Oh, anagrams. I was waiting for zany hybrid products, like so: Merger of HOSTESS and PETCO: they sell catnip twinkies. EPSON and CHASE: financing for ink cartridges. FORD and WALGREENS: antifreeze mouthwash. But I guess I’m just in a mood.
@Cat Lady Margaret This is too funny. Thanks for making me laugh.
@Cat Lady Margaret I eagerly await your puzzle. As do the emus. (My one-liners used to go through no problem, but lately it's been iffy.)
Cat Lady Margaret, (1) Love your enhanced clues ... as usual. (2) I got almost all of the the answers from the basic clues without even looking for anagrams; with your enhanced clues, they might have filled themselves in without my help. This was a sweet Sunday crossword, but -- for me -- not a puzzle.
@Cat Lady Margaret Guess I’m in the same mood, because I was also looking for combined efforts. IBM + DANNON + ACER= Deep blue desktop yogurt? POST + SCHICK = Honey bunches of razors? The mind boggles.
Cat Lady Margaret, Finally, you’ve invented the product I need to reduce my icy stares and vile sighs when someone announces there will be ice-breakers at the party I was forced to attend. (I would print you a picture of it, but my cat went twinkie on my toner loan application.) I give your routine a hearty ha ha :)
I hoped the themers would be witty puns but quickly realized they were anagrams. Very impressive, but for me the solve was less DELIGHT and more ALRIGHT. Fabulous clue for LIBELLOUS [“Like a column starting a row, perhaps”}. The irony that the constructor is an attorney who fights corporate mergers is priceless!
Something you'll never hear at a NAPA auto parts store: Hi, I'd like to buy a glove compartment. Sure! They're over by the windshield wipers.
@Mr Dave Well, you might… <a href="https://www.napaonline.com/accessories/smittybilt-vaulted-glove-box/2b0be5c2" target="_blank">https://www.napaonline.com/accessories/smittybilt-vaulted-glove-box/2b0be5c2</a>
@Mr Dave 😂 I LOL'd *hard* when I read that. The first line was ingenious, the second showed real finesse.
This was my first ever Sunday solve without any lookups! Not sure if that speaks to my growing acumen or the ease of this puzzle (lol), but I took a screenshot of the golden star to commemorate the occasion. Funny enough, I’m back in my hometown this weekend to check out venues for my upcoming wedding! Feels like a very APT time and place to achieve this milestone as well 🥹
@Jill OhHH, congratulations on your upcoming marriage!! What a wonderful and exciting time!! ❤️😍❤️ (I mean not quite as exciting as your first Sunday gold star, but very, very close!! Har!!!! 😆)
@Jill This speaks to your growing acumen, of course. Accept no other reason. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. I hope you found a great venue.
@Jill All sorts of congratulations are in order, then!
A trio of clues got my brain whirring: • [Purchases that come with metal plates] got me thinking of dishes, nameplates, and little plaques, so when TAP SHOES emerged, I could only think, “You rascal, Michael Lieberman!” • [Like a column starting a row, perhaps] had me thinking spreadsheets (Hi, @Caitlin!), and I was getting nowhere. When that answer finally emerged from crosses, it brought a big aha, with the play on “column” as well as “row”. • [Corkscrews and such] had me going through a mental gallery of things that curled, things that open other things (like keys), and things one pulls. Never did PASTA enter my mind, but I enjoyed the mental slide show. I liked the PuzzPair© of CLAUS and a backward NOEL. I especially liked Michael’s constructor notes, seeing how he’s like a kid in a candy shop when it comes to anagrams. So, many smile-makers today from your puzzle, Michael – thank you!
My favorite anagram: ALEC GUINNESS-GENUINE CLASS L
This turned out to be far more lame than I expected.
@Shrike You know, you could just say "I didn't care for it" instead of insulting the constructor and the puzzle. There's a difference between you not liking something and that thing being bad. The puzzle isn't lame just because you didn't enjoy it.
Quick comment: it’s been the gin club annual charity festival today. I admit I’m ver ver drunk. I have no idea how I filled the grid, but I got the happy music. Lots of money raised for charity:Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Job done. Will work through the hangover tomorrow
@Helen Wright I always kind of wish I could hang out with you more!! 🍸☺️🍸 Cheers!
@Helen Wright Thanks for helping with Parkinson's research. My husband has it. Sorry you got drunk doing it, though. You could skip the drinks and just donate the money!
I’m usually not a huge fan of anagrams because they tend to solve like themeless puzzles, but actually once I got the theme (which was on the first one) I used it pretty early and consistently for all the theme entries, and they were all cleverly designed. Overall an enjoyable puzzle. A few nits: I wish RIDABLE had an extra E and LIBELLOUS one less L, although clearly they are legitimate alternate spellings. Is it ok to have ACES in both a clue and a separate entry? Finally, as a pediatrician I can confidently say TONSILs are in the throat NOT the neck. Larynx yes, thyroid yes, lymph nodes yes but not tonsils.
SP, We do caution readers not to perform surgery based on crossword clues and answers. And yes, in the NYT XWP you can watch the ACES at 61A while you [Ace the test] at 15D.
This was technically impressive, but not particularly clever. IMO.
I had INkEd for INPEN for too long.
Before I looked at the crosses, I wanted INkEd too. (I solve with a chisel on a stone tablet, so I look twice before cutting.)
The first themer I got was CHOPSTICKS because of the way I worked the puzzle, and I literally went, Ugh, anagrams. I avoided anagramming and solved using the Downs and applying the Wheel of Fortune methodology. Like Cat Lady Margaret, I was hoping for clever products. And while I'm kvetching, I found the cluing difficulty for the rest of puzzle mostly Tuesday level. Oh, well. Can't love them all.
@Vaer I used to love them all. Then I got my heart thoroughly broken last Saturday, I've been having trouble trusting again.
Oh for the days before brand names in the grid. First sighting of OREO: Tue May 27, 1952 44A Mountain: Comb. form. Unknown Farrar
P.S. In case it wasn't obvious... 507 total results for OREO Tue Aug 27, 2019 2D Most common commercial name in New York Times crosswords Daniel Raymon Shortz
@Laura Yeah. The problem is that any four-letter possible cookie is almost surely Oreo. No fun.
@Laura I feel really badly for anybody out there who doesn’t know OREO by now.
Bit of a giggle at seeing HITS in an anagram-themed puzzle.
Lewis, Please don't feed the emus.
@Lewis "Oh Tish, I love it when you speak French!"
@Lewis The other day I saw a headline, “Bullish” on whatever company, and the anagram hit me hard!
Be Furious....Seethed? Its gotta be seethed. Seethe? Irate? What the heck is seered? A way to cook steak? Ohhhhh See Red. As Emily Litella would say...Nevermind.
@Paul Thanks for explaining; I read -ed as an ending and it really confused me!
@Paul Don’t forget to use crossword cluing syntax to your advantage. “Seethed” is perfect tense whereas the clue is written in the present tense. If the answer were “seethed,” the clue would be “was furious.”
@Paul Thank you -- I was quite cranky until I read this!
@Paul and just for the record…this was a really early comment. It took the EMUs 17 hours to clear it.
@Paul came to the comments solely because I was like... what could seered possibly mean... I was looking in the dictionary and everything! see red makes much more sense
Color me "Meh." When I saw the clue "If NEUTROGENA, BIC & VANS merged and opened a winery, they would sell ___", I was excited, thinking that it would be a kind of wine that incorporated syllables from skincare, writing implements, and shoes. When I saw from the crosses that the answer was going to be CABERNET SAUVIGNON, I spent a minute trying to see how this might work. I quickly saw that my initial assumption was incorrect, and that we were (merely) dealing with anagrams. Now I have nothing against a clever anagrams, but since they are all computer generated these days, they have lost a lot of their luster for me. And speaking of losing luster (or lustre), I've never seen LIBEL[L]OUS spelled (or spelt) with a double-L. That belongs in the London Times. That took the shine off of what was otherwise a beautiful clue. So, while I'm not SEEing RED, I am mildly disappointed. I'm sure it's not you; it's me.
@The X-Phile About LIBELLOUS---duck now. My (light-hearted) post regarding that spelling made some folks very grumpy.
At 9D, I entered SEE RED (two words) with fair confidence after ruling out a couple of other ideas. On a later swing back around there, I said to myself, "Self, SEERED can't be right! Add that OOPSY to your ERRATA, you little rascal!" So I took it out. Later when it was filled in as SEERED from the crosses, I fretted once again and double triple checked all the crosses... I took away one letter to have to revisit it, at which time I realized I was right before I dooked myself twice. 😂 Doi! Don't worry, Self forgave me for doubting her! She's kind like that, dontcha know!? Another puzzle done in half my average time 🍌🍌🍌!
Who, besides me, thinks Santa Clara before Santa Claus! Doh!
@Suzanne Seemed to be a little early for Claus.
Suzanne, Summer or winter, I always wait for the crosses. (As per today's puzzle, there is no copyright on that technique; you can use it too.)
@Suzanne I drove through Santa Clara today on my way home, but since I had the U first, there was no conflict. Whew! There are too many Santa's in California. But we did drive past Santa's Village off-ramp. There used to be 2 small amusement parks by that name -- near Santa Cruz and Lake Arrowhead.
I enjoyed this puzzle and it was a bonus delight to find out afterwards that the creator is an antitrust lawyer working vs. mergers - so funny! I am not great at anagrams so I got most of them from the crosses, but it was fun trying to puzzle them out a bit anyway.
I am ashamed to say that the anagram aspect eluded me. I got all of the clues right, but why they were right escaped me.
@Michael You’re not alone.
Slow and steady won the race. Only two look-ups, because the puzzle was relatively free of proper names and arcana, but I blush to admit that I didn't realize the theme fills were anagrams until I came to the column. They just dropped in with a couple of additions to the crosses. You must be juggling corporate names all day, Mr. L, when you do the opposite of merging, and it looks like you do some doodling while you're thinking about them. Clever clues made some creative spelling forgivable, and anyway, it all ADDEDUP to a fun solve. Thanks, Mr. Lieberman, and I'm sure we'll see you here again before too long.
Pretty good puzzle, at first I was looking for the mixed clues to be some sort of semantic combination of those companies as opposed to anagrams. Nothing particularly hard or misleading for a Sunday.
@Chris me too! I thought it would be wordplay.
Someone must know, when's the last time the triple play of OREO, OBI, and TSAR appeared together? Too bad Yoko Ono and Brian Eno didn't show up,
@Mike No Yoko, but we had OCA. Tuber or not tuber.
Very clever to come up with “products” with all those “merged” letters. Fun!!
Can someone explain "Ding-dong ditch, e.g." with "antic" as the answer? I feel like I must be missing something obvious, but I don't get it. Thanks!
@This is me. It just means “antic” like a prank or harmless joke. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, ding-dong-ditch is when kids ring someone’s doorbell and then run away.
Or you could look it up... <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/ding-dong-ditch" target="_blank">https://www.dictionary.com/e/pop-culture/ding-dong-ditch</a>/
@This is me “Ding-dong ditch” is a kind of prank that involves ringing a doorbell and then running away. Thus it could be described as one of many ANTICs that people get up to. (IMO even so ANTIC doesn’t work well in the singular).
@This is me Ding-dong ditch is an antic I did as a 7-year old… you ring a doorbell and run away and hide (ditch) but in a place where you can see the resident open the door and fruitlessly look around. Sometimes we did it many times in succession.
@This is me a guess a prank and an antic can be similar
@This is me Ah, the bygone days of Ding Dong Ditch. Ring cams ruin everything.
@This is me Ring doorbell and run. But even better if you can leave a treat on the doorstep!
Awww... I was sure there were going to be puns or tricky spellings or something. Like POST and SCHICK might sell POTSTICKERS! Even if I had to add a letter or two, I was eager to indulge in some wordplay... Instead, just unlikely combinations of collaborators making even less likely products. So, Michael, you run aground on the insatiable appetite of puzzle-solvers for some trickery and giggles... For instance: I wanted DaBEARS for 42D, until DHubby informed me that I was mixing up football and baseball teams. Picky, picky, picky. OOPSY indeed.
@Mean Old Lady LE CREUSET and POST-IT should be selling the POT STICKERS!
@Mean Old Lady I've often wondered what the D in DHubby stands for. Now we have two possiblilities "Da" as in "Da Bears" and "Diamond" as in D-BACKS.
Missed opportunity: Cluing OLAY with "Face Anything" but not IONE Skye with "Say Anything". Like our illustrious Cat Lady and others here I was hoping for zany hybrids. For Hostess & Petco I came up with Squeaky Suzy Qs. Unfortunately I couldn't BE MUSED to find anything better. "Let me root, root, root on the home team ... "
@ad absurdum Oh yeah, the puzzle. There were some great clues but sadly I don't STAN ANAGRAMS = SANTANA GRAMS--I got one of those for my birthday once; Santana showed up at my door and sang "Evil Ways". Then they played Ding-dong ditch on my neighbors. Otherwise not too tricky although there were a few squares I thought I might have to look something up for. Oh no! Cheater, cheater, reference needer! Like what are they gonna do? Send the military here to get me?
I like punny witty sundays. I hate anagrams. I’d be ok with anagrams that were a witty take on the clue. Not so here.
Shout out to FARGO and MONEYPIT.... Two really terrific, and really different, movies, dontcha know!? The Fargo TV series is pretty terrific too!! While I agree with many posters about wishing me themers were more witty instead of anagrams, there were a lot of fun entries in here. Those two movies are my fun favorites, but Buckwheat for RASCAL was also fun! Of course, TATERTOT hot dish (as they say in Minnesota) or casserole {as those of us from Wisconsin would typically say) was a fun one too!! My favorite way to eat them is as TOTchos... Basically nachos but tots instead of chips. Maybe with some bacon on top, not VEGAN. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) CINNAMON BREAD reminded me of an amazing human who most of us just called Ma, who used to make cinnamon toast, just toast with a load of butter mixed with a load of cinnamon until it turns very dark brown. It's the most incredible simple meal in the world. I used to work with her at a camp that is also so very special to my heart, and we would make like 600 slices of these a morning. I never tired of them! Somehow they're never the same when I make it at home, even though I know exactly what I'm doing. One of those things. She's gone now, and even her daughter has just recently passed, but they live on in my, and so many, hearts. So, though it was good, it may not be a favorite puzzle, but it sure brought up a bunch of favorite memories. ☺️
@HeathieJ My mother keeps a shaker of cinnamon and sugar in her spice rack, just for putting on toast.
I should have added that the copious amounts of butter and cinnamon also included sugar. My kingdom for an edit button in these comments!
Anyone else get stuck on 18A PRANK for a hot minute. Grrrr. Killed my time today.
@Allen also my instant guess! Very fun.
@Allen Yes! It took me a very long time to let go of that one.
“Seered”? Surely this is incorrect.
@dismal valley yeah…been there…thought it was seethed…thought it was seethe…thought it was irate…Its See Red as Emily Litella would say…nevermind
@dismal valley It's 2 words, 'see red' - that did briefly confuse me when double checking what I had.
@Barry -- Speaking of DOOKS -- GETANA.
Deja vu all over again. Like yesterday, I finished but no cigar music. Like yesterday, the offending square was a vowel, and like yesterday, the problem was a verb tense. The difference was today I was able to find that GETANA/LEON was far better than GoTANA and LoON. Yesterday is was ALDI/SIT and I had ALDa/SaT. So maybe I'm learning. Or maybe I just one lucky duck-billed platypus.
@Francis I couldn't even get a foothold on yesterday's puzzle but got this one pretty quickly without any 'Squares amiss'.
@Francis I guess about LEON for a Spanish province but then I thought of Ponce de Leon who I just found out explored Florida in search of the fountain of youth!
A nice Sunday puzzle, but, once again, I challenge editors and contributors to reflect upon if they’d use EUROPE in lieu of ASIA for an analogous clue.
@S What do you mean? If they'd listed the respective years that the Olympics took place in Paris, Athens and Barcelona, Europe would be a perfectly good answer.
S, I understand what you are saying (regardless of whether I think your point has merit), but please consider that you may be asking for the wrong change. The grid is created before the clues. ASIA is in the grid. How would you prefer ASIA be clued (to avoid the bias you perceive in the cluing)?
What a blast! That's the kind of Sunday that I can get behind, fast and funny, enjoyable and a theme that actually helps you solve the puzzle. Plus I love anagrams. AWESOME.
The "aha" moment when I said out loud to my disinterested cat "Oh! They're anagrams! I love this!". This was another bottom-up puzzle for me (like yesterday). The North kept me pretty stumped until I finally let go of "prankS". Some clever clueing for a fun Sunday puzzle!
No column, only 2 Google lookups, and 5 minutes away from my PB. Nowhere near the 22 minute average of course. But for me 1:18 is pretty respectable. Don't think I could ever come near 22 minutes but then again as a young adult I'd watch my dad finish Sundays and I'd say to myself I could never do that. Got all the merger products but the answers didn't seem that clever so I was actually looking for a rebus or 2. Anagrams never even crossed my mind. Loved libellous.
I enthusiastically entered stethoscoNes with an ‘N’ thinking that the answers will be punny that way. But realized the answers were not to be punny.
@Mu so did I. I even thought it could be “cakes” for Hostess.
@Mu -- It was actually quite a feat to find two or more trade names anagrammed in common products, but the potential for punny cluing with your STETHOSCOnES takes it to another level. Mu-sic to our ears!
@Mu yes, I thought stethoscakes would be cool.... I never tumbled to the anagrams at all
Hands down one of the easiest Sunday puzzles I’ve done in a long time. Still fun though. Always like the diversion even if it's just a few minutes.
@Kevin For some reason, I usually (almost always) have more trouble on the Saturday puzzles than the Sundays. I was disappointed in the Mixed Company thing. I thought it'd require more cleverness than simply solving an anagram.
I find Sundays can be just about any level of difficulty, except a Monday or an old-school Saturday. Because my eyesight struggles with the bigger puzzle on a phone, I’m quite happy when they’re quick.
Green and black bag stumped me until I looked at what I was drinking. Dah!
@Laura Thank you. I misread it as [bug], so I got it but I didn't know why.
Best Sunday puzzle for awhile. Nice mixture of anagrams, trivia and word play. Excellent 👍
This was a very fun and enjoyable puzzle. Did it sitting outside on a Berlin morning that has a strong tinge of fall in the air. I too thought the solves had to be some combination of those companies' products, until the 31-Across "winery" solve was just too obvious too ignore that there was wordplay going on here--aha! they're anagrams. Fun facts to know and tell: the very first NYT Crossword appeared on a Sunday in 1942 with the author line of "Anna Gram" (a pseudonym for the first editor, Margaret Farrar.) The puzzle was meant partly to give readers a short break from the relentlessly bleak news cycles (this was not long after Pearl Harbor, of course), a function it is still serving today. (yes, I can Wikipedia with the best of 'em). Other note: Had a really, really hard time with the upper left grid, kept coming back at it until solving 23-Across gave me a few crosses that made the rethink the clues, (esp 1-Down).
@Sean Off-topic note. My father-in-law was on a battleship at Pearl Harbor. My father was a B-17 pilot whose plane was shot down and he spent the last several months of the war at a POW camp in Germany. Both of them had often humorous stories about their experiences. As a combat veteran I quite understand that. Sorry for the drift. I'll shut up now. ...
@Sean Fun fact: The first NYT crossword was constructed by Charles Erlenkotter, not “Anna Gram.”
Aaargh It wasn't till The grid was about 1/3 filled (northeast and Atlantic seaboard) that the light shone on the clueless Leapfinger mind. Anagram, anagram, anagram onward Into the Valley of Tradenames the LF brain wandered. All we needed was a little ANTIC witty! And it wasn't nearly as PITiFALL as I thought it was going to be. Have to say it was as joyful as ever to see the OPAL show up; just one of the things I'll always share with @suejean, along with her five husbands and the ship's 'manifold'. A tip of the Hatlo hat going Harrogate way. Still chuffed, and I'm only 1/2 way there...
@Leapfinger admits that metal plates were considered in the skull Long before TAPSHOES
@Leapfinger Nice to see you here! I don’t know if you saw my reply to your comment a week or so back, but if not: We recently celebrated one year of Colorado residency. Neither of us misses much about Texas.
This one took me fifteen minutes less than the Saturday puzzle I struggled with this morning. If these themers were found with no computer assistance then count me quite impressed. Not familiar with FERNET, and LIBELLOUS is spelled incorrectly. With the stress on the first syllable, the doubled L is simply unacceptable. Please don't bother trying to convince me otherwise. ;-)
@Xword Junkie All right (two words) Already (one)
@Xword Junkie I won't try to convince you, but I will take a cue from your playbook and tell you that you're simply wrong: <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/libellous" target="_blank">https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/libellous</a> <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/libellous" target="_blank">https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/libellous</a> <a href="https://sapling.ai/usage/libelous-vs-libellous" target="_blank">https://sapling.ai/usage/libelous-vs-libellous</a> (Next you'll be trying to tell me that I spell colour, honour, cheque, etc, wrongly. Be advised: there are more countries in the world than you think there are, and some of them don't like to be "corrected" by Americans).
@Xword Junkie I know you’re joking, but the “row” in the clue is the tip-off/justification.
@Xword Junkie appreciated your humor, felt the ;-) in my gut, and giggled over my tea at the multilingual row you incited ;;-)* *me winking, but plagued by last night's mascara and this morning's allergies
Oh, how I hate anagrams. But I really enjoyed this puzzle.
Didn’t try to puzzle out the themed clues until I had some downs. After a bit I saw that they were anagrams, but found it faster to solve just using the crosses, rather than trying to unscramble the anagrams. I had prank for ding dong ditch. ANTIC seemed like a bit of a stretch, so I looked up the definition, and it turns out it was pretty apt. Live and learn.
@Marshall Walthew Hand up for PRANK (which interfered with crosses, but I was just so sure....!) Same with 'bend in a pipe' and SANTA -- (we lived in Santa CLARA County, and there's always ANITA, MARIA, LUCIA, etc.) Oh well.
Waaaaaaaay too many proper nouns and the gimmick is tedious and unnecessary.
@LJADZ But at least LIBELLOUS was spelled properly. ;-)
Unrelated to this puzzle, I think the updated display of a user’s overall crossword statistics does not work at all. While all the numbers are still there, you can no longer see your average, best and latest time for a particular day next to each other or at the same time. You can see each in a different view/screen. Second, the length of the bars is now relative to the bars on that particular screen (the days of the week for that view.) So your bar for your time on a Monday “this week” could be longer than the bar for your a Monday average even if the latest time is faster. Essentially the new view lets you compare your times for the days of the week against each other which — since they are apples and oranges given the difficulty of the days varies — is less useful than comparing your performance for each particular day against your historical times for that day. Maybe I’m nitpicking but I liked it the other way.
@Mikey This changed several weeks back, and I and many others have made the exact same observations, apparently to no avail. NYTG, please listen!! The scaling issues is really annoying!!! Mark
@Mikey And there is no longer a date associated with the personal bests.mine we’re all during a 28 day streak in 2019. I must have been highly caffeinated in those days.
@Mikey It’s probably easier for them for some technical reason.
OK, so not really my thing, I would rate this puzzle a solid "Hem," which is the best my anagram-stunted brain can come up with for "Meh." YMMV. When I had filled in the grid, but got the "Bicyclefeathers!" pop-up, boy, did I seer! I seered and seered, until I found the glitch (OOPSe/SeD--wha?) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trinU3VD1Zo&list=RDtrinU3VD1Zo&start_radio=1" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trinU3VD1Zo&list=RDtrinU3VD1Zo&start_radio=1</a> *** On Friday we had L'Île aux Serpents, aka Kelleys Island, and yesterday I took a trip down the OHIO RIVER with Celeron and @john ezra, distributing lead plates as we went, so by last night (by coincidence) I was reading up on the Haudenosaunee--aka the Iroquois--and how they systematically massacred the other Iroquoian-speaking peoples, including the ERIES. "Massacred" isn't really the best term, since some they took captive, tortured, then cannibalized (ritually); but most they took captive, and assimilated, adopting them into their households. Sort of like the Borg. So most of the Eries, individually, were not extirpated; they just became Iroquois. It seems this was pretty common practice among the Eastern Woodland peoples of the 17th c.--the Hurons and the Wendats did it as well, much to the horror of the Jesuit Fathers--it's just that the Iroquois did it better than most.
@Bill --- According to what I've read and seen myself, sometimes Hems are raised and sometimes Hems are lowered as the fashions change, and I've heard it posited that the direction is a function of the economy. D'you suppose that's the case with your own 'solid Hem'? You PASTA certain line that I usually draw in your second para, but (having read some histories in both North and South America) I feel bound to say that, by reports, neither the Iroquois nor any other resident peoples in the North or South Americas attempted the excesses of the invaders from overseas. Citations only by private request.
THIS was a great puzzle! As always, I had to look up some names. The crosses are what got me the theme entries. I loved 104 across. Thank you, Michael!
Loved the clue for LIBELLOUS Did not like ROOT ON - yesterday I was rooting on Okinawa to win the Koshien tournament (??) - that sounds very unnatural to me.
@Bill in Yokohama Maybe it’s regional but it’s pretty familiar to me
@Bill in Yokohama I'd say it as "rooting Okinawa on" as in onward or forward. Same applies to "cheer on" and "urge on".
@Bill in Yokohama I would say root _for_. ROOT ON sounds like ...something else to me (Google "root australian slang" if you're not sure.. Maybe not at work though :D)
@Bill in Yokohama I hope the British solvers are happy with the spelling of LIBEL[L]OUS!