Laurence who wrote "Tristram Shandy" / MON 4-2-2018 / Top-notch / Think up / Big name in Russian ballet / Arnaz of "I Love Lucy"

I wanted to start this week off with another "hello it's me Rex and I am very gruff and hate Mondays almost as much as Garfield the lasagna cat" type intro, but then I remembered that I already did that one time, and that although it's still April Fools' Day at the time I'm writing this, it will be the much less interesting April 2nd when this post is published. So I'm just going to say, hey, it's Annabel Monday!

Constructor: Jason Mueller

Relative difficulty: Challenging



THEME: PARIS, FRANCE — Theme answers relate to the City of Love.

Theme answers:

• EIFFEL TOWER (17A: 62-Across landmark)
• THE LOUVRE (24A: 62-Across museum)
• PONT NEUF (30A: 62-Across bridge)
• SORBONNE (44A: 62-Across school)
• PATRON (49D: St. Genevieve, for 62-Across)
• NOTRE DAME (51A: 62-Across cathedral)
• PARIS FRANCE (62A: World capital that's the theme of this puzzle)

Word of the Day: ANODES (15A: Battery terminals) —

An anode is an electrode through which conventional current flows into a polarized electrical device. This contrasts with a cathode, an electrode through which current flows out of an electrical device. A common mnemonic is ACID for "anode current into device".^[1] The direction of conventional current in a circuit is opposite to the direction of electron flow, so (negatively charged) electrons flow out the anode into the outside circuit. In Galvanic cell, the anode is the electrode, which reduction reaction occurs in. 

An anode is also the wire or plate having excess positive charge.^[2] Consequently, anions will tend to move towards the anode. 

Uh, are we sure this one's a Monday? Because I've done a lot of Mondays at this point, and they don't normally lead to me gently bashing my head against the wall. I don't really know what it is, maybe there were just too many older/more obscure cultural references, or maybe my brain is just fried from eating too many chocolate Easter eggs or too much matzo and I'm having an off day. (My parents come from different faiths so I've always celebrated both Easter and Pesach to some degree, although I have been known to briefly stop observing Pesach whenever there's some cinnamon rolls or foccacia bread near me.)

Anyway, despite the puzzle's difficulty there were a few clues that were...tired. Surely there's another way to clue ENE and its cousins? And yes, I still know what ALOE vera is. I want to see more exciting fill! But not too exciting because I got stuck on the western side of the puzzle for about a million years. What can I say, I'm hard to please. DETOO made me giggle though, so score one for Jason.

The theme, fortunately, was the easiest part. Total missed opportunity for TOUR as in "de France" though. I got lost on the metro in Paris one time on a high school trip; me and a friend of mine got off at the wrong stop and spent two hours wandering around the next station waiting to see if our school group would reunite with us. Ended up having to navigate back to where we were staying because I was too anxious to ask someone to borrow their cellule and he didn't speak a word of French. Mais c'était une adventure! 

Bullets:

• ENT (6D: Suffix with differ) — If this puzzle was going to get a bit geeky with DETOO, why not go all out and clue this one after the tree creatures from Lord of the Rings? Then again, those fellows went on for so long that I quit the books about two-thirds of the way through Treebeard's scene. At least he gets a really cool name.
• OGRE (42D: Shrek, e.g.) — Alternate clue: "Layered." 
• OLIVE (52D: Shade of green) — A friend of mine has a theory that in any given partnership (be it a couple or BFFs), only one person likes olives, so the other can give that person their unwanted olives. I have always been the latter. They're just too salty and weird! I'll pick them off my pizza and give them to whichever bizarre olive-lover is around. 
• SCAT (59D: Sing like Ella Fitzgerald) — Can also refer to poop, or an excellent YA book by Carl Hiaasen, or this man. 

SKI-BA-BOP-BA-DOP-BOP

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

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