The art of appearing effortlessly nonchalant / SAT 4-2-22 / Sushi chef's tasting menu / Capital of ancient Persia / Where "the cheese stands alone," in a class song / Midwife's focus in the third stage of labor / It started in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports

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But there was no more zing after that. Just slog. All the air went out of this one in the SW. And I guess it's worth noting that the heavily compartmentalized corners made this feel like a bunch of different puzzles rather than just one, and also meant that over and over it felt like you could just get stuck. You're in this tiny little cave and there's nowhere to go. That's what the remaining corners all felt like, especially the SW, where "___ SURE" could've been a whole bunch of things, and AURAL should've been TIDAL, and ARUM? Uh, whatever you say, I guess, and I've never thought of congee as GRUEL, though I guess technically it is ... anyway ... Sigh. The very worst thing down here, though—in fact, the only genuinely bad thing—is ALL-HEALS (56A: Herbalists' panaceas). What ... what? That is the kind of word where, when you get it, you think "that can't be right ... that's a thing?" What an incredibly stupid word. Like ... was "cure-all" not enough? You somehow needed ALL-HEALS? Just a painful revelation. Giant Thud. This puzzle had a lovely sense of SPREZZATURA but with ALL-HEALS, it's all gone. Vanished. Drained completely from the puzzle. All because of this "word." Do constructors / editors not consider what it will be like, for a solver, to turn up a word like this? It's not enough to think "it's valid!" Please consider the solver. And the solver's grave disappointment. Thank you. Moving on. . . . well the rest of the puzzle is really just OMAKASE (36A: Sushi chef's tasting menu) and ISFAHAN (7D: Capital of ancient Persia), two names I had absolutely no hope on. Again, foreign words with uninferable spellings, but this time I did not know them at all. Fun! Once again I repeat—it doesn't matter that I don't know something. It happens every day. Not mad about that part, exactly. It's just annoying that the puzzle keeps leaning on the same kind of fill, fill that presents the same kind of difficulty. SCHLEP is the word that best represents how I feel. I feel like that word feels. I feel like that word looks and sounds. Bedraggled. Working but not enjoying it. 

I'm sure many of you geniuses knew ISFAHAN and/or OMAKASE, but I am also quite certain that the general familiarity of these words is far far lower than anything else in the grid. Light years from almost anything except maybe SPREZZATURA. And yes, yes, ISFAHAN has a population of over a million people, so yes, yes, it's valid, but do you know how many cities of over a million people there are in China? Do you? And do you know how many you could name? Not you, geography trivia guy, sit down. I mean you, everyone else. Hell, do you know how many cities of four million+ you don't know? A bunch. I absolutely guarantee you, a whole bunch. DALIAN has over five million people, and I just learned of its existence right now. Again (again again), it's not about a single answer's validity, it's about a *puzzle*'s overall sense of proportion and balance. And this one just wanted to test you on trivia. And it was irksome.

I liked SPRAY TAN a lot (27A: Color not generated by light). I struggled with it a lot, and then I figured it out, and I liked figuring it out. See, difficulty can be fun! If it gets you to Aha—fun! ALL-HEALS is never, ever going to get you to fun. I keep looking at that answer and getting depressed, so I should stop. Or move on to the closing act.