Saturday Themeless by Jacob McDermott
This a debut LA puzzle for Jacob and I was able to get through his 68-word construction in a very good time.There were a few sticking points but, as usually happens on Saturdays, the long fills became obvious and allowed me to roll on to a satisfying conclusion. Even his very contemporary references fell with relative ease.
Across:
1. Game that's somewhat pointless?: SHUTOUT - Don Larsen's 1956 World Series perfect game SHUT OUT against the Dodgers is probably the most famous one of all. Other than that game he was only a journeyman pitcher at best but he did have his day in the sun.
8. Spanish language apps: TAPAS - Appetizers
15. Brightness: SMARTS 😀
17. Self-made person?: ALTER EGO - $4,500 will buy you a first edition of the most famous one in literature.
18. Like some barbecue: KOREAN - This one is in Houston.
19. Dale: GLEN.
20. Competed like Kobayashi: ATE - At a July 4th eating competition.
22. Dealt with: SAW TO.
23. Colorful wrap: SERAPE - Clint bought this himself and took it with him where he made the American western trilogy in Spain with an Italian director.
26. "The Hurting Kind" poet Limón: ADA.
29. Loaded: ROLLING IN IT 😀
32. "No joke!": HONEST TO GOD.
33. Drain: SAP.
34. Texter's "Success!": FTW - Where I learned the phrase, "I'll take Totie Fields For The Win." These days it's more likely to be said after the victory.
35. Pro certified in BLS: EMT - An EMT can give CPR as a part of BLS
36. Really bad situation: DIRE STRAITS.
39. Home of Fangorn Forest and the Misty Mountains: MIDDLE EARTH - From Lord Of The Rings
40. "__ plaisir!": AVEC - With pleasure in Français
41. First name in rational egoism: AYN - Wanna know more?
42. Lineup at a charging station: TESLAS.
47. Where workers cut the mustard?: DELIS 😀
49. Shakshouka ingredient: EGG - I first saw shakshouka in a Stella Zawistowski puzzle I blogged four years ago.
51. Storm antecedent, perhaps: CALM.
52. Tolerates: ABIDES - I have trouble ABIDING obscure names crossing each other in a puzzle, but I soldier on.
54. Teen drama starring Zendaya: EUPHORIA.
57. 1977 Travolta role: MANERO - John lost 20 lbs to play Tony MANERO
58. Home inspection concern: RADON GAS - Here ya go
59. Showed again: RERAN - This is show is credited with being first to do this during the time Lucy was pregnant.
60. "Feel me?": CAPEESH - The Americanization of the Italian phrase.
Down:
2. "Ungodly Hour" R&B duo Chloe x __: HALLE - More info on this sister act
3. Unqualified: UTTER.
4. Singer __ Marie: TEENA.
5. Bobby in an iconic Stanley Cup Final photo: ORR - that led to this statue in Boston
6. Four Corners Native: UTE.
7. Pilate's wear: TOGA - Not what you wear to a pilate's class. 😀
7. Pilate's wear: TOGA - Not what you wear to a pilate's class. 😀
 |
| Pilate, "Ecce Homo" |
8. Verbal headshake: TSK.
9. Famous name in cookies: AMOS.
10. Models: PARADIGMS - I have seen many PARADIGM shifts in education over my many decades of teaching. Some were useful and some were failures.
11. "Right?": ARE WE NOT- ARE WE NOT crossword fans?
12. Card handed to a TSA agent: STATE ID.
14. Rando: TOTAL STRANGER - Jay Leno's hilarious encounters with rando(m) strangers.
21. Wikipedia tussle: EDIT WAR.
24. Set in motion: PROPEL.
25. Unit of time often used hyperbolically: EON.
27. Pangolin snack: ANT - Two pangolins at a buffet
30. T-Boz and Chilli bandmate: LEFT EYE - If you're a fan, you know who's who
31. "Faust" dramatist: GOETHE - A first edition for $7,500
32. Apple press release?: HARD CIDER 😀
33. Bench: SIDELINE - Some players can be SIDELINED by an injury which will put them on the bench
36. Source of cheap shots?: DIVE BAR - Happy Bottom Riding Club was a DIVE BAR near Edwards Air Force Base where lots of early test pilots, including Chuck Yeager, hung out. It was featured in the movie The Right Stuff
33. Bench: SIDELINE - Some players can be SIDELINED by an injury which will put them on the bench
36. Source of cheap shots?: DIVE BAR - Happy Bottom Riding Club was a DIVE BAR near Edwards Air Force Base where lots of early test pilots, including Chuck Yeager, hung out. It was featured in the movie The Right Stuff
38. Wednesday's cousin: ITT - Halloween costumes
39. Formal address: MADAM.
43. Rock cake kin: SCONE.
44. Cup size: LARGE.
45. Protective cover?: ALIAS - George Costanza's favorite
46. Big hit: SMASH.
48. Transfusion fluids: SERA - SERA vs Plasma
50. Avo dip: GUACamole
53. "Bye, __": farewell from a buffalo's dad, in a classic joke: SON.
56. Brewer's unit: HOP - Not a measure just an ingredient.
 |
| HOPS is a, uh, growing crop in Nebraska |
57 comments:
One of the most important aspects of any crossword puzzle is “redundancy.” The fact that clues run both “across” and “down” gives us a much better chance of solving them than if they were “linear” as in an acrostic. For example, because of redundancy I was able to get “edit war” and “are we not”? Which I may not have been able to get otherwise. And so I can say “FTW” or, more appropriate for us here, FIR, so I’m happy.
DNF. Filled 29, 27 correctly.
Today is:
NATIONAL I AM IN CONTROL DAY (if you think so, you may need to see a doctor)
NATIONAL DOCTORS DAY (MD-type docs. Proclaimed by Bush XLI in 1991)
NATIONAL TAKE A WALK IN THE PARK DAY (before the air quality makes it unhealthy)
NATIONAL VIRTUAL VACATION DAY (something even ol’ Jinx can afford)
NATIONAL TURKEY NECK SOUP DAY (thought this was the day after Thanksgiving. Or Christmas.)
NATIONAL PENCIL DAY (when is “national pencil neck day?”)
Missed with dARk CIDER and TAcoS, but, of course, I got LARGE cups. Nice fill, if you get my drift, kiddo.
I also got DIRE STRAITS, but that one made me crave money for nothing.
Thanks for the fun review, H.Gary.
I was not up to this challenge. Unlike last Saturday when I FIR in record time, today I had to resort to red letters early in the game. Even then it took multiple alphabet runs to get it done.
Well, out of 185 spaces to fill I was correct on 184 of them, for a 99.4%, so I’ll give myself an “A”, but my FIW prevented the “A+”. Had the grid filled in about 45 minutes and pored over it several times and couldn’t locate a mistake, which was spelling SERAPE as SARAPE, and HALLA instead of the unknown HALLE. Unlike Husker G, I found this to be quite the struggle, but about a perfect puzzle for the Saturday LAT. DKN EUPHORIA, MANERO, LEFT EYE or ADA, perps handled those. Had to change I SWEAR, to HONEST, and ALIBI to ALIAS. The backspace key is my favorite and why I prefer to do the CW’s online, if I did this one in pen there would be so many write-overs as to be illegible in spots 🤣. More modern slang with Rando as a clue, the other day INSPO being an answer. DW does Pilates almost daily, but she usually wears tights and never a TOGA, didn’t equate it with that Pontius dude. Some clever cluing for SHUT OUT, DIVE BAR and ALTER EGO. Thank you Jacob and Patti for the truly challenging puzzle today! Nice to see young people getting into construction, makes us older solvers keep up with the times!
HG ~ another stellar review, much appreciated!
Took 12:37 today to for the win.
Surprising FIR for me, as there seemed to be a lot I didn't know including, Manero, Halle, the poet, the dramatist, the rational egoism name, today's French, the spelling of "capeesh/capice", and even today's Spanish (my fault on that one). I don't think of "snort" as a drink.
Five of the first seven down clues involved proper nouns, but things settled down after that.
Even though I remembered her, I consider "Left eye" to be fairly obscure. Mainly because she was dating an NFL player (Andre Rison) and was accused of trying to burn down their mansion.
Jinx, you and I must be brothers in arms.
* Sorry for the extra "to" in my first sentence.
I think I'm going to take a break on the crossword for awhile. I'm just not enjoying it anymore. I think AVEC plaisir pushed me over the edge but it wasn't going to take much.
Good group here. Thanks for putting up with my whining.
Fun review. Leno and Large videos made my morning!
Anon @ 12:37 - or maybe we're sultans of swing
Whiner - that's why I give up early on some puzzles. I just go on to the Penny Press and King Features crosswords, as well as a couple of sudokus. Too many fish in the sea-o-puzzle to let myself get too frustrated with any one of them. But I am too stubborn to give up on the diabolic Friday and Sunday sudokus at sudoku.org.uk.
DNF. Crashed and burned in the NE. It didn't help that I threw down "rolling over" instead of "rolling in it".
I really struggled with two areas, the center and the aforementioned NE. And I really thought I was going along OK with an easy fill everywhere else.
But, alss, I was wrong, so wrong!
Hey Jinx ~ did you happen to notice that clue “cup size” for LARGE was appropriately numbered 44D? 😂
YP - How the heck did miss that! Makes me feel like a downright boob!
Utter is "unqualified"? Some kind of Tiktocky usage? Capiche means "get it?" or "understand?", not "Feel me", unless that's again some kind of online usage that will be gone in six months. And I never heard of "capeesh". Tik Tok again? Is "app" supposed to be an abbreviation for "appetizer"? Never heard of that either. Lousy puzzle. Really lousy.
For the men's NCAA fans, I've been writing about the ESPN analytics. Before the tournament started, the stats showed that only 10 of the 66 teams would be likely to win. After the first round, 8 teams on the list remained, and only 6 after the second round. After Thursday and yesterday, Purdue is the only team left. I have a sneaking suspicion that history will be made this year. After all, it is March Madness©.
Anon @ 9:37 - far be it from me to defend a puzzle, but if were you British you might say "this puzzle was utter rubbish" - "utter" meaning without qualifications, such as ifs, ands or buts.
Capeesh.....really???
Unlike Gary, I wasn't able to get through this one, just 3/4 of it. I couldn't get the NW even though I immediately filled SERAPE, ORR, UTE, & TOGA. Baseball wasn't thought of because it has RUNS, not points. HALLE & TEENA Marie were unfilled unknowns. TATER TOTS in a casserole- not in the South. The NE and everything below HONEST TO GOD was filled- no lie.
These new words, abbrs., Rap singers and text speak are making puzzles harder to even guess, not to mention somebody you've never heard of who ATE a slew of hot dogs. The 'Corner' had its own acronyms and I TITT after 20 minutes.
29A. "Loaded"- I was thinking food, not money. A 'loaded' baked potato has EVERYTHING IN IT but had one too many letters.
FTW- I only knew of the bikers' tattoos with FTW, short for F____THE WORLD. "For The
Win" never clicked.
BLS- never heard of it.
EUPHORIA and MANERO- got those by perps; never saw Saturday Night Fever or even heard of Zendaya or "Euphoria". Didn't get the unknown LEFT EYE person in the band.
GOETHE- I read the book 'auf Deutsch' back in college in 3rd semester German.
Yooper- you are observant to get the 44D's LARGE. Maybe it was a Freudian slip.
Jinx @ 6:43, I, too, was on the Mark Knopfler band wagon at 36 Across.
Had to change ARE WE SET to the correct ARE WE NOT at 11 Down.
I know that here was not enough room to make 12 Down STATE ISSUED ID but STATE ID was utterly unsatisfactory.
Congrats on the debut, Jacob!
I thought it was a great puzzle!! I thoroughly enjoyed it!
DNF. TITT early, could see that this was not worth the effort for me. YMMV.
DNF big time. Jacob, I cry uncle on this beast, especially in the SE. I have no idea what shakshouka is, never heard of Zendoya, or for that matter rock cake, so the SE is pretty white. And the rest of the puzzle doesn't look much better.
Son Jim--aka Arizona Jim to you all--is arriving for a visit later today, so maybe we'll put our heads together and try to reduce the number of white spaces.
34 across For The Win -- my final answer to FIR! (Never heard of Left Eye or his/her bandmates, but it had to be.) Sure, there were lots of unknowns, but perps were friendly. My first real success was in the southwest, which I completed AVEC plaisir, and then on to the rest.
Many thanks, Jacob, for the enjoyable challenge. Thanks as always to Patti for making sure the clues give us a toehold, and thanks to Husker Gary for cheerfully solving and sharing.
I’m leaning in that direction although I don’t wish to do so. Contemporary clues? Maybe, or another word for obscure for items like Halle and Left eye. Does anyone else think that the trend of using texter abbreviations is getting out of hand as only twelve year olds will be able to decipher them as the use of full words becomes antiquated? Also seems like slang terms such as “Rando” (while I understood it after a moment) are also becoming a norm? I understand language changes, but soon we’ll need decoder implants in our brains to figure out communication! How many different ways have we seen the Americanization of ‘capeesh’ spelled? And I also don’t see any correlation between utter and unqualified (nor does google in my effort) although I recognized it as an utterly poor possibility!
I found this quite difficult. NW a cluster of obscurities for me. Hand up UTTER had me mystified for awhile. LEFT EYE/FTW also obscure for me. Hand up SNORT seems wrong. Relieved to FIR.
In this video Merlie looks radiant as our KOREAN BARBECUE is prepared at Park's BBQ in Los Angeles.
waseeley Hand up regarding AYN. Not RATIONAL or consistent at all. She lived on public assistance late in life after railing against it for others.
From Yesterday:
AnonT Thanks for the shout out regarding ENCINO and Valley Girl!
P.s. for a more complete comment, I FIW only due to looking up Halle and Left Eye - but still feel like the constructor doesn’t give one a fair shot. But I’m stubborn and will keep coming back. Does anyone get the feeling that some constructors put together a grid but have a mix of empty spaces left and then just google a random abbreviation or texter phrase and plug them in without having a clue themselves of the concept beforehand? Otherwise it would be back to the drawing board for an answer that could actually be sussed out?
Bill, did you see the news from up your way? The administration has issued standards for decorating the Easter eggs that will be used in Monday's Easter Egg Roll. Among them, there shall be no religious symbols. Yup, there must be no religious connotation during an Easter celebration. I fear our bureaucrats more than I fear our foreign adversaries.
Back to the ugly clueing and also nonsense clueing..
I challenge anyone to show me the definition of UTTER to be “unqualified”.
I’ll even settle for a synonym.
Someone else already mentioned the idiocy of “CAPEESH”….so now we’re going to use a foreign word but not spell it correctly.
And “(blank) plaisir” speaks for itself.
I think WHINER has it correctly.
I've worked crosswords on and off since I started reading. I'm old. A few years ago I stopped working the puzzles because of the integration of text-speak, and ridiculous, subjective 'sounds'...disgusting = eww or is it eew? I also resented the multi-word clues without the 'two word' caveat in the clue or 'foreign word' omissions. I'm waiting for a back surgery, and find myself with time to kill and am back to my daily puzzle frustration. I now find I need and urban dictionary just to keep up with the crossword blog :D Is there a listing of acronyms used in the blog so I know to what posters are referring? I get WAG...but FIR and others are, to quote Jimmy Buffett, 'Like the jitterbug, they just plumb evade me'. Thanks in advance for helping a dinosaur understand a new language.
Let's go around again [once!] ...
Thank you Jacob and congratulations on your debut. I really liked this puzzle, but ended with a one letter FIW.
And thanks Husker for your review and for showing me which letter.
A few favs:
23A SERAPE. Had SARANG, which didn't perp, so I changed it to SARAPE. When the penny dropped for 1A SHUT OUT (doh!) I still had SARAPE and thought 2D HALLA sounded a little strange for a woman's name but ALAS ...
32A HONEST TO GOD. Appropriate fill for the Easter Vigil, which is literally "No joke".
41A AYN. It may be rational, but amidst a world population of 8 Billion+ it's pretty stupid.
47A DELIS. DIJON didn't perp.
7D TOGA. Pilate is the poster boy for the most famous "hand washer" in history.
10D PARADIGMS. We're overdo for one in the science of Biology. Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions would predict that we'll get one when the current generation of biologists dies out!
21D EDIT WAR. Some of these WARS are conducted by BOTS, as ID advocates have found out the hard way.
27D ANT. I learned this from watching Wild Kratts on PBS KIDS with my grandsons. 😀
31D GOETHE. His drama has also served as the basis for two two OPERAS by Gounod and Berlioz.
Cheers
Bill
Most of the complaints (and there were quite a few) I thought were legitimate. Obscure words, abbreviations, foreign words..and text lingo among other things. It seems the contributors can’t complete one without all the gobbledegook. Great to see things like
Paradigms. That’s even my kind of crossword. Good clue too. Never heard of rando. They were right about the ne corner. Never heard of Euphoria as a teen drama, but I’m not surprised. I think folks forget the average age of the people doing the puzzles. Let’s have a nod to us older types who I think are the participants for the most part. There wasn’t much negativity in this blog a year ago. There definitely seems to be a lot more grumbling these days. Nuff said.
I thought it was a great puzzle!! I thoroughly enjoyed it!!
I thought it was a great puzzle! I thoroughly enjoyed it!!
Nonna49 @2:48 PM Here's the standard list that C.C. created. But it's 12 years old and probably needs to be updated. You can also get to it from the Comments Section Abbrs that appears just above/below the comments edit window depending on whether you're using a desktop or phone to enter your comments.
Greetings! It would probably be quicker for me to list the clues I filled rather than the ones left blank. I don’t usually do the Saturday puzzle but gave this on a try. I was not on the wavelength for both clues and fills, but the ones I entered were right, so that’s a plus.
I do have to agree that clues for 60A: “feel me”/CAPEECH and 3D: unqualified/UTTER were misleading. Earlier in the week the clues might have been: “Understand?” & “complete.” Yes, I know… both perfectly obtuse for Saturday.
Thanks H.Gary. I’m impressed & amazed!!
FLN: Anon-T, thanks for the suggestion. I’ve set the perimeters but can’t exclude the shrub on my Ring. Another thing is that it partially obstructs the view of my front walk so it’s gotta go…. eventually. Who knew 30 years ago when it was put in that it would become an issue!!
Happy Easter to all who celebrate.
JJB @12:54 PM The idea behind all this gobbledegook is that it's supposed to draw in a younger generation of solvers. But that assumes that the post-literate generation has any interest in crosswords ...
Hand up if you're a solver on this blog and you're under 50. Anyone who wouldn't like to reveal their age can always login anonymously! 😀
OTOH ... Here's another slant on the problem.
FIR despite knowing almost nothing on the first pass. This was one of those puzzles for which everything needed perps, and the whole thing unfolded, rather pleasingly, in about 40 minutes. Thanks, HG, for the confirmations.
Names I knew, like EUPHORIA AND MANERO, didn’t come to mind immediately without a couple of letters’ worth of perps. The ‘u’ in GUAC was enough to give me the show with Zendaya, proving I’m now better at Wheel of Fortune than I am at Jeopardy. Even MIDDLE EARTH came slowly; I knew it was a Tolkien thing, but I’ve never read any of that. I did read AYN Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” in which she hypocritically turned the liberal character I liked early on into an UTTER axxhole, a totally different person.
Names I didn’t know: I’ve heard of Lisa “LEFT EYE” Lopes but don’t know TBoz and Chilli. And the only HALLE I know is Halle Berry. Yummers.
The northeast fell last. The g in HONEST TO GOD led me to PARADIGMS, which was next door to my two least favorite entries in the puzzle, the lame dialogue of ARE WE NOT? and STATE ID, instead of photo ID. I hope Irish Miss shows up to tell us whether that’s an example of “green paint.” SNORT was a stretch, and KOREAN barbecue ain’t exactly up there with Texas brisket when my favorite barbecue items come to mind.
Also lame: the redundancy of RADON GAS in the southeast, the spelling of CAPEESH, calling HOPs a “unit,” and the mustard-cutting clue for DELIS. There sure are a lot of DELI clues in these puzzles for things I would never frequent a deli to buy. Not every sandwich shop is my idea of a deli.
I liked DIRE STRAITS (and want to mention the song So Far Away), which reminded me that most people mistakenly say ”straight jacket.” I also liked DIVE BAR. And, unlike others, I liked AVEC, even though the clue didn’t help me.
There was some misdirection based on parts of speech, notably “bench” as a verb, and one really great punctuation trick, an apostrophe that meant Pilate’s was referring to the Roman person, not the eponymous dance/exercise regimen. There were two food entries that took me a while. TAPAS came slowly because I fell for the pun on “apps.” TATER TOT came slowly because I wouldn’t add that to a casserole. On the plus side, it brought Napoleon Dynamite to mind. In the same vein, shakshouka brought EGG to mind less quickly than it conjured Stella Z.
AnonymousPVX @12:36 How about this?"
Friday and Saturday have become very tough lately for me, I suspect that the mix of some new jargon leaves me on the outside. Thus, I am often forced to search for clues to complete the puzzle. Today was no different. Finished the puzzle but had to do some searching for answers.
Example, 2D. No idea who the Duo was.
SubG is right that perps often contribute to solving the long answers. The problem is often the short ones can have several options, etc, etc.
Regardless, I still look at it as a learning experience.
Nuff said
Jinx @8:38 AM I just started slogging my way through 75 Patrick Berry puzzles and I had to TITT on the last two. Google "Crossword Construction for Dummy" and you can buy the PDF for 2 STAGS -- the puzzles are a bonus that Berry uses to illustrate his considerable constructor chops.
Anonymous PVX, Husker football has been an UTTER (absolute, unmitigated, unqualified) disaster for two decades. How's that? :-)
BTW, I am 77 and enjoy learning the slang of today. Did we invent: No Prob, That's Teriif, Pram, Natch, Decaf, Hankie, Nuke, etc.?
I can hear my mother saying – Cat’s pajamas, Bee’s knees, etc. One day my dad was listening to a song and shocked us all when he mentioned that it sounded like a like a bazooka a guy used to play.
Another close but no cigar effort today. I fell on my sword in the middle with LEFT EYE, FTW, and AYN (I read her stuff years ago but didn’t recognize the descriptor). I got RADON GAS but read it as “radongas” and couldn’t figure out the strange word - duh! Despite my difficulties and, honestly, my non-enjoyment of the puzzle, I admired the long clues and much of the fill. ABIDES is a favorite, and I adored Saturday Night Fever and Tony MANERO. Thanks and welcome Jacob, for the challenge, and thank you too, Waseely for the super tour.
I still don’t know what BLS stands for - anyone?
It was so great to watch Duke prevail over Houston last night, though I have almost no fingernails left. Onward to The Elite Eight and NC State tomorrow.
Threw in the towel early, as this Saturday stumper is way out of my league.
But I did learn a lot of things, and it did pique my curiosity. For instance:
Left eye...
(I had to ask a younger person for help, and they knew immediately.)
But being an old fart, ( I assure you, I only eat the freshest beans...). (Something in the processing ages them...)
I wondered how it could be clued for the flatulent.
I ask you, for a Saturday, would it be too hard to clue "left eye",as jack of hearts?. (Where right eye would be jack of spades?)
Waseely at 1:07, Thanks so much for the excellent article on crossword perspectives. I especially liked Will Shortz’s comments, since is at the master of everything to do with Words, in my opinion
Oips - my comment published before I was ready. “He”, not “is” and a period at the end.
Sorry make Berry's book 10 STAGS. It still a steal.
Wendybird @1:37 PM Thank you for the kind words on my Thursday review, but today's Sherpa is er, Husker Gary. Saturday puzzles are out of my league. And Gary has kindly provided a picture for BLS -- Basic Life Support.
Out of town guests gone, so catching up. I loved the Friday puzzle, the Saturday, not so much. I had to look up half the words/nouns/abbreviations.
Now to rest, then more partying. Phew!
Thank you reviewers as usual. I really appreciated Waseely’s link to CW construction conundrums.
Loved today's puzzle although it took the better part of an hour. Amused by the snarky maligning of Ayn Rand.
Anonymous @2:57 PM She would have appreciated it. She had such a great sense of humor. 😀
PHOTO ID --> STATE ID.
YES --> TSK.
SARAPE --> SERAPE and HALLA --> HALLE.
-------RICH, nope.
WTF is CAPEESH? Let's just go ahead and spell stuff however we feel like it. And, as Anonymous at 9:37 AM said, capiche means "get it?" or "understand?", not "feel me?".
I was not able to solve this puzzle without several clicks on the "Reveal word" button because I just don't have the educational, experiential, and cultural background information in my brain to solve it. Or maybe I should type "expeeerinshul" as long as it seems to be acceptable to spell stuff whichever way we choose to.
Oh, about our ages, I'm 82.5 years of age.
Jace - love it. Thanks for the chuckles
Jinx,
I'm with you on your note to Bill re the Easter Egg Roll. My beliefs could most charitably called agnostic, but even I would not be offended in the least if there were some crosses visible somewhere. This is EASTER, for crying out loud. If there were some Jewish fest going on at the capital, I would expect to see some Stars of David somewhere.
Waseeley,
I neglected to respond to your hands-up regarding anybody in the Corner under 50. Son Jim (aka Arizona Jim) has been
traveling, but he won't mind my telling that he is 43.
Jayce @ 5:07 ; Heartily concur. The sheer arbitriness of the new regime's spelling antics is too much. Remember "RAWR" from recently?
Also 8D, 'headshake' for "TSK" was illustrated ironically in HG's exposition by a FINGERshaking!
I thought it was a great puzzle!! I thoroughly enjoyed it!
I’m also with Whiner. AVEC what? CAPEESH? All of it UTTER rubbish, indeed. After an initial run-through with almost Ø fills, I was about ready to do something that I’ve never done: TITT. But SNORT, dang it, I wasn’t going to fold, so I just decided to cheat on the pop-culture falderah so I could get at least some enjoyment out of this too-clever-for-its-own-good mess. Sorry, Jacob… not my cuppa.
As usual, Husker G’s overview gave me some respite — Jinx, glad to see you’re another Mark Knopfler/Dire Straits aficionado!
====> Darren / L.A.
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