"An Average Puzzle"
18. "The Shape of Water" director: GUILLERMO DEL TORO.
43. Snapchat marketing expert, in modern lingo: SOCIAL MEDIA NINJA.
65. "Watch your mouth!": DON'T GIVE ME ANY LIP.
And the reveal:
71. Garden-variety, and a hint to what's hidden in 18-, 43- and 65-Across: AVERAGE.
An LA Times debut for Brian Temte, who in collaboration with Jeff Chen, gives us three grid spanners that hide the theme answers.
And unless you got the answers via perps, they also give us three clues that need the reveal answer to provide you with, well, a clue:
22. Below 71-Across: BLAH.
47. Below 71-Across: SUBPAR.
72. Below 71-Across: POOR.
If you are a top to bottom solver, or happened to hit one of those three clues early, you may have looked to 71A to figure out what the clue should be. Average didn't immediately come to mind for Garden-variety. At least it didn't for me. Horticulture came to mind. Outdoor plants versus indoor plants.
Also, Brian and Jeff didn't exactly make solving the reveal at 71A easy. Grid spanners hiding the theme answers, no circles to help you find them, and perhaps not-so-easy perps crossing the reveal.
Adam Savage I knew.
Super star ? A famous person ? Idol ? No, it was noVa. So a literal super star.
Bartleby left me clueless, and I had no idea that he or she was a scrivenEr.
Angle and athlete prefix tRi came easily enough.
Noir weapon could have been rod, but this time it was gAt.
Then we get to: Spanish soccer association that means "the league": La LiGa. Did you know this ?
Then an easy E in gavEl.
Thus, AVERAGE. So "Below average" as the clue for 22, 47 and 72 across.
I have to admit that after solving the mini-theme test and then completing the grid, I almost forgot to look for the hidden words in the spanners. Mean, Median and Mode explained.
Across:
1. 35th pres.: JFK. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
4. Smaller-than-life depiction: ICON.
8. Larger-than-life creations: COLOSSI.
15. Spleen: IRE.
16. Hilo shindig: LUAU.
17. Put into play: ENACTED.
21. Construction __: SITE.
23. "Frontline" network: PBS. A favorite PBS program. Thought provoking.
24. What a pursuer seeks to narrow: THE GAP.
28. Evergreen shrubs: ERICAs. Oops. Make that three words that had to be corrected. Had yuccas. Bzzt ! The Genus Erica You may know it as heath or heather.
31. Meat on a stick: KEBAB. Key in a K (skip a cell), Key in a B (skip a cell), Key in a B and then check perps.
33. English "L'chaim!": TO LIFE. Hebrew translated to English. A toast.
36. Pack animal: ASS.
39. "Gimme the skinny!": TELL IT. TELL me went in. It wasn't until I got the second grid spanner that I saw that it should be IT.
Cue up Aaron Neville. He wants to know if she's just playing with his emotions in this 1966 song:
42. Stiff: RIGID.
46. Northern Iraqis: KURDS.
48. Virtual-city denizen: SIM. A simulated person.
49. __ column: SPINAL.
51. Cabbage in a French café?: EUROs. Usually, slang in the clue would require slang in the answer, but it is Friday.
Google Translate tells me the French word for the vegetable cabbage is chou, and sounds something like shoe.
Chou looks like a Chinese word. It sounds something like cho, rhyming with show. Chou seems to mean draw, or pump, or take out, or pick out, or shrink, or quilt, or flagellate. Must be about the tone.
Many Asian languages (exempli gratia, Chinese) are tonal, so in addition to having vowels and consonants, tones can change the meaning of words. I read that some Chinese dialects can have as many as 12 tones.
I also read that in some other languages (e.g. Japanese, Hebrew, Norwegian, et al.) that pitch accent can change the meanings of words by stressing different syllables.
Where was I ? Cue up Styx - Too Much Time On My Hands:
53. Long trip: VOYAGE.
56. Old tankard metal: PEWTER.
59. Suffix for but-: ANE. Butane. "Man, that's cold !"
61. Rolling rock?: LAVA.
63. High pair: ACES.
73. In bygone days: AGO.
74. __ status: MARITAL.
75. Ward with awards: SELA.
76. Explosive stuff: TNT.
Down:
1. Lively dances: JIGS.
2. __ Roll-Ups: FRUIT.
3. Urban of country: KEITH.
4. Not well: ILL.
5. Numberless type of ball: CUE. My first thought was gum.
6. Pole in a lock: OAR.
7. Indifferent: NUMB. Apathetic.
8. Chest material: CEDAR.
9. Like some wonders: ONE HIT. nh
10. LeBron's team, on scoreboards: LAL. LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.
11. World Series mo.: OCT. ober.
12. Corner quartet, perhaps: STOP SIGNS. The town we moved to when I was eleven had no 4-way stop signs. There was only one traffic light, with a constant flashing yellow in one direction, and a flashing red in the other. Two churches, a hardware store, a pharmacy, a one pump gas station, a bar, a post office and our high school. Cue up John Mellencamp.
13. Balkan native: SERB. ian.
14. Altar words: I DOs.
19. Welsh national emblem: LEEK. Wait, what ? Why ? Let's check with Wales Online
20. Cheer for a banderillero: OLE. Primera persona del singular (yo) del presente de indicativo de banderillear.
25. Have one's chance to speak: GET A SAY.
26. Genesis victim: ABEL. For some inexplicable reason, I keyed in Cain rather than ABEL, but fixed that two words later when I got to KEBAB.
27. Conceals, in a way: PALMS. Sleight of hand.
29. Stylist's braid: CORN ROW. Versus a farmer's rows of corn.
30. Others, in Latin: ALII. As in Et (and) al. (others). "... the phrase in Latin could be written three different ways, depending on whether the other things one referred to were masculine (et alii), feminine (et aliae), or neuter (et alia)." - Merriam-Webster
32. French flag couleur: BLEU.
34. Island nation whose flag has a Union Jack on it: FIJI.
35. Dutch cheese: EDAM.
36. Seeks permission: ASKs. Some are big.
37. Common stock option?: SOUP. What's the diff ?
38. Bartleby, notably: SCRIVENER. "Bartleby the Scrivener" at Sparknotes
40. "__ delighted!": I'D BE.
41. Hold higher, as a baby bottle: TIP UP.
44. License fig.: I.D. NO.. I remitted the fees to have my driver's license renewed for another 4 years via the online portal for the Secretary of State. Didn't expect to get it back for awhile, but it came back within a few weeks. Real ID can wait.
45. Swiss river: AARE.
50. Spanish soccer association that means "the league": LA LIGA. Am familiar with some of the teams like FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, but not familiar enough to know the association name.
52. Command to Fido: STAY.
54. Bench mallet: GAVEL. The piece of wood struck by the gavel is known as a sounding block.
55. Christmas __: EVE.
57. Conspicuous display: ECLAT.
58. Hold sway: REIGN.
59. Savage of "MythBusters": ADAM. This program fist aired in 2003 and immediately captured my interest. Myths weren't always busted. Sometimes they held true.
60. Super star: NOVA.
62. Roadie's haul: AMPs.
64. Stain: SPOT.
66. Prefix with angle or athlete: TRI.
67. Noir weapon: GAT.
68. Fair-hiring initials: EOE.
69. Co. that bought Netscape in 1999: AOL.
70. Food service trade org.: NRA. The annual National Restaurant Association was scheduled for May 16th to May 19th at McCormick Place in Chicago but North America's largest convention center has been turned into a medical facility.
Check your answers against this grid:
