Twitch streamer with a digital avatar say / THU 8-24-23 / Green booking / Theater section for Statler and Waldorf on "The Muppet Show" / 2016 title role for Auli'i Cravalho / Liqueur in some coffee cocktails familiarly

Constructor: Robin Yu

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ROLLING BLACKOUTS (34A: Temporary, controlled power shutdown ... or a hint to reading four of this puzzle's answers) — the word OUT is represented by a BLACK circle-like dealie with an arrow in it. You have to imagine the word "OUT" in that space and then follow the arrow into and out of that space in order to make sense of four theme answers:

Theme answers:

• WENT OUT THE WINDOW (2D: Suddenly fell through, as a plan)
• VOTER OUTREACH (14A: Campaign to increase Election Day participation)
• EMOTIONAL OUTLETS (53A: Activities that relieve psychological stress)
• SWEPT OUT TO SEA (43D: Carried away by the tide)

Word of the Day: René Lalique (12A: Style of René Lalique's glasswork = DECO) —

René Jules Lalique (6 April 1860 – 1 May 1945) was a French jeweller, medallist, and glass designer known for his creations of glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments.[...] Lalique was best known for his creations in glass art. In the 1920s, he became noted for his work in the Art Deco style. He was responsible for the walls of lighted glass and elegant coloured glass columns which filled the dining room and "grand salon" of the SS Normandie and the interior fittings, cross, screens, reredos and font of St. Matthew's Church at Millbrook in Jersey (Lalique's "Glass Church"). As part of the Art Nouveau style, many of his jewellery pieces and vases showcase plants, flowers and flowing lines.

Both unique and commercial works of René Lalique are in the collections of a large number of public museums around the world including the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Lalique Museum of Hakone in Japan, the Musée Lalique [fr] and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in France, the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim [de] in Germany, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum and the Corning Museum in New York State, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. (wikipedia)

• • •

Big thank-you to Linda Holmes for (inadvertently) alerting me to the fact that my downloaded puzzle grid did not have the visual element needed to make sense of the theme. My grid just looked standard, so ... you know, I finished, and I "got" it ("OUT"s have been "blacked out") but I didn't get it get it, in that the "ROLLING" part made absolutely no sense. When I opened the puzzle at the NYT Games site and saw what the grid was supposed to look like, I had an "...oh" (as opposed to an "aha!") moment. As in "Oh ... yes, that is very visually literal, that is." I wonder if the arrows made it easier to solve. It was pretty darned easy without them. Anyway, my main feeling about puzzles that rely heavily on physical alterations of the grid for their impact is something less than joy. I can see how the visuals break up the visual monotony of most crossword grids, but I dunno, today, the little swirlies just don't do much for me. Well, they didn't do anything for me, as we've established, but seeing them after the fact did not make me think I'd've enjoyed the puzzle a whole lot more if I'd had them. The theme is fine. It's mildly interesting that in each case, the "OUT" is sandwiched, in its phrase, between a word that ends in "X" letter and a word that begins with "X" letter. Not literally the letter "X"—that would be truly astounding! But you know what I mean. WENT crosses THE at the "T," VOTER crosses REACH at the "R," etc. Doesn't really add anything to solving enjoyment, but it's a nice little flourish. But I think the only thematic energy coming from this puzzle is decorative. You see that grid and go "whoa!" ... and then you've got sort of a ho-hum solving experience on your hands.

[Sorry, I know I post this video every time "black" or "out" is thematically

relevant, but its "F&%^-you!" energy is just irresistible to me]

The fill is a mixed bag. A mixed TOTE BAG, filled with some goodies (DONE DEAL, GOING GAGA, and OPERA BOX (esp. as clued)) and some baddies (really hard to work up any love for ECOHOTEL or VTUBER). Beyond the theme, there is nothing especially tricky or difficult about today's puzzle. And the thematic trick wasn't that tricky to begin with so ... the puzzle is weak in the trick department. Undertricked, I feel. The only things I struggled with were dumb little details like "ugh, is is EEO or EOE?" I wish I had more to say about the fill, but it's rather straightforward. I wrote in DADA before DECO, that was fun. What would DADA glasswork even look like? It was interesting to learn that Jimmy Carter's Secret Service code name was DEACON. I was just telling my wife yesterday that that is what I want to call our next dog. Then I could call him "Deke" or "DEACON Jones" or "DEACON Blues" or "DEACON King Kong" or "Total Deke-lipse of the Heart" or if he's mellow maybe "Dekaf" etc. The possibilities are endless. My wife is currently favoring "Vienna," but I told her we'd just end up singing Ultravox's "Vienna" to her all the time, and that might get boring—though if I sang it in the dog’s voice, that might be fun: (extreme emo dog voice) "The feeling is gone / Only you and I / It means nothing to meeeeeeee / This toy means nothing to meeeeeeee / IIIIII'm Viennaaaaaaaaaa!" I mean, that could work. But I'm still Team DEACON. 

Explainers:

• 41A: News stand? (OP-ED) — a piece that takes a "stand" in a "news"paper. That's kinda cute.
• 21D: Something that's designed to be buggy? (WEB) — Yes, spiders do "design" their webs in order to catch "bugs," so that works.
• 24A: House of reps? (GYM) — best of the "?" clues, for sure. You do reps at the gym. Nice legislative pun.
• 48A: Foil, e.g. (SWORD) — a "foil" is a fencing SWORD, 
• 31A: Exactamundo (BANG ON) — this one clanked. I think of BANG-ON as a fairly ordinary expression, whereas I think of "Exactamundo" as something I've only ever heard Fonzie say. The "word"—in my experience—exists only in the Fonziverse. Nowhere else. Also, it's an exclamation, not an adjective. This clue is very un-Fonzie-like, i.e. uncool

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Egg dish with a lemon turnover / WED 8-23-23 / Ones with chiseled jawlines often / Salad dressing with chopped liver / Sandwich with wild rice / Capital that was once part of Denmark / End of a two-player Harlem Globetrotters play

Constructor: Michael Lieberman

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Don't eat that! — theme answers are food items clued as if they have an ingredient they would never actually have—that "ingredient" is instead found literally (in the circled squares) in each answer:

Theme answers:

• BALSAMIC VINEGAR (17A: Salad dressing with chopped liver)  (the word "LIVER" appears "chopped" up inside "BALSAMIC VINEGAR")
• MONTE CRISTO (28A: Sandwich with wild rice) (the word "RICE" appears "wild" (i.e. mixed up) in the middle of "MONTE CRISTO")
• PEACH MELBAS (48A: Desserts with split peas) (the word "PEAS" is "split" in two inside "PEACH MELBAS")
• WESTERN OMELETTE (60A: Egg dish with a lemon turnover) (the word "LEMON" appears "turned over" (i.e. reversed) inside "WESTERN OMELETTE)

Word of the Day: ALANA De La Garza (33A: Actress De La Garza of "FBI") —

Alana de la Garza (born June 18, 1976) is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Connie Rubirosa on the NBC television series Law & Order in the last four seasons of its initial run, Law & Order: LA until the show's conclusion in 2011, and in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She also portrayed Marisol Delko-Caine on CSI: Miami. In 2014 and 2015, she starred as Detective Jo Martinez in the ABC series Forever. From 2016 to 2017, she starred in Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders as Special Agent Clara Seger. In 2019, she began starring as SAC Isobel Castille on FBI, a role she also plays on the spin-off series FBI: Most Wanted. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gotta be quick with this write-up because I stupidly left my laptop charger plugged into the wall of my work office and ... well, I don't trust laptop batteries. My experience has been they tend to be almost fully charged and then all of a sudden they're near zero battery power and somehow there's no in-between. We're pretty good right now, so let's go. This theme has a couple of layers to it—the "what the hell kind of food item is that!?" layer and the "take it literally" layer. Maybe it's just one layer, but the fact that all the wordplay stays in the food realm is what gives the theme its icky charm. I wish there had been a way to lean into the disgustingness if not outright inedibility of some of these concoctions. I don't really know what a "lemon turnover" is, but I'm pretty sure if I found one in my WESTERN OMELETTE, the result would be GAGS (6A: Reacts to something gross). Ditto chopped liver in my balsamic or split peas in my peach melba. This leaves [Sandwich with wild rice], which actually sounds fine. The way it's worded, the rice sounds like a side dish, and even if the rice did somehow make its way into or onto your sandwich, you probably wouldn't gag, so the wacky food factor is not nearly so evident with that answer. I like how there's a different type of wordplay going on in each theme answer, and that the wordplay comes from absolutely ordinary culinary terms ("chopped liver" "wild rice" etc.). Thematically, this is solid. No complaints. 

Is BALSAMIC VINEGAR a "salad dressing" all on its own. I tend to think of it as a salad dressing ingredient—mixed with oil, at the very least. But maybe some people just dump it right on there, I don't know. The hardest themer for me to get was WESTERN OMELETTE, specifically the WESTERN part (which appears in the "western" part of the grid!). "Egg dish" = OMELETTE, which I had, but there's nothing in the clue that suggests "western," so I had to hack away at crosses to see what kind of omelette I was dealing with. Not hard, but somewhat slower going than other parts of the grid. 

As for the fill, a little too much crosswordese (EPODE, ugh), a few too many names (ALANA BALOO ADELE and on and on), and *way* too many TV networks. If you've already foisted TRU and MTV on us, why in the World would you also clue BRAVO as a TV network!? (51A: "Top Chef" network). The puzzle is already running way too hot on proper nouns; take the opportunity to staunch the flow when you get it! The longer answers today are solid enough. I really like DIALECT and RUBS IT IN, and I'm definitely going to need some SALTINES to cleanse my palate between the courses of today's menu. I struggled most with ALANA, who, like yesterday's ILENE, I'll apparently never remember. She's on a bunch of network crime shows I've never watched. I didn't even know there was a TV show called "FBI" (let alone a spin-off! ... my god, it's a whole damn franchise!?). I haven't watched network TV in what feels like a decade, at least. It's a big entertainment world that I know nothing about. I watch TV shows, and I am aware of many TV shows that I don't watch, but almost none of them are network shows. Just ... alien territory to me. Weird how, in my lifetime, ABC / CBS / NBC (and later FOX) went from virtually the only game in town to marginality and irrelevance (as far as quality is concerned—there's still an audience, obviously, I just don't know who they are). Of the eight comedies nominated for Emmys this year, only one ("Abbott Elementary") is a network show. And in the drama category: zilch.

Wrap-up:

• 49D: Source of a scandalous comment (HOT MIC) — first answer: HOT TIP!
• 26D: Capital that was once part of Denmark (OSLO) — first answer: MARK! (OK, hear me out. I think my brain read "Denmark" as "Germany" and then took "Capital" to mean "money," and then the "once" part suggested bygone money ... and there we are: the bygone German currency, the MARK. Ta da! :(
• 19D: Off one's game (NOT ON) — this was an answer that I thought was NOT OK. That is, I did like the clunkily literal cluing ("off" = "not on"), and I also literally thought the answer was NOT OK. I wrote in NOT OK. Thank god that ALAKA was not a plausible human name (my apologies to the ALAKAs of the world!)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. In 45A: End of a two-player Harlem Globetrotters play (OOP), the "play" in question is an "alley-OOP" (explanation here if you're unfamiliar)

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