I'm always amazed when constructors can pull off a puzzle with long stacks in every corner. I would be even more amazed if I had been able to solve this without the help of Dogpile...alas, it was not to be.
The northwest stacks:
1A: Big flap on the road? (splashguard). I don't know about the rest of you, but I didn't have a clue where that one was heading.
15A: Song sung by Mehitabel in Broadway's "Shinbone Alley" (Toujours Gai). This had to be one of Brad's first entries in the puzzle...you don't just fit that into a grid. I tried to find a picture of Eartha Kitt as Mehitabel...this will have to do. According to Wikipedia, "Shinbone Alley preceded Cats by a couple of decades but definitely was a precursor of the far more successful Andrew Lloyd Webber hit."17A: Traitorous (unpatriotic). That was the only one in the stack that I got easily.
In the northeast:
12D: Dangerous swimmer with an oarlike tail (sea snake). I'm generally not afraid of snakes, but this gave me the creeps. I wanted to see (and show you) what the tail looked like. If you're squeamish about snakes, don't click to enlarge it.13D: Bathtub rings, e.g. (residues). With almost all of the letters in place, it still took forever to see that. I blame it on the stuffy head.
14D: Deep-sixes (scuttles). I don't get this...I only know scuttle as a basket.
The southwest stacks:
35D: Early-birds' opposites (lie-abeds). Here's a sure sign that Elaine is maturing...on the weekends, she's up by 10:00. Athough that's not an early-bird, it's all relative...she used to sleep until midafternoon.
36D: Ride roughshod over (ill treat).
37D: "Born to Be Blue" singer (Mel Torme). His name always reminds me of one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite sitcoms. Harry (Judge Stone from "Night Court") just loved Mel Torme.
And, finally, the southeast stacks:
61A: Dedicatee of "The Muppet Movie" (Edgar Bergen). I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought that would be Jim Henson...except that it wouldn't fit. The girls were already grown by then, so I didn't see the movie. According to this article, Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy) had a cameo role in the movie but died shortly after the scene was filmed.65A: Dish with coddled egg (Caesar salad). I had the AD from crosses so was able to guess salad...beyond that I was clueless. I remember that anchovies are used in an authentic Caesar salad, but I forgot about the coddled egg.
67A: Order of ants (hymenoptera). This is probably my favorite word in the puzzle. I didn't get it right initially...had lepidoptera, but that's the order of butterflies and moths.
This puzzle was truly Dantean (27A: Bizarrely hellish), but I mean that in the most admirable sense of the word.
There were two more excellent long answers. 10D: Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould (rail barons)...had rail for the longest time and couldn't figure out how to end it...and 29D: Mardi Gras, in the U.K. (Pancake Day).
I always like to see identical clues in the puzzle, especially when the answers are so totally unrelated. [Ready to be driven] appears at 26A (teed up) and again at 49D (in gear). The latter was a gimme...the former took a letter or two.
Connected cluing at 55A: With 59-Across, it lasted from about 3500 to 1000 B.C. (Bronze / Age). Age was a gimme (duh) but it took a couple of letters to figure out which one we were talking about. I'm better with geological time periods.
Other favorites include 2D: Soft, thin silk cloth (pongee), 3D: 2006 Tony-nominated "Sweeney Todd" actress (Lupone), 4D: 1977 Steely Dan title track (Aja)...if you can't remember any other Steely Dan song, remember this one for crossword purposes, 24A: Rijksmuseum subject (Rembrandt), 5D: They're often fried (sots)...so many ways to clue that oft-appearing word, 7D: Member of the 1960s Rams' Fearsome Foursome (Grier)...the guy who went on to star in "Little House on the Prairie" (Merle somebody) was another one, 8D: Sports biggies (US Opens), 43D: Home to some fighters (air base), 52D: Language in which "k" and "v" are the words for "to" and "in" (Czech) and 53D: Kitchen gripper (Saran).Other crosswordese to reappear...44A: Identification aid in an obituary (nee), 60A: Slogan ending (eer), 66A: __-Mère-Église (D-Day Town) (Ste)...although it didn't indicate an abbreviation. 56A: Defeater of Schmeling in 1933 (Baer) appears often, although I don't recall ever seeing him clued that way. If it's four letters and a fighter, that's what I enter.
Before I figured out 47A: The Danube flows through it (Serbia)...doesn't it flow just about everywhere?...I thought that 48D: Charles Darwin's ship H.M.S. __ would begin with SEA. Turns out it was Beagle...not to be confused with Snoopy.
The only truly foreign word to me was 35A: Sketching (limning). I just looked it up so it isn't wrong...it only looks wrong.
Another no-drive day. A tank of gas seems to last a whole lot longer when I don't drive all over creation on Saturday. I stayed home the last two days, although I had to drive two miles to the doctor on Thursday, but I'll end up with several no-drive days this week. I hope to regain my strength and the rest of my voice so I can get back to the real world on Monday.
That's it for today. Here's the grid...
...and I'll see you tomorrow.
Linda G
7 comments:
Gah! Sea snake! I deliberately didn't Google that one to find info or a picture. Tree snakes and sea snakes are just WRONG. And scary. Linda, please promise me never to include a picture of a centipede or millipede. Those are worse even though they're smaller.
Eartha! I actually saw her at the Carlyle in NYC a few years ago; she is a marvel at her age and certainly doesn't lack for self-esteem. ;) We had a great time at her show.
Night Court - what a great show that was. Was anyone ever better in his role than John Laroquette? Mel TORME had a few cameo appearances on the show, as I recall. I just checked to see whatever became of Harry Anderson; he opened a nightclub in New Orleans just before Katrina but eventually left the city because he couldn't make it work after that.
Another answer that would have worked at 10D was RAIL Moguls. How would life be different if we could be either of the two?
Speaking of taxes, I must spend my confinement by this blizzard finishing the assembly of paperwork that I started a month ago.
Very few gimmes in this one, but SCUTTLE was one of them - to deliberately sink a ship by opening the sea cocks or punching holes in the bottom.
The only thing I remember about Rosey GRIER, other than how big he was, is that he did amazing needlepoint.
Linda, the football player who acted on Little House on the Prairie was Merle Olsen. Another former NFLer who turned to acting is Alex Karras, who was in Victor/Victoria.
Apologies to Orange...I was just too curious about that tail. But you have my word...no centipedes or millipedes. Nothing needs that many legs to move!
Have fun with your taxes, Wendy. We probably won't start on ours until next month. Go figure...
Thanks, Anna, for the Olsen/Karras info. And I remember Rosie Greer doing needlepoint on something like the Mike Douglas show...never figured out how he held the needle with his huge hands.
I really enjoyed Sunday's puzzle...I'll be back later to blog it.
I can vouch for what Anna said about Rosie Grier
I can vouch for what Anna said about Rosie Grier. I once sat across the aisle from him on a flight from Memphis to LA. Can you guess what he was doing to pass the time away?
You are both wrong about his teammate, though. His name was MERLIN Olsen, as in magician, not MERLE.
Thanks, Jurgis, for clearing that up. You're probably a real football fan...I'm only one for crossword purposes ; )
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