Yijing Chen is becoming a regular following her LAT debut earlier this year.
62. Oregon Trail cry, or an apt title for this puzzle?: WESTWARD HO. WESTWARD HO was an encouraging cry used by pioneers along the historic 2000 mile migration route. And if you can imagine hundreds of thousands of people walking across the U.S. in the mid-1800s, they needed all the encouragement they could get! Although if you were a movie star, they let you ride in a wagon.
As a title reveals, HO is to be appended to the west end (left side as in an ATLAS) of each theme answer, turning a common phrase into something jolly.
17. *Urn that self-returns?: HOMING VASE. A MING VASE that returns like a HOMING pigeon.
24. *Spreading the gospel of continental breakfast, turndown service, and free Wi-Fi?: HOTEL EVANGELISM. A TELEVANGELIST is usually a Christian minister who preaches via TV broadcasts and solicits donations. Here he's singing the praises of luxury HOTEL amenities.
37. *Corny, sappy, or cheesy?: HOKEY WORD. A KEYWORD is a word of great significance that describes the main idea of a text or a search query. Adding HO makes it HOKEY to match the clue.
53. *Treating guests to some honey, perhaps?: HOSTING LIKE A BEE. "Float like a butterfly, STING LIKE A BEE" is a famous line by boxer Muhammad Ali. The HO out front changes this to HOSTING like at a party serving BEE honey.
It took me a while to catch onto the West Side Story. I had several blanks in the themers until I got to the revealer and had my O-HO moment. Overall, I liked the mash-ups even though I found this puzzle to be more difficult than usual for a Thursday. Or maybe the last few Thursdays were easier than usual. In any case, very few proper names made this a winner.
Onward HO!
Across:
1. Bit of baby talk: DADA. DADA was also an art movement, but I don't think that's the kind of movement a baby talks about.
5. Soothe operator?: BALM. Fun clue right off the bat!
9. Hutches: PENS. I was thinking furniture for way too long. Hutches are generally cages for small animals.
13. Rink leap: AXEL.
14. Geography buff's compendium: ATLAS.
16. Milquetoast: BLAH.
17. [theme]
19. "Purple Haze" rocker Hendrix: JIMI. I have a life-size photo of Jimi playing my dream white Fender Stratocaster.
20. __ Strauss & Co.: LEVI.
21. Discord figs.: MODS. Not knowing that Discord is an online messaging and gaming app made this one hard. But I inferred it had something to do with social media, so someone who handles discord (the verb) would be a MODerator.
23. Flat cap: TAM.
24. [theme]
28. Took in: ATE.
29. The Roaring Twenties, e.g.: ERA.
30. Target of some recycling drives: E-WASTE. The world generates 66 million tons of Electronic Waste every year, and only about 20% gets recycled.
31. Some 35mm cameras: SLRS. Single-Lens Reflex cameras.
33. Woes: ILLS.
36. Submitter's button: ENTER. When I first started using computers (pre-PCs), I sometimes got a message to press any key to continue. I'm still looking for the ANY key...
37. [theme]
40. Discord fig.: ADMIN. A near clecho of 21A with my same logic arriving at ADMINistrator.
43. Seafaring wood: TEAK. We have several Danish Modern furniture pieces made of TEAK. Because of its natural oil content, it is unfinished and never needs polishing. Just wipe it down once in a while with TEAK oil to restore it's luster. This property makes it repel water so it works well on boats.
44. Isolate, in corporate jargon: SILO. I need to brush up on my jargons.
48. Small diadems: TIARAS.
50. Member of the fam: MOM.
52. Drops in the morning: DEW.
53. [theme]
57. Quitter's button: ESC. Is the ESCAPE key anywhere near the ANY key?
58. __-poly: ROLY.
59. Tex-Mex extra, for short: GUAC. This is just a little guacamole.
60. Screen type at many a science museum: IMAX. As Ed Sullivan purportedly said, "It's a really big shoe."
62. [theme]
66. CarPlay companion: SIRI. Apple CarPlay projects your iPhone interface onto your car's built-in display.
67. "Bo-ring!": SNORE.
68. On in years: AGED.
69. Rapa Nui monoliths: MOAI. MOAI are giant stone statues carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island between the 13th and 16th centuries. Today, the eye sockets are empty, but white coral fragments discovered nearby suggest they originally had white eyes like this restored one.
70. Tried to get home, say: SLID. Baseball reference.
71. Journo's hook: LEDE. Journo is slang for a journalist and a LEDE (pronounced leed) is the introductory first line of an article. Newspapers changed the spelling to avoid confusion with "lead," the heavy metal used to typeset in old printing presses.
Down:
1. Morse code unit: DAH.
2. Mexican salamander found in mountain lakes: AXOLOTL. An AXOLOTL is a fully aquatic salamander, it never leaves the water.
 |
| Smile for the camera! |
3. Greek goddess of the harvest: DEMETER. DEMETER is the ancient Greek goddess of agriculture, grain, and the harvest. Her Roman equivalent is Ceres, from which we get our modern word "cereal." Apparently, no one wanted DEMETER and milk.
4. Still in it to win it: ALIVE.
5. Purse: BAG.
6. Off-rd. rig: ATV. All-Terrain Vehicles travel off-road.
7. Vicuña kin: LLAMA. Vicuña wool is the rarest, finest and most expensive animal fiber in the world. I knit my socks from it.
8. George __ University: MASON. GMU is located in Northern Virginia near Washington D.C. It is named in honor of George Mason, one of our Founding Fathers and frequent visitor to the colonial capital of Williamsburg, VA.
9. Vegan sando: PBJ. Who knew that I was a vegan throughout elementary school with my daily Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches? Mine were never cut on a diagonal like the rich kids.
 |
| Gourmet PBJ |
10. Gatekeeping type: ELITIST. Smith Corona type: ELITE
11. Word often said over prayer hands: NAMASTE. NAMASTE is a respectful Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain greeting meaning "I bow to you."
12. Sequins effect: SHIMMER.
15. Grasslike plant: SEDGE.
18. Murchison Falls river: NILE.
22. Setting of the animated film "Flushed Away": SEWER.
24. Consumes: HAS.
25. "Black Panther" villain Killmonger: ERIK. Killmonger sounds like a Marvel supervillain, but his first name is ERIK? That's like saying Darth Vader's first name is Bob.
26. Worker who gets around a lot: VALET. My other favorite clue.
27. Touches down: LANDS.
32. Henley, for one: SHIRT.
34. Curing agent for century eggs: LYE. The preservation process of century eggs (usually duck or quail) actually only takes 40 to 100 days. But that's still about 40 to 100 days older than I like my eggs.
35. Ashram leader, perhaps: SWAMI.
38. Broadcasting: ON AIR.
39. "I get the point already!": OK OK.
40. Pascal's wager subject: ATHEISM. Pascal's Wager is a pragmatic philosophical argument stating that a person should live as though God exists and believe in Him, because the reward of believing is infinite and the loss of being wrong is small. I never heard of this rationale, perhaps because it was posited 400 years ago.
 |
| Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) |
41. Spanish expression of shock: DIOS MIO. Oh my God! (I'm covering all bases now thanks to Monsieur Pascal.)
42. Lash thickener: MASCARA.
45. Lanyard attachment: ID BADGE. If you don't have an Identification badge, you'll just have to remember your own name.
46. Freeloaded: LEECHED. Equating a bloodsucking worm to a human parasite who drains someone else's resources dates back to 1784.
47. Have debts: OWE. I OWE, I OWE, so off to work I go...
49. Makes a winter blanket?: SNOWS. It didn't snow much in Williamsburg, VA as I grew up, but when it did, the blanket of SNOW turned the colonial area into a Currier & Ives print.
51. Grand opening?: MEGA. MEGA as a prefix for great or mighty.
54. Secluded valleys: GLENS.
55. Wipes brand: LYSOL.
56. Hearing-related: AURAL.
61. Number on an old clock: XII. I like the number 12 in Roman numerals at the top, but IIII instead of IV for 4 not so much. They do it to help balance the visual weight of VIII on the opposite side of the face.
63. Numeric prefix: TRI. TRI is the only prefix (from 1 - 10) that is the same in both Greek and Latin.
64. Married: WED.
65. Lines from an admirer: ODE.
HOped you liked it!
Be good. RB
FIR, somehow, but son->MOM, roli->ROLY, stale->SNORE, sparkle->SHIMMER, and ocean->SEWER. Yup, did me some guessin' on this one.
ReplyDeleteI think the theme for this one should have been "words of discord: who you callin' a ho?"
This one was a rare example of how I can finish a puzzle without error, but also without joy. Far too much obfuscation for my taste. Of course YMMV. But thanks to Rusty Brain for the fine review.
After I got the reveal,
ReplyDeleteand then went back and corrected a couple of things based on it, everything came together, in spite of a few definite obscurities.
FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
ReplyDeleteI liked it. Even read the reveal clue. (I'm taking my temperature as we speak.) The flight deck on our WWII-era aircraft carrier was "paved" in TEAK. Wite-Out corrected glIMMER to SHIMMER, and the grid was complete. Yay. Thanx, Yijing and Rusty.
Not my favorite. Trying too hard to be clever and it shows.
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
DeleteFun puzzle and review. To me getting blah from milquetoast is too big of a stretch, but that led to reading about the origin of milquetoast from Caspar Milquetoast, a made up name for a timid character from milk toast which sounds pretty unappetizing but makes the point effectively so that was fun.
ReplyDeleteYou certainly can't call this puzzle HOKEY, with words like AXOLOTL, NAMASTE, DIOS MIO, DEMETER, and MOAI. I managed to FIR without really knowing any of them.
ReplyDeleteERIK, ADMIN, MODS and LEDE- not really known as clued.
My first thought for "Henley" was EAGLE, as is Don Henley. Second thought was REGATTA.
PENS and Hutches- I was also thinking furniture.
MODS and ADMIN and Discord figs- not a clue about either. I just accepted what the perps let me have.
MOAI- I wanted TIKI but the perps wouldn't allow it for the Easter Island statues.
LEECHED or MOOCHED; SHIMMER or GLIMMER- waited for perps
A tough puzzle to finish.
The above was me.
DeleteGood Morning:
ReplyDeleteI FIR but can’t say I enjoyed the experience. I’m just not fond of this type of theme because the theme entries are usually nonsense phrases. I like my puzzles more true to their origins, i.e., ordinary words clued in a meaningful, yet thought-provoking manner. Despite the solving difficulty level being a Thursday, the theme itself could lend itself to any day of the week, IMO.
Thanks, Yijing, and thanks, RB, for a delightful review and commentary which I enjoyed much more than the solve. Tummy rubs to Buster.
Have a great day.
FIR. That's two days in a row of extremely hard puzzles. Another workout of Saturday proportions. And also a bunch of obscure proper names. With several WAG's I was able to get the win.
ReplyDeleteI had to come here to understand the theme. Meh!
Overall not an enjoyable puzzle.
Looked twice at the date on my newspaper, as for me as the puzzle sure seemed like a Saturday. On a typical Saturday, I do not get far on the puzzles. Today was one of those days. Two bad days in a row, as yesterday's sure seemed like a Friday. Really did not like this puzzle. Hopefully, I'll do better tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteDIOS MIO, that was a doozy! But I loved it for some reason. Maybe because there were so few pop names. Erik was my only unknown and it was easy to guess.
ReplyDeleteWe’ve had AXOLOTL before, still I needed perps to fill it. I like Henley SHIRTs. I’ve worn that style for many years. I liked the clues for NAMASTE and ATHEISM. We had DADA and MOM.
Thank you RB for your great review. Pascal’s wager might be 400 years old, but it still makes sense today.
Musings
ReplyDelete-Rusty’s summative paragraph works for me.
-Submit/ENTER – Gmail gives me a few seconds to cancel anything I write but Text does not.
-Discord as an online service was completely unknown but I got the fills anyway
-SILOS around here are lonely but will be accepting a bumper crop very soon
-The IMAX shuttle movie fills the screen with the image and has speakers bigger than a house that shake you in your seat.
-My iPhone plays wirelessly on our 2020 car's radio but has requires a USB connection in the 2019 vehicle
-Buried the LEDE
-For some reason, I knew DEMETER but did not realize the NILE River has a very big waterfall or that a shirt has a name
-Pascal vs Homer Simpson
-Milquetoast/BLAH? “Missed it by that much!”
FIR, but not without a struggle. Some clever clueing (BALM) and fun vocabulary (NAMASTE).
ReplyDeleteI really liked the stacked 7 entries in the NW, but the SW was tougher, with ATHEISM and DIOS MIO crossing the unknown (to me) MOAI. I had to guess between ATHEISM and ATHEISt and managed to get it right. But this corner would have been gentler with IMAM at 60A, MIT at 61D, and MOAT at 69A.
Overall a solid challenge. Thanks to Yijing for the fun, and to RB for the delightful review. Loved the picture of the AXOLOTL, “totes adorbs.” :o)
That should have been “stacked 7s in the NE”, not NW! Typo.
DeleteYou would think I would have loved this CW: only 7 names, only 3 DNKs among them. But I hated this CW. Far too many other obscure things clued. "NAMASTE"? Also had to wait on almost all perps for AXOLOTL: such strange spelling.
ReplyDeleteHad no idea "Discord" is an app really confused me. Eventually, FWH (red-letter help) but still took 20 minutes and I really had no fun with this CW. Never heard of a Henley shirt, which didn't help.
I thought I knew all the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses, but nope: DNK DEMETER.
GLITTER/GLIMMER/SHIMMER.
To top it off I did not suss the theme. I don't feel too bad about that, because I didn't take time to look for it.
YC, you defeated me in terms of a clean FIR, but I did FWH. Thanx for so few names.
Thanx RB for the terrific write-up. That's a great picture of Jimi Hendrix, but those "century eggs" look disgusting. People actually EAT those things? Why do people still use Roman Numerals? The NFL enumerates the Super Bowls using Roman Numerals, but they didn't call the 50th the "D Super Bowl", they called it the "50th Super Bowl". Roman numerals were replaced for a reason: they are clunky. We should have dumped them entirely 1,000 years ago.
I can't give an honest evaluation, because I rushed thru with the red letters on. (Busy day.) all I can is there were a lot of red letters...
ReplyDelete"Oho moment!" Rusty Brain, good one! I LoL'd...
Demeter actually emerged without any red, because I seem to remember a previous puzzle where (I believe Husker Gary reviewed it) a picture of The Demeter statue placed atop a dome on a town hall was shown. I cannot find this anywhere now. Hg? Do you remember this?
(Or am I misremembering...)
The only thing that addled my brain all the way to the review, was hotelevangelist. Thanks for the reveal. I could not see the "hotel" and was wondering what a ho-televangelist could possibly be... maybe it was just badly placed..?
I did not enjoy this hokey puzzle. With made up terms like homing vase and hosting like a bee this CW belongs in 22D(“flushed Away”)
ReplyDeleteTook 9:13 today to get to West Virginia.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm facing South while solving, then the "ho" is added to the East, right? Is it an unwritten crossword puzzle rule that we're assumed to be facing North while solving?
I agree with most of the other comments. Challenging, but not fun. The juice wasn't worth the squeeze for me today.
Uncle Fred, I think "D" is 500 and "L" is 50, but I'm not Roman.