As a child, James Sajdak developed an interest in crossword puzzles by watching his father solve each day's
Chicago Daily News crossword. Sajdak earned a degree in linguistics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and began teaching ESL classes (English as a Second Language). He began creating his own puzzles in 2005 and they have been published in the
New York Sun, New York Times and
Los Angeles Times. When he comes up with a clever theme, he often comes to the Cruciverb.com site to see if the idea has been used by anyone else. The theme of Sajdak's crossword today is BOTTOMSUP ("Toaster's words"). "Bottoms up" is the way four pairs of words are to be read:
ARREST
PLACES
"Literally, books": PLACES UNDER ARREST
OATH
LIES
"Literally, commits perjury": LIES UNDER OATH
FOOT
GETS
"Literally, forms an obstruction": GETS UNDERFOOT
THEBUS
THROWS
"Literally, sacrifices to save one's own neck": THROWS UNDER THE BUS
"Bottoms up!" is an American idiom. The Cambridge Dictionary says the words are "sometimes said by people in a friendly way just before drinking an alcoholic drink together." Some sources say the expression is a direction to drink the entire beverage at once, in which case the empty glass could be set back down with the "bottom up." I tend to doubt that explanation -- but I question why the "Bottoms up!" phrase is even necessary. No one can lift just the
bottom of a glass. One either lifts the entire glass.....or lets it sit on the table.
"Physicist's proposed particle" is AXION. Wikipedia describes the axion as "a hypothetical elementary particle postulated by the Peccei–Quinn theory in 1977 to resolve the strong CP problem in quantum chromodynamics. If axions exist and have low mass within a specific range, they are of interest as a possible component ofcold dark matter." Well,
that certainly clarifies things!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axion"Beantown landmark, with 'the'" is PRU. The Prudential Center, colloquially known as the Pru, opened in 1964 in Boston and covers 23 acres. It includes a shopping mall, restaurants, offices, a convention center and the Prudential Tower, a 52-story skyscraper which is one of the headquarters of Prudential Financial (formerly Prudential Insurance Company). When the 749-foot Tower opened, it was the second-tallest building in the world, behind the 1,249-foot-tall Empire State Building in New York City. Now, in 2016, the Empire State Building is only the
30th-tallest building and the Prudential Tower is not even among the
130 tallest! The world's tallest building is now the 2,717-foot, 163-story Burj Khlifa ("Khalifa Tower") in Dubai:
http://factualfacts.com/world/tallest-building/I'm guessing the tenants on the top floors need to wear oxygen masks.
