Bug Fixes
Rebecca Goldstein's theme features don't exactly jump out at you ...
- She uses 4 cross references to another clue to identify the theme clues, a feature unpopular with some solvers, some of whom might even call it 49D 😀.
- She uses mixed Across (1) and Down (3) clues ...
... here are the themers ...
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| Button Fly Jeans |
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| 2024 VW Beetle |
Rebecca's clever reveal suggests that she might have done a stint in IT at some point in the past ...
58A. Seeming flaw that's intentional: A FEATURE NOT A BUG. I.e. the second word of each theme fill is part of an in-the-language term (a "feature") not an "insect" ...
... the reveal reminds me of the old programmer's excuse -- "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" to justify an attempt to fix a bug that unintentionally introduces a new and bigger one. A good example of such a claim might be one of the improvements recently made to the Blogger comments section -- the new feature of always returning to the top whenever you refresh the screen gives you multiple opportunities to read each commenter's bon mots, insuring that you'll have them all memorized by the end of the day. 😀
Here's the grid ...
1. From downtown, maybe: URBAN. The etymology of the word URBAN.
6. Dream team member?: MVP. Most Valuable Player. We are blessed to have C.C. as our MVP.
9. Mammal with a prehensile snout: TAPIR. Elephant wouldn't fit, but this mammal did ...
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| Malayan Tapir |
15. Avian Tootsie Pop mascot: OWL. The mascot for Tootsie Roll Pops is known for asking "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" and then saying "One, two, three..." before biting down on the pop.
16. Counters of yore: ABACI. The history of the abacus.
17. Tons o': LOTTA. SCADS fit but didn't perp.
18. Jazz org.: NBA. The Utah Jazz are an American professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City. The Jazz compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Northwest Division of the Western Conference. Here's their noted logo ...
19. Like some comic-con attendees: CAPED. Here's an attendee from the 2023 Comic Con held in Cape Town, South Africa ...
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| Any guesses on who she's cosplaying? I haven't a clue. |
20. QB's throw: ATT. Short for ATTEMPT. QB's get a stat just for trying!
21. Action by the Fed: RATE CUT. The "Fed" being the Federal Reserve System - what it is and how it works.
24. Commercials: ADS.
25. Angus animal: COW. They look like this ...
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| Angus Cow |
28. "Well, ya see ... ": ERM.
29. Simple path: LANE. Certainly not an ALLEY. 😢
30. Insurance company with a purple heart logo: AETNA.
31. Hobart hoppers: ROOS. Hobart is the capital and most populous city of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Located in Tasmania's south-east on the estuary of the River Derwent, it is the southernmost capital city in Australia. Tasmania has approximately 26,000 kangaroos. This one lives in an obscure Northeastern province of Tasmania called "The Hundred Acre Wood" ...
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| Roo |
35. Ctrl-__-Del: ALT. Usually reboots the OS, but if it's really hung you may have to turn it off and on again.
36. Solve, as a problem: CRACK. The daily exercise routine on the Corner.
37. Lady: GAL. This number might be more to your taste, and it's rated G too ...
Is it just me, or do those guys look like quadruplets?
38. Let loose: UNLEASH.
41. Greek X: CHI. Not to be confused with the anti-social media platform formerly known as Twitter. 😀 -- or the given name of one of my BILs.
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| Chi |
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| Élysée Palace |
46. "Welp, what can you do?": ALAS. ALAS, the very last thing I thought of.
48. Solemn vow: OATH. Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon āþ, also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise intended as a sign of that the speaker is telling the truth. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to give an affirmation instead. Nowadays, even when there is no notion of sanctity involved, certain promises said out loud in ceremonial or juridical purpose are referred to as oaths. OTOH in certain contexts it implies profanity ...
52. Unit of magnetic induction: GAUSS. Definitely not a Thursday clue. GAUSS is a unit of magnetic flux density named for the physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss, whose researches helped define it. To make matters worse the unit is obsolete and has been superseded by the Tesla, an SI unit equal to10,000 Gauss. My links having exceeded 1000 words, I am forced to resort to this picture ...
55. Color-blending technique: OMBRE. Ombré (literally "shaded" in French) is the blending of one color hue to another, usually moving tints and shades from light to dark. It has become a popular feature for hair coloring, nail art, and even baking, in addition to its uses in home decorating and graphic design.
61. "Succession" cousin: GREG. Succession is an American satirical black comedy-drama television series that aired for four seasons on HBO from June 3, 2018, to May 28, 2023. The series centers on the Roy family, the owners of global media and entertainment conglomerate Waystar RoyCo, and their fight for control of the company amidst uncertainty about the health of the family's patriarch. Gregory John "Greg" Hirsch, played by Nicholas Braun is great-nephew of Logan Roy, played by the great Brian Cox, the patriarch that everybody's trying to succeed. This following trailer is rated PG13 (profanity and dramatic music 😀) ...
62. Coop up, say: PEN IN.
63. Rowlands of "The Notebook": GENA. Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlands (June 19, 1930 – August 14, 2024) was an American actress, whose career in film, stage, and television spanned nearly seven decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she collaborated with her actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films, including A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980), both of which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She appeared in Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988), and her son Nick Cassavetes's film, The Notebook (2004). In 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker said, "The most important and original movie actor of the past half century-plus is Gena Rowlands." In November 2015, Rowlands received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her unique screen performances. Here's the trailer for The Notebook ...
64. Feeling yesterday's workout: SORE.
65. Briquettes: COALS.
66. Tagged, say: IDED.
Down:
1. Campus near Sunset Blvd.: UCLA. The University of California, Los Angeles. The new UCLA campus in 1929 had four buildings: Royce Hall and Haines Hall on the north, and Powell Library and Kinsey Hall (now called Renee And David Kaplan Hall) on the south. Today, the campus includes 163 buildings across 419 acres (1.7 km2) in the western part of Los Angeles, north of the Westwood shopping district and just south of Sunset Boulevard. In terms of acreage, it is the second-smallest of the ten UC campuses.
2. Endodontic therapy: ROOT CANAL. Everybody's favorite dental procedure.😀 A root canal is treatment for infections in tooth pulp, the innermost layer of your teeth. Endodontists and dentists do about 15 million root canals in the United States every year. Typically, root canals are painless treatments. You can avoid needing a root canal by brushing your teeth after meals, flossing daily and having regular dental checkups.
3. [Theme clue]
4. Spot-on: APT.
5. In the neighborhood: NEAR.
6. City named for the hill it surrounds: MONTREAL. Montreal is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest in Canada, and the tenth-largest in North America. Founded in 1642 as Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary", it is now named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked mountain around which the early settlement was built.
7. [Theme clue]
8. Organ that nourishes a fetus: PLACENTA. The Cleveland Clinic addresses this description to expectant mothers -- "The placenta is a temporary organ that connects your baby to your uterus during pregnancy. The placenta develops shortly after conception and attaches to the wall of your uterus. Your baby is connected to the placenta by the umbilical cord. Together, the placenta and umbilical cord act as your baby's lifeline while in the uterus."
63. Rowlands of "The Notebook": GENA. Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlands (June 19, 1930 – August 14, 2024) was an American actress, whose career in film, stage, and television spanned nearly seven decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she collaborated with her actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films, including A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980), both of which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She appeared in Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988), and her son Nick Cassavetes's film, The Notebook (2004). In 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker said, "The most important and original movie actor of the past half century-plus is Gena Rowlands." In November 2015, Rowlands received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her unique screen performances. Here's the trailer for The Notebook ...
64. Feeling yesterday's workout: SORE.
65. Briquettes: COALS.
66. Tagged, say: IDED.
Down:
1. Campus near Sunset Blvd.: UCLA. The University of California, Los Angeles. The new UCLA campus in 1929 had four buildings: Royce Hall and Haines Hall on the north, and Powell Library and Kinsey Hall (now called Renee And David Kaplan Hall) on the south. Today, the campus includes 163 buildings across 419 acres (1.7 km2) in the western part of Los Angeles, north of the Westwood shopping district and just south of Sunset Boulevard. In terms of acreage, it is the second-smallest of the ten UC campuses.
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| Royce Hall after the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, Italy |
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| See, it's simple! 😀 |
4. Spot-on: APT.
5. In the neighborhood: NEAR.
6. City named for the hill it surrounds: MONTREAL. Montreal is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest in Canada, and the tenth-largest in North America. Founded in 1642 as Ville-Marie, or "City of Mary", it is now named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked mountain around which the early settlement was built.
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| Mount Royal view from av. du Parc in Montreal. |
8. Organ that nourishes a fetus: PLACENTA. The Cleveland Clinic addresses this description to expectant mothers -- "The placenta is a temporary organ that connects your baby to your uterus during pregnancy. The placenta develops shortly after conception and attaches to the wall of your uterus. Your baby is connected to the placenta by the umbilical cord. Together, the placenta and umbilical cord act as your baby's lifeline while in the uterus."
More on the amazing functionality of the placenta from the National Library of Medicine website.
9. Diplomatic skill: TACT.
10. Therapy for some individuals with autism, for short: ABA. This one is a real toughie. The articles on ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) are heavily peppered with psychological jargon -- a language in which I am reasonably fluent, as my BA is in Psych -- yet I still wasn't able to come up with a succinct explanation for how this "therapy" works. However one of the characteristics of persons with autism is that they are often very visually oriented, so I've decided to start with a trailer for a biopic about a real individual with autism named Temple Grandin, who has managed to succeed in a world of "normal" people ...
And here's Temple Grandin speaking for herself...
Now I'll leave it to you to go back to the first link and see if you can make any sense of ABA.
11. [Theme clue]
12. Cold, chocolaty cafe order: ICED MOCHA.
13. Frees (of): RIDS.
22. __ glance: AT A.
23. MA and PA home: USA.
26. Hardly huge: WEE.
28. Blunder: ERR.
29. Supine winter sport: LUGE. Luge racing is a competitive sport that's included in the Winter Olympics, and "to luge" means to speed down a snowy hill on a luge. The word luge comes from the Latin sludia, or "sled." This is another clue that can only be described visually. Here's the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea with Chris Mazdzer taking the silver medal run in men's singles luge ...
32. Smartphone case: SKIN.
34. Competitor who may be put through the paces?: DUELIST. Duelist Aaron Burr may have won his duel with Alexander Hamilton, but he lost everything as a result -- an accused murderer, he fled, was turned away by many countries, anonymously returned to the US, and eventually died a miserable, penniless traitor.
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| Aaron Burr dueling Alexander Hamilton |
36. Customer service agent unlikely to pass a captcha test: CHATBOT. CAPTCHA is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart". It usually takes little effort to convince a customer service CHATBOT that I need to talk to a human -- they're not as smart as they think they are. 😀
39. National Book Award winner Shusterman: NEAL. Neal Shusterman (born November 12, 1962) is an American writer of young adult fiction. He won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his book Challenger Deep and his novel, Scythe, was a 2017 Michael L. Printz Honor book.
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| Neal Shusterman |
40. Hitch: SNAG.
43. McMuffin option: SAUSAGE. “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” -- origin disputed.
45. Crèche trio: THE MAGI. The MAGI go all the way back to the infancy narratives of Jesus Christ (Matthew 2:1-13), but the Crèche ("Nativity Scene") didn't appear in modern Europe until 1223, when St. Francis of Assisi staged a living Crèche complete with an ox and an ass in the Italian town of Greccio.
43. McMuffin option: SAUSAGE. “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” -- origin disputed.
45. Crèche trio: THE MAGI. The MAGI go all the way back to the infancy narratives of Jesus Christ (Matthew 2:1-13), but the Crèche ("Nativity Scene") didn't appear in modern Europe until 1223, when St. Francis of Assisi staged a living Crèche complete with an ox and an ass in the Italian town of Greccio.
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| St. Francis at Greccio Giotto, 1295 |
48. Result of achieving a goal?: ONE NIL. The score after the first goal in games like soccer, ice hockey and lacrosse would be ONE NIL. In American football a six point touchdown would have to be scored before a single extra point could be scored.
49. Part of LGBTQ: QUEER.
50. Humanitarian Sendler recognized by Yad Vashem: IRENA. Irena Stanisława Sendler (née Krzyżanowska; 15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008), was a Polish Catholic social worker, and nurse who served in the Polish Underground Resistance during World War II in German-occupied Warsaw. She was eventually captured and tortured, but refused to reveal the identities of a list of potential Holocaust victims. She was scheduled for execution, but escaped when her compatriots bribed the guards who were to take her to the firing squad -- corruption has a way of corrupting itself.
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| Irena Sendler 1942 |
51. Receded: EBBED.
52. Funny bits: GAGS. Last week we had funny bits from Monte Python. Today we hear from Beyond the Fringe. A friend of mine from High School could intone this whole monologue from memory ...
53. Natural style: AFRO.
56. Ancient character: RUNE. A RUNE is a letter in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before those peoples adopted the Latin alphabet. In addition to representing a sound value (a phoneme), runes can be used to represent the concepts after which they are named (ideographs). Here are the Anglo-Saxon runes, also known as the futhorc ...
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| Anglo-Saxon runes |
59. Checkout lines?: UPC. The Universal Product Code (UPC or UPC code) is a barcode symbology that is used worldwide for tracking trade items in stores. Here is the UPC for this clue ...
60. Word with come or carry: ONS. And with that I'm signing OFF.
Cheers,
Bill
And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.
waseeley
