Bit of pork, but not in a congressional bill / WED 10-11-23 / Garlic in Guadalajara / People of northern Scandinavia / Alternative to mushrooms / Fitting way to invest in Campbell's / Nut once used as an ingedient in Coke

Constructor: Miranda Kany

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: CAJUN (29D: Cuisine with [circled letters], whose ingredients are the answers to the italicized clues) — theme answers are ingredients to JAMBALAYA (which is spelled out in circled squares scattered across the top and bottom rows):

Theme answers:

• ONION (16A: Real tear-jerker?)
• ANDOUILLE (17A: Bit of pork, but not in a congressional bill)
• PEPPER (26A: Stuff it!)
• CAYENNE (29A: Something that's red-hot in the kitchen?)
• CHICKEN (48A: Scaredy-cat)
• CELERY (50A: Stick in a salad?)
• WHITE RICE (64A: What pales in comparison to other carbs?)
• STOCK (66A: Fitting way to invest in Campbell's)

Word of the Day: LUCAS Sinclair (62A: "Stranger Things" kid) —

Lucas Sinclair is one of the four central protagonists (alongside Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson and Will Byers) of the Stranger Things franchise. 

He is one of the four original protagonists. He also serves as the main protagonist of the novel, Lucas on The Line. 

He is the older brother to Erica Sinclair, the best friend of Will Byers, Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson and Eleven, as well as the boyfriend of Max Mayfield. 

He is portrayed by Caleb McLaughlin, who also voiced Gary Goodspeed as a child in Final Space. (hero.fandom.com)

• • •

We've definitely had one of these "here are the ingredients to some food or beverage"-type themes before, and I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. I just don't get it. It's just a list. It's a list of ingredients. So what? Where's the "puzzle"? The cleverness, the wordplay, the anything? I see that the puzzle is desperately *trying* to make it seem like there are "puzzle"-like elements here ... the nonconsecutive squares spelling out "JAMBALAYA" strewn across the top and bottom of the grid ... the italicized clues, with their frequently strained attempts at wordplay. But non-consecutively spelling things is a giant shrug, and the cutesy "?" clues are just the ordinary type of clues one might see in any grid. And the thing is, those aren't even written with any kind of playful consistency, something that would give the theme clues some kind of coherence. They're just ... italicized. And then wacky ... but only sometimes? And the clues are about the food items themselves ... except when they're not? (i.e. the ONION and ANDOUILLE etc. are clued as what they are (foodstuffs), whereas CHICKEN ... is clued as [Scaredy-cat]). The theme clues should have something in common besides the fact that they're italicized. A common cluing approach or tone or ... something. But they're all over the map. Worse, the majority seem to want to do one thing (wackiness), but then a few just sit there and refuse to go along, so it looks not like a bunch of random clues but like a theme attempt that just went wrong or didn't quite work out. Further, PEPPER on its own seemed odd. Is it a GREEN PEPPER? A BELL PEPPER? I assume so, because the *other* kind of PEPPER, the hot one, is ... right next to it, so you get this awkward PEPPER CAYENNE sequence (which is like how the French or maybe Yoda would say CAYENNE PEPPER), with the adjectival part following the noun. The "funny" is bizarrely forced in some of the clues, especially ANDOUILLE (17A: Bit of pork, but not in a congressional bill). Why would I suspect pork meant congressional bill, as my first guess for what pork might be? It's like the clue is telling me what the misdirection *would have been*, if this had been a misdirection clue, which it isn't. The whole puzzle feels like a rough draft. Like it needed more time to cook.

Is the AJO in the JAMBALAYA? Do you put AJO in JAMBALAYA? Pretty sure you do, only here it's just sitting there, outside the theme, and in Spanish. A stray would-be themer. "Hey guys, what about me?" Sorry, AJO, I know you're in a central position, but you're not part of the action today. You just sit there and look fresh (it's been 28 years since AJO was in the grid!). I enjoyed learning AJO—the puzzle was so easy and the theme so straightforward that AJO felt like a real point of interest today. Had a nice false-theme moment when I thought ROCK MUSIC was going to be ROCK [&] ROLL at 14A: Output of the Rolling Stones, appropriately. An ampersand rebus!, I thought. But then no. Just a recipe. I like ANDOUILLE as an answer, and thought that since it was italicized and had a wacky-clue, maybe there was some wordplay going on in the answer ... stared at ANDOUILLE for a bit trying to imagine what that could be, then moved on, eventually discovering that no ... it's just a recipe. So the first two long Acrosses each gave me hopeful theme vibes, which made my eventual discovery of the actual theme that much more disappointing. The fill is pretty disappointing today too. A parade of STALES: ELWES, EENY, ACER, ICEE, RIRI, ENT, AEON, MUSÉE, ALOE, etc. None of it gruesome, but too much of it ho-hum. I enjoyed seeing ITHACA. I try to get up there several times a month to see a movie at Cinemapolis and maybe grab something to eat (this past weekend, it was Ethiopian food at Hawi). Here's a picture of me a few weeks ago in ITHACA with crossword constructors Robyn Weintraub (a Cornell alum, and Cornell mom, and Cornell booster) and Rachel Fabi (who teaches bioethics at Upstate Medical University in nearby Syracuse):

[I'm the tall one]

It's approaching peak leaf season, so it's a good time to get up that part of the country, or any part of the NE with deciduous trees. My maples are about a week or so from peaking. They're mostly shedding, much to the dismay of my constantly leaf-battling neighbor. We just let the leaves sit so kids can play in them and people can take pictures. One lady even asked if she could take a leaf home with her once, because she missed autumn and didn't have turning leaves wherever she lived now. I was like "uh, it's a leaf ... there are thousands ... so yes, please, help yourself!" Anyway, enjoy whatever fall beauty you've got. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Panegyric poet / WED 3-8-23 / Fabulous fabulist / Marine fish that's also the name of a hairstyle / Saskatchewan's second-largest city, after Saskatoon / Former Wyoming representative Liz / Reverse a thumbs-up for, on Facebook

Constructor: Miranda Kany

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Guacamole" — theme answers are ingredients for guacamole, clued as recipe instructions. The word "Guacamole" is spelled out by shaded (here, circled) squares that you are supposed to read clockwise starting from the top:

Theme answers:

• ONION (3D: "One small red minced, for crunch and tang")
• GARLIC (4D: "Three cloves minced, for depth and aroma")
• SALT (11D: "One teaspoon, pink or black, for emphasis")
• CILANTRO (22A: "1/2 cup coarsely chopped, for bright (or soapy) flavor")
• AVOCADO (40A: "About two cups cubed, after peeling and pitting")
• JALAPEÑO (55A: "One seeded and minced, for heat")
• CUMIN (53D: "1/2 teaspoon, for a little extra flavor ... really, try it!")
• TOMATO (49D: "One vine-ripe chopped, for texture and color")
• LIME (57D: "One small juiced, for citrus notes, and to preserve color")

Word of the Day: TINO Martinez (13D: Baseball's Martinez) —

Constantino "Tino" Martinez (born December 7, 1967) is an American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Seattle Mariners, New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, and Tampa Bay Devil Rays from 1990 through 2005. He also served as a hitting coach for the Miami Marlins in 2013. He is known as "Tino", a shortened version of his first name, but was also nicknamed "The Bam-tino" after his home run in game 1 of the 1998 World Series. Formerly a third baseman, Martinez was the first round draft pick for the Seattle Mariners in 1988 out of the University of Tampa, where he starred during his time on campus. During his 16-year MLB career, he scored 1,009 runs, drove in 1,271 runs, and hit 339 home runs. He had 100 or more RBI in six different seasons and was twice named to the All-Star team. (wikipedia)

• • •

The real [Baseball's Martinez] 

Well I love guacamole, but this puzzle ... I don't know. I don't think I get it. That is, it's just a list of ingredients. That is all that it is. It seems to try to make up for this with some shaded (circled) squares that spell the "revealer" ("Guacamole"), but those squares are ... what are they doing? Are they supposed to form the outline of an AVOCADO? I can almost imagine that, if I squint and also am very generous. But if random squares that you read "clockwise" are still random squares. It is not going to be hard to find any of these letters in any given grid, and in a very choppy, high word-count grid like this, you can probably make a very vague "clockwise" scheme come out pretty easily. It's possible that the large amount of theme content (*Nine* ingredients!), made filling the grid more of a challenge than filling a similarly-shaped grid would've been under less demanding circumstances, but still, the "clockwise" revealer is kind of a dud, and it's a dud that's trying to make up for an insubstantial theme. This puzzle is just missing some essential *crossword* element. It doesn't seem playful or gamelike. It's a list. And the addition of CUMIN ... trust me, I do not want to get into the Guacamole Culture Wars ("Peas! How dare you!"), and I have no doubt that CUMIN is, as the clue suggests, quite good in guacamole, but its presence here is so painfully, obviously about making the ingredient list come out symmetrical that it had me going "really? come on." It is the notable outlier, as far as standard guacamole recipes go, and it knows it (the clue wouldn't be trying so hard to convince you it was valid if it was in fact valid) ("... really, try it!"). Overall, it's hard to be excited about this one, except insofar as I am always in some small way excited about guacamole. But I'll try the CUMIN. I promise.

The fill isn't great. I nearly took a screenshot early on because I got that NW corner feeling again today—the feeling when I'm only a few answers in and I can tell already that things aren't going to go well. ECO EON EELS ... OK, but then LUI on top of that? Yeesh. The rest of the grid had similar problems with stale repeaters. ODIST!? That's twice this week I think for that one—a word only a crossword could love. The only part of the fill I really like is the REGINA MULLET SPEEDO stack. Getting quite the picture—of a pasty Canadian dude with a bad haircut in tight swimwear. In my head, he's drinking Labatt's. He's got a MACAW on one shoulder and a MYNA on the other. He is a heroic figure of freedom. He should be on coins. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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