Collection of 10 directives written by Vladimir Lenin / FRI 9-3-21 / Old automaker with the models Firedome, Fireflite and Firesweep / Citato in the work quoted Lat / Longtime mint brand that doesn't contain any mint / Conspicuously unfamiliar party guest informally / One punch kung fu technique / Words before Yes I cried yes I cried in Return of the Mack

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley and Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging, maybe harder

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: APRIL THESES (47A: Collection of 10 directives written by Vladimir Lenin) —

The "April Theses" (Russian: апрельские тезисы, transliteration:  aprel'skie tezisy) were a series of ten directives issued by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin upon his return to Petrograd from his exile in Switzerland via Germany and Finland. Theses were mostly aimed at fellow Bolsheviks in Russia and returning to Russia from exile. He called for soviets (workers' councils) (as seen in the slogan "all power to the soviets"), denounced liberals and social revolutionaries in the Provisional Government, called for Bolsheviks not to cooperate with the government, and called for new communist policies. The April Theses influenced the July Days and October Revolution in the next months and are identified with Leninism. [...] The April Theses were first announced in a speech in two meetings on 17 April 1917 (4 April according to the old Russian Calendar). (wikipedia)

Hi. Hello. It's Rex Parker here (not my real name, but it seems to be working, so let's stick with it). I'm back from Minnesota, where I was helping The Girl (soon to be a 21yo woman, actually) move into her new living sitch, as well as seeing friends, going to the Minnesota State Fair, touring Minneapolis on foot, and planning our eventual move thereto ("eventual" is probably doing a lot of work here, but we'll see). Anyway, I think I was away on one trip or another for roughly half of August, but I'm back for the foreseeable future. So, the regular schedule is hereby resumed. Today's puzzle was an interesting one to start back on. Kind of threw me in the deep end, this one. Two experienced and notoriously challenging constructors teaming up for Friday pranks and shenanigans. Honestly, this felt a lot like *last* Friday's puzzle, down to the grid shape (high word count, lots and lots of short stuff, but with more than enough long answers to keep things interesting). And like last week, I got bogged down more than usual in this one. Lots of trivia in this one, more than a few answers out of my wheelhouse, and then just an overall tricksy, question-marky vibe. The good news is that the highs were superhigh—enough to make me genuinely, sincerely, audibly LOL at one point (just the one LOL, no LOLS, or LOLZ, as I imagined at one point). I took pictures (i.e. screenshots) early on, so happy was the puzzle making me. There were definitely a few low points, one of them very low, which kind of marred the latter half of the solve, but the top half was strong enough to make up for the bottom half and the overall experience was pretty decent. 

[20A: Words before "Yes, I cried, yes I cried" in "Return of the Mack"]  (Sidenote: Not sure about the punctuation on the lyrics there: Why is there a comma after the first "yes" but not the second? Yes, I am complaining about punctuation in the NYT's rendering of pop music lyrics, thanks for asking).