Lion in the heavens / TUES 1-29-2019 / Paragon / Orange Muppet / German mark

Hi, all! It's Clare — back for another Tuesday. Hope everyone is staying warm and preparing for what very well could be record lows in much of the country this week! In D.C., I think we're supposed to avoid the worst of it, but I'm still hoping for a snow day, even though in law school they make you make up any classes you miss! I'm also prepping for the Super Bowl on Sunday, and, because I know you all to be smart people, I know you all hate the Patriots as much as I do. Go, Rams!

Constructor: Benjamin Kramer

Relative difficulty: On the easier side
THEME: VOLLEYBALL (57A: Sport hinted at by the ends of 17-, 24-, 36- and 47-Across) — Phrases that end in words that all relate to volleyball

Theme answers:

• LIP SERVICE (17A: Empty talk not backed by action)
• COLBERT BUMP (24A: Boost after appearing on a certain old Comedy Central show)
• TELEVISION SET (36A: Product from RGA or LG)
• GOLDEN SPIKE (47A: Symbol of the completion of the Transcontinental railroad)

Word of the Day: Tatooine (36D: Luke Skywalker's home planet)

Tatooine is a fictional desert planet that appears in the Star Wars space opera franchise. It is beige-coloured and is depicted as a remote, desolate world orbiting a pair of binary stars and inhabited by human settlers and a variety of other life forms. The planet was first seen in the original 1977 film Star Wars and has to date featured in a total of six Star Wars theatrical films. (Wikipedia)

I thought this puzzle was just meh. While I liked the idea behind the theme, the execution wasn't overly inspiring. VOLLEYBALL wasn't clued very cleverly, and I found it was pretty easy to get the theme description and the ends of the theme answers once I got SPIKE and then SET at the ends of 47A and 36A, respectively. Even just getting the "b" in VOLLEYBALL made me realize the word would most likely end in "ball." It was pretty clever, though, how the themes work in sequence — you have a SERVICE, then the BUMP, SET, and SPIKE. My favorite theme answer was COLBERT BUMP— it's something I haven't seen clued before, and I do always love Stephen Colbert. I would've thought that more of a bump would have come from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but what do I know?

A lot of the fill was just pretty bland, I thought. Especially the three-letter answers, like: BTW; ITS; BAG; BYE; ODE; BED. Those are all so basic and, frankly, boring. DEER MEAT (12D: Venison) was also dull. And, AS TO (35D: Apropos of) should just be banned from crosswords, in my opinion. (Am I starting to sound like Rex yet?) LEI (55A: Gift for which you might reply "Mahalo") was at least clued a little bit differently this time, which I liked.

There was a bit of international flavor in this puzzle, which was fun. There was QUINOA and OUZO crossing each other in the northwest corner. Then there were COUPE, UMLAUT, and PAELLA all in the southeast corner. Not to mention DEGAULLE (11D: Airport named for a president) and, I suppose TATOOINE, if you count an alien planet as being international.

I found MARLO and ADLER crossing each other to be kind of weird. I've heard of ADLER (15A: Psychologist Alfred), but I've never seen The Wire, so MARLO (5D: Kingpin on "The Wire") took some guessing on my part. The Wire is that show that's always at the top of my "to-watch" list, but I always seem to pass it over for something a little lighter and, more likely than not, for something that I've already seen a million times before. I also struggled in a few random places because I put in the wrong words originally: Had "thin" instead of SLIM for 21A: Slender, which hurt me some at the top; had "blast" instead of BLARE for 22A: Play loudly, as music; and wanted "rew" instead of REC for 8D: DVR button. It took me a bit to get airports like Kennedy and Reagan out of my head for 11D:DEGAULLE and realize that the puzzle wasn't referring to an American airport.

Misc.:

• MACRO: Please don't remind me of my introduction to economics days from freshman year of college. Those were dark times.
• I'm not sure I really need slaves in a puzzles with ENSLAVED (37D: Forced into bondage)
• 54A: Work without __ A NETthrew me for a bit of a loop. I kept trying to tie this into current events and really wanted to somehow make this about working without "pay."
• QUINOA— I've never jumped on this trend and don't really have a taste for it, but other people seem to love it... (like, ahem, my sister, who keeps trying to make me like it)
• OUZO— Legit never heard of this before — maybe my tastes just aren't refined enough yet. We certainly weren't drinking OUZO in college.

Signed, Clare Carroll, brrrraving the cold in DC

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]