Theme: Three's company - each of the three theme answers has a abbreviation for a type of business embedded therein. This puzzle has 16 rows and 14 columns with a left to right mirror symmetry. Our norm is 15*15 with 180 degree rotational symmetry.
19A. Animation pioneer : WALT DISNEY. He had more nominations and won more Oscars than anyone else in history - 59 nominations leading to 22 awards. Mr Crowe of 37A didn't do quite so well.
27A. Warren Harding's successor : CALVIN COOLIDGE. I don't believe he was nominated for any Academy Awards, making him the odd man out here. Serious-looking chap too.
37A. 1999, 2000 and 2001 Best Actor nominee (he won once) : RUSSELL CROWE. He was nominated for The Insider and A Beautiful Mind and won for Gladiator in 2000.
55A. Company's main activity, and a hint to a different three-letter abbreviation hidden in 19-, 27- and 37-Across : CORE BUSINESS
Hello to everyone and hello to Wednesday already - time does fly when you're having fun. Steve here with this pretty fun puzzle from Mangesh. I like how the abbreviations for the different types of business all split on the 2-1 letter count in the "core" of each name.
(One common benefit of the Limited Company, the Incorporation and the Limited Liability Company is the fact that the personal assets of company officers are protected from claims by creditors and by lawsuits.)
Now that we're done with the corporate law lesson, let's see what else we're working with.
I had a couple of do-overs on the way - nothing too tragic but enough to keep me thinking. All good stuff.
Across:
1. Pizza Quick sauce brand : RAGU. Food! Well, almost! If you have a Trader Joe's near you, try their pizza dough for an even quicker pizza experience, it's really good.
5. Boxer's weapon : FIST
9. Frankly declare : AVOW. Had my first misstep here with AVER. I'll remember not to jump to conclusions next time.
13. Parade instrument : HORN. I don't know how anyone manages to walk with these things, let alone play them too.
14. "The Andy Griffith Show" tyke : OPIE
15. Olin of "The Reader" : LENA. Perps all the way. I even had to look up to see if this was a movie, TV show or book reference. (It was a movie).
16. Cheers for a torero : OLES. We've had quite a few of these recently.
17. Like a blue moon : RARE. Didn't we have one last month? A blue moon is the second moon in a single month, and so named because the symbol was colored blue in the Farmer's Almanac (the first moon was colored red).
18. Overcast, in London : GREY. I can never remember which is which now as GRAY/GREY both look fine to me. So I wait for the cross to help me out.
22. Too scrupulous for : ABOVE
24. Peasant dress : FROCK
32. Jacuzzi effect : EDDY
33. 50+ group : AARP
34. Score after deuce : AD IN. This is a tennis term for those who've not come across this bit of crossword-ese before and it's shorthand for Advantage, Server.
35. Line on a map : STREET
43. Japanese fish dish : SUSHI. Food! I had sushi for lunch yesterday, one of two puzzle-coincidences for me today.
44. Battery post : ANODE
46. "Dear" one? : ABBY
47. __ qua non : SINE
51. Duds : TOGS. This has cropped up a couple of times recently, too, no?
52. Cry of pain : YIPE
53. Eat too much of, briefly : O.D. ON. I could easily overdose on sushi.
54. Poems of praise : ODES
58. Coyote's coat : FUR I see a lot of coyotes when I go hiking around LA. They're shifty-looking buggers.
59. Bridge player's blunder : RENEGE. You must follow suit in bridge if you can. Failing to do so is a renege, and you are penalized for this heinous crime.
60. Work on a garden row : HOE. I like the row/hoe rhyme
62. Garden pest : ANT
63. Low points on graphs : MINIMA. Nice word!
64. Benelux locale: Abbr. : EUR. The country grouping of Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg in Europe.
65. Billboard fillers : ADS
66. Lacking a musical key : ATONAL. Me, singing. I confine exercising my pipes to the shower to spare the rest of the world considerable anguish.
67. Souse's woe : DT'S. The bad thing about getting delerium tremens is that your hands shake so badly the only way to get a drink is to swig it straight out of the bottle until things calm down and you can pour into a glass again.
Down:
1. Frat letter : RHO
2. Longtime ISP : AOL. Calling your Internet Service Provider America On-Line seems quaint now. My first ISP was Compuserve - my email address was 35678-1931@compuserve.com - not exactly the easiest thing for people to remember.
3. Got tiresome : GREW OLD
4. Not in the know : UNSAVVY
5. Old West defense : FORT
6. High-tech release of 2010 : iPAD
7. Voice-activated app for 6-Down : SIRI. Quibble - Siri is on the iPhone, unless she's hiding somewhere very remote on my iPad. I've got the iPad right here and I can't find her.
8. Football supporters : TEES. I looked quizzically at this then remembered - kicking tees.
9. African country that was a French colony : ALGERIA
10. "Well, that's weird" : VERY ODD
11. With 12-Down, sign with an arrow : ONE
12. See 11-Down : WAY
20. Island ring : LEI
21. Patriots' org. : N.F.L. The New England Patriots of the National Football League. They probably have quite a supply of 8D's
22. Serving success : ACE. Two tennis references today.
23. Horrible : BAD
25. Modern film effects, briefly : C.G.I. or Computer-Generated Imagery. It doesn't seem to be given the period-abbreviation treatment in most of the industry literature that I see.
26. Understanding : KEN
28. __ the Great: boy detective : NATE. The junior Sherlock Holmes with his dog, Sludge.
29. Rob Reiner's dad : CARL
30. Hershiser of ESPN : OREL
31. Oil bloc : OPEC. The Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries. I wonder why no abbreviation indication in the clue?
35. FICA benefit : S.S.I.
36. La-la lead-in : TRA
37. Ruddy, as a complexion : RUBICUND. Great word - I want to find someone ruddy tomorrow so I can compliment them on their complexion - or is it not a compliment?
38. Places to plug in mice : USB PORTS. Because "funny-looking 9-pin socket all the way in back of my desktop computer" doesn't fit
39. More reserved : SHYER
40. En pointe : ON TOE. Ballet. I've never seen this translated in the ballet sense though.
41. Place to store cords : WOODSHED. Very nice. A cord of wood, given that it's properly and tidily arranged, occupies 126 cubic feet, and that's a pretty big pile.
42. Beats by a whisker : EDGES OUT
43. For instance : SAY
45. Slalom curve : ESS
47. "Fine" : SO BE IT
48. Words accompanying a shrug : I DUNNO. My last misstep - I had I GUESS first as I had the I and the U
49. Like much metered parking : NOSE IN. Took my a while to see that it wasn't NO SEIN because I had NO idea what that was all about.
50. Head-scratcher : ENIGMA
56. Columnist Bombeck : ERMA
57. Country singer McCoy : NEAL
58. SFO overseer : F.A.A. The Federal Aviation Authority oversees San Francisco International airport. My second puzzle co-incidence as I was in and out of SFO yesterday, and for the first time in memory there was no inbound delay due to fog or air traffic congestion, and no delay leaving to go home. I got upgraded to First both ways, so a happy travel day for me. I ♥ United Airlines (sometimes).
61. Hesitant sounds : ERS
Good luck to Oracle Racing Team USA in the down-to-the-wire America's Cup race today. A pretty amazing comeback whichever way today's race goes.
There it is, as the chef who rolled a chicken salad in a tortilla said - "it's a wrap"
Steve
1) Note from C.C.:
For those of you who do not use Across Lite, please click here for the Chronicle puzzle George Barany and Alex Vratsanos made last Friday. He had quite a few links there. Just click on here (A PDF file created from Across Lite). There is another special puzzle he and a friend created for a speical event last Friday. Click here, you can solve interactively too.
2) Note from today's constructor Mongesh:
Rich said in his acceptance mail ... "It's a nice, tight theme and a really
clean, fun grid". I added the word Mumbaikar to my byline to pay a
tribute to my city Mumbai which has been with my crossword journey
and has given me so much.
