Constructor: Kate Hawkins
Relative difficulty: Easyish (untimed)
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THEME: BILLY CLUB (66A: Nightstick ... or what might form if the beginnings of 14-, 20-, 37- and 58-Across started paying dues?) — first part of each theme answer is also the last name of a famous BILLY:
Theme answers:
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Can't quibble with the core idea here. It works. Take a [blank] CLUB phrase, then make your themers' first words (or word parts) all types of [blank]. It's cookie-cutter, but cookie cutters make very neat shapes, so conceptually, this is fine. What made this puzzle completely off-putting for me was the revealer. I'll be blunt: I wring an enthusiastic "aha!" from an instrument of police brutality, especially not at the end of a year dominated by said brutality and the vocal, world-changing resistance thereto. I wouldn't want to see BILLY CLUB in any puzzle, in any position, and I especially don't want it posing for cute pictures in the revealer position. Themes are hard, so if you find one that works, I applaud you, but with some themes ... just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Relative difficulty: Easyish (untimed)
Theme answers:
- OCEAN VIEW (14A: It might cost extra at a beach resort)
- CRYSTAL BALL (20A: Clairvoyant's accessory)
- GRAHAM CRACKER (37A: Key lime pie crust ingredient)
- PORTERHOUSE (58A: Cut above the rest?)
Billy Porter (born September 21, 1969) is an American actor and singer. He attended the Musical Theater program at Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School's School of Drama, graduated from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, and achieved fame performing on Broadway before starting a solo career as a singer and actor.Porter won the 2013 Best Actor in a Musical for his role as Lola in Kinky Boots at the 67th Tony Awards. He credits the part for "cracking open" his feminine side to confront toxic masculinity. For the role, Porter also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. In 2014 Porter won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for Kinky Boots. He currently stars in the television series Pose for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the first openly gay black man to be nominated and win in any lead acting category at the Primetime Emmys.
Porter is included in Time magazine 's 100 Most Influential People of 2020. (wikipedia)
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My other substantial objection to the puzzle has nothing to do with the theme; it's the PINYON (?) / ESO crossing. That is a horrendous crossing. If you have never heard of the PINYON tree (raises hand) then that vowel in ESO is a complete and utter guess. Hell, even if you *have* heard of the PINYON tree, there's a reasonable chance that you're not certain how to spell it. The only way I guessed "O" correctly there was by "knowing" (erroneously, it turns out) that PINYAN was already a thing—the romanization system for Chinese. Turns out that's PINYIN, but whatever, I made the right choice, which is what counts, and yet ... that is not how anyone should have to make a choice on the final letter. 23A: That: Sp. can be ESO or ESA, so the cross for that last letter has to be crystal (!) clear and undeniable. I submit that the last vowel in a regional tree, in this case, is not clear and undeniable. I mean, if you tried to analogize from other trees that end -Y-blank-N, you probably *would* have gone with the "A," since the BANYAN tree exists (and is the national tree of India, in fact). All the editor had to do here is clue ESO in a way where grammatical gender was a given (I've never prayed for "ESO Beso" before, but Oh, Lord Anka, hear my plea!). But no. We get ambigu-clue. :/
Not a lot else to say here. The fill seems fine. I forgot that MAISIE was the title character in those detective novels, but I'm happy to be reminded. They're very popular (24A: ___ Dobbs, title detective in Jacqueline Winspear books). I don't think AFTRA is particularly great fill (9A: SAG-___ (media labor union)). If you wanna clue SAG as a union, that's fine, any time: the SAG Awards make that particular acronym well known and thus fair game. But AFTRA is just the butt-end of a hyphenated name. Not great stand-alone material. It sounds like an off-brand aftershave. Oh my god, "Afta" ... "after" ... is AFTA aftershave an aural pun? Wow, I just got that. Sorry I have no similar revelations about ATRA or AFLAC at this time. Good day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld