Saturday Themeless by Guilherme Gilioli
Guilherme is from Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil which is 930 miles SW of Rio de Janeiro as you can see on the map.says, "Mostly I create crosswords in Portuguese for magazines and my personal website, but lately I've been trying to create puzzles in English and it's going pretty good, learning a lot."
This grid is very striking with 12, 13 and 14 stair-stepped cells at the top and mirrored at the bottom. I struggled mightily, finished the bottom first and then the top after taking some educated guesses.
Across:
1. "If memory serves ... ": LAST I CHECKED.
13. Particles in the Fermi theory of beta decay: ANTI NEUTRINOS - If you're really that interested - This filled in pretty easily for this physics guy.
15. Rent, pension, etc.: UNEARNED INCOME. It's still taxable.
17. "There's no wrong way to eat a __": candy tagline: REESES.
15. Rent, pension, etc.: UNEARNED INCOME. It's still taxable.
17. "There's no wrong way to eat a __": candy tagline: REESES.
18. Madness, e.g.: SKA BAND - Uber obscure fill for a common word
20. Bandmate of Dizzy and Duff: AXL - Saturday cluing for AXL Rose of Guns n Roses who is in the middle below. I have no idea who the other two are but they must be in this picture somewhere.
21. Functions: USES - How many can you count?
24. Comedian Radner: GILDA - Part of the SNL Not Ready For Prime Time Players. One iteration is below: Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, John Belushi, Larraine Newman, Dan Aykroyd, GILDA Radner and Bill Murray.
25. Nectar eaters: WASPS.
27. Skinned: PEELED - Softball is played on a skinned infield where the grass has been PEELED off.
28. Prep for a bout: SPAR.
30. Actress Jessica: ALBA - Ms. ALBA is on our crossword marquee frequently
32. N-everlasting thing: FAD - N has become slang for no, not, etc. FADS are certainly not everlasting.
33. Ishikawa __: visual component of root-cause analysis: DIAGRAM - Okay....
35. "Come again?": I'M SORRY.
38. __ Souls College, Oxford: ALL.
39. Shortly, shortly: ASAP.
41. Vegan-friendly organic brand: AMY'S.
42. Responds to 52-Across: REACTS.
45. Durable garb: JEANS.
47. Forest moon where C-3PO was worshipped as a god: ENDOR.
48. Pub pals: LADS.
49. Walks, in stats: BBS - "A walk's (Base On Balls) as good as a hit"
52. Cues: STIMULI - Natural STIMULI are telling many thousands of Sandhill Cranes to return to the Platte River in Central Nebraska this time of year as a stop on their migration north.
54. Straight: IN A ROW.
57. "My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles," for one: MNEMONIC DEVICE - ...My Very Excellent Mother Served Us Nine Pizzas had to be edited when Pluto was demoted.
60. Star quality: STAGE PRESENCE.
61. Comfortable: ON EASY STREET.
57. "My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles," for one: MNEMONIC DEVICE - ...My Very Excellent Mother Served Us Nine Pizzas had to be edited when Pluto was demoted.
60. Star quality: STAGE PRESENCE.
61. Comfortable: ON EASY STREET.
Down:
1. "The Glass Menagerie" girl: LAURA - Laura Wingfield, the withdrawn high school dropout who passes her days listening to old phonograph records and caring for her collection of glass animals while the world closes in around her.
2. Add-on: ANNEX.
3. __ drum: STEEL
4. Mulheres da família: TIAS - Our Brazilian constructor gives us the Brazilian words for women as a clue and TIAS for aunts as fill.
5. About: IN RE.
6. 2030 event: CENSUS - Article 1 Section 2 of The American Constitution
7. Peach or plum: HUE.
8. Weather-sensitive fig.: ETD - Changing ETA to ETD was my last fill.
9. "Mindfreak" magician Angel: CRISS.
 |
| "Levitating" on the beach |
10. Idiosyncrasy: KINK.
11. Put behind bars: ENCAGE.
12. The __ Brothers: "Listen to the Music" band: DOOBIE - A great musical interlude
14. Shaver: SMALL FRY - The fish version
 |
| Stocking a lake with SMALL FRY |
16. Creates a soft spot?: ENDEARS.
19. Pops: DADDY In Japan it is 36. Japanese title of respect: SAN - Papa SAN
22. Abuses an email list, say: SPAMS.
23. Continuing ed course: ESL.
25. Go to and fro: WAG.
26. Flight board abbr.: ARRivals
27. Muñoz Ryan who wrote the Newbery Honor Book "Echo": PAM.
28. Part of 57-Across: SILENT M -
29. Legendary attendants of Charlemagne: PALADINS - Yeah, I thought of this too.
31. Yeti, e.g.: BIPED - Not the first characteristic I think of.
33. Doesn't want the truth, say: DARES - Game
34. Juice sources?: AA'S 😀
37. Chanting sounds: OMS.
40. 2023 WNBA Finals MVP Wilson: AJA.
43. Arrive at: COME TO.
44. Pulitzer-winning McCullough presidential biography: TRUMAN - It's on one of my, uh, shelfs.
46. Muttered remarks: ASIDES - Ferris Bueller's ASIDES broke the fourth wall quite often during his Day Off.
48. Form opener: LINE A.
49. Preservative: BRINE - The basic ingredients are water, vinegar, sugar and salt.
50. Bowling game: BOCCE.
51. "Cool!": SWEET.
53. Seating level: LOGE - If you want to see Hamilton in Atlanta tonight, here is what the LOGE seat below will set you back.
55. Shape of a baklava, sometimes: NEST.
56. Profess: AVER.
58. IDs of PCs: IPS - The IDentificationS of Personal ComputerS are their Internet ProtocolS.
59. Let it out, in a way: CRY.
Notes from C.C.:
Voting is now open until March 1 for the 12th ORCA Awards – the annual celebration of creativity in crosswords! Winners will be announced on March 6 during a livestream filled with games and prizes. Five long-time solvers will receive special awards. For
each day of their streak, solvers can receive a chance to win crossword
memorabilia inscribed to them and signed by Will Shortz. Need not be
present to win. Details and voting info can be found at Diary of a Crossword Fiend.
36 comments:
My favorite clue and answer? “Doesn’t want the truth” - “Dares.”
(A reference to the tween girl party game “Truth or Dare.”) Like that clue, there was a lot of fun misdirection in this puzzle. But it wasn’t enough to fool me! (And you folks know I don’t time myself, but I know it took me less than half an hour to solve it .)
FIR, so I’m happy.
Very tough Saturday themeless, as it should be, but after more than an hour I didn’t think 31 WAGs would get me a FIR, so I TITT and hit “reveal” on the top 3 spanners. Had snare, never thought of STEEL. AS IT OCCURRED was totally wrong on top. Oh well, I did figure out what the mnemonic meant although I’d never heard it. MVEMJUNP(Plain), I never demoted Pluto, gross injustice 🤣
DNF. Filled 37 answers, 34 correctly.
Today is:
NATIONAL TORTILLA CHIP DAY (I’ll have the salsa AND guac (sorry, Lucina) please)
National Shortage of National Days Day (OK, I made this one up. Only one on today’s list)
I hesitated filling LAURA. That was my first thought, but then I remembered that in my high school production, the role was played by my friend Laura H. (I played "The Gentleman Caller".)
Two days in a row for reminders of teaching project management. Yesterday we had Maslow's NEEDS hierarchy, and today we have Ishikawa DIAGRAM, aka fishbone DIAGRAM, aka cause-and-effect DIAGRAM.
Can't believe that I didn't get PALADINS. Daughter went to Furman U. I had "page boys" before MNEMONIC DEVICES horned its way in.
I'm happy to give the CENSUS takers the number of people living in my house. I decline to tell them how many bathrooms, bedrooms, and other nosy stuff, regardless of their threats.
OK you 'net heads, isn't an online device identified by its current (it can change) IP Address? Isn't IP the protocol, not the identifier?
Thanks to H.Gary for the tour through the unknown.
Wow! I learned a lot today! Thanks! From eating Reese’s to thinking physics, and beyond … And got to see great shelfies, and to vote on crossword clues/themes/et al. ❣️🙏 Who could ask for more?! Now I’m off to learn more about psychological trauma and its treatments (I used to treat PTS at a VA med ctr, and before that at a nonprofit serving the unhoused. Maybe someday soon I’ll retire and do crosswords and sudoku/ken-ken all day 🙄😉🥳)
FIW. I put wax instead of wag thinking of moon cycles, and cares instead of dares. I had no idea what 33A was so my WAG failed.
The rest of the puzzle really challenged me, but as I stuck with it the answers just seemed to come (to).
Aja, Amy's, and Ska Band were new to me, as well as several other proper names.
My brother when he retired lived a block away from Easy Street. He always wanted to move there but never did. It was a joke we shared when he was alive. I guess Easy Street is really a state of mind. I feel like I live there now!
I don’t think I would have fared much worse had this CW been in Portuguese. Did Pluto lose its planetary status just for being a SMALL FRY?? I know it’s way out there but it still orbits the sun like the other planets.
Loved the Shout Out to the SKA band Madness. One Step Beyond remains my all time favorite music video.
Jinx is correct, IP Address is the current identifier for a device on a network. IP is the protocol. 25 years in the business, I don't think I ever heard someone ask what the IP was, but rather the "IP Addr", unless maybe you were very deep in a conversation and IP Addr was to be repeated many times.
Today's puzzle was too hard for me and I'm getting on the road soon so after a first pass with very few hits and a couple of errors, I revealed words left and right.
Good Morning:
Finishing this puzzle without help required as much P and P as I could muster, but finish I did, in a whopping 53:08. Subgenius, you can remove the Sub, based on your amazing finish time. There were too many unknowns and esoteric references for me to list but I finally got a hard-earned Tada! Saturdays are supposed to be difficult, but I think this one went above and beyond the standard level. Just my personal experience.
Thanks, Guilherme, and thanks, HG, for brightening my day with your usual sparkling and informative review and photos, especially the various shelfies. Bill, your pottery pieces are just lovely.
Have a great day.
First let me say that I’m “mightily” impressed that a fellow was able to put together a Saturday puzzle in English when it’s not his first language….and only ONE foreign word. Bravo Billy!!
Quite a leap from an easy-ish Friday which seems to be the deal lately
Unless you have advanced degrees in a variety of disciplines this was a hard nut to crack and I eventually gave up. A Pat on the back to all who FIRed (Ok Pat that’s enough, you can get off their backs now😁)
“Baklava shape” PARALELLOGRAM waaay too long. Our Lebanese-American neighbors called it “Bak-LAU’-ah” when they brought some over to my folks 😋
Our usual “Flight board abbr.”. ETA/D didn’t work this time. AAA juice must be a battery jump? “Yeti, etc” bogus wouldn’t perp. Our “ELHI” planetary mnemonic phrase ended in “Nine Pickles” for Neptune and currently downgraded Pluto
As to not have deal further with my ignorance I threw in the towel. 🙄
16 degrees and sunny
Thank you, Guilherme Gilioli, and thank you Husker Gary.
It took a while. Almost an hour. 53:49. I couldn't suss one little area.
I had SMALL BOY instead of SMALL FRY. I've encountered crossword clues of "old shaver" meaning old man, shaver meaning man, and "little shaver" meaning little boy (lad), but I have never heard of SMALL FRY meaning little boy. Insignificant or trifling, yes. Baby fish, yes. Little boy, no. Perhaps it's regional, like Utz potato chips?
I held onto BOY because I had no clue on N-everlasting and bad seemed okay. Then it was most likely PAT or PAM for the unknown author, and I guessed wrong.
The kicker today was that when I first read, "Come again", I entered "say what" but nothing perped. I should have stayed with that train of thought.
Other than that, I got everything else and enjoyed this puzzle immensely. It would be great if every puzzle. Well, maybe. But I did encounter a lot of new stuff today, and that made it fun to solve.
I enjoyed looking at the Shelfies.
Jinx, you are not incorrect about ID's of P.C.s. being IP'S. It's not a good clue for IPs. It's like saying that a license plate is the ID of a car. It may be an ID for a long time, some time, or a short time, but the ID of car is the VIN. The ID of a PC would be it's mfg serial number. It doesn't change, just as the VIN doesn't change. What if the PC is never connected? But hey, it's a puzzle.
I'm not ORCA voting because I didn't solve all of those crosswords. I may vote for best clue because I can read them all there. It might come down to a popularity contest.
I think all the astronomers are waiting until they discover the really big planet they theorize is out beyond Pluto so they can bring the number back upto nine.
HG ~ In my angst about my FIW I forgot to thank you for today’s recap. I thought of you this morning when I saw a vehicle with Nebraska plates that read “FOOOORE”.
FIR the old fashioned way -- paper and pencil, no cheating. Didn't think I would ever finish the northwest until UNEARNED INCOME dawned on me. The very first toe hold was GILDA Radner, of blessed memory. Amazing puzzle! Many thanks to Guilherme, Patti, and Husker Gary.
My biggest flub today was misspelling CRISS AZ ChriS. Changing helped a lot. But just getting a start was tough. Wanted DENIM for JEANS. BBS gave me my chance and with 1 or 2 lookups I finally finished.
Really should have dashed off 1A since I say it all the time. Speaking of MNEMONICS, being a engineering technician, I always made good use of "bad boys r_pe our young girls but violet gives willingly" for resistor banding.
Great puzzle, Guillermo. Nice recap, Gary.
Never believe that someone has your best interests at heart.
Promote.
Nope. Not even close. Not only Not on my radar, but in an alternate universe somewhere. My hat's off to those of you who tamed this puppy! WAY above my pay grade.
I filled in LAURA nearly immediately and tried to work vertically, but it took forever to get rolling, even though MNEMONIC DEVICES gave me a strong toehold in the South.
The DOOBIE Brothers from San Jose gave me hope in the North, where 1A was one of those obtuse dialogue clues that Patti thinks are better than they actually are (shoutout to D-O).My last fill was AXL/ANNEX, largely because I was thrown by the presence of “Dizzy” in the AXL clue and was just sure it was Dizzy Gillespie and that Art Blakey was in the same band. They were indeed bandmates for a while.
Although I eventually picked up on the Truth or DARES entry, the word “the” in the clue threw me because it’s not part of the game’s title. The clue merely should have said “doesn’t want truth, say.”
Once I got rolling, the puzzle became a quicker than usual Saturday FIR, with fewer nits (14) to pick than most.
Took me 30 minutes flat, with the NNW section last to fill. Tough one. I pretty much always do Saturday puzzles on the computer which helps a lot, being able to check the entries along the way. I’d never ever have finished this one with pen and paper.
Phew! That was a toughie. In order to finish it I had to resort to some Googling for proper names. But with Irish Miss’ P and P, I FIR. I knew the book TRUMAN because I read it a couple of years ago. AMY’S was familiar to me because I eat some of her frozen dinners.
I love MNEMONIC DEVICEs. I discovered this one a few years ago.
I too hope N-everlasting FADes away quickly.
If you get enough of that UNEARNED INCOME you’ll be on EASY STREET.
Thank you HG for all the clarifications.
Today, spring is here, and so are my allergies, but I’m not complaining.
TITT after a not-particularly valiant effort on my part, and considerable white space in the north. I bow to Guilherme.
My southern hemisphere looked respectable, thanks in no small part to the actor Richard Boone. Huh? Well, I've been watching a movie that Boone is in, while working the puzzle. When I got to 29D (Charmagne's attendants), Richard Boone's old TV show, "Have Gun Will Travel," came flooding back: Boone played a bounty hunter named PALADIN.
I actually sussed out another Saturday stumper!
I can't say I finished it, because I had the red letters on, and played alot of Whack-A-Vowel. But I think I could have completed this puzzle fairly, only it would have taken aheck of alot longer...
21 functions:uses. HG referenced the Swiss Army Knife. I cannot even begin to guess all its possible uses, because for the past ten years I have been watching Felix Immler come up with amazing new ways. For Chairman Moe: opening wine without getting stains on the ceiling!
Check out his YouTube channel for how to build everything in the woods with just a Swiss Army knife!
Here is an example: I've actually built someth8ng like this but without the table!
And finally, SNL. A rare, and poignant John Belushi clip that has been posted before, but some of you may not have seen it...
Puzzling thoughts:
TITT - revealed the missed letters, etc - ran out of allotted time
CED @ 12:11 ==> thanks for the wine corkscrew Victorinox video - cool!
Enjoy the weekend
Big fat DNF.
What Jayce said.
Whew! This was an agorophobiac's nightmare -- all that whitespace! Nevertheless, with first aid from my trusty sidekick Teri we were able to get'er done (after several delays - see below).
Thank you Guilherme for a brilliant puzzle and thanks Husker for an equally brilliant review (and thanks for making good on the SHELFIES).
I didn't make a whole lot of progress out of the gate, but when NEUTRINOS emerged I proceeded to outsmart myself. I still had 4 spaces to fill and so I filled it with MUON the only type of NEUTRINO that has 4 letters. Shows how much I know about "beta decay" [duh!]. Also had 3D BONGO, 5D INRE and 6D CENSUS (I used to work there).
I couldn't make any further progress in the NW, but did leave erasure marks for [LAST]I CHECKED and [REESES].
Then I circled round, came back to the NW, and circled around again. This went on for awhile. When all that was left was the NW, and I was obviously blocked. I was ready to TITT but asked Teri to take look at it and went in for a NAP. An hour later she woke me and triumphantly announced that she'd finished the puzzle!
She had changed MUON to ANTI, not really knowing why ... but... of course an ANTINEUTRINO is not a type of NEUTRINO, but a completely different particle, but I guess that was what the good Dr. Fermi must have theorized. This unlocked the whole NW. She refilled [LAST] and [REESES], filled ANNEX for ADD-ON, STEEL for BONGO, and LAURA for 1D (we'd seen the The Glass Menagerie years ago, but I couldn't remember the heroine's name).
Favorites? Everything!
Cheers,
Bill
Lee, me too. And my outer planets were Under Nancy's Porch.
I spent 13 weeks tracing leads in our pre-microprocessor CPU for our #2 EAX switching system. It would not have been possible without MNEMONIC DEVICEs. I still remember a few - The memory sent a parity bit over a lead labeled PAR for parity. If the CPU calculated that the parity bit was correct for the data bits received, it set the ASW (all seems well) bit to 1. Hard to believe that was nearly a half century ago.
(tracing leads in paper, page after page, from one subsystem to another.)
FIRed a Saturday!! I can’t believe it. Only had to pen over CHRIS, UNEARNED RECORD and AVOW.
Verrrrry difficult yet fun puzzle that I nearly gave up on numerous times. Finally made a breakthrough with MNEMONIC DEVICE, after thinking ‘what a terrible name for a book’ and then counting all the syllables to see if maybe it was a haiku.
And in reading these posts I just discovered a double-meaning: apparently AAS is referring to batteries? The whole time I was thinking it was Alcoholics Anonymous—they don’t have booze so they serve juice, right?!
Thank you, Arizona Jim, for the 34 Down comment. AA batteries and Alcoholics Anonymous!
Thanks to Guilherme for his Saturday Stumper! Unfortunately I have too much on my To-Do list today so no time for P&P and I TITT early. I did see a surprise connection to my write up for Monday. (Trust me, definitely not a spoiler alert. Just a coincidence.)
Thanks to H-Gary for his valiant work as our Saturday guy!
Hola!
Whew! Like others I spent too much time on this and since it was constructed by an obvious genius, I failed. I got the upper part, with a little help, but then just got tired of it and gave up on the bottom. I knew it was MNEWMONIC DEVICE but by that time I had stopped.
Thank you, Guilhermo Guilloli; your ESL teacher must be exceedingly proud of you! If I didn't spell the name correctly it's because the ink in my newspaper swallowed it.
The unforgettable GILDA Radner was my first fill. Then that section just flowed in, however, I can't say I've ever heard of PALADINS. Could I have skipped that chapter in history class? I'll do some research.
I hope your day has been wonderful and fruitful, everyone!
All i can say about this puzzle- NOT a chance of even getting close to completing it.
UNEARNED INCOME- everything I have coming in is that. SS, interest, capital gains, dividands and RMDs
SKA BAND & Madness=No idea abouteither
AMY'S ditto
ANTI-NEUTRINO-LAST I CHAECKED it was way above my pay scale
SNARE drum? Nope, STEEL
Mindfreak & CRISS Angel-clueless on both
PAM Munoz Ryan-ditto
PALADINS- only know from "Have Gun, Will Travel" TV show: didn't get any of it.
LINE A- that's getting ridiculous for a clue and fill
All I can say is, Señor Gilioli has one helluva KINKy brain to pull off this extravaganza — and ESL for him, to boot! Plus he’s also a music fan, I’d say: DOOBIE Bro’s, SKABAND and AXL (that’s Slash to the left of Rose in the pic, HG).
As such, thanks, H-Gary, for the music clips you included; makes for some good background tunes whilst reading your as-usual erudite recap 😎👍🏽
Hand up for the double-think on AAS — electric or drinkable, choose your juice — as well as having GILDA be my first fill and building this one from the bottom up. Also remembered the late great Richard Boone from his TV persona PALADIN.
About the only weak word, imo, was ENCAGE; this is where Sr. G’s ESL kicked in; I’ve never heard anyone ever use that word…
And as for MNEMONICDEVICES, I’ve never grokked the concept; it just does not compute in my feeble grey matter, even though I do know how to spell it 🤣
====> Darren / L.A.
I'm with Big Easy, above. Too much of assumed culture agreement, that doesn't quite exist.
And 'N' meaning 'No' in 32A? The only stand-alone Ns I know of in 77 years of using English, are for Nitrogen, or for 'negative' in NPN or PNP transistors (back in the days of discrete transistors, say in the later Beaker Culture).
Really like this blog. Really, REALLY like that I finally found the abbreviations link, b/c I've been struggling on what FIW/FIR meant. As a teen, I did the LA Times Sunday with my Dad. Now I do them with my teen daughter. Thanks to all who keep this blog going.
Yes! Definitely not obscure for this gen xer
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