Good morning, cruciverbalists. Malodorous Manatee, here. It is time to rise and shine. If your cat did not wake you up this morning perhaps your dog did. Or, your significant other. Or, it's now the afternoon in your time zone. In any event, grab that morning newspaper or that electronic device and head for the puzzle page.
THEME: THE FOUR V's
In "Big Data" the Four V's are Volume, Veracity, Velocity, and Variety. In today's puzzle, by Jeff Stillman, the letter V, and only the letter V, is used as the clue to each of the four long answers. A straightforward theme, this was.
In addition to being the title of a Thomas Pynchon novel and a TV show, V can, of course, take on may different meanings and Jeff has employed some of them to good advantage.
Here are the themed answers:
17 Across. V: VICTORY SIGN.
27 Across. V: T-SHIRT NECK TYPE. Self explanatory.
44 Across. V: GEESE FORMATION. Also, self explanatory. The theory is that the V formation conserves energy and facilitates co-ordination.
59 Across. V: CAESAR'S FIVE. Roman Numeral. If Jeff had been able to work in V, and only V, theme answers (and I would be willing to bet that he tried) then that really would have been a coup.
That's it for the theme. Now, let's take a look at the rest of Solver v. Puzzle.
1. Two-mile-high city: LA PAZ. LA PAZ, the capital of Bolivia, sits at an elevation of 11,942 feet.
6. Numbskulls: BOOBS. This one has certainly been teed up. Fore! A swing and a miss (to mix golf and baseball lingo). Today's "It's best to skip the graphics" moment, shared with 57 Down. In this instance BOOBS is a synonym for other five-letter words such as dopes, bozos, or dodos. All of these words have multiple meanings.
11. Ate: HAD. As in "I had too much to eat last night." In 1967, The Electric Prunes used that expression as the jumping off point for a song.
AMERICAN BANDSTAND
EUTERPE AND ERATO
16. "I __ you one!": OWE. In this case, the clue is most likely referring to the reciprocation of a favor.
19. Carried the day: WON. Did you hear about the person who WON a hundred thousand dollars in the lottery and decided to give one quarter of it to charity? She now has $99, 999.75.
20. Brainstorm: IDEA.
21. Spanish pronoun: ESO. Given their range of dispersion, Manatees generally speak pretty good Spanish. This one does not but has been told that ESO translates, in English, to "that".
22. Understated way to put it: MILDLY. "To Put It Mildly" is an idiomatic expression indicating that the thing referred to is actually larger, more important, or more serious than stated.
24. Old PC display: CRT. Cathode Ray Tube
26. City west of Hong Kong: MACAO. Now, officially, The MACAO Special Administrative Region Of The People's Republic Of China has a human history that goes back 6,000 years. MACAO is sometimes referred to as "The Gambling Capital of the World" or as "The Monte Carlo of the East".
MACAO
33. Scribble (down): JOT. I have a friend who learned Italian by JOTting down sentences that she heard. She used the wrote learning method.
34. Read (over) closely: PORED. Along with 35 Across, these two clues provide a good example of how constructors mess with our heads. Read can be either present tense (reed) or past tense (red), and . . .
35. Wind into rings: COIL. . . . wind can be a flow of gasses that blows leaves all over and lets us fly kites or, as in this case, its heteronym (wined) which means to put something into a COIL. The chances of constructors winding up the use of these tricks is nil.
36. Look into closely: PROBE.
38. Egg: Pref.: OVI. Today's punt from our constructor. It could been clued as "NE opening". Baaaa.
39. Suspends operations, with "down": SHUTS. It is time to turn off the computer?
40. European erupter: ETNA.
SIRACUSA AND MT. ETNA - Photo by MM
41. Low card: DEUCE. As an alternative to the playing card reference (a two), this clue could have cited the 1932 Ford Model 18 which was know as the DEUCE Coupe.
THE BEACH BOYS
43. Female antelope: DOE. DOE an antelope, a female antelope.
48. La Scala locale: MILAN. Il Teatro Alla Scala, what we call La Scala, e situato a MILANo, Italia.
TEATRO ALLA SCALA
49. Word with rolling or bowling: PIN.
50. Slanted, in a way: ITALIC. Tilted and biased both came to mind before ITALIC which comes from the Latin word for Italian, Italicus. The print style was named in honor of the Italian printer, Aldus Manutius, who is credited with being the first to use it.
52. Diamonds, slangily: ICE. Diamonds are called ICE because of (a) their clear, colorless nature and (b) their ability to pull heat away from any warm object with which they come into contact.
54. Bar requests: ALES. One of the most overused words in crossword-dom. A four-letter word with three of them being two vowels and an S does come in handy. This marine mammal does not tire of it, however, due to a significant affinity for India Pale ALES.
58. A.L. East team: BOS. In late 1978, or early 1979, I was walking up a stairwell of The Goldminer's Daughter Hotel in Alta, Utah when I spotted a gentleman coming down the stairs. He was wearing a T-shirt on which was emblazoned "The Yankees Suck". Being somewhat more parochial than I am today, and the Dodgers having recently lost the 1978 World Series to the Bronx Bombers, I said to the man "You must be from Los Angeles." He smiled broadly and replied, "Nah Bahston!"
62. It may need a boost: EGO.
63. Revered ones: IDOLS. Humans are proscribed from worshiping false IDOLS. This bit of wisdom seems, however, to be almost universally ignored.
64. Official Wimbledon timekeeper: ROLEX. Not the person in charge of keeping time but, rather, the timepiece manufacturer and sponsor. Not being a tennis buff, I first tried Omega because it fit nicely in the allotted space.
65. Summer shade: TAN.
TAN LINES THROUGH THE DECADES
66. Article of faith: TENET.
67. Title feeling "beyond power of speech," in an "Into the Woods" song: AGONY. A reference, unfamiliar to the author, to a song by Stephen Sondheim.
AGONY
DOWN:
1. Son of Jacob: LEVI. Coincidentally, on May 20, 1873, U.S. Patent Number 139,121 was issued to Jacob Davis and LEVI Strauss & Company for the first riveted work pants. What we call Blue Jeans, today.
LEVI STRAUSS JACOB DAVIS
2. Dry as a bone: ARID. Sometimes the answer turns out to be "sere" which also has four letters.
3. Go back and forth: PACE. Yo Yo? No. Sway? No way. Vary? Nary a chance.
4. Include with an email: ATTACH.
5. Wild place: ZOO. An actual ZOO is, in reality, a pretty controlled environment. This clue makes more sense when thought of as used in the colloquial expression "It's a real zoo out there" or something similar.
6. Clothing store department: BOYS.
7. Estimate phrase: OR SO.
THREE MINUTES OR SO ABOUT OR SO
8. Kimono closer: OBI. We see OBI often. It is a wide sash or belt worn in Japan since ancient times to secure a kimono.
9. Classic fast-food sandwich since 1967: BIG MAC.
10. Gift bearer, informally: STNICK. What's a Stnick? Oh, ST. NICK !
ONCE AGAIN, THE BEACH BOYS
11. Polite greeting: HOW DO YOU DO. It is not really a question.
12. MP's quarry: AWOL. Absent WithOut Leave
13. Disallow: DENY.
18. Old-school: RETRO. RETRO is defined as imitative of a style, fashion or design from the recent past.
23. Door securer: LATCH.
A BARN DOOR LATCH
25. Ready to pluck: RIPE.
26. Soda order: MEDIUM. This slow creature first thought of flavors, then name brands, then sparkling or flat. Finally, with the aid of the perps, MEDIUM sized became clear.
27. Rich dessert cake: TORTE. I always get confused between a TORTE and a Tart (I know, I know). A TORTE is a rich, multilayered cake filled with buttercream, whipped cream, fruit or jam. A Tart is a shallow, round pastry with no top crust. I remain confused.
28. Building artisan: STONE MASON. The work of the ancient STONE MASONs of Cusco, Peru was remarkable.
INCA STONE MASONRY
29. Trampled: TROD ON. When reviewing the puzzle did you find yourself asking yourself "What's a TRODON?" It was, of course, a species of dinosaur and a close relative of the Iguanodon, the Dimetrodon and the Thesaurus.
30. Emphatic refusal: NEVER. Well, hardly ever.
HMS PINAFORE by GILLBERT and SULLIVAN
31. Mountaineer's tool: PITON. I do not usually think of a PITON as being a tool. It's more a piece of hardware but it does serve a very useful purpose.
A PITON SET INTO A CRACK
32. "Is there something __?": ELSE. A very straightforward fill-in-the-blank clue.
33. Photoshop image acronym: JPEG. JPEG is the acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG is a standard image format.
37. Culinary herb: BASIL. A Caprese salad is made with tomato, BASIL leaves and mozarella. Season to taste.
INSALATA CAPRESE
39. Org. seeking far-out life: SETI. SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Often, we see YETI in our puzzles.
SETI MIGHT FIND THIS YETI
42. Playful prank: CAPER. I am too old for this kind of CAPER and I have no taste for the other kind.
CAPERS
45. Summon up: ELICIT.
46. False appearance: FACADE. An architectural term that has come to mean false fronts put up by people.
47. Dazed: IN A FOG.
50. "Yeah, sure!": I BET. Ah, sarcasm!
51. __ party: TOGA.
JOHN BELUSHI IN ANIMAL HOUSE
52. "Lost" setting: ISLE.
LOST - OPENING SCENE - SEASON ONE, EPISODE ONE
53. Word before votes or shadows: CAST.
55. Stitch's movie pal: LILO. Stitch, aka Experiment 626, was created by a mad scientist. LILO Pelakai is the young Hawaiian girl.
56. Fifty-fifty: EVEN.
57. Hot: SEXY. I am informed that this is a G-rated Blog. Today's second "Let's skip the graphics" moment, shared with 6 Across.
60. Long division?: EON. At least we got the "?" to tip us off that this one was not going to be straightforward. An EON is a long division of geologic time. Less formally, the term refers to a span of one billion years.
61. Mexican Mrs.: SRA. The abbreviation for SENORA, a married woman.
That completes our voyage through this virtual venue. Now it is time to vamoose, venture forth and face the vagaries and vicissitudes of life.
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MM OUT
