Category: Themeless

puz | pdf | solution

Word count:  77

Average length:  5.30

Difficulty:  a soft 5

The seed for this one was 41 Across, which is a fascinating concept and reinforces that we are all one big family (and should act accordingly).  More on that below.  This entry also required a slightly over-sized grid (16×15).  Enjoy, and if you do, please share expansively.

Picture is apropos of nothing in the puzzle but today is a special day (only 2 years til Medicare!). Actually, it kind of relates to 26A.

18A:  my third favorite CSN song after Guinevere and Helplessly Hoping.  I love the propulsive beat and engaging travelogue.

41A:  In the words of Wikipedia, this answer is “the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all living humans. In other words, she is defined as the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman.”  The concept is unrelated to the biblical woman of the same name; there were probably thousands of other women alive at the time that this answer lived (roughly 150,000 years ago), but none of them left descendants whose descendants are living today.  To me, this is an incredibly powerful concept, which underlines that however different we look, feel, or act, and whatever we hold dear, every one of the more than 7 billion humans alive today is a cousin of some degree to every other human.  If that’s not mind-blowing enough, check out Last Universal Common Ancestor.

64A:  These are wonderful books.  The follow-on trilogy, two books in, is just as good so far.  I haven’t seen The Golden Compass, which was based on book 1 of the answer, but I understand it pulls some punches compared to the book.

32D and 60D:  Apologies if these names are unfamiliar to younger solvers (“younger” is an increasingly expansive category, currently encompassing 80% of the U.S. population compared to yours truly), but I think they’re prominent enough to be fair game for a crossword.

puz | pdf | solution

It’s April 20, but today’s offering has nary a clue related to the day’s festivities.   There are two seed entries (it’s not a sinsemilla!) in this medium-difficulty themeless:  1A, who I think deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, and 59A, which I first tried in a fantastic hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Florence. 

Overachieving lemons near Sorrento:

Other answers/clues of note:

39A.  I didn’t know the derivation of “wonk” until I saw something similar to the clue on a t-shirt at a Nats game, back when regular attendance at a baseball game was a thing for me.

43A.  This was surprisingly difficult to verify.  I have every album released by this group as well as any combination of its members.  Keeping straight which combination (particularly whether “Y” was part of it) first released which of their gazillion hits isn’t always easy.  Here’s an early song by “S” that’s lyrically appropriate for today, in a non-psychoactive sense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtCfCg9V6Lw

13D.  My least favorite answer in the puzzle.  It stands for Short Take-off and Landing.

puz | pdf | solution

I constructed this one at the end of 2020, and it’s suitably difficult for what was an, um, challenging year. If you don’t know 56D and like mysteries, check him out. His Rebus books (set mostly in Edinburgh) touch all the bases in detective fiction and add lots of mordant humor and references to classic rock.

puz | pdf | solution

Another semi-tough themeless …

puz | pdf | solution

A semi-difficult themeless … a few solving notes below, but you may want to solve the puzzle before reading them.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

16A:  The reference is to James Russell Lowell’s poem, “The Vision of Sir Launfal”:  “And what is so rare as a day in June/Then, if ever, come perfect days ….”  I’m not sure how I know it, but I believe it’s familiar enough to be fair fill.

18A:  In addition to being continents, Asia and Europe are rock bands formed around 1980 and, apparently, still active. Asia’s biggest hit was Heat of the Moment; Europe’s was The Final Countdown, which was used a few years ago in a clever GEICO commercial.  After a less than thorough (roughly 30 seconds) Internet search, I am fairly confident the two bands never played together.

27A:  Spammers, industrial spies, data thieves and others silently hijack a group of computers (the botnet) and use them to spread spam, disseminate malware, and steal trade secrets and identities.  It’s a shockingly common occurrence, even if it’s not a widely known word.  To learn a lot more (and probably lose some sleep), check out Nicole Perlroth’s new book, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends:  The Cyberweapons Arms Race.  It’s tense, chilling, clear, and compelling.

44A: The answer stands for Neural Processing Unit, which I didn’t know and you didn’t know (I assume).  It’s terrible fill, but it’s here because my son Adam, puzzler extraordinaire and my go-to puzzle beta tester, reworked this little portion of the grid for me to eliminate three somewhat obscure answers (SCIS was SCIF (a secure compartmented information facility), STOMP was STOMA (a leaf pore), and SPUR was FARR (the actor who played Klinger in M*A*S*H).  Alas, NPR became NPU, but the tradeoff was worth it.

55D:  STEAM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math.

57D:  SATB is an acronym for Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass, the four main choral voices.

puz | pdf | solution

I hope you enjoy this 68-word themeless. A couple of solving notes:

My favorite clues are 60 Across and 55 Down. 47 Down refers to “The Virtuoso Pianist, written by the answer. If you’ve ever taken piano lessons, you probably know this — and remember it as the stuff of nightmares. If you’ve never taken piano lessons, the answer almost certainly will be unfamiliar, but perhaps the crosses will help. My apologies for the dreck fill at 20 Down, but needs must, and just be thankful I didn’t clue it as suggested (jokingly, I think) by my astrophysicist brother: “quark components of a Sigma baryon.”