Nicolas standout player in soccer's Premier League / SUN 11-29-20 / Brand of cologne with literary name / Cloth used in theater backdrops / Compulsive thieves informally / Dancer with glowsticks often / Supporting musician in jazz band

Constructor: Eric Berlin

Relative difficulty: Easy (9:20)

THEME:"Six-Pack"— wacky phrases where first and second parts of the phrase have 6-letter overlap; in the grid, the overlap is represented literally, with the words entered into the grid as if they were actually overlapping. Thus:

Theme answers:

• EPHEMERAL EMERALDS => EPHEMERALDS (23A: Very short-lived gemstones?)
• AIREDALE RED ALERT => AIREDALERT (3D: Emergency situation caused by a terrier?)
• GILGAMESH GAME SHOW => GILGAMESHOW (34A: TV quiz program about an epic poem?)
• SUPERMAN PERMANENT => SUPERMANENT (11D: Salon job named after a comic book hero?)
• FIRST-RATE STRATEGY => FIRSTRATEGY (93A: Magnificent plan of action?)
• HAMMERING MERINGUE => HAMMERINGUE (63D: Pounding on a pie topping?)
• OBAMACARE MACARENA => OBAMACARENA (107A: Dance celebrating 2010 legislation?)
• WISEACRE SEACREST => WISEACREST (74D: Entertainment host Ryan, that smart aleck!?)

Word of the Day: Nicolas PÉPÉ (25A: Nicolas ___, standout player in soccer's Premier League) —

Nicolas Pépé (born 29 May 1995) is a professional footballer who plays as a winger for Premier League club Arsenal and the Ivory Coast national team.

Pépé began his senior club career with Poitiers in the Championnat de France Amateur 2. He signed for Angers in 2013, aged 18, and spent a season on loan at Orléans in 2015. He signed for Lille in 2017, and was named to the UNFP Ligue 1 Team of the Year in the 2018–19 season. That summer, Pépé joined Arsenal for a club-record fee of £72 million, and won the FA Cup in his debut season.

Pépé, who was born in France to parents of Ivorian descent, made his debut for the Ivory Coast on 15 November 2016 in a friendly against France. (wikipedia)

80D: Mustachioed Springfield resident

I see what the puzzle is doing, but I don't quite know why it is doing it, considering there's no real humor or wackiness payoff. There's just a kind of grid gibberish. "Ephemeral emeralds" is kinda fun to say, but EPHEMERALDS ... actually, you know what, that's almost fun to say. That one may be the best of the lot. But take SUPERMANENT. There's just no way to make that funny as one word. I get that the way that the answers are entered in the grid is merely a visual representation of the full phrase, but even then ... is FIRST-RATE STRATEGY fun ... on any level? This is an architectural exercise. On that level, I guess it's a success. But as a bit of entertainment, it's something of a thud. You do have to do some fancy thinking to get everything to work out, but ultimately it's pretty easy. In fact, probably much easier than if the theme phrases had appeared in the grid completely. This way, every time you get *one* of those six letters in the overlap, you're actually getting *two* letters of the entire phrase. So, yeah, the theme felt very easy to untangle once you tumbled to the core concept. Beyond that, you've got a solid if fairly old-fashioned grid. When's the last time anyone said PEP PILL? Sounds like some kind of '50s/''60s euphemism for speed. When's the last time someone was STINKO? (aside from in the '40s/'50s movies I watch all the time)? Still, beyond the always-awful INAPILE and the plural suffix -ENES, nothing really grates today. I really liked SIDEMAN on the "side" of the grid with its plus one, PLUS ONE. Quite a pair, those two. Mostly, though, this was a thrill-less task.