____ Valley, European steelmaking region / MON 4-13-2015 / St. Teresa of ____ / Mexican chili pepper / Fine glove material

Just when you thought that April was going to be dark, gloomy, and woefully free from the sunshiny words of a certain guest blogger...


 

Constructor: Alex Silverman

Relative difficulty: Easy



THEME: Fab Four— Theme clues are about which types of people might like different Beatles songs.

Theme answers:

• YELLOWSUBMARINE (14A: Navy captain's favorite Beatles song?)
• SHESLEAVINGHOME (17A: Empty nester's favorite Beatles song?)
• WHENIMSIXTYFOUR (35A: Sexagenarian's favorite Beatles song?) 
• PAPERBACKWRITER (55A: Author's favorite Beatles song?) 
• HERECOMESTHESUN (58A: Early riser's favorite Beatles song?)

Word of the Day: MAME (49D: "We Need A Little Christmas" musical)—

Mame is a musical with the book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. Originally titled My Best Girl, it is based on the 1955 novelAuntie Mame by Patrick Dennis and a 1956 Broadway play, by Lawrence and Lee, that starred Rosalind Russell. Set in New York and spanning the Great Depression and World War II, it focuses on eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis, whose famous motto is "Life is a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."^[1] Her fabulous life with her wealthy friends is interrupted when the young son of her late brother arrives to live with her. They cope with the Depression in a series of adventures.

So, last week you may have thought "SHESLEAVINGHOME," or "The only time I'm going to see Annabel again is WHENIMSIXTYFOUR," or even, um, okay I can't find a way to make PAPERBACKWRITER fit into this writeup. But no, I'm just on vacation (Buenos dias de Costa Rica!) and was on a plane at the TIME when I was supposed to be writing last week. But I'm here now. Hola!



I thought this was a pretty good Monday, all in all. Loved the frequent biology references (ERNS, NEUR, BIOTA, AMINO) and felt that rare words were pretty well peppered throughout the puzzle. Nice command to SLEEP SOON up top. Not a lot of combos to speak of otherwise, though - the words may have been interesting individually, but never really came together. Oh well. It's worth it for words like LISLE and ANCHO.

Themewise...well...did someone say music-related crossword puzzle where the music is actually good??? Okay, so as you can see, I got super excited about this theme...The Beatles are just classic, man. Perfect for a simple Monday theme. (And the 15-letter answers make the puzzle look awesome.)

Bullets:

• UNMAN (12D: Deprive of courage)— Ahem. My Wellesley classmates will be hearing about this. 
• GRR(21A: Sound before a dog bites) — This was also the sound I was making a few minutes earlier this evening, when I accidentally did the wrong puzzle!! My electronic device had the Tuesday, March 24 one cued up for some bizarre reason, and in my folly, I spent half an hour on that instead. (The whole time, I was thinking, "Gee golly, this sure is hard, it should be a Tuesday puzzle!"
• GALILEO(21D: Astronomer who discovered the main moons  of Jupiter), GALILEO, GALILEO FIGARO, MAGNIFICO-O-O-O...

Signed, Annabel, tired high school student.