I just read the definition of PART SONGS and honestly still don't get it.
Eventually I just guessed SONGS because I figured well, that's a word that means "numbers," so OK. Is that like a round song, like "Frère Jacques"? Oof, I had PART and then no idea. It's GOLDEN AGE not GOLDEN ERA (12D: Prosperous period). DIET PILLS are awful in real life and so awful in the grid. Trying to pretend they're not literary just makes them fussier / weirder, not better. People use that? It's weird that the puzzle wants to make ARGO and EYRE non-literary. Is that also bygone? Oh, no, just corn oil. What is Mazola? ( 10A: Sister brand of Mazola). This one fell short on both counts. The good stuff was not nearly good enough, or widespread enough, to offset the overall musty feel of the grid. Puzzles should have broad frames of reference and the cluing should be alive to the language of today. I really liked " JUST SAY IT!" as that was the one thing that felt like it had a pulse. Laura INNES isn't a contemporary reference any more, not since RIVERDANCE was a thing (seriously, has this puzzle been sitting in a drawer since '97?).
HELL RIDER PLYMOUTH DUSTER MOVIE
1 all-time movie crush) (OK, maybe tied with Teri Garr). I love Joel MCCREA (26D: Joel who once played Wyatt Earp in film), but then I watch more old movies than is probably healthy, and anyway, what a borrrrrrring clue for MCCREA-a charming, dreamy leading man who was the star of some of the greatest movies of the '40s, including Sullivan's Travels and one of my five favorite movies of all time, The More the Merrier (with JEAN ARTHUR, my No.
I learned CANTAB from crosswords and then promptly stopped thinking about it because constructors got better at filling grids and also got slightly less Ivy-centric in their thinking (I think of CANTAB like I think of ELIHU Yale, i.e. How long has it been since someone tried to use THEPO in a grid? When's the last time someone used the term POOBAHS unironically? I think I learned that term from "Happy Days," which means it was already old-timey 45 years ago. How long has it been since there were CHEVY NOVAS? ( Not since the '80s). '80s, possibly, were it not for NEVE Campbell. For real, this could've come out in the late '90s, No Problem. I was having flashbacks, seeing fill I hadn't seen in two, four, twenty-four years, and for the life of me I could not find more than a wisp of contemporary. Felt like being bludgeoned with olde-tymeiness.
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