So many layers here or a hint to the circled squares / THU 9-29-22 / How many salsa dancers dance / God-knows-where casually / Tweeter's that said / Group putting out electronic music / Like a blocked penalty kick in soccer / Homeland of monsters Mothra and Gamera / Setting for operation Red Dawn

Constructor: Jeremy Newton

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: IT'S A LOT TO UNPACK (62A: "So many layers here" ... or a hint to the circled squares) — the letters "ALOT" start out inside one square, and then with each successive themer, those letters get "unpacked." That is, one letter at a time is moved to its own square as you descend the grid, until all the letters are "unpacked" (into their own squares) in the final themer / revealer: 

Theme answers:

• "AND THAT'S SAYING [ALOT]" (16A: "Which is a big deal, considering!")
• CALIFORNI[A LO][T]TO (26A: Contest for millions on the West Coast)
• ALOE VER[A L][O][T]ION (47A: Popular skin moisturizer)
• "IT'S [A] [L][O][T] TO UNPACK" (62A)

Word of the Day: King Harald (44A: Father of Norway's King Harald = OLAV) —

Harald V (Norwegian: Harald den femte, Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈhɑ̂rːɑɫ dɛn ˈfɛ̂mtə]; born 21 February 1937) is King of Norway. He acceded to the throne on 17 January 1991.

Harald was the third child and only son of King Olav V of Norway and Princess Märtha of Sweden. He was second in the line of succession at the time of his birth, behind his father. In 1940, as a result of the German occupation during World War II, the royal family went into exile. Harald spent part of his childhood in Sweden and the United States. He returned to Norway in 1945, and subsequently studied for periods at the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Military Academy, and Balliol College, Oxford.

Following the death of his grandfather Haakon VII in 1957, Harald became crown prince as his father became king. A keen sportsman, he represented Norway in sailing at the 1964, 1968, and 1972 Olympic Games, and later became patron of World Sailing. Harald married Sonja Haraldsen in 1968, their relationship having initially been controversial due to her status as a commoner. They have two children, Märtha Louise and Haakon. Harald became king following his father's death in 1991, with Haakon becoming his heir apparent. (wikipedia)

I will confess that I did not know Norway still had a king. Not sure why reasonably functional western democracies still keep these monarchical relics around, but my country's got its own problems, so ... I'll move on. This is a very clever theme. Take a common (if unappealing) buzzphrase and reimagine it in grid form! The main challenge for me, beyond figuring out the gimmick in the first place, was figuring out how the "unpacking" was going to play itself out, exactly. I wanted [ALOT] (one square) to go to [AL] and [OT] (two squares) in that second themer, but then I was looking at that third themer and thinking "well they can't divide the letters evenly there, so ..." Anyway, this one-at-a-time unpacking makes the most sense. The execution of the theme here is very neat. The unpacking goes 1-2-3-4, all on a straight line (seriously, you can run a straight edge through the "ALOT" parts, no problem), and then ends with the revealer doubling as the final theme answer (themers typically stand outside the theme and point at the theme). All the themers are solid, unforced phrases ... there's not much to fault here, thematically. This one gives you ALOT without being "ALOT" (i.e. overwhelming, hard to take, difficult). As you can see, I got it, confirmed it with TECHNO BAND (nice answer), and then sorted out the circles up top. After this, the puzzle got much, much easier. As for the fill, it holds up fine. Lots and lots of short fill, but it all runs very clean. Even though SNAZZ looks kinda weird on its own, it might be my favorite thing in the grid—and it was also super-helpful, as "Z"s often are. Helped me sort out the answers in that NE corner, particularly ZEALOTS (12D: Extremist group), which I wanted to be something benign like SECT before I'd gotten the theme sorted. The only things I truly didn't like were the clues on SCAN (34A: It's a good look) and WOKE (59D: Socially "with it"). It's such an O(W)N GOAL when you give your answer a terrible clue just to make a successive-clue trick happen, as is the case today with the clue on SCAN. The puzzle wants to do its little [It's a good look] [It's a bad look] thing with SCAN and SNEER, but ugh the clue only works for one of those (SNEER). A SCAN is neutral. All SCANs are neutral. What's this "good look" nonsense? Is the idea that if you give something a good (as in "lengthy") look, you've "SCANned" it. If anything, SCAN suggests a *less* than good look. So many times, when a clue just clunks, it's because the puzzlemakers tried to make some kind of clue pairing happen. Such a bad idea, since even good clue pairings rarely pay off the way you want them too (solvers mostly don't solve Across clues successively, so what is the point!?). As for the WOKE clue, yeesh, don't do this. It's horrible and dismissive and plays right into the furiously racist and diseased right-wing use of "WOKE" that dominates the discourse these days. Not wanting women to go to jail for getting an abortion? WOKE. Thinking migrants should be treated humanely and not physically and psychologically tortured? WOKE. Hiring a Black person for literally anything? WOKE. The cutesy quotation marks, the quaint "with it" ... nah. Either clue it as part of the Black political discourse it came out of, or just clue it as a straight verb, no politics. Today's clue is, at best, condescending—the one big miss in a puzzle that's otherwise full of hits.