Substitute for "subs" / THU 12-21-23 / Some fluffy slippers / "The Good Dinosaur" dinosaur / Receptionist-turned-administrator on "The Office" / Maker of Max Throat Care drops

Theme answers:

• BLASTING / FREEZE (3D: *What iodine might do / 45D: *Liberated) [STING and FREE are the correct answers for their respective clues; they appear inside BLA/ZE, which changes both answers to different, unclued words: BLASTING and FREEZE]
• FILAMENTS / SPARE (5D: *Expresses regret about / 52D: *Place to be pampered)
• INFERTILE / CHINO (7D: *Blank, e.g., in Scrabble / 53D: *X, to a sorority sister)

Word of the Day: LARA Spencer (13D: TV newswoman Spencer) —

Lara Christine Von Seelen (known professionally as Lara Spencer; born June 19, 1969) is an American television presenter. She is best known for being the co-anchor for ABC's Good Morning America. She is also a correspondent for Nightline and ABC News. She was the host of the syndicatedentertainment newsmagazine The Insider from 2004 to 2011 and was a regular contributor to CBS's The Early Show. She was the national correspondent for Good Morning America and spent several years as a lifestyle reporter for WABC-TV. She hosted Antiques Roadshow on PBS for the 2004 and 2005 seasons and Antiques Roadshow FYI, a spin-off of Antiques Roadshow, during 2005. She hosts the show Flea Market Flip on both HGTV and the Great American Country channel. In April 2018, she announced she would be only appearing on GMA three days a week to focus on her television producing. (wikipedia)

Sometimes you should just skip right to the revealer. Just scan the clues for the [blah blah blah dot dot dot or a punny hint to 17-, 24-, blah blah blah- and blah blah blah-Down] clue. It's possible you will save yourself a lot of time and hardship that way. Then again, some of the fun of solving is trying to suss out the damned theme *before* the revealer tells you what it is. And some of the fun is having the revealer actually *reveal* what the hell is going on, like a big "Ta-Da!," after you've been going at it for a while with no clue. If speed is your goal, seems worth just scanning for the revealer and seeing if you can get a jump start. I never do that, though some days I kinda sorta wish I did. If I'd seen today's revealer early, I would've filled it in (as I did when I eventually got there) with absolutely no help from crosses. Then I could've had some idea, as I filled in the extra-letter answers, what the HELL they were doing. My actual experience was much more clunky and embarrassing. Since I only ever really see what's right in front of me—I don't bounce around the grid, I always work off answers I have unless/until I get stuck—I have trouble sometimes seeing Bigger Picture things. Like today, as I was trying to assess what the hell the little extra bits were doing in those *asterisked* Downs, I never thought about linking the bottom of the grid with the top. Miles apart, they are, and mentally I just was Not putting them together. So I'm out there trying to spell things like "ZE ... RE ... NO ... ZERENO? Pfff, probably not." Looking at the grid now, I can't believe I didn't just look at BLA and then ZE and think "hey, it's BLAZE." My favorite show as a child was "Electric Company," so this short of [word part] + [word part] = [word] should've been second nature for me!

My actual experience involved stumbling my way through the grid until I finally hit the revealer, which, as I say, was a gimme—maybe the biggest gimme in the grid. But even with GO DOWN IN / FLAMES telling me what the trick was, I didn't see it immediately. I was thinking: "How is BLA "flames"? Or ZE or RE? These letters are nonsense, both on their own and when combi-" At some point my eye must've caught the BLA-ZE thing, and it was then that I had my genuine AHA (just one for me, not the plural promised by the grid) (30D: Moments of discovery). Once you have the revealer and understand what's going on, those circled/shaded squares don't have a chance. I filled them immediately:

Easy to finish things off from there. So, the theme ... I don't know how easy it is for solvers to see how hard it is to pull something like this off as cleanly as this puzzle does. I thought the extra letters were gibberish, so to have the gibberish snap into focus was wonderful. Also, to make this work out so that two different answers get engulfed by a word and come out looking like two *different* answers—so, STING to BLASTING, FREE to FREEZE, so that you've essentially got *five* different coherent words in each theme column (the clued, the unclued, and the "flames" word) ... and then all those columns (plus the revealer) end up in perfect symmetry!? I see stunt grids all the time that are trying real hard to impress you, but that are all superficial fireworks and no substance, or else compromised substance. Whereas this grid, even though its physical appearance is incredibly low-profile and non-showoffy is a *real* architectural marvel, and it also plays well as a puzzle. It's fun to solve. It works. And the grid is whisper-quiet, i.e. no clunks anywhere. The craftsmanship here ... well, it's Patrick Berry-esque. Quietly great. I hope solvers see that. If you've ever made a puzzle, you know what I'm talking about.

I feel like there's a bit of an in-joke happening in this puzzle. A Taylor Swift in-joke. I didn't realize this until I was finished and trying to think of GO DOWN IN / FLAMES songs I could put on the blog today. And my brain had this snippet of a lyric floating around it: "... or it's gonna GO DOWN IN / FLAMES." Not a lot to work with, and I couldn't quite pick up the tune, but even though it seemed a long shot, I turned to Google. And there was a lot of SEO nonsense at the top (Google really is increasingly useless), but I saw one name that came up in the first few "news" (i.e. "celebrity gossip") stories: Taylor Swift. Me: "OMG that's it, I know the song ... What Is The Song?!" Well, the song, it turns out ... is "Blank Space" ... you know, like those little boxes you've been filling in. So we get a revealer that is also a Taylor Swift lyric, from a song about "Blank Space"s, in a crossword grid where some of those blank spaces are eventually filled by Taylor Swift's ERAS tour (42D: Taylor Swift's record-setting ___ Tour). Conclusion: David Steinberg is a Swiftie. I love this era for him.

I don't have much to say about the fill. It's there, it's solid, I didn't trip on or groan at any of it. Closest I came to groaning was CRATE UP. Maybe I groaned, but if I did, it was pretty weak, as groans go. Really liked some of the misdirection, particularly [Brown in strips] for CHARLIE. I have teeny cluing quibbles here and there, but they hardly matter. This one really hums, and the revealer really revealed, and even though I felt dumb for much of the time I was solving, I had a great time. 

Time for more Holiday Pet Pics! Three cats, three dogs, let's go! 

First the cats, who all seem so serene...

[Beaniford J. Fuzzybritches aka Bean, a handsome addition to any flat surface (thanks, Timmy)] [Hey, my first cat was named Timmy] [Actually, he wasn't ours, he just came around with dead things from time to time and let you pet him. He was a drooler. This is no comment on you, Timmy!]

[Cleo and Zoe are helping! (thanks, Nancy)]

[Taschi is also golden, please look at him! (thanks, Nick)]

[Don't give up, Duffel! You're so close! We're sorry we doubted your ability to use scissors! (thanks, anonymous)]

[Sit somewhere else, bub. This chair is for Lulu, the wee half poodle / half mystery dog baby (thanks, Bonnie)]

[Like me, Olive is unsure about the edibility of gingerbread houses. Smart girl! (thanks, Maggie)

See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]