D.C.-based Damon has been published here on 2/18/10 and 12/29/22. I got this one done in 25 minutes but my smooth sledding was was slowed down when I hit some blizzards of proper names but managed to work my way through them.
1. Gallery display: ART which would attract an 34. Gallery visitor, perhaps: AESTHETE.
4. Sweetener option: AGAVE - If you're not making tequila out of AGAVE...
9. Penner of classic tributes: ODIST - Penner is not a proper noun, it is an unusual name for one who pens or writes
14. Spy rings?: PEEPHOLES 😀
16. Butter up, in a way: BASTE.
17. Geographic feature of nine states: PANHANDLE - Nebraska's used to me more pronounced.
18. Unfamiliar: ALIEN.
19. Common ingredient in wellness products: ALOE.
20. Sparks st.: NEV - Sparks is 5 minutes east of Reno down I-80.
21. Writer whose first novel was adapted as a film by Wayne Wang: AMY TAN - I had no real idea but with a few letters our cwd friend AMY TAN showed up.
22. Turkey bacon?: LIRA - Bacon is a euphemism for money and one of these 100₺ = $4.23
30. Appropriate time for acting unprofessionally: AMATEUR HOUR - Will this karaoke guy really sound like Jim Morrison?
34. "To put it mildly": AND THEN SOME - To put it mildly, we screwed up...
35. Spoilsports: WET BLANKETS.
36. Moccasin sound: HISS - Cottonmouth Moccasin
37. Lack of space?: AIR - Yes, space has a definite lack of air.
38. Hinged fasteners: HASPS.
42. Med. specialty: ENT - My ENT and my audiologist are in the same building. One day I left there with hearing aids and a CPAP machine.
43. David Rakoff compositions: ESSAYS - On leaving Canada and becoming an American citizen: George W. Bush made me want to be an American. It was a need I had not known before. A desire that came over me in a rush one day, not unlike that of the pencil-necked honors student suddenly overwhelmed with the inexplicable urge to make a daily gift of his lunch money to the schoolyard tough.
46. "This is fun!": WHEE - Would you be filled with too much 56. Apprehension: DREAD to ride this?
47. Prepare, as leftovers: REHEAT
49. Dude: BRO.
50. Easy to maneuver, at sea: YARE - Landlocked me has only seen this word in cwds
51. Looks out for, in a way: ABETS.
52. Ones fluent both in JavaScript and Klingon, perhaps: UBER NERDS - Seems right
2. Teaching aids that illustrate everyday life: REALIA - After 50+ years in education, I have never heard of this word but used it constantly in my classes. At the bottom of my emails, I have, "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand."
3. Barbershop fixtures: TENORS - Towels didn't cut it. I was a TENOR as a freshman in our barbershop quartet and a bass as a senior
4. Insightful remark: AHA.
5. Fixin' to: GONNA - Billy Williams had a 1957 hit with this old Fats Waller song about what he was GONNA sit right down and do.
6. Tree whose roots contain nitrogen-fixing organisms: ALDER.
7. Plush toy in a Margery Williams classic: VELVETEEN RABBIT - $12,500 will get you this 1922 first edition in near fine condition
8. Legal conclusion?: ESE - LEGALESE for "date":In witness whereof, the parties hereunto have set their hands to these presents as a deed on the day month and year hereinbefore mentioned.
9. "The Audacity of Hope" memoirist: OBAMA.
10. Longtime "Last Call" host: DALY - Another DALY, John Charles DALY, was the longtime host of what TV show? (*answer below)
11. "Should I believe this?": IS IT TRUE.
12. Dumpling cooker: STEAMER.
13. Court activity: TENNIS 😀
15. Long-tailed birds: PHEASANTS - My friend missed my daughter's wedding because it was on the first day of Nebraska's PHEASANT season
21. In the saddle: AHORSE - Damon probably swallowed hard before he put in this archaic fill.
24. Dull sound: THUNK - How the fill above hit me.
27. Film site: IMDB - and 39. Leal of "Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin": SHARON - SHARON Leal's IMDB entry
29. Twain lad: TOM SAWYER - This 1876 first edition is $45,000
31. Jazz classic with the line "My lonely days are over": AT LAST - and 48. 31-Down singer James: ETTA. ETTA sings her signature song at her 1993 induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame
32. Many Bangkok Post readers: THAIS.
33. Ice planet with tauntauns and wampas: HOTH - I'm told this is a Star Wars Wampa preying on a Tauntaun. 🤔
35. Pour house?: WINE BAR 😀
36. Announce with pomp: HERALD.
40. Tyson rival: PERDUE - Oops!
41. Makes sure of: SEES TO.
43. Facilitated: EASED.
44. California town near the Oregon border: YREKA - YREKA (wy REE kuh) is 645 miles north of LA on I-5 and it is like a whole different world.
45. Tender spots: SORES.
52. Hesitant sounds: UMS.
53. To the __ degree: NTH.
In case you missed yesterday afternoon, here is my view as I blog. I got this by using the PAN function on my iPhone.
Today's constructor is Damon Gulczynski, a real blast from the past, who last visited us on February 18, 2010
and was reviewed by none other than C.C. Burnikel. Her review is worth
reading if for no other reason than to see some commenters who were
members of the fledgling Corner, some whom I know and some I do not.
While he was away it seems that Damon was spending a lot of time at that other newspaper (and thanks to them we have this capsule bio).
Today Damon wants to ask us some
Questionable Questions
using
2 word clues, which are questions about the question we're asked to
fill in. There's no reveal, but these and only these 5 Across clues end in ?:
17. Trick question?: WAS THIS YOUR CARD?
A question a card sharp might ask: shuffle and cut the deck, ask the
mark to "pick a card, any card", have he/she insert it back in the deck,
shuffle again, pick a card, and pop the question. Don't ask me how it
works?
23. Quick question?: DONE ALREADY? A question a teacher might ask of a slow student who finishes before everybody else. 38. Burning question?: WHERES THE FIRE? A question a cop might ask a speeder. The real burning question might be "how much is the fine?".
49. Leading question?: WHO'S WINNING? Everybody was asking this question about the World Cup until December 18th. In case you were living in a cave, it was Argentina.
58. Probing question?: FIND ANY THING YET?. Grandma asks this from time to time on Easter afternoon as the kids are probing the bushes for eggs in the back yard.
Here's the grid:
More questions for you to answer: Across:
1. Young chaps: LADS.
5. Methodology: Abbr.: SYST. SYSTEM. I found many
definitions for these two terms and they seemed vague, inconsistent,
contradictory and sometimes circular. In my experience a METHODOLOGY is aformal, documented approach to defining the requirements and designs of INFORMATION SYSTEMS. There are many such methodologies. YMMV.
9. Played over: RERAN.
14. Samoa's biggest city: APIA. Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoaand until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono and Apolima); and several smaller, uninhabited islands. APIA is on Upolu island. Not to be confused with American Samoa, which is located 64 km (40 mi) Southeast of Samoa. IIRC D-O served in the military in America Samoa. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
15. Fat-heavy diet: KETO.
16. Prenatal test, for short: AMNIO. Short for Amniocentesis, which is a diagnostic test that may be recommended by your health care provider following an abnormal triple test
result. Inherited or genetic concerns lead some parents to choose
amniocentesis to determine if specific genetic disorders may be present
in their baby.
[Theme clue].
20. Role for Flockhart: MCBEAL. Ally McBealis an American legal comedy drama television series starring Calista Flockhart and originally aired on Fox from September 8, 1997, to May 20, 2002.
29. Fictional Wolfe who was born in Montenegro: NERO. Nero Wolfe
is a brilliant, obese and eccentric fictional armchair detective
created in 1934 by American mystery writer Rex Stout. The character also
appeared in a 2011 TV Series on A&E:
31. Netflix's "__ White People": DEAR. Dear White People is an American comedy-drama television series on Netflix
that follows several black college students at an Ivy League
institution (the fictional Winchester University), touching on issues
surrounding modern American race relations through a progressive lens.
32. By way of: VIA.
33. "Battle of the Sexes" loser: RIGGS. In tennis, "Battle of the Sexes" describes various exhibition
matches played between a man and a woman, or a doubles match between two
men and two women in one case. The term is most famously used for an
internationally televised match in 1973 held at the Houston Astrodome between 55-year-old Bobby Riggs and 29-year-old Billie Jean King, which King won in three sets. What was he thinking? The match was made into a movie starring Steve CarellEmma Stone:
35. Like dried rose petals: PAPERY.
[Theme clue]
41. Bumps: RAISES.
42. "__ Meenie": Kingston/Bieber hit: EENIE.
43. "CODA" communication method: ASL. American Sign Language. CODA is a 2021 coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Sian Heder. It stars Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi, the titular child of deaf adults
(CODA) and only hearing member of her family, a teenager who attempts
to help her family's struggling fishing business while pursuing her own
aspirations of being a singer. The movie uses deaf actors to play the
deaf characters, who, along with Jones, communicate in ASL.
64. Bread served with mattar paneer: NAAN. Peas and paneer is our all time favorite Indian dish. You can substitute cottage cheese for the paneer, buy it in Indian food stores, or make your own. Here's a recipe for the mattar paneer:
Mattar Paneer
65. Radiate: EMIT.
66. Grind, as teeth: GNASH.
67. Fail suddenly, with "out": CONK.
68. Turn down: DENY.
Down:
1. Wyatt Earp, for one: LAWMAN. Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp(March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone. Earp took part in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which lawmen killed three outlaw Cochise County Cowboys.
Wyatt Earp
2. Southwestern people: APACHE. The Apache (/əˈpætʃi/) are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua,Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño and Janero), Salinero, Plains (Kataka or Semat or "Kiowa-Apache") and Western Apache (Aravaipa, Pinaleño, Coyotero, Tonto (so his name was just an adjective?)). Distant cousins of the Apache are the Navajo, with whom they share the Southern Athabaskan
languages. There are also Apache communities in Oklahoma and Texas, and
reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. Did I miss anybody?
Apachean tribes, c. 18th century WA: Western Apache N: Navajo Ch: Chiricahua: M Mescalero J: Jicarilla L: Lipan Pl: Plains Apache
5. Places to recover after going downhill fast: SKI LODGES. A
CSO to MalMan. When he's not frolicking in tropical lagoons, he spends
his time going downhill (but I understand not as fast as in former
days).
6. "Sweet!": YES.
7. Farm pen: STY.
8. Over the line: TOO FAR. For some reason, this hit by Brewer and Shipley was the first thing that popped into my head. DNK the railway station. Hand up if you do?
9. Like more expensive art, often: RARER.
10. Awards show host: EMCEE.
11. Genetic molecule translated into protein: RNA. DNA would have fit as well, so you have to wait for perps. Here's a simplified view of the translation process. PET PEEVE: I have a lot of problems with orthodox explanations of this process because they employ circular reasoning, a logical fallacy formally known as petitio principii and commonly called "begging the question". For example, a key component of the translation process involves a large enzyme (a type of protein) called a ribosome, which is a complex assembly of various proteins and ribosomal RNA (rRNA). Thus proteins and RNA are precursors to the synthesis of proteins and RNA.
Thus the premise assumes the conclusion. Scientists have been trying
to explain how this process originated (was "bootstrapped") ever since
Francis Crick formulated his famous central dogma in 1958. So far the explanations all boil down to this:
12. Ultrathin MacBook: AIR.
13. Go-ahead: NOD.
18. Conned: HAD.
19. Short address: URL.
24. Photo sources: NEGS. NEGATIVES, a term which might seem a little negative to any Gen X,Y, or Zers
reading this, i.e. anyone who was raised taking digital pictures with
cellphones. This article will give you much more than you'd ever want
to know about the ancient analogue world of film photography, but it does have a lot of pretty photos.
25. Conference of Magic and Wizards: EASTERN. That is the NBA conference of the Orlando Magic and the Washington Wizards. As near as I could tell it has nothing to do with Harry Potter.
26. Assert as true: AVER.
27. Bleak: DIRE.
28. "Woot!": YAY. A CSO to Anonymous -T. I hope he's way better by the time he reads this.
30. Rich deposits: ORES.
34. Intense anger: IRE.
35. No-frills drawing style: PEN AND INK. This is MC Escher's "No-frills" pen and ink sketch,
36. "100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time" org.: AFI. I think we can all guess #1 - here are all them from theAmerican Film Institute. AFI is also an abbreviation for A Fire Inside, an American rock band from Ukiah, California, formed in 1991. Since 1998, it consists of lead vocalist Davey Havok, drummer and backing vocalist Adam Carson, bassist, backing vocalist and keyboardist Hunter Burgan, and guitarist, backing vocalist and keyboardist Jade Puget.
Originally a hardcore punk band, they have since delved into many
genres, starting with horror punk and following through post-hardcore
and emo into alternative rock and gothic rock. Here's their emo hit Leaving Song Pt. II from their Platinum album Sing the Sorrow:
37. Traditional March 14 desserts: PIES. That date comes every year on 3.14, and is celebrated with homophonic PIs by geeks everywhere. And I'll betcha raspberry pi is -T's favorite flavor.
38. Break-even proposition: WASH.
39. Oldest city in Hawaii: HILO. Around 1100 AD, the first Hilo
inhabitants arrived, bringing with them Polynesian knowledge and
traditions. Although archaeological evidence is scant, oral history has
many references to people living in Hilo, along the Wailuku and Wailoa rivers during the time of ancient Hawaii. Oral history gives the meaning of Hilo
as "to twist", no doubt the origin of everybody's favorite crosswordese
dance. Hilo was about 800 years old when this picture was taken in
1907 (not bad for a film camera).
Hilo, Hawaii 1907
40. Half up front?: HEMI. HEMI as in "half"; "up front" as in "prefix", as in HEMISPHERE:
41. Gritty, in a way: RAW.
44. Thinking alike: IN SYNC.
46. "No objection here": OK BY ME. Sounds like these conversers are IN SYNC.
52. McKellen who plays Gandalf: IAN. Here's Ian McKellen in what is for me the most memorable scene in the Lord of the Rings. It expresses not only WRATH, but intense SADNESS: (spoiler alert: don't watch this if you haven't seen LOTR; you owe it to yourself to see the whole saga first):
62. "To All the Boys" novelist Jenny: HAN. Jenny Han is an American author of young adult fiction and
children's fiction. She is best known for writing The Summer I Turned
Pretty Trilogywhich was adapted into a TV series of the same name
beginning in 2022 and is still ongoing. Here's the trailer for one of the stories, To All the Boys I've Loved Before:
Cheers, Bill
As always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.
waseeley
Damon Gulczynski, you are invited to post anything you'd like to share about this puzzle,
its evolution, the theme, or whatever, in the Comments section below. We'd love to hear from you.
