Friday, August 4, 2023, Taylor Johnson, Christina Iverson

 

Good Morning Crucibverbalists.  Malodorous Manatee here once again with a recap of a Friday puzzle.   Today's puzzle setters are Taylor Johnson and Christina Iverson.  We have previously seen puzzles by each of them in the L.A. Times.

Today's "theme" is something of an odd duck and I find it to be a bit difficult to explain.  First of all, it is meta.  At five places within the grid (each clue ending with a question mark for a bit of added helpfulness), portions of the clues themselves are used to form the answers.  In each case the letters that are employed in this capacity frame the opening portion of the clue.  The relationship that each answer has to its clue is the "letter play"and the use of words such as border, case, frame, etc,.  Let's look at the first example and see if things might not become a bit clearer.

17 Across:  Op-ed column feature?:  OPEN BORDER.   If we look at OP-ED COLUMN we see that the O P E and N form the word OPEN.  OPEN forms, and frames, the left BORDER of the clue (exclusive of the word "feature").

25 Across:  Spa service feature?: SPACE CASE.  .   In the second-from-the-top themed clue/answer, we are presented with  SPA SERVICE in the clue.   The S,P, A, C, and E of the answer (SPACE CASE) originate in the clue.  They could be said the enCASE the clue.  The fact that we have two C's and two E's from which to chose might be a wee bit confusing but since we are going with edges and sides we'll go with the first C and the last E for the highlighting, below. Making things a bit more interesting or confusing is that, in this instance, SPACE can  frame both the clue and the answer.

The other three theme answers are:

35 Across:  Free booze feature?: FREEZE FRAME.  FREE BOOZE.    As with the previous theme answer, things are a bit more interesting / confusing because FREEZE FRAMEs both the clue and the answer.

48 Across:  Lotus pose feature?:  LOOSE ENDS.  LOOSE frames the ENDS of the clue LOTUS POSE.

58 Across:  Chocolate mousse feature?: CHOSE SIDES.  CHOCOLATE MOUSSE.

I found the theme, and its execution, to be both clever and a bit unwieldy.  YMMV.

In the grid things look like this:

Now, if we are not tuckered out from exploring the machinations of the theme, we can take a look at the rest of the puzzle.

Across:

1. Neck, in Nottingham: SNOG.   Neck as in canoodle.  We have seen this bit of British English before. 

5. Antlered ruminants: STAGS.

10. European range: ALPS.

14. Cab, for one: WINE.  Not a taxi, CABernet Sauvignon.

15. Young trainee: CADET.

16. Spring, essentially: COIL.

19. "Un-Break My Heart" singer Braxton: TONI.

20. Reply "stop" to a text message campaign, say: OPT OUT.

21. One of a kind: UNIT.  Not a "one off" but one of many (of a type or kind).

23. Nickname that drops -in: KEV.

24. MIT __: business school: SLOAN.  

27. Mother clucker: HEN.   Also the name of quite a few restaurants.

28. School of whales: GAM.  Hand up for first going with POD.

30. __ sauce: seafood dressing: TARTAR.  COCKTAIL would not fit the allotted space.

31. Garnish in Mexican cuisine: PEPITA.  A subset of pumpkin seeds.

34. Rascals: IMPS.

38. Singer Parks with the 2023 album "My Soft Machine": ARLO.  A clue for the newer kids on the block.  Most of us would have gone with Guthrie.

40. Tick off: ENRAGE.

41. Rose ominously: LOOMED.

44. Poetic contraction: O'ER.  Over.

45. Path: WAY.  Had up for wondering if it might be TAO.

51. Lyric poem: EPODE.  Fortunately, we have previously seen this one in our puzzles so it was easier to perp than would otherwise have been the case.

53. Former Russian orbiter: MIR.  MIR means peace or world.

The MIR Space Station

54. Plotting spot: LAIR.  Often clued with an animal reference but, hey, it's Friday.  Criminals plot capers in their LAIRs, I suppose.

55. __ wheel: FERRIS.

56. Some early PCs: IBMS.

IBM PC AT

60. "Marriage Story" writer/director Baumbach: NOAH.  Unknown to this solver.  Thanks perps.

61. Desert refuges: OASES.  Plural clue, plural answer.

62. Pivot around: SLUE.

63. Jimmy V Award for Perseverance, for one: ESPY.  Named in honor of North Carolina basketball coach Jim Valvano.

64. Some piercing spots: NOSES.  First thought was LOBES.  Three out of five wasn't going to work out.

65. Toy (with): MESS.

Down:

1. Sportswear logo: SWOOSH.  A Nike athletic apparel reference.

2. Baby bottle topper: NIPPLE.

3. Pickup spec: ONE TON.  Not a pickup bar reference.  A truck reference.

4. Ligurian port on a namesake gulf: GENOA.  Often clued with a salami reference but, hey, it's Friday.

5. Glasgow citizen: SCOT.

6. Road goo: TAR.

7. Total: ADD UP.  If this had been a truck reference the answer could have been WRECK.

8. Davis of "Beetlejuice": GEENA.

9. Stern: STRICT.

10. Pretend: ACT.

11. Cry for attention: LOOK AT ME.

12. Turpentine ingredient: PINE SAP.  First went with PINE TAR.

13. Tweezers targets: SLIVERS.  SPLINTERS was too long.

18. Jumper cable?: BUNGEE.

22. 39-Down, e.g.: TEA.

25. Portmanteau coined by Tyra Banks on "America's Next Top Model": SMIZE.  Smile with your eyes.  Perhaps in some circles Tyra-isms are as accepted as Yogi-isms are in other circles.  However, at this point in the solve the only thing my eyes were doing was rolling.

26. Harlan Coben genre: CRIME.

29. Simian: APE.  What do you call a simian who lives in a ventilation system?  A duct APE.

31. Dances with queens: PROMS.  Dances is used here as a plural noun.

Julie Brown

32. Sundial X: TEN.  Roman numeral.

33. Some natural hairstyles: AFROS.

35. Blueprint: FLOOR MAP.  More often, FLOOR PLAN but that would not fit.

36. "Black Beatles" hip-hop duo __ Sremmurd: RAE.  Ear Drummers spelled backwards.  Yo!

37. Matches: AGREES.
 
38. "None for you!": ALL MINE.

39. Herbal red 22-Down: ROOIBOS.  A new one for me but, apparently, not all that obscure.

42. Unadon fish: EEL.  A sushi reference.

43. Church official: DEACON.  A couple of locals DEACONs stood by the side of the road holding up a sign that read, “The End is Near! Turn yourself around now before it’s too late!” They held up the sign to each passing car.  “Leave us alone you religious nuts!” yelled the first driver as he sped by. From around the curve they heard a big splash.  “Do you think,” said one DEACON to the other, “we should just put up a sign that says ‘bridge is out’ instead?

45. Guessing game where the answer can be false, but not true?: WORDLE.  A gimme for many here.  Tough for many others.

46. Farewells: ADIEUS.  Could have been ADIEUX.

47. Approvals: YESSES.

49. Hangzhou "Hello": NI HAO.  Today's mandarin lesson.

50. Metallic waste: DROSS.  SLAG was too short.

52. Spectrum-maker: PRISM.

55. Own (up): FESS.  It might have been clued as "Actor and wine maker ____  Parker".

57. Short: SHY.  Not a height reference.  As in to owe money that one does not have.

59. "The thing is ... ": SEE.

The thing is... that about wraps things up for today.  Have a great weekend, everyone.  I will be traveling and taking time off from blogging for a while.  See you in September.

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Friday, July 21, 2023, Jess Shulman & Shannon Rapp

 

Good Morning, Cruciverbalists.  Malodorous Manatee here with today's recap of a puzzle by Jess Shulman and Shannon Rapp.

Let us begin with the reveal:

57 Across:  Business retreat, and an apt title for this puzzle?: COMPANY OUTING.

OUTING is used here as a stand-in for take out.  No, not like in take-out food but as in to remove something. The removal is employed at three places within the grid where our puzzle setters delete the abbreviation for COMPANY (CO) from recognizable names and phrases.  

20 Across:  Melt down in response to some trash talk?: PANIC AT THE DIS.  Before the "outing" PANIC AT THE DISCO.  DIS as in to criticize.  Panic at the Disco was an American pop rock band.

36 Across:  Talent for sliding into someone's DMs?: PING SKILLS.  DM is contemporary talk  for Direct Messaging.  Before the "outing" COPING SKILLS.  PING is a network utility used to test reachability of a host.  Alternatively, PING me."

43 Across:  Little cat with a beachy vibe?: CALI KITTEN.  CALI as in California, I suppose.  Before the "outing" CALICO KITTEN.

Here is how this looks in the completed grid.  It proved impossible to highlight the letters that were not there:

The remaining clues and answers are:

Across:

1. History: PAST.

5. Dreamcast maker: SEGA.  A home video game console.

9. Blessing preceder: ACHOO.  Gezuntheit.

14. "__, Brute?": ET TU.  A Shakespearean reference.

15. God attended by Valkyries: ODIN.

16. Intact: WHOLE.

17. Instagram video: REEL.  A contemporary usage of the word REEL.

18. Compact __: DISC.  They replaced LPs

19. Like some seals: EARED.  Most often fur seals and sea lions.

23. Refill: TOP UP.  As in a cocktail or fuel tank.  Do we TOP UP electric vehicles?

24. Costa del __: SOL.

25. AED pro: EMT.  Automated External Defibrillator was new to this solver but the perps quickly led to Emergency Medical Technician because EMTs appear here frequently.

28. Copy cats?: MEOW.  Not exactly copycat as in imitator.   Literally, copy a cat.

30. Noisy bird: MAGPIE.  See also 33 Down.

33. Colorado's __ Verde National Park: MESA.  Cliff dwellings.

39. Haim of "Licorice Pizza": ALANA.  Unknown to this solver.  As the puzzles get more contemporary I find myself becoming less enthusiastic about some of them.  I also know that time marches on and a puzzle full of references to prior generations of entertainers won't do either.

41. Zodiac lion: LEO.

42. __-garde: AVANT.

46. Peepers: EYES.  If one goes looking online for the old song one is "rewarded" with many references to the horror movies.

Jeepers Creepers

47. Connect: ATTACH.   What can you ATTACH to a ball, a cart or a harp to make it something completely different.  OON.

48. "Star Wars" family name of Han and Ben: SOLO.

50. Bentley of "Yellowstone": WES.

51. Substance that lacks refinement?: ORE.  Nice word play.   No, not the French city.

54. Benchmarks: NORMS.  If Weird Al Yankovic wasn't weird he'd be called NORM Al.

62. Language of Iran: FARSI.

64. Exam with a max score of 180: LSAT.  The law school apptitude test.

65. Sunburn salve: ALOE.  Often applied in crossword puzzles.

66. __ beverage: ADULT.  Alcohol.

67. Entice: LURE.

68. Mario __: game with a Rainbow Road: KART.

69. Captcha target: ROBOT.    A contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart".  It is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human.

70. Itches: YENS.  As in desires not allergic reactios.

71. Docs who insert tympanostomy tubes: ENTS.  Our second medical reference with an abbreviated clue (Docs) and answer.  Ear Nose and Throat specialistS

Down:

1. BOLO target: PERP.  Be On The Alert.  PERPetrator not a crossing word in a puzzle.

2. Patronized, as a restaurant: ATE AT.

3. Shorthand pro: STENO.  A somewhat obsolete profession.

4. Dutch market craze of the late 1630s: TULIP MANIA.

5. Soft drink: SODA POP.

6. Address plot holes, perhaps: EDIT.

7. General ideas: GISTS.  What do biologists, archaeologists and meteorologists all have in common?  They all get the GIST of their fields.

8. Dried poblano: ANCHO.

9. Amazed: AWED.  A truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus crashed yesterday losing its entire load.  Witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, taken aback, stupefied, confused, shocked, rattled, paralyzed, dazed, bewildered, mixed up, surprised, awed, dumbfounded, nonplussed, flabbergasted, astounded, amazed, confounded, astonished, overwhelmed, horrified, numbed, speechless, and perplexed.

10. Milky spiced tea: CHAI.

11. Tomfoolery: HORSEPLAY.

12. La Liga cheer: OLE.  A soccer reference.

13. Ref. work that once employed J.R.R. Tolkien: OED.  Oxford English Dictionary.  Tolkien was an English author best known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

21. Snooker stick: CUE.

22. Long-lived trees: ELMS.

26. Eeyore creator: MILNE.  A Winnie The Pooh reference.

27. Challenges: TESTS.  Both can be used as nouns or verbs so that wasn't at issue.

29. Go limp: WILT.

31. Pseudonym indicator: AKA.  Also Known As

32. "Ish": GIVE OR TAKE.

33. Noisy bird: MACAW.  The second noisy bird today.

34. Thrill: ELATE.

35. Element of a margarita pedicure: SALT SCRUB.  Margarita pedicures are not within my ken.  SALT, however, was not surprising as part of the answer.

37. Aquarium scoop: NET.

38. "So It __ ... ": song on Taylor Swift's "Reputation": GOES.  Is Taylor Swift now channeling Kurt Vonnegut?

40. "For the love of all things dog" org.: AKC.

44. Eatery with a "Happy Face" combo on the kids menu: IHOP.

45. "Don't change a thing": NO NOTES.

49. "Mambo No. 5" singer Bega: LOU.

52. Comeback: RALLY.

53. Follow: ENSUE.

55. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" novelist Kundera: MILAN.  MILAN Kundera passed away on July 11, 2023.

56. Stifled laugh: SNORT.

58. Norse city name that can be translated as "meadow of the gods": OSLO.  Frequently visited in our puzzles.

59. Fly catcher?: MITT.  A baseball reference.

"I Got It"

60. Crocheter's supply: YARN.

61. Understands: GETS.  Can you dig it?

62. Way off: FAR.

63. Fuss: ADO.

Well, coworkers, that will wrap things up for today.  For those of you entertaining guests this weekend, enjoy your COMPANY.

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Friday, June 23, 2023, Luke Schreiber

 

Good Morning, Cruciverbalists.  Malodorous Manatee here, once again, with a Friday recap.  Today's puzzle setter is Luke Schreiber who has elected to do a riff on RIGHTs.  Right turns, Right angles, human Rights.

Two weeks ago I recapped a puzzle in which the theme answers were placed vertically in the grid in lieu of the more often seen horizontal placement.  Today, we get yet another approach.  At five places in the puzzle, all identified with circles, Luke requires us to make a right-angle (90 degree) turn to the right in order to get the right answer to the Down clue.  The answer to that clue requires the combining of the Down clue's answer with the corresponding Across clue's answer. Here are the five places that make up the themed answers:

1 Down:  Bounces back: RALL with 20 Across:  "It's all untrue!": LIES.  RALLIES  I imagine that most everyone went "Huh!?" when 1 Down filled.  Or did it?

7 Down:  Some Arctic Cats: SNOWMOB  with 35 Across:  Gymnast Simone: BILES. SNOWMOBILES

10 Down:  RuPaul's competition: DRAG with 22 Across:  Coup de __: GRACE.  DRAG RACE  This one confused yours truly for a bit as the down answer, DRAG, is able to stand alone as a real word, a feature exhibited at none of the other four word combinations.  After scratching my head for a while I assumed that RALL and SNOWMOB (which had previously been filled in) were, indeed, the right answers and that it was time to stop overthinking things and move right along.

26 Down:  Extremely beautiful, perhaps: HEARTST with 54 Across: Froyo choice: TOPPING.  HEART STOPPING.  A little bit odd as FROYO was a "truncated" clue (FROzen YOgurt) but the answer was a complete word.

48 Dwon:  Quilting technique: APPLIQ with 71 Across:  "¿__ pasa?": QUE.  APPLIQUE

The unifier comes at 64 Across:

64 Across:  Freedoms protected by the Equality Act, and an apt title for this puzzle?: LGBTQ RIGHTS.  Note that, when taken in order, the pivot points spell out LGBTQ.

Here is how all of this looks in the grid:

Here are the rest of the clues and answers.  Content warning:  Roughly a dozen or so are proper names.  Some additional theme-related answers also appear here and there:

Across:

1. Noisy toy: RATTLE.  Shouldn't RATTLEsnake warnings be called "Cautionary Tails"?

7. Went fast: SPED.

11. Oroville structure: DAM.

14. Legends on the road: ACURAS.  An automobile make/model reference.

15. Depilatory brand: NAIR.  Was it going to be NEET or VEET?  Nope.

16. Post-op area: ICU.  The Intensive Care Unit at a hospital.

17. Beatles song with the lyric "Sunday morning creeping like a nun": LADY MADONNA.  I strongly suspect that the Beatles imagery was not meant to evoke anything quite like these self-described "nuns":

.

19. Fistful of bills: WAD.  A wad of cash.  I guess the Times wished to avoid paying a royalty on this clue.

21. Possess: OWN.

24. Remorseful: ASHAMED.  Why was the pterodactyl not ASHAMED to use the toilet?  Its "P" was silent.

28. Nobelist Wiesel: ELIE.

29. Epicurious.com offering: RECIPE.  A very good web site to visit when you are looking for a RECIPE.

32. Lucille Clifton's "Homage to My Hips," for one: ODE.  In puzzles, the poems almost always turn out to be ODEs.

33. Lab container: VIAL.  Why are almost all test tube manufacturers single?  People seem to find them VIAL.

34. Bright bloom: DAHLIA.

37. "Rules __ rules": ARE.    . . and they are meant to be followed,  we are told.

 

38. Hesitant sound: ERM.  Punt!

40. Minor matter: NIT.  Idiomatic, unless you are, perhaps, a chimpanzee.

41. "Delish!": YUM.

44. SLR setting: F-STOP.  A photography reference.  The aperture setting on a Single Lens Reflex camera.

46. Halloumi, e.g.: CHEESE.  If it were Monday the clue might have been Cheddar.

48. Québec chum: AMIE.  Français dans l'indice donc Français pour la réponse.

51. Early Beatle Sutcliffe: STU.  Sometimes referred to as "the fifth Beatle".  We sometimes see this clued along the lines of "letter run after R".

52. Got bronze?: TANNED.  Not an Olympics reference.

53. Window part: PANE.  My stupid, hungry donkey decided to eat a window.  It was a pane in the ass.

56. Subject of many June parades: PRIDE.  Continuing with the theme.

58. "Awesome!": RAD.  "Bitchin'!"  "Groovy!"  "Far Out, Man!"  "Phat!"

59. Exercise aftermath: ACHE.

63. Cap: LID.  Remember when a LID cost $10?

68. "__ say!": I'LL.

69. Pouty face: MOUE.

70. Backup squads: B-TEAMS.

72. Cheek: SASS.

73. Attend without a partner: GO SOLO.

Down:

2. Berry that's a superfood: ACAI.  Frequently served in our puzzles.

"3. Truculent behavior, informally: TUDE.  Derived from attiTUDE.  "Don't Cop a TUDE, bro."

4. Seafarer's choice during a storm: TRYSAIL.  New to this solver.  "A TRYSAIL is a substitute mainsail designed solely for storm conditions. Setting independently of the boom it is loose-footed and designed to sit above the stack of your mainsail using a long tack strop."  Got it?

5. On the __: LAM.  Fleeing from the law.

6. Finnish conductor __-Pekka Salonen: ESA.  He led the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 until 2009 when Gustavo Dudamel succeeded him.

8. Prepared for a close-up shot: PANNED IN.  A pan shot is a horizontal camera movement in which the camera pivots left or right while its base remains in a fixed location.

9. German article: EIN.  Was is going to be DER?  Nein.

11. South Asian festival of lights: DIWALI.  A bit obscure (to us North Americans) but we have seen this reference to the Hindu Festival of Lights a few previous times.

12. Tree favored by giraffes: ACACIA.

13. Bottom-dwelling fish: MUD EEL.  Also known as Heterenchelyidae but that would not fit the allotted space.   

18. __ double take: DO A.

23. Cranks (up): REVS.

25. Spots: SPIES.  Used as a verb.  Not, for example, a Dalmatian dog reference.

27. Corpus __: prosecutor's concern: DELICTI.

29. Nutrition fig.: RDA.  For those of you who have may not read a food product information label in the last twenty or thirty years, Recommended Daily Allowance.

30. Sideburn neighbor: EAR.

31. Michael of "SNL": CHE.

36. Actor Hawke: ETHAN.

39. Tour vehicle, quaintly: MOTOR BUS.

41. Osaka currency: YEN.  Money in Japan.

42. Exploit: USE.  Used as a verb.

43. __ school: MED.  DAY?  OLD?  LAW?  ART?  At least those are not abbreviated as is MEDical in response to a non-abbreviated clue.

44. Satellite signal: FEED.

45. Leaves the larval stage: PUPATES.  Rarely seen in our puzzles as a verb.  More often we see PUPA as in the insect stage between larva and adult.

47. Ties up: ENGAGES.  Perhaps a new take on an ENGAGEment announcement?

49. Henner of "Taxi": MARILU.  A TV sitcom reference.  There should be no trouble picking her out in this photo:

50. Warming up the car, say: IN IDLE.

55. ASAP kin: PDQ.  Pretty Darn Quick

57. Trees with many streets named after them: ELMS.  And streets with many movies named after them.

60. Rosalind of 2020's "Mulan": CHAO.

61. Web page standard: HTML.  HyperText Markup Language is used, among myriad other applications, to produce our daily Crossword Corner blogs.

62. Petro-Canada rival: ESSO.  A reprise from two weeks ago.  This time without the "petrol" reference.

65. Indian state known for white-sand beaches: GOA.  At 18 Down we had DO A.  Do these fit ___  T?

66. First member of SCOTUS to officiate a same-sex wedding: RBG.  Supreme Court Of The United States justice The "Notorious" Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

67. Manga artist Junji: ITO.  Often clued with reference to Judge Lance ITO.

As I am otherwise engaged, this seems like the right time to bid adieu for this morning  . . .

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