Today we have another outing with Paul Coulter, as he shares with us his favorite drinks and mixers. The themers might be a bit easier to follow if we start with the Grid. As there are 4 pairs of related theme clues, I've shown the pairs here connected by red lines:
The first answer set consists of four beverages, 3 alcoholic (1A,
5A, and 60A) and one a mixer (45A). These
respective beverages are then "mixed" in anagrams embedded in 4 two word
answers (46A, 27A, 17A, and 66A). The
anagrams don't seem to have any particular relationship to the drinks in the
first set of clues, but EDAM cheese
(in 46A) might pair nicely with a
CLARET (5A).
Paul, please feel free to stop by and comment if I'm missing something. Here are the paired theme clues:
1. Ancient beverage
"mixed" in 46-Across: MEAD. A drink fermented from honey. Also the name of the famous anthropologist
Margaret Mead, best known for her seminal book
Coming of Age In Samoa
and for her autobiography Blackberry Winter. The anagram here
is EDAM.
46. "Give me time to collect myself":
I NEED A MOMENT. I needed a lot of MOMENTS to suss all of the
above!
5. Dinner beverage "mixed" in 27-Across:
CLARET. The British term for the dry red wines vinified just across the
Channel in the Bordeaux region of France. Clarets are generally
BLENDS (mixes) of the VARIETALS Cabernet Sauvignon,
Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. The anagram here is
CARTEL:
27. Driver's aid, once:
CAR TELEPHONE. Hands up if you've ever
used one. Bluetooth links to your cellphone don't count.
45. Fountain beverage "mixed" in 17-Across:
SODA. The anagram here is ADOS. I guess all that fizzin' stirs up a fuss!
17. Air Force
Academy city: COLORADO SPRINGS. Also known for
The Garden of the Gods:
and for
The Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun: 
66.
After-dinner beverage "mixed" in 60-Across:
PORT. All ports are made from a blend of grapes grown throughout
Portugal's Douro valley. There are two kinds of port:
TAWNY and RUBY.
Beyond that I've got to issue a CSO to C Moe for any additional exegesis
on PORTS. The anagram here is TROP:
60. Balancing act: TIGHTROPE WALKER. Here French tightrope walker Bongonga completed a stunt on a cord hanging 35 meters from the ground at Paris' picturesque Montmartre hill, with no security cable attached to her costume. I can barely bear to watch this. Sacré-Coeur!
The anagram here was TROP, which imported from French into English still means TOO MUCH. It might describe the throbbing in your head the next morning if you mixed "TOO MUCH" MEAD, CLARET, and PORT on New Years Eve! Cheers, and here's all the rest ...
Across:
11. Cooking meas.: TSP. It couldn't be the abbreviation for tablespoon, as that's four letters.
14. Part of a pot: ANTE. On the other side of the pond it's pronounced ONTIE, as in your mother's sister.
15. On a smaller scale: LESS SO.
16. Bit in a horse's mouth: OAT.
20. Abbr. between names, perhaps: AKA. An author's
PSEUDONYM or perhaps more often an ALIAS for someone suspected
of figuring out a crossword answer from the intersecting answers. But
who might get BUSTED by the dreaded NATICK.
21. Gulf of __: OMAN. Could be the Gulf of ADEN. You
might have to perp it.
22. Starkers, on this side of the pond: NAKED. On this side of
the pond we have a similar sounding noun STREAKERS, but on the
other side of the pond the former word is an adjective. Here's a
TV frame of a breathless Benedict Cumberbach (AKA Sherlock
Holmes) being Scandalised in Bohemia by his STARKERS nemesis
Irene Adler. While this image is RATED PG, the one on the
BBC was definitely RATED R:
23. Not fooled by: WISE TO.
25. City blight: SLUM.
33. Sneeze syllable: CHOO. Doubled this becomes a kiddie
TRAIN.
36. It's a wrap: SARAN. I'll make mine with a
TORTILLA thank you.
37. Bond was kicked out of it: ETON. If it's a four letter English
school, you can count on it being ETON.
38. Fireplace shelf: HOB. Dw will be happy to know we have one on
our gas grill. It's also "a machine tool used for cutting gears or screw threads". CSO to
Dash T, I know you've got a SONIC SCREWDRIVER, but do you
have a HOB? TAPS and DIES don't count.
39. Berkeley sch.: CAL. CALs are something we've all
resolved to avoid for at least another mo.
40. Effort: TRY.
41. ESPN MLB analyst: AROD.
43. Drive: MOTOR. These have been known to throw
A ROD from time to time.
49. Animal rights gp.: PETA. Also a homo-phonic pocket bread used
to serve FALAFELS with TAHINI and shredded lettuce.
50. Make more powerful: SOUP UP. Like I did with the ham
HOCK left over from Christmas dinner. A bit salty though.
54. Gut feeling?: AGITA.
57. Simon Says player: APER. So Simon was a simian?
59. That, in Oaxaca: ESA.
64. Artist Yoko: ONO. Yoko was in the last puzzle I blogged and
I'm happy to report that she is still with us.
65. Filling out forms, often: HASSLE.
67. Make a dent in: MAR.
68. Drove off: SHOOED.
69. Costner role: NESS. A much more famous NESS is the
LOCH in Scotland, the home of NESSIE, the MONSTER who
warms the hearts of the Scottish tourist industry:
Down:
1. Rainforest parrot: MACAW.
2. Mushroom in Asian cuisine: ENOKI. 
Not to be confused with these cuddly creatures on the planet
ENDOR.
3. World record?: ATLAS. Cute clue. OTOH
Icelandic actor and strongman Hafthor Bjornsson set a
world record for the deadlift last May, when he lifted 1,104
pounds (501 kg) at Thor's Power Gym in Iceland.
4. "Gloria in Excelsis __": DEO. The beginning of the hymn from
the Latin Mass. Here is Antonio Vivaldi's setting:
5. Demands loudly, with "for": CLAMORS Wannabe OYSTERS if
you ask me.
6. Helen of Troy's mother: LEDA. An early
#METOO
victim.
7. John Irving's "__ of the Circus": A SON. I have but one.
And 8 grandchildren. And sometimes it IS a circus!
8. __ feed: online news aggregator: RSS. "Really Simple Syndication" is a web protocol that allows users and
applications automatic access to website updates in a standardized,
computer-readable format. These FIFO feeds can give you a pull down menu
on your browser listing any new posts to a site. In order for this
to work the site must support the RSS protocol.
9. Medium gift: ESP. IMHO there is some statistical evidence that
there is something to this.
10. Ripped to shreds: TORN UP.
11. Honky-__: TONK. I read somewhere that COVID-19 has really
wreaked havoc on these convivial watering holes.
12. Wise one: SAGE. A very wise man indeed. Without him
there would be no SAUSAGES.
13. Condition once called "shell shock," for short: PTSD. My
father suffered from this for 10 years after WWII. But he recovered and
managed to raise a family of 5, four very bright girls and a boy.
18. Membership list: ROTA.
19. "You found the right guy," formally: I AM HE.
24. Novelist Umberto: ECO.
He was much more than a novelist, but is perhaps best known for his first novel, "The Name of the Rose",
which was later made into a movie.
25. Go this way and that: SLALOM. Sort of a gentle ZIG and
ZAG.
26. Actor Cariou: LEN. Canadian[Eh!] actor and stage
director, best known for his Tony award winning portrayal of Sweeney Todd in
the original Broadway cast of
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
28. City near Seattle: TACOMA.
From the Salish Indian word for the mountain that provided
water to their tribe (later changed to Mount Rainier - I have no have no
idea what that means in Salish. Rainer maybe?).
29. Muse for Shelley: ERATO.
30. "The Simpsons" bus driver: OTTO.
31. North of Paris: NORD.
32. One-named New Ager: ENYA. Please forgive the recursion but
... I used to like this singer, but as time went by she became
increasing derivative of ENYA.
33. Spiced tea: CHAI.
34. Cornucopia shape: HORN. An almost clecho to 35B next.
Both BRASSES and WOODWINDS have HORN shaped instruments, but
they have different timbres and belong to different orchestral groups.
35. Bassoon kin: OBOE. One of my favorite pieces for this
instrument is Ennio Moriconi's "Gabriel's Oboe" for the film "The
Mission" starring Jeremy Irons:
52. Computer operators: USERS. The oft overlooked system
"component". I prefer the term STAKEHOLDER. And when
the computer is a personal computer, USERS are the
chief stakeholders.
53. Labor go-with: PARTS.
54. Tiny bit: ATOM. But not the tiniest. There is ample
evidence for SUBATOMIC PARTICLES, like the familiar
ELECTRON, the PROTON, and the NEUTRON But the
latter two are further composed of even smaller particles called
QUARKS. Physicists, despairing of describing them in terms that
we mere mortals might understand, assign them bizarre names like UP,
DOWN, CHARM, STRANGE, TOP, and BOTTOM, , with a
total of 17 denizens in the particle zoo known as
The Standard Model. And if that's not STRANGE enough, there is a whole theory of
near infinitesimally smaller particles called STRINGS, for which
there is no experimental evidence whatsoever! And I'm not
stringing you along. But the theorists might be.
55. Carano of "Deadpool""Deadpool": GINA. I've never seen it, but
it does get a lot of press, whatever it is. Sounds like a scary
place.
56. Horror movie assistant: IGOR. Sometimes you have to perp it
for the first letter, which may be a Y.
57. Lhasa __: APSO. This breed originated in Tibet. How they
could survive Tibetan winters I have no idea. I knew one of them
once, and I know I shouldn't generalize on a sample of one, but my
impression of it was that it was a warm. cuddly, white furry lizard with a
ganglion in place of a brain. A CSO to any Lhasa Apso owners on the
Corner - as a dog lover I'd be happily disavowed of my prejudice if you've had
a different experience.
58. Soccer great: PELE.
61. "Go team!": RAH.
62. Spanish bear: OSO. I don't think I can bear that again.
63. Hosp. staffer: LPN. A CSO to the LPNs, RNs, LAB TECHS and DOCTORS (inanehiker,
Ray-O and any I've missed) on the Corner.
YOU ARE HEROES!!!
waseeley
Note from C.C.:
Here are two lovely pictures of JD's family. JD lives close to her two daughters and she often helps with the grandkids' school work.
