google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Monday, September 12, 2016 Brock Wilson

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Sep 12, 2016

Monday, September 12, 2016 Brock Wilson

Theme: 2 by 6 - Six theme entries that start with the same two letters.

16A. Crustacean catcher: LOBSTER POT

25A. Weapon in Clue: LEAD PIPE

42A. Slip for a tardy student: LATE PASS

55A. Decorator's wall prettifier: LATEX PAINT

10D. Backyard bash: LAWN PARTY

32D. Keats or Byron, e.g.: LYRIC POET

55D. Collectors' albums ... and a hint to six puzzle answers: LP's

Argyle here. Quantity over quality. A simple two letter theme(but six of them) with a grid that is compartmentalized makes this a stiff Monday. This Brock's third puzzle and perhaps his most complex yet. Not very many names which will make some happy. With LP's as the unifier, I should find some album songs to post. Update: I didn't find much.

Across:

1. Is blessed with, as talent: HAS

4. Creator of Finn and Sawyer: TWAIN, Mark.

9. Leave rolling in the aisles: SLAY

13. That, in Spain: ESA

14. "Olde" store: SHOPPE

15. Ring over an angel: HALO

18. Out of town: AWAY

19. Intent: PURPOSE

20. OB/GYN procedure: AMNIO. (amniocentesis)

21. Hiding spot for a cheater's ace: SLEEVE

22. Put off bedtime: STAY UP, but after 4 hours....

27. Brewery product: ALE

30. "Defending our rights" org.: ACLU. (American Civil Liberties Union)

33. Electrified atoms: IONs

34. Scans for injured athletes, briefly: MRIs. (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

35. __ Mawr College: BRYN. Welsh for "big hill".

36. Piece of pizza: SLICE

37. To-do list entry: ITEM

38. Worse-than-one's-bite quality: BARK

39. Online TV giant: HULU. Any users?

40. Since, in a holiday song: SYNE

41. Fifi's friend: AMI


45. Like the Arctic, compared to most of the planet: COLDER

47. Two-base hit: DOUBLE

51. Debate issue: TOPIC

53. Illness characterized by a red rash: MEASLES

54. Soon, to a bard: ANON

58. Subtle look: PEEK

59. Lion groups: PRIDES

60. Former AT&T rival: GTE.  formerly General Telephone & Electric Corporation (1955–1982)

61. Former fast planes: SSTs. formerly SuperSonic Transport

62. Unemotional: STOIC

63. Bladed gardening tool: HOE. Ah, groundbreaking invention.

Down:

1. Makes a difference: HELPS



2. "I won't tell __!": A SOUL

3. Buffalo hockey player: SABRE

4. Title venue for Hemingway's old man: THE SEA. If you meant, like me, to read it, well, here it is. The Old Man and the Sea.

5. Sported: WORE

6. Kindle download: APP

7. Wall St. debut: IPO. (initial public offering (IPO) first time that the stock of a private company is offered to the public)

8. Volleyball barrier: NET

9. SeaWorld star: SHAMU

11. Jai __: ALAI

12. String-around-your-finger toy: YOYO. Toy of the moment.

14. Cooking appliance: STOVE

17. Explore caves: SPELUNK. "cave, cavern," c.1300, from Old French spelonque or directly from Latin spelunca "a cave, cavern, grotto," from Greek spelynx (genitive spelyngos). An adjective, speluncar "of a cave" is recorded from 1855. ~ Online Etymology Dictionary.

20. Sailor's word of obedience: AYE

22. Information that ruins the ending: SPOILER

23. Costner/Russo golf film: TIN CUP. ¡Golfers!



24. Basilica recess: APSE

26. Water down: DILUTE

28. Bank claim: LIEN

29. Salinger's "With Love and Squalor" girl: ESME

30. Palindromic pop group: ABBA.  No links to albums allowed.

31. Study all night: CRAM

34. Pageant title with 51 contestants (the 50 states plus D.C.): MISS USA

36. Roe source: SHAD

42. Partners' legal entity: Abbr.: LLC. (limited liability company)

43. Madison Ave. bigwig: AD EXEC

44. Most TV "operas": SOAPS. Remember this one?



46. Sounds from sties: OINKS

48. "Mutiny on the Bounty" captain: BLIGH

49. Slow movement: LENTO

50. Perfumer Lauder: ESTÉE

51. Four-note lights-out tune: TAPS

52. Singles: ONEs

53. Prefix with care: MEDI

56. Gallery collection: ART

57. Chihuahua uncle: TIO

               Chihuahua City, Chihuahua State, Mexico.

Argyle


Note from C.C.:

Happy Birthday to dear Steve, who's blogged for us from all over the world. Has any of you ever tried his mayo recipe? So simple. So delicious. I halved everything the second time, as I could not use up the amount the first time. How long do you keep yours, Steve? One article I read suggests that home-made mayo is good for 3 days.

50 comments:

Dudley said...

Hello Puzzlers -

Here was another case of a puzzle so quick to solve I didn't even notice the theme. Not unusual for a Monday. Quality fill, though, not a groaner in the bunch.

Morning, Argyle, glad to have you illuminate the theme!

OwenKL said...

{C+, C, B+.}

Will a single drop DILUTE THE SEA?
Will the tiniest flaw SPOIL a lover's glee?
Then the minicam I secrete
In the girl's shower, for just a PEEK
Why does it mean a month's detentions for me?

A super-hero in town flies around on a mission
He has several powers, like super X-ray vision.
He's got the cape and the stance,
But no LATEX pants --
They might expose him to super derision!

The badminton league was in a bit of a spot!
Not enough fans to fill a SLEEVE of shuttlecocks!
So they added a loving CUP
For the longest to STAY UP --
The prize money was known as the LOBSTER POT!

Nice Cuppa said...

Thanks Argyle

Certainly had some Monday morning breakfast crunch, a tidy theme and mostly decent fill.

– Nice to see SYNE, to remind people that "For the sake of old lang syne" is an insulting tautology. The Scottish phrase is "FOR AULD LANG SYNE"

THIS IS WHAT BURNS WROTE:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

Chorus.-For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.


– HAS = Is blessed with, as talent. Clue-to-answer letter ratio = 7:1.
– Not sure why "Decorator's wall prettifier" is LATEX PAINT. Paint is Paint.
– I knew of SPELUNKING [= POT-HOLING in the U.K.], but was not familiar with the back-form, SPELUNKER.
What do you do on weekends? I SPELUNK. I don't think so. I GO SPELUNKING sounds better. Still a daft word.
– SHAMU will soon go the way of SSTs.
– STOIC does not mean "unemotional". It means "not showing emotion [while feeling it]", which I consider quite different. STAID would be a better answer.

TTFN

Early posts will end soon as am returning to the West Coast this week

Barry G. said...

Morning, all (and Happy Birthday to Steve)!

Blew through this one in near record time, even for a Monday. My one do-over was replacing LARGO with LENTO. I maintain that LARGO is actually a movement, whereas LENTO is merely a tempo, but I could certainly be wrong.

Hungry Mother said...

I used to live near BRYN Mawr and went to Bala Cynwyd Junior High school, so the Welsh names are never a problem. No writeovers today.

Lemonade714 said...

HBDTY Steve and many more.

WBS this was an easy one that somehow put NC in.a bad mood. Paints can be latex or water based or oil based. STOIC as an adjective can be synonymous with unemotional for me. Please explain why Burns was being insulting. I understand the confusion from the lyric, as did Harry in Harry Met Sally but can you be more explicit. Maybe if you did so LENTO.

Happy Monday all

desper-otto said...

Good morning!

No problems, no write-overs, no sense of theme. Looking over the puzzle, I couldn't figure out why I entered THESE A. D'oh! Still, I managed 100% of 33-1/3.

Happy birthday, Steve! I sense it's gonna be a busy month.



Jinx in Norfolk said...

Nice Monday eye-opener. Didn't know LATEPASS, and only sorta knew LENTO and ESME, but handy perps rescued me.

desper-otto said...

Congrats on going blue, Jinx. Have you tried just ignoring ReCaptcha on your posts, yet?

TTP said...


Happy Birthday Steve.

What Dudley said. To a T.

Thought of our ever-on-the-go friend Abejo at GTE and then again at CC's mayo question.

Spitzboov said...

Good morning everyone.

Happy Birthday Steve and belatedly to Husker G.

Actually, the end of 1 d suffices for 56 d. Maybe there were 6 gimmick fills, none lollapaloozas. but I liked seeing themeage in the downs. Other longer downs for a Monday: SPELUNKER, SPOILER, MISS USA. No searches or erasures were needed.

inanehiker said...

Speed run today which is good, because I got up late and will still get to work on time.

Thanks Argyle, Brock, and Happy birthday Steve!

Anonymous T said...

Morning All!

A Monday LEAD PIPE cinch; thanks Brock. Argyle - I can see the problems finding songs here but your expo (and SOAP link!) was another for the Billboard Charts :-)

WO: BR[aeiou?]N, AYE, Y.

Fav: SPELUNK. As a young Boy Scout we'd go into S. IL caves to explore; as a "grown-up" I go deep into data w/ the appropriately named product Splunk <-Link of funny (to a nerd) T-shirt slogans

DW has HULU. We were able to catch up on Mr. Robot S1 for "free." [Xfinity wanted $3/episode].

{C, C, B+}

Happy Birthday Steve! I always enjoy your take on the puzzles and your wit. Have a good day wherever you find yourself in the world today.

Cheers, -T

Lucina said...

Happy birthday, Steve! I wish you delightful eating today!

To paraphrase Lionel Richie, "easy as Monday morning" today. What Dudley said. Only had to change ESO to ESA and PEER to PEEK.

Thank you, Brock Wilson and Argyle.

Have a happy day, everyone!

Magilla Go-Rilla said...

Easy Monday. No erasures!

Yellowrocks said...

Like Dudley and others I found this one a quick solve with quality fill.

There are many print references to SPELUNKER. For example:
"The spelunker was treated at the site and then transported to a hospital in France." Seattle Times, Aug 13, 2016
"Spelunkers agree that this region has some of the most remarkable caves on the planet, including my favorite, the Skocjan Caves." Seattle Times, Jun 7, 2016

He HAS an ear for music. She HAS a nose for news. He believes he HAS ESP.

Happy birthday, Steve.
I will have to try the mayo recipe.

I square danced last night for the first time in almost 8 weeks. Lots of fun. So good to get off the medical merry go round for an evening.

tawnya said...

Morning all!

Nice speed run Monday - didn't get hung up on anything and got the theme right away! My nephew works on fishing boats year-round but he got his start with lobster pots. I always eat well when I visit!!

Couldn't find a LAWN PARTY song, but I thought of this one

The classic live version HELP!

I had to read The Old Man... in high school a million years ago. I remember being so bored and not seeing the magic of it. I was also 16 and easily distracted. Perhaps I will read it again while I'm on break in December...

OINKS reminds of Esther. If you haven't seen Esther the Wonder Pig on Facebook, you are missing out! A couple bought a mini-pig and raised her in the house with their dogs, but she kept growing and is now close to 700 pounds! She's still in the house, her best friends are dogs, the couple now run a sanctuary, and it's adorable.

"30. Palindromic pop group: ABBA. No links to albums allowed." I think you broke the first rule of Fight Club...

Happy Monday!

t.

Irish Miss said...

Good Morning:

An easy, peasy Monday meander with only two w/o's: eso/esa and largo/lento. A pretty basic theme but it was enhanced by the fill.

Nice job, Warren, and nice expo, Argyle.

Happy Birthday, Steve. 🎂🎁🎊🎈🎉 May your day be full of fun, food, and fanfare!

We have a lovely, sunny day here and some cooler temps to look forward to. (Have a doctor's appointment later to discuss some meds side effects such as the North Korean captivity nightmare, for one!)

Have a great day.

Husker Gary said...

Musings
-Thanks for all the 70th birthday wishes! Having a birthday where all flags are flown at half staff is very sobering.
-Argyle’s summative paragraph works for me as I dispatched this puzzle quickly and saw the theme stand out like a brick in a punch bowl.
-Talk about your AWAY FB games – This year the University of Hawaii played Cal in Sydney, Australia and the next week flew to Ann Arbor, Michigan to play the Wolverines. Whew!
-I can’t think the ACLU agrees with this policy
-The Arctic’s precipitation is similar to that of the Sahara but the COLD temps prevent the snow from melting
-The coach of the UNL national VB champions, John Cook, said of player Brianna Holman, “At times it appeared her belly button was above the NET!”
-SPOILERS – Rhett leaves Scarlett and Rick lets Ilsa fly off with Victor!
-Unlike Captain Queeg of the Caine, Captain BLIGH was real
-The very thought of SPELUNKING fills me with claustrophobia!
-Happy Birthday, Steve!

Tinbeni said...

Happy Birthday, STEVE!

Since I consume Scotch NEAT, I've never watered down, DILUTE the Good-Stuff.

Cheers!

unclefred said...

Mostly a speed run, but took the longest time for the light bulb to come on with ADE_EC/LATE_PAINT. An easy on that for some reason I just couldn't see for probably a full 30 seconds of staring at it. Oi! Nice, fun, witty CW, thanx, Brock! Nice write-up, thanx, Argyle! Thanx for the grins, Owen, B, B, C.

Lemonade714 said...

What started a discussion of SPELUNKer?

desper-otto said...

Lemon, 17d.

C6D6 Peg said...

Thanks, Brock, for a fresh Monday puzzle, with very nice fill and six great theme answers.

Argyle, as always, love your pics. Chihuahua was especially nice!

Spitzboov said...

HG re: Bligh. Quite a sailor and navigator. Served under Capt. Cook, sailed 3600 miles in an open boat to Timor, and captained a warship under Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen, among other accomplishments.

oc4beach said...


Good Monday puzzle Brock and I enjoyed Argyle's write up.

Only a couple of issues/missteps, but perps sorted them out.

The original Kindle download was an EBook, they really didn't download APPs until they came out with the Kindle Fire. I have both plus IPads, IPods, IPhones and Android devices that I download APPs to. Technology keeps changing and sometimes you need to update to a newer generation device or operating system if you want the apps to work. I still say that the developers of these systems are EVIL and in many cases are greedy. My DW still loves her original Kindle.

Being male, I had no clue to what the OB/GYN procedure was.

I also had MCI before GTE became evident.

Have a great day everyone. Go out and celebrate National Chocolate Milkshake Day today.

desper-otto said...

oc4beach -- I've also got an original Kindle; it's my bedside companion. Upset me when I left it in the gate area in West Palm -- flight attendant wouldn't let me leave the plane to go get it. Luckily, somebody turned it in and they Fed-Ex'd it back to me. Spent a few evenings reading via the Kindle app on my Android tablet before it arrived. I still prefer the no-frills, long-battery-life Kindle for reading books.

Sailor said...

>Lemonade714 said... What started a discussion of SPELUNKer?

I'm thinking it was the only word in this puzzle interesting enough to sustain a conversation.

Jayce said...

Easy puzzle but well constructed, I thought. Realizing SOBRE was very likely not the name of the team, I changed ESO to ESA and ta-da.
I really like the word SPELUNK. Anonymous T, I am going to research Splunk to learn more about it. Much of what we do in my profession is "deep dive" into big data to look for signals that might be from precursors. Any tools that might help with that would be worth checking out.
Gary, I'm with you about claustrophobia. As much as I like the word SPELUNK I get the heebie jeebies just thinking about doing it.
Happy birthday, Steve, and best wishes to you all.

Chairman Moe said...

"puzzling thoughts":

HB, Steve

Enjoyed the recap, Argyle

Puzzle was OK for a Monday - about the right difficulty

I had three wrong guesses before I allowed the perps to assist: WHALE before SHAMU in 9d, LYRICISTS before LYRIC POET in 32d (I obviously had penned that in way before I got to the "theme"), and SOAPY before SOAPS in 44d. On that one (SOAPY), the clue, to me, suggested an adjective. I didn't know if "soapy" applied or not, but if so I thought it a clever clue/solve!

Go ahead and offer some "boo's" to the following:


SeaWorld star (seeking habeus corpus)
Had a scheme, one he chose, as his PURPOSE.
SHAMU planned to expose
That the dolphins were "fauxs";
Some would say that he did this on porpoise

oc4beach said...


DO: I agree about the original Kindle. One of the nice features that my DW really likes is that you can read it in daylight where the IPad etc. get washed out.

It was nice of the person who found your Kindle to turn it in. There are still good people out there. I left a Pocket Daytimer with my money and credit cards in it in the seat back on a NY Air flight years ago. After realizing it when I got to the parking lot I frantically went back into the airport and was able to get on the plane which was still at the gate (This was pre - 9/11) and checked my seat area, but it was gone, so I went to baggage claim to report it, never thinking that I would ever see it again. While I was filling out the form an airplane cleaning crew member came in and turned in the Daytimer completely intact with all the money and cards. The airline manager would not let me tip the attendant so I left and waited for him to return to the gate area and tipped him there. Honesty should be rewarded.

Ol' Man Keith said...

The clue for 1-A still seems strange to me.

Anyway, thanks, C.C., for the link to Steve's mayo recipe!

Except for 1-A, it's a pleasant pzl today from Brock Wilson and a neat exegesis from Argyle. HBD Steve!

Some neat words too. Can words really be favorites? Some of mine are LENTO & SPELUNK. AMNIO, on the other hand, isn't so cool. Nothing at all against the valuable procedure; it's just the sound and the way it causes the tongue to tap the palate, y' know? I don't like LIEN either. It can't be that I have a thing against "N"s - when you compare these with my top hits.

AnonymousPVX said...

Barry G. - me too.

Hungry Mother - bought my 92 Miata in Bala Cynwyd in 2001, still have it.

What's an old male Beatles fan's favorite song? "Let it Pee".

Sorry to all!

Jerome said...

The best way to get over your fear of spelunking is to stop at Carl's Bad Tavern, get drunk and not cave in to your phobias.

Misty said...

Brock, you really know how to give us a terrific start to our week! I got the whole things in record time with no erasures or any problems--a complete joy! And I thought it was a terrific puzzle, with literature, movies, music, and so much more. Wonderful! Many thanks!

Happy Birthday, Steve, and thank you for your always great expos.

Fun limerick, Chairman Moe! And Yellowrocks, so great that you're square dancing again.

Have a good doctor's visit, Irish Miss, and I hope you get help with your nightmares.

Have a great week, everybody!

Irish Miss said...

Sincerest apologies to Brock Wilson for thanking Warren (WTH is Warren?) for a job well done. Those kudos go to Mr. Wilson from Irish Miss AKA "Agnes The Menace."

Misty @ 1:41 - No nightmares since I stopped one particular medication. We'll soon see if that med was the culprit for the nightmares and a host of other side effects. (After I described the North Korean captivity dream to my doctor he wanted to know if I met Kim Il Jung (sp?).



Anonymous said...

Monday, Monday, so good to me. This was a great start to the week. Thank you, Brock Wilson. I enjoyed your expo, Argyle, thanks.

I caught the theme early--unusual for me. I usually forget to look for it.

Belated birthday wishes, HG. I hope it was a wonderful day.

Happy Birthday, Steve. Have a great day!

Cooler temps, lower humidity, the official pollen/mold count for today is 0! It's a great day!

Pat

Anonymous T said...

Tawnya - {B+, A}. Thanks for digging the music out of the puzzle :-) I thought you were going to go with Oingo Boingo's Dead Man's Party @10d :-)

//If you don't care about Spluk - skip a bit brother...
Jayce - Splunk can eat lots of data from multiple sources but you pay by the drink (MB/day). It's not as good as an R-based tool (SpotFire) for statistical analytics [so I've heard; I've never used SpotFire] but what I love about Splunk is you can search "Google-like" and find questions in your data you you did think to ask and then cross-correlate the s*** out of it. If you know pivot-tables in Excel; Splunk == that on 'roids. The craziest part - it's Schema on the fly - you barely need to define your data to search it. Like magic...

Splunk offers a free 500MB/day Enterprise trial you can play with for 90 days. It does take some getting used to (how well do you know perl / regular expressions?).
[Full disclosure: I don't work for them but I done-drunk the cool-aid. This week I'm in their Admin class and will be slapin' the Pony in Orlando at .conf in two weeks with the Enterprise Security class]

IM - I was on Chantex to quit smoking and had those nutty dreams. Scared the h*** out of me - I can't sleep w/ the lights off to this day. I hope you got a better Rx w/o the side-effects.

C. Moe - groan {B+}

Cheers, -T

Lemonade714 said...

D-O and Sailor, I saw SPELUNK- 17D, I was wondering where the issue of the "er." came from.

I am not afraid of needles - we were part of the test group for the Salk vaccine in the early 50's so I got stuck often - but the amniocentesis needle is frightening. I only watched.

I loved my original Kindle, which I have to my son and my Kindle fire, a gift from one of my Arizona cousins. Merci mille fois Mme. P.

Steve said...

Enjoyed this puzzle, nice crunch for a Monday. Nice job, Brock.

Thanks for the birthday wishes to all of you. Eating out later at a local favorite, the Smoke House in Burbank - it's been there for decades and serves up a quite wonderful prime rib.

C.C. - I keep my mayo in a screw-top jar and it's good for a couple of weeks.

Avg Joe said...

A reasonably enjoyable puzzle, but not enough to get real excited. Saw the theme after two entries, thus anticipated the reveal. But no major hangups, no erasures and no problems. Thanks Argyle.

Happy Birthday Steve! Enjoy your evening out and the food that goes along with it.

Anonymous T said...

I'm clearly not good at this Cake thing.... CED, where are you?

Cheers, -T

TX Ms said...

oc4beach @ 12:45 - A great story. I am so glad you persevered and waited until the "coast was clear" to tip the attendant. I know it made his (and his family's) day!

Anon-T @ 8:18 - LOL!! I think you're great at finding hilarious cakes - but then I find your humor (and choice of music - "Oingo Boingo??") a bit off-the-wall. Of course, considering the techies' front-line duties over the years while working for lawyers, it's their first line of defense in the interest of sanity.

Anonymous said...

???

PK said...

Hi Y'all! Great puzzle, Brock! Okay expo, Argyle, but I really wanted some ABBA. Why the ban?

Happy Birthday, Steve! And may you enjoy life for many more years.

Didn't sleep much last night so slept all day. At midnight we had many sirens which quit suddenly in front of my house. I struggled out of my electric recliner. Sirens kept coming. When I peeked around the draperies, there were six squad cars and uniformed policemen and woman running around with their guns drawn & pointed forward. Common sense said get away from the window. After a bit I went back to the window in time to see four cops manhandling a great big black guy in handcuffs out from in back of my neighbors house across the street. Other cops were looking at a car in front of my next-door neighbor's house. There were some people pointing between a couple houses down the street. They hauled out another guy. Funny thing. The felons ran between the houses that had the most fences to climb. If they'd chosen mine they'd have encountered no fences and got away. Around 2 a.m. I looked out again. Some very heavy-set people were looking at the car which had a big dent in the fender and a flat tire. Cops were gone. I felt sorry for the man when he set to changing the tire on the car than drove away. Today the incident made the evening news. Yup, stolen. Cross-town car chase. Too exciting at bedtime.

Argyle said...

I kept running into this notice:

"This video previously contained a copyrighted audio track. Due to a claim by a copyright holder, the audio track has been muted."

There still is a lot of Abba on YouTube though.

Anonymous T said...

TXMs - Glad you enjoyed ;-) BTW, Oingo Boingo's front-man has scored scores of movie-scores - most famously Weird Science.

One last ITEM, er TOPIC - a LATE PASS - DOUBLE'n' down for those who STAY UP: Just for you PK - ABBA after your eventful last night.

Cheers, ANON -T

Lucina said...

Anon T
Thank you for ABBA! I love them!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Wow PK

Wilbur Charles said...

I started to post something after my speed run. I had LYRIcistS before POETS. Never spotted the theme as usual.

POETS were excellent today and Jerome's bad joke was a good one. Love that kinda humor.

Now to go way back and check out Sunday's blog