Words: 68
Blocks: 30
Triple tens and triple nines make up the corners of today's challenge from two of our regular constructors; their last duet was on the fourth anniversary of this blog, back in January. One grid spanner -
35A. Poet's liberty : ARTISTIC LICENSE
and two 12-letter entries -
27A. "M*A*S*H" dramatic device : GALLOWS HUMOR - never heard of it, but then again, it does make sense when you create a comedy with the Korean War as your setting
42A. Left nothing in the tank : WENT WHOLE HOG - I found this on the origins
ACROSS:
1. Eugene O'Neill character? : APOSTROPHE - This " ' " character, in his name
11. Without gaps in coverage : A TO Z
15. Orbital position nearest the sun : PERIHELION - Speaking of orbits, Science Channel had "Moon Machines" on last night - I knew the LEM was made right around the corner from my house by Grumman; I plan on watching the Neil Armstrong tribute tonight
16. Capture, in a way : TAPE - Like this - it's quick~!
17. Commercial identifiers : TRADE NAMES
18. "The Tourist" author Steinhauer : OLEN - Not the Tourist I thought it was
19. Run like the wind, e.g. : SIMILE
20. More than equaling : UPPING
22. Strike setting : LANE - ah, bowling - Boomer knows....
23. Confused : AT SEA
26. Oldies syllable : SHA
30. Graphic designer's deg. : BFA - The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree
33. Spurious : FALSE
34. King Faisal's brother : SAUD
39. Passing remarks? : YEAS
40. "__ Plays Fats" (1955 jazz LP) : SATCH
41. R.I.'s Sheldon Whitehouse, e.g. : SENator, Rhode Island
46. Brown, for one : IVY - the university
47. Paul or Lloyd of Cooperstown : WANER - as always, I defer to our baseball fanatic, C.C. (From C.C.: Paul Waner was nicknamed "Big Poison". His younger brother Lloyd was nicknamed "Little Poison". Wiki said they hold the career record for hits by brothers (5,611), outpacing the three Alou brothers (5,094) & the three DiMaggio brothers (4,853). No wonder the "Poison" nicknames.)
48. Hebrew letter before shin : RESH - for those who care for a "cheater" link....
51. Mythical Aegean Sea dweller : NEREID
53. Short drop-off? : CAT-NAP
55. Farm hauler : DRAY
56. Not blown up : ACTUAL SIZE
60. Bone: Pref. : OSTE
61. Cleese role in "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life" : GRIM REAPER - see below
62. Work on a bed : WEED - like one's 14D. Zen Garden - shoulda used some Weed Stop©....oh, that's one of those 17A's
63. Picasso medium : OIL PASTELS
DOWN:
1. Complex gp. : APTS - apartment complex - nailed it
2. Thin ice, say : PERIL - now this is what I remember John Cleese for; @6:05
3. Slangy advertising suffix : O-RAMA - here on LI we have Sign-O-rama, and Windowrama - uh, well, that's not quite it....
4. Short stretch of track : SIDING - Railroad track, sometimes called a "spur"; I love to design model railroads, I just don't have any space to get to building one
5. Air Canada Centre team, informally : THE LEAFS - Toronto, of the NHL; we are now less than a month from pre-season - gets my 39A~!!!
6. Peace Nobelist Cassin : RENE
7. Ipanema greeting : OLA
8. Milne's "Mr. __ Passes By" : PIM - This mister missed this Tuesday's treasure
9. Earth mover : HOE
10. Results : ENSUES
11. Overlying : ATOP - A to P~??? No, wait atop, I get it....
12. Curse repellers : TALISMANS
13. Realtor's come-on : OPEN HOUSE
14. Where gravel may represent water : ZEN GARDEN
21. Tuba note : PAH - the other note it can play is Oom....
23. NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby : ALLISON
24. How most maps are drawn : TO SCALE - or AutoCAD drawings
25. Bake : SWELTER
28. Map coordinate: Abbr. : LATitiude
29. Exhaust : USE
30. Balcony alternative : BAY WINDOW - I could spend all morning looking at cool structures for such a construction, but I stopped at this one
31. Like playing tennis with the net down, to Robert Frost : FREE VERSE - I was not sure exactly what this meant, so I went Wiki-ing
32. "Be that as it may ..." : "AT ANY RATE..."
36. Novel conclusion? : IST - novelIST
37. Frankfurter's pronoun : ICH - seen below in the title
38. Bach hymn arrangements : CHORALES - interesting take on a musical visual....
43. Four-yr. conflict : WWI - World War One, the "Great War", and the "War to End All Wars" - if only....
44. Tried it : HAD A GO
45. Doesn't quite reveal : GETS AT
49. Marsh bird : SNIPE
50. Light golden brown : HAZEL - followed by....
52. Watched : EYED
53. "Flashdance... What a Feeling" lyricist : CARA - we usually see IRENE in puzzles. Earworm~!
54. Head of a PIN?: Abbr. : PERSonal Identification Number - great clue/answer~!
57. Dernier __ : CRI
58. Shop sign word after open, maybe : TIL - "Open til midnight or later", e.g.
59. One stationed at a base : UMP - how fitting, to close with a baseball clue for our host - thanks for the great NY Rangers find, C.C.~!
Answer grid.
Splynter
Answer grid.
Splynter
Morning, all!
ReplyDeleteMan, this one slapped me around, but good! Aside from the complete unknowns (RESH, WANER, ALLISON, PIM, RENE, SIDING) and my missteps (SEED for WEED, CANTATAS for CHORALES, STILT for SNIPE) much of the cluing was tough nearly to the point of being malicious. Nearly. Let's just say it was challenging, but fair. More or less.
In the end, with lots of passes through the grids and plenty of semi-educated guesses (and a few totally wild guesses as well), I made it through the puzzle. Didn't get the *tada*, though, so I had to keep going back through until I changed the aforementioned SEED to WEED.
After this workout, I have to say my head is both bloody and bowed...
Tough one. What Do I expect on Sat? Had choruses for 38d trap for 18a. Liked clue "left nothing in tank".
ReplyDeleteGlad it's Sept. Perhaps some relief from Houston heat! Have super Labor Day.
Wow, this was a real challenge. For my next test, I'm off on a SNIPE hunt!
ReplyDeleteWhew! Ended up with an A- with 16 red letters helping me along. It was fair, but much too difficult for a mere mortal...even for a Saturday!
ReplyDelete3/4 of this puzzle seemed like a normal Saturday to me, but the SE did me in, alas, a DNF.
ReplyDeleteARTISTIC LICENSE came almost immediately and I slowly, but steadily inched northward. After completing that I successfully crawled through the SW.
I didn't know GRIM REAPER or RESH.
I had GETS AT, ACTUAL SIZE and OIL----, but never thought of PASTELS.
I should have known PERS and CATNAP.
I had the Z, but didn’t come up with HAZEL I don't think of HAZEL as golden brown, but rather greenish brown. I have HAZEL eyes, getting greener with the years.
They send neophyte boy and girl scouts and campers to find non-existent SNIPEs. I always had a nit about that because as a youngster I knew SNIPEs are real birds. I guess the point is that they are only found in wetlands.
Looking for a left handed monkey wrench is another wild goose chase for neophytes.
Oofta! This one required some heavy lifting!
ReplyDelete1A was the last to fall, primarily because I just refused to give up TRADEMARKS until the very end. Couldn't decide if it was going to be CATNAP or SIESTA, CANTATAS or CHORALES. It all came together, but it was a full 10 minutes over my self-imposed time limit.
Those double trios of stacked 10's must have been really challenging to create. Bravo, Doug and Brad. Splynter, your writeup was elucidating, as always.
Time for that 10-mile pedal through the humidity....
Hello Puzzlers -
ReplyDeleteI wondered what Barry was going to say about this tricky puzz with its hard clues. Turns out we were thinking right straight along the same lines. So, without delay:
What Barry Said.
'Nuff said.
DNF, not even close. Totally defeated me. 1A was the start of bafflement, and it never got better. Oomph!
ReplyDelete@Yellowrocks - didn't know monkeys could do mechanical work at all. Are they cheap?
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know if these guys hadn't created the puzzle, could they actually solve it? Or if only one did it, could the other solve it?
I'll start with the answers I actually got: DRAY, EYED, WEED, ATOP, FALSE, and the long one, CHORALES. That's it.
Then, the ones I tried and got wrong: mFA for BFA, TAkE for TAPE, FAhD for SAUD.
Then, the ones I got half of: tradeNAMES, artisTICLICENSE.
The rest was some Googling and DNF.
Good morning:
ReplyDeleteWhat Barry said.
What Dudley said.
Send in the Tylenol!
Have a great holiday weekend.
Gave up.
ReplyDeleteGood morning Splynter, C.C. et al.
ReplyDeleteLoved the J.S. Bach chorale video, Splynter! It was fascinating to watch the "notes" flying up into the air.
Had "brand" NAMES before TRADE NAMES. Did not know PERIHELION, so that one required every single perp. I thought many of the clues were downright devious, like "Head of a PIN?" for PERS and "Eugene O'Neil character" for APOSTROPHE.
"Left nothing in the tank" for WHOLE HOG was a bit of a stretch, though. I always think of it as doing something completely without restraint.
I liked seeing GRIM REAPER and GALLOWS HUMOR. Almost as if they were waiting for me to "give up the ghost"...
We're off to the TPC Boston Deutsche Bank golf championship tomorrow to watch Tiger, Rory and Phil take on the course. See you all on Monday!
Sfingi,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure whether monkeys are mechanical or cheap, but I believe perhaps baby snipes do cheep.
I wondered about how WENT WHOLE HOG matched left nothing in the tank. I rationalized that when you go whole hog you become physically spent and so have nothing left in in your "tank," in reserve.
Rotten way to start a Saturday, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteWhat Barry Said
What Dudley Said
What Irish Miss Said
Some of the trouble was my own fault. Thought of every possible O'Neill character, e.g. "The Iceman Cometh," "Mourning Becomes Electra," etc. etc. but of course didn't register the #x&*@ question mark. (Sorry for the cussing).
Anyway, let's go on and have a wonderful weekend! My sweetie and I are going to see something called "Lonesome Traveler" at the Playhouse that, they say, features the songs of Pete Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, and Dylan. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Have a good one, everybody!
DNF ...NOT even close ... though I did enjoy the 2-Mugs of java.
ReplyDeleteOff to Honeymoon Island with Gal-Pal.
Cheers to all at Sunset!
Good afternoon Splynter and all.
ReplyDeleteThis took a long time and was a difficult solve as others have stated. Some fill just too cute for words: APOSTROPHE and IST. ALLISON was a WAG. We were at PERIHELION on January 4th this year. In the Navy, engineering ratings are affectionately known as SNIPES. An engineering propulsion space is known as a SNIPE hole.
Have a good day.
What Barry Said
ReplyDeleteWhat Dudley Said
What Irish Miss Said
What Misty said
Enough said.
But I DID finish it with lots of look-ups.
Misty, that Lonesome Traveler does sound good. I was sitting here listing to a PP&M CD as I read your post..."it's long memories and short tempers that have cursed poor Ireland." Great song.
ReplyDeleteHello everybody. Wow, I found this to be an extremely difficult puzzle. What Barry and the others said.
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is, I got PERIHELION right off the bat, so I thought I was going to do well. I was wrong. I got totally stumped and had to start looking things up. Jeeez, even the NASCAR driver Bobby could have been ALLISON or LEBONTE, and I had no acrosses yet to determine which it was. Then I had to look up SATCH, which told me ALLISON was the guy. Did having those two words help me solve the rest of the center? Nope; it was still a huge struggle.
Wanted HERON instead of SNIPE, couldn't let go of TRADEMARKS or MFA, and Brown was HUE. Didn't know if it was going to be FAHD or SAUD. That doggone ATOZ got me again!!
Anyway, finally solved the WHOLE thing and didn't know I finished it wrong until reading Splynter's enlightening writeup to see 22A was LANE, not LINE (as in picket line.) ORAMI seemed fine to me, but by then I was worn out and didn't give it any more thought.
Whew!
Hola Everyone, Since I had Used up the Gas for Went Whole hog, I had used up all of my gas on this one.
ReplyDeleteI had very few answers, and a DNF. I try Saturday puzzles just to see if I can get anywhere. Today, I just didn't even get out the door.
Have a great holiday, everyone. Enjoy these last days of summer.
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteI looked at the puzzle today but haven't tackled it yet.
I want to thank C.C. for putting our pictures on the blog yesterday, also all your nice comments.
Rain,rain,rain- it goes north of us,south of us and east of us but can't seem to come to south central Wi. Maybe next time?
Have a good Labor Day weekend, everyone.
Marge
I was feeling really low and dumb on this one until I read the comments by others. Misery loves company. Have not felt well this week so I thought it might just be me. I Feel much better now!
ReplyDeleteI finished it with red-letter help as is typical on Saturday. WEES.
ReplyDeleteI just came across women's soccer on TV but also, "Love Actually." I've seen all of it three or four times and have watched parts of it even more often. It's in my top favorite movies of all time, top five for sure. It's kinda like "Sleepless in Seattle" but maybe even better. It always makes me smile and cry. Hard to beat that.
Yellowrocks, let me know if you want me to try to find that eight-person logic puzzle you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteThere was a beautiful full moon last night. During the Dodgers game, they focused in on it and zoomed in with one of their wonderful zoom lenses. The moon filled the whole TV screen. I saved it to show to Jordan the next time he comes over. I started thinking how astounded and excited Galileo would have been with a telescope half as good.
Bill G. thanks so much. I would appreciate your providing the logic puzzle, and I am sure many of our fellow solvers would, too. How do you have these puzzles organized so that you can readily access what you want? I have my copy of that puzzle and my solution essay, but 12 years later I don't know where I stored them. They are not on my computer.
ReplyDeleteWe all agreed this puzzle was hard. My DNF was technical because I needed Google help. I don’t do red letters. However, I am surprised that the puzzle has not raised any significant thoughts. Most didn't bite on my SNIPE sally. What speaks to you?
GRIM REAPER- I used to love Monty Python on TV, but some of his movies are a bit much. Life of Brian was not bad, but not so interesting. Did any of you like The Meaning of Life?
OK, here 'tis. I had included it an a newspaper puzzle column from years ago and I remembered that it had been called Einstein's Logic Puzzle so I just searched for 'Einstein' on my computer.
ReplyDeleteThe person who sent this to me said it was attributed to Einstein. Personally, I doubt it but it’s a good puzzle anyway. There are five houses in a row painted in five different colors. In each house lives a person of a different nationality. These five house owners drink different beverages, smoke different brands of cigarettes and keep different pets.
• The Brit lives in a red house.
• The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
• The Dane drinks tea.
• The green house in on the left of the white house.
• The green house owner drinks coffee.
• The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
• The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
• The man living in the center house drinks milk.
• The Norwegian lives in the first house.
• The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
• The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
• The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
• The German smokes Prince.
• The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
• The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.
Who keeps fish?
This puzzle bordered on sadistic! How do you do it week after week, Splynter? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteSome FREE VERSE I wrote in my prime:
You left me
And the clock ran down
For only you
Think to wind it
And I thought
(as I stood with my
Hands in dishwater)
How like the clock
Am I
For when you go
I stop
Untended
And wait
For you to come
With your gentle hands
And move
the time.
Bill, thanks. This seems like the one I remember, but I believe mine had no reference to smokes. They may have been changed to favorite foods to make it more PC or child friendly. I probably won't have enough time now, so, everyone, please don't give away the answer until tomorrow. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteHappy holiday weekend.
Yellowrocks (hugs)from Kathy
Four cell shorts while watching the Huskers - APOSTROPHE? PIM? OLEN? RENE? TRADE NAMES and not TRADEMARKS? Oh well, the Shuckers are playing well. Tin called me on the way home from golf and said this was the hardest of the year and I enjoyed the workout. E for Effort?
ReplyDeleteMusings
-The long fills were very doable
-APOSTROPHE?
-M*A*S*H got too PC at the end and forgot what made it good. Same as Roseanne.
-I thought Complex gp. might be an association of psychiatrists
-The world’s largest rail yard at North Platte, NE has a gazillion sidings before they, uh, hump the cars
-The Rushmore heads were built TO a SCALE of 1:12 to Borglund’s original busts
-My first Balcony alternative was MAIN FLOOR
-Ich bin ein Husker!
-HAZEL not TAUPE, SNIPE not EGRET
-One more travel musing – we stayed in four different motels and they all had LG TV’s.
Husker Gary,
ReplyDeleteI'm really glad you got to the Black Hills and got to see some of the amazing sights there. Please make a date to go again some day and see some of what you probably didn't have time to see this time. By the way, you are absolutely right about there being NOTHING but flat flat flat prairie across most of SD.
Best regards!
Oh! That Flash dance! I thought they meant this one Flashbier
ReplyDeleteSplyner, Just wanted to point out that the actor in your link for Peril is Michael Palin, not John Cleese.
ReplyDeleteGreg
I have shown before what an old fogy I am with regard to popular music. I just came across "Kodakchrome" on the car radio by Paul Simon. What a great song. It makes me want to dance whenever I hear it. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody does a line dance to it. If not, they should.
ReplyDeleteDesper-otto, so glad you too like PP & M. I saw them live back in the 60s--a fantastic concert! Then I saw Mary Travis do a concert alone just after the break-up. She attracted a much smaller crowd, sadly, but that voice was still magical. I've never lost my affection for their music, and even visited Hanalee (spelling?) on the island of Kauai once--inspired by "Puff the Magic Dragon"!
ReplyDeletePK--your poem is lovely! Many thanks for posting it.
Since we`re submitting original "poetry", here`s one I wrote to honor the 11th birthday of our pomeranian, Mia, today: (to the tune of "Camp Granada")
ReplyDeleteHello Mia, Nice to see yuh!
On my carpet, please don`t wee-uh!
Happy birthday! You`re a sweety!
Hope, for years, we get to hear your little feet-y!
Just found this site while looking for clues to Saturday's crossword. I haven't done a logic puzzle in years so had to try it!
ReplyDelete1st house,yellow,Norwegian,Dunhill,water,cats.
2nd house,blue,Dane,Blend,tea,horses.
3rd house,red,Brit,PallMall,milk,birds.
4th house,green,German,Prince,coffee,fish.
5th house,white,Swede,BlueMaster,beer,dogs
Hello, my friends.
ReplyDeleteMy granddaughters were here today so of course I couldn't work on this puzzle.
WEES. Some wicked misdirection so I and Mr. G finished it together as the names were unknown to me. But slowly and surely finish it I did and now there is "nothing left in the tank." Time for bed.
I hope you have a fantastic weekend, everyone!
Off and on since Saturday, DNF and wouldn't have if I had tried to do it *"no hands" for the rest of the week! Very hard indeed. NW corner and BAYWINDOW got me.
ReplyDelete*as in "look Ma"!
Tough but doable. I was on a plane, so no Googling. I really liked the Pah clue
ReplyDelete