Happy Monday, everyone! Can you believe it is the last day of September? If you are like me, any melancholy over that realization disappeared when you saw that Zhouqin Burnikel was today's constructor. As is her style, she gave us a clever theme with fair clues.
Theme: Ophiology
Let's begin with the themed clues & answers:
16 Across. Netflix true crime series about big cats: TIGER KING. This TV show ran on Netflix during the pandemic when everyone was stuck at home, looking for entertainment. I gave up my Netflix account in 2013 so I never saw it.
24 Across. Evergreen that grows well in coastal soil: SAND PINE. The SAND PINE is endemic to the Southeastern U.S. Its Latin name is Pinus clausa and its common names are "Florida spruce pine" and "scrub pine".
Side note: This is what we mean when we say Zhouqin's puzzles are fair and it is why she is a favorite on The Corner. If you are not familiar with this answer, you can still suss it out with a few perps and by connecting coastal to SAND and evergreen to PINE.
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| "Pinus clausa" sounds like it should be native to the North Pole. |
37 Across. Backyard hideout: TREE HOUSE. 
53 Across. Great Barrier Reef locale: CORAL SEA. I first tried "Australia" but ran out of boxes. more about the Coral Sea
And the reveal:
63 Across. Predatory fish capable of crawling on land, or what each part of 16-, 24-, 37- and 53-Across can be: SNAKEHEAD. This is an air-breathing freshwater fish that is not native to North America. The USGS answers your questions.
To be ssssuccinct, every word in the themed answers can come before (at the HEAD of) the word SNAKE.
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| Top row l to r: Tiger Snake, California King Snake, Sand Snake, Louisiana Pine Snake Bottom row l to r: Brown Tree Snake, Brown House Snake, Coral Snake, Sea Snake |
To be honest, I really wish this puzzle had not fallen on a Monday. SNAKEs are not my thing. It took a lot of dedication to gather these photos. I am not exaggerating when I say that I will have a nightmare about a snake tonight. If you would like more information on any of these animals, please open another TAB on your browser (See 1-Across below.) and search to your heart's content.
Slithering on....
1. Things opened in bars and browsers: TABS. This was a fun 1-Across! One can open a TAB (bill) at a bar or a TAB (interface) within your computer's browser.
5. Surfer's ride: WAVE. Did you watch the men's surfing final from the 2024 Olympics? (3:40 min.)
9. Pollution in the sky: SMOG.
13. French friend: AMIE.
14. Done: OVER.
15. Spread the wealth: SHARE.
18. Big: LARGE.
19. "Still pending" letters: TBD. To Be Determined
20. Jacob's twin: ESAU.
21. Parent company of Simmons: SERTA. Both are brand names of mattresses.
22. Jumps like a frog: LEAPS. I searched for a .gif of a frog LEAPing but instead chose this adorable kitten playing leap frog with its littermates.
27. "Finish every last bite on your plate!": EAT IT UP. Yes, that is the literal interpretation. "EAT IT UP" is also an idiom that can mean "to believe unquestioningly that something is true" or "to thoroughly enjoy something".
30. Marshy wetland: BOG. I learned from this video that acidic water is an important characteristic of a BOG. What is a Bog? (1:41 min.)
31. Minor criticism: NIT. Last week TTP gave us a new-to-me definition of NIT: a unit of measurement used to quantify the brightness of electronic displays, particularly those with emissive technologies like LEDs, OLEDs, and microLEDs.
32. Beige kin: TAN. Both are colors.
33. The Matterhorn's range: ALPS. This Matterhorn is in Southern California (hence the palm trees). It has its own resident Yeti.
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| Disneyland, Anaheim, CA |
35. Actress Durance: ERICA. She is a Canadian actress born in 1978. She looks familiar. Maybe I have seen her in a Hallmark Christmas movie??? her IMDb page
40. "Same here!": ME, TOO. My oldest brother did all the talking. My next brother would then say, "Me, too." For a while my parents made that his nickname. BTW, my oldest brother still does all the talking...he became a lawyer.
43. On-campus residence: DORM.
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| That device on the table is one of those baby monitor things. |
44. Co. such as Verizon Fios: ISP. "Company" is abbreviated, so is "Internet Service Provider".
47. 15, for a quinceañera era: AGE. If you read NaomiZ's blog about Zhouqin's Sept. 22 puzzle, then you know that this is a celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday.
48. Drag with effort: LUG.
50. Energetic songs, in slang: BANGERS. I hear this term a lot on NPR's All Songs Considered podcast.
56. In the lead: ON TOP.
57. Powwow host: TRIBE.
58. Brightly colored: NEON. Just the one song today. It's not a BANGER, but it's a good one.
John Mayer ~ Neon ~ 2001
61. CFO's degree: MBA. Chief Financial Officer" is abbreviated, so is "Master of Business Administration".
62. Serious genre: DRAMA.
65. More friendly: NICER.
66. Coiled garden tool: HOSE.
67. Poker stake: ANTE.
68. Mimicked: APED.
69. Watched closely: EYED.
70. Union payments: DUES. In one of the school districts where I worked, if someone did not want to join the union they still had to pay DUES but it went to a scholarship fund. Fair enough.
Down:
62. Serious genre: DRAMA.
65. More friendly: NICER.
66. Coiled garden tool: HOSE.
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| Continuing with the SNAKE theme.... |
67. Poker stake: ANTE.
69. Watched closely: EYED.
70. Union payments: DUES. In one of the school districts where I worked, if someone did not want to join the union they still had to pay DUES but it went to a scholarship fund. Fair enough.
Down:
1. Spill the beans: TATTLE.
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| Another snake comic.... (I did not plan this.) |
2. "Sheesh, what a day!": AM I BEAT!. BEAT can mean "tired".
3. Input analyzed by a supercomputer: BIG DATA. (See 26-Down.)
4. "I told you so!": SEE. everyone's favorite thing to hear
5. Pans for making beef chow fun: WOKS.
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| dry fried flat rice noodles with marinated flank steak and green onions Winnie's recipe |
6. Sneakers brand: AVIA.
7. Second rock from the sun: VENUS. This clue reminded me of the 1996 TV show Third Rock from the Sun with John Lithgow and a very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was about four ETs who came to Earth to observe human behavior. They took on human forms that did not necessarily match their alien personalities. (4:24 min.)
7. Second rock from the sun: VENUS. This clue reminded me of the 1996 TV show Third Rock from the Sun with John Lithgow and a very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was about four ETs who came to Earth to observe human behavior. They took on human forms that did not necessarily match their alien personalities. (4:24 min.)
8. Energy unit: ERG. Def. (noun) a centimeter-gram-second unit of work equal to the work done by a force of one dyne acting through a distance of one centimeter and equivalent to 10−7 joule.
9. Like some cheddar: SHARP. This was a clever cluing angle for SHARP!
9. Like some cheddar: SHARP. This was a clever cluing angle for SHARP!
As it turns out, the other day I learned about orange vs. white cheddar on the Good Job, Brain! podcast. It goes back to the 17th century. The cheese produced near the town of Cheddar, Somerset, England was made with milk that was rich in beta-carotene (especially in the Springtime), producing an orange pigment in the cheese. After the color became associated with high-quality cheddar, cheesemakers began adding orange dye to the cheese to create a consistent color. The practice persists today because people expect their cheddar to be orange. Most orange cheddar is now made with annatto, the seed from the achiote tree of Central and South America. (I will add that annatto seems like a Saturday-level word.) source
10. Shaken or stirred drink: MARTINI.
11. Like some pricey produce: ORGANIC. Trader Joe's bananas cost 29¢ each for organic and 23¢ each for non-organic. If you buy 5 banana a week for one year, the cost difference is $15.60.
12. "Gosh!": GEE.
15. Heavy hammers: SLEDGES. I threw down SLEDGES because I could not think of anything else. I did not expect it to stick.
17. Take a breather: REST.
21. Cold-sounding commercial prefix: SNO-.
23. Bean in refried beans: PINTO.
25. Soak up: ABSORB.
26. GPS approx. affected by traffic: ETA. Here is a video about how WAZE and Google Maps calculate your Estimated Time of Arrival (3:41 min.). Spoiler alert: They use a lot of 3-Down.
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| Whether orange or white, its SHARPness increases with age. |
10. Shaken or stirred drink: MARTINI.
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| answer below* |
11. Like some pricey produce: ORGANIC. Trader Joe's bananas cost 29¢ each for organic and 23¢ each for non-organic. If you buy 5 banana a week for one year, the cost difference is $15.60.
12. "Gosh!": GEE.
15. Heavy hammers: SLEDGES. I threw down SLEDGES because I could not think of anything else. I did not expect it to stick.
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| Apparently you have to have a lot of muscles to wield this tool. |
17. Take a breather: REST.
21. Cold-sounding commercial prefix: SNO-.
23. Bean in refried beans: PINTO.
25. Soak up: ABSORB.
26. GPS approx. affected by traffic: ETA. Here is a video about how WAZE and Google Maps calculate your Estimated Time of Arrival (3:41 min.). Spoiler alert: They use a lot of 3-Down.
Someone must have told her that more hand gestures are better.
28. Dubai's fed.: UAE. "Federation" is abbreviated, so is "United Arab Emirates".
29. Solemn promise: PLEDGE. "I PLEDGE to tell the truth," said Reg while working on the edge of the hedge along the ledge with his SLEDGE and his wedge. "I most certainly did dredge my straightedge through the sedge."
29. Solemn promise: PLEDGE. "I PLEDGE to tell the truth," said Reg while working on the edge of the hedge along the ledge with his SLEDGE and his wedge. "I most certainly did dredge my straightedge through the sedge."
34. Noodle soup with a Saigon style: PHO.
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| I'm a fan of PHO! |
38. Race car safety feature: ROLL BAR. IIRC, ROLL BARs with KC lights were big in the 1980s.
39. Actress Thurman: UMA.
40. PC alternative: MAC.
41. Self-indulgent episode: EGO TRIP.
42. Rooftop lounging spot: TERRACE.
45. Prix fixe offering: SET MENU. Prix fixe is a French term used to describe a complete meal offered at a fixed price. LOTS more on this
46. Process of validating a will: PROBATE. Investopedia explains
49. Put to work: USE.
51. __ of the above: NONE.
52. Digging tools: SPADES.
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| Do you agree with this? It is confusing because this spade ♠ has a pointy tip. |
54. Prepared to throw a dart: AIMED. Will drinking beer improve your darts game?
Note: Consider the source of the above link.
55. Drive up a wall: ANNOY.
59. Make simpler: EASE.
60. Gave approval to: OK-ED.
62. Ancestry test material: DNA. This story about a family reunited after a DNA test was in last week's news.
63. Third-person pronoun: SHE.
64. "You __ to be there": HAD. I don't get this one. It must be an inside joke. 😜
55. Drive up a wall: ANNOY.
59. Make simpler: EASE.
60. Gave approval to: OK-ED.
62. Ancestry test material: DNA. This story about a family reunited after a DNA test was in last week's news.
63. Third-person pronoun: SHE.
64. "You __ to be there": HAD. I don't get this one. It must be an inside joke. 😜
Here's the grid: 
*The martini on the right is shaken (ala James Bond), not stirred.
That'ssss all for today. I look forward to reading your commentssss!
52 comments:
Believe it or not, I had a little trouble with one across. But things soon settled down to the usual Monday “walk in the park.” FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
C.C. put a little crunch in our morning cereal. Nice. Copperheads are the only snakes to worry about here -- very painful, but seldom fatal. If you swapped the rice for a tortilla, your beef chow fun would become fajitas. Even more fun. Thanx, C.C. and sumdaze. (After telling a funny story that fell flat on the listener: "You HAD to be there.")
KC Lights: Was pretty sure they had nothing to do with the Knights of Columbus.
PROBATE: We put all our assets into a revocable trust which should avoid probate when the time comes.
FIR, but erased taps for TABS, ditto / as am i for ME TOO, and chief for TRIBE.
Most folks coil their HOSE in a circle. They should be coiled in a figure 8 to avoid kinks. Works for power cords and rope too, unless the rope is of twist construction, then circles work fine.
We have three dangerous snakes - rattlesnakes, copperheads and water moccasin / cotton mouth.
Thanks to CC for the fun Monday challenge, and to sumdaze for overcoming your phobia to create this writeup for our snake, er, sake.
Scuttlebutt here at the mouth of the Chesapeake predicts a 2-day dockworker strike to start tomorrow. I hope it doesn't go longer, or Santa could be in trouble.
FIR, but found this a tad crunchy for a Monday. I am unfamiliar with bangers but the perps saw me through.
Last to fall was the NW. I needed the reveal to get tiger king. After that all was good.
Overall an enjoyable puzzle.
A crossword puzzle by C.C. is always refreshingly fair and enjoyable. Today's was no exception, and to boot it was virtually devoid of pop culture and celebrities. I did need help from perps for Erica Durance, but that was about it.
I don't particularly share sumdaze's dislike of snakes, but freely admit that, all things considered, I prefer my pets to be warm, furry, and cuddly. And able to purr. And not able to swallow you (which has happened to the occasional unlucky python owner).
If ophiology is the study of snakes, I do not get a passing mark in ophiology based on today's puzzle. I've heard of coral snakes and king snakes, but not the others in today's puzzle.
Thanks, again, C.C., for your usual professionalism and providing us with a satisfying solve.
Took 4:22 for me to water this one.
I didn't know today's actress, and I wouldn't tomorrow either.
"Big data" seemed weird.
Easy, themeless puzzle.
Good Morning:
I can't think of a better way to start the week off than with a puzzle created by our dear CC. I was totally clueless about the theme until the reveal slithered into view. Most of those snakes are new to me and will be promptly forgotten, thank you very much. I wasn't familiar with the Netflix series, or the term Big Data and only knew Bangers as Sausages and never heard of Erica Durance, but perps were Monday-fair, leading to a quick and smooth solve.
Thanks, CC, and thanks, sumdaze, for telling me more than I'd ever need to know about snakes! I'm with you, although I don't think I'll have any nightmares about these critters. Enjoyed your write-up very much and my favorite comics were the "Tattle" Snake, the Sock vs the Dryer rebellion, and the Viking "Exam." Nice job!
Have a great day.
Good morning, I found the cartoons more difficult to understand than the puzzle. I have only 2 snake stories- my brother bought a very nice house on a canal near the intercoastal and wanted to remodel to make a bigger closet. They were shocked when a small python was found beyond a wall. Apparently he/she lived on rats who came into the house and also lived in the walls, until they didn't. The remodel became exponentially more expensive. That same brother and I went to law school together and bought a house across the street from the school. I was teaching an LSAT prep call on the weekends and would walk home to eat. One Saturday as I started to walk back to the school, a very definite snake face appeared. I called to my brother who was working as an assistant DA and had a gun and a carry permit so he decided to shoot the creature. There was a huge oak in back of the small palm where the snake was living so he thought it was safe to shoot. All there bullets ended up in the tree but not the snake. We switched to a 2 iron and learned it take 7 strokes to kill a snake.
Great theme and execution C.C. and wonderful write-up Sumdaze; happy October all tomorrow
I guess I can't delete and can't stop the computer from reverting to anonymous. I just need to pay attention before commenting; sorry
Yikes want there a movie called? “Snakes on a Crossword” 😧😲. CC presents us with a serpentine theme 🐍
Ha!! FIW! had Taps instead of TABS which gave me PIGDATA 🐷 so LIU, it’s a real thing. “What is an example of PIGDATA: Pig has three complex data types: maps, tuples, and bags. All of these can contain data of any type” and Why not traditional Pig Data:
Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Artiodactyla, Family: Suidae, Genus: Sus, Species: Sus scrofa. 🐽
Guess there hadda be one unknown PP…. ERICA
Inkovers: ahead/ONTOP, roof/ROLLBAR, TBA/TBD …. (Quite a few for a Monday)
BUNGERS?
If a Brit’s “Erm” is our “Um” is their ERG our “Ugh”? Then there’s our UMA. CORAL SEA a new one on mea.
What happens if “beans” are only “fried” once? 🫘
Enjoy the week
Good Morning! On the plus side, nice to see that CC is our constructor, and no WOs although there was some waiting for perps in a couple of areas.
I did not see the theme until 63A filled – TMI!!
Alas, I will bypass your usually delightful recap, sumdaze. Just not a reptile person, not even visually. I'll check the Comments to see if it's safe to view. Have a good day everyone.
Rayo, "What happens if “beans” are only “fried” once?" -- They'd still look like beans. It takes twice to make 'em into a paste.
Sssssweet CW this morning. Although I didn’t know some of the snakes in the theme, the answers were EASY to fill. As someone said CC has a knack for gently guiding the solver to the right answer.
Snakes are not my favorite creatures, but there are some really beautiful ones, NEON colored almost. My grand niece when she was a teen was given a large snake. Her father built an enclosure for it in their living room. She took it out only when there were no visitors.
Thank you sumdaze for the nice recap. Loved that kitten leap frogging over its siblings.
RoseE@9:36. I'm with you on the snakes. I put a pic of all 8 snakes where we generally talk about the reveal. You should be OK if you skip down to 1A. I did put in 2 comics about snakes. Comics do not bother me like real photos do.
I spent many years living on ranches in California's hills so I was always on the watch for rattlesnakes. Over the years they bit my horse, my dog, and my cat. The horse and cat survived but the cat spent the rest of her life skedaddling every time a garden hose kinked and made a hissing sound.
D-O@5:40. 64-Down was my attempt at humor, hence the "wink".
= )
Yes, 1A gave me a little trouble also. Ended up attacking it from the downs up. Curiously, my iPad has reverted to normal in that the YouTube videos all work properly, and the ads are where they normally would be. Only in crosswords are Mondays easier...
Great quote from Mel Brooks.
I was in a real hurry at a Mexican restaurant once and asked my beans only be fried once. They refused, now I know why 😁
Most comics are philosophers. Parsan
A good Monday workout. Nicely done CC. Very enjoyable recap Sumdaze. I hope you bypass the nightmares. GC
Fun FIR from CC to finish off the month. My only W/O was fen for bog. A couple of minor nits...I think of a poker "stake" as the money one brings to the table to gamble with, and I sill don't care much for the paraphrases. sumdaze, I'm with you on the snakes! I know they fill an ecological niche, but I prefer that they fill it FAR away from me!
Fine Monday fare from our prolific constructor extraordinaire, thanks Zhouqin for the enjoyable solve! FIR in 11:02, the only real unknown was ERICA as clued. (Must’ve been Patti’s clue on that one). NIT could also be clued as ‘annual college basketball tournament’ which was the premier one before the NCAA’s upstaged it in the 50’s. Some Vietnamese restaurants have used a play on words and named them PHO Q. Thankfully there are no poisonous snakes in my neck of the woods. I don’t really mind snakes or spiders as long as they don’t invade my space.
sumdaze ~ for a puzzle with a subject you have an aversion to you covered it well! 🐍 😊. I agree ‘annatto’ would be a fitting Saturday word, as would the vowel heavy ‘achiote’.
The entertainment world has lost another icon, RIP Kris Kristopherson (sp ?), impressive man in many ways! Penned such songs as ‘For the Good Times’, Help Me Make it Through the Night’ and ‘Bobby McGee’ among others. Actor, scholar, military man.
Anonymous @ 11:42 is YooperP from my phone.
Over clubbed. Should have gone with the 3 iron
Such a nice way to start a Monday, CC., but I had to skip the snake pictures. A thoughtful review sumdaze, and Bravo! for soldiering on when you needed pictures of snakes.
My snake story: Barefoot as a five year old, hiding in a forsythia hedge when playing tag. Standing on a rock - NO ! - a curled up sleeping 6 ft. long blacksnake that didn’t like being disturbed. (My hands and feet are tingling as I type this). Near panic and much screaming on my part, but a teaching moment from my Father. Black snakes are good because they eat rats and mice and they are not poisonous, (Of course they will also eat birds and chipmunks, but he didn’t tell me that). I’ll take spiders and bats any day!
Happy day, all! Parsan.
Always enjoy a CC offering but a little hard for a Monday. Didn’t find a baseball clue except maybe “on top”
Hi All!
I didn't realize it was C.C.'s puzzle until sumdaze said it. Then I looked, and sure enough, there's her byline. I didn't look 'cuz I was busy flying through the grid.
Thanks C.C. for the Monday fun. Thanks sumdaze for continuing it.
WO: SET MEal
ESP: ERICA
Fav: 1a was cutely clued
I liked BIG DATA too. I swim in it. We monitor all activity on every machine looking for Badness(tm). If it wasn't for BIG DATA heuristics, we'd drown in the noise.
Snake story?
Our Medical Reserve unit was doing our summer camp at a field hospital we setup.
Most of the guys is my unit were older black guys - fought in Viet Nam.
It was after hours and they're hanging around my tent (being the lab-tech, I had the refrigerator; they used it for beer) playing dominos and one guy says,
"I smell a jake."
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a BB and sling shot and shoots it over a guy's shoulder.
Out of a tree 20ish feet away falls a snake.
I knew right then, if our field hospital was ever overrun by enemy forces, I was going to his fox hole* :-)
Cheers, -T
*hopefully, he'd let me in :-)
D-O, your comment reminds me of how jokes often don't work with immigrants. My GF is Filipina. She has a large family here of brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. I am well known for my ability to tell a joke well, but at her family gatherings, my jokes ALWAYS fell flat. They would laugh politely but I could tell, like the Queen of England, they were not amused. And yes, they all speak very fluent English, most living in the U.S. for forty years or so. The same with my Brazilian friends: even my very funniest jokes, told well, fall flat.
You can add coral snakes to that list, Jinx.
I just deleted 18 suspicious comments. Please do not let your curiosity get the better of you. Do not click on any blue links today unless you are 100% sure they are OK.
I usually love a Monday CW, because it's at my level. Same today. Thanx CC for this gem. I only DNK ERICA DURANCE. FIR in 10, which for me is a typical Monday. I am not surprised by all the negative snake stories. It's a shame people kill every snake they see, most are beneficial. Sumdaze your picture of the guy with the sledge showing off his six-pac abs reminds me of how proud I am of MY six-pac abs. I value them so much I keep them carefully protected behind four inches of fat. Oh, also DNK TIGERKING but that filled effortlessly by perps. Thanx again for the fun, CC, and thanx too for the terrific write-up, Sumdaze.
Dang. I meant to comment on the shovels. What is shown is exactly the opposite of what I have always called them. The one with the pointed end I've always called a spade, the other a "flat-shovel", which is not much good for digging but better at shoveling things up off concrete.
Ditto on shovel/spade shown…opposite.
Think of the shape of the spade in a deck of cards.
In fact, check the ace of Spades logo….
Call a spade a spade.
https://www.lowes.com/n/buying-guide/choosing-between-shovel-spade#:~:text=Shovel%20Handle%20Materials-,What's%20the%20Difference%20Between%20a%20Shovel%20and%20a%20Spade%3F,soil%20or%20creating%20precise%20holes.
Wow! How exciting to get a puzzle from you on this Monday, C.C. It was so much fun to do, thank you so much for this great treat! And thank you too, for your delightful and helpful commentary, Sumdaze.
Well, as soon as I started working on this puzzle, I felt I was in a SMOG somewhere in a forest, looking at a SAND PINE as though we were here in California, and not somewhere in the ALPS. Or were we actually near the CORAL SEA? This geography has me totally puzzled. Well, I'm fine as long as I don't run into that SNAKE HEAD, which would be a real DRAMA for me and require me to order a MARTINI to calm down. But hey, I'm just playing with this delightful puzzle and want to thank you again for the fun.
Have a great week, everybody!
C. C. came close to becoming a “Boa Constructor” today.
Thank you, C.C., and thank you, sumdaze. (And thanks for getting rid of all that spam while I was away. Great job!)
I give snakes their space, and let them be, unless they pose a danger. Most don't. I see more garter snakes here in Chicagoland than any other kind... They're pretty much harmless. The rattlers in central and west Texas were a different story.
I liked the snake stories. Parsan stepping on one, and Dash T's buddy knocking one out of a tree. Lemonade and his brother bringing out the firepower and long irons...
How many can name the song and band (w/o looking it up) with the lyrics, "Instead you lay still in the grass, all coiled up and hissing?"
Dash T, I totally get your BIG DATA comment with the "swim in it" and "noise meanings". From a pure tech standpoint, I somewhat disagree that a super computer is necessary for big data analytics. It could be a supercomputer, but it doesn't have to be. Any current technology midrange or mainframe would work just fine in most cases.
I agree with the spade/shovel labels in the image, and with xtulmkr (thanks for the link, too). I use a SPADE shovel like the one pictured to edge all of my gardens every spring, and to plant new additions in existing gardens. SPADE shovels with raised sides are called 'transport" shovels. I think those may be what Unclefred is thinking of.
Prof M, funny!
Musings
-A fun C.C. puzzle and a Sumdaze write-up after 18 holes on a gorgeous fall day
-Garter snakes are common around here and are almost universally called gardener snakes.
-VENUS is rocky, but the temp there is over 900˚F and the pressure is 100X what it is on Earth. Yikes!
-Everyone at my school recites the PLEDGE of Allegiance first thing every morning.
-I’ve told my story about having a boa constrictor on my hand for a half hour several times here.
-ME TOO on the comments.
Hola! Oh! I am going to miss these morning comments while I'm gone. You are all in good form today! I, too, enjoyed the puzzle from C.C. though I'm not a fan of SNAKES. Here in the Southwest rattle SNAKES are the main crawlers but thankfully they mostly stay up in the higher elevations or out in the isolated desert. I have never encountered one and have only seen them at the zoo. My daughter, however, had a pet SNAKE for several years (caged, of course) and once a week we had to buy baby rats for its food. Amazingly a local pet store supplied them!
Have a beautiful day, everyone! I hope it's cooler where you are.
Me too, re ERICA.
Thank you, C.C. and sumdaze.
Define a super computer :-)
What we have in our pockets pales in comparison to what NASA had during Apollo.
But to your point, yes, we have pedestrian servers (with massive primary storage) sifting through data.
//Some of the sifting is even code I wrote :-)
-T
Um, scratch that; reverse. What NASA sent to the moon pales in comparison to the iThing / 'droid in our pocket.
I don’t remember ever seeing BANGERS used as clued here, then this afternoon I was reading something on line and the writer used the word BANGER as clued by CC.
xtulmkr@1:37. Thanks for the link! A few years ago I asked DH to pick me up a spade at Home Depot. He brought home what I called a shovel. We were surprised to learn we had different names for those tools. We chalked it up to a regionalism. In these cases we quote the song lyric, "Just because you're right, doesn't mean I'm wrong."
Thanks, sumdaze. I'll go to 1A.
I liked this puzzle, sumdaze's wonderful write-up, and all your comments. I wrinkled my nose at the clue for EAT IT UP, but I did/do like the clues for TABS, LEAPS, VENUS, SHARP (hi, sumdaze), MARTINI, and ANNOY.
Good reading you all.
Marvellous Monday. Thanks for the fun, C.C and sumdaze.
I FIRed in good time and saw the theme (although I didn’t know all the different snakes). Hand up for hating snakes!
We have the very occasional garter snake in the garden. The only poisonous snake in Ontario is the Massasauga rattlesnake found in the Bruce Peninsula and the Wainfleet BOG.
I thought of Apps at 1A before TABS.
Inkblot to change Ahead to ON TOP.
Even this Canadian did not know ERICA (although I have seen a few episodes of Saving Hope).
We have a SLEDGE hammer that is used to prop open the rear garage door to keep the wind from shutting it when we are in the garden. It is very heavy - I don’t swing it, but DH uses it to bang hockey sticks into the ground as tomato stakes.
Wishing you all a good evening.
Thanks to sumdaze's advice I started her review at 1A, and got to enjoy her commentary, info and humor. Thanks.
Yes, it does pale. And in a relative few years, the young ones are going to be talking about how archaic we were, what with our binary based computer systems. They'll be like, "Hah!, your systems used bits? That were either on or off? That is so quaint!"
Then they'll go off solving all of the great mysteries of the universe with their qubit based quantum computing systems.
"[...] but DH uses it to bang hockey sticks into the ground as tomato stakes" is the most Canadian thing I've ever heard :-)
Koo Loo Koo Koo! -T
//cite
Yes, he collected hockey sticks (broken) from our sons and at the arena. They are really strong and hold up the plants with large tomatoes really well. (Yum BLTs!). I LOLed at your comment. Bob and Doug would have made a great skit with it.
Have a peaceful and happy week, everyone!
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