Italian term of endearment / THU 2-17-22 / At the party where the scientist was demonstrating her new shrink ray ... / 1934 novel made into a hit 1970s BBC/PBS miniseries / Setting for the 1962 hit Monster Mash

Constructor: Aaron M. Rosenberg

Relative difficulty: Easy


THEME: a shrink ray at a party ... (?) — theme clues ask you to imagine a party where a "scientist was demonstrating her new shrink ray" ... theme answers are familiar phrases clued as if they were small foods (or food-related items):

Theme answers:

• 19A: "At the party where the scientist was demonstrating her new shrink ray, [ZAP!] the punch ladle turned into a ..." (LITTLE DIPPER)
• 28A: "When the appetizers were passed around, [ZAP!] the potato wedges turned into ..." (SMALL FRIES)
• 38A: "When the main course was ready, [ZAP!] the six-foot hoagie turned into an ..." (ATOMIC SUBMARINE)
• 45A: "When the dessert was brought out, [ZAP!] the pudding cake turned into a ..." (MERE TRIFLE)
• 53A: "Finally, when the still-hungry guests went back for more, [ZAP!] the additional helpings turned into ..." (MICROSECONDS)

Word of the Day:"I, CLAUDIUS" (15A: 1934 novel made into a hit 1970s BBC/PBS miniseries) —

I, Claudius is a historical novel by English writer Robert Graves, published in 1934. Written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius, it tells the history of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the early years of the Roman Empire, from Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC to Caligula's assassination in AD 41. Though the narrative is largely fictionalized, most of the events depicted are drawn from historical accounts of the same time period by the Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus.

The "autobiography" continues in a sequel, Claudius the God (1935), which covers the period from Claudius' accession to his death in AD 54. The sequel also includes a section written as a biography of Herod Agrippa, a contemporary of Claudius and a King of the Jews. The two books were adapted by the BBC into the award-winning television serial I, Claudius in 1976. (wikipedia)

This felt really ragged. The very premise was odd, and then each clue and answer felt contextually tortured in their own particular way. There's an implement, three foods, and a word for "more food." Some of the party-related answers are not reimagined much at all (the LITTLE DIPPER is called that precisely because of its resemblance to a "ladle"), while others are changed radically by the cluing ("trifle" being the most obvious of these). ATOMIC SUBMARINE is weird in that you'd call the sandwich a "sub" or maybe a "sub sandwich" or maybe a "submarine sandwich" but just a "submarine?""Dipper""fries""trifle" and "seconds" are all what they say they are—they are all the things you'd imagine at this party. I cannot imagine a "submarine" at this party, in that I would never call the sandwich that. I dunno. The theme answer set is just all over the map. Extremely arbitrary. It made the party-going experience feel really awkward and implausible. Worse, you definitely had to solve the themers in a very specific top-to-bottom order even to understand the context. This is not unheard of, but today I didn't really *get* that you needed to go back and look at themer one in order to find the absurd premise of scientist + shrink ray + party. I hit the clue for ATOMIC SUBMARINE first and sincerely believed I had stumbled into some weird superhero theme. "Why are these foods turning into superheroes?," I wondered. "ZAP!" is such a comic-booky term, and strange transformations were obviously happening, so, yeah, foods that are somehow superheroes—that's what I thought this was. If Atom and the Sub-Mariner are comic book characters with superpowers (and they are), then, well, when you throw in "ZAP!" you can maybe see how my mind went to superhero transformations. "Shazam!" Anyway, I wish the theme had been the Legion of Superfoods. I would've liked that better.