Saturday Themeless by Rich Norris
I followed my usual pattern of toe holds on my way to conquer his crossword wall. It all felt very comfortable and doable.
Across:
1. Hairpin: SHARP TURN.
10. Antiquated: MOLDY - In blue cheese the penicillium mold is okay to eat
15. Flier to Sharjah: AIR ARABIA - If you flew AIR ARABIA from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Doha, Qatar for the World Cup, it's about a little over an hour flight.
16. Can't get enough of: ADORE.
17. Putter, in golf lingo: FLAT STICK - It's easy to find in the set below
17. Putter, in golf lingo: FLAT STICK - It's easy to find in the set below
18. Area bordering the Colorado Desert, for short: SO CAL - SOuthern CALifornia
19. Sign in many a tree-lined nabe: ELM ST.
20. Ruby of "A Raisin in the Sun": DEE - We all know the name of the man in this scene with her
21. Fishing boat net: TRAWL - Emptying a TRAWL net
22. Team's pronoun: OUR.
24. Fixates (on): DWELLS - I heard you the fourth time!
26. Winter wardrobe component: FLANNELS - Shirts, pj's, etc.
31. Straight up: ERECT.
32. Bled: RAN - Oh, so that's why you separate the whites and colors
33. White Cloud Temple worshipper: TAOIST - White Cloud Temple in Beijing
35. Hardly pleased: SORE.
37. Best Picture winner based on the memoir "The Master of Disguise": ARGO - A great movie I saw on Netflix.
39. High-def screen: LCD TV.
40. Old-style challenge: SLAP.
41. Chinese border river: YALU - Chinese troops flocked over the border when U.S. troops got near the YALU.
42. Blackmail tactic: THREAT - Send those sexts at your own risk
44. Need to satisfy: OWE.
45. __ voce: SOTTO - Not me, I had to close the door when I taught.
47. Prep for future coll. students: AP COURSE - Some students now graduate high school with many college credits
49. Bit of forecast shorthand: T-STORM.
49. Bit of forecast shorthand: T-STORM.
51. Patronizing term of address, perhaps: SON.
52. Bygone rulers: SHAHS - If you had _ _ A _ S you might have chosen a different bygone ruler
53. Orange tuber: YAM.
56. Dock: TIE UP.
60. Spells: HEXES.
61. "Don't blame yourself": THAT'S ON ME.
63. Subject of una serenata: AMORE.
64. Memorable drive?: HOLE IN ONE - This was my first one - 110 yds with a nice easy 9-iron
65. Parental units?: GENES.
66. Training in the mountains, say: SKI LESSON.
Down:
1. Call at home, maybe: SAFE - If you argue too much you might get 46. Discards: TOSSES- Tossed out of the game
2. Rise: HILL.
3. Saroyan's "My Name Is __": ARAM - A first edition you can get for $550
4. Sells out: RATS ON - In this movie, the late Ray Lotta (far left) played Henry Hill who RATS ON the mob in real life.
5. Carlsberg's "Probably not the best beer in the world" campaign, for one: PR STUNT - Like...
6. Half an even exchange: TAT - We all know the other part
7. Former auction website: U-BID.
8. Hall of Famer who holds the record for most career touchdown receptions: RICE - Jerry Rice caught 67 TD passes from Joe Montana and 92 more from Steve Young.
9. Undisguised: NAKED.
10. Perfect: MASTER - To MASTER a skill you would need to perfect your technique
11. Like helium: ODORLESS - colorless, ODORLESS, tasteless, non-toxic and inert `
12. Regional attribute: LOCAL COLOR - Lucy wanted to soak up LOCAL COLOR in this famous episode and did so in more ways than one
13. Determine an unlucky winner?: DRAW STRAWS - 😀
14. Cry: YELL.
23. Person with lots to offer: REALTOR - Around us, REALTORS want lots for lots
25. Solutions for spills: WET VACS.
14. Cry: YELL.
23. Person with lots to offer: REALTOR - Around us, REALTORS want lots for lots
25. Solutions for spills: WET VACS.
26. Fight: FRAY.
27. Movie music that inspired the Connie Francis hit "Somewhere, My Love": LARA'S THEME - Here's the song with lyrics and lovely scenes from Dr. Zhivago
28. Old English: ANGLO SAXON.
29. Highlands water: LOCH - LOCH Ness has the most water of all of them plus a mythical inhabitant.
30. "Seinfeld" woman who said, "They're real, and they're spectacular!": SIDRA - Played by Teri Hatcher
34. Instructions part: STEP - Could you go over that again? 😐
36. Foil cousin: EPEE.
38. Nonconformist: OUT THERE - Dennis Rodman is the poster child!
43. __ Roll: TOOTSIE.
48. Strike callers: UNIONS - In 1979, baseball's strike callers went, uh, on strike
52. Messy do: SHAG - Laugh In's Sock It To Me girl, Judy Carne, popularized this haircut in the late 60's.
54. "Sure, I get it": AH OK.
55. Senegal neighbor: MALI - It's a 39-hour drive from Dakar, Senegal to Timbuktu, MALI
57. Mireille of "The Killing": ENOS - First time I've seen ENOS as a surname
59. Hammer part: PEEN - I'm guessing you all know which hammer has a claw and which one has a PEEN
62. Contacts list no.: TEL.
Notes from C.C.:
1)
Happy 75th birthday to our sweet Madame DeFarge (Janice), who's always
been so kind and caring to regulars on our blog.
2) Happy 15th birthday to our blog! Thank you so much for visiting and commenting.
Zounds* and Zowie! (I had to put in the asterisk to keep spellcheck from turning “Zounds” into “Sounds”) I defy anybody to call this puzzle “easy “ or “a walk in the park.” It was tough! And it didn’t help that I kept trying to to say “that’s okay” when “ that’s on me” was called for! Anyway, through P&P I managed to FIR. so I’m happy. And Happy Birthday to the blog, I’m so happy to have met all you lovely people! (By the way, being relatively “new” here, I don’t really know Madame DeFarge, but Happy Birthday to her, too!)
ReplyDeleteMost of my solve time was spent looking for a mistake in the NW. Not too fond of DEE and RICE both clued as names with UBID in the area, though I remembered seeing that clue for DEE in other puzzles, and I also realized I knew Jerry Rice…
ReplyDelete…from a YouTube video about a videogame called Jerry Rice and Nitus’s Dog Football. Am I starting to sound insane?
Anyway, my mistake was FLAGSTICK. Because, you know, putters are used near the flag… at least it made sense in my head.
Good morning!
ReplyDeleteThought it should be EMIRATES, since Sharjah is part of the UAE, but it was too short. (D-o spent a month there once in about a week.) SIDRA finally filled by perps. I happened to watch that Seinfeld episode last night, but couldn't remember her name. Those horizontal stacked 9s and vertical stacked 10s were very nice. Nice one, Rich. Enjoyed your take on things, Husker.
Happy birthday, Mme DeFarge. Perhaps you'll drop in for a visit today. Hope so.
Rich and Patti teaming up for a Saturday semi-stumper. I managed to FIR with a little luck and will jump into discussion early. The SW was a breeze for this person with ANGLO SAXON GENES, who still has the piano sheet music to LARA'S THEME. The final trouble was in the NE. I wanted VERNACULAR instead of LOCAL COLOR, SEINE instead of TRAWL, and the Colorado Desert was unheard of and according to Gary's map it looks like an extension of either the Mojave or Sonoran Desert. SOCAL was a WAG, as was AIR ARABIA after a few perps.
ReplyDeleteUBID, ARAM, ENOS, and SIDRA were complete unknowns, I knew YALU and SOTTO but was unsure of the spelling. WET VACH looked weird until my HON became SON and it was WET VACS.
The puzzle is a lot better than AH OK, which is a bad fill for its clue.
If most golfers use the FLAT STICK twice as much as the driver, why do they practice more on the driving range than the putting green?
FLN- the US National Debt for the federal gov is currently $31.5 Trillion, $94,229 per citizen, and $246,847 per taxpayer. But as MM stated over half of those 'taxpayers' don't pay any federal tax and should really be called 'tax-filers' who get money back through the Earned Income Tax Credit. Most people forget about their state and local government debts OR the state and municipal pension obligations. These houses of cards will fall sometime and it will not be pretty when it happens.
Actually only about 31 million filers get EITC and they average a tad over $2000 each.
Deletehttps://www.eitc.irs.gov/eitc-central/eitc-information-for-press/statistics/statistical-sample-wording/statistical-sample
Took 22:01 today. I enjoyed the challenge, mostly.
ReplyDeleteThe Seinfeld episode is memorable for the line and the actress (today's actress, I knew!), but not the character's name (Sidra?).
I didn't know the Chinese river (directly under a movie title, crossing a movie's music), the golf lingo, or the Killing or the actor/actress.
I didn't like the turbulence of having LCD TV, AP Course, & T Storm all within 4 rows of each other.
Is "slap" really an "old style challenge"? I think I'm missing something there.
Liked the use of Wetvacs, and the clue for hole in one.
I took the 'slap' clue to be referring to the "I challenge you to a duel" light tap with an empty glove kind of slap.
DeleteI'm not sure if that sort of thing really happened or was just in old movies?
FIR, but a bit of a workout. Went astray when I threw down inert gas for helium, which set me back a bit. Several unknowns for me, but the perps saved the day.
ReplyDeleteFIR, but a bit of a workout. Went astray when I threw down inert gas for helium, which set me back a bit. Several unknowns for me, but the perps saved the day.
ReplyDeleteLARAS THEME always reminds me of
ReplyDeletegoombas on the elevator from the Mario Brothers movie
Low hanging fruit is precious on Saturday but I found two: OUR and YAM. But the third, tsars, was a blind alley. Then SHAHS dropped.
As usual it seemed hopeless but the X in HEXES got me the SW; 4 ltrs ends in E? Jerry RICE(not Moss)
The V in WETVACh was my last fill. But FIW. hON/SON and its LCD not LCe. One VAC can handle several spills
Typical Saturday difficulty but doable. Low pop-cul count but SIDRA was obscure even though I remember the episode well
Hbd to Madame DeFarge whom I miss
WC
The SLAP was an insult to honor History of dueling Throwing down the gauntlet was the classic prelude to the duel
ReplyDeleteWC
Good Morning:
ReplyDeleteI believe this is Rich’s second appearance as a constructor since he retired and both offerings have been very challenging, IMO. That is not a complaint, though, as I relish a difficult Saturday, especially since the Friday difficulty level has changed. On first pass, the pickins’ were slim but, slowly but surely, a word here, another one there, and soon things got brighter and clearer, EXCEPT, the NW corner which was almost my downfall. UBID, Air Arabia, Flat Stick, and Aram were all unknown and needed every ounce of P and P to decipher. Wanting an Asia ending instead of Arabia made matters trickier until I finally figured out the unknown UBID. Happy to say, though, that I knew Jerry Rice. Other unknowns were Sidra and Taoist, as clued, and the only w/os were Hon/Son and Seine/Trawl. I thought the cluing was a mixture of clever and confusing, but anything goes on a Saturday!
Thanks, Rich, for staying in our lives and providing us with worthy challenges and rewarding solves and thanks, HG, for the usual visual eye candy and fun and facts. You made Lucina’s day with the video of her beloved Omar. I share your opinion about Argo, too.
Happy Birthday to our dearly missed Janice. 🎂🎉🎊❤️🎁
Thanks to CC for the group picture. Abejo, RIP. WikWak has been absent from the blog for ages, hope he’s okay. Thankfully, our stalwart steward, TTP, continues his graceful guidance.
Happy Birthday to CC’s creation. It’s been an important part of my life for over 12 years and I thank CC and her crew for my daily enjoyment. (Today is also the Feast of St. Agnes, 😇)
Have a great day.
FIR, but erased seine for TRAWL, duel for SLAP, yser for YALU, hon for SON, (yes) tsars for SHAHS, adam for ARAM, ibid for UBID, inert gas for ODORLESS,uh no for UM NO, and (temporarily) RAN, TSTORM and AMORE. I also started DR Z for the movie, not reading the clue correctly. Didn't have any idea how to spel the rest.
ReplyDeleteObviously a very easy Saturday Norris offering, since even I got it, albeit with great difficulty.
It's NCAA BB season. I would have clued TIE UP as "jump ball", even they don't jump TIE UPs anymore. Interesting that the refs still use "two thumbs up" to indicate simultaneous possession (instead of jump ball). (When will that signal be labeled as a microaggression? We'll discuss that topic and more on tomorrow's Sports Center.)
When I corrected hon to SON I thought of the Lynyrd Skynyrd lyrics "And I'm telling you son,
Well, it ain't no fun Staring straight down a forty-four" and Three Dog Night lyrics "Mama told me not to come, She said, 'That ain't the way to have fun, son. That ain't the way to have fun, no'."
BE - I'm not sure the pros spend much more time on the range than on the green. For me, getting a drive in the fairway and at least nearly as long as the group is more important than avoiding three-putts. For the pros, reducing each round's score by one putt puts millions of dollars in their pockets. After all, that's four strokes per tournament. One less putt per round is irrelevant in the group of hackers I play with.
FLN - Lucina, my DWs son and daughter spell me for a few days in April, when I go to Myrtle Beach for geezer golf with three buddies. I'm looking into our local senior center for adult day care a day or two a week. I think she would like it, and I would get an occasional break. Also, thanks for the thoughts, Michael (and others too.)
Thanks to Rich for letting me play today, and to Gary for the fun review. I've never had a HOLE IN ONE, but I've hit the flagstick twice and another time left the ball pin high and about 2 inches to the right.
Greetings. As to the puzzle: Nope, not today. I filled about half, and surprisingly the whole SE, but for the rest, my synonyms were off - either a letter too short or too long. I caved and went to the reveal. Score one for Rich. Thanks Husker Gary for clearing the fog.
ReplyDeleteTo Anon-T, I saw your comment - That was some wild video!! Not exactly what I had in mind when I wrote synchronicity but isn't it interesting to where the path can lead!! Yikes!!
RE: your e-mails (& I apologize if I'm preaching to the choir), please take o moment (or two) and scroll down to the bottom of the e-mail and click on UNSUBSCRIBE. It may be buried in the fine print. This applies to all unwanted/repetitious e-mails. Hope this helps.
RosE, sometimes hitting "Unsubscribe" serves only to alert the spammer that you really exist. The end result: more spam emails.
ReplyDeleteDesper-otto,hasn't been my experience. Works for known vendors I have bought from, and political candidates. Others I just delete.
ReplyDeleteOn the initial 2/3 horizontal foray all I came up with was DEE and SOTTO. Yikes maybe I should give up. But Saturdays require more imagination, persistence, and thinking outside the CW box. Somehow pulled a FIR out of the hat
ReplyDeleteInkovers; duel/SLAP, tsars/SHAHS...Thought "Old English" refered to the the wood polish and first put the nonsense answer ANGLOwAXer.
Not sure I'd call a SHAG messy but as the French say "shotgun oz sewn goo"..hadda wait for the perps on T_ T.. I confused the YALU River with the Yellow River (which gets its color from the PEEN 😄)
"patronizing": a pater (father) would call his boy: SON. I took AP English in the Paleolithic Age (1966-67) and got credit for and didn't need to take kollidge English.
Many of us are familiar with Seinfeld episodes. I remember that scene but knowing the name of the character is really out there..at least it doesn't rhyme with a part of the female anatomy.. 🙉
Someone should tell the golfer in the picture that manually putting the ball in the hole is strictly against the rules 😠.
How is the Lucy "grape crushing" scene in color? !!🎨😲...That's a first for me.
Late October we bring out the FLANNEL bed sheets. ("Baby it's Cold Outside). "Foil cousin" Saran wrap way to long.
Happy rest of the weekend. Snowed here in CNY and the Adirondacks..but not enough for winter sports.
Happy B day to our blog, thanks CC. and to Mme D. 🍰
I would choose Tricky Dick as pen name for Rich, our talented constructor. There was a lot of erasing going on this morning but I finally FIR. I too had Seine for TRAWL, tsars for SHAHS. a few weeks ago I finished a fascinating book about the Amur River which separates China from Russia, so I smugly entered it instead of YALU. I had weep for YELL, Rock and roll for TOOTSIE, duel for SLAP, but I had a lot of fun, after all this a puzzle, so it’s up to me to try to solve it.
ReplyDeleteI have a question about # 19 across. What is a tree-lined NABE?
Cool, dreary morning today, just right for CWs.
Happy birthday to this blog and to Madame Defarge whose name I have not seen in quite a while.
Thank you Rich for a challenging, but fun Saturday morning. Unfortunately for me this wasn't horseshoes and I missed a FIR by one letter. I couldn't dredge up Saroyan's "name" and went with ELIST for the SIGN posted by LOTS of REALTORS. Still fun, and even more fun was Husker's review.
ReplyDeleteI liked ...
10A MOLDY. I'm starting to feel a bit of that.
26A FLANNELS. So far it hasn't been cold enough in BMORE to put on long johns.
33A TAOIST. Learning moment. I've always thought that TAOISTS were soul searching solitary sorts and have never seen a temple. Like they rest of us they are "saved in communion".
64A HOLE IN ONE. That was ONE of how many Gary?
66A SKI LESSON. A CSO to Joseph.
5D PR STUNT. Seems that our government (both sides) has devolved into one big zero sum game. T** for TAT is no longer on the table.
52D SHAG. If this were a British puzzle that wouldn't pass the breakfast test.
We're finally having everybody over for Christmas tomorrow and I have to "straighten my office" (i.e. clean up my act), so I'll see you folks on Monday.
Cheers,
Bill
Ray, since you started today with DEE and SOTTO, maybe you can start a future puzzle with CATTLE LACK.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 10:50, I call my putter "the flat stick". I also call it my "Texas flat wedge" when I use the putter from off the green. Neither are original; I've heard both a lot.
Tante, NABE is "neighborhood," from the shortspeak folks who also brought us "bae" for babe/baby.
It was wonderful to have Rich presenting a Master Class on how a crossword should be constructed - IMHO. It was challenging but fair, and the fill was interesting and subtle. Despite some names, it was NOT a trivia contest. My favorites were DRAW STRAWS and ANGLO SAXON. I do challenge FLAT STICK - as a golfer , I’ve never ever heard that term. Minor nit.
ReplyDeleteLike others, I almost gave up after my first pass which yielded almost no answers, but I kept trying and slowly, slowly it came together. Thanks so much Rich. Thanks to Gary too for the great tour. I loved the Dr. Zhivago clips and the beautiful song, as well as the Seinfeld clip.
Happy Birthday Mme D.
Oops, looks like Anon @ 10:50 got cancelled. Troll?
ReplyDeleteRay-O thanks for PEEN in the Yellow River, too funny.
ReplyDeleteVery rarely do locals refer to the desert area west of Yuma, as the Colorado Desert. It is a portion of the much larger Sonoran Desert.
SUDRA was totally unknown, and DH HELPED with me RICE
I definitely needed my FLANNELS this morning was a nippy 37.
Happy Birthday Madame DeFarge.
Wendy, I've played golf only in the southwest and southeast, and frequently hear flatstick. Could it be regional? Maybe gender specific? I usually play in male foursomes, could be heard less in mixed/female groups? Have you heard a male golfer asked, after leaving a putt on line but short, if his husband plays golf too? Or, when a player takes his/her turn but doesn't get closer than the three others in the group, is told USGA (u suck - go again)? My guess those two are guy things, but I would be surprised if "flatstick" falls into that category. More likely regional.
ReplyDeleteWonderful to see your puzzle, Rich, many thanks--even if it was a bit of a Saturday toughie. But that's what it's supposed to be. And your pictures are always wonderful, Gary, thanks for those too. And C.C. congratulations on having started our blog 15 years ago. Believe it or not, I still remember when you first started it and how exciting that was.
ReplyDeleteWell, starting out on a SHARP TURN made me a little nervous, especially since it was followed by more negatives with a THREAT of a SLAP which could make us SORE, and some HEXES to make things even worse. But maybe that was all just a PR STUNT, since we also got a chance to DWELL on LOCAL COLOR on ELM STreet, and to DRAW STRAWS, and to wear comfortable FLANNELS and take SKI LESSONS and get a HOLE IN ONE playing golf, if we had a chance to MASTER the sport. Not a bad experience--I'm sure lots of us ADOREd it, and so I end by saying AMORE.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
Thank you Jinx. I thought maybe NABE was a misprint. I wonder how many more of those are out there. It shows how unhip i am, or have become.
ReplyDeleteHi Y'all! Very tough slog today with all the long phrases, but managed to fill it. Thanks, Rich. I almost gave up. Thanks, Gary, for 'splainin'. I especially like your maps.
ReplyDeleteWET ones before WET VACS. My spills are usually smaller.
Only knew Jerry RICE from Dancing With The STARS --not what he did with a football.
Knew some boats were called TRAWLers but didn't know it was a net name.
DNK: ENOS, UBID, FLATSTICK, SIDRA.
Happy Birthday, Madam DeFarge. Happy Birthday, C.C.'s blog! A much enjoyed addition to my life, thanks to all of you.
Nice to see that Rich is still constructing! I really enjoyed today’s themeless, challenging yet doable with some fine clueing. Managed a FIR in 23:10, which on a Saturday is a good time for me, usually have to dedicate at least a half hour. I wonder how much editing Patti has to do on a puzzle by Rich, and if he’s happy with the end product. Anyway, thank you both for today’s grid!
ReplyDeleteHG ~ another stellar review which is always the case when you take the helm on Saturdays. I’ve golfed a lot all my life and never had a hole in one, or never witnessed one, congratulations on your multiple ones! I’ve hit the stick with a 2 iron from 190 (years ago), and gashed the green on the fly a couple inches from the cup but can’t get one in. And I have heard the putter referred to as a FLAT STICK, just sort of a slangy term.
Happy b/day to the Corner and kudos to C.C. for keeping this going for 15 years! Really glad to have discovered it by chance. Always enjoy the bloggers and commenters, nice eclectic group of people with so much to offer!
Very enjoyable puzzle today, mostly on my wavelength . I actually filled it in from top to bottom with lots of challenges, usually I am just a scattershot solver trying to fill in the white holes... thank you Rich.
ReplyDelete15 years! HBD Blog!
I remember looking up the definition of Madam Defarge way back when, and posting a knitting cake. but when I went to refresh my memory today, Google gave me a whole deeper meaning...
Learning moment: flat stick
I dunno, I was looking for words with more obscenities..
"Tie up"
I want to be this good!
Who knows, I might even learn how to stop my headphones from tangling!
Today was tough and at first I despaired of filling the puzzle but, like others of you, eventually finished Rich's challenging puzzle. But as Husker Gary pointed out in his review, I had a FIW at my Natick in the NW: AIR ARABIA crossing UBID. Like IM I had Asia firmly in mind for the ending and filled in an S even though I couldn't quite make it work. Thanks Rich and Husker Gary for giving me the fun of figuring out most of it!
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely not SORE about missing one square in a puzzle like today's, but I had a mishap while walking on campus this morning with my DH and fell, getting a knot on my head which is SORE. I can't remember ever having one before. I expect to be more colorful as the bruise forms and also need to get my glasses repaired. It's my latest learning experience.
FLN, it sounds like you have some ideas, Jinx, that will help you and your DW. Best wishes.
Happy Birthday to the blog and to Madame Defarge today! Come by and visit, MD! We've missed you. And thanks, C.C. for starting the blog which has become so important to us. The interesting people who contribute add a lot to our puzzle experience.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
Hi All!
ReplyDeleteNope. I had 7 fills and 3 (tsars, one (one-to-one exchange (6d), & noblegas) were wrong. Thanks for letting me play Rich (and thanks for letting me cheat for some extra-play, HG).
Nice expo, HG - I too thought of Foghorn Leghorn at 51a (post copious cheats).
Now that I see the puzzle as a whole, it's a really impishly clued grid with nice stacks. Maybe I should have stuck it out instead of getting on with chores.
Jerry RICE catching for Joe Montana - beautiful. I rarely watch football but those 49's game were must see TV. I hear a rookie-QB may take the Cowboys tomorrow [this counts for sports on NPR], so I may tune in.
Anyway... RosE - from well known companies, the un-subscribe link can be effective but some SPAM, hocking known-brands, are oft from unscrupulous sources [see: D-O's response]. The delete button is pretty quick way of dealing with it.
Oh, and sorry if The Police was a little jarring :-)
I had a great clip lined up for: TanteNique - NABE == neighborhood. More modern-day short-talk. //cue - Seinfeld's Close Talker [Judge Reinhold is great]*
But Jinx already explained it and TanteNique knows. But, I'm not letting it go to waste :-)
AP COURSES seem like a good deal but don't expect any of them to apply to Major's credits when you get to university. None of my AP Sciences (Chem, Physics, Calc) were accepted by Tech for EE but History and English were*. DW deals with this a lot with her 2-year CC students transferring to 4-year colleges. I think they're called articulation arrangements -- she's worked with many Unis to protect the kids' credits.
Little story:
Over the Holidays, Pop's DW & (Army (ret.)) Bro played my Monday NYT puzzle. This rekindled (Army (ret)) Bro's interest in crosswords (he did them a lot when enlisted) and now he texts me his (nearly) completed grid almost daily. He had trouble early week but nailed Thursday (which I DNF'd) and Friday's. Kid's a quick learner. Anyway if you see some anon with salty language join in The Corner Chorus - careful, it may be him - and he's a trained sniper ;-)
Happy Birthday Corner and Happy Birthday MdF!
Cheers, -T
*Had a buddy I car-pooled with from Norman to TAFB, he was a close-talker; turn his whole body over the seat to say something while I was driving.
**And for some reason, I had to take music appreciation. Being me, I flipped to the back of the text. Beatles! The prof never got that far in the text :-(
Musings
ReplyDelete-I have had one and one-half other holes-in-one. The half one came when I hit my first tee shot way out of bounds and then my second tee shot went in the hole for a “3”. My third one was seen only by the squirrels and meadow larks and was part of a 37 I shot on the front nine that day.
So Wendy Bird
ReplyDeleteAs an "OZARK" addict, been meaning to ask . When the screen goes blank and Jonah fires the the rifle, did he shoot Sattern like everybody thought or actually... you
❓
Now that's a well-crafted puzzle! I agree with those of you who said it was a challenge but fair and I had many of the same false starts and writeovers that you experienced. I give this puzzle 2 thumbs up.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Sat. challenge, Rich. I was confounded at tsArS. FAV: Person with lots to offer
ReplyDeleteHappy B-day to the blog and Madame Defarge and me! (Yes, Irish Miss, my parents considered naming me Agnes because of the feast day but my French grandmother got the nod.)
sumdaze @5:20 PM Missed that one. Happy BDay Renee! 🎉🎂🍰
DeleteIrish Miss @9:18 AM That's what I forgot. Happy Feast Day Agnes! ✝✝✝
ReplyDeleteMy impression is that, for the men, European golfers are better putters than American golfers. Some kind of masculine exercise to practise hitting the ball longer and harder!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday, Crossword Corner !
Happy Birthday, Madame DeFarge !
Happy Birthday, Sumdaze !
IM in Italy your saints name day is as important as your birthday. Buon Onomastico greeting cards are as common as birthday cards...(Greek verb onomázein "to call by name").
ReplyDeleteThe Eve of St Agnes: unmarried girls see their future mate in dreams.
Happy birthday SD
Re. FLAT STICK… Golf is Draconian in its punishment of wayward shots. A bad drive usually yields a double bogey or worse vs a missed four footer means an extra stroke.
ReplyDeleteRe. The pros… it's not noticeable on TV but if you're at a tournament you'll see 5-10' putts . Consistently making them is the key to a successful round
WC
ReplyDeleteThree really nice people in that picture, and then there's me.
I remember that day. I was there early. Then WikWak pulled in. I guessed it was him because of the ham call letters on his tags. Just as we were introducing ourselves, Abejo came walking across the parking lot. By the way, Abejo is pronounced similar to Abbey Joe, not as a-bay-ho with a long a and a long o. Hard J. He was given that moniker from some local nationals when he worked in Iran as a contractor. Sometime during the rein of the last SHAH.
Abejo and I had met some months earlier. He lived a short walk from that Italian eatery where we were meeting. Just about the time Abejo and WikWak were shaking hands, right on cue Madame DeFarge pulled in. Abejo and Madame DeFarge had met before:Abejo meets Madame DeFarge by chance!
So after Abejo's story months before, it was easy to know who she was because of her plates. See C.C.'s comments at the end of Steve's blog this day: Abejo's pics from their initial meeting.
We talked outside for a bit, and then went and got a table. We talked and talked and talked. Probably for an hour before we ordered, and then probably twice that after we ate. The time just flew by and too soon it was over. Good thing we were there before the restaurant got busy. We tipped the gracious server generously.
I miss Madame DeFarge and WikWak's comments. Hope they are both doing well.
And I miss Abejo. He was a great guy.
Happy Birthday, Sumdaze. You've been a fun addition to the blog.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rich, and thank you, Gary!
A really good Saturday challenge.
SubG, if it's any consolation to you, it took me just over 32 minutes to solve it without any help. At least that's what the timer said. I don't pay much attention to it, and I solve while watching TV. It's not like anyone regularly reading and posting at this blog is ACPT competitive.
Even Stella found it a bit difficult. She tweeted "Well, this one was harder than some Saturday Stumpers, at least for me!" She solved it in 5 minutes and 24 seconds.
Jinx, yes. A troll.
True about unsubscribe. Some are really good about it. Others not. I don't recall now whether it was Groupon or a Kohl's / Sears "Save Your Way" program, or someone other legit company that sent daily emails, but it took forever to get them to stop. Uber sends me an email almost daily offering me $25 on a delivered food order. Comcast doesn't seem to much care either.
Some ignore your requests seemingly forever and continue to send you stuff even after you've cancelled your account. Some even want you to sign in to your now-closed-account so you can unsubscribe. Argh ! Petco is one of those that made it super hard to unsubscribe. She signed up to get some big purchase savings. She eventually got a different email account. Her email account was pwned, and she didn't use that particular one anyway, so no big deal.
Just about every modern email system has a method to block senders... if you know where to look.
It's the non-legit ones that use that unsubscribe button in emails to know they've got a live one on the line. Hit their unsubscribe and they might request your SSN. Like the phone scammers.
ReplyDeleteDash T, show your bro how to go blue. We already have enough people commenting as Anonymous.
Not that the AI cares, it will flag and remove salty and salacious comments regardless.
You probably have other ways of checking phone numbers and email ids, but have you ever used:
https://haveibeenpwned.com/
I entered my wife's old AOL email id in its search field, and it came back that it had been pwned. One of my ids show the same, and it wasn't unexpected, but it's a junk email id anyway.
ReplyDeleteI failed to include Stella's comment that preceded her tweet.
It was, "WOW, OKAY. So I’ve been saying about quite a few LAT Saturdays lately that they’re a bit easier than I like. Well, this one was harder than some Saturday Stumpers, at least for me! (I also spent longer on this one than on both of this week’s NYT themelesses put together.)"
TTP - yes, haveIbeenPwned is a great site. With a subscription you can get more data. We have a service that mines all the data there and other (dark-net) sties for UIDs and sends me an email every time one hits.
ReplyDeleteFunny that Stella found it 'hard' - she humbles me nearly every grid.
I do miss Abejo.
If (Army) Bro decides to visit The Corner, I'll tell him how to 'go-blue.' But, honestly, I don't think you want both of us in the room at the same time - it gets loud.
//toss in my (CEO) Bro and my Sisters and things go off the rails in a hurry. Pop just shakes his head and goes in for another beer :-)
Cheers, -T
@1:46a - that's how I interpreted SLAP as well.
ReplyDeleteThis scene didn't start with a SLAP but (are those EPEEs?).
C, -T