Themeless Saturday by Jeanne Green & John Lieb
Jeanne and John served up a tough pre-Thanksgiving event for me. The fun fill of I'M HERE ALL WEEK was a big speed bump but after hunting and pecking around the edges, I earned a big DOH! when I finally figured it out. As you can see by the graphic, the red cells show the unique fill for this puzzle.
John shared this picture of him as Elvis in an outfit he wore for a special day at his school a few years ago when I did his first LA Puzzle.
Across:1. Vittles: CHOW.
5. Schools that don't play in bowl games: IVIES - Columbia pulled a huge upset in 1934 Rose Bowl but the IVIES, who give no athletic scholarships and have high academic standards, quit going to bowls in 1945.
10. Blown away: AWED.
14. Bring on: HIRE - Schools are always looking to HIRE more substitute teachers
15. Classic infomercial brand: GINSU.
16. "That's ... really off the mark": UH NO.
17. Team that went to the NBA Finals with Durant, Harden, and Westbrook, familiarly: OKC THUNDER.
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| Durant Westbrook Hardin |
19. Part of some cleansing rituals: SAGE.
21. Further: FOSTER - C.C. worked with me years ago to FOSTER my blogging skills
23. Attraction north of Syracuse: ETNA.
24. Category on a spa menu: FACIALS.
25. Product with Ground Ball Grape and Wild Pitch Watermelon flavors: BIG LEAGUE CHEW - So young kids could emulate MLB players who used to be able to "dip"
29. Key chain?: ATOLL.
30. Hit makers?: EPEES 😀
31. Backing: AID - Candidates require a lot of backing or AID to run
34. "¡__ mío!": DIOS - Add "Oh" and you have the Spanish version of OMG
35. Take to task: SCOLD.
36. Petrol choice: ESSO - This Canadian petrol costs $1.62/litre
37. Cap. of America: USD 1 U.S. Dollar is $1.39 in Canada
38. Goes over: SPANS - The Royal Gorge bridge that SPANS the Arkansas River in Colorado is the scariest structure I have ever walked on
39. Aromatic hydrocarbon: ESTER.
40. Alternative to a rim shot: I'M HERE ALL WEEK - What a comedian might hear or say if a joke goes over big
45. Bye line: TATA.
46. Source of pain for some runners, familiarly: IT BAND - Iliotibial band
47. "Right ... hadn't thought of that": AH GOTCHA.
51. Athlete also known as "Fräulein Forehand": GRAF.
52. Placed: RECOGNIZED - I have trouble placing or recognizing most of my 14,000 former students.
54. Wizard: MAGE - We are more accustomed to them in plural form
55. "I'm free to help": USE ME.
56. Scruff of the neck: NAPE.
57. Architectural area whose name comes from the Greek for "vault": APSE - from the Latin apsis, "arch or vault," and the Greek root hapsis, "arch or loop." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
58. Inquired (into): NOSED.
59. Shiraz locale: IRAN.
Down:
1. Baltimore __: infield hit with a high bounce: CHOP.
2. State park activity: HIKE.
3. One may catch some rays: ORCA - I suppose Shamu might have a ray over for lunch
4. Electrochemistry devices: WET CELLS - When I started teaching, the science store room only had these horrible Bell System dry cells that hadn't been used in many years.
6. Some collectibles from the Roaring Twenties: VINTAGE CARS.
7. Some voters, briefly: IND'S - Teddy Roosevelt got the most electoral votes running as an INDependent (Progressive) candidate in the 1912 presidential election.
8. -speak: ESE - We speak crosswordESE here
9. Arose: SURFACED.
10. Oz dweller: AUSSIE - Australia is sometimes called "Oz" because the first three letters of when pronounced make a hissing sound like OZ.
11. Cry over spilled milk?: WHAT A WASTE.
12. Georgia of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show": ENGEL - I think you all know the cast below
13. People of action: DOERS.
18. Suite spot: HOTEL 😀
22. Folk singer Phil: OCHS - I remember the folk music era so well. My favorite song of Phil's was There But For Fortune - There But For Fortune
24. Is completely comfortable: FEELS AT HOME - Our Lily
26. "Really?": IT IS.
27. Signs that the party's over?: GOODIE BAGS.
28. Clinging to a lead: UP ONE.
32. "Clearly": I SEE.
33. Diary writer in a Rachel Renée Russell series: DORK ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
35. Gamer's mad dash to complete a level: SPEED RUN - Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. We have solvers here that do the same with our puzzles.
36. Africa's last absolute monarchy: ESWATINI - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Changed from Swaziland in 2018.
38. Area guarded in many sports: SHIN.
39. John with an EGOT: ELTON.
41. Computer security brand: MCAFEE.
42. Fell behind: LAGGED.
43. Scylla's head?: SIGMA - Σκύλλα A meta gimmick but done in Greek this time
44. Plumbing piece: P-TRAP
47. Fab: ACES.
48. House of Fabergé patron: CZAR - Nicholas III commissioned the House of Fabergé to make an Easter egg as a gift for his wife in 1885
49. __ filter: HEPA.
50. "Rectify" star Young: ADEN ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
53. Spanish "that": ESO - Paul Anka always saves me for this cluing
16 comments:
“Eswatini” was all perps, of course, and there were a few others like that. Nevertheless, I thought the constructor(s) played fair with us, for the most part. FIR, so I’m happy.
I spent about 20 minutes working on this puzzle before hitting a brick wall. I turned on the red letters and saw that almost all of my fill was wrong. Decided to go back to sleep. On a happier note, later I’ll be doing the shopping for the Thanksgiving feast. Food and football. What’s not to love?
Sure didn’t make my Saturday morning. A big Bronx cheer.
DNF, answering 24, only 19 correctly. Oh well, there are always the Sudokus and a couple more xwords to get to.
I wasted too much time on this puzzle already this morning, so I will make my review short and sweet. Lame.
Took 16:47 for me to err with "oh gotcha" rather than "ah gotcha". While "aces" makes sense, I reasoned that "ices" could work for "fab."
Unknowns for me included: today's writer and her series (dork), today's actress (Engel), the actor and his show/movie (Aden), Graf's nickname, Eswatini, itband, and that Syracuse isn't just in NY.
I actually passed today's foreign language lessons (Dios, eso, & the apse clue).
Ditto
DNF. I admitted defeat and went down in flames today.
I struggled throughout, but the SW was my ultimate roadblock. It band? Wow! Never heard of it.
And Eswatini was all perps as was Aussie. But I have to ask, since when is Okc short for Oklahoma? Am I missing something here?
So overall, I didn't enjoy this puzzle at all.
Hi KS, OKC is short for Oklahoma City, as in Oklahoma City Thunder.
I can take the occasional FIW, but today I had to settle for the dreaded DNF, looking at about a dozen blank spaces I knew I couldn’t WAG my way out of this one. Never got I’M HERE ALL WEEK, no chance with a clue I still don’t get. Also in the SW, I DNK IT BAND, GOODIE BAGS or SIGMA as clued. Like SubG, ESWATINI was all perps. Oh well, as HG says, “it’s a game and not a test. Thank you Jeanne and John for the Saturday worthy challenge, even if I didn’t quite make the grade. Also to Gary for making sense of most of it 👊🏼
I hate to defend the puzzle, or pretend that I know about the NBA for that matter, but OKC is short for Oklahoma City, which is in the name of the team. Folks around Dallas call it "Oak City."
I'm one of the two constructors of this puzzle. In the editing process, a number of clues were changed, which ended up making the solve, in my opinion, a bit trickier. An example: for DORK, we'd had 'Sheldon Cooper, for one'; this was replaced with 'Diary writer in a Rachel Renee Russell series', which would have stumped me! Another example: for ADEN, we'd had 'Yemeni port'; this was replaced with '"Rectify" star Young'.
Thanks Jeanne or John for confirming what we have heard before about the editor changing the clues. This one was a Saturday Stumper.
Thanks.
This CW was above my pay grade, as is true for many Saturday creations. I spent too much time before I TITT.
48D clue overturned my rule of thumb for deciding between Tsar and CZAR. (Tsar for the Russian monarch, and CZAR for the business tycoon.)
Wishing you all a great day.
Above my pay grade also. TITT. I appreciate the constructor(s) commenting. It is bizarre that their product would include a clue they wouldn’t be able to solve.
Thanks you HG for your valiant recap.
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