Theme: Hole Foods. Perhaps inspired by the grocery store sometimes known as "Whole Pay Check"?
The nicely-placed reveal tells us what to look for in the theme entries:
54A. Component of balanced health ... and what each answer to a starred clue looks like it should be part of? : HOLISTIC DIET. "Hole-istic" if you're still at a loss.
And we have *drum roll*
20A. *Beer hall snacks : HARD PRETZELS. This is the outlier - three holes in a hard pretzel, one hole in all the other theme entries.
29A. *Deli snacks : BAGEL CHIPS. Yum. The best part of Gardetto's mix. I make a home-cook gluten-free version for my gluten-intolerant friend.
35A. *Bakery snacks : CHOCOLATE DONUTS.
43A. *Diner snacks : ONION RINGS. I've tried making onion rings at home. I think I am onion ring kryptonite. You wouldn't recognize my efforts as onion, let alone rings.
So ... I'm wondering why the asterisks today? The convention is that if the theme entries are not obvious, then you highlight them, but these all follow the rules - they're the longest entries in the grid, across and down, and, to boot, linked by the common "snacks" in the clues. Maybe one of my fellow constructors/bloggers can shed some light?
Nice puzzle though - I was off to the races with the first few entries and then stalled somewhere in the middle. I like when that happens.
So let's see what else we've got to talk about:
Across:
1. Día de San Valentín flowers : ROSAS. Plenty of these sold yesterday, I'm sure.
6. California's __ Gabriel Mountains : SAN. I can see these from my window most days.
9. Construction rod : REBAR
14. Remove from the bulletin board : UNPIN
15. Blood type letters : ABO. Apparently this is just one of 35 different blood type classification systems currently recognized. We'll have a pop quiz on the other 34 shortly.
16. Like 36 piano keys, traditionally : EBONY. That leaves room for 52 ivories on a traditional piano keyboard.
17. Lewis with 12 Emmys : SHARI. Amazing what a cute sock puppet will do for your career.
18. "That '70s Show" exchange student whose nationality isn't revealed : FEZ. I watched the show, I never realized there was a secret nationality gimmick.
19. Lessen : ABATE
23. Surf and turf, say : ENTRÉE
24. NASA vehicle : L.E.M. Lunar Excursion Module. Also the Apollo 13 "lifeboat"for the crippled command module.
25. Tempe sch. : A.S.U.
28. Time for action : D-DAY
33. Actress Neuwirth with Tonys and Emmys : BEBE. Very talented TV and stage actress, two very different disciplines. She graduated from Juillard.
34. Slim craft : CANOE
41. "Tempt not a desperate man" speaker : ROMEO. He was not long for this world when he spoke these lines - in Hamlet's words he was about the "shuffle off the mortal coil".
42. Pretty good : OKAY. I'd say "Okay" was middling, rather than pretty good. More "mas a menos" or "comme çi, comme ça".
46. California wine valley : NAPA. I recently got to taste a bottle of Chateau Montelena chardonnay, the wine that launched the global recognition of Napa wines when the '73 won a blind tasting in Paris, much to the chagrin of the French. A bottle of the famous vintage is in the Smithsonian. It would be undrinkable by now.
50. Favorite : PET
51. One of three rhyming mos. : DEC. Rhymes with those famous crossword months "Pec" and Sec". Wait - no. Maybe "September" and "December"?
52. Pavement cloppers : HOOVES. Two half-coconut shells do the trick for foley artists. I was told than snapping a carrot in half is useful when a broken finger is called for, and abusing a cabbage with a knife gives you a "crunching stab sound". The wonderful world of sound effects.
57. Lose one's cool in a big way : PANIC. The nerd in me loved the Tesla in the SpaceX capsule with a copy of "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" in the glove compartment. "Don't Panic" is writ large on the cover. "Life on Mars" on the stereo was super cool too.
60. Murmur : COO
61. Lift with force : HEAVE
62. Car or tree feature : TRUNK
63. Tote : LUG
64. Film with lots of shooting stars? : OATER. Six Shooters.
65. Ships : SENDS
66. Stat for Clayton Kershaw : E.R.A.
67. Flexible Flyers, e.g. : SLEDS. Capitalization hints that you are looking at a brand name.
Down:
1. Blitzed, in football : RUSHED
2. In stock : ON HAND
3. Peloponnesian War victor : SPARTA. Athens V. Sparta. It lasted for 27 years, and nothing good came out of it.
4. Put on the line? : AIR DRY
5. Wading bird : SNIPE. I tried STORK first, and was gradually rebuffed.
6. No-risk : SAFE
7. Help with an inside job, say : ABET. Apparently you can't just "abet" in law, you have to "aid and abet".
8. Gas pump part : NOZZLE
9. Genuine article : REAL MCCOY. Per the interwebs "the phrase has been the subject of numerous false etymologies". Google and Wikipedia at your peril.
10. Flows out : EBBS
11. Feathery wrap : BOA
12. House pest : ANT. The moment you see one of the little buggers in the kitchen you need to act fast, otherwise 10 bazillion will follow.
13. Bread with caraway seeds : RYE. Food! Mmmm, Pastrami! I'm in New York - Katz's Deli sounds awfully tempting right now.
21. Insurgent : REBEL
22. Charged fish? : EEL. The electric kind. Apparently they do kick out a pretty good shock.
25. Indigenous Japanese : AINU. Thank you crosses, and a learning moment. Japanese/Russians
26. Notice : SPOT
27. Multi-tools have many : USES
30. Old hoops org. : A.B.A. American Basketball Association
31. Board : GET ON
32. Solo with a Wookiee co-pilot : HAN. "Star Wars" character portrayed by Harrison Ford.
33. Nowheresville, with "the" : BOONDOCKS. I'd have said "boonies", but I guess there's a proper designation.
35. Cut closely : CROP
36. Sharpen : HONE
37. Skip over : OMIT
38. Board bigwig : CEO. Bored bigwig - the CEO listening to the financial forecast from the CFO.
39. Heart test letters : EKG
40. Broth that's the base of miso soup : DASHI. If you have a handy supply of kelp and dried tuna, you can make your own. I get the stuff in a jar, much easier.
44. Cath. or Prot. : REL. Catholics, Protestants. Religion. Stir together and stand well back.
45. Christmas eave decor : ICICLE. Nice! Clue of the day for me.
46. "The agreement is off" : NO DEAL
47. Take wing : AVIATE. Here we go again - the verb.
48. Rather put out : PEEVED
49. Starlike flowers : ASTERS
53. Figure-eight steps, in an Argentine tango : OCHOS
54. Posterior : HIND
55. Acidic : SOUR
56. Draped garment : TOGA
57. FG's three : PTS. Three points for a field goal on the gridiron.
58. Exist : ARE
59. Many a "Call the Midwife" character : NUN. I saw a couple of episodes of this BBC series, then completely forgot about it. Thank you, crosses.
So there we are, another Thursday in the books. Back to the west coast tonight and my home timezone, at least for the weekend. According to my chums at united.com, I've already flown 40,129 miles in 2018, and that doesn't include the Delhi-Mumbai return on local airline Indigo. My trip back to LA today will put me right around the 43,000 mile mark. That's a lot of airline snack bag hard pretzels!
I've never seen anything like this though - a United flight from Honolulu to San Francisco yesterday. Google engineer Erik Haddad gets the "cool humor under stress" award of the day for this tweet:
And with that gem, here's the grid!
Steve
The nicely-placed reveal tells us what to look for in the theme entries:
54A. Component of balanced health ... and what each answer to a starred clue looks like it should be part of? : HOLISTIC DIET. "Hole-istic" if you're still at a loss.
And we have *drum roll*
20A. *Beer hall snacks : HARD PRETZELS. This is the outlier - three holes in a hard pretzel, one hole in all the other theme entries.
29A. *Deli snacks : BAGEL CHIPS. Yum. The best part of Gardetto's mix. I make a home-cook gluten-free version for my gluten-intolerant friend.
35A. *Bakery snacks : CHOCOLATE DONUTS.
43A. *Diner snacks : ONION RINGS. I've tried making onion rings at home. I think I am onion ring kryptonite. You wouldn't recognize my efforts as onion, let alone rings.
So ... I'm wondering why the asterisks today? The convention is that if the theme entries are not obvious, then you highlight them, but these all follow the rules - they're the longest entries in the grid, across and down, and, to boot, linked by the common "snacks" in the clues. Maybe one of my fellow constructors/bloggers can shed some light?
Nice puzzle though - I was off to the races with the first few entries and then stalled somewhere in the middle. I like when that happens.
So let's see what else we've got to talk about:
Across:
1. Día de San Valentín flowers : ROSAS. Plenty of these sold yesterday, I'm sure.
6. California's __ Gabriel Mountains : SAN. I can see these from my window most days.
9. Construction rod : REBAR
14. Remove from the bulletin board : UNPIN
15. Blood type letters : ABO. Apparently this is just one of 35 different blood type classification systems currently recognized. We'll have a pop quiz on the other 34 shortly.
16. Like 36 piano keys, traditionally : EBONY. That leaves room for 52 ivories on a traditional piano keyboard.
17. Lewis with 12 Emmys : SHARI. Amazing what a cute sock puppet will do for your career.
18. "That '70s Show" exchange student whose nationality isn't revealed : FEZ. I watched the show, I never realized there was a secret nationality gimmick.
19. Lessen : ABATE
23. Surf and turf, say : ENTRÉE
24. NASA vehicle : L.E.M. Lunar Excursion Module. Also the Apollo 13 "lifeboat"for the crippled command module.
25. Tempe sch. : A.S.U.
28. Time for action : D-DAY
33. Actress Neuwirth with Tonys and Emmys : BEBE. Very talented TV and stage actress, two very different disciplines. She graduated from Juillard.
34. Slim craft : CANOE
41. "Tempt not a desperate man" speaker : ROMEO. He was not long for this world when he spoke these lines - in Hamlet's words he was about the "shuffle off the mortal coil".
"I must indeed, and therefore came I hither.
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man.
Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone.
Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,
Put not another sin upon my head
By urging me to fury. O, be gone!
By heaven, I love thee better than myself,
For I come hither armed against myself.
Stay not, be gone. Live, and hereafter say
A madman’s mercy bid thee run away."
42. Pretty good : OKAY. I'd say "Okay" was middling, rather than pretty good. More "mas a menos" or "comme çi, comme ça".
46. California wine valley : NAPA. I recently got to taste a bottle of Chateau Montelena chardonnay, the wine that launched the global recognition of Napa wines when the '73 won a blind tasting in Paris, much to the chagrin of the French. A bottle of the famous vintage is in the Smithsonian. It would be undrinkable by now.
50. Favorite : PET
51. One of three rhyming mos. : DEC. Rhymes with those famous crossword months "Pec" and Sec". Wait - no. Maybe "September" and "December"?
52. Pavement cloppers : HOOVES. Two half-coconut shells do the trick for foley artists. I was told than snapping a carrot in half is useful when a broken finger is called for, and abusing a cabbage with a knife gives you a "crunching stab sound". The wonderful world of sound effects.
57. Lose one's cool in a big way : PANIC. The nerd in me loved the Tesla in the SpaceX capsule with a copy of "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" in the glove compartment. "Don't Panic" is writ large on the cover. "Life on Mars" on the stereo was super cool too.
60. Murmur : COO
61. Lift with force : HEAVE
62. Car or tree feature : TRUNK
63. Tote : LUG
64. Film with lots of shooting stars? : OATER. Six Shooters.
65. Ships : SENDS
66. Stat for Clayton Kershaw : E.R.A.
67. Flexible Flyers, e.g. : SLEDS. Capitalization hints that you are looking at a brand name.
Down:
1. Blitzed, in football : RUSHED
2. In stock : ON HAND
3. Peloponnesian War victor : SPARTA. Athens V. Sparta. It lasted for 27 years, and nothing good came out of it.
4. Put on the line? : AIR DRY
5. Wading bird : SNIPE. I tried STORK first, and was gradually rebuffed.
6. No-risk : SAFE
7. Help with an inside job, say : ABET. Apparently you can't just "abet" in law, you have to "aid and abet".
8. Gas pump part : NOZZLE
9. Genuine article : REAL MCCOY. Per the interwebs "the phrase has been the subject of numerous false etymologies". Google and Wikipedia at your peril.
10. Flows out : EBBS
11. Feathery wrap : BOA
12. House pest : ANT. The moment you see one of the little buggers in the kitchen you need to act fast, otherwise 10 bazillion will follow.
13. Bread with caraway seeds : RYE. Food! Mmmm, Pastrami! I'm in New York - Katz's Deli sounds awfully tempting right now.
21. Insurgent : REBEL
22. Charged fish? : EEL. The electric kind. Apparently they do kick out a pretty good shock.
25. Indigenous Japanese : AINU. Thank you crosses, and a learning moment. Japanese/Russians
26. Notice : SPOT
27. Multi-tools have many : USES
30. Old hoops org. : A.B.A. American Basketball Association
31. Board : GET ON
32. Solo with a Wookiee co-pilot : HAN. "Star Wars" character portrayed by Harrison Ford.
33. Nowheresville, with "the" : BOONDOCKS. I'd have said "boonies", but I guess there's a proper designation.
35. Cut closely : CROP
36. Sharpen : HONE
37. Skip over : OMIT
38. Board bigwig : CEO. Bored bigwig - the CEO listening to the financial forecast from the CFO.
39. Heart test letters : EKG
40. Broth that's the base of miso soup : DASHI. If you have a handy supply of kelp and dried tuna, you can make your own. I get the stuff in a jar, much easier.
44. Cath. or Prot. : REL. Catholics, Protestants. Religion. Stir together and stand well back.
45. Christmas eave decor : ICICLE. Nice! Clue of the day for me.
46. "The agreement is off" : NO DEAL
47. Take wing : AVIATE. Here we go again - the verb.
48. Rather put out : PEEVED
49. Starlike flowers : ASTERS
53. Figure-eight steps, in an Argentine tango : OCHOS
54. Posterior : HIND
55. Acidic : SOUR
56. Draped garment : TOGA
57. FG's three : PTS. Three points for a field goal on the gridiron.
58. Exist : ARE
59. Many a "Call the Midwife" character : NUN. I saw a couple of episodes of this BBC series, then completely forgot about it. Thank you, crosses.
So there we are, another Thursday in the books. Back to the west coast tonight and my home timezone, at least for the weekend. According to my chums at united.com, I've already flown 40,129 miles in 2018, and that doesn't include the Delhi-Mumbai return on local airline Indigo. My trip back to LA today will put me right around the 43,000 mile mark. That's a lot of airline snack bag hard pretzels!
I've never seen anything like this though - a United flight from Honolulu to San Francisco yesterday. Google engineer Erik Haddad gets the "cool humor under stress" award of the day for this tweet:
And with that gem, here's the grid!
Steve
