Captor of Wendy Darling / WED 6-2-10 / Metaphorical target of attacks / Rawhide singer Frankie / Quebec's main drag / Forte's opposite

Constructor: Adam Cohen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Fishing — theme answers end with ROD, HOOK, LINE, and REEL


Word of the Day: Grande ALLÉE (65A: Grande ___ (Québec's main drag)) —

La Grande Allée est une importante voie de Québec. Elle est située sur la colline de Québec, parallèle au fleuve Saint-Laurent, dans les arrondissements La Cité–Limoilou et Sainte-Foy–Sillery–Cap-Rouge. Elle est réputée pour ses restaurants et ses beaux édifices. (wikipédia)

[The Great Walk is an important route of Quebec. It is located on the hill of Quebec, parallel to the St. Lawrence River , in the boroughs City-Limoilou and Sainte-Foy-Sillery-Cap-Rouge. It is renowned for its restaurants and beautiful buildings.]

• • •

Not much to this one. Theme feels overly simple and *very* old-fashioned. Theme answers, ho-hum (though LIGHTNING ROD and VIRGINIA REEL have a kinetic quality that's kind of appealing). Rest of the grid is solid and unremarkable, except for STRIKE PAY (6D: Compensation during a work stoppage), which shines, and ALIMONIES (37D: Severeance package payments?), which doesn't. Long answers aren't the place for forced plurals. Anyhow, I'm grateful for the almost complete lack of dreck. I stumbled in several places, but still came up with a time under 4, which says "Easy" on a Wednesday. Went with KENTS instead of KOOLS (1D: Mentholated smokes) — love the clue on that one; poetic — and DIRGE instead of ELEGY (8D: Poem of lament). Later, I took HOPI over ZUNI (59A: New Mexico native) and ARI over URI (60D: Altdorf's canton) — a perennial mistake of mine.

Theme answers:

• 20A: Metaphorical target of attacks (LIGHTNING ROD)
  
• 35A: Captor of Wendy Darling (CAPTAIN HOOK)
• 42A: Game show originally titled "Occupation Unknown" ("WHAT'S MY LINE")
  
• 56A: Dance with fiddlers and a caller (VIRGINIA REEL)
  

Couldn't remember DEL RAY at first (46A: ___ Beach, Fla.), had to fumble around to get ALLÉE, and found the clue on BALMY tough for some reason (30D: Like Indian summer days). Wanted some word for "unseasonably warm." Or "long," which is weird, as Indian summer days aren't particularly long. They suggest a "long" summer. Hardest clue of all, for me, strangely, was 59D: ___ + 4 (ZIP), especially considering I didn't have the "Z" at first. "Where's the 'equals' sign?" I'd forgotten that the ZIP code system is called "ZIP + 4" ("4" being the four digits that come after a hyphen, after your regular ZIP — I don't know my "4").


Bullets:

• 1A: Japanese beef center (KOBE) — also, a phenomenally talented Laker who will begin playing for the NBA championship tomorrow night.
  
• 49A: Oslo Accords partner of Yitzhak and Bill (YASIR) — I like when first names are clued this way (via parallelism) more than when they're clued via last name. Usually.
  
• 66A: Diary fastener (HASP) — Me, while solving: "What's a dairy fastener?" Me, a few seconds ago, when looking at this clue again: "What's a dairy fastener?"
• 69A: Sawbuck halves (ABES) — like this clue as much as [Mentholated smokes]. Three cheers for the colloquial.
  
• 7D: "Rawhide" singer Frankie (LAINE) — If I had a "Crosswordese 101" segment to this blog, the way PuzzleGirl does over at her (now) very own LAT crossword blog, this would have been my entry for the day. An important name to know, and one I know only from crosswords. There's also a (doubly crosswordy) CLEO LAINE.
  
• 22D: Eclipse, to the impressionable (OMEN) — I have trouble with the word "impressionable." I think you wanted to convey "ignorant," but thought that too mean, so hedged, and got a word associated mainly with children. Not good.
  
• 28D: Sporting tattoos, slangily (INKED) — good clue. I'd have gone the comic book route in this clue, but tattoos work fine here.
  
• 31A: Forte's opposite (PIANO) — so "pianoforte" is an oxymoron?
  
• 44D: Sicilian spewer (ETNA) — "spew" is up there on the Ugly Words list with "MOIST" and "PUS" and "MULCT" and some others.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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