Monday October 27, 2025 Guilherme Gilioli

 

Happy Monday, everyone! sumdaze here. Our Saturday blogger, Husker Gary, introduced us to today's constructor on February 24, 2024. Today's puzzle is Guilherme's second LAT publication.

Theme:               

...went upstairs to kiss a fellow. How many fellows did she kiss?
One, two, three, four, ....
(Did you play this jump rope game at your school?)

Each of the three themed answers contains the letters R, O, P, and E with just one letter between them -- a very specific requirement. The circles highlight how the R's, O's, P's, and E's line up vertically in the grid. Wow! I'll insert it now, in case you missed Guilherme's fancy footwork.  

20 Across. Cornucopia: HORN OF PLENTY.  In Latin, cornu  means HORN and copiae means PLENTY or "abundance".

Notice that the basket is HORN-shaped.

28 Across. "Can't Fight This Feeling" band: REO SPEEDWAGON.  This one gets a slight ding for the extra E immediately following the P. Nevertheless, it was a fun change to see REO's full name in a grid. Here is that 1984 song (with lyrics):  

45. Device for inflating tires: AIR COMPRESSOR.  

The reveal ties everything together:  

52 Across. Cord in some cardio workouts, or an apt description of each set of circled letters in this puzzle: SKIPPING ROPE.  The letters R, O, P, and E literally SKIP.

This is an 8:19 min. compilation of choreographed jump rope videos.

Watch until you've had your fill. (I could not turn it off.)

Let's move on to the remaining clues.  

Perhaps this wise BIRD OF PREY will help guide us?

Across:

1. Puff of smoke: WISP.

5. Veer off course, as a ship: YAW.  Def.:  (intransitive verb) of a ship:  to deviate erratically from a course (as when struck by a heavy sea); especially: to move from side to side.

8. Morales who becomes Spider-Man in the "Spider-Verse" films: MILES.  Miles Morales is a comic book character created in 2011. I am going to over-simplify this and say that he is not replacing the other Spider Man. Rather, he is from an alternate universe. Perhaps a true fan can tell us more....

13. Love, in León: AMOR.  

14. App Store patron: USER.

16. Joker, to Batman: ENEMY.  

17. Feng __: SHUI.  Def.:  (noun) a Chinese geomantic practice in which a structure or site is chosen or configured so as to harmonize with the spiritual forces that inhabit it.

also : orientation, placement, or arrangement according to the precepts of feng shui.  

This is a 1 min. video on how to use feng shui to arrange your office.

Note: This guy talks fast so you might need to read the subtitles. He has a lot of good

Feng Shui videos. Find him on YouTube @DearModern.

18. Curly cabbage in the mustard family: KALE.  

Kale is a good source of vitamins C & K, magnesium, calcium, and potassium.

19. Software extension: ADD-ON.  This is a piece of software that enhances existing software without having to start from scratch.

23. Beatles opener?: THE.  The question mark hints that we might not be talking about the opening song from a Beatles performance. Similar to The Who, not "Who", they were "The Beatles", not just "Beatles".

Please Please Me was their debut studio album, released in 1963. Can you guess what was the opening song off that album? I'll give you just seventeen guesses.    

Notice that in this video The Beatles do not yet to "own" the stage.

24. NNW reversal: SSE.  Think "compass".

25. Animation frame: CEL.

32. Chatted on WhatsApp, briefly: IMed.  Instant Messaged.  (Hi C.C.!)

34. Overtime cause: TIE.  This clue references sports -- not work hours. A tie score will throw a game into overtime.

35. Quarrel: ARGUE.  Quarrel is a verb here. 

36. Quick snooze: NAP.

37. Nile reptile: ASP.

38. Bought by us: OUR.  

Our House     ~     Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young     ~     1970

IIRC, D-Otto has two cats in his yard. 🎵🎵

40. Hoppy pub pick, for short: IPA.

41. Zagreb native: CROAT.  CROAT is the demonym for the ethnic group native to Croatia. A "Croatian" is from Croatia but not necessarily an ethic CROAT.

43. Media with reflective sides: CDs.  

You can hang them in your garden to keep the birds out of your strawberries.
...but then who will eat the slugs?

44. Podiatry focus: FEET.  

Click to enlarge.

49. Gobbled up: ATE.  

a wild turkey gobbling up insects

50. Cristo Redentor's city: RIO.  CSO to our Brazilian constructor!  

aka Christ the Redeemer

51. Floppy rabbit part: EAR.  

A lop-eared rabbit refers to any rabbit with ears that droop.
I'm not sure if being super-cute is also a requirement.

58. Formal "Me too": AS DO I.

61. Volcano near Sicily's east coast: ETNA.

62. Paradise: EDEN.

63. Lard Lad treat on "The Simpsons": DONUT.  

Does Lard Lad remind you of anyone?

64. Like an old cotton blanket: SOFT.  

65. Family dinner rule, maybe: NO TV.  Dinner is the only time DH and I turn on our TV. It's just the two of us so we call it "dinner theater".

66. Paver option: SLATE.  

39 seconds

67. Short story writer Edgar Allan __: POE.  six Edgar Allan Poe story suggestions just in time for Halloween

68. Deuce topper: TREY.  A three tops (beats) a two for "high card".  

Down:

1. Use soap on: WASH.  

2. Texter's "As I see it": IMHO.  In My Humble Opinion

Some people are now speaking with texting initialisms IRL!

3. Tart-tasting: SOUR.  

4. Not handwritten: PRINTED.  This one made me laugh a little because printing is one form of handwriting.  

PRINT (top) & cursive (bottom)

5. Laugh riots: YUK FESTS.  YUK is slang for laugh and FEST is short for FESTival.

6. "... and make it snappy!" letters: ASAP.  

YUK! YUK!

7. "Maybe, maybe not": WE'LL SEE.  These are magic words for a parent.

8. Shepherd's pie filling: MEAT.  The usual MEATs are beef or lamb.

9. Racing body with an annual "500" event: INDY CAR.  This clue plays with the definition of body. A car body is the main structure of a car, excluding the mechanical components.<cite>  Law Insider has a more detailed definition. Also, this Car and Driver article classifies the various car body styles.

10. Showed the way: LED.  

Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein (1974)

"Walk this way."  (1:42 min.)

11. Punk subgenre: EMO.

12. Antonym's opposite: Abbr.: SYN.  SYNonym

I looked up "synonym" in The Synonym Finder. Ironically, it was not listed. However, It does have these words for "synonymous":  equivalent, equal, even, parallel, twin, corresponding; same, similar, like, alike, identical, exact; correlative, comparable, exchangeable, transposable; reciprocative, reciprocal.

15. Witherspoon of "Big Little Lies": REESE.  This is an HBO MAX series based on a novel by Liane Moriarty. It was primarily filmed in Monterey County (some of the filming locations). This is a video of the opening credits for Season 1 (2017):

21. "Caught you!": OHO.  Def.:  (interjection) used to express various emotions (as taunting or amused surprise).

22. Actor Beatty: NED.  [1937-2021]  his IMDb page

26. Like shortcake, compared to shortbread, usually: EGGIER.  This word strikes me as a difficult one to clue. Eggs can be used to make recipes fluffier.  

strawberry shortcake        and        Scottish shortbread

27. Gem examiner's tool: LOUPE.  Wow, wasn't that heist at the Louvre gutsy??!!

28. School assignment: REPORT.  

29. Domino dot: PIP.  We use the same word for dice dots.

30. Tug-of-__: WAR.  

31. Not messy: NEAT.

32. Andean empire: INCA.

33. Ave __: Catholic prayer: MARIA.  

Luciano Pavarotti     ~     Ave Maria (Shubert)

37. From __ Z: A TO.

38. Verse of praise: ODE.

39. Upper chamber in Amer. politics: US SENATE.  American is abbreviated, so is United States.  

42. Gets the best of: ACES OUT.  like a TREY over a deuce

43. Shirt that shows off one's abs: CROP TOP.  

44. Landlord's sign on an empty property: FOR RENT.

46. Hosp. scan: MRI.  I have not had one of these.

47. Plumbing components: PIPES.

48. Yield to gravity: SAG.

53. Lightweight toy flyer: KITE.  

In Geometry, a KITE is a four-sided polygon where two pairs of sides
that touch at a corner are the same length.

54. Facts and figs.: INFO.  figures and INFOrmation

55. Strong smell: ODOR.  Losing all sense of smell is called anosmia.  Some famous people with this condition include Jason Sudeikis of Ted Lasso, Ben of Ben & Jerry's, and Bill Pullman of Independence Day.

56. Folk icon Seeger: PETE.  Click on the image below to hear Pete perform a well-known folk song, This Land is Your Land, written by another famous American folk singer, Woody Guthrie:    

57. Green with __: ENVY.  

58. YouTube interruptions: ADS.

59. Note after fa: SOL.  

60. Crime lab evidence: DNA.  

This is an excerpt from Humble Pi:  When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Matt Parker (p. 56):

Between 1993 and 2008, the police in Germany were searching for the mysterious "phantom of Heilbronn," a woman who had been linked to forty crimes, including six murders; her DNA had been found at all the crime scenes. Tens of thousands of police hours were spent looking for Germany's "most dangerous woman," and there was a €3000,000 bounty on her head. It turns out she was a woman who worked in the factory that made the cotton swabs used to collect DNA evidence.

Have a great week, everyone! Here's one more for the road:  

Saturday, February 24, 2024, Guilherme Gilioli

 Saturday Themeless by Guilherme Gilioli

              

Guilherme is from Bento Gonçalves, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil which is 930 miles SW of Rio de Janeiro as you can see on the map.says, "Mostly I create crosswords in Portuguese for magazines and my personal website, but lately I've been trying to create puzzles in English and it's going pretty good, learning a lot."

This grid is very striking with 12, 13 and 14 stair-stepped cells at the top and mirrored at the bottom. I struggled mightily, finished the bottom first and then the top after taking some educated guesses.

Across:

1. "If memory serves ... ": LAST I CHECKED.

13. Particles in the Fermi theory of beta decay: ANTI NEUTRINOS - If you're really that interested - This filled in pretty easily for this physics guy.

15. Rent, pension, etc.: UNEARNED INCOME. It's still taxable. 

17. "There's no wrong way to eat a __": candy tagline: REESES.

18. Madness, e.g.: SKA BAND - Uber obscure fill for a common word

20. Bandmate of Dizzy and Duff: AXL - Saturday cluing for AXL Rose of Guns n Roses who is in the middle below. I have no idea who the other two are but they must be in this picture somewhere.

21. Functions: USES - How many can you count?

24. Comedian Radner: GILDA - Part of the SNL Not Ready For Prime Time Players. One iteration is below:  Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, John Belushi, Larraine Newman, Dan Aykroyd, GILDA Radner and Bill Murray.

25. Nectar eaters: WASPS.

27. Skinned: PEELED - Softball is played on a skinned infield where the grass has been PEELED off.

28. Prep for a bout: SPAR.

30. Actress Jessica: ALBA - Ms. ALBA is on our crossword marquee frequently

32. N-everlasting thing: FAD - N has become slang for no, not, etc. FADS are certainly not everlasting.

33. Ishikawa __: visual component of root-cause analysis: DIAGRAM - Okay....

35. "Come again?": I'M SORRY.

38. __ Souls College, Oxford: ALL.

39. Shortly, shortly: ASAP.

41. Vegan-friendly organic brand: AMY'S.

42. Responds to 52-Across: REACTS.

45. Durable garb: JEANS.

47. Forest moon where C-3PO was worshipped as a god: ENDOR.

48. Pub pals: LADS.

49. Walks, in stats: BBS -  "A walk's (Base On Balls) as good as a hit"

52. Cues: STIMULI - Natural STIMULI are telling many thousands of Sandhill Cranes to return to the Platte River in Central Nebraska this time of year as a stop on their migration north.

54. Straight: IN A ROW.

57. "My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles," for one: MNEMONIC DEVICE - ...My Very Excellent Mother Served Us Nine Pizzas had to be edited when Pluto was demoted.

60. Star quality: STAGE PRESENCE.

61. Comfortable: ON EASY STREET.

Down:

1. "The Glass Menagerie" girl: LAURA - Laura Wingfield, the withdrawn high school dropout who passes her days listening to old phonograph records and caring for her collection of glass animals while the world closes in around her. 

2. Add-on: ANNEX.

3. __ drum: STEEL 

4. Mulheres da família: TIAS - Our Brazilian constructor gives us the Brazilian words for women as a clue and TIAS for aunts as fill.

5. About: IN RE.

6. 2030 event: CENSUS - Article 1 Section 2 of The American Constitution  

7. Peach or plum: HUE.

8. Weather-sensitive fig.: ETD - Changing ETA to ETD was my last fill.

9. "Mindfreak" magician Angel: CRISS.

"Levitating" on the beach

10. Idiosyncrasy: KINK.

11. Put behind bars: ENCAGE.

12. The __ Brothers: "Listen to the Music" band: DOOBIE - A great musical interlude

14. Shaver: SMALL FRY - The fish version

Stocking a lake with
SMALL FRY

16. Creates a soft spot?: ENDEARS.

19. Pops: DADDY In Japan it is 36. Japanese title of respect: SAN - Papa SAN

22. Abuses an email list, say: SPAMS.

23. Continuing ed course: ESL.

25. Go to and fro: WAG.

26. Flight board abbr.: ARRivals 

27. Muñoz Ryan who wrote the Newbery Honor Book "Echo": PAM.

28. Part of 57-Across: SILENT M - Mnemonics 

29. Legendary attendants of Charlemagne: PALADINS -  Yeah, I thought of this too.

31. Yeti, e.g.: BIPED - Not the first characteristic I think of.

33. Doesn't want the truth, say: DARES - Game

34. Juice sources?: AA'S 😀

37. Chanting sounds: OMS.

40. 2023 WNBA Finals MVP Wilson: AJA.

43. Arrive at: COME TO.

44. Pulitzer-winning McCullough presidential biography: TRUMAN - It's on one of my, uh, shelfs.

46. Muttered remarks: ASIDES - Ferris Bueller's ASIDES broke the fourth wall quite often during his Day Off.

48. Form opener: LINE A.

49. Preservative: BRINE  - The basic ingredients are water, vinegar, sugar and salt.

50. Bowling game: BOCCE.

51. "Cool!": SWEET.

53. Seating level: LOGE - If you want to see Hamilton in Atlanta tonight, here is what the LOGE seat below will set you back.

55. Shape of a baklava, sometimes: NEST.

56. Profess: AVER.

58. IDs of PCs: IPS - The IDentificationS of Personal ComputerS are their Internet ProtocolS.

59. Let it out, in a way: CRY.

Here are some Shelfies submitted by our Corner Friends

Notes from C.C.:

 

Voting is now open until March 1 for the 12^th ORCA Awards – the annual celebration of creativity in crosswords! Winners will be announced on March 6 during a livestream filled with games and prizes. Five long-time solvers will receive special awards. For each day of their streak, solvers can receive a chance to win crossword memorabilia inscribed to them and signed by Will Shortz. Need not be present to win. Details and voting info can be found at Diary of a Crossword Fiend.