Saturday, September 6, 2025, Rafael Musa, Geoffrey Schorkopf

 Themeless Saturday by Rafael Musa & Geoffrey Schorkopf 

BRICK went in immediately and then I raced down the eastern seaboard with just Florida to fill in. That did take a little doing but I came back and finished there. Cutesy cluing and modern slang provided some speed bumps but I did get a satisfying Congratulations message when I "got 'er done". 

As the graphic shows, Rafael (A software engineer for Airbnb in S.F.)  and Geoffrey (a software engineer at Fastly in Atlanta) had a lot of unique fill including all of a triple horizontal stack of 9's in the NW. Its matching triple stack in the SE had one unique fill and the symmetric double vertical 10's each had one. 

Rafael

Geoffrey

 

Across:

1. Showers with affection in a manipulative way: LOVE BOMBS - I was happy to learn this. It seems to be an example of "too much, too soon".

10. Classic surface for the Indy 500: BRICK - My first confident fill. The last vestige of the old brick surface is a strip just after the finish line.

15. Option at a Mediterranean bakery: OLIVE ROLL - Unknown to me but makes perfect sense.

16. Art print, for short: LITHO - A very nice one minute video about the LITHO (rock) GRAPHY (picture) process. 

17. Hero in a 2018 Thai rescue operation: CAVE DIVER.

18. Photographer Adams: ANSEL.

19. Fertility clinic donations: OVA.

20. Piggy back?: LOIN - I had _ O I N and thought GO IN as you piggy back on someone else's idea or gift purchase and GO IN on it. 😀

21. Not spotted: UNSEEN.

22. People taking steps together: LINE DANCERS 😀

24. Pro pitcher, perhaps: AD MAN - Pitcher is one of those clue words that warn you this is might not be a baseball player or a container of lemonade.

27. Symbol of statistical deviation: SIGMA - Yes, 𝛔 is a lower case SIGMA. 𝜇 is the mean or average.

28. One who might run a Lab's labs: VET. 😀

30. Host who fielded many, many questions: TREBEK - It just ain't the same without him

32. New beginning?: NEO.

33. Aura: VIBE.

34. Water under the bridge: BYGONES.

36. Medium for pop art?: SODA CAN - Andy Warhol's Campbell's SOUP CAN came to me first

38. Cracked: AJAR - This door can be said to be slightly cracked or AJAR

39. Long-nosed fish: GAR.

41. Fights off: REPELS.

42. Primary ingredient in the Nigerian dish āmālā: YAM - When I saw it wasn't OCA I entered YAM

43. Conceive: BEGET - The Book Of Matthew chronicles 40 generations of BEGETTING! 

45. Church walkway: AISLE.

46. Butler honor: NEBULA AWARD.

49. Arm-twisting: DURESS.

50. Coin featuring Hagia Sophia: LIRA.

51. Interior designer's deg.: BFA - This is the degree my youngest granddaughter is currently pursuing 

54. Parties hearty: RAGES.

55. One-in-a-million personality: RARE BREED.

57. Goddess of peace: IRENE.

58. Departing words: ALL ABOARD before they 21. Cast off: UNMOOR.

59. Guy Fawkes Night structures: PYRES - What is this all about?

60. Updos that might be carefully arranged to appear casual: MESSY BUNS.

Down:

1. Set into -motion?: LOCO - I never miss a chance for some great 60's rock 'n roll!

2. Norwegian ruler known as Folkekongen, "the people's king": OLAV.

3. " ¡__ la fiesta!": VIVA - "Long live the party!" or "Hooray for the festival!" 

5. Set for retirement?: BED LINEN 😀 Set is a noun

6. Spacecraft of NASA's Artemis program: ORION - Yeah, I knew it! The ORION spacecraft that will carry astronauts sits high atop this massive rocket. The vast majority of rocket below the ORION craft simply carries fuel and two boosters.

 

7. Things pushed by trailers: MOVIES. 😀

8. Become one with the crowd: BLEND IN.

Hint to find Waldo at bottom of write-up

9. Snap decision, for short?: SLR - Yes, you can use a Single Lens Reflex camera to take a snap (photo)

10. Bahía __: city whose name means "White Bay": BLANCA.

11. Dishwasher setting: RINSE.

12. Field for one with their head in the cloud?: IT SERVICES - Uh, the virtual cloud (singular in the clue)

13. Lacking taste: CHEESE BALL - He is so CHEESE BALL

14. City on the Rhein: KOLN - In Germany they say KURN in English we say Kuh LOWN. Koln or Cologne?

22. When one might hope for same-day delivery?: LABOR 😀

23. Quite a stretch: AGES.

24. No longer dangerous: AT BAY.

25. Nondrinking age?: DRY JANUARY.

26. Very big deal: MEGA MERGER.

29. All knotted up: TENSE.

31. Pelvic exercises: KEGELS.

33. Jejune: VAPID.

35. Hardly a digest: SAGA.

37. Advice column with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: DEAR ABBY.

40. Cask beer in traditional British pubs: REAL ALE.

43. Kisses: BUSSES.

44. Shows off a new dress, say: TWIRLS 47. Geoffrey of fashion: BEENE. Here is a TWIRL in a Geoffrey Beene dress.

ee

48. Fields: AREAS.

49. Stalactite origin: DRIP  - The DRIP can make them grow as fast as 1" per 100 years.

51. Main squeeze: BEAU.

52. Scottish comedian Brady: FERN - She's a hoot who says, "I am an intelligent woman trapped in a Scottish accent". Here's a 29 second clip.

53. Does the math: ADDS.

55. Mac spec: RAM.

56. Hold up: ROB.

Here's Waldo!

 

Saturday, June 7, 2025, Rafael Musa & Rebecca Goldstein

 Saturday Themeless by Rafael Musa & Rebecca Goldstein

I skated around with gradual success and then I wound up with one empty cell which you can see

in red at the right. I wrestled with what letter would work in that cell that began two unkown-to-me words and correctly guessed the L. I was so pleasantly surprised to get the congratulations message. I'll take a "got 'er done!"

These puzzles make me abandon my concrete ideas about language and force me to interchange nouns for verbs or vice versa.We solvers also have to access less common definitions for words. That is part of the frustration fun!!

Across:

1. Option for keeping travel plans on track?: TRAIN - Plan B leapt to my mind before "track" made the correct fill obvious

6. Band: GANG and 13. Band: POSSE.

10. Influential lobbying org.: AARP.

14. Goat rodeo: HULLABALOO - A goat rodeo is a slang term for something going totally, unbelievably, disastrously wrong, and there's nothing left to do but to sit back and watch the trainwreck.

16. "See ya!": CIAO.

17. "Seems legit": I BELIEVE IT.

18. Dip targets, for short: TRIS - His TRICEPS are pretty easy to see!

19. __ ed: SEX.

20. Dens: LAIRS.

21. Stop and yield: SIGNS - Usual verbs become nouns

22. Scary stories?: HAUNTED HOUSE - This one has three stories 😀

24. Amusement park ride: GO KART.

27. Téa of "Madam Secretary": LEONI.

28. __-garde: AVANT - On clearance at Kohl's 😀

29. Try something new: SHAKE IT UP.

33. Get the band back together?: WELD - If your band is broken...

34. Luxury fashion house founded in Madrid: LOEWE - The eponymous shirt below goes for $990!

35. Starchy element in some bubble tea: TARO.

36. Season openers: PREMIERES - That last E was a speed bump.

38. At a loss for words?: TERSE.

39. Wassail ingredient: CIDER.

40. First sentence of a book written with only 50 distinct words: I AM SAM.

41. Chicken: SCAREDY PANTS.

45. Features of some loyalty programs: TIERS.

46. Inapt rhyme for "first": WORST 😀 The Royals first World Series win was in 1985 after many years of being usually WORST 

47. "Hilarious": HAH and 30. Part of a giggle: HEE.

50. Further: ALSO.

51. When many abandon ship: SHORE LEAVE 😀 - In Honolulu just before heading out to fight the Japanese during WWII

53. Exclamation from someone refusing to buy something: LIAR 

54. Move that can plump accent pillows: KARATE CHOP 😀

55. Feature of some Disney headgear: EARS - Some other EARS can be found in Disney's famous Hidden Mickeys around the properties.

56. Minute: ITSY - Yeah, I put TINY first.

57. "The Goldfinch" novelist Tartt: DONNA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

Down:

1. That isn't it: THIS 😀

2. Goldberg who won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning: RUBE.

 

3. "Call Her Daddy" podcaster Cooper: ALEX - She signed a contract with Spotify for $60M

4. Not 100%: ILL.

5. Some digital displays: NAIL ART - Oh, those digits!

6. First name in California politics: GAVIN.

7. At the ready: ALERT.

8. Public hearing guidelines?: NOISE LAWS - For Arlington, VA

9. "A Song of Ice and Fire" show, colloquially: GOT.

10. Meeting points?: ACTION ITEMS - AGENDA ITEMS? Not so much.

11. Imaginary instruments: AIR GUITARS 😀

12. Causes delays, perhaps: RAINS.

15. Stunner: BEAUT.

21. Something dropped in an idiom about inevitability: SHOE 😀

22. Portable self-checkout devices?: HAND MIRRORS 😀

23. Wild maneuver?: DEKE - Now this is a wild DEKE!

24. Stare stupidly, to a Brit: GAWP 

gawp

/ɡôp/

verb

INFORMAL•BRITISH

1. stare openly in a stupid or rude manner.

   "what are you gawping at ?"

   
   

25. Completed: OVER.

26. Salad whose main ingredient may be massaged: KALE CAESAR - The massage helps break down the tougher parts of the raw KALE

 

29. "Excuse me!?": SORRY WHAT.

31. Astronomical bear: URSA.

32. Sapphic work: POEM - Sappho was an influential ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos whose passionate, emotional lyric poetry about intimacy between women led to the term “sapphic” and the island itself becoming associated with female homoeroticism. More about this

34. Green building cert.: LEED - Leadership in Energy and Enviromental Design ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

37. Portentous day: IDES.

38. Told a grown-up, say: TATTLED.

40. Like Alaska, often: INSET.

41. Left out overnight, maybe: STALE.

42. Fine hairs: CILIA.

43. Standard partner?: POORS.

44. Data structure in computer science: ARRAY - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In computer science, an array is a data structure consisting of a collection of elements (values or variables), of same memory size, each identified by at least one array index or key, a collection of which may be a tuple, known as an index tuple.  Yeah, I knew that! 😀

47. "Agatha All Along" star Kathryn: HAHN - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

48. River associated with Shakespeare: AVON.

49. __ filter: HEPA.

51. Common sight at oversized baggage pickup areas: SKI.

52. Prefix with hotel or tourist: ECO - Ion Adventure Hotel, Iceland. Taking up residence in an abandoned building of the nearby geothermal power plant, the hotel was sustainable from inception and continues to be today. With sinks made from old tyres and furniture from recycled wood, it repurposes materials in an eco-friendly way.