Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: All Tied Up — The last word of each theme answer is something that can be TIED.
Word of the Day: SHTETL (6D: Yiddish for "small town") —
Smalltown East European Jewish community, famous in lore for the warmth and Jewishness of its life. The shtetl (Yid. diminutive for shtot, "town") was born in the 16th century when Jews were invited by the Polish gentry to constitute the urban commercial class on their lands. Whether they remained a majority or became a minority in these new settlements, and whether the towns remained truly small or mushroomed into cities, Jewish life there over the next few centuries, intimate and inbred, assumed characteristic patterns, making the shtetl a unique social and cultural habitat. It was here that everything associated with the rich fabric of Jewish life, however romanticized, found expression. ...
In the 19th century, the shtetl and its way of life spread to the Russian Pale of Settlement and the eastern lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; in the 20th century, in the face of modernization and urban migration, it declined; and in the Nazi Holocaust, it ended. Shtetl life has been immortalized in the stories of Shalom Aleichem and the paintings of Marc Chagall.
[Answers.com]
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Theme answers:
- 17A: A-team (FIRST STRING).
- 26A: Composer's work for a film (MUSICAL SCORE).
- 47A: Portuguese, for Brazilians, e.g. (MOTHER TONGUE).
- 61A: Really steamed ... or what the ends of 17-, 26- and 47-Across are? (FIT TO BE TIED).

Couple things:
- 22A: Excellent, in slang (GNARLY). Little California flavor here. Perfect for the tournament!
- 5D: Like dragons and centaurs (MYTHICAL). Me: "Scary?"
- 12D: Country star Steve (EARLE). My favorite Steve Earle song is "Six Days on the Road," but I'm pretty sure I posted that last time, so today we'll fade out with "Copperhead Road."
Love, PuzzleGirl
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