Winner of first Nobel Prize in Physics 1901 / TUE 2-15-11 / Sainted ninth-century pope / Sorority members Ann-Margaret Laura Bush

Constructor: Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Seen it... — Theme answers begin with words that are synonyms of "ordinary": COMMON, AVERAGE, USUAL, REGULAR


Word of the Day: Wilhelm ROENTGEN (10D: Winner of the first Nobel Prize in Physics, 1901) —

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (27 March 1845 – 10 February 1923) was a German physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. (wikipedia)

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Average. Yes, that about says it all. Clean and ordinary in most every way except for the surprising ROENTGEN, which is fantastic. AVERAGE HEIGHT is the weakest of the bunch (not nearly as coherent and snappy a phrase as the others), but it's not bad, just as LEO IV is as bad as it gets in the fill (19D: Sainted ninth-century pope), and it's not so bad either. Strangely, my biggest hang-ups (requiring all the crosses) were little words: DIET (36A: Plan the changes courses) and LOAD (56A: Mutual fund charge). Also, I have never heard of an EXOsphere (50A: Prefix with sphere), and so I wrote in ECO. Sadly, that was the very last letter I filled in, so my first thought was "crud, I've got a mistake somewhere." Thankfully, my mistake was right there, the first place I looked—the EXO cross, LEX (44D: Comics villain ___ Luthor).


Theme answers:

• 17A: Something everybody is aware of (COMMON KNOWLEDGE)
  
• 26A: It's not very short and not very tall (AVERAGE HEIGHT)
  
• 46A: They may be rounded up after a crime, with "the" (USUAL SUSPECTS)
  
• 60A: Cheapest choice at the pump (REGULAR GASOLINE)
  

It's an early morning for me, so I'm out of here. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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