17. *Employee insurance coverage, briefly: WORKERS COMP.
60. *Unmanned aerial attack: DRONE STRIKE.
11. *Hotel bed choice: QUEEN SIZE.
32. *Persist despite difficulty: SOLDIER ON.
46. Symbolic Egyptian snake, which includes the start of a hint to the answers to starred clues: ASP.
Look at the hind end of this ant:
After noticing worker, drone, queen and soldier as answers in the starred clues, I first thought "Bees" but I had never heard of soldier bees. John threw me for a loop with ASP. What does ASP have to do with bees ? At that point, I paid attention to the circles and reread the reveal. ANT COLONY might have been hard to spot without the circles.
Clever puzzle and design. I like how ANT COLONY is arranged so that it represents a mound. We had plenty of fire ant mounds in the pastures and yards in Central Texas. Dang things were so hard to get rid of. It was like playing Whac-A-Mole.
Across:
1. "Star Wars" warrior: JEDI. All you want to know and more at Wookiepedia, the Star Wars Wiki.
5. Treaded winter vehicle: SNO-CAT.
11. "Proven," in proofs: QED. Quod Erat Demonstrandum. Latin, from the buzzwords used by great Greek mathematicians, such as Euclid and Archimedes.
14. Laptop brand that sounds like a top tennis player: ACER. Cure clue.
15. Pays homage to: HONORS. Pays respect to.
16. Prefix with corn or cycle: UNI. As a preteen, my gangly friend Brian became an accomplished unicycle rider in our hilly little town. He turned out to be a pretty good basketball player on our high school team.
19. It may be bruised: EGO. 8 Ways to Overcome a Blow to Your Ego
20. Blight-stricken tree: ELM. A fungal disease spread by bark beetles. "This disease is not of Dutch origin, but because early work on the disease was done by Dutch pathologists in the 1920s, the disease has been called Dutch elm disease (DED)." - Morton Arboretum
21. Deceived: LIED TO.
22. Lo __: noodle dish: MEIN. Lo mein - soft boiled noodles. Chow mein - crispy fried noodles.
23. Church officers: DEACONS. Not germane to the clue for any other reason than Deacon is in it:
25. "Valley of the Dolls" author Jacqueline: SUSANN. A best selling book about three pill-popping women. It was later adapted into a movie of the same name.
27. Animal that can learn sign language: APE.
28. Parting site in Exodus: RED SEA.
30. "Who's there?" response: IT'S ME. Pretty song:
33. Rank above maj.: COL. Major / Colonel. Colonels have two grades in the Army. "Light"(Lieutenant Colonel - grade O-5, silver oak leaf insignia) and "Full Bird" (Colonel - grade O-6, silver eagle insignia).
36. Makes an effort: TRIES.
37. Small store: SHOP. My parents small store was in a 6600 sq. ft. two story building my dad and his contractor buddies built. Antiques, Furniture Stripping & Refinishing. That's why I can tell people I used to be a stripper.
38. Serious no-no: TABOO. Women's fragrance: Tabu.
40. Poet Pound: EZRA.
41. Be under the weather: AIL.
42. 11 p.m. personality: NEWSMAN. 10 p.m. Central.
44. Mentalist's "gift": ESP. Every Single Perp was not required for this initialism of Extrasensory Perception.
45. Installs, as a minister: ORDAINS. Ordains, as a deacon: Deacons.
47. Sound like an ass: BRAY. I'm not touching this one.
49. Blu-ray buy: DISC. lu- added to bray above.
50. Quick breaths: GASPS.
54. "To reiterate ... ": I REPEAT.
57. Like sunset-silhouetted scenery: REAR LIT. A photog like John Lampkin knows how to get the perfect shots .
59. Golfer's goal: PAR. Unless you are a tour player. Then you are looking for birdies or better. Canadian Corey Conners qualified last Monday to play in the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio. He birdied six of nine coming in on Sunday to win the tournament. It was the first time in the last 9 years that a Monday qualifier won a PGA Tour event.
62. From __ Z: A TO. An idiom for beginning to end.
63. Shrek's kiss made Fiona one for good: OGRESS.
64. Hint of the future: OMEN. I don't believe in them.
65. Home in the woods: DEN. I'd prefer a cabin.
66. Treating kindly: GOOD TO.
67. Sunset direction: WEST. On this planet. I assume the same for the others in our solar system.
Down:
1. Ranted (at): JAWED. It's baseball season. So many great clips to choose from. Let's look at this blast from the past for a good example of a couple of guys that jawed at each other:
2. French school: ECOLE.
3. Skin care prefix: DERMA.
4. Annoy: IRK.
5. Sacred place: SHRINE. I wonder if the PGA Tour players had time to stop by the Alamo, and perhaps stroll along the River Walk.
7. Like one's prized music collection, perhaps: ON CD.
8. Small water birds: COOTS. Thank you perps. An internet search tells me they are closely related to the moorhen, which didn't really help me. A group of them is known as a covert or a cover. I don't remember when I was first told that girls had cooties, but I asked my mom and she said it wasn't true. We didn't have the internet back in those days.
9. Big name in canned meat: ARMOUR. Hormel too.
10. Baking soda amt.: TSP.
12. Amtrak employees: ENGINEERS.
13. "My Heart Will Go On" singer Celine: DION. The theme song from Titanic:
18. Flee to wed: ELOPE.
22. Mexican mother: MADRE.
24. Sleep in a bag, maybe: CAMP.
26. Gig component: SET.
29. "Pronto" letters: ASAP.
30. Japanese golf great Aoki : ISAO. Isao Aoki with Arnold Palmer.
I had the exact same clue and answer on March 20th, 2018. Here's the exact same picture and comments:
He credits watching Arnold Palmer for giving him the inspiration to pursue a golfing career.
"Isao Aoki only plays with golf balls marked with the number 5. That number is pronounced “Go” in Japanese and it also represents the worst score he wants to make."
He was elected into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2004. Source - World Golf Hall of Fame.
31. Hardly the best: THIRD RATE.
33. Sounds like a crow: CAWS.
34. Docs who deliver: OBs. Obstetrician.
35. Bausch partner: LOMB.
38. On a scale of one to __: TEN.
39. Sculler's need: OAR.
42. "Please don't bite me!": NICE DOG.
43. Persistently worry: NAG AT.
48. Peter of Peter, Paul & Mary: YARROW. Friend and fellow Cornell student Leonard Lipton wrote a poem in 1959 that Peter Yarrow put into lyrics for this 1962 song that had nothing to do about smoking marijuana or other drug use. - paraphrased from Wikipedia. Our own Bill G went to Cornell.
51. Snail trail: SLIME.
52. Colorado's __ Peak: PIKES. Aaron Kaufman of the Discovery Channel's Fast N' Loud narrates this short clip of him racing up Pikes Peak a few years ago in his '63 Falcon.
53. Cardiologist's implant: STENT.
54. Apple tablet: IPAD.
55. Jason's ship: ARGO. He was searching for the Golden Fleece. Greek mythology. Not my cuppa, but here is an article that shed some light on the story line and players involved. I had no idea that Hercules was an oarsman on the Argo.
56. Lawn mower brand: TORO. I keep thinking about replacing my old John Deere rider. It's a yellow deck STX-38. It was built to last and it has. Faithful service for nearly 30 years.
57. Take a load off: REST.
58. Exxon, formerly: ESSO.
61. Homer's neighbor: NED. Homer Simpson and Ned ("Okilly-dokilly!") Flanders.
Here's the grid !
Notes from C.C.:
1) Lovely grid, John!
2) So what did you shoot yesterday, TTP? 80s?
3) Dear Agnes (Irish Miss) had to spend 5
hours in the ER yesterday due to the excruciating foot pain from the
fall she suffered a few weeks ago. She's going to see her GP tomorrow
and an orthopedic doctor soon. It's been tough few weeks for Agnes, who
lives alone. Please send positive thoughts and love to Troy, New York!
