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1976 rescue site / SUN 11-21-10 / View from Catania / German-born tennis star Tommy / Portuguese speaking island off African coast / 1930s film pooch
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Constructor: Clive Probert
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: "Having Aspirations" — familiar phrases have "H" added to beginning of some word in the phrase, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily
Word of the Day: CLANGOR (9D: Loud ringing) —
n.intr.v., -gored, -gor·ing, -gors.
- A clang or repeated clanging.
- A loud racket; a din.
To make a clangor.[Latin, from clangere, to clang.]
• • •
Any time I come in under 10 on a Sunday, it's gotta be easy. Despite the simple premise and dearth of theme answers (just 6), I sort of liked this one. With the exception of HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE (whose "H"-less version I've never heard of), the theme answers were all pretty cute, and SET ONE'S TEETH ON HEDGE was legitimately funny. I wanted the HERRING to be ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION, but too long. At any rate, the rest of the grid seems mostly neatly filled, especially considering how glutted it is with four-letter words (which are hard to make interesting and easy to make horrible). I didn't catch on to the theme with the first theme answers. Just wondered why REAL MEN DON'T EAT QUICHE wouldn't fit. Truthfully, my first thought was REAL MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, but it didn't really (at all) fit the clue. I THINK THEREFORE I HAM was the answer that revealed the gist of the theme to me, and the rest of the theme answers were remarkably easy to get (even HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE, the latter part of which I inferred easily enough).The other day there were complaints about OBOLI, a Greek coin given a Latin plural. Greek words often go through Latin to get to English, hence the hybridity. See also, today, SYLLABI, a plural I refuse to use because it's not Latin in origin (4D: Course outlines). Doesn't mean SYLLABI isn't legit. Just means that I hate it.
One word I don't hate is CLANGOR, which sounds both onomatopoetic and Klingon. When a bell ("CLANG") creates a CLAMOR, you get a CLANGOR. And of course a small CLANGOR is a CLANGORLING (34D: Diminutive suffix=LING). I wanted my whales to be SPRAYERS (not SPOUTERS, 72A: Whales, at times) and my lock-out league to be NBA or NFL (not NHL, 90D: Org. with a 2004-05 lockout). Also wanted KNOBBY to be KNOTTY (42D: Not smooth) and OOOH to be ... well, something else, preferably (44D: Cry of delight). My cries of delight came from very, very different answers: COKED up (5D: Out of one's mind, in a way, with "up"), which took me many crosses to get, and CHURCHY (21D: Very religious). "COKED Up and CHURCHY" is a tell-all autobiography just waiting to be written, e.g. "COKED Up and CHURCHY: The Mother Teresa Story!"Theme answers:
- 26A: Macho guys like their pie cold? (REAL MEN DON'T HEAT QUICHE)
- 41A: Bad actor's philosophy? (I THINK THEREFORE I HAM)
- 63A: Concerns of middle-aged guys in lower Louisiana? (DELTA HAIRLINES)
- 73A: Lengthy military sign-up? (SEVEN-YEAR HITCH)
- 92A: Put the dentures aside while gardening? (SET ONE'S TEETH ON HEDGE)
- 108A: Starboard food fish? (HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE
- 10A: German-born tennis star Tommy (HAAS) — like the ILSA he sits on, I know his name instinctively from crosswords.
- 24A: Signal for a programmer's jump (GOTO) — I remember this command from learning Basic in ninth grade.
47A: "___ doubt but they were fain o' ither": Burns ("NAE") — from "The Twa Dogs," a poem I'd never heard of until just this second.- 48A: Org. with the motto "For the benefit of all" (NASA) — that's a pretty vague and un-spacey motto for those guys.
- 56A: Carrier with a frequent flier program called EuroBonus (SAS) — airline I know only from xwords.
- 106A: View from Catania (ETNA) — feels like I've seen this exact clue before. Oh, I have.
- 8D: "Were I the Moor, I would not be ___" (IAGO) — big week for IAGO, an olde skool piece of crosswordese whose grown less common in recent years ... until this week.
- 12D: 1930s film pooch (ASTA) — ETNA, IAGO, ASTA ... crossword vets, every one.
- 13D: Portuguese-speaking island off the African coast (SÃO TOMÉ) — Pres. Obama just returned from Portugal today (or yesterday, I forget). That, and the fact that the capital is Lisbon, is about all I know about Portugal (OK, I know more, but I always feel as if Portugal is the European country that time forgot—from major colonial power to ... whatever it is now. No offense! I'm sure it's wonderful)
- 95D: 1976 rescue site (ENTEBBE) — Had only the vaguest sense of what this was until I ran into it in a grid a while back and looked it up. Israeli rescue mission in Uganda. More here.
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77 comments:
Did not like this theme at all.
Would have been a record time time if DAR was "Org. for electing candidates".
How can one err on the side of right? Wouldn't that be being right, as in not in error?
Othello > Act I, scene I
IAGO: O, sir, content you;
I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly follow'd. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass,
For nought but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd:
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are
Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them and when they have lined
their coats
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;
And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,
It is as sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.
King Henry IV, part II > Act V, scene V
PISTOL: There roar'd the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.
I loved this puzzle, took a little time to figure out the theme, but when I did it seemed to move smoothly. I groaned at DELTA HAIR LINES but after reflecting on it, I'm accepting. Favorite by far was I THINK THEREFORE I HAM. Reminds me of my egocentric brother. (Hope he doesn't read this blog.
Cannot tell you what I wanted to fill in at 50A. It wouldn't pass security.
Great Sunday puzzle, thank you Mr. Probert.
Hey Rex! Went to a Will Shortz talk at UCSB tonight. And one of the audience members asked him what he thought of you! He said he thinks your blog has generally helped to elevate the quality of the NYT puzzles... though he did add he thought you were a little TOO critical sometimes :) He was a really cool and entertaining guy, and reminded me I haven't checked out this blog in a long time.
Cute puzzle (I wrote this before Rex posted) with more than a couple of amusing theme answers. Seems about right for a Sun. No serious problems for me. Briefly had SELL for VEND, DESPOT for Kim (OK chefwen A**HOLE doesn't fit so now I'm wondering), KNOTTY (like Rex), and TAS for MDS. Plus getting LING required some effort. Nice Sun.!
I messed up the SAOTOME area of the puzzle but otherwise an okay Sunday.
@Rex I pictured the creaky SPOUTER's Inn sign from the opening scenes of Moby Dick.
I always feel as if Portugal is the European country that time forgot—from major colonial power to ... whatever it is now.
Same here. Fascinating to think that little Portugal was a major player once.
Not much to say about this one; got the idea from the very first theme answer and it was smooth sailing all the way through. I did think that was a bit fresher way to clue IAGO. I was frankly a little surprised--not offended, just surprised--that COKED UP made it into the puzzle.
Considering my age, I'm embarrassed to admit that I had to get HANOI from crosses.
gumhordi (Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?)
I enjoyed this a lot -- I thought the first three theme clues were terrific (QUICHE-HAM-DELTA), the others not so much. The first two magically appeared with almost no letters!
Lots of obscure (to me) stuff I had to get from crosses -- HAAS, DREA, TESS, OVERS among others.
I was fearing a DNF -- I had _NC for PAC for a long time, thinking it would be RNC or DNC. And I had SPURTERS for SPOUTERS for a while, till I demoted the SGT to a PVT.
The CIVIC-ONEAL-CLANGOR area was the last to fall (could not get the G on GALS -- I don't love this clue) but it was a typo on OHME (I had AHME) than kept Mr. Happy Pencil away. ;-(
@RP, interesting comment about SYLLABI. (Free Dictionary says: "Medieval Latin, probably alteration (influenced by Greek sullambanein, to put together) of Latin sillybus, parchment label, from Greek sillubos.) In my academic world it's in daily use, but I hadn't considered your point before. But don't you think that 'SYLLABUSES' sounds kinda... I dunno... slurpy?
@chefwen -- give us a hint on 50A!
captcha = "dissnee" ... oh, the possibilities!
Easy, even for a Sunday. The theme was cute (I liked DELTA HAIRLINES). Agree abut HERRING, etc. Didn't like the clue for CHURCHY (Pogo character ______ La Femme would have been better).
Ip, Ip, Urray! A really easy Sunday...
I wondered about ALOES, thinking it was a variant of the name Alois, but no. I didn't know Fugard's protest play, A Lesson from ALOES, so I looked it up. The title reflects the symbolism in the plant collection of the Afrikaner character Piet: "To Piet, classifying and segregating his aloes is a hobby; to the South African ministers of apartheid, it meant control, surveillance, torture and death." Whew.
Otherwise, excepting ECOLI and COKED UP, lots of smiles here. I pictured the DELTA HARLINES as the opposite of Widows' Peaks?
I still need to look up the Ciliary body of UVEAS from the other day though, as it sounded like hairy eyeballs. Eew.
∑;)
p.s. In the news today, a CHURCHY lesson from Rome: the current Pope apparently sees the value of using condoms in some situations!
∑;)
captcha -- ausheesh
Loved the clue for churchy, it seems vaguely accusatory.
Very easy puzzle today. Got the theme right away but I really don't understand what having aspirations has to do with it.???? Someone explain please
Not much of a challenge but still a fun Sunday.
A mini-huzzah for REALMENDONTHEATQUICHE, best of the theme clues.
ERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE = ERRING ON THE CONSERVATIVE SIDE because conservatives are always right (literally and figuratively), which explains why Rex never heard it....
So... ERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE is just redundant. Gotcha. Thx. :)
@Rex, in time you really will get it, but for now, construe as you will (is that redundant or a punor what?).... For now I prefer to think of it as corrective, like the recent elections....
Thanks for the explanation of the ALOES title, ArtLvr. It was on my look-up list, along with the WOTD, CLANGOR. Much to enjoy in this easier Sunday puzzle. My favorite themed answers were in the QUICHE, HEDGE, DELTA grouping.
Personal Natick at AL_ES and G_TO. Happened early on which ruined what I now see could have been a fun puzzle.
I was hoping for some commiseration from Rex or posters...c'mon, help a brother out.
Bebe Rebozo wasn't just Nixon's friend; he was his only friend; that's what made him newsworthy.
I believe that phonetically the "H" sound is an "aspirate" because saying it involves pushing out breath. Cockney speakers famously put aspirates where they don't belong and drop them where they do.
@chefbea
The letter "h" is an aspirated phoneme.
@No BS @Anon 11:02 thanks!!
BTW, Rex, thx for the Garland clip of clang, clang, clang. We geezers loved her, drugs and all....
If I was going to err on any side at all, I would err on the safe side.
Having become aware of some constructors' fondness for dubious Latin and Greek plurals, I first wrote SYNOPSI at 4D. Not that I thought it was a word, of course, but I thought it might be one in crossword-land. SYLLABI is better, but only just...
Thanks to the Bard's channeler @1:16AM. Trumpet-clangor? Interesting. Doesn't seem to match the primary meaning (we expect bells or gongs or anvils), but curiously the first collocation that comes to mind is “clangor tubæ”, which I see is from the anonymous acrostic poem set by Hindemith in Apparebit Repentina Dies. [NB in Latin “tuba” is a trumpet, not what we call a tuba.]
NDE
Rex: LOL, literally, at "COKED Up and CHURCHY: The Mother Teresa Story!" Actually, I also combined them in my head but they evoked the Church Lady from SNL.
My uncle was the SAS representative in the Middle East, so this one is from childhood, along with NOUGATS which I loved to eat. Now I have a yen for them.
I'm proud of guessing STU, whose name I learned from puzzles.
I Hen joyed this.
My first answer was Tommy HAAS, which I proceeded to cross with "A Lesson From ATHOL".
I had both caviar and Champagne yesterday. I did not have a Miller.
Easy indeed.
BAH! Yes, easy breezy all the way around...coming in at an easy time and with a thorough Natick in the NNW. One mistake at MIAS/MOHR at 1D/1A.
But it was the Natick that I could have scrutinized until next year, 'til the cows came home, 'til the hogs ate my little brother, 'til the cows jump over the moon...and still could have tossed any letters in.
It started with RICHLIFE instead of HIGHLIFE and went downhill from there. The only things right in that area were ASTA, ILSA, HEATQUICHE and GALS. Pffffft. Programming language could have been any random letters, I don't know who or what ALOES is. Any random letters could make up a German four-letter name. I'm just grumpy now.
And I didn't particular care for the ho-hum fill of the puzzle, either.
Since I have been unfair to Rex, it is only RIGHT that I be fair as well. I suspect Rex never heard of ERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE because it can't be right. How does one know to err on the right side when the expression implies one doesn't know which side is right? So I have never heard of it either.... Try err on the safe side (ala David L or err on the side of caution or err on the conservative side (ala an accountant or lawyer) but not on the right side, unless you jknow the right side, then it is no error (the obverse of Rex's touche)....
DNF. Did not get the theme. Just back from hospital Friday night. Have been happily coked up since Monday. First on a morphine pump; wheee. And now on percocet. Haven't finished a puzzle since Monday a.m. The surgery went well, but the mind wanders. I didn't like the puzzle today; that could be my brain. The anagram thing from Thursday a total mystery. Anyway, up and attem. Looking forward to fresh Monday.
OK, I guess. Got the theme from the QUICHE (which was my favorite). Worked on STPETERS from the bottom up, which made it tough to see until I had all the letters from crosses.
One write-over was TERRa/TaSS, which I would have missed save the real TASS on the east side.
@Shamik: Your experience was mine: "It started with RICHLIFE instead of HIGHLIFE and went downhill from there. The only things right in that area were ASTA, ILSA, HEATQUICHE and GALS. Pffffft....") I even had SAOTOME, but the German tennis star, the programmer's jump and Fugard's Lesson had me Naticked. I didn't get grumpy, though, 'til I read that Rex came "in under ten." Good grief, how is that possible?
Polly
Someone please explain 113D to me. What does IMHO have to do with false modesty?
@Sparky, glad to have you back! Your name always cheers me up!
@!:40 IMHO=In My Humble Opinion, which is rarely truly humble, hence the modesty being false. Some people don't pretend, and simply write IMO.
@Sparky, glad to see you back and that you're on the mend.
Had lots of writeovers like LING/ette, MDS/taS, KANGA/milne, (remember to read the clue completely), KNOBBY/KNOttY, etc.
The groaner for me was STPETERS, kept looking for some Latin term. But then again, St Peter's square is in the Vatican, which, strictly speaking, is not Rome.
Last letter in the puzzle was the "S" of GALS. Couldn't believe this was the answer... really dumb.
Was really proud of myself for remembering Tatum O'Neal. I usually punt on these type of clues, but I really like her name. It falls into the same class as Peekaboo and Stockard... memorable.
Gotta take advantage of the break in the rain.
Solved over lunch today and buzzed through until that 10A and D tied me up. Didn't know Haas and along with others had rich life first. I looked up the island. I have flown SAS and it was a very pleasant experience in that for breakfast they baked fresh yeast rolls. Waking up to that aroma plus the best coffee I think I've ever had anywhere (except the first one after being stranded in the Detroit airport during the blackout seven years ago) makes me wonder if they still do that in these days of nightmarish air travel.
@Foodie, then I suppose IMAHO means in my always humble opinion?
Forgot to say thanks Rex for the Trolley Song clip. Not a Garland fan but love that song!
Thanks for the clarification on IMHO. Guess I need a texting course to know what these things mean. Never got past wtf.lol
I made up a new word today that kept throwing me for a loop: KNUBBY! Funny how Sunday can do that to you!
Can someone please explain to me how today's theme of adding the "H" has anything to do with the title "Having Aspirations". Am I completely missing something????
Easy peasy. But I also have not heard ERRING ON THE SIDE OF RIGHT ...
Nicole, see earlier explanation - the spoken "H" sound is called an 'aspiration' (not a desire for the future).
@artlvr, thanks for the Fugard research.
And the news from the Pope goes nicely with your captcha.
@Anon at 10:12, clever up to the close parenthesis
@Anon at 10:54, "Not so," says Anon at 10:12.
@No BS, sounds like a good premise for a Broadway show
@Sparky, welcome home. Recommended a morphine pump some days ago - glad you partook.
I am bothered by DEAR ME and OH ME being in the same puzzle. Bad form.
ERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE is in today's puzzle because of Fox News Reporting Sunday at 9 p.m. ET for 'The Right, All Along: The Rise, Fall & Future of Conservatism,' the inside story of the movement following the Nixon scandal.
Fikink and Anon at 10:54, Can I list the ways (no, I'm not Jay Andres) that made Nixon a great President: 1) Recognition of mainland China; 2) Rapprochement with USSR and Triangulation (for all you poly sci geeks); 3) End of the Viet Nam war and the military draft; 4) Easing of Middle East conflict, all of which were overshadowed by his 5 o'clock beard and Watergate. By the time he left office Bebe was his only friend because all his other friends were in jail....
ERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE:
Act so that the least harmful of possible mistakes or errors is the most likely to occur.[ODE]
"I made an error by purchasing the wrong amount of paint. Luckily, I erred on the right side and found we had too much rather than too little".
P>G>
@Anon at 3:47, yes you may.
Take care in your presumptions. Many of your assessments of Nixon's positives I have noted elsewhere. William F. Buckley was one of my favorite intellectuals.
But I digress...sorry, @Rex.
I agree with you, SET ONE'S TEETH ON HEDGE was good.
@filink, May I use can when I'm quoting Jay Andres? Yes I can said the little engine....
@TomtheDog
And now Will is en route up here to SFO
(Tho his plane is an hour late already, cutting in to table tennis time!)
(Berkeley Zellerbach 7pm tonight! Come up and introduce yourself! Lots of constructors will be there: Kevin Der to Manny Nosowsky, Byron Walden, Tyler Himan...)
@Rex, any rebuttal you want shouted from the balcony?
;)
20A ILSA? I believe that the misquote is genrally attributed to Rick (during one of the greatest drunk scenes of all time), not Ilsa (when she asked Sam to play it for old time's sake). However, literally the right answer could be any character from the movie. So, what is the consensus: Was it Ilsa or was it Rick?
@handrea, tell Will heverybody's a critic.
@Anon 4:20, My "veil-of-tears" mother (sorry, @Pashtur) used to fall asleep to Jay Andres when he was on WBBM!
You should really unmask yourself, btw.
Three and out.
Clue for "coked up" is ridiculous. NYT ought to be ashamed of itself.
Juvenile glorification of drugs like that is maybe something one would expect out of a counter-culture puzzle like the Onion but the NYT has a higher responsibility.
Coke kills people, families and communities. It is not benign or funny. Idiots.
portugal and its islands should not be missed. lisbon and the azores and madeira all are great destinations. reids palace hotel is renowned.
@Bill W - You're a good friend of mine, but how is "out of one's mind" a glorification of drugs? Sounds more like a damnation to me.
like a few others i had rich life and had to google haas to finish my solve which i did. the rest had come easy. portugal is a nice vacation destination and i love fado. imaho is funny.
@anonymous -- "out of one's mind" is a friendly, amused idiom used by a speaker who thinks another person has done something silly or is acting emotional. .... "coking up" is not silly or emotional. it's an addiction and disease and exercise in criminality that ruins lives -- and referring to it in a casual, accepting, pop-culture way shows bad taste and poor judgment.
Whew... if anyone finds anything in a puzzle tasteless or offensive, one only wishes they would focus on something that is seriously dangerous and misguided and sure to do harm in the real world, such as the Republican Congressional agenda. Sorry, I don't much like it when folks inject political stuff here (it's not the time or the place for it), but we need some perspective as to what is worth getting upset about. I'm not defending drugs, but it's "just a puzzle" and your reading (even though these things are inherently polsemic) is your idiosyncratic own. Chill, Bill.
Whoops, that was supposed to be "polysemic."
DREA de Matteo does a great voice-over commentary on her last Sopranos episode, late in the fifth season.
fkink: I, too, thought that DEARME/MDS should have been DEARIE/IDS.
Rex: Our universes must have interlocked today, as I too think in terms of ERRING ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION, but ERR ON THE RIGHT SIDE has a ton a quality citation support in a google search. But I got a great kick out of I THINK, THEREFORE I HAM and DELTA HAIRLINES! Go, Clive!
Vic (between directing gigs)
I liked this puzzle.
Vic, this horse died several hours ago but the poor bastard continues being beaten like a french toast recipe at a Marriott cafe. Notwithstanding human the painter and all your google hits, the idiom makes absolutely no sense. One might have erred on the right side because in the past tense the human who erred might have finally learned which side is right, but erring denotes a present act and when one is acting one cannot know what side will turn out to be right otherwise there is no reason to err. Now if you want to insist on making sense out of a non sequitur, then I have this wonderful manuscript I would like to sell you. Otherwise, I love your commentary....
I'm a huge Judy Garland fan and trivia buff and have been since the 60s (I have about 30 of her LPs and many many books about her). I loved seeing "The Trolley Song" on @RP's blog today, but I hate to have to admit that it took me several minutes or more to figure out what on earth it had to do with this puzzle!
Zing zing zing went my heart!
I wish these logicians of grammar would identify themselves, if only with Anonymous Pedant #3, or Anonymous Sylvan Historian, or whatever.
fergus, see Ann at 11:33 and to those who want Anons to be something else, I say who are you?
I take it all back and apologize to Vic becauwse I just witnessed them carting an Eagle off the field and they were definitely erring on the right side....
Hey, Rex, I see Nissan makes a Juke. Do you suppose they sell them to diners?
I'm just a persistent passing voice, of occasional reason in his subjective commentary. It seems difficult to see why the Anon at 11:33 would need to cover an identity with the default. All I am proposing is that opinions are sourced with a specific identifier, not some default. Even the person who thinks Conservative is right, as in correct, will merit more of my consideration, but the birds who flock (or the rodents who gather as Anonymice, as someone once said, and I don't mean this snidely) under a general rubric, are simply less interesting to me as correspondents, this missive notwithstanding.
Only just now getting to comment on this one, since I was on the road all day, but it was my fastest Sunday in a while.
Overall, loved the theme -- I actually laughed out loud at HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE, and am surprised that many didn't like it -- but disliked the lack of lively clues elsewhere in the puzzle. Agree that SETTING ONES TEETH ON HEDGE was the best theme entry, but liked 'em all.
Not much else to say. Am finally learning my intermediate crosswordese -- I've never heard of Tommy HAAS or Athol Fugard and his works, so might have had a Natick up there ... except that I've finally gotten to know the dog ASTA from seeing him enough times, and then realized the tennis player almost had to be HAAS, a common German name. That was the only part of the puzzle that troubled me much.
@fergus, a mouthful. Were you erring on the right side?
To please the pesters I will henceforth sign as Anon...., which seems modest when I could have picked Anon the Great....
Never know when I'm erring, though it's likely to be frequent. Today I did the Friday, Saturday and Sunday puzzles at various stages of the day.
That I still have a scintillating life may be beside the puzzle.
There used to be some artistry and theatrics in the comment line, and as it's grown cold I'm vacating more completely.
Funny - Entebbe was one of the easiest words for me. I was 16 at the time of the rescue, so those of us old enough to remember probably had no trouble. Rex and the other youngsters are at a disadvantage.
@MicgaelAShea - The brother of the present PM of Israel was a hero killed at Entebbe abd there was a movie made of the raid, so everyone should know. The post script was Carter trying the same thing in the Iranian desert to rescue the hostages in the American Embassy, which ended in a total disaster....
Syndicated paper puzzler.
Is it okay if real men REheat quiche?
I liked this puz cuz I actually finished it with no oogly-Googly. And cuz I thought the ". . . IHAM" thing was ADORABLE. Couple of stalls, like having eBoli initially for eColi, Sarne for Marne, etc. DEARME OHME.
ERRINGONTHERIGHTSIDE is of course a legitimate phrase, as the natural alternative to erring on the wrong side, one form of which is to "misunderestimate." Pelosi: "I knew the CBO had underestimated the cost of Obamacare, as planned, but I had NO idea . . . ." In contradistinction: Dan Quayle: "When I mispelled [potatoes or whatever it was], at least I used a dictionary-recognized alternative spelling. Who would have thought how wee-wee'd up the press would get about THAT? Don't they HAVE dictionaries? Didn't they know how stupid all their gotcha fooey about it made THEM look?"
Is the name OVERS for 69D "Cricket units" due to the little buggers' not having a flip side to their big hit song?
Finished with an error that I didn't catch until I came here: Had bACH at 39a - never knew MACH was a name until just now. That's why I love doing these puzzles and reading this blog.
Gee thanks, for giving me all the answers...spoiler alert much? And BTW I was ALMOST there...I had "OWL", "LIP", "THOSE", and I thought Fleishmann's sold "FISH" before I realized the internet may help....
Anyway thanks for helping me end a bad situation!
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