Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Mike Ellison

Constructor: Mike Ellison

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "The Sounds of Music" — notes in the scale (the octave from DO to DO) appear in gray squares as the tail ends of various musical (-ish) Across answers, turning downward; this downward turn is explained by two revealers: SCALE DOWN (42D: Cut back ... or an alternative title for this puzzle?) and FALL TONES (52D: Autumn colors .. or an alternative title for this puzzle?)

The "scale" / "tone" answers:

TUXEDO (19A: What a conductor might wear to a concert)
PAVAROTTI (24A: One of a trio of famous tenors)
CINDERELLA (28A: Rodgers and Hammerstein's only musical written for TV)
"I TOLD YOU SO" (57A: 1988 #1 country hit for Randy Travis)
WIZ KHALIFA (82A: Rapper who shares part of his name with the world's tallest building)
"WHO AM I?" (107A: Question asked in a "Les Misérables" song)
"THAT'S AMORE" (111A: Classic tune inspiring a joke about eels)
GLISSANDO (123A: Musical slide)

Word of the Day: WIZ KHALIFA (82A) —

Cameron Jibril Thomaz (born September 8, 1987), better known by his stage name Wiz Khalifa, is an American rapper, singer and actor from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [...] A tribute to his hometown of Pittsburgh, the song peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100 and received two Grammy Award nominations. "Black and Yellow," along with the top 40-charting singles "Roll Up" and "No Sleep" preceded the release of his third album and major label debut, Rolling Papers(2011). It was met with commercial success and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200, although critical response was mixed. [...] His fifth album, Blacc Hollywood (2014) became his first to debut atop the Billboard 200, and was supported by the lead single "We Dem Boyz." His 2015 single, "See You Again" (featuring Charlie Puth) was released for the soundtrack to the film Furious 7, in tribute to late actor Paul Walker. The song peaked the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 non-consecutive weeks, received diamond (14× platinum)certification by the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA), earned three Grammy Award nominations, and remains Thomaz's most commercially successful release. His sixth album, Rolling Papers 2 (2018) matched its titular predecessor in chart position, and was supported by the sleeper hit single "Something New" (featuring Ty Dolla Sign). (wikipedia)

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Ah yes, that famous scale, DO TI LA SO FA MI RE DO! I can't believe the scale wasn't in any kind of order [NOTE: I was wrong. It is in order, from bottom to top; stupid me with my top to bottom reading habits... so the SCALE goes DOWN in two ways; that makes this puzzle cleverer than I thought it was; my daughter came into town last night, so I was distracted ... is my excuse. Anyway, gonna leave the write-up as is. Sorry for the oversight]—should not have been hard to do—but then if it had been in order, the whole thing would've been far Far too easy, instead of merely too easy. I got the "DO" part, and then got SCALE DOWN, and that was basically the end of my thematic enjoyment and interest. I filled in the scale from top to bottom, in order ... but then that wasn't right, but it hardly mattered. Once you know the note placement is random, you can just go looking for the notes, ho hum no big deal. The second revealer, FALL TONES, was supposed to be a bonus, I guess, but it merely felt redundant, and anyway the term is FALL COLORS (or EARTH TONES). After I'd finished, I wondered why so many of the "themers" were songs, and only then did I notice that all the "themers" were musical in some fashion, although TUXEDO is a ssttrreettcchh—nothing inherently musical about TUXEDO; they had to force it to be musical through the cluing (which references a conductor's attire). You can tell that the theme kind of knows how weak it is by how many "bonus" elements it tries to throw at you—musical themers! a second revealer!—but in the end it's just a bunch of randomly placed two-letter "notes" turned down. Very weird to refer to those notes as a "scale" and then not arrange them in "scale" order. Very weird also to have the musical term CRESCENDO sitting dead center ... but with nothing thematic to do. Like the other themers just abandoned it there. "Hey ... hey guys, remember me? Guys? Come on ... hey, why does GLISSANDO get to be the second "DO," that's not fair! Fine, be that way! I'ma go hang out with Vanilla Ice and THE PIPS. They'll appreciate me!"

Also, it's SOL. Decades of crossword-solving have taught me that the note is SOL, not SO. DO RE ME FA SOL LA TI DO. Here, look:

xwordinfo.com

OK, some of those clues have nothing to do with music, but look at all the ones that do: [G, in C]; [Fifth note in an octave scale]; [Fa-la connector]. I know that "SO" is an acceptable variant, but I would've been a hair's breadth more impressed with this theme if it had pulled off a SOL instead of a mere SO. I guess there are no musical terms ending in SOL. Not a lot of songs about PARASOLs or LYSOL, I suppose. Ah well.

I just went over to the puzzle website to make sure there was not some music or puzzle animation that I was missing. Apparently not, which seems slightly startling. They went to such great lengths to make those wheels spin last week that I thought for sure they'd do some big musical number, some song, dancing notes, god knows what. But nope, just gray squares and an out-of-order scale, just like my downloaded puzzle. Hmm, now that I look at the clues and grid a little more, it looks like the puzzle is so desperate to convince you there's really a theme here that it's trying to make As Many Clues as Possible into music clues. DOMO? MOPS? ANT? All of them (and more) getting musical treatment. I didn't notice. If the theme is weak, it's weak, and no amount of "bonus" stuff is gonna rescue it.

The fill is fine, OK, pretty average. CIERAS is less than lovely (bygone and plural?) (98D: Some Olds of old), but not much else made me wince. Well, HINKY, a little, especially crossing CIO (Chief Information Officer). And I had to say the ENACTED clue to myself over and over again before I could begin to understand it (7D: Written in code?). If you enact a law then it becomes part of the legal or penal or criminal code ... I think that's what the clue is going for. Also, HOUDINI was an escape artist so he ... got out ... of various forms of bondage (47D: Whose performances were as astonishing as all get-out?). I know Wynton and Branford Marsalis, but I did not know ELLIS (he's one of many accomplished musicians who died early in the COVID epidemic (see also John Prine and Adam Schlesinger, among others)). I was proud of myself for getting BANYANS off just the "B"—pretty sure I learned about the existence of those trees from crosswords, and that knowledge really paid off today (94D: Trees that can grow multiple acres wide). Speaking of knowledge I possess solely from solving crosswords—ALDO shoes! (115D: Footwear retailer founded in Montreal). And the word AGLARE, LOL, what? (22A: Gazing angrily). I mean, I know what, but still, what? Such a dumb word. Only mistake I made today was thinking that [What guacamole often costs] was EUROS. You cannot dispute that guacamole is sold in the E.U. and therefore often costs EUROS, so please respect my perfectly good if technically wrong answer, thank you, good day.