Yellowfin, on a menu / FRI 11-16-12 / Fifth star in a constellation / "He ___ Me" (old hymn) / Actor Morgan of "The Sixth Sense" / Dancer enslaved by Jabba the Hutt

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Constructor: Victor Fleming

Relative difficulty: Wait, are you sure it's Friday?


THEME: Legalese

Hi, everybody, PuzzleGirl here coming to you live from my bed where I've been for, hmmm ... let's see, 24 days now! If you haven't heard (and I imagine most of you haven't because why would you?) I tripped off a curb at the grocery store and ended up with one sprained ankle and one broken ankle. Graceful, right? The sprained ankle is pretty much back to normal at this point, but I had surgery on the broken one and am still healing ... slowly but surely.

Now, I'm not gonna lie to you. The first couple weeks were pretty cool (besides the pain part, of course, but that wasn't even so bad thanks to the drugs). I mean, waking up every morning knowing that NOBODY expected ANYTHING from me was really quite awesome. But then I started doing some work from home and then I started to get a little stir crazy and now I just feel like a big old worthless slug. The good news is that I hope to get a walking cast on Monday so it'll only be a few more days. Whew!

So anyway. I'm glad Rex asked me to do this because it makes me feel like I'm contributing a little something to humanity today and I haven't felt like that in quite a while now. Is there a puzzle we should be talking about? Alrighty then, let's get to it.

I flew through this puzzle. I mean FLEW (41D: Raced). 10A: Marilyn MCCOO of R&B was a gimme and then I pretty much didn't stop filling in answers until I was done.


Was it easy for me because I've worked with lawyers my whole life? I don't know. There are enough cop/courtroom shows and movies out there that I wouldn't necessarily categorize these theme answers as obscure. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it though.

Theme Answers:

• 17A: Cause for acquittal (REASONABLE DOUBT)
• 62A: Show some photos, perhaps (PROVIDE EVIDENCE)
• 3D: Something applied to a suit (STANDARD OF PROOF)
• 12D: Date with a judge? (COURT APPEARANCE)
• 28A: Exams for students potentially most interested in this puzzle's theme, in brief (LSATS)

Obviously, PROVIDE EVIDENCE is the clunker in the bunch, but the other theme answers, while not exactly sparkly, are in-the-language phrases and are certainly enough to hang a theme on.

What else?

• 1A: Spans usually starting in the fall (TV SEASONS). Had the "seasons" part in there pretty quick, but it took me a while to suss out the "TV" part. Speaking of TV, OMG have I watched a lot of TV the last few weeks. I'm all caught up on "Homeland," "The Mindy Project," and "Nashville." I'm in Season 2 of "Breaking Bad" and "Louie" and have almost finished Season 1 of "Veep." I got through several episodes of "Revenge" but couldn't really put my finger on why I was thinking about ditching it until PuzzleHusband told me his reason: watching it makes him want to kill rich people. Why yes, that's it exactly!
• 15A: Turn in (HIT THE HAY). This phrase reminds me of my dad.
• 20A: "___ & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood" (reality series) (TORI). Can't say I've ever seen this show but I remember seeing pictures of Tori ... what's her name again? Oh yeah, Spelling. Whatever.

• 40A: Paid driver? (GOLF PRO). Cute.
• 54A: Set for biking (GEARS). This one gave me trouble because I was reading "set" as an adverb, not a noun.
• 56A: Means of enforcing compliance (WRIT). Bonus theme answer.
• 66A: Ride in a joyride, often (STOLEN CAR). Mort parts of speech confusion here. Wanted "ride" to be a verb but, again, it's a noun.
• 13D: "Such a headache!" ("OH BOTHER!").
• 27D: ___ Rivera (Los Angeles suburb) (PICO). Never heard of it, but the crosses were solid so it fell right into place.

• 34D: "Heavens!" ("DEAR GOD!"). I didn't notice until I was reviewing the puzzle that "god" is in both this answer and in the clue for DEMI (59A: Prefix with god). That's a no-no, but since I didn't even notice it, I suppose I can't complain.
• 38D: Grilling demand (ANSWER ME). "More charcoal!"
• 55D: Prepare to be snapped (SMILE). I didn't even see this clue-answer pair as I was solving. That's how fast I was going. That never happens on Fridays.

And that's it for me. My ankle has actually been kind of bothering me this evening so I might hit the Percocet and drift off to sleep. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl