Happy Thursday, cruciverbalists! While it is not yet time for us to poke our heads out, I hope that 2021 has gotten off to a good start with everyone staying safe and healthy.
If you were scratching your head over the theme of today's puzzle it is safe to assume that you had plenty of (socially distanced) company. Even after solving the "tell", this moronic marine mammal had to stare at the completed grid for several minutes before the theme answers slowly revealed themselves. Prison breaks are, by nature, difficult to discover. These were.
I tried looking backwards and forwards within each of the long answers. Nothing. Puns? Homophones? Anagrams? Still stumped. MaryEllen had purposely used "puzzle rows" and not "answers" in her hint to the theme so, perhaps, I should look at entire rows. The hint also contained the word "break" so something had likely been broken apart. Even with these insights I then wasted time looking for some form of symmetry of which there was, well, none. Finally, it dawned on me.
Simply put, on four rows of the puzzle, synonyms for PRISON have been broken apart and waited patiently for us to reassemble them. Of course, once the theme had been figured out, and the involved letters had been located, everything appeared to be obvious.
Let's start with the reveal at 65 Across: "The Shawshank Redemption" event, and what's hidden in four puzzle rows: PRISON BREAK.
At 17 Across we have - Angry reaction: HORNETS NEST followed at 19 Across by - "This American Life" host Glass: IRA
The end of the first answer combines with the start of the second to from STIR, a slangy word for prison.
At 27 Across we are asked to solve for - Indian noble: RAJA followed by 31 Across - Surly: ILLNATURED
As above, parts of these answers combine to yield JAIL.
..and so on,
38 Across - It went down in history: TITANIC and 40 Across - Connects with:LINKSTO.
CLINK is another slang term for prison
47 Across - Stable cleaner: SADDLE SOAP and 51 Across - Tolkien tree creatures: ENTS.
PEN is, well, we get it, we get it.
Here is what this all looks like in the grid:
Now that we have successfully escaped the confines of puzzle prison let's take a look at the rest of today's challenge:
Across:
1. Bobbleheads, e. g.: DOLLS. Do they have to be human?
6. Jury decision: AWARD. Verdict was the first impulse but, of course, did not fit in the allotted space.
11. Pair of Grammys?: EMS. We have seen this type of clue and answer many times previously...and you know that this MM appreciates EMS.
14. "It's __ time!": ABOUT. A straightforward fill-in-the-blank clue. The seven-letter adjective is implicit.
15. Old photo tint: SEPIA.
A SEPIA PHOTO
16. Dwarf who mixes up his words: DOC. He's the one with the eyeglasses.
20. Meeting goal often not achieved: LENGTH.
21. Nuclear energy device: REACTOR. You can build your own.
23. Lip: SASS. Impudence by any name.
26. Firefighter's tool: HOSE.
35. Soft palate projection: UVULA.
37. Not what one would expect: IRONIC.
AIRPLANE 2
44. Mexican bread: DINERO. Bread, of course, being slang for money.
46. Single-master: SLOOP. This version of "The Sloop John B" involves both The Beach Boys and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra:
SEE HOW THE MAINSAIL SETS
52. Palm tree superfood: ACAI. A current-day crossword, and for some folks dietary, staple.
53. Ancient home: EDEN. If the stories are to be believed, the most ancient of all.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
55. Predator with a heart-shaped face: BARN OWL.
59. Card game with trumps: EUCHRE. Not Bridge. Not Whist.
64. Hurricane season mo.: OCT. The Atlantic Hurricane Season officially runs from June 1st through November 30th.
68. Cravat or ascot: TIE. Not to be confused with 18 Down. Two weeks ago the puzzle demanded No TIE.
69. Like Caspar Milquetoast: TIMID. Caspar Milquetoast is a comic strip character created for the strip "Timid Soul" that launched in 1925.
CASPAR MILQUETOAST
70. Give a false idea of: BELIE.
71. Low: SAD.
72. Deposit in the attic, say: STORE.
73. Cheerleaders' assortment: YELLS.
EAST LAKE HIGH SCHOOL SPARTANS
Down:
1. "James and the Giant Peach" author: DAHL. Roald DAHL was a spy, a fighter pilot and a medical inventor as well as an author. In addition to the clue's referenced work, he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda.
2. Wind heard in Dion's "Abraham, Martin and John": OBOE. Although oboes, of course, are heard frequently in our puzzles this is one of the best clues yet.
DION
3. Desolate: LORN. LORN means lonely and abandoned. We more often see forlorn.
4. Organ in a chest: LUNG.
5. Decides to leave alone: STETS. STET is a proofreader's mark for Let It Stand. Rarely, though, do we see it used as a verb.
6. Biblical mount: ASS.
BALAAM'S ASS
7. Harmless cyst: WEN. This week's "I'll pass on the graphics" moment.
8. Imitator: APER. Outside of puzzles one rarely sees, or hears, APER or Aped. Within puzzles we commonly see them both.
9. Slope: RISE.
SLOPE INTERCEPT (y = mx + b)
10. It may be crunched: DATA.
11. Spell-checker, say: EDITOR. Literally true but I'd bet that most of us first thought of something word-processing-related
12. Lacking in joy: MOROSE. Our second ASS of the day (if one chooses not to count Peter Griffin):
EEYORE
13. Rustled (up): SCARED. Colloquialisms. SCARED up something to eat, Rustled up some grub.
18. Bangkok native: THAI. There is nothing else quite like a tuk-tuk ride through the streets of Bangkok, THAIland.
22. Private laugh: CHUCKLE. Chuckles are laughs that are quiet, inward or suppressed.
24. Golfing mishaps: SLICES.
25. Camera type, briefly: SLR. A Single Lens Reflex camera uses a mirror and prism to allow the photographer to see exactly what will be captured on the film or digitally.
27. Rural road feature: RUT.
28. Prefix with fauna: AVI. A reference to the birds of a particular region. I am most familiar with these:
29. Stick (out): JUT.
30. 2019 Mena Massoud title role: ALADDIN.
32. Free of commissions, as a mutual fund: NO LOAD.
33. Young Darth: ANI. A "Star Wars" reference and a "diminutive" name to boot.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER
34. Cookie containers: TINS.
36. Indigo plant: ANIL. I only know this from crossword puzzles...and the perps helped to recall it.
39. Having four sharps: IN E. We needed to assume that we were talking here about the musical key E Major. The relative minor of E Major is C Sharp Minor and it also has four sharps.
41. Absalom, to David: SON. A biblical reference.
DAVID AND ABSALOM
42. "PAW Patrol" fan: TOT.
THE PAW PATROL
43. Special ___: OPS. Both OPTS and OPS in the same puzzle!
45. Caviar: ROE. I went to a sushi bar and ordered salmon roe. It was a spawn-taneous decision.
47. Clogs: SABOTS. In this instance, a shoe reference. My friend Jon's father had a small sailboat that we would sometimes take out in the marina. It was far too small for the open sea. The logo on the sail, and the type of boat it was, was a SABOT.
48. Thorny shrub: ACACIA. Both ACACIA and ACAI in the same puzzle!
54. Lumpy, as a knit fabric: NUBBY. This type of fabric is rarely seen in crossword puzzles but it has been seen before.
56. Comes down on one side of something: OPTS. An intentionally somewhat obtuse clue? Not incorrect, merely less straightforward than it needed to be. Oh, wait, it's a crossword puzzle. They do that all the time.
57. Court order: WRIT.
58. Ride to the prom: LIMO. Perhaps riding in a LIMO is now commonplace but it sure wasn't when this manatee was in High School. Further, unless PROM is considered to be an abbreviation for something, there is nothing in the clue that indicates LIMO in lieu of Limousine.
60. Algonquin language: CREE. Often, CREE is clued with a reference to the Canadian indigenous population.
61. Severe criticism: HELL. We rarely see "semi-swear-words" in puzzles.
1948 CAMPAIGN BUTTON
62. Fence crosspiece: RAIL.
POST AND RAIL FENCING
63. Manages to get, with "out": EKES. We see this one a lot. I sometimes get confused between EKES and EEKS.
66. Military address: SIR. A bit of misdirection as APO (Army Post Office) is commonly seen as an answer to similar clues.
67. "To Autumn," for one: ODE. What would a puzzle be without ODE somewhere in the grid?
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