Good Morning, Cruciverbalists. Malodorous Manatee, here, with the recap. Our puzzle setter today is Hoang-Kim Vu who sometimes constructs/publishes with his wife, Jessica Zetzman. A web search will return quite a few hits for each/both of them.
Today's puzzle does not have a "reveal" but it does contain four themed answers and the theme could be dubbed Job Descriptions. At four places in the grid, the answers are tasks required of an employee. Each of those four clues employ a bit of paranomasia - punning, playing on words. The job descriptions are also all presented in a somewhat Tarzan (or Tonto)-esque manner in that gerunds are eschewed.
Tonto, Tarzan and Frankenstein
Here are the four themed clues and answers:
17. Part of a DJ's job description?: KEEP RECORDS. The clue riffs on recorded music.
28. Part of a matchmaker's job description?: PLAN MEETINGS. Matchmakers PLAN (potentially) romantic meetings.
50. Part of an umpire's job description?: WORK FROM HOME. In this case Home plate.
65. Part of a squire's job description?: DELIVER MAIL. MAIL as in chainmail armor. A squire was a young man who hoped one day to become a knight himself.
Here are the rest of the clues and answers:
Across:
1. Savory jelly made with meat stock: ASPIC.
6. Focus of many HGTV shows: DECOR.
11. Animal that brays: ASS.
14. Animal native to the 54-Down: LLAMA. Ogden Nash having been invoked last week, let's go with this: What did the mama LLAMA say to her children as they got ready for a picnic? Alpaca lunch. Maybe I should have gone with the LLAMAS and the Papas.
15. Produce concern: E-COLI. Produce used as a noun. Fruits and vegetables. A hand up, here, for trying to work out something ripeness-related.
16. Deep __: CUT. SLEEP and STATE were both too long. Never cared much for PURPLE and $H#T was not going to appear in an LAT puzzle.
19. Gene messenger: RNA.
20. Belt-maker's tool: AWL.
21. Pop-folk singer Williams: DAR. Dorothy Williams. The first of many proper nouns in today's list of clues/answers the abundance of which in recent puzzles has been previously discussed.
22. Celebrated: EMINENT.
24. Some car deals: LEASES. As opposed, one supposes, to SALES.
27. Gift to new parents: ONESIE. Actually, wouldn't it would be more of a gift for the infant?
31. "Look alive!": HOP TO. HOP TO IT. Begin to do something quickly and energetically.
32. Have a life: ARE. Often this is clued with "exists".
33. Snooty sort: SNOB.
37. Pitching stat: ERA. A baseball reference. Earned Run Average
38. Sport for Amanda Nunes, briefly: MMA. Mixed Martial Arts. Her nickname is The Lioness. Ronda Rousey might have been the clue earlier in the week.
41. Single, for one: Abbr. SYN. Thanks, perps. This marine mammal scratched his head over this one for a while. . . and flippers aren't the best for scratching. Then came an aha moment: Single can be a SYNonym for one.
43. "Hadestown" Tony nominee Noblezada: EVA. Two unknowns in a row. Thanks, again, perps.
44. Pitching stat: WINS. Nice job repeating the clue. A record of WINS and losses is kept for baseball pitchers.
46. "Christopher Robin" hopper: ROO. Roo also visited us two Thursdays ago. Christopher Robin is a character in A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories. So are Kanga and her child, ROO.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
48. Portend: AUGUR.
54. "Mother of Democracy," to Filipinos: AQUINO. Corazon AQUINO is best remembered for being associated with the revolt which overthrew Ferdinand Marcos.
57. Least possible: FEWEST. By definition.
58. Tricky soccer moves: NUTMEGS. I am not completely ignorant when it comes to soccer but I had never heard this term. Here is what the move is and how it is done:
60. "__ Mubarak": holiday greeting: EID. HOSNI would not fit. Arabic. Roughly, "have a blessed holiday".
61. L'eau land: ILE. C'est la leçon Français d'aujourd'hui. Eau = water. ILE = island.
64. "The Chronic" rapper, familiarly: DRE. This time, at least, it wasn't Lil Nas X. Rap culture is a good source for constructors because it offers additional letter combinations outside of established usage.
68. Tuner's asset: EAR. For tuning instruments, it is better to have a good EAR than a tin EAR.
69. Elegance: GRACE.
70. One "She's Gone" vocalist: OATES. Daryl Hall and John OATES.
71. __-Cat: SNO.
72. Best Upset and Best Driver, e.g.: ESPYS. ESPY awardS seem to be handed out quite frequently in our puzzles.
73. Pet __: PEEVE.
Down:
1. __-Seltzer: ALKA.
Plop Plop Fizz Fizz
2. Boatload: SLEW. We sift through those other four-letter alternatives - among which are TONS, ALOT, LOTS, GOBS, and MANY - to find the one that works.
3. Redundantly named equipment for a rice-and-seafood dish: PAELLA PAN. From the old French for frying pan. In Spanish, PAILA refers to certain metal or clay pans.
4. Little troublemaker: IMP.
5. Spice in many chai mixes: CARDAMOM. Alternative clue: Identify A Matron. CARDAMOM is an accepted alternative to CARDAMON which is what I always thought it was called.
6. Edict: DECREE.
7. Fuel-saving mode in some cars: ECO.
8. Plank target: CORE. ABS was too short to work.
9. Nouveau riche counterpart: OLD MONEY. Hand up for first trying to think of something having to do with being needy.
Randy Newman - It's Money That Matters
(with Mark Knopfler on guitar)
10. On the up and up?: RISING.
11. Griffith Park's 4,210+: ACRES. Located in Los Angeles.
12. Largest division of Islam: SUNNI.
13. Condition: STATE.
18. Slide (into): EASE.
23. Loch in hoax photos: NESS.
The Loch Ness Monster?
25. Tolkien talking tree: ENT. ENTs and ORCs often come from Middle earth to visit us.
26. Metro stop: Abbr.: STA. Okay, is it going to turn out to be STN or STA?
28. "That was close!": PHEW. Okay, is it going to turn out to be WHEW or PHEW?
29. Greiner of "Shark Tank": LORI.
30. Org. to report tax fraud to: IRS.
34. Discuss terms: NEGOTIATE.
35. Certain gamete: OVUM. Why do Romans use more eggs in their omelets than do Parisians? Because in Rome they feel that as far as eggs go you can never have too many OVUM while in Paris the feel that one egg is un ouef.
36. Austere: BARE.
39. Neighborhood guy: MR ROGERS. Clever cluing. The TV show is beloved by millions . . . and often spoofed.
40. Hunky-dory: A OK. Having not gone with Eddie Murphy (Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood), just above, this seems appropriate. What do you say, Eddie?
42. Try to impress by association, say: NAME DROP. Today's construction drops several (perhaps too many) actor/actress/singer/athlete names.
45. Triathlon part: SWIM. SWIM, bike, run.
47. Switch position: OFF. ON was too short.
49. Stumbling blocks?: UHS. ERS? Hmm. Punt.
51. Jittery: ON EDGE. A Dachshund and a Labrador are walking together when the former suddenly unloads on his friend. “My life is a mess,” he says. “My owner is mean, my girlfriend ran away with a Pomeranian and I’m as JITTERY as a cat.” “Why don’t you go see a psychiatrist?” suggests the Labrador. “I can’t. I'm not allowed on the couch.”
52. Actor who plays himself in "Always Be My Maybe": REEVES.
53. Boo-boo: OWIE. Not Boo Boo the cartoon bear.
54. Chilean range: ANDES. The ANDES mountain range is over 5,500 miles long, extends through seven countries and averages more than 13,000 feet in elevation.
55. Sacred text read during Tarawih: QURAN. Hand up for first trying KORAN.
56. In __: not yet born: UTERO.
59. Put (on) hastily: SLAP. SLAP on a coat of paint and call it done.
62. Actor Schreiber: LIEV. The penultimate name in this list of clues/answers.
63. Besides: ELSE.
66. Needing salt, maybe: ICY. Hand up for first thinking it had something to do with food.
67. Actress Whitman: MAE. The final proper name in this list of clues/answers.
