Chuck alternative / FRI 9-2-22 / Chemist Noddack who co-discovered rhenium / 2003 search and rescue target / Modern day locale of ancient Achaemenid empire / Hilson with 2010 hit Pretty Girl Rock / When said three times expression of mock surprise

• • •

The actual answer there (which I didn't get until near the very end of the solve) was far less interesting than my glorious wrong one, but luckily there were a lot of other longer answers that were sufficiently sparkly and delightful to give me that much-looked--forward-to Friday Feeling. Instead of starting in the NW (typical), I weirdly ended up opening this puzzle up from the middle, with WELL SELF GILL RASH SAUL providing my first real hold, and then LAUGH TRACK built on top of that (7D: Reel with hilarity?). I moved steadily through the puzzle after that, and largely enjoyed myself, but I will say I found the preponderance of names, particularly pop culture names, somewhat alarming. I got a good workout trying to maneuver my way over under and through those names, but at some point there got to be so many that they began to feel like a problem. 

There are, by my count, ten (10!) short names in this grid. And of course, names appear in puzzles, no biggie, but when you rely so heavily on names, the very clue type gets exhausting. Names are tricky. They can be nice when you recognize them, and frustrating when you don't, and all of that is a normal part of solving, but as with most things, moderation is key. Today's names were mostly clued extremely straightforwardly. [Singer so-and-so], [Actor of "This Show"], etc. It added difficulty at times, which is fine, but it also made the cluing feel arid. When you clog the grid with names, you a. run the risk of making the puzzle feel exclusionary, and b. you diminish the prevalence of truly inventive clues. You squeeze out cleverness and trickery, two of solving's primary enjoyments, and replace it with a trivia test. Now the names today are reasonably diverse, in terms of the fields they come from and the eras they're being pulled from, but still, by the 7th one they were beginning to feel like speed bumps, and by the 10th, potholes. I was very grateful that all the names were handled fairly (to my mind) and none of them caused agonizing delays, but ... I'd probably be happier with about half this many. (To be clear, today's names were: EGO AVA KERI ANDY REID SAUL OSSIE DANNY IDA and Van NESS) (NEMO gets a pass, largely because he was afforded a clever clue) (16A: 2003 search-and-rescue target).

Lots of low-key missteps. None of them as good as VASECTOMY at 1-A, but many still worth noting. I imagined that there were people out there who identified as OMNI-sexual (8D: Prefix with sexual). And I think there are, but the prefix they take is actually PAN-. I don't know what AMBIsexual is, or how it differs from (mere?) BIsexual, hang on ... [furious research montage] ... wow, it's a polyvalent word. It can mean bi- or androgynous *or* unisex (like a garment). Cool, though it seems like using it might result in ambi-...-guity. But Maybe That's The Point. OK, what else? Oh, CHAS! That stopped me cold for a bit, mostly because I thought "Chuck" was meat ... or a verb meaning "toss" (54D: Chuck alternative). Definitely never considered "Charles" until I had 3/4 of the crosses. I thought AVA was ARI despite having seen this AVA before, for sure (32A: Pop singer ___ Max). And it took me a bit to see that the clue on FRAMED could be read as past tense (24A: Set up). I kept thinking "Why ... won't FRAME ... fit!?"

I'll close by saying how much I loved bounding from the thornier short name-dense patches into the brighter, longer, more exciting stuff like "REAL MATURE!" (11D: Response to a juvenile joke, perhaps) and "NOT BY A MILE!" (28D: "Far from it!") and HOOKED UP (!) (39D: Got together). Enjoyed the riddle-like quality of the clue on CAR TROUBLE (good answer, good clue) (17A: What pings might indicate). I'm weirdly entertained / impressed by the fact that IOTA and ATOM are not only symmetrical but have identical clues (27D: Tiny bit / 36D: Tiny bit). The answer placement is undoubtedly accidental, but  to notice it and highlight it through cluing, that's the kind of attention to detail that I admire in puzzlecraft. Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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