Small vehicle on a railroad track / MON 3-4-24 / "You both swiped right!," on Tinder / Streaming service that dropped th first three letters of its name when it rebranded in 2023 / Film franchise that includes "The Avengers," "Thor" and "Iron Man," in brief

Constructor: Samantha Podos Nowak

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: BANANA SPLITS (35A: With 37-Across, some ice cream confections ... or a hint ot the second, fifth, eleventh and fourteenth rows of this puzzle) — the word "BANANA" is "split" across black squares four times:

Theme answers:

• SCUBA / NANAS
• CABANA / NAYSAYER
• SUBURBAN / ANALOG
• CUBAN / ANAIS 

Word of the Day: gimlet (38D: Gimlet or screwdriver = TOOL) —

: a small tool with a screw point, grooved shank, and cross handle for boring holes (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Now that I see the BANANA gag, I like the theme OK. It's a cute idea. The problem is that there's no real theme material—no theme answer, nothing holding the puzzle together but letters shared between two answers. The only wordplay is in the revealer. It's a virtually non-existent theme until you get the revealer. And the long answers somehow *aren't* involved as theme answers, which makes it awkward. As I was solving, I assumed that the last Across was going to finally tell me what the theme was all about, but when I got "IT'S A MATCH," I still had no idea. Turns out, "IT'S A MATCH" isn't even theme material. It's just ... a long Across. Same with AISLE SEAT. So the puzzle is structurally interesting, but it feels oddly put together, and kind of themeless, without any of the upsides of a themeless (namely, lots of longer, sparkly fill). I concede that the concept is clever, but solving it wasn't terribly fun or satisfying. The grid is laden with overfamiliar stuff (ESL CCS AHAB YER ABA GAEL ALA NAGANO UTERO UHNO), and some of the longer fill just left me cold. Bygone names of streaming services should be scrubbed from your wordlists; I've lost count of how many HBO streaming incarnations there have been: HBOGO, HBONOW, HBOMAX (4D: Streaming service that dropped the first three letters of its name when it rebranded in 2023), and now it's just MAX. Why not throw all of them in the garbage? The first three, anyway. And never having used Tinder, "IT'S A MATCH" felt like a dead-weight phrase to me (56A: "You both swiped right!," on Tinder). I inferred it from crosses, but couldn't think of a context that would make it a worthy standalone answer. I guess that context is Tinder. OK. As I say, the puzzle just didn't resonate with me. If it meant something to you, fantastic.

The Downs-only solve was very easy up top and very hard down below. Whole banks of Downs in the bottom half of the grid were blank after my first pass. ASSIST / QUOTED / ABUSES? Nothing. HANDCAR (?) / "CAN'T BE" / BEAUT? Nothing. I stumbled my way to BEAUT in a most improbable way—by guessing "UH (or UM) NO" at 55D: "Well ... I'll pass" and then guessing that a five-letter word beginning "U" and ending "O" must be UTERO, which put a "T" at the end of 50D: Real gem, and *somehow* BEAUT leapt to mind. From there I could suss out SUBURBAN, and then the CAR part of HAND CAR, and then those pesky parts finally fell, but for a bit there it looked my Downs-only efforts were gonna be a bust.

The big surprise of the day, for me, was realizing that I had no idea that "gimlet" was a TOOL. I assumed, as the clue probably assumed I'd assume, that the "gimlet" and "screwdriver" in 38D: Gimlet or screwdriver were cocktails. Bizarrely, I'd just looked up "gimlet" (the cocktail) earlier in the day, during cocktail hour with my wife (every day, five o'clock, like civilized people). I was remembering that Marlowe drank them with Terry at Victor's in Chandler's The Long Goodbye, and Marlowe insisted they had to be half Rose's and half gin (“beats martinis hollow”), but if you've ever tried that (specifically on Marlowe's recommendation, in my case), you know it's way, way too cloying. Those proportions are horrendous. So anyway that’s how I came to look up the "classic" recipe for a gimlet earlier in the evening. I was even reading about the history of the drink and its name, and I think the damn explanation even *mentioned* that the drink might've gotten its name from some tool! Hang on, I'm going to find it. Ah, here it is—this passage from Liquor.com:

As for who first combined Rose's cordial with navy rations of gin, the story gets murkier. Many like to credit Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Desmond Gimlette, a British naval doctor, for popularizing the cocktail. Others say it was named after a tool used to bore holes on ships. Like most pre-20th-century cocktails, particularly one that comes from such a simple template—spirit, sugar, and citrus—it's hard to pin down a single point of origin. (my emph.)

Which is more improbable? That I was reading this just hours before solving today's gimlet-containing puzzle, or that my reading it helped me Absolutely Not At All? I sat there with --OL at 38D: Gimlet or screwdriver and had no idea what to do. Began suspecting I had something wrong, until the SPLITS part of BANANA SPLITS became obvious, and TOOL became inevitable. 

Big shout-out to Will Shortz, who announced yesterday (on the NPR Weekend Edition puzzler segment) that he is recovering from a stroke he suffered last month. Hopefully he's back in action soon, and next month's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament continues as scheduled, with him running the show, as usual. He's gonna get such an ovation ... :)

Take care, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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