google.com, pub-2774194725043577, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 L.A.Times Crossword Corner: Wednesday, February 22, 2017 Jascha Smilack

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Feb 22, 2017

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 Jascha Smilack

Theme: THE COLOR OF ANGER.  Each theme fill entry is two words, the first of which is a color. Notably, one color is missing from this exposition, but shows up both in the unifier, and elsewhere, as we will see - in disguise.

20 A. *Fictional road material : YELLOW BRICK.   From the Wizard of Oz, of course.



57 A. *Cola flavor : BLACK CHERRY.



10 D. *One with noble lineage : BLUE BLOOD.  Presumably because, since they never had to do manual labor and led an indoor existence, their pale skin allowed the blue of veins to show through.

14 D. *Floral papal ornament : GOLDEN ROSE.  Despite growing up Catholic, I know nothing of this tradition.

26 D. *Chard, by another name : SILVER BEET.  I knew this was a green leafy plant in the beet family, but didn't know about the silver part, which refers to the white stalk.

33 D. Angrily ignoring the first half of the answers to starred clues? : SEEING RED.  Well, ignoring all the other colors somehow equates to seeing RED, but not GREEN nor VIOLET.  But, OK, let's just go with it.  The color of Magic, BTW, is Octarine.

UPDATE: As Owen pointed out in comments, each of the 2nd words in the theme describes a shade of RED, a subtlety that I completely missed.  This, to hijack a phrase, really ties the puzzle together, and adds an element of elegance.  Well done, Jascha!

High gang, JazzBumpa here to guide you through a late winter color tour.  Let's see if we can get through it without too much rancor.

Across

1. Spot for an AirPod : EAR.   Wireless headphone parking place.

4. Chowder morsel : CLAM.  Soup ingredient.

8. Moscow currency : RUBLE.  The Russian monetary unit for the last 500 years.  Currently equal to about 1.7 US cents.

13. Slept like __ : A LOG.  I wonder how that feels?

15. Color in a Spanish rainbow : ROJO.  Red, of course.  Irritably missing from the theme, but we have it here.


16. Religion of Basra : ISLAM.  Basra is a city in Iraq whose local economy is largely dependent on petroleum.

17. Corn Belt tower : SILO.  Here's an example in Maumee, a suburb of Toledo.


18. Latin I verb : AMAT.  Do I love this entry?  No, I do not.

19. Riyadh resident : SAUDI.  The capital and most populous city in the country.

23. Bookshelf bracket shape : ELL.  The "L" you say!

24. Of a battery terminal : ANODAL.  Specifically, the positive one.  Would it be an anodyne to say I'm positive?

25. Necessity for a game of Ultimate : FRISBEE.  This is the trademark for a flying disc, owned by the Wham-O toy company.  Points are scored by passing the disc to a team mate in the opponent's end zone

27. History class assignment : ESSAY.  A written paper on a specific topic.

30. Elec. or water : UTILity.

31. __ a clue : HASN'T.  I tried HADN'T first.  HAVEN'T also does not work.

34. Slangy pounds : QUID.  British money.  Even before Brexit they opted out of using the Euro.

36. Financial help : LOAN.

39. End __ : USER.

40. Tomato product : PUREE.

41. Preference indicator : VOTE.

42. Religious prefix : THEO-.

43. Grub : EATS.  Unattractive sounding vernacular.

44. Brought about : LED TO.  Preceded and caused whatever then ensued.

45. Tenerife, por ejemplo : ISLA.  Spanish Island.

47. Take the helm : STEER.  Direct the movement of a vehicle, in this case a ship.

49. Surface layers : VENEERS.   Generally decorative, as a fine wood over a less elegant wood.

52. Clogs from France : SABOTS.  Each one hollowed out of a single piece of wood.  Hence the word sabotage, meaning to wreck something by kicking with sabots.   I read once somewhere that the Luddites sabotaged weaving machinery by throwing sabots into the works, but that might be apocryphal.

56. Neurologist's order, briefly : EEG. The ElectroEncephaloGram detects electrical activity in the brain.

60. Pop-up foul-up : ERROR.  Baseball boo-boo, dropping a short fly ball.

62. Stereotypical family spoiler : NANA.  Grandmother, or, as some in our clan say, "Grandmom."

63. Pulitzer-winning novelist Jennifer : EGAN.  In 2011 her novel A Visit From The Goon Squad won the Pulitzer prize for fiction.

64. Renaissance painter __ della Francesca : PIERO.  Many of his paintings are on religious themes.



65. Minute quantity : DROP.  A drib, a drab or a TRACE.

66. Fish __ : TACO.   I had one once.  It was OK.

67. Family car : SEDAN.  Typical 2 or 4 door auto with front and rear seats.

68. __-Coburg: former Bavarian duchy : SAXE.  Read all about it.

69. Homer's neighbor : NED.  Flanders from the Simpsons.  



Down

1. Class requiring little effort : EASY A.

2. Distant and then some : ALIEN.  Beyond the pale, perhaps.

3. Pal of Nancy, in comics : ROLLO.


4. Barely advances : CRAWLS.  Makes slow, possibly steady progress. 

5. Big name in vision care : LOMB.  Along with Bausch.

6. Slightly open : AJAR. When is a door not a door?  When it is a jar.

7. Recurring theme : MOTIF.  As in music, literature or visual design.

8. Go out on a limb : RISK IT. Take a chance.

9. Stars and Stripes land: Abbr. : USA.  Mandatory.


11. Crock-Pot server : LADLE. For soups and stews.

12. French novelist Zola : EMILE. [1840-1902] Also a playwright, journalist and contributor to literary and theatrical realism.  Also a major figure in the exoneration of wrongly accused and convicted military officer Alfred Dreyfus.

21. Brewery kiln : OAST.  A drying oven.

22. Input for a refinery : CRUDE.  Petroleum.

28. Marine shade : AQUA.   Ocean blue - a hue tinged with green.

29. Portable Mongolian dwellings : YURTS.  Collapsable circular tents used by nomads.

31. Simple dwelling : HUT.  A simple, single-story dwelling, perhaps a step up from a YURT. 

32. Shade of gray : ASH.  Not all grays are created equal.  

35. Luck, pluck or duck ending : IEST.  Modifier degrees are positive, comparative, and superlative.  This illustrates the latter.

37. Part of D.A.: Abbr. : ATT.  District ATTorney.  Typically, a prosecutor.

38. Prefix with con : NEO-.  Referring to NEO-conservatism, which is distinguished by aggressively interventionist foreign policy, strong support for Israel, and hostility toward other middle-eastern regimes.

40. Shade of gray : PEARL.  A gray shade tinged with blue or green, having a pearlescent luster.

44. Jacob's wife before Rachel : LEAH.  Jake got snookered by Lebon, his mother's brother into marrying LEAH, Lebon's older daughter, when he was expecting to marry the younger sister Rachel, whom he loved.  Eventually he married Rachel as well.  Both of them bore him children, as did Zilpah, a servant that Leban had given to Leah.  

46. James with three NBA titles : LEBRON.  Not to be confused with Lebon, he was first loved and then hated by Cleveland fans.  Not sure what his status is now.
  
48. Tunnel out, maybe : ESCAPE.  As from prison or a PoW camp.

49. Many future presidents, as it turned out : VEEPS.   Vice Presidents.

50. Like "Stranger Things," e.g. : EERIE.  Weird and/or spooky.  The show is a Netflix original series concerning the searches for a 12- year-old boy who disappeared amid supernatural occurrences.

51. Metaphorical moments of time : SANDS.



53. Skin, but not bones : ORGAN.   A body part with a distinct structure that performs a specialized task.  From my brief on-line research, it seems that bones are considered to be organs.  Hmmmm  .  .  .

54. Kind of evidence : TRACE.  Some small incriminating quantity - only a DROP, perhaps.

55. Ecclesiastical council : SYNOD.  In modern usage, the governing body of a particular church.

58. Word of amore : CARA.  Italian term of endearment.


59. Fort with billions in bullion : KNOX.  Located near the Ohio River, south-west of Louisville.  

61. "... man __ mouse?" : OR A.  Challenging words.

That wraps it up.  We had some religion and politics in the fill, so please don't go there in the comments. Also, some colors outside the theme fill.  Did you color within the lines?  Hope after all this, you're not seeing RED.

Cool regards!
JzB




35 comments:

fermatprime said...

Hi everyone!

Thanks to Jascha and Jazz!

Not difficult. Theme transparent. Hadn't heard of GOLDEN ROSE.

Really tired.

Have a great day!

OwenKL said...

A lot of trouble for only a Wednesday, but I finally FIR! The SW & SE corners were the worst. Never heard of SILVER BEET, Jenny EGAN, PIERO della Francesca, I thought SABOTS were Israeli, not French, and a fish TACO is an EERIE criime against nature!

And the theme was a real RED herring! All those colors, and then they had nothing to do with it! The real MOTIF was that all the second words were shades of RED! BRICK RED, BLOOD RED, ROSE RED, and CHERRY RED! Brilliant!

A bad day yesterday, spent it in bed in the dark and dark thoughts until 10 pm. The crossword and resulting poetry help ease the bubble a bit, as does sharing in this blog. I couldn't care less about which words were difficult or unfair -- it's the interesting conversations they start, and the sharing of both hurts and triumphs, that make the corner a refuge.

{A-, B, B.}

Clem was a CLAM who studied ISLAM
Bong was a dog who barked before dawn
Said Clem to Bong
Your muezzin song
Is CRUDE to the EAR of even a CLAM!

He tried to ESCAPE the dreaded ESSAY
So he took an art course for an EASY A
But the course MOTIF
LED TO no relief,
He ended up posing nude for hours a day!

A Mongolian herder lives in a YURT
The walls are shag, but the floor is dirt!
But he's not cold much
With just A MAT in a HUT,
A few RUBLES will buy a nice warm shirt!

desper-otto said...

Good morning!

I liked this one, and even got the theme for a change. My pickup is a theme-related fire engine red. Is T-Bone a GRUB steak? Had to change JUICE to PUREE, but otherwise this was a smooth slide to the bottom. Thanks, Jascha.

JzB, your writeup was replete with nuggets of knowledge, as usual. Well done. BTW, Harry Shearer never did leave The Simpsons. Two months after threatening to quit, he accepted the same terms as the other cast members. I've seen him on celebrity Jeopardy! -- impressive range of useless knowledge. Cheech Marin is also a great Jeopardy! celeb.

Gotta run..

Big Easy said...

JzB- The color theme was fairly obvious after YELLOW BRICK and BLUEBLOOD. Maybe the ROJO was an early clue for SEEING RED. The 'Chard' clue took all perps because I knew it was some type of edible plant, but that's about it. Or a nickname for a wine.

The top and middle filled easiest, but I would like to know what DUCKIEST means. Never heard of that word. Had some trouble in the South, not knowing PIERO, EGAN, or CARA.

Yellowrocks said...

Easy solve. I saw the colors quickly, but failed to notice that they were all reds, which makes the reveal very apt. Great info. JzB. Thanks for giving the origin of blue blood. I have heard your explanation of sabotage before which makes sabot easy to remember.
I usually associate anodyne with a pain killer. It was good to be reminded that it also means inoffensive.
Motif- In college German I learned that leit motif (motiv) literally leading theme, is a "short, constantly recurring musical phrase associated with a particular person, place, or idea." A prime example of this is the special music for each leading character in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. The students enjoyed associating the music with the character.
We observed Rose Sunday in Lent. I did not know of the golden rose award.
PIERO was all perps. LEBRON gave me the O.

TTP said...

Good morning. Thank you Jascha and thank you JazzBumpa.

Clever. Fun too.

Decided to make a first pass run of the across clues without checking perps. Wanted to see how many I could get correctly. That went rather well. However, upon the first pass of the down clues, I quickly discovered that Mountain Dew was not correct. I must equate cola with caffeine. I think it's commonly known that Mountain Dew has one of the highest levels of caffeine among all soda pops.

That was the only real gaffe. And at that point, knowing we were dropping the first word and adding RED to the second word made getting BLACK CHERRY easier. That and a couple of other perps of course.

Needed perp help elsewhere. Like JzB and Fermatprime, I wasn't familiar with GOLDEN ROSE. I wouldn't know PIERO based on the clue alone. In fact, I wouldn't know him based on any clue.

Big Easy, duckiest is the superlative form of ducky. How was the puzzle today ? Just ducky. Peachy keen. It was the duckiest puzzle I solved today.

Jazzbumpa said...

Hi gang -

A big THANK YOU to Owen for seeing the part of the theme that I missed. I have updated the post with the addition of that knowledge.

Cool regards!
JzB

Hungry Mother said...

Entertaining, and got it with few writeovers, but it seemed pretty crunchy.

Yellowrocks said...

Duckiest (informal) most excellent or most charming. That's the duckiest little cottage by the sea. This usage seems very old-fashioned to me. Now I hear ducky used sarcastically. "That's just ducky!" (not)

inanehiker said...

Enjoyed the creative theme - WEES about chard being SILVER BEET was learning moment.
I've usually spelled Jacob's FIL Laban - but both are usable translitterations of the Hebrew which doesn't have vowels at all!

Thanks JB and Jascha!

Jinx in Norfolk said...

I add my OKL thanks to JazzB's for revealing the clever theme. That elevated my evaluation of the puzzle. One more nit, Jazz - the cartoon showed Nancy and Sluggo, not ROLLO. ROLLO is the rich kid and fop. Still a great review, as usual.

I found this to be really difficult. Didn't know what an AirPod was. Wasn't aware that there was a game called "Ultimate", but have heard a game called Ultimate FRISBEE. I knew SABOTS were wooden shoes, but associated them with the Dutch. Never heard of BLACK CHERRY cola, nor Jennifer EGAN, nor PIERO della Francesca, nor SAXE-Colburg, nor chard (except for white wine), or CARA as a word of amore. And I found the cluing for IEST to be tedious.

I'll stop now, since I don't want to rain on the parade of the many solvers who enjoyed this one.

Husker Gary said...

Musings
-The SE corner eroded the north end of my pencil but all’s well...
-Am I really going to have to watch The Simpsons to do cwd puzzles?
-Some of those BLUE BLOODS had very few branches in their family tree
-I’d need my iPhone’s stopwatch to time how long it would take to lose AirPods
-How many RUBLES for a burger at a Wendy’s in Moscow?
-Sidebar on our pen/electronic greeting card discussion. My HS ESSAYS would have been much better if I could have used/edited with a computer
-VOTE decision – Candidate? Nah! Party – Yup!
-Grace for GRUB (:20)
-News about an “EASY A” class got around campus like wildfire
-CRUDE humor is in the ear of the beholder
-No VEEP who became president was more “out of the loop” than Truman. Harry, we’ve got this new bomb…
-My body’s SANDS have shifted like those in the hourglass
-I just signed up for Amazon Prime and now have access to the James Bond movies. I’m sure I’ll watch the one with this classic theme that features Fort KNOX
-All the Bond movies have a recurring musical MOTIF as well
-Well done, Jazz!

Northwest Runner said...

A Google search for the etymology of sabotage brings up several sources contradicting the shoes in the machine story, but I had a little trouble finding one that does so smoothly enough to link to.

This puzzle very cleverly constructed, so I won't see red in my minor nit that VEEPS was not clued with an abbreviation.

Spitzboov said...

Good morning everyone.

Colorful puzzle today. Got the theme after the 2nd starred entry. Never heard of SILVER BEET, but the SILVER was clear enough.
And GOLDEN ROSE came from perps.
SAXE - Knew SAXE-Coburg=Gotha, the Brit dynasty starting with Victoria. Name was changed to Windsor around WWI; the former sounding too German.

Off to play some bridge.

Have a great day.

Irish Miss said...

Good Morning:

What a clever and fresh theme this was. Saw the Red connection to the second words right away. And, as a bonus, we had Rojo, Ash, Pearl, and Aqua. A very colorful puzzle, indeed. Needed perps for Piero and Egan, even though I'm pretty sure I've read at least one of her books. Never knew there was a Silver Chard and didn't know it was in the beet fan family. I, also, have never heard of the Golden Rose, though I vaguely remember the priest wearing rose-colored vestments on Laetare Sunday.

Thanks, Jascha, for a wonderful Wednesday whirl and thanks, JazB, for your usual wit and wisdom. That clip of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" brought back cringe-inducing memories of my high school graduation. It was one of the songs we had to sing (pity the poor audience!) and our rendition was only slightly more melodious than your performers. I don't think this is a song that should be sung, at least not by a bunch of silly seniors.

Have a great day.

Irish Miss said...

Sorry, fan somehow broke into beet family. I seem to be plagued by Gremlins! 🤓

MJ said...

Good day to all!

Enjoyed todays clever, colorful puzzle. Last cell to fill was the "e" in the crossing of SILVER BEET and Jennifer EGAN, both complete unknowns. Thanks for the tour today, Jazzbumpa. Wonderful, as always.

Enjoy the day!

Ernie 'Neto' Corral said...

Wrong friend of Nancy in example. You show Nancy with Sluggo, not Rollo. Rollo is the rich kid in strp.

Al said...

Speaking of red, is Jascha a Russian name?

37 years ago today a bunch of college kids from the USA surprised some red clad men from the USSR on a rink in upstate New York. Do you believe in miracles?

Lemonade714 said...

Wonderfully full puzzle for this Wednesday- the many layers of color were very well done. Did not know GOLDEN ROSE or SILVER BEET but in context they were easy.

You left out poor Bilhah; the 12 sons (Dinah the only daughter) are the 12 tribes.


LEAH ZIPAH (Leah's servant) BILHAH (Rachel's servant) RACHEL
Reuben (1) Gad (7) Dan (5) Joseph (12)
Simeon (2) Asher (8) Naphtali (6) Benjamin (13)
Levi (3)
Judah (4)
Issachar (9)
Zebulun (10)
Dinah (11)

OwenKL said...

Just saw a meme in re 49a: surface layers --
Someone threw a bottle of Omega 3 pills at me!
Luckily my injuries were only Super Fish Oil!

A couple articles about CWPs --

75 Years at NYT

Youngest Compiler (and other articles on him).

Lemonade714 said...

Your pun of the year OKL
Super Fish Oil!!!!!

Purrrrfect!

Lucina said...

WEES about this colorful puzzle. As has been said, ROJO at the top crowns the array of REDS. Thanks, JzB for your elucidation and Jascha Smilack for today's fun run. Like others, only the SE gave me pause with the unknown Jennifer EGAN but SILVERBEET and ORGAN supplied the missing letters.

Saxe-Coburg is a frequent subject on Victoria, the PBS series. If the real Albert was as charming as the actor it is understandable why Victoria was crazy about him.

Being steeped in Catholicism, I am very surprised to just now learn about the GOLDENROSE. Yes, ROSE is the color of Laetare Sunday, third Sunday in Lent, but I can't recall ever hearing about that special blessing. I'll have to read more about it. Gaudete Sunday, the third in Advent, also requires the wearing of ROSE.

Have a wonderful Wednesday, everyone!

C6D6 Peg said...

Thanks, Jascha, for a very "colorful" puzzle. Great theme and I liked the other "colors" as well.

JzB, nice write-up, as usual.

AnonymousPVX said...

Nicely constructed puzzle with a bit of crunch to boot. Enjoyable.

JD said...

Good morning all,
Thanks Jascha for today's fun run, and you, Bumpa, for the learning lessons. Seeing Red helped fill the second word which eased my navigational zig zag. Many WAGS ld to ah-ha's. It took a bit to remember Rollo, as only Sluggo came to mind.Like Lucina, the S.E. slow my ending. I could only think of Jennifer Weiner.

Laetare Sunday is new to me, so I should also do some more research.

The sun came out this morning, but unfortunately many parts of San Jose are under water, and the roads going over to the coast are closed. Some roads just fell off the hillsides. Hoping for a few dry days.

CrossEyedDave said...

I thought this was going to be a DNF,
but I managed to finish it with two WAGs.
One right, one wrong...

I chose the A in sAxe, after originally putting a,e, & o in that little square.

However, I was sabotaged with silverFeet.
I think it was just yesterday, when CHARD (a veggie) turned out to be a white wine.
Never heard of Silver Beet, but there are a lot of weird wine names out there...
Oh well, at least I learned the origin of the word sabotage.
(& some Luddite history...)


Jzb! That Muppet Eagle clip seems to adumbrate todays political climate...
(also, I left the clip running while looking up adumbrate,
which led me to discover there are 84 more Muppet clips in a continuous playlist.)

OwenKL!
I had to read super fish oil 3 times before the V8 can struck!
Excellent!

anyway, I am not angry that this puzzle beat me.

I swear, not at all angry...

after all,I got the theme right away...

Misty said...

Whew! Crunchy Wednesday puzzle this morning, and I worried that I was going to have to cheat to finish. But, Yay! I got the whole thing in the end. Many thanks, Jascha, and you too, Jazz B, for pointing out all those REDs, which I might not have noticed otherwise.

In the end this was a lot of fun. I surprised myself by remembering PIERO, and finding it worked. I'm also another Catholic who never heard of GOLDEN ROSE. EGAN got filled in by perps. And I thought of LOMB only at the last minute which made ROJO correct. (Loved the Spanish colored crayon pic, JazzB).

Glad you're feeling a bit better again, Owen.

Have a great day, everybody!

Tinbeni said...

D-N-F ... caught on to the SEEING RED theme easily but there were a few items I just didn't know.
SILVER BEET, the novelist EGAN, the painter PIERO ... learning moments I already forgot.

Oh well, I did enjoy the amazing write-up. Good Job Jazz!

Taking it on faith that there will be a Sunset tonight (it is lightly raining).
But "It's 5 o'clock somewhere!"
Cheers!

Ol' Man Keith said...

RATS!

My eye caught the date at the top of my newspaper page just before coming on line, and I saw it is only Wednesday. I did very well on today's pzl - but all the while for some reason I was thinking it was Friday! I really thought I was regaining my old stride, solving a tough Friday pzl w/o any look-ups or cheating.
But now I see it is only a Weds challenge.
I don't mean to disparage Mr. Smilack's fine work. Not at all. I'm grateful for an enjoyable start to my day. Obviously it is my error to imagine it at a higher level of toughness. I see from the comments of respected colleagues (Anon PVX, Hungry M, and Misty) that it deserves a decent mark on the "crunch" scale.
Nice to be reminded of the great PIERO della Francesca. Thank you, JzB, for linking the great True Cross. I first came to know his work in my first teaching days at Williams College. The Clark Institute on the Williams campus has a marvelous Madonna and Child by him. It is one of those masterworks that grabs your eyes and heart. Those cool, poised idealized stares express a dignity that 15th C believers conferred on religious figures.

Jayce said...

I liked this puzzle and am impressed with the cleverness of the theme entries. Didn't know EGAN, PIERO, GOLDEN ROSE, or SILVER BEET. Chuckled at seeing ISLAM and SAUDI one atop the other. Wrinkled my nose at IEST then acknowledged that it is actually sorta clever.

Anonymous T said...

Hi All!

Thanks Jascha for a puzzle I (almost) did between query processing. I wish I'd paid more attention to it rather than dividing my time. Very nice misdirection with the colours up front but the MOTIF in the back.

Thanks JzB for the expo. I always learn something and get entertained (Muppets!)

North of 45a/47a was EASY As CHERRY pie but, boy, did I get WHoMP'd in the S.

WOs: Pannels [sic] for Surface (think Microsoft's); TAle (a fishing story), TAil (think car's back end sliding)...
ESPs: ISLA, PIERO (LOL TTP!), SAXE

Googles:
1. EGAN, that finally let me guess BEET, but gave me SABO__. SABOot? No, should be Le Boot, no? Oui.
2. SABOTS. That finally got me a fish TACO! (D'oh! And I just posted fish TACOs Sat), TRACE and SYNOD. Fin but no win.

Fav: That Jascha decided to RISK IT by stacking Russia (RUBLE) over ISALAM over SAUDI and then put the Go' Ol' US of A in the middle of that mess :-).

{A-,A, B+} Nice catch on the REDs.

HG's link didn't say... ASH, A Lighter Shade of PEARL? :-). //Go ahead, groan at the CRUDE pun attempt...

Cheers, -T

CanadianEh! said...

Late to the party today after curling tournament. Thanks for the fun Jascha and JazzB. Loved the colourful theme (thanks OwenKL also).
I was starting to see a Fifty Shades of Grey mini-theme with ASH, PEARL and SILVER. LOL.

I sailed through this but with a slow-down in the SE.

I replaced Aloof with ALIEN. My tomato moved from Paste to Juice to PUREE. Hadn't moved to HASN'T.
Unknowns ROJO, SABOTS, EGAN and PIERO filled in with perps.
IEST was meh! but forgivable.

After recent cluing for Chard, I thought there might be a new SILVER Wine before perps forced BEET.

Thanks to all for the interesting conversations.

Wilbur Charles said...

Yes, I'd always read the dastardly uncle as Laban.
I finally had to do a google cheat on EGAN. I was Mistyfied. If I'd cottoned to the red MOTIF I could have gotten BEET.

I had TRIAL Evidence

Owen, your first was pretty good. Not to speak of Super Fish oil. Do you take it? Or perhaps, melatonin which I take to help me sleep.

WC

Picard said...

Thanks to Owen for explaining half the theme that I, too, missed!

Mostly I agree this was not too difficult. But the cross of SILVER BEET and SABOTS nearly had me fail at the end. I, too, was thinking Chard was a wine reference, as it had just come up recently.

But it was worth it to learn about the origin of "sabotage"! Though it is also good to know that might not even be true!

For once I actually knew a sports person with LEBRON.