Metaphor for one's personal perspective / SAT 4-8-23 / 2019 chart-topper for Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello / Source of masago in Japanese cuisine / Consumer of cod but not cow / Game that's hard to follow / Rock band named after its founding guitarist

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Masago (6A: Source of masago, in Japanese cuisine => SMELT) —

Masago is the roe of capelin, a fish in the smelt family. It’s a popular ingredient in Japanese cuisine because of its distinct look and taste. Masago eggs are very small, and often used as a topping in a variety of sushi recipes. (izzycooking.com)

A central element of this puzzle's difficulty for me came from an answer that was very easy to get: namely, PESCETARIAN. That word is pronounced with a hard "C," and since "C"s are never* hard if they precede an "E" I always assumed that word was spelled PESCATARIAN. Which it is. Sometimes. I see now that PESCETARIAN is supposed to be a variation on VEGETARIAN, hence (I assume) the "E" spelling, but knowing too much about how the English language actually works completely blinded me to the idea that PESCETARIAN might be right. It still looks horrible to me. PESCETARIAN. What is that? "Someone who eats only what Joe Pesci eats"? Anyway, I'm going to continue to spell it the correct way, the way that my software (currently) is *not* red-underlining: PESCATARIAN. The problem with my "misspelling" today is that it led to BARBECUES at 25A: Some tailgate party accessories (BEER BONGS). I think of tailgate parties and BEER BONGS as belonging to completely different cultures, or at least different locales (stadium parking lots vs. frat houses / dorms), so the BONGS part was a long time coming. I am "drawn" to NYC for art exhibits, and to wander art museums, but it would not occur to me to come for something as vague as ART SCENES (27A: Cultural draws for New York and Los Angeles). Again, the clue just didn't track for me. See also STIR (?) instead of the obviously better answer SNIT at 14D: Tizzy. I know "three-card MONTE" but not (really) MONTE on its own, so that was brutal.  SHOES is clued accurately enough (16D: Metaphor for one's personal perspective), but dear lord it's hard to imagine without a possessive pronoun ("your""my") in front of it. Somehow all these troublesome clues ended up in the NE, but I still blame PESCETARIAN for starting the trouble. The west half of the puzzle played normal, but the east half played very hard, and the epicenter of that hardness was PESCETARIAN's second "E."