Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Steve Mossberg, is a tough one. 16-A, four letters, “Done quickly?” No, not at all, in large part because of 16-A. (No spoilers: I explain in the comments.)
Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:
5-D, three letters, “Elvis played it between tour stops.”Suprising, not surprising.
13-D, nine letters, “Question before the cameras.” Fun.
17-A, ten letters, “Going over everything.” I kept thinking the answer must be a participle.
19-A, four letters, “Bug out.” I didn’t know it, so I hereby deem it arcane.
26-D, ten letters, “Comparatively slick.” C'mon man. This is pretty ridic.
33-A, fifteen letters, “Star Trek intro claim to fame.” My starting point. A giveaway, I think.
39-A, seven letters, “Party central of a sort.” Ugh.
52-D, three letters, “Some PJs.” Seems ridiculously arbitrary. “Some almost anything” would work as well.
55-A, ten letters, “Rolls in it.” I wanted LUXURIATES.
My favorite in this puzzle: 30-A, four letters, “Slimmed-down food department.” Now that’s one clever clue.
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments. But if you know what Elvis played, you might agree that
everyone should play.
Saturday, February 18, 2023
Today’s Saturday Stumper
By Michael Leddy at 8:42 AM
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comments: 3
THRU. UKE. AREWELIVE. ALLTERRAIN. FLEE. SLITHERIER.
SPLITINFINITIVE. FRATROW. SMS. (Smalls, right?) MAKESAMINT. DELI.
My complaint about THRU: Through is a preposition, an adverb, and an adjective. If you’re done, finished, that’s the adjective. The informal short spelling is common when the word is a preposition but not when it’s an adjective. Google this morning:
I’m thru: 112,000 hits
I’m through: 1,280,000
We’re thru: 18.600 hits
We’re through: 1,100,000
Thru with work: 14,600 hits
Through with work: 522,000
Clueing THRU as “done” is not especially true to the word’s use.
I knew BUG OUT as a war thing from old cartoons and comics. Even its Wiktionary entry mentions its possible origins from 1930s cartoons.
I immediately looked it up in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, and there it was. I knew it only as meaning “freak out” (I’m buggin’ out). I was trying to be tongue in cheek by saying the kind of thing crossword-blog comments sometimes amount to — if I don’t know it, it has no place in the puzzle.
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