First word of the song Simple Gifts / THU 7-1-21 / Point value commonly assigned to a queen in chess / Instrument that largely replaced the ophicleide

Word of the Day: ST. REGIS (5D: Luxury hotel chain) —

St. Regis Hotels & Resorts is a luxury hotel chain that is part of Marriott International. // In 1904, John Jacob Astor IV built the St. Regis New York as a sister property to his part-owned Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Exhibiting luxury and technological advance, each room had its own telephone. Ownership changes, a new wing, and restorations occurred over the following decades. In 1966, Sheraton Hotels purchased the property. After an extensive restoration in 1991, the hotel became the flagship for the Sheraton premier hotels rebranded as the ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection. In 1998, Starwood acquired the Sheraton brand, and created a new St. Regis brand. In September 2016, Marriott gained the St. Regis chain as part of its acquisition of Starwood. The brand name cannot be used in the lower mainland of British Columbia, because the name is legally owned by the independent St. Regis Hotel, Vancouver, built in 1913.

Opened my puzz file and got one of those notes saying "such-and-such squares look different in the newspaper version, you should solve this in a different format." Sigh. So I opened the newspaper version (or, rather, went to print out the "newspaper version" so I could see what it looked like (and what I saw were these somewhat bigger but *also* (?) slightly askew squares at the ends of the longest Acrosses. Here's the newspaper version:

Those last squares looked like playing cards to me, so I was dreading, I don't know, a poker theme or some such nonsense. Anyway, with the shape of those squares in mind, I just went back and solved my puzzle in my regular software like I always do. And I got the first themer, and then got the second themer and was like "that's it?" Very bored right about here:

Maybe the fact that all the clues are spoken phrases is supposed to give this thing a unified feel, but mostly I didn't feel anything. The squares in the newspaper don't suggest "big"ness so much as jauntiness and wackiness, and the squares in the website version (and app, I assume) aren't especially "big" before you finish the puzzle (at which point the digital crossword pixies magically make them "big"). So the "big"ness just doesn't come across. Newspaper solvers aren't necessarily going to write the letters any "big"ger than they normally do. And my goodness how many wasted 15s is this!? Four, that's how many! That's all I can think of—the phrases themselves are fine, and would look really nice as grid-spanners, but instead their languishing in this half-theme, where three black squares replace the three-letter word "big." The puzzle just doesn't work on a visual level, in any of its versions ... which is the only level that matters. There are some nice longer phrases in the puzzle ("HOW ON EARTH...!,""I'LL ALLOW IT"), and the theme phrases themselves are just fine, but thematically, this fizzles. Also, a much smaller thing issue: the "very" in "THAT'S A VERY (BIG) IF" feels semi-gratuitous. The phrase is "that's a big if." Sure, put an adverb in there if you want, people sometimes do, but the base phrase doesn't have one, so that answer felt artificially stretched for symmetry's sake.

Only a few trouble spots today. I don't really know the ST. REGIS hotel chain, although it must have rung some faint bell because after ST. R- was in place, my brain was able to parse the "ST" as "ST." (i.e. an abbr.) and not the first two letters of a word. And REGIS was the first thing to come to mind. Still, I think I just know the saint, not the hotel. Guess I'm not sufficiently into "luxury." I wrote in APP before GPS (6A: Feature of a smartwatch, e.g.), and then "confirmed" my wrong answer by getting PENDS (7D: Is unresolved). Hate when that happens. That "Simple Gifts" clue on 'TIS meant absolutely nothing to me (58D: First word of the song "Simple Gifts"), until I looked it up just now and read the first lyrics and realized "Oh, the 'Appalachian Spring' song!" 

'Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

Ironic that BEAMER (45D: Visibly happy person) appears in the same grid as "I'LL ALLOW IT" because I will not allow it. And I don't think "NO NEED" is particularly "polite" (29A: Polite refusal). It's brusque, potentially, and at best it's neutral. I mean, sure, it's "polite" enough, more "polite" than "don't bother" or "*$&% off!" but there's nothing intrinsically "polite" about "NO NEED." What else? ETAILER is bad and ETAILER crossing ETHANE is very bad and ETAILER crossing ETHANE *and* E-COLI is cursed. No BEAMER, I. I need my coffee now. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. [Something that turns light green?] is a very nice, and very deceptive, clue for SOLAR POWER

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