In this picture, he is shown at the post office in San Antonio, Puerto Rico eleven days after visiting all the post offices on the island. He circles every post office on his AAA map and then highlights them once he has visited them. In this picture his right index finger is pointing at the office in San Antonio, P.R.
Sometime during his quests he finds the time to, "put his stamp" on "first-class" puzzles like this and definitely doesn't just "mail 'em in"! Okay, okay I'm through.
When I contacted Evan, he was kind enough to send me a wonderful narrative about how this puzzle came to be. I have posted his response at the bottom of this write-up and I highly recommend that you take time to read it.
Now for our special delivery from Evan (Okay NOW I'm through):
Across:
1. Moisture-catching linings: SWEAT BANDS - My lawn mowing fashion statement
11. Barbecue crust: CHAR - National Cancer Institute says agents in charred meat can cause changes in DNA that may increase the risk of cancer and advises those parts be cut off and discarded. Not good for me to hear!
15. Period that included the Civil War: LINCOLN ERA.
16. Place with rolling pins, perhaps: LANE - Cute clue for our bowlers, Evan!
17. Making a plea: ENTREATING.
18. Present opener?: OMNI - It's an election year so guess what will be OMNIPRESENT
19. Have the chutzpah: DARE 21. Word with interest and error: HUMAN- This 8-second clip is a HUMAN interest story about a HUMAN error for a "hard to sight-read" word
20. Farm structure: SILO - Can hold corn or ICBM's
22. Farm structure: STY - and either can be next to one of these
23. Date night convenience: ATM - Insert $4.25 and you can get your date a Sprinkles Cupcake at this ATM
24. Pauses: LET UPS - Not a good idea when your team is on a roll
 |
Hélène Dutrieu |
28. Turn: ROT.
29. Informal "Right?": AIN'T IT TRUE - or more commonly around here: AIN'T IT THE TRUTH?
32. Ball, e.g.: GALA.
33. Links legend: SNEAD - Arnie fought to get in here but...
34. It's above lead on tables: TIN - There's Lead (Pb - PlumBum) right below TIN (Sn - StaNnum) in the Carbon family
35. Ring of Saturn?: ORBIT - Cute again! Saturn's ORBIT path
36. Hash ingredient: SPUD.
37. Makes even more gross?: GETS A RAISE - Cute again! My gross teacher salary was $488.33/month in 1968. In 2012 it was $4,883/month - I GOT quite A RAISE!
39. Plural possessive: OUR.
40. Leo is one: FIRE SIGN - If you believe in such, uh, science
41. Jalopies: CRATES.
43. __ wolf: CRY - Aesop had a fable about the consequences of doing this once too often
44. Nasty current: RIP - Swim sideways to the current to escape
47. R&B family name: ISLEY - Otis Day and The Knights covered The ISLEY Brother's song Shout in Animal House
48. Caps on a protective vest: SWAT - Those CAPS are letters not headgear. Fun!
50. Fundació Joan __: Barcelona museum: MIRO - The Joan Miró Museum in Barcelona that contains most of his art
51. Family member: AUNT.
52. Blocks off: BARRICADES - The "construction" of the BARRICADE on stage in Le Miserables often draws applause on its own.
54. Level: TIER.
55. Gerald Ford and Glenn Ford, e.g.: FREE MASONS - Mason symbolism on the $1 bill
56. Blues first name: ETTA - Her ETTA Is Betta Than Evah album led off last Friday's puzzle
57. Intermediary's compensation: FINDER'S FEE.
Down:
1. They often have runners: SLEDS - Mine was a Flexible Flyer
2. Succeed in: WIN AT and 3. Contest form: ENTRY - To WIN AT Power Ball after you make an ENTRY has a chance of 1 in 292,000,000
4. Estate unit: ACRE - Highclere Castle (used in Downton Abbey) was originally set on 5,000 ACRES in Hampshire, England
5. __ the line: TOE.
6. "Dang!": BLAST IT.
7. Part of the Enterprise's power source: ANTIMATTER - It was also in Dan Brown's book
8. Diamond of song: NEIL.
9. Bond classic: DR NO - My first image that DR NO evokes for me is of Ursula, especially on this cold, winter's day
 |
| Ursula Andress in Dr No |
10. Decline: SAG - None spotted in the picture above
11. Leverage: CLOUT.
12. Early code name?: HAMMURABI - One of his 282 rules from his code of ~1754 B.C.
13. Alphabetically second on a list of U.S. state capitals: ANNAPOLIS - Oh yeah, it's the capital of Maryland AND the home of The Naval Academy
14. Put back: REINSTATE - It may be a while before AJ Hinch is REINSTATED into baseball because the Astros got 44. No longer forced to deal with: RID OF him. Hinch didn't 24. Whopper you can't eat: LIE - He admitted he knew of the cheating, didn't approve of it but did not stop it
21. Curse: HEX.
23. All in: AVID - I would say Evan is "All In" on his post office avocation.
25. Ever so slightly: A TAD.
26. Not remotely fresh: TRITE.
27. Flees in a panic: RUNS SCARED - I would if he were 30. Chasing, with "of": IN PURSUIT of me
31. Artificial intelligence framework: NEURAL NET - Explained from MIT
32. __ Torino: 1970s Ford: GRAN - The producers of GRAN Torino (a 53. Ford product: CAR) found the car they wanted on Ebay. Clint Eastwood bought the car after the movie was done for his collection
35. Bacchanalia: ORGY - Curious?
37. Beneficiaries of a 1944 bill: GI'S - A well-deserved benefit for The Greatest Generation and military men and women that followed
38. PAC's election season purchase: AIR TIME - INFLUENCE had too many letters
40. "30 Rock" creator: FEY - Can you find the "creator" in the More Info area below?
42. One-third of dodeca-: TETRA - One-third of twelve is four
45. Sherlock's foe Adler: IRENE - Based on a real person?
46. Term in Old West and hip-hop culture: POSSE.
48. Indian garb: SARI.
49. Chirpy bird: WREN - They are a drab addition to our winter landscape but their songs can lift my spirits
50. Keyword in Newton's second law: MASS - Bigger masses are harder to speed up
52. Texting partner, like, srsly!: BFF - Part of the modern lexicon by now
Here is what Evan wrote to me about the genesis of this puzzle:
The origin of this puzzle dates back six years, to when I was effectively filling grids manually and with a distinctive lack of success. Here is an early draft of the grid. I love reading about scientific developments and try to keep my word list updated accordingly. This grid was originally developed around the HIGGS BOSON, front and center (well, top and left). You can see the origins of the current puzzle in the SE corner, with fill that included FISA Courts—which were in the news at the time—and some other short entries that I find unsatisfying today...
Back then I left several half-filled versions in a folder (including a version with the NE and SE corners of the grid as they stand today). I remember being excited to include HAMMURABI, ANNAPOLIS, and FINDER’S FEE because they hadn’t appeared in a modern NYT crossword before… (and indeed they still haven’t!) Fast forward to July 2018 and this puzzle came to life. I had to scrap HIGGS BOSON, but was able to get my sci-tech fill with ANTIMATTER and a NEURAL NET from AI research. Other than that, I tried to make all the longer answers radiating from the center interesting while keeping everything smooth.
Favorite submitted clues: “Spot with rolling pins?” = LANE, “Present opener?” = OMNI, “Like fans you can’t turn off?” = AVID, and “Early code name?” = Hammurabi. Glad to see my clue for ORBIT made the cut!
32 comments:
DNF. The entire NE corner. I had everything else plus HEX and GALA, but C-LANGUAGE and U-IE were wrong and everything else was blank. After red letters, I got seAR, LANE and LETs-up. After more red letters, CHAR, CLOUT, ORBIT. Wanted "compound" interest/error, but it didn't fit, likewise "REscheduled", and "Caesar cipher" for early code. "HAMMY GABBY" suggested itself, but really?-- tho it did give me OMNI and HUMAN.
CSO to Abejo, Bluehen and myself at FREEMASONS! (Only three of us? Anyone else?) (That link includes an interesting bit on LINCOLN in a footnote.)
Rock and Roll excites the fans,
Gyrating idols seem OMNI-HUMANS!
Their energy
Is ecstasy,
But leaves them smelly SWEAT BANDS!
Rioters at the BARRICADE,
ENTREATING changes to be made!
Sad, AIN'T IT TRUE,
Whate'er they do,
It's still the rich that GETS A RAISE!
{A-, A.}
It likely is not planned, but today is the anniversary of the birth of ETTA JAMES .
Good morning!
Got 'er done in under 20, better than usual, so life is good. Stumbled with SEAR/CHAR, but otherwise my grid is "clean." Thanx, Evan and Husker. (That's a lot of ch-ch-ch-chutzpah.)
MIRO: One of is works sits outside the JPMorgan Bank Tower (the Texas Commerce Tower when I worked there) in downtown Houston. When it was completed in the early '80s, it was the eighth tallest building in the world. It's still the tallest in Houston.
ANTIMATTER: Because DILITHIUM was too short.
Where'd my H go?
Hammurabi was (and still is) a total unknown
Ford produced the Torino models from 1968 to 1976, the Gran Torino from 1972-76. I owned a 72, horrible car.
FIR 😁
Desper-otto, it was needed in useton.
Me too. Faster than usual Saturday but I'm not complaining. Especially with pairs of triple stack 9s and pairs of triple stack 10s. I enjoyed the clues and working out those longer answers.
Hammurabi was (and still is) a total unknown for me too, but the perps dictated it, so it stayed.
My absolute favorite was "Makes even more gross." I was like, What ? and then as GETS A RAISE developed I chuckled.
Evan, too bad “Like fans you can’t turn off?” = AVID didn't make the cut. Good clue wasted.
That Gran Torino looks almost exactly like the one my dad bought after I left for Germany. Must have been celebratory. I came home on leave one Christmas and was taking a girl to the movie in it.
A guy coming down the hill on Racoon Road crossed the center line and was heading right at us. I drove off the road and down in the ditch. He caromed the driver's side fender, crushed in the door and on back to the rear bumper. The impact straightened him out and he was just driving away. I climbed out over her through the passenger window and started running down the road after him. He eventually stopped.
Long story short, he had no insurance, expired plates, and no current driver's license, but didn't get a ticket because of ice on the road. The state trooper that investigated had the same type of accident the night before and the road crews hadn't addressed the ice. My dad's Gran Torino ended up totaled.
C.C. has a puzzle, "Year of the Rat" over at USA Today.
Not much resistance today. I enjoyed my visit to the MIRO museum in Barcelona during our 4 month stay in in Spain in 2003.
Good morning everyone.
Thanks Gary for sharing Evan's insight to the puzzle with us. Much appreciated.
Woohoo. Got it all and FIR. Made some lucky guesses and filled in about 60% but ran hard aground in the SW. Set it aside and read our paper (a 5 min. exercise), poured some more coffee and tackled the SW. Guessed at SNEAD, SPUD, and CRATES, and saw ASSOCIATES, so I had plenty CLOUT to finish.
MIRÓ - The Buffalo Art Museum had some Miró's the last time I was there. Very captivating to view.
SPUD - Navy ships have an informal position of SPUD Coxswain, a commissaryman detailed to handle the duties of preparing fruits and vegetables for the daily menu. He is in charge of the vegetable preparation room and performs his duties with the assistance of mess cooks.
This puzzle was fairly steady for a Saturday, but the NE corner definitely was the last to fill for me. I finally got the L and S of ANNAPOLIS which started that corner rolling, then with HAMMURABI next to it, that whole section was history.
I had HOGAN before SNEAD on the golf legend - but perps took care of that. And I was trying to think of a name for the Femina Cup - but once I had HEX and the year of the competition then AVIATRIX filled nicely!
HG - I thought of Les Miz as well with BARRICADES - it's one of my favorite musicals!
Thanks Evan for explaining your constructing process - the original start looked almost nothing like the finished product!
Happy Chinese New Year to those who celebrate the year of the rat! Cute Google doodle as I came to this site!
Good Morning:
I enjoyed this solve but I miss the Saturday head-scratchers ala Barry Silk. I know, I know, be careful what you wish for! In any case, I had a few hang ups but cracking open the long fill made the rest fall neatly into place.
Thanks, Evan and HG, for the smooth journey and steady guidance.
Have a great day.
The water heater quit, my truck broke down, but I finished a Saturday puzzle right. All is OK in my world.
What does FIR stand for?
FIR fairly quickly but home now, back to pen and newspaper, soap few messy multiple write overs.
Put "Antibellum" for 15a even though it means "before the war". A perp didn't work so rashly changed it to "Victorian" but ran out of letters. LINCOLN ERA is a new historical term to me.
Don't all SLEDS have runners? Otherwise a few slabs of wood bolted together.
DUNNO, I WANNA, now AIN'T. My grade school teachers are turning over.
With "IX" the only femina I could think of was AVIATRIX.
Not a Trekkie but thought I was smart putting "antigravity" till the perps wouldn't work.
"Sly" wolf held me back for ATAD till corrected.
Scratching my head trying to think of a Ford CAR model with 3 letters...*head slap*
Speaking of Fords...
Is it common knowledge that Gerald Ford and Glenn were Freemasons. Gerald, a president of the pentagram design of Washington DC. Was this a mystical crossword "code" clue? Are the "Illuminati" involved? (Eerie background music)
Back to work next week..puzzle tackled as dessert after dinner instead of an ATM cupcake.
Have a nice rest of the weekend.
Well, I got the northwest corner right away--very exciting--and made me hope I'd do as well with the rest. DARE gave me SLEDS and STY, and that helped. Was surprised that I remembered DR NO, and that gave me SILO. Lots of fun, but then things got tougher and needed a lot of cheating. I did get AUNT and ETTA--always great to see her in puzzles so frequently (thanks for telling us about her birthday, Lemonade). Neat to get that picture of the AVIATRIX, Husker Gary, thanks for that. And thank you for telling us about your puzzle construction, Evan.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
Hola!
Thank you, Evan Kalish! Your hobby of visiting and photographing post offices is intriguing. Where do you put all those photos?
This was interesting to fill with all the historical references. I'm surprised so many don't know of the HAMMURABI code. It is one of the earliest codes of law. He was king of Babylon in the 18th century B.C. and expanded his empire by conquering all his neighboring kingdoms.
It's always a treat to see NEIL Diamond in the grid; I like his music especially Sweet Caroline.
Gary, that was a nice RAISE you got though it took a few years. Arizona is definitely not as generous to its teachers.
Thank you for the GRAN commentary!
Have a delightful day, everyone! Time to go collect my dress from the alterations it required.
Very tough for me, but with Jack’s pantomimes and hints, I got ‘Er done. Favorite clue was Makes More Gross - nice mis-direction.
Gran Torino remains one of my favorite movies.
Can someone tell me how to find a list of the abbreviations you folks use - like FIR? Is there a site that has them all? Thanks.
@Wendybird - on the right side of the blog - under the Olio heading there is one category called Comments Section Abbrs (for abbreviations)
https://crosswordcorner.blogspot.com/2009/02/comments-section-abbreviations.html
Anonymous @10:22...you are quite correct, he does it quite a bit, it’s against the rules, but as you have seen “all bloggers are equal, but some are more equal than others”. Plus I do believe he thinks he’s being funny while doing so...which makes it worse, IMO.
But don’t think for a second it’ll stop or that there will be any consequence. But don’t YOU try it...different rules for us.
I thought this Saturday effort was going a bit too fast for a Saturday...then I hit the NE, where it got a bit messy.
Write-overs...BARK/CHAR, LETSUP/LETUPS, GAME/GALA, EVEN/TIER.
On the cooking shows they call it bark, but I understand char working.
Have a great weekend, see you Monday.
Husker Gary thank you for the many illustrations, including the ORGY link.
Hand up this was challenging and the challenge was often with the tricky clues. Notably, for ROT, ORBIT, LANE, CHAR, HUMAN, SWAT. But I will take tricky clues any day rather than names that you either know or you don't. Thanks, Evan Kalish FIR.
Did anyone else try REINSTALL before REINSTATE?
Always a treat to see the ENTERPRISE or any other Star Trek reference. Last summer we were pleased to explore a Star Trek exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
Here you can see DW posing with an original ENTERPRISE model. And me inside the Jeffries Tube that may lead to some of that ANTIMATTER.
From Yesterday:
Lucina thank you for the encouraging words about my postings. Yes, quite a coincidence indeed about the Eleanor Rose riverboat on the Thames to visit the CUTTY SARK. Yes, I have never heard of anyone else with that name except for my mother and that boat!
I liked it, except for the "CAR" clue. It seemed so easy, I could not force myself to write it in. 😃
Husker: Outstanding, informative write-up. Good job!
Well it is "Talk like a pirate!" today in the Tampa Bay area.
Yup, the Gasparilla Pirates have invaded and taken over the city AGAIN!
Always like it when 250,000 drunken idiots march down Bayshore Blvd..
A "Toast-to-ALL" from Villa Incognito at Sunset.
Cheers!
Perfect! Thanks so much.
Wendy
And we have the "Lincoln Lawyer" a good read and movie.
After yesterday's debacle this was a relatively smooth solve. Some difficulty in the SE as I tried partitions and preeminent. POSSE and BFF were familiar millennial language and IRENE Adler was THE Woman for Sherlock (Illustratious Client*). I didn't ink it but thought of wrecks / CRATES. I also had TOw the line.
It helped that I knew about the Sumerian King HAMMURABI, he of the code. Ironically, the "Eye for an Eye was a lessening of the Draconian punishments of the day. Of course Draco was much later.
.
WC
I see I was referring to this Sherlock text
Well,
I am really bummed that I could not even attempt
the puzzle today.
The dead tree version was soaking wet in the driveway,
& the LATimes would only show me an Ad,
but no puzzle...
(wouldja believe I watched three different Ads for nothing?)
(How do I get my money[or life]back...)
(I wuz robbed!)
Anywho,
Just to keep my place as to how far I read the Blog,
here is 23 minutes of Magic that I really enjoyed,
& hope you will to...
If you don't like magic, or do not have the time,
pls be sure to skip to the 19 minute mark
for the baby chickens...
P.S.
Lemonade714,
your a lawyer,
is there a way we could file a multi/joint lawsuit
against the LA Times puzzle site
for making us watch Ads
with no puzzles?
Hi Lucina,
I have several different venues for my post office photos and stories...
I have a blog (not as frequently updated these days as it used to be):
https://blog.evankalish.com/
I post a generally daily post office photo on Instagram, @thepostlandia:
https://www.instagram.com/thepostlandia/
The mother lode is an archive with 30,000+ post office photos, and can be found here:
http://www.postmarks.org/photos/
Cheers!
Evan Kalish
HAMMURABI?
Really, Wilbur? HAMMURABI?!
Who else knew?
You & Lucina?
I admit I've heard of him, but just barely--and not enough for him to stick. I got him through perps, but didn't believe him until I checked him out.
He depressed me half way through this day when I paused to consider how long ago he reigned. In human terms, it feels like eons, but of course in the "grand scheme o' things" it was barely a blink ago. Still, it depresses me to think of entire civilizations that flourished, in which countless other humans lived, loved, fought, and died without our knowing them (or them, us).
It only adds to our own sense of mortality, or Sic transit....
~ OMK
__________
DR: Four diags today, one in front and three behind.
The main anagram points to the fount of fate, or an ancient prophetic locale, such as the Apollo of Delphi. I speak of the...
"SEAT [of] DESTINY"!
Big victory on Friday. Big fail today. I did like caps on protective vest=SWAT and I did know Hammurabi.
I liked this puzzle a lot and was able to solve it all without having to look anything up, but I certainly had to do plenty of thinking, which is good. Fill like HAMMURABI and AVIATRIX are awesome.
I enjoyed working the puzzles and reading your comments all this week but did not have the energy to post comments.
Lucina, you had a dress altered? Are you getting smaller?
Yes, Picard, I had tried REINSTALL before REINSTATE.
Happy Chinese New Year!
Jayce:
Most long dresses I buy are way too long for me. It's not that I'm getting smaller (at least I don't think so) but dresses are sized for much taller women, even in the petite section. And it is still too long. I had to hold it up slightly when walking.
Evan:
Thank you about the information on where to find your post office pics. I look forward to perusing them.
The wedding was beautiful as most weddings are but the dress was really gorgeous. I was told it was bought on line and came from Russia. That makes it a quite international wedding. The bride is half Hispanic from her mother and partly Japanese from her father as well as other (white) and the groom is Korean. That made for an interesting group of attendees.
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