French painter of Le Pont de Mantes / MON 11-22-10 / Daytona 500 acronym / Pioneering razor pivoting head / Sprite alternative

Constructor: David Poole

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Food clued as money — Geographical place / adjective + food that is also slang for money; clued as if it were about money ("?"-style)


Word of the Day: ELEA (6D: Home of Zeno) —

Velia is the Italian (and Latin) name of the ancient town of Elea located on the territory of the comune of Ascea, Salerno, Campania, Italy in a geographical sub-area named Cilento. Originally founded by the Greeks as Hyele in ancient Magna Graecia around 538–535 BC, it is best known as the home of the philosophers Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, as well as the Eleatic school of which they were a part. The site of the Acropolis of ancient Elea, once a promontory (castello a mare meaning castle on the sea) and now inland, was renamed in the Middle Ages Castellammare della Bruca. (wikipedia)

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Superfast! And I didn't even pick up the theme until I was about halfway through the grid. Here's the thing about Mondays: don't stop. I do not stop to ponder a clue. I know it or I don't, and if I don't, I move. So I sliced clear through the center of the grid, from NW to SE, without getting a single theme answer. Eventually, in course of building other corners, stumbled into CANADIAN BACON and kind of sort of got the theme. CANADIAN and ITALIAN are adjectives, and are related to countries, where MONTEREY and BOSTON are nouns, and are cities, and something about this discrepancy bugs me a bit, but only a bit. Started with MATS (1A: Wrestling surfaces) and got every Down cross instantly (including SANAA! Thanks, xwords of times gone by!—4D: Yemen's capital). SANAA and ELEA and OTERO (68A: New Mexico county whose seat is Alamogordo) all come to me very easily now in a way that they would not have even a couple of years ago.

Theme answers:

• 20A: Meal money in Manitoba? (CANADIAN BACON)
  
• 34A: Meal money in California? (MONTEREY JACK)
  
• 41A: Meal money in Tuscany? (ITALIAN BREAD)
  
• 56A: Meal money in Massachusetts? (BOSTON LETTUCE)
  

No real sore spots today. Trouble getting the theme, but "trouble" is an exaggeration. I just decided to ignore the theme and plow ahead, which worked well. GOING FAR did not come easily. It's an odd phrase that I don't hear used much, though I'm sure I've heard it somewhere. Anyway, the GOING FAR (11D: On the path to great success) / GADFLY (32A: Persistent, irritating critic) nexus was about the only place I even had to think at all. Don't know if I remembered ERNESTO straight off (44D: Che Guevara's given name), but I had enough letters to make an educated guess. Was staring at daughter's sheet music yesterday noticing all the Italian tempo cues, among which was almost certainly AGITATO, so that was a nice coincidence (43D: Energetically, in music). Not sure there's anything else of note ...



Bullets:

• 14A: Pioneering razor with a pivoting head (ATRA) — common razor brand in crossworld, but I didn't know it was "pioneering." La-di-da.
  
• 54A: Daytona 500 acronym (NASCAR) — wasn't there some big deal NASCAR race yesterday? Yup, Jimmie Johnson won his fifth straight NASCAR championship.
  
• 53D: French painter of "Le Pont de Mantes" (COROT) — I recognize the name, but wouldn't have gotten it so quickly if -OROT hadn't already been in place the first time I saw the clue.
  
• 50D: Sprite alternative (FRESCA) — this drink exists almost exclusively in the late '70s, as far as I'm concerned. Like Tab. I honestly haven't seen any since 1981, I don't think.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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