What Rex said, pretty much. Susan Gelfand's puzzle has nice fill and a theme worn smooth with familiarity. A modest defense of the basic theme: An easy Monday puzzle like this one is a like a gateway drug that gets the uninitiated warmed up for heavier stuff. As such, the simple theme works just fine.
Once, all of us jaded old solvers had a sense of wonder about wordplay that now strikes us as jejune. There was a time when LOCKE'S LOCKS might have ope'd the world wide for us, though that time is now long gone.
HAMM'S HAMS with its vague suggestions of salaciousness and soccer--HAMM'S HAUNCHES, HAMM'S HAMMIES--is a cut about the other theme answers. A wink to more sophisticated solvers is a nice touch in an easy Monday, and this puzzle gives us one.
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