Theme: "Musical Interlude" - Each common phrase is humorously reinterpreted fitting the musician in the clue.
23. The celebrity triangle player __: HAD A FAMILIAR RING.
32. The organized drummer __: DIDN'T MISS A BEAT.
47. The jovial maraca player __: SHOOK WITH LAUGHTER.
66. The irresponsible trumpet player __: BLEW IT BIG TIME.
81. The influential harpist __: PULLED SOME STRINGS.
101. The careless trombone player __: LET THINGS SLIDE.
111. The thoughtful guitar player __: HIT THE RIGHT CHORD.
Over
the years we've seen a few job rephrasing gimmicks, but none with such
tightness. All musicians. The clues all follow "The + adjective +
musician" pattern. Very consistent.
This is our construct Mark, a chemistry professor at the University of British Columbia.
Across:
1. Tiny amount (of): A DAB.
5. Pie __: CHART.
10. Celtic Sea country: WALES. Where this popular salt comes from.
15. Harbor service vessel: SCOW.
19. Hawk: SELL.
20. Temperament: HUMOR.
21. Trilling event, often: OPERA.
22. "Say Anything ... " star Skye: IONE. With John Cusack.
26. Not very exciting: DRAB.
27. Future residents?: PRE-MEDS. A few more creative clues: 75. Teller's offering?: TRICK. (Penn & Teller, thanks, D-Otto.). 87. Made the shot?: DOSED. 120. Future growth opportunity?: SEED. 15. Hit back?: SIDE B.
28. Puts (down): LAYS.
29. Touches up a text: EMENDS.
31. Put on: AIRED.
36. Loch with a legend: NESS.
37. Country Music Hall of Famer Buck: OWENS. We also have 57. "The Christmas Song" composer Mel: TORME.
39. "Downton Abbey" daughter: EDITH.
40. Short way?: RTE. Short for Abbr.
41. Goes soft: THAWS.
43. "Hey, that's enough!": CAN IT.
45. Surgical beam: LASER.
52. Move like a mouse: SCURRY.
53. Consoles with Nunchuks: WIIS.
54. Wipe out: ERASE.
58. Field: REALM.
60. Tennis icon Arthur: ASHE.
63. "If This Is a Man" author Primo: LEVI. Unfamiliar with the book or the author.
65. Pt. of NATO: ATL.
70. Take the gold: WIN.
71. One up, e.g.: TIED.
73. Biblical paradise: EDEN.
74. Helpful: UTILE.
77. First island in The Beach Boys' "Kokomo": ARUBA.
79. German auto pioneer Adam: OPEL.
80. Bully's arsenal: TAUNTS.
90. Salty expanse: OCEAN.
91. Pipework fastener: U BOLT.
92. Food Network's "Be My Guest With __ Garten": INA.
93. Bath depleter: DRAIN.
95. A bit pickled: TIPSY.
97. Person named in a will: HEIR.
105. Chicken run border: FENCE.
106. Early mainframe: UNIVAC. Universal Automatic Computer.
107. "Buona sera!": CIAO.
108. Former name of a 3D X-ray technique: CAT SCAN.
110. Frog kin: TOAD.
116. Piedmont blues guitarist Baker: ETTA. Died at age 93.
117. Bring to mind: EVOKE.
118. Come clean about: ADMIT.
119. Comic strip canine: ODIE.
121. Bishops' gathering: SYNOD.
122. In need of a rinse: SOAPY.
123. Sign of age: WEAR.
2. Darling: DEARIE.
3. Trees in the birch family: ALDERS.
4. Discussion to assign culpability: BLAMESTORM.
5. N'Djamena's country: CHAD. N'Djamena is the capital.
6. Runs smoothly: HUMS.
7. Pal in Poitiers: AMI.
8. Arrive at last: ROLL IN.
9. Sheet music threesomes: TRIADS.
10. Best opposite: WORST.
11. Distracted Driving Awareness Mo.: APR.
12. Aromatic necklace: LEI. It's indeed fragrant.
13. Seaside flyer: ERN.
14. Most wise: SAGEST.
16. Least gooey brownie pieces: CORNERS. I never had one.
17. Out to dinner, maybe: ON A DATE.
18. Lexicographer credited with standardizing American English spelling: WEBSTER.
24. Nourished: FED.
25. Author Rand: AYN.
30. Composer Gustav: MAHLER.
32. Lydic of "The Daily Show": DESI.
33. Restaurant guide: MENU.
34. Hep "Roger that": I DIG.
35. "Star Wars" order: SITH.
37. Like many a Chardonnay: OAKY.
38. Site opening?: WWW.
42. Exodus mount: HOREB. Have not seen this entry for a while.
43. Get into, as a bunk bed: CLIMB UP ON.
44. Some Energizer products: AAS.
46. Central Asia's North __ Sea: ARAL.
47. Nova __: SCOTIA.
48. Bullpen member: HURLER.
49. Clemens handle: TWAIN. And
50. Knight's handle: HILT.
51. Swarm (with): TEEM.
52. "Quickly!": STAT.
55. Upholsterer's task: SEWING.
56. Forces out: EVICTS. I can't wait for the 5501 renters to get evicted.
58. One of two colors on Poland's flag: RED.
59. "Baa-ram-__": "Babe" chant: EWE.
60. Quick on one's feet: AGILE.
61. The Blues of the NHL, for short: STL.
62. Zoom off, quaintly: HIE.
64. Stamp pad refills: INKS.
67. Sharon of "Dreamgirls": LEAL.
68. Collector's __: ITEM.
69. Cyberbusiness: E-TAIL.
72. Fool: DUPE.
76. Lead: RUN THE SHOW.
78. Subject of a 233-foot statue in Leshan, China: BUDDHA. Leshan is in Sichuan Province.
.jpg)
79. Female bear, in Spanish: OSA.
80. Priam's kingdom: TROY.
82. Source of extra dough: LOAN.
83. Vaping product: E-CIG.
84. Cub Scout groups: DENS.
85. Apartment honcho, familiarly: SUPE.
86. Network with some MLB postseason games: TBS.
87. Makes juice from concentrate, say: DILUTES.
88. Monotonous: ONE NOTE.
89. Fill to excess: SATIATE.
94. Fortune: RICHES.
95. Princess toppers: TIARAS.
96. Enthusiastic reply to "Who wants ice cream?": I DO I DO. "Who wants to swim?"
 | |
98. Privatize?: ENCODE. Oh so the message becomes private.
99. Aegean island: ICARIA.
100. Melt down, as fat: RENDER.
102. Jack Pearson of "This Is Us," e.g.: TV DAD.
103. Asst.'s responsibility, often: SCHED.
104. Tell a whopper: LIE.
105. Consumer protection agcy.: FTC.
108. Crockery defect: CHIP.
109. Paralegal employer, for short: ATTY.
112. "The Holly and the __": traditional British carol: IVY.
113. Slew: TON.
114. Bout ruling, briefly: TKO.
115. Early ABC program, for short: GMA. Early in the day.
C.C.
30 comments:
In spite of a couple of obscure names (“Leal,” anyone?), I didn’t have too much trouble with this puzzle. The themed answers were all familiar in-the-language phrases with some pretty obvious double meanings (I don’t know if you would call them “puns” or not). Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
Zipped through this one, Wite-Out free, in good Sunday time. Thought of JzB when the trombonist showed up. Do you suppose Mark and John are brothers? Thanks for the recap, C.C. (Methinks that TRICK (Teller's offering) refers to half of Penn & Teller.)
Mt. HOREB: This is a small Wisconsin town southwest of Madison.
Baa-Ram-Ewe: To your breed, your fleece, your clan be true. Sheep be true. Baa-Ram-Ewe.
D-O at 5:40 a.m.
Thanks for that explanation of “trick,”
D-O. I was wondering what that was all about.
The obscure (for me anyway) clues and names kind of hit a sour note with me (EDITH, DESI, LEAL, LEVI….), but with major perp help I prevailed with a FIR in 36:37. Had to correct one mistake when I learned that Chardonnay is OAKY and not oaty. This time it wasn’t ASH can, ASH bin, but ASH PAN 🤷♂️. Favorite clue was for SIDE B. I really enjoyed the musical theme, thank you Mark and John for your challenging collaboration, I read Marks bio, but like d-o was wondering about John? Thanks also to C.C. for explaining it all.
FIR. I had to work at this one and also make a few WAG's along the way. Too many obscurities for my liking.
I got the theme fairly early on, but that wasn't a lot of help in several troublesome areas.
Overall not an enjoyable puzzle.
FIR with 10 erasures. Won't list them all, but b-side became SIDEB, interns became PREMEDS, end cuts became CORNERS, and buddah became BUDDHA (UNTIE!)
I always use "one up" to mean the good guys are ahead, and I use ONE all to mean TIED. I suspect a cluing error. And there's One-upmanship, which Bing says is "the art or practice of achieving, demonstrating, or assuming superiority in rivalry with a friend or opponent."
With the modern trend to merge words, I'm surprised that a WEBSTER isn't what we used to call a WEB maSTER.
Gosh, I can't picture the Polish flag. Let me think, which 3-letter color could it be?
Thanks to the MacLachlans for the fun puzzle. And thanks to CC for aother fine tour.
Any puzzle that is music-related, and which contains my favorite composer, Gustav Mahler, is my 7-Down.Thank you, Mark and John (how are you two related?), for providing such an enjoyable Sunday solve.
The puzzle was well-constructed and admirably consistent, with the seven long theme answers all being familiar non- musical phrases, turned adeptly into musical ones.
I thought I might have a Natick impasse in the left central region, with the verticals DESI, WWW, HOREB, and LEAL in proximity to each other, but nearby horizontal perps rescued things.
The cluing was by and large fair and clever, with a few misdirections--which I can never get enough of!
So thanks again, Mark and John (and Patti, I'll wager) for a fun and satisfying Sunday musical interlude.
Tripped up the start: ASH-bin to ASH-can to ASH-PAN, but smooth sailing after that. Fun diversion on a Sunday morning while listening to jazz and sipping coffee.
Good Morning:
A light-hearted romp of musical puns, just what we needed after Friday and Saturday’s brain-busters. A cute and clever theme is half the battle for a Sunday grid being a pleasant solve vs an unpleasant slog and our duo constructors met that challenge quite well, IMO. The other half of the battle is a grid without an excessive number of obscure entries and reliance on popular culture references. Again, success by the authors. That’s not to say that there weren’t some head-scratchers, to wit, Blame Storm, Chad, Horeb, Ewe, Buddha, and Icaria, to name a few but, overall, the grid was clean and the perps were fair throughout, which coupled with the aforementioned positives, made for a satisfying and enjoyable solve.
Thanks, Mark and John, and thanks, CC, for the professional inside skinny and for accentuating the highlights of some of the fill. I, too, hope your troublesome neighbors get the heave-ho soon!
Have a great day.
Am happy to announce that Firefox has been updated to correct the freezing problem that I have been having. I can now comment again.
Great puzzle today. Enjoyed thr redefinition theme. Dug around a bit to obtain a foothold, but when I figured out the theme and filled a few perps, it began to loosen up. FIR.
My thanks to Mark and John (are they brothers?) for their labor in creating this puzzle and C.C. for her recap.
Whence we came, there do we finish.
Abrupt!
Good morning. It started badly and stayed bad. My ASH CAN or BIN gave me CRE and BREMEDS. PRE MEDS never came to mind. My fireplace is natural gas with a fake log. Moving down to the SW, it was a disaster. LET THINGS SLIDE and INA were easy but I had a brain fart on the easy UNIVAC (I really knew it), but TV DA and This is Us and ETTA Baker were unknowns. THAWS didn't make it due to the unknown HOREB.
I see schedule now has two crummy abbrs. SKED and SCHED.
ICARIA, DESI, LEAL, HOREB, BLAMESTORM, LEVI, WIIS (nunchuks), EDITH,- perps for those fills.
The only former name of 3D-xray, aka CAT SCAN, I know is CT SCAN- "computed tomography"
C.C never had a Brownie? I've eaten her share. Let me SCURRY out of here.
Hola! Today the puzzle had just a tad more crunch than usual IMO, but I managed to finish although it took a bit more time. I liked the clever repurposing of terms in the themes. They were almost puns and I love that! Thanks to Mark, John and C.C. for the day's enjoyment.
You all have a wonderful day!
Interesting Sunday puzzle, many thanks, Mark and John. And thanks again for your very helpful commentary, C.C.--always much appreciated.
Nice to have a somewhat more manageable puzzle than we get on many Sundays, and it was nice to see HUMOR early on, although I don't think an OPERA would be likely to be very funny. I didn't actually shake WITH LAUGHTER, but the clues were still surprisingly UTILE, and didn't DUPE or TRICK us, and that helped a lot. So I'm happy to ADMIT I really enjoyed this, and will sign off with a happy CIAO.
Have a delightful weekend, everybody.
It was a slow solve, but quite satisfying. This turned out to be a great puzzle. The few obscurities, for me, were taken care of by perps and WAGs. The theme was fantastic. What a joy.
It looks like you’re still pursuing your swimming passion, CC. Enjoy.
I’m sitting outside on the patio as I write this enjoying a warm and sunny Sunday.
One up means ahead by one, not tied.
I enjoyed solving this puzzle.
Sunday puzzle….late start, kind of a drag. Decorating to finish, football to watch.
Greet the day!
Musings
-Grandson is in PRE-MED and will be an intern soon.
-Hit back was worth the weight :-)
-Kokomo joins a long list of Beach Boy earworms.
-TAUNTS: The bullies usually claim, “I was just kidding!”
-The UNIVAC was significantly slower, much larger (filled a room), used outdated technology like vacuum tubes, had significantly less memory, and could only perform a single task at a time and couldn't hold a candle to my Macbook
-My black leather jacket is 30 years old and is showing some WEAR. It is still my fav!
-All political parties have a BLAME STORM after a defeat
-N'Djamena indicated Africa and CHAD is the only 4-letter country that I could think of
-Lists with best and WORST of 2024 will soon be everywhere
-Name this mountain: “I don’t care about Clifton Clowers, I’m gonna climb up on his mountain”
-HILT not haft
-I had to add INK to this stamp frequently because I used it hundreds of times for evaluating work
-Poor Johnny ONE NOTE
-My sub SCHED for Friday contains a late start time with an early dismissal and just monitoring tests
-Appointment TV with the Chiefs today!
YP here ~ one up can mean the same as one all - tied.
Super Sunday. Thanks for the fun, Mark and John, and C.C.
Jus5 a little crunchy for me today, but I got the Tada.
Quick post before I Skype with the family.
I liked the Musical Interludes and noticed some Easter Eggs. We had TRIADS, ONE NOTE, and HUMS, plus an OPERA.
Wishing you all a great day.
Busy day.
Just lurking.
MLB fan here. Announcers have different ways in talking about tied scores. It is not uncommon to hear something like, "We start the bottom of the inning tied one up." Or two up, three up, whatever the case may be. Other announcers may use "all" or "each" , as in "... tied at one each." In this context, they all mean tied.
Having said that, it seems that one up in that context is almost always used with the preceding "tied." Does it stand alone as as synonymous with tied? It may, but it seems weak to me. The announcer wouldn't have to use the preceding "tied." e.g. "We start the bottom of the ninth at one all." The tied is implied.
The more common usage of one up would be to indicate a one run (or point) advantage.
But this is a crossword puzzle, so I'll give it a pass as iffy but acceptable. After all, puzzles aren't being edited to win pullet surprises.
Wolverton Mountain, of course! Gotta propose to Clftons daughter.
As a musician I enjoyed the MUSICAL theme and was impressed with the construction. So many misdirections that almost seemed impossible to figure out. Hand up MOUNT HOREB a learning moment. It may be the same as MOUNT SINAI. That was the last area to fill to FIR.
Happy to see PRIMO LEVI. A brilliant chemist who was part of the Italian Resistance against the Nazis. He somehow managed to survive the Auschwitz death camp. "IF THIS IS A MAN" is his account of that experience and it was rejected by multiple publishers.
CC Thanks for the lovely photo of you at the pool. Did you really mean you have never had a BROWNIE?
Here I have animated my broken wrist CAT SCAN into a video.
I took the 74 CAT SCAN frames and animated them at one frame per second. I had to repeat it three times to avoid forcing it to be one of YouTube's evil "Shorts".
From Yesterday:
Jinx Thank you for taking the time to look at my SALINAS photo at the Steinbeck Museum. Including his East of EDEN. Had EDEN again today.
Amusing story about "SANTA BARBARA LEFT". I am not aware of having to turn left to get to Santa Barbara nor of any such sign. Google came up empty. Can you say more about where this sign was and where you had to turn left?
I once TIED one on by drinking straight up. That led to a pullet surprise: what I thought was a hen turned out to be a rooster! I never went back to that bar, quit drinking and became a journalist. You can mail my Pulitzer to...just kidding!
Okay, it didn’t turn out to be the leisurely Sunday stroll I wished for yesterday…but even though it was a bit of a workout, the clues were for the most part (except for that “one up” backfire) quite doable and also amusing on many. Nice job, boys! My usual nemesis, pop culture names, reared its fugly head (LEAL…really?) but I guess if one needs IONA to make a puzzle work, there ain’t a whole lotta choices. That “One up” had me filling in “tier”, as in “one level up”, but I kept looking at rUPE for 72D going “what the…” — until I threw in the “D” — D for DOH!!
Loved the musical theme — not just the long ones, but nice little musician-ish touches like TRIAD, SIDEB and ONENOTE were a very clever flourish. ETTA is usually the James girl, so seeing the blues guitarist Baker was a nice departure for this here picker!
C.C., nice to see you’re keeping up with the swimming; another coupla years and you’ll be ready for the English Channel😆 Thank you for the run through today.
@Picard: OUCH! Damn, dude, you did a job on your wrist there…
====> Darren / L.A.
Glad to hear that most people enjoyed the puzzle! My son (John) and I came up with the theme about a year ago and worked on it for a long time... (and big thanks to Patti for helping get it over the finish line!) John's the musician, I'm the chemist (hence the shout-out to Primo Levi!) - it was fun to collaborate on this puzzle.
I'm not sure "hit the right chord" is as common a phrase as the others? Not wrong, just not perfect.
Mark MacLachlan, thank you for posting and for clearing up the relationship between you and John. I hope we see more of your puzzles as this one was really fun.
My goal today was to finish my cards and, ta-da! Mission accomplished. They are now in the mail. Now to finish the wrapping. With only four left, it also will be finito. I hope you all had an equally successful day.
Nice to hear from you. We need more puzzles from you and your dad. You make a good team.
Post a Comment