Saturday, August 12, 2023, Rich Norris

Saturday Themeless by Rich Norris

 

Our former editor returns with a very doable Saturday exercise. He also gives a very nice shoutout to C.C.

Across:

1. Draft pick?: OXEN 😀 OXEN are draft animals

5. Bentley of "Yellowstone": WES - Second from left

8. __ Canarias: ISLAS - Canary Islands was obvious but I had to work to get ISLAS 

13. Backs: SIDES WITH 

16. Use, in a way, with "off": MOOCH and 37. Used, in a way, with "off": SPONGED.

17. Texas Revolution figure: SANTA ANNA.

18. Ask: PUT TO - I PUT TO you this question, does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost over night?

19. Hot: ON A STREAK.

20. Like some accents: ACUTE.    

21. Uniform item, often: CAP - At the Pentagon Mall store - $29. At a street kiosk by Ford's Theater - $9

22. Best Original Song Oscar winner for "No Time to Die": EILISH - Billie won with her brother Finneas for this Bond theme

24. March honoree, familiarly: ST. PAT.

27. 21st century explorer: DORA.

28. Job listing ltrs.: EEO.

30. Golf shot: CHIP - Tiger's on #16 at Augusta is probably the most famous

31. 2002 AFI Life Achievement Award honoree: HANKS - At 46, he was the youngest to get it

32. Pandora or Spotify: APP.

33. Demolish: RAZE - My childhood home finally got RAZED two years ago, twenty years later than it should have been.

 

34. Rest stop visitors: SEMIS.

35. Take the lead: STAR - Henry Winkler declined to STAR as Danny Zuko in Grease

36. Snack brand since 1921: UTZ - Not familiar in my town

37. Cocky gait: STRUT.

38. Olympian queen: HERA - A wife of Zeus

39. Org. honored with a commemorative stamp for its 50th anniversary in 1960: BSA.

40. Assistant's job, often: PREP.

41. Deserving of: WORTH.

42. "Criminal Minds" actress: AJ COOK.

44. Cut (off): LOP.

45. Runners at the corners, say: TWO ON - That means a baseball team has runners at 1st and 3rd base.

46. Request to be heard: INDULGE ME.

52. Garden hose gasket: O-RING - Of course this NASA guy immediately thought of the O-RING on the Space Shuttle Booster that failed on that cold January day and caused the Challenger to blow up.

53. TV series that teamed a conspiracy theorist with a doctor: THE X-FILES - Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) was the conspiracy theorist and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) was the doctor turned FBI agent.

54. Poet whose work helped establish modern Italian: DANTE.

The Inferno - Canto I 

The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil. 

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita. Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear.

55. Critters with discs on their extremities: TREE FROGS.

56. Wasn't indecisive: OPTED.

57. Kennel sound: YAP.

58. "Fuller House" actress Ashley: LIAO - In the middle below

Down:

1. __ buco: OSSO - Italian for "bone with a hole"

2. Capital of Shaanxi Province: XIAN - This is the hometown of our gracious hostess, C.C.. Here is a beautiful picture of her in her old XIAN "hood" where her brother Andy still lives.

3. "The Incredibles" designer Mode: EDNA - It is commonly believed that multi Oscar-winner Edith Head was the inspiration for this cartoon character.

4. Loser to Explorer in the first browser war: NETSCAPE - This was my first browser and I remember how thrilled I was to use it via my dialup modem.

5. __ Country: WINE.

6. Volcano where Zeus trapped Typhon, in some myths: ETNA - Zeus, volcano, c'mon...

7. Agree: SHAKE ON IT.

8. Chevys retired in 2020: IMPALAS - I didn't know that

9. Sans __: carefree: SOUCI - French: Sans (without) SOUCI (worry)

10. Odyssey dreamer: LOTUS EATER - Speaking of sans souci...

11. Behave as required: ACT THE PART.

12. Brake __: SHOE.

14. Occupied, in a way: SAT AT - The famous 1960 lunch counter SIT IN in at a Woolworth's Lunch Counter in Greensboro, N.C.

15. Distort: WARP - Did'ja ever...

23. Bugs: IRKS.

24. Really clean: SCRUB - My idea of "clean the deck" is using a garden hose for ten minutes. Joann's is two hours with a power washer attached to a 2,700psi compressor.

25. Closing words: THAT'S A WRAP - In some movies, "THAT'S A WRAP" is heard after the first scene is filmed way out of sequence.

26. Pie seller, casually: PIZZA JOINT - This is a one where we got a great pie on top of the Island of Capri which is called Anacapri.

27. Block: DAM UP.

29. Media mogul born in Mississippi: OPRAH.

In Kosciusko, MS

31. Summons whose last word is often repeated: HERE KITTY - Repetition does not seem to help with our kitty.

34. Minute Maid Park player, to fans: STRO.

35. Meg Ryan's screen name in "You've Got Mail": SHOPGIRL.

41. Mezzo-soprano Beverly: WOLFF - Two famous Beverly sopranos with five-letter last names.

SILLS.            WOLFF

43. Italian noble title below marchese: CONTE.

Nobility

• Imperatore (Emperor) / Imperatrice (Empress)
• Re (King) / Regina (Queen)
• Principe (Prince) / Principessa (Princess)
• Duca (Duke) / Duchessa (Duchess)
• Marchese (Marquis) / Marchesa (Marchioness)
• Conte (Count or Earl) / Contessa (Countess)
• Visconte (Viscount) / Viscontessa (Viscountess)

44. Opulent: LUXE.

luxe

adjective

ˈlu̇ks  ˈləks  ˈlüks 

Synonyms of luxe

: LUXURIOUS, SUMPTUOUS

45. Well attachment?: TO DO - Well TO DO peeps demand LUXE accommodations 

47. Drag org.: NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

48. Word with freeze or fry: DEEP - McDonald's great fries are DEEP frozen before they are DEEP fried

49. H.G. Wells race: ELOI - Rod Taylor greets the passive ELOI in the 1965 iteration of The Time Machine 

50. Colossal: MEGA.

51. Petrol brand: ESSO - This Ontario station was charging 116.5 cents/liter

 

Saturday, May 13, 2023, Rich Norris

Saturday Themeless by Rich Norris

Our former editor shows up with another engaging puzzle. I sailed along pretty good but POPO is not in in my vocab and so I'll take one bad cell (COPO/CBS) and try to get on with my life.

I wonder if Rich was familiar with all the proper names he employed. 🤨

Across:

1. Erosion control supply: STRAW MATS - These are ubiquitous around here as bypass highways with overpasses are being built all around our town and good spring rains are bringing the STRAW MATS to life.

10. Composer Bruckner: ANTON - All you'd ever want to know

15. Ahead of its time: PROPHETIC - Some claiming to be prophets are really looking for a profit

16. Held up: BORNE.

17. Pizza sauce choice: RED TOMATO.

18. Condition: STATE - The value of a dime depends on its STATE or condition

19. "__, Chef": Marcus Samuelsson memoir: YES - This is the story of his rise as an adopted child from Ethiopia who became a very successful chef in NYC. (pub. 2012)

20. Nabokov novel: LOLITA - A middle-aged man having relations with a 14-yr-old girl, what could possibly go wrong?

22. Condition that can interfere with focusing, briefly: ADHD.

23. Reagle of "Wordplay": MERL.

24. Go along: AGREE.

26. Pupil of Beethoven: CZERNY.

29. Things that are worth looking into?: MIRRORS 😀

31. Trope intro: HELIO - HELIO(Greek: helios/sun) tropes (Greek: trepan/turn) are plants whose flowers follow the sun across the sky. The prime example is the state flower of Kansas.

32. Summer Olympics racer since 1936: CANOE - Ernst Krebs canoeing in the 1936 Olympics for Deutschland 

33. Pac-12 athlete: UTE - Next year, USC and UCLA join the Big Ten and the Utah UTES, et. al. will be left behind

35. Round figure: ORB.

36. Like many '50s cars: TWO TONE - Oh, you mean back when cars had personality?

38. HBO __: MAX.

39. Court: WOO.

40. Romance novelist Brenda: HIATT.

41. Poor showing: NO ONE.

43. Chirp: TWEEDLE - Lewis Carroll invented TWEEDLE Dee and TWEEDLE Dum to encounter Alice in Through The Looking Glass

45. Coastal features of Washington and Alaska: FJORDS - Kenai FJORDS National Park, Home of the most beautiful FJORDS in Alaska

46. Bridget Riley genre: OP ART.

47. Rebuke, maybe: SLAP.

48. Fluffy rug: SHAG.

49. Last-minute, often: HECTIC.

52. "Death in Paradise" airer: PBS - A BBC import

55. Model 3 maker: TESLA.

57. Inescapable situation: BLACK HOLE - Not even light can escape

59. Some deco works: ERTE'S.

60. One who makes the rounds?: 😀 BARKEEPER.

61. Circular defense mechanisms: MOATS 😀

62. Anxiously awaits: SWEATS OUT - 1969 draft lottery

Down:

1. Agile: SPRY.

2. Corner: TREE.

3. Fish sticks?: RODS 😀 

4. Keenly intelligent: APT.

5. Totally different, slangily: WHOLE NOTHER.

6. Broadway classic with the lyrics "I can smile at the old days / I was beautiful then": MEMORY - The show-stopping song from Cats

7. In any way: AT ALL.

8. South American monkey: TITI.

9. Shetland native: SCOT - A SCOT who lives in the Shetland Islands has a cost of living nearly double the rest of the U.K. However, golf is reasonable at the Shetland Golf Course: £30 per day, £80 per week; £130 per fortnight

10. Six-pack contents?: ABS.

11. Tig with a recurring role on "Star Trek: Discovery": NOTARO - She is standing under the K in this picture

12. News about a possible exchange: TRADE RUMOR - These rumors were around all winter and he didn't go to any of these teams. If you care at all, you know where he went.

13. Testifying: ON THE STAND.

14. Sine qua non: NEED.

21. Vice president after Thomas: AARON Burr.

23. Hosp. scan: MRI.

25. Prize that may need to be altered if a player wins it again: GREEN JACKET - Here we see the 2019 Master's winner, Tiger Woods, helping the 2020 winner into his GREEN JACKET.

26. Eats: CHOW.

27. Process of dramatic character change: ZERO TO HERO - Tom was the 199th player picked in the 2000 NFL draft and sat out his entire rookie year. The next year the Patriots' starting QB got hurt and Brady finally got to play and became the Greatest Of All Time.

28. Gomiti, for one: ELBOW PASTA.

 
29. Lacking luster: MATTE.

30. Trying to resolve a tie, briefly: IN OT - Notre Dame coach (and cwd fill) Ara Parseghian was forever blamed for not trying to win this game in 1966 and "settled for a tie". It was another 30 years before the NCAA instituted rules so games could go IN(to) OT(overtime) 

32. __-fired: COAL - Our electricity is mostly generated in this plant 1/4 mile south of where I am sitting

34. Former union members?: EXES - That would be former marital union members 

37. Side to side?: WIDTH.

42. Alley follower: OOP.

44. Aerie newborn: EAGLET - EAGLETS born in this aerie are a short flight from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center.

45. Title horse in a Mary O'Hara children's novel: FLICKA - My Friend Flicka was part of my b/w television childhood

47. Unsettling look: STARE.

48. Half-note feature: STEM.

50. Weakens: EBBS.

51. White __: hard seltzer brand: CLAW.

52. The law: POPO - From reduplication of the abbreviation PO (“police officer”), originally in reference to partnered bike officers in Southern California whose paired shirts would read POPO

53. Fromage hue: BLEU - My Greek wife hates BLEU cheese and olives in the Greek salad

54. Barcelona-born muralist: SERT.

56. Jenny, e.g.: ASS- Here's a link to the site below

58. Dads and lads: HES.