![]() ![]() Okay, this is how I know the Monday puzzle was too difficult - I finished Wednesday a full minute ahead, just like on Tuesday. president” for MBA and not surprisingly, in keeping with the theme, he had been a baseball owner, Yale and Harvard grad, George W. (There was a lot more to like in the fill, STELLAR, EGOMANIA, TWEETS, NONSENSE and ANOMALY as examples).īut, the clue of the day has to go to 35 down that asks for the “Deg. Never having heard of BIGUPS, “Kudos, in street slang”, I went scurrying to Urban Dictionary to get the details but, as it always seems with U.D., one can’t tell the praise from the insults so I’ll just move on to GROK and the rest of Gary’s goodies.Īnd, we quickly get back to baseball and the obligatory rendition of our National Anthem, cleverly signaled as “Key opening?” for OSAY, then “The Little Professor”, Boston Red Sox star of yore, DOM DiMaggio shows up to play center field and, Holy MACKEREL, the game can begin. ![]() Gary’s fill more than matches the imagination of the theme as SNOOKI, MIKA and ARETHA do (gentle) battle over which one will be the puzzle’s DH (my money is on ARETHA) and the rest of us are left to deal with the likes of WAWA and BIGUPS. (Since my Red Sox were able to SWING, HIT, RUN, SLIDE and SCORE at will on opening day yesterday against the Evil Empire, the baseball season started nicely and today we get a chance to do it all over again). ![]() Gary Cee tosses out our first puzzle of the 2013 baseball season and with a theme that begins with MOODSWING and works its way down to FOURSCORE, it’s batter up and get out the pine tar, because we’ve got a free swinging affair for sure! I think O SAY is terrible fill, but I love the clue it got today. Managed to get both mountain ranges with little problems, though I did put in ALTA before ALAI at 15A: Asia's Trans _ Range). I guessed WAR off the W- despite fearing that answer would be some old-time acronym ( 29A: Cabinet department until 1947). I'm been known to have "Morning Joe" on briefly in the mornings from time to time, so I am familiar with co-host MIKA Brzezinski (whose father ZBIGNIEW was National Security Adviser to President Carter) (side note: Dear Santa, please give me a puzzle ZBIGNIEW in it) (side note 2: actually, I think I recently saw ZBIGgie in one of BEQ's puzzles). Wrote in EGOTISM at 3D: Prima donna's problem but it didn't stretch-easily corrected. Glanced back to make sure RAGA was correct for its clue ( 14A: Tamboura player's music) and then moved on. As it was, just over.įlew out of the gate with AMEN and got all the Downs in quick succession. If not for those hiccups, I'd've been under 4 today. Had to leap in cold and get R.E.M. ( 61D: Michael Stipe's band) and ACORN ( 60A: Nut with a cupule) in order to get the traction I needed to finish things off. DON pretty much stopped me from coming straight down the west side of the gird, so I had to come at that SW corner from the east, and not being able to get EYER ( 58A: Leering sort) from the -R or LIE FOR (49D: Help by confirming an alibi, say) from the -FOR, I just couldn't flow right in there. My main problem (and it wasn't much of one) was DOM (42A: One of the DiMaggios) (really, " CANNONBALL RUN" is in your grid and *that's* the DOM you go with?), whom I know only from crosswords and whom I put down as DON, which made seeing ANOMALY very very hard ( 30D: Deviation from the norm). Maybe SNOOKI, I guess, but she's been around long enough that she already feels dated (48D: "Jersey Shore" nickname). At any rate, those were the only answers I could see causing anyone a problem today. I'm also not terribly sure how well known GROK is ( 59D: Totally get, in slang), but I figure it's gotta be better known than BIG UPS (esp. Only reason I tacked "Medium" on there was the slang, particularly BIG UPS, which I can't recall ever seeing in a puzzle, but which I know well from '90s rap. ![]()
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