Wednesday, August 9, 2017

My time: 9:10.  (The record for Wednesday is 7:43).

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Lots of things that stalled me today.  I liked the "card terms used in other contexts" theme.

I swear, "feeds the kitty" (ANTES) is the most common crossword clue ever.

Not being a reality TV watcher, Immunity IDOL from Survivor eluded me.  In the back of my mind I had this vague thought it was a conch or something.

"Dixie bread:" PONE.  Tom Lehrer: "I wanna be a Dixie pixie and eat corn pone till it's comin' out of my ears."

Mossad is the national security agency of Israel, so "Mossad's land" is ISR.

"Disney's" EMIL "and the detectives" is based on a 1929 German novel, and not one of their most famous adaptations.

"Big name in DVD rental"??  Do those exist?  Did this puzzle come from 1994?  Ah yes, REDBOX.  Not a service I am familiar with.  *NETFLIX didn't fit.

"Soccer's Messi" is LEO.  Look, his informal nickname is right there in his Wikipedia article!

"Cheese in moussaka" is FETA because moussaka is clearly a Greek word, but what the heck is moussaka?  It seems to be a Middle Eastern dish that resembles a lasagna made of eggplant or potato, with minced meat.

I have never once heard of Henry James PYE, esteemed Poet Laureate.  However, these sentences from Wikipedia give a fine portrait of the man:  "Although he had no command of language and was destitute of poetic feeling, his ambition was to obtain recognition as a poet, and he published many volumes of verse... He was made poet laureate in 1790... The appointment was looked on as ridiculous, and his birthday odes were a continual source of contempt. The 20th century British historian Lord Blake called Pye 'the worst Poet Laureate in English history with the possible exception of Alfred Austin'... After his death, Pye remained one of the unfortunate few who have been classified as a 'poetaster.'"  

The EEL River has a very long and through Wikipedia article.  Why, look at this!  A proposal to dam the river was met withzzzzzzzz

Franz LEHAR was an Austrian composer best known for the "Merry Widow."

Sticking it to myself department: For some reason I put *GRE instead of GED for "goal for some H.S. dropouts," which held up the works for a little while.  I also had *COLA for SODA at "Coke or Pepsi," which meant that the "school email suffix" was *ELU.