This is a nice article about Marylander Erik (graduate of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Springs)
Across:
1. Online gay dating site: GRINDR - Here ya go
7. Bridge accessory: SCORE PAD.
15. Electrically overhaul: REWIRE - It took me an hour to REWIRE a lamp three weeks ago. Now I could do it in five minutes!
17. Many: A LOT OF.
18. Bent: APTITUDE - My APTITUDE for math and science led to a 42-yr career (BENT OUT OF SHAPE was our Thursday gimmick)
19. Legal end: BAN - It doesn't seem to be a good time to be starting a Vape business
20. Eponymous German bacteriologist: PETRI - Here is the discoverer of penicillin, Alexander Fleming, holding a PETRI dish like the one he used in making his momentous find
22. Nuzzled: NOSED.
23. Relative of "You go!": ATTA- Many "over and above" things I did as a teacher garnered me an "ATTA Boy" but no cash
25. Yogurt-based condiment: RAITA - How to make one type. Yes, I saw it is an anagram of our cwd rope friend
27. Contents of some weekly organizers: MEDS - They can get complicated
30. Forensic workplace: DNA LAB - DNA testing exonerated this Idaho man and convicted the actual perpetrator. 28. "Alas ... ": SADLY he spent 20 years in jail before the truth came out
32. Volumes on devices: EBOOKS.
34. Cheeks asset: GLOW.
35. Lose juice entirely: DIE.
38. Sci-fi science: ALIEN TECHNOLOGY - The premise of the movie Independence Day was that gov't scientists were studying ALIEN TECHNOLOGY at Area 51
41. Palindromic observance: TET.
42. Imprecise words: OR SO.
43. Stand-up comic Boosler: ELAYNE - A funny minute with ELAYNE
44. Words of denial: I WASN'T
46. Was upheld on appeal: STOOD - After a review, an NFL referee can say a call has STOOD, been confirmed or been overturned
47. Radio letters: AM FM - In my yute, our car radios only had AM but those of us of a certain age will recognize the Conelrad symbols in case of emergencies
50. Many of the characters in the 2018 film "Smallfoot": YETIS.
52. Italian cabbage?: EURO - This is slang for money. Real Italian cabbage is Cavolo Italiano
53. Part of UCSD: DIEGO - The Geisel Library at the University of California at San DIEGO
55. Radical cousin: NEATO - The fill predates the cluing by quite a bit
57. Cheese go-with: MAC.
58. Handy annuals: ALMANACS - Here's one from the year I was born
60. It was created in Philly in 1792: US MINT.
62. Small tuft: PLUMELET - The PLUMELET (feather) in Forest Gump had wonderful symbolism
63. White, to Juan: BLANCO - A fun song about Una Paloma BLANCA - The White Dove (I know the fill is masculine BLANCO but this is a fun song)
64. Persistent: TIRELESS.
65. Unifying alloy: SOLDER - U.S. - Sodder. U.K. - Sohl' der. Why?
Down:
1. Park it: GRAB A SEAT.
2. Sympathetic: RELATABLE - I would call Tom Hanks the most RELATABLE actor in Hollywood
3. Defiant refusal: I WON'T DO IT.
4. Micromanager's excess: NIT - In a recent response to me, a professional person hoped my "weekend went GOOD" and said "she was giving me a PEAK at fees her institute charges". I did 9. Go (for): OPT to not correct her
5. Fall: DROP.
6. Direct: REFER - My doctor REFERRED me to a wonderful Omaha surgeon rather than trust our local hospital
7. Competitions in which batting is forbidden: STARING CONTESTS - Anyone batting their eyes loses
8. Goalpost look-alike: CAPITAL H.
10. Control during riding: REIN.
11. Lay to rest: ENTOMB.
12. Meaning of two vertical lines, at times: PAUSE.
13. Put in later: ADDED - If you buy M*A*S*H DVD's, you can choose to leave off the ADDED laugh track which I would elect to do
14. Done things: DEEDS.
21. Tiny bit: TAD.
24. Wound application: ALOE.
26. Without help: ALONE.
29. Informal "Dig?": Y'KNOW - Another ' from Erik and a very annoying speech idiom
31. Base runners?: AWOLS - Sgt. Hulka chews out Pvt. Ringer after Winger goes AWOL from the base, which was Camp Arnold, in Stripes
33. Deviate: STRAY.
35. "Excu-u-use me!": DO YOU MIND - He made it famous (:07)
36. "Learning [is] the kind of __ distinguishing the studious": Bierce: IGNORANCE - I always say that I am smart enough to know how little I know
37. Triangular chart user: EYE DOCTOR - People in 2020 will be surprised to learn that 20:20 vision is normal not perfect vision
40. Having a timing problem: LATE - Rude
44. "Let's": I'M GAME - A fourth apostrophe fill for our good friend Erik today
45. Familia member: TIA - ¿Todos los demás tienen una TIA loca en su familia? (Does everyone else have a crazy aunt in their family?)
47. Change for the better: ADAPT - When in Rome...
48. __ Vanilli: MILLI - Their lip-synching fraud of someone else's performance came out when the track stuck while they were "singing" on stage
49. Big bone: FEMUR.
51. Theater buff's collection: STUBS - Decorate a coffee table with them
54. Turow memoir: ONE-L.
56. Parliament : London :: Storting : __: OSLO - Norway's parliament, the Storting, meets in this building
59. Pale __: ALE.
61. Not bien: MAL - ¡El rompecabezas de Erik es bien, no está MAL! (Erik's puzzle is good, not bad!)
Comments welcome:
31 comments:
DNF. Got all but the NW, but that was mostly white, and then red. The only words I had correct were REWIRE, PETRI, and TET. Never heard of GRINDR or RAITA, the rest (IMHO) were either vaguely or deceptively clued. NITS should have been plural.
Tony, I don't know if the JH poem is you or totally wrong. (And did I peg last night's spammer? I see he's deleted now.)
DIEGO was a guy whose only APTITUDE
Was in the display of his attitude!
"DO YOU MIND!", with
"I WON'T DO IT!"
Show his social ineptitude.
SADLY, books may soon be rare.
E-BOOKS now are everywhere!
Read off-line
At any time --
ALIEN TECHNOLOGY infiltrators!
{B-, C+.}
Good morning!
Had trouble getting started, due to a dearth of LHF. But there was enough to allow me to get the job done. Took the full time allotment, though. Thanx, Erik and Husker (The Barnacle had "Provençal" in the TAPENADE clue.)
MEDS: If you're on Medicare and have a Part D drug plan, I encourage you to go to Medicare.Gov, enter your current medications, and see if your plan is still the least expensive option. Also check whether your pharmacy is still the "preferred" pharmacy for your plan. My 2019 best plan will come in third in 2020. You can change plans every year without penalty. Open enrollment begins on Tuesday.
"Triangular chart": I can't read an eye chart with my right eye. Any small object that I try to focus on disappears. Annoying.
Legal-ese instead of -BAN had me looking for take or have a seat.
Most modern goalposts have a single support so they don’t look like H’s any more.
RAITA and PLUMELET were unknown, and TAPENADE only barely
Never seen a triangular eye chart like that. If anything it’d be an inverted triangle
Didn’t have a clue about 1 across, so DNF on the NW corner. Thought REWIRE was right, but that didn’t help me with the rest of the answers.
A few too many phrases - IWONTDOIT, IWASNT, IMGAME etc for my liking. A meh puzzle IMO.
Good morning. Tough puzzle, and a FIW.
Thought maybe I had a single letter error typo, but I had 2 wrong letters.
First, I had attitude instead of aptitude.
Secondly, and it led to the second error, calipalh instead of capital h. But hey, it was 3:30 in the morning and I sure never heard of RAISA. Then again, I nailed TAPENADE.
Yes, NW took the longest time to work out. Started at the very beginning with IT WASNT ME. Nearly 40 minutes later that corner was still pretty much blank. Finally worked it out without help, but never rethought attitude. Dang it !
Thank you Erik and thank you Husker Gary.
Husker, I heard something the other day on an NFL broadcast that there are now only two calls on an NFL replay. Something like it stands as called or it is reversed. Didn't quite catch it though. You linked the MLB Replay outcomes. I couldn't find the official NFL outcomes of a replay.
Did not know / never heard of Conelrad symbols/
Well I stumbled to a DNF today. The center got me. RAITA is not any word I'd ever seen or heard. And then there was the CAPITAL H. I couldn't get TH, SH,CH, or AH of my mind and GLOW never came to mind.
Radical & NEATO- make no sense to me. I was thinking NEOTO as in NEW TO but TIA & TIO were the perps.
GRINDR was a total unknown but after HAVE A SEAT & TAKE A SEAT, GRAB let the NW work.
In the NE the VIE-TRY-OPT possibility was hard to REIN in but I finally ADDED OPT. Everything below ALIEN TECHNOLOGY came easily. I DIDN'T before I WASN'T opened up the SW.
Gary-IGNORANCE- The more "YKNOW" the more you realize that there's a lot more that you don't know.
D-Otto- What low hanging fruit? SOLDER, TET, and ELAYNE were slim pickings for me.
billocohoes- my legal BAN was perps because legalESE was the only word I could think of.
ERIK- get a hair cut (I'm bald).
At first I thought this was going to be hopeless as the NW was the last to fill. But started in the SE and slowly pieced it together! Like D-O - our paper had "Provencal" for the the clue (I don't know how to make the cedilla under the c on my computer). I've had TAPENADE at restaurants before, but never made it- but I always want to pronounce it "tamponade" which is a medical term LOL!
Thanks HG and Erik!
TTP, back in the olden days the gov't was afraid that incoming missiles would lock onto radio stations and home in. Under Conelrad, in an emergency, stations would only broadcast at 640 or 1240 khz (kilocycles back in the day). That way the missiles would be confused as to what city the signals were coming from. Reminds me of the old Beyond the Fringe skit about WWII. The lads were out changing the road signs to confuse the Germans. "We'll put Ipswich where Great Yarmouth was, Great Yarmouth where Lyme Regis was, and Lyme Regis where Ipswich was. That'll fool 'em. Hello...how do we get home?"
Now I know I'm still tired.
Should have been, catilalh instead of capital H, and I sure didn't know raila, which of course was RAITA.
Thanks, Desper-otto. As a youth, I always wondered what those marks were. Seems like it must have been a good idea at the time.
Good morning everyone.
SADLY the NW was beyond my wheelhouse so I DNF. Had I gotten TET instead of sticking with EVE, I might have had better luck.
As Grant said to Sherman after the first day at Shiloh: ‘Lick’em tomorrow though!’
I usually keep the SCORE PAD in our bridge group.
I set out my weekly MEDS into the organizer on Friday morning. With 4 daily pills it's probably not too bad at my age.
Julius Richard PETRI (May 31, 1852 – December 20, 1921) (born in Bremen) was a German microbiologist who is generally credited with inventing the device known as the Petri dish after him, while working as assistant to bacteriologist Robert Koch.
Inane - I do the ç on my MAC by keying [option C]
Inane, if you're a Windows user, there's a "Character Map" Windows accessory app. You select the special character and copy it. Then CTRL-V to paste it into your post. I keep the app on my taskbar.
Good Morning:
The NE and NW took forever to finish correctly, mainly because I was convinced the web site was Tinder and the the olive spread was Caponata. I also stuck with Take a seat and Legal ending Ese for far too long. Attitude before Aptitude was asking for something Cat related for the eventually correct Capital H. I also went astray with spelling Elayne incorrectly and my Eve proved to be Tet. I have never heard of Raita which is not surprising because Yogurt has and will never be in my shopping cart, let alone my fridge! (Only a healthy dose of P and P allowed me to complete this puzzle unaided.)
Thanks, Eric, for a challenging but, finally, doable challenge and thanks, HG, for your always appreciated translation and enlightenment.
I hope our California Cornerites are all safe.
Have a great day.
DNF, very challenging. I had two red letters in three quarters of it, but the NW was my downfall. I needed much help. I'd rather get help than give up entirely. RAITA and GRINDR were new to me. ESP.
Because I love any kind of olive I made TAPENADE a few months ago. I didn't care for it at all. At least, it provided a puzzle gimme.
I just read ONE L this month, although it was published years ago. Turow humanized the life of a first year law student and made it very interesting.
I didn't particularly care for MAC as a cheese go with. There was no indication it was shortened. I know that saying mac and cheese is common, but we never say it that way. We love macaroni and cheese with A LOT OF extra sharp cheddar.
The situation in CA is terrible with the fires and the blackouts. I hope you all are safe.
Several years ago a five day blackout after a hurricane caused all kinds of havoc here, especially for people with medical gizmos. Our town had a generator for a warming center serving hot food and providing hook ups for electronics. First the stores ran out of ice. Then there were no more gasoline deliveries and finally the grocery stores were bare, empty of non perishables, because the delivery trucks had no gas. Much perishable food was discarded by stores, restaurants and homeowners. I used my gas grill and my camp stove for cooking, although it was quite cold out. The CA situation is RELATABLE. At least we had no fire threat. I hope the blackout ends soon and all of our virtual friends are safe.
Hola!
Ay! Que dificil! Thank you, Eric, for challenging my brain!
The bottom filled first starting with DIEGO and outward from that point. NEATO! I like the sound of it. BLANCO was a dead giveaway for me but it took a long while for USMINT to emerge. I was thinking USMAIL. EYEDOCTOR altered that course.
Spitz, I thought of you at SCOREPAD for bridge.
I have seen ELAYNE Boosler on TV and she is very entertaining.
DIE had an amusing clue.
Up north even after I filled CAPITALH I thought it was wrong and it took a long time to parse it.
RAITA is new to me, too. I LIU.
GRABASEAT also took too long but it finally made sense. I held on to legalESE for an inordinately long while.
EBOOKS is also cleverly clued.
TET was actually one of my first fill.
I don't recall ever seeing PLUMELET before this.
Thank you, Gary. You really rose to the challenge today. Muy bien hecho!
Today we shall have a bridal shower for my gay grandniece. She and her partner are going to Cancun to marry and much of the family is going, too. Since I just bought a new dining room set I can't go. It cost the same as plane fare would.
Have a beautiful day, everyone! Today I'll organize my MEDS.
Very hard puzzle today. DNF. I WAGged a few like PETRI and DNALAB. Many other guesses were incorrect (Tinder, USMail). Could we go back to Jeffrey W. please?
"Misery loves company," as today's crossword brought many friends to visit. Several words I have never seen in 70 years of reading Englsih, so that the DNF that you saw augering in out in the field, was not alone.
I couldn't solve this puzzle unaided either. I found it to be extremely hard, both due to difficult cluing and answers I had never heard of. I have heard the word TAPENADE and have probably eaten some but still had to look it up. GRINDR was totally unknown. Well, I expect an Agard puzzle to be damn hard and this one sure was.
Heard on the evening news last night about the fires near Los Angeles: words to effect of "Turning off the power didn't prevent the fires." Huh? Do those guys even understand what they are reading? Sheesh.
(Turns out it was flaming trash spilling out from a garbage truck that ignited at least one of the fires; totally man-made!)
Yes, yesterday was a lot more fun.
Today had me for a complete loss...
In fact, I cannot remember much of anything from this puzzle
(which means I did not learn anything...)
except for Tapenade, which reminded me of an excessively salty
concoction I ordered at a restaurant that I wanted to send back.
(& I love olives, & I love salt, how could it go wrong!)
& raita,
which reminded me of Riata,
which had me looking for pics of Yogurt on a rope?
(if u ever catch yogurt with a lasso, let it go....)
Super Saturday. Thanks for the fun, Erik and HuskerG.
After a full day of prepping for company on Thanksgiving, I thought my brain would never solve this CW. But P and P succeeded! (Hello IM). And only a couple of inkblots. Wow.
Of course, I was not off to a good start with 1A. The NW was the last to fill.
Hand up for Attitude before APTITUDE.
I had to come here to understand PAUSE. Thanks for that photo HG.
My newspaper had "Provençal" in the TAPENADE clue too. (Thanks inane hiker, now I know why I wanted to put a M in that word!)
I just copied from D'otto's post to get Provençal. I'm lazy!
I wonder how much of that Italian Cabbage AnonT "ate" on his trip?
I'll take a CSO with 27A; but reading d'otto' post, I am boggled by your Medicare system.
Hope all our California Cornerites are safe.
Manitoba has declared a state of emergency after an early season snowstorm created havoc, with trees down and loss of electricity.
Only 20 comments today, and most not raving, despite the usually good nature of the bloggers. Think that says it all. Going to nominate it as the Edsel of 2019.
P&P brought me to the FIR. A little inky. LAW/LAB; USPOST/MINT(PAS/MAL;IT ISN'T/I WASNT. Not to speak of WEES -ESE/BAN(?)
Yesterday's forum helped where Jeff mentioned the slowballs mixing with curves and sliders.
I wanted GLOW but what word ends with LH? Oh, LITERAL. And, I wanted some kind of REBAR for that bridge support. MEDS? Just got it as I did my M-Su pill organizer.
Yes, after six perps I recalled GRINDR. I inked REWIRE while most of the grid was white but it didn't like HAVE/TAKE A SEAT
NIT….I WONT,I WASN'T. Rex would tsk,tsk that.
Finally the consensus found this difficult. All Saturdays are difficult for me. I was ready to spend all week at it but still didn't think I'd ever get it since the top half was blank
Tony, as Owen mentioned, the J poem is a CSO
WC
Just checking in. Late today because I was catching the matinee of Adam Bock's THE CANADIANS at SCR. A funny play with a sweet ending--recommended to anyone in the neighborhood.
Tough pzl today with many vague clues & some obscure fills. Not motivated enough to work it out. Made me think of how much I enjoyed yesterday's.
~ OMK
J, Eric was asked to do a difficult Saturday xword. Some jargon, two fifteens (btw that wasn't "Independence" but I can't think of the name. I got the A and then the N and Jayce's V8 can hit: ALIEN.
BATTING-STARING - Great clueing.
It's not supposed to be elegant,witty ETC, just devilish, obscure,arcane and , did I mention, difficult.
Great job Eric and ?, TTP?
WC
Misty will like this quote: “The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility,” Eliot summed up. “Humility is endless.”
The Eliot is TS as I recall one of her favorites.
Here's the article tbt editorial
WC
Edsel?
Ouch!
It wasn't ugly, just freakin' hard...
Another fine puzzle from Erik. The last few I've seen from him have been early week NYTs. Pleasant (and somewhat nerve wracking) to see him back on a Saturday. Lots of nice misdirection in both part of speech and underlying meaning. I'm looking forward to the next one.
Petri dish is named after German bacteriologist, Julius Richard Petri.
Erik, ya got me, but it was a fabulous puzzle, fun to solve.
Way to go Yankees!
And just as I said that I see Erik has the weekend's NYT Sunday.
I agree with the "ugly" comment for this entry. Why do some constructors think that using silly imagery, arcane slang, cutsey phrases, ... Makes a puzzle more challenging?? All it does is make the puzzle a tedious bore. I hope Agard has a day job to fall back on! What a waste of newsprint.
Hi All!
Late today because Boomer Sooner! took the OU TX game, Eldest had me build pizza for her guests, and the 'Stros dropped GAME ONE(L) to NY - our BATTING needs to wake up.
Took me all day before I tossed the towel. Unlike others, the NW was cake [I know of GRINDR and that gave me a false sense of "I've got this!"]. No, my DNF is the NE. TAPENADE was unknown as was RAITA and, like BillO said, the uprights I've seen only have a single bottom post - a capital Y?
7a had nothing to do w/ the NOSE's bridge and SADLY was not the Optigrab [HG, you started the Steve Martin :-)]
Thanks Erik for the puzzle. Rich should not run you after a JW again or I might have to give up this pastime for good. :-)
Thanks HG for finally bailing me out in the NE. Fun expo and I learned about Conelrad.
WO: ELAiNE Boosler.
Fav: 36d. Love me some Bierce quotes.
{B, B+} LOL the JH poem. I noticed late last night (early this morning?) that the phisher was taken down.
Back to Conelrad - D-O: I knew there was more reasons other than your radio knowledge that I liked you. Being a Beyond the Fringe fan gets you +2. The Ipswitch switch was also used in the Dead Parrot sketch [Pythons were also Fringe fans].
C, Eh! Wonder no longer... I burned though a bunch of Italian Cabbage [who wanted Lira for old time's sake?] one night by a "we got these tourists" restaurateur in Rome. DW made the mistake of asking "what's good?" and we got the expensive menu +$70 bottle of wine. The guy was good and, even though I saw his GAME, I played along. Once he learned my last name his tone changed. Oh, do you know X & Y [my last name] in New Jersey? they are buddies. The guy became family :-) [Ever get to meet your lobster before he's on your plate?]
Hope everyone in CA is doing alright. The news makes it seem pretty grim.
Cheers, -T
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