.png)
Relative difficulty: Easy side of normal
THEME: BREAD (37A: Moolah ... or the makeup of the ends of the answers to the starred clues) — ends of starred answers are bread-like:
Theme answers:
- BANK ROLL (4D: *Provide funds for)
- SEABISCUIT (18A: *1938 Horse of the Year)
- STUD MUFFIN (54A: *Hunk)
- MEAT LOAF (38D: *"Bat Out of Hell" singer)
Lake Chad (French: Lac Tchad) is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Africa, which has varied in size over the centuries. According to the Global Resource Information Database of the United Nations Environment Programme, it shrank as much as 95% from about 1963 to 1998, but "the 2007 (satellite) image shows significant improvement over previous years." Lake Chad is economically important, providing water to more than 68 million people living in the four countries surrounding it (Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria) on the edge of the Sahara Desert. It is the largest lake in the Chad Basin. (wikipedia)
• • •
The only place I encountered resistance today was in the middle, for a number of reasons. First, the revealer just wasn't coming to me. Don't know why. Possibly because I wasn't sure what part of the toucan was "colorful"—somehow I thought maybe it was his COAT, which is ... not a thing a bird has, right? They have feathers. Dogs have coats. I also couldn't get BELLE without a lot of help from crosses (33A: Scarlett O'Hara, for one). Accurate enough clue, just not obvious to me. Then there was the fact that the whole center was framed by LAKE / CHAD, which caused slow-down both because it was cross-referenced and because its symmetricality made me briefly imagine it was somehow a theme answer. Also, the fact that both parts of LAKE / CHAD act like guards / gatekeepers for the puzzle's middle worked to make that section by far the hardest to get through. Not "hard" in any absolute terms—merely harder than the rest of the (very easy) puzzle.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
@LMS - Just wanted to agree with Chuck McGregor regarding the troll-post by TB a week or so ago. George B. is one of the nicest and most articulate posters, who always shares his wisdom. Trolls like TB are simply, well, A-Holes. IMHO.
ReplyDeleteDiana, Waiting for Civility
Congratulations to Ms Luttrell for her debut puzzle! Nice Monday puz with no groaners. If lavash, pita, naan, and Wonder are all bread, then I'll accept a BISCUIT and a MUFFIN as bread too. Two thumbs up; more please.
ReplyDeleteCome on Rex, where is your PC outrage over "STUDMUFFIN". It's not OK to objectify women but men, well who cares? Surely you are not going to use the weak excuse that they can have their turn, so to speak. It is either right or wrong and the NYT Crossword either has an obligation to be the bell weather of all that is PC or it doesn't. Seems just a tad hypocritical.
ReplyDeleteEasy smooth Mon., good beginner puzzle, liked it. Nice debut.
ReplyDeleteI finished in 2:39, which I think might be a record for me. I need to start keeping track of this sort of thing. I thought a lot of the clues were pretty dated, but I grew up in the 80s, so it worked for me.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, Rex – I would definitely count MUFFIN as a BREAD. But I see your point. A muffin is just one step away from a cupcake, I guess. Really interesting to think about what makes a bread a bread. I think I'd call it a bread if I'd serve it with a main course. Hmm. I'd definitely serve a corn muffin with dinner, maybe even a blueberry muffin. And I'd include it in some kind of "assorted breads" basket. Maybe this whole question smacks of the brioche/pain deal that Marie Antoinette apparently got wrong?
ReplyDeleteMrs. Helmsley, the hourlies have no bread!
Let'em eat muffins.
PIA ZADORA was actually in the hotel lobby when I was chatting with Chuck Mangione. I always get a kick out of the (probably untrue) anecdote that her performance as Anne Frank was so bad that audience members yelled "She's in the attic!" when the Nazi soldiers arrived.
The book SEABISCUIT is even better than the movie. Fascinating to read about the diets of the jockeys. Bread, indeed. More like a piece of celery and some lettuce leaves.
A fine Monday. Now I'm humming "It Don't Matter to Me," "Make It with You," and "Everything I Own." Good times.
Hearty congratulations to @Janice Luttrell on her New York Times debut. Constructor notes over at xwordinfo.com are quite moving, as @Janice pays tribute to her father, and thanks @Patti Varol for mentoring. As @Rex points out, a relatively easy solve, with LAKE / CHAD providing a bit of a speed-bump to the geographically-challenged, and the added personal hiccup of writing MEAThead ahead of MEATLOAF.
ReplyDeleteToday marks the tenth time (and first Monday) that Pia ZADORA has appeared in a @Will Shortz-edited crossword; the previous time was a mere three months ago when PIA also appeared and was cross-referenced in a puzzle by @Herre Schouwerwou. For the record, PIA alone has appeared many more times, although there are non-actress ways to clue her crossword-friendly first name, and the full name appeared in a Friday puzzle from 2012 by @Patrick Berry.
Time for me to trot out the classic stories, for those of you who missed them previously. My friend Paul Luftig, a retired banker, had dealings with Zadora's sugar daddy of an ex-husband, über-businessman Meshulum Riklis. At their very first meeting, an arranged luncheon, the first words from Meshulum to Paul were "I don't know why I'm having lunch with you; I usually get laid at lunch." Years later, when Riklis was recovering from some prostate treatment, he confided in Paul that Pia would not sleep with him because she thought it was contagious.
Of course, LONI Anderson was a gimme, since she is a 1963 graduate of my kids' alma mater, Roseville Area High School (then known as Alexander Ramsey Senior High School), and who can forget her ex-husband BURT Reynolds?
Yesterday, @Howard Barkin reminded us (Yankee and Met fans) of RED_SOX_NATION. Today, Patriots' Day, the eyes of the nation turn (again) to the City on a Hill, aka Beantown (and, for that matter, on the town of Natick too!) in this easy tribute puzzle from three years ago.
[Loose tie-in to today's theme: this enlightening article says "Beans and brown BREAD were a staple in colonial New England"].
Once again we see that people do not know that the UK uses the imperial measuring system as we do - feet, yards, miles. So, about 39 inches in England is about 39 inches. While the theme didn't bother me, there were a lot of proper names for a Monday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThat was a clue to the spelling not the usage.
DeleteIt is a beautiful looking grid, with easy access to all areas, and very clean, with some answers that pop: KICKBACK, SEABISCUIT, GOODEGG, GLIB, RUBE, GENRE, FACADE, even WAPNER. I like the cross of
ReplyDeleteGOODEGG with GEESE -- my brain keeps scrambling these two into "goose egg". And there is the beautiful mirror pair of AMOR and ROMA. The theme is a bit weak, as, like Rex, I don't think of rolls, biscuits, and muffins as consisting of bread (although the Wikipedia list of types of bread does have biscuits on the list), but on Monday, especially when all the other elements come together so beautifully, I'm more forgiving of theme weakness.
The bottom line is -- How was the solve? For me, it was a quick and happy romp, where I left the puzzle smiling from the experience. This was anything but a bagel creation.
Wiki-thingies claim that LOAF is a quantity of BREAD, a ROLL is a small LOAF, and that BISCUIT and MUFFIN are two types of quick BREAD.
ReplyDeleteQuick for me, too.
ReplyDeleteNo problem coming up with BELLE. Writing it in at 32A instead of 33A caused me some writeovers. I also don't know how "Lion's locks"/CAPS LOCK made it through editing. Otherwise, Monday.
ReplyDeletePPP Analysis
Pop Culture, Product Names, and Proper Nouns as a percentage of answers. When the percentage exceeds 33% some GLIB rants are likely to ensue
28/78, 36%
Unlike yesterday, I thought the PPP was going to be high, with a little too much emphasis on the 70's and 80's (when is the last time you cared about BURT Reynolds love life?)
CRIME and Punishment
ROMA
AESOP
ANNA Karenina
(LAKE) CHAD
Pia ZADORA
BELLE Scarlett O'Hara
Dr. SEUSS
MYSPACE
LAKE (CHAD)
Condé NAST
AMOR
HOSER
LONI Anderson
IMAC
Gabrielle REECE
ISAK Dinesen
BURT Reynolds
Pepsi and RC COLA
DALEY
BRUCE Willis
MEATLOAF
Judge WAPNER
OSHA
OPEL
Michael CERA
Fort KNOX
After reading @Rex, I guess this was better than it seemed while solving. So many show business names! I guess I've heard of most of them (I know Pia ZADORA only because a Boston Globe columnist used to make fun of her all the time, but that was enough). And clues like "Number in a quartet" for FOUR seemed too simple even for a Monday. But yeah, nice long answers, nice across and down themes (even if they never crossed), somehow cluing GOOD EGG as "Mensch" made me giggle, due to the totally different cultural contexts. And it was quick. I thought LAKE Kivu might have touched 4 countries as well, but went with CHAD, fortunately (only 2 for Kivu).
ReplyDeleteMarathon Day here, a friend from Chicago is running, so have to go watch her. And my taxes are in, so I can relax!
Oops! I'm getting a 'can't connect' message for the Captcha -- maybe I am a robot? I'll try this again later.
Shame on me: I didn't know GROK; thought it was GLOM. Not bothered that I didn't know Judge Wapner or Gabrielle Reece. Otherwise an easy Monday.
ReplyDeleteHearty congratulations to @Janice Luttrell on her New York Times debut. Constructor notes over at xwordinfo.com are quite moving, as @Janice pays tribute to her father, and thanks @Patti Varol for mentoring. As @Rex points out, a relatively easy solve, with LAKE / CHAD providing a bit of a speed-bump to the geographically-challenged, and the added personal hiccup of writing MEAThead ahead of MEATLOAF.
ReplyDeleteOf course, LONI Anderson was a gimme, since she is a 1963 graduate of my kids' alma mater, Roseville Area High School (then known as Alexander Ramsey Senior High School), and who can forget her ex-husband BURT Reynolds?
Yesterday, @Howard Barkin reminded us (Yankee and Met fans) of RED_SOX_NATION. Today, Patriots' Day, the eyes of the nation turn (again) to the City on a Hill, aka Beantown (and, for that matter, on the town of Natick too!) in this easy tribute puzzle from three years ago.
[Loose tie-in to today's theme: this enlightening article says "Beans and brown BREAD were a staple in colonial New England"].
Yummy and easy puzzle . No problem for calling them all bread and we even have an EGG to go with them. Also meatloaf (two for one) and casaba...again!!!
ReplyDeleteFun puzzle!!
Coming up Saturday: ENDORHEIC?
ReplyDeleteEasy puzzle, but liked it. Loved how the FOUR, long theme answers are symmetrically placed.
ReplyDelete@Rex sez: “The connection among all the answers is far too tenuous…” ???
The revealer clue reads “the makeup of….” Thus we have from Wiki, though similar in other sources:
ROLL: “A ROLL is a small, often round loaf of BREAD”
BISCUIT: “In the United States and some parts of English Canada, a BISCUIT is a quick BREAD”
MUFFIN: “A MUFFIN is an individual-sized, baked quick BREAD product.”
LOAF: “Technically, any UNIT of BREAD is called a "LOAF", no matter what its shape,”
And, for good measure, “quick bread?” is simply a BREAD leavened with other than yeast or eggs. So, the fundamental makeup of each is BREAD. I think the connection amongst them is fine.
You want more BREAD connections? There is a plethora of them in the puzzle. To wit:
EGG
OASIS (for the water)
ZEST (used in some BREAD recipies)
CASABA, TOE, & FLAXseed (types of BREAD)
“Farm animals that butt…(aka the heel of a LOAF of BREAD)
SLIDER (MEAT in a “UNIT of BREAD”)
MESS (what making BREAD can create)
There’s even BREAD PASTE, a well-known type of bait in the fishing world: “IZAaK Walton recommended a PASTE of white BREAD and honey as an excellent bait fo carp….”. Presumably he would have fished in LAKES for carp with this as bait. Indeed there are some LAKEs named after him.
I rate this as a BREAD-amazing puzzle.
“Give us this day our DALEY BREAD…”
I think Ms. Luttrell more than delivered it in SPADEs.
Cheers
A fascinating solve today, when I forgot to change my printing from landscape to portrait, and thus was missing 3 Across clues plus half of another, and 16 Down clues plus half of another.
ReplyDeleteAt the end, there were two problem areas. BEA_ crossing LA_E could reasonably have been d, k, m n or t. However, by sheer luck LA_E is cross-referenced by 24A, which I had as CHAD, so LAKE was the logical choice.
Then there was NA_T crossing ME_S. S seemed to be the most likely, but I wondered if NAST was to obscure for a Monday, given that the only NAST I could think of has been dead for 100 years. But then I looked around and we had a couple of hard-for-a-Monday names in ZADORA, whose 15 minutes ended around 1984, and somebody named Gabrielle REECE, whose fifteen minutes has not yet begun.
I have the impression I would have really liked this puzzle anyway. SEABUSCUIT, WEASEL, STUDMUFFIN, FACADE, MEATLOAF, those are pretty high quality words for a Monday. And I loved the Great White North reminder (hot on the heels of Eugene Levy).
Both biscuits and muffins can be found in the bread isle at my local super, so while I agree it's a stretch, I can get there.
I am not much of a cook, preferring those heat and eat options from Fresh Direct that give the illusion of cooking, but my mother did teach mr how to bake breads, pies, cakes, and cookies. So @Red, I did have A GRIN on my face over your consternation about MUFFINS and BISCUITS being classified as BREADs, especially when I double checked my recollection that they fell into the subcategory of quick BREADs and discovered that my cookbook included waffles and pancakes into the mix of BREADs. I loved my mother's corn muffins which were savory, not sweet.
ReplyDeleteAs for SEABISCUIT, I encountered him ages ago when I was a tween and all the tween girls were reading horse stories and collecting model horses. We lived in an area where a few lucky tweens even had parents that would buy them a horse or pony. The rest of us would "borrow" a pony to ride from families who still kept the ponies abandoned by their older daughters who had moved on to other interests. My friend actually adopted one of these ponies and he shared a paddock with her goat. The goat actually ate most of the pony's tail and MANE. Despite the pony's attempts at KICKing BACK when the goat snuck up from behind to chomp on a mouthful of tail, the goat was always fast enough to avoid the kick,
@Diana,LIW 12:32 AM - Thank you for echoing my comment about Mr. Barany. Well said!!!
ReplyDeleteCheers
I don't think that good egg has the gravitas that mensch has.
ReplyDeleteAs that mensch does.
ReplyDelete@Anon5:52 --
I respectfully beg to differ. While you're obviously correct that England -- like the US -- uses the Imperial Measuring System (primarily, though there have been some modifications in the UK, and similarly the US Customary System has some modifications).
In fact, though, in both places there are some disciplines that have adopted the Metric System, particularly in Scientific and Industrial applications, and in a significant number of commercial applications.
My main point is that the ~39-inch Meter/Metre, though not the primary length measurement in the US/UK, are both well-known in these places, though the spelling is different. And the U.K.-qualifier in the clue was merely to indicate the "Metre" spelling variant.
Apologies to all for the morning pedantry ... ;-)
I really enjoy the pop culture flashback of Pia ZADORA and those nonstop Dubbonet ads back in the 70s (a French cocktail! How continental!), but is there a solver under the age of say 50 who has any idea who she is? It seems kind of crazy to me that she still lives on in NYT crossword puzzles.
ReplyDeleteNice Monday, though for some reason I felt a slight twinge of vertigo filling the far SE in an OPEN/OPEL.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with the grid, but why does every single answer have to be clued in the most blah, obvious, completely unchallenging way? Watering spot in the desert for OASIS? Lion's locks for MANE? "----- and Punishment" for CRIME? Number in a quartet for FOUR? I mean, give us a break. We're not, any of us, nine years old.
ReplyDeleteGood Monday puzzle with a couple of snags, such as BELLE and WEASLE which both had me stumped fur a moment.
ReplyDeleteGot a Biblical chuckle out of looking back over the puzzle and finding ONAN hiding in the NW corner.
To those of us who are allergic to wheat, everything gluteny (probably not a word but should be) is "bread," so I'll go with it. By the time I got to the revealer I already had "biscuit" and "roll," so the answer came easily. I also had no problems with either "belle" (had the E from "spade in place" or "beak" (childhood family friends had a toucan). I solved this one almost solely running through the acrosses, with an occasional shift to grab the obvious downs, and I am usually a slow plodder who second guesses themselves a lot. I would rate this one "way too easy" (or using my rating system on how smart/stupid the crossword makes me feel: "mega genius").
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun, playful Monday puzzle. Good job Janice Luttrell.
ReplyDeleteI also like how all the themers are nicely placed in the grid.
Reminds me of a joke:
When asked about rumors that he owned a bakery, Shakespeare replied "It's much a-dough about Muffin......"
Please feel free to groan.
Liked this easy debut for JL.
ReplyDeleteFavorite answer was CAPS LOCK.
After arriving at GOOD EGG , immediately thought theme was breakfast foods and was under that impression even though it was not starred--until Rex.
CrosswordEASE-- ZADORA and that's it.
Thanks JL
Hi-carb debut.
ReplyDeleteHi-lites:
* LONI Anderson.
* cinnamon ROLL. (Had a German visitor insist on buyin M&A one of them after dinner last night. Said jawohl.)
* KICKBACK. GOODEGG. WEASEL. FLAX.
* 6 U's.
* Vertical *and* horizontal themers. Always makes figurin out the theme more fun.
* BREAD. Good 70's rock group. ("Make It with U", etc.) Themers seemed consistent enough for government work. M&A Official Dictionary defs for BISCUIT, MUFFIN, ROLL, and LOAF all mention the b-word, so they must all at least have bread in their "makeup".
Like most MonPuz solvequests, this one flew along pretty much unencumbered. CHAD/GOODEGG/BELLE mighta chewed up an extra nanosecond or two, for some reason.
thUmbsUp on the grid art, at 19-Down (in newspaper version). And the all-caps 50-A clue. Peps things up.
Thanx and congrats, Janice Luttrell. Yer puz was a good egg.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
@kitshef -
ReplyDeleteUnless you're on some elite level where you don't look at the clues, a ' body of water' that is LA_E and a part of a bird that is BEA_ really cannot be anything other than K... Same with a sty that is ME_S (unless you hate the METS?). That's sub-Monday easiness.
Also, a muffin is a type of bread, unless you want to categorize it under baked-leavened-grain-product('bread'). The nit picks are trying too hard on this one, must mean it's a nice clean puzzle! Enjoyed it.
Hey All !
ReplyDeletePia Zadora is a Babe, Schwing! :-) Or at least I thought so in the 80's.
Super easy puz. Nice center stair-step of fives. Nice pretty much dreck-free fill. No Eel, Ass, RRN, RGL (Random Greek Letter), or species of the West Indian Rubber Tree clue.
A J and Q from a pangram. @L at 9:18, I'm under 50 (for now...), and I heard of all the people in the puz. Loved HOSER! Can't remember the last time I heard that! Thanks for the Boband Dpug MacKenzie pic, Rex!
Congrats on debut, JL, I'm still trying! I'm going for a personal rejection record! Well on my way...
REECE GEESE
RooMonster
DarrinV
A very enjoyable debut puzzle!
ReplyDeleteI like to start in the extreme NW and finish the last cross in the waydown SW (at least on a Monday). I found this grid great fun. Start with the NW block, then three consecutive diagonals going down the page until the last block in the SE.
I thought all the bread clues were immediately clear without having to subject them topost partum analysis.
First easy Monday for me in a while. This is a great entry-level puzzle and a nice debut. I was a bit taken aback at the number of partials but that does add to the ease of the solve.
ReplyDeleteMy one writeover was Adage before AXIOM at 27D. GENRE crossing METRE is nice. And I liked being reminded of how I used to find music on MY SPACE, which I liked infinitely more than Facebook. If you ever want to find out what is going to be commercially successful, ask me what I like and invest in the opposite. It always seems like the products/shows I like are discontinued first. Count me out of the mainstream!
Congrats, Ms. Luttrell, on the NY Times debut.
And thanks, @Lewis, for the "bagel creation" and @LMS for the apt avatar.
@Wm. C - you saved me the trouble. Ah, the ($125m) perils of two measuring systems .
ReplyDeleteAck. I got hung up on ZADORA/CASABA, having entered ZADORe/CASABe and not really knowing any better. The hunt for my mistake pushed me well past average time. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteWhat's the matter, Rex? Too embarrassed by your hypocrisy to print my comment about STUDMUFFIN? Or should I take it as a sign that my earlier messages got through to you and you are going to stop with the nutty PC crap?
ReplyDeleteThis was an excellent debut puzzle. The revealer is dead center and the themers are symmetric. While the themers have only been seen one to four times before the debut threshold is actually met by two of those longer entries that @ Rex was praising: CAPS LOCK and KICKBACK. Debut words are so far as I can tell a given requirement for publication. While doing this puzzle I expected the PPP to be even higher than 36%(keep up the good work @Z.) However to an experienced solver they're too familiar to generate difficulty.
ReplyDeleteBy my difficulty/uniqueness rating this scored a surprisingly low 49.2 overall. This is a result of the high PPP. An entry like SEABISCUIT which has only been used once before is still easy to guess due to the recent well known movie. I m also concentrating more on the clues. ONAN has appeared 74 times but only 56 times as a phrase. The other 18 refer to the infamous biblical character. These two things are so different you have to rate them as one or the other.
You can see I'm too easily distracted to be a speed solver.
Great Pia Zadora joke by @lms.
No one seems to be mentioning the connection between bread and money. FT KNOX BANK ROLL KICKBACK CFO. He uses the word Moolah in the theme clue. BURT LONI and PIA are all multi millionaires (Pia is probably richest of all). I dunno, Rex didn't say anything and I didn't catch it anywhere above. No saying it makes the theme sturdier, but it's another layer.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this puzzle, came smoothly and easily for the most part (I always have trouble with names of actors, and TV shows -- a function of my personal interests no doubt.) I enjoyed the theme -- and agree with others that biscuits and muffins are all some sort of bread.
ReplyDeleteBut after I filled in 61A, AMOR for "Roman god of love," I had to stop and think. The answer fit, and when I checked, it was right, but hey, it's NOT. Had to check on this but -- the Roman God of love is Cupid, the Roman Goddess of Love is Venus, the Greek God of Love is Eros.
So what is AMOR? It is a part of the verb AMO, to love. (I never studied Latin I confess, so it is hard for me to explain AMOR in more detail -- but to those who have it is the singular, nominative case in the 3rd declension. Got that from Wikipedia) Who was editing this one?
Oh how I wish I had enough puzzle depth to be able to admire a grid or evaluate a theme. Instead I'm left with the sads over moldy pop culture crud like Pia Zadora and Loni Anderson and Burt Reynolds.
ReplyDeleteAgree that the clue to the 'revealer' is awkward, but not sure how it could be phrased more felicitously. The rant-of-the-day is just...weird.
ReplyDeleteAgree with others, Ms. Luttrell has done herself proud with a comely Monday. The moving tribute she wrote to her father is also on the Wordplay blog.
Recently saw this performance of 'Ode to Joy' by a flash MOB in Spain, on TV. I saw on YouTube that there were several from different locales, and looked at one of them from Germany and decided to link to them both - each has nice shots of folks in the crowd, and I especially liked that some of the German spectators joined in the singing.
Oops, again.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBaHPND2QJg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a23945btJYw
Today marks the tenth time (and first Monday) that Pia ZADORA has appeared in a @Will Shortz-edited crossword; the previous time was a mere three months ago when PIA also appeared and was cross-referenced in a puzzle by @Herre Schouwerwou. For the record, PIA alone has appeared many more times, although there are non-actress ways to clue her crossword-friendly first name, and the full name appeared in a Friday puzzle from 2012 by @Patrick Berry.
ReplyDeleteTime for me to trot out the classic stories, for those of you who missed them previously. [Special thanks to @Loren Muse Smith, who had one that I had not heard before.]
My friend Paul Luftig, a retired banker, had dealings with Zadora's sugar daddy of an ex-husband, über-businessman Meshulum Riklis. At their very first meeting, an arranged luncheon, the first words from Meshulum to Paul were "I don't know why I'm having lunch with you; I usually get laid at lunch." Years later, when Riklis was recovering from some prostate treatment, he confided in Paul that Pia would not sleep with him because she thought it was contagious.
@Margaret - Cupid was sometimes know as AMOR, probably when he was operating on the down low.
ReplyDeleteWow, Fearless One, nothing made you wince? What about one of the most horrid partials ever: ONAN? This is an unfortunate stain in an otherwise spotless carpet. Some carbon tetrachloride is called for.
ReplyDeleteAlso, that's a very picky criticism of the theme; while technically true, at least you can say that all that stuff comes from a bakery. Perhaps the revealer clue should have gone that way, but it's a nit.
No dearth of damsels this day, but Gaby and Pia notwithstanding, I'll go for LONI. Hubba hubba! I bet she STILL looks good! Very easy and smooth Monday: theme serviceable, fill squeaky-clean outside of that stain. If a debut, it's promising, and I wish to encourage. Birdie.
DALEY BREAD
ReplyDeleteCHAD the STUDMUFFIN was a REEL GOODEGG,
yet in AMOR, still a NAÏVE HOSER, or RUBE, or oaf.
“I want a KICKBACK from your BANKROLL”, he’d beg.
I said, ”Leave MYSPACE, WEASEL, and don’t let your MEATLOAF.”
--- BRUCE KNOX
I thought it a pretty good Mon-puz, wouldn’t pick on MUFFIN (think English MUFFIN) and certainly not on LOAF as a UNIT of BREAD.
ReplyDelete@spacey – I did wince at ONAN, wishing it were clued after the generator which used to be manufactured locally here (too obscure for Mon), or after the biblical character (at least semi-obscure), but I guess this is what happens on Monday. As for yeah babies, I wasn’t even out of the NW and had 3, but no more (as clued) to follow. LONI from WKRP , and Ms. ZADORA from a bunch of places are a nice start, but I’d go with volleyballer/model Ms. REECE, Tom Brady notwithstanding. Good call on Sarah SIDLE yesterday, I might be slipping. Or not, LAKE Bell from today? ANNA Kournikova? ROMA Downey? Probably too much unless there’s a yeah baby theme some day. Then watch OFL howl.
@D,LIW – that Delorean sure gets around.
Flashback to the McKenzie bros. with HOSER. Wasn’t there a HOSER in a puz recently?
Had some Russian gingerBREAD with tea today. Not bad, but a crumby MESS after. Enough puz talk, gotta get back ATOM.
Seems that Mondays are offering a bit more bite.
ReplyDeleteNot the BREADs, which aren't bad, but the somewhat more ZESTY fill: CASABA and SLIDER, and, from a different GENRE altogether, LONI,REECE, and ZADORA.
Pretty good Monday fare.
Oh, and I meant to include Scarlett, a Southern BELLE with unmatched verve.
ReplyDeleteIf I didn't say this was easy, @Rainy would call me a HOSER. Or maybe a RUBE.
ReplyDeleteI, too, kept thinking what a nice Monday this would be for a newbie. And, FWIW, I think the ONAN "partial," whilst not scintillating, also would give a novice an idea of what a partial may consist of. Just like the SPADE. And CAPSKEY. I guess FOUR is just a touch above "opposite of NNW" as a clue. A tiny touch. A pat.
Second time we see that yellow CASABA fruit in recent memory. I've gone looking for this so-called melon at local stores and have yet to find one. Out of season?
SEABISCUIT made me smile. The movie "Secretariat" is on today. Have not see that yet.
Laughed out loud at Aketi's goat/horse story.
Raining for third day in a row - good day to be HOME. No place like it.
Thanks, @Rondo, for your response to my moderation woes. (And I answered the email.) I Googled the Depot - beautiful! Reminds me of 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.
And I so agree with Teedmn - I can kill just about any product if it becomes a favorite. Everything from shampoo to underware to bread - you name it. I kept putting new renditions of Almay's face lotion out of circulation, and finally, I killed off the whole line. A company made famous for hypo-allergenic face cream, still in existence, drops the whole face cream line. Always thought I could save companies a lot of trial and error, "Look. Mikey likes it!" Then, poof! All gone.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for Crosswords
@Diana, Lady-in-Waiting - for me, it's clothing. Find a shirt I like? When I go back to buy more, they will have altered the fit. Find boots that are great for hiking with no break-in period? They'll be replaced with an inferior model in a jiffy. Socks, pants, shorts, unmentionables, they'll all be ruined by the time I buy some more.
ReplyDeleteHey @D,LIW
ReplyDeleteIs "underware" some kind of Tupperware or software or hardware worn under one's clothes? Stop relying on Spellcheck. Better to use a Spellcaster, tho they've been banished.
DELE, not STET
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for an Editor