Utopian locale in a Coleridge poem / TUE 8-8-23 / Buddhist temple built in the early 12th century / 1990s TV heroine with a sidekick named Gabrielle / Surgical tool with an acronymic name / Bit of chocolate-flavored cereal / Likely contents of a cup with a green siren logo

Constructor: Zachary David Levy

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: STATE LINES (64A: Borders represented four times in this puzzle — both in the grid and on a map) — state postal codes abut one another in the theme answers (just as the states they represent abut one another on a map):

Theme answers:

• ROYAL / FLUSH (17A: Best possible hand, in most poker variants)
• FANNY / PACK (25A: Carrying case worn with a strap)

• STARBUCKS / COFFEE (39A: Likely contents of a cup with a green siren logo)
• ANGKOR / WAT (51A: Buddhist temple built in the early 12th century)

Word of the Day: Temple of the Golden Pavilion (22D: City with the Temple of the Golden Pavilion = KYOTO) —

Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺, literally "Temple of the Golden Pavilion"), officially named Rokuon-ji (鹿苑寺, lit. 'Deer Garden Temple'), is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. It is one of the most popular buildings in Kyoto, attracting many visitors annually. It is designated as a National Special Historic Site, a National Special Landscape and is one of 17 locations making up the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto which are World Heritage Sites.

Kinkaku-ji was ranked the No. 85 Most Holy Place on Earth by religious leaders, writers and scholars in the Patheos multi-faith religion project Sacred Spaces: The 100 Most Holy Places on Earth. [ed.: how, and more importantly why, would you RANK holiness? Why would a "religion project" participate in turning holiness into yet another clickbait Top 100 list? Bizarre] [...] On 2 July 1950, at 2:30 am, the pavilion was burned down by a 22-year-old novice monk, Hayashi Yoken, who then attempted suicide on the Daimon-ji hill behind the building. He survived, and was subsequently taken into custody. The monk was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was released because of mental illnesses (persecution complex and schizophrenia) on 29 September 1955; he died of tuberculosis in March 1956. During the fire, the original statue of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was lost to the flames (now restored). A fictionalized version of these events is at the center of Yukio Mishima's 1956 book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and another in the ballet RAkU.

The present pavilion structure dates from 1955, when it was rebuilt. (wikipedia)

Good morning and greetings from very near the border of FANNY andPACK! (about a 15- or 20-minute drive from my house in southern NY to the PA border). This puzzle features not one but two Buddhist temples, which is ... well, I don't know what. Unusual? I got ANGKOR WAT straight away—must be the most famous Buddhist temple on the planet, or maybe I just know it because it's been used to clue WAT so often—but I'd never heard of "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" (which seems to be officially named "Rokuon-ji" or "Deer Garden Temple"). This ignorance of mine led to one of the few places in today's grid where my forward momentum was slowed down: confronted with a five-letter "K" city containing a temple I've never heard of, I went with KABUL. Well, I didn't really "go" with it, I just couldn't think of any other five-letter "K" city off the top of my head, so I had to wait for the "Y" from FANNY PACK to help me out. Seems appropriate, since that "Y" is the part of "NY" that I live in—the part abutting PA (we call it the Southern Tier). Where was I? Ah, I was ... nowhere near the theme yet. So, the theme—I dunno. Shrug. You get a little "oh" at the end of a very easy themeless, basically. The theme answers themselves are lively enough, even if STATE LINES itself ... isn't. What this theme made me think of was the potential consequences of eliminating literally all other state code adjacency in your puzzle. That is, I wondered about what happens to a grid in which you do not allow for accidental state code adjacency. Is there a cleaner, more enjoyable, less gunky version of this grid out there with DEAL in it, say, or MANY, or any of many other regular English words (or phrases) where state codes just happen to appear in succession? The constructor has done a good job of making sure there are so such stray couplings, but ... well, the grid has stuff like TSLOT and ULNAR and a lot of regular old crosswordese (ELOPE EPSON AROAR and on and on and on), and I wonder what the policing of accidental state code adjacency has done to grid vibrancy (if anything).