Sunday, 5/17

NYT second Sunday "Takeaway Crossword" 13:08
PI 8:42
NYT 8:35
LAT 7:42
BG 7:10
CS 4:40

Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword, "Perfect Jobs"

After I figured out how the theme operated, I kept forgetting again and thinking of famous people or characters with the names in the clues rather than noting what verb the name sounded like. The theme answers are apt occupations for a person with a name that sounds sort of like that worker's task:

• 23A. [Perfect job for Dustin?] is a HOUSEKEEPER who's dusting.
  
• 25A. MERCENARY is the [Perfect job for Warren?], who's always warrin' it up.
  
• 44A. [Perfect job for Rowan?] is OLYMPIC CANOER. Not very steady work, that.
  
• 65A. MASTER THIEF isn't really a job, is it? It's clued as the [Perfect job for Robin?], and here's where I was pondering what sort of THIEF or CHIEF job would be good for Batman's sidekick.
  
• 71A. [Perfect job for Darren?] is STUNT DOUBLE, which involves plenty of daring.
  
• 93A. [Perfect job for Landon?] is an AIRPLANE PILOT. Isn't it unnecessary to call them airplane or airline pilots? If the pilot's a test pilot or a helicopter pilot, we call them that—otherwise, we should all save ourselves the syllables and just call them pilots. And yet "airplane pilot" is 100% in the language.
  
• 118A. [Perfect job for Brandon?] is COW HERDER. Aw, poor cows, getting branded
  
• 121A. [Perfect job for Holden?] is POKER PLAYER.

Robin is unisex, but I'm disappointed to see the puzzle handed over to the boys. Where is Karen, the home health aide? Or Carolyn, the Christmas concert director? Or Marian, the justice of the peace or clergywoman? Sharon...whose job is it to share?

Clues and answers of note:

• Good gravy, 1A kicks off with [Bob Jones Award org.]? The crossings eventually told me it's the USGA, for golf.
  
• I like the stacked Arabic answers. ISLAM is ["The straight path"] and LEILA is a [Girl's name meaning "night" in Arabic]—also the name of my best friend in 8th grade. 
  
• BRAIN-DEAD is clued as [Completely unthinking]. This is not a good match for crossword solving...but when your daily crossword bloggers are feeling brain-dead, they suck it up and get cracking anyway.
  
• A [Woodworker's double boiler] is a GLUEPOT. Not a word I've ever encountered, but you can't weld wood so you're gonna need a little glue.
  
• The MERENGUE is a [Relative of the cha-cha-cha] and MARENGO is the [Italian town where Napoleon won a historic 1800 battle]. A half hour before I sat down to do this puzzle, my husband and I shared a laugh at the menu in the window of a waxing salon—what they're calling the Cha-Cha-Cha wax will run you $10, and...it's covering less ground than the Brazilian wax they're calling the Samba.
  
• I like the casual language of answers like BLOWS IT, IN SPADES, and ALL RIGHT.
  
• A FREE-SOILER was a [Pre-Civil War abolitionist]. Hooray for the Free Soil Party! Too bad they didn't have better luck.
  
• YOD is the Hebrew [Letter after teth].
  
• The ADMIRAL is the [Nickname of the N.B.A.'s David Robinson].
  
• Together with Jerry Stiller, ANNE MEARA is [Half of a longtime comedy duo], Stiller & Meara. You can see where Ben Stiller gets it from.
  
• The Oldsmobile [98, e.g.] was a SEDAN, an OLDS. Did you want a letter grade of HIGH A or something for one of these clues? Or something about temperature?
  
• An APSIS is an [Orbital point]. I'm no astronomer, so this is a word I picked up from crosswords.
  
• A [Writer of aphorisms] is a GNOMIST. Sounds like it should mean someone who's bigoted against gnomes, doesn't it?
  
• [The same to vous?] is EGAL, French for "same."
  
• SAGO is a [Steamed pudding ingredient], apparently. This would be a pudding made from milk and the starch from the sago palm.
  
• Two words are inversions: UPEND means to [Topple], and END UP means to [Result].
  
• Italy's up there with MARENGO, and also invoked with [___-Turkish War, in which the first aerial bombs were used]—ITALO.
  
• [Saudi Arabian currency] is the RIYAL. Surely I'm not the only one who entered DINAR here? In Iran, one riyal is worth 100 dinars.
  
• You wouldn't think the Gray Lady's crossword would be where I learn drug slang, but SCAG = [Heroin, slangily] is here, and the first time I encountered that slang was also in the crossword. 
  

Matt Ginsberg's NYT second sunday puzzle, a "Takeaway Crossword"

Ah, that's more like it. Remember when we'd get a crazy, twisted Friday Sun crossword that would push the cruciverbal envelope and strain our brains in a delicious manner? Matt Ginsberg companion to the NYT Sunday crossword is one of those goodies. I opted to solve it without reading the notepad (doing so is definitely more badass, but there's no shame in using the notepad if you must), and I don't think it was all that hard to notice that the asterisks replaced all instances of a single letter within each clue, or to guess that the same letter would be omitted from the answer. The astonishing thing is that dropping the letter from the answer still leaves us with a valid crossword answer. Granted, with straightforward clues, this would be an awfully dull puzzle—but instead we have to work a different spot in our brains to come up with the answers.

Here are some examples. 9A is ["Dani*l Boon*" actor], with two E's replaced by asterisks. The actor in question is Ed Ames. Minus the E's, he turns into the word DAMS, and that's the answer that goes in the grid. 34A is RESIN, which is Kreskin with a couple K's excised—Kreskin is the [Mentalist inspired by "Mandra*e the Magician"]. 27D is ROCA, a Spanish word meaning I-don't-know-what as well as a confection (in fact, Matt has let me sample his wife's delicious almond roca at the last two ACPTs), and if you add four L's you get ROLL CALL, a [*egis*ative routine (Sp.)]. That tag at the end of the clue offers the solver a little help with the grid answer; other tags used in this puzzle include Lat., suffix, Ger., hyph., 2 wds., and Fr.

My favorite discovery was that Stuttgart is just SUGAR with four T's—64A is clued [Sou*hwes* German ci*y]. The hardest factoid I encountered was 40A [Apo*tle known a* "the Zealot"]. I don't know Biblical stuff too well, so I needed to lean on the crossings to get TIMON, which is St. Simon minus the S's. The only clue that led me astray was 52A [Italian po*t?]. I was thinking poEt and missing E's, but no, it turned out to be poRt. And given the question mark, we're not talking about a port city here—port wine. Marsala is a sherry type of Italian wine, and minus the R, it becomes MASALA, an Indian spice mixture.

Okay, Matt, you figured out how to make one of these work smoothly. Now how about constructing some more? I know Will Shortz doesn't have a ton of Sunday slots for variety puzzles like this, but I'd definitely vote to have more Takeaway Crosswords. Many of you adore the Cox & Rathvon acrostics that take up 26 of the 52 second Sunday puzzles, but I wouldn't mind swapping a few of those out for interesting puzzles like this one. (I wouldn't want to lose any of the diagramlesses or cryptics, though.)

Updated Sunday morning:

Kathleen Fay O'Brien's syndicated L.A. Times Sunday crossword, "Quiet Meetings"

See L.A. Crossword Confidential for my full write-up of this puzzle. The theme entries shorten PIANISSIMO to PP, both meaning "very softly" in music, and use the PP as "quiet meetings" between words in assorted two-word phrases (e.g. TOP PRIORITY, SLEEP PHASE). I'm always pleased to see a word like CHUTZPAH in the grid ([Impudence]), but the theme was definitely on the dry side. Bonus points for the liveliness of theme entries STRIP POKER and POP PSYCHOLOGY. The latter takes the "quiet meetings" theme to extremes by having the second P of PP be so soft, it's a silent letter.

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "Triple Doubles"

Here's another theme where it's the letters within the phrases that hold sway—in this case, each phrase has three sets of double letters. I'm guessing Merl started with the long title, split into two partially stacked answers at the bottom of the grid, that has two triple doubles, or sextuple doubles. The 1955 comedy is ABBOTT AND COSTELLO / MEET THE MUMMY. The remaining triple doubles are as follows:

• 21A. [800 number, e.g.] is a TOLL-FREE CALL. I'm not crazy about the lack of parallelism between "number" and "call."
  
• 24A. LITTLE GREEN APPLES is a [1968 O.C. Smith hit]. Never heard of the singer, never heard of the song.
  
• 34A. For [Last Tudor monach], I paid no mind to English history and went with the first four-letters-containing-double-letters queen name that bubbled to the surface: GOOD QUEEN ANNE. D'oh! It's GOOD QUEEN BESS.
  
• 54A. [ABC show since 2003] is JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE. This is the first theme entry in which a set of double letters splits over two words, and this threw me off a bit. I even tried to make him JIMMY KIMMELMANN.
  
• 65A. SLEEP TILL NOON is clued as [Indulge oneself on a day off]. This answer is less of a stand-alone entity than the other theme entries.
  
• 77A. A COFFEE TABLE BOOK is not only a colorful phrase, it's an [Often glossy volume].
  
• 95A. YABBA DABBA DOO is Fred Flintstone's [Quitting-time shout, on TV]. Presumably he also said it in the live-action movie version. I'm not about to watch the movie to find out for sure.

The least familiar answer in the grid was MARK J., clued as [Secret Service chief ___ Sullivan]. Ouch.

Henry Hook's maybe-6-weeks-old Boston Globe crossword, "Done to the Nines"

This is my favorite of today's 21x21 puzzles. The theme entries are "done to the nines" by having the Roman numeral IX added to them, radically altering each phrase's meaning. Noncommissioned + IX = NIXON-COMMISSIONED, [Like the Watergate burglars?]. SPECIAL KIX might be a [Breakfast cereal blend?] of Special K and Kix. The Ming dynasty turns into MIXING "DYNASTY," a [Soundtrack job on a 1980s soap?]. A stock quote becomes STOCK QUIXOTE, a [Standard idealist?]. There are four other theme entries, but I liked these ones better.

Favorite clues and answers:

• PYONGYANG is [North Korea's capital]. I recommend Guy DeLisle's graphic-novel style memoir, Pyongyang, about an animator's work sojourn in the bizarro world that is North Korea for a Westerner. His comings and goings were monitored closely by his North Korean minders, but he was still able to learn a lot about this surreal dictatorship.
  
• KOJAK! This Telly [Savalas series] from the '70s is delightfully Scrabbly.
  
• Remember the KLIBAN cats? As in this book from '75? Yep, I had a copy too. As [Famed cat cartoonist]s go, I'll take B. Kliban any day over Jim ("Garfield") Davis.
  
• The comet KOHOUTEK was a [Disappointing 1973 fly-by]. Like KOJAK, a name from the '70s that starts and ends with K.
  
• The clue [Cardinals are placed in it] confused me completely until I had several crossings. SUDOKU! Cardinal numbers, not redbirds.

Bob Klahn's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

Have I cracked The Klahn Code, or is this puzzle a good bit easier than, say, his occasional (and all-too-infrequent) Saturday NYT crosswords? I started out fumbling through the first Across and Down clues and seeing nothing I knew, but then it started rolling. 5A [Huge goof] tends to be the sort of clue we see for BONER (unless it's an Onion crossword), and checking the R's viability against 9D [Speak on the record?], that worked with RAP (great clue!). Toughest clues, for me:

• 16A. ["Happy Days Are Here Again" composer] is AGER. I don't know who AGER is (Milton Ager, the Internet tells me), but I like the proper noun route better than clues that have AGER mean "thing that ages something." Fill-in-the-blanks like [Golden ___] have their place in easy puzzles, of course.
  
• [Fringe group?] clues CILIA.
  
• [Roaring Camp chronicler] is Bret HARTE.
  
• [Troublemaker invented by the British Royal Air Force] is a GREMLIN. Wow, I didn't know this word only dated back to the 1940s. It sounds old and Scandinavian to me. GREMLIN's near-twin, the Kremlin, is also in a clue—[Kremlin feature] is a DOME.
  
• [Bay south of Staten Island] is the RARITAN.
  
• [Bird of prey known to reach speeds of over 200 miles per hour] is the PEREGRINE. I had two-word birds on the brain and suspected some sort of ERNE or GREBE thanks to some crossings.
  
• [Trail type] is VAPOR. Mm-hmm, like the trails left by jets. I was thinking of hiking trails.

Favorite clues:

• [Nut named after an Australian botanist] is the MACADAMIA. Trivia I didn't know.
  
• [Day's end?] is GLO, as in Day-Glo colors.
  
• [Scottish river associated with draft horses] is the CLYDE, as in Clydesdale horses. A dale is a valley, so presumably these horses are from the River Clyde's valley region.
  
• [A priest, not a beast] is Ogden Nash's ONE L LAMA. Without spaces in the grid, it looks like ONE LLAMA, which would be a plausible entry only in a puzzle like Trip Payne's "Something Different"/"Wacky Weekend Warrior" puzzles. You know, Brendan Quigley is supposed to try his hand at making a puzzle like that—a wide-open grid filled with goofy, made-up phrases. I can't wait to see it.
  
• [Psi look-alike] is a TRIDENT. This is an upending of a crossword staple, cluing PSI as a trident-shaped Greek letter.

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Sunday, 9/28

BG 9:04
NYT 7:53
PI 26:40 (ONOT*)
LAT 23:00 (ONOT)
CS 28:00 (ONOT)

* Obviously Not Orange's Time

I'll be at the movies when the Sunday NYT is released, so either I'll get to that puzzle later this evening or PuzzleGirl will swoop to the rescue and blog the NYT for us. Either way, the hilarious PG will be doing some guest-blogging here tomorrow. Behave for her, will you?

Henry Hook constructed the Boston Globe crossword that's available in Across Lite this weekend. As the title "Struck for an Answer" suggests, the theme answers are phrases in which ST__ words are changed to STR_ words to alter the meaning. For example, [Participated in a food fight?] clues STREWED TOMATOES. The theme wasn't too difficult, but there are a number of knotty crossings and names that aren't common in crosswords. I had to play the "type random letters until one is correct" game where [Psychologist Emil] COUE meets [Leatherwood shrubs] or WICOPIES at the C. Wow, I wonder how many constructors have wicopy and the plural wicopies in their word lists. I hadn't heard of Émile Coué before, but you gotta love him—he's the guy who recommended saying "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." [1993 Nobel Prize winner Robert] FOGEL was also new to me, and I don't think I care for him. The other mystery person in this grid is [Violin virtuoso Fritz] KREISLER. Luckily, I figured out all the crossings for the economist and the violinist. I'd never heard of the [Kia concept cars] called KUES, but fortunately I knew KAPOK, a [Mattress fill of a sort], because my grandma had told me my dad was allergic to it (or maybe he was allergic to non-kapok fill) as a kid.

Updated:

(Still Orange here.) Well, my weekend plans have changed for the third time. So here I am! Angela will be by Sunday morning (or early afternoon) to blog about the other three puzzles.

It's been too long since we were treated to a puzzle by Cathy Allis Millhauser. Her New York Times crossword is called "'Twas Puzzling" because each theme entry contains a W__ word changed to a TW__ word. Same basic theme idea as in the Boston Globe puzzle, but with the added appeal of the TW sound. Read Cathy's theme entries aloud and you'll feel like Elmer Fudd twying to pwonounce TR__ words. Here are the theme entries:

• THE TWITCHING HOUR is [When jerks come out?].
  
• DESSERT TWINE is [String around a cake box?]. Kinda boring entry, but now I'm in the mood for a bakery cake.
  
• THE TWEAKER SEX is clued as [Men or women who pinch?]. I do not care for pinching, I must say.
  
• THE SOUL OF TWIT is a [Nerd's essence?]. I like this one. I don't think brevity is the soul of twit.
  
• FLIP ONE'S TWIG is [Roast the other side of the marshmallow]. Bonus points for working from the colorful phrase, "flip one's wig." (Though it would be more idiomatic with "your" than "one's.")
  
• YOU CAN'T TWIN 'EM ALL is a [Discouraging comment to a cloner?].
  
• TWEED KILLER is a [Moth, perhaps?].
  
• LIVING TWILL is a [Fabric that really breathes?].
  

Other clues and answers of note:

• ON TOPIC means [Pertinent to the discussion]. Kudos to you, the Crossword Fiend reader, for usually staying ON TOPIC in the comments lounge.
  
• NEWBIE is one of the better words to arise from the Internet's giant stockpot of slang. It means a [Novice], of course. Another __IE noun is TOWNIE, or [Off-campus local].
  
• I DO'S are a [Once-in-a-lifetime exchange, maybe]. If you get remarried, it's twice...or three times...or more.
  
• ANGELINA eschews Ms. Jolie for its clue: [Texas county, river or forest that's a girl's first name].
  
• [Bridge], the verb, means to CROSS OVER.
  
• An APSIS is an [Orbital point]. This is one of those words I learned from crosswords and not from the astronomy unit in physics class.
  
• [Dope] as in info is the SKINNY.
  
• STIPES is another word crosswords taught me—they're [Mushroom stalks].
  
• [Unlikely to run] is COLORFAST if you're talking about fabric dyes. My first thought was "unlikely to run for office." Er, nope.
  
• GLORY BE is clued ["Praise the Lord!"].
  
• [A leveret is a young] HARE.
  
• PILAR is Spanish for "pillar," a word used in some place names. It's also an adjective meaning [Pertaining to hair]. And it's part of the name of Pio del Pilar, a Phillipine national hero who was my husband's grandfather's cousin or something.
  
• "Same difference." SAME is a [Kind of difference, oxymoronically].
  
• I started right off at 1-Down with a wrong answer. [Monitor type, for short] is CRT, not LCD. Aren't flat-screen monitors cheap enough now that nobody's buying CRTs any more?
  
• [Like some eggs or cloth] is SHIRRED. I'd love to find directions for shirring an egg that instruct the cook to sew a bunch of elastic onto the egg.
  
• [City near Tel Aviv] is LOD and [City near Milan] is LODI, but poor Lodz, Poland, is left out.
  
• The last time there was a '60s baseball clue, 6 letters starting with K, I did the same thing I did today—try to make Al KALINE's career match that of Sandy KOUFAX. Whoops.
  
• ["Vigilant ___ to steal cream": Fasltaff] is completed by AS A CAT. Were you familiar with the quotation? I wasn't.
  
• WIGWAM is an innately pleasing word. It's one type of [Native American home].

Updated again:

Hey, everyone! PuzzleGirl here, thrilled to be hanging out with you guys this weekend. For those of you who don't know me, I'm, um ... a little slower than Amy. So, while solving and blogging three Sunday puzzles might take her, oh, let's say anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, for me it's more like at least half the day. So I'm going to go ahead and get Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Gag Me With a Spoonerism," out of the way tonight. Let's get started.

I was happy to see the title on this one. Although puns are likely to make me cringe, spoonerisms, on the whole, make me laugh. Or at least smile. I assume the readership here consists solely of Elite Crossword Solvers and Language Experts, right? Therefore any sort of detailed explanation of "spoonerism" would insult your intelligence? Mkay, moving right along....

Theme answers:

• WALKING YOUR HARES is clued as [Giving the jumpier pets some exercise?].
• A LUNCH OF BOOZERS might be made up of [Six martinis and one big olive?]. This is my favorite of the group. Probably because the original phrase is funny too. At least the way I hear it in my head.
• BELLY JEANS are [Levis with an elastic waistband?]. Any moms out there have the same reaction I did when I put on my first pair of maternity jeans? "Why the heck don't we wear these All The Time?"
• HUMMING AND PLEATING describes [What goes on at the Happy Shirt and Skirt Factory?].
• BUSY CHEWING THE DOORS is [What the escape-minded goats were?].
• BACK TO THE MALT SIGNS is a [Soda-shop owner's decision after the flyers didn't work?]. I've heard the original phrase on this one, but don't really know what it means or where it comes from. ... Okay, I Googled it. Just one of the many services I offer. It simply means "going back to unpleasant work" and may or may not derive from a time in the past where prisoners were sent to Siberia to dig for salt. I'm going to think of it as an early version of "Time to make the donuts."
• WAIT FOR THE OTHER DREW TO SHOP [What Carey and Barrymore do at Christmastime?]. I could only think of Jim Carrey for the longest time, so I was all kinds of mixed up on this one.
• MONKEY CHILD SALSA [One way to spice up mashed bananas at the zoo?]. And now, ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the point in the blog where I admit to you that I don't understand this. (You knew it would happen sooner or later, because it always does.) I mean I understand that this phrase is a spoonerism of chunky mild salsa, but what does the resulting phrase mean? Salsa made out of ... children? monkey children? I'm confused and, frankly, a little grossed out.

Other notable stuff:

• [Late-night Carson] is a verrrrry tricky clue for DALY, dontcha think? Raise your hand if you thought to yourself confidently, "Well, of course that's Johnn... Wait, what? Four letters?"
• "You're a RIOT, Alice," is a phrase from the old "Honeymooners" television show. Not from Alice in Wonderland. Although it wouldn't surprise me to hear it on "The Brady Bunch" too.
  
• KIX is a [Cereal brand]. Also an '80s band from Baltimore that you probably don't want to listen to.
• [Tillis of country], with no crosses in place, could have been either MEL or Pam. I was going to link to one of Pam's songs but, as it turns out, I'm not a big fan.
• [Was within popcorn-sharing distance, perhaps] is a super-fun clue for SAT NEAR.
• I think ["All My Children" star] Susan LUCCI was in the puzzle last time I was here. I'm sure it's been a good 25 years since I've seen AMC, but I still really like this woman and her gorgeous smile.
• ABC is the ["Lost" network], which reminds me -- when the heck does "Lost" start up again? Anyone know?
• KNUTE Rockne is a [Big name at Notre Dame]. "Knute" is also the title of what I learned today is PuzzleDaughter's "Very! Favorite! Book! Ever!" Highly recommended for seven-year-old girls, especially if they own the polar bear Webkinz.
• I was looking for something a little more complicated for [Climber's goal]: apex, acme, summit ... huh? Only three letters? TOP? Oh, okay.
• Quick story on STREAKER [Runner in the raw]. I was looking at a feminist blog the other day and I saw a headline that I read as "Courtney Streaking in Minneapolis." I thought, "Well, that's a little weird -- some kind of publicity stunt?" The first sentence of the post explained that she'd be talking about her "book, perfectionism, body image...." And I thought, "Well okay, then, I guess it makes sense." (Of course what the headline actually said was that Courtney would be speaking in Minneapolis. HAha!)
  

Alright, time for me to get to bed. See y'all back here in the morning with two more puzzles.

Updated Sunday morning:

And we're back! Kathleen Fay O'Brien's LA Times puzzle, "Co-editing," drops the letters CO from a familiar phrase to create new funny phrases. Like so:

• (co)RONA DISCHARGE = [Firing of a gossip columnist?] - I'm not entirely sure what the original phrase means. I'm guessing it's science and not beer.
• SECOND (co)MING = [Yao junior?] - This refers, of course, to the Houston Rockets Chinese center, Yao Ming.
• KING (co)BRAS = [Some of Billie Jean's lingerie?] - How much do you suppose Billie Jean King would hate seeing this particular clue/answer pair?
• XEROX (co)PIES = [Unoriginal desserts?]
• NOEL (co)WARD = [Hospital section where carols are sung?]
• STAGE (co)ACHES = [Aftermath of a fall during the play?]
• PERSISTENT (co)UGH = [Sign of tenacious disgust?]
• (co)PING MECHANISM = [Gadget that makes a bullet-impact sound?]
• MY GOOSE IS (co)OKED = [Relieved comment from a "Next Food Network Star" contestant when the judge likes her fowl dish?] - That's a long way to go for the joke, but I like it!

What else?

• CARIBOU [Arctic deer] seem to be in the news relatively often lately.
• Unfortunately, RAISINY, [Like some cereal], is not a word. It's just not. But it's Sunday, so that's okay.
• A debutante, or DEB, is the party who "comes out" at the coming-out party, which makes her the [Coming-out party?]. Got that? People still do this, right? Wow. So far away from my reality.
• [One of a dozen, often] is a JUROR. Raise your hand if you initially had donut.
• I wish Jack Johnson would do something with the [Classic Hawaiian song] ALOHA OE. That would be cool.
• I had never seen the word LincolnIANA. As it turns out, though, I was given some as a gift several years ago.
• Could ULU Grosbard have a cooler first name? No, he could not.
• ARPEL is a ["Mon Oncle" family name]. Has anyone seen this movie? Seems like it might be a little hard to understand.

Let's just say there was a lot of Googling going on during the solving of Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy Sunday Challenge. I think the four long answers in this one are colorful:

• John Denver's "Calypso" is, of course, a tribute to JACQUES COUSTEAU. Also, the song I'll have stuck in my head the rest of the day.
• The LEGAL PROFESSION can be described as a [Brief field].
• A MASQUERADE PARTY is, indeed, a ball.
• And DON'T MOVE A MUSCLE is a much more precise way of saying ["Stay right there"], particularly if you have children who when you say "Don't move" start flailing various limbs around just to annoy you. Not that that ever happens to me.
  

Good stuff all the way through, a lot of which, sadly, I did not know.

• HORAL means [Happening every 60 minutes]. I pieced it together, but don't recall ever seeing it before.
• WISCONSIN is the [State that hosts the "World's Largest Music Festival"]. With only the first I in place, I guessed Minnesota.
• [Square-toed] means PRIM. Who knew?
• The [First man to walk in space] was Alexei LEONOV. Now that really seems like something I should have known.
• [Queen Dido's lover] was AENEAS.
• A [Queen's demesne] is a REALM. When I don't even know the words in the clues, I know I'm in trouble.
• A SHOJI is a [Rice paper screen]. Apparently, the depth of my ignorance knows no bounds.
• Frances the Badger was created by Russell HOBAN.
• Ya know that [Lining that keeps the lungs from rubbing against the ribs]? Yeah, that's called a PLEURA.
• ELMER is a [Bugs' bugbear]. I have no idea what this means.
• JA-DA is a jazz standard written by Bob Carleton in 1918. Here's a clip.
• A [Banshee's bailiwick] is EIRE. I didn't know banshees were specifically Irish.
• EDEN is Hebrew for "pleasure." Good to know.
• [Clementine's final solution] was BRINE. Anyone know all the words to this song? It's pretty sad.
• Robert DONAT starred in "The 39 Steps." Why can't I ever remember this man's name??

I took it as a challenge when Orange said last night that I might not have the rest of the puzzles blogged until "afternoon," and it's 11:44 now, so let me get this up. Someday Orange will ask me to blog a Monday puzzle for you and you'll see that I am sometimes pretty fast! And smart! Enjoy the rest of the weekend....

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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)].

Updated:

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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