google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Michael Paleos

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Showing posts with label Michael Paleos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Paleos. Show all posts

Oct 7, 2021

Thursday, October 7, 2021, Michael Paleos

 



Good morning, cruciverbalists.  Malodorous Manatee here with Buck Henry & Mel Brooks' Maxwell Smart and The Chief to introduce today's puzzle.

If my research is correct, today's constructor Michael Paleos made his L.A. Times Debut on June 28, 2019.  He has also had puzzles published in the L.A. Times on March 12, 2020 and, more recently on June 10, 2021.  Apologies in advance if I have missed one or more.

The Cone Of Silence seemed appropriate today because Michael riffs on those silent letters that are not uncommon in the English language.  The reveal comes at 54 Across:

54  Across.  Cold shoulder . . . and a hint to four circled letters, individually and as a unit: SILENT TREATMENT

The interesting twist here is that the four circled letters spell, in order from top to bottom, MUTE.  That is an impressive twist on an otherwise pretty straightforward theme.

17 Across.   Aids for retrieving things: MNEMONIC DEVICES   MNEMONIC DEVICES are tools used for memorizing a string of words.  Well-known ones include HOMES (for the Great Lakes), King Philip Came Over For Great Spaghetti (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family Genus, Species) and ROY G BIV (for the colors in a rainbow and, yes, Indigo has been dropped by some).

28 Across.  Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, for one: GUITAR SOLO


33. Made bad news easier to take: SOFTENED THE BLOW


41. Bond of the '70s and '80s: ROGER MOORE.  Not a T-Note or a Junk Bond, but a British spy.



. . . and now for the rest of the story:

Across:

1. Something going to the dogs: ALPO.  Right "off the bat" a bit of misdirection.  Not the idiom for a crumbling situation but literally something you would give to a dog.


5. Chirpy sci-fi critter: ARTOO.  R2 D2 aka ARTOO DEETOO from the Star Wars franchise.  R2 D2 visited us last Friday, also.

R2 D2 Noises

10. Joe by another name: JAVA.  Slang for coffee.


14. Welsh actor Roger: REES.  Unknow to this solver.  Diolch, perps.

15. Domain: REALM.

16. Kalahari-like: ARID.  The Kalahari Desert.

20. Hunted ones in a 2016 craze: POKEMON.  POKEMON GO



21. Rare forecast: HAIL.  Less frequent than sunny skies, overcast skies, rain or snow.

22. Teeing off: IRING.  Alternative clue:  What this clue is to solvers.  Irking?  Okay.  But the present participle of IRE?   

23. Provider of colt comfort: MARE.  Not Cold Comfort.  Nice wordplay.  No, not jeu de mots.

24. "On the Road" narrator __ Paradise: SAL.   Jack Kerouac's (nee Jean Louis Lebris de Kerouac) thinly-veiled self in the book.

Cassidy (Cassady / Dean Moriarty) - 1977 - Grateful Dead

27. Zippered shelter: TENT.  Looking at the local streets, other clues come to mind.

31. One might be slipped: DISC.  Hands up for having had L5 / S1 or something similar added to your vocabulary at some point.

32. Some urban pollution: NOISE.

39. Word with box or light: IDIOT.  Two idioms.  IDIOT box for television and IDIOT light for the lights on an automobile dash board that illuminate to tell the driver that something has gone amiss.

40. Bush hoppers: ROOS.  Bush is used to indicate Australia and hoppers provides a slangy hint for KangaROOS.

44. Part of CSNY: NASH.  Crosby Stills NASH and Young.  DSGN work not work as well.  A local school once held a charity auction featuring Graham NASH's Nash Rambler automobile.

48. Its returns were never sales: Abbr.: IRS.  Tax Returns.


49. Strong lobby for seniors: AARP.  This clue requires no explanation here.


50. Game with scratching: LOTTO.  Scratch off that ticket.  You might be a winner.

51. 2019 Broadway biomusical: TINA.  TINA Turner.

52. Big squeeze: BEAR HUG.  Again, nice wordplay.

58. Rapper-turned-actor: ICE T.  Alternatively, Rapper-turned-actor who often visits crossword puzzles.

59. Something one may be dying to hide?: ROOTS.  Hair Dye.  Nice pun.


60. Pro foe: ANTI.

61. Smart-alecky: CUTE.  CUTE, real CUTE.  Do we detect a note of sarcasm?

62. Affected: ARTSY.  As used here, too, too pretentious.

63. Zap: LASE.  Zap often turns out to be Nuke, as in microwave.

Zap Comix #0


Down:

1. Axilla, commonly: ARMPIT.  Today's let's skip the graphics moment.  The A from ALPO at 1 Across proved helpful as, initially, I had no idea about 14 Across.

2. Lost love in "The Raven": LENORE.  Edgar Allan Poe.

James Earl Jones and Friends

3. Spy, in a way: PEEK IN.  LOOK IN was, briefly, considered as was PEER IN.

4. "Pay It Forward" actor Haley Joel __: OSMENT.  Unknown to me.  Thank you, perps.

5. River in Tuscany: ARNO.

The Arno River at Night - Firenze 2015 - Photo By MM


6. Bit of equestrian gear: REIN.

7. Tic __: TAC.  A bit surprised that it didn't turn out to be Tic Tok.  What do you get if you cross some ants with some tics?  All sorts of antics.


8. So last year: OLD HAT.  Idiom meaning passe.  It may have developed during the time when women often wore hats and the styles changed annually.

9. 1998 Masters winner Mark: O'MEARA.  In 1998, golfer Mark O'MEARA became the oldest to win two majors in the same year.  He was 41.

10. Monopoly corner: JAIL.  Do not pass GO.  Do not collect $200.



11. Parabolic path: ARC.



12. Contend: VIE.

13. They pop up too often: ADS.  Online Pop-up ADS.

18. IM gasp: OMG.  Instant Message gasp = OMGod!

19. Sábado preceder: VIERNES.  Today's Spanish lesson.



23. Emphatic end to a killer performance: MIC DROP.



24. Lowe's bagful: SOIL.  Lowe's home improvement centers sell bags of SOIL in the Garden Department.

25. "And another thing ... ": ALSO.

26. MGM co-founder: LOEW.  Marcus LOEW.  Not to be confused with Lowe's from 24 Down.

28. Gimlet option: GIN.  2.5 ounces of GIN, 0.5 ounces of Simple Syrup, a squeeze of fresh lime and a lime wedge to garnish.

29. One of a Swiss Army knife's many: USE.  Many uses.


30. Blubber: SOB.  To cry.  Not, in this case, flab.

31. Disembark, maybe: DETRAIN.  Not to be confused with DEPLANE.

 

33. Aide to millions: SIRI.  A modern-day reference.  My girlfriend asked me why I was whispering at home.  I told her that I was worried that Mark Zuckerberg was listening.  She laughed.  I laughed.  Aexa laughed.  SIRI laughed.  We all laughed.

34. It could be fishy: ODOR.  

35. Cookie fruit: FIGS.  Fruit, as with fish, can be singular or plural.

36. __ the mark: TOE.  


37. NBA's Raptors: 
TOR A National Basketball Association team.  TORonto.  Canadian, eh?



38. Groundbreaking invention: HOE.  Quite literally.

42. Watchword: MANTRA.  There was an indecisive Buddha.  His mantra was, "ummmmmmmm...."  

43. Address provider: ORATOR.  A nice play on words.  Why did Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address?  Because the Gettysburg was naked.

44. Not odd: NORMAL.  Not EVEN.  Not even what?

45. She turned Arachne into a spider: ATHENA.  I did not know this but the assumed that it would be an ancient goddess and the perps made it fairly easy to guess correctly.

46. Action film fodder: STUNTS.


47. Stymie: HOGTIE.

50. GPS finding: LAT.  LATitude.  For a modern take on location-finding take a look at the What Three Words app.  What Three Words

51. It's under un beret: TETE.  Today's French lesson.  TETE = head.



52. Risks: BETS.  This makes more sense as a couple of verbs than it does as a couple of nouns.

53. "Nothing to it!": EASY.

54. Attack, to Rover: SIC.  (Not my error)



55. RN workplace: ICU.  Registered Nurses work, sometimes, in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital.

56. Tennis call: LET.  A serve that hits the net and lands in the correct court.

57. Rubbish: ROT.  Another idiom  Used as a noun not a verb.  I was once on an airplane and found myself seated next to a man who held a backpack full of ROTting meat.  He said that it was his carrion luggage.


. . . and on that note . . .



______________________________________________________________


__________________________________________________________


Jun 10, 2021

Thursday June 10, 2021 Michael Paleos

 



Twilight Zones


Today's puzzle leads us into other dimensions of reality.  Our captain for this journey will be Michael Paleos, an LA Times veteran who last published here on Thursday March 12th 2020.  He has also been published at least twice by the NY Times.  This is what Will Shortz had to say about him for his Sunday puzzle debut on October 27, 2019:
 

Michael Paleos, of Oyster Bay, N.Y., is chief of staff at a major investment bank. He started solving crosswords at a young age, but only got hooked on them after discovering the archive of puzzles in the New York Times app. "After doing enough of them, I started wondering what it would take to make one, and down the rabbit hole I went." [my emphasis]

In this puzzle Michael leads us to close encounters with holes you don't go down, but go through, and come out the another side!

I'll start by highlighting a key piece of information by showing a blank grid:


You will notice that there are what appear to be four circles.  If your publisher didn't include these, then the deep dive I'm about to take is not going to make a lot of sense.  I'm not sure I'm going to make sense anyway, as this is the most convoluted theme I've had to explain ...

First I made the mistake of assuming that the circles actually were circles, but that's not what they really are.  Next I have to admit that this was the first puzzle that I've blogged that I DNF.  I expected that the circles contained letters that could somehow be joined together to reveal the theme.  And after it was clear to me that I had reached a dead end, I had to resort to reading the clue/answer file bloggers receive that contains all the answers.  Normally I only read this file after solving the puzzle just to verify my solution. 

Okay, so here are the themers, in which some of the letters appear to abruptly end or begin out of nowhere. These are indicated by white letters CIRCLED IN RED  in the text that follows.*  Answers with these circles are connected to other answers on the grid in temporal order, i.e. the order in which they will occur, or have occurred in historical time:

In the not too distant future:

7A 22-Across captain: KIRK.  Obviously a clue to the unfinished answer at 22A ...
22A Classic sci-fi name: STARSHIP  🅔  Where is this taking us?  To 56A via a 38A?
56A -: 🅝TERPRISE  The clue "-" indicates that this answer continues from a previous clue, but there is no indication of which one.
The preceding three clues are all related to the voyages of the STARSHIP 🅔🅝TERPRISE which will begin when she is commissioned in 2245, in the EARTH's near future.  She will first be captained by Robert April, then by Christopher Pike, and finally will be turned over to James Tiberius KIRK.

And "A long long, time ago in a galaxy far, far away​...."

71A. 18-Across captain: SOLO.  Obviously a clue to the unfinished answer at 18A ...
18A Classic sci-fi name: MILLENN🅘  Where is this taking us? To 62A  via a 38A?
62A. -: 🅤M FALCON.   The clue "-" again indicates that this answer continues from a previous clue, but there is no indication of which one.
The preceding three clues are related to the voyages of the MILLENN🅘🅤M FALCON,  captained a long, long time ago by that irascible STAR WARS rogue HANS SOLO and his wookie companion CHEWBACCA

And the reveal, dead center in our puzzle universe, tells us the real meaning for the "circles"
:

38A. Theoretical shortcuts ... or what the four circles in this puzzle represent: WORM HOLES

Are these WORM HOLES simply direct shortcuts from two parts of the puzzle to two others, or are they more than that, intended as actual shortcuts thru interstellar space and time?  The first possibility is pretty straightforward.  An exploration of the latter possibility would require a deep dive down the rabbit hole of interstellar physics that is beyond the space and time of this review.

* The circled red letters are unavoidably shifted up a bit due to the Unicode font I had to use to generate them.

The final grid might help clear up any confusion you might have, if that's possible!


Now let's get down to EARTH:

Across:
1. "The Devil Wears Prada" co-star: STREEP.  I have not seen this movie, but apparently Meryl presents another powerful performance as one of the greatest actresses of our time.  My indelible memory of STREEP was her incredible portrayal of Zofia Zawistowski in the 1982 film Sophie's Choice, based on the novel by William Styron.  Here are two reviews of this 1982 film -  The first was written by the late Roger Ebert, when the film was first released.  The second is from the (SPOILER ALERT) Wikipedia.  If you haven't seen this film and plan to, read Ebert's review first, see the movie, then read the Wiki review.

11. Some notebooks: PCS.

14. Pirouettes: TWIRLS.

15. Be in store: LIE AHEAD.

17. Not in a good way: POORLY.

19. Zeno's followers: STOICS.  Zeno was also known for his formulation of a series of PARADOXES, that is apparently self-contradictory propositions.  I recall being taught about the DICHOTOMY PARADOX in HS Math: "suppose someone wishes to walk to the end of a path. Before she can get there, she must get halfway there. Before she can get halfway there, she must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, she must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on", the implication being that she'll never get there. 

Our Math teacher Mr. Fritz refuted it thusly: "Suppose we put all of the girls on one side of the room and all of the boys on the other.  Each side starts by walking a 1/2 of the way to the middle, and then 1/4, then 1/8th, and so on.  They may never get to the middle, but pretty soon they'd be close enough for all practical purposes."

21. Have a little lamb, say: YEAN.  My favorite clue.  I've heard of calving (something ELSIE might do - see 44A below), but I didn't know there was a verb specifically for giving birth to a lamb.

25. Andean grazer: LLAMA.  I wonder if they give birth by LLAMINATION?

28. Gumshoe: TEC.

29. Keep in inventory: STOCK.

31. Vote of dissent: NAY.

32. "The Jungle" author Sinclair: UPTONSinclair was born right here in Baltimore in 1878, the son of an alcoholic father and a teetotaling Episcopalian mother.  At the time he wrote The Jungle (awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in  1943) he was best known for his muck-raking novels and his socialist leanings, but we owe the beginnings of the Food and Drug Administration to him.

35. Popular Halloween costume: SKELETON.

41. Was superficially polite: MADE NICE.

44. Commercial mascot with an honorary Doctor of Bovinity degree: ELSIEELSIE was and still is  the original spokes COW for Borden's line of dairy products.  And she really does have a "degree" in BOVINITY.

48. Function: USE.

49. It's often eaten with a fork and spoon: PASTA.  Didn't know you needed a spoon.  Given the number and shapes of different pasta varieties I suppose you might need a spoon for some, e.g DITALINI (not sure what you'd do with the fork though):
 
Ditalini Pasta

52. 292.5 deg., on a compass: WNW.

53. Blueprint info: SPECS.  I used to have to worry about those kind of SPECS.  Now that my license is up for renewal I might have to worry about these:
 
59. Entreaty: PLEA.

61. Boatload, say: AMOUNT.

66. Scrabble coups: BINGOS.  Never heard this term, which gets you 50 extra points for using all of your letters.

Scrabble is like a "moveable crossword puzzle" that you make up as you go along.  I used to play it a lot with my with my youngest sister before I left for college.  I was always looking for clever words but she played for blood, consistently scoring higher than me.  Here's a good Scrabble resource with lots of words for getting BINGOS, including would you believe it: BOVINITY?

68. Spice that gives yellow curry its color: TURMERIC.  Poor man's saffron.  This looks like a good recipe for what DW and I used to call "Dal and potato stew".  The website says it all: "yummy!".

69. Balinese, e.g.: ASIANS.  The aspect of Balinese culture that I'm most familiar with is their distinctive music: Gamelan, also spelled gamelang or gamelin, is the indigenous orchestra type of the islands of Java and Bali, in Indonesia, consisting largely of several varieties of gongs and various sets of tuned metal instruments that are struck with mallets.
 

70. Eponymous ice cream maker: EDY.  Add a D and you've got EDDY and a clecho to 14A.

72. One exchanging dollars for quarters?: RENTER.  Clever misdirection.  Hands up if you thought this was for playing the slots.

Down:
1. Big racing sponsor: STP.

2. Texas dance: TWO STEP.

3. Cautionary reading?: RIOT ACT.  No comment.

4. "404 Not Found," e.g.: ERROR.  Generated by HTTP when it cannot locate the specified URL you are trying to reach on the Internet.

5. New York Harbor's __ Island: ELLIS.  Used as a gateway to the US for immigrants. Here is their story.

6. Inspires, with "up": PSYCHS.

7. Dutch carrier: KLMKLM Royal Dutch Airlines (in Dutch Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij) N.V., is the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands.

8. Sundial marking: III.  Not XII or VII.

9. Depend: RELY.

10. Superman, on Krypton: KALEL.  The first of the super heroes, an extensive mythology has arisen about Superman: his past, his upbringing, and his raison d'être.  Superman still "fights a never ending battle for truth, justice, and the American Way."
11. Baseball championship emblem: PENNANT.

12. Preserve, in a way: CAN.  A great way to preserve garden vegetables.  We still CAN tomatoes, salsa verde (tomatillos), and pickles.  The Ball Blue Book is the authoritative source on canning :
 

13. '80s missile prog.: SDI.  Often referred to as "Star Wars", a riff on the movie series and a clecho to 3 of our themers.  A lot of missiles were loosed in the series.

16. Get better: HEAL.

20. Obedience school command: SIT.  Obedience training is really all about training pet OWNERS,  but it didn't SIT too well with us.  DW took both our dogs to obedience training.  Our Black Lab, NEPTUNE, didn't pass.  Our Yellow Lab, JUPITER, was the "most improved" and excelled while attending the class, but forgot it all as soon as he got back home.  They are both romping in DOG HEAVEN now!.

22. R-V man's name?: STU.  Clever clue, with the answer embedded in the alphabet range.

23. Most elegant: POSHEST

24. Marc of fashion: ECKOHere's his story.
 
26. Red Guard leader: MAO.  Chairman MAO ZEDONG was the founder of the Chinese communist party and a distant relative of our very own Chairman MOEMAO also features as a character in the opera Nixon in China by composer John Adams.  The opera presents the events surrounding Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972.  Here is an outtake from one of the scenes in opera called The Chairman Dances, a foxtrot for orchestra that is performed much more frequently than the opera.  Performance by Cole Conservatory Symphony Orchestra at CSU Long Beach, Johannes Müller-Stosch, Music Director:

27. Objectivist Rand: AYNHere is the Wikipedia's explanation of Objectivism. I agree with some of what Rand espouses, particularly the existence of an objective reality that we can contact directly with our senses and use to guide our behavior.  [BEGIN RANT] But I'm disturbed by the parts that seem to derive from Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch or "Superman", the heroic figures that Rand places at the centers of her novels.  The milieu of Superman is a mythological world (10D) and my perception of the real world is that, while it has many heroic figures, those figures are ultimately dependent on the vast interwoven network of all humanity to accomplish what they will.  To the extent that they exploit this humanity for their own purposes I think they are not only wrong, but ultimately foolish.  [END OF RANT]

30. Kenan's one-time comedy partner: KEL.  I have not seen Kenan and Kel, an American sitcom created by Kim Bass. A kid's show, it originally aired on the Nickelodeon network for four seasons, from August 17, 1996, to July 15, 2000. Set in Chicago, Illinois, the series follows Kenan Rockmore (Kenan Thompson) and best friend Kel Kimble (Kel Mitchell), who go on a number of misadventures. 
 


33. Run a tab, say: OWE.

34. Fiction opening?: NON.

36. Big name in denim: LEE.

37. Au pair's subj.: ESL. An Au Pair is defined as a young person (between the ages of 18-30), who goes abroad to live with a native family and learn (or perfect) a language in exchange for childcare.   As distinct from a Nanny who provides child care for a salary.

39. Criticize: RIP.

40. Big name in shoes: MCAN.

41. Lambda followers: MUS.

42. Nile menace: ASPAccording to Plutarch, Cleopatra tested various deadly poisons on condemned people and concluded that the bite of the asp (from aspis—Egyptian cobra, not European asp) was the least terrible way to die; the venom brought sleepiness and heaviness without spasms of pain.  Apparently she was doing contingency planning.  She chose this method to commit suicide to avoid the humiliation of being paraded as a prisoner in a Roman triumph celebrating the military victories of Octavian, who would become Rome's first emperor in 27 BC and be known as Augustus. 

43. Prepare, as tempura: DEEP FRYA Japanese dish, consisting of thin slices or strips of vegetables or seafood that are dipped in the batter, then briefly deep-fried in hot oil. Vegetable oil or canola oil are most common; however, tempura was traditionally cooked using sesame oil.  Vegetarian Indian cooking has a similar dish called pakoras, deep fried vegetables or paneer (an Indian cheese) using peanut oil.  I think both of these dishes are best suited for serving at restaurants, as they use a lot of oil.

45. Attempt to hit: SWING AT.  Sums up my career in little league baseball.

46. Permanently: IN STONE.  Not necessarily.  This statue of the Pieta by sculptor Michelangelo, which resides in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was severely damaged by a mentally ill vandal named Laszlo Toth in 1972.  It has since been restored, but is now behind protective glass:
 

47. Sheep that sounds like a pronoun: EWE. And they YEAN little sheep!

50. London hot spot?: TEA.  "A spot of tea anyone?"  Alternately, "Would you like a cuppa'?"

51. Hand-to-hand combat maneuver: ARM BAR.  I hope you never need this ...
 

54. Half-shell serving: CLAM.  À la Clams Casino.
 

55. Monica of tennis: SELESMONICA SELES is a retired professional tennis player, who represented Yugoslavia and the United States. She was born and raised in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) to an ethnic Hungarian family. She became a naturalized American citizen in 1994 and also received Hungarian citizenship in June 2007. A former world no. 1, she won nine Grand Slam singles titles, eight of them as a teenager while representing Yugoslavia, and the final one while representing the United States.

57. Grace under fire: POISE.  Not the "fire" of war, which takes fearlessness.  Rather the stresses of everyday life.  Has anyone seen this series?
 

58. Quarrel: RUN IN.

60. Start to bat?: ACRO.

62. Beehive State athlete: UTEThe UTES are the University of Utah Football Team, named for the Ute Indian tribe.  In case anyone is wondering: On Mar 4, 2020, the University of Utah and the Ute Indian Tribe announced a renewal of their agreement, or “memorandum of understanding,” to use the nameUtes” as part of the athletics program for the next five years.

The Ute are the indigenous people of the Ute tribe and culture among the indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. They have lived in the regions of present-day Utah and Colorado in the Southwestern United States for many centuries. The state of Utah is named after the Ute tribe.


Utah's nickname is the Beehive State, due to its original title of “State of Deseret.” Deseret, meaning honeybee in the Book of Mormon. ... Also tying in with Utah's roots, the beehive is a symbol of industry, which is the state motto.  This is the state seal:
 
63. Word with wrestling or pie: MUD.

64. Artist's medium: OIL.

65. Sgt., for one: NCO.

67. Abbr. on a pre-1991 map: SSR.  If you want to see what the world was like circa 1935, I'd recommend a visit to the 3D Mapparium at the Christian Science Museum in Boston, where you can walk inside a giant glass globe of the world:

Mapparium

A WORM HOLE back to a different time on EARTH.

waseeley

Cheers,
Bill

And kudos to DW for proof reading and for the dog obedience story!

Mar 12, 2020

Thursday March 12th 2020 Michael Paleos

Theme Happy Days - if you remember the date. Unhappy days if you forget!

17A. First anniversary gift for a zookeeper?: PAPER TIGER. 

38A. 10th anniversary gift for a musician?: TIN HORN. There's a bar near me called the Tinhorn Flats in Burbank, used often for location shoots for commercials. It's got those great saloon doors that swing back when you push through them.


57A. 50th anniversary gift for a fast-food worker?: GOLD NUGGET

11D. 15th anniversary gift for a golfer?: CRYSTAL BALL

25D. 25th anniversary gift for a chef?: SILVER SPOON

Cool theme from Michael today. Plus, if you thought that you'd never seen GOLD NUGGET in a crossword before, you very likely haven't. None of the major puzzles have used it before. Yay! Something new!

Let's go roaming through the gloaming and see what we turn up:

Across:

1. Soft end of the Mohs scale: TALC. Diamond is at the other end.

5. Old Toyota models: ECHOS

10. Order to go: SCAT. Get outta here! Fun clue.

14. Squiggly lines in the funnies, maybe: ODOR

15. Hot day refuge: SHADE

16. "Him __?": love triangle ultimatum:  OR ME

19. Like eyes "you can't hide," in an Eagles song: LYIN'

20. Ring loudly: PEAL. I've been in a bell-tower while the bells were being rung, and they're quite muffled. It's outside that you get full volume. I'm sure that you know a true cockney has to be born within the sound of Bow Bells - the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside in the City of London. A full peal of eight bells must have at least 5,000 changes, that's a lot of bell-ringing.


21. It can spice things up: TABASCO. Avery Island, where the sauce is produced, it very pretty. I was making a dish at the weekend which called for Louisiana Hot Sauce. I've got about 20 types of hot sauce, but did I have Louisiana? Then the penny dropped - Doh! Tabasco!


23. Prescription specs: DOSES. Another fun clue - "specs" as in specifications.

26. 2000 Gere title role: DR. T.

28. Gere, for one: ACTOR. Shifting into second "Gere".

29. Super Mario Galaxy consoles: WIIS. I did a little digging on this one, and a lot of the "gaming community" say the the plural is Wii, just like fish or sheep.

30. Japanese ice cream flavor: GREEN TEA. Tea grown in the shade has the best flavor, such as matcha or gyokuro.

32. "It's __ good": ALL

33. Livid: IRED

34. Lots and lots: OODLES

37. Race in place: REV

40. Wire-concealing garment, perhaps: BRA. Professional male soccer players in the major leagues now wear what looks like a sports bra - it "conceals" a tracking device so that sports scientists can analyze the movement, speed and distance traveled on the pitch during a game.

41. Least encumbered: FREEST

43. Musical work: OPUS

44. "A lie that makes us realize truth," per Picasso: ART. Pablo had a bit of a mean streak. This is another of his: "I'm a joker who understands his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries". Ouch!

45. Adds insult to injury: RUBS IT IN

47. Hair gel squirt: GLOB

48. Bow ties, e.g.: PASTA

50. The Spartans of the NCAA: M.S.U. Michigan State.Their mascot, a Spartan, is creatively named "Sparty". They really went out on a limb with that one.

51. "Well, I'll be!": GOLLY

52. Totally jazzed: AMPED UP

54. Like many 45 records: MONO.


56. Jordanian queen dowager: NOOR

62. Stop discussing: DROP

63. Hail: GREET

64. Passion: LOVE

65. __ pool: GENE

66. __ pool: STENO. Fun cluing today. A close-proximity clecho.

67. Biblical spot: EDEN

Down:

1. Cover: TOP

2. Nicole's "Cold Mountain" role: ADA. Thank you, crosses

3. Hack: LOP

4. Brunch choice: CRÊPES. Food! Strictly speaking, crêpes are sweet and galettes are savory (unless you come from a certain part of Brittany, but let's not get into that, it causes a lot of argument!).


5. "¿Cómo __?": ESTA

6. Kids: CHILDREN

7. "Macbeth" role: HAG

8. "Swan Lake" princess: ODETTE

9. Blood fluids: SERA

10. Comforted: SOLACED

12. Palermo pal: AMICO

13. Barbershop part: TENOR

18. In medias __: RES. A narrative device where you open a story in the middle of it, then go back and fill in the bits as you go. Shakespeare was fond of its usage, such as in Hamlet.

22. Relay sticks: BATONS

23. Middle-earth figure: DWARF. Might be small, but definitely not to be messed with.


24. Gulf ship: OILER

27. Fiery candies: RED HOTS

30. South side?: GRITS. Another cracking clue.

31. Like a shutout: NO-RUN

33. "I'm not gonna sugarcoat this": IT'S BAD

35. Screen legend Flynn: ERROL

36. Failed to act: SAT BY

39. Long-outlawed smoking establishment: OPIUM DEN

42. Greek Muse of music: EUTERPE. I didn't know this, but the crosses were solid.

46. Oil, for many: IMPORT. Via your 24D

47. Look-up aid: GOOGLE

48. Herbal Essences maker, for short: P. AND G. Proctor and Gamble. "I supervised the exam and then hit the casino. I proctored and gambled" Pa-da-ching! I'll be here all week.

49. 64-Across, at La Scala: AMORE

51. Serengeti herbivore: GNU

53. Fleece-lined footwear brand: UGGS. These things were all the rage not too long ago. They even convinced Tom Brady to wear a pair.


55. Not duped by: ONTO

58. Two-time Emmy-winning actress __ Grant: LEE

59. OMG part: GOD

60. 67-Across outcast: EVE. Quite a bit of cross-reference and clue play today.

61. Number of Canadian provinces: TEN. I tried to recall them, I missed British Columbia and Alberta, but invented Victoria, so I was roughly on the right track, and thought Newfoundland and Labrador were seperate. So I had ten, just not the right ten.

With that little geography challenge out of the way, here's the grid!

Steve


Jun 28, 2019

Friday, June 28, 2019, Michael Paleos

Title: Ten-hut!

Michael Paleos
is a new constructor who already has an NYT and a WSJ publication under his belt. Why he keeps them there I do not know, but it isn't for me to judge. The New York Times was October 24, 2018, and the reveal and puzzle were great. The WSJ on May 9 of this year also had a really fun reveal. Today, we are presented with a reveal that hints at the solution but lets us work at the solve. The rest of the fill is very gettable, but you have to unravel 38A. Splitting with one's group ... or a hint to the theme found in four puzzle rows: BREAKING RANKS (13). First, you need to understand that ranks are military ranks. The next hint is that the military ranks are hidden 4 different across rows. Then you need to picture the military ranks split into two pieces like...

1A. Pickle: DILEMMA paired (7) with 8A. Important biblical river: JORDAN (6) which together gives us a MAJOR. Then knowing the rule of symmetry we go to the very last row and find:
67A. Oregon city where Nike was founded: EUGENE(6) paired with 68A. Comes back: RALLIES (7) which together gives us a GENERAL. Now to find two more rows...you can quickly discard rows 2 and 3, but behold! Row 4 has the delightful pairing
18A. Rundown: RECAP (5) paired with 19A. IMPURETAINTED, which together gives us CAPTAIN.  Then go up 2 rows from the bottom to maintain the grid symmetry and locate 56A. High wind: PICCOLO. (7) Very tricky, a high wind instrument paired with 59A. "M.O." rapper: NELLY (5) which gives us COLONEL. And now you know how I solved the puzzle. Michael needed many "cheater"(helper?) squares to make this work, 8 in all which are shown with a pink sign in the black squares in the grid.       

                                                                                                            The stacks of seven and six in the top three and bottom three rows were impressive and the theme was so close to being elegant if he could only have had the Captain Major Colonel General appear in order. There lots of common fill but also he squeezed in AIR ASIA,  ECOTOUR, ICELAND, PICANTE, CABLECAR, DEADLOCK,  RETAPING, and the timely and controversial ROE V. WADE. Now that my write-up is all out of control, let us examine the rest.

Across:

14. Whale-watching excursion, say: ECOTOUR. I found this definition of ECOTOURISM: “Environmentally responsible travel to natural areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature (and accompanying cultural features, both past, and present) that promote conservation, have a low visitor impact and provide for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local peoples.”

15. It's about 80 miles SW of Buffalo, N.Y.: ERIE, PA. Major (pun intended) to our Erie folk. Do you this BILLIONAIRE?

16. Hot and spicy: PICANTE.

17. Only Jet who was a Super Bowl MVP: NAMATH. The Jets along with the Tampa Bay Bucs and New Orleans Saints have each played in and won 1 Super Bowl.

21. Photo lab abbr.: ENLarge.

22. That, south of the border: ESO. Spanish, man.

24. Food additive: DYE.

25. Something you can stand to lose: LAP. Not a racing lap, the one that goes away when you stand.

28. Lyric tributes: ODES.

30. Med. school subject: ANATomy.

32. Name on a banana sticker: DOLE. This multinational company is at the forefront of growing ORGANIC FRUIT.

33. Winery cask: TUN. I like the definition: an imperial measure of capacity, equal to 4 hogsheads. Cutting the quantity in half each time, volumes were measurement went as follows: tone (tun), butt/pipe, hogshead, barrel, kilderkin, and firkin. While working at a start-up brewery my son reintroduced the firkin as a part of both brewing and sales.

35. Iconic San Francisco sight: CABLE CAR. This is not just a sight, it is a really fun way to get around the city and not get totally worn out by the hills. LINK.

41. Landmark 1973 decision: ROE V. WADE. Now it is all politics.

42. Oxford, to Oxonians: UNIversity.

43. Pay to play: ANTE. Poker and other gambling card games.

44. Mideast seaport: ADEN. Again no comment, but you can watch.

46. Natural floor covering: MOSS.

50. __ green: PEA. Or green pea.

51. __Kosh B'gosh: OSH. My boys were dressed in this children's clothing manufacture when they were young.

53. Louis XIV, par exempleROI. I hope you remember this from two weeks ago. He was a French King.

55. Something you might grab in a hammock: NAP. Also, the sides to keep from falling off.

61. "Okay, that makes sense now": AH, I SEE.

63. Budget carrier headquartered near Kuala Lumpur: AIR ASIA.
65. Scammer: CONMAN. Sexist, it can be a con woman.

66. Nordic Council member: ICELAND.

Down:

1. Hinge (on): DEPEND.

2. It's pointy and cold: ICICLE. They look very pretty at first.

3. "Livin' la Vida __": LOCA.
4. Military day's march: ÉTAPE. This is a place where troops camp after a day's march, or the march itself.

5. Many a fed. holiday: MONday.

6. Chop meat: MUTTON. This was tricky because in the US we think only of lamb chops or beef, pork and veal as chop meat.

7. Calculation often using pi: AREA.

8. Spinning __: weaving innovation: JENNY. The STORY of this invention and its impact on the industrial revolution.

9. Provide an address: ORATE.

10. Frosty coating: RIME.

11. Stalemate: DEADLOCK. I am not sure why but I had trouble with this dead-heat being the last to fall away.

12. Fitting: APT.

13. "You're dreaming": NAH.

18. Speed Wagon make: REO. The Reo Speedwagon was a very creative vehicle from Mr. Olds and his Reo company. REO Speedwagon was a band.

20. Aid in reuniting a lost suitcase with its owner: ID TAG.

23. Coffee brand with an orange cap: SANKA. It was all there was for decaf for years unless you wanted to drink grain like Postum.

26. Word of regret: ALAS.

27. __ sePER.

29. L.A. Clippers owner Ballmer: STEVE. I love that he could be called Steve "Basket" Ballmer, but he is much MORE.

31. Blemished, in a way: ACNED. Meh.

32. Commonly blue fabric: DENIM. Levi Strauss started with Canvas because the miners needed strong pants to hold their gold.

34. Motor City org.: UAW. United Auto Workers.

36. Musical Mars: BRUNO. Two for one. 41D. Cardi B genre: RAP.
37. Office PC nexus: LAN. Local Area Network.

38. Fillet's lack: BONE.

39. Recording over: RETAPING.

40. Panhandle state: IDAHO.

45. Beethoven's Third: EROICA.

47. Browsing, nowadays: ONLINE.

48. Tortilla shell fillers, perhaps: SALADS. When? okay, there is lettuce and tomato along with the        cheese and meat, but really, just salad?



49. Special Stratego piece: SPY.

51. Broad expanse: OCEAN.

52. A co-star might steal one: SCENE.

54. Taken together: IN ALL.

57. "Woe __!": IS ME.

58. Villain's hideout: LAIR.

60. Morales of "NYPD Blue": ESAI.

61. Great service?: ACE.

62. Astros, on sports tickers: HOUston.

64. Shinto, for one: Abbr.: RELigion.

You already have the grid above so don't be greedy. Welcome Mike and I hope you stop by and say hello. I enjoyed reading your comments when your NYT was published. Lemonade out.