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.

Saturday, January 4, 2025, Rafael Musa

 Saturday Themeless by Rafael Muse

This is my third Saturday themeless by Rafael which have all been in early winter ('23, '24 and '25)

I made great time through Rafael's puzzle because the fill was very "gettable" or had sufficient perp help.

Across:

1. Take credit?: OWE.

4. Kevin's "Bull Durham" role: CRASH.

         

9. Up: ASTIR.

14. Autoreply sender: BOT.

15. Prefix with -centric: HELIO - Ptolemy's geocentric (Earth-centered) theory was believed to be right for 1,500 years

16. Pressure: FORCE.

17. Device used in some medical and military training, informally: VR HEADSET.

19. Sooty passages: FLUES.

20. Closing statement?: I'M ALL DONE.

21. Mid day?: IDES 😀 It's the mid day of a month

22. Reptile that dominates Taylor Swift's "Reputation" era imagery: SNAKE - Daughter and granddaughters knew this instantly when I sent the clue to them. I, uh, had to wait for the crossings.

23. Punk, grunge, emo, et al.: ALT ROCK.

25. Camper's protection: TARP - Yeah, I put TENT first too.

27. Important figures of preindustrial Japan: SAMURAI.

29. Oktoberfest order: BIER 

31. Border: ABUT.

33. Highly intelligent songbirds: TITS - When I searched for a picture of this pretty little bird, I got a lot of NSFW images.

34. All of the Barenaked Ladies, actually: MEN - Their frontman Ed Robertson (far right below) wrote the theme song for The Big Bang Theory in the shower in 15 minutes. The band recorded it and made big bucks.

35. Crème de la crème: TOP TIER.

38. Not amazing: MEH.

39. Suggestions, informally: RECS.

41. Confer, as authority: VEST.

42. Busy travel days: EVES.

44. Baby, in Irish slang: SNAPPER.

46. Allay: EASE.

48. People with no class?: TRUANTS.

...and FWIW

Wednesday's Rose Parade had a float with
scenes from moviedom's most famous TRUANT

50. Apple Watch stat: STEPS.

53. Some beachfront dwellings: HUTS.
 
54. "I've heard quite enough": OH SPARE ME 

57. Deceptive move: FEINT - Gotta love this one! (Explanation at bottom if you don't see it)

58. Follows a boat, in a way: WATER SKIS.

59. Bert's bestie: ERNIE.

60. Put up: ERECT.

61. Furniture wood: ELM.

62. Standing __: DESKS.

63. Some jabs: LEFTS 😀

64. "Called it": SEE.

Down:

1. Curt "Clearly": OBVI.

2. Nematodes, e.g.: WORMS.

3. Hunt in action movies: ETHAN.

4. Works outside?: CHALK ART.

5. More ripe, perhaps: REDDER.

6. To boot: ALSO.

7. Tuscan city that hosts the Palio horse races twice a year: SIENA.

8. Rooms together?: HOTEL SUITE 😀 Rooms as noun not a verb

9. Emotionally encourage: AFFIRM.

10. Was wildly popular, say: SOLD OUT.

11. "Serial" genre: TRUE CRIME.

12. Cutting-edge footwear?: ICE SKATES 😀

13. Hi or low follower: RES.

18. Tickle pink: ELATE.

24. Sugar magnate who established a network of British art galleries: TATE.

 

26. Over-the-counter option after an accident?: PAPER TOWEL 😀

28. "Sorta": ISH.

29. "Relatable": BEEN THERE.

30. Many tourist sites in Peru: INCA RUINS.

32. Group formed in Seoul in 2010: BTS.

34. __ Puff: SpongeBob's driving teacher: MRS.

36. Oast, for one: OVEN.

37. Takes it from the top: RESTARTS.

40. First artificial satellite: SPUTNIK - As a NASA guy, I would have had to turn in my Official Space Decoder Ring if I missed this one.

43. Swerves: VEERS.

45. Follows up on copying: PASTES.

47. __ ratio: ASPECT.

49. Portion: SHARE.

51. Some toys, for short: PEKES 😀

52. Upside-down frown: SMILE.

55. Australian actress Dawson: STEF 

56. Bianco of "The Magicians": ESME - Signing autographs at Comic Con

57. Stoked: FED.

Baseball feint explained: There was a runner on first and the hitter hit a ball out to the center fielder. The shortstop pretended he caught the ball on the fly and the runner thought he would be easily doubled off first base, just gave up and returned to the dugout. The center fielder then fired the ball to the shortstop and the runner was tagged out. 😀