Happy Thursday, cruciverbalists! While it is not yet time for us to
poke our heads out, I hope that 2021 has gotten off to a good start with
everyone staying safe and healthy.
If you were scratching your head over the theme of today's puzzle it is
safe to assume that you had plenty of (socially distanced)
company. Prison breaks are, by nature, difficult to discover. These
were. Even after solving the "tell", this moronic marine mammal had to stare at
the completed grid for several minutes before the theme answers slowly
revealed themselves.
I tried looking backwards and forwards within each of the long answers.
Nothing. Puns? Homophones? Anagrams? Still stumped. MaryEllen had purposely used "puzzle
rows" and not "answers" in her hint to the theme so, perhaps, I should look
at entire rows. The hint also contained the word "break" so something
had likely been broken apart. Even with these insights I then wasted
time looking for some form of symmetry of which there was, well,
none. Finally, it dawned on me.
Simply put, on four rows of the puzzle, synonyms for PRISON have been
broken apart and wait patiently for us to reassemble them. Of
course, once the theme had been figured out, and the letters involved had
been identified, everything appeared to be obvious.
Let's start with the reveal at 65 Across: "The Shawshank Redemption" event, and what's hidden in
four puzzle rows: PRISON BREAK.
At 17 Across we have - Angry reaction: HORNETS NEST followed at 19 Across by - "This American Life" host Glass: IRA
The end of the first answer combines with the start of the second to
from STIR, a slangy word for
prison.
At 27 Across we are asked to solve for - Indian noble: RAJA followed by 31 Across - Surly: ILLNATURED
As above, parts of these answers combine to yield JAIL.
..and so on,
38 Across - It went down in history: TITANIC and 40 Across - Connects with:LINKSTO.
CLINK is another slang term for
prison
47 Across - Stable cleaner: SADDLE SOAP and 51 Across - Tolkien tree creatures: ENTS.
PEN is, well, we get it, we get
it.
Here is what this all looks like in the grid:
Now that we have successfully escaped the confines of our puzzle penitentiary
let's take a look at the rest of today's challenge:
Across:
1. Bobbleheads, e. g.: DOLLS. Do they have
to represent humans?
6. Jury decision: AWARD. Verdict was the first impulse but, of course, did not fit in the
allotted space.
11. Pair of Grammys?: EMS. We have seen this type of clue
and answer many times previously...and you know that this MM appreciates
EMS.
14. "It's __ time!": ABOUT. A straightforward
fill-in-the-blank clue. The seven-letter modifier is implicit.
15. Old photo tint: SEPIA.
A SEPIA PHOTO
16. Dwarf who mixes up his words: DOC. He's the one with
the eyeglasses.
DISNEY'S SEVEN DWARFS
20. Meeting goal often not achieved: LENGTH.
21. Nuclear energy device: REACTOR. You can build your
own.
23. Lip: SASS. Impudence by any name.
26.
Firefighter's tool: HOSE.
35. Soft palate projection: UVULA.
37. Not what one would expect: IRONIC.
AIRPLANE 2
44. Mexican bread: DINERO. Bread, of course, being slang
for money.
46. Single-master: SLOOP. This version of "The Sloop
John B" involves both The Beach Boys and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra:
SEE HOW THE MAINSAIL SETS
52. Palm tree superfood: ACAI. A current-day
crossword, and for some folks dietary, staple. ACAI was found in yesterday's puzzle. Manatees rarely eat ACAI berries.
53. Ancient home: EDEN. If the stories are to be
believed, the most ancient of all.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
55. Predator with a heart-shaped face: BARN OWL.
59. Card game with trumps: EUCHRE. Not
Bridge. Not Whist.
64. Hurricane season mo.: OCT. The Atlantic
Hurricane Season officially runs from June 1st through November
30th.
68. Cravat or ascot: TIE. Not to be confused with
18 Down. Two weeks ago the puzzle demanded No TIE.
69. Like Caspar Milquetoast: TIMID. Caspar
Milquetoast is a comic strip character created for the strip "Timid
Soul" that launched in 1925.
CASPAR MILQUETOAST
70. Give a false idea of: BELIE.
71.
Low: SAD.
72. Deposit in the attic,
say: STORE.
73. Cheerleaders'
assortment: YELLS.
EAST LAKE HIGH SCHOOL SPARTANS
Down:
1. "James and the Giant Peach" author: DAHL. Roald
DAHL was a spy, a fighter pilot and a medical inventor as well
as an author. In addition to the clue's referenced work,
he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda.
2. Wind heard in Dion's "Abraham, Martin and
John": OBOE. Although oboes, of course, are
heard frequently in our puzzles this is one of the best clues
yet.
Dion DiMucci
3. Desolate: LORN. LORN means lonely and
abandoned. We more often see forlorn.
4. Organ in a chest: LUNG.
5. Decides to leave alone: STETS. STET is a
proofreader's mark for Let It Stand. Rarely, though, do we
see it used as a verb.
6. Biblical mount: ASS.
BALAAM'S ASS
7. Harmless cyst: WEN. This week's "I'll pass
on the graphics" moment.
8. Imitator: APER. Outside of puzzles one
rarely sees, or hears, APER or Aped. Within puzzles we
commonly see them both.
9. Slope: RISE.
SLOPE INTERCEPT (y = mx + b)
10. It may be crunched: DATA.
11. Spell-checker, say: EDITOR. Literally true
but I'd bet that most of us first thought of something
word-processing-related
12. Lacking in joy: MOROSE. Our second ASS of
the day (if one chooses not to count Peter Griffin):
EEYORE
13. Rustled (up): SCARED.
Colloquialisms. SCARED up something to eat, Rustled up
some grub.
18. Bangkok native: THAI. There is nothing
else quite like a tuk-tuk ride through the streets of Bangkok,
THAIland.
22. Private laugh: CHUCKLE. Chuckles are
laughs that are quiet, inward or suppressed.
24. Golfing mishaps: SLICES.
25. Camera type, briefly: SLR. A Single Lens Reflex camera uses a mirror and prism to allow the photographer
to see exactly what will be captured on the film or digitally.
27. Rural road feature: RUT.
28. Prefix with fauna: AVI. A reference to
the birds of a particular region. I am most familiar with
these:
29. Stick (out): JUT.
30. 2019 Mena Massoud title
role: ALADDIN.
32. Free of commissions, as a mutual fund: NO LOAD.
33. Young Darth: ANI. A "Star Wars" reference
and a "diminutive" name to boot.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER
34. Cookie containers: TINS.
36. Indigo plant: ANIL. I only know this from
crossword puzzles...and the perps helped to recall it.
39. Having four sharps: IN E. This answer
obviously assumes that the clue was talking about a Major
musical key. The relative minor of E Major is C Sharp
Minor and it also has four sharps.
41. Absalom, to David: SON. A biblical
reference to a story about family dynamics.
DAVID AND ABSALOM
42. "PAW Patrol" fan: TOT. Paw Patrol is a
children's television series that premiered in 2013.
THE PAW PATROL
43. Special ___: OPS. Both OPTS and OPS in the
same puzzle!
45. Caviar: ROE. I went to a sushi
bar and ordered salmon roe. It was a spawn-taneous
decision.
47. Clogs: SABOTS. In this instance, a shoe reference. My friend Jon's
father had a small sailboat that we would sometimes take out in
the marina. It was far too small for the open sea. The
logo on the sail, and the type of boat it was, was a SABOT.
48. Thorny shrub: ACACIA. Both
ACACIA and ACAI in the same puzzle!
54. Lumpy, as a knit fabric: NUBBY. This type
of fabric is rarely seen in crossword puzzles but it has been
seen before.
56. Comes down on one side of something: OPTS.
An intentionally somewhat obtuse clue? Not incorrect,
merely less straightforward than it needed to be. Oh,
wait, it's a crossword puzzle. They do that all the time.
57. Court order: WRIT.
58. Ride to the prom: LIMO. Perhaps riding in
a LIMO is now commonplace but it sure wasn't when this manatee
was in High School. Further, unless PROM is considered to
be an abbreviation for something, there is nothing in the clue
that indicates LIMO in lieu of Limousine.
60. Algonquin language: CREE. Often, CREE is
clued with a reference to the Canadian indigenous population.
61. Severe criticism: HELL. We rarely see
"semi-swear-words" in puzzles.
1948 CAMPAIGN BUTTON
62. Fence crosspiece: RAIL.
POST AND RAIL FENCING
63. Manages to get, with "out": EKES. We see
this one a lot. I sometimes get confused between EKES and
EEKS.
66. Military address: SIR. A bit of
misdirection as APO (Army Post Office) is commonly seen as an
answer to similar clues.
67. "To Autumn," for one: ODE. What would a
puzzle be without ODE somewhere in the grid?
1) Wendybird, hope you and Jack make a full recovery soon!
2) Happy Birthday to dear JD, who also enjoys traveling the world like Hahtoolah. The second picture was taken from the same trip but on a cruise ship, I think.
Today we have another outing with Paul Coulter, as he shares with us
his favorite drinks and mixers. The themers might be a bit easier to
follow if we start with the Grid. As there are 4 pairs of related
theme clues, I've shown the pairs here connected by red lines:
The first answer set consists of four beverages, 3 alcoholic (1A,
5A, and 60A) and one a mixer (45A). These
respective beverages are then "mixed" in anagrams embedded in 4 two word
answers (46A, 27A, 17A, and 66A). The
anagrams don't seem to have any particular relationship to the drinks in the
first set of clues, but EDAM cheese
(in 46A) might pair nicely with a
CLARET (5A).
Paul, please feel free to stop by and comment if I'm missing something. Here are the paired theme clues:
1. Ancient beverage
"mixed" in 46-Across: MEAD. A drink fermented from honey. Also the name of the famous anthropologist
Margaret Mead, best known for her seminal book
Coming of Age In Samoa
and for her autobiography Blackberry Winter. The anagram here
isEDAM.
46. "Give me time to collect myself":I NEED A MOMENT.I needed a lot of MOMENTS to suss all of the
above!
5. Dinner beverage "mixed" in 27-Across:
CLARET. The British term for the dry red wines vinified just across the
Channel in the Bordeaux region of France. Clarets are generally
BLENDS (mixes) of the VARIETALSCabernet Sauvignon,
Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. The anagram here is
CARTEL:
27. Driver's aid, once:
CAR TELEPHONE. Hands up if you've ever
used one. Bluetooth links to your cellphone don't count.
45. Fountain beverage "mixed" in 17-Across:
SODA. The anagram here is ADOS. I guess all that fizzin' stirs up a fuss!
66.
After-dinner beverage "mixed" in 60-Across:PORT. All ports are made from a blend of grapes grown throughout
Portugal's Douro valley. There are two kinds of port:
TAWNYandRUBY.
Beyond that I've got to issue a CSO to C Moe for any additional exegesis
on PORTS. The anagram here is TROP:
The anagram here was TROP, which imported from French into English still means TOO MUCH. It might describe the throbbing in your head the
next morning if you mixed "TOO MUCH"MEAD, CLARET, and PORTon New Years Eve! Cheers, and here's all the rest
...
Across:
11. Cooking meas.:TSP. It couldn't be the abbreviation for tablespoon, as that's four letters. 14. Part of a pot: ANTE. On the other side of the pond it's
pronounced ONTIE, as in your mother's sister.
15. On a
smaller scale:LESS SO.
16. Bit in a horse's mouth:OAT.
20. Abbr. between names, perhaps: AKA. An author's
PSEUDONYM or perhaps more often an ALIAS for someone suspected
of figuring out a crossword answer from the intersecting answers. But
who might get BUSTED by the dreaded NATICK.
21. Gulf of __: OMAN. Could be the Gulf of ADEN. You
might have to perp it.
22. Starkers, on this side of the pond: NAKED. On this side of
the pond we have a similar sounding nounSTREAKERS, but on the
other side of the pond the former word is an adjective. Here's a
TV frame of a breathless Benedict Cumberbach (AKA Sherlock
Holmes) being Scandalised in Bohemia by his STARKERS nemesis
Irene Adler. While this image is RATED PG, the one on the
BBC was definitely RATED R:
23. Not fooled by: WISE TO.
25. City blight: SLUM.
33. Sneeze syllable: CHOO. Doubled this becomes a kiddie
TRAIN.
36. It's a wrap: SARAN. I'll make mine with a
TORTILLA thank you.
37. Bond was kicked out of it: ETON. If it's a four letter English
school, you can count on it being ETON.
38. Fireplace shelf: HOB. Dw will be happy to know we have one on
our gas grill. It's also "a machine tool used for cutting gears or screw threads". CSO to
Dash T, I know you've got a SONIC SCREWDRIVER, but do you
have a HOB? TAPS and DIES don't count.
39. Berkeley sch.: CAL. CALs are something we've all
resolved to avoid for at least another mo.
40. Effort: TRY.
41. ESPN MLB analyst: AROD.
43. Drive: MOTOR. These have been known to throw
A ROD from time to time.
49. Animal rights gp.: PETA. Also a homo-phonic pocket bread used
to serve FALAFELS with TAHINI and shredded lettuce.
50. Make more powerful: SOUP UP. Like I did with the ham
HOCK left over from Christmas dinner. A bit salty though.
54. Gut feeling?: AGITA.
57. Simon Says player: APER. So Simon was a simian?
59. That, in Oaxaca: ESA.
64. Artist Yoko: ONO. Yoko was in the last puzzle I blogged and
I'm happy to report that she is still with us.
65. Filling out forms, often: HASSLE.
67. Make a dent in: MAR.
68. Drove off: SHOOED.
69. Costner role: NESS. A much more famous NESS is the
LOCH in Scotland, the home of NESSIE, the MONSTER who
warms the hearts of the Scottish tourist industry:
Down:
1. Rainforest parrot: MACAW.
2. Mushroom in Asian cuisine: ENOKI.
Not to be confused with these cuddly creatures on the planet
ENDOR.
3. World record?: ATLAS. Cute clue. OTOH
Icelandic actor and strongman Hafthor Bjornsson set a
world record for the deadlift last May, when he lifted 1,104
pounds (501 kg) at Thor's Power Gym in Iceland.
4. "Gloria in Excelsis __": DEO. The beginning of the hymn from
the Latin Mass. Here is Antonio Vivaldi's setting:
5. Demands loudly, with "for": CLAMORS Wannabe OYSTERS if
you ask me.
6. Helen of Troy's mother: LEDA. An early#METOO
victim.
7. John Irving's "__ of the Circus": A SON. I have but one.
And 8 grandchildren. And sometimes it IS a circus!
8. __ feed: online news aggregator: RSS. "Really Simple Syndication" is a web protocol that allows users and
applications automatic access to website updates in a standardized,
computer-readable format. These FIFO feeds can give you a pull down menu
on your browser listing any new posts to a site. In order for this
to work the site must support the RSS protocol.
9. Medium gift: ESP. IMHO there is some statistical evidence that
there is something to this.
10. Ripped to shreds: TORN UP.
11. Honky-__: TONK. I read somewhere that COVID-19 has really
wreaked havoc on these convivial watering holes.
12. Wise one: SAGE. A very wise man indeed. Without him
there would be no SAUSAGES.
13. Condition once called "shell shock," for short: PTSD. My
father suffered from this for 10 years after WWII. But he recovered and
managed to raise a family of 5, four very bright girls and a boy.
18. Membership list: ROTA.
19. "You found the right guy," formally: I AM HE.
24. Novelist Umberto: ECO.
He was much more than a novelist, but is perhaps best known for his first novel, "The Name of the Rose",
which was later made into a movie.
25. Go this way and that: SLALOM. Sort of a gentle ZIG and
ZAG.
26. Actor Cariou: LEN. Canadian[Eh!] actor and stage
director, best known for his Tony award winning portrayal of Sweeney Todd in
the original Broadway cast of
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
28. City near Seattle: TACOMA.
From the Salish Indian word for the mountain that provided
water to their tribe (later changed to Mount Rainier - I have no have no
idea what that means in Salish. Rainer maybe?).
29. Muse for Shelley: ERATO.
30. "The Simpsons" bus driver: OTTO.
31. North of Paris: NORD.
32. One-named New Ager: ENYA. Please forgive the recursion but
... I used to like this singer, but as time went by she became
increasing derivative of ENYA.
33. Spiced tea: CHAI.
34. Cornucopia shape: HORN. An almost clecho to 35B next.
Both BRASSES and WOODWINDS have HORN shaped instruments, but
they have different timbres and belong to different orchestral groups.
35. Bassoon kin: OBOE. One of my favorite pieces for this
instrument is Ennio Moriconi's "Gabriel's Oboe" for the film "The
Mission" starring Jeremy Irons:
52. Computer operators: USERS. The oft overlooked system
"component". I prefer the term STAKEHOLDER. And when
the computer is a personal computer, USERS are the
chief stakeholders.
53. Labor go-with: PARTS.
54. Tiny bit: ATOM. But not the tiniest. There is ample
evidence for SUBATOMICPARTICLES, like the familiar
ELECTRON, the PROTON, and the NEUTRON But the
latter two are further composed of even smaller particles called
QUARKS. Physicists, despairing of describing them in terms that
we mere mortals might understand, assign them bizarre names like UP,
DOWN, CHARM, STRANGE, TOP, and BOTTOM, , with a
total of 17 denizens in the particle zoo known asThe Standard Model. And if that's not STRANGE enough, there is a whole theory of
near infinitesimally smaller particles called STRINGS, for which
there is no experimental evidence whatsoever! And I'm not
stringing you along. But the theorists might be.
55. Carano of "Deadpool""Deadpool": GINA. I've never seen it, but
it does get a lot of press, whatever it is. Sounds like a scary
place.
56. Horror movie assistant: IGOR. Sometimes you have to perp it
for the first letter, which may be a Y.
57. Lhasa __: APSO. This breed originated in Tibet. How they
could survive Tibetan winters I have no idea. I knew one of them
once, and I know I shouldn't generalize on a sample of one, but my
impression of it was that it was a warm. cuddly, white furry lizard with a
ganglion in place of a brain. A CSO to any Lhasa Apso owners on the
Corner - as a dog lover I'd be happily disavowed of my prejudice if you've had
a different experience.
58. Soccer great: PELE.
61. "Go team!": RAH.
62. Spanish bear: OSO. I don't think I can bear that again.
63. Hosp. staffer: LPN. A CSO to the LPNs, RNs, LAB TECHS and DOCTORS (inanehiker,
Ray-O and any I've missed) on the Corner.
YOU ARE HEROES!!!
waseeley
Note from C.C.:
Here are two lovely pictures of JD's family. JD lives close to her two daughters and she often helps with the grandkids' school work.
