Late media columnist David / THU 8-19-21 / 1970 John Wayne film / Operatic daughter of the king Amonasro / Extraneous computer programs that slow down a system / Home to the golden pavilion known as Kinkaku-ji / Vaping device informally

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Seriously, there's just one OAT in the box, first of all, which is, let's say, unlikely, and then there are only oats, no other cereals — should've been called OAT BOX, not CEREAL BOX. Then of course "Life" is not a great cereal to use in the revealer of your one-oat puzzle because while it is made by the Quaker OATs company and was at one point made primarily of OATs, it now contains wheat flour, corn flour, and rice flour, and is marketed as "Life Original Multigrain Cereal." But as someone who once made a SLICED / CHEESE Thursday puzzle where all the cheeses involved were not, in reality, sliceable, I can't complain too much about the fact that Life doesn't match up that well with OATs. It's clearly here solely for the groany pun in the revealer clue. Was the entire puzzle built around that pun? Was that the ... germ ... of this puzzle? (sorry, wheat pun, wrong venue). It's not a great payoff. Mostly I found the theme overly simple and rote. I found the first OAT easily—had CUT, knew it had to be CUT-THROAT, and then just waited to find out which part of THROAT was going to be shoved into a rebus square. Once I got OAT, I sort of hoped that other grains awaited, but then I hit the CROATIAn GOATEE, and that dream died. OAT OAT OAT, straight down the line. There was some fun going on the Easter OAT hunt, I guess (never knew where they were going to pop up), but the only OAT answer I really liked was THE GOAT (stands for Greatest Of All Time, in case the term is unknown to you). Seems like BLOATWARE is the most original, but that term means nothing to me, so it was hard to be too excited about it. Except for MOILS (oof), the grid seems solid enough. Ironically, there just wasn't enough life (!) in the theme for me. So upside-down to have the Tuesday and Wednesday themes excite me more than the Thursday.

This puzzle was definitely harder than yesterday's, but adjusted for day-of-the-week expectations, it was still very easy. Didn't struggle anywhere, despite the fact this puzzle unleashed a hell of a lot of proper nouns. Only two of said names gave me any trouble: with LOGAN, I already had LOGA- in place before I ever saw the clue; with FOGEL, things were definitely harder. Not a household name, or (in LOGAN's case) a Boston airport or ... I don't know, a Run ... anyway, not a recognizable name, so I needed every cross and even at -OGEL I half-assumed the answer would be VOGEL (by far the more common name). That HIREE / FOGEL / MOILS section was the only one that caused any perceptible slow-down today. Again, as with yesterday, I mostly read clues / filled in answers, with very little intervening "hmmm" time.