Constructor: Ed Sessa
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: none
Word of the Day: TAMARIN (
10D: Member of the marmoset family) —
n.
Any of various small, long-tailed, arboreal monkeys of the genera Leontideus and Saguinus of Central and South America, closely related to and resembling the marmosets but having a larger body, longer limbs, and lower canines that extend well beyond the incisors.
[French, from Galibi.]
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/tamarin#ixzz2vzibQ7hE
• • •
That's more like it. Much prefer this to yesterday's Dance of the Intersecting 15s. Same amount of time spent solving, twice the enjoyment. Light on the junk, heavy on the real words and interesting expressions.
TWITTER JAIL sounds made-up, though. I'm on Twitter every day, never heard of it. I googled it, and it seems you get penalized for too many tweets within a designated period. I guess this is to prevent mass spam-tweeting? Maybe? Anyway, that answer is pretty out-there. But it was inferable, or at least gettable from crosses, so it didn't make me too cross. And anyway, when you've got
KISSY FACE, BRAIN FREEZE, and
BODACIOUS in your grid, it's easy to forgive the odd wackadoodle answer. I love that there is not much crosswordese in this grid, and that
ULEE (which is pure crosswordese) brings with it the much larger, much more interesting
BEEKEEPER. Yes, I'll pay one
ULEE to get one
BEEKEEPER. More than fair.
On Saturdays, the missteps are often plentiful and fun to recount. Went with SHAD before
HAKE (1D: Relative of haddock), but
OTIS had to be right, which meant SHAD couldn't be.
OTIS and
MGS gave me
AT-A-GLANCE very quickly, and the NW went down pretty quickly. But then I couldn't get south of
CENT (despite having TWITTER in place), so I had to jump ship and start over. First traction I got was at
HORAS and
HAILED, the latter being a desperate guess that panned out.
SLEDS and
ARPEL went in and things took off from there. Might've gone faster if I could've figured out what the hell
18A: Producer of "whirlybirds" meant. Even with -APLE, I had no idea. I'd heard of a
TAMARIN, so finally got that last "M" square, but it wasn't until after I was done that I looked up [maple whirlybirds] to see what the hell the connection was. This is ironic, as the damned things fall all around my house every year—we have two sugar maples out front.
Had HASPS for
WARPS (33A: Buckles). MOPED for
MIATA (41D: Modern two-seater). What on God's Green Earth is "
I ME Wed"???? Further, who is Erica Durance? This answer is the (much shorter) equivalent of yesterday's "THE NOONDAY DEVIL." Never heard of it, and never heard of the person in the clue. Yikes. That "M" was the last thing into the grid.
Good day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. "
I ME Wed" was a Lifetime TV movie … massive demerits for not putting "movie" in quotation marks.
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86 comments:
Steve J
From yesterday comment
Teams started as the New Orleans Jazz and Minneapolis Lakers (10000 lakes).
Enjoyed today's puzzle.
John
Delightful medium for me too Sat. This is what a Sat. should be. Fun with just the right amount of crunch. To much good stuff to list, but BODACIOUS brings to mind David Keith's anatomical description from "Officer and a Gentleman."
No WOEs and ARden (Elizabeth) before ARPEL and AlpE before AARE were my only erasures.
Puzzle of the week? Liked it!
Wow, thought this was great. Started with ARPEL (pure guess) and MAPLE, a few downs got me to HORNETS and I was off. Easily fastest Saturday ever for me. Shad discarded due to OTIS, just like @Rex.
Loved APPLESAUCE and BANANAPEEL. Waiting for the @chef's to weigh in.
Can someone explain how velvety pink leads to DAMASK?
Solid Saturday for me. I don't know if the puzzles are getting easier, or I am getting better at them. I hope the latter. I'm googling less and less it seems.
Easy 'cept had edDIE ere AUDIE.
I too googled less! I know it's a DNF, but only five times on a Saturday is great for me. And I would love to read the novel, with a BODACIOUS BEEKEEPER, SUBWAY SEATMATES, a NEUTER that SMARTED, HEMPS next to HORAS, heck, the whole HUMANRACE was represented! Super Saturday in my book.
I appreciate it when a frequent answer is clued in a new way. As others have mentioned, this was the case with "ULEE." I will add that it also is the case with "NEE," with the clue for this answer being the best I can remember.
A very enjoyable Saturday with some lovely words - DAMASK, ELYSIAN, HOLMESIAN, the fun TWITTER JAIL and BRAIN FREEZE, and all-around great cluing. Seemed very tough to me at first, as starting out, I had just HORAS, AUDIE, PAEAN, and ALAIN scattered about the grid. Luckily, crosses gave me what I needed to open things up, and it ended up a "medium" for me as well. The ULEE-BEEKEEPER connection was a nice help in getting the SE corner.
I liked the tabloid-headline-sounding MUTANT MATES, WARPS HUMAN RACE across the center.
MAPLE whirlybirds - tell me about it. Every year I have to pull up countless baby maple trees from my garden. Hundreds upon hundreds.
Do-overs: solE before HAKE, TIn cup before TIP JAR, rien before EURO (I thought "jack" meant "nothing"), rOckETS before HORNETS.
Thank you, Ed Sessa. This was a treat.
@anonymous 12:36. I took it to mean the Damask rose which has velvety petals. Poetic clue imo.
@Richard - AARE too: crosswordese utterly redeemed by a great clue. It felt hard to move from the NW and SE which went in quickly out to the rest of the puzzle, but my time was right in the middle of my (very wide) range for Saturday puzzles.
I thing of warping and buckling as different by degree. A warped bench could be perfectly useful, but I wouldn't want to sit on one that had buckled. But I see that the definitions aren't so far apart, so I learned something useful.
And something useless: TWITTER JAIL. ;-)
Thanks for his one Mr Sessa!
@carola: maple seed are carried by an attached structure that looks a bit like wings. The air resistance of the wings spreads the seeds away from the tree. To the delight of small children, the structure sometimes spins as the seed falls, a bit like a helicopter. My children called them whirleybirds. Excellent Saturday puzzle -- everything a Saturday should be!
1) Can't believe I didn't know they changed the penny!
2)Love the fact that Twitterjail is a term, if only to wish more people spent more time there.
3)I wonder how Sessa/Shortz decided to go with "I Me Wed" instead of the Beatles' "I Me Mine".
4) Alain de Botton?!?! Did he write "I Me Wed" or something?
"I have seen roses DAMASK'd, red and white
But no such roses see I in her cheeks...."
W.S., Sonnet 130
As noted before, The Bard always comes to the rescue!
I kid you not: My very first entry--2D, "uplifting company"--was BALI.
Noonday'dEvil
Hand up for SHAD; and ARDEN too!
Tough puzzle for me again today DNF . But I could certainly make a yummy fruit salad out of it - bananas, grapes,cherries, strawberries and mix it all together with applesauce and maple syrup.
Nice symmetry of the first and last acrosses.
Played super-tough for me, but I finally got there. Started with the NE (HORAS/HAILED went in first) and went from there down the whole eastern hemisphere.
Then I stared at a perfectly symmetrical half-filled grid for what seemed like forever.
Finally, west revealed itself, basically a square at a time. I was hardly HOLMESIAN -- Psalm for PAEAN certainly didn't help.
A few too many POCs for my liking (TALLS and HEMPS being the worst) but aside from that this was quality Saturday crunch.
Re: Twitter Jail, I've heard of it, and even thought of it, but I rejected at first as too limited in usage to be in a NYT puzzle. Guess I won't make that mistake again!
"Bodacious" does not mean "sexy." Maybe constructor was thinking of the expression "bodacious bod," which is an excellent, outstanding, prodigious -- and, by inference, sexy - body. But bodacious alone? Not sexy.
I knew 1D couldn't be SHAD - not only because of OTIS but because our town has an annual Shad Derby (and Shad Derby Queen) to celebrate when the shad are running in the Connecticut River. So pretty much everyone around here knows what a shad is, and it is nothing like a cod.
Any hoo, this was a good, strong Saturday. More on the challenging side of medium for me.
Forgot mrs. Obama was nee a Robertson!
Looks like this is a winner all the way around!
There are many fresh entries -- most already mentioned -- but my favorite was BRAINFREEZE.
I also like the nod to Monday's parade with STPAT and IRISHMOSS.
Beautifully done, Mr. Sessa!
Fine Saturday puzz. Lot of very clever clues.
No write-overs, but I was a bit puzzled by DAMASK, and I ME was my last to fill.
(Just looked now, and the Urban Dictionary's fourth entry for BODACIOUS is "sexy.")
Thanks, @SirHillary, for describing my solve! Finally broke into the Western Hemisphere with PAEAN, and made my way steadily north from there.
Loved HOLMESIAN, KISSYFACE, BRAINFREEZE, ELYSIAN, and TWITTERJAIL, and the teamed clues for SUBWAY/SERIFS and ULEE/BEEKEEPER. TIncAn before TIPJAR, cArp ( talk about yer wild stab in the dark!) before HAKE.
Lots of easy-medium fun. Thanks, Mr. Sessa!
I don't know why I had such a tough time with it. I did it after watching episodes 11 and 12 of House of Cards and seeing parts if my home- town Warriors bumble the game away to the woeful Cavs. The clues were not that hard. Except for the six entries I didn't know, the other 62 clues were fine. 21 straight definitions, 36 fuzzies, and only six distorted. Putting in IDYLLIC instead of ELYSIAN and sticking with it for a long time didn't help.
I was with Evil Doug. I asked my wife for the names of four-letter bra makers.
I really don't get the waffle clue. Can someone please explain. Otherwise, a fun and interesting puzzle.
A fine Saturday, fine observations from OFL et al.
@Carola - hand up for rien>EURO, and TIncup paired so well with BUMS that it took me forever to let go of that.
That SW section left me staring at a big fat DNF. But this morning, stared once more, and BANANAPEEL lifted the clouds from the grid.
So, a FWOG for a medium-rated Saturday - a rare and happy event for me!
We called those maple seedling 'polynoses' - we would atke one half, pry open the seed end, exposing some stickiness, and stick them to the tips of our noses.
What fun.
Also had SMitTEn for Stung b4 SMARTED - stung by cupid's dart??
Thank you Mr. Sessa. An imaginiative challenge.
Laurence Katz I agree bodacious != sexy. I had seductive there at first, was hard to let it go.
If you don't waffle (i.e., change your mind back and forth), you're SURER of something.
Great puzzle, for all the reasons previously noted.
Second almost everyone in saying this was a great puzzle. Played medium/challenging for us, and enjoyed every minute.
solE for HAKE for far too long. And hands up for ARdEn for ARPEL. Finally opened up NW when I remembered Michelle's maiden name - mind was locked on Jackie.
Loved that the two 10's going down were fruity (APPLESAUCE, BANANAPEEL), and brilliantly clued, btw.
Like Rex our last letter was the "M" in IME. Nearly naticked because I insisted it had to be "I'vE Wed", but wife won the vote saying IRISHMOSS sounded more seaweedy than the alternative. God bless the Irish, they can make beer out of anything.
Loved the last sentence of @Rex's commentary.
I had the most difficulty with 1A. Had the HOLMES and thought ok, is the rest a noun? a verb? a third person pronoun? predicate nominative? pluperfect? AHA it's IAN because I finally remembered Michele's given name...
I'll add whoohoo because this is the second time in my life that I finished a Sat. (and yesterday's Fri.) without Google. Just took my good ole time and kept saying AHA very loudly after getting an answer here and there and everywhere....
KISSY FACE is wonderful. I've used it before but more in the sense of a brown noser.
That Texas PECAN gets me every time - I always want an Alamo tree.
This was one fine BODACIOUS puzzle Mr. Sessa. Thank you kind sir.
Hey...@Tita were you be hiding?
Great Saturday puzzle!
Very creative clues, the one for banana peel at the top. I also had "rien" before euro, Arden before Arpel and hasp instead of warp.
Being HUMAN is a RACE only in the sense that whoever dies with the most toys, wins.
Definition of BODACIOUS: Erica enDurance, star of I ME Wed.
Did everyone see DAMASK of Zorro with Antonio Banderas? Me too.
How does being NEUTERed prevent one from having anything? The only thing you can't have is SACS. You can have APPLESAUCE.
When you see two or three SEATMATES playing KISSYFACE on the SUBWAY, stare at them. See if you can do it SAFELY.
Can BUMS be SMARTED?
MIATA car is a PORSCHE Cayenne, after I traded up from the AUDIE.
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium!
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, Dein Heiligtum...
- from An die Freude (Ode to Joy) by Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). I am sure he wasn't thinking of Schadenfreude.
Excellent Saturday puzzle, thanks Edward Sessa and Will.
I got started w/tip jar & StPat. put in bodacious even tho I could only think of Snuffy Smith using it. Pecan only after rejecting pinon & pecos. HumanKIND held me up for a while. We San Franciscans don't have too many Maple trees, I was thinking of toymakers! It seems to me that "inane" can mean whatever mildly undesireable quality you want. Clue for banana peel super!
Very strong puzzle IMHO- Lots of great entries eg. HOLMSIAN, BRAINFREEZE, BODACIOUS, TWITTER JAIL, pairs like APPLESAUCE and BANANAPEEL, et al.
Groanless fill- so rare these days.
Only write-over was mIStletoE before KISSYFACE, but MGS and ELYSIAN - another strong entry- fixed that.
Adrien ARPEL was selling her wares on HSN- so she fell right in.
SENT was not elated today.
Good one- Mr. Sessa!
Wonderful! Great puz! Anytime I finish a Saturday cleanly, then life is good. My brain seems to have recovered from the smacking around from ACPT #5.
Had PSALM for 48A for the longest time, along with HUMANKIND for 29A, erased both of them at it was off to the races.
And ... and .. the sun is out today! Who would have thought.
@ED nice to see you back. My understanding is that Miss OTIS wears BALI, with no regrets.
My very first car back in 1964 was a 1960 MGA so that started me off on a very enjoyable cruise around the grid. It's a rare day when all of my initial guesses are right but so they were today. Lots of fun answers, including the slap-stick image of slipping on a BANANAPEEL, kept me smiling throughout. Loved it - it left me in an ELYSIAN state. Thanks Mr. Sessa.
Greatly enjoyed -- sparkly answers and clues with bite. Thank you, Mr. Ed.
SatPuz fun ... except ... pitifully low on weejects.
On PuzSat, the M&A is all-atingle, anticipatin all them little pieces of 3-letter desperation, essential to gettin wide-open, feisty grids to behave themselves in public.
But -- as what's his number points out in the blog writeup -- this puz is too well made. I suspect not only computer aid, but also extra-terrestrial mind-meld aid. There are only 6 weejectoid candidates, and of those, only two are remotely upliftin. Let us fire off our two lowly rounds...
* CRU - Not bad. Brings CREW misspelled to mind, right away. Has yer proper vowel respect, btw.
* IME - This is clearly yer money entry. Looks like total gibberish. Not quite as desperate as IEM, but still, very nice. Also liked how the "___ Wed" clue made me want other stuff, such as: GIT. or STE-. or AMI. or NUF.
fave clue: "Prevent from having anything?" = NEUTER. day-um. No sh*t, Holmes. Or anyone.
fave revelation: DAMASK = pink. Sorta like DANONYMOUS = blu.
themelessthUmbsUp. Was gonna chip in my own KidPool themeless, but uh-uh. Competition's been too stiff, this weekend...
M&A, the musephooeyedmeister.
Oh,... yeah...
Agent 007-U will return, in...
"Eons Fleming"...
@Gil I.P. -- Thanks for reminding me. I had alamo before PECAN too.
Okay, to fess up before whining, this was just not on my wave length. Damask is not a proper clue for velvety pink, no matter if the Bard makes a connection to it. While one can waffle, less likely to have waffles is a very poor clue unless you want to put yet another question mark in a puzzle already replete with them. Bodacious is not anything close to a synonym for sexy. To give credit where it is due, I had no idea that any kind of seaweed was used in home brewing.
More challenging than average. NW was a struggle but finally yielded after giving up on Dace as the fish. Good puzzle. Thought I would never solve it!
@M&A - Are you one of David Mitchell's reincarnated characters in CLOUD ATLAS?
bookmark
@Evil - Hand up for Bali.
Other than being much more on my wavelength, I don't see much to discriminate between today's offering and yesterday's. Just as much crosswordese, just less noticeable when the long answers come easier. TBARS, ARPEL, OTIS, CRU, EURO, PAEAN, USSR, ULEE, NEE, EONS, the dreck quotient ≠ zero.
I have no idea on my solve time since I had to visit the the local garage and get my pot-hole damaged front tires replaced mid solve. Not getting HOLMESIAN and refusing to believe KISSY FACE (really - people like this? - not my cuppa - someone making KISSY FACE at me is not going to get smacked only because I try to be non-violent) made the NW especially slow. Otherwise, another fine tussle.
Mirriam-Webster:
Full Definition of BODACIOUS:
1
Southern & Midland: outright, unmistakable
2
: remarkable, noteworthy bodacious bargain
3
: sexy, voluptuous <bodacious babes
Great puzzle. And, in reference to some days ago, yes, cannabis can be helpful.
With apologies to Sally Field, I liked it, I really, really liked it! Of course, I feel great whenever I am able to finish a Sat. outing, but this puzzle was chock full of wacky, wonderful words. SW corner finally fell w/ BANANAPEEL, once I determined the 'slip' was not lingerie! (I, too, initially thought 2Down was Bali, as in bra. Hmmm, underwear on the brain, today.)
A great med-chall. workout. Thanks, ES and WS!
@bookmark: Maybe... which one did U have in mind? I suspect that U suspect story #6.
That David Mitchell dude was sure partial to 6's. Musta thought it didn't get enough respect.
M&A
The lonely negative voice, I guess. "Hated" would be too strong, but three car clues are two too many as far as I am concerned, (MGS, Miata, Porsche - never heard of the "Cayenne) Twitterjail is awful, heard of Alain Delon but not de Botton , don't like clue for "at a glance" - I see how it fits, but it still bothers me. Liked yesterday's MUCH better! Still, I finished this one without error, and there was plenty of good, clever cluing. So thanks for the workout, Mr. Sessa.
( I don't tweet. I cackle.)
@ M and Atlas: Yes, Zachry Goatboy in #6. David Mitchell is a genius!
Lots of good stuff throughout this very fine puzzle. It's hard to look anywhere without finding something to put a grin on my face, KISSY FACE being my favorite.
That said, I agree with Sir Hillary @9:11, the grid fill is POC-assisted, including five, two-for-one, double POCs (where a Down and an Across meet at the end with an "S"). These "S's" are the equivalents of cheater, er, helper squares. If you're keeping score, they are at the ends of 14D/23A, 21D/33A, 23D/35A, 31D/39A, & 36D/53A.
And yes, I understand that for a lot of solvers, this is a non-issue.
23A should have said "ex" or "former": the hornets are no longer an nba team. They were the Charlotte Hornets, then became the New Orleans hornets and are now the New Orleans Pelicans. The team in Charlotte is now called the Bobcats.
At first, I thought 2 D was the name of a bra company.
Charlotte is returning to the "Hornets" again next season!
@anonymous220: The Bobcats are changing their name back to the hornets next season. Confusing, right?
p.s.
OK. I know...
How'bout a nice, themed puz that introduces a krossword breakthru long overdo: the wee weeject?
Yer wish is my command:
www.xwordinfo.com/Solve?id=53983&id2=1743711929
M&A
@Glimmerglass - Thank you for the whirlybird lore.
@M&A - #113 is a masterpiece! I had to reveal too many words to claim to have "solved" it, and 6 D I have simply never heard of. But looking at the completed grid!!! A true classic!
Lots of good answers and fun cluing, even though I had a lot of trouble getting in synch with this one (which was my fault; my brain is currently mush after a long, difficult week).
@Anon 12:08: Yep, I knew those. They're the most egregious examples of not keeping a nickname when a team moves. For many reasons, thankfully, teams now tend to change names (and in the NFL, they have to by rule).
Speaking of moving teams, while the HORNETS did start in 1988, they moved to New Orleans in 2002. There's currently no team named HORNETS, as the team changed its name to the Pelicans last year. The current Charlotte Bobcats are taking the HORNETS name back starting with the next season this fall. Further support for the idea of keeping team names in their originating homes.
The New Orleans Hornets started in 1989, not 1988. I went thru every team looking for 1988, then gave up, particularly after filling YELLOW rather than HAILED for the cab clue. Did the SE we'll, but that was about it. If I weren't so OCD I wouldn't even bother with Friday or Saturday--but sometimes I do manage to finish one. Not today. Pleased to get HEMPS, MAPLE, PECAN and PAEAN. Small wins needed for morale and to reduce the despair from reading how easy and "fun" so many others found the goddam thing.
@Bob K: har! Thanx. All right then. An unsolvable masterpiece. At least the two-bies allow for some fresh grid layout designs.
M&Aster Piece of Cake
@LaneB: The Charlotte HORNETS' first season was 1988-89. The first game was played Nov 4, 1988.
Hard Saturday for me, but got it after googling Alai de Botton. Not as enthusiastic about the puzzle as most of you. Didn't hate it but didn't love it.
Thiught haddock had eyes one sided like 'sole' but otis and mgs i knew
Humankind and achingknees kept me adrift.
If jaques had jack he had nothing 'rien'
All is good when i got it all but cran seems a reach to me
Charlotte deserves to have the Hornets name--it comes from the Revolutionary war, when Cornwallis called Charlotte "a hornets' nest".
I found this one challenging but so much fun!
Who woulda thought -- "kissyface", "holmesian", "brainfreeze", etc.
A lot of excellent wordplay.
@Gill - ola! I'm doing puzzles every day, and marking them up with all the Revillian-related things to talk about and read about.
Alas, between work and family, I've not been able to drop by.
@Diri - in 1980 I got 2 1960 MGAs... had great times with them. Well, with the one that ran. At least, when it ran...
I solved this one on the plane, flying back to Boston from spring break in Captiva, FL -- tried to post from my phone during the brief Charlotte change of planes, but couldn't make it work. Given the context, I didn't much appreciate the reminder that ST PAT's day is celebrated in what is still winter -- but it can't be long! We found most of the snow gone from our garden, and a nice bunch of snowdrops in bloom.
This one was really tough for me - I had most of the standard errors, PsalM, etc. -- but got HAKE right away. We subscribe to a community-supported-fishery program where we get 2 pounds of fillets of whatever they catch each week -- so we've learned which fish are like which other fish, and HAKE are a lot more like haddock than sole or shad. Not so sure about dace, having never seen one.
Anyway, I'm posting later than everyone but the witch doctor/spammer, and I've solved Sunday by now, so time to move on.
Saw Twitter forming (shudder) and knew there was trouble ahead. Agree with Danp that more should go there, tho.
If anyone knows why TJail is clever, please advise.
Otherwise, t'was a lovely puzzle. Especially liked the Subway/Serifs A-line pairing (no dresses or skirts this time) ... Tanks!
Saw Twitter forming (shudder) and knew there was trouble ahead. Agree with Danp that more should go there, tho.
If anyone knows why TJail is clever, please advise.
Otherwise, t'was a lovely puzzle. Especially liked the Subway/Serifs A-line pairing (no dresses or skirts this time) ... Tanks!
some good stuff, liked SURER for less waffling, and BRAINFREEZE is great, so common to all of us, and yet first I've see it in xwords...finally had the classic doubling of noun & adjective with DOZENS, what cookies are baked "in"...nice.
didn't catch on to 'how things end' in EST
Had BEGGAR for TIP JAR. A TIP JAR does not collect spare change -- it is for expressions of appreciation for service. Tips may consist of coins that customers don't want to carry around, but that doesn't make it "spare". Minus points for misleading clue.
DAMASK is a noun while clue ("Velvety pink") is an adjective. Parts of speech must be parallel, non? And the crossing IRISH MOSS is too obscure for my taste, even if the beer produced with it is yummy.
Regrettably, due to time constraints I DNF. Got everything but the SW, might have gotten that too, but just...gotta leave for the day, so I'll comment on the 3/4 of it that I did.
I liked it better than Sessas of old. This guy's evolving--in a good way. Maybe a little too much obscurity, even for a Saturday. What the heck's a TAMARIN? Ever seen one? Me neither. DAMASK as "Velvety pink?" Where did THAT come from? And so sorry, folks, but we're all out of IRISHMOSS here. Don't think we EVER carried it.
That is all. Just a 6-high straight.
This was medium-challenging for me, mainly due to the SUBWAY/TWITTERJAIL/ALAIN/BANANAPEEL interface. Otherwise, I found it pretty straightforward with just enough 'easy' ones to make the tougher ones come into view. Very little crosswordese/crap/dreck.
Tradeja a ULEE for a BEEKEEPER. IME would any day of the week.
I was pretty sure that I was on the right track in the NW, but HOLM---- was throwing me. Was I on the wrong track? But then my detection methods kicked in and... elementary, my dear OTIS!
Initially I wanted something to do with puckered up, but it didn't fit in any form. KISSYFACE is not a good image but was cutesy in this puz.
The A-Lines and the loose change collectors next to each other was cool.
@Diri, your first car was a 4-year-old MG? BODACIOUS, Dude!
My first was a 4-year-old two door, six cylinder, Ford manual shift on the column. My grandparents gave it to me in return for a promise to go to church every Sunday. I'd much rather have driven an MG.
Capcha: economy gradiut. Skipped the spelling class.
+ 1 for BALI at 2D but had HAKE & ATAGLANCE right after. Right side of puzzle fell fast. Had to overcome a BRAINFREEZE to finish though. Personal victory: Sunday-Saturday complete. No googles!
@eastsacgirl, kudos to you for your week of googleless solving. You've inspired me.
Kind words indeed. Very rarely happens! Happy Easter tomorrow to you and all other syndies.
@SiS - It was a really sweet ride that inspired a lot of fond memories, but there were times when I would have swapped it for your Ford just to have a back seat.
Happy weekend to all Syndies, no matter what you celebrate or don't celebrate - don't forget to check the night sky as there are meteor showers in the offing for the next few nights.
It looks like it's just me and spacy at the table and the best I can do is three 8s.
@Diri, back seat or not, bet your MG got you more action than my '57 Ford.
Let me add my voice to wish all a good weekend.
Well, they brought on the Saturday puzzle and left me pretty much in the dust. Got a good diagonal swath, but the NW and SE have a lot of blank spaces. Haven't even looked to see what should be there! Guess I should to see if I can learn something of future use?
I do have four 6's and two 9's. Maybe some luck there?
I went and I looked, and ... Maybe I'll never get up to this level of puzzle solving. Example, even with HOLM... In place HOLMESIAN didn't occur to me, and probably never would. PORS--E as a spice producer would never had led me ro a car. And so it went . Only thing in my favor, I had no wrong fills except, after replacing "Bali" I had Oric- don't those vacuums pick up stuff? But again, it probably should be spelled Orick? Think I"ll go have An early dip into the Easter goodies!
Oh dear, no more cards, only terribly indecipherable "words". Well, I guess i'll give it one try.
Somehow I enjoyed this, even though I failed to get the NE due to the proper nouns (my excuse; sticking to it).
There's a fine line between misdirection and impenetrable obscurity, and this puzzle walked that line rather well, IMO. The Porsche clue is a fine example and got a happy smile from me when I twigged it.
BRAINFREEZE crosses were the last to go. Had rOckETS instead of HORNETS and SERIeS instead of SERIFS. But finally thawed.
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