Beginning of a balcony soliloquy / MON 7-24-2023 / Guitar clamp / Card with a single spot on it

Theme answers:

• [Livestock holders on freight trains] for CATTLE CARS
• [Partner of a pepper mill] for SALT CELLAR
• [Stay very far away, as from a hazard] for STEER CLEAR
• [Courses that might have models] for ART CLASSES

Word of the Day: HARTE (19th century writer Bret) —

Bret Harte (born Francis Brett Hart; August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) was an American short story writer and poet best remembered for short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush.

Hi Barbies and Kens, it's Malaika here with a guest write-up! Solving Snack is Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk (straight from the pint so I don't have to wash a bowl) and Solving Music is the new Taylor song "Castles Crumbling." I zoooomed through this puzzle, I know Mondays are the easiest day but it felt particularly breezy. I think I benefitted from being familiar with crossword-y words like EMOTES or the weird-to-parse UN DAY or IOUS.

I was able to enter CATTLE CARS and STEER CLEAR very early on, and tried to play Guess The Revealer-- something bovine?? Oh how wrong I was. I believe this type of mechanism is called a "letter bank" although I'm not 100% sure of that definition, so perhaps you can correct me in the comments. The theme entries were all decently fun (raise your hand if you had "salt shaker" first), and the revealer seemed perfectly suitable. My mind wasn't blown or anything, but a very solid Monday.

And I will always give a round of applause to people who can pull off little stacks of vertical non-theme answers in the corners!! Ross Trudeau and CC Burnikel are good at this. I like to call those "colonnades," which is an architecture term for pillars that are in a row, because it describes the vertical nature of the entries and because I like cute little terms for things. I am more familiar with the terms "good sport" and "sore loser" but GOOD LOSER felt very "sure, why not." 

I recently gave a little How To Make A Crossword Puzzle talk, and one of the attendees asked me how to make a hard clue easier, especially if it's trivia or jargon. This puzzle had lots of examples of how you can add extra information. For example, the clue [Spider-Man adversary who was struck by lightning] could have just been the first two words, but adding the detail about lightning makes you think about electricity, which leads you to the answer ELECTRO. (Shout out to Jamie Foxx's uhh..... electric portrayal of him, by the way.) [Font style that the shortcut Ctrl+I activates], which clued ITALICS, is another good example. "Ctrl+I" is a good hint that the first letter will be I, and "font style" is a clear descriptor that could have been much more vague, like "formatting option."

Bullets:

• ["That's hilarious," in a text] for LOL — I get that it's boring to say "Will Shortz (70 yrs old) has a different frame of reference from Malaika (26 yrs old)" but here I am, beating a dead horse around the bush, or whatever the saying is. That is simply not what LOL means anymore because language changes and evolves etc etc okay I'm done now.
• [Soccer game cheer] for OLE — I have been trying to watch the Women's World Cup, but the time change makes the schedule Hell-ish. If any of you are in East Asia or Australia / New Zealand, I hope you are enjoying it!!
• [Inedible part of a cherry] for STEM — Cherries are in season and delightfully cheap over here! My local produce store is selling big bags of them for $1.99 and they're so ripe and juicy.

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]