Joseph Knecht

    Some Travelers The Traveling Wilburys seem to enjoy traveling by train, but the travelers  in constructor Norman Aaronson 's 4 themers appear to be suffering from various forms of hodophobia (fear of travel).  Here are some of their punny excuses for avoiding it  ... 18A. Some travelers won't tour the Corn Palace for fear that ...: THE WALLS HAVE EARS .  The Corn Palace , commonly advertised as T he World's Only Corn Palace and the Mitchell Corn Palace , is a multi-purpose arena/facility located in Mitchell, South Dakota, United States.  The Corn Palace is a popular tourist destination, visited by up to 500,000 people each year .  A must see for corny cruciverbalists 😃...   Corn Palace Mitchell, SD 29A. Some travelers won't go to the top of the Eiffel Tower because they never ...: COME TO THE  POINT .  Th...

  Sow's Ear to a Silk Purse Eric Bernhardt Bernie's Blues 2020 It's often said that "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear", but our soloist Eric Bernhardt does exactly the opposite in his rift above called Sow's Ear to a Silk Purse .  And so too do our new team of constructors for today's puzzle: David Goldenberg and Matthew Goldenberg .  They do this by taking the nicknames found in five fictional themers and fancifying them with formal first names .  Here are the resulting fills, followed by the names their friends call them ... 18A. Formal name of a tech business?: DOROTHY COM .  Nickname: DOT COM .  A dot.com is a company that does most of its business on the Internet , usually through a website on the World Wide Web that uses the popular top-level domain ( TLD ) ".com".  As of 2021, .com is by far the most used TLD, with almost half of all registrations. 23A. Formal name of a bun...

 Double Trouble Toil and Trouble November 8th of this month marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of the great dramatist William Shakespeare's 1st Folio , and our editor Patti and constructor Rena Cohen have certainly picked a great way to commemorate it.  Today Rena celebrates it with a flourish of 4 starred themers ... 17A. *Naval rank of computer scientist Grace Hopper: REAR ADMIRAL .   Grace Brewster Hopper (née Murray; December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist , mathematician , and United States Navy REAR ADMIRAL .  Among her many accomplishments, perhaps the most significant was the invention of COBOL , an early programming language still in wide use today .  She is also credited with first applying the term "BUG" to an early computer hardware failure (due to a moth stuck in a relay!) .  Years back Teri saw her speak and she gave every member in the audience a 1 foot length of insulated copper...