I still haven't figured out "leveled" for "Went through an evening." Can someone explain?
Hi DH,
If something gets evened out, like when builders are making sure a floor is straight across, it is leveled.
Thanks. Have to love the English language.
Oooh just saw this (I've only been reading wordplay for the last couple of months though I've done the NYT times puzzles for decades)! I have loved the acrostics for eons! So excited when a new one pops up every two weeks. This one was fairly easy in that I finished in under 20 minutes, no lookups. NOT always the case, but the same psychology applies as in late week xwords--if on my first run through I get very few words, I don't despair. I start to look for patterns on the grid with what few letters I have (helps that I did cryptograms as a child) and eventually light dawns. However, in my experience sometimes light simply never dawns, and then I do a word reveal (or three if necessary). I actually believe that if I really persisted I would be able to finish without the reveals but oh well, I'm impatient. But anyway thank you for a chance to thank you! Love the acrostics!!!
gimmes: YOGI BEAR ITCHING NOISE OUTTAKES TEN FEET and UNKNOWN. messed around until COMIC STRIP EMERGED. then quickly MORT WALKER. liked to see NAVEL ORANGES -- my favorite fruit!
Loved the Constructor Notes and also the link re the cartoonist colony in Fairfield. Conn!
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Gimmes this week: NOISE, TEN FEET, CART, OUTTAKES, UGANDAN, NACHOS, TUFTED, YOGI BEAR. Still took me quite a while to do this and I didn't understand the answer to C. until after I really thought about it! (I'm not much of a punner)
This one was right down the middle for me in terms of difficulty. The answers were reachable and quite satisfying to get. I know what melanin is but couldn't coax the red out of it. Thanks Richardz for the link to Terry Gross' interview. It was a delight and added to my appreciation of the puzzle.
Wasn't there also a whole big foofaraw about the TV show "I Dream of Jeannie" where Barbara Eden's costume had to be designed to conceal the fact that she had a navel?
Anyway, didn't know that about comic strips.
Fairly easy acrostic, although comic strips and related things are a bit out of my wheelhouse. YOGI BEAR, for instance. I was an adult by the time Hanna-Barbera came along with their creations, but I was still young enough (impecunious enough) not to have a TV, so I never really saw those things. I know them only through the osmosis of pop culture. So YOGI was a guess, and a lucky one.
Didn't know the word "pheomelanin," but did know "melanin." Had a horrible moment when I thought the word might be "redskins," but couldn't bear to think our beloved acrosticians would go that racist route. Tried to figure out something about freckles for a while, but another letter or two straightened me out.
Never really thought about ODETTA having a last name.
Anyway, a pleasant acrostic, if not terribly challenging. Nice things: I've always liked the mental image of the TUFTED titmouse, and HALCYON is, for no apparent reason, one of my favorite words.
Thanks all.
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This was a tough acrostic for me. I only had 4 gimmes after the first pass--UNKNOWN, NOISE, TEN FEET, and YOGI BEAR. After the next couple of passes, and a little bit of Googling, I added RARE ART (which turned out to be LOST ART), REDHEADS, NOGGIN, and TUFTED. I also looked up the African lakes to get a list of countries, but had to wait to decide between UGANDAN and RWANDAN. But thinking of HALCYON was the big breakthrough, and led to the eventual solve.
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Delightful. Love the phrase HALCYON days which, if my memory serves, were connected to the arrival of the Kingfisher bird. Where are Kingfishers when you need them?
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Cullen Murphy was interviewed by Terry Gross (the host of NPR's Fresh Air) after publication of the book "Cartoon County", and he mentions the odd prohibition against the depiction of navels, along with Mort Walker's clever response. It's a very entertaining interview - here's a link if anyone's interested:
-https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568550021/cartoon-county-looks-back-at-th...
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Some guessing success this time starting with only CART and YOGI BEAR (my favorite toon growing up) and a possible TEN FEET, but those gave me the C and Y and I wondered if the last word of the title was County, which then sparked OUTTAKES, UGANDAN and NACHOS. Gradually building in the quote, had the “you”s and also guessed “couldn’t”. Big breakthrough with NOISE, YANG and NOGGIN. Had heard about tough syndicate rules after reading a bio of Charles Shultz. They renamed his Lil Folks strip Peanuts! :) Didn’t know about the cowbell. Lots of fun!
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A sad postscript:
Mort Walker, who drew “Beetle Bailey” and also “Hi and Lois”, died early this year.
Fun quote, but we Texans know you don’t dip nachos even once. If you try, all the good stuff that’s stacked on the TORTILLA CHIPS will fall off.
This is the first acrostic I’ve completed without reference to Google et al. and no corrections. Lots of gimmes: CENSORED, UNKNOWN, LOST ART, MYTHIC, HALCYON, TEN FEET, NOGGIN, CART, OUTTAKES and YOGI BEAR. With all that, filling in was pretty simple. Having been a Pogo fan while growing up may have helped, but I don’t recall seeing crates of navel oranges.
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But Pogo was drawn by Walt Kelly, not Mort Walker.
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Mea culpa. But I don’t remember crates in Beetle Bailey either.
Back Ends was something different, and more challenging to complete than it looked at first.
REVOLVER was the only answer that I had to search for.
TOOK ROOT was the answer that took me the longest to get, mostly because I had originally misread “became” as “become”.
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Jerrold, you lost me.
What are you talking about?
liked back ends a lot! my last one was DRAWING BOARD. but all were quickly solved.
Took root was my last entry. I had to write out the letters before it... um... took root. Also had to double check the herb. A fun one.
I don’t know if the Acrostics are getting more difficult, or if it’s just me.
This was the second one in recent times that I had to give up on after hitting a total wall halfway through it. That is what seems to happen when there are not that many answers which are specific facts that I either know or can search for.
Apologies for the comments glitch everyone! Post away.
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