The gentleman in the picture is Richard Silvestri, composer of the diabolically clever NYT cryptic crossword of a couple of weeks ago. Making mental note to replace the grumpy picture of him in that post with this much happier picture.

If the name Cathy Allis doesn’t ring a bell, it’s because she used to be Cathy Millhauser. That name did ring a bell for me, because she did a celebrity crossword with former President Bill Clinton, along with a number of other Sunday NYT crosswords.

Here are some alternate clues:

23 Across – Non-lying female paternal ancestor of King David
31 Across – The samovar on the left is to be eschewed
40 Across – I, I, I don’t have an alternate clue! But I saw a picture in my mind’s eye of toilets raining from the sky like polar bears rained from the sky in this video

65 Across – Tolkien’s stories of beers swiped from The Prancing Pony
84 Across – Where heretics with drive and ambition end up
99 Across – Yet another pathetic failed attempt to make the kids think we’re not lame (On a related note, I want “Pants on the Ground” to be the Vikings fight song for tomorrow’s game)
112 Across – The credo of the Metal Men?

19 Down – Proofreader’s crusade?
40 Down – I don’t have a alternate clue for this one either, but I’m recalling Salman Rushdie’s story of when he was a child…

In our house, whenever anyone dropped a book or let fall a chapati or a “slice,” which was our word for a triangle of buttered leavened bread, the fallen object was required not only to be picked up but also kissed, by way of apology for the act of clumsy disrespect. I was as careless and butter- fingered as any child and, accordingly, during my childhood years, I kissed a large number of “slices” and also my fair share of books.

Devout households in India often contained, and still contain, persons in the habit of kissing holy books. But we kissed everything. We kissed dictionaries and atlases. We kissed Enid Blyton novels and Superman comics. If I’d ever dropped the telephone directory I’d probably have kissed that, too.

All this happened before I had ever kissed a girl. In fact it would almost be true, true enough for a fiction writer, anyhow, to say that once I started kissing girls, my activities with regard to bread and books lost some of their special excitement. But one never forgets one’s first loves.

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul – what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?

It was noted by a number of solvers that there was an Avatar reference in this puzzle. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

I was pleased with myself that I filled in Oort cloud without missing a beat.

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