Longtime SNL cast member Thompson / MON 11-12-18 / Spiced tea from East / Site with Shop by category button / Felipe first Dominican manager in MLB history

Constructor: Kathy Bloomer

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:02)

THEME: COME TO THE TABLE (57A: Show up for negotiations ... or a hint for 20-, 33- and 42-Across) — each theme answer contains a piece of silverware

Theme answers:

• STICK A FORK IN IT (20A: Declare something completely finished)
• GAG ME WITH A SPOON (33A: Expression of disgust in Valley Girl-speak)
• GO UNDER THE KNIFE (42A: Have surgery)

Word of the Day: OPEL (14A: Affordable German car) —

Opel (Opel, pronounced [ˈoːpl̩]) is a German automobile manufacturer, subsidiary of Frenchautomaker Groupe PSA since August 2017. From 1929 until 2017, Opel was owned by American automaker General Motors. Opel vehicles are sold in the United Kingdom under the Vauxhall brand.

Opel traces its roots to a sewing machine manufacturer founded by Adam Opel in 1862 in Rüsselsheim am Main. The company began manufacturing bicycles in 1886 and produced its first automobile in 1899. After listing on the stock market in 1929, General Motors took a majority stake in Opel and then full control in 1931, establishing the American reign over the German automaker for nearly 90 years.

In March 2017, Groupe PSA agreed to acquire Opel from General Motors for €2.2 billion, making the French automaker the second biggest in Europe, after Volkswagen.

Opel is headquartered in Rüsselsheim am Main, Hesse, Germany. The company designs, engineers, manufactures and distributes Opel-branded passenger vehicles, light commercial vehicles, and vehicle parts and together with its British sister brand Vauxhall they are present in over 50 countries around the world. (wikipedia)

Mixed bag today, but let's start with the good news—those themers are all lively and interesting. As stand-alone phrases, they are great, and they give the puzzle a lot of sassy personality. All of them are idiomatic in one way or another, even the revealer, and that colloquial quality really spices things up. I'm also a big fan of "WHO KNEW?", KEELS OVER, and PUT ON AIRS—I especially like the clue 64A: Act all hoity-toity because it reminds me of Michael Ian Black's podcast "Obscure" (about Jude the Obscure), which has an episode called "Hoity-Toity!" which is what Arabella yells at Jude the first time she sees him walking past ... not sure if it's before or after she throws a greasy pig part at him ... anyway, bring back "hoity-toity!" I say! (Also, check out "Obscure," it's a bunch of fun).


But then there a number of problems. First, this isn't the tightest theme; spoon fork knife, OK, but ... two are at end of their themers, one isn't; two are things you would actually put in your mouth, one *decidedly* isn't. I mean, not that we put knives in our mouths as a rule, but we definitely don't put *surgical* knives in our mouths. And look, surgeons, if I'm wrong about that, please don't tell me. Also, the revealer is pretty weak, in that it doesn't really evoke silverware specfiically. COME TO THE TABLE? Lots of things are on a table, lots of things are involved in a place setting. Maybe do something with SILVER ...? I dunno, but this revealer just lies there. Then there's the very serious problems with the fill. The grid is choked with crosswordese, some of it of a stunningly archaic variety. IGLU!? You can see what happened—the fill is weakest along the length of the central two themers. They are treacherously close, and the grid just groans with hypercommon or just plain bad short fill as a result. If you position your themers such that you give yourself -G-U as a starting point, you really are dooming yourself to IGLU. Gotta make better choices, or build a more forgiving grid, or let your themers breathe more, or something. Real problem is those 14s—14s are very hard to work with. Very unwieldy, and you can't put them on the third / thirteenth rows because of black square issues, so they're crowding the middle of the puzzle. Much of the grid is under strain because of the lack of breathing room between the very long themers. So we get SOT ERGS ETON ALOU ATPAR ELAN RAJAS ACERB ENOLA OBIS AAA ETATS SOU (ugh) IGLU (2x) OPEL HOER (?) UHURA. It's a crosswordese barrage. And it's pretty brutal.


FIVE THINGS:

• 53A: Org. with the longtime leader Wayne LaPierre (NRA) — f*** that guy and this answer and this clue and all of it. I know it's a useful answer, but this is pretty much a white terrorist org. now, so maybe delete it from your wordlist. Please. EURO could've been changed to ESSO and the whole horrid gun-fetishizing scene could've been avoided.

• 39A: Give the glad eye (OGLE) — again, jeez, read the room (i.e. country). This old-timey euphemism for a creepy predatory gaze is somehow much worse than just a straightforward clue. 

• 1D: Moo goo gai pan pan (WOK) — indeed, a funny clue, but one that had my speed-solving brain totally flummoxed, as I thought ... I just couldn't figure out what I was reading. It was like I was seeing double and I couldn't parse it to save my life, so I actually had to go to crosses, ugh. My bad.
• 43D: "You wouldn't believe it if I told you" ("DON'T ASK!") — more good colloquial stuff, though I couldn't get the part after DON'T, and since I couldn't get the part before -TO THE TABLE, I was in this weird position of being almost done but locked out of that SW corner. Had to jump into it and solve my way back out.
• 48A: One-named singer with the 1985 hit "Smooth Operator" (SADE) — this puzzle has me wishing SADE and REBA did a duet together, if only for the complete and utter unexpectedness of it

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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