Centrist in British politics, informally / THU 1-25-24 / Cautionary store sign from an alcohol retailer / Chewy, meaty dog treat / Ice cream brand in West Coast supermarkets

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Mercury is in ... — things that Mercury is in (or might be in):

Theme answers:

• GLASS THERMOMETER (17A: Mercury is in this) (the element Mercury)
• RETROGRADE (26A: Mercury might be in this) (the planet Mercury)
• WNBA FINALS (45A: The Mercury might be in this) (The Phoenix Mercury)
• "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY" (58A: Mercury was in this) (Freddie Mercury)

Word of the Day: Wilfred OWEN (61A: English poet Wilfred ___) —

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon and stood in contrast to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility", "Spring Offensive" and "Strange Meeting". Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918, a week before the war's end, at the age of 25. (wikipedia)

• • •

A Tuesday-type theme but with Thursday-type clues (attempts at trickiness all over). Still, the whole thing played well on the easy side, except (for me) one properly Thursday patch—the southeast. Would've been much easier if I had solved the southwest first. Then I could've plowed "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY" and WNBA FINALS right across the grid, and those would've given me the traction I needed to whiz through the SE. But as it was, I didn't have those last two themers, and trying to parse them, esp. from the back end, was a little miserable. That "BAF" in WNBA FINALS really had me thinking something was wrong. Also, I had "RATS!" for "NUTS!" (47D: "Phooey!"), forgot that LARB was a Thai menu word (a Lao chopped meat salad) (57D: ___ gai (Thai dish)); had VEE for HEE (60D: "Tee" follower); and just couldn't get LIBDEM at all until I got a few crosses (49D: Centrist in British politics, informally). Miserable enough paying attention to U.S. politics right now, the last thing I wanna do is throw Britain on top of things (I do like that this puzzle has LABOUR ARTY sitting there, one answer atop the other, in the west ("What happened to your party, mate? You lose something? A "P" maybe")). [Square] for DWEEB kept up the toughness down in that neck of the woods. Had no idea (or forgot) that CURIE was a unit of any kind (54A: Unit of radioactivity). So yeah, all the difficulty, for me, was condensed into that quadrant of the grid. The theme was a cinch, and any other trouble elsewhere in the grid was momentary.

The theme is cute, even if not quite Thursday-worthy. Must've been a EUREKA moment when the constructor realized that GLASS THERMOMETER and "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY" were both exactly 16 letters (as good a reason to expand the grid as I can think of—two theme elements need the room). There wasn't too much that was exciting in this grid, but also not too much that just WON'T DO (I like WON'T DO, btw). Things started out in very crosswordesey fashion, with me seeing right through the Greek-letter ruse at 1A: Three-point letter you won't find in Scrabble? (PSI), and then following it up with a visit to Crossworld's favorite inn, the IMARET (3D: Turkish inn). Struggled a bit to get PIG EAR (not something I ever gave me dogs) (1D: Chewy, meaty dog treat), and laughed a bit at "ATTA way!" (4D: "___ way!" ("Nice job!"), which caused some consternation when it appeared as a full seven-letter answer a few days back (I'm always gonna prefer the Indian flour for this answer—ATTA boy/girl/way feels partial, olden, flat) (oh, also, I laughed at ATACOST, which is not a good answer, but gets a lot more entertaining if you read it as someone cheering on COST: "ATTA COST! Way to go ... cost!"). ARE OUT was a tremendous "ugh" for me, especially since I really wanted the much better, much more vibrant RUN OUT (52A: Have no more in stock). That drop from RUN to mere ARE is steep and jarring. The clue on NOT NEW also made that answer feel disappointing. Like, yes, [Used] is NOT NEW when talking about books, cars, etc., but as a standalone phrase, NOT NEW works better as something like [Familiar] or even [Unoriginal]. Balked at WECARD, since I mostly see WEID, but WECARD definitely exists, so OK (45D: Cautionary store sign from an alcohol retailer) (sidenote: I cannot believe WEID hasn't found its way into the crossword yet—a new, completely real four-letter answer!? Come on! What are you all waiting for?). 

Obviously hesitated at GMEN/TMEN (9D: Some Feds). Took a few moments to get my brain to connect chips and cookies to TECH (9A: Chips, cookies, etc.). Was surprised to see the full AÇAI BOWL yet again—this makes two appearances already this year (which, in case you're counting, is two more appearances than solo women constructors have made. That's AÇAI BOWL(S): 2, solo women?: ... NAH)*. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Counting solo constructors as 1 and co-constructors as a 1/2, the M/W split this year is currently a stunning 23/2

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Selma march leader who served 17 terms in Congress / WED 1-24-24 / Court failure / Its shores have the lowest land-based elevation on earth / Its HQ is sometimes called "Crypto City" / Some water bearers / Fish with "snowflake" and "sawtooth" varieties / "The Clan of the Cave Bear" heroine / Sports org. in which five members have bird names

Constructor: John-Clark Levin

Relative difficulty: Easy (one of the easiest Wednesdays I've ever solved)

THEME: LONGJOHNS (35A: Winter underwear ... or what appear four times in this puzzle) — Different 5-letter "Johns" have their last names made twice as "long" by having each letter appear twice:

Theme answers:

• GGLLEENNNN (17A: First American to orbit the earth)
• LLEEWWIISS (25A: Selma march leader who served 17 terms in Congress)
• AADDAAMMSS (51A: Only U.S. president elected under the Federalist Party)
• EELLWWAAYY (62A: Broncos QB who won back-to-back Super Bowls)

Word of the Day: "AD ASTRA" (39D: 2019 Brad Pitt sci-fi movie whose title means "to the stars") —

Ad Astra is a 2019 American psychological science fiction film produced, co-written, and directed by James Gray. Starring Brad Pitt(who also produced), Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, and Donald Sutherland, it follows an astronaut who ventures into space in search of his lost father, whose obsessive quest to discover intelligent alien life at all costs threatens the Solar System and all life on Earth. The project was announced in early 2016, with Gray saying he wanted to feature "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie". Pitt signed on to star in April 2017 and the rest of the cast joined later that year. Filming began around Los Angeles that August, lasting through October.

Ad Astra premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 29, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on September 20, 2019, by 20th Century Fox. It received positive reviews from critics, with praise for Pitt's performance. At the 92nd Academy Awards, it was nominated for Best Sound Mixing. The film grossed $135 million worldwide against an $80–100 million budget. (wikipedia)

• • •

That was a Monday. That was so easy it was almost non-existent. The theme is about as slight and pushoverable as any I've ever seen. Famous five-letter Johns? And all you gotta do is type each letter twice? And every John is 100% legitimately famous? OK, but in that case, we aren't gonna be at this long. Will there be anything else about the grid that's interesting? Any sparkly longer fill or ... anything? No? Just ... your regular old stuff? The Sparkle will top out at AIRBALL? Why are doing this again, exactly? To make solvers feel powerful? To take up space until the Thursday rolls around? It's hard to see what the point is here. The puzzle was so fill-in-the-blank, point-and-shoot, child's-placemat simple that I can tell you precisely, with crystal clarity, where I so much as hesitated in filling it in. First instinct for 1A: Some water bearers (MAINS) was EWERS, LOL, Extreme Crossword Brain at work right there. But then I got NIL (4D: Goose egg), switched EWERS to MAINS, and the next thing I know, the whole NW is filled in, with the first themer having this weird "GGLL" start. Must be an err- ... nope, it's John GLENN ... guess I just double every letter? Yup. And zoom, I'm off. Don't know *why* GLENN is GGLLEENNNN yet, but I'm off.

[PPRRIINNEE]

I somehow can't get the CHIP part of CHIP IN (10D: Contribute), but everything surrounding it is so easy that those squares get filled in pretty quickly anyway. I think of DJS as spinning vinyl,  not CDS (32D: CD players?), so again I needed nearby fill to help, and again it helped almost instantly. I did not get either PROM (56A: Event with a royal court) or AIRBALL (44D: Court failure) at first glance, and I misspelled SAMOYED (as SAMOYAD, I think) (46D: Siberian sled dog), so I guess we can say that the SE was the "hardest" section, but "GLORY BE!" led to "I'LL BE" (horrid "BE" / "BE" crossing there, boo!), which fixed SAMOYED's spelling, and then BRO AIRBALL PROM and zoom, off again. None of the Johns were hard. The last two I got solely by looking at the first two or three words of the clues ("Only U.S. president," "Broncos QB"). I know my crosswordese, so neither LAILA (not LEILA, not LAYLA) ALI nor AYLA last-name-unknown (65A: "The Clan of the Cave Bear" heroine) could slow me down. Finished in the far far SW with the Brad Pitt movie I didn't know but since it was also clued as the Latin phrase I *did* know, whoomp, there it was, the end. If I still got high on speed, I might've had good feelings about this one. As it is, it felt remedial, and I feel cheated.

[PPRRIINNEE]

If your clue begins "Italian" poet and it's five letters (esp. if I have some letters in place), I don't need the rest of the clue. If your clue begins "Norse god" and it's four letters (esp. if I have *any* letters in place), I don't need the rest of your clue. The clues needed to be putting up obstacles and roadblocks today, and they absolutely were not, not ever. If you'd shown me 18D: Fish with "snowflake" and "sawtooth" varieties *and* I'd had no idea how many letters it was *and* I'd had no letters in place, I would've been stumped. But in three letters, with any letters in place, it's EEL. I mean, it's crosswords, of course it's EEL. They retired GAR a long time ago, I think, so unless it's Old-Timers' Day at the Crossword Ballpark, the three-letter fish is always EEL. I had one write-over, and that's when I read a clue poorly (too quickly) and wrote in OVEN instead of NAAN (15A: Tandoori chicken accompaniment). See "Tandoori," see four letters ending in "N," write OVEN, pure instinct. NAAN is the more crosswordy word (and the only answer that actually makes sense here), but a TANDOOR is literally an OVEN, so that's why my brain did what it did. 

[PPRRIINNEE]

Puzzle had an overall old-ish feel, from "GLORY BE!" and "MY EYE!" to "M*A*S*H" and "Kate & ALLIE" to all the Johns to the old "trick" use of "fast" in the EAT clue (62D: Make a fast stop?). I hope lots of people broke their Wednesday records today, because I'm not sure what else this puzzle is good for. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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