Japenese drum / WED 11-29-17 / Coconutty girl scout cookie / two-tone apex predator / Gnocchi topper / Gospel star Winans

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: MOTOWN (74A: Record label for the singers starting 18-, 40-, 45- and 66-Across)— a Supreme, a Contour, a Miracle, and a Temptation walk into a bar...

Theme answers:

• SUPREME COURT CASE (18A: 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges, for example)
• CONTOUR KIT (40A: Product of assorted tones of makeup)
• MIRACLE MOP (45A: So-called "self-wringing" cleaning implement)
• "TEMPTATION ISLAND" (66A: Early 2000s Fox reality show) 

Word of the Day: TAIKO (44A: Japanese drum) —

noun

noun: taiko; plural noun: taiko; plural noun: taikos

1. a Japanese barrel-shaped drum. (google)

Who are the Contours and what is a CONTOUR KIT? That answer was a double WTF for me. I can sing my way deep, deep into the catalogue of the Supremes, the Temptations, and (Smokey Robinson and the) the Miracles, but I couldn't pick a Contour out of a line-up. I believe they exist, I just see no way in which they belong as the fourth themer in a MOTOWN theme that includes those other, absolutely iconic groups. The drop from their fame to Contour fame is verrrrrrrtiginous. They sang "Do You Love Me?," a #3 hit from the early '60s. Literally nothing else they sang cracked the Top 10, or even the Top 40, except ... the rerelease of "Do You Love Me?" in 1988 (thanks, "Dirty Dancing"!).


Whereas:

• Smokey Robinson and the Miracles had 6 Top 10 hits! 
• The Temptations had 15 Top 10 hits!!
• The Supremes had 20 Top 10 hits!!!

There's no way a Contour deserves to share the theme stage with the others. The fact that I don't know some make-up term is less noteworthy, but never to have heard of the term? Ever? That's at least a little odd. Granted, the women I know and love aren't terribly into make-up, but ... I actually do know lots of terms that have little or nothing to do with me or my loved ones. Just not that one. So, yeah, that answer was doubly weird for me. The rest of this seemed fine. I like the oddness of having the "singers" be singular elements from groups better known as plurals. Wacky.

No way on earth that TAIKO (!?) is a Wednesday answer. I thought I had learned all the exotic four- and five-letter instruments (SAROD! TABLA! KOTO!), but apparently not. It's a very Erik thing to do—throw some never-seen non-Anglo-American term at you like a pitcher throwing a fastball at your head. I don't mind it. I actually think it's OK, assuming the term is not some bullshit obscurity but actually just a word / term that's reasonably common ... elsewhere. Constructor's gotta be competent, gotta cross things fairly, but ... yeah, folding in some should-be-known terms from outside the conventional crossword lexicon: fine by me. If you are a skilled constructor, knock yourself out. 


Felt a little slow, but the puzzle is extra-wide, so it was probably perfectly normal, difficulty-wise. I had trouble in the middle, when I had MIRACLE and added DRY to the end (!), and *then* dropped PENDS down at 31D: Is in the offing (LOOMS). Yikes. I also didn't want to believe that MILA was in the puzzle on back-to-back days, so I imagined that the Uris title "URSA 18" (27A: Leon Uris's "___ 18"). Needed every cross for TAIKO, obviously. Very impressed with INNIT, for some reason (28D: "Don't you agree"," in British lingo). "TEMPTATION ISLAND" is some pretty old / forgettable reality TV. It was pretty low-rent and sleazy, and it only ran from 2001 to 2003, which is a long time ago now. I've been married as long as that show has been *off* the air. So I'm not thrilled with it as a theme answer choice, but ... again, the crosses are fair, so I'll allow a little reality TV dumpster diving, I guess.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Obergefell v. Hodges => the marriage equality case, in case you didn't know

P.P.S. this is very accurate:

Yes. I had *no idea* what the 1A: What you see when you look up? (ACROSS) was going for. Presumably, ACROSS refers to the word "ACROSS" above the ACROSS clues in the crossword. Sadly, this clue makes zero sense if you're not solving in the newspaper. Here, I'll show you:

A gigantic portion of your solving audience isn't solving on paper, guys. Editing!

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