Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Lyre holder of myth

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: "DAVEY and Goliath" (18A: Goliath's master of old TV) —

Davey and Goliath is a 1960s stop-motion animated children's Christian television series. The programs, produced by the Lutheran Church in America (now a part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), were produced by Art Clokey after the success of his Gumbyseries.

Each 15-minute episode features the adventures of Davey Hansen and his "talking" dogGoliath (although only Davey and the viewer can hear him speak) as they learn the love of God through everyday occurrences. Many of the episodes also feature Davey's parents John and Elaine, his sister Sally, as well as Davey's friends; Jimmy, Teddy, and Nathanial in earlier episodes; Jonathan, Jimmy, Nicky (who looked a lot like Teddy) and Cisco on later ones (all were members of the "Jickets" club). (wikipedia)

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On the tough side for me, but not for the rest of humanity, I think. Just wasn't in sync with it, though I did have my second root canal appointment a few hours ago and my face is still pretty numb, so maybe some of my relative slowness can be attributed the residual effects of the stress / drugs. Who can say? This is a fine-looking grid, though it didn't excite me much. Trying to guess what the seed answers were and not having a very easy time of it: THE X FACTOR, I'd imagine (27D: Competition TV series with versions in over 30 countries)—that's long and fresh; maybe ROBOCALLS—also modern, and, this month, timely. I don't see anything else that would make me say "Man, I gotta put *this* in a puzzle. Maybe TOP KNOTS (40A: Kewpie doll features). I like that, though I apparently don't really know what Kewpie dolls look like, because I didn't know TOP KNOTS were a feature. I think I was imagining Troll dolls. I know TOP KNOTS as a gang in "Watchmen." Wait, no, those were the KNOT-TOPS. Nevermind.

Fill is both smooth and Scrabbly, a nice combination, and one you can pull off when you go toward the high end of the word-count spectrum with your themeless (this one is 70, max is 72). As I've said many times, I prefer the higher word counts and nice fill to the lower word counts and barf. I didn't struggle mightily with this one, but I struggled often—had at least a little trouble getting into every section. Opened very weirdly by kind of traipsing across the middle of the grid. ST. PETE to EIGHTY to HERR to REBA to LATE, jump to RSVP, then VOID, then ODOR. Then OMIT at 37D: Let pass (OKED). Mistake 1. Mistake 2 was CRUX at 28A: One hanging in una iglesia (CRUZ). Mistake 3 was GOLDEN AGE instead of GOLDEN ERA (62A: Heyday). Mistake 4 was HOMER, though, to be fair to me, I doubted it as soon as I put it in, suspecting that HOMER was too obvious and knowing that TATER would also work (63A: Four-bagger). So I just waited for crosses to work their magic. No idea about cities in MINORCA (38D: Mahon is its largest city). No idea about POODLE CUT (though I was able to work out the POODLE part, eventually) (59A: Short, curly hairdo). No idea who ERICA Hubbard is (16A: Actress Hubbard of "Akeelah and the Bee"). I do, however, own a beat up Jerry Rice jersey, and I was the only kid growing up in Fresno in the '70s who was a huge Seattle Seahawks fan, so that EIGHTY clue was up my alley x 2 (25A: Number retired for Steve Largent and Jerry Rice). All in all, a reasonably enjoyable outing.

Bullets:

24A: Santa Maria's chain (AZORES) — did the ship land there? (no). Is Santa Maria an island in the chain? (yes). I thought maybe "chain" meant restaurant. IHOP?
30A: Truncated parlor piece? (TAT) — Interesting, though "?" usually work best if they use a zig phrase for a zag answer. [Parlor piece?] for TATTOO would be a good example. The "Truncated" part here (to get the abbrev. TAT) is just odd.
35A: Sitcom mom of Cheyenne and Kyra (REBA) — educated guess. She's the most common four-letter sitcom mom in crosswords.
38A: "I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it" (MARX) — Little-known fact: Karl MARX was Hi-Larious.
48D: Thing placed during a political campaign (SPOT AD) — this is different from an AD how? I don't know this phrase.

56A: Two-time Italian prime minister Giuliano (AMATO) — puzzle really wants to know my Italian PMs this month. Not gonna happen.
58A: Filler of some cavities (GROUT) — please. Ixnay on the cavity talk. I've had it with tooth talk (or apparent tooth talk) for a while.
11D: Lyre holder of myth (ERATO) — nice fat gimme: the muse of lyric poetry. And also crosswords. (sorry, Melpomene)
41D: Dark reddish brown (OXBLOOD) — it's a color? Wow, apparently it's the "color of the moment" (per this fashion article published just today at HuffPo). News to me. Do oxen have different colored blood from other, uh, ruminants?