Tobacco plug / SUN 2-20-22 / Reason-based belief in God / Repeated sound that's hard to get rid of / Ubiquitous advertiser with an acronymic name / 673 parts of the Louvre Pyramid

Constructor: Victor Barocas

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium, somewhere in there

THEME: "Pardon My French" — ordinary phrases where first word has been replaced by a French homophone, making them wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. as if the French word were literal):

Theme answers:

• OUI ("yes") SHALL OVERCOME (22A: Positive thinker's motto?)
• DIEU ("God") PROCESS (34A: Means of becoming a god?)
• BELLE ("beautiful") TOWER (51A: Where Rapunzel let down her hair?)
• EAU ("water") FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE (65A: Holy water?)
• C'EST ("it is") CHEESE (83A: Answer to "What is Roquefort or Brie?"?)
• LAIT ("milk") TO WASTE (96A: Spilled milk?)
• REINE ("queen") CATS AND DOGS (112A: The queen with her pets?)

Word of the Day: CARYATIDS (78D: Architectural columns in the form of sculpted female figures) —

A caryatid (/ˌkæriˈætɪd/ KARR-ee-AT-id; Ancient Greek: Καρυάτις, pl. Καρυάτιδες) is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town on the Peloponnese. Karyai had a temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis in her aspect of Artemis Karyatis: "As Karyatis she rejoiced in the dances of the nut-tree village of Karyai, those Karyatides, who in their ecstatic round-dance carried on their heads baskets of live reeds, as if they were dancing plants".

An atlas or telamon is a male version of a caryatid, i.e. a sculpted male statue serving as an architectural support. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm not sure I will pardon it. Your French, that is. The wackiness mostly doesn't land today, largely because of the often extreme grammatical awkwardness occasioned by the French translations. LAIT TO WASTE just doesn't read as a good answer to 96A: Spilled milk? when you render it as "milk to waste"; if you spilled it, it's wasted, I guess, but the "TO" just doesn't work. "Queen cats and dogs" is likewise iffy. I don't really get what "Rapunzel" has to do with anything? All the other clues contain the English version of the French word, but not so the clue on BELLE TOWER (51A: Where Rapunzel let down her hair?). There, I guess you are supposed to take BELLE as a substantive adjective (beautiful woman) and you are supposed to think of Rapunzel's definitive quality as beauty (I don't; I think of it as long-hairedness). The biggest problems, though, are pronunciation problems. Some of these are right on the money (OUI SHALL OVERCOME, C'EST CHEESE, EAU FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE). But REINE doesn't really sound like "rain" (it's closer to "ren"), and DIEU really really Really sounds nothing like "due"—it's more like "dyuh." It's a diphthong with absolutely no long-U sound in it. Huge miss on that one. If all the answers were spot-on, this would be an adequate, somewhat ho-hum Sunday concept you might've seen many years ago. But they aren't all spot-on, so it's somewhat less enjoyable than that.

As if ATREE weren't annoying enough as a partial answer, this puzzle had to go and riddle it up, thereby calling attention to it, highlighting it in neon yellow, rather than cluing it as a much more humble fill-in-the-blank so we can just solve it and forget it ever existed (108A: What's clothed in summer and naked in winter, per an old riddle). Why people insist on drawing attention to their worst fill like this, I'll never understand. AT NINE is bad, but at least it's straightforward and easy, so its badness isn't likely to linger in your mind. The voiding of "nerdiness" of all meaning continues apace at 39D: Most likely to win at Trivia Night, maybe (NERDIEST). I know plenty of real nerds who don't concern themselves with trivia at all. Math, science, "Star Trek" and "Star Trek"-related shows, sure, but this thing where "nerd" just means "someone who knows trivial stuff," I dunno. It doesn't track that well. I had no idea GEICO was an acronym: "Give Everyone Insurance, Come On!"? Ah, no, I see it's "Government Employees Insurance Company." Huh. I feel like I've learned and forgotten this before. I had T-BOND before T-BILL because honestly I don't know financial things at all and when I'm solving I just put in plausible-sounding words and hope for the best (54A: It matures quickly, in brief) (T-bonds actually mature slowly—takes at least 20 years). There's not a lot else to say about this one. "ANNE WITH AN 'E'" is original, for sure, but that's the only non-theme answer that really stood out. The grid is mostly clean and clear. The theme just isn't up to snuff. Dommage. 

Another Boswords virtual crossword tournament (or "league") is just around the corner. I think it's a "league" because competitors solve puzzles once a week over a period of months, as opposed to solving a bunch on one day. Anyway, this time it's the "Boswords 2022 Spring Themeless League"! Here's a few words about the tourney from tourney organizer John Lieb:

Registration for the Boswords 2022 Spring Themeless League is now open! This 10-week event starts with a Preseason puzzle on Monday, February 28 and features weekly themeless puzzles -- clued at three levels of difficulty -- from an all-star roster of constructors and edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to solve a practice puzzle, to view the constructor line-up, and to learn more, go to www.boswords.org. 

The puzzles for these Boswords competitions are excellent, and as I've said before, if you're curious about what the world of crossword tournaments is like, if you wanna dip your toe in those thrilling waters, Boswords is a good way to find out. You can choose your own difficulty level. You can solve with a friend or family member as a pairs team. What've you got to lose!?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. my daughter (who just graduated college in December) is currently on tour for her first professional theater gig—stage managing a regional tour of "Church Basement Ladies" across the upper midwest. They open on Thursday in Ottumwa, IA (yes, Radar O'Reilly's hometown, that Ottumwa). She also has a summer job lined up assistant stage-managing at a Shakespeare festival, but I'll tell you more about that later. Anyway, I'm proud, and my daughter is working, so hurray for a Theater degree, actually!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Actress/screenwriter Taylor / SAT 2-19-22 / Michael E. ___, pioneer in coronary bypass surgery / First foreign-language film to win Best Picture / First national fraternity to welcome transgender members 2014 informally / Gorgon's lock / They graduate quickly

Constructor: Billy Bratton

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RENEE Taylor (43D: Actress/screenwriter Taylor) —

Renée Adorée Taylor (née Wexler; born March 19, 1933) is an American actress, screenwriter, playwright, producer and director. Taylor was nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay for the film Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). She also played Sylvia Fine on the television sitcom The Nanny (1993–1999). [...] Taylor acted with improv groups in the 1950s. She worked as a comedian in the early 1960s at the New York City nightclub Bon Soir. Her opening act was a then-unknown Barbra Streisand. In 1967, Taylor played an actress portraying Eva Braun in Mel Brooks' feature film The Producers, a role she got while performing the play Luv with Gene Wilder, whom Brooks cast as protagonist Leo Bloom. [...] From 1992 to 1994, Taylor played the overbearing Jewish mother of Brian Benben's lead character on the HBO series Dream On. In 1993, she was cast as the mother of Richard Lewis, and the ex-wife of Don Rickles, in the Fox sitcom Daddy Dearest, which was cancelled after a two-month run in the fall. // Also in 1993, Taylor was slated for sporadic guest appearances on the new CBS sitcom The Nanny, playing Sylvia Fine, the mother of Fran Drescher's title character. After the cancellation of Daddy Dearest, Taylor was upgraded to a recurring cast member during the first season of The Nanny and eventually a full-time cast member by the third season.(wikipedia)

• • •

I think this was tough but I know I made a ton of unforced errors and just wasn't processing information clearly, so it was "Medium-Challenging" for me, but might've been somewhat easier for someone who was a little more awake and alert. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out the name of the damned web browser (the web browser I use to find and open the damned puzzle every day) because in my brain decided "web browser" meant "search engine," so when GOOGLE didn't work, I was out of ideas. I thought maybe it was a Chinese "web browser" I hadn't heard of, but no. Side note: the most popular web browser in China is ... CHROME (15A: Web browser with a majority market share). Side side note: the most used search engine in China is BAIDU, which has very very very big "I'm going to be in your crossword some day" energy. In addition to botching CHROME (I mean, really... still mad ...) I could not think of a "birthstone" ever with the "RA" and then the "-RAL-" in place. I thought "oh it's going to be one of those weird ones like garnet or peridot or gabardine or something else from the back of the lapidary" but ultimately, no ... it's just EMERALD (11D: May birthstone). A first-tier well-known gemstone. I mean, diamonds rubies EMERALDs! It's part of the gemstone holy trinity, as I understand it, and I couldn't think of it. "Peridot" I somehow have in my store of answers, but EMERALD, the CHROME of gemstones, nope, fresh out. So mainly today was a day to wallow in my own mental insufficiencies. But the puzzle was also genuinely hard, in its way. Everything felt like it could be two or three things, and with literally all of the long Downs, I had the first word and then no idea of what should come next, so I never got that satisfying whoooosh feeling. Just a lot of toiling. Or moiling. (Seriously, I had -OILS for a while because TOILS and MOILS mean basically the same thing ... sometimes, there is such a thing as knowing too much)

Two of the trickiest places involved arbitrary colloquialisms, by which I mean they are real colloquialisms, but like many colloquialisms, they have all kinds of variants, which meant determining exactly which words I was dealing with was not easy. I had "OH, RATS!" at 1A: "Botheration!" "Botheration" sounds proper and British and Winnie-the-Pooh-like, whereas "AW" sounds more slangy and American and Little Rascals-like, so "OH" seemed somehow more fitting. But the "Z" from UZI made me realize I didn't know any bands with "Z"s in them that started with "H" and fit the pattern ("HEEZER?!" "HANZIG!?"), so WEEZER finally broke through and "OH" went to "AW." Down below, a similar thing happened with "WELL, NOW..." (47A: "Hmm, let's think where this leads us"). I had "WAIT NOW..." because I had the initial "W" and the "NOW" and the clue really Really suggests pausing, i.e. WAITing, so ... yeah, that was that. "Botheration!" I cried (figuratively).

Didn't know DEBAKEY or RENEE Taylor but at least RENEE is an inferable name. DEBAKEY is a "this name came with my giant wordlist" name (24D: Michael E. ___, pioneer in coronary bypass surgery). You can rationalize using him because he's famous enough, in his field, and because you don't have any other obscure-ish trivia in your whole grid. The DEBAKEY Principle—you get precisely one DEBAKEY-type proper noun per grid ("DEBAKEY-type" being both not exceedingly well known *and* uninferable i.e. not a common name or a name that's famous in any other context). So today there is one and only one DEBAKEY and that's just fine. You can handle one DEBAKEY. It's Saturday, after all.

Puzzle-worthy ... but utterly unknown to me (this magazine cover is 
from before I was born (1965))

Is a MILE RUN really a test of "endurance" (35D: Endurance test in gym). It's just one mile, and if you are "in gym" you are very young, so a MILE RUN doesn't seem like much of an endurance test. I was imagining something much more grueling, though I don't know what. Rope climb? Fire walking? My favorite answers of the day were not part of that architecturally impressive center, where three 11s run through three other 11s. Rather, it was the symmetrical answers ROB BLIND (10D: Bamboozle big-time) and "PARASITE" (34D: First foreign-language film to win Best Picture); the former is a wonderfully vivid phrase, whereas the latter is a wonderfully vivid movie, a real masterpiece, and the last movie I saw in the theaters before COVID shut everything down in 2020. I've since been back to theaters a few times. The first movie I saw when I returned: "The Card Counter." Then I got in "Azor" and "The French Dispatch" before Omicron came and I stopped going to theaters again. But now Omicron is waning and I'm thinking about getting back in there to see "Licorice Pizza" before Omicron II comes and messes everything else up again. I love streaming movies (I've seen ~700 movies since the beginning of COVID Times, no foolin'), but nothing beats popcorn, Junior Mints, big screen, darkness. Even crosswords can't compete.

Explainers:

• 4D: Be with a group? (ARE) — plural present indicative form of the verb "to be"
• 34A: Group of commuters? (PAROLE BOARD) — they can "commute" sentences (nice clue)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. this complaint is reasonable

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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