Terpsichore
Today's puzzle is all about dancing so I've taken the title of this review from the name of the Greek muse of Dance and Choral music and the opening video is a performance of La Bourée by Renaissance composer Michael Praetorius from his Dances from Terpsichore.
Today's constructor is our very own Renée Thomason, and today is her first solo without her mentor C.C. Burnikel. And I have to say that C.C. has mentored her well. I usually don't comment on the quality of puzzles, but in this case I really enjoyed solving and reviewing this one. Not only was there a cleverly executed theme to amuse us, but there were no references to obscure pop culture icons, and some very clever cluing.
Here are the themers. They don't appear to have anything in common semantically so we really need the reveal to tell us that they all have something to do with dancing ...
56. Moonwalk, running man, floss, et al., and what can be found in the answers to the starred clues?: DANCE MOVES. And here I'll squeeze in a bit more music to show us something about the nature of these dances -- they really resemble a frenzied Italian Tarantella ...... scrambled across the theme clues ...!
22A. *Appetizer with lots of toppings: LOADED NACHOS.
35A. *Solving the Sunday crossword, for one: WEEKEND ACTIVITY.
45A. *Some design transfers: IRON ON DECALS.
Note the adherence to the convention that the embedded word must span multi-word fill. Finding the right combination of words for the themers and finding a place for them in the grid is impressive.
Here's the grid ...
Here's the rest ...
Across:
1. Chunk of fairway: DIVOT. We recently took one of our granddaughters to our first POLO match this Summer and found that during the Chukkers (time outs to swap out horses) the audience is invited onto the field (which is 9 times the size of a football field!) for "DIVOT stomping."
6. All-__ pots and pans: CLAD. Pots and pans used by the pros ...
10. Exactly suitable: APT.
13. "Parting is such sweet sorrow, mon ami": ADIEU. Today's French lesson -- "goodbye", spoken to a male friend, A DIEU is actually a blessing ("to God") and is used when the separation will be long term or permanent. Au revoir ("Until I see you again") is used for short term partings.
14. Classroom helper: AIDE.
15. Qatari ruler: EMIR.
16. [Theme clue]
18. Tree with needles and cones: PINE. Conifers -- a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Unlike deciduous trees (oaks, maples, poplars, etc.) which shed their leaves in the Fall, conifers drop their needles gradually over the course of the year.
19. Continuing ed course: ESL. English as a Second Language.
20. Mixology verb: STIR.
21. Dukes: FISTS. Maybe this is why they called John Wayne "the Duke" -- because he used his fists so much.
22. [Theme clue]
25. Birds with blue eggs: ROBINS. We're talking here of course about American Robins ...
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| Robin Eggs (American) |
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| Robin Eggs (English) |
29. Casserole appliance: OVEN.
30. Off: AMISS.
32. The "Gras" of "Mardi Gras": FAT. More French -- "Fat Tuesday", i.e. getting stuffed on the Tuesday before the first day of of Lent (Ash Wednesday), a season of fasting.
35. [Theme clue]
39. Soon-to-be alumni: Abbr.: SRS.
40. Window part: LEDGE.
41. Sound imitated by hitting coconut halves together: CLOP. Used to great effect by these coconuts ...
42. Cor anglais kin: OBOE. What's the difference between a Cor Anglais and an OBOE? Here Vivien Kong plays a lovely excerpt from the second movement of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in E minor, From the New World with a Cor anglais ("English Horn") ...43. Abrasion: SCRAPE.
45. [Theme clue]
50. Update, as a library card: RENEW.
51. Tomato paste tomato: ROMA.
52. Bird that can weigh more than a baby hippo: EMU. Who knew -- a new EMU clue?
55. Rae of "Insecure": ISSA. Jo-Issa Rae Diop (born January 12, 1985), credited professionally as Issa Rae, is an American actress, writer, and producer. Founder of Hoorae Media, she achieved wider recognition as the co-creator, co-writer, and star of the HBO television series Insecure (2016–2021), for which she was nominated for multiple Golden Globes Awards and Primetime Emmy Awards. Here's a very short clip with Issa as President Barbie in the 2023 film Barbie ...
56. [Theme reveal]
59. Mushroom part: STEM.
60. As well: ALSO.
61. Amazon option: PRIME. I was surprised that Renée didn't clue this with a bit of number theory. 😀
62. FDR successor: HST. Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to 1945 and briefly in 1945 as the 34th vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Assuming the presidency after Roosevelt's death, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan in the wake of World War II to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism.
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| Harry S. Truman |
63. Prerelease software version: BETA. In my experience the "release" software IS the BETA. That's when the real debugging starts. 😀
64. Tennis star Monica: SELES. Monica Seles (born December 2, 1973) is a former world No. 1 tennis player who represented Yugoslavia and the United States. She won nine major singles titles, eight of them as a teenager while representing Yugoslavia, and the final one while representing the United States.
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| Monica Seles |
1. Miami-__ County: DADE. Miami-Dade County is in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida (CSO to unclefred and Lemonade). The county had a population of 2,701,767 as of the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Florida and the seventh-most populous county in the United States. The county seat is Miami, the core of the nation's ninth-largest metropolitan area with a 2020 population of 6.138 million people. As I am writing this, I'm sure the people throughout the state of Florida still have much work to do to recover from hurricane Milton.
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| Miami-Dade County |
3. Bottle in a lab: VIAL.
4. 20-vol. lexicon: OED. You can also buy this used edition of the 2-vol OED, complete with magnifying glass, for as low as $79.95 ...
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| 2 volume OED |
5. Arizona city nicknamed "The Old Pueblo": TUCSON. Here's how Tucson came to own its charming nickname.
6. Cat : felid :: dog : __: CANID. Today's Latin lesson.
7. Bath water volume: LITRE. Clever clue! -- Bath the town, not the vessel for bathing. I spent 2 weeks working in Bath once, but I took showers so I can't tell you how many LITRES of water I used. If truth be told however, only the government, industry, commerce, and scientific research have been metricated, whereas the common folk still use Imperial units -- when Brits walk into a pub they will invariably order their ALE by the PINT (i.e. 473 ML).
8. Citrusy suffix: ADE.
9. German article: DER. Today's German lesson: THE -- DER, DIE, and DAS are the definite articles used to modify masculine, feminine and neuter nouns. In English we don't make such distinctions and use THE as the definite article for all nouns, e.g. "the boy, the girl, the table", but in German it's not that simple.
10. Community known for barn raisings: AMISH. This scene from the 1985 film Witness shows how they do it ... 11. Skewbald horse: PINTO. Not to be confused with a Paint.
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| Pinto horse |
15. Sweeping accounts: EPICS. They don't get any more epic than this ...
17. Airport sked details: ETAS.
21. Language of Iran: FARSI. Also the language of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam see clue 9A of the puzzle for 10/10/2024 for a sample of FARSI.
22. Common sight on Safari: LINK. Another clever one -- if like me you didn't notice that Safari was capitalized and you'd already perped the first two letters: LI, you would have reflexively filled LION, rather LINK -- a URL on a Safari browser page.
23. Prepare for a winter flight: DE-ICE.
24. Political cartoonist Thomas: NAST. Thomas Nast (September 26, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist often considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon". He also popularized the donkey as the symbol for the Democratic Party and the elephant, for the Republican Party; and created the “modern” image of Santa Claus.
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| Thomas Nast |
26. No longer hung up on: OVER.
27. Crucial pollinators: BEES. Some are more crucial than others.
31. Short periodical?: MAG.
32. Hoka rival: FILA. I'd not heard of Hoka shoes, but I did know FILA because one of my BILs used to work for them. Our clue is also today's Māori lesson: the word Hoka means "to fly" in that language.
33. Sitting upon: ATOP.
34. Blood category: TYPE.
36. Pasta salad pasta shape: ELBOW.
37. Colorless gas that makes colorful signs: NEON. For over 70 years this NEON sign dominated the sky above the Baltimore Harbor, but eventually succumbed to old age. On July 4, 2021 it was replaced by an LED version. The lowercase “o” from the old Domino Sugar sign was donated to the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
42. Last-call hr., sometimes: ONE AM.
43. Equal: SAME.
44. Workshop grippers: CLAMPS. There are a lot of shapes and sizes ...
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| Workshop clamps |
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| Irish Setter |
47. Get-go: ONSET.
48. Surrealist Max: ERNST. Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalized American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism in Europe. If the word surrealist is clued in a crossword puzzle, the fill is almost invariably DALI or ERNST.
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| Max Ernst |
52. Really rotten: EVIL.
53. Social media share: MEME. A MEME begins as a social media share, but like the GENE, the biological entity upon which the idea is based, it must be propagated widely in order to survive. While I don't always see eye to eye with the bloke, I have to give credit to ethologist and story teller Richard Dawkins for coining this word in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
54. Applications: USES.
56. Skosh: DAB. Here's one clue that I doubt Patti came up with -- our constructor likely brought it back from Japan.
57. Taproom brew: ALE. See also 7D.
58. Mine find: ORE. Solvers often find ORE in crosswords too.
Cheers,
Bill
And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.
waseeley
waseeley
Notes from C.C.:
1) Congrats on your first solo, Renee! I'm so proud of your accomplishment.
2) Happy 80th to Uncle Fred, an avid Packers fan! Fred is based in Fort Lauderdale.
