Theme: Happy Birthday! [Maybe?] Today might or might not be the birthday of the below identified composer. Nobody really knows. In the theme, his name and some of his works or identified by either name or number.
17A. With 63-Across, musician born 12/16/1770: LUDWIG VAN.
63A . See 17-Across: BEETHOVEN.
Wikipedia
He was baptized on the 17th, so his birthday is assumed to be the 16th, but that is just a guess. He could have been a week or a month earlier. Anyway, later in life, he wrote some music. You can read more about him here.
39 D. 63-Across work: SYMPHONY. An elaborate musical composition for full orchestra, typically in four movements, at least one of which is traditionally in sonata form.
26 A. Nickname for a 63-Across 39-Down: CHORAL. Numerically, the 9th, and last.
Well, this set my write up back by 23 minutes, but it was time well spent. Give it a listen if you have the time. Schiller's poem is a hot, sappy mess, but I guess it works in the original German. And Beethoven's setting makes it truly heavenly.
40 A. Numerically, 63-Across' C-minor 39-Down: FIFTH. Which gives us what is probably the most recognizable 4 note sequence in all of music.
50 A. Nickname for a 63-Across 39-Down: EROICA. Numerically, the 3rd.
10 D. Nickname for a 63-Across 39-Down: PASTORAL. Here is a Disneyfied excerpt.
Hi, gang. Jazzbumpa here to conduct today's musical adventure. Once upon a time, there was trombone themed puzzle, and by chance in landed on my blogging day. This one is just about as fitting. Beethoven was my introduction to what we call classical music, though he stood on the bridge between the classical and romantic periods. Having him as my intro made it hard for me to appreciate the much simpler - and genuinely classical - music of his teacher Haydn. But everything builds over time, and without Haydn and Mozart, there could have been no Beethoven. Let's move on through this score, and hope there are no sour notes.
Across:
5. "Yikes!": JEEZ. Oh, my!
9. Fencing blades: EPEES. A narrow-bladed sword with a blunted tip.
14. Tarzan raisers: APES. I guess Jane was the gorilla his dreams.
15. Cher and Sade, vocally: ALTI. Voices with range above tenor and below soprano.
16. 16th-century English queen: MARY I. "Bloody Mary" Tudor [1516 -1558] in her 5 year reign, she had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake.
19. North Sea county: ESSEX. Located north-east of London.
20. German steel city: ESSEN. Eight of the 100 largest publicly held German corporations are head-quartered there.
21. Offered an arm to: ESCORTED. As into a formal event.
23. Basics: ABCS.
25. Ming most look up to: YAO. Because he is 7'6" tall. He started his basketball career in Shanghai, China, then played for the Houston Rockets from 2002-2011. He was an 8-time all star.
29. Literate: WELL READ.
34. __ Vegas: LAS. Sin City, it's been called.
35. Marks for removal: DELES. To be deleted.
37. "Inferno" poet: DANTE. From whom we get out modern, and at best only marginally Biblical concepts of hell and the devil.
38. Story lines: ARCS.
42. Tolkien trilogy, to fans: LOTR. Lord Of The Rings.
43. Remains: STAYS.
45. It's usually not a hit: SIDE-B. Now here is some nostalgia - referring to the presumably less popular song on one side of a 45 RPM phonograph record.
47. Toon crime fighter __ Possible: KIM. An American animated action comedy-adventure television series created by Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle for Disney Channel. The title character is a teenage girl tasked with fighting crime on a regular basis while coping with everyday issues commonly associated with adolescence. It ran from 2002 to 2007, and was a favorite of our oldest granddaughter.
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48. Spread throughout: PERMEATE.
52. Pipe plastic: PVC. PolyVinyl Chloride is the third most widely produced thermoplastic, after polyethylene and polypropylene.
53. Like cotton candy: SPUN.
54. Sticky stuff: ADHESIVE. Glue
58. Facebook action: SHARE.
62. Unverified word: RUMOR. A circulating story of uncertain or doubtful truth.
65. Tony winner Menzel: IDINA. She originated the role of Elphaba Thropp in the Broadway musical Wicked in 2003. Later she sang some songs in animated Disney movies.
66. The M in BLT?: MAYO. As an option.
67. Artist's quarters: LOFT. An upper story or attic in a building, directly under the roof, presumably with north light..
67. Artist's quarters: LOFT. An upper story or attic in a building, directly under the roof, presumably with north light..
68. Record material: VINYL. Here, phonograph records and PVC make another appearance - together.
69. Chopped side dish: SLAW. Cabbage fragments, typically with a 66 A- based dressing.
70. Some traffic court cases: Abbr.: DWIS. Driving While Intoxicated.
Down:
1. New Haven school: YALE. Where the Elis roam.
2. Musical work: OPUS. These are given numbers, approximately in the order of publication date. 40 A is Beethoven's OPUS 67.
3. H.S. proficiency tests: GEDS. General Educational Development, indicating an approximate equivalence to a high school diploma.
4. Oath beginning: I SWEAR. And you'd better tell the truth.
5. XK-E, for short: JAG. The Jaguar E Class, Marketed in the U.S. as the XK-E, was manufactured from 1961 to 1975.
6. Seasonal aides: ELVES. Santa's helpers, also known as subordinate clauses.
7. Greek vowels: ETAS. Notable, because they look like h's.
8. It makes cents: ZINC. Usually when mixed with copper.
9. Important gem in Oz: EMERALD. I was thinking in Australia, which would be the OPEL. But it doesn't have enough letters. In the wonderful land of OZ, there is the EMERALD city.
11. Gaelic language: ERSE. A Scottish or Irish language.
12. Watched closely: EYED. Peered at.
13. Touchdown points: SIX. The kicked extra point used to be automatic, but many have been missed this season.
18. __ humor: grumpy: IN BAD. Irascible.
22. Bony Olive: OYL. Popeye's often disloyal girlfriend.
Wikipedia
24. Musical symbol: CLEF.
26. Bracelet fastener: CLASP. Hook and lock mechanism.
27. Gold rush storyteller: HARTE. Francis Brett HARTE [1836-1902] was an American short story writer and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush.
28. "The Odd Couple" roommate: OSCAR. Madison and Felix Unger from the Neil Simon play and the resulting movie and TV series.
29. Group self-pic, in slang: WEFIE. Everybody crowd in tight.
30. Started, as a co.: ESTD. Established
31. Japanese mushroom: ENOKI. Sounds like a minor Star Wars character. But it is a mushroom that naturally grows on the stumps of the Chinese hackberry tree (Celtis sinensis, "enoki" in Japanese) and on other trees, such as ash, mulberry and persimmon trees.
32. Web site: ATTIC. Not the world wide web - the top floor of a house that seldom gets entered by a human.
33. Stuffed Jewish dish also called kishke: DERMA. Make it here.
36. Itemize: LIST.
41. Dickens sycophant: HEEP. Uriah, a fictional character created by Charles Dickens in his 1850 novel David Copperfield. Heep is one of the main antagonists of the novel. His character is notable for his cloying humility, unctuousness, obsequiousness, and insincerity, making frequent references to his own "'umbleness".
44. A few: SEVERAL. Less than many.
46. Salon item: BRUSH.
49. Summer coolers, briefly: ACS. Air Conditioners, not cooling drinks.
51. Indefinitely suspended: ON HOLD. In limbo.
53. "Later!": SEE YA. TTYL.
54. Autobahn auto: AUDI. Audi AG is a German automobile manufacturer that designs, engineers, produces, markets and distributes luxury vehicles. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group.
55. Key of the 26-Across 39-Down: Abbr.: D-MINor. Has one flat. And should probably have been included with the theme entries.
56. System/360s, e.g.: IBMS. Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Systems? Nope. Just a family of mainframe computer systems from IBM that were delivered between 1965 and 1978.
57. Piccata meat: VEAL. It is sliced, dredged in flour, browned, then served in a sauce containing lemon juice, butter, and capers. Yum!
59. Openly declare: AVOW. Or Aver. Always needs perps.
60. Mortgagee's option, for short: REFInance. Looking for a lower interest rate and/or monthly payments.
61. Laryngitis docs: ENTS. Ear, Nose and Throat specialists.
62. Ohio or Mississippi: Abbr.: RIV. River
64. Auto club service: TOW. As, frx, when my transmission decided to stop transmitting 20 miles north of Muskegon, and 200 miles from home. That was fun.
So we reach the coda of another Wednesday, melody complete and chords resolved. And every day is somebody's birthday. HBD, if it's yours.
Cool regards!
JzB
Some days the stars do align and we get JzB as our maestro for this tribute to LVB. Well done, Ron and Brock. The theme was so rich that the rest flowed easily for me. I enjoyed the ESSEN ESSEX and ESCORTED TRILOGY . Also, MAYO directly above SLAW . I missed out on the KIM POSSIBLE TV run, but I did get to see IDINA MENZEL playing ELPHABA with my sons on Broadway.
ReplyDeleteDecember is almost gone, enjoy the rest of 2020
BTW, isn't interesting how the world follow our puzzles with SIA now a hot topic in the news with her kerfuffle with SHIA LABEOUF . The thought of SHIA and SIA as a couple was amusing but the allegations are not.
ReplyDeleteFIW with KId/DERdA. Kind of a waste of time fighting through all of the names.
ReplyDeleteAgreed
DeleteGood morning!
ReplyDeleteMake that two in a row. JEEZ. (Hello, Jayce.) Tried ALTO for Cher and Sade, but ZONC set me straight. Didn't know that Jewish dish nor the toon crime-fighter. Went with KID rather than KIM. Bzzzzzzt! Thanx for playing. Really nice puzzle, Brock. Couldn't have landed on a better blogger than JzB -- serendipitous.
Now here's something completely different for you wordsmiths. The word "quixotic" is derived from the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. So why is the X in "quixotic" pronounced as an X and not as an H? Inquiring minds want to know.
Tom, it is the same reason CAIRO Illinois rhymes with Karo syrup in our world I would guess.
ReplyDeleteREALLY annoying cluing with so many cross-references. I hate clues that don't clue anything.
ReplyDeleteYogi's quote: because his house was on a circle road, so whether you went right or left at the entrance fork, you still got there.
Thx for the explanation of DERMA, I thought kishke was going to be a spelling variant of kiszka, a Polish blood sausage that only my mom and I liked. God knows what the cholesterol count in it is.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN wrote a CHORAL
ReplyDeleteIn a style often called a PASTORAL
His OPUS in D-MINOR, his FIFTH SYMPHONY
He named EROICA, ("Heroic" to you and me).
The ESSEN Philharmonic recorded it on VINYL,
A version some take as definitive and final.
I'm not musically LITERATE, I'm nearly deaf,
Don't know the difference, ALTO or trebel CLEF.
But Beethoven did, tho he also went deaf;
He still composed, lest the world be bereft.
This Beethoven tribute took 6:20. Didn't know the Jewish dish, but knew Kim from visiting Epcot World.
ReplyDeletebillcohoes, kishka is a kosher variation of kisza LINK .
ReplyDeleteC.C. has the USA Today today
Well this solved quickly - mostly because I'm a big Beethoven fan. Back in my college days I went to the now archaic "listening room" in the library when I had a paper to write. I often struggled with stopping the prep/research and just doing the writing. So I would go there and check out a complete set of Beethoven's symphonies and I had to have at least a paragraph written of my rough draft for each side of an LP.
ReplyDeleteD-O I think the difference with pronouncing "quixotic" is because it is in English and Quixote is pronounced with a Spanish pronounciation.
Thanks JzB and Brock!
Nice expo, Jazzbumper! However, OPEL is the German GM car, which I tried for 51 down before AUDI. The aussie gem is OPAL. Easy to confuse.
ReplyDeleteMy problems were in the mideast, not knowing LOTR, KIM, or DERMA.
Thank you Brock! I am delighted with this puzzle and in fact am listening at this moment to Beethoven’s Piano Quartet No. 1 (written when he was 15, the first ever in the genre), courtesy of Balmer’ radio station WBJC FM, which will be playing nothing but his works all day. For those of you who are out-of-town you can get them on www.wbjc.com. Be beware they are fund raising today, but they probably wouldn’t mind a DOS attack (they really need the money).
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks to Jazzbumpa for an excellent review. I would add just one thing and that is today (subject to JzB’s caveats) is Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th Birthday! In addition, it’s my DIL’s 50th birthday. Her claim to fame is that she’s raising our 8 beautiful grandchildren, all geniuses of course!
Right now I’ve got to go try to get our (my BIL and I) snowblower started before the MONSTER hits. I hope to be back later.
Bill
Not a fan of so many clues chasing me around the puzzle to come up with answers. Feel like I was on a scavenger hunt and I'm way too lazy for that. Plus lose my place too easily. FIR with perpswalks
ReplyDeleteParticularly enjoyed this OPUS
Had "Alto" first but wait it's a plural clue so ALTI....Shoulda paid closer attention. Cher is tall (Italian feminine alta, plural alte) but her singing "voice" is alto (ALTI plural). After surfing the web I couldn't find a convincing explanation to the musical question "why are the italian words Soprano and Alto masculine when the singers are feminine?"
Next....I put mint for cent maker...clever clue , but wrong answer. (JEEm?)
YOGI's MOST famous catch phrase.
If you're keeping score. Religious killings
Mary Tudor 280 Protestants
Elizabeth Tudor 450+ Catholics.
And the winner is...
Summer coolers: Immediately, erroneously put ADE (again it's plural!, pay attention!) which unglued me from ADHESIVE for a while
ESSEX: at first thought it said North Sea Country (mask must be fogging up my glasses) ***yeah, a likely excuse***....53 across: Like cotton candy: "no" (I don't) was too short an answer.
Had this discussion months ago (I think with YR?) but SEVERAL still sounds like the opposite of a few at least to me...... WEFIE , C'mon..betcha wouldn't pass scrabble muster.. Sheesh!
Mom got her GED at age 60. Never went to.HS... She aced it.
Had an AUDI years ago. Worse car I ever "owned". Never knew each morning if it would start. Constantly needing service. So happy at the end of the 3 year lease. (Spitz how do you call a car a "lemon" in German?)
EMERALD city wheels......OSCAR.
Transport for ribald hairpieces......LUDWIGVAN.
To finish the SYMPHONY BEETHOVEN drank a whole ____ FIFTH
JazzB : "Gorilla his dreams" love it! 🤣
The usual daily household squabbles have reached their preCOVID intensity levels. All's right with the 🌐
Good puzzle with a great recap by JzB - informative and concise.
ReplyDeleteFor Idina Menzel fans, there is an episode of the TV show Undercover Boss in which she goes undercover as an aspiring (and not very competent) wedding singer. In one scene she and her "mentor" appear at a childrens hospital where one of the patients requests "Let It Go" and that creates a dilemma - stay in character or sing one for the kids. Well worth watching if you get the opportunity.
I was a bit surprised that Bill & Ted did not make an appearance with their new friend Beeth-Oven.
Bill & Ted Mall Scene
Jazz: Wonderful, informative write-up & links. Good job !
ReplyDeleteWell this was a FUN Wednesday puzzle.
After all, any puzzle that starts with my "All-Time" Favorite NY Yankee, YOGI is going to be an enjoyable solve.
A "Toast-to-ALL" at Sunset.
Cheers!
Wonderful Wednesday. Thanks for the fun, Brock and JazzB (how appropriate for you to blog this musical CW).
ReplyDeleteOfficially a DNF and FIWed today; I did not correct JEEs to JEEZ, and I had a personal Natick in the mid-east since I was not familiar with DERMA, KIM and EROICA. (I Googled "kishke"). ATTIC almost opened it up when I moved away from computer "Web site"s.
I entered Mint for 8D (hello Ray-O), even though our Canadian mint does not make cents any more.
I changed Sts (shouldn't be plural) to RIV.
And of course, there was the usual wait to decide between Aver and AVOW.
I thought summer coolers were Ades but ACS fit (hello again Ray-O).
I noted ATTIC and LOFT.
MAYO above SLAW was appropriate also (I see Lemonade beat me).
I noted VINYL and SIDE B (JazzB noted PVC).
All that music today and we had ALTI and CLEF too. But our CW friend Oboe was missing.
Several numbers also with MARY I crossing SIX, and FIFTH, but only ABCS for letters. (Oh, I just noticed ETAS! And possibly DWIS, ACS, LOTR, IBMS, GEDS, and PVC fit also.)
waseeley- Happy Birthday to your DIL.
Ray-O- glad to hear the DW and daughter are back to normal squabbles.
Jamie FLN- yes, I don't often comment after your posts later in the day, but I do enjoy your input to the blog.
Wishing you all a great day.
Didn't care for the cluing at all like so many others. And had Kid at 47A like so many others. We should start a club. Just an okay puzzle to get the gray matter in gear.
ReplyDeleteHola!
ReplyDeleteIt happened again! Misattribution. I got so excited when I saw C.C. Burnikel as the constructor then discovered Brock Wilson created this when reading the Blog. Disappointing. But cheered when I read JazzB's blog, the perfect person to lead this parade. Thank you!
No, this was not my favorite kind of puzzle yet it was fairly easy to complete. I knew from reading Peanuts all week whose birthday it was so that put all the clues into perspective.
Finished all but LOTR with a Natick at DERMA of which I've never heard. I could not recall Lord of the Rings so no R.
The ELVES at my house are really slow this year. Usually I have everything done by now but still have to go shopping for a few items. As proof of my diminishing mental ability I ordered an XBox charging station twice but luckily it's something another person can use.
Owen:
You are back in great form!
Ray:
You too! I hope the family is better.
Have a lovely day, everyone!
Good morning everyone.
ReplyDeleteAnother 'Magnum OPUS' from JzB. Thanks for the tour.
Crunchy for me; 2 wrong letters @ DERMA. But I did like the Beethoven them and got all the associated fill. Well done to Brock.
BTW - Beethoven's grandfather was a Fleming from Belgium who settled in Bonn.
Ray-O - - 'Lemon' is highly idiomatic in this sense, so perhaps a bit hard to translate. 'Klapperkasten' would work.
I also found this:
lemon (defective car) (n): ein defektes/schlechtes Auto.
I would not use the literal translation of 'Zitrone'. A Canadian colleague had one and had problems with his, too.
"Prime Examples" C.C.'s USA Today puzzles just showed up in the Shortyz app. It'll be fun to see what aspect(s) of Prime she went with.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the theme, the fill, and the blog, JzB and Brock. Cool that Jazz got to explain it.
ReplyDeleteRay, try chasing around on a Kindle for the crossrefernces. But, it was worth it to solve this great puzzle.
I thought that mint was a great pun until it turned to zinc.
Idina, Kim and this sense of IBM were new to me.
There seems to be an inordinate number of Uriah Heeps these days.
The other day we were speaking of loan words. The Japanese say something like "ayer con" for air conditioner. Our Japanese teacher used to say things like this were English words and was surprised we didn't recognize them.
Delis in this area carry derma.
I agree it is good to see you back and in form Owen.
ReplyDeleteUriah HEEP came immediately to mind because I recently watched the Armando Iannucci adaptation of "David Copperfield." It's not actually my favorite Dickens novel (that would be "A Tale of Two Cities"), but the movie was an absolute delight--funny, sweet, visually gorgeous, and surprisingly fast-paced! I have been waiting for months for it to come out on US streaming, and it's now available on Amazon. Highly recommended.
ReplyDeleteYAO Ming owned a very nice Chinese restaurant in Houston. I guess that was how he decided to invest his money from basketball. I ate there once and had so many tiny cups of tea that I was physically shaking for the rest of the day. I don't remember anything about the food, but the tea must have been good! Looking it up now, I see that the restaurant seems to have closed.
I've never heard the term WEFIE before. I've heard the group selfie referred to as an USIE or GROUPFIE--mostly by cutesy internet writers--but in real life, my friends and I would just say "Let's take a group selfie!"
When I was in college a few years ago, for some reason it was always the short guy who wanted to take a group selfie, and he would end up holding the phone even though he had the shortest arms. So we have a lot of pictures that are mostly his face.
Good memories!
Good Morning:
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side, I liked the theme very much and I liked seeing some Easter Eggs: Alti, Clef, Opus, and D Min.
On the minus side, I didn’t like the cross-referencing format (too confusing, IMO) and some of the cluing was odd. My major dislike, however, was the crossing of Derma and Kim, which resulted in a FIW. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word unfair about clues or crossings but this, I believe, was a deliberate attempt to stump the solver big time. I’m not being critical because I didn’t finish correctly, that’s happened before. I have never heard of Derma nor the TV character, but one of them could have been clued more fairly, Kim, especially, ala Kardasian or Cattrel, or even the North Korean despot. End of rant.
Thanks, Brock, for an almost-pleasant solve and thanks, JzB, for the very witty and informative write-up and the musical links. Ludwig’s music soothed my soul and lightened my mood.
FLN
MalMan, oops! Sorry if I offended.
Have a great day.
Musings
ReplyDelete-ATTIC/DERMA/LOTR eventually came into focus
-A wonderful story of how Beethoven’s Ninth became an institution in a very unlikely country
-When ESCORTING a blind person, offer your arm don’t grab theirs
-I may need some ADHESIVE because ”the skeleton key” keeps pulling out of my fob, stays on my ring and the fob is lost
-Do you know a more famous story ARC than Dorothy’s trying to get home?
-People who demand I SHARE something on FB to prove I am patriotic, religious or whatever
-Pennies today are 97.5% ZINC and 2.5% copper plating
-How did we survive being raised without AC’S?
-Need some humility? Here’s what a GED test is like
-Jazz – I enjoyed “gorilla of his dreams” and “subordinate clauses”
An unexpected FIR after a lucky guess at DERMA and KIM. I went with the m as I thought of "impossible" as the reference, not knowing the show. A few WOs were sour notes for my grid: bEef/VEAL, AVer/AVOW, ALTo/ALTI, Ade/ACS. I see I had company with some of these. Otherwise found the theme manageable and thought of Beethoven right away, though tried to fit it in at 17A first with the V in place. We lived in Bonn where his birth house is and toured it SEVERAL times.
ReplyDeleteThanks JazzB for the expert review and Brock for the appropriate puzzle for today. I enjoyed it. Jamie, I've tried that method of solving early week puzzles but without as much success as you. I too like punny and twisty puzzles, but have gradually learned some sports and music groups, terms, and celebs by doing the puzzles every day. Lucina, you are a role model for us all. Our Christmas preps look Scrooge-like in comparison! Good job today, OwenKL.
Best wishes, everyone!
I enjoyed chasing BEETHOVEN and his oeuvre around the grid. Didn't know DERMA, but LOTR is an easy initialism, and the unknown KIM Possible was an easy guess. FIR.
ReplyDeleteI liked OwenKL's rhyming review today. Also liked JzB's reference to ELVES as "subordinate clauses." And agree with Jamie that WEFIE is not something I've heard IRL.
Thanks, Brock, JzB, and Cornerites all!
Guten Morgen alle. Meine mutter (end of German) was a piano teacher and every Christmas she gave her students a small bust of LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, which yours truly had the displeasure of having to wrap them. Why he had the Dutch 'from' instead of the Deutsch 'from" always puzzled me. Van-Von.
ReplyDeleteOne change today- MINT to ZINC. WEFIE, HARTE, & DERMA were filled by perps.
IBM 360? We had 370, 1130, System-3, and AS-400 computers but no 360.
Only knew KIM Possible from granddaughter talking about her.
Only know IDINA & ENOKI from Xwords.
MAYO in a BLT? Not in mine; request mustard.
Lemonade- both SIA and SHIA are unknown to me.
SEE YA!
Like Lucina, I too saw this morning's puzzle as attributed to C.C. and was very excited. But as soon as I got to Jazz's helpful commentary, I saw our constructor was Brock Wilson. Learning that C.C.'s puzzle appeared in USA today, I wonder if that isn't how these almost daily mix-ups in the LA Times occur, with the puzzle constructors getting switched between two papers. Why hasn't somebody solved this problem yet?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Brock, your Beethoven puzzle was a delight, especially with SYMPHONY and CHORAL accompanying his name. Also nice to see EROICA, and in a different art, DANTE. Funny to see ESSEN and ESSEX so near each other. But my favorite joke was ATTIC for a Web site.
Owen, it is so great to have you back and your poem today was wonderful. Stay well, and keep giving us these terrific treats.
Have a great day, everybody.
Aside from misspelling Ludwig Von Beethoven, it was a good puzzle. What's Beethoven been doing lately? Decomposing. I hear his 10th symphony is quite an undertaking. It's rather grave, but I'm dying to hear it.
ReplyDeleteJzB, great blog today. I’m so glad I watched the Yaniv Dinur clip since that’s an interesting and compelling explanation of the Beethoven piece. Thank you for including it.
ReplyDeleteI liked the puzzle very much, but FIW in the same place that troubled others: DERMA crossing LOTR and KIM. The rest was relatively easy and fun.
Wheres the abbrv in clue for PVC. USSIE i was told was official Group self pic in slang. I love Paccata! Enoki mushrooms are one of my favs. Always love to hear about the sexy Olive Oyl, hubba hubba.
ReplyDeleteIn multicultural North Jersey we meet many Jewish people, their culture and their language. Derma seems common to me. Some Jewish and Yiddish words have become IN the language here. I enjoy the cultural sharing.
ReplyDeleteThe thesaurus lists several and few as synonyms, not antonymns. I made a few mistakes. I made several mistakes. Macht nichts. Both have the definition of a small number more than two or not many.
I wrote this note a while ago. The internet cut off for a few (several) minutes and my post disappeared.
My introduction to "Enoki"
ReplyDeletewas via Daughter #3's fav Sushi place...
It was an appetizer that I had to try
because it was wrapped in Bacon...
(just don't order 3 servings,
it gets very greasy after the 2nd serving...)
Composer@ 11:56,
ReplyDeleteyou had me LMAO!
in response...
I also had about 20 minutes worth of links and commentary,
but after forgetting what I had for breakfast,
I totally forgot, and/or messed up the links for Ida Menzel etc/Yada/Yada...
(your welcome...)
I.M. @ 10:43: Offense was neither taken nor even vaguely imagined. While I am "in the dark" as to why you might think that it was possible I do appreciate your sensitivity in that regard.
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon.
ReplyDeleteLate to the game today. Too much Italian homework before our break. Or maybe too much procrastination on the part of a certain studentessa. . . .
Great puzzle Brock. Thank you. I liked all the musical crossing, but my favorite was SIDE B at 45 [!!] across. I think I may be easily entertained.
JazzB, thank you for such a grand musical tour. More procrastination. . . .
Back to I pronomi complemento oggetto diretto. Yep, just what it looks like: direct object pronoun complements. And I still have to write a paragraph about my family's Holiday [Natale here] traditions.
Hope you have some sun on this dreary day. I see a big storm forecasted out East. My local yarn shop when I'm in in York, Maine, is closed tomorrow due to the snow.
Be well, everyone. A domani--after class if I can.
Ah, thank you, thank you! It's not everyday that I get to enter my name as the first item in the crossword puzzle.
ReplyDeleteMalMan @ 2:12 ~ I don’t want you to be in the dark, nor did I think you took offense, not with your sense of humor! My comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek! I found your photo to be delightfully serendipitous vis a vis my suggestion to you to check out Adam’s photo. 😈
ReplyDeleteThank You Mr. Wilson, for an engaging and timely puzzle, and JazzB for an entertaining review. It is a coincidence and one of serendipity, that you, an accomplished musician, should be the blogger for this CW, constructed in honor of this magnificent composer.
ReplyDeleteI would venture, to guess, that his 'Van' rather than 'Von' might be so, either because his family had not been ennobled ( Von implies nobility - ) or maybe he kept his ancestral dutch surname. I had read about his 250th anniv., on this blog yesterday, so I was immediately alerted to his name.
I also was stuck, temporarily, on the crossing of DERMA and KIM, but was lucky in the correct guess. I have since talked to one of my friends, who is an active dermatologist, and he has confirmed,( to the best of his knowledge ..... ) , that they now require a course in Kosher cooking, as a small part of their Residency. Lol. ;-o)
However, none of my jewish friends appear to be familiar with this DERMA patty. ;-x)
From Last Night :::---I would like to thank NaomiZ for revealing the hebrew word, and the translation. Personally, I am still trying to figure out where I made the mistake in transcribing the letters of the alphabet.
I have been sprung. I am on a house computer with a mouse. Nice to get out and walk around and have a change of scenery. Yay, freedom!
ReplyDeleteMy buyers are contesting a tiny flaw in the new garage door that was there when they first saw the house and when their inspector looked at it. I sold the house as is. My attorney says I will not be liable.
We are beginning to get a few snow flakes now. Alan says it has been snowing for an hour. We are expecting about a foot. If I wait long enough maintenance will clear my car.
Yellowrocks
Vidwan and Big Easy - - Re: 'van'. As I mentioned in my earlier post above, Beethoven's grandfather was a Fleming from Flanders, Belgium. They are Dutch speakers. Grandad moved to Bonn and that's where Ludwig was born.
ReplyDeleteHi All!
ReplyDeleteThank you Brock for the fine puzzle. Normally, more than one cross-refence annoys me but today, with the theme so obvious, it didn't bother me at all.
How nice that you got expo duties for this puzzle JzB? Thanks for the music and the puns.
WOs: BlUSH -> BRUSH, started putting in AAA for TOW. Trying to spell BEETHOVaN.
ESPs: IDINA, DERMA
Fav: Now that MdF has pointed it out, SIDE B at 45 is pretty slick.
//I had C,Eh! - is there a U in RUMOURs? :-) [Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way 3:33]
{A}
Thanks MManatee for the heads up on C.C.'s (credited in Chron for today's puzzle) USA Today grid.
Good news YR!
Funny, Composer @11:56. Nice response CED.
RayO: So no new issues after the ER visit?
A Venn of our humor overlaps greatly - yesterday In Living Color; today Bloom County
I expected you to stick with the music: Composer Franz ___ LIST :-)
Lucina - Also FLN Waseeley mentioned it was Beethoven's B-Day :-)
Speaking of Waseeley - You DIL is my age. Wait, she had 8 children? -- give her a big day off! :-)
Our Help Desk manager was named Kim. When she was on vacation, her team hung a big Kim Possible poster (same as JzB expo'd) in her office as a joke. She kept it on the wall until she left the company.
To go with the theme: Camper VAN BEETHOVEN's Pictures of Matchstick Men
//If you think, "Hey, that sounds like Cracker" It's because once CvB broke up, lead singer David Lowery formed Cracker.
Cheers, -T
Dash T @4:20 PM Dw and I are getting ready to call DIL to wish her an HBD. I'll give her your permission slip.
ReplyDelete10D My favorite fill was PASTORAL. If I were “marooned on a desert island” and could take only one piece, of music it would be Beethoven’s 6th Symphony. A more pleasant piece of music has not been written and I would never tire of it. It’s an early example of what is now called a “tone poem”, with musical depictions of walks in the woods in Spring, birds singing, a festive peasant picnic interrupted by a thunderstorm, and the re-emergence of the sun. IMHO for anyone looking for a gentle introduction to Beethoven, there is none better than this.
25D YAO Ming is well known for his great height. He reminds me of a story I’ve told to CC about my trip to China with my son to “GET” (adopter jargon) my grandson Ray. Ray was 3 at the time and we were spending a week in GUANGZHOU to get his visa to enter the US. While visiting one of the gift shops there a diminutive lady asked me where he was from. I told her he was born in the northern city of Harbin in Heilongjiang province. She replied, rolling her eyes to the ceiling “Oh they get very TALL up there!” At 15 Ray is about 3 inches taller than his father and shows no sign of slowing down. Interestingly, while Yao Ming was born in Shanghai in the South of China (same as CC I believe), his given name “Ming” was the name of an ancient dynasty in the north in the region of Manchuria. I wonder if he might have had ancestors from there.
56D IBM System/360. The first computers I worked with used this operating system, as I suspect so have TTP and/or Dash T. It represented a breakthrough for IBM, as before it every time IBM invented a new HARDWARE platform, they developed a new OS to use it. This caused a lot of hardships for its customers who had to convert their custom developed applications to run on it. With System/360 IBM finally realized that it was really in the SOFTWARE business, with HARDWARE being just a necessity to run it on. System/360 was designed to be “portable” and all IBM mainframes since have run on descendants of this OS.
Bill
p.s. The snowblower is still a nogo.
When I see LUDWIG VAN standing alone like that, I can't help but think of Alex as played by Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.
ReplyDeleteHe was a violent thug and a Beethoven fan, a winning combo in any street brawl.
Ah, another fine verse from Owen today.
Erato is strumming her harp through our own resident poet!
Add him to the National Treasures as our very own Corner Cache!!
Another day with a wrong attribution in the LA Times. Don't either of the credited editors do any editing at all?!
~ OMK
____________
DR: Well, this is a fine how-d'you-do!
Each side sports one diagonal. But the paucity of vowels between the two makes it almost impossible to get a decent anagram out of either.
Still, if I COMBINE the two of them, I can make a rather obvious statement about what happens when an attractive person or persons flaunts their body while walking away from an ogler.
It can be true, my friends, that...
"SASHAYS BEFUDDLE"!
OMK @5:00pm - I've never seen "A Clockwork Orange", but there is a Beatles movie in which Beethoven's music is featured. There is a scene in "Help" where IIRC Ringo falls through a cellar trapdoor to find himself menaced by an escaped Tiger. Some coolheaded bloke up above, recognizing the Tiger as famous, states that he happens to love Beethoven's 9th. He begins to sing a few bars of the Chorale, everyone around gradually joins in and suddenly the camera pans to a conductor leading an entire stadium of people in the "Ode to Joy". And thanks to Ludwig the Tiger doesn't eat Ringo.
DeleteI had blush/Brush in the Salon clue but remembered EROICA just in the nick.
ReplyDeleteWhen I told an out of state family "When you come to a fork in the road.. .". They took off. Apparently my Boston accent made it sound like something else.
Beatles had a bunch of BSIDE hits.
MAYO is not an option. NO MAYO is the option. And there's no such thing as too much mayo for the fast-food ilk. Ugh. And it ruins SLAW. BigE, yes mustard or with turkey, horseradish
ZINC and ACs were clever. But... I was told I shouldn't order VEAL because of maltreatment of calves.
The TB-Times insert has had the correct constructor names. I'll post the names of constructors when I think of it. I've completed all but a few boxes of Saturday's xword. Thurs and Fri were a little sticky.
WC
Dash T @4:20 PM Dw informs me that DIL's BD is the one day of the year when the kids wait on her hand and foot.
ReplyDeleteThank You Husker Gary for introducing the first link about how crazy ( and passionate - ) the Japanese are about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I had heard about this, over 20 years ago, in a TV CBS news bulletin, but I had pretty much forgotten all about it.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link, for one version, on Youtube, produced by a japanese music station, about the preparations that go on in Japan, year round ... to prepare, pay and participate in the massive event involving 10,000 singers.
And, get This !!!,
The Singers Have to Pay an equivalent of 700 Euros ( @ USD 1.22 to a Euro ) = $ 854 USD ... for the privilege to participate in the event. !!! Plus pass an audition !
Personally, I wouldn't pay this type of money for the Beatles.
And they practice their heart out, year round, some of them sing, even in the original German (!) and they all try to read and understand the music of a foreign origin and notation, and the meaning of the words for a religion that is foreign to their beliefs and their shores.
Be sure, to read the detailed introduction below the video, and the comments of others.
The video is mostly in Japanese, with english subtitles.
The feeling does not require a translation.
Only in Japan.
Beethoven's Ninth in Japan
Cute DR OMK.
ReplyDeleteWaseeley - Yep, System/360 ran my freshman Fortran code in college.
Vidwan - I enjoyed the Japanese Ode video.
Why not, it's almost Christmas (I post this every year)...
This is my favorite Ode to Joy just because of the looks of folks' faces and watching the children enjoy the music.
Cheers, -T
ReplyDeleteThank you Anon-T, for that wonderful Youtube video.
I had seen it before, about over 5 years ago, but it is still very heart moving.
Just so many professional musicians moving in rhythm and precision seems impossible, but it still happens.
I thought the city was in Italy ( my bad !), it is in Sabadell, Catalonia, Spain.
Sabadell is also the name of the Bank offices, from where the musicians appear, but it is also the name of the city. in the area of Placa de Sant Roc.
Thank you for posting.
That is really impressive for Japanese people to gather and perform Beethoven's symphony! I am awed! Truly, music is the universal language!
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting, Tony.
Progress was made today in the wrapping of presents! I made a good dent and will likely finish tomorrow unless I buy more things! Usually the stack of gifts is so much higher but instead the stockings will be filled with gift cards. I hope they will enjoy shopping for their own presents.
ReplyDeleteLate! Grandson's 21st birthday tomorrow, so dinner last night. Look out public!
ReplyDeleteFIW. Started out OK, filling in LVB first (haven't gotten to Tuesday's blog yet, so I didn't know beforehand). First error was VON instead of VAN, which then went uncorrected with ETAS. Duh! I had the KIM/DERMA glitch others have mentioned, and also missed EROICA. However, overall I was pleased that I did as well as I did.
Never heard of WEFIE, and I DON'T do selfies.
Neat puzzle, Brock; great write up, JzB!