Saturday Themeless by Rafael Musa & Rebecca Goldstein
I skated around with gradual success and then I wound up with one empty cell which you can see
in red at the right. I wrestled with what letter would work in that cell that began two unkown-to-me words and correctly guessed the L. I was so pleasantly surprised to get the congratulations message. I'll take a "got 'er done!"
These puzzles make me abandon my concrete ideas about language and force me to interchange nouns for verbs or vice versa.We solvers also have to access less common definitions for words. That is part of the frustration fun!!
Across:
1. Option for keeping travel plans on track?: TRAIN - Plan B leapt to my mind before "track" made the correct fill obvious
6. Band: GANG and 13. Band: POSSE.
10. Influential lobbying org.: AARP.
14. Goat rodeo: HULLABALOO - A goat rodeo is a slang term for something going totally, unbelievably, disastrously wrong, and there's nothing left to do but to sit back and watch the trainwreck.
16. "See ya!": CIAO.
17. "Seems legit": I BELIEVE IT.
18. Dip targets, for short: TRIS - His TRICEPS are pretty easy to see!
19. __ ed: SEX.
20. Dens: LAIRS.
21. Stop and yield: SIGNS - Usual verbs become nouns
22. Scary stories?: HAUNTED HOUSE - This one has three stories ๐
24. Amusement park ride: GO KART.
27. Tรฉa of "Madam Secretary": LEONI.
28. __-garde: AVANT - On clearance at Kohl's ๐
29. Try something new: SHAKE IT UP.
33. Get the band back together?: WELD - If your band is broken...
34. Luxury fashion house founded in Madrid: LOEWE - The eponymous shirt below goes for $990!
35. Starchy element in some bubble tea: TARO.
36. Season openers: PREMIERES - That last E was a speed bump.
38. At a loss for words?: TERSE.
39. Wassail ingredient: CIDER.
40. First sentence of a book written with only 50 distinct words: I AM SAM.
41. Chicken: SCAREDY PANTS.
45. Features of some loyalty programs: TIERS.
46. Inapt rhyme for "first": WORST ๐ The Royals first World Series win was in 1985 after many years of being usually WORST
47. "Hilarious": HAH and 30. Part of a giggle: HEE.
50. Further: ALSO.
51. When many abandon ship: SHORE LEAVE ๐ - In Honolulu just before heading out to fight the Japanese during WWII
53. Exclamation from someone refusing to buy something: LIAR
54. Move that can plump accent pillows: KARATE CHOP ๐
55. Feature of some Disney headgear: EARS - Some other EARS can be found in Disney's famous Hidden Mickeys around the properties.
56. Minute: ITSY - Yeah, I put TINY first.
57. "The Goldfinch" novelist Tartt: DONNA ¯\_(ใ)_/¯
Down:
1. That isn't it: THIS ๐
2. Goldberg who won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning: RUBE.
3. "Call Her Daddy" podcaster Cooper: ALEX - She signed a contract with Spotify for $60M
4. Not 100%: ILL.
5. Some digital displays: NAIL ART - Oh, those digits!
6. First name in California politics: GAVIN.
7. At the ready: ALERT.
8. Public hearing guidelines?: NOISE LAWS - For Arlington, VA
9. "A Song of Ice and Fire" show, colloquially: GOT.
10. Meeting points?: ACTION ITEMS - AGENDA ITEMS? Not so much.
11. Imaginary instruments: AIR GUITARS ๐
12. Causes delays, perhaps: RAINS.
15. Stunner: BEAUT.
21. Something dropped in an idiom about inevitability: SHOE ๐
22. Portable self-checkout devices?: HAND MIRRORS ๐
23. Wild maneuver?: DEKE - Now this is a wild DEKE!
24. Stare stupidly, to a Brit: GAWP
gawp
/ษกรดp/
verb
INFORMAL•BRITISH
- stare openly in a stupid or rude manner."what are you gawping at ?"
25. Completed: OVER.
26. Salad whose main ingredient may be massaged: KALE CAESAR - The massage helps break down the tougher parts of the raw KALE
29. "Excuse me!?": SORRY WHAT.
31. Astronomical bear: URSA.
32. Sapphic work: POEM - Sappho was an influential ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos whose passionate, emotional lyric poetry about intimacy between women led to the term “sapphic” and the island itself becoming associated with female homoeroticism. More about this
34. Green building cert.: LEED - Leadership in Energy and Enviromental Design ¯\_(ใ)_/¯
37. Portentous day: IDES.
38. Told a grown-up, say: TATTLED.
40. Like Alaska, often: INSET.
41. Left out overnight, maybe: STALE.
42. Fine hairs: CILIA.
43. Standard partner?: POORS.
44. Data structure in computer science: ARRAY - ¯\_(ใ)_/¯ In computer science, an array is a data structure consisting of a collection of elements (values or variables), of same memory size, each identified by at least one array index or key, a collection of which may be a tuple, known as an index tuple. Yeah, I knew that! ๐
47. "Agatha All Along" star Kathryn: HAHN - ¯\_(ใ)_/¯
48. River associated with Shakespeare: AVON.
49. __ filter: HEPA.
51. Common sight at oversized baggage pickup areas: SKI.
52. Prefix with hotel or tourist: ECO - Ion Adventure Hotel, Iceland. Taking up residence in an abandoned building of the nearby geothermal power plant, the hotel was sustainable from inception and continues to be today. With sinks made from old tyres and furniture from recycled wood, it repurposes materials in an eco-friendly way.
44 comments:
I had the exact same experience of a WAG for the “L” of
“Loewe” and “Leed” that Husker Gary had. And I note “hah” and “hee.” Finally , here is a puzzle that could be called “challenging.” I was glad to see it, and glad to be able to solve it. FIR, so I’m happy.
We all get a little R AND R today!
Husker Gary, I had a similar experience. I kept at it, chipping away. My certainties were RUBE, LEONI, AVANT, URSA, POEM and DONNA. Thank goodness for those four names in that set.
After the certainties were the probables. Each had to be proven. One at a time, with intersecting answers that made sense. It was somewhat slow going, with bursts here and there.
SEX locked in by THIS, which led to TRAIN because of the word track in the clue.
Then NAIL ART agreed with the N from TRAIN, the T from AVANT, and the L from the highly probably LAIRS.
And so forth and so on, in each section of the puzzle, until I had enough letters entered to start using word recognition.
I sensed HULLABALOO and it worked. Ditto, SHORE LEAVE and SCAREDY, leading to PANTS. Cute!
GUITARS came fom the G in SIGNS, the I in LEONI, the R in TERSE, and the S because the answer was plural. That S gave me SAM, and then I AM SAM. Then I changed tata to CIAO for AIR. Aha! AIR GUITARS!
HAUNTED appeared when I rethought "stunner" and changed BEAsT to BEAUT. The H from HAUNTED led me to rethink "self-checkout devices" with the question mark in the clue. That ? mark dissuaded me from something along the lines of UPC scanners. _O__RT was likely to be GO KART, and I took a stab with WELD. That gave me HAND and then HAND MIRRORS. Neat! And two clues with band, but neither about a musical group.
LEED was an early fill for me but I was having a hard time proving it. I must have read wasabi four or five times before finally, nearing the end of the solve, read the word correctly as wassail. DO'H. Wassail - CIDER. When MIRRORS emerged, I changed miles to TIERS at the loyalty programs clue. That southwest corner was the last to fill. I looked up at the clock and it said 41:36. I wasn't surprised. It felt like it was taking longer than normal, but like an old car with bald tires driving up a steep, snow covered road, I wasn't about to stop once I started getting traction.
It was a great challenge for me today, and I enjoyed it. Thank you Rafael and Rebecca, and thank you, Husker Gary! Fun stuff.
The company that I worked for was proud of its LEED certified building.
There's also a LEED certified building in an office/industrial park just a few miles from where I live. It is a large single story building that stands out mostly because the roof is a covered in a living ecosystem of native grasses, spreading ground covers, mosses and lichen. There are even a few potted trees on the roof. One of the local newspapers did a feature story on it after it was built. It's pretty cool looking.
Reporting this morning from a First Nation hotel on Manitoulin Island, Ontario CA (hi C Eh!๐จ๐ฆ). As per a typical Saturday, there weren’t a lot of first glance gimmes for me to gain a foothold, and I wasn’t liking it very much, but with a lot of thought and perp help I was able to FIR in 22:56. Like HG and SubG, it took a WAG at the L to get the congratulatory message. Lots of Saturday worthy clues and fill in this one. Never heard of KALE CAESAR, LEED or LOEWE, and ACTION ITEMS still makes no sense. Liked the clue for HAUNTED HOUSE, and being a hockey fan I sussed “Wild” as being a reference to Minnesota’s team, which yielded DEKE. “Band” in three clues, answers required perps cuz it can have several meanings. The N in the unknown HAHN/DONNA crossing could be nothing else, so not really a WAG. Overall, a very enjoyable solve, thanks Rebecca and Rafael, and to HG for another stellar review!
I thought there were 3 clues with band in them, but when I went back to find them, I only spotted two of them.
I just read about Manitoulin Island. I'd never heard of it before. Very interesting, and new trivia!
TTP ~ two were just the singular “Band”, the other in the clue for WELD.
DNF. Filled 30, all correct except for GAWk, nearly an average Saturday for my dumb mass. But I did get ARRAY without benefit of perp, so I got that goin' for me. Which is nice.
Thanks to H.Gary for the fun review, and for showing me several fills that I would have gotten with a little P&P.
Made one pass and threw in the towel.
FIR. I too had to take a WAG at the crossing of Loewe and leed to get the win. But today my guesser is working, hooray!
I thought i was acing this one when I threw down air guitar without hesitation. I was wrong. This was a challenge with some very difficult clues. But I persisted until gradually sections filled and I was only staring at one empty square.
I disliked the crossing of two proper names, Hahn and Donna, but otherwise today's puzzle was fair.
Overall an enjoyable puzzle.
I agree with everything Yooper Phil said. I got the whole puzzle correct except for the LEED/ LOEWE clues. I thought it was a challenging but fun puzzle.
FIR but did not enjoy it one bit. Some of the clues were just flat-out ridiculous and their inclusion likely led to the constructors patting themselves, and each other, on the back.
Similar to a Silkie, I just kept circling around filling a little more with each round until it was done. Felt slow but came in under 20
-I knew LEED because we sometimes have college interns stay with us for the summer. One was an environmental and civil engineering major. I learned more about LEED than I ever thought I would
-LOEWE was unknown - sounded more like the theater or the home improvement/garden store- and for trying to suss out - it definitely didn't sound Spanish!
-1A I was thinking of rail travel with the track - but put ACELA the crosswordese Amtrak fast train before
-
Good Morning:
I always begin a Saturday puzzle feeling a mixture of barely contained nervous anticipation and a bravado honed by years of solving experience. Most always, the first pass yields very little and the nervousness increases. Then, slowly but surely, if I’m lucky, a chip here, a chip there, and the whole grid falls into place. Those chips, of course, rely heavily on fair and plentiful perps, which today’s offering provided. I believe the authors found the right, but rare, balance of challenging difficulty vs fairness to the solver. With one or two exceptions, .i found the cluing to be just the right amount of clever vs too cutesy and I also give props for the fresh and sparkling fill. Any other minor nits I may have are outweighed by my satisfaction and enjoyment of the solve.
Thanks, Rafael and Rebecca, for bringing lots of brightness into another rainy, gloomy Northeast morning, and thanks, HG, for adding to the brightness with your trademark cheerful commentary and striking visuals.
Have a great day.
Oops - hit publish accidentally before finish the comment
I've never used a KARATE CHOP to plump a pillow before
- Gimme - my BIL worked for Standard & POORS for many years
Thanks HG for another fun blog and Rafael & Rebecca for the puzzle
Now that's what I call a Saturday! Nice work Rafael & Rebecca, you make a good team. Tough but doable with the many misleading clues crossed fairly. Not to mention 3 "band" related clues (although none reference the musical type) and an AIR GUITAR to boot! Woohoo!
Got off track with Acela, then mispelled Jerry Brown with a G to fit GANG. That caused a temporary HULLABALOO at the start, but it smoothed out after that.
Love chicken on my CAESAR, but not of the SCAREDY PANTS variety. Fun answer!
Sweet review, Gary, you massaged it like KALE! Or something like that.
I couldn’t figure out what cALE CAESAR was until I realized coming here that I had misspelled GOcART. Actually I would rather give KALE รก KARATE CHOP than รก massage. I hate KALE.
I too despaired at first when รก first run through left รก lot of blanks behind. But little by little I whittled at this puzzle and almost FIR, but, but, I looked up รก few names like LOEWE, HAHN, ALEX and GOT.
There were many fills I liked like AIR GUITAR, SHORE LEAVE, SHOE, HAND MIRRORS.
I didn’t like SORRY WHAT, because I dislike these types of clues. For HAUNTED HOUSE, I wanted attics instead of HOUSE. HULLA BALOO was รก WAG.
Thank you HG. Great review.
H.G., that noun or verb question is my "go to" mantra when I get stuck. I only wish that I would remember to call upon it more often and more quickly.
YP here ~ currently traversing Lake Huron/Georgian Bay on the vehicle/passenger ferry Chi-Cheemaun. Beautiful day for a 2 hour boat ride here in ๐จ๐ฆ ๐. Destination Tobermory, on the tip of the Bruce Peninsula.
Couldn’t get the tough L for Loewe and Leed although I should have guessed. Still enjoyed it as it was fair albeit with a few too many personal names (I’ve only listened to a part of one podcast so far in my life!), while Gavin and leoni are well known.
Got it done, but very tricky word play. Scary stories? Definitely Saturday level. But then, I am easily misled. I thought Goat Rodeo had someth8ng to do with Greatest Of All Time...
One th8ng I still do not understand though, what the heck and why would you massage Kale?
Amen Mal Man!
Probably because it's better than eating it?
Nope. TITT. Today's clues and answers bore no relation to my universe. Too tough, so on to other Saturday things!
. . . and the there are the words that can be a noun, a verb, or an adjective. Well, well, well.
Amen
As I say frequently, some modern constructors don’t think there’s anything wrong with look-ups. I couldn’t have finished today’s puzzle without them. But you’ll never convince me that’s kosher.
I finally gave in and googled “types of Caesar Salad” to get KALE, which revealed GO-KARTS, NAIL ART, and PREMIERES. I looked up HAHN to see if Kathryn was there, and I finally sussed KARATE CHOP. I also googled LOEWE and LEED because I had no idea whether they were right. Hall of Fame Natick, that one.
I resisted RUBE Goldberg for a long time, because I was far more aware of his ingenious contraptions than his editorial cartooning. At 1D, THIS took a long time to materialize, partly because the goat rodeo/HULLABALLOO entry was so elusive. HAND MIRRORS provided the same problem as the salad ingredient. I had the mirrors way before the hand part. The band/GANG entry required an alphabet run, because GOT, as clued, was another unknown. The clue for ARRAY couldn’t have been less helpful, partly because I had Standard and POORe instead of POOR’S for far more than a “minute” and thought “arrow” might be the data structure.
Along the way, some of the cluing was galling. Stories do not a HOUSE make, HAUNTED or otherwise, unless haunted houses are a genre unto themselves. I wasn’t thrown by “Wild” maneuver, but I’ll bet the majority of solvers don’t have the Minnesota NHL team near the top of their mental rolodexes. And TRIS! I finally realized it must the plural of TRI, but I would have gone with Hall-of-Fame outfielder Speaker as the clue.
Speaking of baseball, I must disagree with H.G. about the pre-1985 K.C. Royals. They were founded in 1969 and quickly got better than the Kansas City Athletics had ever been. The Royals won several division titles in the late 1970s and made it to the 1980 World Series with a far better team than the one that upset the Cardinals in 1985. (Curse you, Don Denkinger!)
Getting back to KALE: I like kale in many dishes, but a Caesar salad with kale is NOT a Caesar Salad. In fact, MOST Caesar salads out there these days are not legit.
Interesting Saturday puzzle, many thanks, Rafael and Rebecca. And nice to have you back, Gary, to give us your always helpful assistance again.
Right at the top of this puzzle, we got the NOISE LAW helping us to control the sounds of the AIR GUITAR. But wait a minute--if that guitar is an "imaginary instrument," why would we need a "noise law" at all? If these things were going on at an actual performance, there sure would be a lot of HULLABALOO SHAKING IT UP at the PREMIERES. But what if the performance was a real BEAUT that just charmed our EARS. I bet in that case it would inspire someone to create a POEM that would hail ART.
Have a lovely weekend, everyone.
Copy editor @ 12:09 p.m.
I’m sorry, C.E., but the whole point of doing crossword puzzles to me is to challenge MY OWN knowledge of the world, not to get help from “look ups” or anything else.
Just my opinion!
You are right, right right!
That's my take as well. It's a word game not a research project, even if resulting in a DNF.
Add me to the "not a research project" team.
I have learned many valuable lessons over 40+ years of crossword solving.
#1-You won’t always “know” every answer. That’s why they’re called puzzles. The challenge is figuring out those unknown answers.
#2-Every clue and/or answer doesn’t have to be literally precise. On the contrary, such a deviation is what provides for fun and clever wordplay.
#3-Completing a puzzle (with or without help, your option) is an achievement.
#4-Enjoying solving the puzzle is a satisfying and rewarding experience.
#5-All puzzles are not created equal but, in my experience, the positives outweigh the negatives by far.
My 2¢ for the record.
I could not finish this puzzle without resorting to red letters and looking things up. It was a research exercise. I therefore don't feel as if I actually "solved" it.
Again, that's also MY take. My issue is that some constructors disagree with us and have said so.
I will take my "out" and claim a victory, even though I had to look up a couple of things. My "out" being: put two names right next to each other or crossing is NOT FAIR and I get a mulligan and get to look up at least one. RUBE/ALEX I managed to suss w/o looking it up, but LOWE/LEED and HAHN/AVON/DONNA well I knew AVON. Anyway, I will award myself a FIR in 18 with one cheat in the SE. Took a while to dredge INSET out of the few remaining brain cells for 40D. BTW, CILIA are not hairs. 11 names, DNK 7, so a struggle there as already mentioned. Also DNK GAWP or ARRAY. A real Saturday tough CW, thanx RM&RG. Thanx Husker Gary for the fun and informative write-up.
I'll cavil at 38A and 51D.
A person who is terse is more likely choosing not to use words rather than not knowing the words.
A pair of skis, or even several pairs of skis, may well be a common sight at the oversized baggage area But, one ski is probably a lot less common (and quite annoying for the owner!) :-)
Thanks to Rafael and Rebecca for this Saturday workout! I hope you team up again. FAVs were INSET clue and SCARDY PANTS was fun, too. I had a 4-box FIW, including a WAG L in H-Gary's red box. I'm pretty happy with that considering I started with RAILS for 1A. I had a lot of straightening out to do....
I am not even close to being a solver in IM's league (Proof: I spent 1 hr. on today's puzzle.) but I completely agree with her 2:11 comments -- especially the "clever wordplay" part.
YP. It sounds like you are having a lovely trip!
Thanks to H-Gary for showing me what those 4 wrong boxes should have been! So happy I do not have to wait for tomorrow to see the answers.
Wiktionary defines 'cilia' as the plural of 'cilium'. It offers four definitions of 'cilium'. Two of those definitions use the word 'hairs' and a third uses the word 'eyelash'. Even the fourth, non-hair related, definition uses the adjective 'hairlike'.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cilium#English
Add me to the team of never looking anything up. If I can't figure it out, that's my problem. But I will not consider that I finished it correctly
I've been in over 36 different airports that I can recall, and I don't think I've ever seen an oversized luggage area. I carried golf clubs and they show up at the regular carousel. But I usually try to travel light.
Amen, sistah!
Interesting comments today.
It was researching a crossword puzzle clue and answer that first led me to C.C.'s site about 13 years ago. And there was the explanation, clearly explained in the blog writeup that day. CED, you must have went straight to the comments today. HG answered your question about Kale.
Crossword clues, answers and reader comments often pique my interest and cause me to query the internet, but it's after the fact. In the time since I retired, I have had more time to look things up and learn new things. Today, I learned about Manitoulin Island.
My issue is that one article leads to another, and then another, and at some point I have to quit linking to more articles and reading so I can get other things done.
Today it was a full day of lawn and garden work, followed by trips to a couple of stores for groceries. After dinner, I was exhausted and fell fast asleep for a few hours. Just a few hours ago I woke up and a bit later read all of the comments. Including my own.
I had written that DONNA Tartt was a gimme. But I was wondering why. I haven't read fiction in years, and I wondered why I was so certain of her name. So I searched and read some articles. "The Goldfinch" sounded familiar, but I'd never read the book. A few minutes ago, I realized it must be because I'd encountered her name in crossword puzzles.
So I did a site search of the Crossword Corner, and sure enough, we've had either her first name or last name, along with a reference to "The Goldfinch" in the clues six or eight times in the last 5 years.
The kicker?
The first time the LAT clued Donna Tartt in those puzzles was a crossword that I blogged. It was Friday, July 17, 2020 Nancy Stark & Will Nediger. I remarked that I had "No idea" and linked to an article in that review.
MYSTERY SOLVED! I'd researched it! No wonder it was a gimme. I may have been fuzzy about the book but I remembered her name. Here's the article from Pulitzer.Org .
BTW, in the comments that day, CanadianEh! and Ray O Sunshine mentioned that they were reading it, or had already read it.
I’m sure glad you know what a tuple is, Gary! Clueless here ๐ but thanks for the edification (and the review).
Talk about a brain twister…this puzzle had more inside-out clues than I’ve ever seen before. Sure made me take the obtuse view while trying to figure these out; I got totally hung up on the idea of HANDscanners…which wouldn’t fit no matter how I tried to bend the spelling ๐คฃ but PREMIERES and SCAREDYPANTS finally fired the V-8 can at me, and I was like “OH-kay, so this is how the Musa/Goldstein brains work!” and I shifted my mental focus, leading to the FIR, woohoo! Not bad at all for a Saturday (except for the usual pop-culture crap…).
====> Darren / L.A.
If you folks had read CE’s post carefully you would have known your criticisms were unjust.
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