Living in the
Material World
Today's constructors, Nancy Stark and Will Nediger, tell us a short story via their theme clues -- fabricated out of whole cloth, and revealed in the end to be told in the first person ...
17A. The shady lawyer tried to __ a client's eyes, ...: PULL THE WOOL OVER.
33A. ... and was confident nobody would __ the scheme ...: COTTON ONTO. As in the phrasal verb.
43A. ... and sure the client would __, ...: GET FLEECED.
60A. ... but I saw everything, so I'm the __!: MATERIAL WITNESS. Here's the Legal Information Institute's definition for our reveal. But our favorite dinosaur seems to agree with our constructors, WITNESSING to 3 other synonyms related to MATERIAL:
Here's the grid ...
Here's the rest ...
Across:
1. Vodka cocktail, familiarly: COSMO. Here's a recipe. COSMO is also the first name of a famous comedian ...
6. Land area unit: ACRE.
10. Lose one's footing: SLIP.
14. Surfer's place: OCEAN.
15. Word after sonic or baby: BOOM. I suspect that many Cornerites were born during the Baby Boom, so we will start with them, especially since many are retiring and there are big changes afoot in the workforce ...
16. Most common number in a data set: MODE. The MODE is measure of central tendency. Small data sets may not have one. Here's a brief video explaining measures of central tendency ...
17. [Theme clue]
20. Street in a Wes Craven title: ELM. A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American supernatural slasher film written and directed by Wes Craven and produced by Robert Shaye. It is the first installment in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and stars Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, and Johnny Depp in his film debut. Since it's only 42 days until Halloween I thought you might enjoy this trailer ... 😁
21. Ships' frames: HULLS. A CSO to Jinx.
22. Store for folks who like to assemble: IKEA. Some might call this just an EKTORP, but IKEA is also an acronym of founder's initials -- Ingvar Kamprad; Elmtaryd, the family farm where Kamprad was born; and the nearby village of Agunnaryd, Kamprad's hometown in Småland.
23. Jeweled ornament: DIADEM. This word occurs often in the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) and is roughly equivalent to a crown or tiara, although it can also connote a turban or a mitre ...
25. Healer of all wounds, so they say: TIME. And they also say "Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana." 😀
27. John Quincy __: ADAMS. John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, politician, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829.
 |
| John Quincy Adams |
33. [Theme clue]
37. Curmudgeon: CRAB.
39. Expect: AWAIT.
40. 2016 Olympics city: RIO. Today's Portuguese lesson: "Rio de Janeiro = River of January" -- the name that was given to the city's original site by Portuguese navigators who arrived on January 1, 1502, and mistook the entrance of the bay for the mouth of a river. Here is the view of the city from behind Christ the Redeemer, an Art Deco statue of Jesus overlooking Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, created by French-Polish sculptor Paul Landowski and built by Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa, in collaboration with French engineer Albert Caquot ...
 |
| Rio de Janeiro |
42. Migratory bird: TERN. "Did you hear the one about the butcher who used seagulls for making sausages? -- He took a TERN for the wurst." 😀
43. [Theme clue].
45. Not-to-be-questioned beliefs: DOGMA. Unquestioned DOGMAS are not worth believing. But peace of mind requires that the questions they raise be answered eventually.
47. Smooth and confident: SUAVE.
48. Sounds of grief: SOBS. If we heard all the sounds of all the SOBS being made around the world at this very moment, we would all collapse in grief.
50. Musician with pipes: SINGER. This brings to mind a movie ...
 |
| ... the closing credits to a film starring 4 musicians with great pipes ... |
54. Food that might be soft-shelled: TACO. It turned out to be this ...
 |
| Soft Tacos |
 |
| Soft Shell crab sandwich |
56. Ice dancer Virtue: TESSA. Tessa Jane McCormick Virtue (born May 17, 1989) is a Canadian retired ice dancer. With her partner Scott Moir, she is the 2010 and 2018 Olympic champion, the 2014 Olympic silver medalist, a three-time World champion (2010, 2012, 2017), a three-time Four Continents champion (2008, 2012, 2017), the 2016–17 Grand Prix Final champion, an eight-time Canadian National champion (2008–2010, 2012–2014, 2017–2018). And a CSO to CanadianEh! Here are Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir's Moulin Rouge at The Thank You Canada Tour ...
59. Single-stranded molecule: RNA. Ribonucleic Acid is the single-stranded relative of Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Here the Amoeba Sisters explain the difference ...
60. [Theme reveal]
63. Noodle variety: UDON. One of two varieties of noodle crosswordese -- the other being SOBA. What's the difference?
64. "La Bohème" character: MIMI. A beautiful soul. In the touching aria Mi Chiamo Mimi ("They call me Mimi") we find out that her real name is a CSO to Lucina ...
65. Evaluate visually: EYE UP.
66. Intent look: GAZE. This and the last clue border on OGLING.
67. Event for seniors: PROM.
68. Guys: DUDES. Here's All the Young Dudes by Mott the Hoople ...
Down:
1. Got by: COPED.
2. Eyes, in Latin: OCULI. Today's Latin lesson -- where we get our adjectives OCULAR and BINOCULAR.
3. Alabama River city: SELMA. Selma, located on the banks of the Alabama River, is in south central Alabama, extending westward. The city has a population of 17,971 as of the 2020 census. About 80% of the population is African-American. The city was planned and named Selma by William R. King in 1820, a politician and planter from North Carolina who was a future vice president of the United States. The name, meaning "high seat" or "throne", came from an old Scottish poem called The Songs of Selma. Selma was an early center of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. This iconic bridge was the site of a brutal attack on civil rights marchers known as Bloody Sunday ...
 |
| The Edmund Pettus Bridge |
 |
| Manatee The sweet smelling variety 😀 |
6. Brother of Cain: ABEL. Despite the fact that Cain slew his brother ABEL, God protected the former from premature death by "the mark of Cain".
7. Billowy cloak hood: COWL. A typical monk's garb -- robe and cowl ...
9. Mopey rock genre: EMO. Wired Magazine recently reported that, with 87 percent of the world's population expected to have become "emo" by the year 2020, a team of English newscasters delved into the phenomenon to find out more about this intriguing musical subculture ...
But the craze is expected to be over by 2025, so it looks like we won't be seeing EMO much longer, except of course in crossword puzzles. 😀
10. Deceptive tactic: SMOKESCREEN.
11. Lyricist's subject, often: LOVE. Here's Andy Williams with Love is a Many Splendored Thing (lyrics by Sammy Fain) ...
... and for an encore here's -- All You Need is Love (lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney)
12. Possible solution: IDEA.
13. As ordered by: PER.
18. Dog's best friend: HUMAN. How the greatest pair of symbionts of all time evolved together.
 |
24. Milieu for single people: DATING SCENE. E.g. the apps Tinder and Grindr.
26. Texter's qualifier: IMO. IMO = In My Opinion. Those who are really qualified use IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) 😀
28. Seconds or thirds: MORE. Famously requested by Oliver Twist ...
29. Huffy moods: SNITS.
31. "The Boys" developer Kripke: ERIC. The Boys is an American satirical superhero television series developed by Eric Kripke for Amazon Prime Video. Based on the comic book of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, it follows the eponymous team of vigilantes as they combat superpowered individuals (referred to as "Supes"). The trailers were a little too weird for my taste, so I decided to use this song instead ...
32. Goalie achievement: SAVE. Here are some of the greatest saves in NHL history ...
33. "__ got your tongue?": CAT. The curious origin of this phrase.
34. Was in a red state?: OWED. Red ink is used in ledgers to indicate debts.
35. Edible purple corm: TARO. What is Taro?
36. Stir-fry protein: TOFU.
38. Cot, for one: BED.
41. Colored outside the lines, say: DEVIATED. I'm sure that a lot of us prided ourselves for not coloring outside the lines in elementary school. Those who did DEVIATE became artists.
43. Talk on and on: GAB.
44. Cold yogurt drink: LASSI. Here is the Perfect Sweet Lassi Recipe. And if you add just a little bit of collie fur, it also makes the perfect cure for a hangover. 😀
46. Habitat for heather: MOOR. Northumberland is renowned for its wide open moorland, which covers about 70 per cent of the National Park. Such heather moorland habitat is internationally significant, as it only occurs in Britain.
49. Help on the way to the top?: STAIR.
51. Generosity opposite: GREED. One of the Seven Deadly Sins, but by tradition only -- the list does not actually appear in the Bible. It is perhaps best personified by King Midas, who eventually died of hunger, when he was granted his wish that everything he touched be turned into gold.
52. Come after: ENSUE.
53. Shop class tools: RASPS.
54. "Behold my brilliance!": TADA. Cornerites who solve online eagerly await this TADA!
55. The whole shebang: A TO Z.
57. Muppet host of "The Not-Too-Late Show": ELMO. Live from New York! ...
58. Do laps in a pool: SWIM.
60. Make silly faces, maybe: MUG. Here's a collection of MUGS with silly faces from Royal Doulton China in Staffordshire, England ...
61. Nanny's handful: IMP.
62. Tisch Sch. of the Arts home: NYU. The New York University Tisch School of the Arts is the performing, cinematic, and media arts school of NYU. Tisch is a training ground for artists, scholars of the arts, and filmmakers. The school is divided into three Institutes: Performing Arts, Emerging Media, and Film & Television -- teaching acting, dance, drama, performance studies, design for stage and film, musical theatre writing, photography, record producing, game design and development, and film and television studies.
33. "__ got your tongue?": CAT. The curious origin of this phrase.
34. Was in a red state?: OWED. Red ink is used in ledgers to indicate debts.
35. Edible purple corm: TARO. What is Taro?
 |
| Taro Corms |
38. Cot, for one: BED.
41. Colored outside the lines, say: DEVIATED. I'm sure that a lot of us prided ourselves for not coloring outside the lines in elementary school. Those who did DEVIATE became artists.
43. Talk on and on: GAB.
44. Cold yogurt drink: LASSI. Here is the Perfect Sweet Lassi Recipe. And if you add just a little bit of collie fur, it also makes the perfect cure for a hangover. 😀
46. Habitat for heather: MOOR. Northumberland is renowned for its wide open moorland, which covers about 70 per cent of the National Park. Such heather moorland habitat is internationally significant, as it only occurs in Britain.
 |
| Northumberland National Park |
51. Generosity opposite: GREED. One of the Seven Deadly Sins, but by tradition only -- the list does not actually appear in the Bible. It is perhaps best personified by King Midas, who eventually died of hunger, when he was granted his wish that everything he touched be turned into gold.
 |
| King Midas |
53. Shop class tools: RASPS.
54. "Behold my brilliance!": TADA. Cornerites who solve online eagerly await this TADA!
57. Muppet host of "The Not-Too-Late Show": ELMO. Live from New York! ...
58. Do laps in a pool: SWIM.
60. Make silly faces, maybe: MUG. Here's a collection of MUGS with silly faces from Royal Doulton China in Staffordshire, England ...
 |
| Mugs |
62. Tisch Sch. of the Arts home: NYU. The New York University Tisch School of the Arts is the performing, cinematic, and media arts school of NYU. Tisch is a training ground for artists, scholars of the arts, and filmmakers. The school is divided into three Institutes: Performing Arts, Emerging Media, and Film & Television -- teaching acting, dance, drama, performance studies, design for stage and film, musical theatre writing, photography, record producing, game design and development, and film and television studies.
Cheers,
Bill
And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.
waseeley
That was a fun puzzle. It must have taken some work to come up with just the right themed answers to lead to the surprising and satisfying reveal. Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
ReplyDeleteFIW, missing my WAG @ TESlA x LASlI (lower case "L". Why did they stick us with this font?)
ReplyDeleteErased crab @ 54a because it was needed at 37a.
CSO to our own CC at "do laps in a pool."
Early day today. The mechanic is coming for our coach at 7:15 (6:15 Corner Daylight Time) and everything has to be travel-ready - coffee pot stowed, dog fed, satellite dish down. Going to have lunch with our freshman USC grandson in Columbia.
Thanks to Nancy, Will, Bill 'n' Teri for the fun.
Favorite was "most common number in a data set" for MODE.
Good morning!
ReplyDeleteThis one took 12 minutes -- about par for a Thursday. That capital V in Virtue led me to TESSA rather than a synonym for "asset," my final fill. Enjoyed this one. Thanx, Nancy, Will, waseeley, and Teri. (Methinks the illustration for Baby Boomer must be about 3 years old based on the age-range listed.)
NYU: Loews Corporation owned by the Tisch brothers, was majority stockholder in the company I retired from. Over the years it also owned CNA Insurance, CBS, and Bulova, among others.
As smooth as silk, Nancy and Will twisted together the threads of those fabrics of testimony and wove it all into a wonderful puzzle. I solved it from top to bottom today. I wasn't sure where their quote was going until the ending stitched the textiles together with the MATERIAL WITNESS closing. Great puzzle!
ReplyDeleteI'll have to get back to the review later. Just glancing through, it looks as if waseeley covered everything from A TO Z.
TTP, how do you get to bold the font? I've tried but my only choice on this screen seems to be to right click, but a bold option isn't on that menu. I usually write my comment in Word & copy it to here. Bold doesn't transfer over. Please, do tell.
DeleteRosE, you do it with HTML tags. Blogger allows a few types of tags to be used in the comments section. Bold is one if them. Italicized text is another.
DeleteIt's easy. Paste this link in a new tab, read the example, and then press the Try it Button.
https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_b.asp
You don't need to use the paragraph (p) tags shown in the example. Just the bold (b) tags.
Tags are most often used in pairs. An open, and then a close. The / character signifies the close.
After you've played with it at that link, try it here in the comments section.
Thanks, TTP, I got as far as pasting the link in a new tab, but then nothing different happened. I tried the but it was still "normal." I don't get what's supposed to happen. It's beyond me, but don't fret, if you see me put something in "quotes" it's my version of "bold." Thanks anyway for the info.
DeleteWhat!!!! I didn't expect that!!! Back to the drawing board!!/
DeleteI'm glad you got it!
DeleteI get everybody here managed to GET FLEECED a time or two in their lifetimes. Somebody PULLED THE WOOL OVER on them. But I've always heard COTTON TO (not ONTO) as meaning to like something or someone.
ReplyDeleteWOOL & FLEECE the same? Not if one is golden. But I thought the same.
MODE, mean, median, average, - I know them but they are just specific words for the same things.
TARO - I filled it but what is 'corm'. My eyes read it as 'cor-n' and I knew it wasn't corn.
TESSA, ERIC, MIMI, LASSI,- I DNK but perps took care.
You can be GREEDY and very generous at the same time. That way you can distribute your assets the way you want instead of somebody else making the decisions . Those "greedy" Gates, Bezos, & Buffet families sure donate a lot of money to things they want before the government can get ahold of it and waste it.
Enjoyable outing today. A few head-scratchers, but perps to the rescue for a FIR! The low count of proper names was much appreciated. Fun recap, too!
ReplyDeleteTook 6:25 today for me to lace this up.
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard "cotton onto," so I thought there was a punny gimmick going on. Apparently, not. It's been a long time since I have seen a "quip" type puzzle, and this was awfully close to that.
I didn't know the Latin eyes; the Canadian retired ice dancer; the cold yogurt drink; what or where Tisch was; or, Mimi. I still don't get moor.
The intersection of Tessa & lassi wasn't great.
I also thought of Cosmo Kramer (played by comedian, Michael Richards).
"cotton onto"? Neither had I. Just 'cotton to'.
Delete"the Canadian retired ice dancer; the cold yogurt drink; what or where Tisch was; or, Mimi."-ditto
FIR. I found this to be surprisingly easy for a Thursday. I sped through the solve without even seeing the gimmick with the materials. Only when I got here did I get it.
ReplyDeleteOnly misstep for me was throwing down crab before taco.
Overall this was a most enjoyable puzzle.
Never heard of “EYE UP”
ReplyDeleteI agree about COTON ONTO not being a real in the language phrase
ReplyDeleteNancy and Will presented us with a tour de force today by weaving their theme answers together in story form. Clever move that made it all the more fun!
ReplyDeleteAnd I found the answers reasonably fair and straightforward, with.the exception of COSMO, DIADEM, UDON, ERIC (Kripke), LASSI, TARO, and TESSA (Virtue). But these were pretty well spread out, to avoid any Natick dilemmas.
Big East: my high school students would flunk you for stating that mode, median, and mean are "the same thing." On the contrary, each is an entirely different measure of central tendency, with varying usages.
Thanks again, Nancy and Will, for an inventive and satisfying Thursday diversion!
Betcha Nancy was humming Madonna’s “MATERIAL Girl”, to Will when she got the brainstorm for the theme.
ReplyDeleteWas about to TITT. Got stuck on ired for “Red State” then rethought the theme. Not pretrialWITNESS but MATERIAL WITNESS and ginned COTTON to complete that and surrounding answers. Finally used my noodle and changed soba to UDON for the win
We have ADAMS son ABEL Adamson. Liked the SINGER’s “pipes” clue but not EYEUP (who says that?). I always do a double take on ATOZ
Suprised the politically charged “ The Boys” would be brought up in a crossword. About a powerful megalomaniac superhero trying to take over the US government with lies deceit, and racism. The series eventually had to post a disclaimer indicating it was political fiction.
From “La Bohème”: Mi chiamano MIMÍ ma Il mio nome è Lucia “They call me MIMÍ but my name is Lucia” …. What? Why? 🙄
Thought a COWL was tight fitting around the head and neck not a “billowy cloak hood ”. Check with Batman or a retro-habited nun. 🤔
Where the great and powerful wizard resides… ATOZ
A ___ give milk without asking …. COWL
Pa is on board, now just have to ___ …. SELMA
Enjoy the rest of the day. 😀
Here's one of several definitions for cotton onto out on the net.
ReplyDeleteRay - O @8:30 AM I first thought of going with Madonna, but have never really followed her music, so I went with Harrison instead, of whom I am a big fan. As for why MIMI's friends call her that instead of Lucia, you'd have to ask them. 😀
ReplyDeleteGood Morning! And here I thought we might be getting off easy today. I breezed through the north, started to get some crunch in the middle, then hit some roadblocks in the south.
ReplyDeleteI suspected the theme today was types of cloth which helped with FLEECE.
COSMO – Ha!! I was onto Kramer yesterday in my comment to the clued cran cocktail…
I had to look up TARO (as "corm" was unknown).
Perps for DIADEM, ERIC, TESSA, TASSI and MIMI.
WO: cODE -> MODE (?) and yet again, fooled by A TO Z, not a ton!!
Still in all, a fun run.
Thanks, Bill & Teri, for the tour.
Musings
ReplyDelete-I thought I had stumbled onto a Tuesday puzzle as LASSI/TESSA was the only speed bump
-I was born on the BOOMER starting line
-Me too: I usually just here COTTON TO without the ON. “I don’t COTTON TO your thinking.”
-TIME: I wish I could always live life through the windshield and not include the rearview mirror
-I don’t think I am DOGMATIC about anything. Show me the data.
-The warmup for the narcissistic diva – MI, MI, MI, MI…
-Into each cwd an EYE UP must fall
-ON THE DOT is late if you are a student travelling with me
-SMOKESCREEN: If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with b.s.
-Rose: Use text for bold
Good Morning:
ReplyDeleteThis was one of the most enjoyable solves I've had in ages. The play on words was smile-inducing, especially the show-stopping Material Witness. The cleverness and execution of the theme far outweigh any small nits about the questionable Onto vs To and Eye Up, IMO. The grid was clean, the perps were fair, the pop culture was minimal, as were the TLWs and, most importantly, the theme was fresh and fun. What more could one want?
Kudos, Nancy and Will, for a memorable and most enjoyable solve and, Bravo, Bill, for a tour de force review, filled with interesting information and beautiful music, not to mention a few Dad jokes! La bohème is a favorite of mine and Andy Williams is, too. I laughed out loud at your suggestion to add a little collie fur to the Lassi recipe. A little bit of the hair of the dog never hurt anyone!
FLN
HG, it sounds as though you and Joann fell victim to Murphy's Law! Hope all is well, finally. 😉
Have a great day.
-Rose Bold in HTML which I use when I write my musings in Word
ReplyDelete-Now I have to figure out how to type HTML code in Word and have it show and not the result
Gary, replace the tag brackets with their HTML entities codes.
DeleteThe less than symbol is < The entities code for it is & lt ; (all 4 characters without the spaces)
The greater than symbol is > The entities code for it is & gt ; ( all 4 characters without the spaces)
You can add the slash as is.
You can type <b/> to show the command without it being executed.
Yes, Irish, it was bad enough that we got hacked but our twenty-something "banker" was very careless and we had to start over.
ReplyDeleteVery fast today. Only this Eric and Tessa were new to me. I have seen lassi, but needed all the perps to dig it up. I was a little wobblily about the S in Tessa crossing lassi, but it made sense.
ReplyDeletePull the wool over and get fleeced made me think of sheep. Fleece can be the wooly covering of sheep. Then I thought of being duped. Smoke screen relates to being duped, but cotton onto means not being duped. Then I thought of cloth. So material was not a surprise.
I have heard cotton onto, but cotton to seems more common.
I have seen eye up used for evaluate visually. It also means to look at with sexual interest.
Cosmo has appeared so frequently lately it seems to be crosswordese.
TTP I enjoyed your cleverly worded post.
I encouraged students who colored outside the lines mentally when the idea could be accepted logically. Students I tutored were penalized at school for doing this.
When I taught the fifth grade we learned :
Mean, median and mode are different types of averages from a data set.
-The mean is adding up all the data points and dividing the sum by the number of data points (or total number of numbers). It is also known as ‘arithmetic mean’, rather than ‘geometric mean’.
-The median is the middle value (or midpoint) after all the data points have been arranged in value order as a list of numbers.
-The mode is the value that appears the most number of times in a data set.
-The range is the difference between the largest value and the smallest value.
Yellowrocks, I am glad you enjoyed it.
DeleteBTW, I just got a letter from Change Healthcare. They are a subsidiary of of United Health Group. Another massive data breach from earlier this year. Change Healthcare paid the ransom, but the data was released for sale on the dark web anyway.
Change Healthcare) is a provider of revenue and payment cycle management that connects payers, providers, and patients within the U.S. healthcare system.
Key functions of Change Healthcare include pharmacy claims transactions, provider claims processing, patient access and financial clearance, provider payments, and patient authorizations and medical necessity reviews.
The impact of this breach was not limited to United Health Group insured people. Change Healthcare is a major clearinghouse for records processing for insurance and payment processing for providers across the country.
They were breached and held for ransom because they did not use multifactor authentication.
Another big mess. They advise keeping a close eye on your financial records, and all medical payments and EOBs.
Thanks for the EMO video! Been kneejerking it for years in response to 'Angsty genre' prompt and now I have 'the rest of the story'.
ReplyDeleteNice. Really enjoyed this CW. Liked the theme, fun to figure out. Very few names, only two unknowns TESSA and ERIC.
ReplyDeleteI tried CRAB for TACO at first.
COTTON ON TO and COTTON TO both exist but have different meanings as I learned reading waseeley’s link to word definitions. Thank you.
From yesterday:
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the conversation about perfect pitch, and remembered reading an article that stated "everyone has a form of perfect pitch." Turns out to be somewhat true...
When you remember a well known song in your head, you remember the exact pitch of every note in that song. As an example, the first note of the Led Zeppelin song, Stairway to heaven, is an A. If you ever wanted to tune your instrument to an A without a tuner, remember "stairway" and you will be spot on...
Can you hear it?
Just to get technical for a sec, the 5th string on a guitar, is an open A. But this "A" is 440 hertz. The "A" in the opening of Stairway is an octave of two A's, (A5=880 Hz and A6=1760 Hz) more here...
Just use the do ray me scale to find the other notes in your head...
(Or just use a song that is more familiar to you for reference.:)
Today?
ReplyDeleteAnd just as a test, I put this Capital B between the center right and left angle brackets. (Or sideways carets)
I knew you could do it!
DeleteThanks for the CSO, waseeley, and thanks for going with Harrison (in lieu of the so-called material girl) to open. If I am going to have a song stuck in my head all day I'd much rather have Geroge's. Another hand up, here, for soft shell crab. Now, I have to go find my A440 tuning fork (which I have neither thought of, nor seen, in years).
ReplyDeleteI do not COTTON ONTO as a synonym for COTTON TO and I think the references chosen by Bill support my point, not a single real use in a literary quote. I also have never heard of EYE UP , have you? I agree about the definitions of MODE, MEDIAN and AVERAGE. It is interesting how often Bill gets puzzles including religious topics. Thank you Bill and Nancy & Will
ReplyDeleteHusker @9:20 AM To link text in Word to a URL -- Key in the text and highlight it, then select Insert from the main menu; select Link from the secondary menu below; and then key in the URL you want to link to.
ReplyDeletewaseeley, Husker Gary knows how to create a link in Word. In his 9:20 comment, he was saying that he needed to figure out how to display an HTML element in a comments post, without it actually executing the HTML. That is done by using the entity codes for the characters of the tag brackets.
DeleteLoved this puzzle with its continuing story line, but didn't even get the MATERIAL theme until waseeley explained it. Now I love it more!
ReplyDeleteAnd waseeley's jokes! "Did you hear the one about the butcher who used seagulls for making sausages? -- He took a TERN for the wurst." ROFL.
thanks to Nancy and Will for a great start to the day, and to Bill 'n Teri for making it even better.
I actually typed "Many thanks to ..." above, but I tried using the sideways angle brackets as a shortcut to make the first word bold, and it disappeared!
ReplyDeleteYou can do it! Keep trying. When you press the "Try it Now" button on the W3 page I linked earlier, you can key in your HTML on the left side, and then it will display the results on the right side after you press the Run button.
DeleteNever heard of cotton to or cotton onto…where have I been?? Anyway took a lucky guess and FIR! Didn’t see how it fit in with the theme until I came here.
ReplyDeleteHola!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nancy and Will! This was fun! It's a flash to the past when puzzles frequently had story lines on a continuing basis. That was a long time ago!
Thanks, too, for the photo of TARO which I can't recall ever seeing though it's a common CWD fill.
I can recall in high school hearing the SONIC BOOM and wondering what it was then our science teacher explaining it. She was so much fun which helped me because science was not at that time something I could COTTON ONTO.
LASSI is another new term and TESSA another unknown. Thank you, perps, but I left a blank since I did not know either one.
Many thanks to Bill and Teri for wrapping up and tying the bow on this package! Have a happy day, everyone!
Fun Thursday puzzle, many thanks, Nancy and Will. And I always appreciate your commentary, Bill and Teri, thanks for that too.
ReplyDeleteWell, ABEL, MOSES, and ADAM (no, not Adams), were biblical figures. Were they responsible for any DOGMA? They certainly had to do without a lot of things, and bet they never saw a SMOKE SCREEN. They might have come across a DATING SCENE now and then. But I hope none of them had any GREED and never GOT FLEECED either. Well, one way or another they were HUMAN, and so they deserved LOVE.
Have a lovely day, everybody.
Terrific Thursday. Thanks for the fun, Nancy and Will, waseeley and Teri.
ReplyDeleteI FIRed in good time and saw the MATERIAL theme (although I thought Fibres after WOOL and COTTON). I am not too sure about the WITNESS part of the theme, but we did have EYE UP, GAZE and OCULI. Easter Eggs?
I had DATING sites before SCENE, Yak before GAB, Cape before COWL, A ton before A TO Z.
MAL for Bad Start took a moment to compute.
EVEN THIS Canadian knew ADAMS, but I had no idea about NYU (yeah perps).
But I did know TESSA.
LASSI and ERIC were unknown.
I smiled at DOGMA almost crossing CAT.
Favourite was the clue for STAIR.
Wishing you all a great day.
CanadianEh!, Like you, when I read the clue "Ice dancer Virtue", I immediately keyed in Tessa. Then I knew that her name would be a gimme for you. You and I have exchanged comments about her before.
DeleteShe and Scott Moir were absolutely incredible to watch at the highest stages of the sport. I remember the one Olympics where the gold medal skate was absolutely going to come down to either the Americans or the Canadians, and my wife was really into it. It was must see TV for Olympics fans!
Puzzling thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI liked this puzzle (and recap) a lot. Well done!
This one (with the word FLEECE(D) always makes me think of these two limericks I penned a few years ago:
He can’t write, so we just sent a letter
On behalf of our pet Irish Setter.
To the North Pole it went
Santa read it and sent
Us a FLEECE Navidad doggie sweater
==============================
A young hooker ran into a priest,
Shortly after her "John" had deceased.
She confessed, she had sinned,
But she felt no chagrin;
There were scores from his flock she had FLEECED
Cotton on to: Examples in print:
ReplyDeleteI should have cottoned on to that trick years ago.
The public has cottoned on to the fact that the dealers come up with a different brand name every other week.
The workers soon cottoned on to how much more productive they had become.
Because we haven't heard a word or phrase does not make it invalid. I often cotton onto things I had not heard before. I love expanding my horizons and my vocabulary. This acceptance also helps in solving crosswords. Accepting things like this makes them available for future use.
I absolutely agree. Just like yesterday, when Narco was pooh-poohed because it referenced a DEA Agent rather than the druggie or drug pusher. It didn't take much of an online search to learn that the slang term is also used derogatorily to refer to the good guys. By the bad guys, no doubt, but it was legit as clued.
DeleteAlso, I responded to your earlier comments.
I liked this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteNot much time but just had to say that I love this type of puzzle. A cute pun that ties the themers together is fun.
ReplyDeleteY'all have a great day.
Cheers, -T
Clever, fun, not many obscure names, (I counted 12 names, but only DNK 4), what's not to like? Other than LASSI, which I was SO sure was wrong, but the perps demanded it. I've heard of Lassie, but DNK LASSI. FIR in 15. Thanx NS&WN for the fun. Thanx too to Bill for the outstanding write-up, lotsa info, lotsa fun. One of your items was a picture of the Edmund Pettis Bridge, named after the first Grand Dragon and one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. It's astonishing that that name persists on that bridge today. Oy.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back C-Moe. I had missed your funny Moe-kus.
ReplyDeleteNot much to say on this one except that it was great ! (let’s see if the trick works using an iPhone)
ReplyDelete====> Darren / L.A.
Nope; it just dropped the words “fun” and “bold”…
Delete====> D.
Darren, I think you and a couple of others may have misunderstood. Perhaps after reading what CED wrote.
ReplyDeleteYou can't simply put words in between the two tag brackets (the < and the >) symbols. If you do, your browser will try to render it, but then discard it. So the word(s) will disappear.
To make text bold, you would have to key <b>then the words you want to bold</b>
It would appear as this: then the words you want to bold
Note that you use both tag brackets to start, and both tag brackets to stop. The / at the end is telling the HTML to stop.
Replace the b with an i (in both sets of tag brackets) for italicizing the text.