Theme:
The reveal tells you what to look for...
35A. Impediment to creativity ... and each set of puzzle circles: WRITER'S BLOCK
... and we find, clockwise in each circled block, beginning in the NW: Bradbury, Lawrence, Chandler, Voltaire, Gordimer and Morrison. That's Ray, D.H. (or T.E.), Raymond, no first name, Nadine and Toni to give them all their full monikers. The latter two I have not read, the others I have.
Tough to pick a favorite, but I did find T.E. Lawrence's "The Mint" fascinating. If you have ten minutes to spare today, please enjoy this excerpt from the book. Glorious writing. If your heart isn't beating furiously reading about the race with the airplane, better check your emotional pulse!
Back to the crossword, I'm looking for a connection between the six authors but nothing jumps out unless there's some fiendish meta that I'm missing (quite likely, actually!)
This grid extends the recent sixteen-squares-on-one-side (SSOOS?) Thursday trend, and also features a very clever theme in the "block" shape of each author. Jeffrey's a master at themes, this one is no exception. Let's see what the fill held in store:
Across:
1. Seething: ABOIL
6. Jaguar weapons: CLAWS. My Jaguars had weapons - break down at every opportunity. One to drive, one in the shop.
11. Half a dance: CHA. Cha. (Cha?)
14. Stinger ingredient: BRANDY. Classically made with cognac and white crème de menthe. Cheers!
15. Superman player Cavill: HENRY
16. "The Last Jedi" villain Kylo: REN. Thank you, crosses. No Stimpy clue today? Nice for a change.
17. Alpine airs: YODELS
18. Broken out, in a way: ACNED
19. Days gone by, in days gone by: ELD
20. Capital on the Volga: RUBLE. Capital as in "money" for anyone new to this game.
21. Suppress, as a story: SIT ON
22. Punching tools: AWLS
23. Suffix with fruct-: OSE
24. Hall of Fame manager Stengel: CASEY. He managed both the Yankees and the Mets. I think the HOF nomination came more from his exploits with the former rather than the latter.
25. Sal of "Exodus": MINEO
26. Waters down: WETS
28. Taiwanese PC brand: ACER
29. Rita awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom: MORENO. And ... cue the music!
30. Hankering: ITCH
32. Depilatory cream: NAIR. Tried NEET first, was wrong. Not sure where I came up with that one. Wiki has it as an acronym for "Not in Employment, Education or Training" referring to young people without a job.
34. Historic span: Abbr.: CEN. tury
38. Big letters in family-owned supermarkets: IGA. Founded as the Independent Grocer's Alliance.
40. Troubadour's strings: LUTE
41. Uncle __: BEN'S. A crime against humanity.
42. Codes of conduct: MORALS
44. Christian with style: DIOR
46. Venerated one: IDOL
50. Adorkable types: NERDS. I LOVE "adorkable". What a great language we have in English.
51. Lets off steam: VENTS
52. JFK posting: ETA. I haven't been to JFK for a while, United stopped flying into there a few years ago. All their NYC flights go through Newark now, with the exception of some regional services into La Guardia. What was the point of this story? I miss the ride into Manhattan past the World's Fair remnants.
53. "Psych" finale?: -OSIS
54. Is after: SEEKS
55. Field mice: VOLES. I didn't know voles were mice. Good to know for the next time I meet one.
57. Area 51 craft: UFO
58. Singer with Lawrence: GORMÉ. Wild, stab-in-the-dark guess for me. Husband and Wife duo.
59. Accept, with "for": SETTLE
60. Greek org.: SOR. Sorority. I drove up Hilgard Avenue by UCLA last week, it's also known as "Sorority Row" from all the sorority houses there.
61. Lyft passenger: RIDER
62. Difficult tasks: TRIALS
63. Hosp. parts: E.R.S
64. Mideast bigwigs: EMIRS
65. Will Rogers prop: LASSO
Down:
1. Work up: AROUSE
2. Risky proposition: BAD BET. Risky? Downright dumb if you ask me.
3. Turow biographical title: ONE L. Harvard Law School calls first year students "one l's"
4. Not working: IDLE
5. Fleur-de-__: Quebec flag image: LYS
6. Poolside chair: CHAISE
7. Debate equipment: LECTERNS
8. Get under one's skin: ANNOY
9. Small songbird: WREN
10. Letters on a Qantas baggage tag: SYD. Sydney airport. I've been there, I don't recall much about it though (the airport that is, not the city!). I recall the Qantas lounge was nice, I flew out of Sydney to Auckland en route back home to LA.
11. Like many tees: CREW NECK
12. Greek: HELLENE. I knew "hellenic", now I know "hellene" too.
13. "... et cetera": AND SO ON. These entries can be difficult to parse. There's a few good examples today, look at 38 and 54D too.
14. How some tickets may be sorted: BY ROW
21. Scented pouch: SACHET
22. Put on: AIR
24. Plant in many Road Runner cartoons: CACTUS
25. Dunderhead: MORON
27. What Marcie calls Peppermint Patty: SIR. I needed this to unlock "ITCH" - I couldn't get away from "ACHE".
29. Distance runners: MILERS
31. Cultivates: TILLS
33. Monastic figures: ABBOTS
35. Golden State team: WARRIORS
36. Christ the __: Rio landmark: REDEEMER. An iconic sight. I got a great view of it flying into Rio's Santos Dumont domestic airport from Sao Paulo the last time I was out there. SDU is right on the ocean and slap-dab next to Sugarloaf, so it's hard to beat the view out of the airplane window.
37. Crime show with several spin-offs: CSI. The purists might have wanted to try to avoid "crime" in the clue as "crime", albeit abbreviated, is part of the answer. Doesn't ruffle my feathers though.
38. "You obviously can't depend on me": I'M NO USE
39. Fetches: GOES FOR
43. Most junk mail: ADS
45. Comic book personnel: INKERS. They draw the outlines. Other folk color them in. With crayon, and their tongue sticking out of the side of their mouth. Just kidding, some of my best friends are in comics and animation.
47. Change symbols, in math: DELTAS. The difference between "this" and "that".
48. Opera with Desdemona: OTELLO. I had a brain futz and tried OFELIA first. What was that all about?
49. Alters with a light touch?: LASES. Laser shaping, reshaping or surgery.
51. 48-Down composer: VERDI
54. "__ told": "That's the rumor": SO I'M
55. Designer Wang: VERA
56. Name in boxy cars?: OTIS. Mr. Elevator. Nice clue.
58. Higher ed. test: G.R.E.
59. Cardinal's letters: STL. St. Louis, on scoreboards.
And, as the stoics would say, "grid and bear it", so here it is!
Steve
The reveal tells you what to look for...
35A. Impediment to creativity ... and each set of puzzle circles: WRITER'S BLOCK
... and we find, clockwise in each circled block, beginning in the NW: Bradbury, Lawrence, Chandler, Voltaire, Gordimer and Morrison. That's Ray, D.H. (or T.E.), Raymond, no first name, Nadine and Toni to give them all their full monikers. The latter two I have not read, the others I have.
Tough to pick a favorite, but I did find T.E. Lawrence's "The Mint" fascinating. If you have ten minutes to spare today, please enjoy this excerpt from the book. Glorious writing. If your heart isn't beating furiously reading about the race with the airplane, better check your emotional pulse!
Back to the crossword, I'm looking for a connection between the six authors but nothing jumps out unless there's some fiendish meta that I'm missing (quite likely, actually!)
This grid extends the recent sixteen-squares-on-one-side (SSOOS?) Thursday trend, and also features a very clever theme in the "block" shape of each author. Jeffrey's a master at themes, this one is no exception. Let's see what the fill held in store:
Across:
1. Seething: ABOIL
6. Jaguar weapons: CLAWS. My Jaguars had weapons - break down at every opportunity. One to drive, one in the shop.
11. Half a dance: CHA. Cha. (Cha?)
14. Stinger ingredient: BRANDY. Classically made with cognac and white crème de menthe. Cheers!
15. Superman player Cavill: HENRY
16. "The Last Jedi" villain Kylo: REN. Thank you, crosses. No Stimpy clue today? Nice for a change.
17. Alpine airs: YODELS
18. Broken out, in a way: ACNED
19. Days gone by, in days gone by: ELD
Once adown the dewy way a youthful cavalier spurred with a maiden mounted behind him, swiftly passing out of sight, recalling to the imagination some romance of eld, when the damosel fled with her lover.
1891 - Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country
20. Capital on the Volga: RUBLE. Capital as in "money" for anyone new to this game.
21. Suppress, as a story: SIT ON
22. Punching tools: AWLS
23. Suffix with fruct-: OSE
24. Hall of Fame manager Stengel: CASEY. He managed both the Yankees and the Mets. I think the HOF nomination came more from his exploits with the former rather than the latter.
25. Sal of "Exodus": MINEO
26. Waters down: WETS
28. Taiwanese PC brand: ACER
29. Rita awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom: MORENO. And ... cue the music!
30. Hankering: ITCH
32. Depilatory cream: NAIR. Tried NEET first, was wrong. Not sure where I came up with that one. Wiki has it as an acronym for "Not in Employment, Education or Training" referring to young people without a job.
34. Historic span: Abbr.: CEN. tury
38. Big letters in family-owned supermarkets: IGA. Founded as the Independent Grocer's Alliance.
40. Troubadour's strings: LUTE
41. Uncle __: BEN'S. A crime against humanity.
42. Codes of conduct: MORALS
44. Christian with style: DIOR
46. Venerated one: IDOL
50. Adorkable types: NERDS. I LOVE "adorkable". What a great language we have in English.
51. Lets off steam: VENTS
52. JFK posting: ETA. I haven't been to JFK for a while, United stopped flying into there a few years ago. All their NYC flights go through Newark now, with the exception of some regional services into La Guardia. What was the point of this story? I miss the ride into Manhattan past the World's Fair remnants.
53. "Psych" finale?: -OSIS
54. Is after: SEEKS
55. Field mice: VOLES. I didn't know voles were mice. Good to know for the next time I meet one.
57. Area 51 craft: UFO
58. Singer with Lawrence: GORMÉ. Wild, stab-in-the-dark guess for me. Husband and Wife duo.
59. Accept, with "for": SETTLE
60. Greek org.: SOR. Sorority. I drove up Hilgard Avenue by UCLA last week, it's also known as "Sorority Row" from all the sorority houses there.
61. Lyft passenger: RIDER
62. Difficult tasks: TRIALS
63. Hosp. parts: E.R.S
64. Mideast bigwigs: EMIRS
65. Will Rogers prop: LASSO
Down:
1. Work up: AROUSE
2. Risky proposition: BAD BET. Risky? Downright dumb if you ask me.
3. Turow biographical title: ONE L. Harvard Law School calls first year students "one l's"
4. Not working: IDLE
5. Fleur-de-__: Quebec flag image: LYS
6. Poolside chair: CHAISE
7. Debate equipment: LECTERNS
8. Get under one's skin: ANNOY
9. Small songbird: WREN
10. Letters on a Qantas baggage tag: SYD. Sydney airport. I've been there, I don't recall much about it though (the airport that is, not the city!). I recall the Qantas lounge was nice, I flew out of Sydney to Auckland en route back home to LA.
11. Like many tees: CREW NECK
12. Greek: HELLENE. I knew "hellenic", now I know "hellene" too.
13. "... et cetera": AND SO ON. These entries can be difficult to parse. There's a few good examples today, look at 38 and 54D too.
14. How some tickets may be sorted: BY ROW
21. Scented pouch: SACHET
22. Put on: AIR
24. Plant in many Road Runner cartoons: CACTUS
25. Dunderhead: MORON
27. What Marcie calls Peppermint Patty: SIR. I needed this to unlock "ITCH" - I couldn't get away from "ACHE".
29. Distance runners: MILERS
31. Cultivates: TILLS
33. Monastic figures: ABBOTS
35. Golden State team: WARRIORS
36. Christ the __: Rio landmark: REDEEMER. An iconic sight. I got a great view of it flying into Rio's Santos Dumont domestic airport from Sao Paulo the last time I was out there. SDU is right on the ocean and slap-dab next to Sugarloaf, so it's hard to beat the view out of the airplane window.
37. Crime show with several spin-offs: CSI. The purists might have wanted to try to avoid "crime" in the clue as "crime", albeit abbreviated, is part of the answer. Doesn't ruffle my feathers though.
38. "You obviously can't depend on me": I'M NO USE
39. Fetches: GOES FOR
43. Most junk mail: ADS
45. Comic book personnel: INKERS. They draw the outlines. Other folk color them in. With crayon, and their tongue sticking out of the side of their mouth. Just kidding, some of my best friends are in comics and animation.
47. Change symbols, in math: DELTAS. The difference between "this" and "that".
48. Opera with Desdemona: OTELLO. I had a brain futz and tried OFELIA first. What was that all about?
49. Alters with a light touch?: LASES. Laser shaping, reshaping or surgery.
51. 48-Down composer: VERDI
54. "__ told": "That's the rumor": SO I'M
55. Designer Wang: VERA
56. Name in boxy cars?: OTIS. Mr. Elevator. Nice clue.
58. Higher ed. test: G.R.E.
59. Cardinal's letters: STL. St. Louis, on scoreboards.
And, as the stoics would say, "grid and bear it", so here it is!
Steve
46 comments:
Greetings!
Thanks to Jeffrey and Steve!
No real problems. Great puzzle!
More later. Have been waiting a long time for Steve! Otherwise I might forget to blog in the day!
Have a great day!
Am I subject to WRITER'S BLOCK when Erato's not around?
It's true that when without her, my words do not abound.
But Thalia, Muse of humor,
At least so goes the rumor,
Can take my words MORONIC and make them profound!
The statue, Christ REDEEMER, here's the scoop on:
It was carved to IDOLIZE the Saving icon!
For example, the last supper,
When the tab made Judas mutter,
Jesus saved when He redeemed a bargain Groupon!
{B+, A.} (Plus a few extra days in Purgatory for that second l'ick!)
While I blogged on of Jeffrey's early LAT puzzles, he became a regular here on Thursday with marti doing expositions. Now he is back in the Thursday rota, and after 120+ puzzles in his 6 years here, he can still present a new grid and a new challenge. Awesome. This was a puzzle where the theme really did not help the solve. As always he mixes a variety of pieces from the current culture like - Superman player Cavill: HENRY and "The Last Jedi" villain Kylo: REN to more historical like - Hall of Fame manager Stengel: CASEY and Singer with Lawrence: GORMÉ and timeless like Rita awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom: MORENO and Opera with Desdemona: OTELLO. The only unknown for me was poet Nadine GORIMER who was apparently a political as well as an artistic force. I am somewhat embarrassed I do not a Nobel Prize winner. For those who did not devour comic books and revere Stan Lee and his troops, Comic book personnel: INKERS must have been tough. Anyway, I enjoyed and I hope you did. Steve, thank you for your usual wonderful write-up and the T.E. Lawrence writings; I only thought of D.H..
Good morning!
Made a minor mess this morning with GRINDS (TRIALS) and HELENIC (HELLENE). But that's what Wite-Out is for. I suspect folks who had no circles had no clue to the theme. I was surprised to see Lawrence in the clue for 58a and also as one of the blocky writers. I suspect Jeffrey meant D.H. (one of Misty's favorites) rather than T.E. (Lawrence of Arabia). The only eww moment came from ACNED, but that CNE was necessary, so whatcha gonna do? Well done, Jeffrey and Steve. (Maybe the fiendish meta is simply that all of the writers' names have eight characters?)
NAIR: Only someone of a "certain age" would remember that old brand. Hmmmmm. Just looked it up and learned to my surprise that it's still around.
GORDIMER: Maybe it's because I live under a rock, but until this morning I'd never heard of her.
MORENO: Did anyone else catch the irony that Maria, the star-crossed Puerto Rican lover in West Side Story was also the name of the hurricane that destroyed Puerto Rico? One of the lines from America, the song Steve linked, was prophetic: "Everyone there will have moved here."
WOW! We get a HG/CC puzzle followed by a JeffWech Special! Throw in a camping trip and life is good.
FIR, but erased irate for ABOIL, fangs for CLAWS, LyrE for LUTE, HELLENa for HELLENE and Icon for IDLE. Didn't know what was in a stinger, HENRY, REN, or Rita MORENO. I do know of Kay Scarpetta's detective Pete MARiNO. All of Eve Dallas' subordinate officers call her SIR. Lottos aren't merely BAD BETs, they are taxes on being bad at math.
Thanks for the great puzzle Jeffrey. My favorites were "venerated one", "adorkable types" and "name in boxy cars", Nice review, Steve. BTW, Neet was a competitor to NAIR back in the covered wagon days.
Good morning. Thank you Jeffrey and thank you Steve.
Didn't have WRITER'S BLOCK today, but did have reader's block.
"Like many trees" and "Site of Exodus"
cACHET instead of SACHET. D'OH ! Should have read the crossing clue.
Had ABBeyS before ABBOTS. DIOR and VENTS fixed that.
Opened up the LA Times site to see the circles. Saw them, but never saw the authors. Thought it was some kind of Jumble, and tried to unscramble a couple. When that didn't work, I looked at the middle letters inside each block. That looked promising, as the top three started out with ONE, but the bottom three were EIT.
Wow Steve, that Mary Murfree was quite the romantic. Wonder what a guy would have wrote ?
New word for me today was in the clue for NERDS: Adorkable.
Steve, Neet was a longtime competitor of NAIR, was renamed Veet (the name used in Europe) in the US and Canada in 2002.
Also never heard of GORDIMER, LIU that she wrote on apartheid in South Africa. Nobel in 1991.
Early guess at Mel tORME instead of Eydie.
Good morning everyone.
Another entertaining puzzle from JW. Not so difficult today, some clever theming and ample fresh fill. What's not to like? By the time I got down to WRITERS BLOCK, it flowed right off my pen. The author Blocks were a good check on whether the fill was correct. BZ.
VENTS - After each boiler overhaul on our DD, we had to lift safeties (valves) as a final test to insure the boiler was able to operate correctly.
VOLES - We always called them meadow mice. Don't know how they're classified taxonomically.
Amusing as always JW puzzle. WEES about GORDIMER- I figured there had to be one of the theme blocks that was hard to fill. He probably also wanted to have another female, as well as someone else who was not from the US. I often have not heard of the authors who win the Nobel Prize for literature in past years (except Bob Dylan) as they are often from other countries and may not have been translated to English.
Thanks Steve for the fun write-up as well.
Terrific Thursday. Thanks for the fun, Jeffrey and Steve. (Thanks for the T.E. LAWRENCE link - great descriptive writing!)
I saw the blocks of circles in my newspaper and knew we were in for an interesting solve.
I FIW with just a few detours.
Hand up for not knowing GORDIMER. But I did know MORRISON (we usually have her as Toni) and using that to unBLOCK the SW corner.
Debated between ERS or ORS; ABOIL or Aroil; LYS or Lis. Perps to the rescue. Perps also displayed the Australian city where Qantas was landing (SYD).
Our "historic span" was a CEN not an Era (Abbr. ruled out that).
You either smiled or groaned and said "meh" at ACNED, OSIS, OTIS, LASES and ABOIL.
We have had the "adorkable" clue before. That would be AnonT. (I have to repent for my Dad pun reference yesterday LOL!)
I'm typing this on an ACER.
BRANDY for Tin (but not "WATERed down").
I think I have VOLES in my garden compost bin. Sleek dark black!
Enjoy the day.
Thank you Jeffrey (our IDOL after C.C.) for having the courtesy to list the WRITERS' names clockwise. Nice work. It would be a BAD BET to say your puzzles are easy. WRITER'S BLOCK- when having to write a freshman English paper IN CLASS on what you were supposed to have read before that class.
I had a little trouble in the NE before finally sorting things out. DIES or AWLS, DON or AIR, REN (unknown), and ERA or EON before I noticed CENtury's clue was abbr.
What's wrong with "Uncle BEN'S" converted rice?
Fluer-de-LYS, not in NOLA. It's Fluer-de-LIS. On the New Orleans Saints' helmets.
Good Morning:
A Thursday puzzle by JW is as good as it gets, IMO. The reveal was a nice Aha moment and parsing the writers' names was an added bonus. I had a couple of hiccups, I.e., Aroil/Aboil and NEET/Nair. The only unknown, as clued, was Ren. Overall, I thought the solve was a tad easier than the usual stumpers from the Word Wizard. (I agree with DO that the themers commonality is 8 letters.)
Thanks, Jeffrey W, for an entertaining and enjoyable solve and thanks, Steve, for your usual witty and chatty write-up.
Have a great day.
Musings
-A master indeed! GORDIMER?
-He played REN in this movie
-According to #ME TOO, it seems many papers did indeed SIT ON some stories
-AGE, ERA and EON are joined by CEN which is an abbr.
-The distinctive spelling of GORME’s first name is seen in cwd’s
-We wrote checks to ∏ßØ for 8 consecutive years
-I had kids compute ∆T for temp changes many times in labs
-OTIS never imagined the elevator like the one in this building
-This is my first real day of subbing and a gaggle of 6th graders just walked in. Time to get out the whip and chair.
Good Morning, Steve and friends. Not a fan of circle puzzles, but this puzzle seemed fairly easy for a Thursday.
Hand up for wanting Ache before ITCH.
Fun seeing IDOL and IDLE in the same puzzle.
I'm a bit surprised that so many are unfamiliar with Nadine GORDIMER. Her writing is excellent. I read her in my books in college.
QOD: If you run from technology, it will chase you. ~ Robert M. Pirsig (Sept. 6, 1928 ~ Apr. 24, 2017)
Word wizard indeed! That's JW. What an impressive set of BLOCKS from the master cruciverbalist.
Hand up for OTHELO before OTELLO. OH, that's Italian. Also HELENIC before HELLENE. My BADBET was AROIL instead of ABOIL.
I'm no sure why OTIS would elicit a groan since only a genius could invent the elevator, IMHO.
CACTUS today, cacti yesterday.
Eydie GORME is who one of my nieces is named after.
Rita MORENO has won every known acting award: Oscar, Tony, Grammy, Emmy, Golden Globe, ALMA (Latin American award) and several lifetime achievement awards. To call her only a singer is to underestimate her multiple talents. She can act, sing and dance, do comedy or drama.
Thanks to JW and Steve today.
Have a sensational day, everyone!
Wow! Wonderful Wechsler wizardry! So many fun clues. Alters with a light touch was a favorite but Adorkable types was a close second. I loved the writers in BLOCKS. Icing on a delicious cake! Am I getting better or just catching on?
We won’t discuss LYS. Surely the French flag would use the French word, lis. Oh well.
Steve, thanks for walking us through.
Owen, I laughed out loud!
Tough puzzle!
Have not been able to find much lately to post...
But I understand that there is a cure...
Yes SwampCat, I think that you are correct about Quebec using Lis.
The Government of Canada says
"The flag of Quebec is often called the “Fleurdelisé”. The white cross on a blue field recalls an ancient French military banner, and the four fleurs-de-lis are symbolic of France."
QuebecFlagImage
Rich and other editors take note!
Since we have CACTUS again today (CACTI yesterday), I will relink AnonT's very late link. Beautiful!
SecondBloom
Thank you very much Jeffrey Wechsler! It was about time someone mentioned Raymond Chandler. He's the guy who wrote "The Long Goodbye." Created Phillip Marlow. Raymond Bradbury, one of the greatest sci-fi writers. "Fahrenheit 451" is, or was, required reading in high school. Guy Montag as the future-fireman who burned books and then began to read them - Bradbury was beyond creative.
Great puzzle today,but lose the darn circles !
Anonymous @11:38, why fuss? The puzzle could be solved without the circles but they add another layer of fun... and creativity from Mr Wechsler. It’s just another measure of his talent.
Woohoo! Woohoo! I got a Thursday--yes, Thursday--Jeffrey Wechsler puzzle without a single cheat or a single error! Woohoo! And what a fantastic puzzle it was, with all those wonderful names popping up in the blocks! Yes, I got very excited when I saw (D.H.) LAWRENCE, Desper-otto, and remembered Nadine GORDIMER too. And to have this wonderful puzzle come a day after C.C. and Gary's makes this a terrific puzzle week!I loved so many things in this one, and it was nice to see Sal MINEO remembered. He had a sad end at a fairly young age, didn't he? I had a little pause with RUB_E because I first thought of a city, not currency--but re-read the clue one last time and got it. Yay! Anyway, you've made my day, Jeffrey--many thanks. And thank you for giving us that ELD poem, Steve.
Liked your first poem, Owen.
Have a wonderful day, everyone. We certainly got off to a great start.
Hi Y'all! Great puzzle, Jeffrey! Great expo, Steve, I enjoy your travel tidbits.
No circles! Writers were BLOCKed from my view. I've read CHANDLER & MORRISON. Never heard of CORDIMER.
Couldn't come up with the "city" on the Volga so went on. "R" in the ROW/RUBLE cross last to fill. Jeffrey gotcha me.
Hand up for HELENIC and several other spellings before HELL became apparent.
OTIS was ESP as clued. I was trying to think of the model of an ugly little boxy car a neighbor has. Pea green too. See it go by and gag.
DNK: HENRY, REN, SYD, DELTAS. Fleur-de- LiS, LeS, LYS.
Lawrence seems to be in Misty's bailiwick
Casey's"legend" came from his Brooklyn managing days not to speak of this
Young Casey
I'll read for awhile. Enjoyed Jeff's challenge. I'm still in the process of reading the write-up
WC
Ps . I thought the poem was Grantland Rice
Okay....what’s the issue with Uncle Ben’s Rice?
GORDIMER was new for me also.
WANTS b4 SEEKS, TORME b4 GORME and that was it.
on to Friday.
I am very impressed with the construction skill that Jeffrey Wechsler must have put into this! Impressed that the author names were all positioned the same way around the BLOCK.
I got the BLOCK theme immediately. Wondered if it was MENTAL or WRITERS at first. Anyone else? The first BLOCK solved was GORDIMER. Utterly unknown. I tried parsing those letters in different ways wondering what in the world that was. She does sound impressive, so it is good to learn about her! The other authors were all well known, although I was not sure which CHANDLER was meant. Don't know that one, either.
Loved the clue for OTIS! Stuck with unknowns MINEO, MORENO and VERA. WAGs and crosses. Last to fall was HELLENE/CEN. Took awhile to figure out it meant CENtury. FIR!
These photos show my ascent to the REDEEMER in RIO among other things.
The park is called Corcovado and it is a nature reserve.
Ray BRADBURY used to come here for a WRITER'S conference each year. Here are some of my photos from 2005.
Regarding Uncle BEN'S rice, not sure I would call it a crime against humanity Steve but I agree it is quite bland and tasteless. We usually have Basmati rice from Trader Joe's. I have been using the same rice cooker for decades and it usually gets it right.
From yesterday:
desper-otto, D4E4H et al Thanks for trying to explain PIED A TERRE. Yes, idioms may make little sense, but there usually is some sense.
Spitzboov Thank you for your PIED A TERRE theory. It makes sense: A place to stay (TERRE) that is close enough to walk by foot (PIED) to your destination.
OlManKeith Glad you were Clean for Gene in 1968!
Here I was honored to spend time with him and other great minds at our Shorter Work Time conference in Iowa City in 1996.
After the riots in 1968 Senator Gene McCarthy headed a Senate committee to find solutions to poverty and inequality. He suggested one solution: Full employment through shorter work time. This had been used at Kellogg's during the Depression to avoid laying off employees.
I had ACT < AIR and forgot to change the T to R. I knew Mineo.
So Steve, now you take the TUBE*, eh?( From newNewto Manhattan)
Aaarrgghhhh!! Another miss on VOLES vs MOLES.
* We had that recently
Battery is low
WC
RIP Burt Reynolds He died of cardiac arrest at age 82.
We had Otis not too long ago,
Writers block, like life, has it's ups and downs...
Fun Fact
Anon @ 11:38 ... If there are circles in a puzzle, just ignore them -- otherwise you spend lots of time trying to find the inner, 'mystical,' meaning of, say, Gordimer, mostly unsuccessfully. (Most Cornerites must have majored in American Lit, but I have to confess that I was cured of this possibility by English classes at Pasadena High in 1960-62. Asking a 16-year old to find the real meaning of some teacher's favorite, like a poem by T.S. Eliot, requires life experience that just isn't available at that age.)
RIP Burt.
Your Smokey and The Bandit was one of my favorite films.
Also enjoyed your work in Deliverance and Boogie Nights.
You seemed to have enjoyed life fully by never taking yourself too seriously. I admire that. You are in my thoughts today.
Elisha OTIS didn't (exactly) invent the elevator, they had been around since the Romans. He invented the safety system so they couldn't crash if the cable broke, giving the public confidence and making elevators commercially viable. Lucky for the builders of steel-framed skyscrapers that started going up soon after.
Good afternoon, folks. Thank you, Jeffrey Wechsler, for a fine puzzle. Thank you, Steve, for a fine review.
Wow! What a puzzle. Got through it in about an hour and a half. About right for me for a Thursday.
Enjoyed the theme. Caught LAWRENCE first. Then I knew the theme. Theme did not really help me with the rest of the puzzle. Finished it all and then looked at the authors. Some I knew, some I did not.
Took me about five perps to get BRANDY. I know very little about mixed drinks, just beer.
I remember EXODUS well. I read the book first and then saw the movie. Thought they were both outstanding, probably the book a little more. Still remember Ari ben Canaan.
Of course I spelled SACHET wrong initially, with a Y.
Tried MOLES before VOLES. I had gophers in my yard in California. I had a garden each year and one year the gophers tunneled under the garden and pulled the plants (ie: carrots) right down into their tunnels, just like you see in cartoons. Drove me nuts.
Well, have to run. See you tomorrow.
Abejo
( )
Veddy clever, this Mr. Wechsler, no?
Still, I can claim my Ta- DA!
Oh, but he led me a merry chase, ending finally in the lower left corner after I abandoned OTIC in favor of OSIS.
The true fun of our tangle lay in his secreting of six WRITERS' names in well positioned BLOCKs throughout the grid. A fiendishly clever way to honor his own preferred authors, no doubt. They are all brilliant wordsmiths, of whom I can claim some familiarity, especially with those Steve says he hasn't read, GORIMER & MORRISON.
I may also prefer D.H. LAWRENCE to T.E., but I really appreciate Steve's link to Mr. "Arabia"'s description of his motorcycle jaunt through Lincoln and Nottingham.
It is thrilling reading and a real eye-opener to the man's extraordinary power in no-frills first-person narrative. It is especially compelling in light of LAWRENCE's death in a similar biker's outing. It's as if he's letting us read his mind, flush with sanguine thought just before his fatal crash.
It was fun too seeing VOLTAIRE linked, puzzle-wise, with VOLES, those sneaky little burrowing buggers. That is real audacity, Jeffrey!
(BTW, VOLTAIRE's first name was François-Marie, although he did not include it as part of his nom-de-plume. But I'm sure Steve knew that.)
~ OMK
____________
Diagonal Report: None, as the grid is asymmetrical.
I can't let the day go by w/o complimenting Misty on her perfect Ta- DA!
This was no easy-peasy challenge, so the win must feel especially gratifying.
Woo and Hoo!
WooHOO!
~ OMK
I liked this puzzle very much. Learned some things I didn't know before. LW and my eyes glued to the screen again today watching the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings live. Damn glue got too much to endure, though, so we're not going to watch any more.
Does Burt Reynolds belong on the Mt. Rushmore of mustaches?
I vote yes. Here's my four:
Tom Selleck
Rollie Fingers
Alex Trebek
Burt Reynolds
Just missed the cut:
Clark Gable
Wyatt Earp
Nietzsche
Yosemite Sam
Thank you, Wilbur and thank you, Ol'Man Keith for your very kind shout-out. Yes, this was an extraordinary treat for me because I'm usually cheating like crazy on a Thursday. And a Jeffrey Wechsler yet! Thanks for saying I deserved my Woohoo!
Late again.
Thank you Mr. Jeffrey Wechsler for this beautiful CW. I could tell Surnames in the blocks, but I did not recognize the authors. I am in awe that you could include 6 names, and have words for perps.
Thank you Steve for your informative review.
Ðave
Hi All!
JW got me again. I just couldn't crack the NE w/o one lookup - REN. With that and CHA, I finally "saw" the long downs and filled in my unknow names (MINEO & MORENO). EN in HELL-EN-E were the last letters to INK. I'll be honest, this monster took me all day to fill. I was driving home from the gym when I finally realized BY-O- was BY ROW. But it was fun.
Thanks JW for this fun puzzle that learnt me something me in every corner. With 120+ puzzles in six years, the theme does not apply to you.
Nice Expo Steve. I did not "parse" LASES until you got there- V-8!
Thumper: Starting a puzzle w/ an A-word(?) :-)
WO: LeS b/f LYS [yes, I know 6 vowels AND two are correct, yet...]
ESPs: Way to many but VERDI wasn't one of 'em.
Fav: the clue for ITCH. Hankering is just plain fun to say.
{A, A+ for devilishness :-)}
OSIS is not Thumper fill for me b/c it was clued as the TV show Psych - very cute [the show and the c/a].
Misty - I'll second OMK's WooHoo! to you. You did better than I today.
Thanks C, Eh! for re-posting my CACTUS pic. I'm hoping for the next bud to bloom tomorrow.
This Adorkable has a PSA for you:
If you get a document via email AND, within the document, it says "click to view" or some such, DON’T - even if it was "from" a friend.
My buddy's wife did [message from her hacked-friend] and her box* is hosed**. We got rid of the "bad" stuff but there is a persistence-script (still bad but MalwareBytes blocks the attempt to re-infect) that runs at login from within the registry. And, every time it runs, it changes where the "persistence" lives so there's no deleting it.
I'm going to recommend a complete re-install of the computer - it's just too ate-up** [and why I'm extra-late posting the last few nights].
Cheers, -T
*That's technical - it means "computer"
**Also technical jargon :-)
Thank you, Anon T. My day just gets better and better.
Jayce, if you view it* as pure entertainment it's not so bad. Just count the votes . I'm not sure what the RedvsBlue count is re. Arizona .
There was a Senator from Georgia during the Clinton trial who had a similar appraisal:
"We don't have the votes"
I needed the posts to realize it wasn't DH on the motorcycle. Misty, I bet you knew knew DH Lawrence didn't tool around on a souped up cycle.
Btw, congrats on ACEing the xword as well as being a TH guru
Jeff could have Clued another author(11D) with Profits for 26A. Let's see: Poet turned rebel? **
I just see from OMK that it was VOLTAIRE not Moliere. That block had gotten INKy and I juxtoposed I and A
Of course Moliere is a playwright.
And of course, any browser of our sister blog knows I write letters out all the time to solve there.
WC
* Kavanaugh
**Aiding the HELLENEs
In case you no more wanted to Grok BYRON than I wanted to spell VOLTAIRE ...
I was thinking that like Moliere, Voltaire didn't write novels.. So I LIU . Candide .
Some of my French IV classmates read it while I was reading about some poor chap who bet he could mange pillet pour une mois
No, not Wade Boggs. It was by Guy de Maupassant
WC
I meant POULET
WC
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