Of this puzzle, Matt was kind enough to write to me, "I was glad to be able to get a variety of frames of reference into this one -- as a solver, I like it when a themeless calls on many different types of knowledge. The shape of this grid emerged from some experiments in unusual patterns -- for instance, I was trying to limit 3-letter entries, especially adjacent ones, and I was interested in wide-open corners like in the NE and SW. I remember the NE corner coming together pretty quickly, which seemed semi-miraculous... and then I paid for that good fortune in the SW, which required some ingenuity. My thanks for Rich and Patti for their improvements, and I hope solvers enjoy the result."
Lights, Camera, Sewell!
Across:
1. Station lineup: CABS - The lineup of taxi CABS has been greatly diminished by lines here
5. Lacks calmness, in modern slang: HAS NO CHILL - I'll file this along with "YAS QUEEN" from last Saturday, in my "Never Heard Before, but Happy To Learn" folder 😐
15. Wrench or twist: HURT
16. SiriusXM channel devoted to "the King": ELVIS RADIO.
17. Feature of some cheeses: ODOR and 25. Semi-hard cheese: EDAM - is said to have almost no odor compared to other cheeses
18. Jigsaw-making process: DIE CUTTING - This machine has a DIE inside for CUTTING your own puzzles after pasting your picture on a special board
19. Site with many alterations: WIKI can explain 35. In an atom's outer shell, two electrons not bonded to another atom: LONE PAIR if you're interested
20. Kelly of "Anchors Aweigh": GENE - His costars were Frank Sinatra and Jerry Mouse
21. Fast-food order: TO GO - Without the space, cluing could have been "21. A 1925 eponymous hero of a 2019 Disney film"
22. Eurasian ecoregion: STEPPE - America's STEPPES
27. Source of relief: OASIS.
30. Take off: DEPART
31. Place with a bucket list?: KFC - You can get a KFC bucket in C.C.'s home town at 101 North Quinling Rd, Quinyonggung Rd, Xi'an China. 32. Steamed by: MAD AT
34. Familia nickname: TIO - Tuve catorce TÍOS en mi vida (I have had fourteen uncles in my life)
35. TV program generally targeted for women: LIFETIME MOVIE -Examples
39. With 38-Across, SLR since 1987: CANON 38. See 39-Across: EOS - The official SLR in Crosswordland
40. London's Old __: VIC - On the corner of the Cut and Waterloo Road in Lambeth, London, England
41. Loosen, in a way: UNSNAP.
43. Portfolio item: ASSET.
45. Brings back to the team, say: REHIRES - Yankee owner George Steinbrenner fired and REHIRED Billy Martin many, many times
47. Best Picture title locale the year after the West Side: ARABIA - 6' 3" Peter O'Toole played 5' 5" T.E. Lawrence
51. Uncommitted: OPEN.
52. What a reservation can prevent: WAIT - A very early Seinfeld episode was about not having a reservation and was shot on only one set. This is often cited as an example of the show "being about nothing"!
35. TV program generally targeted for women: LIFETIME MOVIE -Examples
39. With 38-Across, SLR since 1987: CANON 38. See 39-Across: EOS - The official SLR in Crosswordland
40. London's Old __: VIC - On the corner of the Cut and Waterloo Road in Lambeth, London, England
41. Loosen, in a way: UNSNAP.
43. Portfolio item: ASSET.
45. Brings back to the team, say: REHIRES - Yankee owner George Steinbrenner fired and REHIRED Billy Martin many, many times
47. Best Picture title locale the year after the West Side: ARABIA - 6' 3" Peter O'Toole played 5' 5" T.E. Lawrence
51. Uncommitted: OPEN.
52. What a reservation can prevent: WAIT - A very early Seinfeld episode was about not having a reservation and was shot on only one set. This is often cited as an example of the show "being about nothing"!
55. Philosopher influenced by Hegel: MARX - Last Saturday I had the MARX Brothers.
56. Yellowish-tinted spirit: PALE BRANDY - Very Special Old PALE
59. Stress indicator: Abbr.: ITAL.
 |
The Scream
|
61. Period in ads: NITE.
62. Timely quality: PROMPTNESS - Is Munch's subject very 49. Steamed: IRATE about someone being late or upset because he just found out he was going to be undergoing an 2. Regular review: AUDIT.
63. Barely gets (by): EKES.
Down:
1. Dark-tongued dogs: CHOWS.
3. Destitute: BROKE.
4. Remove, as varnish: STRIP OFF 5. Natural windbreaks: HEDGES.
6. "Fascism is __ told by bullies": Hemingway: A LIE - Wanna read the essay?
7. Old Norse name meaning "young man": SVEN.
8. Not so rough: NICER.
9. Pac-12's Beavers: OSU - It's about an hour drive from the Beavers to the Ducks
10. Early TV component: CRT - Philo Farnsworth's product
11. Genteel gesture: HAT TIP.
12. Like much spoken language: IDIOMATIC - 27 Canadian speech IDIOMS
13. Chantelle offering: LINGERIE - Google at your leisure
14. Access, in a way: LOG ONTO.
23. Indy front-runner?: PACE CAR - This year it was a 2019 Corvette in Longbeach Metallic Red Tint for the Indy 500
26. Move beyond: GET OVER - "Hey, life's unfair. GET OVER it!"
28. "Game on!": I'M IN and 53. Play fare: ANTE - An interesting way to ANTE
29. The Apolima Strait separates its two main islands: SAMOA.
31. Greet affectionately: KISS HELLO.
33. Escape rooms: DENS.
36. Red annoyance?: TAPE - Government RED TAPE held up a viaduct in our town for seventeen years and finally it just became too expensive to build. Meanwhile a little girl died because her ambulance was blocked by a train for ten minutes.
37. Wheat germ nutrient: VITAMIN E - All you need to know
38. ABBA's genre: EURO POP - I never miss a chance to post an ABBA video. Enjoy!
e42. Evening hr.: NINE PM.
44. Mythical wine lovers: SATYRS - Guys out for a good time
46. Proust character married to Odette: SWANN - Odette, in full Odette Swann, née de Crécy, fictional character, the vulgar wife of Charles SWANN in Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time (1913–27), by Marcel Proust. You're welcome.
48. Cloth-dyeing method: BATIK.
50. Beetle bars: AXLES - partsgeek.com can get you one. Very tricky, Matt!
54. Shakespearean warning word: IDES.
57. Christian denom.: BAP - BAPTIST
58. Slowing, in mus.: RIT - A very familiar usage
Comments on Dr. Sewell's puzzle?
33 comments:
DNF. The center-top stopped me. 5d=hEdgES, 7d=sVeN, 5a=hAs NO, 18a=dIe, & 20a=gENE were all naticks. I also missed a WAG at LiNE PAIR + EiS.
When traveling from STEPPE to OASIS,
You'll notice that climate's the basis
For changing terrain --
The steppe has more rain,
While a dry-heat mirage in mendacious!
Alas for Kentucky Fried Chicken!
Kentucky Fried Chicken took a lickin'!
Kentucky objected
Chicken rejected,
And Fried caused too much bucket kickin'!
{B, B-.}
Good morning!
Got 'er done in good time, but it was a struggle. Matthew gave us just enough WAGable answers to make it doable. I've never read it, but from somewhere in my file of useless information I dredged up Swann's Way. That same file cabinet yielded SAMOA. Thanx for the diversion, Matthew (I took you for a scientist with that 35d cluing.) Enjoyed the tour, Husker (It took longer to read your Canadianisms that it did to do the puzzle).
ELVIS RADIO: My car came with a year of "free" (meaning: I've already paid for it) SiriusXM. I think it's simpler just to leave the radio on NPR FM. I can't imagine that I'll extend SiriusXM when it expires.
I needed to drive out FM1485 on my M-o-W route on Thursday. It's a two-lane highway, but was completely shut down for an accident. After sitting for 20 minutes, I decided to find a way around it. Had to make a 14-mile detour just to get back to the highway beyond the accident. Grrrrrr. That's the price for living "in the sticks."
This was really tough for me - I had just a few "for sure"s in a sea of white! Not having a lot of experience with racing I had POLE CAR to LEAD CAR until PACE CAR stayed in place. I had no idea where the Apolima strait was, but perps told me it wasn't in Italy but SAMOA! I thought the Proust character would also be a first name since Odette was a first name, but no it was SWANN the last name....and on it went.
I know a lady here who probably has ELVIS RADIO on 24/7 - everything she wears has Elvis on it: earrings, shirts, socks, shoes....she goes to Graceland at least 4 times a year- definitely a FAN-atic!
Thanks HG and to Matthew!
Good Morning:
This was a super-duper challenge but with much P and P, I finally finished w/o help in 37:10. The SW and NE were both bears and the NE was the last to fall. Unknowns galore today: Has no chill, Elvis Radio, Swann, Pale Brandy, Lone Pair, Vitamine, Sven, and Samoa, as clued. Phew! My Curtsy became Hat tip and my Taco morphed into To go. My favorite C/As were Red annoyance=Tape and Timely quality=Promptness.
Thanks, Matthew, for a strenuous but satisfying solve and thank you, HG, for another expo filled with eye-pleasing visuals and links. I knew Chow’s had dark tongues, but I never saw a blue one before.
One of my smoke alarms went off last night and chirped for a few seconds every half hour or so for about four hours, then stopped chirping and hasn’t made a peep since. Is this a new warning system rather than the non-stop chirping of before? Anyway, my nephew is coming to change the batteries in all four of the alarms, as they were all installed at the same time, so no sense waiting for the others to start chirping.
FLN
Spitz, I enjoyed reading your clever verse.
Jayce, I’m typing this on my new iPad and slowly adjusting to some of the new features. I started out with the very first iPad, then progressed to the first iPad Mini, and now to the latest version, iPad7. This has features that I will probably never use but the price was too good to pass up. The keyboard configuration has changed, so that’s going to take some time to adapt to, but, overall, I’m quite pleased. Oh, one more adjustment is to the increased weight vs the featherweight Mini.
Have a great day.
A bit of a slog, but got it done without major hurdles. Some fun cluing to contend with.
I got this from Matt today as a follow-up to a question I asked him:
Hello Gary,
Thanks again for reviewing the puzzle -- I will check out the blog this morning.
You asked about triple-stacks. There are some strategies, but yes, I'd say that trial and error is part of it. Jeff Chen has said that the difference between 'meh' fill and good fill is the willingness to sift through 100 possible options in order to find the one that's just a tiny bit better than the other 99. I'm sure that stubborn persistence is a common personality trait among constructors!
Matt
Returning from an early morning hockey game in a freezing arena to watch my 7 yo grandson play. My brain obvioulsy froze too.
Plus the inside Christmas decorations won't take themselves down... so I surrendered early. Finished the center and SE then figuratively threw the pen across the room
Been listening to ABBA since they first started recording never heard the term. This puzzle was my "Waterloo"
What do the Europeans call our music? "Ameripop"?
Back from the Florida Gulf shores I was thinking "red tide"....much more than just a nuisance than REDTAPE
The only yellowish tints in our liquor cabinet come Galliano and Limoncello. Almost wrote in the latter but the perps wouldn't work
Shouldn't it be a jigsaw "puzzle" making process? The clue sounds like a process to make a jigsaw itself which is a tool.
Time to "UNDECK the halls with bows of fake holly!!"
DNF A total slog and no joy. Taking the cluing from a Frank Longo playbook most being quite a stretch.
I had a really hard time with this one. The first time through, I had almost nothing filled in. It took me over twice as long to finish as my normal Saturday time, but I did it! A bunch of the answers were completely unfamiliar to me: HASNOCHILL, PALEBRANDY, and LONEPAIR. Also, I didn't know what Chantelle was. But one thing I really appreciated is that the puzzle had very few proper nouns, so the answers slowly dropped into place after a lot of pondering. I could figure out the above four answers because none were proper nouns, and the clues for LONEPAIR and PALEBRANDY confirmed to me that I was on the right track once enough crosses were completed.
The puzzle was extremely well-clued in general. Great job, Matt!
One thing in general that I don't love about themeless puzzles is that, since there is no unifying theme and the longer answers are often more in the corners, they can feel like you are doing 4 different unrelated puzzles - NW, NE, SW, and SE, with very few linking squares. I liked that NE and SW didn't feel isolated, but that construction made NW and SE extremely isolated. There is only one square joining those corners to the rest of the board. I did SE without too much trouble but had nothing except for STEPPE and xxxxPOFF in the NW for a very long time. Finally, ODOR came to mind, and then the rest fell into place.
Really hard, but satisfying.
The northwest corner eluded me today, and I was not happy with the clues! "Wrench or twist" seems very specific; that leads to the very general "hurt"? And why is an "audit" cause for concern if it is only a "Regular review"? I guess that makes me a sore loser.
A nice challenging Saturday. Needed lots of perps and educated guesses to finish. Some nice clueing, once I got KFC was able to finish the SW corner. OILPAINTER was the last to get.
Long wait until 8:00 PM for a rare wild card game for my Patriots. They dug themselves a big hole with the loss to Miami last week. Doesn’t look like it’s going to be our year. Oh well, we can't win it every year.
This makes two Saturdays in a row that were slog fests. I guess I "have no chill" for these.
JB2
On the first pass I felt "RITarded", especially all across the North. I knew CHOW and figured it was ELVIS but not RADIO. Let me give a HAT TIP to Mr. Sewell for putting the HURT on me today. PROMPTNESS didn't describe my solve; it took three passes to complete. Never heard of HAS NO CHILL, Charles SWANN, or PALE BRANDY. SATYRS, VITAMIN E, SVEN, & SAMOA were unknowns but there were enough perps to correctly guess them. Agnes must be my twin in solving.
LIFETIME MOVIE. aka The Man Hating Channel- DW switches between them and Hallmark Movies. I can tell which one she is watching by the different types of background music. Same plot for every Hallmark Christmas movie. Ditto for the Lifetime shows.
NaomiZ- I only gut HURT from perps. But in retrospect you can 'twist of wrench' you back and it will HURT.
LONE PAIR- glad I have a chemistry degree for that one.
Most EUROPOP music is what I would call electronic dance music.
Well, I was delighted to get the whole southeast corner (okay, it's a pretty small one) and a bit of the middle east before I got stuck and had to start cheating. I got started with IRATE and took a chance on BATIK. That gave me both MARX and ARABIA and AXLES and that filled in VITAMIN E. Took me a minute to realize stress referred to writing, not to emotion (I guess because I was having some stress trying to work this puzzle) but eventually got ITALic. Knew London's Old VIC, and along with the vitamin, that gave me MOVIE (although the LIFE TIME took a life time to fill in). I also got SWANN instantly--hey, I remember Proust. But I kept thinking MUNCH referred to chomping on food, and so his OIL PAINTING eluded me. And so it went, a typical and fun Saturday morning--many thanks, Matthew. And thank you, too, Husker Gary, for your always helpful write-up.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
Wow, this was a toughie. I had to put it down twice to reset my brain. A very gritty puzzle, indeed.
Nope, not today. Correctly finished all until I got to the deep south where I could not get PALE BRANDY, OIL PAINTER, PROMPTNESS, SWANN, ANTE and IDES.
Put the puzzle down multiple times thinking that with a break, something might appear that wasn't seen before. Nope.
Probably the most time I've spent on a puzzle in years.
Thanks for the great write up, Husker Gary. Some of those answers I missed should have come to me, but it just wasn't to be. That read on Canadian slang was enjoyable.
CrosseEyedDave, I hope all went well with your wife's surgery and that she's recovering comfortably.
Hand up this was difficult with long unknowns and tricky clues. Amazed to FIR in one pass in less than an hour.
Husker Gary you moved me to post with your Philo T Farnsworth visualization of the original CRT for TV.
DW and I were pleasantly surprised to find this memorial statue to Philo T Farnsworth and his CRT in the Presidio in San Francisco last month!
We were walking from the bus to the Disney Museum which is also in the Presidio. Near the Philo T Farnsworth statue were some other notable memorials. Including one to Yoda. I will save that for another occasion.
Still eagerly awaiting an explanation for the cryptic LWEEK yesterday.
Fine puzzle, easier than I thought at first, but I turfed it in the SW. Hello, TTP. I didn't know LONE PAIR. I couldn't guess KISS HE---. Sometimes kiss hello is just a formality like a handshake, not a sign of real affection. Pale brandy? My spirit was non alcoholic. I normal use spirits with an S for liquor. OIL PAINTER? The only MUNCH I know is about snacking.
I blush to have missed EOS. I have often heard of that camera.
Even if I had gotten the SW, I had HASN'T for 5A instead of HAS NO . It was not Texas, but Ohio.
A worthy challenge, Matthew and a great expo, Gary.
I agree, Picard. Too bad the constructor from yesterday did not get back to us about his version of L WEEK.
I watched only one and a part of one Hallmark Christmas movie. Too formulaic. I wouldn't call them man-hating, just predictable. In the one I watched completely the girl came around to love the man and to loveChristmas. He taught her his values.
Like others, I appreciated having very few proper names - this puzzle was tough enough without them! Thank you, Matthew for a real workout, and thank you Husker Gary for all the visuals. I loved the ABBA video.
The SW almost did me in. I fell for the misdirection on munch and did not know LONE PAIR or .EUROPOP. Thank heaven for perps and some lucky wags.
Audits are not just for questionable tax returns. Our HOA schedules a regular audit every year by a CPA firm to be sure we are managing our funds properly and maintaining adequate reserves.
Hello Everyone.
Thanks for the comments on my long-ago New Year's poem posted yesterday.
Hearty welcome aboard to Shyster.
Thanks Gary for another great informative intro.
I was as surprised as I could be by actually finishing today's challenge with only one look-up. I guessed at Malta before I saw there was a perp problem; so checked on and entered SAMOA. At least the two 'a's were spotted correctly. Also had Kant before MARX, but changed it onmy own. OIL PAINTER was a total flaming wild-assed guess but it was perfect. Pleased when ARABIA loomed. LoA is one of my favorite flicks. Loved the scene with Lawrence and Gen. Allenby in the Cairo officer's club.
Thanks Matthew for pushing my limits.
ABBA's genre - Hi, Swenglish Mom. Glad to see you 'stopping" in.
RIT - Rochester Institute of Technology. BH's and #2 son's alma mater.
I didn’t realize I was parsing Vitamin E incorrectly as one word until reading the comments. No wonder I never heard of Vitamine!
Hi All!
Better than a typical Saturday outing for me with ~3/4 solved before crying Uncle, er TIO. Proud of myself for nailing EURO POP and LONEPAIR w/ nary a perp. 31d was going to be "gives a hug" but perps wouldn't agree (except for re-sign [See: below])
Thanks Matthew for both the puzzle and giving HG some inside baseball.
Thanks HG for the nudge(s) I needed to EKE OVER the finish line in the SW (to the right of BAP).
WOs: US-? [where OSU is], TIA b/f gender-bending, GET past, RE-sIgnS a 'team' player to a $MM contract. Plus, I forgot the P in PROM(p)TNESS so there's a bit of a inky mess there too.
Fav: OASIS [Champagne Supernova - 7:28]. They were once called the next BEaTLES; didn't quite pan out.
{B+, A}
Ray-O: DW paid Youngest to take her load re: un-decking the halls. Youngest & I got 'em all down in about 2 hours (then I returned to "finish" the puzzle). Oh, and Limoncello, I was a sucker for that in Italy too. So good after dinner.
Picard - is Presidio park in the same vicinity as the Japanese Tea Garden? If so, I've been there but totally missed the CRT and Yoda. Next time we visit DW's aunt I'M IN.
D-O: I have SiriusXM in the garage (on a base-station for the portable receiver that's no longer sold), DW's car, and streaming. I'll flip from FM-NPR to 122-NPR when the former is a replay (or boring/annoying [see: Live from Here]). The streaming option isn't cheap but I can listen in my computing loft, at work, wherever.
That's the long way of saying ELVIS RADIO was a gimme 'cuz I've heard the ads.
BigE - I wouldn't call LIFE TIME MOVIES man hating so much as setting unreal expectations of what guys are like. We don't listen, we fix; events (except for sports parties) don't need to be "big and planned"; and we don't have emotions other than "I'm happy" or "I'm sad/out of beer." There it is, ladies, a guide to your simple man.
Speaking of... Anyone else miss Splynter's Saturday expos at 13d? :-)
IM - LOL VITIMINE - related to Vegemite, right? ;-) [@1:13]
//Vegimite WIKI page.
Well, Eldest is on her way back to OU. She should be stopping for gas in the next 30 min and text that she's just north of Dallas [where Braum's' Country begins.]
Y'all have a great afternoon!
Cheers, -T
A tough one, appropriate for Saturday. I did better than I expected--got all of 3 corners before I needed one cheat in the SW sector. I don't believe I've heard the term EURO-POP before, but it was KFC I needed help with. Ah, well.
The history of the Old VIC is interesting. Lilian Baylis took over the management of her Aunt's music hall & coffee house and, wishing to provide edifying entertainment to the working classes, placed an emphasis on Shakespeare's plays.
Many moons ago, as a student, I attended Old VIC productions. That's where I saw a young actress play a remarkable Juliet. She was a little poke of a thing named Judi Dench.
~ OMK
____________
DR: Two diagonals, one on either side.
The near side anagram tells us to take our sustaining medicines regularly, even if they are compounded by charlatans. We are reminded to...
"SIP NOSTRUMS"!
I liked this puzzle but it was too hard for me. Thanks anyway, Matthew Sewell, for giving us such a well-constructed puzzle. From Gary's write-up, it's clear you put a lot of thought into it.
Hand up for wanting GALLIANO for that yellowish spirit. FRAIDY CAT GENIE didn't fit.
I learned that the Eurasian STEPPE is an ecoregion.
Irish Miss, I'm glad you are getting good use out of your new iPad. When I first got an iPad, I didn't appreciate it or use it much, but now I use it a lot for (1) email, (2) reading the news, (3) browsing and doing research on the web, (4) texting, and (5) as a Kindle substitute. I even downloaded and read the entire Mueller report with it.
We have many relatives who live in the greater Toronto area and I have never heard any of them use slang like that. Maybe it's because when we do chat they adapt to speaking with us American hosers.
Our car radio is pretty much permanently tuned to NPR on FM.
Tony, Vegemit E? haha
Good wishes to you all.
OMK - I'm sippin' a NOSTRUM now... //good source of VITAMIN E :-)
We've had EUROPOP ~10 times in the last few years.
Now at Sprockets it's time we dance! :-)
Great story of Dame Judi! I loved her character in As Time Goes By. [random clip apropos of nothing]
Cheers, -T
Tony- the few times I ever witnessed any LIFETIME MOVIE it seemed like there was always a scoundrel, a single/divorced woman, and a hero man.
FLN- concerning LORI, I know where you went to school in Ruston. No bribe or donation needed to get in there. Ditto for LSU-S and LSUNO.
Back in 1983, my boss's daughter was going to Tech and having a rip-roaring time with a 2.1 GPA. His wife suddenly died and he wanted his daughter to get out of Ruston. So he came down to NO to visit Tulane and was told she needed at least a 3.0 to transfer. After a nice 5-figure donation--- a miracle happened. She was taking classes on St. Charles Ave. the next semester.
Thankful for a tough puzzle today,
as it kept me busy until DW got discharged.
Everything went well, & I got her back home today.
Now for the long recovery.
Irish Miss,'
Anonymous-T was the one who told me why I could
not post links from my Ipad. It was the " key was
squiggles instead of straight lines needed for hot link commands.
That's when I found out the Ipad has a whole bunch of different
keyboard layouts to choose from. I am sure your old keyboard is in there
somewhere if you look in settings under keyboard...
I'm very late to the party today but I had to bring my Canadian perspective. Thanks for the fun, Matthew and HuskerG.
I worked at this CW over several periods of time, needing P& P to finish. Many inkblots and actually FIWed . . . but it is Saturday!
I started by wanted my "station lineup" to be a Queue (see Canadian slang) but it wouldn't fit.
I noted HAS NO CHILL (which is not part of my Canadian slang) crossing IDIOMATIC., and also noted I'M IN and ANTE
I wanted a RomCom MOVIE since this Canadian has not heard of LIFETIME Movie.
My "site with many alterations" was Etsy before the clever WIKI.
I was totally misdirected by Munch, and KISS HELLO never did get completed correctly.
Now to the Canadian slang (Ok speech idioms) per link at 12D. I recognized most of them, and many we have discussed here (Loonie, Pop, Timmies, Zed, Toque, Runners, and yes this grandma says Chesterfield). But the 6ix, You sayin', That's jokes, whale tab are not in my vocabulary . Do you not use Kerfuffle? - beautiful word best translated by the common CW Ado.
But I was amazed to discover you do not use the term Pencil crayons. That's what they are - crayons in the form of a pencil. I had to Google to find your term. Coloring pencil just sounds wrong . . . and besides it is missing a U (just like ODOR today).! LOL!
One idiom was missing IMHO. Tea. That is hot tea made with boiling water (and Red Rose tea bags in a china pot preferably). I add sugar and a drip of milk but that does not make it Sweet Tea(I have a story about that for another day). Even Timmies sells Tea (they call it Steeped Tea.
Good night all.
Hello? Matthew? I want my brain back.
After the first complete run through I think I only had 7 or 8 complete answers. But, as often happens with me by the forty-leventh go ‘round, I did finish with all correct entries. Didn’t count as FIR though, because the SW (hello, nearly everybody) required some red-letter assistance.
I did know Edvard Munch; his “Scream” has long been a favorite of mine. And I also have (and even use occasionally) a CANON EOS.
I never heard of PALE BRANDY, and the LONE PAIR eluded me for way too long. EUROPOP has been a thing for at least a couple of decades and I do admit to listening to quite a bit of it. SATYRS were part of the (Greek or Roman, I misremember which) mythology from very early days.
Well, I have put off procrastinating long enough (or maybe not). Here’s to a kinder, gentler puzzle tomorrow. Enjoy your Sunday.
I'm sorry, but I've lived in a cave for seven decades and don't have the vast experience of good Dr. Sewell which he blatantly displays in this puzzle. Being a mere mortal, I am unable to compete with Sewell's gargantuan experience with and comprehension of all matters of knowledge in heaven and Earth. Therefore, I humbly request you to excuse my participation in your next puzzle. Rubbish!!!
This was literally a long days journey into night. I started at Breakfast Station in Dunellon (hi Jinx, c'mon over some time).
I filled a few boxes then joined an erudite discussion of whether the picture on the grape jelly was actually a blueberry.
I then needed more solving but was having pen problems. This Mc Donald's kid whom I befriended a week ago miraculously fixed both of them. A few more boxes filled. 90% of the clues were impossible but I'm resolved never to quit nor cheat*.
SW was my Waterloo but Ney arrived finally in the guise of PROMPTNESS (I originally thought Punctuality and before that Permanence- I was trying to come up with the antonym of habitually late**, knew the word but the brain ain't what it used to be).
Now the dominoes started to drop. LONE?-PAIR, Shakespeare warning? Not HARK , begins with I ???- ah IDES.
I had finally got the NW when WIKI popped. 60 odd clues and easily 50 baffled me.
But, today I'm no-box Wilbur with a beyond hope FIR.
.
WC
* I'll ask Phil a gaming question and Betsy yoga or astrology
** That's me. When I finally arrive at my mtgs the "WAGS" all look at their wrists. I don't have to mention that they don't wear watches.
I might add. As we prepared to depart Dunellon for Sun City my newspaper was an inky mess. So... I went to the online version and never filled a single box. But...
When I arrived home there was my newspaper on the ground. Let's give it one more try. I ended up filling the new xword out with clean and sparkling blue ink
Perhaps I'll get it framed
. WC
Didn’t think I’d be able to finish this one. I was stuck on easy things like “chows” and “axles” but finally got everything in the right place, which I don’t always accomplish on a Saturday puzzle. Go, me!
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