17A. Confederate slogan symbolizing financial independence : KING COTTON.
 |
| King Charles I of England |
 |
| Caesar Augustus |
 |
| Emperor Napoleon |
64A. Sandwich choice : KAISER ROLL. More! Food! There are many theories around the origin of the name.
 |
| Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia |
Across:
1. Appliance connector, briefly : AC PLUG. The handiest gadget I've got in my travel bag is a universal adapter for my US-standard AC plug and any international socket.
7. Cairo cobra : ASP
10. Selling site with a Half.com division : EBAY
14. Point in the right direction : ORIENT
15. Bather's facility : SPA
16. No longer green, perhaps : RIPE
19. Asia Minor honorific : AGHA
20. Swipe : STEAL
21. Thin soup : BROTH
23. Plywood wood : FIR
27. Literary alter ego : MR HYDE. Growing up, I always thought Dr. Jekyll seemed more fearsome just from the sound of the name.
 |
| Egads! |
31. Great Lakes' __ Canals : SOO
32. Speak harshly : RASP
36. Co-founding SkyTeam airline : DELTA. I've flown over a million miles, and oddly only a single round trip from LAX to Atlanta on Delta.
43. Small thicket : COPSE
44. Sans serif, e.g. : TYPE. In honor of this clue let's use Helvetica as the typeface.
45. Razor-billed diver : AUK
46. "Isn't __ shame?" : IT A
47. Sudden jets : SPURTS
56. Cousin of edu : ORG. There used to be a only couple or three more cousins like .com, .gov and .mil, now there's a whole bunch.
57. Municipal ribbon cutter, often : MAYOR. Or John Lennon.
58. Rapper __ Shakur : TUPAC
62. Femme fatale : VAMP
66. List catchall : ET AL From the latin "et alia", "and others". Compare and contrast with "et cetera", "and the rest".
67. Sci-fi staples : E.T. s. They bring their own cellphones with them now.
68. Rest of the afternoon : SIESTA
69. Modernize : REDO
70. Messy digs : STY
71. How coal may be priced : PER TON
Down:
1. Launchpad thumbs-ups : A-OKs. A shameless plug for Team Oracle's stunt pilot Sean Tucker.
2. Review, briefly : CRIT
3. Long (for) : PINE
4. Inheritance : LEGACY
5. Naked : UNCLAD
6. Potent '60s-'70s Pontiac : GTO
7. Stars in Kansas' motto : ASTRA. "Ad astra per aspera" - "To the stars through adversity". Very similar to the Royal Air Force's "Per adua ad astra" - "Through struggle to the stars". Lots of Latin today!
8. Animal trail : SPOOR. That's a nice polite way of describing it.
9. Khakis, e.g. : PANTS
10. Timeline chapter : ERA
11. Deceitful sort, on the playground : BIG FAT LIAR
12. Sap sucker : APHID
13. Century units : YEARS
18. "Very funny" TV station : TBS. TBS has a place in TV history as the first "superstation" when Ted Turner took the then-unheard of step of distributing this local Atlanta station via satellite enabling the station to be received nationwide.
22. Good start? : HARD G
25. Architect Saarinen : EERO
26. In __ of: replacing : LIEU
27. Connection rate meas. : M-SEC. Measuring the speed of data connections in milliseconds.
28. Cowboys quarterback Tony : ROMO
 |
| "I can't believe I just did that" |
33. Getty collection : ART
34. Le Carré's Smiley, for one : SPY
35. Get-up-and-go : PEP
37. Fastener with flanges : T-NUT
38. Seeks, with "for" : ASKS
40. Picasso's "this" : ESTA
41. Provide with new weaponry : RE-ARM
42. __ egg : NEST
48. "The Dick Van Dyke Show" surname : PETRIE. Rob, played by Dick.
49. Figure of high interest? : USURER. Favorite clue/answer of the day.
50. Man with a van, perhaps : MOVER
51. Emulate Cicero : ORATE
52. "Ace of __": 2000s Food Network bakery show : CAKES. Food! or Art?
53. Marriott rival : HYATT
54. Like leaf blowers : NOISY
55. RN workplaces : ORs
59. Military assignment : POST
60. Certain chorister : ALTO
61. Family group : CLAN
63. West Bank gp. : P.L.O. Mahmoud Abbas is the current leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
65. Debatable "gift" : ESP
That's all, Folks. As Tupac would say - "It's a rap".
Steve
Morning, all!
ReplyDeleteSmooth sailing today. I wasn't familiar with MONARCH NOTES, but all the other theme answers came easily based solely on the clues and by the time I hot MONARCH NOTES I had figured out the theme, so no big hangup there.
Wasn't overly fond of CRIT (or AC PLUG, for that matter), but it didn't slow me down at all. Just made me wince a bit...
DNF, royally missed this one by 3 naticks. Just flat didn't know RIT nor T-NUT, and without them I couldn't see HARD G nor DELTA. I was looking for a prefix for good, but should have realized that clue form had other possibilities. Never heard of SkyTeam, but should still have figured out an airline name, even with 40% of the letters missing. And wanted WING NUT, but just couldn't fit wing into a single cell.
ReplyDeleteExcept for that sector though, the puzzle was fairly straight forward. KAISER is derived from CAESAR so one could quibble that word is used twice. And too bad the 2 long downs weren't part of the theme, though the non-PC BIG FAT LIAR almost fit it.
I grew up near a park with a public pool, but one summer I couldn't go swimming. The zoo had acquired a waddle (creche, colony, huddle, parade, parcel, rookery, raft) of Emperor and Adélie penguins, but had no place yet to keep them, so our park's pool was filled with ice and pressed into service as a penguinery while a proper penguin house was constructed.
Speaking of ice, a friend sent me a photo of Canadian Archaeology.
Good morning all!
ReplyDeleteSteve, I was looking at the odd man out as being CAESAR. The others are general titles, but CAESAR was a family name. Oh well, I “got” the theme and enjoyed the puzzle, so it’s all good!
I tripped a couple times – oops! I had DR HYDE instead of MR HYDE. Of course, D SEC looked as good to me as M SEC, so that little error cost me big time from finishing! And the other problem was TUPAC. If I had spelled it correctly instead of USoRER that name could have come out with perps. (I have trouble “seeing” vertical spelling errors.) Ugh.
I have been working like mad to get the house next door ready by March 1st. But it seems if anything can go wrong, it will. Of course, the old furnace that we were hoping to salvage finally died over the weekend. So I had to shell out another $5300 to install a new one. Arrrrghh!! But the good news is that I got a reprieve – the new tenants want to move in on the 15th instead of the 1st. So an extra two weeks grace period – yay!
Them was easy after KING and CAESAR. MAYOR is a minor king in his own mind. This was a very straight forward solve. 55d debatable gift could have been GAB or ESP. The HARDG type answers always slow me down but was still an easy 10 minute Wednesday puzzle
ReplyDeleteGood morning!
ReplyDeleteThought this one was going to be tough when I had nothing but ORIENT in the snowy NW. CAESAR and EMPEROR gave me the theme so KING COTTON finally appeared and the NW passage was complete. While looking over the finished puzzle I had to re-read the clue before I could parse PERTON.
Didn't we just have ROMO the other day? Probably not. RIT is one of the few musical terms I can remember. Slowing down = dyeing.
Nice puzzle Mr. Wechsler. Nice commentary, Monarch Steve I.
Marti, I see you're enjoying the many pleasures of landlordship. Have you figured out at what future point you're likely to break even and perhaps show a profit?
Nice puzzle today. I was able to finish this pretty quickly. I had to PERP AGHA,and RIT. I wanted BRIAR for COPSE. But everything else filled in nicely.
ReplyDelete22D: Good start? HARD G - this type of clue gets me every time.
Have a great day.
Good morning everyone,
ReplyDeleteNo getting around it, this was a bear for me. in the end, I managed to suss everything except the mid west section and ended up with a DNF.
I neglected to fill in 31A and 27D and for 43A I had Gorse instead of COPSE making HOPPING MAD incomplete too.
Even though i solved it, wasn't fond of 22D Good Start/HARD G. I opened with ERs for 55D, but ORS
came about when I solved 50A.
Can't say for sure if I noticed the blank squares it would have mattered. This whole puzzle was a toughie for me from the start.
Thank you Jeffrey Wechsler and thank you Steve.
ReplyDeleteNot my fastest solve for sure. Seemed to be just one of those days where I was drawing too many blanks in the north and middle. The south was much easier for me, starting with MOVER, ORATE, ORG, MAYOR and TUPAC and that got me going.
The big hangup was the NW corner. Shot myself in the foot with entering DIRECT in LIEU of ORIENT. If seemed AOK with GTO. Finally took a chance on STEAL and then PINE and LEGACY appeared. Do not care for CRIT.
In the end, I had 1 error. Spelled EMPEROR as EMPiRER and didn't notice it. I know Picasso's there is/was ESTA, but of course mine was iSTA.
Good morning everyone.
ReplyDeleteFrom yesterday, Happy Anniversary, HG.
Somewhat crunchy but generally straightforward puzzle today. Interesting theme. Last fill was HARD G. Favorite clue was for SIESTA. Never heard of MONARCH NOTES - today's learning; also, RIT.
Have a good day.
All Hail, Monarch Steve I of Studio City!
ReplyDeleteQuick solve today. The theme was a big help. I saved the NW for last. The NE gave me SALAD. Then moving down, EMPEROR PENGUINS was a gimme. I liked Happy Feet. Then KAISER ROLL (one of my favorite for sandwiches) gave me the theme. I had NOTES and the theme suggested MONARCH. Then I filled in CAESAR and had all the perps I needed. No unknowns or nits. DEL had to be DELTA. HARD G always gives me pause.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I'm not into SPOOR as scat or manure. Animal tracks are more my kind of SPOOR. Do you recognize these?
Link spoor
Link animal tracks
Musings
ReplyDelete- Just enough crunch for a humpday with a theme so obvious even I got it.
-Some argue Eli Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton gin accelerated the need for cheap slave labor to produce KING COTTON and helped lead to the civil war
-I come to eat CAESAR SALAD not to praise it
-We lost our AC adaptor in Venice but the hotel had a box full of ones that had been left behind
-I’ve seen alcohol turn people into Mr. HYDE
-Honey and lemon juice allowed me to give my NASA program for 6 periods Monday and not RASP
-Isn’t it a shame that great teachers get paid exactly the same as mediocre ones?
-Gotta love the infectious rhythms of rap but some of the vile, misogynistic lyrics are disturbing at best
-Daughter has decided to completely REDO her living room two years after building her house
-Great LEGACIES left by giants like Conrad Hilton eventually fall to dilettantes like great granddaughter Paris who is mostly shown UNCLAD
-I lost a birdie yesterday when my putt hit some goose SPOOR. Talk about HOPPING MAD!
-I remember at first Ted Turner started his TBS shows at 5 minutes past the hour
-Name the song with “She's made it clear enough (enoof), it ain't no good to PINE”
A well done Wednesday, with a shout out to Don Hard g .
ReplyDeleteJW is becoming a regular at the LAT with a variety of styles none of which are too easy.
Interesting to see ASP which is not only an anagram of the fill SPA but clearly best known from its use by Julius Caesar's friend Cleopatra. Speaking of JC, Marti' s comment about the family name is a good excuse to LINK the article which discusses the various theories of the family name. I like the elephants
Thank you mr. Wechsler for a very nice puzzle and very punny. I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteThank you Steve for your charming humor and food references. Really enjoyed your blog.
Thank you OwenKL for Caesar and canadian ice history... And YellowRocks for spoors and tracks. I find animal tracks in my backyard and front yard .... But when they approach my front sloop and knock on my door .... That's when I get nervous.
Thank you, HG, for unclad .... I must confess, I had to see it....
Hi, Lemonade. Shakespeare was quite faithful in his play , Julius Caesar , to the actual events.
Have a nice day, all.
Good Royal Wednesday puzzle. Is Tony Romo more famous as a Quarterback or for the fact he dated Jessica Simpson? 11D made me thing of old playground insult "Liar, Liar Pants on Fire". 43A reminds me of Gettysburg where Pickettt set his men to the copse of trees in the Union lines.
ReplyDeleteHi All ~~
ReplyDeleteI couldn't get started in my usual NW corner because I misread a clue. I didn't notice the 's' in ups so when A OK didn't fit I was stumped. I also wasn't familiar with CRIT so that further held up that area. I then started on the right side, moved down and around and was able to finish without any other real problems.
I didn't catch the theme until after KAISER... but looking back, it all made sense. I, too, thought CAESAR didn't fit with the others but Wikipedia says that it is "a title of imperial character." A learning moment.
Write-overs: Ache / PINE and Bursts / SPURTS.
Favorite: 11D - BIG FAT LIAR. Reminds me of the good ol' days of having playground duty. Ugh.
Thanks for your always enjoyable write-up, Steve!
Mensa still stuck on Satuday Merriam-Webster version stinks. Half-way through the puzzle an ad popped up and erased all my entries. What's the best, most reliable site for the LAT?
ReplyDelete1derfed,
ReplyDeleteNever have I had any interference in using the Merriam Webster site. I'm not sure what caused it, but
I'd be surprised if it were MW.
OOPS, 1derfool sorry about spelling error.
ReplyDeleteHello, Puzzlers! All hail, Oh great MONARCH, Steve I! As long as you're blogging you have your very own followers right here on the Corner!
ReplyDeleteAs Lemonade said,JW constructs good ones at various levels of difficulty but this one was mid week easy. Thank you, Jeffrey.
However, I did start in the east because that corner almost filled itself and by the time I reached SPURTS, RIT had emerged. Loved the HARD G. Hi, Don G, wherever you are.
So then with MONARCH, KAISER, EMPEROR and CAESAR in place the only one left was KING and the NW began to take shape. CRIT was the last fill and seemed forced. Earlier my hesitation was with AOKS as plural but that worked.
Nice to see EERO again as he's been absent for a while and I recall TUPAC because he was involved in some violence. Death maybe?
Great fun today. Now my serious packing begins.
Steve, you mentioned a universal converter. Is there any particular place to buy that?
Have a delightful Wednesday, everyone!
What a fun Wednesday puzzle, many thanks, Jeffrey! Right after I got MONARCH I saw the beginning of KAI___ which of course suggested KAISER and that gave me the theme. Helped enormously. And Steve, many thanks for giving us the history of CAESAR salad. I didn't even know it had a history! The things I learn on this blog!
ReplyDeleteHad a couple of tough moments, though. Wanted KNOT and took forever to get T NUT. Had the same problem of two impossible consonants together with HA_DG. What word ends with DG? Finally figured out that HARD G. But it's fun to have to struggle with this sort of stuff.
The doxies have to go to the vet today to get their teeth cleaned. Since I brush them every other night (thank heavens for Poultry-flavored Canine Toothpaste) they should be in good shape in spite of their ten years. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Have a great Wednesday, everybody!
1derfool
ReplyDeleteTry Yahoo games
JB in VA
Good morning all,
ReplyDeleteThis one was a little sticky for me.I got the theme right away, but have never heard of Monarch Notes; we called those yellow and black book Cliff's Notes.What a life saver they were!spoor? a new one. Changed dame to vamp and starts to spurts... both much better answers.Knew I was foggy this morning when it took me a bit to remember where Picasso lived!
Jeffrey, I had a big laugh with "big fat liar" and thought you may have been waiting a long time to yell that one out. LOL!
Who doesn't love penguins? We were pleasantly surprised when we saw them at the Cape in S. Africa.
Happy belated anniversary Gary!!
ReplyDeleteJohnr @ 9:26 AM was rescued the blog filter.
I enjoyed the puzzle. It seemed hard in places. I got stuck on CRIT and HARD G. WEES. Thanks Jeff and Steve.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I had exactly the same confusion between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I thought Jekyll was the scary-sounding one. Like all the years I read Looney Tunes comics and though Yosemite Sam was pronounced Yo-si-myte. Jordan made the same mistake when we were reading together.
D-O, Marti might be breaking even right away when she depreciates everything, adds in her losses and gets a big tax break.
The first Caesar salad Barbara learned to make from a cookbook called for some barely-cooked egg (coddled?) in the dressing, homemade croutons and bits of raw anchovies. I loved it! Seldom do restaurant Caesar salads live up to that recipe.
Gary, I see what you mean about Paris not living up to her grandfather's legacy. I had to go back and look at her photo several times to properly work up my sense of disappointment... :>)
Hi Y'all! Great puzzle, Jeffrey! NW hard to start. CRIT (Boo hiss!)
ReplyDeleteGreat expo, Steve. I thought MONARCH was the unifier?
68* yesterday. Snow almost gone. Wintry mix predicted for tomorrow (boo hiss!).
Good Wednesday-level puzzle. Huskey Gary, Herman's Hermits? Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter? (ear worm alert).
ReplyDeleteFor those of you watching Olympics curling & want to learn more, check curlingbasics.com, with animated descriptions of sweeping, takeouts, etc. Our local curling club is hosting 30-min. Learn to Curl open houses. 60 people showed up last night!
Hi Everyone:
ReplyDeleteA little tricky in spots but, overall, clever theme and a fun solve. Never heard of Monarch Notes and didn't care for crit. Nice job, Jeffrey, and witty expo, Steve.
It's snowing, AGAIN. What can I say?
Misty, good luck with the Doxies!
Stay safe and warm.
My solving talent at this time makes Monday & Tuesday rather easy and Friday and Saturday rather too hard so I feel challenged by Wednesday & Thursday so this was most enjoyable for me. Thank you, Jeffrey.
ReplyDeleteI managed to finish the puzzle, unfortunately I got a bunch of letters wrong...
ReplyDeleteOh well, chalk it up to a learning experience.
Spoor was a new word for me, I had to look it up...
Hmm, this puzzle reminds me of the Congress of Vienna.
Heads Up!
Speaking of the name Caesar, and how it became another title for emperor, brings me around to the legendary naming of Britain after Brutus--Decimus Junius Brutus. Apocrypohal as it is, historians accepted for centuries that Britain was named for the general who conquered northern Spain for Rome (and then went on to Albion). He was thought to be a descendent of Aeneas of Troy, the legendary founder of Rome.
ReplyDeleteThose old Romans had a way with words, names, and who laid claim to what.
Hands up for who had GAB before ESP!
ReplyDeleteToo bad, as GAB was the cleverer response, satisfying two meanings at once.
MIT gets in. RPI gets in. When does RIT get a chance? (Rochester Institute of Technology)
ReplyDeletedesper-otto @ 7:15, Profit?? You mean I’m supposed to make a profit? Hopefully, Bill G. is right about the taxes…we'll see in a few weeks when I get them back from the accountant.
ReplyDeleteYR @ 8:40, thanks for linking those animal tracks. I love figuring out what is roaming around our back yard in the wee hours, but I was unpleasantly surprised to notice that one of the tracks is actually a skunk!
HG, sorry I missed your anniversary yesterday! Yummm, leftover pizza and HGTV? "Wow, it just don't git no better'n 'at!!"
I worked this one at the car dealership, waiting for my oil change/tire rotation/etc. to be finished. Got 'er done! Got home, read the review and.....FIW. I had dR. HYDE instead of Mr. HYDE. Everything else went smoothly. I even caught HARD G and AIOLI. I'm learning.
ReplyDeleteSunny, temps in the 50's, snow is melting. It's a good thing.
Misty, hope the dogs get a clean bill of health. Congrats on keeping up with the tooth brushing. I haven't gotten into the habit yet.
Happy hump day.
Pat
Happy Wednesday everybody!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a mid-week level puzzle, but do-able in the end. Woo-Hoo...!
Eventually written-over: GRUEL for BROTH, U.S.AIR for DELTA, and TUPAK for TUPAC. Whenever I hear the latter's name I always think of the joke about being 4 cans short of a 6-pack....
Hands up for HARD G being the hardest answer to suss.... Only consolation is that I nailed the misdirection of Rest of the Afternoon....
Favorite answer = BIG FAT LIAR.... Does anyone else remember rotund kids on the playground being referred to as Fatty, Fatty, Boom-Ba-Latty...?
CED, your Heads Up link had me laughing so hard I almost spit out my KAISER ROLL...!
Finally have to agree whole-heartedly that the Hilton name has gone downhill ever since the "leak" of Paris' sex tape. Unfortunately, that little episode spawned a gaggle of other so-called celebrities with no discernible talent....
HGTV, Gary has his own TV network? Cool.
ReplyDeleteParis shows her discernible worth as often as she can; people watch and she makes money.
Apparently, if Paris goes through the pain of a bikini wax, she wants people to see it. One good thing is she hasn't reproduced her kind by age 33.
ReplyDeleteHi gang -
ReplyDeleteTrouble all over the place for me today. Never sussed the theme, and MONARCH NOTES is a total unknown.
Never got my head into the puzzle. Too distracted by the Olympic hockey and lade's short program figure skating. Surprising loss of Russia to Finland. Canada outplayed Latvia, but only eked out a 2-1 win. U.S. over Czech Republic 5-1. Sweden 5 - Slovenia 0. U.S. - Canada, and Swe - Finn next.
Catch the skating tonight if you can. Very dramatic and many wonderful performances.
King Cotton.
Cool regards!
JzB
Creative spelling.
ReplyDeletelade's = lady's
Proquest says,"For years, Monarch Notes have served as excellent supplements to the actual texts of the world's great literature. These carefully crafted study guides allow students to gain additional insight and develop a deeper understanding of a particular work."
ReplyDeleteI am of two minds about Monarch Notes and Cliff Notes. ANTI: Students who neither read the literature in question nor understood its concept can use them to write a creditable paper. PRO: Those students who actually read the work and DEVELOPED ideas about the concept can delve more deeply into the work. (Drat that Spell Check)
I used to look for phrases borrowed whole from Cliff Notes with no attribution.
I had a couple of little things to pick up at the grocery store, so...
ReplyDeleteRather than go to the usual local, perfectly satisfactory supermarket, I opted for a local specialty grocery store, Bristol Farms. That was fun. I wandered around the store cluelessly, sampled some sharp cheese, asked questions and bought some stuff that I didn't need. Some soup, a pasta salad, some seafood salad that didn't contain the fake stuff (krab), a couple of fancy pieces of chicken, a couple of crab cakes, an heirloom tomato, a couple of salads, three little desserts, a pint of gelato, some cut flowers, and a couple of other things I've forgotten. Lunch is coming soon.
JD, how thrilling that you actually visited the penguins in South Africa. My 15 year old grandson has loved penguins since he was a toddler. Did you see the movie, "March of the Penguins"? Great info.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your clip, especially at 1:18. That looks like my car backing out of my garage this afternoon. There was a huge four foot wide lump of ice for the car to scale. The eaves and gutters are dripping like crazy and hitting the ice below creating even thicker ice.
I salted it and as we warmed to a balmy 50 degrees I was able to chop much of it out. Hooray! This is the first I could chop with my weak shoulder, two-fisted as it was.
There is much water slicked ice left, but 50 degrees feels balmy, for me preferable to 85 degrees, except for the left over ice.
I'm with you Tin. I hate ice.
No puzzle for me today... like 1derfool I had trouble with merriam webster... and I also had trouble with chicago tribune... both of those sites froze up and I couldn't get beyond the ads nor back out of the site... had to shut down and start over.... both times... yahoo finally changed to the current date and brought up the grid and half way thru it decided to wipe out my entries and give me a clean grid.... I quit.....
ReplyDeleteI enjoy this little corner of the world and all the bloggers that make it the enjoyable place it is.... :) I may not always say it but my best to you all always whether it be birthday or anniversary or just a take care of yourself.....
Or.... a happy new house Dudley.... :)
thelma
To Argyle:
ReplyDeleteGo RPI beat Clarkson and St Lawrence this weekend in hockey.
KING COTTON helped me catch the theme. I enjoy reading about the Civil War. Marti can you work Bruce Catton in as an answer?
Gee, johnr, I don't know what the spam filter has against you. That's twice now.
ReplyDeleteHello everybody. Enjoyable puzzle today. I find most of them are. Maybe I'm just easy to please. I loved the clue "Rest of the afternoon". Yep, HARD G fooled me again. I, too, wrinkled my nose at CRIT.
ReplyDeleteMY brother, who lives in Marlborough (which we affectionately call Molebarrow), MA, sent us a bunch of photos of the snow there. Man oh man, eye-opening to see the results of the non-stop blizzard you guys have been having for weeks. Whew.
Best wishes to you all.
Hey Russia good job, good effort. Thanks for showing up to your own Olympics. Stalin is probably rolling over in his grave right now. Not even a worthy adversary anymore. No wonder Communism failed. Can’t even beat Finland.
ReplyDeleteMusings 2
ReplyDelete-27 holes on a breezy but lovely day
-Thanks for the well wishes for our anniversary and Joann’s tolerance!
-Yes, that Paris Hilton can sure almost wear clothes! Worthless scions of hard working ancestors have been a bane of civilization for many years!
-Bill G, I’m glad you thoroughly checked out her, uh, credentials
-Joann declined a $40 steak just to stay home on the day as we have been doing a lot of traveling lately.
-BTW, we love HGTV (yeah, Lemon, Husker Gary TV ;-) to see where $250,000 will buy a mansion in some cities and a rat infested dump in others. I wonder what Marti will be asking!
-Cliff’s Notes were originally started by a man named Cliff Hillegass in a house in Lincoln just a few doors down from where my daughter lived.
-Yup, it was Herman’s Hermits advising us “not to pine” in this this ear worm (not Huskey Gary, Bea ;-)
Theme? Theme? What Theme? It complete escaped me. But they frequently do. :-)
ReplyDeleteFor 31A: Great Lakes' __ Canal: SOO - I Grew up in Michigan. It was always referred to as Soo Locks, not canal. They are on the St. Mary's river, at Sault St. Marie, and allow ships to go around the rapids between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.
Thanks everyone for your witty posts and clever puzzles.
Greg
I knew of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site of Canada and of the Soo Locks so I spelled the answer SOO in the puzzle. My parents visited there maybe 50 years ago. If you have locks, it seems you must have a canal for them to be in.
ReplyDeleteMarti - didn't know the "Caesar" was a family name. Must research my Roman Empire more thoroughly.
ReplyDeleteYellowrocks - I saw paw prints of a mountain lion in a bunker at my local golf course a couple of weeks ago. There were also deer prints in there. Not sure what the outcome of that encounter was.
Argyle - arise, my Liege.
Vidwan - thanks for the shout-out; it's as much fun to write these as to read them!
PK - you're right, it could be the unifier - but only as a plural?
Lucina - I have one to spare if you don't mind the "Oracle" branding on it?
Hello Puzzlers -
ReplyDeleteLate to the party again. Lots of snow removal to do, even though today's accumulation was less than 6". Part of the problem is that the new house has a steeply sloped front grade; vehicles will use any excuse to get all stuck. Today it was the fire chief who got his pickup sideways while arriving to inspect the smoke alarms. It was a mess.
Did the puzzle hours ago, and as I recall it was trouble free. The theme became apparent even without a unifier. Vamp is certainly an odd word, to me at least, one of those with both verb and noun definitions that are unrelated.
Paris Hilton seems like a waste of oxygen to me. Her photographs emit skank waves.
Aka Thelma, thanks for the house wishes!
Gary, you mentioned that in some places, $250,000 will only buy a rat-infested dump. Locally, that amount won't buy any dump, with or without rats. We were lucky to buy a house when we did when prices were less unreasonable.
ReplyDeleteJzB, thanks for the King Cotton link. I LOVE Sousa marches. Here are a couple of favorites. (Lots of good trombone parts.)
The Washington Post
The Thunderer
There is another march called The Manhattan Beach March. I thought it might be named for the little city where I live but no; it is named after another little city in New York.
Greetings!
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the puzzle and expo, JW and Steve!
Favorite fill: BIG FAT LIAR.
No problems.
Happy belated anniversary, HG!
I do not think that $15 is a bad price to pay to always have puzzle available. (Join puzzlesociety.com. Of course, you do not get the circles. But then you can check another site. You also get many, many other puzzles!
Cheers!
Steve:
ReplyDeleteThanks. But I found that Office Max just 1/2 mile from me has one although I may just use my old one with four different adapters for different parts of the world.
Finally got here today. This puzzle took me a while to finish but I got it done!
ReplyDeleteHand up for GRUEL before BROTH and for not being a fan of CRIT!
We had Cole's notes in Canada so I was not familiar with MONARCH notes.
We flew KLM last spring but I was able to get Delta Skymiles as both airlines are part of SKYTEAM.
Thanks OwenKL for the Canadian Archaeology. LOL.
Canada-Latvia hockey game was a nail-biter. Latvia's goalie was amazing and made 55 saves!
ReplyDeleteTomorrow's Canada-USA game should be interesting!!
Gruß an Kiel
ReplyDeleteI always wanted to be able to play a song on a harmonica but I never could. It seemed simple enough... Do you suppose everybody is self taught? I've never known anybody to offer harmonica lessons.
ReplyDeleteIs there a significant difference between a button box and a piano accordion?
Off to watch Jeopardy.
Many button accordions are diatonic but some are chromatic. Harmonicas are usually diatonic.
ReplyDeletePiano accordions are always chromatic.
A lot of accordions used to be diatonic, but then they developed a vaccine.
ReplyDeleteSpitzboov:
ReplyDeleteAmazing musical group!
Dudley:
LOL!
So as I'm watching the Olympics Giant Slalom event I'm wondering if any NBC announcer has had the cojones to refer to something called the (Ted) Ligety Split...?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the ladies skating tonight and even was able to enjoy some of the sled and ski events now that the snow in my yard is gone. Amazing what temperatures over 50* can do for my mood.
ReplyDeletePK at 5:18 is not the regular poster. Don't know what he/she's talking about.
Unable to check in as often. Noticed I missed wishing Linda a Happy Birthday awhile ago.
ReplyDeleteHappy Anniversary Gary and Joanne!
If I missed anyone's special occasion, I apologize.
My daughter flew to Ohio for a job interview and was a little set back when hotel staff said, "Your room is ready Dr. O'Brien." How cool is that! She is starting a new time in her life.
River Doc, I think Jimmy Fallon did so last night if I recall correctly. Sounds silly.
ReplyDeleteMensa is back on the air. I hope it stays that way 'cause I can get the next day's puzzle at 10 pm local time.