Themeless Saturday Puzzle by Barbara Lin and Jess Rucks
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| Barb |
I was very pleased to see Jess's name come up today as a co-constructor. I have had the fun of blogging her Saturday themeless puzzles before and am always amazed by her work and, uh, creative clues 😀, a tradition she maintained here as well. As you can see in the picture at the left, Jess and I met up on a very cold night in Lincoln for a delightful dinner last year and hashed over a lot of crossword minutiae. She lives in Colorado with her husband and son and is retired from the Air Force where she was an Urdu translator. Yes, she was a Division 1 volleyball player as well.
Her partner in crime construction is Barb Lin who lives just outside Philadelphia, PA, where she dabbles in gardening and excels in computer engineering. Here is a lovely interview of Barb Jess conducted.
1. Teddy bear: SOFTY - I thought this might be a brand name but no, it's just a tender-hearted person. Even Elvis knew this: "Oh let me be, your teddy bear". Hey, I heard you sing along! 😊
9. Basaltic plain on the moon: MARE - MARE is latin for Sea and here we see the location of The Lunar Sea Of Tranquility which hosted Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969.
13. Roadside snack: STREET TACO.
16. Driver on a movie set: ADAM - 😀 The answer below is no.
17. Sign that means it's time to turn around: NO ENTRANCE - How it's done in the UK
18. Spam musubi wrapper: NORI - Musubi (結び), translates to “tie” or “bind,”
19. White-hot: SEETHING.
20. Lights up: SMILES.
22. Quick kiss: PECK - Not a BUSS
23. Useful spot: PSA - Here's a Public Service Announcement from the 50's about saying Good Night after a date
24. Some sci-fi villains: ETS.
25. Multipurpose tool: SPORK - We really like KFC, but we opt for real silverware.
27. Verb coined in "Stranger in a Strange Land": GROK - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Author Robert Heinlein said GROK is a Martian word that literally means "to drink" .Metaphorically, it means to understand something so completely and deeply. Jess is fluent in Urdu but not Martian. 😀
28. Hindi honorific: SRI.
29. Berry grown in Ohio?: HALLE - She took her stage name from Halle's Department Store in Cleveland.
30. Jordan who won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay: PEELE.
31. Org chart leader: CEO.
32. "Sure, that tracks": I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN.
35. "J to __ L-O!": 2002 remix album: THA - Some hip hop slang
36. Replacements after leaving marks?: EUROS - Germans now use EUROS for currency after having used marks since 1876.
37. Huffs and puffs: PANTS and 40. Huffs and puffs: RANTS.
38. __ de deux: PAS - a ballet duet, literally translating from French as a "step of two", typically performed by a male and a female dancer. Below is the Grand PAS de Deux from the Nutcracker. Play as much of this 5:37 cut that you like to beautify your day.
39. Mass agreement: AMEN 😀
41. "Yes, captain": AYE.
42. Clear (of): RID.
43. Clear of contaminants: PURE - Clear in the clue is an adjective and not a verb
44. Varied: RANGED.
46. Opportunities to learn the hard way: MISTAKES - Do guys like this ever learn?
50. Mil. no-show: AWOL.
51. "Mine! Mine! Mine!": I WANT IT ALL.
53. "The Goonies" role for Ke Huy Quan: DATA - Saturday cluing for sure, Ke is in the bottom row, second from the right.
54. Brings the temperature down, maybe: TALKS SENSE.
55. Googly-__: EYED - From a cartoon first published in 1919. A popular song of the day was, "Barney Google With the Goo, Goo, Goo Googly Eyes"
56. Fashion letters: YSL.
57. Trapped, in a way: TREED.
Down:
1. Fed. IDs: SSNS.
2. Della Warrior's heritage: OTOE is the first and only woman to date to serve as chairperson and chief executive officer for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe.
3. Priceless?: FREE.
4. One-night stand, perhaps?: TENT POLE 😀
5. Frustrated expression: YET HERE WE ARE.
6. [All of a sudden!]: BANG.
7. Stanford's gp.: ACC - With all the conference alignments up in the air, Stanford and Cal Berkley (formerly in the Pacific 10) had to get into some conference even if it was on the other coast (Atlantic Coast Conference).
8. Disbands?: GOES SOLO - Michael Jackson had great success when he left this brothers
9. Digital art, informally?: MANI 😀
10. Juvenile: ADOLESCENT.
11. Special indulgences: RARE TREATS.
12. Targets of smog checks: EMISSIONS.
14. Bridge unit: TRICK - 😀 A trick in a card games is a single round of play where each person plays one card, and the highest card wins.
15. Choke: TANK - These are both failures. In sports, if a player chokes, he might fail to make a winning play even though he is trying. If a player TANKS, he also fails but might be trying to lose or throw a game.
21. One who tries not to overshadow the star?: MAKE UP ARTIST 😀 Gotta love this one!
23. Feeds (on): PREYS.
25. "Shantay, you stay" opposite: SASHAY AWAY - During our dinner in Lincoln, Jess said she enjoyed RuPaul Drag Race and this phrase is part of that show.
27. Mount: GET ON - How The Lone Ranger accomplished this with Silver.
29. Top tunes: HIT PARADE - When The Lone Ranger was mounting Silver in the 50's, The Hit Parade was telling us the top songs of the week. Listen to as much of this 30-minute show (complete with cigarette commercials) as you like from over 70 years ago.
30. Trimmed (down): PARED - By the first game, NFL teams must have PARED down to a 53 man roster from the 100 or so that are trying out.
33. Hair curler?: HUMIDITY.
34. 1982 Hall & Oates song: MANEATER.
40. Shows signs of age: RUSTS.
43. Chappell Roan's "__ Pony Club": PINK - A fav of my granddaughters.
46. Edina, Minnesota is home to the first U.S. indoor one: MALL - 1956. This would go along with The Lone Ranger and Your Hit Parade!
47. Lucci role: KANE - Susan Lucci played Erica Kane on All My Children for 41 years.
48. Conditional word in Python: ELSE - Barb is a computer engineer
49. Blair Braverman vehicle: SLED.
52. Portrayed: WAS - I first had DID, as in an impersonator DID Cary Grant.
More from Jess: Barb and I met at ACPT in 2025, and since then have been wanting to make a puzzle together. We finally made that happen with this one! Barb did a lot of the heavy lifting on the gridding and we collaborated on the clues. Hope you enjoyed it :) This one was fun to make. Barb is a great constructor, so I felt some pressure to push myself working with her -- I tried to clue with more wordplay and generally at a higher difficulty than I may have on my own. She clued, too, but I clued more of the entries since she ended up making more of the grid.
I got it!
ReplyDeleteIt took me a fairly long time, and for a while, I was looking at a sea of white squares. But by chipping away, a little here and a little there, it finally came clear.
FIR, so I’m happy.
I was able to successfully GROK this one in 27:50, the west half took twice as long as the east. Impressive construction with eight 10’s, a couple 12’a and a spanner. Perps were fair and very helpful for unknowns like THA and DATA. Thanks to Barbara and Jess for your fine work, and to HG for the informative and entertaining review, always nice to know the backgrounds of the puzzle authors. Currently sitting at gate K12 at ORD, DW and I awaiting a flight to San Diego for a week.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's a long time to spend at ORD waiting for your flight. :)
Delete🤣
DeleteGood morning!
ReplyDeleteHand up for BUSS before PECK and TRUSS before TRICK (wrong bridge). I realized that I'm starting to begin to commence to get old when I looked at the illustration for Your Hit Parade and could immediately recognize Snooky Lanson, Russell Arms, Dorothy Collins and Gisele MacKenzie. In the end, it all came down to a single word for "Chuffed." My Googly EYES led me astray. I was amused, but never got GLAD. Bzzzzzt, enjoy the ceramic Dalmation. Thanx, Barbara, Jess, and H-G.
Also had truss before TRICK, never heard the word ‘chuffed’ before either, thanks perps.
DeleteI have been doing the LA Times crossword puzzle for decades, and this may have been the most enjoyable Saturday puzzle yet. Certainly one of the few I’ve finished without the excessive help of red letters and alphabet runs. With few exceptions, the cluing was great. If the rest of the day is one tenth as enjoyable as this puzzle, it’s going to be a great weekend.
ReplyDeleteSure we're a lot of ?s
ReplyDeleteFIR, but steed->GET ON. Guessed at DATA x GLAD. At first this one seemed impossible to me, but part of effective procrastination is staying busy on an alternative task, so I stuck with it.
ReplyDeleteI knew GROK without a single perp, so I've got that goin' for me. Which is nice. I was really into Stranger in a Strange Land in the early 70s and acquired several water brothers in the process.
I suppose that with all the cash generated by D1 athletic programs, travel expenses are no problem. And chartering big aircraft like the 777 means that travel time is also not a major obstacle, and these young men and women probably handle jet lag better than us more seasoned folk. Still, it sounds odd to have a Pacific Coast team in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Just about every algorithmic programming has ELSE or equivalent. I think it was Pascal or Fortran that introduced me to ELSEIF, more shorthand for nesting if...then tests.
I enjoy a good drag show, but I've never seen one on TV. So SASHAY AWAY meant nothing to me.
I wonder if TENT POLE was used euphemistically during that one night stand. After all we had PANTS with our TENT POLE. But probably not. I guess sometimes a banana is just a banana. OTOH, we had I WANT IT ALL, which is great to hear during the best one night stands. IIRC. It's been a minute.
Thanks to Barbara and Jess for the fun, doable Saturday special. And thanks to H.Gary for another fine tour. Now I have to get back to re-leveling my fridge. I had new kitchen cabinets installed yesterday, and the fridge won't fit in its cubbyhole without being perfectly plumb.
Python (which was mentioned in the clue) shortens “else if” to “elif”. Which looks like crosswordese, but I don’t want to see it in a grid, ever.
Delete🙄😮🤭
DeleteDetermined to FIR, I worked away at this CW and slowly filled the cells. Alas, I finally had to turn on red-letter help...and then still do several alpha runs. So award myself a DNF. To me alpha runs are disqualifying to try to claim a FIR, or even a FWH. Alpha runs are TOO much help. Finally filled all the cells in 30, but with too much cheating to feel a sense of accomplishment.
ReplyDeleteOnly 10 names, but DNK 9 as clued. Also DNK who Blair Braverman is. Hence, the struggle.
Some clever clues, but not "One-night stand, perhaps?" for TENTPOLES. Baaad clue! (Say that like you would say "Baaad dog!")
Clecho at 37A & 40A. "PANTS" filled immediately; "RANTS" waited a long time for the "R".
Thanx HG for the terrific write-up.
FIR. As is expected on a Saturday, this was definitely a workout. My only nit is with the crossing of mare and mani. For me it was a WAG since mani didn't compute for me.
ReplyDeleteBut the rest of the puzzle, although very hard, was definitely fair.
Overall an enjoyable puzzle.
I really enjoyed this puzzle, some of the clues were RARE TREATS, there were a few unknowns, the SE was rough going, but I must admit the SW defeated me. I kept EYEs, couldn’t possibly come up with GLAD for chuffed, DATA was a total unknown and for the long vertical I tried PLEASE cOmE, then vOTE. Oh well, I’m still happy. I obviously couldn’t have IT ALL.
ReplyDeleteThank you HG for the review and the interviews. Nice picture. That must have been a really fun dinner.
Great Saturday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThe southwest was my longest area to fill (CHUFFED?) but I finally sussed everything out
Good Morning:
ReplyDeleteIt took forever to complete this toughie but I was glad I stuck with it. I went astray at Steed/Get On, Eloi/Otoe, and The/Tha. The fill was top notch as was the cluing, with a few too cutesy exceptions, i.e., the clue for Tent Pole. Sashay Away and Yet Here We Are were my favorite entries, and Hair Curler?=Humidity was my favorite C/A.
Thanks, Barbara and Jess, for a challenging and rewarding collaboration, and thanks, HG, for the review and background information on today’s constructors and, as always, for the array of theme-related photos and clips.
Have a great day.
The 36 Across clue should be "Replacements after leaving Marks". All German nouns are capitalized.
ReplyDeleteThat is true. In Germany, but not here. English grammar rules are followed. The old German currency would only be capitalized in English writing if it was the first word of a sentence.
Delete10:42. Fairly easy and pretty straight-forward puzzle.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks to Jess & Barbara; and to HG❣️ I enjoyed this puzzle immensely and thoroughly❣️
ReplyDeleteChoking is buckling under pressure and failing. Tanking is finding a discreet way to fail in service of a greater goal, such as sitting your best players down the stretch, in order to drop in the standings and secure a higher draft pick.
ReplyDeleteIt has been an issue in the NBA for decades.
The puzzle itself was so-so. Mostly decent but with a few ridiculous clues.
I was on the right wavelength today, as I GROKed all the "?" clues from Barbara & Jess. Good times.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your masterful recap, Gary.
I haven't been around much lately because I'm zipping all over Florida for work this month.
I sometimes want to use GROK as a verb, but refrain because it is obscure. In today's puzzle, it was a welcome toe hold! I was thrilled when I finished this challenging puzzle the old fashioned way, on paper, without help. My final entry was MISTAKES.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks to Barbara and Jess, and also to Husker Gary! The video of "Your Hit Parade" was enlightening. What a production! Never saw it before. Not exactly American Bandstand or Hullabaloo.
& - I’m back to say a big TY! to HG for the Hit Parade memory (just finished listening) - took me back to sitting on my grandpa’s lap watching it together on Saturday nights! I sang along with all those songs, and did again today! I would have been ~3-9yo when we watching together. And after that was a noir piece - maybe “The Whistler”? 🤩
ReplyDeleteHusker Gary I was surprised you didn't know GROK. Did you read any of Heinlein's books? GROK is a common word among science and tech people.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the detailed review of the puzzle and of the constructors.
I very much enjoyed doing this puzzle and was able to completely solve it without having to look anything up. I did resort to turning red letters on ("Check Grid") to see where I went wrong, which was in plenty of places. For example: STREET FOOD-->STREET TACO, SIZZLING-->SEETHING, VENTS-->RANTS, RANTS-->PANTS, CREE-->OTOE, POOL-->MALL (of course, Jayce, that famous mall). I wanted ELECTRICITY for hair curler but it wouldn't fit.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, for me this was the most pleasant Saturday puzzle in my recent memory. Thank you, Barbara and Jess. And thank you once again, Gary, for your informative write-up, your interviews with constructors, and your upbeat attitude.
Jayce: Do you think you could have solved it without red letters? Do you think a puzzle should be solvable by a reasonably intelligent person without needing such help?
Delete(1) I don't know whether I could have solved it without red letters. My feeling is that I probably could not have solved it without red letters.
Delete(2) Back before the days of the internet, when my mother was an avid crossword solver, she had no qualms about consulting her dictionary, encyclopedia, or Book of Quotations (real books, made of paper and stuff), when working a puzzle. Personally, I try not to have to do that, but when it comes to specific trivia-like answer-seeking, such as today's "Jordan who won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay: PEELE", where a regular dictionary or encyclopedia would be of no help, I have no qualms about going on like (usually to Wikipedia) to find the answer.
"on like" --> "on line".
Delete