Today's puzzler is brought to us by Jeffrey Wechsler, and I assure you that it's a real gas. In fact it's full of gas! The following themers are inflated with a different gas at different points in the answer. Per the usual Xwd convention they each span 2 or more words:
18. Red River city: FARGO NORTH DAKOTA. The setting for a 1996 Cohen Brothers crime dramedy starring Francis McDormand, who won an Oscar for best actress in it. It also spun off a highly successful 4 season TV series. This answer is inflated with Element #18 ARGON.
30. Words of urgency: NOW MORE THAN EVER it's VERY URGENT that you don't strike a match! This answer is inflated with ETHANE, a highly volatile hydrocarbon gas:
47. Intro suggesting uncertainty: SOMEONE ONCE SAID. Element #10 NEON. Very illuminating.
59. Pre-road trip detail ... and a hint to what certain parts of three long answers were doing as you solved them: FILLING UP WITH GAS.
It's interesting that the first and last of these clues are INERT GASES, whereas the last is HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE. I'm not sure if there's any significance to this. Maybe Jeff will stop by and elucidate.
Here are the rest of the clues ...
1. Queens stadium namesake: ASHE. Arthur Ashe was an iconic sports pioneer among many greats. Not too many have a stadium named after them. He was named in last Sunday's puzzle, clued by his book "Hard Road to Glory".
5. Elevated vantage point for Wile E. Coyote: MESA. Wiley wasn't very wily was he?
9. Sister of Sasha: MALIA. Malia came to the White House when she was 10. She's now 22 and studying at Harvard. Her sister SASHA is 19.
14. Many a gamer: TEEN.
15. Oodles: A LOT. It's misspelled ALOT.
16. Freezes: ICES UP. It's doing that here in Charm City as I'm finishing this up.
21. Fronded plant: FERN. Easy to grow, otherwise we wouldn't have so many of them in our back yard.
22. Exit in a hurry: BAIL. You can only do this after you MAKE BAIL. But keep an eye out for the BAIL BONDSMAN if you do. They're big dudes.
23. Oodles, with "a": SLEW. Or OFFED. In the Biblical sense.
24. They, in Calais: ILS. Today's French lesson. But wait there's more ...!
25. Drawn from diverse sources: ECLECTIC. A school of philosophy "denoting or belonging to a class of ancient philosophers who did not belong to or found any recognized school of thought but selected doctrines from various schools of thought." A good way to avoid COGNITIVE DISSONANCE.
29. Hound for payment: DUN. And they won't stop until they're DONE.
33. Partners: COHORTS.
34. TV component?: TELE. Don't watch much TELLY, except for British murder mysteries.
35. He hit his 600th homer exactly three years after his 500th: A ROD.
36. Medical suffix: ITIS. Then there's ITISITIS, a.k.a. HYPOCHONDRIA.
40. Caesar's next-to-last words: ET TU. "You BRUTE!"
44. "Take a hike!": GET LOST. Not difficult to do, with my sense of direction.
51. Way off: FAR. What results if you do light a match around 30A.
52. Be decided by: TURN UPON.
53. Sot's woe: DTS.
54. Caesar's last day, e.g.: IDES. Some days you just shouldn't get out of bed! You never know who'll run you thru.
56. __ act: RIOT. Much in the news these days.
57. Summers in Bordeaux: ETES. My favorite French region. But not in the ÉTÉ.
64. Make certain: ASSURE.
65. Island in Micronesia: GUAM. Looks like a nice place to visit. Anybody been there?
66. Big name in digital imaging: AGFA. Many will remember KODAK as the "big name" in photography compared to this Belgian competitor and others at the time. But KODAK wasn't looking when the Internet hit and now what's left of them is a brand name applied to OEM products. AGFA in the meantime has become a leader in digital imaging:
67. Jovial: MERRY.
68. Modern address letters: HTTP. Look at the address line (URL) at the top of your browser. The first thing in the address will be the letters HTTP, which stand for HyperText Transfer Protocol. A protocol is a standardized agreement between computer programs about how they exchange data and documents across a network. This particular protocol was invented in 1989 by computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee (now Sir) when he was working for the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland. An initial objective of this protocol was to facilitate the transfer of documents among scientists world-wide, e.g. Hypertexts like the blog you're now reading. The first programs using HTTP for document transfer were text-based, but after a team led by Marc Andreessen at NCSA developed a GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE for it called MOSAIC, the protocol's usage mushroomed and the modern World Wide Web was born.
69. "Got it": I SEE.
Down:
1. DOJ bureau: ATF. "Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms", a potentially incendiary mixture.
2. Shipwreck site: SEAFLOOR.
3. "Want to know the culprit? I'll tell you!": HERES WHO.
4. Many an MIT alum: ENGR.
5. Ralph Ellison's "Invisible __": MAN. Born in 1914 in Oklahoma City, the grandson of slaves, Ralph Waldo Ellison and his younger brother were raised by their mother, whose husband died when Ralph was 3 years old. His mother supported her young family by working as a nursemaid, a janitor and a domestic.
6. "Livin' Thing" rock gp.: ELO. The Electric Light Orchestra is an English rock band formed in Birmingham in 1970. Here's an audio clip ...
7. Cold dessert: SORBET. What's the difference between SORBET and SHERBET? They're both iced, fruit-based confections that contain sugar. The former contains no dairy products and would be the suitable for those who are LACTOSE INTOLERANT. The latter contains milk and is creamier than sorbet. Neither sounds suitable for diabetics.
8. Stick on: ATTACH.
9. Central dividing point: MIDLINE. Often a medical term denoting a bisection line or plane in the body, e.g. for an incision.
10. Here, in Juárez: ACA. Today's Spanish lesson. What little Spanish I know I learned from crossword puzzles. And also from a group of Mexican nuns who used to do the housekeeping for a nearby monastery I visited every Saturday morning. Before the world changed.
11. Albanian money: LEKS. The Albanian lek (ALL) is the national currency of the Republic of Albania. The following image of a 1 LEK coin, worth approximately US $0.01, is licensed by the Wikimedia Commons (here are the Licensing details):
12. Tristan's love: ISOLDE. Among other retellings of this 12th century story, Tristan and Isolde is a 3 act tragic opera with libretto and music by RICHARD WAGNER. Wagner is an acquired taste and this 4 hour opera (not including intermissions!) is not the way to acquire it. It is rarely performed outside the MET in New York, and requires specialized "Wagnerian" singers with incredible vocal skills and stamina. These people are literally musical Olympians!
13. Filmmaker with a distinctive style: AUTEUR. FREDERICO FELLINI and FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT come to mind.
17. One before a king?: PAWN. In addition to being a chess piece, it can also connote a HOSTAGE or a pledge to return money for an object that has been PAWNED.
19. "It's __ the other": ONE OR. But not BOTH. Unless of course we're talking about QUANTUM MECHANICS. But as NOBELIST and bongo player extraordinaire RICHARD FEYNMAN once said: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." That's QM in a nutshell!
20. Try to strike: HIT AT. See 47D.
24. Old Peruvian: INCA. They weren't called that when they were growing up?
26. Old TV component: CRT. CATHODE RAY TUBE. A CSO to the Cornerite who said she used to solder the electrodes for these during WWII. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I make some of this stuff up. The problem is I can't tell which is which!
27. "__ Miz": LES.
28. Wile E. Coyote collectible: CEL. See 5A for a whole bunch of these.
31. Surfing tool: MODEM. A MODulator DEModulator converts analog signals (e.g. telephone, radio, coax, WiFi) to/from digital formats (i.e. usable by computers).
32. Bridal shop array: VEILS.
37. Source of some tadpoles: TOAD EGGS.
38. "Okay to come out yet?": IS IT SAFE. Someone please tell me when it is!
39. Norms: Abbr.: STDS. See e.g. 63D below.
41. Asian holiday: TET. This word entered Western vocabulary in 1968 after a major North Vietnamese offensive during the VIETNAM WAR. I've always thought that it was exclusively the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, but the Chinese celebrate it too. However it starts at a different time because of a 1 hour time zone difference. A CSO to CC for any additional details.
42. Competition: TOURNEY.
43. Strip of gear, as a ship: UN RIG.
44. Econ. yardstick: GNP. Gross National Product vs Gross Domestic Product? GDP measures the value of goods and services produced within a country's borders, by citizens and non-citizens alike. GNP measures the value of goods and services produced by a country's citizens, but both domestically and abroad. GDP is the most commonly used metric by global economies. You may have to perp it. I didn't last week and FIW.
45. Environmentalist's prefix: ECO. Last month it was clued "Novelist Umberto".
46. Principle: TENET.
47. Cruelty named for a marquis: SADISM. Nasty business.
48. Ultimatum phrase: OR ELSE. OR WHAT? "Is that a threat?".
49. "Just stop, okay?!": ENOUGH. Or as my granddaughter says when I'm teasing her: "STOP ... STOP!"
50. Production: OUTPUT.
51. World Cup soccer org.: FIFA. All I know about soccer is that PELE is a very gluey person and was one of the greatest players in the sport. I'm more of a Cricket FAN. It's much easier to take NAPS during a match. A CSO to Vidwan827 - can you explain cricket scoring to us?
55. Omit a part of, perhaps: SLUR.
58. Asian takeout option: THAI. CSO to anyone who knows if they celebrate 41D.
60. Mdse. category: IRR.
61. Angkor __: Cambodian temple: WAT. The answer to the question: "What is the largest religious site in the world?".
62. Trickster: IMP.
63. Encl. with a résumé: SAE. Also a grading standard for the viscosity of motor oils.
Here's the grid:
Cheers,
Bill
