"___ a lot!" (Dracula's expression of gratitude?) / WED 10-5-22 / Ancestor of a termite, surprisingly / "Silent" prez

Theme answers:

• Memoirs of a dance contest champion?-- LIFE AND LIMBO
• Brushing, flossing, and avoiding sugar?-- FINE TOOTH COMBO
• Disney classic without any extra features?-- JUST PLAIN DUMBO
• What Mary might have had if she were into Italian sports cars?-- A LITTLE LAMBO

Word of the Day: HEDY (Actress / inventor Lamarr) —

At the beginning of World War II, she and avant-garde composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Although the U.S. Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

Hey besties! It's Malaika, here to hang out on a rainy, fall Malaika MWednesday, and before we dive in I would like to briefly advertise the Boswords fall themeless league. Every Monday for eight weeks, a new themeless puzzle is released. One of them is written by me, but I'm not allowed to say which one :) We've already released the first puzzle, but there's still time to join and solve and compete with us!

Okay, onwards to our regularly scheduled programming. This puzzle took me under ten minutes to solve. I listened to this song (it starts at 1:38) three times during the solve. I got trapped at the top: I refused to believe the Times would allow such an egregious dupe in ARE NOT / ARE SO, and I had "said no" rather than TOLD NO, and "Doom" rather than THEM (I don't watch old movies or horror movies). So I hit the trusty "check puzzle" button and that helped me see where I went wrong.

I think some people consider that to be a DNF, or a "did not finish" but that kind of confuses me... I did finish the puzzle! And, to be clear, there are some puzzles that I simply do not finish. Natan's on Saturday is an example; it was too hard-- I got a few entries, and then stopped solving. I did not reveal the grid, or look anything up. I just put it down and never came back. To me, that's a DNF. But maybe I am just not clear on the jargon.

Anywayyyyyy... themes like this are doomed from the start on the "Impress Malaika" front because I simply do not think that a phrase can be made funny by adding a letter. I am a lost cause. I have solved many puzzles and these never make me laugh. The only hope is to find a good revealer, like ATTACHE, to make me say "Okay, cool, yeah." When there is no revealer, I shake my fist at the sky and say "What was the point of all of this???"

On top of that, there were no long answers that were non-theme (although FAIL UP was nice). And some weird stuff like RIEN and LIC and OLAS and TRA and ACT I and NHL FAN and SMALL B and NON US. I suppose I am, in a word, underwhelmed! What about y'all? Whelmed? Overwhelmed? Let me know in the comments.

Bullets:

• [Stars that are blowing up?] for NOVAE — I don't like how there are some plural words (like NOVAE / novas) where both answers are acceptable and the clue doesn't give us any hint to the final letter. It's the same vibe as [That, in Spanish] and you don't know if it's "eso" or "esa." 
• [Inc. or Ms.] for MAG — This took me a sec because I expected titles to be stylized in some way (italics or quotes)
• San Luis OBISPO— I filled this in with no crossings and I have no idea why. Why do I know this?? Is this in crosswords? I don't even know what this is! A city, presumably? But where? Who put this info into my brain???
• [Champagne name] for MOET— Me and my sister were discussing whether we could tell champagne from Prosecco in a blind taste test. She thinks we both could, I think that she could but I couldn't. We both agree that we don't prefer one to the other.

xoxo Malaika

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