CrossEyedDave here, filling in again. My interpretation of a theme for this puzzle would be:
It's For The Birds...
Alan Olschwang is a prolific constructor, and has provided many puzzles for us to enjoy. You can find CC's 2009 interview with him on the right side of the Blog, 3rd from the bottom.
As near as i can comprehend, these birds are cooped up in the circles as follows:
18 Across. Rather often: QUITE A LOT
Teal
23 Across. In large quantities: HAND OVER FIST
Dove
Rhea
Egret
And, the reveal:
60 Across. Handmade backyard nest box, and an apt description of 18-, 23-, 37-, and 50-Across: BIRDHOUSE.
1. Root beer brand owned by Coca-Cola: BARQ'S. This combined with 3 down, Regan, was almost a Natick for me. But the R in Barqs was dredged up from previous Crosswords.
6. Tightly closed: SHUT.
14. Indigenous Alaskan: ALEUT. Indigenous Alaskans are diverse peoples, including Inupiaq, Yup'ik, Aleut (Unangan/Alutiiq), Athabascan, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. (And you thought they were just Eskimos...)
15. Work hard for: EARN. (I earned this puzzle review!)
16. Feminine Spanish pronoun: ELLA. (e.g., Ella es mi madre - She is my mother; Los regalos son para ella - The gifts are for her). I have no explanation for "Cinderella..."
17. Roman robes: TOGAS.
Or, a rallying cry...
18. [Theme]
20. Jackie on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: CHAN.
21. Mardi Gras, for one: Abbr.: TUE. I cannot imagine only one person celebrating Marci Gras...
22. Selling point: ASSET.
23. [Theme]
27. Name on a former lake in Central Asia: ARAL. This word is as common as Oreo...
28. "Guys and Dolls" composer Frank: LOESSER.
This Guy
32. "Been __, done that": THERE.
35. Chapel bench: PEW.
36. Med. plan option: HMO. (Health Maintenance Organization)
37. [Theme]
42. Chicken __ king: ALA.
43. Hundred Acre Wood joey: ROO.
This Guy
44. Cropped up: AROSE.
What cropped up, was a rose upon his nose...
45. Antarctic body of water with penguin rookeries: ROSS SEA.
48. "Othello" frenemy: IAGO.
48. "Othello" frenemy: IAGO.
NOT this guy
50. [Theme]
55. Poker buy-ins: ANTES.
58. Final tally: SUM.
59. Prefix with -gram: SONO. (One of too many to mention...)
60. [Theme]
63. Hollowed out: CORED.
64. Crossword hint: CLUE.
65. Finds a purpose for: USES.
66. Blender setting for pumpkin pie filling: PUREE. And baby food.
67. "As __ on TV": SEEN.
68. "Devil Inside" band: INXS. This was another almost Natick, saved by U.S. Navy...
69. Ring-shaped island: ATOLL.
Down:
1. Baker's sheetful: BATCH.
2. "Welcome to Maui!": ALOHA.
3. Middle daughter of King Lear: REGAN. (Half an almost Natick.)
4. Difficult situation: QUANDARY. (What ever should i post here.)
5. MA, ME, MI, and MO, but not MU: STS. (And not Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum...)
6. Follow-up film: SEQUEL.
7. Rutger of "Blade Runner": HAUER.
This guy
8. Ocean State sch.: URI. University of Rhodesia Island.
9. Blasting letters: TNT.
10. __ of burden: plow-pulling animals: BEASTS.
11. Letter-shaped pipe joints: ELLS.
12. __ vera gel: ALOE.
13. "The Simpsons" creator Groening: MATT.
The guy on the left
19. "At __, soldier!": EASE.
21. FDR energy project: TVA. Tennessee Valley Authority
24. Dirt pie cookie: OREO.
25. Escape in a hurry: FLEE.
26. Ames locale: IOWA.
29. "Go on, git!": SHOO. (Scram! Or Skidaddle...)
30. Big birds of Australia: EMUS. Not Rheas,
31. Learning by repetition: ROTE. (The answer is Oreo!)
32. Salty drop: TEAR.
33. Saintly glow: HALO.
34. Airport pickup figs.: ETAS.
35. Vietnamese soup: PHO. (Do i need to post a pic?)
38. Manhattan Project scientist Harold: UREY.
OMG!
Another name!
(This is getting to be a pain...)
39. Multicolored horse: ROAN. I would post a pic, but I really thought they were more colorful...
40. All the __: very popular: RAGE.
41. Brings forward for display: TROTS OUT. (Hmm, see 47 down...)
46. Country between Finland and Norway: SWEDEN.
47. Merit badge holder: SASH.
48. "Well, maybe": I GUESS.
49. Sleeve: ARM. (If you are armed, would you be sleeved?)
51. English county south of Suffolk: ESSEX.
52. Masked vigilante whose name is Spanish for "fox": ZORRO. Learning moment
53. Genuflect: KNEEL. Only know this from The Wizard of Oz... (The Lions Solo song)
54. Alpine song: YODEL.
55. School basics: ABCS.
56. Aswan's river: NILE.
57. Factual: TRUE.
61. French yes: OUI.
62. Top Gun org.: USN.
63. Audit firm pro: CPA.
This would have been a Pangram, but was missing the "J."
Well, you didn't need to be an Ornithologist to solve this one. Hope it was right up your roost, aviary, dovecote, aerie or henhouse, and didn't ruffle any feathers.
CE:D out.
Note from C.C:
Today we celebrate the 81st birthday of our sweet Misty, who has been with our blog since 2011 and means so much to all of us. Wishing you a beautiful day, Margot!
 |
| Misty and her husband Rowland |
Not too difficult a
ReplyDeletepuzzle. I saw all the “birds” quickly, had a good idea what the reveal would be, and I was right.
FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
ReplyDeleteEntering TWA instead of TVA made HAND OVER FIST slow to arrive. Got there eventually. D-o managed finally managed to see the four birds, even if he failed to read the full reveal clue. [Sigh] Excellent Tuesday offering, Alan. Thanx for pinch-hitting, CED. (KNEEL, clued as "Genuflect," just cries for this Tom Lehrer song.)
Now how did I manage that?
DeleteFIR, but ural->ARAL, remake->SEQUEL (known in data warehousing as SQL,) and gretski->GRETZKY.
ReplyDeleteGRETZKY just wasn't the goal scoring machine that "The Great 8," Alex Ovechkin, is. A great sport, GRETZKY was in attendance last year to congratulate Ovechkin when Ovechkin broke GRETZKY's record.
If we're getting a French lesson, why "gras?" Making it easier because it's Tuesday? Would it be "Mardi in New York" in a Thursday puzzle?
The start of a saying: "Been THERE, done that." The rest: "Bought the tee shirt, sold it for a profit on Ebay."
HBDTY, Misty. I know you'll be missing your beloved Rowland this holiday season.
Thanks to Alan for another fun puzzle. The couple of unknowns were gentled by the perps, which was nice. And thanks to CED for pinch hitting.
Jinx has reminded me
ReplyDeletethat I forgot to wish Misty a Happy Birthday! I always enjoy your little “stories,”
Misty!
FIR. As usual I ignored the circles and only looked at them after the puzzle was filled. I'm sorry, but for me the theme was lame. Just try to imagine a bird house large enough to house an egret or a rhea. That would be quite a structure.
ReplyDeleteThe puzzle itself had a couple of proper names that only perps allowed for solving. Hauer and Loesser for example.
Overall this was not an enjoyable puzzle.
Initially, I had the same thought about a birdhouse. Another way of looking at it: the bird is boxed inside the clue fill: a "nest box".
DeleteGood Morning:
ReplyDeleteThis was a perfect Tuesday offering: a cute and discernible theme, strong themers, a very clean and solver-friendly grid and, most importantly, an enjoyable and satisfactory solve. Urey was the only unknown but perps took care of that hiccup.
Nice job, Alan, and very nice review, CED. You settled right into the blogging business smoothly and successfully. Congrats. Your impish humor is right at home, too!
Happy Birthday, dear Misty. Enjoy your special day. 🎂🎁🎉🎊🎈
Have a great day.
Musings
ReplyDelete-By doing crosswords, I learned QUANDARY has three, not two, syllables.
-Learning by repetition: I recently took the job of emptying the dishwasher and eventually learned where items go. Do we really need eight different types of Tupperware containers?
-ABC’s: Some kindergartners come to school reading at a third-grade level and some do not know how to write any letter
-HBD Misty!
QUANDARY? Do Americans learn their ABCs (55D)by ROTE (31D) or Mozart's melody for "Twinkle, twinkle little star"?
DeleteWe still have some real Tupperware bowls that we use daily. But Diane tries to save plastic containers until we have too many. I never put them in the dishwasher.
First, looked over CW and discovered 21 names! Oy. But then as I filled the CW, I came to realize that of those 21 I only DNK 5, so not so bad. I hesitated to fill GRETSKY/GRETZKY; O.K., ZORRO solved that. Other than the namefest, a nice CW, thanx AO. Thanx too to CED for the fine write-up. I was gonna comment that the bird pictured is a pigeon, not a dove, but looked it up and learned something: pigeons and doves are actually the same bird. People tend to call white or tan colored ones doves, other colors they tend to call pigeons. But it's the same bird. Learning moment, so thanx for that, CED.
ReplyDeleteInteresting about DOVEs and pigeons.
Delete1A-BARQ's- QUITE a story on that drink that did not claim to be a root beer. There were TWO Barq's brands, one in NOLA and the other in Biloxi, MS. One of the NOLA co. ads was "Drink Barq's, it's good" and another was "Barq's has bite". The two local brands were sold in LA and MS markets and the real fireworks started when the NOLA brand and its registered trademark sold to the Coca-Cola company, leaving the Biloxi company out of the big money. I'm sure they eventually settled because it's now called Barq's Root Beer.
ReplyDeleteAs for the puzzle, the circled BIRD HOUSE species were easy to spot but not the unknown composer, band & song (as clued), actor, or scientist. LOESSER, INXS, HAUER, UREY. Monday level puzzle with Saturday level proper names.
I saw the Blade Runner movie over 40 years ago, and I only remember them hiding from the 'hunter, killer drones'. Kinda predicted the current battles
between Ukraine and Russia.
Happy birthday Misty.
Terrific Tuesday. Thanks for the fun, Alan and CED.
ReplyDeleteI saw the BIRD HOUSE theme early in the solve.
Officially a DNF since I had a Natick-to-me cross at USN and INXS. I’ll blame Canadian disadvantage. (Although I did have no problem with WAYNE GRETZY.). TVA held me up, but I have learned HMO (but don’t have that here).
QUITE A bit changed to LOT.
After the Q and Z appeared, I was looking for a pangram. 6A should have had the door Ajar rather than SHUT to give us the J.
I don’t know why I notice these things, but the NE corner had a plethora of EAs (BEAM, TEAL, EARN, EASE, BEASTS). Then a little pocket in the west centre (EAT, HEART, TEAR, SEA).
Happy 81st birthday Misty.
Wishing you all a great day.