Joseph Knecht

  Today's constructors are veterans Adam Wagner and Rebecca Goldstein who challenge us with 4 themers embedded with EMULSIFIED WORDS While some of you will be delighted that these words aren't enclosed in little round things, the rest of us may need a little help finding them.  So to assist you, here's a brief tutorial on emulsification , its uses and techniques ... ... which should now make it quite easy to separate them from the fill ... 18A. *Pronoun for a spokesperson: EDI TORIAL WE .  23A. *Decorative touch made with a small paintbrush, e.g.: D ETAIL WOR K . 36A. *What "we are living in," per a Madonna hit song: MA TERIAL WO RLD . 51A. *Wraps at a spa: H AIR TOWE LS . Hair Towel ... still don't see them?   Luckily there's a reveal ... 57A. Substances that never mix, except in the answers to the starred clues?: OIL AND WATER .  Not so fast!   There is another place where OIL and WATER mix: inside our bodies...

For many of you today's constructor Doug Peterson needs no introduction. By my count today's outing marks his 59th appearance on the Corner, his first being on  Friday, May 9, 2008 , reviewed by C.C.  Here's an interview with Doug on November 29, 2016 published in the blog Puzzle Nation .  His theme today is contained in 4 over the shoulder zingers said by the person who got in the last word at a less than amicable departure.  This is not the type of theme that helps you to solve the puzzle, but rather one that is a puzzle in itself,  While this will disappoint some, I think that it would be difficult to suss without the circles, and in the event that your publisher didn't include them just Give It Your Best Shot For reasons we'll see shortly, each themer consists of a pair of answers.  I've highlighted the letters that appear in the grid circles. Pair 1: 17A. Song from "Anything Goes": YOU'RE THE TO P ...

    ANIMAL CROSSING Today's puzzle is brought to us by constructor Max Schlenker who has had previous settings published in Inkubator and Universal Crosswords and is making his debut today in the LA Times .  His theme concerns 4 zoologists who give us punny presentations on birds , spiders , snakes , and mollusks .  Trigger warning : some of these are a little creepy ... 17A. Teaching surface for an ornithologist?: BILL BOARD .   Ornithology is the study of birds, and birds have BILLS (aka beaks ).  The famous naturalist Charles Darwin was also an ornithologist who made an extensive study of the differences between the beaks of various finches on different islands in the Galapagos Archipelago .  He concluded that the differences in the shapes and sizes of their beaks were the result of adaptations to different plant life on the different islands, and that over many years they had  evolved into different species via na...