Saturday Themeless by Dr. Kyle Dolan
This is the 22nd themeless Saturday puzzle by Dr. Dolan I have blogged. For this puzzle I sought out someplace where I could get multiple fills and work out from there. For this puzzle it was the SW corner where things filled in and ERIVO took care of itself greatly aided by my fortuitous guess at SCUBA DIVE. As you can see by the red square I did have one bad cell where I had to confess to my French major
granddaughter that I guessed ENTRE VOUS and not NOUS. I made the connection to Egypt with Theban deity but AMENRA escaped me.
Across:
1. "Hold my beer": WATCH THIS - Idiocy fueled by alcohol and testosterone.
10. __ forest: KELP.
14. "It's not up to me": IF YOU WANT.
15. Obsession: MANIA - Are you old enough to remember this MANIA?
17. Quirkily creative: ARTSY.
18. Leaves home?: TREE 😀 Leaves is a noun and is possessive.
19. Put on board: LADE.
20. Board game: DARTS.
21. Pronoun option: HER.
22. Radiation that triggers vitamin D synthesis, for short: UVB.
23. Lineup of runners?: SLATE - This is the SLATE of runners you would have seen in 2024 in Nehawka, NE (pop. 167)
25. Used a prayer rug: KNELT.
27. Supreme Theban deity: AMENRA - AMEN-RA (alt. AMUN-RA) was the supreme state deity of New Kingdom Egypt (150-1100 BCE) merging the Theban creator god Amun ("The Hidden One") with the sun god Ra. Searching for his book was a plot arc of the 1999 movie The Mummy.
30. Mexico City's __ de la Reforma: PASEO - Walkway Of The Reform. A nine-mile diagonal street modeled on the Champs-Élysée in Paris.
33. "Truce?": ARE WE COOL.
35. As soon as: ONCE - ONCE you get some time
36. Natl. Merit Scholarship qualifying exams: PSATS.
37. Dance with a kahiko style: HULA - Includes chanting
38. Small beard: SOUL PATCH.
40. Amounts on some bottles: DOSES.
41. Sportscaster Dick with the catchphrase "Touch 'em all!": ENBERG - Said after a home run
42. Tilt: TIP UP - Getting the stones to Stonehenge was one thing and then they had to TIP them UP
44. "Fare thee well": ADIEU.
46. Top suit: CEO 😀 A suit is one of the executives of a company and so the top one would be the CEO
47. Toe bean spot: PAW - Lily did not like that channel!
50. Shots after whiffs, say: REDOS or after a really bad bunker shot
52. Polish place: NAIL 😀
54. [Not again!]: SIGH.
55. "Wicked" star: ERIVO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
56. "Count me in!": I'M SO THERE.
58. Assumption: GIVEN.
59. Suit perfectly: FIT TO A TEE.
60. Forward thinker?: SEER.
61. "Why not both": YES AND YES - Do you love me and will you marry me?
58. Assumption: GIVEN.
59. Suit perfectly: FIT TO A TEE.
60. Forward thinker?: SEER.
61. "Why not both": YES AND YES - Do you love me and will you marry me?
Down:
1. Mover's concern: WIDTH - Oops!
2. "Loch Lomond" preposition: AFORE.
3. Pianist McCoy who played with the John Coltrane Quartet: TYNER- ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
4. Home on an apartment building's roof, maybe: COTE - Brando shows Eva Marie Saint a pigeon egg from his rooftop COTE in On The Waterfront.
5. Carrier base: HUB.
7. Lives it up: HAS A BLAST.
8. Clear for all to see, so to speak: IN HD - Fill words can be complicated when abbreviations have become "words" on their own.
9. Lid blemishes: STYES.
10. Handy maneuver?: KARATE CHOP 😀
11. "Confidentially ... ": ENTRE NOUS - Just between you and me. Entre vous means between us as a group.
12. Lay out: LIST - My projects are much more successful when I lay out what I need to do in a LIST.
13. Foots: PAYS - We used to "foot the bill" when we took our girls out but now they have families and we go dutch.
15. Nice thing to call someone?: MADAME - I suppose MADAME would be a nice thing to call someone in Nice, France. 😊
22. Shedding card game: UNO.
24. Code components: LAWS - One of the first compilatons
25. Succumbed to gravity: KEELED OVER.
26. Leaflet: TRACT - A famous one.
 |
29. "Woe is me!": ALAS.
30. False front: POSE.
30. False front: POSE.
 |
| Give it up, poser! |
31. Mystery author, briefly: ANON - Here the identity of the author is the mystery not the work itself 😀
32. Get tanked on a tropical vacation?: SCUBA DIVE - A confident fill when I only had the "S" showing. Yay me!
34. People with concerns about trolleys?: ETHICISTS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Happy to learn.
36. Resident of D.C.'s Daniel Webster Hall: PAGE - A former funeral home that was refurbished in 1995 to house Senate PAGES.
39. "Orange Is the New Black" setting: PRISON - A binge watch for me.
40. Couple: DUO.
43. Cesta-slung sphere: PELOTA - Here a jai alai player is slinging a PELOTA (sphere) with his cesta (basket)
45. Bring together: UNIFY.
47. Reverence: PIETY.
48. Concur: AGREE.
49. Carnival cries: WHEES - Kevin Hart seems to be making a cry of terror while Jimmy Fallon is doing more of a WHEE.
50. Policies, for short: REGS.
51. Put-in-Bay's lake: ERIE - The village of Put-In-Bay is located in our favorite crossword lake
53. Femme friend: AMIE - A French friend who is female
54. Roe source: SHAD.
57. 100 runs, for a cricketer: TON ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
6 comments:
I got it!
But it took some “tweaking.” Particularly because I started off with “piano” instead of “width.”
Nevertheless, I thought this was a very fair puzzle, especially for a Saturday. There were only a few of what I call “obscurities.”
Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
Thank you, Kyle and Husker.
Yowser. That was tough. So many aha! moments today. But it wasn't easy. I went way over Desper-otto's allotted solving time. Multiple answers had to be changed.
And in the end, it was a lousy typo that prevented the congrats message. It really wasn't even a typo. I had the correct letter but somehow typed over it a some point during the struggle. Fairly early on, I figured out KARATE CHOP and entered it, but somehow ended with CHOe.
After starting with KNELT and UNO, there was a lot of bouncing around the grid trying to find solid footing and get some momentum. In the SE, PAW, AGREE and WHEES gave me hope. Then I had to change arGH to SIGH and got PIETY and SHAD. Then IM SO THERE, FIT TO A TEE and YES AND YES fell quickly.
In the NW, I was stuck with PIANO for Mover's concern and NEST for Leaves home. That gave me OUR for the Pronoun option, but nothing else was working, Except NEST again for Home on a roof. That couldn't be correct because Leaves home was also NEST. Turns out that neither NEST was correct. I finally got tweener out of my mind and realized TWELVE for Not quite a teen.
It hadn't helped that I misread Lid blemishes as Lip blemishes. Got STYES after rereading as lid.. I also had HIRE instead of LADE for Put on board, but that would be Bring on board for HIRE. The triple stack phrases of 9 letters in the NW fell.
No idea on TYNER and AMENRA. Both perped and I left them. And I had never heard of the Trolley problem, so the clue meant nothing to me, but I knoow the word ethicists and what it means, so I left that one too. It nested in nicely with all of its crosses.
CARDS before DARTS. That leading D led to MADAME. That second M was my last fill. But no congrats. ARGH! That errant e instead of P.
So many simple but great clues though. Tough, but in the end, fair. Lineup of runners, Leaves home, Code components, Top suit, Foots, Clear for all to see, and my favorite Flyers for TRACTS. When I entered TRACT, the first thing that came to mind was Thomas Payne's Common Sense. Perhaps the most famous TRACT in American history. I read it, or at least most of it. Compelling.
Today's puzzle got the old noggin working this morning, and I enjoyed the challenge.
My experience was very similar to that of TTP. TYNER was my only real unknown. One of the problems of solving online for me is the accidental replacing of a letter such as the “e” that appeared. For TTP. The rest solved slowly but steadily bot after 20+ prior solves, Kyle’s creations are doable. Olympics are almost done and baseball on tv does not fill the gap. Watching Scottie Scheffler scramble to make the cut at Riviera was fun. ThankssGary and Kyle
Felt good I sussed it was the Egyptian Thebes and was sure it was Amon Ra; don't recall ever seeing it spelled Amen Ra.
Hands up for unite instead of unify.
If idiots can't get out of the way of a trolley car that is far enough away to switch to another track, then not really an ethicist's problem but one that has a Darwinian solution.
Took 17:35 today to make the same mistake as our trusty guide (HG) made.
I've also seen "Amon Ra", but not "amen ra." I didn't know "Tyner" or the Mexican city. I knew the Actress of the Day (Erivo).
I think there should be another editor assigned solely to question mark clues. For examples, today's trolley and "Nice" clues. There's plenty of room for improvement.
FIR. I too like SubG threw down piano before width. I also went with unite before unify. Those two really slowed me down.
But what really opened up this puzzle for me, after staring at a whole lot of white squares, was scuba dive. From there everything seemed to flow.
I'm certainly not fond of all the odd proper names, but managed via the perps.
Overall an enjoyable puzzle.
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