High-energy person metaphorically / MON 12-12-22 / Basketball rebound play / Snoopy and Gromit for two / Fliers that may consume thousands of insects in an hour / Obsolescent music purchases in brief

• BALL OF FIRE (16A: *High-energy person, metaphorically)
• BONE CHINA (10D: *Some fine porcelain)
• STICK TO IT (33D: *"Don't quit now!")
• PAPER TRAIL (63A: *Documentation leading to proof)

Word of the Day: BONE CHINA (10D) —

Bone china is a type of ceramic that is composed of bone ash, feldspathic material, and kaolin. It has been defined as "ware with a translucent body" containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from animal bone and calculated calcium phosphate. Bone china is the strongest of the porcelain or china ceramics, having very high mechanical and physical strength and chip resistance, and is known for its high levels of whiteness and translucency. Its high strength allows it to be produced in thinner cross-sections than other types of porcelain. Like stoneware, it is vitrified, but is translucent due to differing mineral properties. (wikipedia)

Pretty dull example of an old-fashioned theme. It's true that each of the fetched items have been clued as unfetched items (i.e. this STICK is not a fetched STICK, this PAPER is not a fetched (news) PAPER, etc.), but that's pretty standard. There's nothing here you couldn't have seen 20+ years ago, except maybe EMOPOP, which is maybe the worst thing in the grid, since the word is just EMO, they call it EMO, just EMO. Crosswordese abounds (IBIS TAT ALOE ALBA I haven't even left the SW corner but you get the idea). It's not that the puzzle is terribly made, it's just ... hard to find anything positive to say about it. Frankly, it's hard to find anything to say about it—it's about as drab a piece of work as I've seen in a while. I've seen puzzles I really disliked that had more imagination and ambition than this one. I love a simple, snappy theme, but this isn't that. It's a tired first-worder. I couldn't even find a very interesting word to be Word of the Day today, so you're stuck with BONE CHINA, sorry. A BALL OF FIRE, this isn't. Speaking of BALL OF FIRE, have you seen it? The 1941 Howard Hawks movie with Barbara Stanwyck as a showgirl hiding out from the mob in a big house with fuddy-duddy lexicographers (including Gary Cooper)? Yes? No? Well, if no, you should fix that. It's in the Criterion Channel's "Screwball Comedy" collection this month. Yes sir, Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, a can't-lose combination. (This is how I amuse myself when the puzzle does nothing for me—remembering great movies).

Speaking of screwball comedies currently showing on the Criterion Channel—I just (re-)watched Easy Living (1937), which opens with cranky steel magnate Edward Arnold throwing his wife's extremely expensive fur coat from the top of his Manhattan home onto the street below, where it lands on the head of poor Jean Arthur as she passes by on a double-decker bus. When she looks around to see What The Hell just happened, the man seated behind her looks at her intently and says, in a rather ominous voice: "KISMET"! (50A: Fate). And yes, kismet, fate, that fur coat drives the whole damn case-of-mistaken-identity plot, complete with misunderstanding after misunderstanding after misunderstanding, and two big dogs, and Ray Milland and even a crossword puzzle—you think I'm kidding? Look:

Again, highly recommended. OK, yes, the puzzle. Uh ... I bought a portable cassette / CD player literally just today (to replace my old one, which is still sitting here on my home desktop, broken), so to the clue on CDS I say "obsolescent, shmobsolescent"! (31A: Obsolescent music purchases, in brief). Not much trouble solving this one today, but it didn't feel any easier than Mondays usually feel. I don't think CABINs are by definition "cozy," so I had an unusual amount of hesitation straight out of the gate (1A: Cozy home in the woods). I thought the dice were CUBED as opposed to CUBIC (1D: Shaped like dice). I had CHINA and kept wanting it to be FINE CHINA despite the fact that "fine" was right there in the clue and therefore obviously off-limits for the answer. I had the BEA- at 23D: Snoopy and Gromit, for two and, well, I confess I did not know Gromit was a beagle, so I could only imagine some kind of BEASTS, BEASTIES, something like that. I am now very much out of things to say about this puzzle. Hope you found much more to enjoy about it than I did. I'll be away for a few days while I relocate myself to the other side of the globe. But you'll be in good hands. See you soon. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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