google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Tuesday, May 29, 2018, Ed Sessa

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May 29, 2018

Tuesday, May 29, 2018, Ed Sessa


Holding Hands

20. Basic cocktail with Dewar's: SCOTCH AND SODA.

24. Live frugally: PINCH AND SCRAPE.

42. Political entities subject to Constitutional separation: CHURCH AND STATE.

48. Exhortation to come together ... and a hint to 20-, 24- and 42-Across: LET'S JOIN HANDS.

Each phrase holds (contains) the word hands. 

Across:

1. Learn to fit in: ADAPT.

6. "Sí," on the Seine: OUI

9. Nasser of Egypt: GAMAL.

14. Oscar winner Marisa: TOMEI.   1993 Oscars, Best Supporting Actress award,  as Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny

15. "What was __ expect?": I TO.

16. Martini garnish: OLIVE.

17. "The Sixth Sense" writer/director M. Night __: SHYAMALAN.  Perps made it easy.  Otherwise, no clue. 

19. "Mack the Knife" singer Bobby: DARIN.

22. Spanish "other": OTRA.

23. Acorn producer: OAK.

31. What truants "play": HOOKY.   I thought of Senior Skip Day.

32. 2010 Apple release: IPAD.

33. Application file suffix: EXE.  File suffix being file type.  Short for executable.

35. Pests in a pantry: ANTS.

36. Like very serious errors: FATAL.   "Error 1603: A fatal error occurred during installation" is a catchall when your application's executable doesn't install correctly. 

38. Octopus octet: ARMS.

39. Muscle spasm: TIC.

40. Chore: TASK.

41. Most of Wile E. Coyote's gadgets, brand-wise: ACMES.

46. Forget-me-__: NOT.  

Your birth flower if you were born in September.

The Alaska state flower.

Symbolism 



47. Ohio border lake: ERIE.


54. Hawaiian hi: ALOHA.

55. Embarrasses deeply: MORTIFIES.

58. Bourbon Street cuisine: CAJUN.

59. Boston skyscraper, with "the": PRU.

60. Nick of "Cape Fear": NOLTE.

61. Shoelace problems: KNOTS.

62. Stockholm airline: SAS.  SAS is an abbreviation of its former full name, Scandinavian Airlines System or legally Scandinavian Airlines System Denmark–Norway–Sweden.   The main hub is in Copenhagen, while the company headquarters is near Stockholm.   Wikipedia

63. Wear away: ERODE.


Down:

1. @ signs: ATs.   I first learned this symbol meant each at.   Internet Hall of Famer and inventor of email,  RPI & MIT grad Ray Tomlinson, used the @ symbol to distinguish host name from user name so that messages could be sent from one host to another on ARPANET, the precursor to the internet. 

2. "I am so stupid!": DOH. Popularized by Homer Simpson.    You're telling me Grumpy and Doc weren't in Sleeping Beauty ?  Oh, Snow White.  DOH !

3. Actress Poehler and singer Grant: AMYS. Actress and comedian Amy Poehler and contemporary Christian singer Amy Grant.

4. Birds with eyelike spots on their tails: PEACOCKS.

5. Youngest-ever Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Hutton: TIMOTHY. Won for "Ordinary People."   I confused him with his father Jim.


6. Lube shop container: OIL CAN. Red Sox fans like Wilbur would remember "Oil Can" Boyd, a starting pitcher for the Beantown nine.

7. D-Day beach: UTAH.

8. Hebrides isle: IONA.

9. NASA's __ Space Flight Center: GODDARD.

10. Where Nome is: ALASKA.


11. Surrealist painter Joan: MIRO.

12. Gung-ho: AVID.

13. "Girls" creator Dunham: LENA.

18. Gillette blade: ATRA.

21. Diet-friendly: NO-CAL.

24. Cool, in '90s slang: PHAT. Not an acronym, but a deliberate misspelling of fat, in the sense of rich, abundant, or desirable.  A couple of backronyms - phrases constructed after the fact - are Pretty Hot And Tempting and PHysically ATtractive.  Paraphrased from Snopes.com

25. Greek column type: IONIC.

26. V-shaped cut: NOTCH.

27. Football's "Iron Mike": DITKA.


28. Place for a waxing: SPA.

29. Prefix with frost: PERMA.

30. Ron Darling or Tom Seaver: EX MET. Starting pitchers for the NY Mets.

34. To be, to Livy: ESSE.   "Livy, Latin in full Titus Livius, (born 59/64 bc, Patavium, Venetia [now Padua, Italy]—died ad 17, Patavium), with Sallust and Tacitus, one of the three great Roman historians. His history of Rome became a classic in his own lifetime and exercised a profound influence on the style and philosophy of historical writing down to the 18th century."  - Britannica.com

36. De __: actual: FACTO. "In fact or in practice; in actual use or existence, regardless of official or legal status." Wiktionary.

37. Campfire remnant: ASH.

38. Represented: ACTED FOR.

40. Some "Iliad" warriors: TROJANS.

41. Utterly absurd: ASININE.

43. Left open, as a door: UNSHUT.

44. Indian political family: NEHRUS.

45. "Dagnabbit!": DRAT.

48. Absence: LACK.

49. Splashy style: ELAN.

50. Axis dictator who ordered the Pearl Harbor attack: TOJO.

51. Little rascals: IMPS.

52. "Julie & Julia" director Ephron: NORA.

53. Grain tower: SILO.

56. Flight board abbr.: ETD.

57. "Just like I said!": SEE.

56 comments:

OwenKL said...

A PEACOCK is a showy bird who feathers his behind
In hopes a hen will fall for him, and to him be kind!
He does a dance that MORTIFIES
Watched by his tail's AVID eyes,
And if it weren't so beautiful, would seem quite ASININE!

Should a SCOTCH AND SODA seem too dull and bland
Add an onion or an OLIVE, whatever is at HAND.
It may not change the taste at all
But each DE FACTO know-it-all
Will come to tell you that's not done, and that it should be banned!

{A-,B+}

Lemonade714 said...

Well, we are back to the work week after a day with no rain.

A no-nonsense Tuesday with the spelling of SHYAMALAN the hardest part for me. He has made some very interesting movies following up The Sixth Sense , which was a wonderful movie, with The Village and Signs both clever entertaining movies. Since then his star has plummeted and a series of movies all tanked.

There were many other proper names which probably bedeviled some, from the not nice TOJO to the yummy Ms. TOMEI and one of my favorites TIMOTHY HUTTON who was outstanding in the short-lived A&E series where he played Archie Goodwin and in LEVERAGE .

Thank you TTP and Ed.

D4E4H said...

Good morning Cornerites.

I wish to thank Mr. Ed Sessa for this Easy Peasy Puzzy. I FIR in 31:33.
My first fill, 1D @ signs: ATS - - caused a NIT to rear it's ugly head. Not one person has ever seemed to care that @ means much more than "at" so I shan't attempt to explain.
I solve sans theme, and yet the theme answers came easily, and we all joined hands when I filled 48A. There they were in each theme answer.
Last to fall was 52D - NORA who joined hands with me.

Thanks TTP for your excellent tour through the CW.

Ðave

desper-otto said...

Good morning!

Hmmmm...so it's not spelled SHAMALIAN. D'OH! TTP, I think it was HANDS, not just HAND that got joined. Thought Tom Seaver was a golfer rather than a baseball player. The Kingston Trio sang of SCOTCH AND SODA. Thanx, Ed, for a fun outing, and a big HAND for TTP's exposition.

DeFACTO: Doesn't seem to matter anymore.

NOME: There's no place like it.

UNSHUT: Don't like it.

Hope you Panhandlers had a not-too-severe visit from Alberto. Y'all are free to send a little of that moisture our way.

TTP said...

DOH ! Thanks Desper-otto ! Corrected. I better keep my day job.

Big Easy said...

SHYAMALAN- "Perps mad it easy"? Not really because I wasn't sure if the girls' names were AMYS or AMIS (I knew it wasn't AIMEE). Unheard of before- all perps. The rest of the puzzle was a speed run but there were two glaring mistakes.

1.There is NO CAJUN cuisine on Bourbon Street. Bars, live music, daiquiri shops, strip joints and neither Arnaud's nor Galitoire's restaurants would never be called CAJUN cuisine. Creole cuisine it might be called but not Cajun.
https://www.arnaudsrestaurant.com/menus/a-la-carte-dinner-menu/
http://www.galatoires.com/menus

2. NO CAL diet? With NO CALories you won't live very long.

BobB said...

Shyamalan was a total unknown easily completed with easy perps. No problems elsewhere. Unshut, really🤔

Jinx in Norfolk said...

Finally an eraser-free FIR! Two part nit: 1) lube shops use bulk oil, and B) motor oil is packaged in plastic bottles, not cans. To see oil cans you can tune into American Pickers.

Didn't know GAMAL, Shama Lama Ding Dong, or the PRU. Convenient perps to the rescue.

D-O, I'll bet you would really hate the word "unstart". So did the SR-71 pilots when it happened.

Thanks to TTP and Ed Sessa for today's fun exercise.

Yellowrocks said...

All the names in the NW dismayed me at first, but they all soon fell with perps and wags. SHYAMALAN was ESP, IMO not Tuesday friendly, but perpable. With a few prompts I remembered TOMEI and TIMOTHY. Ordinary People was a great movie.
GAMAL and DARIN were gimmes from long ago. Sometimes age helps.
TTP, interesting article about forget-me-nots. Thanks for a fine expo.
I was waiting for a reaction to UNSHUT. I have seen it in poems. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: "What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with unshut mouth?"
Hi Tin, here's to you. Scotch without the soda. PINCH is great. Fosters makes OIL CAN sizes of beer and ale.
Off to PT now. Five hours in a chair in the ER yesterday left me quite achy, but well read.

kazie said...

The clue "si" on the Seine: Actually, "si" is also used in French for "yes" if the expected answer is a negative, but the speaker is contradicting that expectation by saying yes. (You didn't know this? Yes (si), I did.) "Si" is also used as a conjunction to mean "if".
The names held me up today. Especially the NW corner.

Magilla Go-Rilla said...

17A: I knew this one. I just didn’t know how to spell it; nor pronounce it. Crosswords saved the day.

Spitzboov said...

Good morning everyone.

Easy again, today. Got all the 'ANDs' and by the time I got to the reveal, I didn't pay attention to what the theme might be. Ed always has interesting puzzles. Noted IMP as a CSO à moi.
OAK - German Eiche, L. German Eek, Dutch eik.

After several years, we finally got to attend the Memorial Day services at the Saratoga National Cemetery yesterday. It was a beautiful setting and parts of it were quite moving. A highlight for me was the ringing of the Saratoga (WWII aircraft carrier) ship's bell for 21 chimes. (It is rung only twice a year - Memorial Day and Veterans Day. The rest of the year the clapper is secured.). The weather was perfect; about 68º and only light breezes.

I did yesterday's puzzle too late to post meaningfully, but did note the Minnesotan "YOU BETCHA".

Good to see Kazie check in.

Anonymous said...

I felt so smart getting it done so quickly and then...I read the comments that it was easy.

desper-otto said...

Anon@9:08 -- Early-week puzzles are always easy. They get progressively harder as the week goes on with the trickiest, most difficult, arriving on Saturday.

Madame Defarge said...

Good Morning.

Thanks, Ed and TTP, for lots of fun and a fine walk through the details.

I have a collection of favorites here:

UTAH Beach as my dad landed there nearly 74 years ago. SCOTCH AND SODA, which he taught me was a better drink with less dangerous results than any of the sweet concoctions. He drank the best stuff neat. Sorry about the SODA, Tin!

DITKA: Ah, for one brief shining moment the Bears were great fun. It was Super (pun intended XX) to go with our kids to New Orleans where my brother and his family lived. They were the perfect ages. WE watched the Bears get on the bus to leave NO. DITKA wouldn't talk to reporters or adults, but he said the kids could come on the bus to talk to everyone. It was a wonderful memory for my kids. (Is it possible to be reported to child and family services for teaching kids to become Bears and Cub fans?!) Thanks TTP. I love NFL films--especially the old ones narrated by John Facenda.

ELAN--just because I like the word and it's meaning.

Hand up for misspelling SHYAMALAN. DOH!

TIMOTHY Hutton was excellent in Ordinary People. It's a fine film with an excellent--mostly low key--cast. Including a very young Elizabeth McGovern. It was filmed on the North Shore here, so its reality was striking. Redford did a nice job with Judith Guest's difficult novel. I used to teach it in Senior English. Many deep, valuable discussions.

Spitz: Sounds like a fine memorial.

Have a sunny day, wherever you are.

Tinbeni said...

TTP: Nice write-up.

Gotta like a puzzle with the answer SCOTCH AND SODA ... though I drink
my SCOTCH ... NEAT!

Cheers!

Irish Miss said...

Good Morning:

There were plenty of CSOs today: NASA's Goddard (HG), Erie (Abejo), Imp (Spitz), Scotch and Pinch (Tin), and Dewar's (clue) Scotch and Trojan(s) Moi. My only hiccup was figuring out the spelling of Shyamalan but perps solved that easily enough. My w/os were No fat/No cal and NY Met/Ex Met. Nolte reappears, joined by fellow actors Tomei and Timothy Hutton. He was outstanding in "Ordinary People" and, also, in a recent, short-lived TV series, "American Crime." Phat has appeared before but I never heard it used or knew the meaning. Years ago, I sat next to Mike Ditka at a country club bar and was surprised at the size of his hands.

Thanks, Mr. Ed, for a Tuesday treat and thanks, TTP, for the informative and lively expo.

Lucina, you and my sister, Eileen, share a love for all things purple.

FLN, YR, I'm sorry you had such a stressful holiday, especially after all your food preparation efforts. I hope Alan is feeling better.

FLN, Roy, thanks for the additional Nipper clips, particularly the pictures of the art project! Do you live in the Capital District?

I have a haircut appointment and then "lunch with the ladies"!

Have a great day.

oc4beach said...


Nice one from Ed Sessa today and TTP's tour was enjoyable.

No real problems today. Just a few missteps that were quickly corrected by perps. I had ABDUL before GAMAL, but to be fair, his full name was GAMAL ABDEL NASSSER and I thought ABDUL was right.

I knew GODDARD because I spent the better part of my 40+ year career there working on NASA programs. My Avatar is a picture of the sign at the front gate of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

I wasn't sure of the spelling of SHYAMALAN and I had SHAMALLAN at first, but that was quickly remedied. And for some reason I spelled Bobby DARIN's name with an E instead of the I. Again, fixed by perps.

The theme answers were ultimately filled in with enough perps to allow a few WAGs to finish filling them in.

I think Marisa TOMEI was great in "My Cousin Vinny" and she was also hilarious in the small part she had in "What Women Want" with Mel Gibson.

Well, the summer vacation season is here, so, I hope everyone enjoys it this year.


PK said...

Hi Y'all! Cute theme, thanks, Ed! Great informative expo, TTP.

I failed to look for the theme so that it registered as such, but I got it enough to fill in the lower two long ones with HANDS after a few perps.

Hand up for not knowing how to spell SHYAMALAN. The trailers to his works turned me off of watching his stuff. Other unknowns: GAMAL, EXE, PRU, LENA.

YR: Wish I were there to help you eat all that potato salad. So sad about Alan's setback and missing the party.

WikWak said...

A tap dance through the tulips it was today. Went straight through doing only the horizontals; then I came here to see what all the verticals were. Just a tad over 9 minutes. Nice change after Saturday’s (for me) disaster.

M Night Shyamalan is well known to me because there was a time, about 5-10 years before I retired, when I would see dozens of his books on middle school kids' desks.

Like oc4beach, I remember Gamal Abdel Nasser (well—I remember his name).

UNSHUT is unloved here.

Thanks to Ed Sessa; I nearly always enjoy your puzzles. Thanks to TTP too, for his write up today.

Have a great day, all!

Misty said...

Well, I was really excited to think I got an Ed Sessa puzzle, but 'twas not to be, thanks to a tiny error. I put EMMET for those names, not recognizing them as sports figures, and forgot to reconsider the file suffix. But hey, I actually got SHYMALAN and TOJO and all the theme answers and reveal and everything else--so still a great way to start the day. Many thanks, Ed, and nice pictures, TTP.

I also got the Sudoku, Kenken, and the Jumble this morning, which was a delight.

I love the way my glasses let me see clear distance again.

Have a great day, everybody!

SwampCat said...

So much to love about this one. SHYAMALAN has long been a favorite of mine though I can never pronounce or spell his name. I filled in what I remembered and waited.

Didn’t know Seaver or Darling and wondered what an EXMET was. Perps were solid.

D-O, I remember the Kingston Trio’s Scotch and Soda. And like Big Easy I cringed at CAJUN for Bourbon Street. But I guess we can both claim a CSO.

I feel I should say something about Mike DITKA but I can’t think of anything.

Thanks , Ed and TTP!

Owen, A+. A+. !!

Lucina said...

ALOHA, everyone!

My only encounter with M. Night SHYAMALAN's movies is The Sixth Sense but my daughter loves all his movies. For some reason she is a big fan of dark, horror films. I prefer NORA Ephron's films.

Like YR and others I remember GAMAL Nasser and the controversies in Egypt during the 50s and 60s. ALASKA and PERMAfrost together seem right.

WEES. This was an easy solve with enough good perps to spell SHYAMALAN. Thank you, TTP, for joining HANDS with us and providing interesting tidbits.

Have a fantastic day, everyone!

JJM said...

Big Easy.... any good suggestions for places in and around Tulane? We've found a couple over the last 2 years, but the natives always know the best places.

Chairman Moe said...

"Puzzling Thoughts":

A rare day off; slept in as if it were a weekend day. Very late start to my "morning", as breakfast morphed into lunch. Had some problems with two words in the Jumble but ultimately solved. Sudoku was easy; Ed's Crossword was a bit crunchy, and I ended up FIW as I forgot Nassar's first name was GAMAL - I also did not know painter Joan MIRO, so this was my Natick

TTP, of course you know that Iron Mike DITKA is from Aliquippa and Pitt. I met him when I lived in Chicago suburbs, at a Pitt alumni event, and again at his restaurant in Chicago

NO CAL started as NO FAT, until I realized my FATAL error

I had ANTS in my pantry until I bought a tube of Terro. They must've loved this elixir, as they're no longer pestering me ...

When New England star
Chung quits, he's moving to France.
He'll be EX-PAT, Pat

AnonymousPVX said...

A fairly direct solve today with no issues. Other than “no cal” diet-friendly food.....I’ll bet....it’s called “air”.

Someone’s at the door, I have to go and unshut it for them.

oc4beach said...


Misty: Glad to hear that you are seeing better.

Ol' Man Keith said...

I want to thank Mr. Sessa for today's lesson in the spelling of proper names. I mean, who really knew how to spell SHYAMALAN until now? And DARIN with an "I" - and I was never sure of GAMAL, which seems much shorter when we spell it out.

And thanks too for giving that old bastard TOJO a brief revival. He was our primary west coast villain when I was growing up in San Francisco.
Historically, he's lost ground to Hitler and even Mussolini as the decades roll on.

TOJO had his own matchbook when I was a kid. The matches were shaped like little bombs, and the striking surface was TOJO's derrière.
We also had Hitler-themed matches, but I recall the TOJO ones because they were so vividly racist. His skin was greenish yellow, and he had enormous buck teeth and wore goggle glasses.

~ OMK
____________
Diagonal Report:
Today's mirror threesome gets us back in the diagonal business. No hidden messages unless there's something concealed in anagrams. (I use all my anagram energy on the Jumble these days.)

Jayce said...

Hand up for knowing SHYAMALAN's name but spelling it wrong. Hand up for unloving UNSHUT; well said, AnonymousPVX. The other hand up for entering NOFAT before NOCAL; does anybody actually eat NOCAL food, i.e. food that has no calories? AnonymousPVX and Big Easy, well said about that. ACMES (as a plural) is also unloved by me; most of Wile E. Coyote's gadgets were ACME brand gadgets, not ACMES. Although I suppose one could imagine him sweeping a hand (paw?) over a collection of his gadgets and saying, "These are all Acmes." I still don't have to like it.

It seems our beloved editor seems locked into a rut about cluing certain entries UNfactually. Yesterday it was calling DSL an ISP; today it was, once again, cluing CAJUN food as Bourbon Street cuisine. It seems to happen again and again.

So, plenty to like and unlike in this puzzle. Best wishes to you all.

Yellowrocks said...

Do you like poetic language? I do. I love UNSHUT in poems but not in everyday language. Leaves of Grass is not a favorite of mine, so I did not publish the verse from it this AM. However, I do love Yeats's Two Songs of Fool.

A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And sleep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to Providence.

I start out of my sleep to think
Some day I may forget
Their food and drink;
Or, the house door left UNSHUT,
The hare may run till it's found
The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.

I bear a burden that might well try
Men that do all by rule,
And what can I
That am a wandering-witted fool
But pray to God that He ease
My great responsibilities?

Second part

BTW, Owen, I loved both poems today.

Ol' Man Keith said...

I still wonder at the cultural phenomenon of the song "Mack the Knife." Both Louis Armstrong and Bobby DARIN had major hits with it.
I was familiar with it before it caught on in America because of my theater work. I was fortunate enough to see the original Brecht/Weill production of Die Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera) in its revival at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1960.

But I never understood its popularity here, considering how it refers to a character whose shenanigans most Americans never heard of.

I recently caught up with that little piece of musical history while watching Babylon Berlin via Netflix. This wonderfully accurate series (in German, but you can choose English titles and/or dubbing if you wish) is a re-creation of Berlin in the 1920s (the age of Cabaret!), and one episode is set in the very same theater in which Dreigroschenoper is playing.

Even outside the theater ordinary workmen are whistling "Mack the Knife." So I guess it's showing that people just liked Kurt Weill's tune. They didn't need to know anything beyond that.

An interesting fate for Herr Kurt Weill, a classically trained musician who yearned to be respected as a serious composer.

Roy said...

Irish Miss, one of the few things in my profile is that I'm across the river from you in Clifton Park.

Put down ABDUL (middle name) for Nassar until perps showed me the error of my ways.

I always felt that M. Night SHYAMALAN's first name should be "Mid".

CHURCH isn't (or shouldn't be) a "political entity".

My impression is that CAJUN is country and CREOLE is city; put in the word that fit.

Ol' Man Keith said...

Addendum:

Speaking of Kurt Weill's career, many will recall that he came to this country and wrote for Broadway in his later years. Among his other "pop" hits are the lovely romantic ballad, September Song, and an apparently simple number many people think of as a genuine folk song, Down in the Valley.

~ OMK

Husker Gary said...

Musings
-Early golf and then puzzle solving in the car to Omaha for shopping and return to a wonderful ¾” of rain!
-Puzzle was lots of fun and having to choke down UNSHUT is a small price to pay for a great time.
-Bobby’s Mack The Knife is the only record I’ve ever ordered
-Straight arrow me never played HOOKY from Kindergarten to Master’s Degree
-Joann has been ACTING FOR her mother for years and has been the DE FACTO head of this household even longer
-TOJO pleaded for compassion for defeated Japanese after the war and was hanged in 1948

Ol' Man Keith said...

Yes, Owen - Kudos!

You're whipping those meters into line!

Roy said...

This is the full link to my profile.

Lucina said...

I thought lettuce might have zero calories, but apparently one cup contains 5 calories. Even onions and tomatoes have calories.

Irish Miss said...

Roy @ 4:38 ~ Thanks for your profile link. IMO, your avatar would add some color and whimsy to your blog comments. I have a brother and other relatives who live in Clifton Park. I lived in Knox Woods (Halfmoon) from 1988-1991 so I was familiar with CP but I doubt I would recognize it today after 27 years of development.

I had a very nice luncheon get together with my friends. Much reminiscing about our younger year's mischievous moments! Two things I never saw before kind of tickled my fancy: A sign advertising a Vegan Fest on Saturday and the beauty salon's receptionist's canary yellow nail polish! I can't relate to either but I did get a kick out of both. Vive le Difference!

CrossEyedDave said...

Wees, (nocal? unshut?)

I thought the puzzle easy, but thank goodness for the Blog!
I never saw "hands" in the theme answers.
(It is the Blog, and the ensuing V8 cans to the head moments
that add so much to the enjoyment of these puzzles...)

Had to post this for Irish Miss...

Let's solve this puzzle together!

However, you may be surprised what joined hands can accomplish...

Picard said...

There are two kinds of people. Those who found this easy and those who found this absurdly difficult. Hand up for the latter. I do not know film people, so the NW seemed quite unfair with crossings of nothing but film people: TIMOTHY, TOMEI, SHYAwhatever. Hazy memory of AMY GRANT rescued me. Amazed to check and see I indeed FIR! Other than that, I enjoyed the theme!

Other unknown: LENA. I usually don't know sports people, but I do know the name Mike DITKA. Did not know the "Iron" part.

My father's uncles heroically landed on those D-DAY Beaches. Very far from the UTAH I have shared in photos before. I still have many more UTAH photos for other occasions. I love the natural beauty there.

PHAT actually goes back at least to 1963. A recent learning moment from another puzzle. I also recently learned that MACK THE KNIFE has its roots in The Beggar's Opera of 1728.

Here is a graphic that shows LET'S JOIN HANDS in a different way.

This is from our annual I Madonnari Chalk Painting Festival every Memorial Day Weekend. I will have lots more photos to share soon. This was actually from last year.

This hike I led last year took us through OAK trees.

Our Live OAK trees in California are very different than what I was used to growing up back East.

Here the PRU is coming out of the top of my friend Genie's head as we stand with our friend Paul.

I remember visiting the GODDARD Space Flight Center as a child in Maryland. Somewhere I hope I have photos.

From yesterday:
Michael: Thanks for noting that Apple products were always more expensive than IBM clones. Apple deliberately made everything incompatible with the rest of the world, forcing their customers to buy special printers and other accessories. I always try to avoid goods and services that are made deliberately incompatible to force you to do things their way.

CrossEyedDave said...

Scotch and soda? Tinbeni would never approve...

Pinch and scrape Ouch!

Touchy Subject...

Jinx in Norfolk said...

My favorite rendition of Mack the Knife is a duet by Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Buffet.

It may be an old wives tale (is that offensive?), but I've always heard that celery has negative calories. Burns more calories to eat than you take in by eating it. Just to ward off that apparent voodoo, I make sure to slather my celery with peanut butter or "junk" cheese.

Anonymous T said...

HI All!

Note to self - If you think the fish isn't fully cooked, don't eat it. I was up all night trying to bring my toenails through my entrails. #NotFun

If that wasn't bad enough - how many names can you stuff in a puzzle Ed? I enjoyed the theme but struggled WAG-wise in the NW. Nailed that but not so much in the NE. C. Moe and I had the same issue @FIW. And GAMEL(?) - way before my time.

Thanks TTP for the wonderful expo and music. YouTube said DITKA wasn't approved for my iPAD.

WO: @30d I knew Ron & Tom were baseball but, with EX in place, made them EXpos. When ARMS was apparent, I made them EX-MEN (Yes, X-MEN, I know --read my 1st line; I'm still not whole! [my story and sticking to it :-)])

ESP & WAGs - too many names. SHYAMALAN (?). Ok, I've seen the movie but I just remember Bruce somebody
Fav: GODDARD. Oc4 - I worked as a consultant at JSC; never got to other centers.
I also liked 1d just 'cuz TTP gave the shout-out to Ray @BBN. //no, never met him;. A hero nonetheless.

{A, B+} {cute}

FLN - Sorry YR to hear about Alan and you missing the party. //I'll forgo the potato salad today

Lucina - I finished Comey's book. Some on the 'right' will not appreciate the last two chapters; those on the left will shake heads and wring their HANDS. I still recommend it.

Grumpy Jayce & BigE - You can get CAJUN on Bourbon Street from a street vendor :-)
JJM - Try Royal House in the Quarter. Their crab bisque is crazy good.

NOCAL - DW purchased these cookies. --- No Dairy, no Egg, no Soy, non-GMO, Vegan? Then, um, WTF is in it?!> Might as well chew a twig. This is why I normally do the grocery shopping.

MDE Defarge - LOL bringing in CPS for foisting The Cubs on your kids :-)

Any one wanna see the cell cake Youngest built for PAP Bio?

Cheers, -T

Misty said...

Thank you for the kind words, Oc4beach. And how amazing that you worked at the Goddard Space Center! Wow! You must have loved seeing this in the puzzle this morning.

Loved the Yeats' poem, Yellowrocks. Don't remember hearing it before, so this was a treat.

Madame Defarge said...

IM: Those DITKA hands next to you at the country club are the reason why he was such a great tight end. Those ends cannot drop the ball! Very observant of you. My son who was both a tight end and defensive end through high school and college. He was pretty much slow as molasses in January, but he never dropped a football-- great hands! He was is also a great guy. Both of those are honest analyses from Mom. 😉

oc4beach said...


Anon-T & Misty: Although I did work at Goddard, I spent a lot of time at the other centers on TDY, especially JSC where I worked on the Solar Max Repair Mission and the Space Station integration. One of the things I liked about JSC was all of the great food in the area. And the Marshall Space Flight Center had great German food (Because of all of the German rocket scientists that came over after WWII.)

It was a fun career.

D4E4H said...

Comments on the comments:

CrossEyedDave at 5:16 PM
Caption for IM "Bless this beast on which we are about to feast, and the paws that prepared it. adogs."

Picard at 5:26 PM
Are the dirt homes under the overpass for bird or bee (wasp)?

Anonymous T at 6:45 PM
I read that PAP Bio is having a sale on cell cakes in the cellar until they are sold out. "C" ya there. Yeah Youngest! I give her a "D" n "A". "C"igh.

As usual, it took me longer to correct the post than to write it.

Ðave

Madame Defarge said...

IM: Those DITKA hands next to you at the country club are the reason why he was such a great tight end. Those ends cannot drop the ball! Very observant of you. My son who was both a tight end and defensive end through high school and college. He was pretty much slow as molasses in January, but he never dropped a football-- great hands! He was is also a great guy. Both of those are honest analyses from Mom. 😉

Lemonade714 said...

Mike Ditka is a bigger than life character and I was a Bear fan for most of my life until Dan Marino turned my head.

I had no idea that we had so many NASA ties here- HG do you start a club?

Moe - I think he would be an ex-pat ex-Pat. Bill would never approve.

I always had great hands but a too small body; catching the ball and getting destroyed. They did call me sure hands which could have been part of the theme

OwenKL said...

I never worked for NASA or any scientific concern, darn it, but I was president of the Albuquerque chapters of both the National Space Society and the L-5 Society in the 80's. Does that count for anything?

Dow Jones said...

FYI.....

C.C.'s puzzle ("Inner Nerd") appears in the Wednesday edition of the Wall Street Journal (5/30/18). It can be solved online or printed from the website: wsj.com

Wilbur Charles said...

I got to this late and it is late. I got bogged down in an SI Article about the Hernandez Bros (c below)
I agree with Picard about all the pop-cul figures. Now as TTP alluded to, if the clue for OILCAN had been ex bosox hurler then ...
I see ASININE got in. I like that word. Synonym for Fla driver. But ATS???
I spelled TORME exactly how it's pronounced. Around the PRU anyway

Oil Can was in the 1986 WS rotation. Sans LIU I think he pitched the 3rd game, but was passed over for games 6 and 7. Redsox were woefully mismanaged in the '86 WS.

Wow, C-Moe, you know your Pat's. Famous ex-Pat? Aaron Hernandez ,a modern tragedy.

My hooky story: as a 15 yr old Soph, I was talked into HOOKY. I got away with it until the news got out a week later that the Asst Principal was out.

The "Gang" decided to call out *sick but as I left I sat in a car with other skippers and guess who showed up. He then got wise to the earlier HOOKY.

WC

* The ol'fake number gambit

Wilbur Charles said...

Btw, CED, those were great links. Owen and C-Moe: W's all around. And here's my link to the SI article

WC

Anonymous T said...

OKL - If it makes you feel better, I added Zero to NASA's scientific endeavors. My stint @JSC was helping make their computer network more secure. AND Good luck with that - there are inter-connections w/ most every country and they're all fairly open.

NASA is funny, in that they are very .edu in their attitude. While the hacker & DOD in me keeps my paranoia high, I had to stop myself from getting freaked when seeing .ru on the .gov net and remember, "Right, we're working with the Russians on this," and move on. Their research requires openness and I get it -- it makes the Hippie in me happy. Everyone JOIN HANDS in Kumbyia now :-)

MDE Defarge - I wasn't sure where you and IM we're going w/ DITKA, big HANDS, tight-ends, .. :-)

WC - on HOOKY... The scene: HS Sr yr; DW & I met in March...
I knew all the tardy / truancy rules. Future DW (who, bored w/ HS, GED'd out) would call the school as my "Aunt" to pick me up 8 minutes into afternoon classes... Oh, we Ferris Bueller'd the hell out of it. #30YearsTogether #WeWereBad

Cheers, -T

Ol' Man Keith said...

Picard ~
Although Die Dreigroschenoper was based very loosely on The Beggar's Opera, it was uniquely transformed - freely adapted & updated - by Bert Brecht with Kurt Weill's music.

Although you can say the (distant) origin of the song lay in The Beggar's Opera, none of the operetta's music is popular now. The song in question "Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife)," was unknown to 18th century English audiences. The Weill/Brecht version was a mega-hit in Berlin in 1929 but virtually unknown in America until the Theatre de Lys production in New York in 1954.

As sung by the organ grinder in Act I:

"Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne
und die trägt er im Gesicht
und Macheath, der hat ein Messer,
doch das Messer sieht man nicht....
"

~ OMK

Picard said...

OMK: Thanks for the rest of the Beggar's Opera story!