Sunday, October 8, 2017

My time: 17:44, destroying my previous Sunday best by nearly seven minutes!   Why, that's enough time to play Cream's studio version of "Spoonful!"  (The Blob's favorite band and song?)

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The reason I blew through this quite fun puzzle by Erik Agard and Alex Briñas is probably because the theme was made for me specifically.  Pretty much the only pop culture I know is comic books and modern music, so the clues that blended them were filled in with no hesitation.

"Aquaman's favorite singer?" BILLY OCEAN.  "Electro's favorite singer?"  FRANK ZAPPA.  "Iceman's favorite band?"  COLDPLAY.  "Spider-Man's favorite band?" THE SPINNERS.  Not a single one unknown to me, either on the comic or music side.  And the capper? If they all perfromed together, they'd be a SUPERGROUP.

I am the single most clueless-about-sports American male, an ongoing series:
I have never heard of STEFAN Edberg, "two-time US Open tennis champion."  And why doesn't he have a cool nickname?
I have never heard of ELTON Brand, "two-time NBA All-Star."

This puzzle has YMA and UMA!  That's funnier than Letter's stupid Uma-Oprah bit.

Finally, an actress I recognize, at least, though I didn't know her name.  ALFRE Woodard has four Emmys.  She was in 12 Years a Slave and "True Blood" and "Gray's Anatomy," but I may know her for such roles as Mariah Dillard in "Luke Cage."

The "covalent bonds of a carbon atom" for a TETRAD, which just means a group of four.  After that it gets confusing to a dullard like me.  A covalent bond is a chemical bond that involves sharing electron pairs.  As far as I can tell, carbon has four electrons in its outermost shell so I guess that would be sharing two pairs, which is four?  Possibly but not necessarily.

PONCE, Puerto Rico, is not named for Ponce de Leon, but "shares its name with" him, because it's actually named after his great-grandson.

I don't think I even noticed the clue "university in North Carolina" and answered it with crossfill alone, but there it is: ELON, last seen September 14.

So "the upright yoga pose vrikshasana simulates" a TREE, which I did not know, but it seems like a decent guess from the "upright" part of the clue.

"Not only that but also" is NAY, which gave me a few seconds of trouble, but it looks like one of the meanings is in fact "an old word used for correcting yourself when you think of a better way of expressing something," so there you go.

Hey, it's ALOHA 'OE, which was an answer just yesterday.

Clever clues: "Agcy. for Kennedy or Reagan" is TSA.  Airports, not presidents!  Har.