Monday, 5/4

BEQ 4:19
Jonesin' 3:08
LAT 2:59
NYT 2:28
CS 6:31 (J -- paper)

Happy 18th anniversary to my husband, who is remarkably tolerant of my crossword avocation. Thanks, hon!

Mark Milhet's New York Times crossword

Today's theme is hesitant trepidation: All three theme entries are clued with [Succumbing to second thoughts]. The answers are GETTING COLD FEET, CHICKENING OUT, and LOSING ONE'S NERVE. Some of the fill in this puppy might give a crossword newbie second thoughts, although the puzzle's an easy one for the seasoned solver. Here are some words that flirt with the "crosswordese" category:

• 46A: EMI is a [U.K. record label]. Yes, it's still a major player in the recording industry, but I suspect it gets nearly as much attention in crosswords as in the music press, and is considerably more prominent in crosswords than in everything else I read.
  
• 58A: ITERS are [Anatomical passages]. I encounter this far more in crosswords than in medical editing.
  
• 6D: ERGS are [Energy units] or units of work. Outside of physics and crosswords, I can't say this word gets much play.
  
• 38D: NIBS are [Writing points], as in the points for a fountain pen. Nibs are also those terrible cherry licorice bits that I can't get enough of. Twizzlers, you are no Nibs.
  
• 40D: FERULES are [Old schoolmasters' sticks], handy for thwacking recalcitrant pupils. This isn't common crossword, no, but neither is it usual Monday fare.
  
• 56D: ENOL is a [Certain alkene]. Not your usual [Organic compound], [Carbon compound], or [Hydroxyl compound] clue. The dictionary on my Mac doesn't include this word, so it's got no business being in a Monday crossword—except for the LEGION ([Veterans' group, informally]) of regular solvers who reflexively fill in ENOL for any 4-letter chemical-sounding clue. If you didn't know this answer, jot it down in your brain—it'll be coming back to a puzzle near you quite soon.
  

There are three Bible answers today, but luckily they're not the more arcane ones like SELAH or NEH. or TAMAR. EDEN is the [Genesis garden]. SINAI is the [Mount ___, where the Commandments were given to Moses]. And NOAH was a [Biblical captain for 40 days and 40 nights].

Milhet's three-part theme leaves plenty of room for more interesting fill in the corners. There's ["Gesundheit!"], or "BLESS YOU"; CORNPONE, or [Dixie bread]; MARVEL [___ Comics, home of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four]; plus ICE SHEET, HARASSED, and TOTTERS.

Updated Monday morning:

Will Johnston's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Measuring Up" -- Janie's review

Nice to start the week with this puzzle by esteemed moderator of the erstwhile New York Times Puzzle Forum -- and creator of the invaluable page of Puzzle Pointers. (There's also a link in Orange's column of "Crossword Links" at right.)

And it's also nice to see the ways this puzzle lives up to its title. Will gives us three grid-spanning phrases, each of which starts with a type of "measure":

• 17A: LENGTH OF SERVICE [Factor in employee recognition awards] -- LENGTH being a unit of distance -- or, as in this case, time.
• 37A: AREA OF EXPERTISE [Professional's specialty] -- AREA, as we learned in geometry, refers to a plane's size and is determined by multiplying (class?): "length by width." Unlike the previous example (or the next...), this fill does not describe a literal measurement but gives us a strong "in the language" phrase, where "area" means "field." As the exception, it is perfectly placed at the puzzle's center.
• 59A: VOLUME OF TRAFFIC [Commuter's concern] -- VOLUME being a measure of capacity (or sound amplitude). Again -- we're talking about the amount of traffic here -- or possibly the noise generated by it. This commuter is assaulted less by the sound of above-ground traffic than by the decibel level of the subways (and confesses she carries earplugs.....).

SPEED and NANO also come from the "measure" vocabulary pool -- so Will gives us a double bonus.

Three favorite clues: [High wind?] for FIFE, [Pen name] for CROSS and [Worldly wisdom? (abbr.)] for GEOG.

And speaking of GEOG, between the fill and the clues, we get a bit of a world tour here with: SARI [Delhi wrap], NILE [Luxor's river], IRAQI [Baghdad native], USSR [Cold War inits], AMIN [Former Ugandan tyrant]; and foreign phrases [Cul-de] SAC and [Pâté de] FOIE [gras].

It's probably serendipity, but where the demise of Cleopatra is concerned, invert the clue numbers and notice that 36A [Venomous viper] ASP has a complement in 63A's [Luxor's river] NILE.

Never heard of GINO Vanelli, but the crosses allowed me to find the correct fill. Will's a Boston guy -- and it seems there's a special Celts-Gino connection! Also tripped myself up some, trying to make MINI work for NANO; then NEWBIE for NOVICE.

Has anyone ever seen TRON? Ah, well -- perhaps it'll show up on AMC. ;-)

OVER.

Los Angeles Times crossword by Rich Norris's alter ego, Gia Christian

I can't help thinking of the power ballad "Sister Christian" when I see this one of Rich's pen names. (Skip to about 4:05 in the video to see how dramatically the vocalist belts out "You're motorin'.")

Let's call this theme KABOB (41A: [Skewered meal])—each theme entry is a B-to-B kabob:

• 17A: [Excellent performance] is a BANG-UP JOB.
  
• 29A: [Sci. class where many an "Eeuw!" is heard] is BIO LAB.
  
• 46A: [Bill for what you drank] is BIXBY. No, not really. BAR TAB.
  
• 62A: A catchier name for [Satan] is BEELZEBUB.
  
• 11D: To [Betray by bad-mouthing] is to BACKSTAB.
  
• 39D: The [Angels or Dodgers] are a BALL CLUB in the L.A. area.
  

Smooth fill, as we expect from Rich, with 14 6- to 8- letter non-theme answers classing up the joint. And six theme entries! Favorite answer: KIBITZ, or [Be a nuisance at the card game], connecting two theme entries. Favorite clue: [Host who expects you to question his answer?] is Alex TREBEK. Just a few more weeks 'til my Jeopardy! audition in Chicago...

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Inside Jobs"

The theme is "Inside Jobs" and one job is hidden inside each theme vertical entry in this 15x16 grid:

• 3D: ["Pan's Labyrinth" director] is GUILLERMO DEL TORO.
  
• 18D: [Plants with purple flowers] are the unknown-to-me FOXTAIL ORCHIDS. Slightly better known to me: the [South African iris cousin] called the IXIA, which I saw recently in another crossword. It's on the crosswordesey side.
  
• 8D: [SUV that was a prize during "Survivor 2005"] is the PONTIAC TORRENT.
  
• 10D: [Acts of desperation] are LAST-DITCH EFFORTS.
  

Those 11-letter answers at 17A and 62A? Not part of the theme. They're just there to interlock nicely with three theme entries apiece. Favorite fill: Where ASHKENAZ, or [Group of European Jews], meets MATZOH, or [Seder staple]. I bought that record my senior year of high school—the [1983 Huey Lewis and the News album]—and yet I blanked on the title. SPORTS!

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Pardon My French"

Matt's theme this week is couleurs—color phrases with the colors translated into French. Like so:

• 17A: [Bugs Bunny, most notably?] clues BLANC RABBIT. He's a gray rabbit, not a white one, but (a) "White Rabbit" is a familiar phrase and (b) Mel BLANC did the voice for Bugs.
  
• 32A: [Fear that you'll smear your makeup?] is ROUGE SCARE. Brendan's puzzle has the original RED SCARE in it today.
  
• 41A: [The woman that seduces hard-boiled film detectives?] turns the equine Black Beauty into a film NOIR BEAUTY. This puts me in mind of Kim Basinger's character in L.A. Confidential and nudges me to link to L.A. Crossword Confidential (Rex covers today's puzzle).
  
• 57A: [Extreme skateboarder who shreds on the halfpipe?] clues VERT MONSTER. The Green Monster is that wall at Fenway Park in Boston. I'm guessing VERT = short for "vertical" in skateboarding argot.
  

Notable stuff in the fill: A marijuana [Joint] is a DOOBIE, but one [In need of joint relief] is ARTHRITIC. Trade names abound—we see CESSNA jets, GUMMI Worms, Mr. PIBB, KOOL-AID (a [Drink that's stirred, but not shaken]), BUGATTI (the [Sports car manufacturer now owned by Volkswagen], maker of the super-fast Bugatti Veyron), and TOFUTTI. Plus the SEATTLE P.I., or Post-Intelligencer, the [Washington newspaper that ended its printed version in March 2009, for short]. For a foreign vibe, we get FUGUS, the Japanese [Poisonous blowfishes], and PRAHA, [Czech Republic capital, to locals]—one of my dearest friends lived in Prague for a decade, so that was a gimme for me.

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Saturday, 7/26

NYT 8:26
Newsday 7:50
LAT 4:15
CS 3:04

(post updated at 10:30 Saturday morning)

All righty, I (barely) finished the NYT crossword before it was time to put my kid to bed. I took a diagramless puzzle with me—I'm test-solving for an upcoming book of diagramlesses. If you dig 17x17 grids that don't tell you where the black squares go, you're gonna like that book, which I'm guessing will come out next year sometime. Anyway, my head is in that frame of mind...going to finish it...okay, now I'm back and will don my standard crossword blogging hat.

Ach! Barry Silk's New York Times puzzle really was quite reasonable, but I had a typo that eluded my vision for the longest time. The [Hunter of fish] is a SEA EAGLE, but I had SEE EAGLE for a ridiculous amount of time. No, WEENERS didn't look right, but what know I of [Stockbreeding devices]? Yeah, those were supposed to be WEANERS. THERE NOW sure seemed to be [Words of solace], but that errant WEENERS and the less-familiar variant RHEBOKS ([Cousins of oribis and dik-diks]) threw me. I'm wondering if Will Shortz is a big Mick Jagger fan, because Sir Mick just celebrated his 65th (!) birthday, yesterday's puzzle included a Stones song title, and ROLLING STONE is in this one, clued generically as a [Drifter]. This STONE is partnered with ELEANOR RIGBY, [Title woman of a song who "lived in a dream"]. These long entries are crossed by ["Let ___"], which surely must be the Beatles' "Let IT BE," except it isn't—it's "Let IT GO."

Favorite entries and clues here:

• MR. WIZARD, [Conductor of many TV experiments.
  
• I thought [Like some palms] was botanical in nature, but no. Just SWEATY palms. The other kind of palms might be found in an OASIS, or [Haven].
  
• [Children] are one's ISSUE.
  
• [Direct] means BLUNT, and that describes me.
  
• [Cause of an explosion] is IRE, not TNT. Were you fooled?
  
• A TYPESET publication is [Ready to be put to bed]. Well, after proofreading, of course.
  
• B MOVIES [may have just one or two stars], in terms of reviewers' ratings as well as who's in the cast.
  
• BONANZA! Good word. Clued here as [Ore galore].
  
• GOALIES are [Players with saving accounts?].
  
• All the Scrabbly stuff, plus the two entries with W following an unexpected letter, QWEST and DWELL ON. QWEST crosses IQ TEST, so both Q answers don't have a U after the Q.
  

Random factoids:

• [Where Charles de Gaulle was born] is LILLE.
  
• Scottish : Mac :: Arabic : IBN.
  
• The ["Frank TV" airer] is TBS on cable.
  
• AKRON, Ohio, is the [Home of minor-league baseball's Aeros].
  
• Queen NOOR, née Lisa Halaby, is a [U.S.-born Jordanian queen]; she got "dowager queen" status after her husband, King Hussein, died.
  
• OXNARD is [Ventura County's most populous city], while ORSK is the [Second biggest city in Russia's Orenberg region]. This is not to be confused with the Orenthal region of O.J. Simpson's name.
  
• Mount Saint ELIAS is an Alaskan/Canadian peak, while MT. SINAI is the [High point of the O.T.].
  
• I have friends who went to RPI, home of [The Engineers of N.Y.'s Liberty League].
  
• [1966 Pulitzer-winning poet Richard] EBERHART is unknown to me.
  
• Did you know there's a New York congresswoman named LOUISE Slaughter?
  
• [Oahu "thank you"] is MAHALO.
  

Clues I dispute:

• ST. KITTS was a [Columbus discovery of 1493]. Well, except that the clue is imperialistic bullshit. Indians were there for 5,000 years before Columbus "discovered" St. Kitts and Nevis.
  
• [Many people get 100 on it] is the clue for IQ TEST. I don't care for that clue because [Many people get 101 on it] and [Many people get 99 on it] are probably equally logical. Okay, fine. "Many people get ___ on it" is accurate enough for any number between, say, 80 and 120.
  

Updated:

Patrick Jordan's themed CrosSynergy puzzle, "Bar Stars," isn't about lawyers or drinking. No, it's much tastier than that—the theme entries are famous(ish) people whose last names are also the names of candy bars. SIR EDWARD HEATH was a [1970s British prime minister]. PETULA CLARK is the ["Don't Sleep in the Subway" singer]. KENNETH MARS [was Inspector Kemp in "Young Frankenstein"]; who? I may have seen the movie when I was a kid, but the name Kenneth Mars doesn't ring a bell. BARBARA HERSHEY was ["The Portrait of a Lady" Oscar nominee]. Yum, chocolate! Outside of the theme, fill I like includes the real SLIM SHADY, [Nickname for Eminem]; TOURMALINE, [One of October's birthstones] (usually a crossword cites October and birthstones for the opal); CHAIN GANGS, or [Groups of linked convicts]; and ITZHAK, [violin virtuoso Perlman]. I used to always forget which of the ARNO and EBRO is in Italy and which is in Spain; they're both here, only ARNO is clued as [Cartoonish Peter]. (The EBRO is in Spain, and Iberia's name derives from the river's name; the ARNO is in Italy.)

Doug Peterson's themeless Newsday "Saturday Stumper" was pretty tough. SHARKSKIN JACKET ([Hepcat's attire]) anchors the grid along the middle, and the other entries I liked most include JETTISON ([Toss]), HOME BREW ([Do-it-yourself draft]), ZEPPO Marx ([Brother-act nickname]), and SCREE ([Crater debris]), just because I'm fond of those SK-sounding words of Scandinavian origin (cf. skulk, skid). Favorite clues:

• [Jaguar juice] is GASOLINE.
  
• [Wing or back] for ATHLETE—not, say, chicken part.
  
• [Literally, "vault"] is CAMERA.
  
• [Simulated] does double work: it's both SHAM and ERSATZ. Hey! It's an adjective in both cases, rather than the clue duping the solver by meaning the verb in one case. Whew!
  
• [Puzzle] puzzled me for far too long. It's BAFFLE. I like both words.
  

Trouble spots:

• [Merits bleeping] could be CUSSES (which it is) or CURSES (which I had). Having that R there really mucked up [Some stock] by hiding the COWS.
  
• A [Line on a sea wall] is a TIDE MARK. I'm a Midwesterner, and Lake Michigan doesn't have tide marks.
  
• The [Efficiency measure] crossing 13-Down, [Unrestrained], got mucked up when I assumed the Down answer ending in -REE ended in -FREE. It turned out to be ON A SPREE crossing MPG, or miles per gallon.
  
• That [Medieval crossbow] is an ARBALEST. Obscure? Pretty much. That word really slowed me down in that corner of the grid.
  
• [Endymion's love] is SELENE, [Gary Cooper's birthplace] is HELENA, and I had to piece both together from the crossings. If only Tejano singer SELENA had joined the party.
  
• DANCE is clued as [Reel example]. That feels backwards. Isn't a reel a dance example?
  

My favorite entry in Mark Milhet's themeless LA Times crossword is JACK SQUAT, or [Zilch]—three uncommon letters plus colloquial? Win-win. The fill was surprisingly dense with prepositions (some used as adverbs here, but they're also prepositions):

• EASES IN is [Starts slowly].
  
• SIT UP is [Show sudden interest].
  
• NOT ON A BET is ["Never!"]
  
• IN OR OUT is a card [Dealer's query].
  
• EXCEL IN is [Be among the best at.
  
• STOOP TO is [Use in an undignified way].
  
• TROT OUT is [Submit].
  
• AGREE TO is [Shake on].
  
• FLAIL AT is [Try to hit with wild swings].
  
• CHEATED ON is [Two-timed].
  
• SLIPS IN is [Enters without notice].
  

There are other entries that contain the same letter sequences as those prepositions—INGRATE, OTRANTO, ATE A LOT, AKRON OHIO, PLATEAU, SALONGA, HEATHER—so there's an overall feel of sameness in the grid. But! This grid's got only 64 answers, so it's got a fairly low word count. MY personal preference is for a higher word count and more answers in the delightful JACK SQUAT vein.

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Saturday, 6/28

LAT 6:43
Newsday 6:36
NYT 5:52
CS 3:56

All righty, let me be quick here so I can get my kid to bed. The New York Times puzzle's by Byron Walden, and it feels like it's been a little too long since his last Saturday NYT. My favorite entries:

• The ROYAL WE, or [The "I" of Elizabeth I?]. We like this one.
  
• ZIPLOC BAG, or [Holder of many a sandwich].
  
• TURNS TAIL, or [Goes yellow, say].
  
• SOCK AWAY, or [Save].
  
• MR. ROMANCE, or [2005 reality show hosted by Fabio]. 
  
• CRAN, or [Start of some blended juice names]—I do actually think of that class of Ocean Spray beverages as cran-something drinks, so these days it's a solid word unit on its own.
  
• RESORTS TO, or [Uses in desperation]. I am delighted not to have had to resort to Google for this puzzle.
  
• NEW DO, or [Change at the top?]. My new do involves a cut with "more movement," according to ze stylist, and summery highlights. In case you were wondering.
  
• PIRANHA, or [Ruthless type]. Guessed this one off the final A.
  
• SASHAYS, or [Steps lively]. I should really sashay more often.
  

The clues I enjoyed most:

• [They come with strings attached] for both HARPS and YO-YOS. I entered YO-YOS for the first one and had to backtrack, so it was nice to be right the second time.
  
• [Coming right back at you?] for ECHOIC.
  
• [Heart failures?] for RENEGES. This has to do with a card game. Bridge, maybe?
  
• [Item called a geyser in Britain] is a WATER HEATER. Makes a certain amount of loopy sense.
  
• [Will work?] for an OP-ED ESSAY by George Will.
  
• [Corps of corpses?] for ZOMBIES.
  

The "Huh?" category:

• BEAM ENGINES are [Steam-driven devices that pump water from mines].
  
• I have seen AGA in plenty of crosswords, but [Janissary commander] was out there. The Wikipedia article on the Janissaries refers to something called the Auspicious Incident, which is the best name ever for a historical event.
  
• [1785 invention of England's Edmund Cartwright] for a LOOM. Plausible enough.
  
• ALCIDS are [Auks, puffins and related birds]. I've seen this word approximately twice in my life. Not to be confused with Alcee Hastings, El Cid, or antacids.
  
• [Owen ___, rebel in Shakespeare's "King Henry IV"] for GLENDOWER. The historical plays are not the group I'm familiar with.
  
• [100 aurar] are equivalent to a KRONA in Iceland, land of real geysers.
  
• [Southern historical novelist ___ Price] is named EUGENIA.
  

Mark Milhet created the themeless Los Angeles Times crossword. About 20 of the entries consist of more than one word—everything from the short I-TEN to FILL IN FOR and THE TIMES. URUSHIOL is the [Irritant in poison ivy]. Did you know that 15% to 30% of people don't react to poison ivy? A biologist friend was just telling me that last weekend, and Wikipedia confirms it. THE TIMES is [London paper]; if you like easier sudoku puzzles that have a place to write teeny candidate numbers in the box, check out the Times' online sudoku solver. The Easy and Mild are at least as easy as the NYT's Easy, with Difficult approximating the NYT's Medium, and the Fiendish and Super Fiendish being more manageable than the NYT's difficult because of the teeny number thing. ...if you like that sort of thing. (Crosswords are my love, but I cheat on them with sudoku when the mood strikes.) DRAVIDIAN is a [Language family that includes Tamil]; the Branch Davidian sect in Waco threw me because it wasn't Branch Dravidian. Never heard of the EAGLE RAY, a [Winged ocean denizen]. Is ONE AND ONE a stand-alone phrase meaning [Two parts?]? It seems more like a baseball status or early-season won/lost record. Good to see J CREW clued aptly as a [Polo rival] rather than as an L.L. Bean rival; Polo's closer to that fashion niche. With ON DECK clued in relation to batters in baseball, did you interpret [Tool for bats] as a wood-turning LATHE rather than the correct SONAR for mammalian bats?

The last I checked the publisher chart at Cruciverb.com, the LA Times was paying just $60 for 15x15 puzzles, versus $200 for the New York Times and $136 for the New York Sun. It's scarcely any better than the Tribune Media Services' $50, and slightly lower than USA Today's $65. But you know what? The LA Times puzzles are usually considerably better than the crosswords in those last two publications. That is surely a testament to editor Rich Norris's skills, professionalism, and collegiality. The sort of lousy fill that appears in TMS and the sometimes-incomprehensible editing of clues in USA Today? Rich bars the door to both. Here's hoping the publishing syndicate that set that $60 rate can summon the will to increase it to $100 or more—these are good puzzles by good constructors, and it would be great if the paycheck would reflect that better.

Dan Stark's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" contains some nice words. LEXICON is [Available words] in a language; CLAMORS are [Rackets]; MONIKERS are [Handles]. Those one-word clues are words that have a variety of meanings, and that's the Newsday way—short clues that can be interpreted many ways, only one of which will be correct.

In Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword, "Final Thoughts," the word LAST (66-Across) can go before the first word of the four theme answers: DITCH-DIGGER, MINUTE RICE, DANCE FEVER, and NAME DROPPER yield last-ditch, last-minute, last dance, and last name. I think OTIC is an adjective for ears, not hearing—auditory is the big hearing word. In college, a linguistics professor told us that in a word like goin', nobody has dropped a G. Rather, that distinct ng sound has been replaced by an n sound. So from a strictly technical angle, I'm not sure that ELIDE really goes with [Say "somethin'"], though it's popularly believed to.

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Saturday, 6/2

Newsday 8:02
NYT 8:00
LAT 5:25
CS 4:43

(updated at 9:45 a.m. Saturday)

Okay, I will play the bulleted-list game again. Maybe I'll even add a picture to this post. We'll see if anything visually arresting suggests itself.

The Saturday NYT crossword is by Byron Walden. As with any Saturday NYT, there's plenty to talk about—the befuddling, the clever, the edifying.

• First up, the befuddling: I beg to differ. We oranges are sweet. I'd never heard of the BIGARADE ([Sour orange, in French cuisine]). The [Prince in an L. Frank Baum "Oz" book] is Prince INGA, from Rinkintink in Oz. (Gotta love a prince with a Scandinavian girl's name.) The TAN OAK is a shrubby [Pacific Coast evergreen]. Never heard of ["Farewell, ANGELINA," 1965 top 10 Joan Baez album]. THE TRIP is a [1967 Peter Fonda film written by Jack Nicholson]; sounds trippy, as in LSD-trippy. I've never read anything by Terry Pratchett, certainly not [A HAT Full of Sky. College football is something I pay minimal attention to, so [Georgia Tech football coaching great Bobby DODD] was also an unknown. And it was Wikipedia that belatedly helped me figure out that MER (53-Down) DES (28-Down) Caraibes is French for the Caribbean Sea. You know what? I think that's a few more never-heard-of-it factual clues than I usually encounter in a Saturday puzzle. So edjumacational!
  
• Groovy entries: LIMA, OHIO; HUMPERDINCK; I CAN'T LIE; the adorable SMART CAR, which we saw throughout London; DRAGON FIRE; END / ON A HIGH NOTE; and the INDIANAN who's a COLTS fan.
  
• My favorite clues: [Fix...or damage] for SCRAPE (noun and verb!); [Deltiologist's purchase] for POSTCARD; [Silver holder] for REIN; [Literary name with a dieresis] for ANAIS (Anaïs Nin); [Something often laid at a window] for WAGER; [Like best buds] for TIGHT; ["Judge ___..."] for NOT; [Coupling device] for CIVIL UNION; [Gag rule, of a sort] for OMERTA; and [Scoring leaders?] for G-GLEFS.
  

And now, a picture of the BIGARADE, or Seville orange:



So: Not impossible, no horrifically deadly crossings (well, I lucked out with guessing it was Richard EGAN crossing BIGARADE), nothing patently unfair—but still pretty darned tough. How much did it rake you over the coals?

Updated:

Stan Newman, writing as "Anna Stiga," constructed today's Newsday Saturday Stumper. What a shame to have AVA Gardner clued as [Artie ex]; according to the Wikipedia piece on Artie Shaw, he was an ass. Shaw had two children by his eight wives. "When asked why he never saw his children, he replied, 'I didn't get along with the mothers, so why should I get along with the kids?'" Lovely man (not). Ava fact: She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for Mogambo. CARL XVI GUSTAF slowed me down a bit—hadn't known there were royals with Roman numerals in the middle of their names. Nice mislead with [CBS retiree of '04]—DON HEWITT, not DAN RATHER (who retired in '05). And did you know that ALIAS means [Literally, "at another time"]?

Mark Milhet's LA Times themeless crossword didn't always resonate with me. Who calls it a CUSH JOB? Cushy, maybe, but I don't think I've heard "cush." And LEMON SODA—have you ever drunk this? Is there a national name-brand concoction that's a lemon soda? (Lemon-lime Sprite doesn't count.) But look at that lively DRAG QUEEN down there. Here's Miss Understood for you.) Other highlights: [Pecking order?] for KISS ME and [Grace land?] for MONACO. The clue for OP ART cited [Stanczak's "Provocative Current"], which didn't ring a bell. If you're in the mood for some op art, visit Julian Stanczak's site.

Looks like Lynn Lempel has also joined the CrosSynergy gang! In "So There!" she wedges a SO into existing phrases to create things like KISS AND MAKE SOUP and SOWING NUT. I got bogged down in the top middle by having PTA instead of NEA for [Public school backer], thus obscuring the square-dancing GENT and [Sauté starter] OLEO. If you're sautéing with oleo, I don't think I want to eat your cooking. Ew.

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