Saturday, June 15, 2019, Craig Stowe

Themeless Saturday Puzzle By Craig Stowe

Today marks the the celebration of a big source of renewable energy - Wind. As you can see by the accompanying chart, wind turbines are sprouting up at a good clip out here on the Great Plains. 

My daughter and her family just returned from a vacation in Palm Springs, CA two days ago and were amazed when they saw this huge wind farm on I-10 near there

The main issue of course, is how to store this energy when the wind is not blowing. This is being addressed in many ingenious ways

Today, Craig Stowe has blown up a challenging puzzle to solve. Let's see "watt" he has done:

Across:

1. Word with H or I: BEAM.

5. Key of Chopin's Étude Op. 10, No. 3: E MAJ - Gee, I'd love to hear some of that

9. Wont: HABIT - It is my wont to blog every Saturday 

14. Old: OUT OF DATE.

16. "The Faerie Queene" woman: IRENA - IRENA appeals to "The Faerie Queen" for help in Edmund Spencer's 1590 epic poem

17. U.S. gross national debt units since 1981: TRILLIONS - and the beat goes on...

56. Disproportion: IMBALANCE - Speaking of which

18. Fictional musket wielder: ATHOS - He was one of The, uh, Three Musketeers

19. Ready for action: HOT TO TROT 

20. Medieval feudal lord: THANE - Macbeth as the Thane of Glamis

21. Prepare quickly, with "up": WHIP.

22. Shudder: QUIVER - The master

23. Some partygoers: STAGS.

27. Aristotle in the 20th century: ONASSIS - Mr. Jackie O

29. River in Tuscany: ARNO - The ARNO 15. Runs: FLOWS  out of the Apennines, goes through Florence and empties into the Ligurian Sea at Pisa. There are no boat rides on the ARNO as much of it is not navigable  

30. "Middlemarch" author: ELIOT - An 1871 novel of provincial English life by George ELIOT (Mary Anne Evans)

32. Low digits: TOES.

34. YMCA leader and Peace Prize co-Nobelist John: MOTT - His Bio.

35. Coup group: JUNTA.

36. Normandy department: ORNE - France's NW Region of Normandy is divided into five Administrative Departments seen below. The beaches of Calvados were much celebrated nine days ago.

37. Lofty verse: EPOS - Here ya go!

38. Glyceride, for one: ESTER - Here ya go!

39. Tabula __: RASA - Latin for Tablet Erased

40. Japanese electronics giant: HITACHI.

42. "Black Velvet" singer Alannah: MYLES - Some nice Saturday listening/viewing

43. Sovereign: DYNAST - Yes, I suppose a DYNAST would have a dynasty

44. Early one-named Velvet Underground vocalist: NICO - 60's vintage

47. Great service providers: ACERS - They can make for tennis matches played with few strokes

48. Looked raptly: STARGAZED - Mine would be more directed at the heavens than anything terrestrial 

53. Photo finish: MATTE.

54. It may be a stretch: LIMOUSINE - At Disney Studios, Rock 'n Roller Coaster is a ride in a "stretch LIMOUSINE" at 57mph into a black light adventure with Aerosmith blasting in your ears! I'd allow "awesome" as a description!

55. Colorado's __ Park: ESTES.

57. Origins: SEEDS - 800 miles south of the North Pole lies the Svalbard Global Seed Vault that stores nearly a million seeds from around the world

58. Nudnik: PEST.

59. Hit, as with snowballs: PELT.


Down:

1. Choice when you can't decide?: BOTH - An old commercial about this dilemma

2. Prefix with vision: EURO - Need more info?

3. Working: AT IT.

4. Shed: MOLT.

5. Bunker on Hauser Street: EDITH - Jeanne Stapleton won an Emmy for her wonderful portrayal

6. "The Piano" extra: MAORI - In this movie the MAORI unload Ada's piano on the beach in western New Zealand 

7. Never: AT NO POINT IN TIME.

8. Kid: JEST.

9. Break: HIATUS - Kids and teachers are on one now

10. Subject including the Renaissance: ART HISTORY.

11. Type of economics: BEHAVIORAL - Five interesting examples

12. From that perspective: IN ONE SENSE.

13. Cop show shocker: TASER.

22. Doha's country: QATAR - Doha is a 2-hr flight from Baghdad 

23. Word of equality: SAME.

24. Cup holder: TROPHY CASE.

25. Name wrongly associated with cake: ANTOINETTE - Most feel Marie never said "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche" (Let them eat cake) in response to hearing the peasants had no bread. However it became a rallying cry for French revolutionaries 

26. Took the first step: GOT STARTED - Debate continues on how attribution to Marie Antoinette of "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche" GOT STARTED

28. One on a staff: NOTE - This NOTE is the top of my range

30. Kick out: EJECT.

31. Green: LUSH - Redux from last Saturday

33. Tranquility and Serenity: SEAS - A lunar reconnaissance orbiter caught site of the Apollo 11 landing site in the SEA of Tranquility 45 years later. (Yeah, we really went!)

41. Rate: ASSESS.

42. Big kahuna: MOGUL 

43. Some royal wedding guests: DAMES - DAME Judi Dench became the first woman to play James Bond's boss, M. Her role was modeled on DAME Stella Rimington, the real-life head of MI5 between 1992 and 1996

45. Feet in a meter?: IAMBS - Ba BUM, Ba BUM, Ba BUM, Ba BUM, Ba BUM (each "ba BUM" is an IAMB and of course there are five in this smart aleck's answers)

46. Balkan native: CROAT.

48. Err: SLIP.

49. Pronto: ASAP - Add Stat in a hospital 

50. E-__: ZINE - Not an online magazine but just for fun-  What time is it in EZINE, Çanakkale, Turkey right now?

51. Letter-bottom abbr.: ENCL - The ENCL can be a S.A.S.E. for an R.S.V.P.

52. Bugs' bane: DEET - The EPA now says DEET is safe when used as directed but this product advertises it is DEET FREE

Now the person in this house could comment on his computer that is powered by WIND and solar energy!

Saturday, June 8, 2019, Brian E. Paquin

Themeless Saturday by Brian E. Paquin

Today celebrates one of my favorite bakery items, Jelly-Filled Doughnuts. When I am vying for Husband Of The Week, I buy my lovely bride her fav, a cinnamon roll with maple icing. But while in the store, I buy myself a long john and have the girl go in the back and inject that long pastry (yeah, I know it's not in any way a doughnut) with a generous dosage of raspberry jelly. Yum! BTW, can it truly be called a doughnut with filling where a hole should be? 😏


Today I am blogging my fifth Saturday themeless by Brian Paquin in less than a year. 

I ripped through this in twenty-five minutes and enjoyed a lot of the fill (no jelly) and cluing along the way.

I hope you enjoyed Brian's puzzle and had a nice doughnut brimming with your favorite jam or jelly while completing the exercise.




Now let's see what has filled our grid today:

Across:

1. "Yikes!": OH NO and 53. Harassed "SNL" clay character: MR BILL - Having MR BILL and his signature cry of distress in the same puzzle can not be an accident (:05)

5. "Dance of the Seven Veils" play: SALOME - John The Baptist lost his head over this dance

11. Common commuter letters: MTA - But did he ever return?

14. __ red: BEET.

15. Got around: ELUDED - Dr Kimbell ELUDED Lt. Gerard for five years on TV

16. Slur in musical notation, e.g.: ARC - A slur ARC joins different notes not to be performed separately. It's called a tie when it connects two notes of the same pitch

17. Not at all slack: TAUT.

18. Shocking weapons: TASERS.

19. Spendable amount: NET - If you win a million in a Nebraska lottery, you will NET $406,700 after taxes. You will NET $700,000 if you take the 30 year annuity payout

20. Set of keyboard keys: ARROWS.

22. Season ticket holders, usually: HUGE FANS - Huskers have sold out every FB game since 1962

24. Personal ad "looking for": ISO - In Search Of... 

25. Boo-__: HOO.

27. Gates of philanthropy: MELINDA - She and her husband have formed the world's largest private charitable organization. 28. Impressive: NO SLOUCHes they, when it comes to sharing their wealth

31. Votes against: NAYS - When "independency" was first proposed to the Continental Congress on June 7, 1776, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina voted NAY

32. Make a bad situation worse: FEED THE FIRE - Sometime said about a bad relief pitcher (Last Saturday we had "Treading Water - NO WORSE)

36. Magnificence: STATELINESS - I saw it while in the redwoods!

38. Many a "Twister" character: STORM CHASER - I enjoyed the Helen Hunt/Bill Paxton movie but this KC farm team on the prairie stirs things up 35 minutes from my house

40. "Not happening!": AS IF.

43. Colors in the family: SHADES OF - Click on any color to see SHADES OF that family

45. Rascals, old-style: VARLETS.

49. Bard's preposition: ERE.

50. __-pitch: SLO - SLO in/fast out

51. High seas greeting: AHOY MATE - And on the telephone if Alexander Graham Bell had gotten his way

55. Salon acquisition: TAN.

56. 1887 Verdi debut: OTELLO - Original poster for when it was performed at the Theater At The Stairway (Teatro Alla Scala)

58. __ rage: ROID - One side effect of taking a steROID is the rage it can generate

59. "__ too!": ARE - Am not, ARE too, ad infinitum 

60. Kind of calendar: JULIAN - Pope Gregory XIII's calendar replaced it in 1582 as the 1,500 year old JULIAN calendar was 11 days (correction) off


61. Girl of Avonlea: ANNE.

62. "Gnarly!": RAD.

63. "Either way": I'M EASY - An academy award winning song for a one-hit-wonder

64. Roman Catholic prelate: Abbr.: MSGR- The MonSiGnoR at my grandson's first communion lost the kids after 15 seconds but went on for 15 minutes anyway


Down:

1. Come into: OBTAIN.

2. Learns about: HEARS OF.

3. Obsessions, often: NEUROSES - Road Rage is listed an example of a NEUROSIS

4. German aviation pioneer Lilienthal: OTTO - In 1912, Wilbur Wright said of this glider pioneer, "He presented the cause of human flight to his readers so earnestly, so attractively, and so convincingly that it was difficult for anyone to resist the temptation to make an attempt at it himself"

5. Has every intention that one will: SETS OUT TO - Wilbur and Orville SET OUT TO take OTTO's curved surface gliders/flyers and put a motor on them

6. In the manner of: ALA.

7. Well-kept, as a lawn: LUSH - Ours has to be mowed every third day

8. Concert hall: ODEUM - A small theater of Greece or Rome

9. Emulate Time and Warner: MERGE - Our Time/Warner  cable company is now Spectrum

10. Ford who championed the Model A: EDSEL - Henry and son EDSEL unveiling the 1928 Model A

11. Procrastinator's word: MANANA - Sung here by the surprising cowriter 

12. Fashionable: TRENDY.

13. Plays the role of: ACTS AS.

21. New Orleans Saints chant: WHO DAT.

23. Tactful handling: FINESSE.

26. Earth pigment: OCHER.

29. Unleashes: LET'S FLY

30. Big wheels: HELMS - Here's one on the RMS Titanic 

33. Sheet of microfilm: FICHE -  from French fiche "card, index card, slip, form". Here is a microfiche reader that magnifies the fiche card where the information has been shrunk and stored

34. Singing like Pentatonix, e.g.: IN HARMONY - Acapella was one letter short

35. Keeper of many books: READER - Books fill his shelves or his eREADER

37. Meetings: SESSIONS.

39. On the road: ROLLING.

40. Gamer's icon: AVATAR.

41. About 30% of Africa: SAHARA - From space

42. Did a laundry job: IRONED.

44. Office item: FOLDER.

46. Tiny birthday cake, perhaps: EMOJI - Yeah, I've used one before too

47. Art of jazz: TATUM - Here ya go (alt. Goose of the Globetrotters) 

48. Stone marker: STELE - The seven foot tall basaltic STELE, Law Of Hammurabi, is now housed in the Louvre 

52. Director Kazan: ELIA - He named names to the HUAC and was a Hollywood pariah from then on

54. Name on the cover of "Dracula": BRAM - A $10,000 first edition 

57. Syllables in some madrigals: LAS - Can you count the TRA'S and LA'S

Go ahead and comment. I have a raspberry filled long john waiting for me!

Saturday, June 1, 2019, Michael Wiesenberg

Themeless Saturday by Michael Wiesenberg

Today is National Flip A Coin Day. For those of us who work crosswords this can be a decision making aid. For instance - AVER/AVOW, AYE/YEA, DNA/RNA, etc.  This is what crossing answers and erasers are for.

Today's constructor is our former professional poker player from Calgary, Michael Wiesenberg. I suspect that at Michael's skill level, he did not have to resort to many coin flips to decide his strategy on a particular hand.



Michael's great puzzle today has four vertical and horizontal stacks of ten that yields only 28 blocks with 99 open squares

Sit in for a hand as we explore what Michael has dealt us today:

Across:

1. Luxurious ease: BED OF ROSES - Did anyone else also think of a Kevin Spacey movie?

11. Slangily admit, with "to": COP - Some will COP to a lesser crime rather than go to trial

14. See 3-Down: YOU WOULDN'T and 3. With 14-Across, "Bro, no!": DUDE - DUDE, YOU WOULDN'T... 

15. What you see hear?: TYPO - "What you see hear (here)" has a TYPO

16. Plays the nice guy?: ENDS UP LAST - Leo's motto and book title

17. Fins: ABES - $5 bill slang

18. Mariner's hdg.: SSE - Mariners on the Edmund Fitzgerald had a SSE heading on its final leg toward Whitefish Point on that fateful day in 1975 when  it sank in a horrible storm

19. Security issue: LEAK.

20. Eponymous diplomat Lord St __, friend of explorer George Vancouver: HELENS - His eponymous mountain blew its top in 1980

22. Peters out: DIES - DIES/EBBS was a "Flip A Coin" moment

23. Treading water, so to speak: NO WORSE - Not getting "aheader or behinder"

24. Quakers in forests?: ASPENS - Cottonwoods on the plains also make that sound



27. Harlequin output: ROMANCES.

28. '90s Rather co-anchor: CHUNG - They lasted three years together 

29. Caribbean native: CUBAN.

30. Univ. mentors: RA'S - Another coin flip with TA'S

31. Chloé fragrance maker: COTY.

32. Angel in Venezuela?: FALLS.

33. Soup made with stock called dashi: MISO - Making MISO soup with dashi stock

34. Pollution monitoring gp.: EPA.



35. Blender button: PUREE - One of many verb options on this old Oster

36. Thing that's spread: RUMOR.

37. Dressed for the beach, perhaps: SANDALED - and 36. Least prudent: RASHEST. Any port in a word storm

39. Symbols seen in pairs, briefly: PARENS  

40. How condemnation is expressed: SHARPLY - Even when tempered, "I respectfully submit that my friend from across the aisle is lying through his teeth!"

41. __ job: DESK - Technically, teaching is a DESK job but I rarely used mine

42. Set upon: COME AT - Google Mike Tyson

43. Jive: JOSH.

44. Show with a Miami spin-off: CSI - CSI, CSI Miami, CSI New York and CSI Cyber. 792 episodes of this franchise have aired. 

47. Designer Cassini: OLEG.

48. Response to a con: I'VE BEEN HAD - I almost said that in a CraigsList 11. Phishing, e.g.: CYBER CRIME last month. 

51. Morse sounds: DITS - My name in Morse Code is --. .- .-. -.-- or in PARENS - (dah dah DIT, DIT dah, DIT dah DIT, dah DIT dah dah)

52. Choose not to continue: LET IT SLIDE - I know Uncle Bob wants to debate politics but...  

53. Prefix with conscious: ECO.

54. Close talks: TETE A TETES - Furniture so-named for those "head to head" talks

Down:

1. Passes at a tournament: BYES - Washington got a BYE because it had a better record 

2. Long, long time: EONS - EONS/AGES coin flip

4. Cries of pain: OWS.

5. It may result in free throws: FOULING - In a past, rougher era, the Detroit Pistons got away with a lot of FOULING

6. Nepalese money: RUPEES - An ad for the KFC in Kathmandu, Nepal with prices in RUPEES

7. Widemouthed stewpots: OLLAS - Spanish, from Latin olla, aulla pot; akin to Sanskrit ukhā pot and probably to Goth auhns oven

8. Badlands Natl. Park's state: S DAK - It's about the only interesting thing between Rapid City and Sioux Falls.

9. Navy lt.'s subordinate: ENS - Did you think of ENSIGN Pulver too?

10. Charlotte Amalie's island: ST THOMAS - Charlotte Amalie (named in 1691 for wife of Danish King Christian V) is on ST THOMAS and is the capital of The American Virgin Islands

12. Time to hunt: OPEN SEASON 

13. Owners: POSSESSORS.

15. Hawk's claw: TALON.

21. Obi-Wan portrayer: EWAN - Coin flip - My first fill of ALEC (Guinness) played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars. EWAN McGregor played a younger version of him in the prequels

22. Repudiate: DENY.

23. __ gas: NOBLE - NOBLE/Inert coin flip


24. It'll get you in: ACCESS CODE - We find it very convenient to have one on this doorknob

25. Mall portmanteau: SHOPAHOLIC.

26. Label, as feelings: PUT A NAME TO - It's hard PUT A NAME TO the feeling I have when a former student says something very nice about me (or something bad too)

27. Dominated: RULED.

29. 1990 Best New Artist Grammy winner: CAREY - Mariah's IMDB

32. At high speed: FULL TILT - Great running backs get to FULL TILT quickly

33. Gloom: MURK 

35. __ John's Pizza: PAPA - Last year Peyton Manning sold his interest in 31 PAPA John's franchises just days before PAPA John withdrew as the NFL's official pizza

38. Settled matter: DREGS - Part of a lovely, poignant Sinatra lyric that has more meaning as birthdays pile up

39. Former Spanish coin: PESETA - Now on the Euro

41. Guard dog originally bred in Germany, familiarly: DOBIE - DOBERMANS were named for dog breeder Ludwig DOBERMAN in 1890 who was a tax collector and took this dog on his route for protection

43. Singer with The Blackhearts: JETT - My favorite 

44. Gambler's marker: CHIT.

45. Marquis de __: SADE - When the word SADISTIC is derived from your last name... 

46. June 13, e.g.: IDES -  In the ancient Roman calendar, the fifteenth day of March, May, July, or October, and the thirteenth day of the other months.

49. Migration flight pattern: VEE.

50. Marlins' MLB div.: NLE - You'll find the National League East Marlins at the bottom of this attendance list

No need to flip a coin, we'd love to hear your comments.