Les Niles
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@Hannah I grew up in Washington (state) and the term Pacific Northwest was understood to mean Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. It’s roughly what had been the Oregon Territory.
Come to find out, there’s a romance character named after a cookie.
A great puzzle. The theme was challenging enough to be a fun discovery, and after filling in a couple of instances the pattern was clear so it really helped with the other eight words. The only thing I can complain about is that since “tinder” is a collective noun, it just seems strange as a plural. Maybe an R-rated clue referring to the dating app would’ve felt better.
@Grant If the snail rephrased that slightly, as “Look at thE S Car go!”, it could be part of today’s theme.
Sam, while “kind of” often is an idiomatic disclaimer, it can also be used literally, as a synonym of “type of,” as in, “that bird is a kind of eagle.” I think the harmonic limbo usage could go either way, which probably means it’s a bad construction since it’s kind of ambiguous.
@Bruce Well it wasn’t that unlikely, given how often crosswords use Hoda Kotb in some form. 😀
@Dan Wellll… maybe it was a double entendre, but Batman did use “boff” as one of the many fight words. <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=75&v=10lnyw0Qleg&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=75&v=10lnyw0Qleg&feature=youtu.be</a>
@David Reiffel I had a similar experience — was in despair after going through the acrosses, but ultimately ended up with one of my fastest Saturdays. There was a nice back-and-forth between the downs and acrosses. I’m still trying to figure out “fists,” though.
This one strikes me as a constructor’s puzzle — showing off the craft it making those six spanning entries work — rather than a solver’s puzzle. There’s nothing particularly interesting about the spanners, and too many of the crossers are obscure names.
Nice puzzle. Harder than the average Sunday for me, but enjoyable. 9A is a perfectly fine word; yes, it’s specific to mechanical machines, but not archaic and no more obscure than, say, the name of a character in a 19th century play. My objection is to 32A. The proper answer to this clue is stratosphere, which obviously doesn’t fit.
@calhouri Here “bio” is short for “biology,” which is a prerequisite for medical school but isn’t generally required for college admission or graduation.
A fun and challenging puzzle, and perhaps my fastest Saturday yet. I filled in CLINKED from the crosses and still didn’t understand the clue until I read Caitlin’s explanation. I was sated by this puzzle.
@Brian AGEE appears so often, it’s virtually the literary equivalent of EMU.
There were some fun, challenging clues and “aha!” bits in this puzzle. But the SE corner is a mess, with the crossing of obscurely-clued sports knowledge compounded by mis-clueing Randall’s middle daughter. (Really ironic, since Randall himself was adopted and a central theme of the series was that accidents of birth and DNA are not important in defining family.)
@sotto voce Sleeping on it might’ve been part of what helped. I’ve certainly seen what seems to be some unconscious solving that goes on when I put a difficult puzzle aside and come back to it later or the next day.
Enough of the ITPRO, please!
@CaptainQuahog Hmm… the only search results I got for Astro Pops are the cone- shaped lollipop candies, which generally aren’t frozen. There was a recipe for Astro Original Popsicles, made by freezing Astro yogurt but those are a traditional popsicle shape, not rocket-shaped OTOH, I found it to be a pretty good puzzle, hard enough to be interesting but not a this-should-be-a-Friday.
@Rachel R. Thank you! This idea that a Mobius strip is distinguished by having no end has been turning up a lot in crossword clues and it misses the whole point.
@Jan Merriam-Webster says “Inca” is a noun meaning “a member …” and “Incan” is an adjective.
@Grant Some might suggest that accordions ALWAYS require tuning.
“JAPE”? Really? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before. Nor have I heard “jake” in the sense of “nice.” Just my luck that they would intersect….
@GyrndiIm Use of an Automatic External Defibrillator has been part of the CPR training curriculum for many years. But those devices are universally referred to as “AED,” not “defib.”
@Colin A strip joined end-to-end without a twist — an ordinary ring — also has no end. What distinguishes a Mobius strip is that it only has one side, and one edge.
@Barry Ancona I didn’t have a problem with this clue, but I have generally heard, and used, “sate” in the sense of satisfy — providing at least enough of something that’s desired, not necessarily oversupplying. As in, I am sated by zero emus.
@Helen Wright Chutney is Indian in origin and (in my opinion) refinement. The British variety is just one of the many results of colonialism.
@Mrs. Beeton That’s a good point about the rest of the world. I guess they just have to wait until 31 April.
How does PROUD work? I may be proud of someone who’s honored, but there are plenty of people who are honored who I’m not proud of, and plenty who I’m proud of who aren’t honored. I got the letters, but I still don’t get the reasoning.
@archaeoprof I never heard of it either, but I did get a chuckle when I got to “INCO_MEATO” and saw what it had to be.
@Xword Junkie “Think tanks” refers to all three theme entries collectively.
@festy It’s worth noting that the original name for a turbo was “turbosupercharger,” indicating that it was a particular type of supercharger, namely one powered by a turbine. (And a technical aside, which probably no one here cares about: a turbocharger does put a load on the engine due to the increased back pressure on the exhaust, just not as much of a load as a mechanically-driven supercharger. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”)
There seems to be a glitch in the streak length counting. It says my current streak length is 25, but I haven’t missed one since last summer and when I look at the archive the puzzles are all gold-colored.
@Joe “Science” can also mean the theories and knowledge that come from the study. ESP is fake knowledge; as such, it can be called pseudoscience.
@kkseattle Wow, thanks for clarifying the origin of the new name for the Cleveland baseball team. I thought they’d followed the example of the DC football team and taken the name of one of the repressive classes in The Handmaid’s Tale.
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