JW is back and it seems almost as if he and Mark McClain collaborated on the last two offerings. Instead of removing a "T" like we did last week, we add an "M" to each phrase to create a new and entertaining entry. 1/3/5 have the M added at the end, with a complete change in spelling. 2/4 add the M before a final E. The Ms also change all five vowels, E, O, U, I(Y) and A. Using each and every vowel is a cool addition. The rest is vintage JW with ARCADIA, DAEMONS, SPACIER, SINATRA, YOU HEAR ME, WORK FORCE, TOM SWIFTY, I THINK NOT, FOREIGN MAIL, SCIENCE SHOW all fun longish fill. With so many spaces filled by the theme and the long fill, there are some 3/4 letter fillers but all in all a fun Friday.
27A. Comprehensive text on mints? : TIC TAC TOME (10). Tic tac toe. The Xs and Os GAME.
LINK before they found Kelly Harmon.
37A. Reaction to Bugs' continued evasiveness? : ELMER'S GLOOM (11). Elmer's Glue. Poor Elmer Fudd, poor COW. Which leads perfectly to...
48A. How a snail moves? : ON THE SLIME (10). On the sly. LINK.
56A. "I plotted against Caesar completely on my own!"? : CASSIUS' CLAIM (12). Cassius Clay. JW slips a little hint of Shakespeare within a Muhammad Ali reference
1. Out of practice : RUSTY. I like this clue/fill but it actually took me a moment, which suggests that maybe I am....
6. Blue stone : LAPIS. I always think of Lapis Lazuli.
14. Casual opening : INTRO. I was looking for a prefix for casual all too long.
15. Saudi neighbor : OMANI.
16. Part of un giorno : ORA. Italian for a day and an hour.
17. Crayfish habitat : BAYOU. A CSO to all of our Louisiana contingent.
18. Employees : WORK FORCE.
22. Newspaper supporters : ADS. A tricky way to clue a simple one- ads do pay for the newspaper to exist, but...
25. LAX stat : ETA.
26. "You got me there" : SO I DO. This is a bit of confusion for me, though it turns out ok.
So do I is simply "I agree", or "I feel exactly the same" (me too).
"So I do" can mean several similar things. It is a way of agreeing about something you did not realize, as in "well, how about that, what you say is true." (meaning "I do in fact do that, what you say). For example- "Joe Isuzu, you raise your eyebrow when you are lying." Joe responds, "So I do; I never realized that before."
.
It also is a way of agreeing with something fairly obvious, that you have known for some time. "Joe, you raise your eyebrow when you are lying." "So I do (yes, and you are just noticing that?)"
32. Card game : GIN. I have played many hours, including knock gin and all the rummy cousins.
33. Certain cross-country traveler : SKIER. Hey marti.
34. Crane's construction : NEST. Tricky, the bird not the heavy equipment.
36. "One Mic" rapper : NAS. I will NOT link this song.
41. Common ID : SSN.
43. Soaps actress Rylan : EMME. This diminutive actress appears on soaps mostly and changed her name legally from Marcy.
44. Some kissing sounds : MWAHS. Back at you. I am sure this was the work of the cell phone generation.
47. Snap : PIC.
51. Lend __ : AN EAR. Friends, Romans....
54. "That's so cute!" : AWW. Two weeks in a row. Did not help the Dolphins.
55. Brine-cured delicacy : LOX. When I was a kid, there was LOX (salty) and Nova, not salty.Now I know Why.
61. "Doubtful" : I THINK NOT. A classic JW multi-word fill.
62. Be enamored of : FANCY. I can almost hear this in a British accent.
66. Relative of -ista : ERO. Spanish that has invaded US speak. LINK.
67. View from the Eiffel Tower : SEINE.
69. Cold and wet : RAW. The night was...
70. Fragrant compound : ESTER. Not Esther Lessner...oh the other ONE.
71. Quite a while : YEARS.
Down:
1. Kid : RIB. I was slow getting this and 1-across, sad; especially for a kidder like me.
2. A, in Acapulco : UNA.
3. Mess metaphor : STY. Rhymes with Sly.
4. Canter cousin : TROT. Many kinds of GAITS for horses. 49D. Bit of equestrian gear : HALTER.
5. "Am I clear?" : YOU HEAR ME? Another classic JW multi-word fill; words a child does not want to hear from a parent.
6. Dieter's choice : LOW FAT. There are high fat diets as well.
7. Milwaukee : mine :: Marseilles : __ : A MOI. Just French.
8. Last of three Catherines : PARR. 37.5% of Henry VIII wives.
9. Calligrapher's array : INKS.
10. Searches (through) : SIFTS. Even works for emails.
11. Philatelist's source : FOREIGN MAIL. It was always so exciting to get a letter from a foreign country, and look at the stamp.
12. Peloponnesian region : ARCADIA. A reference to both old and new GREECE. Next to....
13. Nature spirits of Greek myth : DAEMONS. BZZZT! That is the Latin term for the GREEK. This is like cluing JUPITER as a Greek god.
19. Plains tribe : OTO.
21. List substitute: Abbr. : ETC.
22. Cadillac model : ATS. A car- whoopee!
23. Hägar creator Browne : DIK. Gone 27 years, his son Chris now produces the strip.
28. Invoice heading no. : TEL.
29. Initiation : ONSET.
30. Ryan of "Sleepless in Seattle" : MEG. Another victim of plastic surgery.
31. Night sch. staple : ESL. It helped Oo and I become a couple.
35. Bit of adverbial wordplay : TOM SWIFTY. "I need a pencil sharpener," said Tom bluntly.
38. Confessional music genre : EMO.
39. LBJ's successor : RMN. Tricky Dicky.
40. Real head-turner in the animal kingdom : OWL.
41. Deeper into la-la land : SPACIER.
42. "From Here to Eternity" Oscar winner : SINATRA.
45. Coverage-providing org. : HMO.
46. __ symbol : SEX. Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Paul Newman...who are they now: Brangelina? Mr. and Mrs. Clooney? Link your favorites.
50. __ Beach, Hawaii, home of the 2005 Little League World Series champs : EWA. I can sense some serious grumbling about this fill unless you all know Hawaii much better than I do. It was filled before I got here, but this is obscure. How about, Adam and Ewa?
52. "__ suspected!" : AS I.
53. Salon procedure : RINSE. As a child when my grandmother would go to the beauty parlor for a rinse and set, I though 'how stupid' it was, since we had a perfectly serviceable sink and shower. I did not know about THIS.
57. Hawaiian strings : UKES. More Hawaii.
58. Agitated state : SNIT. I hope no reader got in a snit over any of the fill.
59. Pothole warning : CONE. Or barrels? ORANGE.
60. Farm female : MARE.
63. Org. assisting museums : NEA. I always get this wrong.
64. Amtrak unit : CAR. How simple.
65. QB's stat : YDS.
Well, fall has fallen, I get home after dark and another Jeffrey Wechsler is in the record books. It fit together nicely and I had a good time unraveling the mysteries and picking the links.. You all have a great weekend. Lemonade out.
48 comments:
Hi Y'all! Another good stumper from Jeffrey! I got off to a good start with RUSTY and filled the whole NW corner before moving on. I got the theme early which helped on most the theme fills. However, this lead me astray because I expected the long downs to be theme entries. Nope! Except for YOU HEAR ME those long downs were difficult for me. TOM SWIFTY was ESP. Didn't make a lick of sense until Lemony explained.
The NE corner was the last to fill. Do I know these? I THINK NOT. No way! Unh uh! Tried Greece before ARCADIA was red-letters most of the way. Didn't know DAEMONS, ORA or NAAS. FAD was first choice "day" which doesn't last long either.
Snap = (oh, snapshot) PIC. Threw me off a while.
Didn't remember SINATRA until SIN perped up -- then I knew the rest.
EWA Beach also new to me.
But a good start to my day anyway.
Morning, all!
Got off to a slow start (really wanted PONDS instead of BAYOU at 17A), but then things picked up nicely. Finally figured out the theme at CASSIUS CLAIM, which really helped me go back and quickly get the other theme answers. A fun time was had by all!
FIW. Bah! I had several WAGs in the NE corner, but it turned out to be a couple of 3-letter words in the west: eDS + eTS. I thought the newspaper clue was oddly worded (neither subscribers nor newswires fit). Car models can be any letters in the alphabet.
The theme took a while -- the first ones I got were CASSIUS CLAY, then ELMER'S GLUE, so figured names were part of the deal.
There was a fish from the SEINE
Who didn't like being in rain
The water was fine,
That, he didn't mind,
But the air-drops were really a pain!
The SCIENCE SHOW wasn't quite able
To find a bench that was stable.
But the regular sway
Had a fixed E.T.A. --
So they called it a periodic table!
{B, A.}
"Eds" instead of ADS, "Nes" instead of NAS, "flier" instead of SKIER. Not a great effort today.
Good morning!
Changed PENS to INKS and thus endeth the write-overs. Nobody, and I mean nobody, in Looziana says "crayfish." They're crawfish! And they're tasty. Thanx, JW for a nice Friday outing.
I "hear" MWAH as the sound of an across-the-room air-kiss. I don't get the cell phone connection. Lemon, perhaps it would be better to leave the percentage calculations to Splynter. Henry had six wives.
Good Morning, Lemonade and friends. I got off to a roaring start this morning and immediately filled in the NW corner. RUSTY and RIB absolutely jumped out at me. Like PK, however, the NE corner gave me fits and was the last portion of the puzzle to be filled in.
I wanted the Blue Stone to be a Topaz, but the perps quickly led me to the LAPIS.
The Crane's Construction = NEST didn't fool me.
Crawfish, not Crayfish, are more likely to be found in the BAYOUS! (And yes, I know the terms are synonymous.)
QOD: Every poker player, like every fisherman, needs to have a story in a box, and most poker stories are completely uninteresting. ~ Jason Alexander (b. Sept. 23, 1959)
Another creative theme from JW! WEES about the NE being the most challenging, especially with ARCADIA and DAEMONS, and the awkward "SO I DO". Wanted UNO before GIN.
Heading to KC to celebrate my mom's 85th birthday tomorrow - we're going to see Shirley Jones in a revue of her songs over the years at the New Theater. We've moved to going to the matinee to fit her routine better.
Thanks Jeff and Lemonade!
It's not just TIC TAC TOE; a TIC TAC is a mint.
"It helped Oo and I . . . ?" How 'bout "Oo and ME"?
TOM SWIFTY? Where are the adverbs?
This was a little too tough for this redneck. After I halfway filled most of the puzzle I caught the theme at CASSIUS CLAIM. I even correctly guessed and perped the actress EMME and rapper NAS but the Greek in the NE and the cross of Hawaiian & AWW (ooh, aah) and the never heard of TOM SWIFTY crossing the non-word- MWAHS left that area full of blanks.
ARCADIA- a town in N. LA. where Bonnie & Clyde were killed. Didn't know it was in Greece. DAEMONS- new to me
GIN- penciled in both UNO (which led to US MAIL) and WAR- both wrong but I had a gin & tonic last night
SO I DO- ugh is all I can say
THE FIRST TEAM- I actually filled 'the first TIME'- thinking of a tie game.
D-O- you are correct about the CRAWFISH and the pronunciation of Louisiana. If you are a native, it's LOOZIANA but if you're from another state it's LOUISE-E-ANA.
I remember Tom Swifties fondly from my days as a Boy Scout. They were very popular in the "jokes" section at the back of Boy's Life Magazine.
"That's the last time I ever stuck my arm in the lion's mouth," the lion tamer said offhandedly.
"I'm sick and tired of shellfish," said Tom crabbily.
"I can't remember what I was supposed to buy at the grocery store," mumbled Tom listlessly.
And the one I had the honor of making up (although I'm sure I'm not the only one to ever think of it):
"I seem to have lost my arrow holder," stated Tom without a quiver.
"I love our new trampoline", said Tom, bounding with joy.
Ooh -- here's one I just thought of in honor of 67A:
"I just fell into the river," the Parisian gibbered insanely.
Working from the bottom up Cassius Claim set the theme and helped tremendously. I had EDS instead of ADS. BZZT!Still a great puzzle. EWA and NAS were perped.
From Barry's list above, the last word ending in LY is an adverb. Without a quiver does not fit the Tom Swifty pattern. You need an adverb. Quiveringly would fit. Bounding with joy has no adverb, either.
In my experience seeing it on TV, I think of MWAH as coming from actresses and other "beautiful people" air kissing. Think Joan Rivers. They actually say MWAH. IMO this preceded its use on the Internet.
I, too, think the base phrase was Tic TAC mints.
I suppose the bayou reference makes crawfish more likely than crayfish, but being from the NE we used to catch crayfish as kids.
• OK, Tom Swift[L]y was new to me. How about:
41D. "Is there always more room in la-la land?", he asked spacily? [Yes, it's SPACIER]
• 61A: Two ropes meet in a restaurant.
First rope: "FANCY the LOW-FAT special?"
Second rope: "Yes, I THIN KNOT"
• 70A: [NERD/BRIT ALERT]
"I hear that Gin had a kid with some tart he fancied."
"Yes, they called it ESTER."
Good Morning:
I always enjoy a JW challenge and this one certainly was a challenge, particularly that devious NE corner, as others have indicated. I did finish w/o help but it was a hard-won victory. Had pens/inks, cleat/tread, and Uno/gin and, although I got the theme, the "M" addition in each answer sailed right over my head until reading the expo. Nice CSO to Lucina at ESL.
Thanks, Jeffrey, for keeping us on our "Tic Tac Toes" and thanks, Lemony, for unraveling the knotty parts. Sweet picture of Charlotte and Harper; they look like they are close and happy sisters.
With the exception of some rain due later today, our extended forecast shows lots of blue and sunny skies and temps of 60's-70's. Perfect Fall weather!
Inane hiker, best wishes to your mom on her 85th and enjoy the Shirley Jones show.
Have a great day.
Dinah Shore closed her show by throwing a kiss with a "MWAH" as early as the 1950s.
"They want to electrocute an innocent man!", Tom said, shockingly.
Good morning everyone.
Crashed and burned on MWAHS. Also needed red letter help with ORA and EMO. But it's Friday. 'Nuff said.
ARCADIA - Also the name of a destroyer tender, USS ARCADIA (AD-23).
Have a great day.
Musings
-Jeff Wex on a Friday and what a trip! O_A/A_CADIA was not a C and now of course I see giorno as day as in bon giorno (good day) in Italia, which would yield an R for hour – ORA. DOH!
-All the theme fill was wonderful but, come on, CASSIUS CLAIM topped them all!
-The best Rock and Roll INTRO of all time? Hmmm…
-Being out of the WORK FORCE is a bigger adjustment than it looks
-Neil and Buzz took off at 9:32 am EDT on July16, 1969. Their ETA on The Sea Of Tranquility was 4:18 pm, July 20 1969. They were a minute-and-a-half early.
-Lifelock founder Todd Davis did this with his SSN. His identity was stolen 13 times
-Yup, A MWAH AD ending (1:21) that those of us of a certain age remember
-Tire TREAD on Dinah’s Chevy used to run out in 1/3 the time of today’s
-Catherine PARR outlived Henry VIII by a year with her head intact
-In the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn movie Charade, the quarter million dollar ransom was hidden in plain sight in their value
-Having a golf partner my age get into a SNIT is very uncomfortable.
-What calypso song told of a girl who “was down by the seashore all day, all night SIFTING sand”?
YR, the word "bayou" evokes a Louisiana connection. But the crawfish in Louisiana don't come from bayous; they come from crawfish farms -- basically off-season rice paddies. The best crawfish meal I ever had was in Breaux Bridge, not far from Lafayette. It's served family-style, piping hot in a large circular tray containing crawfish, half-ears of corn and skin-on potatoes. Add a frosty beer and ...gotta stop....I'm gettin' too hungry.
All day, all night Marianne
Down by the sea shore sifting sand
Never had either a crayfish OR a crawfish--had quite some few crawdads, though...
So far as I know, I made this one up while at Cornell.
"I dropped my toothpaste," Tom said crestfallenly.
My favorite science show as a kid was Ask Mr. Wizard. It wasn't flashy like Bill Nye but you learned and enjoyed a lot of science.
Well, though I liked this puzzle very much, I mirror ELMERSGLOOM at the NE corner. Like others, I found it frustrating and extremely challenging.
The entire western hemisphere filled in record time for a Friday though EMME was a pure guess. I had E_ME so it could have been ESME. And I really laughed at ONTHESLIME. Very cute.
Jeffrey is so clever. Of course I didn't glom onto the theme so thank you for 'splaining that, Lemonade. At first I thought it might be groups when FORCE and TEAM filled.
I learned about TOMSWIFTY jokes right here on this Blog. Some years ago we had a whole day of creating them. Remember that, Argyle?
Thank you for the shoutout, IM. It brought a smile and I recalled it's been four years since retiring from that job.
ARCADIA (in Greece) was a source of inspiration for many poems if memory serves, at the beginning of the Romantic Age.
Thank you, Jeffrey Wechsler and Lemonade for today's offerings.
Have a beautiful day everyone! 84 is the expected high today and I'm in heaven!!!
The first time I ever heard "mwah" was when Dinah Shore used to say it at the end of her show, after she had placed her hand over her mouth.
She was throwing a kiss.
The first time I ever heard of Dinah Shore was today.
Thanks, JW & Lemon! Got 'em all this morning with no cheats, not one. Enjoyed sussing the theme, esp. as there was no hint within the pzl--just those taunting question marks.
Yep! I figured I wasn't the only one to go for UNO before GIN. UNO is the most common of three-letter card games that we find in this neighborhood, so it was a bit of a wrench to see it replaced by the game my wife and I used to play a lot. (No longer; she beat me far too many times to maintain civil conversation.)
CASSIUS' CLAIM was the brilliantest of them all. Not only did it stretch the theme beautifully, it reminded us of the age range shared by most pzl-solvers. I can't imagine many millennials would have the experience to recognize the former name of Muhammad Ali -- unless, of course, they read through his entire obituary. But then, would they read through anything of length?
Do you suppose MOI and MWAH could be homonyms?
Ah, to pick a very tiny nit, do we really believe Cassius would have claimed the murder of Caesar as a solo act? If we follow Shakespeare's version of events (and he was following historical sources), Cassius laid great store in drafting Brutus into the conspiracy (scenes I/2 and II/1), to the extent that he deferred his leadership role to him - because Brutus' family name stood for Roman republican principles, and Cassius knew the killers needed that honorable cachet to appease the public.
Just sayin' ...
Anonymous at 12:16:
"The first time I ever heard of Dinah Shore was today."
Sic transit gloria Chevroleti!i
Whew, tough and clever as heck. Another wonderful Wechsler creation. I gotta say, the LAT puzzles are generally of very high quality. I keep imaging Jeff seeing EWA sitting there in the grid and frantically searching for something with that name or that would somehow fit.
Barry G, you might get a kick out of today's Non Sequitur comic strip.
I don't know why Cadillac (and Acura for that matter) name their vehicles with seemingly random strings of 3 letters. Who the heck can remember the difference between a GHQ and an XYZ?
Well, then there's NAS and MOS DEF and probably some others.
Best wishes to you awl, say I pointedly.
Those sure aren't the lyrics to "Marianne" that I learned in college.
"All day, all night, Marianne
Guess she musta thought I was a Superman."
Great puzzle with a lot of crunch in New England. Had to turn on red letter help for that section. Very informative expo, lemonade.
Cya!
Got my butt kicked today. After looking up EMME, AMOI, ARCADIA and EWA I still had errors in four squares. I had eDS for ADS, yWAHS for MWAHS, and tANCy for FANCY.
Pretty typical of my weak effort on a JW offering, but still had fun trying. And I always enjoy Lemonade's write ups.
Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who had trouble with the Northeast, but I got most of the rest, and that's pretty great for me for a Friday Jeff Wechsler. I also got the theme early with CASSIUS CLAIM,and so ended up really enjoying this puzzle--many thanks, Jeff!
And you too, Lemonade, for explaining a TOM SWIFTY to us. Barry G., your collection cracked me up, as did all the others contributed by our clever crew. Made for a fun Friday morning!
Have a great weekend coming up, everybody!
I'm old enough to remember Tom Swifty's but there was also a Tom Swift series of science fiction novels way back in the day that I enjoyed.
Worst clued puzzle I've seen here in quite some time. "MWAHS", really??? "TOMSWIFTY" what does that even mean?
I HATE puzzles designed with such bad clueing. Really. Hate. Them.
Blech, what a hot mess Mr. Wechsler.
I forgot to mention that UNO was my first choice, too.
Never heard of Dinah Shore? Oh, my, was it that long ago? That's the lovely thing about crossword puzzles; they keep us connected to the past. Besides Dinah, think Caesar, Cassius, even Mohammed Ali, aka, Cassius Clay and ARCADIA, ancient Greece.
Books of the original Tom Swift series: List
There are some great titles in there.
Its all been said. NW was pretty easy with Rusty for a start. Topaz worked with Parr, but Lapis became apparent quickly. Got the theme with Elmer's Gloom followed by Cassius Claim, then On The Slime. That allowed some good guesswork with Tic Tac Tome and The First Team. So.... it was all filled except much of the NE. Even Tom Swifty, Sinatra as clued and I think not. 3 letter card games were War and Loo, so Uno didn't lead me astray, but Gin never even dawned on me. Nas came and went at least 3 times. Nothing else was working, so I resorted to outright cheating to finish. But despite the bloody nose and no lunch money I enjoyed it. Very clever theme, just too clever overall for me today.
It surely must be 5 O'clock somewhere, he said dryly.
Good afternoon, folks. Thank you, Jeffrey Wechsler, for a fine puzzle. Thank you, Lemonade, for a fine review.
"I love hiding under the bleachers" said Seymour Butts.
This puzzle was tough, but it is a Friday.
CASSIUS CLAIM was my first theme answer and did help with the rest.
FOREIGN MAIL took me a while, but fell with perps.
I wanted MULE instead of MARE, but a MULE is not a female (I remembered).
Tried CLEAT for 68A. Pretty soon TREAD became the word.
Tried AHH for 54A, but AWW won that round.
In Johnsonburg now. The class reunion starts tonight. I am on the committee, even though I did not go to this school. Hope it is fun.
See you tomorrow.
Abejo
( )
"I don't want to take the bus" whined Otto Carr.
"We should use more temps" opined Hiram Daily.
The entire Car Talk staff credited at the end of the PBS show used to be a combination of these groaners, especially their law firm of Dewey Cheatham and Howe.
I used to work with a guy named Hyman Wiener, but I never heard anyone make wordplay with his name. Some things are too easy.
Guys, you need an adverb end in ly, not just a pun for it to be a Tom Swifty. We should use more temps he said hotly.
"Yellowrocks has corrected you once again", he said sanctimoniously.
Not all adverbs end in ly. Too, very, well, par ejemplo. But I had trouble seeing Tom Swifty in that sense.
Cartalk: My favorite was "In charge of the shrimp buffet - Sheldon DeVaned"
"Jump Off The Cliff" by Hugo Furst.
not all adverbs end ly, but it is correct that the Tom Swifty usually does end that way. Not sure why 'bluntly' offended.
"The felon escaped by tunneling down," Tom said condescendingly.
"I couldn't get a word in edgewise," Tom complained crossly.
"It's only 15 by 15," Tom explained daily.
"It's a whole 21 by 21," Tom expanded weekly.
"The grid is all in just black and white," Tom mused cruciverbally.
"The corner is at an angle," Tom said righteously.
"That puzzle was easy," said Tom with a snap.
"The other puzzle was hard," said Tom wrongfully.
"C.C. is a goddess," Tom spoke of her highly.
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