Saturday Themeless by Jimmy Peniston and Matthew Stock
Across:
1. Rescue, perhaps: ADOPT - Our kitty Lily ADOPTED us in 2014
6. Work well together: MESH.
10. Blackberry, e.g.: PDA - They are no longer supported
13. Satellite navigation device?: LUNAR ROVER - Navigation here means a device used to actually move around a surface that is a satellite of Earth not a device used for assistance in planning a route on the planet Earth.
15. Fizzles: DIES.
16. Work that's subject to inflation: BALLOON ART 😀 - Wow!
17. River ride: RAFT - The Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges ride at Universal Florida SOAKS you!
18. Foxy?: SLY.
19. Mise en __: French culinary term: PLACE - Mise en place (MEEZ ahn plahs) literally means "put in place" is a French term for having all your ingredients measured, cut, peeled, sliced, grated, etc. before you start cooking.
20. College declaration: MINOR.
21. Enmity: BILE.
22. Silhouette on some jerseys: NBA LOGO - Modeled on Jerry West
24. Hard to come by: SCARCE.
27. Member of a TikTok subculture: E GIRL.
28. Spanish hand: MANO.
29. Concern in the Premier League: RELEGATION - The lowest teams are relegated to the lower division for the championship round.
34. [Eye roll]: UM OK.
35. Dahi-based condiment of Indian cuisine: RAITA - An Indian yogurt-based condiment
36. One might run around the house: EAVE 😀
37. Message from a cast party?: GONE FISHIN 😀 Oh, casting fishing nets!
39. Many moons: AGES.
40. African language group: BANTU
43. Spice in taktouka and shakshouka: PAPRIKA - I first encountered the egg dish shakshouka in a Stella Zawistowski puzzle three years ago.
 |
| Shakshouka |
47. Stick in a backpack: RULER 😀
48. Renewable energy option: SOLAR - The daily energy output for my town's large solar farm for last month. We got lovely rains in early August!
50. Pretend: ACT.
53. Impression: IDEA.
54. Gem clip?: VIRAL VIDEO - Any event that is interesting or controversial can be shared across the web in a heartbeat and if it attracts a lot of views, it is said to have gone VIRAL.
56. Heed: MIND.
57. Comfortable existence: EASY LIVING - Nobody expresses it better than our crossword favorite
58. Pod unit: PEA.
59. Genesis grandson: ENOS - ENOS can be a biblical character, a baseball player or, lately, an American actress
60. "Nifty!": NEATO.
Down:
1. Some ankle-length attire: ALBS.
3. Just: ONLY.
4. Amigo: PAL.
5. Hot water line?: TROPIC 😀 - The TROPICS of Cancer and Capricorn generally denote where water heats up on a map. (I emailed Matthew to make sure I wasn't missing something here.)
6. "The Age of Pleasure" singer Janelle: MONAE - Janelle recently played New Orleans
7. Brief getaway?: EVAC - I also emailed Matthew to make sure this wasn't some E-"xxx" slang. (BTW, Matthew is a great guy!)
8. National park that's home to more than 3,000 lions: SERENGETI.
9. Menopause treatment option: Abbr.: HRT.
10. Instrument played by Don Shirley in "Green Book": PIANO - Was "Sam's instrument in Casablanca" not "Saturday" enough? 😀
11. Clear up, in a way: DEFOG.
12. Minute Maid Park athlete: ASTRO.
14. Derby locale: ROLLER RINK - It's been around a long time.
15. Squads with precision dance routines: DRILL TEAMS - The Kilgore, TX Rangerettes DRILL TEAM were a staple of football halftimes in my yute.
20. "Matilda" star Wilson: MARA - MARA now and then as the girl in Mrs. Doubtfire
21. Dined together: BROKE BREAD.
23. On the plus side: BIG AND TALL.
24. Holier-than-thou: SMUG.
25. Print found in the woods: CAMO 😀 (Matthew said he was really happy with this clue/fill)
26. Forthwith: ANON - Forthwith: immediately; without delay. ANON: (archaic) soon; shortly
27. Yale founder Yale: ELIHU - A crossword staple that was very helpful early on
30. Japanese or Javanese: EAST ASIAN.
31. "Aladdin" character who calls Jafar "Your Rottenness": IAGO.
32. Brownie point?: OVEN 😀 At some point, I guess that is where brownies go
33. Hard or soft finish?: NESS.
38. Many a venue visited on "Carnival Eats": FAIR - Have you ever had a deep-fried Snickers?
42. Magic man?: EARVIN - He posted a lovely note the night that Husker VB set the world's record for attendance at a women's sporting event.
43. Perfect a part, perhaps: PRIMP 😀 I could never PRIMP any of my parts to perfection!
44. Cornish of CNN: AUDIE.
44. Cornish of CNN: AUDIE.
45. Legislative assemblies: PLENA - .
(Latin for full) A fully attended meeting or assembly, esp. of a legislative body
46. Takes the field: PLAYS.
49. Roundabouts: OR SO 😀 Both are estimates. OTOH, I have to negotiate four roundabouts to get from my house to the Platte River Bridge on the way to Lincoln.
50. Barnes of college basketball: ADIA - Coach Barnes
51. Small price to pay: CENT. 😀 A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
52. Benin neighbor: TOGO - All right, here is the map of Africa, do you know where these two countries are? How did you do?
54. Vegas opener?: VEE - Yeah, I made the same mistake at first too! 😊
55. "__ got it!": IVE - Uh, if you called it, you gotta catch it.
30 comments:
A Saturday toughie, as I expected it to be. Plenty of misdirection, obscure names and foreign language phrases to help make it so. (I had heard of “plenum “ but not of “plena,” for example.) But somehow, through P&P I got through it okay and managed to FIR. Finally, a worthy challenge for once! So you know I’m happy! Subgenius out!
Good morning!
Crashed and burned in the NW. Why the question mark for "Foxy?" It kept me from immediately entering SLY. Thanx for 'splainin' HRT, Husker -- no idea. This was a worthy challenge which proved this challenger unworthy. Thanx, Jimmy and Matthew. Great expo, Husker.
MANO -- I'll never forget Mano, The Hands Of Fate on Mystery Science Theater 3000. That film was over-rated at Rotten Tomatoes with 0%. Definitely not a VIRAL VIDEO. (Wow, the words "Viral Video" were just uttered on WWDTM as I was typing them.)
Guess that title had to be "Manos, but you get the idea.
RIP, Jimmy Buffet. He's off to the Margaritaville in the sky.
TITT after 30 fills, 27 correctly. Had louisville instead of ROLLER RINK, meRlIN instead of EARVIN, and obey instead of MIND.
Today is:
NATIONAL PLAY OUTSIDE DAY (so we can observe the…)
NATIONAL HUMMINGBIRD DAY (then we’ll try…)
NATIONAL TAILGATING DAY (maybe we’ll try…)
NATIONAL BLUEBERRY POPSICLE DAY (and maybe garnish with a little snow of…)
WORLD COCONUT DAY (Jimmy Buffett sang about the Coconut Telegraph)
INTERNATIONAL BACON DAY (always a crowd-favorite)
NBA LOGO, because "Jerry West" wouldn't fit.
I would have known HRT if the clue was "mass transit in Tidewater," for Hampton Roads Transportation, the government org that runs the busses and light rail here.
College basketball has one famous Coach Barnes, and his name is Rick.
Was there ever a rock 'n' roll song called Roundabout? Yes, there was.
I hope Jimmy Buffett is enjoying a Cheeseburger in Paradise. He was amazing. Only a couple of hits, but he built a huge fan base and sold out his concerts minutes after tickets went on sale. Many of his fans hadn't even been born when he had his last hit record. He left a business empire that included a chain of restaurants, beer, resorts, retirement communities, campgrounds, and a clothing line (maybe others that I'm forgetting - I didn't LIU). He also wrote a couple of books, and I enjoyed those. He was a distant relative of Warren Buffett.
Thanks to Jimmy and Matthew for the Saturday toughie, and to H. Gary for the fun review.
This puzzle had its challenges but what felt sluggish actually came in early for my usual Saturday finishing times.
When we had an exchange student with us over one summer, we took her to the 4th of July celebration and bought all the gut bomb fair foods for her to try like funnel cakes and corn dogs.
BANTU is a whole family of languages. The most common for us in the West are probably Swahili, Zulu, and Xhosa (Nelson Mandela's native language)
My husband has been to TOGO several times to teach pastors and that language is EWE (pronounced EH'-Vay) which is the same language used in eastern Ghana where I have done medical clinics. TOGO is such a tiny country - sort of the Vermont of Africa.
ADIA Barnes is a very impressive coach in NCAA Div 1 basketball for Arizona- and balanced that with 2 small children (her husband is an asst. coach on the team originally from Italy where she played in the off seasons from WNBA) Many of the head coaches don't have children due to the demands of the job (they would need a wife :)
It wasn't until I lived in the big deer hunting states of Wisconsin and Missouri that I understood that deer are color blind - so hunters can wear camo to fit into their surroundings - but also wear bright orange and pink so other hunters can see them and not shoot them!
Thanks HG for the fun write-up and Jimmy & Matt for the puzzle.
DNF. The entire west side of the puzzle continued to have white squares. It didn't help that I first put break bread instead of broke bread. Past tense, duh! And roller rink just wouldn't come to me.
At least the right side of the puzzle from roller rink over got done without a problem.
Thank you Messrs. Peniston and Stock for a nice doable Saturday puzzle ... I had a very good time with it ... but it was a lil past 300 hrs this morning .... then I went back to sleep.
Raita ... is like an indian sour yogurt salad dressing .... thin-nish sour plain yogurt with grated carrots, or radish, or white beet or cucumber etc. Much like a greek cucumber dressing ... Tzatzi
ki, in a gyro sandwich. Meant to cool down your stomach.
... the word 'dahi' was to indicate the fact that the name was in an indian named answer.... the answer itself was quite rare, in this case....
Many anthropologists and linguists have opined that southern BANTU is probably the follower of the first spoken language, for homo sapiens,....
... since its proto version, the progenitor, was the most closely related audible form of communication, to the original chimpanzee 'mother tongue' ... which is a series of 'clicks' ..
... See the book;; Guns, germs and Steel, or especially, Homo (Sapiens )( book author ... Yuval Harari ) for a more detailed explanation.
I knew Janelle Monae, only, from her role in Mary Jackson, in Hidden Figures ... as the minority engineers in the space program ...
I had no idea there were 3,000 lions still alive !!?!!!
Annually, they must be consuming an awful lot of meat, that could be feeding the starving mankind around there .... lol.
What a waste .... of perfectly good steak ...!!
Enough stupid things said, I runneth over in my post, as usual ..
Have a great Sunday.
Good Morning:
I finished w/o help but not w/o frustration. There are puzzles that are difficult but rewarding when solved, and there are puzzles that are difficult for the sake of being overly difficult, with the only reward being a sense of relief that the ordeal is over. Today’s fell into the latter category, IMO, because of the unprecedented, in my experience in solving, overload of foreign referenced clues and/or answers, e.g., Place, Relegation, Mano, Raita, Bantu, Paprika, Pal, Serengeti, East Asian, Plena, and Togo. Add the clues for Piano and Fair, and we have a proper name/noun Baker’s Dozen. Then add the unknown EGirl, Demons, Iago, and Adia and we have a slog fest instead of a satisfying and enjoyable solve. End of rant.
Thanks, HG, for the usual sparkling visuals and the always welcome presence of Darling Lily.
FLN
Thanks for all the kind words and well wishes.
Hope Steve is okay.
Have a great day.
My Waterloo was MIEN EN PLACE. Didn't know the term. Had to look it up. That finished up the NW.
Paprika was the big logjam breaker in the SW, relegation in the NE and easyliving in the SE.
Well done, Jimmy and Matthew! Quite a puzzle. Hats off to Gay for his analysis of today's enigma.
Bye bye.
Big Easy from phone
Uncle. The stack of the unknowns got me. EGIRL, RELEGATION, RAITA crossed unknown MARA. I had LOGO but couldn't think of NBA.
ADIA, MONAE, PLACE were other unknowns filled by perps.
Sorry to hear of Mr Buffet's passing. Guess it's 5 :00 in Heaven now.
Many Americans are more aware of the terms RELEGATION and promotion as it relates to Premier League football (soccer) after watching Apple+ "Ted Lasso". The fictional AFC Richmond team was always looking to be promoted to the upper tier or relegated down to the lower tier in the story arcs.
When I first met my wife Brenda back in 1999, she was a huge Jimmy Buffet fan. My boss at the the time had a niece who worked for Buffett, Inc. She was able to score us two tickets right by the stage. My wife loved the concert. For me it was the longest three weeks of my life. When it comes to music, I’m more of a Nine Inch Nails kind of guy.
I agrée with IM☘️ that when difficulty comes for the sake of difficulty there is no reward in solving, in fact I got bored with this CW and quit. I knew this site would be my reward this morning.
I only know Audie Cornish from NPR, not CNN, which I don’t watch. Does she work for both or has she quit NPR?
I too didn’t enter SLY because of the question mark.
There were too many unknown cultural references for me to list. There were however some clever clues like the ones for ALBS, EVAC, NBA LOGOS, PTAS, MINOR.
After a week of easy puzzles, we were due, as often happens on Saturdays, for a doozie.
Thank you Jimmy and Matthew for a brilliant Saturday challenge. After completing (I thought) about 2/3's of it I took a break to pray for about an hour. When I got back I found that Teri had picked it up, corrected several wrong paths I'd gone down and filled 43A PAPRIKA and 21D BROKE BREAD. All I had left to do were the clues to the SW of those two. The breakthrough to the finish was 43D PRIMP (very clever!) and thus TERI [and I] got a FIR.
And thanks Husker for an equally brilliant review!
Some favs:
19A PLACE. The mise en place for each recipe ingredient is usually prepared by the SOUS CHEF, who then hands it of to the CHEF for assembly and seasoning. Today we are celebrating our BIL's retirement and we're bringing crab dip and cucumber salad. Teri has already checked the crab meat for bits of shell and will add the rest of the ingredients. I'm the SOUS CHEF in our kitchen (I'm handy with knives!) so I'll prepare the mise en place for a cucumber salad by using a zester to peel the skins and then slice the cucumbers and also the sweet onions Teri will then prepare the dressing and assemble the final dish.
35A RAITA. This condiment is often dipped in NAAN and used between spicy dishes as a palate cleanser. Here's one of our favorites using cucumbers (we had a real bumper crop this year).
44D AUDIE. The most celebrated AUDIE was the highly decorated WWII soldier, Audie Murphy.
52D TOGO. I once had a friend from TOGO at our Church. I spent a lot of time with him trying to help him navigate the catch-22's of the US immigration system, but to no avail. He has since returned to Africa, but to the Ivory Coast, not to TOGO, where he was a wanted man -- wanted because he refused to worship the emperor as a god.
Cheers,
Bill
No way. So far above my pay grade that I couldn't even hear the swoosh sound as it flew over my head. After resorting to Google a dozen times I did manage to fill all the cells and stop the clock, but it gave me no pleasure or satisfaction at all.
Got the solve…despite the shaky clues.
RELEGATION- I'd never heard the term before but after seeing what it is I realized this is was the procedure of a tennis league I played in 30-40 years ago. We had 32 teams with four divisions- red, white, blue, & green. Each team played 7 doubles matches against the other 7 teams in their division. The two teams with the best record in each (except the red) moved up; the bottom two moved down, relegated to play other teams that weren't as good.
I was just reading that Jimmy Buffet met WARREN Buffet in 1983 because Warren's sister was a big Jimmy Buffet fan. Warren convinced Jimmy to buy 15 shares of Berkshire-Hathaway- the price was around $1,000/share back the. Current price- as of 9-1-23 (Yesterday)-$550,000.
Also, I didn't know Jimmy played tennis until a couple of years ago and he belonged to the tennis club where we were members. Our granddaughter's husband was the head pro and we were all getting together one night and he said the Jimmy came to the tennis club that day to play. One of our pickleball group, who was the club manager for over 25 years, told me Buffet had been a member for years. What you don't know.
Hola!
It's a slow, lazy Saturday for me. This filled in an off and on fashion while I did my chores, laundry, cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, etc. it's a bright, sunny day so the clothes should dry very quickly. It's also very quiet so no interruptions.
MANO was, of course, my first fill. I always check for any Spanish in the puzzle. Then ALBS. I'm familiar with those, too.
I did not know Janelle MONAE was a singer and only know of her as a character in Hidden Figures.
My grid is shiny with all the wite-out I used which speaks to the obscure and misleading clues. I did remember the PIANO in "Green Book".
IAGO could have been a Shakespeare reference.
I, too, am more familiar with PLENUM.
Thanks to Jimmy and Matthew for today's fun challenge and many thanks to Gary for his observations. Have a wonderful day, everyone!
Hi All!
I thought I was going to do OK as I got most of the East-Coast w/o much thought. The West, however, would budge with only a smattering of fill.
Thanks Jimmy & Matthew for the grid. Thanks HG for finishing it in fine fashion.
WEES - RIP Jimmy Buffett. I wasn't much of a Parrot Head but I could kick-back to his music when I heard it.
Inanehiker - Ted Lasso is the ONLY reason I knew RELEGATION.
Tante Nique - Audie left NPR's ATC citing new opportunities but me thinks that's not all to the story.
Waseeley - if I'm making anything more complicated than pizza dough, I'll mises en place so I don't forget anything. Sadly, (for Chef -T), my sous are off at college ;-)
Vidwan / Waseeley - I always order extra RAITA to help "cool down" my mouth after most everything else ;-)
Back to chores. Cheers, -T
This puzzle had so many tricky clues. I was shocked when the FIR screen came up. GONE FISHIN' opened up the west. I wanted "break a leg".
FAVs: Hard or soft finish?, Hot water line?, clue for CAMO, and clue for PRIMP
Thanks to Jimmy and Matthew. Your puzzle MESHed your skills. Kudos to all middle school math teachers!
48A. CSO to Uncle Fred!
Thanks to H-Gary for explaining the many terms I did not know (PLENA?, RELEGATION?, etc.) and for the pic of Lovely Lily!
GROAN! This was a red-letter-run festival for me with over half the squares still white after the first pass thru. Jimmy & Matt: not on my wave length. Filled all of it & liked some of it.
Thanks, Gary, for 'splainin'. Also for "Summertime" one of my all=time favs which I sang for requests by friends and to my babies. Don't sing now because my voice went croaky.
I started by filling in "midi" instead of ALBS which I knew were priestly wear but not length.
Also thanks to Vidwan for 'splainin' some stuff.
RIP Jimmy Buffett who made a success out of being laid back.
PK, I think Jimmy Buffett made a fortune by APPEARING to be laid back. My guess is that he paid close attention to the business at hand, and was a stickler for details.
Took 16:14 today.
Busy day. Just did the puzzle, about 12 hours later than usual.
I don't like foreign words in the puzzles, but I hate it when a foreign word/phrase is used for an otherwise common English word, such as "place."
I got Earvin right away, but didn't know that coach Barnes (feel like I missed her a few weeks ago too).
Too clevuh by 'arf today!
Too many fills are just obscure, combining abbreviations and unusual exclamations with unexpected ways of stating the obvious.
~ OMK
____________
DR: Three diagonals, far side.
The center diag is overloaded on vowels, but we can squeeze an interesting anagram (11 of 15) out of it.
Imagine an Olympic Ladies' sword fighting contest, in which the leading woman is SO very fine that onlookers can't help but dub her duels with her first name.
Work with me, as we imagine we can hear the crowd chanting...
"AI!--ANA IS EPEE"!
IM @ 9:27 -- Bravo! Your analysis is spot on.
There is another quality to a good puzzle, and that is CRISPNESS. Look at 34A, clued as [Eye roll]. This could mean anything: so-so, well, yuck, and so on. Challenging clues are expected, but a crisp, V-8 answer is also part of the bargain. IMHO and all that.
Edward in Los Angeles: After the initial read-through, the paper went straight into the trash , and I went out for breakfast.
My brain musta been in top gear for this one, because I somehow managed to FIR despite the usual Saturday obfuscatory clueing. Best Of Show goes to the clue for LUNARROVER! Very clever dodge. Top off the day with Husker Gary’s erudite run-through, and it made for a fun journey.
Haven’t a “clue” about EGIRL; total mystery for this geezer…
You’re spot on, Jinx, about Jimmy Buffett’s business acumen; early on he got burned on a record deal, so from there forward he handled EVERYthing in his career personally, right down to keeping the books. He had a knack for writing eloquent narrative-songs — I don’t know how to add links here on the Corner, but for prime examples, listen to “Banana Republics” and “African Friend”, songs where he puts you “right there”. I had the good fortune to meet the guy when I worked on the shoot for the album cover of “One Particular Harbour”; he was exactly as advertised, laid-back and personable. And one hella hard-partying dude, as we found out the hard way… 🤙🏽😆
====> Darren / L.A.
Didn’t get finished until just now. Was busy tailgating with family and friends. Glad to know we celebrated an official tailgating day in style. Tough puzzle but made it
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