17. With 18-Across, symbolic goal: FINISH.
18. See 17-Across: LINE.
20. With 22-Across, daily Wall Street signal: CLOSING.
22. See 20-Across: BELL.
52. With 53-Across, concluding phase: HOME.
53. See 52-Across: STRETCH.
56. With 57-Across, farewell effort: LAST.
57. See 56-Across: HURRAH.
36. Perm problem, and a hint to the four two-part answers: SPLIT ENDS.
Melissa here. The gimmick here makes for a theme-heavy puzzle, with eight theme answers, plus the reveal. Each two-part answer makes a different phrase meaning the end of something. FINISH LINE, CLOSING BELL, HOME STRETCH, and LAST HURRAH.
Across:
1. Dine at home: EAT IN.
6. Eye obtrusively: OGLE.
10. Flight coordinators: Abbr.: ATC. Air Traffic Control.
13. Brawl: FRACAS. "A noisy disturbance of quarrel." Has anyone actually heard or used this word in conversation? I only see it in crosswords or books.
15. Author Hubbard: L. RON. He wrote the book Dianetics, and founded the Church of Scientology.
16. John, to Ringo: LOO. Great clue, even though we see it a lot. Ringo Starr, and john as slang for toilet, or the British version, LOO.
19. Landlocked land in S.A.: BOL. BOLivia is the fifth-largest country in South America.
23. False god: IDOL.
26. Went (for): VIED.
27. Berlin's Maxim __ Theater: GORKI. The oldest concert hall building in Berlin. Interesting history.
28. Guys working on lines: WIREMEN. They get a charge out of it. Are women who work on lines also called WIREMEN?
30. Colorful disc-shaped candy: SMARTIE. Popular in trick-or-treat bags.
32. Fed. fiscal agency: OMB. Office of Management and Budget. Description.
33. "Ah, me!": ALAS.
35. __ a time: ONE AT.
38. Flat: STALE. Don't usually refer to flat soda as STALE, or stale bread as flat, but okay.
40. Chemical formula for lye: NAOH. Sodium hydroxide.
41. Antipollution org.: EPA. Environmental Protection Agency.
44. Pro tennis designation since 1968: OPEN ERA. The Open Era of tennis began in 1968 when most world-class tournaments first allowed professional players as well as amateurs to enter.
46. Sparkle: GLITTER.
48. Law school class: TORTS. A tort is a civil claim where a claimant has suffered damages due to the actions of another party.
49. City near Colombia's coastline: CALI. City southwest of Bogotá. It’s known for salsa dancing.
55. Quarterback Manning: ELI. Sixteen seasons with the New York Giants.
61. Cartoon canine: REN. The Ren and Stimpy Show.
62. African bovines: GNUS. What's GNU?
63. Spots to remove: STAINS.
64. Indian honorific: SRI.
65. Best Upset, e.g.: ESPY. Best Upset ESPY Award.
66. Uppity sort: SNOOT.
Down:
1. Gee preceder: EFF. Alphabet: F, G.
2. "Exodus" hero: ARI. Otto Preminger directed a 1960 film based on the novel, featuring Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan. It focuses mainly on the escape from Cyprus and subsequent events in Palestine.
3. Summer shade: TAN. Not much time left for tanning this year.
4. Pointy, cold formation: ICICLE.
5. Former FC Edmonton org.: NASL. North American Soccer League.
6. Skate park move: OLLIE. The story of the ollie.
7. Monotonous routines: GRINDS.
8. Like marathons: LONG.
9. Charlotte-to-Raleigh dir.: ENE.
10. Medicine Hat's province: ALBERTA. Medicine Hat experiences the lowest combined tax rate in Canada, the lowest utility rates in Alberta and an enviable climate. Known as the "oasis of the prairies," Medicine Hat is also Canada's sunniest city.
11. Carpenter's collection: TOOLKIT.
12. Lassie, for one: COLLIE.
14. December driveway clearer, to a Brit: SHOVELLER. Not sure why the Brit distinction is noted here, as both shoveler and shoveller seem accepted spellings in both the U.S. and Britain. Besides one who shovels snow, it is also the name of a type of duck in the northern hemisphere.
21. Moses' mount: SINAI. Where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
22. Tiresome types: BORES. Zzzzzzz.
23. WWII battle site, for short: IWO. One of the Japanese Volcano Islands, and where this iconic image was captured.
24. Faint: DIM.
25. The Sun, say: ORB. From the latin word orbis, meaning circle or disk. Not sure why Sun is capitalized here.
27. Biopic that was 1982's Best Picture: GANDHI. Starring Ben Kingsley.
29. Syrup sources: MAPLES.
31. The Sphinx et al.: MONOLITHS. A geological feature that has only a single massive stone or rock.
34. Subway stop: Abbr.: STN.
36. "¿ votre __!": SANTE. French for "to your health," often used as a toast.
37. Bird on old quarters: EAGLE. Washington quarters.
38. Printing program: SPOOLER. A computer utility that regulates data flow by receiving data (as from a word processor), queuing the data in a buffer, and then transmitting it (as to a printer) with increased efficiency.
39. Subway system extremes: TERMINI.
41. Pilot's approx.: ETA. Estimated Time of Arrival.
42. Part of mpg: PER. Miles per gallon.
43. Horace's "__ Poetica": ARS. See here.
44. Significant ones?: OTHERS. As in, "his significant other."
45. Doesn't behave: ACTS UP.
47. Mideast capital: TEHRAN.
50. Dilettantish: ARTSY. Merriam Websters includes this as a dated definition: "an admirer or lover of the arts." The first definition is "a person having superficial interest in an art or branch of knowledge : dabbler."
53. Lacking: SANS.
54. Skips class: CUTS.
56. Clothing dept. size: LGE.
58. __ Grande: RIO. RIO means river in Spanish.
59. Enero begins it: ANO. Spanish. Enero = January; ANO = year.
60. 33rd pres.: HST. Harry S. Truman. U.S. President from 1945 to 1953. His middle initial, "S", honors his grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.
37 comments:
FIWrong. Misspelt FRACuS, had no more idea what NuSL than I do NASL. Misspelt GORKy, didn't notice what it did to COLLyE.
Didn't quite get the theme. Didn't get HOME STRETCH before the reveal, but noted that the first word of all the others -- FINISH, CLOSING, LAST -- was a synonym for ending, so thought that was it, without paying attention to the phrases in whole. If it were just the first word, the one I hadn't got yet, HOME, would have disabused me of that idea.
The first row of downs gave a couple hints at other themes. Canada (Edmonton, ALBERTA) and skateboarding (GRINDS should have had a clecho with OLLIE. "A grind is a skateboarding move that involves the skateboard trucks sliding along an edge or surface. Skaters can grind on ramps, in pools, off handrails — basically, any protruding surface that they can balance on.)
I wonder if younger Pope Francis
Would ever ACT UP in a FRACAS?
Would a referee
From the Holy See
Declare him to be overly fractious?
L. RON started out writing fiction,
But his fantasies became an addiction!
A LONG story short,
His "religion", of sorts,
Belongs in the LOO of conviction!
Once when Adam and Eve thought to EAT IN,
A snake came along to the meetin'
To be a hob-nobler
He provided a cobbler,
Which ALAS, got them thrown out for EATIN'!
A practiced skateboarder can OLLIE
Making his board jump, by golly!
To GRIND down a hand rail,
Will make his board wail --
For me, to ride one would be folly!
{A-, B+, A-, B.}
Thanks, Melissa. Owen, I liked your skateboarding homage in particular. The clecho didn't occur to me as I constructed.
In themes like this, "split" or its synonyms usually mean phrases with book-ended theme letters. I thought it would be interesting to "split" by separating two word theme phrases with a block.
Thank goodness September is here, which means Fall is weeks away. Today, we're battening down for torrential rains and predicted flooding in our creek. How's the weather and Ida treating everyone?
FIW, missing with TOOLseT, GORsI and SMARTeE, the last two unknown to me. Also DNK SANTE and ARS, but I admit that I do appreciate an especially well-formed ARS.
Back when I was a craft employee for the phone company, I learned that WCTS was an acronym for "wire chief's test set". Gender neutral even back then. I never met a "wire chief" though.
To automate your SPOOLing, use HASP. Acronym-within-an-acronym. (Houston Automatic SPOOLing Program, Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On Line.) Fun nerd trivia.
Thanks to PC for the fun challenge. And thanks to Melissa B for another fun read.
Good morning! (Ribbit, Ribbit!)
Got through this one in good time. Noticed the paired entries, but not that they were "split ends." Sometime maybe I'll learn to read the complete reveal clue. [Probably not.] Thought GORKI was in Russia -- oops that's GORKY Park. Also tried GLISTEN before GLITTER showed up. Thanx, Paul and Melissa Bee. (CALI "It's known for salsa dancing." -- and that's not all!)
FRACAS: Back in '51 Bing Crosby recorded In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening with Jane Wyman. They managed to rhyme FRACAS with "jackass." Seems quite risqué for the '50s.
Filled this slowly. NASL was all perps. One bad cell, N. I had STA instead of STN. and NAOH. These two abbreviations were the only unfamiliar fill. I found the theme quickly after the reveal. Thanks mb and Paul.
I sometimes call flat soda, stale.
I occasionally hear FRACAS spoken. I remember how to pronounce it. FRAYkuhs.
Smarties are similar to Conversation Hearts and Necco Wafers. I prefer the latter.
My favorite clue, John to Ringo/LOO. These days I rarely hear John for toilet.
Is it "to a Brit" because they call the tool a SHOVEL(L)ER? To me, it's just a shovel or snow shovel. When my sister worked in England, she brought hers with her (the govt. shipped her stuff) and the natives were amazed by the size of the shovel.
GORKI with an "I"? I suppose Germans can spell it as they wish because the original name would've been in Cyrillic characters.
Thank you Paul for the puzzle and you, Melissa, for a right-on-target recap. FIR but misspelled HURRAH for a while and had to correct that (hoorah). Also, worked through the NW in a similar fashion to Jinx (tool set as first guess).
Good morning everyone,
Nice puzzle from Paul, today. Not hard, no strikethroughs. FIR. Liked the fresh fill of FRACAS, SPOOLER, GLITTER, and MONOLITHS.
Neat theme.
WIREMEN - In our neck-of-the-woods, utility types who work on over head wires are called 'linemen'. Those that work on energized high-voltage transmission lines using special insulated tools are called 'hot-stick linemen.' I believe it is gender neutral.
Swamp - Sorry for all your storm damage. Glad you survived and hope that your family and friends are all safe.
Ray-O - - Bummer about the insurance. Is there something the state Insurance Department can do about the way that product is marketed? Sounds like it's bordering on fraud.
À votre SANTÉ!
FIW. I had TOOL seT and GORsI. And SMARTeE. As did Jinx I see
I couldn't make head or tail of SPLIT ENDS.
Just the right level of difficulty for Wednesday
Scientology HQ is in Clearwater. I believe LRON SPLIT from the group
I was thinking Paraguay for that landlocked SA country
So all three, 6,7,8 could have had GRIND as the answer. And Columbia is in a clue as well as an answer
I FIR on the end of week and FIW early week.
WC
Re. Cool, cool,cool
Clooney version, no jackass
Detail for Cool
I thought lyrics might be Ira G.
My father was a WIRE Chief for NETel. Internet is back. It's stormy here in Ocala country
FIW, thinking the same as Jinx and WC again. I put TOOLseT, also not so familiar with the perps. Luckily I had changed FRACuS/FRACAS in time while proofreading. Other WOs were BOorS/BORES and STREngh/STRETCH. It was a good puzzle for today and had a new theme trick. Thanks, Paul, also for coming by. Thanks, Melissa B, for your review which expanded my knowledge about skateboarding and the sphinx.
We got lucky with Ida as it mostly edged by us. So sorry to hear about your place, SwampCat. The battle here with the army worms continues (small problem in comparison). Hope you all have a peaceful day.
Sorry, I just had a hankering for crooning so here's the
Crosby, Lombard version complete with "Jackass"
WC
C.C. has yet another puzzle either today or tomorrow. USA Today, "Pear Down". It exhibits her usual eclectic vocabulary and cuisine references.
Nice puzzle Paul. I got a FIR and even sussed the theme (very atypical of me!). And a very informative review Melissa. I particularly liked the link on OLLIE, as I'd never heard of it before. Sounds like a real skate boarding PARADIGM SHIFT!
Some musings:
19A DNK that BOLIVIA was landlocked, but PARAGUAY didn't fit (well PAR would I guess) and I had to wait for perps.
28A WIREMEN. WIREMYN maybe?
38A STALE. Perhaps Paul (or Rich) was thinking of CARBONATED drinks, as in FLAT?
61A So if REN's a DOG, what the hell is STIMPY?
62A GNU. "What's in a name?" Any other OS that works just like UNIX would still be as SWEET! GNU is legendary as the Free Software movement's clever way to circumvent AT&T's rights to the name UNIX. And I'm sure that MA BELL is still recursing about it!
7D GRINDS. When combined with BUMPS, they're suddenly not so MONOTONOUS!
11D TOOLKIT. My dad was a carpenter, and he kept his tools in a TOOLBOX.
25D THE Sun is OUR sun. Also the newspaper that delivered this puzzle to me in this morning's email.
38D SPOOLer. "Simultaneous Peripheral Operations Online" allows multiple users to simultaneously access a printer (or card reader) by buffering inputs in memory and then printing them (usually) FIFO. Not the kind of thing you can do with a tape.
Cheers,
Bill
MalMan @9:19 AM Just checked USA Today. And C.C.'s puzzle is Today!
Nice puzzle - I liked the Split Ends answers.
I also had TOOLSET. Oh well. Never heard of GORKI or SMARTIE (Smartee seemed better).
Trivia--Lassie was a female COLLIE. I guess back then they couldn't see a hero as female?
Another great word-FRACAS.
As a big sci-fi fan, I read a lot by British authors, so 2 LLs in SHOVELLER looks correct to me: ex. The Time Traveller. Traveler (as spelled here in the USA) just looks totally wrong to me. Same with cancelled vs canceled and levelled vs leveled. So why then do we then spell it patrolled and controlled and enrolled with 2 L's? We are so inconsistent!
FLN: SwampCat, sorry to hear of your Ida experience. Glad to know that you were personally unscathed, though your losses will probably be severe.
There was a delay in reaching the FINISH LINE during the HOME STRETCH in the mideast. Stuck with "BaaL" too long instead of IDOL when I got final perped "L" . I certainly wasn't a SMARTIE when I wrote in "IRS" instead of OMB either. Speaking of "L" I had E Ron first. Plus the extra "L" in SHOVELLER is apparently "Bri-ish". Canada Eh, you use an extra "L" to shovel snow? 🌨
Although this was a nice Humpday puzzle without a lot of proper names, (didn't know the Berlin theater), I personally don't care for single clues SPLIT into two answers. I can't remember from one second to the next what the original clue was and go back and forth. ...What did I just say?
"Best Upset" apparently is an award? Thought a "dillantante" referred to drops to widen your pupils? 😳
SPOOLER was an unknown. Did Spoolies cause SPLIT ENDS?" 🤔
"What's your sign?" in a Helsinki bar...FINISH LINE.
Natasha's colleague...BORES.
Mumbai SMARTIES....GANDHI.
Pastry school class....TORTS.
Trumps 2 of 3...MAPLES.
Ornery Wildebeests? "Give me the bad ___ first" ..... GNUS.
Another cold snap and some showers from the weekend Hurricane... Been an disappointing summer. The time from Memorial Day to Labor Day gets shorter every year
Ray - O @10:48 AM. It is for the UPSETTER!
Spitz..
Don't think this is insurance fraud as much as policy owner stupidity. I should have checked my policy coverage when I went part time. I made the comment to alert anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation.
Clever Wednesday puzzle, many thanks, Paul--and thanks for stopping by. Always enjoy your helpful explanations, Melissa--thanks for those too.
Had TOOL SET, like others, and never heard of SMARTIE, so that made that northeast corner a bit difficult this morning. But was happy that I remembered ELI MANNING--especially since I don't know much about sports. But maybe he's popped up in puzzles before. And had no trouble with MT. SINAI, or with TEHRAN.
Thanks for those fun poems, Owen.
Have a good day, everybody.
Great Ray-isms, today! Bores and Natasha? I wonder if Fearless Leader knows.
I managed a FIR but took 30 to do it. Had to wait for perps to see if OGLE or LEER would fill 6A. Do not like the clue FLAT to mean stale; that just doesn’t ring the bell for me, Was sure NASL had to be wrong, missed that it would be an acronym. DNK SANTE or GORKI. W/Os GLISTEN:GLITTER, STA:STN, TOOLBOX:TOOLKIT. Also don’t like that clue, a KIT is a small assemblage of items, and you can’t be a professional carpenter without a pretty extensive collection of tools, not a “kit”. Sorry, Paul, my nit-picking makes it sound like I didn’t like your CW, and in reality I pretty much enjoyed it. Is the Sphinx a monolith? I thought a monolith was a geological term, like a huge piece of stone, not a carved item. I’ll hafta look it up later. I got the theme immediately with the first theme clue, which was a help. For some reason I strained my brain before HOME showed up to complete STRETCH, probably because I also struggled to fill OTHERS for 44D. NAOH marks the second day this week when my background in chemistry came in handy. Thanx for the nice CW, PC, I liked it in spite of my grousing. And thanx Melissa, for the fun and informative write-up.
Creative puzzle that only had a few glitches. I had SKITTLE before it became SMARTIE with crosses. I also wondered about The Sun clue being capitalized - so had me thinking of newspapers, especially as I was looking for perps to lead me to WIREMEN. It's a term that could be deduced but I have never heard it- if I was going to guess it's definition it would be people who work with telegraph or radio equipment.
MONOLITHS filled by perps as well, since I think of them as tall narrow column type of formations rather than something like the Sphinx- which is made of one piece of stone.
It was only 72 on my walk this morning - yes fall is coming!
Thanks Melissa and Paul!
IH @1:21 PM Melissa raised the same question about Sun. It's a named star like rigel, betelgeuse, and arcturus. Those spellings like odd to me. In fact spell check capitalized them all initially.
O.K., learning moment for me: monolith as used in the CW is correct. Just looked it up.
Musings
-Played 27 holes today in weather that gave a great preview of fall
-An enjoyable theme
-In Bolivia, two bodies were exhumed in 1990 that were purported to be Butch and Sundance as their LAST HURRAH in the movie took place in that country. DNA tests proved those bodies were not the famous bandits.
-A MONOLITH appears several times and plays a big part in 2001, A Space Odyssey. I have no idea what Arthur Clarke meant by them except, “Something is changing!”
Not a fan of cross reference puzzles but gave it a shot. The gimmick wasn’t worth it in this case. Not a bad puzzle just wasn't for me.
Well, I am from Alberta, so Medicine Hat's province was easy. Two of my grandchildren were born there. But... being sports illiterate, I had no idea which league Edmonton had belonged to. That gives me a mark of 50%! We shovel our fair share of snow around here. Am I a shoveller or a shoveler though? I can't say that I had ever given it a thought!
I also had a FIW, and for the same reason.
Had TOOLSET, SMARTEE, GORSI.
I don’t eat candy, if I did it wouldn’t be those. I knew of GORKY PARK, but that’s in Moscow.
No write-overs, but 2 bad cells,
See you tomorrow.
Was I the only one that thought BORES should be BOORS????
The male family members of "The Flying Wallandas" were WIREMEN too. With a few beers 🍻: "high" WIREMEN
🙄
I liked this puzzle. Yeah, I had to make myself learn that (1) something like the Sphinx can be called a monolith, and (2) there is such a thing as WIREMEN. My brain really really wanted FIREMEN even to the point of accepting IFO as the nickname for that WWII battle site.
Upon giving it a second look, NAOH looks like someone with dyslexia might spell the name of that ark guy. And to my sports-challenged mind, NASL also looks like some sort of spelling-challenged chemical formula.
Yeah, waseeley, good question. What the hell is STIMPY?
"L, RON, LMNO Scientologists." "OSAR!"
SwampCat, I join the others in hoping you come through your loss of property all right.
Good wishes to you all.
Re: Waseeley @ 9:59 am and Jayce @ 4:58 pm
Stimpson J. "Stimpy" Cat is a red and white, rotund Manx cat with a blue nose, purple eyelids, no tail, paws with gloves and four fingers that have fingernails, human-style buttocks, flat human feet, four wiggly toes and a brain the size of a peanut.
Nickelodeon, thank you.
FIW by one letter. Thought of WIREMAN, but never heard of it; always been linEMAN. Firemen do call their hoses "lines." I_O for a battle site? IWO Jima as a short form just didn't occur to me; so I just left IfO.
>> Roy
FIW! I corrected my 13A/5D error, but I forgot to go back and correct 40A/34D. I hate it when I make stupid mistakes!
No problem with the theme or the reveal; they fell pretty quickly.
Thanks, Paul and Melissa. The puzzle was fun, and the expo was enlightening.
Hi All!
Thanks for the puzzle Paul but I fell in the same traps as OKL (FRACuS*) and Jinx & WC (TOOL seT [I thought it was SMARTIE, dang it!]) for the FIW.
Excellent expo, mb. I enjoyed the info on the OLLIE and your link to GNU's Not Unix.
WOs: SHOVEL-Lad(?), I was going for a BuLL market b/f the BELL rang.
ESPs: SANTE, CALI, NuSL(5d), BOL, GORsI
Fav: I listen to NPR's ATC (All Things Considered) every afternoon. ARI Shapiro is a host.
{B+, A, A, B+}
MManatee - thanks for the heads-up on C.C.'s USAToday pzl. It was fun and I think it's right (clues from 56d on are missing). If it weren't for the title, I wouldn't have gotten the theme.
Waseeley - LOL AT&T re-Cursing GNU. If you have to run Windows, GNUWin32's Tools in your %path% makes it bearable.
inanehiker - "radio equipment"? That'd be WIRElessMEN ;-)
Curmudgeon: When I first joined the DOD/USAF EIT (Engineering & Installation Technology) unit, they sent me to lineMAN school so I'd know the toil it takes to install future designs of mine.
I learned, "Don't call out 100 pair if 50 pair will do" 'cuz "telephone poles are high" and "manholes are hot & dank."
Fortunately for us over-engineering designers AND the lineMEN, Fibre Optics were just coming out. :-)
Cheers, -T
*I was thinking RuckUs [:19 Breakfast Club]
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