(Person A writes down the Webster's definition of an obscure word then the other players write their made-up definitions. We were celebrating the holiday with dear friends and someone suggested the 'dictionary' game. I was traveling yesterday and unable to hop in on WYVERN, which has been a family in-joke for nearly 40 years now thanks to a Thanksgiving night in NYC (where we lived the first two years of our marriage). Tonight, for example (4 letters, answer below) Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clue for today's grid: I think I'm just opposed to gratuitous SO's (especially since there's already a 'SO' in the grid ( 1A: 'I feel pretty, _ pretty' ('West Side Story' lyric)). It tends to be a faux-diplomatic, understated assertion anyway. EXTRA on its own pretty much takes care of the 'overdoing' it.

I've heard of particularly intense or emotive people referred to (semi-derisively) as 'EXTRA,' but SO EXTRA feels like an odd hyperbole. I like the NW corner's HOW NICE / SWOONED. There are a healthy *eight* such answers, but there's not much sizzle there. Would've been nice to have a little more sass or verve in the longer Downs. I'm not gonna notice a small handful of these, many of which are fine words, but they repeaters, for sure, and today they kinda come at you en masse. ADEN ATTA TWERE LEAS ELENA NAS ECO LEIA WWII OLIN ASP APBS etc. This leads to a predictable glut of crosswordese, which is rarely bad on an individual-answer basis, but which can be enervating in any significant accumulation. Just pockmarked in a way where all you notice is short answer after short answer after short answer, everywhere, all the time. On first opening the puzzle my heart sank just a tiny bit because the grid is so choppy-looking. So it's a very fine concept with only a so-so execution. These answers kinda sorta land, here and there. If you're going to do something basic like 'drop-a-letter' (or, in this case, two letters), then those themers really Really have to land. It's not just the weaker of two base phrases, it's the weakest of three. That is, 'beat to the draw,' while a real idiom, is far far less common and idiomatically snappy than BEAT TO THE PUNCH, or, from another angle, QUICK ON THE DRAW. Then there's BEAT TO THE AW, which has the best clue by far ( 55A: Preceded in commenting on an adorable kitten photo, say?), but also has the weakest base phrase. Maybe there's a wacky clue out there that can save it, but this ain't it. The main problem is that the concept just doesn't evoke a particularly funny situation. 'The practice of pretending to be ILL' doesn't really translate to ILL PRACTICE very smoothly.

I would've liked ILL SERGEANT better here, probably. ILL PRACTICE is both awkward and depressing. TWO INK MINIMUMS would've been fine in the singular, but feels awkward in the plural (feels like the puzzle was desperate for a 14 to match the revealer's 14 and this was the best it could come up with). I'm less certain about the answers themselves, which seem like they could've used more brainstorming. This is a simple letter-removal theme, a wacky concept that is old as the hills but effective if done properly, with genuinely funny answers and a clever revealer. Well if you're looking for a path to my heart, a 'Peanuts' theme is one reasonably certain way to get there.

Particulars in slang crossword clue