Cousin of a mallard / TUE 6-16-15 / Blues musician Allison / Brooklyn hoopster / Social reformer Jacob / Paintball cry / Hindu meditative rituals / Multilevel military readiness system / Cousin of catalan / Prankster's weapon

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Challenging (**for a Tuesday**) (time: a bit over 4)

THEME: toppers— different foods are clued as "offerings" from different venues, and then the answers directly on top of said foods (so … literally topping them) are clued as those foods'"toppers":

Theme answers:

• 18A: Fast-food offering (BURGER) / 15A: 18-Across topper (CHEESE)
• 19A: Soda shop offering (ICE CREAM) / 16A: 19-Across topper (HOT FUDGE)
• 60A: Trattoria offering (RIGATONI) / 58A: 60-Across topper (MARINARA)
• 61A: Ballpark offering (HOTDOG) / 59A: 61-Across topper (ONIONS)

Word of the Day: SCAUP (8A: Cousin of a mallard) —

The New Zealand scaup (Aythya novaeseelandiae) commonly known as a black teal, is a diving duck species of the genus Aythya. It is endemic to New Zealand. In Maori commonly known as papango, also matapouri, titiporangi, raipo. [there are "greater" and "lesser" SCAUP too. I just picked the NZ one because if I have an opportunity to go kiwi, I'm going kiwi] (wikipedia)

I quite liked this theme. Simple, neatly executed. It played hard for a Tuesday, but not ridiculously hard, and not hard for the wrong reasons. The not-terribly-specific, cross-referenced theme clues, as well as a few less-than-common answers, simply created speed bumps (or humps, which I'd never heard of until I saw a "SPEED HUMP" sign outside PuzzleGirl's front window in suburban D.C.—our hypothesis is that speed humps are broader and less jarring). The fill here isn't great; there's some fine stuff here and there, but the average is a little on the weak side—grid's a little too crowded with a POSSE of less-than-great answers, from the harmless and banal (ASNER, ERNIE, RIIS, CERA, PSA, ADA) to the somewhat more crosswordesey (SSN, SSE, ALEE, MRES, NOMSG, ONKP, INLA, URALS, ANO, CBSTV) to the aggressively partial (ATAIL) to the oddly arcane (LOGIA) to the how-the-hell-have-I-never-seen-this-duck-before!? (SCAUP—last known NYT sighting: 1998). It's also hard to imagine using REGALER in a sentence, straightfacedly. But the charm of the theme was enough today. Even the horrific image of a SCAUP CHEESE BURGER couldn't ruin the fun for me.


Bullets:

• 8D: 7-0 baseball victory, e.g. (SHUT OUT)— came at this from below and initially went with BLOW OUT. The clue seems designed to elicit that error. This is yet another reason the puzzle played harder-than-normal for me today.
• 41D: Cousin of catalán (español) — lack of capitalization threw me, but languages aren't capitalized in Spanish (it seems), so, fine.
• 2D: Doggie (POOCH)— was sure this was gonna be some kind of non-canine slang. Might've read it initially as "dogie." Whatever happened, I needed multiple crosses to see POOCH.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 39A: What a surfer catches (WAVE) / 49D: It might accompany a wave in Waikiki (ALOHA) — every one of you can fix this dupe in approximately zero seconds. Editing!

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