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Title: “This Stays Between Us”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a kind of talk that’s best kept private.
Answer: VENTING
Correct entries: 569 overall, 522 of which were solo
21×21 on a Week 2 of 5! Unusual, but the crossword gods demanded it. Seven wacky theme entries anchored our grid:
23-A: [Changing the amount of margarine your recipe calls for?] = OLEO RECALIBRATION
32-A: [Wine-based dish eaten by a lottery winner?] = PARVENU’S MARSALA
51-A: [Said bad things about infielder Manny?] = MALIGNED MACHADO
68-A: [Decide not to give away an 8-track cassette?] = RETAIN AUDIOTAPE
87-A: [Card game played on a carriage in India? (yeah, I know that’s his real name, just play along)] = GHARRY BLACKJACK. Gharry was a new word for me, and perhaps for you as well.
102-A: [Supreme Court justice whose opinions are full of clichés?] = HACKNEYED BREYER
116-A: [Ideas that Thomas Edison could never quite get to work?] = STALLED INVENTIONS
What’s going on? With each of these two-word phrases, we find a pair of related things concealed therein:
OLEO RECALIBRATION = LEO and LIBRA, signs of the Zodiac
PARVENU’S MARSALA = VENUS and MARS, planets
MALIGNED MACHADO, MALI and CHAD, African nations
RETAIN AUDIOTAPE, ETA and IOTA, Greek letters
GHARRY BLACKJACK, HARRY and JACK, first names of U.S. presidents (sort of — see below)
HACKNEYED BREYER, a pair of EYEs; a little different than the others
STALLED INVENTIONS, TALL and VENTI, Starbucks sizes
Now what? With a nudge from the title “This Stays Between Us,” look for what logically comes between each pair of those things:
The zodiac sign between Leo and Libra is VIRGO
The planet between Venus and Mars is EARTH
The country between Mali and Chad is NIGER
The letter between eta and iota is THETA
The president between Harry and Jack is IKE
Between an eye and another eye you’ll find a NOSE
The Starbucks size between tall and venti is GRANDE
The first letters of those spell contest answer VENTING.
Did it bother me that VENTING is close to “venti” in the last theme clue? No, since the two words aren’t related (“venti” just means “twenty” in Italian, while “vent(ing)” comes from the Latin word for “wind.”)
Regarding 87-Across: The parenthetical on this clue was supposed to clarify that, while “Ike” Eisenhower and “Jack” Kennedy were nicknames, “Harry” really was President Truman’s first name. Not sure how much it actually clarified but that was the intent. Strangely, Harry-Ike-Jack is also the alphabetical sequence HIJ, so some solvers thought it was just that trio of letters being hinted at, missing the presidential connection altogether.
TMart says:
I feel so much better now.
Evan writes:
At first I mistakenly wrote down that SCORPIO comes between LEO and LIBRA, and with SE?TING I was sure the answer would be SEXTING.
I made more work for the anonymous solver who does these awesome new solution graphics I’ve been using lately:
Can we talk about the #&$*@* who decided on using a 21 x 21 grid?!?
Bonnibel is 1 for 1:
My first time doing this, I was feeling a bit out of my league but then happily found the AHA moment somewhere between the right and left sides of my brain.
And finally, eowynfate found a deep rabbit hole:
Did you know that ORE and CAL are right next to each other inside of 23 across (oleORECALibration)? And did you know that California & Oregon were admitted to the union with only a single state (Minnesota) between them?
Yeouch. Tough to climb out of that one.
GUEST CONSTRUCTOR META:
This week’s puzzle was written by guest constructor Dean Silverberg. About the author:
I graduated Lynbrook High School in 1971 with letters in sports and played solo clarinet for the Nassau Youth Symphony. I made the All-County Orchestra, NY State Band, in both 1970 and 1971, and upon graduation, received the musician of the year award. I then received a nomination from Congressman Allard Lowenstein and entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1971.
I graduated the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1975 and spent 5 1/2 years in the Army at Ft. Hood, Germany, and Korea, and upon discharge went back to the University of Texas in Preparation for medical school. I graduated medical school in 1986 and in 1989 went back into the Air Force and served as a Major in Desert Storm treating and evacuating wounded personnel from Iraq. At this time I returned to Andrews AFB and served as a Flight Surgeon aboard numerous congressional delegation airships around the world with people like George W. Bush, Nicholas Brady and so on. I also did flight instruction there as I have an Airline Transport Pilot rating, along with being a single, multi-engine and instrument flight instructor.
Finally, I worked as a Board Certified Emergency Medicine doctor in the VA for seven years before retirement. Since then, I have worked on-call as needed in the Bay Pines ER and worked during the height of the COVID pandemic this past summer, to help during the crisis in the central Florida area.
Whoa. Not sure how high “Guest Constructor at MGWCC” will rank on that resume, but here we go…
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a fictional detective.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.