The fun of solving today's crossword by Janice Luttrell might be enhanced by having Bobby Darin's
If I Were A Carpenter playing in the background. Each theme answer begins with the name of a tool:
Ten-spot: SAWBUCK
Utmost effort: LEVELBEST
Military marching unit: DRILLTEAM
Reality show hosted by rapper M.C.: HAMMERTIME
One of a daily three at the table: SQUAREMEAL
Ten-dollar bills began to be called "sawbucks" around 1850 because X, the Roman numeral for 10, resembles the legs of a sawbuck, a rack used for holding wood for sawing. It consists of a long flat platform supported by a pair of crossed wooden legs. The $20 bill used to be known as a "double sawbuck." The hundred-dollar bill used to be called a C-note. Again, the reference is to a Roman numeral. Roman numerals appeared on some of the earliest United States currency.
M.C. Hammer was born Stanley Burrell in Oakland, California. The biggest of his many rap hits was
U Can't Touch This (1990), in which he shouted "Hammer time!" In 2009, Burrell and his family began starring in
Hammertime, a reality series on the A&E Network.
"NFL team that moved from St. Louis in 2016" is LARAMS. To be precise, it was not the Los Angeles Rams who moved from St. Louis -- it was the
St. Louis Rams. "Oddball" is KOOK. The word dates from the mid-1950s and is a shortened form of "cuckoo." An eccentric person is often described as "kooky." On the 1958-64 ABC-TV detective series
77 Sunset Strip, Edd Byrnes played a young greasy-haired hipster named Gerald Lloyd "Kookie" Kookson III. Byrnes became a teen idol and was the inspiration of Henry Winkler's "Fonzie" character on
Happy Days. In 1959, Kookie's jive talk and slang expressions were turned into a hit record. Here are Edd Byrnes and Connie Stevens with
Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpABRTn6kSALater, Daddio!
