People of south-central Mexico / SUN 2-3-19 / Organization of Afro-American Unity founder / 1960s group with fabric-related name / Writer/critic Madison III / Stew that's decidedly not very spicy / Metric in digital journalism / Meursault's love in Camus's Stranger / Belief in one's role as savior / Seeming opposite of ignorance is bliss

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (11:58)

THEME:"Ejection Letters" — sports stars (their names) are "ejected" from various phrases, creating gibberish phrases; also, reasons for being ejected from various sports are included in this grid, for no clear reason:

Theme answers:

• BEANBALL [LOL] (21A: Reason for an ejection in the M.L.B.)
• FLAGRANT FOUL (22A: Reason for an ejection in the N.B.A.)
• ILLEGAL SLIDE TACKLE (33A: Reason for an ejection in FIFA)
• HELMET HIT (58A: Reason for an ejection in the N.F.L.)

• MESSI (86D: FIFA star ejected from 65-Across)
• RUTH (64A: M.L.B. star ejected from 87-Across)
• RICE (28A: N.F.L. star ejected from 102-Across)
• ONEAL (48A: N.B.A. star ejected from 105-Across)

• AH COMPLEX (65A: Belief in one's role as a savior) (from "messiah complex")
• THE T WILL SET YOU FREE (87A: Seeming opposite of "Ignorance is bliss") (from "the truth will set you free"
• P OF ADMISSION (102A: Entry fee) (from "price of admission")
• ARM CHILI (105A: Stew that's decidedly not very spicy) (from "one-alarm chili," what the hell, who calls their chili that?

Word of the Day: OTOMI (93D: People of south-central Mexico) —

The Otomi (/ˌoʊtəˈmiː/; Spanish: Otomí [otoˈmi]) are an indigenous people of Mexico inhabiting the central Mexican Plateau (Altiplano) region. [...] One of the early complex cultures of Mesoamerica, the Otomi were likely the original inhabitants of the central Mexican Altiplano before the arrival of Nahuatlspeakers around c. 1000 CE, who replaced and marginalized them however the Otomi and their nomadic lifestyle allowed them to easily adapt to different environments avoid enemies and defend traditional lands and villages. In the early colonial New Spain period, Yųhmų Otomi of Tlaxcala helped the Spanish conquistadors as mercenaries and allies, allowing them to extend into territories such as Querétaro and Guanajuato, previously inhabited by semi-nomadic Chichimecs.

There are definitely parts of this that I like, but unfortunately none of those have anything to do with the theme, which is a shambles. It's a cool idea—players "ejected" from answers—but the execution here is so confusing, and the resulting answer are just nonsense. The fact that the player names aren't anywhere close to symmetrical adds another level of inelegance. The main problem here, the one that stands out the most, is that the wacky phrases are so dreadful. They aren't even wacky, actually. They're just missing letters, so the result is ridiculous. No humor. Is ARM CHILI funny? ARM is actually in the grid, just above this answer, so ARM CHILI is both not really funny *and* seems like it's replicating a word. Normally with a wacky phrase-type theme, you'd give the theme answers wacky clues, but these just have straight clues, and those clues don't even indicate they're part of the theme, so you just get AH COMPLEX and wonder "what the...?" So much hunting around, cross-referencing, etc., to figure out what's going on, and since only the clues for the sports stars make any attempt to tie things together, and since the four reasons for ejections from the various sports have literally nothing to do with any of it—seriously, they don't relate directly to the gimmick at all, they're just examples of things that might get one ejected—you're left with a an asymmetrical goopy mess. The puzzle is trying to do way, way too much, and doing none of it very well. Also, is the title a pun? On "rejection letters"? 'Cause otherwise I don't really get it.


Puzzle felt a little harder than normal, but I think that was due almost entirely to the lower half of the grid, specifically the nonsense theme answers, which I did not understand were part of the theme at all until very late. I actually thought AH COMPLEX was a thing I had just never heard of. I knew something weird was going on when I got to THE T WILL SET YOU FREE. And then I absolutely could not get into the very very far SW section, so I knew something was up with whatever those three letters were preceding ADMISSION as well. I actually had to go searching around the grid to find out which sports star had been ejected there, because crosses just weren't helpful enough—never heard of OTOMI, and was never every gonna see ROSY with just -SY in place (I do not think of "Pollyannaish" as being ROSY—a Pollyanna naively believes that things will turn out ROSY. Also had no idea ARM CHILI was a themer for a time, so that was hard. I really liked some of the fill, like MALCOLMX and CAFFEINE FIX. But FIJIISLANDS seems ridiculous to me—how is that different from, uh, FIJI? I guess we call Hawaii the "Hawaiian islands," sometimes, but ... that answer felt off. Also, SHE BEAR??? Is that real? (18A: Den mother) Is that a thing? Yikes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]