Full of noxious vapors / WED 6-1-22 / Only living creature in the genus Dromaius / City near Provo Bay

Theme answers:

• Info not typically found in the Yellow Pages-- (HOME) PHONE NUMBER
• Creative activity for grade-schoolers-- (ARTS) AND CRAFTS
• Reason to sleep with a nightlight on-- (FEAR) OF THE DARK
• Prized possessions for numismatists-- (COIN) COLLECTIONS

Word of the Day: PAELLA (Rice dish infused with saffron) —

In 2015, an emoji for paella was proposed to Unicode. The emoji was approved for Unicode 9.0 as U+1F958 "SHALLOW PAN OF FOOD" in June 2016. Although it is generally rendered as paella, Samsung has rendered the symbol as a Korean hot pot.

Happy Malaika MWednesday to all who celebrate! I am grumpy as I write this because the G train is not running and I had to bike for half an hour home after playing volleyball tonight and my legs hurt so so so much. Sorry for not being my usual Ray of Sunshine (TM), and please take everything I say with a grain of salt, anyway, I did not like this puzzle.

Here is me complaining about the theme:

I don't get the theme. Truly, what was the point? Why are half of the theme answers stand-alone phrases and the other half are bizarre partials? What do HOME / ARTS / FEAR / COIN have to do with each other, besides having four letters? Why open with a theme entry that seems to suggest many added layers (the Yellow Pages do have PHONE NUMBERs, they just don't have (HOME) PHONE NUMBERs, tricky tricky!!) when you're immediately going to follow it up with AND CRAFTS which is meaningless? 

Here is me complaining about fill:

Soooo many things that I do not care about in this puzzle, like a golf player and a 90-year old writer who inconveniently has the same last name and number of letters as a much more current writer, and classical music and baseball stats. I do not like to use the word "cr*sswordese" because, since everyone has their own definition for it, it just invites chaotic arguments. So instead I say, these are the words that were in this puzzle that I have learned from doing crosswords, and (upon learning them) have never ever seen them outside of a crossword puzzle: STNS (that is simply not a real abbreviation, I take the train and the bus constantly (EXCEPT WHEN THE G IS NOT RUNNING THRU BEDFORD-NOSTRAND DUE TO TRACK MAINTENANCE!!!!)), EFTS, RBIS. RONDO, OREM, and ETO would be in this category as well, except that I have not actually learned them. Don't remember ever seeing these before in all my years (two, lmao) of solving.

Here is me being nice:

A lot of the long down entries and mid-length fill were nice, like NINTENDO, STEAM CAR, and TAROT CARDS. (I typo-ed that as "torta cards" and, like, can you imagine???) PAELLA, RANDOS, and ASHLEE Simpson. All fit my definition of fun fill which is "they would be exciting to see in a themeless grid." The clue [Washington post?] for EMBASSY absolutely rocked.

Bullets:

• JOB-- Word with snow or bank. Can someone explain this? What's a "snow job"?
• LEA-- "Back to the Future" actress Thompson. I've never heard of her; my preferred LEA is Salonga.
• PLO-- Arafat's grp. I don't remember seeing this in a grid before, although apparently it appears often enough. This weekend I learned a "fun" fact: In Israel, it is illegal for a Jewish person to marry a non-Jew. (The government will recognize marriages that took place outside of the country.)
• ENID-- Children's author Blyton. I grew up reading her books-- mostly "The Secret Seven," but also all her hundreds of fairy tales. I think she's racist probably, but I'm a little scared to look into it and discover the full extent of the situation.

xoxo Malaika

The past seven puzzles were written by eight men; I believe seven are white.

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