Famed deco designer / SUN 3-5-23 / Aggressive setting in Fortnite / Landmark on the entrance to Narnia / Bankman-Fried fallen crypto mogul

Constructor: John-Clark Levin

Relative issue: Easyish

THEME: “As Heard Across the Dinner Desk” — theme solutions comprise circled letters which can be MEAT SUBSTITUTES (102A: Vegetarian choices … or what the shaded letters on this puzzle are, phonetically); that’s, they’re letter strings that sound similar to meats (of their respective solutions) regardless of not being spelled as such:

Theme solutions:

• GO TO A RESTAURANT (22A: Dine out) (goat)
• DUCT TAPE (35A: Assist in some makeshift repairs) (duck)
• PORE CLEANSER (38A: Blackhead remover) (pork)
• BEFORE PICTURE (62A: A part of many a weight-loss advert) (beef)
• BAKE IN THE SUN (85A: Lie out on a scorching day) (bacon)
• LAMP POST (89A: Landmark on the entrance to Narnia) (lamb)

Phrase of the Day: CSU (10D: Fort Collins sch.) —

Colorado State College (Colorado State or CSU) is a public land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado. It’s the flagship university of the Colorado State College System. Colorado State College is classified amongst “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very excessive analysis exercise”. It was based in 1870 as Colorado Agricultural Faculty and in 1935 was renamed the Colorado State Faculty of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. In 1957, the Colorado Basic Meeting accepted its present identify, Colorado State College. […] The Colorado State Rams compete within the NCAA Division I Mountain West convention. Swimmer and six-time Olympic gold medalist Amy Van Dyken is certainly one of CSU’s most notable athletes. The varsity renamed West Drive, which stretches alongside the west aspect of the Administration Constructing on the south finish of CSU’s Oval, Amy Van Dyken Manner. (wikipedia)

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Actually want I had higher information right here, however this was fairly brutal. Not brutal as in laborious–it was principally a breeze—however brutal as in painful to resolve, for quite a lot of causes. The fundamental theme idea … I do not assume it actually works. They don’t seem to be MEAT SUBSTITUTES in any significant sense of the time period. The “shaded letters” aren’t substituting for something. In the event you’d spelled it PORKLEANSER, then certain, “meat” is serving as a “substitute” for the precise letters, however as is, what you have obtained are solutions which can be spelled completely appropriately. The truth that the circled letters are kinda pronounced like numerous meats does not make these letters “substitutes” for something. So on a literal degree, the theme does not appear to work that properly. Additionally, simply circling the “LAM” in a solution does not appear to be … something. What number of billions of phrases may you could have used there? So your themers are both arbitrary and completely non-special solutions, like LAMP POST, or, on the opposite finish of the spectrum, they’re tortured solutions, like GO TO A RESTAURANT. I imply … wow. Wow. I … I imply, I invented the goofy phrase EAT A SANDWICH to explain a sure number of ridiculous “[verb] A [noun]” phrases you generally see in crosswords, however I by no means ever imagined I might seen a solution that was truly *goofier* than EAT A SANDWICH. I am gonna should rename the idea now. No, I am not going to, however GO TO A RESTAURANT is hall-of-fame ridiculous. After which to have the gall, the gumption, the nerve to additionally put GETSANA in the identical grid?! Wonderful. Amazingly grotesque, however wonderful nonetheless. Add to all this the puzzle’s weird, perverse dedication to gratuitously inserting a number of the very worst human beings into the grid (BRET Stephens!?!? SAM Bankman-Fried!?!? Whyyyyyyyy? What are you doing? Who’s that for?), and you have got … properly, I do not know what, however nothing I’d care to re-experience, that is for certain.

GO TO A RESTAURANT omg sorry I am nonetheless laughing / dying inside over this reply. LOL, HOW DARE YOU certainly. I feel I blacked out after that, someway finishing the puzzle with out retaining a lot reminiscence of any of it. The lengthy Downs on the edges are form of attention-grabbing. That is a pleasant little function. Or … it is the nicest function of the puzzle, that is for certain. PANCAKE (as clued) and SLAMMER have some good vitality. However the grid as an entire is quite bland, and the construction of the grid, woof, it is so horribly segmented. So many black squares, and people NE and SW corners are *ridiculously* lower off from the areas simply beneath them. In case you are within the NE nook, you can’t transfer down the grid with out going All The Manner Over, previous the puzzle median, to AIRDROP at 41D: Apple wi-fi file switch. Clearly the identical holds true in reverse for the SE nook (gotta go allllll the best way over to DECADES to maneuver up). It feels actually clunkily put collectively. I am sorry I haven’t got extra to say, or at the least extra to say that is optimistic. I simply assume this one missed the mark on each degree—on the degree of idea, execution, and total fill. As for issue, there wasn’t a lot. I feel the toughest half for me was the DOUR DYED LOAF EUROS half. A number of clues there I did not perceive. Had IDLE for LOAF (43D: Do nothing) and SOUR for DOUR (51A: Sick-humored) and had no thought what to make of the clue on EUROS (44D: Paris bar tender?) (“tender” right here is “cash”—so, the cash you’d use at a Paris bar = EUROS). In order that was a tricky patch, however that is the one one, I feel. I actually hope you discovered extra to admire than I did. 

Something want explaining? A COT is [Where you might go down in the ranks?] as a result of “go down” = “sleep” and “ranks” = “different troopers.” That is all for me on this one. See you subsequent time.