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I'm old and don't know very much. So it's a pleasure when I do. I love the old pre-war (i.e WWII) Looney Tunes and Disney cartoons. In one of them, Porky Pig is a farmer. He goes into his barn with a lit candle. He's going to candle the chicken eggs. In a 1938 Disney cartoon, Mickey is a magician who is being heckled by a member of the audience, namely Donald Duck. Mickey performs a trick and captures a miniature Donald inside an egg then holds it up to a candle so the audience can see a very angry Donald inside. He certainly was a bad egg. Prior to WWII most people lived on a farm. They would have immediately known what Porky and Mickey were up to. I don't really know, but maybe the origins of the expression "bad egg" or no longer known.
@William Not sure what you getting at as I see you know the last letter was dropped. So BADEG equals BADEGG or simply "bad egg". So what does that mean? Well, I'm old enough to remember my mother candling eggs. She kept an incubator that held fertilized eggs so we could hatch chicks. She would hold the egg up to a light source--in the old days it was a candle--to illuminate the inside to see if a chick was developing. Not every egg would develop. If not, it was a "bad egg". This became a metaphor for a bad person. I think most of our old sayings have a farming source. The old practices for the most part are gone, but the saying persists. If you know this already, pardon my going on about this.
Still working this. Still have hope to complete with no "cheating." But frankly the entire lower left corner is like my 8th Grade social studies class: a complete blank.
This puzzle met its demise in my hands when I solved the clue for a random number generator. It's to die for.
Today I'm Goldilocks. This puzzle was just riiight!
I need to make the following comment, which I hope will resonate. I remember Gilbert O'Sullivan and the answer was easy to that clue. But what do Gilbert O'Sullivan, Jane Seymour, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Mt. Rushmore all have in common other than they weren't born with those names? Ans: their names echo famous fictional or real historical characters. Instant name recognition on the part of their targeted audiences who probably heard the names before but couldn't quite place them: "Oh yeah, Jane Seymour, the famous actress!" (not the queen of England). Or "Tom Jones that swinging singer!" (not the title of a Fielding novel). And so on. That's marketing for you. As for Mt. Rushmore, I just felt like throwing that in there.
Got it--finally! With no outside help. One of the clues is the word STAND. It got me thinking (something I try to avoid). A STAND could be: 1. a position 2. the opposite of sit 3. to endure (or abide) 4. a small table It's when a clue has a multiplicity of possible answers (but really only one) that makes for a good crossword puzzle.
Yeah, well, I got, and with no help. Took a hour. Really, I thought it was a hard rain's a gonna fall and not hail. A hard reign did in fact fall a few days ago. but it's like the man says: Don't take life too seriously; you'll never get out of it alive.
I just want to put my two cents in. Pigs are far from boorish. This is very unfair. They are fascinating and highly intelligent. Studies have shown they can easily distinguish between an actual object and its reflection. And they are curious. It is a sight to behold when one sees a sow on her side with six or seven piglets nursing. OK, OK, it's a crossword puzzle. I get it. Still, they got a bad rap.
@JB Thanks to everyone. In my defense (if defense is needed), I got the biblical reference, I considered the critters two-by-two, and I weighed the significance of the question mark. I did all that. What I missed was companion + ship = ark. I have now done a complete U-turn. I like this clue + answer the best. Thanks everyone.
I seemed to be on the same page as the creator of this puzzle. I just started filling it in. With only a few minor corrections (changing a t to a p, for example), I found myself done. Seldom happens (for me), but nice when it does.
Having been a proofreading back in the days when there were actual typesetting shops, STET was one of the first clues I got. Manage to do the entire puzzle in 42 minutes, which is fast for me. Fun.
My favorite answer was LIMBOBAR. Clever clue.
OK, but don't like answer to 19A.
Two comments: (1) I've known a few older people in need of burping and (2) there's something fishy about one of those clues.
Solved the entire puzzle, rebus and all (that was simple), but had one letter wrong. Searched almost everywhere for it, finally gave up after half an hour. I thought--and didn't question--that the Portuguese spelling of a certain city in Brazil was with an O, not a U. Duh! If Trump can change the names of bodies of water--sorry AP--then surely he can order Brazil to change the spelling of its most populous city.
Here's an observation based strictly on personal experience: Down clues are often easier to answer than Across clues. I usually start systematically going through the Across clues. If I find it rough going, I switch to answering the Down clues. For the most part, these seem easier to solve than the Across clues regardless of the day of the week. I have no explanation for this, and to be honest I'm not 100% sure my observation is correct. Has anyone observed the same thing? Or has anyone observed just the opposite?
@Harri I don't race the clock, so for me time is not relevant. I often find if I let the puzzle sit and come back to it later, answers come to me.
When I finally got KENKEN (never heard of it) I knew I had a win-win situation. Good one.
Hooray! I got it. Took more than an hour. It was the lower left corner that gave me the most problem. I kept thinking of Christmas, but when I got that X, then ANNEX, then SELSUN, everything fell in place. I think this was a very clever puzzle. Really liked it, even more after I solved it. Hooray!
I thought a TOOTOO is what a ballerina wears.
Fun puzzle. Particularly like YARDSALE and DANCE. Clever.
Well, HERE I GO. I got it. Took awhile, though. The lower left corner gave me tho most difficulty.
@Times Rita I liked the "relative minor" clue because of the musical association. Every major key has a relative minor, for example A-minor is the relative minor to C-major. I think this was deliberate dis-association, so to speak.
This puzzle was very simple, even for a Tuesday. If that sounds like I'm bragging, I'm not. TAM, OREO, COLE , MAD, SODA, BARD etc--these are all stock and trade answers (or whatever crossword puzzle solvers call them). The upside, I guess, is I can strut around a bit today before my success wears off.
Well, I solved it without looking, but I confess to kvetching all the while. You see, I early on realized the letter E was being dropped but it didn't seem systematic. That's not fair to haphazardly drop a letter here but not there unless there's some indication in the clue. Damn those writers! Anyway, I successfully solved the puzzle with the thought that some E's were dropped and others not. Only when I completed the puzzle did I understand that it was IEs and EIs that had vanished. Forgive me, dear puzzle creators.
I like this one. (Well, I like any I can solve, no matter how hard or easy.) But I particularly like this one because many clues had more than one answer that could fit--eye vs pie, for example. One needed to reach a critical mass, but once attained, the answers fell in place.
Hey, hey Boo-Boo. Which reminds me: half the things attributed to Yogi were uttered by him. Fun anyway. And profound in their own way.
@JB Oops! Deja vu all over again. I meant to write half the things attributed to Yogi were NEVER uttered by him. My apologies.
@Brian Sinclair Brian, are you on the other side of the international dateline or making a wry comment about this puzzle's difficulty?
A very nice puzzle. The kind I like with multiple possible answers to the same clue. I was stuck on spelling of the capital of Portugal until it suddenly became clear what the answer is to the final Across clue.
What I like about this puzzle is the DD, NN, and GG. A nice touch.
@Oikofuge Absolutely not limited to British English. See my response above.
I like this puzzle. It took me an hour and a half but I got it. Hooray for me!
About 80 percent done and finally got the meaning of DE, HI, ID. Let me state this: very clever.
Took me a long time, but I solved it. Don't like all the answers, though.
The problem with most restaurants that serve them is, they're all batter and no onion.
I don't know, NEE is used so often in crosswords everywhere, I want to say NEE, NAY, or possibly NEIGH--you know, nevermore.
Not too difficult, but not a PUSHOVER either. Some clever clues
Not bragging, but this was easy, especially for a Friday. I'm often stumped on Fridays, so if I complete the puzzle sans looking anything up, by definition it must be easy. Not that I knew everything, ARO for example. Got that for free. Ditto for THERANOS. Nonetheless, whether hard or simple, always some satisfaction when I complete a puzzle.
@George Yes, sometimes it takes a lifetime to solve a single puzzle. Hmmm . . . not sure I'm referring to crossword puzzles . . . . Oh well.
I manage to solve it without looking anything up--just me and the puzzle. I'm not so sure that's a "modern reimagining," more like stream of consciousness. Unfortunately crossword puzzles don't allow punctuation.
A tough one for me; took me nearly two hours spread over a course of a day. But finally got it. My break was when I got the word INTRACTABLY. Then I guessed GETTHESCOOP. After those two, things fell more quickly into place. A very good puzzle.
Managed, slowly, drowsily to solve everything without looking anything up (that's cheating, IMHO). Still don't know why the answer to 67A is a minivan.
For me, this was a very good puzzle, not too simple and required some thought. The clues were clever, and when the light dawned, I smiled.
@JB Well, I'm the original poster. I have found all the comments both informative and interesting. I wasn't expecting any comments to my lighthearted post but got five, for which I thank the people who posted them.There's more here than I thought.
@JB Both wrong. For the Odyssey, the time span is about 4 weeks, and perhaps for the Iliad about the same time. For the Odyssey, the story begins on the island with Calypso; the Trojan War had ended some ten years earlier. Odysseus builds a raft and 18 days later is shipwrecked on the island of the Phaeacians, a seafaring people with magical boats. They return him to Ithaka in a day or two. There Odysseus executes his revenge on the suitors. The subject of the Iliad is a dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon over a woman, a war prize. This occurs in the ninth year of the war over possibly a 3 to 4 week period; the war itself is the backdrop. Achilles refuses to fight and the Trojans, led by Hektor, are winning until Achilles gets back into the battle and eventually kills Hektor. There is no mention of the Trojan Horse, not in the Iliad.
@RSA Snarky responses aside, I do understand your question. Touch screens are called that because one merely touches them rather than depresses a button. But given how loosely words are used, I guess people "press" touch screens as well. Perhaps that explains why so many touch screens no longer work.
@Ray I must agree with you. I dislike pop culture references. If a corner of the puzzle has two or more, I'm usually stumped. I often quit rather than look up an answer or use the autohelp. I take no joy if I can't complete a puzzle totally on my own.