My OTTER title for this entry is “Does Carol Have The BIRDFLU?”
I’m writing this today because Carol has been feeling a bit under the weather the past few days and has forgotten to keep our brand new blog updated! We hope to be reading her little MORELS of crossword wisdom soon.
Today’s puzzle barely gave me any pause at all. It did have a few interesting facts in it, such as Sean Lennon’s middle name and the opening line of THE RAVEN. I love it when destinations I’ve been to, like PRAGUE, are in the puzzle as well as places I need to visit, like RWANDA and PERU. One day I’ll plan trip based on a crossword’s geographical references.
The theme came to me as soon as I made out GOALPOSTS in the southeast. I immediately figured out the rest of the themers and had to go back to suss out MOVING GOALPOSTS. I’ve always heard it as “moving the goalposts”, though I like “Moving Goalposts” as it sounds like it could be the name of the next Faith Hill album.
The only slight hang up I had was initially writing JIM as Tim. Can someone also explain to me how “Step on it!” clues SOLE?
To me, “sole” (rhymes with “guacaMOLE”) means something like “dude” in Samoan (and apparently in other Polynesian languages, too). And speaking of Samoa, everyone should harass an anti-vaxxer today, as the death toll of the horrifying measles outbreak there has reached 52 this week.
Medical professionals have attributed this outbreak to a rise in fear of vaccines that has arisen thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and an Instagram influencer of Samoan decent named Taylor Winterstein. They capitalized on the tragic deaths of two infants who died after being mistakenly given muscle relaxers instead of MMR vaccines. They have been knowingly spreading lies to Samoans in order to enrich themselves. You can read about it here, but the long and short of it is that Ms. Winterstein and Mr. Kennedy should do the world a favor by digging holes and getting into them.
A second Samoan word in the puzzle today is MOA, which means chicken. Chicken happens to be one-third of my dinner tonight, along with some sweet POTATO ravioli left over from Thanksgiving.
PS- I’ve identified at least two more Samoan words hidden in today’s puzzle! I’ll cook this for anyone who can figure out what they are!
My Wednesday best is now faster than my Tuesday best, and that’s going to annoy me until I can get Tuesday done in under 7:58. My mistakes were thinking YINI some how was something that meant YIN when in fact YANG was the answer (I confuse light and dark, apparently) – also because I was confused by MOVING GOALPOSTS missing the THE. Like everyone. Oh, and I also misspelled POTOMAC because I didn’t go back and answer OSHA like I meant to, and it was so close to ASHE that I thought I had misspelled that. Seeing is hard when you’ve got the BIRD FLU. And I still don’t really understand how this is even a theme.
PS: How did RJK, Jr become so stupid?
It’s sole because you step on it 😉 that took me a bit to see. Chasing waterfalls would have been a good themer entry too.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WEtxJ4-sh4