Much A DO about Cheveux
This is Baylee Devereaux's 3rd visit to the Corner, the last reviewed by sumdaze on January 30, 2023. Some of you will have already noticed that there are circles in this puzzle, and for those who see them as unneeded, I decided make it easier for you to solve by removing them from the grid, comme ça ...
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Today's grid sans circles |
63A. Elegant hairstyle, as given by clues 17-, 30-, and 47-Across?: FRENCH TWIST.
Without all that clutter solving the themers should now be a piece of cake ...
17. Man in 1990s hip-hop fashion?: HAMMER PANTS. Named for the
eponymous M C Hammer?
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Hammer Pants |
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... send the kids outside |
47. Dog in a classic drawing game?: PICTIONARY. This one was really easy...
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All you have to do is picture it! |
... and suddenly the reveal started to make sense ...
63. Elegant
hairstyle, and what the circled letters give to 17-, 30-, and 47-Across?:
FRENCH TWIST.
... all three of
the actual themers were 5 letter
mots Français that twisted
UP and
DOWN (or
DOWN and
UP) above and below the FAUX themers (those referenced in the
reveal). They provide today's French lesson, spelled respectively ...
HOMME: "Man in 1990's hip-hop fashion?"
ECOLE: "School in a recreational vehicle?"
CHIEN: "Dog
in a classic drawing game?"
... very clever (and hard to construct I bet). And to think that I nearly missed it! The moral of
this saga is that circles are sometimes useful and may even be necessary
to solve a crossword puzzle, or at the very least to understand the theme. 😀
Most of the rest of the clues are lot easier, except for 1A ...
Across:
1. Market leader?: GROCER.
I got this answer only with the help of perps. The word "leader"
usually implies a prefix or perhaps the start of a meta-clue. After 2
or 3 false starts I gave up trying to figure out what the clue had to do
with a GROCER and googled it -- "A market leader
could be a product, brand, company, organization, group name which has
the highest percentage of total sales revenue of a particular market. The market leader dominates the market by influencing the customer loyalty towards it, distribution, pricing, etc." - indiatimes.com. I don't get it. Any ideas?
11. Borrow, but not really: BUM. At the very end of this Beatles classic John Lennon tries to BUM a cigarette. Listen for it ...
14. Mexican state on the Gulf of California: SONORA. SONORA -- officially the Spanish: Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora (English: Free and Sovereign State of Sonora), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. Looks like it's right down the road from Lucina and the Chairman ...
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| Pilates"All Fours" Exercise |
17. [Theme clue]
19. Donkey: ASS.
20. "Uncut Gems" actor Sandler: ADAM. Tomato Meter 91%, Audience Score 52%. Capsule reviews and a trailer (movie rated R, trailer PG (language)) ...
21. AirPod locale: EAR.
22. Loathes: HATES.
24. "Umbrella" singer, to fans: RIRI. As in Rhianna . Here's her song ...
25. Device that forms the "I" in the Pixar logo: LAMP. It wasn't always a LAMP.
29. Annoyance: PEST.
30. [Theme clue].
33. Pronoun choice: SHE.
35. Poker do-overs: REDEALS.
36. Scottish cap: TAM. Only $165, with free shipping ...
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| Scottish Tam |
41. Pt. of OED: ENG. Oxford English Dictionary.
42. Change one's locks?: DYE.
43. One on a shopping spree: SPENDER.
45. Lunar New Year: TET. 2024 is the Year of the Dragon which is especially lucky. Our soon to be born Vietnamese great-nephew will be doubly blessed!
47. [Theme clue]
50. When repeated, "Great speech!": HEAR. HEAR, HEAR is also a song by Atmosphere.
54. "Heavenly!": AHH. Short for ALLELUIA?
55. CBS Sports NFL analyst Tony: ROMO. Antonio Ramiro Romo (born April 21, 1980) is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys. He played college football for the Eastern Illinois Panthers, where he made an Ohio Valley Conference championship appearance in 2001 and won the Walter Payton Award the following year. Romo signed with the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2003.
56. Hayworth of the silver screen: RITA. RITA Hayworth
(born Margarita Carmen Cansino; October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987) was an
American actress. She achieved fame in the 1940s as one of the top
stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and appeared in 61 films in total
over 37 years. The press coined the term "The Love Goddess" to describe
Hayworth after she had become the most glamorous screen idol of the
1940s. She was the top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II. Here's a
dance number she performs as femme fatale Gilda,, perhaps her most famous role ...
57. Clear: ERASE.
59. "... and many more," for short: ETC.
61. Josh Gad's "Frozen" voice role: OLAF. OLAF is the snowman, who is of course literally -- "Frozen" ...
62. Yang partner: YIN. Yin and yang comprise a concept that originated in Chinese philosophy, describing opposite but interconnected, mutually perpetuating forces. The technology of yin and yang is the foundation of critical and deductive reasoning for effective differential diagnosis of disease and illnesses within Confucian influenced traditional Chinese medicine. The "complementarity" of these two concepts has also resonated in the West, especially among scientists. The great Danish quantum physicist Niels Bohr even used it in the design of his family crest.
63. [Theme reveal]
67. L.L. Bean rival: REI. The door handles to every Recreational Equipment, Inc. store are ice axes. Here's the story.
68. __ chain: FOOD.
69. Detritus from the Digital Revolution: EWASTE. The e-waste problem has overwhelmed waste management protocols. Here's a look at how electronic waste has impacted the entire globe.
70. "Didn't mean to open that" key: ESC. It can mean other things as well.
71. Princes, e.g.: SONS. Nice clue.
72. Instrument near the end of the dictionary: ZITHER. The poster child for the ZITHER is the Johann Strauss Jr waltz Tales from the Vienna Woods ...
Down:
1. Seventh note in the A major scale: G SHARP. Not being a musician, and not being able to suss 1A (see above), I eventually had to look it up. Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 was written in A Major and Richard Wagner called it "the apotheosis of the dance". Here's the enchanting 2nd movement Allegretto, which you might recognize from its frequent use in movies and TV ...
2. Touring technician: ROADIE.
3. Really, really out there: ON MARS. Elon Musk is committed to colonizing MARS. We can all rest easier when he's really, really out there.
4. Goes all in: COMMITS.
5. Sonnet preposition: ERE.
6. Not so common: RARE.
7. Hieroglyph critter: SCARAB. SCARABS are beetle-shaped amulets and impression seals which were widely popular throughout ancient Egypt. They still survive in large numbers today. Through their inscriptions and typology, they prove to be an important source of information for archaeologists and historians of the ancient world, and represent a significant body of ancient Egyptian art.
8. Snookums: HON.
9. Work on a wall: ART. This one is on the wall of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
10. Fit well together: MESH.
11. Huge amount: BOATLOAD. It's amazing the things you discover when you are annotating crossword puzzles.
12. Improper: UNSEEMLY. The Corner review team tries to avoid UNSEEMLY annotations, but some of us are EDGIER than others. 😁
13. Knotty tangle: MESS. Probably the most tangled MESS in history was the legendary Gordian Knot, undone by Alexander the Great with a single stroke of genius. The story was memorialized in a lost Restoration play, but the incidental music by Henry Purcell still survives. Here are two movements from the suite ...
18. __ Alto, California: PALO. Palo Alto (Spanish for 'tall stick') is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. It's also the home of the HP Garage and the birthplace of the term "Silicon Valley".
23. Ibuprofen target: ACHE.
26. Swampy spot: MIRE. This clue is all wet!
27. More than one needs: PLENTY. [No politics Bill. No politics.]
30. Streaker in the sky: METEOR. These streakers periodically fly by Earth in relatively large numbers called meteor showers. If you are blessed with skies unpolluted by light (or the streaks from Elon Musk's Starlink network) you may be able to photograph them. Here are some tips for doing that.
31. Lip: EDGE.
32. Denver-to-Wichita dir.: ESE.
34. "__ only known ... ": HAD I. We should always act as if we had. A song by Reba McEntire ...
36. Cookbook meas.: TSP.
37. Where busy bees buzz: APIARIES. What is an Apiary, and Why Are 2 Hives Better Than 1?
38. Pit crew member: MECHANIC.
40. Cube creator Rubik: ERNO. A Rubik’s Cube is an interesting puzzle invented by ERNO Rubik, which has 43 quintillion possible configurations. But with the use of certain algorithms, it can be solved easily. There are many variations of the Rubix cube nowadays but the most basic one is the 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube. Here's how to solve it. Hand up if you were ever addicted to these?
44. Unspecified degrees: NTHS.
46. Try to bean: THROW AT. Watch Mr. Bean THROW sponges AT the Headmaster!
48. Makes right: AMENDS.
49. College military org.: ROTC.
51. "What Was I Made For?" singer Billie: EILISH. Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell (born December 18, 2001) is an American singer and songwriter. She first gained public attention in 2015 with her debut single "Ocean Eyes", written and produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell, with whom she collaborates on music and live shows. She and her brother were nominated for an Oscar for their song What Was I Made For, written for the soundtrack to the movie Barbie -- and this just in -- they won!
I had originally illustrated this clue with a scene from the movie, where Barbie has left the doll's world and entered the real world where she encounters an old woman at a bus stop -- very existential.
52. One small sip: A TASTE.
53. Roof timber: RAFTER.
57. "Reader, I married him" governess: EYRE. The first line of the last chapter of Jane Eyre by
Charlotte Brontë. Tracy Chevalier, novelist and author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, tells us why this quote is so famous.
58. Flunking grades: EFFS.
60. Bistro awning word: CHEZ. Did this one TWIST its way out of the grid? 😀
64. Youngster in the Hundred Acre Wood: ROO. Here's ROO in his mother KANGA's pouch. They live in the Hundred Acre Wood with Winnie the Pooh and all his friends.
65. Ages and ages: EON.
66. Bi- equivalent: TWI. The Wiki tells us that TWI is a variety of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people, mainly the Akan people, the largest of the seventeen major ethnic groups in Ghana. I suspect however that this may also be a slang appropriation, coding for something else. 😀
Cheers,
Bill
And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.
waseeley
Oh, I almost forgot. Happy Pi Day everybody!
55. CBS Sports NFL analyst Tony: ROMO. Antonio Ramiro Romo (born April 21, 1980) is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys. He played college football for the Eastern Illinois Panthers, where he made an Ohio Valley Conference championship appearance in 2001 and won the Walter Payton Award the following year. Romo signed with the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2003.
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| Tony Romo |
57. Clear: ERASE.
59. "... and many more," for short: ETC.
61. Josh Gad's "Frozen" voice role: OLAF. OLAF is the snowman, who is of course literally -- "Frozen" ...
62. Yang partner: YIN. Yin and yang comprise a concept that originated in Chinese philosophy, describing opposite but interconnected, mutually perpetuating forces. The technology of yin and yang is the foundation of critical and deductive reasoning for effective differential diagnosis of disease and illnesses within Confucian influenced traditional Chinese medicine. The "complementarity" of these two concepts has also resonated in the West, especially among scientists. The great Danish quantum physicist Niels Bohr even used it in the design of his family crest.
67. L.L. Bean rival: REI. The door handles to every Recreational Equipment, Inc. store are ice axes. Here's the story.
69. Detritus from the Digital Revolution: EWASTE. The e-waste problem has overwhelmed waste management protocols. Here's a look at how electronic waste has impacted the entire globe.
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| Apparently the biggest problem is cellphones |
70. "Didn't mean to open that" key: ESC. It can mean other things as well.
71. Princes, e.g.: SONS. Nice clue.
72. Instrument near the end of the dictionary: ZITHER. The poster child for the ZITHER is the Johann Strauss Jr waltz Tales from the Vienna Woods ...
Down:
1. Seventh note in the A major scale: G SHARP. Not being a musician, and not being able to suss 1A (see above), I eventually had to look it up. Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 was written in A Major and Richard Wagner called it "the apotheosis of the dance". Here's the enchanting 2nd movement Allegretto, which you might recognize from its frequent use in movies and TV ...
2. Touring technician: ROADIE.
3. Really, really out there: ON MARS. Elon Musk is committed to colonizing MARS. We can all rest easier when he's really, really out there.
4. Goes all in: COMMITS.
5. Sonnet preposition: ERE.
6. Not so common: RARE.
7. Hieroglyph critter: SCARAB. SCARABS are beetle-shaped amulets and impression seals which were widely popular throughout ancient Egypt. They still survive in large numbers today. Through their inscriptions and typology, they prove to be an important source of information for archaeologists and historians of the ancient world, and represent a significant body of ancient Egyptian art.
 |
| Scarab inscribed for King Hatshepsut c. 1479–1458 B.C., MOMA, NY, NY |
9. Work on a wall: ART. This one is on the wall of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
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| Woman Holding a Balance Jan Vermeer c. 1664 |
11. Huge amount: BOATLOAD. It's amazing the things you discover when you are annotating crossword puzzles.
12. Improper: UNSEEMLY. The Corner review team tries to avoid UNSEEMLY annotations, but some of us are EDGIER than others. 😁
13. Knotty tangle: MESS. Probably the most tangled MESS in history was the legendary Gordian Knot, undone by Alexander the Great with a single stroke of genius. The story was memorialized in a lost Restoration play, but the incidental music by Henry Purcell still survives. Here are two movements from the suite ...
18. __ Alto, California: PALO. Palo Alto (Spanish for 'tall stick') is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. It's also the home of the HP Garage and the birthplace of the term "Silicon Valley".
23. Ibuprofen target: ACHE.
26. Swampy spot: MIRE. This clue is all wet!
30. Streaker in the sky: METEOR. These streakers periodically fly by Earth in relatively large numbers called meteor showers. If you are blessed with skies unpolluted by light (or the streaks from Elon Musk's Starlink network) you may be able to photograph them. Here are some tips for doing that.
31. Lip: EDGE.
32. Denver-to-Wichita dir.: ESE.
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| 7 hr 20 min (520.3 mi) via I-70 E |
34. "__ only known ... ": HAD I. We should always act as if we had. A song by Reba McEntire ...
36. Cookbook meas.: TSP.
37. Where busy bees buzz: APIARIES. What is an Apiary, and Why Are 2 Hives Better Than 1?
38. Pit crew member: MECHANIC.
40. Cube creator Rubik: ERNO. A Rubik’s Cube is an interesting puzzle invented by ERNO Rubik, which has 43 quintillion possible configurations. But with the use of certain algorithms, it can be solved easily. There are many variations of the Rubix cube nowadays but the most basic one is the 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube. Here's how to solve it. Hand up if you were ever addicted to these?
 |
| Rubik's Cube |
44. Unspecified degrees: NTHS.
46. Try to bean: THROW AT. Watch Mr. Bean THROW sponges AT the Headmaster!
48. Makes right: AMENDS.
49. College military org.: ROTC.
51. "What Was I Made For?" singer Billie: EILISH. Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell (born December 18, 2001) is an American singer and songwriter. She first gained public attention in 2015 with her debut single "Ocean Eyes", written and produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell, with whom she collaborates on music and live shows. She and her brother were nominated for an Oscar for their song What Was I Made For, written for the soundtrack to the movie Barbie -- and this just in -- they won!
I had originally illustrated this clue with a scene from the movie, where Barbie has left the doll's world and entered the real world where she encounters an old woman at a bus stop -- very existential.
52. One small sip: A TASTE.
53. Roof timber: RAFTER.
57. "Reader, I married him" governess: EYRE. The first line of the last chapter of Jane Eyre by
Charlotte Brontë. Tracy Chevalier, novelist and author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, tells us why this quote is so famous.
58. Flunking grades: EFFS.
60. Bistro awning word: CHEZ. Did this one TWIST its way out of the grid? 😀
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| Chez Fred, Paris |
64. Youngster in the Hundred Acre Wood: ROO. Here's ROO in his mother KANGA's pouch. They live in the Hundred Acre Wood with Winnie the Pooh and all his friends.
66. Bi- equivalent: TWI. The Wiki tells us that TWI is a variety of the Akan language spoken in southern and central Ghana by several million people, mainly the Akan people, the largest of the seventeen major ethnic groups in Ghana. I suspect however that this may also be a slang appropriation, coding for something else. 😀
Cheers,
Bill
And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.
waseeley
Oh, I almost forgot. Happy Pi Day everybody!
60 comments:
Well, I saw that we were dealing with French from the first themed fill, so that helped me solve this somewhat challenging puzzle. And, with apologies to SS, without the circles I have no idea how I would have seen the gimmick.
That said, I persevered and got the win.
FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
The great northwest remained buried in snow til the very end, when GROCER occurred to me. (A market is a grocery store, and the leader of the market is the GROCER.) Isn't the SCARAB a beetle, itself, which sometimes appears in hieroglyphics? RITA was a gimme. In my ute she performed the dance of the seven veils as Salome -- salacious. Noticed the French words in the circles. As usual, the FRENCH TWIST fell into place without tipping off d-o that it was a reveal. Très chic, Baylee. Enjoyed your expo, waseeley and Teri.
FIW, missing ZoTaER x TWo and EILISa.
Today is:
NATIONAL PI DAY (Bill beat me to it. Pizzerias across the country rejoice)
NATIONAL LEARN ABOUT BUTTERFLIES DAY (watch them as they flutter by)
NATIONAL WRITE DOWN YOUR STORY DAY (uhoh, watch out for that paper trail)
NATIONAL CHILDREN’S CRAFT DAY (call me if their craft is a sailboat)
I actually knew four of the names today!
I would have DNFed without the circles. I knew ECOLE from crosswords, then was able to extract HOMME from somewhere in my nether regions, but had no idea what CHIEN was.
A MOBILE HOME isn't an RV. An RV is designed to be moved frequently by the owner, while a MOBILE HOME is designed to be moved only occasionally, and by professionals.
The SCARAB is a type of dung beetle. Folks with colitis worship the porcelain throne.
To amplify DO's explanation, there used to be a GROCERy stor chain in (crossoword favorite) SOCAL named Boys Market. Slogan - "Boys Love Girls." Boys was sold to Ralph's, which was sold to Krogers.
Thanks to Baylee for the Thursday stumper, and to Bill 'n' Teri for the fun tour.
FLN - TTP, I don't know the technical difference between MMS and SMS. Have never heard of a difference of priority, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. When I retired, 2G was all the rage. I should have stuck around a few years longer. Had I known that those idiots were going to hijack and crash those airliners, I would have.
Here's the bi-weekly DAB puzzle Having It Both Ways. Here's what David has to say about it ...
I’ve always wanted to have it both ways—to work a little and make a lot, to eat or drink what I please and remain healthy nonetheless, to treat others ill and be treated well by those others. But I can’t, according to the proverb—except in a crossword.
D-O @5:36 AM Thanx for the tip on GROCER. At one point in my write up I'd used a similar analysis, complete with an illustration from the British mystery series Vera. Much of the action takes place in an open air market and here is a trailer with the man who played the "Market leader" (actor Amit Shah -- he's one of the first in the scene and is dressed in a long tan coat). Unfortunately he is not a GROCER, but manages a bunch of other GROCERS -- and after going down that rabbit hole I couldn't figure a way out. As you know my superpower is making the easy look difficult and voila!
Fun and creative puzzle today! I agree that the circles at least for me were necessary to get the theme!
Some gimmes in today's puzzle. When I was a child we had a ZITHER which we could insert music into and play a tune by plunking the notes as they showed on the paper
PALO Alto - the original tree still exists at the border between Palo Alto and Stanford University- it's a redwood that is over a 1000 years old, and it is on the seal of the university. https://125.stanford.edu/then-and-now/el-palo-alto/
TWI (pronounced TWEE) is the most common of the 19 languages in Ghana where I've been several times for medical mission trips -but English from their colonizers is also a national language. My work was in the Volta region where they speak EWe (pronounced Ay-Vay) but TWI is spoken in the Capital Accra
Time for work - Thanks Bill & Teri!
FIR, but this was a slog today. And we have circles again? (Groan) And French words in them? (Yuk)
The NW gave me fits and I still don't see market leader as grocer. And Riri? And on the opposite side we had twi? These are all mysteries to me.
I finished this puzzle with the help of perps and a few WAG's. This was not fun today.
Took 8:39 today for me to declare victory over the French.
The theme escaped me. I usually don't look for it, but I also don't speak French.
I agree with KS, "not fun."
But, I did know today's actress (Rita).
Oh joy, circles!
Oh joy, French words!
I'll be honest. I never looked at either the clues for PICTIONARY or FRENCH TWIST because they were filled by easy perps but the NW had me stumped. I filled GROCER (didn't look right) but was stymied on the cross of ON MARS and RIRI. I wanted ON MEDS for "really out there" and had no idea who sang a song I'd never heard. That person's nickname never had a chance. I left it at ON MA__ S & RI__I. The rest was easy but it was a DNF.
LAMP, HEAR, EILISH, TWI- perps for those unknowns
“Circles, we have circles, we have lots and lots of circles!!” IMO this puzzle has too much of a FRENCH TWIST for anyone who has as much knowledge of French that I do of the Akan language of Ghana : ÉCOLE (school in an RV) CHIEN (dog in PICTIONARY) and HOMME ( we were recently “puzzled with le parfum L’Homme “da man”…. I’m guessin’ there’s more to the theme than I’m seein’ (Just read the reveal and I guessin’ wrong 🫤) I’m sure there gonna be beaucoup complaints about touts les mots français among mes ami’s “coinistes” 😌
Sheesh I thought they meant the 60’s umbrella song “Bus Stop” by The Hollies 🙄
Liked the “1/2 & 1/2” clue and “changed locks” but TWI? Blanche (sorry I mean Baylee) Devereux musta hadda got Alexa or Siri to give her that one
Inkovers: If I’d/HAD I, atones/AMENDS
Sheep’s leavings…..EWASTE
Streakers in the sky….COMMITS
Tending to come apart at the hem…UNSEEMLY
Tom or Huckleberry….. RAFTER
My teacher daughter just told me about PI day. Everyone enjoy a slice!!
Happy PI day, one and all.
I, too, took GROCER to simply be the leader of a market (as in grocery store). More as in "leader of the pack" than as in, for example "loss leader". That said, it was not immediately solved.
Musings
-Dang! I hate not subbing on PI Day!
-Mon Dieu! Like Jinx, ECOLE gave me the gimmick, HOMME I knew as man and I had to correctly infer that CHIEN is French for dog.
-Security question: “Who was your best childhood friend?” Answer: He is now a multimillionaire living in SONORA
-SANDLER is not a name that will get me in a theater
-CLE hasn’t even appeared in any of 58 Super Bowls
-RITA was married five times. Has any “Love Goddess” had a stable marriage?
-E-WASTE: I wish I still had my Apple IIe from 1984.
-Musk ON MARS? Hey, they laughed at that guy from Genoa in 1492. :-)
-The difference between COMMITED and involved
-Russell Wilson and the Denver Broncos did not MESH
-THROW AT: If you show up a pitcher, be careful the next time you’re up
Good Morning:
I thought this was a very clever theme with a very clever and surprising reveal. I saw the French words right away but didn't need or use them for the solve. The perps were fair throughout the grid and my only hesitation was at Erno because his name wouldn't come to me right away. The circles were necessary and not an issue for me. I wasn't keen on the 24 TLWs or the slightly wobbly On Mars fragment, but really liked Boatload and the Easter Egg of Chez.
Merci beaucoup, Ms. Deveraux, for a very enjoyable solve and thanks, Bill, for the mind-boggling facts, fun, and frolicking you treated us to this morning. I can't imagine how much time you spent on this review, particularly on your opening discourse covering the theme, the circles in, the circles out, the reveal, etc. And, of course, you showered us with the usual vast array of interesting and informative videos and photos. The enjoyable musical interludes ran the gamut from Reba and Ri Ri to Johann and Ludwig, with a little Billie Eilish for good measure! Many thanks to you and Teri.
Have a great day.
Good Morning! A very Thursday worthy puzzle. Thanks, Baylee.
The theme escaped me even with the circles. Because they weren’t together, I wasn’t sure if the circles were for the horizontals or verticals, and then when I got to the reveal, bah, I decided to wait for the Blog. Sorry, Bill, the theme still left me cold.
The NW was mostly empty and being the intro to the puzzle almost stopped me in my tracks, but the rest of it eventually came together.
WO: ScAM -> SHAM and Cafe -> CHEZ
I had to look up G SHARP and RIRI and guess at HAMMER to finish.
Thanks, Bill and Teri (and Jinx). I love PI Day! Yum! Any and all kinds are my favorite, well except mincemeat. Today I’ll make cherry or blueberry, hmm …
FIR, but NW also gave me issues as I don’t know Riri or music notes - and never figured out that the theme gave French answers running through the middle - nor did I know chien so never understood that until now! Also initially had cafe instead of chez until zither made that a no go! Happy to come through unscathed on a Thursday.
Certainly clever CW today. I saw the theme once I noticed ÉCOLE in the circles. Still the NW and the SE were the last to fall. Some unknowns filled thanks to perps, like RIRI, CLE, REI. TWI, EILISH. I do believe circles were needed today as Waseely so ably proved.
I was long puzzled by 17a, then noted the ? and the light bulb went off. Good one.
Terrific Thursday. Thanks for the fun Baylee, and waseely and Teri.
I FIRed in good time and saw the FRENCH TWIST (plus the CHEZ Easter Egg).
I was happy the theme was French and not Spanish.
PLENTY (a BOATLOAD) of names, but perps were fair.
Motor HOME was too short; MOBILE fit.
Similarly, thoughts of marsh, bog were replaced by MIRE.
Aah changed to AHH.
I noted EAR/ERE, RIRI/REI.
TWI is new to me.
Happy Pi Day to you all.
If you didn’t recognize it, the post @10:20 is mine. Apparently I was not signed in on my phone.
Learning moment: French word for dog. Did I want to learn it? No!
Thumper!
(Thank goodness for all the blog links, they will keep me busy...)
il m’a fallu quinze minutes et nerf secondes pour resourde ce puzzle. Perps were fair which was good because the themers made no sense to me as clued. Still don’t understand TWI 🤷♂️. Second OJC grid this week. Thanks Baylee for the Thursday challenge, and thanks Bill and Teri for the very thorough write-up, especially about the theme!
Fun puzzle. The bottom was Wednesday-like for me. the top was Friday-like. The NW was my downfall. I looked up the Umbrella singer and then I looked up her nickname.
1D, I had sharp right away, but G for grocer was slow in coming. Good clue.
Also I had E instead of O for ROMO and ERNO. I recall them now, after the fact. Tsk.
I worked bottom up so I soon saw the twisted French words.
Butterfly Day, my totem. I have a lot of butterfly jewelry, scarves etc. People send me birthday cards with butterflies and David puts butterflies on my birthday cake.
TWI was a gimme. The prefix, BI, means two (bicycle, biped) and so does the prefix TWI (twin, twice).
AAH, another of those sounds we try to spell, like uh huh and ugh.
Eilish was all perps.
Thanks to Baylee for an interesting puzzle and to Bill and Teri for a fine review.
Irish Miss @10:04 AM Thank you for the kind words IM. I do have to admit that a lot of circular reasoning went into this one.😀 It was abetted by a utility that CC/-T turned me onto that enables you to edit .puz files, allowing me to show the grid sans circles.
RosE @10:13 AM Funny that my Mother used to make a lot of mincemeat pies, but I never developed a taste for them. My favorite pies are Teri's pizzas. I keep telling her she should go into business!
A clever and challenging Thursday offering from Baylee .
I figured out the “French-Connection” at ecole.
A lot of fresh fill. I liked on mars, chez, and boatload.
Its too bad Riri couldn’t have worked as Fifi a stereotypical French dogs name.
Thanks Bill for the illustrious and informative recap.
…..kkFlorida
Someth8ng else I learned today,
I took your advice, and checked out Google Photos for the first time as a repository for linking photos to the blog.
I was very much surprised to see that I already had 2 gigabytes of photos stored from 2005 thru 2010. Turns out that the discontinued and deleted photos posted to Google Earth via the obsolete "Panoramio," are stored here. It was good to see them again, as they are highlights of my hikes thru Harriman State Park that I thought were lost forever.
Google photos will store up to 15 gigabytes, after which there is a monthly fee to store up to 100 gigabytes. Useful, but not unlimited.
I think I will continue using Shutterfly, which is free and unlimited (for now) and suffer the ads. Who knows, I may want t9 get prints or a photo coffee mug!
Let me know if viewing shared l8nks gets too cumbersome. As I do not see what you see being the user...
Regards
CED
As I contemplated 11D, with xxxTLOAD filled in, I couldn’t help guessing what Jinx probably had been thinking in that situation. Oh, you mean BOAtload!
As for 1A, I had to wait to make sure GROCER was the right answer, since the clue wasn’t much help. So I worked vertically through that section, starting with GSHARP, of which I WAS sure.
And as for the theme, I’m not usually put off by circles, but today’s clunky, contrived theme was dependent on the circles to a fault. Clever? Too clever by half (and half). I didn’t even try to figure out why the clues didn’t make perfect sense to me, because I filled the grid without caring about that. I didn’t envy WASEELEY’s task of explaining it, but he did it well.
TODAY’S EARWORM: “I’m So Tired.” I like the line that follows the cigarette request: “. . .and curse Sir Walter Raleigh/He was such a stupid git.”
Jinx probably knows the joke about the octopus who could master any musical instrument, including the ZITHER, but, locked in a room with bagpipes all night, the octopus was thoroughly confounded when asked whether he finally was able to play it. “Play it?” he said. “I’ve been trying to LAY it all night.”
This one flew right over my head today. Wanted the name of the man, instead got the name of the pants. Wanted the name of the dog, got the name of the game. Mobile home, Riri, and twi just did not compute. Theme? Frawnch? Nyet!
When I got to FRENCH TWIST, I finally saw the French words twisting around the theme answers in circles, and that helped me fill HAMMER PANTS. In fact, the clues for 17-, 30-, and 47- Across didn't quite make sense without the circles. I thought this was very clever, and while I realize that not everyone knows these basic French words, I don't understand the aversion to circles. It's a puzzle! There will be TWISTs!
Anyone who still doesn't understand GROCER needs to read desper-otto at 5:36 AM. D-O also gave a nice clarification about SCARAB.
Thanks to Yellowrocks for explaining TWI.
Many thanks to Bayley, Patti, Bill, Teri, and all non-whining Cornerites for today's fun.
Just a bit of bite to the rendering for today. Since I had French in high school and college the reveal today was anticlimactic. Perps were kind.
FIR.
Toughest fill was APIARIES, word just wouldn't come to me..
Bill, 1D was easy. The A major scale, starts with note A, then BCDEFG. Voila, the seventh letter is "G". Never played Pictionary.
As to the reveal, a lady I used to work with sported a French Twist hairdo.
She had her hair washed and set once a week. She slept with it. I asked what she did if her head itched. She said, "Thats why they invented rattail combs".
Never ask a question to which you don't want to know the answer.
Begin.
CED @11:11 AM Oh please never stop sharing you IMP! 🤣
Copy Editor @1:12 AM 🤣
I very much enjoyed this FRENCH TWIST theme. No idea about the hair style. But I took four years of FRENCH in high school, so I knew HOMME, CHIEN and ECOLE. That helped me with the solve. Hand up learning moment about TWI.
Yellowrocks Thank you for TWIce and TWIns to explain TWI. Nothing at all to do with Africa. More related to German "zwei" for two.
Here I was with a cooperative server at the FRENCH BISTRO San Germain.
Hand up I am in awe of the construction of this puzzle.
Copy Editor - you nailed it (me.) Also, like Milton Berle, I know a good joke when I steal one. Now if I can only remember it...
CED, I always click on your links, except the occasional video when I'm away from home and my usage is limited. Please don't stop.
The NW was the mire for me too. I really got bogged down. For the longest time I only had RARE and ADAM. I suspected COMMITS but couldn't go all in on it. Then I vacillated between pain and PESTS. Oh, and I had insane for really, really out there, but took that out when I could get anything but the A to perp.
As for "Man in 1990s hip-hop fashion?" - That was the clue that finally led to solving the NW and completing the puzzle.
I had the PANTS part. They were called parachute pants and were also known as harem pants. It was thinking of the alternate name of harem that made me think of MC HAMMER, and that was the AHA moment when the clue meshed so well with the answer. HE WAS the 90's Hip Hop artist that so popularized parachute (harem) pants that they started being called HAMMER PANTS.
Without further ado, here he is performing his most famous song in his trademark "HAMMER" PANTS: M.C. Hammer - U Can't Touch This
Jinx, in re FLN, SMS vs MMS, thx. It's a mystery. I'll just keep dealing with it and see if I can find any patterns. I know I was connected via WiFi because I checked when I saw the wheel spinning. It was just odd that it was 5 hours before the message status was "sent."
Thanks to Baylee and Waseeley
Hola!
French? Oh, no! I'm sunk. However, I have managed to learn a few French words, HOMME and ECOLE being two, thanks to crossword puzzles.
ENRO. When the RUBIK cube first came out, my late DH received one and being the stubborn genius that he was, he spent an ENTIRE DAY working on it until he solved it. Then that was it. He was done.
SCARAB used to appear regularly in puzzles but haven't seen it much until now.
Not too far from me there is a MOBILE HOME park but they never move. The homes are permanently situated.
Billie EILISH was featured on the program, "Sunday Morning" some months ago and I learned then of her quirkiness. I thought it took a particular kind of dedication to her craft to appear at the Oscars dressed as informally as she did. She and her brother, Phineas, collaborate on all their works.
Thank you, Baylee, for the puzzle challenge. Have a sweet PI Day, everyone!
oops. ERNO
Lucina @ 1:09 ~ Actually, compared to her usual sloppy and ill-fitting garb at any and all occasions, Billie Eilish's Oscar night fashion was downright chic! She was "wearing" classic Chanel right down to her purse and sporting Mary Jane's with knee-high white stockings. However, I greatly miss seeing the stunning and classic styles of Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, et al. 😉
I believe TWI is not technically a prefix whose definition is “a letter or group of letters, for example 'un-' or 'multi-', which is added to the beginning of a WORD in order to form a different word. For example, the prefix 'un-' is added to ' happy' to form 'unhappy'.”
Hi All!
Bzzt. FIW at TWo | ZoTHER.
Thanks Baylee for the fun puzzle even though the theme went whoosh right over my monoglot anglophile head.
Thanks for explaining the puzzle, waseeley (and Teri). Only 17a made sense since M.C. HAMMER is the man in the pants (hi TTP!)
WOs: N/A
ESPs: [see: FIW], RIRI
Fav: I'll go with Silicon Valley's PALO Alto. (Palo Alto is also the name of a firewall IDS/IPS* company)
FLN - anyone hear from JzB?
LOL All you can pronounce, CED.
Enjoyed reading y'all but gotta get back to work.
Cheers, -T
*Intrusion Detection / Intrusion Prevention System
Anon-T, this analog tape-head guy thought IPS was Inches Per Second.
Twi as a prefix is old fashioned and seldom used now. There are few modern examples. However, the possibility of TWI being the answer was suggested by twin, twice, twain, twenty, and two. Crosswords make us think outside the box. Twin did it for me.
TTP,I first thought of harem pants and parachute pants. Thanks for perps. I didn't know HAMMER.
TTP, did you know that Hammer's big hit U Can't Touch This "borrowed" the bass line from Rick James' big hit Super Freak? After the fact, James was added as one of the songwriters, which, I'll wager, included some type of compensation. I suspect it was on the advice of counsel.
IrishMiss
Yes. I also miss the classic lines of the past when stars dressed fittingly. Right now, though, I'm going to go purchase a pie for PI day.
Merci beaucoup! C’est tres facile!
Edward in Los Angeles remains anonymous
Can't believe both the puzzle creator and editor signed off on NTHS. Oh, could you do better, Whiner? Why yes, I think I can. I don't really like ETAS, but that would've been better than NTHS. It changes a couple of perps to SPEEDER and AHA (a little better than AHH, IMO).
Whiner I often agree with your critiques. But please note that ETAS instead of NTHS would have eliminated CHIEN.
As I said, I am in awe of this construction. One thing that caught my eye immediately: All theme TWISTs are five letters. And the TWISTs are all done with the same pattern of up and down.
CrossEyedDave, glad to hear that you found your old Google Earth screenshot photos.
Jinx, I did not know that, and I'd bet that you are correct that Rick James got some of that action.
Yellowrocks, I was thinking parachute pants, but it obviously wouldn't fit, and that's when I remembered they were called harem and HAMMER PANTS.
Dash T, I knew you would know that song and MC HAMMER. D-O, not so much.
D-O, Dash T knows all of the abbreviations in the world of security. Every time he reads my TTP screen name, he thinks Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures. :>)
In all seriousness though, you can get a good feel about some TTPs used by adversaries in this informative article: New Mint Sandstorm TTPs
Wow, two dazzling puzzles on back-to-back days. Baylee's challenge today was fun and clever, and admittedly gave me fits for a time. But it was all worth the bruises for the payoff, so creative and unexpected, with those three common French words modifying the long Across words.
And I appreciated that the much-maligned circles for once proved indispensable to get the complete solve.
Copy Editor--
As someone with a Scottish heritage, I was by no means offended by your frustrated octopus joke. I will be sure to retell it at Scots gatherings, especially if there are pipers present.
Whiner,
I'm with Picard. I would add that for my whole life I've heard--and said--"to the nth degree." It's not my favorite crossword clue, nor have I often seen it pluralized as here. But when I saw the clue "Unspecified degree," I wrote down the answer in a split second, relieved that Baylee had given us a Monday-type clue.
Fun theme with fun circles. FIR without much difficulty until the very end—had to make a 50/50 guess between I & O for the TW_/Z_THER cross. Was pretty sure I had heard of a zither but what the heck is twi-?
Welp, it’s in my Webster’s as a prefix, with an example of “twi-headed.” Try saying that without sounding silly. (Are you twying to say ‘tri’?)
And there is just one word listing beginning with twi-: “twi-night,” which apparently is an afternoon/evening baseball doubleheader… Boy if there’s a baseball term I’ve never heard before, it is really obscure.
A-Jim@4:50. Interesting about TWI. So what do we do with TWILIGHT? Is it because it is a state of ambiguity between day and night?
Back in the day, when most grocery stores were mom&pop businesses, the GROCER was usually the proprietor (or “leader”) of the place. HTH
====> Darren / L.A.
I'd totally forgotten about the word twinight--and not having seen it in use in baseball for a generation. But yeah, your uncles and I used to love to go to twinight doubleheaders at old Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. My recollection is that the first game started around 3:30 PM. So if it was a weekday, we'd dash out of school and grab a streetcar and generally be there for the first pitch.
Az Jim, you must be a youngin, probably even younger than 60. I've gone to several twi-night MLB games in Cincinnati's Crosley Field. As the Players Association became more powerful, these games became less frequent, to point that today they are mostly used for weather make-up games.
It took at least 2 hours for us to drive to Cincy, so we scheduled it so we could take in two games with one admission, stay overnight, go to the horse races the next day across the river at River Downs, then drive home.
Without circles, still a pretty easy and enjoyable cruise to a FIR. As far as the circles went, even with them I woulda been clueless; I’m useless with anything in French. In my humble opinion, the entire language has been misspelled — when a dude name written as Guy Herbert comes out of someone’s mouth as “Ghee Aybear”, there is a very serious issue going on 😆
I surmised the same as Copy Editor @11:12am — xxxTLOAD sure looked like it wanted a more off-color bit of slang. Thanks to the perps gods for keeping me civil…
“Mobile home” was originally a term for travel trailers (back way before anything like an RV was invented) because you could be MOBILE and take your “HOME” with you. Then trailers started getting parked and people began living in them…and the rest is history.
CrossEyeDave, yes, please keep ‘em comin’! The only hitch with links on the Corner are that, as of late, I have to open them as a New Tab — if I just click on one directly, when I punch back after viewing it, the page reloads back to the top, and I have to whizz-scroll back down to where I was at said link. Maybe the IT dep’t. can fix this?
====> Darren / L.A.
Oh boy, as Jim knows, I could talk baseball till eternity. But Jinx brought up old Crosley Field in Cincinnati. It was built about the same time as Forbes Field, and with similar constraints. They were both built in already-existing neighborhoods, so the dimensions of both parks were assymetrical. They had to fit between the streets. For example, right field in Forbes Field, where Roberto Clemente patrolled, was only 300 feet, and left field 365 feet.
Crosley had similar peculiarities, and had one of the smallest seating capacities in baseball. But the thing that set Crosley apart to me, was the incline, or ramp, in left field. Jinx would know what it was called. But essentially, as a left fielder, you'd be drifting back for a long fly, and about thirty or forty feet from the fence, the ground started rising! I kid you not.
NTH I understand, the plural NTHS I would have trouble using in a sentence without it being very forced. I knew the answer right away, but that doesn't mean I liked it.
Picard, I did not consider the circles, mostly because I totally ignored them and they wouldn't have helped me at all. There are enough vocal critics of those that I won't add to it.
TKen, that short right field seems like a big waste of Clemente's arm, though I guess he used it to nab a lot of runners who rounded first a little too far.
Tehachapi Ken, I was pretty young when I attended those games (I attended with my mom or aunt and uncle,) but what I remember most about left field was the tons of foul "home runs" Johnny Bench hit for "loud strikes."
Speaking of baseball -- I didn't say it in the review (only hinted at it), but as the clue was "Bi-", I thought it might be slang for a "switch hitter". Shame on me! 😁 Thanks to YR and others for a more mannerly explanation.
Speaking of baseball, and of asymmetry, I used to watch the Los Angeles Dodger play at the Los Angeles Colosseum. 250 feet down the left field line, 300 down the line in right field and 425 to center.
Happy Pi Day, everyone!
Merci, Baylee for today's puzzle. Hand up for being impressed by the construction!
FAVs: Half and half; BOATLOAD
When I do a FRENCH TWIST in my hair, I use chopsticks to hold it in place. "Fusion" isn't just about food.
; )
C-Eh!@10:20. Nice catch on CHEZ!
California's Gold Country has a town named Sonora. They say the early settlers were gold seekers from Sonora, Mexico.
Merci, waseeley for another excellent tour! I am an REI Co-op member so the ice axe trivia was extra fun today.
FLN: Thanks to TTP for saving the day!
It was a nice PI day today and we ate some pie for dessert.
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