Theme: "It Takes Two" - Theme entries are phrases that can follow the clues once you repeat them.
22A. *Extra: READ ALL ABOUT IT. "Extra! Extra! Read All About it."
32A. *Bad: LEROY BROWN. "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" Jim Croce song.
40A. *Liar: PANTS ON FIRE. "Liar, Liar, pants on fire".
65A. *Hail: THE GANGS ALL HERE. "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here"
88A. *Ladybird: FLY AWAY HOME. "Ladybird, ladybird fly away home". Boomer thought it's "ladybug".
97A. *Wait: DON'T TELL ME. "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me". Hahtoolah likes the show.
112A. *Hush: SWEET CHARLOTTE. "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte" 1964 movie. New to me.
I don't see any extra layer in this theme. You?
Across:
1. Daffy Duck feature: LISP.
5. Throws, as the shot: PUTS. Shot put.
9. Real grind: SLOG.
13. Second most populous city in the Dakotas: FARGO. Sioux Falls has more people. Boomer took me to Corn Palace on our honeymoon.
18. Chip in a chip: ANTE.
19. Brand with a wasabi-flavored variety in China: OREO. Gimme!
20. Necklace-fastening site: NAPE.
21. Most of the Earth's surface: OCEAN.
25. Brought up: REARED.
27. Paint fight sounds: SPLATS.
28. Corned beef concoction: REUBEN. You can spread a tiny bit of wasabi on your bread.
29. Latte maker: BARISTA.
30. 31-Across prefix: TELE. 31. Cruise stopover: PORT.
34. Since: AS OF.
36. Small island: CAY.
38. Afore: ERE.
39. Make out, in Manchester: SNOG.
45. Attends to: MINDS.
47. In an absurd fashion: INANELY.
48. Popular roller coaster name: CYCLONE.
50. Squatters build them: QUADS. This kind of squatter.
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55. Saucy: PERT.
56. Big Apple designer initials: DKNY.
58. Choice words?: ORS.
59. Some campus coaches: TUTORS. Hi there, Bill, are you still reading us?
60. Messy room metaphor: STY.
61. Bakery output: PIES.
62. Plot size: ACRE.
64. Intellectual: THINKER. The one.
68. Apollo and Artemis: ARCHERS. Not SIBLINGS.
71. System developed at Bell Labs: UNIX. Does anyone still use Unix?
72. Get rid of: OUST.
73. Banned pesticide: DDT.
76. Whizzes: MAVENS.
77. Waze option: Abbr.: RTE.
78. Ostentation: POMP.
79. Toon explorer with a talking purple backpack: DORA.
80. Like 20 Questions questions: YES-NO.
81. More irritable: FUSSIER.
84. Like a probability distribution with two peaks: BIMODAL. New word to me.
86. Say "I do," maybe: MARRY.
90. Suit in a Spanish deck of cards: OROS. We had this before.
94. Madre's sister: TIA.
95. Mois après avril: MAI. Month after April.
96. "The Big __ Theory": BANG.
100. Burn slightly: CHAR.
102. Air 2 or Pro: iPAD.
106. In general: OVERALL.
107. They're sometimes goodies: OLDIES.
109. Expert advice: PRO TIP.
111. Sympathize: RELATE. Painful reading Picard's post. Boomer did not want a surgery. VA gave Boomer a hernia belt like this one. Tight and uncomfortable to wear, but it eases the pain.
114. Fed settings: RATES.
115. Second half of a children's game: SEEK.
116. Olympian queen: HERA.
117. __ mad: to the max: LIKE.
118. Practices in a ring: SPARS. Boxing ring.
119. Language that gave us "plaid": ERSE.
120. Boundary-pushing: EDGY.
121. Villain in "The Lion King": SCAR.
Down:
1. "Dancer in the Dark" Palme d'Or winner von Trier: LARS. Learning moment for me.
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2. Clumsy: INEPT.
3. Hardly new: STALE.
4. Item common to bikes and pianos: PEDAL.
5. D.C. bigwigs: POLS.
6. Address without lat. or long.: URL. Web address.
7. Detachable strip: TEAR OFF.
8. Serious: SOBER.
9. Ignore pointedly: SNUB.
10. In recent history: LATELY. Still no police report on our neighbor. We saw a U-Haul truck in front of the house last week.
11. Offer a view: OPINE.
12. "__ Out": 2017 Jordan Peele film: GET.
13. Made inroads: FORAYED.
14. Biting, as wit: ACERB.
15. Shows over: RE-AIRS.
16. Actress Greer with the longest-ever Oscar acceptance speech: GARSON. Google shows that the speech lasted seven minutes.
17. Kind of punch: ONE TWO.
23. Order to relax: AT EASE.
24. Verbal protest: OUTCRY.
26. Freaking: DANG. OK, like "dang cute".
29. Carried: BORNE.
31. Quarter barrels for a beer bash: PONY KEGS. Wiki info: "A quarter barrel, more commonly known as pony keg, is a beer vessel containing approximately 7.75 gallons of fluid. It is half the size of the standard beer keg and equivalent to a quarter of a barrel."
33. Controlling power: REINS.
35. Perseveres, with "on": SOLDIERS.
37. Old nuclear agcy.: AEC. Atomic Energy Commission.
40. Dicey spots?: PIPS. Dice-y. Spots on dice.
41. Working without __: A NET.
42. Not, quaintly: NARY.
43. Explosive stuff: TNT.
44. Like some roads and receptions: ICY.
45. Gourmet mushroom: MOREL. Never saw fresh morels in our store. Always dried.
46. Pipsqueak: SQUIRT.
49. Seuss character who "speaks for the trees": LORAX.
51. Alternative media namesake: UTNE.
52. Perfectly fine: A-OK.
53. __ Johnson, Anthony Anderson's "Black-ish" role: DRE.
54. Pre-1991 Georgia, e.g.: Abbr.: SSR.
57. DOD intel arm: NSA.
59. Dramatic artist: THESPIAN.
61. Whiz kid: PHENOM.
62. Choreographer de Mille: AGNES. And our sweet Irish Miss.
63. TV franchise with a Vegas spin-off: CSI.
64. Digital conflict?: THUMB WAR. That digit.
65. Before ... or after: THEN.
66. Wacko: NUTSY.
67. Head of MI6?: LOO. Good old clue.
68. Senator Klobuchar: AMY. Our senator.
69. Issa of "Insecure": RAE.
70. Papers in a job recruiter's office, briefly: CVS.
73. Bird last seen in 1662: DODO. Here's our Dodo.
 |
| L to R: Chickie, Lucina, Garlic Gal, JD, and Dodo 2014 |
74. Apothecary's weight: DRAM.
75. Story: TALE.
77. Urban opposite: RURAL.
78. Nose (into): PRY.
79. "I'm so dense!": DOH. If you cut the top of your chicken
package off too deep, you'll never find out the Tyson chicken
establishment code. I was focusing on the bottom UPC and later the USDA
mark at Spitzboov's suggestion.
81. Purely decorative detail: FRILL.
82. "__ body meet ... ": IF A. Unfamiliar with this reference.
83. Bring forth: ELICIT.
85. The Temptations' first #1 single: MY GIRL.
87. Dieted: ATE LESS. Boomer eats super light these days. Here's
his Friday dinner: raw cauliflower & watermelon. Odd combo, but
that's what he wanted. No minis for us, Agnes, Boomer only likes big watermelons.
89. Embarrassed: ABASHED.
90. Reason for shoe inserts: ODOR.
91. Perseverance and Curiosity: ROVERS.
92. Track's 400 meters: ONE LAP.
93. Layers: STRATA.
95. Free-for-alls: MELEES.
98. Where a tot might come from?: TATER. Another cute clue.
99. Grass accessory: MOWER.
101. Anne of "Psycho" (1998): HECHE.
103. Aquatic arenas: POOLS.
104. Bertha was locked in one in "Jane Eyre": ATTIC. Bertha is the mad wife of Mr Rochester.
105. Chicago Bears' Super Bowl XX winning coach: DITKA (Mike)
108. Denzel's role in "The Little Things" (2021): DEKE. Nope. No idea.
109. Beseech: PRAY.
110. __ pressure: PEER.
112. Dir. the Kings travel to play the Lakers: SSE.
113. Tango's co-birthplace: Abbr.: ARG. Argentina.
C.C.
FIWrong by one cell. NUTtY < NUTSY crossing FUtSIER which I misread as FUSTIER, "old-fashioned in attitude or style". No quite the clue, but close enough it could have been.
ReplyDeleteI did get the theme very quickly at least.
"DOUBLE, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble."
ANTE in some OREOS,
A latte-flavored BARISTA'S nose;
Stir in some D.K.N.Y. fashions,
UNIX code, throw just a dash in.
From a swinish, homely STY,
Gather mud to make a PIE.
Throw in DORA, with her BACKPACK,
Then that FUSSIER, furry LORAX.
Stir it with a CYCLONE's spiral --
Our YouTube channel will go viral!
{A-.}
82. "__ body meet ... ": IF A. Unfamiliar with this reference.
ReplyDeleteIt's not from a Three Stooges movie. It's the opening line of a famous poem by Robert Burns (who, incidentally, was a poet laureate of Freemasonry). He wrote it in a Scottish dialect, so the original line read "Gin a body meet a body, comin thro' the rye". It's a euphemistic poem about a tryst in a dew-soaked grain field. It's been set to music a couple times, so there are several YouTube videos of it, and various English versions of it.
Good morning!
ReplyDeleteSay it ain't so, Joe. Not two DNFs in a row! Alas, tis true. NUTTY and FUTSIER made sense to d-o, but not to Margaret, apparently. Agree with Boomer on "Ladybug," but I see that both versions are correct. Noticed the SO to I.M. My only Wite-Out moment was changing SENS to POLS. Nice debut, Margaret. Thanx for the expo, C.C.
CSI: Wasn't Las Vegas the original CSI as opposed to a spin-off?
UNIX: "Normal" folk wouldn't use a UNIX computer. Anon-T might. UNIX variants are commonly used as the operating system for network servers.
DON'T TELL ME: I listen to WWDTM while doing the Saturday puzzles. It streams at 6-7 AM CDT on WGBH, Boston. (It doesn't air 'til 10 AM on the Houston PBS station.)
Happy birthday, CanadianEh!. I enjoy your comments and arcane spellings.
FIW, but I feel pretty good about it because OKL and D-O made the same mistake.
ReplyDeleteI think TELE PORT is a CSO to our ailing friend Picard. Hope the pain is easing up.
RUEBENs and patty melts are my favorite sammies.
I think I mentioned this years ago, but "The Idea Factory" is the fabulous story of how Bell Labs helped usher in the electronic age. The Feds allowed them to overcharge for long distance calls to subsidize pure research, which is usually relegated to universities.
Some race cars have clear windshield TEAR OFF strips. Faster than scrubbing off the bugs.
AT EASE doesn't mean "relax." That's "as you were."
I thought CVS was a drug store chain. Silly Jinx.
I had trouble with the puzzle until I caught the gimmick, then everything fell into place. Fun Sunday. Thanks, Margaret and CC.
Good Morning:
ReplyDeleteWhat a simple, yet fresh and fun theme this was. It was also relatively unladen of proper names, especially for a Sunday.I don’t think there were any unknowns and my only w/o was Water/Ocean. I enjoyed the duos of Slog/Snog, Ors/Oros, Scar/Spar(s), and Pols/Pools. It’s fun, if somewhat rare, to see Agnes in a puzzle.
Thanks and congrats, Margaret, on a fine debut and thanks, CC, for your expert guidance and the CSO.
Happy Birthday, CanadianEh, hope you get to celebrate in style. 🎂🎁🎈🎉🎊
Owen, A+ today.
Have a great day.
Hi Y'all! Wow, very challenging debut, Margaret, thanks. Thanks, C.C. for another enlightening expo.
ReplyDeleteI didn't get the theme from the title & had to come here to let C.C. explain it. But I did catch on to the familiar phrases with a few perps. We used to crack up singing, "If a body meet a body comin' thru the rye. If a body kiss a body, need a body cry." Don't know why that was so funny to two little girls.
Unlike our esteemed AGNES, there were a lot of unknowns to me. Perseverance and a lot of back and forth filling got 'er done.
Wasabi flavored OREO? Sorry, no!
Tried Idaho before TATER for my TOTS. Somehow guessed it was spuds, not kids.
My squatters built a shack before QUADS.
My MOWER doesn't want to get off his "grass accessory" to do anything else. Drives me NUTSY. He drives right over sticks rather than pick them up. Won't that dull the blades? I don't like all the chopped sticks in the lawn either.
Musings
ReplyDelete-Yesterday’s pen/pencil discussion – This fun puzzle would have been a mess using a pen today
-None of the movie Fargo was filmed in Fargo
-AS OF 6 o’clock last night we had had 5” of rain in 24 hours
-I’m so proud I got MAI
-My shoe insert is for plantar fasciitis
-Happy Birthday, Canada!
-Gotta shower and get ready for church and still watch the Virgin Galactica launch!
Good morning everyone.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday Canadian Eh!. Hope you have a great day. Dinner at the Prince of Wales perhaps?
Finally got it all. Good clue at QUADS. The theme fill consisted of well-known phrases, so that helped things along.
The Sinking of the REUBEN James. I see she was a four-piper.
AT EASE - IMO is 'relax' only relative to standing 'at attention'. 'At rest' is a truer relax order.
I agree with PK, I saw the theme of CLUE inducing familiar following phrases but the double aspect escaped me.
ReplyDeleteA bit of a slog (I would have preferred a SNOG) but FIR.
My favorite clue was Head of MI6? CC, you must have seen this before but I got a chuckle with the juxtaposition of the Head of the British Intelligence Service being the bathroom.
My question to CC and the group: Are product placements and political references paid entries?
If, so Nabisco is spending a lot.
Fun puzzle, thank you Margaret.
Just finished watching the live broadcast of Richard Branson head up into space in Virgin Galactic (and return, of course). Very cool! Next is Jeff Bezos in HIS ship in a few weeks.
ReplyDeleteI loved the theme, and got PANTS ON FIRE quickly which gave me everything else. I remember seeing the movie HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE at the drive-in with my folks as a kid. There are only about 300 drive-ins left in the USA. A few years ago I took the family to one so my son could experience it. Oops--forgot that some of them host a bazillion mosquitoes!!
BTW...I believe LINUX, an open source alternative/offshoot of UNIX, is the most popular version now (it is free).
Ladybug. Mais oui.
ReplyDeleteVery clever theme! They all filled quickly except for the utterly unknown HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE. Puzzled by MOWER clue. Does GRASS ACCESSORY refer to a tractor add-on? NUTSY/FUSSIER seemed odd. Learning moment these gods were ARCHERS.
ReplyDeleteI know LISP as an early artificial intelligence programming language. It was the first language to allow recursive definitions. Meaning that you could use a function in its own definition! Yes, I still use the UNIX text editor every day. Nothing is faster than their "vi" visual editor when you master it. Yes, LINUX is the currently used version.
Here is our most challenging and rewarding "Three POOLS Beyond Seven Falls" hike.
The pretty petite lady in the black and white one piece bathing suit is my music teacher Nancy. She said that I introduced her to hiking and she went on to far surpass me. She is also my unicycling partner and a dear friend. I just learned that she died hiking in Peru. I am trying to absorb this.
CC Thank you for the empathy and for the support that Boomer has found helpful. Good if that works for him. My understanding is that eventually surgery will be needed. But he should go with what his doctor recommends. Especially since he does so much bowling.
ReplyDeleteJinx Thank you for the kind words, too! Wouldn't it be wonderful if we really could TELEPORT around? The producers of Star Trek explained that the Transporter was a plot device to allow more time for the story and less time wasted on "how did they get there".
I know "IF A BODY" from the book "Catcher in the Rye". Anyone else?
From Yesterday:
Spitzboov Thank you for the interesting NIAGARA information. I did know about the diversion of water for power. Makes good sense.
Wilbur Charles Good that you have also experienced the ROAR of Niagara. I had never been there when I lived back East! But I have now been there in 2009 and again with DW in 2019. Nothing quite like it out West.
Irish Miss Thank you for the cautionary words. Yesterday was my first day really getting out and driving. I went to our Early Music rehearsal where we also made time to remember our companion Nancy who I just mentioned above.
IF A Body was filled on this end by thinking of Comin Thro' The Rye - even tho' that really isn't exactly the lyric/line.
ReplyDeleteMal-Man, if you sang the song in your ute, I'm pretty sure you sang, "If a body..." rather than "Gin a body..."
ReplyDeleteHola!
ReplyDeleteThis was a fun theme which helped to reveal the long answers. I remember the movie, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Both Bette Davis and Olivia DeHaviland performed brilliantly. They were true THESPIANs.
I enjoyed recalling all the repetitive phrases and I'm familiar with all of them. Thank you, Margaret Woodruff. And thank you, C.C. for guiding us through the process.
You will never, ever see me on a CYCLONE or any other roller coaster. I don't like any of those rides.
AGNES, I loved seeing your name in the puzzle!
CHARLOTTE, NC is where my sister, Yoli, lives but she has been visiting here for several weeks. I plan to visit her sometime in the fall when all the mosquitoes are gone. Yes, I am more familiar with Lady Bug, Lady Bug, fly away home. There's more but I can't recall it.
Time to go. I can't believe I finished this before going to church.
Have a spectacular day, everyone!
Happy birthday, Canadian Eh!
My last minute proofreading saved my FIR today when I caught several errors. OVERALL a fun Sunday puzzle and I thank you Margaret. Do come back! Thanks, C.C., for going over things. I had wondered about DANG but you confirmed what I thought. As for the theme...Margaret said, "It takes two." That was true! With the third themer (PANTS ON FIRE) I saw what was happening and it sped the theme fill afterwards.
ReplyDeleteLadybugs are more familiar to me, a descriptive term but not as elegant sounding. My first thought was Burns for the IF A body source. My squatters built tentS, PK. And ostentation was POsh way too long before perps insisted on POMP. Tried OmiT before OUST and hand up for NUTtY, but caught that error during my proofreading. Patience saved the day for the first Sunday FIR in weeks. Woohoo!!
Happy Birthday to C Eh! Enjoy your special day. And hope everyone can enjoy the rest of this Sunday.
Thank you, Margaret Woodruff. I needed this delightful puzzle after our last two puzzles. I loved this fun theme and knew all the theme entries.
ReplyDeleteI’m only familiar with IF A body meet …. NPR’s ‘Wait,wait,don’t tell me’ is funny at times, but the canned laughter is hard to take.
QUAD filled with perps, but I needed the blog’s picture to get how the clue fit. ( Thanks, CC)
I play bridges frequently, so I’m familiar with card suits, but didn’t know Spanish suits were completely different. OROS filled from perps and ‘looked’ right. GARSON filled from perps. Her acceptance speech is on YouTube and is very humble and gracious.
HG, wish you could share your 5” of rain with our extremely dry SoCal area. We’ve been asked to conserve water again.
Owen, your poem is A++ today.
Spitzboov, thank you for the Niagara Falls info. I read more on Google and learned a lot.
Happy Birthday, C EH!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful theme and wonderful construction...and you say it's a debut? Super.
ReplyDeleteWe outta get our DOH and DUH straight. DOH is what Homer cries out. DUH is "Stupid me!"
Happy Birthday, Canadian Eh!
Picard, hand raised for "Catcher in the Rye." Great book.
I was thinkin PUT had an extra T
ReplyDeleteI imagine we all started with Neck/NAPE. Russian dressing was de rigueur for REUBENS of yore
Aha, that kind of squatter
I was awful slow on ARCHERS. That corner was last fill
Fiw, had a perfectly good xword pen in my pocket but I'd have to get up to get. Hence the lousy pen. Ergo, misread the V in OVERALL as an S and thus OpOS/pOsERS.
Excuse of the week so far?
Now to find out why Perseverance and cautiously are ROVERS?????
Contact Owen that's an A+ and in running for l'icks of the year. Too bad we didn't have EYE and or NEWT or at least some EFT.
DEC prez, Olsen called UNIX "Snake-oil". But it was non-proprietary* and had less security
Re. AT EASE. There's also "Rest!" Ah, Spitz beat me to it
"relatively unladen of proper names" - except the SW corner
Picard, nice pics and great time had by all. Sorry about Nancy
WC
* I see I'm thinking of Linux.
Puzzling thoughts:
ReplyDeleteThis was a real SLOG, but unlike yesterday, I didn’t have to look up answers.
Too many write-over’s to mention, but I ended up FIR
Thanks Margaret for the fun puzzle; thanks CC for the recap; Happy Birthday C Eh! PS: DONT TELL ME (or anyone else) how old you are!
Wilbur: Perseverance and Curiosity are NASA Mars ROVER names.
ReplyDeletePicard: sorry about the loss of your friend Nancy. I also lost a friend last week with whom I had once had a lot of fun. The older we get the more friends dwindle away.
"...the more friends dwindle away"
ReplyDeleteTrue. Valerie and I lost two friends recently at the Chamberlain Tower.
Fell for the nutty, futsier trap also. If there were judges (ala Jeopardy), they might find this acceptable.
ReplyDeleteThe NY Post seems to only print the title on Sundays so I'm not in the habit of looking for it but today I did and it was quite the help getting the gimmick. Fun puzzle.
MalMan: if that is the collapsed bldg. in Surfside, what a terrifying way to go. My sympathy to you & Valerie.
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon everyone! I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, although a bit challenging in spots. Thank, Margaret, for the fun solve; and thanks, C.C., for the illuminating review.
ReplyDeleteThe meaning of the “It Takes Two” theme hint dawned on me with the 40A answer PANTS ON FIRE. After that, it was easy to go back and fill in the rest, which helped with the OVERALL solve. Like PK, wasabi OREOS get a “hard no” from me. But I love a grilled REUBEN (sans Thousand Island, please) along with a potato pancake, A popular local deli, Izzy’s, makes the best I’ve ever tasted. The FARGO movie and streaming series are fascinating, if at times hard to watch – definitely not everyone’s cuppa.
Hand up for being more familiar with Ladybug vs. Ladybird in the children’s rhyme, although I understand these are different names for the same beetle. Lucina, the rhyme we used to chant goes: “Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home! Your house is on fire, your children will burn!”
Have a great Sunday, all!
Happy birthday, CanadianEh!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful construction, Margaret Woodruff. A DANG good puzzle.
I liked this puzzle a lot, and loved the theme gimmick. Am familiar with all the phrases.
I'm with PK in thinking I would not like wasabi-flavored Oreos.
For some reason I like the name REUBEN.
For some reason I did not cotton to the name DRE.
I didn't know FARGO has more people than Minot and Rapid City.
I was usually the receiver of many SPLATS when I used to play paintball.
I remembered the DK in DKNY is Donna Karan.
I learned that Apollo was also an ARCHER.
The last name of the executive administrator where I worked is PERT.
Frankly I think Bell Labs was a huge contributor in technology, and Western Electric made extremely reliable devices including telephones.
Of course THESPIAN made me immediately think of Ol'Man Keith.
Of course AGNES made me immediately think of, well, you know who.
RURAL Road is a major artery in Tempe, Arizona. 'Snot rural at all any more.
Excellent verse today, Owen. Thank you.
Congratulations to Sir Richard. DANG, he sure looked happy.
Good wishes to you all.
Delightful Sunday puzzles, with a fun theme--many thanks for a cool debut, Margaret. And, C.C., your commentaries are always another Sunday favorite. (And already looking forward to Boomer's tomorrow).
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed seeing REUBEN next to BARISTA--makes you want to go out for a sandwich and a bit of beer. (Just a fantasy, I don't actually drink beer. PORT is more of a favorite, but today that would be a cruise stopover). Can't imagine taking a roller coaster ride on a CYCLONE--even in my younger days. If you MARRY, you don't want to FLY AWAY FROM HOME, do you? Well, sure, for a brief honeymoon, I guess.
Loved your poem, Owen--a delight.
Happy Birthday, CanadianEh.
A treat to see AGNES in the puzzle and to get her always clever and insightful commentary.
Have a great week coming up, everybody!
Jayce, in nearby Mesa there's a Longmore street, which my nephew called Lawn Mower.
ReplyDeleteJust my usual Sunday lurkin'
ReplyDeleteI see it's our north o' the border pal's birthday.
🎂
Happy Birthday Canada ...eh!
Heh heh, Lawnmower Street. Funny.
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon. Usually by this late in the day I can say THE GANG'S ALL HERE. I caught the reveal at LEROY BROWN and promptly filled PANTS ON FIRE, THE GANGS ALL HERE, DON'T TELL ME, and SWEET CHARLOTTE. But the Ladybird clue- I'd never heard of that one but FLY AWAY HOME was an easy fill after a few perps. But a FIR after two FIW days.
ReplyDeleteTwo areas gave me a little trouble. Building QUADS- it was A OK after I somehow guessed UTNE and DRE (unknown). A great clue for "Squatters build them". I kept trying to make SHEDS work.
After I changed PAM to AMY I filled MAVENS but CVS- that's a chain of drugstores. As I'd never had to write one or fill out a resume, I learned about it through crossword puzzles. But like job recommendations from a previous employer anybody reading one has to separate the wheat from the chaff.
SNOG, DRE, HECHE, DEKE, LARS, GET out- unknowns filled by perps.
BIMODAL- never seen the word used with that description but it made sense after MODAL was in place by perps.
PONY KEGS- a new term but an easy guess.
THUMB WAR makes by arthritic thumbs hurt just thinking about it.
Boomer, Corn Palace, honeymoon? Got to be a Mid-Western thing.
UNIX- reliable, reliable, reliable but if you need to make a change you need to know what you're doing. It doesn't break down, unlike other computer languages.
It took a long, long time for me to get through this one today, and I had another ONE SQUARE FIW, but considering how long it took me to recognize the theme clues (a long time) and then filling in the rest, I’m not unhappy at all with the results. My only error was DUH, instead of DOH, and BIMUDAL looked OK to me. I agree with you, Kelly!
ReplyDeleteWelcome and thanks, Margaret, and thanks C.C.
PK, he probably doesn’t sharpen the blade anyway.
Didn’t know UTNE at all. I needed some perps here and there for some of the names.
I’ve never met a roller coaster that I haven’t liked! Got over my fear the summer after I graduated high school. It was about 9:45PM, and the amusement park was getting ready to close, and each of the four of us had five tickets each remaining. We got on the roller coaster and stayed on it until we ran out of tickets.
Gotta admit that I haven’t been on any of the monster coasters, but bring ‘em on!. Can’t remember the last time I was at a real amusement park ---- probably not since AstroWorld closed. Don’t get me started about THAT! There’s STILL nothing but a bare field there!
Still haven’t finished Friday’s or Saturday’s. Had to work, and so they are only about half done.
Happy Birthday, Canadian Eh!
Speaking of ROLLER COASTERS, my daughter loves them. She obviously inherited her father's penchant for risk taking and recently parachuted out of an airplane! Just for fun! Luckily she didn't tell me about it until after it was over.
ReplyDeleteLongmore - lawn mower! That is funny.
Late to the party, because I spent most of today at another party celebrating the life of a saint I knew, a BFF who died at age 97 in April. A truly remarkable woman. But I did manage to get the puzzle completed after my return around 6ish.
ReplyDeleteThank you Margaret (you are the third Margaret I met today - two others were at Elizabeth's fete), and congrats on your debut. And thank you C.C.! Wasabi OREOS? Chacun a son gout!
And HBD to our North of the Border Gal, CEh!
Great puzzle Margaret, and the fill just flowed once I figured out the theme. I would have had an FIR on this, had you been FUTSIER and NUTTIER, instead of FUSSIER and NUTSY, but c'est la vie.
I'm with PICARD on first hearing the Burns reference in JD Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye", in which Holden Caulfield introduced the teens of the world to the word "phoney".
I'm also with Robert on the Linux variant of Unix. I used it for many years in my work and found 'vi' to be the fastest text editor in the west. I used the 'vim' variant of vi. I also use a Windows port of the same.
Gotta get up early tomorrow and it's past my 11 PM bedtime on the East Coast. See you all tomorrow.
Cheers,
Bill
I just finished watching the movie, Hidden Figures. What a remarkable group of women and they did remain hidden for too many years. I'm glad this movie was made so everyone can know about them and honor them. Smart women!
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