The chorus then got expanded to a longer poem in the late 19th century, and the poem/song's pop cultural presence just proliferated from there. I think that one is "Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me." Ah, I see the "bottle of rum" line is originally just a snippet of song in Treasure Island. I want to say it's from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride at Disneyland, but that can't be right. I'm not actually sure where that line comes from, though it's very, very familiar. I'm sort of surprised that YOHOHO clue didn't (also!) have a "?" on it, but I guess the line is " YOHOHO and a bottle of rum," so it's pretty literal. Maybe I got YOHOHO first, I don't remember ( 6D: Accompaniment for a bottle of rum). Somehow, from the "O"s, I was able to see the XOXOXOXO gimmick. I started with HOT (wrong) ROY (correct) and SON (correct), which is the only one of the three I was certain of ( 8D: Chaz, to Cher). It's possible that the NW corner was your idea of fun. Detracting from the Zoom-even though I did lowercase "z" zoom through the puzzle, for the most part. has a way of piling up and deadening the Friday thrill. The fill is smooth throughout, it's just that IBAR IPSO AOL OCALA etc. The center is thick with blandness: PETSTORE, ARETOO, TARTARE, ÉCOLES-a lot of common letters but not a lot of zing. After that, there are a couple good longer answers- TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE is solid, and I like FALL EQUINOX and ARMY-NAVY as well-but there's mostly 3s, 4s, and 5s, not much to write home about. MALLET?" And that ended up being the most original thing in the grid. When I got MALLET, after working the crosses, I thought "really, we did all that for just. ) MALLET (thud) ( 17A: What can strike up a tune?). And then to come crashing out of that corner with XYLOPHONE (promising.
It just seems like a waste of good space, space that could've been used for legitimately interesting fill instead of a totally arbitrary number of "XO"s and a YOOHOO / YOHOHO pseudo-echo. It's not that getting those "X"s was difficult. Putting seventy-five or however many "X"s in one corner is not the HOOT you think it is, from a solving perspective. (wikipedia)Ī lot of nonsense up front, and then an easy and dullish exercise the rest of the way. The alphabet has been traditionally attributed to Cyril. The early Glagolitic alphabet was used in Great Moravia between 863 (the arrival of Cyril and Methodius) and 885 (the expulsion of their students) for government and religious documents and books, and at the Great Moravian Academy ( Veľkomoravské učilište ) founded by Cyril, where followers of Cyril and Methodius were educated, by Methodius himself among others. The Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets are the oldest known Slavic alphabets, and were created by the two brothers and their students, to translate the Gospels and liturgical books into the Slavic languages. In 1980, Pope John Paul II declared them co- patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia. In 1880, Pope Leo XIII introduced their feast into the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. Both brothers are venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as saints with the title of " equal-to-apostles". They are credited with devising the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet used to transcribe Old Church Slavonic. After their deaths, their pupils continued their missionary work among other Slavs. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs". Word of the Day: Saint CYRIL ( 20A: Saint associated with the Russian alphabet) -Ĭyril (born Constantine, 826–869) and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries.