Sunday, January 20, 2008

Monday, January 21 - Andrea Carla Michaels

Monday, January 21...Elaine's 20th birthday. It's hard to believe that our little girl has grown up. Happy Birthday, sweetie. We love you so much.

Today's theme...Win, Lose or Draw. I love the theme answers...all multiword answers and all good. Once I got the first one, the next two were gimmes.

17A: Triumph, but just barely (win by a nose).

38A: Fall off a beam, e.g. (lose one's balance).

61A: Momentarily forget (or get lucky in Scrabble?) (draw a blank). Clever clue.

This one was easy, even for a Monday. With very few exceptions, I just worked the acrosses...missing a lot of the down clues until I was finished.

There were only two nontheme multiword answers, but I liked both...3D: Led off (went first) and 35D: Sworn to tell the truth (under oath)...both were gimmes. Nice legal subtheme...32A: Legal wrong (tort), 8D: Thing, in legal briefs (res) and 29D: No longer worth debating (moot).

Favorite nonstandard fare includes 5A: Dopey or Doc (dwarf), 24A: False fronts (facades), 28A: Smug smiles (smirks), 46A: Marks that look like inverted v's (carets), 56A: Opposite of an intro, musically (coda), 5D: All soap operas, basically (dramas) and 10D: Popular newspaper puzzle subtitled "That Scrambled Word Game" (Jumble).

Also liked 1A: Lascivious (lewd)...both are great words, 10A: Say jokingly (jest), 19A: Hawaiian island (Maui)...of course, 27A: God, to Muslims (Allah), 48A: Pago Pago's locale (Samoa), 69A: Command to a steed (whoa), 1D: Home turf? (lawn), 4D: Amount of hair cream (dab), 12D: Finnish bath (sauna), 36D: Glaswegian, e.g. (Scot), 58D: Lifeguard, at times (saver) and 59D: Scandinavian furniture giant (Ikea).

I didn't know 41D: Swiss river (Aare) but was able to get it from crosses. Also didn't know that Erie [at 2D] is the [Shallowest Great Lake]...but it was easy enough to guess. I've seen 28D: Capital of Manche, France (St. Lo) clued many ways before...this was one of the down clues I didn't read until after I'd finished.

Others that I didn't see...but would have known...include 25D: Comic Johnson (Arte), 37D: Loch __ monster (Ness) and 63D: Actor Ayres (Lew).

That's it for tonight. Here's the grid...



...and I'll see you tomorrow.

Linda G

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Linda...our oldest turns 20 on the 28th...Jan. is a popular month for us...our anniversary and the b'day of both our girls...enough personal stuff...puzzle almost too easy even for a Monday...hope that you have today off

Linda G said...

No day off for me, Bob...but I'm okay with that. If you have the day off, enjoy it! By the way, the personal stuff is nice...it makes us feel as though we all know one another. Happy anniversary to you and your wife...whenver it is/was ; )

Anonymous said...

Thanks Linda...yes the personal stuff does allow us to know a bit about each other....the congeniality of your blog is why I enjoy it so much

MBG said...

the congeniality of your blog is why I enjoy it so much

Ditto!! Your blog is like sitting down with an old friend to talk over the puzzle.

Happy birthday to your daughter, Linda. My oldest boy is 38.

Happy anniversary, Bob. Our fortieth is coming up in February.

This was an easy-peasy puzzle. I never saw most of the down clues either. It's nice getting better at solving, thanks to you, Linda, and to Rex, but the Monday and Tuesday puzzles are almost always so easy for me now that I can't wait until Friday and Saturday when the solving gets really tough!

bougeotte said...

Ditto Ditto. Happy Birthday to your oldest. My nephew turns 18 next week. Happy Anniversary Bob - hope it was a nice day for you both.
Today was super easy. Like you Linda, I just kept going until done.
Until tomorrow. Cheers

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all the good wishes

Ben said...

I love your blog, Linda, and I thank you for being so reliable, witty, and able.

But I was deeply saddened to see you blogging about a puzzle featuring Arte Johnson without the requisite picture of Mr. Johnson playing the idiot Nazi from Laugh-In.

Have you no decency?

Ben

Linda G said...

Ben, I'm glad you enjoy the blog. The more in our virtual family...the merrier.

I seriously considered a picture of Arte Johnson, but I'd have gone with him on the trike. For some reason, that always made me laugh. I guess that means I have no decency ; )

wendy said...

Allow me, Linda:

Reminisce away!