Thursday, July 11, 2024, Jared Cappel

 Theme:  It's a Jumble Out There!

SOUND MIXING usually refers to editing of audio files in a movie, whether to make sound levels even, to layer sounds, or to bring in additional sounds.  Or something like that!  We don't need to know the specifics here, because the trick is that the word SOUND is scrambled, or jumbled, in each of the answers to the starred clues.

The theme clues and answers are:

17. *Totally falls apart: COMES UNDONE.  You can unscramble the red letters to spell SOUND.

25. *Floating lunar particles: MOONDUST.  Again, red letters can be rearranged to spell SOUND.

39. *Gravity powered nourishment: INTRAVENOUS DRIP.  Another mixed SOUND.

51. *Tips to the next dollar, say: ROUNDS UP.  This ROUNDS UP our tour of mixed SOUNDs.

64. Audio technique, or a feature of the answers to the starred clues: SOUND MIXING.  This is the big reveal, letting us know that the word SOUND is mixed (or scrambled, or jumbled) in the answers to the starred clues.

Would you say that this puzzle was built on a SOUND basis?

Across:

1. Satisfied sounds: AAHS.  Satisfied, but not mixed, SOUNDs.

5. Comforting text during a bad storm, say: I'M SAFE.  I tried I'M OKAY  and I'M FINE first.  I finally remembered seeing friends "mark themselves SAFE" on Facebook during crises.

11. Popeyes rival: KFC.  Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken vs Kentucky Fried Chicken -- not Popeye vs Bluto.

14. Political coalition: BLOC.

15. Econ. figure used to highlight income inequality: CEO PAY.  This did not immediately spring to mind as an economic figure.  Note that an abbreviation in the clue calls for an abbreviation in the answer.

16. Every last one: ALL.

17. [Theme entry]

19. 20-20, say: TIE.  A tie occurs in sports when both players or teams have the same score.

20. Surgical tube: STENT.

21. "Deal": SOLD.

22. Offshore: ASEA.

23. Radiate happiness: BEAM.

25. [Theme entry]

27. Hollywood VIP: A LISTER.

30. Doc's order: MED.  A doctor orders medicine.

31. Bygone space station: MIR.  Mir was a space station operated by the Soviet Union, and later by Russia, from 1986 to 2001.

32. Wine category: REDS.  I love reds.  DH loves whites.  In summer, we agree on Rosés.

35. Breakaway groups: SECTS.

39. [Theme entry]

43. Anesthetic of old: ETHER.

44. Praise: LAUD.

45. Musician Yoko: ONO.  

46. Debtor's letters: IOU.  Short for "I owe you."

48. Words on some missing posters: LOST CAT.  It's a dangerous world for lost pets.

51. [Theme entry]

56. Wolfe of fiction: NERO.  Nero Wolfe is a fictional armchair detective created in 1934 by writer Rex Stout.

57. Professionals who work from home about a quarter of the time?: UMPS.  UMPires work from behind home plate -- as well as from other positions on the baseball diamond.

58. Asian language: THAI.

60. Channels of communication: MEDIA.

63. "__ me guess ... ": LET.

64. [Theme entry -- the big reveal]

66. "Me" problem: EGO.

67. Terrarium pet: TURTLE.  I have hosted a number of turtles in my home.  One of them had a massive terrarium. 

All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises.

(Tortoises are a land-dwelling subset of turtles.)

I photographed this Giant Tortoise on the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos.

68. "Night" author Wiesel: ELIE.  "Night" is a terrifying Holocaust memoir.

69. __ Juan, Puerto Rico: SAN.

70. Wipes: ERASES.

71. Related groups: SETS.  I imagine some of you are playing the New York Times "Connections" game.  One of our youngsters showed it to me.  Looked challenging.

Down:

1. Building blocks: ABCS.  Building blocks, or ABCs, are basic elements that are vital to construct a thing.  Words are the building blocks of language.  Hard work and perseverance are the building blocks of success -- in crossword puzzle solving.

2. Bushels: A LOT.

3. Residential delivery?: HOME BIRTH.  Cute!

4. Act divisions: SCENES.

5. Critical hosp. area: ICU.  Intensive Care Unit.

6. Department store department: MENS.  A fraction of the size of the women's department.  

7. Genesis city: SODOM.  Sodom and its sister city, Gomorrah, were destroyed by the Almighty for their evil ways.  Lot's wife made the mistake of looking back at the destruction of the cities as she fled with her family, and the Almighty turned her into a pillar of salt.

Or perhaps Lot's wife stopped to take a selfie.

8. Speed skater Ohno: APOLO.

9. Swifties, e.g.: FANDOM.  "Use the word fandom to talk about the community of people who admire a particular celebrity, hero, sports team, or TV show." -- Vocabulary.com.  In this case, Swifties are fans of Taylor Swift.

10. Word with public or private: EYE.  "A private eye is a detective who works for private customers, rather than with a police department."  "The public eye is the attention of the general public, or the focus of many people. Movie stars and famous criminals are both examples of people in the public eye."  -- Vocabulary.com

11. Fried Japanese cutlet: KATSU.  Breaded, fried meat.  DNK (Did Not Know).  Relied on perps (perpendicular entries, AKA crosses).

12. Takes a high way: FLIES.  Takes an airplane, sure, but long ago:

O you take the high road, and I'll take the low road

And I'll be in Scotland afore ye

But me and my true love will never meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond

13. Spiked shoe: CLEAT.  A shoe with studs on the sole, or the stud itself, meant to provide grip on a slippery surface.

18. Saves or assists: STAT.  Sports again?!  Someone is keeping STATistics on every save or assist in the game.  Hey, have you heard of the new punctuation mark, the interrobang?  It's a question mark with an exclamation mark superimposed on it.  Neat, huh‽

22. Said more: ADDED.

24. Griffin who created "Jeopardy!": MERV.

26. Loch __ monster: NESS.  A mythical creature that is said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands

Nessie

27. Québec pal: AMIE.  Female friend in French.

28. __ roller: LINT.  Necessary equipment for dog and cat guardians.

29. Instagram video: REEL.

33. 23andMe material: DNA. Spit in a tube and learn about your ancestry!  Amazing, really.

34. Genre for Otis Redding: SOUL.

36. Predator with powerful jaws: CROCODILE.  The American Crocodile lives in the Neotropics, including South Florida, which is the only place it is found in the wild alongside the American Alligator.  I prefer to find them from the deck of a river boat or from a boardwalk.

Alligator on the left -- Crocodile on the right

37. Lifford of "Queen Sugar": TINA.  DNK.

38. Ad: SPOT.

40. Bridle straps: REINS.

41. Former Yank who's now part owner of the Timberwolves: A ROD.  Apparently, Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) is one of the greatest players in the history of baseball.

42. Japanese noodle: UDON.

47. American leg of a concert series: US TOUR.

49. Frozen Four game: SEMI.  Sports again‽

50. "Jurassic Park" dinos: T REXES.  Tyrannosaurus rex (or T. rex) lived throughout what is now western North America in the Late Cretaceous period.  It lived in the Jurassic Park movie, but not in the actual Jurassic period, which came before the Cretaceous.

My dad the paleontologist didn't raise no anachronists.

51. Principles: RULES.

52. Last Greek letter: OMEGA.

53. Supermodel Kate: UPTON.

54. Saldaña's "Star Trek" role: UHURA.  Zoë Saldaña plays Nyota Uhura in the Star Trek movies.

55. Slacks: PANTS.

59. Run in neutral: IDLE.

61. Still fighting: IN IT.  We are IN IT to win it!

62. Grows older: AGES.

64. Sault __ Marie: STE.  Sault Ste. Marie is a city in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

65. Month, in Mexico: MES.


Here's the grid.  Mixed SOUNDs are in red letters.

Thanks for playing along!

-- NaomiZ

 

 

Notes from C.C.:

 

Happy birthday to CanadianEh!, who's been with our blog since 2012. Wishing you a beautiful and fun-filled day, Eh! Thanks for all the informative and caring posts all these years.

 

Thursday, May 23, 2024, Jared Cappel

 

Funny, Funny Spots!

Jared Cappel, writer and champion Scrabble© player,  has constructed crossword puzzles for USA Today, Universal, and other sites, and today makes his debut in the LA Times.  I believe he may have another LAT puzzle in the oven for near term publication.  His puzzle is a bit unusual for a Thursday, in that it has 5 theme clues, all clechos.  There is no reveal, but all of the fills are two-word, in the language phrases, and the perps are fair so the correct fill is not too difficult to spot ... 😀

17A. Spot for a spot?: PARKING LOT.  Parking SPOTS are found in PARKING LOTS.

24A. Spot for a spot?: WHERES WALDO. Illustrator Martin Handford published the first in his series of Where’s Waldo books over 25 years ago. The books challenge readers to find the titular cartoon man, clad in his trusty red-striped shirt and red-striped hat, as he hides in a landscape of red-striped red herrings. It turns out that for me, WALDO was not very easy to spot -- I had to search through at least a 1/2 dozen images before I could find one to use for this clue.  This one's a gimme ...

Ben Blat thinks he has a
mathematic strategy for finding Waldo

36A. Spot for a spot?: TEA CEREMONY.  Everything you would want to know about the British ritual and the Japanese ritual.

47A. Spot for a spot?: TV BROADCAST. -- SPOT in this case being slang for an advertisement.

57A. Spot for a spot?: BENCH PRESS.  I couldn't find a picture of Stella doing a BENCH PRESS, so you'll have to settle for this one.  Tsk, tsk -- he's not using a SPOTTER!

Here's the grid ...

Here's the rest ...

Across:

1. Of the kidneys: RENAL.  In a single day, your kidneys filter about 150 quarts of blood. Most of the water and other substances that filter through your glomeruli are returned to your blood by the tubules. Only 1 to 2 quarts become urine, which is passed to the bladder.

6. Mineral deposits: ORES.  An Ektorp? Plural clue with the word "mineral" and a 4 letter fill -- what else could it be but ORES?  OTOH, not all mineral deposits are destined for the smelter.  For example Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) is not refined into the Alkaline earth metal Calcium (Ca) -- rather it is used to make plaster, wallboard, and other products.

10. Stacked on: ATOP.

14. Words of defeat: I LOSE.

15. Bigger than big: HUGE.

16. "Don't use that __ with me!": TONE.  "Well what tone DO you want!?"  Here's a father and son team who will make a set of wind chimes that will play any 8 TONE tune you want to hear ...

17. [Theme clue]

19. Symbol at the center of a Scrabble board: STAR.  Jared should know -- he's a STAR Scrabble player!

20. Virtual video game characters: SIMS.  The Sims is a series of life simulation video games developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and is one of the best-selling video game series of all time. It is also part of the larger Sim series, started by SimCity in 1989.

The Sims™ 4 on Steam

21. Top under a hoodie: TEE.

22. Switches from a bottle to a cup, say: WEANS.  IMO, more commonly associated with giving up mother's milk.

23. California's Santa __ Mountains: ANA.  The Santa Ana Mountains are a short peninsular mountain range along the coast of Southern California in the United States. They extend for approximately 61 miles (98 km) southeast of the Los Angeles Basin largely along the border between Orange and Riverside counties.

Santa Ana Mountains

24. [Theme clue]

27. Language in which "w" can be a vowel: WELSH.  Not only can "w" be used as a vowel in WELSH, but the latter's orthography (conventional spelling system) has 29 letters.  Some examples of "w" as a vowel include “cwm,” which means “valley” and sounds like “coom,” as well as “crwth,” which is a stringed instrument and sounds like “crooth.” -- Book Riot.

29. Grade that may accompany a 26-Down message: DEE.

30. Particle exchanged in water purification: ION.  Ion exchange is a process used in softening or demineralizing water, purification of chemicals, and separation of substances.

31. Square stuck in a corner: POSTAGE.  This reminded me of a tone poem about a shy young man who stood in a corner trying to get up the nerve to invite the pretty girl on the other side of the room to dance -- and then he did, and she did! (a CSO to Yellowrocks) ...

Invitation to the Dance
Carl Maria von Weber

35. Mediterranean mountain: ETNA.  The same one that erupted on the Corner just last week.

36. [Theme clue]

38. Threading target: BROW.  String Theory: an inside look at eyebrow threading ...

Ouch!

40. Economic improvement: UPTREND.  What are trend lines and why are they useful?

41. Asset in darts: AIM.  We'll skip the Ted Lasso clip this time around.  Maybe next time.

42. Bases-loaded walk stat: RBI.

43. Beach tour destinations: ISLES.

47. [Theme clue].

52. Wonder: AWE.  These days I wonder a lot about the Here After.  I walk into a room to find something and then wonder "What am I here after?" 😀

53. Put on the payroll: HIRED.

54. Blonde hue: ASH. I used to be an ASH blonde, but what's left of my hair is on the verge of becoming SILVER blonde.

55. Printing shade: CYAN.  The color CYAN, a greenish-blue, has notable tints and shades. It is one of the subtractive primary colors along with magenta, and yellow
 

CYAN, MAGENTA, and YELLOW

56. Lions or Tigers: TEAM. or BEARS oh my! 😀

57. [Theme clue].

60. Pakistani tongue: URDU.  Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English.  Here is a distribution of native Urdu speakers in the major countries where it is spoken ...

61. Nirvana, for one: TRIO. This grunge rock TRIO is named for Nirvana, the Hindu  term for enlightenment.  Here is a sitar, flute, and violin TRIO evocative of that state (15 min.) ...

62. Patisserie purchase: TORTE.  What’s the difference between Gâteau, Cake, and Torte?  Here's a recipe for an an almond TORTE.

Almond Torte

63. Howls: BAYS.

64. Electrical unit: WATT.  A WATT is a unit of power, named after Scottish engineer James Watt, which measures the rate of energy transfer. A watt, in electrical terms, is the rate at which electrical work is done when one ampere (A) of current flows through one volt (V).  I've included this link for those who have spotted that A and V are not the standard symbols used in Ohm's Law.

James Watt
(1736–1819)

65. Church recesses: APSES. There are two types: the large one at the front of the church with the ALTAR, and in some churches there are smaller ones (niches) around the sides with statues or images of saints.

Apses
 in the Crypt of
the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
Washington, D.C.

Down:

1. Lumber mill tool: RIPSAW.  Lumber mills use RIPSAWS to rapidly rough cut lumber because they are designed to cut along the grain, which is parallel to the growth of the tree.   CROSSCUT saws have more teeth and are designed to make finer cuts across the grain of a finished lumber ...

... more discussion for wood geeks on the Woodworking StackExchange

2. Only main "Seinfeld" character who was not in the show's pilot episode: ELAINE.  This one was handed to me ...

3. "The truly fearless think of themselves as __": Margaret Atwood: NORMAL.  While Margaret is known for championing women's rights, notice that in this meme she isn't excluding men ...

4. Responds on "Jeopardy!": ASKS.

5. Hula hoop?: LEI.  Cute clue.

6. "My stars!": OH GEE.  So said Alice Cooper ...

My Stars lyrics

7. Arendelle's Elsa, for one: RULER.  Another empowered woman ...

8. Narcissist's problem: EGO. 

9. Volleyball move: SET.  One of my granddaughters plays volleyball.  SET sounds like a simple move, but it takes a lot of practice to master.

10. Between ports: AT SEA.

11. Climactic moment during an eclipse: TOTALITY.  While we didn't experience totality in Baltimore, it did get dark here for several minutes.  Here's a national geographic explanation of how it happens ...

12. Ad infinitum: ON AND ON.  See 18D below.

13. Lady Gaga, for Stefani Germanotta: PERSONA.  A PERSONA is the personality that a person (such as an actor or politician) projects in public: i.e. their IMAGE.  Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer-songwriter and actress.   Here's her song Just Dance (her PERSONA in Poker face was just a little too gaga! for me) ...

18. Ultimate degree: NTH.  -- a term used to describe the most recent in a long series of things, when you do not know how many there are.  This is truly the NTH time we've seen this. 

22. Royal Rumble org.: WWE.  World Wrestling Entertainment.

24. "Holy moly!": WHOA.  The first word that popped into my head, Batman! 😀

25. Path maintenance tool: EDGER.

26. Teacher's directive: SEE ME.  Is she going to pat you on the head and tell you what a good job you did on the test?  Or to talk about the 29A you got?

28. Erupt: SPEW.  Like 35A.

32. PADI certification activity: SCUBA.  Hand up if you're PADI certified?  If you aren't and want to be here's  a clip on course 101 ...

33. Halfhearted: TEPID.

34. Objet d'__: ART.  Today's French lesson: "Object of Art" or ...

35. Burnt brisket bits: ENDS.

36. Only person to win seven Super Bowls: TOM BRADY.  Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. (born August 3, 1977) is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 23 seasons. He spent his first 20 seasons with the New England Patriots and was a central contributor to the franchise's dynasty from 2001 to 2019. In his final three seasons, he was a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Brady is widely regarded as the greatest quarterback of all time.  He was also the greatest 6th round draft pick (199th player) of all time ...

Tom Brady

37. "Right away, boss!": ON IT.

38. Rubber duck's place: BATHTUB.  Do De Rubber Duck With Ernie ...

39. Côte d'Azur, e.g.: RIVIERA.  More French: literally "Azure side" -- a reference to the blue Mediterranean Sea perhaps.  Eight must-see spots on the Côte d'Azur.

42. Ned Flanders' oldest son: ROD. 

Rod Flanders

44. Tiers: LAYERS.  E.g. a 62A is usually multi-tiered.

45. Fried Apples?: EWASTE.  Funny clue, but not funny fill.

46. Has an inkling: SENSES.

48. Brother in Rome's foundation story: REMUS.  The other brother was Romulus, who lived to tell the story.  They were raised by a she-wolf ...

Romulus and Remus
Capitoline Museums, Rome

49. "Pipe down!": CAN IT.  Another clecho. Be quiet and you'll hear it.

50. Fancy neckwear: ASCOT.  An ascot tie or ascot is a neckband with wide pointed wings, traditionally made of pale grey patterned silk. This wide tie is usually patterned, folded over, and fastened with a tie pin or tie clip, modeled here by American expatriot artist John Singer Sargent ...

John Singer Sargent
in a pleated Ascot tie c. 1880,
and the subject of a recent Tate Exhibition.

51. "Pipe down!": SHH. Another clecho.  Be quiet and you'll hear it.

55. Do some photo editing: CROP.  Sometimes it's necessary in these reviews.  And video editing too.

57. "I should tell you," for short: BTW. -- but the time's too short ...

58. Common __: ERA.  I am in AWE of how BCE suddenly became CE in the course of a single weekend? 😀

59. Org. that may organize after-school activities: PTA.  What would constructors do without them?

Cheers,
Bill

And as always, thanks to Teri for proof reading and for her constructive criticism.

waseeley