Simba's love in Lion King / MON 8-2-10 / Sitarist Shankar / Sesame Street character with unibrow

Constructor: Diane Baker van Hoff

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (typical Tuesday time for me)

THEME: "The ___ of ___" switches — familiar 15-letter phrases have final words rotated to final position in subsequent theme answer, creating odd phrases, clued with "?"s


Word of the Day: OLLA podrida (16A: ___ podrida (spicy stew)) —

Olla podrida is a Spanish stew made from pork and beans and an inconsistent, wide variety of other meats and vegetables, often including chickpeas, depending on the recipe used. The meal is traditionally prepared in a clay pot over several hours. It is eaten as a main course, sometimes as a single dish, and sometimes with ingredients separated (i.e., meats from the rest, or liquids from solids). (wikipedia)

• • •

Very easy in the parts that weren't the theme answers. Took me way longer than normal (for a Monday) to pick up on the theme. Put in THE SPEED OF SOUND at 17A: Tempo?, only to have it be MUSIC. But then next theme answer began with THE SOUND ... and so exactly what the nature of the switcheroo was did not become evident for a (comparatively) long time. Also, two original phrases are movie titles and one ... isn't (though probably there is a movie out there somewhere called "THE SPEED OF LIGHT"—yep, there it is). Also thrown by the long Downs near the middle of the grid. When these appear in early-week puzzles, they are typically located closer to the edges of the grid, so some part of my brain thought they might be implicated in the theme somehow, especially when I went from TIE THE KNOT (6D: Marry) to WED (26A: Marry). So my brain was a gobbledygook of ideas about the theme as I dutifully plowed forward and got theme answers via crosses. Theme is crazy enough, and the grid structure interesting enough, to make for a satisfying Monday, I think.



Theme answers:

• 17A: Tempo? (THE SPEED OF MUSIC)
  
• 37A: Ka-ching? (THE SOUND OF MONEY)
  
• 55A: Spectrum? (THE COLOR OF LIGHT)
  

Bullets:

• 14A: Sitarist Shankar (RAVI) — crossword staple, father of other musical crossword staple, NORAH Jones.
  
• 15A: Squiggle over an "n" (TILDE) — seems like this clue should have "in Spanish" in it (however obvious that might be). Seems incomplete / nonsensical otherwise.
  
• 36A: Simba's love in "The Lion King" (NALA) — NALA, FALA, KALA, LALA ... these names bleed together for me.
  
• 48A: "Sesame Street" character with a unibrow (BERT) — he also has a pet pigeon, Bernice, and collects bottle caps.
• 29D: Put X's over (CROSSED OUT) — My brain translated "over" as "on top of" or "above," and I was trying to imagine some activity where one would draw an "X" above something...
  

Enjoy the week. I'll be back on Sunday, I think, and then for good next Tuesday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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