Saturday, March 13, 2021, Mary Lou Guizzo

Saturday Themeless by Mary Lou Guizzo

Today our constructor is Mary Lou Guizzo. She and her retired  science teacher husband met at Dayton University and now live in Oakwood, OH which is a suburb of Dayton. Last time she told us: I am a retired medical technologist with a Specialty in Blood Banking (SBB). I’ve worked in hospitals, private labs and the Community Blood Center for many years. She further said she knew of C.C. and knows our moderator is a "rockstar constructor!" Here's what she told me about this puzzle:

Mary Lou and Grandson

Thanks for your kind words Gary. Glad to hear you enjoy the photography as well as the puzzles (Husker: I see her pix on FaceBook). They both make me look at the world in a different way and serve as good diversions. A shout out to my husband who helps me in both these endeavors.

I was happy to feature two strong women in this puzzle, GRETA THUNBERG and the NOTORIOUS RBG aka Ruth Badger Ginsburg. It's not easy to pave the way in perilous circumstances and times, but they have both done that well and with such grace. 

To answer your question about the clues, roughly 20% are different, with 80% being the same or very similar to my submitted clues.  I hope the solvers have enjoyed the puzzle and it has brought them some respite during these trying times.

Best,

Mary Lou

Husker Gary Addendum: When I saw the clue/fill 21. Impish: ELFIN - I asked Mary Lou if she would mind if I referred to her as ELFIN. She got a big laughed out of that said "go ahead!"

Across:

1. Wrap up: SWATHE - Changing a noun SWATH to a verb by adding an "E" like cloth and clothe. Here's a Corflex universal sling has also been SWATHED

7. Game-watching, maybe: ON SAFARI.

15. "Y Is for Yesterday" sleuth Millhone: KINSEY - Our frequent cwd author and her female sleuth

16. One skilled at spelling: SORCERER - or his apprentice

17. __ of: address words: IN CARE.

18. Rocky time?: STONE AGE - MOUNTAIN (standard time) didn't cut it

19. Slow-witted Bergen puppet: SNERD.

20. 8-Down, e.g.: BIO and 8. 2015 best-selling 20-Across: NOTORIOUS RBG - A clever play on rapper NOTORIOUS B.I.G.

22. Boo follower: HISS - The Harbor Playhouse Melodramas will cue you in

23. Key contraction: OER - "O'ER the land of the free..." Renee Fleming nailing the last  word of this Francis Scott Key phrase at Super Bowl XLVIII

24. "Likewise": SAME.

25. Elect: OPT - What did you OPT for at 4. Nicholas II et al.: TSARS or CZARS?

26. Attributive term: ALA - Today's puzzle is ALA Guizzo! 

28. One presented for payment: IOU.

31. Driver's aid: TEE.

32. Legal show for 40 years, with "The": PEOPLE'S COURT - It's biggest fan!

36. Youngest-ever "Time" Person of the Year: GRETA THUNBERG.

39. Formal seizure: CONFISCATION - I confiscated some interesting items as a teacher over the years

41. Tyke: TOT.

44. Early Beatle Sutcliffe: STU - STU quit the band to go study art. The Beatles put him on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album. He is to the extreme left peeking over a blue hat.

45. "The Last Jedi" villain Kylo: REN - Here ya go!

46. Sticky substance: GOO - Yeah, I'm the only one who put TAR

47. Pique: WHET - "The design of the restaurant PIQUED my curiosity and the aromas WHETTED my appetite."

49. Tennis strategy: LOB - How 'bout a between-the-legs LOB shot?

51. Brits' luxury cars: JAGS - In Britain, the full name has three syllables

52. Singer who founded a sewing company: ISAAC - Did he invent the sewing machine?

54. Seasonal drink: NOG.

55. "Romeo Must Die" star: JET LI.

56. Riviera resort, briefly: ST TROPEZ - French major granddaughter says the two T's kind of blend together into SAN TROPAY

58. President, at times: VETOER - FDR leads the league with over 600 VETOES

59. "__ Wins By a Hare": Bugs Bunny cartoon: TORTOISE.

60. Dog on a bun: WEENIE.

61. Throw that anticipates the receiver's timely arrival: SPOT PASS - QB, "I'm throwing this PASS to that SPOT so be ready!

62. Puck: SPRITE - I'll bet you recognize this 14-yr-old who played Puck in the 1935 production of A Midsummer's Night Dream without looking at his name at  the bottom of the picture

Down:

1. Business concerned with going downhill: SKI SHOP.

2. Jets' home: WINNIPEG - NHL not NFL

3. Great-grandmother, say: ANCESTOR

5. Round up: HERD.

6. Word with chart or color: EYE - Here's a CHART on EYE COLOR

7. Actor Davis: OSSIE - OSSIE and wife Ruby Dee

9. Full house sign: SRO - Not so much these days

10. Bad marks: ACNE

11. Touches: FEELS.

12. Co-Nobelist with Rabin and Peres: ARAFAT.

13. Ruling period: REGIME.

14. The "I" in "E.I. du Pont": IRENEE - Éleuthère IRÉNÉE du Pont

20. Hot air: BOASTFULNESS - My speed bump! B _ A S T F U _ N _ _ _ sure looked like BLAST FURNACE to me.

26. Some saxes: ALTOS.

27. Listed in Liverpool?: LEANT - I wrote to Mary Lou to make sure I had this right and she agreed that Listed is the past tense of List (usually heard as a listing or leaning boat) and LEANT is a British past tense for LEAN, hence the Liverpool reference. Very cool clue!

29. Cup fraction: OUNCE - My science lab never strayed into the labyrinth of English measures. How many milliliters are there in a liter is infinitely easier than how many ounces are in a cup.

30. NFL coach Meyer: URBAN - URBAN has not coached in the NFL yet but will this year. He leaves a very successful but checkered past in the college coaching ranks. 38. Modern-day checking suggestion: GOOGLE IT if you must

33. Chest muscle, briefly: PEC and 34. Phi follower: CHI and 35. Vietnamese festival: TET - Familiar cwd puzzle veterans.

37. Pasta order: RIGATONI.

40. "Nuh-uh!": NO SIREE - Ya gotta have some miles on your tires to remember this song.

41. Citrus garnishes: TWISTS - I had TWISTS and ZESTS in Saturday puzzles very recently 

42. "C'mon, I'm not that good!": OH STOP.

43. Italian playhouse: TEATRO - A 1778 playbill from the very first production in a very famous TEATRO 

48. Pulitzer-winning "The Goldfinch" novelist Donna: TARTT.

50. Inches: OOZES.

51. Yankee whose #2 was retired in 2017: JETER - An iconic introduction

53. Fowl area: COOP.

55. Cherokee on wheels: JEEP.

57. __ mater: PIA - The innermost layer enveloping the brain 

58. Golfs on wheels, briefly: VWS - Everything you want to know

Saturday, January 30, 2021 Joe Deeney

Saturday Themeless by Joe Deeney 

Joe and his
lovely daughter born in April

Here we have another challenging Saturday pinwheel-style puzzle consisting of 10-letter troikas by Joe, our Supply Chain Project Manager in Massachusetts.

Here is what Joe had to say about this puzzle: 

Hi Gary,

Thanks for reaching out. All is well here, hope the same for you.

This is the same grid layout as my puzzle published in the LA Times July 25, 2020 (hg - both are posted just below). This puzzle originally started life as an offshoot of that puzzle. I submitted that original puzzle to the New York Times and got a polite rejection, noting they especially liked the NE corner. I decided used that corner to design what would become this puzzle and submitted it to them - they passed again. I submitted the original puzzle to 

Rich which he accepted. At that point I rebuilt the NW corner of today's puzzle, since it was the same as the original, and sent that on to Rich as well, and was very happy to get the thumbs up from him on it.

As I look at the puzzle today, LISLE and BEREA stick out as fill I wouldn't tolerate anymore, but I hope there is enough fun among the long answers to make up for those clunkers.

-Joe

Today's grid and Joe's identical 7/20/20 grid

 

Let's Take Off!

Across:

1. Ones who usually know what to do with their hands: CARDSHARPS - This CARD SHARP (SHARK) isn't dealing hands off the top of the deck

11. She taught Butch and Sundance Spanish for their Bolivian robberies: ETTA.

15. Turn yellow: CHICKEN OUT.

16. Level: SHIM - Using a SHIM (noun) to SHIM (verb) up a doorframe to level

17. Italian menu word meaning "hunter": CACCIATORE - I not only got it, I spelled it correctly!

18. Rig: SEMI - "See ya on down the road, Jack!"

    
19. Spot about being green, for short: PSA - Public Service Announcement telling you to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle so we don't 30. Exhaust: USE UP our natural resources 

20. Earthquakes or Fire, briefly: MLS TEAM.

22. Kind of engine: JET.

23. Lhasa __: APSO - Lhasa is the capital of Tibet and APSO is the Tibetan word for hairy

24. Snack chip: DORITO.

26. Row houses?: FRATS - FRAT row in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

29. Agamemnon pair: NUS - Αγαμέμνονα

32. In again: RETRO - 80's? I wore those Converse Chuck Taylor's twenty years before that.

33. Only: LONE.

34. Social science classic: DAS KAPITAL - A rare first edition Marx signed four days after its 1867 publication 

36. DEA employee: AGT - We see lots of AGENTS clued here

37. Research Triangle city: RALEIGH.

38. Green of "Casino Royale": EVA - She is wearing a V-NECK like we saw in Jeff Stillman's Thursday puzzle

39. French archipelago: GUADELOUPE - In the Lesser Antilles

41. Cello's lack: FRET.

42. City with a Cleveland Browns training facility: BEREA, Ohio on Lou Groza Boulevard (you have to be a real (old) NFL fan to know of Lou "The Toe" Groza

43. Network operated by the U.S. Space Force: GPS - A GPSIII satellite just before launch by the U.S. Space Force last year

44. Hosiery thread: LISLE - I knew from doing cwd's and Joe said he would not use again.

45. Theater company?: ESCORT.

47. Vet school subj.: ANAT.

49. DIRECTV parent: ATT 

50. Hotel convenience: MINIBAR  Check out the cost of a Snickers and a Coke 

53. Get rid of: AXE.

56. "Kills bugs dead" brand: RAID - My ants seemed to be taking a shower in RAID but this stuff wiped 'em all out in an hour

58. It doesn't affect a starting pitcher's win-loss record: NO DECISION - In this summary below, C. Morton pitched 7.0 innings but did not get the win because R. Osuna was the pitcher of record when the Astros scored the winning run.

60. Permanently mark: ETCH.

61. Hard to follow, facetiously: CLEAR AS MUD - Try to explain baseball's infield fly rule to someone. 

62. True: REAL.

63. Trials with blindfolds, perhaps: TASTE TESTS.

Down:

1. Soyuz initials: CCCP - Союз Советских Социалистических Республик

2. Revelations: AHAS.

3. Like una heredera: RICA - Heredera means heiress and RICA means rich

4. XXV x XXVIII: DCC - Screenshot of an online Roman numberal calculator I used

5. Cuts corners: SKIMPS - This package SKIMPS on the shrimp

6. Recovers: HEALS.

7. Snack with an unappetizing name: ANTS ON A LOG - Celery, peanut butter and raisins. What's not to like?

8. Square __: ROOT - My online Roman Numeral calculator does not appear to do square ROOTS.

9. Unmitigated: PURE.

10. Place: STEAD - During the Civil War men could pay someone to go fight in their STEAD

11. Start at the beginning?: ESS - Start

12. Nerves: THE JITTERS - Never had 'em from coffee

13. Cause of many fictional paradoxes: TIME TRAVEL - In Back To The Future Marty McFly meets his mom and dad when he was their age

14. "Did it start already?": AM I TOO LATE.

21. Transmute: MORPH - Sir Isaac Newton's notes for transmuting lead into gold with the "philosopher's stone"

23. Put away the dishes?: ATE.

25. Portuguese royal: REI - Across the Pyrenees in Spain it is REY

26. Olympics opening ceremony VIP: FLAG BEARER - Soviet weightlifter Yury Vaslov carried the 35-lb flag with one hand for a full five minutes

27. Threat to world peace: ROGUE STATE and people who 37. Provide new pieces for?: REARM them

28. Ross Sea locale: ANTARCTICA - About 3,000 miles south of Melbourne

31. Flutters with excitement: SKIPS A BEAT - There was this JH dance once... 

34. Indian lentil stew: DAL All you want to know

35. Spend time in a cellar, perhaps: AGE - I'm seem to be doing that above ground 

40. __ juvante: with God's help: DEO - Latin

41. Honda subcompact: FIT - Their 5-door subcompact

44. Roundup tool: LARIAT - Unlike a lasso, a LARIAT is made of stiffer rope so that the noose stays open when it is thrown

46. Bit of color: TINCT.

48. Mother-of-pearl: NACRE - A familiar cwd substance

51. Pelican St. city: NOLA - New Orleans LA

52. Shakespearean warning word: IDES - Beware the IDES of March: Soothsayer warning Julius Caesar of the Ides of March - the day on which he was assassinated. Illustration for Julius Caesar from an edition of William Shakespeare's works published 1858.

53. Designs: AIMS.

54. Cancel: X-OUT - Also a golf ball that has a slight cosmetic defect is sold for much less is called an X-OUT

55. The odds are with them: ENDS - Every house has a drawer full of odds and ENDS

57. UPS alternative: DHL and...

59. Seattle-to-Reno dir.: SSE.