Anticonsumerists aiming to help the environment / SAT 2-20-21 / Humorist Leo who wrote Joys of Yiddish / Singer whose name becomes a city if you add an R in the middle / Cold War missile type / Word derived from Greek for age

Constructor: Ali Gascoigne

Relative difficulty: Medium (again, as with yesterday, the preponderance of proper nouns might make it much tougher)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Leo ROSTEN (26D: Humorist Leo who wrote "The Joys of Yiddish," 1968) —

Leo Calvin Rosten (April 11, 1908 – February 19, 1997) was an American humorist in the fields of scriptwriting, storywriting, journalism, and Yiddish lexicography. He was also a political scientist interested especially in the relationship of politics and the media. [...] Rosten is best remembered for his stories about the night-school "prodigy" Hyman Kaplan, written under the pseudonym Leonard Q. Ross. They were published in The New Yorker from 1935^[1] and collected in two volumes published in 1937 and 1959, The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N and The Return of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. The Education was a "close second" for one U.S. National Book Award in 1938. The second collection was one of eighteen National Book Award for Fiction finalists in 1960.  // He is also well known for his encyclopedic The Joys of Yiddish (1968), a guide to Yiddish and to Jewish culture including anecdotes and Jewish humor. It was followed by O K*A*P*L*A*N! My K*A*P*L*A*N! (1976), a reworking of the two 1930s collections, and  Hooray for Yiddish! (1982), a humorous lexicon of the American language as influenced by Jewish culture. Another Rosten work is Leo Rosten's Treasury of Jewish Quotations.

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This was, for the most part, a nicely varied and sufficiently tough Saturday. The grid's not built to give you too many long answers (these are usually the most colorful), but what it does give you is decent. I especially liked FREEGANS and "GET A ROOM!"Also, this is a puzzle constructed by a man that is properly inclusive of women, so, you know, here's me giving credit instead of yelling criticism. Don't say I never etc. I do want to ask constructors, once again, to consider not just the kinds of names they use, but how well known they are, whom they're well known to, and (this is crucial) how close they all are to each other. Diversity is, for me, a paramount concern, and this puzzle is good on that front: old new, men women, Black white, cool. There were two areas, though, where proximate names created potential difficulty—this is not necessarily a criticism, as Saturdays are *supposed* to be difficult, but ... it's a question of whether you want to be getting your difficulty primarily from tricky clues and wordplay or from names, many of which are culturally / generationally exclusionary by their very nature, leaving some solvers thrilled, or at least satisfied, and others just blinking and baffled. I think it's fine to have both kinds of difficulty, but ROSTEN (used-to-be famous) next to ANYA Taylor-Joy (very recently famous) creates a real knot, and SKEE-LO crossing AKON, while easy for me, seems like a possible nightmare for someone who is less familiar with stylized one-name '90s/'00s rapper/singers from the hip-hop/R&B world. Both names I've seen before, both grid-worthy, but crossing like that, dang. You can tell the puzzle kinda knows it's in dicey territory, as it really Really goes out of its way to help you with AKON (8D: Singer whose name becomes a city if you add an "R" in the middle). Since SKEE-LO is only really famous for one song ... that crossing feels potentially demographically fatal, especially with the already tough ALICANTE up there. Also, staying in that quadrant, people who don't know SKEE-LO or AKON are maybe also less likely to know CRAY? (short for "crazy," sometimes doubled to "CRAY-CRAY"). Just hypothesizing. Anyway, space your names out and make sure your difficulty is coming from a broad array of answer types and cluing strategies. Again, all the names in this puzzle are absolutely acceptable fare. Just watch where you put 'em / how you clue 'em.

I don't watch "Queen's Gambit" and don't plan to, but I did see last year's "Emma," and ANYA Taylor-Joy was great in that. Still, I remembered her as an ANNA. Alas. Turns out that "Y" is a *crucial* letter in parsing the central Across, "IT'S A YES FROM ME" (32A: "You have my vote!"). I had "IT'S AN ..." and wanted something like "IT'S AN EASY YES," but that didn't fit. How I remembered Leo ROSTEN, I have no idea. I looked at the clue, thought "How am I supposed to remember that?," and then found my fingers typing R-O-S-T-E-N almost independently of me. Weird how you can not know something and know it simultaneously. I am certain that "The Joys of Yiddish" was on my mom's bookshelves in my childhood, along with, I don't know, that blue Zelda Fitzgerald biography, maybe? I didn't read anything on those bookshelves, but they left a strong memory imprint. Still, I did not know that I knew who wrote "Joys of Yiddish" ... until I did. So, trouble with ANYA offset by the unexpected lack of trouble with ROSTEN, which meant what could've been a very hard section created only a minor hold-up. Another hold-up: ELLA before ETTA (47D: "___ Is Betta Than Evvah!" (1976 album)) (I see that you're trying to give me ETTA by including the rhyming 'word' 'Betta' but the double-v in 'Evvah' made me think double-letters, not rhymes, were the deal, so ... ELLA). I have maybe heard of ALICANTE, but certainly don't "know" it, so that answer needed almost every cross. Otherwise I didn't really struggle much. Parsing the longest answers (including SECRET SERVICE) provided most of today's difficulty. The puzzle was very much on my cultural wavelength. 

Some more things:

• 1A: Requirement (MUST-DO) — yeesh, that was tough. And slightly awkward. MUST-SEE feels natural (possibly from NBC's '90s TV slogan, "Must-See TV"), whereas MUST-DO feels clunky. "Have you been to the Louvre? Oh, it's a MUST-DO" ... :( ... not saying it's not a thing, but saying it clanks.
• 39D: One doing some stitching (SEAMER) — really? Kinda weak. I'd've gone with [Four-___ (fastball type)], but also I'd've gone with something other than SEAMER.
• 41D: Kind of state (NANNY) — this is right-wing propaganda. Total garbage. There is no such state. NANNY state is what so-called "conservatives" call a functioning government. One with taxes and regulation. And heat and electricity and clean drinking water. You can't include NANNY state in your puzzle like it's an actual, real thing. It bespeaks a fraudulent world view, or at least an extremely politically tendentious world view, and should be clued as such. I mean ... "The term was popularised by the British and American tobacco industry." This clue is cordially invited to *&$% off.
• 43D: Buddy of "Barnaby Jones" (EBSEN) — there will never be a day when I don't hesitate when spelling EBSEN (or EPSOM, or EPSON). You'd think I could get a mnemonic going like "Buddy has a 'B' ... and the 'E' at the front has a 'buddy' toward the back." Solves the "B" and the "E" dilemma. But I guarantee I won't even remember writing this the next time EBSEN's in the grid.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Complete set in musical comedy / FRI 2-19-21 / Modern lead-in to speak / Short pioneer in West Coast hip-hop / Pal of Seinfeld and Costanza / Parent company of Gerber and Lean Cuisine

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin

Relative difficulty: Medium (skewing slightly harder depending on how rough the proper nouns were for you)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Dorothy LAMOUR (27D: Dorothy of old"Road" films) —

Dorothy Lamour (born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton; December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the Road to...movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

Lamour began her career in the 1930s as a big band singer. In 1936, she moved to Hollywood, where she signed with Paramount Pictures. Her appearance as Ulah in The Jungle Princess (1936) brought her fame and marked the beginning of her image as the "Sarong Queen".

In 1940, Lamour made her first Road series comedy film Road to Singapore. The Road series films were popular during the 1940s. The sixth film in the series, Road to Bali, was released in 1952. (wikipedia)

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Had some trouble in the middle of this one, but otherwise, a pretty normal Friday. A little heavy on names, but maybe that's just the SE, where BADU BENES HEIDI and TOO $hort all cross each other just a little bit over from the RAND / O'NEIL cross. LAMOUR and LASSER are old(er) names that might have caused trouble as well (though LASSER is, or was, reasonably common at one point). All of the names are fine, individually. Perfectly suitable for crosswords. There were just a lot of them piled up, which can make solving dicey, as proper nouns are feast or famine for solvers. The NW was, bizarrely, the easiest part of the puzzle for me. Usually, getting started can involve a lot of sputtering, but I went to the little guy early (FAD), and that terminal "F" got me A BIT OF—and thus the first letters of All the Acrosses in that section. LACUNA is kind of a tough word, but it's one I know, so I made quick work of that NW section. It was only when I hit the center that I ran into problems—total stoppage, in fact. See if you can see where my problem is:

Well, ENO, obviously (30D: Singer/songwriter of 1980's "Kiss Kiss Kiss"). I actually had ONO in there at first, but -YLO- looked wrong at 29-Across so I pulled it. I also have NESTEA instead of NESTLÉ at 25D: Parent company of Gerber and Lean Cuisine. That's the real killer, because that's two wrong letters reaching into the empty part of the grid, giving me false footholds. Bad news. Even with the A-K- at the top of 28D: 13, for many (AWKWARD AGE), I couldn't see it (wanted something like "unlucky number"). The only thing that makes me mad at the *puzzle* and not myself is 27A: Modern lead-in to speak (LOL). I've been on the internet for, well, a while, and I don't know what "LOLspeak" is. LOLcats, yes. LOLspeak, no. Lulz, yes, LOLspeak ... can't even imagine. Hang on. Wow, ok, it seems that LOLspeak is the language of LOLcats. The ungrammatical language of cat memes. OK. 

When I googled "LOLspeak," LOLcat came up. I love cats, but the whole LOLcat thing got very old very fast. It all feels very 15 years ago, i.e. a lot less "modern" than the clue believes. I really hope you knew LOLspeak, or knew Dorothy LAMOUR, because that crossing seems maybe tough otherwise. I briefly thought the actress was Dorothy MALONE (just watched "Written on the Wind"), and was very eager to find out what MOLspeak was. But then I fixed it.

I think MADE BANK is my favorite thing in this grid (13D: Raked in the dough). AWKWARD AGE is also nice, even if the clue did flummox me for a bit. And both CEREAL AISLE and its clue are very nice (53A: Way of Life?). Though I talk about her every time I teach the Aeneid, I never think of Helen as a DEMI-GODDESS, but of course she is, just as (technically) Aeneas is a demi-god (mother = Venus). Helen was the offspring of Leda (a mortal princess) and the Swan (aka noted shapeshifter-rapist Zeus). What else? Oh, lots of women in the grid—very noticeable, largely because the norm is the reverse. In fact, men are better represented in this grid than women are in the typical NYTXW grid. Nice to see the effort here to even things out a bit, though it shouldn't just be women constructors who are fixing this issue.

Lastly, if you don't get the clue on VOWELS (37A: Complete set in musical comedy?), it just means that a complete set of the VOWELS (a e i o u and even y) can be found in the phrase "musical comedy." Until tomorrow...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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