Woman's name that means violet / THU 8-6-20 / Political party founded in 1966 / TV host with memoir born a crime / Container brand that lost its trademark status in 1963

Theme answers:

• THE BLACK PANTHERS (19A: Political party founded in 1966) / RED WHITE AND BLUE (3D: Old Glory)
• EGG WHITE (9A: Ingredient separated and whipped in meringue) / BLACK HOLE (12D: Outer space phenomenon photographed for the first time in 2019)
• TELLING A WHITE LIE (56A: Saying "You've never looked better," maybe) / ROLLING BLACKOUT (25D: It might prevent an overload of the power grid)
• BLACKTOP (67A: Many a country road) / SNOW WHITE (52D: "Grimms' Fairy Tales" heroine)

Word of the Day: Judith IVEY (57D: Two-time Tony-winning actress Judith) —

Judith Lee Ivey (born September 4, 1951) is an American actress and theatre director. She twice won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performances in Steaming (1981) and Hurlyburly (1984).

Ivey also appeared in several films and television series. For her role in What the Deaf Man Heard (1997), she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. (wikipedia)

This whole thing was pretty straightforward. Took me almost no time to figure out the gimmick, and ... I mean, it's just "black" one way, "white" the other, the end. Not too exciting. The GRAY / AREA bit is kind of a clever twist (black and white do technically make gray), but then that little bit didn't show up in my software, so I had to read about it in a note. I thought the revealer was oddly placed—it seemed off-center—but then I realized this was a sixteen-wide grid, and thus there is no central Down column and the two-part revealer does in fact sit in the center, with the two parts of the answer rotationally symmetrical to one another. With the theme being a kind of non-event (containing no revelations and causing no struggles), the fill became more important, or I noticed it more, and was bothered by it somewhat more than I would've been (probably) if the theme had been captivating. I got real mad at SML, which is horrible fill to begin with, and then the way it's clued seems to ask for a plural, so I thought the answer would have to be SMS (like ... "smalls"?) ... but it's SML as in "small, medium, large," which, if you've bought any article of clothing with that sizing system, you know is an incomplete list of options (things go to XL at a minimum, and often many Xs higher). I'm not sure how you can justify (any more?) SML as a stand-alone answer. Retire it, please. Thank you. Anyway, SML and IONE (as clued) (46A: Woman's name that means "violet") and ANA (which I can never remember, as clued) (40D: Carrier to Tokyo) slowed me down a bit there in the east. Nothing else proved very difficult at all, except TREPID, which I kind of refuse to accept as a word without its IN- lead in (4D: Hesitant to act). Literally never seen anyone described as TREPID. TREPID is like "choate" or "gruntled"—not buying it.

BLIND PIG was cool (26A: Speakeasy, by another name), but in general I expected the fill to be nicer, given the wider grid and the way two of the theme squares are buried in the corners, leaving the grid as a whole without a ton of thematic pressure on it. Or maybe there actually *was* a lot of thematic pressure on the grid from those longer crossing themers and I should be impressed the grid is as clean as it is. I can't really tell. I just know that I kept running into not-great overfamiliar stuff like ELIHU and AANDE and ONEBC. I think STET is better than STES (69A: Fr. religious figures). "IS IT?" you might ask. Yes. Yes it is. In all, I think this puzzle is fine, if bland. I mean, GRAY ... it fits. It's apt. It's not sunny, it's not dark, or stormy, it's just ... gray. Gray can be nice. I sometimes like a gray day. But it doesn't crackle and you're not apt to remember it. Oh, and before I forget, TELLING A (WHITE) LIE is inching toward EATING A (BIG) SANDWICH territory. I'll give you TELL A LIE, and, *maybe*, past tense (TOLD) or 3rd-person (TELLS) variations. Make it a participle phrase, and I start to balk. Add (WHITE) and I very much balk. You have entered the realm of green paint. It stands out because all the other themers (to their credit) are tight (and ROLLING BLACKOUT, btw, is the best thing in the grid, imho).

Take care. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. I am having the MOST annoying problem with tags in Blogger so if you have good computer skills and think you can help me figure out how to deal with deleting ALL tags that aren't days of the week or constructor names, please shoot me an email at rexparker at icloud dot com, many thanks

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