Friday, July 25, 2025, Dan Schoenholz

Good Morning, Cruciverbalists.  Malodorous Manatee here with the recap of a Friday puzzle by Dan Schoenholz who's puzzles have previously appeared in the LAT and NYT.  Today, at five places in the puzzle (I hope that the count is correct this time 😁) Dan conjures up homophones of common words by splitting the word into two parts.  The result each time is a punny, two-word answer to the themed clue.  All of these answers end with the sound of "ease".  Cleverly, the sound is created four different ways - EASE, IES, EES, IES (again) and EAS.  If, e.g., EZE could had been employed in lieu of the second IES then the feat would have been, perhaps, even more remarkable.

The gimmick is applied at:

17 Across:  Baseball player who flirts with joining the Kansas City squad?: ROYAL TEASE.  From ROYALTIES.

The Baseball Team

31 Across:  Release vital agricultural workers?: FREE BEES.  From FREEBIES.  Everybody loves free stuff.

37 Across:  Sound of a job seeker who ran hard to get to an appointment on time?: INTERVIEW WHEEZE.  From INTERVIEWEES.

46 Across:  Precaution for absent-minded drivers?: TWIN KEYS.  From TWINKIES.  Have you ever asked yourself "Where did I put my keys"?  While holding them in your hand?

64 Across:  Coast Guard's desire after a hurricane warning?: VACANT SEAS.  From VACANCIES.  Stay in port.

The completed grid looks like this:

. . . the the rest of the clues/answers:

Across:

1. Quarrel: SPAT.  Alternative clue:  Hocked a loogie.

5. Hosting, briefly: M C ING.  Rarely have I heard emcee employed as a gerund.

10. "Love & Basketball" actor Omar: EPPS.  A frequent visitor.

14. Electrolyte components: IONS.

15. Cartoon hunter Fudd: ELMER.

16. Dab: BLOT.   A Little BLOT' ll do Ya?  Meh.

19. __ carotene: BETA.  BETA carotene is a plant pigment that can be converted into vitamin A and has antioxidant properties.

20. Form: SHAPE.  What tree has fruits of all shapes and sizes?  The geometree.

21. Fill in for: ACT AS.

23. Three-in-one vaccine, familiarly: DPT.

24. Laughfest: RIOT.  A real hoot!

26. Cheap smoke: STOGIE.  A not-very-good cigar.  Presumably from stoga + ie, the former of which is derived from Conestoga, Pennsylvania.  The Conestoga Cigar Company (1880s) was one of the first Pennsylvanian cigar factories.

28. Legal action: APPEAL.  My buddy was trying to explain the APPEAL of invisible ink...but I just didn't see it.

33. Meadow: LEA.  Frequently visited.

34. French greeting: ALLO.  Sort of rhymes with Bardot.

Brigitte

36. [Bam!]: POW.

43. Hundred Acre Wood resident: ROO.   An A. A. Milne / Winnie The Pooh reference.  See also 2 Down.

44. Mascara site: LASH.

45. Unagi roll fish: EEL.  A frequent bite to eat.

49. Comes to: AWAKES.

52. Sneak: WEASEL. A WEASEL walks into a bar.  The bartender says “Wow, I’ve never served a weasel before. What can I get you?”  “Pop,” goes the weasel.

53. Attempt: STAB.  Idiomatic.

54. "To __ is human ... ": ERR.  . . . and our puzzles often prove us to be human.

55. Majestic: REGAL.

58. Iranian language: FARSI.

62. Suggestions, for short: RECS. RECommendationS

66. German chancellor who presided over reunification: KOHL.  Helmut KOHL served as chancellor from 1982 to 1998.

67. Kagan of the Supreme Court: ELENA.  A frequent visitor.

68. Bring in: EARN.

69. Vodka brand in blue bottles: SKYY.

70. Mean-spirited: NASTY.

71. Narrow opening: SLIT.

Down:

1. Old-fashioned letter opener: SIRS.  Dear SIRS:  . . .

2. Hundred Acre Wood resident: POOH.  See also 43 Across.

3. Actress Taylor-Joy: ANYA.  Not a name familiar to this solver.  Thanks, perps.

4. Airport express lane, briefly: TSA PRE.

5. With 56-Down, annual NYC fashion event: MET. and 56. See 5-Down: GALA.  The Met Gala, formally called the Costume Institute Benefit, is the annual haute couture fundraising festival held for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in Manhattan. The Met Gala is popularly regarded as the world's most prestigious and glamorous fashion event.

6. Sports stud?: CLEAT  One definition of CLEAT is "a projecting piece of metal or hard rubber attached to the underside of a shoe to provide traction".   Stud seems to be just a bit of a stretch.

7. Apple on a desk: IMAC.  These days, a clue that is a bit ambiguous.

8. Tree house?: NEST.  A "house" found in a tree.

Jackie, Shadow, Gizmo and Sunny's House.

9. Laundry challenge: GREASE.

10. Recede: EBB.

11. Promising time in public broadcasting?: PLEDGE WEEK.  Time to make a financial promise.  It seems as if it's perpetually PLEDGE WEEK.

12. Marie Callender's purchase: POTPIE.

13. Mexico's 31: STATES.  Would have expected estados.

18. Kylo Ren's mother: LEIA.  A Star Wars reference.

22. NBA superstar Curry: STEPH.  Of the Golden State Warriors basketball team.

25. Patron saint of Norway: OLAV.  This solver often forgets which is OLAV and which is OLAF.

OLAV

OLAF

27. Bassoon kin: OBOE.  A musical instrument frequently heard in our puzzles.

28. Comedian Wong: ALI.  How do I clue thee?  Let me count the ways.  Muhammad, Laila, Mahershala, Wong, MacGraw, Baba  . . .

29. Author: PEN.  Used as a verb.  To write.

30. Male-dominated society: PATRIARCHY.   The longest word in this puzzle.

31. Cat-nippers?: FLEAS.  Cute play on words.  Fleas bite (nip) cats.

Sometimes The Cats Fight Back

32. Uses oars: ROWS.  A couple of Fridays ago ROWS was clued as fights.

35. Easter bloom: LILY.  Puns are blooming all over this write up....Like a cat fight between a dandelion and tiger LILY . . . Oops, a daisy.

 

38. So very long: EONS.  

39. Al of "Today": ROKER.  The weather reporter.

40. "Huh?": WHAT.  You can say that again!

41. Capital of Zimbabwe?: ZEE.  One of those clues.  Did it fool you?

42. Overhead trains: ELS. ELevated TrainS.

46. Shakes one's booty: TWERKS.

47. "Don't worry about us": WERE OK.  Or Not.

48. Nearing noon: ELEVEN.  This solver might have clued it differently.

The Grateful Dead

50. Float, as a scent: WAFT.

51. Belittles: ABASES.

53. Writer's angle: SLANT.  As in bias.  Anyone try to squeeze in ITALIC?

57. Nails: ACES.  As in the idiom "to nail it".

59. Authentic: REAL.

60. South Asian wrap: SARI.  SARI puns would be repetitious.

61. "__ that something?": ISN'T.

63. Sneaky: SLY.

65. Vote against: NAY.  We often have to choose between YEA and AYE for the pro votes but with the anti bloc it's EEZE - ier.

Well, it's now time to ease on down the road.  Have a great weekend, everyone!

__________________________________________________

Thursday, July 24, 2025, Katherine Baicker, Laura Dershewitz

Theme:  It's just your imagination.

Constructors Katherine Baicker and Laura Dershewitz have entertained us here before, together, separately, and with other co-constructors.  Today they make us stop and wonder whether it's all been real, or just our imagination.

The theme clues and answers, placed symmetrically in the grid, are:

20-Across. Spot where parallel lines appear to converge: VANISHING POINT.

33-Across. Sensation experienced after a long day of sewing: PHANTOM THREAD.  Seamstresses sometimes go home and still feel the sensation of a thread between their fingers.

42-Across. Erroneous result on a medical test: FALSE POSITIVE.

57-Across. Snide dismissal, and what can be said about 20-, 33-, and 42-Across?: THAT'S NOT A THING.  Current slang for “that's not real/true” or “that doesn't happen.”

In every case, we see or feel evidence of something that is not real.  But you know what is real?  We have 132 other mysteries to solve!  Here they come.

Across:

1. Move with a hop and a step: SKIP.

5. Circle dances: HORAS.  Not just a Jewish dance enjoyed at weddings and b'nai mitzvah celebrations, variants of the hora (called hora or oro) have folks holding hands and moving in circles in Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey, and elsewhere.

10. Tendril: WISP.  While a tendril is part of a climbing plant, and a wisp is any little thin mass, both words can be used to describe strands of hair that fall away from the main mass of hair on the head.  It's a thing.

Hayden Panettiere with straight wisps, and Chloe Sevigny with tendrils.

14. Office assistant: AIDE.

15. Maker of a Breakout hit: ATARI.

16. Poker buy-in: ANTE.

17. One past 12?: TEEN.

18. Name, in Latin: NOMEN.  From which we have the English nomenclature, the devising or choosing of names for things, especially in a science or other discipline.

19. Money mgrs.: CFOs.  Chief Financial Officers.

20. [Theme clue]

23. Green prefix: ECO.

24. Protected: SAFE.

25. Electric creature: EEL.

26. Knucklehead: OAF.

29. Yale student: ELI.  A nickname derived from Elihu Yale, the primary benefactor of  Yale University.

31. Vague threat: OR ELSE.

33. [Theme clue]

37. Root in tropical cuisine: TARO.

38. __ juice: MOO.  A cutesy way of saying "milk."

39. Backyard spot that's shovel-ready?: SHED.  It's ready to store your shovel.

42. [Theme clue]

47. Work together: TEAM UP.

49. "I don't trust stairs because they're always up to something," e.g.: PUN.  MalMan!  Have you used this one?

50. Number of fielders in slow-pitch softball: TEN.  Did Not Know.

51. Old tape dispenser?: VCR.  Video Cassette Recorder.

52. Animated pics: GIFs.  The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format developed by a team at CompuServe and released in 1987.  Usage of the format has declined, often being replaced with newer formats such as PNG for static images and MP4 for videos.

This GIF is a real Thriller.

55. "Eww!": ICK.

57. [Theme clue]

62. Home of the "American Gothic" house: IOWA.

American Gothic is a 1930 oil painting by Grant Wood.

63. Avis rival: ALAMO.  Car rental companies.

64. __ contendere: NOLO.  "Nolo contendere" is a Latin term meaning "I do not wish to contend" or "no contest."  In a legal context, it's a plea in a criminal case where the defendant doesn't admit guilt but accepts the consequences of a conviction.  It's often used when a defendant wants to avoid the implications of a guilty plea in potential future civil lawsuits.  Remember in 1973 when Vice President Spiro Agnew pleaded nolo contendere to a felony charge of tax evasion?  As part of the plea bargain, he resigned from office, was fined $10,000, and sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation. 

66. Average in math class?: MEAN.

67. Pipe alternative: CIGAR.

A little play on The Treachery of Images by René Magritte.

68. Picked, as a Scrabble tile: DREW.

69. Sherbet brand: EDY'S.  Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream makes Dreyer's brand frozen desserts for the Western US market, and Edy's brand for the Eastern and Midwestern US, so named to avoid confusion with Breyer's ice cream in those regions.  Nestlé acquired Dreyer's in 2007, and in 2020, Nestlé sold all its US ice cream businesses to Froneri, the global ice cream manufacturer that Nestlé co-owns with PAI Partners.  Big business!

70. Party throwers: HOSTS.

71. "You said it!": AMEN.

Down:

1. Didn't play: SAT.

2. Chicken __: KIEV.  Chicken Kiev is chicken fillet, pounded and rolled around garlic butter and parsley, coated with egg and bread crumbs, and then fried or baked.

3. "Eureka!" elicitor: IDEA.  "Eureka" (Ancient Greek for "I have found it") is an exclamation used to celebrate a discovery or invention. It is attributed to Archimedes, who stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose, whereupon he understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged.  He was so excited that he forgot to dress and ran naked in the streets yelling "Eureka!"

Archimedes has a revelation.

4. Pasta with angled ends: PENNE.

5. Longtime Harrison Ford role: HAN SOLO.

6. Texter's equivocation: OTOH.  On The Other Hand.

7. "Ghostbusters" actor Harold: RAMIS.

Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis

8. The Eras Tour venue: ARENA.  Taylor Swift's fans filled large arenas on her recent "Eras" tour.

9. Entertain, in a way: SING FOR.

10. Baylor University home: WACO.  Baylor University is a private Baptist university in Waco, Texas.  It was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas.

11. Dribbler that gets a batter on base, e.g.: INFIELD HIT.  An infield hit in baseball is when a batter hits the ball within the infield and safely reaches first base without the defense making an error that allows him to advance. It's typically a slow-rolling ground ball or a ball that is hit with enough speed to reach the infield but not the outfield, and the batter is able to beat the throw to first base. 

12. Cairn elements: STONES.  A cairn is a human-made pile of stones, typically used as a marker, a memorial, or a burial mound. 

13. Mortar's companion: PESTLE.

The pestle is gripped and used to grind items in the mortar.

21. "Rhyme Pays" rapper: ICE-T.  You may know him from his acting role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Tracy Marrow AKA Ice-T

22. Napoleon's father: PÈRE.  Père is French for "father."  It's not Napoleon's father's name.

26. Stop waffling: OPT.  Choose!  Decide!  Pick one!  

27. "Eureka!": AHA.  See explanation at 3-Down for Archimedes's "aha!" moment.

28. Like the galaxy from which 5-Down hails: FAR, FAR AWAY.  Harrison Ford played the character Han Solo in the Star Wars movies, which take place in a galaxy far, far away.

30. "Gotta do my thing!": I'M ME.

You do you.

32. All-Star side: EAST.  In the MLB All-Star Game, the National League represents the "East" side, facing the American League (AL).  In the traditional NBA All-Star Game format, the Eastern Conference All-Stars play against the Western Conference All-Stars.  

34. Linguist Chomsky: NOAM.

35. Blouse: TOP.

36. Stud alternative: HOOP.  Earring styles.

Hoop with dangle, regular hoop, stud.

40. Night before: EVE.

41. Cozy spot for 47-Down: DEN.

43. Hauls with effort: LUGS.

44. Ingredient in a Florentine dish: SPINACH.  Chicken Florentine, Pasta Florentine, Eggs Florentine ... apparently people in Florence, Italy, love spinach.

45. Beaus: SUITORS.

46. Yardstick division: INCH.

47. Period between homework and dinner, for some kids: TV TIME.

48. Made a comeback: ECHOED.

53. Shakespearean volume: FOLIO.

54. Antlered deer: STAGS.

56. Ish: KINDA.

58. Catches some rays: TANS.

59. Amo, amas, __: AMAT.  We had Greek earlier, so it's time for Latin:  "I love, you love, he/she/it loves."

60. Par for the course: NORM.

61. Delight: GLEE.

65. BYOB part: OWN.  Bring Your Own Beverage/Bottle/Booze/Beer.

Here's the grid:

Did you SKIP all the way to Finish It Right?

Was that a SOLO effort, or did you TEAM UP to solve the puzzle?

Or did you finally come close, but no CIGAR?

Let us know in the comments!

-- NaomiZ