Up until this week, Brad Wilber of Houghton College in Western NY had only created Saturday puzzles at the Times. His Friday, June 27 puzzle (answers) seems like a minor departure but I found this one to be Saturday tough.
How are you going to become famous? RUDI Gernreich's great idea in 1964 was to sell bikinis half off. Actually, the full story is more complicated. His great innovation was to create a one-piece swimsuit cut so low in the front that it failed to cover the breasts. Women who preferred to show off their bosoms were smart enough to eschew this awkward invention for the more practical idea of simply neglecting to strap on the top half of a standard bikini. Isn't it amazing what you learn on this blog?
The "legendary abductee" is HELEN. I love the geeky joke that a millihellen is the amount of beauty sufficient to launch one ship. Margaret Atwood provides an amusingly different view of Helen from the point of view of Odysseus's wife Penelope in her wonderful novel The Penelopiad.
How many people tried to fit ECHOES for "canyon tones"? Close but no cigar. It turns out the tones are visual rather than aural. The correct answer is OCHRES.
I'm still traveling so my posts the next couple of days may be later than usual, but then I'm back to a regular schedule.