today made me feel like the struggle was worth it—a simple and very elegant expression of the revealer phrase. A "Huh, cool" rather than [shrug] or "ugh, really?"

Aptly snared by SNARE today (6D: Catch). I had the "R" and wrote in LEARN (?). Like "catch" as in "hear of" or "pick up," as when someone doesn't hear something and says "Sorry, I didn't catch that, what did you say?," which, now that I write it out, really isn't a good substitute for LEARN, but Thursdays can be wacky, so ... yeah. Had a lot of trouble with TRAMPOLINE, as I took "bouncer" in the club / bar security sense and not in the "literally someone bouncing" sense (41A: Bouncer's equipment). And REPO MEN, also very hard, as I couldn't remember the very crosswordesey (and yet still not automatic) RAU. Did not enjoy seeing RAU (a name that is crossword-famous all out of proportion to its actual famousness), but the clue on REPO MEN was really good (47A: Ones coming for a ride?). As with RAU, I had trouble retrieving ATUL's name, but ATUL's book I have laid eyes on many many many times, which means that even though I've seen his name in crosswords far less often than I've seen RAU's name, I resent it much less (i.e. not at all). 

Had RANKS before MARKS, that hurt (48D: Grades). Couldn't remember if it was FEY or FAY (30A: Eliflike). Since FEY can mean "marked by an otherworldly air or attitude" (m-w.com), you can see how one might get confused. Found "A WORD ..." very hard but ... it was one of those perfect hard answers where when you first get it you're mad but then after you sit with it you have to acknowledge that it is very much a real expression, clued accurately (37A: "I need to speak with you," briefly). Worst mistake today was a mistake combo. Went with OPAL (AUSTRALIA!) / HEEL, which I felt pretty good about, until none of the crosses worked and I quickly realized it was ONYX / STYX (52D: Traditional gemstone for a seventh wedding anniversary / 63A: Where Achilles took a dip?).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. only just now seeing the Australian clue on RUM (19D: ___ Rebellion, 1808 uprising in New South Wales). That may be a bit of trying too hard with the theme stuff. Know when to say when.

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