Deep, dark ocean caverns / SUN 2-16-25 / Cry of cringe / Hazard cleanup, in brief / Yo-yo-like toy with devilish-sounding name / Instruments with large bells / Religious gymgoer on leg day? / Meyer who directed 1965's "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" / Boat equipment for removing water on board / Whimsically imaginative, as writing / Michael Jordan's nickname, with "His" / Hindu honorifics / They make sounds when they're tickled

Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that featured campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the latter of which he considered his definitive work. (wikipedia)

Wish I had better news about these Sunday puzzles, but OOF (7D: Cry of cringe). I do not get it. You change "W" to "SQU" ... why? The "S" in particular, I do not get. It's a whole other sound. What is the point of all this? Especially for a mere six weak puns. Mystifying. Even more mystifying is how the grid is as bad as it is, given that there are only six themers, and thus the pressure on the grid is minimal. But still, we're doing COEDS in the year of our lord 2025? And BLUE HOLES, whatever those are, and UBOLTS, whatever those are, and DECON, and plural ALTS and plural SRIS, and on and on. Further, the grid is built to maximize short stuff (look at all the 4s and 5s through the middle there), and in a Sunday-sized grid, that is a particularly dire choice. How do you get only two (2?!) good long non-theme answers in a Sunday-sized grid with this few themers. DEEP-FRIED OREOS and WALRUS MUSTACHE can stay, but everything else? Tear it down and rebuild. I'm surprised that the editing team seems to care so little about overall craft. Even if you (somehow) loved the theme, that's just six answers. What about the rest of it????! It's all so bland and so dull. And the one bit of original fill in the whole thing (besides BLUE HOLES (!?)) is ... A.I. ART!? Why? No one likes that. No one wants to see that, in real life *or* in the grid. I don't understand the choices people make sometimes. AIART + YECH had me wanting to quit the puzzle before I'd even really begun. What the hell kind of spelling is YECH??? Yuck.

The theme was not just rudimentary, it was also very easy to pick up. Got the first themer, took one look at the title of the puzzle, and knew exactly what I was for ... although I repeatedly forgot about the addition of that damn "S"—"W" to "QU" makes sense to me, "W" to "SQU" ... much less so. There's not much difficulty anywhere to be found today. Besides YECH (30A: "Eww!") and BLUE HOLES (!?!?!) (11D: Deep, dark ocean caverns), everything was pretty familiar, and none of it was clued too trickily. I think parsing "ODDS ARE..." was probably the toughest part of the solve for me today. I have never heard of a DIABOLO, or heard anyone even refer to such a thing, except in crosswords, where I have seen it ... I dunno, a few times (77A: Yo-yo-like toy with devilish-sounding name). Maleska seemed to really like it (three appearances in four years), but after he last used it, in 1987, it took a twenty-two year vacation from the grid. Why it reappeared in 2009, I don't know, but it's appeared three times since then, twice now in just the past couple years. If you've never heard of it, you're in good company, for sure. As for BILGE PUMP (76D: Boat equipment for removing water on board), I've definitely heard of that, but again ... why do you put such ugly (sounding) words in your puzzle? I know that this is simply a matter of taste, and nautical types might find BILGE PUMP absolutely poetic, but BILGE already kinda sounds like a synonym for "barf," and then you add PUMP in there and .... I don't know. It's not attractive to my ears. See also SUMP PUMP, STOMACH PUMP ... but not FUEL PUMP, BICYCLE PUMP, FIST PUMP. These are my pump rules. I didn't know I had pump rules, but puzzles sometimes clarify things for you, make you aware of feelings you didn't know you had.

Is that really how you spell "SQUIRRELLED," with two "L"s?? As one-syllable words go, that one is looooooong. Eleven letters!? Wow. Anyway, the double-"L" is an acceptable form, but it really looks British to me. Most spellings I'm seeing are single-"L," which is certainly how I'd spell it if I had to spell it. Also thought it a strange choice to deliberately steer the PACKS clue into cigarettes (14D: Cigarette purchases). So many PACKS in the world, why would you go there? Look, I smoked for several years in my youth and I remember that time semi-fondly and I think certain actors look amazing on screen when they're smoking, and it's true that, despite the frequently disastrous health consequences, people still (somehow) smoke; I'm not suggesting we should ban all mention of cigarettes. But somehow the clue was oddly jarring to me, esp. given how unnecessary it was to take the clue in a carcinogenic direction. Packs of animals, packs of cards, packs of gum, "packs" as a verb. If I had a choice, a lot of choices, I don't think I'd go with a cigarette clue. Not going out of my way to normalize a bad habit (and a worse industry).

Bullets:

• 32A: Instruments with large bells (TUBAS)— the "bell" is the fluted part sound comes out of. Just glad they didn't spell this TUBAE.
• 67A:Whimsically imaginative, as writing (SEUSSIAN) — SEUSSIAN seems way more narrow than "whimsically imaginative" to me, so this took a while. I think you gotta get "rhyme" in there somewhere for it to be truly SEUSSIAN. And "for children," too.
• 80A: Michael Jordan's nickname, with "His" (AIRNESS) — I liked this. I'd like the whole thing better (HIS AIRNESS), but as dumb sports names go (AIRNESS doesn't even rhyme with anything), I like this one.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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