Good Morning, Cruciverbalists. Malodorous Manatee here with the recap of a Friday puzzle by Kelly Richardson. Kelly has had several puzzles previously published by the LA Times and made her NY Times debut in July, 2024. Today's puzzle contains many answers that we have seen before as well as quite a few proper nouns - many music-related.
While there is no reveal" in today's grid there is a theme. At four places Kelly has created punny word play employing the names of U.S. states. At three of those places she uses abbreviations for the states' names (although not the official USPS abbreviations) and for the fourth she truncates the name by dropping the word NEW.
Here are the four places where the gimmick appears:
16 Across: Play staged by Boston's Commonwealth Shakespeare Company?: MASS PRODUCTION. From Massachusetts.
23 Across: . Demand policy changes from lawmakers in Olympia?: PRESSURE WASH. From Washington. Tell those politicians what you want.
53 Across: Digits starting with 908?: JERSEY NUMBER. 908 is the (telephone calling) Area Code for New JERSEY.
62 Across:. Fortunes made in Chicago?: ILL GOTTEN GAINS. From Illinois.
This is how everything appears in the grid:
.... and here are the rest of the clues and answers:
Across:1. One of Islam's five pillars: HAJJ.
5. Avocado dip, for short: GUAC. GUACamole.
9. Truckful: LOAD.
13. Margarine: OLEO. A spread frequently slathered in (on?) our puzzles.
14. Not fooled by: ON TO.
15. General vibe: AURA. Anybody need a crystal?
20. Johnny of "Point Break": UTAH. A fictional character.
21. Audio jack abbr.: MIC. MICrophone
26. Trails: PATHS.
29. Vegetable in bamia: OKRA.
30. DOL division: OSHA.
31. "Don't Bring Me Down" gp.: ELO. Electric Light Orchestra
34. Robed ruler: EMIR. A position frequently occupied in our puzzles.
36. Steinem who co-founded Ms. magazine: GLORIA.
38. More repulsive: ICKIER.
42. Betting figures: ODDS.
I know. I know.
65. Jelly that may be added to boba tea: ALOE. How do I clue thee? Let me count the ways.
66. Tear: REND.
67. Let go of: DROP.
68. Window-rattling: LOUD. If Dan could scream very loudly how LOUD would Daniel?
69. Contributes: ADDS.
70. So small: EENY. EENY. Meeny. Miny.
1. Last word of "The Wizard of Oz": HOME.
2. Woeful cry: ALAS. My experiment of cross breeding a hen with a Slinky has failed. ALAS, I've no spring chicken!
3. Quip: JEST.
4. Soul and gospel singer Margie: JOSEPH. Great name.
6. Card game cry: UNO. Frequently played in our puzzles.
7. Just before nightfall: AT DUSK.
8. High fashion: COUTURE. From the French.
9. Woodworking tool: LATHE.
10. "Mais __!": OUI. Une autre des leçons de français d'aujourd'hui.
12. Coffee pastry: DANISH. Culinary Misnomers
17. __ meteor: many an August streaker: PERSEID.
18. Italian term of affection: CARA MIA.
24. Mop (up): SOP.
25. Stop __ order: bad news on a construction site: WORK.
26. Cribbage marker: PEG. Fifteen two, fifteen four and a pair is six.
27. More than most: ALL. ALL would, indeed be more.
28. Additionally: TOO.
33. Rueful reply: SADLY NO. Alas.
35. Glacial calving result: ICE BERG. Sometimes clued with reference to a salad.
37. "I'm Coming Out" singer: ROSS.
39. USDT division: IRS.
40. Take off the table?: EAT. Not a negotiation reference.
41. Reuben bread: RYE.
43. "Strangers in the Night" crooner: SINATRA.
46. Supplies tunes, briefly: DJS. Used here as verb . . . and what this blogger seems to be doing today.
47. Like drone footage: AERIAL.
48. Kitchen pad: BRILLO.
50. Got the ball rolling?: PUTTED. A golf reference.
52. Game point?: ARCADE. Not a tennis reference. The point (place) where one plays pinball and other games.
54. Spurred (on): EGGED.
55. Stripes: BANDS. As in BANDS of color.
59. Employ: HIRE.
60. Hip to: IN ON.
61. Athletic honor: ESPY. Frequently awarded in our puzzles.
63. "The Incredible Hulk" star Ferrigno: LOU.
29 comments:
Now THAT’S what I call a Friday-worthy puzzle! I don’t think
IM can claim it was “too easy” for a Friday, yet for the most part it was fair, and definitely doable (or, at least, I ended up being able to do it). FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
There sure were lotsa names in this one, but most were familiar. Got the state theme early on -- didn't really help with the solve. I doubt that anyone under 60 remembers Eydie GORMÉ -- you can blame it on the bossa nova. That "Dodge pickup" clue should be retired. RAM is its own brand now. Still, d-o liked this puzzle and it came into the station in good time. Thanx, Kelly and Mal-Man.
FIR, thanks to the theme. Erased tENY for EENY.
I knew COUTURE but, of course, I had no idea how to spel it. Ditto haute, but that wasn't needed today.
Took me a while for ROSS. I was thinking of I'm coming up, so you'd better Get the Party Started, recorded by Shirley Bassey and made famous by Pink.
When I saw USDT I thought of the Transportation Department. No, that's DOT. As far as I can tell, there isn't an abbreviation for the Treasury Department. But I only checked the official A-Z index of U.S. government departments and agencies.
Thanks to Kelly for the fun puzzle that washed away the foul taste of yesterday's offering. And thanks to our MalMan for another enjoyable review. Loved all the tunes.
way too many names and cutesy obscure garbage. titt
Took 9:30 today for me to get to Cleveland's water source (OH well).
Despite knowing today's actress (Rae), I didn't know singer Joseph or singer Gorme (though I knew singer Lipa). I also failed the foreign language portion of this puzzle, not knowing: the Chinese tea, the French expression, the Italian expression, or bamia. Those sucked most of the fun out of this puzzle, as did "game point?" for arcade.
Ram is still a DODGE. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
Good morning all. I made it harder than it should have been by misspelling HOME as HOPE and couldn't figure it out until the end and realized it was also a state abbr. CARA MIA was an unknown and I couldn't figure out what PRESUME WASH had to do with the clue, MAMA MIA, PRODUCTION appeared. Voila! At the same time the SE had me stumped my "Game point" was an ANTLER (12 point buck) and that allowed King ARTHUR, not Prince ARHCIE. Had to back out of that corner and start over. I finally managed ro FIR.
RAE and LIPA are both "frequent visitors" to go along with ORA, IDRIS, and a few others.
JOSEPH, ALOE and UTAH were unknowns filled by WAG and perps.
FIR. One expects Friday puzzles to be difficult, and this one didn't disappoint. But the clues were fair and the theme was clever.
Yes there were several proper names, but well placed perps made them doable.
Overall this was an enjoyable puzzle.
FIR. More like a Wednesday, but I'm not complaining. Rough start with HAJJ (I've heard of "the Hajj" never dawned on me that it was spelled with two Js). Perps filled it in though. SW corner a little choppy, but still worked out fairly smoothly. I've finally learned DUA as an answer but got lost with it as clue and needed perps. Thought there should have been a hint someplace that the theme involved shorthand names for states, but they were easy enough.
Good Morning:
The only unknowns, and therefore perp-dependent, were Joseph and Perseid, so I didn’t find the solve difficult and certainly not Friday-level difficult, at least by old Friday standards. I thought the theme was very clever, even with the outlier of Jersey being truncated rather than a fourth abbreviation.
Thanks, Kelly, and thanks, MalMan, for the punny review and the musical memories.
Have a great day.
It was a bit of a slow start not knowing the Islam pillar or the gospel singer it crossed, but perps demanded HAJJ/JOSEPH (don’t know of any English words that end in double J). Ultimately I didn’t MISS the boat like yesterday and came in at 18:51 for the FIR. PRESSURE WASH was the first long fill I got and sussed the theme from that. (I saw a sandwich board sign on a street corner advertising a pressure washing business “Two Bros and a Hose”. We had RAE, RYE, and RAY, missing was CW favorite roe. CARA MIA and UTAH were all perps. ICKIER and EENY can retire. I knew GORME, but didn’t know she spelled her first name like that. A Friday worthy puzzle IMO, thank you Kelly for that, and to MM for your recap. I liked the OSHA cartoon, and your SO to the Chairman on his day off.
Much better puzzle than yesterday. Held up for a while in the Northwest Territory, but once that cleared up, the rest came easier. Enjoyed the sound track today, MalMan! The Smothers Brothers show was definitely "must see TV" for me back in the day. When it comes to pads, I always prefer SOS to Brillo.
Before I weigh in on the puzzle per se, I first want to thank Malodorous Manatee for your usual amusing recap. I have just one nit to pick, where you said that 908 is the Area Code for New Jersey. Uh, no. That is actually only one of many Area Codes in New Jersey--which is necessary in a state with nearly 10 million population.
Kelly's puzzle today was challenging, but I felt that that had less to do with cleverness and durable construction than it did with pop culture obscurities and proper names.
The theme was mildly interesting. I was disappointed that the answer to the first theme answer had essentially nothing to do with Shakespeare, notwithstanding what the clue inferred. There were other odd clues in the puzzle, like "Game point?" = ARCADE. There is a difference between clues that are misdirected, and those that are just misleading.
Thanks, Kelly, for your efforts in constructing today's puzzle; and thanks, MalMan, for your helpful review.
Kelly was able to dodge for the most part the deluge of state vowel-rich words like ACAI, ALE, and OREO that are spit out by the generator Crossword Compiler. She did, however, succumb to ALOE and OLEO. Yuck.
First, the last two paragraphs above were somehow printed out of order; second, the word "state" should be "stale."
Musings
-Gimmick was fun and helpful once I got ONTO it
-I live in a VERY flat area and so any new building requires LOADS and LOADS of fill dirt to get above the flood plain.
-Loved the OSHA cowboy MM!
-Issa Rae and Dua Lipa have taken up residence here.
-Window rattling: SAC had to reroute their flights because the sonic booms were breaking things and spooking cattle
-I remember Edyie blaming it on the bosa nova
-Jay Black could still belt out Cara Mia 40 years after he and The Americans recorded it
-The Ruben sandwich looks good except for sauerkraut which is ICKY to me!
-Supplies tunes: We have Sirius XM in our cars and Apple devices
FIR after battling the SE. I had free for DROP and couldn’t make sense of the clue for ARCADE. Yes, there were lots of names, some several I knew, some I guessed.
I got the theme at the PRESSURE WASH answer but struggled with the 908 area code. Finally, only JERSEY would fit.
All in all not very difficult for á Friday.
MM thank you so much for all the YouTube recordings displaying the variety of musical styles over the year. I thoroughly enjoyed listening and luckily today, I could open them all.
Hey, Kelly, nice puzzle! FIR on paper, no cheating, in good time, and enjoyed it. I thought JERSEY stretched the theme, but it is "short for" a state name, so it wasn't a violation. MalMan, you are sure to be widely ESTEEMed for your humor today. That's ALL! The END!
From last night:
Lucina, I was troubled that any customer reliant business would dump you rather than help you. Seems the whole world has gone mad...
The puzzle?
Fun Friday, always love gimmicky puzzles as they help with the solve. But unfortunately, any puzzle that's ends in an alphabet run on the last square between two names always leaves me in a dreary "state."
MalMan! Loved the write up, and all my YouTube imbeds opened just fine. Which makes me wonder, could it possibly be because they were all older tunes? Not knocking your choices, they were all great, but is YouTube age biased? Or only blocking imbeds of newer videos? (Like trying to stream a newer movie, "ya gotta pay!" Hmm,,,,)
Especially enjoyed the link to why Danish is called Danish! Learning moment! Coney Island Whitefish is not even remotely what I thought it would be...
Also, I am left to wonder if, they will add a tariff on Canadian Bacon...
I also tried to make "antler" work. I
I liked the theme enough to excuse the excessive number of short words, even when a small flaw in one of the theme entries knocked my assessment of the theme from A to B-plus.
I was intrigued immediately when I spotted Olympia, Boston, and Chicago in the clues, and when I saw they were related to good old Associated Press abbreviations of state names, I decided Kelly was/is a copy editor. I’ve always been irked that the public has adopted the two-letter postal abbreviations for states (and that anyone considers them “official”), and I still use the AP versions, even though AP no longer does. As for the fourth theme entry, I quickly deduced that 908 was an area code but thought first of Alaska (which is 907), rather than New Jersey. Neither one matched the theme in my view. The abbreviation for New Jersey is the same as the postal one – N.J., and Alaska was among the states that AP never abbreviated, as were Texas, Maine, Idaho and all the four-letter states. Thus, the theme gets only a B-plus from me.
Another knock: The FIR came a bit too easily for a Friday, and very little about the puzzle delighted me except the theme. Nevertheless, it was a fun solve fully worthy of most weekdays.
By the way: I’m glad MalMan made reference to Van Morrison, who has come to mind this week in the wake of Beyonce’s Grammy for country music amid purists who considered her unqualified. Do those people think Van Morrison is a bogus blues artist because he isn’t black?
CED- I’m not sure that we have thought of a tariff on our bacon, but that would really hit hard on your American breakfasts! LOL
C E , a short while back some folks were all up in arms about what they labeled "cultural appropriation" to which those folks were opposed. The best Klezmer fiddle player that I ever heard in a live performance was an African-American woman. Should she not have chosen that path? IMO, of course she should be free to do so and be applauded for her accomplishment.
Hola!
Thanks to Kelly and MalMan for the fun! HAJJ required all perps and I really hate the short form, GUAC.
It seems inconsistent after seeing the abbreviations for MASS, WASH, and ILL, we then see JERSEY spelled out.
CSO to my niece EYDIE who was named for the singer. Her parents had been to Las Vegas and saw her before their daughter's birth.
I have never felt such intense cold as when we sailed by an ICEBERG in Alaska!
CROSSEYEDDAVE, yes, I agree. Madness seems common everywhere!
Dua LIPA and Issa RAE (hmm, followed by RAY) have become staples lately and if it weren't for "Entertainment Tonight" I would have no idea who they are or what they look like.
Ciao! Have a great day, everyone!
Always interesting that some find a particular CW easy while some find it difficult. I managed to FIR in perhaps the best Friday time EVER (for me) of 13 minutes. Although my usual complaint of "too many names" applies to this CW, only DNK 5 of the 15. Last letter to fill was the second "J" in HAJJ. I was sure it was spelled "HADJ", but 3D had to be "JEST" via perps, and "JOSEPH" was one of the 5 names I DNK, but it had to be a "J". Anyway, I liked the clever theme, got it with the first theme clue (16A), which helped. Many clever clues. Thanx KR for this fun Friday romp. MalMan you never disappoint with your write-ups, thanx for all the time and effort you put into making them fun, interesting, and informative. Last night I woke up with a thought: Is a picture of a palm tree a tropic topic optic? Or maybe a topical tropical optical? Hmmm. If my last name was "Tan", and I had a son, I definitely would NOT name him "Charles", because I wouldn't want him to grow up to be a con-man.
Mathematically speaking, one NPA (area code) is enough for 10 million. But we don't use 10-digit phone numbers with a first or fourth digit of 0 or 1. The "area" of area code lost its meaning when they started doing overlays. When I lived in Atlanta, they augmented the 404 and 770 area codes with 678, which was assigned to subscribers in both the 404 and 770 "areas." Folks were upset because they had to "dial" all 10 numbers as a result.
Yes, apparently Hadj is an alternate spelling. I wanted it too.
Friendly Friday. Thanks for the fun, Kelly and MalMan (great Moe pun @70A).
I thought I FIRed, and I saw the abbreviated states theme (hand up for thinking JERSEY was an outlier). My area code is 905.
UTAH was an Easter Egg.
But I arrived here to find that I had CHI tea instead of CHA (I am used to the Indian Chai and dropped the wrong vowel). And of course, this Canadian did not notice the error at OSHI. (Thankfully IRS perped since I didn’t know USDT either.)
My coffee pastry was Donuts before DANISH perped.
Mais Non changed to the more positive OUI. We did have SADLY NO.
I HAD agar in my boba tea before ALOE. Agar would be ICKIER.
I did know GORME, PERSEID, CARA MIA, COUTURE.
Despite not having a clue what bamia was, I WAGged OKRA with only the K perp. Perhaps okra should join ALOE in the overused trashcan.
If MIC is an abbr. today, why is it not consistently clued as an abbr.?
Wishing you all a great day.
I received a 90 day Sirius XM trial when I bought my 2013 CRV new. I am still enjoying the trial period. I occasionally get emails from Sirius XM inviting me to listen free to nearly all their channels for 90 days, but I ignore them. I figure if they activate anything, they may turn off everything when this trial expires.
Challenging but fun Friday puzzle, many thanks, Kelly. And your commentary is always helpful and interesting, Malman, thanks for that too.
Well, like others, I've never encountered a word with a double J before, so HAJJ was a total surprise for me. When I saw what I assumed was a DANISH pastry, I started to feel hungry and looked forward to lots of puzzle food to EAT. But except for OKRA, which I've never tasted, we only got some OLEO to put on RYE bread. Not much of a lunch. I guess the best thing to do is check with some DJS and listen to some SINATRA on the stereo or the radio. OUI, that would make for a more delightful morning!
Have a great weekend coming up, everybody.
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