Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell, and it’s full of Stump. A half-hour’s worth for me. Phew.
Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:
2-D, five letters, “You might get one at City Hall.” Could that be right? I’ll try it. Yes, it’s right.
4-D, eight letters, “John Muir’s ‘magic wand in Nature's hand.’” Beautiful.
17-A, ten letters, “Mold-made French dessert with milk and almonds.” Thank you, James Joyce’s Dubliners.
28-A, five letters, “Hair Buster Gel brand.” Perhaps a giveaway, but it fooled me.
25-D, six letters, “Grafted plant with red and white edibles.” O brave new world, / That has such plant life in’t.
35-D, eight letters, “Turned the page?” Clever.
38-D, eight letters, “Father of fairy tales.” Heh.
49-A, seven letters, “Math’s ‘unifying thread.’” I’ll take your word for it.
56-D, three letters, “View preamble.” PRE? PUR? Help.
57-D, three letters, “Exciting or excellent, these days.” And sometimes repurposed for comic effect.
62-A, ten letters, “Professor’s preservative.” Made me laugh.
But my favorite in this puzzle: 31-A, eight letters, “Peacock’s display.”
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Today’s Saturday Stumper
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comments: 7
INLAW. PINETREE. BLANCMANGE. (It’s mentioned in “The Dead.”)
DRANO. (I was thinking some brand of mousse.) POMATO.
DOGEARED. PAPABEAR. ALGEBRA. IMO. LIT. (Sluggo knows.)
DONOTERASE. EGOMANIA.
Do birds posses an “ego” (either in the psychoanalytical or philosophical sense)?
Think of a metaphorical peacock: “one making a proud display of oneself” (Merriam-Webster). I thought of that only after getting the answer.
That’s one of the reasons I stopped doing crosswords. In the “Golden Age” the setters used quotation marks or question marks to let you know the word (in this case peacock) is being used in a non-standard way. In this case as a metaphor rather than as a nominative for a bird.
If they expected an answer to be an abbreviation then one of the key clue words would be abbreviated.
Cats and refrigerators are quite different entities but if the clue was: Cat and refrigerator “commonality”? I’d gladly accept PURR, TAIL, or PLACEFORFISH..
I see your point about clueing. I get irked when a word used as a word in a clue isn’t in italics or quotation marks. Me, I think “Peacock’s display” is fine, because the metaphorical meaning is one of the meanings of the word “peacock.”
I get your first and third answers, but what does TAIL mean?
TAIL: might be obscure because people rarely look behind their fridges. What goes into the wall socket?
Oh, now I see — thanks.
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