Squire in Wind in Willows / TUE 11-26-19 / Classic American novel set in France Spain / Anxiety about exclusion per modern acronym

Constructor: Olivia Mitra Framke

Relative difficulty: Medium (for me; other people seem to be setting personal records, so i dunno)

THEME: TAROT CARD READER (63A: One examining the starts of 17-, 27- and 48-Across)— themers begin with three different tarot cards: THE TOWER, THE DEVIL, and THE SUN:

Theme answers:

• THE TOWER OF BABEL (17A: It resulted in human language division, per Genesis)
• THE DEVIL YOU KNOW (27A: It's better than what's not familiar, in a saying)
• "THE SUN ALSO RISES" (48A: Classic American novel set in France and Spain)

Word of the Day: ENOS Slaughter (37A: Baseball Hall-of-Famer Slaughter) —

Enos Bradsher Slaughter (April 27, 1916 – August 12, 2002), nicknamed "Country", was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) right fielder. He played for 19-seasons on four major league teams from 1938–1942 and 1946–1959. He is noted primarily for his playing for the St. Louis Cardinals and is best known for scoring the winning run in Game Seven of the 1946 World Series. A ten time All-Star, he has been elected to both the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame. (wikipedia)

If you are reading this, I am fifty. Well, at least fifty. It's possible you are reading this in the distant future, I suppose. Anyway, it's my birthday. Sadly, it's also a Tuesday, which is one of my less hopeful crossword days. Tuesdays are so often dismal that there's even slang for a bad easy puzzle: "it tuezzed!" I think my friend Ben coined this. Anyway, Tuesdays are notoriously iffy. Why they should be such a drop off from Mondays, average quality-wise, I don't know. I think they're in a kind of no man's land, difficulty-wise and theme type-wise, and so often things just go awry. It's like a dumping ground for easy puzzles that were maybe too awkward to be truly easy. Anyway, they clunk more than most other days of the week. Given my very low expectations, I thought today's offering was fine. The tarot card choices are totally arbitrary—there are 22 cards, and these are just the three that you can make good 15-letter themers out of, I guess. So little does the tarot deck mean to me, I actually sincerely wrote in ZENER as the first word in the revealer. ZENER cards are used to test ESP, if I remember correctly. The only time I encounter either TAROT or ZENER is in crosswords. Ooh, except I do own a Red Sonja tarot deck, which I haven't opened. It just sits on a shelf here in my office next to my Saul Goodman action figure, a plush pig, an N*SYNC-themed die cast toy truck (Lance!) and a Duran Duran cassette. It's quite a shelf, to be honest.

Five things:

• 2D: Adolph ___, creator of the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" (OCHS)— forgot this. Went with OTIS. The elevator guy. Terrible. Not as auspicious way to begin age 50. 
• 12D: ___ out a living (barely gets by) (EKES) — eeks. I can (barely) take EKE, but other variations / tenses are a drag, if only because of the ugly clues they entail.
• 11D: Bum (HOBO)— yeesh, easy on the "bum" stuff. In fact, here, read this: "Unlike a "tramp", who works only when forced to, and a "bum", who does not work at all, a "hobo" is a travelling worker" (wikipedia)
• 42A: Duke of ___, title for Prince Andrew (YORK)— yes ... yes ... because what everyone wants to see in their light-hearted Tuesday crossword is a gruesome Jeffrey Epstein associate. What a delightful and timely way to clue YORK. (My kingdom for a conscientious or even half-awake editor!)

• 64D: First of three? (TEE)— because "t" is the first letter ... of the word "three." 

Thanks for listening! Hope your lead-up to Thanksgiving is going swimmingly. Ciao!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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