google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Wednesday, June 26, 2012 Don Gagliardo & C.C. Burnikel

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Jun 27, 2012

Wednesday, June 26, 2012 Don Gagliardo & C.C. Burnikel

Theme: By Golly! It's a Wednesday Puzzle! By Steve

A nice fun puzzle from the Dynamic Duo. Prefixing the first word of the theme answers with "By" gives you four variations of what are usually lumped together as "OMG" moments in today-speak.

The unifier at 45D ties everything together nicely, and gives me something to work with for the theme title of the blog (phew!).

Or a late-breaking news story: Jiminy Cricket! George Jetson's gummed up the works on the Jupiter Probe!



20A. Cause a major snafu : GUM UP THE WORKS. SNAFU is such a great acronym, and no, the F does not stand for "fouled". This is military slang, they don't fool around.

32A. Spacely Space Sprockets employee : GEORGE JETSON. Hero of the Hanna-Barbera classic series.

41A. Pioneer 10 or Voyager 1 : JUPITER PROBE.

57A. Umbrella-carrying Disney character : JIMINY CRICKET. Disney and Hanna-Barbera in one theme!

and the reveal:

45D. This puzzle's title, based on the starts of 20-, 32-, 41- and 57-Across : BYLINES

A lot of fun stuff to look at today. Let's get started!

Across:

1. Bombards with junk email : SPAMS. This is commonly-understood now but I don't know how junk email got be called spam. Anyone?

6. Bk. after Proverbs : ECCL. Always, always have to wait for the crosses with the Bible Study questions. Thank goodness we don't have to remember how to spell Ecclesiastes.

10. Lingering effect : ECHO

14. Colorado snowboarding mecca : ASPEN. Yodelers here strive for a 10A!

15. Laze : LOLL

16. Phenom : WHIZ.

17. Davis of "Commander in Chief" : GEENA. She'd have been able to defend herself pretty handily with a bow and arrow rather than rely on the Secret Service. She was a semi-finalist in the US Archery Olympic Qualifying competition in 1999.

18. Un-PC purchase? : iMAC. Funny, I was in the Apple store today picking up an iPad. The sales assistant scanned the bar code with his iPhone, swiped my credit card with his iPhone, I signed the sales receipt on his iPhone with my fingertip and when I got home an email copy of the receipt was waiting for me - on my Dell Laptop, Windows XP.

19. Grain that's rolled : OATS

23. Educator LeShan : EDA. What's her Shortz Factor?

24. Wear a long face : POUT

25. Kicked out : OUSTED. You're allowed to POUT when this happens.

28. 2011 PGA Player of the Year Luke : DONALD. Men's golf WHIZ.



30. Barrister's deg. : L.L.D. Doctor of Law.

31. Clinch, in slang : ICE, as in ice the deal, or put the game on ice.

36. Part of PGA: Abbr. : ASSN. Luke Donald, a Professional Golfer, is a member of this association.

39. Rating from Moody's : AAA. Not a sore-throat exam.

40. Elusive : EELY. Could also be a Yale undergrad trying to hide after a sporting defeat at the hands of Harvard.

46. Shipping magnate Onassis : ARI. Poor Aristotle lost two-thirds of his name because of us cruciverbalists.

47. Benz- finish : ENE. I wanted wax, clear coat and tire dressing after a car wash.

48. Quaint love letter opener : MY DEAR. Really? I hope this intro didn't go on to say what Rhett Butler was warming up to!

52. Dollar deal? : RENTAL. I use Avis for my car hire needs. I like seeing my name up in lights on the board when you go to pick up the car. I know there's 100 names up in lights, but it's the little things that makes the road warrior world tolerable.

54. Make better : HEAL

56. Flagstaff-to-Tucson dir. : S.S.E. Here's a question for CC and Don - we all know the three-letter abbreviations now, but we never see the "South by South East" or "SbSE" for the finer intervals. "North by North West" was a well-known movie - isn't that a good enough reason for allowing NbNW?



60. Pop star : IDOL

62. Pop : SODA, I'm flying to the Midwest tomorrow - isn't there some code I have to know when I'm ordering a soda in Ohio?

63. Gullible : NAIVE

64. Ear piece : LOBE

65. Works on the road : TARS

66. Chair designer Charles : EAMES. Austin Powers probably furnished his office with these.

67. Light beer ad word : LESS. Hopefully referring to "filling" and not "calories" or "carbs", otherwise we'll be having words with Messrs. Busch, Coors and Miller.

68. Persian for "king" : SHAH. Really? I never knew!

69. Bar shot : SNORT. Or, in my world, a bar-joke laugh from my friend Heidi when she's had a couple of snorts. She snorts.

Down:

1. Went south, in a way : SAGGED. Never happened to me. Moving on.

2. Bogus : PSEUDO

3. Theoretical proto-person : APEMAN. I loved this, I had the A and E and was trying to see how AMOEBA-MAN could be contracted to fit.

4. Item in a diner host's stack : MENU. Food! Finally!

5. "Made from the Best Stuff on Earth" drink brand : SNAPPLE. I like the Scottish soda IRN-BRU tag line "Made from Girders". It looks and tastes like it could easily have been brewed from left-overs from the Forth Bridge.

6. Yale of Yale : ELIHU. I'm sure only his mother called him Elihu, and only when he'd forgotten to do his homework.

7. Night sky streaker : COMET.

8. Tiger's weapon : CLAW. Tiger's Wife's Weapon: 9-Iron

9. "Hey Lover" rapper : LL COOL J. Fantastic! When I was filling in the grid I kept looking sideways at how this was shaping up - then it all came clear

10. Furry sci-fi critters : EWOKS

11. Chew out : CHASTISE. Somehow I'd rather be chastised than chewed out.

12. Googler's success : HIT. See 8D alternative clue/answer

13. Parts of lbs. : ozs. Sixteen ounces make a pound. Why, I have no idea. It's a perfectly good random number. Just like fourteen pounds make a stone. Oh, and twenty ounces make a pint in the UK, not sixteen as here.

21. Big fuss : TO-DO

22. Not minding one's manners : RUDE

26. Green sci. : ECOL. I saw a headline in the LA Times a couple of years ago saying "Ecology is the new hot major for UC students" which rather made me chuckle.

27. Turn down : DENY

29. Lambs: Lat. : AGNI. This took crosses, French culinary references for "agneau" and realizing Agnus Dei school is down the street and I roughly know what it means. A lot of work for four letters!

30. Jet giant : LEAR. But they're little jets! I'm going in a little one tomorrow, I've got a 45 minute hop from Cleveland to Dayton, but it's a Canadair, not a Lear.

33. Hard to come by : RARE. Like room to spread out on a Canadair Regional Jet.

34. Reason for braces, perhaps : GAP. Not the store, although a GAP store in London may well sell braces, you just wouldn't put 'em on your teeth.

35. Ready to drive : TEED. The first tee is a moment of joy in any Luke Donald wannabe's Sunday morning. The ball is teed up, the scorecard is blank, the green fairway beckons invitingly - and then you slice your drive out onto the street, just like I did last weekend (and most weekends before that).

36. Cracked a little : AJAR

37. "You betcha!" : SURE. Fargo-soundtrack subtitle.

38. Damage control efforts, imagewise : SPIN JOBS

42. Sports group : TEAM

43. Joins up : ENLISTS

44. Epps of "House" : OMAR. One day I'll finally remember as I'm confidently writing in OMER that I'm WRONG!

49. Alaska native : ESKIMO

50. Love letter sign-off : AS EVER. This sounds like a cop-out to me. If I got a letter starting "MY DEAR" and ending "AS EVER" I'd be wondering where the romance went.

51. Take back to the lab : RE-TEST

53. Mah-jongg pieces : TILES. I'll tell you all a story one day about how I got to play Mah-jongg one afternoon in Beijing during the last Olympic Games with three locals who had never seen a European before, let alone one who actually knew how to play.

54. Many-headed monster : HYDRA

55. PayPal funds : eCASH. or E-CASH, I wasn't sure how to punctuate this one.

58. Wordsmith Webster : NOAH. Where would be be without the Webster's Dictionary? Well, we'd be stuck with the Oxford English Dictionary and never able to say "color", "neighbor", "winningest" or "dude".

59. James of "The Godfather" : CAAN. Sonny Corleone portrayer. It still gives me the willies when Michael lays the "You have to answer for Santino" line on Carlo, you just know his day isn't going to end well.

60. Below par : ILL. Unless you're Luke Donald, then you're feeling pretty good about yourself.

61. One may be fawning : DOE. Awwww!

Answer grid.

That's about all I've got. A quick fact-check and I'm off to the airport for a day in Dayton. Have a great Wednesday!

Steve

Note from C.C. & Don:

Don came up with this theme. We only have 4 theme entries, but they all have 13 or 12 letters. So we had to start with Row 4 and the three J's in the theme answers gave up trouble while filling this grid. LL COOL J (9D) was locked in from the very start, so was BYLINES of course.

61 comments:

  1. Morning, all!

    Loved the puzzle theme today, even though I didn't put it all together until the end. I'm familiar with by GEORGE and by GUM, but can't say I've ever heard of by JUPITER or by JIMINY before.

    Fill and cluing was solid overall, as usual. I did wonder about the cluing on COMET, though, since comets do not "streak" across the sky the way meteors do. Perhaps "streak" just means the fact that they appear as a blurry line, though, and not that they speed across the sky.

    Elsewhere, SPIN JOBS seemed a bit awkward (I've only heard of SPIN CONTROL before), that's probably just my own ignorance. Still, it slowed me down a bit.

    In general, I blew through the top half of the puzzle and then slowed down dramatically in the south. AS EVER and MY DEAR did not leap immediately to mind and I needed lots of perps. EELY was a bit icky and it took me awhile to replace ENROLLS with ENLISTS. EAMES and SNORT also took a bit of perp help to uncover. And ILL was not the first (or second or third...) thing I thought of when reading "Below par". All solid fill, but just slow for me to get today.

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  2. Hello Puzzlers -

    Today's clever DGCC creation was a speed run for me - a good thing, because my iPad is almost out of power and I don't have an adapter yet!

    Didn't grok the theme until the unifier, but that's typical for me.

    Spitzboov and Kazie from yesterday - I got mixed up. Moos, with whom I'm better acquainted, is definitely Moos, but the other fellow is Fuss. Thanks for your input!

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  3. Good Morning, Steve and friends. I wish I could say BY GEORGE, I think I've got it! to today's theme, but it evaded me (was it too EELY?). Lots of fun clues, however, so I don't feel too bad for missing the BY LINES.

    All of my computer gadgets are iMACS, so i really liked the Un-PC Purchase.

    Here's a JOB for the SPIN Doctors.

    As I filled in SPAMS, I, too wondered about its origin, Steve.

    Favorite clues included: Went South = SAGGED

    I also liked the ever-so-cute One May Be Fawning = DOE.

    When is a door not a door? When it's AJAR!

    In memory of Nora Ephron, here is today's QOD: Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy. ~ Nora Ephron

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  4. For the longest time I could not see PSEUDO fill in. I kept thinking something else was wrong. Eventually I saw it, but I thought I was losing it!

    LL COOL J is one of favorites. Not for his music or acting per se, but we share the same first and middle name!

    Wasn't EWOK already in the puzzle this week?

    Can't wait for Thursday's!

    Cheers. I hope everyone has a great day!

    James

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  5. Is it spam because, like Spam©, you don't want to know what's in it?

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  6. Apropos of nothing, here is an interesting Monkey Orchid. Do you think it might be somehow related to the Theoretical Proto-Person?

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  7. Morning,

    I like Wednesday puzzles and this one was a grand slam by Don and CC. Pecked and poked as things filled in from the South to the NE where Jam Up The Works really did Gum things up until I figured out how to spell Pseudo.

    Great Puzzle!!

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  8. By cracky, a week of back to back marti and CCDG, sweet. I had forgotten the conclusion that by GUM , by GEORGE (like by JUPITER) are all ways to say by G-D. A smother puzzle with nicely placed, though apparently troublesome Js, and a fine write up by Steve.

    Halfway home, enjoy all. How was the cataract surgery this time?

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  9. Good morning, folks. Thank you, Don G., and C.C., for a great Wednesday puzzle. Thank you, Steve, for the excellent write-up. Have fun in Dayton. I was just there yesterday and had a tough time.

    Was sure SPAMS was it for 1A. Before I entered it I looked at 14A. ASPEN looked good except for 2D. The PS looked hokey, so I held off for a while on those. Filled them in after MENU and SNAPPLE. PSEUDO appeared.

    ECCL was easy for 6A. IMAC for 18A. I own a few of those. Did not know LLCOOLJ. Perps fixed eventually. I guess I am just not cool.

    First theme answer was GEORGE JETSON. Got them all before the unifier. Then I put BY LINGO, thinking that was it. EAMES and SNORT changed that to BY LINES. My only write-over.

    68A SHAH was easy. The last recently was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. He called himself the Shahanshah, or King of Kings.

    67A Light beer ad word, LESS. What they really IMHO is Less Taste, Less Enjoyment, Less Cost. I refuse to buy those kinds of beer.

    One of my goals today is to see if I can get a refund on my unused bus ticket. See you tomorrow.

    Abejo

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  10. Spam comes from the Monty Python skit, where they sing Spam over and over

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  11. Good morning Steve, C.C., Don G. et al.

    By Jove, what a fun puzzle! I really chuckled at your late-breaking news flash, Steve!

    The word "spam" was coined for junk mail, based on this Monty Python skit where vikings were interrupting the "waitress" by shouting "spam, spam, spam..." True story!

    Thanks for the notes, C.C. - I thought it must have been tough, with all the J's and the BY LINES reveal crossing a themer. Great job!

    Happy hump day, everyone.

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  12. I sped right through this one with no write-overs to GUM UP THE WORKS. I did learn that Agnes Dei means Lamb of God. Never knew SNORT was a name for a bar shot - now I do.

    I don't recall reading anything by Nora Ephron, but am saddened to lose an accomplished writer none the less.

    Hope everybody has a great day. 90s today in Chicago. Tomorrow +100.

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  13. An excellent Wednesday CW made even better since it's a Dynamic Duo production. Thank you!

    My only hesitation was the JOBS part of 38D, but since perps filled that as well as several others I wouldn't otherwise have known for sure, there were no real snags.

    I always forget the spelling of those names that end in either AAN or AHN, and have to wait for perp help on them.

    Dudley,
    Glad the mystery is solved.

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  14. Steve: Just order youself some pop and you'll fit right in!

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  15. Fun puzzle. When there is a unifier, I always wait to solve that, hoping to figure it out on my own. Not today. It took a while to grasp even with the unifier filled in. I'm not sure I've heard the phrase "By Jupiter", but have heard "By Jove", which I believe to mean the same. The others are very common.

    Only erasure was CLub turning to CLAW, but it was definitely no speed run.

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  16. Mari et alii,
    Agnus is another or those Latin words from the masculine declension ending in -US which change to an -I ending for the plural and for the singular possessive (genitive case).

    dominus, domini,
    agnus, agni
    circus, circi
    corpus, corpi

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  17. I thought many here might appreciate Non Sequitur today.

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  18. Good morning everyone. Thanks for the commentary, Steve.

    After Marti's opus, yesterday, I awoke and wondered. "Wouldn't it be providential if we were treated to a C.C./Don G. puzzle today?" Well BY GEORGE it happened. Great fun theme and relatively easy fill. Unknown proper names derived easily from the perps, as in LL COOL J. Re: SPIN JOBS, During my college years, we called such chatter 'snow jobs'. Only neg, while I think EELY is correct it somehow felt clumsy. Favorite fill 'ready to drive' - TEED. Thanks for another fun challenge.

    Enjoy the day.

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  19. Don an CC, great puzzle. I was on your wave length with the puns. I loved "One may be fawning" and got it right away. Also I wasn't fooled by "below par." My last fill was the unifier.

    Steve your late breaking news story was witty, as well as your entire blog.

    I began reading the ever practical Eda LeShan long before I discovered her in x-words.

    Hahtool, the monkey orchid is cool.

    We had Lamb of God, Agnus Dei , often before, but not the plural AGNI. The Agnus Dei symbol referring to Jesus is seen in many churches.
    Link Agnus Dei symbol

    I have heard of BY JUPITER, but it is much rarer than its cognate, BY JOVE.

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  20. Steve - Don't worry about soda, or pop, or coke. Just order a Lite beer from Miller. Less filling.

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  21. MY DEARS -

    What a wonderful puzzle today; our prolific pair does it again.

    And again and again.

    Without the unifier, I had no clue as to the theme.

    Down fill is great.

    Nate's team can't ICE a game. He pitched the first 3 innings last night, and gave up 2 runs. After leading 9-2, they lost 12-11.

    Later in the game, he was playing left field, and made a perfect throw to 2nd ICING a batter trying to stretch a single. The ump called him safe.

    So it goes.

    AS EVER!
    JzB

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  22. Good morning:

    What a nice treat ~ Marti on Tuesday and CC and Don today! Super puzzle, guys, lots of fun and quite doable. And thanks to Steve for a sparkling expo!

    Dudley @ 6:05 ~ Didn't your iPad come with an adapter?

    Have a great Wednesday everyone.

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  23. Don G. & C.C. Thank-you for a WONDERFUL Wednesday offering.

    Hahtoolah: I think of that old A-JAR joke every time I see that word in our crosswords. LOL

    Hope Husker has TEED it up today.

    Steve: instead of soda, or pop, or coke ... order a Pinch of something else.

    Believe it or not, my final entry was ICE.
    Liked the original cluing, but y'all know I abhor ICE.

    Cheers to all at Sunset.
    (Looks like Debby's "Rain-sets" have gone away. Whew!)

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  24. By golly, that was a fun puzzle though the theme was hard for me to suss out. I too wasn't crazy about the clue for COMET. I think it's because it might 'seem' as if the constructors and editor don't know that a comet doesn't streak across the sky even though I'm sure they do know it. It's like the dumb joke I made a couple of nights ago when I said something like I didn't feel "badly" about something. It must have seemed that I didn't know that was incorrect usage. Anyway, even if we all know it, comets move very slowly. I've seen just one against a dark sky up in the local mountains. It was beautiful though its movement from night to night was hardly noticeable.

    Best wishes to the people who are in danger of flooding or in danger from raging forest fires. Lots of bad news lately.

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  25. I just lost an entire comment! Now I must start over.

    Hello, Steve, and puzzlers. Thank you, Steve, for your witty commentary.

    BY GEORGE! This was surely a fun way to sashay today. What a refreshing puzzle from that WHIZ TEAM, C.C. and Don G. It all filled easily and quickly with nothing to GUM UP THE WORKS.

    I'll try to post this and then continue later.

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  26. BY JUPITER! That one went through.

    Well the cataract removal went exceedingly well and this time I never felt a thing whereas before I could feel the doctor working on me. Suddenly it was over and now my vision is high definition for distance. I shall need cheaters to read and can buy those at the Dollar Tree Store. I'll have one in each room!

    Also today my letter to the editor was published in the Arizona Republic so I'm pleased to have a "byline" so to speak.

    I hope you all have a terrific Wednesday!

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  27. Kazie, what would we do without your foreign language expertise!
    Being a semi-southerner, I`ve always hated the expression "gone south" for bad occurrences. I realize it means to the bottom (as on the compass) but still...and as surely as they want to depict a person of lesser intelligence or education (in a movie or play) guess how they talk and where they`re usually from? But that`s another rant.
    Why is an imac not considered a personal computer?
    Who but CC and Rich could work "LLcoolJ" into a puzzle!
    "Jiminy Cricket" was also a mild epithet at one time as was "jumping Jupiter." (my grandparents` contemporaries used them...my gps were too straight laced.)
    "Rating from Moody`s" was a refreshing clue change from "small batteries"
    Seeing blue skies and white clouds today...but we could still get some more rain and wind...feeder bans "dontchaknow."

    Not to be overly political, but all elections seem to be about which side does the best "spinjob!"

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  28. Good afternoon to all and happy hump day. Thanks Don and C.C. for the puzzle and Steve for your thoughts. Good luck Lucina hope all is well. Started out and i thought this could be a tough one, but then it all came without any cheating. Have a great day to all. RJW

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  29. Always exciting to get a Dynamic Duo (or is that our Dream Team?) puzzle, even though I didn't really get BY until Steve's write-up. Your BY-LINE made me chuckle, Steve. And I'm glad you explained that the golfer was LUKE DONALD and not 'Donald Luke' (who knew?). To show how poor my golf knowledge is, I almost put TEEN instead if TEED for 'ready to drive.' I also loved the cartoon references, although it took me a minute to remember that 'Mary Poppins' wasn't a Disney character.

    Lucina, how wonderful that your sight is now terrific and that your surgeries were untraumatic!

    Have a great Wednesday, everybody!

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  30. "Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi..."say it every Sunday at Mass!

    Wish they still did Mass in Latin.

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  31. Well, I'm glad the Mass is in English and even though I studied Latin for two years, I prefer to wholly understand what is being read.

    I apologize for delving into religion but just reacting to the previous post. I just don't understand that position.

    Thank you all, MY DEARS, for your good wishes, thoughts and/or prayers.

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  32. Irish Miss - I meant the travel adapter that allows me to plug my charger into British/Irish style outlets. We walked around Dun Laoghaire today discovering that such adapters are in short supply at the moment. (Lots of forgetful tourists?)

    Finally found one at a tiny little electrics shop.

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  33. With apologies to Little Richard, BY GOLLY, Miss Molly! Needed the reveal for the theme BY, uh, C.C. and Don, but loved this puzzle.

    Musings
    -Here’s how we celebrate SPAM here in Fremont!
    -Bryce Harper is baseball’s latest PHENOM
    -Our best RENTAL was this. Very handy!
    -I live in the Midwest, Steve, and if you simply ordered a SODA here, all you’d get is a blank stare. Brand please.
    -I saw Halley’s (rhymes with valleys not baileys) COMET in 1986 at 3 am on a roof on a bitterly cold early morning. Totally worth it!
    -Tin, I TEED it up on 36 holes today and was done by 11 am with the temp nearing 100°F. I shot 37 on the front!
    -In the Arizona immigration law decision earlier this week the dems and reps were doing SPIN JOBS saying they won.
    -If you’re ever in Alaska, stop and see, my cute little ESKIMO!”
    -Apologizing like Lucina, I wish the mass would move into the 21st century and not try to go back to the 10th.

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  34. Tin, how goes the rain and flooding for you down there? It looks horrible from up here!

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  35. Tinbeni @ 11:02 am: A pinch or a SNORT?

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  36. Dudley~ Sorry, I forgot you were in Ireland. Hope you are enjoying the Auld Sod and all it has to offer.

    Lucina, good news about your surgery. And congrats on having your letter printed!

    So sad about Nora Ephron; she was a very talented lady.

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  37. I'm going to miss Nora Ephron. She made some of my favorite movies. Call 'em chick flicks if you want; I still liked 'em.

    Have you noticed that everything 'impacts' you these days? A person isn't affected by these leaner economic times, they are 'impacted.' I guess it's a more modern, hipper way to say the same thing.

    Here's an odd little geometry problem you might enjoy (if you're so inclined).

    Two equilateral triangles are contained in square whose side length is 2(sqrt3). The bases of these triangles are the opposite side of the square and their intersection is a rhombus. What is the area of the rhombus?

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  38. Bill G

    Your homophone challenges give me a chuckle.
    Your math challenges give me a migraine! :)

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  39. Irish Miss: The very word math gives me a headache! I`m definitely right-brained!

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  40. BillG, along those same lines, I heard an ad for a roofing company this morning. They used the phrase: "Do you need to update your roof?"

    I realize that roofing materials are different today than 20 years ago, but I'd still rather "replace" my roof than "update" it if it was wearing out. A roof has absolutely no feng shui.

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  41. Bonita Lucina, so glad both of your surgeries are done and sucessful. After my own cataract disaster, I do worry more about others even though I understand mine was caused by my prior transplant surgery.

    Be careful who you call an auld sod.

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  42. Hola Everyone, By golly, I actually got the theme today after the unifier filled in. Unusual for me to get a theme even when I have filled in the by-line. This was a fun puzzle by our very prolific duo.

    Thanks, Steve for a stellar writeup.

    I tried to put in Mary Poppins for an umbrella carrying Disney character, but it was too short. I had to go over all the Disney characters before Jiminy flew into my head.

    I also had put in phoney, for Bogus, so the NW corner was a problem for me as I didn't know Eda or Donald. I'm afraid I had to Google those names before things fell into place.

    I thought Lingering effect/Echo was very clever. Loved that clue/answer.

    Lucina--Sooo glad that your surgeries are over and that they were successful. Also, what was your letter to the editor about?
    It is always fun to see your name in print.

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  43. Bill, I got 1.85 for the area of the rhombus. How 'zat?

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  44. Hi all,
    This was a great puzzle but it took me awhile. Thanks C.C. and Don for a fun time. Also Steve for your nice write-up.

    I'm not familiar with Moody of 39A. When I think of AAA I think of batteries or Triple AAA travel Co.

    When I think of Jiminy Cricket I think of his long nose.

    Lucina, I get frustrated too when I loose a comment.

    My mind does the stupidest things sometimeds. I play Mah-jongg on my computer a lot,its my favorite game. Then I couldn't think of a simple word like tile.Ha!

    Have a good evening all!
    Marge

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  45. Irish Miss, sorry about the headache. I've got another cute word puzzle for another day.

    Gary, just right! How did you do it?

    Avg Joe, I agree. I would feel very insecure with an old roof. Ours is pretty new. I have a friend in Florida going through that big rainstorm and discovered a leak that's caused ceiling damage.

    Geez, these days the Dodgers are wimpy pussycats when it's their turn to hold a bat. They haven't scored a run in 23 innings.

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  46. I came up with 8(sqrt3)-12

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  47. Lucina -

    Yay, hooray!

    Not so fabulous: Streakers. Not COMETS, just hungry, I guess.

    Yikes!

    Cheers!
    JzB

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  48. -Using the base angle of 60° for the equilateral triangle, I used tan 60 = H/(sqrt 3) which means the height of each triangle is 1.46 (sqrt 3) = 2.99 with a base of 2(sqrt 3)
    -That leaves .46 on each end that goes from the vertex to the edge of the square - .92
    -That means one diagonal of the rhombus is 3.46 - .92 = 2.54
    -That leaves 4 right triangles each with a height of 1.27 (2.54/2)
    -Using tan 30 = B/1.27 gives each of those triangles a base of .733
    -The area of the rhombus is then the area of the 4 triangles (4)(.5)(1.27)(.733)
    -Voila 1.85

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  49. Husker G. @ 1:19, if you shot 37 on the front, I never want to play with you…unless you doubled it on the back! (^0^)

    Lucina, so glad to hear all went well!!

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  50. I used tan too, but only a SPF15, so I didn't stay out too long.

    Don't wanna fry my rhombus.

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  51. Marti, I shot 37/42 and so I finally broke 80 on my little baby 5,800 yd course.

    Dennis, I also put ice on my rhombus because I did not want to see even a SIN of a burn on my asymptote ;-)!

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  52. Hi Gang.

    Excellent puzzle Don & CC, great recap Steve.

    Just thinkin’- a couple of comments on comets alluded to them not “streaking” across the sky. Not sure ‘bout the rest of you but anything moving at 157,838 mph qualifies as streaking to me… by golly!

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  53. Irish Miss and Arbaon:
    I'm with you in reference to Math! Sorry, Bill G.

    Chickie@2.40
    I'll try to recap. My letter was a response to an article which commented on the widening gap between the executive and legislative branches as emphasized by the President's executive order to keep illegals brought here as children. It was a thought provoking article and my response was that unless Congress works together to solve problems, that sort of action will not only continue but become commonplace.

    Again, I apologize if this crosses the line into politics.

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  54. Lucina:
    Glad to hear you can see again.
    Hmmm, isn't the idea of "Congress works together" an oxymoron?

    Mari @1:28
    I would 'sip' the Pinch.
    SNORT the 'rot-gut' ... lol

    Husker @1:19
    37 on the Front?
    Did you 'ace' the Windmill hole???

    I also remember going out to watch Halley’s comet back in 1986.
    It looked like this ~ (in real size).

    Razz: @4:36
    I couldn't tell if it had some clothes on or was "streaking".

    Ahhhhhh, it's nice to have a 'blue-sky' again.

    Cheers

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  55. Bill G.
    Unlike Husker Gary, I cheated on the quiz and asked my daughter, who has been
    taken AP math classes since 8th grade. So if her formula and $100 calculator are correct, the answer should be around
    1.8564064605510183482195707... and then it blew up. Now I owe her a new one.
    Always love a challenge!

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  56. Yes Manac (Mainiac?), That what I got too. You and Gary done good. Hahtoolah, maybe your husband would like to give it a shot.

    Beautiful day here for a short bike ride and macchiato, about 72 F.

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  57. Bill G.
    Thanks but the credit goes to my daughter who thought school was all but over for the summer until I hit her with this one.
    And yes it's Manac, been using it for over 15 years but didn't want to be confused with mainiac here so I try to limit my posts. Keep up the brain teasers, they make my day.

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  58. Lucina, Thanks for answering my question. Politics or no.
    Well done!

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  59. Well nice puzzle, nice write up and nice comments; the day is almost done. I guess it time to tell Steve today is the 27th of June not the 26th. I know you did it last night but I started typing a letter and had catch myself...

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  60. @Anony-mouse from Monday. The stylus travels 5.25 inches - from the outer edge to the inside edge, yes?

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