Happy Thursday, cruciverbalists! While it is not yet time for us to
poke our heads out, I hope that 2021 has gotten off to a good start with
everyone staying safe and healthy.
If you were scratching your head over the theme of today's puzzle it is
safe to assume that you had plenty of (socially distanced)
company. Prison breaks are, by nature, difficult to discover. These
were. Even after solving the "tell", this moronic marine mammal had to stare at
the completed grid for several minutes before the theme answers slowly
revealed themselves.
I tried looking backwards and forwards within each of the long answers.
Nothing. Puns? Homophones? Anagrams? Still stumped. MaryEllen had purposely used "puzzle
rows" and not "answers" in her hint to the theme so, perhaps, I should look
at entire rows. The hint also contained the word "break" so something
had likely been broken apart. Even with these insights I then wasted
time looking for some form of symmetry of which there was, well,
none. Finally, it dawned on me.
Simply put, on four rows of the puzzle, synonyms for PRISON have been
broken apart and wait patiently for us to reassemble them. Of
course, once the theme had been figured out, and the letters involved had
been identified, everything appeared to be obvious.
Let's start with the reveal at 65 Across: "The Shawshank Redemption" event, and what's hidden in
four puzzle rows: PRISON BREAK.
At 17 Across we have - Angry reaction: HORNETS NEST followed at 19 Across by - "This American Life" host Glass: IRA
The end of the first answer combines with the start of the second to
from STIR, a slangy word for
prison.
At 27 Across we are asked to solve for - Indian noble: RAJA followed by 31 Across - Surly: ILLNATURED
As above, parts of these answers combine to yield JAIL.
..and so on,
38 Across - It went down in history: TITANIC and 40 Across - Connects with:LINKSTO.
CLINK is another slang term for
prison
47 Across - Stable cleaner: SADDLE SOAP and 51 Across - Tolkien tree creatures: ENTS.
PEN is, well, we get it, we get
it.
Here is what this all looks like in the grid:
Now that we have successfully escaped the confines of our puzzle penitentiary
let's take a look at the rest of today's challenge:
Across:
1. Bobbleheads, e. g.: DOLLS. Do they have
to represent humans?
6. Jury decision: AWARD. Verdict was the first impulse but, of course, did not fit in the
allotted space.
11. Pair of Grammys?: EMS. We have seen this type of clue
and answer many times previously...and you know that this MM appreciates
EMS.
14. "It's __ time!": ABOUT. A straightforward
fill-in-the-blank clue. The seven-letter modifier is implicit.
15. Old photo tint: SEPIA.
A SEPIA PHOTO
16. Dwarf who mixes up his words: DOC. He's the one with
the eyeglasses.
DISNEY'S SEVEN DWARFS
20. Meeting goal often not achieved: LENGTH.
21. Nuclear energy device: REACTOR. You can build your
own.
23. Lip: SASS. Impudence by any name.
26.
Firefighter's tool: HOSE.
35. Soft palate projection: UVULA.
37. Not what one would expect: IRONIC.
AIRPLANE 2
44. Mexican bread: DINERO. Bread, of course, being slang
for money.
46. Single-master: SLOOP. This version of "The Sloop
John B" involves both The Beach Boys and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra:
SEE HOW THE MAINSAIL SETS
52. Palm tree superfood: ACAI. A current-day
crossword, and for some folks dietary, staple. ACAI was found in yesterday's puzzle. Manatees rarely eat ACAI berries.
53. Ancient home: EDEN. If the stories are to be
believed, the most ancient of all.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
55. Predator with a heart-shaped face: BARN OWL.
59. Card game with trumps: EUCHRE. Not
Bridge. Not Whist.
64. Hurricane season mo.: OCT. The Atlantic
Hurricane Season officially runs from June 1st through November
30th.
68. Cravat or ascot: TIE. Not to be confused with
18 Down. Two weeks ago the puzzle demanded No TIE.
69. Like Caspar Milquetoast: TIMID. Caspar
Milquetoast is a comic strip character created for the strip "Timid
Soul" that launched in 1925.
CASPAR MILQUETOAST
70. Give a false idea of: BELIE.
71.
Low: SAD.
72. Deposit in the attic,
say: STORE.
73. Cheerleaders'
assortment: YELLS.
EAST LAKE HIGH SCHOOL SPARTANS
Down:
1. "James and the Giant Peach" author: DAHL. Roald
DAHL was a spy, a fighter pilot and a medical inventor as well
as an author. In addition to the clue's referenced work,
he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda.
2. Wind heard in Dion's "Abraham, Martin and
John": OBOE. Although oboes, of course, are
heard frequently in our puzzles this is one of the best clues
yet.
Dion DiMucci
3. Desolate: LORN. LORN means lonely and
abandoned. We more often see forlorn.
4. Organ in a chest: LUNG.
5. Decides to leave alone: STETS. STET is a
proofreader's mark for Let It Stand. Rarely, though, do we
see it used as a verb.
6. Biblical mount: ASS.
BALAAM'S ASS
7. Harmless cyst: WEN. This week's "I'll pass
on the graphics" moment.
8. Imitator: APER. Outside of puzzles one
rarely sees, or hears, APER or Aped. Within puzzles we
commonly see them both.
9. Slope: RISE.
SLOPE INTERCEPT (y = mx + b)
10. It may be crunched: DATA.
11. Spell-checker, say: EDITOR. Literally true
but I'd bet that most of us first thought of something
word-processing-related
12. Lacking in joy: MOROSE. Our second ASS of
the day (if one chooses not to count Peter Griffin):
EEYORE
13. Rustled (up): SCARED.
Colloquialisms. SCARED up something to eat, Rustled up
some grub.
18. Bangkok native: THAI. There is nothing
else quite like a tuk-tuk ride through the streets of Bangkok,
THAIland.
22. Private laugh: CHUCKLE. Chuckles are
laughs that are quiet, inward or suppressed.
24. Golfing mishaps: SLICES.
25. Camera type, briefly: SLR. A Single Lens Reflex camera uses a mirror and prism to allow the photographer
to see exactly what will be captured on the film or digitally.
27. Rural road feature: RUT.
28. Prefix with fauna: AVI. A reference to
the birds of a particular region. I am most familiar with
these:
29. Stick (out): JUT.
30. 2019 Mena Massoud title
role: ALADDIN.
32. Free of commissions, as a mutual fund: NO LOAD.
33. Young Darth: ANI. A "Star Wars" reference
and a "diminutive" name to boot.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER
34. Cookie containers: TINS.
36. Indigo plant: ANIL. I only know this from
crossword puzzles...and the perps helped to recall it.
39. Having four sharps: IN E. This answer
obviously assumes that the clue was talking about a Major
musical key. The relative minor of E Major is C Sharp
Minor and it also has four sharps.
41. Absalom, to David: SON. A biblical
reference to a story about family dynamics.
DAVID AND ABSALOM
42. "PAW Patrol" fan: TOT. Paw Patrol is a
children's television series that premiered in 2013.
THE PAW PATROL
43. Special ___: OPS. Both OPTS and OPS in the
same puzzle!
45. Caviar: ROE. I went to a sushi
bar and ordered salmon roe. It was a spawn-taneous
decision.
47. Clogs: SABOTS. In this instance, a shoe reference. My friend Jon's
father had a small sailboat that we would sometimes take out in
the marina. It was far too small for the open sea. The
logo on the sail, and the type of boat it was, was a SABOT.
48. Thorny shrub: ACACIA. Both
ACACIA and ACAI in the same puzzle!
54. Lumpy, as a knit fabric: NUBBY. This type
of fabric is rarely seen in crossword puzzles but it has been
seen before.
56. Comes down on one side of something: OPTS.
An intentionally somewhat obtuse clue? Not incorrect,
merely less straightforward than it needed to be. Oh,
wait, it's a crossword puzzle. They do that all the time.
57. Court order: WRIT.
58. Ride to the prom: LIMO. Perhaps riding in
a LIMO is now commonplace but it sure wasn't when this manatee
was in High School. Further, unless PROM is considered to
be an abbreviation for something, there is nothing in the clue
that indicates LIMO in lieu of Limousine.
60. Algonquin language: CREE. Often, CREE is
clued with a reference to the Canadian indigenous population.
61. Severe criticism: HELL. We rarely see
"semi-swear-words" in puzzles.
1948 CAMPAIGN BUTTON
62. Fence crosspiece: RAIL.
POST AND RAIL FENCING
63. Manages to get, with "out": EKES. We see
this one a lot. I sometimes get confused between EKES and
EEKS.
66. Military address: SIR. A bit of
misdirection as APO (Army Post Office) is commonly seen as an
answer to similar clues.
67. "To Autumn," for one: ODE. What would a
puzzle be without ODE somewhere in the grid?
1) Wendybird, hope you and Jack make a full recovery soon!
2) Happy Birthday to dear JD, who also enjoys traveling the world like Hahtoolah. The second picture was taken from the same trip but on a cruise ship, I think.
