Good morning, Cruciverbalists. Malodorous Manatee here with a puzzle that takes us into the wonderful world of our avian friends. Our puzzle-setter today is Michèle Govier who has previously had crossword puzzles published by both the Los Angeles Times and the NewYork Times. At four places in the grid, Michèle has conjured up answers that are the names of two species of birds cleverly placed back to back so as to provide an appropriate response to the clue. Let's start with the unifier:
73 Across: Double birdie, which can also be found at 17-, 31-, 48-, and 62-Across?: EAGLE. In golf scoring a birdie is one shot below par (e.g. a three on a par four hole) and an EAGLE is two shots below par so an EAGLE is, in effect, a double birdie. For our purposes, Double Birdie refers to the two bird names.
Here are the places where the theme has been applied:
17 Across: Ingest lather while getting one's mouth washed out with soap?: SWALLOW DOVE.
A Swallow A Dove
To SWALLOW means, well, to swallow and DOVE, of course, is a brand of soap.
31 Across: Loudly promote trips to Istanbul?: HAWK TURKEY.
A Hawk A Turkey
To HAWK something is slang for avidly promoting something for sale and Istanbul, of course, is the capital city of TURKEY.
48 Across: Successfully elude director Scorsese?: DUCK MARTIN.
A Duck A Martin
To DUCK something is to avoid or shirk (as in responsibility) and MARTIN Scorsese is a famous film director.
62 Across: Say "Holy nightmare, Batman!"?: PARROT ROBIN.
%2Fclose-up-of-gold-and-blue-macaw-perching-on-tree-962288862-5b50073e46e0fb0037c23c23.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=260fb71ab83876f239082568ba3de876e6b3133f6a6dccee3b20248ba8e20f9c&ipo=images)
A Parrot A Robin
To PARROT something is to repeat it verbatim. ROBIN is Batman's sidekick.
Here are the other clues and answers:
Across:
1. Birthstones for some Scorpios: OPALS. The most-often seen birthstone in our puzzles.
6. Consumes, in a way: READS. An appropriately semi-obtuse clue for a Friday.
11. Revenue sources for freemium apps: ADS. Users of the app get access at no monetary cost but are subjected to ADS.
14. Jubilant cry: WAHOO. Something someone might say. YAHOO. BINGO. WHOOP. All would have fit the space and the clue but were not what the puzzle demanded this time around.
15. "Dominicana" novelist Cruz: ANGIE. Thanks, perps.
16. Matcha, e.g.: TEA. A concentrated form of green TEA.
19. Clever one: WAG.
20. Show the way: LEAD. Some of us are partial to this advice:
21. Cry at the end of a performance: ENCORE. More, more!
23. Tourney game: SEMI.
26. French beans?: TETES. In English, Bean is slang for head. TETES means heads in French.
29. Seed coating: ARIL. An ARIL, also called an arillus, is a specialized outgrowth from a seed that partly or completely covers the seed
30. TikTok upload: CLIP. A man went viral after posting a video CLIP on TikTok about how to stay cool in the summer without air conditioning. He has many fans.
35. Theater boxes: LOGES. A LOGE is an elevated seating area in a theater that is typically located at the side or rear of the stage. Loges are often reserved for special occasions or VIP guests. They offer a unique vantage point from which to watch a show and provide more privacy than a regular seat.
36. Virtual animal in an early 2000s fad: NEOPET.
38. Insist: DEMAND. It is what this puzzle required.
43. Luster: SHEEN. Got that, Martin?
47. Proportion: RATIO.
53. Sound off: RANT. It might have been RAVE. Put in the R and the A and let the perps decide.
54. Sufficient, in texts: ENUF. Our "old friend" (new friend), textspeak. Not a fan but maybe it is time to memorize this: Glossary of Textspeak
55. Tiniest amount: TRACE. An alternative to IOTA.
56. Kerfuffles: ADOS. Fusses common in crossword puzzles.
57. Late sign: PISCES. PISCES is the twelfth, and last, sign in the zodiac. This solver did not previously know that but, then again, his moon is in Fresno.
59. Crossed (out): EXED. This rest of this answer has been EXED out. (or as close as it was possible to exhibit).
61. Brainpower nos.: IQS. A friend recently scored a 175 on an IQ test that had just 3 simple questions: 1. His credit card number 2. His social security number 3. Uploading a scan of his birth certificate
68. Pool need: CUE. Not a swimming reference. A billiards/pocket billiards reference.
69. Omar of Congress: ILHAN. Democrat, MN.
70. Accustom (to): INURE. I've become INUREd to her face.
71. Apple TV+ role for Jason: TED. Jason Sudeikis stars in the television show "Ted Lasso".
72. "Jurassic Park" dinosaur, e.g.: CLONE. What is the best thing to do if you see a T-Rex CLONE? Hope that it doesn't see you.
Down:
1. Pained cries: OWS. Onomatopoeia.
2. Print maker: PAW. Cute clue. Not a reference to lithography.
3. "I've got it!": AHA. Moments all of the solvers here have experienced.
4. Sticky treat, in more ways than one: LOLLIPOP. Of course the sweet is sticky as in adherence. The pun-y additional way is that the candy is on a (usually paper) stick. Stick-y.
The Chordettes
5. Only: SOLE. I’m writing a book about a guy who sells shoe parts to Satan. It’s your basic “Sold my SOLE to the devil” novel.
6. Unfair treatment: RAW DEAL. Idiomatic.
7. Word with tight or loose: END. A loose END is something yet unfinished. A tight END is a position player on a football team.
8. Long __: AGO.
9. Sold off: DIVESTED. A current buzzword.
10. Observed: SEEN. Not observed as in a religious holiday. Viewed.
11. On the job: AT WORK. As in:
12. Sweetie pie: DEARIE. Slangy clue. Slangy answer.
13. With wisdom: SAGELY.
13. With wisdom: SAGELY.
18. Solemn recitation: OATH.
22. Sonata, for one: CAR. Not a musical reference. A Hyundai.
23. Create a PDF, perhaps: SCAN. A computer tech reference that almost everyone knows.
24. "Legally Blonde" blonde: ELLE. ELLE Woods is the protagonist. REESE (Witherspoon) would not fit.
25. Actor Ventimiglia: MILO. Total unknown to this solver. Thanks perps. What does twenty miles have to do with this? Oh, never mind. Of course, if you watched "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" this was not a problem.
27. Number of hearts for a Time Lord: TWO. A "Dr. Who" reference.
28. ER graph: EKG. Electrocardiogram. Wait, wouldn't that be ECG? Apparently, EKG was adopted as the standard abbreviation to avoid confusion with electroencephalogram.
32. Touchpad toucher: USER. Remember, only USERs loose drugs. Oh, a computer user!
34. Reply with an apostrophe: YES'M. Yes ma'am.
37. "We're done here": THAT'S ALL. Mel Blanc's epitaph:
39. Argentine soccer legend dubbed "El Pibe de Oro": MARADONA.
40. Not much: A TAD. My teacher once asked "Name three famous Poles." I replied, "North, South and TAD."
41. Spanish boy: NINO.
42. ...: DOTS. Quite literally. If one misread the . . . then they might have thought POLKA.
44. Goof: ERR. A mistake frequently encountered in crossword puzzles.
45. Airport info: ETA. Estimated Time of Arrival
46. "Good going!": NICE ONE. Something someone might say. BITCHIN' would have fit. FAR OUT would not. See also 58 Down.
48. Portray: DEPICT.
49. Singular: UNIQUE.
50. Used colorful language: CUSSED. A good place for grawlix.
51. Crispy Colonel sandwich seller: KFC. Before Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC (in 1991) this writer would have to have typed out Kentucky Fried Chicken.
52. Coming right up: NEXT.
58. Way awesome: EPIC. NEAT DOPE KEEN PHAT
60. Buffalo's lake: ERIE. A place often visited in our puzzles.
63. Density symbol, in physics: RHO.
64. Oversaw: RAN. As in to have once run a company or an international drug cartel.
65. Flu or fly: BUG. If you got sick some would say that you caught a BUG. A fly (the insect not the baseball hit or the trouser zipper) is, well, a BUG (at least in casual English usage if not scientifically).
66. Not online, for short: IRL. In Real Life
67. Word with a maiden name: NEE. From the French = born.
The completed grid:
__________________________________________________
The New Riders of the Purple Sage - 1969
Last Lonely Eagle
I did not know that there was an Owsley Stanley Foundation but I do remember reading somewhere that Augustus Owsley Stanley III was an even better mechanic than he was a chemist.
45 comments:
I understood the gimmick right away, and that helped solve this somewhat challenging puzzle. (“Maradona” for instance, was gotten only through ESP.) Anyway, after a bit of a struggle, I FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
Oh, no. My OYS weren't the pained cries, and my YAHOO should'a been a WAHOO. Bzzzzzt. Went further wrong with MILA/MILO. Also went sideways with WISELY/SAGELY, but corrected that before the final bell. Not an auspicious day for d-o. Cute theme, Michele. Punny expo, Mal-Man. (North, South, TAD, indeed. You may want to look up Istanbul.)
Cussed -- A while back I first ran across WTF and wondered what was so raunchy about Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. OK, it was quite a while back.
DNF, looking up MILO. Also misfilled CUrSED and OyS (hi D-O.)
Today is:
NATIONAL MINT JULEP DAY (I thought this occurred on the first Saturday in May)
NATIONAL CREATIVITY DAY (Albert Einstein said “creativity is intelligence having fun”)
LOOMIS DAY (dentist Mahlon Loomis received a patent for wireless telegraphy in 1872, beating Marconi's patent by 25 years)
NATIONAL WATER A FLOWER DAY (but try not to overwater it)
Erased rusts for READS, anil for ARIL, LOLLyPOP, too for END, ella for ELLE, and had to stet AGO.
Thanks to Michele for the fun Friday challenge. Loved the theme. And thanks to our MalMan. Maybe your punniest yet.
I was cruising along pretty well for a Friday, sussed the theme early and had the grid 95% filled in about ten minutes, but that pesky spot in the west where ELLE and MILO were adjacent, and the unknowns of SCAN, NEOPET and CLIP all crossed took some thought and WAG’s. Perps got me CLONE and ANGIE, FIR in 21:38. Thanks Michèle for the Friday challenge, and to MM for your informative and illustrative rundown!
CanadianEh 🇨🇦 ~ heading toward your neck of the woods today (sort of). Going to Tobermory via Sault Ste. Marie ➡️ Manitoulin Island ➡️ Chi-Cheemaun ferry. DW’s family has had a summer home since the early 50’s on Dunks Bay just south of town on the Georgian Bay side of the peninsula, we go this time of year to help her dad open up the place for summer. Beautiful area with pristine waters, shouldn’t be too busy as it is pre peak tourist season. Have to change my dashboard readings to metric 😂.
Took 7:50 today for this loon to go with Oys/yahoo instead of ows/wahoo.
Thus, pursuant to the First Law of SubG, I am unhappy.
I knew today's foreign language lessons (tetes and nino), but didn't know today's writer or her work.
Oh well, at least we broke the circle streak.
Well, it came down to a double guess at the cross of three unknown proper names. ELLA, ELLY, or ELLE and MILT or MILO filling out the never heard of NEOPET. MILA Kunis is an 'actress'; didn't make the guess possibility list. I did FIR, as 'naopet' ,nytpet', ...etc. made no sense. I'm glad the following Time Lord clue wasn't abutting because TWO was unknown.
I noticed the 'verb-noun' bird combo at HAWK TURKEY. You can SWALLOW DOVE Bar-the ice cream variety. ANGIE and TED were unknowns.
RANT- I wish the constructors (or Patti) would lay off some of the proper name clues. Obscure writers, actors, directors,...etc. With all those streaming networks, cable networks, and broadcast TV showing hundreds of shows that nobody really watches, why do we keep getting them. Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Apple TV, Disney+, ESPN+, Sling, YouTubeTV, MAX, Peacock, Paramount+,...etc., what is the limit people will to pay? What's next? Podcasts and social media 'influencers'? ENUF said.
FIR. It took many perps to get this done. Too many unknown proper names, Milo, Elle, Maradona, Angie. As I've said before, these do not belong in crosswords. Maybe if I made one and included my nephew's name it would be the same as this puzzle. Sheesh!
I got the theme at hawk turkey and that helped a lot. But overall, this puzzle was not fun, even considering it's a Friday.
Easier than most Friday puzzles. I soon saw the two birds in a theme answer and that sped the solve along. Very enjoyable theme. So much fun today. Names were mostly easily perped and wagged. I was sailing along until, like Yooper Phil and Big Easy, the central Pacific coast slowed me down. SEMI, LOLLIPOP, and ALLOY gave me a toehold. After a time, I guessed ELLE, CLIP, MILO and SCAN. I was surprised to see NEOPET perped. The name doesn't ring a bell. Looking at the link, I see I have heard of the concept, but was not interested in it.
I think the lollipop clue should have been just sticky treat. I didn't care for IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE, stick-y on a stick.
I am avid consumer of books, three or four a week. You could say I eat them up. I read mostly fiction. In addition to being interesting, reading, whether fiction or nonfiction, is a broadly based vocabulary builder, both the formal and the vernacular. Reading also builds up your fund of information, especially if you are curious enough to look up the facts and concepts you read about.
We are encouraged to be life long learners.
Well, we got a Friday-like puzzle on a Friday, of all things. And a first-rate one at that.
The theme was clever. I couldn't believe that all four of of the first-named birds were verbs. And I found all four of the themes painted a hilarious picture.
When I had seen the name of the constructor, Michele Govier, I thought "cool-- we'll get some French words." (I lived in France for a couple years). No such luck. Only TETES in 26 A.
I think Michele was only a letter or two short of a pangram.
Holy Witherspoon! That West Central area was like quicksand. I was pretty sure that Reese Witherspoon was in "Legally Blonde," but there were only four letters available. Perps were no help, but WAGs were, in particular 33A. I was pretty sure that sterling silver was not 100% silver, so I tried alloy, and that broke the logjam.
I loved 22D because I drive it: it's a Hyundai Sonata.
If we gave an annual award for the best puzzle of the year, this one might get my vote. Creative, appropriately difficult, funny, and clever. Michele, I look forward to your next challenge.
Thank you Michele for a Friday challenge. I got all the themers, but ran aground and sank in the vicinity of San Francisco. I had to look up two clues, but even then couldn't perp them to an FIW because I swapped 24D for 25D, so I ended up with a DNF. Yer basic disaster!
Thank you as always MalMan for another fine, funny recap.
Nevertheless, some favs:
23A SEMI. Didn't see this because I got 24D ELLE and 25D MILO reversed.
30A CLIP. Nor this.
36D NEO PET. Nor this. Chaos theory calls this "A significcant dependence on initial conditions!"
29A ARIL. Learned this in CWDS.
48A DUCK MARTIN. This might have also been clued "OCD MD from Cornwall with an aversion to blood".
54A ENUF. Worth the price of admission to your review Joseph. I've saved your link for future reference.
59A EXED. Finally a use for this Blogger feature! Another thing I'm saving.
61A IQS. Did your friend upload his shirt too?
62A PARROT ROBIN. Nice touch using an English Robin for the illustration.
1D OWS. Had OHS instead.
4D LOLLIPOP. I couldn't even spell this right. Like I said, yer' basic disaster.
18D OATH. There have been a lot of OATHS sworn in NY recently, especially yesterday. See 50D.
Cheers,
Bill
Friday Puzzle made easy by long gettable theme answers supplying lots of perp help. (Let’s get it over with; Someone will eventually say it. “This puzzle was for the birds” 🦆🦜 🕊️ 🦃🇹🇷)
Had a problem for a bit with the PARROT answer cuz I had led for RAN. Eventually this sucker corrected LOLLyPOP to complete the Midwest for the win.
No need for to repost The Chordettes “ LOLLIPOP” video. Didn’t know it was vintage 1950 like me😉 (Now we know how Andy Williams got his start.) ”Sooo how about “My Boy Lollipop”, by Millie Small: 1964
Inkover: wiz/Wag,
ENUF…Why can’t people use correct spelling and not trendy abbreviations: it’s Enuff (two f’s!!)
ChiaPET wouldn’t fit? Don’t remember NEOPET. Didn’t know ANGIE either.
ENCORE is French for “again” but the French and Italians holler “Bis!” “Twice” (rhymes with fleece) when they want an ENCORE. .
Physics symbols are usually Greek letters, I only had the R so it hadda be RHO. Also the odd name of a town outside of Milan.
Almost filled THATis it instead of ALL
Actor MARTIN turned purple when his son Charlie lost his ____ ….SHEEN
What a crewman does….___ RHO
Nearly dried up frequent CW lake…. ARIL
Think OWL leave now
🦉
Good Morning:
Unlike others, I didn't see the theme until the clever reveal clue and answer, so it was a nice aha surprise. My favorite themer was Duck Martin, the only one, IMO, that made perfect literal sense. Although I knew Maradona, my memory needed jogging to fill it in and perps were also needed for the unknown Angie and Neopet. Milo was a gimme as he was my favorite member of the cast of the excellent and long-running series, This Is Us, and who could forget Elle Woods and her chihuahua, Bruiser, from Legally Blond? Aril was a crossword staple when I first started solving, as were Ani and Etui. I went astray at Cursed/Cussed, which could have used a "slang" or "colloquial" qualifier in the clue. My favorite C/A was the simple, but fun, Flu or Fly=Bug.
Thanks, Michèle, for an enjoyable solve and thanks, MalMan, for the usual humor and informative commentary. Your puns today were particularly chuckle inducing and the video of Rex Harrison made my day. My Fair Lady had some of the most memorable lyrics and beautiful melodies of all the Broadway musicals ever written, and gave us the unforgettable love story of Professor Henry Higgins and Miss Eliza Doolittle. Julie Andrew's had the natural vocal ability for the role on Broadway but, IMO, Audrey Hepburn exuded more natural waif-like charm and grit in the film.
Have a great day.
Good Morning! Well, that was fun! Thanks, Michele.
By the time I had SWALLOW, HAWK and TURKEY, I was onto the theme, and that helped fill the others. Loved it. I have 2 feeders that bring a bunch of birds. I can only name the cardinals, blue jays and a woodpecker. The others are identified only by their size, color or markings. Don’t know, don’t care, I’m not a “birder.” Just happy to see them around. At a third feeder completely apart from the others is the hummingbird feeder. I have a lovely single couple. I’m jealous of those pictures that show so many gathered at a time.
Was that a picture of a ROBIN? Ummm, doesn't look like the ones that show up in my yard.
I had the diagonals NE -> SW and NW ->SE but had to work at filling the other boxes. With a few WOs (sometimes you gotta try to see what might work, or other times it’s just spelling).
LOLLY -> LOLLI; Shine -> SHEEN; CUrSED -> CUSSED; Near -> NEXT.
Unknowns: ANGIE; RHO (as clued); NEOPETS, MARADONA.
Thanks, MalMan. Your recap was EPIC!
RosE @9:31 AM That was an English Robin. The ones that show up in your yard are American Robins. You can always tell the English Robins because they drop their 'atches" 😀 (anyway the Cockney ones do!)
I loved the theme and got the double birdies in no time at all, the rest, not so much.
I too kept OyS/yAHOO. The little square area below that stayed blank. Didn’t know NEOPET, ELLE, CLIP, as clued, etc.
ANGIE came via perps as did MARADONA. Missed out on ILHAN, EPIC as clued, and finally I held on to CUrSED too long, so I missed the PISCES. What a pitiful record.
I did enjoy the birds however and MM’s pictures of them.
Best crossword puzzle ever! Thank you, Michele Govier, Patti, and MalMan! Propers were perped; birds were in my bailiwick.
A big DNF. Definitely too many names I hadn't heard of for me. I'll have to Echo BIG EASY on this one. 'Twas really for the birds, today.
waseeley, thanks for clearing the ROBIN mystery. I didn't know our ROBINs had cousins across the Pond!
Musings
-Oops, obscure NAT PET looked okay as did MILT and ELLA. Two bad cells for me but I loved the puzzle. “It’s a game, not a test!!”
-The gimmick was obvious before the reveal but the latter put the maraschino on top!
-We live 20 minutes from WAHOO, NE, former home office of The David Letterman Show
-Some Tik Tok videos have had very dangerous content
-Last May we had a TRACE of rain. This May we have had over 10”
-Jurassic Park is one of my top ten of all time movies
-This TV character from The Blacklist used the appellation of DEARIE a lot.
-MARADONA was an absolute unkown but went quietly
-Kentucky Fried Chicken now goes by KFC and Sugar Crisp is now Golden Crisp. A rose by any other name…
Hola!
Well, this was one for the birds! Thank you, Michele Govier, I enjoyed the whole flock and much more than A TAD.
I've met one person named MILO; he is the son of a former principal.
Visiting TURKEY was a UNIQUE experience. It's very different from other countries I visited. First, the architecture such as the Hagia Sophia and the bazaar are distinct. In some ways it's westernized and in others it retains it's centuries old culture and customs.
ARIL is a really old crossword term and one of the first I learned that is UNIQUE to CXDS.
Have a wonderful day, everyone!
Merci Michele for the fun Friday cleverly themed puzzle. Hand up Mal Man for not knowing what “almost everyone knows” SPAN nor NEOPET -, but guessed right.
I did not want to give up fit for END, and not knowing ANGIE it was the last to fill in. I did know MILO and ELLE,and MARADONA, not as a fan of the sport, but from READ(s)ing sports pages. Led/RAN, lollypop/LOLLIPOP, tinge/TRACE.
Waseeley@9:06. I also thought of the TV character with DUCK MARTIN.
Wonderful ROBINs at my bird feeder and HAWKs and a rarely seen EAGLE live in the woods behind my house.
Happy day, all!
Hi All!
What a smartly-themed, fun (if not a bit name heavy) puzzle. Thanks Michele!
Thanks MManatee for the punny expo. LOL "IQ test" & I haven't heard Men at Work in a looong time.
WOs: SOLo, Wit -> WAG
ESPs: ANGIE, ARIL, ELLE, MILO, MARADONA
Fav: LOLLIPOP. It's sticky candy on a stick! (that and FIL would call trivial stuff lollipop BS :-))
Um, what D-O? Well, drat. I got a FIW at OYs too.
Cheers, -T
Puzzling thoughts:
FI with assistance. I couldn't even make a WAG in the west central coast area of the grid. CLIP, MILO, and ELLE were all red letters
Clever theme and entries; only nit is with the term "double birdie". No golfer EVER uses this term. There is a "double eagle" (three under par) and an "EAGLE" (two under par) and a "birdie" (one under par). While "double birdie" seems like it would make sense, it doesn't exist. Maybe this was one time where a reveal was unnecessary, as once you observed the two birds, back-to-back, the theme was obvious
Thanks MM for the video links and puns
Fun Friday puzzle, many thanks for the treat, Michele. And always enjoy your commentary, MalMan, thanks for that too.
I love to READ, so that was my favorite, even with the added 's'. Hard to read AT WORK, though, so maybe it's time to go outside and see a SWALLOW and a DOVE and a DUCK and a PARROT and a ROBIN, and, can you believe it, even an EAGLE. Makes us feel like we're in an aviary, doesn't it? So, no need for a RANT, and time to get a glass of TEA and enjoy a LOLLIPOP.
Have a great weekend coming up, everybody.
This was a particularly hard-earned FIR for me because I ended up reconstructing the grid on blank paper because the newspapers never arrived today and I’ve never done a puzzle online and don’t know how. I saw the reveal early, which helped a lot, as did knowing MARADONA right away. I think the solve went more quickly than the construction.
Very well-executed theme, although I think of MARTINs as being weasel-like animals. Pretty good Friday puzzle. Thanks for explaining, MalMan.
Chairman Moe, I wondered why I have never heard the term double birdie on televised golf shows. "A double birdie in the sport of golf refers to scoring two strokes under par on a particular hole. However, this term is not commonly used, with golfers normally using the term 'eagle' to refer to a score of two under par." So it is quite uncommon.
It seems normal for botanists to use the term aril. It is not common usage for most of us, except in crosswords, where is has been used for many years.
Sticky is not used to mean on a stick. Meh.
I was convinced the PDF answer was 'SAVE'.
Since I didn't know 'ELLE', 'MILO', or 'NEOPET' that left me battering my head against 'V__OY' for the longest time.
But, once I got 'ALLOY' the rest fell into place.
Irish Miss brought up My Fair Lady and its beautiful music, and I'm going to weigh in there, in a couple areas. The music is by Fritz Loewe, and I honestly can't remember if it was Loewe, or his partner Alan Jay Lerner, or the picture's director, George Cukor, or someone else, who determined that Audrey Hepburn's voice was going to be dubbed by Marni Nixon.
There is no question that Julie Andrews' voice was superior to Hepburn's, but no one (including Andrews) disagreed with Hepburn's taking the part. She was a perfect Eliza Doolittle.
OTOH (drum roll here), I'm not convinced that Audrey Hepburn's voice left a lot to be desired. Please correct me, but I think she was not dubbed in either "Breakfast at Tiffany's," or "Funny Face." In the former, that's Hepburn (I'm pretty sure) singing "Moon River," and in the latter, she's singing, for crying out loud, Gershwin!
I wrote some weeks ago about he same words appearing on the same day in the L.A.Times and the other smaller, easier puzzle that is published in my paper. Today, we had, as you know, “sterling silver” - ALLOY, and then the other puzzle “metallic mixtures” - ALLOYS. Can that be a coincidence? What say ye, Patti?
Comment at 3:15 is Parsan.
RosE at 10:56 AM: just FYI, the European Robin and American Robin are unrelated. English people came to America, saw a red breasted bird, and called it a Robin.
DNF, & Meh!
And WCES (What Charlie echo Said...)
I found the birds, but try8ng to find anything in that Midwest Natick Nightmare was like trying to find the Potoo bird...
Anon @ 3:15 - I do think the double-entries are mostly coincidental. It would take too much coordination for no apparent benefit for constructors and/or editors to intentionally cause them. But I kinda like seeing them - it's like our CSOs when a puzzle seems to highlight one of us Cornerites. I think it would be fun to list the clues and fills, along with the source of the duplication. I work on the King Features (Eugene Sheffer) and Penny Press crosswords most days, in addition to this one.
I've never attempted to construct a crossword, but I suspect the successful puzzlers share a small set of softwares in the process.
YELLOWROCKS: Good call on “sticky.” It’s off in the same way some Jeopardy! clues are awry lately. I especially dislike “stately”portending the name of a state. Yesterday a clue promised an “ordinal” component to a music group's name, which turned out to be Third Eye Blind. Meh.
For some reason I saw HAWK TURKEY as an intentional mispronunciation of TALK TURKEY and DUCK MARTIN as an intentional mispronunciation of DOC MARTIN. Then SWALLOW DOVE and PARROT ROBIN disabused me of that notion. I liked the "double birdie" theme.
It's late so I won't write more. Good wishes to you all.
Copy editor @ 2:01
Finally got around to reading the afternoon comments
I guess there is a group of swallows called MARTINS ,not just the purple ones. The furry mammal is a marten. Our English schaw makes them sound the same
CopyEditor
Do you have access to a printer? If so you could print the puzzle and that would be so much easier than replicating it by hand.
Speaking of printer, does anybody have a recommendation for someone (LW and me) who want an inkjet but print quite infrequently? We are currently considering the Brother MFC-J1010DW, which uses ink cartridges, but would also consider a "tank" type. We don't need fax capability, nor do we really need a document feeder. We do need to print, copy, and scan, sometimes in color. Thanks!
NaomiZ,interesting backstory about the English and American robins. I knew the picture wasn't like any robin I had seen before.
Jayce, I have a Brother All In One (inkjet) printer which will print copy and scan. Fax is an unused extra feature. I have been very pleased with its dependability. I print the puzzle out every day.
Remember when printing from the LA Times website to reset (reduce) the ink density by slinging the little ball to the left. That will save ink, and you can still have ample contrast.
Thank you, RosE.
Jayce, I use a brother all-in-one both at home and at the office. Neither of them is a color printer. Black and white is just fine. Don't discount the convenience of a document feeder. The 2750 can be found for around $250.
Thank you, Malodorous Manatee
Jayce
My printer is an HP Office jet Pro 6968 which I've had for several years and am pleased with its performance. I bought it when I was still teaching and used it daily but now only occasionally. It's good for photos, too. I don't recall the price.
Rayo: 🤣👍🏽 ====> D.
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