Roman foeman / SAT 9-5-20 / Dice in slang / Source of brachiocephalic trunk

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Medium (8:01)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ATHOL Fugard (42A: Playwright Fugard) —

Athol Fugard FRSL OIS (born 11 June 1932) is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director widely regarded as “South Africa’s greatest playwright.” He is best known for his political plays opposing the system of apartheid and for the 2005 Oscar-winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood. Acclaimed as “the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world” by Time Magazine in 1985, Fugard continues to write and has published over thirty plays. Fugard was an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego. He is the recipient of many awards, honours, and honorary degrees, including the 2005 Order of Ikhamanga in Silver "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre" from the government of South Africa. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was honoured in Cape Town with the opening of the Fugard Theatre in District Six in 2010, and received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011. (wikipedia)

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Sometimes puzzles have no dramatic flaws but still come across as listless, like they were spat out by a computer armed with a prodigious word list. There's just an Uncanny Valley quality—yes, these are all words and phrases, and they are mostly reasonably familiar, but somehow it still doesn't feel like a flesh & blood human being made this. I think I just want to see more obvious humanity in, well, everything, and I expect Fridays and Saturdays to fairly teem with it. BUREAUCRAT and ACCOUNT REP are just deathly to joy in general, and then many of the longer answers, while Just Fine, don't really sing. Don't have flair. Don't seem daring. Maybe you love Gilbert & Sullivan and so thought PIRATE KING was keen, ok. But by the end of this thing, the only things I looked back on with any fondness were MEDAL HUNT, OPEN LETTER, and RAINMAKER. The rest feels like a robot or a Martian or a robot-Martian made it. I mean, a well-trained, highly observant robot-Martian, one who had been studying the ways of humans and their language for years, but still. I also just really didn't like the structure of the grid—I always find highly-segmented puzzles annoying, as cut-off corners tend to play like entirely separate, often much harder stand-alone puzzles. With only one tiny route in, the NW and SE corners like that—the rest of the grid is more open, had a nice flow, wasn't a slog. But then there were these tight 3x10 (roughly) corners and they felt slightly suffocating. Maybe this entire puzzle rests on PIRATE KING. Certainly if I'd known it, the SE would've been much easier, and maybe if I were a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, I'd've felt that PIRATE KING and MUSICAL were sufficiently delightful distractions. But I doubt it. 

Hey, if cancel culture is real, why is infamous racist Paula DEEN still showing up in my crossword? (4D: Celebrity chef Paula). Literally no one in solver-ville is clamoring for more DEEN content, so ... what the hell are you even doing, constructors / editors? To whom is ONE STAR an [Amazon deterrent]. Does it deter me ... from buying something. The seller ... from selling bad things or giving bad service? Mostly I find ONE-STAR reviews unhinged and narcissistic. Also, it's the review / rating that's the deterrent, not the star itself. Cluing ONE STAR as if it were a noun phrase is weird. "I gave the blender ONE STAR and that ONE STAR will surely deter future blender buyers." Again, as I said up top, something about the wording here lacks a distinctively *human* quality. It's called a "paring knife," not a PARER. But I don't have a load of complaints today, just a kind of disappointed, listless feeling. Mistakes? A few. I genuinely thought PIRATE KING might be PIRATEKIND (26D: Gilbert and Sullivan's "glorious thing to be"). HISS (?) before SASS (52A: See 48-Across) (48A: "Watch your ___!" (response to 52-Across) (TONE) (suuuuper-awkward cross-reference). MAKE A JOKE before TAKE A JOKE (43A: Laugh it off, say). MARES (??) before BERGS (51A: Calves come from them). INDIA before TAMIL (5A: Part of Kamala Harris's ancestry) (wasn't really sure what part of speech was called for there). HIS before THY (21A: "Glorify ___ Name" (church chorus)). Nothing too remarkable. Nothing too remarkable. That's how I feel about pretty much the whole shebang today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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