Espy Crossword Clue 4 Letters

Espy Crossword Clue 4 Letters – Anastasia’s love at Anastasia 1997 / SEN 4-11-22 / Young Australian woman / Japanese curly-tailed dog / Sign on the door of a moody teenager / Cutlery probably wrapped in red paper

THEME: PICK UP (66A: Learn, as a new skill…or what can precede the end of 20-, 36-, 42- and 59-Across) — just what the clues say; so, PICK UP lines, games, trucks and sticks):

Espy Crossword Clue 4 Letters

Word of the Day: LOOFA(1D: Shower scrubber) — Luffai is a genus of tropical and subtropical vines in the cucumber family (Cucurbitaceae). In colloquial, non-technical usage, luffa, also spelled loofah, usually refers to the fruit of the species Luffa aegyptiaca and Luffa acutangula. It is cultivated and eaten as a vegetable, but must be harvested at a young developmental stage to be edible. This vegetable is popular in India, China and Vietnam. When the fruit is fully ripe, it is very fibrous. The fully developed fruit is the source of the loofah scrubbing sponges used in bathrooms and kitchens. […] The fruit parts of L. aegyptiaca can be left to ripen and used as a bath or kitchen sponge after processing to remove everything except the xylem fiber tissue. If the loofah is allowed to fully ripen and then dried on the vine, the flesh will disappear leaving only the skeleton and fibrous seeds, which can be easily shaken. Marketed asluffaorloofah, this sponge is used as a scrub while bathing. In Paraguay, panels are made of luffa combined with other plant-based materials and recycled plastic. It can be used to make furniture and build houses. (wikipedia)

Friday, April 15, 2022

Very basic and completely adequate Monday puzzle. It could have gone thirty years ago, fine, but it’s not bad, just… not good either. “Words that can precede (or follow)” are one of the simplest types of themes ever, but sometimes a rudimentary concept can produce great results. Today’s result, however, was just a ho-hum. Also, aesthetically speaking, the grille is a little… weird. The whistleblower is in a strange place. One from the bottom… on the left? So … anteante antepenultimate answer Across? It’s not clear to me why this grid is not a mirror image of itself with PICKUP in place of the standard revealer (i.e. bottom right). It’s not like a very complicated or demanding theme. I’m a stickler for forms if there’s no clear reason to break the form. If there’s a clear (good) reason to mess with the standard format, then screw it up! If not, put things in their place. Another aesthetic imperfection that’s a little hard to see (imho) is that the grille is completely cut off, top from bottom. It’s invisible, but you can feel it as you finish, because your flow falters as you descend. There are only two small paths from the top to the bottom of this grid:

Technically, yes, there’s still a thorough interlock here, but it almost—feels like I’m actually restarting the puzzle at the bottom, because there’s hardly any crossover to lock, and even that is on the longer side. On Monday, the flow disruption was jarring. Is that a big problem? Not that. It’s Monday. Everything is very solvable. But in general I like … lots of paths in and out of sections. A feeling of openness. Flow. I like things to flow. So I don’t really like the pieces of this two-piece puzzle. Other than that, the filling… is mostly acceptable, but also mostly mediocre. Lots and lots of repeaters and not much oomph or shine. BLOSSOMED might be the highlight, but the other 7+ letter answers just lie there. Again, the puzzles are perfectly plausible and enigmatic and don’t miss the mark in any gruesome way. But it feels like a passable imitation of a late twentieth-century puzzle. It was like not trying very hard to bring something new to the table. I think I prefer ambitious failure to moderate success.

ADMAN is one of the answers that gave me a Warning, the feeling of a Warning if I saw it early on. It feels old, and it feels very old-fashioned, and while it’s legit, it still seems like a bad sign. This ADMAN is followed by two French answers and INIT and EASE crossing tEAser , etc. and while neither of those things are bad, to be exact, they combine with ASPS and ESPY to keep things in superfamiliar territory. “OH I SEE” has a little life to it. KEEP OUT also has some vibrancy, but the “moggy teenager” hint only makes the puzzle feel harder — the type of theme and content feels a bit old. No need for a hint to make it worse. I spelled LOUFA like that, and I think YODA (not LEIA ) “founded the Resistance” (got the last “A” first and just guessed wrong). No other real problems. See you tomorrow.

P.S. the preferred spelling of LOOFAH seems to be the H-terminal version. Maybe missing the “H” in … marketing? I do not know. But merriam-webster dot com doesn’t even have LOOFA as the alt spelling in its LOOFAH entry. Volcano-like release / TUE 7-25-17 / Protective embankment / Ambient music is just as catchy / Zo Avatar / Jason’s vessel / House Elizabeth II / Variety show host 1951-71 / Ship Ibsen’s Gabler / Captain Nemo’s ship

Meet The Mini, The Little Puzzle That Helped Launch 930,000 Subscriptions To New York Times Games

THEME: SPREAD THE GOSPEL (61A: Evangelization … or what do these puzzle-circled boxes do? — The letters in the names of the four canonical gospels are “spread” through the four theme entries.

The President’s Guest House, commonly known as Blair House, is a formerly separate complex of four buildings—Blair House, Lee House, Peter Parker House, and 704 Jackson Place—located in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. A major interior renovation of these 19th-century residences between the 1950s and 1980s resulted in their restoration as a single facility. The President’s Guest House is one of several residences owned by the United States government for use by the President and Vice President of the United States; other residences include the White House, Camp David, One Observatory Circle, Presidential Townhouse, and Trowbridge House. The President’s Guest House is called “the most exclusive hotel in the world” because it is used primarily to host important and other presidential guests. It is bigger than the White House and closed to the public. (Wikipedia)

I’ll go to 32A: No LARRED on this one: this is my least favorite puzzle of all the puzzles I blogged for Rex. It’s not a terrible puzzle, but meh. The theme itself is a bit archaic, as is much of its content (more on that later), and while it’s competently executed… if it weren’t for 20A: Zoë from “Avatar” (SALDANA) and 69A: Crafting company with 2015 IPO (ETSY) , I was able to solve this with my grandfather in 1982. And as much as I miss those times, and as much as I miss them, I’d rather solve better puzzles.

“It’s hard when you go and fight for a role, because they’re like ‘I don’t know, man, you mean, it’s like the blue girl from Avatar? … I want to go a different route. I feel like a little underdog because I live in outer space, nobody wants me here on Earth. (Interview at The Independent)

How To Solve The New Scientist Cryptic Crossword

Content-wise… TSK (41A: Voice of reproach). We have our prefixes: LACTI, ALTI, TERA and ISO. We have BSIX (take one ADAY). We have a DSHARP that crosses ESCARP (I’ll bet MSHARP would love to have him ESCARP on this one). We have ANTE, APSE, ADA, and ENO. SPEW, EEGS! HIE there, RUSSO! ABAFT, PELOSI, said the GOP Reps. I love seeing both the fictional ships ARGO (25A: Jason’s ship, in the myth) and NAUTILUS (35A: Captain Nemo’s ship). N.W.A member known as Godfather of Gangsta Rap / WED 11-4 -20 / Change from Gojira to Godzilla say / TV personality once said in a commercial The only thing braver than Fuze Iced Tea is ME!”

THEME: Norite, Dolerite (INDIE ROCK)(my weak fake example I made at 4:30 am) — that is, the words in the theme hint must be sounded with the first letter up to the first word in the answer ( N, D, = > INDIE); the second word in the answer is the type of the hint word (Norite, like Dolerite, is the ROCK type). The result of the theme’s answer is a familiar phrase (INDIE ROCK):

Word of the Day: EAZY-E(25D: N.W.A member known as “The Godfather of Gangsta Rap”) — Eric Lynn Wright (7 September 1964– 26 March 1995), known professionally as Eazy-E, was an American rapper , songwriter, record producer, and entrepreneur who pushes West Coast rap and gangsta rap by leading the group N.W.A and his label, Ruthless Records, pushing the boundaries of lyrical content. […] During the N.W.A split, largely by a dispute over money, Eazy-E became embroiled in a fierce rivalry with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, who had set out for a solo career in 1989 and 1991, respectively. Continuing his solo career, Eazy-E released two EPs. But he still