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Constructor: Todd Gross

Relative difficulty: 4:03



THEME:"OF THE"— Four expressions that have the prepositional construction "[noun] of the [time period]" in increasing order of time-period length.

Word of the Day: NAT (63D: Turner who led a slave rebellion) —

In August of 1831, seven enslaved men turned the South and the nation upside down when they engaged in a violent and historic bid to gain their freedom. Beginning before dawn on a Monday morning, a band of slaves led by Nat Turner made their way across Southampton County in southeastern Virginia. As they traveled from farm to farm, they killed every white person they encountered and picked up recruits from among the slave population. Within twenty-four hours, fifty-five white men, women, and children lay dead. By Monday afternoon, whites launched a successful attack against the rebels, capturing or killing most of them that same day. Nat Turner remained at large, and rumors spread that the rebellion had been part of a much more widespread conspiracy of slaves in Virginia and North Carolina. Over the next four months, dozens of slaves were put on trial, and more than twenty were executed, including Turner, who was captured after hiding in the area under a pile of wood for more than two months. (The Nat Turner Project)

Theme answers:

• [17A: Unplanned]: SPUR OF THE MOMENT
• [28A: Parliamentary agenda]: ORDERS OF THE DAY
• [48A: Literary club feature]: BOOK OF THE MONTH
• 62A: Annual Time issue]: PERSON OF THE YEAR

This is a nice Monday theme which does no more and no less than it needs to. I'm not super-sold on ORDERS OF THE DAY as plural, but Wikipedia confirms its use as a phrase used in the business meetings of a deliberative assembly. Apparently the Book of the Month Club is still going strong! You can get five hardcover books delivered to your door in a "fun to open box." I don't know about you, but what I find discouraging about reading is that the books are generally in a container that is such a drag to open. PERSON OF THE YEAR used to be Man (or far less often Woman) of the Year until 1999, when Time went gender-neutral. Inanimate objects have twice been Thing of the Year: The Computer in 1982 and the Endangered Earth in 1988. You were Person of the Year in 2006. Guess who was Man of the Year in 1938?

Fill-wise, we're good for a Monday with entry-level, standard stuff like ANTE ISIS MEME MAUI AFTA -- all on the NOSE, LIKE SO.

Bullets:

• [26D: TV broadcast band]: VHF— That's quite a throwback, to when there was VHF and UHF, and the channels were on a little dial that you had to turn manually, and you taped a wire hanger to the rabbit ears on top of your little tube TV. And sometimes you could get that other channel that showed Monty Python if you stood near the antenna just so. Do we even say broadcast anymore?
• [40D: N.R.A. members]: GUN USERS— I'm not convinced, from rhetoric of late, that the NRA is an organization for GUN USERS anymore, or if they just exist to intimidate people who disagree with them.
• [6D: Possibly, but unlikely]: IN THEORY— I think of IN THEORY as more, yeah, it's good on paper, but will it play in Peoria? That doesn't mean it's unlikely to happen though -- just that it might not go over as planned.

See you tomorrow.
 
Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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