google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Josiah Breward

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Feb 18, 2009

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Josiah Breward

Theme: Go, Sow Your Wild Oats

17A: Show: FINISH THIRD

60A: Slow: REDUCE SPEED

11D: Snow: WINTER WHITE

24D: Stow: PACK TIGHTLY

If you have a better theme title, please come to the Comments section. I first wrote down "Go with the Flow" as all the theme clues rhyme with "Flow", but they are quite strict, all starting with letter S and ending with OW.

WINTER WHITE sounds strained to me. Besides, it's clued as a noun while the other three are all verb phrases. I dispute the clue for YEASTY (49D: Like bad bread). It's simply not true. Or should I say "a lie" given the lively blog discussions on TRUER yesterday.

This puzzle is a Hydra monster to me. I struggled hard.

Barry Silk has constructed a special puzzle for us. Click on iPaper and then print it out. Argyle will blog this puzzle on Sunday Feb 22. I hope you save it and solve it only on Saturday evening or Sunday morning.

Across:

6A: Jazz pianist Jankowski: HORST. Stumper immediately. Have never heard of this German pianist.

15A: City southeast of Rome: UTICA. No idea. Here is a map. I can't find UTICA. (Addendum: This is the correct map. It's in NY State. I was thinking of Italy.)

19A: Born in Boulogne: NEE. Another alliteration, the same with "Born in Bordeaux".

20A: Bishop's district: DIOCESE. ARCHDIOCESE is the district of Archbishop, who reports directly to the cardinal, right?

22A: Angel dust, abbr.: PCP. I forgot. It's still an illegal drug, isn't it?

25A: Willie Wonka's creator: DAHL(Roald). His name simply escaped me. Have you watched the Johnny Depp movie?

30A: Hope/Crosby co-star: LAMOUR (Dorothy). Here they are, "Road to Bali". I have never seen any of their "Road to ... " film.

32A: Athletic org.: YMCA. Penned in NCAA first. Can't seem to associate YMCA with "Athletic org.". My friend Linda goes to Y for workout sometimes.

40A: Game bird: WOODHEN. New bird to me. It's a flightless bird of the rail family. They look very dumb. So, the male of WOODHEN should be woodcock then. Oh, no, woodcock is a different bird of wading species. WOW (11A: Holy cow!), What do you call female woodcock then?

48A: __ Beach, S.C.: MYRTLE. I love the golf courses there. And the seafood.

50A: Cartwright or Down: ANGELA. Easy guess. I know neither of them. Who is ANGELA Down?

56A: Jellyfish: MEDUSAS. Nope. Here is a red MEDUSA. Named after the ugly Gorgon MEDUSA I suppose. Don't look at her too long, you don't want to be turned into a stone.

59A: U.S. dance grp.: ABT (American Ballet Theatre). First encounter with this abbreviation.

64A: __ Paese cheese: BEL. This cheese appeared on a Sunday TMS puzzle before. I like the package. So green. Poor dairy cows. So many of them have been turned into hamburgers.

65A: Pipe material: BRIAR. Thought that's how we got BRIAR Pipe. It turns out that I was wrong.

66A: Roofing material: TERNE. No idea. This roofing is TERNE metal coated.

68A: Cordage fibers: ISTLE. This word just looks so wrong. I tried to associate it with thISTLE and whISTLE when it appeared in our puzzle last time. But obviously it did not work. I forgot the damned word completely.

69A: Streisand movie: YENTL

Down:

2D: Fauna starter?: AVI. Prefix for bird.

5D: Football kick: ONSIDE. Not familiar with this football term. Only know PAT value is ONE.

6D: Rabbit residence: HUTCH. Good to know. Could only think of the briar patch.

7D: The Moor of Venice: OTHELLO. IAGO was clued as "Othello conniver" yesterday.

8D: Journalist Jacob August: RIIS. Googled this journalist. Very strange surname. He wrote a biography on TR, the 4th greatest American president, according to the latest C-span survey.

10D: Abe Lioncoln's boy: TAD. Nice trivia.

21A: Quito's country: ECUADOR. Their monetary unit is SUCRE, which was clued as "One of Bolivia's capitals" yesterday.

22D: "The Silver Streak" co-star: PRYOR. Got the answer from intersecting clues.

23D: Comet heads: COMAE. Plural of COMA. Brutal clue. I've never heard of Comet COMA before.

31D: Element fig: AT WT. Always want AT NO.

34D: __ majesty: LESE. High treason. Learned from doing Xword. What is the French root word for LESE?

41D: Pass through a membrane: OSMOSE

44D: Occurring in small stages: GRADUAL. I don't get this one.

47D: Dubbers: NAMERS. Annoy ERS repetition.

53D: Ill-gotten profit: LUCRES. I wanted LOOTS. Definitely need a "filthy" hint for LUCRES.

63D: Dolores __ Rio: DEL. Oh dear, I thought it's river. Have never heard of this Mexican actress. She looks so beautiful. I would say 999 millihelens, enough to launch 999 ships.

C.C.

87 comments:

Dennis said...

Good morning, C.C. and gang - was well on my way to another no-pause puzzle until I hit the SW and stopped cold. Only the perps saved me there, as I never would've equated stowing with packing tightly. At best, it's a secondary definition. I did like the theme, however, and found some refreshing new clue/answers.

Today is National Battery Day. I have a feeling Lois is celebrating...

Today's Words of Wisdom: "I don't know whether my life has been a success or a failure. But not having any anxiety about becoming one instead of the other, and just taking things as they came along, I've had a lot of extra time to enjoy life." -- Harpo Marx

Zhouqin (C.C.) Burnikel said...

Dennis,
I can't think of any other S?OW words to add, so I agree, the theme clues are quite complete and tight. Can't say the same about the theme answers though. What's the gist about the the Harpo Marx quote? A "Let it be" attitude?

Martin,
"Would you believe a midgit in a canoe?" What does that mean?

Barry G & Ink,
Claude Rains, not Raines.

Zhouqin (C.C.) Burnikel said...

Argyle,
Bullroarer sounds like a fun word to play with.

Embien,
Point taken, though I disagree. I have no problems with placing 2 words of different roots (ARE, AREA) in one grid. But ART & art are jarring.

PromiseMe, Redsmitty, JD et al,
Thanks for the answers yesterday.

Martin said...

I feel a bit awkward today becuase at least one of the clues was different for me: ANGELA was clued as "Actress Lansbury" which is a lot easier than the clue given in print. Overall, I finished in 18 minutes, 39 seconds. I wanted JUST for SO SO, FIXED for SAW TO, NCAA for YMCA and SHRIEK for SCREAM. Unknowns were HURST, HUTCH, UTICA, COMAE, WOODHEN, ROHE, BRIAR, TERNE, ISTLE, ABT, BEL and DEL.

"Would you believe a midgit in a canoe?"

If a millihelen is the amount of beauty capable of launching a single ship then the ammount of beauty that would only launch a midgit in a canoe would be significantly less than one millihelen.

Martin

Dick said...

Goood morning CC and all. I tore along unmolested until the West central area. I put NCAA in for YMCA and for some reason I entered LSD in lieu of PCP. Those two bads really screwed up that section. Also, CC I think you meant to put PACKTIGHTLY and not PARK...

The remainder was very doable but did require perps for some of the fills.

Snow here this morning. UGH Hope you all have a great Wednesday.

Martin said...

C.C.

Online COMAE was clued as "Comet's head". Was it the same clue in print? Because I was expecting you to scream bloody BLUE MURDER about that letter repetition.

Martin

Zhouqin (C.C.) Burnikel said...

Dick,
Thanks. You have not answered my yesterday's question: Who is your favorite crossword constructor?

Martin,
Yes, 23D COMAE is clued as "Comet head". I failed to key in that entry. I did not and still don't understand the cluing. Why?

Bill said...

Rome/Utica
I live 6 miles from Rome.

Dick said...

@ CC, I guess I like Barry Silk's puzzles the best, but I think I would get bored working only his puzzles every day. I enjoy the variety that comes with having different constructors. Our paper, "The Beaver County Times" does not print the constructors name(s) and I do not know who constructed the puzzle until I access your site.

This is also true for the "Pittsburgh Post Gazette" as they print one NYT puzzle and one local puzzle daily. Neither puzzle has the constructors name. I don't think the local puzzle is syndicated but I am not sure.

Dennis, I really enjoyed your 5:36 comment to Lois. LOL

Lemonade714 said...

Doing something gadually, means a little bit at a time.

SCOW: A scow, in the original sense, is a flat bottomed boat with a blunt bow, often used to haul garbage or similar bulk freight; cf. barge. The etymology of the word is from the Dutch schouwe, meaning such a boat.

If you watched years of Don Adams in "Get Smart" you would understand the humor. I like the Urban Dictionary definition of MIDGIT: A person who can easily be thrown because of shortness.

Onside kick is a strategy in American Football where you make a short kick in the hope of retaining the ball; you need to sit and do a lot of watching for this as well.

Oscars in 4 days, any favorites?

Anonymous said...

I am only 6 FEET from Rome. The apple bowl is next to me.

Zhouqin (C.C.) Burnikel said...

Bill,
Thank you. I was thinking of Italy.

Lemonade,
SCOW has different pronunciation. It does not rhyme with the other 4 theme clues. Thanks for ONSIDE. I pick "Slumdog Millionaire" for best picture, how about you?

Dennis said...

I hate picking on spelling, but this one's been repeated long enough: the word is "midget".

C.C., sorry for the delay; I was at the gym. To me, the quote meant that it was better to roll with the punches life throws at you than to agonize over them.

Bill said...

If you don't REDUCESPEED on the WINTERWHITE that is PACKEDTIGHTLY on the track, you may FINISHTHIRD.

Barry G. said...

Morning, all!

Today's trouble spot (the BRIAR patch, if you will) was the upper middle section. I'd never heard of HORST and, while I'm familiar with UTICA, I didn't know there was a Rome, NY, and was therefore thinking of Italian cities like C. C. What saved me there, though, was my ability to pull RIIS out of the dark recesses of my brain, which finally let me put everything together. I had a similar experience with ROHE in the SW corner. It took me awhile to remember the name, after which everything fell into place.

I knew that the head of a comet was a coma, but I've never seen it pluralized as COMAE before, so that took a little extra brainpower this morning.

Like others, I still don't associate YMCA with purely athletics, but since we just had it in the puzzle it was a gimme (although I did put NCAA in at first).

Everything else was pretty straightforward, except for TERNE. TERNE? WTF is TERNE??? OK, so that's my new word for the day, I guess. I got it easily enough via the perps, but just couldn't believe it was a real word.

Oh, and C. C. -- you're right, of course, about Rains/Raines. I always get that confused, and will likely continue to do so in the future... ^_^

Anonymous said...

good morning, all,
Better puzzle today. Not very difficult, but at least some new words/clues ( e.g. gradual,matinée).
Just a hunch, but is it possible that Dennis' National Battery Day and subsequent comment has anything to do with Victorian Hysteria?
If you gradually reduce speed you may finish third. It is of course true that nice guys finish last. What a scream.
I guess tomorrow's puzzle will wield a tightly packed quip.
Till then.
Windhover

kazie said...

My problems were many today: I too was in Italy for UTICA, so that didn't come easily. Did know Rohe, as he influenced Frank Lloyd Wright, who was born where I live. But didn't know TAD, PCP, COMAE, YMCA (I misspelled Prior), ABT, BEL, (I confidently wrote bon), TERNE or SPEE.

I recognize TERNE from the linked photo though. It's an increasingly common roofing material around here. I saw a lot of it in Alaska too. The snow slides off it easily and it's very durable and never needs replacing apparently. I just didn't know its name. I just thought it was "a metal roof".

c.c.,
léser means "to wrong, hurt" in French. Lèse-majesté, high treason, implies one has hurt or wronged the king.

Frey said...

OMG a decent puzzle. I did get stuck in a few spots but found it refreshing to have to think a little longer to get the clues. goofed up on "PACKTIGHTLY" but the rest was fine.

Buckeye said...

Hiddy, ya'all. I know we don't do this, but I made a post late last night that I thought I would pass on today. Forgive me.

February 18, 2009 1:07 AM
Blogger Buckeye said...

Barry G. This will be posted too late for many to read so I may re-post it tomorrow.

Your comment of 9:05PM really proves my point about Truth being perception and relation.

You said "My current blog avatar, for example, is certainly a true likeness of me. But, since it's now about 5 or 6 years old, a more recent picture would certainly be a truer likeness."

This use of the word true to equate to Truth is a stretch but will work for my purposes. Both the 5 or 6 year old picture, and the recent photo are BOTH true likenesses. One is not truer than the other, because the picture cannot lie. (Just as the photos we all posted on those ponies were true likenesses of ourselves.) And this is where "relation" of truth comes in. The "relation" here is time. The recent photo would not be TRUER, but rather NEWER. Both would be likenesses, but in different time. Both are TRUE.

If a nubile young lady would ask you if your avatar is true, you could honestly, truthfully and factually say "Yes". Because she didn't ask the question properly, she will assume that's how you look today. She should have asked if the picture is representative of how you look TODAY. Then the honest,truthful and factual answer would be "No".

Misguidance of perception is a ploy often used by lawyers. They phrase a question so that a truthful answer from you is misleading of the facts in a case.
"Yes or no, Barry. Have you stopped beating you wife?" Either answer and you're dead meat on a stick.

Never confuse Truth with Fact.

IMBO

February 18, 2009 2:00 AM
Delete
Blogger Buckeye said...

One other thing, fellow x/wers. (I'll post this on Wed., also). This is something that irritates me to death and c.c. has mentioned a few times. Please read ALL of the postings before you jump in to correct someone's error.

On Presidents Day I did a little skit about presidential trivia, and said that George Washington Carver was the great grandfather of our 38th President Jimmy "Carver". I got to thinking about that, and rechecked my facts. About an hour later, I posted a correction stating Jimmy was our 39th President.

Roughly 13 hours later, up pops Mr./Ms. anonymous telling me Jimmy "Carter" was our 39th President. "No S***????????????" I told everyone that YESTERDAY, Anon.

Another Anon idiot. Such is life!!

IMBO

February 18, 2009 2:20 AM

And yes, promisemethis. Jimmy "Carver" was "tongue in cheek". I don't think many would believe that George Washington Carver was Jimmy "Carver"'s great grandfather. Anon's correction was of the 38th President mistake.

I must be off.

Anonymous said...

Dolores Del Rio was the co-star in the movie high noon. Made in 1952 and I believe an oscar winner.

Anonymous said...

Dolores Del Rio was the co-star in the movie high noon. Made in 1952 and I believe an oscar winner.

Argyle said...

Good Morning, CC and the usual gang of cruciverbalists.

23D: Comet heads: COMAE. Plural of COMA.
Astronomy. the nebulous envelope around the nucleus of a comet.
COMA/COMAE is based on a figurative resemblance between and humans. This figurative name is recorded first in the works of Aristotle, in which he uses KOMĒ, the Greek word for "hair of the head," to mean "luminous tail of a comet." Aristotle then uses the derived word komētēs, "wearing long hair," as a noun meaning "comet." The Greek word was adopted into Latin as comētēs, which was refashioned in Late Latin and given the form comēta, furnishing Old English with comēta, the earliest English ancestor of our word comet.

Also used in botany for a seed with hair.

WARNING: COMAL is the adjective form, according to one dictionary.

Clear Ayes said...

Good Morning All, A nice puzzle this morning. As is so often the case, I sailed through the top half and had some vocabulary problems with the bottom half.

COMAE, ATWT, ROHE and ISTLE were toughies. I believe it was Col Golpinath who pointed out, just last week, that YMCA wasn't strictly an "athletic org."

Yesterday's discussion on degrees of truth, lies, faithful, etc. was really enjoyable. Thanks Buckeye for 2:00 AM and rerun at 8:53. I was thinking more or less the same thing, but I had run out of posts later in the day.

Ano@8:59, I think it was Kay Jurado who was in High Noon, not Delores Del Rio.

Anonymous said...

Good morning all. I found the midwest totally impossible. Had to come here for the answers. Got only matinée , oaktree, and retie by myself.
But I don't like ROAMER for gadabout.
I think they have two separate connotations.
I truly like Bill's comment on the theme answers. Good thinking, for those of you who have to deal with winter white.

melissa bee said...

good morning c.c. and all,

took a few passes to fill everything in. i prefer for the theme ANSWERS to be related, rather than the theme CLUES. usually the theme ties the grid together and provides a hint for theme answers. i don't really care if the clues are tied together.. but it's an interesting twist.

@c.c.: i totally agree about yeast/bad bread .. terrible. thanks for the link to the silk puzzle.

@clear ayes: the rain is so welcome. more coming this weekend.

@jd and lois: thanks for the kind words before - i don't get here to post very often any more but always read.

Clear Ayes said...

I am an Academy Award fan....there, I said it...I'm not ashamed. It's true (that word again!) that the best movie doesn't always win and that sometimes the lengthy TV show is embarrassingly dull. The presentations are often corny and being PC, the Award isn't "won" anymore, it "goes to". I don't care. I enjoy movies and have learned a lot about literature, history, geography, art, love, sex and humor (oh, those Marx Brothers!) from watching them.

This has been a pretty good year (at least the last six months) for movies. I'm with C.C., and most others, in saying I think Slumdog Millionaire will win for Best Picture. I think Kate Winslet will win Best Actress for The Reader. I'm "iffy" about Best Actor. OK, I'll go with Sean Penn for Milk although Frank Langella, and Mickey Rourke were excellent.

Here's a photo of Katy Jurado from High Noon. She wasn't a great beauty, but she was very sexy in an offbeat way. She was the first Mexican to be nominated for an Academy Award, but didn't win. She did win a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for High Noon.

Lemonade714 said...

BTW,

I filled the spaces, but have no idea what ATWT means, stands for?

Dennis said...

Imagine my disappointment when I went to the movies to see a film I thought was "MILF".

Dennis said...

Lemonade, Atomic Weight

Crockett1947 said...

@tobylee I hope you do not think you can find Sunday's puzzle online. That is the one day of the week that it is NOT online.

Good morning, everyone!

A real son-of-a-gun today. ANGELA, ROHE, TERNE, RIIS, and COMAE were all new/unknown. Perps helped solve those and bring to mind other forgotten words.

Thanks to Barry Silk for the Bonus puzzle. I doubt that I can wait until Saturday night/Sunday morning to tackle it.

Sneaky Rome/UTICA combination. DAHL was one of the forgottens that eventually came to the fore. I have not seen the movie. I did the NCAA/YMCA switch as well. I also wonder about ANGELA Down. Did the AT NO/AT WT switch as well.

@dennis Treading on DF waters there! Now someone will ask for an explanation -- the ball's in your court, LOL!

lois said...

Dennis: LOL I am definately celebrating today...but w/out batteries as today is my 30+20+4-10+20-5+1-9+3-5+6+7-2 birthday. After tonight however, I will again give a whole new meaning to a wild charging animal!

Argyle said...

Dennis, you bad.

Argyle, 130 miles from Rome.
(I didn't get it either.) I still think Utica would be a good place for the Crossword Hall of Fame.

Lemonade714 said...

C.C.

If you enjoy truly silly movies, you should watch the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road movies, lots of inside jokes and frivolity.

ROALD DAHL was a very entertaining author of more than children's
stories (though he also wrote James and the Giant Peach) writing some very dark stories, and a wonderful short story, where a wife murders her philandering husband with a frozen leg of lamb, and then cooks it and serves it to the police officers sent to investigate the death. He was also in World War II, and married for many years to actress Patricia Neal.


"Silver Streak" is one of the three movies Richard Pryor made with Gene Wilder, all pretty funny.
"Stir Crazy" "See No Evil, Hear No Evil"

lois said...

Dennis: LMAO That movie must 've been quite a disappointment...but I'm sure you 'handled' it just fine.

carol said...

Good morning C.C. and everyone - before making any comments (I have not read all yours) I wanted everyone to know today is our Lois's BIRTHDAY!

Argyle said...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOIS!

You are 43, right, unless my math is off. ;~)

My birthday is a couple of days away, along with several others extended family members. (Whoa, there is a DF phrase.)
I think we were conceived when our parents finally shed the old winter longjohns.

Dennis said...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Lois! And many, many more!

Wouldn't mind being a candle for a day...

melissa bee said...

@lois: you're officially a classic, but we knew that already.

Crockett1947 said...

Happy Birthday, LOIS!!

carol said...

Hello again, this puzzle was a hammer for me! I did not know so many but at least I learned something!!

Kazie, we have a lot of those metal roofs in our rural and mountainous areas. I have seen a few here in the city, but to me they look weird...too 'bright and shiny'.

ok, Dennis, I give up...I did not understand your remark at 10:41 re "MILF". Care to explain?

Bill at 7:26 LOL good explanation!

WM said...

First: Happy Birthday Lois

C.C. and all...Good Morning. Not a bad puzzle, I always seem to know the obscure names and miss the obvious...had WINTER, but the WHITE eluded me...everyone else has pretty much covered things.

Your Cheese factoid for the day: BEL PAESE which means "beautiful land" is originally from the Lombardy region of Italy. It is a semi soft cow's milk cheese containing 48% fat. The uncooked, pressed cheese is soaked in brine then aged for 45 days in a humid environment and "washed" regularly. Since it is traditionally under 45 days old, to ship it into the US, it must either be aged to at least 60 days or pasteurized...stupid rule...ALL raw milk cheeses in the US must be aged 60 days minimum.

Am off today to babysit our granddaughter. Yesterday's TRUTH discussion was extremely interesting and it was fun to readBuckeye's comments...very astute. Thank you to him also for the "read first comments"...I alway do and I preview now so that I am at least reasonabley caught up with the comments.

Dennis:@ 5:36 & 11:09 am you a funny guy.
Ciao

Clear Ayes said...

Happy Birthday Lois! I added and subtracted the numbers and I am positive, as is Argyle, that you are now 43 years old. Congratulations!

Got to get ready for monthly ladies cribbage & lunch. Have a good time extricating yourself, Dennis. To everyone else, enjoy the show.

Anonymous said...

C.C. I feel I should thank you for the very nice note to me yesterday. Actually, I am a bit intimidated in the midst of so many of your blog friends who are so very literate and obviously very intelligent. I will try to drop in once in a while just to say hello briefly. Maybe if you could install a spell checker on here for me it would help.

My best to you and all your neat friends.

Hayrake

JD said...

Good morning C.C. etal,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOIS!!!! We all know you will make the best of every minute.

Buckeye, very enjoyable thoughtful posts.. makes one think about facts vs truth.

Bill@7:26....clever :)

Dennis @ 10:41..I laughed, but, like Carol, I'm not sure why.

Clear ayes, we are Oscar fans also. My 2 daughters and I always make an evening of it. I'm sure Slumdog will win, deservedly so. I am still ticked off that Clint Eastwood and Gran Torino were snubbed. Lots of good movies and superb performances this year; The Wrestler was hard for me to watch.

Argyle, I had never thought of the nebulous envelope that surrounds the nucleus of a comet before..until today. I love the phrase,"nebulous envelope", very poetic.

CC, mold came to mind, not yeasty. Didn't like namers for dubbers.Got stuck with medusas. I had manowar, and didn't know briar or istle.I had to G Horst, Nobel and Rohe today.

oops...gotta run......appt@ 10:30

Auntie Naomi said...

Good Afternoon C.C. and CO.,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Lois !!!

Someone (Col Golpinath, according to ClearEyes) pointed out the last time that it appeared that YMCA was not properly clued as 'athletic organization'. It reminded me of something I learned while in China, though. A tour guide in Shanghai informed our group that basketball was immensely popular there. I am sure I was not the only one who was surprised to hear that, since the Chinese are not generally tall. Upon thinking about it, I recalled how I learned as a child, when I was a member of the Y, that basketball was invented there. I figured that it must have been introduced to China by YMCA workers not long afterward and, sure enough, this turned out to be true. Our guide told us that an incredible percentage of Chinese play basketball on a regular basis. Wikipedia confirms that, "Some experts estimate as many as 300 million of China's 1.3 billion population now play basketball."

Carol, you could hit the G-spot for MILF, but it will be more fun for the rest of us if you let Dennis explain it :)

kazie said...

Happy Birthday, Lois!

How can Dennis be such a gentleman, with his math being off, and yet so DF in his expectations for the movie? One of life's many mysteries.

Carol,
I was also told those rooves are very noisy.

DoesItinInk said...

I really did not like the theme of today’s puzzle. Having rhyming clues wasn’t enough: there needed to be some continuity in the answers too. Having said that…it was overall a very easy puzzle. I had one error where TAD and UTICA crossed, having thought Lincoln’s son was named Tod when it was really Mary Lincoln’s maiden name Todd that I was thinking of. There were a few unknowns such as ISTLE and TERNE that I did not know, but all were easily obtainable from the crosses.

I had an issue with the clue for 52A “succulent herb”. I would not class an ALOE as an herb. The general definition of herb would be “any green, leafy plant, or parts hereof, used to flavor or season food”. Does anyone else take issue with this clue?

@cc: I stand totally corrected on the spelling of the last name of Claude Rains! Interestingly if you enter “Claude Raines” into Google, it returns entries for “Claude Rains” but makes no mention that the spelling was incorrect.

@Lemonade714…AT WT = Atomic Weight.

What do you call female woodcock then? Satisfied? (Oops! Sorry for my DFness.)

Barry G. said...

Your comment of 9:05PM really proves my point about Truth being perception and relation.

Well, Buckeye, as my daddy used to always say, "Everybody is entitled to his own opinion, no matter how wrong it may be."

The more I think about it, the more I realize that truer words were never spoken... ^_^

lois said...

Thank you all for the kind birthday wishes. It's quite a day! Flowers at work no less and lots of attention. Thank you all again. I really appreciate your sweet thoughts. The age is really s lot older than 43 (it's that higher math - not my forte)more like older than dirt...a new decade for me... but it's better than the alternative.

Dennis: I would love for you to be a candle on my cake. I'm sure you'd be the biggest one and make me blow like the Big Bad Wolf on steroids. I can handle it though.
I can't wait to see how you explain MILF to Carol and JD.

Argyle: which day is yours? Are we like Irish twins?

Dennis said...

I have no idea what DF thing you all are talking about. I was hoping to see Methodists In the Lord's Flock, as I myself am Methodist (or so I've been told).

Sometimes I wonder about this group...

Kazie, you lost me with the 'math being off' comment.

Crockett1947 said...

@dennis Wow! Where did you learn to tap dance like that? Slick moves!

carol said...

Dennis, I'll let you off the hook (this time only)... I looked up MILF on Google and OMG...No wonder you avoided the explanation, I would have too! Geez! I am at a loss when it comes to any text message abbreviations..but I didn't know this was one of those. phew!

Argyle said...

Lois, Friday and forty-five (DoB, not age)

Doesitinink, Todd(Robert Todd) and Tad(Thomas) were both Lincoln's sons. Robert Todd Lincoln was the only child to live to adulthood. He ended his days in Manchester, VT, in a beutiful mansion(open to the public) called Hildene.

The other two boys were Edward "Eddie" Baker and William "Willie" Wallace.

Dick said...

Happy birthday Lois. Hope you have many more.

kazie said...

Dennis,
Since a lady often doesn't like to tell the TRUTH about her age, I thought you were being gentlemanly about avoiding Lois' real age.

I had to google MILF too.

Bill said...

Nice recovery, Dennis. Somehow I knew you would offer a correct explanation!!!
As to my living close to Rome, NY., I didn't get it either till I changed TOD to TAD! And figured out RIIS.
So, proximity to a place, doesn't mean you'll immediately remember.

Bill said...

OH, Lois! Save some of the celebration till May! Happy Birthday, today and every day.

Anonymous said...

Hi Lois,
Happy Birthday!
Fun blogs today.
Keep smiling everyone.
Geri

Buckeye said...

Lois, Happy Birthday. I don't know how Argyle came up with 43. I added three times and came up with 39.

Hayrake. You're a friend, too. We love anybody stupid enough to lay their thoughts out for us "nitwit" buzzards to pick at.

Wolfmom. What the hell is a semi-soft cow?

Barry G. Daddies is always more smarter than us youngins. My Pappy use to say, "Son, you're gonna be real surprised how smart I really am when you grow up". Yep. He was right.

Dennis. With that "tap dance" move - you just made Fred Astair look like he had a club foot.

Men who go for MILF's are male "cougars". Tappity tap tap.

Spent two and a half hours, 15 miles from home, in Probate Court re: my sister's will and at the County Treasurers Office and Auditors Office re: too high real estate taxes and accomplished exactly nothing. Attorneys in legislatures write laws and to comply with those laws, you MUST have an attorney. WHO'DA THUNK IT??

I must be (pissed) off

Lemonade714 said...

Happy Birthday Lois, it is nice to be the same age.

On the topic of truth and perception:

The Window Through Which We Look


A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside. 'That laundry is not very clean,' she said. 'She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.'

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband:

'Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this.'

The husband said, 'I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.'

Thank both of you for the atomic weight, sometimes we have blind spots and need a little kick to get over them.

Martin said...

Re: TRUE/FALSE

The problem of subjectivity becomes serious when engineers and scientists are designing computer programs to describe the real world: you cannot limit conditions in the real world to being just TRUE or FALSE as a result of subjectivity.

In a computer program, one might have a line

"IF condition THEN command1 ELSE command2"

Let's say the "condition" is "the room is cold" and so "command1" is "put on a sweater" and "command2" is "take the sweater off". It sounds simple until you take into account human subjective reactions: when you put on a sweater you feel hot and when you take off a sweater you feel cold! So in the instance where the room is just a bit warm, you'll be constantly putting on and removing your sweater. (This was a real problem in designing heating and airconditioning systems: a poorly designed system based on binary [off/on] logic would constantly be switching on and off and wasting electricity.)

It was eventually realised that if you want to describe the real, subjective world that we live in then we have to abandon the idea of seeing everything as simply TRUE or FALSE. Or buy a sweater with a zipper.

Martin

P.S. TRUE or FALSE? PI = 3.14?

Crockett1947 said...

@martin Pi approximates 3.14.

Auntie Naomi said...

Martin,
False

You beat me to it, Crockett. I was going to say that PI is irrational. 3.14 is an approximation of PI.


Regarding Bel Paese: That label would turn me off because it reads 'di merda' which looks to much like 'de mierda', which would mean it is made of $#@!

Auntie Naomi said...

oops ...

'too' much like ...

Martin said...

MILF = Mother I'd Like to F***

Martin

Dennis said...

Martin, I think we all knew what it meant. Sometimes it's better left unsaid.

Martin said...

To say PI = 3.14 is somewhat true. A better approximation would be TRUER (ie more precise).

That's a lame example though. :)

Martin

Martin said...

MILF can also stand for Moro Islamic Liberation Front which is a terrorist organisation in the Philippines. That could lead to some confusion: imagine a woman being arrested by the Philippine authorities because people were going around saying she was an MILF!

Martin

Anonymous said...

"Lamb to the Slaughter" was one of my favorite short stories to teach. The chuckle at the end is as the deputies are tired from searching from the murder weapon, and the wife serves them the leg of lamb, one of the detectives says, "I can't help thinking the murder weapon is right here under our noses," as he takes another bite.

Doreen

JD said...

Really??? OMG!! Dennis, you are bad.

Dennis said...

JD, sorry, that was supposed to remain unsaid.

JD said...

Dennis, I also looked it up. Guess I'm just a little out of touch.Knew it would be somewhat DF, but it was a whole lotta DF.No need for an apology.

Auntie Naomi said...

Has anyone ever proffered the term MILFME?

Just curious.

Buckeye said...

I guess I agree with Barry G that we are going to have agree to disagree on "Truth". I would never say PI = 3.14 is "somewhat true". I would say it is "somewhat accurate", and the extension of 3.14 as not being "truer" but "more accurate". To say that PI is infinite is both "Truth" and "Fact", which sometimes occurs, but not often.

My head now hurts and I shall leave this subject forever. Nurse Ratchet said that if I behave like a good little fella', and take my shock treatment, I can have pudding for dessert. Yummy!

Why isn't "phometics" spelled the way it sounds??

IMBO

Argyle said...

Is it exact to say PI = 22/7?

Martin said...

RE: accuracy / precision

3.200 would be a precise approximation of PI which is not accurate. 3.1 would be an accurate approximation which is not very precise. The TRUE value of PI has an infinite number of digits.

The practical problem of accurate pictures eluded me yesterday. Sometimes in modern police dramas you will see a scene where the detectives use facial recognition software to identify the "perp" from an unclear photograph. In reality, a lawyer for the defense would argue that the picture was not a (sufficiently) TRUE likeness and ask it to be removed from evidence.

My head hurts too.

Martin

Martin said...

_pi_ = 3.14159265...
22/7 = 3.14285714...

Martin

Auntie Naomi said...

"The TRUE value of PI has an infinite number of digits."
Precisely ;)

BTW, Where is Jeannie?
Come out, come out wherever you are!
Why not? I did :)

...and how about those Panthers?
They shut down New Jersey, handily, last night. Now, if they can just figure out how to contain Ovechkin.

Lemonade714 said...

A cougar is an older woman who seeks much younger men. The MILF term was coined by teen-age and college age boys who had friends with hot mothers, and it was a way to express the desire to know the mother better, without the old people knwoing what was going on. While the "Graduate" may be the most famous movie dealing with this phenomenon, the movie "Class" starring Jacqueline Bisset, as the mother also fulfills that fantasy in a very attractive way. Clearly, Ms. Bisset is worthy of many millihelens. (The movie also was the screen debut of Lolita Davidovich, another millihelen machine). The cougar, on the other hand signifies the older woman on the prowl for the younger men. Anne Bancroft certainly was the prototype.
All of which shows the importance of perspective, and the relevance of what may appear to be random comments in this blog, as once again cougar or MILF depends on where you sit.

As for the problems created by allowing lawyers to make laws, I agree but it seems inescapable. We are the only profession where we create work for each other. However, in defense of the profession, as someone who is involved in probate and other old people law, now that I am 39, or is it 43, it is so sad to watch the greed tear families apart when a relative with assets dies. Also, the violence which accompanies many divorces, is not the lawyer's fault. I practiced criminal law, and had no problems with my criminal clients, but had my life threatened twice in divorce cases, including having a gun pulled on me in the hallway of my office. If you love somebaody enough to marry them, you should be able to separate without wanting to kill, or cheat each other. The dead beat fathers who will do everything to not pay money to their exes, even though their children suffer, come to mind.

Dennis said...

Just realized I (and several others) have blown past the five-post limit. Sorry 'bout that, C.C.

Have a great night.

Clear Ayes said...

Buckeye @ 2:18 - Yours and Mark Twain's daddies....

Enough semiotics and filasofee for a while. Too much thinking give me a brainache.

Dennis, A tap dancing and socially skilled Methodist....what a guy.

MILF is a common enough term to have been used as an episode title, "MILF Island", on NBC's 30Rock AND to have a Wikipedia article. No in depth explanation was necessary. (Thank goodness!!)

PromiseMeThis, If MILFME requires a new definition, don't let Martin know.

Martin, Just kidding around. You are obviously a guy who says what is on his mind. Not a bad thing at all.

Lemonade714, Attorneys are one of those professions where lots of blame is piled on and very little credit is given. That's a great line, "If you love somebody enough to marry them, you should be able to separate without wanting to kill, or cheat each other".

Lousy cribbage today, lost 3, won 1. For a person who believes herself to be an excellent cribbage player, the TRUTH has jumped up and bitten me in a place I'd rather not be bitten.

embien said...

12:57 today. No particular problems, but I spent time looking for the (non-existent) theme. c.c.'s theme seems as good as any.

Interestingly, today's syndicated NY Times puzzle had a similar, homophonic, theme (air, heir, e'er, eyre).

While I'm on the NY Times puzzle, allow me to point out the following site for those objecting to 47d: Dubbers (NAMERS). Acme Naming. Andrea Carla Michaels is a well-known crossword constructor, sometimes called "the queen of the Monday puzzle" since her work appears so often in the Monday NY Times.

embien said...

There will be no viewing of the Oscars here. It seems DISH Network is involved in a dispute with Fisher Stations, so the local ABC affiliate (KATU) is no longer carried on DISH.

I hate when customers are held hostage in disputes like this between corporate entities (dare I say "greedy corporate entities"?)

Local station wants more fees, satellite company doesn't want to absorb higher fees (they are competing with other satellite company and cable systems), customer gets screwed.

Auntie Naomi said...

"If MILFME requires a new definition, don't let Martin know"
Martin, likely, does not want to know.

I thought six was the post limit per person. No?

WM said...

Buckeye@2:18 pm Think wagyu with a beer massage...

I could get technical with cheese terms but wouldn't want to give you a brain freeze.

Been gone all day...another day of very interesting discussion...

Hayrake...ALWAYS join in.

Clear Ayes said...

PromiseMeThis, ""If MILFME requires a new definition, don't let Martin know"
Martin, likely, does not want to know."


Thinking that your acronym probably doesn't refer to Moms, you are probably right.

"I thought six was the post limit per person. No?

False...or maybe True...I'm so confused!
My understanding of C.C.'s request is that posts in answer to a question from her are freebies. Any other posts should be limited to five per day.

That's five for me, so I'm outta here. Have a great evening everyone, especially Lois who should be enjoying a great party right about now.

Martin said...

I googled MILFME and got something NSFW (Not Safe For Work). My millihelen exposure went through the roof.

Martin

P.S. I'm working on the assumption that half my posts today were "free" because they were puzzle related.