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Viking poet / SAT 4-24-10 / Like some harrows / Summer salon service / What 1776 got in 1969 / Title role in 1983 black-and-white film
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Constructor: Thomas Heilman
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: none
Word of the Day: KIBEI (54A: U.S.-born Japanese educated in Japan) —
Kibei kibei (帰米, literally "go home to America") was a term often used in the 1940s to describe Japanese Americans born in the United States who returned to America after receiving their education in Japan. (wikipedia)
• • •
Mostly wonderful puzzle that felt easy, but final time says normal. Three potentially killer answers, but all of them crossed fairly. Studied medieval literature in grad school and still never heard of a SKALD (3D: Viking poet). My "wacky medieval words for 'poet'" list begins and ends with SCOP (it's Old English / Anglo-Saxon, and if you haven't seen it in the grid, you will). No clue about the Barbra Streisand "hit," though "STONEY End" (23A: "___ End" (1971 Barbra Streisand hit)) turns out to be a Laura NYRO composition that has been recorded by many, many people, including Diana Ross and Linda Ronstadt. The scariest mystery word of the day, however, has to be KIBEI. I reflexively wrote in NISEI without properly reading the clue, but then 29D: Very full ended up ending in -ACNED. Not likely. So I waited on JAMPACKED and then GAME TABLE (31D: Play furniture?) to give me the "K" and "B," and they just prayed that KIBEI was, in fact, a word. And it was.Here's how I broke this one open. After my typical few moments of "huh?" "wha?" "don't know it" "Oh come On!," I got SNOG (5D: Make out, in Harry Potter) and
ZELIG (19A: Title role in a 1983 black-and-white film) in quick succession. That "Z" was precious, as it allowed me the educated guess of IBIZA at 1D: One of the Pine Islands, which gave me the first letters of all those long Acrosses up there. Those Acrosses didn't come right away, but luckily the little 3s up there (HIM (6D: Exclamation at a lineup), AWE (7D: Something to gaze in)) were easy to get, and gave me enough leverage to bring down the long Acrosses after all.Made a fantastically good guess at 12D: Person prone to proneness? (LAZY BONES) with just the "Y" in place. Or maybe I had the "B" from (wrongly) guessing BSA at 25A: Org. with the motto "Start With Trust" (BBB). Yeah, I know, "Be prepared." Maybe orgs. can have more than one motto, what do I know? Anyway, LAZY BONES was enough headway to lay that whole corner to waste, despite my not having any clue about Ariel the mermaid's sisters (16A: One of Ariel's sisters in "The Little Mermaid" => ALANA), and never having heard of 33A: Broadway's "Never GONNA Dance" — does it really belong to *all* of Broadway, and no one particular show?
Rebooted in the SW, once I finally changed TID to TER (35D: Thrice, to a pharmacist), which instantly got me PTER- (41A: Wing: Prefix). TER / PTER = not a great cross, but there was too much goodness for that to matter much. Then there was the aforementioned KIBEI encounter. Rounding the corner to the SE proved easy. Finally closed in on ELIO, which was bugging me, as it's a name I know I've seen but just couldn't retrieve today (37D: Chacon of the 1962 Mets). Finished things up down in the SE, which is my least favorite area today, due primarily to the uninspired Downs. The FIRESTORM (55A: Violent outburst) / FLUMMOXED (59A: At a loss) pairing is pretty hot, though, so I can't be too mad at that corner.Bullets:
- 15A: Summer salon service, for some (BIKINI WAX) — I was like "summer? summer? why summer?" And now I know.
29A: One with an ear and a small mouth (JUG) — Frustrating! Knew what clue was going for but could come up with only EWER (?)- 38A: Quietly tells a tale (MIMES) — Pretty sure that's "Silently ..."
- 51A: Target of some leg-pulling (CRAB MEAT) — that is a most decent clue.
- 2D: Like some harrows (TINED) — Confused "harrows" with "barrows," and I barely know what "barrows" are. Disaster. At least I know TINED is a word. A "harrow" is a farm implement that is dragged over ground to level it, break up clots, etc.
- 14D: Remove graffiti from, in a way (SAND BLAST) — Sounds extreme. Does SAND BLASTing use actual sand? Here's more than you'll ever want to know about abrasive blasting.
- 21D: Wide receiver Welker (WES) — for a guy who's only 5'9", he's kind of a big deal. Major offensive force for the New England Patriots. His late-season knee-injury kept him out of the this past year's playoffs. New England didn't get far.
- 24D: What "1776" got in 1969 (TONY) — More Broadway. Lucky me :( For whatever reason, I could only think of "Barry Lyndon" (1975)
- 48D: Leader who died 27 days after his election (LEO XI) — early 17th century pope. He gives you an "X" and a lot of vowels. He's very crosswordesey. My favorite wikipedia fact about him: "He was nicknamed Papa Lampo ("Lightning Pope") for the brevity of his pontificate."
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
PS Happy Birthday to PuzzleGirl, my friend and (most) trusted blog assistant / administrator / adviser / fire-putter-outter. Andrea (of Carla Michaels fame) and Doug (Peterson) and PuzzleSister (who comments here sometimes as @addieloggins) put together a little puzzle in her honor, which I'm told should be generally doable (i.e. no special PuzzleGirl knowledge required). You can get it here. I haven't done it yet, but if there's nothing about Iowa Wrestling in it, I'll be shocked.
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67 comments:
Not too tough, but the Zelig/Skald cross was pretty brutal. Could've been just about any consonant as far as I was concerned.
Really liked the fat/SLIM combo.
Also, hand up for trying BSA first.
nice puzzle;skald was my first answer that gave me the whole nw.except jelig which i had gelig.Loved firestorm over flummoxed.needed a nice easy saturday for once.
DNF + google = epic fail. By the time I started googling I had what turned out to be 14 correct answers and one “close but no cigar”—57D EMT for EMS. Also had to two somewhat ironic errors: 19A ANNIE [HALL] for SELIG (partial credit for right director?) and 53A VITRO for UTERO (right lab, wrong procedure).
80 minutes in I’d struggled through all but SW, which was still a patchwork. Checked and, happily, Rex had posted—so I pulled the plug on this one. Only cavil about the downs I couldn’t complete is 46D, where I had O___S. How does “Passes by” = OMITS?
One really terrific clue, though—43D “Gets help for”. Bled from the ears trying to get that one.
Hand up for 35D TID before TIR, which is not to say that TID isn’t actually correct, but hey.
What the HELL is going on?
Last Friday & Saturday "Kicked MY ASS" so bad I thought I had lost my MANHOOD.
Then yesterday & today I get puzzles where, when I finished, I noticed clues not even crossed off.
Filled entirely by the crosses.
I check them (IBIZA, SKALD, SNOG, ELIO, UTERO & KIBEI) look at the clues and know I avoided six serious WTF moments & kicks.
(Must be my clean living finally paying off)
BIKINI WAX, SEABEDS, CRABMEAT, ALOE for the sunburn, then throw a JUG to this LAZY BONES, and there's a beach mini-theme in this one.
Any time I finish a Sat.NYT without getting completely FLUMMOXED, it's a great day.
@Rex Thanks for the info on those clues/answers I didn't need. I really do treasure puzzle learning moments.
I printed out the @PuzzleGirl xword, your assumption was dead-on.
GONNA get a wrestling hold of it over coffee in the AM.
Now it's Scotch time and I'm watching a show about Moonshining on the History Channel.
@Lit.doc
About 7 months ago, TER came up in a LAT and I had that same WTF feeling.
Then it repeated in 3 or 4 more puzzles in about 10 days. Learned by being knocked over the head with it.
TER may be Thrice, to a pharmacist, but it is now my
"Recommended Daily Allowance" of the Avatar.
@Tinbeni, thanks for the note re TER. Duly jotted on my Jameson's label. But I still don't get it. TID = Latin "Ter In Die", and I can't find...oh, crap, I just noticed what I just keyed. Doh.
Two days in a row with excellent puzzles! My NW was pretty much what Rex said and the rest was my typical stop and go solve. Medium works for me (and hands up for TID before MIMES set me straight). Not remembering COZEN gave me some problems in NE and LEOVI briefly tripped me up in SE (man, there were a sh*t load of LEOs, which, of course, I only know from xwords).
Wasn't ELIO the first name of that kid from Cuba that Janet Reno had to make a decision about?
@jai, it was Elian Gonzalez.
Took a while and had to scrape off SCRAPEOFF to make it SANDBLAST...
The only real problem for me...
Downstairs neighbor wanted to solve together, which is about as much action as I'm gonna get these days on a Friday night...
Nick suggested X when I left LEO-I, (could have been any IVL or X), but that was the key to getting FLUMMOXED and the rest fell one after another.
Loved LAZYBONES, BIKINIWAX and four packs of three stacks of nines...or however you would say that in crossword-speak.
Sort of a malapop directorally... considered ANNIE of Annie Hall for the title role, till I realized 1983 would be too late...and then magically ZELIG popped up, as he is wont to do!
(With ---IG, Nick had to admit ZELIG was a better answer than his first choice of CRAIG! Despite my insistence that there has never been a movie with "Craig" in the title...
Nick said, "What about "Jesus Craig, Superstar?"!
(Now that I think about it, I once saw a small film about CraigsList. And of course who can forget "Bob and Ted and Craig and Alice"?)
@Rex
What is with that pic of Diana Ross which looks like one of those ads where you could save the child or change the channel?
Anyway, nice puzzle! Heil Heilman!
My first entry was the NOMDE/UTERO cross and the SE presented itself rather quickly thereafter. Since LEOXI was the only Leo I've ever seen in a puzzle, FLUMMOXED was pretty much a neon for me. HOSTILE was the key to the whole East Coast. COZEN was an interesting word that I saw in a Sunday puzzle a year or so ago andnever forgot. I have a mind for odd words.
Omce I worked into the North, this puzzle fell pretty quickly as ZELIG was my favorite Woody Allen movie and the black-and-white part of the clue kicked the door down.
The SE was the most difficult section as I had a problem at 35D and needed every cross for KIBEI as I suspect a lot of others did but once PTER showed itself I had no further problems.
This puzzle was a done deal inside of 20 minutes with only a couple of sticking points.
A nice Saturday jaunt, with only a few write-overs, errors and empty squares. It took me a while to (almost) fill the grid, but I don't feel abused for having taken the trip.
"Stoney End" was also covered by trumpet great Maynard Ferguson, which is worth a listen at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdUjWkmWZCc
Enjoy
Did anyone else think GALA for "Festive" was a little off, grammatically?
What a great puzzle! I was all proud of myself, thinking I was so clever, until I hit the southeast and . . . stayed and stayed and stayed.
The key word to let it all fall into place was 43D, STAFFS. I was running through all the 55A STORMS there could be (including "shitstorm," which I knew would never appear in a puzzle, but I was desperate). When STAFFS and FIRESTORM finally clicked, I was able to get FLUMMOXED (or unflummoxed, I guess) and change Leo VI to LEO XI.
Lots of those Leos! Man--you're just asking for your kid to be Pope if you name him Leo. Like naming your kid "Colt McCoy." He'd flippin' well BETTER end up being a star quarterback! (I kid--I know popes get renamed.)
I loved, loved doing this puzzle. Not that I did it perfectly, as I had to google ELIO. Still the experience showed me how I have learned to untangle a whole Saturday from barely a toe hold-- the very last clue I read-- NOM DE. I worked backwards from there and got the rest. And of course loved the content... especially BIKINI WAX! Hardly anything felt uncomfortable, forced, weird or far fetched. Solid, fun, substantive, with a touch of humor--a puzzle you'd be proud to introduce to your mother.
Happy Birthday Puzzle Girl! You are the moon to Rex's sun. I'm looking forward to Andrea et al's puzzle!
I had a very enjoyable time with this last night, and all worked out well with crosses. Favorite words included GALOOTS and COZEN. Today I looked up authors Robert OLEN Butler and James Gould Cozzens in wiki for good measure, both winners of Pulitzer prizes though I'd remembered only the latter.
BBB struck a nerve though, as the local Albany paper just disclosed SEC fraud charges against two brokers I'd worked for in the early '80s. It may not make national news à la Bernie Madoff, but it's a shocker all the same. FIRESTORM and FLUMMOXED are the apt words! HELL to pay, too.
∑;(
grabbat - motto for recent years of greedy excess!
I'm with Tinbeni. Confidence restored this week.
Perfect Saturday puzzle. I slowed down too long in the NE because of sings instead of "talks", which caused "sucky", and I also had a hard time remembering jug. Wanted dark meat instead of crab. Bikini wax and flummoxed, as well as hawk eyed, are my favorites.
Happy birthday, PuzzleGirl! Looking forward to the extra puzzle.
Excellent puzzle. At 35 minutes with breakfast, actually tracks as an Easy-Medium for me, though 20 minutes in I almost said it was undoable (STONEY End???)
Agree with JC66, loved Fat chance = SLIM chance. And like mac, seriously wanted DARK MEAT before CRAB.
I loved the clue, but can't help thinking that most LAZYBONES are Prone to be supine rather than prone.
@ArtLvr
How is the Better Business Bureau connected to SEC investigations? (I don't get the Albany paper.)
P>G>
King Richard III > Act IV, scene IV
KING RICHARD III: You speak as if that I had slain my cousins.
QUEEN ELIZABETH:
Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle cozen'd
Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.
Whose hand soever lanced their tender hearts,
Thy head, all indirectly, gave direction:
No doubt the murderous knife was dull and blunt
Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart,
To revel in the entrails of my lambs.
But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame,
My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys
Till that my nails were anchor'd in thine eyes;
And I, in such a desperate bay of death,
Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft,
Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.
Napoleon is to Waterloo as dk is to CRABMEAT.
Exoskeleton creatures aside I did fine. Off to the races (I thought) with LAZYBONES, FIRESTORM, FLUMMOXED, and some lucky guesses.
Stared at ___FFS for far to long till I got ASOCIAL.
The rest has been said.
A fine start to a rain soaked Saturday.
*** (3 Stars)
Happy birthday, Puzzle Olson Girl!
Rex, your Jughead comic book could in theory refer to three of the answers in that section: JUG, BIKINIWAX, or SANDBLAST.
I probably spent half my time choosing between OPTSIN and the correct OPTSTO. ELIO = ELIN as far as I'm concernect, and it took me forever to realize how Friends clued SECT. I drove past, as I do nearly every day, my local Quaker Meeting Hall, and sure enough, it's called the Friends Meeting Hall. Every damned day I see that.
@Ilsabing, "This is a GALA event"-- a festive event. It's the kind of "off" they use to keep our brain cells hopping.
I really enjoyed the Andrea, Doug, PuzzleSister Puzzle!! One place in particular is downright LOL funny, and it's very doable while extremely well done.
Happy Birthday, PuzzleGirl! She used to live in Las Cruces, donchaknow! :-)
Rex, I freakin' loved Barry Lyndon! Must've seen it 9 times. Thanks for bringing it back to me!
This was a hard puzzle for me, but I finished with no errors. A lot of menudo splatters, but no errors. The central area was the last to fall because I did not know the baseball player, and I wanted GAgA for 33D. When I changed to the (in my eye) less plausible GALA, HELL came into view and that was that.
BIKINI WAX was the butt-clenching, wince-inducing, I-ain't-ever-doing-THAT ouch answer for the day.
LAZY BONES was the I-resemble-that-remark answer of the day.
CRAB MEAT was the Jimmy Buffett lyric answer of the day.
My Lovely Lady
By: Jimmy Buffett
1973
When I pay my bills
Gonna leave these Tennessee hills
Take my lady to the sea
That's where we both come from
That's where we both belong
Think I'll go back to the Keys
Chorus:
'Cause I don't want the fame that brings confusion
Where people recognize you on a plane
All I want's the quiet and the comforts
That livin' with my lovely lady brings
Somehow we survived the double talk and jive
Things are looking better all the time
I owe her all I can 'cause she made me understand
The simple way that we should live our lives
Chorus
Let me tell you now she can eat her own weight up in CRAB MEAT
And there's plenty of that down there by the sea
Well we're sailin' in those warm December breezes
Sendin' picture postcards back to Tennessee
Chorus
For 14d, I initially wrote in OVER PAINTS. That was so wrong, but a couple of KNEE BENDS disabused me of it, and SAND BLAST looked so much better when it eased its way in. Here on the border, we have ginormous graffiti issues, and I spend time over-painting my alley wall many weekends.
Anyway, loved the puzzle. Loved the write-up. Loved the comments. Loved the menudo most of all. Throat is getting slowly better.
I'll see all y'all fellow GALOOTS manana! (I dunno how to make tildes on my Mac.)
Fasodiva! (Is it so wrong that Aretha Franklin comes immediately to mind?) -- jesser
@Free Association -- it was just that, instant free association of the BBB motto "Start with Trust" and the sad revelation of how these brokers I knew scammed their clients, betraying their trust. Lots of our NY state legislators went way beyond TACKY too, thinking they were too smart to fail?
∑;(
@jesser -- no bikini wax here either! And to get a tilde, press the alt/control and hold it while you type letter n, then release and you'll type n again.
ñow try it! ∑;)
@artlvr: I tried it. Honest! It no worky on my aged I-mac. I'm still on OS-X, Could that be it? :-(
I can make this post quasi puzzle-related by pointing out that I am not ASOCIAL! See! I'm mingling! Also, I can honestly say that I am FLUMMOZED by my inability to create tildes.
I'll shut up now.
A "censored" single release of "Stoney End"
from composer Laura Nyro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRBHBSTIedo
My first pass did not yield much but I stuck with it to a happy ending.
Great clues and so many wonderful words. I guess medium is right for this one but it had enough (crab) meat to it to force me to resort to schemes like guessing the sports guy's name probably ended in a vowel. The experience gained from daily solving payed off today.
Self esteem restored after last week!
For me, this was quite a bit tougher than yesterday -- 41 mins vs 28 -- mainly because I got stuck in the SW. Kept messing with DARKMEAT and NISEI (not sure what it means but know it has something to do with Japanese-Americans) but couldn't make sense of crosses. After 15 fruitless minutes, fate BEAMed on me and I caught the CRAB, after which it only took a couple of minutes to JAMPACK the remainder of that corner.
Melt-in-your mouth ooey gooey themeless today. So many clever clues and original long words/phrases.
Oh how I do hate TER, tho. In my 25 years in medicine, I have never once heard of that. TID is correct, but it will be history soon, due to the crackdown on the use of abbreviations by the "Joint Commission". If you've never heard of the Joint Commission, this is the shadowy group of soulless bureaucrats who make life miserable for hospital folk.
SET DESIGN was my down first answer, Robert PENN Butler was my first across. PENN was changed quickly, and the SE was done quickly. The rest of the puzzle? Let's talk about something else.
Happy Birthday, PG! Hawkeyed!
I loved the puzzle and loved Rex's comments. My solving progression was exactly the same as his. A solid Saturday all around. Thanks Rex and thanks Mr. Heilman.
Enjoy the weekend.
Apparently my comments last night failed to get posted and I don't have the time to go into it again at length.
Finished with a few Googles. Much easier than Friday, probably because of fewer pop culture clues. Had most trouble in SW where wanted darkMEAT at 51A. Google was no help with KIBEI, (except for Rex's writeup which I refused to use), so struggled far too long, but eventually got it all. Still not sure about the connection between ANATOMY and Makeup Lessons.
After finishing the NW in a minute and a half, I hoped I was headed for a personal best Saturday time. But the SW ended up taking me more time than the rest of the puzzle combined, even with UNITPRICE, ANATOMY, APT, and ECLAT in the grid. The main problem: I got hung up on FROGMEAT in lieu of CRABMEAT. Secondary: with those four acrosses, BARSTOOLS kept wanting to fit as an answer for "Play furniture?" that I didn't understand. MIMES finally broke the section for me.
I knew ELIO Chacon from my childhood in Cincinnati. He was a utility infielder on the 1961 Reds, winners of the NL pennant that year, losing in the World Series to the Yankees. That was the year Roger Maris hit 61 home runs.
Chacon was picked up in the expansion draft by the 1962 NY Mets, one of the worst baseball teams of all time.
Thus ELIO Chacon went from first to worst. Poor guy deserved better.
Well, didn't know IBIZA, SKALD or SNOG. ZELIG was in my wheelhouse, but couldn't suss it out from ?E?I?, so went down in flames in the NW. Once again must bow in AWE to old #44's superior wisdom. Got everything else somehow, no thanks to KIBEI and COZEN and especially NOMDE. French friggin' partial phrases...gack, sputter, wheez. PIU (learned that word yesterday.)
COZEN...always a rush to fill in every letter of a word and still draw a blank, I guess. Use it in a sentence, so you'll remember it: my cozen is my mum's neese, which feels like a swindle, 'cuz I don't spell it at all like that. KIBEI I give a pass to...at least in ain't French.
@lit.doc -- Thanks, I knew it was something like that.
@Rube -- I took ANATOMY to mean lessons about the makeup of the body.
I loved this puzzle. Especially how active the long answers are: KNEEBENDS, SANDBLAST, HAWKEYED, FLUMMOXED, BIKINIWAX and JAMPACKED.
With the BM in place I wrote in laMBMEAl before CRABMEAT.
Really fun Saturday morning courtesy of Mr. Heilman, thank you!
Happy Birthday, PuzzleGirl ... can't wait to do your tribute puzzle a little later today.
@Hobbyist
You said it brother!
A week ago the constructor relished that he had created "a killer Saturday NYT" when all he really did was bring together the worst example of bik saranya! (bullshit)
I remember I commented that he had made the
"Obtuse Puzzle of the Year!"
This week we had FUN !!!
FUN in capital letters, FUN !!!
FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN !!!
(did I mention, I do crosswords to have FUN?)
Thomas Heilman, I salute you.
Last night, when I did this they were Toasts !!!
A lot of them !!! Well over my RDA.
LIke Rube - what is the connection between ANATOMY and "makeup lessons?"
@Santa Fe: Take a class in anatomy, and you'll learn all about your make-up.
Thanks Jesser ... nice truck!
@satafe- watch out, that's a jeep !
@jesser - on my mac, it's the alt/option key. It really works. Señor must give it a try.
The puzzle was FUN, to echo @Tinbeni.
Ditto what has already been said.
See you all mañana !!!
OOOPS. So concerned about tildes, I got your name wrong. @santafe :)
@HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PuzzleBabe!
I think HAWKEYED in today's puzzle was a total shout out to you, right?
And I love @foodie's comment that you are the moon to Rex's sun! I think that makes me some sort of floating asteroid, or maybe a demoted planet! ;)
@Ben
That would be a GREAT name for a beach party: SANDBLAST
@Jesser
Total synchronicity...last night my new Spanish roommie, Gonzalo, came in and said he was off today to the Kubrick retrospective at the Castro...today's double feature? "Clockwork Orange" and "Barry Lyndon"!!!!!!
@Andrea, "magically ZELIG popped up, as he is wont to do!" LOL! Nice glyph on the movie!
ZELIG is what got me into the puzzle actually and with BIKINI WAX, I was off and running.
Cannot believe I remembered COZEN - don't know if I have ever used the word!
@llsabing, yes it was off to my ear, too.
@foodie, yes, the FIL would like to be introduced to this one.
@Bob K, I second you on supine!
@Bard, thanks for the COZEN earplay.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PuzzleGirl. Thomas Heilman said he put HAWEYED in this puzzle just for you!
@Andrea! We were separated at birth, sista!
@Andrea: The degree to which that is awesome is more numbers than the miles to the Planet Pluto!
@Artlvr & Purple Guy: I figured it out! ñ! Gracias!
One over the legal limit (apparently much like Tinbeni last night) and outta here!
@Tinbeni, easy on the "fun, fun, fun" stuff, lest your daddy should take your T-bird away. But yes, it was, even in abject failure.
I had a solidly hard time with this - at just over an hour, it took me about four times as long as yesterday's, and that was despite moving at a pretty steady pace. Just goes to show, some of this difficulty thing is puzzler-specific.
@Leslie: I, too, wanted SHITSTORM. That's how FLUMMOXED I was getting in places.
Only the SW hung me up on this one. 'Cause everyone knows that to tell a tale *silently* is to MIME. But to tell a tale *quietly* is to DIME. That, and the clearly self-evident "DARKMEAT" threw me for a while.
I was attached to SEALEGS for a while, in place of SEABEDS
Nice, jazzy diction in this puzzle, I notice. Like most Saturdays, it was completely beyond me, but that's fine at this point in my learning curve.
Andrea and Doug: Much laughing out loud on this end (2D, 5A, 58D). Happy Birthday, PG!
@ACME, PuzzleSister, Swedish-sounding Doug ... cute birthday puzzle for PG! 58D was so corny it was funny!
I had harpeyed for a while, which turns out to be a real world. Eventually, I got hawkeyed, which leads to puzzlegirl, who used to live in my town and knows a lot more about our wrestling team than I do.
Finished in two sessions, before and after Saturday errands, but did so without googling and with great enjoyment.
Full of beautiful a-ha moments, nothing unfair or strained. Made my Saturday.
I'm posting only to join the choir congratulating hawk-eyed puzzle girl...
...and to make my chuckles heard all the way to a dual-mate apartment in SF.
Since I'm writing anyway: Thanks also to Mac, who recommended a while ago not to give up too early on late-week puzzles, i.e. not to consult Prof. Google too soon--it really helps in the long run. Did this one on and off during the way while working in the garden and finally completed it, in spite of quite a few words I have never, ever heard of that had to be teased out with crosses (COZEN--I was convinced it had to be wrong--ALANA, BIKINI WAX, STONEY, KIBEI, OLEN plus some names whose bearers were unknown to me...) But now the sun settles and I survey the accomplishments of the day from the porch I built, Martini in hand--life is good!
happy b-day puzzle girl. Thanx everyone for a fun puzzle
@Ulrich: I love the vision of you on the porch you built yourself, with a Martini! Probably some good wine with dinner? It's a nice day in CT.
@andrea lazybones michaels
Just wanted to 'pile on' a "Thank You!" to you Doug and PuzzleSister for a most enjoyable
@PuzzleGirl Birthday Salute.
Had a LOL moment b/c @Orange in the LAT blog said
3 0 and I'm not going anywhere close to asking a lady her age.
@jesser
There's a limit?
Like most guys ... I only doubled the RDA.
@Lit.doc
Last week the constructor produced a puzzle that took away any form of enjoyment, he took the T-Bird away.
It was nice to get my main reason for these back.
I like a challenge.
Love the 'duh!' moment at a mis-directional clue.
Don't mind the occasional DNF.
And I like Avatar and sunsets.
Cheers !!!
"Never Gonna Dance" was the name of a short-lived 2003 Broadway show based on the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie "Swing Time."
Finished late (busy day) and with an error. OWEN/WEO XI instead of OLEN/LEO XI. WEO XI might have been a Chinese emperor, dynasty unknown, and the XI would be a Chinese name, not the Roman numeral. Oh well....
Mostly loved the puzzle. I was more certain of DARKMEAT than any other answer in the puzzle. That held me up quite a bit, but not forever. Since the rest of the puzzle had fallen pretty easily, I didn't mind some extra head-banging in the SW. Plus, we looked at MIMES, and both my wife and I agreed that 'quietly' instead of 'silently' eliminated that option. I still think it does--less-than-APT cluing, to my way of thinking.
Dearest Rex: I refer to "pyramid" as parsvottanasana which, by the way, does not mean pyramid in Sanskrit. We have done it, sometimes with the back heel up in the beginning of class, and sometimes after backbends because it sets the femurs. But okay, you are right, we rarely do it. I've been bringing it back recently because it illustrates the loops of the legs very well. Namaste. ;-)
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