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Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: APRIL FOOLS — Theme answers are just strings of letters.
Theme answers:
- TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT (20A: Tea set?)
- GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG (36A: G-string?)
- BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB (50A: Beeline?)
Word of the Day: EBBETS (45D: ___ Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers) —
Ebbets Field was a Major League Baseball stadium in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. It is known mainly as the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team of the National League, from 1913 to 1957, but was also home to three National Football League teams in the 1920s. Ebbets Field was demolished in 1960 and replaced by apartment buildings.
• • •
Hi everyone, it's me, Rex, and I thought this puzzle was poorly constructed. Always unfortunate when I don't have a lot to say about a puzzle, and that's the case here. The theme answers fell flat; the answers didn't even form an acronym. I would have loved to see more diversity in cluing as well; too many baseball clues, overused clue-word connections, etc. This one just did nothing for me. Wait, it's the first Monday of the month! It's been me, Annabel, this whole time! April Fools! That being said, I think the puzzle's trick worked; I totally slapped myself in the forehead when I entered my fourth T. I actually do wish the answers had formed an acronym. In fact, it seems like it would have been easy to do without changing too many of the clues--G, B, and T were all there, and with the LGBTFLAG clue it seems like a natural progression to add LLLLLLL or something. But other than that, having words that aren't actually words is a good April Fool's prank in my book!
Anyway, the rest of the puzzle. Not to linger on LGBTFLAG too long but I don't know anyone who doesn't just say "Rainbow flag" or "pride flag," making that terminology feel a little forced. I didn't have a ton of difficulty with this one, which IMO makes it a good Monday overall! My one other major gripe with the puzzle was that the cluing tended towards straightforward, which would normally be fine but doesn't feel right for an April Fools' Day puzzle. Play around with some words a little! I mean, getting BUSS right away did validate my English major, but give me something else to work with too!
Bullets:
- BLAH (50D: When tripled, "and so on and so forth") — I'm feeling the opposite of this right now! I just got back on campus after my last spring break ever (until graduate school but that's different), and I've been applying to a bajillion jobs. I'm like, super nervous, guys, but also super excited. So yeah, anything but blah.
- AEIOU (59A: "...and sometimes Y" preceder) — Oh man, talk about a blast from the past.
- OUIS (40A: French assents) — I think the constructor was just being a ouise guy with this one. [Loud groans]
- EARWORM (25A: Tune you just can't get out of your head) — It was too hard to pick just one, so I'll leave you with this comedy bit about an earworm instead.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
What’s the over/under on the percentage of experienced solvers getting their fastest time ever today? I’m guessing the o/e must be around 97% (and I’ll take the over). Today’s puzzle basically filled itself in.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, seems like a pretty good starter puzzle for new solvers. Straightforward clues with an easy gimmick to uncover.
So I'm solving the NW... look at all those T's.. wtf.. is it all.. yes... bam, in go the Ts. and look there's a few Gs.. bam in go the Gs.. I didn't even look, I just laid in all the Bs. super super easy. New Monday record for me.
ReplyDeleteThis is clearly the greatest Monday puzzle of all time. Did I mention I set a personal record?
Extremely easy, but then when all you have to do is hold a key down for 15 spaces it should go quickly. Goofy theme, some nice long downs, plus Michelle and Wells, liked it.
ReplyDelete45 squares wasted on nothing. April’s fools joke? Not clever nor funny.
ReplyDeleteI’ll quit now before I get as obnoxious as this puzzle. Yuck!
Happy April Fool's, Annabel!!! I loved your write-up! Also, John Mulaney is so great, excellent video to wake up to!
ReplyDeleteIf this wasn't intentional, it's too much of a coincidence...
ReplyDeleteTGB:
Taiwan Golden Bee Co. Ltd.
Founded
1 April 1978.
!!!
@Anabel, nice write up.
ReplyDeleteI don't ever remember seeing this theme before, and bravo to Joel for coming up with it. And it's tight -- I ran the alphabet seeing if I could come up with another theme answer, without success. Jeff Chen suggests as a possibility SEA LANE, but the letter C is nowhere in that clue, unlike the theme answers in the puzzle. I wonder if Joel came up with this long ago and was waiting for April Fool's to land on a Monday.
ReplyDeleteAs your resident alphadoppeltotter, I must report that this puzzle has 30 double letters -- a 15 x 15 record high in the years I've been tracking this -- but, alas, it comes with an asterisk, as it is directly theme related. Apart from the theme answers, the double letter count is average.
When the theme hit me, it was, like, as column 13 says, THE THING IS ... BING!
There are some that are stretches and probably require question marks on the clues
DeleteDefense?
Affront?
Jaywalk?
Elway? (As in John)
Queues?
Express? (literally what you would do to as x key)
Zero? Zeerow?
DeleteEye liner?
DeleteGGGGGGG Louise, Joel, that was fun!
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle was RIDICULOUSLY hard! I'm at two hours now, and only TWO answers filled in. This is supposed to be a MONDAY. BAH!!
ReplyDeleteAnnabel, nice opening paragraph!
ReplyDeleteAnnabel - best review - EVER!
ReplyDeleteWe hope Rex lets you continue ;)
Annabel: You got me! (Although the “Hi everyone, it’s me, Rex" had me thinking, this sounds pretty "un-Rex-like"). Anyway, good write up and happy April fools day everyone.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this puzzle, especially for a Monday. That some of the downs cross two themers is pretty impressive. Not too much bad fill either.
Two things: 1) I always heard of the slate-like color as “blue-gray" instead of GRAYBLUE. Maybe that’s just a holdover from my childhood infatuation with Crayola crayons? 2) Is the chalk used by gymnasts really made out of TALC?
That one had me stunped for about three seconds, because I always thought they use magnesium powder, not talc...
DeleteI was running through the downs in the NW corner on my iPhone. Somehow I typo’d G I’m the end of PANT without noticing. Then for LGBT - the longer form is LGBTQ, and I often want to put that Q before the T for some reason (slight dyslexia?). Anyways, when I get to the clue for 20A, I look at what I have so far, and it’s TTTGTTTTQ....... so I spent some cycles trying to fit it into some DNA or other sequence. Kind of funny when I glanced at the downs and noticed the G was wrong and I was making this way too hard. Still came in under average.
ReplyDeleteYou made me laugh, Annabel. You caught Rex exactly! Brava!
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the job hunt, Annabel!
ReplyDeleteGood fun today, Ty Cobb, too (great player, not so great person). Also detoured to the Wordplay Column where there's a link to the 2016 Fool's puzzle, a Friday. I remember it, but relished the redo.
Great write up Rex/Annabel. I like Joel and his puzzles. Maybe TGB stands for The Goof Ball. And @Lewis what about “D-List”? As in Hollywood has-beens? I for one am glad powdered WIGS for men are still out of fashion. Too much TALC on one’s LAPEL. Oh and how ‘bout “Z Thread”? We had a long one yesterday.
ReplyDeleteLewis and quasi:
DeleteEl train
👎👎
ReplyDeleteEasy... but not in a good way.
That white powder that gymnasts use on their hands in not talc. It's chalk. Magnesium carbonate. Rock climbers use it too.
ReplyDeleteA bit of surprise on April Fool’s Day is most welcome and today we get two bits worth including the mini. Thanks Joel! Do you have a whoopee cushion hidden somewhere today?
ReplyDeleteI’m so happy to be reminded of the remarkable RBG at any time of the day or night, but AINT was just wrong. It got me wondering how AINT became the bastard child of the English language and how we’ve learned to cringe at the sound. Curse words are socially much more acceptable. Poor little AINT. Maybe our linguist @LMS, loves you but I bet she doesn’t trot you out in public.
I was totally pranked by the MINI. Take a look if you haven't yet read @Harryp 12:28 (He gives it away). The big puzzle-I put in lapel and started doing the downs and saw the T thing. I had a similar experience with the G & B, just ran them across and didn't read the clues. So this was pretty much a big nothing theme-wise. But it's a crossword puzzle so it was pleasant.
ReplyDeleteTGB The Green Button (Windows Media Center online forum)
TGB Torque Game Builder (software)
TGB The Great Beyond
TGB Targeted Group Business
TGB Terrain Vehicle (Swedish military)
TGB Tangentbord (Swedish: keyboard)
TGB Telecommunications Grounding Busbar
TGB Tiagabine
TGB Temporary Guide Base (energy production)
TGB Très Grande Bibliothèque
TGB Tarbes Gespe Bigorre (French basketball club)
TGB Tokyo Gate Bridge (Japan)
TGB The Gay Blades (band)
TGB Taiwan Golden Bee Co Ltd
TGB The Glorious Burden (Iced Earth album)
TGB Télévision Générale Brestoise (French: Brest General TV; Brest, France)
TGB Très Gros Bisous (French: Very Big Kisses)
TGB Transfer Gearbox
TGB The Grand Barn (Canada)
TGB Tail Gear Box
TGB Trunk Group Busy
TGB Ten Green Bottles (gaming)
TGB Trace Gas Biogeochemistry
TGB Taiwanese Government Bonds
TGB Turbine Gear Box
TGB Turkish Community of Berlin
Happy April fools day all!! Great write up Annabel.
ReplyDeleteOf course I LOVED 50 across!!!!
I usually like everything, but today I'll be a YYYYYYY guy and just say,
ReplyDeleteZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
12 seconds slower than my Monday record.
ReplyDeleteI just don't get the "theme." Or I guess I get it but it seems...who cares? I got the string of Ts first. Saw that I had two Gs on that line, so filled it in. Had no Bs in that line, but after I got Ts and Gs, I looked at the clue and filled that in. Yawn. At least give us a vowel so we can have an actual word? (A-list?) Also available? L Series. Those are my quick, didn't really think about other ideas for theme answers (and I think the hyphen in these is allowed because of g-string).
Good luck wrapping up your undergrad experience, Annabel!
Meh.
Along with many others, I set my personal best by a good 30 or 40 seconds. I've only been at this for about 6 months and this felt a bit too easy even for me, especially after Sunday's puzzle absolutely destroyed me.
ReplyDeleteYep, that's a Monday puzzle alright. The theme is cute, and the fill was tolerable (mostly ... BAE Again!!, but please, make me think just a little.
ReplyDeleteOnly ten comments after 8 AM? Are the moderators asleep?
ReplyDeleteAnnabel, you say you would have preferred less straightforward clues. Problem is, on a Monday the clues should be extremely easy, which means they should not veer much from being straightforward. I'm not sure how many ways there are to keep an April Fool's day puzzle quite easy for beginners.
I'm not sure I would call the gimmick an April Fool's joke, but who cares on April Fool's day?
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteWell, Happy April Fools Day. Puz was interesting. TTTTTotally BBBBBadass GGGGGrid.
Got one for DDDDD... Detour?
Clean fill job, though it would've been A BIT nicer if there were no other T's, G's, or B's elsewhere in puz. Probably A LOT to ask.
Really wanted fartY for GASSY. Chuckle at EARWORM today to go with YesterPuz's similar answer. (No spoilers here!) Liked the clue for AEIOU.
Got two F's (no FFFFF...?), and a ROO in ROOT. Also, 9 U's. Counting for @M&A, as he seems to be missing in action. Does anyone know his whereabouts? I know it's tough to find someone who is masked & ANONymous.
TGB GBT BTG
RooMonster
DarrinV
I thought April Fools jokes were when you say something absurd but sell it like it's true. Claims that life on Mars has been discovered or that someone famous has died or resigned or impeached...NOT a line of Ts, Gs, or Bs. That's not even really a prank. It's just a not very good theme. It's not very good because once you figure it out, you just fill in a bunch of letters that are hints to other letters...there's never any doubt about it either. I filled in the Ts thinking maybe ONE of them would be something else related to "set" or something. Nope. Just Ts. So I went to the next grid spanner, saw the letter in question and filled it in...all the way across.
ReplyDeleteI feel like my streak should have ended because I got so many hints.
What WOULD have been an April Fools would be that there was some meta "joke" that would have needed to happen so that when you got to the end of the final letter and you were sure it was right, it wouldn't be right. In fact, if they had programmed the applet on the website to NEVER say you did it right....THAT would be an April Fools joke. A good one too...because the puzzle was so easy and it would piss a lot of people off. I'm not a fan of April Foos, but that is how you April Fools.
This was just bad. I mean, as puzzles go, it was a Monday. But it was not funny nor particularly fun to do.
I'm going to add one more Z to @pablo's post.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm laking in the perspicacious column but I don't understand April Fool's Day. Why? Who was the smarty pants that invented that day?
I have a friend who spends about an entire year thinking of something new to do to her husband thinking he will never catch on. She does things like turn the water off when he's showering or putting vinegar in his afternoon tea. You know, really hysterically funny things - sort of like this puzzle. Why?
I seem to get pranked every year. I ask myself do I carry a huge big L over my forehead? Last year I was buying some wine at BevMo and I had my Trader Joe's wine bag with me. The check-out guy told me that TJ's had just filed for bankruptcy and that all the stores were being closed. Well, I believed him. I wailed WHERE AM I GOING TO BUY MY CHEESE?
Oh...I like BOCA crossing LOUD.
It's true that the theme was easy but Joel managed to pull it off without compromising the fill. Heck, nearly every answer is fill!
ReplyDeleteThat he also was able to find answers that crossed more than one line of theme letters impressed me as well.
I liked it. Well played Mr. Fagliano.
I thought this was a fun Monday. Of course, the theme made the puzzle even easier and the puzzle certainly didn't need to be any easier than it already was, but I overlooked it because there was imagination and humor and a certain je ne sais pas. This is exactly the sort of puzzle I'd give to a novice solver.
ReplyDeleteThe three theme answers were nicely clued. I've been trying to think of some others:
Rolling seas
Full of ease
Long queues
"Eyes right"
Joel's are better.
I don’t understand the self-congratulatory nature of solving crossword puzzles in record time. What’s more enjoyable, self-congratulations or solving a crossword? And why must it be announced?
ReplyDeleteGood stuff from Joel. On April 1, you have to just CCCCCCCCCCCCCCC the day.
ReplyDeleteMy hacker's lament: Ernie LLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, from the back TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT, IIIIIIIIIIIIIII the fairway and strokes his drive with EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG, I sure could UUUUUUUUUUUUUUU a swing like that -- golf is such a TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.
@pabloinnh wins the day.
ReplyDeleteWTF was that? ULEE and AEIOU should have been a big red flag that something just wasn’t working. 45 squares that you just fill in? And then you foist non-things like LGBT FLAG (as was pointed out, that’s not what anyone calls it) and GRAY-BLUE? THE THING IS, this is a boring non-theme based around simplistic letter puns. Maybe a top line of RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR could have turnt this into a semblance of a theme, but I doubt it. BLAH.
ReplyDeleteNice one, @Sir Hillary (9:19).
ReplyDeleteI thought it needed more work. First, two of the themers are clued with words that sound like the letter, but aren't; the middle one is just cued with the letter. (I realize it's the letter used as a musical note, but still.) And it neeeded a bit more -- either the acronym thing, or as @Roo suggests, not using the theme letters anyplace else in the puzzle. A BIT /A LOT--you should only use one of these per puzzle, unless you want to really overdo it with A TAD, A SEC, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd finally, RUST? You are certainly rusty if you don't practice, but I don't think anyone has ever used the noun form this way..
Sorry to be grumpy; I think I'm just tired of having to remember Disney princesses.
Thanks for the writeup, Annabel. Once you graduate, try to get some rest!
My five favorite clues from last week:
ReplyDelete1. Verb whose past tense is formed by moving the first letter to the end (3)
2. Non-religious observance: Abbr. (3)
3. Totally screw up? (6)
4. Peabrain? (6)
5. Deg. that requires the study of calculus (3)
EAT
DST
MISADD
MENDEL
DDS
What was the puzzle like today?
ReplyDeleteZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
You know it's lame when you don't even bother to look at the down-clues/answers.
ReplyDeleteNo foolin'.
{U-haul?} = UUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. Just sayin.
ReplyDeletePrimo @RP riff, @Blu'Bel. U may have some snark potential.
This mighta been an awful hard MonPuz to construct. Usually long strings of consonants or vowels in an answer can cause fill-in problems for doin the crossers. Lotsa longball fills are crossin two themers in this puz, also. Day-um. Nice job, Mr. Fagliano.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {Five cards of the same suit, in poker} = FLUSH.
fave longball fillins included: GAMEBALL. RAGINGBULL. THETHINGIS.
staff weeject pick: BAE. Coulda been worse: Coulda had BEE right over that there B-line.
@Roo: Yo. M&A had been on a road trip to Waco, where he spent a few days waitin in line at the Fixer Uppers' (Magnolia) bakery. A long B line, if U will. Mighty good cinnamon rolls, tho. We feasted on them on the adjacent Magnolia patio, next to two bigass old silos and a whole mess of hungry crows.
Thanx for the tease, the geez, and the bees, Joel F. Some slight desperation: AEIOU & ARIEL/DOGES. [M&A wanted DO GAS, to compliment GASSY.] Otherwise, mighty smooth grid work, considerin.
Masked & Anonymo9Us
p.s. @Muse darlin: Consider yerself heavily m&aind-melded.
April Fools runt? …
**gruntz**
THE THING IS, this theme feels like a stunt that probably impressed the constructor but wasn’t much fun for the solver. At least not this one. Too much of a gimmee, even for a Monday.
ReplyDeleteHad a similar idea as Annabelle that a row of Ls (perhaps an “el line”?) could have turned this into an LGBT puzzle instead of an arbitrary set of repeating letters.
Meanwhile we’ve moved from an “eargasm” a few days ago to an EARWORM today. Then there's the oddly clued RUST. And a LAST SONG for a splash of green paint.
That said, Joel Fagliano is still one of the best constructiors around. And that’s not an April Fool’s joke.
puzzle insists i have something wrong and it's driving me crazy. is this an april fool's joke by them?? don't wanna break my streak by checking puzzle if it will give me credit later or something.
ReplyDeletenot getting credit for completing. is it an april fool's joke. I don't want to check puzzle if i'm gonna get credit later.
ReplyDeleteIt's BLUE GRAY, yes it is, don't try to tell us it isn't. (Trivia: the Blue Gray crayon was one of the first that Crayola "retired".)
ReplyDeleteAnd -- OUT OF SORTS does not mean discombobulated. It means cross, grouchy; or feeling under the weather.
And isn't spoiling the Mini here verboten?
Would have been more impressive if there was one or more downs that crossed all 3 'theme' answers. Also I spell it grEy.
ReplyDeleteYou want a real April Fool's puzzle? One that really fools you? Or, as in my case if memory serves, makes you think you are losing your mind? Check out April 1, 2011. If you're someone who thinks you never did it and can find an online copy with no answers, I recommend it to you. It possesses all the crunchiness you didn't find here.
ReplyDeleteAnabel's "ouise" in analogy to French "oui" (and in fact also "ouest") actually points out that W is really another vowel (in English) as is Y always (Iago vs Yago).
ReplyDeleteExcept for waiting for the other shoe to drop on what the significance is of TGB (still waiting :-), I thought this was a cute puzzle. As Annabel points out, an LGBT tie-in could have been made (Cued as El train? perhaps?) but oh, well.
ReplyDeleteI'm not much into April Fools' type pranks. The only one I remember ever pulling was a revenge prank - a friend left a huge wad of gum stuck to the window of my car, grossing me out. Perhaps 10 years later, I saw this thing for sale in a catalog that you stuck to someone's car window that made it look like a golf-ball had embedded itself into the window, complete with radiating cracks. I applied it in the dead of winter to the rear window of his vehicle in his blind spot so it would be hard for him to see from inside the car. It took him several days to find it, he thought it was real at first, and he blamed someone completely different for the joke. He was very shocked when I owned up to it but he remembered the original joke he pulled on me and considered us even. I think I can live with having played one successful joke in my life (and not an April Fools' joke.)
Easy but cute, thanks, Joel.
Ack, I see I wasn't the first with "El train". Sorry.
ReplyDeleteAnabel, you nailed it for me, both with the April Fool and your comments. I Sussex out the “joke” immediately and, like you hoped against hope it would flesh out to a revealer about the “stripes” of letters somehow representing stripes of the LGBT flag! Oh well, trying to do so might have resulted in a completely cringe-worthy fill for an otherwise super Monday effort (in my truly humble opinion).
ReplyDeleteI rarely complain vehemently because I am certainly in no position to put my smart-ass (or otherwise negative) opinions to work to demonstrate how much better a puzz of mine could be than the one suffering my complaints!
It was a very easy Monday. Hope it brings in lots of new solvers! I beat my own Monday record!
@M&A
ReplyDeleteU-haul!!!! Awesome.
In a similar vein; FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF - F Troop?
Nice to see you didn't OD on those Cinnamon Rolls.
Without you and @LMS, this place lacks a certain freshness. Try not to stay away so long.
I definitely can't fill in for either of y'all. :-)
RooMonster
Fastest Monday for me ever. Once I got the line of Ts thanks to tackling so many of the Down clues, I just jumped and filled in my Gs and Bs. If I didn't get confused between GReY and GRAY, I would have come in under 4 minutes. Took some time to figure out that was where I went wrong.
ReplyDeleteYou could just have nyc subway train as a clue for strings of several different letters.
ReplyDeleteOr long nap? z's.
O to the 15th power? (Oh not zero)
Tasted five times better than mmm.
Stuttered badly? B's
Stuck on the first letter? A
Stuck on the last letter? Z
I second @Joe Dipinto's "isn't spoiling the Mini here verboten?" You now have to do the mini before coming to this blog or risk having it spoiled here.
ReplyDeleteApril 1, 2002 was another interesting one. That one had some touch cluing for a Monday, so it starts off slow but finishes fast. And no, I don't remember that from 17 years ago. I've been working through 2002 in the archives.
ReplyDelete@Annabel, you totally got me! Thanks for the laugh.
ReplyDeleteI thought the theme offered a nice Monday-meets-April-Fools'-Day compromise: easy overall, and with the mild joke of substituting the letter strings for words.
I liked the array of female STARs: OBAMA, OLGA, IDA, ARIEL, and GINSBURG and the new-fangled BAE with her old-fashioned BEAU.
@Mini-before-crossword-doers - I echo @Linda and @Joe DiPinto. Give us a spoiler alert, please.
@pabloinnh nailed it. This puzzle was incredibly easy and not fun at all, and the long letter strings weren't clever either. This is the best the NYT could come up with for an April Fool's Day puzzle? And there was only one clue that stumped me for even a second: RUST for "Lack of practice, metaphorically." WHAT? RUSTY for "Out of practice, metaphorically," maybe. Try using it in a sentence: "You'd be doing better with your piano studies if it weren't for your rust."
ReplyDeletePhooey.
stuck at the Newark Marriott (have more dire words EVER led into a comment?) I opted for 20 replays of Neil Diamond's "Forever in bluejeans" Try being more of an arse than me!
ReplyDeleteTalc ... ?
ReplyDeleteYou haven't played for a month: Better shake the rust off.
ReplyDeleteOnly comment today is the video linked in the review, AEIOU and Sometimes Y, may be the worst song I have ever heard and worst video I have ever seen. If it does, indeed, become an EARWORM, this will be my last post. Ever! For if it does, I will jump in front of a RAGINGBULL, or wave an LGBTFLAG in a biker bar while singing Paula ABDUL's Opposites Attract, or something to ensure I never hear that mess again. (And THETHINGIS, I graduated HS in 1984 and still appreciate the New Wave music of the times, but I seriously cannot remember ever hearing/seeing this dreadful tune.)
ReplyDeleteTGB = "There's a good boy"
ReplyDeleteMany times, dear Daphnis, said Chloe
You have told me my breasts are snowy.
You've made much fine verse on
Each part of my person.
Now do something--there's a good boy.
Posted by Anon. i.e. Poggius, who is not the author of the verse.
@Marc. Thanks A LOT. I managed to not open Annabel's link because, you know, April 1st and all that.
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing that dude's yellow pants, listing to the music from hell and eyeing the teacher who is probably now in jail for child abuse, I think I'll go pour myself a drink and listen to some Lionel Richie.
AEIOU and sometimes Y: The video, not the song, is vaguely reminiscent of Hot for Teacher, which is a bit strange since it was released before it, not after it.
ReplyDeleteA boxer who has had a long layoff might suffer from ring RUST.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one bothered by the clue for “pan”? Swivel is not the action....wasted time arguing with this one.
ReplyDeleteGeez, what a tease. George Thorogood said it best: "BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBad to the bone." Someone said it was tight? Not IMHO. Tight would be if there were NO stray T's, G's or B's outside of the three strings. And without a fourth string: the vowels. This is an industrial-strength crutch. Plus I still don't like BAE.
ReplyDeleteEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-Y enough, to B sure. One letter written over: I'm never sure whether a name ends in -berg or -BURG. We do have a stellar DOD in Ms. ABDUL, but THETHINGIS, this one just didn't do it for me. Bogey.
BOCA BAE BODE
ReplyDeleteYou could ARGUE, though, ARIEL AIN’T just a 4 STAR TTTTT . . .
THETHINGIS her BEAU taught THE BEST of birds and THE BBBBB . . .
--- ABDUL GINSBURG
Yeah. No. Not for me.
ReplyDeleteShirts worn by the brothers Gibb: B GG TTT (Bee Gees Tees).
So, though not in order, the word ladder continues. Three rungs today. Within the last week or so we’ve had IRA IDA IMA YMA UMA UNA. Waiting on Uta. Am I missing any?
@Lewis, I beg to differ. I count at least 49 sets of double letters. 14 each for the ‘themers’ plus 7 others.
@spacey is correct, Paula ABDUL. Yeah BAE BAE.
THETHINGIS we should expect better.
I'm packing for a 17-day trip, so you won't hear from me for a while. I'll leave you with a story my Grandma used to tell me:
ReplyDeletePatron and Waiter in a café:
P - F U NE X?
W - S, V F X.
P - F U NE M?
W - S, V F M.
P - F U NE T?
W - S, V F T.
P - OK, I F X N M N T
Hey, I was six - I thot it hilarious. I need a vaca.
Diana, Lady-in-Waiting for the plane
PS - My Sundays were out of sync in local paper, so you may see me once on a Sunday before I'm back.
Expected a line of L's to complete the LGBT FLAG.
ReplyDeleteFINI.
Oops, FINIS.
ReplyDeleteGood idea, @Lefty
ReplyDeleteLady Di
@Lady Di--
ReplyDeleteTook me a little time to get the M in your kid's joke. Has to be "ham", right? Pretty clever stuff for a six-year old to enjoy.
Yup, Lefty, good ole M N X on that crossword fav, wry.
ReplyDeleteLady Di