Religious group affected by the Edict of Nantes / SAT 8-27-22 / Nickname that elides vin / Network onetime HGTV spinoff / Superhero with lightning bolt on his costume / 1890 admission to the Union abbr / Future rap group in which Tyler the Creator got his start / Gum brand with red white blue wrapper

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I could not get from [Taxes] to TRIES with just the -ES in place, nor could I get to IMAGED (such an odd word) from [Scanned, perhaps] with just the "I." So I had to go fishing for short stuff in the adjacent NE corner just so I could get my footing once again. . . and let me tell you, things went very, very badly at first. My opening pass at alllll the short Downs in the NE was an 0fer ("O"-fer? ... how do you spell that? Anyway, rhymes with "gopher," means "zero for [however many attempts you made]"). Nothing, Nada. No HEM ALAS TEXT SATÉ ASHE FEEL or IDA. I spell "SATAY" like that, so even though that's the answer I wanted, I never thought to spell it "SATÉ," and I definitely considered "FEEL" at 10D: Vibe but I thought MOOD fit better (technically it does, but again, as with DIP, it's simply wrong *for this puzzle*). Incredibly for me to scan an entire bank of short answers and come up with absolutely nothing. Weirdly, the longer Down up there came much more quickly. I took an educated guess with TAM (22A: Flat topper) and ELMS (25A: Trees that canopy Central Park's Literary Walk), which got me STEAMY and RATTLES. Then I changed MOOD to FEEL and the tail ends of those long Acrosses started coming into view. Finally, it was time to embark on the big, creamy middle:

And once I correctly guessed EKES for 25D: Squeezes, I had KEY at the end of 27A: Super-useful item?, and MASTER KEY seemed the only possibility (such keys are undoubtedly "super-useful," but they are also "useful to the super ... intendent ... of a building ... which is what the clue is going for with its "?" today). With MASTER KEY in place, the middle didn't stand much of a chance. Also, I lucked into HUGUENOTS, an answer which, like JAMES I, is a prominent part of the early-modern European political landscape, and thus my early English literature courses (the HUGUENOTS are French protestants who faced a lot of hostility and persecution from the Catholic crown) (35A: Religious group affected by the Edict of Nantes). 

The middle of the puzzle ended up falling very fast, and then the bottom half of the grid played like a Bizarro top half, with JOANNE WADDLED easily opening up the front ends of the long Acrosses, and the secluded SE corner being much more easy to break into than the NW corner was to break out of. SHAZAM, a gimme, BAZOOKA, a gimme, ALADDIN and KIA, both gimmes, the end. Ultimately, all smiles, no cringe on this one. I especially like the stacks up top and down below, each of which suggests a coherent scene THAT'S A FIRST! RELEASE DATE! IMAX THEATER! sounds like hype for a big movie's opening weekend, whereas ONLINE POKER ONE MORE TIME MED STUDENTS sounds like a pitch for a movie about how gambling addiction leads to desperate, criminal behavior at a big-city teaching hospital. Whatever the answers in this puzzle suggest to you, I hope you ultimately saw what I saw: a very well put-together piece of work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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