Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld
Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium
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THEME: H2O (69A: Fire fighter, familiarly ... or a phonetic hint to this puzzle's theme) — simple letter swap: "H" goes "to""O," wackiness follows:
Theme answers:
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There are a lot of "ugh"s and frowny faces in the margins of this one. The theme itself is so slim that the funniness payoff needs to be big, and it isn't. This is a simple letter swap—a theme as old as the hills. Very 20th century. And I don't mind a throwback theme if you can do something great with it, if you can make your tiny changes yield genuine LOL wackiness. But these answers are all pretty limp. I don't know how hard it is to find words that will let you change them into other words by making an "H" an "O," but I'm guessing pretty hard. Still, you gotta do better than AFTER SOAVE or POD PROGRAM. You especially have to do better than AFTER SOAVE and POD PROGRAM when the rest of your grid is so lumpy and stale. This was one of those where I knew I was in for a rough ride before I even got out of the tiny NW corner. TAD ASAHI OHOHOH REHEM OMANI is *not* promising stuff, especially when that section of the grid isn't even compromised by a theme answer. And sure enough, the short fill continued in this vein, despite the theme's not being particularly dense or otherwise tricky to pull off. TAD and SLEW and ALOT. If we could find ATON and SCAD, we'd have a Crosswordese Amounts basketball team! You've got General MEADE and his STENO and of course MNEMENEMEMEMENMO or whatever Her name is, wow, yeah, and then the TEA RAT, yuck, those are the worst, I take my tea without rats, thanks. OMNI ANNO ONIT NAW. Truly an onslaught. You get one good longer answer, "I CAN'T EVEN!" and you get Natalie PORTMAN (who I forgot ever won an Oscar, sorry, Natalie, my bad), and then you get, what, HONOREE? CAR LOAN? Somebody named BEA HERO? Oof, BE A HERO, that has some big EAT A SANDWICH energy (BE A HERO! EAT A SANDWICH! There's your new slogan, delis of the world! It's all yours!). The only difficulty in this puzzle was coming up with the themers, which are somewhat hard to see when you don't know the gimmick yet, as the grid phrases are nuts and the base phrases can only be grasped after you've filled in the grid phrases. Beyond that little bit of resistance, the grid doesn't put up much of a fight.
Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- AFTER SOAVE (18A: Seeking a dry Italian wine?) (from "aftershave")
- MARCO MADNESS (29A: Fervor over Senator Rubio?) (... "March Madness")
- FIRESIDE COAT (46A: Blazer worn next to a blaze?) (... "Fireside Chat")
- POD PROGRAM (59A: TV show about a group of whales?) (... "Ph.D. program")
Roger Kahn (October 31, 1927 – February 6, 2020) was an American author, best known for his 1972 baseball book The Boys of Summer. (wikipedia) // [On A Season in the Sun (1977)] In 1976 Roger Kahn spent an entire baseball season, from spring training through the World Series, with players of every stripe and competence. The result is this book, in which Kahn reports on a small college team's successes and hopes, a young New England ball club, a failing major league franchise, and a group of heroes on the national stage. (Google Books)
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I thought the muse was MNEMO (41A: Muse of memory), which is what happens when your brain crosses "mnemonic" with Mets outfielder Brandon NIMMO. Actually, MNEMO is just the first five letters of "mnemonic," so it felt right. Wrong. Ah well, SLEW to the rescue, I guess. I had trouble with DEAF because I didn't know what the "signers" were signing (I figured contracts). I had trouble with NONRANDOM because the clue just doesn't seem correct (35D: Like the results of loaded dice). The "results" of dice throws ... are they truly random? Obviously your odds of throwing certain numbers are greater than those of throwing other numbers, but I'm probably confusing mathematical concepts here. Anyway, whatever the clue, kind of hard for me to like NONRANDOM. I thought KAHN was a songwriter and "A Season in the Sun" was a song from some musical. This despite owning Roger KAHN's "The Boys of Summer." Last little screw-up came at the very end, where I figured the [Valuable diamond] was ICE. But it was ACE. You know, playing cards.
Probably shouldn't have clued PORTMAN via the Oscar, since "Oscar" is part of EGOT (57D: Feat for a performer, in brief). And was there no other MARCO you could've gone with in that MARCO MADNESS clue!? I mean, just the weakest, bootlickingest twerp there is in the Senate. Let the former president just push him around. I mean, I almost had respect for him when he was"calling Trump a "con artist" and saying that Trump is "wholly unprepared to be president of the United States" but then he gave the bully all his lunch money and told him what a great man he was. Anyone with integrity and self-respect would've broken with his party. But no. Huge embarrassment. It's bad enough I gotta suffer through the resurrection of Reagan/Bush propagandist Peggy NOONAN (36A: Political columnist Peggy), but to have her crossing Rubio, ugh, it's A LOT to take in one puzzle. I know the puzzle feels very strongly about right-wing representation, but show some restraint. Anyway, I hope you digital solvers didn't have 2 much trouble entering the "2" into the grid today. And I really hope you enjoyed this a hell of a lot more than I did. Good day.