We’re back after a weekend hiatus. Hi everybody! Let’s see what the weekend puzzles brought us.

Does 1 across on Saturday — MAGIC SHOP — hint at all sorts of oddities in the puzzle? Well, 27D is a little weird. The clue was “Potentially prophetic child,” and the answer was SEVENTH SON. According to encyclopedia.com, it has long been believed that a seventh son is especially lucky or gifted with occult powers, and that the seventh son of a seventh son has healing powers. In Scotland, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter was said to have the gift of second sight (prophetic vision). In Ireland, the saliva of a seventh son was said to have healing properties. However, in Romanian folklore, a seventh child was believed to be fated to become a vampire. [In Jewish tradition, the seventh child is fated to become a doctor, but the same holds true for the first six as well.]

An odd item of clothing made its appearance at 35D — a CODPIECE, clued as “Renaissance-era cup.” The codpiece is a pouch, especially a conspicuous and decorative one, attached to a man’s breeches or close-fitting hose to cover the genitals, worn in the 15th and 16th centuries. Who says crossword puzzles aren’t sexy?

And I learned something new about the word SCAN, clued as “What classic sonnets do.” When it is said of a sonnet (or any verse) that it “scans,” that means it has the correct meter (“conforms to metrical principles”). So you might trash a poem by saying “it doesn’t rhyme and it doesn’t scan.” OTOH, when’s the last time you trashed a poem?

On a lighter note, for the clue “Word that retains its meaning when preceded by ‘no,’” the answer was DUH. I’m not sure that’s a good clue. In any event, a discussion arose on how DUH differs from DOH. This is a good explanation: DOH is what you say when you have been stupid. DUH is what you say when someone else has been stupid. You can slap yourself on the head for emphasis with DOH.

One of my favorite moments from the old show CAR TALK on NPR was when a woman called in, explained her car problem, and outlined what she thought about it and then what her husband thought about it. Then she said, “So am I right, or do I deserve one big dope slap?” And one of the Car Talk guys said “Brace yourself.”

Sunday’s puzzle was an absolutely brilliant construction, called Terminal Connections. Two long down answers turned inwards towards one another, with the horizontal parts forming a third clued word. This happened six times, and the twelve last letters of the down words spelled MAKE ENDS MEET. So take 6D (“Baseball pitching style. . . or a weapon” — SIDEARM), and 14D (“Big name in hotels: RAMADA) If you insert them as shown below, they meet to form DEAR MADAM, cleverly clued as “Old-fashioned letter opener.”

        S               R
        I               A
        D E A R M A D A M

And the last letters from SIDEARM and RAMADA, are the M and the A that start spelling MAKE ENDS MEET.

As much as I admired the construction, I had an error where two names I didn’t know crossed. “Lil _ Howery (“Get Out” actor), is REL (he reminded people of his older cousin DARREL), and the Sherlock Holmes character is LESTRADE. I guessed RED and DESTRADE, wrongly inserting a D for the L at the meeting point. You guys hear of either of them? Lestrade is the character who appears most in Sherlock Holmes after Holmes himself and Watson.

The clue for STREET was “Word with easy or stop.” I’m familiar with easy street, but stop street or street stop seemed off to me. Some felt it refers to “street stop,” a police term for, duh, stopping someone in the street. Others thought it refered to a “stop street,” which is defined in Merriam/Webster as “a street on which a vehicle must stop just before entering a through street.”

Get this! The clue for EON was “Phanerozoic _ (what we live in).” I first thought of ERA, but someone explained: “We’re living in the Phanerozoic EON, the Cenozoic era, the Quaternary period, the Holocene epoch and the Meghalayan age? EONs are divided into eras, which are divided into periods, which are divided into – well, you get the picture. There have been only four EONs since the formation of the Earth, and the one we’re in is characterized by the evolution of complex organisms – so we share it with the dinosaurs.”

A nice thing happened in the center of the puzzle. Amid all the wild verbal goings-on, we stopped and took a rest. That is, there was a TEA CEREMONY at 45A, and a CROISSANT immediately below it at 51A. You could also put your feet up and listen to some oldies for a spell, with OTTOMAN SETS right over THE RONETTES down near the bottom.

Here they are singing Be My Baby, released as a single in 1963. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnWOBMQhNBQ

Give it three minutes — it’s wonderful.

It includes the verse: I’ll make you happy baby, just wait and see. For every kiss you give me, I’ll give you three.

It scans!