Author: Jeff

Words:  10

Average Length:  4.60

This one may (or may not) play a bit tougher than previous VMs – I can never tell.  Spolers/explanation below the break.

online | puz | pdf | solution

1A.  AMP – amplifier, ampere

4A.  CORDS – newborns have umbilical cords and cords (corduroy pants) have wales (ridges)

7A.  IDIOT – Village idiot; Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot

8A.  DEMME – Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins appeared together in Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme’s most famous movie.

9A.  SLEEP – REM is a sleep stage; the famous Hamlet soliloquy contains the line “to sleep, perchance to dream”.  (The clue would work equally well for DREAM.)  I wanted to further the REM misdirection by having the second half of the clue be “Sidewinder”; the band had a medium-sized hit song called “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite,” but it’s 30 years old and I wasn’t sure how well-known it is.

1D.  ACIDS are used in etching, and “on acid” is slang for tripping on LSD

2D.  MODEL – a model poses on a runway, and an A380 is an airplane model from Airbus. Major misdirect on this one!

3D.  PRIME – beef and numbers both may be prime

5D.  DOME – Buckminster Fuller is known for designing a geodesic dome, and the Pantheon in Rome is one of the most famous domed buildings in the world

6D.  STEP – it’s a synonym for stair and, in music, a step is a whole tone (e.g., from C to D).

Words:  11

Average Length:  4.73

online | puz | pdf | solution

I wasn’t threatened too grievously after posting Venn Mini 1 last week, so here we go again! Think of each half of each clue as a circle in a Venn diagram; the answer will fit in the intersection between the two circles. It could be a common component, a word used in both “circles” but with different meanings, a name associated with both “circles,” or some other common ground.

EXPLANATIONS/SPOILERS BELOW

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1A:  MOSS is a kind of bryophyte; Kate Moss is a supermodel

5A:  COPPER is an essential element of both brass and bronze

7A:  O’LEARY was the owner of the cow that started the great Chicago fire, and “Mr. Wonderful” on Shark Tank is Kevin O’Leary

8A:  DERIVE is a term used both in calculus and in etymology

9A:  SANE – besides meaning “sensible,” Aladdin Sane was one of David Bowie’s alter egos

1D:  MOLES are enemy agents who’ve burrowed into a spy organization as well as rodents that burrow in gardens

2D:  OPERA – The Marx Brothers are known for A Night at the Opera and Kurt Weill is noted for his music for The Threepenny Opera (esp. “Mack the Knife”)

3D:  SPAIN – Toledo is a city in Spain and Columbus’s expeditions were funded by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain

4D:  SERVE – people serve in tennis and in the military

5D:  COD – Cash on Delivery or a kind of fish

6D:  RYE – Salinger wrote The Catcher in the Rye, and rye is a type of whiskey