Saturday, March 21, 2020

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Stan Newman, was a relatively easy puzzle. That seems right in a difficult time.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

1-A, seven letters, “Squealing stoppers.” OILCANS? No.

1-D, seven letters, “Holistic notion.” I hadn’t thought of this word in ages.

28-A, nine letters, “Honor for Peter, Paul and Mary.” Mildly clever.

33-D, four letters, “A matter of course.” MEAL? Something to do with golf? Even after getting the answer, I didn’t understand it, until I did.

34-D, three letters, “$2000 appliance, circa 1983.” MAC? No, wrong price, wrong year, and another answer rules out MAC. Where are (at least most of) those appliances now?

39-A, nine letters, “Tabloid fodder.” It took me a while to figure out the last six letters of the answer.

54-A, seven letters, “Part of the erstwhile Microsoft Student suite.” Also part of the Microsoft Works suite. “Suite”?

The funnest thing in today’s Stumper: the nine-letter crossing answers for 34-A, “East side” and 20-D, “Nietzsche, e.g.” My guess is that the puzzle began with that crossing.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

comments: 1

Michael Leddy said...

GAGLAWS. GESTALT. SAINTHOOD. TRIP. FAX.

And now you can send a fax for free from your ’puter. Yes, there are insurance companies that still insist on faxed documents.

SEXPLOITS. ENCARTA.

I remember Encarta on a Sony Vaio, and thinking how cool it was to have an encyclopedia (even a mediocre one) on call. Pre-Wikipedia.

FRIEDRICE. FRIEDRICH. That’s nice.