Amie Walker is an attorney/current stay-at-home parent to three little girls in Chandler, Arizona. When she’s not thinking about puzzles, she loves spending time with her family and singing in her women’s choir. Here is a picture of Amie on Jeopardy on 3/28/22.
When I did her puzzle in January, I finished the bottom first and the headed back to the top. Today I did just the opposite and you can see by the graphic, the bottom was a struggle for me. Some of the cleverness and 21st century slang gave me a real challenge.
Across:
1. Exclusively: ALONE.
6. Tach readings: RPMS - My car runs so quietly that I have to look at the tach (far left) to see if the engine is still running.
10. Annie Lennox, e.g.: SCOT - Anyone else put ALTO?
14. Spot with spotty reception, perhaps: REMOTE AREA - We got no reception in the Redwoods 😀
16. "Don't start with me": UH UH.
17. Chore that's a bore: MENIAL TASK.
18. __ noire: BETE.
19. "Funny or Die" segment: SKIT.
20. Dishwasher setting: RINSE.
21. Country with the largest number of Quechua speakers: PERU - 4:30 of listening
22. Time for scare tactics?: SPOOKY SEASON.
25. Sweeney of "Euphoria": SYDNEY - Famous Australian Opera House city is not "Saturday" enough
28. Deep blush shade: BERRY.
29. Indulge: HUMOR.
30. Gridiron cues: HUTS.
31. Spell: JAG.
34. Moonrise direction: EAST.
35. Signs: OMENS.
37. Caesar dressing?: TOGA 😀
38. __ sample: DNA - #1 and #3, you're free to go. #2, uh, we'd like a word with you.
39. Listen to: OBEY.
40. 1990s TV nerd: URKEL.
41. Cookbook verb: ROAST.
43. Belief systems: CREEDS.
44. Waffle, perhaps: ICE CREAM CONE 😀 An ice cream vendor at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair ran out of dishes. Turns out the vendor next to him was selling thin waffles. Voila!
48. Chew toy for a naughty puppy: SHOE.
49. Unsmiling: STERN.
50. AFC East team: PATS
54. "Dance the Night" singer Dua __: LIPA - After sufficient appearances here, I have learned this name.
55. Tool for turning over a new leaf?: SALAD TONGS 😀
57. Fairly matched: EVEN.
58. Personal driver?: EGO BOOSTER - Your ego might make you have more personal drive
59. Second place at a math Olympiad?: TENS 😀 Amie!
60. Fed. IDs: SSNS.
61. Bares fruit?: PEELS 😀
Down:
1. Plank supports: ARMS.
2. Allium cultivar: LEEK and 45. Allium cultivar: CHIVE.
The Allium Family
3. High-end hotel chain: OMNI.
4. "Wrong": NO IT'S NOT.
5. "Should we start wo u?": ETA - When r u getting here?
6. Flood with negative replies on social media: RATIO - Learning for me. At the bottom of social media like X (formerly Twitter and other social media) there is a list of the number of comments, retweets and likes. Comments are assumed to be negative and so if the RATIO of comments to retweets plus likes is more than 2:1, it is assumed to be a bad tweet. A poster can be said to have been RATIOED if there are a lot of comments.
Comments = 59K, Retweets = 21K Likes = 6K. Bad RATIO
7. Jape: PRANK.
8. Casual-chic do: MESSY BUN.
9. Collections that include tokkuri and ochoko: SAKE SETS - More
Serving glasses - ochokos Flask - tokkuri
10. Disappointing: SUBPAR - Not disappointing in golf at all
12. Closing bars: OUTRO - a short, distinct closing section at the end of something (such as a piece of music, a performance, or a news report). A complement to INTRO.
13. Country group, briefly?: THE UN 😊
15. Cartoon boy in a Space Cub troop: ELROY - ELROY is at the left in front of his dad George Jetson in this 60-yr-old Jetson's cartoon. Yes, I said 60 years!
23. According to: PER.
24. Some hesitations: ERS.
25. Lose: SHED.
26. 10 jiao: YUAN - It takes 10 jiao to make 1 YUAN. 1 Yuan = $0.13 or about a dime.
A new EV car in China costs about ¥100,000 ($13,912)
27. "Feel free to contact me privately on social": DMS ARE OPEN - This tells the world that you're available and willing to receive and read direct messages from unknown people is by announcing your "DMs are open". A tactic you'll see used by journalists on Twitter looking for scoops.
30. "Watch it!": HEY.
32. Mellowed, perhaps: AGED.
33. Misses: GALS.
35. Loses sleep (over): OBSESSES.
36. HTML data: META TAGS - How the line above looks in HTML:
Today's veteran constructors Emma Lawson and Amie Walker present
us with another vertical theme, sans circles or stars, but this one is
a little dark. The reveal starts on the first row at 10D, so we know
what's going on pretty much out of the gate ...
10.
Creedence Clearwater Revival hit with the line "I see trouble on the way," or
what can be found in three long Down entries:
BAD MOON RISING. A song all about what could go wrong -- this
MOON is not only
BAD, it's RISING! (well maybe) ...
18. Bella Hadid and Precious Lee, for two:
FASHION MODELS. Fashion models
with last name Hadid are becoming crosswordese -- last Thursday we had
Gigi (see 59D), this week we have Bella. Here is Bella ...
28. Key
information for a hotel guest?:
ROOM NUMBER. A true story about
what could go wrong ...
We recently stayed in mid-priced
hotel in a small town in Ohio and when we checked in we were issued the usual key cards, which had our ROOM NUMBER
digitally encoded in them. The second morning after returning from
breakfast, we made several attempts to get into our room and concluded that
for some reason the cards had stopped working -- so we went back to the
front desk. The desk clerk knew exactly what had happened and
explained that the
circuitry that detects the key card was powered by a battery inside
the door (presumably to guard against power failures to the hotel
grid). When
a battery ran down, it could be remotely recharged from the hotel
front desk and
new key cards would be issued. The BUG (remember BUGS
from
last Thursday?) in the system was that the key card had be used
within 2 minutes
of the recharge or it was invalidated. The clerk recharged the
battery from the front desk and headed off to our room -- unfortunately
we were on the 3rd floor on the far end
of the hotel and
it proved to be physically impossible for anyone other than Usain Bolt to reach our room within 2 minutes. After several attempts to do this he said that the IT Guy
had a way to override the system -- but that it was after hours and he
wasn't there, but that they would page him and would let us know when
he arrived. In the mean time the hotel offered us a different room, but
all of our stuff was in that room,
including my CPAP machine, without which I cannot sleep. So we
went to lunch, came back, read USA Today, solved the crossword (which
SS could probably knock off in 30 seconds), tried tonap on the
lobby sofas, etc, etc. Eventually the IT Guy showed up and was
able get the door open and we were good to go.
We usually visit this small town in Ohio at least once a year and they
don't have a lot of hotels, but if we have to stay at this one again, it will
be contingent on the desk clerk demonstrating that he/she can reach our room
within two minutes (or if Usain happens to be staying in the hotel that weekend!).
I guess it's pretty obvious by now what's going
on with the theme. I have a slight NIT about that, as unlike the
UPSIDE DOWNCAKES in last Thursday's puzzle you can't really
tell whether these MOONS are RISING or SETTING.
Nevertheless they AREALLBAD.
15. Jeff Bridges sci-fi franchise: TRON.
The franchise
began with the 1982 film
TRON staring Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer and video game developer who is transported inside
the software world of a mainframe computer where he interacts with programs in
his attempt to escape. It back then it had SOTA animation for 1982. I believe
that there were other films as well. Hand up if you saw the original?
21. __ de deux: PAS. Here's the Pas de deux from
Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet ...
23. Physics quantity: MASS. Also a RITE than can be
said at a 20A.
24. Rental agreement: LEASE.
25. Get off the partner track?: GO SOLO. It's not all it's
cracked up to be ...
27. Car alarm: HORN. Here's the 3rd movement of
Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 417, Rondo - allegro
...
29. Slick: SMOOTH. Or the Jefferson Airplane vocalist
singing White Rabbit?
32. Final Four game: SEMI. March Madness is upon us!
35. Yahoo: OAF.
37. "Thanks, I got it": NO NEED.
39. Handi-Snacks cookie: OREO. See 60A.
40. Have a loan from: OWE TO.
42. Like a dragon egg in Minecraft: RARE. According to the
Minecraft Wiki
"A Dragon Egg is a decorative, egg-shaped block, which is dropped after
defeating the Ender Dragon in the End. It is only dropped by the death of the
first Ender Dragon, not by respawned Ender Dragons. It is also not possible to
get from the creative inventory without commands. This do not apply [sic] to
Bedrock Edition". They look like this ...
Dragon's Egg
Egg shaped, but in a low-res digital sort of way. Hand up if you're a
Minecraft maven and can explain why they're so valuable?
43. Jackman's "The Greatest Showman" role: BARNUM.
The Greatest Showman,starring Hugh Jackman, is a 2017 American fictionalized biographical musical
drama about the life of
P.T. Barnum. I can never get enough of this portrayal by Rebecca Ferguson
of BARNUM's love interest, the legendary Swedish Soprano
Jenny Lind
singing Never Enough (but
actually sung by Loren Allred) ...
Not Loren Allred
45. "__ your heart out!": EAT. Hearts were a favorite food of the
Egyptian goddess Ammit, 'devourer of the dead and hearts' -- Chacun à son goût! 😀
46. Apple computer: IMAC.
47. Siete días: SEMANA. Today's Spanish lesson -- "Seven days" make a
"week".
49. Centipede's multitude: LEGS. A word with a multitude of synonyms ...
57. Chatted privately, briefly: DMED. Digital
Messaging not in an open "chat room"
60. "It's not really working for me": MEH. This doesn't really work for
me either -- but conductor
Zubin MEHTA
does -- here he leads the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the last 3
minutes of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, "The Resurrection"
...
61. Admonition to bickering kids: BE NICE.
62. Electric guitar effect: REVERB. Not a new thing -- back in
the Renaissance the stringed instruments had reverb, and in this
Dr. Who clip from The Magician's Apprentice episode, time traveling
Peter Capaldi shows off his REVERB chops on the electric lute (no stunt double), while treating us to a few bad
puns ...
64. "Back so soon?": YOU AGAIN. Yeah, it's Thursday again. 😀
66. Audrey Tautou role: AMELIE.
Amélie is a 2001 French-language romantic comedy film, a whimsical depiction of contemporary Parisian life, set in
Montmartre. It tells the story of a shy, introverted and quirky
waitress, played by
Audrey Tautou, who decides to change the lives of those around her for the better while
dealing with her own isolation ...
3. Sandwich on a bolillo: TORTA. In Mexico
a TORTA is a kind of sandwich
served on white sandwich rolls similar to a small baguette called a
bolillo. A CSO to Lucina -- anything to add?
Torta on a bolillo
4. Typical opening?: STEREO.
5. Story shapes: ARCS.
6. Deteriorate: ROT.
7. What a mood board might provide, informally: INSPO. A mood
board is a collection of visual materials that evoke a particular theme, style
or concept. Designers, illustrators, photographers, filmmakers and all types
of creative professionals create mood boards to communicate and give them
inspiration or "INSPO" (also a vaccine!
😀) and vision for a project.
Here's how to make mood board using a product called Milanote. Here's an example ...
8. [Theme clue]
9. Former Bolivian president Morales: EVO.
Juan EVO Morales Ayma (Spanish pronunciation: [xwan ˈeβo moˈɾales ˈajma]; born 26 October 1959)
is a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, and former cocalero (coca
leaf) activist who served as the 65th president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019.
He was his country's first president to come from its indigenous
population. Not to be confused with a Rachel Ray favorite 😀 ...
Evo Morales
10. [Theme reveal]
11. "M*A*S*H" star: ALDA. Alan Alda (born Alphonso
Joseph D'Abruzzo; January 28, 1936) is an American actor, author,
screenwriter, podcast host and director. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden
Globe Award winner and a three-time Tony Award nominee, he is best known for
playing Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the CBS wartime sitcom
M*A*S*H (1972–1983). He also wrote and directed numerous episodes of the
series.
But he's done a LOT of other things as well.
Alan Alda
12. The ten in "hang ten": TOES. Prehensile TOES that
is. "Hang ten" is slang for any of several maneuvers used in
sports where all ten toes or fingers are used to accomplish the maneuver. In
basketball it's hanging on the hoop after dunking the ball. In
surfing,
the sport it's most commonly associated with, it's also called "nose riding",
as it's done by perching on the very front of the surfboard ...
31. Juno's Greek counterpart: HERA. While HERA and
JUNO played the same role in Roman and Greek mythology,
they were very different goddesses.
Hera vs. Juno
32. Cry loudly: SOB.
33. "-zoic" periods: ERAS. Here is simplified chart of Earth's
geological ERAS, courtesy of the
British Geological Survey
...
Nowadays when people hear the word ERAS they're more likely to think of
this (Ms Swift has better PR men than the geologists😀) ...
34. No more than: MERE. Could also be clued as "French for Mother".
36. Extra charge: FEE.
38. Advent mo.: DEC. It can actually begin in late NOV.
--
Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas
(always falling between 27 November and 3 December), and ends on Christmas Eve
on 24 December. It is the beginning of the liturgical New Year.
50. Axle coating: GREASE. Messy. How about a
1978 film
about a sheila from Down Under who becomes hopelessly devoted to an
American greaser instead? ...
52. Pay to play, e.g.: RHYME.
54. Food Network chef De Laurentiis: GIADA.
Giada Pamela De Laurentiis
is an Italian American chef, entrepreneur, writer, and television personality.
She was the host of Food Network's program called
Giada at Home (2008–2015) . Here's her recipe for
Pasta with chicken and broccoli rabe.
58. Many a viral post: MEME. The word MEME is a portmanteau of mime and gene and first appeared in a book by biologist
Richard Dawkins. Here was Dawkins' first attempt, but for some reason it didn't go viral ...
59. Level: EVEN.
61. Peck: BUSS. Often seen in PDAs.
63. __ de Janeiro: RIO. Sadly, last year we lost
Astrud Gilberto, an icon of RIO culture. Here she is singing Stan Getz's
arrangement of
The Girl from Ipanema
...
65. Cruet liquid: OIL.
Cheers, Bill
And as always, thanks to Teri for proof
reading and for her constructive criticism.
When I did her puzzle in January, I finished the bottom first and the headed back to the top. Today I did just the opposite and you can see by the graphic, the bottom was a struggle for me. Some of the cleverness and 21st century slang gave me a real challenge.
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