Brian Paquin presents us a puzzle (with parallel vertical grid spanners) that you may have to finish in a hurry as there will be a minimum of daylight to guide your solve.
Let's see what we have on this auspicious astronomical day:
Across:
1. Swagger: BRAVADO shown by someone who 1. Crows: BRAGS - An interesting cross
8. Elite list: WHO'S WHO - As a high school senior I remember getting a flattering letter that I had been chosen to be in the WHO'S WHO book for outstanding students. My balloon burst when I saw that I had to send them $50 to see my name in print.
15. Tent event: REVIVAL - Elmer Gantry's REVIVAL tent was home to a charlatan hustler 16. "Get going!": HOP TO IT
17. No longer happening: AT AN END - Today? Autumn!
18. Its namesake, a former Surveyor General of India, objected to having it named for him: EVEREST - The world's highest peak is called Chomolungma by the Tibetans and Sagarmatha by the Nepalese
19. Hip-hop subgenre: GANGSTA - Google if you must
20. '20s tennis star Lacoste: RENE - How his shirt with the crocodile came to be
21. Convene: SIT.
22. De bene __: literally, of well-being: ESSE - In law
28. Old Messina money: LIRA.
31. __ operandi: MODI - Plural of Modus Operandi (M.O.)
33. Aromatic garland: LEI - I wonder if ONO ever wore a LEI and shared an OREO with an EMU at a game where 14. Giants legend: OTT was playing in Crosswordland
34. More than is tolerable: ONCE TOO OFTEN
38. Charles, until he's in charge: HEIR TO THE THRONE - Prince Andrew was 8th in line for being HEIR TO THE THRONE but now it seems his mother has "fired" him
41. Doesn't evolve: STAYS THE SAME - Like these guys
 |
| The Luddites |
43. Cold War leader Andropov: YURI - YURI was head of the KGB for fifteen years before being the head of the Soviet state for fifteen months
44. Longbow wood sources: YEWS.
47. Lumps: CLODS - Breaking them up to make a seed bed
50. Places where shooting occurs: SETS - They can be deceptive
52. Like aspirin, briefly: OTC - Certain meds like these are not Over The Counter any more
54. Sermon ender?: ETTE.
59. Kerosene cousin: COAL OIL - The difference
62. Like some light, fruity wines: UNOAKED - American Chardonnays are almost always oaked, which is why they're known for that buttery creaminess, and European Chardonnays are steel-aged and tend towards those bright apple and citrus flavors. A new word for me and my spell checker
63. Annual February race site: DAYTONA 500
64. Croc or cobra: REPTILE.
66. Like some lumber: TREATED - Our deck made of pressure TREATED lumber lasted ten years and now we have a composite deck
Down:
2. Sell at the mall, say: RETAIL - Less and less so
3. Italian "forward": AVANTI - The 1963 Studebaker AVANTI. If you thought the Edsel looked odd... How the AVANTI came to be
4. "Pulp Fiction" actor Rhames: VING - Theories abound about why Ving had a band-aid on his neck
5. City rtes.: AVES.
6. Boccaccio added "Divina" to the title of his masterpiece: DANTE Alighieri originally called his work simply Commedia
7. Ancient: OLD AS METHUSELAH - it took a lot of crosses to get the spelling correct
8. Response to a wince: WHERE DOES IT HURT?
9. __ to: halted, nautically: HOVE - He HOVE to when the pirate told him to
11. Scatter: STREW.
12. Anguish: WOE.
13. Part of HMS, at times: HIS - His/Her Majesty's Ship and 61. Word of obedience: AYE - A word often heard on board
23. "Told you!": SO THERE.
25. Glee club voice: ALTO.
26. Rounded tool part: PEEN - Claw and ball PEEN hammers
27. Trig function: SINE.
29. Rival of Tiger: RORY - McIlroy today. The golf media actually tried to make Phil Mickelson his rival but Tiger in his prime had no peer
30. Giants in the 1954 horror film "Them!": ANTS - None named OTT32. Smidgen: IOTA.
35. Owner of Clairol and CoverGirl: COTY.
36. "Goodness!": OH MY - Look at the size of those ANTS!
37. Let out: FREE.
38. London-based financial corp. founded in Hong Kong: HSBC - Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
39. Short space saver: ET AL.
40. "It is the green-eyed monster ... " speaker: IAGO - The passage in original and modern text
45. Exercise prompt: WORK IT.
46. Brosnan role in '80s TV: STEELE - We had his co-star in the Friday the 13th puzzle this month
48. Yazoo region: DELTA.
49. One without arms: STOOL.
51. More lucid: SANER.
53. Turned over: CEDED.
55. Decorator's subtlety: TINT - Quick, what is the color of your living room wall? I have no idea about ours.
57. Drink copiously: TOPE - From French toper to keep an agreement, from Spanish topar to take a bet; probably because a wager was generally followed by a drink. You're welcome
58. "Ciao!": TATA.
59. Streaming alternatives: CD'S - Our Mannheim Steamroller and Trans Siberia Orchestra CD'S get a workout this time of year
60. Meal starter?: OAT - A cheap ($0.98) and convenient version of a childhood favorite of mine
Go ahead and comment with a light heart as our darkest days will now start to get longer and Spring is coming. Calculate the time until spring
Notes from C.C.:
Happy fifth wedding annversary to Oo and Lemonade. How time flies!
Happy fifth wedding annversary to Oo and Lemonade. How time flies!
34 comments:
FIWrong. I was sure it was CÔTE, and with that E in place, I couldn't remember YURI.
Gantry preached with BRAVADO.
He was fearless in his calls for REVIVAL!
He had no fear of the Devil
Because he wasn't on the level,
And his piety was only for the show!
Troubled boys hear GANGSTA rap
It tells them being good is a trap!
Police, ONCE TOO OFTEN
Put a black boy in a coffin,
And now trusting cops is just crap!
{A-, B.}
Good morning!
Tried ORR before OTT (D'oh!) and HAT rack before TREE. But it was California/Arizona that almost did me in. Toeholds were few. My only certainty was METHUSELAH, and I wasn't sure of the spelling. Tried TONE and ALCOHOL in that area before the Wite-Out went on. Finally DAYTONA came to me and that broke the logjam. Thanx, Brian and Husker (I needed that explanation for RORY).
YAZOO: Learning moment. I'd assumed it was some location in Gulliver's Travels.
ANTS: Early role for James Arness who went on to play Matt Dillon, (Mark Dillon in the radio pilot).
REVIVAL: "Revival tent" and "charlatan huckster" go together like bread and butter.
Happy 5th, Lemonade.
Good morning. Let me HOP TO IT. Since most of the comments here are made by people like me (OLD AS METHUSELAH), when our doctors ask WHERE DOES IT HURT, we usually say everywhere.
The NW was the last to fall and it took a few WAGS to complete AVANTI, DANTE & ESSE. VING-perped. I only guessed AVANTI because a friend had one of those Studebakers. UNOAKED was an unknown but an easy guess after a few perps were in place.
For some strange reason the DELTA Region is NOT anywhere near the Mississippi River DELTA, which is a few hundred miles downstream in Plaquemine Parish, LA.
Clairol was a Bristol-Myers brand until they sold it off to PROCTER & GAMBLE (2001) which sold it to COTY.
TATA.
SW was last to fall. 63 A Kept thinking of Alaska and Iditarod, but couldn't make it fit. Yazoo region a total unknown.
Good morning. Happy Anniversary, Lemonade and Oo !
It really helped to get ONCE TOO OFTEN, HEIR TO THE THRONE and STAYS THE SAME early on. Then put my focus on getting the two top to bottom grid spanners. WHERE DOES IT HURT came first, and I could see OLD AS METHUSELAH but had to work out the spelling.
Don't know why I keyed in CLOgS for the clue "Lumps", but having that and propane where COAL OIL belonged slowed me down in that corner. METHUSELAH led to the change to COAL OIL after getting DAYTONA and STEALTH.
Wanted HAllTREE for "spot for a bowler" but there weren't enough spaces.
Tupac Shakur was a hip hop and then a GANGSTA rapper after he moved to the west coast from NYC. He was gunned down at age 27 during the height of the East Coast / West Coast rap wars. The police suspected rival Notorious B.I.G. or one of his posse, but then he was gunned down shortly there after. The gunmen have never been caught. How do I know this ? I blog crossword puzzles. Leads to a lot of reading stuff that you otherwise might not be interested in.
Once again, I got sidetracked reading the links in the write-up. This time, it was reading about Ned Ludd and COAL OIL. A friend that relo'ed from south of Houston always called charcoal fluid COAL OIL. He later relo'ed to Fargo. Talk about heading to colder climates !
Didn't know about oaked and UNOAKED when it comes to wine, but I don't drink it.
I’ve used that expression “ it’s not my bag” plenty, but for some reason I drew a real blank with the clue...and not knowing the London based financial Corp., I was one letter shy of finishing this puzzle. That’s a real drag, because at first I thought it would be a DNF for sure! But then everything just fell into place...except one letter:(
I was born and raised in Yazoo City. Home of Jerry Clower, former MS Governor Haley Barbour, Willie Morris, Fletcher Cox, and others. Yazoo City is known as The Gateway to the Delta. The Yazoo Delta is not the delta of the MS River. It is really an alluvial plain caused by flooding over the years. This region has great soil for farming (cotton, soy beans, corn, etc) as well as Home of many catfish farms. Land is very flat in this area.
Good morning everyone.
On the easy side for a Saturday but I did get one letter wrong @ VING. But everything else clicked. The long acrosses and downs helped fill up space and were fairly common phrases. Thought the SW was going to be a Natick but I broke through with TINT and STEALTH. (I did toy with 'scratch' for a while.). WAGS included BAG and COAL OIL.
HSBC - Predecessor company built the tallest building in Buffalo @ 529'.
3 Nauticals - - AYE, HOVE, and HMS(clue). If we had 'avast' we'd 've had something like the 'cycle'.
Anon-T FLN; I can't picture you taking a nap when you're going 100mph with all your other interests.
Happy Anniversary to Oo and Lemonade.
Our local Weather Babe solemnly announced the sun was crossing the Tropic of Capricorn today. Guess she was not in class the day they taught about tangents.
Nice lead-in, Gary
Seasons greetings to all!
I felt bad about putting 3D Avanti and 4D Ving together. Pretty difficult, I thought. But I just couldn't fill that corner in a better way.
38A HeirToTheThrone "Charles, until he's in charge" I'm surprised that my clue survived, given that it will be obsolete in a year or 3. It was also a reference to the old TV show "Charles in Charge". Raise your hand if you watched it. Anyone... anyone... Buehler... Buehler. Well, I didn't see it either, but I knew about it.
56A HatTree "Spot for a bowler" I had "Regular target of James Bond". But that's from the older Bond movies, where he announced his arrival to Moneypenny from off-screen.
7D OldAsMethuselah "Ancient" I had "Like a 904-year pensioner?", but maybe that is overcooked. But I thought that "Old as.." was normally used in reference to people, whereas "ancient" refers to places and things. Dunno, really.
Hola!
Brian, thank you for stopping at the Corner. I liked your puzzle and the clues.
My family are avid fans of thriller movies so VING Rhames is familiar and there is a local restaurant called AVANTI where I learned the meaning of that word.
Overall, this was an easy Saturday except for the SW corner where I finally LU COAL OIL and that opened it for me. I've never heard of the Yazoo region and DELTA was a guess.
I love the clue for STOOL.
Gary, I also received an invitation to WHO'S WHO with the same result. Thank you for the commentary and links.
Lemonade, congratulations on five years!
Have a beautiful though short day, everyone!
I've been to a tent revival. Taken there with my four brothers and sisters. Mom raised us by herself. Worked as a waitress. Fire and brimstone Baptist she was. To say the least, revivals are quite lively. People get, shall I say, wound up and a bit raucous. As a kid, I was fascinated by it all. I must admit though, no preacher ever got through to me with any message or sermon. Rebel without a cause.
Rest in peace, Amber. There's never been a more beautiful mother.
Good Morning:
Because of the easy to get (mostly) long fill, I sailed through this with only one w/o, Her/His and only one perp-required, Everest. Alas, it was a big, fat FIW because of never having heard of Coal Oil, I confidently entered Seal Oil. (I think I was picturing Whale Oil?) Unoaked may be a word but it sounds clunky to my ear. I liked the Brags ~ Bravado crossing and I was tickled that I remembered Tope's meaning from a recent puzzle. Methuselah took some patience, but perps were fair. My favorite C/A was One without arms=Stool.
Thanks, Brian, for a fun solve, despite my goof and thanks, Gary, for the excellent overview and commentary.
Happy 5th Anniversary to Lemony and Oo.
Have a great day.
Excellent puzzle! Good challenge, and I really enjoy the long answers in a Saturday puzzle.
SW was the last, finally got COALOIL and STEALTH. Misspelled YeRI and had nETS instead of SETS, but other than that 100% correct. METHUSELAH is a real mouthful. I’ll give myself a gold star today!
Patriots playing the Bills at 4:30, about the same time as sunset on the shortest day of the year. Also the sunset on Buffalo’s hopes of dethroning the Pats!
Did yesterday's puzzle today. The Homecoming Queen my freshman year at Bradley University back in '67 was a lovely young woman from Cairo, IL. She was the last Homecoming Queen as Bradley dropped football at the end of the season. Also, where US 57 crosses the Mississippi was/is a notorious speed trap going north. On the south side of the Mississippi the speed limit was 70. On the north side it dropped to 55 with little warning.
JB2
Super Saturday. Thanks for the fun, Brian (thanks for dropping by) and HuskerG (loved the Fog link).
I completed this CW in good time for a Saturday; after the long entries fell, things moved along apace until I was AT AN END.
But I came here to discover that I FIWed because my lumps were Clots not CLODS; I had no idea about the Yazoo region and Google only told me about a music group. TELTA made no sense.
And it appears that I also FIWed at the cross of LIRA and ANTS. I had the plural Lire and I remembered Ents as alien beings. D'uh - Lord of the Rings, not the unknown film "Them!".
After reading IM's comment,the lightbulb just went on about STOOL=one without arms! Diabolically good or meh!? It is Saturday so I guess "chair without arms" would be too easy.
Yes, I caught the BRAVADO/BRAG cross.
It took a few inkblots/perps to get the Es and As in METHUSELAH straight.
Yes changed to AYE.
I didn't know VING but it filled with perps, as did AVANTI (AnonT would know that one!)
I am very used to the term UNOAKED in Niagara wine country. On our last visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake, we tried a wild ferment Chardonnay at a wine-tasting. Very interesting.
Happy Anniversary, Lemonade and Oo.
Happy winter solstice to all of you.
jfromvt, I hope you are wrong about Buffalo's sunset. I'm hoping that it will be bright and sunny for their fans by game's end.
Hi Y'all! Great puzzle, Brian! Good to see your comments! Happy solstice, Gary, thanks, I needed that.
Thought the theme-ish aging was apt for many in this bunch. I, too, feel OLD AS METHUSELAH & WHERE DOESn't IT HURT? I can't HOP TO IT or WORK IT any more. SO THERE!
Due to faulty electric transmission when I was a kid, we still had COAL OIL lamps which had to be lit with most night-time storms. I never heard it called kerosene until I was grown. My little sister had trouble saying COAL OIL. She'd say, COY OY OY OY OIL, so the rest of us did too.
Happy 5th Anniversary, Lemonade & Oo! Best wishes for many more happy and interesting years together.
I don't get STEALTH and OAT. Can someone explain how they relate to their clues?
High it's asset, lol.
Nevermind, K
love, Emily Latella
Interesting that the first half of this puzzle seemed much easier than the bottom, which is usually the easier part. I guessed BRAVADO immediately and liked that it crossed with BRAGS. The long fills helped with HSBC -- never heard of it. METHUSELAH was initially spelled incorrectly causing problems with COAL OIL, something with which im unfamiliar. FIW, so the write up cleared it all up.
Re: HOVE, my DH was in the navy, but can never help with nautical terms. Mmmmm...
Jerome, I read your comments twice looking for puns. Last night's comments were groan-worthy, but fun, and created quite a ripple.
Swag, OAT before meal .... oatmeal. Stealth could be an asset for a hunting animal.
Have a nice Saturday everyone.
Fairly easy Saturday puzzle. Wasn't certain what the last few letters of METHUSELAH were but should have known better than to end sermon with "amen"
Not sure I agree with the ONCETOOOFTEN answer.
COALOIL?. Squeeze chunks of coal for juice? When Superman did that he created a diamond. A much better use of coal.
I misunderstood Boccaccio's clue. The only work I knew he produced was Il Decamerone, a collection of bawdy tales...anything but Divina.
UNOAKED was a new one for me but no way could I force "sangria" in the space.
So a FIR Saturday puzzle with a single error!! Like Mary Martin: "I gotta crow!" (5 year old me watching Peter Pan on a tiny black and white TV screen: "Mom how come Peter is a girl?")
Good afternoon, folks. Thank you. Brian E. Paquin, for a fine puzzle. Thank you, Husker Gary, for a fine review.
Lemonade and Oo. Happy fifth, and many more!
Puzzle was easier than most Saturdays. Not complaining a bit.
Of course I tried FUEL OIL for 59A. COAL OIL won that bet.
YEWS was easy. Have read a lot of English related books and their wars. The long bow was their great weapon.
YURI was a guess. It sounded right. And it worked.
Of course I entered AMEN for 554A. That changed after a bit to ETTE. Oh well. The question mark should have been a clue.
Lots to do. See you tomorrow.
Abejo
( )
Well, I started out with LEI, which gave me ALTO and PEEN, and that gave me SWAPS and got me started on the northeast corner where I got WHO'S WHO before long. Down south it was REPTILE that got me started, followed by TATA and SANER and so on. Before long I had the whole east, but the left side was tough. I did get DANTE and IAGO though--hey, that's literature, my field. I don't do nearly as well on sports figures, needless to say. But this was a fun puzzle, and how nice of you to stop by to discuss your construction process with us, Brian. And great commentary, Husker Gary.
What a lovely picture of Oo and Lemonade, C.C. Many thanks for posting it.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
I enjoyed this puzzle very much. Like jfromvt, I really enjoy the long answers in a Saturday puzzle. I think this puzzle was exceptionally well constructed and clued.
Gary, excellent write-up.
Happy Anniversary, Lemonade and Oo!
Good wishes to you all.
Great puzzle! Difficult at the start for me but FIR in 20 minims.
Starting at the top, I ended up with only 3 or 4 entries completed. I applied my time-tested method of going away for a while; when I came back to it, it just clicked and I pretty much sailed through before I HOVE TO at the end.
WEES about a lot of things. My dad had nothing but Studebakers until they went out of business (sometime in the ‘70s?). I learned to drive in a 1956 Studebaker Hawk. Similar look to that of the Avanti. Makes me feel OLD AS METHUSELAH.
I liked the triple O in the middle; oncetOOOften. Fun.
Brian, thanks for stopping by. It’s always interesting when a constructor explains his thinking/reasoning.
Husker, your treatise was as lively as always. Thanks for that.
Off to the workshop to make some sawdust. Enjoy your weekend.
Thanks for the map of the CEDED territory, HuskerG! It's a reminder and an eye-opener. U.S. Grant fought in the Mexican-American War but thought it an unjust war of imperialism.
Ah, "Manifest Destiny"! The US gained California and huge amounts of land through "negotiation," but mainly via Right of Conquest, a principle no longer recognized in international law.
~ OMK
____________
DR: One diag, NE to SW.
So many vowels! The only anagram I can find acknowledges my brother's old pals, a bunch of uncool brutes. I.e....
"HIS YAHOOS"!
Happy Anniversary Lemonade & Oo!
Regarding the CEDED territory,
(I had nothing to do with it!)
Hi All!
D&D was fun - didn't get to learn too much but we were sent into an underground world that "went below" during a planetary disaster 7,000 years ago. While our languages where the "same" dialects diverged so much over the ages that we couldn't understand them until, while at a library, Eldest cast a Comprehension spell.
The spell works but it takes 1 minute per page.
My Ranger character and another half-elf left the nerds at the library and where pleased to find our currency was good at the tavern.
Alas, no bar fights with an OGRE.
Fun times.
Oh, the puzzle. Yes, well another Saturday over my pay-grade. MOVE OUT (Hop To It) was right out as was CAMP OIL. I leaned on HG's grid to fix those for extra play. Still a DNF with a HINT CLOTting (hi C, Eh!)-up the area.
Thanks Brian for dropping in. I caught the Charles in Charge TV reference [and entered LORD having read 38's clue for 28 :-( ]
Thanks HG for the informative expo.
HSBC has their name on a building near my office in the Galleria Area [BAG(?)]
Fav: the xing at 1a was neat. Also clecho (for me anyway - I put ANCIENT in for "No longer happening") & 7d.
{A, A}
DR - Your brother knew Swift? :-)
Happy Anniversary Lem (and Oo).
Lucina & HG - same results here with WHO's WHO.
Spitz - I couldn't keep up without a 45-90 minute refresh in the early eve.
JB2 - I feel like I've asked this before... Bradly in Peoria, right? Pop's Wife is from Peoria and her father was the organist at the adjoining Methodist church. He got the organ when Bradley got a new one and, now, parts of that organ adorn Pop's back yard [in the 'secret garden' he has 3 pipes painted like USA rockets :-)]
Time for a quick nap b/f getting takeout for Eldest. I'm going to take my laptop so I can sit with her until rounds start at 9.
Cheers, -T
CED ~
No, we are just the inheritors.
Anon T ~
No, he just thought he did. Or, er... was.
~ OMK
Jinx, whaddya think ? Did he travel ?
JfromVT, that was a close game. Perhaps they should have videotaped the Bills instead of the Bengals ?
Dash T - my friend has one going to Bradley, another to Northwestern, and the third is going to UIC. #smartkids #brokeparents #nevergoingtoretire
D-O, you're thinking of "The Thing(51)" starring the Marshall.
"Kept thinking of Alaska and Iditarod, but couldn't make it fit"...Me too Bob B. But…
I had EAT/OAT??! so I had SDs/CDs and went back a century for SEAL OIL(shudder). Also missed B(AG) and tried M even though HSBC is familiar. (Let's) EAT makes more sense than OAT - duh, OATMeal double duh!!!aaarrgggh!
From memory:
What of the bow?
The bow was made of YEW wood, the true wood
The wood that bowmen love So(okay Google time… Doyle's bow song
I see IM had Seal OIL,too.
WC (got a new phone)
Happy Anniversary to Oo and Lemonade
Thanks Brian for dropping in and thanks to Gary for another great write-up.
-T, if an afternoon nap was good enough for Harry Truman it's good enough for you,wikwak et moi
Mouse -- Thank you for reminding me of Jerry Clower of Yazoo City (1926-1998), "The Mouth of Mississippi"! Back in the day, I listened to his recordings as one of the top storytellers, along with Bill Cosby {Noah} and Andy Griffith (Football).
Just found -- Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer! Spitzboov will love this!
OKL - No link seen. Pls advise.
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