When Desirée Penner and Jeff Sinnock were standing at the altar, the minister asked them, "What's an oath of acceptance? Three letters." She immediately said, "YES," and he said, "VOW." The minister shook his head. "Try again." They eventually came up with, "I DO," and the Crossword Couple was born.
All these answers are answers...to questions from celebrities. The resulting common phrases end with a pun using the celebs first names.
18. Reply when Mr. Nicholson asks, "How do you like your coffee?": BLACK, JACK. JACK Nicholson. Like most of today's celebs, he needs no introduction. Yay!
24. Reply when Mr. Garfunkel asks how everyone is doing?: FINE, ART. ART Garfunkel. My favorite reply of the bunch.
39. Reply when Mr. Nye asks why there are so many wind turbines?: ELECTRICITY, BILL. BILL Nye, the Science Guy. Perhaps this phrase is more commonly known as an ELECRTIC BILL.
51. Reply when Ms. Deeley mentions her new TV gig?: COOL, CAT. CAT Deeley is a British television presenter? This is the only person I didn't know, but was very inferable. So, it's COOL.
60. Reply when Mr. Hamill says, "May the Force be with you"?: DITTO, MARK. MARK Hamill, AKA Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. A DITTO MARK looks like a double quote symbol " or " " under a word or words you want to repeat.
I liked the execution of this puzzle better than some punster themes we see. No awkward spellings or twisted phrases made to fit. And, with the possible exception of CAT, all the celebrities are well known. Good, clean fun all around!
And now, on with the show:
Across:
1. Biblical queen's land: SHEBA.
6. "Hurry!" letters: ASAP. As Soon As Possible. I can hear the groans already, and I mostly agree. So, I wrote STAT.
10. Mojito garnish: MINT. I wrote LIME and voilà! I had two of the first three answers wrong!
14. Cultured sort?: PEARL.
15. Interpretation: TAKE. What's your TAKE on this clue?
16. Chimps and gorillas: APES.
17. Like 11-Down and 27-Across, often: ON TAP. It's a "pony keg"-sized mini-theme!
18. [theme]
20. Lode load: ORE.
21. Bam Adebayo's team: HEAT. Bam Adebayo plays on the Miami HEAT basketball team. In March, he scored 83 points against the Washington Wizards (I guess they left their wands at home). That is the second-highest single-game scoring performance in NBA history!
23. Merchant stalls: KIOSKS. In related news, music KIOSKS are bandstands like the one in Henri Rousseau's painting at 2-Down.
24. [theme]
26. Beloved: DEAR.
27. Beer with a Grillo's Pickles flavor, briefly: PBR. Pabst Blue Ribbon. I've heard of people putting a pickle spear in their beer mug, but this concoction seems like a bad idea.
28. Short clip?: VID. Short for VIDeo.
29. Warbled: SANG.
33. Bicycle spokes, essentially: RADII. A single spoke is a radio. Or maybe I'm thinking of an antenna.
36. Grand-scale tales: SAGAS. Anyone seen The Odyssey yet?
38. Battle (for): VIE. Like Matt Damon as Odysseus, taking on giants.
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| Except this pic shows his stunt-double, Devyn Dalton, a woman! |
39. [theme]
42. Yahoo! alternative: AOL. So last century...although my brother still uses
43. Midsize car: SEDAN.
44. Great Grandma?: MOSES. I grew up with a Grandma MOSES print hanging by our dining table. I always thought it was just a winter scene of people playing in the snow. It wasn't until returning home as an adult that I really looked at it and noticed everyone was working, making maple syrup.
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| "Sugaring Off" 1955 |
45. Lat neighbor: DELT. Lats (Latissimus Dorsi) and DELTs (Deltoids) are upper body muscle groups.
47. "Mean Girls" screenwriter Tina: FEY. She of SNL fame, among other things.
48. Center prefix: EPI. EPIcenter - the exact spot on the ground above where an earthquake starts. Being at the epicenter was disastrous for the poor souls of Venezuela and Columbia recently.
49. Big bustles: ADOS. In the late 1800's, women with big ADOS were all the rage.
51. [theme]
55. One with an eye for dotting i's: EDITOR. EDITORs and proofreaders may correct a missing dot (called a tittle) on a lowercase "i", although in modern digital text it's usually caused by a font glitch rather than forgetfulness.
58. Downsides: CONS.
59. Director DuVernay: AVA. AVA is an award-winning director of TV and movies, including a Best Picture nod for Selma.
60. [theme]
62. Along for the ride, say: IN TOW. Kinda sorta.
64. Nerve: GALL.
65. Lake at the Detroit River's end: ERIE.
66. Track star Bolt: USAIN. He's just the fastest man alive.
67. Fashion monthly: ELLE. Unfortunately, my subscription ran out, so I'm left wearing t-shirts like this.
68. Informal claim: DIBS.
69. Moore of "This Is Us": MANDY. MANDY made a successful pivot from teenage pop star to Emmy-nominated actress.
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| Then and now. |
Down:
1. "Weird Al" specialty: SPOOF. "Weird Al" Yankovic has four gold records and six platinum ones, and has won five Grammy's. "I Love Rocky Road!"
2. Postimpressionist painter Rousseau: HENRI. HENRI paints in a Naive or Primitive manner. He's like the Grandma Moses of France! They also have something else in common - they both started painting late in life.
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| "View of Montsouris Park, the Kiosk" 1910 |
3. All finished, say: EATEN.
4. Wacoal garment: BRA. Wacoal is a major international manufacturer of women's lingerie and intimate apparel from Japan. But I didn't know this as my subscription to ELLE expired as noted earlier.
5. Cereal that once featured a crossword puzzle in magazine ads: ALPHA-BITS. This one came out in 1959. I'm still working on it because I can't find a Q.
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| 799 boxes later... |
6. Currently hitting: AT BAT.
7. Curing agent: SALT.
8. Otherwise called: AKA. Also Known As the answer to this clue.
9. Like a bird feeder: PECKED AT.
10. College paths: MAJORS. College paths: DESIRE. Desire to graduate and get a good job? Maybe, but desire paths are unofficial trails leading more directly to a destination, as often seen on campuses.
11. Some craft pours, for short: IPAS. India Pale Ales.
12. Make out: NECK. This is canoodling, but if you crane your NECK, you can make out a couple in the back row.
13. Tuts: TSKS.
19. Korean automaker: KIA. "Who makes that new KN car?" KIA's redesigned logo created quite a controversy when it was unveiled in 2021. But all publicity is good publicity, and the confusion generated millions of free internet searches.
22. Go amiss: ERR.
25. Grand-scale tale: EPIC. A clecho of 36A, but singular.
26. "Bon appetit!": DIG IN. French cuisine vs. American in a nutshell.
28. Short trip?: VACAY. A little vacation.
30. Rental car giant: AVIS. This may be needed on one's VACAY.
31. River near the Great Pyramid: NILE. Looks more like a pool to me...wait, that's the Luxor in Las Vegas.
32. Meshes well: GELS.
33. Interpretation: READ. It's cleco day. What's your READ on this?
34. Spiky succulent: ALOE.
35. "Hi-ho, the derry-o" locale: DELL. From "The Farmer in the DELL".
36. Heads and tails: SIDES. Although there's a small chance a coin will land on its EDGE.
37. Academic gathering: SYMPOSIUM.
40. Back on the straight and narrow: REFORMED.
41. Fume: BOIL.
46. Be a rat: TATTLE. I didn't know rats could sing.
48. One billion years: EON. However, in formal Earth geology, an eon is a variable block of time lasting hundreds of millions to billions of years rather than an exact number.
50. "Yabba-dabba-__!": DOO. People from Dubai don't watch the Flintstones, but people from Abu Dhabi do! I'll be here all weekend.
51. Classic colas: COKES. In another case of all publicity is good, Coca-Cola's' failed introduction of New COKE in 1985 created a backlash that propelled sales of the original "Classic" COKE. Conspiracy theorists have suggested they did this on purpose to revitalized sales.
52. Board game with settlers: CATAN. Back when my boys lived closer to home, they'd come by on Sundays and we'd play board games. We liked CATAN, and apparently so did everyone else - it has sold over 45 million copies worldwide and is available in more than 40 languages.
53. Dance around: AVOID. I learned to play the guitar so I could AVOID dancing around at school hops.
54. Like some port: TAWNY. TAWNY port gets its name from its warm, amber-brown color, which develops from long aging in oak barrels.
55. Perimeter: EDGE. Heads or tails? I call EDGE!
56. Body wash brand: DIAL.
57. "C'mon, __ be fun": IT'LL.
58. Spot for a tot: CRIB. Some are nice than others.
61. Cal. neighbor: ARI. California and Arizona.
63. Codebreaker Challenge org.: NSA. The National Security Agency. The Codebreaker Challenge is an annual, cybersecurity competition offered to high school and college students who try to solve realistic threat scenarios.
Be good. RB
