Espresso-over-ice cream desserts / WED 6-22-22 / Darkest part of a shadow / Old-fashioned shoe cover / Garden plant that opens and shuts its "mouth" / Drivers' process when two lanes of traffic become one / Italian city in a Kiss Me Kate song

Theme answers:

• ZIPPER MERGE (17A: *Drivers' process when two lanes of traffic become one)
• SNAPDRAGON (26A: *Garden plant that opens and shuts its "mouth")
• BUTTON MUSHROOMS (38A: *White pizza toppings)
• PINSTRIPES (49A: *Design on some baseball uniforms)

Word of the Day: ZIPPER MERGE (17A) —

When a lane is closed in a construction zone, a zipper merge occurs when motorists use both lanes of traffic until reaching the defined merge area, and then alternate in "zipper" fashion into the open lane.

Zipper merge vs. early merge

When most drivers see the first “lane closed ahead” sign in a work zone, they slow too quickly and move to the lane that will continue through the construction area. This driving behavior can lead to unexpected and dangerous lane switching, serious crashes and road rage.

Zipper merging, however, benefits individual drivers as well as the public at large. Research shows that these dangers decrease when motorists use both lanes until reaching the defined merge area and then alternate in "zipper" fashion into the open lane. (Minnesota DOT)

This is a fine "first words"-type puzzles. The revealer is cute, and the theme answers themselves are colorful and interesting, which means the journey to the revealer is not a programmatic and boring one. I like ZIPPERMERGE best of all, both because it's got, well, zip, and because I love ZIPPERMERGEs and wish they were a much, much more common thing in the U.S. (for reasons neatly described in the Word of the Day definition, above). The amount of erratic, aggressive, unpredictable behavior I've seen in and around "early merge" situations is astonishing. Unnecessarily stressful. Free-for-alls will inevitably result in cascading bad behavior, because, as we've established, people are frequently awful and driving only makes it worse and driving in close quarters with no clear guidance ... that's just asking for trouble. Nobody, literally nobody, is a *better* version of themselves when behind the wheel of a car, and people hate lane closures anyway, so everyone headed toward a merge is already inclined toward irritability. It's nice to have the whole situation just be orderly, so people can relax and not freak out about whether it's "fair" or not. ZIPPERMERGE tells you precisely where to start the merge. Here, no earlier. Once you are "here," then the rules are very clear. Merge like a zipper. Simple. Man have I come to hate driving over the years. Growing up in California, the idea that I would hate driving would've been unthinkable. The freedom! The romance! But now, ugh. Anyway, patience is always an option, when driving or ... really any time. The other theme answers are also nice, though they degrade slightly as you descend the grid, with PINSTRIPES being (to this non-YANKEEs fan) the least interesting of the bunch. My brain is so oriented away from the YANKEEs that I couldn't make sense of 69A: Major-leaguer who wears 49-Across at home even with -KEE in place. I didn't yet have PINSTRIPES and ... well, I figured they wanted an actual player, a particular guy, not a type of guy. This made me wonder if maybe TRUCK was wrong and the Major-leaguer was PEEWEE (Reese?). But this is all my own particular baseball pathology and has not much of anything to do with the puzzle, which, as I say, is just fine.

The fill does get a little yucky in places, especially toward the center, from AGORA through ÊTES TUN EONS through SSR SSE all the way over to the rock-bottom answer of the day, ASSAD. Dude is a war criminal on an epic scale. There's not enough "F*** That Guy" in the world to express my feelings about That Guy. ASSAD finds his way into puzzles because he is a short answer with common letters in an uncommon pattern. This means he's not only a terrible human being, he's also crosswordese of a sort, so now you have two reasons to get rid of him, which, today, is very easy. Again, without trying at all:

[please clue SPIT as a skewer or a piece of land, thank you]

There are more and undoubtedly better options than this, but you get the idea. You could just change ASSAD to ASSES, SPAT ADO to STET OSO, and that takes care of it too. You have lots of non-war-criminal options, is what I'm saying. A little effort in this section and you can probably end up improving it well beyond the de-ASSADification. 

I think this puzzle thinks I'm fat. It keeps whispering things like "PUDGY" and "OBESE" at me. Take it easy, puzzle. I try to think about the Bidens (and all national political figures) as little as possible, and I especially don't think about their kids, so this ASHLEY person was news to me (48D: Daughter of Joe and Jill Biden). Everything else was familiar, though I weirdly had trouble early on with SEARCH, CREW and HERESY. I had SEAR-- and couldn't think of any English words that would fit there, LOL. Sigh. Ugh. Then I wanted 5D: Gaffer, best boy and others to be an -S-ending plural, and I wasn't sure what kind of "charge" the clue was going for at 6D: Inquisition charge (HERESY). Here, it's "charge" as in "allegation," not "charge" as in responsibility, i.e. "we are charged with torturing heretics." After that early snafu, the puzzle felt very easy. Took me a little bit to get from "white pizza" to BUTTON MUSHROOMS, since I did not know they were a necessary component. This is possibly because they are not a necessary component. They aren't even mentioned in the first full paragraph of wikipedia's "white pizza" page. They're an option. Not loving this clue. But I like the answer and pizza is tasty so any clue that takes my brain to the land of pizza and isn't verifiably false, I can't really be mad at. Especially if the puzzle also takes my brain to the land of AFFOGATOS, omg so tasty! (10D: Espresso-over-ice cream desserts). Lastly, I wanted GAIN CLOSURE before FIND CLOSURE. It just felt ... righter. But it's not. I mean, it is in my ears, but not in the world writ large. I think GET CLOSURE is pretty common too. They all work. That's all. Have a nice day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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