google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Monday, June 2, 2014 Bruce Venzke and Gail Grabowski

Gary's Blog Map

Jun 2, 2014

Monday, June 2, 2014 Bruce Venzke and Gail Grabowski

Theme: What are the odds? - Well?

17A. Baby book milestones : FIRST STEPS

23A. Backup player's backup : THIRD STRINGER

39A. Hershey's chocolate-and-peanut-butter products : FIFTH AVENUE BARS

52A. Bliss : SEVENTH HEAVEN

63A. Penultimate bowling game division : NINTH FRAME

Argyle here. A nice straightforward Monday.

Across:

1. A rather long time : AGES

5. Be of use to : AVAIL

10. Greenside golf shot : CHIP



14. Kauai cookout : LUAU

15. Alabama civil rights city : SELMA

16. Titled nobleman : LORD

19. Baghdad's country : IRAQ

20. Even if, briefly : ALTHO

21. Prepares, as a violin bow : ROSINS

27. Dusk-dawn link : 'TIL

28. Steeped brew : TEA

29. Low mil. rank : PVT.

31. Commotions : ADOs

35. Actor Kilmer : VAL

37. Road Runner chaser __ Coyote : WILE E.

43. Prepare beans, Mexican-style : REFRY

44. Square dance lass : GAL. CSO YR.

45. Island in a computer game : MYST

46. NHL tiebreakers : OTs

47. Zadora of "Hairspray" : PIA. Not her usual blond hair.


50. "Wait a __!" : SEC

58. Fill with bubbles : AERATE

59. Purple flower : LILAC

61. Cold War country: Abbr. : USSR

66. Hired hood : GOON

67. Baseball bobble : ERROR

68. Sport __: family cars : UTEs. (sport-utility vehicle)
69. Sharpen : HONE

70. Steed stoppers : REINS

71. Spanish muralist José María : SERT

Down:

1. __ Romeo: Italian sports car : ALFA

2. Feeling of remorse : GUILT

3. Target in alien-attack films : EARTH

4. Japanese fish dish : SUSHI

5. Long-eared beast : ASS

6. Doggie doc : VET

7. On the ball : ALERT

8. Non-domestic beer, e.g. : IMPORT

9. Film collie : LASSIE

10. Hang on (to) : CLING

11. Boisterous behavior : HORSEPLAY

12. Savings option, briefly : IRA

13. ASAP kin : PDQ. Was your solve PDQ? (pretty damn quick)

18. Lawsuit basis : TORT

22. Amazed : IN AWE

24. Distinguished soprano, say : DIVA

25. Pole or Croat : SLAV

26. Campground users, briefly : RVers. (recreational vehicle)

30. Driver's license prerequisite : TEST

31. Frizzy do : AFRO

32. Loses on purpose? : DIETS

33. Summer, at ski resorts : OFF-SEASON. but not without some excitements.
34. Orchestra sect. : STR. (strings)

36. Chair support : LEG

38. Tech co. known as Big Blue : IBM

40. All keyed up : HYPER

41. Poet Ogden : NASH

42. Peter Fonda title role : ULEE. (Ulee's Gold)

48. More absurd : INANER

49. Clothes : ATTIRE

51. Young cow : CALF

53. Sci-fi pioneer Jules : VERNE

54. Artist Rousseau : HENRI. Bio.

55. Computer invader : VIRUS

56. Tickle pink : ELATE

57. Snitch, when identifying the bad guys : NAMER

60. "__ la vie!" : C'EST

61. "That smells disgusting!" : "UGH!"

62. Jack of "Barney Miller" : SOO



64. Freight measure : TON

65. Baseball round-trippers: Abbr. : HRs. (home run)



Argyle


66 comments:

  1. Greetings!

    Thanks, Gail and Bruce! Argyle, too!

    Not a really easy Monday for me. Could not remember WILE E spelling. Could not come up with Chip. Perps took care of everything and the TA-DA told me no typos!

    Time for beddy!

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Morning, all!

    Cute theme and pretty straightforward solve for me. As with fermat, I got hung up a bit with the spelling of WILE E (I forgot it was two words and initially went with WILIE), but the perps took care of that pretty quickly and everything else went smoothly.

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  3. The French hoodlum waited in the saloon.
    He had nowhere to be till high noon.
    Then his chances of surviving
    Were nowheres near thriving,
    He thought sadly of himself, "bleu, la GOON."

    The airline thought the time opportune
    To schedule some flights by balloon
    Conditions were terrific
    Throughout South Pacific.
    But the gondola was so cramped, they blew leg room!

    Beulah went to the beach to festoon
    It with flowers for her wedding there soon.
    She had a catered buffet,
    But alas, no fiancé
    She still needed a Beulah groom!

    The tropical island was strewn
    With plants both green and maroon
    But the strangest to be seen
    Was an aqua-hued bean --
    The temptingly sweet blue legume!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good morning all.

    Yes Argyle, this fun offering from Gail and Bruce was over way too soon. PDQ. Better yet, there's not a single smudge on my completed puzzle.

    I too thought of YR at square dance lass, and Abejo at steeped brew. I enjoy a fermented brew, such as the wonderful Belgian 8D Stella.

    I didn't know MYST, HENRI and SERT, but the perps were solid.

    Speaking of being over too soon, so was the weekend. Time to make coffee. See y'all later.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Another week starting with GG and BV. and a fun offering. The cluing had nice alliteration like Steed Shoppers (I thought of John and Emma) Baseball bobble, Boisterous behavior...

    Once again Argyle nailed the ideal title for the theme. Thanks all and have a great week

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  6. Good morning Argyle, C.C. et al.

    Yes, ideal title for this theme, Argyle! I basically made one pass doing the across clues, and used the downs only to confirm my first guess.

    1-A almost tripped me up, though, because my first thought was "Aeon." Checking 1-D, ALFA, seemed to confirm it. But 2-D had to be GUILT, so AGES appeared! (Whew!!)

    I noticed the numbers at the starts of the theme entries, but didn't stop to think that they were the odd numbers from 1-10, in order. Very nice, Bruce and Gail!

    As TTP noted, the weekend flew by. Now back to the grind.

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  7. Good morning!

    Just one smudge on my otherwise pristine grid -- and at 1a, no less. I started with AEON . Shoulda known that wasn't Monday-friendly.

    Off to perio again today for a post-checkup checkup. Should be a quickie.

    AC -- stupid captcha question. If we're supposed to be helping Google with character recognition, who decides if we "decoded" it correctly?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Good Morning, Argyle and friends. If I remember my math correctly, and it is quite possible that I am not, each of the "odd" numbers is also an ordinal number.

    I thought of Reeses Pieces, which are also made by Hershey's. I am not so familiar with the FIFTH AVENUE BAR.

    Some of the murals of Jose Maria SERT (aka Josep Maria SERT) can be found at Rockefeller Center

    Henri Rousseau.

    Lose on purpose = DIET was my favorite clue of the puzzle.

    QOD: You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. ~ Thomas Hardy (June 2, 1840 ~ Jan. 11, 1928)

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  9. You would like WEB's title then, Odd Ordinals.

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  10. Good morning, folks. Thank you, Gail and Bruce, for a fine puzzle. Thank you, Argyle, for a fine review.

    This is my first posting since Thursday. I almost finished Friday, but not quite. Never started Saturday dues to a heavy schedule. Sunday I worked on off and on throughout the day while at Shriners Hospital in Chicago, but not finished yet. I have a little more time today.

    Got through today's puzzle quite easily. My favorite answer was 28A TEA (Earl Grey, of course).

    I also spelled WILE E wrong at first. I tried WILEY. Fixed it.

    Theme worked out fine. I tried TENTH FRAME at first. Then entered NINTH.

    Tried RAT ON for 57D. The only correct letter was the A. NAMER came later.

    Our favorite ULEE.

    Just had VAL Kilmer in another puzzle recently.

    Have to cut the grass before it rains. See you tomorrow.

    Talked with Spitzboov the other day on the phone. That was nice. We may connect later this summer.

    Abejo

    (24445822 105)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thank you for the puzzle, Bruce & Gail. Thank you for the review, Argyle.

    Easy peasy start to the week, over PDQ. I got the theme after three theme answers, and that helped me get the fourth.

    Hand up for AEON before AGES, but the perps quickly fixed it. I also had WHET before HONE, but again the perps rescued me.

    I didn’t know SERT and couldn’t remember SOO, but the perps solved them too.

    Nice shout-outs to Abejo and YR.

    I've been wondering about d-o's question also!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Musings
    -After two theme answers, I knew there was something odd about this nice puzzle
    -I always told kids who were assigned a project that the hardest part was the FIRST STEP – getting started!
    -The Aerial America feature on Alabama spent a lot of time on SELMA, MLK and the 50 mile march to Montgomery
    -Baghdad, IRAQ was the world’s center of math, science and the liberal arts until 1100 AD when an Islamic fundamentalist Al-Ghazali took over and declared such things the work of the devil. Since then…
    -A rosin use more familiar to me
    -I do wish our Ferm had some more restful sleep from dusk TIL dawn
    -What it looks like after I AERATE my lawn
    -Wasn’t Rocky a GOON before he fought Apollo Creed?
    -An IMPORT beer like Budweiser is not highly thought of in Germany
    -Judge Judy adjudicates TORTS right and left
    -I’ve read that Beverly Sills dispelled the image of the soprano DIVA
    -Motto in some neighborhoods, “Snitches get stitches”
    -FORE! If the heavy rain last night doesn’t preclude that.

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  13. Good morning everyone.

    Agree with Argyle about the puzzle. Had the same WILE E hiccup as Barry and Fermat.
    Had aeons but when the only perp that worked was Alfa, changed to AGES and voilà!
    We just nipped off our spent LILAC flowers yesterday.

    Have a good day.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thanks, Argyle, for the expo. I got the theme at THIRD and was sure of it at FIFTH. I usually forget to look for a theme, so this was a pleasant Monday surprise to me.

    I also thought of YR and Abejo while solving.

    Have a good week!

    Montana

    ReplyDelete
  15. d-otto and Buckeye, the reCaptcha program does not rely on a single interpretation. They send the same image/word/number to many different sites for validation. There is a formula that is applied to the number of identical "solves" before it accepts the word as correct.

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  16. Re: reCAPTCHA

    HeartRX is correct. That's why I had described any attempt to thwart Google's plan (by deliberately entering the wrong letters or numbers) as futile (and petty). I guess it's human nature to want to get it right.

    That said, I think the blurry, wavy letters, the ones you have to get right, needn't be as hard to read as they are (especially considering how easy the wavy numbers are to read).

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  17. Hello Puzzlers -

    Hand up for Aeon first, until Guilt swept it away.

    D Otto 6:38 - I was wondering that very thing! I've had quite a few Captchas that were just the photos, none of the squiggly characters, and assume other Cornerites have too. I would guess they only use photos whose numeric strings are known, but can't guess why they'd bother.

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  18. After seeing "Lose on purpose?" a few times before I've finally learned that it isn't "dive." As for my case of the Mondays I would quibble that "even if" and "although" are not quite the same and that "refry" is just wrong. Although words like lariat and buckaroo have found English meanings by our misunderstanding, I would say that even if you insist that language is dynamic "refrito" does not mean fried twice.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Oops, that should be "by our misunderstanding what Spanish speakers are saying."

    ReplyDelete

  20. Hi all, back for a short visit.

    There should be a question mark in the area where you enter your recaptcha. That will provide help and useful information.

    Google doesn't really explain what they do or how it really works under the covers, but does speak to the benefits.

    Here's a good article on how it all works if you are so inclined.


    How to turn blather into books

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  21. Thanks for thinking of me and for the CSO. I filled in GAL right away, even though GAL is not used much in our modern type of square dancing. The word GAL seems to have a country or mountain influence. We are called LADIES. There is not much of the "hick" in our activity.

    Northwest Runner @ 9:04,I agree with your comment about refried beans not being fried twice and that the word REFRY does not apply to that dish. REFRIED has entered into the English language, but this sense of REFRY has not.
    Wiki on REFRIED, “The name is based on a mistranslation: in Mexican Spanish, the prefix re is an informal form of emphasis meaning "very" or "well", which has been confused with the English re, which more often indicates repetition. Thus, frijoles refritos really means "well-fried beans", not "refried beans". In this dish, the beans are often fried (once), but may also be baked, thus making the term "refried" a misnomer on two counts.”

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  22. Northwest Runner, I agree that your EVEN IF comment is technically correct.
    EVEN IF is used in a supposition or hypothesis.
    EVEN IF Caroline earned a big salary, she would not buy a fast car. Here it means whether or not Caroline earns a big salary.

    Although is used with a fact. Although, Caroline earned a big salary, she would not buy a fast car. Here Caroline, in fact, earned a big salary.

    That being said, crosswords frequently use near synonyms rather than exact synonyms.

    ReplyDelete
  23. One more of the Brady Bunch has been pruned. A memorial shout out to Ann B. Davis who left our midst at age 88. I recall her as Schultzie on the Bob Cummings show 60 years ago.

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  24. Good Morning:

    A nice, smooth beginning of the week from Gail and Bruce, as usual. Caught the theme early on and, as Lucina would say, sashayed right through it all. CSO to YR and Abejo. Also to Boomer with ninth frame.

    Thanks, Bruce and Gail, and thanks, Argyle, for your always spot-on review.

    Our beautiful weather continues but I think some rain is due tomorrow.

    Have a great day.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Ooops! Had NAMES and not NAMER; SERS/SESS could equally have been correct to my ignorant-of-Spanish-muralists mind.

    Thanks for the expo and a great title Argyle!

    REFRY didn't bother me at all, although I did find the "mistranslation" interesting, I didn't know the true meaning of "refrito". Odd that no-one seemed to be pedantically bothered by "SUSHI" being clued as a fish dish, being that it actually means "flavored rice" in Japanese.

    Oh - Owen's Law, of course.


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  26. Hello, Friends!

    What a nice sashay courtesy of Gail and Bruce and a great way to start the week! Thank you both and thank you, Argyle.

    WEES, I started with AEON but then AGES became obvious with ALFA and GUILT. Then WILE E which first was WILEY but TEST changed that. And as soon as FIRST and THIRD appeared, I caught the theme and filled FIFTH, SEVENTH and NINTH then the rest flew by.

    I thought I'd have a Natick at ERROR/HRS but guessed the last R and it was done! That was enough to ELATE me.

    CSO to YR, GAL and Abejo, TEA.

    Have a marvelous Monday, everyone!

    ReplyDelete
  27. NorthwestRunner:
    I wouldn't worry about the literal meaning of transliterated words. English has absorbed many terms from other languages, not only Spanish, and adapted them into our style of speaking.

    YR has it right on refrito. Ooh, that's making me hungry.

    Consider what Steve said about SUSHI, too.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Delightful Monday speed run--many thanks, Bruce and Gail. Also thanks for pointing out the order of the numbers, Marti. And nice expo, as always, Argyle.

    Never heard of SERT, so many thanks for posting the link to that dramatic mural, Hahtoolah.

    Glad to learn what PDQ stands for.

    My insomnia is over, thank goodness--seven hours of sleep last night.

    Have a great week, everbody!

    ReplyDelete
  29. Steve, sorry that some of us sounded pedantic. We find the exact meaning of words interesting and stimulating in the ways that others here focus on computer technology, math or science. I am not bothered by near synonyms in puzzles and am content to accept them. I have few quibbles or nits with these or any other clues. But it was fun to meet another lexophile.
    Yes, the sine qua non of sushi is the vinegared rice, not fish or seafood. I have had sushi with only vegetable or egg and no fish. But I have no quibble with the clue.
    My best ever sushi experience was in Tokyo when I dined alone at a kaiten zushi (converyor belt sushi)
    restaurant frequented by Japanese people only. I sat at a huge circular counter with a conveyor belt circling past me, carrying plates of various sushi. You grabbed one off, ate it and stacked your plates to be counted for your bill. Different colored plates signified different prices. It was a yummy way to taste many small samples.
    Link conveyor belt sushi

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  30. @Yellowrocks - I'm sorry, I didn't mean my comment to sound derogatory, it wasn't intended that way. I should have used "literal" rather than "pedantic". Monday morning brain-mush.

    ReplyDelete
  31. The Odds

    #1

    #3

    #5

    #7

    #9

    Conveyor belt Sushi, what are the odds of winning a prize with dirty dishes?

    ReplyDelete
  32. I haven't posted for a while as I have been busy gardening and haven't finished the CWs until late in the evening. Also visited the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the Lake. Beautiful flowers in the town, excellent food at Vintage Inns, and of course the play (Philadelphia Story).

    Enjoyed today's puzzle although I thought I was going to have more than the usual Monday challenge at first pass. But the perps filled in nicely and once I saw the numbers I was off to the races.

    Like Hahtoolah "I thought of Reeses Pieces, which are also made by Hershey's. I am not so familiar with the FIFTH AVENUE BAR". Hand up for WILEY (gave me a nice cross of MYST and TYST!) and AEONS.

    Another gorgeous day. We waited all winter for this so I am out to enjoy it!!

    ReplyDelete
  33. CrossEyedDave at 12:27 PM --

    Just FYI -- My anti-virus software (Webroot) has been blocking a few of your links lately. Today it was 2 links in 1 post. I don’t know if my software is being conservative and safe, or if it is accurate, so just a heads up for you.

    # 3 was blocked and I got this message:

    "We recommend that you don't continue to this website because it is reported to contain the following threats: Suspicious threat.

    This is a suspicious site. There is a higher than average probability that you will be exposed to malicious links or payloads."

    # 9 was blocked and I got this message:

    "This website has been reported as unsafe. We recommend that you don't continue to this website because it is reported to contain the following threats: Malicious software threat.

    This site might contain links to viruses or other software programs that can reveal personal information stored or typed on your computer to malicious persons."

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  34. I have Kaspersky Security and it didn't raise any flags.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Hello from Scotland!

    Thanks Gail, Bruce and Argyle (and Mensa site for printable puzzle!)

    Hand up for Aeon and DIveS at first.

    CED - I had same issue with some of the links. I'm behind a filter right now.

    I remember WILE E. Coyote from his business card.

    Cheers, -T

    ReplyDelete
  36. Hmm, This does raise a concern. I thought image URL's were safe as they were not interactive.

    Is there a computer specialist out there who can shed some light on this?

    Can you get a virus from an image URL?

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  37. CED - yes. They are called drive-by attacks. The odds are 9 times out of 10 its because Java is outdated. Sometimes its an ad on the web-page that does it. If the drive-by is focused on an industry, say defense, they will try to get malicious ads on say Jane's Defense. These are called water-hole attacks.

    Cheers, -T

    ReplyDelete
  38. More word geeky Japanese food stuff. Soy sauce isn't called soy sauce because it's made from soybeans. Soybeans are called soybeans because they're used to make soy sauce.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Something I didn't know I'd learn today: conveyor belt sushi.

    I watched that YouTube vid, but couldn't hear it very well. Does the dish handling machine score the plate cleanliness? If so, that's clever.

    ReplyDelete
  40. My PDQuickest puzzle yet. Fast but fun with clever theme.

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  41. Dudley, I didn't "get" the sushi video either. This hectic place seemed nothing like my pleasant, relatively quiet experience. Of course, mine was not a tourist attraction, but a local shopper's and salaryman's lunch spot.
    We had no dish "gobbler," no games. We did have different color dishes, because some types of sushi are more expensive than others. The dishes were hardly dirty. We had separate small dishes for the soy sauce for dipping, no charge. We made a neat stack of plates and the wait staff came and counted our plates and gave us a written tab to take to the cashier. The staff also counted our little plastic thingies that represented our drinks. Tea was free. The wait staff cleared our place setting.
    Sushi in Tokyo can be prohibitively expensive. This was a quite inexpensive place, because you serve yourself and it was not a tourist trap.
    DIL and son know all the non touristy, reasonably priced shops for buying almost anything in NYC

    ReplyDelete
  42. Argyle - and the constructors - thanks for a very enjoyable experience.

    CED, as always - Thanks - my computer never objects to any of your humorous and not so humorous images - its a kind of laid-back, liberal, easy going, lets-have-a-look type of computer - like me.

    Its already told me that the odds of getting a virus is 100% .... with this type of blog - so why worry. I have to complain (!!!) ---- your "odds number one" does not show a Lamborghini - I must vehemently complain - where the h--l is the Lamborghini ?!>!?

    Sushi .... Su = rice, Shi = vinegar. End of explanation. No fish, roe, eel, seaweed etc. etc. All food is very expensive in Japan because of high tariffs and restrictions on imports - fruits, staples, meat whatever. In USA sugar sells at twice the world price for the same reason.

    Hatoolah - All arithmetic progressions are ordinal numbers (sets). Odd numbers in an arithmetic sequence are ordinal. So are even numbers and any combinations, thereof, in any arithmetic progression sequence.

    Refried beans should be nomenclatured differently. Nobody 'refries' beans - they're not that stupid. Not meant to be interpreted in a disparaging sense. Meant in a genial. humorous sense.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Oddly Careful @ 3:30,

    My apologies, here are some Lamborghini's. (Just don't click on them, you might catch something....)

    Also, I can see that frying beans twice does not make much sense, & yet, Cooking.com claims that the best French Fries should be fried twice??? (once @ 325, & again at 375 degrees.) Curious...

    Argyle, does your antivirus allow you to scan just my links 3 & 9 separately? My old antivirus used to, but this new one is hard to figure out. I just checked its records, & the amount it has blocked so far is disturbing...

    P.S. Chrome is supposed to be the safest browser on the web for images, but hackers come up with new stuff every day.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Enjoyed the puzzle...wanted "aeons" for "ages" for a rather long time :)...(1a)...loved "Barny Miller"...favorite character: "Fish" with "Wojohowitz" next. The progression of odd, ordinal numbers was quite clever. Wanted "thug" for "goon" (66a). No terribly clever clues but fun!

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  45. CED, as Anon-T pointed out, yes.

    You may recall that in Dec 2012 and into Jan 2013, this blog spot was almost completely shutdown for being listed as a source of malware.

    There was an infected jpg file in the site. D-O used his Chrome browser to identify the specific date that was causing warnings, and Argyle and CC then removed the infected image. Then CC got Blogger to rescan the site and the warning was removed. One of the outcomes of that event was that CC followed a recommendation to add reCaptcha.

    If you are concerned that a site is not clean, such as where you get your jpgs, you should run the safe browsing exec against it.

    Ignore the 3:50 comments as this blogspot is safe. It was most recently tested today.

    http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://crosswordcorner.blogspot.com/

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  46. Re-fried beans are actually re-cooked. After being cooked in water, they are then lightly fried and mashed.

    My captcha is a small, framed piture of a woman. How do I enter that?

    Ah, that's better. Numbers.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Wow, while I worked all this fun information.

    Conveyor belt food- does any US restaurant do this? I never heard of such a combination (Ford and the automat merged!).

    Why is stuff like your Java or Flash needs to be update carry virus to the computer? Is is enough to just ignore?

    TTP, without owning the Corner how did you get to use the webmaster tool?

    ReplyDelete
  48. Just a gentle reminder. Jeopardy enthusiasts might want to watch today.

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  49. There are a couple of sushi conveyor-belt places in London that I know, one overlooking the platforms of Liverpool Street station and one with the same view at Paddington Station.

    @CED - The best fish & chips "chips" (or steak fries as they're called here) are indeed fried twice. The lower temperature frying cooks them through, the higher-temp second frying browns them and makes the outside crispy. What cooking.com probably doesn't tell you is that the best frying medium is lard.

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  50. TTP & Anon-T, thanks for the input!

    TTP, I ran my link #3 thru the diagnostic & got this...

    & link #9 also came up clean.

    However, I do have a question? Note that the above Link#9 info was for the specific pic I posted. Here is what comes up for just the website.

    My question: What if the website is loaded with malware, & antivirus programs pin it out, but the image URL goes directly to the image within the website, bypassing all the crap! Unless the image itself has been poisoned with malware, shouldn't it be safe to view an untainted image from an infected site???

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  51. Thanks Steve! But Lard!!!

    Holy Heart Attack!

    Here they swear by peanut oil, (but tomorrow that will probably kill you too!)

    But I heard that a trick the street vendors do to make that 1st fry taste as good as the last, is when they change the oil, (if they ever do...) you have do add a small amount of the used oil into the new oil to get that crispy street flavor! (new oil just boils the crap out of food, it's the residue that adds flavor...)

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  52. Lemonade, et al,

    Hackers exploit vulnerabilities that are often found in down level versions of Java, Flash, your browser, your Operating System, your Antivirus product, your Firewall. It's almost always better to keep everything up to date.

    The Safe Browsing Diagnostic isn't limited to Site Webmasters.
    Anyone can use it, and for any site. Just replace the stuff after site= with the url of the site you want to test.

    Copy this and put it in your address bar and press enter. You'll see a clean report from the site.

    http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://crosswordcorner.blogspot.com/

    Now replace the url with this http://ebay.com/ and you will see a report of a site that is being used to download and install software without user consent.

    The safe browsing tool is giving you a report of that site. You aren't going to the actual site so you are safe.

    So why isn't ebay doing something about it ? Their site is e-bay, not ebay. e-bay is clean.

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  53. TTP, Anon-T,

    Thanks for all the info and the work.

    So does that mean my security software is returning false positives? Is there anything I can do? (I am on automatic updates for my security software and browser.)

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  54. Buckeye Bob - What TTP said about reputation services. It is the reputation of a site in general that is reported in AV not the specific link.

    CED - If you are sending us to just the photo (which I can now see because I am not at the office and the site's reputation isn't blocking it) we are all safe. No one should worry.

    Also what TTP said about Flash, Java, IE (esp. if you are on XP still), there are bugs in older versions of the software (and sometimes new ones discovered that aren't publicly know (called 0-days, pronounced zero-days (like patient 0 in an epidemic))) that can be exploited without the user "doing" anything but visiting a web-site that exploits that bug. That's why the safest thing a home-user can do is keep their software up to date. Unfortunately, Java, et.al. doesn't make it easy (I saw on my wife's computer 4 different versions of Java 3 exploitable).

    Back to the SUSHI - I've not seen the conveyer belt, but but there was a fine restaurant in SanFrancisco's Japan Town that floated SUSHI by on coloured plates. The colour of the plate indicated the price. Pretty cool and tasty too!

    Cheers, -T

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  55. Thanks AvgJoe. Your obvious Jeopardy hint made for a very anti-climatic viewing of one of my daily enjoyments.

    Maybe later you can tell me who tomorrow's puzzle constructor is.

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  56. Bad links bottom line:

    If you are not sure, don't click on it!

    (But tell us so we don't step in it too!)

    Here is a hot link to TTP's Ebay diagnostic versus e-bay....

    There is no way I can do a diagnostic for every link, so pls point out anything that seems suspicious!

    Speaking of suspicious,, Tibeni, Brookstone is advertising this device for Fathers Day! Dumbest thing ever for $30 bucks...

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  57. Anon @ 7:07, I can assure you it was never my intention to interrupt your cliimax. Please accept my most sincere condolences.

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  58. Anon-T, I am glad you are here.

    CED, the diagnostic is for websites rather than webpages. So just up to the .com, .gov, .edu, .org etc...

    Buckeye Bob, many AV / Firewall packages would prefer to err on the safe side, and some may be more overzealous than others in updating their lists of suspected sites.

    Security suite providers often rely on third parties that provide "blacklist" URLS / IP addresses that are known or suspected of containing malware.

    Sometimes these third party providers aren't exactly what you would refer to as six sigma operations.

    CC and I did a test using our own IPs quite a while ago, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that out of the many "reputation" providers, a couple of them actually listed our IPs as questionable.

    You could report to your provider that you have received a false positive.

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  59. Thanks for your, er...um, apology.

    I'm just happy that you can't tell me the outcome of tonight's Royals, Cardinals match-up.

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  60. I confess to not understanding why being informed the identity of tomorrow's constructor a few hours in advance seems to be upsetting to some folks but I accept that it is and have been careful not to give anything away when I am able to work on the puzzle the night before.

    Lucina (or anyone else), did you watch Sunday Morning and see the Moment of Nature at the end? It was filmed at a beautiful woodsy park in Georgia. At the beginning, I was delighted to see several shots of dogwood trees in bloom. Not only were they beautiful but the brought back great memories of our yard in Virginia in the Spring.

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  61. Hola Everyone, I finished the puzzle early on today, but had a lot of errands to run and chores to do so I'm just getting to the blog now. I think just about everything has been said.

    The puzzle was easy, and I did get the theme after the first couple of theme fills.

    I did like the clues for diet/Loses on purpose and Steed stoppers/reins.

    The CA Coven is going to get together on Wed. for lunch. Lucina will be joining us from Arizona. She is visiting here in CA so we could call her part of this CA Coven group. It will be fun to see Lucina and Dodo.

    Have a great rest of the evening.

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  62. Avg Joe, I wasn't happy with the way Jeopardy ended tonight but it wasn't your fault. All good things must come to an end. She is a very appealing champion.

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  63. What TTP failed to tell you is that he patiently guided me through each ordeal we've faced, behind the scenes.

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  64. How do you know what the theme of the puzzle is?

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  65. The theme is usually found in the longest answers. The name for the puzzle is whatever I come up with. Sundays are the only ones that arrive with a name from the constructor.

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