Relative of a pupusa / FRI 9-6-24 / Hyperbolic ordinal / Hindu gentleman / Frankfurter's cry / Youth-centric magazine spinoff / Shade akin to mauve / Crimean town in 1945 headlines / What female llamas do to show disinterest in a mate / Spy's assumption

• • •

The other long central answers came fairly easily as well, so you'd think that would give me the exhilarating zoom-zoom whoosh feeling I'm always looking for on Fridays. But I just didn't navigate from section to section that easily. The puzzle is overall a little too ... quadranted? ... to make for good whoosh. After a slow start, I kept getting bogged down in corners (most notably, the NE and SW), so my experience was one not of flying but of grinding. Plus, it's hard to get a joyful whoosh feeling when you're riding an answer like BIG PHARMA (ugh), or when you throw down MEAT PATTY instead of BEEF PATTY, or when most of the long Acrosses in the NE and SW do *not* come easily at all. The puzzle wasn't Hard hard, but every part that was *not* the center took some working out. So the feeling was one of being stuck in corners, not one of flying around the grid from explosive answer to explosive answer. Still, as I say, the quality of the fill is generally high, and I enjoyed the ride, even if I never got much above the 55mph speed limit.

It's a very first-person grid, with "I""ME" and "MY" answers all colliding near the center of the grid. I like that "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA, / I PROMISE" feels like one complete statement, though I will say there is something *slightly* off about "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA." I think it's the "THAT." If I just google ["wasn't my idea"], all the hits I get are either "IT WASN'T MY IDEA" or just "WASN'T MY IDEA" (both of which feel more colloquially correct). "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA" feels like someone trying to overstuff a wordlist. It's a perfectly comprehensible phrase, but it just doesn't land as perfectly as it ought, to my ear. Not nearly as perfectly as, say, "IT MEANS A LOT TO ME." The only thing that actively bugged me about the puzzle was BIG PHARMA + CITI, particularly that clue on CITI (31D: "___ Never Sleeps" (banking slogan)). It's not that the clue's inaccurate, it's just that it combines with BIG PHARMA to give the puzzle a creepy Blade Runner-esque corporate dystopia vibe. Maybe CITIshould sleep. "CITI Never Sleeps" is a half step from "Big Brother is watching you." Also, about BIG PHARMA—I think "familiarly" is maybe missing the vibe. I'd say "contemptuously" is probably closer to reality. No one is saying "BIG PHARMA" with affection, is what I'm saying. It's either someone (rightly) complaining about profiteering and irresponsible marketing, or someone (wrongly) railing against vaccines. I know the puzzle is never gonna sneer at Big Business the way I think Big Business deserves, but, still, I can't imagine voluntarily putting something like BIG PHARMA in your grid. Is anyone going to be happy to see that?

On the other hand, I was happy to see TEEN VOGUE (59A: Youth-centric magazine spinoff). That publication seems (generally) like a force for good, and it also helped me tremendously in getting through that SW corner, where I had PUCE as PLUM (55D: Shade akin to mauve) and had no idea what kind of RACE or SALE I was dealing with, and where the clue on ONCD was entirely inscrutable (53D: Ready for a drive, perhaps?) (I mean, I get it now, but not then). I also loved seeing "Kia ORA" down here (a phrase you'll hear if you ever fly Air New Zealand, which I have, many times), and, I mean, who doesn't love AREPAs (45D: Relative of a pupusa). I had my first AREPA at Hola AREPA on Nicollet in Minneapolis. I was visiting my best friends, Shaun & Steve, and then my friend Rob Ford, who calls games for the Astros, was also in town (because the Astros were in town), and so we all went to Hola AREPA ... I think it might've even been Rob's birthday (!?). All the stars were weirdly aligned to make the debut of AREPAs in my life a memorable one. And today's constructor lives (or at least went to school) in the Twin Cities, so it's all ... it's all coming together. I really want an AREPA. It's 5:11a.m. ... Patience.

The hardest section of the puzzle for me was the NE, without question. Started with my stupid MEAT PATTY mistake, but switching to BEEF PATTY only helped a little. I had no idea PIN was a chess thing, so I was out there, and of course I couldn't remember the OCH v. ACH distinction (7D: Frankfurter's cry), so I left a square blank there, and I wasn't certain about CATHY v. KATHY, and I got completely fooled by the mashed potato / chicken clue, and wow, yeah, SKA BANDS are not a front-of-the-brain thing for me, so parsing that one = yikes (5A: They often have multiple horns). No idea how to take "horns" in that clue. So that corner verged on Saturday difficulty for me, but everything else was solidly Friday, with the center being more Tuesday or Wednesday.

More Points:

• 63A: Roman goddess of childbirth (DIANA) — this flummoxed me, as DIANA is so strongly associated with virginity that "childbirth" seemed ... an unlikely bailiwick for her. I mean, she's really into virginity. Demands it of all her followers. She favors and watches over Camilla, the virgin warrior who has a prominent role in the Aeneid. She banished the nymph Callisto from her inner circle when she discovered Callisto was pregnant (by Jupiter, who "seduced" or "raped" her, depending on whom you read). So in my mind, DIANA => virginity, and since virginity does not (except in one famous case) lead to childbirth, I resisted DIANA for as long as I could. 
• 32A: Rembrandt and Sargent, notably (PORTRAIT ARTISTS) — wrote in PORTRAIT PAINTER even though the answer is obviously plural. Just a reflex. That's the phrase I want. The opening paragraph of Sargent's wikipedia page features a quotation calling him the "leading portrait painter of his generation." Sargent is the artist who first got me to see portrait painting as something other than static and boring. As I've probably said before, I stood in front of this painting for ... well, it was probably 15 minutes or so, but it felt like hours. I was mesmerized. I kept noticing new details. Everything about it was engrossing. I love you, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw!

• 1D: Hindu gentleman (BABU) — no idea. I had BABA in there at one point.
• 57D: Burrell of the Food Network (ANNE)— less than no idea. Isn't there a Ty Burrell who is ... someone? Oh yeah, look at that, he's the dad on Modern Family. As for ANNE Burrell ... wow, she was born on the same day (not the same date, but the same damn day) as my best friend Shaun, who is now making her second appearance in this write-up. September 21, 1969! It's an auspicious birthday, Sep. 21. It's the Earth, Wind & Fire birthday!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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