Suffix meaning little one / TUE 12-17-13 / Bruce who played Dr Watson / Supercute marsupials / Hemingway novel title location / Italian granny

Constructor: Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: NBA (54A: Org. found in the answer to each asterisked clue)

Theme answers:

• 17A: *Sheriff's insignia, in old westerns (TINBADGE) 
• 3D: *Tanning method (SUN BATH)
• 29A: *Actor named in a "Six Degrees" game (KEVIN GAME) —wtf is "a 'Six Degrees' game"? There's only one such game. It's not a genre of game. It's "Six Degrees of KEVIN BACON." The "a" is comical, and not in a good way.
• 11D: *Recover, as lost love (WIN BACK)
• 46A: *Tangy breakfast item (ONION BAGEL) —"tangy" is not an adjective I'd ever use to describe this breakfast item. Orange juice is tangy.
• 40D: *Tommy's game in the Who's rock opera "Tommy" (PINBALL)
• 44D: *Feature of many a charity gala (OPEN BAR)
• 59A: *Packers' hometown (GREEN BAY)

Word of the Day: KIR (57D: ___ Royale (cocktail)) —

A drink consisting of dry white wine or champagne flavored with cassis. (thefreedictionary.com)

Pretty bad. Just because you manage to shove eight theme answers in there doesn't mean it was worth it. With no concept and no real revealer, this is just a bunch of theme answers that happen to have a letter string in common. Snore. What's the point? And yet I should probably be grateful for the theme, since the theme answers are the only tolerable part of the puzzle. They look positively Gorgeous next to the rest of the mediocre-to-horrid stuff that dominates the grid—stuff a real pro should have down to a bare minimum, even in a theme-dense grid. Buncha sounds like HOS (ugh!) and HAHA and OOP OOH NAH. The NW alone is a disaster zone. SATI?! *and* THESEA *and* ACADS *and* the totally arbitrary SCENEV? And then, all over: KNT, ENT, KIR (Yet Again), ASON, ULA, AARE, SNERT, GES, NONNA. The repetitiveness of RELY ON  / SPIT ON / IN ON. And for what? A no-concept letter-string puzzle. Depressing. No care. No craft. Adequate, perhaps, but you'd think more would be expected of Old Hands.


That's all.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld