Early chewing gum ingredient / THU 6-23-22 / South Asian informally / Ancient dweller of Central Asia and Eastern Europe / Street food favorites topped with tzatziki / Supplier of iron carrots in old cartoons / Sprites but not Pepsis / Adam's apple locale

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy


THEME: OXYGENATION (34A: Photosynthetic process "inflating" 16-, 24-, 46- and 56-Across)— just add oxygen (O
2) (i.e. two "O"s) to the clued answer to get the answer in the grid ... which is just ... an unclued answer:

Theme answers:

• CANOODLES (candles + O
  2) (16A: Mood setters for a romantic dinner) 
• BOO RADLEY (Bradley + O
  2) (24A: Actor Cooper) 
• TATTOOERS (tatters + O
  2) (46A: Torn and ragged clothing)
• PATOOTIES (patties + O
  2) (56A: Quarter-pound things at McDonald's) 

Word of the Day: BOO RADLEY (see 24A) —

In the classic American novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Boo Radley(whose first name is actually Arthur) doesn’t leave his house or talk to anyone, which leads the children in the novel’s setting (Maycomb, Alabama) to wildly speculate about what he looks and acts like. According to main character Scout Finch’s brother, Jem, Boo Radley is more than six-feet tall with yellow teeth, a scar across his entire face, and blood-stained hands from eating raw cats.

In the reality of the story, Boo Radley is a kind but mentally underdeveloped recluse who stays inside after an accident in his childhood. He secretly leaves the Finch siblings little gifts in a tree outside as a friendly, social gesture and becomes a hero who saves them from an attack at the end of the book. Scout walks Boo Radley home after his heroics and begins to see the world from his perspective, learning her father’s lesson that you can never understand someone before “trying on his skin.”

Harper Lee apparently based the character of Boo Radley on a real family who lived in a boarded-up house down the street from her during her childhood. (dictionary.com)

I had somewhat high hopes for this one after I got CANOODLES. I thought it was really impressive the way the clue managed to get the base word (candles) and the oxygenated word (CANOODLES) to relate to one another (via the idea of a romantic dinner). Canoodling by candlelight! Nice. But the next themer I got was TATTOOERS, and the connection there between the base word and the oxygenated word was a lot less obvious. "I guess tattoo artists ... sometimes wear ripped ... shirts? Or jeans? ... maybe?" And then later: "Did Bradley Cooper .... play BOO RADLEY ... in a movie I don't know about? Or on Broadway?"). But then the dream of a connection between base word and oxygenated fell apart completely at PATOOTIES (unless, of course, you think that McDonald's hamburgers taste like ass, in which case, bull's eye!) (so weird that "patootie"can mean both "sweetheart" and "buttocks" ... English, what a language!). The most remarkable thing about this puzzle is that it's the second Thursday in a row where "patooties" have been involved (last week was the whole "-tooties" = two "T"s thing). I wouldn't want to guess at what the odds of such a hebdomadal coincidence are, but I'd say fairly slim. (Sorry, I just learned the word "hebdomadal" this week, while looking up "hebetude," so I'm trying it out on you all, thank you for your patience).