google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Thursday, June 27, 2024, John Michael Currie

Gary's Blog Map

Jun 27, 2024

Thursday, June 27, 2024, John Michael Currie

 

  Rarely do I find a splash screen that explicitly reveals the reveal (see if you can spot it) ...

Missed it?  Here it is ...

59. Rodentlike features, and a phonetic hint to a segment of 18-, 23-, 36-, and 50-Across: BEADY EYES. And without further ado, here are the 4 themers, provided to us by constructor John Michael Currie  ...

18A. Sea creature who lived across the Strait of Messina from Scylla: CHARYBDISAs described by Odysseus on his 10 year voyage home from the Trojan War (see also 46D).  The phrase "between the Scylla and the Charybdis" is also a metaphor sometimes used for "being caught between the horns of a dilemma".
Charybdis
23A. Objects for separating subjects: TAB DIVIDERS.  Adjectives?

36A. Seafood appetizer often seasoned with Old Bay: CRAB DIP. Teri's recipe for this popular Chesapeake Bay delight is posted on C.C.'s Ginger Roots Blog

50A. Land of giants in "Gulliver's Travels": BROBDINGNAG.  These creatures of Jonathan Swift's imagination are not only 60 feet tall, but they are also moral giants who have nothing to fear.

Still don't see it?  Patti made it a lot harder than the hat trick from last week -- and certain members of our community will love the fact that there are no circles, stars, question marks, or any other cruciverbalist crutches, so I guess we'll need the grid πŸ˜€...
 
... Now say BDI 4 times real fast!

Here are the rest of the clues ...

Across:

1. False earnestness: SMARM.

6. Sawbuck halves: ABES.  A sawbuck is a $10 bill and an ABE is a $5 bill.

10. "Pencils down": TIME.

14. World capital once called Thang Long: HANOI.  My brother-in-law is from a capital just South of there now called Ho Chi Minh City, once called SAIGON.  But that terrible time in history has passed, and he has returned to beautiful Viet Nam a few times to lecture on his cancer research.

Hanoi Travel Guide
15. Zoom: RACE.

16. Human rights lawyer Clooney: AMALAmal Clooney (nΓ©e Alamuddin; born in Beirut, Lebanon, on 3 February 1978). is a British international human rights lawyer. Notable clients of hers include former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed, Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and Iraqi human rights activist Nadia Murad. She is fluent in English, French, and Arabic and has held various appointments with the Government of the United Kingdom and the United Nations, and is also an adjunct law professor at Columbia Law School.

Amal Clooney
17. Bonus feature: ADD ON.

18. [Theme clue].

20. Like good things happening to good people: KARMIC.  The adjective form of the noun KARMA.

22. Not obviously true: ARGUABLE.  I suppose if something is actually TRUE and you argue against it, then you are WRONG! πŸ˜€

23. [Theme clue].

25. Staffer: AIDE.

26. Norman Lear's specialty: SITCOMS.  The most famous of which is probably All in the Family.  It had a really great laugh track ...
30. Establish anew, as authority: REASSERT.

34. Sandwich cookie: OREOEKTORP.

35. End of a professor's address: EDU.

36. [Theme clue]

40. Heat quickly: ZAP.

41. Mattress option: FIRM.

43. Some "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" characters: DEMIGODS.  After viewing clips for several video adaptations, I decided they were rated NFA (Not For Adults) and decided they were probably not the best way to teach kids Greek Mythology. I haven't read any of the novels, but  this should tell you all you need to know.
45. Onset of: START TO.

49. Isolated group of employees: SILO.  An information SILO, or a group of such silos, is an insular management system in which one information system or subsystem is incapable of reciprocal operation with others that are, or should be, related. Thus information is not adequately shared but rather remains sequestered within each system or subsystem, figuratively trapped within a container like grain is trapped within a silo, or a human actually trapped in an office cubicle.  It can be a frustrating experience ...
50. [Theme clue]

54. Person experiencing the bystander effect, perhaps: ONLOOKER.

57. Heroic sister of children's literature: GRETEL.  "Hansel and Gretel" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 as part of Grimms' Fairy Tales.  There have been many adaptations of it over the years, including an opera by Engleburt Humperdink (no relation to the singer Arnold George Dorsey MBE) and a 1987 film starring Cloris Leachman ...
59. [Theme reveal]

61. Ticked off: IRATE.

62. Check status: VOID.

63. Cozy retreat: NEST.

64. Truly stuck: MIRED.

65. Home of Lucas Oil Stadium, familiarly: INDY.  The venue for the yearly Indianapolis 500 Race.  And if you're not into racing Taylor Swift will be there in November. πŸ˜€

66. SoCal school: SDSUSan Diego State University.

67. Snail trail: SLIME. Or the  trail of an ethereal, supernatural presence ...
Down:
1. Literary citation abbr.: SHAK.  Not ibid, op. cit., et. alia, but this guy ...
William Shakespeare
1564-1616
2. Cross with: MAD AT.

3. "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" Oscar nominee Day: ANDRA. Andra Day plays Lady Day in this 2021 musical drama (some profanity) ...
4. iRobot products: ROOMBAS.  Not the dance.  The vacuum cleaners ...
A PSA by iRobot*
5. Bygone audio format: MINIDISC. MiniDisc (MD) is an erasable magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 60, 74, and later, 80 minutes of digitized audio first distributed in November of 1992 and the last was sold in March of 2013.  It is highly likely though that operational versions of MiniDisc players are owned by the National Archives, as they are tasked with maintaining the capability to make available any US government records in any medium to duly authorized persons.
MiniDisc reader and disc
6. Character's beginning, middle, and end: ARC. Initially I thought this might be a meta-clue, as the letters A, R, and C appear in it.  But anyone who writes fiction is familiar with the the evolution of a character in the course of a story, especially the protagonist.  Here is an intro on How to Write a Captivating Character Arc, offered by the tutorial site MasterClass.

7. Faith founded in Persia: BAHAI. ISLAM didn't play very well with the perps and then I remembered that although it is practiced in what is modern day IRAN, Islam was actually founded in SAUDI ARABIA.  The BAHAI faith however was founded in the 19th century in what was then Persia.  The governing body of the BahΓ‘ΚΌΓ­s is in modern day Haifa, Israel.
Seat of the Universal House of Justice

8. Paperless Post offerings: ECARDS

9. Pianist Rachmaninoff: SERGEI.  In addition to being a great pianist, he was a great Russian composer, my favorite actually. Here is a 3:30 min. excerpt from his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini featuring the titular theme.  The work premiered at the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore in 1934, with Rachmaninoff at the piano ...

If you want to hear the rest of the piece, the YouTuber who posted it has a link to the full-length version (23:33) in his comments.

10. Hot sauce from Louisiana: TABASCO.  A CSO to HOTOOLAH! πŸ˜€

11. Website with a STARmeter: IMDBInternet Movie DataBase.  IMHO this site is in need of a major  upgrade and I'd rate it ⭐⭐.  I find that the Wikipedia is a much more useful tool for researching entertainment sites.

12. Vote by __: MAIL.

13. Otherwise: ELSE.

19. Circular shelter: YURT.  A teepee on the Mongolian steppes ...

Yurts
21. Beer alternative: CIDERCider is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. It is widely available in the United Kingdom (particularly in the West Country) and Ireland. The UK has the world's highest per capita consumption, as well as the largest cider-producing companies. Ciders from the South West of England are generally higher in alcoholic content.   We've had it in France, where it is a local cottage industry. In the US it's generally referred to as hard cider, to distinguish it from the unfermented fruit juice. It is brewed to varying degrees of dryness.

24. Designer Wang: VERA.

27. Short-cut pasta: ORZO.

28. Beer alternative: MEAD.  The main ingredient of this beer is made by bees.  Mead is the first known alcoholic beverage consumed by mankind and is believed to predate wine by nearly three thousand years.  Everything you need to know about it.  Hand up if you've ever imbibed it? ✋
Mead
29. Soaks (up): SOPS.

30. Penalizing sorts, for short: REFS.  Da bums!

31. Trade unions for onions?: EDIT.  Just replace the U with an O!  Luv them meta clues. πŸ˜€

32. Vibe: AURA.

33. Brief "Not sure yet": TBD.

37. Comedian Lydic: DESI. Desi Lydic is an American comedian and actress who is a senior correspondent on The Daily Show. She got her start in the 2001 parody film Not Another Teen Movie. She's a little edgy, so it took me a while to come up with this clip, which includes her treading water in Iceland while she explores gender equality with some of the natives; plus more interviews on the same subject with Namibians and Spaniards.  All you guys out there might want to skip this ...

38. Chatting on Slack, for short: IMING. Internet Messaging.

39. Voyagers of 1620: PILGRIMS.

42. Victim in Clue: MR BODDY Mr. Mustard didn't cut it, but one of these perps did ...

44. Sister of Regan and Cordelia: GONERIL.  A 1D reference to the play King Lear and a CSO to our beloved Ol' Man Keith -- here's his Wiki.

46. "Iliad" city: TROY.  The city and the legend of the Trojan War.
The Trojan Horse
Spoiler alert -- according to Jeopardy maven Ken Jennings, most of what has been passed down to us about the Trojan Horse is found in Virgil's Aeneid.

47. Arcade currency: TOKENS.

48. Did as instructed: OBEYED.

51. Shift, for one: DRESS.  A shift dress is a dress in which the cloth falls straight from the shoulders and has darts around the bust. It frequently features a high scoop or boat neck (like I have any idea what they are πŸ˜€)
Shift Dress
Ann Taylor for $159.
52. Arcade pioneer: ATARI.

53. Phrase beginning a chase scene, maybe: GET EM.  ... and often ending with Book 'em Danno!
54. Slangy "Duh": OBVI.  Obviously!

55. Club light: NEON.

56. Put down: LAID.  "... The best LAID plans of mice and men ..." -- and an ODE to our theme creature by Robert Burns.

58. Journo's intro: LEDE. ALAS, embedded ads in online journalism have killed the inverted pyramid.

60. "The Simpsons" disco guy: STU. As Stu is pointing out, some of this commentary is by ChatGPT Pro.
Disco Stu
Cheers,
Bill

And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.

waseeley

*Copyright Isaac Asimov.  Some of the other videos I watched definitely violate at least two of Asimov's Laws of Robotics.  These devices can actually be modified to torment cats and shoot bullets!


41 comments:

  1. Well, I got it. But I’m still not sure how. So many of the themed answers I only vaguely knew how to spell! Anyway, through P&P and BST* I managed to solve this challenging puzzle. FIR, so I’m happy.

    *You may remember I recently proposed a new ‘Corner’ acronym, “Blood, Sweat and Tears.”

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good morning!

    How did d-o go wrong? Let me count the ways. Tried VACUUMS for ROOMBAS (fixed), BAHIA for BAHAI (fixed), and the slip that almost caused a DNF, TBA for TBD (finally fixed). That whole TBD, DESI, IMING section was the last to fall. Whew. GONERIL always reminds me of a venereal disease. Thanx, JMC, waseeley, and Teri.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Awful.right in the trash

    ReplyDelete
  4. Took 14:19 for me to get it wrong at the intersection of Brobdingnab & Goneril.

    Shak. & obvi aren't welcome in my crossword puzzles.

    I struggled at the intersection of Desi & silo, and I didn't know today's actress (Andra) or charybdis.

    Took a long time to get Mr. Boddy, which I thought only had one D. And, isn't Mustard a colonel?

    I guess you could say that I BDIsliked this puzzle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree. Really obscure and weird clues/answers. Didn't like this puzzle at all.

      Delete
  5. Anonymous @6:57 AM Well at least it didn't have circles. πŸ˜€

    ReplyDelete
  6. I saw the many Bs and Ds in the theme answers, but it took the reveal answer to include the Is- creative puzzle. Quite a survey of literature and Greek Mythology

    I knew it was BROBDINGNAG - but needed perp help for the spelling, more of a challenge than Lilliput where the little people lived.

    I wore many a SHIFT dress in the 60s and early 70s- my grandma was a good seamstress and made most of them for me - most didn't have a belt and were sleeveless like this one worn by Jackie O https://fabrickated.com/2015/01/07/the-little-shift-dress-considering-sixties-style/

    I like Angry Orchard's Hard CIDER

    Thanks Bill & Teri for the blog and John Michael for the interesting puzzle

    ReplyDelete
  7. DNF, not even close. I finally filled SMARM, but Alaska remained mostly snow covered. For the little I filled, only Islam and land were wrong.

    I just bought a bottle of TABASCO sriracha sauce on sale for half price yesterday. I'm guessing that means it isn't selling well. Tastes good, and is in a handier size than the giant economy size the original is sold in.

    Mattress FIRM is a great name for the national chain of bedding products.

    FLN - Thanks a pantload, Bayou Tony. I guess now we'll be seeing "tranche" as a "steak or investment slice" clue in some future puzzle I won't be able to finish.

    Thanks to Bill 'n' Teri for the fun review.

    ReplyDelete
  8. FIW. What a workout for a Saturday, oh wait, today is only Thursday. Right?
    The crossing of Desi and silo did me in, as if all my WAG's couldn't all be right.
    Ironically I got the theme and saw the "bdi" sequence but that didn't help much.
    Too many unknowns and proper names. At least no circles! Overall, not an enjoyable puzzle at all.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Start out with 1A "charm" so 1D was "chak", 2D was "had at". Seemed to make sense. Not!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Natick of the day goes not to this difficult challenge, but the one in the (normally tame) Dell Penny Press: "cumshaw" x "ribbed fabric." (Answers: TIP x REP.) So note to self: Maybe don't bitch so much here; it could be worse.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Quite astounding how many obscure clues I didn't know. Actually too many to count.

    ReplyDelete

  12. ARGUABLY A difficult Thursday. Was about to TITT, cuz of the SW. Looking for a rodent-like animal’s name and OBVI, it wasn’t (like the theme, way beyond my grasp)… then realized it was BEADY and VOID for “check status” not look and the rest fell into place πŸ˜…

    Inkovers: romCOMS/SITCOMS, CHARiBDIS/Y,

    Almost filled the CW variant iglu for YURT. Was looking for a repeated letter in the clue word “Character’s”. Tempted to try extra for ADDON and done for TIME but wouldn’t perp.

    Have heard the term “SILO” used for an “isolated department” when I was assisting in the reorganization of a local non-profit as a board member. Once again, saw the movie but didn’t remember ANDRA. MEAD, yes but more likely “Hard” CIDER for a “beer substitute”?

    I will not comment on “Thang Long” 🀭 DO, GONERIL, thought the same (crude minds think alike)πŸ˜†

    “Journo”? For journal? huh? Thought TABASCO was named for the eponymous Mexican state.

    “Good things/good people”, tried karmic as a no-perp WAG (dislocated my shoulder patting myself on the back)

    The Puritans were a bunch of ____ ….GRIM PILLS
    Declare oneself the greatest, “____!” …IRATE
    Title of a Chinese emperor autobiography “ ____ “ …. IMING
    George is the only “Night Visitor” of ___ …. AMAL

    This may be the first rain free day. Finally 🌞


    ReplyDelete
  13. Ray - O @9:13 AM If you've got rain to spare, send it down the East coast. We haven't had any for weeks in Charm City, just 90+ temps.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Starting the day with charybdis and brobdingnag was certainly a bit of a jolt to this solver. Happy to have survived.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Good Morning:

    SS recently used the term "The juice is not worth the squeeze" and I agreed with him on that particular puzzle. Sorry to say, my feelings about this offering are the same. The theme is not the least bit interesting and the themers themselves are a mixture of plain (Tab Dividers and Crab Dip) and preposterous (Charybdis and Brobdingnag). The obscure cluing and fill, i.e., Demigods, Shak, Andra, Desi, Mr. Boddy, and the nails-on-a-blackboard Obvi, added to the lackluster solving experience. I finished w/o help in close to 40 minutes, with no satisfaction or enjoyment.

    Thanks, John Michael, and thanks, Bill, for the soothing sounds of Rachmaninoff. The video of Cloris Leachman was coincidental as she had a minor part in a very touching movie that I stumbled across last night, entitled So B. It. Alfre Woodard and John Heard were in the cast, as well as a very young, talented newcomer, Talitha Bateman. It's on Amazon Prime and I highly recommend it. Thanks, as always, to Teri for her contributions.

    Have a great day.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Musings
    -I have no issues with solvers who fly through these puzzles but this one took me some time but I never felt like I was going to fail. Loved it.
    -BROBDINGNAG and CHARYBDIS – No idea but they finally came to heel.
    -Was I the only one who had FINS for ABES at first?
    -I was somewhat taken aback when HGTV’s House Hunting Abroad saw Americans looking for quarters in HANOI
    -Speaking of being taken aback, All In The Family did that in a very necessary way.
    -It’s hard for teachers, coaches, bosses et al. to REASSERT authority once it is lost
    -The summer solstice marks the time the grackles finally START TO leave our feeders.
    -It is said ONLOOKERS can make terrible witnesses
    -I have to think one might vote very differently BY MAIL with someone looking over their shoulder than in a private booth
    -MR. BODDY had two “D’s”, how ‘bout dat?
    -Nice job Bill and Teri!

    ReplyDelete
  17. I was MIRED in this puzzle. Way too many words and names I didn’t know. I’ve never heard of Slack or the Percy Jackson characters, though I did get the GODS part, but I hung on to TBa, so missed the DEMI

    At first I had fins for ABES, but changed that when I got BAHAI. The NW remained blank.

    Isn’t “Duh” already slang? I’ve never seen SILO used except as part of rural scenery.

    I finally noticed the BDIs, but by then I was exhausted.

    Thank you Waseely and Teri.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Waz @ 9:33

    instead of oil pipelines across the nation there should be water pipelines and storage tanks when one part of the country is overloaded with water and the other part in need. The Romans did it with aqueducts and storage basins.

    ReplyDelete
  19. FIR on paper, no cheating, and enjoyed it! Sure, it took a while to get going, but little by little, the easy ones created toeholds for the harder ones. I have a few specific memories from reading Gulliver's Travels long ago, but could not have told you the name of the land of giants. I do remember Gulliver's observation that the fair skin of an Englishwoman appears discolored and blotchy when magnified! BDIs were a hidden prize in the grid.

    Many thanks to John Michael Currie for a fascinating puzzle, to Patti for editing, and to Bill for cheerfully explaining it all.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Yuck. A real fun sponge of a DNF for me this morning. Definitely from an alternate universe to the one I live in. Everyone knows that half a sawbuck is a FIN. An ABE, on the other hand, is half an ALEX in the strange world that this puzzle originated in. Could the proper names have been any more obscure? Oh, and when you can't find a real word, why not just make one up? OBVI? SHAK? Sheesh!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Puzzling thoughts:

    FIW with a few lookups: MR BODDY (been a long time since I played Clue - don't recall this "vicitm" / DESI (as clued) / ANDRA / and I had to reveal the C in CHARYBDIS as I had no clue about this

    I also had FINS before ABES; and I agree that the word should be FINS if you are using it to describe a monetary unit. ABES should have been clued: Vigoda and Lincoln, IMO

    I got the reveal long before getting the four entries. I agree 100% with Irish Miss about the theme and entries. And while I always admire a good puzzle and the construction therein, my best way to describe this one is to remove the letters BDI from the entry for 36-across

    Thanks Bill and Teri for your hard work in writing a neutral recap. I would not have been so "matter-of-fact"

    ReplyDelete
  22. I staggered to an FIR. Working from the bottom up, I filled in BEADY EYES at a point where the only theme entry I had solved was BROBDINGNAG, but that assured me that “BDI” was the gimmick. That meant the DIP was CRAB and the DIVIDERS were TABs. Meh and meh. More important, it helped me spell CHARYBDIS, which I sort of knew from the lyrics of “Wrapped Around Your Finger” from the Synchronicity album by The Police.

    The puzzle was a grind. I enjoyed SMARM (once I figured it out via perps), HANOI (a surprisingly beautiful city that is a thousand miles from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon; not near), ARGUABLE, GONERIL, TABASCO, and BAHA’I, the religion that dominated my early childhood and even my conception.

    But I didn’t enjoy much else in a puzzle that contained 16 unknown answers/useless clues/lame entries, and that didn’t even include the despised cornpone “word” SOPS. The clues for DEMIGODS, ANDRA, SILO, and SHAK were particularly unhelpful. The latter seemed like it ought to be a Latin term instead of the Bard’s truncated surname. CIDER really is a beer alternative, but how many people waver between beer and MEAD? The clue for EDIT was fine, but I don’t identify as a “journo” despite the thousands of LEDEs I’ve produced. I didn’t like seeing E-CARDS (as clued) and IMING in the same puzzle, either, because like too much of the puzzle, they loudly proclaimed, “Yeah, I’m a young constructor, so deal with it, Methuselah.” Even MR. BODDY seems to stem from revisions of “Clue,” not the original game I played in the 1960s.

    ReplyDelete
  23. This is my candidate for the most obtuse puzzle of the year. Anybody who claims to have finished this without help or pure guesses is being ingenuous to say the least. My wife came up with Charybdis And I with brobdingnag. Other than that, we struggled. I agree with Husker Gary tho, it did have its moments. Way too many names, objects, locations, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  24. I thought the theme was -BD- and didn't catch the -BDI- until coming here. Probably not easy to find phrases with -BDI- so I am impressed. Hand up I found this difficult, with so many unknowns including: ANDRA, MR BODDY, OBVI, DESI, SERGEI, PERCY JACKSON. We did see MR BODDY not too long ago, though. I knew BAHAI from visiting their magnificent gardens in Israel. They are treated very badly in current PERSIA (Iran). FIR.

    As a child in Europe I developed a taste for SNAILs.

    Here we had SNAILs in Paris not long ago, on our long voyage back from Madagascar.

    From Yesterday:
    Anon at 8:39PM Sorry I was not more clear. The people told me their parents had mis-spelled their names and regretted it. Not an ethnic or cultural variation. Sometimes in the rush of having a baby people make mistakes.

    By the way, I tried again to contact ULTA to find out what their name means. This time I got an immediate answer from a person who was dumber than a bot. Their reply had nothing to do with my question. I tried a few more rounds and they stopped replying.

    ReplyDelete
  25. I guess I’m in the minority today. I really enjoyed the puzzle, even though I finally had to look up ANDRA, so “finished with help”. Greek mythology is one of my passions, and I enjoyed the other literary references as well. One of my favorite books is Circe, but if you aren’t familiar with mythology, the many background tales will be boring and weird. Has anyone else read it?
    I thought the themers were clever, and much of the fill was interesting . I did struggle to finish, but I very much enjoyed the challenge. Thanks so much, John Michel.
    Thanks too, Waseely and Teri for a great, detailed tour. I laughed all over again at Archie and “Meathead”.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Thanks Irish Miss, "The juice is not worth the squeeze", sums it up for me too. Didn't have time for all those unheard of names.

    ReplyDelete
  27. JJB @ 12:10 ~ My taking 40 minutes to complete a Thursday level puzzle is a self-explanatory admission that guesses and/or perps were necessary, not to mention Patience, Perseverance and Subgenius's Blood, Sweat, and Tears. πŸ˜‰

    Picard @ 12:12 ~ Coincidentally, I just received my order for imported (France, of course) escargot, one of my favorite delicacies. I don't use the snail shells, but I use the special snail dishes which are more user-friendly, if not as exotic! πŸ‘

    Acesaroundagain @ 12:15 ~ You're welcome, but SS deserves the appreciation. πŸ‘

    ReplyDelete
  28. Greetings! Quite a blend in today’s puzzle for me. Gotta hand it to John M. Currie for incorporating some “never heard of before” clues & fills.

    The blend? Most I filled; a few (I was interested in knowing) I looked up; and the last 4 blanks, I came to the Corner to finish.

    Clever theme! Two common terms and two very obscure entries that fit the reveal perfectly.

    WO: game -> RACE; e-mails -> ECARDS; full -> FIRM; post -> VOID

    I never suspected there could be a slangier slang for DUH! OBVI, in the current lingo.

    YURT: I first learned about them from Maine Cabin Masters who restructured one.

    MEAD: I had a taste in Ireland. Can’t say I really “imbibed"…

    SERGEI Rachmaninoff, Rapsody, I am dissolved into a puddle and soar to the heights when I hear this music. It was our wedding music.

    Thanks, Bill and Teri. It was a grand tour.

    ReplyDelete
  29. waseeley: You are correct. The lack of those dreaded circles was the lone bright spot today.

    Chairman Moe: Removing bdi from crabdip?
    Well played, sir. Well played.

    Ms. Irish Miss: Thank you for the attribution and appreciation.

    Me, from 6:57 earlier

    ReplyDelete
  30. Hola!

    Wowza! Such vitriol! I mostly liked this puzzle and was able to almost finish it. My Natick was at DESI/SILO and IMING which I, too, believe should be thrown into the dust heap unless its a late Chinese emperor talking to himself.

    GONERIL also makes me think of a certain disease.

    I'll take a CSO at EDU.

    In World Lit, which is one of the first introductory courses for an English major, Pilgrim's Progress is high on the list.

    Is CIDER really a beer alternative? I've never had beer but the parallel seems weak.

    My out of town guests will be here any minute so I have to close. It's their last day and we'll just have some lunch before they leave. It's been a whirlwind visit but that's the way they are and are lovely people.

    Have a great day, everyone!

    ReplyDelete
  31. waseeley, I kinda like the idea of programming a ROOMBA to torment a cat.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anybody remember this old joke? -

    Once there was a snail who was tired of being slow. He went out and bought a really fast sports car and had the dealer paint a big 'S' on each side of it.

    Whenever someone saw him zooming past in his new car, they would say, "Hey, look at that S-car go!"

    ReplyDelete
  33. MM, I must say that I remember that joke. My buddies and I were excited about turning 16 and getting our learner's permits, and automotive jokes got our attention like the fins on a '59 Chevy.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Sunk at the cross of DESI because I couldn't spell BROBDaNG#*@!NAG.

    ReplyDelete
  35. IIRC, those fins were the ones over the "owl eyes" taillights. The three dots came in '60 under the same fins.

    ReplyDelete
  36. DNF. DNK CHARYBDIS. And filling FINS and ISLAM in north central doomed the CW. Also DNK BROBDINGNAG. Really? Did not like this CW. Thanx for the write-up, Bill.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Irish Miss Way cool that you also enjoy SNAILs. I had no idea they could be imported. It is a rare treat when I am able to enjoy them.

    When I started school in the US, the teacher asked what is our favorite food. I said SNAILs. The other students went "Ugh!". I was mystified that they did not like them. It didn't occur to me as a child that someone would dislike something so delicious that they never had tried.

    MalMan Thanks for the SNAIL joke!

    Lucina I have the same thought about GONERIL. Glad it is not just me!

    Since my father worked for the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen, I had BEER long before I had CIDER. I can see the similarity.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have wondered if you have Danish ancestors. You have distinctive features that remind me of my Grandfather Jensen from Aarhus on the Jutland peninsula.

      Delete
  38. Well, thank you for clearing up that misconception about BEER and CIDER. I have, in fact, had hard CIDER and liked it but there is no way I would even taste BEER. My mother became an alcoholic and I cleaned up too many messes during that time. Eventually, however, she gave up drinking when my brother became sick and she vowed not to drink if he got well. He did and she did. He lived a few years longer than predicted.



    ReplyDelete
  39. Thanks to JMC for his very clever BDI themed puzzle! Unfortunately, for the second day in a row, I got lost in Minnesota. I had "tens" instead of ABES.
    FAV: Shift, for one. BTW, I agree with inanehiker @7:18 on this.

    I cannot remember for sure. Didn't a recent episode of WWDTM say that BEADY EYES are now considered attractive? Perhaps someone else here heard that episode and can clarify.

    Thanks to waseeley and Teri!!

    ReplyDelete

For custom-made birthday, anniversary or special occasion puzzles from C.C., please email crosswordc@gmail.com

Her book "Sip & Solve Easy Mini Crosswords" is available on Amazon.

Please click on Comments Section Abbrs for some blog-specific terms.

Please limit your posts to 5 per day and cap each post length at about 20 lines in Preview mode.

No politics, no religion and no personal attacks.