Joseph Knecht

  What the Hack?   Today's constructors are  Laura Dershewitz  and  her  partner in crime Katherine Baicker .  This is Laura's first visit to the LAT, and Katherine first appeared here on May 19, 2022 , reviewed by my partner in crime Malodorous Manatee . Laura's and Katherine's theme is all about HACKS .  But what exactly is a HACK ?  It turns out to be quite a mercurial term with a least a dozen different meanings, many with no apparent connections to the others.  Today we tend to associate "hacking" with computers, but the term apparently predates modern computers by many years .  In their reveal for the themers our constructors seem to be exploring two usages of the word HACK , separated below by  the conjunction AND ... 58A. Tricks to improve productivity, and the tricks used to form the answers to the starred clues?: LIFE HACKS .  (my italics )....

Younger Cornerites, those of you who get your tunes from Spotify , Apple Music , or the ever edgy Pandora ( I wouldn't open it if I were you! )  may not have heard of the hipster who is the subject of today's theme.  But for those of us of a certain age, music was streamed over the radio or at a sock hop by an R&R impresario known as the Disc Jockey ...    ... aka the " Dee Jay " or simply " DJ ".  Our Dee Jay today is constructor Taylor Johnson , who first appeared in this venue on May 22, 2022 , and who has arranged for us a revealing 40A . Dance club compilation, and what the answers to the starred clues literally are: DJ MIX . He accomplishes this through 2 pairs of two-word themers.   The first pair consists of an Across and a Down clue, each word beginning with the letters D and J respectively: 17A . *"Let me enjoy my guilt...

    Higgs Boson Large Hadron Collider Geneva Switzerland Emma Oxford , our constructor today,  is  a graduate student in particle physics and I thought the above splash screen  might make a nice welcome mat.  And it's even tangentially related to one of the themers. This is her second outing with the LAT,   her first was on Thursday March 25, 2021, reviewed by my partner in crime Malodorous Manatee .  Emma has long been solving crosswords, but only began constructing them about a year ago.  During this brief time she has also had puzzles published by Universal , WSJ , and Inkubator , as well as mini and "meta" puzzles on the constructor site CrossHare , under the username damefox Outside of crosswords and physics, Emma is a fan of baking, running, jigsaw p...