Saturday, June 30, 2018

Saturday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: June 30, 2018

My time: 19:18.

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BY JOVE! Andy Kravis built this themeless, and what a nice job he did.  I like the modern fill E-CIGARETTES and BROTOX.  It's Botox for bros, dude!

Let's get right into the unknown material, shall we?

I failed to remember that Milton Berle's nickname is Mr. Television.  By another epithet, he is the not at all creepy UNCLE MILTIE.

It's hard to remember ERNIE Ford's name without the "Tennessee" part.

Emperor CONSTANTINE convened the First Council of Nicaea in 325 to try to reach a consensus about what all Christians agreed on.  Ha!  As if.  There will always be people for whom their made-up thing is much more real than your made-up thing.  The council's main accomplishments were agreement of the divine nature of God the Son and his relationship to God the Father, the construction of the first part of the Nicene Creed (rewritten sixty years later), and establishing uniform observance of the date of Easter.

Never heard of American expressionist painter and sculptor Milton ROBERT Rauschenberg.  He is best known for his mixed-media "Combine" works.

SPÄTLESE is a dry German wine made from late-harvest grapes, which I should have gotten more easily, since I know a little German and spät means "late." Lese turns out to mean "harvest."  It's all a little on the NOSE ("sommelier's concern").

Tarzan, the Ape Man is a terrible 1981 adaptation of the Tarzan story, with Bo Derek as Jane.  It was directed by her husband, John DEREK.  He was married to Bo Derek, Linda Evans, Ursula Andress and Pati Behrs.  Dang!

John Derek has in common with Frank Sinatra that he was REMARRIED three times!  I thought maybe that meant he married, divorced, and remarried the same woman on three different occasions, but it just means he had four wives total.

Finally, the documentary citizenfour is about Edward Snowden, so the organization featured in it is the NSA.

Director AVA DUVERNAY has come up several times and as I have already mentioned, I can't seem to remember her.  She has produced the Oprah series "Queen Sugar," directed Selma, and directed this year's A Wrinkle In Time.  That's a nice resume.  It's time to get her name down in my brian!

There's a lot of clever clues today: "Cold response?" is BRR.  "Grade in the high 80s or low 90s?" is OCTANE.  "Churro ingredient?" is ROLLED R!  "Ones making periodical changes" is EDITORS.  "Bar food?" is GRANOLA.  "Penmen?" is FELONS.  "Fitting pastime?" is JIGSAW.

IN ALL, I did not a not too shabby job.  Well, this has been fun, but let's not DWELL.  Now IT'S OVER.

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