Default: 348183
Default with Spaces: 1301249
I have today’s Post Puzzler in the Washington Post (No. 219). Check it out!
NOTES: Last week I watched a clip of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo for the first time. I knew from watercooler conversations with coworkers that one of the running gags of the show (gag in the revulsion sense) is the pasta dish topped with a sauce of margarine and ketchup — the dish is known as sketti (60). A&E latest reality offering Big Smo (60) about a country-hiphop (or hick-hop (70)) performer, has handy partial. An article about the World Cup mentioned the diabolica (72) as the obnoxiously loud noisemaker to succeed the vuvuzela at the games in Rio.
LISTS: I went through a few lists last week from sharedoc contributors. Dave Shukan’s entries included a fun trio of kitchen device brands: Chop-O-Matic (65), Dial-O-Matic (55), and Bass-O-Matic (65). I’ll bet he added the Dan Aykroyd fish-blender first and then added the Ronco gadgets that were the source of the parody. I recently asked Peter Broda to do some test-solving for me and, when he claimed that he was a poor puzzler, I made a comment in which I called bullshit. on his claim that he was a poor puzzler. Peter’s subsequent sharedoc additions included inflections of call bullshit and call bullshit on; great phrases but in the “25” category for language.
life as a puzzle 
Thanks for the tip on the Post Puzzler; I always forget to check on those.
After getting 1-Down in that puzzle from the crossings, I still didn’t know who you were referring to. So I googled “{ANSWER} Sunny” and was quite scandalized by the results (try it!). Adding “teen” to my search, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not help. I was able to eventually get to a search that worked without being overwhelmed by the “blue” links, but it took some effort. 🙂
I wrote that clue thinking that the figures involved would be especially familiar to solvers in Washington D.C. Of course, there are probably many in D.C. who are also familiar with the figures that came up in your web search.