Aspic-like dish / THU 8-15-19 / Filled steamed bun in Chinese cuisine / Bromantic activity / Travelocity mascot

Constructor: Andrew Zhou

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:00)

THEME: REVERSE ENGINEER (55A: Take apart in order to reproduce ... or a hint to what's hidden in 17-, 23-, 34- and 46-Across) — you can find the names of famous "engineers" backwards (or "reversed") inside of the themers (bracketed numbers after each clue indicate how many letters long each engineer's name is):

Theme answers:

• TRUE OR FALSE TEST (17A: Easy quiz to grade [5]) (Nikola Tesla)
• MALE BONDING (23A: Bromantic activity [5]) (Alfred Nobel)
• NO SIDE EFFECTS (34A: Drugmaker's claim [6]) (Thomas Alva Edison)
• LUCILLE BALL (46A: TV star with a museum in Jamestown, N.Y. [4]) (Alexander Graham Bell)

Word of the Day: GELÉE (33D: Aspic-like dish) —

1: a cosmetic gel gelée skin cleansers

2: a jellied food : an edible jelly peach gelée (merriam-webster.com)

Really like this theme, and the fill is largely solid, so congrats to the constructor. The editor, however ... let's just get the embarrassing stuff out of the way right off the bat. There is no reason to clue ESTATES like that (13D: Jamaica ___, N.Y. (childhood home of Donald Trump)). Why would you do that? Why drag the most influential white supremacist in the world, the one currently torturing and terrorizing child refugees and working to end *legal* immigration for "takers" (i.e. brown people), why are you waving at him? Do you think, Will, that it's cute. That it's funny to troll "sensitive" solvers (the, uh, ones who hate racists and sexual assailants)? The word was ESTATES. It's a common word you can clue a million ways. It wasn't IVANKA, an answer you can clue just one way. It's ESTATES. ESTATES. And you decided you'd do a little nostalgic trip to the childhood home of the guy who inspired recent mass shootings with his nativist "invasion" rhetoric? Like, for funsies? If it was the constructor's clue, you should've changed it. If it was yours ... I don't even know. I don't understand your love affair with this terrible human being. Inclusion of him here is gratuitous and therefore disgusting.

[34A: NO SIDE EFFECTS]

This felt very easy for the most part, but hoo-boy did I get stymied by the whole RICES / OCEANAUT / GLUES / GELÉE mash-up in the NE. I had RIVES for 16A: Splits into bits (RICES), which kept the already-hard OCEANAUT very very hidden from me (11D: Sub tenant?). And though apparently GELÉE has been in the puzzle multiple times in the nearly 13 years I've been blogging, it's hardly ever had a food-related clue. Before today, just two. Here's the list of GELÉE clues:

[from xwordinfo]

Five things:

• 4D: Filled and steamed bun, in Chinese cuisine (BAO) — I cannot believe I actually made a pitch for these to appear more often in crosswords earlier this summer, and yet when one appeared, I actually totally blanked at BA-. Wanted BAP for a second. I think (Korean!!!) Bee-Bim-BOP got in my head (I eat BAO at this Asian fusion place). Ugh, so embarrassing. 
• 35D: Eclipse (OUTRIVAL)— I just want to say how dumb I think this word is. I wanted OUTSHINE. You both try to shine, but one outshines the other. You both try to play, but one outplays the other. You both try to ... rival??? It's weird. 
• 60A: ___ Mongolia (INNER) — I had OUTER, of course
• 34D: Attention-getting phrase (NOTA BENE) — oof, also very hard. I was looking for something like PSSSSSST. I guess that's not a phrase. How about PSST AHEM?
• 3D: So, humorously (THUSLY)— aw, I kinda like good old THUSLY. Don't laugh at poor THUSLY. He means well.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I laughed hard at 4A: Apt hairstyle for a gunslinger? (BANGS). I neeeeeed pictures.

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