"Auto Correct"
After I first solved the puzzle and looked at the circles, I thought "cute the gear shift in order." But after I wrote them out, something wasn't right. I discussed with a Cornerite and he noted they were just "auto-corrected" e.g. Packets->Rackets. That's when it hit me: we were going for a drive.Let's take a spin with an Automatic Shifter (PRND) and (16 & 100 downs) SHIFT GEARS through the normal daily drivers.
 |
| The PRNDL (video) |
26. Noisy outbursts that are greatly appreciated?: WELCOME RACKETS. Welcome Packets. "Auto-Correct" took it out of Park and put it in Reverse.
44. Bird voted "Most Likely to Succeed"?: BEST OF THE NEST. Best of the Rest. Out of Reverse into Neutral.
61. Messages hidden in some brunch fare?: WAFFLE CODES. Waffle coNes. Neutral to Drive.
74. Bit of middle-school fashion?: TWEEN JACKET. TweeD Jacket. Drive going back back through Neutral.
89. Halloween rental fee?: COSTUME CHARGE. Costume ChaNge. Neutral back into Reverse.
110. Bad news at an Atlanta pie shop?: JUST OUT OF PEACH. Just out of Reach. And Reverse back into Park. There, we're back in the driveway.
See the SHIFTer going through the GEARS in order as you leave and return, top to bottom and back to top: PRN-D-NRP.
Let's take ride through the rest of the grid.
Across:
1. Ends of pens: NIBS. Think you have an ink, well... [see what I did there? Ok, I'll try to behave]
5. Approval from a Lab: WAG. That beautiful, smart, pup that sniffs your bum.
 |
| Tinker |
8. Like chocolate ganache: RICH. Yum!
 |
| Recipe |
12. Swindles: SCAMS. If someone asks you to pay in Bitcoin...
17. Sound at a barbershop: SNIP. Clip, clip. There goes your hair. I always ask them to get the gray ones first.
18. Poetic salutes: ODES. Nothing about a Grecian Urn(?)
20. Pain: ACHE. Every Wednesday & Friday after my Tuesday/Thursday workouts.
21. Stuck out one's tongue as requested: SAID AH. Do Docs do this anymore? Mostly they just take blood, urine, and hook you to a machine, no?
22. Coffee shop loyalty card reward: FREE DRINK. I frequent nothing enough to bother with 'perks'.
24. Get close to: NEAR. Approach. Cue Mel Brooks and Cleavon Little [TV - MA] //y'all know Richard Prior wrote at least half that script.
25. Japanese fish preparation: TATAKI. Original meaning is 'beat with a hammer'. In food, just seared on the outside and raw in the middle. Not good for chicken but brilliant for sushi-grade tuna.
26. [See: Theme]
28. Not very much: A BIT OF. Just a smidge.
29. Give, as a driver's license: ISSUE TO. If "they" ISSUE it, it's official.
30. Brown quickly: SEAR. [See: TATAKI]
32. Lemon scraping: ZEST.
33. Toot: SPREE.
36. __ A: Italian soccer league: SERIE. If you say so...
 |
| Serie A League Logos |
39. Loot: LUCRE. I wanted cache for the longest time. At least I knew it was not the verb.
41. Strikes (out): CROSSES. If I showed you my grid, you'd know what it means. DELE.
44. [See: Theme]
49. Like crudités: RAW. Food!
50. Fix, as a pet: SPAY. Poor (female) lab.
52. __-di-dah: LAH. Mr. Fancy Pants.
53. Watch closely: EYE. Gotta keep an EYE on him; He's doing crosswords during meetings (moi?)
54. Fabrication: LIE. You made that up!
55. Signed up: ENLISTED. When I bought my house I said to the title-agent, "Last time I signed this many times, I found myself in the Army."
58. Beach town west of Santa Monica: MALIBU.
 |
| Malibu |
60. AED administrators: EMTS. Automated External Defibrillators are carried by Emergency Medical Technicians. Clear! ?
61. [See: Theme]
63. Made sense of: SORTED OUT. And my big-fat Ink-Over. I had SussED OUT for a while.
66. Atop, poetically: O'ER.
67. Court divider: NET. Tennis, volleyball, et.al.
68. Disgusted syllable: FEH. ? OK, I had FEI
69. Wallach of "The Magnificent Seven": ELI.
70. Tot's perch on a bike: CHILD SEAT.
 |
| Queen of the World back there |
74. [See: Theme]
79. Grasped: HELD. Not "Understand."
80. Used a rotary phone: DIALED. Kinda funny to watch kids (these days) figure one out.
Think they can figure it out in 10 minutes?
82. When the dinner bell rings: MEALTIME. Nothing to do with Pavlov's dog.
83. Not online, online: IRL. In Real Life.
84. Truck's tankful: GAS.
86. Rollaway, e.g.: COT. Army cots don't exactly roll up nor are they a comfy bed.
87. Crack a book: READ. I wanted study.
88. Actor Chaney: LON.
 |
| Master of the Grotesque |
89. [See: Theme]
93. Connect with: TAP INTO. Your social/professional network.
96. Writer Calvino: ITALO. Italian writer.
97. Like ta moko and the haka: MAORI.
99. Indy 500 family name: UNSER. This name I knew.
100. Chutzpah: GALL. Anyone want sass?
103. Govt.-issued IDs: SSNS. Social Security NumberS
105. Oft-removed throat tissues: TONSILS. Do DRs still do this? I have mine.
108. Delights: ELATES.
110. [See: Theme]
116. Garb: ATTIRE. Clothes.
117. App buyer: USER. If you USE a Smart Thing(tm) you buy APPlications to make it more USEful.
118. Fishy scoopful at a deli: TUNA SALAD. Food!
 |
| Recipe |
119. Large-horned mammals: RHINOS.
120. Agitate: RILE. Get your Irish up.
121. "__ Brockovich": ERIN.
122. Teacher from the old school?: MARM.
123. "Yesterday" and "Tomorrow": SONGS. Beatles (Fab Four) & Annie (orphan kid with Daddy Warbucks).
124. Long fish: EELS. Gars fit too.
125. Vote against: NAY. Anti.
126. Apple Watch assistant: SIRI. The voice assistant on your iThing and why all AI assistants are female. //DW's is set to an Aussie bloke. Should I be worried? :-)
Down:
1. Blue tag?: NSFW. Not Safe For Work is a warning before blue-humor. Our team has a discord space for NSFW content and/or to poke fun/entertain ourselves during vendor calls without $corp snooping. [Full disclosure - we are the $corpSnoops #CyberSec]
2. Pertaining to: IN RE. Regarding. As To. Pertaining to Subject. //our #discord only tangentially does; it's mostly memes
3. Jessica of TV's "The Sinner": BIEL.
 |
| Biel is Married to Justin Timberlake [WikiP] |
4. Genus subdivision: SPECIES. Don't know much about biology (This guy does an OK Sam Cooke in the style of Ska.)
5. Some gummy animals: WORMS. I love Haribo's Gummy Bears and sleepy time melatonin gummy worms.
6. Parting mot: ADIEU. Goodbye, Frenchman. [Cue Monty Python]
7. Art classes?: GENRES. Types, er, classes of art. You know, like Baroque. And if ain't Baroque, don't fix it [I'll see myself out soon]
8. Corporal or private: RANK. Army training sir!
9. Potential cause of brain freeze: ICEE. It's called Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia
10. Exchanges: CHATS. Swapping stories.
11. Reflexive pronoun: HERSELF.
12. Onetime Volvo rival: SAAB. See: A Man Called Ove.
13. Inhabitant: CITIZEN.
14. "It's __!": A DATE. Anyone else think, "Alive!"?
Young Frankenstein
15. Predatory sharks: MAKOS.
16. With 100-Down, change one's approach, and a hint to the circled letters: SHIFT.
19. Accomplish a lot with little effort: SKATE BY. All my life. A boss-man once told me, "Get the little things 100% and people will let you slide if you mess-up the big stuff. The big stuff is hard but the little is easy." Then and there, I was a consultant :-)
21. Like potatoes: STARCHY.
23. Some tablets: DOSES.
27. Situp's target: CORE. My trainer has me working core. He said I was getting too puffy(? - I pay him for this? :-))
31. Filmmaker with a unique style: AUTEUR. Highfalutin "class of art."
33. Bit of hardware: SCREW. Saturday, week, it was a T-NUT.
34. One of yoga's five vital forces: PRANA. I'll leave this for those who know better. Lucina, you yoga, right?.
35. Piano-playing dog on "The Muppet Show": ROWLF. I need perps for spelling
Rowlf
37. Puerto Rico y Mallorca: ISLAS. Spanish Islands.
38. Abbr. in a research paper: ET AL. Latin. It means I'm only typing the first few names in my works cited or, literally, and others.
40. "The Pioneer Woman" host Drummond: REE. Sis loves her books & recipes. I have one cookbook.
42. Fragrant compounds: ESTERS. Essential smelly stuff. DW has only one perfume that doesn't send me into a sneezy fit.
43. Small detail?: SPEC. No detail is to small to do a job well. [see: my 19d comment]
45. "Makes sense now": OH I SEE. Aha!
46. Muppet with a puppy named Tango: ELMO. More Muppets!
47. In __: as found: SITU. Latin. In the original place.
48. Course obstacle: TEST.
 |
| Army Training, Sir! |
51. God, in Hebrew: ADONAI. My limited understanding: Saying YHWH is a sin, so Adonai is used in prayer.
56. "You win this hand": I FOLD. With these cards, I can't win.
57. Luge, e.g.: SLED.
Any Takers?
58. Convened: MET. Once, a Constitutional Congress convened...
59. Puccini's "La __": BOHEME. Puccini's opera. Got an hour? Click for Fernando & Luciano Pavarotti.
60. Fiat: EDICT. Law from a ruler. Usually, half-baked. The emperor has no ATIRE.
62. Uncouple: DETACH. Remove the drive-shaft from the joint and you've finally uncoupled it (and covered in gook).
64. 2002 American League MVP Miguel: TEJADA. Shortstop. Miguel [MLB Stats] was with Oakland when he received the Most Valuable Player. He also played in Houston '08 & '09.
65. Transport to Tel Aviv: EL AL. Standard x-wordese. Hahtoolah, I'm sure, can tell you if they lose your luggage.
68. Abbr. in an email subject line: FWD. "Forward." Like when you accidentally FWD that NSFW joke to your boss.
70. Quite smart: CHIC. Stylish.
71. Big sandwich: HERO. Is a hot-dog a sandwich? I say no and neither are hoagies nor grinders. Discuss.
72. Woes: ILLS.
73. Cars named for Henry Ford's son: EDSELS. It was totaled before it left the lot. History says a flop. Too many hands in the kitchen is the way I read the history of this disaster.
74. "Neon" fish: TETRA.
75. "Cool!": NEAT.
76. Pottery ovens: KILNS. Waseeley can tell you all about 'em.
77. Overact: EMOTE. Throwing this out there: Who's the biggest HAM?
78. Mid-range voice: TENOR. Is it weird of me to say The Great Caruso? [no relation]
No Relation
81. Fertile soil: LOAM.
84. Demolish: GUT. Raze. One GUTs the room before the re-model.
85. Accumulates: AMASSES. Gathers. Keep and take care of what you got and, soon, you've got plenty to share.
Or your SO calls you a hoarder :-) //hey, her car still fits in the garage. So there's that :-)
87. Change direction: REROUTE. GPS does this in heavy traffic.
90. Activity at windmills and pinball machines: TILTING. Think Don Quixote or cue Sir Elton John in The Who's Tommy.
Pinball Wizard
 |
| Don Quixote |
91. Create out of thin air: CONJURE. Make stuff up. Lying isn't good but fiction can be. //Who wrote these rules?
92. Show up for: GO TO. Showing up is half the job.
94. Destroys, as books: PULPS. I wouldn't say Pulp-Fiction destroyed books :-)
95. Pants measurements: INSEAMS. "Do you dress left or right?" said the seamstress. Wha???
98. One after another: IN TURN. My turn to comment, your turn will come in twelve more fill.
100. See 16-Down: GEARS.
101. Howe'er: ALTHO. Short for "although." Anyone else think there's TOO MUCH slang in the vernacular?
102. "Lux et veritas" language: LATIN. Where's Lemonade when you need him? I mean this is obviously LATIN, but WTH? [I LIU: Light and Truth]
104. "Fat Is a Feminist Issue" writer Orbach: SUSIE. Her WikiP page
106. Sotomayor who said, "You cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true": SONIA. A Justice in the minority (in more than one way :-))
107. "Unless there are none": IF ANY. IF ANY one objects to the marriage of these two 18yro kids... Nobody did.
109. Greek matchmaker?: EROS. He hit DW & me with his arrows.
111. Peddle: SELL. Pedal: Bike. Petal: Flower.
112. Número de leches en un postre específico: TRES. Spanish: Number of milks in a specific dessert. Three. We had TRES leches as 60a in Rafeael's 2/11/23 puzzle.
113. Jai __: ALAI.
114. NFL quarterback Derek: CARR. Raider's Quarterback.
115. Port on some TVs: HDMI. High-Definition Multimedia Interface. It carries digital & audio signals from box to the screen/speakers.
The Grid
 |
| The Grid |
I hope everyone had fun and I didn't go too far off-road with the expo.
Cheers, -T
27 comments:
I saw the “gears”, but didn’t put the pattern together for “going for a drive “ until T explained it. Also, I didn’t remember the football player Carr and wasn’t familiar with “HDMI”, so the only reason I got those right is that I remembered the “school marm*” from old westerns. I did notice the “substitution pattern “ of the circled letters and that helped me solve the puzzle. FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
Thought this one was a bit of a slog as I worked through it, but the theme was very clever. The circled letters are RNDNRP. The swapped letters from the common phrases are PRNDNR -- exactly reversed. Is that meaningful? Dunno. But it had to be a real bugger to create. Well done Vu, Wendy, and Dash-T.
I know that a lot of Cornerites solve the puzzle the old fashioned way, on paper with pen or pencil, so they don’t know positively if all is correct until seeing the filled grid. I solve online, where when you insert your last letter, if all is correct you get a congratulatory message, if not you know you have a mistake. Well today I had the grid complete in a half hour but didn’t get that message so I knew I had an error somewhere. First I looked for a typo but didn’t see any, then I knew I had something amiss, figuring it was in the area of PLANA and ROWLF which were unknowns, and since I didn’t know what crudités were, I wasn’t sure RAW was correct either, or could CROSSES be wrong? Took me 15 more minutes before I saw in the NE that I had a C instead of a K in TATAKI/MAKOS, Congratulations! I had all the right letters in the themers and sussed what the circled ones were changed from, but the whole sequence of the gear shifter I never grasped till the expo. And speaking of the expo, being Sunday I started out thinking I was reading a C.C. blog till the blurb about ENLISTED where the writer stated they found themselves in the army, and I didn’t recall C.C. being in the army, so I was wondering who I was reading. Anyway, nice job on the write-up Anonymous T! And thank you for today’s challenge Hoang-Kim and Wendy.
FIW. I got the theme answers without seeing the gear shift thing. Where I went wrong was putting down sussed out instead of sorted out, and made a mess of the adjacent clues. Tough puzzle for a Sunday.
FIW with tie into instead of TAP INTO. Never heard of TEJADi/A, and I guess PULPS means to grind it up into a, well, pulp.
For a change I really understood the theme, and like DO noticed that the replaced and replacing letters did mirror image work.
I got "toot" when I realized that "fart" didn't have enough letters.
I used to be able to see MALIBU beach from my desk on the 17th floor of 100 Wilshire Blvd in Santa Monica. You could see my window in the opening scene of Three's Company, when Jack wrecks his bike in the sand because he was examining the back side of a passing bikini.
I've seen The Magnificent Seven a few times, but all I remembered was the theme music was used in the Marlboro TV commercials. (Yes, younguns, cigarettes used to be advertised on TV.)
IRL - The organization (Indy Racing League) runs the second-most important race in America, the Indianapolis 500. (The most important is NASCAR's Daytona 500 being held today.)
EIRN Brockovich (the real one, not Meryl) has been called out to opine on the East Palestine disaster created by the Atlanta Southern railroad.
I'm ashamed to admit that at first I thought that DOSES for "some tablets" was wrong. I never saw a tablet device that ran on DOS. Maybe I need to live IRL occasionally.
Thanks to Vu and Wendy for the fun challenge, which was JUST OUT OF rEACH for me. And thanks to -T for your witty insights and interesting tour.
Looks like Jimmy Carter's days are ending. His legacy is assured for his work after his presidential days. RIP, great man.
Jinx ~ I read this morning that Jimmy Carter is currently receiving home hospice care at 98. Like you stated, his legacy is not the one term he served as President, (a second term was doomed from the ongoing hostage crisis, failed rescue attempt, and the charismatic father-figure Reagan), but everything he has accomplished after he left office, he strapped on a tool belt and went to work hands on building homes for Habitat for Humanity, truly a great man!
FIR but am puzzled as to how "toot" is SPREE.
Dictionary.com answered my question re Toot: "noun Slang. a period or instance of drunken revelry; binge; spree: Those idiots went on a toot last night and spent the night in the slammer."
Good Morning:
While the theme is not very exciting, the execution is impressive and the title is award-winning, IMO. My criticisms are the same as usual for Sunday grids: an over abundance of unknown proper names/nouns and obscure references: Tataki, Serie, Plana, Rowland, Tejada and, as clued, Māori and Susie. Fortunately, my w/os were limited to Binge/Spree, Deal/Date, Lose/Fold and Arf/Wag, so I finished in normal Sunday time. I thought the cluing was a little uneven, ranging from obvious to murky. On the positive side, I liked the symmetrical placement of Shift and Gears and I really appreciated the unusually low number of three letter words.
Thanks, Hoang-Kim and Wendy, for a fun Sunday spin and thanks, Tony, for the humor and colorful commentary. I enjoyed all of the visuals and links, especially the Pavarotti and Lanza clips. Luciano is in a class all by himself, IMO. Is the handsome Tinker Pop’s dog?
Has Ray O gone missing along with those chocolates?
Jinx @ 8:53 ~ Erin Brockovich was played by Julia Roberts, not Meryl Streep. 😉
Have a great day.
Musings
-SHIFTING GEARS in that familiar pattern was wonderful
-Sore CORE muscles (ABS) are still hurting me but are much better three days out. I’m nominating my DW for sainthood!
-CHAT- My youngest sister refuses to turn on her phone and insists that I try to catch her on a landline with any info.
-SKATE BY – You have to be damned good to make it look that easy
-AUTEUR – The only one I can spot is Hitchcock
-Windmills and pin-ball machines/TILTING! Loved it!
-IN TURN – It seems today it is not safe to call out line cutters? BTW, do you stand “in” line or “on” line?
-SUSIE – Did she ever wake up? Don’t ask our younger solvers! :-)
-Nice job, Tony!
Shift Gears?
it takes a little getting used to...
Actually,
My first time(s) were exactly the opposite.
I wasn't giving it enough gas while releasing the clutch, killing the engine.
It's a delicate balance of gas and clutch to get going smoothly...
CrossEyedDave, I got my motorcycle license on Guam back in the '60s. Part of the driver test was the slow speed balance test. Two lines were marked about 20 feet apart on the parking lot. You had to drive across them on your motorcycle, taking at least 10 seconds to cross the distance, without putting your foot down. The cop administering the test offered to let us take that part of the test on his Harley hog. There were no takers.
I struggled with this CW. I soon saw the gear shift, but not the full extent of the clever shifting. Quite a coup. Several unknowns as noted by others.
We haven’t had a TETRA and an ALAI in a while. Give, as a driver’s license got me. I kept thinking of the owner presenting it. My mind didn’t SHIFT GEARS soon enough.
I’m still clueless about NSFW. Anon-t you explained it clearly but I still don’t get it.
So, a clever, well constructed puzzle IMHO.
Highs in low 80s predicted for this week. Whoopee. I cant wait.
Today was a nice Sunday drive with a FIR at the end. Thanks Vu and Wendy for the fun. When I saw that the circles in the themers didn't spell out a word, I caught on to the SHIFTed GEARS, aided by the title. All the clever themers changed to known phrases, and the perps were helpful where I encountered unknown names.
Anon-T, your distinctive style alerted me that you were reviewing the puzzle today. Thanks for an enjoyable and informative trip. Not many WOs, but I started with Grit/GALL, bUrnS/PULPS and I lost/I FOLD. I don't remember seeing GALL in a puzzle before. Anyone?
It's a PEACHy day here and time to get out and walk while it's sunny and warm. Enjoy your day!
D-O: Maybe I didn't explain it right... See, we started in P but it was AUTO CORRECTED to R; that's why I started with PRNDL -- it's just that stupid "auto-correct" changed the circles in the grid!! //that, or I'm really over-thinking it :-)
IM - Yep. That's Pop's Tinker patiently waiting for her piece of bacon every breakfast.
Tante Nique - If I want to send you jokes with naked pics, I'd put in the subject line NSFW to alert you to NOT open this around your more "sensitive" work colleagues. Fortunately, this type of behavior is mostly stamped out at the office.
Hope that helps.
Cheers, -T
IM - Right you are. I was thinking of Karen Silkwood, kinda the same genre. Written by crossword favorite Nora Ephron.
CED - All my bikes were one down, four up. Why would I need a sixth gear? I chickened out at 100 mph on my Honda 750. (I'm older than I deserve to be, having done several stoopid things in my ute that should have prevented old age.)
Oh geez, DO. Did the cops ride Harleys with the suicide clutch and hand gear shifter, like a car? I know they were still around in that era.
Tante - "Blue" material is what comics call adult content. "Do you work clean?" "No, mine is a blue show."
Anon-T Got you. Thanks.
I'd figured when I came here that I'd FIW and at least I was completely right about that. I did get all the themers, ALTHO I missed the Auto Correct layer and with a little common sense (but see 33D), some proofreading, and an alphabet run I'd have gotten an FIR. I'm hoping that my 3 game losing streak ends tomorrow.
However my interest quickly devolved into sussing the identity of the mysterious reviewer, as it didn't seem to be C.C. E.g. the wordiness was definitely skewed toward the waseeley side of the spectrum , but since that's MOI, I knew it definitely wasn't him. And it wasn't quite wordy enough to be Jinx. The recursive commenting ("//"'s and "#" within the comments) meant that it was probably a programmer who coded in C, C++, Java, or Python, so that narrowed it down a bit to the usual suspects. The Mel Brooks, Monty Python (the language named for it), and Elton John clips finally convinced me that it definitely wasn't C.C., so who else could it be but Anon-T?
A brief [HAH] list of my favorites:
105A TONSILS. I still have mine. I think that's why I need a CPAP machine to sleep.
10D CHATS. If you haven't heard of chatGPT, where have you been hiding? The "Singularity" has finally arrived. Oooh! run away, run away!
19D SKATE BY. IT teaches you that the devil is in the details. Definition: "Consultant - someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time".
33D SCREW. I have lots of loose ones.
68A FEH. Never 'eard of it, so I went with MEH, giving me MWD for 58D. An alphabet run would have fixed this.
34D PRANA. Breath.
59D BOHEME. IMHO the greatest opera ever written. Make sure you watch it with subtitles.
76D KILNS. //sorry, I'm not fired up enough to talk about 'em - I feel a NAP coming ...
77D EMOTE. Hands, down it's RAY - O!
104D SUSIE. Let me get this straight Tony -- MalMan was married to SUSIE from 1968 to 2013? Does he know about this?
109D EROS. He nailed us in the doorway of Mr. Saterle's 11th grade "Modern and Contemporary History" class and we've been contemporaries ever since.
114D CARR. DNK him and 122A MAAM seemed like a good idea at the time. ALAS. ALACK.
Oh yes, and thank you Vu and Wendy!
Cheers,
Bill
Phil @9:10 AM I'm definitely with you on Jimmy Carter.
Tante Nique @1:01 PM I've usually heard as "Not Suitable For Work". If your boss catches you looking at "Small songbirds" on your computer screen (if you don't catch my drift see 58D from yesterday) she'll probably show you the door. The clue giveaway was "blue", the wrong kind of off-color.
Jinx,
I agree, no motorcycle needs a 6th gear.
I once took my Honda 650 nighthawk out on the old airport runway at Floyd Bennet Field just to see how fast it would go.
I chickened out at 88 (Hmm, same speed as that back to the future car) when I realized I had absolutely no control as to lean, or turn, or anything. I was just a bullet...
Desper-Otto,
I once joined a poker run on my 2 stroke Kawasaki 400 triple,
Rode all up and down the Hudson River stopping at checkpoints to get a playing card.
When we all ended up at Harrriman State Park at lake Sebago, the best poker hand won :)
Then we all ate hot dogs drank beer, and played games, like "the slow race."
Last one across the finish line won...
(Funniest thing I ever saw, and harder as it was in a grass field.)
But my question to you guys today is,
Does anyone how how to best use those new fangled, automatic sports gears like the ones on the Nissan cars?
Used to be you had a button to stop going into the highest gear which was useful when in traffic to smooth out the ride.
Now the thing has both gears, plus a CVT (continuous variable belt transmission) and you can not only set gears to sports mode, but manually select gears, and it will still be semi automatic so you can't screw up!
I had a heck of a lot of fun with manual sports mode when driving in Manhattan city traffic with DW,
But she was like, "YOU ARE GONNA BREAK THAT THING!"
I was thinking Non Sufficient Fund s. Also, I actually inked orcas/MAKOS despite their classification as mammals just yesterday. I thought maybe Each constructor could name her own SPECIES
CORE , abs didn't fit
You call that an obstacle course!!!
TEJADA was the victim of an outrageous call in 003 playoff game. Ump signaled obstruction but Miguel slowed down. He was tagged out at home.
Wow, Monsieur Caruso, you were married at 18? Yowza
Wow #2. I never thought I'd FIR this one*
I caught on at Caruso line. Definitely brightened up Sunday afternoon
Somewhat makes up for Saturdays one box FIW
WC
Even Sports aficionados find CARR And TEJADA obscure. Then again I'm always surprised that people know the pop-cul and obscure(to me) authors. Btw, Google is suggesting I buy "Caliban" by Asimov about AI unleashed
*But… I took a little nibble off the CBD smart gummy when I still had a sea of white.
I filled all the letters but, like YooperPhil, didn't get the congratulatory message. It turns out I spelled Derek CARR's name as KARR and had SDMI instead of HDMI, giving me PEAKS instead of PEACH. I had to turn on red letters to find the mistake. Other than that, the fact that I didn't understand the shifted gears progression, and FEH, I liked the puzzle okay. I liked Anonymous T's write-up better.
Raquel Welch's maiden name was TEJADA.
Good wishes to you all.
Jinx @ 2:17 ~ Thanks for that added comment as I never knew Nora Ephron co-wrote the screenplay for Silkwood. I just know of her work on comedies. She was a very talented lady.
I liked today's puzzle and even though my auto is a standard, I found the theme. The circles helped me SORT OUT (hand up for thinking "sussed") the "N" in 44A, which opened that area up.
Could the "P" in 4D have been a circle?
FAVs: exchanges for CHATS and a doggie tail WAG is always a good thing.
Hand up of thinking MAaM/CHaR seemed reasonable so no congratulatory message for me.
Thank you for your entertaining write-up -T! The 17-yr olds on the rotary phone was ROTFL! When I got my first Garmin in 2005, I, too, set it for the Aussie bloke. No worries!
Waseely: I catch your drift. Tee hee.
The NW would not let me easily SKATE BY until GENRES finally clicked. Jessica BIEL (and The Sinner) and SERIE-A were unknowns filled by perps. GEAR SHIFT got noticed at CODES and TWEEN. In the SE I had filled REVERSE (gear?) for 'Change direction' and had to REROUTE my trip. MAORI was an unknown WAG.
EMTS- never heard of an AED but the perps handled it.
PRANA, ROWLF, ADONAI, TATAKI, FEH, and TEJADA- ditto.
MAKO- I thought ALL sharks except the whale shark were predatory.
HDMI, 2,3, & 4. Sometimes one doesn't work so I just move the cable.
SHIFT GEARS? The have changed the past few years. DW's Mercedes trans is electronic and has paddles on the steering wheel for manual shifting (she's never done it on purpose). No PRNDL, the display just shows P, R, N, 1,2,3,4,5,6, or 7 after pulling the shift to D.
CrossEyedDave- my Toyota Highlander has a M+ and M- gear change to the left of D on top of three modes-Eco, regular, & sport. I just leave it in ECO mode and use the automatic. The Nissan Murano we got rid of had a CVT which used a belt- no forward gears except D.
Ah, finally had a Sunday devoid of "Grandma Duties" so I sat down at 1:30 with this "puzzle" (qv). It's now 6:20 and only 2/3 filled. I got the theme right away but the clues of the crosses were from the far reaches of LaLa Land. Why, oh why do the editors allow such drivel filling their puzzles? It's an affront to long time solvers like me to see words in the clues I've never seen before...only to find they are "modern slang" mostly used by techies who use their computers to do their thinking for them. Well, taking a dinner break, then back to this slog before I go to bed.
Granny @8:34 PM Sounds like you've got true Grit Granny!
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