Essie competitor / TUE 4-16-24 / Pigment used in the Lascaux cave / Certain immature adult / Japan's national fish / "Gesundheit" prompter / Vodka brand in a blue bottle

Theme answers:

• STEPHEN FRY (16A: *Actor who played Oscar Wilde in "Wilde" [fish])
• RYAN GOSLING (10D: *Mouseketeer peer of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake [gander])
• SAMUEL COLT (62A: *Inventor who patented the first revolver [stallion])
• CHARLES LAMB (24D: *English essayist who wrote "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once" [ram])

Word of the Day: BARBACOA (8D: Beef option at Chipotle) —

Barbacoa (Spanish: [baɾβaˈkoa] [...] is a form of cooking meat that originated in the Caribbean with the Taíno people, who called it by the Arawak word barbaca, from which the term "barbacoa" derives, and ultimately, the word 'barbecue". In contemporary Mexico, it generally refers to meats or whole sheep or whole goats slow-cooked over an open fire or, more traditionally, in a hole dug in the ground covered with agave (maguey) leaves, although the interpretation is loose, and in the present day (and in some cases) may refer to meat steamed until tender. This meat is known for its high fat content and strong flavor, often accompanied with onions and cilantro(coriander leaf). (wikipedia)

It's a weirdly gendered insult that I don't generally hear and certainly wouldn't use, but I guess it has enough currency to be a crossword theme, why not? It's the gender part that ends up being the one weak link in the theme, since all the animals are identified by specifically male terms ... except "fish." Fish is just "fish." No gendered term for baby fish, which makes this answer stick out more than it already did—FRY being a word I almost never hear except metaphorically, with the word "small" in front of it. If you'd asked me the word for a young [any of the non-fish animals in this grid], I would've known immediately, but FRY, uh, yes, that is a stage in fish development (between larva and fingerling, i.e. once the fish becomes capable of feeding itself, but before it's developed scales and working fins, per wikipedia) ... but, perhaps because they aren't generally visible unless you have a fish tank, and aren't particularly adorable, I would not have put them in the "baby" category. But fish are animals and FRY are young ones and STEPHEN FRY gets you an answer symmetrical to SAMUEL COLT, so there you go. Still, nothing "male" about it, so the MAN BABY theme you've taken pains to establish in all the other theme clues kind of falls apart there.

STEPHEN FRY made me laugh because I have no idea what "Wilde" is so, this being crosswords, I wrote in STEPHEN REA. This made me remember that Stephen REA appeared in a grid recently and a bunch of solvers got So Mad because the answer wasn't FRY. Let's see if I can find the puzzle where this happened ... here we go, April 4, 2024—the MARTINI puzzle. The clue was [Stephen of "V for Vendetta"], which both three-letter Stephens were in! So you can see why a solver might be mad. Me, I've been solving crosswords for over three decades (since the early '90s, when Stephen REA gained some fame because of his role in The Crying Game), so REA is just a reflex at this point. Unless you are *certain* about Stephen Fry, the three-letter acting Stephen is *always* REA—the name with the more crossword-friendly letters wins, that's the rule, thanks for playing! It's been that way since 1993—though you might occasionally see the term [Mens REA] (legal Latin for "intention of wrongdoing”) and if you're lucky, you might get a musical appearance from Chris REA. But today, OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Short Bad Fill (I mean, Crosswordese), betrayed me and failed to give me the REA I instinctively expected. He is a capricious god. A MAN BABY, some might say (some, but not me—I really don't want to make him angry) (solvers should make a point to honor him every October 30, for that was the one and only day upon which he showed his fearsome aspect to solverkind, way back in 2009) (the traditional offering is OREOs; you could try NILLA Wafers, but ... I wouldn't risk it).

I had BIG BABY before MANBABY, and thought that the BIGBABY / BIGBIRD crossing was some kind of ... thematic thing. But then BIG didn't work for the BABY answer so I changed it to MAN. I don't know if GOO over BABY is intentional (mens REA?), but it's a nice touch (GOO being half a baby sound). The only tough parts of this puzzle were the first names of COLT and, to a lesser extent, LAMB (having a Ph.D. in English means the 18th-century essay guy is a lot more familiar to me than the gun guy). Oh, and I had no idea about the N.F.L. coach, but crosses just blew right through him, no (real) problem.

Bullets:

• 10A: ___ czar, N.Y.C. government position whose job listing called for "a virulent vehemence for vermin" (RAT) — tl;dr for sure. Scanned the clue, saw "vermin," wrote in RAT, the end.
• 65D: Deserving of a fire emoji, as a party (LIT) — I had HOT
• 64D: Essie competitor (OPI) — nail polish

• 25A: Starting point for a record-setting swim in 2023's "Nyad" (CUBA)— so presumably ... the starting point for a record-setting swim ... in real life? The movie was non-fiction, right? Weird clue.
• 56A: Pepper and O'Leary of classic rock: Abbr. (SGTS.)— [literal record scratch sound in my brain] Wait, hold up. I nearly blew right past this because SGT. Pepper is a gimme but ... O'Leary!? Did you ... did you really just gratuitously throw a Billy Joel reference in there!? SGT. O'Leary? The one who's walking the beat? At night he becomes a bartender? Trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac (-ac -ac -ac -ac -ac)? Wow. He's in one verse of the song, not even the title or anything. That is some deep Billy Joel commitment. Not sure who to blame for this one but I'm gonna guess ... Joel.

• 53D: Word in the title of Broadway's longest-running show (OPERA) — ladies and gentlemen, my sincere reaction to this answer was "Wow, Three-Penny OPERA ran that long? Longer than Cats or Les Miz or Phant- ... oh."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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