google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Saturday, June 22, 2019, Julian Lim

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Jun 22, 2019

Saturday, June 22, 2019, Julian Lim

Themeless Saturday by Julian Lim

Today's constructor is Julian Lim who is an assistant professor in Singapore at Duke-NUS which is a collaboration between Duke University in America and the National University of Singapore. His areas of study would seem to fit right in with my issues! I fought off my behavioral disorders and was able to finish his offering quickly as his long fills were gettable and helpful!



Let's see what Professor Lim has for us today to combat any mental fatigue:

Across:

1. Marketing term involving supposed nutritional benefits: SUPERFOOD What is this?

10. Dividing walls: SEPTA


15. Afford a view of: OPEN OUT TO - You can rent this house that OPENS OUT TO this view in the Honolulu area for $495/night.

16. '90s "SNL" regular Cheri: OTERI.

17. Skilled writer: WORDSMITH.

18. Run up, as debts: INCUR.

19. Starter followers: ENTREES - Here in Nebraska, I'd recommend a filet

20. Not for youngsters: R-RATED - A movie can keep a PG-13 rating with a couple of  "f-bombs" if they are not used in a sexual context

21. Take up again?: RE HEM - In the 70's, some girls "RE-HEMMED" their modest skirts in which they left home by rolling up the waistband to make mini skirts at school 

22. Arch with a point: OGEE - An old cwd friend 

24. Pay stub?: OLA - Julian! Tricky way to get PAYOLA



25. 1941 Bogart part: SAM SPADE - I'll bet most know what Bogie as SAM SPADE was referencing in this line to Ward Bond playing a police lieutenant  



28. Dry __: ROT

29. LeRoy Foster, for one: MURALIST.



30. Prayer's place: NAVE.

31. Robin's rhyming call?: HOLY GUACAMOLE 50 variations on a theme

33. Bangkok bread: BAHT - This 39 BAHT sandwich equals $1.25 in Bangkok 



34. Rain-on-the-roof sounds: PIT A PATS - Interminable this spring in the Midwest

35. FAQ snippet: ANS - If you ask a Q, you expect an ANS

36. China quality: FINENESS Porcelain and China are both terms that refer to dinnerware made of a FINE-particle clay

37. Metric meas.: KGS 50. Land with eland: VELDT - These largest antelope on the African grassland can weigh up to 600 KGS (1,000 lbs)



38. Epilepsy tests, for short: EEGS 

39. Tricked: HOSED - Love this commercial!



43. Romans, in a proverb: LOCALS.



45. Radcliffe grads: ALUMNAE - Graduates of formerly all female Radcliffe would be called ALUMNAE (plural of female singular alumna)

47. Profit: AVAIL.

48. Get at: INSINUATE.

51. Knocked too hard?: NITPICKED - A hazard for all bloggers

52. Kid's retort: ARE SO.

53. Gets even: SMOOTHENS - Most know this word but Seinfeld fans will understand (and want) this shirt




Down:

1. Planter: SOWER - A 1930 video of the 8.5 ton SOWER statue being lifted to the top of Nebraska's capitol building (:48)



2. On top, but only just: UP ONE - Toronto was UP ONE (3 games to 2) when The Golden State Warriors 36. Were conquered by: FELL TO them on 6/10/19. The 4. Upshot: END RESULT was an NBA title for Toronto

3. Western Australia's capital: PERTH - Gird your loins for a long trip if you are going to drive from Sydney to PERTH



5. Seasoning for lamb: ROSEMARY.

6. Steam: FUME.

7. Spunkmeyer of cookie fame: OTIS.

8. First National Leaguer to hit 500 home runs: OTT - This mint condition 1933 Goudey card will run you $42,000 



9. Hand-to-head cry: DOH.

10. Evening do: SOIREE I wonder if Marie Antoinette served cake at her SOIREES

11. Peak in Catania: ETNA.

12. Push-up targets: PECTORALS.



13. What "never runs smooth," in a 1963 Gene Pitney hit: TRUE LOVE - His anguished voice spoke to my teen angst



14. Specification for a pilot: AIR DATE - If your TV pilot is good enough, it will get an AIR DATE

20. Much paperwork: RED TAPE - Even north of the border



22. Poppy products: OPIATES -  The difference between OPIATES and opioids

23. Garage vessel: GAS CAN.

26. Heckle and Jeckle, e.g.: MAGPIES - Cartoon birds of my misspent yute



27. Turning about: SLUING.



29. Where diamond gets a 10: MOHS SCALE - Talc is the softest on this scale at 1

30. Less: NOT SO MUCH.

31. Hair-of-the-dog target: HANGOVER Origin of the phrase "Hair-of-the-dog"

32. Hawkeye's group: MASH UNIT. On M*A*S*H, Lebanese Klinger would call an easy task, "A proverbial piece of 33. Filo pastry dessert: BAKLAVA.



40. Dastardly sort: SNAKE 

41. Downed: EATEN.

42. Accomplishments: DEEDS - I volunteered to take lunch room duty for one year to help out my principal. 23 years later... 



44. Some are visual: AIDS - I believe in using visuals as AIDS in my blogging but people can still just scan for the bold answers and move on

45. Respecting: AS TO.

46. Cosmetic surg. option: LIPO.

48. Connections: INS - A great aid in getting a job

49. Strategic math game: NIM - I suspect Professor Lim has played this combinatorial game of NIM



Now presuming your Heating, Air Conditioning and Ventilation are fine,  comment on Julian's fun Saturday puzzle!





33 comments:

OwenKL said...

Gave up with about half the grid filled, and checked all letters. Roughly half lit up. Back to plodding and finally filled the grid, but no ta-da. Went over each entry until I found one I couldn't parse. Wrote it out horizontally, and I could see the card game I assumed was MONS mCALE, and changed KGm > KGS for the win!

Trickiest clue was Hawkeye's group, which went from USA?MASH > AVENGERS > MOHICANS > MASH UNIT. 29a next with pUgALIST > MURALIST, 12d dElTOideS > PECTORALS, kEnya > VELDT, cArtoon > MAGPIES (I thought they were crows!), uno > NIM, oil pAN > GAS CAN, (dry) ice > ROT and the list goes on...

Liked HOLY GUACAMOLE. Thought of that Robin first, but not that distinctive cry, so sought a birdsong for some time.

OwenKL said...

HOLY GUACAMOLE, Batman, look at that!
A man with a MAGA tipped his cap!
Holy climate change,
This is just a light rain.
All we hear in the Bat-mobile is PIT-A-PAT!

Does Superman have a favorite SUPER-FOOD?
I would ask him, but he might think me rude.
Man of Steel's favorite ENTREE
Might be "cafeteria tray"?
Could some SMOOTH jazz cause a GUACAMOLE mood?

It was NOT SO MUCH the countenance he posed
Yet the END RESULT was his stockings sold --
But the seller was a SNAKE
All his silkens were fake
And the victims were the women he had HOSED!

{B, B, B+.}

desper-otto said...

Good morning!

Hope there's no need for an HVAC tech today. Temps won't be outlandish, but with the high humidity the "feels like" temps will exceed 110 around here today. Ugh!

Worked consistently from top left to bottom right, but needed an alphabet run to get the T in AIRDATE. Still didn't understand it, but it was the only letter that worked. Oh, TV pilot. D'oh! Really liked the stacked nines in this one. Nice misdirection, Julian, and I enjoyed the tour, Husker. (Interesting about "hair of the dog.")

SLUE: When not in use, tower cranes are normally allowed to SLUE freely like weathervanes. If locked down, a broadside wind might blow one over.

Lemonade714 said...

I have always found Dr. Lim's puzzles, and especially his themeless as among the most difficult for me to solve. His knowledge base is diverse and I usually and left struggling and looking for helpful perps. This effort, however, was very doable. My only true unknown as https://education.jlab.org/nim/>NIM . The cluing for OPEN OUT TO, PIT A PATS and HOSED was difficult. I also had doubts about SMOOTHENS as SMOOTHS made more sense to me. I know it is a real word, but why use more letters?

Another fun tour HG and thank you, Professor Lim, which rhymes with nim which means soft in Thai.

Big Easy said...

National HVAC Day? I might need a repairman because my 29-year old AC upstairs unit has been running full blast for two days with out of town family sleeping up there. DW & I never turn it on otherwise.

Julian threw out a few gimmes that made this puzzle easier than the usual Saturday- PERTH, OTERI, MOHS SCALE, VELDT, PERTH, ALUMNAE and of course Mel OTT, whose statue I see on a twice weekly basis when I go to the MEL OTT gym to play pickleball- and I only had one true unknown filled by perps-NIM. MURALIST & HOLY GUACAMOLE were almost filled by perps before the V8 moment.

But it was a DNF because it was either KGS or CGS and BACLAVA or BAKLAVA and I went with C. Boohoo.

SUPERFOOD- had some yesterday- ribs, hamburger, baked potato, stuffed mushrooms, corn on the cob-all washed down by 5-6 brewskis. Later we took the grandkids to Dairy Queen.

Dry ROT- the spare tire in one of my cars is 17 years old and has never been on the ground. I air it up once in a while. It's a good candidate.

Time for this "true amateur" WORDSMITH to sign out for today.

Lemonade714 said...

A very fun WSJ today from C.C. JUNE 22 .

Irish Miss said...

Good Morning:

This started out slowly, but once some of the long fill opened up, everything fell into place and I finished in 22:55, super fast for me on a Saturday. Muralist and Nim needed perps and there were a few stumbles, also: Ice/Rot, Amos/Otis, and Not so many/Much. The SE corner was a bugaboo where I give a nose wrinkle to Smoothens, which I've never seen or heard. It may be a legitimate word but it sure ain't pretty!

Thanks, Julian, for a challenging but very doable offering and thanks, HG, for your usual wise and witty commentary. I, too, found the origin of Hair of the dog fun to learn. OTOH, the Nim illustration made my eyes cross!

Welcome back, Misty. I'll bet you received lots of tail-wagging from Darling Dusty. Sending some T-rubs his way!

Have a great day.

TTP said...


Good morning.


WDOS. Except that I though it was going to be AIR DATa until NAVE mandated the change. AIR DATE ? Then the fog lifted, the sunlight appeared and D'OH !

Like Owen, I was thinking of a robin singing. For the last few days a robin has been in the top of our crab apple singing from dawn to dusk. There's another that seems to have made a nest high in my neighbor's sycamore that's been singing just as loud. It's as if they are competing. They are so loud that I can hear them over the noise of the running lawnmower. In fact, they are almost as loud and shrill as the three little girls playing in the backyard of another neighbor's home three houses away.

"Land with eland" - had me going because I interpreted elan. Land with style ? Land with grace ? But at that point I already had the V and E from BAKLAVA and HANGOVER. Moved on. When I came back to it, I read it correctly. D'OH !

Never heard that Gene Pitney song before, but when I got the answer, I started mentally singing the song. I quickly realized I was singing the even older Young Love (first love - not TRUE LOVE) song by Sonny James.

One person's proper procedure is another person's RED TAPE.

Superb puzzle, Julian. Come back more often. Great write up, Gary. I spent about 25 minutes solving the puzzle, and twice that reading the review, taking the links, and then further reading.

desper-otto said...

TTP, Sonny James had the best version, but there was another in 1957 by none other than Tab Hunter. I can sum it up in just one word -- painful. Even worse (if that's possible), there's an online video of Tab doing the song live on the Perry Como Show.

Haiku Harry said...

Would ardent fans of
Ron Howard, from Mayberry,
Be called Opie-ates?

Where would a Stooge go
To find how hard his head is?
Why, on the Moh’s Scale

Lemonade714 said...

TTP (and others) if you like this effort from Professor Lim, go into the Corner archives and solve any of his many, many earlier publications. He used to drive Splynter crazy.

And just for you HG (and the millions of others who live in Nebraska) do you know the town Monowi, Nebraska?

Fun facts said...

Sorry lemon, theres not quite millions of Nebraskans out there. 2018 population was just 1.929 million.

Husker Gary said...

Lemon, Yes I have heard of Monowi, but have never been in their metropolitan area. However, there are many towns within a short distance of me that have a population of 0. One of those towns in Telbasta that, like Tijuana, Mexico, is mispronounced with four syllables instead of just the correct three.

Anonymous said...

I love it when I first look at the crossword puzzle and think I haven’t got a prayer and then bit by bit it all comes together without any write overs or look ups. Got it done and it felt very rewarding.

Judie B

Misty said...

Well, Saturday puzzles are always toughies for me, and this one was a bit tougher than most due to the long items in the northwest and southeast corners. But at least I got off to a good start with PECTORALS (not that I ever do push-ups, but I still got it). And I also got OTERI, but not the MURALIST. WORDSMITH was a fun answer for a skilled writer, and all in all, a very clever and interesting puzzle--many thanks, Julian. And thank you also for the helpful commentary, Husker Gary.

Your haikus this morning were a delight, Haiku Harry.

And many thanks for the kind welcome-back, Irish Miss. Dusty often looks at me with a "You look familiar--do I know you?" look when I come back after a trip. But this time I got a warm welcome, and we're back in best-friend mode.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

TTP said...

D-O, yes, that was painful. Enough so that I didn't want to look up the one he sang on the Perry Como show.

AnonymousPVX said...


This Saturday grid went a lot smoother than I thought it would, despite SMOOTHENS.

No markovers today, although a close call...was ready to put in RATEDR but I waited.

It’s been brutally hot here, today we have the official Heat Advisory. No worries, I’m not going anywhere....too hot for the convertible anyway.

So stay cool, enjoy the WE, see you Monday.

Swagomatic said...

Pretty smooth sailing until i ran into smoothens. That corner was a toughie.

Anonymous T said...

Hi All!

WEES re: that SE corner was a bugger. DNF 'cuz I only had SNAKE, EATEN, DEEDS, LIPO, and AS TO b/f I crib'd NIM from HG's grid.

Thanks Julian for a daunting-looking grid that (mostly) fell together in <1h. Wonderfully illustrated expo HG (I could have done w/o the SEPTA image ;-) ).

WOs: Dry Run b/f ROT, two Rs in SOIREE.
ESPs: VELDT, NAVE, MURALIST, SMOOTHENS
Fav: I knew Heckle and Jeckle were MAGPIES
Runner-up: HOLY GUACAMOLE [Batman] - got it w/ just H-OLG--C----- :-)

{A, B, A}
Fun Haikus, Harry.

So glad the A/C Tech came last Saturday to install a 3Ton UNIT. BigE - AveJoe said I'd likely save money due to higher SEER RATE-ing of a new unit v. my 28yro one. Though, if you only use it when company comes, your ROI may take a while.

Interesting about Monowi, LEM. I liked her attitude when asked about "after you're gone" and she replied, basically, 'not my problem' :-)

With the house to myself and not on anyone's clock, I got the '86 ALFA Spider [convertible] out for a drive. Sure, it's a "feels like" 112F but who cares [um, PVX, I guess :-)]. While tooling around, Heart of Glass came on the radio. Pure joy!

Cheers, -T

Jayce said...

I feel the same way about Julian Lim's puzzles that Lemonade does: "I have always found Dr. Lim's puzzles, and especially his themeless as among the most difficult for me to solve." This one I found to be difficult yet fair. Fair in the sense that there were enough "gimmees" to supply enough footholds to keep on solving; there was no hint of "Aha, chump! I stumped you!" attitude. Thanks, Julian, well played.

Thanks, Gary, for your commentary. I had the same experiences as TTP: "I spent about 25 minutes solving the puzzle, and twice that reading the review, taking the links, and then further reading." Good stuff.

Thanks, Owen and Haiku Harry, for your verses.

Yep, waited to see whether it would be RATEDR or RRATED. ETNA decided that. Also had to change OPIOIDS to OPIATES because of PITAPATS.

HOSED made me think of those old Canadian "Hoser" jokes. Then the Jayce train of thought led me to think of Vinnie Barbarino, played by John Travolta, saying "Up your nose with a rubber hose" on Welcome Back, Kotter.

I, too, had always thought Heckle and Jeckle were crows.

Very interesting about SLUING tower cranes, desper-otto.

Time to go SMOOTHEN my bedsheets and neaten the bedroom.

Good wishes to you all.

Anonymous T said...

errata: "HOLY GUACAMOLE [Batman] - got it w/ just H-OLG--C-----" should read: [...] H-LY[...]

Ok, with EHS yesterday and now Jayce bringing up the Hose-heads, someone's gotta... A few of my favourite Canadians [Bob, Doug, and Geddy - 4:46 (feel free to stop after 1m)].

G'Day, eh?, -T

Ol' Man Keith said...

13D "The course of TRUE LOVE never did run SMOOTH." - Lysander, Act I, A Midsummer Night's Dream
One of the great delights in playing Shakespeare as a young actor is getting to say famous lines before you know they are famous.
I played Lysander in grad school (opposite Joan van Ark as Hermia), and it was pure pleasure--even when she accidentally knocked my fake Greek nose off at a matinee performance.

Prof. Lim's pzl was what I expected after yesterday's way-too-easy Friday exercise. I knew we were in for a doozy, and we were.

Misty ~
Glad you got your proper wags from Dusty. One of the things I look forward to every morning is the rhythmic wig-wag I get from the bobbed nubbins of our Yorkie.
~ OMK
____________
DR:
Two diagonals, balanced R and L.
The front diag gives me the anagram for a familiar device, a...
"REHEARSAL MAP"!

fermatprime@gmail.com said...

YESTERDAYS post would not send:

Greetings!

Thanks to Bruce, Gail and TTP!

Perped were DIO, OLGA, ELIN, EHS and GIRO.

Have a great day!

Abejo said...

Good afternoon, folks. Thank you, Julian Lim, for a fine puzzle. Thank you, Husker Gary, for a fine review.

Took me several hours to get through this puzzle. Very difficult. I was happy once I finished. It was a great puzzle, well constructed, and clever cluing. I take my hat off to Julian.

I also was looking for a bird answer to 31A. Finally had enough perps to get the real answer. HOLY GUACAMOLE. I happen to love guacamole.

Tried ABOVE for 2D. That tied up that corner for quite a while. OTIS was easy. And OTT. And DOH. That lead me to WORDSMITH.

Had OHS SCALE after a long time. So I wagged the M. Lucked out.

Wanted CROW something for 26D. Eventually MAGPIES hit me in the head.

SE corner was the toughest. The only one I started with and kept was ALUMNAE. For all the rest I tried more words and letters than you can count. My Rosetta Stone was INSINUATE. Was able to finish from there. Phew!

Fortunately, for crosswords, I have a lot of time to kill lately. None of my trousers fit me. They blew up my abdomen like a beach ball. I have nothing to wear except pajama bottoms. Tonight we are going to a dinner that I signed up for months ago. My wife let me tux trousers out enough that I can get them on. At least I will get out for an evening.

See you tomorrow.

Abejo

( )

CanadianEh! said...

Super Saturday. Thanks for the fun, Julian and HuskerG.
Plenty of P&P required today, but I almost finished. The NW corner eluded me and I came here to fill in the last few squares.

Amos changed to OTIS, net RESULT to END, Ach (I was remembering YR from last night) to DOH.
Of course, mint for the lamb was too short; ROSEMARY was required.
I preFerred my fill of panoramic to OPEN UP TO.

I thought after MOHS SCALE that Hardness for a chins quality would be appropriate- DOH, FINENESS (fine china).
Hand up for Opioids before OPIATES (and I should have known better!)
My kid retorted Am Too before ARE SO.
I loved seeing words like PITAPAT and INSINUATE.

I haven't NITPICKED about SMOOTHENS (although I agree with the nose-wrinkles because it isn't used much), but I don't quite understand 35A"FAQ snippet=ANS". I understand a snippet to be a small piece of something and thought the ANSwer required an abbreviation of some part of "frequently asked questions". My first fill was Ask but perps forced me to ANS. What am I not seeing?

We have some WORDSMITHS here, plus some clever poets. Thanks for your offerings today, Owen and Haiku Harry.

Yes,Jayce and AnonT, I thought of my Doug and Bob comment last night when I saw HOSED. LOL your link AnonT.

Glad you made it here today, Fermatprime.
Enjoy your evening Abejo.
Wishing you all a good evening.

Jayce said...

Keith, very interesting that you played opposite Joan van Ark. I remember being particularly impressed at her performance as a patient in Season 3 episode 4 (released in 1971) of the TV series The Bold Ones: The New Doctors. Her character, Evelyn Borden, was suffering from severe Trigeminal Neuralgia and in that memorable scene she deliberately touched her face to trigger an attack; her facial expressions and her mumbling of "mm mm mm mm" from the pain such an attack causes will forever be etched in my memory. A terrific performance.

fermatprime@gmail.com said...

Greetings!

Thanks to Julian and Gary!

Perps needed for: MURALIST, PERTH,  HOLY GUACAMOLE , VELDT, BAHT, UP ONE and  AIR DATE.

Have a great day!

Wilbur Charles said...

I was in Thailand in 1970. So I remembered BAHT and I even thought I knew how to spell it. I did it was that SCALE that threw me.

Managed a tough FIR. Is this Julian Lim or Jeremy Lin? OGEE and OPIATES should have been easy but who expects easy on Saturday.

I thought the China might be THIN
In 6th grade while the"dumb" kids* did the assignnent we played the "Globe game". Say a river,sea,city etc and the other one had to find it. Perth was a good one.

I was singing "A Town Without Pity"

And here I am thinking that Delta assigns AIR DATES to its Pilots

So… if hydrocodone=Vicodin then Percocet=Oxycontin? I got former for tooth pulls and took 1 ½. Tylenol after. Btw.. I'm posting from the hospital; dizzy spells. So, I'm sitting in one of my Bill W meetings and I say to the guy next to me
"Do me a big favor and walk with me outside". And he DISAPPEARS!!! 15 Minutes later he shows up as my son is pulling up. Talk about prescription meds

Curly gets a TEN on the MOE Scale

Better post I'm at the byte limit

WC

** Sixth graders lingo

Jayce said...

I went back to listen once again to that video clip of the Bruckner Etude für das tiefe blech that JazzBumpa posted, and I gotta say I quite liked it. I had to remind myself that Bruckner didn't compose it; it was composed by Enrique Crespo, a tuba player himself, who composed it as a tribute to the composer, Bruckner, who often gives tuba players a leading role in orchestral performances. Trombones, too, for that matter. Cool stuff. Thanks, Ron, for posting it. If you're interested, listen to some very cool shimmery yet ominous-sounding trombones in the first 2 minutes of Bruckner's Symphony number 9.

Wilbur Charles said...

Some more Wilbur comments

Owen, #3 was A+. I had OILPAN too.

BigEasy I had CMS<KGS

Gary, re. Tijuana: Tell it to the Marines

Btw, I see Haiku Harry thought of MOE too.
Judie B., Exactly
D-O, that's the only "Young Love" I'd ever heard. I liked it better than Pitney's version. Talk about ... strokes/folks

Here's the online dictionary def. of MAGPIE: "a long-tailed crow with boldly marked (or green) plumage and a raucous voice."

WC

Lemonade714 said...

I learned so much today about Nebraska. Somehow I was sure there were at least 2 million. Also, I recall meeting Joan Van Ark somewhere in my entertainment law work and thinking she looked better in person (good job OMK) but she has fallen victim to the anti-aging self-destructive disease. FACE TRANSFORMATION .

Ol' Man Keith said...

Lemonade & Jayce ~
Joanie (as we all called her at Yale) was the youngest student in the acting program at the time, and we all sort of "adopted" her. She came into the Drama School w/o a college degree, so was enrolled for a certificate rather than the usual MFA.
I walked her home a few times after nighttime rehearsals. We figured the other actresses were old enough to fend for themselves, but she brought out our "protective" instincts.
She lived in the one female dorm at Yale at the time, the infamous Helen Hadley Hall (where, we all swore, "Hurricanes Hardly Happened").
Naturally, she swept all the ingenue roles, including the lead in Man Better Man, a musical set in Haiti. It was written by our only Black student in the playwriting program, a very fine script that was the excuse for the whole acting program (and myself, from the directing program) to wear not exactly blackface, but Max Factor's 7A.
We all learned to dance the Limbo. I played the local mayor, name of Crackerjack.
Joanie's character was Petite Belle Lily, the love interest of all the town's bachelors. It was an amazing transformation to see her, the blondest creature alive, playing the Black heroine.
I have not seen her in decades. The photo you posted, Lemon, brought her face slamming back to me over all the intervening years. I can still see that sweet, dewy-eyed teenager inside the firmed-up mask. We wake up one day--and find everything curiously changed...
~ OMK

D4E4H said...

FIR in a whopping 69:11 min.

Happy Saturday Cornies!

Thank you Julian Lim for this hard CW.

Thank you Husker Gary for your excellent review.

Ðave