Furniture retailer with an arboreal name / WED 4-24-24 / Tragic NASA mission of 1967 / Lewis who sang the theme for "Avatar" / Classic computer game in MoMA's video game collection

Constructor: Jeffrey Martinovic

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: LATERAL SYMMETRY (62A: Feature of this puzzle's grid and the answers to the six starred clues) — both the grid and the indicated answers (that is, THE INDIVIDUAL LETTERS THAT MAKE UP THE THEME ANSWERS) have lateral (mirror) symmetry along a vertical axis 

Theme answers:

• MAUI, HAWAII (3D: *Home to Haleakala National Park)
• "WAIT, WHAT?" (4D: *"Hold on, repeat that?")
• "MWAHAHA!" (45D: *[Evil laugh])
• MAXIMUM (46D: *Calculus calculation)
• "MAMMA MIA!" (10D: *Musical whose name is an Italian exclamation)
• HOITY-TOITY (11D: *Highfalutin)

Word of the Day: WEST ELM (4A: Furniture retailer with an arboreal name) —

 

West Elm (stylized as west elm) is a retail store that features contemporary furniture designs and other housewares. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma, Inc. There are currently stores in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Customers are able to shop in-store, online, or through a catalog by telephone. The larger products such as sofas and beds are only displayed in stores for customers to see and feel in-person, likening West Elm to a pure catalog/online retail company. (wikipedia)

• • •

Again, I don't understand why this is an idea you'd want to build a theme around. Who cares or notices that (capital) letters of the alphabet have LATERAL SYMMETRY? And as for the grid ... crossword grids have LATERAL SYMMETRY all the time. All. The. Time. It's not a remarkable feature. Not in the least. So you've got a totally ordinary architectural element and then you've tied your hands behind your back and limited yourself to just ... [counting] ... eleven letters of the alphabet for your theme answers, all so you could go "look, those letters have LATERAL SYMMETRY?" When I say I don't understand, I mean I don't understand how anyone thought any of this would be fun or interesting from a solver's point of view. I mean, is anyone, literally anyone, excited to see MAUI, HAWAII? MAUI, HAWAII? Oh, that Maui! I was thinking maybe Maui, North Dakota, but of course, MAUI, HAWAII, I see it now (/sarcasm). I don't mind the other themers at all—they're nice answers, some of them—but do I care that their letters have LATERAL SYMMETRY? I do not. Also, did you know that there are no other Down answers besides the themers that have the same lateral symmetry? I would say this is nice attention to detail, and it is, but it's a detail that a. no one is going to notice, and b. potentially compromises the grid, i.e. your best choice for an answer at any given point when building your grid might, in fact, be a laterally symmetrical one, but for this theme, if the answer is a non-thematic Down, you'd now have to go off of that best choice if it were in fact laterally symmetrical ... and for reasons no one cares about. And if you think avoiding lateral symmetry is easy, notice that the Acrosses have HAM, and TAU, and WOAH ... all of them composed of laterally symmetrical letters. This is all to say that a lot of careful attention had to go into making a tree fall in the woods that no one is there to hear until you call out to them and say "hey guys, listen to that tree falling!? Hear it!?" Erm, kinda? Not really.

I say EWW to ERM. I say EWW to EWW too, in that I was told only yesterday that the spelling is actually just a two-letter "EW." Does the puzzle think I don't remember yesterday? Well, in general that's a pretty good bet, the days do kinda bleed into one another that makes them hard to distinguish, but that "EW" business, I remember. WOAH is also terrible but at least it was clued with special attention to its ugly wrongness (51A: "Slow down!," spelled unusually). Except ... WAIT, WHAT? No one would spell WOAH that way for *that* meaning of the word ("slow down"). Younger people do tend to spell it that way, but only to express astonishment, not to stop their horses. Bizarre cluing choice. ATAD is not "the smallest amount"—it's a totally unspecified amount—but I guess figuratively you can get away with this clue (I had ATOM here). ABYSM? (70A: Bottomless pit). LOL just say this word out loud to yourself a few times if you wanna feel silly. This is different from an ABYSS how? And how is it "appropriate" that OPRAH has a middle name that's the same* as her best friend's first name? (34D: Celebrity whose middle name is Gail, appropriately enough). It's a weird coincidence, I'll grant you, but there's nothing "appropriate" about it. If your middle name were WOOD and you grew up to be a carpenter, that might be "appropriate"; but unless we think of OPRAH as having grown up to be a windstorm, "Gail" doesn't really qualify as "appropriate."  

I don't know my Laotian currency from my Albanian currency, so KIP was an adventure (26D: Currency of Laos) ... wait, is Albania the LEK ... it is! Hey, maybe I do know my Laotian currency from my Albanian currency. Fascinating development. There were no particularly difficult parts of this grid, except maybe the far north, where my consumer habits didn't prepare me for what was being offered, i.e. I am only vaguely aware of WEST ELM and probably would've told you it was a clothing retailer (plus I thought the "arboreal name" was going to be WOOD-something); and as for IMODIUM (18A: Alternative to Pepto-Bismol) ... I know the name, but not how to spell it, and after Pepto, my familiarity with brand names in this category drops off sharply. Even ARCADIA, which is kind of in my wheelhouse, didn't come to me quickly (I thought maybe "Pan's domain" was something like ORGIES or PARTYING or something like that) (15A: Pan's domain in Greek myth). So I had to run a lot of crosses through that section before it filled out. Otherwise, smooth sailing. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Gayle (not actually “Gail”) King

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Ending with screen in a modern portmanteau / TUE 4-23-24 / West known for her double entendres / Announces the big reveal in a magic act / Small coastal nation bordering Iraq / Yuck! I've dated him before. Swipe left / Morning, mother / Machu Picchu builders

Constructor: Judy Bowers

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy in general, but parsing a couple of those theme answers was tricky)

THEME: TWO (54D: Number of letters in every word of the answers to the starred clues — that's it; that's the theme:

Theme answers:

• "OH NO, EW, HE IS MY EX" (16A: *"Yuck! I've dated him before. Swipe left!")
• "SO, IS IT / UP TO ME?" (23A: *With 42-Across, "Well, do I decide or not?")
• "DO AS WE DO" (32A: *"Follow our lead!")
• "HI, MA. I'M UP" (37A: *"Morning, mother!")
• "OK IF WE GO IN ON IT?" (52A: *"Can this be a gift from all of us?")

Word of the Day: IROC (4D: Classic Camaro) —

 

The third-generation Chevrolet Camaro is an American pony car which was introduced for the 1982 model year by Chevrolet. It continued to use General Motors' F-body platform and produced a "20th Anniversary Commemorative Edition" for 1987 and "25th Anniversary Heritage Edition" for 1992. These were also the first Camaros with factory fuel injection, four-speed automatic transmissions, five-speed manual transmissions, four-cylinder engines, 16-inch wheels, and hatchback bodies. For 1987 a convertible Camaro was reintroduced, converted by ASC in relatively small numbers. The third-generation Camaro continued through the 1992 model year. [...] For 1985, Chevrolet introduced the IROC-Z version that was named after the International Race of Champions. Offered as an option package on the Z28, the Camaro IROC-Z featured an upgraded suspension, lowered ride height, specially valved Delco-Bilstein shocks, larger diameter sway bars, a steering/frame brace known as the "wonder bar", a special decal package, and an optional Tuned Port Injection system taken from the Chevrolet Corvette. It also shared the Corvette's Goodyear "Gatorback" unidirectional tires in a 245/50/VR16 size vs. the Corvette's 255/50/VR16 size, and received unique new aluminum 5-spoke 16-by-8-inch wheels. The new wheels were designed with different offsets front and rear, resulting in the words "Front" or "Rear" cast into the wheels to distinguish which wheel went where. // The Camaro IROC-Z was on Car and Driver magazine's Ten Best list for 1985. (wikipedia)

• • •

I actually psyched myself before opening today's puzzle, telling myself, "Come on! ... it's gonna be a good day! You're gonna find things to like in this puzzle!" And I am. But mostly I'm not. I don't know what you want me to tell you. I cannot pretend that this is acceptable. Even if you somehow found the theme charming, the fill, dear lord, I haven't winced this much in so long. Answer after answer that had me EXCLAIMing "Why?! This grid isn't that hard to fill, why is ACER crossing IROC in this tiny little corner you could fill a million ways!?" That NW corner, i.e. the very beginning, was an omen. 99% of the time, or thereabouts, when the fill in the NW corner is so bad that I have the urge to take a screenshot, the rest of the puzzle ... well, it doesn't improve. If you can't get a little corner like that into shape, what hope do you have with the rest of the grid? Actually, that was one of the weird things about this grid—the fill is worst up top and down below, where the the thematic material *isn't* so dense, while in the middle, where theme material is packed close together, the fill holds up, for the most part (not loving GAEL / SALA, but whatever—at least the theme density gives you an excuse there). I haven't audibly OOFed this much at a grid in a while, from IROC ACER to AGER ICERS to APAIN and UPRISE (do you mean "rise up"?) (42D: Rebel) through all the rest of the middling to sub-middling 3-4-5s, this one kinda hurt. Usually the long stuff comes to the rescue a bit, but probably the worst thing in the grid is an astonishing 10 letters long: SAYS PRESTO! (10D: Announces the big reveal in a magic act). I think I actually said "oh my god, No!" to my computer as I filled that in. SAYS PRESTO!!? I normally use EAT A SANDWICH as the gold standard of "random verb phrase that absolutely cannot stand on its own" but SAYS PRESTO really wants to be the new representative of that category. You say this ... when describing a magic act? How many ... times ... have you done that? (Answer: none, no times). SAYS PRESTO is about as solid an answer as EATS PESTO or LEAVES MODESTO. A comically preposterous answer.

As for the theme, I don't know. Hate to use the word "preposterous" two times so close together, but some of these imagined TWO-word statements do seem that way. I almost like them better when they *are* that way, which is why "DO AS WE DO" kinda ruins things—that's nowhere near the wacky weight class of the other themers. The least a theme like this can do is be consistently, ridiculously wacky, because let me tell you, as revealers go, TWO ... TWO? ... is not really cutting it. I wrote that answer in about halfway through my solve and just stared at it. Then stared into middle distance for a few seconds while I contemplated the nothingness of being that is TWO, summoning the courage to continue. I can't go on. I'll go on. The theme answers are frequently forced. Would you be as informal as "EW" but then use the formal "HE IS" instead of "HE'S"? Unlikely. And there's nothing in the "HI MA, I'M UP" clue suggesting that mom is rousing anyone—"morning" doesn't equate to "I'M UP" very well, or only tenuously. And the initial "words" in a few themers ("OH," "SO," "OK") seem arbitrary. But as I said up front, I can see finding the theme wacky and charming. I didn't, particularly, but I can see how one could. I cannot see how anyone could enjoy how poorly filled this grid is. It tops out at ordinary and frequently sinks far, far lower.

On the plus side, very easy! It's an undersized (14x) grid, so that'll help your solving time for sure, but that's not the only reason this was a speedy experience. Lots of short answers (as we've established), most of them very easy to get (esp. if you are familiar with the full panoply of crosswordese). I had one wrong answer while solving: FOLD for WILT (33D: Crumble under pressure). "Crumble" and WILT couldn't be more dissimilar at a literal level, but figuratively, yeah, the clue works. Time for coffee now. "HI MA, I'M UP!" (just saying hi to my mom in Longmont, CO, who maybe still reads me every morning—I haven't checked recently, but it seems likely. She's pretty ... let's say, loyal, lol. Love you, mom! Did you get my letter? The owl card? Let me know... and say hi to Amy [my sister] when you see her. XO)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Happy Shakespeare's birthday (observed) 

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