Quid pro Quo

Just a hair late, but: Ouch! This puzzle hurt bad in a good way. Had to google BMX BIKE and XIA dynasty to finish, being down to only the lower right, where I already had Ms. Stassinopoulos, even after enlisting a friend (who came up with the inscrutable "Three-footer" — EASEL — to help land this puppy. But so satisfying to see Mr. Happy Pencil under any circumstances.

Great puzzle, even though it defeated me!

I'd just like to thank the mini for recognizing me today. After all these years of solving, it's nice to feel appreciated.
-Jeff Johnson

Got home rather late after Saturday Night at the Movies. Saw "Deepwater Horizon" which prominently features an offshore OILRIG. But I managed to finish the puzzle on the LIRR before reaching my home station, always my goal for a Saturday. Good solid challenge with some nifty fill and tricky cluing.

If you ever find yourself in the company of people who have watched reruns of "The Odd Couple" ad nauseam (like me and Deb), quoting the line "I better bring my BIG SPOON" will elicit howls of knowing laughter.

The proper title of 20A is "DA DA DA I Don't Love You You Don't Love Me Aha Aha Aha" (at least in English--Trio were a German group and recorded the song in several languages), but it is usually shortened. Here's the original video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqk0jwNs2Ew

The tie may have been named after a gaucho's favorite weapon-- a bolas-- because of the weighted ends. "Bola tie" was originally more common, but I think BOLOTIE has taken over.

I can see that I'm getting too old for the current crop of crosswords. When I finally filled in BIG SPOON for 1A, I immediately got a mental image of a baby in a high chair clutching two big spoons. Thank you , /deb, for showing me the correct images; they remind me that, yes, I was young once. Now I am waiting to see which constructor comes up with a standards-friendly clue for SIXTY-NINE.

Well, the SW did me in. \\
don't know Chinese Dynasties, and thought BMW might make BIKEs
Had no clue for 60A and 49 D (never a smoker)
so I was doomed to 5 incorrect (mostly blank, actually) spaces/letters
and an Epic Fail.
I was proud of getting ORLOP and POOP decks, plus a lot of the tricky clues in the other sections. Tried leaving and coming back, to no avail. So I bailed.

Congrats to those who managed the whole puzzle!!

The BOLOTIE (or bola tie) is the official neckware of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Arizona made it official in the early '70s, while Texas and New Mexico waited until 2007 to join the movement.

In the #ThingsIOughtToHaveKnown category:
BIGSPOON (thanks, Deb, for the very explanatory link)
LOGROLLS
ETOILES
gashlycrumb TINIES (just ordered the paperback for grand-nephew!)

So the NW was a struggle. All in all a really good workout!

David, if you ever come to Asheville, NC, go to All Souls Pizza and order the polenta crust pizza (which is gluten free). Nothing phony about it, and it is magnificent!

My favorite part of the puzzle were the clues to TOES, GONG, FIRESAFE, EASELS, and CARET. They made me smile. Never heard of big and little spoon, TINIES, DADADA, LOGROLLS (as clued) or XIA, so the solve took some trudging in places. Overall, I'm grateful for going through this one; it took care of my Saturday fix. Got what I PAID FOR.

Why does 31A include an abbreviation in the answer (STGEORGE) when the clue does not indicate one?

Enjoyed the challenge, and made some comments about specific entries in replies to other WPers.

Overall quite a challenging puzzle, except SE which I pretty much zipped through.

Hesitated entering AVIATOR because I thought it was too obvious, what with the movie and all that.

Some years ago I saw something on TV about some BMX BIKErs who got kicked off an airplane after making their trip totally miserable for other passengers. I didn't know what a BMX BIKE was and looked it up. I don't remember exactly what it was, but at least I found a use for the term.

My bartender had ONIONS before OLIVES.

I really liked the clues for GROG, PIANOS, and ETOILES.

Happy weekend all.

Nice challenge today! GAGREEL was my first confident entry which led time to enter MEASURES at 15a and LAUGHS at 9a with equal confidence. Those two mistakes probably caused me an extra 10 minutes on my solve time, especially since each contains two ultimately correct letters, the A and R in measures and the A and H in laughs. Aargh!

Everything finally fell into place, though, once I figured out BOLOTIE and HOTDOGGER, although that was late in the game. My only lookup was was to confirm ORLOs for 6d (the S was because I wanted STAIRS a mover's challenge, totally missing the "noted" pun in the clue - clever!) and Mr. Google kindly asked me if I meant ORLOP instead.

My only quibble with the clues is that a gong, when played in an orchestra, is beaten, not hammered (although I suppose it might be hammered in the manufacturing process).

And Deb, how on earth did you unearth an illustrated guide on how to spoon? Are there really people out there who need instructions? (I did, however, discover that I've never properly sporked.) Thanks for a great HAHAHA!

In the NW my mud engineer was OnaRIG plus I refused to write in EELERS. I so wanted something classier like crabs or lobsters. At least we got our happy CLAM.

In the SW I wouldn't give up (CAVE) on sNeakS especially since SAnka worked with it. sAnka wouldn't get on your nerves, right? I never got out of that mess. I did consider BMwBIKE for a bit but that was wrong, too.

So, NOSTARS for me today. But I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometime the bear eats you.

Today Mr. Woolf, you are the bear!

Hi Viv.

At least a half an hour early, but I've got a busy afternoon ahead. Later everyone.

SW took me forever but I did it.

I snuck into this one with NO STARS and PIANOS, CRETE and ETOILES, then ORATORIO. Good ole Handel. Slow going from there, some look up help, but in the end satisfying to have finished. A long time Edward Gorey fan, but hadn't heard of The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Pleased to learn about that, and will have a look.

Now that the slog is over, I REST.
That was one tough puzzle.

The constructor, and Jeff Chen and Deb all highlighted BIGSPOON and STRESSEATS as favorites. I was not familiar with the apparently intended sense of the first one and I think the latter is, at best, a very awkward formation. All three of them also thought that having HAHAHA over DADADA was a big plus. I, well, don't concur. Actually, I didn't think that having either of them was a plus.

I went and looked up the definition of SPOONing to see if the sense of the term that I know is still in existence. Yes it is, but one source listed it as 'older,' another as 'dated.' I guess that's me - older and dated. And almost certainly increasingly out of touch.

Didn't know ORLOP, but evidently I should file that one away as it has appeared a lot. Didn't know that sense of LOGROLL, but apparently it goes back a long way. Still don't understand the clue for EASELS.

Thought of BOLOTIE immediately for 1d. Decided to wait a bit and then completely forgot about it. Never looked at the clue again even while I was working that corner. It sure would have helped.

Tough one for me and three revealed squares and some failed checks to finally get there.

Parents of a certain age, and children of the 80's would have had little trouble with BMXBIKE, I think. That saved me from "sneaks" instead of KNAVES. BIGSPOON fell like "sign here" for some reason - no thought required; don't know why. Was thinking "recluse" but worked AVIATOR from the bottom up. Last to fall was EASELS, tho' I had it filled in, I had to think far too long to "get" it. "Trio and Error" was a 5-star album, for me!

This continues the every day harder than usual theme for me. However, I'm totally with Deb on clue/ fill 1A. I wanted happy as a lark, never understood why CLAMS are happy. I'll be happy to get back to themes.

All fill is fair game on Saturday even HAHAHA and DADADA. STRESSEATS however?????

Solved this one from the bottom up with 1a as a final laugh out loud moment. Brought to mind Pulp Fiction where making spoons was one of two tender moments. The other had to do with resuscitation.

Gluten free pizza crust are available everywhere. Simply top with olive oil, garlic, OLIVES and perhaps some prosciutto and in 15 mins: Ta Da. Taken to making my own pizza here in the Shire as local pizza houses cannot imagine a crust without too much cheese. It is Wisconsin dontcha know.

Joyful Saturday puz. Thank you David and Deb thanks for the Flintstones.

All all I can say is, Thank God (for) Friday. This week nearly killed me. Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday were all incredibly tough solves for me. Today solved about twenty minutes over my average Saturday time. I had never heard of LOGROLLS or ORLOP, and had no idea what a mud engineer was. Like others, I confidently entered MEASURES instead of ORATORIO which made the NW corner a horror show.

I have to protest the clue of "Showboat" with HOTDOGGER; it should have been "Showboater" to make the tenses align.

I hope next week is easier than this week.

This definitely solved like a Saturday puzzle. Mr. Woolf, I'll join your gluten-free pizza club. Years ago I thought there would be a market for a gluten-free store, and came up with possible names--"No Gluten for Punishment" or "Glutenous Minimus."

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I believe at some point, a solver said they stopped solving a puzzle on the website and moved over to some other platform so they would have access to "Check" and "Reveal".

I determined tonight that the web game has buttons for Check and Reveal.

I used the latter to reveal B__BIKE (had had the M but took it out). The X was a true Natick -- BMX is just an intialism, and XIA isn't known by 25% or more of solvers. Calling it a natick gets rid of the problem of determining whether BMX is a "name" that crosses another "name" at the X.

So now I used Reveal for 2 letters and my "decent streak" is over. Hence, I must mention that my streak is over. Of course, I did that intentionally (I have a length of time I'll devote to a solve; once that's exceeded, I go no further unless the solve is too interesting to abandon; but nothing at all was interesting about XIA, BMX, or the fact that I should have left MRE in).

Syrians have their Aleppo, CRETE has refugees trying to reach the island, and an ORLOP deck has people scratching their heads about what it is. We solvers have the ends of streaks, and no problem worse than that.

I'll take our problem, if I have to choose.

This one seemed to run a little on the hard side for me, particularly because I didn't feel on the constructor's wavelength. There were two answers I flat-out didn't know, and that's rare for me at this point. One was LOGROLLS, as a synonym for quid pro quo, and the other was BIG SPOON. (I certainly know what spooning is, but to me, a BIG SPOON is what you eat soup with--as opposed to stirring your coffee with a little one.) The clue pointed to the general idea, but I'd never heard the expression.

Now some of you might find these gimmes, and others that I found easy, you might find less so. So I learned two things tonight.

As for Howard Hughes (the famous one), anyone else put RECLUSE first?

What about FORCE FEEDS for "Puts away under pressure"? True, it's not an exact correspondence, but same number of letters, and it seemed right at the time.

I'm tired of hearing--or thinking--about Julian ASSANGE. In my book, he's one of the world's biggest 58A.

Anyone put NAIL for GONG? And then doubt it because it sounded like a drunk reference?

CAVING for DESCENT before seeing that it was too short? And that a Spanish word wasn't going to end in a V? CEDE before--wait for it--CAVE?

Basic count for ONE TO TEN? Maybe better, basic scale?

SW quadrant last to fall. Didn't know BMX but did know bike. love Handel operas and oratorios! Good, challenging Saturday puzzle.

I got "orlop" quickly because of the fabulous Patrick O'Brien novels, which must use the word for every single part of a ship.

This was a lovely Saturday challenge, much tougher for me than Friday's puzzle. MEASURES before ORATORIO and--oh darn, something else before something else. But I got HERO and BATTERUP immediately. I figured 49D was going to be a cigarette, but couldn't think of CAMEL for the longest time, although I had the _ELIAC at 49A and couldn't think of anything but CELIAC for that, although I didn't know that fact. I knew ORLOP--I once wandered down to the ORLOP deck of the USS Constitution in Boston, although it wasn't open to the public. When I saw the table saws and other carpenters' equipment I realized it was being used as a repair shop and slipped out quietly before someone caught me.

STRESS EATS looks incredibly weird when written vertically. And I loved the Gashlycrumb TINIES. But CARET as an addition sign? What am I missing here?

I'm prett proud of myself- 30:12! This was a fun one! Challenging, but enjoyable.