Diary of a Crossword Fiend

My Last Post (here)

2009-12-06T16:50:00.006-06:00

The Crossword Fiend now posts at: http://www.crosswordfiend.com. Please make a note of it. Older posts will remain here indefinitely, and can be accessed from the "Old Blog" link at the new site.

Looking forward to seeing you at my new site!

Amy Reynaldo

Sunday, 12/6/09

2009-12-05T17:56:00.005-06:00

NYT 10:18
LAT 8:50
BG 7:32
Reagle 6:51
CS 3:06*

Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword, "Double Break Point"

Theme: At the break point between two words, the first word's final letter gets doubled and scoots over to the second word. A few examples:

20A. [Deciding the best man is better, perhaps?] is CHANGING GROOMS, based on "changing rooms" + G.
25A. A SPORTS SCAR (sports car + S) is a [Memento of an old athletic injury?].
52A. [Double or nothing, say?] is a NEW WAGER (goofy New Ager + W).
93A. [Holder of pet electrons, protons and neutrons?] is an ATOMIC CAGE (the Atomic Age + C).

There are nine theme entries in all. That long central Down answer, LIBERAL-MINDED (29D: [Tolerant of other opinions]), is not part of the theme, though it does intersect three theme answers.

Weirdest (i.e., least familiar) answer: RAHAB, or 91A: [Prostitute who protected Israelite spies, in Joshua].

Notable clues and answers in the fill:

60D. ¡THREE AMIGOS! That's the [1986 film featuring Chevy Chase as Dusty Bottoms]. "Sew! Sew like the wind!" remains my favorite line from that movie.
2A. GIMLI is ["The Lord of the Rings" dwarf]. First answer in the grid when 1A (SCALED, [Like mountains and maps]) didn't give way instantly. I spaced out when typing in SCALED and it wound up as SCARED, which totally mucked up 4D: [They're set for drinking and smoking]. No, REGALAGES made no sense. LEGAL AGES! That's better.
Other than fixing that R/L problem, the last letter I filled in was the F in 47A: [Bottom line?]/FOOTERS and 47D: [Peggy Lee's signature song]/'FEVER." "Never" sounded plausible, but NOOTERS was not helping one bit.
45A. TWEED is a stereotypical [Professorial material?].
78A. Geography meets etymology: GHANA is the [Country whose name means "warrior king"]. They made the World Cup draw, didn't they?
33D. [It might have an extension: Abbr.] clues a URL. Not a TEL., nope.
45D. Maryland's TERPS (Terrapins) are [Competitors of Wahoos and Tar Heels].
46D. [It's most useful when it's cracked] clues a WHIP. Ouch.
70D. [Becomes layered while settling] clues SEPARATES. Gross. Word to the wise: If you should find yourself ordering a McDonald's milkshake, don't let it melt. It'll separate in disturbing fashion.
72D. [Shaker's sound] is "BRR" if he or she is shaking from the cold.
85D. The THROAT is a [Dewlap's place]. In cattle or birds, generally—not people.

That's all for tonight. See you Sunday morning!

Updated Sunday morning:

Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "Fashion Plate"

Merl's theme this week is "food items that contain words that are related to clothing (items of apparel, fabrics, clothing fasteners, parts of clothing), clued with the word fashionable." For example:

46A. [Fashionable condiment?] clues CAESAR DRESSING. Dressing...not sure how this fits the theme. "Getting dressed" or "dress" as part of the word. PITA POCKETS also stretches the theme a bit.
56A. [Fashionable meat?] is SKIRT STEAK. 93A has the same clue, for BEEF MEDALLIONS. So add jewelry to the apparel concept. Wait, ONION RINGS also contains jewelry. Other answers with items of clothing are BLUEBONNET and BOWTIE PASTA, though those are accessories more than clothing.
70A. GINGERSNAPS are [Fashionable cookies?]. See also BUTTON MUSHROOMS.
104A. [Fashionable sweet?] is COTTON CANDY. FRENCH SILK also has a fabric name.
119A. [Fashionable advice to diners at a fancy restaurant?] is DON'T SCARF IT DOWN.

This theme feels too sprawlingly loose to me. FRENCH SILK needs to be followed by the word "pie" to be a food. BLUEBONNET isn't food, it's a brand name of margarine. The vague "things you can wear/things that are used to make things you wear/things that are used as fasteners on things you wear/a pocket" concept doesn't have much punch.

No hitches in the fill. I did not know that 13D: ARBOGAST was the name of [The detective in "Psycho"], but the crossings were more familiar. I could see people getting snagged by the B, which crosses 23A: Victor BORGE, [Great Dane by the piano].

Weird ones: 117A: [999 follower, perhaps] is OOO (but really 000, with zeroes), if you're looking at a three-digit dial that's going to flip back to 000 after it reaches 999. 103D: E NOTE usually gets clued as the not-in-my-parlance "e-note," an electronic note. Here, it's [Part of a C major chord]. Do music people call the musical note E the "E note"?

Dan Naddor's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Subliminal Messages"

The theme is fake advertising slogans in which the name of an apt company is embedded"

23A. [Airline message] is SEE ISRAEL ALL OVER AGAIN. EL AL is at 74D.
37A. [Electronics message] is THE REASON YOU LOVE TV. SONY is at 18D.
66A. RELIABLE PICK-UP SERVICE is a [Shipping message], with UPS in the grid at 5D.
98A. [Automotive message] is BUILT FOR DURABILITY. FORD's at 89D.
116A. EXPLORE A LASTING BEAUTY is the hypothetical [Cosmetics message] from L'ORÉAL (53D).
104A. [The brains behind this puzzle's theme messages] is an ADMAN. I just don't like that word's inherent maleness, though the New Oxford American Dictionary defines adman as "(informal) a person who works in advertising." Anyone know any women who work in advertisting who refer to themselves as "admen"?

The cross-referencing made the puzzle a little slower to unravel, I thought. There are some tough answers (obscure ARTEL, 21D: [Soviet cooperative]) and clues (80D: [Lesser of two evils, metaphorically] for FRYING PAN, as in "out of the frying pan and into the fire"), but no real trouble zones.

Interesting way to massage the "embedded word" gimmick into a sensible theme with a purpose. The idea of "subliminal advertising" ties the company names to appropriate slogans, so there's no randomness to the embeds. I did a little Googling afterwards to see if these were actual slogans—if ad agencies had actually persuaded corporations to go with the embedded-name approach—but the two I looked up weren't real slogans used by those firms.

Tyler Hinman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"

Yay! Tyler made this puzzle a couple years ago but Will Shortz wasn't keen on 1-Across. I liked the puzzle then (the * is because my solving time was assisted by the previous go-round) so I'm glad to see it's been published now. 1-Across had been completely unfamiliar to me, but I enjoyed learning it. [LSU cheer that includes a punny French spelling] is "GEAUX TIGERS," playing on "go." What's not to love about a bilingual sports pun? Kudos to the Louisianans who came up with that one.

The grid's chockablock with interesting fill. Such as:

15A. ALL BROKEN UP, or [Emotionally crushed].
17A. SPREADEAGLE, or [With arms and legs outstretched].
39A. QUONDAM, or [Onetime]. Cool word, not seen often.
62A. DON'T GO THERE, or ["I'm offended by that topic"].
35D. AQUALUNG, or [Jethro Tull album or song].
36D. BUTTER UP, or [Flatter insincerely].

Surprised to see the double A grades in EASY A'S and [An A often boosts it (abbr.)] as the clue for GPA. Never heard of AL RITZ, 3D: [Part of an old comedy trio, with his brothers Harry and Jimmy].

Gotta run now—hope to find time for the Boston Globe puzzle this afternoon.

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe crossword, "U and U Alone"

The theme entries—five grid-spanning 21-letter fake headlines—all contain no vowel other than U:

27A. [Knuckleheads give rave reviews?] clues NUMSKULLS TURN THUMBS UP.
43A. [The Donald's losing money?] suggests TRUMP'S TRUST FUND SLUMPS.
64A. FUDD HUNTS BUGS BUT BUSTS is clued [Elmer just can't bag his quarry?]. Bugs Bunny's last name is left out, presumably because that Y serves as a vowel.
89A. [Some towns have garbage issues?] clues SUBURBS SHUN DUMP TRUCKS.
103A. This one's my favorite: CRUNCH DUNKS CRUSH SPURS almost sounds like a real headline in the sports section. For that matter, the Trump one wouldn't be out of place in the business section, either.

I like the intersecting Simpson clues. 86A: ITO is [Simpson judge] and 78D: [Sax-honking Simpson] is LISA. 65D goes with trivia, [World found by Herschel], to clue URANUS. My kid gets a kick out of inquiring, "How big is Uranus?" When I answer that it's surprisingly light considering that it's larger than Neptune (but less dense), he collapses into giggles.

Saturday, 12/5/09

2009-12-04T22:17:00.006-06:00

Newsday 9:51
NYT 5:26
LAT 3:51
CS untimed

Bonus puzzle: Caleb Madison's Bard Bulletin crossword, "A Swift Response." It's a 19x19 to accommodate the theme, and if you've been plugged into pop culture this fall, you'll dig it. (Link is for a Java applet; here's an Across Lite link.)

Brad Wilber's New York Times crossword

Would you look at all the cool answers in here? Tyler Hinman was just saying on Twitter that "68 is the sweet spot for themelesses" because "68 is where you start to get the eye-pop factor without resorting to obscurities." Brad's 72-word grid may not have so much in the way of eye-pop, but the fill's highlights (and the twistiest clues) do offer brain-pop. To wit:

1A. [Modern campaign element] is the ROBOCALL. If only robocalls were limited to political candidates.
30A. The SHVG in the middle of BUSH V. GORE looks bizarre. This is, of course, the [2000 Supreme Court case hinging on the 14th Amendment].
42A. GROUP HUG! Clued gruesomely as [Corporate retreat closer, perhaps].
56D. [They work to maintain their faculties] clues college DEANS.
65A. I always love to see the word AKIMBO, which is [One way to stand], with your hands on your hips.
68A. [Producer of a piercing look], fictionally speaking, is X-RAY EYES.
1D. REST UP, or [Recharge], is a solid phrase. Kinda looks like RE-STUP since multi-word crossword answers lack word spaces.
7D. LET IT BE is a [1970 hit documentary] and the Beatles hit song.
8D. The late, very great LES PAUL is clued as the ["Vaya Con Dios" hitmaker, 1953]. You know a guitarist is serious about his art if he shatters his arm in a car crash and, when the doctors say the elbow will be fixed in one position after surgery, instructs them to give him a permanent guitar-playing angle to his arm.
9D. TORI, plural of "torus," was just clued in relation to doughnuts, I think in the LAT crossword. Here they're [Bagels, e.g.].
32D. Great mislead in the clue. The [Model featured in "Little Miss Sunshine"] is the VW BUS the family drove, not a fashion model.
34D. BART is a simple little answer. The trivia clue is [TV character who says "I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows"]. I am of the generation that uses "suck" as a synonym for "stink" without regard for any oral sex connotations the slangy usage may have had earlier.
37D. OKEY-DOKE! ["You got it"].
38D. DECREPIT's clued with [Condemnable?] because a decrepit building might be condemned.
44D. The UV INDEX is another terrific entry, [It drops to 0 after sundown].

If you know your Greek roots/medical terminology, you can piece together what achromotrichia is even if you've never seen the word before (as I had not). 49D: [Start developing achromotrichia] clues GO GRAY, as in hair.

I wasn't as pleased with the EX-YANKEE and OXHIDE (though I like the Scrabbly letters). Crosswordese EELY ENE AGAR, meh. The Italian word GLI is not so well-known, I think—61A: [Los : Spanish :: ___ : Italian]. Speaking of Italy, MODENA is the [Maserati headquarters city] and where that yummy balsamic vinegar comes from, SBARRO is a poor [Alternative to Uno Chicago Grill], and LIRA is the [Old capital of 36-Across] (meaning the old unit of currency used in Modena).

Overall, good stuff. I do like a 72-worder if it's packed with goodies the way this puzzle is.

Updated Saturday morning:

Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Getting Active"—Janie's review

Apparently, yesterday's sloth machines yield to today's exercise regimen. In a four-step process to shake off the lethargy and get movin', we:

•17A. SIT FOR A PORTRAIT [Have one's picture painted].

•26A. STAND ON CEREMONY [Follow protocol to the letter].

•48A. WALK ON EGGSHELLS [Proceed gingerly]. This one's my fave clue/fill combo.

•63A. RUN INTERFERENCE [One way to block defenders, in football].

There is nothing BLAH [Ho-hum] about that fill. It's fresh, lively and long–four 15s for a generous 60 squares of theme fill.

While, on the whole, the "straight-forward" school of cluing prevails, there's some nice non-theme fill as well. You can almost hear that BRAZEN GUFFAW clued as [Full of chutzpah] and [Hearty chuckle] respectively; or the person who SCREAMS [Hits the high note, in a way]–though one might also associate screams (the noun) with the sounds heard in the INFERNO [Dante's and Virgil's destination in literature]; or that "CLANG!" [Sound in "The Trolley Song"].

Progressive references to time can be seen in YEARS [What birthday candles represent] and LIFE [Birth to death] and EON (which I'd not thought of as such but which can refer to a) [Geologic time unit]. If you fervently created objects with ROPE [Macramé medium] at some time in your life, chances are you're of a certain age. Or if you baked your own granola, or rolled your own...candles...

[Stick in one's ___ ] CRAW is an almost quaint phrase these days, but I like it still. The craw is the stomach (of an animal) and the phrase is used to describe the way it feels when you just can't easily dismiss something that's bothering you; it causes resentment; it rankles. That would be an exaggeration of how I felt on encountering crosswordese SNEE, SPEE and TRON all in the same puzzle–but I also took pleasure in the way the first two rhyme with ONE G, TREE and NO TV. Cluing RNS as [They work with MDs] did not go unnoticed, btw. Or unappreciated.

Kyle Dolan's Los Angeles Times crossword

I suspect this is the constructor's major newspaper crossword debut. If so, congratulations!

The puzzle's got an unusual grid, with two vertical 15s constituting a mini-theme: 6D, 9D: The mini-theme includes 6D: GREEN-COLLAR JOBS, or [Work in the environmental sector], and 9D: CARBON FOOTPRINT, or [Environmental impact factor]. Timely, since the international summit on climate change is coming up in Copenhagen this month.

Things that caught my eye:

13A. [Wild Asian equine] (ONAGER). Bonus points because this is an anagram of Orange.
14A. ISABELLA is, among other things, a ["Measure for Measure" heroine]. Speaking of Shakespeare plays, I just received an e-mail newsletter alerting me to a community theater production, Comedy of Error. (Just one? Sure, in these recessionary times, who can afford more?)
17A. ["Receiving poorly," to a CBer[ (TEN-ONE). I know "10-4, good buddy," but not "10-1." Remember the '70s, when a song about CB radios could be a runaway hit?
How about some deep-sea diving? 35D: [Sea named for its seaweed] (SARGASSO) crosses 39A: [Watery expanse] (SEA). (Not many people love cross-referenced clues, but SARGASSO's clue could've referenced 39A rather than including the word "sea.") What's in the sea? 20A: [Shockers in the deep] (EELS).
Favorite fill, narrative style: The CLASS CLOWN got into trouble for throwing his PB AND J at the NINJAS, who fought back throwing stars crafted from BASMATI. The clown was sent to the principal, who declared him a LOST SOUL.
31A: [What it takes?] is TWO. To do what? To tango, to fight over the remote control, or move a sofa upstairs.
1D: [Possible source of unwanted feedback, for short] (HOT MIC). Short for "hot microphone." This answer, in combination with the name in the byline, leads me to suspect today's construct is under age 35.
3D: [Trattoria order?] (MANGIA). "MANGIA" is Italian for the imperative, "Eat!"
33D: [Big name in oil filters] (FRAM). Lame answer on its own merits, but it made me think of an Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong duet on "The Frim Fram Sauce," and that makes me happy.

Merle Baker's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

This one seemed a little more obliquely clued than the other recent Stumpers I've done. Among the clues I struggled with were these:

1A. [One of Maryland's state symbols] is the CALICO CAT. I was thinking state flower, tree, bird, gem, and seafood. Maryland has too many state symbols. The state sport is jousting. Apparently they like the calico because its colors—orange, black, and white—are shared by the Baltimore oriole and the state butterfly.
17A. [Unlikely Phi Betes] are B STUDENTS. Straight As will get you into Phi Beta Kappa more easily.
19A. BEES, not ANTS, are the [Symbols of industry].
27A. [Bonding agents?] are PARENTS. Eh, that clue reaches too far.
35A. [Fruit favored by Jefferson] is the GHERKIN. Who doesn't love gherkin pie?
39A. STAGERS are [Home-sale aides].
58A. [Party snacks] clues EDAMS. Really? Pfft. Next party I host, I'm putting out a bowl of Edam cheese wheels. Potato chips and Edams, that's it.
1D. [Sort of driver] is a CABBY. I prefer the "cabbie" spelling.
5D. Took a while to remember a 3-letter first name for a female dancer of yore. CYD Charisse is [Fred's partner in "Silk Stockings"].
7D. [Food processors] are the CANNERS who put your gherkins into jars.
9D. [It's often spoken into microphones] clues "TESTING...testing...one, two three."
12D. WATER SKIS are [Skimming gear].
33D. [Frequent fast-food giveaways] are...GLASSWARE? Wait, didn't that pretty much stop in the '70s? I was just talking about this last weekend with my husband, but thought it was more of a gas station giveaway, the drinking glasses with cartoon characters or sports team logos on them. Have you seen a fast-food joint giving out glasses in the last 10 or 20 years?
44D. [Upgrade one's alarm] clues REWIRE. If you say so.
52A. TARES, the verb: [Computes net weight].

Daily Beast, 12/4/09

2009-12-04T06:57:00.013-06:00

"Climate Changes" by Matt Gaffney
Time - 12:42

Everybody likes to talk about the weather, and today Matt has it all backward. Weird weather has reversed things all over the puzzle. Let’s blame it on 98D: [Climate change champion] – AL GORE.
23A: [What July is, to many students?] – TOO ~~COOL~~ WARM FOR SCHOOL
41A: [Headline about comic Billy’s poor memory?] – CRYSTAL ~~CLEAR~~ CLOUDY
58A: [Like irritated Icelanders?] – ~~HOT~~ COLD AND BOTHERED.
86A: [Creedence Clearwater Revival classic about SPF?] – WHO’LL STOP THE ~~RAIN~~ SUN. Better pack the sunscreen. Shouldn’t that be Creedence Cloudywater Revival.
98A: [Ben Stiller movie about mighty Inuit warriors?] – ~~TROPIC~~ ARCTIC THUNDER
120A: [Eugene O’Neill play about insomnia?] – THE ~~ICE~~SANDMAN COMETH. Is sand the opposite of ice? Hockey vs. volleyball?
21A: [Solo song] – ARIA.
26A: [Poetry contest] – SLAM. I didn’t know poetry was a full contact sport. Will this catch on at crossword puzzle tournaments. Look out for that flying pencil!
27A: [Mr. Nahasapeemapetilon] – APU. Let’s see this clue in reverse.
28A: [Mr. Kotter] – GABE.
34A: [Scientist with a unit of capacitance named for him] – FARADAY. Don’t you wish someone would name a unit of capacitance after you? Orange has a fruit and a colour named after her.
63A: [Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” partner] – ACOSTA. Am I dumb or is this obscure?
80A: [Marathoner’s need] – WATER. Non-marathoners also need it.
102A: [President after Fillmore] – PIERCE. He must be the least remembered president.
106A: [“Titanic” actor] – LEO. Had to search for Canadian content this week.
119A: [Sheriff Taylor’s son] – OPIE.
128A: [Robot maid on “The Jetsons”] – ROSIE crossing 124D: [“Little ol’ me?”] – MOI. Today’s question: Who would win in a fight between Rosie and Miss Piggy?
2D: [Kept playing over and over] – LOOPED. Also can happen in badly written computer programs. Also can happen in badly written computer programs. Also can happen in badly written computer programs. Also can happen in badly written computer programs.
31D: [White House party crasher Michaele or Tareq] – SALAHI. This clue will self-destruct after 15 minutes of fame.
33D: [“Heavens to Murgatroyd!”] – YE GODS.
37D: [Human fallibility, with “the”] – OLD ADAM. Huh??? Dictionary? The old Adam, the natural tendency toward sin: He attributed his wild outburst to the old Adam in him.
50D: [Clapton classic] –COCAINE.
101D: [“99 Luftballons” singer] – NENA.

I’ll be on holiday next week, leaving the warm weather of Canada for the coolness of Florida. There will be an extra-special super-secret guest-guest blogger to take care of you. Bye!

Friday, 12/4/09

2009-12-03T22:06:00.006-06:00

CHE 5:51
NYT 4:17
BEQ 4:15
LAT 3:58
CS untimed
WSJ 7:30

The Oregon/Oregon State football game is on TV right now. Jacquizz Rodgers just had a 14-yard rush. Husband reports that Rodgers is only about 5'8" so he might not make it to the NFL. But I want him to be famous enough to appear in a Karen Tracey crossword!

Martin Ashwood-Smith's New York Times crossword

Martin Ashwood-Smith, a pioneer in triple-stacking 15-letter entries, returns with a smooth sextet of 15s. (Minus two points for having ONE'S in the middle of two answers.) Here are the long ones:

• 1A. AS OLD AS THE HILLS means [Antediluvian].
• 16A. [It's served in parts] clues a THREE-COURSE MEAL.
• 17A. OUT OF ONE'S LEAGUE means [Completely unqualified for competition]. Terrific, in-the-language phrase.
• 50A. [Framing need] isn't about picture frames—it's a TRUMPED-UP CHARGE. I have a slight preference for the plural of this, but the standard crossword isn't 16 squares wide so this will do. Why plural? If you're taking the trouble to frame someone, surely you can come up with multiple trumped-up charges.
• 55A. WATERLOO STATION in London is a [Railway terminus with the Victory Arch].
• 56A. OPENED ONE'S HEART is clued as [Became emotionally receptive].

None of these entries is on the list of the most common 15-letter NYT answers, so the whole triple-stack enterprise feels fresh.

Mystery people! I had three of 'em tonight. 27A: ROSA is ["The Accumulation of Capital" author Luxemburg]. She was a "was a Polish-Jewish-German theorist, philosopher, and activist" who cofounded the Spartacist League in Germany in 1914. 40A: JOSH WHITE is [Singer of the 1940s blues hit "One Meat Ball"]. I have to say, that's one meatball too many for me. 48D: IGOR is [Real-estate tycoon Olenicoff]. He's still a billionaire despite losing a couple hundred million bucks.

Comments on other answers and clues:

• Not crazy about the short two-worders. 29A: "DO IT!" is clued with ["Get cracking!"]. 1D: [Rafts] clues A TON. And 3D: ["... ___ go?"]—what is that, Morse code? The ellipsis replaces "for here" and the blank's filled with the partial OR TO.
• 35A. TASTE BUDS! [They may be excited by dinner]. Lively answer.
• 11D. [Laugh syllable] is HEE. (And 31D: HAHAS is [Music to a comic's ears].) If you are typing "he" as a laugh syllable, I must insist that you stop immediately. "Hee hee" and "ha ha" are laughs, "heh heh" has a less jocular air. "He he" or "hehe"? That's no laugh—that's a pronoun for a gay male couple.
• 15D. SLEETIER is clued as [More like a cold shower?]. I Googled the word and the first 60 hits gave the impression that this is not a word anyone actually uses, but on the seventh page, lo and behold, we find that the word appears in a Ted Hughes poem, "Tractor". I will use the word in a sentence that contains another phrase in the poem: "Sleet is SLEETIER than cast-iron cow-shit."
• 29D. I wanted the [Perilous place] to be AT DEATH'S DOOR, but that doesn't fit. It's a DEATHTRAP.
• 30D. Medieval! [Competition among mail carriers?] is a JOUST—mail as in chain mail.
• 32D. [The second part] is STAGE TWO. That feels arbitrary.
• 37D. Excellent use of the definite article in THE SHAH, a [Leader exiled in 1979].

My nomination for trickiest crossing is the M where 46A and 46D meet. ["___ Fate" (Andre Malraux novel)] crosses an [Unstable particle]. MAN'S and MUON, but if you're thinking the Malraux title will include a proper name or a common noun and you're not up on your atomic particles, DAN'S, FAN'S, JAN'S, and NAN'S don't look completely implausible. Heck, the author's got a French name, so why not "SANS Fate"? (Thank you, puzzles I have done previously, for teaching me the word MUON.)

John Lampkin's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Baroque Embellishments"

Boy, pun themes are hard when you're not that familiar with all the words in the answers, when the base phrases are more oblique, and when the sound changes are a mixed bag. I gather than the theme entries end with two baroque dances and two forms of baroque music:

• 17A. [Baroque dance full of hostility?] is BITTER ALLEMANDE. I think this is a play on "bitter almond," with an added vowel syllable.
• 27A. [Eco-friendly baroque dance?] clues GREEN BOURRÉE. Bourrée? This is not a regular part of my vocabulary. Lovely sound play on "Green Beret," though. The first vowel in the dance shifts from "beret."
• 46A. [Baroque song that's less than a masterpiece?] is THE O.K. CHORALE (the O.K. Corral). Okay, that's kinda funny. Great sound-alike play.
• 61A. [Offering at the Baroque Music Hotel?] is A ROOM WITH A FUGUE. Wait! FUGUE and "view" have markedly different pronunciations. This one doesn't feel close enough for solid punning, especially not with 27A and 46A's closer sounds.

Gotta love a puzzle that includes the [Burp]/ERUCT combo, though. (Still holding out for BORBORYGMUS to make an appearance somewhere.)

Trickiest clue for me: [One that goes to school regularly] for BUS. "That" was a tip-off that we're not looking for a person, which would be "who," but I contemplated fish here.

Updated Friday morning:

Doug Peterson's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Goth Milk?"—Janie's review

Wow. The last time we had a Peterson puzzle was just over a month ago, but I have to say: it was worth the wait. Doug's given us an "add a letter" theme, which we're familiar with. But in contriving an "add an 'H' to a word ending in 'T'" approach, he's managed to come up not only with a very humorous title but also a great variation on this familiar trope. Look what happens as:

• 17A. Vampire bat + h → VAMPIRE BATH [Tub shaped like a coffin]. The visual leap from beginning to end is what gives this one its punch. (And that is one scary lookin' creature—yowzuh.)
• 27A. Slot machines + h → SLOTH MACHINES [Exercise equipment for lazy people]. The perfect complement to "lose weight while you sleep" pills...
• 44A. Wrestling mat + h → WRESTLING MATH [Subject covered in "Geometry for Grapplers"?]. Or: Jane vis à vis higher numbers...
• 59A. Boot polish + h → BOOTH POLISH [Diner owner's spiffer-upper]. Anyone else grow up in a home where every two weeks, for purposes of spiffing up, the furniture got a going over with Jubilee Polish?... Seems it's no longer available, but that's the recollection this clue and fill brought to mind.

Other goodies in the grid:

• [Mad scientist's milieu] LABORATORY and (speaking of mad scientists) ["Young Frankenstein" assistant] IGOR.
• [Its color indicates rank] KARATE BELT.
• Phrases TAGS UP [Touches a base on a fly ball] (oh, great—only four months til opening day...) and "TRY ONE!" ["Have a sample!"].
• THUMP clued as [Soundly defeat] (with the emphasis on sound, no?).
• The colloquial contexts for "UNFAIR!" ["You cheated!"], "I CAN'T!" [Defeatist's cry] and "HEY!" ["What's the big idea?"].
• The group of "heads of state" types: SHAH [Former Iranian monarch], EMPEROR [Nero, for one] and TSAR [Erstwhile Russian sovereign]. (Each was part of a DYNASTY of sorts, though not the [Joan Collins TV series]). I'm guessing that only the tsar (as a child anyway...) may have had a head-covering with an [EAR-FLAP] detail. It gets pretty nippy in Mother Russia—and that can be a nice [Winter cap feature]!

Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword

My son's friend is coming over for a play date (no school today) any moment, so only cursory blogging this a.m. Theme entries have a CK inserted into them. E.g., [Take down by Tinker Bell?] is a FAIRY TACKLE. The theme answers tended to feel a tad strained to me, though, and the little hitches in the fill (SFC, not SGT, for [Army E-7: Abbr.] and CLK for [Court recordkeeper: Abbr.]) were found mainly among the 29 3-letter answers in this grid. Offsetting the 3s are the pairs of 9-letter answers that intersect two of the five theme answers—that's a lot of real estate occupied by the nine longest entries. Favorite clue: [Former pen pal?] for EX-CON.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Tiger Trap"

As I said in a comment at Brendan's blog, this week's easy BEQ puzzles all require an obsessive attention to tabloid-ready names that aren't remotely inferrable if you haven't been following the stories closely. I knew 20A/ELIN NORDEGREN, but the other women? They have weirdly spelled first names and/or uncommon last names (like Wednesday's couple, Michaele and Tar...eq? Salihi). This gives today's puzzle the air of a quote puzzle in which the quote's half in Hungarian. I didn't know if 28A should be parsed as KALI KAMOQUIN (no) or KALIKA MOQUIN (yes). JAIMEE GRUBBS or JAIME E.? RACHEL UCHITEL? Uchitel? Sounds like a Japanese hotel chain.

B'NAI BRITH and QUINTUPLE are lovely, but there weren't enough such entries to grab me today. Thematic SCANDAL is balanced by nonthematic E.B. WHITE, and thematic LIE by nonthematic MIN. With 26 3-letter answers (NEA! KEA! MEA! UBI UZI!) and old crosswordese ISTLE ([Agave fiber]), I say boo to this puzzle. I'm sure I'd have loved it if I were closely following the Tiger Woods scandal, but I'm not, so...half-Hungarian quote puzzle.

Looking forward to a "Themeless Monday"!

Patrick Blindauer's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Scrambled TV Signals"

Hey, this is a fun puzzle. All of the theme entries are TV show titles in which one word's been anagrammed, changing the gist of the show. For example, Arrested Development becomes SERRATED DEVELOPMENT, or [TV show about a breakthrough in knife research]. I had part of DEVELOPMENT and set to work pondering anagrams of ARRESTED that could relate to knives. The game show Deal or No Deal becomes LEAD OR NO LEAD, a [TV show about a filling station choice]. Retro clue—didn't leaded gasoline disappear in the '70s? Also retro: cluing SSR as [Moldova, e.g.: Abbr.]. Moldova hasn't been an SSR since '91.

Favorite clues, answers, and combinations:

• 73A. [Possible reading of a Brannock Device] is EEE. Clue sounds medical, but the Brannock is the metal shoe-size doodad in the shoe store. I like how EEE crosses EERIE.
• 43A/44D. [Foe of Popeye] SEA HAG meets HAGEN, [Golf legend Walter].
• 24A/14D. CLARITIN crosses CLARETS—[Allergy medicine brand] and [Some red wines].
• 83A. A [Cel body] is a TOON, or cartoon character.
• 36A. DO SHOTS! That's to [Toss back some Stoli, say].
• 96A. CHALUPA! A [Taco Bell offering] I've never tried.
• Longer fill that shines includes SOFT SELL, RIFFRAFF, DAME EDNA, and LOSE SLEEP. (Should've clued SLOTHS as something other than [Arboreal sleepers], though.)
• 121A. Au courant clue for TBS: [Home of George Lopez's talk show]. I should watch that.
• 77D. [Ball-bearing creatures] are trained SEALS balancing a rubber ball on their snouts.
• 103D. YELLS is clued as [Makes a long-distance call].

Thursday, 12/3/09

2009-12-02T21:59:00.004-06:00

NYT 7:10
LAT 2:58
Tausig untimed
CS untimed

Matt Ginsberg and Pete Muller's New York Times crossword

Whoa, somebody forgot to issue a "Saturday comes two days early this week" warning about this puzzle's difficulty. If you struggled mightily with this one, you are not alone.

I test-solved an earlier version of this puzzle—I think that one had more of the "all roads lead to Rome action" than this one, and they might've been (semi-)famous roads rather than words that can preced "road." See the four diagonal roads leading to the ROME rebus square in the middle? LOGGING road, PRIVATE road, UNPAVED road, and WINDING road. Those make a solid foursome. The ROME is wedged into a DENVE{R OME}LETTE, or 37A: [Dish with ham], crossing 36D: [Cry from Juliet], O {ROME}O. I like the way the gimmick plays out here.

The single rebus square and the roads don't account for the brutality of this Thursday puzzle, though. No, that distinction belongs to the bottom middle. Good lord, EARBOB? What sort of 49D: [Bit of jewelry] is that? (Dictionary says it's chiefly a Southern U.S. term for "earring.") 70A: [Lot] is GOB but could be other words, like TON. 67A: [Base figure, for short] is an NCO, but there are other 3-letter military abbreviations out there. 54D: [Scammed] is STUNG. I looked up the definition of pizzicato to figure out 60D: [Not pizzicato], or ARCO (played violin with a bow vs. by picking the strings with the fingers). I was also stuck for a long time on 64A: [Michael Jackson genre]. URBAN POP? That's a music genre? When a gazillion MJ fans live in suburbs and small towns, and Jackson's lyrics weren't so heavy on "urban" themes? Hmph. I just Googled "urban pop" and among the first few hits are one for an Aussie mix master and one in which it's reported that Lindsay Lohan billed her upcoming (in '07) album as "urban pop." (For what it's worth, I'd love to see URBAN CONTEMPORARY in a Sunday-sized grid any time.) This zone killed me.

There are plenty of other unusual entries in the grid, but I managed to work through the other sections without so many hitches. Oddball answers:

• 17A. [Restricted zone] is NO-GO AREA.
• 22A. VOIT is a [Big brand in basketballs] and also the name of my grandma's dentist.
• 23A. MARY II is the [English monarch who shared the throne].
• 45A. For [Hare follower], I thought of fabulous tortoises instead of Hare KRISHNA.
• 53A. [Connection means, for short] sounds like it's looking for something more technical, more about wires and modems and whatnot, than ISPS.
• 61A. KONICA is a [Classic camera].
• 71A. ["Mi casa __ casa"] clues ES SU. "My house is your house." I messed myself up a bit with IS SU, which made A AND E, the 56D: [Cable choice], harder to tease out.
• 4D. [Howard the Duck prop] is a STOGY. I prefer the "stogie" spelling.
• 11D. ["Absolument!"] clues "OUI, OUI!" "This little agreeable piggy cried 'oui, oui, oui' all the way home."
• 13D. Roll-your-own word PETTER is clued as an [Attentive dog owner]. No "heavy petting" ramifications here.
• 18D. AGIO! My long-lost crosswordese friend! It's an [Exchange premium].
• 32D. [The "H" in Hanukkah] is called HETH.
• 40D. EOHIPPUS! I love that little old pre-horse. This prehistoric [Ancestor of the modern horse] was much smaller than today's equines and lived in the Eocene epoch.
• 45D. KRAKOW looks great in the grid, doesn't it? It was the [Polish capital, 1038-1596].

I fret that the EARBOB zone may overshadow the whole "all roads lead to {ROME}" gimmick, which is just sort of there for appreciation rather than something that had to be grappled with while solving. Agree or disagree?

Updted Thursday morning:

Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "In the End"—Janie's review

In the end, what holds this puzzle together is that today's theme phrases end with words that rhyme with in. While there's nothing more that unifies the theme, the four phrases are definitely on the fresh side and there's some ear-appeal in saying them aloud as they're all (essentially) dactyls (three syllables with the stress on the first one). Today's guilty parties are:

• 20A. RECYCLE BIN [Curbside container]. And of course, this one (with four syllables...) is the exception. But I think of that first syllable as a pickup to the more metrical remainder of the word.
• 33A. SAFETY PIN [It may secure a cloth diaper]. Apparently Pampers and Huggies haven't completely put diaper service companies out of business. I'm glad to know that.
• 41A. MUFFIN TIN [Baking pan for cupcakes]. And a COFFEE TIN can be a baking container for date-nut bread. I saw the double Fs and TIN emerging and that's what I (smugly) entered. That's what I get for thumbin' my nose at the clues!
• 52A. BATHTUB GIN [Prohibition spirits]. Love this fill. For any DIYers out there, this one's for you. At your own risk. Don't want anyone out there becoming a [Sidewalk stumbler]/WINO...

The subject of alcoholic beverages is a nice segue to pointing out my favorite cross today. Note the repeated word in the clues (both nouns) and you'll see why I enjoyed seeing the juncture of BREWS [They may be found in coolers] and BRIG [Cooler at sea]. In another example of a repeated word in the clues, one is a verb [Board] for GET ON, and one is a noun following TOTE [ ___ board (track fixture)]. That first one took me a while to understand.

There isn't a lot of long fill in today's grid—though I did like seeing SNOWBALL [Winter missile]. And while the preponderance of the grid is made up of four- and five-letter words, note that there are only four three-letter words in the mix. Nice!

Barry Silk's Los Angeles Times crossword

The puzzle's got a straightforward theme type, but there's some juice in the theme entries:

• 17A. ["Imagination at work" company] is GENERAL ELECTRIC. GE is selling NBC to Comcast. What's going to happen to 30 Rock's "East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming" division when GE ceases to be a factor at NBC? (Alec Baldwin's JACK, a [Stranded motorist's aid], is the vice president of that division.)
• 26A. An ELEPHANT EAR is a [Fried-dough carnival treat].
• 43A. Ah, the Doors! "LIGHT MY FIRE" is [The Doors #1 hit covered by Jose Feliciano]. Say what? When did that happen? Totally missed it. I'm guessing it is best to keep the Doors rendition foremost in my head.
• 55A. It's a fairly easy puzzle, but this answer nudges the fill away from the early part of the wek: DAME MURIEL SPARK is ["The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" author].
• 63A. PLUG—[Ad, or the word that can follow the end of] the theme entries—generates an electric plug, ear plug, fire plug, and spark plug.

Did you know AUNT JEMIMA is a [Quaker Oats trademark]? I stay away from Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth and their ilk. Fake maple-flavored corn syrup smells like headaches to me, but real maple syrup? Yum. Speaking of sweet and sticky viscous substances, HONEY is a [Drambuie ingredient]. I believe the other ingredients are peat moss and haggis.

VIRTU ([Artistic merit]) is a good word to play in Scrabble because you can add an E or AL or OUS to it. I think one of my Lexulous (the Scrabble variant on Facebook) opponents played SKEG, a [Surfboard fin].

CLETE ([1950s-'60s Yankee Boyer]) reminds me of Cletus on The Simpsons—my son was just asking my husband what "yokel" meant, and the kid correctly tied the description to Cletus.

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "...Or Not To Be"

Each theme answer loses two Bs:

• 17A. [Headline about the failing health of a former Velvet Underground member?] clues CALE ILL. (CAbLE bILL.)
• 18A. [Contest to see who can read "Cathy" fastest?] is an "ACK!" RACE. (bACK bRACE.)
• 27A. ["OK, tennis students, I want everyone to practice near the net with everyone else"?] clues EACH VOLLEY ALL. (bEACH VOLLEYbALL.)
• 47A. [Expose about the tawdry relations of a 16th-century theologian?] is CALVIN AND HOES. ("CALVIN AND HObbES.")
• 61A. [Ribald yoga mantra?] is DIRTY OM. (DIRTY bOMb.)
• 63A. [Have a flat bottom?] clues the verb phrase LACK ASS. (bLACK bASS.)

Highlights:

• The four corners with triple-stacked 7s.
• [Entomology class?] clues the class INSECTA.
• An ISOGRAM is a [Word with no repeating letters]. Did you know there was a name for that? There are a great many isograms out there. In English, anyway. English probably had a higher percentage of these than Hawaiian does, given our larger number of letters to build words from.
• A HEN is a [Mother clucker].

MGWCC #78

2009-12-02T11:00:00.003-06:00

crossword 6:04
puzzle 0:16

if october was "hell month" at matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, then november must have been "earth month," because all four puzzles featured geographical themes. what does december (i.e. "heaven month"?) have in store? before we get to that, let's take a look at last week's puzzle, "Regional Variation." the five overt theme answers (with starred clues) were:

[Doing a lot of damage to*] is MASSACRING. like in christopher marlowe's the massacre at paris (good title!).
[Show set in the Northeast*] is NEWHART. i have definitely heard of this show, but i don't even know what it was about, let alone where it was set.
[Literally, "little worms"*] is VERMICELLI. you can't go wrong naming food after vermin, can you? oh wait, maybe you can.
[Word on a janitor's door*] is SUPPLIES. okay, just kidding—it's MAINTENANCE. but i just love that little clip, despite its mild racial stereotyping. by the way, that clip is actually only my second-favorite movie supply closet door gag (what are the odds?), but i couldn't find a clip of the one from top secret!.
an [Expert*] is a CONNOISSEUR.

what about the sixth theme answer, the one hiding in the grid? well, the theme isn't necessarily obvious, but i was on the lookout for another geographical theme (and the title didn't dissuade me of that), so i noticed pretty much right away that each of the starred answers began with the first four letters as a state in new england: MASSachusetts, NEW Hampshire, VERMont, MAINe, and CONNecticut. what's the other state in new england? why, RHODe island, of course. that makes the hidden theme answer RHODA, at 15a, clued as [She moved from Minneapolis to New York City]. i don't know anything about this show other than it spun off from mary tyler moore (i think?), but i imagine this geographically-inclined clue was yet another hint, as was the clue for NEWHART.

odds & ends from the fill:

can't get enough geography? well, how about [Washington, Lincoln and Jackson], which are all... US CITIES (in addition to former presidents)? or ANN arbor, [Word in a Michigan city's name]?
a couple more place names get non-geographical clues: MAUI is [___ Gold (pineapple brand)], and further afield, there's [Ancient Africa's ___ Empire], or MALI. ghana, mali, and songhai were the three great empires of west africa.
there were two unfamiliar names for me, [Fox Business anchor David] ASMAN and [Lead role in the 2005 Spielberg movie "Munich"], or AVNER. ASMAN looks like it could be clued as a partial, AS MAN. i've started listening to christmas carols non-stop, and the second verse of "hark the herald angels sing" has the line, "pleased AS MAN with us to dwell" ... but AS MAN is a weirdly-placed clause, and when i was younger i always wanted it to be "pleased as punch with us to dwell."
decidedly non-random roman numeral: [It ends in about a month] is MMIX. hey, that's this year! (and hey too, that's the last four letters of a common five-letter word. hmm.)
[Congressional retirement result] is an OPEN SEAT. which reminds me, crap! i think i'm still registered to vote at my old address, which means i'll have to schlep out there for next week's primary. it's not that far, but it's still a bit of a nuisance.
our random chess clue of the week isn't for ELO, which gets a standard ["Strange Magic" singers] clue, but TACTIC, [Deflection or underpromotion, in chess].
probably my favorite overly erudite clue in this puzzle is [Rhyme scheme used in some Roethke quatrains] for ABAA. i've complained in the past that the standard [Simple rhyme scheme] is a really annoying clue, but it's not a trivial matter to cite a well-known specific example of ABAA. but the last stanza of a villanelle, such as roethke's the waking, is ABAA.
crazy unfamiliar word of the day: ULLAGE, the [Unfilled part of a wine container]. wha?

overall, i found this puzzle surprisingly easy for a fourth-week puzzle, both the crossword and the meta. how did it treat you?

that's all for me this week, this month, and maybe this blog. see you over at the new site!

Wednesday, 12/2/09

2009-12-01T22:10:00.005-06:00

NYT 4:38
BEQ 4:04
Onion 3:57
LAT 2:59
CS untimed

Jack McInturff's New York Times crossword

I've noted before that Jack McInturff's fill tends to run old-school, and this puzzle is in that vein. The theme involves a letter change from H to W, as in HASTE MAKES WASTE ([Advice to the rash, and a hint to this puzzle's theme]). In the other theme entries, an H in a familiar phrase becomes a W:

• 17A. PICTURE OF WEALTH is clued as [Bill Gates snapshot?]. Base phrase is "picture of health."
• 28A. [Banshees' boast?] is SO PROUDLY WE WAIL. So Proudly We Hail is a 1943 movie, and part of a lyric from "The Star-Spangled Banner.'
• 39A. BASE WIT, playing on base hit, is a [Comedic soldier during training?].
• 47A. [Words to estate attorneys?] is HEAD FOR THE WILLS. "Head for the hills" is familiar, but legal documents are a weird thing to "head for," aren't they?

Among the fill that's reminiscent of '80s crosswords are these words: AGHA, or [Turkish V.I.P.]; N-TEST, or [Mushroom producer, for short]; ARLENE [Francis of "What's My Line?"]; ENOS, [Son of Seth]; OAKIE, or [Jack of "The Great Dictator"]; LADES, or [Does dock work]; ILEA, or [Sections of digestive tracts] ("Let's all put our ILEA together and see if we can't come up with a solution that works for all of us"); RAJA, or [Big Indian]; [Mata ___] HARI; SKAT, the [Game with 32 cards]; and ESSO, the [Old Sinclair rival]. Two or three of these are plenty for any 15x15 crossword. The biggest blast from the past is ASE, [Mother of Peer Gynt]. She says, "You may remember me from such crossword clues as ['___ Death']." Pop culture tidbit from Wikipedia: Extracts from "Åse's Death" are played in a Simpsons while Norwegian workers are leaving their town. This may mark the first time this blog has wielded an Å.

I'm not familiar with O'SHEAS Casino, the [Irish-themed Vegas casino]. Apparently it targets gamblers in their 20s and 30s and features a heavy metal star's tattoo parlor. I'm guessing Celine Dion doesn't sing there and that there's no fancy art gallery. Don't recall seeing [Pikake garland] as a LEI clue, though the only other common 3-letter garland is the boa.

There are two women with Ys in place of Is. LYNDA, [Actress Carter who was once Miss World USA], is best known for portraying Wonder Woman. SYD, usually clued as Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, is clued as the [Lead role on "Providence"]. Remember that show? Ran from '99 to '02? Her dad was played by B.J. Hunnicutt.

Deb Amlen's Onion A.V. Club crossword

In Deb's theme, phrases that begin or end with double-E words turn into double-O words:

• 21A. [Golfer?] is a WOOD WHACKER (weed whacker). Let us not speak of Tiger Woods, whose Escalade whacked a tree.
• 26A. [Stress of being strapped?] is POOR PRESSURE (peer pressure). Topical!
• 43A. [Jerky doctor's office combo?] might be SHOT AND A BOOR (shot and a beer).
• 50A. [Prize for the ultimate sulk?] is BEST IN BROOD (best in breed).

Oniony highlights:

• [Teeny problem?] is ACNE, a problem for teens (among others). A unit of ACNE is a ZIT. Watch out for the kilozit.
• [Buck passers?] clues ATMS. Is this a new clue? It stumped me, so I feel as though it is.
• [His middle name was Milhous] refers to Richard NIXON, not Milhouse Van Houten.
• "YEAH, SURE" is a terrific entry. The clue is ["I bet!"].
• BRAS are [Support systems, of a sort].
• "I'M ON FIRE" is the [Springsteen song that starts, "Hey, little girl, is your daddy home?"]. The "little girl" part sounds creepy.
• Unfamiliar OHIO clue: [Kent State tragedy song].
• The F-BOMB! Another great answer. Clued thus: [One might get dropped, to everyone's shock].

You know, Deb's got a humor book coming out next June: It's Not PMS, It's You.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "In Position"—Janie's review

Ya gotta think very literally with this one as the first word of each of the theme phrases corresponds to its position in the grid. In today's case, that also mean that those terrific theme phrases are all oriented vertically. And they are:

• 4D. LEFT HEMISPHERE [Brain area]. Yes, this map of the human brain is sexist and wrong but it still makes me laugh. This map is more to the point.
• 7D. MIDDLE-AGE SPREAD [Weight gain, of a sort]. Not a pretty subject, but the fodder for lotso "humor"...
• 16A. RIGHT VENTRICLE [Heart part]. Here's a cutaway view.

As you probably know, I tend to take a lot of enjoyment in (what I perceive to be) mini-themes and connections within the grid—and today's puzzle delivers nicely. Two of the theme fill are anatomical (referencing the brain and the heart), but look: there're also optical allusions with CORNEA [Pupil's cover] and EYED [Gave the once over]; and [Win by ___ ] A NOSE. That's nothin' to sniff about!

There are ethno-geographic connections, too, as the grid contains ASIA [ ___ Minor]; and from Southeast Asia, HANOI [Vietnam's capital] and [Vietnam's] NGO [Dinh Diem] (who was assassinated in 1963). (Have you ever wondered about Asia Major? While it's not a term we ordinarily use, it's east of Turkey and Asia Minor, and refers to the "heartland of the Persian Empire.") From Europe, there's FLORENCE [Italian city on the Arno]; and from Mexico, AZTECS [Montezuma's people]

Another set of connected fill contains exhortations: the JEERS (and not MEOWS) for [Catcalls], the NOES [Refusals] and "EGADS!" the [Edwardian outburst] ("Edwardian" standing in for "quaint"...).

And in "sacred" territory, there's DIES IRAE [Solemn hymn], MITER [Bishop's hat] and even betrayer-Apostle [Judas ___ ] ISCARIOT.

When I saw SAFE SIDE [Cautious people try to stay on it], my first thought was that it was more theme fill. SNOW TIRE [Winter traction provider] proved not to be a symmetrical match, however, so let's chalk up the former to "bonus fill." To be on the safe side, let's also hope that as the inclement weather driving-season approaches, your snow tires have lotso good tread on 'em—especially for any STOP-GO driving you may have to do!

Ed Sessa's Los Angeles Times crossword

Especially in the Monday-to-Wednesday stretch, there are so few crossword themes that feel new, so this one's a delight. The phrase RAIN CATS AND DOGS can be parsed another way in the punctuation-free zone of the crossword grid: as if it's three entities, RAIN, CATS, AND DOGS. Those three entities are clued by the other three theme answers, which are clued straightforwardly. Kind of the multi-level marketing scheme of crosswords.

• 17A: [*Nightly news show segment] is the WEATHER FORECAST. In Seattle, the forecast often includes rain.
• 27A: [*Big Apple show] clues BROADWAY MUSICAL. One musical I've never seen is Cats.
• 49A: [*1955 Disney animated film featuring Darling Dear] is LADY AND THE TRAMP. Lady and Tramp are both dogs.
• 65A: [Come down in buckets; also, when applied in sequence to the answers to starred clues, this puzzle's theme] clues RAIN CATS AND DOGS. RAIN in the forecast, CATS on Broadway, AND DOGS in the cartoon.

For fill highlights and videos featuring the legendary Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald, please hop over to my L.A. Crossword Confidential post.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "The In Crowd"

In Brendan's post, he says his test solvers thought this puzzle was super-easy, suitable for solving Downs-only to avoid having the puzzle be merely a speed test. I would have been in a total snit if I'd read and followed the "go Downs only" advice because it wasn't all that easy. Maybe other people are finding this a Monday-level venture, but it hit Thursday medium for me.

Perhaps I'm just slow today, because the 35A clue says "two show up in this grid unannounced," but the only DINNER CRASHERs I can find (TAREQ and MICHAELE) are clearly announced as being 35-Acrosses. Are there other hidden answers the 35A clue is referring to? WHOLESALE PRICES and FAIRBANKS, ALASKA don't seem to contain "dinner crashers." What am I missing? (Edited to add: Brendan explains that the crashers' last name, SALAHI, is hidden in stacked halves in WHOLESALE/WAHINE and FAIRBANKS ALASKA/TAHITIAN. What, we're supposed to know the spelling of their first names and what their last name is? Boo!)

I like the GLAMOR/ENAMOR combo, but not the OKED/I'M OKAY pair. Hey, where are the quotation marks of sarcasms in the FEMA clue? [Hurricane Katrina helpers]? Really? Unless the implication is that the agency helped the hurricane carry out its mission. That would be the Army Corps of Engineers, though.

Plenty of Polynesian action today. The Hawaiian word KAHUNA is clued with [Big ___ Burger (fictional chain of "Pulp Fiction"]. WAHINE is a [Female surfer] or a Polynesian woman/wife (esp. in Hawaii and New Zealand). And TAHITIAN is the [Language that gave us the word "tattoo"].

Tuesday, 12/1/09

2009-11-30T21:59:00.004-06:00

Jonesin' 3:33
NYT 2:54
LAT 2:34
CS untimed

Apparently one of Matt Gaffney's recent weekly contest crosswords duplicated a theme previously used, unbeknownst to Matt, in another puzzle by Mike Shenk. Matt demystifies the process of building a crossword to explain how such accidental mimicry can and does occur at Slate.

December? Whoa.

Jonah Kagan and Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword

BREAKFAST gets parsed as "break FAST" and the other four theme entries begin with FA and end with ST:

• 18A. FAIRY DUST is a [Magical powder].
• 22A. FALCON CREST was a [1980s soap opera set at a winery]. I am reminded of those '80s prime-time soaps every time I see the principal at my kid's school.
• 35A. FATHER KNOWS BEST was a [1950s-'60s sitccom that ran on all three networks]. One at a time, I presume? Not during the same season?
• 49A. [Occasion for pumpkin picking] is the FALL HARVEST.

What else is in this puzzle? There's ILO-ILO, the [Repetitively named Philippine province]. Speaking of repetition, [Mine treasure] is both ORE and a LODE. One [Wine container] is a CARAFE, while other [Wine containers] are CASKS. The [Turkish headgear] called the FEZ joins the ILIAD, CAIRO, and EGYPT for today's Mediterranean fill, and the REED that's a [Papyrus plant, e.g.] might grow in EGYPT too.

The fill's not pangrammatic (no J), but there are Scrabbly letters in BOUTIQUE, ZEROES, and ALEX, [The"A" in A-Rod]. You know you've been doing too many crosswords when you try to complete that last one as ALER.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Dam Break"—Janie's review

The title tells us from the get-go that somehow we're going to see the word dam in each of the theme phrases and that the word'll be broken up—but exactly how Randy would do that remained to be seen. Would the letters bookend the phrase or would they fall between two words? As is turns out, it's the latter. Now, while I find the gimmick and the theme fill a tad on the dusty side, I really liked seeing that in each case, the "D" falls in the same spot in its respective row, so that all three of the DAMs are aligned in the grid. That's a nice touch. And here are they are:

• 20A. ROALD AMUNDSEN [First person to reach the North and South Poles].
• 40A. SECOND AMENDMENT [Constitutional protection for gun owners].
• 55A. BLIND AMBITION [1976 tell-all book by John Dean].

There are other nice touches throughout, both in the fill and in the cluing. I liked starting out with the rhyming RAGS/[Scandal sheet] and WAGS/[Witty ones]. And there was something pleasing in seeing "NEAT IDEA!"/["Great thought!"] and GOOD DEED [Samaritan's act] running vertically down the grid. Ditto WOODWIND and BLEAK HOUSE. GO TO PIECES/[Lose it] at first made me think of Patsy Cline, but she fell to pieces. Peter and Gordon ("British Explosion" [light-] rockers), on the other hand, did "Go to Pieces."

Speaking of Brits, ADELE [2009 Grammy winner for Best New Artist] was a complete unknown to me. Go ahead. Tell me I'm living under a rock. Here she is singing "Right as Rain"—not to be confused with Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen's "Right as the Rain." (Harburg also wrote the lyrics to the song ["If I Only] HAD [a Brain"].) Other women with an artistic bent to get a shout-out today include NORA/[Director Ephron], REESE [Witherspoon of "Walk the Line"] and LIZA [Entertainer Minnelli], who first came on the scene in a little Kander and Ebb show called Flora, the Red Menace, but that Flora was not today's FLORA, which was clued as [Lady's-slipper and baby's breath]. And notice the lovely way IRIS/[Spring bloomer] crosses flora. Quite a little nosegay in that SW corner.

Props, too, to [Mail for King Arthur] for ARMOR, [Moon shot?] for TUSH and [Punk rock?] for PEBBLE. Took me a while to experience the "aha" for that last one. But it was worth the wait.

Not that this is a heinous offense, but even though it's clear they mean different things, I wish Randy had avoided including both A LOT / [Gazillion] and LOT [Auction unit] in the same puzzle. This repetition could have been avoided in any number of ways. Lot shares a final "T" with BEAT, so that letter could have been a D, M, N or U; and it falls from the final "L" in DUAL, so there was also the option of changing that shared letter to a D. Whether or not this gets changed for some other incarnation of this puzzle, life as we know it will go on. Just sayin'.

Dave Hanson's Los Angeles Times crossword

I don't recognize the name in today's byline. A debut for Dave Hanson? If so, congratulations!

The theme is really icky, or should I say "ICKy." Each theme entry contains two ICKs but in four different ways:

• 20A. [Dickens hero with "papers," as he is formally known] is MR. PICKWICK, with a "MR." in addition to the two *ICK syllables.
• 51A. [Unflattering Nixon epithet] is TRICKY DICK, with the adjectival -Y sneaking in there.
• 10D. [Surprise football plays] are QUICK KICKS, with a plural not seen in the other theme entries. Is this a familiar term to football fans? I don't know it.
• 29D. [Girls-night-out film] is an unadorned CHICK FLICK.

There were some random ICK sounds lurking in the grid, presumably by chance. John Milton's EPIC, ODIC [Like many Keats poems], mind-reading PSYCHICS, and the CHICLE that's in gum. I haven't had Tiny Size Chiclets in years, but the word chicle always makes me want some. And then I start thinking about those sacks of gold nugget gum. If they would make sugarless versions of both, I tell you, I'd always have one or the other on hand.

RARA isn't in as many crosswords as it used to be, but when it is, it's often clued with [___ avis], Latin for "rare bird." Today the clue is 15A: [Not often seen, to Caesar]. Least familiar answer: OUT YEAR, or [Annual period beyond the current one]. There's actually a lot of fill here that seems tough for a Tuesday, but the crossings are generally easy. This puzzle might require a little more back-and-forth eyeballing of crossings to piece everything together.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Bank Job"

I like the title of this puzzle better than the theme entries—73A: SNOW is a [Word that can precede either word in] the theme entries, but unlike "Bank Job," the four theme answers are made-up phrases:

• 17A. [Macho way to say "dandruff"?] clues MAN FLAKES. Okay, that's funny.
• 66A. PEAS DRIFT is [What somehow happens to the vegetables in your TV dinner?].
• 11D. TIRE BLOWER is clued as [That sharp nail in the road you just ran over?].
• 30D. [Tool used to clean out the pits in kiddie playlands?] clues a BALL SHOVEL. Actually, I think massive quantities of disinfectant would be better than a shovel.

Favorite clues/fill:

• SHAFT is clued with the lyrics ["He's a complicated man / but no one understands him/ but his woman"]. True story: My good friend Amy danced with Richard Roundtree, the actor who starred in Shaft, when she was about 5. She told the tale on public radio a couple years ago.
• ["Liquid sunshine"] is a lie. That ain't what RAIN is. Dang, I thought the answer was going to be something like TEQUILA.
• O'HARE is clued as a [Frequent site for fligth layovers]. Do you know I have never once had a flight layover in Chicago? True story. And living in a centrally located hub means I can get a direct flight almost anywhere I want to go.

Monday, 11/30/09

2009-11-29T21:48:00.004-06:00

BEQ 8:20
NYT 3:02
LAT 2:26
CS untimed

Holy schnauzer! I see that this is post #2,028 here at Diary of a Crossword Fiend. I meant to mark #2,000 but it snuck by me. Coming soon: A blog contest! Inspired by Brendan Quigley's list of "Ten Bullsh*t Themes," the prizes will include Brendan's new book, Diagramless Crosswords, along with Simon & Schuster Mega Crosswords.

Also coming soon: A new home and a new look for this blog. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Dave Sullivan over this long weekend while I was lolling in Wisconsin and enjoying family time, the new site is almost ready to be unveiled. You can hardly wait, I know.

You know who else slaved away over a hot blogstove all weekend? Crosscan, Joon, PuzzleGirl, Sam, and Janie, that's who. Beaucoup thanks to all of them!

Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword

Quickly, because this puzzle came out hours ago and post-getaway laundry won't dry itself—

The theme is ___ TRAPs: LIGHT SPEED, AS QUIET AS A MOUSE, BLUE-FOOTED BOOBY, and GEORGE SAND suggest speed trap, mousetrap, booby-trap, and sandtrap. Gotta love the BLUE-FOOTED BOOBY—friend of mine took a trip to the Galapagos and took great pix of the boobies with variously colored feet. I'm not sure how the theory of evolution accounts for dull-feathered birds with bright blue or red feet.

Kudos to the editor and/or constructor for cluing NURSED as [Breast-fed]. Man, I hope no bluenoses write offended letters to the Times complaining that breast-feeding violates the breakfast test. Kudos, too, for the PLAYMATE being a [Child's friend] rather than the subject of a Playboy pictorial.

Favorite fill: QUIT IT; the AL DENTE / ZIT line; ROD CAREW's full name; the three-in-a-row Down answers LOO, DOO, and ZOO; and DADDY-O. BIC is clued as an [Inexpensive pen]; anyone else see the magazine ads promoting Bic pens, lighters, and disposable razors with a single cents-off coupon? Less fond of TRAYFUL, E-BONDS, and the doubling up on UPDATE/UPMOST.

Updated Monday morning:

Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Knot Now"—Janie's review

Anyone out there read Annie Proulx's The Shipping News? One of the many things I liked about the book were the illustrations of knots that were part of almost every chapter. They were taken from The Ashley Book of Knots which, it just so happens, is available as a free e-book. Today, each of Ray's fresh theme phrases begins with a word that also describes a particular kind of knot. And those'd be:

• 20A. WINDSOR CASTLE [Queen Elizabeth's weekend getaway]. Here's a "how to" in, um, seven easy steps...
• 37A. GRANNY SMITH [Green apple variety]. Here's one kind of granny knot.
• 44A. SQUARE DANCE [Where callers are heard]. Loved this one, because I really didn't understand the clue until the fill became clear. Also, the square knot is just about the only knot I know how to tie: left over right and right over left. Or the opposite.
• 59A. OVERHAND PITCH [It was legalized in baseball in 1884]. Nice little factoid, no? And here's yer basic overhand knot, which bears a striking resemblance to a pretzel. Yeah. I can do this one, too.

While the theme may have been "knotty," the puzzle as a whole was easily and enjoyably solved. Little Jack Horner of English nursery rhyme fame got his day in EL SOL [The sun, in Seville] with not one, but two clue/fill combos: ["...and pulled out] A PLUM" and ["...and said, 'What a good boy] AM I!'" While we're in the nursery, let me not forget to mention CHOO, which has been clued as [Half a toy train?]. Let's just hope that when the child with but half a toy train starts to read, he or she gets an entire primer. Cut-backs are one thing, but Dick without JANE? Next thing ya know that [Double Dutch need] (and knot-tying need...) ROPE will be for—well, is there such a thing as "Single Dutch"? I think not. But look, the National Double Dutch competition is coming up. This may be worth looking into!

In the legal world, the [Burden of proof] ONUS is on the prosecutor, who pleads his or her case before the judge or judges. When the robed ones are hearing a case, they are said to be sitting en BANC. So they're the ones who have a [Seat at the court]. In the world where the "higher law" must be answered to, someone who's been very, very good might be recognizable by his or her HALO [Heavenly ring] (or HARP, perhaps). And a [Heavenly aquarium addition?]? Why, that'd be an ANGEL FISH, of course. (Ray also gives us the WAHOO, a [Dark blue food fish]. This was new to me, and is a nice change from ["Yippee!"].)

Other fill that kept the puzzle lively: CHI-CHI [Hoity-toity] (I like that clue, too) and TOP DOG [One of the highest authority]. We've seen fat cat a couple times in the past few weeks, so I was glad to see a little balance among the species.

Pancho Harrison's Los Angeles Times crossword

Aw, look at 1-Across: [Vikings quarterback Brett] FAVRE. FAVRE turned 40 last month, and would you look at the season he's having with his erstwhile NFC Central/North rivals? My son was OK with his Bears losing yesterday because the Vikings are his second favorite team. If only FAVRE had come to the Bears instead of Jay "Interceptions and Fumbles" Cutler.

The theme is either flawed or fresh: The three longest entries start with synonyms, but one of the synonyms is two words while the others are single words. Is it a nice twist or an unexpected hitch to have TAKE OFF, not TAKE, match up with SPLIT and LEAVE? I'm OK with it. TAKE OFF WEIGHT is clued as [Shed some pounds]; SPLIT THE PROFITS is [Divide earnings equally]; and to LEAVE A MESSAGE is to [Talk to the answering machine].

In the fill, the stars are OLD YELLER (which I haven't seen...I don't want to cry) and AUSTRALIA. Not fond of AGERS and APER. The iBOOK is now dated fill, but it's easier to fit into a puzzle than the MacBook Pro or the AirBook.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"

This puzzle kicked my ass. Chess fans may appreciate 1-Across—ZUGZWANG, or [Unpleasant obligation to move, in chess]—but those who've never encountered the term must rely heavily on the crossings. And 1-Down wasn't helping—["Hannah Montana," e.g.] is a teen sitcom but also, apparently, a ZITCOM. Now, my kid watches some of the Disney Channel's sitcoms for tweens and I read Entertainment Weekly religiously, but ZITCOM was not coming to the fore of my brain. Gah.

How are NITS [Small prevarications]? I've never seen the word used to mean lies. I had FIBS there for too long. Plenty of other wrong turns, too. GAINS instead of EARNS and THETAN instead of THEBAN because I was originally thinking CRETAN mucked up the race horse BARBARO, who was looking like TARBUIO or TARBAIO (the A-vs.-U was JANE, [Alec's twin sister in "Twilight"], and I guess Brendan is more caught up in Twilight-mania than I am. Brendan, you didn't seem the type. I also figured [Acting together] would be ***ING UP rather than IN LEAGUE.

["Eek!"] clues DEAR ME, which is goofy but worlds better than OH ME and AH ME, which I suggest nobody has uttered in a century, if ever. Until now! I have begun using AH ME and OH ME, but so far have had no luck getting my husband to join in. Won't you help popularize these words of regret and despair? It's either that, or we have to insist that constructors stop using these entries altogether. Do any of you have an in with Stephenie Meyer or the writers of Hannah Montana? That could break OH/AH ME wide open. I'd tell you I was saying "Oh, me!" in my head while working on this crossword, but that would be a small prevarication.

Sunday, 11/29/09

2009-11-28T18:40:00.008-06:00

NYT 23:39
BG 28:08
Reagle 19:31
LAT 20:58
CS 31:35

Team Orange weekend coverage continues. Now, from our Seattle bureau, here's Sam Donaldson.
Happy Sunday, everyone. Orange and her DSL-like solving times will reclaim the throne tomorrow, but today you get the analysis of a dial-up solver for the Sunday crosswords.

Will Nediger's New York Times Crossword, "Cued Up"
As a solver, I'm easy to please. I love wacky, envelope-pushing Krozel-esque puzzles as much as the next guy, but honestly, if you give me a simple theme and execute it really well, I'm just as happy. Today's NYT is a fine example: a simple letter-addition theme that is elegant and enjoyable. Nediger inserts a "QU" somewhere inside seven common phrases and then clues the wackiness that results. Behold the delights that unfold:

A [Delighted exclamation?] is a SQUEAL OF APPROVAL (the "QU" is added to "seal of approval"). I wonder if Will had "Navy Squeal" somewhere on his short list when constructing this puzzle.
[Part of an Irish playwright's will?] is a WILDE BEQUEST, which is what you get when you add a "QU" to the wildebeest, nature's "before picture." This was the cleverest theme answer, I thought.
A [Carsick passenger?] is a QUEASY RIDER, from the infamous film, "Easy Rider." Because of the film reference, I wanted a clue that related to motorcycles, but this one is quite fine.
QUALMSGIVING is clued as [Causing uneasiness?]. Until a minute ago, I would have thought that "almsgiving" was forced. I have always heard of "giving alms" but not "almsgiving." But a quick Google search reveals that I have been living in Landbackwards all this time. This is why we do crosswords, right? It's not to stave off ... oh, I forget what they call it. It's about learning new stuff in fun ways.
[Carryin' on, in olden times?] is a well-written clue for QUAINT MISBEHAVIN'. "Ain't Misbehavin'" was the first musical I ever saw live. I still remember the song "The Joint is Jumpin'" with fondness. Come in cats and check your hats, I mean this joint is jumpin'! But back to the clue: notice the last letter missin' in "carrying" sends the signal that similar hijinks are lurkin' in the answer. A great hint to a fun answer.
[Anger at losing one's flock?] is SHEPHERD'S PIQUE (from shepherd's pie). This bothered me at first since the insertion of the "QU" changes the pronunciation of the altered word, but the same happens with wildebeest so it's technically not inconsistent with the others.
Finally, [Subjugation?] is a VANQUISHING ACT (from "vanishing act"). What a terrific answer! The clue itself would be a fun entry in a freestyle puzzle. Hold on a second - I need to write that down.

I have a feeling that QUEASY RIDER was the GERM [Starting point] for this puzzle, but there are so many other good ones here that I can't be sure. Engineering fresh fill around so many Qs is not easy, but Nediger's grid has lots of good stuff. And it appears we're only a "J" shy of a pangram in this grid, for those who care about such things. Highlights include: PLAN A, the [Primary stratagem]; MINI-GOLF, clued as [It may feature a windmill]; BEAVIS, the [TV character often seen in a Metallica T-shirt]; MIST OVER, or [Get fogged up]; UNDIES, clued somewhat deceptively as [Drawers, e.g.]; and BOB SAGET, the [Narrator of "How I Met Your Mother"] and a prominent figure in the movie, "The Aristocrats." Trust me, you'll never look at Bob Saget the same way again after you see that movie (or as much of it as you can stomach, anyway). I loved it, but I have a high tolerance for offensive material.

Those who, like me, enjoy proper names in their puzzles had more than Bob Saget and Beavis on which to feast. There was the Hindu god VISHNU (the clue tells us [Krishna is one of his avatars]), ["Tamerlane" dramatist Nicholas] ROWE, Tom SNYDER of "The Tomorrow Show," the poet James Whitcomb RILEY crossing Mets general manager OMAR Minaya, and Iranian supreme leader ALI Khamenei, among others.

I fell into a few traps, but few of them bogged me down for a long time. I tried NO-HITTER and PERFECT GAME for the [Pitcher's feat] until I came to ONE-HITTER. Then I tried AMOEBA for [One surrounded by cell walls] before tumbling to INMATE. The "A" at the insersection of Pierre de FERMAT, the [French mathematician who pioneered in the theory of probability], and ["Jour de Fete" star, director, and writer] Jacques TATI, was a total guess. Others may have had a hard time in that area too if they did not know CERT, the [Legal writ, in brief] that's short for certiorari. I also had a hard time with the clue for NOUN, [It may be declined]. Apparently, when you change a noun to distinguish the singular from the plural, you "decline" it. Huh, go figure.

Henry Hook's Boston Globe Crossword, "Address Book"
Hook subjects seven different terms commonly found in physical addresses to a little wordplay. Some of the results are stellar; others are a bit--get ready--pedestrian.

[Miss Muffet's address?] is HER CURDS AND WAY, playing off Muffet's legendary prowess at eating "her curds and whey" provided she remain undisturbed. The "her" part is awkward, but apparently necessary to make the symmetry work.
[New mom's address?] clues UMBILICAL COURT, a variation of the umbilical cord. I love this one, even though I think I said "Eww" aloud as I was writing it down. I suppose Umbilical Court is a one-way street.
[J.B. Fletcher's address?] is MURDER SHE ROAD, based on the old "Murder, She Wrote" series on CBS. I've never watched an episode of this show, but I certainly saw enough promos during CBS football games to be aware of the Jessica Fletcher character.
HAMMER AND CIRCLE is a [Communist's address?] that draws from the old "hammer and sickle" symbol on the flag of the former Soviet Union. If your knowledge of recent history is limited to what you know from crosswords, let me translate: the flag of the USSR (or CCCP), the collection of SSRs, had a hammer and sickle on it.
[Halloween party address?] clues TRICK OR STREET. This one seems a bit dull to me. Nothin wrong with it, of course, but it pales next to many other theme entries in this puzzle.
My favorite one of the bunch is the [Cordial host's address?], BEEN NICE AVENUE ("Been nice having you"). This took me a while to uncover since I was slow to see "avenue" as two words and not one. Then, when I had consecutive E's preceding consecutive N's early in the entry, I was sure I had made an error. But when I finally got it, I loved it.
Finally, the [Liberator's address?] is SIMON BOULEVARD, a twist on South America's Simon Bolivar.

Check out how Hook manages to place one theme entry directly atop another in both the NW and SE! If a mere mortal attempted this, the fill would be compromised beyond belief. Hook is one of, what, a handful of constructors that can make this look easy? Sure, each of the corners features some less-than-stellar fill: a partial name (!) (LEE DE-Forest, the inventor of the vacuum tube), a partial chorus (the [Kiddie-song ending] EIO, the last 60% of Old McDonald's "E-I-E-I-O"), a strange French word (INCONNUS) clued as [Strangers, in Strasbourg], and LAFEU, the small-fries role of an [Old lord in "All's Well That Ends Well"], come readily to mind. But the rest of those corners were, I think, entirely legit.

There is much to love in this grid. [Scout master?] is a fun clue for TONTO (Scout:Tonto :: Silver:Lone Ranger). Other fun clues included [Some like it hot] for TEA, [First word of "Kokomo"] for ARUBA, and [Take a ride?] for HIJACK. Today's confession = I plunked down OH SHEILA, the [1985 Ready for the World hit song], without a single crossing to help. One need not be proud of everything buried in one's mind. Look for it on YouTube and you'll know my shame.

I struggled mostly in the far east section of the grid. I nearly got a migraine from IGRAINE, [King Arthur's mother], and it did not help to be unfamiliar with the [Lupin of whodunits], ARSENE. Any time I see the name "Lupin" I think of the Harry Potter novels. The [Pacific republic] of NAURU required every single crossing to get, and even then I was unsure whether I had it right. Below all of that, you had to grapple with four intersecting proper names, BARA, BELA, JEREZ, and JOLENE. I was lucky to know three of the four (only Jerez eluded me), but other solvers may have hit a wall here. The only other entry to stay hidden for a long time was PONIARD, the [Thin-bladed dagger].

Finally, if I had a vote, I would nominate the clue for MASON-DIXON, [Their line was in real estate], for a 2009 Oryx. That's just a thing of beauty. OK, so far Oryxes have only been given to entire crosswords and not to individual fill or clues, but if the Oscars can award supporting cast members separately and expand the Best Picture field from five to ten films, there should be some room to give special recognition to great clues that almost single-handedly make the solving experience a delight.

Merl Reagle's Syndicated Crossword, "The Furry Thought of You"
Reagle proves once again that when it comes to puns, he is the cat's meow. This puzzle offers seven purr-fect phrases with a feline touch. Okay, retract your claws--I'll leave the cat puns to the master.

[Cat's new "I've chased my last rodent" attitude?] is NO MORE MR. MICE GUY (a play on the common "no more Mr. Nice Guy" phrase).
[Washed oneself thoroughly?] is LICKED HIGH AND LOW ("looked high and low"). Sometimes a puzzle needs a title. This theme entry is a case in point: it was the first theme entry to fall for me, and if it weren't for the puzzle's title, my mind would have shot straight to the gutter. Well, maybe it did anyway.
The [All-natural cat drink from Celestial Seasonings?] is HAIRBALL TEA. I kept wanting this to be FURBALL TEA and I'm not sure why I was so resistant to the correct answer.
It takes two entries to uncover the place [Where cats dream of living?], DOWN BY THE / OLD MILK STREAM (from the song, "Down by the Old Mill Stream").
Likewise here, we need two entries for the [Cat's singalong instruction], FOLLOW THE / POUNCING PAW ("follow the bouncing ball").
A [Cat's favorite Ingmar Bergman film?] might be CRIES AND WHISKERS ("Cries and Whispers"). The title is familiar enough to me that I could discern the pun, but I haven't seen it and know nothing about it.
Reagle knows how to save the best for last: the [Cat's favorite play?] is RO-MEOW AND JULIET.

Despite the relatively quick solving time (for me), there were some thorny entries that slowed me down. I don't think I have ever seen VIANDS, a supply of [Food], and it didn't help that it intersected with ODALISQUE, a [Harem girl]. Fortunately I was familiar enough with YAQUI, an [Indian of Sonora, Mex.]. If not, that corner might have become unsolvable. Nearby sit Nabisco's UNEEDA biscuits from 1898. Biscuits from 1898? Merl, seriously - uneeda clean out your pantry. Up in the north, INGLE, the [Brit's fireplace], didn't make me tingle, but all of the crossings were fair. In the SE, TOY SALES, the [Post-Christmas events], struck me as a little forced.

The hardest intersection for me was where PULI, the [Hungarian sheepdog], met [Actress Joanne] DRU. Part of the problem was that I was sure "POUNCING PAW" was supposed to be "BOUNCING PAW," and BULI seemed just as right to me as PULI. And for some reason, I wanted the [Cheery word?] to be TAH instead of RAH. I was thinking "Ta-Ta," as in "Cheerio, chap." Then I was sure it was AAH, since the second letter in Joanne's name just had to be a vowel. And c'mon, a cheery person would be inclined to say "aah," right? Now that I write this out, of course, I see how silly that is, but in the heat of the solve I can get pretty stubborn with myself.

Always happy to see MR. BILL, the [Victimized clay guy on "SNL" reruns], and ERNST, [007 foe's first name]. Blofeld, Ernst Blofeld. And how appropriate for this puzzle that Blofeld was often featured with a white cat in his arms. Even though I tend to prefer dogs to cats (I have a mild allergy to cat fur and I find most cats a little aloof), I had a good time with this puzzle. And it didn't make me itch.

WARNING: If you have not yet completed today's NYT puzzle, this part of the posting will make reference to that puzzle so STOP RIGHT NOW (or skip to the CrosSynergy discussion below).
Peter Wentz's Los Angeles Times Crossword, "Right on Cue"
Oh no! Two newspapers have come to the party in the same outfit! A constructor's second-worse nightmare! (The worst, I think, would be seeing a paper run the same theme just a few days before your puzzle is scheduled to appear in a different paper.) I feel badly for both Will and Peter. I can't help but compare the two puzzles, just as Us Weekly does with its "Who Wore It Best?" feature. The good news in all of this is that the two puzzles were sufficiently distinct that I enjoyed them both. Don't make me pick one, a la "Sophie's Choice." I can love them both equally.

In this puzzle, Wentz *ahem* adds a "QU" to the start of seven common phrases and then clues the wackiness that results. Unlike the Nediger puzzle, all of the "QU"s this time come at the front. In that regard, the theme entries here are a little tighter. Fortunately, only one of the theme entries in Wentz's puzzle overlaps with those from Nediger's puzzle:

[Charmin' way of actin' up?] leads to the overlapper, QUAINT MISBEHAVIN'. In case you have forgotten, "Ain't Misbehavin'" was the first musical I ever saw live, and yes, I still dig "The Joint is Jumpin'." Oh, and this too is a well-written clue for the reasons described above. Let's just move along to the never-before-seen theme entries.
To [Annul in the middle of the week] is to QUASH WEDNESDAY, a play on "Ash Wednesday." I'm not sure "in" is appropriate for the clue; to me that makes sense only if the entry read QUASH ON WEDNESDAY. I think I would prefer [Suppress the middle of the week?] as a clue for QUASH WEDNESDAY.
[Calculation for an express delivery?] is a QUICK FACTOR. I like the base phrase "ick factor," a measure of gore or grossness. Here's a case where the wacky phrase is actually duller than the base phrase, and that's not usually the way you want to go.
[Ends it, to one's subsequent regret] is QUITS A GOOD THING. Since Martha Stewart is famous for saying, "It's a good thing," it would have been fun to see her used as part of the clue.
A [Sick feeling on campus?] is QUAD NAUSEAM, building off the common phrase "ad nauseam." I liked this one, perhaps because it hits home. Like many campuses across the country, my school has been at DEFCON 2 since the start of school with worry over the H1N1 virus. We now have hand sanitizer dispensers installed throughout campus, and some restrooms even have signs reminding folks to wash their hands. What does it say about society when an institution of higher education has to install reminders about basic sanitation practices?
[Wasn't quite ready to accuse?] clues QUASI-SUSPECTED (from "as I suspected," the phrase everyone uses at the end of a murder mystery party).
Finally, QURAN IN THE FAMILY (from "ran in the family") is clued as a [Muslim household's holy book?]. Not as good a punchline as some of the others, but if QUAINT MISBEHAVIN' had been the punchline here too the awkwardness between the two puzzles would have been magnified.

So yes, the puzzles wore the same outfit, but they had different accessories, and that often makes all the difference. Some of my favorite entries in Wentz's version included ABOVE ZERO, BYZANTIUM, HOLD TIGHT, JAM UP, TEPIDNESS, BLOT OUT, QUICHES, DR. KATZ, SILK TIES, and, of course, FREE FALLIN', the classic [1989 Tom Petty hit]. Wentz scored a pangram with the fill, but some of it felt a bit strained. Google verifies that AGENDA BOOK is a valid enough term, I suppose, but it still kinda hurts my eyes and ears. NOT VALID, clued as [Like an expired license], also made me wince. I think most of us would say "invalid" instead of "not valid," and I'm not sure many solvers want a rather arbitrary "not" thrown in before most ADJS [Fast and furious, e.g.: Abbr.]. And UNLAX [Chill out, slangily]? Really? Chillax, sure, but unlax? I think that will bug me until I "untire" to bed tonight.

I would have thought that my second experience with the same theme would have resulted in a noticeably shorter solving time, but such was not the case (in my glacial world, two-and-a-half minutes ain't much faster). Despite the overlapping theme, the only noticeable overlap in the fill comes in the SW of both grids: 112D in Wentz's grid, QBS, is the same as 113D in Nediger's grid. The clue for HOLD TIGHT, [2008 Harlan Coben thriller], slowed me down more than would have a direct clue like [Clutch firmly]. I wanted BAJA for BAHA, [Island band The ___ Men], but I finally figured it out once the crossing [Old Testament prophet] HOSEA fell. Even that proved a little elusive since I had FEAT instead of GEST as the [Daring exploit]. I was also mired at the instersection of LA PLATA, the [City near Buenos Aires], and BRETON, the [Celtic language spoken in France]. Apparently I am not very cosmopolitan. It's true: I have never ventured outside of North America. I've seen much of Canada, the States, and Mexico, but nothing beyond. Even Sarah Palin has seen Russia, albeit from a distance. And yet I finished second to President Obama in voting for the Nobel Peace Prize (we had identical accomplishments, but he photographs better). (It's important to make offsetting political jokes whenever possible.)

Bob Klahn’s freestyle CrosSynergy “Sunday Challenge”
Go figure - my slowest time comes not with the 21x Sunday-sized puzzles but the innocuous little 15x freestyle offering from the master of deception, Bob Klahn. I felt like an IGNORAMUS [Ding-a-ling] throughout much of the solve, but I'm proud to have survived and I admire the construction a great deal. This 70-worder offers four triple-stacked 9s and a grid full of fun entries and knotty clues. In no particular order, here are my ten favorites:

[Something hard to make for Easter] is a BOILED EGG. I managed to get the "egg" first but then struggled to figure out exactly what kind of egg would be so difficult to make. Without the usual "?" to signal wordplay, this proved an uphill battle. Of course, we're supposed to apply a different meaning to "hard." (For fans of "The Office," that's what she said.)
[Turkey portion] is ASIA MINOR, since a part of Turkey lies in Asia Minor. I had little problem with this, as I have tackled enough Klahnian puzzles in my day to know right away that this had nothing to do with the bird many of us feasted upon a few days ago. And yet I couldn't do the same with the flippin' boiled egg. Again, the lack of a question mark here might have thrown off several solvers.
A VEGAN is [One not likely to bring home the bacon]. Easy enough clue (it gave me my entry into the grid), but highly entertaining.
Controversial radio personality DON IMUS also has a great clue, ["My goal is to goad people into saying something that ruins their life" speaker]. When I first read the clue, I had only the N and I in place. I thought that the speaker was likely a trial attorney, but none of the usual names of famous trial attorneys seemed to work. When I later had --NIMUS, I then convinced myself that the speaker was a Roman philosopher. Maybe someone modest named Minimus. Then, I got to -ONIMUS and I was still stuck. Finally (true story), once I got the D from the crossing, I wondered who the Roman Donimus might be. Only after I thought to myself, "What an unfair entry to place in an otherwise nice grid," did the light bulb come on. This confession may cause me to lose authorship privileges on this blog. If so, it was fun while it lasted.
[Wimpy bud] is POPEYE. Sure enough, I tried to squeeze in the name of some lame flower. At first glance, PEONE looked good with the crossings I had in place, but that extra square got in the way. I'm a little mad at myself for not getting this one sooner, especially since Wimpy was only one of my favorite characters in all of cartoons. "For a hamburger today, I will gladly repay you Tuesday."
CALL ME MADAM is a [Musical title all of whose consonants are Roman numerals]. And even though they are out of order, they add to 3,700. I had the first M in place when I came to this clue, so my first thought was MADAME BOVARY until I realized the B and the R wouldn't work. Then I wondered if MAME had a longer title. With a few more letters down I tried the famous palindrome, MADAM I'M ADAM, thinking maybe someone made a musical by that name (a great opening number would be "Able Was I, Ere I Saw Elba"). Eventually I got it, though really I could not have told you before the solve that there was a musical by this name.
[Tang, e.g.] clues ORANGEADE. Not sure why I could plunk this down without any crossings, but I did. Got lucky, I guess.
To [Focus directly] is to TAKE DEAD AIM, just a great, lively phrase.
[Took a flying leap] clues VAULTED. I spent a decent chunk of time trying to come up with a synonym for "beat it" or "am-scrayed."
Finally, [Boston and Chicago aides] are ROADIES. Of course, I don't think of the bands, I think of the baseball teams. There's the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox, so I was sure the answer had something to do with socks. As with most of my hunches in this puzzle, I could not have been more wrong.

A really terrific grid and clues that worked to mire me in the ooze of stuck for a long time. The SE was especially deadly. I have seen the SAMPAN before (it's a [Mat-roofed, flat-bottomed boat]) but it felt completely foreign to me during the solve. The clue for ADAGE, [Sampler sentence], still eludes me, so anyone who wants to help me out should please explain in the comments. I had never heard of Roger Ebert's book, "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," so the clue for HATED left me empty. And I couldn't figure out AMORY, ["The Proper Bostonians" writer Cleveland]. Even with the first three letters of these words in place from the crossing downs, I was befuddled for a long time. The NW corner also took a while, but once I figured out that the LLAMA was the [Animal on Peru's coat of arms], the rest fell fairly quickly.

Roger Ebert may have hated, hated, hated some movie, but I liked, liked, liked this puzzle even though it nearly defeated me. Thank you, Sir Klahn. May I have another?

My Trip to Atlanta
Before I hand the baton back to Orange, allow me to share a slightly off-topic anecdote that readers of this blog will appreciate. In my job I am lucky (?) enough to travel around the country a fair amount for various conferences. I am a slave to my frequent flyer miles, so I almost always fly on the same airline when I can (I won't mention the name of the airline, but it seems to have an awfully high number of flights to Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks). Anyway, one of the first things I often do after taking my seat on a plane is to pull out the airline's magazine and see if it has crosswords. Sure enough, my frequent-flyer airline has a 23x puzzle every month, but I'm pretty sure the grid and the clues are computer-generated because it's never much fun and the clues violate many of the standard clue conventions.

But earlier this month I had to fly on a partner airline (and for reasons that will soon be apparent, I have no problem disclosing that this partner airline was Delta). When I checked the back of Delta's Sky Magazine, I discovered that they run an old NYT 15x crossword and a couple of Sudoku puzzles. I was pleased to see that Delta sprung for a good puzzle, so I pulled out my trusty solving pencil (aka The Death Wand) and set to work. When I read the clue for 1-Across, I actually dropped the Death Wand. It was my debut puzzle from October 2008! Sure enough, my name was printed alongside the grid near the fold. I have only had two puzzles in the NYT (so far - there are some in the queue), so the odds of this happening are, by my precise computations, remote. I was completely floored. For the first time ever, I took the magazine off the plane with me.

By the way, at one point I needed to stand during the flight and stretch my legs (it was a long flight to Atlanta). Rather than stay by my seat near the front, I decided to walk to the back of the cabin just so I could see whether anyone was working the puzzle. It has always been my white whale - I have never seen someone actually solving one of my puzzles (not that I have had many of them out there to see people solve, mind you, but still). I saw two people working the Sudoku puzzles and no one working the crossword. Sigh. But that's just a small hiccup in what was otherwise the coolest flight I have taken in years.

Well, that's the story. Again, I thought that if anyone would appreciate the thrill I had it would be this group. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Saturday, 11/28/09

2009-11-27T22:34:00.006-06:00

NYT (PG)
LAT (PG)
CS (Janie)
Newsday 5:20 (joon—paper)

PuzzleGirl here with you again. Whenever I sit in for Orange on late-week puzzles, I have a little panic attack about the fact that I might not be able to solve the puzzle. I mean, that's just a fact. I've improved a lot over the past couple years, but it's not a given that I can finish a Friday or Saturday New York Times puzzle. And let's just say there's a really good reason that I don't volunteer for the Saturday Stumper. How did I do this week? Find out after the jump.

Oh, but before we get started, I understand there was some discussion over here a while back about the various PGs in CrossWorld and how they (we) should be ranked. I believe I ended up as PG2 behind Paula Gamache. Which is fine. There's no way I'm dumb enough to think I belong in front of Paula on the list. But it occurred to me that I wouldn't even be in the second spot if you guys had remembered Peter Gordon. So. I decided that as long as I'm going to end up a ways down the list anyway, I would prefer to be PG-13. I think that should work for everybody.

But enough about me. Let's see what I think about the puzzles.

Karen M. Tracey's New York Times crossword puzzle

So, what do you think? Did I finish this one? With no mistakes? Why, yes. Yes, I did. Yay me! I struggled a bit, especially in the NW, but I stopped the clock just barely past 30 minutes, which is a few minutes faster than my average Saturday time. It's actually making me feel a little cocky about this year's Puzzle Five, but I'm sure I'll regret that.

Where did I stumble? I had the SSION in place for [What a student might not go without?] and wanted the answer to be some sort of EXAM instead of PERMISSION SLIP. (Actually, my first thought was LAPTOP or IPHONE or something, but ... that's totally inappropriate.) EXAM led me to believe "Pooh-Bah" came from THE MASONS, which seems reasonable. I mean, since FLINTSTONES and HAPPY DAYS wouldn't fit. (Correct answer: THE MIKADO.) Entering TOLL BOOTH for TOLL PLAZA didn't help things down there. But it all eventually worked itself out.

RIKKI TIKKI TAVI showed itself pretty early. What with all those Ks in place, it could hardly be anything else. But I could hear ANNIE LENNOX singing "Talk to me / Like lovers do ...." Turns out that's a whole different song than STEVIE NICKS's "Talk to Me." I also had ELUDE for EVADE and ALLER for AVOIR down in the SW for a while. And since [Pathology pioneer Sir James] PAGET and [18-season Mariner EDGAR Martinez] were total guesses, I'm actually kind of surprised that corner pulled itself together.

There's obviously a lot more we can talk about with this puzzle, but there is a slice of pumpkin pie in the kitchen calling my name so let me get the L.A. Times puzzle out of the way and I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Alan Olschwang's L.A. Times crossword puzzle

I thought we might have a theme going with the two double-Z answers: MEZZO-SOPRANO and JACUZZI (22A: Carmen, for one / 38A: Maker of many jets). But no. Then when I saw more Scrabbly letters, and thought we might have a pangram on our hands. But no again. All it needs is an effin' F. Bummer.

Stuff I did not know:

19A: Zen enlightenment (SATORI). Sometimes considered the first step toward Nirvana.

10D: Belgium winter hrs. (CET). Whoa, what? That would be Central European Time.

13D: Former Tennessee Titans tight end Kinney (ERRON). Insert your own err-on-the-side-of-caution joke here.

24D: Sprites of Persian mythology (PERIS). Apparently they rank between angels and evil spirits. Kinda like humans, I guess.

50D: "The Hustler" author Walter (TEVIS). I didn't know "The Hustler" was originally a novel.

62D: Knotted pile carpet (RYA). It's a traditional Scandinavian rug. If you do a Google image search, you see a wide variety of colors and designs, so I'm not sure what it is that makes these rugs their own category. Something about the wool or the knots I think.

Other stuff I noticed:

33A: Inexpensive kids' toy (PAPER DOLL). I'm pretty sure toy makers have discovered a way to make paper dolls expensive.

47A: Classic Jag (XKE). I always want there to be a J in this answer. And there never is.

4D: Derby town (EPSOM). Epsom, Essex, Sussex ... they're all the same to me unfortunately.

34D: Dallas Mavericks owner before Cuban (PEROT). Kept reading this as "Dallas Mavericks owner Cuban" and couldn't figure out why Mark wouldn't fit.

39D: Golfer Babe who was a six-time AP Female Athlete of the Year (ZAHARIAS). So, yes, I know her name was Babe, but "Golfer Babe"? That doesn't seem right somehow.

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Backup Plan"—Janie's review

As the Congreve saying goes, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," and this puzzle—which takes lively, everyday phrases and re-purposes them with a musical twist—hath its charms as well. Lotta smile factor in this one as Patrick gives a shout-out to both classic rock 'n' roll and classic Motown with:

• 20A. MIRACLE WORKER [Member of Smokey Robinson's group, while performing?]. Pick a tune, any tune.
• 27A. CRICKET MATCH [Sports contest for a member of Buddy Holly's group?]. Oh, I loved Buddy Holly and the Crickets as a kid. Still do. Here's why.
• 43A. SUPREME COURT [Legal venue for a member of Diana Ross's group?] Let's hear it for the girls!
• 51A. COMET CLEANSER [Soap for a member of Bill Haley's group?]. Bill Haley and the Comets were just about the first folks to get the ball rollin'. And popular music was never quite the same.

The four groups that Patrick singled out provide more than a trip down memory lane. Each one made a real difference to the genre; each is still listened to today—and not only by the boomer generation. I'm so grateful for radio shows like Felix Hernandez's "Rhythm Review" on WBGO that spin soul's and rhythm 'n' blues' best. It's worth checking out on line if you don't live in the New York area.

I wish the cluing in this puzzle were as much fun as the rangy fill. Here are some of the words and phrases I liked best:

• PALM PILOT [Hand-held organizer brand];
• FAT CAT [Major campaign contributer]. Oh—and on the subject of campaigns, I liked seeing TED ["Liberal Lion" Kennedy] and KERRY [2004 ballot surname] in the grid;
• TAP WATER [Fluid from a faucet]. New York's is mighty good;
• HEARTH [Fireplace floor];
• TYPECAST [Given similar roles repeatedly]. It beat not being cast at all, but also speaks to some lack of imagination. And not only among the casting directors...
• ICE SHOW [Skating exhibition] (where you might enjoy some SNO [___-Caps...]);and finally—how often do we see this:
• "ET TU, BRUTE?" [Famed Shakespearean last words]. It's the phrase in its entirety. Be still, my heart!

Barry C. Silk's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"—joon's review

this is, by a fair amount, the easiest stumper i've ever done. i started by knowing 1a (EMMA watson, who plays [Hermione in the "Harry Potter" films]) and proceeded through the puzzle, never really getting hung up anywhere. most unusual for a stumper. i liked several of the answers a lot, especially AIR GUITAR, WHIFFLE BALL, and DOMO ARIGATO. i think there were fewer tricky clues than usual. a few that i enjoyed:

[It takes weeks to complete] is not any particular task, but merely a MONTH.

[One held for questioning] is not a person, but a TEST. we held a test last week to "question" our students on physics, i guess.

[Tag line] is the AS IS that might appear on a tag at a yard sale or flea market.

a few outright traps: [___ reader], four letters? nope, not UTNE this time (note the lowercase r): it's MIND reader. [Unrefined], CR___? i put in CRUDE, but it's CRASS, meaning unrefined socially rather than chemically.

[Augustan-era poet] is not a poet from the augustan era of english literature like pope or swift, but VIRGIL, who wrote during the reign of augustus caesar. but i almost feel like you had to be overeducated to fall into this trap.

a couple of unnecessarily stuffy clues: why [Elusive one] for DODGER? nobody uses DODGER to mean one who dodges, unless they're talking specifically about a draft dodger. there's no real alternative for a word like RESHUT, but DODGER is perfectly cluable via the baseball team. and [High-frequency sound] for TWEET seems hopelessly out of touch, given that 99% of the time TWEET now means twitter posting.

clue i still don't get: [Safe to crack] for PETE. huh? is this an adjective or a noun? a person (pete safe)? no idea.

Daily Beast, 11/27/09

2009-11-27T09:27:00.004-06:00

"Second Helpings" - 14:09

Welcome to another edition of Crosscan blogs Thanksgiving Puzzles.

The party never ends. Well if it must be Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for another cool Matt Gaffney creation.

115A: [Food you might be eating today – and the theme of this puzzle] – THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS. And the food is all over, stuck in the middle of familiar phrases.
23A: [Manufacturing one specific piece of sports equipment?] – CREATING A SQUASH RACKET
36A:[Comment about Mr. Luciano’s bowling ability?] – LUCKY ROLLS STRIKES. Do you know what three strikes in a row in bowling is called? A turkey! 47A:[Yiddish cries] – OYS!
56A:[“You’re forbidden to smoke when you’re not indoors”] - IT’S COLD TURKEY OUTSIDE.
80A:[Rigging a supposedly fair election?] – SECRET BALLOT STUFFING.
94A:[Golden opportunity you’ve got to grab quickly?] – EXPRESS GRAVY TRAIN.

1A: [God with a twin sister] – APOLLO. Artemis is the twin.
15A:[Cary’s ex] – DYAN Cannon. Cary (nee Archibald Leach) Grant’s exes also include Virginia Cherrill, Barbara Hutton, Betsy Drake. His last wife was Barbara Harris.
29A: [70 W, e.g.] – RTE. It will take you from North Carolina to Arizona.
30A: [Barkin and Raskin] – ELLENS. Why go with Raskin when you can use Ripstein?
35A: [Have A NAX to grind]. You don’t see many naxes around anymore. What? AN AX? Oh, much better.
46A:[Tossed back bacon] – ATE. Tref!
49A:[Hottie of long ago] – PINUP. See also DYAN and 62A:[Actress Larter] – ALI.
50A: [rotf, perhaps] – LOL. Rolling on the floor and laughing out loud.
76A:[Stopped working, as a car] – DIED. This can happen sitting in a parking lot waiting for your wife using the battery with the engine off. Yes, it can. Sigh.
86A: [Ancient city outside of Atlanta] – ROME. Ancient history experts, please explain.
101A:[Upcoming NASA launch vehicle] – ARES. Future astronauts will ride to orbit on Ares I, which uses a single five-segment solid rocket booster, a derivative of the space shuttle's solid rocket booster, for the first stage. A liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen J-2X engine derived from the J-2 engine used on Apollo's second stage will power the crew exploration vehicle's second stage. The Ares I can lift more than 55,000 pounds to low Earth orbit. (NASA website)
120A: [Sword that may lead to gold] – EPEE. Olympic reference!
2D: [Matthew or Luke] – PERRY. Get your mind out of the bible and back into network TV where it belongs.
5D: [“Serve again”] – LET. I don’t think crosswords would be possible without tennis.
15D: [Cicero’s 761] – DCCLXI. Nobody’s perfect.
37D: [River that separates North Korea and China] – YALU. I don’t think crosswords would be possible without foreign rivers.
59D:[Superman, at birth] – KAL-EL. The greatest super-hero. Period.
72D: [Giant chicken on “The Family Guy”] – ERNIE. I don’t think crosswords would be possible without giant chickens.
78D:[Culs-de-sac: abbr.] – CTS. I’m guessing courts?
96D:[Blackwater founder Prince] – ERIK. I don’t think crosswords would be possible without Blackwater founders.
Musical corner:
48A: [Johnny Cash’s “The Ballad of IRA Hayes”]
51D:[Soul great Redding] – OTIS
60D:[Jamie Foxx song “Can I TAKE U Home”]. A song title only a crossword constructor could love.

Canadian content:
124A:[2003 health crisis] – SARS. Nearly shut down Toronto. I got my H1N1 shot yesterday so I am invulnerable like Superman.
95D: [Former Aykroyd co-star] – RADNER. Dan Aykroyd is Canadian, not Gilda Radner.
100D:[“Wayne’s World” comeback] – AS IF. Mike Myers is Canadian. Hey, an excuse to play the Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody.

WSJ, 11/27/09

2009-11-27T03:08:00.007-06:00

WSJ 28:55 (Sam, paper)

Todd McClary's Wall Street Journal Crossword, "Unreal Estate"

McClary combines some well-known landmarks with some common business terms to unleash some groaners involving an unscrupulous hypothetical realtor. In this case, the solver finds the correct business term to complete each pun. Observe:

[The crooked realty agent tried to sell some sucker the Golden Gate by offering a...] BRIDGE LOAN. All you need is the first one to get the idea of how the theme will work. I like that.
[He tried to sell the National Mall, describing it as...] CAPITAL PROPERTY. This one hurt my ears a little. I have heard of capital assets and capital expenditures, but not "capital property." Granted, I'm a recovering tax attorney, so maybe this is a common enough term in other, considerably less hip-and-happening business circles. But "capital property" just seems repetitive and redundant.
[He tried to sell the Great Lakes, claiming they were...] LIQUID ASSETS. Badum-ching! (It's times like this when one could use a personal drummer to deliver the rimshot right after the answer.)
[He tried to sell Alcatraz, even drafting a contract with a...] LOCK-IN CLAUSE.
[He tried to sell the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade route, even arranging for...] BALLOON PAYMENTS. This was my favorite of the bunch, maybe because it comes fresh on the heels of the parade. I hear the Pillsbury Dough Boy was reintroduced to this year's parade. I would have been happier if the Geico gecko has gotten the call instead. Is a nearly all-white balloon that difficult to create?
[He tried to sell the Crystal Cathedral, fabricating a...] CLEAR TITLE. I figured this one out in due course, but I don't think I have ever heard of "a clear title" before. I always thought one simply has (or lacks) "clear title." So to me, replacing "fabricating a" in the clue with "claiming to have" would have been better.
[He tried selling the Brandenburg Gate, offering to take care of...] CLOSING COSTS. I was unaware of the Brandenburg Gate until I Googled it just now and realized that I had seen it before but never knew its name.
We get one more international property to conclude: [He tried to sell the Tower of Pisa, passing himself off as a...] LISTING AGENT. Hmm. If the theme answer contains "agent," then I suppose the first theme clue should have referred to a "realtor" instead of a "realty agent." But I didn't notice that until writing this entry, so I can't say this interfered with my enjoyment at all. Did you notice it while solving? If so, did it bother you?

I like that all of the domestic landmarks occupied the across slots while the two European landmarks were in the down slots. I'm not sure whether that was intentional or serendipitous, but either way it's cool.

Usually when solving the WSJ, I have to use the fill-in-the-blank clues to gain entry into the grid. This time, I got lucky at 1A, quickly deducing IKEA as the [Seller of Bjursta tables and Bertil chairs]. But then trouble soon followed, as the [Japanese writing form] KATAKANA was a stumper for me, and it took me way too long to realize EVA PERON was the woman [...given the title "Spiritual Leader of the Nation"]. I also got stuck trying to parse out WEBELOS as the [Badge-earning level after Bobcat, Tiger Cub, Wolf, and Bear] for Cub Scouts. (My brother was an Eagle Scout but I never got into it.) Despite these stalls, I managed to finish within my typical range of "3-4 Oranges" (three- to four-times as long as it takes Orange).

I liked several of the clues in this one: [Feeling discomfort in waves] for SEASICK; [Yao Ming teammate, to fans] for T-MAC (that's Tracy McGrady of the NBA's Houston Rockets, for those who aren't CAGERS [Court figures]); [Muppet singer of "Doin' the Pigeon"] for Ernie's old buddy, BERT; and [Regular setting?] for BARSTOOL. I also found the fill in this grid to be quite elegant and smooth. The triple-8s in the NW and SE corners were nice, and the stairstep progression of 4-letter across and down entries from the SW to the NE helped the mid-section fall relatively quickly. Some might quibble with dual ONS (ON AUTO and STARTS ON), but I didn't notice it until after I was done. So despite some misgivings about some of the theme entries and their clues, this puzzle was a welcome Friday diversion.

Friday, 11/27/09

2009-11-26T22:26:00.014-06:00

NYT (PG)
LAT (PG)
CS (Janie)
WSJ (Sam, separate post)
CHE 4:14 (joon, paper)
BEQ 5:33 (joon, across lite)

Hi, everybody! PuzzleGirl here continuing the Thanksgiving Weekend Potluck here at the Crossword Fiend. Amy is off somewhere without internet access which, seriously. I don't even like to talk about it. It must be what hell is like. Our electricity was out yesterday for about three hours and all I can say is Thank God For My iPhone. Not sure I would have survived without it.

Ed Sessa's New York Times crossword puzzle

So what do we have going on today? Well, this week's Friday themeless NYT is pretty fun. I finished it in a little over half an hour, but just knew there was something wrong up there in the NE corner. The doctor's name [DENTON] was somewhere waaaay back in my brain, but when it made it all the way up to the front of my brain it was spelled Dennon. Which made 11D look like it was going to be SNAP-something for [Fasten with a click], right? Perfectly reasonable! But then ... it didn't work. So I tried enable, because an E in that spot seemed okay even though it gave me an artist named Libpi, who is, unfortunately, equally as known to me as Fra Filippo LIPPI. So 11D went from SNAP ON to ENABLE to the finally correct STAPLE. What else did I have trouble with up there? IDA seemed like a good name for a county in Idaho and since there was nothing resembling ARISTOS at 8A [British V.I.P.'s, to Brits], the I seemed perfectly fine to me.

More trouble spots for me include the NW where I had DOGS instead of BOGS for [Things near Baskerville Hall]. Obviously, thinking "The Hound of the Baskervilles," right? And I can never remember how to spell [1950s-'60s NBC host] Jack PAAR's name. I've convinced myself that it's the more "normal" Parr, so I get it wrong every time. I have the same problem with Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal. I know how Shaquille O'Neal spells his name so every time I'm faced with Ryan or Tatum, I can never remember whether it's the same as Shaq or different. (The only reason I got it right this time is that I looked it up.)

I like all three of the long answers: A WING AND A PRAYER for [Hope born of desperation] is awesome. A LEG TO STAND ON for [Justifiable basis for one's position] is typically only referred to in the negative, right? As in "He doesn't have a leg to stand on." And TURKEY LEFTOVERS for [Post-Thanksgiving fare]? Let's just say I'm totally looking forward to those tomorrow!

Also enjoyed seeing LOW MAN as a figurative figure on a totem pole, and colloquial phrases like LET 'ER RIP ["O.K. ... go!"] are always welcome.

Dan Naddor's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword

Ya know, there have been times when I've thought to myself "This puzzle has an old-timey feel to it." Well, today is definitely one of those times. This one is chock full of puns on things from, well, centuries ago! Looks like Dan finally decided to go medieval on us!

17A: Medieval commuter between Dover and Calais? (CHANNEL SERF [surf]).

22A: Medieval castle owner's view? (BARON [barren] LANDSCAPE).

34A: Manages medieval real estate holdings? (MINDS ONE'S MANORS [manners]).

46A: Medieval lord's efforts? (FEUDAL [futile] ATTEMPTS).

53A: Weapons for medieval warriors? (KNIGHT [night] CLUBS).

Seems to me the LAT is continuing the trend of raising the difficulty level. There weren't a whole lot of across answers I could get with none of the crosses in place, and that's usually a good indication of difficulty level for me. Of course it might just be because of the five long theme answers and the funky, chopped-up grid, but whatever. It felt a little more difficult than we've seen the last couple months and that's a good thing.

Not a lot really jumped out at me on this one, but that's probably because I'm in a turkey coma and it's late. So I'll just mention a few things and then get my butt to bed.

I've never heard of Jack OAKIE [Jack of "The Great Dictator"] and am going to guess that's age-related.

KENYA is a [Country known for its distance runners]. Have any of you read the new book about the Indian tribe in Mexico that runs barefoot? I think it's called Born to Run. Ah yes, here it is. I haven't read it yet, but it looks pretty interesting. One of the main points the book makes is that the worst thing a runner can do is buy expensive, overly engineered running shoes. If you're interested in running, check it out.

I know how much people love to see rappers in the grid, and today we get two! NAS ["Thugz Mansion" rapper] and DIDDY [Bad Boy Records founder, as he's now known]. I will never — ne-Ever — understand why he wants to be known as DIDDY. Just doesn't make sense to me.

And, finally, I'll leave you with this musical interlude. Hope you enjoy it. [Cereal bit] = FLAKE.

Tyler Hinman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Internal Dialogue"—Janie's review

Taking the cruciverbal baton from Patrick, Tyler continues with another puzzle that has the puzzle's key concept word embedded in the theme phrases. Yesterday we had multiple opportunities to eat; today, as we learn at 37A., we have several ways to SPEAK [A synonym for it can be found inside this puzzle's four longest entries]. By way of an "internal" word for "dialogue," we can chat, talk, jaw or yak. And here's how it's done:

• 17A. PITCH A TENT [Set up camp]. I like the way chat spans the three words of the phrase.
• 23A. "MORTAL KOMBAT" [Violent video game franchise that debuted in 1992]. Wanna guess what I've never played?... This game is available, btw, through SEGA [Company that released the unsuccessful Saturn and Dreamcast consoles]. Gamers probably knew this, but it was news to me that not only is there a "Superman" video game, but there's also "'Mortal Kombat' vs. DC Universe" in which Superman is a featured player—which I mention because of the [Comics character with a secret identity]/CLARK KENT combo that's also in the puzzle. I do like the skillful way Tyler uses fill skewed to younger solvers within well-tried theme ideas. Same goes for:
• 46A. NINJA WARRIOR [Japanese TV import involving obstacle courses]. If you say so. It is for real (you can even watch full episodes on line), the base phrase is solid, of course, and at least I have heard of "The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
• 57A. "GO FLY A KITE!" ["Buzz off!"]. See 17A. for why this one also appeals.

Though it's not in infinitive form, as I read it, we also get a bonus with SEZ [Utters, informally], first person singular of say...

I was surprised to see SOWN clued as [Placed, as seeds]. When I think of something being "placed," I see it being done in an orderly way—and often seeds are "placed" very carefully in the ground or in containers. But when they're sown, they're scattered or strewn, no?

And I have to wonder if there's an "anger management" issue being hinted at as a sub-theme. After all, the grid presents us with TIRADE [Angry outburst] which crosses RIOT ACT [It's read to a misbehaving child] (please, oh please read the kid a fairy tale instead!). Additionally, there's [Gets in a lather] for RILES and [Battling] for AT IT. (I was actually relieved to see EAT AT clued not in connection with annoyance but quite directly as [Go to, as a restaurant].) What's the source of the anger? Sometimes we direct it at ourselves when we [Mess up], or ERR; sometimes it's directed at others, like the pitcher who [Messes up on the mound], or BALKS.

My suggestion? "Breathe in green; breathe out blue." Listen to music that soothes you, like maybe an OPERA [Diva's setting] or a single ARIA [Diva's highlight]; make like a tourist and visit a museum. MoMA, perhaps? Yes, it's an [N.Y.C. attraction...] but it's not only [...for aesthetes] (thinking here of the negative connotation of the word).

Oh—and thanks for (the) MEMORY/[Something's that's banked?]. Some days mine seems to be double-locked in a seriously subterranean vault.

Did you know CINC? It's clued as [Prez] and I needed to look this one up. It's an acronym not unlike POTUS (President of the United States). Except this time the letters stand for Commander in Chief. Oh—and on the topic of acronyms, I smiled to see FIAT [Italian carmaker that recently partnered with Chrysler]. Seems those letters have come to stand for Fix It Again, Tony...

Ed Sessa's Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle, "Natural Progression

happy day after thanksgiving, everyone. joon here with the lowdown on two more puzzles today. we get a double dose of ed sessa today, as he pairs his clever subtly-themed NYT with a nice CHE puzzle whose theme is a "natural progression" given by the puzzle's seven circled three-letter answers. it's a word latter from APE (14a, [Beginning of a natural progression]) to MAN (70a, [End of the natural progression]). the word ladder goes APE -> APT -> AFT -> OFT -> OAT -> MAT -> MAN, but the five words in the middle are all embedded in longer entries:

to [Change with the times] is ADAPT.

[Glider's booster] is an UPDRAFT.

a [Marshmallow], metaphorically, is a SOFTY. i like this word, but i think i'd normally spell it SOFTIE.

[Thick breakfast] is OATMEAL. this is the only one where the embedded word is etymologically related to the longer entry. i didn't really mind, though.

my favorite of the theme clues was [Stick in a book] for MATCH. great misdirection there! not only does it sound like a verb, but you don't normally think "matchbook" when you see "book."

to top it off, the two longest answers in the puzzle form a two-part companion to the theme: the [1859 publication concerning this puzzle's natural progression] is darwin's THE ORIGIN / OF SPECIES. that's 150 years ago; wikipedia tells me it was published on november 24, so this is an anniversary puzzle of sorts (or at least, the closest that the CHE could get given its once-a-week basis). very cool. what else was notable about this puzzle? the crazy plural MENISCI [Cartilaginous crescents] is not often seen; MENISCUS, of course, is common enough, although i associate that word with graduated cylinders and/or capillary rise rather than connective tissue. (i know it means both, but i've just finished teaching the unit on surface tension, so the latter meaning is on my mind.) speaking of irregular plurals, i wanted [Forearm bones] to be ULNAE, but it's ULNAS this time. the crossing letter is "Ambition should be made of STERNER" stuff from julius caesar; that's a good shakespeare quote. there were a few unfamiliar clues and answers. ["Gift from the Sea" author Lindbergh] is ANNE. [19th-century African-American congressman Joseph] is RAINEY; that's the sort of academic trivia i love about the CHE puzzles, but i had no clue on this one. it was all crosses. and the word that gave me the most trouble was CAUSERIE, an [Informal chat]. never heard of it, and i was waffling on C vs L for the first letter, where it crossed NFC, clued as [The Minn. Vikings belong there]. once i had the rest of the letters, though, C looked much more likely. Brendan Emmett Quigley's themeless blog crossword brendan goes asymmetric with this 64-word themeless, resulting in very smooth fill for such a low word count. i liked CALLED IT, ["As I predicted"], best, but overall the fill was more notable for lack of crap than for brendan's usual pizzazz. there were some pained inflections, of which my least favorite was REMELT, and a couple of abbreviations i didn't like (NAV for navy being the worst), but it's really quite clean for a grid this demanding. clue of the year nominee: [Pass the bar, perhaps] for TEETOTAL. loved it! i also liked how the miami HEAT, clued as [2006 NBA champs], are opposite in the grid from WADES, or [Gets cold feet?]. anybody who watched the 2006 NBA finals knows that dwyane WADE (we really need to get his crazy first name into more puzzles) carried the HEAT to the title that year with an insanely dominant postseason.

Rex Parker celebrates birthdays

2009-11-25T19:38:00.003-06:00

Happy 40th birthday to my friend Michael Sharp, the man known as Rex Parker! Tomorrow is his birthday as well as Thanksgiving. To celebrate, Andrea Carla Michaels and Doug Peterson made a crossword in Rex's honor. The "King of the Blog" puzzle is posted at the Fiend forum.

You know who else is celebrating a birthday this week? Rex's favorite crossword-solving actress, Christina Applegate. Michael created a crossword for Christina's birthday, spotlighting the foundation she started to fund MRI screening for young women at high risk for breast cancer. This puzzle is called "Star Turns," and it's available in Across Lite and PDF at the forum. You'll also want to read the Rex Parker blog post about the genesis of the puzzle. If you can spare a few bucks, please consider joining Michael and me in donating to the foundation, which I won't name here because it's a spoiler for the puzzle (both links in this paragraph are for pages that include a link to the foundation).

Have a happy Thanksgiving (unless you're Canadian or South African or whatnot), everyone!

Thursday, 11/26/09

2009-11-25T16:53:00.026-06:00

NYT - 6:01 (JK - paper)
LAT - oops, clock wasn't on
CS - untimed
Tausig - 11:27 (JK -paper)

Hi everyone. Jeffrey here. Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers. Happy New Year’s Eve to our syndicated readers. Happy Thursday to everyone else.
Happy Birthday to Rex Parker who is now older than me. Check out the previous post for more on this milestone, including two related puzzles and a great cause that needs your support.

Despite holidays, birthdays and Thursdays, like the mail in Seinfeld, the crosswords never stop, so the blogging must go on! Amy is nowhere to be found so Team Orange is on duty to replace Her Fiendness. I must be Turkey Prime, as I get to go first. However, as a Canadian, I'm afraid there'll be no more mention of Thanksgiving.

Paula Gamache's New York Times Crossword

The theme is 51A: [What 20-, 31- and 40-Across were each introduced as by 47-Down] PARADE BALLOONS in the 47D- MACY’S Thanksgiving Day parade. Hey! Darn.
20A: [Introduction of 1977] – KERMIT THE FROG
31A: [Introduction of 1927] – FELIX THE CAT
40A: [Introduction of 1963] – ELSIE THE COW

14A: [First step in a series] – A TO B. There is no Atob.
17A: [Rabanne who was the costume designer for “Barbarella”] – PACO. What a lucky break! Today at work, someone asked me who the costume designer for “Barbarella” was. What are the odds (that any part of that is true)?
25A: [Thoreau’s “On Fields OER Which the Reaper’s Hand Has Pass’d”]. Land of the free, we miss you.
36A: [Head of the Egyptian god Thoth] – IBIS. Every part of that sounds weird.
38A: [A slowpoke may be asked to pick it up] – PACE. Pick up PACE, PACO. Jane Fonda is waiting. Somewhere, a lonely “the” sits alone.
56A: [RAREE] show. Can you say RAREE without show? I’ll have my steakee raree, please.
1D: [Sound on “Batman”] – ZAP! Hard one. Could have been BAM!, POW! Or if this was a rebus, SPLAT!
2D: [Letter after Z] – ETA. Z is pronounced “zed” today.
11D: [Marie Osmond’s ADORA Belle dolls]. Awwww. Isn’t that cuutttte.
12D: [“CAROL of the Bells” (holiday favourite)]. Wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without it.
30D: [Frozen drink brand] – ICEE. Perfect with that steakee.
35D:[Loser of 1948] – DEWEY. Lost to Truman, right? More American stuff.

"Prime Time Practice" by Ben Tausig.
The theme is revealed at 56A/71A [People whose names begin the starred entries] - SCREEN MDS, or "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV". We have 4 TV doctors:

28A: [*Find the source of some corporate malfeasance, say] -PIERCE THE VEIL. Dr. Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) from M*A*S*H.
48A: [*Holy place] - HOUSE OF PRAYER . Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) from House.
62A: [*Mental material] - GREY MATTER - Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) from Grey's Anatomy.
17A/21A: [Long-running PBS concert series] - AUSTIN CITY LIMITS . Colonel Steve Austin (Lee Majors) from The Six Million Dollar Man. Never knew he was a doctor. Well, it could be Dr. Kate Austin (Christine Lahti) on Chicago Hope. A quick check with other members of Team Orange shows similar confusion.

Other stuff you might not know:

24A: [Text type] : SMS - Short Message Service, what you use for cellphone text messages.
27A: [Lee Myung-bak's country, for short] - ROK. Republic of Korea (South)
34A: [Plitvice Lakes National Park country] - CROATIA. Banff - Canada. Yosemite - USA. Plitvice Lakes - Croatia.
39A: [Time off, in mil. slang] - RNR - Rest "N" Relaxation. R&R is better.
51A: [MST 3K (cult show)] - Mystery Science Theater 3000
59A: [Lamas of "The Bachelor"] - SHAYNE. No idea. Related to Lorenzo Lamas? Yup, daughter.
66A: [Quadratic function subj.] - CALC. Calculus. joon, please explain the difference between integral and differential calculus.
68A: [Publisher whose second and third children were born 35 years apart] - HEF. Hugh Hefner.
7D: [Common occasion for leaving work early: Abbr.] - FRI. Memo to my staff: I'll need a bit more than "It's Friday. I'm leaving early."
10D: [Starting a tic-tac-toe game at one of the edges, say] - BAD MOVE. Edge being a non-corner and non-center square. It could work in Hollywood Squares. You fool! (Steve Austin reference in this link).
24D: [Tattoo, in a way] - SCARIFY. New word to me.
30D: [Celtics guard Rajon] - RONDO. Of the Boston Celtics.
31D: [Jamiroquai's "(Don't) Give HATE A Chance"] - Lots of unknown-to-me in this puzzle.
46D: [Pen name for "The Conning Tower" columnist] - F.P.A. Franklin Pierce Adams. PIERCE again. I should know this?
57D: [Grammy-winning blues musician Robert] - CRAY. Here with Eric Clapton.

Lila Cherry’s Los Angeles Times Crossword
The theme answers are all clued [Turkey] (the last with a “?”). Sigh.
17A: BIRD THAT GOBBLES.
27A: FRANK WAY TO TALK.
48A: THEATRICAL FLOP.
63A: FRIDAY’S SANDWICH. I think this is implying leftovers from Thursday feast.
3D: [Turkish currency] – LIRA
52A: [Lake surrounding Canada’s southernmost point] – ERIE. Trivia question – How many US states are at least partly north of Middle Island, Ontario? Answer – 27!
And in the downs, the World’s Most Eclectic Musical Set:
1D: [“Mamma Mia!” band] – ABBA.
26D: [‘60s song car with “three deuce and a four-speed and a 389”] - GTO
30D: [Greek New Age Keyboardist] – YANNI........oh, sorry, fell asleep for a minute.
32D: [Musical buzzer] – KAZOO.
54D: [Hendrix hairdo] – AFRO.
I leave you with 51D: [Slovenly] – FROWZY. Frowzy? Frowzy?

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Gobble, Gobble!"—Janie's review

Thanksgiving already—when Tom Turkey says "Gobble, gobble!" (translation: "Please have roast beef instead or maybe send out for some General TSO's chicken or, hey—maybe a nice BLT!!"), and so many of us will be with family or friends indulging ourselves as we enjoy (translation: "gobble down") our feasts (traditional or un-) and maybe even take a moment or three to think about what it is we're genuinely thankful for. For some, there'll be hours of watching football; for others, hours of prepping for the main event, since—as we're prompted at 71A.—the [Popular thing to do on Thanksgiving (and word that's hidden in 17-, 29-, 47- and 60-Across)] is EAT. And eat and eat and eat and eat as in:

• 17A. SURPRISE ATTACKS [Unexpected acts of hositility]. May our lives be from any more of these...
• 29A. DAVE ATTELL [Comic with the 2007 HBO special "Captain Miserable"]. Never heard of the guy—but then again, I don't subscribe to HBO, and to judge from these quotes, I may not want to. Then again, there's not a lot of stand-up that's funnier in print...
• 47A. SEA TURTLES [Crush and pals, in "Finding Nemo"]. Hmm. Never seen this either, but I have this sneaking suspicion it's more my speed...
• 60A. DEFENSE ATTORNEY [Johnnie Cochran, at the Simpson trial]. And may our lives be free from any need for one of these... I liked seeing this fill directly below ABA [Legal org.] and was thankful to see that the correct fill was not POET LAUREATE-related.

Some other highlights include:

• MAN/[Answer to the riddle of the Sphinx] (nice fresh clue here)
• MANIC [Frenzied] and MAD, clued as [Humor magazine since 1952]
• the side-by-side implement pair of PICK [Icebreaker] and RAKE [Tool for deciduous foliage]
• AMENITY/[Chocolate on a hotel pillow, e.g.] (I love the specificity of the clue)
• DRAPE/[Hang], and then farther down the row, EAVE/[Place for an icicle] (i.e., where an icicle might hang...)
• VENAL/[Easily bribed] (I've heard of venal sins [as in the seven deadly ones], and had seen the word in other contexts, but never knew its literal meaning, so I learned something new yet again. And the next word in my dictionary? Yesterday's vena cava...]
• STRAW/[Float accessory], so that would be this kind of float and not this kind of float... The latter, btw, was from the Rose Bowl Parade—not to be confused with ROSÉ [Wine choice]. You might enjoy that with your Thanksgiving dinner!

Hope it's a happy holiday for all!

Wednesday, 11/25/09

2009-11-24T21:58:00.006-06:00

BEQ 7:48
Onion 4:48
LAT 3:05
NYT 3:03
CS untimed

Allan Parrish's New York Times crossword

You know how it goes when you finish a puzzle without having any idea what unites the theme entries? Yeah, that was my story tonight. "Radial, dual, shower...pirate? No. Tire, exhaust—aha!—drain, flag. Synonyms!" The theme answers are all noun phrases that end with words that double as synonymous verbs:

• 17A. [Goodyear offering] is a RADIAL TIRE.
• 61A. [Blackbeard flew on] clues a PIRATE FLAG.
• 10D. [Feature of many muscle cars] is DUAL EXHAUST. Is it just me, or does the combo of RADIAL TIRE and DUAL EXHAUST bore you, too?
• 24D. The SHOWER DRAIN is [Where lost hair may accumulate]. Eww! Gross!

To purge that image, let us consider some other clues:

• 15A. Crosswordese alert! Old-school AMAH is an [Eastern domestic].
• 21A. The SUN is a [Weather map symbol] that does not get much use in the Midwest in November.
• 24A. SEMITE refers to an [Israeli or Palestinian] or, in fact, any Arab. Anti-Semitism is prejudice against Jews, not against Semites in general. I don't know why that is. See also 29D: ARAB, or [One with an "al-" in his name, often].
• 30A. [Pro- or con-] is a PREFIX. Were you thinking of debate sides?
• 54A. Mount EVEREST is the [Mountain previously named Peak XV]. Didn't know that.
• 13D. HOMEY is clued as [Warm and comfy], but the word always makes me think of Homey the Clown from In Living Color and his sock full of pennies. *Whap!*
• 25D. Maple TREE SAP is the [Syrup source]. Did you see the article in Tuesday's NYT about Chuck Schumer's goal of making New York State the world's leading producer of maple syrup? Hey, he may be a goofball, but I am in favor of anything that means more real maple syrup and maybe less of those maple-flavored corn syrup concoctions. (Edited to acknowledge that this answer, found in the center of the grid, is a fifth theme entry. Thanks, Alex!)
• 62D. ["M*A*S*H" extra]...uh-oh, is this going to be NURSE? Nope! It's a ROK, or Republic of Korea soldier.

Updated Wednesday morning

Donna S. Levin's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Swish!"—Janie's review

Late in April of '10 Broadway will welcome a revival of Promises, Promises a musicalization of the film The Apartment. Why do I bring this up? Because in the show, our hero learns that the object of his affection—a co-worker who is only politely aware of him—shares his affinity for basketball and he can barely contain himself when he makes this discovery. "She Likes Basketball" he sings with exuberance (and the "he" in the link is Jerry Orbach [father of constructor Tony] who garnered himself one of the show's two TONYS [Broadway honors] back in 1969).

Judging from today's puzzle theme, Donna likes basketball, too. Each of the four theme phrases contains a word that's part of the process of getting the ball from the players into the net. The base phrases are not related to the game, of course. That's the fun of it. What's nice, too, is that the point-making sequence is just right: dribble, pass, shoot and score. Regard:

• 20A. DRIBBLE GLASS [Classic gag gift]. Did you know this was invented by Søren Adam Sørensen a/k/a "Sam" Adams—who also gave us the joy buzzer? The words "laff riot" come to mind. Sorta...
• 28A. BOARDING PASS [Ticket to fly]. Not a literal ticket—although these days, with e-ticketing, I suppose it does double as a boarding pass sometimes. I tell ya, it's a new world out there.
• 43A. SHOOT THE MOON [Obtain the optimal result on a hand, in hearts]. That's the card game of hearts that Donna's referring to. This is the only example where the key word in the phrase is the same part of speech (a verb) as the basketball descriptor. And I can see where this was difficult to avoid. In BAMBOO SHOOT, for instance, shoot is a noun, but the phrase is one letter shy of its would-be puzzlemates, and unbalances the fill by having the basketball word at the end of the phrase. Far better is the solution we get in the puzzle with two phrases where it's the first word, two where it's the last. Such are the challenges that constructors are up against, however.
• 52A. EVEN THE SCORE [Get retribution].

I enjoyed solving this one not only for the theme fill, but because the cluing and non-theme fill made me think—and reflect. I recalled being in elementary school, in the library and having the school's librarian asking us third-graders if we knew what the oldest book in the world was. Because I knew only that it had been written in the century before the one we were living in and because I liked the high-spirited Jo March, I proffered Little Women... The patient librarian took all of our suggestions (I'm sure Aesop's Fables and Grimm's Fairy Tales were in there as well, though probably not anything by O'HENRY [Author known for his surprise endings]) and then let us down easy: THE BIBLE, which, it stands to reason is why it's also the [#1 best-selling book of all time].

How did you do with VENA CAVA [Cardiologist's concern]? I had to depend on the crosses to make this one happen and wasn't sure either whether [Tirana's country] was going to turn out to be ALBANIA (yes) or perhaps ALGERIA (not). I was familiar with the British "bangers and mash", so SAUSAGE for [Brit's banger] was not problematic.

If basketball isn't your thing, there's a lot in here for culture-vultures, too, including: author James AGEE, opera's SEVILLE-based barber, composer Gustav MAHLER, deco artist ERTÉ, choreographer AGNES de Mille. And have we seen John Paul STEVENS [Senior-most Justice of the Supreme Court] here at CS before? The Cruciverb database would say no. That was a nice change of pace.

Gareth Bain's Los Angeles Times crossword

(Post excerpted from my post at L.A. Crossword Confidential.)

I finished this puzzle with no idea what the theme was—I knew that 43D/EDSELS had something to do with it, but in Across Lite, long clues are truncated in the clue list and in teeny print above the puzzle so I hadn't read the complete clue: Named for a car model, group who sang the 1961 hit formed by the ends of 17-, 26-, 41- and 52-Across. Aha! The long Down answers, MACHINE GUN and ANGORA GOAT, are not involved in the theme. The puzzle seemed sort of weird, but when "RAMA LAMA DING DONG" popped out, I was delighted.

Theme answers:

• 17A: [360-degree artwork] (CYCLORAMA). This term is not at all familiar to me. The Wikipedia article is informative, and covers Bulgaria, the Netherlands, the U.S. Civil War, and...Disney's EPCOT Center.
• 26A: [Former resident of Lhasa's Potala Palace] (DALAI LAMA).
• 41A: [Wildly exciting, in slang] (RING-A-DING). This...is not the sort of slang I use.
• 52A: [Long-time Chinese leader] (MAO ZEDONG). The Mao Tse-tung spelling fits neither the space in the grid nor the theme's spelling requirements.
• 43D: [Named for a car model, group who sang the 1961 hit formed by the ends of 17-, 26-, 41- and 52-Across] (EDSELS).

OMOO meets OMAHA! How's that for (o)omph? For the grid's highlights, an EDSELS video, and a little Chaka Khan, click over to L.A. Crossword Confidential.

Brendan Quigley's Onion A.V. Club crossword

Did you get the theme right away? I didn't. "Are crowns, kimonos, and Trojans or princes, houses, and horses part of LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS?" I wondered. Eventually TROJAN and LIFESTYLES suggested condom brands, and I Googled crown kimono to see if the Google hits were condom-related. Indeed they were. I've never seen Crown or Kimono condoms. This is not your father's crossword theme, but it might include his old brand of condoms. The theme:

• 18A. CROWN PRINCE is the [Heir apparent].
• 30A. [1974 cult classic album by Sparks] is KIMONO MY HOUSE. Don't know the album or the artist.
• 35A/44A. The [original title of a Robin Leach series] is LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS.
• 57A. TROJAN HORSE is a [Destructive computer virus] as well as the ancient Greek ruse.

Answers and clues least likely to be seen in a daily newspaper's crossword:

• 1D. "I SUCK" is a [Perennial loser's comment].
• 49D. [Device that might work to your satisfaction] is a SEX TOY.
• 66A. [Certain hydroponic plant, slangily] is WEED.
• 54D. [One of Marlo's henchmen on "The Wire"] is named SNOOP.

Boring entries with more interesting clues than usual:

• 6D. EGO is clued with [Robbie Williams' "The ___ Has Landed"].
• 9D. INRI is clued as [Literally, "King of the Jews"] rather than the usual [Cross letters].

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Looks Good Enough To Eat"

The theme is a quip from Arnold SCHWARZENEGGER: "I LOVE THANKSGIVING / TURKEY. IT'S / THE ONLY / TIME IN LOS / ANGELES THAT YOU / SEE NATURAL BREASTS." That's not technically true—the amount of breast meat on a typical factory-farmed turkey sold in grocery stores is hardly a natural development.

This 17x17 puzzle took me as long as a typical 21x21 Sunday puzzle. Where did the challenge arise? (1) The quote isn't crossed by a bunch of answers with easy clues, it's crossed by BEQesque fill with BEQesque clues. (2) The quote's broken into chunks that don't parse as natural units of meaning. "Turkey it's"? "Time in Los"? (3) Pop culture clues for things I didn't always know—Jet lead singer NIC Cester, a Mad Men character, Blackalicious's debut album NIA?

Minus 5 points for including CURED in the grid when the terrific THE CURE is already there. An easy fix: changing 82D ESC to ESL crossing LURED. Here's the "Friday I'm In Love" video if you're in a Cure mood.

MGWCC #77

2009-11-24T11:00:00.002-06:00

crossword 8:47
puzzle 1:29

hi, everybody! this week marks the 77th episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest. this week's puzzle, "Middle of Somewhere," had a really cool theme. let's have a look:

[Whichever biothreat you happen to have handy?] is GERM OF ANY. this ... doesn't actually make grammatical sense, i think. it's definitely the weakest of the theme answers.
[Extinct bird whose habitat was the living room couch?] is the SOFA MOA.
[Dossier on comic Margaret?] is the CHO FILE.
[Craze where everyone stands on top of their houses?] is ROOF MANIA.

the gimmick here is that each of the four answers is the name of a country (germany, samoa, chile, or romania) with the word OF stuck into the middle. hence the title, "middle of somewhere." to find the contest answer, a familiar thanksgiving food, we take a look at the two-part central instructions: STUFF A NATIONAL / BIRD THE SAME WAY. despite my missteps (true confession: my first thought was, "is NOFENE the name of a thanksgiving food?"), the answer came to me reasonably quickly once i started going through birds and thanksgiving foods: TOFURKEY, of course, the tofu version of turkey that some vegetarians have for thanksgiving. i've never had it. one year some friends and i were going to get turducken, but ... we didn't. that's actually the saddest thanksgiving story i have. maybe i'll share it another time.

i looked somewhat askance at "national bird," because as much as ben franklin wanted otherwise, the turkey is not the national bird of this or any other nation. (it's only native to the USA and mexico, so the options are somewhat limited). but of course, the theme is OF in country names, and indeed TURKEY is both a nation and a bird. are there any other birds that are also countries?

odds and ends from the fill:

["Who is John"] GALT? the protagonist of ayn rand's atlas shrugged, that's who. or maybe fountainhead, but i think that's howard roark. i often confuse the two. (i've never read either.)
[Dominated, in internet lingo] is apparently OWND. i really, really, really wanted this to be PWNED.
ha! we've seen the clue [Word on Puerto Rico's state quarter] before, with the answer ISLA. this time he's recycled the clue but not the answer; it's good old e pluribus UNUM.
the ALF at 5d [Franklin crushed him] is ALF landon, erstwhile political opponent of franklin delano roosevelt.
fave fill: it's a tie between I CAN TELL ["Yeah, it shows"] and A-GAME [Peak performance].
fave clue: [It's not working] for TIME OFF, which is, indeed, not working.
several things i did not know: [Lady ___] is GAGA, a musician i've never heard of. [Golfer who hit the "shot heard 'round the world"] is gene SARAZEN, and i've never heard of him, either. (this has got to be a distant fourth on the list of "shots heard 'round the world," behind lexington & concord, bobby thompson, and bob beamon.) [Faddish fruit] is ACAI, or perhaps AÇAI. this sounds 10% familiar (i did guess correctly at the first A), but i don't really know what that's about either. and [Wonkette founder ___ Marie Cox] is ANA. who/what is (a) wonkette?

that's all from me. have a happy thanksgiving, everybody.

Tuesday, 11/24/09

2009-11-23T22:26:00.003-06:00

Jonesin' 4:42
NYT 3:20
LAT 2:56
CS untimed

Vic Fleming and Bonnie Gentry's New York Times crossword

The three multi-part theme entries in this 16x15 crossword made an especially cohesive set for this solver, as I'd recently read this Language Log post refuting the idea that phrases like "at the end of the day" were management-speak. (Turns out everyone else is using these phrases, too.) The theme entries were split up into two or three chunks apiece, with cross-referenced clues flailing all over the place. This provided a rather choppy solving experience rather than a nice Tuesdayesque flow.

The theme pieced together three phrases that mean [everything considered]. 19A and 64A spell out AT THE END / OF THE DAY. 34A, 43A, and 48A say WHEN ALL / IS SAID / AND DONE. And 4A's clue is [After "in", and with 44-Down, everything considered], which is a crazily stilted clue. THE FINAL / ANALYSIS really wants its introductory IN to appear with it in the grid.

The fill's got some sparkle to it, particularly in the longer answers:

• 1A. [Eucalyptus] is the GUM TREE, as in "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree..." Not to be confused with the sweetgum tree.
• 30A. ALAN BALL is the [Oscar-winning "American Beauty" writer] who went on to create the show Six Feet Under.
• 67A. Hey, look, it's ONASSIS, [The "O" of Jackie O.], rather than crosswordese ARI.
• 23D. A small [Traveling bag] is a VALISE. This word has always amused me. "Set down your valise, dear, and have a seat on the divan." Does anyone call it a VALISE these days?
• 47D. V.P.'S are [#2's, for short]. Can we start calling #2 pencils "V.P.'s"? Who's with me?

If you didn't know that 68D: [Soul: Fr.] is AME, make a note of it. This is Franco-crosswordese and while it doesn't come up often, you'll probably see it again. I needed all the crossings for 55A: LAIRD, [Melvin of the Nixon cabinet]. And I was briefly thrown by the 4-letter Roman numeral, 3D: [The year 1450], or MCDL. We don't often see 4-letter Roman numerals without an I, do we?

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Initial Reaction: letters, not words"

The five theme entries change the first word of (semi-)familiar phrases into the single letters whose names sound the same:

• 17A. [Valentine sentiment to the 80-89% crowd?] is "B, MY LOVE" instead of "be my love." Does B MY LOVE make sense to you? It's eluding me. Is it "B, be my love" or "B, (you are) my love"? Is B the letter grade or a person who earns that grade?
• 26A. [Thankful thought toward a universal blood type?] is "O, WHAT YOU DO TO ME" (swapping O for oh). Wouldn't you be thanking O for what she/he/it does for you rather than to you?
• 32A. [Cloud shaped like a small Roman numeral?] is I IN THE SKY (swapping an I for an eye—wait, has that theme been done, or maybe "an eye for an I"?).
• 41A. [Tagline of a rap-oriented cologne slogan?] is "G, YOU SMELL GREAT." Urban Dictionary helps explain "G" if you don't grasp that part. I was hoping for an evocation of Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo from the '70s-'80s.
• 53A. [Hassle at the local community gym?] is a Y BOTHER ("Why bother?"). My favorite among the quintet of theme entries.

The biggest "WTF" clue was right up top at 1A: [Numerical classification of some World War II U-boats]. As luck would have it, 1A intersected the second biggest "WTF" clue, 5D: [Surname of four generations of French painters in the Louvre]. Did not know of the TYPE VII boats, nor the VERNET artistic dynasty. I could see 39D: VALJEAN/["Les Miserables" surname] meeting 52A: ABUJA/[Current capital of Nigeria] mucking things up for some folks. Did anyone else want 43D: [North Africans disputed in a "Seinfeld" Trivial Pursuit question] to be the MOOPS rather than the MOORS?

Updated Tuesday morning

Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "On the Up and Up"—Janie's review

Synonyms for something or someone "on the up and up," include legit, honest, sincere. Today's puzzle easily qualifies—and is a great deal of fun as well. The word "UP" can be found embedded twice in each of Randy's theme phrases. There are five of them—and in the first two and the last two, there's an overlap factor of eight letters, which I do consider a BIG DEAL [Something worth making a fuss over]. The "UP"-camouflaging phrases are:

• 17A. PU-PU PLATTER [Appetizer assortment at a Chinese restaurant]. A tasty start to the proceedings—and also a little deceptive. Because of the phrase's initial "P," I first thought that all of the UPs were going to be reversed (cryptic-style, as if going ↑). This particular phrase supports that theory. But it didn't take me long to see that my hunch was wrong, wrong, wrong...
• 20A. SUPPORT GROUP [Alcoholics Anonymous, e.g.]. See what I mean? In this example and all the remaining ones, the UPs are not only separated out, but are clearly meant to be read from left to right.
• 35A. CUP OF SOUP [Lipton offering]. Or at 38%, more like Cup of Sodium...
• 55A. "SUPER TROUPER" [ABBA hit album and single of 1980]. Omg. That's almost 30 years ago! Um. Time flies when you're having fun? Even longer ago,
• 59A. "STUPID CUPID" [Connie Francis hit remade by Mandy Moore]. Here's Connie's version, 1959...

There was more in the puzzle that AMUSED [Entertained] me as well, and fave clue/fill pairs include:

• [They're set and broken]/RECORDS;
• [West of Nashville]/DOTTIE—so that's the country singer and not the direction. Now there's someone who made a lot of records (of the vinyl variety, that is);
• [Standing]/REPUTE (the noun and not the progressive tense verb form is what's required here);
• [Beat to the tape]/OUTRAN (because that gives me a good mental image)
• [Back for front?/IER → frontIER (as in "the wild West" [the region of the country and not Dottie...]); and
• [Great service]/ACE (tennis, anyone?). John McEnroe and [McEnroe rival] Bjorn BORG are both known to have put away their share of aces.

Also loved seeing the word NASCENT [Just starting to develop], which has great aesthetic appeal for me. EEL POT [Conger catcher]? Not so much. HONORER [The president at a medal ceremony, e.g.]? Not at all. Though I rather enjoyed UNFUNNY [Bad adjective for a comedian], because I'm still surprised to hear talk show hosts introduce "a very funny comedian." Who brings a comedian on national television and introduces him or her any other way? But one of these days......

Gary Whitehead's Los Angeles Times crossword

Spelling! Today's theme centers on a trio of homophones with different spellings that so often get mixed up by people. The homophones appear with introductory words that help clarify which is which, and this puzzle should be required reading for anyone who's had trouble with these words:

• 20A. REFINED PALATE is [Sophisticated taste, foodwise]. The palate that's the roof of your mouth is spelled this way. The word is from the Latin palatum.
• 36A. [Studio item with a thumb hole] is a PAINTER'S PALETTE in an artist's studio, not a film or TV studio as I'd first thought when I read the clue. The word's origin is French: a diminutive of the word pale, meaning "shovel."
• 47A. That rough wooden [Portable shipping platform] is a FREIGHT PALLET, also called a skid. The etymology partners up with that of PALETTE: "Middle English palet, tongue depressor, from Old French palete, small potter's shovel."

Just before doing this crossword, I'd just tweeted about another common spelling mix-up:

My favorite clue is the one for HARE: 49D: [Cocksure Aesopian racer]. Don't see "Aesopian" too often.

Highlights in the fill: 37D: EARL GREY, the [Tea named for William IV's prime minister], and 9D: TEXAS TEA, or [Oil, informally]. The "tea" in the EARLY GREY clue should've been changed to "brew" to avoid the duplication. Also terrific: DEAN'S LIST, or 35D: [Academic honor].

Monday, 11/23/09

2009-11-22T20:32:00.004-06:00

NYT 3:41
BEQ 3:34
LAT 2:50
Payne's Squeezeboxes #1, harder version untimed (easier option with enumerations also available)
CS untimed

If you use the NYT's applet, as I do, you rarely have difficulty loading the puzzle at the promised time. Somewhat more frequently, however, the NYT's link to the Across Lite version gets shanghaied at puzzle time. When the puzzle's not where you expect it to be, visit Jim Horne's Across Lite Links to Recent NYT Puzzles page. At the bottom of the page, there's a perpetual link to the latest second Sunday puzzle in PDF (not Across Lite) form—as those links go haywire sometimes too.

Ben Pall's New York Times crossword

Today's constructor is 14 years old, I hear. What sort of crosswords could you make when you were 14? If your name isn't, say, Will Shortz, Henry Hook, or Merl Reagle, probably the answer's "Well, nothing like this one." The BEATLES are celebrated via the four lads' first names being circled in non-Beatles-related phrases and assorted Beatles-related short fill scattered throughout the grid.

The four lads are here:

• In 18A, PAUL McCartney is in the circled letters in POLE VAULTER, or [Athlete trying to pass the bar?].
• GEORGE Harrison dwells in 59A, AGENT ORANGE, the [Toxic herbicide]. Yay, Orange! Boo, toxic herbicide! Sorry you're in there, George.
• To JOIN THE NAVY is to [Head out to sea, say], and 3D is where JOHN Lennon is hiding.
• RINGO Starr is found in 26D, READING ROOM, or [Library area].

It would be cool if the phrases the Beatles were embedded within had something to do with the band, but alas, they do not. The stray Beatles bits include the following:

• At 9A/46A, ABBEY / ROAD is infelicitously clued thus: [With 46-Down, 1969 album by the 38-Across].
• 14A: [Yoko ___] ONO.
• 16A. ["We're more popular than Jesus now," famously] is a QUOTE.
• 30A. MAN completes ["Nowhere ___" (1966 hit)].
• 47A. RAVI, [Sitarist Shankar], father of Norah Jones, is the Indian musician who turned George Harrison on to the sitar.
• 48A. TRY fills in the blank in ["Gonna ___ with a little help from my friends"].
• 13D. YER ["___ Blues" (song on the White Album)].

From the non-Beatles fill, five clues:

• 55A. An EARPLUG is a [Silencer?]. Generally, earplugs will knock off about 30 decibels, which is not quite silencing.
• 10D. [Like eyes seemingly about to pop out] clues BULGING. I will not link to the video of that woman who can pop her eyeballs out of the sockets at will. (You're welcome.)
• 24D. [Commoner, for short] is PLEB, short for plebeian. Is this Monday-grade fill?
• 68A. A SNORT is a [Sound akin to "Harrumph!"].
• 67A. Looks like LORES in the grid, but it's LO-RES, short for low-resolution. [Like a fuzzy computer image, informally].

Nice debut, Ben. Can you do me a favor, Ben, and try to get some girls your age interested in constructing crosswords? We keep having bright young men entering the field of crossword construction, and it would be great to get some young women involved, too. Mentors are standing by!

Trip Payne's Squeezeboxes #1

If you haven't poked around Triple Play Puzzles yet, go have a look. If you have Thanksgiving travel or down-time ahead and you'd like some puzzles to occupy you, you'll find a trove of goodies at Trip's site. All the puzzles are Trip's own work, and they include regular crosswords (including jumbo themelesses, my favorite), cryptics, variety crosswords, variety cryptics, and more.

If you've seen Frank Longo's "One, Two, Three" puzzles in the Games publications, you get the basic concept of a Squeezeboxes puzzle—except instead of putting 1, 2, or 3 letters in each box, Trip has squeezed in 2 to 6 letters. Most of this crossword tumbled for me, except the zone around 25D (an [Actress on Silver Spoons]? Help! Uncle!), 15D, 24A, and 29A. I finally caved and Googled 25D, and the others fell into place soon after. 29A vexed me because the first part was not either of the two words that came to my mind, and I was blanking on what else could go there. The 24A clue, [Green coin?], completely stymied me for so long.

Trip, what was the construction process like for this puzzle? Just a lot of trial and error, noodling around in the grid? Where does one start to build a puzzle like this?

Updated later Sunday night:

Joan Buell's Los Angeles Times crossword

Easy puzzle, as expected on a Monday. Now, you probably think the NYT crossword was just as easy as this one, and you're probably right. I have no idea where all that extra time went when I was doing the NYT. Even though I had an errant body part in the LAT puzzle, I still got out in less than 3 minutes, so...

The theme is wearable items whose names begin with various lower-extremity terms. ANKLE BOOTS are clued as [Beatles footwear]—that went in the grid early and made me wonder if today is some significant date in Beatles history, for two puzzles to be devoted to them in a single day. But no, the other theme entries included HIP-HUGGERS, or [Pants with a low waistline] (mind you, in recent years, low-rise pants are everywhere but no longer called hip-huggers as far as I know); LEGWARMERS, or [Stockinglike workout wear], which seems off as a description of legwarmers but I'm not sure how else I'd clue 'em; and SHIN GUARDS, or a [Goalie's protective pair]. My misfire was putting KNEE GUARDS there. Hmm? Yes, I know. It's crazy. SHIN GUARDS are utterly Monday-obvious here, and yet I was expecting something KNEE and went with it.

Favorite entries:

• HANGMAN is a [Word game involving a stick figure]. You know who would be a tough Hangman opponent? A lexicographer, that's who.
• The [Spanish wine punch] is SANGRIA. Who doesn't welcome teeny diced-up fruit bits in their booze?
• DIII is [503, in old Rome]. My kid has been grooving on Scholastic 2010 Almanac For Kids this week (the Scholastic book fair was on Wednesday), and he was quizzing me on the Roman numerals over dinner. Also quizzing his parents on state capitals. Mind you, we were at a restaurant. He read from the book during the walk there, too.

Updated Monday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Art House"—Janie's review

20A. PABLO PICASSO ["Three Musicians" artist]. From Wikipedia: "Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs."

So it's no exaggeration when the two-part quip Martin builds his puzzle on has the master himself boasting:

• 36A. GIVE ME A MUSEUM
• 53A. AND I'LL FILL IT.

(A slacker he wasn't.)

Corollary: Give a constructor a grid and s/he'll fill it! Martin's done so in a lively way, too, with colloquial phrases like ACES IT for [Gets 100% on an exam] and "NOT ON A BET!" for ["Forget it!"]. There's also the Jack Benny-conjuring ["Now cut that out!"] for "STOP IT!" (If you use the link to this clip of Jack with Johnny Carson from 1955, you can hear him say it.)

He also gives us a couple of mini-themes. First there's the nautical one, as the puzzle begins at 1A. with [Captain of the Pequod] AHAB, followed shortly by "AHOY!" [Sailor's cry]—and "sailorman" [Popeye's favorite food] SPINACH. (GARP may have been the [Robin Williams title role of 1982] but Popeye was his title role of 1980.) [Dinghy or dory] clues BOAT, and finally there's RINGO STARR in response to ["Yellow Submarine" singer].

Then, there's the apparent tale of an AMOUR [Love affair] that's gone south, complete with a JILTER ["Dear John" letter writer], the ADIEUS [Parting words] and THE EX [Former spouse, informally] because there's more than one marriage that's also been a serious "love affair." Where affairs of the heart are concerned, do read up on Picasso.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "All Caps"

The [Buffoon in modern-day slang], ASSHAT, is hidden in five places covering 10 Across answers—the ASS part is in the five longest Across answers and the HAT appears right below ASS. Now, if you're wearing your ass as a hat because your head's so far up it, shouldn't it be a HEAD that the ASS is on rather than HAT? Just a thought.

The OBI is clued as a [Martial arts sash]. Good gravy, if obis are worn in martial arts (e.g., the black belt), why is this the first time (or close to it) that I've seen martial arts mentioned in an OBI clue? I vote that OBI should get a martial arts clue more often.

GRAPHS are clued as [Calculus homework]. Is that why I got a C in calculus? Because I don't remember there being any graphs? Maybe graphs would have gotten me an A.

OAT is a [Bagel ingredient]? Not usually, I don't think.

Excellent clue for PHAT: ["Cool," to those who think they're cool using rap slang].

No idea what ISOS might be short for. Anyone up on their [Instant replay cameras, for short]?

Sunday, 11/22/09

2009-11-21T19:02:00.005-06:00

Reagle 7:47
BG 7:38
NYT 7:17
LAT 6:55
CS 4:27

If you haven't done Caleb Madison's Bard Bulletin crossword in Across Lite (posted at the Crossword Fiend forum), now you can also solve it online at the Bard High School Early College's student paper site.

Patrick Merrell's New York Times crossword, "Career Day Speaker Schedule"

Did you know that Patrick Merrell has two blogs? At Pat Tricks, where he writes on an occasional basis, his latest post features a cartoon in honor of Will Shortz's 16th anniversary as the New York Times crossword editor. (Congrats, Will! And no, we're not giving you a convertible for your sweet sixteen.) Pat writes more regularly at the NYT's Wordplay blog, where he alternates weeks with Jim Horne now. Hey, look! Patrick blogs his own puzzle today. He mentions that many of his past puzzles have been one-of-a-kind innovations, but that this one is more ordinary. Indeed it is. The theme didn't especially grab me, but there were some shining stars in the fill and clues.

First, the theme. The clues are playful redefinitions of various job titles. For example, a DRIVING INSTRUCTOR might be thought to be a good label for 38A: Career Day Speaker [#3: Golf pro?]. At 70A, the FILE CLERK is billed as a [#5: Manicurist?] on the Career Day schedule. 111A: [#8 Disc jockey?] is billed as a RECORD KEEPER. Who was responsible for all these misconstrued job titles? You might say that the 119A: [Career of the parent who typed up the Career Day schedule?] is a NOVEL WRITER, in that...he or she writes things in a novel manner? That doesn't feel quite as apt as I'd like a theme's capstone to be.

Here are the highlights in the clues and non-theme answers:

• 19A. [Literary work in which Paris is featured] is the ILIAD. Paris, the Trojan, not Paris, the city in France.
• 57A. [Suffix with pant or aunt] clues -IES. So help me, I laughed at this one. A good friend of mine and her sisters just became aunties for the first time this week when their little sister had a baby. (Rowan, a baby girl. As in Rowan Atkinson?)
• 68A. IRAN is the [First landfall north of Oman]. If you have a good sense of what the first landfalls are in various directions from various countries, try this Sporcle quiz.
• 90A. An author's PEN NAME is one sort of [Literary creation].
• 118A. BROWBEATS means [Bullies]. Is the bully beating you with her brow or beating your brow?
• 126A. A [Bay, for one] is a type of INLET. My son's been toiling all day, drawing pictures of geographical terms including bay and inlet (and dune, isthmus, glacier, coastal plain, marsh...38 terms in all). His picture dictionary is due Monday and it will damn near kill the entire household to get it finished by Sunday night. But it's a cool project, and one he's had three weeks to work on. Hmm, fondness for procrastination? I'm sure I couldn't tell you where he gets that from.
• 17D. GRUELS are [Meager bowlfuls]. Even a giant bowlful is meager, no?
• 30D. Fresh clue for EDSEL: [It debuted on "E Day"].
• 55D. ERST is boring crossword fill in English (archaic word, portion of "erstwhile), but if you know German, it's a common word: [First, in Frankfurt].
• 99D. ACTI, ACTII, ACTIII, ACTIV, and ACTV are entries that don't thrill me. ACT FIVE, however, seems cooler. Why is that? It's [When Juliet says "O happy dagger!"].
• 123D. The EAR is a [Human body part with vestigial muscles]. Holy anatomy, Batman! Can this be true? Wikipedia clarifies: They're the muscles that some people can use to wiggle their ears. I am a non-wiggler, but my son can do it.
• 124D. [Hosp. V.I.P.'s] clues R.N.'S. Yay! If hospitals didn't have nurses on staff, the patients would not do too well at all. This clue is a lovely nod to the nursing profession's importance.

Entries that aren't highlights, but that may be found at a fabric store: CIRE is a 29D: [Glazed fabric] and NACRES are 67A: [Button materials]. The latter is solid old crosswordese, but CIRE is markedly less familiar to me.

While the theme didn't wow me, I'm delighted by Patrick's return to the NYT puzzle page. His creativity and humor have led to many memorable puzzles over the years, and I look forward to seeing more of his twists on the conventions of crossword puzzles.

Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "Mr. H and Mr. L"

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed. The same day, two famous writers also died: Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis. They are the Mr. H and Mr. L mentioned in the theme clues. I figured out who they were via two of the answers, but for the remaining theme entries I leaned heavily on the crossings. I'm surprised the puzzle didn't take me longer because of that—I suspect Merl made a point of keeping the clues for the themers' crossings as gettable as he could. Hang on a second—does every single Down answer cross at least one theme answer? I think so, and I think Merrell's NYT puzzle is the same. I swear I never noticed that many Sunday puzzles with all-Across themes are like that, too. Moving on, here's the Huxley/Lewis trivia theme:

• 20A. THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS is a ["Devilish" work by Mr. L]. Don't know it.
• 39A. BRAVE NEW WORLD, which I read in high-school English, is the [Classic work by Mr. H]. This was the only Mr. H clue that told me H = Huxley.
• 43A. [Space novel by Mr. L] is PERELANDRA. This is only very faintly familiar.
• 48A. [Mr. H co-wrote a few, including "Jane Eyre"] clues FILM SCRIPTS. Who knew?
• 65A. This one was my only L = Lewis clue. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA is a [Seven-book series by Mr. L].
• 80A. SHADOWLANDS is a [Film starring Anthony Hopkins as Mr. L]. Really? Didn't know that. Haven't seen the movie.
• 89A. SGT. PEPPER'S is the [Classic album featuring Mr. H on its cover (and lots of other folks, too)].
• 92A. HEAVEN AND HELL is a [Philosophical work by Mr. H]. Don't know this one, either.
• 107A. The rationale for the theme is explained here. [Interesting factoid about Mr. H and Mr. L] is that BOTH DIED ON NOV. 22, 1963.

That last answer is insane, isn't it? With six numerals? They're numerals in the intersecting Down answers, too:

• 106D. [Rockets deployed in Germany's second wave of missile attacks in WWII] are V-2'S. I would not have guessed the 2 if not for the November 22 date that appears with the puzzle's title.
• 78D. GREASE 2 is the [1982 sequel to a high school musical]. Whatever happened to Maxwell Caulfield?
• 86D. APRIL 1ST is the [Fool's day].
• 111D. The [Three-digit number denoting a charge call (as for puzzle answers] is 900. Except that the zeroes are letter Os in 117A and 121A, so in Across Lite, 9OO works.
• 112D. [Time that's exactly halfway between midnight and noon] is 6 A.M.
• 113D. [Elementary school basics] are the 3 R'S.

Favorite clue: [They tell you how to fix things] for RECIPES. I'm planning to make pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Want the recipe? Follow the one on a bottle of Karo dark corn syrup, only use at least double the amount of pecans so you have pecans throughout the pie rather than floating atop goo. I haven't decided if I want to make a butter crust from scratch or buy frozen crust.

Weirdest answer: 29D is LARIATED, clued as [Lassoed]. Is lariat a verb, or just a noun? The Dictionary of American Regional English, or DARE, says it's also a verb.

I do prefer it when Merl's themes have a lot of humor built in, which this one does not. Next week's probably will, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it—the pies and I will be out of town, and an all-star team of guest bloggers will hold down the fort here.

Updated later Saturday night:

Ken Bessette's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Literal Translations"

Ooh, I loved this theme! It was heaps o' fun for my inner anagrammer. Each theme clue is an anagram of a word in its corresponding answer, and the answer explains how the anagramming was accomplished. At the same time, each theme answer is a familiar phrase. To wit:

• 23A. [TOG?] is GOT TURNED AROUND.
• 38A. [GLIBNESS?] is MIXED BLESSING. This entry reminds me of a 4/8/07 NYT puzzle by Byron Walden in which the entry BLESSING IN DISGUISE was linked to both GLIBNESS and B SINGLES.
• 51A. [FELT?] clues LEFT IN DISARRAY. LEFT could also be used to clue FELT CONFUSED.
• 66A. [GOES?] is ALTER EGOS. This one's a bit weaker because the word EGOS is alterED. With a different letter count, ALTERED STATE could be paired with TASTE.
• 69A. [RAGE?] is a GEAR SHIFT of a sort.
• 89A. An OUT-OF-ORDER SIGN is [SING?].
• 97A. [EARTH?] clues CHANGE OF HEART.
• 118A. [STOP?] evokes the POST-REFORMATION era.

Fun, isn't it? My favorite fill:

• 28A. An ARGONAUT is [One of Jason's men].
• 55A. "TAXMAN" is a [Song on the Beatles' "Revolver" album].
• 104A. The INNER EAR is a [Canal locale].
• 110A. "IS THAT SO?" sounds like a challenge, as does ["Says who?"].
• 2D. Hey! Not the usual ORONO clue. [Maine town named for a Penobscot chief].
• 16D. I misinterpreted [Curling gadget] as referring to the sport of curling and figured IRON was just a term I didn't know. Whoops. Curling IRON, used to curl hair.
• 91D. Leonardo DI CAPRIO is the ["Catch Me If You Can" star]. I meant to see that movie.

46D's clue is [Riding for ___: acting overconfidently], for A FALL. I feel as though "heading for a fall" is the more familiar phrase, but "ride for a fall"/"be riding for a fall" has more solid dictionary support.

Less desirable are 68D: REASCENT, or [Second time to the top], and 14D: REDRILL, or [Put through one's paces again]. (RESELL is A-OK, though.) Is it just me, or does New York have more than its share of 5-letter towns with 3 vowels? 73D: TIOGA is a [New York town on the Susquehanna], and then there's UTICA and...maybe there are just the two.

Who is this 114D: [Disney duck princess] named OONA? This cavewoman duck princess (yes, that's right: a cavewoman duck) is possibly not known to more than a teeny fraction of Americans: Wikipedia says "The adventures of Princess Oona have appeared in Disney publications in many countries including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Brazil, and Russia." Had you ever heard of Princess Oona?

Updated Sunday morning:

Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"

This is a terrific themeless crossword. Zesty fill, fun clues, minimal junk. Let's take a stroll through the grid.

Multi-word phrases:

• 1A is IN A FLASH, or [Pronto].
• 18A. There's also the BAD END [A villain might come to...].
• I like to say AS IT WERE (61A: [So to speak])
• 14D is AND SO ON, or [Et cetera].
• 34D, the [Words said with an exasperated flourish], clues "UP TO HERE." This one feels like an 8-letter partial, though, doesn't it? Does anyone say it in isolation, along the lines of a Honeymooners "Straight to the moon!"?

The freshest fill includes:

• The LETTER C—22A: [Embroidery on a Cubs cap, e.g.]. Go, Cubs! (Poor, woebegone Cubs.)
• 33A is [Quarterback Daunte] CULPEPPER of the Detroit Lions. (Poor, woebegone Lions.)
• 7D: SHAG CARPETS are [Lush, plush furnishings], which is not to say furniture.
• I like the zippy TABLE-HOPS at 9D, or [Makes the rounds at a restaurant].
• 10D is OVALTINE, the [Malt drink pitched by Joe Namath], and yes, I was thinking malt liquor. 'Tis the season to watch A Christmas Story and see the kid disgusted by the naked mercenariness of the Ovaltine people.
• 24D: JASPER JOHNS, the ["Numbers" abstract expressionist artist], works two Js in to the grid.
• 31D. I'm fond of PLEONASMS, which means [Redundancies], because it's a spoonerism of neoplasm. "Tuna fish" and "safe haven" are neoplasms—is there a tuna that's not a fish, or an unsafe haven?

Hottest clues:

• 59A. A [Termite's terminus?] might be the ANTEATER that scarfs it up.
• 5D. Good clue for LEERED: [Didn't make proper eye contact] but was instead most improper.
• 9A. TOYOTA is the [Tundra producer].
• 31A. [The time there might be five to ten] clues prison. Not "five minutes to 10," but "five to 10 years."
• 28D. [An addled brain might be likened to one] clues SIEVE.

Answer for which I needed all the crossings: 23D: [Producer of early multi-track recorders] is TEAC. I've seen the brand name before, but the clue wasn't summoning up that answer in my SIEVE of a mind.

Cute shout-out: 51A is MARTHA ["___ My Dear" (Beatles song)]. Three guesses what Tony's wife is named.

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe crossword, "Animal Quackery"

The theme is rough puns on health-care specialties with animal names affixed at the beginning. For example, RODENTISTRY is clued as a [Branch of medicine for gnawers?] (rodent + dentistry). BOAFEEDBACK is [Self-help for snakes?] (boa + biofeedback). SOCKEYEATRY is a [Fishy shrink's practice?] (sockeye salmon + psychiatry]. The puns are a mixed bag of added consonants, changed consonants, vowel changes, added syllables, etc. I wasn't crazy about this theme—pun themes straddle the fine line between "ha ha" and "uh-uh."

Favorite word in the grid: 89D: BOLLIX, or [Completely bungled]. OONA is here, but clued as [Mrs. Chaplin] rather than the cavewoman duck very few of us know.

I suspect the grid got changed along the way but an old clue remained in error. At 58A, the answer is STOOP, but the clue is [Dive like a hawk]. Now, that sounds exactly like a clue for SWOOP. But with those theme entries above and below, the W would've been O*W*P, which doesn't look feasible at all. Hmm. Is there a swooping-like-a-hawk usage of STOOP that I'm not aware of?

Saturday, 11/21/09

2009-11-20T21:55:00.003-06:00

NYT 9:07
Newsday 7:45
LAT 4:22
CS untimed

Gary Whitehead's New York Times crossword

I didn't get quite enough sleep the last couple nights, and then there was some beer, and then my eyelids kept closing while I was doing this puzzle. My solving time says "ZOMG! Harder than Klahn!" but that's not a reliable measure tonight.

By the numbers: This is a 64-worder, and fortunately low on the roll-your-own-words scale. (UNITER would feel less roll-your-own if clued with reference to "I'm a uniter, not a divider," but that'd be too easy for Saturday.) It's got 32 black squares, well within the limits. The stair-step stacks at the top and bottom bleed into wide-open spaces, which is something you're less likely to see when the stack contains all 15s rather than the 11/13/15 stacks here.

Worst misstep: Crosswords have taught me that sheep say BAA and goats say MAA, So why on earth is BAAS the answer to 25A: [Kids' greetings]? Sure, MEER makes no sense for 25D: [It has a head], but by the time I had letters 2, 3, and 4, I was no longer looking at the clue. BEER! I blame beer. That was the one square I needed to change after clicking "done" the first time.

Least familiar answer: 11D: [Horticultural practice] is SEEDAGE.

A selection of clues/answers:

• 12D. Lovely "SAVE THE PLANET" is a [Green line].
• 14A. The pretty JAPANESE LANTERN is a [Party lighting option].
• 22A. [Company dinner] clues MESS. "Company" as in "the troops of C Company."
• 24A. Sports trivia clue that went on and on and was no help to me: [World Match Play Championship champ a record seven times] is golfer Ernie ELS. I thought TAL of chess or ALI of boxing first, but let the crossings lead the way.
• 29A. [Lineup at some entrances] consists of {turn)STILES. Aw, my fellow Carleton grad T.J. STILES won the National Book Award for his biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt this week. I don't know if T.J. does crosswords, but it'd be cool to see the noun turned into a surname in the puzzle sometime.
• 41A. Who knew SELMA was an [Alabama University] and not just an Alabama town? Not I.
• 45A. Favorite entry: MAKE A MENTAL NOTE, or [Store something for later thought].
• 48A. [One of many American houses] isn't architectural, it's a STATE SENATE.
• 3D. Very Olaf-ish clue. "Olaf" is Crosscan's coinage for clues that provide lots of specific information that really don't help you get the answer if the first couple words don't get you there. Case in point: [Egyptian king credited with founding the First Dynasty]. MENES! Who? 24A was rather Olaf-ish, too.
• 8D. Shakespeare fill-in-the-blank: ["...in thy possession lies ___ unparall'd": Shak.] clues A LASS.
• 10D. Ooh, long French word. [Hear, to Henri] is ENTENDRE. Not sure why I had ATTENDRE at first.
• 13D. [Alabama and others] is a wonderfully misleading clue for TRIBES. It's also a state, a country-rock band, and a university.
• 14D. JUICE is a [Press release?] if the press is a juice-press.
• 29D. Love the word SMARM, which is clued as [Oiliness].
• 33D. WALPOLE is fun to say. [Britain's first prime minister] is markedly less well-known to Americans than the P.M.'s of the 20th and 21st centuries.
• 43D. ["Abyssinia"] sounds like "I'll be seein' ya," or TA TA. Whoa.
• 44D. Yay, old familiar crosswordese! TARN is a [Mountain lake], and it's one of the crosswordese words I'm fond of.

Good night, folks!

Updated Saturday morning:

Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "A Ride at Last"—Janie's review

In yesterday's "Opposite Beginnings" we were asked to look at the start of the theme fill to understand the gimmick; today we're asked to look at the end the theme fill (the "last" part) to appreciate it. That's where we meet up with various sets of wheels that'll provide "a ride." What's really fresh about the way Lynn has executed the theme, is that none of the rides appears as a discrete word—even when the fill is a compound; each is a part of the larger word or phrase, almost cryptic-style (though not as tricky to discern...). Take a look. You can travel by:

• 17A. MADAGASCAR [Island known for its unique species]. This one delivers a double helping and that's fine by me.
• 11D. EYESTRAIN [Result of poring over print, perhaps].
• 34D. AWESTRUCK [Stunned]. (This combo has a non-thematic mate, btw, with AMAZE and [Stun]).
• 59A. ED SULLIVAN [Big Beatles booster in America]. Because of the variety and basically high quality of the acts he presented every Sunday night (including excerpts from Broadway shows), Sullivan was one of the great (if almost personality-free) [TV HOSTS] of his day. The jury is still out where [Sajak, Smiley and Springer] are concerned. Here's a clip from 1960 of the original Broadway cast of Bye Bye Birdie performing "Hymn for a Sunday Evening" (an absurd and delicious tribute to Sullivan) while on The Ed Sullivan Show.

There's a lot of nice fill in here today of the non-theme variety as well: TOP HAT [Crowning touch for Uncle Sam], FAT CAT [Campaign contributer with deep pockets], BUY-OUT [Corporate takeover], BEDOUIN [Member of a nomadic desert culture], ANARCHY [Absence of government], and (with reference to the tennis-playing Williams gals) SERENA, by way of the well-clued [She has many court dates with her sister] for starters. (And yes, I am partial to compounds. I feel like they give puzzles a certain ZEST [Gusto]).

I was also amused by the "bad manners" pair of GORGES [Eats like a pig], and what may happen if you do—BURP [No-no at the table], although I always heard that "it's better to belch and bear the shame than squelch the belch and bear the pain"... The other natural pairing is the J.M. Barrie shout-out with ["Peter Pan pooch] NANA and ["]I'VE [Gotta Crow" ("Peter Pan" song)].

Good morning, y'all! I went straight to bed after blogging last night and slept for 10 hours. Now that's more like it.

Barry Silk and Doug Peterson's Los Angeles Times crossword

Fun Saturday LAT, for a change—polished fill, fun clues, and the difficulty level of a Friday NYT rather than a Tuesday. Excerpts from my L.A. Crossword Confidential write-up follow.

When I want to earn some money, I either work on crossword assignments or do some medical editing. So I was pleased with the biomedical slant of a bunch of the fill in this puzzle:

• 1A: We all know what MUSCLE is from an anatomical standpoint. It's also a slangy term for [Hired goons].
• 17A: Use your ears to [Heed], or LISTEN TO someone or something.
• 21A: ["Fantastic Voyage" setting in sci-fi] is the BLOODSTREAM. Great pop-culture clue for a word that could be kinda boring.
• 35A: [Its contents are under pressure] clues AEROSOL. Doesn't look biomedical, except that a sneeze aerosolizes horrid germs.
• 48A: [Geneticist's pursuit] clues DNA RESEARCH. Just read today that there's pressure on the University of Nebraska to limit stem-cell research. Now, "stem-cell research" is a rock-solid phrase. DNA RESEARCH feels kinda iffy to me. Genetics research, sure. What does Google say? Google says "DNA research" is good for 411K hits and that there's a scientific journal by that name. (Objection hereby withdrawn.)
• 63A: [Biological catalyst] is an ENZYME.
• 25D: [Solution for a fertility problem, perhaps] could be a SPERM DONOR, or in vitro fertilization, or a handful of other options. My best friend's son is the genetic offspring of lucky Donor #9. (If you feel this answer pushes the bounds of what's tasteful, be glad that it wasn't clued as, say, "male grad student's side job.")

Other highlights:

• 7A: To [Snub] someone is to HIGH-HAT them. HIGH-HAT is also a noun and adjective. With the G and T in place, NEGLECT seemed like an obvious answer, but all the other letters were wrong.
• 28A: To [Refuse to make changes] is to SIT PAT. No, wait. I don't like this one. I would like STAND PAT, but SIT PAT is a bit weaker.
• 9D: [Rakes it in] clues GETS RICH. How awesome an entry would GET-RICH-QUICK be?
• 11D: The [SUV that replaced the Passport] is the HONDA PILOT. We see relatively few make/model combos in crosswords, and I, for one, would welcome more. VW BUG sometimes shows up, but answers like TOYOTA CAMRY, CHEVY CAVALIER, and FORD MUSTANG would be cool too.
• 15D: The GLIDER is a [Quiet aircraft]. My dad took lessons in the '70s.
• 22D: Hands down, my favorite clue. [Three less than once] looks surreal—wait, is that negative twice?—but once in Spanish is "eleven" in English, so 11 – 3 = OCHO. OCHO is the funniest of the Spanish numbers, isn't it? That Ocho Cinco guy in the NFL has brought the number a great deal of pizzazz.
• 36D: I like familiar brand names as crossword fill. The ["Sorry, Charlie" brand] is STARKIST canned tuna.
• 46D: [2002 Campaign Reform Act co-sponsor] is John MCCAIN. For those who suspect that President "60% Vowels" Obama gets his name in so many crosswords because of a liberal plot, here's your McCain for balance.
• 54D: [Normal in Illinois, say] is a small CITY. Home of Illinois State University, neighbor of Bloomington. I hope some people thought "normal" was an adjective here.
• 56D: One [Instrument played with a plectrum] is a LYRE. You know what a plectrum is? Nothing more than a guitar pick.

Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

Am I the only one whose PDF printout lops off the bottom two clues on the page? 10D and 49D were cut off. Not that it really mattered—10D came via the crossings and 49D, [Harry Senate on "Boston Public"] is a clue that meant nothing to me. KATT? Was William Katt on that show? He is always and forever The Greatest American Hero, and that's that.

8A: PINATA is clued as a [Stuffed party treat]. Check out Patrick Merrell's cartoon in honor of Will Shortz's 16th anniversary as the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle. Pat, we want more cartoons! Ashen and Noir want to come out and play.

17A is HALF-SLIP—[It hangs from the waist]. Hardly anyone wears these anymore. If you or someone you love is Filipino-American, you might enjoy the Happy Slip videos (name derived from the way the video blogger's Filipino mom pronounced "half-slip").

Favorite clues/answers:

• 19A. OLAF is not just a Norwegian king—it's also [One of Snoopy's brothers].
• 20A. LOADED DICE is a great entry. [Pair of cheaters?], not cheater squares.
• 31A. VANITY PLATE is a great answer, too. [Barbara Bush's "I READ," e.g.] is the clue.
• 34A. [Jefferson successor] was looking wrong with two As at the beginning, until AARON BURR bubbled up.
• 41A. [Many months in Mato Grosso] are AÑOS, or "years." The answer and clue are unexceptional, but on Crossword Fiend forum, Zulema mentioned receiving a poorly translated bilingual brochure from New York's State Majority Leader Pedro Espada, boasting that he'd been honored as "el Senador del Ano." That's Spanish for "the senator of the anus" without the tilde.
• 48A. HAD KITTENS is an idiom I never use. It means [Came unglued].
• 13D. ["20/20" creator], 7 letters, starts with A...I went straight for ABC NEWS, but it's Roone ARLEDGE.
• 15D. SPACE INVADERS is an old [Shooting game] in video arcades.
• 28D. [Revolutionary?] clues IN ORBIT. Got this one right away.
• 32D. Egg foo YUNG includes the [Chinese menu word]. You wanted TSO'S, didn't you?
• 34D. [Remote energy sources] are AAS, the double-A batteries used in TV remote controls.
• 39D. Movie trivia: Rod STEIGER was the [Only American star of "Doctor Zhivago"].
• 40D. Boxing [Ring areas] are CORNERS. Were you thinking of AREOLAS? There's no shame in that.

Never heard of 35D: MATHIAS, [Decathlon champ at Helsinki].

Daily Beast, 11/20/09

2009-11-20T06:36:00.017-06:00

"New Moon" - 11:45
I was smart this week. I guessed what Matt's theme would be before the puzzle was even published.

Of course, not being a 92D: [Like some mortgages] TEN YEAR old girl, I knew none of the Twilight Saga:New Moon answers specific to the movie. Which is too bad, because I believe the main demographic reading my posts are ten year old girls.

I did better with Matt's take on a new moon, which, as defined at 65A: [Where the moon is located in its new moon phase - - and a pattern that appears twice in this puzzle] BETWEEN THE EARTH AND SUN. So we get a SUN theme answer, then a MOON, then an EARTH. Each theme answer is a movie with SUN/MOON/EARTH in the title. Whew! Why do I never get to blog puzzles with themes like "each theme entry can follow the word CAT"? These are much cooler, though. By the way, if the moon is directly in line between the earth and sun at a new moon, a solar eclipse occurs. Don't look!!

Other theme answers:

23A: [2003 Diane Lane] - UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN
32A: [1982 Albert Finney/Diane Keaton drama] - SHOOT THE MOON
45A: [1991 Jim Jarmusch movie about cab drivers] - NIGHT ON EARTH

87A: [1946 Gregory Peck Western] - DUEL IN THE SUN
103A: [1999 Jim Carrey biopic] - MAN ON THE MOON (Jim Carrey is Canadian)
113A: [1988 Geena Davis comedy] - EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY. The Earth has moved to the front of the title here. The only one of these movies that I've seen.

Movie theme answers:

19A: ["New Moon" protagonist] - BELLA
75A: [ Lautner of "New Moon"] - TAYLOR
54A: ["Twilight" town] - FORKS
125A: ["Twilight" author Stephenie] - MEYER
52D: [Last name of 19-across] - SWAN

Other stuff:

57A: [Be a bootlicker] - KOWTOW - don't you want this to start with a "C"?
84A: [Part of DOS] - SYS - For the ten year olds: Disc Operating System.
118A: [Zener cards test it] - ESP. Successful proven tests remain at zero. But you knew I was going to say that.
6D: [Average guy] - SCHMOE. When did this start getting an "E"?
10D: ["You Can't Take It With You" co-author] - MOSS HART. Checking...George S. Kaufman is your other co-author.
12D: [One of Cosby's TV kids] - Lisa BONET, who played Denise.
16D: [Key used often by Mozart] - G MINOR. The key I use often is house.
32D: ["Oh my!"] - GOSH. Your grandmother's OMG.
36D: [Glocks and such] - GUNS. I'm Canadian, so I don't know guns.
46D: [Britney Spears' "Piece OF ME"] - Do ten year girls still like her?
63D: ["Two and a Half Men" actor] - Charlie SHEEN. Started watching this in reruns. I should hate it but it is too funny.
100D: [1970 AL MVP BOOG Powell] - If the entire puzzle was about 1970 baseball players I would finish faster than Dan Feyer.
111D: [Led Zeppelin classic "DYER Mak'er"] - Hit it!

Crossing of two random names:
124A: [Cervenka of punk rock] - EXENE. huh? How did this turn into a Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle?
108D: [Dakota Fanning's sister] - ELLE.
EXENA/ELLA looked good to me. Buzz!! Wrong!! Lose bonus points!!

Next weekend is Thanksgiving for you guys down south. I had better start studying. Bye!

Friday, 11/20/09

2009-11-19T22:18:00.007-06:00

BEQ 4:54
LAT 4:36
NYT 4:35
CHE 4:05
CS untimed
WSJ 7:02

You're probably here because you like the harder crosswords that are published later in the week. If so, Peter Gordon's Fireball Crosswords will be right up your alley. For just $10, you can get one puzzle a week, mostly hard themeless crosswords by Peter himself, for pretty much all of 2010. For more money, Peter will work the answer of your choice into a puzzle. See the Fireball subscription page for details. Tell your friends! (The smart ones.)

Alan Olschwang's New York Times crossword

This is a weird puzzle for me. Part of it feels super-fresh and part of it feels like a retread or homage with old answers. What do I mean by the latter? It goes beyond ZOLAESQUE, which was the dramatic linchpin answer in the 2005 ACPT and the documentary Wordplay. There, in Byron Walden's tournament finals puzzle, it was clued as [Stark and richly detailed, as writing]. Here, it's [A la the founder of literary naturalism]. Then there was Bob Klahn's Saturday NYT monster, 12/27/07, in which [Mob rule] clued OCHLOCRACY. Here, [Ochlocracy] clues MOB RULE. Yesterday's Hinmorwitz puzzle had three answers including UP, and so does this one: To REUP is to [Extend one's service life] in the military, [Indicates that one is in] clues ANTES UP, and to [Squirrel] away your nuts is to STORE UP. Last, there's JAZZERCISE at 1A, clued as a [Tae Bo alternative], and the clue weirdly echoes 61D, TAE, or [Inits. of a noted "Wizard"] of Menlo Park, Thomas A. Edison.

What I liked:

• The high-octane Scrabbliness of the fill. Three Zs, three Qs, a pair of Ks, and an X? Me like. Speaking of Scrabble, in a Lexulous game (that's the loose facsimile of Scrabble on Facebook) tonight, I bingoed by playing DOODIES, and twigged the S off CRAP so that CRAPS and DOODIES cross. Isn't that lovely? I thought so, too. Speaking of potty words, PEE is clued as 44D: [Top finisher?] because P is the last letter of "top." Heh.
• 15A. ONE OVER PAR is clued with [It's not bad for a duffer].
• 22A. Trivia! Lech WALESA is the [Only private non-American to address a joint session of Congress (1989)].
• 26A. [Season opener, say] is an EPISODE of a TV show. Were you thinking of sports? Bzzz!
• 28A. [Lions might score one]—are you thinking of sports, the Detroit Lions? Bzzz! The Lions are terrible at scoring. But out on the savanna, a lion might bring down a GNU. Nice to see a fresh (if gruesome) GNU clue.
• 29A. [Foul territory?] is a STY. Were you thinking of baseball? Bzzz! Gotta love having three consecutive clues that aren't about sports but might fool sports nuts.
• 45A. An OTO may be a [Chiwere speaker]. As with the GNU clue, I like the new twist on an old 3-letter answer.
• 58A. [Ones who might get service calls?] are military RESERVISTS. It would be lovely if the RESERVISTS had no war to attend.
• 64A. EAT ONE'S HAT is a great phrase, balancing out ONE OVER PAR in the grid. [Be forced to backpedal] is the clue.
• 66A. Three Ss in a row! DRESS SHOES are a [Pair for a suit]. Not playing cards, but haberdashery.
• 3D. I needed crossings for ZEB, ["The Waltons" grandpa]. ZEB! I never knew Grandpa Walton had a name.
• 6D. [Proofs] clues REREADS. Hey, that's my line of work there.
• 10D. [1990s White House chief of staff Bowles] has an even cooler first name than Grandpa Walton: ERSKINE. There's also author Erskine Caldwell.
• 11D. Ornithology! The [Umbrella bird's "umbrella"] is a CREST atop its head.
• 24D. Never heard of [Irish statesman Cosgrove], but LIAM is a guessable Irish name (and the lovely name of my cousin's baby boy).
• 32D. Like 58A, this sounds like it's about appliance repair, but it's not: ORS, or operating rooms, are [Where some parts are repaired, briefly].
• 33D. PETRI DISH is clue by way of [Germs grow in it]. See also 29A.
• 42D. In some places, NO TURNS is a [Rush hour restriction]. In my neighborhood, that restriction is reserved for the arteries within a half mile of Wrigley Field around game time.
• 45D. Didn't we have a clue like this not so long ago? The OZARKS are your [Buffalo National River locale], but Buffalo smacks of the Great Plains and the state of New York.

Overall, there's much to appreciate in the puzzle, even with that handful of blast-from-the-past answers. Lots of good clues today.

Updated Friday morning

Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Opposite Beginnings"—Janie's review

Well, here's a nice thematic change of pace. The first two words of each of today's theme phrases (their "beginnings") are also pairs of opposites. The first example uses words that are adjectives; the other two, prepositions. These two not only make for lively fill, but they stretch the conceit as they aren't opposites contextually. They certainly add a measure of fun, however. We've got:

20A. LITTLE BIG MAN [1970 Dustin Hoffman film]. You don't need me to point out the opposites...
36A. OFF ON A TANGENT [Straying from the subject].
56A. OUT IN THE OPEN [Transparent].

If this idea isn't a serious ENIGMA [Something hard to grasp], it is fresh—and fresh is greatly to be desired. The last thing anyone wants from their solving experience is a SNOOZER [Real bore], one that would cause the puzzler to SNORE [Saw logs]. Oh—and nice cluing there, too, with [Saw logs], where saw is the present tense verb related to the activity (of sawing...) and not the past tense of "see."

Other clues that made me pay attention: the punny [Slop talk] for OINK, the folksy [Give what for] for SCOLD, the 19th century-sounding [Dastard] for FIEND (which we love, of course!), and [Labor party] for MOM. All I have to say about that last one is "ZOUNDS!" [Gadzooks!"]. I also liked the nod given to the humble writing irons: [Pencil end] for ERASER and [Pen end] for NIB.

And in a mini-thematic way, Randy goes in for a bit of globe-trotting today. From Turkey there's the [Ottoman muck-a-muck] or SULTAN (and another colorful clue, no?); [Turkmenistan neighbor] IRAN; a SIBERIAN [Novosibirsk native] (Russia's third-largest city after Moscow and St. Petersburg. I'd no idea.); the NORTH SEA, that [Body of water between England and Norway]; ASTI, an [Italian wine region]; and BALI [Island near Java]. There's even (bear with me...) AMERIKA [Kafka novel], IOWAN [Waterloo resident] and a tip o' the Stetson to the American West, with ALL IN [Texas Hold 'Em bet], SSW [Dallas-to-Austin dir.] and RODEO [Cheyenne Frontier Days, notably], an annual event since 1897.

Michael Blake's Los Angeles Times crossword

Wow, is it just me, or is this the first Friday LAT in ages that's been ever bit as hard as the Friday NYT? The first theme entry I figured out was the fourth one, which led me astray because LEGO CRAZY, or [Nuts about Danish toys?], looked like the Prince song, "Let's Go Crazy," minus the TS. Then I moved back to the top of the grid and got LENO LIMIT, or [Maximum tolerance for a stand-up comic's jokes?]. Wait, where's the missing TS? Oh, I see: It's +LE, not –TS. (Edited to add: Oh, yes. There's also the explanatory entry ADDLE, to be parsed as ADD "LE.")

The other theme entries are LEON TELEVISION, or ["All Trotsky, all the time" channel?]—that's so goofy, I love it—and LEASH WEDNESDAY, or [When dogs can't run loose?].

Favorite clues/answers:

• SNARF is a slangy word meaning [Wolf (down)].
• LOLA is a [1970 hit by the Kinks]. I like this LOLA much better than a Damn Yankees or Falana reference. I don't suppose we'll ever get [Filipino grandma]?
• [You can count on a lot of bucks from] one...hmm, 6 letters? THE ATM? No, a buckin' BRONCO.
• BERN, Switzerland, is the [Capital northwest of Rome]. Why couldn't I remember this city? I had Berlin on the mind.
• ["___ behold!"] clues the partial LO AND. I don't usually enjoy a partial, but my mom's always been a big "lo and behold" sayer.

Jayne and Alex Boisvert's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Mark My Words"

Cute theme. The central entry, ACCENTS, explains what's going on: [They're missing from the clues for 17, 23, 50, and 58 Across]. Those four answers have one-word clues, which need acute accents in order to correspond to their answers. Without the ACCENTS, the clue words are entirely different words:

• Pliés are BALLET MOVEMENTS, but [Plies] is a verb or the plural of ply.
• The clue is the verb [Resume], but it's a résumé that is a JOB-HUNTER'S NEED.
• Gold lamé is a METALLIC FABRIC, while [Lame] is an adjective and verb.
• [Attaches] is a verb, but attachés are people who are DIPLOMATIC AIDES.

Favorite clues:

• [Cylindrical opening?] is the word's first letter, a SOFT C.
• J. CREW is often clued as an L.L. Bean competitor, just because of the initials thing. But it's more accurate to call it a [Gap competitor].
• I learned a new word in the clue [Like many dactylology experts]. Dactyl- means "finger," so it's DEAF people who use sign language.

Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Faculty Meeting"

Randy Ross's puzzle is a nice counterpart to the Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, thanks to the light faux-faculty theme. Most of the theme entries are non-academic jobs clued as if they're very specific types of faculty. For example, a military DRILL INSTRUCTOR might also be what you call a [Faculty member at a dental school?]. A couple are academic positions, but clued with a different sort of angle—ENGLISH TEACHER is a generic [Faculty member at Eton?] in England rather than a teacher of the English language, and RHODES SCHOLAR becomes a [Faculty member with expertise on a Greek island?]. I like that last one best. Second favorite is STAGECOACH clued as [Member of the drama faculty?]. Least familiar: PAST MASTER is clued as [Faculty member in the history department?].

I like the way the 11 theme answers are distributed throughout the grid, with Across trios and Down pairs running in alternate rows. Favorite fill: [Giant star] sounds like it's astronomy, but it's crosswordese baseball legend MEL OTT making a rare full-name appearance. Also "THAT'S WHY," or ["Here's the reason"]. I think I probably say those words to my son a lot.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "To Your Corners"

Remember playing FOUR SQUARE on the playground with a classic red rubber ball? In each corner of the grid, Brendan adds a FOUR-square layout spelling out FOUR clockwise from the corner. That gives a third level of checked letters to the answers in the corner, which came in handy with KRONUR, the [Icelandic coins] plural. The gimmick is implemented well here.

Favorite clue: [Meadow in New Jersey] is Meadow SOPRANO, Tony's daughter, and has nothing to do with the Meadowlands. Great mislead.

Last square filled in: The X in SIX/[Volleyball side] and XED/[Ticked off]. I was running through the alphabet and made it to P before the X possibility occurred to me.

Most potty-mouthed answer: PEE is [Whiz]. I was thinking of ACE or PRO and wasn't sure what the last letter of RATLIN* ([Ship's ladder step]) was until PEE finally trickled out.

Worst and best neighbors: Strained APISHLY beside juicy, tart KUMQUAT.

Thursday, 11/19/09

2009-11-18T22:22:00.003-06:00

NYT 3:40
LAT 3:17
CS untimed
Tausig untimed

Tyler Hinman and Jeremy Horwitz's New York Times crossword

Here's how I envision this puzzle's development:

Tyler: "Let's make a themeless together."
Jeremy: "No, I want to do a themed puzzle. Something with trivia."
Great cacophony ensues as the chocolate hits the peanut butter, cruciverbally speaking.
Tyler: "Hey, you got a theme in my themeless!"
Jeremy: "What are you talking about? You got your themeless all over my themed puzzle!"
Light bulbs appear over both men's heads.
Together: "Omigod! We made a 70-word themeless puzzle packed with juicy fill and managed to fit three theme entries into it."

I know today's constructors are on the same pub trivia team, so I wonder if A SEED for this puzzle came about from a trivia quiz or if they hit on the trivia trio themselves. It's light as themes go—just 31 squares. But it's thematically solid, bringing together three directors of movies with one-letter titles:

• 17A. ["Z" director, 1969] is known as COSTA-GAVRAS.
• 32A. ["M" director, 1931] is FRITZ LANG.
• 51A. ["W" director, 2008] is OLIVER STONE.

I greatly enjoyed solving this puzzle, though usually I would grumble about a 70-worder that's clued easy enough to hit a Wednesday/Thursday level of difficulty. But I kept getting surprised by answers that were cool, and that was fun.

On the down side, the three UPs distracted me because (a) I hesitated to enter the second and third ones and (b) one of them felt iffy. That one is 8D: [Encircle with a belt] for GIRD UP. I see it in the dictionary entry for gird in the example "gird (up) one's loins," but I don't think that sort of "girding up" involves a belt. If you're belting your loins, I don't wanna hear about it. I wanted UPSIZE to be RESIZE (42D: [Enlarge]) because of 8D, and then UP TO PAR (35D: [Adequate for the job]) showed up and made me wish the other UPs had left this one alone.

Favorite clues and answers:

• 6A. [Symbol in a Riemann sum] is SIGMA. All I know is that SIGMA is used in math for sums of some sort. The clue looked a lot scarier than it turned out to be.
• 16A. MOO [___ juice (milk)]!
• 20A. Scrabbly KLEENEX, a [Kimberly-Clark brand]. KOTEX was too short. (HUGGIES and PULL-UPS would fit, though.)
• 26A. Slangy WHUP means to [Tan] someone's hide, figuratively.
• 31A. "WANT TO?" means ["Are you game?"].
• 34A. Scrabbly JUAREZ is an [El Paso neighbor]. (Hi, Monica!)
• 41A. [Cause of an awakening] sounds metaphysical, but it's the APNEA that might disrupt your sleep.
• 44A. STAR MAPS are [Some Beverly Hills tourist purchases]. There was a recent NYT story about a teenager who's gone into business selling Hamptons star maps.
• 50A. Didn't see this clue while solving: [Google had one in 2004: Abbr.] clues IPO. Tyler, your employer really doesn't need the extra publicity.
• 1D. I hope someone somewhere complains that clueing LUCKIER as [More Irish?] is derogatory to the Irish. And then I hope they're mocked.
• 3D. What is it about the word NOSEGAY that I find so charming? It's a small bouquet or [Posy].
• Anyone think that 6D and 7D would be my entrée into the grid? STAX and rap impresario IRV Gotti, you don't scare me.
• 10D. Oddest clue in the puzzle: [Hearers of Jonah's prophecy] are ASSYRIANS. This may be Biblical, but ASSYRIANS is not short enough to find its way into the puzzle often so it's not Biblical crosswordese.
• 13D. I read a little IONESCO in college—["Le Rhinoceros" playwright Eugene]. I read it in an English translation.
• 18D, 24D. More Scrabbleocity: GEE WHIZ and QUIZNO'S.
• 30D. CREAM SODA is an [A&W beverage] and my favorite Dum-Dum flavor.
• 36D. I like the pairing of [Cousins] and ANALOGS. As in "this is analogous to that/these things are cousins."
• 38D. A WASHOUT is a [Complete failure].

I hereby give my blessing to the cruciverbal union of these two constructors. Jeremy and Tyler, do you have more joint productions in the pipeline?

Updated Thursday morning:

Gail Grabowski's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Case Study"—Janie's review

We know this theme very well: the last word of the theme fill is one that combines with a word in the title. Today that word is "case." The good news is that the theme fill is fresh and the re-configured phrases are pretty lively, too. Today's offerings are:

• 17A. [Wimbledon feature] GRASS COURT → court case.
• 11D. [Delete, for one] COMPUTER KEY → key case.
• 25D. [Healthy all-occasion gift] FRUIT BASKET → basket case (someone who's mentally not-so-healthy. This pair is my fave).
• 63A. [It's said there's no cure for it] COMMON COLD → cold case (followed closely by this pair).

And there's some lively cluing and fill throughout that give this puzzle its [Pizazz] ELAN. I'm fond of the SW corner—the children's corner?—with "BE NICE" ["Don't fight, please"] right next to "ARE NOT!" [Childish denial]. Other exclamations are ["]MAMMA [mia!"] and "TADA!" [Cry of accomplishment]; and one that summons up a variation of "the actor's nightmare": "I'M ON!" for ["That's my cue!"].

Then there's:

• [Smart set] for MENSA;
• [It can cover a lot] for TAR (anyone else start with SOD—and thinking of that "lot" as something more exclusively along the lines of ONE ACRE [4,840 square yards]?);
• [Lasting impression] for SCAR;
• [Pay what's due] for PONY UP (love this expression, even with its apparently unknown etymology);
• [Sketcher's eraser] for ART GUM (because when was the last time I owned one or even thought about art gum?!);
• and in the "good, clean fun" department, [Washer batch] LOAD and COIN-OP [Like some laudromats].

Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword

Jack McInturff mentioned me in his Crossword Corner interview today:

"Orange" the puzzle commentator, once said of a puzzle I did "The fill seems old school." It's probably because I'm 79 years old and that's what I remember. It did give me a wake-up call, however, and I'm trying to be more current.

See? That's why crossword bloggers write about crosswords: We want crosswords to be as good and as entertaining as possible, so it's gratifying when we see evidence that a puzzle-maker or editor uses our critiques in a constructive manner to give solvers a better experience.

Today's L.A. Times theme involves phrases that end with sort of synonymous words, JERK, GOOSE, YO-YO, and DOPE. A thesaurus tells me JERK is a synonym for "fool," but I don't use it that way. I guess some people say "I felt like a complete jerk" to mean "doofus" rather than "heel," though. The theme:

• 20A. CLEAN AND JERK is a [Weightlifting event].
• 30A. The CANADA GOOSE (not "Canadian goose") is a [Golf course pest]. Last spring, I saw a goose perched atop a three-story building. Is that not bizarre? The very same week, my mother saw a rooftop goose for the first time in her life. Heads up, people: The geese have plans. Watch your back.
• 39A. A [Spinning toy manipulated with sticks] is a CHINESE YO-YO.
• 49A. The STRAIGHT DOPE is [Honest info]. You know Cecil Adams' "Straight Dope" column in alt-weekly papers? A couple times I have seen a lexicographer citing Cecil's answers. I think that means his research standards are considered good.

The #1 clue people will be Googling today is 32D: [British actor Robert, the original Colonel Pickering in "My Fair Lady"]. Robert COOTE? That doesn't ring a bell for me.

#2 is 5D: [Original primer used to paint the Golden Gate Bridge], or RED LEAD. No idea what RED LEAD is. Dictionary tells me it's a red form of lead oxide used in paint.

Favorite clues:

• The twin old Ford clues. [Early Ford success] is the MODEL A, while EDSEL was an [Ill-fated Ford].
• [Actors, often] are EMOTERS. Note that the clue does not say "overactors."
• [Some heroes] are called HOAGIES. Yes, I was thinking heroically rather than sandwichly.
• [Very big wind], 4 letters. The obvious choice is between GUST and GALE...but it's a TUBA. That's what my nephew plays. My sister has to listen to three horn players practicing at home, and no, she hasn't developed a case of hysterical deafness. (Speaking of HYSTERIA, that's a [Common crowd reaction in monster films].)

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "A Few Words With You"

The puzzle's title should be interpreted as "A Few Words with 'U' Added to The End": [Yogi's house?] might be HINDU QUARTERS. [Cuddly pasta sauce freebie?] is RAGU DOLL. [Ambrosia and nectar selections?] are a MENU OF GOD. "SHAMU, WOW!" is a [Literal cry at Sea World?]. That one's my favorite because it builds on the silly infomercial product name, ShamWow, which in turn plays on chamois. And the last one is FONDU MEMORIES, or ["The melted cheddar...the kitschy pots...ah, youth"?]. Hooray for cheddar! I don't do Swiss.

Given how few English words there are that end with a U, and how few of those would lend themselves to this theme (familiar word/phrase begins with U-less part of -U word), I'm impressed with this theme. The answers had some decent "aha" action. Now, the fill includes BADU, SABU, TUTU, and APU. A.P.-meets-APU has some potential. King Tut doesn't really have familiar phrases that begin with "Tut," though.

Top answers in the fill: KOJAK meets JETSKIS; WASILLA's near another W*S*L word, WEASELS; CECILIA is opposite OPHELIA. I like BAGATELLE, but feel it would best be clued as [A mere ___]. Top three clues:

• KEN is clued as [Sugar's Daddy ___ (controversial new Mattel product)]. Have you seen this guy doll? Sugar is a teeny dog, and KEN is her "daddy." He's dressed ridiculously and his name evokes the non-Mattel term "Sugar Daddy."
• THA is clued as an [Article in Source magazine?]. Not a magazine article, a definite article.
• IRAQ is an [Emancipated Middle Eastern country with no more problems]. Honest!

Wednesday, 11/18/09

2009-11-17T22:28:00.006-06:00

BEQ 6:58
NYT 4:35
Onion 4:29
CS untimed (J)/3:44 (A)
LAT 3:14

Paula Gamache's New York Times crossword

This keeps happening—my kid has a hard time falling asleep, and in the effort to set a good example for him, I get so dang sleepy that when I rouse myself to do the NYT crossword, I'm not at full speed. The wheels did not spin at their usual clip, and stray typos find their way into the grid more easily than they find their way out. I had "CAN O?" ([Childish plea], CAN I) crossing OCHABOD ([Washington Irving's Crane], ICHABOD), and didn't see it until the grid was filled. Then when I fixed that, my grid was still wrong—BOY TOT/RET instead of BOY TOY ([Young stud])/REY ([Palacio resident]). Adjacent-key typos, my nemesis today.

The theme hinges on a poker phrase, which is something I often find alienating. The [Five-card draw variation] and hint to the theme answers is JACKS TO OPEN, but man, I was stuck on the last letter. (See? Tired.) "JACK STOOPER?" I asked myself. The other four theme entries begin with words that can follow an opening JACK:

• 17A. HAMMER THROW is an [Olympic track-and-field event]. Jackhammer.
• 30A. FROST/NIXON is a [Play and film about a noted 1977 series of interviews]. Jack Frost, nose-nipper. FROST/NIXON is a great-looking answer, isn't it?
• 36A. [Loosely woven cotton fabric] is CHEESECLOTH. Monterey Jack cheese is often called Jack cheese.
• 44A. [Indoor dipole antenna, colloquially] clues RABBIT EARS. Jackrabbit. If you're like me, you always see "rabbi tears" (and "superb owl" for that NFL game).

Ten quick clues:

• 27A. ROTI means [Roasted, in Rouen].
• 35A. DEICE a plane to [Make ready for winter flight].
• 57A. NOOSES are [Causes of some untimely ends]. That's dark.
• 2D. HIALEAH, Florida, is a [Historic racetrack site]. Is it no longer so?
• 3D. ARMAGNAC is an [Eau de vie from Gascony].
• 11D. MAALOX completes ["___ moment" (ad catchphrase)]. Oprah does not lay claim to the Maalox moment.
• 22D. An ARIETTA is a [Short opera piece].
• 25A. Ford MODEL A'S were [1903-04 cars sold only in red].
• 39D. HOUSE PET is a [Collar wearer, often]. Kinda wanted this to be PRIEST.
•42D, 63D. [Roll call response] is PRESENT in, perhaps, a classroom, and NAY in a legislature.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Go Ahead, Shoot!"—Janie's review

I'm happy to say today's title has nothing to do with firearms, in case that's what you were thinking. That imperative is also something you might say when you want you listener to tell you something. Or ask you something. Today it's the latter, and the colorful theme phrases all start with a word that also describes a particular kind of query. The phrases are unified, too, by the clue and fill at 63A., [Objection elicitor, and what the first words of 17-, 26-, and 47-Across could be doing]—and that would be LEADING QUESTION, and LEADING "QUESTION." The additional questions in question are:

• 17A. Trick question, by way of TRICK OF THE TRADE [Professional's shortcut].
• 26A. Burning question, from BURNING RUBBER [Peeling out].
• 47A. Loaded question, which comes to us from the great phrase LOADED FOR BEAR [Livid]. Never heard the expression before and love making its acquaintance. It sure has a lotta character.

So, too, does the cluing, which keeps the play in "wordplay." F'rinstance, the sequential linked-pair [Absent animation] for the lovely LANGUID and [Animation still] for the oft-seen noun CEL. Not only do we get the repeated word in the clues, but something that's "still" is also "absent animation." So we get some double-play action here.

Then we get both [Coiled choker] right next to [Coiled coif], or a BOA beside a BUN. With vocabulary that shows up as often in puzzles as these words, it really is refreshing to have cluing that shortchanges the solving process. Like [Undying dying words] for ET TU, or [Promise at the table] for OLEO (where "Promise" is the brand-name noun and not a verb), or [Net sales?] for E-TAIL (where "net" is short for "internet" and not the opposite of "gross"), or the lengthy but lyrical [Where to house cows once they browse] for BARN.

Other combos that appealed (by no means exhaustive): [Short pants?] for TROU (think about it...), [The same partner] for ONE (ditto), and [Concluding letters for proof reader] for Q.E.D. That's the reader of a mathematical proof and the letters stand for quod erat demonstrandum meaning "which was to be demonstrated."

Fave crossing today: SCHWA [Stress-free sound symbol] (ə) and "SH-H!" [The sound of "Silence!"]. If I omitted your faves, by all means: speak up! ([Ladies in wooly cotes] EWES, anyone?)

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

As usual on Wednesdays and Saturdays, this writeup is drawn from my L.A. Crossword Confidential post.

The theme could be called "Barflies"—Six famous people's last names form new phrases or compound words with BAR. Here are the theme answers:

• 18A: [*"Seven Year Ache" country singer] (ROSANNE CASH). My high-school reunion had a cash bar.
• 20A: [*"All I Wanna Do" singer] (SHERYL CROW). Crowbar. I just reviewed (for work) another puzzle with a theme of female vocalists that included both CASH and CROW, so I couldn't help expecting the other theme entries to follow suit. Nope! In that other puzzle, I changed the clue to include this song instead of some other song I'd never heard of. Good call, right?
• 32A: [*Longtime "American Bandstand" host] (DICK CLARK). The Clark Bar is, well...is it as good as a Butterfinger? I do like me a Butterfinger bar, and I ate all the minis my kid got for Halloween.
• 45A: [*Notable member of The Second City improv group] (JOHN CANDY). The Clark Bar is a candy bar. Rex Parker feels it's redundant to have both generic CANDY BAR and specific CLARK BAR in this theme. My feeling is that you can never have too much chocolate, and that Rex's suggestion (in the comments at L.A.C.C.) that Barbara Hershey and the fictional Veronica Mars could have joined Dick Clark is a good one (if only the word lengths matched up—and if only there were a famous person with the surname Snickers).
• 59A: [*French writer who befriended Chopin] (GEORGE SAND). Don't ground your boat on a sandbar. This is the only theme person who's more high culture than pop culture.
• 63A: [*"The Mark of Zorro" star (1940)] (TYRONE POWER). A Power Bar is one of those horrible things I never eat. I hear people like them.
• 65A: [Happy hour site, and word that can follow each last name in the answers to starred clues] (BAR).

With 63 theme squares, you expect to tolerate a few "blah" entries in the fill. I dunno. This one felt a little heavier on "blah" than usual for a Dan Naddor puzzle: L-DOPA, UTA, L.I.U., ENID, ADE, ADJ., K.P.H., the weird ANC. (Short for "ancient"? Not the much more famous African National Congress?), MAU, SEP., and TRAC are the sort of answers a constructor isn't striving to use, just ends up using to make the fill work.

Highlights:

• 42A: [Bette's "Divine" nickname] (MISS M).
• 50A: [Time-share units] (CONDOS). Hey! Plenty of us city-dwellers live in condos year-round. Are the suburbanites unaware of this? Is it the New Yorkers who ruin everything, by "buying apartments" rather than "renting apartments"/"buying condos"?
• 10D: [Bach work] (TOCCATA). I don't know classical music much, but this answer always makes me think of veal. (Piccata.) Which I don't eat.
• 21D: Gibraltar landmark (ROCK). This gave me a chance to include a photo of Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson in my L.A.C.C. post. He sure was cute in that Disney movie, Game Plan.
• 30D: [King Arthur's meeting spot] (ROUND TABLE). This is where King Arthur hung out with Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, at the Algonquin.
• 43D: [Chat idly: Var.] (SHMOOZE). I prefer the schmooze spelling.
• 46D: [Official emergency status] (CODE RED). My kitchen was at code red last week. It's down to the standard code orange now.

Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword

Tyler's theme is "potentially disastrous neighbor"s, #1 through #5: Your MOTHER-IN-LAW (I'd be fine with mine living nearby, honest), a smelly RENDERING PLANT (I would move), a SEX-CRAZED COUPLE (I highly recommend hearing loss so you won't hear them), a CRYSTAL METH LAB (eek), and PUNK ROCKERS (hey, it's fine so long as they're not rehearsing at home).

Favorite clues/answers:

• 6A. KITES are [Some quadrilaterals].
• 14A. I like the German in the clue [Unterwasser vessel], but it makes me want the answer to be U-BOOT instead of U-BOAT.
• 56A. COLD gets clued in a sporting sense: [Not shooting well]. Basketball, not guns, right?
• 2D. The ABO blood grouping system is a [System that helps you determine if someone's your type].
• 13D. [Animal that hisses], 5 letters, ends with E...SNAKE? Try a GOOSE.
• 27D. [Back], adverbially, clues IN REPLY. "In reply," of course, is the adverbial form of the adjective "in rep."
• 42A. Hey! Fresh ELBA clue: [Porto Azzurro's place].
• 60D. The NFL is [Ochocinco's org.]. His number, of course, is 85. What would your Spanish number name be?

I thought [Iranian city, or its river] would be QOM rather than QUM, but there's no unterwasser O-BOAT. Did you know the city—a holy city and a center of learning for Shiites—can also be spelled KUM?

Updated Wednesday evening:

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Letter Rip"

The theme involves ripping a letter into two, but it's hard to visualize this in Across Lite or if you print your answers in capital letters. The breakage involves lowercase letter strokes:

• 18A. [Huge scissors?] are the BIG clIPPER. See how a lowercase cl, when squished together, looks like a lowercase d? The Big Dipper is the original, pre-ripping phrase.
• 20A. Double Dutch is a jump-rope game. DOUBLE clUTCH is clued as [Extremely reliable under pressure?]. Not too familiar with clutch as an adjective. Is that a sports usage?
• 38A. [Cornfield bunched together?] is CROP clUSTER (crop duster).
• 55A. [Starting up a digital stopwatch?] is LOADING clOCK (loading dock).
• 59A. [Muhammad Ali?] is BOXING clAY. Excellent combination of the Boxing Day holiday that people in other countries may celebrate after Christmas and boxer Muhammad Ali's birth name, Cassius Clay. I didn't love the rest of the theme, but I'm glad it built up to this one. If this one had come first, the rest would've felt like a letdown.

Brendan labeled this one medium difficulty, but it smacked me like a hard puzzle. Toughest spots for me:

• [Snatch beneficiary] is a DELT, or deltoid muscle.
• TEN CC is the British rock band at 39D. Boo! It's 10cc, just as U2 is not spelled U-TWO. I don't recall "I'm Not in Love" at all, but "The Things We Do for Love"? Oh, yeah.
• My Star Wars-fu is down. The scoundrel in 21A is LANDO Calrissian. I barely remember the movie he was most prominent in, so I tried JANGO Fett first.
• That 1D-2D-3D group of two-word phrases that we don't see much of in crossword grids.
• At 56A, wanted [Athlete's handlers: Abbr.] to be MGRS or MGMT instead of AGTS. Abbreviations that only save one or two letters are dumb. (See also Jun., Jul.)
• The answer for [Knocker holder] is incorrect. It should be DDCUP, not DCUP.

MGWCC #76

2009-11-17T11:00:00.004-06:00

crossword 6:45
puzzle 0:45

quick writeup this time, as i'm super-busy this week. hopefully you all can make up for it in the comments. the 76th episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "On the Strait Where You Live," featured a curious geographical theme:

[Part of Montana's capital, to Spanish-speaking immigrants? (4)] is ESTE HELENA, as in east helena.
[Awful place to take a vacation? (1)] is HELLISH ISLAND. i think i went there once. it sucked.
[Founding father visiting Portugal's second city? (2)] is O PORTO JEFFERSON. or maybe OPORTO JEFFERSON. i know this city as porto (mostly because i know the soccer team, formerly coached by jose "the special one" mourinho), but wikipedia tells me that oporto is also sometimes used as the name of the city. well then.
[Honorific for Sooners' favorite lady? (3) is MADAM OKLAHOMA.
and [Games between the Cleveland Indians and the Toledo Mud Hens? (5 -- and the theme of this puzzle)] is a LAKE SERIES. the mud hens, by the way, are a real minor league team, the AAA affiliate of the detroit tigers, in the international league. as such, they'd never play the major league indians. they do often play the buffalo bisons, long-time affiliate of the indians (but now affiliated with the mets), and i suppose that would be a LAKE SERIES too.

so what's going on with this theme? well, it probably has to do with lakes (as the last clue implies). can you think of a LAKE SERIES with five members? i sure can: the great lakes, including lake ERIE of crossword fame. and lookie here, LAKE ERIE is hiding in that last theme answer, except that the ERIE part has been bracketed with a pair of Ss. a similar thing has been done to a geographical place name in the other four theme answers: ST. HELENA plus Es, ELLIS ISLAND plus Hs, PORT JEFFERSON (where is that? wikipedia tells me it's a new york town of 7000 or an ohio town of 300. well then.) plus Os, and ADA, OKLAHOMA plus Ms. putting the extra letters in the indicated order gives ... HOMES, the mnemonic for the great lakes that everybody learned in elementary school. although i have to say, huron, ontario, michigan, and superior are much less useful than ERIE for crossword puzzles.

quick hits from the fill:

PASTIS is apparently a [French aperitif]. never heard of it.
somebody named TILLIS is ["Stutterin' Mel"]. never heard of him, either.
not one but two gratuitous chess clues: pawn SAC and OSLO, home of world #2 magnus carlsen.
["Antigone" playwright] is SOPHOCLES. i so wanted this to be jean ANOUILH, the french playwright who had his own take on the story. i mean... his name ends with -LH. how cool is that?
least favorite answer: IOO, clued as [Five score, written out]. ouch.
favorite answer: HELD IT, clued as [Didn't go to the bathroom]. now there's a good use of IT in the answer, unlike ACE IT, which i see semi-regularly but don't much care for. i'm not wild about the IT in PLAY IT OFF [Act nonchalant], while we're on the subject. HOOF [___ it (walk)] is good. i think IS IT ALIVE [Sci-fi movie question] is a little iffy, but probably okay. except that it's kind of getting to be too many its, no?
oh yeah, YAWNER [No barn-burner] is great, too. if this were the saturday stumper, this would have some boring clue about somebody who's yawning.

okay, that's all. see you next week!

Tuesday, 11/17/09

2009-11-16T21:45:00.002-06:00

Jonesin' 3:59
NYT 3:40
LAT 2:35
CS untimed

Caleb Madison's newest Bard Bulletin crossword is available now in Across Lite, at the Crossword Fiend forum's "Island of Lost Puzzles." It'll be online in Java applet form later this week. Enjoy!

John Farmer's New York Times crossword

Structurally, this is an unusual puzzle. The theme entries are 10 (or 14)-letter doubled entities criss-crossing in two 5 (or 7)-letter halves that intersect in the middle, and these are found in the four corners and in the middle of the grid. The letters in those central intersections spell out RINGO. Here's how it plays out:

• 16A. [WIth 2-Down, group with the only James Bond theme to hit #1] is DURAN DURAN.
• 18A. [WIth 10-Down, flashy jewelry] is BLING-BLING.
• 39A. "TWINKLE, TWINKLE" is [With 25-Down, start of a nighttime nursery rhyme]. It's not just the start of the rhyme/song as a partial entry—we often call it "Twinkle, Twinkle" without adding the "Little Star" part, don't we?
• 61A. [With 60-Down, #1 hit of 1969] is "SUGAR, SUGAR." The Archies?
• 64A. [With 54-Down, intro to a joke] is "KNOCK, KNOCK."
• 52D. RINGO Starr is the [Rock star whose name is spelled out by the middle letters of 16-, 18-, 39-, 61- and 64-Across].

Okay, John: Please fill us in. What drew you to playing with crossword conventions in this way? Was there a compelling thematic reason to have the middle letters spell out RINGO, or could you have just as easily gone with another 5-letter word? How many iterations did you go through while working on this puzzle?

Okay, fellow solvers: Is it just me, or was this puzzle of Wednesday difficulty for you, too? Here are the tougher spots:

• WIGAN?!? 40D: [City near Manchester]—Wiggin' out about that one? Me, too. If you didn't know that RIGEL is the name of that 46A: [Bright double star in Orion], you were sunk here.
• 53A. The SKUA is an [Arctic seabird]. Remember this one with the AUK, ERN(E), and TERN.
• 12A. OCULI are [Eyelike windows]. I prefer auriculi, the ear-shaped windows.
• 21A. [International alliance] didn't shout ENTENTE to me, so I worked the crossings instead.
• 34A. I kinda wanted the [A.P. transmission] to be a WIRE STORY, but it's a WIRE PHOTO. On Twitter, you can follow the APStyleBook or, for a more irreverent take on writing and editing, there's Fake AP Stylebook. Sample: "Avoid using 'gadzooks,' lest your monocle pop out and land in your jar of mustache wax."
• 47A. [Japanese prime minister Taro] ASO puts me in mind of taro chips.
• 59A. The weird "I MEAN NO" is clued as an [Emphatic refusal].

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "You Want Fries With That?"

This week's Jonesin' theme is unusual French fry toppings or dips, beyond ketchup and malt vinegar and my son's preference, barbecue sauce. Me, I want a dash of sea salt flakes and a little ketchup. Other options:

• 17A. [Garnish that some upscale fries at Chicago restaurant mk are served with] is TRUFFLE CREAM.
• 26A. [Ingredient served with fries and brown gravy in the Canadian dish poutine] clues CHEESE CURDS. The gravy ruins poutine for me. Not a gravy fan. As for CHEESE CURDS, I like 'em breaded and deep-fried, à la the Upper Midwest. Mmm, hot cheddar goodness.
• 40A. MAYONNAISE is the [Condiment most often used by the Dutch with their fries]. Mac, is this true?
• 56A. I don't quite understand how this one works. CHICKEN SOUP is a [Seasoning option for fries at the Japanese fast food restaurant First Kitchen]. Wet or powdered soup?
• 67A. WENDY'S FROSTY is the [Fast food dessert that some kids insist on dipping their fries in].

Freshest answers in the fill:

• The FAR LEFT is an [Ultraliberal's place on the political spectrum].
• The GEEK SQUAD is the [Tech support subsidiary of Best Buy].
• Good gravy (a nonsequitur for me)! Crosswordese ARLO gives way to his last name for a change. GUTHRIE is clued as ["Alice's Restaurant" singer Arlo].
• The F-TEST is an [Analysis named after statistician Sir Ronald Fisher]. I've heard of Fisher's exact test, too. Someone else named the F-test after Fisher.
• GLAM ROCK is the [Genre for Gary Glitter].
• SIA is clued as ["The Girl You Lost to Cocaine" singer]. Who? Sia Furler is an Australian pop singer.
• [MSNBC anchor Monica] NOVOTNY is not anyone I'd heard of. I'm not a big consumer of cable news. What I see from across the health club once a week is pretty much it.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Cart Game"—Janie's review

This "cart" game deals out three fresh phrases and one familiar name whose first word can be followed not by cart but by its synonym WAGON, as is made clear at 69A. [Word that can follow the starts of...]:

• 20A. STATION BREAK [Spot for a commercial] → station wagon. Here's a Hudson classic from the '40s. Are station wagons even made today or is it all-SUV-all-the-time? (Remember, this question comes from someone who lives in Manhattan and doesn't own a car. And the last time I did, it was a VW Beetle... that got great mileage!)
• 35A. CHUCK NORRIS ["The Delta Force" star] → chuckwagon. Here's an interesting backgrounder on this mobile food wagon that first came into being in the American West, in the mid-1860s. And here's a picture of one from the 1920s.
• 42A. COVERED DISH [Potluck dinner contribution] → covered wagon, the 19th century version of a station wagon? If you were crossing the Great Plains, your belongings were likely to be packed inside.
• 59A. WELCOME SIGHT [Glimpse of something pleasing] → Welcome Wagon. You and your covered wagon would not have been greeted by one on your arrival in, say, Oregon, but Wiki tells us that "the company was founded in 1928, by Thomas Briggs in Memphis, Tennessee. At that time, Welcome Wagon 'hostesses' would visit new homeowners with a gift basket containing samples, coupons, and advertising from contributing businesses. These home visits continued for over 50 years until 1998, when changing demographics meant few homeowners would be at home when representatives called." I never realized there was an actual company with this name—that that's where the phrase (apparently) came from. And it's still around—on the internet, these days.

There's a lot of good fill and cluing throughout to make this a solid kind of puzzle. For instance, there's a mid-Eastern mini-theme by way of [Palestinian leader Yasir] ARAFAT, ARABS [Jordanian majority], OMANI [Muscat resident] and KURD [Certain Turk or Syrian].

There are also a pair of hirsute creatures—one diminutive, the other... probably not. The former is the EWOK [Forest-dwelling Jedi ally]; the latter, the YETI [Hairy Himalayan humanoid]. Oh—and I nearly forgot a reference to a third creature (a certifiably real one this time) with [Cat's coat] and FUR.

About to be late? You might not be if you [Hotfooted it] RAN. If someone were doing a play-by-play, she might even say, "There he is, and he RACES IN [Enters hurriedly]!"

Other TREATS (they're not only [Halloween handouts]) include SPLOTCH [Irregular stain], because it's a great word to get your mouth around; TABASCO [McIlhenny Company sauce], because it's hot stuff; VAN clued as [Part of Mayflower's fleet], because that's a fleet of moving vans and not ocean-going ships bearing Pilgrims...; BOTOX [Wrinkle-reducing treatment], because I just like that "X"; THREE for its thought-inducing clue [Line count of a haiku]; and the homophonic crossing of SITE MAP [Table of contents on the Internet] with WELCOME SIGHT.

Finally, whether by design or chance, there's that whole assonant SE corner. Look at it: STEEP [Like a canyon's sides], DEEP [Low-bottomed] (like that canyon, no doubt) and THREE. Plus the eye-rhyme that EPEE [Olympics rapier] lends, and the true rhyme of the bottom-central PEEP [Hatchery sound]. Nice touch!

Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword

The four theme entries end with words that can substitute for BUNCH: a VACANT LOT, SEATTLE SLEW, IMPERIAL TON, and RIVER RAFT. Two of the theme answers have 9 letters, so it was a little distracting to have an 8-letter non-theme answer, NO BIGGIE, also end with a word connoting largeness.

The theme square count is 45, which is not small but also not too dense. So I was surprised by the amount of answers that can fit the category of crosswordese (words seen more often in crosswords than in the wild). Consider BRAE, IRANI, SMOTE crossing EMOTE, the OAS, AGER and APED, ANON, E'EN, MOUE, APSE, and G-MAN. Plus a prefix (ACRO), abbreviations (APR, ABA, NET WT, TMI), partials (ALL OR, A CHIP, a single NANU, PRIORI), and a bizarre plural (MA'AMS). These outweighed the theme and the zip of MR. FIX-IT for me.

Monday, 11/16/09

2009-11-15T18:10:00.003-06:00

BEQ 4:50
LAT 3:12
NYT 2:43
CS untimed

James Mulhern and Ashton Anderson's New York Times crossword

This pair of cruciverbal newcomers have crafted a puzzle with an "_OCK AND ___" theme:

• 17A. COCK AND BULL is [Like a story that can't be believed].
• 27A. [Military strategy during the 2003 invasion of Iraq] is SHOCK AND AWE.
• 45A. [Subject of a 1950s "revolution"] is ROCK AND ROLL. I don't think rock was the "subject" of the revolution—I think it was the engine that drove the revolution.
• 61A. LOCK AND LOAD is clued with [Prepare to use a rifle].

A novice puzzler in my living room found the common ANDs to be helpful. This is why it's a Monday theme and not a Wednesday theme. The novice thought she wouldn't get too far in the puzzle, but she actually polished it off in a matter of minutes. Thank you, Monday puzzles! You help lure people into the crossword habit, give them their cruciverbal sea legs.

Updated Monday morning:

Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "K-K-K-KT"—Janie's review

One of the most enduring songs to have emerged from the World War I era was "K-K-K-Katy," also known as "The Stammering Song." With a wink to that title, Ray has found four well-known phrases whose first word ends with the letter "K" and, with great success, has "re-purposed" them to end with the letter "T." So, doing the K/T swap out:

• 17A. Pack of lies becomes PACT OF LIES, a [Worthless agreement?] containing a pack of lies, too, no doubt.
• 11D. Track record turns into TRACT RECORD, a [Log of land sales?]. This example and the ones that follow are more successful for me as they go farther afield from the context of the base phrase.
• 25D. Duck hunting metamorphoses into DUCT HUNTING, or [Looking for new gutters?]. This one is sounds plain silly and I love it for that.
• 50A. Pickpocket changes to PICT POCKET, [Where an ancient Brit kept his wallet?]. Not only silly but conjures up a strong image. Although... did you know that the Picts (among other peoples) are reputed to have been unclad warriors? Some say that they are known as Picts for the body-paint that covered them... I think my favorite line from the first linked article is the observation that the down side of naked combat is that "the combatant misses the practicality of hiding/carrying objects in pockets attached to clothes." Knew that "tract" could get this discussion back on "track"!

There's some very nice longer, non-theme fill that deserves mention. First the playful sounding, symmetrically-placed pair: DOO-DADS [Gizmos] and BON-BONS [Chocolate goodies]; and then the symmetrically-placed cinematic pair: tv WESTERNS ["Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke"] and WARNER [Surname of Hollywood brothers] fave PORKY PIG [Stuttering cartoon character] (who would have been right at home singing "K-K-K-Katy"...).

While its roots are in the word for "entreaty" and its first meaning has to do with prayer, I loved seeing the word LITANY, which is also accurately defined as a [Long list] (as in a "litany of complaints"...). Other fill/clues that caught my fancy would include:

• PANCAKE [Flapjack]
• OLD SALT [Ancient mariner]
• IVY [Wrigley Field wall covering] crossing IVES [Currier's lithography partner]
• NOT clued as [Undoing word], as in, "Tampa Bay's Bucs look to be having a great season so far. NOT!" Apparently they're having trouble meeting requirements related to their [Passing goals (abbr.)] TDS.
• JAUNT [Pleasure trip]
• SPLAT [Pie in the face sound] (We saw this not too long ago clued in connection with the sound an ice cream cone makes when it hits the floor; both work fer me.)
• And while I'm not wild for SHOER [Village smithy, e.g.], [Writer of sweet words?] for ICER really delights me.

Nancy Salomon's Los Angeles Times crossword

The title for this puzzle could be "Doing It in Grand Style," as each theme entry adheres to the "___ing [synonym for big]" format:

• 17A. WALKING TALL is [Striding self-confidently].
• 60A. LIVING LARGE is [Enjoying an extravagant existence].
• 11D. AIMING HIGH is [Shooting for the stars].
• 29D. TALKING BIG is [Carrying on conceitedly].

The theme's straightforward, so I'm not quit sure why this puzzle took me as long as a Wednesday crossword. I derailed partially with SUGAR BEET in lieu of SUGAR CANE ([Crop yielding a common sweetener]), and [Whammies] didn't shout HEXES at me like a [Bad spells] clue might've. I also didn't quite know that the [Game in which "bullets" can be whatever card you decide] is called ACES WILD. Deuces wild is more familiar, and it's got a definition link on Google, whereas "aces wild" doesn't. Not that this is the most reliable indicator of a phrase's solidity, but I've heard of deuces wild while aces high is more familiar to me than aces wild.

A few two-word answers:

• 53A. WAS ON is clued as [Aired, as a TV show].
• 46A. "TAKE THAT!" is [Words while delivering a blow]. 4D: MAKE TIME has the somewhat ungainly clue [Provide a schedule slot (for)]. I think the 8-letter TAKE and MAKE phrases swirled around in the theme part of my brain with WALKING and TALKING and made it a little harder for the theme to stand out clearly.
• 42A. ICE AX is a [Climbing tool for frozen surfaces].

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"

No time to blog now! In short:

• Terrific topical long answers, GOING ROGUE, BALLOON BOY, and SWINE FLU VACCINE. PENIS ENVY isn't topical, but also sparkles.
• Yay for a return to "Themeless Monday"!
• Boo to fill like U-TWO (the band always uses a numeral) and ONER, and to a couple clues. OVA aren't exactly [Places where it all began]—they're wee little cells. The Fallopian tubes and the uterus feel more like the "places" to me. OXIDE is clued as [Iron compound]. While iron oxide is a compound, this just feels wrong to me—oxides are oxygen compounds, no? Chemists, please explain.

Sunday, 11/15/09

2009-11-14T15:15:00.009-06:00

LAT 8:28
BG 7:40
Reagle 7:25
NYT 7:15
CS 3:42
NYT diagramless untimed

I'll be out at the movies and dinner at puzzle time tonight. Go ahead and chat amongst yourselves in the interim, and I'll see you late Saturday night. xoxoxo

—Back home by 10 p.m.!

Liz Gorski's New York Times crossword, "Man of Many Words"

All right, there's nothing at all wrong with this puzzle, but the theme couldn't be more perfectly designed to leave me unmoved. JOHNNY MERCER songs? Ten of them? Luckily, they were clued with other contexts, because most of the songs are not ones I've heard of. Those circled letters from A to N make a connect-the-dots picture of a, whaddayacallit, Wikipedia tells me it's a G-clef. It's a pretty symbol, but I have no idea if it's inextricably linked to these Mercer songs or what.

BEFOOL (39D: Hoodwink] looks kinda crazy. Haven't seen the word before—dictionary labels it "archaic."

Company calls—will return to the blog Sunday morning.

Updated Sunday morning, after sleeping in and having quality family time:

Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Decimation"

Well, I guess I don't really need to blog this puzzle since its constructor explained the theme in the comments before I'd done the puzzle. Spoiler! Spoiler! So, filling in the puzzle was just a rote process, no brain work to decipher the theme. The clues are words in all caps, and if you insert TEN, you get another word, and that word clues the theme answer in sort of a clue/answer reverse: [BAR(TEN)D?] = SERVE DRINKS, [CHAS(TEN)ER?] = ONE WHO PUNISHES, [HEAR(TEN)S?] = ENCOURAGES, [LA(TEN)CY?] = DORMANT STATE, [S(TEN)O?] = SHORTHAND WRITER, [SHOR(TEN)ING?] = LARD OR BUTTER, [AN(TEN)NA?] = RABBIT EARS, and [PAN(TEN)E] = BRAND OF SHAMPOO. You DIVIDE each clue word by TEN by inserting TEN into it.

I think I would've liked the theme a lot if I'd had to puzzle through it myself.

Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "Homophone Sylables"

I enjoyed this theme a ton. A sound-alike word replaces some syllables in a longer word, and the resulting portmanteau is clued accordingly:

• 21A. MISSILEANEOUS (miscellaneous) might be a [Category the Pentagon uses instead of "other"?].
• 32A. [Process of growing grass for cows?] could be called PASTUREIZATION (pasteurization).
• 41A. PROMISECUITY (promiscuity) is clued as [Habit of giving your word to everybody but never keeping it?]. Brilliant. We should adopt this as a useful term. The English language could use a single word to describe this concept.
• 50A. FUTILEISM (feudalism) is the [Social system under which nothing ever gets better?].
• 63A. CHORUSPONDENCE (correspondence) is [The fan mail that backup singers get?].
• 72A. [Organically grown herbal medicines?] are FARMACEUTICALS (pharmaceuticals).
• 83A. [Of an age when pork and mutton were pretty much all you ate?] is MEATYEVAL (medieval).
• 91A. [Having a sweet taste that kind of sneaks up on you?] is SYRUPTITIOUS (surreptitious). This one doesn't work as well for me as the others because I pronounce it "seer-ip," not "sir-ip." (Both pronunciations are listed in my dictionary.)
• 104A. MASSAGEYNISTIC (misogynistic) is clued [Contemptuous of rubdowns done by women?].
• 118A. FILL-IN-THROPIC (philanthropic) is [Pertaining to puzzle events that benefit charities?].

And now, a handful of non-theme clues:

• 27A. [Self-serving aims, often] are AGENDAS.
• 58A. [Knife for Nanook] is an ULU.
• 111A. PASSADO is a [Thrusting move, in fencing]. I don't recognize the word, even though we did some fencing in high school gym class.
• 112A. [Ludacris song, "___ Fool"] clues the two-word partial phrase ACT A. Nobody loves partials, but this is fresher than clueing the word ACTA.
• 1D. [Auctioneer's query] is "DO I HEAR [some random dollar amount]?"
• 10D. ["Well, you go ___ and I'll go mine" (Groucho)] clues URUGUAY, Groucho's pun on "your way."
• 20D. [Rubber hub] is rubber manufacturing city AKRON, Ohio.
• 28D. [P.M. whose jacket caught on] is NEHRU. The NEHRU jacket is, well, not a fashion I've ever worn, but it's had its day.
• 50D. Holy cats, really? FUSEL is today's out-there, uncommon answer. [Fermentation product, ___ oil] is not a clue that helped me get the answer. No clue would.

Mike Torch's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Ling-uistics"

For me, this is today's most challenging 21x21 crossword. The theme involves adding -LING to the end of a word to alter its meaning, and the results are pretty good. I like it when theme entries aren't completely obvious and you have a bunch of "aha" moments when you piece them together. The Gorski NYT's theme didn't offer me any of these "ahas," with the "aha" reserved for the connect-the-dots visual aspect. Hook's Globe puzzle would've given me a big "aha" with some oomph to it if I hadn't known the theme up front. And Reagle's puzzle, like Torch's, had a solid "aha"/amusement payoff for each theme answer.

Here's the "Ling-uistics" theme:

• 24A. STARLING TREK could be a [Migration of gregarious birds?].
• 50A. The Ox-Bow Incident is a novel and movie. OX BOWLING INCIDENT is a [Bovine argument at the lanes?]. This one made me laugh. There were no oxen present when I went bowling last week, luckily.
• 71A. [Game for lazy kids?] is IDLING TAG.
• 95A. Can I pick your brain? PICKLING YOUR BRAIN is [Drinking too much?].
• 122A. LEGAL FEELING is a [Courtroom intuition?].
• 3D. [Result of way too much praise?] is EGO TRIPLING.
• 31D. RED INKLING plays on red ink, and is clued as a Joseph [McCarthy suspicion?]. I like this one a lot too.
• 58D. This clue could've gone down the vomiting lane, but it didn't. BEN HURLING is [Affleck on the mound?"], hurling a baseball. It would've been really impressive if Torch had built the entire theme around movie titles + LING—24A and 50A join with this one in the movie category.
• 74D. The Fab Four become FABLING FOUR, a [Quartet of storytellers?].

Least familiar answer in the grid: 110D: TROON is a [Town on the Firth of Clyde]. Overall, the fill is pretty smooth. I'll dock it one point for having both UNO and UNI, but at least they're small and on opposite sides of the grid.

Doug Peterson's Washington Post/CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

Do HAIRY CHEST ([Symbol of manliness]) and its opposite grid partner OPERA HOUSE ([Sydney Harbor landmark]) constitute a mini-theme? I like to think they do. (Of course, they do not.)

Highlights in this definitely-on-the-easy-side themeless:

• 15A. A BROMANCE is an [Intimate friendship between two guys, slangily]. Near the end of Superbad, which I watched again last night, there's a sweet moment between Michael Cera and Jonah Hill's characters, in the fine tradition of the bromance.
• 8D. "HERE GOES NOTHING" is clued with ["This probably won't work..."].
• 12D. ALGORITHMS is just a cool word, so different from the rest of the English language. They're [Step-by-step procedures].
• 27D. At the Crate & Barrel Outlet on Friday, I passed up the chance to buy a FLY SWATTER, or [Inexpensive extermination device].
• 46A. HATCHET MEN are [Enforcers for the mob], among other things.

Toughest clues:

• 16A. UVULAR means [Sounded from the back of the throat].
• 41A. TOMSK is a [Siberian city]. We see OMSK much more often in the puzzle than TOMSK.
• 2D. URDU is related to the Hindi language, so it's a [Hindi relative] but not a Hindi word for a family member.
• 21D. GALOPS are [Lively dances]. The word's related to "gallop."

Fred Piscop's second Sunday NYT puzzle, a diagramless crossword

It took a little longer than usual to figure out how the first rows were laid out. 1A SCHISM, 11A CRULLER, and 14A DEADLY SINS were stacked together, but was the 7A CLAM, 13A HAHA, 17A AVON stack to the right of the bigger stack (with 1A and 7A on the top line), or was it to the right (with a bunch of black squares to the left of 1A and above 7A)? Turns out to be the latter. I didn't piece it together until the end of 21A DAYS IN A WEEK, in the fifth row, hooked up with some Down answers and showed me the way.

The theme answers are all clued the same: [There are seven ...]. Four of the five were quite familiar, but that unfamiliar one was a killer. The famous septets are as follows:

• 14A. DEADLY SINS
• 21A. DAYS IN A WEEK
• 37A. WONDERS OF THE WORLD
• 58A. HILLS OF ROME
• 68A. LITTLE FOYS

It was LITTLE FOYS that killed me. The Seven Little Foys is a 1955 Bob Hope movie that was nominated for a screenplay Oscar, but I've not only never seen the movie, I've scarcely even heard of it. The O crossed a partial that I had trouble piecing together: 59A ["___ of You" (Hank Williams Jr. album)] clues I'M ONE of you. I pondered "I Mane of You," "Imene of You," "I, Mine, of You," and "Imune of You" for the vowels, and IMLNE and IMRNE for FRYS and FLYS. Gah.

I was slightly thrown by the dated word SLOVEN, 20A [Neatnik's opposite]. It's a dated word, much less familiar than "slovenly." I'm not telling my husband that this word, meaning "a person who is habitually messy or careless," exists.

Saturday, 11/14/09

2009-11-13T22:28:00.006-06:00

Newsday 6:17
NYT 6:15
LAT 3:22
CS untimed (J)/3:01 (A)

Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword

Have we seen quadruple-stacked 15s before? I feel like I've seen it in a Frank Longo puzzle, maybe in a book rather than the NYT. Yes? No? Jim Horne suggests that this is a first, but I have some vague Longo deja vu.

Having a central quad-stack requires an even number of rows (this puzzle is 15x16). The 15s are:

• 32A. INCOME STATEMENT is an [Overhead shower] that shows what your overhead expenses are.
• 37A. I actually saw MOON OVER PARADOR, the [1988 comedy starring Richard Dreyfuss and Raul Julia]. The fake country name appears to be a portmanteau of Paraguay and Ecuador. Who's making this up—George Lucas?
• 38A. "ARRIVEDERCI, ROMA" is the [Song with the lyric "City of a million warm embraces"]. We had this answer in a themed L.A. Times puzzle by Lee Glickstein a month ago, grouped with other A__A phrases that ended with place names.
• 39A. MANDARIN ORANGES are, like other citrus fruits, [Pomelo relatives]. My nephew once asked my mom for some "oranges 'n' mander."

Favorite clues/answers:

• 8D. [Charging giant, informally] is AMEX, short for American Express. Surely I'm not the only one who built off the X by putting T. REX here?
• Burrowing animal alert! PRAIRIE DOG is a [Natural tunnel creator] (11D) while MOLE is an [Uninvited rooter] (42A).
• 25D. [Not to be persuaded] means UNMOVABLE.
• 26D. To GET ACROSS is to [Convey] your point.
• 30D. [Item sometimes planted in a garden], sort of, but not planted beneath the soil, not unless you're lucky that your neighbors don't want to be tacky, is a GNOME. (See also ELVES, [Noted workshop workers].)
• 34D. I don't eat CORNED BEEF, but it is indeed [Something to make a hash of].
• 49D. SKID is clued by way of [A screech may accompany it].

What I didn't much care for:

• 10A. SPAN is [6-Across, for one], and 6A is YEAR. SPAN partners up better with GET ACROSS, if you ask me. Or should just stand alone. None of this year business.
• 43A. DELS., short for delegates, are [Pol. convention attendees]. Don't recall seeing that abbreviation before.
• 45A. MESS ROOM is [Where things are bolted down on base]. Anyone not want this to be MESS HALL?
• 60A. [Etym. followers, often] clues DEFS., short for definitions. Most of my dictionaries (two out of three!) put the definitions first, followed by the etymology. Only my Merriam-Webster's Collegiate puts etyma first.
• 61A. [Tenor Cura] clues JOSE. Really? That's your go-to José? I Googled him: opera singer, born 1962. Is it bad that Ezio Pinza is so much more familiar to me than this guy?
• 2D. NEALE is clued as [Former Canucks coach Harry]. I cannot name a single hockey coach, not even for the Blackhawks.
• 6D. "YOU PASSED IT!" ["That was the turnoff!"]. I'd say "You missed the exit."
• 21D. ALOE VERAS in the plural, as [Alternative medicine treatments]? Aloe vera is a scientific name. Can those take a plural?
• 35D. [One way around Spain] is by TREN, which is not among the Spanish words most likely to be known by non-Spanish-speakers.
• 47D. The clue for crosswordese ORIEL, [Large bay], looks calculated to mislead. Does anyone like it when the payoff for a tricky clue is crosswordese? (It's a large bay window.)

Overall, the fill was smoother than we've seen in a number of other Krozel kreations, so I'll give it a modest thumbs-up. The crossings for the quad-stack are a good bit better (save TREN) than you might expect, given the sort of muck that often intersects triple-stacks, and they're mostly on the long side. So we can say that one advantage of a quad-stack is that it cannot have any crappy 3-letter abbreviations crossing it. Another plus is the Scrabbly fill—a Q, two Zs, an X, K, and J. Notably, none of those Scrabbly letters is to be found amid the 15s and their crossings.

Updated Saturday morning:

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "AV Club"—Janie's review

No—not a shout-out to the kids with the plastic pocket-liners who set up the sound and projection equipment for school events. Patrick instead takes the letters that begin A(udio)-V(isual) and interpolates them into four well-known phrases—with some very fine results, namely:

• 20A. BEAVER BELLIES [Abdomens of some dam builders?], which began life as beer bellies. This one really sparkles. It's easy to imagine those industrious beavers knocking back a few after a long day of gnawing, and eventually having to deal with their expanding waistlines. Time to build more damn dams!
• 36A. BRAVER FOX [More courageous vixen] takes its lead from Joel Chandler Harris's Br'er Fox, one of Br'er Rabbit's classic foils in his Uncle Remus stories. This is the only one of the four in which the meaning of the new phrase is not all that different from the meaning of the base phrase—and I'm afraid it suffers some as a result.
• 42A. WAVING TIP [Hint on how to greet from afar]. Ooh, this is good, as it creates its own picture and is so far away from its equally lively base phrase, wing tip.
• 56A. CAVITY COUNCIL [The American Dental Association, e.g.], which also comes up strong. It starts with city council, but that additional "AV" takes it in a whole new direction—one that takes us back to 20A, in fact. Anyone remember Bucky Beaver, Ipana toothpaste spokes-mascot?

There are several other clue/fill combos that kept me on my toes and that keep this puzzle lively:

• [It may be purple]/PROSE. Purple prose, as in Edward Bulwer-Lytton ("It was a dark and stormy night," etc...).
• [Staffs]/MANS. Staffs is a verb...
• [Number that's its own square]/ONE. This is a "do the math" clue and not a reference to a square in the grid.
• [Long-time Moore costar]/ASNER. Should be easy enough, right? But not when your thought process says, "Demi Moore? No, no long-time costar there. Oh, Dudley Moore. So the answer must be Peter COOKE... No, wait. Mary Tyler Moore! Right—Dick VAN DY... never mind..."
• [Eyes guys, e.g.]/OGLES and in the "turn-about is fair play" department, [Eyes thighs, e.g.]/LEERS. Gotta love the specificity. Gotta love the rhymes.
• [Hot shot?]/LOVE SCENE. So that's a camera shot.
• [Long lunches]/HEROS. Submarines, hoagies, grinders. Whatever they're call in your neck o' the woods, we're still talkin' about the sandwiches here.
• [It's worn on the bridal path]/VEIL. And guess what? It's worn along the bridle path, too. Check out these Victorian riding hats!
• ["Houston, we've had a problem..."]/"UH-OH"—and what a fine example of understatement that is!

Two sorta flag-raisers in the mix as well. I was unfamiliar with the term SPOOLED for [Prepared to send, as data to a printer], but it certainly makes sense to me; and then there was UKE defined as [Tiny Tim's strummer]. Is the instrument a strummer (something that gets strummed) or is Tiny Tim the strummer (the one who does the strumming)? And if the latter, does that mean this should have been clued [Tiny Tim's strum-ee]? I know. I'm in the land of overthink, but I'm afraid it goes with the territory...

Oh—and the one link you must check out is the one that goes a long way towards explaining ["An] ENOLA [Gay Christmas" (Off-Broadway show)]. Seems our multi-talented constructor was otherwise engaged in 2003. I'm only sorry I missed it. Any chance of a revival, Patrick?

Adam Cohen's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

The fill in this 72-worder is a bit drier than I had expected. The letters are mostly the common ones, and there's no showy marquee answer. The 15-letter entry across the middle, THE THREE SISTERS ([Literary characters surnamed Prozorov]), is filled with letters like E, R, S, and T. The only question-marked clue is [Dodging the draft?] for ALEE, "on the side of a ship that is sheltered from the wind." I like there to be more payoff for question-marking than a drab 4-letter word like ALEE.

A dozen clues:

• 12D. [County on the Firth of Clyde] is AYRSHIRE.
• 17A. ["Oliver!" director] is CAROL REED. I like full names in the puzzle, but it helps if the names are really famous or packed with crazy letters. Sir Reed died nearly 40 years ago and doesn't have anywhere near the name recognition of Frank Capra, Orson Welles, or John Ford.
• 26D. [With 34 Across, source of the samara fruit] is the ASH / TREE. It's the flying seed thing, not an edible fruit. Samara is also the name for maple trees' "helicopters."
• 26A. Paul ANKA is [Canada's Walk of Fame inductee]. Why, I've heard of more than half of the inductees!
• 53A. AS SEEN ON TV is a good entry, but the clue, [Common come-on], is less zippy.
• 63A. [Carnival ride] clues SEA CRUISE. Does anyone call it a "sea cruise," or just a cruise? (Carnival is a major cruise line company.)
• 6D. TERI Polo is not quite famous enough to be clued as [Polo, e.g.]. Again, as with ALEE, I want more of a payoff for a clue striving to mislead.
• 14D. I had hoped [Upright ones] would be some sort of pianos. Nope: STANDEES.
• 35D. THESAURI are [Places where land may be close to home].
• 36D. [Paramedic device] clues HEMOSTAT. It compresses a blood vessel to stanch the bleeding.
• 43D. EMEERS are [Some dynasts]. The primary spelling in English is EMIR. Secondarily, there's AMIR. EMEER is an unwelcome variant that has fallen out of fashion in most crosswords. It should be used only to facilitate better fill in its crossings, but EMEERS here crosses RAVER and UTILE, which are pretty flat.
• 57D. ["Pagliacci" part] wants you to think it's a role, but VOCE is Italian for "voice."

Frederick Healy's Los Angeles Times crossword

Excerpts from my L.A. Crossword Confidential post:

This one's back down to the easier level we've seen in recent months. I like to be expected to work hard on a Saturday puzzle—harder than I have to work on Wednesdays. Ah, well.

I was disappointed to find the first person singular pronoun lurking in five answers:

• 15A: ["Land sakes alive!"] clues "I DO DECLARE!"
• 22A: ["__ no idea!"] is completed by I HAD.
• 23A: [Cooperative after-dinner offer] is I'LL DRY.
• 29A: [Player's lament] clues I LOST.
• 41D: ["Out of the question"] clues "I CAN'T."

I can overlook a second use, but not a third, fourth, and fifth. Too much!

Highlights:

• 30A: [Voice of Mr. Magoo] (JIM BACKUS). Also the millionaire Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island. Now that's the kind of full-name answer I like in a crossword—someone whose name is familiar, plus it's got a J and K in it.
• 36A: [French capital?] (DES MOINES). Friend visiting from out of town works in Des Moines a lot. Like the answer, but frowned at the clue.
• 50A: ["High Voltage" rock band] (AC/DC). I only know "Dirty Deeds in a Dundle Jeep," as my best friend in 7th grade called it. Cute to clue the band's name with an electrical song title.
• 54A: [Shaq, 15 times] (NBA ALLSTAR). That's one more time than Michael Jordan, who interrupted his hoops career with his baseball interlude. Is 15 the record, or have others been at the top of the game for longer?
• 22D: [Revival meeting shout] (IT'S A MIRACLE). Dang it, the offical Culture Club video of the song by that name cannot be embedded. It's also the title of a Barry Manilow song.

Daily Beast, 11/13/09

2009-11-13T19:36:00.007-06:00

Time – 11:42 (paper)
“Team Palin” by Matt Gaffney

The publication of a 1A/132A [...new book by Sarah Palin] titled “GOING ROGUE” leads Matt to using the unusual Palin family names for theme answers. Whatever your opinion of the ex-governor of 109A: [Wasila home] – ALASKA, you must admit that not every family could get this puzzle treatment. Osmonds? No. Jacksons? Tito and Jermaine, maybe.
Other theme answers:
23A: [Math lessons for one of Sarah Palin’s kids?] – TRIG CLASSES. Will Trig’s kids be named Calc, Alg and Arith?
39A: [One of Sarah Palin’s kids, when she’s upset?] – WEEPING WILLOW.
56A: [What one of Sarah Palin’s kids puts in her coffee?] – BRISTOL CREAM.
84A: [One of Sarah Palin’s kids, when a slapstick prank is pulled on her?] – THE PIED PIPER.
101A: [Lamp in one of Sarah Palin’s kids’ rooms?] – TRACK LIGHTING. Isn’t high school hard enough with a regular name?
119A: [Dialect spoken by Sarah Palin’s husband?] – TODD ENGLISH. This was new to me. Todd English is a celebrity chef.
Pseudo-theme answer:
82A: [Singer Bareilles] – SARA. Didn’t know the name but I know the song.
Canadian content for the blogger:
93A: [“The Love GURU” (Mike Myers movie)]/ Compare with 32D [Mystic] - SWAMI
2D – [Bobby of NHL fame ] – ORR
115D – [Neighbor of Sask.] – NDAK. Shouldn’t that be neighbour?
Other stuff:
25A: [“Thus Spoke Zarathustra” author] – NIETZSCHE. Made me think of 2001, a Space Odyssey music.
49A: [Throw a fit] – GO APE/76D [Freak out] – PANIC/51D: [Audience disapproval] – BOO HISS
(Is there a hidden political commentary in this puzzle?)
50A: [Fast spreading idea] – MEME. A slow spreading idea is called a YOUYOU.
51A: [Jaw covering] – BEARD. Clever and yet ordinary.
62A: [Fields Medal winner Terence] TAO. That is a big mathematics prize. I’ll bet Mike Nothnagel knew this. I’ll bet Amy didn’t.
69A: [X] – CHI. You wrote TEN, didn’t you? Yes you did. Don’t lie to me.
73A: [Grossmutter, casually] – OMA. Name two terms for grandmother that I didn’t know. I prefer Bubbie.
100A: [Maine college] – BATES. Would you go to a college named after the motel in Psycho?
42D: [Magazine whose next cover features Sonia Sotomayor] - LATINA
54D: [“About SCHMIDT”]. 2002 Jack Nicholson movie. Or another term for grandmother that I didn’t know. Either answer is equally possible.
59D: [Crab-eater’s tool] – MALLET. Why would you eat something that needs a mallet?
91D: [Fencers and hurdlers, e.g.] – ATHLETES. Not in the Winter Olympic, coming to Vancouver in 2010.
95D: [U.S. senator with a palindromic name] – Daniel AKAKA of Hawaii. Not Alaska, despite the A’s and K’s.
98D: [Watch whose days are numbered] – DIGITAL. Clue of the week!
See you next week!

Friday, 11/13/09

2009-11-12T22:18:00.006-06:00

NYT 5:57
BEQ 5:37
LAT 4:14
CHE 3:50
CS untimed
WSJ 8:07

Dana Motley's New York Times crossword

It's been a couple years since the last Dana Motley puzzle. You know what her themelesses are notable for? Rather than going with grids with longish stacked answers, triple-stacked 15s, or corner blocks filled with 7s, she spreads her long fill all around. Rumor has it such a grid is easier to fill than the stack-heavy ones are. One good thing about them from a solving standpoint is that the longer answers serve as bridges between the puzzle's various zones, so you can extend some footholds if you get a few long entries early on.

That said, there are some insanely tough clues here. For example, 1D: [Port near Ogre]. Ogre, it turns out, is a Latvian town of 26,000 that is ridiculously new for a European city, dating back only to 1928. And "Ogre" doesn't shout "must be Latvian" to most of us. The answer is RIGA, but that's a roundabout way to approach it. Speaking of place names that start with O, OSHKOSH is the 39A: [Seat of Winnebago County], Wisconsin—but there are counties by that name in Illinois and Iowa, too. OHIO is clued by way of being 59A: [Title locale in a Leonard Bernstein song where "life was so cozy"]. I relied on the crossings for all three of these. The other geo answer, ANGOLA (48D: [Cabinda is an exclave of it]), is the only place name the clue helped me to get.

Highlights in the fill:

• 17A. [Big wheels, often] clues GAS GUZZLER. Crossword clues more often use "big wheel" to mean a boss, so I like the change.
• 26A. Okay, this clue didn't help me much at all. [Funshine, Grumpy or Love-a-lot] is a CARE BEAR. Good answer, goofball clue that I am the wrong age to know.
• 60A. ACROPHOBIA is the [Source of high anxiety?]. Fear of heights, of course.
• 3D. [She's identified with a cause] clues POSTER GIRL.
• 18D. ZYDECO is a [Grammy category starting in 2007]. I saw Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band in college.
• 22D. WELCHERS, another spelling of welshers, are [Debt disregarders, slangily]. My dictionary says the word's origin is unknown, so don't get your knickers in a twist defending the morality of the Welsh people.
• 24D. ABSINTHE is the [Potent stuff called "the green fairy"]. I knew ABSINTHE was green, but not that it had this nickname.
• 30D. BOOSTER BOX is an [Item-concealing shoplifting aid]. Never heard of this one.

Other favorite clues:

• 10A. [Top or bottom, in baseball] clues a HALF of an inning. Here's why the clue makes me laugh.
• 38D. [1/768 gallon] is a TEASPOON. Remind me to tell this one to my kid.
• 50D. [One may give facts about acts] clues EMCEE. I was thinking of acts that are passed by Congress rather than entertainment acts introduced by an EMCEE.

Quibbles:

• 16A. [Stick out in a restaurant?] clues OLEO. Out where? On the table? I have never seen a stick of margarine on a restaurant table. Out in the restaurant kitchen? Boo to the clue.
• 21A. [American goldfinch] clues YELLOWBIRD or YELLOW BIRD. It is a small yellow bird. Wikipedia redirects yellowbird to the yellow warbler. Is this answer meant to be a specific bird name or just the description of a bird of a certain color? Because as a generic phrase, it's not good fill. It needs to be a specific term for something.
• 44A. [Opposite of me, in Munich] is SIE, which means "she," "they," or (when capitalized) the formal "you." I'd argue that "me" does not have an opposite, per se, and surely not an opposite with three distinct meanings. Ulrich or Zulema, back me up here.
• 53D. [Worrier's words] are "OH, ME"? Who says that? Anyone you know? "Oh, me, oh, my," sure. "Oh, my," of course. But not OH ME or AH ME, which keep showing up in crosswords. I have just consulted my husband about the utility of OH ME and AH ME and he said "no [bleep]ing way." It's fill like this that turns off newbies, isn't it? More so than OLEO? Maybe it's a tie.

Clues that may stymie:

• 6A. [Watch things, briefly] are LCDS. Meh.
• 29A. A spherical GLOBE of the earth is a [Meridian shower] in that it shows the location of the meridian and the equator.
• 47A. [Was an accountant?] clues NARRATED, as in "gave an accounting of a tale." Not wild about this clue.
• 56A. [NFL'er Olsen or Toler] clues GREG. Who? Husband tells me G. Olsen plays for the Bears.
• 67A. [They're applied to some backs] clues WAXES. As in the wax that's used to strip out body hair?
• 5D. [Sch. whose sports teams are the Violets] is NYU. Really? Did not know that. I like it. Violets are closely related to pansies. Pretty flowers.
• 7D. [Kale kin] is COLLARD, as in collard greens. Looks weird without "greens" appended to it.
• 27D. ["Dawson's Creek" role] is PACEY. Except that here, we need ANDIE. Who? Not one of the core four characters, ANDIE was played by Meredith Monroe, who played a 16-year-old when she was 30. Now, that's just silly. Andie MacDowell wants her clue back.
• 28D. [Chloe in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," e.g.] is an AUNT.
• 43D. [Dog for logs] is an ANDIRON. Not familiar with this use of "dog."
• 57D. EINE is a basic German word, one of the ways of saying "a." ["Nosferatu, ___ Symphonie des Grauens"] is missing its EINE.

Overall, I think this was harder than the usual Friday puzzle. And you?

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme is "add an R to words that end with GE":

• RADAR RANGER is a [Park official who tickets speeding bears?]. Radar range is not familiar to me, but the Amana Radarange is.
• [Smallest allowable bet?] might be the MINIMUM WAGER. Minimum wage is certainly familiar.
• [Steals a plumbing supply?] clues TAKES THE PLUNGER. I'd clue that as [Steals a plumber's helper?] or [Steals a bathroom tool?] or something—I think of "plumbing supply" as being pipes and valves.
• [San Fernando creator of fake van Goghs?] could be a VALLEY FORGER. Speaking Valleyspeak, no doubt. "Grody to the max!"
• [Burrowing creature cited for excellence?] is MERIT BADGER. Brendan Quigley just had MERIT BADGE in a recent cigarette-themed puzzle.

Weirdest long fill: [Stereotypical pratfall cause] clues BANANA SKIN. SKIN?!? Not BANANA PEEL? Who calls it a BANANA SKIN? Not me.

James Sajdak's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Produce Literature"

This week's CHE theme is works of literature with fruit in their titles. To accommodate two 15s and and two 16s, the grid's stretched a little taller. The books are THE CHERRY ORCHARD, A RAISIN IN THE SUN, THE GOLDEN APPLES, and THE GRAPES OF WRATH.

Favorite clues/answers:

• LARRUP means [Thrash].
• RICE CHEX is an [Ingredient in a certain party mix]. Would someone remind me to buy Rice Chex?
• ALLAH is a [Word spoken when reciting the shahada]. What's that? It's this, the ritual declaration of belief in Islam. (See also SALAAMS, [Respectful greetings].
• [Audacity] and MOXIE are more or less synonymous.
• [One with a heart of stone?] is a DRUPE. Apt for a puzzle with this theme—DRUPEs are stone fruit, like peaches, plums, and cherries. (See also: PEAR, [Popular compote fruit].
• DOORMAT is an [Overly unassertive person]. Not to be confused with a doorman (which differs by one letter).
• [Trooper on the highway, e.g.] is an ISUZU, as in the Isuzu Trooper SUV.
• Indy [500 letters?] are STP.

Who is this? [Field of White?] clues STYLE, but I can't think of a relevant person in fashion/style named White.

Updated Friday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle,"Inland Seas"—Janie's review

In the world of cryptic puzzles, they're known as "hidden answers." These are the words that can be found by looking at the last letters of one word and joining them with the first letters of the next one. Today Martin's theme fill gives us two such examples and one in which the word in question (see title...) falls within another in its entirety. The beauty of this particular construction is that in each case, the "inland sea" occupies the seventh, eighth and ninth squares of the row it appears in. And there's a little bonus fill as well. The three places you'll find those hidden bodies of water are within:

• 17A. IS THIS SEAT TAKEN? [Moviegoer's question].
• 35A. PROPOSE A TOAST [Raise one's glass].
• 54A. JAPANESE ANEMONE [Showy garden plant of the buttercup family]. Attractive to members of the APHID [Garden pest] family, too, I fear. Today's IRISES are not clued botanically, but anatomically as [Pigmented eye parts]. Durn!

And bonus fill:

• 33D. SEA [Word in the center of all three long entries]. This one's intentional. Just in case the key element ELUDED [Gave the slip to] you... This one (I suspect), sitting right next to it, is not:
• 31D. SEAMS [Clothes lines?] Hmmm. Sure wish there'd been a way to avoid using this word...

Elsewhere, there's a healthy amount of longer fill, clued in a very straightforward way, so it's not too difficult to complete the grid—even with the likes of ROAST PIG [Luau food], MOUTHWASH [Listerine, for one] and ANACONDAS [Jungle crushers]. If they're on the loose, you might want to set out some SNARES [Game keepers?]. Ouch.

There's a little computer mini-theme going on in the Texas portion of the grid with EXE [Computer file suffix] adjacent to USER [Computer operator], which shares its "U" with
URL [Web browser entry].

But my fave combo today? No, not NESTLÉ [Crunch maker] or ORIOLE [Baltimore player], but TWO for [Tango requirement]. Sing out, Dean. Nowhere in this clip, however will you see a tango... Here you definitely will!

Elizabeth Gorski's Wall Street Journal crossword, "For Your Inner Child"

Wow, really? New York City has a PULASKI DAY PARADE? I had no idea. It's a government and school holiday here in Chicago, but I didn't know NYC celebrated Casimir Pulaski at all.

That and the other theme entries contain an "inner child," or KID. I'm not crazy about the theme answers, which don't feel all that natural to me. KHAKI DRESS? KABUKI DANCE, not drama? CHICKEN TERIYAKI DINNER, not steak and not lunch? What I like better is the long non-theme fill:

• 46A. SEX ORGANS are [Features of anatomically correct dolls]. People have 'em, too.
• 80A. WHACK JOBS are [Nutters].
• 92A. SAY PLEASE is a [Reminder from Mom]. I'm more circumspect than that. I say "Psst, did you tell her..." and then my KID says "please" or "thank you."
• 126A. [They may be dusted] clues CRIMES SCENES. Not, you'll note, my bookshelves and furniture.
• 4D. I like the SCULPTURE clue: [It might be a bust]. Indeed.
• 82D. Full name! JOHN DEREK [was married to Ursula Andress and Linda Evans]. Also, notably, to Bo Derek, but that would kinda give the answer away.

Most unusual fill: 30D: TUK, [Barbados musical style]. That one's new to me. I have seen FELLAH (54A: [Egyptian peasant]) before, but quite seldom.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "The Final Four"

The theme is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right? SUDDEN DEATH, FEAST OR FAMINE, ENOS SLAUGHTER, and THE ART OF WAR? Apparently not: They're Conquest, War, Famine, and Death, no Slaughter. So it's just four things that can be "final" in terms of your life?

I didn't care for I'M BAD, the [Little devil's observation], right at 1-Across. Had no idea an IN-RUN was a [Ski-jump feature]. Thought the commonest phrase was PUB CRAWLS, not BAR CRAWLS—haven't seen the latter. Grumbled at the clue [Last year that was a palindrome, in Roman numerals] for MMII, Roman for the Arabic number 2002. Does the word palindrome really apply to numbers? And oh, crap, now we're expected to know the names of Mad Men characters even though a vast majority of Americans do not watch the show?

I had some crazy typing today, so GRITH (GIRTH!) put an R in a Roman numeral, and MICS (MISC!) put the S in OFF-SCREEN (OFF-CAMERA!). D'oh. It's one of those mornings.

Highlights:

• AL LEWIS, Grandpa Munster, is the gubernatorial candidate at 25D.
• [Shock preventer: Abbr.] clues EMT. Took a while to make sense out of this: paramedics try to prevent you from going into shock.
• [Epic ___] FAIL.
• [Puzzler Trip] PAYNE! Howdy, Trip of Triple Play Puzzles fame.

Thursday, 11/12/09

2009-11-11T21:50:00.005-06:00

NYT 6:07
Tausig untimed
CS untimed (J)/3:27 (A)
LAT 2:59

Go here for Eric Berlin's specially commissioned crossword, made for Rex Parker, Patron of the Cruciverbal Arts via Eric's kickstarter.com project. It's Rex's 40th birthday this month.

Brendan Quigley's New York Times crossword

Maybe it's just my browser that does this; I don't know. If you use the applet, do you often have the rightmost characters of a clue cut off by the red scroll-bar ends? 3D: [Excited answer to "Who want / ...?"] is what I saw, with a line break after "want." Well, that's not right at all. I suppose it's just "wants," but I spent some time trying to approach it from different points in the clue list to see if I could move the clue out from behind the red bar...and then I remembered the clock was ticking away. Oh! Moving on.

After I finished the puzzle, I replaced the {DIAMOND} rebus squares (which I'd entered as a D) with asterisks that look ever so slightly like diamonds. Easier to make sense out of, no? So yes, the gimmick theme is a rebus, with five {DIAMOND}s, one in the central answer and four others in symmetrical spots in the top and bottom rows. The sparkling theme answers:

• 1A. [Tycoon who was reputedly the first person in New York City to own an automobile] is {DIAMOND} JIM BRADY. That is, of course, the man the Brady Law is named after. (Just kidding. Different Jim Brady.)
• 1D. [Union symbol?] is {DIAMOND} RING. Were you thinking of political unions? I was.
• 10A. {DIAMOND}HEAD is a [Hawaiian landmark].
• 10D. [Chase Field team] are the Arizona {DIAMOND}BACKS. Sometimes they're called the D-Backs, aren't they? So that one looked fine in my grid without the full rebus word.
• 36A. [Classic marketing tagline] is "A {DIAMOND} IS FOREVER." Did you see that Blood Diamond movie? Hard-hitting.
• 37D. {DIAMOND} LIL is a classic [Mae West role].
• 67D. The silliest song of the '80s, for my money, is NEIL {DIAMOND}'s "Heartlight." A song about E.T.'s glowing heart? "Let it make a happy glow for all the world to see"? Major cheese! ["Heartlight" singer, 1982] is the full clue.
• 44D. BLACK {DIAMOND} is the [Symbol for a difficult ski run]. I couldn't master the gently sloping hill by the ski resort parking lot, so I'm pretty sure the black diamond runs are beyond me.
• 68D. [Home setting] is a BASEBALL {DIAMOND}.
• 54D. The HOPE {DIAMOND} is the [Subject of a renowned curse]. THE CUBS wouldn't fit here.

I like the variety of diamond meanings here—two nicknames, a surname, three gems, two baseball references, a place name, and the shape as symbol.

Five other bullet points:

• 20A. [Like some fancy soap bubbles] clues TORIC. That's soap bubbles being blown all fancy, not bubbles from a fancy bar of soap.
• 40A. CURL is clued [Show signs of age, maybe]. Like the corner of a poster or a book page?
• Good gravy, so many other people's names clued by their works, and I had to rely on the crossings to get them. ["The Red Tent" author Diamant]—hey, Diamant is German for "diamond," isn't it?—is named ANITA, but I blanked on that. R. KELLY's the [Singer with the 2002 hit "Ignition"]. Thomas ARNE is clued with [His first opera was "Rosamund"]. And Andre GIDE is your ["Corydon" author].
• 32A. RECTO is clued as the right-sided page, a RECTO—[Chapter's starting point, usually]. This answer never, ever gets clued as a prefix for "vaginal."
• 17A. ISOLATIVE means [Tending to cut off] and is not a common word.

Updated Thursday morning:

Tyler Hinman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Leeway"—Janie's review

Well, lookee here—a new constructor joins the CrosSynergy roster of all-stars. Welcome, Tyler—and congrats on a great start out of the gate. All of the fill today seems skewed to a slightly younger solving audience—or let me say it's more inclusive of several generations of solvers—and I take this as a good thing. Tyler would be a member of Gen Y, but he's included lots today for the [Gen-___ ] X-ER as well as Boomers and their parents.

All of the theme-fill focuses on celebs of the stage, screen and rock 'n' roll who go by their full names and whose middle name is Lee. Hence the title... And those folks'd be:

• 20A. JAMIE LEE CURTIS ["Halloween" actress].
• 33A. TOMMY LEE JONES [He went to Harvard with Al Gore] (where they were roommates for a time).
• 40A. JERRY LEE LEWIS ["Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" singer]. The AIRWAVEs [Transmission medium] could barely contain him!
• 51A. JONNY LEE MILLER [Title actor of "Eli Stone"]. Have never seen it, but Mr. Miller happens to be in New York City right now in the Broadway production of After Miss Julie, where his co-star is Sienna Miller (no relation). Have never seen "Entourage" either, but courtesy of the puzzles, do know that ARI is the name of the [...agent].

(The musical theatre has a shout out to Lee as a last name, in Sherman Edwards's jaunty "The Lees of Virginia" from 1776. Thank you for giving me the leeway to follow that tangent...)

The grid today is fresh indeed, with the three-stacks of sevens at center-top and -bottom, the five-square at center, the two six-columns in the NW and SE and the fabulous vertical 15s that flank them. And it's filled just beautifully, to boot. Those 15s are especially lively: HIS MASTER'S VOICE [Trademark associated with a dog and a gramophone] and WAXING NOSTALGIC [Remembering the good times] (which is something folks who grew up with gramophones probably enjoy doing).

It's a bit too soon to be waxing nostalgic about SIM CITY [Long-running computer game series], isn't it? Still, it does make for more fill of the contemporary sort. Ditto DRE [Eminem's mentor, popularly]. Now ["Africa" band] TOTO—well, that may be another story... Nice to see Toto clued in connection with the band and not The Wizard of Oz. (Also nice to see Toto in the same grid with TUTU [Arabesque attire].) There's another group from the same (basic, if slightly earlier) period: [1970s band] MOTT [the Hoople]. Plenty in today's puzzle for DJ'S [They spin in clubs] to choose from.

Other fill and/or clues I like: TOOL BOX [Handyman's carryall] (probably for that "X"); DAY JOB [One might be advised not to quit it]; the colorful [Confuzzled] for AT SEA (confused + puzzled...); ["Who wants ice cream?" response] for "I DO!"; [Optimist's word] for CAN; the presence of both (Abba) EBAN and JEW... the former clued as [2001 Israel Prize recipient], the latter as [Seder participant, usually]; and finally, did you know that MAY is [National Salad Month]? News to me, but it's that kind of nugget of info in a clue that keeps things interesting! IMHO ["As I see it..." in a chat room] (or on line...).

I was surprised to see that the title of Tyler's puzzle, "Leeway," included the LEE part in it. I thought that was verboten in titled puzzles. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the puzzle had an impressive ladder structure—each of the two vertical 15s intersect all four of the theme entries.

Kelsey Blakley's Los Angeles Times crossword

The DNA SEQUENCE theme includes five answers in which there's a hidden DNA:

• 17A. [All-big-gun battleship] is a DREADNAUGHT. It's also spelled dreadnought, which is what I first went with.
• 24A. A [Deeply ingrained habit] has become SECOND NATURE.
• 39A. [Shanghais] means KIDNAPS.
• 42A. OLD NAVY is a [Gap subsidiary].
• 53A. [Cuba or Puerto Rico, e.g.] clues ISLAND NATION, but Puerto Rico doesn't have autonomous nation status. There are a zillion other island nations, from Madagascar to Kiribati to Iceland to Grenada to Taiwan, so I'm not sure why this clue includes a non-nation.

Most mysterious answer: 61D: [Nestle cereal beverage], or ECCO. Ecco is also a brand of practical shoes that, it turns out, don't fit my feet well. The Google page for an Ecco search is filled with shoes. Nestlé Australia mentions ECCO, the drink. Ecco doesn't exist on the Nestlé USA website. Boo! Terrible clue! This should be a shoe clue. The crossing could plausibly be either I GET or I GOT, and since ECCO is clearly a shoe, I was tempted to try OCCO for the drink. Took a gamble that it was an unfamiliar ECCO and won.

I haven't got anything else of interest to say about this puzzle, so I'll move along to the next puzzle now.

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Union Agreement"

Ben's wedding is this weekend. To mark the occasion, he snuck an I DO into four familiar phrases, with the resulting made-up phrases clued without reference to the I DO:

• 18A. [Sources of odd teenage behavior?] are MAD LIBIDOS. Mad-Libs are those fill-in-the-blank books that can have zany results. My son enjoys Mad-Libs.
• 29A. The common (but not technically accurate) term "Bush Senior" feeds BUSHIDO SENIOR, or a [Gray-haired samurai?].
• 49A. "SEE YA, IDOLATER" could be [Words of farewell to an object-worshipper?]. "See ya later" is the base phrase.
• 62A. [Quick look at various melon liqueurs?] is MIDORI SCAN (MRI scan). I have never tried Midori and in fact seldom even see it in stores or bars. But I used to look at ads for it in Vanity Fair years ago, and the ads made it look like all the cool people drink it regularly.

I liked this theme a lot. When the base phrases are themselves entertaining fill, a theme has extra oomph. Highlights in the fill:

• Eddie VEDDER is the [Writer of the song "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town"]. My son has better hair than Eddie Vedder—true story.
• FREEGANS, rhymes with vegans, are [Certain anti-capitalist dumpster-divers].
• AUTO-TUNE is [The "A" in Jay-Z's "D.O.A."]. That's "death of Auto-Tune," yes?
• I just booked my February flights for the ACPT. I virtually possess an E-TICKET, or [Modern travel provision].
• I learned something from the clue for CRO: [___-Magnon man (outdated archaeological concept]. Outdated? Really? Tell me more.
• The RED SCARE was a [20th century witch hunt].

Wednesday, 11/11/09

2009-11-10T21:53:00.009-06:00

Onion 5:18
BEQ 5:05
NYT 3:21
LAT 3:07
CS untimed

My son will be home with me tomorrow—Veterans Day. Thanks to war veterans old and new for their service. I wish you all peace.

Kelsey Blakley compiles a set of phrases that contain four different letters, which are used ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR times apiece:

• 17A. [User of barley malt] is a BEER BREWER. One W, two Bs, three Rs, four Es.
• 30A. [Emphatic boast of responsibility] clues I DID INDEED. I dunno, feels more like a boast of accomplishment than responsibility.
• 46A. [One way to be armed] is TO THE TEETH.
• 64A. This jingle/slogan meant nothing to me, but the crossings told me ROTO-ROOTER is the ["And away go troubles..." company].

My solving experience was par for the Wednesday course, judging by my solving time, but it felt a little rougher. Here are...let's call it ten. Ten clues:

• 15A. [McGwire's friendly home-run rival] is Sammy SOSA. Have you seen the latest pictures in which his "rejuvenated" skin looks freakishly pale?
• 19A. [Stick in the mud] is the verb MIRE.
• 37A. A street GANG is a [Turf group].
• 38A. [Slo-___ fuse] clues BLO. I can think only of Rainblo gumballs.
• 51A. Never heard of this ORB, the [Marvel Comics villain with an eyeball-like helmet].
• 68A. NORMS? [They're par for the course].
• 9D. [Unbending] clues HARD-LINE. Are you HARD-LINE when it comes to crossword puzzle quality?
• 'Tis the season. 26A: ["Punkin" cover] is FROST and 47D: [Like a jack-o'-lantern] is HOLLOW.
• 32D. [Key shade] is vowel-consonant-O-consonant-Y. EBONY this time; could be IVORY.

Allan Parrish's Los Angeles Times crossword

This theme falls squarely out of my wheelhouse. I listened to top-40 radio in high school (early '80s with an emphasis on new wave) and then went to college, land of R.E.M. and Violent Femmes and college bands. By graduation in '88, I was completely out of touch with the poppiest pop music. So a theme with the titles of one rap cut from 2002 and two pop songs from 1989? Crossings! Easy crossings. The theme:

• 20A. [2002 #1 hit for rapper Ja Rule] is ALWAYS ON TIME.
• 36A. [1989 #1 hit for Paula Abdul] is FOREVER YOUR GIRL.
• 56A. [1989 #1 hit for the Bangles] is ETERNAL FLAME.

I'd never heard of any of these songs, so I took a gander at them on YouTube. I discovered 20A is laced with profanity and not a very feminist cut at all. 36A was poppy with a too-long instrumental portion near the beginning (dance! keep dancing!) and not my style. The only Bangles song I know is...wait, am I thinking of Katrina & the Waves? "Walk Like an Egyptian" is Bangles, "Walking on Sunshine" is Katrina. Yes? The live performance of 56A I watched on YouTube suggests I like the Bangles OK, but I really do not know their oeuvre.

I'm sorry, nobody asked about my musical history. Anyway—I liked a lot of the fill in this puzzle. Check out L.A. Crossword Confidential Wednesday morning for more details.

Ben Tausig's Onion A.V. Club crossword

Either this puzzle's a notch or two harder than usual or I'm a notch sleepier. The nuptial theme celebrates Ben's upcoming (this very weekend!) wedding. 17A/58A BREAKING / THE GLASS is clued as [a Jewish wedding tradition...and the theme of this puzzle]. The three longest answers have a broken GLASS interspersed among their letters.

The toughest spots for me were 7D: [Spanish province]/SEGIA (never heard of it) and 29A: [Sport spun off from James Naismith's game]/NETBALL (never heard of it). The dictionary entry tells me netball is a mostly British game with seven-player teams and a requirement to stand still when in possession of the ball. That must be weird for a basketball fan to watch. Also, down at 43D: ["Orlando Furioso" poet] is ARIOSTO. Why did I need all seven crossings?

Favorite five:

• ESTELLE Getty [was actually a year younger than Bea, despite playing her mother on TV]'s Golden Girls.
• [Oft-knocked-off thing] is a HANDBAG. That's "knocked off" in terms of being counterfeited.
• [Emulates the chicken] clues CROSSES, as in "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
• BABYGAP is a [Clothing store with models who weigh A LOT less than Ralph Lauren's]. Ha!
• LOCA is the [Word rhymed with "mocha," in a 1999 Ricky Martin hit]. I may have stopped listening to most pop music a decade before "La Vida Loca," but some songs are simply inescapable.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Proudly They Served"—Janie's review

Perhaps not at first glance, but this is a really lovely puzzle. Not only does it pay Veteran's Day tribute to four U.S. presidents who (as younger men) served in the armed forces during wartime, but the grid is clued in a lively manner that boosts its "oomph." See if you don't agree. The theme fill is pretty straightforward—although you do have to use some "process of elimination" thinking (and/or the crosses...) to zero in on the correct fill. All of the clues name a "war" veteran and end with the phrase [...who served as a U.S president]. In case you didn't know:

• 20A. [World War II veteran...] LYNDON JOHNSON. Also Ike, JFK, Nixon, Ford, GWH Bush. Carter was still at Annapolis; Reagan served in the military but his eyesight kept him from active duty (and full "veteran" status)... Here's the skinny.
• 28A. [World War I veteran...] HARRY TRUMAN (the only U.S. president with that distinction, btw).
• 46A. [Revolutionary War veteran...] JAMES MONROE (ditto Andrew Jackson and some guy named George Washington...). There's a bonus with this war and its heroes by way of [American Revolutionary soldier Nathan] HALE, he of "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" fame. Do they make 'em like that any more?
• 57A. [Civil War veteran...] CHESTER ARTHUR (likewise Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley).

In addition to this little history lesson, we get a lotta lively clues and clue/fill combos to keep things peppy. There's:

• [To-do] for FLAP;
• [Do to do] for OCTAVE—so here, do is pronounced "doe," as in "...a deer, a female deer...";
• ["Zip-] A-DEE [-Doo-Dah"]. An example of do to do in "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah": that first "Zip-" is do and the final "Doo-" is the do that's an octave higher;
• [Usher's creator] for POE. As in the short story from 1839, "The Fall of the House of Usher" and not Usher the entertainer... Never read the story? Want to re-read it? Here'a a link. (Public domain and the internet. A heady combination, no?);
• [Zaire's Mobutu] SESE [Seko], a bad leader with a great crossword puzzle name whose regime had the dubious distinction of being synonymous with the concept of kleptocracy;
• ["Dagnabbit!] for "NERTS!";
• [It's good to make them meet] for ENDS;
• [Not a cutting edge blade?] for EPEE; and my fave
• [It's more in an adage] for LESS, as in architect Mies van der Rohe's minimalist observation: "Less is more."

I only wish the long but clinical INANIMATE and GERMICIDE, clued as [Lifeless] and [Disinfectant] respectively could have been given the same clever treatment as these shorter entries; ditto KNEECAP [Triangular leg bone]. Better is ARMOIRE with the visual [Where shirts and ties may be kept] or the active [Dangled a carrot in front of] for TEMPTED.

As for not only our leaders, but all of our men and women who have served in the armed forces and seen active duty—our most profound respect and appreciation is yours. And not only on Veterans Day.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Wednesday"

All right, I gotta feed my kid breakfast and oversee some homework, so let me head straight to the list of favorites.

Favorite word: TRENCHANT, or [Sharp-edged]. I need to use this word more often.

Favorite clue: [People mover?] for a NEWSSTAND that moves a lot of issues of People.

Favorite fill: MAO JACKET atop AQUA VELVA, goofy YACHT ROCK, KLIBAN the ["Cat" cartoonist].

Other clues I liked: [Thelonious Monk supporter] is his PIANO STOOL. Gloria STEINEM is the [Feminist who wrote "Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions]. [Mythical realm on one end of the rainbow bridge Bifrost] is ASGARD; I don't know a ton of Norse mythology but it's so appealing.

MGWCC #75

2009-11-10T11:00:00.003-06:00

crossword 4:57
puzzle -2:00 minutes (approximately)

hola. hell month is over at matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, and this week's easy-breezy puzzle, "Ain't No Way," is proof. the straightforward theme involves people whose first name is almost a state (or two):

[She was personal couturier to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis] is somebody named CAROLINA HERRERA. except that crosswords have led me to believe it was OLEG cassini, no?
["Mrs. Dalloway" author] is VIRINIA WOOLF. you shouldn't be afraid of her. her books are excellent.
["The Secret Life of Bees" actress, 2008] is DAKOTA FANNING. for somebody with a long and not unusually vowel-heavy name, she shows up a lot in crosswords. there's no other explanation for why i know who this is, since i certainly haven't seen any of her movies.
pulling everything together (and spelling it out in impossible-to-miss detail) is the last theme clue: [Be without "stated" aim in life -- like the three people in this puzzle's theme entries] is HAVE NO DIRECTION.

so north/south CAROLINA, west VIRGINIA, and south/north DAKOTA ... see? (yes, of course you see. why am i belaboring the point?) speaking of points, the instructions this week tell us that There are three points you need for this week's MGWCC. This week's contest answer is the fourth point, the one you don't need. that would be east, although east carolina is ... okay, no, it's not a state.

the fill contained some good, some bad, some ugly, and some unfamiliar:

under the "good" heading would fall KOREAN, the [Cuisine with the beef dish called "bulgogi"]. mmm. mmm! my son's birthday was yesterday, and we had some bulgogi at the party. there was a bit left over, so we had bulgogi again tonight for dinner. did i mention mmm? because yeah, mmm.
also under "good": DILI, [East Timor's capital]. last week, for no really good reason, i decided to learn all the countries and capitals of the world by doing those infernal sporcle geography quizzes. i did eventually learn all 195, so this was a nice gimme for me at 1a, even though sporcle prefers to call this country timor l'este. anyway, i had to learn all the countries and capitals back in 10th grade, but east timor wasn't a country then, so this one was new to me as of a few weeks ago.
file this under "bad": IS IT A ["boy or girl?"] is a fairly awkward partial, made more awkward by the presence of IT'S ME and I LIKE IT elsewhere in the grid.
definitely "ugly": [Get an ___ (fail)] F ON is the worst partial i've seen since "LA, A note to follow so(l)." i guess we can be glad that the answer wasn't AN F ON.
either "bad" or "ugly": crosswordese OPA, the [German grandpa]. OMA is the grandma equivalent.
the "unfamiliar" category includes california gubernatorial candidate MEG whitman, "the GONG show" (?) and four people named COHN i've never heard of (al, roy, mindy, or marc).
gratuitous chess clue of the week (which is really its own category, i guess): the [Annual chess tournament won in 1957 by 14-year-old Bobby Fischer] is the US OPEN. and yes, that's as absurd as it sounds. more absurd than tyler hinman winning the ACPT at age 20.

that's all from me this week. peace out.

Tuesday, 11/10/09

2009-11-09T20:58:00.008-06:00

Jonesin' 3:57
NYT 2:50
LAT 2:30
CS untimed

Uh, yeah, hi. I haven't done the puzzle yet because it's about to come out but I am about to leave to take a friend to a late-night MRI appointment (they have those!), and I just got home from the vaccination clinic (2.5-hour wait). Gah!

Go ahead and discuss amongst yourselves for the time being. It's Tuesday. How mystifying can a Tuesday theme be, anyway?

Updated Tuesday morning:

Bruce Venzke & Stella Daily's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Assorted Searches"—Janie's review

Last Tuesday, Doug Peterson gave us a puzzle entitled "Search Party." Bruce and Stella look to have developed the idea Doug set in motion. Now where the connection between today's title and today's theme fill is concerned, what ya sees is what ya gets: four theme phrases, each describing the object of a different search. The variety and range of quests, however, makes for some very fresh fill, and there's a nice SENSE of PLAY in the non-theme fill as well. Cue up The Coasters' "Searchin'" as you, too, go looking for the:

• 17A. [Object of a Ponce de León search] FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.
• 26A. [Object of an eHarmony.com search] PERFECT MATCH. Finian's Rainbow is enjoying a well-reviewed revival on Broadway right now, and in that Burton Lane/Yip Harburg score, our heroine Sharon explains in song that in matters of the heart, she'd been well-advised to "look to the rainbow" and then "follow the fella who follows a dream." Ah, for the days before the internet!
• 48A. [Object of a Sir Lancelot search] THE HOLY GRAIL. Wait—ya mean?...I thought that was the object of a Monty Python search!
• 63A. [Object of many a hopeful machine inventor's search] PERPETUAL MOTION. Hopeful—and deluded...

Bruce and Stella do name a lot of names right at the top of their puzzle: EDIE McClurg, GENA Rowlands, Mos DEF, Dr. PHIL, OONA (O'Neill) Chaplin, and Burt LAHR [...of "The Wizard of Oz"] (the score of which was written by our pal Yip Harburg with Harold Arlen). But they also give us several fill combinations that can be nicely tied together in a sub-theme kinda way. For instance, there's a [Quaint exclamation] for EGAD, and also a [Quaintly polite response], YES'M. Also quaint to my ear (and totally charming), is [Have a crush on, to a Brit], for FANCY. In baseball, if you [Overthrow, for one], you commit an ERROR. An error of a different sort is a TYPO, as demonstrated in [Thsi clue has one]. If it's more than that—a word that's wrong or a sentence that can be cut, say—the offending text may be marked DELE [Editor's "take it out"].

[Do-___ ] RE-MI is the way many a singer will warm up, tune up the voice. TUNE-UPS, though are also [Car maintenance requirements]. Benzoyl peroxide treats ACNE; ACME is [Wile E. Coyote's favorite catalogue company. IGNITES is a word for [Sets ablaze]; when something's [Going out, as a fire], it's DYING.

I liked the misdirection of [Stuff in blue books?] for SMUT. And you thought this was a reference to your college EXAM booklet. Then again, maybe the stuff in your exam books was smut... (You know—for your History of Porn class...) STIR is but one of the many great words for another great word, [Hoosegow]. Clink, pokey, cooler, coop, jug, can. Colorful language for a place where "grey" is the new everything, and the only kind of companionship might be a CHIA PET...

Alan Arbesfeld's' New York Times crossword

Okay! I'm only 12 hours behind schedule. Why, I'll be caught up in no time. Maybe.

Eh, I don't love this puzzle. The theme entries are five phrases that begin with the words TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, which apparently is a a line associated with WOODY /ALLEN. First, I do not like Woody Allen. Second, never would've thought he was connected to that line. Two non-theme answers are stacked with the first and last theme answers and are the same length, which is not optimal. And then there are a zillion two-word answers littering the grid, along with a three-word, 9-letter phrase clued as a partial. Two short answers (TONY, EDIE Falco) are tied to THE SOPRANOS, but why? The THE is part of the Woody Allen theme. It's distracting to shift the focus to The Sopranos.

The glut of two-word answers includes SIC 'EM crossing SIT ON and IN AWE, SAW IN, partial Q AS, I'LL DRY, and I LIED. None is particularly juicy.

As for the theme entries themselves, I like THE SOPRANOS, MONEY LAUNDERING, and AND I LOVE HER, but TAKE PLACE is flat and RUN SCARED, well, I don't like it as much as those others.

I'm short on time this morning too, so...moving on!

Donna Levin's Los Angeles Times crossword

Lovely early-week puzzle from Donna. DRIVE at 68A ties everything together: The four longest Across answers begin with "___ drive" words. FLASH IN THE PAN, SEX EDUCATION, LINE ITEM VETO, and TEST BAN TREATY point towards the lively "drive" phrases flash drive (the itty bitty USB gadget that's so handy for transporting files, and that holds a gazillion more bytes than diskettes ever did), sex drive (hey-o!), line drive (baseball term), and test drive (we fell in love with our 9.5-year-old VW on the test drive when it took a sharp curve fast).

Highlights in the fill include ROUND TRIP ([There and back]), MOON RIVER ([Song with the lyric "I'm crossing you in style"]), VISHNU ([Four-armed Hindu deity]), and HIPSTER ([cool cat]). Overall, smooth stuff.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Home Slice"

Matt's theme is bread puns:

• 17A. [Bready agreement?] is YOU GOT THAT WHITE ("you got that right"). Except there's no inherent "agreement" in YOU GOT THAT WHITE. That's merely identifying that the white bread has been gotten. How about clueing this as a [Wonder lover's question?]?
• 32A. [Bready folk singing group?] is PITA, PAUL AND MARY (Peter, Paul and Mary). Cute.
• 42A. [Bready magic act?] clues SIEGFRIED AND RYE (Siegfriend and Roy). Cute.
• 60A. [Bready phrase after a double take?] is HEY, WHEAT A MINUTE ('hey, wait a minute"). This one has no surface sense at all. Boo!

Highlights:

• TAX DOLLARS are clued via [They're "at work" when talking about public projects]. I am most appreciative of the economic stimulus road resurfacing. My car is grateful for smooth roads replacing horribly pot-holed streets.
• ERIC BLAIR is the [Author who went by the pseudonym George Orwell].
• THE PLAYER is that [1992 Robert Altman satire of Hollywood execs].
• GRUB and [Vittles] have the same variety of slangy vibe to them.

Mystery TV answer #1 (because my son's too old for preschooler TV shows): LAN is clued ["Ni Hao, Kai-___" (Nickelodeon cartoon)]. I know the "local area network" sort of LAN, but needed every crossing for this one.

Mystery TV answer #2 (but inferrable): "I PIE" is the ["Good Eats" episode title where Alton Brown discusses lemon meringue]. I like Alton Brown's goofy-yet-practical sensibility.