Good morning, Cruciverbalists. Malodorous Manatee, here, back from an extended stay in the quite cold Colorado Rockies. The cooling effects of that stay have worn off pretty quickly because today's constructor, Amanda Cook, has elected to take us in quite the opposite direction. Would it be improper to say that, although I have never met the woman, Amanda has given me HOTS? I know, I know. A little context is required and here it is:
At the four corners of the puzzle, Ms. Cook has placed answers that can be preceded by the word HOT. The reveal comes at:
35 Across: Third base, in baseball lingo, or one of four in this puzzle: HOT CORNER. It is commonly assumed that the term came about because of the hot shots aimed at the third baseman, but the explanation is not universally accepted. "Third base was so named about 40 years ago when most of the star sluggers were right-handed. Nowadays, however, with so many hard hitting left-handers, first base is equally 'hot'." - Fan And Family October, 1935
... and the theme is applied at:
1 Across: Valued entity: HOT COMMODITY.
10 Across: Chances: HOT SHOTS. Chances as in "to take your best SHOT" at something. Hot Shots, of course are what all solvers who hang out here are.
64 Across: Breathes heavily: HOT PANTS. With HOT, a style of women's shorts.
65 Across: See's Candies candy: HOT CHOCOLATE. After a career at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Valerie decided to work part time at Sees' Candies just for the fun of it.
The rest of the clues and answers are:
Across:
15. Dodgy behavior: AVOIDANCE. As avoidance is not always dodgy behavior, this clue threw this solver off the scent for a bit.
22. Google rankings metric: Abbr.: SEO. Search Engine Optimization All You Might Want To Know
24. Bubblegum __: POP. A music genre reference. An example (listen at your own risk):
43. Long-jawed fish: GAR.
 |
| Gar Brooks |
46. __ of March: IDES. Beware!
48. Pacific Coast Highway's route number: ONE.
49. Innovative: NEW.
50. Mork's home: ORK. A Robin Williams reference.
54. Some tuna cuts: STEAKS. Tuna puns are fin-ally back in season.
56. Composers' rights org.: BMI. This could have been clued with a reference to Body Mass Index.
57. Ego Nwodim's show, for short: SNL.
58. Magical symbol: SIGIL. A learning moment for this solver.
59. Geographical region for a retailer: TRADE AREA.
62. Completely silly: INANE.
63. Quiz with bona fide answers?: LATIN TEST. Bona fide being a Latin expression.
Down:
2. Sheep: OVINES. Baaa, Not to be confused with BOVINES. Moo.
3. Landlocked country between Ukraine and Romania: MOLDOVA.
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4. The Bucks, in sports crawls: MIL. A professional basketball reference.
5. W.H. Auden's "__ to the Medieval Poets": ODE.
6. Bolts: DARTS. Not a hardware reference. Used as a verb.
7. Lined up: IN A ROW.
34. Dry: ARID.
36. Black bird: CROW. A crow invited her friends over to hang out but they didn’t show up. She was charged with attempted murder.
38. Mexican bar: CANTINA. Alternatively, a Star Wars reference.
39. One who practices minimal consumption: FREEGAN. New to this solver.
42. Awareness of wrongdoing, in criminal law: MENS REA.
59. "No Scrubs" group: TLC.
60. Ambient musician Brian: ENO. Another frequent visitor.
34 comments:
Yesterday someone on this site said we were overdue for a hard one and they were absolutely right; today, we got that “hard one.” Among other head scratchers, Latin legalese made an appearance. And that wasn’t the half of it! Anyway, FIR (somehow ) so I’m happy.
By the way, MalMan didn’t say, so I’ll just tell you that “BMI” stands for Broadcast Music, Inc.
You’re welcome.
I have no idea how the fill managed to not fall apart completely, given the theme material on the edge AND triple stacks. Plus KILLER ABS is a great answer. On the other hand there's LATIN TEST, green-painty with a clue that doesn't really land.
Good morning!
It only took ten minutes for d-o to meet his DEMISE. ERIc/ORc and FREEmAN/SImIL were the guilty parties. SEO and NAP (as clued) were mysteries. BMI, on the other hand, was a gimme. Definitely Friday-worthy, Amanda. Welcome back. Mal-Man. (Loved the "attempted murder.")
BMI: BMI pays composers for public performance of their works. One way to count performances is the number of radio airplays. Occasionally our radio station would be required to complete BMI logging -- a listing of every song played, along with its licensing organization: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc. What a hassle! Results from one radio station would also be used for other stations having the same music format.
STREAK: That immediately evokes memories of Ray Stevens novelty song, The Streak.
Well I had to settle for a FIW after I ran out of WAGs, A-runs, (and patience) in the MOLDOVA/SEO cross (I stuck with i as in Search Engine Index), and FREEGAN/SIGIL had me stumped. Never heard of MENS REA, but perps dictated that. HAMM was the only unknown name, and we have another shortened word in RIDIC which I imagine some will lodge a complaint about. The reveal was a perfect fit for the 8 corner fills, and the cluing was mostly fair (being Friday, it shouldn’t be easy). I liked the clue for STREAK, I just happened to be living in a dorm at the time STREAKing was HOT, and there was one memorable night in the courtyard…. Thank you for the challenge Amanda, nice work!
MM ~ welcome back, and thanks for explaining it all. I think 3rd base is the “HOT CORNER” because the player usually positions himself closer to the batter than the other infielders, thus giving him way less time to react on a hard hit ball.
I guess I should have stated - the dorm was co-ed 😆
Took 10:12 today for me to get sent in the corner with two mistakes.
The "g" at the intersection of "freegan" &"sigil", and the "i" at the intersection of "BMI" & "ridic". "Freeman" made sense, as did "radic(al)". Oh well. I never saw the gimmick either.
Another interesting choice was "mens rea" crossing "latin test".
FIW, missing with eREEiAN x CeO and SIiIL. Oh, and BMe, which I should have known from my broadcase backgroud, and if not for my speling handicap, I would have fixed because of ReDIC. I blame my misspent youth. When something was absurd, we would say Reeediculous. Waited for ERIc/ERIK.
That clue for Jon HAMM made me mad, man.
I wonder if they call See's test kitchen "the CHOCOLATE lab?"
I'm pretty sure that the folks who hated bubblegum music also have "Disco Sucks" bumper stickers.
Thanks to Amanda for the fun Friday challenge, and to MalMan for making it back in one piece to tell us about it.
FIW. The crossing of sigil (?) and freegan (?) did me in. I've never heard of either.
After days of easy puzzles, today was a bear. At first I thought it was Saturday when I saw all the white squares in today's presentation. And it took a while to get a foothold in the NW.
The cluing also reflected Saturday fare. And I'm not a fan of answers like "ridic" in crosswords, not to mention also "seo" and "nap".
So overall this was not an enjoyable puzzle.
Creative puzzle - must have been a real challenge to construct with all those corner theme answers
Another snowy day here, so ready for some HOT CHOCOLATE
FREEGAN was an unknown - but sounded like a cutesy jump from vegan
Bubblegum POP was a favorite during my teenybopper/preteen days
Jon HAMM had Friday cluing with "Grimsburg" instead of "Mad Men"
Thanks MM welcome back to the blog and Amanda for the puzzle!
Greetings from SoCal. Coyote is a trickster and the g-ds do seem to enjoy messing with us mere mortals. It turns out that there was some unwanted irony involved in drawing a puzzle to blog that featured HOT HOT HOT HOT and contained EMBER as an answer. Yesterday, I watched as the airplanes dropped Phos-Chek along the ridge behind my home and last night I could see a bit of flame on that ridge which is roughly three miles to three south. So far, there appears to be no imminent danger and the winds are, predominantly, blowing in the "right" direction.
Friday puzzle. Middle filled, edges failed.DNF
Greet the day.
Great to see MM back again and showing his usual brilliance.
Tough slog today. Like KS, I couldn't get started in the NW, so I moved to the midd.e and worked up. ZVEN, ECHO and ACTS got me MOLDOVA to break the jam.
Filling the reveal at 35A gave the clue to all the corner entries znd helped with the solve. ORBITAL broke open the NE, CANTINA the SW and SANEST the SE.
Amanda gave us HOT potato to solve. Thank you to her.
Never doubt that things will work themselves out.
Prepend
Puzzling thoughts:
Welcome back, MalMan. Glad to hear that you are maintaining safety in the horrible situation of SoCal. Enjoyed your puns
WES regarding the odd entries (SEO, SIGIL, FREEGAN, et al) but I am guessing that these were needed to accommodate all of the HOT CORNERs. This may have been a time where Patti decided to accept the concept/theme at any and all costs. Speaking of HOT CORNER, that was my position when I played baseball/softball. Started at SS but moved to 3B. I had a pretty good arm and pretty good reflexes back when I was a younger guy
Yooper Phil - count me in as one who STREAKed in 1974 on a college campus - in the quad - along with many others (safety in numbers)
On a different topic: Questions for any of my CC friends who've had cataract surgery: which lens did you choose? Is it worth upgrading from the standard replacement lens? Any problems? I will be undergoing this procedure within the next month or so and was hoping to hear back from one or more of you who've had this procedure done, recently. If you'd prefer discussing this off-line, my email address is in my profile. Thanks!
Good morning! Altogether a nice puzzle for a Friday, but I had to raise a white flag in the SE.
But before that: I missed the double L in KILLER with a blank in MO_DOVA and completely off-track going for MIa instead of MIL. And WO changing GluM to GRIM.
Perps for SEO, NAP, BMI, SIGIL, FREEGAN, MENS REA, RIDIC & BRAH (both kid speak).
The SE was a sea of blanks 52a: _AP; 56a: _M_; 59a: _ _A_EAREA; 63a: _ _TINTEST. Learning moments!
Thanks, MalMan, for unveiling the theme and enlightening narrative.
I loved the GAR toon, and it brought to mind Garth and Trisha’s beautiful presentation of Imagine at Jimmy Carter’s funeral. And the other synchronicity of PCH ONE and the tragic devastation of the LA area.
Before I got to the south part of this CW I wanted to say fantastic Friday, KILLER theme because I caught on to the HOT CORNERS quickly and enjoyed filling in the answers, but then I crashed. I had ludic for RIDIC, couldn’t come up with that weird word BRAH, had to look up the breakfast base, had sibil for SIGIL, etc. Too bad.
MM welcome back but sorry for the conditions of your neighborhood. I hope you and your home stay safe.
C-Moe, I went with the plain vanilla lens. I opted for good distance vision and glasses for reading. As it turns out, I need glasses for distance AND reading, so I continue to wear bifocals...just as I did before the surgery.
I had cataract surgery and based on what the ophthalmologist told me, the selection of replacement lens depends á lot on your eyes, that is their configuration and your vision. So in my case, based on his recommendation, I ended up selecting far vision correction. That means I can wear reading glasses for up close work. To avoid doing that, I chose to get progressive glasses with transition. So I wear glasses all day, but I don’t have to fumble for readers or sunglasses.
I went with the standard lens both eyes for reason of an unrelated eye condition, and I had a very positive experience with the laser procedure rather than open. Good luck to you.
Great write up MM! Very entertaining...
The puzzle was definitely chewier than I expected for a Friday. At first I thought it was themeless, but putting on my glasses revealed the center reveal, which had me looking the corners up and down and scratching my head. Thanks for splainin' it all, makes sense now...
And there was even a learning moment word, that,, um,, er,,,
Gosh darn it all! I seem to have forgotten it...
Oh well, I can do the puzzle again, and it will be almost as hard as the first time...
What's not to like about a CHOCOLATE LAB!! 😍!
C-Moe ~ ✋ for also joining in the STREAKing fray, hand-in-hand with my GF no less. Somewhere there exists a full frontal black and white pic, I know that’s probably TMI 🤣. Also, back in the day I was mostly an outfielder and pitcher but occasionally played 3rd, coach’s mantra was “ three steps over, two steps in”, I’ll admit, I bailed on a few liners.
Waaay over my head today, Duuude! After staring at the sea of white in the SE corner, I realized that I was just not enjoying myself. In went the towel, and on to other pursuits.
Only after completing the grid successfully did I notice the intricacy of the HOT CORNER theme -- largely because some of the entries elsewhere were totes RIDIC.
The FREEGAN-SIGIL Natick was as nasty as they come. Duuuude/BRAH required perps that didn’t come easily unless you got BMI without perps. If I were the editor, neither SIGIL nor BRAH would have reached publication. I would have accepted MENS REA and NAP Ministry, but they constituted a Natick for me.
I benefited from a few WAGs, notably at 1A, and TLC was a gimme because I had just seen a “No Scrubs” reference in the “Ask Eric” Thomas advice column a few minutes earlier. I thought the clue for AVOIDANCE was interesting, if not as clever as some may have deemed it.
Two acts for a musical seems to be a hard-and-fast rule. I don’t know why. If mine ever gets produced, I’ll have to drop two songs if the five-act formula is verboten.
Getting back to the hot corner quote MalMan found, I found it interesting that there were few left-handed batters during the 1890s, which I suspect could be traced to the longstanding prejudice against left-handedness. A left-handed batter is more than a step closer to first base, after all, but even in 1959, when I started batting left-handed because it felt more comfortable, there was a lot of “bat right-handed!” being yelled at me.
Friday fail. Thanks for the fun, Amanda and MalMan (stay safe). (I think autocorrect changed USO to USAGE at your 23A)
Like many of you, I had trouble in the NW but Downs there were more favourable. But then the SW - Ach! A FIW. But I did see the HOT CORNERs.
Hand up for messing up on several unknown crosses - but I did get the unknown SIGIL.
CEO instead of CFO (EREEGAN sounded as good as FREEGAN)
I never did get MOLDOVA spelled properly and SEO, ACTS were FIWed. Same with ERIK/ORK where I had a C, and RIDIC/BMI and LATIN TEST.
We needed our LATIN with MENS REA which means “Sound mind”.
Glum changed to GRIM.
I smiled at ALOOF crossing ALOFT.
I WAGged TOMATO with the TO. I thought I had heard of Shakshouka here in the past. Sure enough, it was StellaZ who served it up in 2020.
Wishing you all a great day.
Hola!
Typical Friday frustration today but I managed to finish with a bit of help from ALEXA at TOMATO since I have no idea about shakshouka. CHOCOLATE is a perfect way to end a puzzle, IMO.
Also I don't know who Ego Nwodim is but SNL perped and was served on a PLATE.
I took many a LATIN TEST in high school.
FREEGAN? Really? Is that even a thing? And if it is, it's not me.
MOLDOVA eventually seeped out of my brain but not without some wite-out along the way since I had FIN before END and OWEN before SVEN. SHEEP quickly gave way to OVINES the emergence of AVOIDANCE.
I recall receiving a LEI when we landed in Honolulu.
What exactly is SIGIL?
Have a happy day, everyone and if you are in the area of the fires, I am sorry and hope you stay safe.
There is absolutely nothing not to like about a CHOCOLATE LAB.
Good catch C Eh. Thanx.
Musings
-FREEGAN?/SIGIL? gave me one bad cell and CFO/CEO/CTO at the top did not help. Such a fun and complicated theme might have necessitated such inclusion.
-HOT GOSSIP: TR’s daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth: “If you can’t say anything nice, come sit by me.”
-The Monkees specialized in Bubble GUM Pop but making huge amounts of money wasn’t enough as they felt their artistic integrity was being squashed.
-Mink STOLES and cigarette smokers are rare sights today
-RIDIC joins the ranks of words with omitted syllables. Any port in a storm for constructors? No prob, Bob!
-We went to a “bargain” luau on Oahu and each got a LEI for a picture they took (and later sold to us for $20) but they took the LEIS back for the next people taking a picture. Ah, commerce in paradise !
Thanks to desper-otto, Monkey, and RosE for the cataract surgery replies
YooperPhil @ 11:08 => my college yearbook (graduated in '74) has a picture of streakers although they don't reveal anything more than a butt crack. As "liberal" as campuses were back then, the photos were still "PG". My most recent experience playing baseball came back in 2013 when I was assisting a friend who ran an amateur baseball event in SW Florida. I was among others in my age group (60+) and I fielded 3B during their batting practice. Needless to say, my reflexes were quite poor, and I took a bad hop off of my left wrist (golf hand). I also took batting practice and did fairly well at hitting the ball. However, it had been a long time since I had swung a bat (this "league" uses wooden bats) and after only spending maybe 5 minutes I developed some rather significant blisters. Getting old sucks, doesn't it?!
Same problems as many: FREEGAN/SIGIL, NAP, THA, BHAN and RIDIC filled in but seemed to br wrong.
Just read “The Ballerinas” and the word TOESHOEs appeared often.
DO - BMI sent me 2 checks in Nov. for royalties from 2021. A little slow in paying?
Interesting that our frequent CW friend Mel Ott, sometimes 3rd baseman on the HOT CORNER, ,batted left but threw right.
Very clever puzzle and it would not have made sense to me without your excellent review MM.
Thinking with sadness of all of our California friends.
FREEGAN crossing SIGIL? Really?
I sure wish the LAT would hire a competent editor.
I played in a softball league into my early fifties, slower reaction time, harder to judge fly balls. I used to have a pretty good arm but the last time I threw something hard (was a golf ball into woods after a quad), I threw out my upper arm and have been reluctant to throw anything hard since. 😂
Thanks to Amanda for her clever idea for a Friday-worthy grid! FAVs: KILLER ABS and LATIN TEST.
My NW started out completely empty and I doubted I would finish. Then I clocked the HOT CORNER theme and came up with COMMODITY. That was the kick I needed to get to a FIR.
FREEGAN seemed like a logical spin-off of vegan. I think my neighbor might be one. He only puts his trash bins out once a year (at Christmastime). He leaves a present for the collector -- sort of a bribe since he does not pay the monthly fees. I will ask him if he has heard of the term.
D-O@5:14. I thought of that Ray Stevens song, too.
Welcome back MalMan! I'm happy to hear that your home is AOK for now. Thanks for the sweet Archies song. I LOLed at your CROW joke.
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