Struck old-style / SUN 8-9-20 / Ferris Bueller's girlfriend / First Alaskan on major U.S. party ticket / Where to get mullet trimmed / Painter of four freedoms series 1943 / Bygone apple messaging app / Hogwarts professor who was secretly a werewolf

THEME: "Craft Show" — you draw on your puzzle at the end and make a kind of boat. The revealer and its clue explain: 66A: In perfect order ... or, as two words, what's formed by applying the answers for the five starred clues to the circled letters (SHIPSHAPE) (so ... you make a ship shape ... based on the shapes described in the ...

Theme answers:

• LOVE TRIANGLE (36D: *Rick, Ilsa and Victor had one in "Casablanca")
• SECURITY LINE (35D: *Airport logjam)
• STORY ARC (84A: *Multi-episode narrative)
• TOWN SQUARE (113A: *Civic center)
• SKI SLOPE (48A: *Winter vacation destination)

Word of the Day: ST. PIERRE (53D: French island off the coast of Newfoundland) —

Saint Pierre and Miquelon, officially the Overseas Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon (French: Collectivité d'outre-mer de Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, IPA: [sɛ̃.pjɛʁ.e.mi.klɔ̃]), is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France, situated in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean near the Canadian province of  Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the only part of New France that remains under French control, with an area of 242 square kilometres (93 sq mi) and a population of 6,008 [ed: !!!?!?!?] at the March 2016 census.

The islands are situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near the entrance of Fortune Bay, which extends into the southwestern coast of Newfoundland, near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. They are 25 kilometres (16 mi) from the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland and 3,819 kilometres (2,373 mi) from Brest, the nearest city in Metropolitan France. (wikipedia)

Whole lotta mixed feelings about this one. Nice to (finally) see a solo female constructor after more than two weeks without one. And this is conceptually ... well, interesting, at least. You draw a ship on the finished puzzle, and I can tell you I have *definitely* been asked to do that with a Sunday puzzle before (I feel like it was a puzzle about a painting that had been hung "upside-down" in some gallery for a long time and nobody noticed? Does that sound familiar? I may be conflating that puzzle with an entirely different draw-a-ship puzzle—I've been doing this for almost fourteen years ... there've been a lot of puzzles). But you build the puzzles out of shapes, and the themers describe both the shape and the letters you need to connect to make that shape: that is definitely clever. Whether I enjoyed the solving and (esp) the drawing, that's another question, and the answer to that question is an extremely equivocal, "I've definitely had worse times on a Sunday than I had today." The grid has a slightly oldish feel and the fill creaks a bit in places. And yet, honestly, it was probably smoother and more solid than most of the Sunday puzzles of late. The SW corner gets very very rough, but that's also the most thematically dense portion of the grid, with a whole bunch of circled squares crammed into a very tight area, so the roughness is at least explainable. I have never enjoyed puzzles that asked me to treat the finished grid like a child's placemat at IHOP, connecting dots and drawing pictures and what not, but if that sort of thing is your sort of thing, I don't know how you dislike this puzzle. It's ambitious and interesting. It's not for *me*, but it's not bad.

The main issue for me, from a satisfaction standpoint, is that I literally have no idea what two of these ship shapes do. Is the TOWN SQUARE some kind of ... tiller, is it? (nope, it's the rudder ... to my very very small credit, the tiller does control the rudder). And the SKI SLOPE is like ... some kind of narwhal unicorn dealie? Ooh, a bowsprit, is it a bowsprit!? [checks internet] Hoooooooly ****, it is! Ha ha, I'm nautical now, mateys!

It's weird how I know things that I don't know I know. 

I had lots of trouble in precisely two sections of this grid: the aforementioned SW (with its NWT and OHI and TNOTE and plural ANTICS with a singular-looking clue) and then the NW, which was where I started, to very little avail. I had AROAR and ERS and that is it. The clue on NOODLE was completely inscrutable to me, to the bitter end, and ADDL had me ... that's right, addled. I figured [Not incl.] was EXCL. though I also figured that was far too stupid to be plausible. I imagined the coast after a storm would be strewn with driftwood and other detritus, not ERODED. I just whiffed the whole thing and had to back into it later, and even then, that NOODLE answer had me sweating til the very last letter. Other parts of the grid caused pain (SMIT!? LOL wha?) but not the kind associated with real difficulty. I had TIMESUCK before TIMESINK (52D: Endless YouTube viewing, e.g.), SCANTY before SKIMPY (63A: Meager), MOSTLY before MAINLY (119A: By and large), and could not process the silverback gorilla clue at all ("why ... is the answer ALOHA?). That's it, that's the whole experience.

Your final reminder: Lollapuzzoola is one of the best crossword tournaments in the country, is entirely online this year, and it takes place THIS SATURDAY (Aug. 15) from 1pm-7pm. There are lots of different ways to compete, or just get the puzzles and solve in a leisurely fashion at home. All the details are here. Highly recommended.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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