CrossEyedDave here... When CC asked me to fill in, it was a Saturday morning, and i thought, "Great! I can do this instead of the Saturday Stumper!" Well, right from the get go, 1Across just screamed out "Cube!" And with that, my Saturday turned into a Wednesday Stumper... I did finally work my way out of a DNF/FIW/TiTT, and was looking forward to reading the write up for someone to explain it all. (Wait! What! I have to splain this!! Aw nuts and dang it all...)
Well, at least Rebecca provided a title:
16. Intentionally delaying, or a punny title for this puzzle?: PLAYING FOR TIME.
"Playing For Time."
Now unless you can play Tetris blindfolded, i don't want to hear any complaints in the comments about circles. I would still be trying to solve this puzzle, if it were not for these life saving theme circles, that helped me discover all of the "off my wavelength" clue/answers that tripped me up.
The Reveal:
54. Constant reshuffling of one's schedule, or what's depicted in this puzzle's circles: CALENDAR TETRIS
The Calendar items circled included: Gala, Game, Work, Yoga, Call, Date, and Trip. You could possibly turn this into another puzzle by trying to find "another" calendar item that wasn't circled. Please let me know if you find any, I'm already too exhausted by Rebecca's offering to even try...
Here is a short Bio:
 |
Across:
1. Sugar serving: LUMP. My horse sense told me this should be "Cube." I mean, you don't give a horse a lump of sugar, you give him/her a sugar cube! Which led to disastrous stabs at the early downs.
5. Crockery flaw: CHIP.
Hmm, i wonder what was wrong with the kid "before" the spell?
9. Paper or plastic items: BAGS.
13. Microbiology lab gel: AGAR.
14. "__ that the truth!": AINT.
15. "At your earliest convenience," less politely: ASAP. (Not STAT!)
19. Error message?: SIC. Latin, literally ‘so, thus’. used in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original.
20. NYC nabe near the Bowery: NOHO. (Not SOHO, or South of Houston, but North of...)
21. Added to the team: HIRED.
22. Kicking sport: SOCCER.
24. Actress Palmer: KEKE. The second K was a personal Natick with 9 Downs Batik, and caused and alpha run ending to this almost DNF/FIW/TiTT...
25. The Queen of Pop: MADONNA.
27. Network featured in "Good Night, and Good Luck": CBS. (3 letters awaiting a perp)
30. Low voices in a women's choir: ALTOS. (Really?)
33. Lav: LOO. (What? Not Water Closet? Hmm, which reminds me...)
34. Sailor's assent: AYE.
35. Shabby: WORN.
36. Rare opening in 54-Across: SLOT. (A Clecho! Or Clue Echo...)
37. Screen writing?: BLOG.
38. Squeak (out): EKE.
39. Tom, Dick, and Harry, for example: MEN. (Not "anybody"...)
40. Name after peach or before toast: MELBA.
41. Mom, to Auntie: SIS. (I don't know why I wanted "Tia" here...)
42. "Be glad to": SURE CAN. Or put another Glad Bag in the Trash Can...
44. Image file format: JPEG.
46. Like the pick of the litter?: CUTEST.
49. Beefy, casually: SWOLE. Learning moment, i can't complain if it's legit...
51. Move like a hummingbird: DART. (Not flit)
52. D-backs, in box scores: ARI. (A crossword fill staple...)
54. [Theme Reveal]
57. Shawkat of "Search Party": ALIA. (Either you know her, or you dont. Perps to the rescue...)
58. Team with a red-tailed hawk mascot named Swoop: UTES. (If you say so...)
59. California county with a wine train: NAPA. More info here:
60. Ran in the wash: BLED.
61. "__ there, tiger": EASY.
62. Gender-fluid pronoun: THEY. (Could have been Them, I could blame Them. But I can't blame They...)
Down:
1. Slurps (up): LAPS.
2. Uniq fruits: UGLIS.
3. Body shop franchise: MAACO. I must have misread this clue, because Maaco with lump and laps turned this corner into a nightmare...
4. Ask too much, say: PRY.
5. Paddled about: CANOED.
6. One regularly experiencing bettor days: HIGHROLLER. Not familiar with this, I wonder why...
7. IT part: INFO. (New to me)
8. Vacay from work: PTO. Paid Time Off (another tricky clue/answer)
9. Patterned fabric that originated in Indonesia: BATIK. I'll let A.I. explain this Learning Moment
4. Ask too much, say: PRY.
5. Paddled about: CANOED.
6. One regularly experiencing bettor days: HIGHROLLER. Not familiar with this, I wonder why...
7. IT part: INFO. (New to me)
8. Vacay from work: PTO. Paid Time Off (another tricky clue/answer)
9. Patterned fabric that originated in Indonesia: BATIK. I'll let A.I. explain this Learning Moment
10. "If memory serves": AS I RECALL. (Without the spaces, reminds me of nothing...)
11. Up for a challenge: GAME.
12. Went a mile a minute, maybe: SPED.
17. Quechua speakers who didn't have a written alphabet: INCAS. Not entirely true They used ropes!
18. Seehorn of "Pluribus": RHEA. (If you say so, but I say its just a smaller Emu from a different country)
23. "Please be serious": CMON. (I am serious about the Rhea/Emu's)
24. Twist into a pretzel: KNOT.
26. "Sounds like a you problem": NO ONE CARES. (Ouch!)
28. Notation on an invite: BYOB. Bring Your own Bottle/Beer.
29. Sonic the Hedgehog developer: SEGA.
30. Leaves speechless: AWES.
31. Norse god of mischief: LOKI. Around long before The Marvel Universe took over his image on the internet. And is now invading politics?
32. "Ooh la la!": TRES JOLIE. It's French...
36. Self-satisfied: SMUG.
37. Good start?: BENE. Italian. Curiously, when I went to research,
IT WASN'T Bene Nota?
(I get this confused with Bella Notte.)
40. Low-gloss: MATTE.
42. Checked out: SEEN. This nose wrinkle really gave me angst crossing 49A. Swole
43. Bow alternative: CURTSY. (Not bow,,, bow... AhNuts!)
45. Be appealing?: PLEAD. (Cute)
47. One of the Torah's four matriarchs: SARAH. (Perped in, because i always leave off the H.)
48. Type of offal: TRIPE. (Anyone want a picture?) Offal is the internal organs and parts trimmed off an animal for food, although tripe has other meanings as well...
49. Sign of healing: SCAB.
50. Muralist's canvas: WALL.
51. Target of some mining: DATA.
53. "My word": I SAY. (Sounds kinda British to me, an I do say so myself...)
55. Expected any minute: DUE.
56. Explosive used in some mining: TNT.
Well, that about does it for this year. On to the next!
Happy New Year!
CE:D Out...
9 comments:
Once again, they got
me on a single letter. “Tres JolLe and
“AlLa.” I think that is a bogus combination, OBSCURE French term and very OBSCURE person. What do folks call that?
A “Natick”?
Anyway, I’ll try to do better tomorrow.
Subgenius out!
ALIA Shawkat is an instant fill for me at this point, but I can totally understand getting Naticked there. There's just no way to remember all those crosswordese clue flawlessly. I always get tripped up by Gasteyer and Garten, are they ANA? INA? ANI? ARI? IRA?
I really like how all 7 Tetris shapes are included (notice that the YOGA and DATE squiggly shapes can't be overlapped by just rotating, and the same goes for the CALL and TRIP L-shapes), and using 7 letters from the revealer for CALL, DATE and TRIP is a clever way to minimize the amount of theme squares. But you can definitely see the strain on the grid that comes from all these wacky shapes used as theme material.
Good catch, Anon, on those Tetris shapes. Unsurprisingly, d-o totally missed that.
Good morning!
Is "Sounds like you a problem" missing a verb? The only "Tres.." phrase I know is "Tres bien" -- JOLIE never occurred. Thus ALLA/JOLLE got to stay. Bzzzzzt. Skewered on the last day of the year. Rats. Thanx, Rebecca and C-E-D. (Methinks your Aussie roots are showing in that Rhea comment.)
I like how tripe and data were also spelled by an adjacent letter making another Tetris shape (?) And call to called; game to gamed. And with Rebecca's bio, is it a coincidence that woke is in the puzzle 2 Tetris shape ways? Like CE:D cube instead of lump got me off to a bad start and made this Wednesday offering a challenge. Good way to end the year. HNY!
Dart and darts
I FIR but could not figure out the theme. Thanks CrossEyed Dave for trying to explain it. But I still couldn't figure it out. Then anonymous at 4:35 talked about the tetra shapes. This did not help me either. It is very rare I don't catch on to a theme, but this is one of those times.
Well I managed a FIR w/out help in one tick under 15 on a Rebecca G puzzle, so I’m a little happier than SubG this morning, feeling SMUG even. I have to admit though, even with the triple reveals, I still had no idea what the theme was all about, the circled words didn’t seem to have any relation to one another, and it took the expo and the comment from Anon @4:35 to make me realize it was the shape of the foursomes that were central. I got CALENDAR TETRIS by perps, I knew TETRIS was a game but I am not familiar with it at all. My last fills were successful first try WAGs at the J, O, and I in TRES JOILE (I thought of ‘mpeg’ first, but went with the J), ‘rsvp’ quickly changed to BYOB. Other unknowns were RHEA and KEKE. I liked the clue for BLOG. Thanks Rebecca for the challenge, and to C-E-D for taking the reins today and explaining it all in layman’s terms.
Not clued as "Sounds like you a problem," it was clued "Sounds like a you problem," which makes sense to me.
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