Saturday, February 18, 2023

Today’s Saturday Stumper

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.

comments: 3

Michael Leddy said...

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.

joecab said...

I knew BUG OUT as a war thing from old cartoons and comics. Even its Wiktionary entry mentions its possible origins from 1930s cartoons.

Michael Leddy said...

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.