Thursday, June 27, 2024, John Michael Currie

  Rarely do I find a splash screen that explicitly reveals the reveal (see if you can spot it) ...

Missed it?  Here it is ...

59. Rodentlike features, and a phonetic hint to a segment of 18-, 23-, 36-, and 50-Across: BEADY EYES. And without further ado, here are the 4 themers, provided to us by constructor John Michael Currie  ...

18A. Sea creature who lived across the Strait of Messina from Scylla: CHARYBDIS.  As described by Odysseus on his 10 year voyage home from the Trojan War (see also 46D).  The phrase "between the Scylla and the Charybdis" is also a metaphor sometimes used for "being caught between the horns of a dilemma".

Charybdis

23A. Objects for separating subjects: TAB DIVIDERS.  Meh.

36A. Seafood appetizer often seasoned with Old Bay: CRAB DIP. Teri's recipe for this popular Chesapeake Bay delight is posted on C.C.'s Ginger Roots Blog. 

50A. Land of giants in "Gulliver's Travels": BROBDINGNAG.  These creatures of Jonathan Swift's imagination are not only 60 feet tall, but they are also moral giants who have nothing to fear.

Still don't see it?  Patti made it a lot harder than the hat trick from last week -- and certain members of our community will love the fact that there are no circles, stars, question marks, or any other cruciverbalist crutches, so I guess we'll need the grid 😀...
 

... Now say BDI 4 times real fast!

Here are the rest of the clues ...

Across:

1. False earnestness: SMARM.

6. Sawbuck halves: ABES.  A sawbuck is a $10 bill and an ABE is a $5 bill.

10. "Pencils down": TIME.

14. World capital once called Thang Long: HANOI.  My brother-in-law is from a capital just South of there now called Ho Chi Minh City, once called SAIGON.  But that terrible time in history has passed, and he has returned to beautiful Viet Nam a few times to lecture on his cancer research.

Hanoi Travel Guide

15. Zoom: RACE.

16. Human rights lawyer Clooney: AMAL.  Amal Clooney (née Alamuddin; born in Beirut, Lebanon, on 3 February 1978). is a British international human rights lawyer. Notable clients of hers include former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed, Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and Iraqi human rights activist Nadia Murad. She is fluent in English, French, and Arabic and has held various appointments with the Government of the United Kingdom and the United Nations, and is also an adjunct law professor at Columbia Law School.

Amal Clooney

17. Bonus feature: ADD ON.

18. [Theme clue].

20. Like good things happening to good people: KARMIC.  The adjective form of the noun KARMA.

22. Not obviously true: ARGUABLE.  I suppose if something is actually TRUE and you argue against it, then you are WRONG! 😀

23. [Theme clue].

25. Staffer: AIDE.

26. Norman Lear's specialty: SITCOMS.  The most famous of which is probably All in the Family.  It had a really great laugh track ...

30. Establish anew, as authority: REASSERT.

34. Sandwich cookie: OREO.  EKTORP.

35. End of a professor's address: EDU.

36. [Theme clue]

40. Heat quickly: ZAP.

41. Mattress option: FIRM.

43. Some "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" characters: DEMIGODS.  After viewing clips for several video adaptations, I decided they were rated NFA (Not For Adults) and decided they were probably not the best way to teach kids Greek Mythology. I haven't read any of the novels, but  this should tell you all you need to know.

45. Onset of: START TO.

49. Isolated group of employees: SILO.  An information SILO, or a group of such silos, is an insular management system in which one information system or subsystem is incapable of reciprocal operation with others that are, or should be, related. Thus information is not adequately shared but rather remains sequestered within each system or subsystem, figuratively trapped within a container like grain is trapped within a silo, or a human actually trapped in an office cubicle.  It can be a frustrating experience ...

50. [Theme clue]

54. Person experiencing the bystander effect, perhaps: ONLOOKER.

57. Heroic sister of children's literature: GRETEL.  "Hansel and Gretel" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 as part of Grimms' Fairy Tales.  There have been many adaptations of it over the years, including an opera by Engleburt Humperdink (no relation to the singer Arnold George Dorsey MBE) and a 1987 film starring Cloris Leachman ...

59. [Theme reveal]

61. Ticked off: IRATE.

62. Check status: VOID.

63. Cozy retreat: NEST.

64. Truly stuck: MIRED.

65. Home of Lucas Oil Stadium, familiarly: INDY.  The venue for the yearly Indianapolis 500 Race.  And if you're not into racing Taylor Swift will be there in November. 😀

66. SoCal school: SDSU.  San Diego State University.

67. Snail trail: SLIME. Or the  trail of an ethereal, supernatural presence ...

Down:
1. Literary citation abbr.: SHAK.  Not ibid, op. cit., et. alia, but this guy ...

William Shakespeare
1564-1616

2. Cross with: MAD AT.

3. "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" Oscar nominee Day: ANDRA. Andra Day plays Lady Day in this 2021 musical drama (some profanity) ...

4. iRobot products: ROOMBAS.  Not the dance.  The vacuum cleaners ...

A PSA by iRobot*

5. Bygone audio format: MINIDISC. MiniDisc (MD) is an erasable magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 60, 74, and later, 80 minutes of digitized audio first distributed in November of 1992 and the last was sold in March of 2013.  It is highly likely though that operational versions of MiniDisc players are owned by the National Archives, as they are tasked with maintaining the capability to make available any US government records in any medium to duly authorized persons.

MiniDisc reader and disc

6. Character's beginning, middle, and end: ARC. Initially I thought this might be a meta-clue, as the letters A, R, and C appear in it.  But anyone who writes fiction is familiar with the the evolution of a character in the course of a story, especially the protagonist.  Here is an intro on How to Write a Captivating Character Arc, offered by the tutorial site MasterClass.

7. Faith founded in Persia: BAHAI. ISLAM didn't play very well with the perps and then I remembered that although it is practiced in what is modern day IRAN, that faith was actually founded in SAUDI ARABIA.  The BAHAI faith however was founded in the 19th century in what was then Persia.  The governing body of the Baháʼís is in modern day Haifa, Israel.

Seat of the Universal House of Justice

8. Paperless Post offerings: ECARDS. 

9. Pianist Rachmaninoff: SERGEI.  In addition to being a great pianist, he was a great Russian composer, my favorite actually. Here is a 3:30 min. excerpt from his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini featuring the titular theme.  The work premiered at the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore in 1934, with Rachmaninoff at the piano ...

If you want to hear the rest of the piece, the YouTuber who posted it has a link to the full-length version (23:33) in his comments.

10. Hot sauce from Louisiana: TABASCO.  A CSO to HOTOOLAH! 😀

11. Website with a STARmeter: IMDB.  Internet Movie DataBase.  IMHO this site is in need of a major  upgrade and I'd rate it ⭐⭐.  I find that the Wikipedia is a much more useful tool for researching entertainment sites.

12. Vote by __: MAIL.

13. Otherwise: ELSE.

19. Circular shelter: YURT.  A teepee on the Mongolian steppes ...

Yurts

21. Beer alternative: CIDER.  Cider is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. It is widely available in the United Kingdom (particularly in the West Country) and Ireland. The UK has the world's highest per capita consumption, as well as the largest cider-producing companies. Ciders from the South West of England are generally higher in alcoholic content.   We've had it in France, where it is a local cottage industry. In the US it's generally referred to as hard cider, to distinguish it from the unfermented fruit juice. It is brewed to varying degrees of dryness.

24. Designer Wang: VERA.

27. Short-cut pasta: ORZO.

28. Beer alternative: MEAD.  The main ingredient of this beer is made by bees.  Mead is the first known alcoholic beverage consumed by mankind and is believed to predate wine by nearly three thousand years.  Everything you need to know about it.  Hand up if you've ever imbibed it? ✋

Mead

29. Soaks (up): SOPS.

30. Penalizing sorts, for short: REFS.  Da bums!

31. Trade unions for onions?: EDIT.  Just replace the U with an O!  Luv me them meta clues. 😀

32. Vibe: AURA.

33. Brief "Not sure yet": TBD.

37. Comedian Lydic: DESI. Desi Lydic is an American comedian and actress who is a senior correspondent on The Daily Show. She got her start in the 2001 parody film Not Another Teen Movie. She's a little edgy, so it took me a while to come up with this clip, which includes her treading water in Iceland while she explores gender equality with some of the natives; plus more interviews on the same subject with Namibians and Spaniards.  All you guys out there might want to skip this ...

38. Chatting on Slack, for short: IMING. Internet Messaging.

39. Voyagers of 1620: PILGRIMS.

42. Victim in Clue: MR BODDY.  Mr. Mustard didn't cut it, but one of these perps did ...

44. Sister of Regan and Cordelia: GONERIL.  A 1D reference to the play King Lear and a CSO to our beloved Ol' Man Keith -- here's his Wiki.

46. "Iliad" city: TROY.  The city and the legend of the Trojan War.

The Trojan Horse

Spoiler alert -- according to Jeopardy maven Ken Jennings, most of what has been passed down to us about the Trojan Horse is found in Virgil's Aeneid.

47. Arcade currency: TOKENS.

48. Did as instructed: OBEYED.

51. Shift, for one: DRESS.  A shift dress is a dress in which the cloth falls straight from the shoulders and has darts around the bust. It frequently features a high scoop or boat neck (like I have any idea what they are 😀)

Shift Dress
Ann Taylor for $159.

52. Arcade pioneer: ATARI.

53. Phrase beginning a chase scene, maybe: GET EM.  ... and often ending with Book 'em Danno!

54. Slangy "Duh": OBVI.  Obviously!

55. Club light: NEON.

56. Put down: LAID.  "... The best LAID plans of mice and men ..." -- and an ODE to our theme creature by Robert Burns.

58. Journo's intro: LEDE. ALAS, embedded ads in online journalism have killed the inverted pyramid.

60. "The Simpsons" disco guy: STU. As Stu is pointing out, some of this commentary is by ChatGPT Pro.

Disco Stu

Cheers,
Bill

And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.

waseeley

*Copyright Isaac Asimov.  Some of the other videos I watched definitely violate at least two of Asimov's Laws of Robotics.  These devices can actually be modified to torment cats and shoot bullets!