Hungarian violinist Leopold / WED 12-25-24 / Unidentified person, in slang / Prepare, as a watermelon / What some fear A.I. might become / "___ anges dans nos campagnes" (French carol)

Constructor: Jacob McDermott

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"O, CHRISTMAS TREE" (5D: Holiday carol ... or a literal hint to what can be drawn by connecting nine letters when this puzzle is finished) — connect the "O"s (which represent ornaments, it seems) and you get a giant triangle ... unless the software connects them for you, and adds a lot of detail, including color, in which case you get a Christmas tree (see above). Things associated with said tree can be found around the grid:

Theme answers:

• LIGHTS (2D: What might be strung from the item hidden in this puzzle)
• PRESENT (just one?) (11D: What might be set under the item hidden in this puzzle)
• GARLAND (just one?) (33D: What might be draped form the item hidden in this puzzle)
• TINSEL (43D: What might be hung from the item hidden in this puzzle)

Word of the Day: Leopold AUER (53A: Hungarian violinist Leopold) —

Leopold von Auer (Hungarian: Auer Lipót; June 7, 1845 – July 15, 1930) was a Hungarian violinist, academic, conductor, composer, and instructor. Many of his students went on to become prominent concert performers and teachers. [...] Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was especially taken with Auer's playing. Reviewing an 1874 appearance in Moscow, Tchaikovsky praised Auer's "great expressivity, the thoughtful finesse and poetry of the interpretation." [...] Auer is remembered as one of the most important pedagogues of the violin, and was one of the most sought-after teachers for gifted students. "Auer's position in the history of violin playing is based on his teaching." Many notable virtuoso violinists were among his students, including Mischa Elman, Konstanty Gorski, Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, Toscha Seidel, Efrem Zimbalist, Georges Boulanger, Lyubov Streicher, Benno Rabinof, Kathleen Parlow, Julia Klumpke, Thelma Given, Sylvia Lent, Kemp Stillings, Oscar Shumsky, and Margarita Mandelstamm. Among these were "some of the greatest violinists" of the twentieth century. (wikipedia)

Hello and Merry Christmas. Gonna make this short today (no, really!), partly because it's Christmas morning and I just wanna get downstairs and sit in the dark with my cup of coffee next to the lighted Christmas tree for a while, before the sun comes up and the family starts stirring. It's my favorite time of day on any day, that immediate post-blogging time, but at holiday time it's particularly nice. The other reason I want to make this quick is I don't actually relish spreading negativity on Christmas Day. I don't actually relish it on any day, but today I really don't want to mess with the peaceful, joyous, good-will-toward-men-ish VIBE. And yet ... this puzzle HASA problem (one of which is HASA, but let's not dwell on that). The theme is ... "O CHRISTMAS TREE?" More like "Oh ... Christmas tree ... huh." As much as I loved yesterday's puzzle, I disliked today's. OK, maybe not that much, but this concept felt weak to me. It's just "O"s. I connect "O"s. And you don't even tell me to connect the "O"s, you just say "nine letters" (which is kinda confusing / vague), and anyway, *I* don't actually have to "connect" them because as soon as I enter the final letter of the puzzle, ta-da, the puzzle does it for me. And it doesn't just connect the "O"s, it goes all out with colored ornaments and ... I don't know what is TINSEL and what is GARLAND in that grid picture, but anyway, the revealed tree is covered in Christmas junk and looks very much like a tree ... unlike what you'd get by merely "connecting nine letters," which, as I say, is just a big triangle.