Saturday Themeless by Kyle Dolan
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| Dan Whitney from Pawnee City, NE |
1. Croc or moc: SHOE - 😀
9. Bank: MOOLA - MOOLA and bank are used as slang for each other. Hmmm...🤔
14. Olivia of "The Newsroom": MUNN.
15. Vessel for Anne Bonny or Zheng Yi Sao: PIRATE SHIP - The light finally came on for me as I did not know either of these women. After a few cells filled, the rest was obvious.
17. Quakers' rivals: ELIS - An Ivy League contest
18. Image concerns?: PR AGENCIES - I struggled mightily and had to finally parse the fill. PR AGENCIES are concerns whose job is making good images.
19. Spoken: ALOUD.
21. Acronym to which an "A" is sometimes added: STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Some insert an "A" adding Art to make STEAM. I put SPCA first because I know an A is sometimes added to it.
22. Tops: A-ONE.
23. Rampaged: RAN RIOT.
25. Scorecard standard: PAR - The standard against which we golfers compare
27. Indulgent meal: BREAKFAST IN BED - BREAKFAST was obvious but IN BED took me some time as I thought about the contents of the meal rather than the courtesy being offered.
33. Language in which "hello" is "sabaidi": LAO.
34. Stinger?: NARCO - 🤨 Okay, a NARCO participates in drug stings, so...
35. Code name: MORSE 😀
36. Word in some pasta dish names: ALLA - We have all seen Penne, ALLA and Vodka in crossword fills.
38. "__ see!": YOU'LL.
40. Outdoor game, slangily: DISC - One variation
41. Jumps out of one's skin?: MOLTS 😀
43. Provider of outdoor seating: STOOP -STOOPS in NYC were necessitated by the enormous piles of horse manure in the streets.
45. __ Paulo: SAO - All the McDonalds in SAO, Paulo, Brazil. (Saint Paul 😀)
46. Historic brew-haha?: BOSTON TEA PARTY 😀
49. Important figure in Shia Islam: ALI 🤔
52. __ bowl: ACAI.
55. Point: GIST - As I said earlier, the GIST of Kyle's (or Patti's) clues can be, uh, difficult
58. Screen print?: E-TEXT.
59. Dressy attire that sounds casual: LOUNGE SUIT.
62. Bygone autocrat: TSAR - The [tsar/czar] [avered/avowed] he was at the [acme/apex] of power.
63. "Basically": MORE OR LESS.
64. Teacher of the Dharma: LAMA - Lama (Tibetan: བླ་མ་, Wylie: bla-ma, lit. 'boss') 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. Okay...
65. Taquería option: ASADO - I knew ASADA and dutifully filled it in. Who knew this is an alternate spelling I needed to finish GOO?
66. Place dear to the Sundance Kid: ETTA - 😀 My favorite clue!
67. Amazon Handmade competitor: ETSY.
Down:
1. Smudge: SMEAR.
2. Brouhaha: HULLABALOO - A salute to the TV show of the same name. This video shows many of the 60's music groups it featured.
3. Deli basketful: ONION ROLLS.
4. Guarantee: ENSURE - The most famous and controversial guarantee in sports history
5. Slack, e.g.: APP - Guessing the second "P" and parsing PR AGENCIES finally ended my puzzle. I stared at AP_/_RAGENCIES for waaaayyy too long.
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| An APP not familiar to me |
6. End of a growing season, typically: FIRST FROST 😀
7. "In principio __ Verbum": John 1:1: ERAT - In the beginning was the word.
8. Carry on: WAGE - There are far too many countries WAGING war
9. Fellows: MEN.
10. Film score?: OSCAR NOD - Groan 😖. Patti or Kyle came out of left field with this one. To "score" means to get something. Here a film (not necessarily the film's score) hopes to get (score) an OSCAR NOD.
11. Place-name that comes from the Seneca for "good river": OHIO - The name "Ohio" comes from the Seneca language (an Iroquoian language), Ohi:yo'(roughly pronounced oh-hee-yoh, with the vowel in "hee" held longer), a proper name derived from ohiːyoːh ("good river"), therefore literally translating to "Good River". "Great river" and "large creek" have also been given as translations. 😗
12. Claim: LIEN - I almost had to file a LIEN against a customer when I was a landscaper.
13. Cathedral area: APSE.
16. Bait: TEMPT.
20. Conservationist Fossey: DIAN.
24. "All right": OKAY.
26. Get ready to drive, say: AIM 😀 - Uh, AIMING does not guarantee success.
28. 80 on a math test, maybe: ACUTE - Kyle!! On a math/geometry test, an 80o angle is an ACUTE angle! 🙄
29. One without a backup plan?: SOLO ARTIST - I remember a wonderful John Denver concert where it was all him with no other acts.
30. Is put off by: BRISTLES AT.
31. Tests that are hard to guess on: ESSAY EXAMS - Correcting them, uh, correctly is a pain!
32. Style with a Streamline Moderne offshoot, informally: DECO.
33. Petting zoo baby: LAMB
37. Got: ATTAINED.
39. Canter: LOPE.
42. Estrella del día: SOL - La estrella del día de la Tierra es el SOL. (Earth's day star is the Sun).
44. Unit attached to a spine: PAGE 😀 Kyle! Yeah, I guess every PAGE of a book is attached to the book's spine.
47. Niamey's country: NIGER - Niamey is the capital city of NIGER and has a population of over a million. It is NNW of a cwd fav - Accra. If you knew this straight up, my hat is off to you!
47. Niamey's country: NIGER - Niamey is the capital city of NIGER and has a population of over a million. It is NNW of a cwd fav - Accra. If you knew this straight up, my hat is off to you!
48. Reason to consult a mechanic: RATTLE.
51. Adoptee, at times: STRAY.
52. "Resurrection" and "Watusi (Hard Edge)" painter Thomas: ALMA.
51. Adoptee, at times: STRAY.
52. "Resurrection" and "Watusi (Hard Edge)" painter Thomas: ALMA.
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| ALMA and "Resurrection" |
53. Baby talk: COOS.
54. Lighting effect: AURA - Yeah, I'm the only one who first saw lightning. 😛
57. Fat with a high smoke point: SUET - Wanna know more?
60. Possible result of over-reduction: GOO - I made a good guess at GO_/ASAD_
61. Org. with a "3-1-1" rule: TSA.
42 comments:
From Subgenius, who was unable to post, even anonymously.
This was a doable Saturday puzzle, for a change. There were only a few real obscurities; most of the puzzle gave way to common sense. I had a little trouble with “asado” rather than “asada” but knew “gao” didn’t make sense. Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
I thought this was going to become a rare Saturday win. No such luck. The top was perfect, but LOUNGE SUIT (???) and MORE OR LESS failed to appear. [Sigh.] DNF. Thanx, Kyle and Husker. (Yes, ACUTE was evil.)
FIW. I too had asada for 65A, and saw goa and scratched my head. Then I came here and find it's goo. Hmmmm! Yeah, I get it, but really?
Everything else filled in easily. Compared to previous Saturday's this was a walk in the park. If not for one square it would have been a successful finish.
Oh well, it was enjoyable.
Took 16:26 today, but had asada too, so when I entered "lounge", I got it wrong.
Lots of unknowns (Alma, asado, the Latin, the Islam clue, etc.). Some good Saturday-level clueing/answers.
DNF, like others I had trouble in the San Ysidro area. Should have (more or less) gotten ___E _R _ESS, but I didn't. Who knows how many dominoes would have fallen had I done so.
Erased cplus for ACUTE, acquired for ATTAINED, and trot for LOPE.
I had one error, HaLLABALOO x MaNN. I thought it was HULL..., but thought MUNN wasn't likely.
Thanks to Kyle for letting me play today. I liked most of it, but had no idea there was such thing as an ACAI bowl. I've had many a chili bowl, and I've put down seat cushions in the Rose Bowl, but ACAI is only crossword fill for me. Also thanks to H.Gary for the fun review.
This CW was about PAR for a Saturday, pretty tough with no theme and 10 ten letter fills, nine of which required two or more words, the exception being HULLABALOO. ✋ for keying in ASADA, one of my few confident fills, which I had to correct with the O to get my FIR in 49 grueling minutes, GOO then made sense, as GOA would have been clued as “state of India”. I wanted the end of growing season to end in HARVEST, but it didn’t fit. I know of DISC golf, but not DISC slam. Also thought of “(A)SPCA before STEM. E -TEXT? Being from Michigan, OH-HEE-OH is our enemy to the south 🤣. Thanks Kyle for the morning workout, and to HG for your excellent educational review!
Make it FOUR for ASADA (O). And that's all I got in the SW. I couldn't get the 'gist' of getting a toehold, even with NIGER, COOS, ARTISI and G&T in place. ACAI bowl, ALMA Thomas, and LOUNGE SUIT (never heard of those three). GOO for 'over-reduction'- what a stretch. My lighting effect was MOOD, not AURA. "3-1-1 rule"- I never pack any liquids in my carry-on suitcase.
Then there was the NE. I couldn't figure out what went with SHIP, or '_S_ARNOD', or '_R_G_N_IES'. Wasn't thinking of two word fills and PIRATE was an unknown Chinese ship. I thought Bernie Madoff was 'Histories Most Successful Pirate.' My (A)SPCA wouldn't work either. STEAM? A new one for me.
NIGER- I knew it because it's been in the news lately, with the junta forcing the US Army to leave the country in the last month.
My wife DIANE's name was misspelled as DIAN on her birth certificate. They were handwritten back in those days. Neither of her parents knew it but I caught it when we got our marriage license.
It works! Thank you,TTP, thank you, C.aC.! All it needed was a software update! I’m back in business!
Thought I was headed for a Saturday triumph till I worked myself into the SW corner and hit a roadblock. Couldn’t decide between lard and oleo…. neither… SUET. LOUNGESUIT? is that a thing? Apparently baby talk isn’t a word said ALOUD like “mama”
Inkovers: alias/MORSE, sun/SOL, acquired/ATTAINED.
“Quakers’s rivals” guess not the Shakers.. I know “Anne Bonney” as a real life female pirate from the NETFLIX TV series “Black Sails” a prequel to RLS’s “Treasure Island”
Kind of guessed at DISC which gave me enough perps for DECO (“informally stream line moderne?” ). Liked the “brew” part of the TEA PARTY clue. “Jumping out of one’s skin” is a bit exaggerated for MOLTS. Was tempted to go FIRST with FIRSTfruits but perp-waited. “Slack” Acute angle aha!! 😃
DIAN. I almost put Jane (Goodall)….Thought it was spelt MOOLAh… NIGER: NYE’-ger or Nee-ZHAIR’ only the Naimese know. 🤔
Is there really a painting of kids dancing the “Watusi”? These guys seem to be combining other 60’s dances. At least “ The Swim” “The Freddy” and “The Mashed Potatoes” 🕺
High speed wind comes through again…. REGALES
What I feel like when a Monday puzzle goes DNF, a ____ ….. STOOP
When a company won’t settle out of court no recourse but to___ ….. SUET
Have a nice weekend alluvyah 😀
The only problem is, now I can’t see what I’m writing- maybe switch to a different browser z, like Chrome?
Came to the blog to find out wth "pragencies" was...
A doable Saturday otherwise.
Hmm, format change whack-a-mole again, I see...
Anywho, DW doesn't like me to announce to the internet that the house is empty, so I have been incommunicado. Did I miss anything important?
On my end, in Athens, I could not do the puzzle because The Times will not allow access outside the U.S. without a subscription. (P.s., the Acropolis has a lot of steps, saw a lot, but most was my feet due to rock hopping.)
Note: for a hair raising access, use the disabled entrance (if allowed) for a glass elevator ride to the top, where you get off about 30 stories in the air on a tiny ramp...
On the isle of Kaffelonia, I tried to access the Blog only to be warned by the government of Greece with no less than 30 warnings that the blog was going to track everything and try to sell me stuff...
In Croatia, I was surprised to find out that they are more modern than we are...
In Venice, it is very crowded, the canals smell, but surprisingly contain some large fish! Our hotel had a rooftop bar (one beer, ten euros?!) but came with little water pistols so you could fight off the pigeons. Warning! Don't drop a chip at the bar, the birds go nuts, your toes may be mistaken for crumbs, and one water pistol may not be enough !
Now that I'm on a computer (a computer at the library, I don't have one at home...) it's much easier...unfortunately, I can only go to the library on Saturday because of my other commitments...
Thank you, Kyle, for providing us with a clear and satisfying Saturday challenge, straightforward and gimmick-free.
With two near-grid spanners and a few other touches, yours was an attractive grid.
I ran into a couple head-scratchers like OSCARNOD and APP, but neighboring perps proved helpful.
Sporting no made-up words or pop culture detours, you demonstrated to other constructors how to be respectful of us solvers.
DNF
I thought I’d have a FIR today, but I messed up in the NE. I almost entered MOOLA, but I knew it had to be wrong. I had taunt for TEMPT.
The rest filled out all right, with some erasures like ONION RingS for the ROLLS.
I loved the brouhaha clue for HULLABALOO and down a ways, my favorite clue, historic brew-haha? BOSTON TEA PARTY.
I didn’t know Amazon owns ETSY.
Subgenius @9:29. I also had that problem and when I switched to Chrome, the problem disappeared.
Thank you HG for the nice review.
Dave, sounds like you had a good time. Welcome back.
The excessively high temperatures and fires in Greece made the national news a few different times.
I love me a Saturday! Fav day of the week and this one didn't disappoint. Fell into all the same traps as everyone else - ASADA & SPCA - but they sorted themselves out.
to Monkey - loved the brew-haha clue as well, but ETSY is a "competitor" to Amazon Handmade.
A DNF for me, had trouble getting some of the long answers. It was a tough, but doable Saturday, just not my day.
Aargh! DNF. Scuttled in the Sea of White, the southwest corner. Definitely a Saturday. Some really convoluted clues. Still scratching my head. I always thought that MOOLA was what one kept in a BANK. Never did manage to parse PRAGENCY. Ah, well. On to Sunday!
DNF Just read “First Frost” by Craig Johnson, so 6 down was a given.
On to Connections, Wordel and Strands.
I’ve been a cop for 28 years. Almost 20 of those years I worked narcotics. Narcotics officers are sometimes referred to as narcs but never as a narco. Narcos are drug dealers.
I've heard people say "(s)he made bank" when they come into a big payoff.
Didn't mean a negative connotation at "payoff." Could be a signing bonus, or maybe an unexpected dividend for examples.
Oof! DNF. Like Monkey, I had "taunt" instead of TEMPT, and was pretty pleased with it. I agree with Anonymous at 12:05 PM that a NARCO is a drug dealer, but I filled it anyway. And give me a thousand year old Pope any day over Olivia MUNN, the lady pirates, and Thomas ALMA. I managed to get those through perps, but the clues and answers sure didn't help. Hand up for ASADa and the meaningless GOa.
Some people FIR, so thanks to Kyle for the lesson in humility, and to Husker Gary for a really enjoyable review.
Correction, ALMA Thomas, not Thomas ALMA. I need to read up on her.
Glad it's working for you again
It’s easy to say I really enjoyed a puzzle when I manage to FIR, even if it takes more than an hour, and even if some of the impediments are ridiculous, but I really liked this one overall.
Admittedly, it was a bit of an IQ test. You had to know what an ACUTE angle is/isn’t, with barely a hint. You had to deduce that Quakers are Penn athletes in the Ivy League, which also has Yale’s ELIS. You had to venture west from New York State to come up with OHIO. I liked that. I also liked the “hello” word I’ve used in LAOs, the “brewhaha” clue, ENSURE used correctly, that the clue “all right” did not spell it “alright,” and the very presence of REGALES, BRISTLES AT, and SUET.
However, I considered the crossing of ERAT and STEM, as clued, to be a natick that nearly cost me my FIR and delayed my completion of the puzzle. PR AGENCIES and OSCAR NOD (ridiculous clue) were tough gets, and MOOLA didn’t work for me as clued. LOUNGE SUITS gave me fits in the SW. GOO and COOS were too abstractly clued. There were a couple of unknown names, too.
But I’m glad I never gave up.
I’m putting it down for a while…
Sometimes I take long breaks on Saturdays, which is fine. It just means I can’t read any comments yet because I don’t want spoilers.
I’ve got about half of it filled in. The upper right and lower left sections are still completely bare. So far it seems like good Sat difficulty, though surprisingly I was able to guess a lot of the long answers pretty quickly.
Anyone else think of onion rings first?
Hand up for onion rings, given that most people's definitions of "deli" are looser than mine. Lao forced me to correct.
Rusty Brain @10:59. You’re right of course about ETSY. I somehow misread the clue.
Thanks to Kyle! I liked this one. Favs: Film score; MORE OR LESS; and the clue for ACUTE.
Hand up for ending with ASADa X GOa before ASADO & GOO.
Welcome back to CED! Sounds like you had quite the adventure!
Thanks to H-Gary for explaining it all! 62A. I see what you did there.
I needed your explanations for 17A, 34A (still not sure about the "O"), and 66A.
I knew I would struggle with a Saturday CW so went straight to the computer to do it, bypassing paper. Then made up my mind that if I persisted long enough I would FIR. Well... ended up turning on red letters. Even then had to use several alphabet runs, so FWH. (Or... cheated). With red letters and alphabet runs, it still took ... well, a long time. I've heard of a "leisure suit", but not a "lounge suit". Quite a few other DNKs. Just above my meager abilities. Thanx HG for explaining it all.
I required a lot of assistance to finish this puzzle. Hand up for not seeing how to parse PRAGENCIES. I could, but won't, repeat what many of you have already posted.
I remember a fun computer game from the 80's called Leisure Suit Larry.
I thought MOLTing was a rather slow process, the exact opposite of "jumping" out of the skin.
As CED says, "Anywho..."
Good reading you all.
Yeah, good ol’ Kyle, gettin’ a bit too cutesy in the clueing dep’t. for my taste — but I have to forgive him because of those snazzy wide-track fills like BOSTONTEAPARTY and BREAKFASTINBED. Great stuff, dude!
I, too, fell into the ASADa/O hole like so many. As for AÇAÍ bowls, here in Smogopolis, every other pseudo-para-demi healthy-eats joint sells them, so that was a slam dunk (not DISC!). As for MOOLA, I’ve always seen it with H at the end, so “grrrr!” on that one! And did anyone else get hung out to dry by putting in “alias” for 35A (code name)? Perps finally fixed that one.
My biggest gripe: ACUTE as a math term. Geometry ain’t math, last time I checked (but you’re talkin’ here to a guy who hated algebra 🤮. Letters are for writing words, not doing numerical stuff, if you ask me!).
PIRATESHIP slid right in with Anne Bonny — but now I want to read up on this Zheng Yi Sao chick — sounds like my kinda gal 😆
It just occurred to me that the only place I’ve ever seen an APSE has been in crossword puzzles…and it sure is popular in ‘em!
====> Darren / L.A.
FIW
It was driving me nuts trying to come up with a ridiculous word to fill PR__ENCIES until I finally thought of ‘P.R.” Apparently we all have to assume now that every CW answer may contain an abbreviation, regardless of how it’s clued.
Only miss was ASADA (hand up). I just figured GOA must be some weird abbr…
Well that was fun, even if it did take me eleven hours (off and on) to struggle to a DNF!
I had 'prudencies' - the only word that seemed to fit the clue and the perps. I should have given more weight to the question mark at the end of the clue. Of course that gave me 'Erut' and 'Wade' but my Latin is awful and 'Wade' was at least a word. I did consider 'Lade' for 'carry on' but 'Afel' was a non-starter.
I thought a 'Narco' would be a stingee not a stinger. I'd never encountered the Narcotics Control Officer interpretation.
We'll played Dr. Dolan.
For 7 Down, if the text is "In principio erat Verbum" then shouldn't the citation be Ioannem I:I rather than the English translation? ;-)
"Lounge Suit" may be British English. A lounge suit is what most people would just call a suit (or a man's suit if we're being careful).
A lounge suit is semi-formal when compared with Morning Dress or a Morning Suit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suit
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_dress
Craig Johnson is my man! Better than C.J. Box, I think.
It was a stimulating slog of sussing!
Yeah, that would have made things clearer! DOH!!!
Doable if you had all morning.
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