Themeless Saturday by Tom Pepper
In this picture you can see Tom's wife Terri, Boomer, Tom and C.C. C.C. told me that Tom could probably beat me at golf, which really wouldn't be all that hard. 😀
I am very grateful that Tom was nice enough to include a very informative note about his construction of this puzzle:
Hi Gary,
Nice to hear from you again! I don't always start themeless puzzles with a specific grid pattern, but I did with this one. It was a grid shape that Rex Parker had said he liked in someone else's puzzle because it was conducive to that whoosh-whoosh feeling you get when a couple gettable long entries lead to gettable long crosses. So when I made this puzzle, I placed the four longest entries (13s and 14s) in first, and filled around them. From the start, I had hoped to get both GRAMMAR POLICE and ROOKIE MISTAKE into the puzzle, and it worked out.
When the puzzle was accepted, the editors let me know they were going to make a couple small changes to improve the short fill in the middle section of the puzzle. They even wrote the new clues for me!
Take care,
Tom
Across:
1. Item dropped in the drink: STRAW 😀
6. Chiromancer's target: PALM - Yes, chiromancer is another name for a palm reader.
10. Overwhelm: SLAM - I once SLAMMED a cafe with two buses with 60 kids. We sponsors took orders, served the food, took the money and bussed the tables for them. It turned out great and they were so grateful.
14. Hair extension: WEAVE.
15. Cookies and cream treat: OREO SHAKE.
17. Baseball's all-time RBI leader: AARON.
18. Rescuers on the run?: SKI PATROL 😀
19. Bases for busts: PLINTHS - A PLINTH is a stand or base that can hold a bust. You've got a few miles on your tires if you remember this bust of Voltaire in the office of 50's/60's Perry Mason TV show. You've got a heck of a memory if you remember his secretary Della Street played by the lovely Barbara Hale.
21. Not accidental: MEANT - The hear kids today use the phrase "on accident" instead of "by accident". Did that happen at the same time "could care less" replaced "couldn't care less"?
22. Oft-redacted fig.: SSN.
23. Many an adoptee: HOUSE PET - I can't go into an animal shelter. I'd want to take all of them home.
27. Ones correcting they're gaffes, perhaps?: GRAMMAR POLICE - My favorite clue/fill. This was so clever because the clue had the grammatical gaffe of they're instead of their.
32. French "deadly": FATALE - Mata Hari is said to be the most famous Femme FATALE (deadly woman) of all time.
34. Christmas song: NOEL.
35. "Pass": NAH.
36. Tough to form a bond with: ALOOF - This science guy first thought of INERT
37. Media that led to record losses: CDS.
38. "What she said": DITTO.
40. WoW, for one: RPG - My last fill. This "R" was nearly a natick with FARR crossing RPG but Role Playing Game made sense to me and so I earned a "got 'er done".
41. Visit a souk: SHOP - Souks are common to North Africa. This is one is in Morocco.
43. Steer clear of: ESCHEW.
44. Product of green energy?: ROOKIE MISTAKE 😀 - It can be said that a ROOKIE can be green and apt to make a MISTAKE. My first blogs had them but C.C. was encouraging.
47. Relatively helpful business practice?: NEPOTISM 😀 If your relative is hiring, "it couldn't hurt!"
48. Hip-hop figures: MCS.
51. Groundwork: BASIS.
54. Neighborhood blot: EYESORE.
56. Open: ALL-COMERS - Technically anyone can try but...
60. "Enough's enough": OK NOW.
61. "Truth!": YOU KNOW IT.
62. "Gigi" composer: LOEWE - Can you find him on the poster?
63. Chocolate brand owned by Berkshire Hathaway: SEES - A favorite confection of Warren Buffet
64. Ginormous: MEGA.
65. Samsung appliance: DRYER - You'll have to look close to see the manufacturer
Down:
1. Pulls a switch: SWAPS.
2. Birds for whom a color is named: TEALS.
3. More than ready: RARING TO GO.
4. Bath water: AVON - I learned AVON is a word meaning river in the U.K. Here is the city of Bath on AVON in England.
5. Split evenly, informally: WENT HALFSIES ON - WENT FIFTY FIFTY fit very nicely also
6. Play __: POSSUM.
7. Ararat lander: ARK - Could this shape on Mt. Ararat be the resting place of Noah's ARK?
8. Island ring: LEI.
9. Messy locks: MOP.
10. "Yentl" setting: SHTETL - A SHTETL is a Yiddish word meaning "little town" that refers to small market towns in pre–World War II Eastern Europe with a large, Yiddish-speaking Jewish population.
11. Spencer of "Good Morning America": LARA.
12. "Don't Matter" singer: AKON ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
13. Move to another state?: MELT 😀 Very amusing for this physics teacher who is also a fan of classic movies.
16. "Nothing new under the sun": SAME OLD SAME OLD.
20. Heart's location?: HOME 😊
24. Long jumper's destination: SAND PIT - Bob Beamon shocked the world in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics by beating the old record by almost two feet!
25. Olympic archer?: EROS.
26. Safety gear for ER workers: PPE - We all got familiar with Personal Protection Equipment during covid
28. "The White Tiger" actor Rajkummar: RAO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
29. On easy street: IN THE MONEY.
30. Sandra's "Ocean's 8" co-star: CATE.
31. DIY help site: EHOW.
32. "Fire Country" actress Diane: FARR ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
33. Chewy brand: ALPO - Our kitty Lily gets her food from Chewy.com
37. Lombardy birthplace of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger: COMO - Looks like a nice place for the Pliny's
39. "Ugh!": ICK.
42. Not square: HEP.
43. Spot for unique gifts: ETSY.
45. Mike Brown's NBA team: KNICKS.
49. "Almost Famous" director: CROWE.
50. Underground government operation?: SEWER.
51. Reddish-brown horses: BAYS.
52. Toner additive: ALOE.
53. Turn on an axis: SLUE 😀
55. Toffee bar: SKOR.
57. Certain parent: MOM and 58. 57-Down in a meadow: EWE.
59. Semi: RIG.
I ended up turning on
ReplyDeletethe red letters, and found out it wasn’t Diane LADD, it was Diane FARR.
Once that was corrected, the rest of the puzzle pretty much fell into place.
But I can’t say FIR. The most I can say is FWH.
DNF. Filled 52, 44 correctly. I had Diane Lane; the only FARR I know is Klinger.
ReplyDeleteI had HiP. I blame Huey Lewis and his HiP to be square.
Just before deciding to TIIT, I threw a hail Mary at OREO S___E and filled SconE. It actually sounds pretty good now that I think about it.
Congrats to those who FIRed this one, and to Tom for the solo stumper. And thanks to H.Gary for explaining it all. BTW - I have considered volunteering at my local SPCA now that my caregiver duties are over. But I'm concerned that I might end up with more pets in my house than they have at the shelter.
To be a hep cat, you have to be hip. Neither one is cool.
DeleteGood morning!
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw Tom Pepper's byline I decided to give this one a whirl. Glad I did. The west stayed mostly white, so I went elsewhere and circled back. The problem was my GOES HALVSIES ON/WENT HALFSIES ON, not knowing what RPG meant, and IAMS instead of ALPO. When PanAm lost my luggage, I had to visit the SOUK in Sharjah to shop for underwear. There wasn't much to pick from -- folks in that part of the world don't wear any. I wound up buying some bright colored French designer shorts. Thanx for the amusement, Tom, and for the expo, Husker. (I remember Della Street, but that picture of Voltaire was a bust.)
Squeaked a FIR on this one after my first pass produced two fills. This took some work and a good night's sleep
ReplyDeleteWelp, if the purpose of this puzzle was to remind me of what a dunce I am, it succeeded mightily. Right from the point that I typed in “Olive” for one across…But that’s okay. Last night my wife and I watched “The Queen of Outer Space” the 1959 film starring Zsa Zsa Gabor, which was a hoot. And, my beloved Atlanta Braves are moving on in the post season to the delight of my dog Chipper. All is good.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing your favorite oldie is Crazy Train, Chipper's at bat tune.
DeleteYep. Definitely.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this solve. Immensely. After a full week of LAT puzzles that were way too easy, it was nice to get a puzzle that took some thought. I had to pay attention to detail solve it.
ReplyDeleteAKON is the singer. iKON is the South Korean band. SLiM didn't make sense for "Overwhelm" but SLAM did. And, singer vs band confirmed it.
Spin was my initial fill for "Turn on an axis." But that would have left ALpCOMERS, YO I KNOW IT amd SEpS. They were clearly wrong. ALL and YOU led to the obvious SEES and the D'oh! reaction. I thought it was great misdirection on "Turn on an axis" with the apparent spin evolving into SLUE.
"Rescuers on the run" and "Product of green energy" were my favorite clues, followed closely by "Ones correcting they're gaffes, perhaps?" and "Relatively helpful business practice." The key words in those were run, green, they're gaffes, and relatively. Superb cluing.
Excellent puzzle, Tom. Thanks for the review, HG.
Meandering along... Old song lyrics. It took awhile to remember the name of the song:
"I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag
Somebody bet on the bay"
Stephen Foster's "Camptown Races," right?
DeleteI agree on "they're gaffes." Brilliant clue. First time "they're" served as an adjective!
Yes. Stephen Foster. He also wrote Oh Susanna as you are probably aware.
DeleteGood Morning:
ReplyDeleteAfter the first pass through the entire grid, I had very few squares filled in and a sinking feeling that I’d never complete this puzzle. However, through P and P and sheer stubbornness, I finished w/o help and with much enjoyment and satisfaction. The cluing was clever and nuanced and the fill was not only fresh but energetic. The solve reminded me of the good old days when we were challenged but rewarded by such authors like Barry Silk.
Thanks, Tom, for the solve and the memories it evoked and thanks, HG, for the excellent review and for highlighting Tom’s special friendship with CC. Also enjoyed reading Tom’s perspective on this offering.
Have a great day.
DNF. The NE did me in. And I felt so good after throwing down "same old, same old". But all the likely perps in that corner eluded me. Slam did not occur to me, and all the down clues left me blank.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the puzzle went incredibly smoothly and for a while I really thought I was going to get the win. But alas, no.
Overall a so-so puzzle.
It was good to see Tom Pepper as the author, it made me work at it longer, much longer...
ReplyDeleteSomeday I hope to get better at these Saturday Stumpers, but right now it would take me a week to achieve an FIR.
Curiously, your opening photo did not appear on my IPad when I first opened the Blog. It was all writing side to side. I was going to ask for a copy, but the photo appeared after I reloaded to see the comments. Very curious...
Anywho, it was great fun to see the answers that stumped me, every one was an aha moment...
I WAGged and erased my way through this puzzle. I WAGged some of the names I didn’t know like LARA, AKON, (well, that one was perps), RAO, and CATE.
ReplyDeleteMETRO _> SEWER, mortel _> FATALE, hip_>HEP. Now, I still DNF because I kept MoLT and could come up with SHAKE crossing SHTETL. But make no MISTAKE, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. I thought the theme answers were quite clever.
Thank you HG for the review and the nostalgic photo.
That should be could NOT come up.
ReplyDeleteFWH as usual for Saturday for me. I typically do a pass and circle things I simply do not know. I had 12 here. Tough one but fun. I liked "rookie mistake" and "ski patrol" fills, clever.
ReplyDeleteTom hit the sweet spot for a Saturday: clever clues + fair crosses = tough but doable.
ReplyDeleteThanks for covering all the bases, HG.
Took 17:37 today for me to get from here to they're.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know one of the Actress of the Day (Farr; knew Cate) or the Actor of the Day (Rao), but I knew the director (Crowe). I didn't know the composer (Loewe), the French (fatale), the Italian (Como), "shtetl," or "slue."
Saturday s’pose to be filled with clever, imaginative, even “gotcha” type clues. Those, yes but waaaay too many proper names. Natick city!
ReplyDeleteNever expected to and thought I had FIR but now see I FIW: had FAhR and thus hPG. so guess I’m not a “Pepper” ☺️
Inkover: huge/MEGA, beys/BAYS, core/HOME (liked this clue)
SLUE? “You say taffy, I say toffee” Didn’t know they were different kyna sweets
“Bath Water”, I figured AVON bubble bath. Had ETSY twice, E-HOW?
SHTETL “Papa Can You Hear MEEEEE!”
“Perry Mason”: the way most of us learned how courtroom trials were conducted. Wondered how Hamilton Burger felt when he lost every… single…case! 😖
(As a kid I thought Perry’s secretary’s name was Dellas Treet.)
Enjoy rest of weekend 🙂
Burger never lost a case, he lost all the preliminary hearings. Mason then handed him the real murderer for trial on a silver platter.
DeleteThat was me above
DeleteI see your point. As an 8 y o seemed like the Hamburgler was upset at losing .
DeleteRemember Lt. Tragg would touch a pinch of powered substance to his tongue at a murder scene and know it was arsenic .
Who is Perry Mason?
DeleteAs with most Saturday’s my first pass through didn’t yield much, but like IM☘️ I plugged away at it and FIR w/out help in 35:58. About as good as it gets for a themeless, cluing that really made me think, and a difficulty level appropriate for the day. Last fill was a first time WAG at the W in the LOEWE/CROWE Natick. DNK what a Chiromancer, a souk, or a PLINTH was, or the names AKON, FARR, CATE, RAO, COMO, or who Mike Brown is, thank you perps. Had to change ‘landing’ to SAND PIT. I can’t say I’m a member of the GRAMMAR POLICE, but I do always notice the errors in syntax, ie: ‘had went’ instead of ‘had gone’. Nice puzzle Tom, thank you for the fun challenge, and to Husker for your always entertaining recap.
ReplyDeleteHand up IAMS before ALPO. Hand up FAxR/xPG totally unnecessarily unfair. With a name, it could be anything. Certainly I or H would have worked. WAG to FIR but not happy about it. SE also had crossed proper names.
ReplyDeleteThere was a specific reason that area was unfair. "Deadly" as clued is a modifier but "Fatale" is a noun. A slight variation of Lethal kind of fit in that spot if you thought Diane was Lane (as I did) or Ladd. Never heard of Diane Farr and didn't know RPG, so I "finished with help" when I got help with Farr, and the rest fell into place. Loved about 10 entries in this puzzle, including PLINTH, NEPOTISM as clued, LOEWE, SHTETL, the SEWER clue, Cameron CROWE, and the Mike Brown/KNICKS entry. I thought FARR, AKON, RAO, HEP (instead of HiP) were problematic, and I really disliked OK, NOW and YOU KNOW IT.
DeleteFATALE is an adjective. Fatal is the masculine form.
DeleteFemme fatale could also mean deadly wife.😳
DeleteWe were whelmed with proper names!
ReplyDeleteAn almost finish but no cigar today. Too many unknown proper names that I could not guess, especially in the NE. Shtetl, Lara Akon being side by side kept shake and patrol from being completed. I was thinking about being snowed under, not slammed.
ReplyDeleteWoW- RPG, both unknown. I was thinking Woodmen Of the World. Farr was unknown I left FA__R & __PG as my only other incomplete .
I'm glad we have no grammar police on the website, because I would probably be in the slammer.
Welcome to Obfuscation Saturday! After the relatively easy last couple of days’ puzzles, this one made up for all that.
ReplyDeleteYep — waaay too many proper names, mostly obscure A&E junk; so I followed my usual m.o. and looked those up. Some of the other fills, like OKNOW and SLUE left me with a bad taste, but the clever ones for SKIPATROL and SEWER made things sweeter. I kept looking at that “they’re” in the clue for 27A, thinking “Okay, this must mean something!”…and perps finally led to the “ahah!” moment. So, despite initially wanting to trash this one, I stuck with it for a small FWH.”victory”.
However, I feel there is one blazing error in the clueing: an OREOSHAKE is made with Oreos and ice cream, not “cream”. Bad mislead, imo. 👎🏼 but I’m guessing it’s not Mr. Pepper’s fault…
Thanks for all the comic relief in your tour d’grid, @Husker G.! Some funny bits in there. And yes, I confess to being old enough to have watched “Perry Mason” in its heyday; I don’t remember Voltaire’s bust (probably had no clue who it was) but I definitely remember Ms. Hale as Della Street — and it wasn’t solely because of her bust. 🤣
====> Darren / L.A.
A DNF today for me. But I do recognize the cleverness of this puzzle. And I want to say that I love Mike Brown. I first knew him as an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors basketball team. Then went on to coach the Sacramento Kings where he was fired. He then went to the New York Knicks and won the NBA championship! I guess he showed them!
ReplyDeleteMy fav clue/answer today has to be Bath water = Avon.
ReplyDeleteNot only because it requires Jeopardy like knowledge of obscure things, but because it evoked memories I had not thought of in many, many years... (yes Irish Miss, I was always an Imp...). It reminded me of when I was twelve, (just a few months ago...) when parent (singular) was out of the house, I would fill up the bathtub, and make paper water bombs. Except I left them empty of water, and sewed weights to them to make them look like mines when submerged in the tub. Then I took model warships, poured little dabs of wet airplane glue on them, and set them on fire, making a smoky battle scene...
But I was not finished yet...
Then I would take a half a paper clip, hooked on a rubber band, and shoot at the under water mines which were bouyant being tied to weights with sewing thread but still deep under water...
The exploding mines under burning ships in the bathtub was glorious!
Too bad my (singular parent) never knew what I was doing while out of the apartment. But always wondered about the dings in the bathtub caused by paper clip hits...
Anywho, thanks Tom for the memories...
(Anyone get the feeling I couldn't find a decent silly link today...)
Wait a sec!
This guy stole my childish ideas, and is making money with them on YouTube!
hmm, he is reliving my childhood, "and" making money...
The parts I liked outnumbered the parts I didn't like. Overall I enjoyed solving this puzzle.
ReplyDeletePLINTH(S) is an absolutely perfect word for a crossword puzzle. AKON is not, IMO.
Here's wishing you all a good weekend.