Saturday, March 2, 2024, Stella Zawistowski

Themeless Saturday by Stella Zawistowski

The look the face of our weightlifting constructor Stella reflects some of the anguish I felt as I worked my way through the latest of her always always challenging puzzles. After bobbing and weaving through the grid, I had enough letters to start to make sense of her ten-letter fills and finish up. Her top two ten-letter fills were fun to learn. 

As you can see in the grid, I did have one cell where my coin flip failed. My lack of knowledge of three-string Japanese instruments and Rhianna's music was my undoing.

Across:

1. Unplanned adoption: FOSTER FAIL - FAILING at being a FOSTER parent for a pet and then falling in love with and adopting that pet hardly seems like a FAILING to me. 😀

11. Adoption org.: SPCA.

15. Intended to prevent a torrent, perhaps: ANTI-PIRACY 

16. Name on the highest-grossing concert film in history: ERAS.

17. Certain Central American: SALVADORAN - The lovely custodian at our school is COSTA RICAN and that went in first.

18. Natural traps: WEBS.

19. Olympic badminton team, e.g.: DUO.

20. Victor Hugo's world: MONDE - MONDE is French for world

22. Sea bream, in a sushi bar: TAI - ... and my culinary education continues

23. Sushi bar list: SAKES - As long as we're here...

25. Snooty creatures?: ANTEATERS. 😀

27. Divine: PREDICT - Carnac's gift was to be able to divine the answers without first seeing the questions.

29. "Awesome!": SWEET.

30. "Awesome!": YES.

31. Cheer (up): BUOY.

33. Working days?: STINTS.

34. Practitioner of traditional medicine: HERBALIST.

36. Burlesque: SATIRE - A BURLESQUE is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.

39. Smallest ratite: KIWI - Ratite: A bird having a flat breastbone without a keel, and so unable to fly.

40. Elle King's "Ex's & __": OHS - A Top Ten album

43. Subject of the 2014 documentary "Game Over": ATARI.

44. Jam: BAD SPOT.

46. Get rich: MAKE A PILE.

50. Melancholy work: ELEGY - Sadly, dirge didn't work

51. Salt target: ICE.😀

52. Levi's Stadium player: NINER.

53. Word with Days and Holiday: INN. 😀 Motels 

54. Well-thought-out: SANE.

56. "Hubba hubba!": VA VA VA VOOM - We had this recently with only two VA's but I remember it better with three

60. Let out: EMIT.

61. Feature of non-eco-friendly containers: ONE TIME USE - Why our landfills get full

62. Syllables in Rihanna's "What's My Name?": NANA If you need some raunchy lyrics

63. Moved mindfully?: TELEPORTED - Star Trek did this a lot. Kirk never actually said, "Beam me up Scotty."

Down:

1. Scale tones: FAS - Do, Re, Me, FA, So, La, Ti, Do

2. Rashly: ON A DARE.

3. Name on some church-run hospitals: ST LUKES.

4. Saved to watch later: TIVOED.

5. Org. that regulates HFCs: EPA.

6. Free (of): RID.

7. Step one: FROM A TO B. 😀

8. Noted New York Judge: AARON - Judge is capitalized so...

9. "It's all too much": I CAN'T.

10. Paul of "Hollywood Squares": LYNDE - The center square

11. Compete on "Project Runway," say: SEW.

12. Many a fan of "The Baby-Sitters Club": PRE-TEEN.

13. "Willkommen" musical: CABARET.

14. Sue Bird's WNBA record 3,234: ASSISTS.

21. Home of New York's Museum Mile: EAST SIDE.

23. Northern __ apples: SPY - Here ya go

24. Like the Chukchi people of Russia: SIBERIAN.

26. Fool: TWIT.

28. Fix: CURE.

32. Yona of "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic," for one: YAK - No idea.

33. Media personality JoJo: SIWA - No idea.

34. Bring on: HIRE.

35. Let out: LIBERATE.

36. Instrument played with a bachi: SAMISEN - A one minute sample

37. Region of Chile used by NASA to test equipment for Mars missions: ATACAMA.

38. Fooled: TAKEN IN.

40. Expand, in a way: OPEN OUT.

41. Upturned feature of some snakes: HOG NOSE.

42. Pen: STY.

45. Shard: SLIVER.

47. Pirouette, essentially: PIVOT.

48. Unworthy of consideration: INANE.

49. Tool box item: LEVEL.

55. Text to someone who's late: ETA.

57. Velvet rope crosser: VIP.

58. "O Deus ego __ te": Catholic hymn: AMO - My God, I love Thee, 

59. Scrip spec: MED.

BTW, our newspaper carries this puzzle and a second puzzle they call The Daily Commuter Crossword that is much easier. For years this puzzle has had Jacqueline Mathews listed as the constructor. Ms. Mathews of Spokane has retired and now the daily constructor has been Stella Zawistowski for several weeks (see Created by under the puzzle).

Saturday, September 19, 2020, Stella Zawistowski

Saturday Themeless by Stella Zawistowski 

Our self-proclaimed "brawny brain" is back with another Saturday entry. Stella is a Brooklyn-based copywriter at a pharmaceutical advertising agency and a power lifter. In her last puzzle she introduced us to a North African egg dish called SHAKSHUKA which I have yet to try. 

This is what she had to say about this puzzle and her cluing/fill philosophy:

Thank you kindly! Here's a note on the puzzle:

My seed for this puzzle was TROUSER ROLE, as I am a lover of classical music (although not especially an opera fan). Since the last time I had a themeless published in LAT, I've grown a lot in terms of considering entries for their potential for solvers to realize after the fact what the clue was hinting at, even if they didn't know the term beforehand. I am definitely in the camp of "learning something new from crosswords is good" and not "solving a puzzle should be about figuring out tricky clues for things I already know." But I've moved more to the side of "learn the thing while solving the puzzle," not "see the unfamiliar thing, have to Google it afterward, and THEN learn the thing."

PIANISSIMO was not a seed entry, but now that you know I'm a classical music fan, you can see why I chose that over other possibilities for 14-Across!

Across:

1. On the move: ASTIR.

6. At least four yrs. old, for cognac: VSOP - Very Superior Old Pale

10. TV series for 17 seasons: NCIS - Some cases are solved on the barest of threads that can strain credulity but it's all fun and the bad guys always get caught in an hour

14. Like much of the first movement of the "Moonlight" Sonata: PIANISSIMO - Visual and audio representation of this beautiful piece played PIANISSIMO (quietly)

16. Bit of ceramic cookware: OLLA - "Cooking pot" in Spanish (a familiar crossword utensil)

17. Cold complication: BRONCHITIS.

18. Goes to court?: WOOS - Gotta love this one Stella! Court is used as a verb ("to court" is an infinitive and not an prepositional phrase) makes this fun. Wait, you put SUES first? Uh, so did I. 

19. What Kim might call Khloé: SIS - Kardashian fam. Either you know them or don't care.

20. Weather report word: HIGHS.

21. Trick users, in a way: PHISH.

Don't share your personal info!

22. Texter's signoff: TTFN - Ta Ta For Now

23. Most roguish: SLIEST.

25. Brit's Bordeaux: CLARET - What's this all about?

28. Menace, feline-style: HISS AT - Kitty's mad!

29. Duel purpose?: HONOR - Hamilton had been a "second" for 12 of these matters of HONOR before Burr killed him in this one. This plaque in Weehawken, N.J. marks the site

30. Rain gear preservers: BOOT TREES.

33. Latin lamb: AGNUS - AGNUS Dei mean Lamb of God

34. Per ssa.gov, baby name that's far more popular when "a" is added to it: ANN - How 'bout dat?

35. Airy spaces: ATRIA - Beijing lays claim to have the world's tallest ATRIUM at 620'

36. Having two equal-length legs: ISOSCELES - Good putters keep an ISOSCELES triangle shape all through their stroke

38. French darling: CHERI.

39. Like many renewals: YEARLY.

40. Expressed disapproval of: CHIDED.

41. Road hog?: HARLEY - Former students of mine run this hog shop in west Omaha

42. French wood: BOIS - Matisse's famous The Path in the BOIS de Boulogne 

43. Humor, e.g.: GENRE - Oscar n

44. Cantina breakfast component: HUEVO - Huevo Rancheros (Rancher's Eggs)

46. Old gum mach. inserts: CTS.

49. Not pizzicato: ARCO - A young girl plucking violin strings (pizzicato) with her bow at the ready to play ARCO 

50. Hot flower: MOLTEN LAVA.

52. Spa offering: PEEL.

53. Objection to hustling: DONT RUSH ME.

54. Being of old Rome: ESSE - Another crossword stalwart 

55. "__ yes!": I SAY.

56. Tsukiji Market fish offerings: TUNAS - The final TUNA auction at this Tokyo facility before it moved to more modern quarters

Down:

1. Some PD calls: APBS 2. "Hey" assistant: SIRI - "Hey Siri, don't police say BOLO (Be On the LookOUT) instead of APB today?"

3. Sangre de Cristo Mountains resort: TAOS - Not a bad backdrop

4. Comfort, e.g.: INN - or Holiday INN

5. Shaky measurement standard?: RICHTER SCALE - The 1964 Alaska Earthquake was 9.2 on the RICHTER SCALE

6. Churchill trademark: V-SIGN.

7. Jedi nemesis: SITH.

8. They may be intentional: OMISSIONS.

9. Bldgs. with boxes: POS - Crossword constructor Evan Kalish has a website with pictures of over 10,000 Post Offices

10. "Listen up!": NOW HEAR THIS 

11. Sheltered from the outside world: CLOISTERED - Fewer and fewer people are choosing the CLOISTERED life

12. Response to a beating: I LOST.

13. Dress uniform part: SASH - George Washington's SASH was lost to history until it was rediscovered at Harvard's Peabody Museum in 2011

15. Loose-fitting dress: SHIFT - A straight, unwaisted dress

21. Green ice cream tidbit: PISTACHIO NUT - On the tree

22. Male opera character played by a female performer: TROUSER ROLE - A new phrase for me. This is when a male character is played by a female performer to make use of the higher voice. The most famous role is Cherubino (left in picture) in The Marriage of Figaro

24. Amphibious WWII craft: LST.

25. Masala-flavored drink: CHAI - In India, Masala means spice and CHAI means tea. Masala-flavored CHAI is spiced tea

26. Mill input: LOGS - LOGS in, lumber out

27. Travel delays, say: ANNOYANCES - We had one in Minneapolis and almost called C.C.

28. Certain cell contents: HONEY.

30. Hypes: BALLYHOOS - Famous Johnny Mercer song

Hooray for Hollywood
That screwy BALLYHOOEY Hollywood
Where any office boy or young mechanic can be a panic
With just a good looking pan
And any barmaid can be a star maid
If she dances with or without a fan

31. Word on an Irish euro: EIRE - Here and in crosswords

32. Spoken: SAID.

37. "Maid of Athens, __ we part ... ": Byron: ERE.

40. Charge to get in: COVER.

41. Toast portion: HERE'S - The toastee in the scene appears often in cwd's

42. January's "Mad Men" character: BETTY - She should have dumped Don much earlier

43. Hang open: GAPE.

45. It's usually longer than a radius: ULNA.

46. Four-time Oscar-winning lyricist: CAHN - I'll be very impressed if you can know what goes in the two empty cells. Hint: Frank sat this one out. (* Answer below)

47. Rating for a show with lots of oaths: TV MA.

48. MS enclosures: SAES.

50. When Michelangelo began "David": MDI.

51. Sch. on Shaq's résumé: LSU.

*Call Me Irresponsible/Papa's Delicate Condition/ Jackie Gleason