17. Bingeing on chicken pieces?: WING FEEDING. - Wing Ding
26. Roman naturalist's baseball-playing namesake?: PLINY THE FIELDER. - Pliny the Elder
43. Prize coveted by competitive trees?: BEST OF THE FOREST. - Best of the rest
57. Sports Officialdom Illustrated cover image?: PHOTO OF UMPS. - Photo ops
"Ari, get the press ready for photo ops in the White House lawn. I'll be pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey." And then this happened:
37. Source of the fairy-tale sequence that creates four long puzzle puns: GIANT.
Across:
1. Bewildered: DAZED. and confused. - Led Zeppelin.
6. Public row: SCENE.
11. Friend: PAL.
14. Missouri tribe: OSAGE.
15. Lake that ultimately feeds 8-Down: HURON. And... 8(D): Lake ultimately fed by 15-Across: ERIE.
16. "__ we good?": ARE.
19. Meadow: LEA.
20. Vote against: NAY.
21. Employee's request: RAISE.
22. Tale of Achilles and Agamemnon: ILIAD.
24. Tasting room container: CASK.
25. Soon, to a bard: ANON. This was the prevalent definition way back when.
In the age of internutland, it's the abbreviation for a poster that writes under the cloak of anonymity.
33. Climbing and passing places: LANEs. For any flatlanders: "Large vehicles can present problems for other traffic on hilly terrain and may lead to risky passing behavior with limited sight distances. Climbing lanes provide additional capacity on uphill grades to allow faster traffic to pass slower traffic without the increased risk of making the passing maneuver in the opposing traffic lane." US DOT
34. Preserves, in a way: CANs.
35. "Hooray!": RAH.
36. Inch, e.g.: UNIT.
39. Interlaced: WOVE.
40. Executive gp.: MGT.
41. Chart entries: HITs.
42. Tailed orbiter: COMET.
47. Negotiate a green: PUTT. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three...
Never a doubt !
48. Echelon: RANK. Yeoman is not a rank.
49. Airport conveyors, or what are sometimes placed on them: BELTs.
51. Wispy clouds: CIRRI.
53. Spanish she-bear: OSA.
56. __ Today: USA.
60. Apple product: MAC.
61. Superficial: OUTER.
62. Boredom: ENNUI.
64. Is crowded (with): TEEMs.
65. Falls from the sky: RAINs.
Down:
1. Low: DOWN. Glum. Melancholy.
2. Nearly 9% of Earth's surface area: ASIA.
3. Half-baked: ZANY.
4. Chicken producer: EGG.
5. Pays a share of: DEFRAYs. Paul Coulter used defray in last Tuesday's puzzle.
6. Arab leader: SHEIKH.
7. Subjects of bovine mastication: CUDs.
9. Denial from Denis: NON.
10. Auto mechanic's concerns: ENGINEs.
11. Pop or tot, e.g.: PALINDROME. Evil olive.
12. Bailiwick: AREA.
13. Heavy metal: LEAD. Listen to the band cited at 1A for an example. Rolling Stone's ranking of the 40 Greatest Led Zeppelin Songs
18. Right on the map: EAST.
23. Web prefix with cat: LOL.
24. Tech review website: CNET.
25. "__ Nobody's Business": blues standard: AIN'T. Always liked the clue "Is not wrong."
26. Assess the depth of: PLUMB. This word was also in last Tuesday's puzzle.
27. "Blue Sky" Oscar winner: LANGE. Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Lange starred.
28. Where everything should be: IN ITS PLACE.
29. Online money: ECASH.
30. Ventilation source: FAN.
31. Roof edges: EAVES.
32. "I can't go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands" speaker: RHETT. "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
37. Donation: GIFT.
38. Big comm. company, once: ITT. ITT_Inc.
39. __ load: WORK.
41. Trendy nightclub: HOTSPOT. The best hotspots in '80s Houston were in the Galleria area of the West 610 loop. Gilley's wasn't bad, but it was a long drive from the NW side.
42. Pine, e.g.: CONIFER.
44. Son of Akhenaten: TUT. By an undetermined wife. His stepmother was Queen Nefertiti. Nefertiti and Akhenaten had a daughter that Tut married. So he married his stepsister and his stepmother was his mother in law. - Summarized from a NatGeo reading.
45. Box score statistic: ERRORS. 2 by the Nats and 1 by the Stros in this game:
46. Gambling game involving matching cards: FARO.
49. Borrows without returning: BUMS.
50. Jacob's brother: ESAU.
51. Dove home: COTE.
Sheep and pigeons also live in cotes.
52. List part: ITEM.
53. Hyatt competitor: OMNI.
54. Like a web: SPUN.
55. Sale warning: AS IS.
58. Tint: HUE.
59. Duessa's foe in Spenser's "The Faerie Queene": UNA. The Faerie Queene - Characters
Check you entries against this grid:
Notes from C.C.:
Look who are here: Lemonade, his wife Oo and Jeffrey Wechsler. Lemonade said "We had a very nice long visit, the only benefit of a long layover on our way home from visiting Oo’s mother and son".
