Controversial fish catcher / THU 10-6-16 / Sweet plant of mustard family / Letter embellishment / River that's home to black spot piranha

Constructor:Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty:Medium (entirely because of the NE quadrant—else Easy)

THEME: MIDSIZE (42D: Neither large nor small ... or a phonetic hint to 17-, 30-, 45- and 57-Across)— "sighs" are added (sound-wise) to the "mid"dle of several familiar names / phrases, creating wackiness, which is then clued wackly (i.e. "?"-style)

Theme answers:

• CLIP CYCLOPS (17A: Give an "Odyssey" character a trim?)
• PET PSYCHO (30A: Favorite whack job?)
• BILL SINAI (45A: Invoice a whole Mideast peninsula?)
• SEMPER SCIFI (57A: Motto of a huge "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" fan?)

Word of the Day:ALYSSUM(23D: "Sweet" plant of the mustard family) —

noun

noun: alyssum; plural noun: alyssums; noun: sweet alyssum; plural noun: sweet alyssums

1. a herbaceous Eurasian plant that bears small flowers in a range of colors, typically white or yellow. Several kinds are widely cultivated in gardens. (google)

Gotta get back to watching the NL Wild Card, so let me just say 'no.' I mean, the theme's OK, though it's pretty cornball, and there's almost Too much wordplay going on (in the answers, in the revealer). The answers weren't that funny, and the clunky cluing really, really didn't help. You really have to have a decent sense of humor and a good ear when you do Wacky clues, and these clues just didn't land. I do think there's a certain cleverness here with the revealer, which makes this otherwise unremarkable add-a-sound puzzle at least a little special, but the puzzle is neither fun or funny. Plus the fill—what is GILL NET? (7D: Controversial fish catcher) What is ALYSSUM? (23D: "Sweet" plant of the mustard family) I got DON JOHN only from crosses and a vague memory of that being somebody's name in something I read once (12D: "Much Ado About Nothing" villain). Those three answers (esp. the first two) were weird outliers, familiarity-wise. I love how the clue writer thought quotation-marking "Sweet" would somehow tip me off to ALYSSUM. What the what? Oy, there's an answer where I needed literally every cross, and had to really think about ALYSSUM v. ADYSSUM, because the cross was at least mildly ambiguous (27A: Threaten => LOOM, not DOOM). I also thought the revealer might be ONE-SIZE. It fits.


Bullets:

• 16A: Children's author Asquith (ROS)— high-order crosswordese. Totally blanked on it. Get her confused with EDA LeShan tbh.
• 26D: ___ gun (SPEAR)— Had ---AR and went with RADAR...
• 38D: Barbecuer's supply (RIB MEAT)— ew. What? Your supply is ribs. Presumably, yes, they have meat on them, but you call them ribs. Or (and this fits) RIB TIPS. Can you barbecue ribeyes, 'cause that also fits.
• 10D: Charge (TASK)— Had TASE at one point. Because a taser ... provides a charge ... of sorts.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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