17. Tied with a scrunchie, maybe: IN A PONY TAIL - An "UP" hairstyle
30. No longer on deck: AT THE PLATE - "UP" at bat - I saw this happen in a game on TV while down in VA
BACKSWING BAT CATCHES CATCHER
47. Taking time off: ON VACATION - "I
am AWAY from my desk..." - Technically, I was on vacation last week, as
I was supposed to be in between jobs - needed the time off to sort some
legal issues still pending from the sale of the house on Long Island -
went down there for two days, and that was enough to remind me why I
left....
And the connection -
62. Classic sunshine pop hit single with hot-air-balloon imagery, and what 17-, 30-, and 47-Across literally are: UP UP AND AWAY - Ah,
the 60s - this one is from 1967; I was born in 1971, but I heard this
"The 5th Dimension" hit on the radio, along with another one of theirs,
"Aquarius" - and born in early February, I am an Aquarius
Up, Up, ....
AND AWAY we go~!
ACROSS:
1. Make small adjustments to: TWEAK
6. Palindromic title: MADAM - a palindrome is a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backward as forward - I found this clever palindrome poem
11. "¡Dios __!": "MIO~!" - OMG in text-speak
14. Fictional chocolatier Wonka: WILLY- played by one of my favorite actor/comedians, Gene Wilder
"Pure Imagination"
15. Sports complex: ARENA
16. Series finale, e.g.: END
19. Director DuVernay: AVA - Not much one can do, but IMHO the proper names in crosswords are becoming too much
20. Italian ice cream: GELATO
21. Most coll. applicants: SRs - Twice in a puzzle row now for me
22. Thing: ITEM
23. Food __: lethargy after a big meal: COMA - Thanksgiving is a mere 15-1/2 weeks away; football starts in exactly one month - yay~!
25. Mosaic tile: TESSERA - Learned by doing crosswords, otherwise, a $2 Monday word
27. Stargazer's bear: URSA - My "bear" last week was "MAMA"
32. Election night backdrop for Steve Kornacki: MAP - No idea who we are referring to; filled via perps....no politics, please~!
33. Whispery video genre, for short: ASMR
- This is a 21st century crossword fill; not familiar with it, so I
went to YouTube, and I actually got that 'tingly' sensation.
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response
34. "Fiddlesticks!": "DRAT~!"
35. Big gulps: SWIGS
37. Word before salt or snail: SEA
39. "Know what __?": I MEAN
42. Pre-calc math class: TRIGonometry
44. YouTube diary: VLOG video web log; we here are merely a weB LOG
46. Irish actor Stephen: REA - Crossword staple
50. Car sticker amt.: MSRP - Manufacturer's Suggested Retail
Price - I bought a used Prius C for $12K, using my Amazon credit card -
what a rush that was; I paid it off immediately with money from the sale
of the LI house
51. [shrug emoji]: BEATS ME - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 52. Turner known as the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll": TINA - Died 24 May this year
54. Wheel turner: AXLE
55. Donne couplet?: ENs - do N N e; Donne I believe refers to this guy
57. Forced from power: OUSTED
61. "The Real World" airer: MTV - Shows on this channel seem
contradictory - the "golden age" of the music video, the 80s, gave us a
lot to see, so what defines a good music video~? I threw this question
at my brother, and got the response below; a little bit of
story-telling, some performance, and some 'over-the-top' elements; what
would YOU choose~?
ZZTop Gimme All Your Lovin'
64. Gobbled up: ATE
65. Draped silk dresses: SARIs - or sarees
66. Mitt: GLOVE - more gratuitous baseball for C.C. 😁
67. Letters of distress: S.O.S.
68. Utopias: EDENS
69. Made less onerous: EASED
DOWN:
1. Small branch: TWIG and; 26D. Small branch: SPRIG - Rhyme time, too
2. Sonoma County product: WINE
3. Ben Gurion-based airline: EL AL - Crossword staple, Israeli Airline
4. South American kin of a camel: ALPACA
5. Japanese city with many shrines: KYOTO - WAG
6. Star Wars Day month: MAY - the Fourth Be With You
7. Review-heavy newspaper section: ARTS - I had OP-ED, my first incorrect DOWN fill
8. Scarcity: DEARTH - Vader~?
9. Ouzo flavoring: ANISEED
10. "Bad" prefix: MAL - Latin
11. Carnivores: MEAT-EATERS - Reminds me of Jurassic Park - couldn't find a link to the scene I was thinking about
12. Turn upside down: INVERT
13. Whoopi's Oscar-winning role in "Ghost": ODA MAE
18. Spanish phrase equivalent to "¡Basta!": "NO MAS~!"
22. Five Pillars faith: ISLAM
24. Devices called "cashpoints" in the U.K.: ATMs - fresh cluing for a crossword staple; still didn't fool me
27. Sounds of hesitation: UMs - never can tell if it will be ERs or UMs
28. Uncooked: RAW
29. Trumpet parts that need to be drained: SPIT VALVES - JazzB
can fill you in - or maybe that's not the phrase to use in this
instance....I play the guitar and drums - usually, no spit involved
31. Fountain near Rome's Spanish Steps: TREVI - It's said that $1.5mil in coins was tossed in during 2016
33. Nike rival: ASICS
36. Storm drain cover: GRATE
38. Oodles: A LOT
40. __ Lingus: AER - Irish Airlines
41. Rest in a sleep pod: NAP - I figured it was "NAP", but the sleep pod part had me baffled; THIS or THIS~?
43. Xbox controller, for one: GAME PAD - Gaming for me was Atari 2600
Yar's Revenge
45. Awesome Blossom vegetable: ONION
- The "bloomin' onion" appetizer from Outback is called the "cactus
blossom" at Texas Roadhouse - proprietary, as my brother gets agitated
when I use the "wrong" name at the wrong restaurant
47. 2000s first family: OBAMAs
48. Alongside of: NEXT TO
49. Academic job security: TENURE
50. Indian spice mix: MASALA - I did not know this; filled via perps
53. Gentle reminder: NUDGE - "shall I phone you or nudge you~?" - but again, couldn't find a link to this line from a scene in a great, underrated, all-star cast movie called "Sneakers"
56. Rotate: SPIN
58. Low poker pair: TWOS - meh. I went with TREY, since when I play cards, it's DEUCES
Today's constructors are Laura Dershewitz and her partner in crime Katherine Baicker. This is Laura's first visit to the LAT, and Katherine first appeared here on May 19, 2022,
reviewed by my partner in crime Malodorous Manatee. Laura's and Katherine's theme is all about HACKS. But what
exactly is a HACK? It turns out to be quite a
mercurial term with a least a dozen different meanings, many with
no apparent connections to the others. Today we tend to associate
"hacking" with computers, but the term apparently
predates modern computers by many years. In their reveal for the themers our constructors seem to be
exploring two usages of the word HACK, separated below by the
conjunction AND ...
58A. Tricks to improve productivity, and the tricks used
to form the answers to the starred clues?: LIFE HACKS. (my
italics). The first usage, "Tricks to improve productivity", can be
illustrated by this popular O'Reilly Book on Microsoft Word:
The second usage is, "the tricks used to form the answers to the
starred clues": LIFE HACKS. This commonly implies "tricks to
improve the productivity of one's life" but then riffs on that phrase with the
"black hacker" meaning of
surreptitiously altering a program or program data. Our constructors effect a hidden insertion of the word
LIFE in the middle of each two word
themer to transform it from a funny clue into a commonly used phrase. Here
are the themers with the [LIFE HACKS]:
17A. *Paperwork for a UFO pilot?:ALIEN [LIFE] FORM. The subject of much debate this days. It seems to be commonly
believed that they're "out there", but highly unlikely that they could be
"down here". 23A. *Fast fashion?:ACTIVE [LIFE]
STYLE. I've never been much of a fashion plate, but this is one
STYLE I need to wear more of. 36A. *House of worship
known for raucous parties?:WILD [LIFE]
SANCTUARY. These seem to be shrinking world wide, especially in
the Amazon rain forest (scroll down or hover over the menu on the left to navigate; also the sound track takes a few seconds to load). 47A. *Office scale?:WORK [LIFE] BALANCE. Something that even us retirees can use more of.
Here's
the grid, with the themers before the [LIFE HACKS]
Across:
1. Catch a glimpse of: SPOT. Or a SPOT of TEA, a popular drink on the Corner. Just last week, in
a visit to one of our old neighborhoods, Teri and I discovered a new tea room called Emma's Tea Spot. Amid the British themed decor,
I encountered the slogans below popularized by Queen Elizabeth II during WWII. At this writing she is still "Carrying On" at age 96!
5. "__ Great Heights": single by The Postal Service: SUCH.
The Postal Service
was an American indie pop supergroup from Seattle, Washington, consisting of
singer Ben Gibbard, producer Jimmy Tamborello, and
Jenny Lewis on background vocals. They were active on and off
from 2001 to 2014. Here's "Such Great Heights" from their album Give Up (lyrics)
9. Shelter org.: ASPCA. This dog Bennie has been following me
around YouTube for months and I thought it was time that we got acquainted (a CSO
to PAT):
20. Mobile game?: PHONE TAG. I recently spent 4 days playing
telephone tag with a technician to schedule the installation of a new CPAP machine. I can
breath much easier now.
21. Sauce thickener: ROUX. A ROUXis
flour and fat cooked together and used to thicken sauces. A roux is
typically made from equal parts of flour and fat by weight. The flour
is added to the melted fat or oil on the stove top, blended until
smooth. Here's Teri's recipe for Velouté Sauce from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook. This cookbook makes a great wedding gift. Plus it has hard to spell recipes like Vichyssoise and Bouillabaisse!
22. Suffix with ether: EAL. Ethereal is an a word with a
least three meanings. Here are the first two, courtesy of the
Oxford Languages Dictionary:
ETHEREAL was also the original name of a free software product (now called Wireshark) generically known as a "packet sniffer", a device that enables techs to decode network traffic to
troubleshoot problems or to monitor and detect intrusions by
HACKERS
(was this a themer I missed?). The name probably derives from the root
ETHERNET, a low level network service that most software "sniffers" can decode.
35. Mug: FACE. The association of the words MUG and
FACE,
probably derives from the Scandinavian word MUGG, a "drinking vessel".
In the 18th and 19th centuries, mugs produced in
Staffordshire, England were often decorated with
caricatures on the face of ceramic jugs. This may have led to the term
MUG as a synonym for an ugly face and where we get our term
MUG SHOT.
Here is a typical 19th Century MUG, alias a
TOBY JUG. Looks SUSPICIOUS doesn't he?
42. Wonkette founding editor __ Marie Cox: ANA.Ana Marie Cox
(born September 23, 1972) is an American author, blogger, political columnist,
and critic. The founding editor of the political blog
Wonkette, she was also the Senior Political Correspondent for MTV News, and conducted
the "Talk" interviews featured in The New York Times Magazine from 2015
to 2017.
Ana Marie Cox
43. "__ welcome": YOU'RE. An archaic phrase meaning "NO PROBLEM".
52. Pester: NAG. A terrible instance of
Equine appropriation!
53. Booker Prize-winning author Murdoch: IRIS.
Dame Jean Iris MurdochDBE
(15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and
philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual
relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious.
Dame Iris Murdoch, DBE
54. Really cheap: FOR A SONG. Among many other works,
composer
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
wrote over 600 SONGS in his all too short life of
31 years. Despite the fact that they are considered masterpieces
of German art song, it's doubtful that he was ever paid more than a pittance
for any of them. Here's his hauntingly beautiful Gretchen am Spinnrade, written when Schubert was only 17 and set to a poem
from Goethe's play Faust. Gretchen is sitting at
her spinning wheel pouring her heart out for her lover Faust, who has
abandoned her. Notice how the piano accompaniment evokes the sound of the spinning
wheel's treadle:
56. Inelastic: RIGID.
59. "Yay me!": I RULE.
60. "Can't argue with that": TRUE.
61. The Met __: annual NYC fundraising event: GALA. Sorry, but
all the hits on this topic wanted me to pay them money to see their
advertising. As Bloggers don't have an expense account, I swiped
left.
62. Some spa treatments: PEELS. I think we were treated to one of
these recently. It doesn't sound very APPEELING to me.
63. Tear to bits: REND.
64. Actor Mapa of "Ugly Betty" and "Doom Patrol":
Alejandro "Alec" Mapa
(born July 10, 1965) is an American actor, comedian and writer.
Alec Mapa
Down:
1. Board book subject: SHAPES. Despite having dozens of
these around the house for the grandbabies, I didn't know they had a formal
name. I guess being made of boards, the pages are hard to
REND. Here's Harper Collins Publishers re
The Best Baby Board Books of 2022.
2. New York suburb near New Rochelle: PELHAM.
3. Camden Yards [sic] player: ORIOLE. As of this
writing the O's are at the bottom of the AL East ladder.
However my cardiologist, who is one of the team's cardiologists, and who is an
expert in these matters, informs me that they will be really AFIRE in 2 or 3
years. To think that I'm just 2 degrees of separation from all of the
Orioles! Unfortunately I don't know any of their names this season. A hand up
from anyone who does? Oriole Park at Camden Yards (the correct name)
is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year
(but I doubt seriously that that picture was taken in 2022)
Oriole Park at Camden Yards
4. __ Choice Awards: TEEN.
5. Icy center?: SOFT C. Not ICKY.
6. WWII sub: U BOAT. "Unterseeboot", auf Englisch "under-sea-boat", today's
German lesson. The occasional capture of U-BOATS by Allied
warships was extremely helpful in the breaking of the ENIGMA machines
used by the Germans to encrypt their communications.
This article tells part of that story.
7. Short-legged dog: CORGI. One of my sisters has a CORGI,
a rescue dog named Deidre. She was probably abused by a previous
owner and she doesn't like men. So I don't get to pet her.
11. Armed conflict waged on behalf of superpowers: PROXY WAR. If
they're so "super" why can't they fight their own wars?
12. Fish sticks fish: COD. Much better baked in EVOO with
tomatoes, peppers, onions, and fresh Italian herbs, served over rice.
13. Core muscles: ABS.
18. Closed in on: NEARED.
21. Off the beaten path: REMOTE. Is REMOTED the
opposite of 18D?
24. Forage plant: VETCH. VETCH is a well known legume also
known as "common vetch" or "tares". Its scrambling, smothering growth habit and
frost tolerance make it a very useful winter cover crop or green manure.
It is one of many types of forage crops.
25. Like some lingerie: LACY. Some of the CAMIS we've seen
for the past two weeks were LACY.
35. Burkina __: FASO. We saw this in Pam Klawitter's puzzle just this past Sunday.
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of
274,200 km2 (105,900 sq mi), bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the
southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and the Ivory Coast to the southwest.
Note that MALI and NIGER are also landlocked (and sure to be
fills in a future puzzle):
37. Fascinate: INTRIGUE. Teri and I are armchair detectives and are
INTRIGUED by British murder mysteries.
38. "Sure, I guess": UM YEAH. "Well you don't sound sure!"
39. "I don't have all day!": NOW. The MD's on the
corner don't say that. They say STAT!
42. Stomachs: ABIDES.
44. West Coast petroleum giant that merged with Chevron in 2005:
UNOCAL.
Union Oil Company of California, known as Unocal
was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through
the 20th century, and into the early 21st century.
45. Really get to: RANKLE.
46. Arachnid incubator: EGG SAC. When I'm tilling in the garden
and see a Wolf Spider with an EGG SAC, I do my best to avoid killing
them. All those eggs will hatch and grow up to be natural enemies of the
various pests in the garden.
49. Pumped up: AFIRE. A stoneware kiln is really "pumped up" when it reaches WHITE HEAT, approximately 2380 degrees Fahrenheit.
50. Devoid of joy: NO FUN.
51. 2015 boxing film directed by Ryan Coogler: CREED. Creed is a 2015 American sports drama film directed by Ryan Coogler from a screenplay by Coogler, Aaron Covington, and contributions by Sylvester Stallone. This is a film about people who really BELIEVE
in boxing. I'm not really qualified to say more, as I've not seen any
of the Rocky films. However I have climbed the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art several times over the years and have great respect for anyone who can run up and down them. Creed is the 7th film, but not last, in the Rocky franchise (see next clue for details).
55. Multigenerational tale: SAGA. For example, the Rocky franchise.
56. __ tide: RIP.
Here's how to escape from a RIP TIDE ...
57. Hot temper: IRE. Anger.
58. USPS unit: LTR. Letter.
As always, thanks to Teri for proofreading and for constructive criticism (and for the Velouté Sauce recipe).
waseeley
Cheers,
Bill
Laura Dershewitz and Katherine Baicker, you both are invited to post anything you'd like to
share about this puzzle, its evolution, the theme, or whatever, in
the Comments section below. We'd love to hear from you. Oh and Laura, I'm curious as to whether you are one of the authors of this book?