Crossword puzzle Immortals: Yma Sumac

Cafe Society
41

Oh, don’t get me going!

First names of golfers, architects, obscure 19th century painters, abbreviations that nobody uses (such as for seldom mentioned books of the Old Testament), best supporting actors from any film released more than two decades ago, the names (or nicknames) of baseball players who retired more than 30 years ago…and others, which I can’t recall off the top of my head.

Only people who spend all their free time doing crosswords know these things.

If they get rid of these, I’ll gladly forgo these obvious answers which for some reason crossword writers are obsessed with:

epee
ale (always ale, never beer)
Abba
eel
ode
oleo (really, does anyone ever buy oleo? What the hell is it, anyway?)
Eire (never Ireland, always Erie)
lei
abo (blood typing system)
the word for “friend” in French or Spanish
orate
ire
emote
eon and era

there are others…

ETA: Oh, yes! Uma! What the hell makes them so obsessed with Uma Therman??!!

42

Trust me, I wish I hadn’t.

:slight_smile:

Seriously, you know that it’s a hard job, right, making a crossword puzzle?

43

My tears are palpable.

44

I’ve always been 99% sure that Dave was riffing on that *New Yorker *piece at the Oscars, but no one else got it. I did, and I sent him a letter at the time to let him know. (No, he didn’t reply.)

45

And Queen Ena of Spain.

46

Film actress Ilona Massey, otherwise famous only as the girl (okay, Baroness) in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).

47

I just got **Yma **as a clue in the crossword I’m working on. Wouldn’t have gotten it w/o this thread, and I’ve seen most of the ones listed above.

48

ERTE (Art Deco master)

Playwright William INGE

ENOS may be “Slaughter of baseball”, “Cabell of the Astros”, or “Son of Seth”.

African adventurer OSA Johnson (who’s actually the inspiration for a character in the play Chamber Music)

And every other puzzle in TV Guide features SNEE (John of The New Leave it to Beaver) and/or ERBE (Kathryn of Law & Order: Criminal Intent).

49

Another one is Smee, who was one of Captain Hook’s henchmen in Peter Pan.

50

Agreed, but that’s kind of the point of this thread. It’s meant to be an affectionate poke at some of the more tedious tropes of the medium.

51

A few I anticipate showing up in the future, if they haven’t yet:

Turkish writer, academic, and Nobel Prize recipient: Orhan Pamuk

Egyptian novelist and social critic: Alaa Al Aswany

Nigerian musician and activist: Fela Kuti

52

I realize that. Just consider me affectionless, though still poking.

53

I still don’t know who these people are, but their names still show up in puzzles all the time:

ADELA Rogers St. Johns (a writer of some kind)

EDY Williams (actress of some kind)

People I HAVE heard of who show up a lot:

EWAN MacGregor, the young Obi-Wan Kenobi

Jean AUEL, “Clan of the Cave Bear” author

ERLE Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason’s creator

Thespians Ken or Lena OLIN

54

Britney Spears is an anagram of presbyterian.

55

Ava Gardner
Tito Puentes

56

How about initials? They’ll almost always be AES, RLS, or TSE. (But poor T.S. Eliot, oftentimes his initials are used instead as “Half a biting bug” or something.)

As for the OP and Yma Sumac, I actually knew who she was before I became a crossword junkie. She’s pretty popular among “incredibly strange music” collectors.