Theme: None
Total blocks: 30
Total words: 70
For those who are not aware, our editor Rich Norris has eased up the puzzles to accommodate those who have difficulty adjusting to the late week LAT. In case you think you suddenly became cleverer and outsmarted him in the past several days.
Can you imagine this puzzle without the 4 "helper squares" on each corner? Probably a few obscure words.
Nice stacked-up long fills in Across:
1A: Much sought-after title object, in a 1930 mystery: MALTESE FALCON
14A: 1999 Winona Ryder movie: GIRL, INTERRUPTED
16A: Italian, e.g.: ROMANCE LANGUAGE
34A: Nose nipper in a Christmas song: JACK FROST
55A: Masthead listing: ASSOCIATE EDITOR
60A: Source of much hard wood?: PETRIFIED FOREST
61A: They have their ups and downs: TEETER TOTTERS
My first reaction for the Winona Ryder movie is "Autumn in New York", which also has 15 letters. I had trouble with 60A since I've never heard of petrified wood. I did get the FOREST part easily.
Favorite clue today is SOTS (50A: They're usually lit). So many slang for drunk: lit, stoned, bombed, loaded, etc.
Across:
17A: Desktop array: ICONS
18A: Word seen between surnames: NEE
19A: Partners may form one: Abbr.: LLC (Limited Liability Company). I penned in LTD first. How are those two different?
20A: Barcelona "but": PERO. No idea. It's MAIS in French.
21A: Scholarship-granting mil. program: ROTC
24A: "Got it": ROGER
26A: From Pitts. to Boston: ENE. This clue feels odd. "From ... to..." does not equal ENE grammatically. "Pitts to Boston direction" does.
27A: Catalog section: FOR HER. Had trouble obtaining this answer.
29A: Toons Pixie and Dixie, e.g.: MICE. Easy guess. I am not familiar with the "Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks" cartoon.
30A: Rare sign?: RED. Meat. Nice clue. Demi Moore eats only raw food.
31A: To be, to Brutus: ESSE
32A: Morphine, for one: OPIATE
36A: Altogether: IN TOTO. Learned this Latin phrase from doing Xword.
39A: P &G Pet Care brand: IAMS. Named after the founder Paul IAMS. I got the answer from Down fills. Alpo is all I know.
40A: Flesh-blood link: AND. Flesh AND blood. This refers to one's family, correct?
43A: Biceps toner: CURL. So you are a curler if you CURL?
44A: What you've got to do "if you want my love," in a Temptations song: EARN IT. I had ??RN IT sitting there forever. Thought of BURN IT.
47A: Prufrock's creator: ELIOT. Wiki says Prufrock comes from the German word "Prüfstein", meaning "touchstone". The book cover is so simple.
49A: French friend: AMIE. Female friend.
51A: Largest airport in OH: CLE. Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Unknown to me.
52A: Fuzzy TV E.T.: ALF
54A: Kind of butter: APPLE. I've yet to try APPLE butter. Looks just like jam.
Down:
1D: Epoch in which grazing mammals became widespread: MIOCENE. Mio is from Greek meíōn, meaning "less". Cene is a suffix for "recent".
2D: Well-protected, in a way: ARMORED
3D: Southwestern plain: LLANO
5D: Letter-bottom abbr.: ENC
6D: __-Thérèse, Quebec: STE
7D: Kabayaki fish: EEL. Yummy, yummy, kabayaki simply means "grilled EEL".
8D: Nice location?: FRANCE. The French city Nice.
9D: "Rule, Britannia" composer: ARNE
10D: German semiautomatic: LUGER. Named after its inventor Georg LUGER.
11D: Intel product, briefly: CPU
12D: Earache: OTALGIA. OT(o) is prefix for "ear", and algia is a suffix for "pain". New word to me. Quite close to "nostalgia".
13D: Allow to worsen: NEGLECT
14D: Malcontent: GRIPER. A malcontent person. I was thinking of the adjective.
15D: Fiat: DECREE. A 5-letter answer would be EDICT.
21D: Tanner of '70s-'80s tennis: ROSCOE. No idea. He is left-handed. Dictionary says ROSCOE is from Germanic words meaning “swift” and “horse.”
22D: City on the Ural: ORSK. This has become a gimme.
23D: 1991 Grisham novel: THE FIRM. I've yet to see the movie.
28D: Rent splitter: ROOMIE. Rent is also the past tense of the splitting word "rend".
34D: Island in the Sulu Archipelago: JOLO. See this map. I wanted JAVA.
36D: Polar feature: ICECAP
37D: Group with no members, in math: NULL SET. No idea. This diagram looks very interestingly complicated. Where is love?
38D: Port of NE Italy: TRIESTE. Here is a map. It's on the Adriatic Sea. Only one letter (E) more than the sorrowful word "triste".
41D: Red figure: NET LOSS
42D: Joshua tree habitat: DESERT. The answer revealed itself. Joshua tree sounds biblical.
45D: Erle Stanley Gardner pseudonym: A. A. FAIR. Unknown to me.
48D: Understood: TACIT. Adjective, both mean "implied". I was in the past tense verb direction.
50D: Cathedral topper: SPIRE
53D: Magazine that first published "The Old Man and the Sea": LIFE. This one is in pretty decent condition. Hope it's not musty.
54D: "A line is __ that went for a walk": Klee: A DOT. Easy guess.
56D: Mt. Hood's state: ORE. Ha ha, I could not recall where Mt. Hood is.
57D: Vietnamese festival: TET. Yeah, limit TET to Vietnam. I dislike when it's clued as "Asian holiday". Ours is called Spring Festival. And it has different name in Korea & Japan.
58D: Pre-1868 Tokyo: EDO. 江戸, literally "bay door".
59D: New newt: EFT
Answer grid.
C.C.
Total blocks: 30
Total words: 70
For those who are not aware, our editor Rich Norris has eased up the puzzles to accommodate those who have difficulty adjusting to the late week LAT. In case you think you suddenly became cleverer and outsmarted him in the past several days.
Can you imagine this puzzle without the 4 "helper squares" on each corner? Probably a few obscure words.
Nice stacked-up long fills in Across:
1A: Much sought-after title object, in a 1930 mystery: MALTESE FALCON
14A: 1999 Winona Ryder movie: GIRL, INTERRUPTED
16A: Italian, e.g.: ROMANCE LANGUAGE
34A: Nose nipper in a Christmas song: JACK FROST
55A: Masthead listing: ASSOCIATE EDITOR
60A: Source of much hard wood?: PETRIFIED FOREST
61A: They have their ups and downs: TEETER TOTTERS
My first reaction for the Winona Ryder movie is "Autumn in New York", which also has 15 letters. I had trouble with 60A since I've never heard of petrified wood. I did get the FOREST part easily.
Favorite clue today is SOTS (50A: They're usually lit). So many slang for drunk: lit, stoned, bombed, loaded, etc.
Across:
17A: Desktop array: ICONS
18A: Word seen between surnames: NEE
19A: Partners may form one: Abbr.: LLC (Limited Liability Company). I penned in LTD first. How are those two different?
20A: Barcelona "but": PERO. No idea. It's MAIS in French.
21A: Scholarship-granting mil. program: ROTC
24A: "Got it": ROGER
26A: From Pitts. to Boston: ENE. This clue feels odd. "From ... to..." does not equal ENE grammatically. "Pitts to Boston direction" does.
27A: Catalog section: FOR HER. Had trouble obtaining this answer.
29A: Toons Pixie and Dixie, e.g.: MICE. Easy guess. I am not familiar with the "Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks" cartoon.
30A: Rare sign?: RED. Meat. Nice clue. Demi Moore eats only raw food.
31A: To be, to Brutus: ESSE
32A: Morphine, for one: OPIATE
36A: Altogether: IN TOTO. Learned this Latin phrase from doing Xword.
39A: P &G Pet Care brand: IAMS. Named after the founder Paul IAMS. I got the answer from Down fills. Alpo is all I know.
40A: Flesh-blood link: AND. Flesh AND blood. This refers to one's family, correct?
43A: Biceps toner: CURL. So you are a curler if you CURL?
44A: What you've got to do "if you want my love," in a Temptations song: EARN IT. I had ??RN IT sitting there forever. Thought of BURN IT.
47A: Prufrock's creator: ELIOT. Wiki says Prufrock comes from the German word "Prüfstein", meaning "touchstone". The book cover is so simple.
49A: French friend: AMIE. Female friend.
51A: Largest airport in OH: CLE. Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Unknown to me.
52A: Fuzzy TV E.T.: ALF
54A: Kind of butter: APPLE. I've yet to try APPLE butter. Looks just like jam.
Down:
1D: Epoch in which grazing mammals became widespread: MIOCENE. Mio is from Greek meíōn, meaning "less". Cene is a suffix for "recent".
2D: Well-protected, in a way: ARMORED
3D: Southwestern plain: LLANO
5D: Letter-bottom abbr.: ENC
6D: __-Thérèse, Quebec: STE
7D: Kabayaki fish: EEL. Yummy, yummy, kabayaki simply means "grilled EEL".
8D: Nice location?: FRANCE. The French city Nice.
9D: "Rule, Britannia" composer: ARNE
10D: German semiautomatic: LUGER. Named after its inventor Georg LUGER.
11D: Intel product, briefly: CPU
12D: Earache: OTALGIA. OT(o) is prefix for "ear", and algia is a suffix for "pain". New word to me. Quite close to "nostalgia".
13D: Allow to worsen: NEGLECT
14D: Malcontent: GRIPER. A malcontent person. I was thinking of the adjective.
15D: Fiat: DECREE. A 5-letter answer would be EDICT.
21D: Tanner of '70s-'80s tennis: ROSCOE. No idea. He is left-handed. Dictionary says ROSCOE is from Germanic words meaning “swift” and “horse.”
22D: City on the Ural: ORSK. This has become a gimme.
23D: 1991 Grisham novel: THE FIRM. I've yet to see the movie.
28D: Rent splitter: ROOMIE. Rent is also the past tense of the splitting word "rend".
34D: Island in the Sulu Archipelago: JOLO. See this map. I wanted JAVA.
36D: Polar feature: ICECAP
37D: Group with no members, in math: NULL SET. No idea. This diagram looks very interestingly complicated. Where is love?
38D: Port of NE Italy: TRIESTE. Here is a map. It's on the Adriatic Sea. Only one letter (E) more than the sorrowful word "triste".
41D: Red figure: NET LOSS
42D: Joshua tree habitat: DESERT. The answer revealed itself. Joshua tree sounds biblical.
45D: Erle Stanley Gardner pseudonym: A. A. FAIR. Unknown to me.
48D: Understood: TACIT. Adjective, both mean "implied". I was in the past tense verb direction.
50D: Cathedral topper: SPIRE
53D: Magazine that first published "The Old Man and the Sea": LIFE. This one is in pretty decent condition. Hope it's not musty.
54D: "A line is __ that went for a walk": Klee: A DOT. Easy guess.
56D: Mt. Hood's state: ORE. Ha ha, I could not recall where Mt. Hood is.
57D: Vietnamese festival: TET. Yeah, limit TET to Vietnam. I dislike when it's clued as "Asian holiday". Ours is called Spring Festival. And it has different name in Korea & Japan.
58D: Pre-1868 Tokyo: EDO. 江戸, literally "bay door".
59D: New newt: EFT
Answer grid.
C.C.
