Walled city on coast of France / TUE 10-15-19 / Spouter in Moby-Dick / Old rocket stage / Late 1990s must have toy

Constructor: Julie Bérubé

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (my time was over average, but it's 16 wide, and I totally misread the second themer clue, both of which inflated my time in ways that had zero to do with pure difficulty) (4:03)

THEME: ARK (13D: Holder of the contents of the circled squares?) — themers all contain an animal name twice, so ... you know, two by two, Noah's ARK, etc. . . .

Theme answers:

• MAN-TO-MAN TALK (18A: Frank discussion, perhaps)
• PASS/FAIL CLASSES (24A: Courses without letter grades)
• BEEP BEEP! (40A: Road Runner's call)
• CATCH-AS-CATCH-CAN (53A: By whatever means)
• "TORA! TORA! TORA!" (63A: 1970 W.W. II drama with a repetitive name)

Word of the Day: ST. MALO (49D: Walled city on the coast of France) —

Saint-Malo (UK: /sæ̃ ˈmɑːloʊ/, US: /ˌsæ̃ məˈloʊ/, French: [sɛ̃ malo] (listen); Gallo: Saent-Malô; Breton: Sant-Maloù) is a historic French port in Brittany on the Channel coast. 

The walled city had a long history of piracy, earning much wealth from local extortion and overseas adventures. In 1944, the Allies heavily bombarded Saint-Malo, which was garrisoned by German troops. The city changed into a popular tourist centre, with a ferry terminal serving Portsmouth, Jersey, Guernsey and Poole. (wikipedia)

The theme idea is not bad but the execution is very rough. I'm going to say that if 80% of your themers use repeat words to get the desired two-animal effect, you haven't tried very hard with your themers. Or, you haven't tried hard enough. Simply repeating words seems a very cheap way to double the animal count. It's fine to do it once, maybe, but four times out of five? You might also have taken care to keep the animal count in the grid down. This things is ostentatiously plastered with animals, but only some of them are plural. Maybe there are two BISON and two SHEEP, but if the NEWT and the COW are trying to pretend to be a true pair over there in the east, they're not fooling anybody. (NEWT: "... moo?"). Also, there are pretty much four cats on this ARK: the two in CATCH-AS-CATCH-CAN, and then the other two clinging desperately to the edge of CATCH-AS-CATCH-CAN (see CATAN, SCATHE). There's also an extra ANT clinging to the underside of MAN-TO-MAN TALK. Ooh, and another, appropriately, in your PANTS (9D). Further, doesn't the Road Runner go MEEP MEEP??


I zoomed Road Runner-like through most of this, but several significant hang-ups (at least one self-inflicted) led me to a higher-than-average time. The oversized grid probably had a little to do with that as well. The non-gendered clue really really kept me from seeing the very-much-gendered MAN-TO-MAN TALK, which means that I couldn't see the last letter in the damne revealer—I thought maybe the grid was filled with ART? I could see that ANT and ASS were already in circled squares at that point, but I thought, "yeah, sure, you could see an ANT in ART ... and you can *definitely* see ASS"


I then misread the clue on PASS/FAIL CLASSES as "Courses *with* letter grades..." So, since that was the Opposite of what the clue actually said, that didn't help. Also, for no good reason, I couldn't figure out GUARANTEE (5D: Something you should get in writing). So despite filling in most answers very quickly, I had to do some grouting patchwork on these longer mysteries, and that slowed me down. The "must-have" in the FURBY clue did zero for me—hadn't thought about those since the '90s (25D: Late 1990s "must-have" toy). ST. MALO is a ridiculously non-Tuesday answer. It was big in Margaret Farrar's day, probably because of its place in W.W. II history, but it's only been in the NYTXW one other time in the past two decades. For a reason. I spell YECCH thusly, so YECH I was not sure about (45A: "Ugh!"). Other than that, pretty easy going. So, to sum up, the theme was a nice idea but cheaply executed; a more elegant version of this theme wouldn't have had any other animals anywhere; the Road Runner says MEEP MEEP. As for the fill, it is a little heavy on the crosswordese. I am going to renominate AGENA (4A: Old rocket stage) for elimination from your wordlist (or at least your early-week grid wordlist) (you can take AKELA too if you want—or at least use it very sparingly) (58D: Wolf in "The Jungle Book"). Good morning.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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