Saturday Themeless by Matthew Sewell
Today we have yet another fun entry from our literature and film instructor at Mankato State University.
Here are Matt's comments:
Hello Gary,
Matt
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| Lights, Camera, Matt! |
1. Applies sustained effort: WORKS AT IT
10. Caution: ALERT.
15. HS course that may be lit?: AP ENGLISH How appropriate that Matt would choose this clue/fill. Here are some lit(erature) that might be read in an AP English Course.
16. Ambitious sort: TYPE-A.
17. Bean, e.g.: VEGETABLE.
18. Twist: WRING - When done in the weightlessness of the International Space Station. Cohesion reigns when gravity is eliminated.
19. City on Presque Isle Bay: ERIE - Presque Island Bay is the body of water that is bordered by ERIE, PA on the left and Presque Island on the right. Saturday cluing.
20. Audio engineer's accoutrements: EAR PIECES.
22. Hold back: DAM.
23. Low-carb alternative to oats: NUT MEAL.
25. Princess Margaret portrayer in "The Crown": HELENA
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| Princess Margaret HELENA Bonham Carter |
27. __ act: CLASS.
31. Anticlimactic happenings: NONEVENTS - Anybody remember when Geraldo opened Al Capone's safe on live TV? Thirty million people tuned in to see an empty space.
34. Bob Odenkirk title role: SAUL.
36. Umbilicus formation: OUTIE - Innie was, uh, out
37. __ the People: razor brand: OUI - New to me
38. Gulf of Guinea capital: ACCRA - Suppose Rick and Ilsa wanted to get from Casablanca to ACCRA
40. Movie monster term meaning "alien form": XENOMORPH - Sigourney Weaver and her XENOMORPH co-star from Aliens
42. Zoom sesh, e.g.: E-DATE - I suppose
45. Protective legwear: GAITER - We've also become aware of face GAITERS lately
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| Face GAITER Leg GAITERS |
49. Quick swim: DIP.
51. Idaho has the only one designed by a woman: STATE SEAL.
56. Old orange-roofed eateries, for short: HO JOS - HOward JOhnsons
57. Reggie Jackson nickname: MR. OCTOBER - He got the big hits when they really counted
60. Big name in gaming: ATARI.
61. Charades skill: PANTOMIME - Ten minutes of a 67-yr-old TV game show replete with elegance, commercials, movie plugs and good players.
Down:
1. Shook one's hand?: WAVED.
2. Sydney attraction: OPERA HOUSE - Look carefully
3. Strictly organized: REGIMENTED - Do you have a set bedtime routine?
4. Hacky Sacker's option: KNEE.
7. Yak: TIBETAN OX.
8. Major religion of Indonesia: ISLAM.
10. Whenever one wants: AT WILL
11. Instrument depicted on Keats' gravestone: LYRE - Keats' requested that his name not be on his tombstone
11. Instrument depicted on Keats' gravestone: LYRE - Keats' requested that his name not be on his tombstone
13. Nobelist Cassin: RENE - Here ya go
14. Handles: TAGS - What's your CB Handle?
21. __-12: PAC - West Coast Athletic Conference
23. "The Craft" actress Campbell: NEVE.
24. Paris article: UNE - C.C. est UNE personne merveilleuse (translation is left to you)
26. German camera brand: LEICA.
29. Bird mummified by ancient Egyptians: SACRED IBIS - This 2,000+ year old bundle has been partially cut to show the mummified IBIS inside
31. Nice handle?: NOM - Samuel Clemens' NOM de plume in Nice, France was also Mark Twain
32. Col. on a planner: TUE.
33. Folk music gathering, often: SING ALONG.
35. "Well, __-di-dah!": LAH.
38. BFF of Brittany: AMIE - Your female BFF in the Brittany region of NW France is your AMIE
41. Whiskey barrel wood: OAK.
43. Grad school hurdle: THESIS - They are usually read by the student, the advisor, the committee and then...
43. Grad school hurdle: THESIS - They are usually read by the student, the advisor, the committee and then...
44. Aurora counterpart: EOS - Both goddesses of Dawn
47. Home of Arizona State: TEMPE.
48. That's a wrap: SARAN.
50. Clipped: PARED.
51. Persian for "king": SHAH.
53. Mighty warrior of myth: AJAX - A great warrior in Homer's Iliad
54. Bolted: TORE.
55. Little dogs, briefly: POMS - Pomeranians of course
58. Lisa Leslie's WNBA position: CTR.
59. Moreover: TOO.
30 comments:
Another early morning for me and another Matthew Sewell themeless brought to us by HG. There is order in the universe.
I learned many things solving this one - the Idaho State Seal was designed by a woman; that XENOMORPH has a meaning beyond alien form; that Keats was an odd duck (if you do not want your gravesite public, why the elaborate headstone?); that I used to eat at a HoJo's both in Connecticut and when I moved to Pompano Beach; that they mummified birds to bury; that I never have had a CB handle; that Beyonce is a fine looking woman; and, finally that Gary really is a great Saturday host.
I bailed on The Crown before HBC appeared, and may have to go watch those seasons to catch up. Best wishes for the Queen's health and for of the Corner.
Just rereading last Saturday. My link on Tris Speaker was to a John Thorn article. There's several more I'd recommend for any serious baseball fans(Jfromvt?)
Well for once I have a rough time as I started right after my second Friday post. Roughly 40 minutes. My only ink was wrong on les/UNE. But then fertile territory in the South helped by MR OCTOBER*
I was able to work my way North and West with LAH(de dah) and PAC. Finally WORKS/keeps AT IT , DAM / lAg, and ISLAM then voila, all squares filled.
Now for Gary's write-up to see if I missed anything. I FIW 2 or 3 tines a week but usually FIR on Saturday. This didn't seem easy but at first I had an ocean of white.
Presque Isle made me think of Maine where I bought a Siberian Husky 25 years ago. Cold? Brrr, and only December**.
HOJOS brings back many memories of Boston life. The property they owned exceeded market value and poof.
I visited Sydney on RnR in 1970
C'est vrai(CC)
Aha, not "Brittany" Spears. Got lucky there.
WC
* I won a big bet on Yankees in 77 thanks to Reggie. Serendipitous it turned out.
** I ended up buying the whole litter.
Good morning!
Accidentally worked this one yesterday morning. Came to the blog, and realized my mistake. Went back, and completed the Friday puz. Of the two, I think Friday was the more difficult. Went wrong in a few places on this one: EAR PhonES/PIECES, ihopS/HOJOS, Ares/AJAX. Still, it all came together very quickly. Thanx for the outing Matt, and for the expo, Husker. (My bedtime regimen is to get into bed and fall asleep.)
TEMPE: Gimme for d-o. The parental units lived there for many years. Both gone for more than 20 years.
HELENA: Haven't watched The Crown -- not my cup of meat. I do like nature programs, and Helena did a bang-up job as narrator for the Eden series.
Thanks for the comment Matt. As usual finishing Saturday puzzles usually comes down to a WAG at the cross of two unknowns. I had no idea what HACKY SACKERS did, thinking some instrument or type of job. Presque Isle Bay sounded like it belongs in the Irish Sea but ERIN for a city in ERIN looked wrong and KNEN made no sense. So ERIE & KNEE FIR today. Wrong body of water and Hacky Sack is a game.
But it was a FIW today. BFF of Brittany- I kept thinking 'Spears', not France and for some reason filled GARTER for my Protective legwear. Filled AMRE for AMIE. Duh!
My NE started off on the wrong track. "Whenever one wants" went from ON CALL to AT WILL; "Twist" was an ANGLE before WRING; My "Sprawling tale" reverted from SAGA to EPIC; and when somebody "Handles" something he SEES to it-wrong. It was his Handle, as in TAG. RENE Cassin- complete unknown-thought maybe something to do with the Cassini Mission. LYRE was a WAG.
HELENA, SAUL, OUI The People (easy guess), E-DATE- unknowns today.
SAKE ends with e not I. Last correction saving FIR
Was it a LutE or LYRE? Shades of MInI/MIDI FLN
AJAX fell to a greater warrior. Remember who?
Kids played a lot of Hacky Sack but elbow and foot didn't work
WC
Good Morning:
This started out slowly but but by bit the squares filled in and I finished in 25:13, about average for a Saturday. I needed perps for Nut Meal, Helena, Xenomorph, and René. I had Harp before Lyre and IHOPs before HoJos; I wasn’t a patron of either, simply because of locations. CSO to Lucina and Moe at Tempe.
Nice job, Matthew and dittto to HG for another sparkling and informative review.
FLN
Wilbur, was your wager on the 1977 game in which Reggie hit 3 home runs?
Have a great day.
It is still 2021 and Jinx finished a Saturday LATCW. I finished it WRONG, but I finished it. Should have found SAuRoD IBIS. I got the IBIS, but thought there must be varieties of them. I must have Florida on my mind, so had GAIToR, and figured Rick and Ilsa wanted to flee in an ACuRA. I usually abandon Saturday grids after about 10 minutes due to NSF (non-sufficient fun), but I enjoyed gnawing away at this one.
Ok, so the pampered multimillionaire players and owners are on strike/lockout again. I am a former lover of MLB, but we divorced as a result of the 1981 strike. We tried to reconcile when I moved to Atlanta, and the Braves were fun to follow. But we just couldn't rekindle the magic, and we parted ways (this time for good) when I retired and moved to Norfolk. Fortunately the NHL was right there to catch my heart on the rebound.
I am cursed. FIWrong by one lousy cell. GArTER instead of GAITER. The perp I expected to be wrong, but not at that cell. The A in AMrE was a WAG that I was pretty sure was wrong. I was expecting a name for Brittany Spears' friend, not a French term. (I thought this recurring character in Bo Nanas was probably too obscure to most.)
FIR today, but it didn't seem easier than yesterday. Lots of white space which slowly filled in. OUI and (TIBETAN) OX was my last fill. The SE section required most of my time and attention with early erroneous fill misleading me (and/TOO and various tries for little dogs). I got SARAN finally but then struggled for the rest. Even so, a FIR! Thanks, Matthew, for the interesting puzzle and my successful start to the day.
Thanks, Husker Gary, for your review and note from Matthew. Both were quite helpful. All your work is much appreciated!
Hope you all have a day of sunshine.
This one took 17:02. Would've been done a little bit sooner, but (coincidentally) had to correct MSec instead of nsec.
I got only a few as worked the acrosses going downward, then worked up from the lower right.
I enjoyed this one, as I do most Saturday/themeless.
Thank you Matthew Sewell, for a challenging puzzle, and HuskerG for an interesting review.
I expected a tough Sat, but this was better than most. XENOMORPH and MR OCTOBER were my toughest fills. I am familiar with xenophobia - fear /loathing / hatred of foreigners... especially by people of certain countries.
I was familiar with Presque Isle, its a 4 hr drive from my house, and lots of beaches ...
I had STATE FLAG before STATE SEAL.
Rene Cassin was an unknown ... I read his bio .. a lawyer, who was a member of a lot of U.N. and legal rights, committees,
... what did he do to earn a Nobel Prize for Peace ??
... well, the europeans always have the inside track in such matters... so I guess he was a shoo-in, with the urging and commendations from DeGaulle.
What do Honey, Liqourice, Mint and Ginger japanese drinks have together >
Four ( for) Goodness Sakes...
Have a nice day, and enjoy the first half of your weekend, you all.
Not even close. Far more DNKs than things I DID know. After 30 minutes I had roughly half filled and was not having any fun anymore trying to fill the rest, so I threw in the towel on this one. Ya got me, MS, and pretty badly, at that. When I came here to read HG’s excellent write-up, the answers look not so hard. But still too hard for me, apparently. Even the half I DID manage to fill was a W/O mess, EARPHONES:EARPIECES, ????:SAGA, which ruined EARPHONES, then SAGA:EPIC, which had me writing over write-overs. Nope. Gave up. XENOMORPH? Oy. Oh well, looking forward to Monday, my level CW.
Saturday success. Thanks for the fun Matthew and HuskerG.
This CW required P&P, but I FIRed eventually.
Les changed to UNE.
Mon changed to TUE.
Toys changed to POMS.
OUI perped, and I smiled at the unknown brand name which homophones (I’m verbifying) to We the People. Brilliant!
NUTMEAL was a perp and a WAG, but I’ll stick to Oatmeal thanks.
Haha, CTR can be short for Center or centre,
Hand up for IHOPS before HOJOS, and thinking of Brittany Spears AMIE (more French to go with UNE and NOM).
Wishing you all a great day.
DAM
The first across run was blank till I got to "Better Call SAUL" (a favorite series, hope it returns). I saw all of "The Queen" but couldn't remember Bonham-Carter's first name.🤔
Lots to do today (yeah, I know the usual Saturday excuses) We are heading to Orlando tomorrow till Friday to celebrate our special daughter Catherine's 40 bd 🎁 on the 10th. Packing plus bags of Spring bulbs to plant and my nephews birthday party at 1pm.
Anything else? oh, right the puzzle. When I stopped I still had all but the NE filled. Sticking with "saga" instead of EPIC was the blocker.
Some real zingers today, NUTMEAL, ATSUKAN XEROMORPH (c'mon, Dr. Sewell, you made that one up). Haven't seen the New Guinea capital in a puzzle in awhile so needed perp completion. I knew the IBIS was the venerated Egyptian bird, but didn't expect SACRED to be included in the answer..."lints" wouldn't work for Umbilicus formation.
What kind of grade school expects a thesis?..oh GRAD school. My university is the oldest in Europe, dates to the 9th century but I see PISA "leans" toward education as well. Is anyone fooled by "Nice" anymore?
Painful toenail...INGROSSED
Croc cousin...GAITER
Out- ___ .... LYRE
Worse car I ever owned....OUTIE
Have a great weekend.
Nice Saturday puzzle. OPERAHOUSE and MROCTOBER were gimmes so helped with the solve,
This was tough, but in the end I could see it was fairly fair. Hand up AMIE clue had me misdirected. But that is not how BRITNEY spells her name. Hand up FLAG before SEAL.
Unknowns: MR OCTOBER, LYRE, RENE, SAUL, ACCRA, NUT MEAL, ICE-T RANK. Crosses and WAGS to FIR.
Here are my OPERA HOUSE photos from many different vantage points around SYDNEY.
They don't let you take photos inside; the one of me inside is a professional Green Screen image from the tour. The tour was fascinating. So many ways this OPERA HOUSE almost did not happen.
From Yesterday:
Lemonade, Kerry, AnonT, Bill Seeley Thank you for the thoughtful comments about my WICKED FROZEN CHARLES photo.
Yes, I am well aware of the story of the Smoots on the bridge across the CHARLES at MIT. The Smoot marks are regularly repainted by Smoot's Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. Apparently the legendary event happened a month before I was born.
I will refrain from commenting on the WOODSTOCK/US War in Vietnam conversation as I am sure you can guess what I think. Especially after my ALLISON KRAUSE comment yesterday. I would have hoped there would be more consensus after all of these years. But I will note that our current next door neighbors were there and had some wonderful stories.
Tough, but delightful, theme-less puzzle, Matthew--many thanks. And always enjoy your write-up, Husker Gary, thanks for that too.
I instantly put in OPERA HOUSE for the Sidney attraction, and got excited by such a great start. But things got tougher after that.
Didn't know there was a LYRE on Keats's gravestone--interesting and sad.
OUTIE made me laugh.
I took a guess on TEMPE, and that helped me get PANTOMIME.
So, lots of fun, even with working around a lot of toughies.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
This was a really fun solve. Little by little by little. First to be filled were DIP and EPIC. I also filled HARP right away, but it proved to be incorrect. ISLAM, NEVE, LAH, OAK, TEMPE, and SHAH were gimmees which gave me the toeholds to get started. I also guessed AJAX correctly. Last to be solved were WORKS AT IT and AP ENGLISH. For that "Bean, e.g." I kept trying to fit in LEGUME-something. And so it went. 40 minutes of pleasant head scratching.
Excellent exposition, Gary, as usual. Thank you.
Nashua, NH HOJOS had a separate menu with fresh fish making the 'restaurant ' very popular. Car lot today.
Irish Miss, yes. I was singing and dancing to Yankee Doodle. Young man offered me his VW for $100 and it got me to IT School leveraged into a job I held for 20 years. I'd send Reggie a thank you but I'd make the Dodgers fans unhappy.
Picard, you're confessing to know Ms Spears . What next how to spell Princess Leia? lol
Mr October? They used to call it the World Serious. Then again I don't know sharps from flats nor a Matisse from a Monet(or Manet). Nor any CSI character.
Yep, I took that Ferry Boat past the SOH. I've a story for that too(Maybe sometime if asked)
WC
Achilles (Not that anyone cares) wait for it
I was tempted to write in "oboe" for the musical instrument on Keats graves...hautboy that would have been wrong!!
😆
What a fine PZL by Mr. Sewell, beautifully illustrated by our own Husker G!
The NE corner had me going--because if you fill HYPER at 16A instead of TYPE A,
and EPOD or EPOS at 12D instead of EPIC,
you get IRONY at 18A.
And isn't that a better answer to "Twist" than WRING?
Yes, I thought so too.
It only falls apart at 10D.
~ OMK
____________
DR: Just one diagonal today, on the near side.
Its anagram (11 of 15 letters) refers to an area of the internet sometimes called the "dark world."
Certain clever hackers keep this to themselves by encoding pathways that will disappear from one's "history" if the average surfer stumbles on one by accident.
Yes, my innocent friends, this is the ...
"UNMAPPED WEB"!
Or, allowing for a bit of freedom in abbreviation, this could be a slightly longer anagram (12 of 15 letters) denoting an innocent, him- or herself, stumbling about along the same unfamiliar region of the web.
I mean the ...
"NEWB(ie), UNMAPPED"!
I thought of Irony for Twist too, OMK. If only it fit
WC
Hi All!
Another Saturday, another cheat to the finish...
Thanks Matthew for the puzzle and some inside-baseball. NW & S went quickly but that LEICA|HELENA|NEVE area was tough. As was trying to dig out of the EAR Phones snag.
Great expo, HG. I always appreciate the splashes of space / NASA you sprinkle in.
WOs: EARPhones, I actually wrote μSEC, carL -> SAUL.
Lookups: HELENA, LEICA, NEVE, SAUL, ACCRA*
ESPs: RENE, NOM, UNE, AMIE | GAITER(?)
Fav: HO-JOs made me think of Blazing Saddles.
Like DR#1, OMK. Before there were search-engines (a little history) indexing the web, you'd have to keep track sites you knew of manually.
D-O: I thought of iHOP first but I already had STATE SEAL and ATARI filled... HOJOs slowly perp'd & wag'd in.
Nice snaps of the OPERAHOUSE, Picard. The green-screen snap fooled me :-)
Cheers, -T
*5 lookups are my limit; after that, I toss the towel.
Late to the party dealing with hardware problems, grocery shopping, and prepping for Thursday, but Teri helped me on this one and between the two of us it looks like we may have gotten a FIR. Whoops, Gary's grid shows a horseshoe at 31D!
Thanks Matt for a crunchy Saturday with lots good clues/fill. I don't think I could have finished without Teri's help on this, as she fixed several deadends that I had started with.
Fav clues:
46A XENOMORPH.
29D SACRED IBIS. We have several SCARLET IBISES in the rainforest of the National Acquarium in Baltimore, but like Hester Prynne, they're not very sacred.
Gotta go. See ya tomorrow.
Cheers,
Bill
Picard @12:31 PM And thank you for the great shots of the most uniquely beautiful OPERA HOUSE in the world. I think yours is the first picture I've ever seen of the interior.
Just looked at your photos of the Sydney OPERA HOUSE, Picard--it's absolutely beautiful! Thank you for posting them.
What? No one else had NAVEL for "Umbilicus formation"?
>> Roy
EARPHONE and NUTMEAT had me tearing my hair out on 10D: _ _ _ H T L
Finally LYRE and EPIC persuaded me I must be wrong (no matter how much I didn't want to believe it).
I don't like 50D - you wouldn't say I PARED the hedge or CLIPPED the potatoes. But I'm probably wrong again :-)
Dear -T @ 4:50:
Your source cites 1991 or so as beginning the Internet and searching, but before then there wasn't much need for searching ... with 5-1/4" floppies, running CP/M on a Kaypro, a 1200-baud modem, file sizes in KB -- not MB -- and no graphic interfacing yet, on a personal level, my memory was the searching tool.
Picard, I loved your Sydney Opera House pictures.
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