Good Morning, Cruciverbalists. Malodorous Manatee here with the Friday recap. Our puzzle-setter today is Laura Dershewitz who, often co-authoring with Katherine Baicker, has previously created and published several puzzles for us to solve.
Today, things do not go bad . Things do not go south. Things do not go to blazes. Things do not go to pieces. Things do not go belly up. Things do not go awry. Things do not go off the rails. They do, however, go sideways. Although it can, and often is, applied to different types of situations, the definition of the idiom, as provided in today's reveal, will suffice:
31 Down: Completely fall apart, as a deal, or an apt title for this puzzle?: GO SIDEWAYS.
In the grid, the reveal and the themed clues/answers are placed vertically. This provides the opportunity/necessity to incorporate the word GO horizontally/SIDEWAYS into the answers. Let's have a look at the grid before taking a look the themers.
Here are the three themed clues and answers:
3 Down: Mid-March cry: ERIN G BRAGH.
9 Down: Gentle carnival ride: MERRY G ROUND. You are probably familiar with the tune but do you know the name of the song that Loony Tunes adopted as its theme song? It was written in 1937 and reached the #2 spot on the "Your Hit Parade" radio survey.
The Merry Go Round Broke Down
24 Down: Without a care in the world: HAPPY G LUCKY.
Here are the other clues and answers:
Across:
1. Use a Keurig, say: BREW. A coffee BREWing reference . . . and the first of (some might claim too) many proper nouns referenced in today's clues and answers.
10. Branded tees or mugs, maybe: SWAG. SWAG is the name for the stuff they give you at e.g. conventions, symposia, reunions, etc.
14. Traditional wisdom: LORE. As one of the oldest living people in my family, my word is LORE.
15. "I'm not seeing it": WHERE.
WHERE Wolf?
16. Follow: TAIL. As in to follow a criminal suspect.
17. Bookworm: AVID READER.
19. Alan of "Marriage Story": ALDA. With STACY and WALT being clued the way that they were, this solver did not know two of the names in that NW stack. Alan ALDA helped out quite a bit.
20. Lunch option on the Shinkansen, say: BENTO. Shinkansen (the Japanese bullet train) alerts us to think of Japanese cuisine.
BENTO Box
21. Took away (from): DETRACTED. Did you come across anything today that either added to or DETRACTED from your puzzle-solving experience?
23. "Who knew?": GOSH. What did the fish say when the river stopped flowing? "GOSH dam it!"
25. With diffidence: SHYLY.
28. Ingest: EAT.
30. In the past: AGO. A few minutes AGO I came to the conclusion that tofu is overrated. It's just a curd to me.
31. Dollop: GOB. Given today's theme, that O after the G could be viewed as a bit misleading.
34. Sensitive subject: SORE SPOT.
37. Surname in a classic Styx song: ROBOTO. Domo arigato Mister ROBOTO.
39. Meat in Hawaiian cuisine: SPAM. How A Wartime Necessity Became A Hawaiian Delicacy
40. Teaser ad: PROMO.
42. Italian wine region: ASTI.
Asti Spumante Commercial
43. Divination: AUGURY. This word does not appear often in our puzzles . . . but we should have seen it coming.
45. Head-scratchers: TOUGHIES. Initially, I thought of POSERS but the word wasn't long enough.
47. Speedometer stat: MPH.
51. Dr. of rap: DRE. Née Andre Romell Young
52. French "Cheers!": SALUT.
54. Screwdriver, in a pinch: DIME.
56. Chewy candy bars introduced in 1921: BABY RUTHS. Many people believe that the candy was named after Babe Ruth the baseball player. It was, in fact, named after President Cleveland's daughter.
60. Full of the latest: NEWSY. Current and/or topical.
63. Triumphant cry: I WON. A big cat said this after every race that she ran. She was a cheetah.
64. Fresh start: CLEAN SLATE. A somewhat anachronistic figure of speech.
66. U2 singer: BONO. Not Sonny BONO. Paul David Hewson.
67. Little meower: KITTY. It might have been clued with a "Gunsmoke" reference but then it would have been yet another proper noun. Speaking of which,
68. Cannon of film: DYAN.
69. Toy on some holiday cards: SLED.
71. "Last four digits" IDs: SSNS.
Down:
1. Say too much: BLAB. Don't worry, your secret is safe with me. Everyone I BLABbed to told me that they wouldn't say anything to anyone.
2. Wander about: ROVE. We never know, initially, if it is going to turn out to be ROVE or ROAM but we can fill in the R and the O. I sometimes wonder why this is rarely, if ever, clued with "Karl".
4. United with: WED TO.
5. Have loans: OWE.
6. African lake in four countries: CHAD.
7. Surrenders: CEDES.
8. First name in soul: ARETHA.
ARETHA Franklin - "Think"
10. Gwen __: Spider-Man's first love: STACY. A Marvel Comics reference.
11. Sky's "Breaking Bad" spouse: WALT. In times past, this might have been clued with a reference to Whitman or Disney or Kelly or Frazier.
12. Campaign staffer: AIDE.
18. Bunch of romantics?: ROSES. Not a group of impractical visionaries but, rather, a bouquet of flowers that a romantic person might give to their beloved.
22. __ gobi: South Asian potato dish: ALOO. The first of two South Asia Subcontinent references in a row.
26. State in northern India: ASSAM. The second.
27. Temporary, as a bar or restaurant: POP UP.
29. Publisher with a mountain peak logo: TOR. We sometimes see TOR clued with just the mountain peak reference. Self-published, as it were.
32. Marine mammal that uses rocks to crack shells: OTTER.
33. State capital in the Treasure Valley: BOISE. In a recent Sunday puzzle, BOISE was clued as "the City of Trees". With three vowels and an S it's a useful word for constructors.
35. Flightless bird: EMU. Did you hear about the EMU who was taller than his friends? He was ostrich-sized.
36. Word with tater or tiny: TOT. At least we were spared the casserole reference (unlike last Saturday).
Tater TOT(s) Tiny TOT
38. "Curses!": BAH. How would a sheep say BAH?
41. Online admin: MOD. MODerator
44. Bring up, or something to bring up: REAR. Cute. Raise your children or be in last place. Alternatively, what you are sitting on as you read this.
46. Acquires: GAINS. What does a doctor get from a urine test? She GAINS whizdom.
49. Extend past: OUTLIE.
52. Church council: SYNOD.
53. Angle symbol, in trigonometry: THETA. By definition, much as Delta represents a difference or Pi represents the ratio of a circle's circumference and diameter.
55. Merges: MELDS.
56. Lobsterfest wear: BIBS.
58. Fillet's lack: BONE.
Fillet Minion
59. Coll. entrance exams: SATS.
61. Superfan: STAN. Current slang. The term comes from a song on an Eminem album. The song tells the story of an obsessed fan named, you guessed it, STAN. Possibly, a portmanteau derived from "stalker" and "fan".
62. Strong desires: YENS. YEN is the shortest of the bunch (URGE, ITCH, DESIRE, HANKERING, etc.) and was handy here because, including the S, only four letter could be used.
65. "The 1619 Project" publisher, for short: NYT. New York Times "The 1619 Project" focused on slavery and the founding of the United States.
That's it for today.
_______________________________________________
Notes from C.C.:
1) Chairman Moe (Chris) made Wednesday's Newsday puzzle. Click here to solve and let him know your feedback.
2) Happy 83rd Birthday to dear Irish Miss (Agnes), the sunshine of our little corer. Thanks for the care and love you've shown everyone on our blog, Agnes! I'm so lucky to have you as a close friend and puzzle collaborator.
 |
| Agnes (right) and her sister Eileen, Nov 22, 2013 |
To my friends at the Crossword Corner:
ReplyDeleteForget my “ screed” of (was it?) two weeks ago. I am in this for the long haul. This site gives me joy, and if there’s one thing I know God wants for us , it’s joy ! (I hope I don’t get “bleeped out” for being too “religious” but I had to say that!) Blessings to you all!
SG @4:09 AM And Blessings to you SG 🙏
DeleteAh, this puzzle almost got me! I was beginning to wonder why nothing seemed to fit right. But, after solving the reveal, it all became clear. I can see why some might find this puzzle very frustrating, but in the end, there was a fiendishly clever trick to “getting it to GO right.” FIR, so I’m happy.
ReplyDeleteGood morning!
ReplyDeleteCurses. A single letter caused my DNF. It was the crossing o of RoBOTO and ALOo. Guess who guessed an e? Methinks CHUFFED must be primarily British; I'd look SIDEWAYS at anyone who said it aloud. Cute puzzle, Laura. Punny expo, Mal-Man (though directionally challenged this morning).
DNF/FIW. Looked up Styx hits because Come Sail Away was stuck on repeat in my mental MP3 player. Also had ASrAM, and probably could have found that if I had the time. (My favorite car gets new tires today. A 23rd birthday present.)
ReplyDeleteToday is:
GOLD STAR SPOUSES DAY (Tunnels to Towers provides mortgage-free homes to these spouses with young children. Among the best-rated charities, 95% of donations go to benefits)
NATIONAL FLASH DRIVE DAY (how long before we think of these in the same way we think of 5.25 inch floppies?)
NATIONAL DEEP DISH PIZZA DAY (love ‘em. I recommend Ricciardi’s Pizza in Richmond Hill, GA)
If it is tater tot, both words should be capitalized.
Thanks to Laura for the fun challenge, that I was almost equal to. Fine for Friday. And thanks to our MalMan for anther set of chuckles. Except that I gotta say, that bib cartoon makes me think that Momma Manatee may have weaned you a bit too early.
Took 9:29 today for me to find my get up and GO.
ReplyDeleteThe top-right meeting of Stacy/Walt/Alda was clunky, as were the inclusions of an Indian state, an African lake, a French word, and a South Asian dish.
I didn't know today's actress (Dyan) or augury.
Welcome back (?) SubG - good to know I can continue to count on you to lead things off for us.
Happy Birthday and welcome back to Ms. Irish Miss!
Forgot to wish Irish Miss a Happy Birthday! Speaking of “joy,” IM, you are truly one of the joys of my life!
ReplyDeleteGood Morning:
ReplyDeleteEven though I saw the missing O at Erin G Bragh, I never noticed the adjacent O in Gosh, and this lapse in observation continued throughout the solve until I read the reveal. I'll chalk this up to my usual poor powers of observation, exacerbated by a lack of concentration and alertness. In any case, it was a clever theme with a spot on reveal. I needed perps for Stacy, Roboto, Aloo, and Theta, otherwise the cluing and fill was pretty straightforward and junk free. Ego sort of stuck out, though, considering the theme. The themers were solid and the three letter word count of 14 was more than acceptable so, all in all, an enjoyable solve.
Thanks, Laura, and thanks, MalMan, for the usual facts and humor. Loved the Fillet Minion and the sign-off Kitty!
Thanks to CC for the birthday wishes and the very thoughtful and heartfelt sentiments. The feeling is mutual!
FLN
HG, Bill, SubGenius, and WendyBird, thank you for such kind and generous words.
Have a great day.
FIR. The NE gave me fits, but I persisted and got through. The presence of two proper names, Stacy and Walt, side by side, didn't help.
ReplyDeleteSeveral learning moments for me, stan, Tor, mod, i.e., but the perps helped a lot.
Got the theme fairly early and before the reveal, so I'm happy go lucky!
Fun Friday fare, sort of a TOUGHIE, with a theme that made sense after I got the reveal. FIR in 18:52 with a few corrections, 9D I had _ERR and hastily typed in FERRIS WHEEL, but perps quickly corrected that. ROBOTO was perped, didn’t know it was Styx, but know the song (today’s ear worm). We’ve seen BENTO fairly frequently. DNK AUGURY, WALT, or what diffidence meant, so the SHYLY, ALOO, STACY crosses were WAGs, wasn’t sure if it was MERRI___ or MERRY___. Thank you Laura for the morning mental exercise!
ReplyDeleteMM ~ thank you for your superb rundown! LOL at the bib and Filet Minion cartoons!
Happy b/day Irish Miss☘️! Great to have you back!
C-Moe ~ thanks for the bonus puzzle today, FIR! Nice to see your submissions getting published, probably a lot of competition in the constructors world?
After I had enough perps in place to know what the theme fills were the GO SIDEWAYS was ana easy spot. I knew MERRY-GO- ROUND was one letter too many but I had AGO & ALOO (unknown but ROBOTO took care of it) filled. Didn't think about it until EGO was crossing under HAPPY. Didn't really understand the "Mid-March cry" until I recognized it was referring to St Patrick's Day on March 17. FIR.
ReplyDeleteThe NE was the most difficult. Never saw any Spider-Man or Breaking Bad shows and Chuffed is a word that was unknown to me. But TAIL and ALDA let me get STACY, WALT, & GLAD.
STAN- another slang term I'd never heard. A SORE SPOT for many of us 'seasoned solvers'.
ROVE-" I sometimes wonder why this is rarely, if ever, clued with "Karl". MM, the LAT is a left-leaning paper and you can even tell it by the fills of news personalities in their crosswords. Always CNN, MSNBC, or NPR.
Happy Birthday, Irish Miss!
ReplyDeleteThe NE was a TOUGHy for me, three proper nouns. I knew WALT but had forgotten it.
ReplyDeleteOnce MM explained the theme I realized how clever it was, but I missed it not being able to get ROBOTO and ALOO.
By the way SALUT simply means “Hi” in French, never “Cheers!”
That poor little kitty MM . Thank you so much for that phot of Agnes and her sister.
Happy birthday Irish Miss☘️🎉🎂🎊🌻
Oops, that should be photo.
ReplyDeleteShinkansen was no help cluing the unknown BENTO
ReplyDeleteThe "Ruth Cleveland" story, 30 years after she was born and 17 years after she died, is a pretty thin cover for not paying royalties to ballplayer G. H. Ruth, no matter what the court decided.
Laura der-she-witz should be proud of this puzzle; mentioning Mr. Roboto with lyrics, “Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto, For doing the jobs that nobody wants to…” I hope this isn’t a sore spot for the mods. Relatively easy Friday, since only the northeast had me go-ing. Thank you
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday, Irish Miss!
Are you going to have Gibbles with your cake and ice cream?
Enjoy
Good Morning! I really liked this theme. Thanks, Laura, for a crunchy but gettable puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI first saw the theme with MERRY-GO-ROUND, and then went back and corrected the middle west to fix BRAGH. (APB starting with O just didn’t work.) I was onto it going forward.
The NE was the last to fill, no knowing STACY or WALT. I think we’ve had chuffed recently, but I had to work at it to recall it’s meaning.
Thanks, MalMan. I loved your intro and all the fun that followed.
Hand Keurig a marketing award now that so many are into the one cup BREW style to invent a new K-pod without plastic to replace the K-cup. Oh, and by the way, you will need a new machine to use it! 🤣🤣🤣. Yeah, I’ll probably go for it., The environment and all…..
Pork ->SPAM: I knew they usually roasted a whole pig at their feasts.
Happy Birthday, IM. 🥳🎂🌹🌹
Fab Friday. Thanks for the fun, Laura and MalMan.
ReplyDeleteI FIRed and saw the GO SIDEWAYS theme partway through the solve (when I couldn’t fit the answers into the space provided).
I smiled broadly at the reveal. Great!
There seemed to be an abundance of Os today (although like d’o, I had trouble remembering that final O in ALOO).
I wanted the mid-March cry to be Et Tu Brute, but it was too short. ERIN perped.
The NE corner had some issues with unknown names STACY and WALT. Plus, I had entered an S for the plural 10A clue. I WAGged and cleared it up.
Ham, was too short, Pork filled the spot, until perps changed to SPAM.
I awaited perps to decide between Roam and ROVE.
I thought of Lake Victoria before CHAD, but Victoria is in only three countries.
TOR perped, but I am not familiar with that publisher. Now if it had been clued as “Raptors on scoreboard” . . . !
Which reminds me of the Raptors STAN. Here’s a heartwarming link.
NavBhatiaSuperfan
Happy Birthday Irish Miss!
Wishing you all a great day.
FIR but it was a SGT (stupid gimmick theme) puzzle. The author may have been guilty of this before - there are two constructors with that last name and I can’t remember which is which.
ReplyDeleteSubGenius, so nice to hear you're back! Joy is the key...
ReplyDeleteJinx, say it ain't so!! I have so much stored on flash drives....
I was sitting in the FR doing the CW and the house shook & the dishes rattled. Just learned it was an earthquake in NJ. Hope everyone is OK.
ReplyDeleteYes, a 4.5 on the Richter scale. Very unusual for NJ.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the gimmicky Friday, where the gimmick helped with the solve. Not like circles do. Wait a sec! Could those theme answers be considered circles? Dang!
Learning moment: Stan
2nd learning moment after reading (a very punny write up, thank you MM.) I learned Stan in a previous puzzle, and completely forgot it!
Well, at least a lot of thought went into this...
Happy Birthday Irish Miss!
Happy birthday, I-M. Good to see you back at the corner.
ReplyDeleteEasier for me then most Friday puzzles. I caught the theme early on. ERIN GO BRAGH was obvious. All of it perped but the middle. I penciled in the G and saw the GO lying sideways crossing GOSH. Aha, that's the clever gimmick! It was off to the races.
ReplyDeleteThe NE gave me a little pause, but SWAG, ALAN and DETRACTED perped the others.
With ALO- I remembered seeing ALOO before. Then ROBOTO was all perps.
OCCAM'S RAZOR is similar to the KISS principle, Keep It Simple, Stupid. The simplest explanation is usually he best. In crosswords I try the simplest answer first.
We ate lunch from our Bento boxes while riding the Shinkansen in Japan.
Those eyes were off putting in the fillet mignon picture.
AVID READER, CSO to me and many others here. The daily reading habit pays off in solving crosswords.
Only theta, Stacy, Roboto, and Walt were unfamiliar to me.
Here we had mild shaking from the earthquake for just a few seconds. Twenty minutes away my friend had some broken dishes and a longer period of shaking.
Much paper work to do today. I am looking for a small notebook where I recorded an interview from yesterday. Misplacing things is the most annoying part of aging. They almost always turn up after wasting a long time looking for them.
Happy birthday, Irish Miss, glad to see you, back.
Happy birthday, I-M. Good to see you back at the corner.
ReplyDeleteAn enjoyable Friday FIR! plenty of crunch, but clever clues and helpful perps eased the way. Caught on to the gimmick early, and never looked back. I'll take a personal CSO at BOOKWORM. Fits me like a glove. Mom raised us on various iterations of SPAM. My Dad came back from WWII with a real taste for it! I still like it occasionally.
ReplyDeleteHola!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Laura, for a nice puzzle without too many TOUGHIES. Once I filled SIDEWAYS the mystery was solved. It had been a lingering question for me throughout the puzzle.
BABY RUTHS in plural grates on me!
DYAN Cannon, I believe, was WED TO Cary Grant.
OCCAM's razor was the source of many heated discussions in some of my college classes.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Irish Miss!
I wish you all a HAPPY day!
CED, as it turns out, the placement of those boxes were as good as any. They finally rogered up that the 6' separation wasn't based on science, it was from 80 year old heuristics.
ReplyDeleteRosE - Ya don't wanna know how many CDs once contained my digital backups. I think the thing that will make USB drives obsolete is that, like CDs and tape, they are increasingly prone to failure over time. "The cloud" doesn't fail - until it does.
I’m from Oregon, which has a Treasure Valley Community College near the Idaho border, so that and Mr. ROBOTO attracted me to the Eastern Seaboard immediately. I had “dab” before GOB, but OTTER set me straight and led me straight to the unifier and a fairly easy FIR for a Friday – but only after I found myself accepting MERRYGROUND (for the time being) and trying to cram the 11 letters of ERIN GO BRAGH into a 10-letter space and finally figuring it out. Thanks, MalMan, for the confirmations.
ReplyDeleteAt that point, it didn’t help that GOSH, clued poorly, was one of those dialogue thingies I gripe about so much that I abstained from Thursday’s Corner so I wouldn’t belabor the point. That puzzle’s theme had four of those thingies, two of which were clever enough to be satisfying, but also had EIGHT other examples of my Patti pet peeve. I’d say the “curses” clue today was one of those, but at least it wasn’t “gah” instead of BAH, even though “gah” would be closer to “curses” in meaning. . . I guess.
I liked the clues for REAR and I wanted to like the “bunch” clue for romantics but didn’t quite. More certainly, I didn’t like TOUGHIES but sussed it easily enough. I’ve never approved of MELD as interchangeable with “weld.” Meld is a pinochle term and shouldn’t be used the other way. I didn’t know AUGURY or STAN (as clued). I struggled in the northeast, not knowing WALT and not coming up with STACY immediately, but also because I had Ladd before ALDA.
KEURIG is never robust enough for me, but I am a consumer of both ASSAM tea and ALOO GOBI. The latter usually comes with too many potatoes and too little cauliflower, so I ask the restaurants to reverse the ratio. We eat a lot of foreign food hereabouts. I’m also conversant enough with foreign languages – although Spanish is the only one in which I’m at all fluent – and I’m often dismayed by the number of Americans who not only disdain these things but also are hostile enough to claim there are “American pronunciations” for foreign words and, worse, foreign names, such as pronouncing Sotomayor “Sodamyer.” Oops, am I invoking politics?
Getting back to the dab-GOB area, the clue word, dollop, immediately put the earworm jingle for Daisy sour cream in my head – “do a dollop, do-do a dollop, yeaahh.” I think that’s almost as good as the Jardiance jingle, which I admire a lot. I know, many don’t. I repeat, from a couple of weeks ago: My favorite jingle of all time was the 1960 fugue sung by Snap, Crackle and Pop for Rice Krispies. I guess I.M. is old enough to remember that one. Happy birthday!
Edward in Los Angeles:
ReplyDelete50A- I don’t think it is the double side of a DNA molecule, but more of twins having a “twin set” of DNA between them.
Mr. Biologist, here.
Thank you Laura for a Friday frolic with a bendy theme. We haven't seen one of those recently.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you MalMan for GOing out of you way to explain what was GOing on and not GOing [too] overboard with the punny stuff (I especially liked your re-appropriation of "cheetah" and "curd").
5A OCCAM. The quote “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” has often been attributed to Einstein (probably falsely). However there is nothing inherently correct about simplicy.
10A SWAG. MERC fit, but it didn't sell very well.
45A TOUGHIE. Today's puzzle was not a TOUGHIE.
51A DIME. The guy attached to that finger and thumb would never make it on Angi's List -- he's using a DIME to drive a MASONRY BIT into a piece of wood that obviously has a pilot hole created with a DRILL, but he doesn't own a screwdriver?
2D ROVE. KARL's name passed through my mind, but politics is frowned on on the Corner so I didn't ROVE with it.
11D WALT. It could also have been clued "____ IDZIK", Teri's Dad", but it's doubtful that anyone on the Corner would know that besides me.
22D ALOO. I've had "____ paratha", but never "____ gobi".
29D TOR. DNY TOR, but did know "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", probably their best known publication.
32D OTTER. OTTERS are very clever, but I doubt that OYSTERS SEA it that way.
41D MOD. A CSO to our .
Cheers
Bill
p.s. MOE - I needed a magnifying glass to solve your puzzle, but I liked it and it made a LASTing impression.
p.p.s. HBD Agnes, we're glad you're back 🎈🎁🎂!
Enjoyed the theme - which sussed before the reveal with ERIN G(o) Bragh and MERRY G(o) ROUND being so common
ReplyDeleteI have learned from crosswords - if it's a central Asian dish and it has potatoes-then it is going to be ALOO
Both my grands take BENTO boxes to day care - nice to keep warm and cold foods at their varied temps.
Thanks to MM for the blog - enjoyed the link to ARETHA from the Blues Brothers movies
and to Laura for the puzzle
Happy birthday Agnes- hope you stretch the celebration through the whole weekend!
Nice to see Subgenius back at the top of blog comments
I'm looking forward to the Final Four women's games tonight - amazing athletes!
I couldn't figure out how to work Chairman Moe puzzle online, so I printed it out to take to the beach with me later.
ReplyDeleteWill let you know if I ever solve it, just got back from Home Depot with 15 bags of mulch. I may have to fake a back injury. DW is obsessed with making the yard look perfect...
Lots of interesting words today, such as AUGURY, OCCAM, BENTO (I loved the movie about the mis-delivered Bento box that kicked off a very sweet love story). The theme eluded me for awhile, but things speeded up when I had my V-8 moment.
ReplyDeleteI confidently put Pork instead of SPAM, thinking of the pig roasts on the beach - Bzzzt. I was so proud to FIR on a Friday - but then came the head banging moment when I discovered my error at alou/ALOO. It was a total Wag, and crossing with the totally unknown ROBOTO, I was doomed. Thanks, Laura, for an interesting challenge, which I almost met.
MM, your tours are always a delight. The Aretha Franklin clip was great and showed another side of her great talent. Also loved the kitty clip. Your puns always make me laugh/groan and are delivered so sneakily.
HB and many more, Irish Miss. 🎂🎉
FIR but had to take a break and come back to finish the northeast with unknowns STACY and WALT. I actually knew the meaning of "chuffed" because of our younger son who is totally chuffed about his upcoming wedding. The theme looked like we were dropping the O in GO until the reveal at 31 Down. O! I get it now.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks to Laura and Patti for an interesting, solvable puzzle, and to MM for a delightful review.
TTP, you took the words right out of my mouth.
ReplyDeleteCopy Editor ~ that Jardiance jingle along with Ozempic grates on me, as does any jingle promoting direct-to-consumer prescription drugs, which I don’t know why the FDA ever approved the advertising., should be confined to medical journals. “Tell your doctor you want ___” amounts to self-prescribing. Our resident pharmacist CanadianEh would probably tell us it’s way more highly regulated in Canada, which it should be IMO.
ReplyDeleteMost of the initial advertising for new drugs is to try to get Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance companies to pay for it. After they get Medicare approval, they jack up the price over and over again until their patent ends.
DeleteDesper-otto, it's true. Guilty as charged. A cut-and-paste, for sure. I was on another 'puter, and multiplexing.
ReplyDeleteTOR - it is also the initialism for The Onion Router. It's an access road into the dark web of the information superhighway. The dark web is where your personal information from all of the security breaches is bought and sold. There are many other evils on the dark web, so my advice is to steer clear and don't let curiosity get the better of you. Things can quickly GO SIDEWAYS, so
D
O
N
T
GO
T
H
E
R
E
Puzzling thoughts:
ReplyDeleteFIR with just a few corrections. I figured something was afoot when I saw MERRYGROUND. When GO SIDEWAYS filled I then saw ERINGBRAUGH and HAPPYGLUCKY. Nice work, Laura; and, of course, MM kept us wanting for more (or maybe fewer) "dad jokes"
Yooper Phil @ 8:40 ==> glad you enjoyed the puzzle. Yes, there is/must be a lot of competition from constructors to the xword puzzle editors. I'm certainly happy to see some of mine chosen
waseeley @ 12:06 ==> sorry that the image I sent you re the puzzle did not enlarge to a "normal" size. I hope you get your "system" fixed so you can do the puzzles on-line. I have another one coming next week ...
inanehiker @ 12:20 ==> indeed, tonight's Women's Semi-Finals will be fun to watch. Big weekend for college hoops fans as the Men's Semi's are on Saturday. Four straight days of basketball
Happy Birthday IM! Celebrate in style!!
Thanks, Laura for a fun Friday solve! I caught on to the missing O's but your reveal showed me where they went. I thought maybe the O in 31A was purposeful??
ReplyDeleteFAVs: AVID READER, OTTER, and OCCAM
Hand up for pork before SPAM.
Super tour today, MAL MAN! I especially enjoyed learning the MERRY-GO-ROUND music trivia and seeing the video of your fellow marine mammals. We have Southern Sea Otters here. They have a pocket-like flap of skin near their armpits where they sometimes keep a favorite rock for cracking oysters. How clever is that!
Happy Birthday, Irish Miss! You are simply wonderful!
OK Bill, how many more times does Patti have to force "mercH" into the grids before you remember it's not MERC? Although MERC makes a fine outboard, and they were fine cars.
ReplyDeleteOoh ooh! I remember that book, and of the same era, The Whole Earth Catalogue and Divine Right's adventures.
inanehiker - in my mom's basketball days, women players were restrained to either the offensive or defensive court. Couldn't have our future moms running too far and jarring all that reproductive gear. I wonder how many female medical experts they consulted before making that bad call.
S.Moe - thanks for the fine puzzle. Ironic that EPIcenter appeared on the day of the NYC quake. Conspiracy groups are looking for a causal relationship. "Kid's stuffed bear" for TEDDY could have been clued as "dad's stuffed present."
Jinx @ 1:57 ==> that was quite a coincidence. Love your clue choice for TEDDY! 😂
DeleteMany foreign place names have become Anglicized, which is the proper pronunciation in English. It sounds snooty to try to pronounce them the way natives do. I have studied several languages and note that they all pronounce and spell names of other places in their own way. We say "parr is" for the capital of France. The French call it (paree.) In Austria, Wien, its capital, is pronounced veen, but in America it is spelled Vienna and pronounced vee en uh. The Japanese say makudonarudo for MacDonald's.
ReplyDeleteI played pinochle with my mom and sibs since I was very young, so I have known MELD for a long time. Although not playing pinochle these days, I still us meld often.
Flavors meld when the dish sits over night. Hopefully step families meld. There is the melding together of religion and politics. Colors meld. Voices meld. Ideas meld.
DO says something like "I'd look sideways with anyone who said that." It is so true and so sad that we have to be intimidated into not using a huge percentage of our vocabulary lest we seem snooty or uppity.
C.Moe
ReplyDeleteWow! An earthquake in the NE! Hope no damage for anyone in the area.
ReplyDeleteYellowrocks, I have to say that there are ways to say things that are just showing off the speaker's vocabulary. I remember listening to a presentation that was well organized and presented. Then the speaker said "I trust that you perceive the analog." I stopped listing to that stuffed shirt at that point, and started thinking "where's the bar?"
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday, Irish Miss!
Really enjoyed this puzzle, and, as usual, the wonderful write-up. Thanks to all!
Monkey @ 2:16 PM Felt an ever so slight trembling under my mouse. The mouse might have been frightened, but it didn't scare me. I've experienced 3 "seisms" in my life, the strongest while sitting in a data center feeling the floor tiles "float" under me for about 30 seconds.
ReplyDeleteSumdaze, thanks for commenting on "The Merry Go Round Broke Down". I only learned that bit of trivia comparatively recently. I used to watch the Cartoon Carousel (Skipper Frank) show as a kid and recently discovered that MeTV Plus shows a rerun of each morning's Toon In With Me cartoon show at 9 p.m. Pacific time. I admit to watching it. Another bit of trivia: Bill the Cartoon Curator from Toon In With Me has become a regular on the Svengoolie show. On that show Bill Leff (a Second City Alum - who knew!?) plays an 800 year old vampire named Nostalgiaferatoo.
ReplyDeleteMonkey @9:36 AM Yes, I tried to find a version of Gounod's aria Salut Demeure, Faust's pickup line to Margarete, but couldn't find one with English subtitles.
ReplyDeleteJinx @1:57 PM Let me get this straight -- you're correcting my spelling? 😀
MOE @1:46 PM I'm a dyed-in-the-wool pencil and paper pusher. I don't think I've ever solved a puzzle online and it's too late to start now. Do you use "crossword compiler" to construct your puzzles? I've fiddled with it a bit and Windblows is always complaining about security problems with it. OTOH Windblows complains about anything that wasn't made in Redmond. Re the puzzle for next week -- can you export a copy to AcrossLite? Maybe that will get by the censors.
waseeley @ 3:17 ==> yes to Crossword Compiler. I might be able to export my original submission to Across Lite for you. It will likely be different from what publishes (clues) but the entries will be the same
DeleteLike Canadian Eh, I really wanted the Mid-March cry to be “et tu brute,” especially after getting the E and B first. Kept trying to respell it somehow to make it fit.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday, Irish Miss! You’re not alone in missing the gag until reading the reveal—I only saw that the O’s were missing… and the perps around the reveal were difficult for me.
But I loved the theme, it was very creative and outside-the-box. Took a while, but got the FIR.
DW was mixing a batter last Sunday morning. I asked what she was making. I heard "pet a shoe." A what? "It's the pastry for cream puffs." I googled cream puff pastry, found "Pâte à choux", and then listened to a few pronunciations of it. Yeah, it does sound like pet a shoe.
ReplyDeleteYellowrocks, MM's filet minion cartoon was a pun play on the animated character from "Despicable Me" but the BIBS cartoon was my favorite. Too funny! Also, my thoughts on MELD were along the same lines as yours, particularly about the melding of flavors that makes some cooked dishes so much better the second day.
MM, I occasionally watch Tune In With Me (6 AM here) and like some of the older, pre-60's cartoon shorts. I like Bill the Cartoon Curator's lead ins to the cartoons, especially when he provides back stories about the filming, the creators, the directors and producers. I never paid attention to the credits before watching Tune In With Me. Valerie would certainly know about pâte à choux, amirite?
Waseeley, there's a printer icon on the menu bar at the website for CM's puzzle. You don't have to solve it online. And what censors are you talking about? Google/Blogger doesn't block the links.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle reminds me of Crosswords of old. Excellent. This is how I like to be tricked. Not with obscure PNs and nonsense clue/answers. I was initially leaving out wrong letters to shoehorn what I knew was the right answer in the allotted number of squares till I saw the GOSIDEWAYS pattern. Just hoping a relatively easy Friday doesn’t make for a difficult Saturday.
But.. I feared the NE corner would fail me. I had “s” thinking a plural for “branded tees etc” and wasn’t sure what “chuffed” meant. Then SWAG came outta nowhere and was GLAD to FIR
Finally remembered ASSAM. Had santé first for SALUT (methinks I’m still correct). Plus I prefer my French Toast with lots of syrup
It’s easier to find a screwdriver than a DIME these days. TOUGHIES was a toughy and for as many seasons as I watched “Breaking Bad”. Couldn’t recall Bryan Cranston’s name.
Anyway
Hoping for a decent weekend
Bill, I know...me giving speling advise is like Jelly Roll giving nutrition advize.
ReplyDeleteWaseely @3:17. The old fashioned use of SALUT as in Salut! Demeure chaste et pure is translated as HAIL! Remain chaste and pure.
ReplyDeleteSorry to be a little late checking in, but I still want to give Laura a SALUT for her delightful GO SIDEWAYS puzzle. Many thanks for this pleasure, with few TOUGHIES, thank goodness. And thank you for your commentary always PROMOted by your LORE, MalMan--thanks for that too.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle had very few SORE SPOTs, and a pretty CLEAN SLATE all around. Made me feel like an AVID READER with a HAPPY GO LUCKY sensation as I worked my way through.
And in addition to all that, we got a chance to wish IRISH MISS a wonderful HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
So, have a good weekend coming up, everybody,
YooperPhil: My affection for good jingles comes less from the perspective of the consumer than from someone who would be good at writing jingles, a journalist who sometimes wonders how the old career would have gone in advertising instead of print.
ReplyDeleteTTP @4:20 PM Have you tried the printer icon on the site? What does it do? When I press it it tries to output to a PDF file, which then generates a security message and refuses to save it. Some layer in my stack doesn't like the PDFs generated by the Newsday site. I don't think it's Google/Blogger, because they're out of the picture by then. Chris and I have usually found workarounds.
ReplyDeleteMOE @4:11 PM Sounds good to me. Do you think Stanley give you a .puz of the finished puzzle?
ReplyDeletewaseeley @ 4:something: Next week's puzzle is @ Universal
DeleteWaseeley, it opens a PDF.
ReplyDeleteThen you press File on your browser menu, and then press Print.
Anything else is an issue at your end.
TTP @5:38 I rest my case.
DeleteYELLOWROCKS: I don’t think my standards on the topic of pronunciations are overdoing it to the extent you bemoan, or at least imply. For example, when the state east of California gets pronounced Ne-VAW-da, I don’t applaud. That’s not how anyone pronounces it there.
ReplyDeleteI advocate a happy medium. I don’t expect most Americans to get the subtleties of consonants right, but the vowel sounds – ah, eh, ee, oh, oo – are universal and knowable.
I get this way during baseball season because of all the Hispanic/Latino names that get mispronounced almost institutionally. The name Esteban is properly pronounced Eh-STAY-bahn, not ES-tuh-bahn. The name De Jesus is pronounced day-hay-SEUSS, not duh-HAY-zeus. It’s not so esoteric as to be ludicrous and I don’t think I advocate anything that IS so ludicrous.
Musings
ReplyDelete-18 hole of gold, mowed the yard for the first time this season and fixed the sprinklers! This fun puzzle was a bonus.
Bill, on my Win11 laptop C.Moe's puzzle comes up the puzzle on brainsonly.com When I click on the printer icon, it asks me to select blank, solution with clues, or solution without clues. Clicking Blank, then print from that menu starts the pdf download, and gives me the file name. When it says "completed," clocking on the download notification opens the puzzle in Adobe Acrobat. Pressing Print in Acrobat opens the familiar Windows print dialog box. Hope this helps you figure out when things go awry.
ReplyDeleteJinx @6:04 My download does not complete. Something in my stack doesn't like it. As long as it does I don't want spend any of my remaining time on Earth figuring out the root cause of what it is. 🙂
DeleteOh yeah, I'm using Firefox.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday good wishes to Irish Miss.
ReplyDeleteI liked the go sideways theme.
Not a TOUGHIE for today, but a bit of a Sergio Leone exercise: The Good (pretty snazzy hook with the 90° O’s) The Bad (three! crossing proper names in the NE sector) and The Ugly (who here is a fan of both South Asian food and Styx??). Ol’ Clint Westwood here scored a FIR, however, so I suppose I should be CHUFFED. Besides, Mal-Man’s hilarious observations and links had me ROTFL (we all know that one now!).
ReplyDeleteAnd a big Happy Birthday to you, Irish Miss! You look mahhvelous!
====> Darren / L.A.
waseeley @ 7:44, you rest your case about what?
ReplyDeleteIt's a computer or user problem at your end.
Also, you never did clarify what you meant by censors.
TTP @7:44 PM I rest my case that it's a problem at my end. The censor is some algorithm at my end.
DeleteHi All!
ReplyDeleteHAPPY G/o LUCKY Birthday, IM! Glad to know you're back and on the mend.
I thought Laura's puzzle was a rebus at first and inserted "G/O" at MERRY G/O ROUND. Nope; perps disagreed. But, this was just right for a puzzle to noodle on while dealing with [redACTED] -- GO SIDEWAYS sounds about right.
Thanks MManatee for the extra grins to end my morning.
//Mr. ROBOTO is not Styx's best; just an attempt at replicating the Rock Opera (The Who's Tommy was ++)
WOs: ROam->ROVE, WEDed [sic]
ESPs: DYAN and probably others
Fav: I'm going to say the whole puzzle. Loads of fun clues.
TTP - TOR is fun but don't GO there on your regular machine/'puter. Burners are best to play in that sandbox.
Insofar as data you can get, ATT breach is bad. SSNS and all. Go to HaveIBeenPwned.com to check if you were part of it and, if so, freeze your credit. #endPSA
//I was at a hacker meetup last night and one guy got [REDACTED]'s fake email, home address, phone number from the ATT breach and then, using the fake email account, linked that to his car, DL#, and VIN from other OpenSource data - scary sh**.
Hope y'all are having a great day!
Cheers, -T
Bill, check your email.
ReplyDeleteDash T, yup. That's a good website for checking, and i appreciate you validating it as such a few months ago. Google's safe browsing tool had also told me it was clean.
ReplyDeleteTwo of my email ids are on the dark web from prior data breaches, so I am very careful about the emails I open on them and no longer use them for anything of importance. They get a lot of spam, just as this blog does. In spurts.
My other two primary email ids have not yet been compromised, so I'm cautious about how they get shared. I hate having to keep creating new ones, and updating profiles everywhere.
Our accounts have been frozen at the credit reporting agencies since Equifax screwed up and that breach became publicly known in Sept 2017. No doubt our SSNs are compromised.
I only know a handful of people that have ventured out to the dark web. They were also cyber security professionals.
waseeley, thank you for clarifying. There is no one here that is censoring anything, other than Blogger marking comments as spam. When I do remove a comment for being out of bounds, I address it. Thankfully, there is not much need to do so.