Theme? The clue is a part of the answer... The three theme answers all end with a word that indicates a fraction of a whole, and the clue word is contained as part of each of the first words.
20. Pan?: COMPANION PIECE. PAN is a PIECE of the word COMPANION. A companion piece is one work that compliments another, like the two movies: Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, each tells the "same" story from a different perspective.
33. With 44-Across, ten?: SENTENCE. 44. See 33-Across: FRAGMENT. TEN is a FRAGMENT of the word SENTENCE. I accidentally the whole thing.
54. Kin?: SMOKING SECTION. KIN is a SECTION of the word SMOKING. Is this subject still a hot button for an argument about rights? The statement I remember setting off a war was something like this: Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a pool.
Hi all, Al here. I finally saw the light... Only three theme answers. They all left me puzzled, and didn't help with solving. No unifier clue anywhere, either. The clue words are contained in position 4-6 of all the answer words. The parts given as the clues all end with an "N", preceded in order by a vowel, in order, A,E,I. I was pulling out the last of my hair trying to see what was right in front of me. At first, I noticed that of the three, only smoking -kin = smog made another word, sence might make sense if you're British, and comion isn't a word, so it didn't appear to be letter drops in common. So how are the clues related to the answers? Argyle finally gave me the clue I needed from an interview that Daniel had given Sept 3, 2009:
"To me the perfect puzzle is a simple, elegant, and subtle gimmick puzzle. I really like the crosswords that have a metapuzzle. For example, with some (themed) puzzles, I can fill in the entire grid, and I still don't "get it." So I have to really dig deep to find the theme... it's then that I get that satisfying "Aha!" moment. I wonder how many people miss the whole point of subtle puzzles like that."
I went back and re-read the whole interview, and he had talked about PARTS of speech as the theme from another of his puzzles, and suddenly the light came on...
"To me the perfect puzzle is a simple, elegant, and subtle gimmick puzzle. I really like the crosswords that have a metapuzzle. For example, with some (themed) puzzles, I can fill in the entire grid, and I still don't "get it." So I have to really dig deep to find the theme... it's then that I get that satisfying "Aha!" moment. I wonder how many people miss the whole point of subtle puzzles like that."
I went back and re-read the whole interview, and he had talked about PARTS of speech as the theme from another of his puzzles, and suddenly the light came on...
ACROSS:
1. Flying group: CREW. Captain and crew on an (air) ship.
5. Comic Johnson: ARTE. Soundbite from Laugh-in: "Very interesting."
9. Hyphenated dessert name: JELL-O.
14. Half dodeca-: HEXA. Prefixes for 12 and 6, respectively.
15. Liner danger: BERG. Ocean liner, ice berg.
16. Hater of David, in Dickens: URIAH. Heep.
17. Theater giant?: IMAX. As Ed Sullivan might say, a really big shoe. 70 mm film instead of the standard 35 mm and 300 foot screens.
18. In __: confused: A FOG.
19. High humor?: JINKS. Hijinks. From an old party game where guests threw dice to determine who would perform some silly task or down a large drink. Either outcome would cause amusement to everyone present. Kind of like truth or dare, but with drinking instead of truth.
23. Relative of -like: OID. Suffixes for similar. For example, android means human-like. (Greek "andro" means "human".)
24. Wine bar offerings: PORTS. From the Portugese city of Oporto (the port). Less-known 4-letter wines: Hocks (German Hochheim region), Tents (Spanish reds "tinta"), and Sacks (Spanish white, a precursor to Sherry).
25. Moshe Dayan's "oxygen of the soul": FREEDOM.
29. Guff: GAS. Empty noise, nonsense. Oh, you're just a bag of gas. Guff, like a puff of air, vaguely onomatopoetic.
30. Moo chew?: CUD. Come to Wisconsin and smell our dairy air.
35. Change genetically: MUTATE.
37. Former lover of Riker on "Star Trek: T.N.G.": TROI. in "The Next Generation" of Star Trek, Marina Sirtis played Deanna Troi, an empath who was the ship's counselor. William Riker, played by Jonathan Frakes, was the first mate to Patrick Stewart's Captain Jean Luc Picard.
38. Pontiff's wear: ALB.
40. Foreshadowing: OMEN.
41. Service station vessel: OIL CAN. That takes me back. All I have seen for a long time now are plastic bottles.
47. Org. whose members are concerned with lies: PGA. Ask not where your ball lies. And don't tell any lies about it, either.
48. Birling roller: LOG. The lumberjack contest to see who can stay upright longest on a spinning log.
50. Radius, e.g.: ARM BONE. Along with the ulna and the humerus.
51. San __: San Francisco Bay city: MATEO.
53. Airline to Copenhagen: SAS. Scandinavian Airlines System.
60. Centipede maker: ATARI. One of the early 8-bit video arcade games with a tracking ball instead of a joystick.
61. Spice: ELAN.
62. Yes-__ question: OR NO.
63. Veal piccata ingredient: LEMON. Veal sliced, sautéed, and served in a sauce containing lemon, butter, and spices, usually parsley.
64. Part of Caesar's boast: VENI. vidi vici. I came, I saw, I conquered.
65. N.L. East squad: NATS. National League Baseball, the Washington Nationals.
66. Country sound: TWANG.
67. Golden Fleece vessel: ARGO. From "The Odyssey", Jason's ship.
68. Sin in the film "Se7en": ENVY. The "deadly" sin that the killer was guilty of.
DOWN:
1. Very smart: CHIC. Fashionably smart. Meaning "sharp, severe, stinging," related to "quick, active, clever" probably from the notion of "cutting" wit, words, etc. expanded to the meaning of "trim in attire".
2. San __: REMO. On the Italian Riviera.
3. Student's stressor: EXAM.
4. Emulate Cyrano: WAX POETIC. In Edmond Rostand's highly fictionalized play, Cyrano was the source of the love poems for his romance to Roxanne through the handsome but less articulate Christian.
5. It may be reckless: ABANDON.
6. Update mtge. terms: REFI.nance a mortgage.
7. Band: TROOP.
8. Quaff garnished with nutmeg: EGG NOG. Quaff perhaps from Low German quassen "to overindulge (in food and drink)," with -ss- misread as -ff-.
9. Technique of ancient samurai: JU JITSU. The gentle, or yielding art. The (mostly) weaponless technique of using an opponent's own momentum against them using balance and leverage, because that was more effective than trying to simply hit someone wearing armor.
10. Some native New Yorkers: ERIES.
11. Afro-sporting "Mod Squad" character: LINC. Three young people in trouble with the law are allowed to avoid jail in exchange for infiltrating the counter-culture and exposing bad guys.
12. Vacation location: LAKE.
13. Cries of understanding: OHS.
21. Hill worker: AIDE. Capitol Hill, not an ant hill.
22. Buggy relative: PRAM. A baby buggy.
25. Depth-of-field setting: F-STOP. Camera terms.
26. Outfit again: RE-RIG.
27. __ Gay: ENOLA. The B29 that dropped "little boy" on Hiroshima, named for the pilot's mother, Enola Gay (Tibbits). Pilot: Paul Tibbits.
28. George Strait label: MCA. Music Corporation of America.
30. Actor's day job?: CAMEO. Because waiter was too long.
31. SEC school that retired Peyton Manning's number: U TENN. South Eastern Conference, University of Tennessee.
32. Pasta al __: DENTE. "to the tooth", just a little chewy.
34. Santa's 21-Down: ELF.
36. O.K. Corral town: TOMBSTONE.
39. It's usually uplifting: BRA.
42. Diced and served in a mushroom cream sauce: ALA KING.
43. "Don't look at me!": NOT I.
45. Hall of fame: ARSENIO. Hall as a famous last name, not as a place of recognition.
46. Ally Financial Inc., formerly: GMAC. General Motors Acceptance Corporation.
49. City on the Rhone: GENEVA. Today's geography map.
51. Jerk: MORON. American English carnival slang, perhaps from jerkwater town, where a steam locomotive crew had to take on boiler water from a trough or a creek because there was no water tank. This led to an adj. use of jerk as "inferior, insignificant." Moron is directly from Greek for "foolish, dull". Still, connotatively, these don't really feel synonymous to me...
52. Stare master?: OGLER. A play on words for stair master exercise equipment.
54. Ratatouille, for one: STEW. The full name of the dish is ratatouille niçoise. It originated in the area around present day Occitan Provença and Niça (French: Nice). Derived from ratouiller and tatouiller, two expressive forms of of the French verb touiller, meaning to stir up.
55. Doll's word: MAMA. You'd say mama too, if someone kept tipping you upside down until you made noise.
56. Did some selling out: SANG. Ratted on. Snitched.
57. Mashhad is its second-largest city: IRAN.
58. Airing: ON TV.
59. Intrusive: NOSY.
60. PC key: ALT. Used to change (alternate) the function of other pressed keys. Most computers today use the ASCII character set, which only needs 7 of the 8 bits in one byte to represent all the numbers and letters, both upper and lower (and punctuation, plus certain special signal sequences). The ALT key was originally used to set the "extra" 8th bit so an extended value could be entered, but because of the requirements of internationalization of character sets, it no longer works that way, but instead alters what other keys do depending on the program being used at the time. TMI, right?
Al
