Kate's kisser in classic tongue twister / WED 4-1-15 / 1925 Pulitzer Prize Edna Ferber / Smarter Planet company / Kurtis Mayfield's Move / Region off the Cote d'Azur / Irvin first art director of The New Yorker

Constructor: Sharon Delorme

Relative difficulty: Wednesdayish


THEME: Hijinks!— A selection of jolly pranks for April Fools' Day.

Word of the Day: INDC [Visiting the Library of Cong., say] —

Hmmm, turns out this isn't a word. My bad. But I'd love to visit the Library of Kong.

Howdy, puzzlers. Rex is on vacation somewhere, so this is Doug filling in for PuzzleGirl, who is probably asleep right now. And I don't blame her. We had an amazing and utterly exhausting weekend at the ACPT.

I considered doing some elaborate April Fools' Day post, but I'm sure Rex would get cranky emails if I posted a fake grid or made up extra theme entries. So let's just dive into today's puzzle.

Theme answers:

• 18A: JOY BUZZER ["Put 'er there, pal!"]
• 24A: DRIBBLE GLASS ["Here, have a drink"] 
• 38A: SQUIRTING FLOWER ["Smell my corsage"]— This one sounds weird. I can't imagine someone coming up to me and saying "Smell my corsage." And sticking your nose into a woman's corsage is a good way to get your face slapped.
• 51A: TRICK CANDLES ["Happy birthday! Make a wish and blow"] 
• 62A: PRANKSTER [Speaker of the clue for 18-, 24-, 38-, and 51-Across] 

So we've got a collection of pranks someone found in an old comic book ad. I once bought a joy buzzer (and a pair of x-ray glasses) from a comic book ad. The joy buzzer was a huge disappointment. Instead of delivering the shocking agony shown in the ad, all it did was vibrate weakly in my victim's palm. Where's the joy in that? The x-ray glasses, however, worked like a charm. I use them to watch HBO through my neighbor's wall.

I like the old-timey vibe of the pranks, but I bet this puzzle disappointed some solvers, who were hoping for a wacky April Fools' Day-esque gimmick in the grid and/or the clues. Maybe the trick is that there is no trick. Did you ever think of that? So meta.

Bullets:

• 1A: SO BIG! [1925 Pulitzer Prize winner for Edna Ferber]— The actual title doesn't have an exclamation point, but I think it needs one. I'm trying really hard not to type "That's what she said," so let's just move on. 
• 32A: ESAU [Kate's kisser in a classic tongue twister]— I have no idea. Let me Google that: "I saw Esau kissing Kate. I saw Esau, he saw me. And she saw I saw Esau." I want to add "... by the seashore" in there somewhere.
• 17A: STIEG [Larsson who wrote "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"]— Good timing on this clue. I read today that a sequel to the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy will be published in September. Cool.
• 42D: LOVE/HATE [Kind of relationship]— Nice entry. I also like 9D: COBWEB [Sign of disuse].
• 31A: OEN / 63D: NEO and 57A: OTRO / 2D: ORTO— Two sets of reversed entries. That's kind of weird. And they're all kinda ugly.
• 59D: ABBA [Group with the hit 1978 album "The Album"]— Let's go out on a high note with an ABBA/Van Halen mash-up.

Signed, Doug Peterson, Laughing Boy of CrossWorld