Thursday November 26, 2020 Joe Deeney

Theme: DREAM SEQUENCE (53. Storytelling technique ... or what is altered in this puzzle's circles) - DREAM is scrambled.

19. 1936 anti-drug movie originally titled "Tell Your Children": REEFER MADNESS.

27. Anthropomorphic holiday cookies: GINGERBREAD MEN.

42. It restricts peacetime quartering of soldiers in private homes: THIRD AMENDMENT.

Boomer here again, filling in another Thursday slot.  

"Dream, Dream, Dream, Dream. All I have to do, is Dream." Everly Brothers. I hope everyone is healthy and safe. Graybar treated us to a great display of tasty food, since the annual Christmas luncheon has been cancelled. C.C. and I are having Thanksgiving dinner, probably today, tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday  Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there. 

Across:

1. Antepenultimate Greek letter: CHI. Antepenultimate is "third last". 

 

 

4. Gone by: PAST.  We spent PAST Thanksgiving with family, but not this year.

8. "Love Story" author: SEGAL.

13. 17-Across opposite: SHUT. 17. 13-Across opposite: OPEN. Perry Mason used to solve these OPEN and SHUT cases.

14. W competitor: OMNI.  Traveling to Atlanta for a Braves game??  You may want to stay at the OMNI.  Bring your credit card

15. Out of it: LOOPY.

16. Targets: AIMS. 

18. Come after: ENSUE.  Willie - "My name is SUE, How do you do? "

22. Ski jump's approach ramp: IN RUN.  I have never RUN IN to one of these. 

23. Not turn: KEEP. As food.

24. Actress Graynor: ARI.

31. "The Last Jedi" heroine: REY.  My son was a Star Wars fanatic.  I thought a Lightsaber was a roll of candy.

32. Pronoun-shaped girder: I BEAM.

33. Scan used to diagnose migraines: HEAD MRI.  My head was fine, but I needed the MRI to find why my back wasn't healthy.  MRIs are not too much fun but it is what it is.

38. Cold War military force: RED ARMY.

40. Big name in metal: ALCOA.  Mainly aluminum.

41. Bid the most: WON.  It seems odd to say you WON a bid, because the next step is you have to pay.

49. Vicious on stage: SID. Punk rocker Sid Vicious. Our Minneapolis Star Tribune is still bemoaning the loss of sportswriter SID Hartman. Age 100.

50. Give off: EMIT.

51. "'And hast thou __ the Jabberwock?'": Carroll: SLAIN.

57. Assemblage: ARRAY.  I hope all of you have a tasty ARRAY of food on your table.

59. Get rid of: OUST.

60. Soda selection: COKE.  Sorry, I drink Diet Pepsi straight up.

61. Spirits: BOOZE.  I said straight up!

62. Emphatic Acapulco assent: SI, SI.

63. Didn't conceal: TOLD.

64. Deals with things: COPES.

65. Perched upon: ATOP.

66. __ blue: SKY.  "Blue SKY, smilin' at me, nothin' but blue sky, do I see." Willie Nelson.

Down:

1. "The Daily Show" correspondent Ronny: CHIENG. Malaysian comedian.

 

 

2. Upper arm bones: HUMERI.  Funny bones I guess.

3. Carnival ride cry: IT'S FUN.  "We had joy, we had FUN, we had seasons in the sun."  Terry Jacks.

4. Like a grade of D: POOR.  Better than an "F".

5. Alarm clock toggle: AM PM.  I have not used an alarm clock in years back when we used to get up around 3 AM to get a good spot at the flea market. 

6. Quietly evade: SNEAK BY.

7. App with much swiping: TINDER.  I think it might burn also.

8. Melatonin, for one: SLEEP AID.  Never tried that.  Sometimes I might use a Motrin PM.  They work pretty well.  

9. Long periods: EONS.

10. Delicate fabric: GOSSAMER.  A light weight backpack, until you fill it up.

11. "The Simpsons" character with an 18-letter last name: APU.

12. Caustic chemical: LYE.

13. Delhi dress: SARI.

20. Lang. of Belize: ENG.

21. Used to be called: NEE.  Some ladies keep it as a middle name.

25. Paper package: REAM.  500 sheets

26. "__ Life": Beatles: IN MY. "There are places I'll remember, all my life though some have changed."

28. Throw wildly, say: ERR.

29. Portuguese king: REI.

30. Letters before a trade name: DBA.  Doing Business As

33. Kepi and kufi: HATS. Kepi is military. Kufi is like this.

34. K-12, in brief: EL HI.

35. Candy made with sour sugar: ACID DROP.

36. Palme __: film award: D'OR.

37. Flirted with, with "at": MADE EYES.  "I only have eyes for you"  The Flamingos.

38. Biographer Chernow: RON.

39. Get done with: END.  We are not there yet.

41. Diver's attire: WET SUIT.

43. Reddit interview, briefly: AMA.

44. Midmorning drink: MIMOSA.

45. The NCAA's Spartans: MSU.  In the Big Ten.  Tough competition in basketball for our Gophers.  Seems that a Gopher versus a Spartan is a bit of a mismatch.

46. Votes in: ELECTS.  We just did that.

47. Title Inuit in a 1922 film: NANOOK.  NANOOK of the north is a silent film mystery.  I think she was Paul Bunyan's girlfriend.

48. Sensitive, as a subject: TICKLY.

52. One in Maslow's hierarchy: NEED.  "As long as he NEEDS me". Judy Garland.

54. Level: RAZE.  Interesting.  RAZE is the opposite of RAISE.

55. Standard Oil brand: ESSO.  We do not have ESSO in Minn.  I think it's mainly farther north in Oh Canada.

56. Personal hygiene aid: Q TIP.

57. Robin Roberts' network: ABC.

58. Joey in the Hundred Acre Wood: ROO.

Here's my Turkey of the Year for the MN Bowling site.

Once again, enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday and stay safe. Vaccines are coming! Our turkey is now in the oven. Will be our meal for the next four days.

 

Boomer

Wednesday, September 23, 2020 Joe Deeney

Theme:  YOU'RE CONFUSED.  The letters of the contraction YOU'RE are scrambled in the theme entries. Or, as the unifier has it --

55 A. Judge's words ... and a hint to this puzzle's circles: YOU'RE OUT OF ORDER.  This indicates the mixing up of the letters.  Outside of the puzzle, the sentence indicates that YOU'RE not following the prescribed or established procedures for a meeting, legislative assembly, debate, or - in this case - a court of law.

Let's see how it works.

17 A. University offerings: FOUR YEAR DEGREES.  Typically, it takes FOUR YEARS as a full time student to earn a bachelor's degree in most fields of study.  Here the subject letters are scattered over the first two words of the fill.  

26 A. Bob Dylan title lyrics that follow "in my heart you'll always stay": FOREVER YOUNG.  Here, the letters span both words.

x

42 A. "The Wrestler" Oscar nominee: MICKEY ROURKE.  Again the letters span both words of his name.

Hi Gang.  JazzBumba here.  The theme, though mixed up, is pretty straight forward.   Let's unravel the rest of today's puzzle. 

Across:

1. Bits of trash often swept up with popcorn: STUBS.  Ticket scraps in movie theaters.  Ahh - the nostalgia.

6. Outdoor party rental: TENT.  Protects the guests from direct sunlight, but - we hops - not from rain.

10. Creek croaker: TOAD.  Could have been a FROG.  Needed some perps to hop into place.

14. Like much beer: ON TAP.  Draft beer.  In a tavern.  Sadly, these location are primary virus spread hazards.

15. "Dude!": BRAH.  Probably derived from "bro," which is probably derived from brother.

16. Nashville highlight: OPRY.  It's grand, and it's old.

20. Open patio: ATRIUM.  An open-roofed hall or court.

21. Original angel on "Charlie's Angels": SABRINA. played by Kate Jackson.

Sabrina Duncan

22. Driver's role in "Star Wars" sequels: REN.  Adam Driver played Kylo Ren, the dark side son of Han Solo and princess Leia.

23. Easiness exemplar: PIE.  Figuring out why is not as easy.  

25. Johns in Scotland: IANS.  The name "John" in Scottish dialect.  It has nothing to do with the loo.

31. Hopeless, as a situation: NO WIN.  When all the alternatives are bad.

34. Tears to shreds: RENDS.

35. Cause of some royal insomnia: PEA.  For a fairy tale princess on a stack of mattresses.

36. Leave out: OMIT.

37. Ties together: BINDS.

38. Go no further: STOP.  Hatl!

39. Hill worker: ANT.  Not a congress critter.

40. Works in Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends": POEMS.

Ask not for whom the sidewalk ends.  It ends for thee.

41. Provided light: SHONE.  A word rarely seen in the past tense.

45. Gets moving: HIES.  Goes quickly.  A good old Anglo-Saxon word seldom seen in any tense.

46. Luau finger food: POI. Made from the tuber of the taro plant.

47. Lead-in to a texter's afterthought: BTW.  By The Way - now that I have your attention.

50. Words said in disbelief: WHAT THE  .  .  .  The next word in the sequence is open to considerable variation.

53. Canadian metropolis: OTTAWA.  Ottawa is Canada’s capital, in the east of southern Ontario, near the city of Montréal and the U.S. border.

57. MM and MMXX, for two: ANNI.  The years Y2K and 2020, respectively, in Roman numerals.  Let's face it: MMXX has not been a good year; but it is nothing compared to DXXXVI. 

58. Tire (out): WEAR.  This word has a variety of meanings; here it is to diminish by use, as happens when on tires.  Not also that tires wear from use, which is also the same meaning.

59. Beat, with "out": WIPED.  Another word with many possible interpretations.  Here it is WIPING out an opponent.

60. Enzo's eight: OTTO.   The number, in Italian.

61. Where Southwest Airlines is LUV: NYSE  The company's symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.

62. Puts in like piles: SORTS.  Arranges by type or some characteristic.

Down:

1. Words often suggesting unmet goals: SO FAR.  We have a way to go, but we're on our way.

2. Fed. security: T-NOTE.  Treasury NOTE, a marketable U.S. government debt security with a fixed interest rate and a maturity between one and 10 years. 

3. One-eighty: U-TURN.  A rapid turn to go back into the opposite direction.  We seldom see it spelt out completely

4. Port on Italy's "heel": BARI.  Located near the top of the heel, BARI is a port city on the Adriatic Sea, and the capital of southern Italy’s Puglia region.

5. Watch surreptitiously: SPY UPON.  I see what you are doing!

6. Sched. uncertainty: TBA.  Something To Be Announced.

7. Shows one's humanity?: ERRS.  To ERR is human.

8. Zip: NADA.  Nothing.

9. Hitchcock thriller set in Bodega Bay: THE BIRDS.

10. Piemonte city: TORINO.  More commonly known to us as Turin.

11. Confides in: OPENS UP TO.  Shares personal information.

12. Region: AREA. Location.

13. Start to function?: DYS-.  This prefix indicates abnormality or impairment.  

18. Bahrain bigwig: EMIR.  A tittle applied to various Muslim rulers.

19. Charcoal pencil shades: GRAYS.  Available in a set of 50, I suppose.

24. Like "Halloween," and then some: EERIER.  Feast your eyes upon the comparative degree of a word meaning weird and frightening, because you're unlikely to be seeing it again any time soon - or possibly ever.  If I ever see: "More like a Great Lake: Erier," I'm just going to give up.

26. In good shape: FIT.  In good health, especially when due to physical exercise.  One can get fitter.

27. Mobile payments app owned by PayPal: VENMO.  An easy way to electronically transfer funds.

28. Finally arrives (at): ENDS UP.  Reaches some sort of conclusion.

29. Second-lightest noble gas: NEON.  The lightest is helium.  The lightest ignoble gas is hydrogen.

30. Stare slack-jawed: GAPE.  Wide open as, in this case, the jaws.

31. Linguist Chomsky: NOAM. [b 1928] Linguist - sure; but so much more.

32. Luxury hotel name: OMNI.  Omni Hotels & Resorts is an American privately held, international luxury hotel company based in Dallas, Texas. The company operates 60 properties in the United States, Canada, and Mexico,

33. Prejudiced investigation and harassment: WITCH HUNT.  A search for something to prosecute.

37. Father Flanagan's orphanage: BOY'S TOWN.  An organization dedicated to the care, treatment, and education of at-risk children.

38. "__ sells seashells ... ": SHE.  

40. Actress/author Holly Robinson __: PEETE. [b 1964]  She is known for her roles as Judy Hoffs on the Fox TV police drama 21 Jump Street, Vanessa Russell on the ABC sitcom Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, and Dr. Malena Ellis on the NBC/WB sitcom For Your Love.

Care giving

41. Mountain resort aids: SKI TOWS. Various types of ski lifts, each having a moving rope or bars suspended from a moving overhead cable.  This gets you up the hill, so you can slide back down again.

43. South Korean subcompact: KIA RIO.  A subcompact car produced by the South Korean manufacturer Kia Motors since November 1999 and now in its fourth generation. Body styles have included a three and five-door hatchback and four-door sedan, equipped with inline-four gasoline and diesel engines, and front-wheel drive.

44. Solar panel spot: ROOF.  Because that's where the sunlight is.

47. Reason for spin, briefly: BAD PR.  Some problem with Public Relations and the resulting projected image, perhaps caused by foot-in-mouth disease.

48. Limited message: TWEET.  A post on Twitter.  I do that. Does it make me a twit?

49. Hospital sections: WARDS.   Separate rooms or designated areas in a hospital, typically allocated to a particular type of patient.

50. Refuses to: WON'T.  A contraction of "will not," indicating unwillingness or inability to do something.

51. Newsman Lewis?: HUEY.   Hugh Anthony Cregg III (b.1950) known professionally as Huey Lewis, is an American singer, songwriter, and actor.  He was frontman for the pop/rock group Huey Lewis and the News.  And so much more.  He now suffers from Ménière's disease, which is tragic for a musician.

 

 52. LAX postings: ETAS. Estimated Time of -- Arrival or Departure.  Always needs a perp.

54. Rock's Ben Folds Five, surprisingly: TRIO.  Maybe Ben folds something 5 times?  Or maybe two other guys quickly quit?  Anyway, this group was active from 1993 to 2000; and again erratically from 2008 to 2013.

55. NBA great Ming: YAO.  [b1980]  After playing in China, he was the first overall pick by the Houston Rockets in the 2002 NBA draft.  His successful career was cut short by injuries, and he retired in 2011 after several years of foot and ankle problems.

56. Minecraft material: ORE.  Clever clue for this mundane fill.  Minecraft is the best selling video game ever.  Players explore a blocky, procedurally-generated 3D world with infinite terrain, and may discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, and build structures or earthworks. 

That wraps up another Wednesday.  Hope you made it through in an orderly fashion.

Cool regards!

JzB

Saturday, August 22, 2020, Joe Deeney

Saturday Themeless by Joe Deeney

Joe and his lovely daughter born in April

This challenging Saturday pinwheel-style puzzle by, Joe our Supply Chain Project Manager in Massachusetts, took some effort. Another New Yorker cartoonist, an obscure desert, a familiar word used as a sailing term and a city in South Sudan were partially balanced by my instant recognition of ENOS Slaughter, SEA-TAC and PARSEC. Here's a nice note from Joe along with a new picture of him and his daughter:

Hi Gary,

Hope you are doing well. I've attached a more recent picture for you to use.

As with last month's puzzle, this came out of experimenting with how many 10-letter entries I could reasonably fit into the grid. Would have loved to lose the cheater squares and get two more, but I couldn't make the NW work in a way that was both clean enough and colorful enough. I tinker with this grid pattern every so often to try to 
make that work for a future puzzle - maybe someday. For this one, I tried to make each corner of this puzzle as lively as possible without sacrificing too much to weak shorter fill. ONER is a dud as is the plural IANS, but most of the rest is O.K. Lots of trial and error with this one - I don't remember what the original seed was, but I do remember that it's no longer in the puzzle - It was in the SE corner and I ended up redoing the entire corner later on. Glad my clue for TASTE TEST survived. 

-Joe

Let's see what Joe has put into the supply chain here at our little popsicle stand. 

Across: 


1. NASCAR stat: MPH - I first thought it might be LAP because NASCAR does compile the number of LAPS led and it's Saturday but...

4. Afternoon entertainment staples: SOAP OPERAS.

14. Asia's __-Kum Desert: KARA - KARAKUM or KARA-KUM

15. Certain junkie's stimulus: ADRENALINE - Some people like our crossword friend Evel are called ADRENALINE junkies 

16. Slaughter on the diamond: ENOS - This N.C. boy had the nickname of "Country"

17. One sharing a pedigree: LITTER MATE - Mom and five LITTER MATES - three white and two black

18. Frittata base: EGGS - A Frittata compared to an omelet

19. Inexperienced: UNSEASONED.

20. Combined: POOLED - Many shrinking outstate Nebraska schools have POOLED resources to keep their academic and athletic programs going

22. Belgian or brown: ALE.

23. Canonized pope known as "The Great": ST LEO - 440 - 461 A.D.

24. Sea-__: TAC - It's about a 27 min drive from the SEAttle-TAComa airport to the Space Needle

26. Longtime New Yorker cartoonist Roz: CHAST - Last week Chris Adams had New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno in his puzzle

31. Starbucks selection: CAFFE MOCHA - A venti costs $4, has 240 cals and 150 mg of caffeine 

34. Pi, for a circle with a radius of one: AREA - AREA of a circle = A = π r². So if the radius of a circle is 1, the circle's sAREA = π x 1 x 1 = π

35. Where the action in Chicago's County General Hospital took place: ON ER.

36. Peripheral: OUTER.

37. "Phooey!": RATS.

38. Folklore fiend: OGRE.

39. Folklore trickster: BRER RABBIT - A tale of fooling someone into doing exactly what you want them to do. 

41. Gets rid of: LOSES - C'mon, you know the rest (*answer below)

43. Recognizes: IDS.

44. "The Red House Mystery" author: MILNE - His only mystery book (1922) predated Winnie The Pooh by three years (1925)

45. Delivery pros: OBS.

47. "Truly!": HONEST.

48. "Truly!": I CAN NOT LIE - Every wedding dance we go to these days features the song, I Like Big ______, I CAN NOT LIE.

54. Stadium ticket info: GATE.

55. Some white research subjects: ALBINO MICE.

56. Freudian subjects: EGOS - Let's boil it down

57. Cosmetic coating: NAIL ENAMEL.

58. Little pig, maybe: RUNT 

59. Great places to make contact: SWEET SPOTS 

60. Match with chips: SEE.

Down:

1. Rhyming cocktail: MANGO TANGO - Or a fruity drink sans liquor

Ingredients

• 3 cups ice
• 1 12oz bag frozen mango chunks
• 1 15.2oz Odwalla® Mango Tango® flavored smoothie
• 1 lime
• Chamoy sauce

2. Ones working on the links: PRO GOLFERS - Blog editors just wouldn't fit

3. Easy to use: HASSLE FREE - Turbo Tax for me

4. Mexican toast: SALUD.

5. God played by Anthony Hopkins in "Thor": ODIN.

6. Fine __: ARTS.

7. H.S. instructors who show you the ropes?: PE TEACHERS - A nightmare for many

8. "Inside the NBA" analyst: O'NEAL - Shaq

9. About 3.26 light-years: PARSEC - Like a light year, it's a measure of distance not time

10. Muppet who refers to himself in the third person: ELMO.

11. "Knives Out" writer/director Johnson: RIAN - I was told I would really like this movie

12. Required wager: ANTE.

13. Tournament position: SEED - A #16 SEED in the NCAA Basketball Tournament has to be a sacrificial lamb for a #1 SEED. At least they made it to the tournament

14. Doesn't freak out: KEEPS COOL - This courageous woman did and helped change a nation

21. Fair-hiring letters: EOE.

24. Hotel handout: TOURIST MAP - I just use my phone now but I really liked the 3-D ones

25. Didn't do nothing: ACTED - I can hear our grammarians grinding their teeth. They'd press for "Did something" instead of the double negative.

27. Precursors: HARBINGERS - My spring HARBINGER of The Masters got postponed

28. Group that suspended Syria in 2011: ARAB LEAGUE.

29. Permanent: SET IN STONE.

30. Challenge often undertaken while blindfolded: TASTE TEST.

32. Unruly group: MOB.

33. Talk Like a Pirate Day syllable: ARR.

40. "Te __": Rihanna song: AMO - Te Quiero Mucho (I Love You Very Much) is what you might say to your mom rather than the romantically tinged Te AMO

42. Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus," e.g.: SONNET - The last five lines can be found at the Statue Of Liberty

46. Godsends: BOONS - Ten movies that proved to be a BOON to sales of a product

47. Tips to one side: HEELS - Happy to learn a new use for this word

48. Olympic swimmers Crocker and Thorpe: IANS - Not Joe's fav fill. 


49. Arcade game grabber: CLAW.

50. Irish Rose's beau: ABIE - The poster for the comedy ABIE'S Irish Rose (about a Jewish boy marrying an Irish Catholic girl) performed in Brooklyn in 1928

51. Juba's river: NILE - Here you see the White Nile emerging from Lake Victoria, flowing through Juba, the capital of South Sudan and then proceeding up to Khartoum, Sudan where it joins the Blue Nile which continues on to the Mediterranean. 

52. Long way to go?: LIMOusine 

53. Rapper-turned-actor: ICE T.

*No soup for you!

Click below to leave Joe a comment

Saturday, July 25, 2020, Joe Deeney

Saturday Themeless by Joe Deeney

Joe Deeney returns with a puzzle that was a real tester for me. As far as times are concerned, I won't show you mine if you don't show me yours.

Joe's reply to my note:

Hi Gary,

Thanks for reaching out. Always good to hear from you, glad you enjoyed the puzzle. I actually hadn't yet heard from Patti and Rich that this was slotted, so good to know it’s coming up.In early 2019, I started playing around with themeless grids with a high number of 10 letter answers. I don't have stats for the LA Times, but on xwordinfo there is a page showing that the max published in the NY Times in a 15x is 14 answers of length 10. This grid is relatively unconstrained and has 16. I have another puzzle in Rich's queue with this same grid layout, and another one with 18 answers of length 10 from the same period of experimentation. The tradeoff with these grids is more answers of length 4 than 5 or 6, but as long as the long fill shines that doesn't bother me so much, though I know for some solvers it's not ideal.

The seed for this puzzle was EXCUSEZ MOI which I had hoped to clue [Pardon my French?] but I guess that required a bit too much of a grammatical stretch for Rich's taste – or maybe it narrowly missed passing the breakfast test. I'm glad the gist of my clue for SHOWER GIFT and ORDER A LIMO remained the same. I've been trying to work ORDER A LIMO into a themeless puzzle for a few years now with essentially that clue - very friendly combination of letters, especially starting and ending with a vowel.

Everyone is healthy and safe here, hope the same for you.

-Joe

Across:

1. "Touché": POINT TAKEN.

11. Small complication?: PROB - See above

15. Agree to take the long way there?: ORDER A LIMO - Getting there is half the fun in a long car on a long route

16. Condominio, por ejemplo: CASA - Hmmm... A type of house and in Spanish

17. Dancer's driver: SANTA CLAUS and 18. First word in a classic poem about 17-Across: TWAS.

19. "Telephone Line" rock gp.: ELO - Here ya go!

20. Prepares (for): GETS SET - A man GETS SET for his 100th birthday jump

22. Stretch (out): EKE.

23. "Dark side" sci-fi group: SITH - Jedi enemies in Star Wars franchise

24. Stuffed grape leaves: DOLMAS - From Trader Joe's

26. Rodeo ride: BRONC - Bronc 1 Cowboy 0

29. Either Bush, in school: ELI - George H.W. and George W. were both Yale grads

32. Spanish wine region: RIOJA - A marks the spot

33. "The Mammoth Hunters" author: AUEL.

34. Like some agreements: PREMARITAL - Also called a pre-nup(tial) 

36. I-9 ID: SSN.

37. Caddies and cozies: TEAWARE.

Antique tea caddy                        A cute little tea cozy

38. Pub pick: IPA - A brew often seen here at the Crossword Pub

39. Towels, e.g., aptly: SHOWER GIFT - Now that's just a fun clue!

41. Katy Perry hit that starts "I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath": ROAR - Her feminist anthem

42. Youngest French Open champ: SELES - Monica now, Monica after being stabbed on court and Monica as a 16-yr-old French Open champ

43. Pueblo pronoun: ESA.

44. Like undercooked eggs: RUNNY.

45. Oscar-winning foreign language film based on a Fugard novel: TSOTSI (South African slang for thug) 

47. Sarcastic retort: I BET.

49. Fix: RIG.

50. TV revenue source: AD SALES.

53. Neon tips?: ENS - NeoN

56. Actor Kapoor of "Slumdog Millionaire": ANIL - This story is of a boy from the slums of Mumbai not Johannesburg 

58. Pierre's polite lead-in: EXCUSEZ MOI - I prefer Joe's "Pardon my French" cluing! 

60. Wee: ITSY.

61. Galileo, notably: ASTRONOMER - One of my heroes but was not a big hit with the Pope!

62. NPR giveaway: TOTE.

63. Great bargains: SWEET DEALS.

A classy way to divide the Across and Down clues!

52. Entr'__: ACTE 

Actually intermission
for My Fair Lady

And now back to our regularly scheduled review:

Down:

1. Prepare for cheese?: POSE - Gotta love this clue too!

Sat CHEESE (fromage?)

2. Spoken: ORAL - There are so many questions I never thought to ask my grandmothers

3. Lic. figure: ID NO.

4. Barclays Center NBAer: NET.

5. Like some flaws: TRAGIC  Hamlet's "To be or not to be" reveals his TRAGIC FLAW of indecisiveness  

6. "Don't play," in music: TACET.

7. Hot, hot, hot: ALL THE RAGE - Name the song with this lyric (*answer at bottom of write-up)

8. Sorento and Sedona: KIAS - Car models 

9. Big birds: EMUS.

10. Barely bested, with "out": NOSED - You may have to look for a while to see that Horse #2 not only didn't win but got third. (**reason at bottom of write-up)

11. Dietary info abbr.: PCT.

12. What an actor may bring to an audition: RAW EMOTION - Stella!

13. Honshu city: OSAKA JAPAN - OSAKA and Hiroshima are both on the island of Honshu and it's a 4-hr drive between them

14. Factor in bonus size, perhaps: BASE SALARY - I had a BASE SALARY every year I taught and my bonus was 0% of that

21. Hall of Famer who was an MVP and Manager of the Year: TORRE - 1971 MVP for the St. Louis Cardinals and A.L. Manager of the Year in 1996 and 1998 for the Yankees

23. Longtime NBC hit: SNL.

25. Only Super Bowl the Eagles won: LII - The NFL is doing their bit to keep Roman numerals alive

26. Victoria-Tasmania divider: BASS STRAIT - The diary of Andrew MacCauley's 35 hr crossing of the Bass Strait in a sea kayak

27. Doesn't stop to think about: RUSHES INTO.

28. Expert on ports?: OENOLOGIST - We see OENO associated with wine here quite often and LOGIST indicates an expert so...

30. Martin's partner: LEWIS - Two reasonable choices

Dean Martin and Jerry LEWIS            Dan ROWAN and Dick Martin

31. Angsty lament: I'M A FAILURE - The sun'll come out tomorrow!

34. Each: PER.

35. "The one way possible of speaking truth": Browning: ART 

37. "Creed" actress Thompson: TESSA - Her IMDB

40. Like spring snow: WET - This beautiful Johnny Mathis song has a lyric of "melt my heart like April snow" @~1:12

41. Sticking point?: RUT.

44. Forward, say: RESEND - What I do when I get a cool video from someone

46. Noodle nuggets: IDEAS - Even my noodle/bean/noggin has good IDEAS sometimes

48. Ply with drink: BESOT - George knew he could get the truth from Elaine with peach schnapps

51. Austin festival, briefly: SXSW - South by Southwest conference and festival. Cancelled this year

53. Austen classic: EMMA - Also my granddaughter 

54. Coward with a knighthood: NOEL - He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1970 twenty-eight years after Winston Churchill vetoed her dad's desire to do so.

55. Knight titles: SIRS - Sir Noel had to wait

57. Caustic chemical: LYE.

59. Muppet friend of Elmo: ZOE - Rhymes with snow. With the diaeresis mark ZOË rhymes with snowy 

* The song about THE RAGE is The Beat Goes On by Sonny and Cher

** If you look closely the winning horse is between horse #2 and the horse at the top of the picture. The winner's nose is sticking out in front of horse #2. Horse #2 was declared the winner but someone spotted that the winning nose didn't belong to #2

Crossword Map Update

After four years,I decided to update my map of our LA Times bloggers. I went through the old map and deleted some names that didn't seem to be active any more. My memory is very suspect and I may have eliminated some people who are still contributing but I know we have some new members who are not included. I have also received requests from others who do not usually post but want to be on the map.

Please email me at gschlapfer@gmail.com if you want to add your name and location or edit what is already there. I am truly sorry if I have omitted anyone and am anxious to get the map up to date.

Gary 

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