Wednesday, 4/15

Onion 4:47
BEQ 4:11
LAT 3:18
NYT 3:17
CS 3:08
Tausig (eh, see Thursday's post)

Michael Vuolo's New York Times crossword

Vuolo sets the table with the silverware in phrases that contain a knife at the end, a spoon in the middle, and a fork at the beginning. (Alas, Emily Post prefers the spoon at the far right and the knife in the middle.)

• 17A: [Have surgery] is GO UNDER THE KNIFE.
  
• 24-, 37-, and 50A: [Privileged] is BORN WITH A / SILVER SPOON IN / ONE'S MOUTH.
  
• 60A: ["Gimme"!] clued FORK IT OVER, BUDDY.
  

It's too bad that FORKINTHEROAD isn't 15 letters long, because already one person has grumbled to me tonight about the contrived nature of 60A. 17A is a perfect entry, though, and the middle theme phrase takes up a whopping 31 squares in three entries—an unusual layout that is reminiscent of how a quote theme is set up but without the drabness of a quote theme.

Did anyone recognize COATES, [Actress Phyllis of "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein"]? My favorite Coates is The Atlantic's blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Good stuff:

• PFFT is clued as a [fizzle] sound.
  
• [Colorful glacier layer] is BLUE ICE. My kid likes a blue Icee.
  
• [Bubble contents]? That's AIR, generally, but maybe not so much the bubbles in sodapop and Champagne.
  
• [Geisha's accessory], 3 letters? It's that danged OBI again. But wait! No! At the last second, FAN sweeps in and steals the space.
  
• Kudos for cluing LINT with [It may be caught in a trap]. It always grosses me out when the lint/bellybutton combo is evoked in a crossword. If you're gonna go there, hell, why not dispense some toe jam while you're at it?
  
• [Barry White's genre] is SOUL MUSIC. Nobody really uses the "music" part of that phrase, but it's a solid 9 all the same.
  
• [Bill passed many times on the Hill, formerly] is Bill FRIST. I assume it was his fellow members of Congress who passed him in the hallway.
  
• IRAN is the [Modern locale of ancient Persepolis], which reminds me that I still need to Netflix the animated film Persepolis.
  
• An obi-less geisha and now a Yoko-less ONO? It's true! ["Vas ___ Vas" (former derivative Spanish-language game show] clues O NO. That's "Deal or No Deal" in English.
  
• YAY! ["That's great news!"] I just had chat in my Facebook parlor about "yea" being misused where "yay" or "yeah" is called for.
  

Not so good stuff: We've got a slew of 3-letter abbreviations and fragments, like INV, CIE, OEN, STE, CST, PAC, MCI, and CBS. And OFFAL, the [Butcher's discards], provides the ick factor that the LINT clue did not.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Size Does Matter"

Brendan's having a contest, but I'm guessing he may have already received three correct answers via Twitter direct message. (He's @fleetwoodwack.) The theme entries spell out a riddle: WHAT WORD MEANING / SMALL BECOMES A / WORD MEANING HUGE / WHEN YOU REMOVE / THE LAST 5 LETTERS? I figured out the answer...but I flipped to a thesaurus listing for "small" to do so. Hey, there was no rule saying I couldn't.

Did you know that QATAR is a [Middle East state ruled by the al Thani family]? I didn't. I also considered YEMEN, and knew it wasn't SYRIA or EGYPT—but there are plenty of 5-letter countries in the Mideast. (There are 24 5-letter countries in this Sporcle.com quiz; I missed four of them.)

Brendan puts in a sham word, BREEN, clued as [Brownish-green color (duh!)]. Geeze, the only BREEN I know is Eric Berlin's fictional WInston Breen. (Two plugs! You'd think Eric was paying me for the promotional mentions. I swear he isn't.)

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme focuses on the insanity that is spelling and pronunciation (or orthography and orthoepy, if you want to be high-end) of the English language. Spend a little time trying to come up with mnemonics for your second- or third-grader to remember how to spell certain words, and you'll quickly learn that English is both a marvelous language and an utterly ludicrous one. That's how we ended up with six -OUGH words pronounced six different ways:

• 17A: [Loaf pan filler] is BREAD DOUGH, pronounced "D'oh!"
  
• 29A: [Mistletoe branch that was Aeneas' pass to the underworld] is the GOLDEN BOUGH, and I don't remember this bit of mythology, Bough rhymes with "bow-wow."
  
• 39A: [Something to lead a horse to] is a WATER TROUGH, rhymes with "off."
  
• 52A: ["The Thorn Birds" author] is Colleen MCCULLOUGH. Rhymes with...well, here's the pronunciation.
  
• 11D: ["Cut it out!"] clues THAT'S ENOUGH. Rhymes with "tough stuff."
  
• 24D: To [Make a dramatic recovery] is to PULL THROUGH. Good for you.
  

My longer write-up is at L.A. Crossword Confidential.

Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword

I believe the theme in Tyler's puzzle is "bands whose names start with slang terms for marijuana," but I need to do some research because I only recognize the slang in two of the five theme answers.

• ["Hit" musician who recorded with the Tijuana Brass band] is HERB ALPERT. Herb! I've heard that one.
  
• ["Hit" band that recorded "Nearly Lost You"] is SCREAMING TREES. Surely my government can help me here. Ah, this one ends with the slang term. Trees = marijuana.
  
• ["Hit" musician who sang "Let's Stay Together"] is the legendary AL GREEN. "Herb and Al" = pot and booze, but green = "inferior quality marijuana" and greens = marijuana of non-inferior quality, apparently.
  
• ["Hit" band with "Jesus is Just Alright"] is DOOBIE BROTHERS. A doobie is a joint. I know this one.
  
• ["Hit" group with "Centerfold"] is J. GEILS BAND. J = "marijuana cigarette." Thank you, government reference! My tax dollars at work, bailing me out as a crossword blogger.
  

Assorted other clues and their answers: SHERE HITE is the [Sexologist who renounced her US citizenship in 1995]. She's German now, and did you know her birth name was Shirley?

["Adaptation" locale] is a SWAMP. Never saw it, nor did I read The Orchid Thief, but hey, just reading the reviews can make one relatively well-informed.

[Punish barbarically] clues the gruesome BEHEAD and SCALP. That's [Creeptastic]! (EERIE.) Speaking of creeptastic, here's LOVE IS..., the [Cutesy one-frame comic].

SAT PREP is a terrifically fresh entry—kudos, Tyler. Clued as [Kaplan offering]. Together with SHERE HITE, BEEFS UP, AT ODDS, AL GORE, ARTICLE X, and PETROLEUM, there's a lot of cool fill here and precious little junk.

Randy Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Feudal Effort"

I hope solving this crossword was not a futile effort for you. The theme entries are puns with words from the feudal era:

• [High honor for a feudal lord?] is a NOBLE PEACE PRIZE.
  
• [Exams for feudal "underclassmen"?] are SERF BOARDS.
  
• [Feudal samaritan?] is a GOOD KNIGHT.
  
• And the VIENNA BOY SQUIRE (Vienna Boys Choir) is a [Young feudal attendant from Austria?].
  

Great-looking grid today, with those interlocking 6-letter answers in the NW and SE corners and the three-stacked 8's in the NE and SW. The word count is just 72, so all those long answers nudge the puzzle towards themeless-caliber fill.

We dodged a "breakfast test" bullet with the clue for EFFLUVIA, [Bad smells]. We did not need mention of the more concrete manifestations of effluvia. You can freshen up your own EFFLUVIA with the answer right above it, MENTOS—the [Candy brand known as "The Freshmaker"]. The COLON, of course, is never a part of the intestinal tract in a newspaper crossword. Here it's just :, a [Ratio indicator].

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Thursday, 12/18

NYT 4:42
Sun 4:15
LAT 4:15
CS 2:37

(updated at 10:05 a.m. Thursday)

Michael Vuolo's New York Times puzzle tells a spy tale in the long theme answers:

• UNDERCOVER AGENT is a [Keeper of confidential information].
  
• He or she is SWORN TO SECRECY, and that phrase is clued [Like a keeper of confidential information].
  
• [With 60-Across, what a keeper of confidential information might say] is IF I TOLD YOU, THEN / I'D HAVE TO KILL YOU. My goodness! Such violence in our crossword puzzle today.
  

I mucked things up for myself by not noticing a typo for a long time and thus having trouble with the crossing. One of the two [Part of a famous septet] clues wants ASIA, but I'd entered ASIS and thus couldn't get SABBATH as the [Subject of Exodus 20:10]. The other 4-letter [Part of a famous septet] is ENVY. I prefer continents to sins, personally. The peaceable olive branch corner holds AT PEACE ([Tranquil]) beside OLIVES ([Tapenade ingredients]). Other clues/answers of note:

• [Bearded] means FACED. This may relate to "bearding the lion."
  
• [They start in the middle] clues RADII.
  
• [The last King Edward of England] was Edward VIII. Not the most famous VIII English king, that's for sure.
  
• [Slippery one] clues both an EEL and an ELM tree.
  
• MALA [___ fides (bad faith)] is fairly basic Latin, but this phrase is not so familiar in English. Bona fides, sure.
  
• [Djinn's home in a popular tale] simply means the genie's LAMP. Genie = djinn.
  
• [With French, one of two official languages of Chad] is ARABIC. Chad is just south of Libya and west of Sudan, in the Arabic-speaking North Africa.
  
• [Porsche alternatives] are JAGUARS? They're also [Ford alternatives]. That icky Jaguar model that came out after Ford bought Jaguar reminded me of a Taurus far more than anything as sporty as a Porsche.
  
• [They may be thrown] clues FITS. Javelin, discus...fits. It's part of the Decathlon of Drama.
  
• [Poetic coda] is ENVOI. I majored in English, but I don't quite know what this means.
  
• [Wear away, as a metallic surface] clues ABLATE. Ablation also refers to the surgical removal of body tissue, wind erosion of rock, and evaporation and melting of glaciers.
  

Patrick Jordan's "Themeless Thursday" Sun crossword was excellent—right up my alley in terms of fill. Scrabbly stuff, interesting phrases that don't get much play in crosswords, pop culture, plenty of people's names. JUAN VALDEZ, the coffee commercial guy! AL BUNDY, from Married With Children! YALE LAW right next to SHOW BIZ! QUEASINESS crossing the LAST SUPPER! SAM'S CLUB and THAILAND! There are so many cool answers packed into this grid. Among the names are young actress AMANDA Bynes, hip-hop/crunk pioneer LIL Jon, cartoonist BIL Keane, fictional CHIP from My Three Sons, and gross GENE Simmons of Kiss fame. Sandwiched between the incongruous pairing of CHIP and GENE S. are three Mideast-inflected answers. LUNE is a [Crescent-shaped figure], and the crescent is a symbol of Islam. DOHA, Qatar, is a [Capital on the Persian Gulf]. And IRAN's [flag says "God is great" 22 times].

Favorite clues:

• [La Toya and Janet, to Blanket] are AUNTS. Remember Michael Jackson's baby, Blanket?
  
• [Space heater?] is the SUN, and [Saturn vehicle?] is a UFO. Are there UFOs in our solar system?
  
• QUEASINESS is a [Mal de mer symptom]. Man, I hope I don't get mal de mer on the cruise. I will have Transderm Scop patches to protect me.
  
• "WE CARE" is a [Cliched claim from a conglomerate].
  
• [Item with 21 pips] is GLADYSKNIGHT. No, actually, it's a six-sided DIE.
  

Updated:

Jack McInturff's LA Times crossword changes double-D's to double-T's:

• A budding career turns into a BUTTING CAREER, or the [Life's work of an old goat?].
  
• Did you know that polenta is a sort of hasty pudding? HASTY PUTTING on the golf course is a [Reason for missing a gimme?].
  
• The wedding party becomes WETTING PARTY, a [Drought-ending blowout?]. 
  
• Luxury bedding is nice. LUXURY BETTING is a [Penthouse activity at Caesars Palace?]. You'd think a casino as successful as that would be able to afford an apostrophe in its name, but no. Wikipedia informs me: " It is called 'Caesars' and not 'Caesar's' because every guest is a Caesar." Yes, I am rolling my eyes.
  

Less familiar stuff: AGNES is the [Patron saint of chastity]. [Old ski lift contraption] is a J-BAR. SECRETS are ["...edged tools [to] be kept from children and from fools": Dryden]. [Day star] isn't the sun but OPRAH. ['80s-'90s Serbian import] clues YUGO; I always heard it described as a Yugoslavian car, not a Serbian one. ["Jesus Christ Superstar" song] HOSANNA meets [Medicinal plant] SENNA at the S.

Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy puzzle is easier than most CS crosswords. The "PC Pieces" theme is phrases that end with words that are also computer peripherals:

• The BABY MONITOR [is often placed near a crib].
  
• KEYNOTE SPEAKERS [give important addresses, as at political conventions].
  
• MICKEY MOUSE as an adjective means [Insignificant, slangily]. Much more fun to clue this as the slangy adjective than as the Disney toon.
  

Three allied answers are EDIT, or [Wield a blue pencil]; CARET, or [Insertion mark]; and STET, or [Leave in, as text]. We also get some notable women: ELLEN is [Talk show host DeGeneres]; ANNE is [Author Tyler or Rice]; and STEFFI is the great [Graf of tennis].

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