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
38 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?
DNF, answering 24, only 19 correctly. Oh well, there are always the Sudokus and a couple more xwords to get to.
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).
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.
There is no getting around the fact that today's puzzle was, well, to use a technical term, HARD. I had to keep reminding myself that this is Saturday, after all. And in the end, what saved me and let me struggle to an FIR was the fact that I follow sports. The puzzle was replete with sports entries, especially in the Across clues. And it was comprehensive: baseball, football, basketball, tennis, even fencing. So all those mostly horizontal sports clues were gimmes.
Jeanne and John came up with some clever clues, such as "Key chain?" (ATOLL), and "Further," which normally would be considered a comparative adverb or adjective, but not this time; it was a verb. I wasn't crazy about FOSTER, though, as their answer, because that is not really an apt synonym for "further." And with "Cap. Of America," I felt they went a bit overboard with the cutesies, with USD.
Hey, I have a question (non-puzzle) for everybody. For Thanksgiving, son Jim (Arizona Jim) and girlfriend will be here for Thanksgiving. We decided to be different this year, and have duck instead of turkey. Does anyone have advice on how to cook a duck? I bought it yesterday; it's 5.5 pounds. Thanks!
Thanks again, Jeanne and John, for your challenging workout.
I enjoyed all the new and creative fill for this puzzle - felt like I was slogging but then came in under my usual Saturday times. Our older cornerites should be happy with the oldie OCHS and ENGEL answers
I love maps and geography so the ESWATINI was a gimme. My daughter used to work for the Sporcle trivia website and every time there was a new country name like ESWATINI, South Sudan, and North Macedonia or a new president or prime minister, they had a team that would go through and update all the former quizzes affected by it.
When my kids were young my rule was that their birthday parties only had the same number of invitees as their age - but only to a max of 7 because all the packs of GOODIE BAGS, plates, and napkins had 8 to a pack- one for birthday kid and 7 for their friends.
IT BAND syndrome is very common, but often confused for other knee and hip injuries
Saturday switch from Tsar to CZAR
I wore a PEACOAT most of my junior high/high school years
Thanks HG for the blog, and Jeanne & John for the puzzle
Easy peasy! NOT!! This was struggle from top to bottom. Constructor's notes on clue changes just added to my woes. Wrote in guesses here and there, and changed most of them by the end.
Eventually got pretty close - had AUNTIE (for Auntie Em) instead of AUSSIE and couldn't let it go, making FOSTER impossible to see. I barely see it now!
Find Julia Child online. She’ll give you the best guidance. I do believe
Guess I'm clearly in the minority but I ripped right through this one. Thought everything was fair even if I wasn't familiar with the Aden guy or the dork...
This was a stumper at many points! I try to keep my “learner’s mind” in place - esp. on Saturdays. This one offered that, for sure. Thanks to all for the challenge.
Sports clues are my nemesis, as I find no interest … 😳 My two daughters while at college called me separately in the same summer to ask why we never told them about the Olympics! 🤦🏼♀️ o, shame.
One thing: I don’t get how “fab” = “aces”.
Someone please enlighten me … ?
Good Afternoon:
After spending far more time than usual on a Saturday puzzle and suffering a combination of frustration and annoyance, I finally finished but, unfortunately, was not rewarded with a Tada! I had to resort to showing the error function as I couldn’t determine where I went astray. Not surprisingly, the errors were at the Badu/Dios crossing (I had Batu/Tios) and the Speed Run/Nosed crossing, where I had Posed (A more suitable answer, IMO) and the unnnoticed mishmash of Speed Rup, although Gamers do have some odd expressions.
The constructors gave us a worthy challenge, filled with some exciting and fresh fill and some tricky, inventive cluing, so credit where credit is due. However, as one of the constructors pointed out, the editing process increased the difficulty level beyond the original submission and while only two examples were given, I humbly add Sage, Epees, Dios, Aces, and Sigma to the list. I’ve said it before and it’s certainly applicable to this offering, “Every clue (or the majority) does not have to be a brain-buster.” Throw the solver a bone every now and then instead of trying to outsmart him/her.
The presence of so many unknowns such as Eswatini, I’m Here All Week, Big League Chew, IT Band, Dios, etc., and the questionable cluing contributed to the lengthy finish time and, ultimately, a FIW. I think, in this case, the editing staff used a heavier hand than necessary to what otherwise could have been an enjoyable and satisfactory solve.
Thanks, Jeanne and John, and thanks, HG, for your always fair and honest critique. The photo of Darling Lily was the highlight!
Have a great day.
Lots of unknowns here. Very interesting hearing about the clues being changed. The one's mentioned were definitely unknown. I turned the red letters on and was able to "get 'er done". Thanks for the nice recap Gary. I had never heard of IT band and I used to be a runner. Quads and hamstrings were all I ever thought about. GC
Started off with EATS . . . and my eraser. Tough but fair puzzle today. Thanks for the informative recap, H.G.!
Tough Saturday puzzle, but still with some fun and interesting items here and there. So, many thanks, Jeanne and John. And, as always, your commentary was very helpful, so thanks for that too, Gary.
Well, it was nice to have the puzzle start with CHOW, to prepare us for that BIG LEAGUE CHEW a ways down. Otherwise there wasn't much food, so I'm guessing the GOODIE BAGS were pretty small for everybody. Well, there's no point having us SCOLD anybody. Let's just enjoy our weekend, and tell each other I'M HERE ALL WEEK, so just relax, and tell yourself it FEELS AT HOME.
Enjoy your weekend, everybody.
I can’t quite claim I FIR. I googled EStATINI, and discovered the W (and the K in “I’M HERE ALL WEEK,” which also confirmed the unknown narrator DORK). HG’s color-coded grid covered many of the issues I had with this puzzle.
The ESWATINI/rim shot Natick was one of the worst of all time, with IT BAND/SPEEDRUP a close second. There were about 20 such annoyances, which is only slightly over par for a Saturday, except some of these were doozies!
BIG LEAGUE CHEWS required perps, and some of the paraphrases have never been said by anyone, headed by AH, GOTCHA. Some of the clues were really stretches, like fab/ACES, hit makers/EPEES, the USD clue, and, now that I think about it, the notion that the Oklahoma City NBA team is usually or often referred to as OKC THUNDER. One or the other, yes, but rarely the combo. . . . Why are VINTAGE CARS clued specifically to the Roaring Twenties?”
The “Rectify" star was totally obscure, and I’m glad the constructor weighed in on that and DORK. I knew Georgia ENGEL, Erykah BADU, Phil OCHS, and Steffi GRAF, and that Syracuse probably wouldn’t end up being the upstate NY version. And I liked Baltimore CHOP
Finally, our pact regarding tsar vs. czar was broken, which made RECOGNIZED difficult to, uh, recognize.
No way.
The clues were tricky overall and harder than the average Saturday IMO ([Hit makers?] for EPEES is Stumper-level vague, and I'm assuming that "hit" is a fencing term), but the puzzle as a whole was waaaay out of my wheelhouse, especially with all the sports clues. I messed around in the NW for longer than I'd like to admit. HIKE was easy in retrospect but CHOP as clued and "vittles" were WOEs for me. And I couldn't remember where Thunder plays, so I had to get OKC from crosses. I knew that rays = fish but I had ERNE at one point.
An ATOLL is one island A chain of them would be an archipelago.
The Russian word is TSAR (царь).
One can see from the clues that were changed how horrible this “editor” is…the grid wasn’t hard enough, no, she had to make it even harder.
I just stop in now to see how bad things are. Easy to see they haven’t gotten better at all.
I see from comments here that maybe when it comes to more difficult CWs I shouldn’t do them on paper but on line with what are called red letters, and other handy help.
Also I realize not following team sports, this puzzle was definitely not for me.
I feel so gratified when I can finish one without help (1:11:24), especially when I read all the comments from the regulars. I can justify all the time spent because procrastination comes easily. Anyway, aren't we supposed to be staving off Alzheimer's by keeping the synapses firing?
Completely bombed on this DNF attempt. Not enough toeholds and a few I would have never filled. ESWATINI
DNF. TITT when I realized just how far off my radar screen these clues were. The paraphrases were even worse than usual. No fun ATOLL.
Thanks to Jeanne and John for their themeless collaboration! H-Gary showed us all of your rare fill. Well done!
It was a DNF for me today. I failed to see GOODIE BAGS. I also resisted CHEW for too long, thinking the LA Times would not endorse tobacco in a puzzle. I finally filled it in. H-Gary says it is gum.
If your first name is Erykah, all bets are off for the spelling of your last name.
Thanks for today's commentary, H-Gary! FAV was seeing Lily in her high tower.
But spelled German-style, it's CZAR. (That's why Polish spelling comes up with 'SZCZ' for 'shch' for example, as learned from the Prussians. It's one letter for the sound ( Щ ) originally in Slavic tongues.)
Still no response as to why or how 47D 'fab' can be transmogrified into 'aces.'
To our Anonymous constructor who commented above about his clues being changed…well, welcome to Ms. “It’s Saturday, so let’s make the clues as obtuse and misleading as possible” Varol. Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy doing this crossword (or more accurately, attempting to do it).
“Key chain” for ATOLL? I doubt anyone in the Keys will agree with that. I may have a NAPE but it’s not a scruff. And only luck on the perps gave me ITBAND and MAGE. How do you come up with this stuff anyway, Patty?? 😝 If it weren’t for the rather entertaining themers in it, this would’ve gone in the bin. Sorry. Waaay too much effort for what’s supposed to be a fun thing. I’m out
====> Darren / L.A.
"Fab" is short for "fabulous" and "aces" is slang for "excellent." Not a far reach.
See below, friend…
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