Captain of M.L.B.’s Swingin’ A’s of the Nineteen Seventies / SUN 11-12-23 / Robotic anime style / Darkish inexperienced Indian dish / 2022 culinary black comedy / Anton meals critic in “Ratatouille” / Robotic anime style / Firefighter well-known for extinguishing burning wells

Constructor: Garrett Chalfin

Relative problem: Simple

THEME: “Proper on the Cash” — Down theme solutions are double-clued; one clues is for the common outdated Down reply (probably not themed), however the different clue is for the reply that turns “proper” after which descends once more; the elements the place the solutions jog “proper” (i.e. the horizontal/Throughout half) are all models of foreign money (or “cash”):

Theme solutions:

• DOES WELL BY / DOES WONDERS (3D: Treats favorably / Has an excellent impact)
• MEMORABLE / MEMORANDUM (12D: Like a momentous event / Workplace communiqué)
• EXPERTS / EXPOUNDED (52D: Masters / Elaborated)
• FIRING / FIRE ALARMS (88D: A part of a potter’s course of / Components of a constructing’s security system)
• “HAPPY NOW? / HAPPY ENDING (81D: “Are you glad?” / Widespread fairy story conclusion)

Phrase of the Day: SAL BANDO (78D: Captain of M.L.B.’s Swingin’ A’s of the Nineteen Seventies) —

Salvatore Leonard Bando (February 13, 1944 – January 20, 2023) was an American former skilled baseball participant and basic supervisor. He performed in Main League Baseball as a third baseman from 1966 to 1981, most prominently because the workforce captain for the Oakland Athletics dynasty generally known as the “Swingin’ A’s” that received three consecutive World Sequence championships between 1972 and 1974. // Bando was runner-up for the 1971 American League (AL) Most Precious Participant Award, received by teammate Vida Blue, after serving to lead the workforce to the primary of 5 straight division titles. // A four-time All-Star, Bando averaged 23 house runs and 90 runs batted in (RBI) in his final eight years in Oakland. Though he was usually overshadowed by his modern, Corridor of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson, Bando remained a robust MVP candidate by means of Oakland’s championship run, ending third and fourth within the voting in 1973 and 1974. In 1973 he led the AL with 32 doubles and 295 whole bases. (wikipedia)

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I went to see Anatomy of a Fall (nice) in Ithaca tonight, which suggests I acquired again house later than traditional, which suggests I am running a blog later than traditional, which suggests I am drained, which suggests which suggests and so forth. Which is all to say that this can be a brief affair, each as a result of I wish to lower issues brief so I can go to mattress, but additionally as a result of … I do not know what there may be to say about this. It is fairly self-explanatory. I believe that in the event you needed to you can most likely have guessed the theme concept from the title (+ circles) alone. It is a one-note idea, a little bit of wordplay that most likely appeared impressed at first blush, however … constructing a whole Sunday-sized puzzle round that wordplay, that is a tall, tall order, and the puzzle simply is not as much as it. Sure, you go “proper” on “the cash”; and then you definately do it once more; and you retain doing it; and as soon as you understand that is what you are doing, it will get very straightforward to do it, and sadly the theme solutions themselves by no means actually provide you with something. It is all very workmanlike, satisfactory, high-quality. The theme solutions are uninteresting, and since there are technically two of them every time, they’re doubly uninteresting. I imply, MEMORANDUM? EXPOUNDED? How am I presupposed to get enthusiastic about these, to say nothing of their even much less thrilling counterparts (MEMORABLE / EXPERTS). There’s one semi-interesting factor about this gimmick, and that is that each one of many foreign money models is cluable in a non-currency approach. That narrows the foreign money subject, and possibly raises the development problem a bit of. However sadly that has nothing to do with whether or not this puzzle was thrilling to unravel or not (it was not). You get the gimmick most likely early, after which it is only a entire lot of methodical filling in of squares, with virtually no wordplay payoff. Because the theme has this double / forked factor to it, there’s not loads of room for extra, fascinating, longer fill. HAD A GOOD TIME simply sits up there, promising one thing the puzzle by no means manages to ship.