Saturday, August 22, 2020, Joe Deeney

Saturday Themeless by Joe Deeney

Joe and his lovely daughter born in April

This challenging Saturday pinwheel-style puzzle by, Joe our Supply Chain Project Manager in Massachusetts, took some effort. Another New Yorker cartoonist, an obscure desert, a familiar word used as a sailing term and a city in South Sudan were partially balanced by my instant recognition of ENOS Slaughter, SEA-TAC and PARSEC. Here's a nice note from Joe along with a new picture of him and his daughter:

Hi Gary,

Hope you are doing well. I've attached a more recent picture for you to use.

As with last month's puzzle, this came out of experimenting with how many 10-letter entries I could reasonably fit into the grid. Would have loved to lose the cheater squares and get two more, but I couldn't make the NW work in a way that was both clean enough and colorful enough. I tinker with this grid pattern every so often to try to 
make that work for a future puzzle - maybe someday. For this one, I tried to make each corner of this puzzle as lively as possible without sacrificing too much to weak shorter fill. ONER is a dud as is the plural IANS, but most of the rest is O.K. Lots of trial and error with this one - I don't remember what the original seed was, but I do remember that it's no longer in the puzzle - It was in the SE corner and I ended up redoing the entire corner later on. Glad my clue for TASTE TEST survived. 

-Joe

Let's see what Joe has put into the supply chain here at our little popsicle stand. 

Across: 


1. NASCAR stat: MPH - I first thought it might be LAP because NASCAR does compile the number of LAPS led and it's Saturday but...

4. Afternoon entertainment staples: SOAP OPERAS.

14. Asia's __-Kum Desert: KARA - KARAKUM or KARA-KUM

15. Certain junkie's stimulus: ADRENALINE - Some people like our crossword friend Evel are called ADRENALINE junkies 

16. Slaughter on the diamond: ENOS - This N.C. boy had the nickname of "Country"

17. One sharing a pedigree: LITTER MATE - Mom and five LITTER MATES - three white and two black

18. Frittata base: EGGS - A Frittata compared to an omelet

19. Inexperienced: UNSEASONED.

20. Combined: POOLED - Many shrinking outstate Nebraska schools have POOLED resources to keep their academic and athletic programs going

22. Belgian or brown: ALE.

23. Canonized pope known as "The Great": ST LEO - 440 - 461 A.D.

24. Sea-__: TAC - It's about a 27 min drive from the SEAttle-TAComa airport to the Space Needle

26. Longtime New Yorker cartoonist Roz: CHAST - Last week Chris Adams had New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno in his puzzle

31. Starbucks selection: CAFFE MOCHA - A venti costs $4, has 240 cals and 150 mg of caffeine 

34. Pi, for a circle with a radius of one: AREA - AREA of a circle = A = π r². So if the radius of a circle is 1, the circle's sAREA = π x 1 x 1 = π

35. Where the action in Chicago's County General Hospital took place: ON ER.

36. Peripheral: OUTER.

37. "Phooey!": RATS.

38. Folklore fiend: OGRE.

39. Folklore trickster: BRER RABBIT - A tale of fooling someone into doing exactly what you want them to do. 

41. Gets rid of: LOSES - C'mon, you know the rest (*answer below)

43. Recognizes: IDS.

44. "The Red House Mystery" author: MILNE - His only mystery book (1922) predated Winnie The Pooh by three years (1925)

45. Delivery pros: OBS.

47. "Truly!": HONEST.

48. "Truly!": I CAN NOT LIE - Every wedding dance we go to these days features the song, I Like Big ______, I CAN NOT LIE.

54. Stadium ticket info: GATE.

55. Some white research subjects: ALBINO MICE.

56. Freudian subjects: EGOS - Let's boil it down

57. Cosmetic coating: NAIL ENAMEL.

58. Little pig, maybe: RUNT 

59. Great places to make contact: SWEET SPOTS 

60. Match with chips: SEE.

Down:

1. Rhyming cocktail: MANGO TANGO - Or a fruity drink sans liquor

Ingredients

• 3 cups ice
• 1 12oz bag frozen mango chunks
• 1 15.2oz Odwalla® Mango Tango® flavored smoothie
• 1 lime
• Chamoy sauce

2. Ones working on the links: PRO GOLFERS - Blog editors just wouldn't fit

3. Easy to use: HASSLE FREE - Turbo Tax for me

4. Mexican toast: SALUD.

5. God played by Anthony Hopkins in "Thor": ODIN.

6. Fine __: ARTS.

7. H.S. instructors who show you the ropes?: PE TEACHERS - A nightmare for many

8. "Inside the NBA" analyst: O'NEAL - Shaq

9. About 3.26 light-years: PARSEC - Like a light year, it's a measure of distance not time

10. Muppet who refers to himself in the third person: ELMO.

11. "Knives Out" writer/director Johnson: RIAN - I was told I would really like this movie

12. Required wager: ANTE.

13. Tournament position: SEED - A #16 SEED in the NCAA Basketball Tournament has to be a sacrificial lamb for a #1 SEED. At least they made it to the tournament

14. Doesn't freak out: KEEPS COOL - This courageous woman did and helped change a nation

21. Fair-hiring letters: EOE.

24. Hotel handout: TOURIST MAP - I just use my phone now but I really liked the 3-D ones

25. Didn't do nothing: ACTED - I can hear our grammarians grinding their teeth. They'd press for "Did something" instead of the double negative.

27. Precursors: HARBINGERS - My spring HARBINGER of The Masters got postponed

28. Group that suspended Syria in 2011: ARAB LEAGUE.

29. Permanent: SET IN STONE.

30. Challenge often undertaken while blindfolded: TASTE TEST.

32. Unruly group: MOB.

33. Talk Like a Pirate Day syllable: ARR.

40. "Te __": Rihanna song: AMO - Te Quiero Mucho (I Love You Very Much) is what you might say to your mom rather than the romantically tinged Te AMO

42. Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus," e.g.: SONNET - The last five lines can be found at the Statue Of Liberty

46. Godsends: BOONS - Ten movies that proved to be a BOON to sales of a product

47. Tips to one side: HEELS - Happy to learn a new use for this word

48. Olympic swimmers Crocker and Thorpe: IANS - Not Joe's fav fill. 


49. Arcade game grabber: CLAW.

50. Irish Rose's beau: ABIE - The poster for the comedy ABIE'S Irish Rose (about a Jewish boy marrying an Irish Catholic girl) performed in Brooklyn in 1928

51. Juba's river: NILE - Here you see the White Nile emerging from Lake Victoria, flowing through Juba, the capital of South Sudan and then proceeding up to Khartoum, Sudan where it joins the Blue Nile which continues on to the Mediterranean. 

52. Long way to go?: LIMOusine 

53. Rapper-turned-actor: ICE T.

*No soup for you!

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