Very muscular in slang / TUE 2-21-23 / Anthem lyricist with a musical name / 1970s auto that shares part of its name with one of Santa's reindeer / Name for the star on Israel's flag / Dramatic exhalation

The Volkswagen Passat (B1) is a large family car produced by Volkswagen in West Germany from 1973 to 1981. // The original Volkswagen Passat was launched in 1973. The body types offered originally were two- and four-door fastback sedans (that were discontinued in 1981). These were joined in January 1975 by identically profiled three- and five-door hatchback versions. Externally all four shared a modern design, styled by the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. In essence, the first Passat was a fastback version of the mechanically identical Audi 80 sedan, introduced a year earlier. [...] In North America, the car was called the Volkswagen Dasher. The three- and five-door hatchback and a station wagon model were launched in North America for and during the 1974 model year. (wikipedia)

This puzzle is like yesterday's puzzle in that it has a well-worn, tried-and-true theme type (in this case, the "hidden" word), but it fails by doing poorly what yesterday's puzzle did so well. Yesterday, the revealer was a real revelation, and all the answers worked beautifully, no stretches at all. Today, the revealer is blah and everything besides the ice cream feels like a real stretch. I know something about stretching the limits of answers to make your theme work: I once made a BEER BELLY puzzle where I "hid" LAGER inside VILLAGE ROADSHOW (a movie production company that has done major work but is not exactly a household name). But my puzzle didn't just hide LAGER over and over and over. There were other beer types. Here, it's just AGENDA AGENDA AGENDA, and there are only three themers, so those "huh?" themers really leave a mark. And today, the biggest "huh?" was VOLKSWAGEN DASHER—in fact, the answer is so "huh?," it essentially *tells* you that it's "huh?" but putting that giveaway bit in there about Santa's reindeer. I didn't know the Star of David was known as anything but the Star of David, so MAGEN DAVID was a shrug. Seems like a valid answer, but the point is that you really have to stretch the bounds of familiarity to make this work, and why? Just to see AGENDA again? Further, the revealer comes too early—the whole thing is given away at the top of the grid. Nothing much left to discover except how in the world there could be two more, non-ice cream answers that fit the bill. I just jumped to the end and then filled in VOLKSWAGEN DASHER (a car I've never heard of) shortly thereafter:

The other way this puzzle doesn't work as well as yesterday's is the fill, which was full of CRUD from the very start. Literally, the very start is where CRUD is, but that's also where ARRANT crosses ENNEAD (!?). When I'm stopping to take a screenshot of the wince-y fill before I've gotten out of the NW, that's a bad sign. But I stopped. Right here.

I watched the 1983 movie version of The Pirates of PENZANCE this past week (I'm trying to watch as many major-release movies from 1983 as possible this year—no reason, just 'cause it's been 40 years and it's something to do). It was ... bad? I mean, I'm sure it's a fine operetta, but the production was cheesy, and even though Kevin Kline was handsome and athletic, the movie wanted me to believe that Angela Lansbury was "ugly" and "old" and had no sex appeal, and my credulity could not stand the strain. I realized while watching it that I know nothing about Gilbert & Sullivan except that modern Major-General song, which I always thought was in "H.M.S. Pinafore"— me, to my wife: "Wait ... they did *two* nautical operas??? What on earth?"). Yesterday's 1983 film was The Sting II, which was also not good (it was supposed to be set in NYC but they kept filming at famous L.A. landmarks, what the hell!?). But it did have my childhood celebrity crush, crossword legend TERI / GARR, in it, so it was highly watchable, implausibilities and inconsistencies be damned. See you tomorrow.