Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, has some fine pairs of clues and answers. Or at least fine by me:
31-Across, nine letters, “Dove.” You were thinking of birds, perhaps?
56-Across, ten letters, “They have defensive ends.”
11-Down, ten letters, “Bridge beam.” Thank you, Vertigo, for that answer.
13-Down, five letters, “Minor key.”
No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Today’s Saturday Stumper
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comments: 6
PLUMMETED. APOLOGISTS. CANTILEVER. ISLET.
In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Midge (a commercial artist) talks to Scottie about the brassiere she’s drawing: “It's brand new. Revolutionary uplift. No shoulder straps, no back straps, but does everything a brassiere should do. It works on the principle of the cantilever bridge.”
PLUMMETED: I'm going to call foul on this one. Diving implies controlled descent; plummeting does not.
Your you were thinking birds gave me the idea tat it could be BEAUTY BAR which I believe is what Dove brands itself as.
Steven
I have to agree. Dive suggests deliberate action; plummet does not. But both Merriam-Webster and Rodale’s Synonym Finder give dive as a synonym of plummet.
BEAUTYBAR would be a great answer for “Dove.” No soap, beauty bar!
The words kept nagging me, so I checked the OED. One definition of dive: “Aviation. To descend or fall precipitously with increasing momentum.” And one of plummet: “To drop or fall rapidly or precipitously; to plunge down.” But I still agree that on sight the two words are not convincingly synonymous. I was so taken with thinking that there must be a nine-letter word for pigeon that I didn’t think enough about whether PLUMMETED really fits.
Quote from Shortz: It's a clu, not a definition.
Yes, but I think “dropped” or “fell” would be a truer clue. But not as sneaky.
She dove into the pool. She plummeted into the pool. Pretty dramatic difference.
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