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Encrypted messaging software / MON 6-23-25 / Org. to which to report a phone scam / Fuzzy green stuff on some trees / Texas city in the book and film "Friday Night Lights" / Popular vitamin brand or its recommended dosage / Groups of spin doctors, informally / Yorkie-___ (dog hybrid) / Nursery item with slatted sides
Monday, June 23, 2025
Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel
Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only) (failed, though—one wrong square)
Theme answers:
- DILL PICKLE (15A: Can it!) (you might can a DILL PICKLE)
- SLEEPING BAG (33A: Zip it!) (you might zip a SLEEPING BAG)
- BEDROOM DOOR (40A: Shut it!) (you might shut a BEDROOM DOOR)
- DRESS SHIRT (60A: Button it!) (you might button a DRESS SHIRT)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. It shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC. (wikipedia)
• • •
I failed in my Downs-only efforts. I thought the org. you complained to about phone scams was the FCC. Federal Communications Commissions. The phone is a means of communication, I reasoned (poorly). The real answer was FTC (Federal Trade Commission—see Word of the Day, above). FCC gave me SCRAP in the Across, which, as you know, is a perfectly legitimate-looking answer. So ... that's it. Sucks to fail on a cruddy initialism, but these are the risks you take.
Bullet points:
- 13D: Encrypted messaging software (SIGNAL) — I would never know this software exists were it not for the utter incompetence of the Secretary of Defense et al. around the bombing of Yemen earlier this year, which, of course, everyone forgot about almost immediately because every day brings some fresh incompetence that would've been career-ending in any prior administration. Remember when Clinton fired Joycelyn Elders as Surgeon General because she said that masturbation should be mentioned as part of a safer sex school curriculum? "Elders' comments on masturbation caused great controversy and resulted in Elders losing the support of the White House." Black woman speaks frankly and realistically (and responsibly) about sex, gets fired. But completely unqualified white guy breaks law by going outside established communication protocol, endangers US soldiers' lives in the process, and then lies about it ... everyone acts concerned for a day or so and then .... nothing. What a world.
- 31D: See 30-Across (RADIO) — Kinda hard to "See 30-Across" when you aren't reading Across clues. Had to just wing this one. Had ROGE- at 30-Across and thought maybe ROGET at first but then ROGER made RADIO look plausible, and since there was a clear thematic connection there, I just went with it.
- 33A: Zip it! (SLEEPING BAG) — obviously I didn't see this clue (solving Downs-only), so when I got to SLEEPING --G, I went with what seemed like the obvious answer (to me): SLEEPING DOG. As in, let SLEEPING DOGs lie. No idea how my brain bypassed the much more reasonable SLEEPING BAG. But then I also wrote in LEAK at 57D: Faucet annoyance when I'd already written it in as the correct answer for 54D: Air mattress problem. I blame vacation brain. Up late last night at concert, busy all day today with travel / seeing best friends / drinking / eating / ice cream / jigsaw puzzling / drinking ... probably not the best conditions for peak puzzle-solving. Good thing I've got substitute blog writers for most of the rest of the week. I think I'm back on Thursday. See you then (Clare's on at her normal last-Tuesday-of-the-month time, tomorrow).
Stay cool, everyone.
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47 comments:
Easy. No WOEs and no costly erasures.
Smooth grid, cute theme, liked it or what @Rex said.
Friday Night Lights, the TV series currently on Netflix, is excellent, however, it is not set in ODESSA. It’s worth watching just to see Connie Britton slap her extremely disrespectful teenage daughter.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #1022 was easy-medium for me. The center stack was fun, but 2 of the long downs were serious WOEs. Good luck!
Well I too solved down clues only, and finished with FCC crossing SCRAP, and thought: if Rex is blogging this and solving downs only, I would not be surprised if he had the same error. And he is! And he did! And what's more, he is posting on the eve rather than the morn, and I can't remember the last time that happened.
And I also had no idea what the theme was, because the theme was in the clues and not the answers! Unusual. But as Rex said, it is certainly not the constructor/editor's fault we missed out because we choose to solve this way. Still, on average it is more fun to do Mondays this way so I will probably keep doing it.
I also struggled with ROGER crossing RADIO but I "cheated" and looked at the across clue, reasoning that they made me do it, cross referencing it and all that.
Rex, I remember camping on the New York shore of Lake Ontario. It was lovely, but it was October, so... cold! The campground had hot showers but in an open air building; the shower was wonderful but the instant I turned the water off... brrr! 32 years ago; good times.
Anywayy... went to a minor baseball game this afternoon and it was a back and forth battle between our valiant Penticton lads and the devious visitors from Victoria. We had the lead, but they seized the lead after the 6th inning. Then a thunderstorm rolled in, the rain started, and a bolt of lightning struck a few blocks away (flash!.. one second later BOOM!), and the ump shouted "Game over; get under shelter", and it was. Dramatic finish indeed.
I’m so glad I solved this downs-only. I hate, hate, hate those “blank it exclamation point” clues. And today I didn’t have to deal with them as themers. 4! clues. 4 reasons to shout at my grid. 4 reasons for apoplexy neatly avoided by ignoring the across clues. Whew!
It wasn’t actually a bad puzzle just working the downs. Mostly easy sailing with a few toughies: 27D IHADABLAST, 14D RAWEGGS, 56D LIPS. And the timely 13D SIGNAL. Was helped right down the middle by having just dined on a lovely pork tenderloin with 29D salsa VERDE, a simple but lovely sauce that packs a big flavour punch.
Toughest spot was at 4D where I originally had FCC (Federal Communications Commission?) crossing the plausible SCRAP but when no congrats appeared I immediately returned and changed it to FTC (Federal Trade Commission , I assume) and checked out. (Just read Rex and see he made the same mistake. I somehow feel weirdly good about that.)
More challenging than most Mondays. Forgot "You only live once," so the NW was a brief trouble spot until I saw SLYDOG. I also had "What a blast" before IHADABLAST and "radar" before RADIO. Didn't connect with the theme, but liked the puzzle.
To my detriment, I didn't check the constructor until ... well, until I got here. It was a delightful Monday puzzle, as I've come to expect from Zhouqin "CC" Burnikel. Liked it a lot.
Usually, solving downs only, the theme is dead obvious. I liked that this one gave me an extra puzzle. After reading the first across clue the theme was guessable. Also DNF at FcC, first thought was FBI -- but then capitalism rarely treats financial crimes as crimes. I liked "What ___ you saying" because the gerund could be any transitive verb that takes a non-person object; it's literally just asking you to conjugate the second-person copula. Hilarious!
Having never seen any of these media, I still wrote in ODESSA, so I checked. The clue says book and film, and these are indeed set in Odessa. The TV series, not mentioned in the clue, was set in a fictionalized version.
My five favorite original clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. Water wheel? (4)
2. Silent marching band position (6)(4)
3. Request by those under 21 (3)(2)
4. Training facilities? (8)(8)
5. Flight of fancy? (7)(3)
HELM
PARADE REST
HIT ME
RAILROAD STATIONS
PRIVATE JET
Downs only solve—but ftc vs fcc and so a fail. Oh well. Tomorrow is another puzzle.
Last I checked, DILLPICKLE came in a jar so why would you “Can it!”? (15A) was a stretch.
While solving, it seemed a touch more difficult than a usual Monday. Maybe because the grid is pretty segmented. I had trouble getting going - initially had SPOT instead of FIDO, and CRY instead of SOB. I needed the crosses to get that squared away and got going after that. At the end, my solve time was just a touch above my Monday average, but probably well within two standard deviations from the mean.
As a Friday night lights die hard fan I was extremely thrown by this clue. Put in “Dillon” and then thought I was losing it.
We’ve seen “___ it!” clues before, such as [Darn it!] for SOCKS and [Beat it!] for EGG, but I don’t believe that they’ve ever been turned into a theme, as Zhouqin (aka CC) did today. That is a stellar crossword mind at work. Nailed it!
Fun theme, too, with trying to guess the theme answers with as few crosses as possible.
Plus, the grid today is awash in lovely serendipities:
• The rhyming BLIP and DRIP. Saying them over and over sounds like windshield wipers.
• A SIDE touching a side.
• Crossing echoes: IN APP (which appeared yesterday), and CRIB (as in Saturday’s “Crib for a doll” for BARBIE DREAMHOUSE).
• Double-O gathering with SPOON crossing BEDROOM DOOR.
• Rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap: STRAP.
• DOG crossing POO, and also, re dog: FIDO and STAY.
A touch of brilliance, fun, and little treasures brought sweetness to the box today. Brightened my day right up – thank you, CC!
A DILL PICKLE is canonically in a jar, not a can. I know that the act of making produce shelf-stable is, in general, canning, but this one seems off. There are any number of classically canned foods that could have gone in there (BAKED BEANS comes immediately to mind, and it's the right number of letters).
I guess I needed a revealer as I was going too fast to think about the similarity in all the themers. They do mean shut up! I see that now. No, really, I do.
Totally misguided by "Can it" for DILLPICKLE. I realize this may refer to something like home canning, where things wind up in jars, but did you ever see a can of DILLPICKLEs? No. No you did not.
SIGNAL should have been top of mind but wasn't, and another LIL rapper but unknown to me.
Otherwise fun enough, CC. Coulda Caught on to the theme earlier, and should have. My bad. Thanks for all the fun.
And now off to the dentist and then north to the lake to finish opening up our camp. Should be a good place to be today, with temps predicted in the high 90's.
Another hand up for FcC before FTC. Like Rex, I thought of ROGEt before ROGER, and like okanaganer I peeked at the across clue, but trying RADar before RADIO? That was all me.
Elegant little early week puzzle - I’ve come to expect this from her. Cute theme - liked DILL PICKLE and SLEEPING BAG.
On your deathbed you will receive eternal consciousness
Some flat fill as Rex highlights. SENATE BILL and OPEN MRI are pedestrian - I liked I HAD A BLAST. Needed the crosses for APIA.
SOB
Highly enjoyable Monday morning solve. Stay cool if you’re in the NE.
Turn up your RADIO
Fun puzzle. Somehow reminded me of British Cockney phrasing. No way could I guess the crossing themes without focusing first on the downs but I have yet to try a downs-only solution. No guts!
Canning can involve jars, weirdly enough. (You can google this.)
I can hear the constructor saying: But dill pickles could be canned. And it reminded me of a joke.
Max says to Sid, "Here's a riddle: What's green, hangs on the wall, and whistles?"
Sid says, "I give up."
"A herring."
"But a herring isn't green."
"You could paint it green."
"It doesn't hang on the wall."
"Well, you could hang it on a wall if you wanted to."
"It doesn't whistle."
(Max, exasperated.) "Alright, so it doesn't whistle."
I liked it! Cute Monday. No problem here with the “Canning” dill pickles because I have never heard anyone say “I’ll be jarring my pickles today”. Completely normal to say “I’ll be canning my _____” and then use jars.
Thanks, Rex. I was trying to think of a term to describe the kind of clue that's turned into an entire theme here -- and "Verb it!" is perfect!
A cute idea for a theme -- especially since all the theme clues mean "Shut the bleep up!" The fill is fairly colorful for a Monday. The constructor still has the most amazing gift for "gimme" cluing -- "Not fake" for REAL, being only the most obvious example here -- but happily not all of the clues today are complete gimmes. This might be my favorite of this constructor's Monday puzzles.
I spent a lot of time wondering how you zip a SLEEPING BAG when you're in it. I was in a SLEEPING BAG for the first and last time at age 10 at Camp Pinecliffe -- so I don't remember. What I do remember is that my entire "bed" turned over with me whenever I turned over -- and I really, really didn't like that. I also remember that I never closed an eye the entire night. I managed to avoid all future camping outdoors ventures for my next 5 or 6 years at Camp Pinecliffe.
I suppose YOKO should have come to me immediately, but she didn't. It's obvious from the lyric that John really, really loved her -- but she never seemed especially lovable to me. I always thought she had a face that would have stopped a clock.
Fun, easy, good theme, nice way to start the week.
Boring.
Yes, but think of the home-made process of using Mason jars. Like with jams/jelly.
Agreed. I couldn’t figure what the theme could possibly be. Never ever has a dull pickle been put in a can.
I think you’ll get the same quick non-response from either FTC or FCC so what difference does it make?
Personally, when I’M scammed, I call FTD - they don’t help either but do send some lovely flowers (then scam me with a credit card charge on the next month’s statement)!
My two Downs Only mistakes included the INAPt guess for Seinfeld’s Elaine BENEs.
Fortunately, to escape this Mistaken Downs Syndrome, I check the across clues after 3-5 seconds of frustration/doubt. Would prefer NYT just offer slightly tougher Mondays so we don’t have to create self-handicaps in these Highlights For Children level puzzles but whatchagonnado?
Hey All !
CC! Been too long. If for some reason you read/see this post, I'm curious as to how many puzs you send in vs how many are accepted.
Had Rex's FcC, but not doing Downs Only, saw that a bra or a purse has a STRAP, not a SCRAP. So, good on me. 😁
Funny how no one has had a "___ It!" puz before. The clues we've had, sure, but as a theme? Nice one, CC.
A bit (of course), are DILL PICKLE normally in jars, not cans? Just sayin'.
Nice MonPuz, not blindingly easy, which is good, one write over, cOcA-KOLA, oops, wrong kind of stimulant!
Have a great Monday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
@jberg here—“canning” has come to mean the process of heat putting foods into containers, immersing them in boiling water, then tightening the lids and letting the containers cool, leading to a vacuum seal. Home canners always use glass jars, lacking the expensive machinery needed to seal a can.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, the act of preserving food in jars is called canning. The jars you put pickles, peaches, etc. in are called canning jars. So this clue/answer pair is 100% correct.
If you can pickles in jars (which you do), why would you need to choose another food? Pickles are the food most commonly canned in my (extended) family.
Nada para mi gracias.
I wonder if there would be so many ways to say "shut up" in the world if there were fewer old white men? The minute I hear words coming out of my mouth I really wish I could stop them.
PLEBS > SERFS > PEONS: So many ways I know to get things done the hard way.
People: 7
Places: 2
Products: 7
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 21 of 76 (28%)
Funnyisms: 0 😫
Tee-Hee: Bra STRAP. POO.
Uniclues:
1 What holds up an authentic teenie-weenie bikini.
2 How one describes those opposed to puckering.
3 Best part of the night in a poorly supervised summer camp.
4 What an emotional rap-loving adolescent ant slams.
5 Description of my sports career.
6 Telephoto images from Ono's apartment of the neighbors.
7 How my comedy is described.
8 Those promoting blacksmiths and barrel masons.
9 Implement used for picking up after pomeranians.
1 REAL NANO STRAP (~)
2 ANTI DILL PICKLE (~)
3 SLEEPING BAG RAH (~)
4 LIL BEDROOM DOOR (~)
5 SAT ON END A LOT
6 YOKO SPY ART (~)
7 ONLY I HAD A BLAST
8 OLDEN PR TEAMS
9 POO SPOON
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Pitchfork license for two. AMERICAN GOTHIC PERMIT.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can pickles in canning jars. The constructor is spot on despite complaints here.
The theme is entirely in the clues, which is …odd. I guess you could go at it by thinking what the themes have in common. That would be hard, probably, but here it’s just handed to you.
And speaking of getting handed things, the clue for VERDE pretty much hands you the answer.
A fun idea, to make the theme clues using the imperative, a type of clue many dislike (I'm okay with them) and they all mean "hush". Nice!
Except now I have an earworm of the "Oh Yoko" song, must turn RADIO on to exorcise it.
Thanks, CC!
Just for fun, I tried doing this Across only instead of Down only, and found it unusually hard that way. Maybe it was just my mood, but I wonder how I would have found it Down only. I gave up that effort far too quickly, and when I started looking at the down clues as well, it came together easily. Always enjoy her puzzles!
Having read this blog for years, I know more about Rex than I do about most of my friends. What he likes (food, drink, movies, words). His family. What he does on vacation. And his politics. I'm impressed by how deeply he thinks about it, e.g. today's comment about firing cabinet members. I think that most people I know are San Francisco liberals, but he's left of almost all of them.
I see we have a mini Air Traffic Control theme (Blip, Roger, Radio). One nit to pick....10 down is quite inaccurate. First, a controller does not refer to radar 'screen'....it is a DISPLAY. Second, there are no 'blips' in ATC parlance. The term is either TRAFFIC or TARGET. And if you are a controller at EWR, the phrase: "Radar contact lost" is used a lot. Roger, out
I love #7, probably because it hits home with me.
Nice shout out to Sly (SLYDOG) Stone who died two weeks ago.
@Nancy. Your one experience with a SLEEPINGBAG got me to remembering another one-timer. This is a true story, not one for cheap laughs. Mrs Egs and I have always done a lot of camping, unlike her very hoity toity sister. But one time the sister, who seemed to loathe the idea of outdoor activities other than sunbathing and open-air shopping, decided that she and one of her kids should accompany us on a brief camping trip we had planned. It was to be just a night at a campground 10 miles outside of town. We said we'd get there early to secure a spot and get things set up. So around 5:00, while we're relaxing in camp, in roll her maid and her cook. The maid sets up a tent for Sis, inflates an air mattress and tops it with a never-used down sleeping bag supplemented by down pillows. Meanwhile the chef whips together a salmon with some sort of lovely side dishes. As Sis arrives in her BMW, the servants show her her quarters and then leave. We had a good meal and lots of good talk and wine around the campfire before retiring. The next morning, Sis is full of complaints about how she couldn't sleep because she was so cold all night. This seemed odd, because it was at worst 45 degrees in the night and she had a spanking new down bag. We eventually realized that she had assumed that the bag was used like a blanket and that it had worked its way off her every time she moved. Like you, @Nancy, she never again did the camping thing.
Thanks for a swell Monday, Zhouqin Burnikel.
Nice MonPuz theme. There was a kind of a hush, all over the puz.
staff weeject pick: POO. As in: M&A reaction to the puz havin no U's. They all got canned.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {Popular vitamin brand or its recommended dosage} = ONEADAY.
Thanx, C.C. darlin. Nice [but U-less] job.
Masked & Anonymo[zipped em]Us
... sort of a biter runt follows ...
Stumpy Stumper: "Jaws of Themelessness #22" - 9x7 12 min. themeless runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Hello, did you read my comment?
ell, actually, 'What's Green and hangs on a wall' (Co zielony i wisi na siano) is a famous joke they would tell in Polish bars to root out informers and spies. The answer was some kind of fish, herring, pike, carp, Everyone would laugh uproariously and anybody who didn't would be thrown out. During the communist days and probably going back centuries before that.
Team pickle JAR
Also failed Downs Only at F(T/C)C. But I also failed elsewhere 😄
Wow, @egs. That's quite the funny camping story. One question: Did her cook return to the camp at 6 am to prepare eggs benedict or did she just have to suffer regular old camp fare prepared by you?
I had a little triumph today: for the first time ever, I managed to login to Blogger from my phone, and post in my own name. It may never happen again, I fear! But maybe the first time broke the ice.
OK, the puzzle. I admit I had not noticed that the clues were all ways to say 'be quiet.' It's still in the clues, though. But I like the concept better than I did at first.
As for sleeping bags, yeah, you can't roll over easily. But if you can sleep in one position all night, they can work well.
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