Six strong answers form the center of today's grid. GALAXY QUEST was surprisingly entertaining (as was Tim Allen), and NATO MEMBERS / ...
read moreSix strong answers form the center of today's grid. GALAXY QUEST was surprisingly entertaining (as was Tim Allen), and NATO MEMBERS / HIP HOP music give a good diversity of entries — a little something for everyone. I was only vaguely familiar with LILY MUNSTER, but I bet the older solving crowd will delight in seeing one of the title "The Munsters" characters highlighted. Thank goodness every one of the LILY crosses was easy to suss out.

Well, except the second L. I sweated — LILY was the only real-sounding name, but SUL surely had to be wrong. SUD or SUR, right? Could LIRY or LIDY actually be some monster/Munster-sounding name? Turns out SUL is Portuguese for south. Yikes. I think it's fine to expect NYT solvers to have basic knowledge of foreign languages, but more at the level of AMI or UNO or at least words that can be figured out through etymology.
Great grid flow. Each corner has so many ways into it. The downside of this arrangement is that it's really tough to construct — getting sections to smoothly merge while still incorporating colorful answers is tough. I like the SW corner, with HAN SOLO given a modern clue (thank goodness I just saw the movie!) and NINE IRON getting a fun clue for golfers. (A pitch is a golf shot requiring high loft.) I was so sure the latter had to be some sales or baseball term, so I got a nice a-ha.
Other corners had some rough spots. IN SONG feels like a disguised partial to me. When would you ever use it without "break out"? Speaking of break out, IN STIR … in THE stir, yeah? Apparently it's more common in specific parts of the country?
And A GRIP / ZOT is interesting. As much as I find partials to be inelegant, at least ["Get ___"] gives a challenge. (Get a room, get a life.) ZOT is such a giveaway (for those who read B.C.) — it's what Stan Newman might call "unStumperable," i.e. he might avoid it because there's no way to clue it such that it provides any challenge.
Neat center of the puzzle and great grid flow, with a couple of shorter entries I hitched on.