Spanish city enclosed with intact medieval walls / SUN 2-19-23 / Onetime Turkish title / Full house in poker slang / Presidential pet that sprouts an Afro / Disposable sock in a shoe store / Family-style meal with simmering broth / 2006 mockumentary with a 2020 Subsequent Moviefilm / Tea served with a jumbo straw

Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Simile Irresistible" — answers are familiar similes clued as if the first word in the simile were not an adjective but a verb:

Theme answers:

• CLEAR AS CRYSTAL (22A: Bus?)
• GREEN AS GRASS (32A: Photosynthesize?)
• SOUND AS A BELL (48A: Peal?)
• PRETTY AS A PICTURE (65A: Photoshop?)
• SMART AS A WHIP (83A: Sting?)
• SMOOTH AS SILK (97A: Iron?)
• PLEASED AS PUNCH (112A: Quenched?)

Word of the Day: ANECDATA (39D: Evidence derived from personal experience and observation rather than systematic research and analysis) —

information or evidence that is based on personal experience or observation rather than systematic research or analysis. [wow, only the weakest attempt to change the dictionary wording on that clue, I guess ... weird] (emph. mine) (google i.e. Oxford Languages)

I usually love Rebecca's work but this one I don't quite get. Or ... I do get it, but it just doesn't feel like it works. Not consistently, and not in a way that doesn't occasionally feel tortured. So, if you look at the first themer, I think it works great. It takes a familiar simile phrase, CLEAR AS CRYSTAL, and asks you to imagine it as ... a kind of crossword clue: [Clear, as crystal], for instance, would be a perfect clue for BUS. So you've got a clue, 22A: Bus?, that functions sort of like an answer and an answer that functions sort of like a clue. You've had to reimagine "CLEAR" as a verb (instead of an adjective), and you've had to mentally add an apostrophe to your answer: CLEAR, AS CRYSTAL. So ... clear, as one might clear crystal(ware). Bus. "Bus?" = clear ... a table. Got it, got it, good. But GREEN AS GRASS? What is happening there? Is "GREEN" a verb? Does one GREEN grass? Does grass GREEN itself? How exactly am I supposed to imagine the phrasing here. If I start with [Bus?] meaning CLEAR, AS (one clears) CRYSTAL, am I then supposed to interpret [Photosynthesize?] as GREEN, AS (one greens) GRASS? Or (more likely), GREEN, AS GRASS (greens itself)? Leaving aside the total grammatical awkwardness here, it looks like in the first themer, "crystal" is the putative object of the verb "bus" / CLEAR, whereas in the second themer, "grass" is the subject of the verb "photosynthesize[s]" / GREEN[s]. Also, side note: is GREEN AS GRASS an actual simile people use? That one and SOUND AS A BELL felt ... odd to me, and not nearly in the same league of familiarity as the rest of the themers (actually, SOUND AS A BELL is real enough; GREEN AS GRASS, I dunno ... it's no PLAIN AS DAY or CLEAR AS MUD, I'll tell you that much). Am I supposed to see PRETTY as a verb in PRETTY AS A PICTURE. Because ... if I [Photoshop?] something ... I PRETTY it? I know the verb "prettify" (at least I know it exists), but PRETTY as a verb ... that, I'm less familiar with. Basically the core problem is you've got two different ways we're being asked to reimagine the similes, one that wants you to understand the answer as [verb, AS (one verbs) noun] (e.g. CLEAR, AS (one clears) CRYSTAL [Bus?], SMOOTH, AS (one smooths) SILK [Iron?]), and another that wants you to understand the answer as [verb AS noun (verbs)] (e.g. PLEASED, AS PUNCH (pleases) [Quenched?]), SMART, AS A WHIP (smarts) [83A: Sting?]. Add to that the overall awkwardness of GREEN, AS GRASS and the improbability of PRETTY as a verb, and you've got a theme that doesn't quite come together. A few of these work well, but as with many Sundays, the theme can't really go the (21x21) distance.