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| EXERCISING OUR MINDS |
Good Morning, Cruciverbalists. Malodorous Manatee here with the recap of today's puzzle. That recap consists of but a single word - Oy! Okay, see y'all in a couple of weeks.
Alternatively, as Desi famously said to Lucy, "You've got some 'splainin to do". I shall try my best. Please bear with me as sorting this one out requires taking several distinct steps and describing those steps in prose seems, at the time of this writing, a bit daunting.
To suss out what is going on we have to go through various physical exercises (pull-ups, chin-ups, sit-ups, push-ups), cope with life's inevitable ups and downs, and then knit together fractured answers. Not satisfied with these challenges, today's puzzle-setters provide no unifier. That said, the ", literally" appended to the end of the themed clues did provided a sort of guideance. Also, we do get circles and the circles indicate the points at which we need to rearrange things. Let's take a look at the first pair of themed clues and answers:
7 Down. Lats-working exercise, literally: LLUP.
20 Across. Lift system that offers a mechanical advantage: ROPEANDPEY.
WTF would not be an inappropriate reaction. However, try this: First, read the answer to the Down clue from bottom to top. Literally, P U L L going/reading upwards. As a result, we get PULL as in PULL-UP which does answer the clue
Next, at the location of the circle, insert PULL into the answer for the crossing Across clue. Finally, at the end of the Down clue's answer (read upward that would be the top, in this case the second L) return to the Across answer, et voila, we get:
ROPE AND PULLEY - which is an appropriate answer to the Across clue
The next pair (numerically):
22 Down. Abs-working exercise, literally: TIS. . . . becomes SIT when read from the bottom to the top (as in sit-up, the answer to the clue)
27 Across. Puts everything on the line: RISKSALL.
This one was a bit different because both RISKS ALL and 'TIS could stand on their own whereas the others answers are, standing alone, nonsensical. Still, after taking the necessary steps, we end up with a perfectly reasonable solution to the across clue:
RISKS IT ALL
Continuing along these lines:
31 Down. Pecs-working exercise, literally: HSUP. . . . which becomes PUSH (push-up)
46 Across. Challenging HS class that covers Reconstruction and Prohibition: APISTORY.
Stitched together the result is: AP US HISTORY
Similarly:
44 Down. Biceps-working exercise, literally: NIHC. . . . becomes CHIN (chin-up)
57 Across. Summer forecast in the Southwest: SCORCGHEAT.
Stitch 'em together to get: SCORCHING HEAT
The completed grid looks like this:
. . . and after a well-earned rest from all that exercise we'll take a look at the rest of the clues and answers:
1. Concocts: BREWS.
6. "O Captain! My Captain!," for one: ELEGY. Walt Wh9tman's ELEGY for Abraham Lincoln.
11. Org. with Falcons and Ravens: NFL.
14. Navel type: OUTIE. We can go ahead and fill in the I and the E before we know if it will be an INNIE or and OUTIE.
15. Outdoor screen annoyance: GLARE. Not a reference to the screen on your window. The screen on your electronics (e.g. cellphone or laptop).
16. Part of IPA: ALE. Frequently imbibed here in the crossword world.
17. Collect: AMASS.
18. Busiest port in South Korea: BUSAN. A bit obscure for many solvers.
19. Chaps: MEN. Not a reference to Western Wear.
22. Schoolbook: TEXT. As in textbook.
23. Fantasize about: DREAM OF. Hmm, now just what was it that Major Nelson was fantasizing about?
24. Open the door for, say: SEE IN. Sometimes we get ASK IN or ASK UP as answers.
26. Cartoon frame: CEL.
30. The "Thunder" of Marvel's "Love and Thunder": THOR.
33. "Thank you," in Swahili: ASANTE. Also, a bit obscure.
35. "Excusez-__": MOI. leçon de français d'aujourd'hui
36. Clambake leftovers: ASHES. Shells was too long.
38. Smack: HIT.
39. Bit of witchcraft: SPELL.
41. "Everybody knows that!": DUH. Well, duh!
42. Like some patches: IRON ON. Versus sew-on.
45. Future atty.'s exam: LSAT.
48. __ Jima: IWO. The site of a famous WWII battle and a well-known photograph.
50. Pay for: TREAT.
51. "Guilty as charged": THAT'S ME. To be read as THAT WAS ME, I suppose.
55. Plant inspection org.: OSHA.
59. Lobster eggs: ROE. I went to a sushi bar and ordered the salmon roe...It was a spawn-taneous decision.
60. Condition: STATE. As in "a fine STATE of affairs".
61. __ Dakota: NORTH. We can fill in the O and the TH before we know the full answer.
62. Wheels: CAR. Slang. As in "that's a nice set of wheels".
63. Tea option: PEKOE.
64. Top-notch: ELITE.
65. "Rules __ rules": ARE. And, some would say, they are meant to be broken.
66. Sets loose: FREES.
67. Allude (to): REFER. Is it hard to find a two letter pronoun that can be used to refer to oneself as an object? Or is it just me?
Down:
1. Surf shop purchase: BOARD.
2. Hearsay: RUMOR.
3. Tour de France stage: ETAPE. Literally "stage" in French.
4. Smart aleck: WISEACRE.
(n.) "one who thinks himself wise, one who makes pretension to affects wisdom," 1590s, a partial translation of Middle Dutch wijssegger "soothsayer" (without derogatory connotation).
The deprecatory sense of "one who pretends to know everything" may have come through confusion with obsolete English segger "sayer," which also had a sense of "braggart" (mid-15c.).
5. Halvah flavor: SESAME.
6. Staff lines with a notable mnemonic: EGBDF. A musical reference.
6. Staff lines with a notable mnemonic: EGBDF. A musical reference.
8. Enters, as a hot tub: EASES INTO.
9. Most overcast: GRAYEST. At least they didn't clue this one with a reference to age.
10. Japanese money: YEN. 156 JPY = 1 USD
11. "Who put you up to this?": NAME NAMES.
12. Show off at the gym: FLEX. I flexed my glutes and got a cramp. That was a pain in the butt.
13. Period after Ash Wednesday: LENT. Tom Lehrer gave up LENT for her . . .
21. Po'boy city: NOLA. New Orleans, Louisiana
25. Squeezes (out): EKES.
27. Hardly fair: RAINY. Not a reference to a concept of ethics.
28. "Copacabana" showgirl: LOLA. LOLA and NOLA. Nice. No, not the city.
I Have Used This Clip Before But It Is A Classic
29. Singsongy cadence: LILT.
30. Unveiling shout: TADA.
32. "Didn't expect to see you!": OH HI THERE.
34. Dessert with a sconelike texture: SHORTCAKE.
37. Location: SITE.
40. Narrative incongruity: PLOT HOLE.
43. Oven pan: ROASTER.
47. Sp. honorific: SRA. SenoRA
49. Honus whose baseball card is one of the rarest and most expensive in the world: WAGNER.
51. Orchard makeup: TREES. Today, we'll take all the easy ones we can get.
52. Font flourish: SERIF.
53. Not glossy: MATTE.
54. Upper regions of space: ETHER. Before an operation, my doctor gave her patient the option to be knocked out with gas or a boat paddle.It was an ether/oar situation.
55. Killer whale: ORCA.
56. Fly high: SOAR.
58. __-Missouria Tribe: OTOE. Frequent visitors.
60. Beach bottle no.: SPF.
56. Fly high: SOAR.
58. __-Missouria Tribe: OTOE. Frequent visitors.
60. Beach bottle no.: SPF.
________________________________________
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| M M Out (with a CSO to Chairman Moe for the graphic) |
28 comments:
Kind of an intricately
crafted puzzle, as befits a Friday.
But, pretty quickly, I figured out what was going on, so I’ll pat myself on the back for that.
FIR, so I’m happy.
This was a Friday challenge and I expect many grumbles but it really is well done. If you do the NYT puzzle also this wasn’t that hard. As SubG said once you see the gimmick it all falls into place.
The enjoyable part for me are all the longish fill like WISEACRE, NAME NAMES, EASES INTO, SHORTCAKE… they gave me enough of the grid filled in to suss the theme.
The other fun part is Joseph’s very witty write-up with his punny inserts. Or is it just me and That was a pain in the butt are classic. The reminder of BARBARA EDEN and the bellybutton controversy was fun, as I have said before she was my uncle’s ultimate crush and she is still with usI believe. Thanks guys MM keep ‘em coming Chanukah is almost here
Good morning!
Gotta love a pzl with no reveal to miss. Caught the gimmick early, so it didn't slow me down. Thanx, Harit, Joah, and Mal-Man. (Ether/Oar, indeed!)
GLARE reminds me of gassing up at Wally-World earlier this week. I snatched a wide-open r-h pump only to discover that the video screen (the one that tells you to insert your card..remove your card, etc) was totally illegible due to sun GLARE. Had to wait for another pump to open up.
YEN rate was 360/$1 when I visited in the late '60s. A taxi ride in Tokyo worked out to about 25 cents. We watched the moon landing on our hotel TV and got the sound from Armed Forces Radio.
Great puzzle. Great review. Thx to all three.
Took 10:25 today to finish my cross training.
I didn't know the obscure ones pointed out as obscure (Busan & asante) by our sage reviewer. "Risks all" threw me for a loop, as I treated that as a stand-alone answer.
Oh joy, four circles!
FIR, but shape->STATE. I got everything except where the theme fills appeared, then stalled. I knew the first one had to do with AP HISTORY, but just couldn't pull it out. Put the crossword down, solved a sudoku, then when I came back I sussed SIT (up) right away, and the rest was (recent) history.
"Upper regions of space" just seems wrong. To me, the upper regions of earth's atmosphere is "near space," but actually in space does "upper" and "lower" have meaning?
Thanks to Harit and Joah for the Friday-worthy puzzle. My favorite was "hardly fair" for RAINY. And thanks to our MalMan for another fun review. Fine portrait!
This was a lot of fun AND a reminder to keep exercising to offset all the goodies we get during the holiday season!
Thanks MM for explaining it coherently and Harit & Joah for the amusing puzzle!
Wow. I usually agree with most of what most posters have to say, and therefore say... nothing. But, today, it appears I'm in the minority: I thought the construction of this puzzle was tortured - annoying, aggravating. Did not enjoy the solve (although I did complete it with a slew of WAGs) at all. Better luck next time! Happy Friday, everyone!
Didn’t know the former pUSAN of the Korean War battle had been revised to BUSAN
Tough Friday for me as well due to the upper Midwest! The combo of a mnemonic I had no clue about with never having taken a train to Busan and elegy escaping me until grayest finally dawned upon me making everything come together!
Count me among the minority, but for me, the gimmick was annoying and made this puzzle a complete mess.
Had the constructors limited the gimmick to the uphill words, my opinion would have differed, but mangling the Across words just made for a sloppy fill.
Really fun puzzle. Well done!
I think WTF summed it up quite nicely...
With a puzzle this difficult, why add the circles at all?
In the "must say something nice" department, I must be thankful for this puzzle, as it reaffirms the need for this Blog...
Thank you MM for splainin'
I didn't know either, and it made me feel uneasy about my answer.
Surmounting all the gimmickry wasn’t all that satisfying, but it didn’t take long, so at least it wasn’t frustrating. MalMan did a good job of ‘splainin’.
“Every Good Boy Deserves Favour” is my favorite Moody Blues album. The five Moodies from their early 1970s heyday are down to lead guitarist/lead vocalist Justin Hayward after the recent deaths of three others.
I know “Copacabana” is a cheesy song (and at that, Barry Manilow is a better songwriter than singer), but I like singing that song in Karaoke. Sue me.
Count me among the defeated! DNK BUSAN and of course LLUP was not going to occur to me. Maybe if I'd come back to it in a few days, ELEGY might have appeared. Anyway, very clever, Harit and Joah! MalMan, you were a quiet riot today. Thank you!
Musings
- What a wonderful double gimmick that employs four gravity-challenging exercises.
-Nobody told me PUSAN is now BUSAN but I put it in! :-) What, Peking and Burma too??
-During M*A*S*H there were mentions of fighters who had fought on the PUSAN perimeter.
-I had a ROPE AND PULLEY hanging from the steel girder above the ceiling and had the smalles girl in the class lift the biggest boy off the ground. Kids loved it.
-TREAT: Before I knew it, inanehiker paid for our meal in Lincoln this past year! She is a lovely person!
-During a Florida trip, one of my kids bought a boogie board at Ron Jon’s and had to lug it onto the bus and check it in at the airport.
-During our March blackout I could not even EASE INTO a cold shower!
-A Big Mac in Tokyo will run you about 540 YEN (¥540)
-People who “named names” during the McCarthy hearings became pariahs in Hollywood.
-MM, your write-up and Manilow clip brightened up my GRAY weather here on the Great Plains.
-We NASA peeps easily see PLOT HOLES in space movies but, hey, it’s just a movie and nobody else cares!
I made the puzzle harder than it should have been. I didn't catch the UPside down fills until over 3/4 was completed and never noticed the UP exercises were part or the cross fills. I FIR but didn't know until MM's 'splaining'.
Just like the former Michigan coach had some 'splaining to do'..
ROPE AND PEY- I thought it was something I'd never heard. Oh, PULLEY. BLOCK AND TACKLE wouldn't fit unless TACK had been an UP exercise.
APISTORY-looked at it and just left it.
Ditto for SCORCGHEAT
But TADA, i FIR not understanding how I did it. DUH!
ASANTE- isn't that Armand's misspelled last name? All perps for that unknown.
BUSON's spelling had to change to BUSAN for the GRAYEST skies.
THOR was a WAG for an unknown.
In elementary school, all my patches were sewn on the jeans before the IRON ON patches became fashionable. Now it's fashionable to have holes in the knees. Go figure that one out.
It was either EGBDF or GBDFA for the bass clef. Every Good Boy (Bird) Does Fine (fly) for treble and Great Big Dogs Fight Animals for bass.
Congo-Zaire-back to Congo
Rhodesia to Zimbabwe
SW Africa to Namibia
Tanganyika and Zanzibar to Tanzania
Iran to Persia to Iran
When will all the 'Stans' get other names? And I hope either of these never show up in a puzzle:
Swaziland to Eswatini.
DNF. Couldn't see the gimmick, and got no enjoyment from this one. Kept expecting a crossword puzzle to have, I dunno, WORDS?
Hola! I keep a small globe on a nearby table and so LIU, BUSAN, I don't mind telling you. However, EGBDF (EVERY GOOD BOY DOES FINE) is firmly etched in my mind thanks to my fifth-grade music teacher. As clever as PUSH/PULL up may be, I really dislike those kinds of clues/fill.
In my boarding school days, I had to IRON ON NAME tags on all my clothes.
I am all too familiar with SCORCHING HEAT which can reach up to 118 degrees in some years. However, RAINY has not been used in many, many months.
Have a wonderful day, eveyone!
ROPE AND PEY make no sense to me.
Armand ASSANTE comes to mind.
Ingenious puzzle. But what is up with that clue for ETHER? Didn't Einstein show that ETHER is not a thing? Husker Gary can you weigh in?
"I had a ROPE AND PULLEY hanging from the steel girder above the ceiling and had the smallest girl in the class lift the biggest boy off the ground. Kids loved it." You must have had more than one pulley. Just a rope and a single pulley, with the boy tied to one end and the girl pulling on the other, is 1:1, less friction loss. Now if you put the smallest girl up on the girder and the block on the husky boy, you get your 2:1. My guess is you had a double sheeve block on the girder, and a single block on the husky boy. (If you don't need more rope, you ain't got no mechanical advantage.) That gives you 3:1 advantage, which is probably the least you need for the girl to lift chubby with relative ease.
When I entered "ROPEANDPEY" (the PEY from perps) I quickly figured out the gimmick, which helped. It still took me 19 to FIR. "Thank you in Swahili" really hit me wrong. SWAHILI?? REALLY? SWAHILI? Took all perps to fill. Who here speaks Swahili? Oy. Also DNK and object to ETAPE. I dislike foreign words in CWs almost as much as names. Today only 9 names, and only DNK 1, so that also helped me get to a FIR. GREY/GRAY. WEES, "Hardly fair" as a clue for "RAINY" = best clue. Thanx HR&JM, very clever CW, and a special thanx for the sparce names. Thanx too to MalMan for all the time and effort he put into his write-up of this difficult to 'splain CW.
I agree with Lemonade, if you regularly do the NYTimes crossword you automatically start looking for some misdirection when things aren't coming together correctly. Once you figure out the trick it was smoother sailing. My favorite, "hardly fair". I worked for OSHA for 10 years after my 25 year military career. I enjoyed the puzzle and MM's recap.
Ever notice how ‘Spainin’ is always quoted?
Busan? LIU
Tough Friday puzzle, especially with the complicated ups and downs. But it still had some delightful items here and there, so many thanks, Harit and Joah. And thanks for your helpful explanations, MalMan, much appreciated.
Well, I started with OUTIE, but that didn't give me much help to AMASS any other items. Some ALE would have helped me at this point, but sadly there was none in the refrigerator, but then I remembered to look for some SESAME buns in the ROASTER, and to my surprise also found a SHORT CAKE. My spirits began to SOAR by then, and after another sip of PEKOE tea I felt FREE to continue trying to have a happy day, even if it wasn't going to be very ELITE.
So, my best wishes for a happy day, everybody.
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