Company that introduced Etch A Sketch / SUN 12-15-19 / Daily cable show that's covered Hollywood since 1991 / Airer of Arrow iZombie / French schoolteacher / Interval known as devil in music / Political figure on whom Snowball is based in Animal Farm

Constructor: Christina Iverson and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (11:14)

THEME:"Doing a Double Take"— circled letters, read down the left and then down the right, read CASTOR and POLLUX. They are THE GEMINI (32A: This puzzle's subjects, by another name). So then ... OK, there's a baseball term TWIN KILLING (73D: Baseball double play, in slang ... or a hint to understanding the 12 Across answers that have circles), and that is supposed to explain the fact that you have to "kill" the "twin" (i.e. ignore the circled letters) in order to make sense of the Across themers. And then there's ST. ELMO'S FIRE, which has something to do with THE GEMINI, and so ties in ... that way ... (72D: Weather phenomenon whose double lights were said to represent this puzzle's subjects) here might be seven or eight more theme-related things in here that I can't say, but just explaining this much has been exhausting. Oh, and the themers themselves are twins, i.e. PITCHY appears twice, PRO TEAM appears twice, etc. But with different letters removed in each case, those answers play like two different words.

Theme answers:

• PITCHYs are PITHY and ITCHY
• PROTEAMs are PRO TEM and PR TEAM
• STRIPLINGs are TRIPLING and STRIPING
• LEVITES are LEVIES and E-VITES
• MOUSSESes are MUSSES and MOSSES
• BOXERSes are BOXES and BOERS

Word of the Day: ZOE (83D: Orange Sesame Street monster) —

Introduced [in 1993] to increase the number of strong female Sesame Street Muppets, Zoe is a three-year-old Muppet who loves to sing and dance. She is strong-willed, confident, has a big imagination, and owns a pet rock named Rocco. (wikipedia)

I have not had such visceral negative feelings about a puzzle *while I was solving it* in a good long while. It was not hard to pick up the circled letter gimmick, but it was a bit grim to have to navigate that gimmick twelve times and then to run into all these other quasi-revealers, one of which has to do with baseball, another with sailing... this is one of those puzzles that you are meant to ooh and aah at when you're done ("what an architectural marvel!") but the fill is so compromised, the grid so fussy, the expression of the theme so murky and strained, that I just don't get the appeal. I do not and will never understand why anyone would want to solve a puzzle that needs an explainer at the end so you can appreciate just how great it is and just how much you really should have enjoyed solving it. This puzzle lost me at OHIOART (what the actual hell??) and never got me back. The more complicated the theme seemed, the less I cared. No one says "YES, MOM." I'll give you YES, MAAM and YES, DEAR and then we're done. This puzzle's pretty biblical. GOEST *and* EAT OF??. And then the onslaught of short stuff, SYS SASE MAI etc I mean it's bludgeoning. I am quite certain that the layers of themeness here are many and intricate, and that making this took a good deal of technical skill. But I viscerally disliked solving this thing from about twenty seconds in until I was done, and then for a while after as I (resentfully) went back and hunted down all the theme elements. Give me one good AHA moment and you can take alllllllllll of this.
Much of this also was just either not on my wavelength or else ... just made up of things that I only kind of knew were things (PINE LOG, MUD TIRE ... those do sound thingish ... I suppose). No idea there was an AMELIA (Earhart?) biopic in '09, so no idea that Hilary Swank was in it, obviously. OHIOART, we've covered. I don't know any Sesame Street characters introduced since 1980 (except maybe Elmo??) so had trouble with ZOE (83D: Orange Sesame Street monster). There are actual human women named ZOE you could've gone to here, but ... moving on. Not familiar with TRITONE (128A: Interval known as "The devil in music" on account of its unsettling sound) and somehow that neverending explainy clue helped not at all (usu. when clues add explainy bits, they have helpful elements, not just random trivia). Whoever clued LPS (21D: Retro-cool music purchases) should be fired. No one buys LPS 'cause they're "retro-cool." Also, sales of LPS went *up* in the last decade, so ... not as "retro" as you might think. Also probably not really "cool" at all. Also, "Cool" is in the grid so shouldn't be in your clue in the first place. Also, "I'M COOL" is what you say when someone offers you ... food? Drugs? I'd say "I'm good," or "I'm set."
ONKP rears its dumb head again—really thought that answer was dead. All this short fill, in such a huge grid, really just ground me down. Again, "fussy" is the word that feels most relevant. A rococo theme and then all these nooks and crannies filled with the dust of crosswords past (HST!). I'm gonna stop talking about this puzzle now because it's not going to go anywhere good. Again, I tip my hat to the elaborate theme construction. If someone just showed this to me and explained it, I'd probably be duly impressed. Problem was I had to actually solve it. And that has made all the difference.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. was going to do a crossword subscription gift guide this week, but have been sick all week soooo I'll do it next week.

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