'Good knight sweet prince' made me guffaw. Loved every single groaner in today's puzzle. One of my favourite Sundays from the past year.
Two years ago, I got together with 4 of my high school friends (Martin Van Buren HS, Class of 1973). We were discussing The NY Times crossword and one friend mentioned that our 11th grade trigonometry teacher Randy Ross was a crossword constructor and was a regular contributor to the NY Times. Mr Ross was an amazing math teacher, loved and respected by his students. I myself retired recently as a math teacher, and I can only hope that I will be remembered half as fondly by my students as Mr Ross is remembered by us.
@June As a complete aside, I assume you retired from NYC, as am I. If so, hope you are supporting our retiree health care fight!
FARE IS FOUL AND FOWL IS FAIR has got to be the groaner of the year. Maybe the decade.
@Steve L It’s TWOBSORNOTTWOBS for me
@Steve L and there are a couple of Chinese restaurants where we just get duck and pancakes etc to go. It is almost like an uncertainty principle, great duck, less good other stuff. But not really… can think of some good on both accounts… Sam Woo’s in Burbank is one. (unrelated to the now closed Sam Wo’s in North Beach SF).
@Steve L That’s the only one that really amused me.
Didn’t finish the puzzle yet but wanted to be the first to say it—who wanted Wayne’s World to be BATCAVE or GOTHAMCITY?
@SP -- Me. I even tried "Bat's Cave" to make it fit. And like Steve L. I also had Westeros for a hot minute.
@SP I instantly thought Aurora. It’s an Illinois affliction.
@SP I definitely tried to make a Batman reference work, but the Bat signal was not lighting the way.
@SP tried to believe that until the nickname was clearly Tex and then the gears in my head shifted from reverse to forward.
As I stare at my broken vacuum cleaner: Alas, poor Oreck
As javelin participants practice, will some shake spears? (And the next in line for the event is heir to the thrown.)
@Mike You have a point there. Pshaw, now you've got me thinking about 'Arms and the Man."
@Mike Few people know this but Shakespeare was a professional wrestler. His gimmick was being able to pin opponents just by reciting poetry. They called him “the no-holds bard”.
@Mike if you go to the supermarket and say you want to be an Olympic javelin gold medalist they will direct you to the far-flung project aisle
What a fun theme from a veteran constructor. I like how each misquote employs a slightly different twist, whether it be changing a letter, dropping a letter or a homophone. I love TO THINE OWN ELF BE TRUE. So clever. Welcome back, Randolph. I hope we see you again soon. [Attention CEOs, we need to borrow your company jet for a humanitarian mission] Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your Lears.
@Anita Hey everybody, I need another drink before I jump in the Trevi Fountain! Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your beers!
I've constructed a whole bunch of puzzles. None have been published because they all stink. Turns out, it's easy to make a puzzle – if I can do it, you can do it. But to make a puzzle like this takes that special something that few constructors have. I don't know what it is but by golly Randolph, you sure have it by the bucketful. Mindbogglingly well done.
Look at today’s theme – punning on renowned Shakespearean lines -- simple, elegant, and entertaining. It seems like low-hanging fruit, something a constructor by now would have come up with. But no. I did a bit of research and couldn’t find it anywhere. Bravo, sir! Randolph is a Times crossword powerhouse, with 118 puzzles over 34 years. Those puzzles include more than a thousand answer debuts, and 74 themes. Standing-O, sir! I found today's puzzle fun, trying to get the theme answers with as few crosses as possible. I loved seeing PARAPET, AMBIT, and GARROTE, gorgeous words that don’t come around that often. I liked seeing OPI, ORI and wannabe OBIS, not to mention semordnilaps GAB and BAG, and same-row rhymers ODETTE and BETTE. Once again you made me smile and satisfied my brain’s workout ethic, Randolph. And I look forward to next time. Thank you!
@Lewis and thank you, lewis. today i learned what a semordnilap is.
There is something perfect about a Sunday crossword filled with bad (meaning good) puns. Thank you Mr. Ross for a delightful puzzle. I’ll even forgive you for 28A.
I enjoyed this puzzle quite a bit. For a while I thought I might end up with a personal best but ran into a couple snags and finished a few minutes over my best time. Puzzles that rely on puns for their themes always make me think of my father, who passed away 41 years ago at 60. Often, if he was home for dinner (uncommon as he was a doctor who was a workaholic—hence his four coronaries) he expected me to engage in a pun-duel, in which he’d make a pun and I had to respond with a pun related to his, then he would have to build on that, then I would, continuing until one of us (usually me) would surrender. Mind you, this started when I was perhaps 13 or 14. Later, some years after his death, I came to understand that he was quite shy, even to the point of having no idea how to talk to the son who bore his name, and so puns were his way in.
@Joe It seems he didn't do too badly in his efforts. It is sad you had fewer years than 'might have been.' Thank you for sharing.
The SW corner was brutal for me, with INATRICE intersecting with three proper names and enough ambiguity for me to second guess TCM and AMBIT. I was surprised when I got the solved screen!
@Steve For me, the NW was yet again my Waterloo. I was stumped by what turned out to be TESLAS. I tried phones, ?-tolls, Trunks. I took out TOGAS, got no further, put it back. Couldn't figure out SEOUL, ONEARTH, or ALUI (particularly humiliating as I know French). Got TEES but couldn't figure out what kind. And the only ENOLA I know is the lady for whom the WWII bomber was named. Spent about 15 mins in Upper Confusion.
@Steve PS I was so infuriated by EELIER that I stopped in mid-puzzle to come here and vent. That post was, of course, emu-food.
My earlier review of the puzzle got emu’d and I don’t want to rewrite it but maybe it will turn up. But in the meantime I just had a flashback to my college days when I wrote two spoofs on Shakespeare. One was a WESTERN (“Rodeo and Lariat”) and the other was a film noir take on Hamlet (“To Be and Be Not”). Don’t want to say how long ago that was but suffice it to say they were written on a typewriter. Anyway, I don’t remember much and don’t want to dig them up, but I do remember this line: “What light through yonder window bakes? It is the yeast, and Lariat is the bun.”
@SP Are you surprised I don't get it? 🤪
@SP A suggested line for "To Be and To Be Not": "You know how to be, don't you? You don't??? Well, that's OK; no one else does either."
if you didnt get tonearm youre just not old enough to be up this late.
@Matt Check mate. I didn't know it but its 7 AM here.
@Matt I'm 54... And I'll be up for many more hours, and I used many record players.... but I didn't know the name was TONEARM. I got ARM right away, but I do not remember the TONE.
@Matt haha that one was definitely before my time, but it is the morning here and I’m only up because my 2 year old is - so I quite agree I should be in bed!
@Matt Records are back in vogue, I balanced a tonearm last year and I'm not quite 30 yet!
All's well that ends SWELL with this fun, challenging crossword! Loved it!
After playing around with various letter combinations to make 8D make sense, I had all but one letter: WESTER_S. I put in an O and said to myself, I don't remember a Wayne in Game of Thrones.... The cross didn't work, anyway.
I found this a fun, invigorating puzzle. I got all the misquoted Shakespeare lines with no cheating. I came SO close to a cheat-free puzzle. But it was all filled in and I heard no music of completion. So I looked up various words about which I wasn't 100% certain. All were correct, until I came to 'Sceirra' for the astronaut. Alas, it was "SCHIRRA". I'd had 'abase' for 'ABASH'! So close, so close! Thank you Mr. Ross for a real work out!
@Joan and same here too. Lost a good streak with abase instead of abash.
@Joan I was helped with SCHIRRA because I was blessed with a fascination with the space program, right from the Mercury days, and I'm old. I distinctly remember sitting in the fifth grade, realizing that Wally Schirra was in orbit, and there'd been none of the wall-to-wall coverage of the flight. No one was talking about it. It seemed ordinary. By contrast, we all got out of class to watch Glenn's flight.
@Al in Pittsburgh I read The Right Stuff when published in the 80s. I was in my 30s. I found the tone rather snarky. I did like the movie, however. The writer/director got rid of the snarkiness and it had a fantastic cast. It did not hurt that Sam Shepherd played Chuck Yeager.
And here I was banging my head against a metaphorical wall trying to figure out where Wayne's World took place.
@Jamie Welcome to Aurora. Not just a place … but a state of mind …
Anyone else think of the oldie about the woman asking the postman when her package from the photographer would arrive, and he replied, "I really don't know, but don't worry. Someday your prints will come."
@dutchiris She'll just have to put a TRACER on it.
This is my MOST FAVORITE puzzle ever…kudos to the constructor for his wit and art. Just a wonderful tour de force. Bravo Sir 👏👏👏
If folks in my professional life knew how much I love puns in crossword puzzles, I might have to stop teaching, and publish only under a pen name. What a romp! If I loved today’s puzzle any more, my husband and cat might serve me with divorce papers. As to Caitlin’s comment that, “spoken language has changed, and those [Shakespeare’s wordplay] jokes now go right over our heads, unfortunately,” it speaks to a dream (almost a plan) I have: To travel throughout the rural British Isles, talk to older folks in every local pub, hear all those accents, many of which retain vestiges of long-gone English, and then reread my favorite plays, this time with those living voices inside my head. My husband is on board for part one of my dream/plan. Señor Gato and his old joints, unfortunately, not so much.
@Sam Lyons I can see this as a movie, and one I might actually watch, although I would probably need to turn on subtitles :D (That being said, my wife and I had no problems communicating with anybody on our tour of England, mostly Yorkshire, this summer)
@Sam Lyons Years ago I met Bill Bryson, who wrote The Mother Tongue. I asked him if he knew how and when North Americans began to pronounce words differently than the British. He said that it’s the other way around, that if you watched a performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays during Shakespeare’s day, the actors would sound closer to present day American English than contemporary UK English. I assume he’s correct but have never tried to verify.
@Sam Lyons You might want to add Newfoundland and Labrador (one Canadian province despite its bifurcated name) to your itinerary. Aside from its sheer beauty it preserves the accents and even some of the vocabulary of 17th C England. And, for those who are ad aficionados, their tourist board produces some of the best ads I've ever seen.
@Sam Lyons Of course you could switch your priorities and publish under a pun name.
I always have to relive the scene from "Blazing Saddles" where the name "Randolph Scott" garners worshipful attention from the assembled crowd... then I can move on with a Randolph ROSS puzzle... The Santa Misquote wins my vote for Best Groaner. Otherwise, all was FAIR, none was FOUL. There were even some grown-up words! I had it done IN A TRICE. Smugly yours, MOL
I guess I'm in the minority today. My initial optimism turned to frustration as I sputtered my way through the last 1/4 fill- especially the south-west corner- with too many obscure words (to me) to feel fun. Nice to hear so many others enjoyed it though.
[Advice followed by this theme's creator] GET THEE TO A PUNNERY
I'm sorry for the dupe -- this was posted last night and emued, and now finally it has appeared. I'm glad I posted it again last night, and the third time it actually printed.
‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished… that my contribution tonight would be allowed to appear. I guess it will be after the emu’s hurly-burly is done.
Hm. I'm a bit on the fence about this one. On the one hand, the themed entries were effectively groaners, and I have a very low tolerance for those (unless they are my own, obviously). On the other hand, I found them quite creative *and* it was rather interesting to realize I actually know many Shakespearean quotes even though I never read anything of his in English. I suppose I just learned the lines by hearing them over and over again in various contexts. I had to look up some of the trivia to finish, as is usually the case on Sunday. The crossing of an unknown phrase and name in the SW corner had a naticky quality for me. I was familiar neither with IN A TRICE nor SCHIRRA 🤷🏽
Andrzej, if I may reply to your comment yesterday... (Time-saver alert: what follows is unrelated to yesterday's or today's puzzle) Regarding children, you took the words right outta my mouth. Complete agreement. Have you heard of the U-shaped (or smile-shaped) happiness curve? Here's Scott Galloway discussing it with Bill Maher on this weekend's Overtime: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y1nAONKFjY&t=658s" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y1nAONKFjY&t=658s</a> Regarding London and, "the dreary Warsaw of the early 90s" - I enjoyed both! I did my fall '94 semester abroad in London (first time outside the US except for a week holiday in The Bahamas). Like many students, we did more traveling than studying. Most used their Eurail passes on the well-worn path through western European countries, but my friend and I, wanting to go where nobody else was going, went to Warsaw. We befriended a pair of identical twins, also uni students, and let them show us around. I remember wondering why so many shops were closed in the middle of the day - they weren't, just looked that way because they kept the lights off (saving power, I guess?). Being students on a budget we lunched every day in the same borscht soup-kitchen - delicious "home" cooking served by the sweetest old ladies with whom we communicated by pointing and pantomime. Good times!
@Bill in Yokohama Yes, I have heard of the happiness curve. The Guardian has covered it many times, for example here: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/22/research-says-that-your-40s-are-your-unhappiest-age-its-worse-for-millennials" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/22/research-says-that-your-40s-are-your-unhappiest-age-its-worse-for-millennials</a> Of the people my age-ish that I know and who are parents, many are clearly unhappy, constantly bickering, and even those who look OK are always busy, all their lives reduced to work and caring for their children. They only ever get time for themselves when they dump the children on somebody. You enjoyed Warsaw because you were young and adventurous, and didn't actually have to live there. It was dirty, grey, dangerously polluted, riddled with both petty and violent crime, and getting worse every year, up until the end of the decade. When I returned to Warsaw from my month in London as a 13 year old in 1993 I literally cried for a week, despairing over how horrible my home country and city were. It's only now, over 30 years later, that I am finally beginning to enjoy living here. Experiencing Poland in the 1990s was one of the main reasons I never really became a Polish patriot. You just can't love or feel proud of a place that could get that bad. I've enjoyed vacations in many places I would never, ever like to live.
@Andrzej. The advantage of age is that I was familiar with both. The disadvantages come with pop culture, but I'm hanging in!
@Andrzej I'm a big fan of puns so had a great time with this puzzle. While I like puns, I'm not usually quick or bright enough to come up with my own. Fortunately my lack of qualification for Mensa membership doesn't bother me.
Wow, kept my streak, but that SW corner was BRUTAL
EELIER. EELIER?! Have you no shame? When I first read this clue, I thought 'oilier'. Then I thought EELIER and decided. Not in the NYT, not even on a Sunday. How low can you go? Apparently, 'full fathoms five.' Going down? (Glub...glub...glub...)
@SBK i was happy to have learned that eely is a tried and true word in the tongue of Billy Shakes himself, dating back to the 1600s according to the OED. its always a pleasure when a slippery new addition wriggles its way into my lexicon.
@SBK I think we've been emued down this road before, but this time, I'm on my keyboard, so my voice to text won't make you aghast at me: I loathe the word eelier! In fact, there aren't nearly enough Os in loathe to express my feelings about the word. Better? 😆
@SBK Well, I get what your saying, but... ...maybe better EELIER than LADER. ...
@SBK I sent the above post in at least 20 hours ago. Just how many stomachs do those emus have, that it takes them this long to digest a post?! See my subsequently written but previously posted note here: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4bs8t1?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4bs8t1?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share</a>
Oh that was a lot of fun. The misquotes made me chuckle, I can’t believe no one has done the them before. Yes, the fill was a bit gluey in places, but the overall effect was pure joy. A near perfect Sunday grid.
Great puzzle, lots of fun. 'To thine own elf...' 🤣
Spectacular! This reminds me of a dreadful joke that my mother utterly loved, you need some deep Shakespeare to get this: A trucker gets a job driving through the Australian outback but finds he can't stay awake for the whole 15-hour drive. It seems many other truckers can't either, because right in the middle of nowhere is a truck-stop in a small two-horse town named with the hard Australian sarcasm as "Mercy Truckstop". Arriving at midnight, he asks for some tea to keep himself awake. Instead of a pot they bring out a huge pan, filled with tea, and laying in the middle of it is a dead koala bear - fur, face, and all. He is shocked and asks what the deal is. The server smiles and says, "just try it, hon." So he takes out a spoon, tastes just a bit and it's not only utterly delicious, it's got the caffeine kick of a thousand mules. The pan is so deep, he not only can have two cups at the counter, he can fill his entire thermos. Canisters in hand, he heads off on his route, wide awake and happy. On the return trip, he pulls into the truckstop, feeling tired but happy because he knows he will be able to do this run indefinitely because of the truckstop. He walks in and asks for the tea, the server nods knowingly and turns to leave, but he calls out... "Listen, would it be possible for you to just bring the pan, but leave the bear out?" To which she turns back and replies with a smile, "I'm sorry sir, the koala tea of mercy is not strained."
@Malcolm legendary shaggy dog quality right there. Kudos!!
A clever and enjoyable puzzle. I've had Cole Porter's "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" stuck in my head ever since I saw the title.
I thoroughly loved "To Bs or Not To Bs. Very enjoyable puzzle!
I love crosswords, Shakespeare, and cornball humor, so I savored this Sunday gem. Having looked at the title, I had a general idea of what to expect of the theme clues and answer, but could see that I’d have to be patient and wait for some crosses. I broke through with TWOBSORNOTTWOBS, and the rest became clear in short order. My favorite: FAREISFOULANDFOWLISFAIR - nice use of of a pair of homophones. My only nits: ONEARTH for here (not a fan of clues of that strained ilk); EELIER (just because). On the other hand, WESTERNS for Wayne’s World was clever, and made me smile when it finally became clear. I pictured the Duke saying to me, “You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.”
Not a Godfather person, but I assumed their w_apon was some sort of g_n (feel free to buy ANE and ANa). Did they have to use the GARROTE because they took the cannoli and left the g_n? And that there is the extent of my Godfather knowledge... no wait, something about take it to the mattresses, but I only know that from the rom-com You've Got Mail. No wait, Diane Keaton is in it. I only know that from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But that's it... those are the only things I know. (Though now I feel a bit like Steve Martin in The Jerk, when he kept coming back because he realized he needed more things... And that's all I need... ) I'm done! See, this is what happens when I finish a Sunday puzzle so crazy quickly, I still have silly energy. Anyhow, fun puzzle done in very well faster than average, though there was a FARE amount of things I didn't know... found the crosses very friendly, even in a little twisty for me lower left corner, my final area: AMB??, ?ONEARMS, ??AT?ICE. But, it all worked out. R seemed the most likely completer for Wally's name, then it seemed likely to be INATRICE, which gave me AMBI? and ?ONEARMS. I mean, I know what they are but I didn't know their name. T made the most sense even though I'd swear I've not heard of AMBIT. But, my dunce's music played and here I was, ONEARTH. Very fun theme, I'm always good with groaners, engaging, and education. If crosswords be the food of love, play on!
UGH! Buy ANE and Au! My kingdom for an edit button!!
@HeathieJ In The Godfather Paulie was shot and left with the gun not the cannoli. Carlo got the garrote.
@Paul I had mAcheTE first because of that poor horse (though I don't think the weapon was specified), but not all the crosses worked.
Caitlin's quip about roses and noses made me think of this old ditty from "Singin' in the Rain": "Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously. For Moses he knowses his toeses aren't roses as Moses supposes his toeses to be."
One of my favorite puzzles of the year. Too many brilliant clues to mention here, but I was smiling and saying "wow" throughout the solve (AND it's my birthday, so thank you for a perfect Sunday morning!). I think FAREISFOUL AND FOWLISFAIR was my favorite. A few spots really tripped me up, and I was flyspecking for a while looking for my mistake (I'm looking at you, TRICE!) but that's part of the fun. What one might say about a big, punny puzzle? Levity is the soul of wit!
@Ash Wishing you a very happy rest of your birthday!! Best wishes for the year ahead!
This was fun! I loved the puns. And the other fill. Thanks, Randolf! Happy Sunday, y’all!
Enjoyable. I liked "Good knight sweet prince" and "Fare is foul..." much more than the other misquotes, because they kept the original quotations with a homonymic replacement, whereas the others changed rose to nose, etc., so weren't as clever. I would have preferred all the misquotes be of the first variety. Perhaps that wasn't possible. Wry being "twisted" surprised me, but of course the constructor is correct. I went down the ety-hole and found this online: "WRY...1520s, of the neck, face, features, "abnormally bent, distorted, somewhat twisted to one side," from obsolete verb wry "to contort, to twist or turn the neck, deviate from a straight course," Middle English wrien, from Old English wrigian "to turn, bend, move, go," from Proto-Germanic *wrig-. "This is reconstructed in Watkins to be from PIE *wreik- "to turn" (source also of Greek rhoikos "crooked," Lithuanian raišas "lame, limping"), from root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend." Figuratively, of words, thoughts, etc., "devious in course or purpose, ill-natured," from 1590s. In reference to a smile by 1883. The original sense is preserved in awry. "Germanic cognates include Old Frisian wrigia "to bend," Middle Low German wrich "turned, twisted." " There you go. So a wry eel would be eelier than your plain-spoken eel. I Some lovely words in this one: garrotte, parapet, trice, Halas, Odette, Aswan. I had "Dahl" before Baum, since those oompa-loompas are quite munchkiness. Dag.
@john ezra Down the ety-hole, lol! Thanks for that.
I loved this so much I didn't want to finish :)
The most superficial knowledge of Shakespeare will enable you to do this puzzle with ease and instant recognition. Well, maybe not the most superficial knowledge, but knowledge that is nonetheless pretty darned superficial. My favorite answer was FARE IS FOUL AND FOWL IS FAIR -- even though the phrase had to be broken up into three (3!) parts. But my favorite clue was the one for A NOSE BY ANY OTHER NAME. I thought the initial impulse behind the puzzle would have been the FARE themer. That the constructor would have thought of the double homophone. But, no, it was serendipitous: Randolph asked someone whether Caribbean was spelled with one B or two -- and then had to rephrase it in the way that appears in the grid. (Randolph's Constructor Notes are interesting and you might want to take a look at them if you haven't already. I found most of the fill quite easy, except for TONE ARMS. (I think that's right, but forgot to check.) I'm of the advanced age that has owned record players much of my life, even though I gather that's not the way anyone listens to music anymore, and I never called the thing that holds the needle and goes up and down, on and off the record, anything but an ARM? Anyone heard of a TONE ARM? Everyone but me? Found this an amusing and delightful puzzle.
@Nancy I had never heard of a tone arm either. I just remembered that if you had a really cheapo phonograph and you put a nickel top of the plastic arm it helped to keep your records from skipping. I had also never used ambit in a sentence. I just guessed on both and luckily got them and then the Godfather weapon as well. Great Sunday puzzle.
@Nancy Speaking of noses, we all noticed that 'honkers' appeared twice in the clues, yes? Tip of the hat to the constructor.
@Nancy TONEARM is a nattick for us vinyl fanatics who used or still use a turntable (what we called record players in the 20th century)! As much as I had fun collecting vinyl, now I’m slowly selling the collection because I prefer the convenience of music on the smartphone as I’ve lost enough hearing & focus so that I’m unable to hear music quality differences between digital and physical media :-)
@Nancy DHubby will play anything...Edison cylinders and (thick) records; Victor Playing Machines and their discs; Old 78's; 45's, 33 1/3 LPs... and yes, audiophiles and stereophiles say things like TONE ARM all the time!!
Seems apt that wordplay features prominently in a puzzle that quotes from an author who was so enamored of wordplay. A really fun puzzle!
In a trice? I'm all for challenging but can we keep the challenges in the living language?
Brian, A number of living commenters reported hearing it...
The greatest thing ever happened while I was working on this crossword - I turned on the TV to be presented with an airing of the classic "Gilligan's Island" episode where the castaways have to stage a musical version of "Hamlet" for, you know, sitcom reasons. It's such a great episode and I will have Alan Hale singing "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" to the toreador song stuck in my head all day. I don't know if I can post a link in a comment, but just in case: <a href="https://youtu.be/bXId5jOTxdg?si=gIOGTZz7PYq21sZi" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/bXId5jOTxdg?si=gIOGTZz7PYq21sZi</a>
@GG That is so great!! And too funny on the timing!! Thanks for sharing—I don't remember the episode, but how fun!
@GG - Hilarious! I had to look this up. Per Wikipedia, "Although the show Gilligan's Island seldom earned awards of any sort, 'The Producer' was selected by TV Guide as one of the 100 greatest television episodes of all time, ranked in the #52 spot." :-D <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producer</a>
@GG My entire family memorized all the words and music in this version, mainly because my younger sister learned them and kept singing them around the house. Now all any of us have to do is start with the first three words to Hale's toreador and we all chime in. Much to the dismay of any in-laws who happen to be present.
@GG This episode has been in the back of my mind all day. Here's some more. "Hamlet, Hamlet do be a lamblet." <a href="https://youtu.be/MKMOClN9ITg?si=Kiz27SAqsWPtcSlB" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/MKMOClN9ITg?si=Kiz27SAqsWPtcSlB</a>
@Pax Ahimsa Gethen well deserved! It's genuinely so fun to watch!
@GG OMG! Looking to see whether Gilligan's Island was available on any of the streaming services we subscribe to (it is, on Tubi), I discovered that Season 1, episode 36 was titled: "A Nose by Any Other Name." !!!
@GG That is a lifelong earworm for me!
I wonder why this puzzle included two clues about Israel. Seems kind of distasteful seeing the current climate.