I was going to buy a broken pencil sharpener, but I just didn't see the point. (I'll find another write away.)
@Mike I would just letter go if I were you. We have enough crayola to deal with as it is.
@Mike Luddite authors keep grinding away. If their sharpeners break they get the HB-jeebies.
@Mike Maybe you should just get the lead out.
@Mike Such an ag-graphite-ing passtime--punning!
It was nice to see Mort SAHL make an appearance in the puzzle. It gives me the opportunity to tell my favorite Mort SAHL joke (which he claimed wasn't a joke, but merely the retelling of an actual event). It's a simple interchange between an eager student supporter and Adlai Stevenson, who was running for President against Dwight Eisenhower. EAGER STUDENT SUPPORTER: "On election day, Mr. Ambassador, every thinking American will be voting for you." ADLAI STEVENSON: "That's fine, but I need a majority." Still pertinent for the times we live in? You be the judge.
I encourage others to add their favorite joke from Mort Sahl. Here's another: "Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference." "I've arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago. Because when I die, I want to remain politically active."
@The X-Phile Adlai Stevenson told my all female class at our 1955 graduation "You are going out in the world to do what every [smart, well educated] woman like you longs to do: be the woman behind the man that makes it big!" As a major in Government, I lost faith in him at that moment. Fortunately we Smithies proved him wrong: we did it ourselves.
@The X-Phile I know only one offhand, cuz hubby has uttered it so many times- “The bravest thing that men do is love women.”
@Skeptical 1 It's sad that during the '50s (and beyond), it was regularly joked that young women were going to college to get their MRS degree. I'm thinking that this partly explains @Michelle's discomfort with The MRS. from today's puzzle. I'm glad that you and your classmates put the lie to this "joke".
Something was eating cherry tomatoes that grow up a post of my pergola, leaving just a little piece of the skin behind on the patio table each night. I took my Ring doorbell from the front door (it's not hardwired) and set it on the table. A squirrel climbed up the plant, grabbed a tomato and sat on the table facing the camera. For several minutes, holding it in his 2 little paws, he enjoyed that tomato so much. When he was done he climbed back up and grabbed another one for the road. I couldn't be mad. It was just too much fun to watch. I think your problem with the peppers is rabbits. Put a camera there to find out.
I don’t usually comment, but as an old puzzler (in all senses) i loved this because it felt related to language at its best. Many puzzles seem to be more geared to pop culture. Nothing wrong with that, but I loved this one. Thanks…(wild turkeys often eat my plants, but I’m in california.)
If the caw of a crow is close to the scarecrow, then the scarecrow is not doing a very good job.
@Jonathan. Heckle and Jeckle?
@Jonathan I think you're guilty of the Straw Man Fallacy.
A solid Sunday, fun to solve, with STEALTHy clues wrapping fills like clever BDAY presents. I was especially delighted to see MELINDA, whose generous, AMPLE CASH REGISTER GREASES the way for so many excellent causes. I was ON A TEAR this afternoon, fifty minutes AND DONE—ULTRA slow for the wizards, but please, no SNEERS! It wasn't exactly a GIRL SCOUT CAMP for me—you might even say it was almost a bit of an EAGLE. Thank you, Dr. S. This one was great fun! See you again soon.
@dutchiris No mistakes, no look-ups, a miracle.
Thank you for all of the responses about my peppers. It’s been extremely helpful! I’ve got a list and will be heading to the garden center tomorrow. Some quick notes: To the person who thought the culprit was Peter Piper, I say, touché my friend. My next puzzle has half of a gimmick. So kind of a compromise between the pro-gimmick and anti-gimmick camps. The hemoglobin comment reminded me of playing VR recent with one of my sons, when for some reason he said “hemogoblin,” which I thought was hilarious. It’s really hard coming up with good constructor’s notes—harder at times than constructing the puzzles themselves. This time I thought it would be both helpful and funny to go in this different direction. Honestly, I thought there would be some umbrage but everyone has been really supportive, which I appreciate! And finally, the Night Beast can’t be reasoned with, it can’t be bargained with . . . it doesn’t feel pity of remorse or fear . . . and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Ok, I took that last bit from “The Terminator.” But still. Thanks for doing my puzzle!
@Michael Schlossberg Thanks for a very, very cool puzzle, and great constructor notes. You could also set up a motion-sensitive camera with night vision. But to be honest most of the things they capture at night scare the hell out of me, because they don't look like anything.
@Michael Schlossberg A clean, diagonal cut will be rabbit, and they tend to come back until they've finished whatever the plant, because if they survived eating in a location, they'll believe it is safe and keep coming back for more. A lot of predators out there after rabbits. A 2" tall fence keeps them out. Mostly.
@Michael Schlossberg "hemogoblin" has been on my list of possible science pun Halloween costumes for years. I just can't figure out what it would look like. That and "ectoplasmic reticulum".
Can’t answer the garden question, but I encourage constructors to give us a peek into their non-crossword lives every now and again. This is fun.
"I have a tall fence, so it can't be deer" -Someone who's never dealt with deer issues
@Kevin They are very impressive jumpers. They make it look so easy.
@Kevin We have friends who lived last house up on the hill before the forest. They wanted a vegetable garden. After trying many things, this was the solution: Garden was about 3 feet wide inside, with an 8 ft tall fence around that and another 8 ft tall fence 1 ft outside of that one. Deer couldn't clear both fences and have room to land in the middle.
I won't be solving the puzzle. I just did my first across and down pass. I had some 10 entries after the former, but I had to delete almost half of them, as the 12 answers I got on the latter proved them wrong. At the moment I have one place where more than 2 answers cross and make sense. I'm looking at the almost-empty grid, thinking how much effort it would cost me to deal with it. I just don't have it in me. A regular-sized grid that turns out to be very hard for me may still be fun, but not a Sunday one. The clues are totally not on my wavelength. Not the constructor's fault, obviously, but rather my limited linguistic imagination's. See you tomorrow.
@Andrzej - I had a similar experience early with the puzzle. I stuck with it and managed to get there in the end. As with most of these puzzles, if the ball starts rolling even a little bit, you'll find that things start to clarify. There are certainly some answers most of us won't know and need crosses to solve, but I found it tough but fair and I'd encourage you to be stubborn and focus in on each area in turn to see if you can start to piece some things together.
Grrrr. Two of my posts are hidden by the time stamp bug... Bottom line: the puzzle defeated me. I understood almost nothing in it. One of my worst performances here in two years.
@Andrzej You’ve had a tough week, with the loss of your beloved Jorge. I’m not surprised your mind isn’t on a tricky grid. Give yourself a break; if the puzzle isn’t fun, don’t do it. There’ll be another one along tomorrow.
Thank you for the empathy, Helen 🫂 Still... I'm ill (my "cold" turned out to be a nasty bacterial infection, but I'm on the third day of antibiotics and recovering) and grieving but my mind is clear, strangely enough. I revealed the puzzle and looked at my problem spots (that is, 80% of the grid 😂). There was no chance in hell I would ever complete this. Of course the constructor did not know this but he created the perfect anti-Andrzej puzzle. Not only did I know almost none of the names and trivia, but also the slangy expressions and niche terms were beyond my language skills: I may be very good at English, but please remember I know it totally differently than you do. And there was also the wavelength thing: the constructor apparently thinks completely differently than me. All these factors combined to make the puzzle totally unsolvable for me. It might as well have been in Klingon. Eric, as you may remember, getting a gold star is not high on the list if my priorities, and I don't care at all about any sort of streak. I just wanted to do the puzzle as a break from playing on my console 😂.
@Andrzej I thought of you as I went through this puzzle, several clues that are just too idiomatic or too American. Skip it, there's no POINT in getting that aggravated.
Last day of my Trying Every Puzzle This Week challenge. Total solve time: about 6 hours, but I forgot to pause it while I went for a long afternoon walk... I estimate the actual solve time to be over an hour. No Autocheck this time, but some Googling, although what I love about crosswords is how they can pull out buried knowledge from the depths of the brain... Many times did I think to myself, filling out squares, "I didn't know that I knew this, but I do!" Saw a lot of my native language in this week's crosswords: Tuesday's ÎLE de la Cité, Wednesday's FLAN, Thursday's ÉTOILE, Friday's NOTRE and ÉTÉ, and Saturday's FRÈRE and TRÈS. We wrap up the week with two French culinary specialties, CRÊPEs and SOUFFLÉs. Bon appétit, everyone.
J.P., I'm enjoying your [Joie de vivre]! 54D
Many kudoos to those who write comments here. They are as much fun (and educational!) to read as the puzzles themselves are to do
Some of the themers suggested stories to me, using the idiomatic meaning of the phrases: The clerk reached the TIPPING POINT at the CASH REGISTER after the tenth time a customer handed over extra change, requiring mental arithmetic. The FINE POINT of a good SPEED TRAP is to choose a good tree to hide behind. One PLOT POINT of the murder mystery: the castor bean plant situated in the HERB GARDEN. The couple’s relationship reached the FLASH POINT when one, but only one, wanted to do goofy poses in the PHOTO BOOTH. Our same couple suffered a STICKING POINT about what designs were acceptable at the TATTOO PARLOR. (P.S. Pepper plants: root around soil for a cutworm?) (or, tomato hornworm, but those are so ugly you’d probably see them.)
In regards to your pepper plants….I’m in agreement with Cat Lady. Cutworms and hornworms can easily do this kind of damage, especially at night. Ask your local garden center for options to ward off the hungry critters. Excellent puzzle! Keep ‘em coming!
@Cat Lady Margaret "The clerk reached the TIPPING POINT at the CASH REGISTER after the tenth time a customer handed over extra change, requiring mental arithmetic." I was the kind of guy who would confound a clerk by handing them $5.25 for a purchase of $3.15. Now I'm the kind of guy who just uses my debit card because I haven't had cash in my wallet in at least a year.
A nice combination of fun theme and strong clues; it was an enjoyable solve for me. This not a nit even, just an observation (but one I might have expected an internist to notice if he wrote the clue himself)—hemoglobin is only red when oxygenated, it’s blue otherwise (thats why veins are bluish); as a doctor myself I would have made them word it, “like hemoglobin, half the time” or something like that, just to maintain my reputation. There, that’s your biology lesson for the day.
@SP. Whence the Britishism “blue blood”, meaning an aristocrat who didn’t have to work hard and so had such fine skin that the blue veins could be clearly seen.
@SP Pretty sure you are incorrect about this, Doctor. Hemoglobin is red whether oxygenated or not (darker when not). It appears blue, but isn't. I've known this for five minutes.
@SP this is incorrect. Blood is never blue. It’s always red. Veins appear blue because of the way light passes through the skin. Hemoglobin is always red and I’m questioning how you became a doctor while not understanding this basic biology.
@SP When I started grad school, I was working with hemoglobin. Hemoglobin from my own personal blood. I'd go into the med school clinic, get a pint of blood drawn, and work it up to isolate, as much as possible, the hemoglobin protein. Of course it was bright red as it was exposed to the air. Then I'd put it in a nitrogen tent, so that the O2 would dissociate from the hemoglobin, leaving deoxy-hemoglobin. It is true that the color is different, kind of a deeper, more saturated red, but the spectrum does push a bit towards the blue. That's all. I have to go to see a guy about a transfusion.
Enjoyed. Would have loved: Breaking point - dance floor. :)
Enthralled by the constructor’s comments about the mysterious pepper plant marauder; even more enthralled that the NYT published these comments. tc
@Just Saying Why wouldn't they? They're not about human rights abuses, nepotism or kakistocracy.
As I opened the puzzle, hubby asked if I wanted to go out for crepes before the church rush at 11. While I solved, my youngest (In his second month of residency) texted me a photo of the new resident staff at his hospital. The puzzle can be creepy.
@CCNY SERENDIPITY! I told you that a couple of days ago. And of course also repeating answers..IMAM today.
I know that the problem is very sincere but reading the constructor notes had me laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face because I was simply not expecting it. Unfortunately I have no ideas as to what could be eating them because we get different critters down here, but hopefully the culprit is found soon!
@Naomi C Squirrels will try to eat almost anything. And their memories aren't great; they'll forget that they don't like tomatoes and try a different one every day.
Dear constructor, I'm a firm believer in "innocent until proven guilty"(when convenient), so I shouldn't cast aspersions, but I think you should know that Peter Piper is presently on parole from purloining prison.
“Eres” before EVES was the last to fall and no wonder I couldn’t make sense of 20A. Very satisfying puzzle. Definitely some things I didn’t know, but the crosses got me there.
As to the construction notes-Been growing peppers for many seasons – 100% a four legged small mammal– clean cuts. it is not an insect or slug, given the lack of ragged edges, obvious trail of slime. I have loosely draped bird netting Over the young plants, staking out the corners of my raised beds as to not let the netting interfere with growth. This stops the problem. Wouldn’t work with an insect.
when this happens in my garden, it's a rabbit eating the plants
@JoyB Another vote for rabbits. They seem to be having a banner year and, contrary to popular cartoons, they will go for the greens before a root.
@JoyB Or a groundhog/woodchuck. Cute but evil creature.
Just read constructor’s notes. Four flippin stars. Best note ever. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Short answer- I dunno. Best way to get slugs is a cup of beer, though.
@CCNY I left out snails and slugs, as you mentioned them...but I used a liquid that I "dotted" outside the garden border (never in the garden soil) to forestall the slugs. They never ate the stems, though, so I still think deer or hornworms.
@CCNY So after you drink the cup of beer, what do you do?
It's probably a hungry rabbit even though they don't usually go after pepper leaves unless they are very hungry. An insect would be unlikely to tear it off at the stem, they would just leave a torn up leaf for you. Turtles also display this pattern but I am not sure they like pepper leaves either, and would be hesitant to go up that high. It you have a devoted hose line, there is a great deterrent to all animals. its a highly powerful and noisy sprinkler head with a motion detector that goes off when an animal gets near your garden and scares the heck out of them when it goes off. (not so noisy that it is likely to wake you up). When I was living in an area with herds of deer around us, it was the only thing that worked, even better than fencing. Good luck. PS My wife and I do the puzzle every day and she can't access you reviews on her phone app, so I share them from time to time as I did today. She enjoyed your review today immensly as did I. This was a very difficult puzzle, even if you figured out the theme. Thank you for your work!
@John PS the only caveat is don't go out and walk in front of the sprinkler head unless it is a very hot day and you are in your bathing suit! Turn it or the water supply off first. You can find this online to purchase, very afforable and effective.
Sometimes I am in tune with the puzzle maker and the answers flow. Not so today. I’m clueless….
The theme was fun once I realized what it was about. My favorite constructor comments ever.
@Lynn I absolutely agree about the constructor comments. Perfectly good use of the space. I hope someone knows the answer.
A dairy farm can also be a (cow) tipping point!
Race with an anchor… made me think of news networks, chasing ratings straight to the bottom. On a lighter note: Trigger point? HORSEBARN
I loved LOW POINT. For some reason cow related puns make me giggle every time. I also love when we get a MOO 🐮 MAA comes in close second. 🐐
"Beater of pocket rockets" 😂😂
@cameron I giggled when I saw that clue as well 🤣
@cameron I definitely had FLUSH which beats… a set as well as pocket rockets
Fun puzzle and relatable construction notes! Have been experiencing this with our peppers, and our garden security is basically mini Fort Knox after battling all manner of mammals. We were winning until now…I’m pretty sure it’s insects (Japanese or asiatic beetles or worms as others have suggested). After soliciting a lot of advice, I made an emulsion of water, dish soap, and oil and sprayed the leaves thoroughly (undersides, too) after the sun is low in the evening. Seems to deter them , fingers crossed. (Reapply after rain.) Neem oil is also said to be useful as is sprinkling food-grade diatomaceous earth around the plants.
Went back and read Dr. S's bit thanks to someone's Comment. Tomato hornworms are willing to eat your pepper plants, though the tomato vines are first choice. Daily check--look very closely, they are masters of disguise--is imperative. That said, never underestimate the ability of deer to leap tall buildings at a single bound... oops, no, that was Superman...but deer are quite agile. You can try deterrents like Neem Oil (though the smell is also a human-repellent), but once a pepper plant has been savaged (per your photo) it's not going to recover in time to produce well. You have my sympathy! (My Ohio garden--over an acre, asparagus to zucchini--was beset by groundhogs--enthusiastic diggers under the fencing-- as well as deer, voles, field mice, and various caterpillars. There is no substitute for daily attendance.
Nice puzzle and sorry to hear about the Night Beasts eating your pepper plants. Do you have an Emu-proof fence? In closing, President Reagan warned us about a 2D 10A. I thank you.
IMPOSSIBLE COLORS Well, hemoglobin is not stygian blue, we can agree on that. As for the origin of brownie points, I always thought... well, never mind, it won't pass the breakfast test. Go to Wikipedia if you wish. Aside from that, I enjoyed the puzzle, not too difficult, not gruesome puns to groan over. And TIL that a KITE is a Chinese symbol of hope and prosperity. I'm ok with that, it's easier than trying to fly an anchor.
@Roberto I’m with you on the likely origin of brownie points. As for the KITEs, maybe the puzzle refers to the bird of prey? <a href="https://www.angelicalbalance.com/spirituality/red-kite-spiritual-meaning-symbolism/#Red_Kite_Symbolism" target="_blank">https://www.angelicalbalance.com/spirituality/red-kite-spiritual-meaning-symbolism/#Red_Kite_Symbolism</a> (Sorry if I trampled on a joke. I’m not exactly Charlie Brown with a kite, but for many of my kite-flying attempts, I might as well have been trying to fly an anchor.)
@Roberto I looked up Chinese Kites. It's not the birds and the Kites are spectacular. Google Chinese Kite Festival and choose images. I feel lucky I did!
This one drained away my joie de vivre. Found it solid but also quite dull. Got most of the thematic entries quickly, but found myself wondering if I was missing the "point" of the theme. (Still wondering about that.) Solved it without assistance, but took over 30 minutes. There were some nice words in this grid: ACERBIC, BRIO, DISUSED, SOUFFLE, CONTRITE, TOPSAIL. But, to me, not a very enjoyable puzzle to solve.
@Xword Junkie Once again, I'm with you. I thought the puzzle was fine, but lacked that something special that one hopes for in a Sunday puzzle. The themers were OK, but I, too, thought that there would be another level to it, that would reveal itself at some point. It seems that was not to be.
Sometimes a TEN POINT SPREAD is just a spread with ten "points."
Jane, Betting term. The point spread is the expected final score difference between two teams. "Ten point spread" would likely be a basketball or American football game.
Michael - the most likely candidate for your garden pest is a hornworm. They devour whole leaves nightly and, due to their green color, are hard to see during the day. Good luck saving your pepper plant. As far as the puzzle goes, I was able to discern most of the theme fills, having problems with a few of the more subtle clues. Loved the wordplay with clues for ANI and CARLOT.
@Ken S What is the wordplay for Ani?
Your pepper plant problem is cutworms. I sprinkle Diatomaceous earth over the plants. Once the plants get bigger, the cutworms stop eating them. You can also put a guard around the plants, I use empty gallon size purified water bottles with both ends cut off. Slugs and snails eat small seedlings too. Hail fellow gardener, I live in Oregon too.
Figured out the theme clues pretty quick except for Sistine chapel. Which I then spelled wrong. Enjoyed this very much
I have a super power! Every time I recommend a post, its count goes up by 2 not 1! Maybe just time lag? Someone else has recommended just ahead of me?
RozzieGrandma, Time lag. (Or I have the super power too.)
Printed out on two pages for larger type--definitely made things move more quickly and made the solve a delight...mostly. I found "Plot point?" to be a stretch (I certainly grew a LOT more than HERBS,),...and ENTEBBE is (in)famous more for a hijacking/hostage situation; (the fate of at least one --American woman--passenger remains unknown.) So, Caitlin, you were never a Brownie, I see. It was always about the Wee Folk (pixies, fairies, etc.) and our uniforms, including cap, were brown. When we "flew up" to become GIRL SCOUTS the ceremony involved looking into a "pond" (mirror on the floor surrounded by greenery) and turning about to see "myself!" Much later, an earlier age group (Daisies) was added, uniforms changed, etc. After 7th grade, my Girl Scout career ended, but I had my sash with "Honolulu" division patch and my badges until I sold it on eBay a couple of years back, of all things. Biggest groaner: OR DOCS for "Sawbones." I was trying to shoehorn "orthos" (?short for orthopedists?) in there, because I'd say most surgery does not include the use of saws, drills, screws, and manufactured replacements... but your medical history may vary. Oh well. Looking forward to more frm Dr. Schlossberg, he of the Castle-fortress!
I felt so sure that [Cardinal point?] would be PAPALCONCLAVE until the crosses convinced me otherwise...
The papal conclave is held in the Sistine Chapel, so you were very close!
Rabbits. Rabbits would chew clear thru my cucumber plants, right at the ground, just when full of cukes about an inch long. We got the sort of dog who’d theoretically could clear the yard of rabbits. A second rabbit family moved in. Someone told me they prefer yards with dogs because the dog keeps the fox away. I know the dog keeps the neighbor’s cats from using my garden as a litter box. So that’s a bonus. And while my Frenchie can be mighty fast when she gets the zoomies, she’s just no match for the rabbits. Alas, I must go to the farmers’ market. A self-sufficient homestead will not be mine here in the burbs where small game hunting would be frowned upon. Next year I’ll try cukes in containers on the deck. Not sure the rabbits are coming up that high.
@Bird I was going to say rabbits too. I put a basil plant out on my porch one night after having just moved in to my house in southern California. The next morning it was eaten down to a nub! Never did catch the culprit.
@Bird maybe a terrier? Try a Jack Russell.
@Bird Um...BB guns are very quiet, and you can get little pointed ammunition....squirrels, rabbits... and at least annoying to deer....
My Diary of a Crossword Fiend review of the puzzle: <a href="https://crosswordfiend.com/2025/07/19/sunday-july-20-2025/#comments" target="_blank">https://crosswordfiend.com/2025/07/19/sunday-july-20-2025/#comments</a> Thanks, Dr. Schlossberg!
@Eric Hougland And congrats on the Best Constructor Note ever.
@Eric Hougland Hi Eric, I often read the reviews on that site. It was only fairly recently that I looked at the "Meet Team Fiend" page and saw that you're one of the contributors. Now, I am always on the lookout for you. Bravo!
For Gym, I think I had pec—- forever. I get the gist of working pecs at the gym, but ooohhhh… that! Not fair Thankfully there is 59A for the 79D, else we couldn't tarry in that Gym locker room! 7A may as well read “Yeah, as if that’s possible!” There are a few hotmail holdouts, and even some leftover Yahooligans, but I know no one with an AOL address, nor an MSN. Those had been exploited by spammers so badly, people had to distance themselves. I never know when it's “aah” or “ahh.” Ah well. I absolutely loved allays, astir and ascerbic, though. Derelict, meaning the unkept and disheveled vagabond? I don't see me using the word “disused,” nor would I use the word “derelict,” unless referring to dereliction of duty, perhaps? Star Trek II: As only Ricardo Montalban could say it. “AD-meeril? AD-meeril!” And: “THEES IS CETI ALPHA FIVE!” I'm gonna go out on a limb here assuming the “Cry near a scarecrow” is made upon discovery of said scarecrow, therefore said bird is beating wing outta there, post haste. Now I BEATIT. GOTTA. NOMO. Yesterday’s display shed a light of anger and toxicity, and is something up with which I will not put. I just cannot THRIVE in this HERBGARDEN of such negativity. What does it all ADDUPTO?
@Jerry you must have very young friends. My friends were mature adults when email began. Many of them still use AOL.
@Jerry I, too, got stuck on PEC____ for quite a while. I was so sure it was a play on muscles that I needed nearly all the crosses before I could see it a different way! Aah/ahh trip me up, too. As do slier/ slyer. (I started with the wrong one today.)
@Jerry Yahooligan here. I also have Gmail, but many of my subscriptions and accounts are tied to Yahoo, so I use both. And I can't stand (don't want to get used to?) Gmail's interface.
@Jerry My main email is @netscape.net What I don't have anymore is moosemail
Things were going quite swimmingly for about half the puzzle. Then I got some spots where nothing made sense and I couldn’t solve for hide nor hair. Got super frustrated and threw my hands in the air on this one. Gah!
After Saturday’s mid-section comprised of five … was it five? sixteen letter crossings, was it sixteen though? I was prepared for something dubious. This was not so bad, lots of esoteric filler, sure, but after a few years EMIR / EMIL / IMAM and IDO / ANI / AOL become good friends you can hear through the most duplicitous of descriptions. I liked this puzzle, even more because it still STILL took me behind the tool shed for twenty minutes over ANDERSON / ANDERSEN, and who doesn’t need to know that one is predominant in one part of the world and the other, well, you know. Anyway, kudos, loved the theme. Adieu
@Michael The EN vs ON was a gimme for this clue, knowing that ANDERSEN is Danish. My maiden name is Hansen -- I grew up answering the question EN or ON? My married name is always AN or EN? My children all have first names that are easy to spell!
Clever puzzle. Enjoyed solving it. Thank you.
Peppers; it’s snails and slugs that do the damage here. We put nematodes down as soon as the shoots appear, that seems to do the trick. On to the puzzle: fab. Crunchy, chewy but certainly not impossible. I ignored the theme clues until I had a few crosses in there, the brain fog cleared with HERB GARDEN (snails not ADMITTED). I had a lot of fun working out the rest. Re Brownies. Baden-Powell, who started the Boy Scouts was persuaded to set a girls group up in 1914 by his sister I think. Called Rosebuds originally, they then changed it to mythical creatures from English folklore. So Brownies was the overall title; within each pack there were sets of six; pixies, elves etc. The lead girl was Sixer. I well remember my time in the Pixies, with my brown uniform and beret. Very wholesome. It was changed again some years back to Rainbows. I think the folklore aspect was regarded as too pagan for some. Though the boys equivalent, Beavers, with leader titles based on Kipling’s Jungle Book; Akela etc, remain current. Hmm.
@Helen Wright the Girl Scouts was founded by Juliette Gordon Low, who was inspired by girl guides in England. Brownies are still brownies, and the youngest Girl Scouts are daisies (after JGL’s childhood nickname).
@Helen Wright There are still Brownies in the UK system. Rainbows are the youngest, then Brownies, then Guides (and Rangers if they still want to stay on when they age out of Guides)
@Helen Wright Your writeups are always so refreshing. I love your tasty adjectives, as well!