Traffic go-ahead that should be followed four times in this puzzle / THU 5-6-21 / Certain Miller beers / Persistently demanded payment from / Nickname for tap-dancing legend Bill Robinson / French river in W.W. I fighting / Nail polish brand with Bubble Bath shade

• ALTERED STATE (2D: Drunkenness or hypnosis)
• PUREBRED DOGS (9D: Poodles, but not schnoodles or doodles)
• CURED MEAT (31D: Pancetta or prosciutto)
• CHECKERED FLAG (18D: Something waved when a race is won)

Word of the Day:

Nathanael “Nate” Bargatze (born March 25, 1979) is an American comedian and actor from Old Hickory, Tennessee. He started at "The Boston" in New York City. He's known for his special on Comedy Central Presents, has appeared multiple times on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Bargatze was part of Jimmy Fallon’s "Clean Cut Comedy Tour" in 2013. He won New York’s Comedy Festival and the Boston Comedy Festival in the same year. He wrote for the Spike TV Video Game Awards, and has performed multiple times for Coalition forces in Iraq and Kuwait. He was mentioned in Rolling Stone by Marc Maron as a "comic who should be big" and in Esquire by Jim Gaffigan as one of the top up-and-coming comics. [...] 

His most recent standup special, "The Greatest Average American", was released on Netflix on March 18, 2021. It was filmed outdoors at Universal Studios Hollywood. (wikipedia)

1A: "How to Be an Anti-___" (best-selling book of 2020)

It's like the grid just comes stumbling into the party like "Hey, I'm RACIST!" and the clue is over there desperately waving its hands like "No no no no, notRACIST, notRACIST, I swear, here, look, look at the clue! 'Anti-'! 'Anti-'! SEE! ... Please don't write us letters!" Using RACIST for your 1-Across ... that is some kind of choice, that is. Quite the opening gambit. Where do we go from there? Well, straight into the theme, actually, which I picked up about as quick as I've ever picked up a trick theme—a two-trick theme, I guess, since you've got the rebus square ("RED") and the turn. Had the first themer filled in and the concept largely locked down before I ever left the above-screengrabbed section of the grid:

So, aside from the fact that it's easy to get and plays out rather monotonously, there are a couple of noteworthy problems with the RIGHT ON RED theme. One is little-ish. The other ... less so. So the little-ish problem is that the clue on RIGHT ON RED isn't a thing. That is, there's no such "Traffic go-ahead." No signs say that, exactly, and you are certainly never "directed" to make a RIGHT ON RED. You sometimes see signs saying that such an action is permitted, of course. RIGHT ON RED is a thing one may do under certain circumstances, but it's not a "directive" in any meaningful sense of the word. And in the puzzle, you *must* go RIGHT ON RED. Again, the clue is the problem here. It could easily have been rewritten. Something along the lines of [Permitted action blah blah blah ... or required action four times in this grid], something like that. Phrase it how you will (e.g. "... or what you must do four times blah blah"), you get the idea. 

The bigger, much bigger problem with the RIGHT ON RED theme is that the answers actually go left. They go left. Yes they do. They go to *your* right, but the answers. Turn. Left. And hey, don't take my word for it—here's the New York Times Crossword Puzzle from January 21, 2021. Let's see what it has to say:

The gimmick here was that the answer was to turn either Left or Right depending on whether an "L" or "R" appeared in the circled square. You can see that Every Single One of the circled themers above disproves today's puzzle's idea of what direction "Right" is. Upper left is BOREDOM ... see how it turns right at the "R," but goes to our left!? See how CHARGED does the same in the SW. And then EVIL ONE turns left at the "L," but goes to our right!? Yes, that's how directions work. Our right is not the answer's right. Quite the opposite, in fact. Thank you for coming to my extremely remedial Ted Talk.

Not much else to say about the puzzle. No idea what RED DOGS are or who NATE Bargatze is, but these things happen ("these things" being "my not knowing stuff"). They're fine answers. I forgot the MARNE, which is the precise opposite of what you're supposed to do ... oh, dang, I'm thinking of the MAINE:

And the ALAMO, of course. DUNNED is an old-fashioned word that a bunch of people won't know, but I've seen DUN enough in (old) crosswords, and probably (old) literature, that it feels like an everyday word to me (51D: Persistently demanded payment from). DUN is also a color, I think (yes, a "dull grayish-brown color," per google). I have this vague memory of a book from my childhood called The Dun Cow or something like that ... wow, yes, The Book of the Dun Cow. 

1978

Just seeing the cover gives me strong flashbacks. I think my mom read this to us, or tried to, when I was 8 or 9 years old. I remember nothing about it. And yet ... it's based on Chaucer's "Nun's Priest's Tale" ... and I went on (20 years later) to write much of my dissertation on Chaucer. Coincidence!? Well, yes, surely. Still, interesting. To me, if no one else.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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