Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, is by the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman, composing as “Anna Stiga,” the alias he uses for easier Stumpers. And this one was easy, certainly the easiest Stumper I’ve done. 1-A, seven letters, “Frame + engine, transmission et al.”: a gimme. 1-D, six letters, “Yogi's power point.” Another gimme. And that “Kept happening” (60-A, eight letters). Again and again.
I liked the elements of dowdy in today’s puzzle:
15-D, seven letters, “‘Brush your breath’ sloganeer (c. 1980).” A forty-year-old advertising slogan. And we’re off!
16-A, eight letters, “Where a pat might be placed.” Feels like New York dowdy to me.
31-D, three letters, “Manufacturer of tiny bricks.” O childhood.
34-A, fifteen letters, “Think.” Yep. That’s what ya gotta do.
42-D, six letters, “Gershwin’s first hit song.” So first that I don’t even think of it as a Gershwin song.
And the cleverness:
6-D, six letters, “On fast food, perhaps.” In every sense.
7-D, fifteen letters, “[NO CLUE NEEDED].” Got it.
53-D, four letters, “Skin source.” I first thought of critters. Must be the Tiger King influence.
And the kind of clue that’s becoming a regular, one per Stumper:
52-D, four letters, “It’s far from Aristotelean.” Got it, even at a distance. (Yes, the clue should read Aristotelian.)
There’s one clue whose answer feels dubious: 50-A, four letters, “It’s seen on Irishman posters.” Given the answer, I wonder if the absence of The from the film’s title is meant to be meaningful.
No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Today’s Saturday Stumper
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comments: 8
CHASSIS. CHAKRA. RECURRED.
DENTYNE. HARDROLL. PEZ. USETHEOLDNOODLE. SWANEE.
ILLFED. SELFEXPLANATORY. SPUD.
TELE.
NIRO. NIRO doesn’t signify without DE, does it? But I wonder if Irishman, without The, is somehow meant to suggest NIRO without DE. If so, the answer still feels dubious.
I wonder how the usage counts for USETHENOODLE and USEYOURNOODLE compare?
Skin as a clue for SPUD wouldn’t dress appropriately in England as a “jacket” is required. By the way: ever hear Stompin’ Tom Connor’s song “Bud the spud”?
I got the gist of the “pat” clue; I just figured FLAPJACK as an answer. Are there soft rolls?
Steven
I had to look: Google’s Ngram Viewer has results only for “use your noodle.” No “the” and no “the old.” “Use the noodle,” minus “old,” doesn’t sound esp. familiar to me.
Jacket: groan! There must be a further pun in there with salads and dressing for dinner.
The Internets have recipes for soft dinner rolls. I think of a hard roll as a 1930s-movie breakfast: coffee and a roll. I made pancakes this morning myself.
I’ll look for that song on YouTube.
My wife and son are dutifully going abut their jobs. My wife has a weekday 8 a.m. phone call. Being retired, I haven't had much alteration from my routine. But, since it's Saturday, I too made pancakes and bacon for everyone, at a decenter hour.
Pancakes must be in the air. I made them because we have cow’s milk in the house — first time I’ve made them in years. They and bacon are both considered health foods, right?
Coincidence time. Just reading Dashiel Hammett’s “Red Harvest” (1927), p. 44:
“When I had finished eating I went up to my room, fifth floor front. I unlocked the door and went in, snapping on the light.
A bullet kissed a hole in the door-frame close to my noodle.
More bullets made more holes in the door, door-frame and wall, but by that time I had carried my noodle into a safe corner, one out of line with the window.”
Now, that is using your noodle...
Writing not quite as snappy as Raymond Chandler and late 1920s slang often obscure (a “lunger” is someone with tuberculosis?)
There’s the old Baader-Meinhof effect. I made a joke recently: I looked up “Baader-Meinhof effect,” and then I started seeing the term everywhere.
Yes, a lunger is someone with tuberculosis or some other disease of the lungs. As you likely already know, Hammett himself had TB.
Not exactly the same thing, but when I came home from getting gas for the mower this afternoon, I saw a child across the street had somehow gotten a pool noodle on the roof of his family’s house.
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