Theme: No F words here! The letter F is taken from the end of the second word of a common phrase and is replaced with either a sound alike or the word without the F to create a new and witty phrase. This is my second Mike Peluso puzzle to write up, and like the other it has many 3 and 4 letter words, which should be easy, but they are not. It also has lots of themeage, so let us see what we have to work with today.
18A. Answered on "Name That Fabric"?: CRIED WOOL. Cried wolf. My favorite, and seeing the theme really helped.
20A. Just the binding?: BOOK SHELL. Book shelf. Here the F leaves but an added L comes in to play.
36A. Scale model of an ancient rival of Rome: MINIATURE GAUL. Miniature golf. Here we lose the F sound and have a sound alike. As Julius Caesar said, "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres."
54A. Burger queen?: GROUND BEE. Ground Beef. The F is gone, no sound alike. Queen Bee, a convoluted pun with Burger King as well. A shout out to our amazing BEES.
57A. Non-contraband cheese?: LEGAL BRIE. Legal Brief. This one also just has the F removed. Brie the french soft cheese.
The unifier: 65A. Disappearing sound, and a hint to this puzzle's theme: PFFT. Not much help, but I had the theme long before I git here.
Time for the rest of the story.
Across:
1. Tic, for one: SPASM. Like that of Inspector Dreyfus.
6. Arcade trademark word: SKEE. Skee Ball, the first game where we teach kids to gamble to win prizes.
10. Its website has a "Rodents 101" section: DCON. Gotta love em, CLIP (0:18).
14. "__ Go Again": Whitesnake #1 song : HERE I. CLIP.(4:33).
15. Brand at Petco: IAMS. The founder of the company was Paul Iams.
16. Pats on a buffet: OLEO. No, not on the waitresses' bottom.
17. '30s-'40s Kildare portrayer : AYRES. Lew, who ironically studied to be a doctor at the University of Arizona.
22. Pocatello sch : ISU. Idaho State University.
23. Texter's "Oh, before I forget ..." : BTW. By the Way.
24. Pah lead-in: OOM. Is this too close to 40A. Oomph: ZING?
25. Car radio selection: PRESET.
28. Hedger's OK: YES, BUT...what if? See below?
30. Land measurement ACRE.
32. "Discreet Music" composer: ENO. Sounds better than elevator music.
33. Surrealist Jean: ARP. A regular in our world.
34. On the __ vive: alert: QUI. From French, who lives, being the inquiry of the guard of the gate.
35. City south of Fort Worth: WACO. I guess forever linked to David Koresh, the wacko from Waco.
41. DOD arm: NSA. Department of Defense. National Security Agency.
42. Aus. currency : DOL. Austrailian Dollar.
43. Seasonal helper: ELF.How many liked the Will Farrell movie?
44. Olds 442 rivals: GTOS. My brother has a 1967.
45. Honolulu's __ Palace: IOLANI. The only real PALACE in the US.
49. Mouth formations: DELTAS. Mouths of rivers, my favorite was Miss Florida.
18A. Answered on "Name That Fabric"?: CRIED WOOL. Cried wolf. My favorite, and seeing the theme really helped.
20A. Just the binding?: BOOK SHELL. Book shelf. Here the F leaves but an added L comes in to play.
36A. Scale model of an ancient rival of Rome: MINIATURE GAUL. Miniature golf. Here we lose the F sound and have a sound alike. As Julius Caesar said, "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres."
54A. Burger queen?: GROUND BEE. Ground Beef. The F is gone, no sound alike. Queen Bee, a convoluted pun with Burger King as well. A shout out to our amazing BEES.
57A. Non-contraband cheese?: LEGAL BRIE. Legal Brief. This one also just has the F removed. Brie the french soft cheese.
The unifier: 65A. Disappearing sound, and a hint to this puzzle's theme: PFFT. Not much help, but I had the theme long before I git here.
Time for the rest of the story.
Across:
1. Tic, for one: SPASM. Like that of Inspector Dreyfus.
6. Arcade trademark word: SKEE. Skee Ball, the first game where we teach kids to gamble to win prizes.
10. Its website has a "Rodents 101" section: DCON. Gotta love em, CLIP (0:18).
14. "__ Go Again": Whitesnake #1 song : HERE I. CLIP.(4:33).
15. Brand at Petco: IAMS. The founder of the company was Paul Iams.
16. Pats on a buffet: OLEO. No, not on the waitresses' bottom.
17. '30s-'40s Kildare portrayer : AYRES. Lew, who ironically studied to be a doctor at the University of Arizona.
22. Pocatello sch : ISU. Idaho State University.
23. Texter's "Oh, before I forget ..." : BTW. By the Way.
24. Pah lead-in: OOM. Is this too close to 40A. Oomph: ZING?
25. Car radio selection: PRESET.
28. Hedger's OK: YES, BUT...what if? See below?
30. Land measurement ACRE.
32. "Discreet Music" composer: ENO. Sounds better than elevator music.
33. Surrealist Jean: ARP. A regular in our world.
34. On the __ vive: alert: QUI. From French, who lives, being the inquiry of the guard of the gate.
35. City south of Fort Worth: WACO. I guess forever linked to David Koresh, the wacko from Waco.
41. DOD arm: NSA. Department of Defense. National Security Agency.
42. Aus. currency : DOL. Austrailian Dollar.
43. Seasonal helper: ELF.How many liked the Will Farrell movie?
44. Olds 442 rivals: GTOS. My brother has a 1967.
45. Honolulu's __ Palace: IOLANI. The only real PALACE in the US.
49. Mouth formations: DELTAS. Mouths of rivers, my favorite was Miss Florida.
51. H.S. dropout's exam: GED. General Educational Development are the tests not the diploma.
52. Author Yutang: LIN. Out of my knowledge base, perhaps other can give some history. (From C.C.: Lin Yutang was a giant in Chinese literature, known for his beautiful prose.)
53. High dudgeon: IRE. An odd word never used by itself, and with no known origin like its cousins BLUDGEON and CURMUDGEON.
60. Rock's Burdon et al : ERICS. and the Animals.
61. He lowered the New York Times' price from 3¢ to 1¢: OCHS. And raised circulation from 7,000 to 900,000. Interesting MAN.
62. Doofuses : OAFS.
63. Reds, maybe: WINES.
64. Clothes alterer of a kind: MOTH. Cute, but I do not see many moths here.
66. Tex's "What if ...": S'POSE. This one fooled me for a while even after I filled in all the letters, I suppose I just did not see it.
Down:
1. Ramshackle: SHABBY. I started with SHANTY, thinking of an old house.
2. Native American hallucinogen: PEYOTE. When I was in college lots of people wanted to be indigenous Americans so they could experience the ritual of mescaline, the hallucinogen in Peyote.
3. Pointers: ARROWS.
4. Tuner option: SEEK. Being from New England I like my TUNER to be Albacore. Also and Anagram for SKEE, and the derivation of SIC.
5. Where Clark met Lewis in 1804: MISSOURI. The state or the river?
6. "Attack!": SIC EM. likely from "seek them."
7. Jazz great Malone: KARL. This was so cool, not the music, but the NBA team.
8. Oscar winner Jannings : EMIL. A silent film star who won the first best Actor award in 1929; he later became a Nazi propagandist, and his Hollywood career was over.
9. Toledo-to-Akron dir : ESE.
10. Not spare the rod?: DOWSE. The art of finding water with a stick, not to be confused with DICKY the STICK promoted by Johnny Carson.
11. Sellers role: CLOUSEAU. Truly in a class by himself with his tormentor/tormentee 57D. Herbert who played 11-Down's nemesis Inspector Dreyfus: LOM. A perfect FOIL for Seller's silliness.
12. Antipoverty agcy: OEO. Office of Economic Opportunity.
13. Exiled Cambodian Lon __ NOL. My favorite palindromic leader.
19. Like some consequences: DIRE.
21. Revealing '60s-'70s fad: HOT PANTS. I remember Goldie Hawn.
25. Literally, "pray G-d : PRIE DIEU. Where people kneel to pray.
26. SASE, e.g.: ENCL. Enclosure.
27. Overly: TOO. Like SOFIA sometimes?
29. Slam: BANG. Thank you ma'am.
30. Blue hues: AQUAS. Very big here in Florida.
31. Heel : CUR. An old fashioned word.
35. Medieval fortification: WALL. Anyone watching the mini-series made from Pillars of Earth?
36. Sports Authority Field altitude: MILE. The only stadium anyone cares about altitude is in Denver, home of the Broncos and now Tim Tebow, a Gator.
37. Like some movies: IN FLIGHT. This was really hard for me to parse. The perps finally filled, but this was a struggle.
38. Chicken general?: TSO. A staple both in the restaurant and the puzzle.
39. It may be a relief: GOOD NEWS. Very obscure clue.
40. Last of 26, in Chelsea: ZED. The British way to designate the letter "z."
44. Erse speaker, perhaps: GAEL. Gaels, the Celtic peoples of Scotland, Ireland. Erse became Irish.
46. White rat, e.g.: ALBINO. Or my favorite...
47. Reunion attendees: NIECES.
48. Actually existing: IN ESSE. Literal Latin.
50. Contentious talk: TRASH. The language of the NBA and NFL.
51. "Whither thou __ ...": Ruth: GOEST. "whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people..."
54. Five-time U.S. Open champ: GRAF. Wife of Andre Agassi; you think their children will pay?
55. Jazz phrase: RIFF. Riffs are found primarily in rock music, Latin, funk and jazz, classical music is also sometimes based on a simple riff, such as Ravel's Boléro.
56. Coffee choice: DRIP. I much prefer having my coffee with an interesting person.
58. Green prefix: ECO. Ecology and all that.
59. Gillespie's genre: BOP. John Birks 'Dizzie' Gillespie was a major figure in both bebop and JAZZ. (3:47) Listen and enjoy as he ends my return to the saddle. JzB, cheeky bastard wasn't he.
Answer grid.
Thanks and it is good to be back, if still a bit out of shape. Have a very happy holiday week all.
Lemonade
Note from C.C.:
Happy Birthday to our Capricorn Misty! Found the Capri pants yet?
