Leather-clad TV warrior / SUN 9-30-18 / Where Karl Benz debuted world's first auto / 16-ounce beers slangily / Feature of probability distribution where extreme events are more likely / Fictional creature whose name is Old English for giant / Builder of Israel's first temple / Collapsed red giant / Canoodles in Britain

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Challenging (12:35) (I had two drinks beforehand, though, so ... I'm not very confident in this rating)

THEME:"Sleep On It"— PRINCESSes (82D: Any of the four people disturbed in this puzzle) on MATTRESSes (14D: Item lain upon four times in this puzzle) on [PEA]s (where [PEA] is a rebus square) (123A: Item that disturbs sleep four times in this puzzle)

Theme answers:

• BELLE (27A) on QUEEN OF MEAN (31A) on S[PEA]R (36A)
• LEIA (53A) on FULL-BODIED (61A) on AP[PEA]LS (67A)
• XENA (69A) on TWIN SISTER (73A) on S[PEA]K (80A)
• ANNE (95A) on KING SOLOMON (101A) on [PEA]HEN (110A)

Word of the Day: EPHESUS (63D: Home of the ancient Temple of Artemis) —

Ephesus (/ˈɛfəsəs/; Greek: Ἔφεσος Ephesos; Turkish: Efes; may ultimately derive from HittiteApasa) was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, three kilometres southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of the former Arzawan capital by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists. During the Classical Greek era it was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League. The city flourished after it came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC.

The city was famed for the nearby Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Among many other monumental buildings are the Library of Celsus, and a theatre capable of holding 25,000 spectators. [...] 

The city was destroyed by the Goths in 263, and although rebuilt, the city's importance as a commercial centre declined as the harbour was slowly silted up by the Küçükmenderes River. It was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614 AD. (wikipedia)

Conceptually, this is pretty great. I mean, if you wanted to get the whole fairy tale thing precise, then you'd pile the mattresses high and put a single PEA underneath. A single mattress is somewhat wide of the mark, visually speaking. But as a plausible, viable representation of four different PRINCESS-and-the-pea scenarios, this works. I like how wacky the PRINCESS assortment is. Animated princess, warrior princess, space princess, actual princess. Nice. Solving this wasn't entirely fun, though, partly because I had had a little to drink and so (probably) just couldn't get things to click as easily as usual, partly because I was not looking for the PEA and there are so few PEAs that you could, as I did, get very far into the grid before you ever realized there was a rebus going on. 80% of my trouble in this one was in and around those rebus squares, first because I didn't know the rebus existed, and then because I kept forgetting the rebus existed. I had almost the entire top half of the grid before finally stumbling on my first PEA thanks to NEIL PEART (42D: Rock star known for his 360-degree drum set). Because I got stuck at ASIAN--- at 52D: Certain Far Eastern fruits before I knew there was a rebus, it somehow didn't really register to me that it might be a theme answer Even After I'd Discovered the Rebus. Plus I wanted the dog command to be SIT or SIC. Briefly considered SIK (!) before realizing, "Oh, dang, the rebus! It's ASIAN PEARS! And SPEAK! Aargh." Found the SW very hard despite / because of its lack of theme material (besides PRINCESS). HIT COUNTER and IN REAL TIME and ROUST and SHIRT and EMTS and OATS were all not not not coming to me. Also, I was thinking LAO TZU instead of SUN TZU, which really made me mad re: the ABBA song. Me: "I Know All Their Songs, None Are Three Letters Beginning With 'L', Come On!"


BSCHOOL, ugh (62D: Future plan for many an econ major). On multiple levels. Unpleasant. But it is a thing that people call that type of school, so fair, I guess. Just gross. I'm just imagining dudes going there and calling it that and then becoming useless techbro CEOs or something, ugh. Also, FATTAIL is [me making a face]. I mean, congrats on the "probability distribution" terminology, but that should've been RATTAIL, which has the virtue of being both a more vivid and more widely known thing.

Speaking of hairstyles, or rather no-hair styles, I could not process what the clue was looking for at 44D: Parts of Mr. Clean and Lex Luthor costumes (BALD CAPS). It's the "costumes" part that is terrible and confusing. I thought it was part of *their* costumes, i.e. the costumes or outfits that Mr. Clean and Lex Luthor wear, not what some human *might* wear if they were dressing up as Mr. Clean or Lex Luthor. The only thing I could really visualize was an earring. Don't they both have some kind of earring / pirate look going on? Let's see.

OK, so not Lex. Anyway, if you are bald, or shave your head, then you absolutely do not need a ridiculous BALD CAP(S) as part of your "costume." As a mostly hairless human, I could not relate to this clue at all.

Five things:

• 113A: Western gas brand (TESORO)— I spent my first 21 years in the "west" and I have literally never heard of this "brand." ARCO is the only "western" gas brand I know of.
• 28D: Jazz's McCann (LES) — oy, this made the PEA area in the NW that much harder. No idea. Stunned I've been doing crosswords going on 30 years and have seen jazz name after jazz name and yet somehow, not this one. 

• 87A: Paroxysm (THROE) — always gonna look dumb in the singular. Always. 
• 87D: Grammy winner Meghan (TRAINOR) — young enough to know who she is, old enough to botch the spelling of her name (I had a "Y" in there). 
• 84D: Where Karl Benz debuted the world's first auto (MANNHEIM) — one week later, an answer that I completely mangled returns to give me a boost! I was like, "Can it be ... is it ... the return of ...?" And it was.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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