Venn Mini 7

Words:  10

Average Length:  4.20

online | puz | pdf | solution

Think of each half of each clue as a circle in a Venn diagram. The answer will lie in the intersection of the two circles. It could be a name, a word with different meanings in each context, a common component, or something else they share.

Spoilers/explanations below the photo

1A: SPOCK – Dr. Benjamin Spock wrote what was, for a long time, the baby care bible.  Mr. Spock, of course, needs no introduction.  Live long and prosper!

6A:  THREE – Lithium’s atomic number and Dale Earnhardt’s car number

7A:  DADDY – Daddy Yankee was featured on Despacito and Daddy Warbucks is a main character in Annie

8A:  SEE – The government of the Catholic Church (Holy See) operates from the Vatican, and you “see” in poker when you match a bet

9A:  ERS – as in emergency rooms and “ers” when someone is searching for a word

1D:  STD – a reg (regulation) is a standard (std), and the “clap” is slang for gonorrhea, a kind of sexually transmitted disease

2D:  PHASE – the “terrible twos” is considered a phase, and liquid is a phase (state) of matter

3D:  ORDER – is a categorization in taxonomy (between family and class), and a monastery generally is populated by monks of a specific order (e.g., Franciscans)

4D:  CEDES – sorry about this one; it’s a stretch but it works if you consider that the root -cede is used with con (concede) but not pro (which changes the root to ceed) and pre (precede) but not post (instead it’s succeed).  I got backed into a corner on this one!

5D:  KEY – a piano has 88 of them; Florida has around 800