Herringlike fish / THU 7-21-22 / Destination in Hercules' 12th labor / Relative of a chimpanzee / Dish in which ingredients are cooked at the table / Nerf product that might be used to bother a sibling

Theme answers:

• HIGH PROFILE (20A: Attracting much publicity)
• SCHOLARLY REVIEW (27A: Commentary on a scientific article)
• STORE CREDIT (56A: Alternative to a refund, often)

Word of the Day: OCELOTS (37A: Cats with the unique ability to turn their ankle joints around) —

The ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) is a medium-sized spotted wild cat that reaches 40–50 cm (15.7–19.7 in) at the shoulders and weighs between 8 and 15.5 kg (17.6 and 34.2 lb). It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. Two subspecies are recognized. It is native to the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and to the Caribbeanislands of Trinidad and Margarita. It prefers areas close to water sources with dense vegetation cover and high prey availability.

Typically active during twilight and at night, the ocelot tends to be solitary and territorial. It is efficient at climbing, leaping and swimming. It preys on small terrestrial mammals, such as armadillos, opossums, and lagomorphs. Both sexes become sexually mature at around two years of age and can breed throughout the year; peak mating season varies geographically. After a gestation period of two to three months the female gives birth to a litter of one to three kittens. They stay with their mother for up to two years, after which they leave to establish their own home ranges.

The ocelot is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, and is threatened by habitat destruction, hunting, and traffic accidents. Populations are decreasing in many parts of its range. The association of the ocelot with humans dates back to the Aztec and Incancivilizations; it has occasionally been kept as a pet. (wikipedia)

It's got the structural weirdness of a Thursday, but the difficulty level of a Tuesday. That is the main thing I have to say about this puzzle. It felt like "Thursday for beginners." The fill is basic, straightforward, almost totally devoid of popular culture or proper nouns of any kind—feels like there's more animals than people in this grid (not necessarily a bad thing). There is absolutely nothing to trip you up, and there's really nothing in the way of your discovering the gimmick, either. I mean, your answer runs out of room, and there's really only one way for it to go. The unclued Down segments are basically neon arrows confirming that "The Rest Of Your Across Answers Go Here." The placement of the revealer is super-weird (position 3 out of 4?). It's neither at the top, where an actual DROP DOWN MENU lives, nor at the bottom, where a typical revealer lives. But for the purposes of the particular way this theme was executed, it just *fits* best where it is. That's fine. This is a perfectly decent theme idea, but I'd've liked it much better on a Wednesday. I need something much thornier and more surprising, more *involved*, on a Thursday. The toughest part of the puzzle for me was the SW, where VETOPOWER dropped in easily, but neither PARK IT nor DRYING wanted to drop, and so that corner took some fussing around with before I could get it going. I think DART GUN came to the rescue (67A: Nerf product that might be used to bother a sibling). So it was the toughest corner, but could only be credibly called "tough" if it were, say, Tuesday. Just no bite to this one today.

My main revelations in solving this were weird and personally idiosyncratic. Like, apparently I can't spell CHISEL (18D: Icebreaker?). I wanted the word, I had the first few letters, but somehow ... CHISLE? CHISTLE? Honestly, when I got the -EL I thought "well that's obvious," but, well, nothing else that sounds that way ends that way in English, really, so ... it's weird. BRISTLE ... that's got more "S" sound in it. Usually that "Z" sound means "Z"s, as in FIZZLE. So CHISEL just looks weird to me, man. Also I thought ERE was a preposition. And it is. But it's also a conjunction. Schoolhouse Rock did not tell me about ERE. The lyrics to "Conjunction Junction" aren't "And, But, and ERE / Get you pretty far." I feel betrayed. Apparently ERE (like "Before") can be both preposition and conjunction. "Before" is a preposition when it's used to mean "in advance of a specific time" (e.g. "before breakfast") or "in front of something / someone," and a conjunction if it means "in advance of the time when" (e.g. "before they got married) or "in preference to." Prepositions take objects, conjunctions connect clauses or phrases. And OCELOTS have freaky feet, apparently.

INES and GREENE could've been clued as people's names but ... weren't. The clue on GREENE was so weird that I refused to write in GREENE even though it was the only answer that I wanted and seemed to make sense. The quotation marks around "colorful" in the clue tell you "not an actual color, maybe sounds like a color?" Famous people have the last name GREENE, but we get weird vague county trivia. I don't get it, but ... it's different, I'll give it that. Maybe the idea is that alongside GARR, GREENE needed to be something other than a specific person's name, for fear of name overkill. But two is not overkill. They're not even intersecting, and the crosses are simple. Oh, there's LON on the other side of GREENE, didn't see him tucked down there. For this puzzle, that's a veritable name avalanche. OK, counties it is. Don't think I've seen CTO before. Not fond of the insane proliferation of business abbrs. along the lines of CEO (CFO, COO, CIO). I'm not even sure how the CTO's job is different from the CIO's. Also, I should stress, I don't really care (here's the answer if this is somehow of interest to you). The intersecting CHI and CHI (from CHISEL) directly on top of the intersecting HIGH (from HIGH PROFILE) and HIGH (from THIGH) is ... well, a lot of repeated and overlapping letter strings. Wow, very same section, you also get OOH on OOH (from POOH). MIC on MIC as well! (though neither of those MICs is standalone, so you're not apt to notice). Repeated 3 and 4-letter strings are fine when they aren't near each other. When they're on top of each other, that gets noticeable. And when several sets of repeated letter strings are absolutely piled on top of each other in one little section, it's possible you should polish that section a little more. Looking forward to more of a challenge tomorrow. See you then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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