Mike
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Santa Cruz
An aspiring flautist myself, my difficulties in the SW corner only abated when I begrudgingly gave up on 'tube socks'. for 110A
@Mike Mystery solved: The earliest known literary use of the expression "fast and furious" is in Robert Burns's 1791 poem "Tam o' Shanter," where the line reads, "The mirth and fun grew fast and furious". The idiom has been used to describe actions that are swift, intense, and energetic, and was further popularized by Sir Walter Scott in his novels. The film franchise, however, takes its name from a 1954 Roger Corman film titled The Fast and the Furious.
@Mike Well, Wikipedia says "An āsana (Sanskrit: आसन) is a body posture, originally and still a general term for a sitting meditation pose,[1] and later extended in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise, to any type of position, adding reclining, standing, inverted, twisting, and balancing poses'. So, this is perhaps a question of historical vs. at least modern day western usage. Given that, I withdraw my 'nit'.
My only nit was cluing of ASANA at 7D as 'Sitting meditation pose'. ASANA is general term which includes many non-sitting yoga poses (lying down, standing, and many positions which are neither of these), so simply 'Meditation pose' would have been an adequate and less misleading clue. Specifying 'Sitting' suggested one well known sitting pose 'lotus' (A pose that involves literally tying ones legs in a knot!).
@qzac For starters you have notice that it's spelled oddly in the clue. For me the crosses took care of the rest. So rather than complain that I'm one of the many Americans that don't know what the French call Pennsylvania, I'm now glad to be among the few that do! Re - 'Side question' In general there are many place names that differ from language to language. There appears to be no general rule regarding whether and how the spelling and pronunciation of a place name differs from the usage by said place's inhabitants. Also for nationalities, In the U.S I'm an 'American'. In Mexico, I may be un 'Norteamericano', while a Canadian is un 'canadiense', but all three are located on the North (norte) American content. Like Engllish spelling, there's neither rhyme nor reason to any of this, but plenty of room for sneaky word play.
My late and brilliant horticulturist friend would be at pains to remind us: Although often confused in US supermarkets, yams and sweet potatoes are entirely different, unrelated plants with distinct physical traits, tastes, and botanical families. Virtually all orange-fleshed roots sold as "yams" in American grocery stores are actually sweet potatoes. Learn more at: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=yam+vs.+sweet+potato&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8" target="_blank">https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=yam+vs.+sweet+potato&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8</a>
At first I had 'extensive' for 17A - a perfectly good synonym with a few good crosses. Once I was forced to seek an alternative, I quickly realized I was now in Rebus land, and was quickly off to the races.
68A clue 'Juuuuuuust about done' seemed to gratuitously imply something less obvious than NEARLY READY, when just 'Just about done' would have been a perfectly accurate and adequate clue.
@FR Kern I'm 'only' at 1571. Is it scary or comforting to know that there are other's at least as neurotic as I am?
My downfall, that had me spending way too long scanning all the A's and D's for questionable answers, was a virtually invisible typo in one of the 'BLOCK' rebuses only closely examined after I'd apparently exhausted every other possibility. A win's a win, though time is precious.
My self inflicted wound on 11D, once I had METRO from the crosses, was imagining the 'bench' to be one at a bus stop, and stumped as to 'METRO- what". It's been a long time for this NY XPAT, but did NY bus stops ever even have benches? And to boot, I actually practice flute with a METRONOME every day (it's an app nowadays of course) which doesn't involve a bench.
More precisely, 11,111 is the square root of 123,454,321, but that didn't fit. It is not a prime FACTOR, being equal to 41 * 271 (both prime as it turns out).
Had little difficulty in solving this (23:07, about 2/3 of my avg. Wed. time), just using crosses and educated guesses, without understanding the theme at all, then about 5 minutes staring at the grid til I 'got it'. I've always spelled the 5th scale tone 'sol', but a quick googling does seem to indicate that 'SO' is at least as common and correct.
How did an actual 1949 cartoon manage to have a title that's a pun on a modern film franchise first produced in 2001? can anyone identify a prior, common usage of 'Fast and Furious' that may have inspired the naming of the 1949 cartoon?
I had a big problem with 100D. Apparently, since I last visited England as a 12 year old in 1961, they've gone 'metric' with their currency. Used to be 20 shillings to the pound, 12 pence to the shilling. One pound = 240 pence,, one fifth of a pound = 48 pence. OK, 6 x 8. As an occasional surfer myself, I'm well aware that 99A needs to be either HANG 5 x 2 or HANG 2 x 5, neither of which involves either a 6 or 8 so unless our surfer has an unusually large number of toes, this is just not going to work! I did eventually speculate that 'pence' must now actually be '1 per-cent' of a pound these days, and thus reasoned my way out of that dilemma.
@Steve L I don't see any harm in sharing knowledge of the distinction, one possibly less commonly known than that of what hot dogs are not made of.
@Rrose Selavy Don't know - l often finish a puzzle the next day, and my streak (now at 1763) keeps rolling along. I've speculated that either first starting the puzzle on the following day, or beginning the next day's puzzle before finishing today's might cause a 'streak reset'. As a precaution, no matter how busy I am, I start the day's puzzle before I sleep, and pause it until the morning (I'm smarter in the morning anyway). If I've somehow lost track of the paused puzzle page I don't allow the site to start the next day's puzzle. Instead i find the unfinished puzzle in the puzzle archive. I'm not sure if each of these precautions is necessary, but I'm not about to try to find out ;-) Actually, it used to be that blue 'victory display ' showed a zero streak, but it would be corrected on the stats page. Recently the blue initially comes up, and then update to gold in a few seconds. (Kudos to the coders for the improvement.)
Annoyed, b/c just when I 'got' the theme, and filled in a couple of rebuses, it filled the rest in for me, and declared victory. Would have preferred to have enjoyed figuring them each out myself.
on second thought, maybe You already do that but by 9pm Saturday PST, it's already Sunday EST when you finished the Friday puzzle, They may have had to draw the line somewhere. I may never have finished that late the next day.
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