Unidentifiable protein / MON 11-22-21 / Toy that goes up slow and comes down fast / Shpeak indishtinctly / Member of a DC squad

Constructor: Stella Zawistowski

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday)

THEME: GENRE (67A: What the start of 17-, 29-, 45- or 61-Across is, in bookstore) — themers start with the genres FANTASY, MYSTERY, WESTERN, and ROMANCE:

Theme answers:

• FANTASY BASEBALL 917A: Pastime for armchair sports enthusiasts)
• MYSTERY MEAT (29A: Unidentifiable protein)
• WESTERN WALL (45A: Holy site in Jerusalem)
• ROMANCE LANGUAGE (61A: Spanish or French, but not German)

Word of the Day: St. OLAF College (40D: Minnesota's St. ___ College) —

St. Olaf College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. The school was founded in 1874 by a group of Norwegian-American pastors and farmers led by Pastor Bernt Julius Muus. The college is named after the King and the Patron Saint Olaf II of Norway and is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The college was visited by King Olav in 1987 and King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway in 2011.

As of 2017, the college enrolled 3,035 undergraduate students and 256 faculty. The campus, including its 325-acre natural lands, lies 2 miles west of the city of Northfield, Minnesota; Northfield is also the home of its neighbor and friendly rival Carleton College. Between 1995 and 2020, 154 St. Olaf graduates were named Fulbright Scholars and 35 received Goldwater Scholarships. Of the nation's baccalaureate colleges, St. Olaf ranks 12th in the number of graduates who have gone on to earn doctorate degrees. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a perfectly good Monday theme concept with perfectly good Monday theme answers. Really wish the clues had been better, more accurate, more specific, more fun. The clue on FANTASY BASEBALL was annoying because there's nothing "baseball" about it at all. "Sports enthusiasts" makes it sound general, so FANTASY SPORTS or FANTASY LEAGUES or something like that seemed most plausible. FANTASY FOOTBALL also definitely exists. Would it hurt you to baseball up the clue a little, or at all? Maybe the cluer thought "pastime" somehow evoked "national pastime," which baseball somehow technically still is, but "pastime" is just a word and didn't evoke baseball for me at all. Colorful clues help Mondays be fun instead of just perfunctory walks in the park. Don't skimp on detail and specificity! The clue on MYSTERY MEAT was even worse. Give me a context! Where would I hear that! Give me some sense of the revulsion such a "meat" usually evokes. Paint a dang picture! But no, we get the mystery clue [Unidentifiable protein]. That's just [synonym for 'mystery'] + [synonym for 'meat']—not cleverness or humor or thoughtfulness at all. Just a waste of an entertaining cluing opportunity. The revealer was also disappointing, in that it was anticlimactic and probably totally unnecessary. I can look at the themers and see the GENREs pretty easily. If GENRE is all you got for a revealer, why not just not have one? Even the clue on GENRE feels like it misses the mark. FANTASY, MYSTERY etc., those GENREs whether you're "in a bookstore" or not. It's not like, as a set, you would ever mistake them for anything but GENREs. They are GENREs no matter where you are, no matter what art form you're talking about. Movies, for instance. All this redundancy and awkwardness could be avoided by the elimination of the revealer entirely. The fact that GENRE is not even in the final Across position makes it that much more awkward. It's sad to see a good theme idea mishandled in the details like this.

The fill is fine, though I honestly stopped to take a deep breath of dread when I hit ESTAB. before I'd even exited the NW corner. Felt like a fill omen, and a bad one. But it was just one bad abbrev., no biggie. What was a biggie, though, was all the UP nonsense. BUTTON UP and OPENS UP are too close to each other for a repeat of "UP," given that UP appears in the same position both times (the preposition following a verb). But what was a minor ding becomes a major one when you throw UP BOW into the bargain. UP UP UP, three UPs ... you're out. Three UP three down. Whatever, I'll work on the baseball metaphor later, the point is that littering your grid with UPs is negligent. It suggests a failure of polish. An inattention to detail. A "meh, good enough" attitude. And bah to that, I say. 

The clue on SLED wants very much to be good (22A: Toy that goes up slow and comes down fast), but it isn't because the SLED doesn't go "up" slow or at all without being carried (presumably by a human), whereas it goes down all on its own, due to gravity, whether a human is on it or not. Clue plays too fast and loose with the question of agency, i.e. the question of who or what is actually doing the action. Plus how do you know how fast I take my SLED up the hill!? You don't know me! Only thing I had any trouble with today was "WAS IT YOU?" (just slow to put it together) (5D: Question to a suspected culprit); COIFFEUR (I spelled St. OLAF with a "V," sadly), and "I NEVER!" which I had as "INDEED!" (57A: "The very idea!"). Oh, and of course I wrote in CPU instead of UPC because that's a thing I do. Happy Sagittarius season to all who celebrate (me!). 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Onetime streaming platform of the 2010s / SUN 11-21-21 / Early online forum that popularized terms like FAQ and spam / Chess's Caruana onetime youngest grandmaster in US history 14 years 11 months / Stock ticker symbol for longtime clothing brand / Sister brand of Saucony and Stride Rite / Song title shared by hit singles for Ja Rule and Flo Rida / Member of a Turkic group

Constructor: Adam Wagner

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (theme very easy, fill somewhat tougher but not inordinately so)

THEME: "Screen Sharing" — movie titles that contain other movie titles inside them (in circled squares), clued via the actor who appeared in both of them. Whole thing is tied together with a literal description of the theme: PICTURE-IN-PICTURE (116A: Modern tech feature for watching two programs on one screen ... or an alternative title for this puzzle):

Theme answers (why are the clues in quot. marks? I have no idea):

• FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (23A: "Salma Hayek: 1996, 2002")
• SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (31A: "Dev Patel: 2008, 2016")
• OCEAN'S ELEVEN (50A: "Brad Pitt: 2001, 1995")
• WEDDING CRASHERS (68A: Owen Wilson: 2005, 2006")
• INHERENT VICE (86A: "Joaquin Phoenix: 2014, 2013")
• THE GODFATHER, PART II (102A: "Al Pacino and Robert De Niro: 1974, 1995 (twice!)") (movie title "Heat" is repeated)

Word of the Day: HBO GO (103D: Onetime streaming platform of the 2010s) —

HBO Go is an international TV Everywhere video on demand streaming service offered by the Americanpremium cable network HBO for customers outside the Americas. It allowed HBO subscribers to stream selections of HBO content, including current and past series, films, specials, and sporting events, through either the HBO website, or apps on mobile devices, video game consoles, and digital media players. The service first launched on February 18, 2010.

In the U.S., HBO Go was deprecated following the launch of WarnerMedia's HBO Max streaming platform in May 2020; the latter includes all content available on HBO Go plus additional content from other WarnerMedia properties. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ugh, the rapid obsolescence of media properties. Could every constructor go into their wordlist and remove HBOGO, please. Replace it with HBOMAX, if that isn't in there already. I had no idea what that answer was, and even after I got it, I sincerely thought the answer was H-BOGO. Truly. Wasn't til I went to look it up that it suddenly occurred to me how to parse it. BOGO can mean "buy one, get one," so I figured that whatever "streaming platform" was involved here maybe had to do with ... online shopping? I dunno. I just know that answer is garbage now. Also, because I had -ATAR and reflexively wrote in QATAR at 102D: Member of a Turkic group (TATAR) when I saw the clue was something vaguely Middle Eastern, I had the last themer starting QUEG- for a while. Not great. Hmm, maybe I should back up. So, this puzzle ... conceptually, fine, yes, interesting. A very interesting set of themers with this very specific quality—title inside title, with a prominent actor starring in both titles. Great idea. Two problems. One, it was so easy to get the longer theme answer that I never ever had to pay attention to the circled squares. I just wrote in movie titles. They were all major titles. The hardest one to get was THE GODFATHER, PART II, and that's only because, as I say, I botched the first few letters of that one. So I can politely clap for the idea after the fact, but while I was solving, I just wrote in obvious movie titles and moved on. The worst thing about the theme, though, was that last answer, specifically HEAT HEAT. Just terrible. And what's worse is that it obviously believes it's the Best themer. It is pretty amazing that there are *two* actors involved in both films, but repeating HEAT is just nonsense. HEAT HEAT. That is what the squares spell. Gibberish. That's like spiking the football and it bounces up and hits you in the nose. HEAT HEAT. No no. But again, conceptually, it's all fine. Clever, even.

The fill was a lot less enjoyable. Some of this is because the NYTXW feels like it's very much in a rut, or a holding pattern. Or something connoting repetition. We just had PATOOTIE last week and now we have ... PATOOT? Both awful, frankly, but maybe we could at least space them out. Like ... way out. Years apart, preferable. And yeesh comically we have Another "Grey's Anatomy" clue (see yesterday's write-up for my longish discourse on that). And back-to-back days with IT ISN'T in the grid? I know that you can't really control for when and how fill will repeat, but answers and clue types are repeating themselves weirdly conspicuously of late. Groany clue for MORE (33D: What 2 is vis-à-vis 1). The opposite of aha. "That's it?" Irksome. "I CRY" clue (2D: Song title shared by hit singles for Ja Rule and Flo Rida) was slightly odd in that I have never heard of either of those songs, and the Ja Rule one only hit No. 40 on the Hot 100. Twenty years ago (!). Not exactly ... known. At least the Flo Rida one made it to No. 6. Much more respectable / crossworthy. EGAD with an "S" today, great :( What the hell is "IT'S LOVE"? I get "swoon," which you would say if you had a crush on someone or otherwise thought they were hot, but a. that sentiment is not "love," exactly, and b. "IT'S LOVE" is not a thing anyone would say ... about themselves? About anyone? We keep going to the supermodel well for names and wow do I wish we would stop but I am never going to win that battle. IRINA? (76D: Supermodel Shayk). Sure, IRINA, great. Shrug. Can't really make [Went after] be SET AT in any kind of straightforward, easy way. I SET AT ... him? SETAT is just mediocre fill, and no clue is going to make it nice.

No idea that one could be *a* CSI, since I assumed the abbr. stood for "Crime Scene Investigation," not "... Investigator." Apparently it can stand for both. How annoying, I mean convenient! CSIS, woof, that is rough fill. "AH OK," right next door, was awkward as well, though for different reasons. The gradations betwen UH OK and OH OK and AH OK just hurt my brain to contemplate. But technically "AH, OK" works. It's just that crammed in there with CSIS and the vaguely clued IOS (83A: Focus of some smartphone updates), "AH, OK" rankled a little with its inscrutability. The puzzle really lost my goodwill much earlier, though, with the FABIANO / BONK crossing. I had CONK (completely plausible for the clue), and who the hell knows the name of some chess kid, yeesh and double yeesh (15D: Chess's ___ Caruana, onetime youngest grandmaster in US history (14 years, 11 months)). I surmised that FACIANO was unlikely to be someone's name, and FABIANO felt very namelike, so I guessed right, but that's a horrid crossing. Aside from the pleasure of remembering a few movies, the only thing in this puzzle I enjoyed was EXOTIC FISH. That seemed an original answer. Vivid. Bright. Different. I can GO FOR that. The rest wasn't terribly enjoyable, though again, conceptually, I think the theme is really interesting—far better than your average Sunday. It just didn't play out in an entertaining way for me. 

Have a nice Sunday, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. 29A: Yellow belly? is ELLS because the "belly" (i.e. middle) of the word "yellow" is made of ELLS (i.e. L's)

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