11/13/19: "Carnival Projectiles" by Ed Sessa

Featuring Everything But the Kitchen Sink (& Representation)! 

Gaelle Marcel

Big Picture

This was a tough, slow Wednesday for me. It took me forever to realize there was a rebus. At 51D POP BANDS, it finally clicked for me that there were too many letters! But my first guess for the rebus entry (having not gotten the theme at all yet) was BOYBANDS. After some quick post-puzzle googling, I've determined that both bands are in fact all men, as I thought. But OneRepublic isn't really a "boy band" per se, not like One Direction. Silly mistake. I then looked back at 50A SOAP OPERA and POP! I got it. Puzzle was all downhill from there, aside from a few tricky spots noted below.

The four theme entries and additional revealer, including grid-spanning IS THE POPE CATHOLIC, severely constrained this grid. The fact that Ed was able to fill it as well as he did is major kudos to him. That being said, there were some icky spots (SSE, ERTE, RCA) that made the solve tough in places even after I had the theme entries filled in.

Love

• Theme! It was great! POP as a rebus on a circle is so visually representative of a cartoonish BALLOON DARTS game, especially an online version. I viscerally remember playing online balloon darts on Webkinz to earn whatever the cash was called on there so that my pet wouldn't starve. The entries, especially HIPPOPOTAMUSES, APOPLEXY, and IS THE POPE CATHOLIC had all of the promised POP. Super fresh use of the sometimes tiresome circles and the sometimes tiresome rebuses -- at the same time!
• TASTER (29D: One eating before a king) = this fairly meh entry was elevated by a great clue! Couple of previous puzzles have gotten a similar idea across, but the wordplay on this was just fantastic and made for a good laugh at a spot that might otherwise have been a yawn.
• SYRUPS (8D: Some cough remedies) = Similar idea to TASTER, but thought this clue was fresh and happily un-pancake-related. 

Dislike

• SST, ETRE, RCA: Meh. French partial. Weird Abbreviations. These were clearly tough spots for Ed and they did not make for enjoyable fill. 
• HEP, TORA: HEP is seriously outdated. Even with the word "dated" in the clue I still had no idea what this was. I had HIP in there for a long time, especially since this is crossed with the French partial, ETRE. Tricky (in a bad way) crossing. Movie names from 1970 also fall in the "dated" category for me. Never heard of TORA! TORA! TORA!; not even a hint of familiarity. I had a brain fart at 65A and for some reason had NICK in for a while instead of NOOK, but at least TORA's crossings were fairly benign.
• AD MEN: Ick. Just went in and pulled that one from my dictionary. 

Representation

Major fail. Yikes.

Men clued or mentioned: Elton John, Julius Caesar, Noam Chomsky, Iggy Pop, Eric Holder, John Huston, Gay Talese, Giuseppe Verdi, all of One Direction & One Republic and of course the anonymous but gendered AD MEN.

Women: Dora the Explorer, Tricia Nixon

Without googling pictures of every one of those men, I'll add that POC representation is limited to Dora the Explorer. Not a great look.