Boxer who retired in 2017 / 1980s spinoff of Dukes of Hazard / 1947 Hope Crosby film / Rural husband in 1940s-50s film series

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:36) (on an oversized grid!)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TREF (24A: Like shellfish) —

adjective

Judaism . unfit to be eaten or used, according to religious laws; not kosher. (dictionary.com)

Weirdly, the part of this puzzle that took me the longest to work out was the MUSIC part of PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC. I wanted DRUGS, but that wasn't working, and since I could not for the life of me figure out how to make anything but SURE out of S--E (31D: Certain), which couldn't be right because it was already in the grid (29D), I just ... went elsewhere. Polished off the rest of the grid and finally just closed in on MUSIC (and SOME). Don't really think PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC is worth a 16-wide grid. Maybe that's because I just don't like that music that much. It's the kind of white-guy music that never did anything for me. I'd much rather listen to the soundtrack to "Risky Business," which I don't even remember except for that "Old Time Rock N Roll" bit with Tom Cruise in his underwear, which clearly isn't TANGERINE DREAM at all, but Bob Seger ... wait, where was I? Oh, who cares? What I did dig were all the D.D. answers. The DON DELILLO DINNER DATE followed by the DATA DUMP. Made me slightly worried there was some kind of theme going on that I just couldn't make out.


I could do without CSA generally, but if you gotta use it, I'd much rather see it clued via the Much More Common Modern Usage: Community-Supported Agriculture. Just google CSA if you don't believe me. CSAs are Farmers Market fixtures. Common way to eat and support the growing of local produce. So, yeah, I'd like that instead of the slavery-loving traitorous dipshits, please (52A: Grp. with the motto "Deo vindice"). ENTRAIN is another thing I would ditch forever if I ruled the world. Nothing else about this puzzle bugs me much.  Whoops, spoke too soon. I forgot about the clue on E.S.P. (13D: Inexplicable skill). Yeah, it's "inexplicable" because It's Not A Skill At All. It Doesn't Exist. If your clue doesn't indicate in some way that E.S.P. is bullshit, then your clue sucks, and is making all of us dumber and more susceptible to con artists and conspiracy theorists and Dr. Ozzes etc. Here is the way you should always clue E.S.P., imho:


Got totally fooled by the boxer (or rather, Boxer) clue. Even when I had BARBARA I thought it was some dude's last name, or maybe a stage name (think "barbarous" or "barbarian"). Only other thing that gave me real trouble was OTTO, because I got the "O" first and put in ODIE. [Comics canine] is succcch a dull clue. Something OTTO-specific would've been much more pleasant and entertaining. I feel bad for the non-baseball fans because CHET Lemon is a pretty tough clue, but I don't feel too bad because I'm a Tigers fan and CHET Lemon was cool as hell.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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