Pitt County Crossroads

I read in the Reflector recently about renowned painter Sterling Edwards who’s been leading workshops at the Grifton Civic Center.

“I teach everything from abstract expressionism, how to paint florals, landscapes, coastal scenes, and a very wide variety of subject matter.”

One thing his students like is that he can do a painting in two or three hours that used to take two or three months.

So it made me think of a riddle. A spaceship landed at the painting class with a crew of aliens from one of the 1-Across of the 22-Across. They had come to examine our 42-Across. But unfortunately, the aliens could only see black and white. So when they were asked how they liked the reds, greens, and blues of the paintings, what did they say? The answer is pronounced the same as a type of painting but spelled differently.

To get the answer, rearrange the circled letters and place them in the blanks below the grid. The fifth square is an apostrophe. (Anagram answer for previous puzzle: SEW-AND-SEW)

Across

1 They orbit our sun and other suns

8 Warsaw agreement

12 Take teasing too far (3,2,2)

13 Part of ROM

14 Shrinking Asian lake (4,3)

15 Stereotypical hunchback

16 Do a private eye’s job

19 Utah city

20 Forsyth’s “The ___ File”

21 Loafer bottoms

22 Polaris (5,4)

26 A-list notable

28 Hollywood awards

33 Soup scoop

34 Crown material

35 Lot measurement

36 Put on sale, perhaps

39 Take a load off

40 Funds coming in

41 Comedian Johnson

42 Visual representations

Down

1 Madrid museum

2 Roped in

3 Ease off

4 Frasier’s bro

5 Alf and others

6 Overtime creator

7 Breaks like a twig

8 Agatha Christie detective

9 Luanda’s land

10 Shamrock, e.g.

11 Raw recruits

17 AL clock setting

18 Resort lake

22 Less remote

23 First born

24 Be empathetic, with “to”

25 1040 ID

26 Bow of old movies

27 Oft-quoted Yogi

29 Baseball Hall-of-Famer Rod

30 Acid type

31 Come to mind again

32 Lean and lovely

37 Racket extension

38 Ryan, in WWII

Answer: WHAT’RE COLORS