Friday, August 09, 2024, Ed Sessa

Good Morning, Cruciverbalists.  Malodorous Manatee here asking the question of the day:  What the H is going on here?  Let's try to answer that.

Today's puzzle setter is the prolific and always entertaining Ed Sessa.  In today's puzzle, Ed has dropped the H sound from the SH start to the first words of four common two-word expressions and, thereby, morphed the expressions to provide fitting answers to the clues - at least phonetically.  Here is where he has done this:

17 Across:  Principle behind "speak softly and carry a big stick"?: SUBTLE DIPLOMACY. From Shuttle Diplomacy.  Drop the H and we get "SUTTLE".  Correct the spelling and we get the answer.  Shuttle Diplomacy is the action of an outside party in serving as an intermediary between (or among) principals in a dispute, without direct principal-to-principal contact.  Personally, I never thought there was much subtlty involved in TR's advice/approach.

31 Across:  Grumblers left holding the bag?: SOUR CADDIES.  A golf reference.  From Shower Caddies.  Drop the H and we get "SOWER" which works phonetically if we retain the pronunciation from SHOWER and don't decide to start a garden,  Again, correct the spelling and, well, you get it.

40 Across:  Some Lakota winter supplies?: SIOUX STORES.  From Shoe Stores.  Many moons ago, this reviewer watched a TV sitcom in which an Eastern European and a Native American went into the retail business together.  They opened a shop called The Sew And The Jioux.  I wonder if Ed saw that same show.

56 Across:  Item in a moth-infested closet?: SUIT FULL OF HOLES.  From Shoot Full Of Holes.

Here is a look at the completed grid:

Here are the rest of the clues and answers:

Across:

1. Gymnastics event, informally: BARS. (Uneven) parallel bars.  As used at the Olympic Games.

5. Soccer star Kelley who hosted a "Just Women's Sports" podcast: OHARA.  Might have been clued with a GWTW reference.

10. Cobbler's item: SOLE.  Not a baking reference.  Cobbler's material would have let this solver first think of something other than AWL (too short, anyhow).  Speaking of close but not quite (homophone-wise):

Yardbirds - 1965

14. Cyan kin: AQUA.  See also 49 down.

15. Lavender kin: LILAC.  A reference to the color (not the plant).

16. "Metamorphoses" poet: OVID.

20. When doubled, very affectionate: KISSY.

21. Superlative ending: EST.  Anyone remember Erhard Seminars Training?

22. Perambulates: WALKS.  For pleasure.

23. Fictional archaeologist Lara: CROFT.

25. Hair salon supply: GEL.  DYE would have fit.

26. Church ensemble: CHOIR.

28. Law expert: JURIST.  By definition.

34. __ sale: TAG.  AKA garage sale.

36. Cartoon corporation: ACME.  Wile E Coyote's supplier of choice.

37. Maze features: TURNS.

38. The Met __: annual NYC fundraising event: GALA.  Formerly called the Costume Institute Benefit, the Met GALA is the annual fund raising benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The GALA has been highly publicized in recent years.

39. Extinct New Zealand bird: MOA.  For extinct birds they sure do appear regularly.

42. Peppers used in mole: ANCHOS.  Today's Mexican cuisine reference.

44. Gouges: SOAKS.  Hand up for first thing of something to do with cutting a groove in a piece of wood.  Colloquialism for taking advantage of someone financially as in price gouging.

45. Lady bird: HEN.  Not a reference to LBJ's spouse.

46. Fingerprint feature: WHORL.

48. __ New Guinea: PAPUA.

51. Sci. course: BIO.  Several to choose from.  Thanks, perps.

52. Split up: APART.

59. Long-winged sea eagle: ERNE.  Sometimes we see TERN.

60. It means a lot: MUCHO.  One of today's Spanish lesson and not the first of several possible answers that came to mind.

61. Lustrous fabric: SILK.  Two SILK worms had a race.  They ended up in a tie.

62. "The Jellicle Ball" musical: CATS.

63. Like a loud crowd: AROAR.  A sound often heard in our puzzles.

64. __ Pueblo, New Mexico: TAOS.  Located north of the modern city of TAOS, TAOS Pueblo has a thousand-year history.

Down:

1. Enjoy the sun: BASK.

The Sunrays

2. Here, in Spanish: AQUI.  Another Spanish lesson.

3. Spice blends: RUBS.  This confirmed BBQ smoker liked this one.

4. College admission factor: SAT SCORE.

5. Flamenco shout: OLE.

6. Like most TVs: HI DEF.  HIgh DEFinition 

7. Top tier: A-LIST.

8. Spellbound: RAPT.

9. Knee injury initials: ACL.  Anterior Cruciate Ligament

10. Mogadishu resident: SOMALI.  Mogadishu is the capital city.

11. Like some rugs: OVAL. There were quite a few possibilities with this one.

12. Guitar riff: LICK.  Everybody has thier personal favorites.

13. Ice cream brand: EDY'S.

18. Melodious: LYRIC.  Shouldn't this be LYRICal?

19. People in debt: OWERS.  Has anyone ever heard this useage?

24. Special delivery?: ORATION.  Not a USPS reference.  Delivery of a speech.

25. "I suppose": GUESS SO.  Something that someone might say, I suppose.

26. Swiss Miss product: COCOA.  Not a reference to Heidi.

27. Not perfect: HUMAN.  To err is Human....

28. "We said the same thing!": JINX.  CSO!

29. Unembellished: STARK.  How refreshing to see this clued without a "Game of Thrones" reference.

30. Chaucer collection: TALES.

31. Heughan of "Outlander": SAM.  Unknown to this solver.  Thanks, perps.

32. Olympic badminton teams, e.g.: DUOS.  There are other, less obscure, ways to clue this but (a) it is topical and (b) it is Friday.

33. R&B's __ Hill: DRU.

35. Mini mover: GAS.  A bit of a stumper at first.  The clue seems to refer to the Mini Cooper automobile.

38. End zone upright: GOAL POST.  Often used in a metaphor.

40. Wheat bundle: SHEAF.

41. Bat mitzvah scroll: TORAH.  The first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

43. Half of a board game: CHUTES.  Cute clue.

46. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" indie band: WILCO.  Being unfamiliar with the band this one was a bit difficult.  The NATO alphabet and radio lingo answer (Will Comply) seem to go well to gether.

47. Rumpus: HOO-HA.  I am pretty certain that I recall this word being used in a quite different context on "Two And A Half Men".

48. Min. fraction: PSEC.  Often, we get NSEC.  PicoSECond.  One trillionth of a second.

49. Energy field: AURA.  See also 14 Across.  According to ancient Japanese lore, the colour of a person’s aura changes when they leave the room.  Cyan-aura.

50. Pub order: PINT.

51. Cloudiness: BLUR.  Not sure if the forms of the clue/answer match up?  It's a bit of a BLUR.

53. Et __: and others: ALIA.  Sometimes we get ALII.

54. Move for one's co., say: RELO.  RELOcate.

55. Clucking sounds: TSKS.  Sometimes we get TUTS.

57. Thurman of "Red, White & Royal Blue": UMA.

58. Pro: FOR.  Not anti / against.

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Thursday, September 23, 2021, Ed Sessa

 

Greetings, curciverbalists.  Malodorous Manatee, here.  Today marks an anniversary of sorts.  My first recap was posted on 17 September 2020.  Waseeley, my partner in Thursday crime, wrote up the puzzle on the 16th of this month and that would have been exactly one year.  I have never been one for counting rotations of this planet or its orbits around our sun (ask anyone who has put up with my commenting on the time references in any Star Trek television show or movie) but I realize that other folks like to keep track of such things.  In any event, today is more-than-close-enough to mark the one-earth-year anniversary of may alter ego, MM, writing recaps for the corner.  Please allow me to repeat what I said at that time:  Thank you all for allowing me play in your sandbox.  - -  Joseph

Today's puzzle-setter is our frequent friend, Ed Sessa, and he has come up with something a bit unusual in that the theme answers are not located simply as Across or Down words patiently waiting to be filled in.  Instead, they cross . . . and those patterns are placed diagonally, to boot.  The reveal comes at:

54 Across. Linked in a way illustrated by three pairs of puzzle answers:  JOINED AT THE HIP.

At three locations in the grid Ed has crossed the word HIP and the I of each word is shared in both directions.  The completed long answers provide no hints whatsoever about the theme.  It's the siting that counts.  Pretty clever, if you ask this marine mammal.  Here is how it looks in the grid:

Here is what this structure was built UPON (see 59 Across, although the word is used somewhat differently there):

Across:

1. "The Giving Tree" author Silverstein: SHEL.  Most people do not know that SHEL Silverstein also wrote this:

The Highwaymen (Johnny Cash)

5. Gravelly voiced sort: RASPER.  It's too bad that CEDO is not a word because RASPER is a bit of a stretch.

11. Top (out): MAX.   From MAXimum or MAXimize.   It can be stressful to MAX Out one's credit cards.

14. Ritzy: LUXE.  DeLUXE  (There's a Ray-ism in this one, for sure).

15. City on the Rio Grande: EL PASO.  Also, a Marty Robbins classic.

The Drifter TV Show - 1965

16. Flamenco dancer's cry: OLE.  Today's Spanish lesson.

17. Org. mandating eyewash stations: OSHA.

18. Canvassing technique: DOOR TO DOOR.  Ding dong.   Or, if you have a Ring camera, "There is someone at your DOOR."

20. Animals in a herd: HIPPOPOTAMUSES.  The animals could have been many other species and still answered the clue.  This answer sent me down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what the theme might be.  Still, I want one.

Gayla Peevey Then (1953) and Almost Now (2016)

22. Face value: PAR.  A financial reference.  This could also have been clued with a golf reference.

23. Org. with 132 Pulitzer Prizes: NY TIMES.  The New York Times.

24. Initiation rite: BAPTISM.

28. Tear up: WEEP.  Oh, it's "crying" as opposed to "ripping into pieces".

29. Batter's stat: RBI.  A baseball reference.  Runs Batted In

30. One hanging around in the forest?: SLOTH.  Also, a Deadly Sin - but not today.  Anyone try HIKER first?

32. Give and take: SWAP.  Today's "let's pass on a potential reference" moment.

36. "And fly, __ evil intercept thy flight": Milton: ERE.  Thanks, perps.

37. Title teacher in a James Hilton novella: MR CHIPS.

40. Kipling's "Follow Me __": OME.  OM, OM, Range

41. Insect dating from the Jurassic era: WASP.  150 - 200 million years later we now get the so-called Murder Hornets.

43. Board, as a bus: HOP ON.  Board a Bus?  Nicely teed up.   Fore!

Weird Al  Yankovic with Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz on The Tomorrow Show - 1981

Another One Rides The Bus

44. Darling of baseball: RON.  A nice play on words.

45. Daughter of Cronus and Rhea: HERA.

48. Becomes clear: SOAKS IN.  Ah, the idiom.

50. Digs: SHOVELS.  Ah, not the idiom.

53. Stadium shout: RAH.

58. Hardwood with an edible seed: ALMOND TREE.  The tree itself isn't often referred to as, simply, "hardwood"  but Ed, or Rich, could not, for obvious reasons work the word "tree" into the clue.

59. After: UPON.  UPON further reflection . . .

61. '60s-'70s Pontiac: GTO.  My aunt Millie had a GTO.  I have never been able to figure out how that come to be.  Wa-wa,Wa, Wa. Wa. Wa. Wa. Wa

Ronnie and the Daytonas

62. Venetian Renaissance painter: TITIAN.  I would have loved to use a video clip of the E. Buzz Miller's Art Classics (SNL) pronunciation-based wordplay here but I could not find one that was not copyright protected.

63. Mystery-solving Wolfe: NERO.

64. Virtual-city denizen: SIM.  As in Sim City, the video game.

65. Strips in the freezer: STEAKS.

New York Strip Steaks

66. Torah holders: ARKS.

Down:

1. __-mo: SLO.  SLOw-motion

2. Muzzle: HUSH.  Used as a verb - as is muzzle.  Interesting clue.

3. What some Woodstock attendees eventually became: EX - HIPPIES.

Who? Me?

4. Seize eagerly: LEAP AT.  Does a ballerina LEAP AT the chance to show off her skills?

5. Go over again: REDO.

6. Cockeyed: ALOP.  We have heard this word before but not often.  Does anyone here use it?

7. Table setting item: SPOON.  Hey diddle diddle.

8. House disciplinarians: PARTY WHIPS.  The House of Representatives.  A PARTY's WHIP is generally considered to be the member tasked with ensuring that members of a given party vote the way the party leadership wishes.

Toe The Line

9. Impressive spread: ESTATE.  Hands up for thinking first of something to do with food.

10. One sharing quarters: ROOMIE.  A bit slangy even though the clue is not.

11. Bullwinkle's last name: MOOSE.

12. Sunburn applications: ALOES.  Balms applied frequently in crossword puzzles.

13. Boomers' kids: XERS.  My XERS:  Before anyone cries discrimination, please be aware that the settings of the photos could have been, and have been, switched for both of them.

 

Lauren - Law School Graduation

Randal on the Great Wall

19. Breaks up with: DUMPS.

21. Feature of some eyeglasses: PRISM.  PRISM eyeglasses are used to correct double vision. 

24. Pub order: BREW.

25. Magician's opening: ABRA.  ABRA Cadabra.  ABRA is the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew "avra" meaning "I will create."  Cadabra is the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew "kedoobar" meaning "as was spoken."  "I will create as spoken!"  Makes sense.

26. Camera type, briefly: SLR. Single Lens Reflex.  Note the pentaPRISM.

27. Espresso-based coffee concoction: MOCHA LATTE.  If "chocolate" had been in the clue this one would have been easier.

31. However, in poetry: THO.  Short form of ALTHO?

33. Churchgoer, e.g.: WORSHIPER.

34. Mine, in Amiens: A MOI.  Today's French lesson.

35. "Mystic River" Oscar winner Sean: PENN.

38. Nanki-__: POO.  A Mikado reference (Gilbert and Sullivan).

39. Capture: SNARE.

42. Graph lead-in: PHONO.  Thought, for a moment, that PORNO might work.

46. Social functions: EVENTS.

Somebody Forgot The Name Tags

47. "The front page of the internet" website: REDDIT.

49. Island big shot: KAHUNA.  Today's Hawaiian lesson.

50. Chicago Symphony conductor with 31 Grammys: SOLTI.

Sir Georg Solti

51. Mouthed stadium greeting: HI MOM.

52. Narrow groove: STRIA.  Often one of a number of similar parallel features.

54. Benders: JAGS.  Not the British cars. 

55. Shipbuilding wood: TEAK.

56. Toms' counterparts: HENS.  A Turkey reference (not the country).

Hen and Tom

57. Questionable political spending: PORK.

60. Apt. IDs: NOS.  Apartment Numbers.  The clue (abbreviated so the answer will be, too) could have referred to streets, or come to think of it, myriad things.

I believe that this is No. 29.  You know what's odd?  Every other number.

And, on that note:

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