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
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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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