Deb, Keep staying in the day, every day, for many many days.
Deb, I didn’t know about your diagnosis until today, but so happy you’ve reached (or will soon enough) the five-year mark. Here’s hoping for decades upon decades more.
@Elizabeth Connors I wish I could like this a 1000 times. tc
@Elizabeth Connors My friend has CLL and is now 25 years post-diagnosis. I wish the same and more for you
Deb, thank you for trusting us by telling us about your diagnosis, and for all the wonderful work you do. I really enjoy reading your Wordplay columns -- they are witty and funny, and your wrestles with the crosswords are so relatable! I wish you all the best, medically and otherwise!
[in the voice of professor Farnsworth] GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! Benny the poodle-mutt came home today! The vet and tech said they couldn't believe he's 15 years old because he recovered from surgery so well. He's a bit dopey from the meds, but he's home. His absence, even for just 48 hours, left a void in the house. I want to thank everyone for their support and well wishes.
@DocP Yay! I'm sure Benny is getting all the love, but please give him scritches from me.
@DocP Best news I've heard today. Thanks for the update.
@DocP Way to go, Benny!!!!!
@DocP So glad to hear of your and Benny’s good news!
@DocP Delighted!, and thanks for sharing the good news. Be sure to tell Benny he has a fan club now.
@DocP Im so happy for you both ❤️
@DocP I was thinking about you and Benny, especially after you last told us he was getting prepped for surgery. I know all too well that mix of hope and dread you must have been feeling. This is such good news—the best news. Please (gently) hug your pup from us, his virtual well-wishers.
@DocP Hooray! Give him a hug for all of his new fans.
@DocP Terrific news, just adding to all the good wishes.
@DocP, What great news! ❤️ Thanks for keeping us updated. So glad to hear that Benny came through with flying colors and is back home safe and sound with you. Yay Benny!!
@DocP Wowza!! And I thought my day couldn’t get better! Extra belly rubs and snacks for Benny! Wonderful news!
@DocP Thank you all! Benny has definitely been getting lots of cuddles and head scratches. I did in fact give him scratches specifically from those who requested them.
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia! Deb! Hats off to you for your great job of living day to day and making all our lives so much nicer.
Deb, I remember you sharing the news of your diagnosis a few years back. Your lively, brilliant professionalism makes it easy for me to imagine it just *poof* went away, or that it’s not a great burden for you. I know better, but you make it easy for me to sugarcoat. I’m so very thankful that you’re here. A friend who greets me as I sip my tea, ever a ray of positivity, charm and wit. What a gift you are to us all. Looking forward to *many* more years of days with you.
So many things to like about this puzzle! First (and foremost), it felt like a "real" Friday puzzle, challenging, but not bang-your-head-against-the-wall hard. If you've got to put DOO into a puzzle, is there a better way to clue it than was done here? I think not. Things to learn: Splooting! I've seen this behavior before, but who knew that there was a word for it? And a word that's so fun to say! I hope I see some splooting soon, so I can add this word into heavy rotation and make it a permanent part of my vocabulary. I play Wordle regularly (not that I care about streaks or anything), but I've never heard anyone use golf terminology for their daily score. But it makes perfect sense! Shoot for a birdie-3 every day, be satisfied with a par-4, sad about a bogey-5. An eagle? Nice if it happens, but don't count on it. Hole in one? The stuff of legends. If someone claims to have more than one in a lifetime, they're probably a "storyteller." Double bogey or worse? It's bad luck to even talk about it. And REGNANT: a rare postpositive adjective in English. That is, an adjective that comes after the noun, as in "Heir apparent" or "Attorney General". Please use the phrase "Queen REGNANT" whenever you can. You'll feel so smart and elegant. Thanks, Fritz Juhnke, for a very satisfying solve. And @Deb, Queen REGNANT of Crosslandia, Wild Woman of Wordplay, may you live long and prosper.
@The X-Phile A cottontail was splooting in our yard the other day -- now I have a term for it!
@The X-Phile What a great post! Thank you! Couldn't agree more with everything you said.
Finally, a Fridayish Friday. Fine debut, Fritz!
@Barry Ancona You liked it. I hated it. But I loved all the previous puzzles you said were too easy. Seventeen cheats and it's at last done! Whew. (Even while I was struggling, I thought, "Barry will like this.")
@Barry Ancona I love your Seal of Approval and agree wholeheartedly.
@Barry Ancona Just a shade, (<10 percent), below average here. I think that I learned DOPESLAP from Car Talk. I still miss those guys. I usually identified with Tom.
Joan, Do I recall correctly that you have been an "average" puzzler for quite a few years?
Joan, I have only sought incremental improvement...
"You knew that phone number was disconnected!" "I called it!" (These puns don't get a good reception.)
@Mike Maybe you should dial that down a bit.
@Mike There's one born every minute. That prognosticator is a sucker seer. The one at the private banking window is a fortune teller.
@Mike We get a buzz out of them! (Hold that thought.) ☎️
@Mike You should be behind bars for that pun. Locked in a padded cell!
So here you are, making a puzzle, and you have to come up with a clue for HEAT WAVE. Who out there, I ask you, would have come up with the magnificent [When squirrels may thermoregulate by splooting]? This was presaged by the grid of tees itself, which for me, even before filling in the first letter, turned my head and sent the message that this puzzle was made by a constructor with moxie, confidence, and ability. Speaking of ability, this is a 66-worder, and look how cleanly it is filled in! Speaking of magnificent out-of-the-box clues: [How one lives in the face of an inscrutable future] [Org. that may allow religious headwear in pictures] [Reduced demand for refrigerated trucking, in a way]. I like the “eight” mini-theme, with OCTET, OCTAHEDRA, and the eight black-square tees. I also like that TOOK backward rhymes with “sploot”. I’m delighted by this new Crosslandia voice that made a puzzle pulsing with personality, which promises sweet solves ahead. Congratulations, Fritz, on your NYT debut. You’ve entered with a refreshing splash, and thank you for a splendid outing!
@Lewis Please consider “9A Noted doomsday prepper”, answer Noah, in your weekly compilation of clever clues.
Xwstats.com calls this one Very Hard, with the median solver 27% slower than average. As I was doing the puzzle, I was indeed expecting just that. The puzzle came in at about one and a quarter minutes slower than my Friday average, and I had to do a lot more skipping around to get traction than I usually do. SLY BOOTS is not an expression I've ever used, nor do I think I've seen it. It's inferrable, but it takes time. I also didn't know that a British "bog" is a LOO, but of course, it was to be anticipated. I have never heard the terms "howcatchem" and "splooting," either. I did like the clue for NOAH.
@Steve L I very much agree. Don't know SLY BOOTS, didn't know "bog". I liked [Flash point?] leading to AHAMOMENT a lot. I had a lot of them in this puzzle, and they were delicious.
@Steve L Huh—just goes to show—“different strokes for different folks”: this one was a fair bit quicker than my average Friday. I’m a big enough fan of Brit lit that LOO for “bog” was a gimme, and though I don’t think I’ve heard the term in years, SLY BOOTS brought me right back to my childhood. It is something I recall my grandma saying. (I heard as a kid that she was born when Lincoln was president, and that boggled my mind! It seems that may have been a year or two off, but definitely it was in the 1860’s. She lived to be 101.) “Splooting” was a new one for me, and I love it! Very evocative! Don’t think I’ve encountered “howcatchem” before, but it seemed like an obvious genre for COLUMBO. All in all, a lovely romp, laden with many an AHA MOMENT. NOAH also elicited a smile.
@Steve L The puzzle was very hard for me, except the NW corner, where I found it actually impossible 🤣. A good puzzle, for sure, though. I don't enjoy most puzzles I find too hard to complete on my own, but this one I liked despite my issues.
@Steve L "Bog" I learned from a British author. It was British friends who taught me another term using BOOTS when they once jokingly called me a bossy boots. I said that sounded like a girls' school taunt from the 1950s, which is pretty much how they learned it.
@Steve L This is very flattering news to a 4D person like me. I found it significantly easier than most Fridays. Less than 2/3 of my Friday average. (But that average is an unimpressive 31 min, so need for anyone to feel threatened. )
SLYBOOBS gave me a guffaw when I tried to live DAY BY DAY. (Will the emus be okay with this?) The grid of T’s was fun. None can compare with the one from 1/9/20 by Alex Eaton Salners, though. Saying no more in case anyone hasn’t done that one yet.
@Cat Lady Margaret 😂 SLYBOOBS never occured to me. Now I can't stop thinking about it...er...them...whatever.
@Cat Lady Margaret I've been actively holding myself back from typing SLY BOOBS into Google to see what comes back. I don't know how long I can restrain myself! Aiding in the corruption of a senior! I hope you're proud of yourself.
Cat Lady — thanks for the recommendation. I immediately went and tackled the 1/9/20 puzzle, and it was definitely worth doing.
This was a very hard and quite enjoyable puzzle for me. I really liked the clueing - it felt fresh. Some of it defeated me, sure, but that's to be expected from time to time, especially later in the week, given I'm Polish. The NW quadrant of the puzzle was impossible for me. PAULA and ADA were my only gimmes rhere. For most of the other clues I needed lookups and even some reveals, in the end. I've never heard of a DOPE SLAP or of SLYBOOTS. The clue for OCTET was good, but I just couldn't get it. I suppose I've heard of STUDY DATEs in American films and TV (I personally never had a single study date, and learning together just generally was not a thing when I was at school), but today I couldn't recall it even with just the T missing... The clue for DISC stumped me. The thing is, we have the word "dysk" (disk/disc) in Polish, which means generally the same as in English. However, in geometry specifically, we call the region of a plane bounded by a circle not a "dysk" but a "koło," which is also our word for wheel. I ended up looking up the answer 🤷 In the very middle of the puzzle I was confused by SKIN TAG. I googled what it is just now. Oh, those! I have no idea if the thing even has a Polish name (an article on it in Polish, as well as Dutch, is missing on Wikipedia). I wonder why ALDI, specifically, of all German and European supermarkets, made it on the American market. In Europe Lidl seems to be the most successful chain, and it's my personal favorite.
@Andrzej It was definitely a challenging puzzle. I really liked [Extra large storage unit] solving to TERABYTE. It embarrassing that in all my years as a developer I was still thinking of a physical place for storing junk. I wonder if my reaction is more typical of my age group than younger solvers.
@Andrzej DOPESLAP and SLYBOOTS are particularly tough because they're from different eras and different parts of the world. DOPESLAP arose just yesterday and is primarily US, while SLYBOOTS is very old-fashioned (at least 19th C. if not older) and primarily UK usage. Kudos to you if you got 'em both.
@Andrzej I hadn’t heard of Lidl but knew Aldi because one opened up near where I grew up. I just did a quick Google search and Aldi is the more dominant of the two chains in the US—thousands of Aldi locations vs. hundreds of Lidl locations, and a longer US presence (starting in the 1970s for Aldi, whereas Lidl just began opening stores here in 2017).
@Andrzej I also had not heard of slyboots. That was a look-up for me. As to Dope Slap, I always called that a Gibbs Slap from the TV show NCIS, but it would not fit in the spaces.
@SBK "The Boston Globe (25.04.2015) attributes its origin to Car Talk" _That's_ where I've heard DOPESLAP. Couldn't remember for the life of me. Although they are off the airwaves, you can still get condensed versions as a podcast twice a week. I hear Ray is going to be accepting new calls from subscribers, on an occasional basis only. A shame my 8 yr old car is working so well.
To Deb: Here's wishing you many, many, many years of day-to-days. All my love to you, and heartfelt thanks for the EPICNESS of your columns (from someone who gets it and also lives day-to-day ;-)) To Fritz: Congratulations on a Friday-worthy debut! So Friday-worthy, in fact, that I stumbled around the grid, I fell, I slithered, I cried for help – and I loved it! TIL "howcatchem" and "splooting," so thank you for that. And just today, I was reading about how ALDI has no plans of coming yet to Oregon and Washington [sniff, sniff.] Good thing we have Trader Joe's. The musical accompaniment today is from the 1970s, though it has nothing to do with COLUMBO: <a href="https://youtu.be/ekoHxB4idmg?si=8quCXcjrni7hMWhb" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ekoHxB4idmg?si=8quCXcjrni7hMWhb</a> Thank you for the puzzle, Fritz. Very well done!
@sotto voce I was a big fan of COLUMBO back in high school and somehow never heard the term "howcatchem" until a few years ago. The genre is also called an "inverted detective story." I was surprised to learn that the genre is over 100 years old. Nice choice of a song. Now if I can only get it out of my head . . . :-)
@sotto voce I grew up in Wisconsin, where Aldi is a staple. I moved to Colorado in 2019 and they still aren't out here yet. The closest one is 400 miles away in Kansas. (Yes, I've checked.)
@sotto voce I got excited about ALDI's when they came to our area, but I'm over them now. Prices crept up and quality went down. I still love Trader Joe's. It's the better option. (And it's amusing to think of the German Albrecht brothers who split up to give us these two chains.)
Deb, Thank you for sharing your selfless DAY TO DAY inspiration with all of us. I always appreciate the humble, empirical wisdom you bring to your columns. Thanks, also, for the special shout-out to Stephen Colbert who has been providing"night to night" inspiration over the years for so many of us.
27A. Deb, people talk sometimes about courage, but courage isn't something you plan. If you have it, it's there when you need it, as it has been for you. The day-to-day of five years might have been challenging, but you have carried on, a step at a time, because that's what you're made of. Years you will have can't be measured by a mean—the middle of a range after you ignore the highs and the lows— It has nothing to do with you, and is pointless anyway. The joys and pleasures and satisfactions, along with the tough times, are what life is made of, and you have embraced life. Congratulations, not just for five years, but for all the years to come. There's a proverb, Be living, not dying, and that's what you are doing. Thank you for what you are giving us.
Oh @dutchiris, those are wise words indeed. Thank you for reminding me.
@dutchiris Beautifully written. But asserting that a mean (average) "ignores the highs and lows" is woefully inaccurate. Anomalies are exactly why averages can be misleading. Median, or better yet - a "trimmed mean" - which ignores top and bottom ~10% before taking the average, are much better suited to demonstrate your point. -An amateur mathematician easily distracted by semantics
A lovely almost-themeless puzzle. Favorite entry: COLUMBO, who I am slightly in love with. As a TEETOTALer (fifteen months!) I do allow myself the occasional ginger ALE. I wonder if there's a theme to be had in nonalcoholic liquids that sound like alcoholic ones? Root beer, oyster liquor, and...?
@Laura Whitaker 'Round these parts, we call it pot LIKKER, which might be helpful for future crossword constructors.
@Katie I'm just here to CELEBrate the EPICNESS of 15 months! Way to go!
@Katie I, too, had a crush on Peter Falk. He was amazing in one of my favorite movies, “The In-Laws,” but I think one of his best performances was in “A Woman Under the Influence” with Gena Rowlands (who was also fantastic.)
@The X-Phile Where I grew up, it was pot likker as well. We were a teetotaling family and so I was veeerry curious about what that might be. I knew my dad and grandad loved it, preferably with some Tabasco added. But when I tasted it, I was kind of disappointed. I had no idea what alcohol tasted like, but if it was like that, I was not interested.
@The X-Phile PS. If I had only known, I could have sampled the vanilla extract in the spice cabinet to figure it out.
@Deb Amlen I agree with you about A Woman Under the Influence. He and Rowlands were shattering. I thought that movie was misnamed, though, because it's really about mental illness. Columbo was about the only show my hyperactive dad could sit through. The whole family adored it. My favorite punchline of all time was delivered by Falk as Columbo--with no words. The entire episode was the set-up, and at the end, in front of the murderer, he simply pulled his hand out of a bag he was holding. We all fell on the floor howling. I won't even mention the topic of the episode, because Google just pulls up the spoiler.
Sadly I didn’t enjoy this one bit. Played much like a Saturday for me - it was just not on my wavelength at all
I so enjoy your comments, Deb,that even when I do not need clues I read I them after I’ve completed the puzzle. Thank you.
@Laura I consider that a very high compliment, thank you. And I'm really glad you're all here with me to solve on Thursdays and Fridays!
ok I cheated a whole bunch. But I learned a lot, so it was worth it. SPLOOT!! Can a future puzzle constructor use this please?
@upperlevel the only thing I liked about this one was learning about sploot :)
@upperlevel I think every time we see a dog (or squirrel?!) do this, you have to tell someone to "check out that sploot", so that it becomes part of our regular vocabulary.
I felt like I was in some sort of time warp....SLY BOOTS (a phrase that would be heard in the 1800's) crossing the once-unimaginable TERABYTE ...and the seldom-seen term REGNANT...My head is spinning a little with the EPICNESS of seeing NOAH next to the Three Stooges passing around a DOPE SLAP. We're about to get an ALDI here in the suburbs of Jackson, MS. (Still no Trader Joe's or Macy's. My brother found this unbelievable, but I pointed out that the state has fewer than 3 million residents--less than the number of people in his immediate neighborhood...) Well, we didn't move here for the shopping. I am glad I read the column today--which I don't normally get around to. It's good to know you are holding your own in the face of CLL, Deb! It's indeed a challenge to keep one's thinking from racing ahead. For us, just as PhysicsDaughter has completed cancer surgeries and radiation and regained some of her 'normal life,' her ophthalmologist has declared she needs cataract surgeries...at age 42...while I'm staving it off at 78. (We had nothing but myopic genes to offer our kids. Oops. Or SPLOOT!)
@Mean Old Lady Had cataract surgeries 2 years ago, went so much easier than I was dreading, and the difference in my vision is very amazing, for what it’s worth.
One of my favorite clues ever was for NOAH. And I was so busy assuming this would be yet another pop culture icon I didn't know that I didn't even think of it at first. Joke's on me! And thanks for the nice German clues, Herr Juhnke. ;)
The puzzles this week just keep getting better. What a great Friday; tough but not too fiendish. Favourite clue; noted Doomsday prepper. Gave a very unladylike like snort at NOAH. Needed crosses to get REGNANT, can’t say Ive ever come across that before. Regina yes. Shout out to the LATE SHOW. How thin skinned are some ‘people’ that they can’t deal with a comedian?
@Helen Wright In unrelated news, regulators have approved Skydance Media's $8 billion bid to acquire CBS News parent company Paramount.
Good work for a Friday. Was amused to find DIALSOAP was correct - I stuck it in there on first pass. On the other hand, flash point was not "red carpet". Misread "prognosticator" as "procrastinator", so that took a hot minute. Did we all take a second to appreciate that the E was back at the end of BOCCE? TGIF, everyone!
@Amy I specifically only solved to bocc to leave me the option.
You know you’re in for a ride when one of the only words you get on the first pass is REGNANT.
Thought this was a really good puzzle. Smooth sailing through most of it, but the northwest corner slowed me down a lot. PAULA and ADA were the only gimmies up there for me and I needed pretty much every cross for DOPESLAP so I was surprised to see I was a bit under average. I really liked DAYTODAY's clue -- quite a lot! I don't really have a list but if I did it would probably be one of my top clues ever. Also really enjoyed NOAH as a prepper! Instead of having an AHA MOMENT for it, I had A HA MOMENT (Har!) Also really appreciated the clue for ATELOCAL! Nice all around!! Deb, you are TEEriffic!! Thank you for sharing both your crossword and life wisdom! Hoping for all good things for you! 🧡 The clue and your comments reminded me of this quote, which has gotten me through a lot of tough times,"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'"(Mary Anne Radmacher)
@HeathieJ Whoops, I pasted the quote in there but I had meant to change the spelling of roar to RAWR before hitting submit. 🐉
Thanks, @HeathieJ. I love the quote
@HeathieJ ditto on every single count, including the Deb one!
Deb, you are an ENGEL. I came to the column to get some AHAMOMENTS, and there they were. I was convinced I could not get anywhere in this puzzle until strangely I had filled over three quarters of it. The SE corner refused to budge, but Deb knew the fills. I had two essentials missing, and all unfolded. This was a tough one, not just for the SLYBOOTS clues, but for stuff I just didn't know. I know zip about D&D, and it's been so long since I used a PC that I couldn't remember CTRL (tried it a couple of ways—no go. I knew abou staghorn ferns but not about the SUMAC. Thank you for your dazzling debut, Fritz, and for using the correct spelling of BOCCE. Loved it.
DOPE SLAP! I am so dumb! Could not finish the NE, and it's my own fault. If only I could have found the word for Queen Elizabeth when I had REG. I was thinking Elizabeth REGINA, so I wrote in REGINAL. I didn't think it was a word, but desperate people do desperate things. REGNANT -- of course! DOPE SLAP! The only doomsday preppers I could think of were SURVIVALISTS. I couldn't get ACT NATURAL out of my head, even when it wouldn't fit. I was thinking of the TSA not the DMV for the ones who allow the religious headgear. I didn't understand a word in the squirrel clue and refused to look it up. Of course I don't know anything about the D8 pieces in D&D. And NOUNS was really cleverly concealed. I had all the AHA MOMENTS I needed everywhere else. And despite the EPICNESS of my failure today, I loved, loved, loved this puzzle!
This was a perfect Friday puzzle. By the end of the pass I only had a few squares filled in, after a few passes it seemed hopeless, but then slowly it opened up and came together. The noted doomsday prepper answer made me laugh, too. A really nice start to my day.
@Diana Absolutely agree! I went from befuddled, to clued in, to “is that a word??,” to completed with no lookups or hints
Congratulations on your debut, Fritz! A challenging, but enjoyable puzzle with some clever clues. Got stuck on 5D with “slyboobs,” then wanted 11D to be “act natural” with a rebus. Caught the errors on crosses and made it to the finish line. Looking forward to your next one. And thank you, Deb, for the shoutout to Colbert, who is not only a great talent, but a truly decent human being (IMHO). Happy Friday!
@Valerie One of the very few rules that seems to hold is that there won't be rebuses on Friday or Saturday. Of course, this rule I'm sure has had or will have exceptions.
Well, today I learned how to spell teetotal! All these years I thought it was teAtotal as in someone who drank tea instead of alcohol. I don't think I've ever seen the word spelled out.
It's been a while since a Friday puzzle has forced me to work a little bit. Appreciate you for that, Fritz. Fantastic clueing!
Fritz Juhnke - Congrats on your impressive debut. The “T” grid was interesting and I liked your clues. TIL “Regnant. I thought it was a fabulous Friday puzzle. Hopeful you’re working on a follow up.
I typically don't notice the grid at all, but this one is very pretty. The only black squares are in the T's, and the T's all point inwards. It is a beautiful pattern to look at.
@mako Yes I agree. I usually don’t notice the grid but today I noticed it!
I drove through Natick today. No, nothing in the puzzle - although there were a few unknowns and some difficult crossings, but nothing I would call an outright Natick. This month I'm not in Yokohama - I'm on my annual July visit to fam in upstate NY, and today my better half and I drove to Boston - going to see LAD @ BOS tonight - and we drove through Natick on 90E. Kinda wish we'd lunched at the rest area there, but at least now I can say I've been to (thru) Natick. And I guess again tomorrow, on our way to Saratoga to see the end of Phish's summer tour before heading back to Yokohama. Fun and challenging puzzle, BTW!
Challenging! for me, at least. A few sheer guesses (TIARA and BOCCE) and some blind alleys, as well as some I didn't fall for (TAROT) and it came together. My brain felt exercised, in a pleasant way.
An excellent puzzle. The LATESHOW isn’t late yet.
“Sheer quantity of awesome” made me smile and just made me well-disposed to the whole puzzle. Loved it. Took me longer than usual and teetotally fun (now that I know the derivation of TEETOTAL it’s fun to use!). Comments: 1. I call getting wordle in 5 a _win_, thank you very much. 2. Credit goes to Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song for my awareness of Hall of Famer Rod Carew.
@Noemi You're so right about that clue! That was my reaction, too, exactly - there was much to like about this puzzle (impossibly hard, for me, in places, as it was), but this clue took the biscuit :D
@Noemi I do the wordle every day and agree with you- I didn't know that it was considered a bogey. Then again I don't participate on worle forums so perhaps amongst other worlders its commonly used?
Some cute answers but overall highly tedious. I had more “I guess?” reactions to the fill than feeling satisfied.
Quite challenging, even by Friday standards. Loved so many of the clues. TIL the word “splooting,” and at an appropriate time since our “extreme heat warning” finally ended this morning after a week (the high today will only be 95). Re: 14D and TERABYTE being an extra large storage unit…I got my first computer in 1984, an Epson with 256Kb of RAM and one 5 1/4 inch floppy drive. Each day I’d have to load my word processing program, eject the disc, then load the one I wrote to. At some point…1988?… I graduated to an IBM desk top with two 3 1/2 inch floppy drives, and a one-megabyte hard drive. The first time I switched it on, I sat back at my desk in awe, saying aloud, “I’ll never fill that drive!”
Very happy to see "BOCCE" spelled correctly. Bocce is plural of boccia which means 'bowl' or 'ball' BOCCI would be broccioli which is a flower/plant bud (broccoli anyone?)
BOCCE is the only correct spelling ... in Italian. In English, bocci and boccie are, for better or worse, variants. That's English for you. Have a tamale.
@Dan It's also the binary language of moisture vaporators. "Luke, tell your uncle if he gets a translator (droid) be sure it speaks BOCCE."
Loved the laugh I got from the marvelous phrase, “When squirrels thermoregulate by splooting.” And then further laughs when I had to look up the term splooting! What a nice gift for a Friday morning.
I was slowed down due to reading I CALLED IT's clue as [Procrastinator's shout]. Do better, editors! (Otherwise I'll have to, but I don't wanna.) TEETOTAL should be accepted in the Bee, and that's the esssum teetotal of all I'll say about that. Challenging puzzle = fun puzzle. Peter Falk delivered perhaps the most touching line in a movie inconceivably rich with great quotes: "As you wish."
@ad absurdum Yes we had a Geek out on Princess Bride in these comments last week; I forget what prompted it. A procrastinator’s shout would be “I’ll call it tomorrow!”
@ad absurdum And who can forget his great line from The In-Laws? Serpentine!
@ad absurdum Wss it originally "procratinator's"? becuz I read it that way too.
@Norwood I don't think so. Just an unforced error on my part.
@ad absurdum Teetotal has been accepted in the bee 8 times, and never disallowed…
@Graphic I could have sworn otherwise. Wonder what I was thinking.
@Vaer Wonderful movie. @SP I don't recall the recent geek-out, but it has occurred here quite a few times. Deservedly.
@ad absurdum In April I went to “The Princess Bride: An Inconceivable Evening with Cary Elwes”. It’s a screening of the film followed by a live “conversation” with Elwes telling stories about filming prompted by a local media person (at the one I went to it was a local radio personality) with a few audience questions. I highly recommend it if he’s doing it in your area at all. Then I got the audiobook of As You Wish, his book about making the movie, which he narrates with quite a few of the other cast members. There’s definitely overlap between the book & what stories he told at the event I went to, but I don’t know if he tells the same stories at every stop.
@ad absurdum I read it as “procrastinator” as well. Reminded me of “tinted/tilted windows” (“titled widows”) from a while back LOL.
@ad absurdum Add me to the list of procrastinators. I thought I was the only one. But we are many; we are powerful. Ah, we'll do it tomorrow.
If anyone was wondering, the TEETOTAL in this grid is 20.
@Jamie I was actually wondering if there would only be eight, since that was the total number of black tees. I didn't bother to count.
Twice my usual Friday time. Here in the Great Lakes region, the Staghorn Sumac, or baakwaanaatig, is ripening nicely: Time to make Sumacade! Pick the bunches of berries--do not wash; Cover with warm--not boiling!--water; let infuse overnight; strain through cheesecloth remove as many fibers (and bugs) as possible; sweeten to taste and chill. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccenFp_3kq8&list=RDccenFp_3kq8&start_radio=1" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccenFp_3kq8&list=RDccenFp_3kq8&start_radio=1</a>
It tickles me all over again every time I think of NOAH as a doomsday prepper. Thanks for the giggle, Mr. Juhnke!
Normally, I wouldn’t comment after doing the puzzle this late in the day, but I just had to say how much I loooved this one. Friday puzzles can be a bit on the dry side, and sometimes they feel like work. Not gonna lie, this was a hard one, but in the best, most enjoyable way. I don’t know what I could add to everyone’s lovely thoughts about Deb, other than ❤️ ❤️ ❤️. (And if Deb lived in Texas, she’d see a lot of splooting squirrels.)
@Heidi Your comments are welcome no matter the time of day and add my heart emojis to yours in tribute to Deb's courage.
As a long-ago math major and later software developer, I appreciated DISCS, TERABYTE, DATA POINT, and the Weird Al reference. I knew I was on the constructor's wavelength when I immediately recognized the "Noted doomsday prepper." I hope we see more from Mr. Juhnke.
@Mark Abe Just wanted to mention that I'm another long-ago math major and later software developer. Wonder how many of us there are. ...
What a fantastic way to start my day. I opened the puzzle thinking, “Please, please, give me a workout,” and I was *not* disappointed. Such inventive cluing—a real Friday treat. Since we’re all listing the typos that held us up at the end, mine was at 42A: [When repeated, something often said to be "deep"]. I had just been up till 3am talking with a friend who’d got talked into a shamanic retreat rife with feathers, camp, and cultural appropriation. “Sounds very wOO wOO,” I had opined. And so wOO wOO, so fresh on my mid, was very resistant to flyspecking. Of course, DOO DOO fits much better. Have an awesome Friday, everyone.
@Sam Lyons You might have missed my comment the other day about the Wednesday WSJ crossword. It had a literary theme that I thought might appeal to you.