Today we get a return visit from constructor Jim Holland, whose last
puzzle here was on
December 17, 2020
and who started with us nearly 10 years ago on
December 18, 2011. Perhaps Lemony can add some spice to this from his secret stash.
Jim is not revealing his theme, but it appears to involve adding an S to common phrases, thus transforming them into PUNISHING new ones:
17A. Fan on a farm?: SWINE COOLER. A riff on WINE COOLER, for those who use a thermometer to
check their wine temperatures. Very expensive. We keep the REDS in the cellar because it's cool, and we keep WHITES and ROSÉS in the refrigerator.
27. Hors d'oeuvres for a horror movie?:
SCREAM CHEESE. A take on CREAM CHEESE. Teri makes a delicious dish with cream
cheese, cream, butter, shrimp, fresh peas, and pasta.
Yummy!
49A. Surveillance snacks?:
STAKEOUT FOOD. A riff on TAKEOUT FOOD. Cops can get pretty hungry on a 7 x
24 stake out, and the Brit bobbies seem to prefer CHINESE or
KEBABS (see 50D for a recipe).
64A. Finishing touch
for a gastropod?: SNAIL POLISH. A take on NAIL POLISH. My NAILS are galvanized, so
they don't need to be polished.
And if that weren't enough,
here's some more
polysemous
punishment ...
Across:
1. Geometry numbers: AREAS.
6. Shows displeasure (at): CARPS. I don't mean to be
KOI
about it, but if you eat a
CARP, you'll probably
CARP
about it for days.
11. Part of A&E?: AND. AND? Is that all?
14. Absorb: SOP UP. In case you've been wondering
what the difference is between absorb and adsorb?
15. Ferrell's "SNL" cheerleading partner: OTERI. We did that
clip in a previous review where CHERI appeared. She is well
known for her impersonations, especially of BABA WAWA and here
she is seen interviewing herself:
16. Card-beats-card game: WAR. As it's a perennial favorite, here's a quote from Ambrose Bierce:
19. Shakespearean title noun: ADO. As in Much Ado About Nothing, the story of Beatrice and Benedick. Which Begins here ...
... followed by Much Ado about literally Nothing (you'll have to read the play to find out what it Isn't) ...
...and then Ends here ...
21. Wrestling place: MAT.
22. "Armageddon" author: URIS. Leon Marcus Uris (August 3, 1924 (Baltimore, MD – June 21, 2003 (Shelter Island, NY)) was an American author of historical fiction who wrote many bestselling books including Exodus (published in 1958) and Trinity (published in 1976). Armageddon: A Novel of Berlin, is a chronicle which ends with the lifting of the Berlin Blockade in 1949.
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| Uris in Israel in the 1950s |
23. Chain founded by Ingvar Kamprad: IKEA. As the founder's name sounded suspiciously Sveedish, it had to be IKEA. Which painfully reminds me, three IKEA drawers in one of my office cabinets have been jammed shut for years and will have to be opened somehow before we can sell this house!
25. Movie trailers: TEASERS. You've been teased enough for one day.
31. "Gotcha!": OHO.
32. Head of Paris: TETE. Today's French lesson. LOO was too short.
33. Like some escapes: NARROW.
37. Done in: BEAT.
39. AOL, e.g.: ISP. Internet Service Provider. One of the earliest. And I'm pretty sure we had it two weeks ago.
41. Aria, say: SOLO. Here's Mimi pouring her heart out in the eponymous La Bohème:
42. Watch all night, maybe: STREAM. BINGE might have been better, but you need to be able STREAM to do it.
45. Topers: SOTS. Those who tope too much.
48. High flier until 2001: MIR. The Russian space station Mir ended its mission on 23 March 2001, when it was "deorbited", entered the atmosphere and was destroyed. The next time you see MIR, it'll probably be clued "Deorbited in 2001".
52. Make like the original: RESTORE.
55. Hurry away: FLEE.
56. Place for a bid: EBAY.
57. Arabic "son of": IBN. Today's Arabic lesson. Everything you want to know about Arabic name structures, of which IBN is only a small part.
59. Syrup once used as a poison remedy: IPECAC. No longer used for these reasons. IPECAC causes vomiting and has been abused by bulimics, notably singer Karen Carpenter who probably died as a result of it.
63. No-frills bed: COT. The plural COTS is a also an acronym for Commercial Off-the-shelf Software, a better alternative to "rolling your own", unless you really know what you're doing. Of course you still need to know what you're doing to implement COTS based systems. These people will sell you a COTS product to help you implement your COTS products! Something I like to call the "Cybernetic Imperative".
66. Aussie school: UNI.
67. Cellist Casals: PABLO. Pau Casals i Defilló ( 29 December 1876 – 22 October 1973), usually known in English by his Spanish name Pablo Casals was a Catalan and Puerto Rican cellist, composer, and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century and one of the greatest cellists of all time. Click here to hear him play Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: IV. Sarabande.
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Pablo Casals with his Stradivarius Cello |
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68. Capone henchman known as "The Enforcer": NITTI.
Francesco Raffaele Nitto, January 27, 1886 – March 19, 1943), known as Frank Nitti,
was an Italian-born American gangster in Chicago. Nitti was in charge of all
money flowing through the operation. He later succeeded Capone as boss of
the Chicago Outfit. No mug shot for him!
69. Whiskey choice: RYE. One brand was originally distilled
just up the road from where we live in Pikesville, MD,
now produced in Louisville, Kentucky:
71. Early computer: ENIAC. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer made in 1945. It was Turing-complete and able to solve "a large class of numerical problems" through reprogramming. Here's a comparison of the ENIAC to your cell phone.
Down:
1. Part of NCAA: Abbr.: ASSN. The sponsors of March Madness. This was prepared to help students of English as a Second Language understand this madness (but maybe useful to sports noobs on the Corner as well, e.g. yours truly).
2. "Dirty Jobs" host Mike: ROWE. You never know what kind of "dirt" you can surf up on somebody on the Internet. Here is philosopher Mike Rowe, in a church in Baltimore, describing a "tough job" he once had: that of auditioning for the role of the philosopher Shaunard, singing his heart out as he set off to the Paris streets to sell his trusty overcoat to buy medicine for la Bohème, whom we met in 41A, and who is now dying:
3. Large-scale tale: EPIC. For example The Epic of Gilgamesh. a lengthy poem from ancient Mesopotamia c. 2100 BC, and probably the origin of the story of Noah's flood in the Hebrew Bible. Gilgamesh is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts:
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The Deluge tablet of the Gilgamesh epic |
"Ahem", I can hear Vidwan saying, "You call those Epics? I'll give you Epics!"
4. Pretzel chain __ Anne's: AUNTIE.
5. Deliver an address for: SPEAK AT. I could try the groaner about the Gettysburg Address, but MalMan beat me to it last Thursday.
6. Soft cry: COO. The cry of a Pigeon or Mourning Dove perhaps?
7. __ smasher: ATOM. The first cyclotron ("atom smasher"), invented by Ernest Lawrence and colleagues in 1931, was a mere 4" in diameter. Its modern successor, the CERN Large Hadron Collider, first turned on in September of 2008 is 17 miles across. Here's an aerial view:
9. Many a junior high student: PRETEEN.
10. Polite title: SIR. Or MAAM. Like my Mom always said, "Mind your manners!"
11. Clued in: AWARE. I hope everyone was clued in on this clue.
12. Zenith's opposite: NADIR. More Arabic. The NADIR at a given point is the local vertical direction pointing in the direction of the force of gravity at that location. The direction opposite of the NADIR is the ZENITH.
18. Liqueur word: CREME.
22. Password creators: USERS. There are as many ways to create passwords as there are USERS (who are just another SYSTEM component in the eyes of many programmers). My passwords are constructed from acronyms derived from selected verses of PSALMS, and are probably still hackable. A CSO for your method.
24. "Hamlet" beginning: ACT I. Or to be more specific “Who's there?”
26. Solid-rock link: AS A. Not always, e.g. Pumice, which is more like solidified foam. Still solid I guess, but not something you'd want to build a house on.
27. Emotional outbursts: SOBS.
28. Guitarist Atkins: CHET. Chester Burton "Chet" Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician, occasional vocalist, songwriter, and record producer who helped create the Nashville sound. My Dad's kind of music:
29. "I am woman, hear me __ ... ": Helen Reddy lyric: ROAR. Helen Maxine Reddy (25 October 1941 – 29 September 2020) was an Australian-American singer, songwriter, author, actress, and activist. Born in Melbourne, Victoria, to a show-business family, Reddy started her career as an entertainer at age four. Her feminist anthem "I am woman" is her most famous song, but she did write lots of others and also covered songs by others, like this number one hit written by Alan O'Day:
30. "Steppenwolf" author: HESSE. Hermann Karl Hesse (2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (my favorite novel), each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Hermann Hesse |
34. Former Dallas QB Tony: ROMO.
Antonio Ramiro Romo
(born April 21, 1980) is a former American football quarterback and analyst
who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons with the
Dallas Cowboys.
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| Romo before the 2008 Pro Bow |
35. Hodgepodge: OLIO. This review perhaps? It's just a smorgasbord, so sample what you like.
36. "Agreed!": WORD. Has anyone heard "WORD!" used as slang for AGREED? Or could it be the most generic definition for "Agreed!", a WORD? Our favorite extinct reptile doesn't seem to AGREE:
40. Sound accompanying a disappearance: POOF. This is the second time I've had this in a month. I can't seem to make it disappear.
43. From __ Z: A TO. The entire GAMUT.
44. Places to tie up: MARINAS. Often pretty swanky places. Here's the Baltimore Inner Harbor Marina. That's the Rusty Scupper restaurant in the foreground. Great crab cakes:
46. Spring bloom: TULIP. You can get the blooms or the bulbs year round from Holland, the TULIP capital of the world.
50. Skewered foods: KEBABS. Here's a recipe!
51. "You've Lost That Lovin' __": 1964 hit: FEELIN. "Blue-eyed Soul" by The Righteous Brothers:
52. Arise anew: RECUR.
53. Dark wood: EBONY. Ebony is a dense black/brown hardwood, most commonly yielded by several species in the genus Diospyros, which also contains the persimmons. Ebony is dense enough to sink in water. It is finely textured and has a mirror finish when polished, making it valuable as an ornamental wood. It is also considered an endangered species:
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Rough Ebony |
54. "Sonatine Bureaucratique" composer: SATIE. The Sonatine bureaucratique (Bureaucratic sonatina) is a 1917 piano composition by Erik Satie. The final entry in his "humoristic" piano music of the 1910s, it is Satie's only full-scale parody of a single musical work: the Sonatina Op. 36 N° 1 (1797) by Muzio Clementi. The score is annotated with satirical remarks above the musical notes, which you'll see if you follow along:
58. Africa's Blue __: NILE. The Blue Nile is a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. It travels for approximately 1,450 km (900 mi) through Ethiopia and Sudan. Along with the White Nile, it is one of the two major tributaries of the Nile, and supplies about 80% of the water in the Nile during the rainy season.
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The Course of the Blue Nile |
60. __ Field: Mets' home: CITI. The home of the New York Mets.
61. Whodunit dog: ASTA. The Cornerite's favorite puzzle pooch and pursuer of perps. But even ASTA (alias SKIPPY) was guilty of a misdemeanor.
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Asta in the Director's Chair |
62. Geek __: CHIC. I used to be a GEEK, but nobody has EVER accused me of being CHIC. Apparently such a thing really does exist: for girls and for guys.
64. Place for a peel: SPA. Doesn't sound very appeeling to me.
65. "'Salem's __": Stephen King novel: LOT. King's second novel. Scary stuff!.
Here's the grid:
waseeley
Cheers,
Bill
And thanks as always to Teri for proofreading and constructive criticism.
