google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Saturday, Feb 20th, 2016, C.C. Burnikel

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Feb 20, 2016

Saturday, Feb 20th, 2016, C.C. Burnikel

Theme: C.C.C.W.~!

Words: 72 (missing J,K,Q,X,Z)

Blocks: 31

So nice to see our own blog host as the constructor of the 'Saturday Struggle'.  I was a little miffed by the SE corner, with just a few too many proper names, but a WAG here and there and I prevailed - within my personal allotted time AND without Google or red-letter help, no less~!  Yay~!  Triple 9x6 corners, almost triple 8-letter corners in the Down, and two 8-letter fills round out today's long answers;

32. Chain with day care : PETSMART  - I take it they have a pet-sitting service.  Also, we have a referential clue at 42a. Brand at 32-Across : IAMS

38. Refreshing ice cream with blended cookies : MINT OREO

 58. Step out : GO ON A DATE - this phrase is rather unfamiliar to me....  :7((

 63. Tom Jones hit written by Paul Anka : SHE'S A LADY - I am a huge fan of Tom Jones; I grew up listening to his records because my parents are from England.  I bought his "Rescue Me" album, long out of date, on CD from a guy in Russia through eBay - imagine that
Never Had a Lady Before (1979)
DiscO-NWARD~!

ACROSS:

1. Siri counterpart : GOOGLE NOW - I have an Android cel phone, but not this feature/ app.  I do know about Siri, as a friend of mine was telling us how her kids were able to get "her" to find "your momma" jokes

10. Inst. with a weekly "Big Picture Science" radio program : SETI - seemed like a good WAG, but I had to have the "S" first

14. Short-term hospital service : ACUTE CARE

15. Demonym that may have a second "a" : UTAHN - strangely, I did not know exactly what "demonym" meant (tho I knew "-nym" meant 'name'); then it showed up on Dictionary.com

16. Ignores : LETS SLIDE

17. Wise guys : SAGES

18. One of the Noldor, in Tolkien : ELF - ooops, not ENT

19. Pitcher's goal : SALE - about as close as we got to baseball today; that's a different kind of pitcher

20. Kind of red : MERLOT - not GARNET - but that's 33.3% correct 100%ly

21. Dark genre : NOIR - seemed to easy, so I left it blank at first

23. Holy __ : TERROR

25. Child expert LeShan : EDA

26. When many take breaks : AT TEN - I had TEN AM to start - right idea, wrong order

28. Work with a partner : DUET

29. Dropbox's blue box, for one : ICON


30. More, to Nadal : MAS

34. Lollygag : LOITER

37. Stay in the cooler : DO TIME - I knew this was jail related, but "sentence" didn't fit

40. Mattress problem : SAG

41. First name in couture : YVES

44. "Pipe down!" : SHUSH - I tried QUIET, but the "Q" was just not going to work

48. Child support org. : PTA

49. Road safety feature : MEDIAN - unless, of course, you drive over it; I have seen and heard people do so

51. Family __ : TREE

52. Schools abroad : LYCEES - oops, not ECOLES; that's Frawnche for school; this word translates to High School

54. Genre of the late David Bowie : GLAM - R.I.P. Ziggy Stardust

56. Dove shape : BAR - the soap, not the bird; I was onto the clue, but I was trying "EGG" or "OVA" to describe the shape of the soap bar....


57. "Iron Chef America" host Brown : ALTON

60. Hunger Games competitors : TEENS - I am in the middle of reading "Catching Fire", book 2; I have the third one waiting....and I am not going to see the movie until I am done


61. "We don't promise you a rose garden" sloganeer : U.S. MARINES

62. Transposes letters, say : ERRS

ODWN:

1. Lead source : GALENA - Galena is the ore that lead is derived from; Galina is the Russian name for "Helen"; I knew one when I lived in Jacksonville, FL

2. Spotted cat : OCELOT

3. Company : OUTFIT - There's a running joke in the movie "Payback" (starring Mel Gibson) about the criminal organization's name the "syndicate" being changed to the "outfit"

4. Alfa Romeo sports cars : GTs

5. More, to minimalists : LESS

6. Flash : ECLAT - and a clecho at; 13d. Flash : INSTANT - two different definitions

7. Got down pat : NAILED - C.C.'s turn of phrase when getting a longer fill in a crossword puzzle with no crossings is "Nailed It", and I like to use it, too

8. Diner kitchen shout : "ORDER UP~!"

9. Minute : WEE - now that's a "wee" mini-skirt~!


10. Heineken logo feature : STAR


11. It's trained on a nest : EAGLE-CAM

12. Name meaning "God's gift" : THEODORE

15. Tweeter, say : USER

20. Phrases on seals : MOTTOS

22. Sends in : REMITS

24. Musical piece : REED - dah~! Not reST

27. Icel. is its only member without a standing army : NATO

29. "Perhaps" : "I MIGHT."

31. Soap, for example : SERIES

33. Short stops? : STAs - StaTIONs

34. She played Arwen Undómiel in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy : LIV TYLER

35. Albee's "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?," e.g. : ONE-ACTER

36. Enjoy The Atlantic : READ - Argh~!  Not SAIL - as in the Atlantic, not THE Atlantic

Ghostbusters (1984)

38. Government nutrition guide : MY PLATE - the website

39. "Holy cow!" : "OMIGOSH~!" - interesting fill

43. Wilde tragedy : SALOME - here's where I started running into trouble

45. Roger Ebert's Illinois birthplace : URBANA - proper name #2

46. Ready for dinner : SEATED

47. Reason for Luther's excommunication : HERESY

49. Target section : MEN'S

50. Family matriarchs : NANAs

53. Ages : EONS

55. "The Social Network" actress Rooney __ : MARA - #3

58. Gloomy one : GUS - "Gloomy Gus"

59. Pickles on "Rugrats" : DIL- #4

Splynter


Note from C.C.:

Happy Birthday to Argyle our sweet Santa, who has guided us through over 660 puzzles. Argyle always keeps a close eye on the blog so no comment is accidentally junked by Blogger. He also replies to each question posted on an old post. Off the blog, he's my close friend & trusted adviser. Thanks for all you do for me and this blog, Santa!


 

49 comments:

Barry G. said...

Morning, all (And Happy Birthday, Santa)!

Definitely not a walk in the park for me today. Mostly due to the cluing, I think, but there were some unknowns that threw me for a loop. Down south I guessed that "Pickles" was the name of the family DOG on "Rugrats" (a show I've never watched) off the initial D. It fit, but kept U.S. MARINES from site (an organization who's slogan I was blissfully unfamiliar with). I finally got enough perps to send in the MARINES and that let me guess at the punniness that is DIL Pickles.

Up north, I was thinking baseball for "pitcher" and went with SAVE instead of SALE at 19A. That left me at the end staring at GOOGLE_OW and _AIVED. The only letter that made any sense whatsoever was W to give me GOOGLE WOW and WAIVED, but while the first seemed plausible, I couldn't reconcile the second with the clue provided. After much angst, I finally tried SALE instead of SAVE and then I NAILED it. Still didn't know GOOGLE NOW, but whatevs...

Word of the day was Demonymn from the clues. My spell check doesn't like it and it sounds like an insult, but there you have it.

Anonymous said...

Yes Splynter, I was convinced 36d could have been SAIL!

CartBoy said...

Fun cluing. Speed run for a Saturday. Off for what I hope is a quick 18. Might be scratch on crosswords but not on the course.

desper-otto said...

Mourning!

Crashed and burned on this one. Even with SETI (a wag), MERLOT (another wag), and EAGLE CAM (yet a third wag) in place, I couldn't suss what 15a and 17a could possibly be. ALECS went in and came out, MENSA went in and came out. There are several coats of Wite-Out in New England, but I still couldn't make anything work there. Ya got me, C.C. Nicely done.

Happy birthday, Argyle. I hope your day is better than the way mine has started.

Big Easy said...

Congratulations C.C. and Splynter. GOOGLE NOW- it's like a 'Big Brother' that follows me around always requesting that I tun on my 'Location', aka GPS, which I never do. Knowing GOOGLE NOW and GALENA made the NW fall immediately. After I zigzagged to the SE and up to the NE, I went to the SW and came to a dead stop.

LIV TYLER and MY PLATE were unknowns, I wanted ECOLES for LYCEES, was completely 'clueless' about 'The Goat' but OPERETTA fit nicely. I just crashed and burned in that area; DNF. MARA Rooney was also an unknown. DIL was too but with Pickles in the clue it was an obvious answer.

Demonym-new word for me. I correctly guessed THEODORE and the HN ending puzzled me as I had originally filled TEEN for USER for the Tweeter clue. PET SMART or is it PET'S MART? My doggie ( and cat) day care was always the back yard.

MINT OREO- haven't tried it but I remember reading years ago that after stores return unsold ice cream, the creameries sell it to pig farmers and the only ones that the pigs refused to eat was MINT ice cream.

Gotta go. Have to pick up my grandson to take him to the culturally enlightening 'Monster Truck Jam' in the Superdome.

Lemonade714 said...

How cool to wake up to a C.C.themeless. Some really fun cluing, I forgot GALENA, loved the self-referential NAILED.

Happy Saturdsy

Dudley said...

Hello Puzzlers -

Had to chip away at this tricky rascal, but got there fair and square. Fell for the trap at "Target section" and tried Tens. Hand up for école before lycée, and Sail long before Read that Atlantic. Another hand up for not knowing what a demonym was, and even with an educated guess, needed perps to get Utahn. A true Saturday level effort - thanks, C.C.!

Happy Birthday, Argyle, and thanks for all you do!

Morning, Splynter, you're in fine form today. Just like those legs.

billocohoes said...

Big Easy - not MARA Rooney but (Patricia) Rooney MARA, Oscar nominee for the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Her mother is of the Pittsburgh Steelers Rooneys, her father is of the New York Football Giants Maras.

TTP said...

Happy Birthday Argyle ! Thank you CC and Splynter.

Almost NAILED IT, but in the end it was that northeast corner for me too. STAR and SETI came easily enough, but I couldn't remember crosswordese name EDA LeShan. We get her often enough that the name should be easily entered. My wise guys wanted to be the costa nostra or mafia. Couldn't define demonymn. Was also clueless for the clue "name meaning God's gift."

I too thought there seemed to be more clues or answers requiring a proper name, but got them all except THEODORE, EDA, and MERLOT. In the southwest, ALTON and LIV TYLER came easy, and that V made YVES a no-brainer since I had a couple of his suits and a few ties.

I had the M from MOTTOS, and thought it might be a wine, but it just never came to mind.

The rest of the solve put up a good Saturday challenge, and I managed to increase the difficulty by entering Holy TOLEDO instead of TERROR. That D would have allowed uncomfortable ADAGES for "phrases on seals" but nothing else could be built in that area. Then reread "diner kitchen shout" and NAILED ORDER UP. Then it was done except that troublesome northeast.

I would think that company and OUTFIT in this sense are more related to the military than the mob, and even in that regard, are more closely associated with the Army than other branches of the service.

Splynter said...

Hi again~!

Happy B-day, Argyle~! I intentionally transposed the letters of "ODWN" based on the previous clue, but I see you ( or perhaps C.C. ) changed it. I guess my sense of humor is a bit skewed - like my legs pics.

And I guess that anon must have looked before, if they're saying "again"....

I liked 7th grade~!

Splynter

Avg Joe said...

Happy Birthday Scott. Enjoy the day, and thanks for all you do here.

Enjoyed the puzzle. When I saw it was by C.C., I thought it might be a little easier than a Silkie. That was quickly proven wrong. It took a lot of wags and perp reliance, but it all came together. The biggest trouble was in the SE where I filled SHHHH! I didn't like it, but it proved with Heated and Heresy. Took awhile to be rid of that error. Elsewhere I had fewer outright mistakes (would not commit to Ecoles, for example, even though it was my best guess). But the entire thing took a long time to emerge.

Irish Miss said...

Good Morning:

Always a pleasure to check the byline and have it be our CC and on a Saturday, no less. There were a few stumbling blocks but, as usual, getting the long fill answers opens things up quite nicely. A few learning moments: meaning of Theodore, My Plate, and the Marine slogan. Filled in read for Enjoy The Atlantic without hesitation but had ecoles before lycees and wasn't sure what a demonym is. Where does CC learn all this stuff?

Thanks, CC, for a satisfying Saturday stumper and, thanks, Splynter, for the wrap-up.

Happy Birthday, Scott, and best wishes for many, many more. 🎂 🎉 🎈 Thanks for all you do for this cyber community! 🍀

Have a great day.

Tinbeni said...

Happy Birthday Argyle!!! The first (and probably second) Sunset Toast(s) are to YOU.

Splynter: Nice write-up ... especially enjoyed the WEE mini-skirt.

C.C. Wonderful Saturday puzzle. Only solved since I saw you were the constructor.

Glad I concentrated on the 3 & 4 letter answers first or I would have been in the weeds.

Fave, of course, was the Heineken logo feature, STAR ... hmm, that gives me an idea ... lol

Cheers!

oc4beach said...


Officially a DNF because I had to use Red Letters and Google. Ironically my only Google lookup resulted in GOOGLENOW. I have an IPhone with the annoying SIRI app.

On the ice cream I wanted Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, but that was waaaay too long. So, I figured that it was OREO but didn't get the MINT until perps prevailed.

I did get MERLOT, NOIR, EDA, YVES, TREE and ALTON on the first across run through. GALENA was a known. The V gave me LIVTYLER.

This is my idea of a Dove Bar. It's tastier than the other one. Just saying. I wonder which one C.C. meant.

To me, Step Out meant cheating on your significant other by going out with another.

Today was tough, but I still liked the puzzle C.C. and I liked the write-up Splynter. And I liked 7th grade too .

Have a nice warm day everyone.

Bluehen said...

This Saturday solve was very much like a Saturday Silkie solve. The first pas through didn't yield very much except a few toeholds. A toehold here leads to a toehold there which leads to a flash of intuition or a learning moment there. All with way too many missteps and start-overs. In the end I got a tada without cheating and in fairly typical Saturday time (slow). I'm glad to see that I wasn't the only person who struggled with "demonym" (see, spellcheck doesn't recognize it). It took far to long to conjure up GALENA. To me that's a town in Illinois where Useless Grant spent some time. Thanks, CC, that was a fun ride. Thanks, Splynter for another bright expo. Many thanks and Happy Birthday, Argyle. May you have many more.

TTFN

Cya!

Bluehen said...

This stupid computer won't let me edit my posts today. I obviously meant "pass". There were some other statements I would have reworded, but they're not a big deal.

Cya!

Spitzboov said...

Good morning everyone.

Happy Birthday, Argyle. Thanks for making this blog more seamless for the rest of us, and for all the early in the week blog intros.

What most of you said about the difficulty. I liked the cluing, though and it made me want to get as much solved as I could. Too much arcane entertainment types though and so I invoked a modicum of help in the center south.
GALENA - Also an Illinois town where Grant lived before entering the Civil War.
27d - Some other NATO members don't have much more of forces to contribute than Iceland. Iceland's main value is its strategic location astride the Greenland-Iceland-Faeroes-UK gap, which greatly facilitates anti-submarine maritime air patrol.

PK said...

Hi Y'all! WHEW! This puzzle was jam-packed with tough! But I managed to rise to the challenge and fill it. Red-letter runs were necessary I'm not ashamed to say. Thanks, C.C. Thanks, Splynter.

Happy birthday, Argyle! You are a gift to all of us.

I had to LOITER over much of this. Didn't know most of the proper names. Tried to spell Yves with and "I" first pass. Duh! I did plug in MERLOT immediately.

In my youthful days MENS were always a target for me.

Demonym: I got hung up on "demon" and thought it might be a WEE demon like an imp so wasted time trying to remember what some of those creatures are called.

Spent some time looking for a theme which I couldn't find. Good to know there wasn't one.

Husker Gary said...

I was challenged in every corner and delighted by every fill by our multicultural and brilliant blogmistress! I’ll keep my three bad cells to myself. ☺

Musings
-Cwd Swiss Army Knife OREO found a refreshing running mate in MINT
-Siri quickly gave me Log8 as 2.009744 this week
-A state fair chamois SALES pitcher
-Handling a Holy TERROR 8th grader requires skills that can’t be used in 4th grade
-Teachers are slaves to schedulers and may not get a break until noon
-He would have avoided a lot of trouble if he would have let this guy LOITER
-Our SEALY Elation Gold mattress doesn’t seem to have a SAG issue
-A crowded MEDIAN after some ice in Atlanta
-After 5 min. those cooking competition shows seemed unduly harsh to me.
-A fun, less caustic food show about mostly DINERS
-SOAPS seem to be a good source for our cwd staple - EMOTERS
-We simply called them ONE ACTS
-Some are SEATED and some are serving
-Minneapolis is the home to C.C. and Target and so…
-HBD, Oh SAGE of Puzzleland!

Apias said...

IMER instead of USER bogged me down for a while. Also MAGIS for SAGES. Took me too long to finally untie that knot

CrossEyedDave said...

Pretty much WBS!

CC, thank you for the Lord Of The Rings references,
or I would have been looking at a sea of white...

(Although I spotted Ocelot right away...)

Saturday (for me) is always a red letter day,
as I am not that good at solving puzzles.

This told me right off the bat that:
17A Wise guys are not Alecs...
51A family___ is not life
39D Holy Cow is not Saint Moo! (Yeah, I know. Long shot that didn't fit anyway.)
But what really got me was 23A Holy ______ is not smokes!
After I got the 1st "T",my next thought was Holy Tamole! (bzzt!)
Then when I got 3rd letter R, Holy Turkey?

Anyway holy terror was an apt description of that clue/answer combo.

My only (minor) nit (if any) was that Dove shape = bar
Yes it's a bar of soap, but it is not shaped like a bar.

Happy Birthday Santa!

P.S., Argyle deserves more than one cake, & a really big one at that...

Because of the Iphone discussion recently,
I had to include this link.

Also, One person thoughts on losing a beloved pet.

C6D6 Peg said...

FIW, as I was sure it was it was SAVE not SALE. Thanks, C.C. for a nice challenge this am.

Very nice review, Splynter. Two sets of legs today!

Happy Birthday, Argyle. Hope it is great!

Bluehen said...

CED: When I clicked on your first Argyle birthday link, my security software (Malwarebytes) immediately red flagged it as a site known to contain viruses that steal personal information. Surely that's not true, is it?

Anonymous said...

Good show, C.C., thanks.

A totally black letter day for me here offline, but not without a few write-overs and lucky wags. I had a similar solving experience to Splinter's, with the SW corner last to fall. I guess I was mostly on C.C.'s wavelength on the other 3 though. Another hand up for filling in sail before read, although it bothered me that it ruled out both alpo or iams as candidates for 42a. Also a hand up for filling in ecoles before lycees.

I wavered for awhile between reel and reed for 24d until it dawned on me that 36a was *something* time rather than *something* ice.

5d "more to minimalists" and 11d "trained on a nest" were my favorite clue/answer combos.

Anonymous said...

Correction, meant to write the SE corner (not the SW) was the last to fall for me, like Splynter's solve.

Jayce said...

Wow, what a brilliant puzzle! I agree with Bluehen that this was very much like a Saturday Silkie. Daunting but doable, and full of satisfaction. Some of the cluing was demonically fiendish! Like PK, I wracked my brain looking for names of demons, especially since SATAN didn't work. After looking up the word demonym, I realized it has the same root as demographics, which ended my demon hunt. Man oh man, C.C. how the heck do you do it? I have visions of you poring over dictionaries and other reference works for hours, hunting for interesting words and facts. If so, I say it is time well spent.

Argyle, very appreciative wishes to you on your birthday. What an honor for C.C. (or anybody, for that matter) to have you as a friend. Please stick around for many more years.

Best wishes to you all, and may all your computers stay free of malware.

Misty said...

I have a busy day and had planned to skip the Saturday puzzle when I saw it was a C.C. No way would I ever skip a C.C. puzzle, even a Saturday one. So I dug in and surprisingly got the whole bottom half without any problems. It helped that I knew SALOME and got ONE ACTER pretty quickly. But the top stumped me and so I cheated and looked up the first line across--I would never have gotten either GOOGLENOW or SETI otherwise. But that was enough to let me fill in the rest. So I ended up with a great Saturday morning puzzle solving! Many thanks, C.C., and you too, Splynter for the expo.

And happy birthday, Argyle. Seeing your great photo, I now understand why folks call you SANTA. Hope it's okay if I do so, too.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

PK said...

Argyle, your picture today looks more like my late husband than his brothers did. You could be twins. I think he was older though. Handsome men to my eye.

Miss beckley said...

Elizabeth @ 11:25 -- What's insulting?

AnonymousPVX said...

I thought this NOTHING like a Silkie. Mr. Silk gives clues that you can get, this was filled with misdirection. "One-acter," really? Not to mention the obscure proper names.

Look, there's nothing wrong with a hard puzzle like this one. I was able to solve, although it was no snap. I just didn't care for the clueing, as I thought it designed to NOT let you solve.

Bill G. said...

Hi everybody. I liked the puzzle. Thanks CC and Splynter. A very happy birthday wish for you, Argyle! I really appreciate everything that you do around here.

I caught a few minutes of Jimmy Kimmel's late night show. Kerry Washington from Scandal was on. Barbara is a big fan. She was wearing just the opposite of a mini skirt or mini dress. She was wearing today's fashionable length, a maxi dress down to about mid calf. I don't know what other people thought but I hated it, latest fashion be damned. It looked like a colorful potato sack to me.

Ol' Man Keith said...

I'm with Barry G (@6:26), except that I stopped with WAIVED, WOW, and SAVE, as all together this triad is as good as NAILED, NOW, and SALE. Granted, NAILED beats WAIVED in the cluing department (although it can be argued that in many circumstances, when one has something "down pat," a requirement may be WAIVED), but Google WOW is as real a thing as NOW, and a SAVE is as obviously a "Pitcher's goal" as a SALE.

But that's okay! CC's puzzle is a brilliant construction, and I'm proud to visit her always-bright and chipper blog. I wonder if it might not be a ideal goal for some ambitious pzl-maker to create a crossword in which a good many of the fills could accept multiple answers?

Ol' Man Keith said...

HBD Argyle!
Play this to put a smile on your face! This is the Best Ever Happy Birthday Song!

Bill G. said...

Hey Keith, this may be the most famous example of a CW puzzle with multiple answers. After the 1996 election, the NY Times puzzle had an answer with an answer about the winner from the night before. The puzzle could be solved correctly with either Clinton or Dole, no matter who had won. If you want to try to solve it yourself, don't go here because it shows and discusses the solution. Very clever! Election Puzzle

CrossEyedDave said...

Bill G. Wow! that election puzzle is amazing!

Bluehen@12:10,
I am using McAfee (which I hate)
but it did not indicate the pic could be a problem.
It's a pretty innocuous pic, & I can't imagine any evil mind
trying to use it for nefarious purposes.

Here it is again from a safer source, Pinterest.

Ol' Man Keith said...

Bill G -- That's impressive, a real wonder! Thanks for the lead to the NY Times pzl (11/05/1996).
I couldn't resist (who could?) going right to your link. After a quick glance I tried a couple of times to recover Jeremiah Farrell's whole unfinished puzzle, but it took too long; curiosity overcame patience, so I came back to it. It's a perfect specimen of what I suggested, and even more to the point it was put to a good humorous use, seeming to predict the winner of the Clinton/Dole election. I loved it!

Ol' Man Keith said...

If anyone wants to try the election puzzle from scratch, you can use this link: Election 1996. I just copied it from the screen, reduced it slightly to fit one page, and printed it out.
Thanks again to Bill G for the lead!

inanehiker said...

Just getting to the puzzle now. I was a challenge, but finally made it through all but the NW without help. I wanted to have something like CORTANA instead of GOOGLE NOW, but couldn't make it work.

Thanks, CC, Splynter!
And HBD to Argyle!

Anonymous said...

What name does not mean gift of God?

Argyle said...

Sorry, I've been away all day and haven't even read the expo yet.

Thank you one and all for the birthday wishes.

Anonymous T said...

Hi All!

Not the time to Lollygag w/ the puzzle today as we moved MIL to BIL's house. During the down times MIL & I NAILED the NW corner. Sure, it took two brains but we got it.

Thanks C.C. I smiled at 4d's clue but Spider didn't fit :-). Between that and NANAS (MIL) somehow I felt a SO (coincidental surely). Thanks Splynter for fixing my south and your leggy writeup.

Happy Birthday Argyle! You da' man. I appreciate your Mon / Tues. class and wit later at night. Plus you clean up after dip-ships (like me) who to delete / re-post comments. You make the blog flow.

Notable WO - Family TiEs b/f TREE was fixed by HERISY - imagine that.

I liked seeing URBANA, Champaign's sister city and home of the supercomputing-Fighting Illini (my second choice after MIT until I opt'd for a much LESS costly route at LaTech). Other notable guy from the area is David Foster Wallace (author).

62a: SHES A LADY - knew it! Kim Komando (sp?) was a tech broad-caster [that's funny if you read it twice] who'd use Tom Jones' version as her intro.

Y'all have a great eve. I need a nap after the ado of the move.

Cheers, -T

TTP said...

Bluehen, I didn't have any alert linking to that site Dave linked, and checked it with the Google Safe Browsing page. Nothing noted. BTW, I don't think any of us other than admin can edit a blog post, but you can copy it, then delete the original, and repost it with any corrections that you might want to make.

oc4beach, I probably wouldn't turn down one of those Dove ice cream bars, but wouldn't you rather have a Klondike Bar ? Remember that advertisement tune ? What would you do for a Klondike Bar ? Surely you had an Isaly's in your area. Chipped chopped ham and the lunch counter ? Skyscraper cones ?

Ergo (Husker Chuck) said...

A nice CC Saturday offering. Finally waved the white flag at 8 p.m. with just that pesky SW ink-over festival unsolved. Throughout the day I was HUNGRY, HEATED, and HELPED to get 'Ready for dinner.' But who ever heard of the expression SHUHH. Sakes. Once I got SEATED, things progressed nicely.

Lucina said...

Hello, friends!

Almost missed the party entirely. Santa, I hope you've had a wonderful birthday!

Today we held our annual HOA meeting, then shopping with a friend, etc., etc. So I worked on the puzzle in between times and found it quite daunting but a fill here and a fill there finally finished it though I was doubtful about ONE ACTER yet the crosses were solidly in favor. I had real angst at MEDIAN/MENS as I did not want to give up DONAS but finally NANAS came into view.

Since I don't watch many of the popular TV shows it puts me at a disadvantage but somehow I managed to suss ALTON. Whew!

Thank you, C.C. this was a challenging puzzle and very enjoyable. You, too, Splynter, thank you.

I hope all have enjoyed your Saturday!

Yellowrocks said...

Happy birthday, Santa. Thanks for all your hard work on the blog.Great puzzle, CC. A tad easier than a Silkie.

fermatprime said...

Greetings!

Will read the blog later!

Happy, happy birthday, Santa!

Cheers!

Zhouqin (C.C.) Burnikel said...

Splynter,
Sorry. I misunderstood. Now if you put DOWD, a real name, I might have grokked your intention.

Picard said...

Did anyone else think 20A "Kind of red" was Maroon?

Did anyone else think 51A was Family Feud?

Argyle said...

Hand up for maroon.