L.A.Times Crossword Corner: David P. Williams

Showing posts with label David P. Williams. Show all posts

Mar 22, 2025

Saturday, March 22, 2025, David P. Williams

Themeless Saturday by David P. Williams

My third Saturday themeless from David.

Across

1. Possessive pronoun that can be singular: THEIR Here is a discussion about this topic

6. Clue academic: PLUM 😀

10. Tesla, for one: SERB - I held on to SCOT for a time 🤨

14. Certain king-maker: SERTA 😀

15. Actress Chaplin: OONA - Yes, she is Charlie's granddaughter

16. Ancient Roman conqueror?: AMOR - Very cool cluing!

17. Survive scrutiny: PASS MUSTER - Derivation of the phrase

19. Green party, briefly?: LPGA 😀 Green is a noun here.

20. Samovar kin: TEAPOTS - I've got a pretty good handle on what a TEAPOT is, but this is a samovar that is widely used in Russia.

21. Banded marbles: AGATES.

23. Identical: SAME.

24. Light tunes: STRAINS - We can hear the STRAINS of the high school band wafting down to our house from the football field six blocks from here.

25. Anti-conservative slogan?: GO BIG OR GO HOME.

29. Saw: ADAGE.

30. Clear the air: DEFOG - The little button on the left below the mirror does this for me.

31. Blot: DAB.

34. Continental capital: BERN - BERN is a nearly 4-hour drive SW of my grandfather's home in Heiden which he left 100 years ago.

35. Encounter: RUN IN - Chris Rock had a famous RUN-IN with Will Smith

36. Piece of one's mind?: LOBE.

37. Oft-redacted fig.: SSN.

38. Digital services?: MANIS and/or pedis

39. Unit of energy: JOULE - It takes about 300,000 JOULES of energy to raise the temperature of a coffee pot of water from room temp to boiling.

40. Pool problem?: BRACKET BUSTER - When you are in the office pool and one of your favorite teams gets beat and is out early, your bracket in the office pool takes a severe hit!

43. Perfect figures?: SQUARES - Four equal sides and angles

45. Tops: A-ONE.

46. Takeoff locale: TARMAC.

47. Portrayer of Andy Bernard on "The Office": ED HELMS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

50. Actress __ Deavere Smith: ANNA - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A Saturday ANNA for me

51. Novels no one reads?: AUDIO BOOKS - This was a great clue when it finally hit me! 😊

54. Picked out, in a way: IDED.

55. Tagliatelle topper: RAGU - Tagliatelle (pasta) topped with RAGU (meat sauce)

56. "We agree": US TOO.

57. Early capital of Japan: NARA.

58. Appear: SEEM.

59. Frank who co-designed Prague's Dancing House: GEHRY.

Down:

1. Shortening in a recipe: TSP - Shortening can be used in recipe and its measured amount can be shortened as well 😀

2. Pressure, informally: HEAT - Now in his third year, Matt Ruhle is starting to feel the HEAT to make Nebraska football respectable again.

3. Highland tongue: ERSE.

4. "The universe has spoken!": IT'S A SIGN.

5. Frenzy: RAMPAGE.

6. Preserved jams?: POSTER DUNKS - 😀 Whoa, talk about a jam (dunk) that is preserved on a very famous poster.

7. Plenty: LOTS.

8. A word to les sages?: UNE - 😀 UNE (a) word to Les sages (the wise) is sufficient

9. Long-lasting event: MARATHON.

10. Bow low: SALAAM - I hung on to SCRAPE for a low bow for a long time.

11. Drained: EMPTIED OUT.

12. "The Lion King" voice actor Seth: ROGEN.

13. High-ranking officials: BRASS.

18. Italian man: UOMO - Difesa UOMO a UOMO (Man to man defense)

22. Buccaneer booze: GROG.

24. L.A. venue where "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" was filmed: SOFI STADIUM.

25. Chats: GABS.

26. Heart-filled texts?: ODES ❤️

27. Match that's lit: BARN BURNER - Lit has become slang for great. A very close, intense game can be called a BARN BURNER

28. Spirit of myth: GENIE - The wish granting version came later

32. Up to it: ABLE.

33. Ginger __: BEER.

35. Drag performers: RACE CARS.

36. Like a situation with no good outcome: LOSE LOSE.

38. Rooney of "Women Talking": MARA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

39. Beetle in the scarab family: JUNE BUG.

41. Wyndham brand: RAMADA.

42. __-chic: BOHO - BOhemian style meaning artistic and unusual

43. Leave a mark: STAIN.

44. Time when audiences are engaged, briefly: Q AND A.

47. Upper hand: EDGE.

A cool representation

48. Lepidopterist's subject: MOTH.

49. Toffee bar: SKOR.

52. Persian Gulf fed.: UAE.

53. __ milk: SOY.

Oct 5, 2024

Saturday, October 5, 2024, David P. Williams

Saturday Themeless by David P. Williams

I was fortunate to blog Dave's first puzzle that was published for the LA Times on May 15, 2021. It was so long ago that Rich Norris was still the editor.

The brilliance of Dave's puzzle is evident when you see the three vertical and three horizontal 11-letter fills in the heart of the puzzle. Subsequently, he had a very low word count of 66. The last horizontal fill is only 51. Across and the last vertical fill is 47. Down

My failure was at MIN_US/_ENTIANS which fills my definition of a Natick. I wrote my grandson (see below), who is a professional jazz musician and getting a Graduate Degree at The University of North Texas, and he immediately knew MINGUS and told me some terrible stories about him.

My Grandson

Across:

1. Street in London home to many medical offices: HARLEY.

7. Charles known as the "Angry Man of Jazz": MINGUS.

13. Cold spells: ICE AGES.

15. Like most drafts: UNSENT - Mentally, I went through several definitions of draft before I arrived at the ones that indicate that you might want review a few times before you hit Send.

16. "Hang on": JUST A SEC.

18. Pose: STANCE.

19. Duck: AVOID.

20. Admit: COP TO - On the other hand...

22. Get some sun: TAN.

23. Get too much sun: BURN - On the other hand...

24. "No kidding!": TRULY.

25. Guinness order: PINT.

26. Ready: SET.

27. Large venue: ARENA.

28. Song birds?: SWANS - Two came to my mind

29. Serious scratch: PRETTY PENNY - The idiom explained

31. Poutine kin: CHEESE FRIES - You can hold the cheese on my FRIES

Not a big fan below either!

32. Comes full circle?: WRAPS AROUND.

33. Second-most populous urban area of the Tibetan Plateau: LHASA

LHASA pop. 521,000

Getting from LHASA to Kathmandu takes a WRAP AROUND route.

34. Primary rte.?: US ONE - From Ft. Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida

35. Ask sincerely: BEG.

38. A in Kindergarten: EINE - Kindergarten is German so "A" dog is EINE Hund

39. Like some accents: ACUTE.

40. Adidas rival: FILA.

41. Sound of disapproval: TSK.

42. Shorts' lack: KNEES 😀

43. John whose Civil War trilogy was adapted as a miniseries starring Patrick Swayze: JAKES - You'll have to look hard to see John's name in the credit

44. "Don't bother": SKIP IT.

46. Star witness?: SIDEKICK.

48. Moderate: GENTLE.

49. International understanding: ENTENTE - The most famous/infamous one?

50. Instruments that are difficult to donate, ironically: ORGANS - Now that is a great observation!

51. Help: ASSIST.

Down:

1. Garments similar to mantillas: HIJABS.

2. Contacts company: ACUVUE.

3. Sandals, e.g.: RESORT.

4. Mass medium: LATIN - The Catholic Church changed from being all in LATIN just before we got married over 60 years ago. Some LATIN phrases are used during the liturgical year.

5. "Zounds!": EGAD.

6. Pitcher's aim?: YES - Not a baseball pitcher or a water pitcher. This pitcher is a salesman.

7. Dank: MUSTY.

8. Digging: INTO - I really got INTO Dave's puzzle

9. PRISM org.: NSA.

10. Plants whose roots flavor angostura bitters and Aperol: GENTIANS Angostura bitters is a concentrated bitters (herbal alcoholic preparation) based on gentian, herbs, and spices, produced by in Trinidad and Tobago. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

11. Eerie: UNCANNY - Just some of the eerie comparisons

12. Surgical tubes: STENTS.

14. Ingredient omitted from a recipe, perhaps: SECRET SAUCE - There's some things they won't tell you. 😀

17. Retaliates, in a way: COUNTERSUES - The man on the right sued Taylor Swift for $3M saying she got him fired, but he lost the suit. Taylor countersued for $1 for assault which he is doing in this picture and won that suit.

21. Do some sole searching: PLAY FOOTSIE - I know Irish will like this version

24. Arborist's concerns: TREES - After living on the treeless prairie, Nebraskan J. Sterling Morton proposed Arbor Day to support planting trees.

Very early Lincoln, NE

25. Trounced, as a n00b: PWNED - The word "pwned" has origins in video game culture and is a leetspeak derivation of the word "owned", due to the proximity of the "o" and "p" keys. It's typically used to imply that someone has been controlled or compromised ¯\_(ツ)_/¯