L.A. TIMES CROSSWORD

ACROSS

1 Terrible reviews

5 Dots in the Seine 9 Shoelace tip

14 Baseball's Hershiser

15 Pie à la __

16 Singer Lopez

17 Old enough to start kindergarten

19 Divided Southeast Asian island

20 Sing to romantically

21 Roll the dice

22 Academic URL ending

23 Attend a foreign university, say

25 Way to get off base? 26 Wind quintet wind 27 Native Alaskan

30 Ability to float

34 Spill the beans

35 Done to __: perfectly cooked

37 Numbered book part 38 Sonic, in gaming

40 Old photo tone

41 Dept. with a sun on its seal

42 Carbon monoxide's lack 44 Kind of exam with brief responses

48 Scratch the surface of 51 Attached, as a corsage 52 Go up, as prices

54 Beelike

55 Exam answered in a blue book ... and a phonetic hint to 17-, 23- and 44-Across

56 Pontificate

57 Fab Four fellow

58 Assert as true 59 Three-card con

60 Heidi's range

61 Jared of “Panic Room”

DOWN

1 Rapper's entourage 2 Rainbow-shaped 3 '60s jacket style

4 Gin flavor 5 Behind-schedule comment

6 Amass, with “on” 7 Barely defeated 8 Observe

9 “Way to go, fella!” 10 Scary scythe bearer 11 Dance under a bar 12 __ Gay: WWII bomber 13 Out of gas

18 Initial stage

21 West African country 24 Part of BYO

25 Inexorable force

27 Blond shade

28 Fish story, so to speak 29 Call off

30 Software glitch

31 Day break?

32 Cinematic FX

33 Vote for

35 Leading in the race 36 In tatters

39 Diplomatic accord 40 “My bad!”

42 Says “My bad!”

43 Car window stickers 44 Involuntary jerk

45 Safari heavyweight 46 Gibson garnish

47 Rope fiber

48 “Circle of Friends” author Binchy 49 Balance sheet item 50 Back in style

53 And others: Abbr.

55 Org. concerned with PCB's