Quiet you quaintly / WED 7-7-21 / Cooler Ghostbusters inspired Hi-C flavor / Overseer of a quadrennial competition / Premium streaming service until 2020 / Ancient Greek festival honoring the god of wine / Nerd on '90s TV / One-percenter suffix

Theme answers:

• TAKES A NAP (22A: Snoozes (like participant #2 in one classic fable)) ["one"? why not just "a"?]
• LOSES A BET (57A: Wagers unwisely (as participant #2 did))

Word of the Day: DIONYSIA (41D: Ancient Greek festival honoring the god of wine) —

The Dionysia (/daɪəˈnaɪsiə/) was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually consisted of two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which took place in different parts of the year. They were also an essential part of the Dionysian Mysteries. (wikipedia)

As a visual gimmick, this is very clever. Not sure why the tortoise and hare are racing *diagonally*—there's no good representation of the goal or finish line, and if the finish line is simply the other side of the grid, why aren't they running in a straight line??—but the tortoise clearly makes it to the other side, while the hare is still stuck in the fourth line (precisely where he meets the answer TAKES A NAP—nice touch), so I think the visual representation largely works, and it's definitely original / clever. Unfortunately, the puzzle was over before it really began. As soon as I got SLOW A... I knew the rest of the answer, which means I also knew what was going to go in the remaining circled squares, which means the puzzle was essentially over, from a theme-enjoyment standpoint. Done and done (if not done done).

Yes, there ended up being two "bonus" themers, but those were just superfluous verb phrases, dutiful space fillers rather than essential elements of the theme. It's true that having "hare" stop at TAKES A NAP was nice, and having TAKES A NAP and LOSES A BET follow the same answer blanks-a-blank pattern made that pair of answers more unified than they might've been, but they still felt inessential. The gist of the theme reveals itself early, and giving all of the theme away like that just leaves you to fill in the grid, dutifully, which feels more like cleaning up after a party than enjoying the party itself. The fill is OK, hit and miss, but there's nothing much left to experience after the main theme stuff goes in. So this is another case of an interesting concept being somewhat clumsily executed. Too much given away too early, weird semi-aimless diagonal running, and "bonus" theme answers that don't do much but dutifully fill the spaces where we'd expect to find theme content.

I liked a bunch of the longer fill, particularly GREMLIN and then all of the terminal-A stuff: SCAPULA, ELECTRA, DIONYSIA, PALOOKA). These colorful longer answers helped keep the puzzle from truly dragging after the theme discovery had already been accomplished. I am very grateful, though, that I never even saw the ridiculous "OH, DRY UP!" until after I was already finished and reviewing the grid. Never saw the clue, never saw the answer, not sure how that happened—the puzzle was very easy, so crosses must've just taken care of it. But wow, it's so olde-tymey that I can't even place it. Google searches are indicating that yes, it's a real idiom, but the only specific reference I'm getting is to something in the H*rry P*tter books. Quaint! The only thing I like about this answer is that it's on the same line as PALOOKA, which is also quaint, but in a way that I really like. PALOOKA's got a film noir / Damon Runyon vibe, whereas "OH, DRY UP!" sounds stuffy and vaguely British (?). Maybe if I heard some tough dame say it in a crime film, I'd like it, I dunno. It is by far the most original thing in the grid, I'll give it that.

Five things:

• DOORBELL (3D: Don't knock until you've tried it)— I think this clue is trying to pun. I think. I wrote in DOORKNOB, which somehow makes more sense to me: a knock and a DOORBELL do the same thing (tell someone that you want to be let in), so why would you prioritize one over the other. Whereas if the door is open, well, just use the DOORKNOB and there's no need to knock (or ring). Vote DOORKNOB!
• ON LSD (47D: How Timothy Leary spent some time) — hard "no"; delete it from your wordlist. Wearying enough to have to deal with the occasional ONPOT. You can't just put "ON" before every drug and call it a crossword answer (I would, however, accept ONDRUGS ... so ONDRUGS, yes, ONLSD, ONHEROIN, ONLUDES, no
• HBO NOW (48D: Premium TV streaming service until 2020) — so not so much HBO NOW as HBO THEN, then ...
• TECH (60D: ___ support)— had the "H," wrote in ARCH
• ECTO- (35A: ___ Cooler, "Ghostbusters"-inspired Hi-C flavor) — my brain registered that fill-in-the-blank as somebody's name (because "Cooler" was capitalized, because "Ghostbusters" made me think "actor"), and so, since my brain thinks in crossword terms, it was like "ooh, it's that lesser Ghostbuster with the four-letter name, starts with "E," same name as a famous artist ... EGON! Wow, forgot his last name was Cooler, but OK." This is what happens when you don't read the entire clue. The actual Ghostbuster is named EGON Spangler, but that's not important. What's important is that the answer was ECTO-; what's *bizarre* is that EGON ended up actually being in the puzzle!? (58D: Painter Schiele), which has to be one of the strangest wrong-answer-that-turned-out-to-be-the-right-answer-somewhere-else moments I've ever had.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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