The Stuff of Genius*
... and
the staff of life. People literally "broke" bread for their meals for thousands of
years. But all that changed in 1928 when Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the bread slicer. And constructor Emma Oxford has come up with the best invention since then -- sliced crosswords! Well maybe not 😀. But she does present us with the following fill for four pairs of theme clues, each with some of the letters
circled (shown in RED below),
sliced by a black square, and when sandwiched back together give us four kinds of bread ...
17A. Radio City, for one:
MUSIC HALL and 19A. In the lead:
AHEAD -- CHALLAH BREAD.
Here's a recipe.
|
|
Challah Bread |
46A. Dynamic start?: AERO. and 49A. Neat as a pin: TIDY-- ROTI BREAD. And it's even less widely known that Otto also invented the bread peeler 😀. Here's Karen's recipe.
 |
| Roti Bread |
 |
| Ciabatta Bread |
And slicing the puzzle right across the middle we have Emma's reveal ...
39. Basis of comparison for many innovations that's depicted four times in
this puzzle: SLICED BREAD. But who actually coined the phrase "That's the best thing since sliced bread?"
While the circles made the theme pretty obvious from the
get go , the results were pretty nourishing (albeit some people's tastes may
vary😀).
I noticed that there were no guys represented in the recipes, so I'm tossing in James Beard's Brown Bread (one of our favorites). We just use a bread knife to slice it ...
 |
| Brown Bread |
Across:
1. Elbows: JABS.
5. Tibetan monk: LAMA. LAMA is a title for a teacher of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term guru,
meaning "heavy one", endowed with qualities the student will eventually
embody. The Tibetan word "lama" means "highest principle", and less
literally "highest mother" or "highest father" to show the close
relationship between teacher and student. Among the Tibetan lamas, the
highest ranked is the 14th Dalai Lama.
 |
| Dalai Lama |
15. Hertz rival: AVIS. ... and a Rara AVIS, is a rare bird. Here are some recent sightings of rare birds by the American Birding Association, including this one ...
|
|
Blue Rock-Thrush
sighted by Jason Talbott 25 Apr 2024 San Francisco, CA |
17. [Theme clue]
19. [Theme clue]
20. Gait between a walk and a canter: TROT.
21. Held on to: KEPT.
23. Verizon acquisition of 2006: MCI. MCI, Inc. (formerly WorldCom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company before Verizon bought them in 2006. For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Teri did some consulting for them back in the day.
26. "__ the season ... ": TIS.
28. Beach problem: EROSION.
30. Accord, perhaps: TRUCE. There are two places in the world that need a TRUCE right now.
32. [Theme clue]
34. [Theme clue]
35. Cooper of CNN: ANDERSON. Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an American broadcast journalist and political commentator currently anchoring the CNN news broadcast show Anderson Cooper 360°. His mother was socialite Gloria Vanderbilt and his great, great grandfather was business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who founded the prominent Vanderbilt shipping and railroad fortune.
_(cropped).jpg)
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|
Anderson Cooper |
37. Poetic tribute: ODE. ODES comprise 90% of the poetry in crosswords, the other 10% consisting of SONNETS, ELEGIES, IDYLLS, and a MOEKU or two every other Friday. 😀
39. [Theme reveal]
42. Sign of summer: LEO. Has anyone heard from LEO III lately?
43. Petroleum jelly brand: VASELINE. As distinguished from VICKS VapoRub. Whatever you do, don't put the latter on sunburned skin. Ouch!
46. [Theme clue]
49. [Theme clue]
51. Pre-univ. warmup exams: PSATS. Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Tests. What the PSAT is and what to know about the exam (if you are a High School Junior or the helicopter parent of one).
52. Dressed for work, perhaps: IN A SUIT. Or being SUED?
54. Fam member: SIS. I have four.
56. Psychoactive constituent of cannabis: THC. Shouldn't this clue have had some indication that this was short for Tetrahydrocannabinol?
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| Tetrahydrocannabinol |
58. Like some Fr. nouns: MASC. Today's French lesson -- but not a short one. All French nouns are either MASCULINE or FEMININE (none being NEUTER, e.g. as in German). The corresponding definite articles for these are LE and LA and the indefinite articles are UN and UNE. In most cases, which of these articles to use for a given noun is a matter of memorization. While that's easy for la jeune fille ("the young girl") and le garcon ("the boy"), they must be memorized for nouns that don't have any associated real gender, e.g. HAT ("le chapeau") and DAY ("la jour"). But there are some general rules (and lots of exceptions) for figuring out the gender of a French noun ...
60. Warm, so to speak: NEAR.. Used a lot in party games -- "You're getting warmer", "You're getting colder", "You're freezing!".
62. [Theme clue] .
64. [Theme clue]
68. Exams often given by committee: ORALS.
69. Way, way off: AFAR. E.g. "You're in the next county!"
70. Up to the task: ABLE. E.g. "Napoleon WAS ABLE to conquer Europe (and lose it) ERE he SAW ELBA".
71. "The War of the Worlds" writer: WELLS. H. G. WELLS visited the Corner a week or so back in his Time Machine. His War of the Worlds was made famous by an hour long radio broadcast on Halloween of 1938 by dramatist Orson Wells (no relation to the novelist) using a script derived from the novel. The scale of the panic Wells created is disputed. Here is a clip from that broadcast ...
72. Product preview: DEMO.
73. Absolutely must have: NEED. Air? Water? Food?
Down:
1. Parsons of "Hidden Figures": JIM. Jim Parsons is best known for playing Sheldon in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. In Hidden Figures he played Paul Stafford, head engineer in the Space Task Group. In this interview he talks about the hard time he had accepting his role in the new movie and what a contrast it was to the part he played in TBBT ...
2. __ Dhabi: ABU.
3. Chums: BEST BUDS. They say that Apple AirPods are the best, but they're expensive and I'm afraid I'd lose them. 😀
4. Step in a sauce recipe: STIR. We've used cream sauce for years to serve over asparagus on toast, pastas, etc. The only problem with it is the need to constantly STIR the mixture of flour, butter, and whole milk until it thickens to keep the milk from scorching. Much easier to make, and just as tasty, is velouté sauce, which uses chicken or vegetable stock instead of milk. Here's a recipe. After the roux has thickened Teri stirs in a 1/2 cup of cream to per cup of sauce.
 |
| Velouté sauce |
 |
| Christine Lahti |
 |
| Janelle James |
7. Latte ingredient: MILK.
8. Out like a light: ASLEEP.
9. "Allegory of the cave" philosopher: PLATO. The "Allegory of the cave" is recounted in PLATO's Republic in a dialogue between his brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates, and is narrated by the latter. In the allegory,
Plato describes people that have spent their lives chained in a cave
facing a blank wall. They watch shadows projected onto the wall by
objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and they give names to
these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality but not accurate
representations of the real world. The shadows represent the fragment of reality that we can normally perceive through our senses, while the objects outside the cave represent the true forms of objects that we can only perceive through reason. Three higher levels exist: natural science; deductive mathematics, geometry, and logic; and the theory of forms.
10. Stadium cheer: RAH.
11. Iron deficiency: ANEMIA.
12. Church minister: DEACON. A DEACON
is a Christian official generally associated with services of some
kind, such as preaching and performing specific rites such as baptisms
and marriages. These services vary among theological and denominational
traditions, such as the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Lutheranism, Methodism, Anglicanism, and Mormonism. The office was created very early in the history of the Church, as is described in the Acts of the Apostles 6:1-5. The intent of the office was to offload some of the work of the Presbyters (priests) and Bishops. Among the first seven deacons was St. Stephen. If we follow the above citation from Acts a little further, we find that he was also the first Christian martyr -- from the Greek word for "witness".
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| The Stoning of St. Stephen Luigi Garzi (1638–1721) |
18. Clique: COTERIE. "An intimate and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or purpose". Merriam-Websters. If they cluster around a personality like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, the inner circle is called a POSSE. They seem to have an affinity for the mononymous.
22. Monastic leaders: PRIORS.
24. School org.: PTA. Parent Teacher Associations are not just a USA thing.
27. Steve Madden creation: SHOE. As I think product ads should be kept to a minimum in reviews, I decided on a Jeff McNally creation instead. Here's a recent one from his rag, tag band of avian journalists ...
31. Large strings: CELLOS. Here a large group of large strings (a CELLO choir) from The Young Artists Orchestra of Las Vegas plays Argentinian composer Astor Piazzola's Libertango ...
33. Like some movie rentals: ON DVD. You can't rent them from Netflix anymore, but here are still some other sources.
36. Nova __: SCOTIA. One of Canada's Maritime provinces, and a CSO to CanadianEh!
 |
| The Bathysphere The National Geographic museum in 2009 |
40. Dark horses: BAYS.
41. Rant: DIATRIBE. Notice how deftly I avoid one in 50D below. 😀
44. Advanced degree?: NTH. And the NTH time we've seen NTH!.
45. Key above ~: ESC. A CSO to Splynter ~ is his favorite separator. And just above it, perennially on the lam is
47. Put up with: ENDURE.
48. Rogue: RASCAL. Here are two shots of my son's cat RASCAL, which he titled Royal Rascal and Roaring Rascal, respectively ...
50. "Things don't look good": ITS BAD. As there are no discussions of politics on the Corner, we'll move on to the next clue ...
53. Amherst campus, familiarly: U MASS. A college in Amherst, Mass. And it is also the approximate atomic weight of Uranium (U MASS = 238.03). It's not an integer because U is actually a mixture of 3 isotopes ...
59. Bistro: CAFE.
61. Actor Ruck: ALAN. Alan Douglas Ruck (born July 1, 1956) is an American actor. He is best known for portraying Cameron Frye in John Hughes' film Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), as well as television roles as Stuart Bondek on the ABC sitcom Spin City (1996–2002) and Connor Roy on the HBO series Succession (2018–2023.
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| Alan Ruck |
65. Hat that may match a kilt: TAM. Here ya go ...
67. "Game of Thrones" patriarch Stark: NED. NED (né Eddard) was played by Sean Bean, who among many other roles played Boromir in the movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. He is best remembered for his heroic death defending the other members of the Fellowship of the Ring from Orcs. In the Game of Thrones, it appears that Sean went over to the Dark Side ...
 |
| Ned Stark |
Cheers,
Bill
And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.
waseeley
* "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" - Thomas Edison
I figured out the gimmick with the first themed entry, and that made the rest of the puzzle easier to solve. I also figured out the reveal from just one or two letters; it was that obvious. Frankly, I was surprised at the easiness of this puzzle, seeing that it comes so late during the week. I’m not sure whether to be disappointed by that or not. But anyway, FIR, so I remain basically happy. Subgenius out!
ReplyDeleteAbout a month ago a group that calls itself the Crossword Club started emailing me daily freebie mini-puzzles. They use some constructors whose names you'd know and they can be quite crunchy, e.g. today's. I've decided to link them in lieu of the David Alfred Bywater's bi-weekly puzzles on the alternate weeks that he publishes public domain Victorian novels. Here's today's Crossword Club offering.
ReplyDeleteGood morning!
ReplyDeleteD-o was able to "rise" to the occasion, but not without some missteps: pAvED/LANED, bEta/DEMO, StEAlS/SNEAKS. Hurray for Wite-Out. Noticed the sliced breads, and even read the reveal clue. Really. Nice puzzle, Emma Oxford. (I noticed how you managed to squeeze SHOE into the grid.) Enjoyed your expo, waseeley and Teri.
Bread: One of the first things I noticed in continental Europe was the high quality of bread everywhere. Mmmmmm.
STIR: Knorr makes an excellent Hollandaise mix. Just three ingredients, butter, water, and sauce mix -- no milk, surprisingly.
SCOTIA: Visited Halifax back in the '80s when making an offshore trip near Sable Island. Interesting place. Cold, though.
D-O @5:55 AM Oxford SHOE! I missed that -- very clever!
DeleteFIR,but erased phd for NTH.
ReplyDeleteToday is:
NATIONAL SPEAK IN COMPLETE SENTENCES DAY (While we’re on antiques, when is “National Write in Cursive” day?)
NATIONAL SAVE YOUR HEARING DAY (What?)
NATIONAL AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE DAY (Didn’t Springsteen sing about “suicide machines” in Born to Run?)
NATIONAL SMILE DAY (Shouldn’t that be every day?)
NATIONAL MACAROON DAY (Italians created these sweet morsels sometime around the 8th or 9th century)
Didn't we just have a marijuana clue/fill? I forget these things - too much "wacky tobbacy" in my misspent ute.
Future constructors will clue LEO as "police." (Text-speak for "Law Enforcement Officer".)
ADDING machine? Just how old are you, Emma? (Folks used to be able to multiply with them too. I could do it, but don't remember how. (Did I ever mention that I have trouble remembering things that happened in the '70s?)
I do remember some things about the '70s, including Bob Seeger's Night Moves:
And we'd STEAL away every chance we could
To the backroom, to the alley, or the trusty woods
I used her, she used me
But neither one cared
We were getting our share
Thanks Emma for the fun puzzler, and to Bill 'n' Teri for another fine review.
Took 6:41 today to finish ofF LAT crossword puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know today's actress (Lahti, nor any of her work).
Originally, I typed in "Vasoline", but deep sea corrected it to "Vaseline."
I thought the plural of cello was celli.
Oh joy, circles! Two days in a row!
@Subgenius - I also am confused about why this ran on a Thursday, but the constructors have no say in that. Some behind the scenes for you: the final grid and my set of clues for this puzzle was ready April 12. So that's a month and a half from final acceptance to print. That's pretty fast. For comparison, the final-grid-to-print timelines for the three other puzzles I've had in the LAT this year were all closer to two or two and a half months. Perhaps they were hard-up for Thursday puzzles and thought this theme was gimmicky enough they could add it to their Thursday queue?
ReplyDelete@Jinx - [___ machine] for ADDING was not my clue - I'm not that old! My favorite clue that I'm happy they left in there was the "Abbott Elementary" reference for AVA. I think if I had written that clue a couple years ago, I would've gotten some pushback that it wasn't well-known enough for crosswords, so I'm happy to see it passes the bar for notability now.
Thanks everyone for solving! -EO
FIR. Circles and proper names, oh joy! And in a Thursday puzzle, more joy!
ReplyDeleteI got the theme with the first entry, and tried to suss out the reveal while having challah and pita. I knew roti from crossword fame, but never heard of ciabatta. Oh well.
I did not enjoy this puzzle, but it's done, so there's that.
Fun theme made this solve as easy as SLICED BREAD- which really sped along the lower half. We had crossword favorite ROTI and once I had SAINT LUCIA - the CIA BATTA was a quick fill which made the Army unit clue, which has many options, become easy with BATTALION.
ReplyDelete"Hidden Figures" is a favorite of mine with JIM parsons doing a good job portraying the lead engineer. Seeing this movie and "Lessons in Chemistry" made me glad that I wasn't a woman in a STEM field back in the 50s &60s - it was bad enough in the 70s & 80s but at least "they" knew it wasn't right and weren't so blatant.
Gotta get to work!
Thanks Bill & Teri for the blog -nice to have the Brahms in the background- and to Emma for the puzzle
Good Morning! I certainly liked working this puzzle much better than yesterday. Thanks, Emma.
ReplyDeleteI saw the theme with the top two entries, so it was easy to fill the remaining letters for SLICED BREAD. CIABATTA makes great toast. The bakery at my grocery store will SLICE it for me. I think we’ve had ROTI before, but I’ve never seen it anywhere but at the Corner. I’m glad we had circles today.
No WOs today – yea!
ESP: NED
I had to wait for the perps to see if a parson or pastor would appear, then eventually it was a DEACON.
I’ll take the perps word for it with AIM LOW, but it seems off to me.
Thanks, Bill & Teri, for guiding us along with such good background info. It gives such depth to finishing a puzzle.
ReplyDeleteEasy for a past-midweek puzzle. Circles two days in a row, wow. Liked the BREAD theme but most of the varieties don’t need to be SLICED. My maternal grandparents were bakers. When baking bread the loaf rises upward toward heaven. Once baked and ready to eat should a loaf be turned upside down it was considered an insult to God who gave us bread to begin with. Like Gram and Mom did I still turn a loaf upright when I see it upside down. A habit 🤷♂️
I knew TIM Parsons was in “Hidden Figures” but yah couldn’t have given us a “Sheldon” clue? Too beginning-of-the-weekish is it?
Interesting that Romance language cognate nouns don’t always carry the same gender: The Sea: Italian “Il Mare” masc, French “la Mer” fem. Same withThe Evening “La Sera” fem.”Le Soir” masc
Inkovers: bar/PUB, Kitts/LUCIA
You’ll ruin your shoes if you “Step in a sauce recipe”😁.
Somebody bet on the “dark horses” I see I was wrong thinking VASeLINE rhymed with “gasoline” like one of the anonomi
Canada Eh why do you use the Latin name Nova SCOTIA instead of New Scotland (like New Brunswick and Newfoundland?)
My colleague took sick so I’m running the department solo. This quick break is over
Have a great day
Got the theme with the first SLICED BREAD. It all went smoothly after that. Although I didn’t know AVA or JIM as clued, perps took care of them.
ReplyDeleteThank you Emma for your visit and comments.
We had THC recently.
Waseely, nice clarification on French noun genders. To add to that, the word for person, personne, is feminine even if that person is a man. Great review. Your son’s cat seems to have a big mouth.
Musings
ReplyDelete-What a fun puzzle in that the gimmick was clever and the breads uncommon (to me)
-WWI and Korea essentially ended only in a TRUCE
-SIS: Childhood issues keep me from being close with either of mine
-Shoot par? I am ready and willing but ABLE is another kettle of fish
-AVA Gardner? Not so much, but I asked three young adults last week if they had heard of Laurel and Hardy. They had no idea. Time marches on…
-A documentary on the Niagara Falls area mentioned this STEALTHY hunter
-PP&M: I bet on the grey mare, I bet on the BAY, If I’da bet on old Stewball, I’d be free man today
-AIM LOW, they might be riding Shetlands!
-Thanks for the info, Emma and the fine write-up, Bill and Teri.
I found this puzzle to be like an average Thursday puzzle. I liked the easy to suss bread theme.
ReplyDeleteOnly SHOE needed Every Single Perp.
These days posse is used for a group of friends who see each other often.
I danced at a Canadian Square dance convention in Nova Scotia. We had a scorching heat wave in the NE so we were lookin forward the cool temps in Nova Scotia. They had a heat wave, too, and told us they ordered the warmer temps just for us. Gee, thanks!
Temper as a verb means to moderate or tone down. If politicians are not likely to do well in a certain venue, their handlers temper expectations or aim low. If the politician exceeds low expectations they can claim a win.
We sibs have always been close. There are six of us. These days we have to resort to phoning and emails to remain close. It's not the same as being together.
Before the invention of the bread slicer, there was an invention that sliced four loaves at one time. So, you would get four slices with each cut with this long bread knife. It was called a "Four Loaf Cleaver".
ReplyDeleteGood Morning:
ReplyDeleteCircles in late week puzzles are acceptable when necessary to illustrate or emphasize the theme, which was not the case today. The circles and the placement of the reveal answer certainly lowered the challenge bar and turned this into a Tuesday level offering, IMO. Props to Emma for including the tricky Challah and Ciabatta and for some additional lively fill with Best Buds, Coterie, Diatribe, etc. I do take issue, though, with Tang and Wells being clued as proper names when the grid was already heavily laden with so many others. I also bristled at the green paintish In A Suit and Deep Sea and On DVD, as fragment phrases.
Thanks, Emma and thanks for stopping by and thanks, Bill, for all of the interesting tidbits and learning moments that I experience by reading your weekly missives. I enjoyed the Jim Parsons interview, despite the disgraced interviewer, and the snipped about Christine Lahti, a favorite of mine. Thanks to Teri, as well.
Have a great day.
In my never ending quest to find a lazier way to make better bread, I discovered the magic of old dough.. By brushing the dough with olive oil and baking it in an air fryer toaster oven, a most delectable and easy bread can be made in minutes for any meal.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with all this is the longer the dough sits, the better it gets (ferments). 5 days is optimal. Which made me make a batch every day so I could have a very tasty bread 5 days later. Longer than 5 days and it starts to go downhill.
The result?
I gained 10 pounds and went prediabetic...
Solved so quickly I had to check the calender! Thought I had groundhog day-ed back to Monday for a minute. Guess I was smack dab on Emma's frequency this morning. The shoe fit, so I wore it! Nice write up by Was. JINX: as someone else once said, I enjoyed being in my 20's in the '70's a WHOLE LOT MORE than being in my 70's in the '20's!
ReplyDeleteThanks for a pleasant Thursday outing, actually easier, I think, than yesterday's.
ReplyDeleteI do need to draw attention to 12D. A deacon in some denominations is perhaps considered a minister, but definitely not in others. Both of my grandfathers were deacons in the Baptist church, as was my father, as was I. It is a lay position, with various responsibilities in helping run the church, but definitely not ministerial.
The puzzle was well-constructed, I felt, with those yummy breads spread throughout. And as I mentioned yesterday, I have no qualms about circles.
I was slowed down at times when there would be names of people near each other, like in the SE.
Thanks, Emma, for your time constructing the puzzle, and for joining us here in the Corner! I look forward to your next crossword.
At the outset of every holiday season, the San Francisco Chronicle reminds its reporters and editors that clichés like “TIS the season” should not reach print. The same is true year-round for clichés like “the greatest thing since SLICED BREAD.” It doesn’t help that challah is usually pulled apart, rather than sliced.
ReplyDeleteBut it is VERY heartening that even Emma agreed that it was a Monday-level puzzle. Thanks for doing that, Emma.
Waseeley’s review was stronger than the puzzle. I also thought of Jeff MacNelly’s “SHOE.” I especially enjoyed the discussion of Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, which for me was the seed entry for his having become my favorite classical composer. Thanks, Bill.
Notice the gerund in the preceding sentence, complete with the possessive “his” (instead of the graceless “him”), which turns “having” into a noun. True gerunds must not die.
Hola!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Emma oxford, for the delicious servings of BREAD choices. I'm familiar with all of them though I have tasted CHALLAH only once. It was for a special recipe and I had to find a bakery that sold it. That bakery has now closed.
I'm not sure if I've ever tasted CIABATTA.
When my daughter was an infant I discovered she was allergic to TANG. When she drank it she immediately became swollen.
DEEP SEA diving would never be an option for me. I can't be in small, enclosed places as I immediately get claustrophobic.
One of our good friends, Brother Bob, is the PRIOR at his Franciscan monastery.
ST. LUCIA is a form of Lucy so I'll take a CSO on that.
Although I've traveled to both ends of Canada, east and west, I've not been to NOVA SCOTIA, only to Newfoundland.
I like ANDERSON Cooper and often watch him on CNN.
Have a peaceful day, everyone!
Tony Express, you should be ashamed of yourself. Loved it.
ReplyDeleteCharlie Echo - A wise man, twas.
T.Ken - Same with my deacon mom in the Disciples of Christ (AKA "the Christian Church").
Matt Lauer disgraced? Some people just can't take a (dirty) joke.
I don't eat much BREAD, but I enjoyed the puzzle theme. During COVID, the Jewish Community Center was dropping off CHALLAH on our door step, which was very sweet and kind of them.
ReplyDeleteLearning moment about unknown CIABATTA. Apparently it is a fairly recent invention.
BEACH EROSION indeed is a PROBLEM at our local BEACH.
In that photo you can see two things happening to deal with it. One was the installation of a temporary rock wall. The other was the importation of dredgings from the Harbor that were being spread out with a bulldozer.
I took that photo during an investigative walk by our local environmental group that I served with. Most environmentalists were against these modifications, but I pushed hard for them. Right now we have a wide sandy beach and the rocks are gone. I am glad that sanity prevailed over dogmatic arguments about what is "natural".
Good morning all. When I noticed CHALLAH and PITA in the circles I knew it would be a BREAD theme. After SLICED was filled I added BREAD; Never heard of CIABATTA but the puzzle was easy to FIR even with the unknowns as clued. PRADA, JIM, AVA, LAHTI, NED, ALAN.
ReplyDeleteMCI, bought by a crook: Bernie Ebbers is now sitting prison, became WorldCom.
Delightful Thursday puzzle, so, many thanks, Emma--but thank you especially for stopping by and giving us some helpful comments. And always appreciate your helpful information, and today's music, Bill, thanks for those too.
ReplyDeleteI got excited seeing MUSIC HALL and then those CELLOS, but we didn't get too much more melody after that. But we also get music in church, so maybe the DEACON and the PRIORS could have helped us out, but maybe not on a weekday like this. Well, maybe we ought to get some drinks at the CAFE and listen to some records when we get back home.
Have a great day, everybody.
Coming soon to a crossword near you - "ripping a dart." What is that, Jinx? Funny you should ask. It is used when a beautiful person lights up a cigarette. (Yeah, I was thinking of something that rhymes with "dart" too.) Learned about it as a headline from Golf magazine that described one of the best players smoking while she was signing autographs before today's opening of the US Women's Open. (BTW, the #1 women's player in the world scored a 10 on a par three, her third hole of the tournament. That almost certainly dooms her to missing tomorrow's cut.)
ReplyDeleteLucina @11:46 AM Drats -- I meant to send a CSO to you St. Lucia. Here, have another one on me!
ReplyDeleteJinx @2:34 PM. Be careful what you wish for Jinx. If you listen very carefully near the beginning of next Thursday's review, you'll hear what you're asking for. 😁
I liked this puzzle and waseeley's write-up.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I ever heard of, and ate, CIABATTA was in 1996.
I once read a linguistics paper in which the author made the case that a noun is masculine or feminine because it is preceded by "le" or "la" (using French for this example), and not preceded by "le" or "la" because it is masculine or feminine. I found his argument to be quite compelling.
A really good friend (not necessarily quite my BEST BUD) while I was at Yale came from Amherst. We all called it just "Amherst" and never referred to it as "U MASS" or "University of Massachusetts."
Good wishes to you all.
Hi All!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the fine Thursday puzzle, Emma, and for dropping by The Corner with some inside-baseball.
Thanks for the illustrated expo, waseeley.
WOs: ole->RAH
ESPs: LAHTI, COTERIE, LUCIA, ALAN, NED
Fav: I like the word RASCAL
You last hit of THC was Tuesday in the puzzle I reviewed.
I enjoyed reading y'all today.
Cheers, -T
Oh dopey me took forEVer to get the hook on Emma’s puzzle; a big Homer moment (“DOH!!”) when I finally grokked the theme, and especially the snazzy detail of each type of bread being “sliced” by a black square — very cool construction, Ms. Oxford! 😎👍🏽
ReplyDeleteI confess to being old enough to remember those 10-key ADDING machines — although I’m not so ancient that I actually used ‘em.
As I usually associate URNs with ashes, I had a moment of pause considering the “self-serve” aspect…possibly because I’m not a coffee aficionado. IMHO, IT’S BAD. (How can something that smells so good being ground and brewed taste so vile??). I’ll stick to MILK with my CIABATTA.
====> Darren / L.A.