Constructor: Dan Margolis
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: Types of rye bread, with a twist
Theme answers:
- 17-A: The 68 participants in the N.C.A.A. March Madness tournament, e.g. = SEEDED TEAMS
- 28-A: Michelangelo's David and the Venus de Milo, for two = MARBLE STATUES
- 47-A: Purim or Rosh Hashanah = JEWISH HOLIDAY
- 61-A: Old TV series featuring the creepy main character Barnabas Collins = DARK SHADOWS
Matt Gaffney here filling in for Rex, who's cloud-surfing behind a hot-air balloon over Nova Scotia as I write these very words (I'm guessing).
SEEDED, MARBLE, JEWISH, and DARK are all descriptors of well-known types of rye bread. And then we get an unusually-placed revealer at 68-/69-A: [With 69-Across, courtroom directive ... or, homophonically, what the starts of 17-, 28-, 47-and 61-Across are] = ALL RISE (i.e. "ryes")
So that's a decent theme -- tight set and as far as Google knows it hasn't been done before, plus the revealer ties it up nicely in a bow.
Signed, Matt Gaffney, Regent of CrossWorld for a 24-hour period which will end all too quickly[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]