Marie

Many look-ups for me on this one. Now I'm doing my post-crossword ritual of reading the Wikipedia articles for all the answers that stumped me. While a smooth solve is nice, I can also appreciate puzzles that force me to expand my trivia knowledge. Today I learned that ECHO was a mountain nymph who had an affair with Zeus, much to the dismay of his wife Hera. According to Wikipedia, when questioned by Hera, Echo "distracted her with lengthy conversations. Hera wasn't very amused by her garrulousness, so she cursed Echo to only be able to repeat the words of others.

A moment of appreciation for the rotational symmetry of "LAT" and "LON"

This was a very timely puzzle for me! For whatever reason, I've been thinking about Dracula a lot lately, for reasons unrelated to Halloween. (Also, that bizarre portrait of Vlad the Impaler where his mustache gives the impression that he's balancing a large cigar on his upper lip) Something I learned today is that when Albin Grau wanted to make a film based on Bram Stoker's 'Dracula,' he was forced by copyright restrictions to make various changes to the narrative. This introduced certain vampiric tropes that now seem ubiquitous, but weren't present in the original text. For instance, in Stoker's novel, vampires were only slightly harmed by sunlight, whereas in Grau's 'Nosferatu', they get burned to a crisp. In the end however, Grau still wasn't able to evade a lawsuit! (Source: Copyright Alliance)

I'm a little embarrassed to admit how long I was stuck on ST ELMO. At first I thought: "Stelmo? Who in the world is Stelmo???" When it finally hit me I felt really stupid. Did a quick Google about St. Elmo since I'm not super familiar with him. Not only is he the patron saint of sailors but also... abdominal pain? Apparently this is because he was disemboweled. Grim!

I was convinced the outmoded car component would be a "LIGHTER" at first.

What a great theme. I couldn't help but think of the great landscape painting by Bruegel the Elder depicting the fall of Icarus. Icarus makes a relatively small cameo; you can see his legs flailing in the lower right corner, UNDERTHESEA. If you didn't look close enough, you might have thought he disappeared INTOTHINAIR. Meanwhile the farmer in the foreground plows away oblivious, and the shepherd casts his eyes skyward, enjoying his DAYINTHESUN

For a while I had Samuel Morse down as "CODENAME"!

Fun fact: A dated and less common name for Latvian is "Lettish." Maybe someone more clever than me can come up with a way to relate that to the anagrams "lithest" and "thistle."

Some Monopoly confusion had me stumped with the bottom left corner for a while. The only four-letter piece I could think of that ended with a T was "BOAT" (which I myself would have called a ship, but I decided to let that go). Then I remembered the BOOT! I had no idea it was retired. I am also sad to learn that the thimble has been phased out, which I was always very partial to.

I was so convinced that "Ones with big blocks?" was "URBANITES"!

A fun solve! I'm always happy to be reminded of the existence of REDPANDAS. What terrifically adorable and unusual looking creatures. As it happens, red pandas have an additional digit on their front paws, giving them six "fingers." (These are technically not fingers, but elongated wrist bones, which allow them to better grip bamboo.) However, I don't think they have the dexterity to cross them!

I really enjoyed this one! I'm happy that Jorge Luis Borges got a shout out. "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is one of my favorite short stories of all time, maybe seconded by "Pierre Menard." (I highly recommend both. They're both relatively quick reads and so delightful. I think you can find them online on Internet Archive.) I was staring at 44-across for a long time, even though I had a good number of crossing entries. Once it clicked, a real smile broke out on my face as I input WEIRDFLEXBUTOK. I was also very interested to learn that YOYOS can’t “sleep” in space. (And that “YOYOS can “sleep” at all! Clearly I’m not up on the art of yo-yo-ing.)

This was a tricky one for me. For some reason I was under the impression that "Bonn" was a French city, so for a long time I had UNE for 29-across. I was also super befuddled by ACCIDENT until I saw that in contained ID, which got me thinking in terms of the theme. Until another commenter pointed it out, I also didn't notice that the letters surrounding the nested words spelled out words of their own, corresponding to the latter half of the theme clues (e.g. ACCidENT - "accent" - "a manner of speaking) That's some next level thinking!

I suppose I'm too botanically minded; I had "SEE(D)CATALOG" input for 47-A for a good chunk of time. I've never actually ordered from one before, but I've had lots of pleasure in flipping through and looking at all the beautiful pictures. Maybe one day!

I was surprised to see so many comments troubled about GOHAM! To me at least, "to go ham" is the natural extension of "hamming it up," which to my knowledge has been in use for many a decade. Many such cases. Ham it up, go hog-wild, etc.

Somehow, I managed to cause myself a lot of trouble by filling in "START" instead of "ALARM" for 38A (Word with fire or false). It wasn't until I looked up the footballer's name that I realized where I had gone wrong!

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit how long I was stuck on ST ELMO. "Stelmo??? Who in the world is Stelmo?" When it hit I felt a little stupid. Also, apparently St. Elmo is not only the patron saint of sailors but also... abdominal pain? Apparently this is because of his mode of martyrdom, which I won't mention in particulars because I think it got my previous comment censored (grim).