Chuckwalla relative / THU 4-4-24 / Gave a red card, informally / Derby participants in July / Game show host John Michael / Mission involving Spirit and Opportunity, in brief / What Scott Joplin might yell after a spill? / Kind of candle at a wedding ceremony / Coiner of the term "ambient music" / Accessory in many Rembrandt self-portraits

 

• • •

After that, there's nothing to discover about this puzzle except a very bad and incomplete recipe. If you're going to put the ICE CUBES bit in here, then you also need to include the stage where I get the GIN and VERMOUTH out of the shaker and into the glass. I need POUR or STRAIN or something. ICE CUBES is an absurd answer used only to create some kind of symmetry, I'm guessing (with VERMOUTH), but ... then the puzzle goes and throws symmetry out the window by not including a symmetrical thematic element for MARTINI—unless the puzzle is congratulating itself on a BRAVURA MARTINI. The puzzle should specify  somewhere that the proportions here (5-to-1) are used to make a *dry* MARTINI. Classic proportions are something closer to 2-to-1, and some people enjoy a good 50-50 (where the proportions are ... well, you can guess). I know that people who think they know martinis (which means they know them almost exclusively from pop culture) believe that the vermouth is supposed to be barely there: "wave the bottle over the glass" or some such nonsense. Quit trying to be such a tough guy and get some good VERMOUTH. Makes all the difference. As for *this* martini, it's nice that you got your little picture to have the GIN and OLIVE in the glass itself. I have no idea what you think you're doing with the VERMOUTH and ICE CUBES, though. 

I liked finding ENO at the bottom of my glass. A little bonus crosswordese garnish. What I didn't so much like was the (famous??) quote about MARTINIs from ... E.B. White??? The Charlotte's Web / Elements of Style guy??? Not a name I would've associated with the MARTINI. And that quote, yikes. That thing took this puzzle from way too easy to nearly impossible. QUIETUDE, LOL, I've never seen anyone use that word ever. I barely know what it means. I assume it has something to do with a state of calm, peace, serenity ... quiet? Yes, "a quiet state: repose" (per merriam-webster.com). All I know is that when ELIXIR OF LIFE didn't fit, I was plum out of ideas, and my god was it hard to get a foothold in the SE as a result. I died somewhere around COUPE. Below that ... I got KEEPER and ENDER'S, but they did nothing. Ditto REA and ADD. I kinda wanted BIBS but wasn't sure (54D: Racers' wear). The only way I finally got into all that empty space down there was *finally* figuring out the first two letters of DQ'ED (44A: Gave a red card, informally). Without the "thrown out of the game" part in the clue, my brain failed to make the leap to disqualification (even though if you'd ask me what a "red card" meant, I could've told you). And the "Q" made all the difference, though again, I wrote in QUIETUDE like "uh, I think this is a word, but does not feel like a famous quote... but let's see." And it worked.

And from there I realized that it was PUNIER and not TINIER (51A: More piddling) and that the "Derby" participants were not horses (that's May) but BATTERS ... in the Home Run Derby (which precedes the MLB All-Star Game ... they're really expecting you to be a hardcore sports fan today) (54A: Derby participants in July). To "Tighten the purse strings" was to CUT BACK (and not CINCH UP, as I'd originally guessed). Night and day, this corner from its symmetrical counterpart. The familiarity gap between SHAKEN NOT STIRRED and ELIXIR OF QUIETUDE is approaching infinity. Universal fame and then ... shrug.

Explainers:

• 57D: Mission involving Spirit and Opportunity, in brief (MER) — if it's not the French "sea," I have no idea what MER is supposed to be. Apparently this is the abbr. for "Mars Exploration Rovers." Ugh. It's the sea. Why would you turn the sea into an initialism like this? Stick with the sea, or fix your grid so you're not dealing with MER at all.
• 14A: Dolly, e.g. (EWE)— the cloned sheep
• 18A: What Scott Joplin might yell after a spill? (RAGTIME!) — this is an unwelcome trend in clues, for sure. RAGTIME is of course the music Scott Joplin popularized around the turn of the (last) century.
• 27A: Kind of candle at a wedding ceremony (UNITY)— no idea. First I'm hearing of this. Per wikipedia: "The origins are unclear, however the use of a unity candle in a 1981 episode of General Hospital may have helped to popularize the practice." Dear god.
• 34A: Certain soccer kick (TOE POKE) — Do *not* order the TOE POKE bowl, the toes really overwhelm the tuna and absolutely none of it complements a MARTINI.
• 58D: Homophone of a body part and a letter (AYE) — confidently wrote ARE here ... forgetting that there are no AREs anywhere on my body (I don't think).
• 26A: Letters associated with Joseph Smith (LDS)— Latter-Day Saints (Mormon Church)
• 28D: Alternative to an energy drink, perhaps (NAP) — one of the worst clues I've ever seen. NAPs are great. I wouldn't touch a so-called "energy drink." Not an "alternative" in any meaningful sense of the word. You drink one so as not to fall asleep ... so the "alternative" is falling asleep? So dumb.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc. 

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