Tokarczuk 2018 Literature Nobelist / MON 11-9-20 / Unstable chemical compound / Trending hashtag beginning in 2017 / Lures for magazine readers

Constructor: Kate Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Challenging (look, I was nearly a minute over my average ... it's only 74 words, that's probably part of it (?) ... I dunno what happened, man ...) (high 3s, which is a sluggish Tuesday time for me)

THEME: P-LL— a vowel progression theme, with the first themer starting PALL, and then each subsequent themer moving that vowel one notch up, til you get to PULL:

Theme answers:

• PALLBEARER (17A: Raiser of the dead?)
• PELL GRANT (24A: Financial aid for college that doesn't need to be repaid)
• PILL BUG (37A: Arthropod that can roll into a ball)
• POLL TAKER (49A: Busy person just before an election)
• PULL QUOTES (59A: Lures for magazine readers)

Word of the Day: OLGA Tokarczuk, 2018 Literature Nobelist (16A) —

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk ([tɔˈkart͡ʂuk]; born 29 January 1962) is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual who has been described in Poland as one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful authors of her generation. In 2018, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights (translated by Jennifer Croft). In 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. (wikipedia)

Distracted by the fact that this was clued to Tuesday, possibly easy Wednesday levels of difficulty. Most easy puzzles are 78 or 76 words, this one's 74 (so, more wide open), but the problem for me was just a lot of clues that were not clear or seemed more Fri / Sat or ... just weren't Monday. This has nothing specifically to do with whether the puzzle is inherently good or not; but the editor put it on the wrong day, imho. The theme type is definitely Mondayish, but it didn't flow like a Monday at all. Started right away with CAT at 1A: Thing with pads and claws (PAW). Looking for a CAT part, I guess. This made PUPIL (already bizarrely clued) really hard to see (1D: Necessity for a teacher). Then the first themer had a "?" clue (even though this is not a "?" / wacky-type theme—as I've said before, I hate this). So I had no idea re: PALLBEARER until I had many crosses. No idea who the OLGA Literature Nobelist is (I remember looking her up briefly several years ago when she won, just as I looked her up briefly just now ... and I'm going to forget her just as quickly, I suspect—totally crossworthy, but not at all Monday material). Not sure about the APE part of GOES APE (9D: Flips out). No idea re: COCKAPOO, which I kinda wanted but couldn't spell and anyway kinda thought was a bird (?!) (I was thinking "cockatiel" ... I think) (31A: Mixed-breed dog that's part spaniel). Not sure about ENOL (25D: Unstable chemical compound). Wanted an actual company name, not just CASH, at 31D: Alternative to Venmo. Was not at all sure of how many Rs and Ls were in RAPPELS, and wanted some kind of two-word phrase before RAPPELS ever became clear. Clue on METOO was vague, so even ME- didn't do it for me (44D: Trending hashtag beginning in 2017). Wanted a MARE to be doing the kicking (56D: Farm animal that kicks). Worst of all, though, where the non-theme stuff is concerned, was the clue on SWAG, which I could not at all accept (57A: Appropriate initials of "stuff we all get"). It should just say [Initials of "stuff we all get"] or [S, W, A, G]. The thing is, the NYTXW never, ever just hands you an acronym like that, so I figured I was misreading or misunderstanding something. It's like cluing NOW as [National Organization for Women, for short]. What the hell? So I hesitated a bunch before acquiescing to the criminal obviousness. Awful.