Saturday, December 1, 2012 - Veggies on the Menu

Introduction

In today's puzzle from Cox and Rathvon, we are certainly served up more than our minimum daily allowance of vegetables. However, the menu does would appear to be rather unbalanced in favour of salad lovers.

Solution to Today's Puzzle

Legend:	"*" anagram; "~" sounds like; "<" letters reversed
	"( )" letters inserted; "_" letters deleted; "†" explicit in the clue

Across

1a   PEA(CHE)S — CHE (Guevara; Argentine-born Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara^[7]) contained in (gets into) PEAS (vegetables)

5a   WIRETAP* — anagram (mixed) of WAITER + (with) last [letter] of SOU[P]

9a   CAP|ON — CAP (upper limit) + ON (†)

10a   A|U(TOMATO)N — TOMATO (vegetable) contained in (bagged by) {A (†) + UN (United Nations)}

11a   CELER(IT)Y — CELERY (vegetable) containing (contains) IT (†)

12a   ANNE|AL — ANNE (Heche; American actress, director and screenwriter Anne Heche^[7] — and former partner of Ellen DeGeneres) + AL (Pacino; American actor and director Al Pacino^[7])

14a   RO(A)D — ROD (sporty car; informal shortened form of hot rod) containing (covers) A (†)

15a   CHARD|ON|NAY — CHARD (vegetable) + ON (planned; "the dinner is now on for Friday") + (with) NAY (no)

18a   CRE(A|MINE)SS — CRESS (vegetable) containing (found around) {A (†) + MINE (pit)}

19a   STUN< — reversal of (back) {NUT (eccentric) + S ('s)}

22a   LE(SAG)E — LEE (†) containing (admits) SAG (slump)

Alain-René Lesage^[7] (1668 – 1747; older spelling Le Sage) was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel The Devil upon Two Sticks (1707, Le Diable boiteux), his comedy Turcaret (1709), and his picaresque novel Gil Blas (1715–1735).

24a   BEETLING — double definition; "projecting" & "a little purple vegetable" [the latter being whimsical]

The setters conclude that since a young duck is known as a duckling and a young goose is termed a gosling, it must logically follow that a young beet should be called a 'beetling'.

26a   ANT(ONION)I — ANTI (against) containing (eating) ONION (vegetable)

Michelangelo Antonioni^[7] (1912 – 2007) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, editor, and short story writer.

While my knowledge of his work is limited to Blowup (1966) which was his first English-language film, it seems that true film aficionados highly value his earlier Italian-language masterpieces.

Best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents"—L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), and Eclipse (1962)—Antonioni "redefined the concept of narrative cinema" and challenged traditional approaches to storytelling, realism, drama, and the world at large. He produced "enigmatic and intricate mood pieces" and rejected action in favor of contemplation, focusing on image and design over character and story. His films defined a "cinema of possibilities".

In the mid-1960s, Antonioni signed a deal with producer Carlo Ponti that would allow artistic freedom on three films in English to be released by MGM. The first, Blowup (1966), set in Swinging London and starring David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, was a major international success. Although it dealt with the challenging theme of the impossibility of objective standards and the ever-doubtable truth of memory, it was a successful and popular hit with audiences, no doubt helped by its sex scenes, which were explicit for the time. The second film was Zabriskie Point (1970), his first set in America and with a counterculture theme. The soundtrack carried popular artists such as Pink Floyd (who wrote new music specifically for the film), the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones. However, its release was a critical and commercial disaster. The third, The Passenger (1975), starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider, received critical praise, but also did poorly at the box office.

27a   EXI(S)T — S (second) contained in (entering) EXIT (egress)

28a   STRUDEL* — anagram (strangely) of RUSTLED

29a   YAMMERS — double definition (couched as a cryptic definition); "cries" & "certain vegetable aficionados" [the latter being whimsical]

Down

1d   {PACE CAR}* — anagram (repaired) of A PC RACE

2d   APPELLATE~ — sounds like (heard) A PELLET (A (†) BB (†); a BB^[3] being a standard size of lead pellet that measures ⁷/₄₀ of an inch (0.44 centimeters) in diameter, used in air rifles.)

3d   HUNG_RY — HUNG[A]RY (European country] with A (†) deleted (without A)

4d   {SMART PHONE}* — anagram (disturbed) of MOTHERS NAP

5d   _WAT|T_ — hidden in (involved in) sWAT Team

James Watt^[7] (1736 – 1819) was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.

6d   RO(MAN GO)D — ROD (pole) containing (keeps) MANGO (fruit)

In Roman mythology, Jupiter^[5] is the chief god of the Roman state religion, originally a sky god associated with thunder and lightning and Saturn^[5] is an ancient god, regarded as a god of agriculture.

7d   TI(T)LE — T (†) contained in (in) TILE (Scrabble piece; Scrabble^[5] being a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a gameboard marked with a 15-by-15 grid.)

8d   PEN|ALLY — PEN (write) + ALLY (friend)

13d   PROSPERITY* — anagram (new) of POETRY RIPS

16d   NUTRITIVE* — anagram (wildly) of UNIT RIVET

17d   I|MAGI|NED — NED (Beatty; American actor Ned Beatty^[7]) following (†) {I (myself) + MAGI (wise guy)}

18d   CELLARS~ — sounds like (outspoken; 'spoken out loud') SELLERS (vendors)

20d   NE|GATES — NE (New England) + GATES (openings)

21d   ST|REAM — REAM (make a hole) following (behind) ST (street)

23d   {SI|TAR}< — reversal (returning) of {RAT (tattler) + IS (†)}

25d   SOUL~ — sounds like (audited) SEOUL (place in Korea; Seoul^[7] being the capital and largest city of South Korea)

Key to Reference Sources: 

^[1]   - The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition
^[2]   - Search Chambers - (Chambers 21st Century Dictionary)
^[3]   - TheFreeDictionary.com (American Heritage Dictionary)
^[4]   - TheFreeDictionary.com (Collins English Dictionary)
^[5]   - Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford Dictionary of English)
^[6]   - Oxford Dictionaries (Oxford American Dictionary)
^[7]   - Wikipedia
^[8]   - Reverso Online Dictionary (Collins French-English Dictionary)
^[9]   - Infoplease (Random House Unabridged Dictionary)
^[10] - CollinsDictionary.com (Collins English Dictionary)

Signing off for today — Falcon