Saturday Themeless by Grace and Greg Warrington
Across:
1. Tells: BLABS.
6. Randall Munroe webcomic: XKCD - I had no idea but this looks really fun! XKID made more sense to me at first. 
15. Move, informally: RELO.
16. Athletic brand that makes Scoot Zeros: PUMA.
17. "So ... you're not saying no ... ?": IS THAT A YES?
19. Conditionally give: LEND.
21. Contamination process: OSMOSIS.
23. Drab shade: OLIVE
25. Pet brand since 1946: IAMS.
26. "Rock'n Me" group: STEVE MILLER BAND - A very worthy musical interlude. Rock on!
32. Worked on the road: PAVED or tarred like they did in Cool Hand Luke
33. "Good thinking!": SMART.
34. Congressional auditing org.: GAO - Their charge is to monitor and limit government spending. No, really!
35. Squeezes (out): EKES.
36. Devout: PIOUS.
37. Some recyclables: CANS.
39. For company: ALONG.
40. Actress Tazel of "Justified": ERICA.
41. Correct: RIGHT ON THE MONEY - It had to do with surveyors placing a shiny coin on top of a time aged marker to help them view their target. When the coin was centered in their sights, they knew they were on target - or “right on the money”. You're welcome.
44. Thé addition: LAIT - Thé indicates the French word for tea, LAIT is French for milk and so we get tea with milk. (correction - hg)
45. Singer who never toured outside North America: ELVIS - "Colonel" Tom Parker was the reason Elvis never toured
46. Spots for fireside chats: HEARTHS.
49. "You must let me": I INSIST - The initial two "I's" took some parsing
53. Actor who hosted "Scientific American Frontiers" from 1993 to 2005: ALDA.
54. Editorial piece, perhaps: OPEN LETTER.
56. Side hustle option: UBER.
57. Peignoir frill: LACE.
58. __ wafers: NILLA.
59. Hit with an intense beam: LASE - Name
60. First asteroid landed on by a NASA craft: EROS - NASA's NEAR Shoemaker vehicle traveled the 160 million miles to EROS and landed within three feet of its target. It has remained there in the dark and cold for over twenty years.
61. Wimbledon set?: TELLY - British television. I did not bite on the red herring of Wimbledon tennis.
Down:
1. Con __: with vigor, in music: BRIO - Allegro also means cheerfully
2. Word in some mascara names: LASH.
3. Receipt figs.: AMTS.
4. Is incumbent upon: BEHOOVES.
5. Congested, in a way: SNARLED.
6. Penetrating gaze?: X-RAY VISION - A PSA for the man from Krypton
7. Escape room find: KEY - Here's such a game room in NYC
8. Jazz singer Laine: CLEO - Name the 1940 Disney cartoon that had a character named CLEO (*answer below)
9. Files: DOSSIERS.
10. Grace under pressure: APLOMB.
26. Pike, e.g.: SPEAR - Standard issue to the Vatican's Swiss Guard
27. "Oh Myyy! There Goes the Internet" memoirist: TAKEI - Mr. Sulu's catchphrase
28. Largest subtropical wilderness reserve in North America: EVERGLADES.
29. Wrinkles in time?: LAUGH LINES - Getting rid of them
31. "If I __ so myself": DO SAY.
36. Glitch in "The Matrix," maybe?: PLOT HOLE.
37. Rail yard piece: CROSS TIE - Replacing without moving the rails
39. Busy, busy, busy: AT IT.
40. Celebrated: EMINENT - It is not necessarily imminent that you will become EMINENT
42. Capital of Zimbabwe: HARARE - A 19-hr flight from NYC
43. Pernicious: EVIL.
46. Spoils: HAUL.
47. Heimdall player in Marvel's "Thor" films: ELBA.
48. Box: SPAR.
50. "__ come to me ... ": IT'LL - Wait a minute, IT'LL come to me.
51. Pitch well?: SELL 😀
52. Buffet surface: TRAY.
55. Prefix with footprint: ECO.
1. Tells: BLABS.6. Randall Munroe webcomic: XKCD - I had no idea but this looks really fun! XKID made more sense to me at first.
10. In a tizzy: AGOG.
14. Instant success?: RAMEN - I don't remember these being popular when I was a struggling college student.
14. Instant success?: RAMEN - I don't remember these being popular when I was a struggling college student.
15. Move, informally: RELO.
16. Athletic brand that makes Scoot Zeros: PUMA.
17. "So ... you're not saying no ... ?": IS THAT A YES?
19. Conditionally give: LEND.
20. "My mistake": OH SORRY - Not always sincere...
21. Contamination process: OSMOSIS.
23. Drab shade: OLIVE
25. Pet brand since 1946: IAMS.
26. "Rock'n Me" group: STEVE MILLER BAND - A very worthy musical interlude. Rock on!
32. Worked on the road: PAVED or tarred like they did in Cool Hand Luke
33. "Good thinking!": SMART.
34. Congressional auditing org.: GAO - Their charge is to monitor and limit government spending. No, really!
35. Squeezes (out): EKES.
36. Devout: PIOUS.
37. Some recyclables: CANS.
38. __ Lingus: AER - There appears to be a dominant color inside and out
39. For company: ALONG.
40. Actress Tazel of "Justified": ERICA.
41. Correct: RIGHT ON THE MONEY - It had to do with surveyors placing a shiny coin on top of a time aged marker to help them view their target. When the coin was centered in their sights, they knew they were on target - or “right on the money”. You're welcome.
44. Thé addition: LAIT - Thé indicates the French word for tea, LAIT is French for milk and so we get tea with milk. (correction - hg)
45. Singer who never toured outside North America: ELVIS - "Colonel" Tom Parker was the reason Elvis never toured
46. Spots for fireside chats: HEARTHS.
49. "You must let me": I INSIST - The initial two "I's" took some parsing
53. Actor who hosted "Scientific American Frontiers" from 1993 to 2005: ALDA.
54. Editorial piece, perhaps: OPEN LETTER.
56. Side hustle option: UBER.
57. Peignoir frill: LACE.
58. __ wafers: NILLA.
59. Hit with an intense beam: LASE - Name
 |
| Bond: Do you expect me to talk? Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die! |
60. First asteroid landed on by a NASA craft: EROS - NASA's NEAR Shoemaker vehicle traveled the 160 million miles to EROS and landed within three feet of its target. It has remained there in the dark and cold for over twenty years.
61. Wimbledon set?: TELLY - British television. I did not bite on the red herring of Wimbledon tennis.
Down:
1. Con __: with vigor, in music: BRIO - Allegro also means cheerfully
2. Word in some mascara names: LASH.
3. Receipt figs.: AMTS.
4. Is incumbent upon: BEHOOVES.
5. Congested, in a way: SNARLED.
6. Penetrating gaze?: X-RAY VISION - A PSA for the man from Krypton
7. Escape room find: KEY - Here's such a game room in NYC
8. Jazz singer Laine: CLEO - Name the 1940 Disney cartoon that had a character named CLEO (*answer below)
9. Files: DOSSIERS.
10. Grace under pressure: APLOMB.
11. "Still wrong": GUESS AGAIN.
12. Hotel chain headquartered in Dallas: OMNI - A pretty good guess for a 4-letter hotel chain
13. __ about: GADS - What my wife says I do at parties
18. Short cut: TRIM.
22. Outlet: MART.
24. San Gabriel Valley city north of Whittier: EL MONTE - It's about a 23 minute drive from EL MONTE to Pasadena for the Rose Parade
12. Hotel chain headquartered in Dallas: OMNI - A pretty good guess for a 4-letter hotel chain
13. __ about: GADS - What my wife says I do at parties
18. Short cut: TRIM.
22. Outlet: MART.
24. San Gabriel Valley city north of Whittier: EL MONTE - It's about a 23 minute drive from EL MONTE to Pasadena for the Rose Parade
26. Pike, e.g.: SPEAR - Standard issue to the Vatican's Swiss Guard
27. "Oh Myyy! There Goes the Internet" memoirist: TAKEI - Mr. Sulu's catchphrase
29. Wrinkles in time?: LAUGH LINES - Getting rid of them
30. Actor Jack who often collaborated with David Lynch: NANCE.
 |
| Lynch (director) NANCE (actor) |
31. "If I __ so myself": DO SAY.
36. Glitch in "The Matrix," maybe?: PLOT HOLE.
37. Rail yard piece: CROSS TIE - Replacing without moving the rails
39. Busy, busy, busy: AT IT.
40. Celebrated: EMINENT - It is not necessarily imminent that you will become EMINENT
42. Capital of Zimbabwe: HARARE - A 19-hr flight from NYC
43. Pernicious: EVIL.
46. Spoils: HAUL.
47. Heimdall player in Marvel's "Thor" films: ELBA.
 |
| Idris ELBA |
50. "__ come to me ... ": IT'LL - Wait a minute, IT'LL come to me.
51. Pitch well?: SELL 😀
52. Buffet surface: TRAY.
55. Prefix with footprint: ECO.
*Cleo was Gepetto's goldfish in 1940's Pinocchio
30 comments:
Wide awake this morning at 3:00am so I printed out the puzzle and somehow managed to FIR. I had no idea about XKCD or LAIT but kept AT IT. I Guessed OMNI, PUMA, LASE, LACE, ALPO then IAMS, CANS, ALDA, ELBA.
Perps for ERICA, EL MONTE, RAMEN, TAKEI, NANCE, PLOT HOLE. I know Del Monte veggies but not El Monte.
It was a blank puzzle until the gimme fills of SPEAR, EVERGLADES, and HARARE opened it up.
As usual, this Saturday puzzle proved quite challenging. However, all of the longer fills were well-known names or phrases, and that helped with the solve quite a bit. One thing: I assumed the answer to “spoils” would end with an “s” but since the answer to “hit with an intense beam” had to be “lase” I found out my assumption was incorrect, and I finally came up with “haul,” which gave me “Uber” and that cleared that section up. Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
FIW, missing my Natick XKiD x iLEO, but getting the one at LAIT x HARARE.
Today is:
NATIONAL WOMEN PHYSICIANS DAY (more women than men are entering med school these days. My family physician back ¾ of a century ago was a fine female country doctor. She was known for taking farm products, including chickens, as fee payment when patients didn’t have cash. When we finally got a regional hospital, it was named for her.)
ICE CREAM FOR BREAKFAST DAY (I don’t think Dr. Caudill would approve.)
NATIONAL MISSING PERSONS DAY (I hope they find all those gas pump attendants, among others)
FOUR CHAPLAINS DAY (honors four military chaplains from World War II who sacrificed their lives for fellow service members)
There was a Corner contributor this week from Eagle Rock, not too far from EL MONTE.
I confuse escape room, a fun place, with panic room, a not-so-fun place.
I knew TAKEI immediately from his catch phrase. A very entertaining guy, and occasional foil for his buddy Howard Stern.
Since H.Gary's example for 31D flopped, here's some lyrics from Stevie Nicks' Rooms On Fire:
"Well there is magic all around you, if I DO SAY so myself
I have known this much longer than I've known you"
Thanks to (GW)^2 for the fun Saturday grid that even my dumb mass could almost get right. And thanks to H.Gary for your fine review. We have a (crossword-favorite) RELO day today, but only a couple of hour jaunt to Wildwood, FL.
Good morning!
This was another Saturday fail. SANKA/RAMEN, KHAKI/OLIVE, ALPO/IAMS -- too many ways to go wrong, and d-o found 'em all. Couldn't see my way out of the quagmire. Thanx, Grace, Greg, and Husker. (At least I knew the Disney movie. Does that count?)
Took 14:11 today. I passed through the top third with nothing entered the first time. The Steve Miller Band saved me there (and I'm not being a Joker).
I didn't know today's actress (Erica) or one of the actors (Nance), but I knew the other three (Alda, Takei, & Elba), eventually. Seems like a lot of actors for one puzzle.
I don't care for the "lait" clue/answer, but I liked the "plot holes" clue.
The Saturday geography lessons weren't friendly to me (Harare & Elmonte).
The lower-case "w" in wafers threw me off the scent, momentarily, for Nilla. I figured that had to be a capitalized W, but no. The brand is "Nilla".
My apology first started with "I'm sorry," then "so sorry," before becoming "oh, sorry."
DNF. This puzzle was above my pay grade. I thought I was on a roll when I threw down Everglades but from then on I had brain freeze. Went wrong in the NW with "so sorry" instead of "oh sorry" and all went downhill from there. The obvious escaped me and answers just wouldn't come. Oh well, next!
Good morning. Thank you, to today's Triple G team.
I solved late last night. One silly error. I had AmONG instead of ALONG, and PmOTHOLE instead of PLOTHOLE. D'oh!
Other than my gaffe, I really enjoyed this one.
44A - Thé addition. Thé is French for tea.
I knew XKCD. Part of what makes XKCD fun is that Munroe adds text to his sketches that can be seen if you hover over the image. I've added the missing text to Gary's image. If you hover over it, you will now see his remark about that sketch. (You early viewers will have to refresh his review to see it.)
I quickly entered 'train car' where CROSS TIE belonged. It came out almost as quickly. It took longer to see my mistake at HARARE. I had HAtARE.
Jinx, our family doctor of many years was the same way. Her office was on the first floor of her large and very old two story farmhouse. There always seemed to be people working around her house, yard and garage. I think I commented about her before. She was very smart, very direct, and very down to earth. One time I had stomach pains and my brother took me to her office. She told my brother to take me home. She told him I "was full of s%&#." I needed an enema.
Later that summer, he again took me back to see her for stomach pain. She looked at me and said, "Are you full of s%&# again?" After palpitating me, she told my brother to take me directly to the hospital. "Don't stop at home first, and no food for him." "His appendix is coming out tomorrow morning, if it doesn't burst before then." She did the surgery. I remember her telling me afterwards something to the effect of, "And sure enough, there it was, right where I decided to cut." She was something else.
Gotta run.
Finished it. Did a couple lookups to get started, e.g. capital of Zimbabwe.
I did figure out HAUL, so that gave UBER and ALDA. Tried SOSORRY at first. LASH corrected that.
One complaint, my paper had Rock 'n me band not group for the clue which made me scratch my head when it appeared in the fill. Editorial screw-up.
Real hard to get a toe hold today. Grace and Greg did a great job on the grid and Gary's review spot on.
Goosey, goosey gander, where shall I wander?
Wherein.
Thanks TTP for the explanation of The', my paper doesn't print diacritics so some clues get garbled.
Well all’s right with the world I finished a Saturn’s Day puzzle. 😃Probably in part due to long gettable answers providing lots of perpage. Probably not an easy construct as Grace & Greg as they sit by their HEARTH
Inkovers: xkid/XKCD, NECCO/NILLA (it’s always NILLA, foolish mistake)
Isn’t OSMOSIS a DEcontamination process? … Wanted ELVIS but thought he entertained the overseas troops with a USO type gig. Is APLOMB a type of a plum?
Stuck with ALPO (DO) crossed with PLUG sharing an L too long but no surrounding answers would work SO switched to the other 4 letter dog food.
worm and black wouldn’t work with HOLE. Didn’t see what that had to do with the “Matrix” series until the reveal
When the postman gets sloppy I get wrinkles in “TIME”😆
The only 4 letter actor with the last 2 letters D A. I did need perps not to fall for the tennis part of Wimbledon (just realized it’s not WimbleTon😟). Still don’t know who Jack NANCE is , figured “David” was Larry. …I just about noticed the accent aigu on “thé”
“ITLL come to me” an oft frequent phrase I can be heard uttering during a puzzle bout.
Yikes yet another ELBA!
Suit size….ALONG
Jokes…..….LAUGHLINES
“Slings and ____ “ ….EROS
Before John XXIII…..PIOUS
Jinx: can’t always tell whether it’s Takei or an impersonator on Stern’s show…. TTP our new hospital is named after a Las Vegas casino owner
Hola!
OLE! OLE! I finished a Saturday puzzle and in good time, too, under an hour. Thank you, Grace and Greg.
Every answer filled right along with few unknown or obscure names. Actually, HARARE was the most obscure but it perped also the STEVE MILLER BAND. I believe I've heard of it. Then too, I encountered a Natick at ERISA/NANCE. I had NANsE.
Sigh. I did not recognize Idris ELBA since I don't watch any kind of cartoon films.
Is my OLIVE skin really drab?
it's a good thing that XKCD filled itself because I never would have known it.
And with APLOMB, ALPO gave way to IAMS.
I liked seeing DOSSIERS and OSMOSIS.
Have a great day, everyone!
Mr Google and I FIR. All proper names were unknown to me and I found some clever clues like LASE, TELLY; I was able to make some good WAGS, but I was not too happy with this puzzle.
Concerning LAIT, here it’s milk tea, not café au lait.
Thank you Grace and Greg for a rare Saturday FIR and a lot of fun.
Thank you Husker for filling in the blanks and introducing us to the Warrington family!
Favs:
1A BLABS & 1D BRIO. You know it's going to be a good morning when you get these two right way. Right D-O?
6A XKCD. Google "geek comics" and you'll get a whole bunch of them.
21A OSMOSIS. IMO the clue for this was a bit of a stretch.
26A STEVE MILLER BAND. Let's see if we can backdoor this one.
45A ELVIS. Actually ELVIS did a TOUR of duty in Germany when he joined the ARMY. Batcha he did a bit of singing OVER THERE.
29D LAUGH LINES. You mean there's an antidote for HUMOR?
36D PLOT HOLE. The DR WHO Universe has become so complicated I believe that the BBC must have a whole staff devoted to RETCONS.
50D IT'LL. Reminds me of that joke -- "These days I think a lot about the hereafter. Whenever I walk into a room I find myself asking 'What am I HERE AFTER?'" Sometimes it comes to me and sometimes it doesn't!
Cheers,
Bill
Jinx @5:49 AM "NATIONAL WOMEN PHYSICIANS DAY" - a CSO to Nina (our inanehiker0.
Dang! Almost got this Saturday puppy! Failed at the same spot Jinx did, with ILEO. Never heard of the cartoon, either. I knew about REVERSE OSMOSIS filters, so that was an easy WAG. Lots of perps and some lucky SWAGs almost got me across the finish line. Close, but no biscuit! An enjoyable failure, though.
19:55 Probably a Saturday record for me. The grid filled in as if by divine intervention from the crossword gods, especially the longer fills.
A fun Saturday challenge, had the grid filled in 25 minutes but took me 10 more minutes to correct a mistake in the NW, but managed a FIR w/o help, always a accomplishment on Saturday. First had ROTS for spoils, changed that to LOOT which gave me TASE, but figured that out quickly. My first thought was that the diacritic acute accent on The’ was a speck on my iPad screen til it followed my scroll. Followed the same progression as Anon SS to arrive at OH SORRY. Nice teamwork on this Greg and Grace!
Nice write-up HG, enjoyed reading about the Warrington’s and the whole crossword constructing and selecting for publication process, way more involved than I ever would have thought.
Good Morning:
This is what I consider a perfect Saturday puzzle: challenging, but doable; fair perps with helpful toeholds; no obscurities or esoteric proper names/places; clever cluing; no junk; a minuscule number (4!!) of three letter words; fresh, sparkling fill; most importantly, a truly satisfying, enjoyable, and rewarding solve. My unknowns were XKCD, Erica, Nance, and Elmonte and my only w/os were Harabe/Harare and Necco/Nilla. My favorite C/A was Wrinkles In Time=Laugh Lines and I loved the conversational tones of Oh, Sorry, Is That A Yes, I Insist, Guess Again, and Right On The Money. Some other entries that stood out were Dossiers, Aplomb, Behooves, Osmosis, and Eminent.
Thanks, Grace and Greg, for a delightful collaboration and please come back soon and thanks, HG, for your always dazzling review and photos. Thanks for linking the article about the constructors. Loved the IAMS cartoon and the Behooves quote. Cleo was a cute coda!
Have a great day.
Very good Saturday puzzle, the right mix of challenging but fair. And fun.
And Greg and Grace live right down the road from me! Hope to see more of their puzzles in the future!
Way too hard for me, but I did get some "aha" moments hitting the reveal button.
(I am easily amused...)
Couple of trivia's:
(One thing led to another)
Drab olive green, combined with the aer lingas pic, reminded me of a video I had seen recently. The WWII B17 was painted drab olive green above, and sky gray below,for a combined total weight of 78 pounds of paint. The curious thing was, they did a test towards the end of the war to see how much more efficient the plane would be without the weight of paint, and found contrary to expectations, that the heavier painted plane flew faster and was 3% more fuel efficient than the unpainted plane. If you want to know why this did not apply to the B29, you will have to watch this video. (you can skip to 3:30 if your eyes glaze over...)
XKCD has been on the Blog before!
(It took Anon-T's help for me to see the missing data)
And now my iPad is much more efficient with the preview mode turned on!
Anywho, I became so enamoured with XKCD that I saved it in my "watch again" files. But he only posts roughly once a week and I keep forgetting to keep up t9 date...
Try this interactive comic called "escape speed" which will either annoy you or keep you entertained for hours. Touch the centre and sides of the screen to steer your spacecraft to other worlds, and find stuff. Then go to this explanation of why your doing it wrong.
I dated a UVM professor’s daughter for about six months many moons ago and want to root for these two. The first thing I filed in the puzzle was STEVE MILLER BAND, but, like Lee, I thought the presence of the word “band” in the clue was faulty, and the other grid-spanner added the superfluous “RIGHT” to the fully sufficient ON THE MONEY. I barely detected the diacritical mark on the LAIT clue, my final fill. I did FIR in about 40 minutes (good time for me on a Saturday), so I guess I should feel satisfied.
I didn’t know XKCD, ERICA (as obscurely clued) and found “instant success” to be an obtuse clue for RAMEN. I DID bite on the Wimbledon misdirection. Yes, Wimbledon is a place beyond its tennis center, but c’mon!
HG: I didn’t encounter RAMEN until the late 1970s, but I first heard of it in Jim Bouton’s “Ball Four,” when the pitcher-author discovered Siamin at the ballpark while playing for the Pacific Coast League’s Hawaii Islanders. I knew Cleo Laine and also the Pinocchio fish.
Lucina, I love your labeling of “cartoon films.” I’ve got to steal it. A nation that demands cartoon films above all else is a nation in which widespread belief in ridiculous conspiracy theories should not be surprising.
A version of Waseely’s “hereafter” joke epitomized the Arte Johnson-Ruth Buzzi park bench scenes on “Laugh-In.” Tyrone F. Horneigh: “Do you believe in the Hereafter?” Gladys Ormphby: “Of course I do!” Tyrone, cackling: “Well, I guess you know what I’m here after.”
This puzzle seemed very fresh and creative to me. Like others, I didn't know XKCD, ERICA, and NANCE, and didn't know ELBA in that context, but had no trouble leaping from one clue to another and finishing correctly, with pleasure. Many thanks to Team Warrington and to Husker Gary for the recap.
Puzzling thoughts:
FIR with several spots where I had to "erase" and choose another letter. As others have said, I tried ALPO before IAMS; I had LOYAL before PIOUS; I had I'M and SO SORRY before OH SORRY
Not sure I get the clues for UBER and HAUL
HG gave us a great recap for the wonderful puzzle by daughter and dad - fun article to read about them, too. I won't feel too rejected now that I read about their having had just one puzzle accepted at the NYT after 25 "nos"
Ray-O @ 10:08 ==> does this limerick answer your question?
Little Jack Horner (whose now famous thumb)
Appears at book signings; for money he'll come
To show off his digit,
And try not to fidget,
So all can now see that he does have APLOMB
Cool limerick.
Uber is a “side hustle” for people who wanna make some extra cash besides their “day job”. A Doc friend retired a few years ago and decided to do some ubering and give the HAUL to his favorite charity.
Edward in Los Angeles. My spouse is from El Monte, by way of Amsterdam.
I’m color blind, y’all with color vision mak me sick🤪
G & G set out a nice challenging little grid here — loved all the long ones (altho I ran AGOG at the band/BAND thing); RUGHTONTHEMONEY was a beaut (and thanks for the cool origins story in that, H-Gary!).
Hand up for soSORRY before LASH clued me in, but GADS left me clueless — all I’ve ever heard in its context is GADabout as a noun. My “best pull out of the ether” was HARARE; I have nooo idea what part of my brain I drew that from, but I got it.
Anon 9:13am, does that then mean you’re a midnight toker? 🤙🏽😆
====> Darren / L.A.
CED, I don't have enough gigs to watch the video, but I'm betting that the paint caused a thin layer of air to adhese to the plane, and the wind slid over the "dead" air better than it slid over bare aluminum. Racing sailors found out that a boat hull roughened with very fine sandpaper has noticeably less drag than a finely-polished hull. (But they aren't nearly as pretty)
Didn't like this puzzle.
Good puzzle, thank you.
Thanks to Grace and Greg. How fun it must be to collaborate on a puzzle together! I noticed "GRACE under fire".
FAVs: Penetrating vision, Instant success?, and STEVE MILLER BAND. Had Grace ever heard of SMB?
I heard Randall Munroe tell an interviewer that XKCD does not stand for anything. It was chosen so people would have to say each letter and not be able to turn it into a word.
That was interesting about Elvis. He did make it out to Hawaii....
I lost hope for a FIR when actress Tazel met Actor Jack.
26A. The editors noticed the "band" error and fixed it in time for some publications but it was too late for others.
Thanks to H-Gary for all the info!
Hi All!
I got close, but no cigar. TILT (er, SELL) in the SE didn't help.
Grace & Grag - thanks for the very fun & fresh puzzle.
Thanks HG for the expo, correcting my errors and filling in the blanks.
WOs: Hand-up: aLpo | pLug, CBO -> GAO
Fav: XKCD. I read it (and catch-up) a few times a month, have both his What If? books, and Thing Explainer.
Cheers, -T
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