The reveal: 63-Across. Hair problem, and what three short puzzle answers each has: SPLIT END.
Chairman Moe here, trying to "tackle" the elusive "split end" that Lewis Rothlein featured in today's crossword puzzle. Not the easiest of tasks for this blogger, as I had to cheat several times in solving the puzzle. And then I had absolutely NO CLUE about the puzzle's "reveal" until my sister (who is visiting us for awhile) looked at the filled-in puzzle grid, and saw the SPLIT ENDS.
Let's insert the grid now, and please pay attention to the letters in red, including the circled ones:
First things first: if your puzzle came with no circles, this would be almost impossible to find. Second, the clue (in 63-Across; "what three short puzzle answers each has") was a bit misleading at first. This puzzle is filled with 3-letter answers, not circled. But I digress. Even looking at the circled "words" and trying to make heads or tails from them, all I saw were: CIM/MIC; TIP/PIT; SEY/YES; NOT/TON; DOG/GOD; and TOP/POT. And what, pray tell, did all of these mean? Four of the six circled words were "mirrored anagrams": TIP/PIT; NOT/TON; DOG/GOD; and TOP/POT. Hmm.
My first thought as I began blogging was to look at the uppermost circles: MIC and TIP. The "ends" of these words are "split" apart from their beginnings. What is a MIC TIP you ask?
Same with TOP and DOG.
And the third SPLIT END is NOT YES, it's HELL YES!
But then, as the clues and answers unfolded (I was all the way to 10-Down. "Sure!": WHY), when it finally hit me like a can of V-8! The "SPLIT ENDS" are: HOT MIC, HOT TIP, WHY NOT, WHY YES, AND LAPTOP, LAP DOG! Duh. All of these resemble what a SPLIT END looks like!! I hope it didn't take all y'all as long to figure it out as it took me. I literally wrote over 50% of the blog before I got it. And after devoting about 2-1/2 hours to my draft, I am not going to re-write the whole thing! So just bear with me, OK??!!
Anyway, that's my story and I am sticking to it!! Thanks, Lewis for a VERY CLEVER puzzle
Across:
1. "Born From Jets" automaker: SAAB. Not your average SAAB story
5. Fiscal exec: CFO. Chief Financial Officer
8. Sign of danger: BEWARE.
14. Like letters in an outbox: UNMAILED. Do you folks still use a mailbox flag to indicate your UNMAILED letters?
16. Transport again: RE-HAUL. Different than U-HAUL I presume . . .
17. Connecticut home of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament: STAMFORD. Learning moment for me. Perhaps my Friday blog partner-in-crime, (and native to the Nutmeg State) Lemonade714 would care to comment?
18. Nobody special: ANYONE.
19. One may reveal a secret: HOT. As in HOT TIP! A HOT MIC is not shown, but refers to a microphone that is active
20. Inconsistent: STREAKY. As a college student in the early '70's, my first thought about seeing the root word for this is captured by Ray Stevens below:
22. Pro Bowl side: Abbr.: NFC. National Football Conference. Or could've been AFC. Pro Football all star game. Football used to have SPLIT ENDS until they re-named them wide receivers. And if the game goes 23-Across. Past regulation, briefly: we would say that it's IN O.T.
25. Land in the ocean: ISLE.
26. Cal Poly setting, initially: SLO. San Luis Obispo. California Polytechnic Institute has a campus here. See the map image below, courtesy of Google Maps ... San Luis Obispo is north of Santa Barbara ...
27. Morlock prey: ELOI. You knew this, right? The ELOI are one of the two fictional post-human races, along with the Morlocks, in H. G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine
29. Area 51 figures, supposedly: ETS. This link courtesy of Brittanica dot com has a lot of information, as well as an imbedded video worth watching. Are they really revealing the truth about Extra Terrestrial BeingS? What about this picture?
30. Way to earn interest?: FLIRT. Cute clue
32. Recipe amts.: TSPS.
34. "1984" superstate: OCEANIA. H.G. Wells with ELOI and now George Orwell with OCEANIA from the book Nineteen Eighty-Four
36. Find: LOCATE.
39. Lab tubes: PIPETS. Moe-ku:
Great Expectations
Was translated to Klingon.
Named, "PIP", for ET'S
40. Comparable things: ANALOGS. This one was a stretch for me. Too Friday-ish perhaps?
42. "Black Narcissus" figures: NUNS. Perps filled in this answer for me. A 1947 movie in which a group of Anglican NUNS, led by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), are sent to a mountain in the Himalayas
43. Word on mail from Toledo, maybe: AEREO. "Apartado aéreo" in Spanish means "air section/air post office", in English ... I think ... Toledo as in the city in Spain
44. Abate: EBB. Crossword puzzle staple
46. Just the best: TOPS. See the TOP DOG reference in the intro
49. __ thai: PAD. PAD Thai is stir-fry dish made with rice noodles, shrimp, chicken, or tofu, peanuts, a scrambled egg and bean sprouts. The ingredients are sautéed together in a wok and tossed in a delicious pad thai sauce
50. Mystery novelist Paretsky: SARA. SARA Paretsky is an American author of detective fiction, best known for her novels focused on the protagonist V. I. Warshawski
51. Sine qua non: NEED. From Latin. Loosely translated means: an essential condition; a thing that is absolutely necessary. NEED. Friday clue. But the wine geek in me saw this clue and thought about a California cult wine called "Sine Qua Non"
53. One often chosen for lightness: LAP. As in LAP TOP! Cats love them, and fittingly, the picture below ALSO shows a LAPTOP computer. No LAP DOG in this first picture, but the second one is questionable, methinks
54. Arced woodshop tools: C CLAMPS. Used in carpentry
57. Mex. title: SRA. SenoRA
58. Hercule's creator: AGATHA. Big day for books and authors. Wells, Orwell, Paretsky, and now Christie. Methinks our constructor must enjoy books and reading
60. "Join us for lunch?" regrets: I'VE EATEN. Sure; makes sense
62. Put back in the fridge: RE-COOL. Meh. Not an expression I would use
64. Drafted: DREW UP. Also defined as bringing a body of troops in array
65. Many a quote, for short: EST. LOL!
66. "South Park" co-creator Parker: TREY. Perps. I've heard of "South Park" but not the co-creator. Here is a clip of TREY Parker's favorite episode
Down:
1. Temaki or futomaki: SUSHI.
2. San __: Texas city nickname: ANTONE. Not gonna diss this clue and answer, because phoenetically, it fits. But just as natives from San Francisco do not refer to their city as "Frisco", neither do San Antonians refer to their city as "San ANTONE". Just sayin'
3. Explosive mixture: AMATOL. A high explosive consisting of a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate
4. "Kapow!": BAM.
5. Thicken, as cream: CLOT. According to Wikipedia dot com, CLOT(TED) cream is a thick cream made by indirectly heating full-cream cow's milk using steam or a water bath and then leaving it in shallow pans to cool slowly. During this time, the cream content rises to the surface and forms "clots" or "clouts", hence the name. It forms an essential part of a cream tea. And now you know!
6. Martha's Vineyard arrivals: FERRIES. I think that now, the only active ferry routes to Martha's Vineyard embark from Woods Hole, MA; Hyannis, MA; and Nantucket Island.
7. Most unexpected: ODDEST. Weird; I got this one!
8. Slow up: BRAKE. Do you say this to slow up or slow down?
9. Counting word: EENY. EENY, meeny, miney, MOE!! (That's me, in case you thought Malodorous Manatee was blogging today's puzzle . . .)
11. Internet recovery program: A. A. ON-LINE. This clue and answer didn't resonate when I was filling it in. And still didn't until I found this:. I guess that during the pandemic it is/was the safest way to continue the recovery process
12. Flee in fear: RUN FOR IT.
13. Utility abbr.: ELEC. Our ELEC bills range between $130 a month in the winter to well over $300 a month in the summer. But nothing like the recent bills in Texas this past month
15. Possibles: IFS. One of my favorite expressions (and I may be paraphrasing here): If IFS and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas!
21. As a bonus: ALSO. Did you get this, too?
24. Came to: TOTALED. As in added-up
26. Applies carelessly: SLAPS ON. But not in the case of "wax"
28. Puerile retort: IS TOO. Great word, puerile! Defined as: childishly silly and trivial. This answer could've been clued differently if it weren't a Friday
30. Artful dodge: FEINT. Another great Friday clue/answer. Our resident Canadian, Canadian Eh! might know it as this:
31. Prof.'s aides: T.A.'S. A teaching assistant (T.A.) or teacher's aide or education assistant or team teacher is an individual who assists a teacher with instructional responsibilities
33. Fielder's strong throw: PEG. An archaic baseball term, or it could've been clued as "a nickname for Margaret". But my "Margaret" does not want to be called this
35. PC brain: CPU. Central Processing Unit
36. SoCal ball club, on scoreboards: LAA. Los Angeles Angels. LAD fit, ALSO. As in Los Angeles Dodgers
37. Short report: ONE PAGE'R. Not this PAGER:
38. Turtle shell, e.g.: CARAPACE. I thought this a bit obscure, but it's been seen in other puzzles, recently
41. Letter closer: SEAL. Like this one:
42. Curry and Antetokounmpo, recently: NBA MVPS. National Basketball Association Most Valuable PlayerS. Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors, and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks
45. Sear and simmer: BRAISE. How to braise:
47. Vex: PESTER. Apparently our Thesaurussaurus has not heard of this synonym
48. Cool: SERENE. Another Friday clue for this answer methinks
50. Resell to desperate fans, maybe: SCALP. The word "SCALP" has some negative meaning, too. But the term meaning to resell tickets goes back a long way
52. Fine partner: DANDY. Did this come to ANYONE's mind?
53. Shortening, maybe: LARD. It's actually pronounced "uhts". My favorite potato chip
54. French cabbage: CHOU. Frawnch!
55. Hide: PELT. Moe-ku for SportsCenter fans:
ESPN host,56. Roman numeral?: SEI. As in "VI"?? SEI --> Italian for "six". Wow, what a stretch!!
Now that he's bald, should be known
As Scott Van No PELT
59. Garage service: TOW. As in TOWing a vehicle to the garage for service
61. ABA member: ATT. American Bar Association has, as its members, ATTorneys
This was fun! Hope to hear from many of you about your solving trials and tribulations on today's puzzle . . .
