Author: Mark Feldman
Theme: Phrases derived from bird parts.
- 18a: Keen observer (EAGLE EYE).
- 20a: Horripilation (GOOSE FLESH). Ick.
- 32a: Dark red sometimes called Spanish wine (PIGEON BLOOD). Double ick.
- 48a: Jimmy Buffett fan (PARROT HEAD).
- 50a: Certain carpentry joint (DOVE TAIL).
I'll be honest. I could have done without the flesh and blood fills. Give me goose neck and pigeon toed anyday.
Sunny Spots:
- 52a: "Chico and the Man" costar Freddie (PRINZE). I loved this show growing up. Looking back on it now, I'm not exactly sure why.
- 35d: Big lug (PALOOKA). Great word.
Sundries:
- 15a: Yaz had 1,844 (RBIS). I've probably ranted about this before, because I have a real pet peeve against RBIS. The plural of RBI (run batted in) is RBI (runs batted in). One RBI, two RBI, 150 RBI. It's already plural. RBIS is bogus.
- 43a: They're cobbled together (SHOES). Kind of obvious, but sorta cute.
- 46a: Use a blowtorch on, perhaps (WELD).
- 47a: "High ___" (1952 Gary Cooper film) (NOON).
- 56a: Golf hole goal (PAR). Well, maybe. For really good golfers, par is not a great result. For people like me, bogey would be fine. Par is the "expected" result, but not necessarily the goal.
- 1d: Argue over a price (HAGGLE). Reminds me of one of the great scenes in "Monty Python's Life of Brian". Here it is:
- 6d: Grew crops without much water (DRY FARMED).
- 12d: Stall (BUY TIME).
- 13d: Hastened, with "up" (SPEEDED). Shouldn't this just be SPED?
- 19d: Actor Estevez and designer Pucci (EMILIOS). Plural names are always kind of a stretch.
- 21d: Dance that requires a bar (LIMBO).
- 31d: Suddenly reacts to a strong wind, as a window (FLIES OPEN).
- 32d: Holiday during which many bagel stores close (PASSOVER).
- 34d: Like some triples (STANDUP). Baseball clue. At first, I was thinking college dorm rooms, but even there you have room to lay down.
- 43d: Get cheeky with? (SPANK). Cute.
- 49d: Nonkosher (TREF). I learned this from puzzles.
Suns of Bitches:
- 11d: 11th-century French saint (THEOBALD). Yeah, okay.
Not too much to say about this one. It was okay, but it didn't thrill me.
Thanks for listening.
- Pete M.
6 comments:
good question about SPEEDED. for some reason, "sped up" to me sounds like it means "went faster" (intransitive), and SPEEDED up sounds like it means "caused to go faster" (transitive). is there any grammatical logic behind that distinction?
I like the sped/speeded question too -- joon could be right, feels right!
Did anyone notice that "JOAN D'ARC" fits 11D and has a correct letter crossing with 28A BLAME? Who notices centuries when working bottom to top? Of course, it would have been JEANNE D'ARC. Pfui. It took me a while to convert that saint (pun) to THEOBALD.
Good thing I had PASSOVER at 32D or I might have tried the dark red color as a variant of the French "sang de boeuf" (beef blood) used in ceramics... I appreciated the bird-words anyway, not finding myself finicky over the -flesh and -blood images. Good theme!
have downloaded the remaining puzzles in the nys calendar, but it appears that this friday's "weekend warrior" (10/3) is also the last, as the paper printed its last issue today...
r.i.p. -- and thank you, peter gordon, for a *great* complement to the nyt (and great puzzles in their own right!) -- and (even when i'm not totally comfortable with your style) thank you, pete, for the lively blogging!
;-)
janie
reprieved? here's hopin'.
just read elsewhere that the nys is being published tomorrow. hmmmm.
;-)
j.
I would think if anyone was going to publicize the news of the Sun folding, it would be the Sun. So far, I've seen no new news there.
Ugh, ran into many false starts today. Had HITS, then RUNS, then finally RBIS. Wanted FLEXESOUT for FLIESOPEN, SAME for ALSO, INAFOG for SPACED, and GOOSETEETH for GOOSEFLESH. Looking back on that last one, I am now realizing that geese have no teeth, but then again I have no idea what "Horripilation" means, so for all I knew it could have meant "oxymoron" ...
Way too many erasings for a Monday. I chalk that up to my lack of sleep last night and not the puzzle, however.
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