Inspector Clouseau's employer / SUN 8-20-17 / "A Navel" artist, 1923 / Wine-and-cassis drink / Third one's a harm? / Moaning Hogwarts ghost / From the top, to a musician / The first pope, to French speakers / Part of a locust tree / Baseball exec Bud / Hansen of a 2016 Broadway hit

Constructor: Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium



THEME: Found In Your Inbox — Punny email subject lines that become more familiar phrases when preceded by RE-.

Theme answers:

• [RE]QUEST FOR PROPOSAL (22A: Re: ___ (suitor's subject line))
• [RE]TREAT IS NOT AN OPTION (29A: Re: ___ (stingy date's subject line))
• [RE]VERSE COURSE (45A: Re: ___ (song lyricist's subject line))
• [RE]ACTION TIME (65A: Re: ___ (film director's subject line))
• [RE]AD ONLY FILE (69A: Re: ___ (sales agent's subject line ... with an attachment))
• [RE]MOTE CONTROL (88A: Re: ___ (duster's subject line))
• [RE]WARD FOR INFORMATION (104A: ___ (prison librarian's subject line))
• [RE]ACHES FOR THE STARS (115A: ___ (celebrity physician's subject line))

Word of the Day: WORD (FAUVE) —

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a loose group of early twentieth-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were André Derain and Henri Matisse, whose members shared the use of intense color as a vehicle for describing light and space, and who redefined pure color and form as means of communicating the artist's emotional state.

I officiated a wedding for a lovely couple in Slippery Rock, PA, Saturday afternoon, just a couple of hours before tackling this puzzle, so I felt a weird kinship with it when encountering ALTAR (53A: Place to say 9-Down) paired with I DO (9D: See 53-Across).

Substitute crossword blogger Tyler here for Day 2 of 2, welcoming you to the Sunday puzzle, whether you're CROAT (10D: Dalmatian, e.g.) or SCOTTISH (14D: Like the people who invented golf), a resident of ASIA (54D: China setting) or an admirer of MAO (58A: World leader who proclaimed "Women hold up half the sky"). And I'm including if you're one of the 4.5 million OMANIS (62A: Dwellers on the Arabian Peninsula) or a citizen of OSLO (123A: European capital).



We'll start with the good stuff. VIDIOT (16D: Couch potato) was new to me. Since I couldn't find a toe-hold in the NNW (we'll come back to it), I didn't have SAVE yet (14A: Back up on disk) and needed to see most of IDIOT to intuit the portmanteau that was expected. I liked RAIL clued as (51D: Third one's a harm?). (If you're not previously familiar with the term "third rail", you may hear it again in discussions of political issues.)



I liked APERCUS (100A: Pithy observations) and GMC TRUCKS (78D: Sierras, e.g.). Also, we had IPOD NANO (86D: Apple product discontinued in 2017), where we usually just get one or the other. Then there's the topical EVAN (108A: Hansen of a 2016 Broadway hit), which hit won 6 of the 9 Tony Awards for which it was nominated this year.



There are a couple of family movie references, in ALDRIN (15D: Astronaut after whom Buzz Lightyear was named) and MYRTLE (63D: Moaning Hogwarts ghost). Well, and MONTY (68D: ___ Python), depending how early you're willing to introduce your kids to their oeuvre.



Now, I have two complaints about this puzzle. The first is musical. The correct abbreviation for the musical term Staccato is not STAC (31D: Short and detached, in music: Abbr.) but rather stacc. I could find a hundred examples in fairly short order to share with you, and in all the music I read studying percussion, piano, voice, conducting and ultimately getting my degree in musicology, I don't ever recall seeing it abbreviated with a single C. So, that's annoying. Here's just one example, from Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring:


The second is the NNW block. This whole SAKI (6A: H. H. Munro pseudonym) / KIR (8D: Wine-and-cassis drink) / ARP (7D: "A Navel" artist, 1923) / SURETE (6D: Inspector Clouseau's employer) / ST PIERRE (26A: The first pope, to French speakers) chain is ugly. I wonder if I would have liked it better if SAKI / I DO was instead SAKE / EDO? Or even cluing SAKI as an alternate spelling of Japanese wine? Maybe I'm just bitter that I still haven't memorized SAKI = H. H. Munro, whom I've never read, although I recognize it as crosswordese-that-I-should-know-by-now. It's just a lot of short, ugly stuff connected to some long, foreign stuff, and I didn't like it. Am I alone on this?

Bullets:

• DA CAPO (74D: From the top, to a musician)— Capo meaning, literally, head
• THORN (49A: Part of a locust tree)— As opposed to roses
• SELIG (85A: Baseball exec Bud) — Presided over the steroid era
• AFRO (34A: Hairstyle rarely seen in the military)— A fresh clue on a common answer
• AUTO (82D: Motorcade unit) — This felt fairly generic for the clue; or was I supposed to appreciate the misdirection to LIMO?
• ON TOAST (97A: "Down," at a diner) — It's possible I'm not frequenting enough diners

Signed, Tyler Clark, Fan of CrossWorld

[Follow Tyler on Twitter]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]