Saturday February 1, 2025 by Adrian Johnson & Will Nediger
 |
| Adrian |
 |
| Will |
I had a nice 14-minute trip through Adrian and Will's puzzle. I wrote to Adrian about this puzzle he co-authored with Will and this was his gracious reply.
Hi Gary,
Great to hear from you. Will and I are good friends that have collaborated a few times on puzzles, most recently co-organizing a charity pack to support humanitarian relief efforts in Palestine (https://www.
This puzzle was a stunt of sorts to see how many 12-letter entries we could fix into a 15x grid. I sent Will the layout last year, he helped lock much of the center into place, I polished off the corners, and we were off! Thanks as always for the work you do.
Cheers,
Adrian
1. Attach: TIE ON.
6. Pickle: SCRAPE - Origin of the phrase
12. "You're getting ahead of yourself": DON'T BE SO HASTY.
15. Vaudeville singer Smith: MAMIE ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
16. __ bran: OAT - Love this variety
17. Break stuff?: ADS 😀
18. Like: AKIN TO.
20. Car mirror's view: REAR - Not what you want to see
24. When all's been said and done, to a Brit: AFTERWARDS.
30. Gifts that might be made with kukui: LEIS - A LEI made with Ti leaves and kukui nuts
32. Joplin's "Treemonisha," e.g.: OPERA.
34. Newspaper that covers Congress: THE HILL.
36. __ canto: BEL - Bel canto, Italian for beautiful singing is both a style of singing and a style of opera.
37. "Julia" star Swinton: TILDA.
39. TV explorer Márquez: DORA The Explorer
40. School house, informally?: FRAT 😀
41. One might be on a roll: SESAME SEED - Yes, I'm embarrassed I can still sing this song from memory!
 |
| RAMI Freddie |
44. Audition dismissal: NEXT.
45. Basil who designed England's Coventry Cathedral: SPENCE.
47. "That's the spot": AAH.
50. Question for a magician: HOW.
52. Planet-mapping tool: RADAR - An artist's concept of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mapping the red planet.
53. Highly stressful situation: PRESSURE COOKER - If they pay you millions...
58. "You've been up too long": IT'S TIME FOR BED.
59. Promise: ASSURE.
60. Coarse cloth: TWEED - I'll bet you know who this prof in a TWEED coat is. (* answer at bottom.)
Down:
1. Big name in pizza rolls: TOTINOS.
2. Like some jewels: INSET
3. "There's more," briefly: ETC.
4. Letters with a negotiable price: OBO - Or Best Offer - A cool name for a thrift shop in Spokane, Wa
5. Nautilus captain: NEMO - James Mason played the good captain in this Disney movie. BTW, 20,000 leagues is approximately 60,000 miles. Jules Vernes' book referred to how far the Nautilus travelled while under the sea not how deep the sea was. You're welcome.
6. Recycling-plant worker: SORTER.
7. Margaret of "Fire Island": CHO.
9. Home of most of Turkey: ASIA.
10. Condition that may be treated with EMDR therapy: PTSD - A very interesting 3-minute video about Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reoricessubg therapy for treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
11. Socket sets: EYES 😀
12. People who partially identify as female: DEMIGIRLS.
13. Blowout remedy: SPARE TIRE - Where it was in my Uncle Virgil's pickup
14. Endpoint of the Detroit River: LAKE ERIE - I was pleased to learn that Lake Huron flows into a Lake St. Claire and then the Detroit River takes that water down to LAKE ERIE.
15. Marimba strikers: MALLETS - Lionel Hampton used those MALLETS on xylophones, vibraphones and marimbas.
19. Promise: OATH.
21. Rotten to the Corps, perhaps: AWOL 😀
22. Genre for Flo Milli and Flau'jae: RAP - Not familiar with either of them but RAP made sense
25. Business offering stock options?: FEED STORE.
26. Sugar Bowl home: TAHOE - Yeah, I tried every variation for New Orleans I could but...
27. Handled better?: REBRANDED.
28. Ideal wheels: DREAM CAR - I'll take a '57 red and white Vette convertible!
29. More coarse, in a way: SALTIER not 34. Not at all ferocious: TAME.
38. Dojo level: DAN.
40. Flipped out: FREAKED.
42. Dig up: EXHUME.
46. Europa Clipper, for one: PROBE - Surveying the surface of the Jupiter moon of Europa.
47. Capital of Samoa: APIA - 5hr 35min flight SSW of Honolulu
48. Poetry, weaving, et al.: ARTS.
49. Pianist Myra: HESS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
51. Warp counterpart: WEFT.
54. Stampede Wrestling co-founder Hart: STU.
55. Military title: SIR.
56. Interrupting animal in a classic knock-knock joke: COW - I laughed really hard the first time I heard this joke.
57. City-building resource in Catan: ORE ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't play.
*That of course is Dr. Henry (aka Indiana) Jones
49 comments:
I went through this one fast! I didn’t time myself, but it was definitely under 10 minutes! Definitely unusual for a Saturday! I’m going to have to go get a Washington Post today and make a paper copy of this one! I don’t keep a record of my failures usually, but I do of my successes! FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
Methinks there'll be plenty of complaints about this one -- too easy for a Saturday. Even d-o managed to complete it with only a minimal application of Wite-Out: Farm/FEED. "...see how many 12-letter entries we could fix into a 15x grid." There were plenty of long answers in this one, but I couldn't find a single 12-letter one. Hmmmmm. Thanx, Adrian, Will, and Husker.
Finished it! Wrong, but I finished it! I had rilta for teh equally unknown TILDA. I was certain that the belt would be tAN, and didn't know what a marimba was. But I do know my WEFT from my warp, so I got that goin' for me. Which is nice. (Had to include a Bill Murray reference this Pebble Beach Pro-Am weekend.)
The only MASTERS I care about is the PGA event that starts on Thursday of the first full week in April, which is the 10th this year.
I'm probably the only red-blooded American who has no idea what a pizza roll is. I was thinking it might be something like mud wrestling.
I was certain that the Sugar Bowl home had to be "Superdome" or "NOLA," but neither fit.
Thanks to Adrian and Will for letting me play with the smart kids today, and to H.Gary for another fine review. Still thinking about the knock-knock joke.
WoW! HG comes it at 14 minutes, SubG under 10, I guess my FIR time of 21:34 isn’t so stellar after all. Must be the several gimmes and a big assist from perps that made this puzzle seem easier than most themeless. Unknowns included DEMIGIRLS, HESS, SPENCE, STU, WEFT, and TAHOE as clued. MAMIE was not at all a given as Vaudeville preceded all of us, the second M was my finishing WAG. I liked the clue for REBRANDED one I understood it. I don’t think AFTERWARDS is confined to Britspeak, I hear it often. First day of the month and already a couple nominations for worst clue ; “Stampede Wrestling co-founder Hart” and “Basil” who designed England’s Coventry Cathedral”. I’ve learned from CWs that any three letter Margaret is going to be CHO. A nice doable Saturday grid, nice collaboration Will and Adrian.
HG ~ thanks for explaining it all today, and giving us one of the authors insights as to the creation. The hydrology of the Great Lakes is interesting, starting at 600 feet above sea level, Lake Superior feeds all the lower Lakes and rivers, gradually descending till the 167 foot drop at Niagara Falls, through Lake Ontario on to the St. Lawrence River, eventually reaching sea level.
43. Freddie portrayer in "Bohemian Rhapsody": RAMI.
Methinks the pics / names have been swapped? Or, maybe it's my eyes...
I think you may be right about the pics, Rami’s resemblance to Freddie made him perfect for the role.
Definitely agree re: role perfection - enjoyed the movie greatly. Freddie's famous overbite made the pic switch jump out at me. He refused to have it "fixed" for fear it would negatively affect his singing. He was a real star.
Took 10:40 today to finish this non-pressure cooker of a Saturday puzzle.
Good job, SubG, on your speed run.
I knew today's actresses (Tilda & Cho), but not: Stu, the Vaudeville singer, bel canto, Basil Spence/Spence Basil, dan, demigirls, the Tahoe Sugar Bowl, weft, or the pianist.
I also thought the Rami and Freddie pics may be reversed.
I agree with YooperPhil about the early nominations.
Excellent checking/counting by d-o.
FIR. For a Saturday puzzle this was a walk in the park. I sped through this as though it were a Wednesday puzzle.
There were a few unknowns for me, and a few proper names which I never like, but for the most part the perps were fair.
Overall a most enjoyable puzzle.
Hola! I can't believe I finished a Saturday puzzle and though i don't time myself, it did not take too long. THE HILL started me successfully and I built on from there. It was not a PRESSURE COOKER. However, I did ask ALEXA about SPENCE and that helped to finish FREAKED. I vaguely recalled RAMI. FRAT was tricky. Instead of TILDA Swinton I was thinking of Talia Shire but LAKE ERIE found my error. Very nice experience this morning. Thank ;you Adrian, Will and Gary. Enjoy your day, everyone!
Demigirl? Is that a thing? Spellcheck doesn’t seem to think so, but what the heck does spellcheck know? I finished this one in less than 30 minutes, which is highly, highly unusual for me. All in all an enjoyable start to the weekend. Alas, now it’s time to drag my lazy butt to the gym. Alas…
Like KS, I found this to be a "Saturday in the Park" (cue my old Chicago album). The few sticky wickets quickly fell to perps and educated guesses.
My only "knit" was calling weaving an ART. It's usually classified as a craft, and only rarely does it become art.
Well, I don't know what happened to Adrian's and Will's goal of designing a 15 x 15 grid stuffed with 12-letter words. It's not today's puzzle--there are zero 12's--but the two pairs of 13's and 14's stacked together is impressive. I'm not enamored with three of the four answers therein, since they're just annoying verbalisms, conversational nonentities; but I do like PRESSURECOOKER, a solid idiomatic expression.
Sugar Bowl, up near Lake Tahoe, is one of our more venerable ski resorts in California, going back to the 1940's, I think. It has always been popular with the Hollywood crowd, and it is where Janet Leigh was discovered--by Norma Shearer.
I had some mild Natick headaches in the puzzle: one featuring MAMIE and TILDA; and another with RAMI and SPENCE next to each other. Friendly nearby perps made short work of them.
Thanks, Gary, for ably leading us through what turned out to be a manageable Saturday effort. And thanks, Adrian and Will, for your straightforward and rewarding challenge today. Best of luck with your Palestinian relief activities.
Good Morning:
I would hate to disappoint DO, so I’ll voice a complaint that this otherwise delightful offering was much too easy for a Saturday. I have no criticism for the puzzle itself, as it was chock full of fresh fill and fun phrases, and a few challenging obscurities for good measure (Spence, Mamie, Demigirls, Stu). After yesterday’s easy-peasy solve, I was looking forward to a Saturday Stumper. Alas, ‘‘twas not to be. 😔
Thanks, Adrian and Will, and thanks, HG, for taking the edge off of my disappointment with your usual upbeat and informative summary, not to mention the sparkling visuals.
Have a great day.
There I go again. Everyone finds this á walk in the park and I had to TITT. Yet there have been some CWs everyone complains about and I breeze through. Amazing.
AFTERWARDS, in my defense, I’m not good at rephrasing statements and there were quite á few of them.
I enjoyed reading HG’s recap. That’s á plus.
Saturday puzzle. Absolutely enjoyed long fills…couple name stumpers…romp. Nice change from usual Saturday nightmares.
1955 TBird easily this Michiganders fav.
Greet the day.
ParSan
Lucinda -I too was happy to finish a Saturday puzzle which only happens about two times out of four.
Jinx - Never heard of pizza rolls but with —_——-NOS in place I had Dominos made pizza A Natick at Marie?/MA,MIE - DE IGIRLS?
Not a fan of paraphrases, but this puzzle almost filled itself. Lots of unknowns, but it was a lot like playing "Wheel of Fortune" as the longer answers filled in. Pretty happy to actually get a FIR on a Saturday! I thought that "Demigirls" were just vertically challenged females. Who knew?
Next!
Not really, I had fun with it. All except for Tilda crossing Dan, I can't even chalk it up to a learning experience, as I have no reason to remember it...
Weaving as an art form is not that rare, it's called tapestry.
Before rebranding as Totinos, they were Jeno's Pizza Rolls, and had one of my all-time favorite TV commercials. Look up "Jeno's Pizza Roll commercial 1972" It combines Pizza rolls, the William Tell Overture, Lark cigarettes, the Lone Ranger, and Tonto.
GRRR! Also held on too long to woof (and warp) instead of WEFT. I have heard AFTERWORDS more often than afterword. As kids, we bought black licorice strips at the local FEED STORE for 1 cent.
Thanks HG for the PTSD video - a learning moment. Your COW joke reminds me of the old one my husband thought was so funny;
Comedian- “Ask me what my best quality is as a comedian”.
Person - “What is your best——“.
Comedian - “Timing”.
Happy day, all!
Are you sure you have Rami and Freddie labeled correctly?
Monkey First I have to ask: Why do some of your letters "a" have an accent? Next: Hand up I agree with you and found this very difficult. Almost gave up with that cluster from MAMIE down to TILDA. Changed TAN to DAN at last instant to FIR.
I still don't get the COW thing. Maybe you have to be six years old to get it. I have been to TAHOE many times and never heard of SUGAR BOWL. Learning moment.
Here we were privileged to see final assembly of the EUROPA CLIPPER PROBE
If you look at far lower left you can see a mannequin in a bunny suit holding a EUROPA CLIPPER sign.
Some “anonymous”
participants are less anonymous than others. You all know my good friend SS (“Speedy Solver”). Well, I propose we “christen” Anonymous @ 10:32 a.m.
“Day Greeter” ( or DG) because he invariably ends every submission “Greet the Day.” Who’s with me? (Of course, “he” could also be a “she” but my ( masculine) intuition leads me to believe he is also of the male gender.)
(This is Subgenius. Some “bug” keeps me from being able to comment under my Avatar twice)
ParSan, I believe you have me confused with someone named LUCINDA. But I'm happy for you that you finished a Saturday non-stumper.
I see that the name in Tahoe is SUGAR BOWL RESORT and not to be confused with the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans which I believe is how the constructors meant to confuse us.
Wow, a Saturday puzzle I completed with just one bad cell! Then y'all burst my bubble, not a stumper. My bad cell, T for D in Dan and Tilda. I thought black belt - tan belt. Tilda, a form of Matilda, is much better than Tilta. After reading the blog my slow processing brain, remembered having seen this kind of Dan before.
I know Jenos, but Totinos took every perp.
Thanks, Adrian,Will and Gary for a fun outing.
Had a mild headache while working the puzzle which I figured must have heightened awareness because I raced through in record time. Then realized had been so busy this week forgot to take my BP pills. 💊 Just measured it and it’s off the wall.
Never mind just read everyone’s comments and seems a lot of us FIR. So. Where are those pills!
Some clever clues like ”stock options” and School house” FRAT houses like ours ΑΦΔ were all off campus. A better “handle” (name). I knew RAMI (yes, the pictures are mislabeled) and CHO from the respective films but not MAMIE, STU or SPENCE or DORA’s last name. Never heard the term DEMIGIRL. Corrected Tampa (only skiiing is on the bay) for TAHOE
Haven’t been asked for Samoa’s capital in a while so of course forgot. Had no idea, though task “Masters” made sense it was wrong. The interrupting COW is my fave knock knock joke.
Lot’s wife was a SALTIER lady than most 😀
“Europe Clipper”, a type of sailboat or a barbers tool? Neither!
Now to shovel yet another accumulation of front walk snow. I need to get a small snow blower 😰
FIR, but with little joy and much annoyance.
That three of the four longest answers were paraphrases was bad enough, but the obscure clueing for reasonably common answers was worse. Smith is not a well-known MAMIE, Hart is not a well-known STU, Myra is not a well-known HESS, and those two RAP artists are not . . .
I suppose “Treemonisha” is not a well-known OPERA, but I did know that. LAKE ERIE, Capt. NEMO, APIA, RAMI, TILDA, Margaret CHO (who kicked booty on Celebrity Jeopardy recently and looked better than she ever has), all propelled me to victory, and I’ll concede IT’S TIME FOR BED was conceivable without perps.
Hand up for Domino’s before TOTINO’S. Calling ADS “break stuff” was a stretch, as was the pun on “handled.” I didn’t know the knock-knock joke. Basil is an obscure SPENCE, but I suppose” boxer Errol” would have been worse for most of you. TAHOE perped, and only then did I realize Sugar Bowl referred to a ski area near me, rather than an annual sports event in the Big Easy. I’ve never heard of WEFT.
I was afraid to pen-in AFTERWARDS until I realized the clue was pointing out that what’s not grammatical in the USA is OK in the UK. See also “towards.” Yooper may hear them often, but they’re WRONG. Then there’s “anyways,” which I don’t believe is acceptable anywhere and would disqualify an applicant from scoring writing/editing work from me.
Well, so many comments on how easy this CW was reminds me of how mediocre I am at solving CWs. I managed to FWH: red letters and a few alphabet runs, and still took 25 minutes. Oy. Not a true FIR in my book, due the the alpha runs. By my expanded count 18 names, 12 DNKs. As I said yesterday, I hate names because either you know them or you don't, there's no "thinking it through" or logic to the fill. Also DNK BOYOS, or OBO. To me this was a typical Saturday level difficulty. There are some very clever clues, like 9D, 11D & 29D. Thanx for the entertainment, AJ&WN. Terrific write-up, as always, HG, thanx. All the time and effort you put into your write-ups is appreciated. No BDs today?
Delightful Saturday puzzle, many thanks, Adrian and Will. And your commentary is always a pleasure, thanks for that too, Gary.
Well, when a puzzle starts with TIE ON, meaning "attach", you figure it might be about a couple in a relationship, maybe. But the next couple of comments suggested they were not getting along too well, even though they were trying. "DON'T BE HASTY" one of them says, and the other suggests "LET'S COMPROMISE." And it does it indeed look as though things were getting better AFTERWARDS. They went out to go shopping to the FEED STORE and got some OATS and some SESAME SEEDS for their pets. Then, when it was supper time, they made a really good meal using their PRESSURE COOKER. But right after that they both agreed "IT'S TIME FOR BED." They both ended up having a good night's sleep with one of them dreaming about taking a trip to LAKE ERIE, and the other one imagining buying a DREAM CAR. Bet they both woke up in great spirits.
Have a lovely weekend, everybody.
Can someone please explain the cow joke? I don't get it.
So sorry for the confusion. I typed in Lucinda but Mr. Smarty Pants added the “d” (HE JUST DID IT AGAIN) I’m typing LUCINA.
ParSan
Sorry! See my post after mine at 10:37.
Alls I know is I agree with you. 😀
Super Saturday. Thanks for the fun, Adrian and Will, and HuskerG.
I don’t always have the time or the knowledge to do the Saturday CW, but I completed this one without any Google help (even though I had unknowns). But I arrived here to find that I FIWed by assuming dogs levels were coloured like judo -my tan should have been DAN (I did think Tilta was a strange name). I see that I am not alone.
Wrong or not, I’m with YooperPhil in not thinking AFTERWARDS was strange. I guess we Canadians inherited it along with our added U and inverted RE.
Wishing you all a great day.
Picard, I do not know why my letter á has an accent and I have tried all I can to remedy this weird spelling to no avail. The letter appears that way in all my writing whether email or text.
If you hold down the “a” alternatives should show up above it
And your bouts of Oesophagitis? (Look in up in your Encyclopaedia)
I am posting this separately since it may be deleted as too political.
Canadians have been living in a state of angst for the past weeks under the 53A of threats. Efforts to say 12A and 14A apparently have failed, and we have come under the 15A. Apparently a person’s 19D or signature on a treaty means nothing. After years of feeling 18A to our neighbours below 14D, we now are 27D as 13D.
I suspect that many of you and your fellow-Americans feel that moving in this manner is to 33A, but I can 59A you that Canadians may be 40D out, but 24A, we will recover from our 10D and stand tall.
What 44A?!
I had an engineer in my group who always said "irregardless" for "regardless." Drove me crazy - he was a smart guy in spite of that. I figured that if he could tolerate my speling, I could abide his diction.
Very cute, but you've come under the MAMIE? Thanks for the coded message anyway. Made me dig into the recycle bag to decode it.
Thanks Jinx. Make that 15D
Good one, Ray.
CanadianEh Thank you for sharing your views in a discreet way through the puzzle references. Many of us in California wish your country would adopt us. Maybe you could take both coasts with you.
AnonPVX Thanks for the tip to Monkey. It must be a phone thing. Maybe an autocorrect thing. I see that it only seems to happen if it is "a" as a word. Not if it is an "a" inside a word.
Ray, Jinx, Copy That reminds me of our brilliant Chinese-Vietnamese friend Virginia. She speaks perfect English, which never ceases to amaze me. She had to learn English as a teen refugee. But she pronounces "escape" as "ex-cape". I find it amusing that it is the only word she mispronounces. Perhaps that is how she heard it when she was first learning English.
BIG EASY from phone.
I wasn't as fast as Gary, but I did manage to finish it in record time for a Saturday. A few unknowns like Tilsa. Spence, cow, Cho., and Stu. Tahoe for Sugar Bowl took all crosses to complete.
PTSD and Lads or just guesses, as I didn't know what the clues were. I was thinking LIDAR before RADAR.
I think the term rebranded should be used when getting it a product a new name, not a new logo. Many companies give old products new names.
Post a Comment