Defining Cricket
17. Cricket: GAME WITH WICKETS.
25. Cricket: WIRELESS SERVICE.
45. Cricket: DISNEY BUG JIMINY.
59. [Crickets]: AUDIENCE SILENCE.
Four gridspanners !
Across:
1. Center of the Milky Way?: CARAMEL. Thought this might be about the candy bar and not the galaxy, but the use of THE Milky Way, rather than A Milky Way made me wait for a couple of perps.
8. Calder creation: STABILE. Alexander Calder. Here's a pic of his 53' Flamingo 50 ton stabile in front of the Miles Van Der Rohe designed Federal Building in downtown Chicago.
15. First state, in a way: ALABAMA. If the states are listed in alphabetical order. That wasn't my first thought when reading the clue.
16. Journey's end: ARRIVAL.
19. Once, in olden days: ERST.
20. 2000 Bell Atlantic acquisition: GTE. The birth of Verizon.
21. Slashed pronoun: HE / SHE. I struggled with this one. I had the ending HE, and so I tried a beginning SHE, then a nonsensical HER and a HIM. Not surprisingly nothing fit until, as Steve says, "The penny dropped". D'OH !
22. Suspect: PRESUME.
33. Seed-to-be: OVULE.
34. LAX calculation: ETA. Los Angeles Airport / Estimated Time of Arrival. Not that you needed me to spell it out... Oh, by the way, the X means nothing. It's just a filler so the airport code has three letters.
35. Energy source: ATOM. Incredible reactions when harnessed. Atom Ant was a mid '60s Hanna Barbera cartoon. He was incredibly strong. Of course, so was Mighty Mouse and Underdog.
36. They might help you change your position: WANT ADS. One place you might visit if you are looking for a job.
39. Prepare for coating, as aluminum: ANODIZE.
41. Within: Pref.: ENTO. ENdO wouldn't work this time. You must rely on the perp to get the third letter correct.
42. Land of Freud: Abbr.: AUS. I completed a puzzle the other day and the clue was, 'Birthplace of Freud". It needed 7 letters and I confidently entered Austria. The perps didn't support that, and it soon worked out that the answer was Moravia. That answer sent me to the internet.
Both are correct. Moravia was part of the Austrian Empire in the year of his birth, 1856. The area of Moravia became part of Czechoslovakia in 1918 with the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Czechoslovakia broke up in 1993 to become the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the Moravia region became part of the Czech Republic.
44. Scrooge: MISER.
49. Beat by a hair: NOSE OUT. Edge. Made me think of a photo finish horse race.
50. Wheat species that's also a British past tense: SPELT. Not fooled. Wheat belt farmers like PK would know this.
54. Article in Bonn: DER. All nouns in German are either masculine, feminine or neuter. The little word in front, the article, will tell you the gender. Another tidbit ? As you know, in English, only proper nouns are capitalized, but in German, ALL nouns are capitalized.
Here are the German definite and indefinite articles:
der - the (masculine)
die - the (feminine)
das - the (neuter)
ein - a (masculine and neuter)
eine - a (feminine)
Thank you Rocket Languages for the lesson.
Your challenge when solving a crossword is to recognize the gender, but like a number of Spanish clues that don't give you a hint (compare the clue "Other, in Spanish" to the clues, "Juan's other" or "Juanita's other") you are going to have to get the perp to be correct. Or get lucky.
55. Fraternity activity: RUSH. "He doesn't always listen to RUSH, but when he does, the whole neighborhood does too".
63. Like answers that lower test scores: IN ERROR.
64. Pre-owned item: USED CAR. A specific answer to a general clue. Friday worthy.
65. Top-rated TV show of 1984-'85: DYNASTY. Who shot JR ? Oh wait, that was Dallas. This was prime time show designed to be competition to Dallas, and it eventually worked.
66. WWII vessels: PT BOATS. Patrol Torpedo. Saw my first one watching McHale's Navy.
Down:
1. Source of tweets ... or growls: CAGE. Another very good Friday clue that required creative thinking.
2. Defunct fruit coating: ALAR. The FDA approved the spray that was used on apple trees (and cherries) to regulate growth so the apples didn't ripen and fall to the ground too early. A few years later, questionable EPA testing and a questionable 60 Minutes feature story incorrectly terming it a pesticide raised significant public awareness that it was a carcinogenic. Public concern (deemed "hysteria" by many, but especially the apple growers) created the "Alar Scare" that caused the manufacturer to withdraw the product.
3. Barrels into: RAMS.
4. Help the bad guys: ABET.
5. Big mouth: MAW.
6. Political refugee: EMIGRE.
7. Barista's output: LATTES. Didn't we have LATTE ART recently as the answer ?
8. Understood: SAW. Tried got first. No bueno.
9. Start to cycle?: TRI. I had to go from one wheel to three wheels to complete this answer.
10. Many a Middle-earth combatant: ARCHER. When I see Middle-earth, I think of J.R.R Tolkein. You ?
11. Eco-friendly carrier: BIKE. Clever. Bicycle, and arguably, motorcycle when compared other motorized vehicles.
12. Composer Charles: IVES.
13. Plastering strip: LATH.
14. Other than this: ELSE.
18. 1946 Literature Nobelist: HESSE. Perps. Don't know how a person could answer this based on the clue alone, unless they were were a literature expert. It is Friday.
22. __ bargain: PLEA.
23. Sports gp. that originally had "Lawn" in its name: USTA. I usta play tennis. Got smoked in the very first tournament I entered. It was a small town contest run by the parks department. Still have the Wilson T2000.
24. Nasty: MEAN. Ilie Nastase's nickname was Nasty, but I think that was a bit unfair. He was no shrinking violet. That's for sure. But he wasn't nasty.
25. Knocked the socks off: WOWED.
26. Grand Prince of Moscow, 1328-'40: IVAN I.
27. Litters' littlest: RUNTS. Easy to think the response would be singular.
28. John of music: ELTON. Sir Elton.
29. "Barbarella" director Roger: VADIM. I saw the movie but didn't think much of it. Kinda goofy. Would never have got this without the M in JIMINY. And four others.
30. Formal identification: IT IS I. Formal, in the sense that it is the grammatically correct response. Nice clue.
31. Deceive: COZEN. To trick or cheat, or obtain by deception. There's a large law firm in Philly called Cozen O'Connor that has probably had to bear the brunt of many jokes.
32. Board at one's fingertips: EMERY.
37. How "The Banana Boat Song" begins: DAY O. Why was this song popular ?
38. Fills in: SUBS. Substitutes. Husker Gary is apt to fill the void when a teacher needs time off.
40. Drop: OMIT.
43. Soft leather: SUEDE.
46. Takes the stage: ENTERS. Thespians, musicians, emcees, comics, public speakers etc. They all strive to take the stage.
47. Becomes harder to afford: GOES UP. What goes up, must come down. Spinning wheel, got to go 'round.
48. Legal scholar: JURIST.
50. Came out with: SAID.
51. Inconsequential: PUNY. Not of significant concern. Mere.
52. Early banishment site: EDEN.
53. Pre-Euro currency: LIRA.
55. Start from scratch: REDO.
56. Donald, to Huey, Dewey and Louie: UNCA. Comic strip vocalization of uncle. The characters are a Walt Disney production.
57. "Get lost!": SCAT.
58. "... nor shall ever see that face of __ again": Lear: HERS.
60. Excluding: NOT.
61. Shout: CRY.
62. Syr. neighbor: LEB. Syria and Lebanon.
