Sister brand of Mazola / FRI 3-31-23 / Diacritic over the 'r' in Dvorak / Show first performed during 1994's Eurovision Song Contest / Joel who once played Wyatt Earp in film / Blended numbers / Classic cars that rivaled the Ford Maverick and Plymouth Duster

Constructor: Rich Norris

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PART SONGS (9D: Blended numbers) —

Strictly any song written for several vocal parts, but in practice, a comp. for male, female, or mixed vv. (usually but not necessarily unacc.) which is not contrapuntal like the madrigal but has the melody in the highest part with accompanying harmonies in the other vv. Either through‐composed (Durchkomponiert) or strophic (verse‐repeating). Is a particularly Eng. genre, developing in popularity with growth of choral socs. in early 19th cent., so there are many examples by Pearsall, Barnby, Stanford, Elgar, Delius, Warlock, and many others. But examples exist by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, etc. (Oxford Reference)

This was not for me. In the extreme. Felt like being bludgeoned with olde-tymeiness. I was having flashbacks, seeing fill I hadn't seen in two, four, twenty-four years, and for the life of me I could not find more than a wisp of contemporary ... anything. For real, this could've come out in the late '90s, No Problem. '80s, possibly, were it not for NEVE Campbell. How long as it been since there were CHEVY NOVAS? (Not since the '80s). How long as it been since someone tried to use THEPO in a grid? [Just last year!? Wow, I blocked that out] When's the last time someone used the term POOBAHS unironically? I think I learned that term from "Happy Days," which means it was already old-timey 45 years ago. I learned CANTAB from crosswords and then promptly stopped thinking about it because constructors got better at filling grids and also got slightly less Ivy-centric in their thinking (I think of CANTAB like I think of ELIHU Yale, i.e. really, I have to know this?). I love Joel MCCREA (26D: Joel who once played Wyatt Earp in film), but then I watch more old movies than is probably healthy, and anyway, what a borrrrrrring clue for MCCREA—a charming, dreamy leading man who was the star of some of the greatest movies of the '40s, including Sullivan's Travels and one of my five favorite movies of all time, The More the Merrier (with JEAN ARTHUR, my No. 1 all-time movie crush) (OK, maybe tied with Teri Garr). Laura INNES isn't a contemporary reference any more, not since RIVERDANCE was a thing (seriously, has this puzzle been sitting in a drawer since '97?). I really liked "JUST SAY IT!" as that was the one thing that felt like it had a pulse. Puzzles should have broad frames of reference and the cluing should be alive to the language of today. This one fell short on both counts. The good stuff was not nearly good enough, or widespread enough, to offset the overall musty feel of the grid.