Themeless Saturday by Rich Feely
I blogged Rich's LA Times debut in April and now he is back with this challenge. I zoomed through the NE and SE and had to fish around to earn my "got 'er done" on the western side.
1. Trust-worthy figure: HEIR.😀 - Many of my golf buddies are recommending we set up an irrevocable trust for our two HEIRS.
5. Guardians, on scoreboards: CLE - In 2021 the Cleveland Indians became the Guardians.
8. Daytime fare: SOAPS.
13. Item that may bring a room together: ACCENT RUG.
16. Accustom: INURE.
17. Deep-sea pod cast?: WHALE SONG 😀 - Whales are deep-sea animals whose "singing" can be done by a pod of whales acting as a cast
18. __ four: PETIT.
19. Offensive deception?: NO-LOOK PASS.
21. Patches, in a way: SODS 😀
22. Goons: APES.
23. Fugitive's request: HIDE ME - Rick sticks his neck out for no one
25. Withstood: ABIDED.
28. Early Sony devices: BETA CAMS - Our video guy said a BETA CAM was the future and so we bought one. Everyone else went VHS and we soon had a white elephant.
30. Creed: TENET.
31. Sent in: FILED - Today reporters simply send in/FILE stories from their computers. Before the digital age, reporters had to either call in their stories or drive to the newsroom to type it out to FILE it.
32. Also: TOO.
33. Maintain: HOLD - An air traffic controller might tell a pilot, "Maintain present heading and altitude" which means "fly straight and level"
34. Invoices: BILLS.
35. St. whose Charter Oak fell in 1856: CONN - An interesting story about a 650 year old tree
36. __ pro nobis: ORA - Pray for us
37. Fathers: SIRES - Secretariat had seven of his progeny in the 2023 Kentucky Derby
38. Family nickname: AUNTY - Clara Blandick played Dorothy's AUNITE Em
39. Elements of love and hate: SILENT E'S - 🙄 My last fill as the meta cluing hit me
41. Actress Cuthbert: ELISHA.
42. Sole protector?: GALOSH - Around here we use them in pairs and call them "five-buckle overshoes".
43. NASA __: research center in Silicon Valley: AMES.
44. Third novel in Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead" series: LILA.
45. "Just watch me!": YOU BET I CAN.
50. __ purchases: IN APP - Put simply, an IN-APP purchase is something that you buy when using an app on your computer or mobile device.
52. Five-spice powder ingredient: STAR ANISE - Five spice is a blend of star anise, cloves, cinnamon, Sichuan peppercorns and fennel seeds.
53. Clerical home: MANSE.
54. "No sweat": EASY PEASY.
55. "The __ Scrolls": video game series: ELDER - If you have ever played or heard of this game, that makes one of us.
56. Sound before the orchestra begins: SHH.
57. 2020 NL batting champion: SOTO.
 |
| Juan Soto |
Down:
1. Russell's "The Christmas Chronicles 2" co-star: HAWN - Kurt Russell and his longtime companion Goldie HAWN
 |
| Rotten Tomatoes Audiences gave it a 44% |
2. Fifth letter of the NATO alphabet: ECHO.
3. Bygone scheduling app: ICAL.
4. Added to a card, e.g.: RELOADED - Chuck E Cheese calls it recharging, just bring your credit card to pay for more games
5. Makes a borderline call: CROPS - Yours truly changing the borderline in cropping this picture of me talking to 500 kids.
6. Moon goddess: LUNA.
7. Source of calcium and magnesium in compost: EGG SHELLS.
8. Taste: SIP.
9. "Hang on": ONE SEC.
10. Robotic sorts: AUTOMATONS - Disney has thousands of them
11. When Obergefell v. Hodges was issued: PRIDE MONTH - Obergefell v. Hodges: On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision that the 14th Amendment requires all states to license marriages between same-sex couples and to recognize all marriages that were lawfully performed out of state.
12. Groups at the gym: SETS.
14. Tamagotchi alternative: NEOPET.
15. Expressed impatience: TSKED.
20. Lots to build on: SITES - How bout these SITES to build on in Italy?
24. "Hi hungry, I'm __": DAD 😀
25. Literary musketeer: ATHOS.
26. "March to the beat of your own drum!": BE ORIGINAL.
27. Checked out: IN LALA LAND 😵 Where Mike Tyson put a lot of boxers
28. Gymnast honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022: BILES.
29. Posthumous "General Hospital" Daytime Emmy winner Eddy: SONYA - Fellow cast member and Emmy winner Robert Gossett paid tribute to the late SONYA in his acceptance speech.
31. Items that wind up on red trucks: FIRE HOSES - Wind up 😀
34. Quite wee: BITSY.
35. Cookbook categories: CUISINES.
37. __-cone: SNO.
38. Public house fixture: ALE TAP.
40. Go by: ELAPSE.
41. __ board: EMERY.
43. Humiliate: ABASH - You have the option to remain unabashed
44. Green shade: LIME.
46. Jazz venue: UTAH - The team kept the nickname when it moved from New Orleans just like the Los Angeles kept the name Lakers when they moved from Minneapolis. UTAH is not known as a hotbed for jazz and LA has very few lakes compared to Minneapolis.
47. Parting word: CIAO.
48. Second: Abbr.: ASST.
49. "Self Explanatory" R&B artist: NEYO.
51. A pop: PER - We buy bottled water at a big box store for $.15 but at this game they are $3.50 a pop.
26 comments:
Well, I did it. I solved this challenging puzzle without turning on the red letters. Am I proud of myself? You bet I am! (Not “You bet I can!” but close…)
Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
DNF, answering 52, 47 correctly.
Got BETACAMS and YOU BETICAN, and knew Jack Bauer's daughter and several other clevers.
Thanks to Rich for the Saturday special, and to H.Gary for the tour.
Terrible crash in Sao Palo yesterday. We'll have to wait for the accident report to know what happened, but I'll bet that one cause was a mechanical failure. (There is almost always more than one cause.) All pilots are taught - way before they are even certified to fly solo - how flat spins are caused, and how to recover from them. Sounds like the plane had plenty of altitude to recover from the spin, but the pilots were unable to do so. Prayers to the victims and loved ones. (Thank goodness it wasn't a Boeing product.)
Quite the workout today which is to be expected, six ten letter fills, six nines, and only six TLWs. Somehow I managed a FIR w/o help in 38:56, took some time and thought in the Pacific NW which I thought for a while would be my demise. DNKs would be a whole paragraph, perps were just kind enough. Some fine Saturday cluing from Rich and Patti. HG ~ thanks for another splendid review!
DNF. The NW was my nemesis. I had whale song but the accent rug just eluded me. I knew it was a rug, I had that part, but nothing came after that.
I struggled with the other sections but succeeded in each, so I managed to get close to a complete finish.
Overall, despite not finishing, this was an enjoyable puzzle.
I got about 1/3 filled on the first pass and decided it wasn't worth my time to guess some of the fills, especially one I'd never heard or seen before. ICAL, NO LOOK PASS, ELISHA, LILA, ELDER Scrolls, SOTO, NEOPET, Hi hungry, I',m DAD, SONYA, NEYO.
My BETAMAX was one letter short of CAM.
My St. was WALL Street, not CONNecticut
EASY AS PIE wasn't PEASY
PRIDE MONTH- wish she would give it up. Trying for the Bud Lite award?
SILENCES wouldn't work with BITSY crossing it. Was not expecting SILENT E's.
I don't follow soccer and a NO LOOK PASS in football would get a QB benched.
It sucked.
RIP Chi Chi Rodriguez. DW was his designated golf cart driver at the annual Boy Scouts charity golf tournament in Camarillo, CA.
Good to the last drop...not! FIW because of the last letter in the last row. Didn't know either people so guessed "A" instead of "O." Grrr.
Otherwise, how was they play? Difficult but fair. INLALALAND took some doing. And as Husker Gary noted, GALOSH usually come in pairs so that looks funny.
FIR, but I had to look up some unknown proper names like ELISHA and LILA, just to make sure I was on the right track, the other unknowns perps helped.
This was definitely a cruncher. For a long time I had paced for TSKED which doesn’t seem right to me. Never knew about this joke about hungry and DAD. For a long time I also had acres for SITES. And I needed HG’s explanation to understand SILENTES. I saw it as one word.
I think HEIR and IN LALA LAND were neat entries. BILES was a gimme.
My dear SIL who is named Claire has been BITSY since childhood.
By coincidence we had to SOD 4 bare patches in our lawn yesterday.
Thank you HG for a nice review.
YP here…FLN NaomiZ ~ funny how you use “perambulate” to pull one over on your dog, I would guess you also have to avoid the use of “ride”? 😂
Good Morning:
Despite the numerous perp-dependent entries, i.e., Ames, Lila, Elder, Neopet, Dad, and Sonya, I felt the difficulty level was sub-Saturday, that is, until I hit a brick wall trying to finish in the NW. However, bit by bit, I chipped away and finally got the Tada. Much of the fill was fresh and lively and some clever cluing added some sparkle. The few (8, sorry YP) TLWs were barely noticeable during the solve, but Galosh struck a sour note for me.
Thanks, Rich, for a pleasant Saturday excursion and thanks, HG, for clarifying and edifying, not to mention entertaining us, as always.
Have a great day.
Today was definitely not EASY-PEASY. Definitely Saturday. Could not get the Northwest Territory to come up on my radar screen, so I wound up tossing in the towel for a DNF. At least, I managed to figure out 2D!
Anon @7:43...Indians as racist seems to depend on whether they are "feather" or "dot".
FIR and loved this one. Probably my favorite Saturday in quite a while. Tough but fair and lots of little tricky clues like "Trust-worthy figure." Always happy to see Betamax get a shout-out.
Icing
Like H.G., I completed the eastern half of today’s puzzle before I could make a dent in the western half. California gave me fits, and BE ORIGINAL was my final fill-in, making my inability to see SILENT Es beside the point. It was a rewarding feeling to FIR, but my success seemed a bit too dependent on a pair of WAGs, the excellent WHALE SONGS entry and the more questionable IN LA LA LAND.
ANNOYANCES: The vague cluing for HEIR at 1A and my lack of familiarity with Apple devices such as ICAL caused a bit of a natick in the NW. Eventually I was positive that Kurt, not Crowe, was the Russell in 1D and Goldie HAWN must have been the co-star. . . . BETACAMS took some thought, even when I sussed the BETA part. . . . Auntie looks right, as in “Auntie Mame,” but I HOLD/maintain that AUNTY looks like adverb. . . .GALOSH? . . . The obscure clue for PRIDE MONTH seemed like a Patti contribution. . . . EASY PEASY nauseates me. . . . The orchestra clue for SHH sucked and perpetuates the unfairly stuffy image of classical music. . . . TSKED belongs in a scrap heap with yesterday’s “owers.”
I enjoyed making an educated guess with CONN. . . . STAR ANISE was an unexpected visitor to the puzzle. . . . One of our octet members worked at Nasa-AMES for about 20 years, but his job description was top-secret. . . . The batting champion question was tough, partly because 2020 was the Covid year, but mostly because we Boomers who went into sports journalism are more likely to know who won the batting title in 1920 than in 2020.
Today my grid is dappled with some bits of wite-out though not as many as usual on a Saturday. Thank you, Rich and Gary, for entertaining us today. Simone BILES was EASY but that was the only one. All the rest required some hard thinking. ALEXA helped me with ELISHA because there is no way I would know that. Luckily, SONYA perped and didn''t we recently see HENIE for that one? This puzzle was not EASY PEASY but it offered a good challenge. I'll take a CSO at AUNTY and one for my mother, LALA. She would be thrilled to see her name in a puzzle.
I have no idea why DAD is clued in that way. Also obscure (to me) is the clue for PRIDE MONTH. Also, I've never heard of Marilyn Robinson's series nor would I have known LILA without ALEXA.
Thank you, Gary, for guiding us through this puzzle. Have a great day, everyone!
I first thought that RICH FEELY might be one of Rich Norris's names.
I had to look up ELISHA Cuthbert, Marilynne Robinson's LILA, SONYA Eddy, and NEYO. GALOSH and AUNTY look weird.
I'm familiar with GALOSHES not GALOSH, neither of which I've ever had to wear. Rain is a rare occurrence here.
Appropriate for a Saturday CW, a real toughie, certainly NOT EASYPEASY. FWH, and even then looked at SILENTES and never parsed SILENT Es. Just a perp fill which remained a head scratcher. No V-8 can. I buggered up the SE by confidently filling YOUWATCHME at 45A. It took quite a while to straighten out that mess. DNK ORA and couldn't remember ATHOS, so THAT'S where I had to rely on Google. Dang. 17A wins most clever clue, although there were several. Thanx (I think) RF for the workout, and thanx HG for the terrific write-up. Off to Slacker's Packer Bar for the first preseason game.
Took 25:16 today.
I didn't know the third novel of a series I never heard of by an unfamiliar author, galosh (singular), today's actresses (Elisha; eventually Hawn,), and the video game.
On a vacation this week. Was in Big Easy's city Thursday & Friday. In the land of our dear unclefred now.
Not happy that apes are called goons.
I ECHO what C-Echo@11:05 said.
Thanks to Rich for his puzzle and for H-Gary for explaining it!
FAVs: Clue for FIREHOSES
GOONS has a negative connotation for me, too. Recently a group of teenagers was arrested for killing a young boy, one of their peers. They call themselves the Gilbert GOONS. Gilbert is a nearby city.
Everyone’s already on board the “not EASYPEASY” bus already, so I’ll let that joke sit. But this one almost put me IN LALALAND, for sure.
The NO LOOK PASS is common in basketball — LeBron executed a couple of beauties during the gold medal game the other day!
We had HARD G just the other day, and here is SILENT ES. Argh. And I’m on board: it’s “Auntie” — the lady’s either an aunt, or she’s not; she can’t just act AUNTY and qualify 😆
====> Darren / L.A.
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