Thursday, May 30, 2024, Emma Oxford

 

The Stuff of Genius*

... and the staff of life.  People literally "broke" bread for their meals for thousands of years.  But all that changed in 1928 when Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the bread slicer.  And constructor Emma Oxford has come up with the best invention since then -- sliced crosswords!  Well maybe not 😀.  But she does present us with the following fill for four pairs of theme clues, each with some of the letters circled (shown in RED below), sliced by a black square, and when sandwiched back together give us  four kinds of bread ...

17A. Radio City, for one: MUSIC HALL and  19A. In the lead: AHEAD -- CHALLAH BREAD.  Here's a recipe.

Challah Bread

32A. Arizona people: HOPI. and 34A. Drink mix made popular by NASA: TANG -- PITA BREAD.  It's not widely known that Otto also invented the bread stacker 😀.  Michelle tells you how to make your own stack without a machine.

46A. Dynamic start?: AERO. and 49A. Neat as a pin: TIDY-- ROTI BREAD.  And it's even less widely known that Otto also invented the bread peeler 😀.  Here's Karen's recipe.

Roti Bread

62A. Saint __: Caribbean island: LUCIA and 64A. Army unit: BATTALION -- which when sandwiched back together we get CIABATTA.  Looks like Otto's back in the slicer business.  Here's Gemma's recipe.

Ciabatta Bread

And slicing the puzzle right across the middle we have Emma's reveal ...

39. Basis of comparison for many innovations that's depicted four times in this puzzle: SLICED BREAD.  But who actually coined the phrase "That's the best thing since sliced bread?"

While the circles made the theme pretty obvious from the get go , the results were pretty nourishing (albeit some people's tastes may vary😀).

I noticed that there were no guys represented in the recipes, so I'm tossing in James Beard's Brown Bread (one of our favorites).  We just use a bread knife to slice it ...

Brown Bread

Here's the grid ...

Here's the rest ...

Across:
 

1. Elbows: JABS.

5. Tibetan monk: LAMA.  LAMA is a title for a teacher of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term guru, meaning "heavy one", endowed with qualities the student will eventually embody. The Tibetan word "lama" means "highest principle", and less literally "highest mother" or "highest father" to show the close relationship between teacher and student.  Among the Tibetan lamas, the highest ranked is the 14th Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama

9. Brand paired with devil horns for a Halloween costume: PRADA. Must be a very exclusive party.  A reference to this film perhaps?

14. "Yeah, sure": I BET.

15. Hertz rival: AVIS. ... and a Rara AVIS, is a rare bird.  Here are some recent sightings of rare birds by the American Birding Association, including this one ...

Blue Rock-Thrush
sighted by Jason Talbott
25 Apr 2024
San Francisco, CA

16. Like highways and running tracks: LANED.  And let us not forget BOWLING VENUES!

17. [Theme clue]
19. [Theme clue]

20. Gait between a walk and a canter: TROT.

21. Held on to: KEPT.

23. Verizon acquisition of 2006: MCI.  MCI, Inc. (formerly WorldCom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company before Verizon bought them in 2006.   For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T.   Teri did some consulting for them back in the day.

24. Stop on a crawl: PUB.  Some of my English cousins took me on a PUB crawl one night, but that's all I can remember. 😀

26. "__ the season ... ": TIS.

28. Beach problem: EROSION.

30. Accord, perhaps: TRUCE.  There are two places in the world that need a TRUCE right now.

32. [Theme clue]
34. [Theme clue]

35. Cooper of CNN: ANDERSON.  Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an American broadcast journalist and political commentator currently anchoring the CNN news broadcast show Anderson Cooper 360°.  His mother was socialite Gloria Vanderbilt and  his great, great grandfather was business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who founded the prominent Vanderbilt shipping and railroad fortune.

Anderson Cooper

37. Poetic tribute: ODE.  ODES comprise 90% of the poetry in crosswords, the other 10% consisting of SONNETS, ELEGIES, IDYLLS, and a MOEKU or two every other Friday. 😀

39. [Theme reveal]

42. Sign of summer: LEO.  Has anyone heard from LEO III lately?

43. Petroleum jelly brand: VASELINE.  As distinguished from VICKS VapoRub.  Whatever you do, don't put the latter on sunburned skin. Ouch!

46. [Theme clue]
49. [Theme clue]

51. Pre-univ. warmup exams: PSATS.  Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Tests.  What the PSAT is and what to know about the exam (if you are a High School Junior or the helicopter parent of one).

52. Dressed for work, perhaps: IN A SUIT.  Or being SUED?

54. Fam member: SIS.  I have four.

56. Psychoactive constituent of cannabis: THC.  Shouldn't this clue have had some indication that this was short for Tetrahydrocannabinol?

Tetrahydrocannabinol

57. OB-GYNs, e.g.: MDS.

58. Like some Fr. nouns: MASC.  Today's French lesson -- but not a short one.  All French nouns are either MASCULINE or FEMININE (none being NEUTER, e.g. as in German).  The corresponding definite articles for these are LE and LA and the indefinite articles are UN and UNE.  In most cases, which of these articles to use for a given noun is a matter of memorization.  While that's easy for la jeune fille ("the young girl") and  le garcon ("the boy"), they must be memorized for nouns that don't have any associated real gender, e.g. HAT ("le chapeau") and DAY ("la jour").  But there are some general rules (and lots of exceptions) for figuring out the gender of a French noun ...

60. Warm, so to speak: NEAR.. Used a lot in party games -- "You're getting warmer", "You're getting colder", "You're freezing!". 

62. [Theme clue] .
64. [Theme clue]

68. Exams often given by committee: ORALS.

69. Way, way off: AFAR.  E.g. "You're in the next county!"

70. Up to the task: ABLE.  E.g. "Napoleon WAS ABLE to conquer Europe (and lose it) ERE he SAW ELBA".

71. "The War of the Worlds" writer: WELLS.   H. G. WELLS visited the Corner a week or so back in his Time Machine.  His War of the Worlds was made famous by an hour long radio broadcast on Halloween of 1938 by dramatist Orson Wells (no relation to the novelist) using a script derived from the novel.  The scale of the panic Wells created is disputed.  Here is a clip from that broadcast ...

72. Product preview: DEMO.

73. Absolutely must have: NEED.  Air? Water? Food?

Down:

1. Parsons of "Hidden Figures": JIM.  Jim Parsons is best known for playing Sheldon in the sitcom  The Big Bang Theory.  In Hidden Figures he played Paul Stafford, head engineer in the Space Task Group. In this interview he talks about the hard time he had accepting his role in the new movie and what a contrast it was to the part he played in TBBT ...

2. __ Dhabi: ABU.

3. Chums: BEST BUDS.  They say that Apple AirPods are the best, but they're expensive and I'm afraid I'd lose them. 😀

4. Step in a sauce recipe: STIR.  We've used cream sauce for years to serve over asparagus on toast, pastas, etc.  The only problem with it is the need to constantly STIR the mixture of flour, butter, and whole milk until it thickens to keep the milk from scorching.  Much easier to make, and just as tasty, is velouté sauce, which uses  chicken or vegetable stock instead of milk. Here's a recipe.  After the roux has thickened Teri stirs in a 1/2 cup of cream to per cup of sauce.

Velouté sauce

5. Actress Christine: LAHTI.  Christine Ann Lahti (born April 4, 1950) is an American actress and filmmaker. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1984 film Swing Shift. Her other film roles include ...And Justice for All (1979), Housekeeping (1987), Running on Empty (1988), Leaving Normal (1992), and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019). For her directorial debut with the 1995 short film Lieberman in Love, she won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

Christine Lahti

6. Janelle's "Abbott Elementary" role: AVA.  Not the Janelle in Hidden Figures, but rather comedian Janelle James as Ava Coleman, in the mockumentary Abbott Elementary.  She plays the tone-deaf principal, who got her job by blackmailing the superintendent. 

Janelle James

7. Latte ingredient: MILK. 

8. Out like a light: ASLEEP.

9. "Allegory of the cave" philosopher: PLATO.  The "Allegory of the cave" is recounted in PLATO's Republic in a dialogue between his brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates, and is narrated by the latter.  In the allegory, Plato describes people that have spent their lives chained in a cave facing a blank wall. They watch shadows projected onto the wall by objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and they give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality but not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent the fragment of reality that we can normally perceive through our senses, while the objects outside the cave represent the true forms of objects that we can only perceive through reason. Three higher levels exist: natural science; deductive mathematics, geometry, and logic; and the theory of forms. 
 
10. Stadium cheer: RAH.

11. Iron deficiency: ANEMIA.

12. Church minister: DEACON.  A DEACON is a Christian official generally associated with services of some kind, such as preaching and performing specific rites such as baptisms and marriages.  These services vary among theological and denominational traditions, such as the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Lutheranism, Methodism, Anglicanism, and Mormonism.  The office was created very early in the history of the Church, as is described in the Acts of the Apostles 6:1-5.  The intent of the office was to offload some of the work of the Presbyters (priests) and Bishops.  Among the first seven deacons was St. Stephen.  If we follow the above citation from Acts a little further, we find that he was also the first Christian martyr -- from the Greek word for "witness".

The Stoning of St. Stephen
Luigi Garzi (1638–1721)

13. __ machine: ADDING.

18. Clique: COTERIE. "An intimate and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or purpose".  Merriam-Websters.  If they cluster around a personality like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, the inner circle is called a POSSE.  They seem to have an affinity for the mononymous.

22. Monastic leaders: PRIORS.

24. School org.: PTA.  Parent Teacher Associations are not just a USA thing.

25. Self-serve dispenser: URN.

27. Steve Madden creation: SHOE. As I think product ads should be kept to a minimum in reviews, I decided on a Jeff McNally creation instead.  Here's a recent one from his rag, tag band of avian journalists ...

29. Moves without a sound: STEALS.  -- STEALTHILY.

31. Large strings: CELLOS.  Here a large group of large strings (a CELLO choir) from The Young Artists Orchestra of Las Vegas plays Argentinian composer Astor Piazzola's Libertango ...

33. Like some movie rentals: ON DVD.  You can't rent them from Netflix anymore, but here are still some other sources.

36. Nova __: SCOTIA.  One of Canada's Maritime provinces, and a CSO to CanadianEh!

38. Bathysphere realm: DEEP SEA.  The Bathysphere (from Ancient Greek βαθύς (bathús) 'deep', and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere') was a unique spherical deep-sea submersible which was unpowered and lowered into the ocean on a cable, and was used to conduct a series of dives off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934. These dives were chronicled by explorer William Beebe in his book Half Mile Down.  

The Bathysphere
The National Geographic museum in 2009

We saw a friend recently, who mentioned that her son-in-law is a deep water geologist, and that these days all of this type of work is done by tethered drones.

40. Dark horses: BAYS.

41. Rant: DIATRIBE.  Notice how deftly I avoid one in 50D below.  😀

44. Advanced degree?: NTH.  And the NTH time we've seen NTH!.

45. Key above ~: ESC.  A CSO to Splynter ~ is his favorite separator.  And just above it, perennially on the lam is

46. Temper expectations: AIM LOW.  A guaranteed way to succeed!

47. Put up with: ENDURE.

48. Rogue: RASCAL. Here are two shots of my son's cat RASCAL, which he titled Royal Rascal and Roaring Rascal, respectively ...

I believe these were taken when Rascal was young -- he's much bigger now.  He'll be 13 this year and spends most of his time in the woods hunting -- it also gets him away from all the riffraff kitties that my granddaughters keep adopting.

50. "Things don't look good": ITS BAD.  As there are no discussions of politics on the Corner, we'll move on to the next clue ...

53. Amherst campus, familiarly: U MASS. A college in Amherst, Mass.  And  it is also the approximate atomic weight of  Uranium (U  MASS = 238.03).  It's not an integer because U is actually a mixture of 3 isotopes ...

55. Overture: INTRO.  There are basically two kinds of overtures: opera overtures and standalone concert overtures.  Brahms' Academic  Festival Overture  is of the latter type and was composed on the occasion of him receiving an honorary degree from the University of Breslau.  The university administration didn't take too kindly to it, but the students loved it, as it is essentially a pastiche of student drinking songs popular at the time.😀  Estonian conductor Neeme Järvi does the honors ...

59. Bistro: CAFE.

61. Actor Ruck: ALAN. Alan Douglas Ruck (born July 1, 1956) is an American actor. He is best known for portraying Cameron Frye in John Hughes' film Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), as well as television roles as Stuart Bondek on the ABC sitcom Spin City (1996–2002) and Connor Roy on the HBO series Succession (2018–2023.

Alan Ruck

63. Under the weather: ILL. I worked in ILLINOIS for a year and a half and I don't recall ever being under the weather, although it did rain sometimes. 💧💧💧

65. Hat that may match a kilt: TAM.  Here ya go ...

66. Part of a World Cup chant: OLE.

67. "Game of Thrones" patriarch Stark: NED.  NED  (né Eddard)  was played by Sean Bean, who among many other roles played Boromir in the  movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.  He is best remembered for his heroic death defending the other members of the Fellowship of the Ring from Orcs. In the Game of Thrones, it appears that Sean went over to the Dark Side ...

Ned Stark

Cheers,
Bill

And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.

waseeley

* "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" - Thomas Edison

Thursday, May 23, 2024, Jared Cappel

 

Funny, Funny Spots!

Jared Cappel, writer and champion Scrabble© player,  has constructed crossword puzzles for USA Today, Universal, and other sites, and today makes his debut in the LA Times.  I believe he may have another LAT puzzle in the oven for near term publication.  His puzzle is a bit unusual for a Thursday, in that it has 5 theme clues, all clechos.  There is no reveal, but all of the fills are two-word, in the language phrases, and the perps are fair so the correct fill is not too difficult to spot ... 😀

17A. Spot for a spot?: PARKING LOT.  Parking SPOTS are found in PARKING LOTS.

24A. Spot for a spot?: WHERES WALDO. Illustrator Martin Handford published the first in his series of Where’s Waldo books over 25 years ago. The books challenge readers to find the titular cartoon man, clad in his trusty red-striped shirt and red-striped hat, as he hides in a landscape of red-striped red herrings. It turns out that for me, WALDO was not very easy to spot -- I had to search through at least a 1/2 dozen images before I could find one to use for this clue.  This one's a gimme ...

Ben Blat thinks he has a
mathematic strategy for finding Waldo

36A. Spot for a spot?: TEA CEREMONY.  Everything you would want to know about the British ritual and the Japanese ritual.

47A. Spot for a spot?: TV BROADCAST. -- SPOT in this case being slang for an advertisement.

57A. Spot for a spot?: BENCH PRESS.  I couldn't find a picture of Stella doing a BENCH PRESS, so you'll have to settle for this one.  Tsk, tsk -- he's not using a SPOTTER!

Here's the grid ...

Here's the rest ...

Across:

1. Of the kidneys: RENAL.  In a single day, your kidneys filter about 150 quarts of blood. Most of the water and other substances that filter through your glomeruli are returned to your blood by the tubules. Only 1 to 2 quarts become urine, which is passed to the bladder.

6. Mineral deposits: ORES.  An Ektorp? Plural clue with the word "mineral" and a 4 letter fill -- what else could it be but ORES?  OTOH, not all mineral deposits are destined for the smelter.  For example Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) is not refined into the Alkaline earth metal Calcium (Ca) -- rather it is used to make plaster, wallboard, and other products.

10. Stacked on: ATOP.

14. Words of defeat: I LOSE.

15. Bigger than big: HUGE.

16. "Don't use that __ with me!": TONE.  "Well what tone DO you want!?"  Here's a father and son team who will make a set of wind chimes that will play any 8 TONE tune you want to hear ...

17. [Theme clue]

19. Symbol at the center of a Scrabble board: STAR.  Jared should know -- he's a STAR Scrabble player!

20. Virtual video game characters: SIMS.  The Sims is a series of life simulation video games developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and is one of the best-selling video game series of all time. It is also part of the larger Sim series, started by SimCity in 1989.

The Sims™ 4 on Steam

21. Top under a hoodie: TEE.

22. Switches from a bottle to a cup, say: WEANS.  IMO, more commonly associated with giving up mother's milk.

23. California's Santa __ Mountains: ANA.  The Santa Ana Mountains are a short peninsular mountain range along the coast of Southern California in the United States. They extend for approximately 61 miles (98 km) southeast of the Los Angeles Basin largely along the border between Orange and Riverside counties.

Santa Ana Mountains

24. [Theme clue]

27. Language in which "w" can be a vowel: WELSH.  Not only can "w" be used as a vowel in WELSH, but the latter's orthography (conventional spelling system) has 29 letters.  Some examples of "w" as a vowel include “cwm,” which means “valley” and sounds like “coom,” as well as “crwth,” which is a stringed instrument and sounds like “crooth.” -- Book Riot.

29. Grade that may accompany a 26-Down message: DEE.

30. Particle exchanged in water purification: ION.  Ion exchange is a process used in softening or demineralizing water, purification of chemicals, and separation of substances.

31. Square stuck in a corner: POSTAGE.  This reminded me of a tone poem about a shy young man who stood in a corner trying to get up the nerve to invite the pretty girl on the other side of the room to dance -- and then he did, and she did! (a CSO to Yellowrocks) ...

Invitation to the Dance
Carl Maria von Weber

35. Mediterranean mountain: ETNA.  The same one that erupted on the Corner just last week.

36. [Theme clue]

38. Threading target: BROW.  String Theory: an inside look at eyebrow threading ...

Ouch!

40. Economic improvement: UPTREND.  What are trend lines and why are they useful?

41. Asset in darts: AIM.  We'll skip the Ted Lasso clip this time around.  Maybe next time.

42. Bases-loaded walk stat: RBI.

43. Beach tour destinations: ISLES.

47. [Theme clue].

52. Wonder: AWE.  These days I wonder a lot about the Here After.  I walk into a room to find something and then wonder "What am I here after?" 😀

53. Put on the payroll: HIRED.

54. Blonde hue: ASH. I used to be an ASH blonde, but what's left of my hair is on the verge of becoming SILVER blonde.

55. Printing shade: CYAN.  The color CYAN, a greenish-blue, has notable tints and shades. It is one of the subtractive primary colors along with magenta, and yellow
 

CYAN, MAGENTA, and YELLOW

56. Lions or Tigers: TEAM. or BEARS oh my! 😀

57. [Theme clue].

60. Pakistani tongue: URDU.  Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English.  Here is a distribution of native Urdu speakers in the major countries where it is spoken ...

61. Nirvana, for one: TRIO. This grunge rock TRIO is named for Nirvana, the Hindu  term for enlightenment.  Here is a sitar, flute, and violin TRIO evocative of that state (15 min.) ...

62. Patisserie purchase: TORTE.  What’s the difference between Gâteau, Cake, and Torte?  Here's a recipe for an an almond TORTE.

Almond Torte

63. Howls: BAYS.

64. Electrical unit: WATT.  A WATT is a unit of power, named after Scottish engineer James Watt, which measures the rate of energy transfer. A watt, in electrical terms, is the rate at which electrical work is done when one ampere (A) of current flows through one volt (V).  I've included this link for those who have spotted that A and V are not the standard symbols used in Ohm's Law.

James Watt
(1736–1819)

65. Church recesses: APSES. There are two types: the large one at the front of the church with the ALTAR, and in some churches there are smaller ones (niches) around the sides with statues or images of saints.

Apses
 in the Crypt of
the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
Washington, D.C.

Down:

1. Lumber mill tool: RIPSAW.  Lumber mills use RIPSAWS to rapidly rough cut lumber because they are designed to cut along the grain, which is parallel to the growth of the tree.   CROSSCUT saws have more teeth and are designed to make finer cuts across the grain of a finished lumber ...

... more discussion for wood geeks on the Woodworking StackExchange

2. Only main "Seinfeld" character who was not in the show's pilot episode: ELAINE.  This one was handed to me ...

3. "The truly fearless think of themselves as __": Margaret Atwood: NORMAL.  While Margaret is known for championing women's rights, notice that in this meme she isn't excluding men ...

4. Responds on "Jeopardy!": ASKS.

5. Hula hoop?: LEI.  Cute clue.

6. "My stars!": OH GEE.  So said Alice Cooper ...

My Stars lyrics

7. Arendelle's Elsa, for one: RULER.  Another empowered woman ...

8. Narcissist's problem: EGO. 

9. Volleyball move: SET.  One of my granddaughters plays volleyball.  SET sounds like a simple move, but it takes a lot of practice to master.

10. Between ports: AT SEA.

11. Climactic moment during an eclipse: TOTALITY.  While we didn't experience totality in Baltimore, it did get dark here for several minutes.  Here's a national geographic explanation of how it happens ...

12. Ad infinitum: ON AND ON.  See 18D below.

13. Lady Gaga, for Stefani Germanotta: PERSONA.  A PERSONA is the personality that a person (such as an actor or politician) projects in public: i.e. their IMAGE.  Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer-songwriter and actress.   Here's her song Just Dance (her PERSONA in Poker face was just a little too gaga! for me) ...

18. Ultimate degree: NTH.  -- a term used to describe the most recent in a long series of things, when you do not know how many there are.  This is truly the NTH time we've seen this. 

22. Royal Rumble org.: WWE.  World Wrestling Entertainment.

24. "Holy moly!": WHOA.  The first word that popped into my head, Batman! 😀

25. Path maintenance tool: EDGER.

26. Teacher's directive: SEE ME.  Is she going to pat you on the head and tell you what a good job you did on the test?  Or to talk about the 29A you got?

28. Erupt: SPEW.  Like 35A.

32. PADI certification activity: SCUBA.  Hand up if you're PADI certified?  If you aren't and want to be here's  a clip on course 101 ...

33. Halfhearted: TEPID.

34. Objet d'__: ART.  Today's French lesson: "Object of Art" or ...

35. Burnt brisket bits: ENDS.

36. Only person to win seven Super Bowls: TOM BRADY.  Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. (born August 3, 1977) is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 23 seasons. He spent his first 20 seasons with the New England Patriots and was a central contributor to the franchise's dynasty from 2001 to 2019. In his final three seasons, he was a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady is widely regarded as the greatest quarterback of all time.  He was also the greatest 6th round draft pick (199th player) of all time ...

Tom Brady

37. "Right away, boss!": ON IT.

38. Rubber duck's place: BATHTUB.  Do De Rubber Duck With Ernie ...

39. Côte d'Azur, e.g.: RIVIERA.  More French: literally "Azure side" -- a reference to the blue Mediterranean Sea perhaps.  Eight must-see spots on the Côte d'Azur.

42. Ned Flanders' oldest son: ROD. 

Rod Flanders

44. Tiers: LAYERS.  E.g. a 62A is usually multi-tiered.

45. Fried Apples?: EWASTE.  Funny clue, but not funny fill.

46. Has an inkling: SENSES.

48. Brother in Rome's foundation story: REMUS.  The other brother was Romulus, who lived to tell the story.  They were raised by a she-wolf ...

Romulus and Remus
Capitoline Museums, Rome

49. "Pipe down!": CAN IT.  Another clecho. Be quiet and you'll hear it.

50. Fancy neckwear: ASCOT.  An ascot tie or ascot is a neckband with wide pointed wings, traditionally made of pale grey patterned silk. This wide tie is usually patterned, folded over, and fastened with a tie pin or tie clip, modeled here by American expatriot artist John Singer Sargent ...

John Singer Sargent
in a pleated Ascot tie c. 1880,
and the subject of a recent Tate Exhibition.

51. "Pipe down!": SHH. Another clecho.  Be quiet and you'll hear it.

55. Do some photo editing: CROP.  Sometimes it's necessary in these reviews.  And video editing too.

57. "I should tell you," for short: BTW. -- but the time's too short ...

58. Common __: ERA.  I am in AWE of how BCE suddenly became CE in the course of a single weekend? 😀

59. Org. that may organize after-school activities: PTA.  What would constructors do without them?

Cheers,
Bill

And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.

waseeley

Thursday, May 16, 2024, Alan Levin

 

Cooking Competitions

  This one is between Chef and his wife Janice over the price of turkeys ...

Today veteran constructor Alan Levin dishes up four cooking contests with in the language clues that bake into 4 punny game shows by changing just a single ingredient ...

17A. Contestants must perfect a ras el hanout today on ...: THE SPICE IS RIGHT.   The Price is Right.  And  to spice things up a bit Alan gives us today's Arabic lesson: رأس الحانوت = ras el hanout, a Middle Eastern spice blend. When I attempted to save the logo that follows I got a prompt that it existed already.  Then I recalled that the watchword  for The Price is Right -- "COME ON DOWN" was used as the reveal in Trent Evan's April 6, 2023 puzzle.

 

25A. Contestants flatten a confit de canard today on ...: PRESS YOUR DUCK.  Press Your Luck. If you should happen to have a duck handy, here's a recipe for Confit de Canard (confit is French for candied). As it turns out pressed duck is actually a different dish, an Asian specialty.  Here's the Bald chef's recipe for Chinese Pressed Duck.

424. Contestants work in teams to create a Michelin star-worthy dinner today on ...: LETS MAKE A MEAL.  Let's Make a Deal is still going strong  The fill for this actually makes some sense.

56A. Contestants race to prepare baby's first bottle on ...: THE NEWLY FED GAME.  The Newly Wed Game was an American television game show that put newly married couples against each other in a series of revealing question rounds to determine how well the spouses know or do not know each other (e.g. when the crying baby wakes up at 2 AM, who handles the bottle?).

Here's the grid ...

Here's the rest

Across:

1. First president born after 1960: OBAMA.  The 44th President of the United States.

President Barack Obama

6. Disparages: RIPS.

10. Damsonlike fruit: SLOE.  SLOE (Prunus spinosa) is a species of flowering plant in the rose family native to Europe, western Asia, and regionally in northwest Africa.  The fruits are used to make sloe gin in Britain and patxaran in Basque Country. The wood is used to make walking sticks, including the Irish shillelagh.

Sloe berries
a.k.a. "Blackthorn"

14. Commands a crew, informally: COXES.  A COXSWAIN is in charge of a crew, especially of rowing teams.

The coxswain of this sculling boat is in the stern

15. __ chamber: ECHO.

16. Miami team: HEAT.

17. [Theme clue]

20. Appointed: ORDAINED.  In most Christian churches people are ordained to one of three positions: bishops, priests, and deacons.  In the Catholic church the first two require celibacy.  Deacons may be either permanent or transitional. Permanent deacons may marry, whereas a transitional deacon is temporary position for a seminarian during the last year of their formation.  The following year they are ordained to the priesthood.  Ordinations are performed with the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  One of the many actions that take place during this rite is the laying on of hands ...

The Laying on of Hands

21. Come next: ENSUE.  Clue 21A will ENSUE
.
22. Patient care pros: RNS.  Registered nurses are on the front lines of medical care.  This is what it takes to become one.

23. Brit's pal: MATE.

25. [Theme clue]

31. No longer listening, say: BORED.

33. Type of 32-Down: ALTO.  Also called the English Horn.  Here is a solo featuring this instrument from the second movement of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, "New World", played by  Vivian Kong ...

34. Ground-breaking tool: HOE.

35. Bibliography space saver: IBID.  Today's Latin lesson: ibidem; "in the same place" -- used to indicate that a reference is from the same source as a previous reference.

36. Jet off for: FLY TO.  Don't know where I'm going and  when I'll get back again ...

38. River's edge: BANK.

39. Chaney of old horror films: LON.  Scary looking guy ...

Lon Chaney Jr.

40. Reunion invitee: ALUM.

41. Put out, as a flame: DOUSE.

42. [Theme clue]

46. Fade: WANE.

47. Ocasek of the Cars: RIC.   The Cars were an American rock band formed in Boston in 1976. Emerging from the new wave scene in the late 1970s, they consisted of Ric Ocasek (rhythm guitar), Benjamin Orr (bass guitar), Elliot Easton (lead guitar), Greg Hawkes (keyboards), and David Robinson (drums). Ocasek and Orr shared lead vocals, and Ocasek was the band's principal songwriter and leader.  Here's Just what I needed ...

Lyrics

48. "Being the Ricardos" role for Bardem: ARNAZ.  Being the Ricardos is a 2021 American biographical drama film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, about the relationship between I Love Lucy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem star as Ball and Arnaz. Kidman received an Oscar for Best Actress that year.  Hand up if you've seen it?

51. Locals at the 2016 Summer Olympics: CARIOCAS.  A Saturday level clue that you could only hope to get with perps.  I didn't.  The term is a demonym used to refer to anything related to the City of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. The original meaning of the term is controversial.

56. [Theme clue]

59. Yacht wood: TEAK.

60. Sammy with 609 homers: SOSA.

61. Bert's bestie: ERNIE.  Bert and Ernie go fishing ...

62. __ a one: NARY.

63. Power unit: WATT.

64. Title pages?: DEEDS.

Down:

1. Pod prefix: OCTO.  More Latin (or Ancient Greek: "ὀκτώ • (oktṓ)"): EIGHT.  One of the many definitions for the clue "pod" is "foot", so that in this case it refers to that remarkable, highly intelligent creature, the octopus, a soft-bodied, eight-limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda.

2. Physicist played by Branagh in "Oppenheimer": BOHR.    Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh's casting in this role was criticized by some Danes, as Niels BOHR was Danish -- but director Christopher Nolan defended it on personal grounds.   

As to Bohr himself, his groundbreaking work on atomic theory and quantum mechanics in the  first quarter of the 20th Century not only gained him a Nobel Prize, but made the atomic bomb possible.  He was in fact a hero to J. R. Oppenheimer.

Niels Bohr

3. Canceled abruptly: AXED.

4. Flat-topped hill: MESA.  Today's Spanish lesson: "mesa" = table.  A mesa is a flat-topped mountain or hill. It is a wide, flat, elevated landform with steep sides.  Spanish explorers of the American southwest, where many mesas are found, used the word because the tops of mesas look like the tops of tables. Not to be confused with buttes and plateaus ...
 

Plateau, butte, and Mesa

5. Aimed high: ASPIRED.

6. Playground time: RECESS.

7. Like some tea: ICED.

8. Greek letter that sounds like "fie": PHI.  Among the many uses for this letter, it represents the wave function in quantum mechanics which was developed by Erwin Schrödinger, a colleague of Niels Bohr (see 2D).

Phi

9. Mayday call: SOS.

10. Buffed: SHINED.

11. Bench supports: LEGS.  Or the "tears of wine" running down the sides of a glass.  A CSO to MOE.

12. Island called "The Gathering Place": OAHU.  The Hawaiian Islands and their nicknames, explained.

13. Pal follower: ETTE.  This can be either a flat surface that an artist uses to mix paints, or the range of colors in a painting, e.g.

Some believe that Vincent van Gogh was the greatest artist who ever lived, and I definitely believe that Vincent and the Doctor was the greatest episode of the time traveler series Dr. Who that was ever produced (you can stream the whole episode on Amazon Prime for a nominal amount) ...

18. Stagecoach stopovers: INNS.

19. Evocative of the past: RETRO.

23. Lose a layer: MOLT.  As they get bigger, 38Ds do this

24. Self-: AUTO. 

25. Museum gift shop purchase: PRINT.  Like this one ...

Irises
Vincent van Gogh
May 1889

26. Flushed: RED.

27. "I'm the best!": YAY ME.  The crossword antonym to I TRY.

28. Relocation rental: UHAUL.  U-Haul Holding Company is an American moving truck, trailer, and self-storage rental company, based in Phoenix, Arizona, that has been in operation since 1945. The company was founded by Leonard Shoen and Anna Mary Carty in Ridgefield, Washington, who began it in a garage owned by Carty's family, and expanded it through franchising with gas stations.

29. Scams: CONS.

30. Palmer of "Nope": KEKE.  NOPE (stylized in all caps) is a 2022 American neo-Western science fiction horror film written, directed, and produced by Jordan Peele.  It stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as horse-wrangling siblings attempting to capture evidence of an unidentified flying object in Agua Dulce, California.  Hand up if you've ever been there?  Two hands up if you saw any UFOs? 😀

 31. Tab: BILL. For some reason people always expect me to pick this up. 😀

32. Bassoon cousin: OBOE.  Here is Valerie Xu playing an excerpt from the OBOE solo in Richard Strauss's tone poem Don Juan ...

36. Dessert made in a ramekin: FLAN.  Here's a recipe for an easy to make Spanish Flan.

37. Gospel that includes the parable of the Prodigal Son: LUKE.  Two sons figure in this parable: the prodigal son and the faithful son.  When we visited Lourdes in 1999 there were giant posters of this famous painting by Rembrandt all around the grotto, inviting people back to the Church.  I accepted the invitation.

Return of the Prodigal Son
The faithful son can be seen in the background,
just above the father's left shoulder.
He is not happy about the prodigal son's return.

38. Pet snake, perhaps: BOA.  Eventually they get very big ...

Pet boa

40. Outstrip expectations: AMAZE.

41. Returned a verdict: DECIDED.

43. Like a penthouse: SWANKY.

44. Palestinian leader who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize: ARAFAT.  The Nobel Peace Prize 1994 was awarded jointly to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East".  Here's the Nobel Prize Committee press release.

Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist the following year.

45. Swampy earth: MIRE.

48. Abbr. before an addressee: ATTN.

49. Emmy nominee Seehorn: RHEA.  Presumably named for Rhea a mother goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Titan daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus, himself a son of Gaia.

Rhea

50. In the area: NEAR.

51. Dermatological complaint: CYST.  A cyst is a small pocket of tissue often filled with fluid or pus. It can occur due to an injury, infection, or other issues. They’re usually benign but may need treatment for complications.

52. Scary character: OGRE.  See 39A.

53. Peppermint shape: CANE.

54. During: AMID.

55. Realizes: SEES.

57. OH-to-OK heading: WSW.  Oklahoma is West South West of Ohio.

14 hr 27 min (972.5 mi) via I-70 W and I-44 W

58. Mauna __: LOA.  Not KEA.  You have to wait for perps on this.  MAUNA LOA is Earth's largest active volcano by both mass and volume.  Its last eruption was in 2022, lasting from November 27 to December 13. Here's some news footage of the event ...

Cheers,
Bill

And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.

waseeley