Saturday, 2/28

Newsday 23:08
NYT 9:58
LAT 6:01

frank longo's new york times crossword is a cranium-crusher of exactly the type you would expect from the author of cranium-crushing crosswords. the word count is only 66, and 16 of those are 8+ letters. my favorites were:

• sir ALEC GUINNESS is clued as the [Oscar winner for "The Bridge on the River Kwai"]. sure, he's better known as obi wan, but this is still pretty famous. i was almost surprised i knew this.
  
• ELIZABETH I is getting a lot of crossword play this week, isn't she? today's clue is [First holder of the title Supreme Governor of the Church of England], which got me thinking about henry VIII even though i already had the initial E.
  
• AXIS OF EVIL is probably the marquee answer, and it's clued as the [Epithet coined for the 2002 State of the Union address].
  
• [Summer cooler] for once isn't the (lame non-word) ADE; instead, it's delicious ITALIAN ICE.
  
• [Enter la-la land] is a great clue for SPACE OUT. there's a mild etymological paradox here: are you going in or out? i'd say out, which makes la-la land a very strange place: it's where you enter when you check out of everywhere else.
  

i actually solved most of the puzzle pretty quickly (it really helps when i can get 1a), but the SE region of the puzzle did me in. everything to the east of BAFTA was blank for a while, because i didn't know:

• [Group with the 1967 #2 hit "Georgy Girl"] is the SEEKERS. ouch. a 42-year old song and it wasn't even #1? i didn't stand a chance, although i did guess that it ended with S. [Wronski feint performers] would have been more up my alley.
  
• never heard of english poet STEVIE smith.
  
• [Butcherbird or woodchat] was not calling SHRIKE to mind. yikes.
  
• i did eventually guess that [Like supermarkets] was AISLED, off the A from ELLA (which turned out to be wrong, but the A was right).
  

several anatomical terms are growing in this grid: a TRUE RIB; [Alveoli, e.g.], or AIR CELLS; DIGESTIVE tracts; and the ILIUM. there were also a bunch of little foreign words: ESSA is italian for "she," SCENA is an [Elaborate solo vocal composition], and [Heads of Italy] are CAPI. GAI is french for "happy," and is an unpleasant reminder of the time TOUJOURS GAI prevented me from finishing a saturday NYT about a year ago. (i didn't keep track of constructors at the time, but why am i not surprised to go back and find that it was brad wilber?) and AMO gets a very erudite clue: [Catullus's "Odi et ___"], which means "i hate and i love."

favorite clue: [It might be kicked after being picked up] is a HABIT.

updated 3:00 pm:

stan newman's Newsday Saturday Stumper was all very gettable except for the two longest entries, one of which i felt was clued unfairly, and one of which was a fictional character i'd neeeeeever heard of. CAUSTICALLY is an adverb, but [Emulating Mencken] seems not to be. how does everybody else feel about this? i don't think it passes the substitution test. and the [Oscar-nominated role of '50] is apparently ELWOOD P. DOWD. um... yeah. google tells me this is jimmy stewart's role from harvey, but even if the clue had been [Jimmy Stewart's role from "Harvey"] i would have needed every single crossing. working out the central part of this grid took me about the last 10 minutes of the 23 i spent on this puzzle. and although 23 minutes is a pretty typical time for me on the stumper, i felt i was doing pretty well until i hit an absolute wall in the OOH/DOE area. part of the problem was SPRAINS for [Stretches, in a way] instead of SPRAWLS, which led me to guess that the mystery name might be ELIOTT P. DOWD. then i tried ELINOR P. DOWD, but CREDN looked much wronger than CREDO.

stuff i liked:

• [Seer's certification] is EYE TEST, not some sort of tarot license.
  
• [Who's first] isn't an abbott & costello reference, nor is it ADAM or some such. it's roger DALTREY, lead singer of the who.
  
• [Where Napoleon was crowned] is a historical fact that i just plain should have remembered. it's NOTRE DAME (and not the one in south bend).
  

i quailed a little when i opened up today's LA Times crossword and saw brad wilber's name in the byline. but this turned out to be a very smooth and enjoyable saturday solve, with none of the pull-your-hair-out moments i associate (fairly or un-) with brad's puzzles. the highlights:

• ["The Purple Rose of Cairo" premise] is a FILM WITHIN A FILM. i don't know that movie, but this is a cool answer.
  
• crossing it in the puzzle's center is SCRATCH PLAYER, or a [Regular par shooter] in golf.
  
• circuits get yet more play in the LAT, with OHM'S LAW at 1a, clued as the deceptive [Resistance statement].
  
• another statement demonstrating some resistance is "WHAT OF IT?," a [Defensive retort].
  
• ["Yes!" accompanier] is a FIST PUMP, à la tiger woods. but not a terrorist fist jab, à la the obamas.
  
• [Mini revelations] are not small revelations, but rather things revealed by minis: a lady's KNEES. how perfectly scandalous! i'm still getting used to the idea that loose girls might flash a bit of ankle.
  
• good high-culture stuff: poet seamus HEANEY and artist FRANS hals, as well as SONNETS, clued as [Some Keats works]. "on first looking into chapman's homer" is one of my, oh, say, ten favorite poems.
  
• good low-culture stuff: [Stereotypical monster's target] is TOKYO. [Gibson guy?] is MAD MAX, portrayed by a very young mel gibson. crossing both is [Four time AL home run champ Jimmie] FOXX, aka "double X" or "the beast."
  

gnarly/unfamiliar bits (fewer than usual for a wilber, but there were still some):

• [Sally Ann of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"] is apparently surnamed HOWES.
  
• [Snoopy's first owner] is LILA. this seems deliberately obscure, but maybe snoopy fans know it.
  
• [Distillery waste] is POTALE. i've never seen this word. or is it two words?
  
• ["Married to the Mob" actor] is MODINE. i think that's a last name, but i've never heard of the movie (or show?) or the person.
  
• ["Little Shop of Horrors" dentist]? apparently ORIN. i should tuck this one away.
  

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Friday, 1/2

Sun 10:01
LAT 5:42
NYT 5:13
CS 3:11
WSJ 7:14

(all done updating at 4:20 p.m. Friday)

I hear that the Friday Sun crossword is one of those rare but exceedingly tough treats—a vowelless puzzle by Frank Longo. This might help tide us over until June, when Frank's entire bk f vwllss crsswrds wll b pblshd. Cn't wt! Except I can wait until morning to do the Sun, as I don't want to start it when I'm already tired because then it will kick my butt.

Speaking of the Sun crossword, if you haven't already subscribed, I encourage you to do so here. Editor Peter Gordon has overseen the development of a number of cruciverbal innovations. The vowelless puzzles, some of Patrick Berry and Patrick Blindauer's crazy twists on the format, some rebus puzzles that are too tough for the New York Times, asymmetrical grids—if you have even the slightest appreciation for puzzle challenges like these, please help keep Peter's crossword factory churning out the goodies.

The New York Times crossword is a themeless by Martin Ashwood-Smith, who's one of the regulars on the CrosSynergy constructors team. He's placed a triple-stack of 15-letter answers at the top and bottom of the grid, and a couple more 15's near the middle. Usually when there are that many 15's, one of them might be a gimme for me, but not this time. Here are the big girls:

• SALES RESISTANCE is a [Problem in closing?]. Coffee is for closers, they said in Glengarry Glen Ross. My brother-in-law used to be in sales, despite his own comically low sales resistance. He bought a vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman...as a single man who never vacuumed. He bought a set of encyclopedias for himself around the same time. See? No sales resistance.
  
• [Just before it's too late] is THE ELEVENTH HOUR.
  
• [1984 JoBeth Williams comedy/adventure film] was not ringing any bells for me. According to this page, the tagline for AMERICAN DREAMER was "She was an ordinary housewife until her trip to Paris turned into an extraordinary adventure." Well, doesn't that sound intriguing.
  
• AVERSION THERAPY is [One way to kick a bad habit]. What would crossword aversion therapy consist of? I think speed solver Dan Feyer may be due for an intervention, as he recently reported solving 9,000 crosswords last year. (This is good news for all the rest of us—if a loved one suggests we're spending too much time on puzzles, we can place things in perspective with the Feyer Scale. "Me? Are you kidding? Some folks do, like, five or ten times as many crosswords as I do.")
  
• An INVITED AUDIENCE is a [Preview crowd].
  
• WEATHER STATIONS are [Pressure points?] that may record the barometric pressure. I love my Lacrosse weather station, I do.
  
• [Who said "A hungry man is not a free man"] was ADLAI E. STEVENSON, promoted from his usual initials or first name appearances in crosswords to the marquee level of his full name emblazoned across the grid. It just so happens that I drove about 40 miles on the Adlai Stevenson Expressway today.
  
• [One who'd like to put you in your place] in a nice way is a REAL ESTATE AGENT.
  

It's getting late, so without further ado, other clues and answers I want to include here follow:

• [Seventeen people, briefly] are EDS. at Seventeen magazine.
  
• A HEN is [One whose deposits are often collected]. Eggs, not ore or silt.
  
• [It's a shore thing] means a PIER. Not sure why I opted for TIDE first.
  
• ABS ([They look better when they're ripped]) and GUT ([Instinctive]) appear together...just before GREASED, which puts me in mind of shiny body-builders.
  
• [Supporting piece] clues both a collar STAY and a framework STRUT. A [V-shaped carrier] is a HOD. Are you ready to build some stuff?
  
• The [Word associated with a light bulb] is AHA. Metaphorical/cartoon light bulb, not an actual one.
  
• [Whitebait, e.g.] is HERRING. Isn't that a New Year's tradition in some cultures, eating pickled herring?
  
• I don't know why LAPIS is clued [Stone, to Caesar]. What's the Caesar/lapis lazuli connection? The dictionary tells me lapis is Latin for "stone," so there you have it.
  
• [Ban succeeded him in 2007] refers to Kofi ANNAN. Ban is UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
  
• If proofreaders [Decide to leave] something as is, they STET it.
  
• [Never heard of [Jazz guitarist Farlow], named TAL.
  

Updated:

It's noon, and I've only been up for two hours today. Is that a good thing or a bad one? I think it's good, but it leaves me behind schedule for the day.

The cluing style in Edward Sessa and Nancy Salomon's LA Times crossword clashed with my mindset—there's nothing so inherently challenging about the theme or the fill that accounts for this puzzle taking me longer than the NYT themeless, other than the clues just not resonating with the words in my head. The theme is summed up by TEE-OFF TIME, a golf [Driver's request, and a hint to this puzzle's theme]. The phrase I'm familiar with is "tee time," which gets about 17 times more Google hits than "tee-off time." This answer suggests that the other theme entries have a T taken off a unit of time, but the T is lopped off a set of unrelated words:

• ONE GOOD URN (turn) is [Caterer's minimal requirement].
  
• HOLY ERROR (terror) is [Slip-up in the pulpit?]. My first thought here was that Reverend Spooner and spoonerisms would be involved.
  
• [Reveille duettists?] are a PAIR OF ROUSERS (trousers).
  
• NO NEW AXES (taxes) is a [Lumberjack's lament?].
  

In the fill, [Swedish golfer Stenson], or HENRIK, was a stranger to me. [Ford : RESCU :: GM : ___] clued ONSTAR, which I've heard of; I don't think Ford has done such a good job of publicizing their version of. [Creator of Kissy and Pussy] is IAN Fleming of James Bond fame; I don't recall a Kissy. [Reason for weight loss?] clues TARE; with super-dry factual words like TARE, I think I prefer super-dry factual clues. Why is [Jewish star] MOGEN? I don't know. [First name in detection] is NERO, as in Nero Wolfe. [Place at the track] clues LAY, as in "lay a bet" or "place a bet" on a race. GLUON is a [Quark-binding particle]. The units of time in the crossword are a SPAN, or [Some time], and ERA, or [Hunk of history]. [Ale brewer Slosberg] is named PETE; I've never heard this name, but Google tells me he's the founder of Pete's Wicked Ale. BEETS are [Commonly biennial garden plants], but I do not know any gardeners who grow beets; I hear that eating a lot of beets will turn your digestive output purple or red. (Blue frosting or dye gives kids green poop.) [Cyrene's daughter, in a TV drama] is XENA the Warrior Princess. My favorite clue here is [One of them?] for a FOE.

Ray Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Word of Mouth," gathers four phrases that include parts of the mouth:

• LIP SERVICE is a [Bit of insincerity].
  
• TONGUE-TIED means [Unable to speak].
  
• A really [Hard candy] is a JAWBREAKER.
  
• The TOOTH FAIRY, besides being that generous ethereal being who gives kids a quarter or a buck for a lost baby tooth, is also a [Ravenous creature in "Hellboy II: The Golden Army"]. I forgot those hideous little creatures that chewed up everyone and -thing at the auction house were called tooth fairies. They feed on calcium. If you haven't seen the two Hellboy movies and you enjoy wry, check 'em out.
  

BEET is in this puzzle, too, but clued more accessibly as a [Red vegetable] since the puzzle's targeted at more of a Wednesdayish level. Favorite clues: [It makes il mondo go round] for AMORE; [Carnegie foundation?] for STEEL, the foundation of Carnegie's wealth; [Marriage agreement?] for I DO; [Shorts supports] for the HIPS; and [Unlucky number, in ancient Rome?] for XIII or 13. I also like "DO TELL!" clued as ["Please continue!"], though I hear that Southerners who say "Do tell!" really mean "You don't say" and don't want you to say more. (This page explains that it's an expression of surprise. But this Northerner says it to mean "Please continue.")

Andrea Carla Michaels came up with a theme idea about ANTs and Patrick Blindauer crafted a fun-looking grid to embody it. Today's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Down on the Farm," has a bunch of black squares that draw the tunnels in an ant farm, and the ANTs are crawling all over the puzzle (everywhere but in those black tunnels, actually]. There's one explanatory ANT at 6-Down: [Farm creature that can be found 30 more times in this grid]. Though there aren't really any traditional theme entries in this grid—certainly none to be found in symmetrical spots given that this grid is asymmetrical—the ANTs theme was an aid to solving the rest of the puzzle because you knew that a bunch of answers would contain the ANT trigram. For example, there's a [Hairy creature], the TARANTULA, and a VANTAGE [Point with a view] beside INFANT, or [Babies], with the pair crossing a TYRANT, ATALANTA, and RADIANT. GRANT'S TOMB, the [Memorial in New York's Riverside Park], sits atop a praying MANTIS, or [Devout insect?]. Every section of the puzzle has an ANT or three crawling in it. Cute! But I feel like getting some bug spray now, or calling the constructors Antrea and Pantrick.

Updated again, at last, with the Vwllss Crsswrd:

Frank Longo's Sun crossword is both themeless and vowelless. To keep things clear, there aren't any Y's serving as consonants or vowels in this grid. This puzzle felt easier than Frank's past ventures in vowel-free entertainment. Here's what the NSWRS are when you reanimate them with their lost vowels:
1A. JNLC is Jean-Luc Godard.
5A. MTLPLCHCQZ is multiple-choice quiz.
15A. FTSR is footsore. Not a word I've ever used, but I must concede it should have a place in my vocabulary.
16A. LTHLCMBNTN is a lethal combination.
17A. FDST is fades out, I think.
18A. TRVLDSTNTN is travel destination. Use of those -tion/TN noun endings makes these vowelless monsters a little more pliant.
19A. RSNR is a reasoner.
20A. NTRNTNLZNG is internationalizing. There's another -tion lurking in there. Given how common T and N are in English words, the vowelless constructor is probably quite fond of -tion words.
21A. STTC is static.
22A. GRDTNS are graduations.
23A. NTHM is an anthem. They sang "O Canada" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" before the NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley yesterday. If you watched that, did you see those military jets roar overhead? I heard them fly over my house a few seconds before they reached Wrigley.
24A. PCC is ipecac.
25A. GTHSMN is Gethsemane. It's the name of a good garden center a couple miles from me—very little agony and betrayal going on at this Gethsemane.
30A. MSMFFNRTS is a Museum of Fine Arts. Where are the museums of coarse arts, like the rendering of armpit farts and belching the alphabet?
33A. RNMNT is an ornament.
34A. MSPRNTS are misprints, with only two vowels omitted.
35A. I couldn't figure out what CSNGSTR was short for, so I checked Pete Mitchell's Sun Blocks blog—causing a stir. Ah, the deceptive inclusion of an invisible "a" as a word...
37A. RNCTD is reenacted.
38A. SPRNGRLLS is also missing just two vowels so it looks nearly normal: spring rolls.
40A. LTTSNW is "Let It Snow", times three.
42. LLL is lull; this could also have been clued as loll or Lille.
43A. NKNT is in a knot, againn with an "a" that's dissolved away.
44A. DSCCTS is desiccates.
46A. RLSH is relish.
47A. DRSSRHRSLS are dress rehearsals.
51A. VDTP is videotape.
52A. SSTRPBLCTN is a sister publication.
53A. LTTC is lettuce.
54A. NDNPLSCLTS are the Indianapolis Colts.
55A. TMTT is the tomtit.
56A. GDNCCNSLRS are guidance counselors.
57A. NSNR is ensnare.

1D. JFFRSNMMRL is the Jefferson Memorial.
2D. NTDSTTSSNT is the United States Senate.
3D. LSSNTHMPCT is lessen the impact.
4D. CRTRCMFRTS are creature comforts.
5D. MLTNGPT is melting point.
6D. LTRTRCRSS are literature courses.
7D. THVRDCT is The Verdict.
8D. PLLNT is pollinate.
9D. LCDTNG is elucidating.
10D. CMSNSTRNG is comes on strong.
11D. HBTL is habitual—half the word is omitted vowels.
12D. CNNZ is canonize—ditto.
13D. QTTN is quotation—five vowels dropped, four consonants holding steady.
14D. ZNNG is zoning.
26D. HNGRNRVLTN is the Hungarian Revolution.
27D. SMSLKLDTMS is, I suppose, "Seems Like Old Times."
28D. MNTLNSTTTN is a mental institution.
29D. NTRSTHPCTR is enters the picture. Nice lively phrase.
31D. FNDNDRPLC is find and replace—also lively.
32D. SCRLTLTTR is The Scarlet Letter.
36D. SNLSSNSS is sinlessness. It's not a coincidence that four of those S's double as the last letter of the crossings—those S's come in handy here.
39D. PLCSCLL is places a call.
41D. WSHBSN is washbasin.
45D. CRLCS are curlicues—I like this one.
47D. DSNG is dousing. Could just as easily be dosing, but dousing makes for a crisper clue.
48D. RSDD is resided.
49D. STNN is sit in on. As Pete M. noted, "sit in" sounds a tad more right than "sit in on" here.
50D. SRPC is Serpico.

Did you notice that this is a 60-"word" puzzle with just 25 black squares? If this were a standard crossword, this grid would be off-the-hook insane, with quadruple-stacked 10-letter answers in each corner and those 9-letter answers in the middle binding them all together.

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Saturday, 12/13

Newsday 7:23
LAT 4:47
NYT 4:42
CS 3:35

Next weekend, I leave for a week's vacation in the Caribbean—on a cruise where wireless access would cost $20 an hour so I'm leaving the laptop and crossword addiction at home. Starting next Thursday night, this blog will be in the capable hands of Puzzle Girl. Isn't she swell?

Frank Longo follows up his Friday Sun with the Saturday New York Times crossword. It seems that Will Shortz swapped Friday and Saturday this week, as Frank's puzzle is a good bit easier than yesterday's chewy Nothnagel. This 66-worder has a triple stack of 15's in the middle and two more 15's above and below. Those long puppies are rather factual:

• ACCRUED INTEREST is a [Payback factor].
  
• PATRIOT MISSILES were [Desert Storm defenses].
  
• [Bathroom buzzers] are ELECTRIC SHAVERS. Did you ponder bathroom versions of joy buzzers?
  
• [When many people are off] is a NATIONAL HOLIDAY.
  
• A [Verifiable claim] is a STATEMENT OF FACT.
  

Two 11-letter answers connect the triple stacks to the other 15's: Something [Shrill] is EAR-PIERCING and [Many quiz show fans] are TRIVIA BUFFS.
These ones are my favorite answers and clues:

• [What I may become] is the ROYAL WE. This one amused us.
  
• "I'LL PASS" means ["No thanks"].
  
• HAN SOLO was the [Killer of Greedo in a sci-fi film]. For my money, George Lucas is the worst namer in the business.
  
• [Biker's wear] is LYCRA. Not a Harley Davidson biker—more like a Tour de France biker.
  
• [The planets, e.g.] make up an OCTAD. Poor Pluto, evicted from the nonet.
  
• [Year in which Middle English began, by tradition] is MCL, or 1150. I don't recall learning this when I took Anne Montgomery's class on Old and Middle English lit.
  
• [1990s president of the Philippines] was Fidel RAMOS. I liked this one because I knew it.
  

Quibbles, unknowns, and little-knowns:

• COMPUSA is clued as an [Alternative to Best Buy or Circuit City], and I'm wondering how long ago this crossword was constructed. CompUSA is down to a teeny 23 stores, vs. about 700 Circuit City outlets (they're closing a lot) and over 1,000 Best Buys.
  
• [Between green and black, say] is RIPE. When your fruit turns black, no, that's not good. I didn't see where the clue was going.
  
• [Fort Worth's ___ Carter Museum] clues AMON. Amon the supreme god of the Egyptians demands obeisance.
  
• [Thimblerig thing] is a PEA in that thimblerig means "shell game."
  
• [Pulsar, e.g.] is a RADIO SOURCE. Not on the tip of my tongue.
  
• UNE ["__ Grosse Legume" (Orson Welles novel)] is not remotely familiar to me. I'm sure it's a gripping tale. We need more stories about big beans.
  
• [Tenor Schipa] is named TITO. If only he and Tito Jackson could record together. Who needs The Three Tenors when you can have The Two Titos?
  
• [Sitting Bull's tongue] is TETON. I would've guessed Sioux, but every crossing ruled that out.
  
• [Cancun kinswoman] is TIA, Spanish for "aunt." There was another recent clue like this, and I was surprised by how much Googling it spurred.
  
• [Marsh bird] is a SORA. This, like the erne and nene, is one of those birds I know more from crosswords than from bird books. (The cedar waxwing, on the other hand, never shows up in crosswords.)
  

Updated:

Grr! I was a moment away from republishing this post with the LA Times puzzle section added when the browser hung up, so I'll have to recreate what I had. Barry Silk's LA Times crossword has some of his trademark Scrabbliness—BAZOOKAS are [Big guns], JIMMIE FOXX was the [First right-handed batter to reach 500 home runs], [Old times] are ANTIQUITY, and some [Brass band members] are SAXHORNS. (There are eight members of the saxhorn family. Who knew?) There are two 15's, less Scrabbly—the BETSY ROSS BRIDGE is a [Delaware span] I've never heard of, and HEARTBREAK HOTEL was [Elvis's first #1 hit].

Favorite clues:

• AVERAGES are the [Subject of a familiar law].
  
• Yo-Yo [Ma and others] are CELLISTS.
  
• [Botanist's workplace] is in the HOTHOUSE.
  
• [Colt, e.g.] is neither a gun nor an NFL player—it's a young EQUINE.
  

Things I didn't know:

• WYSE is the last name of [Longtime Good Housekeeping columnist Lois].
  
• ["The $64,000 Question" host March] was named HAL.
  
• The [Role first awarded to British actress Elizabeth Shepherd], who I've never heard of, was EMMA PEEL. Arcane trivia about decades-old pop culture? Oy.
  
• [Bitty, in Banff] is Scottish SMA, or "small." I knew there was a Canadian Banff, but not that it's a Scottish place name too.
  

Dan Stark's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" has, like most Stark themelesses, mostly single words rather than phrases. (Solution here.) Longo's NYT has about 14 multi-word answers, vs. just 3 in the Stumper. The fill tends towards the dry side, with some word endings and beginnings:

• Verbs with -ING: [Tailor's job] is TAPERING. [Efficacious] is AVAILING. Meh.
  
• Verbs with -ED: [Started back] is SHIED. [Hardened] is INURED. [Caused squinting] is GLARED.
  
• Comparatives with -ER or -EST: [Less dense] is AIRIER. [Sparkling less] is TAMER. [Guarded to the max] is LEERIEST. [Least slanted] is FAIREST.
  
• Nouns made by adding -ER: [Camera hog] is a MUGGER. [Mechanic's offer] is a LOANER. [Orb] is a PEEPER. [Gardener's device] is MISTER. 
  
• Prefixes to modify verbs: [Forwarded] is RESENT. [Prepare to take off] is UNBUTTON. [Disentangle] is UNPILE.
  

My favorite clue was [Its flag has an Osage shield] for OKLAHOMA. Here's what it looks like. [Asian titles] usually seems to clue emirs, ranis, rajas, amirs, shahs...something along those lines. This time it's KHANS, as in Genghis and friends. [Where Birmingham is] is ENGLAND; the trap is that Alabama also has 7 letters and a city called Birmingham.

Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy crossword, "Hit Bottom," has four vertical theme entries with HIT at the bottom as part of longer words:

• ["You gotta face this"] is DEAL WITH IT.
  
• [Took care of the tab, maybe] is SIGNED A CHIT. Sometimes a CHIT is clued as an IOU, which sits beside the word in today's grid and is clued as [Creditor's holding].
  
• [Head of a hard-up Dickens family] is BOB CRATCHIT.
  
• [Zilch] is NOT ONE WHIT. [Zilch, in Zacatecas] is NADA.
  

STINK BUGS are [Insects with an olfactory weapon]. I misinterpreted [Writer's fixer-upper] as meaning the first draft in need of fixing, like a fixer-upper of a house; instead, it's the EDITOR who fixes up the writer's work. HOT WEATHER is a [Typical forecast in the tropics]—hey! I'll be there soon.

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Friday, 12/12

NYT 6:05
LAT 5:17
Sun 4:45
CHE 4:39
CS 4:12
WSJ 7:52

What a treat—themeless crosswords from a long established master of the form, Frank Longo, and a newer hotshot, Mike Nothnagel.

Mike's puzzle is the New York Times one, and he's loaded it with some delightful fill. There's some knotty stuff, as you expect for a late-week puzzle, but nothing beyond the pale. Here are the incandescent answers:

• "BATTER UP" is a [Call after which someone fills a box]. 
  
• To [Be way off] is to MISS BY A MILE.
  
• ESPRESSO BAR [employees get a lot of perks], as in percolating coffee. 
  
• An IRS FORM and TAXPAYER are cross-referenced in the clues. One alone would be all right, but the pairing is better.
  
• My favorite crossword answer this week is LUCY VAN PELT of Peanuts. She's the [Fictional manager of a "psychiatric help" booth]. Five cents, cheap! She's completely unlicensed as a mental health professional, of course.
  
• LAKE ONTARIO splashes in the bottom of the grid, clued as the never-heard-of-it [Setting of Main Duck Island].
  
• VISHNU is the Hindu [God commonly depicted with four arms].
  
• RUBS RAW means [Chafes]. The sequence of letters looks wrong, doesn't it?
  
• An EMOTICON is a [Face sideways?].
  
• The Shirley MacLaine special is PAST LIVES, or [Pre-reincarnation periods].
  

Things I did not know:

• LOTHAR is [Mandrake the Magician's sidekick].
  
• [Billy Graham's "___ the Hills"] is finished by UNTO. It's a devotional book.
  
• [Home of the ancient Olympics] is ELIS. We recently had the adjectival form of this (Elean) in another puzzle, and that struck me as so obscure, I blotted the second vowel in ELIS from my memory.
  
• [Bell Centre team member, familiarly] is HAB. Say what? I Googled this post-solve. The Montreal Canadiens are called the Habs, as in les habitants.
  
• [NPR's "Only ___"] is A GAME. I'm guessing this is a sports show, and I wasn't aware that NPR had such a thing.
  
• [Carpenter's scoring tool] is a SCRIBER.
  

Favorite clues:

• [Thing on a string] is a TEABAG. Give yourself a cookie if you strongly considered TAMPON here.
  
• [Where le nez is] is la TETE, or head. I tried to think of a 4-letter French word meaning "face."
  
• [Where rushing strategies are often discussed] isn't a football huddle but FRAT ROW. I needed all the crossings to see where this was going.
  
• [Course that has its limits, briefly] is CALC, or calculus. Math pun, ha! The math teachers seem to love those.
  
• [Piece of silver] ware is a SPOON. Were you trying to summon up a 5-letter name for a silver coin?
  
• [One who's often with child?] is MADONNA, as in both the Madonna-and-child Renaissance paintings and Madonna Ciccone with her three kids.
  
• [Picked a ticket] clues VOTED. When I was 19, I had a cop tell me to "pick a ticket." Wasn't that sweet? I could choose speeding or running a stop sign, and he wasn't going to dispense both tickets.
  

Yeah, I liked this crossword a lot. LUCY VAN PELT! She lights up the grid, she does. I'd actually just been wondering the other day why we hadn't seen a Mikey N. creation for a while, and here 'tis.

I've got to be quick about blogging Frank's Sun crossword, a "Weekend Warrior" (yay! two themeless Suns in a row this week!), because two DVRed TV shows are waiting for me and they're getting impatient. This grid contains two completely unfamiliar answers—CATAMARCA, the [Argentine province or its capital], and CALMA, clued with ["Ridente la ___" (Mozart song)]. The second C in CATAMARCA crossed the [Jailer in Beethoven's "Fidelio"], ROCCO—I think he was in another crossword in the last year, also with a crazy crossing, and some people had opted for ROSCO instead.

Favorite clues and answers:

• [Very bad], [Very sad], and [Very mad] are the first three clues in the puzzle. They point towards AWFUL, DEPRESSED, and IRATE. (This puzzle is a bummer.)
  
• The SUEZ CANAL [was closed during the Six-Day War].
  
• HAVE A BONE TO PICK means [Feel like doing some complaining].
  
• [Trivia, to the Greeks] is HECATE. Is this etymology, or is there a Roman goddess named Trivia? I am sure one of you knows the answer.
  
• AD NAUSEAM means [Way too much]. Spelling hint: it's nauseam and not nauseum because nausea ends with an A, not a U. Nauseum would be, like, a museum of gastric upset.
  
• [Yard alternative] is a PINT GLASS. How many ounces of ale are there in a yard of ale?
  
• PANTS? [They may be charmed off of you].
  
• [House party] is the DEMOCRATS.
  

Updated:

Once again, I had trouble tuning into the Friday LA Times crossword's wavelength. I didn't get the feeling that Gail Grabowski's clues were really hard, and the fill is all straightforward—it was a quasi-"Saturday Stumper"-esque experience of missing the point of the clues. (Sigh.)

The theme entries insert an O to change a phrase's meaning:

• [Constant computer glitches?] are a REPAIR OMEN (repairmen).
  
• [Tournament for cryptologists?] is a DECODER OPEN (decoder pen). "Decoder pen" is not in my parlance.
  
• [Popeye's gal in mortal danger?] is OLIVE BY THE SWORD (live by the sword).
  
• [Work to reduce a cause of air pollution?] is COMBAT OZONE (combat zone).
  
• [How one might read a sad newspaper section?] is OBIT BY OBIT (bit by bit, plus two O's).
  

Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle, "It's Just a Phase," starts each theme entry with a phase of the MOON (67-Across). NEW ENGLAND is [Where Patriots are revered]. CRESCENT ROLL is a sort of [Bent bread]. The QUARTERHORSE is an [Animal raised to run 1,320 feet] on a racetrack. [Back to the start] means FULL CIRCLE, and the phases of the moon—from new to crescent, quarter, ("waxing gibbous" omitted from the theme), and finally full go full circle. Or they do when they pass through waning gibbous to the other quarter and crescent before returning to a new moon. Favorite clue: [Work on a wall?] for ART mounted on a wall.

Todd McClary's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Polymath," has a cool theme. Familiar phrases that start with numbers and share the same noun are paired and subjected to arithmetic operations, and the theme answer is the result:

• [(Women's college group) – (Chekhov play)] = Seven Sisters – Three Sisters = FOUR SISTERS.
  
• [(Parlor game) ÷ (seder ritual)] = Twenty Questions ÷ Four Questions = FIVE QUESTIONS.
  
• [(Alfred Hitchcock film, with "The") + (recovery program)] = The 39 Steps + 12 Steps = FIFTY-ONE STEPS.
  
• [(Woodrow Wilson speech topic) ÷ (slam dunk score)] = Fourteen Points ÷ 2 points = SEVEN POINTS.
  

Isn't that a fun game?

Mike Shenk constructed this week's Wall Street Journal crossword under the pen name Judith Seretto. The title is "Small Investments" because the word WEE is invested in each theme entry. For example, CB radio is short for Citizens' Band, which takes on a WEE to read CITIZENS BAN WEED, or [Headline about an antipot referendum?]. The Dark Knight becomes THE DARK WEEKNIGHT, or [Moonless Monday, perhaps?]. This one's the best of all the theme entries, if you ask me. Plenty of interesting clues and fill here, too.

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Saturday, 11/22

Newsday 7:06
NYT 6:14
LAT 4:48
CS 3:20

(updated at 10:30 Saturday morning)

Hooray! We just had a Sun puzzle co-constructed by Frank Longo—who has been keeping himself too busy with things other than newspaper themeless crosswords—and now the Saturday New York Times puzzle proudly sports the Longo byline. And good gravy, is that an insane-looking grid. Triple-stacked 15's at the top and bottom, and a midsection spanned by two more 15's. They're not such easy 15's, either—none of the usual-suspect 15-letter answers that get used over and over. Here are the big boys:

• COMPARED AGAINST is [Vis-a-vis], kicking off the top triple-stack.
  
• [Age-old retaliation] is A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH. I wanted EYE instead of TOOTH, but that was too short.
  
• TRUE TO THE LETTER is not a familiar phrase to me. It's clued as [Having no inaccuracy whatsoever].
  
• To [Fix things] is to SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Then there's an INTERLUDE, or [Dramatic break], in the center of the puzzle dividing the PROBLEM from IMMEDIATE DANGER, clued with [A firefighter at work may be in it]. (I will not link to firefighter calendars again so soon.)
  
• Beginning the lower triple-stack, we see AMERICAN TABLOID, the [James Ellroy novel that Time magazine named best fiction book of 1995]. If you don't know this answer, the letter combos look kinda nutty when you don't have all the squares for TABLOID.
  
• [Suitable for all] means rated G for a GENERAL AUDIENCE.
  
• [Idolizes] clues SETS ON A PEDESTAL.
  

Toughest clues:

• [Automated, often malicious PC apps] are BOTNETS. Not a term I know at all.
  
• [First suit?] means the topmost exec, a CEO.
  
• [Compete for, in a way] is BID ON, as in the eBay setting.
  
• [Fast-food restaurant packets] wasn't so hard—it's CATSUPS. A few weeks ago, I had 15 ketchup packets. I gave them to Ben and his buddy and they rolled a log over them. Omigod! It almost sounded like fireworks. That ketchup flew pretty far too. There were laundry ramifications.
  
• The [Italian port with ruins of an imposing Aragonese castle] is a town whose name I learned from crosswords. If Toronto and Oneonta won't quite fit and you need Italy, go for OTRANTO.
  
• [Longtime Arizona congressman who ran for president in 1976] is MO UDALL. The clue doesn't warn you that you need a first and last name, so I reckon some people were trying to puzzle out who Rep. Moudall was.
  
• [Amenhotep IV's god] was just in the puzzle the other day. He's ATEN, but can be spelled other ways (Aton) too.
  
• [Time for an emergency phone call?] is THREE A.M. President Obama, the phone's for you.
  
• HOT TIPS [may break open cases] that the cops are having a rough time solving.
  
• MERIMEE, the [Writer whose novella "Carmen" is the basis of Bizet's opera], is not a household name. He's right next to MORDENT, a [Musical ornament using two quickly alternating tones]. Wow, two gnarly words butting up against one another. I think there will be complaints even though the crossings aren't insane.
  
• ["La Traviata" lover Alfredo ___] makes for the third Down answer in a row that was utterly unfamiliar to me. The answer's GERMONT—but again, the crossings felt fair to me.
  

How did you survive this one? Did 36-, 37-, and 38-Down kill you? Me, I was just happy to have a too-rare Longo themeless to kick me around.

Updated:

Robert Wolfe's LA Times crossword has 70 answers, and about 20 of them are multi-word phrases—ranging from the very short (MR. T, ['80s Peppard costar]) to the long (I DON'T UNDERSTAND, or ["Huh?"]). Here's a selection of the other phrases:

• [Create trouble (for oneself)] is DIG A HOLE.
  
• ["Cool it!"] is KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON.
  
• ["Who knows?"] is YOU CAN NEVER TELL.
  
• [Kaput] is DONE FOR.
  
• [Pleading words] are I BEG OF YOU.
  
• [Villain whose first name is Julius] is DR. NO.
  
• [Hit home?] is SIDE A, as in the home of a hit song on a record.
  
• [Share in] is PARTAKE OF.
  

And now, some single-word answers with interesting answers:

• [It often involves competitive drawing] clues an OATER, or movie Western.
  
• [Green prefix] isn't about eco- or enviro-anything—it's CHLORO-, as in chlorophyll.
  
• [Water line?] is a WAKE, the lines/waves that trail behind a moving boat.
  
• [End beginning?] is THE, as in "the end."
  

Three things I didn't know:

• [Like Betty Boop] clues OX-EYED. She has eyes like an ox?
  
• NOUS, or "us," completes [___-memes: French "ourselves"]. The [Spanish pronoun] is ELLO.
  
• LACEY is the name of [Henry Ford biographer Robert].
  

Two bits of standard old crosswordese are here. An ARIL is a [Seed protector]; one aril you may recognize is the little juicy ruby surrounding each pomegranate seed. The STOA [often bordered an agora].

Dan Stark's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" was the day's hardest themeless for me. (PDF solution here.) Favorite clues and answers:

• [Pumapard's parent] must be a puma or a leopard, right? Somehow, it's a COUGAR.
  
• KUNG-FU looks great sitting atop the grid. It's clued as a [Fluid-movement skill]. I have no kung-fu skills, but my Google-fu is not too shabby.
  
• ELI ([Samuel Morse, circa 1808]) isn't a favorite answer, but that reminds me—constructors and editors, you can quit using the ABC series Eli Stone in clues for ELI now because the show's being cancelled after the episodes in the can have been aired.
  
• The verb SHRIMPS is clued [Works on a boat, perhaps].
  
• ROMAINE is a [Healthful food for goldfish]? I had no idea.
  
• [Plants, for instance] are a KINGDOM.
  
• Barbara [Boxer's title] is SENATOR.
  
• An [Anomalous rise] is a BLIP on the graph.
  

Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy crossword, "Le Puzzle," adds -LE to the end of four phrases that end with a CK to transform those phrases into something different. The results sound zingy:

• Writer Pearl Buck becomes PEARL BUCKLE, a [Fancy fastener?].
  
• A dirty trick turns into DIRTY TRICKLE, a [Slow leak of yucky liquid?].
  
• Radio Shack feeds RADIO SHACKLE, a [Drastic means of restraining a shock jock?].
  
• A league draft pick gives us the [NBA wannabe's predicament?], a DRAFT PICKLE.
  

I'm fond of PTOLEMY, the [Ancient Greek astronomer with an Earth-centered theory] and a silent P, not at all fond of NO PARKING signs, though NO PARKING makes for an excellent bit of crossword fill.

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Thursday, 11/20

Sun 15 minutes or so...I had to print out the puzzle in order to finish it
NYT 5:54
LAT 4:37
CS 3:42

Pete Muller's New York Times crossword features a quote theme, beginning with [Start of a quote by economist Allan Meltzer]: CAPITALISM / WITHOUT FAILURE / IS LIKE RELIGION / WITHOUT SIN. Well, that seems a little parochial. This write-up details various religions' views of sin, but surely there are some religions out there in which sin isn't a key concept. Capitalism and failure? Oh, sure. Those do go together—especially these days. Why, there's BEAR / STEARNS, which collapsed a few months ago. And ENRON, which also imploded. Ray KROC [who founded McDonald's] set up a company that has not failed (yet). An [I.R.A. option] that tanked less than stocks would be a T-NOTE.

Quote themes usually fail to entertain me, however, and the challenge of filling a long swath of blank squares with heavier-than-usual reliance on crossings isn't my cup of tea. I cost myself 2 minutes on the clock in the upper right corner of this grid. For 19-Across, [Come ___], I could see nothing but INTO, as in "come into some money." I briefly considered UNTO, but that made no sense. With that I, I decided *HIALS must be PHIALS, even though those couldn't possibly be [Bars of a sort]. And what sort of [Fish that can detect ultrasound] would the PHAD be? No sort. It's SHAD crossing sandbar-type SHOALS and come ON TO, as in hitting on someone in a bar. My eye didn't want to split up ONTO into two words. So that's my tale of solving woe.

What else is in this puzzle? Let's see. Pete is a musician as well as a capitalist, but I don't think he plays saxophone (piano and vocals, according to his website)—[Sound of a sax] is WAIL and [Kind of sax] is ALTO. [One who believes humans descended from extraterrestrials] is a RAELIAN; Raelians sound kooky. [Chinese dynasty a thousand years ago] is LIAO; Wei and Han also seem to get some play in crosswords. Asia also brings us PAKISTAN ([Commonwealth member beginning in 1947]); baseball [Pitcher Hideki] IRABU of Japan; and KABUKI, or [Tokyo theater performance]; Japanese [Director Kurosawa], or AKIRA; and RANI, or [Eastern queen] from India. [Winning coach of the first two Super Bowls] is Vince LOMBARDI of Green Bay Packers fame. A [Device also called a rectifier] is a DIODE; anyone know that one without a few crossings in place? And how about [Tribe speaking Chiwere]—did you know that was OTOE, or did you let the crossings guide you to that popular crossword tribe?

People have been raving for days about the Sun puzzle by Patrick Blindauer and Frank Longo. "Three-Ring Circus" has two theme clues labeled [Ring #1] and [Ring #3], for the FIRE-EATER and LION TAMER in the circus. Where's ring #2? you ask. It's in the middle of this 15x16 grid, sandwiched invisibly between the two 15-letter entries, that's where. The answers that cross those 15's are all one letter longer than their spaces would suggest, and the extra letter really goes between the 15's (though I rebused the extras into the bottom 15 for lack of a better solution). The star of ring #2 is the TIGHTROPE WALKER, spanning the treacherous wire between EDITORIAL STANCE and EXERCISE REGIMEN. Isn't that fancy? The extra letters walk that tightrope in the grid. I think this grid could have been expanded to a gimmick-free 15x17 with the TIGHTROPE WALKER occupying the center row of the grid, but what's the fun in that?

Other cool stuff in this crossword: [He worked with Cuba in 1996] clues TOM Cruise, who co-starred with Cuba Gooding, Jr., and did not (to my knowledge) work with Fidel Castro's regime. Terrific clue there. The puzzle's got four X's, four K's, and a pair of J's. Longer fill includes PIGEONHOLES, JALAPENOS, and "DON'T THANK ME," all crossing the tricked-out 15's in the center. [Band with the 1981 #1 album "Paradise Theater"] is STYX. Omigod, concept album! Complete with a record jacket with left and right flaps that opened out to reveal an old-time theater. This is now my all-time favorite clue for STYX. [Talaria wearer] refers to those winged sandals that have fallen out of favor, worn by HERMES, a.k.a. Mercury. Why does Manolo Blahnik refuse to market beautiful talaria?

Updated:

I've gotten into a bad habit lately with Across Lite solving—I type things in and don't look to make sure they look right. And so in Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword, I had AARNO instead of AARON for [Baseball's Hammerin' Hank], and thus that corner was the last part I finished. Mind you, if AARNO were someone's real name, it's be getting plenty of play in crosswords. Naddor's theme is rhyming puns:

• [Antelope that believes in corporal punishment?] is a SPANKING GUN (spanking new).
  
• [Himalayan hair style?] is a MOUNTAIN DO (Mountain Dew).
  
• [Dismissal from the court?] is a TENNIS SHOO (tennis shoe).
  
• ["Just what you'd expect Capote to say!"] clues THAT'S SO TRU (that's so true).
  
• The clue [Hearth ailment?] is just a letter off from "heart ailment," but it points to CHIMNEY FLU (chimney flue).
  
• [Amorous murmur in the barracks?] is MILITARY COO (military coup). This was a theme entry in another recent puzzle that changed coup and corps to coo and core.
  

There's no shortage of good fill in this puzzle. There's a RED ROOF INN and TV AUDIENCE (["American Idol" judges, ultimately], bypassing Simon, Paula, and Randy). PRETZELS and SAM NUNN, the [Defense secretary after Cheney]. GO GET 'EM is a [Spirited exhortation], all right. I'm not crazy about TINY TOT as fill; this [Stroller passenger] answer was in an NYT puzzle recently too. Are ALOES really [Medicinal creams]? I like the SOLDERED clue: [Put the metal to the metal?]. But does the plural TNTS ([They cause blowups]) work?

Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Twin Ends," has a subtle and probably pretty flexible theme, words that begin and end with a shared set of three letters:

• ENTRAPMENT starts and finishes with ENT. It's a [1999 Sean Connery movie].
  
• IONIZATION is the [Removal of electrons]. I have no idea what the "deionized water" I see on some product labels is—does deionizing consist of unremoving electrons?
  
• The UNDERGROUND is a [Secret revolutionary force]. UND isn't a stand-alone 3-letter word, unlike the other "twin ends" in this theme.
  
• ANTIOXIDANT is clued as [Beta carotene, for one].
  

As a wee bonus, there's a TSETSE fly with twin ends and no middle. I like how the TWO-LITER [Soda bottle size] crosses JOLT Cola—only JOLT is clued as [Shake up]. A [Sheet of connective tissue] is FASCIA; I know all about my plantar fascia, alas.

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Friday, 3/21

NYS 7:45
NYT 5:47
LAT 5:08
CHE 4:49
Jonesin' 4:05
CS 3:31

WSJ 9:12

Do you know which crossword is the hardest, on average? Using a compelling n of 1 (that would be me), Peter Gordon, editor of the New York Sun crossword, has calculated my average solving times (data taken from my blog posts) for the Sun (Monday through Friday), NYT (Monday through Saturday), and Newsday Saturday Stumper. Pop quiz: Can you put the following in order from toughest to easiest?

Thursday Sun (half of which are "Themeless Thursday" puzzles, half themed)
Friday Sun ((half of which are themeless "Weekend Warrior" puzzles, half themed)
Friday NYT (pretty close to all themeless)
Saturday NYT (all themeless, save for the rare rebus)
Saturday Newsday (all themeless)

For extra credit, what are my average solving times for the hardest vs. the easiest of these?

This week, the Friday New York Sun puzzle is a "Weekend Warrior" by Frank Longo. (Raise your hand if you wish Frank would spend a little more of his time crafting themeless newspaper crosswords, and raise your other hand if you're feeling a little whiny that you have to wait until January for Frank's crazy Vowelless Crosswords book to publish.) The marquee entries have unusual letter combos, such as CQ (in FRERE JACQUES, clued as [Renowned round]) and, well, LMXBLVD (from MALCOLM X BLVD.) crossing MBCH in LAMBCHOP. (What the heck, Frank? Are you trying to go half vowelless in regular crosswords, too?) There's also IOD at the beginning of I/O DEVICE, and who expects those letters together outside of iodine?

Let us wander through the Acrosses, shall we? I adore the word PLUMBAGO ([Graphite] or the plant also called leadwort); it looks like a portmanteau of juicy plums and the back pain called lumbago. Actor OMAR EPPS graduates to first-and-last-name status, which is, of course, the goal of ever famous person with a short name. Is it wrong that when I read the clue, ["I Felt Like Smashing My Face in a Clear Glass Window" singer], I wanted it to be ENYA? Alas, it is Yoko ONO. (Yes, that one's a Down answer, I know.) Enya's new-age stylings are also not involved in [Composer and singer of "And When I Die"]; that's Laura NYRO. [Bee kin] is a devious clue for OPIE—TV's Opie had an Aunt Bee, of course. "Good gravy, what is the answer to [Stool softener] going to be?" I asked myself. Turns out it's a CUSHION placed on a hard stool. Love that clue! (Much more so than E. COLI, [Likely find in a gut check?]) Am proud of myself for grasping that [It is what it is] referred to the PRONOUN "it." Any other Seinfeld watchers expect [Sponge alternative] to be a form of contraception rather than a WET MOP? I like the name Childe HASSAM, but the painter's work doesn't grab me at all. I usually think of OPIATE as a noun rather than an adjective meaning [Causing dullness], but there you have it.

Moving to the Down zone: The NYT crossword just had the Te-Amo cigar, didn't it? And here is TE AMO, clued as a [White Owl alternative]. To anchor the Downs, ANNA PAQUIN and baseball's NELLIE FOX follow the DRUM MAJOR (a [Long march leader?]) to the DANCE-A-THON. I've never heard of Las LUNAS, a county seat in New Mexico. (A typo while typing "never" leads me to note that Albanian leader ENVER HOXHA doesn't show up in the Cruciverb database.) And my Italian is rusty, if "rusty" means "nearly nonexistent," so while CAPI makes etymological sense as [Heads of Italy], I didn't recognize the word. The NYT's TEAT gives way to the Sun's TIT ([Lead-in for lark or mouse]).


The New York Times crossword by Peter Collins may represent the first time that a BETSY WETSY doll and the David Lynch movie Eraserhead (you know—back when Lynch made avant garde movies, before he got so ordinary with Blue Velvet) have been mentioned on the same page of any newspaper. Excellent combo!

Favorite clues: [Falcons' grp.] for USAF (not the NFL!); [Sealing fans?] for POLAR BEARS (the verb "to seal" means to hunt seals); [It's no longer divided] for BERLIN, tied to OST (German for "east"); [It is in Peru] for ESTA (Spanish for "it is"—you didn't go for LIMA, did you?); [Simplest, in math and logic] for FIRST ORDER (hmm, more or less new to me); [When doubled, what a rat does] for names NAMES; [Immoderate indulgence] for ORGY (see usage note about the word's history here); and the non-poker [Opening pair?], ADAM AND EVE.

Flashback: A few weeks ago, Mischa Auer was in the NYT crossword with a violinist clue, but it was his grandfather Leopold who was a noted musician; Mischa AUER was an actor, the [Oscar-nominated "My Man Godfrey" actor, 1936], in fact. I reckon this clue is nit-proof.

Groovy entries: SQUEEZEBOX (this [Zydeco instrument] is just an accordion); ORANGE ZEST (I hereby declare that if my fake first name is Orange, my fake last name is Zest); two nutty Norwegians not of my acquaintance, mathematician NIELS Henrik Abel and prime minister JENS Stoltenberg; and two intersecting current actors, Liam NEESON and Edward James OLMOS. Please, let no one complain that these actors are too obscure to cross in the grid. Neeson was nominated for an Oscar for playing Oskar Schindler (any other Oscar-nominated Oskar roles?), he played a Jedi in that bad Phantom Menace Star Wars movie, and he was also in Krull.

Updated:

I didn't notice the byline on the CrosSynergy puzzle, "Chard Catalog," until after I finished. The theme entries convert four phrases starting with CA- words to ones beginning with CHA-. For example, Camp David becomes CHAMP DAVID, [Title for a giant feller?]. Favorite clues: [Stag film?] for BAMBI (hah! I couldn't get that one for the longest time); [Expletive from Cathy or Bill the Cat] for ACK (I could do without "Cathy," but I love-love-loved "Bloom County" and once owned an Opus shirt); the paired [Total] for DESTROY and ENTIRE; and the paired [Scratch, e.g.] and [Scratch] for FLAW and CLAW.

Bruce Douglas's LA Times crossword takes five phrases ending with -LL words and changes those words to -LT endings. Geeze, it took me forever to make sense out of [Lithuanian skid row denizen?]—GUTTER BALT. (Eerie coincidence: My half-Lithuanian grandfather was once an alcoholic in the gutter! But it was before I was born, so this clue didn't traumatize me.) I think the BARBIE DOLT is the one Mattel sold some years back that said "Math is hard!" [1982-94 NFLer], 8 letters, was hard; I forgot about the L.A. RAIDER football team. Did they go back to Oakland? Favorite entry: [Fictional author of "The World According to Bensenhaver"] for T.S. GARP. Five bonus points for pulmonary anatomy: PLEURAL was a gimme for this editor of pulmonary medicine manuscripts.

Patrick Berry's Chronicle of Higher Education is masterful without being exceptionally hard. The "Quarter Rests" are the seasonal breaks from the academic calendar (not sure how many places have a FALL break, but the other three seasons, absolutely—we are on my kid's SPRING break right now). Each season is broken in the grid, staggered in two rows (e.g., the SPR of SPRING is circled in SPRAINED and the ING follows in the answer below, RINGED). The longer words for the broken seasons all intersect with the vertical explanation, THEM'S THE BREAKS, which is delightfully and colloquially ungrammatical for a crossword for academics. Wonderful gimmick crossword! Favorite clue: [One who loves too much?] for TWO-TIMER. I misread [Badly circumstanced] (IN A MESS) as [Badly circumcised]; uh, no. NUN is clued as [What a novitiate aspires to]—some will argue (and did argue this week on the NYT forum) that novice and novitiate are different, blah-blah-blah; close enough for crosswords, if you ask me. BUTTER UP is a terrific entry. VITAMINS is clued as [Junk food's lack]. I would argue that plenty of junk food has been fortified with vitamins to cozen consumers into buying it. For example, Glaceau vitaminwater is basically Kool-Aid—sugar and water, total junk food, but with vitamins added to persuade customers that it's somehow better for them than plain water. Corn Pops cereal—tons of sugar, little fiber, enriched with vitamins. Is it junk food anyway? I say yes (and pour myself another bowl).

Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle, "90-Degree Turnz," plays a fun game—a pair of Zs get turned 90° so that they look like Ns. Thus, a [Belly button that tells jokes] is a FUNNY NAVEL instead of a Fuzzy Navel. Cute! Fresh fill: HALFPIPES, NFC WEST, CAT PERSON, Julie KAVNER, IT'S PAT, ISN'T IT? Favorite clues: [Diesel that's not fuel] for actor VIN Diesel, and [Took a stool sample?] for SAT. Two stool clues in one day! A proud day for crosswords—at least it is if you enjoy playing with the multiple meanings of so many words in this rich language of ours.

Randy Ross's Wall Street Journal puzzle is calculated to delight those who prefer their rebus puzzles to hew to a strict symmetry—the five rebus squares in "Box Sets" form a symmetrical pattern. There are 10 phrases intersecting at [TV] rebus squares, and they're not so long. That means Ross had the leeway to include some broad expanses of white space in the grid, with plenty of lively longish fill entries—WHODUNIT, JAYWALKS, OF NO USE, TUNES OUT, CRACKLES. One semilethal square for me. Actually, two: [Fall, for a señorita] crosses [Jibs on racing yachts] and [Acid used in food preservatives]. OTONO crossing GENOAS and SORBIC? Ow. At least my guesses turned out to be right.

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Sunday, 12/23

LAT 8:29
BG 7:50
NYT 7:27
PI 7:24
WaPo 6:44
CS 5:28

Adam Perl's Santa-themed New York Times crossword, "Yule Outsourcing," has a ripped-from-the-headlines feel to it, with the four-line verse ending EVERY TOY IS MADE IN CHINA (the reason Santa has been lounging in his recliner). Yes, complete with lead paint or toxic plastic compounds. (FYI, here's a Vermont alternative to made-in-China toys. They even make a Soma cube, which is hard to come by. Wish I'd have found that early enough to order it as a Christmas present...for myself.) The explicit theme takes up just four 21-square rows, but there's Yuletide cluing strewn throughout the puzzle in the form of about 15 short answers. My favorite clues: [Way overdue to take off?] for OBESE; ["What to do? What to do?" feeling] for PANIC; [Theodemocratic state] for IRAN; [Of fast times?] for LENTEN; [Discriminating sort, in a way] for AGEIST; and [Out-elbowed?] for AKIMBO. Speaking of elbows, there's also [Elbows] for POKES, [Joint part] for TENON, and [Joint] for REEFER—so not all the joint-related action here is anatomical. Did you notice that BIOTA was followed by IOTAS? The former crosses GUITEAU, [Garfield's assassin] and nobody I've heard of.

Henry Hook's Across Lite edition of the Boston Globe puzzle, "Family Affair," relates not to the old TV series of that name but rather, to The Simpsons. The theme clues are the members of the family, with the parents listed first and the three kids in order from eldest to youngest. [HOMER] is a FOUR-BAGGER / IN BASEBALL, or home run. [MARGE] is SYNONYM FOR OLEO. (Is this a common spoken abbreviation for margarine? I prefer butt to marge, personally.) [BART] refers to the SAN FRANCISCO RAIL LINES. [LISA] is simply an ANAGRAM FOR SAIL. And baby [MAGGIE] is the utterly tortured (but I like it) M PLUS TEXAS A&M ATHLETE, or M + AGGIE. That sly little ampersand also belongs to P&L, or profit-and-loss statement. This crossword's enhanced by the Scrabbly letters in fill like UP NEXT, EXTERIOR, STAX, and MIXED (implicating four separate X's), JAY LENO, ZULU, and the juicy little KUMQUAT. Highlights in the non-Scrabbly, non-theme fill: MARISA TOMEI and ROY ACUFF's full names, FEMBOT, GALILEO, and the TASMANIAN devil.

Frank Longo's Washington Post crossword, "Birthday Greetings," serves up cake to eight famous people who were BORN ON CHRISTMAS. Easy (but still good) cluing, and terrific fill. Favorite bits: JEROBOAM; AGE RANGE; DULLARD; REORG; ["Washington," in poetry] for DACTYL (a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—and Wikipedia points out that a 2006 NYT crossword pointed out that poetry is itself a dactyl); [Semi fluid] for GAS (did your mind's eye add -nal to that first word?); ["Bejabbers!"] for EGAD; [___ freak] for CONTROL; [They may have umbrellas] for MAI TAIS; [Press unit] for REP (as in bench press, chest press, leg press); KEY GRIP; LIKE MAD; [Significant one?] for OTHER; and ["No, No, No" singer] for ONO.

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Carol of the Bells," isn't as Christmassy as the title suggests. Instead, each theme entry contains the letter string DING or DONG within it. Ho-hum, you say? Well, there are 13 of these entries, and the one in the middle is awesome: BAKED-ON GREASE. I'll bet that puppy's never appeared in a crossword grid before, and it amuses me terribly in a crossword. In the kitchen, much less so. (Soaking does wonders, though.) As a little extra fillip, Merl clues PEALES as [Norman Vincent's family (and an apt answer in this puzzle)].

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Kathleen O'Brien's syndicated LA Times crossword also trods the Christmas-theme path in "Not a Good Sign," with a quote from SHIRLEY TEMPLE. I think I've read the quote before, but the punchline's still a good one.

It's Christmas a couple days early if you're a fan of Bob Klahn's cluing style—he constructed today's themeless CrosSynergy puzzle. The clues that were right up my alley (meaning I liked them, not necessarily that I understood what the answer was right away): [Ten-cent pic] means FDR, whose portrait is on the dime. [Third degree] is a DOCTORATE, literally and not idiomatically. [King of the old South] is more metaphoric—COTTON.

[Put your head down, try this, and you'll breathe easy] clues SNORKEL. The first and last time I went snorkeling was on my honeymoon, on Christmas day in 1991. I slathered on Bullfrog waterproof sunscreen and was fine, but my "I tan, I don't burn" husband got fried. His wedding band also slid off and sank down to a coral reef, so he did a little diving, too.

[Small fry] and [Future fry] are TAD and ROE, respectively. I do like the paired clues Klahn often concocts. [Wacky] appears twice, but not in adjacent spots, to clue INANE and LOCO, and [Wacky one] is a KOOK. [A, for one] clues SYNONYM, as "a clue" is synonymous with "one clue." Sort of a lateral-thinking clue. [Loose things not found in rings] is also sort of aslant—they're ENDS, as a ring has no ends.

I'm not crazy about bible clues, but [Two-person starter home?] is as good as a biblical EDEN clue gets.

I don't get why [Balance opener] is TRIAL. Oh—apparently trial balance is a bookkeeping term.

[Muse] is not Erato or one of her sisters here, but the verb: REMINISCE.

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Thursday, 11/29

NYS 8:04
NYT 5:11
LAT 4:04
CS 4:04

Ah, I like Thursdays. Tuesday is good, because that's when the Onion A.V. Club and Ben Tausig puzzles come out and offer a safe haven from easy puzzles. Wednesday feels rather like another Monday. And Thursday is when the thinking cap comes off the hat rack. (I don't really have a hat rack, but if I did, I would definitely hang my thinking cap there.)
First up, Liz Gorski's New York Times crossword, a classic rebus puzzle. Only not so classic, because the rebus squares are plunked in the corners of the grid, and the explanatory entry isn't in the middle or at the very bottom. But then again, classic, because it's classic Gorski. In 2000 (10/28), she had a Saturday NYT [CORNER] rebus puzzle with AMEN [CORNER] being one entry. And today, she's got an [AMEN] rebus puzzle with [AMEN] CORNERS. Even though it's Thursday and I should have been rebusically suspicious, I wasn't, and all four corners were the last to fall. I even figured that TUTANKHA crossing MILITIA made perfect sense. Eventually, the [AMEN] corners asserted themselves. The rebus pairs are [AMEN] TO THAT/[AMEN] CORNERS, CAMER[AMEN]/[AMEN]DS, TUTANKH[AMEN]/MILITI[AMEN], and ST[AMEN]/[AMEN]ITIES. 55-Across, a PRAYER, ends with the [AMEN] found four times in the puzzle, wrapping the theme up with a bow.

Clues and entries I relished the most: [Put up] for HOUSED; OUT THERE; [Loads] meaning ONUSES and not "a lot"; [Follower of Max or Paul?] for INE; [Quick change artist?] for a bank TELLER; [Thumb locale: Abbr.] for MICH (non-U.P. Michigan looks like a mitten); ["Be brave!"] for Dan Rather's nightly COURAGE; the MUUMUU and TENT, both clued as [Roomy dress], but with only the former evoking a favorite Simpsons episode; MIMETIC, meaning [Imitative]; and two [Trattoria order]s, SCAMPI washed down with CAMPARI. I'm always vexed by a clue like ["Midnight Cowboy" role]—R***O, yes, but is it RATSO or are we being treated to the double Z of RIZZO? Always seems to be RATSO, but always I am hopeful and leave the three middle letters blank, looking for Zs in the crossers, and always I am disappointed. (Memo to constructors: Spot us a RIZZO, will ya?)

The Themeless Thursday puzzle in the New York Sun comes from the computer-assisted atelier of Frank Longo. (If you're interested in reading about the rationales for hand crafting vs. computer-aided constructing, read Matt Gaffney's book, Gridlock.) Frank's got a crazy-ass database of potential fill that apparently includes XOLOITZCUINTLI, the [Mexican hairless dog]. Wow. Never saw that word before, and I can't be sure that spelling will stick with me. Besides that mystery answer, there were plenty of tough clues, leading to a tough-Friday-"Weekend Warrior" experience rather than the loping amble I was expecting on a Thursday.

To wit: one [Source of fatty acids] is FISH OIL. [The A of BASE jumping] is ANTENNA (the others are building, span, and earth—all high-up things one can leap off with a parachute). [Four-wheeled carriages with hooded rear seats] are BERLINS; never heard of 'em. [Some franc spenders] are GABONESE, bien sur. [It can be sucked out] means SAP. [Put away in a hurry] is INHALED, as in a plate of cheese fries. [Canine component] is the CUSP of a tooth; PULP almost fit. [They fell after being circled 13 times] refers to the WALLS OF JERICHO, about which I know almost nil. [Having just been razed], a building's IN A PILE. [Like some sciences] means INEXACT; I like this one a lot. An INNIE is [Part of many a tummy]. The LAST SUPPER is the [Passion preceder], and that really stumped me. GAS is [Lemon juice?] in that a lemon's a lousy car. [Trees of the bignonia family] meant nothing to me, but I know that CATALPAS have broad, heart-shaped, pale green foliage and long seedpods. [Concord, e.g.] is a RED WINE; viz. Manischewitz. [Search engine returns] are WEB HITS while [Amazon, eBay, or Yahoo!] is a SUPERSITE. I think I've seen [Los Angeles Sparks general manager Penny] TOLER's name in a crossword one other time (move over, Sidney Toler). RINNA is the last name of the [Lisa who cohosted "Soap Talk" with Ty Treadway], and he has lovely eyes in person (he hosts the crossword game show).

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I really enjoyed Don Gagliardo's LA Times crossword. The theme is terrific—a four-rung word ladder that achieves the ALCHEMIST'S DREAM of turning lead into gold. The LEAD BALLOON leads to LOAD THE BASES, then to GOAD TO ACTION, then to GOLDBRICKER. The puzzle's further enhanced by the fill, which includes plenty of answers we don't often see: SEMIPRO, DADAISM, PYREX, DOLLOP (which is also the name of a cozy indie coffeeshop around the corner from me—alas, my husband would like to patronize them, but he likes the coffee from behemoth Starbucks better), ENCROACHED, and SHELTIE. I don't recall seeing OREO clued lately as [Snack with multiple eating options], and I like the nonspecificity of the clue that led me to think of chips rather than cookies.

Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "X Marks the Spot," uses X in lieu of SPOT in the theme entries. Unlike a rebus puzzle, though, X is just the letter X in the crossing Down answers. Gotta like a theme that delivers five Xs, eh? At 1-Across, LST is clued as [WWII boat featured in "Saving Private Ryan"]. There was a small foofaraw a week or two ago when a similar clue was used for LST in an NYT puzzle. Apparently the craft that disgorged all the soldiers onto the beaches were not LSTs at all, as LSTs are huge things that disgorge tanks from the front and personnel from stairs on the side. If LSTs show up in the movie, they may be in the background and not the "featured" craft we all associate with the long Omaha Beach sequence.

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Friday, 9/7

NYT 6:18
Jonesin' 5:01
NYS 4:48
LAT 4:19
CS 3:32

WSJ 8:01


Well, the New York Times puzzle is on the tough side for a Friday, but much less tough than last Friday's! Barry Silk has packed his 70-word grid with a slew of Scrabbly entries. For starters, that pack of Zs in the middle involves three double-Z answers and two single-Z ones—we've got the UTAH JAZZ and FRIZZLE ([Curl tightly]) crossing FUZZY MATH, the [Approach to arithmetic that emphasizes underlying ideas rather than calculations]—wha? QUARTZ (which is [Tiger's-eye, essentially]) reaches upwards from the Z circus to cross QUI VIVE, the [French sentry's cry]. Elsewhere there's GORE-TEX and TWINKIE, and FJORD partying with the JAZZ.

Favorite and/or interesting clues and/or entries: the colloquial I REPEAT and BE GENTLE; [Purely physical] for BRUTE, as in strength; [Court] for SUE; the German [When Holle freezes over] for NIE, meaning never; [Fat cat] for MONEYBAGS; [Make tracks] for the verb RECORD; [Concavo-convex lens] for MENISCUS in this sense, though the word also means some knee cartilage that my brother-in-law had surgery on; [Memphis's locale] for the NILE in Egypt; [One raised on a farm] for BARN (who doesn't love a good barn raising?); [Schwarzenegger title role] for CONAN, giving Conan O'Brien the day off; [Hides from the enemy, say] for ENCODES; SHIATSU massage ending with a U; [Old sticker] for the old, old SNEE (what I wouldn't give for an OLEO clue that came right out and called it an old word); [Helped someone get a seat] for VOTED (not USHED, which I tried first); [Abbr. before many state names] for USS, as in the U.S.S. Maine and other ships; CRANKED up; [One beaten by a beatnik] for BONGO; [Not split] for STAY; and [No. of People?] for CIRC, as in magazine circulation. I tried to do a little fuzzy math on 45-Across, [If it's regular, each of its angles is 144 degrees]; hmm, it's more than 90 degrees, so it's beyond a square and has got to be a something-GON—DECAGON, it turns out. Oh! Remember the other weekend when I didn't much care for the verb BLARNEYED in the hidden-head puzzle with the EARs and EYEs and whatnot? [Blarneyed] pops up here as a clue for COAXED.

Frank Longo's Weekend Warrior is the first of three planned asymmetrical themeless puzzles the New York Sun is publishing this fall. The top and left sides of the grid have triple-stacked 15-letter entries (making that upper left corner a tour de force in crossword construction), the right side has double-stacked 15s, and the bottom has black squares cutting the space into shorter answers. It turned out to be a little on the easy side for a Weekend Warrior.

I started with a lucky guess that SULTANATE OF ____ would work for 2-Down (OF OMAN, it turns out), got AFLAC to cross it, and the rest unrolled from there. The 15s include fresh phrases I don't recall seeing lurking in previous triple-stacks—AS I UNDERSTAND IT, "A BUSHEL AND A PECK," IT TAKES A VILLAGE (great clue: [One of Clinton's titles]), DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, and IMMEDIATE DANGER.

My favorite clues: [Circle's lack] for ENDS; [Nurses, e.g.] for FEEDS; [Failed to abstain] for USED (as in "He thought he could quit the sudoku, but he's still using"); [It lobbied for MLK Day to become a national holiday] for the NEA, presumably meaning the National Education Association rather than the National Endowment for the Arts; and [Barcelona busts, e.g.] for ARTE. [Part of UT] was the clue for UNIVERSAL; perhaps it refers to Universal Time? I don't know anything about Universal Time, but who's not fond of Hammer Time? I quaked to think of what sort of Google hits I'd get for a bearded tit search, but just this bird, the [Bearded ___ (reedling)]. DOIS was clued as [Number between um and três]; here, you can quiz yourself on your knowledge of Portuguese numbers. I'd never heard of [Sports journalist Hammond of the Golf Channel], INGA. Worst entry: CO-LED, clued as [Chaired jointly]; it seems awfully jargony, but I suppose this is the price to pay for having only three black squares interrupting the highway of white squares zooming around the grid's periphery. I like clever clues, but I don't care for clues that posit a particular bit of dogma, as in [Big race's starting point?] for EDEN. I am not a Biblical literalist, and crossword clues that dis Lucy are pesky.

This puzzle's asymmetry did not in any way impede my enjoyment of the puzzle. There'll be more on symmetry and the lack thereof in the next post.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle, "Whackronyms: familiar phrases, incidental initials" expands one abbreviation I've seen (PITA as a short form for PAIN IN THE ASS) and two I haven't (NOT UP TO SNUFF and TALK OUT OF TURN). I don't think any of these entries are intended to represent phrases that actually do get abbreviated, but that PITA is handy sometimes. Favorite clues: [Book that makes you look] for WHERE'S WALDO; [Smack ___ the head] for UPSIDE; and the cross-referenced French and German opposites clues for OUI and NEIN. Newer-generation fill: HOTTIE and PRICK.

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The title of Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Behest Behavior," might make you think there's an EH or HE added to each theme entry, but as it happens, they're all straightforwardly clued phrases that end with words that mean "behest." Knowing the constructor's propensity for making pangrams (puzzles that contain every letter of the alphabet at least once) and having already used Q and X, I was on the lookout for a Z in the last corner I was working on—but Patrick skipped the pangram chase this time. (Which is fine! Totally fine!) I take issue with [Ineffectual types] being clued as NERDS. What, do nerds make ineffectual engineers and writers? Call them socially ineffectual if you must cast aspersions, but ineffectual in general? I think not.

I just looked up ineffectual in the Mac OS X Dashboard widget that combines a dictionary and thesaurus. I asked lexicographer Erin McKean what online thesaurus she recommended, and she said she used this one and, in fact, had worked on it. I tested it out by looking up terrific and boring, and it disgorged two to three times as many synonyms as Roget's II online. So OS X users, rejoice! (Alas, it's not a website so I can neither copy and paste the text nor provide a link to it. But when I'm writing, boom, it's right here.)

The LA Times puzzle by Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke offers this quip: IF YOU GAVE / HIM A PENNY FOR / HIS / THOUGHTS, YOU'D / GET CHANGE. Favorite and/or notable clues and/or answers: [Auto repair company since 1971] is CAR-X—that X looked wrong after an R. [Teamster's pair] means OXEN—Teamster is mainly used to mean a unionized truck driver these days. (Another antiquated term with an updated meaning is livery—originally it had to do with a stable of horses used to pull carriages and whatnot, and now the word seems to apply mainly to limousine service.) Speaking of unions, there's [Union jack?] for DUES—clever! [They're stereotypically green] means ETS, or extraterrestrials. [Make malteds, e.g.] is JERK—as in soda jerk. [Short turns?] are REVS—short for "revolutions," as in revolutions per minute, or rpm. [Plain] is usually an adjective, but here it's the noun SAVANNA. [Fish dish] is SUSHI—anyone else try to think of a 5-letter cooked fish dish? I had to Google afterwards to understand [Beavers, perhaps] as a clue for hats. Beaver fur hats? Nope: felted beaver fur, popular before silk hats took over. [It's not good to be left in it] means the LURCH.

Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal puzzle is called "Double-Crossed" because a double-T gets inserted into each theme entry's base phrase. [Eskimo parkas and the like?] are FRIGID ATTIRE, [Lewinsky works out a lawsuit] is MONICA SETTLES, and there are six other theme answers. Good crossword! [Two-cup container] is BRA—so how come nobody ever calls a bra a pint? I'd say more about other clues and answers I liked, but I promised myself I'd finish solving and blogging by 9:00, and it's 9:03 already so I've got to run. (Or not run so much as edit.)

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