Theme: "Performance Reviews" - Each common phrase was humorously rephrased as if it's action fitting the professional in each clue.
23A. The lazy housekeeper ...: LET THE DUST SETTLE.
43A. The disruptive hairstylist ...: MADE WAVES.
72A. The fashionable archaeologist ...: DUG IN HER HEELS.
98A. The overzealous electrician ...: BLEW A FUSE.
123A. The absent-minded dentist ...: LEFT AN IMPRESSION.
16D. The psychic bartender ...: CALLED THE SHOTS.
50D. The fearless trapeze artist ...: GOT THE HANG OF IT.
This puzzle is similar to MaryEllen's "Caution: People Overworking" theme. The mechanic BLEW A GASKET in that puzzle, which is tighter with the "overworking" layer.
Across:
5. Sp. girls: SRTAS.
10. USDA Choice, e.g.: GRADE.
15. Vinegar, chemically: ACID.
19. Peak near Catania: ETNA. Catania is a Sicilian port city.
20. Economical with words: TERSE.
21. Collar extension: LAPEL.
22. Support staff?: CANE. BEAM is another 4-letter option.
26. Rootless water plant: ALGA.
27. "Lost in transit" inquiry: TRACER.
28. Natural gas component: ETHANE. Sometimes it's ETHENE.
29. Sent through a network: EMAILED.
31. Charm: ENCHANT.
33. Like some inscriptions: UNDATED. Mount Huashan was not that popular when we climbed. "Zhouqin Was Here" was probably gone.
35. WSW reversal: ENE.
36. Police dept. title: DET. Detective. Also 113. Behind, in a way: TAILING.
37. John Bunyan, notably: PURITAN.
41. Await decision: PEND.
42. Dull brown: DUN. New meaning to me. This horse showed up when I googled.
46. Leaning: TILTED.
48. Hoops player: CAGER.
53. First name in Renaissance painting: MONA.
54. Singles: ONES.
56. "Can't help ya": NAH.
57. Breakdown of social norms: ANOMIE. We've had this fill before.
59. Former capital of Japan: KYOTO.
61. Big cat voiced by Angelina Jolie in "Kung Fu Panda": TIGRESS.
65. Domed halls: ROTUNDAS.
68. Nibbled (at): PECKED.
70. Rush-order letters: ASAP.
71. Scrap: ORT.
76. Color gradation: HUE.
77. "The Wizard of Oz" actor: LAHR (Bert)
79. New __, Connecticut: CANAAN.
80. Part of a wedding toast, maybe: ANECDOTE. Boomer and I would have been married for 22 years next Thursday.
82. Summer pest, informally: SKEETER. Also 128. Burrowing bug: BORER.
84. Workbench grips: VISES.
87. Moved suddenly: DARTED.
88. "His Dark Materials" cable network: HBO.
89. Arctic native: SEAL.
91. Math points: LOCI.
94. "One Minute Man" rapper Elliott: MISSY.
95. Salt, say: SEASON.
101. System of connected PCs, for short: LAN. Local Area Network.
102. Fast-food option: TO GO.
104. For all __ and purposes: INTENTS.
106. Air traffic org.: FAA.
109. Unit of energy: ERG.
110. Showed plainly: EVINCED. Also 58. Draw forth: EDUCE.
115. Lumbered: PLODDED.
117. Playing fields: ARENAS.
121. Farm: GRANGE.
122. Vegan protein: TOFU. My favorite: stir-fried tofu.
127. "100 years of improvement" retailer: LOWE'S. Named after the founder Lowe.
129. Mineral no longer used in baby powder: TALC.
130. Woven fish traps: NETS.
131. Fashion journalist __ Leon Talley: ANDRE. Here with Anna Wintour.
132. FaceTime alternative: SKYPE.
133. Smite, as a dragon: SLAY.
Down:
2. Timeless, poetically: ETERNE.
3. Still together: INTACT.
4. Super casual "Sure!": NATCH. Naturally.
5. Breastbone: STERNUM.
6. Wine choice: RED.
7. Factual: TRUE.
8. Support staff member: Abbr.: ASST.
9. "The Orville" star MacFarlane: SETH.
10. Mercury Seven astronaut John: GLENN.
11. Had status: RATED.
12. Fitting: APT.
13. Take out: DELETE.
14. Periodic-table entry: ELEMENT.
15. Berry native to the Amazon rainforest: ACAI. You can get this puree at Trader Joe's.
17. Unworldly young woman: INGENUE.
18. Maze setback: DEAD END.
24. Messy stack: HEAP.
25. Steam room: SAUNA.
30. Calculating, in a way: ADDING. Not the adjective.
32. Theme park shuttle: TRAM.
34. Sanctuary section: APSE. And
38. Words from a promising couple?: I DO.
39. 6.2 miles, roughly: TEN K.
40. Like the White Sox at Fenway Park: AWAY. Hi there, Bill G, our Steve was at the NBCU box last Tuesday for the Twins vs. Dodgers game. Twins won.
44. Election Day figure: VOTER.
45. Patriarch who "walked with God": ENOCH.
47. Spencer of "Good Morning America": LARA. She used to host "Antiques Roadshow".
48. Holiday songs: CAROLS.
49. Iditarod wear: ANORAK.
51. Bird that can run 30 mph: EMU.
52. Outer layer: RIND. Have you tried sumo oranges? So good.
55. Dutch painter Jan: STEEN.
60. Starts operating, as a store: OPENS.
62. Sat in traffic, e.g.: IDLED.
63. Fries in a little butter: SAUTES.
64. Quick: SPEEDY.
66. Lab gelatins: AGARS. Did not know it's plurable.
67. Wrongdoing: SIN.
69. Hawaii's Mauna __: KEA.
73. __ academy: NAVAL.
74. Selassie of Ethiopia: HAILE.
75. Fast one: SCAM.
78. WNBA stat: REBS. Rebounds.
81. Nike's __-fit fabric: DRI. It draws the sweat from the surface.
83. Honked: TOOTED.
85. Flair: ELAN.
86. Like fluffy towels: SOFT.
90. Deep black: EBON.
92. Prompt: CUE.
93. Stevie Wonder's "__ She Lovely": ISN'T.
95. Skipped an early appointment, maybe: SLEPT IN.
96. Piercing place: EARLOBE.
97. Short work of fiction: NOVELLA.
99. Broaden: WIDEN.
100. Curio stand: ETAGERE.
103. Name seen in many hotels: GIDEON. Bible distributor.
105. Gentlemen: SIRS.
106. Curtain rod decoration: FINIAL. Learning moment for me.
107. Zambia neighbor: ANGOLA.
108. Bureau: AGENCY.
111. Do lunch?: CATER. Nice clue.
112. Wipe clean: ERASE.
114. Has legs, so to speak: LASTS.
116. Clothing: DUDS.
118. Pen points: NIBS.
119. Every which way: AMOK.
120. Moving with ease: SPRY.
124. Start of some subj. lines: FWD.
125. N.Y.'s AOC, e.g.: REP.
Excited to have received the author's copies of my book: Sip & Solve Easy Mini Crosswords, which will be officially released on May 30, 2023 Tuesday. It's edited by the talented Francis Heaney.
You can order on Amazon now. Should be delivered to you on June 1.
C.C.
34 comments:
The one-armed man saw a job to covet.
So he mixed up some paste in a bucket.
Next part of the caper,
He got some wall paper,
The rest was easy once he got THE HANG OF IT!
A PURITAN babe in a SAUNA,
To wear her bikini, she didn't wanna.
So she unhooked her bra
To reveal one tata,
But to bare any more, she wasn't gonna!
{B+, A-.}
Good morning!
MaryEllen's puzzles are usually cute and solveable. Cute, yes, solveable, no. Two areas did me in: MySSY/MISSY and the Big Bend area where FWD/LOWES/ANDRE remained snow-covered. Tried GODIVA (chocolate) before GIDEON became obvious -- clever. Enjoyed the outing, even though d-o wasn't up to the task. Thanx, MaryEllen and C.C. (I also didn't know AGARS could be plurable.)
Took 16:30 today.
Guessed luckily at Etager crossing Grange, and whether it was din or dun.
Fashion journalist...?
Anomie stumped me too.
FIW, missing my WAG at my Natick DiN x INGENiE. Best I could do was suss "genie" for the unworldly down clue. Erased tan for the equally-wrong DiN, KOYOTa, STERNeM, kei for KEA, and fenial for FINIAL.
I was embarrassed by how long it took me to get CANE.
Waited for loa/KEi, and, ironically REP/dem for AOC. No, she isn't a "congresswoman" she's a REPresentative (but not a REPublican.) Members of the House who call themselves "congressman" or "congresswoman" (which is all of them) is my pet peeve. Being a US REPresntative is a big job you can be proud of. You don't need to imply that you might be a Senator. You fool no one.
I knew FINIAL (but of course not how to spel it) from bed posts and stair posts, but never thought of them in the horizontal.
I thought this was a fun grid, with just enough challenge for Sunday. Thanks to MaryEllen for the fun, and to CC for the fun review. Can't believe you climbed that monster.
FIR, despite total unknowns like dun and anomie. Once again perps saved the day. Very clever theme and an enjoyable Sunday effort.
I remembered "dun," because it was the color of Ayla's horse in The Clan Of The Cave Bear.
The easiest Sunday puzzle in quite a while. Yes, cute theme. My only hang up for a while was keeping losT AN IMPRESSION, a little too long.
A few unknowns taken care of with perps and WAGS, like ANDRE. DUN, ooh, never heard that one before.
I hope Irish Miss ☘️is feeling better.
Filled in fairly easy, until it didn't right towards the end. Struck me as being similar to the constructing of a puzzle. Trying to get those last few spaces filled is always difficult. Some witty fill, enjoyable theme. However if dull brown is not tan, it's a trap!
Just because you didn't ask:
The difference between ethane and ethene...
Ethane is an alkane and is saturated. If a compound is saturated, it means all the bonds in the compound are single bonds. Ethene is an alkene and is unsaturated because it contains carbon-carbon double bonds.
(I had to look it up, and still don't understand it.)
(When that happens, I like to pass it on and annoy you too...)
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the DUN sphere flew;
But Casey still ignored it and the umpire said, "Strike two!"
(in some versions of "Casey at the Bat")
CED@9:56. And there I was being very impressed with your chemistry knowledge, and you burst my bubble.
Musings
-This unthinking teacher… LEARNED HIS LESSON by having two careless bad cells today
-A hilarious scene abut being TERSE
-You wrote “Zhouqin Was Here”? You rebel! :-)
-TAILING: The first time they won’t see you. The second time they won’t see anyone but. You.
-The house for sale next door has had PENDING on the sign for a week now.
-When I asked my 9-yr-old neighbor girl if my plants were in a straight line she replied, “The line is TILTED”
-I caught myself before I said “TO GO” in the McDonalds drive thru
-ANDRE: Previn, Dawson and Agassi were on the bench today
-So many Broadway shows feature an INGENUE. Marian the Librarian comes to my mind
-SLEPT IN – OCD me has never missed a class or an appointment
-Many of Stephen King’s NOVELLAS got made into movies. His The Body became Stand By Me
-I was very pleased that ETAGERE had not yet exited my memory box
The clue on MONA is oh so wrong. LISA is the first name, the MONA part (as far as I know) is just s kind of title, like "madam".
What a nice way to spend some time on a Sunday morning! What a difference from yesterday. Fun clues with plenty of "aha's" and "d'ohs" and not too many proper names. I really wanted "BROTHER" for JOHN BUNYAN until the perps said no. (He was PAULS brother, wasn't he?) Got the FIR with a final WAG at scaM/Missy. Haile Selassie was easy as my Uncle flew for Ethiopian Airlines after WWII until he retired in the late 1960's. He sure had some interesting tales!
Enjoyed the puzzle today. Figured out the theme after filling 23A. No 'specially hard sections. Liked the inclusion of some fill that you don't see very often such as etagere, novella and ingenue.
Enjoyed the fact that no esoteric or obscure names were included. Scratched my head at GRANGE. Was under the impression that a grange was an organization of farmers that aided them with common problems.
Wasn' sure if "air traffic org" was going to be FAA or TSA, but FINIAL put that to rest.
Everything came together in the end, so I FIR. Thanks again C.C. and Mary Ellen.
You are correct. A quick Google gives the name of the subject as Lisa del Giocondo.
After yesterday's disaster, I could fill this puzzle easier, but missed a few errors. Dang, FIW! In spite of that I enjoyed the activity and thank MaryEllen and C.C.
Onward to tomorrow!
Hola!
No time to read your comments. Must go. Thank you, C.C., for the narrative and illustrations. I've never eaten TOFU.
This puzzle LEFT AN IMPRESSION with me.
I do not ERASE but use wite-out which I had to do a few times.
My ETAGERE is filled with photos, vases and a beautiful bust of a mujer. That is what it's called, La Mujer (the woman).
Time to go. Wishing you all a very happy Sunday.
Lee and Anon 1:01 - Hold your voices down, will ya? My favorite mechanic, Mona Lisa Vito, might hear you and get confused. 'Cept not much confuses her.
Enjoyable theme.
Zhouqin Thank you for that Mount Huashan scene. I am impressed that you did that.
Anon at 11:01AM, Lee Thanks for setting the record straight on that incorrect MONA clue. It is like saying that the last name of Jesus is "Christ". Amazing how many people think that, too.
From Yesterday:
AnonT Thank you for looking at my photo. Perhaps I was not clear. It is not just a statue of Voltaire. It is where Voltaire is an ENSHRINEE. He is in that box. In the HALL of the Pantheon.
Shirley Z Good to know you FIR. I did, too, but it was definitely a challenge.
I’m late to the party today. My only problem spot was the crossing of “FWD” and “Lowes.” Other than that, pretty smooth sailing. FIR, so I’m happy .
Thanks to MaryEllen for a puzzle with so many good parts! My list of FAVs is long today:
Chow MEIN (I order mine with TOFU.)
Promising couple
Support staff?
First name in Renaissance painting (Perhaps "first name" does not mean "given name" in this case, but means the first word in the name (title) of the painting???)
DUG IN HER HEELS
Artic native
Calculating, in a way
ANECDOTE
For Collar extension, I had Leash before Lapel. Also, I held on to TacO for too long before seeing TO GO.
KYO-TO was the old capital and To-kyo is the new capital. See how the syllables are switched?
H-Gary@10:50. "Learned his lesson". Nice!
C.C. Thank you for your helpful write-up and for that photo of your hike! Wow!
Fun Sunday puzzle, many thanks, Mary Ellen. And I always enjoy your commentary, C.C., nice to see it this morning.
Wouldn't it be great to have a chance to visit Mount ETNA? I think the place would ENCHANT us.
And I'd also love to see the MONA Lisa, and make a trip to KYOTO. Ah, travel--not likely to happen, but it's fun to think about it.
I SLEPT IN yesterday, and then got a SAUNA, and wanted to get some TOFU CATERed. Didn't happen, but as I say, it's fun to think about it.
Have a lovely Sunday, everybody, and a great week ahead.
C.C., I just ordered your new puzzle book on Amazon, and it should be delivered on June 1. Am really looking forward to solving it! Thanks for letting us know about it.
I liked this puzzle well enough to feel a modicum of satisfaction from having solved it. The last cell to fill was the letter grossing M-SSY and DR-, for which I had to do an alphabet run; got it on the third vowel out of 5.
I agree with Lee it was nice to see some nifty fill such as ETAGERE, NOVELLA, and INGENUE.
I agree with you who pointed out that LISA is her first name, not MONA.
Senators are also members of Congress, i.e. congressmen and congresswomen.
Maybe Nebraska's unicameral (one chamber) legislature is a good way to go. In that state they are all called Senators.
I wanted the chemical notation CH₃COOH for "Vinegar, chemically" but it doesn't fit, so the generic ACID it was. The same expectation for that big cat voiced by Angelina Jolie; I was looking for a specific character's name, not realizing that TIGRESS is the name of the character.
Congratulations on your book, C.C.
I thought I'd just pass along here a bit of information:
The name Kyoto (京都, Kyōto) means "Capital (京) City (都)". The first "o" has a line over it to indicate its pronunciation is stretched out, elongated. Sometimes the elongated "o" is spelled as "oo", as in "arigatoo."
The name Tokyo (東京, Tōkyō) means "Eastern (東) Capital (京)". Note that both "o"s are elongated.
So, although, in English spelling, it looks like the two syllables a swapped, the "to" in Kyoto and the "to" in Tokyo are not the same syllable/word.
As for elongated, an example would be "pero" which means "but" in Spanish, while "perro" means "dog." In the second word, the "r" is elongated, and is phonemically differentiating.
Yeah, I know. TMI.
Merriam Webster
The meaning of CONGRESSMAN is a member of a congress; especially : a member of the U.S. House of Representatives
John Bunyan was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress.(1628-1688)
Paul Bunyan is a fictional giant lumberjack. James MacGillivray wrote about Bunyan in 1910, which is the earliest writing about Bunyan that we know about.
Musings 2
- Nebraska’s unicameral has been stymied for almost the entire, soon-to-end, session because one senator from Omaha has filibustered EVERY bill until a Transgender bill for all kids is settled to her satisfaction. Two days ago this incredible thing happened
Jayce@6:56. Thanks for elaborating on Tokyo/Kyoto. I should not have been so "20A.Economical with words". I was trying to provide an easy memory trick for Jinx@8:03 (and anyone else), but I agree that it is more complicated than that. ごめんなさい
HG - a) politics(?) b) Cavanagh made a spectacle of herself that Sky [NOT] News exploited.
I agree w/ her message and, frankly, we don't have time for hate; there's too much more important to deal w/ that no on seems to want to take on.
Picard - I got it. I just loved the camera angle / lighting on the photo.
Jayce - between your knowledge of electronics, seismic, and languages; I'm awed. Is it too much to call you a polymath?
Cheers, -Sunday Lurk.
coda - sumdaze: Can I put you in the polymath column with Jayce and CC too?
//I only KNOW one language and that's perl. Everything else I have to look up.
-T
sumdaze, it is to you I apologize. I totally understand and appreciate what you were saying. I just had to go and stick my nose in.
Gary, regardless of one’s political party and one’s political philosophy, such behavior, it seems to me, is not only undignified, it also produces the opposite of what the message is and engenders only ridicule instead.
FIW on DRy/MiSSY
Even with the size of the Sunday grid my pen moved smoothly. Yes, CANE fooled me
That anniversary will remain special for you , CC and so it should. I miss the big guy too
CSO to SPEEDY Solver
WC
Another 16 hours of angst...WHEW!! Got 90% without a peek but was shot down by my insistence on MAKING an impression and failing to shop at LOWES.
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