Saturday, March 22, 2025, David P. Williams

Themeless Saturday by David P. Williams 

My third Saturday themeless from David. 

Across

1. Possessive pronoun that can be singular: THEIR Here is a discussion about this topic

6. Clue academic: PLUM 😀

                 

10. Tesla, for one: SERB - I held on to SCOT for a time 🤨

14. Certain king-maker: SERTA 😀

15. Actress Chaplin: OONA - Yes, she is Charlie's granddaughter

16. Ancient Roman conqueror?: AMOR - Very cool cluing!

17. Survive scrutiny: PASS MUSTER - Derivation of the phrase 

19. Green party, briefly?: LPGA 😀 Green is a noun here.

20. Samovar kin: TEAPOTS - I've got a pretty good handle on what a TEAPOT is, but this is a samovar that is widely used in Russia.

21. Banded marbles: AGATES.

23. Identical: SAME.

24. Light tunes: STRAINS - We can hear the STRAINS of the high school band wafting down to our house from the football field six blocks from here.

25. Anti-conservative slogan?: GO BIG OR GO HOME.

29. Saw: ADAGE.

30. Clear the air: DEFOG - The little button on the left below the mirror does this for me.

31. Blot: DAB.

34. Continental capital: BERN - BERN is a nearly 4-hour drive SW of my grandfather's home in Heiden which he left 100 years ago.

35. Encounter: RUN IN - Chris Rock had a famous RUN-IN with Will Smith

36. Piece of one's mind?: LOBE.

37. Oft-redacted fig.: SSN.

38. Digital services?: MANIS and/or pedis

39. Unit of energy: JOULE - It takes about 300,000 JOULES of energy to raise the temperature of a coffee pot of water from room temp to boiling.

40. Pool problem?: BRACKET BUSTER - When you are in the office pool and one of your favorite teams gets beat and is out early, your bracket in the office pool takes a severe hit!

43. Perfect figures?: SQUARES - Four equal sides and angles

45. Tops: A-ONE.

46. Takeoff locale: TARMAC.

47. Portrayer of Andy Bernard on "The Office": ED HELMS ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

50. Actress __ Deavere Smith: ANNA - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A Saturday ANNA for me

51. Novels no one reads?: AUDIO BOOKS - This was a great clue when it finally hit me! 😊

54. Picked out, in a way: IDED.

55. Tagliatelle topper: RAGU - Tagliatelle (pasta) topped with RAGU (meat sauce)

56. "We agree": US TOO.

57. Early capital of Japan: NARA.

58. Appear: SEEM.

59. Frank who co-designed Prague's Dancing House: GEHRY.

Down:

1. Shortening in a recipe: TSP - Shortening can be used in recipe and its measured amount can be shortened as well 😀

2. Pressure, informally: HEAT - Now in his third year, Matt Ruhle is starting to feel the HEAT to make Nebraska football respectable again.

3. Highland tongue: ERSE.

4. "The universe has spoken!": IT'S A SIGN.

5. Frenzy: RAMPAGE.

6. Preserved jams?: POSTER DUNKS - 😀 Whoa, talk about a jam (dunk) that is preserved on a very famous poster.

7. Plenty: LOTS.

8. A word to les sages?: UNE -  😀 UNE (a) word to Les sages (the wise) is sufficient

9. Long-lasting event: MARATHON.

10. Bow low: SALAAM - I hung on to SCRAPE for a low bow for a long time.

11. Drained: EMPTIED OUT.

12. "The Lion King" voice actor Seth: ROGEN.

13. High-ranking officials: BRASS.

18. Italian man: UOMO - Difesa UOMO a UOMO (Man to man defense)

22. Buccaneer booze: GROG.

24. L.A. venue where "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" was filmed: SOFI STADIUM.

25. Chats: GABS.

26. Heart-filled texts?: ODES ❤️

27. Match that's lit: BARN BURNER - Lit has become slang for great. A very close, intense game can be called a BARN BURNER

28. Spirit of myth: GENIE - The wish granting version came later

32. Up to it: ABLE.

33. Ginger __: BEER.

35. Drag performers: RACE CARS.

36. Like a situation with no good outcome: LOSE LOSE.

38. Rooney of "Women Talking": MARA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

39. Beetle in the scarab family: JUNE BUG.

41. Wyndham brand: RAMADA.

42. __-chic: BOHO - BOhemian style meaning artistic and unusual

43. Leave a mark: STAIN.

44. Time when audiences are engaged, briefly: Q AND A.

47. Upper hand: EDGE.

A cool representation

48. Lepidopterist's subject: MOTH.

49. Toffee bar: SKOR.

52. Persian Gulf fed.: UAE.

53. __ milk: SOY.

Saturday, March 15, 2025, Zhouqin Burnikel

 Saturday Themeless by Zhouqin Burnikel 

 ...and the beat goes on. Quite soon after we celebrated the publication of her 400th LATimes Puzzle, C.C.  supplies us with yet        another lovely exercise. Her trademark clever cluing provided a lot of entertainment and "DOH!" moments! Obscure names were mere speed bumps.

  

Across:

1. Waldorf salad morsel: GRAPE.

6. Hardly qualified: UNFIT - My first fill was INEPT in more ways than one

11. Disney Jr. rating: TVG.

14. Fired up again: RELIT - The service module engine you see firing in the picture below had to be fired, turned off and fired up again several times to get the Apollo command module to the Moon and back to Earth. It was what blew up on the Apollo 13 mission and made NASA go to Plan B to get the astronauts back home, but that's another story. 

15. Like some vintage T-shirts: RETRO COOL - Will my double knit bell bottoms ever be cool again? 😀

17. "Healthier happens together" insurance company: AETNA.

18. Grill spot: BACK PATIO.

19. Voting coalition: BLOC - It's what our Congress has become

20. Wasn't in the game: SAT.

21. Athenian lawmaker remembered for severity: DRACO.

22. "Count on me": SURE, NO PROBLEM.

26. Ethically indifferent: AMORAL.

28. Hauls: LUGS - An occupation for Sherpas

29. Badly misinformed: FULL OF BEANS - An frequent comment make by my dad

32. Pvt. trainer: SGT.

35. Some Kias: RIOS - An alternative to "Spanish rivers", I guess 

36. Chaps: GENTS.

37. Kallax seller: IKEA.

38. Surgery ctrs.: ORS.

39. Activity that raises spirits?: WINE TASTING 😀

41. Verb in flour-y language: SIFT 😀

42. Drives a team: MUSHES 😀 Where the most famous ones compete and is won by the 10. Big kahunas: TOP DOGS. Current standings

43. Reptile that can weigh 650 pounds: GIANT TORTOISE - Here is a "creep" of them in the Galápagos Islands

48. Home to the University of Jordan: AMMAN.

49. Arctic diving bird: AUK - There are no penguins in the Arctic but...

50. Lump of clay: CLOD - William Blake's poem tells of the CLOD of clay that can be molded but not the pebble which is rigid and unchanging.

53. Close the deal: SHAKE ON IT.

56. Florida city where Jane Castor is mayor: TAMPA.

57. Barely shows up in a painting?: POSES NUDE 😀

58. Gel alternative: CREAM.

59. GPS figs.: STS - My STreet is Skylark

60. Suspect: SENSE.

61. Tales of Greek gods, e.g.: MYTHS.


Down:

1. Take hold of: GRAB.

2. Go for a spin?: REEL.

3. "Memory" and "I Dreamed a Dream": ALTO SOLOS - Both show stoppers!

4. Hair that may be clipped: PIN CURLS.

6. __ renewal: URBAN - Sometimes it is called gentrification.

7. "Fantabulous!": NEATO.

8. Agcy. that investigates telemarketing fraud: FTC - The Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission didn't think much of the Wolf Of Wall Street

9. Drive up the wall: IRK.

11. The bottom line: TOTAL.

12. __ prompt: VOICE - For _____ press ___, For _____ press ___, For _____ press ___, For _____ press ___, ad anauseum

13. Bad outlook: GLOOM.

16. Keto concerns: CARBS.

20. Treat that's not meant to be shared: SELF GIFT 😀 Last year I just decided that I am 78 and I want a red car. So I traded my perfectly good white car for this.

23. Dileep of the "Avatar" films: RAO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

24. "Dear Evan Hansen" Tony winner: PLATT ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

25. Goes wild: RUNS AMOK.

26. __-Cuban jazz: AFRO.

27. "20/20" co-anchor: MUIR.

30. Box that might contain tamagoyaki and tonkatsu: BENTO - I knew the word for the crossword fill but had no idea what the fill in the box was. 😀

31. Toronto-to-Montreal dir.: ENE - If you leave at noon, your ETA is 5:30 pm

32. Peak protection: SKI HELMET 😀

33. Unit that might be edited: GENE 😀

34. Makes out, in a way: TAGS 😀 This took me awhile but I shoulda knowed C.C. would get baseball in the puzzle! This fielder has made the runner out.

37. Admission of fear: IT'S SCARY.

39. Court reporter?: WITNESS 😀

40. Fashion designer Anna: SUI ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Some of Anna's, uh, creations

41. Reptile not found in Iceland or Ireland: SNAKE - Despite the fact that it is St. Patty's day in two days, St. Patrick did not drive snakes out of Ireland. The last Ice Age drove them out and it remained too cold for them to come back.

43. Has a sudden inspiration: GASPS.

44. "Can we turn on the AC?": I'M HOT - Around here we "turn on" the a/c and do not "put it on"

45. Build up: AMASS.

46. Crashes a Twitch stream: RAIDS - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Here ya go: A "raid" on Twitch is a feature where a streamer sends their entire chat to another streamer's channel at the end of their stream, which can sometimes cause the receiving streamer's chat to "crash" if a large number of viewers suddenly join, overwhelming the system and potentially causing temporary glitches or lag.

47. One in a class by herself: TUTEE.

51. Moonfish or sunfish: OPAH - An OPAH can grow to be big!

52. Hydropower sources: DAMS.

54. Unified: ONE.

55. Mother figure: NUN.

56. Network that airs many RKO films: TCM - These RKO classics can be seen on Turner Classic Movies.