google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Sunday June 1, 2014 Gia Christian

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Jun 1, 2014

Sunday June 1, 2014 Gia Christian

Theme: "The Sound of Victory" - V sound is added to the end of the first word in each theme entry.

22A. Traveler's nightmare due to a road crew strike? : PAVE AS YOU GO. Pay as you go.

27A. Wait on a knight? : SERVE GALAHAD. Sir Galahad.

52A. Rocky in a serious mood? : GRAVE SQUIRREL. Rocky the Flying Squirrel. The base phrase is "Gray squirrel".

88A. Make statues of leading reps? : CARVE SALESMEN. Car salesman

113A. Computer maintenance tool? : DRIVE CLEANER. Dry cleaner. Do you clean your keyboard with Gas Duster? I think I might have ruined our last keyboard that way. The spray was so powerful that  a few keys did not re-bounce easily.

121A. Throw out all your stuff? : SAVE NOTHING. Say nothing.
 
3D. Ancient greeting? : WAVE BACK WHEN. Way back when.

65D. Crack up during a jackknife? : DIVE LAUGHING. Die laughing.

I mentioned this before: sound addition is more interesting and challenging than simply letter string addition. You need to be really imaginative.

Gia Christian is Rich's alias name, it's an anagram of "Again It's Rich". I love when theme entries intersect, Rich makes it so easy. He did it in his last Sunday also (Nora Pearlstone byline). The only time I made it happen, I was so excited!
  
Across:

1. Cal. sequence : M T W T F. Cool cluster of consonants.

6. One pulling in pushers : NARC. Pushers the drug dealers. Yellowrocks might have seen these professional pushers when she visited Japan.



10. They're grabbed on corners : CABS

14. Fashionable fold : CUFF



18. "__ Ben Jonson": literary epitaph : ORARE. Misspelled in the inscription as O RARE.



19. Similar: Pref. : HOMEO

20. Other, in Oaxaca : OTRA

21. Paris possessive : A TOI

24. Checking aid : REIN

25. Glacial lake : TARN

26. 1954 Emmy winner for Best Female Star of a Regular Series : EVE ARDEN. "Our Miss Brooks".

30. Credit report item : DEBT

31. "Just like that!" sound : SNAP

33. Domingo, e.g. : DIA. Domingo = Sunday. Not the tenor.

34. Enviable mark : A PLUS

35. List of candidates : SLATE

37. Stake for Keats?: Abbr. : ANAG. Stake and Keats are anagrams.

39. Faux pas : SLIP

42. Unacceptable : NOT OK

44. They aren't major players : COGS

46. Social worker's backlog : CASELOAD

49. Actress Rowlands : GENA. Loved "The Notebook"

50. Legendary rescue boat : ARK

56. Pepper's title: Abbr. : SGT. Sgt Pepper.

57. Hems, say : SEWS

59. Dressy accessories : TIE CLIPS

60. Letter-shaped fastener : T NUT

62. Baseball commissioner before Ueberroth : KUHN (Bowie). OK, TTP, Husker Gary & Buckeye Bob, what did this guy achieve? He's before my time (2001).


63. Eighth Avenue subway in New York : A TRAIN. Never been to NY.

64. Joined : SIGNED UP

68. Wee hr. : ONE AM

70. 2000 Gere title role : DR. T

71. Chickadee cousin : TIT

73. Deli specialty : KNISH

74. System used in home decor : FENG SHUI. Cantonese and Hong Kongese are very into Feng Shui.

77. Largest Bay Area county : SONOMA. New trivia to me.

80. Kind of round : OVAL

81. Dated : SEEN

82. Bag on the back : RUCKSACK. Oh, I Just call it backpack.

84. __ Park: Queens area : REGO

85. Log shaper : ADZ

91. Villain Luthor : LEX.  And 95. Singer McEntire : REBA. And 6D. Reagan biographer Peggy : NOONAN. And 89D. Kilmer of "Top Gun" : VAL. And 98D. Wallace of "E.T." : DEE. And 118. Jazzy James : ETTA. All straightforward clues.

92. Ancient mountain crossing, say : TREK

94. Where keyboard users can get tips : PIANO BAR. Rich plays piano. Lots of constructors are musicians.

97. Got on : FARED

99. Gooey stuff : GLOP

100. Small-runway aircraft acronym : STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing). Gimme for Dudley.

103. Pale wine : BLUSH

106. Jewish folklore creature : GOLEM

108. Part of KJV: Abbr. : VER. KJV = King James Version. We had this clue before.

110. Wine seller : SHOP

112. Turkish general : AGHA

117. Became harder to bear : WORE THIN

119. Rajah's spouse : RANI

120. Serious surprise : JOLT

123. Revered one : ICON

124. Bassoon kin : OBOE

125. Continental boot? : ITALY


126. Nearing the hour : TEN TO

127. Personnel office array : PENS

128. Curve : BEND

129. Substance in the sea's H2O : NACL

130. Element #18 : ARGON
 
Down:

1. Tourists' rentals : MOPEDS. I never rented a moped.

2. Tour : TRAVEL

4. Buy for, as dinner : TREAT TO

5. Trepidation : FEAR

7. Asia's __ Darya river : AMU

8. Rules, briefly : REGS

9. Murmured from a cote : COOED

10. Oregon State city : CORVALLIS. Beavers. The Ducks are based in Eugene.

11. Exactly, with "to" : A TEE

12. Two-masted vessel : BRIG

13. Capital SW of Muscat : SANA'A

14. Mail-order purchase enclosure, often : CATALOG. Don't order flowers/plants/seeds from Michigan Bulb. Awful!

15. Pac-12 team : UTAH UTES

16. Really cheap : FOR A SONG

17. Discovery : FIND

19. Doglike scavenger : HYENA

23. Active campus gp. during the Vietnam War : SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)

28. Rebel : RISE UP

29. Hosp. staffer : LPN

32. Racing safety vehicle : PACE CAR

36. Breakfast food : EGG. OK, tell me what's your typical breakfast in the summer?

38. Like old Paris streets : GAS-LIT

40. High school suffix : IOR. Oh, like Junior or Senior.

41. Story opener : PART I

43. Kit __: candy bar : KAT

45. Span. lass : SRTA

47. Newspaper ad meas. : SQ IN (Square Inch)

48. Leader after Mao : DENG. In fact, Hua Guofeng succeeded Mao in 1976, but was ousted by Deng in 1978. This is like cluing OBAMA as "President after Clinton".

50. Would like from : ASK OF

51. Meet with the old gang : REUNE.

53. River islet : AIT

54. "Rigoletto" composer : VERDI

55. Blockhead : LUNK. I need to use this word.

58. Stocking mishaps : SNAGS

61. Domingo, e.g. : TENOR

64. Old porticos : STOAS

66. Dictionary note subject : USAGE

67. Showy flowers : PHLOX. I think JD has this in her garden.

69. PC time meas. : MSEC

71. Gertrude Stein confidante Alice B. __ : TOKLAS. Her lover. Lots of juicy gossip in this book.



72. Many newspaper ads : INSERTS

75. Sloppy stack : HEAP

76. Strip of gear, as a ship : UNRIG

77. Walkout walk-in : SCAB. Nice clue.

78. Year McKinley was reelected : MCM.  1900.

79. 1966 A.L. Fireman of the Year Jack : AKER . Relievers are called "Firemen". I have no memory of this guy at all. Seattle Pilots! Long long time ago.



82. Fixed up : RENOVATED

83. Event to be played in Pinehurst, N.C., in 2014 : US OPEN. Gimme for Argyle.

85. DOJ enforcer : ATF

86. Contest that's over in seconds : DRAG RACE

87. Prepare to shoot at : ZERO IN ON

90. Cornhusker's st. : NEB

93. Temperature units : KELVINS. Learning moment to me.

96. Poppycock : BLATHER

101. Sighed line : OH WELL

102. Senseless : LOONY

104. Eastern faith : SHINTO. Literally "way of the gods". Japanese "To" = Cantonese "Tao". Shin = Gods. In Chinese, it's SHEN.

105. "Please hold" equivalent : HANG ON

107. Not usually an opportunity for advancement : McJOB

109. Amber, for one : RESIN

111. With 116-Down, shared equitably : PRO. And 116. See 111-Down : RATA

113. Plumbing problem : DRIP

114. Hoop site : LOBE. Hoop earrings.

115. North Carolina school : ELON. Rich saves Musk references for Saturdays.

122. Little sucker? : VAC. Nice clue. Little indicates abbreviation.

C.C.


42 comments:

  1. Birthdays come and birthdays fly.
    Who wants them around? Not me, not I!
    Reminders of mortality seen
    Happy Birthday is a dirge, I ween,
    Tells the Reaper I'm getting nigh!

    "Another year older and deeper in debt,"
    Tennessee Ernie had it right, you bet!
    We accumulate fears
    As we add to our years;
    But am I ready to go? Not yet!

    My body is breaking, getting old, getting grey,
    I sometimes wonder that it lasts the day.
    I need no reminder I'm at Death's gate,
    I can see for myself I disintegrate,
    But when Death beckons -- I'll kick all the way!

    I wonder if the Grim Reaper's a dame?
    After all, we don't really know her name.
    But the gal with that sickle
    Is sure mighty fickle,
    And that's why I think it's a girl who's to blame!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, I finished it, with virtually no red-letter help. I had left it on from Saturday, and didn't realize it until a couple of my earliest entries were red. Turned it off then, and didn't use it again. What I did have to do near the end was tear out most of what I had surrounding WAVE BACK WHEN & GRAVE SQUIGGEL, uh, I mean GRAYS QUIRREL, uh, you know! Figuring out the gimmick early didn't help me all that much with some of the individual entries.

    Couldn't think of a way to lim this puzzle, so decided it was time to unleash my anti-birthday tirade. If any of you have ever noticed I never wish anyone a HB, that's why, and not because I'm a an antisocial anchorite and a crotchety curmudgeon. (I am, but that's beside the point.) Here's a video of the Volga Boatmen's Happy Birthday (6:25). Sorry about the sound effects, I couldn't find another version this good without them. There are many versions of it on the net, maybe CED or Manac can find a better one.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Morning, all!

    I really loved the theme on this one, although some of the theme answers took a bit of work to figure out. I was totally thinking of the wrong "Rocky" for the longest time, for example, before Rocket J. SQUIRREL finally occurred to me.

    There was a lot of stuff in the regular fill that was out of my wheelhouse today, however. Never heard of a BRIG referring to anything other than the jail on a ship, for example. CORVALLIS was a complete unknown as well, which made that whole section up there difficult to get.

    Other complete unknowns included KUHN and AKER.

    My only real nit about the standard fill was that I kept trying to think of what you call a SHOP that sells wine and couldn't come up with anything that would fit in four letters. I really hate overly specific clues for generic answers.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good morning!

    I was zooming right along, but got stuck near the bottom. ZOOMing when I should have been ZEROing and BALONEY when it needed to be BLATHER. The train made it into the station, but it was a couple of minutes behind schedule.

    It's much easier to convert Celsius to Kelvin (and vice versa) than it is to convert either to Fahrenheit. Why do we keep using it?

    I remember EVE ARDEN more for the radio version than for the TV series. We used to gather around the big floor-model Philco to listen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. White rabbit, white rabbit. Welcome to June.

    Well the cluing certainly gives an I sight into Rich' s mind. It was fun but Jack Ale e was totally obscure.

    Below Kuhn on the other hand was a very big influence in baseball for many years. You can read about him
    HERE

    ReplyDelete
  6. Good morning. It's been raining for two days way down yonder in New Orleans. I have to say the SW corner did me in. I had ADZ DRIVE RANI ICON and PENS and penciled in ATF but went in the wrong direction with ZONE IN ON instead of ZERO. Never heard of GOLEM or DEE Wallace. C.C.- KELVINS are the same as degrees centigrade (Celsius as it is now called) but start at absolute zero (-273) which makes water freeze at 273 Kelvin and boil at 373 Kelvin. Enough science. I don't think I have ever worked a puzzle and got correct answers with so many perps. AMU ANAG DIA VER ORARE DRT TOKLAS PHLOX KNISH REGO AKER BRIG ATOI EVEARDEN- all perps.
    The A-TRAIN was a song by Duke Ellington. As for LOONY, I always think of Jo Don LOONEY a NFL player who was really loony. Great running back who made Joe Namath seem normal; unfortunately he died at age 46.

    I have owned four boats, 3 sailboats and one trawler; am very familiar with sloop, ketch, yawl, catamaran, but have never heard the term BRIG.

    Speaking of FENG SHUI, I wonder how somebody becomes an 'expert' in convincing others that they need their help.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I enjoyed the puzzle and CC's comments. The theme helped a lot. Yes, CC, I saw those pushers in Japan. In the anonymity of a crowded train, the traditional Japanese politeness was not so evident. From Wiki, "Japan has a reputation for females being groped on trains and buses."
    This solve went well for the most part.I had two wrong cells. I knew GOLEM right off, having met him in
    several novels, but I wasn't sure of the last vowel. When I got D_E for 98D I didn't go back and fill in the other E. Duh!
    Then I wrote AH WELL instead of OH WELL for 101D. Seeing CC's explanation, Short Takeoff and Landing, I shoulda known. OH WELL, I solved the Fri. and Sat. puzzles correctly.
    TREK doesn't seem ancient to me and I had IDOL instead of ICON, so it took a while to come up with DRAG RACE and KELVIN.
    BRIGs were sailed by the Royal Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries. I have read many rip roaring novels about the Royal Navy battles involving brigs.
    My mom had lovely PHLOX when I was a kid.
    This is a glorious weekend here, blue skies and just right temps. Enjoy your Sunday.

    ReplyDelete
  8. My lol mistake today; calvins for kelvins.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Rabbit Rabbit

    Hello Puzzlers -

    Managed to chug along mostly, and the theme was certainly gettable, but I got fouled up putting Gina before Gena. There was no way I could suss Utah Utes from there. Needed red letters to fix that.

    Morning, C.C., thanks for reminding us about Rich's anagram of the day. I had forgotten.

    D Otto - I'm with you, it's time we retired the arbitrary Fahrenheit scale. As with everything else in the metric system, Celsius makes more sense.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Whew! Like Barry G., I had Rocky Balboa in my head for way too long. But I eventually got two "R"s and SQUIRREL emerged. At the end, way past my usual cut-off time, the NW corner was resisting. I finally got the down clues figured out. MTWTF never occurred to me (I was thinking "Cal." stood for "calories" not "calendar").

    By the way, the misspelling on Ben Jonson's gravestone is "JOHNSON". There's no evidence that "O RARE" was meant to be "ORARE" ("pray for").

    [38:34]

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thank you for the puzzle, Gia / Rich. Thank you for the excellent review, C.C.

    As someone said recently, I don’t know if crossword puzzles are getting harder, or I am getting dumber. This was another puzzle I worked for an hour, and still had a lot of white space, especially in the SW. I turned on red letter help, took out my wrong answers, and finally finished in 80 minutes. Ugh!

    I got the theme after several answers, and it did help with several of the remaining answers, especially DRIVE CLEANER. I had D_I__ CLEANER and just couldn’t see it.

    I remember Bowie KUHN’s time as MLB Commissioner as filled with strife, for the players and the owners. But there were achievements, too. IMO, he did some things that were needed by a sport that was stuck in its ways, even if they were unpopular.

    I had long ago forgotten Jack AKER, but I was able to dredge up his name with 2 perps.

    I’m not sure I get the point of 127A Personnel office array: PENS. Any office would have lots of pens. Why personnel? Thoughts?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Dang! atT/Tared (FARED?) looked right to me, Rich. I’ll take my one bad cell and somehow carry on with my Sunday. After PA(Y)VE came through I tried to get SERVE to be SIRVE but now agree with CC’s take on “sound addition”. What fun in this great puzzle.

    Musings
    -Seeing Rocky as a squirrel and not a boxer generated a Duh!
    -I would DIVE SCREAMING
    -I graded what I knew would be an A PLUS test and then used that as a Checking Aid
    -anaG, GasliT and drT took some time but were all great
    -Many sexist, racist, ethnic comments of 40 years ago are NOT OK today
    -Bowie’s actions weren’t as obvious as Bud Selig’s (e.g. wild card, interleague play)
    -I haven’t seen ONE AM in the morning for quite a while. Are they still making that?
    -In what movie is Jamie Lee Curtis requesting “help” with her RUCKSACK (:10)
    -Be careful when you say STOL (stall) to a pilot. Right Dudley?
    -Why do some wait staff (PC term?) have 10 PENS in their aprons?
    -We are traveling through SONOMA County this summer
    -Daughter bought Emma a car FOR A SONG. However, there was a $1,300 encore.
    -A lot of those SDS kids are doing what they professed to hate in the 60’s
    -Fabulous All I ASK OF you (7:59)
    -In my science lab it was degrees KELVIN not KELVINS
    -A McJob is a great and honorable place to start.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Argyle, we've got a local handyman (have heavy equipment will do most anything). He's got a professionally painted sign on his property listing his many services, including "install calverts." In our town we've got ditches rather than curb and gutter, so every lot needs at least one "calvert." And you've got to pay the city a license fee to put one in.

    ReplyDelete
  14. D-Otto and Dudley

    Fahrenheit, pounds, ounces, and miles are not about to go away.

    Physicists and chemists can't even agree on standards.

    Joules, ergs,or Calories ? Which one to use. Go to Mexico and the nutrition is listed on packages as joules.

    Angstroms or nanometers?
    Bar or Pascal or torr or atm or mmHg?

    liters or cubic centimeters or millimeters cubed?

    Even people who only know the metric system confuse mass with force. I never heard of a 'sea kilometer' KNOTS are not going away.

    In short, there will never be a system used by everybody. I say to learn a system and learn it well because the young people today have no clue about converting ounces to pints to quarts, let alone going from English to Metric. My only problem is with tools, so I spray paint all metric tools orange to keep from stripping the tops of bolts and nuts.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Addendum
    -Fahrenheit remains the temp scale in The Bahamas, Belize, The Cayman Islands, Palau besides The USA and its assorted territories.
    -All analog and digital thermometers in my lab were Celsius
    -My physics teacher told us in 1962 that America would be all metric by 1970
    -While fishing in Canada, I saw a weather forecast for 26° for the next day and freaked because I didn’t bring a coat for the first week in June! It was a beautiful spring day!
    -Pick your favorite cartoon on this subject!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Good morning, C.C., and friends. This wasn't one of my favorite Sunday puzzles, but I eventually caught the theme with SERVE GALAHAD after a pass or two.

    Cal. sequence = MTWTF was not a good start for me today. I was thinking the Cal. stood for Calculus.

    Am I the only one who thought of the late Florida SENator Claude Pepper in lieu of SGT. Pepper of the Beatles fame?

    The GOLEM and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker is one of the best books I have read in a long time. I highly recommend it to the blog readers.

    QOD: Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world. ~ Marilyn Monroe (née Norma Jean Mortenson, June 1, 1926 ~ Aug. 5, 1962)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hello, Word Warriors!

    Owen, if today is your birthday, I wish you a happy one. For me, having another birthday means I get to enjoy yet another day and perhaps another year.

    Rich (Gia Christian) I'm sorry to say this puzzle did not give me as much pleasure as I would like although I managed to solve it in spite of numerous unknowns.

    Having said that, I enjoyed the clueing for CABS, CUFF and PIANO BAR.

    Many sparkling lights did go off for me when GAS LIT emerged instead of a French term and when I recalled the song for A-TRAIN. Ditto for PART I not "ONCE" as in once upon a time.

    ITALY as the continental boot supplanted TRUNK and NACL, SALT.

    And, hello, Argyle. I had CALVINS, toom which of course spoiled TREK and since it was ancient, TREC seemed all right but then FARAD wasn't getting on. And I was fairly sure of GOLEM but had to verify it with the big G.

    SONOMA is not only a county but a brand name as well. And speaking of California, CA Coven, are you ready?

    Have a fantastic Sunday, everyone! June is upon us and so is the heat.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Um, too should be followed by a comma not m.

    Hahtoolah:
    Welcome back! I missed you and the quote of the day.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Hi Everyone:

    I spent almost as much time on today's puzzle as I did on yesterday's, which was way more than usual!

    I agree with Barry on some of the cluing. And I agree with Hatoolah on the overall solve. I, too, thought cal was calculus and Rocky was Balboa.

    Thanks, CC, for an excellent expo. (I don't eat breakfast, but if I did, it would probably be bacon and eggs, toast and OJ. I don't drink coffee or tea.)

    Happy June 1st. My captcha is a word (very easy to read) and numbers. That's the first combo like that in a long time.

    BTW, I watched Labor Day last night On Demand. Has anyone seen it? I enjoyed it-Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin are the leads.

    ReplyDelete
  20. C.C.:
    I forgot to tell you that for breakfast in summer I usually have a fruit smoothie with yogurt and a little milk. It's refreshing.

    Thank you for the excellent review and for revealing the many obscurities in this puzzle.

    Rich, thank you for the mental workout.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Happy Sunday everybody!

    Sorry to say this puzzle does not rank among my favs. Open question - who edits an editor's puzzles, for both content and cluing...?

    Por exemplo, I'm going to my High School 40th reunion next weekend, but I'd never say I'm going to REUNE with any of them. Now, I'm sure it is a word, but it still made me wince as I typed it in....

    So, not an A PLUS, I'd give it a B MINUS at best....

    That being said, I did enjoy the following clues: One pulling in pushers and Walkout walk-in....

    Nuff said, Doc out.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Lucina, OwenKL,

    I agree completely with Lucina about birthdays. It is good to recognize being alive another day, completing another year, and starting a new year. There is no guarantee we will live until old age, so enjoy life while you are able to!

    But OwenKL, you are entitled to your opinion, and you are entitled to express it.

    C.C., Hahtoolah,

    I had a different thought on 56A Pepper's title: Abbr. when I read it. I did get SGT, but I was thinking about Sgt. “Pepper” Anderson on Police Woman (1974 – 1978), played by Angie Dickinson. Right answer, wrong reason!

    Police Woman IMDb

    ReplyDelete
  23. Thanks for the write-up, C.C. I drink my breakfast, coffee, strong and black.

    I didn't like this when I started out, it seems all I was hitting were "abbr.", "say" and "with" clues but eventually I started to make progress and enjoyed seeing the clever theme become apparent.

    Two clunkers for me were "REUNE" and "MTWTF", I have to say.

    LA Kings hockey later. Good luck to the Blackhawks fans on this blog and here's to a good game!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Cal. sequence - I couldn't think of anything Cal. could be except California.
    Pepper' title - the only Peppers I could think of were Pepper Potts (Tony Stark/Iron Man's sidekick/personal secretary/factotum/amenusis) and Dr Pepper.
    Hand up for Rocky the boxer (disgraceful for me, since cartoons are one of my "things").

    ReplyDelete
  25. Good afternoon everyone.

    A little easier than some Sunday puzzles. Basically agree with other's comments.
    7d - AMU Darya is the Oxus river of antiquity that Alexander TG crossed circa 335 BC.
    19d - HYENA may be doglike in appearance, but it is not in the canine family. It is a carnivore in its own family taxonomically.
    43d - KAT. Kit Kat is one of my favorite noshes.
    82a - RUCKSACK - German Rücken means 'back'. L German Rüch.
    85a - ADZ. We used an adz to skin bark off tree limbs used for poles, etc.
    92a - TREK. Agree with YR's comment.
    93d - I think of KELVIN as a temperature scale starting at absolute 0º. (Celsius 0º is at the freezing point of water.) Degrees difference in Kelvin is the same as degrees difference in Celsius.

    ReplyDelete
  26. There are a couple of interesting facts about Jack Aker:

    His is of Potawatomi Indian ancestry and was honored by President Clinton for his work with Native American children.

    Also, for fans of Jeopardy there is this from Wiki: "Aker was living in Arizona with his wife, former sportswriter and broadcaster Jane Charnin-Aker. Their son, Joshua Charnin-Aker, appeared on "Jeopardy!" Kids Week in 2002, competed in the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Swimming Olympic Trials, and was an All-American swimmer for Stanford University. Another son, Matthew Aker, played baseball at Ole Miss and was the head baseball coach at Greensboro College in North Carolina. His youngest son, Adam Charnin-Aker, played for the 2011 and 2012 Arizona State Champion Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, AZ, and is a pitcher for Dartmouth College as a member of the class of 2016."

    P.S. Would have loved to see NOONAN clued as Caddyshack caddy! Husker, do you or your buddies ever use this tactic?

    ReplyDelete
  27. We just saw this delightful little film called Chef. It also has a brief scene in and around the Orleans area. Don't go see it if you are hungry, though. Be warned, there is some "language" in scenes near the beginning.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Speaking of baseball, there's a good game in Stillwater. Cal State Fullerton is down by one to the Huskers in the bottom of the 7th. Loser goes home, winner has to play OSU and possibly beat them twice.

    Oh crap. Now it's tied with one out.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Musings 2
    -Anon - I’ve seen that tactic used before but only among people who really know each other and if it occurs during a fun round
    -I always thought BRIGs were on ships and not the ship itself.
    -OwenKL ;-)
    Owen won’t celebrate the anniversary
    Of an event he considers so cursory
    Not cuz he’s a curmudgeon
    Or residing in high dudgeon
    Did something happen in his nursery?

    -Happy Unbirthday, my friend. I’ll never bring it up again.
    -BTW, Jamie Lee Curtis was showing her, uh, rucksack in the movie Trading Places
    -Bkfst = Black Folgers with PBJ on an English Muffin. If I’m eating on the run, substitute and Egg McMuffin from someone with a McJob.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Hi Y'all! Good one, Rich! I caught on to the theme early which helped with the others. They were worth some hearty chuckles. Great, C.C. Thanks!

    Hand up for the prize fighter. I got stuck with SQUIRe... I had trouble with "rep", thinking state or congressional representative. Many unknowns WEES, but they seemed to perp in well.

    On the "cal." clue, I was doing downs and getting nothing until the last two in that block where I did have TF. The light dawned on calendar then.

    I'd forgotten GOLEM until GO perped in and I could get the rest. I thought "Paris streets" might be "cobble" (stone) at first.

    I didn't know a TARN was a glacial lake. I use that word a lot in a Kindle word game I play daily, but had never stopped and looked it up.

    Owen, I could relate to your poem today except to your sexist last verse. LOL! Men always want to blame a girl for everything. Life can be very painful. You know you're in trouble when a friend dies and you're envious because his pain is over.

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  31. Anonymous@2:03:
    That IS interesting about AKER though not being a sports fan it's not surprising I don't know of him. If the son went to Chaparral H.S. they likely lived or live close to me. It's only about three miles north of me.

    Sptizboov:
    Thank you for the informative list. Now if I could just remember it.

    I also thought of SGT. Pepper (Angie Dickinson).

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  32. I just thought "brig" was the abbreviation for "brigantine" which I knew was a ship.

    My captcha has no numbers or letters. What's going on today? Okay, now I've got numbers.

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  33. Well what do you know?? It’s already getting on towards evening, and I’m just now able to sit down and read everyone’s comments. I did not see who the constructor was until I read your write-up, C.C. No wonder I had so much fun with this one. I love sound changing puzzles and laughed out loud when I finally got PAVE AS YOU GO. I could just visualize the scenario…

    RUCKSACK and GOLEM were gimmes. Hahtoolah, thanks for the book recommendation! I just downloaded the eBook version to my iPad, but have to read “12 Years a Slave” for our June book club meeting first. I can’t wait to get to yours, though!!

    My problems were with the sports clues (except for US OPEN!)

    I’m with Steve on breakfast – black coffee. But if we are someplace with a group and everyone is having breakfast, then I usually opt for fresh fruit covered with some vanilla or raspberry yogurt, topped with granola.

    Owen – I celebrate my birthday every day, because I never know if I will get to see the next one!!

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  34. I liked this puzzle but had a couple of write-overs: ZOOM in on before ZERO in on and IDOL before ICON. Otherwise, it was smooth sailing.

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  35. Knew I wasn't done -

    Breakfast: Orange juice with lots of pulp
    Old fashioned Oatmeal cooked exactly as shown on Quaker Oats box. Topped with tablespoon of blackstrap molasses and a little 2% milk.
    Starbucks French Roast coffee.
    Weekends: In place of cereal substitute 1 or 2 fried eggs sunny side up with cover on. English muffin or raisin bread toast.

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  36. Greetings!

    Ya got me, Rich! Had to use a few red letters!
    Thanks anyway for clever theme! Swell write-up, CC!

    Any great current movies on cable? (Besides Quartet.)

    Cheers!

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  37. Love love love your poem today, Owen. My feelings exactly. I gave up birthdays years ago!

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  38. Hi all !

    Big DNF for me. Made one pass in each direction, finished my coffee, and had breakfast. This morning it was two eggs, three pancakes, and some cantaloupe. Breakfast is my primary meal, so today was light.

    CC, I would say that I was "coming of age" baseball wise when Bowie Kuhn became the commissioner.

    AFAIC, he was and represented and was part of the oligarchy. He was stuck in the past, and was too tied to the status quo.

    Curt Flood et al challenged the system. You should also read about Andy Messersmith. And if you really want to understand about that time frame in baseball, read Jim Bouton's Ball Four. I read that when it first came out, and learned about black beauties and bennies.

    I had no idea that my baseball heroes were so addicted to speed to get them "up" for the games.

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  39. I am trying watching TBBT again. I do not get it. It is sooo boring. The people are all meh.


    I enjoyed today's puzzle, definitely not meh.

    Yellowrocks

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  40. I started this late last night and worked on it today before and after going out for lunch with my brother-in-law and his family. I had the same reaction to it as Hahtoolah and Lucina so I'll take Thumper's approach. I really like the Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly puzzle; others didn't. Some of you liked this one; I was luke-warm.

    Breakfast: V-8 juice, sometimes a grapefruit half, coffee with creamer. Sometimes raisin bran with a little granola added for sweetness, sometimes Quaker Oats with half-and-half and a little brown sugar, sometimes eggs. I like eggs cooked almost anyway including soft boiled.

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  41. Pre-breakfast, two cups of coffee with cream while solving the morning crossword puzzle.

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  42. I thought of brigantine as soon as I saw the clue. Glad someone else did too.

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