Unfounded rumor / WED 4-6-22 / Longtime news anchor Jim / Pedagogic org. / Pioneer in color TV

Theme answers:

• Leave(,) briefly-- VACAY
• Final(,) say-- COURSE EXAM
• All(,) for one-- LAUNDRY DETERGENT
• Flies(,) frequently-- ANNOYANCES
  

Word of the Day: ADELE (64A: She released "30" in '21) —

Richard Russell, the founder of record label XL Recordings, complimented Adele that she had the potential to change the way women were seen in the music industry by focusing on music rather than sexuality. The New Yorker called her "the most popular living soul singer in the world" at 27-years-old. Writing for Vulture, Jillian Mapes opined that Adele is "among the first plus-size female cultural icons to reach the highest echelons of commercial success without having to make herself the butt of fat jokes along the way".

Hey beautiful solvers, welcome to another episode of Malaika Mwednesday. If you'd like to get into The Malaika Headspace, I was listening to Bridgerton's beautiful instrumental covers while I solved this puzzle. I am particularly fond of "You Oughtta Know."

I have lots to say about this puzzle and I do not know how best to order my thoughts! Let's start with easy stuff-- I loved this theme. The finds were delightful. I genuinely don't know which was my favorite one... probably the spanner? I could envision that (with the comma) being a clue in a Saturday puzzle. 

I did have a few thoughts about the execution of the theme. I think a huge job for editors is to identify whether the crux of a theme rocks or not (in this case, it rocks) and then work with the constructor to make it into as excellent of a solving experience as possible. One thing I didn't like was that, when you select 1A in the Times app, it highlights the revealer. Out of curiosity, I jumped down there-- I didn't think it would be a revealer, I thought maybe this would be some sort of opposites puzzle. But it was, and it had (in my opinion) a stupidly easy clue. Within seconds, the theme was over for me. I didn't get to uncover it like a wordplay-filled treasure hunt. Is that my fault for skipping to the end, or the app's fault for highlighting entries, or the editor's fault for making the revealer clue so easy? I don't know!! What do y'all think?

I wonder if this puzzle could have been executed like this one, where there are entries scattered throughout with no symmetry. This would have been tough, because no other clues could have used commas, but I do feel like it would be possible! (And would have resulted in a Thursday puzzle, probably.) That would help with the fact that some of the long answers were a bit boring-- LAUNDRY DETERGENT could become "detergent" and COURSE EXAM could become "exam."

The last thing to note is that I didn't finish this puzzle and, like, it wasn't even close. I have never heard of Jim LEHRER or RCA-- that letter could have been anything. Similarly, I had SeHL and NEeP. And then a patch in the SW caused me to "check puzzle" about four times. CANARD and NEA are both totally brand new terms for me, as were the names REID and MCGEE, combined with the weird-ish AGRO and RE-AIR and the unexpected letter pattern in B-TEAM. Phew. It was hopeless for me.

These types of things really stick out to me because I am someone who submits puzzles to the Times and gets rejections. For example, I recently submitted a puzzle and was told that it was very close, but ANIKA (name) crossing EKG (abbreviation) was unfair. I read and that and thought, "Good point! I agree!" But then I look at this puzzle and see LEHRER (name) crossing RCA (abbreviation). I don't know why the editors thought this was fair. It confuses me! Sometimes my conclusion is that I should stop submitting puzzles at all so that I no longer get caught up in these tiny comparisons and can just go back to Doing A Fun Little Game. And sometimes my conclusion is just that I should make better puzzles. *shrug*

Bullets:

• It's VACAY not "vaycay" right? 
• Have any of you tried aromatherapy? It seems pretty relaxing.
• ARIA has appeared 1,207 times in a NYT puzzle, but never clued in reference to "Pretty Little Liars"
• TWEEDLEDUM was such a nice bonus entry
  
• I always associate the shiny fabric LAME with Rocky's shorts in "Rocky Horror Picture Show"

xoxo Malaika

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