google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Saturday, May 20th, 2017, Erik Agard

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May 20, 2017

Saturday, May 20th, 2017, Erik Agard

Theme: None

Words: 66 (missing J,Q,Z)

Blocks: 35

Well I just smoked through this puzzle today - we've had one other Saturday LA Times from Mr. Agard, and with a similar "blocked" corner grid.  It helped tremendously that I nailed the first two across answers, but got stumped on the third one due to my consideration that "Brown" meant the affectionate nick-name for UPS.  Also did not get my "ta-DA~!" due to an overlooked misspelling, but otherwise, I was definitely on this construction's wavelength.  Even the proper names filled in on their own.  Some of the longer fills, two with "THE" as part of the answers;

15a. Brown nemesis? : KITE-EATING TREE - ah, Charlie Brown


61a. Dialogue box? : TELEVISION SET - around here, it's the IDIOT box, or the boob tube

 4d. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos : THE FATES - the Wiki
  
38d. Title role for Roger Moore and Val Kilmer : THE SAINT - one from TV, the other, film


THE onward~!

ACROSS:

1. Canine cleaners : TOOTHBRUSHES - and a semi-clecho;

13. Canine fixers : ORTHODONTISTS - dentist humor;
Or how about these~?  #2, and #3

17. Be unproductive : LOAF

18. But : YET

19. __ wage : HOURLY

21. 24/7 : ALWAYS

23. Movie makeup dept. creations : ETs

25. Small group : TRIO

26. Capacity count : SEATS

27. French physician Paul for whom an area of the brain is named : BROCA - his Wiki

29. Rose on the charts : AXL - ah, not the verb "rise", but Guns N' Roses frontman

30. Idris of "Zootopia" : ELBA - via perps

32. Small part of a big machine : COG

33. Neat wrap-up? : NIK - neatnik

34. Milky Way cousin : MARS BAR

37. JFK skill : ORATORY - I was thinking it would be something like "oratION"

39. 2010 role for Denzel : ELI - great movie - if you don't know the "twist"

40. Mus. version : ARRangement

41. Go together well : MESH - like smoothly fitting "COGs"

42. Gun : REV

43. Skein makeup : GEESE

45. "Later" : "SEE YA~!"

49. PC components : CPUs

51. Vowel-free lunch : BLT

52. Baited with a red herring : MISLED

53. Violinist Mintz mentored by Isaac Stern : SHLOMO - via perps

55. Ipanema greeting : OLA

57. Recess in church : APSE

58. Winner of the most Grand Slam singles titles in the Open Era : SERENA WILLIAMS

62. Company known for programming languages : ROSETTA STONE

DOWN:

1. Stein's partner : TOKLAS

2. Maryland state bird, e.g. : ORIOLE - and the baseball team that plays in Baltimore


3. National capital from the Algonquin for "to trade" : OTTAWA - and the hockey team that's kicking the Penguin's a** in the NHL playoffs right now

5. Commonly long-handled tool : HOE

6. E-card occasions : B-DAYS

7. __ learning : ROTE

8. Divider's opposite : UNITER

9. Metro abbr. : STN - not STA, which slowed down my 15a.

10. Slugfest feature : HIGH SCORE

11. "¿Qué es __?": "What's this?" : ESTO

12. Confident walk : STRUT - in a skirt this short, you'd have to be confident

14. Pico de gallo pepper : SERRANO

16. Cure-all : ELIXIR

20. Having an unusually large yellow part : YOLKY

22. High-end fashion accessory, briefly : YSL BAG - I threw in "--- BRA", and it helped

24. On tap : TO COME

27. Run with abandon : BARREL

28. Sampras rival : AGASSI - more tennis

31. Essentials : BARE BONES

34. Monterey and Montclair, for short : MERCs - the cars, from Ford's Mercury division

35. A's in Hebrew school? : ALEPHs

36. Small stream : RIVULET

44. "That's enough outta you!" : "STOW IT~!" - I filled in stoP it, and that is 5/6 100% correct

46. Texas city near Juárez : EL PASO

47. Toadies : YES MEN

48. "__ Fideles" : ADESTE

50. More angry : SORER

52. Former White House daughter : MALIA - put in SASHA, and then for some reason changed the name to the Obamas' other daughter MILIA....

54. Prefix with drama : MELO - melodrama

56. Reel off : LIST

59. "__ Maria" : AVE

60. __ dos: both : LOS

Splynter


Note from C.C.:

The Indie Spotlight on Crossword Fiend's blog this week featured today's constructor Erik Agard. You can read it here. Erik is also one of the founders of the Indie 500 Crossword Tournament, which will take place this year on June 3, 2017. 

41 comments:

  1. Easiest Saturday I've seen in a long time!
    Read "Broca's Brain" by Carl Sagan years ago. All I remember now is that I liked it at the time.

    Prescience of the Blog: does it count that I, Big Easy, and Tony all mentioned EL PASO yesterday, since Rich obviously set this one up?

    Totally 'striking out' on any poem this morning.

    Calcium.
    Bones are made of calcium.
    Eggshells are made of calcium.
    A skeleton is BARE BONES.
    A skeleton who cracked open an egg to leave naked an unusually large yellow part would be a YOLKY BARER.

    Normally, I could put that sequence into l'ick form, but today all I have is a compulsion to share that pun.

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  2. Splynter, I sense an anti-Penguin bias in your assessment of the Ottawa/Pittsburgh series. It's tied 2 to 2, no?

    Btw, does Canada even win Stanley Cups anymore?

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  3. Good morning!

    This one was pretty easy, because those long across entries were WAGable. That helped a lot. I had trouble parsing TOCO ME. BROCA evoked a memory...a Stargate SG-1 episode titled The Broca Divide. Those MERCS are all at least six years old now; Ford quit making 'em in 2011. Thanks for the outing, Erik, and for the elucidation, Splynter.

    The dental answers reminded me of a dentist visit many years ago in Iowa. The dental assistant was a Chinese lady. She was explaining that I needed some work done on my gums. I asked what that procedure was called. "Oh, that procedure go by many name. What your policy cover?" Cracked me up.

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  4. I also smoked the first two across and was thinking FEDEX for 'Brown nemesis' but I never got the Peanuts or Charlie Brown connection. Bit 1D stumped me. I did an alphabet run for the _ITE EATING TREE and TOMLAS looked as good as TOKLAS (unknown) for 1D, and although I have never heard of a tree eating mites I left it. DNF.

    Even with many unknowns,the rest was fairly easy for a Saturday, with only two changes: TIA Maria to AVE Maria and JULIE Nixon to MALIA Obama. THE SAINT, SHLOMO, BROCA, ELBA, ELI, ESTO, LOS dos were all perped unknowns.

    I've never heard the expression STOW IT for shut up but since SERENA WILLIAMS was a gimme it had to fit. And as for your nice photo of the STRUT, at my granddaughter's baccalaureate last Tuesday three or four women came dressed like that. DW was just shaking her head.

    SEE YA later.

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  5. Good day to all!

    A doable Saturday puzzle from Erik. Idris ELBA and SHLOMO Mintz arrived via perps. Favorite clue/answer was "Rose on the charts" for AXL. Last cell to fill was the "K" in TOKLAS/KITE EATING TREE. Thank you for a great write-up, Splynter.

    Enjoy the day!

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  6. Good morning all. Thank you Erik and thank you Splynter.

    Pretty smooth solve, after correcting perio to ORTHO, with a number of easy no-brainers. Just had to work my way through the more difficult clues and naticks.

    In the end, no TADA. Don't know that I've ever known of either of those Mercury models. Had entered ALI instead of ELI, and thought MARCS must be short for Marcuses, even though I've never heard of Marcus Monterey and Marcus Montclair. So no TADA when I entered the S in unknown SHLOMO. As an aside, we like watching Marcus Lemonis on CNBC.

    Thought first of a knitting skein, and then my MIL and Madame DeFarge.

    Loved the "Brown nemesis" clue and answer. It gave me visuals.

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  7. Respectably difficult Saturday until some of the Down clues appeared. Then a couple of the long accrosses became apparent and the puzzle fell into place. Splynter's expo made the trip enjoyable today.

    I don't remember that Val Kilmer played the Saint in the movies, but I remembered Roger Moore as the Saint on 60's TV. I catch a rerun on one of the Retro channels now and then. It was a decent show, but didn't have the slick production values of some of today's shows with CGI, etc.

    I didn't know that when in flight it's called a SKEIN of geese and when on the ground they are a Gaggle of geese. It is interesting that groups of animals are known by so many different names. My favorite is a Murder of Crows. Here is a Listing of Animal Groups. Some are funny and some are obvious.

    I'm on day 4 of having difficulty breathing because of a viral infection (according to the doctor.) I think it's a bacterial sinus infection which could be cured by antibiotics in about a week, or in 2-3 weeks without antibiotics. Doctors have been trying to cut down on prescribing antibiotics and I see their point, but sometimes it's needed. Oh well, I got an inhaler and a cough suppressant for some of the symptoms.

    I hope everyone has a great weekend.

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  8. Musings
    -Brown bug, Cleveland Brown, Brown University, FEDEX? NO! Charlie’s nemesis finally unlocked the top along with SERRANO,ELIXIR and YOLKY MESHING with changing ORATION to ORATORY. Quite a test up top today after a flying start
    -Counting HEADS instead of SEATS didn’t help either
    -We are now in the electric toothbrush/water pick set this year
    -“Surely I could always be that way again and YET…”
    -ET make-up is part of this attraction
    I subbed for an hour and a half yesterday for $70. HOURLY wage = $46.67
    -I knew Will Smith was ALI so MERCS filled in ELI for _ LI
    -Jimi Hendrix ARR. of the Star Spangled Banner was fine with me
    -Looking forward to our first BLT with home grown tomatoes
    -Are OTTAWA and Canberra the least known capitals of large countries?
    -6” of rain in three days have created countless RIVULETS here
    -Refusing to be a YES MAN can be a dangerous strategy
    -George Carlin could rip off amazingly long LISTS like this (2:00)

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  9. Good Morning:

    My Saturday streak of speedy solves continues. Today's time was 19:30 compared to the days of yore (Barry Silk, I miss you dearly) when a half hour was the accepted norm, for me, anyway. What really sped things along was the easy-guessable long fill such as Orthodontist, Toothbrushes, (I wanted Poochbrushes!) Serena Williams, etc. My last fill was the K for Kite Eating Tree which was an unknown to me, as was Sholmo Mintz. Lots of sparkling fill plus clever cluing added up to a very pleasant puzzle.

    Thanks, Erik, for a super Saturday offering and thanks, Splynter, for the tour.

    Gave a great day.

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  10. Husker, how 'bout Astana? Size-wise, that country is in the top ten.

    Did anybody else think Slo-Mo when SCHLOMO turned up?

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  11. What a great Saturday puzzle! Thank you, Erik Agard! This was a thoroughly enjoyable think fest. I was on Erik's wave length with the long fill but some of the downs were perplexing such as TOCOME which I still don't understand. D-otto, help.

    SCHLOMO was perped and I forgot all about ELI and had ALI. Drat! But I well remember Roger Moore in THESAINT though never saw the movie. Idris ELBA plays Luther on PBS and I can't wait for that to return. He is such a hunk.

    Today is the funeral for one of my friends who had severe dementia toward the end though she was a brilliant person and highly active in her career. R.I.P Carol Ann.

    Have a beautiful day, everyone!

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  12. Lucina, "On tap" -- in the future -- TO COME.
    See it here.

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  13. What a terrific puzzle! Interesting looking grid. Well clued. Just good all around.

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  14. Yolky? Really? How about the Mercury Montclair, not made since 1968 ?

    A tough outing today, got the solve despite the arcane clues. That's no yolk. Again, yolky?

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  15. Greatest clue ever..."Brown nemesis"...of course the only right answer is "lucy"" or "life" but once I got in the canine tooth mode the perps came then one of the few true LOL's followed. No Tada...don't know my Hebrew alphabet nor my violinists so I had to Wiki Mintz. I still wouldn't know him if he bit me in the a**...as my dad used to say.

    Sad to say dentists don't use the words anymore...canine, cuspids, bicuspids, molars have been reduced to numbers.

    GO SENS ! ( but I am afraid they are overmatched). Anybody but my hometown ducklings...there is something unsettling when the CUP belongs to a place where the only ice is in drinks and " snow" is an illegal substance !

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  16. Well, you got me, Erik. With my sweet doxie Dusty nestled right next to me, I of course put DOGGY-BRUSHES for the first across, even though I knew the spelling was peculiar. Thought of teeth for the second canine, but not the first, and all that kept me from getting TOKLAS, which is really irritating since I taught "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" only three months ago at our Senior Center. But STEIN and BROWN were just too general and vague for me to get the answers right away But at least the bottom filled in quickly, although I've never heard of a SKEIN OF GEESE. So, unlike most others, I found this a Saturday toughie in the end. But I enjoyed the write-up, Splynter, and Owen, I did see the funny Joyce cartoon on Facebook.

    I hope you feel better soon, Oc4beach, and Lucina, my condolences for the sad loss of your friend.

    We have a lovely, sunny day, with lots of little birds enjoying the seeds in the feeder outside my study window. Have a good one, everybody!

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  17. Hi all!

    OK, fine, it was an easy Sat. I don't care. I feel good that I got 93.73% (Hi Jayce :-)) of it right within my 2h (almost-)solving time. What's funny [peculiar, not haha] is y'alls slowdowns were my off-the-bat "gets."
    Case-in-points: 1) With only 5, 6, 7, 9, and 12d filled I 'saw' the pattern for KITE EATING TREE and then looked at the clue (I probably read it, but skipped over the 'long' fill); 2) AXL was filled with out a thought and no perps; 3) ibid COG; 4) (More) TO COME made me think of Johnny Carson's break to commercial.

    Thanks Erik for a fun puzzle. You won but I had fun. Thanks Splynter for finishing my grid and great expo. You finished 4 squares in the SW and fixed my GOoF & AVa Maria.
    I had aLI for 39a (Hi TTP!) and Riveret (??) for 36d so never 'got' 49a and 53a; I shoulda known CPUS but, when yous smart-by-half, you exhaust everything on __ES and think, "Oh, PC as in politically correct..." D'Oh! x 3.

    Other gOoFs: goof for LOAF; I had AXL (yes MJ, that was a great c/a) which gave me ELIXoR [sic] which stood alone for some time; I finally caved for ORATORY (why not spelling out JFK?; who else thought "landing an airplane" was the skill needed?)

    BROCA was ESP -- From what I just read on wiki, cruciverbalists should know of his work.
    Aside: Eldest's T-Shirt today: An image of the brain's hemispheres and the word "ygolohcysp" superimposed. Her psych-club designed it. Funny [both meanings] kids.

    Fav: BLT; just for the great clue... Who else thought of Alphabet Soup for Ice Landers? :-) HG, I've got two ripe heirlooms awaiting Pop's arrival on Tuesday AM. I'm doing my best to keep the pests/birds at bay so we nosh on BLT's at 1p.

    {A for effort/pun :-)}
    Oc4 - Know a dentist? Our dentist is a good friend of DW; we learned they (denti(?)) can prescribe antibiotics. If you have green-stuff; maybe a zPak will kill it. I had something similar-sounding [I couldn't catch my breath] a month ago... It ran it's course.
    Lucina - I thought of you at 14d as I struggled wanting jalapeño. I'm sorry to hear about your friend... Warm thoughts your way.

    HG - I was hoping for the 7-dirty word LIST; now I'm worried about calcium deficiency.

    Hand up, Skein in 43a's clue MISLED me to yarn/wool/ our knitting Cornerites; somehow GEESE pop'd out and the V-8 hit.

    Y'all have a great Saturday! Cheers, -T

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  18. Good afternoon, folks. Thank you, Erik Agard, for a fine puzzle. Thank you, Splynter, for a fine review.

    I got through this easier than most Saturdays. The top two across appeared after a little study and thought. That helped.

    I had ITE EATING TREE and winged it with a K. Never thought of Charlie Brown and did not know TOKLAS. And, when you think of it, many kites are eaten by trees. Kites reminds me of that Afghan Novel I read many years ago, "The Kite Runner". That is like a national sport in Afghanistan.

    ALEPHS made sense, so SHLOMO worked.

    I also tried SASHA at 52D. Now I have an inkblot there when I figured it had to be MALIA. SERENA WILLIAMS helped me with that decision.

    I own that movie with Denzel Washington. The Book of ELI, I think. Great movie. A little violence.

    GEESE gave me YSL BAG.

    Anyhow, time to eat a late lunch. We made lentil soup. One of my favorites. Then off to work at my other part time job.

    See you tomorrow.

    Abejo

    ( )

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  19. Anonymous T, snoitalutargnoc on getting 93.73% of it! Green stuff? Ewww!

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  20. Jayce, was that a back-handed compliment?

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  21. And why do we need so many words to describe a group of geese? On the ground they're a "gaggle," in the air a "skein"...or if flying in V-formation, a "wedge," or if flying closely together a "plump." Geez, Louise!

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  22. Jayce & DO LOL!!
    Eldest is heading to Prom [crap, I recall DW's & mine! Oy!] tonight. No Limo, but her and her friend will have fun [and I'll be up all night].

    You want an ICEE brain-freeze juxtaposition? Bob Seger's STRUT and NPR's Ask Me Another both talking about Jane Fonda's back-side [FF; most of AMA is millennial navel-gazing; yeah, I was cute-by-half when I was 25ish too and loved me some Trivial Pursuit and CED's bar-games link; DW is an English PhD and some knowing oozed in and I get HIGH SCORE playing vicariously]. Where was I?...

    CED - there's a mind-bender for you. Two un-relating things and then "the sound of Woosh" [which I love as a deadline passes by].
    Cheers, -T

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  23. Musings
    -Otto, Kazakhstan is a big country but I think very few people would come up with Montreal or Sydney first
    -I thought about that 7 Words You Can’t Say On TV but the lists he rattled off during many of his monologues were funnier and more clever to me

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  24. I finished CC's Thursday puzzle. Another winner. Couldn't do it or Friday's. Might tackle that one later.

    I've had a justified absence. Crazy weather. Those powerful storms that Husker Gary spoke of the other day hit us late Wednesday night.

    We lost power just before midnight. Pounding rain driving against the windows woke me up just before we went dark. Walked out to the family room and looked out the sliders. A long lasting brilliance from lightning across the sky revealed the telephone pole across the road from my drive snapped like a toothpick, and the power lines were down across the road.

    Called 911. Sheriff's Deputy arrived in 15 minutes. Flared the road. ComEd arrived an hour later and assessed the damage. Got back to sleep after 2AM. Awakened a few minutes before 4AM to the sound of the township road district crew throwing the road blockades off the back of the truck. Clang ! Bang ! Clang !

    Dawn arrived and revealed that the majority of the neighbor's fifty foot sugar maple had blown across the power lines, snapping the pole. ComEd arrived early mid-morning and removed all the limbs off the lines and cleared the easement. Then left. Neighbor said we were supposed to get power back at 12:00. Another neighbor said it would be 12:00 AM, not 12:00 noon.

    DW reminded me again that we don't have a generator. Replied that she says that every time we have a power outage. That went over like a lead balloon. Trooper that she is, she freshened up using bottled drinking water, got dressed, and went to work.

    Didn't want to open the refrigerator doors. Drove a few streets through the neighborhood on the indirect way to McDonalds to get something to eat. Trees down in a few places. On the way back, saw a buddy helping a neighbor starting to clear a tree that had fallen on the house. Put on my grungy clothes, pulled out the driveway to go pitch in, and blew out my van tire as I caught the edge of the angle iron holding the barricade closing my block. Perfect.

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  25. Par for the course, getting the spare down from the undercarriage turned into a small ordeal. A few strong whacks of the hammer finally broke the rust free and it was down. Jacked up the van, put on the service spare, let her down, and, wait for it... the spare was nearly flat. Halfway back from the shed, pancake air compressor in arm, I realized that I had no power to make it run. Homer Simpson exclamation moment. I guess the brain doesn't function quite so well with just a few hours of sleep.

    Toted the compressor over to a neighbors house that had power. Filled the spare and moved the van to the side of the driveway. Trudged a couple of five gallon buckets of water filled from my neighbor's garden hose so we had water to flush the toilets. House started heating up. Put screens in the windows.

    Got my pickup out of the garage and drove to get bags of ice to put in the freezer and refrigerator sides of both refrigerators. Bought extra and dug the camping coolers out of the shed. Filled the bottom of one with beer and covered with ice. Put a 22lb bag of ice in the other and put it in the comparatively cooler basement. It was to be reserve for the refrigerators in case they didn't get the power back up.

    ComEd crew arrived around 7. Seven trucks and fourteen men. Gotta admire the way they worked those trucks in and out, unloading the new pole, using another to pull the remnants of the old one out of the ground, another to widen the hole. They got the new one planted and backfilled, then two bucket trucks were brought onto the stage. They attached the hangers and insulators to the pole, and then they started pulling the lines up reattaching them. It was like a choreographed dance of men and trucks.

    They had power restored by about 10:30 or 11:00. I was so glad. I was hot, sweaty, dirty and exhausted. By then, I'd had a few of those ice cold beers. Washed and went to bed.

    Went to bed in Texas and woke up in Canada. A cold front came through, and all of those open windows made it pretty chilly in the house. Shut the windows, went downstairs to the basement to start putting things away. Stepped in water before putting my shoes on. Forgot to put the plug on the drain hole of that 44 quart cooler with the 22lb bag of ice.

    Perfect. Just perfect.

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  26. D-O @ 1632 - And don't forget corps and flock.

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  27. Misty, thanks for the good words.

    Anon T: Thanks for the idea, but my dentist retired and moved away and his replacement is currently in jail. I just can't catch a break.

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  28. Congratulations to Chad Brown, the trainer of today's Preakness winner, Cloud Computing. Chad is a native of Mechanicville, NY, which is not too far from where Spitz grew up and where Argyle lives. And, Bill G, he is a Cornell grad. If you missed the home stretch, try to catch it on your later newscast as it's one of those, "I can't believe it" finishes.

    TTP, I hope tomorrow is a better day, to put it mildly.

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  29. I forgot all about the Preakness.

    Ok. I pretty much worked bottom to top after spotting SERENA and AGASSI. Well, canine fixer, VETERINARIAN of course. And it fit. Did Mark know? And Brown nemesis? Robert E Lee of course.

    What a mess. I eventually got it all except ELI. I got rushed and never went back since MARCs really didn't cut it.


    TTP. You just supplied an episode of the "Rocks" where the gals take cousin Wilbur home to Kansas and he tries to do what you did.

    This Wilbur is in Awe of your energy and gumption.

    Misty missing Stein's Alice B Toklas. Is that known as a whiff in xword world. It was a V8 can for me.

    Owen, C-Moe would be cheering your groaner.

    If somebody said "Easy Saturday" then it wouldn't have been so hard.

    WC

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  30. Ps. Always enjoy Splynter Saturday.

    WC

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  31. Finally, a Saturday puzzle that I could manage (most of). Thanks Erik and Splynter.

    Irish Miss, thanks, I didn't know. At least some Cornell graduates manage to make their mark...

    Regarding Splynter's photo of a girl as an exemplar of STRUT. Is that a miniskirt or a belt? No complaints from me.

    TTP, that's a very bad day you had. I'm sorry...

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  32. No, "whiff" wouldn't have helped, Wilbur. Had it been "Stein's partner" I would have gotten it instantly.

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  33. I was thinking of "Whiff" as when the ball is teed up and you miss it. As I did the last time I played golf.

    I think Lee was a CAPTain when he captured John Brown. Except Erik didn't signal CAPs.

    I can't believe I was the only one to use VETERINARIAN, not to speak of spelling it right.

    Wilbur in the gloaming

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  34. WC - It's just us night-owls now... I was confident-ish enough to enter HOE as my 1st fill in Erik's offering so, whilst I thought Vet for 13a, I knew it wouldn't work.

    It's kinda funny going back through the grid and trying to figure out what begat what in your solve. I do recall I had H-U-L- _wage and for the life of me couldn't 'see' HOURLY until a vowel run; SERRANO pop'd out and NIK filled fixing my o in ELIXIR.

    TTP - Dang Dawg, what a week for you! Glad to hear things are returning to normal... At least there's not a TREE EATING your house. The bit w/ the compressor is the funniest (too soon?)... I've done that too; "Ok, I'll just get my... D'Oh! No power." I have a question re: your EPIC SAGA; how is it you had no water durning a power outage? Just curious, because I've always been happy to know I have water, gas, and land-line even when the power's out during a hurricane [they say stock up, and I do freezing it the night before, but I've never lost water].

    Cheers, -T

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  35. Picard - your profile says you're form CA, but your posts are off by >12h.
    OK, so I can't sleep and keep looking for stuff to do (I've almost reached the end of the Internet!) and then refreshed yesterday's posts and saw yours. 1) What kind of R&D Engineering? 2). Yeah, with BRAN RAISING, I too was thinking breakfast cereals and getting CORN reinforced that wrong idea.

    Ahh, a text from Eldest... Prom was fun and all is well. Now I can sleep.

    Cheers, -T

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  36. Irish Miss, Wilbur, Bill Graham, and Anonymous T, thank you for your thoughts and care. I guess I was a little long winded about the whole thing. My dad would have said, " We had a power outage, but it's been fixed." That's only if someone asked.

    I wasn't exaggerating about the temperature drop from Thursday night to Friday morning. We'd been in the 80s, and we dropped to just over 50.

    Had both front tires on the van replaced Friday afternoon. Mowed the wet lawn last evening after posting. John Deere didn't seem to mind. Ate and went to bed. First good night sleep in a few days.

    Anonymous T, we are in an unincorporated area of the county. We don't have sidewalks, fire hydrants or other services such as sewer and water. We're on well and septic.

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  37. If that's the case your wife is correct, why no generator? Harbor Freight has an 8K watt one for $600? Another $3-400 for the electrician and now you are done.

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  38. I was so thrilled that I got through this puzzle that looked so difficult. But I was wrong. One more hand up for ALI which gave me MARCS. I had no idea what that might mean. But I probably would not have gotten MERCS either.

    I thought the Programming Languages clue for ROSETTA STONE was brilliant misdirection!

    Had no idea about who or what Brown might be. Our governor? UPS? Then the light went on! Fun answer for anyone who read Peanuts over the years.

    Never heard of ELBA and assumed that was a female first name! Learning moment about a skein of GEESE. Just know skeins of yarn.

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