Bills first introduced in 1861 / SAT 12-20-25 / Frustrated and making poor decisions, informally / First name in hog riding / Shamans, typically / Sampras rival during the 1990s / Mardi Gras parading societies / #1 on Wired magazine's list of the 10 most influential video games of the 2010s

Constructor: Robert S. Gard

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ANIMISTS (10D: Shamans, typically) —

Animism (from Latin: anima meaning 'breath, spirit, life') is the belief that places, objects, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—as being animated, having agency and free will. Animism is used in anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many indigenous peoples in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions. Animism is a metaphysical belief which focuses on the supernatural universe: specifically, on the concept of the immaterial soul.

Although each culture has its own mythologies and rituals, animism is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most indigenous peoples that they often do not even have a word in their languages that corresponds to "animism" (or even "religion"). The term "animism" is an anthropological construct.

Largely due to such ethnolinguistic and cultural discrepancies, opinions differ on whether animism refers to an ancestral mode of experience common to indigenous peoples around the world or to a full-fledged religion in its own right. The currently accepted definition of animism was developed only in the late 19th century (1871) by Edward Tylor. It is "one of anthropology's earliest concepts, if not the first". (wikipedia)

• • •

Another anemic Saturday. No fight in this one at all. Started with a total gimme at 1A: Sampras rival during the 1990s (AGASSI) and never really stopped. A few pauses here and there, none of them significant. Very few tough / tricky / clever clues to fight through, which makes for a somewhat disappointing Saturday experience. The part of this puzzle I liked the most (the SE corner) was also the part I blew through the fastest. I didn't even have to look at the clue for SAD TROMBONE (45A: [womp, womp])—I had so many crosses at some point that I could just infer the answer. Same for REUBEN and DORIS, which were the answers I closed the puzzle with. Saturday puzzles shouldn't just fill themselves in like that. All I want for Christmas is for the NYTXW to tighten up the Saturday puzzles. Just a smidge. You don't have to brutalize me, but make these clues bob and weave with a little bit more energy. Please, Santa? LOL now I'm imagining Shortz-Santa. Even funnier, as soon as I imagined it, I thought "they must have made a Shortz-Santa image for at least one of those thousands of books of crosswords and sudoku they've put out. Surely ..." And in fact—surely:

Not the greatest likeness, but recognizable, at least. Mustache on fleek. Back to the puzzle. I suspect how you feel about it will depend to a great extent on how you feel about STILL MOOING. As I have never heard this expression and can't imagine how it could even be used in the way that the puzzle suggests, I definitely fall in the "not a fan" camp. STILL MOOING sounds like something you'd say about someone or something that is (surprisingly) not dead yet. Like a wacky, farmyard-inspired version of STILL KICKING. Not sure how the "STILL" part works with the "rare" part. STILL relates to time, "rare" does not. Oh wait. Ha ha. Wow. OK, so you are watching me discover in real time that I have completely misread this clue because I have completely misread "rare." This is a steak clue. The cowness of MOOING should've tipped me off, but boy it did not. If your beef is done rare (as opposed to say, medium-rare, medium, well, what have you), then the center is red ("cool to warm red center," 120º, per Omaha Steaks). "Rare" is the least cooked of the various steak-cooking options. And the less cooked a steak is, the closer it is to alive ... and thus the closer it is to STILL MOOING. Alright alright alright. I like it somewhat better now that I understand what the f*** that clue means. 

Because of my comprehension failure, STILL MOOING was about the only answer that gave me any trouble today. I had to think for a few seconds about what "bills" meant at 16D: Bills first introduced in 1861 (FIVES). Considered legislative bills and hat bills (!) before finally getting around to cash. Never considered bird bills because how would you "introduce" those. Unless you discovered a bird no one had seen before, one with a brand new kind of bill. But even then, you'd be introducing the bird, not the bill per se. But that was it for "what? huh?" reactions today: STILL MOOING and FIVES. I'm looking over the whole grid now and I don't see anything that I didn't get pretty much on first look. I mean, I misspelled KEENEN (as KEENAN) on my first pass, but that's hardly a significant snag. I haven't seen the term "dogsbody" in a while, and the last time I saw it was (shocker) in a crossword. But I apparently misremembered the word as applying to nurses, specifically combat nurses. Where is my brain getting this from? The word "dogsbody" just means "drudge," in the sense of "one who is obliged to do menial work," or work that is routine and boring. No idea how "combat nurse" got tangled up in my mental picture of the word. Hmm, did a little poking around and it looks like the last time I dealt with "dogsbody" in a puzzle context was almost 19 years ago, in early 2007 (!!), when "dogsbody" was in the clue for ... [drum roll] ... NURSE'S AID. Hurray, I'm not insane! There was ... some ... medical angle to the word as I learned it. The full clue was [Hospital dogsbody]. So there's nothing inherently medical about "dogsbody." It's just a word I see so rarely ("chiefly British," Merriam-Webster tells me), that I haven't processed its full meaning before. Those days are over! I'm now a dogsbody expert. And a steak expert to boot. Been a real educational morning on the blog, I tell you what.

Bullets:

• 15A: Frustrated and making poor decisions, informally (ON TILT) — a poker term. A poker term I learned from crosswords. Poker, like golf, is not a thing I care at all about. I know most of what I know from crosswords. Or from accidentally "watching" poker coverage on ESPN back when I had television ("watching" = briefly stopping at while flipping channels).
• 16A: #1 on Wired magazine's list of the 10 most influential video games of the 2010s (FORTNITE) — transparent and dull. Straight trivia, and not even tough trivia. I care zip about video games but FORTNITE (like MINECRAFT) seems ubiquitous.
• 20A: First name in hog riding (EVEL) — at some point Mr. Knievel got bored of jumping motorcycles over trucks and canyons and decided to move on to competitive swine racing. (I look forward to your corrections)
• 30A: Higher power? (SOLAR) — power that comes from the heavens, i.e. the sun

• 12D: Mardi Gras parading societies (KREWES) — I've been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans precisely once, in 1994. I remember the KREWES, but I only know that's what they're called, and that that's how they're spelled, because of crosswords. Beginning to suspect that half of all the things I know, I know from crosswords. I'm like 95% crossword lore at this point. One more year of doing this (the big "2" "0" next year!) and I will have achieved full crosswordness. Crossword singularity. I will be one with the Crossword Universe, indistinguishable from grid discourse, a walking blog. Can't wait.
• 44A: Org. that's gone to the dogs? (AKC) — more dogsbodies now, only this time they are dogs' bodies, and the bodies in question are the purview of the American Kennel Club.

Speaking of going to the dogs, let's do that now. It's time once again for 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲! Note: PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE PET PICS, I'M ALL FULL UP FOR THIS YEAR, thank you.

We'll start with the three wise men. I'm speaking, of course, about Harry, Joey, and Mittens:

[Thanks, Jane!]

Here's Mae holding Connie, high above the streets of NYC. It's always a white Christmas when Connie's around. Look at that sweet snowball!

[Thanks, Laurie!]

Silent Night, Pumpkin Night ...

[Thanks, Barbara]

Here's wee Alex. I love this genre of photo—the dutiful-posing-in-hopes-of-treat-remuneration photo. "Just take the shot already. Great, that'll be six treats, please."

[Thanks, Danny!]

Here's Taschi, whose hiding skills aren't very advanced yet. 

[Where's Taschi!?]

[There's Taschi!]
[Thanks, Nick & Dagna!]

Garf, on the other hand, has perfected the art of hiding. Knows just how to blend into a crowd. Master of disguise. Here, look, just a pile of toys, the kind you might expect to find under any Christmas tree, nothing to see here ... right? ... wrong! 

[Garf! That's the sound you make when your cat scares the hell out of you]
[Thanks, Kathryn!]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Reef predator with extendable pharyngeal jaws / WED 11-20-24 / Dapper sartorial choices / Coloring implement since 1903 / Makeshift shield during a food fight / Comic strip with a collection titled "Shoes: Chocolate for the Feet"

Constructor: Robert S. Gard

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy + whatever challenge is involved in discovering the gimmick)

THEME: SHRINK RAY (64A: Downsizer? ... or a hint to six squares in this puzzle) — a "RAY" rebus, where "RAY" must be "shrunk" to fit in a single square (six times):

Theme answers:

• CRAYOLA CRAYON // MORAY EEL / SPRAY TAN (17A: Coloring implement since 1903 // 2D: Reef predator with extendable pharyngeal jaws / 6D: Artificial bronze)
• PORTRAYALS // LUNCHTRAY (35A: Film representations // 10D: Makeshift shield during a food fight)
• CRAY-CRAY // STRAY / GRAY AREAS (47A: Totally bonkers // 38D: Potential rescue pet / They're open to interpretation)
• RAY-BAN // BRAYS (50A: Big name in sunglasses // 46D: Hee-haws)

Word of the Day: Zhou EN-LAI (19A: China's Zhou ___) —

Zhou Enlai (Chinese: 周恩来; pinyin: Zhōu Ēnlái; Wade–Giles: Chou Ên-lai; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman, diplomat, and revolutionary who served as the inaugural premier of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 until his death in 1976, and concurrently as the inaugural Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1949 to 1958. Zhou was key figure in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and ally of Mao Zedong during the Chinese Civil War, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the economy. (wikipedia)

• • •

A rebus on Wednesday. Did not see that coming. But then I did see it coming. Pretty quickly. Had the MO- at 2D: Reef predator with extendable pharyngeal jaws and thought "well that's MORAY ... but MORAY won't fit. MORAYS fits, but it's not a plural clue ... [gets first "E" from O'ER] ... if it ends "EEL," then ... wait, is it a "RAY" rebus?" And it was. 

The only questions now were "how many "RAY"s?" and "what's the revealer?" I guess there was some question about whether all the rebus squares would be "RAY," but since it's Wednesday (and not Thursday), I didn't think the puzzle had much trickiness or difficulty left to give. And it didn't. Just a bunch of scattered "RAY" squares, two thirds of which can be found in just two answers (CRAYOLA CRAYON and CRAY-CRAY). I wish the revealer had been more evocative or meaningful to me. I had RAY and no idea what could come before it. I haven't thought of a SHRINK RAY since ... I don't know when. Feels very mid-century comic book to me. How does Ant-Man shrink? I feel like it's not a RAY-based shrinkage, hang on ... oh right, Pym particles. According to an MCU fandom site, they're "subatomic particles that can increase or reduce mass as well as density and strength and are heavily used by Ant-Man and Wasp." When's the last time I saw anyone get shrunk with a ray? In The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981), it's exposure to chemicals in an experimental perfume. In The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), it's a "strange fog." I just went and looked up "SHRINK RAY" and it looks like it was popularized in the mid-20th century, primarily by the movie Fantastic Voyage, and then reiterated and parodied in various contexts over the years, including in Despicable Me and (multiple times?) in the Lilo & Stitch franchise. As I say, I'm familiar with the concept, but the phrase itself just didn't spring to mind. If you gave me "Shrink ___" (Password style), I'd say "WRAP." Anyway, yes, you shrink "RAY" in order to fill six squares—a very literal revealer.

The resulting "RAY" answers weren't very interesting in and of themselves, though, and the rest of the grid doesn't have a lot to offer as far as entertaining fill. Things get very choppy toward the middle and we get subjected to a lot of gunk, a lot of ABU PDQ QUA UAE gunk, a lot of NSFW CFOS TSA gunk. Looking it over now, though, I'd say the grid comes in pretty solid overall, especially for a puzzle with so much theme density. Since I picked up the rebus easily, the only trouble came from finding the "RAY" squares (not much trouble at all, actually, despite their being unpredictably located), and then finishing off the puzzle—i.e. picking up SHRINK, which was made somewhat harder than it might've been by the terrible cluing on the adjacent CANE. No one puts CANEs on their Christmas tree. Way too heavy, and anyway grandpa needs his CANE to get around; seems cruel to put it on the tree. The things that are on the tree are candy CANEs. No one says "CANE" without the "candy" part when they are talking about "candy CANEs." The [Christmas tree decoration] is, iconically and only, "candy CANE." CANE alone is garbage. I was like "... CONE?" Little decorative pine CONEs? Seemed plausible. More plausible than (non-candy) CANEs. Bah. That clue is CHUM (61D: Shark bait). 

Further reading:

• 25A: Comic strip with a collection titled "Shoes: Chocolate for the Feet" ("CATHY") — oh right, I forgot about her thing for chocolate. All I remember is her pathological obsession with her weight. And "ACK" (3), of course. 
• 27A: "You should open this on a personal device" heads-up (NSFW) — this clue is just wrong. Plenty of people have "personal devices" on them at work. They might use them at work. NSFW stands for "not suitable for work." It's not the device, specifically, that's in question—it's where you're using it. Yes, don't open the porn site on a work computer, but mainly don't open it in a workplace environment. 
• 43A: Parent working behind the scenes? (STAGE MOM) — this clue is extremely literal, so even though I see the "pun" you're trying to make there, with "scenes" being literal theater / movie "scenes," the clue really doesn't need a "?" at all.
• 56A: Move to the beat? (PULSATE) — I don't think of pulsation as "movement." The blood is moving, the thing that is doing the pulsating isn't going anywhere.
• 1D: Dapper sartorial choices (ASCOTS) — "Dapper," eh? I guess that's one word for it. Here's William Windom sporting an ascot in an episode of Love Boat that I watched recently—we're up to Season 6, and I said to my wife "we're gonna be done soon..." only to check and discover that it ran into a 10th season and there are actually close to 100 episodes left to go. I want to get off, I can't get off, I want to get off, I can't get off. The ship goes to Mazatlan, the ship returns to the Port of Los Angeles, the ship goes to Puerto Vallarta, the ship returns to the Port of Los Angeles. Like Gopher, Julie, Doc, Isaac, Merrill, and Vicki, I seem to be doomed to ride this thing forever (though if I remember correctly, I think Julie's time is gonna be up very shortly...). Sorry, here's the promised picture of William Windom in an ascot (of sorts):

• 2D: Reef predator with extendable pharyngeal jaws (MORAY EEL) — there is one entertaining aspect of this puzzle, which is—it's very fun to say "extendable pharyngeal" over and over again. It's like something out of Gilbert & Sullivan: "In short, in matters vegetable, extendable, pharyngeal, / I am the very model of a model Major-General!"

• 4D: Show on which Julia Louis-Dreyfus got her big break, in brief (S.N.L.) — Julia Louis-Dreyfus was one of two celebrity sightings I had this year (which I don't have a lot, as I live in Binghamton, NY). I stood behind her (and some of her family) in line for ice cream at an indoor food court in Santa Barbara this summer. That was in August. Earlier in the summer, on the way back from our Canadian vacation on the north shores of Lake ERIE, I saw Samantha Bee at a rest area in western New York. As you can see, I lead a thrilling life.

[Here's my ticket to the Binghamton Rumble Ponies' inaugural game against the ERIE SeaWolves (13D: Pennsylvania home of minor-league baseball's SeaWolves); see? thrilling life!]

• 39D: Culture group (BACTERIA) — this clue is good. Nicely misdirective. Another highlight of the puzzle.

NOTE: the tenth annual edition of the NYT's Puzzle Mania comes out on December 1. If you're not a dead-tree newspaper subscriber, you can now pre-order a copy of the puzzle extravaganza for yourself (for $7 + shipping). This is the holiday supplement that has tons of different puzzles in it, including (in previous years) a truly giant crossword puzzle, which you have to put on a large table or the floor to solve. Anyway, it's an event. And now you know how to get it if you want it.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Belligerent, in British slang / TUE 2-20-24 / N.H.L. team with a mythological eponym / Cop-turned-vigilante in a postapocalyptic film / Courtier who oversees Hamlet's duel with Laertes / Hero of Narnia in C.S. Lewis / Crooner Mel who was called "The Velvet Fog" / Swiss founder of analytical psychology / Upper part of a Vandyke beard, informally

Constructor: Robert S. Gard

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (very name-heavy, so "difficulty" level is gonna vary widely)

THEME: HALF-BAKED (59A: Description of 17-, 25-, 36- and 49-Across, in different senses?) — themers are all things that can be said (mostly facetiously) to be HALF-BAKED:

Theme answers:

• BIKINI TAN (17A: Evidence of a day at the beach)
• LAVA CAKE (25A: Chocolate confection with a molten core)
• CONTACT HIGH (36A: Effect of secondhand pot smoke)
• WILD IDEA (49A: Flight of fancy)

Word of the Day: Ted CHIANG (41A: Ted ___, author of the best-selling short-story collection "Exhalation") —

Ted Chiang (born 1967) is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and six Locus awards. His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film Arrival (2016). He was an artist in residence at the University of Notre Dame in 2020–2021. Chiang is also a frequent non-fiction contributor to the New Yorker Magazine, most recently on topics related to computer technology, such as artificial intelligence. [...] Former US president Barack Obama included Chiang's short story collection Exhalation in his 2019 reading list, praising it as the "best kind of science fiction". // Chiang has commented on "metacognition, or thinking about one’s own thinking" being something most humans, but neither animals nor current AI, are capable of, and that capitalism erodes the capacity for this insight, especially for tech company executives. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't know if I liked this theme as a whole, but I very much liked CONTACT HIGH, which is the answer for which the punny HALF-BAKED theme seems custom made. As for the others ... BIKINI TAN is a cute idea, but it doesn't work in at least two ways. First, you're far more than "half" baked if you have a BIKINI TAN, and second (and more importantly) the tan itself isn't HALF-BAKED—you are. The tan is the baking. I guess this logic applies to CONTACT HIGH as well, now that I think of it. The cake and the idea are themselves HALF-BAKED, but the tan and the high belong to people who are HALF-BAKED. In fact, "baked" is a synonym for "tan" and "high" (and not at all a synonym for "cake" or "idea"), so the theme is wonky on a fundamental level. And then there's the fact that WILD IDEA is not punny at all—that is, HALF-BAKED applies to "ideas" in regular, ordinary, everyday usage, whereas with the other theme answers in this grid, HALF-BAKED is a punny joke that takes the meaning of "HALF-BAKED" into unexpected territory. There's just no punniness with the WILD IDEA answer. Further, and lastly (as far as theme problems go), I don't think of a HALF-BAKED idea as being "WILD." I think of it as being poorly thought-out. I mean, I guess it might be wild, but wildness does not seem like an intrinsic quality of the HALF-BAKED idea. A WILD IDEA might turn out to be a great idea ("Let's go skinny-dipping! Fly to Paris! Buy a zoo!"), whereas a HALF-BAKED idea is never gonna go anywhere good.

It's a shame the theme kind of breaks down at multiple levels, because it's got ... something. It's trying valiantly to stretch that "BAKED" metaphor, and gets closest with CONTACT HIGH (which sits, appropriately, in the marquee position, dead center). It's possible the pot meaning seems most relevant to me because there is a late '90s pot comedy called HALF-BAKED. There's also a Ben & Jerry's flavor, which (I'm now realizing) may be a pot pun as well. I mean, yes, it contains "baked" goods (chocolate chip cookie dough and fudge brownies), but it's also probably the perfect food if you're high and have the munchies. But then most food fits that description, so who knows? What I do know is that HALF-BAKED is about the worst movie I've ever seen. I should say "seen," quote unquote—I did go to see it, in the theater, when it originally came out (I wanna say 1998 ... wow, yes, how did I remember that?), but I walked out after about half an hour when I realized that a. I was not laughing, and b. if I rushed home I could still catch back-to-back episodes of The Simpsons in syndication (there was no on-demand television in the 20th century, kids, you had to catch it in Real Time (RIP, Real Time) ... or else have the foresight to set your VCR—a cumbersome process). I can't remember why I, a non-pot-enjoyer, thought HALF-BAKED would be a good fit for me. I must've reasoned: "Jon Stewart, Dave Chappelle ... what could go wrong?" Plenty, it turns out.

As for the non-thematic fill in today's puzzle, it is ... I wanna say "HALF-BAKED," but I think it might be worse than that. I mean, the olde-tymey slang alone is bludgeoning (NERTS! MOOLA! Lah-di-DAH!), but then there are not one but two Shakespeare characters (including OSRIC, who remains alive in popular consciousness solely because of crosswords) (10D: Courtier who oversees Hamlet's duel with Laertes), and then old names like ELIE and TORMÉ and at least one abbr. I haven't seen for years (SSGTS), and then the always terrible prepositional phrase IN A TUB (38D: Like "three men" of nursery rhyme). IN A TUB makes EAT A SANDWICH seem brilliant (protip: never EAT A SANDWICH IN A TUB—bathing and foodstuffs are pleasures to be enjoyed separately). The puzzle really leans into names. While none of them were unknown to me, I don't think OSRIC / ASLAN is a great cross (not inferrable if you don't know both names, and plenty of people won't know at least one of those), and I don't much like TORMÉ crossing a late-model NHL team either. The Seattle KRAKEN have only been in existence since 2021! (46D: N.H.L. team with a mythological eponym) I guess the "R" in that cross should be inferrable (in that KRAKEN is a widely known mythological character), but still, crossing proper nouns ... you gotta be careful. Ted CHIANG will probably be unknown to many. In fact, I'm not sure how *I* knew him. I have yet to read anything by him (though it sounds like I should). Anyway, I'm not complaining about his name at all, just noting that it's Yet Another Name in this Namey puzzle. At least he's crossed fairly (even if one of those crosses is the horrid IN A TUB).

MAD MAX (9D: Cop-turned-vigilante in a postapocalyptic film), OLIGARCH (11D: Member of a powerful ruling elite), and CARL JUNG (36D: Swiss founder of analytical psychology) are all vibrant answers, so it's not all bad news with the non-thematic fill. But still, too much of the grid felt like sludge today. There were no real tough parts today, though. Puzzle played pretty easy for me. I wrote in VIDI before ISAW (21A: Middle of a classic boast from Caesar), and BOLD IDEA (!?) before WILD IDEA, and I spelled CARL with a "K" initially, but other than that, no problems. That's all for me today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Universal self of Hinduism / SAT 9-9-23 / Thieves who target pedestrians in historic parlance / Political subject of the 2018 memoir "Nino and Me" / Title that shares an etymology with admiral / Half sister of Meredith Grey / Branch of study that challenges heteronormativity / First coed and racially integrated college in the South / Vacation destination in the Ionian Sea

Constructor: Robert S. Gard

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BEREA (41A: First coed and racially integrated college in the South) —

Berea College is a private liberal arts work college in Berea, Kentucky. Founded in 1855, Berea College was the first college in the Southern United States to be coeducational and racially integrated. The college provides a work-study grant that covers the remaining tuition fees after subtracting the total sum a student received from Pell Grant, other grants, and scholarships. Berea's primary service region is southern Appalachia but students come from more than 40 states in the United States and 70 other countries. Approximately one in three students identify as people of color.

Berea offers bachelor's degrees in 33 majors. It incorporates a mandatory work-study program that requires students to engage in a minimum of 10 hours per week of work for the college. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

This started out way too easy. Suspiciously easy. Tuesday easy. Plus it started with SCALIA, and the absurdly-spelled BASSES, so things were somewhat unpleasant and disappointing, if very fast-moving, early on. But once I got into the middle of the grid, things started to zoom-zoom and whoosh-whoosh a lot more. The fill wasn't exactly sparkling, but it was solid, and I was flying every which way, which I kinda like (it's more efficient, most of the time, to work sections to completion in a methodical way, but sometimes the lure of the whoosh is too much and you careen around until you find yourself somewhere like this:

You can see a lot of the answers I didn't get at first pass, including CAVES, which was about the last thing to go into the puzzle. In fact ... yeah, CHANCEL was last (32D: Church part near the altar), so CAVES was also last. Looked at it early, didn't have any idea, and only saw it again when I'd finished. Very Saturday (i.e. very vague) clue on that one (32A: Folds). The meaning here is "gives in" or "concedes." Tough. But not the kind of tough that really holds you up, just the kind of tough that sends you bouncing off in another direction. Knowing BEREA really helped today. You can see how it allows me to cross the grid from DUST BUNNY all the way to the eastern edge, which I did with almost no trouble. After that came the high point of the grid—peak whooshing, when I finally put together the long crosses in the SW corner (almost simultaneously):

POETIC and THEORY colliding—now you're speaking my language, puzzle. QUEER THEORY was so "normative" to me in grad school (30 years ago) that the clue here actually threw me a bit (45A: Branch of study that challenges heteronormativity). I never talk about my dissertation here because who cares, but QUEER THEORY was definitely involved. Anyway, QUEER THEORY and WAXES POETIC coming ecstatically together was the moment I finally warmed to the puzzle. I cooled again, a bit, at FOOTPADS (wtf?) and again at the clue on ASSUME (12D: "So many ___, so little know" (proverb)), for a few reasons: because I've never heard this "proverb"; because "proverb" feels like pretty weak provenance; and especially because "little" feels screechingly wrong to my ears. If the "many" are people, then you really (really) want "few" here: "So many ASSUME, so few know." If it's countable, it's "few." And in this case, in addition to being grammatically correct, "few" just sounds way (way) better. So boo to that clue. But yay to most of the rest of this. Finished up in the SW corner, which is really varied and crunchy and nice. SLEAZY, sure, but nice-SLEAZY. And I absolutely loved that clue on OVA (48D: Monthly releases?). Me: "Uh ... EPS? But why would you put out an EP every month? How could you put out an EP every month, that's an insane level of productivity ... oh, it's an ovulation clue. Oh yeah, that makes way more sense."

Bullets:

• 1A: Many opera villains, traditionally (BASSES) — the plural of "basso" is "bassi" but also "BASSOS," so that is what I and many of you wrote in, come on, you know you did. Then you wondered what the hell an OMIR was and (if you're lucky) corrected accordingly (5D: Title that shares an etymology with "admiral" => EMIR). 
• 29A: Half sister of Meredith Grey on "Grey's Anatomy" (LEXIE) — look, it's hard enough for me to keep "Game of Thrones" characters straight; asking me to reach back into the "GA" universe is a bridge too far. Reminds me of a time in the aughts when the puzzle was like "remember this tertiary character from 'Ally McBeal'!" and I was like "I absolutely do not, please stop." [OK I'm only now discovering that "Grey's Anatomy" is still on the air!?!? 19 seasons in!? Wow, I am walled off from network TV so hard—if people I know watch this, they neeeeever talk about it. I assumed it had its big moment and then went away after a decade or so, as most shows do. I know Shonda Rhimes went on to create "Scandal," and then "Scandal" went away so ... yeah, her chronology is all messed up in my head, clearly. Wow. OK then. LEXIE. Sure.]

• 16D: ___ cakes (cupcakes, in the U.K.) (FAIRY) — had -AIRY. Thought maybe DAIRY (?). Had to wait on that cross, which turned out to be the "F" in FOOTPADS, which, again, wtf? "Historic parlance"? Wikipedia more aptly calls it "archaic."
• 42D: Universal self of Hinduism (ATMAN) — blanked on this, though I've seen it before.
• 28D: Unwanted discovery under the bed (DUST BUNNY) — "Unwanted," I guess, but if you have pets, inevitable. Although I guess to get to full-on "bunny" stage the pet hair has to have sat for a long time and combined with a lot of other crap you don't want to know about. We don't get much of that, but we do get little clumps of hair blowing across the hardwood floors like tumbleweeds on a pretty regular basis.
• 38D: Whim-whams (NERVES) — I just realized how I know this. I've heard it precisely once, in a movie called "5 Against the House," and it made me laugh so hard I took a screenshot with the captions on:

Hope your weekend is whim-wham free. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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