Gail gave us a covert themed puzzle. BEND, SQUAT, and STOOP are found in two thirteen- and one fifteen-letter answer. But why is there no unifying clue? It would have been relatively easy to use LOW clued "Not erect, and a clue to the long answers." In the upper right of the grid, the changes needed to use LOW would be:
9 ACROSS: FOCAL 10 DOWN: ORO
16 ACROSS: ORONO 12 DOWN: ANO
19 ACROSS: ROLOW 13 DOWN: LOW
For the hopelessly lame, Rolow is a rapper who's known among the cognoscenti as "King of the hill." [Lower case
H for some reason.] I had to Google him.
I liked PERRYCOMO and would be nifty with ROLOW.
