Good Morning, Cruciverbalists, Malodorous Manatee here with the recap of a Friday puzzle by Wayne Bergman, an LAT, NYT and WSJ veteran constructor. Today, Wayne takes a dive down the rabbit hole that is automatic spelling correction on our electronic devices. To do this, he takes the names of four well-known car makes/models and imagines how spell check might alter them in order to "make sense" - at least according to the spell checker's view of the world. The use of car makes/models presents an opportunity for an amusing double entendre focused on AUTO which, today bounces back and forth between automatic and automobile.
The reveal is quite straightforward . . .
61 Across: Texting feature that sometimes goes awry, and what was used on 17-, 28-, and 46-Across?: AUTO CORRECT. In this instance, as is too often the case, it's AUTO INCORRECT as the names of the automobile manufacturers have become improperly altered.
. . . and the gimmick is employed at these four places:
17 Across: Antelope who really loves bubble gum?: CHEWY IMPALA. An impala is a medium-sized antelope found in eastern and southern Africa.
 |
| '59 Chevy Impala |
Alternatively,
28 Across: Expert on the hunt for the perfect eating utensil?: FORK EXPLORER.
46 Across: One who organizes hecklers at a comedy club?: JEER WRANGLER. Round 'em up.
 |
| Jeep Wrangler |
Here is how everything appears in the grid:
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. . . . and here are the rest of the clues and answers:
Across:
1. Startle: ALARM. Used, here, as a verb. As in "That really startled me!"
6. Get straight: ALIGN. A clue to be taken quite literally (not, for example, as "get straight" is used in the Paul Revere and the Raiders' song).
11. Place for de-stressing: SPA. A wordplay riff on distressing.
14. Brown hue: COCOA.
15. Antler points: TINES. As in Fork Explorer?
16. Silken trap: WEB.
16. Silken trap: WEB.
19. Winter hazard: ICE. Also, a name in the news.
20. Sun-Maid morsel: RAISIN. Sun-Maid is a play on words (sun made) that we learned early on (although most of us would have preferred finding a Hostess cupcake rather than RAISINs in our lunch bags).
21. "General Hospital" network: ABC. General Hospital is an American daytime television soap opera which has been broadcast on ABC TV since April 1, 1963.
22. Quiet summons: PSST. Frequently heard in our puzzles.
23. Crumb carrier: ANT. Why be satisfied with a few crumbs?
24. Old Pontiac: GTO. Would auto correct change this to the Pontiac GOT?
26. "Wonderwall" band: OASIS. Five letters - three vowels, two esses. A constructor's friend often clued with references to the desert.
26. "Wonderwall" band: OASIS. Five letters - three vowels, two esses. A constructor's friend often clued with references to the desert.
32. Personal pronoun: SHE.
34. Magic, on ESPN crawls: ORL. The ORLando, Florida NBA team.
34. Magic, on ESPN crawls: ORL. The ORLando, Florida NBA team.
35. Spanish title: SENORA.
36. Walks like a hippo: PLODS. What do you do with a hippo with three balls? Walk him and pitch to the rhino.
38. Hawks, on ESPN crawls: ATL. The ATLanta, Georgia NBA team.
40. Put off: DELAY. One television outlet had to DELAY televising the 'World Origami Championships' but it's currently available on paperview.
41. Ineffective shepherd of rhyme: BO PEEP.
43. Alley-__: OOP. A basketball play and an old cartoon strip.
45. Overhead trains: ELS. Chicago is famous for its ELevated TrainS.
49. Quartet voice: TENOR. Bass, tenor and alto appear so often in our puzzles that it might be helpful to take a look at the overlapping ranges:
50. Coltrane's horn: SAX. John Coltrane. Would that be a TENOR SAX?
51. Big primate: APE. What do APEs use to fix things? Gorilla Glue.
54. "Ragnarok" hero: THOR. Ragnarok is a Norse myth that depicts the cataclysmic destruction of the gods and the world, followed by a new age of rebirth. The name was appropriated for a 2022 motion picture.
56. Family room: DEN. Everyone knows Las Vegas is Sin City but are you familiar with Den City? Mass over volume.
58. Metaphor for fitting items into a tight space: TETRIS. This solver used to play until his wrist began to hurt severely. Then he took a couple of aspirin and kept on playing.
60. Greet warmly: HUG.
63. In the past: AGO.
64. Sound during allergy season: ACHOO.
63. In the past: AGO.
64. Sound during allergy season: ACHOO.
Men In Tights - 1993
65. Name on some compact trucks: TONKA. Very compact (toy) trucks.
66. Unionize?: WED. Cute, or cutesy, cluing.
66. Unionize?: WED. Cute, or cutesy, cluing.
67. Bob Marley's "Get Up, __ Up": STAND.
68. Hotel bookings: STAYS.
Down:
1. West African capital: ACCRA. Often visited in our puzzles.
2. "Mean Girls" star: LOHAN. Lindsay. With four Golden Raspberry Awards and seven "official" arrests.
3. Stick the landing, so to speak: ACE IT. Meh. ACE IT is usually reserved for exams in our puzzles . . . but NAIL IT wouldn't fit.
4. Tiffs: ROWS. Tiffs is only one of several possible definitions of ROWS.
5. Request to be excused: MAY I GO.
6. Scratch removal device?: ATM. Scratch, in this case, is used as slang for money.
7. "New Love" singer Dua __: LIPA. A frequent visitor.
8. Ready for shipping: IN A BOX. Anybody remember the SNL bit with Justin Timberlake?
9. Some oral meds: GEL CAPS. Abbreviated clue . . .
10. Intel org.: NSA. Abbreviated clue . . .
11. Snack cake with a swirl: SWISS ROLL.
12. Bench press targets, for short: PECS. PECtoral muscleS.
13. Criminally aid: ABET. There is an annual day devoted to puns. Abet and Aid Punsters Day
18. Foreword: INTRO. Not an abbreviated clue but I guess INTRO is now an accepted form of the word INTROduction.
22. First of a kind: PIONEER.
25. Oft-pickled pod: OKRA. I have a friend who always baits his hooks with OKRA when fly fishing . . . He's really into podcasting!
27. Arctic coaster: SLED.
28. Tennis great Roger: FEDERER.
29. Pop icon John: ELTON. Covered, here, by Country Gazette (Byron Berline, Roger Bush, and Alan Munde):
30. Notable stretches: ERAS.
31. Bright line: RAY. A little RAY of sunshine, a little bit of soul (The Turtles).
32. Blackthorn fruit: SLOE. As in a SLOE gin fizz.
33. Fervently wish: HOPE TO GOD.
Animal House - 1978
36. Brown bag sando: PBJ. Sando = Sandwich PBJ = Peanut Butter and Jelly
37. Stitched: SEWN.
39. Records: LOGS.
39. Records: LOGS.
42. Result of multiplying: PRODUCT.
44. "Theory of Forms" philosopher: PLATO. This solver was not familiar with the title but his limited knowledge of philosophers actually made the answer easier to perp. LOCKE didn't work out and Aristotle wouldn't fit.
47. Franklin who received honorary degrees from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale: ARETHA. This solver thought, initially, that Franklin was being used as a first name. The next thought was Benjamin.
The Blues Brothers - 1980
48. Wields, as influence: EXERTS.
51. Taylor Swift concert venue: ARENA. Anagrams to, or when read backwards, AN ERA. Apropos.
52. Hard to please: PICKY.
53. "¿Cómo __?": ESTAS. S'up?
54. Become friendlier: THAW. As in detente.
55. King-size: HUGE.
54. Become friendlier: THAW. As in detente.
55. King-size: HUGE.
57. Morning's end: NOON.
59. Home run pace: TROT.
59. Home run pace: TROT.
61. Some Energizers: AAS. Energizer, capitalized, is a brand name of batteries.
62. Atlantic food fish: COD. My girlfriend tried giving me some flatfish last night instead of COD! Know your plaice woman!
. . . and on that note
____________________________________________
38 comments:
Believe it or not,
it took the reveal to make me aware of what was going on. And I thought it very clever how the constructor used my old nemesis (perhaps the nemesis of all of us) for the reveal: “autocorrect.”
Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
AUTO, not OTTO. D-o noticed the mangled models -- no reveal required. Oh, we got one anyway. Question for Mal-Man: When is "startle" not a verb? Tried SWISSWIRL (didn't notice it was missing an S), but it had to be ROLL. DEfer before DELAY. Those fox passes were all corrected. The coupe de grass was my final fill -- HOPE TO Get. AGe and WEt looked fine, so I never looked at the across clues. Bzzzzzzt. Dang hubris. Thanx, Wayne and Mal-Man. (Loved your "den city" and "podcasting.")
FIR, but arm->ATM, and rooms->STAYS.
It's probably not correct to call OASIS a one-hit wonder, but their only top ten hit was today's fill tune. When that one came out I was too busy to listen to any music, because I was trying to keep GTE Mobilenet (now part of Verizon) from going tango uniform on January 1, 2000. You're welcome.
The only thing I know about TETRIS is that it's some kind of computer game. My ignorance extended to Ragnarok, SWISS ROLL, and ACCRA. Will I remember them next time? As the Magic 8 Ball would say, "Don't count on it."
Thanks to Wayne for the fun Friday challenge. My favorite was the clue for TONKA. And thanks to our Mal Man for another punny review.
Took 6:48 today to get straight.
The last to fall for me was the African capital (Accra) crossing "cocoa," which I've never seen used as a color/hue. I did ok with the Spanish lessons (estas and senora).
I looked it up: Thor Ragnarok was released in 2017. 2022 seemed too recent.
SubG, another WITP?
FIR. Lots of proper names in today's presentation, but the perps were kind. For some reason it took me a while to get a foothold in the NW.
The SW was especially stubborn, making me wonder if I might get a DNF today. But I persevered and soldiered through.
I got the theme early on with chewy impala, and that helped a great deal with the solve.
Overall an enjoyable puzzle.
Good Morning:
The theme was easy to figure out, but the reveal was unexpected but very logical. I had Mocha before perps forced Cocoa to appear and, inexplicably, Miss Lipa, a frequent visitor, was Lupa for a while. Swiss Roll needed perps as did Tetris, a name I know only from cws. Otherwise, the solve was smooth and quick for a Friday.
Thanks, Wayne, and thanks, MalMan, for the spot-on explication of the theme and the overall grid. As usual, the punny humor was top notch.
Have a great day.
Enjoyable puzzle, fun theme which I’d didn’t get until the reveal and had á good laugh.
Very few unknowns like OASIS, TETRIS, and SWISS ROLL, perps took care of them. ATM was my last fill. Now that I think about it, quite clever.
It’s strange that á run would be á TROT.
I had the pleasure to attend á Coltrane musical set at á tiny nightclub in DC way back in the 60s.
Thank you MM for the neat review. Cute play on fish names. LOL
Once I realized that CHEWY didn’t hafta be CHEvY I knew FORK not FOrD was OK and completed the answer.
The upper mid was my problem. Had the TM so the first letter hadda be A. (Ah yes… “Scratch” one of the many names for money). Didn’t know TINES and had CIA . Eventually able to ALIGN the answers for a FIR
1970 Elliot Gould movie “Getting Straight” The classic anthem to college protest movements.
Little Boy Blue was asleep on the job but wrong answer. TENOR next to SAX. Liked “unionize” for WED
“stick the landing?” Huh?
Ancient Greek clay … PLATO
Shirley temple as “Heidi” …SWISS ROLL
Repair a motor vehicle: AUTOCORRECT
So far not bad this week so bet tomorrow’s gonna be a bear.
I always enjoy a puzzle where you need to reveal the reveal first to reveal the themers, (if that makes sense...)
Anywho, I muddled thru...
speaking of sex...
Musings
-I lived teh theem a lto!
-RAISINS are one of those “love ‘em or hate ‘em” snacks. I’m in the former camp.
-A GTO was call a goat when I was growing up
-Early yesterday lightning had chased golfers off the course where we were headed so we had to DELAY going. 3” of rain followed so we wound up not going.
-My voice progression by grade: 8th - Soprano, 9th – High TENOR, 10th – Lead, 11th – Baritone, 12th – Bass
-Den city pun? The other puns were very nice but I'm a physics teacher!
-HUG? You’d better read the room first.
-TONKA trucks were first made in the year of birth (1946) in Minnesota and were steel and indestructible. Now they are mostly plastic and made in China.
-A light kit we got this week from Amazon was wrong. I put it back IN A BOX that it came in (yeah, I know you should never use a preposition to end a sentence in) :-). I got a code on my phone from Amazon and it took 15 seconds to return it at Staples.
-Instead of a PBJ yesterday we had a BLT using the first tomato from our garden.
-The only ARENAS we have been to for concerts featured PP&M and John Denver
-Nice job, MM!
Addendum
-Verizon has gone to $90/month for our two phones. I see Consumer Cellular and Mint Mobile will do our two phones for $30. Any reason not to switch or are there other alternatives?
We've had Consumer Cellular for the past few years. No complaints, and their customer service is stellar.
Fabulous Friday. Thanks for the fun, Wayne and MalMan. (Isn’t it only 3 car makes/models?).
I FIRed in good time and saw the AUTOCORRECT theme.
Hand up for Arm before ATM, and Defer before DELAY.
Mega changed to HUGE.
I wanted Nail IT but ACE IT fit the spot.
Perps were friendly for unknowns, but like KS, I found the SW corner stubborn.
We tend to think of hippos as HUGE and unwieldy, but PLODS is misleading. Hippos can run faster than a human (up to 30 mph apparently), and are not to be underestimated. On our safari in Kenya, we saw a muddy water slide area not far from our glamping cottage, where the hippos had slid down the steep bank at dawn to return to the river after their night of grazing on land.
Wishing you all a great day.
I'm not sure about that $30, though. We've got a pretty basic plan and it runs $54/month for two phones.
Right you are - three. Thanks.
DNF. Done in a the north and southwest corners. Lots of good stuff in the puzzle, but I was just not on the constructors frequency this morning. MM...the manatee at the Lakehurst mooring mast cracked me up! Going back now to listen to the tunes.
OTTO-CAR-WRECK, aka, AUTO CORRECT. Not on my phone or desktop. Google and Microsoft let me know if I spelled it wrong or left off a comma but I don't want their words if they are different. The puzzle was easier than the usual Friday offering. I didn't notice the car models because I finished it while watching the first set of the Alcaraz-Fritz tennis match at Wimbledon.
I DNK OASIS, STAND Up, TETRIS, or PLATO but they were easy fills after a couple of letters.
DUA Lipa and Rita ORA have taken the place of Mel OTT and Bobby ORR in crosswordland.
LOHAN- a few years back, we were in NYC staying at the Westin-Union Square for a wedding. Lohan and some guy she picked up at a bar happened to get into a squabble a few doors down from our room. We didn't hear a thing, but you can read all about it. Another he said-she said story.
https://www.businessinsider.com/report-lindsay-lohan-in-altercation-with-congressional-aide-2012-9
I don’t worry much about speedy completion, but this must have been my fastest Friday ever.
The puzzle gimmick was clear-cut, but I thought the theme entries were too contrived, and “auto-incorrect” would have been a more suitable unifier. (I see MalMan beat me to that conclusion.)
I liked two puns elsewhere – the scratch removing ATM, and the TONKA ENTRY. Also was glad to see MAY I instead of can I
Thanks for the vocal range chart, MalMan. My range, unlike that of most singers, has moved upward instead of downward over the years. I wasn’t always a tenor, but now I can hit G4 full-voice, which wasn’t true as recently as 15 years ago. I also can hit G2, but not with my former oomph. My progression, HG: Grade 4, alto; Grade 8, tenor; Grade 10, bass; Grade 11, baritone; Grade 12 baritone-forced-to-sing-tenor.
We still had a land line until last month. ATT decided to raise the price to $53/month. We never used it. I am getting a cheapie cell phone (probably Mint Mobile or Tello ) to keep as a house phone. I use Google Voice to call from my computer.
A clever and fun puzzle. A tad easy for a Friday but that seems to be the norm now.
I always tell my auto correct that it was
not “DUCK”
Every winter our little town would erect a snow fence across main street at the dam over the millpond. Rather than repaint the entire fence, Maintenance would just modify the offensive words. By spring every other word on the fence was "truck."
Fun Friday puzzle, many thanks, Wayne. And your commentary is always a pleasure too, so thanks for that also, MalMan.
Well that SPA in the puzzle felt like a bit of an OASIS today, where we had a chance to order some COCOA and some RAISIN muffins, and a delicious SWISS ROLL. We also got to listen to some lovely music on the radio, including neat songs by ELTON John and ARETHA Franklin. There was also another lovely TENOR, but I don't remember his name. By NOON it was time for us to go, but after such a pleasant morning, we gave everyone a HUG before we left the spa.
Have a lovely rest of the day, everyone!
FIW. DUCK!
H-Gary@9:53. You might double-check how long those prices last. The Mint commercials I hear sound like that price is only for the first 3 months then you go to regular pricing.
Ahhh, that sounds so lovely, Misty!
Thanks to Wayne for his clever AUTO/vehicle theme! This might be the first time I was not tricked by thinking John was a first name. I'm finally onto that one.
Thanks to Mal-Man for the wonderful tour! I loved the Den City joke and all the good tunes. IIRC, that was the last Calvin & Hobbs comic. It was an optimistic exit!
You know, I had forgotten about that being the final Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip but you, sumdaze, are absolutely correct about that. Thanks for reminding us all.
I liked this puzzle, MM's write-up, and all your comments.
Puzzling thoughts:
My partner in grime came through again! Good job, MM
The puzzle by Wayne was clever enough but not too difficult (for a Friday - but what does that even mean, anymore?)
Favorite pun: I have a friend who always baits his hooks with OKRA when fly fishing . . . He's really into podcasting!
Been trying to spoonerize the last word of your pun and come up with something that relates to codpasting ...
I've always had a rather deep voice, but except for being assigned alto in grade school, I don't know what my range is. I do remember that Daddy Sang Bass.
Oh! Oh! I just read that in 1993, Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov snuck a Game Boy aboard the Mir space station and played TETRIS during his stay. Who gnu?
Great song.
Even the AI generators are having a difficult time with codfish scrapbooking.
Being a “car-guy”, I grokked the theme hook straightaway; very amusing wordplay, compliments of Mssr. Bergman! Like @KS, I’d bogged down a bit in the NW but eventually got my brain in the proper gear and raced to a FIR with no gripes — even the A&E names weren’t obscure today, so thank you, Wayne 🤙🏽😎
Manatee, you were in such fine form today — a stellar collection of gags and clips to augment the recap! “Oh the Huge Manatee!” killed me (too bad your name isn’t “Hugh”…), along with the podcast pun; and yes, I do remember the SNL skit with The Box 🤣 (def a NSFW vid!). I’ve saved that Captain’s Log meme to pass on to a couple of Trekkie acquaintances (altho I’m betting they’ve seen it already) and also enjoyed hearing Bob Marley’s signature anthem “Get Up, STAND Up” — it could become revived for current events… so keep ‘em comin’, MalMan!
And hip-hop hooray for good ol’ AUTOCORRupT…
====> Darren / L.A.
Darren, you are correct that SNL bit was NSFLATCC!
Lol
Sumdaze, thank you for your incredibly kind comment. Made me happy!
There’s always YouTube😎
====> D.
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