Happy Thursday, cruciverbalists! While it is not yet time for us to
poke our heads out, I hope that 2021 has gotten off to a good start with
everyone staying safe and healthy.
If you were scratching your head over the theme of today's puzzle it is
safe to assume that you had plenty of (socially distanced)
company. Prison breaks are, by nature, difficult to discover. These
were. Even after solving the "tell", this moronic marine mammal had to stare at
the completed grid for several minutes before the theme answers slowly
revealed themselves.
I tried looking backwards and forwards within each of the long answers.
Nothing. Puns? Homophones? Anagrams? Still stumped. MaryEllen had purposely used "puzzle
rows" and not "answers" in her hint to the theme so, perhaps, I should look
at entire rows. The hint also contained the word "break" so something
had likely been broken apart. Even with these insights I then wasted
time looking for some form of symmetry of which there was, well,
none. Finally, it dawned on me.
Simply put, on four rows of the puzzle, synonyms for PRISON have been
broken apart and wait patiently for us to reassemble them. Of
course, once the theme had been figured out, and the letters involved had
been identified, everything appeared to be obvious.
Let's start with the reveal at 65 Across: "The Shawshank Redemption" event, and what's hidden in
four puzzle rows: PRISON BREAK.
At 17 Across we have - Angry reaction: HORNETS NEST followed at 19 Across by - "This American Life" host Glass: IRA
The end of the first answer combines with the start of the second to
from STIR, a slangy word for
prison.
At 27 Across we are asked to solve for - Indian noble: RAJA followed by 31 Across - Surly: ILLNATURED
As above, parts of these answers combine to yield JAIL.
..and so on,
38 Across - It went down in history: TITANIC and 40 Across - Connects with:LINKSTO.
CLINK is another slang term for
prison
47 Across - Stable cleaner: SADDLE SOAP and 51 Across - Tolkien tree creatures: ENTS.
PEN is, well, we get it, we get
it.
Here is what this all looks like in the grid:
Now that we have successfully escaped the confines of our puzzle penitentiary
let's take a look at the rest of today's challenge:
Across:
1. Bobbleheads, e. g.: DOLLS. Do they have
to represent humans?
6. Jury decision: AWARD. Verdict was the first impulse but, of course, did not fit in the
allotted space.
11. Pair of Grammys?: EMS. We have seen this type of clue
and answer many times previously...and you know that this MM appreciates
EMS.
14. "It's __ time!": ABOUT. A straightforward
fill-in-the-blank clue. The seven-letter modifier is implicit.
15. Old photo tint: SEPIA.
A SEPIA PHOTO
16. Dwarf who mixes up his words: DOC. He's the one with
the eyeglasses.
DISNEY'S SEVEN DWARFS
20. Meeting goal often not achieved: LENGTH.
21. Nuclear energy device: REACTOR. You can build your
own.
23. Lip: SASS. Impudence by any name.
26.
Firefighter's tool: HOSE.
35. Soft palate projection: UVULA.
37. Not what one would expect: IRONIC.
AIRPLANE 2
44. Mexican bread: DINERO. Bread, of course, being slang
for money.
46. Single-master: SLOOP. This version of "The Sloop
John B" involves both The Beach Boys and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra:
SEE HOW THE MAINSAIL SETS
52. Palm tree superfood: ACAI. A current-day
crossword, and for some folks dietary, staple. ACAI was found in yesterday's puzzle. Manatees rarely eat ACAI berries.
53. Ancient home: EDEN. If the stories are to be
believed, the most ancient of all.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
55. Predator with a heart-shaped face: BARN OWL.
59. Card game with trumps: EUCHRE. Not
Bridge. Not Whist.
64. Hurricane season mo.: OCT. The Atlantic
Hurricane Season officially runs from June 1st through November
30th.
68. Cravat or ascot: TIE. Not to be confused with
18 Down. Two weeks ago the puzzle demanded No TIE.
69. Like Caspar Milquetoast: TIMID. Caspar
Milquetoast is a comic strip character created for the strip "Timid
Soul" that launched in 1925.
CASPAR MILQUETOAST
70. Give a false idea of: BELIE.
71.
Low: SAD.
72. Deposit in the attic,
say: STORE.
73. Cheerleaders'
assortment: YELLS.
EAST LAKE HIGH SCHOOL SPARTANS
Down:
1. "James and the Giant Peach" author: DAHL. Roald
DAHL was a spy, a fighter pilot and a medical inventor as well
as an author. In addition to the clue's referenced work,
he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda.
2. Wind heard in Dion's "Abraham, Martin and
John": OBOE. Although oboes, of course, are
heard frequently in our puzzles this is one of the best clues
yet.
Dion DiMucci
3. Desolate: LORN. LORN means lonely and
abandoned. We more often see forlorn.
4. Organ in a chest: LUNG.
5. Decides to leave alone: STETS. STET is a
proofreader's mark for Let It Stand. Rarely, though, do we
see it used as a verb.
6. Biblical mount: ASS.
BALAAM'S ASS
7. Harmless cyst: WEN. This week's "I'll pass
on the graphics" moment.
8. Imitator: APER. Outside of puzzles one
rarely sees, or hears, APER or Aped. Within puzzles we
commonly see them both.
9. Slope: RISE.
SLOPE INTERCEPT (y = mx + b)
10. It may be crunched: DATA.
11. Spell-checker, say: EDITOR. Literally true
but I'd bet that most of us first thought of something
word-processing-related
12. Lacking in joy: MOROSE. Our second ASS of
the day (if one chooses not to count Peter Griffin):
EEYORE
13. Rustled (up): SCARED.
Colloquialisms. SCARED up something to eat, Rustled up
some grub.
18. Bangkok native: THAI. There is nothing
else quite like a tuk-tuk ride through the streets of Bangkok,
THAIland.
22. Private laugh: CHUCKLE. Chuckles are
laughs that are quiet, inward or suppressed.
24. Golfing mishaps: SLICES.
25. Camera type, briefly: SLR. A Single Lens Reflex camera uses a mirror and prism to allow the photographer
to see exactly what will be captured on the film or digitally.
27. Rural road feature: RUT.
28. Prefix with fauna: AVI. A reference to
the birds of a particular region. I am most familiar with
these:
29. Stick (out): JUT.
30. 2019 Mena Massoud title
role: ALADDIN.
32. Free of commissions, as a mutual fund: NO LOAD.
33. Young Darth: ANI. A "Star Wars" reference
and a "diminutive" name to boot.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER
34. Cookie containers: TINS.
36. Indigo plant: ANIL. I only know this from
crossword puzzles...and the perps helped to recall it.
39. Having four sharps: IN E. This answer
obviously assumes that the clue was talking about a Major
musical key. The relative minor of E Major is C Sharp
Minor and it also has four sharps.
41. Absalom, to David: SON. A biblical
reference to a story about family dynamics.
DAVID AND ABSALOM
42. "PAW Patrol" fan: TOT. Paw Patrol is a
children's television series that premiered in 2013.
THE PAW PATROL
43. Special ___: OPS. Both OPTS and OPS in the
same puzzle!
45. Caviar: ROE. I went to a sushi
bar and ordered salmon roe. It was a spawn-taneous
decision.
47. Clogs: SABOTS. In this instance, a shoe reference. My friend Jon's
father had a small sailboat that we would sometimes take out in
the marina. It was far too small for the open sea. The
logo on the sail, and the type of boat it was, was a SABOT.
48. Thorny shrub: ACACIA. Both
ACACIA and ACAI in the same puzzle!
54. Lumpy, as a knit fabric: NUBBY. This type
of fabric is rarely seen in crossword puzzles but it has been
seen before.
56. Comes down on one side of something: OPTS.
An intentionally somewhat obtuse clue? Not incorrect,
merely less straightforward than it needed to be. Oh,
wait, it's a crossword puzzle. They do that all the time.
57. Court order: WRIT.
58. Ride to the prom: LIMO. Perhaps riding in
a LIMO is now commonplace but it sure wasn't when this manatee
was in High School. Further, unless PROM is considered to
be an abbreviation for something, there is nothing in the clue
that indicates LIMO in lieu of Limousine.
60. Algonquin language: CREE. Often, CREE is
clued with a reference to the Canadian indigenous population.
61. Severe criticism: HELL. We rarely see
"semi-swear-words" in puzzles.
1948 CAMPAIGN BUTTON
62. Fence crosspiece: RAIL.
POST AND RAIL FENCING
63. Manages to get, with "out": EKES. We see
this one a lot. I sometimes get confused between EKES and
EEKS.
66. Military address: SIR. A bit of
misdirection as APO (Army Post Office) is commonly seen as an
answer to similar clues.
67. "To Autumn," for one: ODE. What would a
puzzle be without ODE somewhere in the grid?
1) Wendybird, hope you and Jack make a full recovery soon!
2) Happy Birthday to dear JD, who also enjoys traveling the world like Hahtoolah. The second picture was taken from the same trip but on a cruise ship, I think.
Happy New Year's Eve, cruciverbalists! In what has been a trying
year, our final puzzle seemed, fittingly, to be a bit trying for a
Thursday. Perhaps it was just the fatigue factor but it appeared to
this solver as if this puzzle had more than its fair share of "forced"
fill (word fragments, abbreviations and the like) and these required some
time to work through.
Fortunately, the theme was fairly easy to identify and that helped
out. In other words:
That Part Made Cents
First, the unifier:
67 Across: Items that can circulate or be tossed ... as illustrated in
this puzzle's six sets of circles:COINS.
At six places within the grid, in both Across and Down answers, the
word COIN can be formed by
unscrambling adjacent circled letters.
17 Across: Birder's gear: BINOCULARS
Watch The Birdie
30 Across: California county where Fort Bragg is: MENDOCINO
The Sir Douglas Quintet - Mendocino
47 Across: Barrier-breaking report: SONIC BOOM A loud noise is sometimes called a "report" and the clue also
refers to the sound barrier.
Chuck Yeager - B: 13 February 1923 D: 07 December 2020
63 Across: State capital about 100 miles from
Sacramento: CARSON CITY By automobile, the state capital of Nevada, Carson City, is roughly 135 miles from
Sacramento, the state capital of California.
10 Down: Chance to plead one's case: DAY IN COURT.
29 Down: Tip of a toy arrow, often:SUCTION CUP.
Well, those are the themed answers. Now, let's take a look at the
rest of the puzzle:
Across:
1. Potential fodder in a libel lawsuit, briefly: BAD PR. At the risk of being served with a libel lawsuit, I thought that
BADPR (BADPublic Relations) was, to coin a phrase, a bad way to get the ball rolling.
6. Sackcloth material: HEMP. The reference is often to
"sackcloth and ashes" with the sackcloth traditionally being made from goat
hair.
10. Reduces, as glare: DIMS.
14. Lexus
competitor: ACURA. An automobile reference.
15. Avocado shape: OVAL. Avocados are, however, three
dimensional and an oval is two dimensional. Obovate would,
perhaps, have been a more precise answer but it would have necessitated
other changes. Fruit Shapes
16. "Stress cannot exist in the presence of __": Mamet: A PIE. The quote begins: "We must have a pie." I have no
familiarity with this quote. I have no difficulty embracing the
philosophical stance.
19. Afghan constitution?: YARN. A bit of misdirection in
that the first impulse might be to assume that the clue was referring to the
laws of the country that lies at the crossroads of Central and South
Asia. Instead, the clue refers to the composition of an eponymous
knitted blanket.
Misdirection
20. Newspaper VIPs: EDS. EDITORS Being a writer is enjoyable but being an EDITOR is more
rewording.
21. Possessed by Shakespeare?: HADST. When we see constructors fall back on Elizabethan English may we
assume that they got stuck?
22. Bathroom fixture: BIDET. This is the first time that I
recall seeing this particular bathroom fixture in a crossword puzzle.
A BIDET is a sensible idea if borderline inappropriate for a crossword
puzzle. If you do not know what one is then you might want to ask Mr.
Hankey to explain.
23. Overwhelm: AWE.
24. "Young Sheldon" star Armitage: IAIN. While I enjoy
"The Big Bang Theory," I am far less familiar with the "Young Sheldon"
spin-off and I was previously unaware of anyone named IAIN. Still, I
suppose it would be good to remember this constructor-friendly (four
letters, three vowels) name.
26. Laundry cycle: RINSE.
35. Nonalcoholic beer
brand: O'DOUL'S.
37. Crimson, e.g.: RED. There are many shades of red
represented in the English language.
38. What the nose knows: ODOR. The clue is nice
play on words. I once tried to buy perfume from a vending machine
but it was out of ODOR.
39. Soft mineral: TALC. What did the Moh's Scale say
when it was feeling down? "I don't want to TALC about it."
40. Mortar and pestle stone: AGATE.
42. Sports org. whose name once included
"Lawn": USTA. The United States (Lawn) Tennis Association
43. Shoot the breeze: CHAT. CHAT is also
French (masculine) for cat.
44. Bon __: MOT. A
Bon MOT is a witty remark.
45. Upset, as a
plan: DERAIL.
50. Eye sores: STYES. It seems like a good idea to
eschew the graphics for this one.
51. Scandinavian royal name: OLAF. We often have to wait
a bit to determine if the answer is going to be OLAF or Olav.
52. Apr. addressee: IRS. Our good friends at
the Internal Revenue Service.
54. Fogg's creator: VERNE. Phileas Fogg was a character
featured in Jules VERNE's "Around The World In Eighty Days". He also
made an appearance in an episode of "Have Gun Will Travel" (season
4, episode 12) .
57. Count with a band: BASIE. ... and a one,
and a two, and hit it ...
Count Basie - Blazing Saddles
59. "That __ close!": WAS.
62. Lindros in the Hockey
Hall of Fame: ERIC.
Eric Lindros
65. Prego alternative: RAGU. Very often, one of these
brands of sauce is clued by referring to the other.
66. Polar chunk: FLOE.
68. "Don't dawdle!": ASAP. As Soon As Possible
69. Bygone GM line: OLDS. We often see Ransom Eli OLDS
in puzzles. It usually has something to do with, or the answer is,
REO.
70. Ryegrass fungus: ERGOT.
Down:
1. Innocent: BABE.
That'll Do Pig. That'll Do.
2. Prilosec target: ACID. Oh, stomach ACID. This
could have been clued Orange Sunshine or Window Pane.
3. Hassles for payment: DUNS.
4. In favor of: PRO.
5. Ray who hosts the Yum-o! virtual cooking
camp: RACHAEL. We often see RACHAEL Ray's pet name for
extra virgin olive oil, or EVOO, in crossword puzzles.
6. Poker variety: HOLD EM.
7. Mendes and Gabor: EVAS.
The Gabor Sisters
8. Taskmaster: MARTINET. This is not a word
that we often see, or hear, but it seems like a good addition to our
crossword vocabulary.
9. Letters from a polite texter: PLS. Texting
"shorthand" has provided a great many possibilities for constructors but,
PLS, enough already, with this sort of thing.
11. Tablet at a Genius Bar: IPAD. To solve this, it
helped to know that the tech support station at an Apple Store is called
The Genius Bar. Most people do. If not, the perps likely
filled it in.
12. Boggy area: MIRE. Fen has too few letters and Swamp
has too many. Moor might have seemed to work out for a while.
13. Posted: SENT.
Gromit
18. Assembly line gp.: UAW. The United Auto Workers Union
22. Prefix with mass: BIO. The combined BIOmass of
bacteria on Earth is more than a thousand times that of the combined
BIOmass of all humans.
25. Went on to
say: ADDED. Sometimes, too much is ADDED.
Joe Jones - 1960
26. University mil. programs: ROTCS. Has anyone before seen the plural of Reserve Officer Train Corps ?
Navy ROTC
27. Twin Falls' state: IDAHO.
28. "Dunkirk"
director Christopher: NOLAN. One might have clued this
answer with a reference to this gentleman:
Nolan Ryan
31. Muse of poetry: ERATO. We often see one, or more,
of the Nine Muses in crossword puzzles with ERATO being the most commonly
spotted.
32. "My guess is ... ": ID SAY.
33. Casual remark?: NO TIE. This must be a reference to
Casual Fridays.
34. Intense exams: ORALS. An academia reference.
This clue really tees it up but this manatee shall, reluctantly, pass.
36. Latin steps: SAMBA. A dance reference. Both
Tango and Rumba would have fit but neither would have worked out.
41. Cut-up: GOOFBALL. Not a cooking reference.
Both the clue and the answer are synonyms for a silly person.
46. Bottom line: ESSENCE. A bit of a stretch in the
cluing but not completely goofy.
48. The Cavs, on ESPN crawls: CLE. The CLEveland Cavaliers are a professional basketball team.
49. Air balls, e.g.: MISSES. In basketball jargon, a
shot that MISSES everything, and hits neither the backboard nor the rim,
is called an Air Ball.
53. __ Grande: RIO. I first thought of TACO Grande
by Weird Al.
54. __ Bradley bags: VERA. VERA Bradley bags are well
known in some circles.
55. Named stretches: ERAS.
56. Latvian
seaport: RIGA.
58. J.Lo's partner: AROD. Alex RODriguez played twenty-two
seasons of major league baseball but he might be even more famous for his
relationship with Jennifer Lopez.
59. Kristen of 2016's "Ghostbusters": WIIG.
Kristen Wiig Ghostbusters Vignette
60. 8 for O, e.g.: AT NO. At no time would my first
guess have been that this was a reference to the ATomic Number (NO) of Oxygen.
However, by the third or fourth guess it became clear.
61. Betting aid: Abbr.: SYST. As with PLS, above, I did
not care much for this abbrvtn.
63. Fiscal exec: CFO. Chief Financial Officer
64. __ anglais: English horn: COR. By definition.
The COR Anglais originated in neither England nor France but,
rather, in Silesia circa 1720.
That completes the work on our puzzle, and completes our puzzle work for
the year, leaving one more question:
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
MM OUT
Notes from C.C.:
I'm very sad to inform you that Gail Grabowski, our regular L.A. Times crossword constructor passed away on Christmas eve. See here for her obit. Thanks for the link, TTP. In addition to her many solos, Gail collaborated many puzzles with Bruce Venzke over the years.
