(disregard the September date, they made an error)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/here-comes-trouble-tuesday-crossword-september-10-11612719458

Review 

Evan Kalish’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Here Comes Trouble!”—Jim P’s review

I’m going to start off-topic here because Evan’s title for this puzzle reminds me of his post office escapades.

You’ve probably done plenty of Evan’s puzzles, but you probably don’t know he has this whole other life of visiting and documenting America’s post offices. At current count, he’s been to more than 10,000 in all 50 states in the past 10 years. He’s been interviewed by NPR, featured on the BBC, and runs his own blog called Postlandia.

If you listen to those interviews, you get the sense that Evan truly appreciates post offices, but also that he wants to fight for them—for the preservation of their stories if not for their very survival. And he’s not worried about ruffling a few feathers to do so. Last year, he and some of his fellow post office enthusiasts discovered that in numerous post offices around the country, historical murals were being unceremoniously covered up with no explanation. Evan led the charge with a FOIA request to find out what was going on. The PR people he addressed his request to didn’t take too kindly to this and responded by denying his request but also inadvertently sending him some internal emails in which they referred to him as “extra cranky,” a phrase he considered adopting as his new moniker. I believe what happened next is that Evan turned to the Baltimore Sun, and they took the story from there.

(According to Evan, broadly speaking, the murals have been in place for decades and depict historical activities in each community—including slavery. Evan discovered that if a mural was the subject of a complaint, that mural was simply covered up with a tarp with no explanation. Supposedly, the USPS is conducting a review of its options, but has never once communicated its intent to the public; it is this lack of transparency that spurred Evan to seek an explanation. Things will no doubt be better once DeJoy is no longer Postmaster General, but that’s going to take a while.)

Returning to the puzzle and knowing this backstory, you can see why the title makes me think of the USPS reacting to Evan “Extra Kranky” Kalish coming to RAISE CAIN (35d, [Cause a commotion, and a hint to a feature of 3-, 6- and 9-Down]). In the other theme answers, you can find the letter string NIAC going in the Down direction (or CAIN going up).

• 3d. [Incessant self-Googler, perhaps] EGOMANIAC
• 6d. [The 656-mile Route 1 runs along it] CALIFORNIA COAST
• 9d. [Ornamental climbing plant] VIRGINIA CREEPER

Nice finds, especially the two grid-spanners. I wouldn’t expect the letter string NIAC to produce many decent possibilities, but I like all of these. I also like that there are no circles telling us where to look.

That said, these entries don’t really RAISE CAIN in my view, unless you write them from the bottom up, which maybe some solvers did. They have CAIN going up, but there really isn’t any active “raising” going on.

Moving to the fill, we have an atmospheric TORCHLIT castle, and a slew of nice 6s and 7s: EYE DOC, Vasco DA GAMA, “I’M LOST,” OPEN NET, John OLIVER, PEASANT, BASMATI, CAVIAR, AMATEUR, and a HOT ITEM.

Clues of note:

• 43a. [Level]. This was tough as I went with TIED (like a tied game) which shares 75% of its letters with the correct answer TIER.
• 28d. [Urbi et Orbi address deliverer]. POPE. My high school Latin didn’t help me realize that the phrase means “to the city and the world.” It’s used as a term for certain solemn papal addresses and blessings.

Solid grid with a nice selection of theme answers. I do wish there was some grid trickiness in which CAIN is actually raised, but that would probably be a later-in-the-week theme. 3.5 stars.