Theme: NO WAY (51D: "Forget it!" (and a clue to this puzzle's theme)) - WAY is omitted from familiar phrases.
19A: Alleviate a tie-up?: FREE(WAY) TRAFFIC
21A: Partly built residence, perhaps?: HALF(WAY) HOUSE
29A: Periscope lens kept as a souvenir?: SUB(WAY) TOKEN
38A: Euphoria at Pebble Beach?: PACIFIC COAST HIGH(WAY)
44A: Embodiment of a footrace? RUN(WAY) MODEL
57A: Play on a wide stage?: BROAD(WAY) SHOW
59A: Shot at a D.C. bar?: CAPITAL BELT(WAY)
A special 16*15 grid, to accommodate the center 16-letter theme answer PACIFIC COAST HIGH.
BELT is a slang for a shot of liquor, hence CAPITAL BELT. I was picturing a terrible gun shot at a D.C. bar. Halfway house is the only base phrase I had never heard before.
Dan Naddor seems to be fond of stacking theme answers on top of each other, esp. the first two and the last two. I've noticed this in his past several grids. Not easy to pull it off.
I normally start with the lower right corner for Friday puzzles, the tie-in word is often placed there. And getting NO WAY earlier today certainly helped me.
I still struggled a bit, but I fared much better than I did last week. Lots of abbreviations in today's puzzle, maybe the result of heavy 72 theme squares.
Across:
1A: Mine tram bit: LUMP. LUMP of coal. I lost myself on the first hole.
5A: Univ. sites: BLDGS
10A: Foul line indicators: POLES
15A: Beam of support: I-BAR
16A: Baseball Hall of Famer Combs: EARLE. No idea. Wikipedia says EARLE Combs played his whole career with the Yankees (1924-1935).
17A: Submit taxes on an impulse? E-FILE. Why "on an impulse"?
18A: "__ the mornin'!": TOP O'. Irish slang for "Good morning!". New to me.
23A: Throw from the saddle: UNSEAT
24A: Quebec's Festival d'_: ETE. Summer Festival. Easy guess.
25A: Ticks off: IRES. I wrote down IRKS first. I thought IRE is only a noun.
26A: Church-owned Lone Star State inst.: SMU (Southern Methodist University). Site of the Bush Presidential Library. Laura Bush's alma mater.
27A: Toast topping: PATE. Rarely.
34A: Goose egg: ZERO
35A: Seat of Dallas County, Alabama: SELMA. The civil rights march city. I have never heard of the Dallas County though.
37A: Old dagger: SNEE
41A: Son of Rebekah: ESAU. Or "Son of Issac". I am more familiar with the "Biblical brother" clue. ESAU is Jacob's brother.
42A: Midshipman's prog., perhaps: NROTC. Stumped. It's Naval ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps.)
46A: Noted pairs guardian: NOAH. He filled the ARK with pairs. A Biblical sub-theme in this puzzle.
47A: Nietzsche's "never": NIE. And "Nietzsche's "no" is NEIN.
48A: Feds: G-MEN. FBI agent.
50A: Hamlets: Abbr.: TNS. Towns I suppose.
63A: Little guy: SHAVER
61A: Davenport site: IOWA. The clue "site" made me think of Davenport the sofa rather than the city.
62A: Argumentative retort: ARE SO
64A: Reddish brown: ROAN
65A: Odessa native: TEXAN. Nailed it immediately. Odessa is a oil city in W Texas.
66A: __ Martin: ASTON. James Bond's car.
67A: "Grand" brand of ice cream: EDY'S
Down:
1D: Athletic: LITHE. I associate LITHE with supple rather than athletic.
2D: Destroyer destroyer: U-BOAT. WWII German submarine.
3D: Sweet, nutty pie: MAPLE PECAN. I've only heard of pecan pie.
4D: Plum, e.g.: Abbr.: PROF. Not familiar with the board game Clue or the character Professor Plum.
5D: "___ I forget...": BEFORE. I felt silly not filling in the blanks immediately. LEST will be good for "___ we forget".
6D: "Law of the Lash" star: LA RUE. Lash LA RUE.
7D: Slip cover?: DRESS. Stumped. Nice wordplay on slipcovers.
9D: Spike preceder, in volleyball: SET. It's a maneuver in which a ball is directed to a point where a player can spike it into the opponent's court. Not a familiar term to me.
10D: Oil source: PEANUT. No. 1 cooking oil in China.
11D: Whacks: OFFS. OFF here is a verb, meaning "to kill". Whack is slang for "to kill" too.
12D: Long sentence: LIFE. LIFE sentence. Good clue. I like how it parallels OFFS.
13D: "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist" essayist: ELIA. Easy guess.
14D: Cainites, e.g.: SECT. Cainite is "a member of a Gnostic SECT that exalted Cain and regarded the God of the Old Testament as responsible for evil" according to dictionary.
20D: Latin ballroom dances: RUMBAS
22D: "__ the Week" 1930s record label: HIT OF. Unknown to me. Wikipedia says it the record was sold at news-stands, not record stores. And as the name implied, new records came out at the rate of one each week.
26D: Rash source, maybe: SUMAC. Itchy itchy.
28D: Planet ending: ARIUM. Planetarium is a new word to me.
29D: Bandit one hopes to take money from?: SLOT. One-armed bandit, the SLOT machine.
30D: Irish-born actor Milo: O'SHEA
31D: Honor for Connery: KNIGHTHOOD
32D: Lines of thought?: EEGS. Saw identical clue before. Still like it.
33D: O. T. book: NEH
34D: Silents star Pitts: ZASU. A combination of "Eliza" and "Susan", relatives of her mother. ZASU is pronounced as zay ZOO. Gimme for Jerome & Buckeye & me.
35D: Mountainside debris: SCREE. Learned from doing Xword.
36D: Sierra Club concern: Abbr.: ECOL
39D: Jawaharlal's daughter: INDIRA. I only knew Jawaharlal Nehru as Nehru. So, I struggled with INDIRA (Gandhi).
40D: Govt. obligation: T-BOND. Treasury Bond.
45D: Common pickup capacity: ONE TON. 2,000 pounds.
46D: Pick up: NEATEN. New definition of "Pick up" to me.
49D: Musical tempo modifier: MOLTO. Meaning "very", musically.
52D: Some trumpeters: SWANS. Trumpeter swans, with loud, trumpeting style honks.
54D: Fictional braggart: HARE. The moral guy Aesop's HARE?
55D: Top spot: APEX
56A: It's usually taken in stores: VISA. The credit card. Tricky clue.
57A: OPEC units: BBLS (Barrels)
58D: Term of royal respect: SIRE. Archaic.
60D: Bucolic setting: LEA
Answer grid.
Today's picture: A beautiful photo from our fellow solver Moon. She said: "A pic of my family taken during my sister's wedding in Feb, 2009. Usually all of us meet very rarely, the previous time was in Feb 2006 and before that, it was during my wedding in Oct 2002.
Starting from left is my Dad, my better half, me, my younger bro-in-law, my younger sis, my elder sis, my older bro-in-law and my mother."
Email me crosswordc@gmail.com if you want to share with us a part of your memories.
C.C.
19A: Alleviate a tie-up?: FREE(WAY) TRAFFIC
21A: Partly built residence, perhaps?: HALF(WAY) HOUSE
29A: Periscope lens kept as a souvenir?: SUB(WAY) TOKEN
38A: Euphoria at Pebble Beach?: PACIFIC COAST HIGH(WAY)
44A: Embodiment of a footrace? RUN(WAY) MODEL
57A: Play on a wide stage?: BROAD(WAY) SHOW
59A: Shot at a D.C. bar?: CAPITAL BELT(WAY)
A special 16*15 grid, to accommodate the center 16-letter theme answer PACIFIC COAST HIGH.
BELT is a slang for a shot of liquor, hence CAPITAL BELT. I was picturing a terrible gun shot at a D.C. bar. Halfway house is the only base phrase I had never heard before.
Dan Naddor seems to be fond of stacking theme answers on top of each other, esp. the first two and the last two. I've noticed this in his past several grids. Not easy to pull it off.
I normally start with the lower right corner for Friday puzzles, the tie-in word is often placed there. And getting NO WAY earlier today certainly helped me.
I still struggled a bit, but I fared much better than I did last week. Lots of abbreviations in today's puzzle, maybe the result of heavy 72 theme squares.
Across:
1A: Mine tram bit: LUMP. LUMP of coal. I lost myself on the first hole.
5A: Univ. sites: BLDGS
10A: Foul line indicators: POLES
15A: Beam of support: I-BAR
16A: Baseball Hall of Famer Combs: EARLE. No idea. Wikipedia says EARLE Combs played his whole career with the Yankees (1924-1935).
17A: Submit taxes on an impulse? E-FILE. Why "on an impulse"?
18A: "__ the mornin'!": TOP O'. Irish slang for "Good morning!". New to me.
23A: Throw from the saddle: UNSEAT
24A: Quebec's Festival d'_: ETE. Summer Festival. Easy guess.
25A: Ticks off: IRES. I wrote down IRKS first. I thought IRE is only a noun.
26A: Church-owned Lone Star State inst.: SMU (Southern Methodist University). Site of the Bush Presidential Library. Laura Bush's alma mater.
27A: Toast topping: PATE. Rarely.
34A: Goose egg: ZERO
35A: Seat of Dallas County, Alabama: SELMA. The civil rights march city. I have never heard of the Dallas County though.
37A: Old dagger: SNEE
41A: Son of Rebekah: ESAU. Or "Son of Issac". I am more familiar with the "Biblical brother" clue. ESAU is Jacob's brother.
42A: Midshipman's prog., perhaps: NROTC. Stumped. It's Naval ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps.)
46A: Noted pairs guardian: NOAH. He filled the ARK with pairs. A Biblical sub-theme in this puzzle.
47A: Nietzsche's "never": NIE. And "Nietzsche's "no" is NEIN.
48A: Feds: G-MEN. FBI agent.
50A: Hamlets: Abbr.: TNS. Towns I suppose.
63A: Little guy: SHAVER
61A: Davenport site: IOWA. The clue "site" made me think of Davenport the sofa rather than the city.
62A: Argumentative retort: ARE SO
64A: Reddish brown: ROAN
65A: Odessa native: TEXAN. Nailed it immediately. Odessa is a oil city in W Texas.
66A: __ Martin: ASTON. James Bond's car.
67A: "Grand" brand of ice cream: EDY'S
Down:
1D: Athletic: LITHE. I associate LITHE with supple rather than athletic.
2D: Destroyer destroyer: U-BOAT. WWII German submarine.
3D: Sweet, nutty pie: MAPLE PECAN. I've only heard of pecan pie.
4D: Plum, e.g.: Abbr.: PROF. Not familiar with the board game Clue or the character Professor Plum.
5D: "___ I forget...": BEFORE. I felt silly not filling in the blanks immediately. LEST will be good for "___ we forget".
6D: "Law of the Lash" star: LA RUE. Lash LA RUE.
7D: Slip cover?: DRESS. Stumped. Nice wordplay on slipcovers.
9D: Spike preceder, in volleyball: SET. It's a maneuver in which a ball is directed to a point where a player can spike it into the opponent's court. Not a familiar term to me.
10D: Oil source: PEANUT. No. 1 cooking oil in China.
11D: Whacks: OFFS. OFF here is a verb, meaning "to kill". Whack is slang for "to kill" too.
12D: Long sentence: LIFE. LIFE sentence. Good clue. I like how it parallels OFFS.
13D: "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist" essayist: ELIA. Easy guess.
14D: Cainites, e.g.: SECT. Cainite is "a member of a Gnostic SECT that exalted Cain and regarded the God of the Old Testament as responsible for evil" according to dictionary.
20D: Latin ballroom dances: RUMBAS
22D: "__ the Week" 1930s record label: HIT OF. Unknown to me. Wikipedia says it the record was sold at news-stands, not record stores. And as the name implied, new records came out at the rate of one each week.
26D: Rash source, maybe: SUMAC. Itchy itchy.
28D: Planet ending: ARIUM. Planetarium is a new word to me.
29D: Bandit one hopes to take money from?: SLOT. One-armed bandit, the SLOT machine.
30D: Irish-born actor Milo: O'SHEA
31D: Honor for Connery: KNIGHTHOOD
32D: Lines of thought?: EEGS. Saw identical clue before. Still like it.
33D: O. T. book: NEH
34D: Silents star Pitts: ZASU. A combination of "Eliza" and "Susan", relatives of her mother. ZASU is pronounced as zay ZOO. Gimme for Jerome & Buckeye & me.
35D: Mountainside debris: SCREE. Learned from doing Xword.
36D: Sierra Club concern: Abbr.: ECOL
39D: Jawaharlal's daughter: INDIRA. I only knew Jawaharlal Nehru as Nehru. So, I struggled with INDIRA (Gandhi).
40D: Govt. obligation: T-BOND. Treasury Bond.
45D: Common pickup capacity: ONE TON. 2,000 pounds.
46D: Pick up: NEATEN. New definition of "Pick up" to me.
49D: Musical tempo modifier: MOLTO. Meaning "very", musically.
52D: Some trumpeters: SWANS. Trumpeter swans, with loud, trumpeting style honks.
54D: Fictional braggart: HARE. The moral guy Aesop's HARE?
55D: Top spot: APEX
56A: It's usually taken in stores: VISA. The credit card. Tricky clue.
57A: OPEC units: BBLS (Barrels)
58D: Term of royal respect: SIRE. Archaic.
60D: Bucolic setting: LEA
Answer grid.
Today's picture: A beautiful photo from our fellow solver Moon. She said: "A pic of my family taken during my sister's wedding in Feb, 2009. Usually all of us meet very rarely, the previous time was in Feb 2006 and before that, it was during my wedding in Oct 2002.
Starting from left is my Dad, my better half, me, my younger bro-in-law, my younger sis, my elder sis, my older bro-in-law and my mother."
Email me crosswordc@gmail.com if you want to share with us a part of your memories.
C.C.
