Corpus juris contents / WED 9-23-15 / Fast Company profilee / Beauty queen bride quaintly / Miller on town kiss me kate / Only american invention as perfect as sonnet per HL Mencken

Constructor: Michael S. Maurer

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Wednesday...)


THEME:just ordinary football terms that have been given wacky clues—

Theme answers:

• FIRST DOWN (17A: Appetizer, usually?)
• KICK OFF (24A: Exile from?) — god, that clue's awkwardness hurts
  
• DEFENSIVE LINE (33A: "I am not guilty," e.g.?)
• RED ZONE (50A: Cuba or North Korea?)
• FAIR CATCH (57A: Beauty queen bride, quaintly?)

Word of the Day: ANN Miller (8D: Miller of "On the Town" and "Kiss Me Kate") —

Johnnie Lucille Collier (April 12, 1923– January 22, 2004), known professionally as Ann Miller, was an American dancer, singer and actress. She is best remembered for her work in the Hollywood musical films of the 1940s and 1950s. [...] She appeared in a special 1982 episode of The Love Boat, joined by fellow showbiz legends Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, Della Reese, Van Johnson, and Cab Calloway in a storyline that cast them as older relatives of the show's regular characters. (wikipedia)

I guess I don't consider this much of a theme. You could replicate it over and over and over, with any field. Just put some terminology in there, and then clue it ... wacky. These clues could've been wackier, actually. Or at least more ... lively. Interesting. They're a bit dull. Whatever. Shrug. Pretty hard, though. I know football terms very well (I knew all of these), and I couldn't find the handle much of the time. Just not on my wavelength. Puzzle seems reasonably well constructed. I detest the word ESPECIAL, and w/ ESTOS up there, that section's not much fun. But the puzzle rarely resorts to stupid non-words (though, EMOTER, I see you ...), and there's nothing very cringey at all. It's all OK. Just conceptually weak. Not much fun for me. But I've been testing some pretty special puzzles, so maybe this puzzle is suffering in my eyes by comparison. There's really nothing Wrong with this puzzle. It's just blah. And if you're not into football, god help you.


Bullets:

• 26A: "The only American invention as perfect as a sonnet," per H. L. Mencken (MARTINI)— Great clue on MARTINI, but Hard As Hell. Needed almost every cross before it dropped.  
• 21A: Where you might spend dinars for dinners (SERBIA)— first, that pun is truly lousy. Second, I fell like half the world uses dinars. This clue was hard.
• 52A: Dance class wear (UNITARD)— I wrote LEOTARD, because of course I did.
• 35D: Ceaselessly (NO END)— I wrote in ON END. This was oddly disastrous.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]