Setting for "My Cousin Vinny" / MON 9-16-24 / One assigned female at birth and identifying as such / Letter-shaped plumbing piece / Fruit that's a citrus, not a hybrid of a pomegranate and melon

The pomelo (/ˈpɒmɪloʊ, ˈpʌm-/ POM-il-oh, PUM-; Citrus maxima), also known as a shaddock and from the family Rutaceae, is the largest citrus fruit, and the principal ancestor of the grapefruit. It is a natural, non-hybrid, citrus fruit, native to Southeast Asia. Similar in taste to a sweet grapefruit, the pomelo is commonly consumed and used for festive occasions throughout Southeast Asia and East Asia. As with the grapefruit, phytochemicals in the pomelo have the potential for drug interactions. (wikipedia)

Nah, this doesn't quite work. Specifically, the "LAND" part of the revealer has nothing to do. The only one of these answers that's an actual "LAND" is RURAL ALABAMA ... which also happens to be the most contrived answer of the lot. I know that the theme answers can be conceived of as "lands" in some vague metaphorical sense, but that's weak. If you give me LA LA LAND, that LAND part better mean something. And it doesn't. A simple letter string isn't that interesting, and it's especially uninteresting if one of the resulting answers is something as tenuous as RURAL ALABAMA. Moreover, MALALA YOUSAFZAI isn't a great fit either, given that "LALA" breaks across two words in every theme answer *except* that one. The LALA is contained entirely in her first name, leaving her last name just hanging out to dry. No, this one just doesn't have the next-level concept of the polish to make for a very good Monday (or any day). It's not bad, but it's not good enough. 

Solving this Downs-only was easy enough, except for one part that felt pretty harrowing, namely, the tail end of YOUSAFZAI. I threw those Downs down and got plausible crosses, but something about -ZAI felt wrong/off, so went to the end of this puzzle worried I was not going to get a "Congratulations!" message at the end. So I guess that part wasn't "hard" so much as dangerous-feeling. The harder part—the hardest part for me, by far—was figuring out 21D: Decided to skip. At first I assumed it ended -ED, but when that didn't work out I eventually got it down to -A- OUT ... but then nothing. For a while, the only thing I could think to make out of that first word was "RAN," but RAN OUT didn't feel like a good answer for [Decided to skip] (perhaps because it's not). Thankfully, NONY is not a word, or I might've written in RAN OUT and left it. But NONY looked like a definite no-no, so I waited a bit and ran some other scenarios and finally hit on SAT OUT. And yes, that looked much better. TONY> NONY, for sure. 

Otherwise, the only other real hesitations I had today came right away, at 1D: Org. with the motto "Because Freedom Can't Protect Itself" (ACLU), and then "OK, BUT," which is a really odd standalone answer (odd enough that it's only ever appeared one other time, ten years ago). Oh, and BLABBY, which seems like a borderline nonsense word (10D: Loose-lipped). No hope there until I finally got inferred the "B" in GWBUSH (8A: POTUS #43). One thing I liked about BLABBY, though, was it helped me guess the "F" in FLAB (43A: What "muffin top" and "spare tire" are euphemisms for). See, since I was solving Downs-only (i.e. not looking at Across clues), I was staring at -LAB, which gave me multiple options for that first letter, but since I could eliminate BLAB (because BLABBY was already in the grid), I went ahead and tested FLAB ... and it worked. I realize now it could've been SLAB, not sure why that didn't occur to me, but once the "F" went in, FINEST immediately followed.  I had MAMA before DADA (no surprise there) (53D: Baby's first word, perhaps). Forgot the first letter in P-TRAP (45D: Letter-shaped plumbing piece), but thankfully S-ELLS wasn't likely to be anything but SPELLS (or, rather, P-TRAP rang a bell, whereas M-TRAP and W-TRAP and H-TRAP seemed ... unlikely). I was surprised to see LILLE, which seems kind of a minor French city for a Monday, but I was able to get it off just the "L," so maybe it's more major than I thought. In crosswords, at any rate. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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