Saturday Themeless by Will Eisenberg
I sailed along the top half of the puzzle as PARABOLA and the James Webb SPACE TELESCOPE were gimmes for this math and physics guy! 
Then I hit some speed bumps in the bottom half. My ignorance of puffy bread and hip-hop artists (Currier's partner worked that out) slowed the bottom but eventually it all came together and all was right in my puzzling world. PAN SAUCE and PATTER SONG also took some doing but I enjoyed the exercise and learning.
As you might have suspected with ADZ, LEX, AQUA and JEN, Will's puzzle is a pangram and you can see this in the chart below the grid.
1. Leather accessory: CHAPS - My first fill of PURSE didn't quite make it!
6. Sandbox game items?: PAILS.
11. Rangers home, familiarly: MSG.
14. Cocoon fillers: PUPAE.
15. Actress MacDowell: ANDIE - Name this fun movie that was one of the highest grossing films of 1993 where ANDIE co-starred with Bill Murray. (*answer at bottom)
16. Took a course?: ATE 😀
17. Ancient Greek market: AGORA - A familiar cwd shopping area
18. Fed. security: T-NOTE - This 1891 T-NOTE recently sold for $2.3M
19. MSNBC's "Inside With __ Psaki": JEN - Yesterday's JEN was more obscure.
20. James Webb, for one: SPACE TELESCOPE.
23. Really feel the heat: BAKE - BOIL and BURN? Not so much...
24. Introduces an MGM film?: ROARS - In 1928, Jackie the Lion provided MGM's mascot Leo's roar.
25. Hosted: HAD OVER and 10. Shows the door: SEES OUT - Hello/Good Bye
28. Arrests: HAULS IN 😀 Ya gotta love the car Steve McQueen used in this movie where he played a bounty hunter.
30. __ Polytechnique: ECOLE - More We see the French word for school quite often.
31. "Severance" actor: SCOTT - Adam is definitely Saturday cluing for SCOTT
33. Source of local produce, for short: CSA.
34. __ regia: gold-dissolving substance: AQUA - Keep your doubloons out of this
36. Muscles worked in pull-ups and pull-downs: LATS.
37. Spice blend: RUB.
BBQ DRY RUB MIX INGREDIENTS
This barbecue rub goes great on pork, chicken, burgers, and especially pork ribs! The best part is you probably already have all of these ingredients in your cupboard right now!
- Smoked Paprika
- Brown Sugar
- Salt
- Pepper
- Garlic Powder
- Onion Powder
- Dry Mustard
39. __ mignon: FILET.
40. Inclined: TILTING.
42. Spelling practice?: SORCERY 😀
44. Receiving line?: HEIRS 😀
45. Layered snack: OREO.
46. Silent nemesis in "Peanuts": KITE EATING TREE 😀 - I loved this after it hit me.
51. Is for many: ARE 😀
52. Smoothie option: GUAVA.
53. Daniel who writes the Gabriel Allon spy novels: SILVA.
55. Luthor in the Legion of Doom: LEX - Through the years. I only know of Gene Hackman's great portrayal (top middle) in the original Superman movie.
56. Row of pawns, e.g.: OCTET 😀 We have recently had 15. The Ivies, e.g.: OCTAD and 19. Tarantula legs, e.g.: OCTAD
57. Needed Advil, say: ACHED.
58. Superlative suffix: EST.
59. One-named rapper in the hip-hop collective Doomtree: DESSA - I had no chance on this fill but she's on the right.
60. "The Constant Gardener" Oscar winner: WEISZ - Rachel and Ralph Fiennes below
Down:
1. Pro concerned with returns: CPA - I'll bet there's a CPA who participates in CSA and PTA in the USA
2. Brings it in, in a way: HUGS 😀
3. Each: A POP.
4. y=2x² plot, e.g.: PARABOLA - I've taught about them many times.
5. Coastal formation: SEA CAVE - A famous one we have visited
6. Gilbert and Sullivan staple: PATTER SONG -The patter song is characterised by a moderately fast to very fast tempo with a rapid succession of rhythmic patterns in which each syllable of text corresponds to one note. You're welcome. Ya Got Trouble from The Music Man is also a very familiar one.
7. Rice, for one: ANNE
8. K-pop star, say: IDOL.
9. Book club?: LITERATI.
11. Pitches delivered in sequence?: MAJOR SCALE 😀
12. Member of a blended family: STEP SISTER - What Marcia was to Greg, Peter and Bobby.
13. Tiny inheritance?: GENE 😀
21. __ out: EKE.
22. Berkeley, familiarly: CAL.
25. "Barracuda" band: HEART - An incredible rock and roll anthem!
26. Purchases a company to obtain talented employees: ACQUIHIRES - What a great portmanteau!
27. Follow up too soon, perhaps: DOUBLE TEXT - Guilty (and impatient) as charged!
28. Beethoven composition for brass virtuoso Giovanni Punto: HORN SONATA - I tried for a long time to make this more diffficult.
29. Repugnant: NASTY.
32. Imitate a dove: COO.
35. Many a reduction: PAN SAUCE
36. Good & Plenty flavor: LICORICE - This candy is like M&M's with LICORICE in the middle rather than chocolate.
39. Tool for intricate cutting: FRET SAW.
41. Draw: TIE.
43. Part of some email addresses: ORG.
46. Vegetable baked for chips: KALE
48. Lithographer James Merritt: IVES - Partner of Nathaniel Currier
Sleigh Ride
There's a happy feeling nothing
In the world can buy
As they pass around the coffee
And the pumpkin pie
It'll nearly be like a picture print
By Currier and IVES
These wonderful things are the things
We remember all through our lives
50. The before times?: EVES - Tomorrow is an important one.
54. Wood shaper: ADZ.
*Andie and Bill relived Ground Hog Day over and over
37 comments:
Another Saturday toughie. However, once I got “space telescope” and “kite-eating tree” the rest (pretty much) fell into place, though some answers were gotten through ESP, such as the person in the “hip-hop collective.” Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
This was a tough one as to be expected and I’m glad I got it done …. In a remote city in NJ where I’m visiting….
The long answers were a particular challenge …
Thank you Mr constructor and thank you Husker Gary for your lucid explanations and clever snd interesting links ….. especially Thd words of the Major. General song …. ;-)
The Indian words of POORI and AGNI Were gimmes …. Thd first one is too oily fof our age, and the second one is invoked by the religious folk.
Have as great weekend and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!! Everyone !!!!
Good morning!
This can't be Saturday. I've become inured to failure on Saturday toughies, but today it was twelve minutes and done. My only Wite-Out moment was changing LUGS to HUGS. Methinks Patti threw us a pre-Christmas softball. I'll take it. Thanx, Will and Husker.
Happy Festivus, y'all. Bring on the airing of grievances; that's always fun.
Regarding:: Polytechnic .... in this case, the (previously -) Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, ... later the New York University School of Engineeering ....
Sorry, for the boo-boo in my earlier post, ...
I meant to include the history page of the Brooklyn Polytechnic, where my schoolmate/classmate Mr. Ranjan Tandon, and his wife, in 2015, gave a $100 million to NYU,so that the school was renamaned the Tandon School of Engineering... my 2 minutes of fame.
My solving experience was faster at the top, slow in the middle, and faster again in the lower third. Will included some crosswordese with EL-HI and A POP
Like D-O with an extra step- I went from tugs to lugs to HUGS
I did need some perps to think of MSG (Madison Square Garden) for the New York Rangers hockey team - I was stuck on the Texas Rangers MLB team who won the World Series this year. Of course Splynter wouldn't have.
Funny how old memories are stuck in the brain somewhere - like the formula for a PARABOLA - thank you Mr Mayer! and HEART came out with "Barracuda" my senior year of high school.
I co-chaired a conference in September and we did a parody of the same PATTER SONG that Gary linked to introduce ourselves.
Not a fan of LICORICE (unless it's red) so I avoid Good & Plentys
Thanks HG for the fun blog and Will for the clever puzzle
FIW, with one mistake when I put literate instead of literati.
This was a typical Saturday puzzle made more difficult with the many proper names such as Pouri, Dessa, and Weisz.
I, however, had no problem with the long answers, space telescope and kite eating tree, so I feel good about my effort.
Took 23:17. Literally more than half of that was in the lower-central area.
Having "heist" before "heirs" for receiving line didn't help.
What would help is if there were an editor to prevent having a proper noun lithographer crossing a proper noun hip hop artist in some collective.
Franz somebody, or somebody Franz, was unknown, as was this Saturday's obscure food (poori).
Enjoyable top half/third of this puzzle. Can't say the same for the bottom. But, I knew today's actresses (Andie & Weisz).
DNF. I filled 61, 59 correctly. Missed GUAVe and TATt (read the clue, Jinx!) Erased aura for AQUA, rum for RUB, lugs for HUGS, arms for TATt, and PARABaLA (UNTIE!) I obviously skipped "spelling practice" IRL, even though I got the fill today.
Today is:
NATIONAL PFEFFERNUSSE DAY(a German spice cookie)
NATIONAL ROOTS DAY (the holidays are an ideal time to collect family information)
FESTIVUS (commemorates a holiday episode of the television comedy Seinfeld)
I knew coping saw, but fret saw was new to me.
I guess one can make chips of KALE, but why the hell would one? Let's do a Coke-versus-Pepsi style taste test with KALE against Cape Cod Sea Salt an Vinegar and see who wins.
Christmas Eve has become such an event that today is Christmas Eve Eve.
Thanks to H.Gary for teaching me a new meaning for "fond." Hope I remember it tomorrow. However, Steve McQueen only drove one iconic car, the 68 Mustang GT fastback in Bullitt. (I had a look-alike '67 at the time, but with a puny 289 2 bbl power plant.) Also thanks to Will for an almost-doable (even by moi) Saturday grid.
Good Morning:
Based on the above comments, I must be either becoming less patient and persevering or less knowledgeable, or both, because for the second consecutive Saturday, I TITT and resorted to red letters to end my anguish.
Scott
Aqua
Poori
Fanon
Kite Eating Tree
Dessa
Patter Song
Horn Sonata
Ecole
Heart
Acquihires
Double Text
Fire God
Parabola
Pan Sauce
Some were totally unknown, some were eventually gotten by perps, but too many remained blank, leading to a frustrated surrender.
Kudos to those who finished!
Thanks, Will, and thanks, HG, for your always fair and balanced critique and commentary, and for the many sparkling and delightful visuals. Thanks, also, for the Bio info on Will.
Happy Birthday, dear Misty, we miss you, 🎂🎁🎉🎊🎈
FLN
HG and Anonymous, thanks for sharing your thoughts about Maestro; I thought perhaps I was alone in my dissension about such a highly praised film. I finished watching it last night and while the second half had more highlights of Bernstein's musical talents, I was still disappointed in the overall movie, mainly because it wasn't at all what I expected. That said, Ms. Mulligan and Mr. Cooper both gave Oscar-worthy performances. (Mr. Cooper may be nominated for Best Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay; I'm not sure
about Best Producer!)
Have a great day.
Thank you Will for a Saturday FIR (but not a gimme).
And thank you Husker for another superlative review, especially for pointing out the PANGRAM, which didn't occur to me.
Some favs:
18A T-NOTE. Easy fill, but I liked Husker's current valuation. Didn't know they accrued this much interest! 😁.
20A SPACE TELECOPE. Another easy fill. The WEBB appears in the Google news pretty much daily.
35A POORI. We ATE Indian vegetarian for the first few years of our marriage and POORIS were a staple. Here's a recipe.
38A FANON. The F in _ANON was the last to fill. Hmm, wasn't VULCAN the roman GOD of FIRE?
46A KITE EATING TREE. This blew in right away.
60A WEIZ. RACHEL is DANIEL CRAIG's wife.
4D PARABOLA. It didn't throw me a CURVE.
6D PATTER SONG. Love these guys!
28D HORN SONATA. Czech horn virtuoso Jan Václav Stich changed his name to PUNTO when he moved to Italy. Here is Beethoven's Sonata in F for horn and fortepiano played by Anneke Scott on the natural horn, accompanied by Steven Devine.
Cheers,
Bill
SPACE TELESCOPE was a gimme and all above it filled rapidly. Below it was a complete disaster. I even managed a 3-wide Eastern seaboard but a broad swath of the SW was just undoable. Remember when cities had two daily newspapers? "Peanuts' was always in the 'other' paper that my family or I subscribed to and I never really knew anything about it except the TV show. FRE_SAW was filled; FRET was unknown and KITE EATING TREE had no chance.
DOUBLE TEXT, ACQUIRE HIRES, GUAVA, PATTER SONG, PAN SAUCE, AQUA regia, FANON, POORI, SCOTT, DESSA, IVES- unknowns NOT filled
SILVA, WEISZ, CSA.- unknown but I got them. But 3 out of 14 unknows is a low batting average.
I'm with you IM, much of this puzzle went beyond my knowledge and experience. Some answers triggered recognition when I finally filled them in.
Went for Kafka when it was FANON which screwed up FIREGOD. Sleeve part made me scratch my head but recognized TATS when it filled. I hate made-up words like ACQUIHIRES.
Where there's a Will, there's a way and Will had his way with us today. Thanks to Gary for for relaxing the twist my brain was in trying to solve this puzzle.
No way out but up.
Nevertheless
Thanks for the dry rub recipe. Care to add the amounts of the ingredients you listed?
More enjoyable than most Saturday stumpers, at least it gave me food bits for puzzlement, and I had a chance chew on it a while...
Silent nemesis in peanuts made me think of Snoopys Cat Neighbor, I mean, the kite eating tree was hardly "silent."
An uphill battle and sure I’d eventually never make it to the apex or acme. The final attempt at the central cluster of WAGS were correct FANON, POORI, gave me HORN SONATA for a rare Saturday FIR. (BTW I thought all sonatas were piano pieces.) Almost put HOUR but that’d be rough on the fingers …. And it seems every culture has a version of “deep fried bread”
Felt there were some clever Saturday worthy tricky clues but of course the now obligatory smattering of unknown proper names. AQUIHIRES (auto-correct really didn’t like that one).
Inkovers: tugs/HUGS, IGA/CSA
“Vulcan or Agni” : kept trying for an alien or ET type then remembered mythology. Wouldn’t a KITE EATING TREE be a “doomtree” ?
PATTERSONG? Hadda LIU. <a href="https://youtu.be/Piv19tK4lH4?si=2zdSHqAUZEv59A1d”/>Steve Martin performing a PATTERSONG “Which of the Pickwick Triplets did it?”</a> from <i>Only Murders in the Building</i>
Wonder if Will plays the HORN SONATA?
DNF. Went down to defeat in the CSA. (Deep South) Too much of todays offering was from a universe I don't live in.
Well, I tried mightily to finish without help, but I finally turned to Google to help with FIREGOD, GUAVA (does guava jelly exist any more? I haven’t seen it in years), IVES . Wag gave me POORI. Thanks Will for the insurmountable challenge, and thanks, Husker G for the excellent tour. I love Gilbert and Sullivan, and the clip was fun. I was in The Mikado in high school, and we continued to sing parts of it at every reunion for years.
FLN. Thanks to those who helped me with PEEVE - should have figured it out.
FLN. Thanks for the Misty report, C ‘eh.
FLN. Good news on your ablation. I had 2, 5 years apart, and they both went well - done robotically, with the surgeon in another room! Amazing what they can do these days.
I neglected to direct my final comment, above, to Ray-O - sorry.
Different strokes. I found yesterday’s CW impossible and most cornerites found it easy. Today’s puzzle, though it took some time, didn’t make me TITT. In fact I really liked this puzzle. So many fun clues, all eminently fair and sussable.
I read Frantz FANON’s revolutionary work many years ago.
I remembered Jen from yesterday's discussion. We had not seen AGORA in quite some time, but were treated to our usual snack, OREO.
I like shortcuts when it comes to cooking, so I make PAN SAUCEs frequently.
I forgot to thank HG for a neat recap.
I smiled at both SORCERY and KITE EATING TREE when I got them.
Didn't know FANON, POURI, DESSA, ECOLE, FRETSAW and IVES. And when I have no clue on those I don't have patience to figure out ones I could've figured out like WEISZ and SILVA. So I did a lot of revealing to finish this. Why prolong the agony?
Although I refuse to Google clues, I think Googling my answers/guesses is fair with a puzzle like this, so I’m claiming an FIR. POORI, FANON, DESSA, FRETSAW, and the spelling of WEISZ were all look-ups. Unknowns also included CSA, Daniel SILVA, and ACQUIHIRES, and I didn’t pick up on IVES’ being the Currier & Ives dude. BTW, H.G., the song lyrics with the lithographers’ names are from the great Leroy Anderson song “Sleigh Ride.” . . . The CAL/Berkeley entry rankled me slightly because the university is having identity problems, with neither “Cal” nor “Berkeley” equating “California” in the minds of too much of the public. That campus is THE University of California. The rest, including UCLA, are subsets, offshoots, etc.
Another Saturday, another ugly grid. Acquihires??? Let’s make up words for the crossword.
I had to laugh at anonymous’s complaint “ if there were an editor to prevent having a proper noun lithographer crossing a proper noun hip hop artist in some collective.”…
I’d be happy with just a competent editor. We haven’t had one in forever.
See review NY Times on 12/23 by Zachary Woolfe. "Maestro' Serves as a Safety Net". He agrees with you. As do I.
Happy birthday Misty! I miss your daily paragraphs including the crossword answers
From FanNation: "Cal let all of a 26-point lead slip away before scratching out a 71-67 victory over UC San Diego on Wednesday afternoon at Haas Pavilion."
I wonder if they substituted "Cal" for "Berkley" as the informal name after the later got such a reputation for goofyness.
Jinx -- Nobody calls Cal's sports teams "Berkeley" in the sports section, but apparently the university's P.R. researchers have found that people outside sports identify the university's academic components as "Berkeley," and that is confusing sports fans outside the West Coast, who don't know the Golden Bears and Berkeley are one and the same.
I was enjoying this puzzle until I reached DESSA. I am used to seeing POORI spelled as PURI on the menus where DW and I have eaten, so it took a while for me to fill that one even though I thought of PURI right away.
We are going to visit our son and his family tomorrow and he has promised to be serving beef FILET, but not filet Mignon, which is a specific way of preparing filet (bacon-wrapped, etc.)
Good reading you all.
Sometimes I crow about my accomplishments, so it's only right that I eat crow occasionally. Today's puzzle was a big DNF for me. My hat is off to all the solvers (who didn't use lookups or red letters), especially to desper-otto, who thought the puzzle was a softball. ACQUIHIRES? DOUBLE TEXT? FANON, POORI, DESSA? Actually, I got DESSA through perps. Couldn't have identified James Merritt by his first and middle names, but who were America's most famous lithographers, after all? Apparently I was on the "receiving line" for my comeuppance today.
Anonymous @ 2:15 ~ Thank you, I read that article this morning. I was surprised by the number of reader comments agreeing with the author's viewpoint, and I was equally surprised by several harsh criticisms of Mr. Cooper's acting and directing abilities.
AnonymousPVX @2:04 PM ACQUIHIRE is not a word made up by the constructor or editor but rather it'sbusiness jargon. I got multiple hits when I googled it. Here's the first.. - waseeley
Thanks, Will for your Saturday challenge! I am wondering if our French horn playing constructors knows the HORN SONATA well.
Unfortunately, I had a FIW-wrong-wrong-wrong. Like H-Gary, I was off to a good start with PARABOLA and SPACE TELESCOPE; but, unlike H-Gary, everything did not "all come together". These filled but I did not know why until coming to the blog: MSG, CSA, AGUA, POORI, PATTERSONG, PAN SAUCE, plus most of the names. Seeing this list, I feel lucky to have done as well as I did.
FAVs: KITE EATING TREE and PARABOLA
Thanks to H-Gary for his explanations!
Happy b-day to Misty! I miss your clever stories. They make tricky grids seem friendlier.
Guava jelly is still around, WendyBird — try Amazon!
====> Darren
Well, tonight I’m going to take Husker-G’s recommendation and air my grievances…thanks to his always-enjoyable review.
Ten proper names (11 if ya count the band HEART)?? As Snoopy would say (from yesterday’s cw), “BLEH!!”. And crossing ones, no less…pretty POORI editing in my book.
I’ll give some redemption to our man Will for the flashy looong entries like SPACETELESCOPE and KITEEATINGTREE — pretty snazzy stuff! But what sandbox “game” involves pails? Maybe it’s just been too many centuries since I last played in the sand…
AQUIHIRES? Even if it is current corporate-speak, BLEH again.
A fret saw is used to cut precise grooves for fret wire on guitar fingerboards. I tried using one once on one of my guitars; it didn’t go well…
Meanwhile, hope y’all have a Merry and a Happy! 🎄🎉
====> Darren / L.A.
Agreed wholeheartedly
I did the same, however I also worked for a fortune 200 company that did a huge amount of acquisitions (some of which I was involved with) and I never heard of it. So while it may be real jargon, it’s not well used.
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