Byam Stevens

What a fun and clever puzzle! One of the fun things about crosswords is the associations prompted by the clues. Today 25 Across had a completely different association for me than the Shakira song, of which I was ignorant. For years, across three sports (soccer, ice hockey and lacrosse, I had coaches tell me that the "Hips Don't Lie". This was advice to the defender to watch your opponent's hips as it's harder to fake your opponent with your hips than with head, shoulder or foot fakes. In this case, I was faked out as the hips in question belonged to a rose. Still, like a good defender, I was able to recover and get the solve.

I certainly don't know Ms. Weintraub's intention, but in fact this clue can be associated with screenwriting of the filmic variety. In the early days of word processing film scripts, the repetitive task of typing out line attributions (the character's name before the line of dialogue), especially in dialogue heavy scenes where you might be called upon to type the character's name scores of times, was onerous. So, many writers used the Copy and Paste functions to enter the line attributions. When screenwriting software was introduced, the writer would set up macros with the characters names and save themselves the repetitive task and the slightly clunky Copy and Paste process.

"French letter" is a common euphemism for a condom, originating, I think, with WWII GI's. It's still quite possible that CHER would be an appropriate term of endearment for the person opening one. Surprised the edit team didn't pick this one up. Or maybe they did.

Deb: I haven't read through all the comments, but as far as I went, I didn't see this: the poet responsible for ARS POETICA is Horace, not Horatio.