DR. FLUDZINSKI IS ON CALL TODAY
He had a friend who knew Will Shortz, introduced Pawel to Will and after that Dr. Fludzinski took up the challenge of constructing crosswords with his first one being a 9/18/11 Sunday LA Times puzzle. Pretty impressive.
Pawel's license plate tells you both where he lives and about what one of his passions is.
I earned a "got 'er done" in Pawel's challenging weekend offering but those of you familiar with The Family Circus, might recognize that the path I took resembled this circuitous route as the boys in the cartoon frequently take in getting from point A to point B. BTW, this also resembles my path in the grocery store.
Pawel's puzzle was anything but a, uh, bitter pill to swallow and I am going to start with his long fills which were so helpful once a few of their cells were filled.
19. Jesse Owens, e.g. : OLYMPIC ATHLETE - HOAX ALERT! Hitler never did congratulate Jesse for his 1936 Olympic wins, as Jesse expected, but this 2013 photoshopped image made the internet rounds. Jesse did feel snubbed in that FDR never contacted him in any way to acknowledge his tremendous accomplishments.
50. Canine epithet : MAN'S BEST FRIEND - 'Nuff said! 😀
5. Real estate investment strategy : FLIPPING HOUSES - Tarek and Christina starred in Flip or Flop on HGTV. His job was negotiations and labor and hers was some decorating but mainly simply looking photogenic. They're divorced but are still on the show together.
16. Voting bloc term used by Nixon and Trump : SILENT MAJORITY - Howard Beale's fabulous call to arms for this group in 1976's Network
Now let's see what Dr. Fludzinski has prescribed for us in the balance of his puzzle:
Across
1. Bundles together, as wheat : SHEAFS - One SHEAFS wheat into SHEAVES
7. EPA concern : AQI - Air Quality Index Current air quality across the USA
10. Cab alternative : UBER - I've sung their praises here
14. Field meeting : HUDDLE - "Okay guys, 3 OUT, SLOT HAT - 73 GHOST TOSSER ON SET. BREAK!"
15. Choral extreme : BASS NOTE - The E♭Paul Robeson hits in Old Man River on the word "jail" is listed as a "Notable low note"
17. Predestine : ORDAIN - ...do ORDAIN and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
18. Countermeasure : ANTIDOTE - Milking venomous snakes is the first step to producing an ANTIDOTE
21. Advance : SPOT - Look kid, I'll SPOT you 10 points
22. Part of NAFTA: Abbr. : AMER - North AMERican Free Trade Agreement
23. Rats along the Rhine? : ACH - ACH du lieber! Ich habe gerade eine Ratte gesehen! (Oh my God, I just saw a rat!)
26. Rage : IRE
27. Where snowbirds flock in winter? : SUNBELT
31. Feller's tool? : CHAINSAW - Here's a pretty good feller!
34. Cheap smoke : STOGIE
35. Stick : CLING
36. Hamm from Alabama : MIA - An all time great soccer player born in Selma, AL
38. Windows predecessor : MS-DOS - Tedious forerunner of icons (GUI - Graphic User Interface)
39. Five-book collections : TORAHS - The first 5 books of the Jewish Bible are such a collection
41. Serious betrayals : TREASONS - Here is a famous group committing TREASON
43. Henry VIII's third : SEYMOUR - Jane SEYMOUR came between Anne Boleyn and Ann of Cleves but died with her head intact.
43. Henry VIII's third : SEYMOUR - Jane SEYMOUR came between Anne Boleyn and Ann of Cleves but died with her head intact.
45. Kunal Nayyar's role in "The Big Bang Theory" : RAJesh Koothrapali - You either know this or don't care
46. Ultra-secret org. : NSA - National Security Agency
47. River to the Seine : AUBE - In the same vein as Where's Waldo, can you find the AUBE?
48. Winged figure of myth : EROS
56. Monthly subtitled "The Magazine of Maine" : DOWN EAST - Ya gotta love this cover and the topics
57. Portugal's capital, locally : LISBOA - Easier to find than the AUBE
a
a
58. Having an accent : STRESSED - "CON flict" is mostly a noun while "con FLICT" is mostly a verb
59. Speedily : AT A RUN
60. Astronomical dist. : LT YR - LighT YeaR
61. Slight opening? : ESS - Slight
62. End zone quartet : PYLONS - If the ball is inside or touches one of the PYLONS at the corners of the end zone, it's six points!
Down
1. Wave off : SHOO
2. Fling : HURL
3. Result of pulling the plug? : EDDY - Circling the drain
4. __ apple : ADAM'S
6. Year-ending ceremony participants : SENIORS
7. Quatrain rhyme scheme : ABAA - Dylan Thomas's final stanza
8. Airline with a kangaroo on its logo : QANTAS - QANTAS on the left and on the right...? *Answer at the bottom of the write-up.
9. Common canal site : ISTHMUS
10. Position near the top of some organizational structures : UNDER BOSS - Sotto Capo
11. Spare tyre site : BOOT - A spare TYRE (tire) in a Land Rover BOOT (trunk). Oh so British!
12. Kitchen finish? : ETTE
13. "Pioneer Woman" cookbook writer Drummond : REE - Ree's show is a favorite of my wife's
20. Backups' backups : C-TEAM
23. Bank nos. : ACCTS
24. Techie on "24" : CHLOE - Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and Jack (Kiefer Sutherland seem to be having a hard day on "24"
25. Hirsute : HAIRY
28. __ Heath: Thomas Hardy setting : EGDON - It is said that EGDON Heath was as much a part of The Return Of The Native as the characters
29. They have their pride : LIONS
30. Championship ice dancer __ Virtue : TESSA - Along with her partner Scott Moir
32. So to speak : IN A MANNER
33. Verbal deftness : WIT - A highly prized trait here
37. Rue stop? : ARRET - Here's an ARRET sign where Rue De Buade crosses Rue Jardins
40. Naval fortification : SUB BASE - The Nazi U-boat SUB BASE built in what was then occupied France
42. Winter cap feature : EAR FLAP - Found on a certain hunter of a "cwazy wabbit"
44. Piece maker : REESES - M & M's turned down being in ET and REESES pieces cashed in
49. Twine fiber : SISAL - 50# hay bales tied with SISAL twine - $6 apiece
50. Suffragist who co-founded Swarthmore : MOTT - A powerful trio
51. Off the mark : AWRY - Where best laid plans of men and mice can go
52. EPA issuances : STDS - STanDardS
53. Iberian river : EBRO - For 32€, you can be outfitted to do this on a five mile stretch of the EBRO River in northern Spain
54. Truth or consequences, e.g. : NOUN - Pretty tricky, Pawel!
55. Aykroyd and Patrick : DANS
56. Broadband choice, briefly : DSL - Digital Subscriber Line. Usually the slowest connection
DA GRID
If the puzzle made you uneasy, I'll bet Pawel can hook you up with an ANTIDOTE! 😀 Now tell us your symptoms by commenting:
DA GRID
*The logo on the right is from Alaska Airlines
67 comments:
OwenKL.
Your anagrammic brilliance shines! As far as hidden messages go, I have to acknowledge your superior detective work.
I did try reading yesterday's diagonals forwards and backwards - and as always I made a cursory attempt at decoding any anagrams. But, clearly, I did not go as far as you.
To any future constructors who want to join the diagonal game, let me suggest that the first serious attempt at burying a message will probably just be a straightforward reading. But once we get truly underway, anagrams may well be the wave of the future!
I hardly believe I finally finished this puzzle correctly! But I did! In process, I may have changed more cells than I filled right the first time!
Doc SEYMOUR's universal ANTIDOTE
Will cure what ails you, see if it don't!
For colic or grippe,
Or post-nasal drip,
Or helping a soprano to sing a BASS NOTE!
In the ADDAMS bestiary,
Cousin Itt is very HAIRY!
Static CLING
Bedevils Thing,
And Wednesday, child, is never merry!
{B, C.}
Good Morning wood chuckers,
Yesterday Punxsutawney Phil communicated in "groundhogese" that he had cast a shadow. According to legend, that means the weather will be wintry for the next six months.
We may need some Watermelon wine to keep us calm until spring springs.
Speaking of an "S" 1A Bundles together, as wheat : SHEAFS - One SHEAFS wheat into SHEAVES.
I had only heard of SHEAF as a noun so I LIU.
Verb
sheaf (third-person singular simple present sheafs, present participle sheafing, simple past and past participle sheafed)
(transitive) To gather and bind into a sheaf; to make into sheaves
to sheaf wheat
(intransitive) To collect and bind cut grain, or the like; to make sheaves.
15A BASS NOTE - The E♭Paul Robeson hits in Old Man River
23A Rats along the Rhine? : ACH Ach is German for Oh. How does this become rats? I think I just got it. When we would say rats, Germans would say ach. Rats! = ach!
25D Hirsute : HAIRY I pulled this word out from somewhere, and later I was working a paper CW, and there it was again.
Thank you Mr. Pawel Fludzinski for this challenging CW. I had to BAV at the natick of 35A cLing, and 24D chLoe. I had no idea who she is.
Husker Gary, Once again you have entertained and regaled. Thank you.
There was an even 80 comments yesterday. Good posting all.
Dave
"...weather will be wintry for the next six months." Let's hope not!
HG wrote: "If the ball is inside or touches one of the PYLONS at the corners of the end zone, it's six points"
Not if the player caught the ball. According to the WORST rule in the NFL(I think, it's so convoluted I'm not sure I've got it right), if the player is running the ball, the instant the ball touches the PYLON or crosses the vertical plane of the front of the goal line, it is a touchdown. But if the player has received the ball and has yet to make a "football move" to establish himself as a runner then he must hold on to the ball until the bitter end to complete the pass and qualify a touchdown. Maybe. It such a bad and confusing rule that even the commissioner stated this week that it needs to be changed. I sure hope it doesn't rear it's ugly head in tommorows game.
Good morning!
I was on Pawel's wavelength this morning. Didn't time myself, but I know it came together in under 10 minutes. No need for Wite-Out. Thanx, Pawel. (Maybe you'll run into OKL some day. I think he lives in Santa Fe.) Sterling exposition, Husker.
Husker, is that the SUB (Uboat) BASE that we see in Das Boot? Those 50# bales must be very well-dried. The ones we picked up off the fields in my ute ran about 70#.
Interesting to see DAN Patrick and "Flipping" in the same puzzle.
I understand that the girl from "Flip or Flop" had affair with one their contractors. I'm wondering if that's him in the background of that picture. The expressions captured and the body language makes me think so. I wonder how many hours of video they went through to capture that image?
Uh...typically a French stop sign just says “Stop,” not “arret.” There is even a French verb “stopper” that is in common usage. An “arret” is more typically a place where a bus stops, as in “ arrest de bus, “ rather than a place where all traffic stops.
Gary,
Absolutely loved your write up - very entertaining indeed. My favorite was the MANSBESTFRIEND image. Laughed out loud! I can't begin to imagine where you find all of those creative pix and video clips. Bravo. Well done and thank you for adding another complete layer of entertainment to the puzzle. Your efforts were more than successful.
Pawel
The good doctor is IN this morning but I didn't need a doctor because there was no pain incurred completing the puzzle. The spanners were basically gimmes. I'd always heard PRE-ORDAINed as predestined, with ORDAIN having to do with somebody becoming a preacher, priest...etc.
A rare NW to SE Saturday finish, only having to change SEA to SUB BASE and SISEL to SISAL.
FLIPPING HOUSES- a sure-fire way for most people to LOSE money.
AUBE, TESSA, EGDON, REE, CHLOE, MOTT- unknowns
Never heard of DOWN EAST magazine but it was an easy guess.
Weekend schedule- Mardi Gras parade or two during the day, wedding tonight at the Audubon Zoo, Super Bowl party, Super Bowl, eat nothing Monday and no beer.
This is the PICTURE of Tarek, Christina, and the Contractor.
TTP from last night - I tried again but failed. This time I took a screenshot that I’d be happy to send for analysis if you’re interested.
-T, I’ll send it to you in a minute.
I’ve been doing links for years, now and then, without problems. Curious to learn.
Musings
-Pawel, thanks for the kind words and our lovely email exchanges. It was fun to learn that your and my personal philosophies mesh pretty well. I spent over 40 years trying to engage the toughest audience there is – middle school kids. In so doing, I soon learned that visual cues (along with demos and labs) were the best weapon to use toward that end. C.C. has allowed me to bring that strategy at a higher level to this amazing group here on this blog. I eagerly look forward to your next puzzle from the Land Of Enchanment.
Good Morning:
Because of the abundance of long fill, this was an easier than usual Saturday solve. W/os were: Sisle/Sisal (thinking of Lisle, maybe), Hurdle/Huddle (thinking of track and field), an A as in/Adams for ___ Apple. Unknowns were Egdon, Aube, and Chloe. Down East was a gimme as I had a subscription years ago. Learning moment was Lucretia Mott as a founder of Swarthmore. Liked seeing Treasons over NSA.
Thanks, Pawel, for a smooth and satisfying offering and thanks, HG, for another shining review. Love all of the visuals, especially the Man's Best Friend image. I might add that Pawel's alma mater is RPI. Spitz's, also.
Have a great day.
Husker. I love your summaries.
Good morning. Thank you Pawel Fludzinski and Husker Gary.
Nice Saturday puzzle. Getting longer answers quickened the solve, so to speak.
The W and SW presented the most difficulty. I had to work out CHLOE, and I stumbled for a bit because I had Henry VIII's as SEYMOre. The candy maker REESES made me correct that error.
Didn't know MOTT and made it worse by having type in LpYR instead of LT YR. Figured it had to be DOWNEAST, so that left me with MOTp so I reexamined my fill and changed it to MOTT. TA DA !
Earlier, I went from OGDEN to OGDON to EGDON for the unknown Heath on the east side.
Loved the review Husker Gary. Ditto for my DW and the Pioneer Woman. DW's current favorite is the Great British Baking Show, even though it's airing reruns that she's seen before.
Thank you Dr.F for the workout. And thanks Husker G for the summary. Thought sheaf at the start but hesitated stuck on the noun. Enjoyed it over all but needed to look up too many for my liking. ANON at 7:57 in my experience I've come across many ARRET signs in cities with french quarters or communities serios about preserving the fr language. In North America the signs are usually bi lingual with French and English or even Spanish renderings.
Hello Puzzlers -
Enjoyed this Saturday challenge. First pass looked a little thin, but pretty soon it all came together. Aube was unremembered - I say that because it was in my spell checker’s custom dictionary, in caps, which means I typed it into Blogger sometime in the early years of the Corner. That’s too many years ago.
Morning, Husker, especially enjoyed today’s summary. Thanks for checking in, Dr. Pawel!
Dudley, look in your email.
I ALMOST earned a FIR, but had a bad cell at LISeOA x EeRO. Also didn't know AUBE, DOWN EAST (easy guess), and like my fellow Kentuckian D4 didn't know that SHEAFS was a verb. I don't know anything about Judaism, and was thinking of a name for getting 5 books in the card game Spades.
Favorites were "rats along the Rhine", "having an accent" and "truth or consequences, e.g.". Thanks to Pawel Fludzinski for a Saturday puzzle that I could almost solve. And thanks to Husker Gary for another terrific tour. Legs shmegs - who needs them?
No time to read the Blog or the comments as I'm going to a funeral but had to thank Pawel for this lovely puzzle. This might be my fastest Saturday solve, 20 minutes!
The long stacks were easy enough to suss with only a few letters then it was just a matter of filling the shorter cells.
Later, all. Gary, too.
Have a fantastic day, everyone!
I can't believe I solved a Saturday puzzle, but I did!
It took me longer to read through your expo, Husker, than to solve. (I kept stopping and following links.)
I flew into and out of Lisbon in October.
My young (4 & 6) CT grandsons flew on Qantas 4 times, round trip, this past year.
Like someone else said, getting the long answers helped with crosses.
Winter has returned to my part of the world so solving crosswords in front of a fireplace with a cup of tea is a nice pastime,
Montana
Fifty pounds of hay for $6? Tell me where. I'm lucky to find it for $8 even if I buy a ton.
Well, Puzzlers, it took TTP about three seconds to see where I went wrong with my link syntax last night. D’oh! It seems obvious now, but at the time...
So, returning to the topic: yesterday’s Smith College lecture was delivered by Ruby Bridges who, in 1960, looked like this.
Oh good! It worked! Thanks TTP, and -T also, for “vectors”. Pilot talk.
Wow! Some of you solved this one very fast. A worthy challenge for me. Wonderful expo, Gary. It took me longer than usual, but FIR. I couldn't get a toe hold. After a long time I settled in and solved it more quickly.
I've read several books about Mott and the suffragists. Very interesting. They were so independent for women of that era.
I actual thought of bus stop at ARRET. Now I have LIU and found pictures of French stop signs with ARRET on them.
EGDON and AUBE took ESP.
Paper work awaits me.
A challenge with many unknowns, but totally fair with no Naticks! Last to fall was SISAL/EBRO/LISBOA cross which was fair as long as you knew "Lisbon" in English.
Husker Gary: Thanks for that amazing animated GIF of the FELLER's extraordinary success!
DOWN EAST seemed wrong since Maine is North and I think of DOWN as South.
My friends were OLYMPIC ATHLETES of a different kind!
They provided crowd entertainment at the OLYMPICS in 1984.
Here are a few more of my 1984 OLYMPICS photos.
The torch is being run down the street near my home. Photos of the OLYMPIC Rowing Village on our University of California campus. And the Rowing Finals at Lake Casitas. Sorry, I could not afford a telephoto lens back then!
I was just about to board this QANTAS Longreach to fly from Los Angeles to Brisbane in 2014.
A Long Reach, indeed!
Good morning everyone.
Thanks Husker for bringing us up to date on Pawel. Always enjoy his challenging offerings.
Favorite clues were for REESES and EDDY, but there were many good ones. My Merriam did not recognize SHEAF as a verb, but others did. (SHEAF as a verb must have entered the language after the Middle Ages. 'f' ending words which invoke a following 's' for grammar usage, and come from the Old English, usually change the 'f' to a 'v'; to WIT, SHEAVES. (Note - none if this is a nit.). Got ARRÊT with perp prompt. Found AUBE, Husker, a learning. Next to the Marne.
Mostly a clean solve.
"Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;
Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Refrain:
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves."
When I was a wee lad, my Dad used a reaper-and-binder which spat out SHEAVES. ( it used twine made of SISAL.) First they were stacked into shocks, then after several days, loaded onto wagons and taken to the threshing machine for processing. Lots of very hard work for the adults. When the war ended in '45, combines became available again and made things a lot easier.
Well, this was a Saturday toughie for me, but then they all are. Had to start cheating pretty early, but enjoyed it all as answers slowly began to fill in. So many thanks, Pawel, for a clever offering. And I loved your write-up, Gary, fun and interesting.
I got ACH (German kicked in) but think it's a tiny stretch to give it the same emotion as RATS. But no big deal. I should make a chart of Henry VIII's wives and keep it near the sofa where I do my puzzles. Got UBER right away--comes up pretty frequently in puzzles, doesn't it? So EROS has wings? Never knew that. We get a lot of French rivers in puzzles, but this is the first time I saw AUBE. By the way, nice maps, Gary. And I'm finally onto those opening clues, like Slight opening=ESS. So, thanks for a pleasant start to a sunny Saturday morning, Pawel and Gary.
And have a great weekend, everybody!
The first time I saw an Alaska Airlines plane (in Vancouver BC, I think), I couldn't figure out why they would have an image of Che Guevera on the tails of their planes. A closer look helped--a bit.
Unlike lots of you, it was hard for me to get a toehold. I stubbornly hung around the northwest for WAY too long. I really try always to do the puzzle section by section, left to right and top to bottom. It feels like giving up to leave a section incomplete and move to another, but that's what I had to do today. I did FIR in 23 minutes, but that's close to double my usual Saturday time. Egad!
Thanks, Dr F, and thanks, HG. Very enjoyable. Husker, you beat me; I only did 37 middle school years. :-/
Hi Y'all! When I saw Dr. F's name I said, "Oh Rats!" (or something similar but stronger) because I always struggle with his puzzles. I was in a terrible mood anyway and hoping a cw would jar me out of it. I can't get anything to work around here and I couldn't work the puzzle without mucho red-lettering. I came, I filled 'er, so thanks, P.F.
Gary, great expo. That dog looks just like our late-lamented dachshund mix house pet, "Doc". He would have climbed on my lap and fixed me up pronto. That baby will probably become the Tiger Woods of ping pong.
Out here in the "Nations' Bread Basket" a/k/a "The Wheat Belt" no one SHEAFS anything especially wheat. I've ridden around in a Gleaner Combine with a 25' foot header with sickle teeth so I know what they do with wheat. Liked your post, Spitz.
I saw TESSA & Scott on TV a few weeks ago. Did I remember her first name? Nope.
As I mentioned a few days back, I wasn't looking forward to taking a test to get my driver's license renewed. I got an appointment. The DMV wasn't crowded. I went right in within five minutes of my appointment. The test comprised most of the easier questions from the practice tests. I zoomed right through, got a new photo taken, easy peasy. I'm good to go for another seven or eight years.
A birthday lunch coming up. Woohoo!
Rats! I saw in my finished grid that I had TESSE/NSE. But I still feel good about finishing so quickly.
Gary, kudos, I agree that your Blog is brilliant and brilliantly illustrated. Thank you.
WEES about the puzzle. AUBE and ARRET were mostly perped as was PYLONS.
Again, thank you, Dr. Fludzinski. This was most enjoyable. Now I get to go to a children's pizza birthday party. Ach!
WikWak, I had a hard time getting a toehold, too. I took longer than you. I am not that fast. as a rule. I try to do the puzzle in complete sections. I scratch around until I find a section where I can be successful. This toehold gives me entree into other sections.
Misty @11:39, I often think that the use of ach is over-stated in crosswords. It is not very often a complaint like "rats!" At home we used ACH in innocuous phrases to simply mean a variation of OH or AH. It is most commonly used by those who have no complaints at all. Will you help me? Ach ja! Oh yes, surely, why sure. This is a positive answer, not the negative "rats!" Ach as a complaint in puzzles always gets my back up.
No time, shuttle Pkup awaits. Btw, can I claim a CSO from yesterday? I finally grokked AUBE, SEYMOUR and TORAHS(While driving it came to me).
HG, I did one year as a provisional SUB, then went to Quantico. Boot camp was easier.
M
I'll be back to talk about that NFL rule
WC
I thought this a typical Saturday puzzle.
No idea who’s on the tail of that plane, but the Qantas one sure doesn’t look like a Roo.
Record speed for a Saturday. Thanks for the fun Pawel and HuskerG.
I completed this CW this morning but had to do some housecleaning before returning here. I couldn't believe my time but I did have some red-letter help.
WEES re SHEAFs. Yes Spitzboov, I remember that song.
EGDON was unknown as was MOTT. Our Famous Five Canadian suffragettes are Murphy, Parlby, McClung, McKinney and Edwards.
My snowbirds wanted Florida or Arizona before SUNBELT.
AnneMurraySnowbird
Anon@7:56am -Here's Wikipedia re ARRET in Quebec - "In Quebec, Canada, modern signs read either Arrêt or Stop, however it is not uncommon to see older signs containing both words in smaller lettering, with arrêt on top. In practice, however, arrêt predominates in French-speaking areas (i.e., most of the geographic extent of Québec), while stop can be found in majority English-speaking areas such as Montreal's West Island suburbs."
I am only aware of one TORAH. Are any other 5 book collections called Torah?? Plural seems odd to me.
STOGIE reminded me of the mojitos in Cuba discussion yesterday since excellent Havana Cigars, not STOGIES, may be brought back to Canada after a vacation in Cuba. BTW, I think Oas is a closet Canadian? Canadians have been able to travel to Cuba for years.
Speaking of "having an accent", TESSA Virtue and Scott Moir are Canadian flag-bearers for the Winter Olympics opening ceremony next week in PyeongChang, South Korea.
TessaScott
Discussing the current NAFTA negotiations would be too political for this blog!
PYLONS and HUDDLE to ready us for SuperBowl tomorrow.
Enjoy the rest of the day.
DNF... too much Europe, words, geography.
One thing I don't understand about UBER and Lyft. When I had to travel to NYC and SanFran for example if I needed a ride it was either taxis or something called a gypsy cab. The gypsy cab was much cheaper because they didn't have a "hack" license. In NYC this cost in the high 5 figures or more. selling rides without this license was heavily fined and against the law. It was pretty much the same throughout the US at least in big cities. How do these new firms (that are losing millions ) get around all that???
Well, Lah-Ti- la-
Ta DAH!!
Thanks to Dr. Fludzinski we had one of our rare, most favored kinds of cruciverbal experiences today.
I mean, that extraordinary rush that comes after you've been pushing P&P to the limit and - almost on the brink of throwing in the towel - everything falls into place, and you find yourself trying to keep your pen moving fast enough as you race to the finish!
WooHoo, to quote a good colleague!
It would be very hard to single out the best clues and fills today. We had a great run of offbeat combinations - the kind that call on us to scrape the ol' walnuts for half-remembered words and phrases, for me from EDDY to DOWN EAST.
On top of it all, today's Xwd bestows extra diagonals on us. (See below*)
I hope these are all good signs for the rest of my day. I have my yearly appointment with our CPA this afternoon, and I'm just hoping I have all my paperwork in line.
____________
Diagonal Report:
*Five diagonals today, a 3-way swath from the NW to SE, matched by two sub-diags on the mirror side. It is unusual to see sub-diagonals w/o a center line, but we have seen it a few times before. I wonder if it is possible to have sub-subs standing alone. Hmmm...
No hidden messages. At least none of the straight-forward kind. I haven't found any anagrams - not yet!
Owen?
.
Close but no STOGIE; I couldn't suss the area around @23a nor the SE (AT A RUN(?)).
D-O et.al., I'm in awe you can puzzle so AT A RUN(?). Monday's take me at least 10 min. Today I spent ~20min inking what I knew (or could figure out) and then another hour or so staring down the rest of the blocks before tossing the towel and seeing what HG had for me.
HG had a lot! Specifically, it wasn't SeaBASE. Aha! SEYMOUR became obvious as did CHLOE and TORAHS. Then HG gave me LISBOA and AT A RUN finishing off my SE. D'Oh! NOUNs... I couldn't stop thinking of @54d as a dare-game. Thanks HG for the sparkly expo [the dog was hilarious and the guy with the CHAIN SAW was wow!]
Thanks Dr. Pawel for this wonderful puzzle. You see where you got me but I had fun playing.
Anyone else almost put in battle for HUDDLE?
Fav: MS DOS... Ah, the memories of managing memory.
Runner-up: DAN Aykroyd after posting Hey Bartender FLN. :-).
{B+,B}
Since the Groundhog saw his shadow... I'll share this cupcake Youngest built. Perhaps that will warm non-SUN BELT folks' cockles for at least one of the six weeks.
Cheers, -T
Didn't refresh b/f posting says...
C, Eh - 5 book collections other than the TORAH? How about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy? :-). -T
I appreciate yesterday's explanation of "glue fill" from desper-O. I take it that today's example of ESS might qualify.
And maybe even ACH, although the degree of misdirection in that one's cluing might add to its stature.
Christians often use "Bibles" to mean multiple copies of the Bible. Please order 10 new Bibles for the Sunday School.
I have never seen "TORAHS" in print, only "Torah scrolls" as a plural. Maybe our Jewish Cornerites could advise us.
I think "sheaving" is old fashioned. The word is used when harvesting wheat by hand. The wheat is is scythed and then bundled into sheaves by hand. The article I read used the terms "bundling into sheaves," as well as "sheaving."
Quote: "But first we had to finish raking and sheaving it. So early on the third morning we were back at it."
I always have trouble late in the week but this was absolutely HORRIBLE! On some of this I didn't even understand the entry after it was "explained."
I'll just do the forward diagonal, SUDMPRAIRAOIBUS, since it has so many possibilities.
SPURIOUS BARMAID says, "I'D USURP AMBROSIA for SAMURAI BIRD SOUP."
FYI: While I have a lot of spare time on my hands, there is a limit. I didn't check all 166,667 possible rearrangements of SUDMPRAIRAOIBUS. I have the search boxes from two sites added to my search bar: https://wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html gives all lexical rearrangements of the entire string of letters (that's where I got the number above), while 963 words were found in the string by https://theunscrambled.com starting with ABSURDISM and yesterday's MARIPOSA. Wordsmith's results can be overwhelming, so Unscrambled can suggest a seed word to cut down on the chaff.
Tony: tell Youngest that the Cornerites think that cupcake is marvelous! (I would say adorable, but that's probably not an adjective that would be apprciated!)
I really wanted to do a l'ick on CHAINSAW, but that's so last-century!
Didn't really like the cluing for AT A RUN or PYLONS
Canada: there is only one Torah, but you can have multiple copies. Also, technically, the plural of Torah if Torot, since it is a Hebrew word.
This is what I would call an almost perfect archetypal puzzle: Much white space that, at first, I have no idea how to fill. Finally a few toeholds, usually shorter entries that I know, or am very sure, are right, such as BOOT, QANTAS, HAIRY, SEYMOUR, RAJ, MIA, MSDOS, LISBOA, and DANS. These toeholds then help jog my brain to fill additional entries, such as AQI, AMER, LIONS, UBER, and others. These in turn lead to getting more and more until finally the whole puzzle is solved, all without having to look anything up or turn on red letters. Thank you, Pawel.
And thank you, Gary, for your terrific write-ups.
Best wishes to you all.
YR, I too try to find a secure foothold, especially on Saturday. I eschewed HUDDLE for the DANS and worked north and west from there.
It just seemed to fall in into place, not many long pauses. Except due West. I hastily penned AARE. I was way off.
Re. The NFL catch rule. The parallel is the MLB tag rule. Ok in MLB, the definition of possession is not dropping the ball on a tag. Ty Cobb and his ilk would go after the glove hand with sharpened spikes.
The NFL historically said, the definition of possession of a catched ball is not bobbling it when hitting the ground.
Re. MIA... Maybe next week Backwards Mexican SS. (NOMAR).
OK. I'm still SHUTTLEing. Look for me in the gloamin
WC
Oh my! I struggled. But the challenge was fun. Thanks, Pawel. I loved some of the clues.....but they escape me now. ....sigh....it is late.
I do remember PYLONS because I, too, have struggled with that complicated rule about the feet in a touchdown. There has got to be an easier way. If you get into the end zone it is a touchdown. What's so, hard about that. But no! There have to be all the little nitpickings about touching pylons or side lines or your shoelaces. Okay, I made that one up. But the rules do seem unnecessarily complicated.
Do you think I am a fanatic?
Gary, the write up was almost more fun that the puzzle! Thanks!
Owen....alll A's. And yesterday's too. You are on a roll!!
I guess I should stay out of the Bible- Torah debate, but when did I ever do what I Should?
There is only one Bible. There is only one Torah. But if you order multiple copies from Amazon you have Torahs and Bibles.
Okay. I'll go back to sleep now...
BTW Arett is not the word on French stop signs, you putz!!!
Re plural of Torah:
AnonT @3:26 - yes, but that 5 book collection is not called a Torah!
Thanks YR, Chief Rabbi Bob and Swamp Cat - I see your point about multiple copies of the Torah being the plural. Thanks.
I still think the "Five- book collections" clue is awkward. Perhaps a "gluey" spot. And "multiple copies of a five-book collection" is a rather lengthy clue. LOL!
Did you realize that there is not one universally accepted Bible?
(Canon means a list of sacred books accepted as genuine.) A number of Bible canons have evolved with overlapping and divergent contents. We speak of the Hebrew Bible, the Catholic Bible, etc.
Different Bibles
In church circles the plural "Bibles" is used extensively. A Bible study group is told to open their Bibles to that day's passage. In Israel our guide told us where in our Bibles to find the story related to the site we were visiting. We collect the Bibles after Sunday School class and put them on the shelf. In my 50 years of teaching in the Church I never heard, "Open your COPY of the Bible." "We need put these COPIES of the Bible on the shelf."
C, Eh! - I read the clue as any collection of five books... Like a Trilogy is a collection of any three books. I stared and wracked my noodle trying to come up with three:Tri::five:? Pent didn't start w/ a T ;-)
Moody - well, that's settled then <insert eye-roll>
YR - Yep.
Cheers, -T
Gee - I wonder just where these SIGNS are used
62D End zone quartet : PYLONS Daddy sang bass, Mamma sang tenor. Me and little brother would PYLON in there, in the end zone of the Super Bowl.
There are 2 pylons at the corners of the sideline, and the end zone. Where are the other 2? Duh, at the other end of the field. If I'm correct, quietly shake your head. If not please Larn me afore kickoff.
Picard 1144a
You used the abbr,GIF. The unabridged dictionary of abbrs. has 23 definitions for GIF. Could you mean "Great Internet Fun?" I have heard "Girl Intimate Friend" but that doesn't seem fit 'cause she wasn't in the video.
You questioned "DOWN EAST." Wiki has a good expl. LIU.
PIC 1, What do you call the objects you are juggling? How tall was the man in the center of PIC 1984-08-19.
Brisbane CA is close enough that you could have driven.
AnonT324p
Your youngest rated an AWE! There is nothing more lovable than a cute little critter, unless it is edible.
Dave
@ John (in a bad) Moody
You are correct. The correct spelling is ARRET (not arett) on those French stop signs !
D4 - GIF is Graphic Interchange Format. Basically, a .jpg or .bmp. A .txt for pictures.
Picard - I can juggle clubs but doing it in tandem - no. A college buddy and I spent 4 half-drunk hours 'perfecting' the 6-ball tandem juggle one night. The clubs we tried exactly once - one of us yelled something stronger than ACH! when smacked in the head...
Youngest said she's glad yous enjoyed her eCupcakes. She made everything (including the icing from scratch). The rascal is an Almond Joy and the nose is a Twizzler. For those watching your blood-sugar, don't stare too long... I took one bite and my sweet-tooth cavity'd :-)
Cheers, -T
There was an operating system between MS-DIS and Windows. Anybody remember it? I liked it better.
I FIW'ed Monday and another easy day. Plus I was careless yesterday and missed another box. And Saturday? Clean FIR*.
BTW. Can one actually FLIP a lease? At the heat of the last RE crush they were flipping P&Sales. I've got one on my house in Nashua that's in limbo.
Well, I'm going nowhere.
Owen, I reiterate: thanks for the great l'icks and poems lately.
WC
* And it just makes my day
If "Bibles" was clued as "66-book collections" I would not like it any better. End of rant for the day😀
Things that happened this week that I learned listening to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me:
1) After recently losing its editor in chief, the LA Times on Tuesday misspelled Los Angeles. Any readers notice?
2) Canada unveiled a new gender neutral version of its national anthem. Fact check, C-Eh?
3) According to new rankings released this week, Florida is the worst place in the US when it comes to absolutely everything. Apologies to all the Floridians here.
4) Two British metal detector enthusiasts thought they'd hit the jackpot when they dug up 50 Roman gold coins. They turned out to have been props on a BBC-TV show about hapless metal detector enthusiasts.
I love this stuff - with the crosswords, blog - all y'all's great posts and links - and this, who needs the political ("real") news.
Yes, the clue was awkward. It is not really about "pluralizing."
An East Coast venue for the Super Bowl would have been more comfotable. How is the city chosen?
As a teen I totally had a crush on this JANE SEYMOUR in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die.
Did anyone else think of her? One time I was eating in a local restaurant and I realized she was sitting at the next table. She was very sweet and beautiful in person, too.
AnonT:
Sorry if it was not clear: I was not one of the juggling OLYMPIC ATHLETES.
But here I was juggling (passing clubs) with one of the OLYMPIC ATHLETES (Mark Collier) in 2002.
Here was the interesting part: You might notice a set of crutches behind me. I had been hit by a car and nearly killed just three months earlier and had been in the hospital for a month. My pelvis was shattered and I could not walk. So I was flying high to be able to stand on one foot and pass clubs with Mark.
D4E4H: Regarding GIF: I am talking about Graphical image files in the Graphical Interchange Format. (GIF was around before JPG). The puzzle wizards like Husker Gary often use animated GIFs to demonstrate a point in their reviews. I was applauding Husker Gary for the one of the precision tree FELLER. I hope that makes things clearer.
From yesterday:
D4E4H: I am glad you enjoyed the video of my friend on stilts entering the bar on ST PAT Day. But I am afraid I did not understand the connection to the fan and balloon fiasco?
Yes Mike Sherline, the Senate passed the change for a gender neutral O Canada. Now it has to be signed by the Governor- General and become law. (I don't think our female GG, Julie Payette (yes, the former astronaut) will object.
The second line "True patriot love in all thy sons command" will change to " True patriot love in all OF US command", thus including those of us who are daughters. Ms. MOTT and Ms. McClung would be pleased.👍
Now all you Cornerites are up-to-date on your Canadiana! Keep listening to the anthem at the hockey games and you should note the change. Anthems at the Olympics are played and not sung so the change will not be noted there - unless our medal winners decide to sing (but the hockey players usually are NOT good singers LOL).
Wilbur: I don't think there was anything between DOS and Windows, tho MacOS and Linux came out seperately. But you may be thinking of the DOS precursor, CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers.
WC - Are you referring to DR-DOS? (from Digital Research's Kilndall, IIRC) There was also VMS and OS/2 from IBM that Microsoft morphed into Windows NT/XP/2010/what we got now. There was the crappy Windows 3.0 and the almost ready for prime-time Windows 3.11 before Windows 95. Windows Bob is right-out.
If you were on Jobs' iBoxen [that's plural, like OXen - LIU :-)], well, I got nuthin'. I only played with the 68000-series' assembly code.
OMG! - I see what you're doing... We're going back to CISC/RISC Wars! ACH!
YR - when the NFL gets rubes, er, tax-payers, to pony-up for a shiny new stadium we suckers are promised a Super Game. //Steve's right! we can only say "the big game"...
See #4 as citation. Houstonians paid for NRG Stadium and hosted last year's head-banging body-slamming ball; which I read was the #1 best Bowl of Super in history.
Mike S. I missed #1 but Sat radio's NPR will replay WWDTM at 11p CST so I'll catch it then.
I read #2 in the paper so it must be true. //and, face it, Canadians are so nice... They'd just wonder why they didn't do it before, eh?
C, Eh! - MOTT would be proud. The Pope changed-up The Lord's Prayer so I guess I can get used to a new O'Canada before hockey (or an OLYMPIC win) too, no? :-)
-T
//Lucina - how'd it go today? You OK?
Many thanks, Yellowrocks--I totally agree with you about the ACH issue.
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