Theme: "He who hesitates is last" - Mae West
17A. War film with a cast of 60-Across? : APOCALYPSE LATER. Apocalypse Now. Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War release. And a perfect excuse for some dramatic background music from Richard Wagner.
28A. Newspaper with a staff of 60-Across? : USA TOMORROW. USA Today is missing one staff member, the crossword editor. Allegedly.
44A. 1969 hit song by a group of 60-Across? : NEXT MAGIC MOMENT. "This Magic Moment" passed me by unnoticed. Research tells me that the song was originally recorded in 1960 by Ben E. King and the Drifters, then Jay and the Americans took it to Number 6 in the Billboard Chart in 1969. There it has lain, untroubled by history, until today.
which leads us to
60A. Off-putting sorts? : PROCRASTINATORS. Great word. This has also sat, dusty and forgotten by crossword constructors since an appearance in the New York Times back in 1976. Welcome back!
Yay Thursday! Time for me to focus on the work I'm meant to get done this week. But first - there's a crossword to finish.
Welcome also to today's constructor Alan DeLoriea and an LAT debut. He also debuted in the NYT back in December, so a nice two-fer, considering how long it takes for a puzzle to actually appear in print. A quick Google reveals that he's one of the West Coasters among us, and he plays scrabble.
Three grid-spanners and one 10-letter theme entry means the grid has mirror symmetry, not the usual rotational, so that's a little different. "Now/Later", "Today/Tomorrow" are a solid couple of theme pairs. "This/Next" requires a little more thought and the addition of "week" or "month" etc. to fully come to life. There is quite a lot of three-letter fill, but there's some sparkly longer stuff to offset that.
Good effort!
Let's see what else catches the eye:
Across:
1. Subj. for a non-native speaker : ESL. English as a Second Language. Some native speakers could do with a refresher class, I swear.
4. __-top: Beatles' style : MOP
7. Much of "Star Wars" FX : CGI. Special Effects/Computer-Generated Imagery. I was blown away when I saw the first movie in the theater (or theatre?) back in England in 1978.
10. Clumsy type : OAF
13. __ Michele, 8-Down co-star : LEA. Good morning, cross-referenced clue. Thank you, eventually, perps.
14. "The Princess Diaries" princess : MIA
15. Tetris shape : ELL
16. Sporty truck, briefly : UTE. I can't help but think of "My Cousin Vinnie" and chuckle when I see this word.
21. "Rock and Roll All __": Kiss hit : NITE. Paul Stanley played my first guitar shortly after it was given to me as a present. Well, he picked it up, showed me an "E" chord and gave it back to me. My girlfriend at the time worked for the record label and he dropped by for drinks at a party we had just after New Year.
22. Reckon : 'SPOSE
23. Custardy dessert : FLAN Food! Flan is grande in Mexico.
24. Thrown for a loop : DAZED
26. Cool, once : HEP. Can't you still be a hep cat? I know you'd have to be wearing a zoot suit and playing sax, but still ..
27. Campus groups : FRATS
Food! I've been learning some of Masaharu Morimoto's recipes recently, including making your own udon noodles for ramen.
32. Square __ : ONE
33. Traveler's aid : VEHICLE
37. "Hamlet, thou art slain" speaker : LAERTES. Act V, sc ii. There was so much jiggery-pokery going on in that scene (as well as Osric making a nuisance of himself) that it was difficult to keep track. I believe Queen Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius and Hamlet (appropriately) shuffled off the mortal coil in that order. Rosencrantz, Guildernstern, Ophelia and Polonius had already beaten them to the Pearly Gates. Cracking stuff.
42. Political __ : ARENA
43. Big name in big tractors : DEERE
50. Write in code? : PROGRAM. Come on over and help me with my Linux shell scripting. Please.
51. Actress Ramirez of "Grey's Anatomy" : SARA. More crosses - thanks very much.
55. __ d'Alene : COEUR. Nailed it (finally)!
56. Mideast sultanate : OMAN
63. Pie choice : À LA MODE. It's always a sneaky task trying to parse this with a few missing letters. I'm always looking for a fruit or savory filling.
64. Like bread knives : SERRATE. I wanted SERRATED. I'm sure the usage is fine, but I would never describe a knife as "serrate" - I'd say "serrated", incorrectly as it turns out. Learning moment. Here are my knives - the serrate is third from the left next to the cleaver and the boning knife. The cleaver cost me $16 from an Asian restaurant supply store, weighs 2lbs and makes you feel like a bad-ass when you're chopping stuff with it.
65. Well-to-do : MONEYED
66. Unpredictable : ERRATIC
Down:
1. Twisty-horned antelope : ELAND. Twisty robber-baron and founder of Stanford? LELAND
2. Photo app effect : SEPIA
3. Founder of Taoism : LAOTZU. My last fill was the "A" as LEA was unknown. I just couldn't pull the correct spelling out of my memory banks. LAO looked better than LEO so that's what I went for.
4. Sport for Ronda Rousey, for short : MMA. Mixed Martial Arts. Her reputation's taken a bit of a beating(!) after the last couple of fights. I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of her though.
5. Aromatherapy array : OILS
6. Outmoded public convenience : PAYPHONE. It's amazing how quickly these things have disappeared. I'm not sure I'd be able to remember how to use one.
7. Center of moral corruption : CESSPOOL
8. TV show with mashups : GLEE. Never seen the show. The mashups are well known though. Check out YouTube.
9. Down with something : ILL. My first thought went with the modern parlance "in favor of" then I talked sense into myself.
10. Wanted one : OUTLAW
11. Bothered a lot : ATE AT
12. Fronded plants : FERNS
18. Mediocre marks : CEES. I'm not a big fan of these "grade" fills, especially when pluralized. I'd have tried to find something else.
19. Sonnet, e.g. : POEM
20. Do maintained with a pick : AFRO. Strictly speaking, shouldn't it be 'Do?
25. Kids' summer activity : DAY CAMP
27. "Another word for nothin' left to lose," in a Joplin hit : FREEDOM. "Me and Bobby McGee" and a classic. She never sang it at Woodstock, contrary to what a lot of people think. She only recorded it a few days before she sadly passed away.
29. __ Aviv : TEL
30. Genetic messenger molecule : RNA
33. The Scooby gang's Mystery Machine, e.g. : VAN. All together now: "Mr. Jenks!!!" "And I'd 'a gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you darned kids!"
34. Ode preposition : 'ERE. As the cockney Grecian Vase thief said to his accomplice "'ere, 'ode on to this while I go back fer the uvver one".
35. Spell : HEX
36. QB's mishap : INT. I still can't get over Sunday's "Big Game".
38. Dream state letters : R.E.M. Rapid Eye Movements; not dreaming about Michael Stipe.
39. Technical foul signal, in basketball : TEE. "Tee him up Ref!"
40. West ender? : -ERN
41. Place : SET. So wait, a place setting is a place placing? Or a setting setting? English is a great language.
45. Centipede home? : ARCADE. Atari video game from the '80s.
46. Stimulated : GOOSED
47. "Oh, now __ it!" : I GET
48. All-in-one vacation : CRUISE
49. Eliot's weaver : MARNER. Silas. I'm not sure the book would go over too well if it was written and published today.
51. Canned meat used in Hawaiian cuisine : SPAM. Food! I love Spam musubis. My Japanese "Auntie" Satchi makes them at Christmas.
52. "The Good Dinosaur" dinosaur : ARLO. Crosses. Mr. Guthrie gets a rest today.
53. Reddish horse : ROAN
54. Source of cartoon explosives : ACME. Made me laugh. Wile. E. Coyote was a good customer of theirs.
56. Other, south of the border : OTRA. Down Mexico Way. Canadian Eh! might argue this one.
57. Castle defense : MOAT
58. Basic class with easels : ART I. Funny, after my question regarding LATIN I last week, now we see another "I". I always thought it was "101", but then again I never went to school here.
59. Tiny time pd. : N-SEC. A nanosecond. Tiny indeed. 1 nanosecond:1 second:31.71 years.
61. Siegfried collaborator : ROY. Their performance days were pretty much over when Roy was bitten by one of the tigers and almost died.
62. PDX info: Abbr. : ARR. Arrivals into Portland International Airport. The terminal is famous for the carpet design; the original was replaced in 2015; swatches of the original carpet being sold off to the public. The last time I was in PDX I was changing planes on my way home from Seattle to LA in a torrential rainstorm in a little turbo-prop puddle-jumper. We deplaned outside the terminal, I dripped a lot onto the new carpet when I finally got inside. Here's the old (left) and new side-by-side:
And with a carpet swatch, I think that wraps up this one! Heeeere's the grid!
Steve
(I just noticed that if you blur your eyes, the grid looks like a Teddy Bear with a "Sting" 80's spiked haircut. And I promise I've not been smoking anything.)
Notes from C.C.:
17A. War film with a cast of 60-Across? : APOCALYPSE LATER. Apocalypse Now. Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War release. And a perfect excuse for some dramatic background music from Richard Wagner.
28A. Newspaper with a staff of 60-Across? : USA TOMORROW. USA Today is missing one staff member, the crossword editor. Allegedly.
44A. 1969 hit song by a group of 60-Across? : NEXT MAGIC MOMENT. "This Magic Moment" passed me by unnoticed. Research tells me that the song was originally recorded in 1960 by Ben E. King and the Drifters, then Jay and the Americans took it to Number 6 in the Billboard Chart in 1969. There it has lain, untroubled by history, until today.
which leads us to
60A. Off-putting sorts? : PROCRASTINATORS. Great word. This has also sat, dusty and forgotten by crossword constructors since an appearance in the New York Times back in 1976. Welcome back!
Yay Thursday! Time for me to focus on the work I'm meant to get done this week. But first - there's a crossword to finish.
Welcome also to today's constructor Alan DeLoriea and an LAT debut. He also debuted in the NYT back in December, so a nice two-fer, considering how long it takes for a puzzle to actually appear in print. A quick Google reveals that he's one of the West Coasters among us, and he plays scrabble.
Three grid-spanners and one 10-letter theme entry means the grid has mirror symmetry, not the usual rotational, so that's a little different. "Now/Later", "Today/Tomorrow" are a solid couple of theme pairs. "This/Next" requires a little more thought and the addition of "week" or "month" etc. to fully come to life. There is quite a lot of three-letter fill, but there's some sparkly longer stuff to offset that.
Good effort!
Let's see what else catches the eye:
Across:
1. Subj. for a non-native speaker : ESL. English as a Second Language. Some native speakers could do with a refresher class, I swear.
4. __-top: Beatles' style : MOP
7. Much of "Star Wars" FX : CGI. Special Effects/Computer-Generated Imagery. I was blown away when I saw the first movie in the theater (or theatre?) back in England in 1978.
10. Clumsy type : OAF
13. __ Michele, 8-Down co-star : LEA. Good morning, cross-referenced clue. Thank you, eventually, perps.
14. "The Princess Diaries" princess : MIA
15. Tetris shape : ELL
16. Sporty truck, briefly : UTE. I can't help but think of "My Cousin Vinnie" and chuckle when I see this word.
21. "Rock and Roll All __": Kiss hit : NITE. Paul Stanley played my first guitar shortly after it was given to me as a present. Well, he picked it up, showed me an "E" chord and gave it back to me. My girlfriend at the time worked for the record label and he dropped by for drinks at a party we had just after New Year.
22. Reckon : 'SPOSE
23. Custardy dessert : FLAN Food! Flan is grande in Mexico.
24. Thrown for a loop : DAZED
26. Cool, once : HEP. Can't you still be a hep cat? I know you'd have to be wearing a zoot suit and playing sax, but still ..
27. Campus groups : FRATS
31. Dough for ramen? : YEN. Nicely done. Some of these: ¥ for a bowl of these:
Food! I've been learning some of Masaharu Morimoto's recipes recently, including making your own udon noodles for ramen.
32. Square __ : ONE
33. Traveler's aid : VEHICLE
37. "Hamlet, thou art slain" speaker : LAERTES. Act V, sc ii. There was so much jiggery-pokery going on in that scene (as well as Osric making a nuisance of himself) that it was difficult to keep track. I believe Queen Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius and Hamlet (appropriately) shuffled off the mortal coil in that order. Rosencrantz, Guildernstern, Ophelia and Polonius had already beaten them to the Pearly Gates. Cracking stuff.
42. Political __ : ARENA
43. Big name in big tractors : DEERE
50. Write in code? : PROGRAM. Come on over and help me with my Linux shell scripting. Please.
51. Actress Ramirez of "Grey's Anatomy" : SARA. More crosses - thanks very much.
55. __ d'Alene : COEUR. Nailed it (finally)!
56. Mideast sultanate : OMAN
63. Pie choice : À LA MODE. It's always a sneaky task trying to parse this with a few missing letters. I'm always looking for a fruit or savory filling.
64. Like bread knives : SERRATE. I wanted SERRATED. I'm sure the usage is fine, but I would never describe a knife as "serrate" - I'd say "serrated", incorrectly as it turns out. Learning moment. Here are my knives - the serrate is third from the left next to the cleaver and the boning knife. The cleaver cost me $16 from an Asian restaurant supply store, weighs 2lbs and makes you feel like a bad-ass when you're chopping stuff with it.
65. Well-to-do : MONEYED
66. Unpredictable : ERRATIC
Down:
1. Twisty-horned antelope : ELAND. Twisty robber-baron and founder of Stanford? LELAND
2. Photo app effect : SEPIA
3. Founder of Taoism : LAOTZU. My last fill was the "A" as LEA was unknown. I just couldn't pull the correct spelling out of my memory banks. LAO looked better than LEO so that's what I went for.
4. Sport for Ronda Rousey, for short : MMA. Mixed Martial Arts. Her reputation's taken a bit of a beating(!) after the last couple of fights. I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of her though.
5. Aromatherapy array : OILS
6. Outmoded public convenience : PAYPHONE. It's amazing how quickly these things have disappeared. I'm not sure I'd be able to remember how to use one.
7. Center of moral corruption : CESSPOOL
8. TV show with mashups : GLEE. Never seen the show. The mashups are well known though. Check out YouTube.
9. Down with something : ILL. My first thought went with the modern parlance "in favor of" then I talked sense into myself.
10. Wanted one : OUTLAW
11. Bothered a lot : ATE AT
12. Fronded plants : FERNS
18. Mediocre marks : CEES. I'm not a big fan of these "grade" fills, especially when pluralized. I'd have tried to find something else.
19. Sonnet, e.g. : POEM
20. Do maintained with a pick : AFRO. Strictly speaking, shouldn't it be 'Do?
25. Kids' summer activity : DAY CAMP
27. "Another word for nothin' left to lose," in a Joplin hit : FREEDOM. "Me and Bobby McGee" and a classic. She never sang it at Woodstock, contrary to what a lot of people think. She only recorded it a few days before she sadly passed away.
29. __ Aviv : TEL
30. Genetic messenger molecule : RNA
33. The Scooby gang's Mystery Machine, e.g. : VAN. All together now: "Mr. Jenks!!!" "And I'd 'a gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you darned kids!"
34. Ode preposition : 'ERE. As the cockney Grecian Vase thief said to his accomplice "'ere, 'ode on to this while I go back fer the uvver one".
35. Spell : HEX
36. QB's mishap : INT. I still can't get over Sunday's "Big Game".
38. Dream state letters : R.E.M. Rapid Eye Movements; not dreaming about Michael Stipe.
39. Technical foul signal, in basketball : TEE. "Tee him up Ref!"
40. West ender? : -ERN
41. Place : SET. So wait, a place setting is a place placing? Or a setting setting? English is a great language.
45. Centipede home? : ARCADE. Atari video game from the '80s.
46. Stimulated : GOOSED
47. "Oh, now __ it!" : I GET
48. All-in-one vacation : CRUISE
49. Eliot's weaver : MARNER. Silas. I'm not sure the book would go over too well if it was written and published today.
51. Canned meat used in Hawaiian cuisine : SPAM. Food! I love Spam musubis. My Japanese "Auntie" Satchi makes them at Christmas.
52. "The Good Dinosaur" dinosaur : ARLO. Crosses. Mr. Guthrie gets a rest today.
53. Reddish horse : ROAN
54. Source of cartoon explosives : ACME. Made me laugh. Wile. E. Coyote was a good customer of theirs.
56. Other, south of the border : OTRA. Down Mexico Way. Canadian Eh! might argue this one.
57. Castle defense : MOAT
58. Basic class with easels : ART I. Funny, after my question regarding LATIN I last week, now we see another "I". I always thought it was "101", but then again I never went to school here.
59. Tiny time pd. : N-SEC. A nanosecond. Tiny indeed. 1 nanosecond:1 second:31.71 years.
61. Siegfried collaborator : ROY. Their performance days were pretty much over when Roy was bitten by one of the tigers and almost died.
62. PDX info: Abbr. : ARR. Arrivals into Portland International Airport. The terminal is famous for the carpet design; the original was replaced in 2015; swatches of the original carpet being sold off to the public. The last time I was in PDX I was changing planes on my way home from Seattle to LA in a torrential rainstorm in a little turbo-prop puddle-jumper. We deplaned outside the terminal, I dripped a lot onto the new carpet when I finally got inside. Here's the old (left) and new side-by-side:
And with a carpet swatch, I think that wraps up this one! Heeeere's the grid!
Steve
(I just noticed that if you blur your eyes, the grid looks like a Teddy Bear with a "Sting" 80's spiked haircut. And I promise I've not been smoking anything.)
Notes from C.C.:
1) Steve, grids with left/right symmetry tend to have funny looks. Re rice balls, did we miss an important event in your life?
2) Happy Birthday to dear Splynter (Richard), who turns 46 years old today.
Splynter started blogging for us since March 2011 and only missed one
Saturday when he was sick. He's this dedicated to our blog and readers. We're so lucky.
