What's the measure of how hard a mystery cache is to solve? Most cachers avoid all puzzles; some look at the Difficulty rating and pass on anything above 2. But don't be intimidated by this puzzle. Just focus on the mostly hard parts and let them take you, lickety-split, right to the numbers and then the answer for which you search.
PUZZLE DIFFICULTY IS RELATIVE: HOW HARD CAN THIS BE?
ACROSS
1 Historical periods
4 The S in a famous FSF
8 Originally a way to use up leftovers, this meat, potatoes, and onions dish gets its name from a French word that means to chop
12 Hooked infructescence
13 What you said when you looked up that fancy word in 12A
14 Indian title of respect, type of Sikh, or Algerian music genre
16 Brief sleep
17 Times that stress those who clean up after most NFL games?
21 Co. founded by Turner & Long commissioned to make a $30K bike for the ’96 Summer Games
22 Miners, ants, and termites, in a way?
23 Pres. directive, such as Carter’s 12148, which created FEMA, and FDR’s 8807, which created OSRD
24 An opportunity for Holmes at the seashore?
26 “Is there no ___ in Gilead?”
28 His Roman counterpart was Cupid
30 Coordinate conversion, distance measurement, or projection to Jim Carson or David Knapp?
37 Dupe
38 Chit letters, sometimes
39 Fleming, of Bond fame
40 Calloway, of “Minnie the Moocher” fame
42 Wheel nut or big, clumsy fellow
43 Name of a pet shop specializing in a Chinese dog with a wrinkly face, bulging eyes, and a curled tail?
45 Short for purchase price plus costs of operation
46 Short for noisy transportation in the Windy City
47 Generally, the higher a borrower’s credit score, the lower the ___ for his loan will be
48 Barometer of a royal’s sensitivity in an 1835 fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen
50 Designation for model trains built to 1:76th scale
51 Low visibility in State College, Pennsylvania, before mid-day?
56 Type of hair transplant now more popular than FUT
57 Medical shorthand for “before meals”
58 Income owed a company, to a CPA
59 Dir. from Frederick, MD to Littlestown, PA
60 What through-hikers meeting along a 2200-mile trail between Georgia and Maine might do?
64 Innocent ___ proven guilty
65 H. P. Lowcraft, Grail Undwin, pseudonyms of ___ Carter, sci-fi writer, editor, poet, critic
66 Lasciviously looks
67 Primary goal of a moderate, maybe?
DOWN
1 White, who called The Elements of Style “Strunk’s parvum opus, his attempt to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric down to size and write its rules and principles on the head of a pin.”
2 Maura Tierney, Alex Neustaedter, Jeff Daniels, David Alvarez, and Juia Mayorga of American ___
3 Blakey or Garfunkel
4 Tibiae fronts
5 It might be Gregorian, Ambrosian, or Mozarabic
6 To throw bait into internet water in the form of deliberately provocative statements, then waiting for someone to bite (per Jennifer Beckett, writer and University of Melbourne lecturer)
7 It’s considered the soul of Macedonia
9 Whichever
10 Envelope content designed to facilitate a response?
11 Manuf. of Office Jet printers
13 One of Igiaba Scego’s novels
15 Alternate spelling of one of the Saronic Islands of Greece, in the Aegean
18 Toxic Waste chewy candy that comes in lemon, strawberry, and blue raspberry
19 Anne of Stiller and ___ (and husband of Jerry and mother of Amy and Ben)
20 Benefit
24 Adhere
25 “I was made ___ and lone . . . . Where I sit there is my throne . . . take the sap and leave the heart.”
27 He ran ___ ___ the law
29 ___: ___ Man Army Corps, graphic novel by Jack Kirby, which presents a violently dystopian future
31 Bright, fresh, lively, fast, or speedy—or ___Finn, CO of 174 hides, including GC5FX6J
32 Tom, assuring Huck that his father hasn’t drunk up all his money, says, “it’s all there, yet—six thousand dollars and more; and ___ ___ hain’t ever been back since.”
33 Danny Mondello of Meals by ___ (a play on the Italian slang for cousin)
34 ___ Catherine Thomas, UPenn swimmer, who became part of the public debate about transgender women in sports (especially after she was nominated for the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year Award)
35 Parking structure
36 ___ tubes
37 That part of the staff identifying pitch
41 Nickname of an Oriole with the same name as a Civil War general and later explorer of the Colorado
44 Acronym found after numbers on air-conditioners
47 The ___ of ___, 1650-1750, by Daniel Judson Milburn
49 A former journalist, translator and BBC archivist, she was hired to provide independent question setting and adjudication for the producers of Double Your Money and Blockbusters
52 Winds over and above sustained?
53 Salieri’s opera Europe Revealed was its first production; the opera wasn’t performed again until 2004, for the teatro’s reopening after three years of renovations (with La)
54 Dr. Larch’s customary send-off when putting the orphans of The Cider House Rules to bed: “Good night, you princes of ___, you kings of New England.”
55 Map within a map
61 “When it comes to ___ Yoga vs Lululemon, Lululemon seems to win in terms of durability . . . .”
62 Dither
63 Former measure of length (equivalent to six hand breadths) used mainly for textiles, about 45 inches
MANY THANKS TO ZUMBIDO FOR EDITING AND BETA-TESTING THIS CACHE!
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