Caesar's first stabber / TUE 1-15-19 / Women's clothing chain since 1983 / 1982 film inspired by Pong / 1701 USS Enterprise registry / Eponymous scale inventor

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday) (4:19) 

THEME: welcome comments at a bar— phrases indicating that someone else is paying for your drink:

Theme answers:

• "IT'S MY TREAT"
• "DRINKS ON ME"
• "I'LL GET THE BILL"
• "YOUR MONEY'S / NO GOOD HERE"

Word of the Day: CHICO'S (1D: Women's clothing chain since 1983) —

Chico's is a retail women's clothing chain founded in 1983 by a three-person operation on Sanibel Island, Florida. Chico's FAS, Inc. is an American women’s clothing and accessories retailer. The company was founded by Marvin and Helene Gralnick and is headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida. Chico's FAS operates three brands: its namesake Chico's, White House Black Market and Soma. As of November 1, 2014, Chico's FAS operated 1,557 women's clothing stores in the US and Canada and sold merchandise through franchise locations in Mexico. (wikipedia)

Ouch. Very rough Tuesday. Rough as in "difficult," rough as in "ouch, I am wincing at this fill and these answers." Let's start with the theme, which is completely colloquial, and so when the phrasing isn't just right, it's grating. Feels like an alien life form has learned our language and is trying awkwardly to fit in. Actually, these aren't *that* off, but they veer sharply from the complete-sentence formal of "IT'S MY TREAT" to the where's-the-verb awkward of "DRINKS ON ME." Then there's "I'LL GET THE BILL," which ... ok one might say that, but it's not very bar-y, and like "IT'S MY TREAT" it's got that weird complete-sentence thing going on that you probably wouldn't actually here. "I GOT IT.""IT'S ON ME.""MY TREAT." I can hear these. The others have a weird formalism. Then there's the last one, YOUR MONEY'S / NO GOOD HERE, which is also the best one ... and the one total outlier, since it's the only themer that a bartender / owner would say. The other phrases are things your friends or colleagues might say. So it's all over the map as a theme. Not very tight, not very bar-specific. Also, how is the most common "welcome comment" of all not even in this grid? No ON THE HOUSE? No IT'S ON THE HOUSE? No IT IS ON THE HOUSE? The puzzle needed another answer with something drinky in it, like ROUND, and an answer with ON THE HOUSE in it. The theme as it is just clunks and lurches all over the place.

Then there's the fill / clues, which were super-hard for me, for a Tuesday. I have somehow lived almost half a century and never heard of CHICO'S. There has never been a CHICO'S anywhere I've lived. I have a sister and a mother and a wife and a daughter, so women's clothing chains aren't *entirely* unfamiliar to me, but yeah we found the giant hole in my knowledge base today, for sure. The NW was a disaster for that reason, and also because I misspelled HENNE and also because UNSNAG wtf!?!?! *And* with a "?" clue (3D: Let off the hook?). "CAN I SEE?" is a question and ["Ooh, ooh, let me look!"] is *not*, so that's fun (i.e. terrible). Don't watch that sitcom but guessed SEGAL buuuut the crosses were so weird to me that I kept taking him out when I couldn't get things to work. Pure disaster. And then when I'd go to other parts of the grid, I also couldn't get traction. Ask me about NETH, LOL, wow that is the Worst abbr., and I had NET- and still couldn't get it. My brain wouldn't allow it to exist. Up there with ICEL as Worst Euro Abbr. Wanted an *actual* wood for 28D: Wood in a fireplace, not the hilariously anticlimactic LOG. Cassius and Brutus are on my mind a lot (they figure prominently in Dante's "Inferno") but CASCA??? Totally forgot him (45A: Caesar's first stabber). Again. Just ... ugh. ATOY is horrendous fill and the clue did nothing for me (39A: "This is not ___" (warning to kids)). I have no idea what NCC even is (42A: ___-1701 (U.S.S. Enterprise registry). Seriously?? An abbr. that's cluable only in relation to an *adjacent* abbr.???? It stands for Naval Construction Contract and no, you did not know that.


Then there's ORIENTAL (11D: Avenue between Reading Railroad and Chance) ... I guess nothing says "hey, guys, sorry for BEANER" like ORIENTAL! Which is painfully dated, at best. It's a term that rubs a lot of Asian people the wrong way for reasons I Do Not Have Space or Time or Energy To Get Into. Here is an interview on NPR from ten years ago that puts things in non-inflammatory terms. My favorite part of the interview is when Linda Wertheimer asks Jeff Yang if anyone really *uses* the term ORIENTAL any more (in 2009) and he just laughs. People Still Use It To Describe Asian Things And People In This the Year of Our Lord Twenty Nineteen. ORIENTAL is not BEANER-level jarring, but I wouldn't put it in a puzzle. I mean, you can point to a Monopoly board and yup, there it is. But why are you including terms that need defense? It's common sense. You know it's a racially-loaded term, a term that has been used in racist ways, so why include it at all. Drive Around It. Take a different ... avenue, as it were. Thank you and good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld (Twitter @rexparker / #NYTXW)

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