Friday, 6/12

BEQ 4:55
CHE 4:07
Tausig (untimed)
NYT 3:42
LAT 3:24
CS 6:25 (J—paper)
WSJ 7:44

Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword

Just before doing this puzzle, I did two Berry puzzles from an '06 Games World of Puzzles—my goodness, how did I leave both a Rows Garden and a Ringside puzzle unfilled?!? Berry's variety grids are always terrific—if you like challenging crosswords and you're not wedded to themes, buy his Puzzle Masterpieces book immediately. And don't be put off by the introduction's claim that the book's puzzles are of Wednesday difficulty—only the snake-grid ones are easyish, and some are beyond Saturday-level. My favorite variety might be Some Assembly Required, which work the jigsaw and crossword parts of your brain in tandem, and the Rows Gardens, in which Across answers intersect with answers that travel hexagonally. The book's an attractive hardcover, which may make you hesitate to write in it—but go ahead and do it. Once the book is in your hands, your pencil will not be able to resist its pull. Shall I give it an Amazon-style rating? Yes: ★★★★★. Crossword books don't get any better than this.

Berry is, of course, also a master at the wide-open themeless grid. His Friday NYT crossword has just 64 words, and holy cow, would you look at that midsection? That fat swath of 7's and 8's marching up the stairs from left to right? That's impressive. I suppose there's some advantage to the easier cluing—why not make such a grid more accessible to a broader cross-section of solvers? But you know me, I like the gnarly clues best. Here are the answers and clues that were right up my alley:

• 23A and 25A rhyme. SINGSONG is an [Uninteresting voice], while ["Don't give up!"] clues BE STRONG. In my circles, "be strong" is used mainly in jest.
  
• 26A. Tricky clue—[Manufacturer of boxy cars] is OTIS, for elevator cars. With the O in place, I tried OPEL. I also thought of SAAB and FIAT as other 4-letter automakers.
  
• 33A. [Frequent subject on "Desperate Housewives"] is ADULTERY, which I got off the Y alone. If you know anything at all about the show, that shouldn't be too tough to guess.
  
• 35A. Didn't see this clue while solving. TOPE is clued with the verb phrase [Empty bottles]. No, that's not a plural noun today.
  
• 39A. BANZAI always sparkles in the grid. It means ["Char-r-rge!"], more or less.
  
• 41A. [Lousy driver, say] clues DUFFER. A duffer is a bad golfer.
  
• 42A. GEOID is an [Imaginary surface coinciding with earth's sea level], and while I don't quite understand the clue, I like the pile-up of vowels in the answer.
  
• 3D. ELECTRICAL STORM, or [Potential blackout cause], is one of two 15's in this puzzle. (PRISONER OF ZENDA, an [1894 adventure novel, with "The"], is the other 15.) Only three of its 15 crossings are 3- or 4-letter words. How on earth does Berry get everything to interlock like this? Have I heard that he hand-crafts his puzzles, or does he use technology to make the magic happen?
  
• 4D. DEMOTES is clued as [Puts in a bad position?]. See also AXING, or [Giving a pink slip]. Recessionary crosswording!
  
• 8D. LESS IS MORE is the [Central concept of minimalism] and of themeless puzzles—64 is a low word count, but not ridiculously low. You get into the 50s and you really start to see clunky or obscure words.
  
• 10D. "SOUP'S ON!" means ["Come and get it!"].
  
• 23D. SERPENT gets an arcane (to me) clue: [Midgard ___ (monster of Norse myth)]. Norse mythology has a lot of cool stuff.
  
• 25D. The [Top dog] at the Westminster dog show is BEST IN SHOW.
  
• 36D. [Musical O'Connor] is SINEAD. What a nice change to have this Irish singer in lieu of crosswordese ENYA.
  
• 39D. [Very well done]—hmm, this must be an accolade such as one might apply to Berry's Masterpieces, right? Nope—it's BURNT. Burnt cookies are a keen disappointment.

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "If I Could Turn Back Time"

In the six theme entries, Ben has turned back time by flipping an AM or PM into MA or MP:

• 17/62A. [With 62-Across, a senior racer?] clues PONTIAC / GRANDMA. Perfect play on the Pontiac Grand Am with the delicious GRANDMA payoff.
  
• 18A. [Keep an antioxidant-heavy juice in check?] is STEM POM, Pom being a brand of pomegranate juice and stepmom being a phrase with a reversible PM in it.
  
• 32A. The past-tense [Put actress Amanda in the freestyle?] clues SWAM PEET. Swap meet, Amanda Peet.
  
• 38A. MAPLE EVIDENCE (ample evidence) is [Syrup presented to the jury?].
  
• 46A. RAM PETAL plays on the rap-metal music genre, and the clue is now [Pretty sheep decoration?]. The original clue cited a nonspecific farm animal and man, did I have a hard time figuring out the answer.
  
• 58A. BASS MAP might be a [Rhythm instrument guide?]. I can't say I know what "bass amp" means. An amp that produces low-frequency sounds? A bass player's amp? A rockin' smallmouth bass's accessory?

My favorite clues and fill include [Adjective for some past-their-prime musicians] for BLOATED; the [Fighting words] "oh, IT'S ON"; [Golfer Ernie with his own wine company] provides a bit of trivia for Mr. ELS; [Mark of wit] clues writer TWAIN; [They're usually No. 2's] clues PENCILS, not vice presidents; and [Alexander the Grape, e.g.] is an example of a PUN. This week's Ink Well mystery word is RATINE, or [Rough, loose fabric]. Wow, I don't even recall that one from the heyday of Eugene Maleska. [Banned MLB substance] is the general abbreviation PED, or performance-enhancing drug, rather than a specific steroid or hormone. I didn't know that abbreviation before doing this puzzle.

Ed Sessa's Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle,"Storied Institutions"

Greetings, academics! Last week, there wasn't a CHE crossword and this week, there is. What's the deal with the Chronicle's summer publishing schedule? Is it every other week and then a few weeks off in August, something like that? Ah, here's the scoop from chronicle.com: "The Chronicle appears weekly in print except for every other week during June, July, and August, and the last three weeks in December (a total of 42 issues a year)."

The theme this week is fictional schools, and wow, I sure haven't read many of these books set in fictional schools:

• [Fictional school in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"] is BROOKFIELD.
  
• [Fictional school in the Harry Potter books] is HOGWARTS. Hey! I knew this one.
  
• [Fictional school in "Nicholas Nickleby"] is...dang, I'm probably parsing this wrong. Dickens wouldn't have had a DO THE BOYS HALL. Wikipedia to the rescue: it's Dotheboys Hall.
  
• [Fictional school in "To Serve Them All My Days"] is BAMFYLDE. Non-intuitive spelling and it's from a book I've scarcely even heard of? Ouch. The Y crosses SYD, [Charlie Chaplin's half-brother], so BAMFILDE looked equally plausible.
  
• [Fictional school in "The Catcher in the Rye"] is PENCEY PREP.

In the fill, PECK is clued as [What a bird in the hand might do?]. I beseech you: guard your eyes. [Makes a botch of] clues BLOOPS; while "blooper" is common and there's a baseball usage of this word, I can't say BLOOPS came to me easily. I like the echo between AT BAT and KEPT AT BAY—that T and Y are right next to each other on the keyboard, so it'd be easy to mangle these two. Did you know that the STAR FRUIT, or carambola, is an [Edible Malaysian export]?

Updated Friday morning:

Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Covered with Mud"—Janie's review

Back in May, Randy brought us a puzzle whose theme fill was literally to be found "in a NUT shell," where the first two letters of the theme-phrase were NU and the last was T. Today, we're "covered with MUD," as MU and D surround ("cover") the letters of the theme-phrase. As anyone who enjoys being pampered on occasion can tell you, MUD treatments are not only relaxing, they're refreshing. Ditto this puzzle. Behold:

• 17A. [Score keeper?] MUSIC STAND. Great clue; great CS-debut fill.
• 10D. ["Not a peep!"] MUM'S THE WORD. Shhh—it's a secret. But not that this is another CS first-timer.
• 24D. [Kingdom of heaven comparison, in the New Testament] MUSTARD SEED. Hmmm. While this was easy enough to solve by way of the crosses, the clue here helped me not one iota as I have almost no familiarity with the NT. To me, MUSTARD SEED is one of Titania's fairy servants in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Or the stuff you crush up and add vinegar to to make a savory condiment...
• 55A. [Part of a 401(k) plan, often] MUTUAL FUND. The slightly dry MUTUAL FUND (you will SURELY be ELATEd to know) is making its first appearance in a major puzzle; and—after the turn in the economy last fall, I have some friends who wryly refer to their 401(k)'s as 201(k)'s...

This puzzle is but one letter shy of a pangram ("J"), and it was really nice to encounter the scrabbly end of the alphabet in its entirety in such lively (and in some cases "street-smart") fill as: BAD VIBES, MEOW clued as [Copy cats?], EXERT, YOU DA MAN (YIKES!), and ZIPPO (which I filled in first with ZILCH).

Other fine fill and/or clues:

• LA BOHÈME [Opera by Puccini] (whose score might be found on that MUSIC STAND...)
• NO 'COUNT [Good-for-nothing] and DODO [Knucklehead]
• [Swimming center] for EMS (the letter M appears twice in the center of the word. This kind of clue appears with some regularity and maybe you're already alert to it. If not—pay heed! It will show up again.)
• [Tub or tug] for VESSEL
• [Victoria and Albert] for LAKES. Perfect.

Got myself off on the wrong foot by confidently entering SANTA for SATAN (hello again...). Now I know that [OLD NICK] and Beelzebub are one and the same. Ditto the Deuce, the Dickens, Old Harry, Old Ned, Old Scratch, Old Horny, Old Poker, the Old Gentleman and a slew of others. Thus spake Roget.

The reminder of iconic newsman Chet HUNTLEY and the HUNTLEY-Brinkley Report stirred memories of a time when getting the nightly news from unimpeachable sources still mattered (also memories of their classic "Goodnight, Chet," "Goodnight, David," sign-off). And while we're looking at journalism, the puzzle also makes a nod to the dead-tree sort with OP-ED.

One little grid-bit and then ('til Monday) I'm history: the crossing of IRMA and FIRMA.

Happy weekend!

Robin Stears' Los Angeles Times crossword

A constructing debut for Stears? I think so. Congratulations! I loved unraveling the theme and I admire the theme's execution. Each theme entry has TRY tacked onto the end to completely change the gist of a phrase, and since it's a Friday puzzle, there's no give-away hint anywhere that explains it all. Here are the fun theme answers:

• 17A. [Where Jerry Garcia kept food for the band?] is the (DEAD PANTRY). Grateful Dead, deadpan.
  
• 28A. BLANK TAPESTRY would be a truly [Minimalist wall hanging?]. I probably still have some blank tapes around here even though I'm not using tapes anymore. You know how 20-somethings might use a bedsheet as a makeshift window covering? They could class that up by calling it a BLANK TAPESTRY and expounding on its artistic value.
  
• 47A. [Small clergy group?] could be a MICRO MINISTRY. A micro mini is, I believe, this thing that Daryl Hannah wore recently.
  
• 64A. Playing on faux pas, we get FAUX PASTRY as a [Wedding cake mock-up?]. You know how some bakeries keep faux pastry on display in the window? This could almost be a real phrase.

In the fill, I like the French vowel trifecta combo of EAU (51A [__-de-vie: brandy]) and BEAUT (36A [Doozy]). Geography brings us TONGA—5A [Kingdom called the Friendly Islands]—and both ELON and ASHE from North Carolina. The people in the puzzle are mostly familiar to regular solvers, except for 23A [1990s speed skating gold medalist], somebody named KOSS. No relation to the headphones company, I presume, Wikipedia tells me that "Johann Olav Koss (born 29 October 1968) is a former speed skater from Norway, considered to be one of the best in history." There's also an oddball fictional character whose name I learned from crosswords: GORT is clued as 8D ["The Day the Earth Stood Still" robot].

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Getting Extra C-R-E-D-I-T: Let me spell it all out"

Brendan's added a new feature, a difficulty-meter for the puzzle. This one's rated hard, and I'd say it's at least Friday-level but with a theme that might take Saturday effort to glom onto. The theme entries sort of sound like familiar phrases, and HARD ICHOR looked like "hard liquor" without the L. But what's going on here is that each of the six theme entries has a letter added to a phrase, and the spelling's changed to make a real word out of the word that adopts the extra letter. Those extra letters are, in order, C, R, E, D, I, T. Straightforward enough, right? This is an instance of a puzzle where the title really helps pull the theme together and make it more fun for the solver, less mystifying. The theme:

• Harriet Lane was a big name in pediatric philanthropy, but I don't think I'd know her name if I hadn't worked for the publisher of The Harriet Lane Handbook. Add a C and you get CHARIOT LANE, or an [Appian Way section?] in ancient Rome.
  
• Eiderdown turns into RYDER DOWN with an R. That's a [Phrase describing a rental truck with a flat tire?]. Seeing the rhyme with eiderdown is what finally tipped me off to the theme.
  
• [Simple partnership?] is an EASY AXIS. Sounds like "easy access" but that's irrelevant. There's an E added to...I don't know what. Help!
  
• "Kind of" + D = KIND DOVE, or [Considerate peacenik?]. I like this one best.
  
• [Blood of the gods with that extra kick?] is HARD ICHOR, "hardcore" + I.
  
• [Effect of a serious earthquake on the Golden Gate?] is a BRIDGE TWIST. Uh, just a guess that there's a card game called bridge whist. Apparently its heyday was a century ago.

Favorite clue: Maple SYRUP is a [Silver dollar covering] if you're talking about silver dollar pancakes. Mmm, pancakes... Second favorite: [Goes from prenatal to parental, e.g.] clues ANAGRAMS.

That's all the time I have right now, as it's just about time to pick up my kid from school. In Chicago, they get out at 9:30 a.m. on the last day! Will be back later on with the Wall Street Journal puzzle.

Updated again Friday evening:

Wall Street Journal crossword, "Speaker Boxes," by Mike Shenk a.k.a. "Alice Long"

Mike Shenk is known in the puzzle business for being an innovator, for devising cool new types of puzzles. Mike can even bring innovation to the fusty concept of the quote theme: here, the words in the quote are hidden within longer phrases or words, which are clued straightforwardly. So the hideousness of the standard quote theme—the "sure hope you can get the Downs because you're not getting much help with the long Across entries" thing—is eliminated. You're not getting a ton of thematic material, it's true, but you do get a 21x21 with 29 answers of at least 7 letters, and you're getting Shenk-grade fill. The Matthew Prior quote that's spelled out in the circled squares, one word per long answer, is THEY TALK MOST WHO HAVE THE LEAST TO SAY. Hey, that's only 32 letters of quote in a Sunday-sized puzzle. This I find much more palatable than a 50-letter quote in a 15x15 grid.

Highlights in the fill include a COON'S AGE (which is a more familiar phrase than the DOG'S AGE that was in another recent puzzle), LIP BALM, a PANAMA HAT, a comfy OLD SHOE, NO-DOZ, RENT-A-COP, STEPMOM, and some of the entries hiding the quote words—THE YANKEES, MORTAL KOMBAT, FIFTH AVENUE, and crossword-ready ADELE ASTAIRE graduating to full-name status.

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Friday, 1/30

NYT 6:13
BEQ 4:16
Sun 4:04
LAT 3:47
CHE 2:51
WSJ 6:07

(post updated at 10 a.m. Friday)

When it comes to themeless crosswords, Brendan Emmett Quigley likes to cram in a lot of cool entries. Here are the showiest answers from his New York Times crossword:

• MATT DRUDGE is clued as a [Journalist with a widely read "Report"]. Is it merely coincidence that his name intersects with HIGH TREASON, which [has made many people lose their heads]?
  
• The DIGERATI are a [Computer-savvy crowd]—a blending of digital and literati. Aptly, they cross DATA, clued with [It may be mined].
  
• Curb Your Enthusiasm's LARRY DAVID was a [1993 Emmy winner for "Seinfeld"].
  
• I learned about the AXOLOTL, a Mexican [Salamander variety], from one or two earlier crosswords. It rhymes, roughly, with "packs a bottle."
  
• The separate halves of ADDIS ABABA used to show up in a lot more crosswords as fill-in-the-blank clue/answer combos. The full city name is clued as [City at the foot of Mount Entoto]. Wow, I've never heard of that mountain. Addis Ababa is the capital of Ethiopia, it has over 2 million people, and it's fun to say. More African geography: DAR [___ el Beida (Casablanca, to its natives)].
  
• "WE'RE DOOMED!" is a {Cry when you don't think you'll make it].
  

Favorite clues:

• [Woolly bear, eventually] metamorphoses into a MOTH.
  
• [Brownish orange] clues TERRA COTTA. This one took me a long time to figure out because I had Crayola colors on the brain.
  
• [Hits a line drive] clues RIPS ONE.
  
• [Briar locale] isn't the briar patch, it's a TOBACCO SHOP. Briar wood is used to make pipes.
  

Toughest clues:

• SETH LOW was an [Early 20th-century New York City mayor]. Non–New Yorkers maybe don't remember any besides Bloomberg, Giuliani, Dinkins, Koch, LaGuardia...I'm out.
  
• [Not overseas] is PAS, which is French for "not." Now, Quebec isn't overseas from here, and they speak French there. For Spanish, we have AVISOS or [Warnings, to Juan].
  
• [Gardener or landscaper] is called an OUTSIDE MAN? Okay.
  
• [Person in an apron] is ACTOR, the apron being part of a stage. Admit it: You wanted a BAKER or some other sort of cook, didn't you?
  
• BAO [___ Dai (last emperor of Vietnam)] didn't ring a bell.
  
• [Tritium output] is a BETA RAY. This is dangerous radiation, right?
  
• What [Classic Pontiac] is the VENTURA? Apparently it's from the '60s and '70s, and I don't remember it at all.
  
• ["Phoenissae" playwright] is SENECA.
  
• [Asparagus's family] is LILY. I always forget this.
  

Karen Tracey's latest Sun "Weekend Warrior" felt like a "Themeless Thursday" because the clues weren't so hard. Or maybe they were, but knowing Karen's style, it's so easy to read a clue like [Fruity bread spread] and leap at a super-Scrabbly answer like QUINCE JAM. Other answers with uncommon letters include ARABESQUE above DIXIE CUPS, with that Q feeding into QUINCE JAM, whose J is shared by JAMI GERTZ (I just saw the clue [She's behind Biden in the presidential line of succession] and wanted it to apply to JAMI GERTZ), whose Z links to MAXIMIZES, which meets RELAX.

I misread [My brothel's keeper?] as "My brother's keeper" and thought biblical rather than MADAM and prostitution. [Neither fore nor aft] clues AMIDSHIPS; the cruise ship I was on just called it midships. The Lone Ranger is a MASKED MAN but somehow I wanted that answer to be NAKED MAN. TIM MCGRAW has five consonants in a row heaped up inside his name.

Updated:

Daniel Finan's LA Times crossword replaces successive sounds with double letters that, when read aloud, sound roughly the same as what they replace:

• [Suits?] are corporate execs or CORPORATE XX.
  
• [Add up one's losses?] is assess the damage or SS THE DAMAGE.
  
• [What you won't hear from a mutineer?] is "aye aye, Captain" or II CAPTAIN.
  
• [Simple?] is as easy as pie or AS ZZ AS PIE. This one's a little different from the other three because ZZ doesn't just replace "easy"—it includes the Z sound from AS.
  

Toughest clues for me: [Plain type?] for JANE; [Fire and brimstone target] for SODOM; [Popular tourist spot] for MECCA (do hajjis consider themselves tourists or religious pilgrims?); and [Gran Paradiso, e.g.] for an ALP.

Wow, is this the easiest Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle to date? Usually they're at a Thursday or Friday NYT difficulty level, but this one felt like a Tuesday. In John Lampkin's "Misplaced Modifiers," the theme answers are things like French fries, things with a geographical name that's inaccurate (fries are a Belgian creation):

• CHINESE CHECKERS is a [Board game invented (despite the name) in Germany]. Hey, I never knew that.
  
• SWISS CHARD is a [Vegetable first cultivated (despite the name) in Sicily]. Here's a Swiss Chard you can drink.
  
• PANAMA HATS are [Headgear made (despite the name) in ECUADOR]. I believe Panama's most prominent export is Panamanian strongmen. (What guides journalists' decision in labeling various leaders as "strongman" vs. "despot" vs. "dictator"? And wouldn't it be great to have one of those ESPN2 broadcasts of a World's Strongest Man competition featuring feats of strength for dictatorial strongmen? I want to see Robert Mugabe try to pull a jumbo jet. And getting Fidel Castro out of green fatigues and into shorts and a tank top to carry a giant rock would have been fun.)
  
• [Reuben-sandwich condiment created (despite the name) in America] is RUSSIAN DRESSING.
  

Mike Shenk, writing as "Alice Long," constructed this weekend's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Winter Business." Easy puzzle! The seven theme entries all have "in winter business" appended to otherwise straightforward clues. Each answer is a common business phrase that begins with a word associated with winter. For example, [Manufacturing supplies, in winter business] are RAW MATERIALS, and damn, is it ever raw outside in Chicago today. Windy and 15°F? That's also cold (COLD, HARD CASH is [Real money, in winter business]) and frozen (FROZEN ASSETS are [Blocked funds, in winter business]. We have snow (SNOWBALLING is clued as [Momentum in the equities market, in winter business]) here, but it's too cold for slush (SLUSH FUND is a [Money reserve, in winter business]). The other two theme entries evoke a much warmer winter—BRISK TRADING is clued as [Market activity, in winter business], and "brisk" describes early November better than a Chicago January. COOL MILLION is a [Tidy sum, in winter business]. Overall, the fill and clues were a good bit easier than a Sunday NYT crossword's.

Brendan Emmett Quigley's self-published crossword, "Lean on Me," has the subtitle "Think thin." That should have pointed me away from thinking AL ATTRACTION was made by removing NIMA from ANIMAL and straight towards seeing that it's FATAL without the FAT. With the NIMA in my mind, I had no idea what was going on with the other theme entries, but it came together after the grid had been filled in. CRUEL TWIST OF E takes the FAT out of FATE, and HER CHRISTMAS diets down the FAT in FATHER. Two of the four 11-letter Down answers in the fill put me briefly to sleep—ORAL VACCINE and DATA STORAGE—but hey, they're stacked 11's crossing two theme entries so we can't expect them to break new ground. Favorite entry: DON CHEADLE, the ["Hotel For Dogs" star]. How many Hotel ___ movies must he make? He's also had two recent verb-preposition-Me movies, Reign Over Me and Talk to Me.

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Friday, 12/26

WSJ 37:52
NYT 36:22
LAT 17:21
Sun 12:58
CS 5:00
CHE Unavailable

(Updated at 7:30pm Friday)

Good morning, everyone. It's PuzzleGirl again. Hope you're enjoying your Day After Christmas, or your Fifth (fifth?) Day of Hannukah, or, ya know, your Friday. Whatever it happens to be for you, I hope it's good. After today you'll only have one more day of me before our beloved Orange is back, so things are looking up! I'll be honest with you, I don't know how early I'll get to the rest of Friday's puzzles. If you want to talk about them — is anyone really even here? — please feel free, but I'll try to get them up before 1:00 tomorrow afternoon. But no promises!

When I saw Brendan Emmett Quigley's name on the Friday New York Times crossword, I suspected I was in for a workout. And I wasn't disappointed.

Missteps:

• First drive-in, then stadium, and finally BOXSEAT for [Where to get a good view of a hit and run].
• Stadium at 1 Across gave me ten to one for [Pretty poor chances]. (Actually, ONE IN TEN.)
  
• I thought package would be a good tricky answer for [Prepare to ship]. Eventually, changed it to the correct CRATE UP.
  
• I know I've been sneered at contemptuously, but come to think of it, I've probably been SNORTED at too.
  
• You knew damn well I'd enter imp for ELF, didn't you, Mr. Quigley?! What is this, some kind of sick joke?!?

I admit I was troubled by duplicate words in the grid: CRATE UP, NEXT UP, ONE-UP and FIT IN, ONE IN TEN, KEPT IN. A year ago, I probably would not have noticed this, but since I've been doing a lot of puzzles on a regular basis, I know that there's a "rule" and I don't really expect it to be broken. So, although I knew that NEXT UP looked really good, I was hesitant to use it when I had already seen CRATE UP and that one seemed to be right as well. Obviously, the "rule" can be broken and I certainly don't mean to chastise BEQ or suggest in any way, shape, or form that I could have made this puzzle better, I'm just saying it affected my solving experience. So that and four dollars will get you a half-caf skinny caramel latté (no whip) at Starbucks.

Hip Hip Hooray:

• It took me way too long to remember that SIR PAUL McCartney was knighted in 1997.
  
• This is how discombobulated I was about 3/4 of the way through this puzzle. I had _OE for [One of the Baltimore Ravens' mascots] and was all "Moe? Joe?" Did I mention that I majored in English? Yikes! (By the way, Poe the Raven was voted the "Most Fierce NFL Mascot" for 2008.)
  
• OTIS is a [Leading manufacturer of cars]. Elevator cars, that is.
  
• SUZIE [Wong of book and film] is the archetypal "hooker with a heart of gold" in Richard Mason's The World of Suzie Wong.
  
• BALOO is ["The Jungle Book" bear]. AKELA is the wolf. I only know this from my son's Cub Scouts activities.
  
• Nice to see the whole name of MAUNA KEA in the puzzle, instead of just the KEA.
  
• Way back in the old days when I moved to New York to go to college, I couldn't wait to "Take the A TRAIN."
  
• Never heard of "EADIE Was a Lady." It's a song originally sung by Ethel Merman in the Broadway show "Take a Chance." According to Wikipedia, "In 1933, the show was made into a film with almost no resemblance to the original show, except for the song Eadie Was a Lady. Lillian Roth played Merman's role in the film." So now I know.

Karen M. Tracey's Sun "Weekend Warrior" started out with a big ol' collision of seemingly unrelated letters at 1 Across. [The IJsselmeer was a part of it before construction of the Afsluitdijk]. Um ... WHAT? Got the answer — ZUIDERZEE — completely from crosses and still don't know what it means because I didn't look it up and now it's late and I'm going to try to finish this so I can get to bed. Just to be clear, I'm not complaining. Those are all awesome words.

Yummy:

• ATRA is the [Fusion predecessor]. I'm going to assume the Fusion is a razor that was created more recently than the Atra. So, nice tricky clue for a common crossword answer! Have you guys ever seen the Uncyclopedia site? I don't know if the whole site is like this, but this article tells the "history" of the "Gillette Good News! Trac II Atra Sensor Excel3 Turbo Power Fusion Power for Men and Women." Funny stuff.
  
• COSMO Spacely isn't exactly my go-to answer for Jetsons references, but it was cool to see him here.
  
• Never heard the term lady chapel before, but it's related to an APSE. Not sure if one is a subset of the other or what.
  
• [Pet for Hamlet] is referring to the Hägar the Horrible comic strip. Hägar's son is named Hamlet, and SNERT is the family dog.
  
• Big Spike Lee fan back in the late 1980s. I saw all six of the films he made starting with "She's Gotta Have It" in 1986 through 1992's "Malcolm X." Not sure what happened after that because I didn't see another Spike Lee Joint until "25th Hour" in 2002, and then INSIDE MAN in 2006.
  
• It's embarrassing how many words I don't know. COZEN means "to deceive, win over, or induce to do something by artful coaxing and wheedling or shrewd trickery." So I guess [Hoodwink] would be a good clue.
  
• I promise — promise — I'll learn my rivers. In the meantime, though, please, please, please I'm begging you, don't clue one river with another. My fragile ego can't take it. ([Rhôone feeder] = ISÈRE. It's in France. I'm writing it down now.)
  
• I figured out [Bar in a bar] but I wonder if it threw some people. A bar is a measure in music and a REST is ... shaped like a bar I guess? It looks like this.
  
• For some reason I just can't wrap my head around the word bucolic. To me it sounds like anemic or asthmatic ... something medical that's, ya know, not good. But in real life, it means "of or relating to shepherds or herdsmen." So I guess that pretty much describes a LEA.

Updated:

Okay, this is going to be quick. I was up early this morning with PuzzleSon, who felt like he was going to throw up. He didn't, but I was up with him for quite a while. Then I went back to bed and didn't get up until 11:00. I'm getting my hair cut at 2:00 and the kids are clamoring for ... breakfast? It's basically lunchtime! I guess things are a little off today. What? You don't care about this stuff? Okay, sorry. Here are the rest of today's puzzles:

Don Gagliardo's L.A. Times crossword is filled with puns where the original phrase includes a word that ends with the letter T and resulting phrases change that T sound to a D sound. I'm not one of those people who loves puns, but I don't hate them either. I kinda liked these.

• [Many a con game? ] = FRAUD (fraught) WITH DANGER
  
• [Hippies?] = BEAD (beat) GENERATION
  
• [Student's concern?] = GRADE (great) DEPRESSION
  
• [Visit Disneyland?] = DO THE RIDE (right) THING (this is my favorite; maybe because it's one of those Spike Lee films I was talking about earlier!)
  
• [Math-challenged?] = PAINED (paint) BY NUMBERS

[Low digits] pulls double duty today as a clue for both ONES and TOES. Also a couple of golf clues today with JULI [Inkster of the LPGA] and ERNIE Els, [Rival of Tiger (Woods) and Vijay (Singh)]. I was having trouble getting out of a jam instead of a RUT for a while. Had limo instead of DICE for [High roller's rollers], signing up instead of SIGNING IN for [Registering]. Never heard of Kimmie Meissner, but her milieu is a RINK, so I guess she's a skater. I can never remember how to spell SHIH Tzu. I know how it's pronounced so I always think the first word is going to be shit and then realize that, of course, can't be right. Don't get me started on [Like many couples] = WED. I just don't have time for that kind of a rant today.

Love love love Alice Long's Wall Street Journal puzzle today! It's called "Boxing Day" and rebus squares contain the letters ALI. Like Muhammad Ali! A three-time World Heavyweight Champion boxer! Awesome!

• [Cardiologist's prescription] = DIGITALIS
  
• [Lucky charm] = TALISMAN
  
• [Deceptive art] = OPTICAL ILLUSION
  
• [Gym class activity] = CALISTHENICS
  
• [Steinbeck's California birthplace] = SALINAS
  
• [Support for a bridge, perhaps] = DENTAL IMPLANT
  
• [Some MoMA works] = DALIS
  
• ["The Jungle Book" setting] = COLONIAL INDIA
  
• [Eucharist need] = CHALICE
  
• [Noted University of Padua professor] = GALILEO GALILEI
  
• [Trotsky rival] = STALIN
  
• [Historic Chicago-to-Los Angeles train] = CALIFORNIA LIMITED
  
• [Name on the runways of Milan] = ALITALIA
  
• [Mind readers] = MENTALISTS
  
• [Hood's handle] = ALIAS
  
• [High-pH stuff] = ALKALI
  
• [Lionhearted] = VALIANT
  
• [Temporary partnership] = COALITION
  
• [Vezina Trophy winners] = GOALIES
  
• [Detectives check them] = ALIASES
  
• [Make illegal] = CRIMINALIZES
  
• [Flippered critter] = SEA LIION
  
• [Assassination victim of A.D. 41] = CALIGULA
  
• [Mullah Omar's group] = TALIBAN
  
• [Mouth moistener] = SALIVA

That's a lot of rebus squares! The only other thing I want to mention real quick is that if you haven't seen the HBO series "Entourage," you should consider it. Vince's agent, ARI Gold, played by Jeremy Piven, is the best thing about the show. PuzzleHusband and I just started watching it last year but are catching up with our sweet Christmas present of seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. (One caveat: If you're offended by bad language and sexually explicit humor, this is not the show for you.) I was completely tickled last month when in one of the episodes the actor/director Peter Berg had a cameo. Ari was taking a call from him and told the other people in the room "This is Pete Berg! He was my roommate in college!" Well, that was a shout-out to those of us who attended Macalester College in the early 80s and know that Peter Berg was, in fact, roommates with Ari Emanuel, the guy Ari Gold's character is based on (and, coincidentally, Rahm Emanuel's brother).

Gotta go for now. Back later with the CS.

I'm so late getting to today's CrosSynergy puzzle that I'm just going to post the grid for you and tell you that the theme is Puppet Duos. PUNCH AND JUDY, KUKLA AND OLLIE, and BERT AND ERNIE. I noticed an old-timey feel to the puzzle with the inclusion of LASS, GENT, and FELLA. See ya in a little bit with tomorrow's NYT....

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Sunday, 7/6

NYT 10:18
PI 8:58
LAT 8:15
WSJ 8:05
CS 4:45

If you like both crosswords and sudoku, you'll enjoy Patrick Blindauer and Frank Longo's new book, Crosswordoku. Each pair of puzzles includes a crossword and a sudoku—the 13x13 crossword has some shaded squares, and you transfer the letters in those squares into the shaded squares of the sudoku grid. Then you've got a "wordoku" puzzle to contend with—a sudoku logic challenge using nine different letters rather than numbers. The finished wordoku grid will include a nine-letter word in one row, column, or diagonal (and if it's the diagonal, it won't be an anagram of the nine letters used in the grid). I'm still in the "beginner" section at the beginning of the book (hey, I just started the book last night), but both the crosswords and -oku puzzles will get harder as the book progresses.

Brendan Emmett Quigley's latest Sunday New York Times crossword is called "What the H?" Each of the eight theme entries changes a W word into a sound-alike WH word:

• [V.I.P. in a limo?] is WHEELED AUTHORITY (wield).

• [Stories about halting horses?] are TALES OF WHOA (woe).
  
• [Causes of meteorological phenomena?] are WEATHER WHYS (wise). (This phrase could also have been converted into WHETHER WISE, a question of wisdom.)
  
• [Iceland?] is an ISLE OF WHITE (Wight), though they say that Greenland is much icier than Iceland.
  
• [Barrier Ahab stands behind?] is a WHALING WALL (Wailing).
  
• [Cry after writing a particularly fun column?] is THE EDITORIAL WHEE (we).
  
• [45, e.g.?] is a WHIRLED RECORD (world).
  
• [Where ax murderers' weapons are on display?] is a WHACKS MUSEUM (wax).
  

Let's turn our attention to the knottiest fill: NATICK is the [Town at the eighth mile of the Boston Marathon], and it sits atop CARROL, [Charlie Chan player J. ___ Naish]. Ouch! 2-Down could have been OOHED AT just as easily as the correct AAHED AT ([Showed delight over]), and ["Treasure Island" illustrator, 1911] N.C. WYETH's initials cross NATICK and CARROL. ARNE is the first name of [Swedish Chemistry Nobelist Tiselius]. The [1887 Chekhov play] IVANOV was eluding me when I'd thoughtlessly entered WHIRLED REPORT instead of RECORD, making THE CAN (the [Stir]) turn into THE PEN and obscuring the sense of [Fully or partially: Abbr.]—that's ADV, or the abbreviation for adverb, which is what "fully" and "partially" are. At least, these were the knottiest spots for me—I'm seeing some longer-than-usual applet solving times, so I suspect people found other hitches too.

Favorite clues and favorite answers, in no particular order:

• The LARYNX is your [Pitch maker?].
  
• Rock 'n' roll gets its due with DEVO, or ["Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are ___!" (hit 1978 album)] and KEITHS, or [Rock's Richards and Moon]. There's also pop, with the [1971 Tom Jones hit] SHE'S A LADY, the countryish [1973 Helen Reddy #1 hit] DELTA DAWN, and square dancing's DOSIDO, or [Literally, "back to back"].
  
• SAY WHEN is a [Pourer's comment].
  
• ANHEUSER is the [Eponymous German brewer Eberhard].
  
• An AIRHEAD is a [Scatterbrain].
  
• DRESS-UP is [Something little girls may play]—and also something little boys may play.
  
• Isn't NYAD a wonderfully apt surname for [Long-distance swimmer Diana]? Naiads are water nymphs.
  
• I like the HAU* foreign-language section, with HAUS ([Residence on the Rhein]) atop HAUT ([High, in the Alps]).
  
• [Slogan holder, often] is a TEE shirt.
  
• The OLD WEST is [Boot Hill setting].
  
• A [Team building?] is a sports ARENA.
  

Updated:

The Saturday Wall Street Journal included Mike Shenk's crossword (published under his Alice Long nom de plume), as the usual publication day, Friday, was the Fourth of July. In the "American Plan" theme, eight phrases adopted the letters USA and radically changed their meanings. Bond traders became BONUS AD TRADERS, or [Ones swapping free TV spots?]. That one feels a little tortured, but presumably the bond traders who like the WSJ crossword appreciated the shout-out. Cal Tech gives us a CAUSAL TECH. There's a SAUSAGE BRUSH, a [Tool for scrubbing a salami?] (sagebrush). [Fizz added to "Every Breath You Take"?] is STING OPUS AERATION (sting operation). Grand Prix yields a GRAND PRIUS AX. There's CHRISTMAS CAROUSAL. Those are all fine, sure, but my favorite theme entries are CLUB MEDUSA, [Advice to Perseus if he had a bat instead of a sword?], and SAY IT AIN'T SOUSA, ["Please don't play another march by that guy!"?].

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "The Jack Black Society," assembles 13 people (a few of them fictional) who, like Jack Black, have rhyming names. The least obvious is LEO CARRILLO, [Actor who played Pancho on TV's The Cisco Kid]. Fast food spokesclown RONALD MCDONALD, [Salad inventor] BOB COBB, CHERI OTERI of SNL (111-Down), and several others join the rhyme party. [Operetta pioneer] JACQUES OFFENBACH and an [L.A. center, once] named SHAQUILLE O'NEAL are stacked together with their Q's in close proximity—that's some fancy constructin' there. I love seeing Happy Days' redhead, RALPH MALPH, in the grid. Fun fill overall—MR. BEAN, "OH, CRUD," LINUS from "Peanuts"—lots of pop culture inside and outside the theme.

Updated midday Sunday:

Newcomer Zack Kushner makes a nice debut with his syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Sail Away." The six theme entries have boating puns:

• [Struggling to stay up at sea?] is ON A SLIPPERY SLOOP (slope).
  
• [Request to a circumnavigator?] YAWL COME BACK NOW, Y'HEAR? (y'all). This one's my favorite for sheer lunacy.
  
• [Bear's sailing vessel?] is THE DHOW OF POOH (The Tao of Pooh).
  
• [Transport for 2%?] is a GALLEON OF MILK (gallon).
  
• [Major mooring mishap?] is BARQUE UP THE WRONG TREE (bark). This was the toughest boat name for me to get.
  
• [Build Captain Nemo's versatile sailing craft?] is MAKE A DIVING KETCH (catch).
  

Favorite clues: [Uses a powerful engine] for GOOGLES; ["Just kidding!"] for "PSYCH!"; [Lettuce] for GELT; [Strawberry Shortcake, e.g.] for DOLL; and [Airport in "Home Alone"] for O'HARE.

Bob Klahn's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge" has tons of lively fill and tricky clues:

• [He sang with the Pharaohs] refers to SAM THE SHAM.
  
• [Top of Hawaii] means an ALOHA SHIRT.
  
• "LOVE STINKS" was a [1980 J. Geils Band hit]. Here's the video.
  
• [In British lingo, it's stingo] means BEER. That's a new one on me. Speaking of booze, TOPE means to [Life one's spirits?] to one's mouth.
  
• [Got into trouble, perhaps] is TOLD ON—getting someone else into trouble, that is, not getting yourself into hot water.
  
• Your MASH NOTE [might be signed with tic-tac-toe symbols].
  
• The toughest clue for me was [They may be counted on to complete a score] for TOES. A score is 20, and you can use your fingers to count to 10; to count to 20, you'll need to count on your TOES too.
  
• ["Bernice Bobs Her Hair," e.g.] is a SHORT STORY by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
  
• ALOE vera is ["The potted physician"]. I'm surprised I haven't seen this clue umpteen times before, given how often ALOE appears in crosswords. Similarly, ESAU shows up so often, you'd think the clue ["My Brother ___" (Grateful Dead hit)] would be used more.
  
• I like the judgment suggested by [Exaggerated sense of power] for MACHISMO.
  
• [Have an affair?] is a terrific clue for HOST.
  
• WYES are a [Yucky couple?] because WYE is how you spell the name for the letter Y, and there are two Y's in yucky. Mr. and Mrs. Wye may also be a yucky couple.
  

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Friday, 2/8

NYS 8:24
LAT 5:33
Jonesin' 5:32
NYT 4:31
CS 3:04
CHE 2:54

WSJ 8:49

This afternoon, a Jumble link caught my eye on the Tribune home page. I was supposed to be helping Ben with his homework, but he found it more engaging to watch Mom zip through the Jumble. My fastest time was ridiculously wee, which amused me. Ben wanted to try the Jumble for Kids—and who am I to pull a kid away from playing with anagrams to finish homework? Priorities!

Here's a language-usage link for you—linguist Ben Zimmer's Oxford University Press blog post divulging the solid historical justification for using none with a plural verb (as in "None of the candidates have won yet"). I've noted that the NYT uses it, and had wondered why they didn't hew to the standard modern "rule" that none = not one = singular. Guess what? The Old English equivalent could be inflected as singular or plural. It's totally kosher to use a plural verb! Zimmer also debunks the flimsy tradition that dictates a decided difference between less and fewer. I always find it most refreshing when a Language Logger knocks grammar pedants down a peg and explains how a common usage that's often held to be wrong actually has a rich history dating back centuries.

Francis Heaney embraces the breakfast-table test for suitable crossword material, featuring a double-rebus BOWL OF / LUCKY / CHARMS in his Friday New York Sun crossword. (The title is the misleading "Spoonerisms," for a puzzle with no spoonerisms but with cereal you'd eat with a spoon.) Wikipedia suggests that the current lineup of "marshmallows" differs significantly from Francis's assortment, which appears to reflect Lucky Charms reality circa 1984. The six marshmallows are placed in symmetrical points in the grid, with Across answers including the color and the Down including the shape: yellow moon (YELLOW CAB, MOON-UNIT), pink heart (PINK FLOYD, TAKE HEART), purple horseshoe (PURPLE PROSE, HORSESHOE CRAB), orange star (AGENT ORANGE, LONE STAR beer), blue diamond (JETBLUE, NEIL DIAMOND), and green clover (SALAD GREEN, CLOVERLEAF).

This breakfast is enriched with essential vitamins and minerals, including RICE MILK, AXEL F, and Hamid KARZAI. Favorite non-theme material: [Strong, in a way] for SMELLY; [John of "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle"] for CHO; [It's used for cleavage] for AXE (which can cleave a log like nobody's business); ["___ Plain" (Nirvana song)] for ON A; and [2005 Supreme Court nominee] for Harriet MIERS. I can't stand those nasty little "marshmallows" in Lucky Charms, but liked the challenge of the two-way rebus action.

I wouldn't have minded tougher clues for Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword. Why? Because the fill was so great, I wish I'd had to work harder for the reward of filling in the answers. The three longest answers—STEPFORD WIVES ([Ultra-obedient companions]), ONE-NIGHT STAND ([Short-term relationship]), and GET ON THE STICK (["Start doing your job!"])—are as crisp as a fresh tortilla chip. Other multi-word answers included OZONE HOLE, CAPE VERDE ([Africa's westernmost point]), IN LEAGUE (IN CAHOOTS was one letter too long), EGO BOOSTS, PATENT LAW, SENDS AWAY, BIG APE ([Lug]), FIRE UP, STOOD IN (past-tense [Pinch-hit]), the NEW ME (Person after a lifestyle change, self-descriptively]), STOP IT (["No more!"]), and PLANS TO. Oh, and ONE PIN—in bowling, a [Spare part?]—a little clunky, whereas the other phrases were all smooth as butter. The answer I liked best was MAD-LIBS, [Laugh-producing game popular since 1958]—my son enjoys Mad-Libs, as I did in my youth.

Favorite clues: [Ways to get inside hip joints?] for MRIS (hip's a noun, not an adjective here!); [Is not misused?] for AIN'T; [Modern vent outlet?] for BLOG (oh, yeah!); [You may want to pass on these: Abbr.] for RDS (roads); [Where a tongue can be found] for (eww!) a DELI; [Ryan of "Boston Public"] for JERI (whose ex-husband's proclivity for sex clubs is one reason Barack Obama is a U.S. senator); [See stars?] for GAZE; [Big ___] for BEN (I started with the Big TEN and thus had EGO TOOSTS); [Sect governed by the Universal House of Justice] for BAHAI; and [Jersey workers] for KNITTERS. Nobody's crazy about the [Fragrant resin] ELEMI in a crossword, but everything else is so nice, I can accept it. (Don't confuse ELEMI with the [Kind of resin], EPOXY.)

Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle is entitled "Did I Stutter?" The five theme entries take a phrase, stutter a consonant sound, and change the spelling. Rocker Tommy Lee becomes a [Martial artist who practices on straw matting?], TATAMI LEE, for example. (This one took me the longest to understand.) And "holy cow" becomes [Sacred beans used to make chocolate?], HOLY CACAO. There are also POPPY SECEDE (poppy seed), NANETTE WORTH (net worth), and PENNY LALANNE (Penny Lane). Favorite clues: [Oscar category?] for MUPPET (Oscar the Grouch); [___ off (gets lost)] for EFFS; and [You get one when you come home] for a RUN in baseball.

Updated:

Annemarie Brethauer's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword for today, "Animal Tales," meanders away from academia to kid lit, making for an easier-than-usual solve. The theme is classic novels featuring multiple animal characters, and the non-theme fill is less abstruse than that of the typical CHE crossword. Favorite fill: the uncouth YAHOOS from Gulliver's Travels.

Dan Naddor's LA Times puzzle has six theme entries that double an O and plenty of long fill to boot. [Animated feature about Humpty Dumpty?], for example, is an EGG CARTOON (carton). Odd that this answer crosses CARTON, clued as a Dickens character, while the other theme entries' base words aren't included—but I'll give the constructor the benefit of the doubt about fill options for that section, what with the two stacked theme entries running through it! Yet another crossword venue demonstrates that the word SPERM is A-OK, at least when clued as [Kind of whale]. Overall, good fill, good clues.

Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "On the Beach," relates the theme to On the Beach—the book, the movie based on it, and a rock album. Plenty of good fill, lots of names from pop culture—fun puzzle.

"Alice Long" (Mike Shenk) crafted this week's Wall Street Journal crossword with a "Writers' Strike" theme in which PEN is deleted from the base phrases to generate the theme entries. Favorite theme entry: "ELOPE, ANN MILLER" (Penelope Ann Miller).

Gotta run!

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Friday, 7/27

NYS 6:15 + 3:00
NYT 5:44
CHE 4:16
Jonesin' 3:39
LAT 3:31
CS 2:44

WSJ 8:22

(updated at 11 a.m. Friday)

The New York Sun crossword, "Solving by the Numbers," is a joint production of Patrick Blindauer and Francis Heaney. In the comments on yesterday's post, our Aussie correspondent, DA, wrote, "Patrick B and Francis H have pushed the envelope off the table, and out the door. It is brilliant." What's the twist? The clues for the three theme entries are provided in a post-puzzle puzzle. After I finished the grid, I filled in the acrostic-style blanks above it with the letters that appeared in the crossword squares with the corresponding number. Those gotta-work-for-'em theme clues are mighty fine clues, and yet they had to be exactly the right length (21 letters each) and those letters had to fit into the grid's numbered squares. It's horribly intricate, this interwoven meta-construction. And the trio of theme entries? A rock-solid set: ON THE DOTTED LINE, DASHES ONE'S HOPES, and FILL IN THE BLANKS all go together thematically. And! And these phrases more or less describe the acrostic-style spaces. I will cry foul with the crossing of 1-Across and -Down; I didn't know the singer LULU and certainly didn't know that [Bogs] was British slang for "toilet," or LOOS. (That link also edifies me on "Bob's your uncle!" It's slang for "That's all it takes!") Although I have to uncry foul given that the L was also available via the acrostic. Favorite clue: [Briefs, briefly], which managed to surprise me by being UNDIES. Here's the mythological tale behind "Pile Pelion on OSSA" (53-Across), which isn't a phrase I knew before.

The New York Times crossword by John Conrad has a reasonably Fridayish-looking grid, but with a Thursday-style rebus trick that may induce sneezing if you have a dust allergy: A [DUST] rebus in six exactly symmetrical spots in the grid. [DUST]Y SPRINGFIELD and INTERSTELLAR [DUST] anchor the long entries in the middle, and the top and bottom rows have shorter words/phrases containing [DUST]. The overall cluing and the shorter answers didn't do much for me, but I admired the longer fill (IRIDIUM, [DUST]BUSTER, BIT THE [DUST], NETZERO, SECRECY, and the evocative pair of CHEESES and HORMONE). [Shop coat?] was one of the trickiest clues, since I didn't know [DUST] was involved there at first (SAW[DUST]). I know some people rail against gimmicks like rebuses making Friday incursions, but I always like the punched-up surprise.

Matt Jones' Jonesin' puzzle for the week is called "For Your Security," and its theme entries include the key words from the national threat advisory. Highlights: SEX TAPE, clued as [Paris Hilton recording]; OOMPH; SHAUN clued as ["___ of the Dead" (2004 comedy)] (most entertaining!); and APLOMB. [Author of "The Sandman" series Neil] is Neil GAIMAN, whose name I hear a lot but whose work I've never read. What am I missing? The Busta Rhymes CD called ELE is actually E.L.E., short for extinction-level event. (Hey, I remember that from the movie Deep Impact.)

Updated:

Michael Ashley's July 13 Chronicle of Higher Ed puzzle, "Party Time," quizzes you on assorted U.S. political parties formed between 1828 and 1971. Are you up on your political history?

Wall Street Journal puzzle editor Mike Shenk bylined today's crossword under one of his pseudonyms, Alice Long. "Singling Out" converts a double letter into a single one in various -ING words, altering the phrase's meaning and cluing according to the new meaning. Thus, [What eyes have?] means STARING ROLES. Plenty of interesting clues for the fill, but the theme wasn't up my alley. I think it's because the theme entries are all so unnatural. A bowling teammate is a SPARING PARTNER?

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