THEME: Corny quip — 15A: Start of a quip attributed to British comedian Ken Dodd (I HAVE / KLEPTOMANIA BUT / WHEN IT GETS BAD / I TAKE SOMETHING / FOR IT)
Word of the Day: HOT STOVE (39D: Kind of off-season baseball "league") —
In baseball, hot stove league is the sport's off-season. The phrase does not denote an actual league, but instead calls up images of baseball fans gathering around a hot stove during the cold winter months, discussing their favorite baseball teams and players.
The term has also come to refer to the wave of off-season player transactions (contract negotiations, re-signings, trades, free agency, etc.) that occur between seasons. Since most free-agent signings and trades occur during the off-season, this time of significant player transactions (including rumors and speculation about possible trades), is often referred to as the hot stove league or more simply, hot stove. (wikipedia)
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Oh god, the quip, the Quip! Why are these still a thing. It's someone else's cleverness, first of all, so it shouldn't even count. Second of all, "cleverness" is generous. Corny dad humor and groaner one-liners don't usually rise to the level of "clever." This quip is something your boss saw in some joke book and then said at a meeting and everyone force-smiled and half-laughed but actually died inside. That's what this quip is. Here, I'll explain the joke (always funny!). So a kleptomaniac is someone who steals, or "takes," things compulsively, so when the quipper says he "TAKES SOMETHING / FOR IT," normally that phrase is understood to mean "takes a pill to alleviate an ailment," but here the "TAKES" is to be taken (literally), i.e. the quipper alleviates his kleptomania by stealing. There, wasn't that fun? I hope you were able to ENWRAP your head around the complexity of it all.
The quip is lamentable and the fill is likewise, with the longer Downs being a notable exception. YORKER (?) ANS ELL OSIS OSA OTRO ANAL SPYS ... there's a lot that's NOT SO good. I forgot MA BELL was a thing because, as the clue says, it is, in fact, "old" (3D: Old telephone service). ST. JOE is a city in MO? News to me. I wrote in ST. LOU. Then LOO. Also had SET AT for SIC ON (5D: Send to attack). Figured the [Cause of a bee sting's sting] was its ... stinger, actually. Pictured actual cookie cutters "living" in cupboards or drawers, but the hyphen in "cookie-cutter" shoulda tipped me that it was an adjective (11D: Locale of many cookie-cutter homes => SUBURBIA). Had STAY IN for STAY AT despite the fact that "in" is clearly in the clue (47D: Spend the night in). For 49A: Y feature I had the "Y" and thought, "well, yes, Y is a feature of ... Y." But it's Y as in YMCA, and the feature is the GYM.
Then there's 54D: 2018 Super Bowl champs (EAGLES), which ends up being weirdly timely, given ... given ... ugh, I can't even bring myself to describe it, it's so dumb. So dumb. The whole episode. But it did give us, ultimately, this beautiful bit of video, so ... "enjoy"!
THEME:"THE DIRTY DOZEN" (53A: Hit movie released on June 15, 1967 ... with a hint to this puzzle's theme) — twelve different answers (w/ asterisked clues) must be preceded by "DIRTY" to make sense
Theme answers:
JOKE
JOB
MARTINI
HARRY
LAUNDRY
LIAR
RAT
PICTURE
WORK
LOOK
TRICK
MONEY
Word of the Day: OJAI (61A: California tourist destination) —
Ojai (/ˈoʊhaɪ/OH-hy) is a city in Ventura County in the U.S. state of California. Located in the Ojai Valley, it is northwest of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. The valley is about 10 miles (16 km) long by 3 miles (5 km) wide, surrounded by hills and mountains. The population was 7,461 at the 2010 census, down from 7,862 at the 2000 census. // Ojai is a tourism destination with boutique hotels and recreation opportunities including hiking, and spiritual retreats, as well as for a farmers' market on Sundays with local organic agriculture. It also has small businesses specializing in local and ecologically friendly art, design, and home improvement—such as galleries and a solar power company. Chain stores (other than a few gas stations) are prohibited by Ojai city law to encourage local small business development and keep the town unique.// The origin of the name Ojai has historically been known as derived from a Native American word meaning nest. The city's self-styled nickname is "Shangri-La" referencing the natural beauty of this health-and-spirituality-focused region. While there are no known references, it is commonly claimed that the mountains visible from the city were used, but then cut, from the 1937 movie as the mystical sanctuary of James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon. (wikipedia)
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It's an anniversary puzzle that actually appears on the right day, so that's something. Also, the mirror symmetry grid looks kinda cool. Beyond that, I don't know. It's clean enough, and there are some OK answers here and there, but this gimmick was transparent, and it made the puzzle overall way too easy. The only interesting part was the revealer, which provided an answer to the annoyed question I was asking in my head from about 5 seconds in until I finished: "Why is this happening!?" I got the "dirty" angle before I ever even got out of the teeny NW corner. I thought there'd be other words involved somehow, but no: "dirty" just kept coming. Made all the asterisked clues a cinch to get. I finished in under 4 (!?), which is about where I was Tuesday, and a good half minute faster than yesterday. I like this better than I would a puzzle where LORETTA'S WIT is a theme answer, but honestly that's not saying much.
I would tell you where I struggled, but I didn't. I held back writing in a few things to make sure the crosses checked out, and I balked at least once at writing in IDEATE, despite the fact that it's the first thing I considered (37A: Brainstorm). I think of the clue as a noun, but of course it can also be a verb. Only place I can imagine someone's having trouble is maybe in the SZELL / LPNS section (i.e. the SE). Nope, wait—my wife just came in and told me her error. She'd never heard of HAMM'S (5A: Old beer with the ad line "From the land of sky blue waters"), so she guessed TAMM'S, thinking (re: 5D: Giggle), "Well, that's a really stupid way to spell TEEHEE, but OK ..." To be fair, the correct answer is also a really stupid way to spell HEE HEE.
THEME: Face value? — same clue for five different theme answers, each one featuring the FACE and the VALUE on particular denominations of American paper currency (denominations represented by letters—"I"s for ones and "O"s for zeroes):
Theme answers:
17A: FRANKLIN IOO
25A: HAMILTON IO
37A: CLEVELAND IOOO
52A: CHASE IOOOO
61A: WASHINGTON I
Word of the Day: AGFA (59D: Big name in photography, once) —
Agfa-Gevaert N.V. (Agfa) is a Belgianmultinational corporation that develops, manufactures, and distributes analogue and digital imaging products and systems, as well as IT solutions. The company has three divisions. Agfa Graphics offers integrated prepress and industrial inkjet systems to the printing and graphics industries. Agfa HealthCare supplies hospitals and other care organizations with imaging products and systems, as well as information systems. Agfa Specialty Products supplies products to various industrial markets. It is part of the Agfa Materials organization. In addition to the Agfa Specialty Products activities, Agfa Materials also supplies film and related products to Agfa Graphics and Agfa HealthCare. Agfa materials is a fantastic part of Agfa. // In the past, Agfa film and cameras were prominent consumer products. However, in 2004, the consumer imaging division was sold to a company founded via management buyout. AgfaPhoto GmbH, as the new company was called, filed for bankruptcy after just one year.The brands are now licensed to other companies by AgfaPhoto Holding GmbH, a holding firm. Following this sale, Agfa-Gevaert's commerce today is 100% business-to-business. (wikipedia)
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I like the theme based entirely on the cluing concept—"Face value" is a meaningful phrase where money is concerned, and here the theme answers literalize the phrase, giving you both the face and the value. I also like that the value is represented by letters (I and O), which work just fine in the crosses. The rest of the puzzle is mediocre and forgettable. Also, pretty easy. The only difficulty I encountered (beyond the initial problem of "what the hell is the theme?") was remembering who was on the $IOOO and the $IO,OOO. I learned about Salmon P. CHASE (who was, among other things, Secretary of the Treasury during the Civil War) from crosswords—I think his full name was an answer in a puzzle once.
OLIVE OYL (40D: Toon with size 14-AAAAAA shoes), MR. MAGOO (27D: Toon voiced by Jim Backus), and JEAN AUEL (3D: "Earth's Children" author) form a nice triad of long (and symmetrical) Downs, and OCCUPY has a nice contemporary clue, but most of the rest is the white noise of crosswordese and its close cousins. I had trouble with AGFA (another name I've never seen outside crosswords, and can never seem to remember). Also, SAVE AS (just could've think of it / parse it) (48D: Computer command under "File"). Everything else, a cinch. Finished just under 4. That puts it firmly on the Easy side of the fence. Not much else to say about this one.
See you tomorrow,
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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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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