"May I cut in?"
Today veteran constructor Micah Sommersmith treats us to a letter insertion theme. For the punny version of the theme clues the answer to the above question is YES. For the in-the-language version the answer is NO ...
17A. Accumulation on neglected steps?: STAIR DUST. Joni Mitchell sings the words "... we are STAR DUST, we are golden, we are 10 billion year old carbon ..." in her classic song Woodstock ...
24A. Institute for invective?: TIRADE SCHOOL. With the high cost of college these days, increasing numbers of high school graduates are going to TRADE SCHOOLS. They generally cost less than college and enable students to enter the work force more quickly. Here are some programs offered at Maryland trade schools.
And the reveal ...
64D. Question on the dance floor, or an apt title for this puzzle: MAY I CUT IN.
... the inserted letter of course being I.
Here's the grid ...
Here's the rest ...
Across:
1. Carrie-Anne of "The Matrix": MOSS. Carrie-Anne Moss (born August 21, 1967) is a Canadian actress. After early roles on television, she rose to international prominence for her role of Trinity in The Matrix series (1999–present). Her parents named her for an old Holley's song. 😀
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| Carrie-Anne Moss |
9. Satirical bit: SKIT. These guys invented the genre ...
13. Unit of length: INCH.
14. Superfood berry: ACAI.
15. Midmorning hr.: TEN AM.
17. [Theme clue]
19. Disentangle: UNTIE. A CSO to Jinx.
20. Netflix's "__ Kai": COBRA. Cobra Kai is an American martial arts comedy-drama television series and a sequel to the original The Karate Kid films created by Robert Mark Kamen. Here's the Season 6 trailer ...
21. Thing of the past: RELIC. One of the most fascinating relics is the Greek Antikythera mechanism developed in the late 2nd century BC and discovered by divers from a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera in 1901. Upon close examination it was discovered to be an analogue computer that could be used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance ...
23. Molecule in some vaccines: RNA. An mRNA vaccine works by triggering your immune system to create antibodies. Antibodies are proteins in the body. They fight bacteria and viruses that cause disease. The preceding link contains a great video on how they work and is definitely worth watching.
24. [Theme clue]
27. Actress/activist Milano: ALYSSA. Alyssa Jayne Milano (born December 19, 1972) is an American actress, producer, activist, and former singer. She has played Samantha Micelli in Who's the Boss?, Jennifer Mancini in Melrose Place, Phoebe Halliwell in Charmed, and many other roles in TV and films. As an activist, Milano is known for her role in the MeToo movement in October 2017.
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| Alyssa Milano |
31. Feline sign: LEO.
32. Experts who may recommend rebooting a PC: IT PROS. We used to call that "Getting out of the car and getting back in again". Don't get me started on how the boys in Redmond get away with this kind of stuff. 😡
35. Lab rodents: MICE.
39. "Pale Blue Dot" author Carl: SAGAN. Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, and science communicator. His best known scientific contributions are his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and the assembly of the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, which were universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Here is his iconic monologue from The Pale Blue Dot ...
Every time I hear this I am reminded of Dr. Lewis Thomas, who writing in his book The Lives of the Cell, suggested an alternative to Sagan's plaque and record --"I'd send Bach. All of it. It would be bragging of course ...". 😀
41. Georgia airport code: ATL.
42. Elided address: MLORD. An elision commonly heard upstairs at Downtown Abbey.
43. Color-changing gem: OPAL. The value of these gems has dropped significantly in recent years due to their frequent appearance in crossword puzzles -- e.g. last Thursday.
44. Reaction to bright light, for some: SNEEZE. Among other more technical terms this has been called the ACHOO syndrome!
46. Carried the day: WON.
47. Paintballs, e.g.: AMMO.
49. National Gallery of Canada locale: OTTAWA. The museum is particularly known for its Indigenous art, e.g. a recent exhibition by Mohawk artist Shelley Niro. I was particularly taken by this brilliant "sound sculpture" by artist Janet Cardiff called Forty-Part Motet, a reworking of Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis' Spem in alium (Latin for "Hope in any other"). Here is Janet's description of it ... Here's the work it was based on ... 51. [Theme clue]
56. Verse opener?: UNI. Also Britspeak for University.
57. Percolate: LEACH. Also the surname of the great Bernard Leach, the father of British Studio pottery in the mid 20th Century. Village craft pottery had been all but destroyed by the industrial revolution in the previous century and Leach revived it by elevating it to high art.
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| Stoneware bottles, thrown and paddled Bernard Leach, circa 1950 |
58. Prefix with gram: INSTA.
62. Dismally dull: BANAL. Or a description for the commonness of evil, as described in the book by philosopher Hannah Arendt ...
66. Flight path?: AISLE. "Please fasten your seat belts and prepare yourself for landing". 😀
67. Word with "open" or "up in": ARMS. We seem to see a lot more of the latter than the former in the world these days.
68. Number for a letter?: RENT. I.e. the cost for letting an apartment ...
71. Star of Life wearers: Abbr.: EMTS. Worn by Emergency Medical Technicians ...
1. Catchall category, briefly: MISC.
2. Glom __: ONTO.
3. Wound covering: SCAB.
4. Tops: SHIRTS.
5. Short-lived trend: FAD. "Fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months!" -- Oscar Wilde, 1883.
6. Luxury car brand: ACURA. Acura is the luxury and performance division of Japanese automaker Honda, based primarily in North America.
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| 2024 Acura TLX Premium Sports Sedan starting at $45,000 |
8. Cagney or Lacey: TITLE ROLE. Cagney & Lacey is an American police procedural drama television series that aired on the CBS television network for seven seasons from March 25, 1982, to May 16, 1988. The show is about two New York City police detectives who lead very different lives: Christine Cagney (Sharon Gless) is a career-minded single woman, while Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly) is a married working mother. The classic trope of the mismatched detective duo.
9. Rough finish: STUCCO. A rough clue too -- Crossword Tracker has never seen this clue before. Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture.
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| Baroque stucco on the ceiling of the Rotonde de Mars Louvre Palace, Paris Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy, 1658 |
10. "The Masked Singer" panelist Jeong: KEN. The Masked Singer is an American reality singing competition television series that premiered on Fox on January 2, 2019. Celebrities sing songs while wearing head-to-toe costumes and face masks concealing their identities. Hosted by Nick Cannon, the program employs panelists who guess the celebrities' identities by interpreting clues provided to them throughout each season. Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg, Nicole Scherzinger, and Robin Thicke appear in each episode and vote alongside an audience for their favorite singer after all performances have concluded. The least popular is eliminated, taking off their mask to reveal their identity.
11. 101-level course: INTRO.
12. Indigenous Caribbean language: TAINO. The TaÃno were historic Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, whose culture has been continued today by TaÃno descendant communities and TaÃno revivalist communities. The TaÃno language was a dialect of the Arawakan language group. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and the northern Lesser Antilles.
The Lucayan branch of the TaÃno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492. Here is stone statue in Puerto Rico dedicated to Agüeybaná II, a TaÃno hero remembered for his bravery in fighting the Spanish invaders during Taino rebellion of 1511 ...
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| Agüeybaná El Bravo |
18. Trail mix bit: RAISIN.
22. Egyptian fertility goddess: ISIS. Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom (c. 2686 – c. 2181 BCE) as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her slain brother and husband, the divine king Osiris, and produces and protects his heir, Horus. In Roman times, Egyptians across the country celebrated her birthday by carrying the local cult statue of Isis through their fields, probably celebrating her powers of fertility.
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| Isis nursing Horus Ptolemaic Period 332–30 B.C. |
26. Code with tags: HTML. Hypertext Markup Language is standard language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is the underlying language in which our reviews are written and this paragraph looks like this in HTML.
The tags are the symbols <> and </> -- e.g. <b> ... </b> mean start/stop boldface. But this a simple example -- HTML has a complex syntax and it can be quite unwieldy to hand code (except for wizards like -T 😀), so we use an application called Blogger that generates the HTML for us. Blogger is an example of a WYSIWYG editor ("What You See Is What You Get") and is much easier to use.
27. To boot: ALSO.
28. __ of faith: LEAP.
29. Meditative discipline: YOGA.
33. Long shots?: PANORAMAS. Odds are they can be created with most cell phones. 😀
34. GPS suggestion: RTE.
36. "The Music Man" setting: IOWA. It has a reputation for being a stubborn state ...
37. Brag: CROW.
38. Poet __ St. Vincent Millay: EDNA. Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her poem "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"; she was the first woman and second person to win the award. In 1943, Millay was the sixth person and the second woman to be awarded the Frost Medal for her lifetime contribution to American poetry. Here's her "The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish".
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| Edna St. Vincent Millay 1922 |
42. Like grams: METRIC. It's a shame that the metric system never caught on in the US. Formulating and compounding ceramic glazes using English units would be a nightmare.
44. "Peter Pan" pirate: SMEE. The villain HOOK didn't perp, but SMEE seems like a likeable pirate ...
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| Smee |
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| Rex's Roar |
50. Length of service: TENURE.
51. Home of Buena Vista Social Club: CUBA. The Buena Vista Social Club was a musical ensemble primarily made up of Cuban musicians, formed in 1996 and "discovered" by American guitarist Ry Cooder. The group's eponymous studio album was recorded in March 1996 and released in September 1997, quickly becoming an international success. This prompted the ensemble to perform with a full line-up in Amsterdam and New York in 1998. We were fortunate to see them perform at the Lyric Theater in Baltimore some time after that. Here's Chan Chan, one of their hits from the documentary film by Wim Wenders ...
52. Broadcasting: ON AIR.
53. Washer cycle: RINSE.
54. Close call: SCARE.
55. Oregano kin: THYME. MARJORAM wouldn't fit.
59. Woody part of 55-Down: STEM. My big gripe about THYME -- separating all those tiny leaves from all those the woody stems ...
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| Thyme |
61. Terro trap targets: ANTS.
63. In the style of: A LA.
65. Belief system: ISM. For example DARWINISM -- the name of a scientist + ISM. Believe it or not I still haven't found another example of this.
Cheers,
Bill
And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.
waseeley
