Saturday Themeless by Beth Rubin and Brad Wilber
Hi Gary,
BRAD: When I connected with Beth, I was excited to be collaborating with another librarian. Lots of common ground emerged between us, and not only were we well-matched in puzzle making, Beth became an empathetic sounding board for pandemic life in general.
BETH: Thank you for inviting us to the L.A. Times Crossword Corner! Originally from New York (where Brad now lives - hg), I am a librarian, crossword constructor, writer, and artist living in Los Angeles. My puzzles have been published by Universal, Crosswords Club, and Spyscape. This is my Los Angeles Times debut and my first themeless.
I was fortunate to connect to Erik Agard and Facebook's Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory community just a few weeks into learning how to construct a puzzle. The guidance and mentorship has been stellar. The generosity, humor and creativity of the crossword community continues to inspire me.
It’s been wonderful learning the basics from someone of Brad’s expertise and lovely getting to know him as well. Thanks to Rich for his excellent edits. Hope that you all enjoy the puzzle!
BRAD: When I connected with Beth, I was excited to be collaborating with another librarian. Lots of common ground emerged between us, and not only were we well-matched in puzzle making, Beth became an empathetic sounding board for pandemic life in general. I gave Beth a starting corner with a seed entry from academia (which I'm keeping under wraps--sorry, themelesses are a cutthroat business!). But when she came back with this beautiful corner with DIPLOMA MILL, I wasn't that interested in doing a collegiate minitheme, so we ditched my corner and re-evaluated. Beth did lots of wonderful experimentation in the middle of the puzzle as we struggled with the joinery of the two stacks of 11s. She brought in the novelist Carl HIAASEN and that proved
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| Checking Out With Beth and Brad |
quite important to a clean, fresh grid fill. Librarians for the win! We really tried to get a whimsical verbal expression in the spot where PILED IT ON is (we may try it again next time we work together), but that had to be shelved.
We ended up being quite proud of our work on the clueing: new takes on MUTTS and ION, ETTU, and SIDE ONE. It's such a pleasure being back in the L.A. Times again! Enjoy…
1. Some chocolate purchases: ASSORTMENTS - If you order from See's Candies you can make your own ASSORTMENT
12. Inflation fig.: PSI - How much air is in your tires?
15. Purveyor of fraudulent credentials: DIPLOMA MILL - An exposé in the St. Louis Star in 1923
´16. Bit of positivity?: ION - a crossword staple
17. Hair, in many cases: DNA EVIDENCE - "Uh, number 3, can we have a word?"
19. Climber's rest stop: LEDGE.
20. Poetic indicator of relative time: ERE.
21. Juice extractor: PRESS.
23. Pasture palindrome: EWE.
24. Wouldn't share: BOGARTED - Named for BOGART, of whom it is said never took a cigarette out of his mouth. It's when marijuana smokers accusing others of not passing around a joint.
24. Wouldn't share: BOGARTED - Named for BOGART, of whom it is said never took a cigarette out of his mouth. It's when marijuana smokers accusing others of not passing around a joint.
26. Imperious dismissal: LEAVE ME.
28. Surfboard damage: DING.
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| Before. and After |
31. Shocked big-time: APPALLED.
34. Official who sings in Hebrew: CANTOR - This movie in all its iterations is about a boy who did not want to be a CANTOR like his father
36. Leverage provider: CROWBAR.
37. Where to find "Octopus's Garden" on "Abbey Road": SIDE ONE.
38. Utah Jazz center Whiteside: HASSAN
39. Ran into trouble: HIT A SNAG - in 1865, the steamboat Bertrand HIT A SNAG in the Missouri River an hour east of me. It was rediscovered one hundred years later and now its cargo is on display in this beautiful museum
40. Shakespearean last gasp: ET TU and 49. When 40-Across was spoken: IDES - Shakespeare 101
41. Neologists: COINERS - People who invent/coin new words like webinar, malware, blogosphere, etc.
43. Zoom frustrations: TIME LAGS - The TV broadcast of Husker FB games is 10 seconds later than the local radio broadcast.
45. __ rule: MOB.
48. Love of collectibles: VIRTU.
50. "__ Kapital": DAS - Marks and Engels 101
51. Succumbed to stage fright: FROZE.
53. Brown or Rice ending: EDU - Brown (brown.EDU) and Rice (rice.EDU) University web sites
54. '90s-'00s HBO series with lots of therapy sessions: THE SOPRANOS - Lorraine Bracco played Dr. Jennifer Melfi who was conflicted in trying to counsel Tony Soprano.
57. Comprehend: GET.
58. Impresario's contact: TALENT AGENT - A TALENT AGENT's job is to hound impresarios (people who put on shows, etc.) to get jobs for their clients
59. Hibachi waste: ASH.
60. Election focuses: SWING STATES - Candidates spend more time in "toss up" states rather than states that are solidly blue or red.
Down:
1. Disorient: ADDLE.
2. Power cord?: SINEW - One use of the SINEW (tendon/ligament) of the Bison was used to make the bowstring to power a bow and arrow
3. Club relative: SPADE - Also hearts and diamonds
4. First name in film designers: OLEG - OLEG Cassini
5. Wander: ROVE.
6. "Eww! Say no more!": TMI.
7. Redesigned: MADE OVER 8. Popped up: EMERGED - A new Lidia EMERGED below
9. Common starting hr.: NINE AM - Not at any job I ever had
10. "I Am Jazz" cable channel: TLC - This reality series focuses on Jazz "Jennings" who was identified as having gender dysphoria and the show follows Jazz's life as a transgender girl
11. Took a day to consider, with "on": SLEPT.
12. Faulted to excess: PILED IT ON - "I heard you the fourth time!"
13. __-chef: SOUS - Literally "under chief/chef". Here are three SOUS Chefs in training.
14. "Need You Tonight" band: INXS - If you'd really like to hear that
22. Dermatological symptom: REDNESS.
24. Yoga asset: BALANCE - I can see that
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Dancers Pose/Natarajasana |
25. Reels off: RECITES - "Fourscore and seven years ago..."
26. Premise in many John Grisham novels: LAWSUIT - Mr. Grisham was named in a LAWSUIT for libel in 2007 for a non-fiction book he wrote.
27. Idris of "The Jungle Book": ELBA.
26. Premise in many John Grisham novels: LAWSUIT - Mr. Grisham was named in a LAWSUIT for libel in 2007 for a non-fiction book he wrote.
27. Idris of "The Jungle Book": ELBA.
29. Actress Gaye of "Ali": NONA.
30. Novelist Iles: GREG.
31. Reason to call a chiropractor: ACHE.
32. Nit, to a Brit: PRAT - and 51. Alpha Phi Alpha, e.g.: FRAT - What would you call a FRAT PRAT?
33. Like a situation in which emotional persuasion trumps factual accuracy: POST TRUTH.
35. Purim month: ADAR.
37. Voice used for "Humpty Dumpty," say: SING SONG.
39. Crime novelist Carl: HIAASEN - I've never heard of Carl but I read a snippet from this fun book that is illustrated by a crossword friend of ours and I might buy it!
42. Yale sobriquet: OLD ELI.
44. Crosses at obedience school?: MUTTS
45. "Rouen Cathedral" painter: MONET - He did over thirty of them
46. Thinning layer: OZONE.
47. Tops: BESTS.
48. Chevy named for a star: VEGA - This lightweight, rear-wheel-drive vehicle would not fare well in the snow we got last night.
52. Sitar sequence: RAGA - A pattern of notes, rhythms, etc. in Indian music
55. Hem partner: HAW - Derivation
56. NBA stat: PTS - Here are the all time leaders. Notice the #1 scorer only made one 3-pointer in his entire career.
FWIW: Today I start my fifth year of writing up the Saturday puzzles for C.C.'s wonderful site. In so doing, I have gained so much knowledge from the puzzles themselves and the wonderful band of bloggers who post here!
30 comments:
So close. TV channel? T_C, duh, TMC just like last week. With bad lighting and bad pen I never noticed MImL and left it for a killer FIW.
And after getting a fast start I completely bogged down. TIMEouts, noVA, asa/MOB weren't helping. That Brown and Rice are unis broke the SW. I then SWINGed thru SE since the only artist I knew fit.
MUTTS was devilish and I realized ELI was the 2nd word.
Under(the)sea was where the octopi lived but ONE/two made those fiendish SIDE by side names make sense.
Inflation wasn't cpi but SOUS Chef was solid, unlike my Latin but I wagged the X. And…
I'm looking at completed xword and MImL is clear as day. Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!
Gary, any thoughts?
I'll post and read his write-up
WC
I couldn't make out the clue: When. "40- across was spoken" was on second line. IDES perped in. As did VIRTU
Therapy sessions have proved to be great gag filler for MOM and Monk
I enjoyed the link to NBA PTS Scorers and seeing the old names. (Easy)Ed MacCauley,the old Celtic , popped up. The C's traded him to Hawks to move up one slot to draft Bill Russell.
WC
Ps, the early solvers seem to be having trouble with this Saturday stumper.
Good morning!
SOCAL really slowed me down. My NOVA was no-go. Remembering VEGA finally broke things open. Further up the coast, it took a vowel alphabet run to decide on that A in PRAT/HASSAN -- both new to me. VIRTU was another learning moment. Knew of Carl HIAASEN, but as a newspaper columnist rather than author. This one was definitely Saturday-worthy. Nice LAT debut for the Rubin/Wilber combo. Enjoyed the tour, Husker. (Kareem was a center, right? Makes sense that he wouldn't spend much time outside the arc. Plus, he's an oldster. I'd bet the 3-point shot wasn't a "thing" for most of his career.)
DNF. Only about 50% finished when I thew in the towel and hit red letters. But I only had to do so once, and continued on from there without further help.
33d is utterly political, and there's a word in the clue that should have been capitalized and with an apostrophe.
T/os: FULCRUM < CROWBAR, VOTE TALLIES < SWING STATES, TRACK __ < SIDE ONE, probably a bunch of others I've forgotten.
noun: virtu or vertu
1. knowledge of or expertise in the fine arts.
+ curios or objets d'art collectively.
2. (literary) the good qualities inherent in a person or thing.
article of virtu: an article that is interesting because of its antiquity, beauty, quality of workmanship, etc.
Origin
early 18th century: from Italian virtù ‘virtue’; the variant vertu is an alteration, as if from French.
Purim is in the Jewish month of ADAR
Synagogues fill with the voice of the CANTOR.
A MOB of Persians
Were denied their purgin',
And Esther was hailed as a star!
Louis was shocked and APPALLED,
That Rick's place should ever be called
A gambling den
By a German, when
The usual suspects were involved!
{A-, B+.}
Dedicated crossword solvers are gonna love today’s puzzle, beginners I think not so much. This is what we get when two librarians collaborate, an expertly constructed and clued puzzle that is a true test of thinking in the abstract. Thank you Beth and Brad for the Saturday mind bender!! I counted at least 15 compound words or phrases, none of which I knew or could even WAG on at first glance of the clue. And it could also be described by two words from yesterday’s CW, arcane and esoteric. From a starting point of only being able to place a few words confidently, I eventually gained a foothold in the SE and somehow managed a FIR in 35 minutes. DNK HASSAN,VIRTU, HIAASEN, NONA, GREG, and more....and I first thought of leverage provider as “fulcrum”, and yoga asset to be “agility”, which both proved wrong.
Thank you Gary for a most interesting expo, definitely appreciate your time and effort! I’m a relative newcomer to this site, but as you stated, I’ve also gained much knowledge from the insightful write-ups and all the commenters. I never knew where the term BOGART came from but I do remember a line from a song, “don’t bogart that joint my friend, pass it over to me”. And now I know what neologists are, have seen Monet’s cathedral paintings, and learned about the steamboat Bertrand, thanks for the enlightenment on those, and congratulations on starting your 5th year on here!
FIR!!! Yes, Jinx got a Saturday! It's been a while. Erased as a for MOB, cars for INXS (oh yeah, the Car's hit was "You're All I Got Tonight"), sleep for SLEPT, red spot for REDNESS, nora for NONA, and ppg for PTS.
HIAASEN's best talent imo is wacky character development. One is "Skink", a former Florida governor who went nuts because of his inability to slow down commercial development and destruction of wildlife. Skink dropped off the grid, moved to the Everglades and lives off the land, and pops up in unlikely situations. Even if you aren't a Flordaphile (and why wouldn't you be), HIAASEN's books provide great belly laughs. You might want to start with "Tourist Season", which inspired Jimmy Buffett's "Ballad of Skip Wiley".
PSI - My coach tires should have 105 in the fronts and 110 in the rear. Since they were filled before I left Virginia, they are now about 5 PSI too high. My Honda's tires have 32 PSI and weren't noticeably affected by the temperature change.
Thanks to B&B for the fun grid that even I could complete. My favorites were BOGART and SIDE ONE. And thanks to Gary for the fun tour. My favorite was Lidia's makeover.
Owen, par excellence. APPALLED: Def. "Shocked and chagrined"
I just had to lookup Don't BOGART that Joint
I've gotta get up'n goin times awast'n
WC
Wow! This Saturday themeless nearly got me, but I did finish, albeit with a FIW. One bad square: HASSeN and ELBe. I assumed ELBA was not spelled like the island and I learned otherwise from Husker Gary. I won't make that mistake again! I spent more time dithering over the HASSAN and PRAT crossing since both were total unknowns, but I made a lucky guess based on knowing pratfall.
So much ink used on WOs today. I could hardly read some entries. I had SWING voters/STATES, as a/MOB, and sore/ACHE. The print in my puzzle clue for GREG Iles isn't like here, making it hard to get the spelling of the last name. Lies? ILes? What? Are we looking for a proper name or a general term?
Anyway, all's well that ends well enough and I will be happy with a FIW again today as I was close to quitting halfway through. A great challenge and many thanks to Beth and Brad. Also for coming by. And as usual I appreciated Husker Gary's informative review. Five years well spent!
Hi Y'all! Thanks, Beth & Brad for a tough one that filled easier than expected.
Gary, thanks for four years of your interesting tutorials in CWD. Can it have been that long?
PSI was last fill. I was thinking economic inflation.
DIPLOMA MILL took every single perp. I was thinking passports, driver's licenses, birth certificates...
Never heard of BOOGARTED. Never did doobies.
Knew Whiteside but not his first name HASSAN. Also DNK VIRTU, INXS, NONA, PRAT.
I've read HIASSEN but wouldn't class him as a crime writer. Comedy. Also knew GREG Iles.
novA first, but I had banished from my memory that I'd once owned a VEGA, probably the worst car Detroit made in the second half of the last century.
Time spent wondering why 'act V" wouldn't work until IDES clicked, "when" in time, not when in the play.
A lot of unknown names that had enough crosses for help.
Husker Gary may have started his 5th year of blogging Saturdays today, but he has been blogging longer than that. All the way back to 2012.
I show over 300 puzzles blogged, with 206 Saturday deliveries leading the way.
Also:
Wednesday - Over 50
Sunday - Over 30
Friday - 5
Thursday 2
Tuesday - 1
Gary, you'll have to get a Monday one of these days, just to complete the perfecta.
Good Morning:
Most of the solve was smooth, with aids from perps, but the NW and SE corners were teeth gnashers! I just couldn’t get any traction in either area which was exacerbated in the SE by being convinced that As A (Rule) was the correct fill. Finally, finally, I saw the light when I filled in Froze. The NW also took forever until I came up with DNA Evidence and a few downs. I don’t know how long I spent on the solve because I didn’t exit the App when I was interrupted, but I know for sure that it was longer than YooperPhil’s impressive 35 minutes. I liked the Frat/Prat, Et Tu/Ides pairings and my favorite C/A was Crosses at Obedience School=Mutts. My unknowns were Bogarted, Virtu, Nona, and Old Eli. I’ve only heard of Eli for Yale students.
Thanks, Beth and Brad, for a challenging workout and for sharing your thoughts with us, and thanks, Gary, for the several years of dedication, illumination and enjoyment that you give us each and every Saturday. Bravo and Grazie.
Have a great day.
Learning moment: Prat
Note, it is quite rude to use this word...
So, please be kind,
and use the word "twit" instead...
It was fun and helpful for this South Floridian to have both HIASSEN and HASSAN in today's fill. CARL is a fellow Gator who has worked for the Miami Herald as a reporter and then a feature writer. He also has done much to feature SoFla. His sister was married to a Broward County Commissioner.
The Miami Heat benefited from the services of Whiteside when the Big 3 broke up when Lebron James left and Chris Bosh got hurt. He played well averaging a double double each year.
I liked 2. Power cord?: SINEW did not like COINER .
Thank you to the new team of Beth and Brad and HG as always
Thank you Beth and Brad, for a not just crunchy, but positively rocky Saturday puzzle, which BARing any objections I'm here to CROW about. There were a lot of challenges, but I spiraled round and round until thought I was going to dry up in the SW. Lots of clever puns and misdirections all the way up to the last fill, which perped but I'd never heard of.
And thanks for another fine review Gary, and thanks inviting these fine folks in for a chat. Oh and congrats on your anniversary. Google pegs it as the "Wooden", but I'd call it Golden.
24A BOGARTED. I have a hazy recollection of the origin of this term.
13D SOUS. Reminds me of that hilarious Brit comedy Chef, owner of the Chateau Anglais. His clueless sous chef was named Everton.
41A COINERS. We have a lot of CORNY COINERS on the CORNER.
32D PRAT. British detectives use PRAT a lot to describe suspects and perps.
33D POST TRUTH. We POST the TRUTH, the whole TRUTH and nothin' but the TRUTH here. Anyone interested in a BRIDGE?
45D MONET. Lisel Mueller tells us that they look that way, because "Monet Refused the operation".
48D VIRTU. Way cool. I had to trust perps on this one, as I'd never heard of it.
Cheers,
Bill
p.s. to Beth. My first job was in a library shelving books. As a consequence I can recall the titles and authors of lots books I've never read. Kind of like my own library. Oh, and congrats on your debut!
CED Your Links are Absolutely Fabulous !!!!! Thank YOu !!!!
Thank you Beth Rubin and Brad Wilber for a very difficult puzzle, filed with names, names, names and arcane, esoteric, plain fantabulous words. But, On the whole, it was still enjoyable.
I have always believed that Librarians are a purveyor of all knowledge, even if they are master of none ... they have entire sets of Wikipedias and other pedias at their fingertips, and know where to find more information. A veritable gateway to Heaven.
Thank you Husker Gary for so many years of blog reviewing, and your stupendous volunteer efforts. We are so grateful. I have learnt a lot about various subjects like NASA, Space Flight, How to Sub at school, and How to handle querrulous teenagers....( more than I ever wanted to know ). We have also been charmed about your lovely DW and your exciting cat, Lily.....!! Thank you for letting us into your lives.
The puz was not easy, but I finished it willy nilly. I also learnt a lot of words and concepts in the process.
I finally got a word that describes me, a VIRTU, I collect all sorts of eclectic objects, some of which I have no idea of what they are. Its a fun passion to discover the reason for its existence.... My wife just calls me a Hoarder ...
BTW, I googled the hebrew words on the Yale logo ... for those who might care ... the words are Urim and Thummim ... which are hebrew for Lux Et Veritas ... Light and Truth.
I thought LUX in a college logo, stood for Luxury ... which is what a college education used to be in days of yore...
Talking of college education and DIPLOMA MILLs,.... was Axact, .....one of the largest and most consummate, most incorrigible, of all of them, in the world, according to the BBC and the New York Times. They even spelled their name wrong ... For the record, they represented 370 fictitious educational universities, including many in the USA ....and handed out, degrees for, among others, .... Medical Doctors, Research Scientists and Airline pilots.
Have a nice day, and enjoy the relatively warm weekend, you all.
After yesterday, I had no hopes for Saturday but I FIR! What a slog, though. But fun!
Becky
A rare DNF for me, and not even close. A few Naticks, but basically I was not on the same wavelength as the constructors. Maybe better luck next Saturday.
Wow, what a magnificent puzzle. I enjoyed all 65 minutes it took me to solve it. Well, not all; there was plenty of teeth gnashing, too (hi, Irish Miss). Excellent fill and tricky cluing. One of my faves was the way MUTTS was clued. Good stuff.
Congratulations on the milestone, Gary.
I'll join the chorus: DNF. WAAAAAAY too esoteric for me. Who's keeping score when the constructor(s) completely obliterate solvers? In surfer lingo this would be called a "wipeout"! You guys belong in the "Shrine of the Great Unsolvables"!!
Vidwan @12:51 LUX as in "Fiat LUX", God's first words in Genesis - "Let there be light".
Sure enough.
Because I found yesterday's tough, this one turned out to be much easier.
A fine PZL from the Rubin/Wilber team! It wasn't entirely smooth sailing, but I needed only a couple of cheats to finish pretty quickly.
Too bad it lacks diagonals.
Fun to see BOGARTED. Takes me back to an earlier era. I think most of us first heard it in the song "Don't BOGART me" on the soundtrack for Easy Rider (1969).
Ah, the innocence of illegality. Living vicariously with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. Both dead now.
Oh, and Jack Nicholson too. At least he's still kicking.
Puffing pot. Buying a nickel bag. I wonder: was that the first time I saw myself as an Outlaw?!
Ooh, we were so-o bad. Living on the edge.
And now the law has come 'round to see it our way. Kinda drains the fun...
~ OMK
OMK, remember the story about the tourist who took in a rock concert while in America? He went back to his country and reported to his friend that the reports of American prosperity were greatly exaggerated. "Americans are so poor that they have to share the same cigarette."
What a strange meaning for the old Latin word, VIRTU. I'm familiar with its main Renaissance sense through Shakespeare, where it refers to one or more of the "powers" or "strengths" of a man.
Or woman. "Assume a virtue if you have it not." ~ Hamlet to Gertrude, on the value of abstinence.
Today's usage is oddly specific for such a general word.
~ OMK
Saturday Stumper. Thanks for the fun, Beth and Brad, and HuskerG (congrats on 5 years).
This CW was one step above my pay grade, and I had to resort to Google. Then with the unknown to me names of NONA, GREG and HIAASEN I could get the Tada. I may have been ADDLEd but not APPALLED.
PRAT is not a British term that has made it into this Canadian’s vocabulary.
BOGARTED and VIRTU were both unknown.
My chocolate purchases ended in Mints for a long time until the E EMERGED.
My sitar sequence was a riff (oh that’s guitar). We have had RIGA before.
Hand up for Nova before VEGA.
Perps decided between Hussan or HASSAN, and SIDE ONE or Two.
PSI was a total misdirection, and I didn’t realize COINERS was a “real” word.
I was almost misdirected by “thinning layer” into thinking of Hair and baldness, but then OZONE popped up.
Favourite was “power cord?” For SINEW.
I noted CANTOR crossing ADAR.
We had DNA EVIDENCE and a LAWSUIT.
Wishing you all a good, safe evening. We have high winds here (80kph) but power has only flickered a couple of times.
Hi All!
Big Fat DNF. Names! + I shot myself in the foot but good: Fulcrum [CROWBAR], Nova [VEGA], and SWING voters. Oy!
Thanks Beth & Brad. Congrats on the LAT debut, Beth.
Thanks for stopping the bleeding (after my 5th lookup, I just gave up), HG. Excellent expo, as is par for you. Wow! 5 years? Seems like just yesterday Splynter bow'd out.
WOs: CPI (Consumer Price Index) instead of PSI.
ESPs: None - DNF
Fav: SIDE ONE just 'cuz - Beatles.
Is a DIPLOMA MILL really fraudulent or just a place where everyone who pays tuition over a few years gets a degree? #GradeInflation
//wait, Vidwan, airline pilots?
Power chord had nothing to do w/ a Rock & Roll guitar nor was nit something you picked :-(
//CED beat me to Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year. :-)
{A, A+}
Jinx - LOL "share one cigarette."
Those were different times OMK (and the pot wasn't as potent as what I'm told it is today)
//I had stoner-friends in HS; tried it a few times but I'll just stick with beer.
Waseeley - DW & I started binge-watching The Madame Blanc Mysteries last night. Monet's affliction was mentioned in episode (5? - it's a all blur now :-)).
//oh, and re: knowing Titles & Authors of books you've never read? Yeah, I'm married to PhD English Lit; our bookshelves are full of those.
Well, my to-do list ain't going get to-done hangin' around The Corner.
Enjoyed reading/learning from y'all.
Cheers, -T
Seeing all the destruction in Kentucky, I'm wondering about a farmer friend of the corner who lived there. Was his moniker Windhover?
PK, yes, his name was/is Windhover.
Hey, Windhover, hope you are okay! Let us know if you still are lurking.
Wow, VEGA worse than Pinto or Corvair. That's going sum.
Anon-T, I was just back from Nam and my friend was APPALLED at two things: 1. That I didn't find a way out and 2. That I spent a year there and never had a puff.
Re. #1, I had a back operationa to get IN to Marines. I also neglected to mention my asthma. My last attack was week 2 but it was death or PI and I preferred the former.
This xword followed the typical Saturday pattern: Hopeless white-out, breakthrough, and…
All of a sudden all boxes filled.
Five years since Splynter Saturdays, eh? I wish he'd drop by and say hello. CC talks to him, I guess he's doing well. He'd like my Chet and Lois saga over at the J
WC
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