Lassie's owner on old TV / THU 8-22-24 / Blue reef fish / Lover of Euridice, in opera / Young male lover, informally / 41, to 43 / Land that split from Zanzibar in 1861 / What doesn't look the best naked? / Tootsie treat? / Fitness fanatic, in slang? / Stampeders in "The Lion King"

Theme answers:

• EMMY AWARDS (17A: MEDALS—i.e. awards that starts "ME-")
• GEOLOCATION (24A: GOBI DESERT—i.e. a location that starts "GO-")
• ESSAY QUESTION (36A: "SAY WHAT?")—i.e. a question that starts "SA-")
• ANY OLD THING (48A: NEOLITH)—i.e. an old thing that starts "NE-")
• "ARE YOU GAME?" (59A: RUMMY)—i.e. a game that starts "RU-")

Word of the Day: L'Orfeo (25D: Lover of Euridice, in opera = ORFEO) —

[note: there are at least five operas with ORFEO in the title; this is the first and most famous] L'Orfeo (SV 318) (Italian pronunciation: [lorˈfɛːo]), or La favola d'Orfeo [la ˈfaːvola dorˈfɛːo], is a late Renaissance/early Baroque favola in musica, or opera, by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua. While Jacopo Peri's Dafne is generally recognised as the first work in the opera genre, and the earliest surviving opera is Peri's Euridice, L'Orfeo is the earliest that is still regularly performed. (wikipedia)

Well that theme was a lot easier to comprehend than it was to explain. I got it early and easily and then immediately went off to see if I could get every themer in the grid with no additional help. Here's where I picked up the theme...

And then here's me after I tried to get 'em all...

As you can see, I couldn't quite do it? The only GEO- word that would come to me was "GEOCACHING" and dear lord who could have foreseen that something as specific as [GOBI DESERT] would lead to something as hypervague as LOCATION? As for [RUMMY], I assumed that was slang for a drunk, and so wanted something like "ARE YOU HIGH?" (something I'm much more likely to say than "ARE YOU GAME?"—which most people would slangily shorten to "YOU GAME?" anyway...). So there were still theme things left to discover after the theme clicked, but not many. Got the gimmick and the puzzle opened right up, which meant that despite some toughish cluing here and there, this one played well on the Easy side. I like the theme just fine, though the only answer that seemed truly clever—the real winner of the day—was [NEOLITH]. Came close to a literal LOL while working that one, something about the professorial term "Neolith" being reduced to mere "OLD THING" seemed funny to me. The rest of the themers ... they do the job. The concept is lightly amusing, the execution is uneven but mostly solid. Too easy by far, without enough real thematic zing, but not bad, on the whole

One real tough spot for me: the NE. OK, not real tough, but toughish. Trouble started with GOT AT instead of GOT TO (22A: Irritated), and then two "?" clues, neither of which I could quite process. I know the term "naked eye," obviously, but my brain was like "Why would it look bad with your naked eye? or why would your eye look ... badly?" But the idea is just that there are things that simply can't be seen with the naked EYE, which means it's not the "best" at "looking" (at microbes, say). Then there was the ABBOT, who sits at the "Top of the order" ... of monks. It's a good "?" clue (9D: Top of the order?), with a surface meaning that screams "baseball" and then seemingly infinite potential other meanings (depending on how many meanings of either "top" or "order" you can imagine). In the end, it's pretty straightforward, actually, but once your (my) brain goes into "?"-clue, mode, it can be hard to emerge from the weeds. Then there was BOYTOY, which, again, I just couldn't come up with (11D: Young male lover, informally). I wanted something in the ROMEO / LOTHARIO family. BOYTOY implies a specific relationship to a partner, a somewhat demeaning and objectifying relationship, in a way that other words for mere "lover" do not, which is probably why BOYTOY didn't occur to me. I actually figured all this out without that much trouble, but compared to the rest of the grid, that NE corner seemed like work.

A couple things that grated. One was the cloying cutesy language. BOOTIE seems pretty neutral, but it started a baby-talk trend that just kept going, including referring to feet as "Tootsies" (5A: Tootsie treat? = PEDI) and finally (literally finally, the last thing I put in the grid) referring to one's rear end as both the cringey / dated [Buns] (in the clue), and the truly horrifically infantile PATOOT in the answer. Real nails/chalkboard stuff, and a hard way to go out. Otherwise, the only other problem I have with this grid is that it contains NEO when NEOLITH is such a prominent thematic component. That seems like very bad editing. Doesn't matter that you clue NEO some other, non-prefix way. Still seems like a jarring dupe, especially as NEO literally crosses the [NEOLITH] answer.

Some other things:

• 19A: "Cheers" bartender Woody (BOYD)— Woody Harrelson (who played "Woody") and Ted Danson have a newish podcast called "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" where they just chat to famous people they know (Jane Fonda, Laura Dern, etc.) and talk about the good old days, and I find it soothing and charming. 
• 7D: 41, to 43 (DAD) — gratuitous Bush content? That, I did not need. Why would you do this? Who requested this?
• 14D: Blue reef fish (TANG) — want to say "never heard of it," but I'm pretty sure that's what I said the last time TANG appeared ... wait. No. This is the very first time (?!) TANG has been clued as a fish. Oh I feel better. I assumed it just went in my head one day and fell out the next, like so many things I "learn" from crosswords. Anyway, TANG are aquarium fish that look like this:

• 62A: Land that split from Zanzibar in 1861 (OMAN) — truthfully, I had -M-N and saw "Land..." and just wrote in OMAN without reading further. Embarrassingly, I have no idea what "Zanzibar" is. I've heard the name, of course, but ... nah, I got nothing. Sounds mythical. Isn't there a candy bar named "Zanzibar"? No, I'm thinking of ABBA-ZABA ... or maybe a ZAGNUT. Anyway, lest I be called an incurious lout, here's what Zanzibar really is:

• 38D: Catchphrase for moviedom's "International Man of Mystery" ("OH, BEHAVE!") — you can tell the editors know the puzzle is too easy when they refuse to name "Austin Powers" in this clue.  So you kinda gotta solve two things: who has that moniker *and* what was his catchphrase? For me, neither one was an issue.
• 50D: University of North Carolina team, to fans (HEELS)— short for "Tarheels"
• 55A: Lassie's owner on old TV (TIMMY)— this feels like a pop culture thing that will get generationally evaporated very quickly. I never saw one episode of Lassie (more my parents' generation), but the idea that this wonder dog could essentially telepathically communicate with its owners, "telling" them where the danger was or whatever, was a standard joke when I was growing up. Your parents' pop culture is proximate. It's in your orbit. You "know" it even if you don't know it. But your grandparents' pop culture??? I dunno. I'm curious where the Lassie line is, age-wise. I mean, I assume people still recognize the name Lassie, but TIMMY? His "fame" seems like it might not be long for this world.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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