Thursday, October 28, 2021, Jerry Edelstein

 

Today's puzzle was constructed by LA Times Crossword veteran Jerry Edelstein, whose last appearance here was on August 18, 2021.  Today he appears in a MASTER's TOURNEY, turning the last word of each themer into the first half of the reveal. 

Here are the seeds:

 20A. Retiree's investment goal: INCOME STREAM.  A CSO to JzB.

34A. Performers in cages: LION TAMERS.  Marcus Loewe, Samuel Goldwyn, and Louis Mayer generated quite an INCOME STREAM by TAMING this LION:
 

42. Cornell's "Far Above Cayuga's Waters" and others: ALMA MATERS.  A CSO to any of our Cornell alums on the Corner.  Hands up please!
 

And the reveal:

 54A. "Mona Lisa" and "Guernica" ... and, in a different way, the last words of 20-, 34- and 42-Across: MASTERPIECES.  That is, the last word of each themer is an anagram of MASTER*.  I found the contrasts between these two masterpieces to be intriguingly dissonant.

Leonard da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is one of the most well-known works of art in the world.  It's difficult to visit the painting in the Louvre because it's always surrounded by enormous crowds.  Instead we'll take a virtual tour.  After the brief intro, click the start button.  You can control the tour by clicking on the small menu icon on the right side of the screen. 

The Mona Lisa has inspired many other works of art, including this one.  The painting is pretty high-maintenance, demanding one of the largest insurance premiums of any painting in the world, and all for just 4.4 sq ft. of canvas (poplar actually).  

The painting suggests many emotions, but for me it is iconic of serenity. 

Mona Lisa, The Louvre
30 in × 21 in

Pablo Picasso's masterpiece Guernica, on the other hand, is iconic of the madness and horrors of war, depicting the  April 26, 1937, bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain which was bombed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists:

Guernica, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
11 ft 5 in high x 25 ft 6 in wide

Across:

1. Lose it: GO MAD.  Madness is a frequent theme in art, literature, and music, e.g. the aforementioned Guernica or Shakespeare's King Lear (CSO to Ol' Man Keith) or Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.  Here's Lucia losing it after just murdering her husband Arturo on their wedding night, the aftermath of an "arranged" marriage:
 

6. Winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, second-most in the Open Era: GRAF.  Stefanie Maria Graf (born 14 June 1969) is a German former professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 1 for a record 377 weeks (only player, male or female, to be No. 1 for more than 7 years) and won 22 Grand Slam singles titles, which is the second-most since the introduction of the Open Era in 1968 behind  Serena Williams (23).

Steffi Graf

10. Not talk, with "up": CLAM.

14. Gulf State native: OMANI.  A citizen of OMAN,  a country occupying the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula at the confluence of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea.
 

15. Jedi who lived to be 900: YODA.  See 23A.  See also MASTER in 54A.

16. Dance with a chair: HORA.  As a left hander, I'm also left footed.  In fact I'm so left footed that I have TWO of them.  Maybe this will help me the next time I'm invited to a Jewish wedding:

  17. Ice shelf breakaways: BERGS. 

18. Relaxing melodies: MOOD MUSIC.  Winter's on its way and here's a bit of MOOD MUSIC for relaxing with your sweetie:

22. __4: Toyota SUV: RAV.

23. Happy eating word: NOM.  Yes it's in the Scrabble Dictionary.  The word originated as an an onomatopoeic adjective coined by the Cookie Monster, a NOM DE PLUME of puppeteer, actor, and film maker Frank Oz.

24. ABC early show, briefly: GMA.

27. Wandered: STRAYED.

31. Eclipse shadows: UMBRAS.  From the Latin for SHADOW.
 

The UMBRA of an ECLIPSE

33. Kung __ shrimp: PAO.  Here's a recipe.

37. River in the Congo: EBOLA.  The river and the virus.
 

40. Female in a field: EWE.

41. Loyal subject: LIEGE.

45. Hobbyist's buy: KIT.

46. It often follows a crash: REBOOT.  AKA the "Blue Screen of Death"  (BSOD).  Save this link in the unlikely event that this should ever happen to you.  Oh, but you won't have any way to access it will you? 😖

47. Overthrows: DEPOSES.  Speaking of BSODS, there are some tech companies I'd like to DEPOSE. 

50. Federal benefits org. founded under FDR: SSA.  So we're talking about the "Federal benefit" of all that hard earned money that was withheld from my paycheck for 53 years?

51. Hit hard: RAM.  See 46A.

53. Write "ere" for this answer, say: ERR.  Yeah, "This clue has on" too.  Just sayin' - this is a slippery slope!

60. Debate provision: EQUAL TIME.

63. Spice native to Indonesia: CLOVE.  8 Surprising Health Benefits of Cloves.

64. Hide in the shadows, say: LURK.  There are a lot of people who just LURK on the Corner, but we still love you!

65. "Garfield" dog: ODIE.  Known for his copious amounts of saliva.  Pretty obvious that Jim Davis is a cat person.  A CSO to .חתולה

Odie

66. Southend-on-Sea's county: ESSEX.  Southend-on-Sea is a resort town on the North shore of the Thames estuary, to the east of London in county ESSEX:
 

County Essex

67. Movie "Citizen": KANE.  Spoiler alert:  ROSEBUD was the brand name of Kane's childhood sled.

68. Parallel __: PARK.

69. Snookums: DEARY.

Down:

1. East Asian desert: GOBI.  For your next vacation, here are twenty interesting facts about the GOBI desert and some stunning photographs.    And for the grandchildren, Mongolian dinosaurs!

2. It can be a good sign: OMEN.

3. Designer Jacobs: MARC.  Marc Jacobs (born April 9, 1963) is an American fashion designer. He is the head designer for his own fashion label, Marc Jacobs, and formerly for Marc by Marc Jacobs.

4. Wool from a rabbit: ANGORA.  Awe, aren't they cute?  There's money to be made raising Angora rabbits, if you want to try your luck.

5. Sudden loss of courage: DISMAY.  The closest our friendly Thesaurus comes to that is "disCOURAGEment".  I think the cluer is stretching it today:

6. Where to see rats and reps: GYMS.  REPS I know about, but GYM RAT?  I'm unclear on the concept:

7. Cheer: ROOT. 

8. Fancify: ADORN.

9. What many pop songs end with: FADE OUT.  The greatest FADE OUT of all time:
 

10. Buddy: CHUM.

11. __ Altos, California: LOS.

12. Jackie's second: ARI.  Aristotle Socrates Onassis  (January 20, 1906 – March 15, 1975), commonly called Ari , was a  shipping magnate who amassed the world's largest privately-owned shipping fleet and was one of the world's richest men. But before Jackie his partner was Maria, considered by many to be the greatest soprano of the 20th century ...

Maria Callas

... except  of course for the even greater soprano Rosa Ponselle,  singing this aria from La Traviata (check out some of the comments comparing her with Callas). When she retired from opera she came to Baltimore and used to sing in our Church choir (really!).  Sadly it was long before our time.

13. Big __: MAC.

19. Me or you or a dog named Boo: MAMMAL. Let's see, we're: warm blooded (✓),  hairy (✓), ... I could go on, but I think that narrows it down enough.

21. Daredevil Knievel: EVEL. Robert Craig Knievel (October 17, 1938 – November 30, 2007), professionally known as Evel Knievel, was an American stunt performer and entertainer. Over the course of his career, he attempted more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps. Knievel was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999. He died of pulmonary disease in Clearwater, Florida, in 2007, aged 69, sans BOOTS.

24. Early Olympians: GREEKS.  Apparently the early Olympic games were plagued by many of the same problems as we see today.

Panathenaic amphora,
a victory prize from ca. 530 BC depicting a foot race,
Terra Sigillata slip attributed 
to the painter Euphiletos.

25. Name related to Peggy: MARGIE.  An old nickname applied to an even older name.

26. Gems, for example: ASSETS.

27. Pickles on a plate, often: SPEARS.  Britney Spears has been in a pickle for the last 13 years or so, but things are starting to look up for her.

28. Puts on hold, as an agenda item: TABLES. Aside from a necessary noun in the kitchen, TABLE can be verbified in American English, e.g., to remove from item from consideration during a formal meeting or other procedure; and in British English, curiously, its meaning is the opposite: it denotes placing an item on an agenda.  One can also "lay one's cards on the TABLE" ("to be candid") and "under the TABLE" ("intoxicated" or "secretive"). 
 
29. Wandering vacuum: ROOMBA.  Robotic vacuum cleaners have been around for a while.  The next new thing is robotic lawn mowers. 

30. What you eat: DIET. 

32. Fat meas.: BMI. Body Mass Index, how you can tell whether you need to watch your 30D and tips on the right approach.

35. Part of IOU: OWE. 

36. Uncool one who lately is sort of cool: NERD.  We've been over this before, but I think there is a difference between the words GEEK and NERD,  but YMMV.   As I think I'm both, it probably doesn't matter.  

38. Philosopher __-tzu: LAO.  LAO TZU (6th-5th Century-531 BC), the father of Taoism and the author of the Tao Te Ching.

39. Seeing no evil?: AMORAL.  Today's Morality lesson:  'Unmoral', 'Immoral', 'Nonmoral', and 'Amoral' all have prefixes meaning "not."  So which to use when?  Ted's quote in the latter link seemed timely at the time, but I guess times change.

43. Not moving: AT A STOP.

44. Flow slowly: SEEP.

48. Having a tag on it, maybe: PRICED. Or the "it" on a playground?

49. Unsettling closing words: OR ELSE.

52. Site of the Cave of Zeus, in myth: Abbr.: MT IDA.  Apparently there is some dispute about the exact birthplace of Zeus: in a cave on Mt Ida in Western Crete or  the Psychro cave further to the East.  Another possibility is that Zeus and his twin brother Jupiter were swapped at birth.  This happens a lot in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, but it's the first time I've heard of it happening in Greece.

54. Put together: MAKE.  OTOH, MAKING a marble statue means taking things apart, bit by bit.

55. Kuwaiti ruler: EMIR.  Emir , sometimes transliterated amir, amier, or ameer, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or ceremonial authority.  See here for more on this frequent denizen of Crosswords. 

56. Give a strong impression (of): REEK. Rhymes with LEEK, featured at the annual Polk County Tennessee Ramp Tramp Festival, where there's a whole lot of REEKING goin' on.

57. __ Nostra: COSA.

58. Even one time: EVER.

59. Like some knockouts: SEXY.  This clue/fill is relevant to a dispute currently going on within a prominent restaurant chain regarding new "uniform" requirements, but as this is a family blog I won't reveal it.

60. Rockies bugler: ELK.  With an S an ORDER  Without an S a MAMMAL (see 19D).

61. Sine __ non: QUA.  The grid is the SINE QUA NON of a review and after I dispatch the next clue, it will be forthwith.

62. Coffee hour sight: URN.  Crosswordese.
 

waseeley

Cheers,
Bill

And special thanks to Teri for proof reading this puzzle and for her constructive suggestions.
And thanks to TTP for his suggested correction of the reveal definition.