Title: The HEAT is on. LISTEN.
The sixth pairing of our resident Santa, Argyle, with C.C. brings us a single clue puzzle to unravel. HEAT yielded 2 grid-spanners and 2 fourteen letter fill giving us a quick 58 letters in the theme. These single word, single clue ones mean lots of work for me as I really need to solve many perps to get to the theme fill. Lots of nice fill like DE NADA, WET HEN, HEE HEE, ERECTS, LESS TAR, SERAPES, MIGRANT, SPLICES, SARASOTA, FOOLED ME, D.H. LAWRENCE, OPEN SECRET. Well if you can't take the heat, get our your eraser.
17A. Heat : INTENSE PRESSURE (15). For example, the heat is on Hilary about her deleted emails.
31A. Heat : QUALIFYING RACE (14). For example, Mark Spitz won his semi-final heat in world record time.
38A. Heat : MIAMI HOOPSTERS (14). Their season is over, but no Whiteside and no Bosh for most of the Toronto series.
59A. Heat : HABANERO FEATURE (15). For example, you can READ all about hot peppers.
Okay, now solve:
Across:
1. Light source : BIC. As in:
Recognize Orson Bean's voice?
4. Sea bordering Uzbekistan : ARAL and the ever confusing to me 32D. 1,509-mile border river : URAL. They are both back again to add to our geography miseries.
8. Online money source : E-LOAN. They must be more popular in the midwest.
13. Prepare for a snap : LOAD. I guess this refers to the old fashioned need to put film in a camera.
15. "Sons and Lovers" author : D. H. LAWRENCE. This was one of his earliest works LINK ; his most famous perhaps being his last major novel
20. "__ does it!" : THAT.
21. Zipped : SPED.
22. Gulf Coast resort city : SARASOTA. A wonderful little city with white sand beaches and it rhymes with Minnesota which is great for limercists.
24. Like sriracha sauce : HOT. LIke the reference to "TODDLERS" in yesterday CHILD theme, I am ambivalent about this being in a HEAT puzzle.
26. Smidgen : DAB. Brylcreem anyone?
27. Colorful cover-ups : SERAPES. Forgive the partial NUDITY.
35. Alley wanderer : CUR. But not dressed like that.
36. Popular truck brand : RAM.
37. Important time : AGE.
45. Unites, in a way : SPLICES. A thoughtful Friday clue. LINK.
46. PETA concern : FUR. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I have always had mixed feeling about how they promote this effort.
48. "No, really?" : FOOLED ME.
53. Egg on : SPUR. More horse talk?
56. L, vis-à-vis C : HALF. 50 is half of 100.
58. Junkyard material : SCRAP. Sometimes.
63. Fries, e.g. : SIDE order.
64. Medicare card specification : PART A.
65. Fabulous runner-up : HARE. FABLE leads to fabulous here.
Down:
1. Euphoria : BLISS. So many choices joy, happiness, pleasure, delight, ecstasy, elation, rapture.
2. Region that rebelled against Persia in about 500 B.C. : IONIA. A bit of HISTORY.
3. Work at weddings : CATER.
4. Hulu distractions : ADS.The rerun service.
5. Butler in a classic film : RHETT. My first thought was Arthur Treacher.
6. Greek leader : ALPHA. Cute clue.
7. Logan of "60 Minutes" : LARA. She was made part of a horrible STORY. She did well on Jeopardy Tuesday.
8. EMS destinations : ERS. No bitter vetch? Will Weng where are you?
9. Advertised advantage of some lights : LESS TAR.
10. "Get __": 1967 Esquires hit : ON UP.
12. Cry out for : NEED.
14. "You're welcome," in Havana : DE NADA.
16. Anger simile : WET HEN. Did you KNOW?
18. Like Willie Nelson's voice : NASAL. Well that sounds a bit critical but Willie is an interesting MAN.
23. Kabuki accessory : OBI. My sash a week continues.
25. URL ender : ORG.
27. Easy mark : SIMPelton.
28. Host after Allen : PAAR. I have written often about Jack Paar.
29. Med. tests using leads : ECGS.
30. "Now do you believe me?" : SEE. Mira.
31. Wit's end? : QUIP. The end result of wit.
33. Big dos : FROS.
34. 2011 NBA retiree : YAO. HOF center with bad feet.
35. Divs. on some rulers : CMS. Centimeters which is pronounced??
39. "The Grapes of Wrath" character : MIGRANT. I tried to dredge up a character name until the perps kicked in.
40. Make sure of : ICE. They are out to get Tinman these days.
41. Titter : HEE HEE. I always like TEE HEE.
42. Bay Area travel letters : SFO.
43. Home of the WNBA's Shock : TULSA. They have moved to Dallas LINK but do post star Skylar Diggins
44. Puts up : ERECTS.
48. Botanist's field : FLORA.
49. Proposal : OFFER.
50. Old Celtic religious leader : DRUID. Never understood this GROUP.
51. Column in un calendrier : MARDI. Tuesday in French.
52. Fencing swords : EPEES.
53. Hunt for bargains : SHOP.
54. Hemingway sobriquet : PAPA. Self imposed? LINK.
55. Cab company competitor : UBER. I recently used one, and it was great.
57. Image on Missouri's state quarter : ARCH. The gateway arch.
60. "Citizenfour" org. : NSA. The movie about Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency.
61. Saison in Provence : ÉTÉ. Summer is coming.
That means the regular tv season is over, lots of characters lying dead on the screen but we soldier on. Great fun, thank you Scott and C.C. and thank you all for the comments I will read soon. Lemonade out.
44 comments:
DNF. QUI- and S-LrCES just didn't come to mind, and MrGRANT totally fooled me. :-(
The theme was hot, but I kept expecting a gangster's gun to show up. I did have parsing problems: aside from Mr. Grant, QUALIFYING RACE gave me some slight difficulty.
There once was an imp whose idea of BLISS
Was searing lost souls and hearing them hiss
Should they QUALIFY IN GRACE
For a higher, cool place
He gave HABANERO wine as departing gifts!
A snowbird there was from Minnesota
Who wanted to winter in SARASOTA.
His mistress was there,
His wife found the affair,
Switched his tickets so he landed in North Dakota!
The was a young tyke in Santa Fe
Whose security blanket was a SERAPE.
With a hole for his head
He would wear it to bed
Where its woolen armor kept monsters at bay!
{B-, C+, C.}
Morning, all!
Found this to be mostly easy, except for the middle section where I almost threw in the towel. Biggest problems were caused by having CAT before CUR and TEEHEE before HEEHEE. Once I finally got rid of those, however, I was able to finish. 31D really threw me for a loop, since I was convinced the answer was supposed to be a suffix at the end of "wit", such as NESS or LESS. Having CAT at 35A really didn't help matters.
Ah well, all's well that ends well...
Lots of write overs, but got it eventually. Lots of interesting clues and answers.
Good morning!
The center section was were I had trouble, too. I never did figure out how a Qualifyin' Grace = Heat. D'oh! Hand up for CAT (also TOM) before CUR showed up. Another hand up for TEEHEE. Still, managed to put this one away in normal Friday time, so life is good.
It's an OPEN SECRET that D. Scott Nichols is Santa Argyle.
My dahmper used to vacation in SARASOTA every winter. He died when I was four, so there isn't a whole lot that I remember about him.
I'll bet D H LAWRENCE was a gimme for Misty.
UBER has pulled out of several Texas cities, because Uber refuses to require background fingerprint checks of its drivers -- the same checks required of the regular taxi companies.
MARDI reminds me of Marti. She must have really dropped out of the crossword community. When's the last time you saw her byline on a cw?
All about write overs and retries. Argyle and CC, you FOOLED ME well. I had to SCRAP a number of entries that could not be proved.
Changed entries included era before AGE, GMC for RAM, VET for make sure, tore before SPED, and the unavoidable trap of Cat before CUR. Oh yea, and usher before CATER.
Good tough puzzle with some unusual cluing. Great job.
Very much fun with this difficult puzzle. Many write overs. Finally solved it online because of all the inkblots. Congrats to Santa and CC. Lemon, great write up.
I had --alif-ing race. Finding QUALIFYING was a V8 can moment. Of course! I shoulda known that. CAT for CUR held me up. One cheat. I red lettered CAT and saw it was wrong. I was SO sure. Turned off red letters and found CUR which gave me QUIP, URAL, QUALIFYING and YAO. That WHELP (CUR) did me me in.
i suspect 4 out of every 5 veteran crossnerds will fall into the CAT/CUR trap, especially when having only the "C" in place...guilty!...the "Q" was a major help in wiggling free though...hope everybody is well
Okay Tom, I give up, what is a "DAHMPER"?
Lemon, at age 3-4 that was my best attempt at pronouncing Grandpa.
I do not know who wrote the clue for CUR but it was diabolically clever because of the mindset of ALLEY CAT. Certainly dogs do alleys as well but we our programmed to write CAT. I lucked out because I had filled QUALIFYING RACE and put the "U" below the "Q" and never had a chance to think CAT.
Pretty sure RAM is not a brand. The brand is Dodge. Ram is the model.
D-N-F ... though with Argyle & C.C. as constructor's ... I guess you could say a "certain 3-letter word" was a CSO ... LOL
Oh well, the rest of the puzzle was a FUN solve with a great theme.
Cheers!
Have you ever noticed that when you put in wrong letters it delays the solving? Oh, you did. -Nevermind (:02)
Musings
-A lovely, clever puzzle that filled some of my time watching sophomores taking finals all day. Me too on Lemon’s summation.
-State track is today and a student here missed going by .01 sec in his QUALIFYING HEAT. A miss is as good as a mile
-Well I guess a QB could take that kind of snap
-Laika was a stray dog in the streets of Moscow before he became the first living thing to orbit Earth
-35 mm film we showed in class in the 60’s were full of very bad scotch tape SPLICES
-Ear worm alert! When Chubby Checker sang Pony Time (2:07) the lyrics included “Turn to right when I say GEE”. No Really!
-“You weren’t cheating? You sure FOOLED ME!”, said the sarcastic teacher
-“All right, Julius, Here’s $L change for that $C chariot!”
-This C.C. Wednesday puzzle I blogged was full of SIDES
-Plowing about an ACRE/day with a horse was the norm. Today’s tractors take five minutes
-YAO married Ye Li in Shanghai in 2007
p.s. It’s an OPEN SECRET among us subs that when you have a study hall, like I do right now, you love the phones every kid is using to occupy their time on this penultimate school day!!
Hello Puzzlers -
Traction was slow to establish, until the unmistakeable D.H. Lawrence answer went in. Hand up for Cat before Cur. Needed perps to establish Tulsa, of course. Thanks Argyle and C.C.!
Morning Lemon, the Druids were too busy to let their site load, so I read about Hemingway instead.
Hi gang -
Argyl and C.C give Jeffrey a Friday off. Hope he has a nice rest.
RAM is absolutely a brand, and has been so since 2010.
Excellent puzzle. No nits. Tough go, too. Had to G-spot IONA and LAWRENCE. ARCH - HARE cross was the last entry. Lots of trouble in the north-west corner. LOAD baffled me. Didn't get the picture
Fell into the CAT trap, of course.
Happy weekend, everyone.
Cool regards!
JzB
A friend of mine that's a wild game chef is a QUAIL FRYING ACE
Thanks, Argyle & C.C. Great job! Love the puzzles with one clue repeated. Very clever and well done!
Thanks, Lemonade, for the pics and references. Can't say enough about how great you bloggers are!
Hi Everyone:
What a nice treat to see CC and Scott's byline on a Friday. This offering had some bite (as well as heat) and lots of misdirection, but fair, not diabolical, as is sometimes the case. W/o's include tom>cat>cur, era/age, GMC/Ram, ace/_ _ _ (in deference to Tin), muumuus/serapes, Miami/Tulsa, metal/scrap, and tee hee/hee hee. Clever theme + clever cluing + fresh fill = Satisfied solver.
Nice job, CC and Scott, and solid summary, Lemony. Thanks to all.
Have a great day.
I was bemused by HEAT = "Intense Pressure". I learned at high school that PV = RT, so equating Pressure with Temperature is fine (at CONSTANT VOLUME). I also recognize the non-scientific link.
URAL and ARAL in same crossword - mmm.
Lots of learning moments today to add to my 'Merican informal/slang vocabulary:
WET HEN = ANGER ? Etymology anyone?
GEE commands a horse to turn right? I thought it meant "speed up". I'd better get off this high horse right now!
SIMP = Simpleton, clued by EASY MARK = someone easy to fool = Slang clue for slang answer. Phew.
OPEN SECRET is THINLY disguised? Not disguised at all, I would have thought.
TALK TRASH TO = DIS ? I thought I knew what DIS meant (fool, show disrespect to), but DAT definition is new to me. TALK TRASH ≠TRASH-TALK.
PETA would be concerned about the FUR TRADE rather than FUR, per se, I would have thought.
DOS = HAIR-DOS I knew. AFROS I knew. But I FROZE at 'FROS.
TEE-HEE is in my dictionary, but not HEE-HEE.
ICE = MAKE SURE OF? I now know it means "complete (a deal)", so clue is OK if a bit of a stretch.
L, vis-à-vis C. OK, I got it, but the Frawnche phrase in the middle seemed a bit off, when referring to Roman numerals.
I would have thought the plural characters would have been a kinder clue for 39 D. Still, this IS war by other means.
I blew it at 1A ( clue should have read 'heat') and never could recover. I filled the complete East but under the INTENSE PRESSURE I could not get INTENSE, QUALIFY, MIAMIHOL, and mispelled HABANERO as habEnero. GEE by the time I quit I was getting mad as a WET HEN (not really) because of the unknowns-ON UP, NSA,TULSA, YAO and had tried CAT & TOM for CUR, USHER for CATER, TEEHE for HEEHEE, and never knew what the URAL river bordered.
anon the sniper @ 9:08, RAM is now the brand. The new trucks don't even have a Dodge name on them.
So Argyle & C.C., you beat me today. But Lemonade, Orson Bean gave the best advice that I ever heard: Never but life insurance just so you can drop dead and another man can use YOUR money having a good time with your widow.
With a last name of Simpson, I've been called SIMPleton countless time over the years.
Nice Cuppa- You left out the gas constant.
PV=nRT
Nice Cuppa - I guess you never sprayed water on a chicken when you were a kid.
Also DNF,
Couldn't beat the heat...
However...
Mad as a wet hen?
Hmm, being a city boy, I don't know how to comment on this,
So i will let this video speak for itself...
(hope you find it interesting...)
Congratulations, Argyle and C.C., on another winner!
DHLAWRENCE slipped in immediately as my first fill. Can't forget that bad boy. From there the top central rapidly fell in place and having recently seen LARA Logan on Jeopardy called her to mind.
It was BLISS to complete the entire northern area though I didn't recall that IONIA was a religion. RACE was in but QUALIFYING took longer because of the aforementioned CAT/CUR confusion. Like others I thought the ending to wit would be -NESS or -LESS. Ironically having MIAMIHOOPSTERS there clinched QUIP and URAL. What fun misdirections! Ironically for me because I recalled a sports team name. HEEHEE
My dead is still hurting from the V8 dent at taking so long for ARCH on the MO quarter! But sadly I chose PARTB on my medicare card since Citizen Four meant nothing to me. DNF, drat!
MARDI and ETE also took longer because of the clever cluing.
Lemonade, you clarified my doubts along the way and I thank you. Zesty as always.
Have a BLISSful day, everyone!
Good afternoon everyone.
Nice commentary, Lemonade. C.C. and Argyle put INTENSE PRESSURE on us today.
Nice theme today. 4 quite different forms of Heat. A lot of very arcane fill, making it a good Friday challenge. URAL is a border river with Kazakhstan which I wasn't sure about. Initially wanted Amur.
Finally settled on RAM but wanted MACK or Kenworth.
ACRE - furrow wouldn't fit.
Heat - Our boilers operated at 850º F superheat and 600 psi (another example of INTENSE PRESSURE.) Saturated steam at 600 psi is 489º.
NC, I do not know how it happened, but I had a link for the etymology of "Mad as a Wet Hen", which somehow got lost, but it is now back in the write up. Click on KNOW and it will take you there.
The DRUID links pops open right away for me; anyone else?
Good Afternoon!
I am indeed late to this game, so I must say: WEES! Nonetheless, with the back and forth to the puzzle today for me, it was fun to finally solve it. Thanks so much Argyle and C.C.!
Terrific tour, Lemonade. Thanks!
Hen & druid links work for me,
but 1st link, Glen Frey, has been removed due to copyright...
Lucina, it was "region" -- not "religion."
Lemon, the druid link opened fine for me.
I checked; not our clue for CUR. We had way too easy "Mangy dog".
Just when I had this toughie about 80% solved I must have bumped something or clicked something because my browser went off to some other web page and my efforts were wiped out. Hitting the browser's Back button did get me back to the puzzle page but the puzzle started all over from the beginning. But I wasn't going to be able to solve it anyway; the west side was defeating me completely because I had STYX and CAT and TOM JOAD and wanted witNESS which obviously wouldn't work, etc. So I just hit the "Solve the whole puzzle" button and came here to read what you all had to say. Congratulations and thank you, C.C. and Argyle, for treating us to this well-constructed and (to me) quite difficult puzzle.
Too tough for me.
Hi Y'all! Hey, a HOT time on the ol' blog tonight! Thanks, Scott & C.C.! Another challenge with a lot of WAGs & educated guesses for me. I actually got the theme entries easier than many of the down fills. I put in HABANERO even though I didn't know it was a chili pepper. I thought it was a sexy HOT dance.
Mercy me, Lemonade, I got lost in the links for over an hour, they were so interesting. Thanks.
SPLICES: knots are never quite retained by my mind. When I did macrame, I had to follow the diagram for every single knot. Will never understand why.
MIAMI HOOPSTERS & YAO Ming were gimmees for a basketball fan. I'd seen the pictures of YAO's wife when they got married & wondered how she could ever give birth to his babies. Caesarian, I suspect. We had a big bull once....
My brother who does cancer research using rats has no love for Peta. He thinks finding the cures for cancer is of utmost importance and doesn't know why anyone would care about a rat. He can't stand to use dogs or monkeys though, so doesn't.
Son & grandson drive a RAM. No hesitation to fill that.
Missouri Quarter: remembered the "boat", forgot the ARCH until after red-letters yelled at me.
Didn't get that the L, vis-a-vis C = HALF was Roman numerals until Lemon explained. Duh!
After yesterday's tough-to-start pzl, I welcomed this softie from CC & DS Nichols. Not that it was only a bunch of gimmes, but that it offered early toe-holds that inspired me and energized my brain-to-pen pathway - so I didn't at all mind having to write over several early WAGs, such as TOM and CAT for CUR, COM for ORG, and even CALIFORNIA, which I managed to slip into my partially filled QU[ALIF]YING RACE.
Nice to see SARASOTA, a reminder to me of a wonderful summer I spent right on the gulf (a beach house on Siesta Key, the gulf was my back yard) in '68. I was with the Asolo Theater for a season, directing and acting. It was a dramatic summer in other ways, as that's when the news came that RFK had been shot. Closer to home, it's the summer I took up sky diving and later shot myself in the leg with my own spear gun. A crazy, chaotic but memorable time.
Well, this was a real Friday toughie, C.C. and Argyle, but I was thankful to get D.H. LAWRENCE right away (just finished an article on his poetry) and that helped me fill in the top half pretty quickly. (Thank you, too, Desper-otto, for guessing I would get that one). I also got the bottom corners pretty quickly but the middle was a bear until the end and I had to do a fair amount of cheating to get it at all. Like many, I had CAT instead of CUR for the longest time, but I wouldn't have gotten QUALIFYING RACE in any case. Still, a fun experience, and great expo, Lemonade.
I liked your second limerick, Owen.
Jayce, "Sex and Education" was a lot of fun, a play about an English school teacher who intercepts a racy note a basketball student in her class tried to hand his girlfriend. She gives him detention and works on both his manners and his grammar, so there's a lot of rapid, interesting, and funny dialogue. My friend Becky and I both liked it a lot.
Have a great day, everybody.
That was challenging for me. I had a hard time getting SNAP/LOAD. I had SNAP/pose at first instead. Thanks Argyle, CC and Lemon.
My faithful 1993 Camry is still limping along and reliably taking me and my bike back and forth to the bike path almost daily. As a reward, I took it in for a pre-smog-check service. It also needed an oil change, fixing the electric window on the passenger side and replacing a burned-out brake light. I'm expecting a large bill that will put a dent in my tutoring income. I keep the car so that I don't have to keep taking the bike rack on and off my newer Camry. Normally, it costs me next to nothing to maintain and I adjusted the insurance coverage to the bare minimum since I only drive it a few miles each week back and forth to the bike path.
I admit to cat/cur, teehee/heehee and being stumped by snap in this context. But I also admit to @Lemonade714 and @desper-otto that my first thought about DAHMPER was dhampir. I'm sure your grandfather was nicer than that!
TALK TRASH, the verb meaning DIS, is quite common in this area, and even more so in sports. The idiom dictionary says TALK TRASH means, "to speak disparagingly, often insultingly or abusively about a person or group." Those cowardly anons who talk trash about others by name, sniping from the cover of anonymity have no credibility or class. If they have nothing nice to say they should think of THUMPER, or at least have the spine to own up to their own opinions. What they say undercover has little effect, especially those who talk trash on a Friday.
Very challenging. Had the Cat problem, of course, but complicated that by thinking the river "might" be Utah. I know, I know. But it fit. So Oregon was bolluxed up forever. Florida wasn't any easier due to Druid and Mardi. Plus, the puzzle printed out sans a clue for 66a. So without Dis as fill, I didn't stand a chance. Finally pulled up the pzl online and got that clue leading to the answer, so that saved it for everything else with some successful wags. Back in Oregon, I finally gave up the cat and it came together. But it was a slog, and more work than I could enjoy this morning after a night out watching Paul Simon.
A well crafted puzzle, Scott and C.C., but too much of a fun sponge to enjoy.
I know it's been said before, but:
PETA: People for Eating Tasty Animals
And I suppose those who stumble out of the starting blocks do not QUALIFY IN GRACE.
desper-otto@12:51
Thank you! Obviously I need to upgrade my reading glasses!
Got stuck for awhile with ImmENSE PRESSURE instead of INTENSE PRESSURE. Otherwise it was a fun and challenging ride!
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