Eventually I patiently ran the alphabet for the Barbie clue and saw TOY and then saw AYES and then shook my head very slowly and disappointedly. "Officially speaking" is doing a lot of weird and unclear work there. And POPES, ugh, once I got it, I didn't doubt it, but do they really "love" Latin? ( 42D: Latin lovers, officially speaking?). I was never fully sure of " LISTEN TO ME!" I started doubting HOMES (which has its own really awkward / non-intuitive clue) ( 45D: Divisions of subdivisions). But when things didn't work, I started questioning everything. And I didn't actually see the Barbie clue until *after* the "C" was (I thought) safely nestled in place at the end, inside of ACES. My mind was racing around for other kinds of "Barbies," but after Australian barbecues, I was out of ideas. "That's clever"? My reaction was "I can't believe I wasted minutes of my life for so little." I will admit that I overthought the Barbie clue, but with the kind of cluing this puzzle was throwing at you, you can't really be blamed for overthinking. I don't know what my reaction was supposed to be when I found out it was AYES. It's infinitely more appropriate for ACES.
But the clue on AYES, I resent, mostly because it so nakedly wants you to think ACES. It's like the puzzle *wants* this specific, tiny area to be a pain to get through. You've already put in the completely absurd ORE clue right next door (one that, thank god, I knew from having solved crosswords for decades) ( 51D: Unit of the Swedish krona). I really don't understand trying to engineer your puzzle for difficulty in this way. What I was looking at was just the one blank, above the "O." The other blank I had confidently filled with a "C" because ACES is the only correct answer for 58A: Pros. I actually wasn't looking at this version of the grid most of the time. In retrospect, of course, I'm thinking "well, just write in TOY, dummy" ( 50D: Barbie, e.g.). But eventually I pulled COW and thought and thought and then tried FIT and voilà, problem solved. Would you really have to add "THERE"? I dunno. It was so bad that I sincerely doubted AHOY THERE, which does seem awfully. The only answer I felt pretty sure of down there was ANT, and it wasn't helping. The FETA I've eaten doesn't usually come in "slices" ( 52A: Slice in a salad, maybe). TAX clue was super ambiguous ( 53D: Line on a receipt). TEXT had an inscrutable "?" clue on it ( 59A: Comment from one who's all thumbs?). a plausible saffron producer (it's kinda near IRAN, is my defense) ( 56A: World's leading saffron producer). I have no idea where saffron comes from, really, and instead of the "O" from COW seeming wrong, the "R" from AHOY THERE seemed wrong, because OMAN seemed. You'd think the short fill in that corner would've helped me fix that error quickly, but no. The puzzle was so devoid of good colloquialisms that I thought, "ah, here we go." So. Really seemed like it should be HAS A COW. The less significant standstill was in the SE, where AHOY THERE was a promising gateway to the far corner, but then. But the bottom was a complete disaster, and the worst kind of disaster, which is to say that the cluing on short fill made it impossible (for me) to see, and I came to total standstills, twice (this normally doesn't happen even once on a Friday). I hacked away at it, made progress, plowed through. But the real truth is I don't remember much of the top 2/3 of this puzzle. Very much enjoyed seeing WHITNEY HOUSTON, but that may very well be because I got that answer so much easier than most other things in this puzzle. I kept waiting for something to really kickstart the party, but I kept getting just OK stuff like LEMON SAUCE and WORK OF ART and CARAWAY and BRAIN GAME-you can't fault any of those things, but there's no standout there. Also, I spelled WHOOPIE like that, so that's no good. WHOOPEE CUSHION is kinda funny, but even there, the awkward syntax of the "?" clue made it feel a bit forced. Felt like I was working for everything, and without much "aha" payoff. Occasionally this felt like a good Friday, but that whooshing of wonderful answers, that flow, that pop pop of good surprises-that never came today. Something about the cluing wavelength-mainly that I was nowhere near it, at any time. Never really found my grip with this one.
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