kilaueabart

I was really surprised when "Drip alternatives" filled in from the crossings, but my guess that it must have to do with coffee was confirmed through googling. I still have a lot to learn but at 89 already I won't have enough time. Then I found out that "drip" no longer comes close to meaning what I thought it did, "a dull or unattractive person." Yes, way too much to learn.

Tomorrow's puzzle got my streak all the way back up to one again! Several column readers wrote kind remarks in response to my moaning about how hard these puzzles were getting for me and probably bringing an end to decades of fun doing them. I thank you. One Sonnel from Isla Vista (I don't remember where that is either, though I have lived in California for a total of over 31 years, starting in 1935 and including the last eight) suggests, as others have before, that if I just keep at them they will get easier. In my case it is the other way around.

I held off switching to Autocheck for a while and the puzzle seemed easy enough to keep holding off. I spent 46 minutes correcting first wild guesses with new ones, but it worked. It's nice to have my streak back up to three!

Sometimes being old pays off, I guess. Three names in the top middle that bothered a lot of people were sort of automatic for me. Now if they had been rock stars or in current movies...

A lot of fun, once I caught on. But at my age (89 11/12) can I really afford 1:23:37 worth of fun?

For some reason it never occurred to me to fill in those squares with a "rebus." Fortunately, it wasn't required. Autocheck accepted the letters from the Across fills as being enough. I read "MICU" as MICKEY, but didn't write it. The same with PERSE(PHONE) on my CORDUROYS. Had it not been for those two, I might never have understood that GOTOU was GOT O(pen) and I had never heard of BI(G LOVE) before tonight and ended up googling "biglove" to try to figure out what was going on. I'm glad google knew, although it wasn't necessary in order to get the music. In fact, the red glove was already showing in its square before I turned to googling.

I have finally found a way to finish these things about as quickly as I used to up until a few years ago: Start with Autocheck. Just barely broke an hour. It's still just as much fun.

When I loaded the puzzle last night there was a reminder that I had the usual Tuesday 2-day streak behind me. I decided to hold off on starting Autocheck this time until I got hopelessly stuck. I did have to quit for the night. When I restarted this morning a lot of the fill was still in Pencil, but I pushed on and finished a Wednesday just like in the old days. I wonder if it ever took me 56 minutes back then. Dare I try again tonight?

I was hoping, with one square to fill, that B_S for "Certain significant others, informally" might be BFS, and it was. FILAS is an actual sneaker brand! I can still do Tuesdays without Autocheck, but how much longer?

When I fixed 48A InEVER ("I never ..."), 43D suddenly made sense.

After all those hints, WRIST and HAR turned out to be too much for me. Boo hoo.

On my first pass across and down, using Autocheck, I ended up with just 18A, 40A, 33D, 38, 41D, 43D, 45D, then 44A from crosses. I had a bunch of S's for probable plurals or third-person verbs, and a few first letters where Autocheck told me the first letter or two of my wrong guesses had been right. Then back for another pass. Final S at 23A gave that one away. I guessed the last five letters of 24A this time. Many passes later I had everything filled in except the letter where 37A and 37D meet. I went to the column and found that quickly, but so much of this puzzle would been easy up to two or three years ago!

I didn't yet know it was a double scooped ice cream cone but filling it in in 24D on the basis of Vs with varying numbers of Os on top gave me that answer and led me to correct a couple of errors I had made in that part of the puzzle, so the "theme" was important for me.

On Tuesday I barely remembered not to turn Autocheck on--I save that for Wed~Sun. Last night when I started today's puzzle I forgot to turn it on. But by the time I remembered it was going well enough that I decided not to. Things I needed to do made me shut down the computer, but I finished up quickly (quickly for me nowadays = 30 minutes) when I got back to it this morning. It had been quite a while since I last got my streak up to 3!)

I'm glad I forewent switching to Autocheck in spite of it being beyond Tuesday, when I usually need to switch. Wild guesses were fun and kept paying off; and with one lookup, the Pepsi guy, I was able to finish. I'm not sure how long it took; the 11:14:23 includes a night's sleep, breakfast, and after breakfast morning stuff including washing the breakfast dishes, but it certainly wasn't fast.

This one took me forever, as usual these days. I had to look up most things related to names, Only ALBEE and ONEILL came very quickly, and I had ASICS for AVIAS for over an hour. Then I started to catch on just where Caitlin did, when I changed my very unusual (but not entirely unheard of) TAKE5, trying to figure out what 5IVE could mean at 72D. That led to repairing ALUMNWSLETTER at 24A with the same trick, and I realized that it really was Count DOWN and filled in the rest of the numbers and worked fairly satisfactorily across them. Too much fun, though, for someone as behind on everything as I am.

Tricky, going B...B....for the answer to the first "?" clue, then F...F.... for the next two. I was going crazy trying to fill in a F___ERFAIL. I've not had EMU problems so far, but I;ll add this line to feel safer.

I don't imagine this puzzle will take many solvers 23:01, but it gets me to bed on time. Linguist though I've been I didn't know anything about Urdu until I saw 51D when I suddenly learned it was Indo-European. So much like Hindi.

I wondered if I could possibly turn my three-day no-Autocheck streak into a four day one. Over an hour and not without lookups, but I'll call it a streak. Lookups included an unlikely ARO that had filled in 67A. COOPERS to get the last four letters of 61A. MELImbA hoping for a correction to my 22A. That didn't quite work and I had to go to "casino style cooking" to find out that CrAb wasn't the only possibility for C_A_ at 12D. Then I was able to fix my UNA with a penciled A at 27A and finish 11D (until then I had had BCS at 11A) and the puzzle. I enjoyed it in spite of its temporal costliness. Of which I am facing more as I made ready to read the comments.

This was really hard, but I was determined to finish the week with my phony "streak" still going. But two especially stupid errors made me go to Word Play to find my "at least one" booboo. I always think when that NPR first name is needed in a puzzle that it is IRA. But when I finally got 87A, I "remembered" oh, that was ARA, wasn't it? This in spite of remaining baffled over how could SQUARES "study how knights move"? I figured, well, after all, that's what they move *on.* Word Play finally got me back to ARI Shapiro. I had pretty well filled in the right side of the grid last night when I had nearly an hour to spend on it. I think I probably spent three hours on the much harder lefthand side this morning. I won't play that game again. I'll start Autocheck on Mondays and save my time for The Word Game and Jumble in my digitized newspaper and Spelling Bee, Wordle, and Waffle online. Those still take more time than I can really spare from what I should be doing.

Another big sign that I am almost done here. When a KILAUEAbart gets Lāna'i and Ni'ihau mixed up, wow! Fortunately, Maui was too short for 32A. I must have seen 54A JA__A in a movie. I can't imagine missing one of the Star Wars batch, but it would have been decades ago. I had the fairly obvious UMAMI coming down over the first "_" but the idea they could make a BOMB out of it was one of many things new to this old man in this puzzle. If I hadn't at long last caught on to 35D I probably would have had to give up.

I forgot to turn on autocheck for this puzzle and by the time I remembered I had enough fill that I thought I might be able to finish it with less help and just switched to pencil instead. It took a while, and a look up for 42A got me TiM instead of TOM, but once I got that fixed I had my first three-day streak in months. Actually, this puzzle was a lot easier than Monday's!

Tricky but fun to finally figure out.

With a couple of interruptions, that took me over 40 minutes. I'm glad tomorrow is Wednesday and I can start using Autocheck again.

It took me way too long to remember that "shed tears" could be past tense. Worse, I have been speaking English for about 87 years, and I couldn't have told you what INTREPID means! Or is it one of the words my "cognitive decline" has erased? "Courageous" for 38D was one of the lookups that got me to a phony 24-day streak. But it took me an hour. I'm going to have to go back to using Autocheck soon.

Finally noticing what impeachment had to do with chatting online made finishing this puzzle fun.

Lots of little delights, like when I caught on to what 26D "Not own," really was instead of RENT. The E and N had served me well anyway.

I recently bought a dinner kit online and a main foodstuff in it was hake. Extra fun to find what would otherwise been a totally unknown word in the puzzle.

I shouldn't do this, but I started a Thursday without turning on Autocheck. I didn't get all that far before I had to give it up for the night, but I found one of those formic acid bugs fairly early this morning and all of a sudden, I could make sense of some of those weird strings of letters I had come up with last night. It still took a lo-o-ong time to finish. The middle left was the last to go, where I stupidly could not think of a three-letter word for "filled up with" and kept thinking a "Full House" pair ending with -ENS must be queENS (I tried to think of a blank-blank AN TENS, but no six-leggers there). At long last I realized what came before GARDE and was able to wrap things up and bring my streak to an amazing five! (I'll never beat what the stats claim is my longest streak of 113. That dates from the days when I looked up anything I could and especially went for what googled up as "New York Times crossword clue.")

I shoulda "no"ed better, but I thought, what if I can add one more to my "streak." By the time I needed to give up for the night I didn't have a big hunk of the grid filled, like the over half on Friday, but I did have quite a bit that I thought might be right. KIX, KILTS, ENTRANCE, GEODE in a group starting at 25A. SWIMS, OPT, ROTI, THESE, and DOLE starting at 37A. Lonely LARIAT at 47A. ERES and DEL 56D. NGOS and C_O at 10&11D. RADII for 29D, TAKEI at 40D. But I had a bunch of incorrect fill botching things up as well. This morning I started figuring out ways to look things up, and got some crosses that led to surprising ideas, most of which turned out to be right. Like unknown lookup results filling in 17A ____EL and 19A J___S were big starts to getting the downs that ran through them. I, unlike many in this group, never see things where I feel that the constructor was off. 7D AMIRITE may be the first ever. But the clue is "Agreed?" in quotes, so I feel the answer should be quotable as well, but can anybody say "rite" when they mean "right"?

It must indeed have been an easy puzzle. Even I (someone who has deteriorated enough to answer "octopus" instead or "waterfall" for "might freeze in cold weather" in a Japanese crossword yesterday with the first square of two, TA, given! Then I made exactly the same pronunciation mistake for today's "sushi roll"!) finished before bedtime (in 29:36) using Autocheck. I could probably have done as well without Autocheck when I was 84.

A new low. At least three lookups needed to finish a MONday!

It said I finished in 59:50, with Autocheck on! But everything went much faster when I came back to it this morning. I was only half done when I had to quit last night. There was a lot I didn't know, but I think only five answers were completely unknown to me: 77A, 113A, 119A, 51D, and 94D. Mostly I sort of knew the answers even though it took crosses and surprise guesses to get some of them. I had never associated port wine with any country. A real surprise was 11D. It felt like DEGERM had to be a made-up word for the puzzle, but I know that isn't allowed.

I wondered if I could extend my non-Autocheck streak another day. By the time I had to quit and go to bed I had the left-bottom triangle, a bit more than half the puzzle, filled with wild guesses in Pencil, many of which made no sense to me. I kept telling myself that I should switch to Autocheck and stop wasting time. I was about to do so when I suddenly wondered, looking at my ___E___CHASE at 21D, could STEEPLECHASE be something Kenyans might do. I filled that in and shut down for the night. I started seeing more possibilities this morning, like F in front of my -OOD at the end of 14A. That led to one of my many lookups: "ramadan if" and Bingo! I could fill in three possible Acrosses, like STREETFOOD. Another very beneficial lookup was "american greed." The resulting four letters were good clues to finishing the Downs they started. My very last letter was a likely N for COHEN, supported by a lookup of the unlikely word PATREON saying it was real. So, with all those lookups it's silly to claim a streak, but I'm going to say I added a sixth day to my "streak" in an incredibly speedy 1:25:14 (with lots of interruptions).

I held off on Autocheck one more time. The bottom of the puzzle, from the row starting with 26A, went quickly and surely, but the top was hard, particularly the NW corner, except for the easy 3, 4, and 5 Downs. I was pretty sure I had 8D, 9D, 13D, 14D (of course), and 16D, as well as the last four letters BHUB of 10D, and it turned out I was right about those and some Across words they hinted at, but I was finally stumped to the point where I had to turn to the Column. That gave me the 2D name and the Spanish X (I should have had that from my BE__ at 21A!) and was enough for me to finish. But it was another close call. I'll start Saturday in Pen mode but it probably won't last.

I was utterly stumped by this mere Tuesday puzzle. No real hints in the Column about my problems so I had to take advantage of being a subscriber and peek at the answers for these: ARABIan to ARABICA (I don't remember encountering that word in the previous 90 years) and ALS (first names?). U_A over P_M to USA, POM, and KELSO; I recognize the first of those three. The rest of the puzzle was very easy. The only theme answer I guessed immediately from the clue was 24A but the rest filled in from crossings. But I couldn't figure out how to associate the second parts of them to the revealer until I read the column. In spite of having once been a fan of HOUSE it never occurred to me that there might have been TV programs called GIRLS, SUITS or CASTLE. Something new every day.

I managed the first two lyric samples from the crosses, but meeting four songs I've never heard or even heard of before sure makes me wonder about myself. Where have I been? At least I recognize the names of the second and fourth singers, and maybe the third.

I don't feel too bad about looking up "noomi" but I shouldn't have had to read the second paragraph of the Column's Tricky Clues to see that I had misspelled ICARiS! These things happen when one tries to do a puzzle without Autocheck turned on. But my Phony Streak is now up to 10 days.

Probably a good clue to my mental condition. I had trouble with 58A, "City of Honolulu's island." After 43 years of living there and only eight years away, I could not think of any real city besides Honolulu on its island.

By far the hardest Tuesday I've ever done. 35A saved me from making some bad mistakes, but didn't help much with correct alternatives. Almost an hour in I was informed I had something wrong, so I looked up ILA B. Wells. I don't know why I had an L there, but I wouldn't have thought of a D either.

I hunted and hunted for my mistake last night, and was about to click Reveal Puzzle, but at the last second I decided to let a night's sleep and perhaps a trip to Ms. Corbin's Column help me. It turned out that the latter was all it took. I was suspicious of my 17A. Somehow I imagined that I could make sense out of rINGERROLL--aren't baskets made called "ringers"?--even though the internet didn't recognize the word. I'm not sure what a "finger roll" is either, but the F change got me the music, hoorah!

I had a number of lookups even before I gave up and turned to Mr. Aronow for help. Names were a big problem. Some of them were in the 11 clues to names that I couldn't answer (well, I was pretty sure of ALICE) and I only recognize two of the answers, ALICE and BONO. But here is a weird thing that keeps happening to me. I'll see something like ___T_T__ from crossings at 35A and decide to google "art tatum" and it turns out to be a real person's name that I don't remember ever hearing or seeing before! A less startling case was at 30A where crosses gave me __R_. "Maybe rori?" I wondered, seeing a use for the first R. Close enough! The silly app thinks I really solved this puzzle and have a five-day streak!

EMO didn't occur to me, the way my mind works now, but a discussion shortly before this taught me a brand-new word "SLEAZO"! Before that Deb had kindly provided the L of LGA and when I looked up the brand-new word PELLA, sure enough, windows and doors! I have HEADW_ITER at 28D. R seems likely but I tried A as well when that didn't work. Neither makes sense in the T_U I have across it. There has to be something else wrong somewhere. Aha! It was something that happens to me over and over: Where I had typed MOES it had changed to MOEH, and my GEEKS/TUE had become GEKKS/TUK. What could cause that?

I remember when, not at all long ago, Mondays were no challenge. Last night, partly due to not noticing the word ladder (nor even remembering how one worked), plus allowing a same answer WOOD a second time at 39A, I gave up last night with one empty square, the 37D/49A crossing where I had WA_/_ISHING, hoping that a good sleep would lead to an answer. This morning after a mental alphabet run I couldn't think of anything better than perhaps DISHING for 49A and filled in the D with no good result and turned to the column. Oh! Clicking on 1A highlighted a bunch of answers showing me immediately how to fix that wAD problem. But I had to scroll through one more time to find out that I had failed to fix my E in 45D CUEDeN! Yay! Monday done in only 47:23, including interruptions.

I'm going to have to start Autochecking on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays. The scavengers helped a lot, but even at my age (89 1/2 possibly "going on") I still didn't know "adze" doesn't require that "e." Among my several lookups, 36D HAD to be the BRODOWN that filled in from the crosses, but how could it be? Among the things that show the cognitive stage I'm coming to, I needed crosses to get 66D. In my past I would have had that at sight on my first pass.

When someone with a good reason for using my Username has trouble with a four-letter rare state bird, even after finding out the first letter is N, we know that one won't be here much longer.

The missing diacritic in 16A's clue, plus the odd pluralization, made me miss the answer on my first pass. It's a diacritic that saves a bit of ink and a bit of paper, but its cons include being too hard to type and too easy to leave out, cons it shares with the 'okina (and the Spanish tilde). The kahakō represents a doubling of the vowel it is written over, and it would make better sense to write the vowel twice. <a href="https://bartssite.net/hawaiianspelling.html" target="_blank">https://bartssite.net/hawaiianspelling.html</a> Granted, most people who don't know the word would mispronounce "kahakoo." Big deal! Call me kiilaueabart.

One of my better days. Of 11 proper nouns in this puzzle I knew every single one, except for ELPHABA, MATILDA, and MELANIE, and I knew the last two of those as names, just not as clued. Even the other eight, including SUSANNA, required crosses for me to catch on.