Astronomical event / TUES 11-29-21 / First name in denim / Home of many of the world's alpacas / Wilde or Wilder

Theme answers:

• CAPTURE THE FLAG (20A: Sign outside a Stratego tournament?) 
• SIT FOR A SPELL (25A: Sign outside a Scrabble tournament?) 
• DON’T SAY A WORD (48A: Sign outside a Taboo tournament?) 
• CONNECT THE DOTS (56A: Sign outside a dominoes tournament?)

Word of the Day: OLGA (5A: Actress Kurylenko) —

Olga Konstantinovna Kurylenko is a Ukrainian-French actress and model. She was discovered as a model at the age of 13. She moved to Paris to pursue a modelling career at the age of 16 and started her acting career in 2005. She found success as an actress for her role as Nika Boronina in the film adaptation of the video game Hitman (2007), and then mainstream prominence with the role of Bond girl Camille Montes in the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace (2008). (Wiki)

So this puzzle was… fine? I didn’t enjoy it a ton, which I could attribute to solving the puzzle while my sister drove us back from LA from seeing BTS, and we were stuck in traffic, so the mood wasn’t all that great. But, in general, the theme fell a bit flat for me. The plays on words just weren’t that clever, and three of the four answers were literal descriptions of the goal of the game (i.e., in Stratego your goal is to CAPTURE THE FLAG). Only SIT FOR A SPELL, the description for Scrabble, was figurative. 

Nothing seems that bad when I look back on the puzzle, though it did feel like sort of a slog to get through, mostly because I didn’t quite get the theme. The solve also started off ominously when I put in LSAT instead of MCAT for 1A: Exam for some coll. seniors. Little did I know that LSAT would instead be in the puzzle at 30D with the same clue. I don’t usually mind — and sometimes like — when clues repeat, but going astray at 1A threw me bit. 

YACHTS (49D: Sails in style, in a way) as a verb seems egregious to me. I’d be willing to die on this proverbial hill, even if the dumb dictionary tells me that the word actually can be used as a verb. I also didn’t enjoy having YES (38A) be smack dab in the middle of the puzzle. It feels bland, and the clue — “You rang?”— is one of the types I dislike, where the answer could be a whole multitude of things. Another example could be 66A: “Same with me” as AS AM I. And, lastly, the answer for 55D: These, in Madrid annoyed me because, realistically, it could be either “estos” or ESTAS. 

A fair amount of the puzzle is crosswordese, but looking back there weren’t many three-letter answers in there (I count five, and they’re fairly spread out). I do like that. There are also some particularly nice bits in there, like some of the long downs you don’t usually see in crosswords, such as: TITANIUM, TSUNAMI, MOSH PIT and TAILSPIN

Misc.:

• For 1A, when I put in LSAT instead of MCAT and then realized my error, I laughed because I thought that I just had law on the brain and was trying to force it into the puzzle. Then LSAT appeared at 30D! 
• Some of my favorite clues/answers were 27D: The end of the Greek world? as OMEGA and, similarly, 3D: The beginning of the Hebrew world? as ALEPH,along with 43D: Notoriously fast starter as HARE. They confused me at first, but when I got them I chuckled. I also liked the misdirection with 45D: Where you might bump into a metal fan as MOSH PIT. 
• Solving the puzzle, I remembered that the point of dominoes really is to lay the dominoes out and connect the dots. As a kid, I thought the whole point was to just line them up vertically and in a long, long line and see if you can get them to all tip over. 
• Not sure how to connect this in except for maybe saying the seven BTS members really SHINE[d] (35A) at their concert, and my sister and I had the absolute best time! Here’s a low-quality pic I took up close the first night of the concert and another picture from Twitter to show you that the group really does shine!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]