1D: A LAP will not appear until you sit down, so “You need to sit down for this.”

43D: “Bill Clinton’s 1996 opponent” was indeed BOB DOLE, and if you have never solved the New York Times crossword for Nov. 5, 1996, you should drop what you are doing and solve it right now. You’re in for a treat.

Today’s Theme

Ms. Lempel offers us a set of common noun and verb phrases, where the first word or part of the phrase is a synonym for condemning the rest of the clue. For example, the answer to 19A’s “Bash some small trucks?” is TRASH PICKUPS, which, on the surface, means garbage collection. In the theme’s sense, however, Ms. Lempel is encouraging us to give a big old thumb’s down to pick up trucks, which personally never did anything to me, but clearly she has a grudge against them.

Similarly, the phrase BLAST OFF is clued punnily as “Bash a bug repellent brand?,” with OFF being the bug repellent.

Constructor Notes

I suppose the genesis of this puzzle was realizing how many words we use to indicate a thumbs down. Actually, an earlier version that included SLAM DANCING in the middle was submitted in 2015. But it was rejected, with the comment that Will didn’t like the “visually unappealing” blanks in the last two squares of Row 1 and the first two in Row 15. Periodically I tried to redo that grid, but the original was always better. Finally, I dug it out again in the spring and thought of the new middle entry, seven letters and thus far easier to work with than SLAM DANCE or -DANCING. This time it was a go. The changes in clues usually made them easier, I think. For example, on a Monday, I didn’t get away with “Mating game?” for CHESS. Now that I think about it, that’s probably because the theme already involves word play so the rest was kept pretty straightforward.

The Tipping Point

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