German film award akin to an Oscar / THU 5-26-22 / Exclamation after a witty comeback / Print collectors for short / Famed designer whose career was boosted by American Gigolo

Constructor: Jonathan M. Kaye

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "The Gambler"! — four theme clues are from the chorus of Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler"; the theme answers reimagine the meanings and/or contexts of hold 'em, fold 'em, walk away, and run:

Theme answers:

• WRESTLING MATCH ("20A: "You've got to know when to hold 'em")
• ORIGAMI CLASS (31A: "Know when to fold 'em")
• LOWBALL OFFER (41A: "Know when to walk away")
• ELECTION SEASON (57A: "And know when to run")

Word of the Day: LOLA (34D: German film award akin to an Oscar) —

The German Film Award (German: Deutscher Filmpreis), also known as Lola after its prize statuette, is the national film award of Germany. It is presented at an annual ceremony honouring cinematic achievements in the German film industry. Besides being the most important film award in Germany, it is also the most highly endowed German cultural award, with cash prizes in its current 20 categories totalling nearly three million euros.

From 1951 to 2004 it was awarded by a commission, but since 2005 the award has been organized by the German Film Academy (Deutsche Filmakademie). The Federal Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs has been responsible for the administration of the prize since 1999. The awards ceremony is traditionally held in Berlin. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm afraid I really liked this puzzle, but I'll start with the one part I hated, which is GROGU. Unless this jumble of letters is clued as [Where pirates go to college], it's entirely unwelcome. It's absolutely exhausting how much of the extreeeeeeemely extended "Star Wars" universe I am expected to be familiar with. See also "Game of Thrones," but especially this Disney-owned Baby Yoda "Mandalorian" stuff. I know "The Mandalorian" exists, and I know BABY YODA because it's an oft meme-ified phenomenon. Pretty sure I've seen BABY YODA in puzzles before, and that's OK, because that's the well-known part of that only-on-the-Disney-Channel show. But GROGU? Please think about the names you're floating out there. I see only-on-the-Disney-Channel pop culture names like this and can't help but recall that two of the greatest filmmakers in history (OZU, VARDA) still haven't appeared in the NYTXW even once. And yet tertiary actresses on marginal sitcoms, some singer who had a #9 hit in 2008, and (now, apparently) secondarily famous names of marketing gimmick creatures are somehow things I have to know. Names are great when they are in your wheelhouse but they are Hostile when they are part of some in-group you're not a part of. We all "don't know things," duh. But can we stop with the "Star Wars" universe? Hiatus? Moratorium? It's not like we Haven't Heard From That Universe Before! It's not underrepresented. Just because you have the opportunity to put a "new" name in the grid doesn't mean you should. And now GROGU is going to be in so many constructor wordlists, ugh. Well, at least you know it now. Remember: it's where pirates go to college. That is how you will remember it if you do not watch that show. You are welcome.

I'm mad at GROGU because it was the *only* thing I didn't like about this puzzle. This is such a dumb (in a good way), simple, clever theme. Taking all the verbs in the chorus out of a poker context and plunking them in absurdly literal contexts—I don't know why this works, but it does. Plus, now I'm singing "The Gambler" in my head, which, as earworms go, could be worse. Plus, I was oohing and aahing a little even before I got to the theme, as I dropped BOURDAIN and then BLOWHARD right alongside it. BOURDAIN was a fine writer and by all accounts a lovely man, but he was *repeatedly* (and literally) referred to as a BLOWHARD in the press, so I gotta imagine that BLOWHARD / BOURDAIN pairing would've made him smile. I couldn't quite figure out what WRESTL- was gonna do in that first themer, but I could see ORIGAMI coming into view pretty quick, so that's when I got the literalness of the theme concept. I had trouble with CLASS (wanted CRANE (!?)), and later on I had a little trouble figuring out what SEASON you were supposed to "run" in (that SW corner is a tiny bit hairy). But mostly the theme answers came easily, and delightfully, unexpectedly. I most admire LOWBALL OFFER—such a great phrase, such a perfect answer for "when to walk away." 

The fill on this one was strong as well, with AFEWZS being the top answer of them all (46D: Forty winks)—got a genuine "wow" from me. Don't know if it's original, but it is a ton of fun to try to parse. Worth the effort! I really liked much of the cluing today too. 39D: "What is your greatest ___?" (interview question) (WEAKNESS) made me laugh because it made me think of the conventional fake-humble answer, "Sometimes I care *too* much" (or "I work *too* hard" or "Perfectionism"). I also loved the clue on ARMANI (46A: Famed designer whose career was boosted by "American Gigolo") because I am a huge fan of "American Gigolo" (the movie that kickstarted The Eighties and one of the greatest neo-noirs of the decade). If you aren't listening to "Erotic '80s," the latest season of Karina Longworth's "You Must Remember This" podcast, then do yourself a favor and remedy that immediately. It's a wonderful year-by-year trip through sex in the movies during the decade that comprised my entire adolescence, so yeah, I am into it, although it did coerce me into watching "Jagged Edge" (yesterday), which I was Not so in to. But now I'm glad I've seen it, I guess, even if it was pretty bad. Anyway, "Erotic '80s" is up to 1985 this week. Four more years to go. Get on board! OH DEAR, where was I? Oh, ARMANI! Richard Gere! Blondie! Cinematic '80s ... my happy place. Hope you found things to like in this puzzle, and if GROGU was one of those things, well, de gustibus etc. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. "item of wear" is such a weird, awkward phrase (29A: Often-changed item of wear => DIAPER). There's gotta be something better. [Oft-changed covering]? [... protective gear]? Maybe just [Oft-changed item]? I dunno, something else.

P.P.S. like several of you (it seems), I found the clue on SOARS (53D: Shoots up) to be jarring and unwelcome, to say nothing of inapt. Why evoke heroin usage here? Or mass shootings? It's awfully grim—grim enough that it bothered the constructor, who actually sent me an email this morning disavowing it (his clue was [Flies high]). 

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One-named ancient satirist or a Pokemon character / WED 5-25-22 / Convert into a higher-level language, as computer code / Hinged bit of hardware / Art of bone carving

Constructor: Christopher Youngs

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: I, um, don't really know — looks like "-IUM" has been added to familiar phrases to create wacky phrases. Why, I don't know. But there it is:

Theme answers:

• PODIUM CAST (17A: Group of winners at a film awards show?) (podcast)
• CRANIUM APPLE (27A: Target for William Tell?) (Cran-Apple)
• MEDIUM SCHOOL (46A: Where séance leaders get their degrees?) (med school)
• TEDIUM TALK (62A: Lo-o-ong lecture from a parent?) (Ted Talk)

Word of the Day: IMPOSTORS (21A: Not real royals, maybe) —

The noun referring to one who takes an assumed identity in order to deceive is variously spelled imposter and impostor. Impostor has the edge, and it is the form recommended by most English reference sources, but imposter is not wrong. Not only is it nearly as common as impostor, but it is also nearly as old. Impostor came to English from the French imposteur in the late 16th century, and imposter first appeared almost immediately thereafter. And though the -or spelling has always been more common, imposter has always been present to some degree. // In fact, imposter is more common than impostor in some areas of English. In a search covering a few dozen of the most popular blogs in the English-speaking world, for instance, the ratio of imposter to impostor is about 6:5. Imposter is also a little more common than impostor in 21st-century Australian and New Zealand news publications that make content available online. The two forms are neck and neck in British and American news publications from this century. Meanwhile, in a Google Books search—which covers millions [of] books, journals, and magazines—limited to 2000 to the present, impostor remains about three times more common than imposter. (grammarist.com) (emph. mine)

• • •

There's only one thing I'll remember about this puzzle, if I remember anything, and that's that I default to -ER spellings over -OR spellings (at the ends of nouns) if I'm not entirely sure. And now I'll remember that my "wrong" answer today (IMPOSTERS instead of IMPOSTORS) was not, technically, wrong. Attestations for that spelling are all over the place, and all over the globe. But my answer was "wrong" for this puzzle, since DECOMPILE is (apparently) a word, and DECEMPILE is nonsense, only if you clue that word as some coding jargon, I'm not *exactly* sure how I'm supposed to know that the nonsense is nonsense. Mostly I'm just struggling to understand why you'd burn one of your long Downs on a word as phenomenally boring as DECOMPILE (11D: Convert into a higher-level language, as computer code). I gotta believe that even if you *knew* that word, you were like "oh, I know this! ... yeah, still boring." This grid is desperate, starved for entertainment, starved for interesting fill or genuine pleasure of any sort. Typically, the long Downs (in an Across-oriented theme puzzle) are places to throw down some sparkly fill to add to solving pleasure or at least to make up for a dull theme. But here, we get DECOMPILE and EPIDERMIS. I don't mind the latter, but you wouldn't call either of them gems, and man this theme needed gems—a passel of gems to make up for an inexplicably flat theme. Why -IUM? I still don't see it. Even if there had been some kind wordplay revealer, you're still left with a set of wacky theme answers without a laugher in the bunch. CRANIUM APPLE comes close; you definitely get the most mileage from your -IUM with that one. But the first one, PODIUM CAST, just falls flat—not a great way to open. MEDIUM SCHOOL doesn't pick things up much. By the time I got to TEDIUM TALK I just wanted it to be over. I had the TEDIUM part and thought "which TED is this? Knight? Danson? Oh, TALK, great, thank god that's over."

The grid is absolutely teeming with 3- 4- and 5-letter fill of the commonest variety, which makes it hard to know what to talk about besides how uninteresting it all is. SCRIMSHAW is about the sassiest, liveliest thing here today (54A: Art of bone carving). The short stuff isn't horrendous, just, well, to reuse a word I've used a lot already today, flat. I won't bother listing it all out; you can just look at the grid and see for yourself. If the theme had been a sizzler or even if the longer answers had been winners, all the repeaters that populate the bulk of the grid wouldn't be nearly so disappointing, or even noticeable. Short fill can be familiar and merely adequate if the marquee stuff really shines. Today, it did not. 

["See, EPIDERMIS means your hair ..."] 

Notes:

• 6D: One-named ancient satirist ... or a Pokémon character (LUCIAN) — choose your fighter, I guess. The second half of this clue is depressing to me. A sad, random afterthought that I guess is supposed to act as a bone to ... some class of solver, I don't know. Or maybe it's the puzzle's one very weak attempt to be "current" (never mind that Pokémon is old by now). Anyway, LUCIAN is rolling over in his non-Pokémon grave, and I sympathize with him. "Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings, which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm." (wikipedia). A writer after my own heart. 
• 14A: Monopoly token replaced by a cat in 2013 (IRON) — I love cats, as you likely know and/or are tired of hearing about by now, but the IRON was a great token and I miss it. That is, I miss it theoretically. Monopoly is a soul-crushingly dull game that I haven't played in decades, so I don't miss it miss it.
• 49A: Unfinished crusade of the 1970s in brief (ERA) — Equal Rights Amendment. The first version was introduced in Congress in 1923. 
• 19A: Reminder of a past injury (SCAR) — here's how to know if the answer to a clue like this is SCAR or SCAB: ... it's just SCAR. "R" is a more common letter, so guess "R." Also, a SCAB will be fresher, so it'll probably have a neutral "wound covering"-type clue, whereas SCAR is likely to be clued in reference to the "past." But again, just guess "R." There are way, way more appearances of SCAR, and anyway half the SCAB clues refer to strikebreakers.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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