Theme: "FOUR OF A KIND" - Each theme entry contains four words that share a same ending sound.
22. Expensive streaming ad error?: RICH TWITCH PITCH GLITCH.
36. Carrier for casino winnings?: BLACK JACK BACK PACK.
56. "Apparently, it's better not to dye your hair"?: THEY SAY STAY GRAY.
82. "Masala tea is getting so expensive," e.g.?: SKY HIGH CHAI SIGH.
96. Tie-dyed quilt?: DEAD HEAD BED SPREAD.
117. Shooting star?: QUITE BRIGHT NIGHT LIGHT.
I think this is Adam Landau's LA Times debut. Congrats, Adam!
It's been a while since we saw this type of full-on rhyming theme. A tough feat to pull off cleanly with fun clues.
Across:
1. Palindromic address: MADAM.
6. Around: ABOUT.
11. Taylor-Joy of "The Queen's Gambit": ANYA. She also voices Princess Peach in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie".
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15. Prelude to a kiss?: I DO.
18. Classic Camaros: IROCS.
19. Beatles drummer: RINGO. Sir Richard Starkey.
20. Appearance: MIEN.
21. Ghost calls: BOOS.
26. Northern Nevada city: ELKO.
27. Carded at a club, casually: ID'ED.
28. The Emerald Isle: EIRE.
29. Dwelling for una familia: LA CASA.
30. Knitter's medium: WOOL.
32. Oft-fried vegetable: OKRA.
33. Father: SIRE.
34. Edebiri of "The Bear": AYO. It means "Joy" in Yoruba.
44. Ballet studio support: BARRE.
46. Feels bad about: RUES.
47. LAX info: ETA.
48. Actor Astin: SEAN.
49. Streetwear designer Marc: ECKO. He wanted ECHO in the first place.
50. Ingredient amt.: TBSP.
51. Change beds?: RE-PLANT. Garden beds.
55. Guatemalan gold: ORO.
59. Playground retort: AM NOT.
61. Wander: TRAIPSE. Aimlessly.
62. Duplo maker: LEGO.
63. Rifts: SCHISMS.
65. Meadow: LEA.
66. Sault __ Marie: STE.
68. Digital art hosted on a blockchain: Abbr.: NFT. Non-Fungible Token.
70. 84-Down edge: RIM. 84. Basketball target: HOOP.
71. Attracted by: DRAWN TO.
75. Lhasa __: APSO.
77. Albuquerque minor leaguer: ISOTOPE. Learning moment for me.
81. Like some wine barrels: OAKEN.
86. Mario Kart avatar: MII.
87. Most sore: ACHIEST. I got jabbed five times the past 3 weeks. The first was the worst, the
spot got swollen immediately. The infusion nurse then took a mulligan.
That spot remained purple for over 2 weeks.
89. "I heard you! Enough!": OK OK.
90. Plot measure: ACRE.
91. "¿Cómo __ usted?": ESTA.
93. Solo's son: REN.
94. One who walks the walk: DOER.
95. Slightly off: ASKEW.
102. Tagging symbols: ATS.
103. Cones' counterparts: RODS.
104. Travel option: RAIL.
105. Fall pile component: LEAF. Just had some rain. Most of the pretty leaves in our neighborhood are gone.
107. Charcuterie meat: SALAMI.
110. Bad habit: VICE.
111. Big __: Red Sox nickname: PAPI. He was just David Ortiz when he was a Twin.
114. Corleone played by Marlon Brando: VITO.
121. Liberate: FREE.
122. Hunger (for): LONG.
123. Abated: EASED.
124. Fantasy Football domain: YAHOO. I like this new clue angle.
125. Caribbean vacation souvenir?: TAN. Ha.
126. Manchego sources: EWES. From Wikipedia: It's a cheese made
in the La Mancha region of Spain from the milk of sheep of the Manchega
breed. It is aged between 60 days and 2 years.
127. Takes in a text: READS.
128. __ nous: ENTRE.
Down:
1. Bog down: MIRE.
2. Pomegranate seed: ARIL. I always love arils on all the Thanksgiving dishes.
3. Waterfront laborer: DOCKWORKER.
4. "Gesundheit" prompt: ACHOO.
5. Colorado hrs.: MST.
6. Lacking precipitation: ARID.
7. More than a nibble: BITE.
8. Like most recorded music from the 1990s: ON CD.
9. "Hate it!": UGH.
10. Midwest capital: TOPEKA.
11. California Zephyr operator: AMTRAK. Scenic.
12. "Love it!": NICE.
13. Slangy assent: YEH.
14. Like St. Paul's Cathedral: ANGLICAN.
15. Itty-bitty bit: IOTA.
16. Ob-gyns and ENTs: DOCS.
17. Org. concerned with employee well-being: OSHA.
21. Curl targets: BICEPS. Someday Splynter will show his.
23. Estate document: WILL.
24. Texter's qualifier: IIRC.
25. Morning songbird: LARK.
31. U.K. honor for Naomie Harris: OBE. Order of the British Empire. She's been in a few Bond movies.
32. 60-Down, minus the champagne, for short: OJS. 60. Bottomless brunch drinks: MIMOSAS.
33. Skewered Thai dishes: SATAYS.
34. Help a bad actor: ABET.
35. Luxury boat: YACHT.
37. "We have the meats" chain: ARBY'S.
38. Swears: CUSSES.
39. Didn't throw away: KEPT.
40. Lugosi of "Dracula": BELA.
41. Forever and a day: AEONS.
42. Ricochet, in billiards: CAROM.
43. Nautical speed units: KNOTS.
45. Majestic pronoun: ROYAL WE.
50. Knock softly on: TAP AT.
51. Deli bread: RYE.
52. Festive beverage: EGGNOG.
53. Undergrad lecturer: PROF. 113. 53-Down degs.: PHDS.
54. Surfing site for the 2024 Olympics: TAHITI. It's part of France. French Polynesia.
57. Toyota minivan: SIENNA.
58. First Hebrew letters: ALEPHS.
64. [I'm a frog]: CROAK.
67. "Ariel" voice actor Diggs: TAYE. He made his debut in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back".
69. Heart: TICKER.
71. Like the Capitol building: DOMED.
72. Confident poker action: RAISE.
73. Curly-tailed guard dog: AKITA.
74. Irish-themed casino on the Vegas Strip: O'SHEA'S.
76. Heed the theater warning bell: SIT.
78. "Jersey __": MTV reality show: SHORE.
79. Stir up conflict: PICK A FIGHT. Great fill.
80. Everglades wader: EGRET.
83. Granola bar brand: KIND.
85. Chops down: HEWS.
88. Trustworthy: CREDIBLE.
92. Around $8 million, for the Super Bowl: AD RATE. Imagine the money Budweiser has spent on Super Bowl ads.
94. ISP option: DSL.
95. Gator follower: ADE.
97. Where the heart is, proverbially: HOME. Our home is the only home I've lived in the US.
98. Myers-__ personality tests: BRIGGS.
99. A pop: EACH.
100. Keto adherent, perhaps: DIETER. Both Bill and Margaret were on Keto for a while. Then Margaret's blood sugar dropped too low.
101. Landed: ALIT.
106. For the birds?: AVIAN.
107. Room meas.: SQ FT.
108. Vibe: AURA.
109. Bank claim: LIEN.
110. Bygone video app: VINE.
111. Leaning tower locale: PISA.
112. Like good balsamic vinegar: AGED.
115. Asgardian Avenger: THOR.
116. Plains people: OTOE.
118. Excel line: ROW.
119. Scot's "I'd rather not": NAE.
120. Soap-making chemical: LYE.
C.C.
10 comments:
Besides the weird clue
for “kind” I didn’t have too much trouble with this fun puzzle.
FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
Some of the themers were real stretches, but the multi-rhymes were impressive. Enjoyed your debut, Adam. Thanx for recapping it all, C.C.
FIR, but circa->ABOUT, oh ok->OK OK, han->REN, cups->RODS, deed->WILL, and imho->IIRC.
Eastern Kentucky is very proud of its own Jean Thomas, AKA The TRAIPSin' Woman. Here's a PBS tribute to her.
With AMTRAK and RAIL, I think we have a new-new choo-choo YAHOO doing the clueing today.
DOCKWORKER, because longshoreman was too long and stevedore was too short.
I traded up from DSL to cable internet many years ago. This month I fired cable and hired fiber (fibre for C-Eh!) Much better performance at 2/3 the cost.
I don't remember the VINE app, but I do remember Banyon Vines. IT loved it, users hated it.
Myers-BRIGGS received undeserved credibility back in the day. It was a fun exercise, based on the human instinct to pigeonhole people. (The old joke goes "there are two types of people: those who categorize people, and those who do not.") But the inventors were not educated in the field, and the process has been panned by many experts.
Thanks to Adam for the fun Sunday workout. Congratulations on your debut. Hope you come back often. And thanks to CC for the interesting review. Sorry to read about the difficulties you had with your infusions, especially the first one.
After faltering on yesterday’s puzzle it was nice to get back in the win column with today’s very enjoyable solve. Not much floundering on this one, a pretty much top to bottom FIR in 32:16. The top spanner gave away the theme and that definitely helped fill some unknowns, AYO, ECKO, TAYE, BRIGGS, ISOTOPE (odd name for a team, and I haven’t LIU yet to see how that originated), VINE, and of course the ever popular digital art, NFT. I knew OBE but not the honoree. Last fill was a WAG at EWES and I wrongly thought Manchego must be WOOL. Thanks Adam for your puzzle, congrats on your LAT debut, impressive that it’s on a Sunday! C.C. thanks for explaining it all, hope they are all done with the jabs!
FIW. Way too many proper names, many of them obscure. More than one social media/internet abbreviation is more than one too many. Not a fan of “referential” clues (traipsing off to another part of the puzzle to find a related clue---maybe tolerable for a printed puzzle, no fun on-line).
And maybe a future constructor/editor pair can strive to have ELKO and NATICK cross. And did I mention the obscure proper names? OKOK already.
FIR. Except for the plethora of proper names, this was a fun Sunday challenge. There were a few clues that I thought were a bit of a stretch, but nothing too severe.
I got the gist of the theme very early on and that helped a lot.
So overall a quite enjoyable puzzle.
Took 16:11 today to say g'day.
I didn't know today's actress (OBE winner Naomie Harris) or the streetwear designer (Ecko), but I knew today's Spanish (la casa). I had "curses" before "cusses."
Musings
-A fun, helpful gimmick where I pretty easily earned a “got ‘er done”
-Unknown, but no matter: NFT, MII
-The Omaha Storm Chasers (Royals) play the Albuquerque Isotopes (Rockies) during the summer
-DOER: Candidates bill themselves as one of these and then bureaucracies hit them
-Every LEAF from my neighbor’s dying ash tree has fallen and none of ours have started
-A old George Carling line: “Hundreds of longshoremen walked off the docks today. Rescue operations continue around the clock.”
-MST covers about 25% of America’s land mass but has less than 7% of its population
-NICE as fill is pretty straightforward but not necessarily when Nice is in the clue…
-Joann is on a “clean out the basement” binge. She is now RUING how much stuff she has KEPT
-Somehow my daughter got the idea I like EGGNOG which I do not. She still brings it every Christmas to surprise me.
-My house is worth about $1.77/SQ. IN.
-Granddaughter’s new job involves research into the prospect of expanding the use of nuclear energy. The company is flying her out to Alamogordo, NM where the ISOTOPE U235 was put to destructive use in WWII
A nice walk in the park to start my Sunday. After seeing the pattern of the first themer, it was easy to drop in random letters once a small toehold was gained in the subsequent ones.
That, in turn, provided a head start on the related perps.
Overall, an enjoyable puzzle.
Well, this was fun. Admirable effort getting all those rhymes in.
I’ve been to Sault Ste Marie when I visited wonderful Mackinac Island. Many years ago my sister had a Lhasa APSO that I called the mop.
I encountered many unknown names like ANYA, AYO, ECKO, ISOTOPE, PAPI, TAYE and NFT and IIRC ( I had first entered IMHO). But there were enough perps to allow me to FIR.
Thank you CC for that recap.
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