Themeless Saturday by Adrian Johnson
A funny thing happened on my way to a very quick solve. I sped through the SW, SE and NW but the fill in the NE mocked me. As you can see in the colored grid, there were some real obstacles there. Even a NASA guy like me struggled with SPACE WASTE (usually called space junk) and I flat did not know SHOJIS, ARBORIO, AGRABAH or suss out the sense of the word WEEPING. I'll struggle to get through the day, live with a couple of bad cells and try to stay out of the left over Halloween candy.
1. Tails the fox's creator: SEGA - Apparently our frequent crossword visitor, SEGA's Sonic The Hedgehog, has a friend.
5. Remains among the stars?: SPACE WASTE - OBVI the picture below is an exaggeration but there's a lot of junk up there. The first object in space was Sputnik in 1957 and it fell back to Earth after 3 months and burned up in the atmosphere.
15. Snake's target: CLOG.
16. Factor in some accidents: HUMAN ERROR.
17. One consulting a manual, perhaps: USER - After this HUMAN makes an ERROR, he then seeks out the manual which, fortunately because I threw out the one that came with the item, is almost always online.
18. Event with pros and cons: OPEN DEBATE.
19. Cactus League city: MESA - We paid $65 per seat to watch the Cubs play the Royals during spring training in MESA, AZ.
20. Puts together: JUXTAPOSES - One of my favorite words.
21. "Duh": OBVI - There seems to be poetic license to take any word and chop off a part and use it as slang these days. Totes adorbs! 🤨
23. Title for Mo Farah: SIR.
24. Impulse-ive path?: SYNAPSE 😀
27. "How cool!": OH NICE.
30. What hikers wear: PATHS 😀 Some of those PATHS that HIKERS wear can be very precarious!
31. Aspirational hashtag: LIFE GOALS.
34. Letter between pi and sigma: RHO - In Greek, Gary becomes Γκάρι
35. Berry quantities: PINTS.
36. Softball stat: RBI.
37. Formal address: YOUR GRACE.
40. Affix: TIE ON - "Affix a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak tree"
42. Chocolaty cereal brand: OREO O'S.
43. Leila Fadel's venue: NPR NEWS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
45. Brand on a racetrack: STP - Too slick for a sumo wrestler in this 1960's commercial
46. Austrian gent: HERR.
47. "Brake! Brake! Brake!": STOP THE CAR.
53. Not close enough: AFAR.
56. Name for five kings of Hawaii: KAMEHAMEHA.
57. Beyoncé voice role: NALA.
58. Structures at some winter carnivals: ICE CASTLES - Wisconsin's Magical ICE CASTLES
59. __ bag: GIFT - A welcome alternative for those of us who are very bad at gift wrapping.
60. "I'm in no mood": DON'T TEST ME.
61. Ballpark figs.: ERAS - Not EST'S today
Down:
1. Dirty film?: SCUM.
2. Term in conditional programming: ELSE.
3. Plays around?: GOES ON TOUR😀 After 60 years, Mike Love is the only original Beach Boy that still GOES ON TOUR (pink hat below)
4. Fictional city that's a magic carpet ride away from the Cave of Wonders: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ AGRABAH.
5. Sliding screens: SHOJIS - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ $800 at Home Depot
6. __ platter: PUPU - It was my first thought and it turned out to be right
7. Centurion co.: AMEX.
8. Tilt: CANT - Lean and Bias didn't work.
9. Dating connections in some publications?: EN DASHES - My full time teaching gigs ran from 1968 - 2015.
10. Overcome with joy, perhaps: WEEPING - My first sense of overcome with joy was BEAMING
11. Rice named for a Piedmont municipality: ARBORIO - Grown in the Piedmont area in the far NW section of Italy.
12. Titles for mujeres casadas: Abbr.: SRAS - Married women in Español
13. __ bag: TOTE.
14. Part of a basic Spanish conjugation: ERES.
13. __ bag: TOTE.
14. Part of a basic Spanish conjugation: ERES.
22. Seconds, for short: VPS - Vice Presidents can be the second person in charge. I went through many thoughts about what "seconds" meant in the clue
24. Moving with ease: SPRY.
25. "Huzzah!": YAHOO.
26. Big name in sports statistics: ELIAS - The ELIAS Sports Bureau is famous for hyper-specific sports nuggets for the media such as
24. Moving with ease: SPRY.
25. "Huzzah!": YAHOO.
26. Big name in sports statistics: ELIAS - The ELIAS Sports Bureau is famous for hyper-specific sports nuggets for the media such as
There have been more than 4 million innings pitched in Major League history and Fernando Tatis is the only player to hit two Grand Slam home runs in the same inning.
27. Habitually: OFTEN.
28. Event intended to address trade deficits?: CAREER FAIR 😀 When you are looking for a new trade.
29. Pipe shape: ELBOW.
32. "Feel Good __": 2005 hit for Gorillaz: INC. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
27. Habitually: OFTEN.
28. Event intended to address trade deficits?: CAREER FAIR 😀 When you are looking for a new trade.
29. Pipe shape: ELBOW.
33. Trespasses: SINS.
35. Initial stage of mitosis: PROPHASE.
35. Initial stage of mitosis: PROPHASE.
38. Abide by: RESPECT.
39. "Capisce?": GOT THAT - "ARBORIO is Italian rice. Capisce?"
40. Uno e due: TRE.
41. Close enough: IN RANGE - The arrival of the B29 Super Fortress put the home islands of Japan IN RANGE for bombing
48. Qdoba snack: TACO.
49. Serious sign: OMEN.
50. Defib experts: EMTS - Many buildings now have defibrillator units in the hallways to use until EMT's get there.
52. "I'm still here": AHEM.
54. The "A" of NATO: ALFA - The NATO alphabet where I would be Golf Alfa Romeo Yankee.
55. "Phooey!": RATS.
I’ll reserve my comments
ReplyDeleteto a little later. Y’all go ahead.
I can’t remember the last time I failed this bad, an hour in I still had 15 blank spaces, and some of the fill I did have was wrong ie: DEBATE____ . I was slowed down in the SW where I first had ICE statues, I had no idea about the kings of Hawaii, but KAMEHAMEHA miraculously perped. In the end I was done in by SHOJIS, SYNAPSE, CANT, VPS…. Oh well, I guess I had fun trying, thanks Adrian for keeping my ego in check. Thanks to HG for shedding light on all I didn’t know. Spring training games are no bargain, I attend a few a year in Florida, high ticket prices and $14 beers.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Phil. I feel much better. I got several that stumped you, but missed at least as many of the rest. We should’ve teamed up!
DeleteOne letter off.
ReplyDeleteToughie
Pass.
ReplyDeleteI got hung up in much
ReplyDeletethe same area H. Gary did.
So, DNF.
Oh, well. Not unusual for a Saturday.
Better luck next time, I guess!
Trying too hard to impress. Didn’t.
ReplyDeleteI needed 16 reveals to get through this one. Toughie!
ReplyDeleteThis was so outside my wheelhouse, after a couple of run throughs, I TITT.
ReplyDeleteKudos HG and to all who finished this CW and had a good time.
Good Morning:
ReplyDeleteI breezed through most of this thanks to helpful perps, some WAGs, and actual knowledge. Shojis and Arborio came to me immediately but many others, Kamehameha and Agrabah, in particular, needed lots of assistance. I was surprised to see Paths at 30A because of the use of Path in the clue for Synapse, right above it. Speaking of clues, I thought some were too cutesy and over the top. As usual, non-words such as Obvi are annoying nose-wrinklers. Overall, though, it was (mostly) a satisfying Saturday solve.
Thanks, Adrian, and thanks, HG, for the usual facts and fun. I hope Darling Lily is on the mend.
Have a great day.
Thanks for the lovely note about Lily. I think we are making progress but have found out that administering oral meds to a cat is not easy! After we are done doing that, she does not go hide and still comes and sits by us. So in some sense, after 12 years with us, she must know we are only trying to help her.
DeleteB.E.
DeleteMy cat's vet taught me how to give a cat a pill or liquid using a dropper.
Put the cat on a towel (so you won't get clawed) in your lap-facing RIGHT.
With your LEFT hand resting behind its head, pull the LEFT ear and the cat's head will go back, but more importantly, it will also open its mouth.
Lick your right pinkie finger to hold the pill, stick the pill on your finger and put the pill down the cat's throat. It always worked for me.
HG, let’s hope the meds help your little girl get back to her darling, healthy self! Good luck!
DeleteDNF. The NE did me in. Shojis was a complete unknown and "space waste" just wouldn't come to me even though i knew it had to be space related.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the puzzle, although difficult, filled in nicely. My first long entry was "ice castles" and everything else followed nicely.
Overall a so-so puzzle.
I spent about 5 minutes going through the clues, and could never really get started anywhere in the puzzle. Too nice of day too, so went outside to watch the butterflies and birds.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how some of you found this EZ and others a wash like me. My SYNAPSEs were just not firing. Not a puzzle to PU PU 😟
ReplyDeleteI completed the NW and SW plus a smattering of fill throughout the rest.
Had pilotERROR, the only 3-letter PHASE I could remember was ana PHASE. tubic for “pipe shape” hadda be wrong.
As a listener NPR while driving never heard of Leila Fadel.
AGRABAH? SHOJIS? ELIAS?
“Remains among the stars” does not refer to a Hollywood Cemetery. 😉
Rainy weekend. 🌧️☔️
DNF. Got 44 fills, 41 of them correctly. Erased boots for the equally wrong irons, which may be more apt for the trail Gary chose. Also, pecks->PINTS, ests->ERAS, and dock->SKID.
ReplyDeleteI really disliked the clue "huzzah." There were others that I wasn't crazy about, but IMO that one really stank up the joint. But I really liked "event intended to address trade imbalance" for CAREER FAIR. In Norfolk there is a severe shortage of tradesmen and tradeswomen to build and repair ships. CAREER FAIRs happen fairly often. The job isn't easy, but applicants can get paid while they learn, and they graduate apprentice school without debt. Shipyards pay very well, and the skills learned are easily portable to other industries.
Didn't help that I read Australian instead of Austrian, so HERR was a long time coming.
I thought of "condom fail" for "factor in some accidents," but it wouldn't perp. I guess that's a specific kind of HUMAN ERROR.
I DNK that Bouncy does voice-over work.
I'll like NPR NEWS a lot better when no tax dollars fund it.
Thanks to H.Gary for another entertaining write-up. I needed it after struggling mightily with the grid.
22:40. Hardest one for me in a long time. Struggled with the center part but eventually everything came together. Really good puzzle. The fill was excellent--no real junk.
ReplyDeleteThe opening 1a, and general NW area piqued my interest at first, because I had a whole lot of nothing... determined, I doggedly continued on revealing "human error." However, I hit reveal on "juxtaposes." When duh=obvi, I threw in the towel, knowing I could never get any enjoyment out of this puzzle... nope, tilt is not lean, but cant? Other than formula 1 race car wheels, this is a formula for "I can't do this and have any fun at all!"
ReplyDeleteThe last line sums this puzzle up perfectly...
Hmm, I know how I might get something out of this this... I will reread the review and comments, and "if" I get bored sometime later today, I will retry doing the puzzle, just to see how much I can remember...
I like that idea - different kind of brain-gain. I’m curious to hear
DeleteToday’s puzzle was a real challenge - over an hour, and I never got obvi-x-vp. “Seconds” as in “more food” just would not leave my head!
ReplyDelete& I depended on crossings a lot to suss it all out - kept me from giving up!
My favorite: synapse! Clever clue! But needed perps - I SHOULD have gotten it on its own🤷♀️ - after all, I’m a (retired now) microbiologist and a psychologist!
Thanks for the challenging puzzle, and the engaging review! Y’all have a great week!
DNF and also had one answer wrong. Guess it’s a Saturday so it’s ok for constructors to very likely look up answers even they may not know what they mean such as pupu and shojis? I had clot instead of clog so agrabah was wrong and for the life of me, I can’t get used to teen speak so couldn’t suss obvi although it’s been foolishly around before. Ultimately only left 3 unfinished between obvi, vps, and agrbah, so it could have been worse. And that took a couple hours!
ReplyDeleteI took one pass and got the SE and a few correct guesses elsewhere; then TITT. It was OBVIous from the start that it would be a DNF. Words like unknowns AGRABAN, SHOJIS, ELIAS, ARBORIO and a few others from the unknowns in clues would have made it impossible to finish (or come close). I didn't.
ReplyDeleteI aced all my Zoology classed back in 69-70 but don't remember the mitosis phases. I remember more about meiosis.
TILT or BIAS wouldn't work for CANT.
My shipping platform started as a DOCK.
I knew who Mo Farah was and confidently filled G.O.A.T. where OBVI was supposed to be. Eventually filling SIR in 23A wouldn't have helped with ARBORIO making it.
KAMEHAMEHA and ICE were gimmes but I wanted HOTELS, which wouldn't fit.