Heraldic band / THU 9-30-10 / Destination for Near Eastern caravan / Zeno's locale / Sci-fi role starting 1966 / Low-cost home loan corp

Constructor: Victor Fleming

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Uh-uh" — That's the clue for five theme answers


Word of the Day: SERAI (31A: Destination for a Near Eastern caravan)

serai [sɛˈraɪ]

n

(in the East) a caravanserai or inn

[from Turkish saray palace, from Persian sarāī palace; see caravanserai]

nsary. (dictionary.
• • •

This puzzle reviews itself.

I have been surprised this week at how little care has been given to the quality of the fill. The theme is fine—no real memorable answers, but it's consistent enough, with a nice colloquial quality. But the non-theme stuff is Horrible. Over and over again, grimace-inducing answers. Not just one, but at least half a dozen. Obscure names, strange abbreviations, odd forms like LHASAN (ack) (44D: Like the Dalai Lama, historically) and SUBMERSE (ugh) (63A: Put under), and then ... whatever SERAI is. Apparently, the cuteness of the idea of the theme is all that matters. Computers can fill in the blanks. I just don't know ...

Theme answers:

• 16A: I WOULDN'T / IF I WERE YOU
  
• 34A: BAD IDEA
• 36A: BACK OFF
  
• 49A: THINK AGAIN
  
• 58A: DON'T DO IT
  

Briefly: shot self in foot early on with DR. SPOCK / KARATE instead of MR. SPOCK (1A: Sci-fi role starting in 1966) / KUNG FU (7D: Style of fighting). Weird to make those mistakes and yet have ORLE (ugh) be a gimme (5D: Heraldic band). Then I confused "L" and"D" and wrote in MLI for 1D: Year Michelangelo began work on "David" (MDI) ("began?" Since when is "year artist began a work" a basis for an important date???). TEAS for BEES (22A: Some socials) also held me up. To this point, frustrating, but not anger-inducing. Normal Thursday stuff. It was not until I encountered the slew of (often absurdly marginal) character / actor names that I began to get annoyed, and then by the time I hit the east coast (toward the end of things), I had completely checked out. Don't know how you cram a section full of ERIKA (25D: Actress Alexander of "The Cosby Show") / SERAI / FNMA (!?) (39D: Low-cost home loan corp.) / A COW / NUM (48A: Deut. preceder) / MINA (52A: ___ Harker, wife in Bram Stoker's "Dracula") and think "yeah, that's good." Also, CAN TOO, YES BUT, DARE ME—I'll take one. I will not take three.

I have used a juicer, but wouldn't know a REAMER if it were staring at me (29A: It gets the juice out).

I have "F.U." written in the margin next to 64A: Girl in "Waterworld" (ENOLA)

Bullets:

• 43D: Brokerage name since 1992 (E*TRADE) — I confess to enjoying their baby.

• 8D: Nymph pursuer (SATYR) — pairing of this with FAUN (38D: 8-Down's Roman equivalent) was one of the nicer moments today
• 23D: Zeno's locale (ELEA) — one of those answers (like ORLE) that you have beaten into you one too many times; eventually, the word just sticks, whether you like it or not (though truthfully, today, my brain rolodexed a host of E-words: EDOM, ELIA, etc. before remembering ELEA—which reminds me, ALEA is the Latin word for "die" (singular of "dice") in case anyone asks)

The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]