Common ingredient in eye shadow / SUN 7-7-2024 / Italian for "tooth" / Display at a school show / Slowly wanes, as support / Popular brunch cocktail / Ice on one's head? / Robert who owns the New England Patriots

Theme answers:

• EA(T HUMB)LE PIE (22A: Admit one was wrong)
• BL(IND EX)PERIMENTS (35A: Research trials using withheld information)
• KATE (MIDDLE)TON (48A: Royal whose wedding had a whopping 1,900 guests)
• SPAR(RING) PARTNER (76A: Friendly debate opponent)
• (PINKY) AND THE BRAIN (92A: Lab mice of 1990s cartoons)
• FAT FINGER SYNDROME (107A: Excuse for texting errors, jocularly ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)

Word of the Day: CLAMATO (119A: Ingredient in a Bloody Caesar cocktail) —

Clamato /kləˈmɑːtəʊ/, /kləˈmeɪtəʊ/, /kləˈmætoʊ/ is a commercial drink made of reconstituted tomato juice concentrate and sugar, which is flavored with spices, dried clam broth and MSG.^[1] It is made by Mott's. The name is a portmanteau of clam and tomato. It is also referred to colloquially as "clamato juice". It is consumed in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, to a lesser extent. It is very often mixed with alcohol to make a Caesar, a drink similar to a Bloody Mary.

Hello yet again! It's Rafa here to close out the weekend! I'll be gone tomorrow, so if you've been waiting anxiously for me to go away, you are in luck. Again, I hope your last 24 hours were wonderful. I read an article in the New Yorker about glass eel fishing. Always fun to read about eels as a crossword person. Eels are actually really cool! Nobody knows how they reproduce (!) ... they only spawn in the Sargasso Sea ... they are very expensive and there's a whole clandestine eel industry. That article made me feel like EELER / EELED are maybe ok as crossword fill? (Don't cancel me!). Anyways, let's move on to this puzzle.

So, IMO there are a few issues here. Firstly, and most glaringly, FAT FINGER SYNDROME is simply Not A Thing. The puzzle is trying very hard to make it A Thing, but, alas, it is not. Googling "fat finger syndrome" with quotes returns a measly 15,000 results. Take a peep at this incriminating graph below.

Having a revealer that misses the mark is always a real letdown for me because the whole puzzle is one building crescendo getting you ready for the revealer denouement. You worked so, so hard for that revealer! And when you get something that is Not A Thing you are sad!

Secondly, once I figured out the theme (early on), there were no additional aha moments, no side plots to my puzzle's drama, no wine pairings to my puzzle's tasting menu, no deliciously thick layer of cream cheese to my puzzle's toasted sesame bagel. Since there are just five fingers, and they were in order, I could just go through and pretty much immediately fill out the theme answers based on very few (if any) crossings.

Thirdly, the fingers aren't very well hidden in all the entries. We start out strong with THUMB and INDEX across word breaks. Then MIDDLE and RING are just half-heartedly "hiding" at the beginning / end of a word. And then PINKY ... is just there, in plain sight. Its own word. Not trying to hide at all.

Finally, Merriam-Webster lists "pinkie" is the primary spelling for the finger, and PINKY as a variant spelling. This didn't bother me too much (I don't think I have a preference for one vs. the other) but did any of you notice or care? Let me know!

And then the fill felt mostly uninspiring to me. There are no non-theme entries with length >7, so there isn't much opportunity to include interesting bonus fill in the puzzle. Sometimes a Sunday theme is just so constrained that there's no way to fit in any other long slots, but this one felt like it could have supported some more zing. ZEPHYR is a fun word ... BELLINI is nice maybe? ... ECHIDNAs are funky creatures, SPARE ME is a good colloquial expression ... but there isn't much else here to remember.

The short stuff was on the gluey side too. LEDA / OBS / MAI (as clued) / OWS / SISI is a pretty rough row. The clue choice for MII [Early 11th-century year] boggles the mind. Funny that they had to clue EDM as Edmonton and not Electronic Dance Music, I assume for fear of the ECHIDNA crossing but then they couldn't clue ALB as another 3-letter Canada abbr. so they went with the religious garment.

Overall, not my favorite Sunday, I'm afraid! It's a pity because the "fat finger" idea is really fun. If the revealer had been just FAT FINGERS, even if not in a symmetrical position with another theme entry, I think this would have been a stronger puzzle.

Bullets:

• I SEE [39D: Words from someone who's following you] — Loved this clue!
• ASEA [104D: Offshore] — I will be an ASEA hater for the rest of my living days. Abolish ASEA as crossword fill. May ASEA go ASEA and never return a-land
• TOASTY [31A: Like a room with a lit fireplace, often] — This, however, is a fantastic word. TOASTY! What a great word. More TOASTY in crosswords, less ASEA
• STREAK [85A: Run out of clothes?] — Another cute tricky clue that was easy to see through but still got a chuckle out of me

Signed, Rafa

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]