Saturday, 10/31/09

Newsday 8:13 with one blank (bookmark this link for free puzzle access)
NYT 7:18*
LAT 3:05
CS untimed

*Yes, the applet says 7:30. I'm not including the 12 seconds it took to communicate with the server.

My kid's school field trip was to see a Polish movie, "The Magic Tree," at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival. The movie's director, Andrzej Maleszka, was there for a long Q&A with the kids. No, I did not ask him if Eugene Maleska was any relation.

Robert Wolfe's New York Times crossword

This puzzle has run afoul of...something. I enjoyed one answer: 28A: [Johnny Depp title role] clues ED WOOD, and that movie was a hoot. (Okay, two answers: Also TRAVOLTA, 4D: [He played a governor in "Primary Colors"].) But there's a big danger in making 58-word crosswords, and that danger is that the fill's quality will be sorely compromised in order to get the challenging interlock to work. Structurally, this grid is bound to give some solvers fits—if you don't get solid footholds in the NW and SE quadrants, only 26A and 28A are going to feed you any help from the rest of the puzzle.

I have groused before about what I call "roll your own" words: words with tacked-on endings or prefixes providing handy (for the constructor) letters to fill in space. Here, 15 answers have an S added to the end. One of 'em includes an -ER, too: SNEERERS, or 48A: [Disdainful bunch]. It's gettable, sure, but hardly anyone is using this particular form of sneer. There are also a couple -EDs and an -EST, and don't get me started on the -ERs. SERENER is bland but OK, FISHIER is decent, but MARRER? 38D: [Graffitist, e.g.] is a MARRER? The MARRER and his friends the SNEERERS have marred this grid. Then there's TERRENE, or 50A: [Earthly], which my dictionary labels archaic, and the wow-I-can't-believe-it's-in-the-dictionary-as-an-"also"-spelling INDORSED (7D: [Supported: Var.])—this one the dictionary calls dated. Throw in your ESTERS and ORRIS OIL, your DENATURE and AIR MOTOR, and you've got an abundance of fill that doesn't do anything to engage me.

All right, let's roll through some clues and answers:

• 15A. GANTRIES are [Spanning frameworks]. Not a word in my daily vocab.
• 17A. [Upstate New York town where I.B.M. was founded] is ENDICOTT. Does everyone know this tidbit? Am I the only one who didn't?
• 18A. HEAVEN is a [Good resting place?]. I don't care for clues presenting religious tenets, even with the question mark.
• 23A. HUSSARS were [Brilliantly dressed cavalrymen]. Camo is probably a little more practical on the battlefield, no? Dictionary says hussars were 15th-century Hungarian "light horsemen," so the term predates Prussia, which I always pair it with in my head in the category of "old European things with USS in them."
• 41A. [Axial skeleton parts] are STERNA, plural of sternum, your breastbone. "Axial" because it's in the middle of your body? I was first thinking of SPINES with an S plural rather than a word with a Latin plural.
• 46A. An AIR MOTOR is a [Pneumatic power producer]. There are things called air motors?
• 50A. KALES are [Mustard family members]. My family has a long-standing feud with the Mustard family. The feud dates back generations, to when Colonel Mustard shot my great-great-granduncle in the back...in the conservatory.
• 5D. [Like the 2 in "x squared"] seems like a long way to go for SUPERIOR. Do mathy types call it SUPERIOR, what I call superscript?
• 12D. It really is time to retire the fleet of SSTS from the crossword puzzle. [They had adjustable noses] is as good a clue as you're going to get for this answer, but it still doesn't fix the fact that the answer is here. It's in too many puzzles.
• 14D. SENTA is clued as [Wagnerian hero]. Austrian actress Senta Berger needs a better agent so she can get all the SENTA clues. I just Googled her, and she looks great for 68 but was a stunner in her younger days. (I kinda thought she was in the same category as Pola Negri and Perle Mesta, long-dead crosswordese people. But no! Not so old at all.)
• 15D. Ooh, I don't think I like the GEISHA clue. [Companion abroad]? I also have deep reservations about the geisha tradition. Women spending hours to look a certain way and devoting their working hours to entertaining men? Eesh.
• 25D. This one's weird. SHOE STORE is clued as an [Establishment with many horns]. My son and I went to a good indie shoe store with a large staff of experienced salespeople, but there can't have been that many shoehorns in the entire place. (The guy did use one on my son, though.) Most shoe stores these days pretty much leave the work to the customer, and I don't think they make a point of stocking shoehorns for our use.
• 29A. WATER OAK is a [Tree of Southeastern swamplands]. I don't spend much time in Southeastern swamps.
• 37D. I wanted the [Unrequited lover of legend] to be DAPHNE, since the ****NE fit. It's ELAINE. Which legend is this? Whom was she pining for?
• 39D. [It may be under enamel] clues a coat of PRIMER under enamel paint, not the dentin under your tooth enamel.

So often, a low-word-count puzzle just makes me wish the constructor had instead strived for the liveliest, most colorful and interesting fill. I'm sure the 58-worders have their fans, but I'm not one of them. (Exception: Well, Patrick Berry can pull off the holy grail: low word count with lively fill.)

Updated Saturday morning:

Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Witchcraft"—Janie's review

What a happy Halloween Tony has made this. (Wicked) "Witchcraft" is filled with a variety of wordplay in the four theme entries (this would be the "trick" part), plus bonus fill and non-theme fill that is loaded with high-scorin' Scrabble letters (all of which makes for a very nice "treat"). First, the tricks, which take all-things-ordinary and transform them into all-things-occult:

• 16A. Add a letter. [Like cookies at a witch's fundraiser?] which would be not oven-baked, but COVEN-BAKED, a coven being an "assembly of witches." Some definitions specify 13 witches. Think there's any significance in that?...
• 26A. Change a letter. [People who can sniff out a witch's concoction?] are the olfactorily-gifted POTION DETECTORS. Sensors that can register a witch's activity would be motion detectors.
• 43A. "Sounds like." [Announcement at a witch's market?] is "SPELL IN AISLE TWO!" Announcement in your market (in the aftermath of the marinara display's descent to the floor, say...): "Spill in Aisle Two!" (I was also thinking that spell might have been the way the word special sounded over a muffled p.a. system...)
• 59A. Add a letter. Ooh, good—another one, and this time [Witch's mobile sound systems?] yields up BROOM BOXES. No mere boom boxes for our gal!

In addition to the theme-fill itself, the "treats" also include bonus theme-fill: BREW, clued as [Cauldron contents, perhaps] and which harkens back to potion, that "witch's concoction" in the clue at 26A; SKELETON for [Halloween costume]; and how perfect is this?, "BOO!" [Interjection heard on Halloween] as the very last of the Down fill. Nice.

Then there're all those lively words with the scrabbly letters, like:

• JOKE [One-liner], which shares that "J" with, and whose meaning relates to, JAPED [Made fun of]; JEDI ["Star Wars" knight], too;
• ZILCH [Zip], which is synonymous with [Zero] NONE and which shares a "Z" with ZONK [Nod off, with "out"];
• KUMAR (who went to the White Castle with Harold), PECK [Little kiss] sharing its "K" with CLINK [Lockup], and LOCKET [Keepsake holder];
• AVERSION [Strong dislike]; and
• IN-BOX [E-mail receptacle] (though I confess I was surprised to see this word in the same puzzle with broom boxes...).

And just because I enjoyed them in the puzzle, let me also point out "SPLAT!" as the [Sound of dropped ice cream] and [Former U.K. airline] BOAC, British Overseas Airways Corporation (sometimes a/k/a "Better on a Camel"...), which will always be associated in my mind with the opening lyric of the Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R."

Nothin' remotely BLAH [Boring] about a puzzle with this kinda fill. This one has a real [Zing]/KICK to it!

Orange/Amy back on the clock. I've seen the Harold & Kumar movies and yet my first impulse was to have Harold & MAUDE Go to White Castle. Who among us wouldn't want to see that movie?

Sam Donaldson's Los Angeles Times crossword

This easy themeless sat in stark contrast to the NYT today. As I was saying at L.A. Crossword Confidential, I'm partial to grids with four quadrants of stacked, longish answers. This one's got just two such quadrants, but they have quad-stacked 9s rather than the standard triple-stacked fill. The puzzle combines lively and fresh words and phrases with a lot of ordinary fill, which stands in contrast to the Saturday NYT crossword, which had lots of uncommon but not exciting fill. Sure, TESTS and EMOTE are pretty boring words, but I'll take them over this MARRER business. Ideally, of course, a themeless/freestyle puzzle will be packed with juicy stuff, low on the MARRERs, and full of tricky clues for the ordinary words. The L.A. Times puzzle has been laboring under a push for easier clues, so we haven't got the tricky clues today. But soon, maybe!

Highlights:

• 1A: War and more (CARD GAMES). I didn't see that one coming. Even with GAMES in place, I was still thinking of actual war.
• 15A: Strain (OVEREXERT). I like the X, but wish it had been put to better use—the crossing is the partial AXE TO.
• 17A: Place with trays (CAFETERIA). Super-easy clue, no?
• 32A: Cosmetic surgeries (NOSE JOBS). Again, easy clue—but crispy crossword entry.
• 40A: Sherry, often (APERITIF). OK, this is my cue to look up this word, and probably not for the first time. Turning to the dictionary...aperient, "(chiefly of a drug) used to prevent constipation"...wait, just, a little further...here it is. Apéritif is from a French word which draws on the Latin aperire, "to open." You drink it before you eat to whet your appetite. You eat an appetizer for the same reason, purportedly, but the two ap— words are unrelated. Appetite stems from Latin words meaning "desire for/seek after." Not that anyone asked, but I think sherry is gross.
• Here's the nutty Star Wars zone. 47A: Film that's out of order? is a PREQUEL, while 13D: End of a pentamerous serial is PART V. If you're lucky, that is, PART V is the end of the series. Crazy George Lucas went for VI.
• 53A: Seeking advancement at any cost (ON THE MAKE). I almost went with ON THE TAKE, but TAKE has another home in this puzzle.
• 60A: Eastern Canadian province grouping, with "the" (MARITIMES). I'll bet the people near Canada's Pacific coast wish they could be called the Maritimes, too. The Maritime Provinces are Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. How many of you have been to any of those? I've hit Ontario and British Columbia and that's it.
• 62A: Smithsonian collection (AMERICANA). Hey! I went to the National Museum of American History for my first time this summer. A C-3P0 costume is Americana, you know. Don't believe that Tattooine hype. There is no museum of Tattooineana.
• 4D: Cologne crowd? (DREI). "Two's company, but three's a crowd."
• 9D: Child actor's chauffeur? (STAGE MOM). Alternatively, a virtual mother who's going to the party alone is a STAG E-MOM.
• 11D: Tolerates teasing gracefully (TAKES A JOKE). See? This could also have been MAKES A JOKE, though that would be a fairly flat answer, and ON THE MAKE could've been ON THE TAKE. I find that the most of the time when someone says "Can't you take a joke?"—really, that person was being a jerk and the jokee should not be expected to "take a joke."
• 27D: Unwavering (FOUR-SQUARE). Not a term I use. Isn't "four square" also a playground game using a ball?
• 38D: One with immunity (DIPLOMAT). I blew my son's mind when I told him that people with diplomatic plates on their cars can probably get away with parking illegally.

Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Anna Stiga, a.k.a. Stan Newman

(PDF solution here.)

Don't freak out when Newsday.com invites you to pay for access when you look for this puzzle—just bookmark Stan's site and get the puzzle there. Stan's page loads faster than Newsday's busy site did, too. Win-win.

I had no idea which vowel belonged in the 54A/50D crossing. [Personal-finance guru Dolan] turns out to be DARIA, but for all I knew it was a less common DORIA or something. SAO is clued as [Neptune moon discovered in '02] and I, for one, do not follow the news about small moons orbiting distant planets. There are certainly less esoteric ways of clueing SAO.

Likes:

• The TEMPURA/TEMPERA crossing. Don't care for TEMPURA's clue, [Seafood serving], being reused for BISQUE. TEMPERA's a [Type of paint].
• A LA MODE is clued as [Apple-pie order] but involves actual apple pie and not the idiom "in apple-pie order," meaning "tidy."
• MR. SLATE is [Fred Flintstone's boss]. Took a zillion crossings for me to remember his name. What better to draw a blank on than SLATE?
• TWADDLE, or [Horsefeathers], is a great word.
• ["...the Flying Trapeze" guy] is LEOTARD.
• Who's the best athlete? PELE is [IOC's Athlete of the Century], while Muhammad ALI is [SI's Athlete of the Century]. Did you see the Flip Wilson–as–Geraldine clip with Muhammad Ali that Rex posted at L.A. Crossword Confidential the other day? Funny stuff, and Ali was such a cutie in his younger days.

Dislikes:

• EATEN AT is clued as [Annoyed]. "This puzzle has eaten at me"?
• I like SPATULA, but the clue, [Kitchen blender], feels off to me.

Neutral zone of clues I needed lots of crossings to get:

• [Toon teen in an '89 film] is ARIEL, the Little Mermaid. Never saw it.
• [Five-petal flower] is SEDUM. There are others with five petals, I'm sure.
• [Quarters with buttons] are PUP TENTS. They have buttons? Google tells me the old military pup tents buttoned together...up to World War II. We need to know 1930s tent technology now?
• [Huckleberry's father] is his PAP. Don't be dissing him, now. We don't want any pap smears here.

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Summary only...

Sunday, 9/6/09

NYT 9:54
PI 7:52
BG 7:45
LAT 7:07
CS 3:30
NYT cryptic crossword 9:20

Robert Wolfe's New York Times crossword, "The Argonne"

The theme's not about the Argonne wood of WWI fame. Rather, each theme entry has an "R gone" from the last word. I found the theme somewhat vexing on account of the presence of undeleted Rs in earlier words in some theme answers and several unfamiliar base phrases. Here's how the theme plays out:

• 24A. [Some skiing stars?] are CROSS COUNTRY ACES; RACES loses its R. Note the R remaining in COUNTRY; this may have led some solvers astray because COUNTY is also a word. When I think of cross country races, I think of distance running rather than Nordic skiing.
  
• 114A. Wow, only two of the theme entries run Across. [Departure call from a Spanish vessel?] is a SHIP-TO-SHORE ADIOS; RADIOS dropped the R here, but I briefly contemplated making SHORE into SHOE.
  
• 3D. [Word signed for a deaf toreador?] is a NON-SPEAKING OLÉ (role). That's cute.
  
• 7D. [Fish in a firth?] clues SCOTTISH EEL (reel). You might think that this theme answer, like the others, is a nonsensical phrase, but the Internet tells us such things as this: "Many Scottish eel populations are very slow growing." Who knew?
  
• 28D. [Reaching 21?] is BECOMING THE AGE. THE AGE of what? This one feels clunky rather than clever. I also like the rhythm of "becoming all the rage" better than "becoming the rage," though both are used.
  
• 35D. [What an unevenly milked cow might have?] is a RIGHT FULL UDDER. This plays on "right full rudder," which is not a term of any currency for me. Never had a sailing class, never joined the Navy. (I can't help picturing editors Will Shortz and Stan Newman out on a boat in the brisk sea air, jaunty Captain and Tennille–style captain's caps and all.) The answer feels awkward because if you were referring to a particularly full udder on the right side, wouldn't you call it a "full right udder"?
  
• 40D. [Camouflage?] might be a COMMANDO AID (raid).
  
• 51D. [Mythical twin's bird tale?] is ROMULUS AND EMUS (Remus). That'd be a terrible name for a mythological tale. Maybe "Romulus and the Angry Emus."
  
• 71D. [What the N.H.L.'s Hurricanes skate on?] could be CAROLINA ICE. Hang on, what's Carolina Rice? Is that Condoleezza's sister's name? Let me Google that...it's a brand name of rice that I don't think I've ever seen in a Chicago grocery store. Have y'all heard of it?
  

There were some oddities in the fill. TUTORAGE isn't a common word at all, is it? It's clued as 4D: [Educational work after school], but that's more often called tutoring. The tall flower I know is the gladiolus, but apparently GLADIOLA is an "also:" spelling; here it's clued as 92D: [Relative of an iris]. The 13D: [Metrical accent] called an ICTUS is known to me only as a medical word for a seizure; I had no idea it had a literary application (I much preferred studying prose). TENTH DAY, or 90D: [Part of Christmas when lords a-leaping are given], felt contrived.

Favorite things:

• 19A. [Jesus, for one] clues ALOU. The other famous Alous are Matty, Felipe, and ex-Cub Moises. Would you believe that with AL**, I was tempted to fill in ALER? There've gotta be at least a few Jesuses playing in the American League, but they're not usually referred to by first name alone.
  
• Three UP answers may be too many, but they're all lively phrases. To 30A: [Importune, informally] is to HIT UP. FACE-UP is 16D: [Unlike the cards in a draw pile]. And if you want to WHIP UP a Carolina rice casserole, 88D: [Create quickly] is what you've got to do.
  
• 96A. ["Shadowland" singer, 1988] is K.D. LANG, though she'd want that all in lowercase letters. I didn't start listening to her until after then, but I love the All You Can Eat album.
  

Clues I think people will be a-Googling:

• 47A. [To whom Mortimer declares "They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"] clues Katie HOLMES. No, wait: Sherlock HOLMES. Robert Downey, Jr., plays Holmes in a movie this fall...with martial arts. It's a safe bet to get better reviews that All About Steve.
  
• 91A. [Brings with great difficulty] clues LUGS IN. I started with TUGS IN.
  
• 97A. [The Charioteer constellation] is AURIGA.
  
• 103A. ADANO is the [Fictional village visited by Major Joppolo] in A Bell for Adano.
  
• 120A. The [Contents of a stannary mine] are TIN. Does toothpaste still have stannous fluoride in it? Gotta love the tinny goodness.
  
• 5D, 10D. ["Wagon Train" network, 1957-62] was NBC, and ["Wagon Train" network, 1963-65] was ABC. Both before my time.
  
• 36D. [Dentiform : tooth :: pyriform : ___] refers to a PEAR. No relation to the prefix pyro- (fire); apparently the 18th century folks who concocted a Latinate word misspelled pirum as pyrum. Did you know there's a piriformis muscle in your buttcheeks? It can irritate the sciatic nerve, meaning I know exactly where my right piriformis muscle is.
  
• 81D. [Year the mathematician Pierre de Fermat was born], in Roman numerals, is MDCI. In Arabic numerals, that's 1601.

Updated late Saturday night:

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer (et al.) crossword, "Designers' Holiday"

The first theme entry in Merl's puzzle made me laugh because my husband can't get through a department store clothing department without saying "Ask Tommy; HILFIGER IT OUT." Merl's got that at 22A, with the clue [Confident words about a designer doing this puzzle?]. The remaining theme answers didn't entertain me as much as that first one. They are:

• 32A. WE'RE PRADA YOU, or [Encouragement from a designer's parents?]. This puns on "We're proud of you."
  
• 50/61A. [Comment to a mischievous designer?] is YOU'VE BEEN UP DIOR / OLD TRICKS AGAIN ("...up to your...").
  
• 68/84A. [Comment about a designer's much-anticipated show?] is I'VE BEEN WAITING / VERSACE LONG TIME ("for such a long time").
  
• 97A. LAUREN! BEHOLD! is an [Exclamation at a designer's show] ("lo and behold").
  
• 114A. Merl bundles two designers together in PUCCI GUCCI KOO ("coochy coochy coo"), or [Words to a designer's baby?]. This is not to be confused with CHARO's "cuchi-cuchi"—she's clued as [An ex of Xavier] Cugat at 19A, and her ex is referenced in the next clue 20A, where MARACAS are [Cugat's shakers]. If a band had to include me, maracas are one of the few instruments with which I might acquit myself decently.
  

Tough nuts are scattered throughout the fill:

• 35D. ORSINI is [Pope Nicholas III's family name]. I was confused as to why the name's Italian when Czar Nicholas was Russian...and then saw that the clue wasn't about czars at all.
  
• 72D. I held off on choosing a C or K for the end of ICEPA*, or [Cooling pouch for perishables], but the answer turned out to be ICE PAD. Is that a thing?
  
• 44A. ARCATA is a [College town near Eureka, Calif.]. What school? Humboldt State University. And yes, I had to Wikipediafy that.
  
• 115D. [Hue: abbr.] is CLR., short for "color." I might've gone with the tough cleanser by that name. You know—the one that claims to work on calcium, lime, and rust deposits.
  
• 70D. [If ___ (should circumstances warrant)] clued NEEDS BE. I'd used "if need be," with no S. This may be one of those phrases with regional differences in usage, per the Separated by a Common Language blog, with "if needs be" popping up more in the U.K., Australia...and Utah.
  

Pancho Harrison's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword, "Great Direction"

This one's a centenary tribute puzzle to director ELIA KAZAN (123A: [Born 9/7/1909, he directed the answers to starred clues]). It's too bad that what is perhaps his most famous film, On the Waterfront, didn't find a home in this grid. I hadn't realized Kazan was a theatrical director as well as a movie director, but many of the theme entries are plays. Plays include ALL MY SONS, the 23A: [1947 Tony-winning Arthur Miller play]; two-entry DEATH OF A / SALESMAN, or 28A/113A: [1949 Tony-winning play starring Lee J. Cobb]; and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, the 68A: [1947 Tennessee Williams play]. His films include 42A/45A: [1945 film based on a Betty Smith novel], A TREE GROWS / IN BROOKLYN; 94A: EAST OF EDEN, the [1955 film based on a Steinbeck novel]; 97A: VIVA ZAPATA, the [1952 biopic starring Marlon Brando]; 103A: CATWOMAN, the [2004 movie starring Halle Berry as a sinuous comics villain]; and 115A: MAVERICK, the [1994 Western starring Gibson and Foster]. Okay, I lied. The last two aren't theme entries, and the clue for MAVERICK reads simply [Loner].

I think I haven't seen any of Kazan's work, actually. Huh. On the plus side, I also skipped Catwoman and Maverick.

What I liked most in the fill, besides those non-Kazan movie titles with non-movie clues, were these answers:

• 27A. GEPPETTO is [Pinocchio's creator].
  
• 76A. STOOLIES are [Rats] of a non-rodent type.
  
• 100A. OMIGOSH means ["Yikes!"], among other things.
  
• 89D. To [Snap] is to GO POSTAL. No offense to all the postal workers I've known, even-tempered to a man/woman.
  
• 98D. Doctor ZHIVAGO is the [Title hero who married Tonya Gromeko]. Where does Lara fit in? I can hum her theme from the movie, but that's pretty much all I know about the story.
  

Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "College Knowledge"

I'm going to make this quick because I'm getting sleepy—but I want to get all the Sunday-sized puzzles out of the way tonight because I'm going out for a birthday breakfast with a friend. Yes, my birthday was three weeks ago, and no, there's no reason it can't be a month-long celebration of moi.

I enjoyed the theme, in which college names are paired with rhyming nouns. Some are easy/obvious, like DENISON VENISON, but more fun are the ones with crazy spelling variations for the rhyming sounds. For example, RICE GNEISS, FISK BISQUE, and DUKE SPOOK. The shortest four theme entries travel Down and are stacked beside each other in pairs—that's a Hook/Reagle trademark, that sort of theme stacking. Good stuff.

Updated Sunday morning:

Doug Peterson's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

Plenty of easy clues plus no obscure fill to get in the way of working the crossings make for a quicker-than-most-themelesses experience. Easy doesn't mean lifeless, though. There's a slew of good stuff here. The highlights:

• 1A. ADAM'S RIB is a [Romantic comedy of 1949].
  
• 36A. This is one of a pair of intersecting middle 15s. "HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT" signals that ["This may come as a shock..."].
  
• 46A. [Place to try a line] isn't a fishing pond, it's a SINGLES BAR.
  
• 60A. M.C. ESCHER is the mindbending [Artist known for drawing "impossible objects"].
  
• 8D. An idiomatic way to say one is [Hard at work] is to say one is BUSTING ONE'S HUMP. Although really, if you're going to be using such colloquial speech, that ONE'S is going to be nowhere near the middle of that phrase.
  
• 12D. "AMEN TO THAT!" means ["You said it!"].
  
• 13D. The most common Frasier-related fill has got to be the ROZ/PERI Gilpin nexus. Today we get NILES CRANE, a ["Frasier" character].
  

Mystery name for me: 37D: [Country singer McCoy] is named NEAL. Wikipedia tells me this:

Hubert Neal McGaughey, Jr. (born July 30, 1958 in Jacksonville, Texas) is an American country music singer of mixed Irish and Filipino descent. Known professionally as Neal McCoy, he has released ten studio albums on various labels, and has released thirty-four singles to country radio.

What, "Hubert McGaughey, Jr." wasn't zingy enough for the music industry?

Bob Stigger's New York Times second Sunday puzzle, a cryptic crossword

I like Bob Stigger's cryptics in Games and/or World of Puzzles, so I was glad to see his byline here. I've got to run now, so I'm out of time to talk about the toughest clues to unravel or my favorite answers. The Across Lite file is locked, so I can't swear that my solution's 100% correct, but everything made sense to me.

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Saturday, 5/30

Newsday 7:47
NYT 6:56
LAT 4:17
CS 7:23 (J—paper)

Matt Ginsberg's New York Times crossword

Write-up and answer grid coming later tonight, after raspberry shortcake and putting my kid to bed.

But first:

48A. [Chain of treeless rolling hills] is a WOLD.
44D. The W's crossing is a [Metalworking tool] called a SWAGE.

Now, TOLD/STAGE would fit there and could lend themselves to interesting cluing riffs, but no, we get WOLD and SWAGE, neither of which I've heard of. After decades of crosswording!

Aside from that, there are about a dozen Z's in the grid, which is just insane, so I enjoyed the puzzle. The "pick a random letter and see if the applet likes it" game got old pretty quickly, though. W?? Maybe it's a product placement for the W Hotels.

—Okay, I'm back, and my kid's still not in bed! This puppy's a 72-worder, which means it was probably easier to fill the grid in mondo Scrabbly fashion than it would've been for a 68-worder. I have no objection to hitting the ceiling for themeless word count, especially not when the fill boggles the mind. Favorite answers, enjoyable clues:

• 12A. [Just over a minority] is ONE HALF, which is also just under a majority in that awkward in-between stage.
  
• 16A. JACUZZI is the ["Water that moves you" sloganeer]. Luckily, this isn't the slogan for a laxative beverage.
  
• 17A. CHORIZO! Great word, but I'd never eat [Spanish pork sausage]. I'm so sausage-averse I don't even like vegetarian sausage.
  
• 19A. YITZHAK Rabin has a first name that is perhaps more fun to spell than any other. He was [Shimon's predecessor].
  
• 21A. [Sucker, quickly] is a VAC, or vacuum. I almost went with POP, short for lollipop.
  
• 34A. Anyone who would CLAP to [Summon a servant, maybe] should be slapped. Although...after my tonsillectomy and wisdom tooth removal, I absolutely clapped to summon my husband.
  
• 40A. Another puzzle recently, maybe not an NYT, had PETARD clued as a bomb of some sort. Here it's a [Gate-breaching bomb].
  
• 45A. ZOG is the [Planet visited by Spaceman Spiff in "Calvin and Hobbes"]. There was also a King Zog of Albania.
  
• 56A. The [Drink with lemon juice] is a GIN FIZZ. Does the sloe gin fizz also have lemon juice? SLOES are three rows above, clued as [Sour fruit].
  
• 60A. Emilio ESTEVEZ was a [Brat Pack member] in the '80s. Anyone else try to think of a Rat Pack member ending in Z? No? JUST ME? (That one's clued as a [Response to "Is anyone else here?"].)
  
• 1D. JOJOBAS are [Southwestern shrubs yielding a cosmetic oil], the jojoba oil seen on many a label. What exactly is it? Who cares? It has two J's.
  
• 6D. Popeye [Cartoonist Segar]'s first name was ELZIE. Is it any wonder he's typically credited as E.C. Segar?
  
• 14D. [Junk] is SCHLOCK. I like all those Yiddishy sch-words.
  
• 27D. In slang, RULES means [Is way cool].
  
• 35D. The four-Z spelling of PIZZAZZ is the one I like. It's [Flair].
  
• 53D. The queen bee clues fool me a lot. [Queen's quarters] are the HIVE.
  
• 54D. GIRO is a [Big name in cycling helmets], and so is Bell.

Here are a few answers that demanded that I work the crossings a good bit: MAZY is an odd little word, clued as [Tangled and interwoven]. [Clyde ___, "Beau Brummell" playwright, 1890] is Mr. FITCH. (Who?) I know what pomades are, but POMATUM—[Fragrant hair dressing]—is unfamiliar. In music, [Larghetto] means SLOWISH.

Updated Saturday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Pig Farm"—Janie's review

Anyone who attended this year's ACPT should remember Merl Reagle's puzzle #3: "Lipstick on a Pig" which gave us lots of cosmetic-treatment puns with a porcine twist. When I saw the title of today's puzzle I was immediately reminded of it. Once I started solving, however, it became clear that Martin's approach would be uniquely his. In three grid-spanning entries, Martin gives us some insight into what remains of a pig once it has gone to, and is resting in, Hog Heaven. And what might those options be? Our first choice is :

• 17A: GREEN EGGS AND HAM [Dr. Seuss classic]. My usual method of solving is to do the first row of acrosses, left to right, and then start with the downs, going from right to left. So today I saw ANDHAM emerge and quickly summoned up the title in question (and felt brilliant, I tell you! [Really...sometimes it takes so little...]). Still, I wasn't certain what to expect for the remaining theme fill, the next of which is:
  
• 37A: PORK BARREL BILLS [Sources of government waste]. Exactly. Now here I was able to enter PORKBARREL right away, but BILLS was to come later. All I could summon up at first was SPENDING—which wasn't gonna work... Leaving only:
  
• 57A: SIR FRANCIS BACON ["Novum Organum" author]. Had no idea, but once SIRF emerged, knew exactly what was required and entered it with confidence.

With two CS debuts (the first two) and one major puzzle debut, this theme fill is both fresh and a lot of fun to boot.

But it's not only the quality of the theme-fill that makes this puzzle so good. The lengthy non-theme fill stands on its own and it, too, is fresh as can be. There are three CS debuts here:

• OPOSSUMS [Pogo and others]. Like our friend the "koala," whom we encountered yesterday, another folivore, another marsupial;
  
• BRIC-A-BRAC [Curios]. I love this one. Makes me think of "tsotchkes" and "etagères." And
  
• EXHIBIT A [Most damning evidence, maybe].

And two major-puzzle firsts:

• MCGREGOR ["Trainspotting" star Ewan]. Given the title of today's puzzle, I was thinkin' "Farmer"...; and
  
• JOHN MILLS ["Oh! What a Lovely War" star]. Also father of Juliet and Hayley. While O! WALW is cited in its film incarnation, it came into being on stage under the aegis of Britain's astonishing director, the late Joan Littlewood.

Three other astonishing women—all born within 20 years of each other—get first-name mentions, and I'll mention 'em, too: hostess PERLE Mesta (1889-1975), aviator AMELIA Earhart (1897-1937) and author EUDORA Welty (1909-2001).

Some clues that shone: [Joltless joe] for DECAF (remember when Joltin' Joe was the spokesman for Mr. Coffee?...); and [Letters on a Cardinal's cap]. I really FALTERED with this one. What sort of religious esoterica is this? How am I supposed to...? Oh. Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals. STL. Nevermind...

And have no idea why I like this particular pair of words, but I do: SPINAL and BUNION. Go figger.

This was a not-too-difficult puzzle with a lotta meaty fill. A Saturday treat (sorry, vegetarians!!). Need more? There's a CD that pokes fun of the ultra-earnest (Gregorian) Chant disc that was so popular for a while. This is called Grunt and is a recording of Pigorian chant...

Robert Wolfe's Los Angeles Times crossword

I've got a longer write-up of this puzzle L.A. Crossword Confidential today. One thing I didn't mention over there is my unease with the clue for 1-Across, WADES IN. Yes, the dictionary says it does indeed mean [Begins energetically], but that just seems wrong. If you're enthusiastic about getting into the water at the beach, you'll move beyond mere wading and splash in for full immersion. Whoever decided that wading in represented a "vigorous attack or intervention" was clearly on drugs. Is there a word for "idiom that seems patently backwards"?

EXTRA-LARGE is clued as a [Soft drink order]. I order that size only at the movies, and refer to it as "a trough of Diet Coke." (ASPARTAME!) [Philippine bread] is Philippine currency, the PESO. My mother-in-law doesn't bake much so I haven't had any Filipino baked goods, but that's not what this clue is about. [Caesar's tax form?] is 1040, or MXL—the clue is just nutty enough that I like it, even though it works that question mark hard. (Caesar did not complete any IRS forms.) The [Burrowing rabbitlike mammal] called the PIKA is adorable. It lives out west in the Great Basin, the area between the Rockies and Sierra Nevada. And, as I learned when reading about it for my L.A.C.C. post, it eats its fresh poop to extract more nutrients and only the second-round poop becomes the familiar pellets of rabbit poop. Shouldn't the pika have evolved a more effective digestive system so it could get all the nutrients out the first time? I'm relieved that humans' GI tract evolved past that.

Updated again Saturday afternoon:

Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

This is among my least favorite Doug Peterson themelesses (answer here), but it's still pretty good. (Doug's set his bar high.) And I like this difficulty level. First, let's look at the parts I liked most:

• SNOW JOB is a colorful phrase. Not crazy about the clue [Hustle], as a hustle and a snow job don't feel quite the same to me.
  
• BAILING could've had a horrible, lifeless clue, but [Taking off] means BAILING's slangy sense is what's in play here. "This symposium blows. I'm gonna bail."
  
• THE WILD, WILD WEST is a cool 15. I know it from the crappy movie with, if memory serves, Will Smith and Kenneth Branagh, but that conveyed some time travel, I think, so ['60s (sort of) sci-fi series] worked for me.
  
• Who doesn't love MELANCHOLY? (The word, not the feeling.) It's clued simply as [Low]. [Lowers] is unrelated. The word that means SCOWLS rhymes with cower and flower, not mower.
  
• I love AWKWARD SILENCES, which are [What hosts may fill].
  
• SCTV, short for Second City Television, is [Letters on Ramis's resume]. The very funny Harold Ramis was on SCTV back around 1980 or thereabouts.
  
• I like JAILBIRDS, but the clue [Losers] sure doesn't seem to equate. JAILBIRDS has a degree of specificity that isn't matched by [Losers].
  
• OGLING is indeed [Unwelcome attention]. I like the negative aspersions in the clue.
  
• Free [Weights] in the weightlifting area of the gym are IRON, as in "pumping iron."

What worked less well here? This stuff:

• [Baroque, in a way] clues FUGAL. Music isn't my area, true, but the dictionary definition of baroque says nothing about fugues and the fugue/fugal definitions don't mention the baroque style.
  
• If you're going with finance, then the typical IRA probably isn't a [Place for cash]. A saving or checking account is a place for cash, but my IRAs are invested in mutual funds. And that money isn't exactly the same as cash because, well, a good 40% of it vanished, and cash doesn't tend to vanish. I suppose the intent here was to trick solvers into trying ATM, but...meh.
  
• GEYSERS aren't "stuff." They may be "things" but they're not "stuff," so [Hot stuff] fails as a clue if you ask me.
  
• Doug tries to get cute with ULNAE. [They're up in arms]? No. What are up in your arms are your humeri. The ulnae and the radii are down in your arms, closer to the ground.

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Friday, 4/24

NYT 7:21
BEQ 4:30
LAT 3:52
CS 2:53
CHE (untimed)
WSJ 9:19

Happy birthday to three of my favorite puzzle people! Evad, Byron, and PuzzleGirl were all April 24 babies, as was my son. Luckily, only one of the four expects me to present him with Legos tomorrow.

Barry Silk's New York Times crossword

Apparently I shouldn't fritter away an hour on Lexulous and phone calls before making it to the puzzle, because I got trounced by Howard Barkin to the tune of 3 minutes plus, and 4 minutes plus by Dan Feyer ("fredwbear" clocked in between Howard and Dan but I don't know that I buy that 3:20 time.) I took any number of detours in this crossword—RENTA instead of ECONO [___-Car], CREW instead of NAVY for the [Sub group], LAST WEEK instead of LAST YEAR, BIOLOGY instead of ZOOLOGY for [Alfred Kinsey's field], and my favorite wrong turn, BIKINI instead of INNING for [It has top and bottom parts]. Either answer is good for that last one and they share a couple letters.

I was also looking for 18A [Running] to end with a long A sound (the answer turns out to be ON THE LAM) because it sits opposite FIND A WAY, and SUSAN DEY and ENOLA GAY ([Carrier of very destructive cargo]) are another pair of long-A rhymes.

My favorite clues and answers follow:

• 1A: [Now out...or "it"] is TAGGED, as in baseball...or tag.
  
• 7A: [Its flag features an image of a stone-carved bird] clues ZIMBABWE. Here's the flag. Wish I'd known this bit of trivia because it really would have paved the way in the northeast corner. Quibble about the clue: Shouldn't it be "carved-stone bird"?
  
• The northwest corner has not one but two Q's. T-SQUARES and AQUILINE ([Hooked, as a nose]) go down; SQUATS and QUAINT go across.
  
• 20A: [Jambalayas] clues OLIOS, and I'm not sure why. Is jambalaya slang for a miscellany or is olio an edible stew? Olio seems to be related to olla podrida, which is a stew.
  
• [Way up state?] isn't talking about a place in northern New York or a place like Tibet that's at a high elevation. It's MANIA, a state in which one is feeling up, way up.
  
• U.C. IRVINE is where some of my cousins went to school (the cousins who are friends with ACPTer Eric Maddy). I had no idea they were [The Anteaters of the Big West Conf.]. Their school T-shirts must be hilarious. Yep, they are.
  
• GUANACOS! These mammalian [Residents of dry, open country in South America] can be found at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans sharing living quarters with the crossword's second-favorite large bird, the rhea. Did you know male rheas sit on nests filled with a bunch of different females' eggs, and the females can cavort with other males while he's keeping watch over their eggs? Avian awesomeness.
  
• DST, or daylight saving time, is a [Reason to do a 2 a.m. shift] of your clocks' settings.
  

Answers I didn't know:

• Katarina Witt wants some respect. What's her last name doing assigned to [1984 perfect game pitcher Mike]?
  
• RIC completes [Rapper ___-A-Che]. The Cars' frontman Ric Ocasek and wrestler Ric Flair are feeling put out.
  
• GREGG is the [Texas county named for a Civil War general, with its seat in Longview]. Gregg shorthand and Gregg Allman want some props here.
  
• [What wisdom outweighs, according to Sophocles] is WEALTH. But if you're wealthy, you can have a YACHT ([Millionaire's plaything]). Wisdom doesn't buy a lot of yachts.
  
• I am part Lithuanian, sure, but I didn't know that [Like Old Prussian] would be BALTIC.
  
• EMMETT fills in the blank in [Daniel Decatur ___, minstrel who wrote "Dixie"].
  
• I got the M in [Physics Nobelist Simon Van der ___] MEER strictly by figuring out MANIA. That M gets my pick for toughest square.
  

Iffiness:

• [Pair of elephants?] is the BIG EARS possessed by elephants. I don't know that BIG EARS qualifies as a crossword-worthy phrase.
  

Updated Friday morning:

That rapper in the NYT puzzle, Ric-A-Che? I guess the name's supposed to be pronounced like "ricochet," but I see Che and hear the "Che Guevara" pronunciation. This puts me in mind of the little Pokemon critter called Pikachu, and I'm thinking that's not what any male over the age of 10 would wish his name to evoke.

Robert Wolfe's L.A. Times crossword

The theme doesn't seem to signaled in any way at all. Each theme entry contains an abbreviation for a road of some sort (abbreviations you'd see in a street address), but taking the place of words that aren't normally abbreviated in phrases. There's no hint that there will be abbreviations, no unifying entry whose clue explains it all. And that is why this puzzle's running on a Friday and no earlier in the week. Did you like the theme? It did not move me (or my car). Here's the theme:

• 18A: To [Speed?] is to BURN UP THE RD. (road).
  
• 24A: [Average Joe?] is a MAN ON THE ST. (street).
  
• 35A: [Badly fluster?] is DR. TO DISTRACTION (drive).
  
• 50A: [Excessive charge?] is HWY. ROBBERY (highway).
  
• 57A: [Way out?] is AVE. OF ESCAPE (avenue).
  

Does SOEVER work for 47A: [In any way] without a preceding what? My dictionary says yes: adverb, archaic or poetic/literary, "of any kind, to any extent." Hey, how did you like 51D: [Lincoln-to-Cheyenne direction]? Four letters...hmm, that won't work for something like NNE, so what could it be? Just plain ol' WEST. I don't recall seeing a cardinal direction clued in relation to the space between two geographic points before. 7D: [Edwards who played Ben Casey] is VINCE, and I sure didn't know that one.

Mike Torch's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Rock Festival"

All right! A puzzle for the geologically inclined out there! You don't see that too often. The theme answers are puns with the names of minerals (or a rock) substituted for words that sound similar:

• 17A: [Put a gem on display?] clues ROLL OUT THE BERYL. This is a play on the "Beer Barrel Polka," also called "Roll Out the Barrel" ("We'll have a barrel of fun"). When I was a kid, Chicago TV channels would have commercials for record compilations of polka hits. This one's the most memorable; the misogynistic, fat-phobic "Too Fat Polka (I Don't Want Her, You Can Have Her, She's Too Fat For Me)" is in second place. Did the rest of you learn polka from commercials, or is that a regional thing?
  
• I'm sorry—where were we? Oh, yes. 24A: [Man famous for his rock collection?] is MR. GNEISS GUY (Mr. Nice Guy). Gneiss is a metamorphic rock with a silent G.
  
• 43A: [Mineral used to build residences?] is HOUSE BLENDE. Blende is a mineral also called sphalerite. Pitchblende apparently is a different mineral. House-blend coffee is the base phrase here.
  
• 58A: [Sharpen a stone?] clues WHET ONE'S APATITE (appetite).
  

I did this one on paper last night while putting a birthday boy to bed, so I have no solving time to report.

Brendan Quigley's blog puzzle, "Going Through Hoops"

I finished the little bitty northwest corner, the PBJ/BOZO/JOSS stick corner, and moved along to 20A: [Sugar-covered peanuts]. Well, it doesn't take a Bostonian to know those are called BOSTON BAKED BEANS, but that wouldn't fit. It started with BOS, though, so that confirmed the answer and shouted "rebus" at me. "Hoops" in the puzzle's title? OK, so it's an NBA rebus. The other long rebus theme answers are AMERICAN BANDSTAND, which Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon appeared on a record 110 times. Is it OK that I've never heard of him? I know only Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington from Welcome Back, Kotter. Then there's BENJAMIN BANNEKER, the [African American mathematician who purportedly surveyed the District of Columbia. There's an extra rebus in the southeast corner, with no long answer anchoring it into place; Brendan wants to know if you felt that was fair. I wasn't on the hunt for symmetry, so I didn't mind it.

Among the flashiest answers were these:

• T AND A is [Some erotica, briefly]. T&A was also observed on Charlie's' Angels in the '70s, years before Baywatch added shirtless men to the T&A mix. Do those shows count as erotica? With Hasselhoff?
  
• EVAN BAYH is an [Indiana senator] with an NBA in his name.
  
• The Elton John song "ROCKET MAN" is a classic.
  
• RIGHT JABS [might set up crosses] in boxing.
  
• [Versatile musicians] are ONE-MAN BANDS.
  

Ray Hamel's CrosSynergy crossword, "Roomful of Roses"

Ray Hamel is one of those legends in the trivia world, and this puzzle's theme answers could be a tough trivia question: "What do BETTY WHITE, the KEWPIE DOLL, the country GEORGIA, BING CROSBY, and UMBERTO ECO have in common?" The word "rose" or the name "Rose" ties them all together:

• 17A: KEWPIE DOLL is a [Toy created by Rose O'Neill in 1909].
  
• 39A: GEORGIA was the [Site of the bloodless Rose Revolution in 2003]. The Ukrainians had an Orange Revolution, and I don't know if Georgia's revolution is named after the flower or the color. Flowers, it turns out.
  
• 60A: UMBERTO ECO is the [Author of "The Name of the Rose"].
  
• 11D: BETTY WHITE [played Rose Nylund on "The Golden Girls"]. Three colors in one clue/answer combo is a lot, isn't it?
  
• 28D: [Singer with the 1941 hit "San Antonio Rose"] didn't ring a bell for me, but it's the legendary crooner BING CROSBY.
  

A couple of the fill answers relate to rose, too. A [Rose supporter] is a STEM. WILTS is clued [Droops, like an old rose]. And SMELL completes the phrase ["Stop and ___ the roses"]. Unusual theme but not a difficult puzzle; good fill. Two thumbs up.

Harvey Estes' Wall Street Journal crossword, "The Bases Are Loaded"

Boy, I could've save myself a lot of time and mystification if only I'd paid attention to the puzzle's title. It didn't take me forever to find the rebus square with THIRD in it, and eventually I found FIRST, but it didn't occur to me that they were in symmetrical spots and would be accompanied by SECOND base and HOME plate, the four rebus squares forming a baseball diamond. I was just thinking of ordinal numbers. 'Tis the season for baseball themes, and even without the New York Sun delivering a barrage of them, there are still so many. (Sigh.)

The long theme entries weren't straightforward answers at all, so there was a gimmick underlying the gimmick:

• 24A: [Serious grilling by the cops?] clues MAJOR THIRD DEGREE. I know what the third degree is, but "major third" is a mystery. Hmm, it's one of those musical things I have no grasp of.
  
• 113A: [Historic way to increase women in the army?] is a "LADIES FIRST" DRAFT, joining "ladies first" and the first draft of a paper.
  
• 3D: [Western facility for seniors?] is a whopping 21 squares long: RETIREMENT HOME ON THE RANGE.
  
• 16D: [De Gaulle, early in his career?] is CHARLES THE SECOND LIEUTENANT, combining Charles the Second and a second lieutenant. Raise your hand if the collision of De Gaulle and something-LIEUTENANT made you try to get the guy from The French Lieutenant's Woman in there somewhere. This answer was tough to piece together because the rebus crossing was a cooked-up phrase while the other rebus crossings weren't: [Motion to secede endorsed for a vote?] clues SPLIT SECONDED. Ouch!
  

I'm past being out of time to blog this morning, so I'll sign off here. Hope your Friday will be unseasonably warm but not too hot!

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Summary only...

Saturday, 3/28

Newsday (not timed, but maybe 9:00ish)
NYT 6:31
LAT 3:48
CS 3:21

Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword

Joe Krozel makes a habit of stacking and interlocking 15-letter answers in his themeless puzzles. This one is no exception, with two 15's near each edge. Those long answers roll out thus:

• 15A. [Estate taxes, e.g.] provide INTERNAL REVENUE.
  
• 17A. [Grosbeak relatives] include SCARLET TANAGERS. Not to be confused with Scarlett Johansson as a teenager—this is a red and black bird.
  
• 50A. A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE means [Tons of work to do].
  
• 53A. PLEASURE CRUISES are [Carnival offerings] from the cruise company Carnival. Who calls these "pleasure cruises"?
  
• 2D. UNCONDITIONALLY means [Without reservations].
  
• 3D. To STAND ON ONE'S TOES is to [Try to get a better view, say].
  
• 12D. A telephone [Operator's line] might be ONE MOMENT, PLEASE. Ah, such a treat to actually get a human voice on the line.
  
• 13D. The EUROPEAN THEATER in WWII [included the Eastern and Western fronts].
  

The puzzle's word count is 74—two over the usual max for a themeless puzzle. I reckon 99% of the people who solve this puzzle will neither notice nor care. (Edited to add: What was I smoking last night? The crossword has 64 words and a very low black square count of 19—which, again, 99% of solvers won't notice and won't care about.) What they might care about are the answers that are strikingly unfamiliar—though the Saturday puzzle sometimes bludgeons us with such fill:

• The last Down answer in this category demands to be listed first, ahead of the Acrosses. AETAT! 43-Down is an [Old tombstone abbr. meaning "at the age of"]. If this is old crosswordese, it has been 25 years since I saw it/
  
• The Greek island SAMOS is [north of the Dodecanese Islands]. I wanted NAXOS here.
  
• EDO: It's not just for breakfast in old Tokyo any more. It's also a [Nigerian native or language].
  
• SINGER is a perfectly ordinary noun and name. I had no idea it would be the answer to this clue, though: [___ Building, company headquarters erected in 1908 in New York City, at the time the tallest building in the world]. Singer sewing machines, I presume? Speaking of erstwhile tallest-building-in-the-world joints, the Sears Tower in Chicago is to be called the Willis Tower, after a British concern, setting the stage for a couple decades of people in my age group saying "What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?" whenever the building's name is mentioned.
  
• We know what is a [Sentence part: Abbr.], sure. But how often do we see phrase abbreviated as PHR.?
  
• Crosswordese alert! ANSA pops back up on occasion. It's a [Looped vase handle].
  
• TIR is a [French shooting match]. All my shooting matches take place here in the Midwest, so I didn't know that.
  
• We know ERLE Stanley Gardner, sure, but ["Phineas Finn" character Barrington ___] ERLE is not a regular denizen of the crossword.
  
• AVAS are [Prizes for video production]. Acronym, I presume?
  
• [Having no aisles, in architecture] clues APTERAL, which looks to mean "without wings" if it's got the word roots I think it does.
  
• TOSCA is a regular in the puzzle, but not clued as [Object of Cavaradossi's affection].
  
• [Be no slouch in class?] clues SIT ERECT, which feels not quite "in the language" as a phrase.
  
• Hey, look! It's one of those "roll your own" words that likely not a single one of us has ever uttered: IRELESS is clued as [Having no spleen], relying on the "anger" meaning of "spleen."
  

I dunno, that sort of felt like a lot of "Huh?" stuff for one puzzle, but I still made it through safely thanks to the crossings. Here are some less vexing clues and fill I liked:

• [Big catch of 2003] is Saddam HUSSEIN. The year wasn't pointing me in the right direction at all, so I was surprised by the answer. I can't say i liked it, but it surprised me.
  
• "SPILL IT!" means ["Fess up!"].
  
• [One on a strict diet] is a VEGAN, whose request is NO MEAT. (Also no eggs, dairy, etc.)
  
• BISCOTTI are [Crunchy cafe treats]. Horrible excuse for cookies if you haven't got anything to dip them in.
  
• [Intrepid palace employees] are TASTERS checking for poison in the royal's food.
  
• [Five-time winner of the Copa do Mundo] is BRASIL spelled the Brazilian way, in keeping with the Brazilian way of saying "World cup.
  
• [There's sometimes no room for it] clues DESSERT. Nonsense! If you don't finish your entrée, you will have room for bomba al cioccolato like I did tonight.
  
• [Work ID] is an OPUS number.
  

Updated:

Robert Wolfe's L.A. Times crossword

I'm getting a late start on blogging today, and a crossword proofreading gig demands my attention. So let me lay out just a few clues here and then refer you to my L.A. Crossword Confidential post on this puzzle.

If you haven't checked out the new blog yet, let me tell you one cool feature—a "Crosswordese 101" section for every puzzle. PuzzleGirl, Rex, and I are taking a decidedly educational approach over there, laying out the sort of lessons that are a boon for newer solvers. There's also a lot of content like that in my book, How To Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, but hey, nobody who's Googling because they're stuck on a crossword is able to Google their way to the lessons in my book. Today's Crosswordese 101 focuses on the 4-letter European rivers. Who among us couldn't use a refresher course on those?

All righty, some clues from today's LAT:

• [What a nyctophobe fears] is the DARK.
  
• A [Floating point] is the WATERLINE. I'm sending warm, dry thoughts to the folks battling the Red River up in the Fargo area. I don't know if WATERLINE is a word that the hydrologists use in talking about rivers. Let's look it up. Nope: "The waterline is an imaginary line marking the level at which a ship or boat floats in the water."
  
• [Lions or tigers or bears], oh my! Each of those words is a NOUN. Cute clue.
  
• [Peggy Lee and Marilyn Monroe, at birth] were both NORMAS. Marilyn was Norma Jeane Baker, and Peggy Lee was North Dakota's Norma Deloris Egstrom.
  
• A [Doe to be identified] isn't a female deer. It's JANE or John Doe.
  

Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" crossword

Doug Peterson continues to pep up the Stumper with livelier fill than the themeless Newsdays are generally known for. To wit: Christina AGUILERA, the [Best New Artist Grammy winner in 2000], and Paula ABDUL, ["Cold Hearted" singer]. Not to mention MR. T, the ['80s TV star]. The rest of the puzzle (answer here) doesn't swim in pop culture, but that dose of three pop names makes a difference in my enjoyment of the puzzle. It's when the pop culture backslides into the '50s that I grumble—as with ["Hardy Boys" girlfriend] crossing a word with two accepted spellings. Come on! That's hardly fair. Is the [Steer snarer] RIATA or REATA? Is the Hardy Boys character named IOLA or EOLA? (Turns out it's the more common RIATA crossing the really-not-common IOLA.)

One-word clues with multiple meanings abound! [Upset] is the verb OVERTURN as well as an adjective. [Brook] is the verb ABIDE as well as a noun. [Transport] is the noun ECSTASY as well as a verb. [Compact] is the noun ALLIANCE as well as an adjective. This is now the hallmark of Stumpers—clues that are harder than ever to Google. Why use obscure trivia when a one-word clue will stymie solvers just as effectively?

Other clues:

• The PLASMA TV can be a [Modern wall hanging], but ours sits on a table.
  
• [Word-processor pioneer] is WANG. The WANG! At my first post-college job, we were all on the Wang. Gotta love the green screens. Eventually people upgraded to IBM 286's and 386's.
  
• [Military publisher] JANE'S does those "fighting aircraft" books, I believe.
  
• ["Pequod" co-owner] is PELEG. With the final G in place, I tried QUEEG, but that was a mashup of Wouk's Captain Queeg and Melville's Queequeg, a more memorable Moby-Dick name than PELEG.
  
• [Mortar/pestle material] is AGATE? I haven't seen AGATE mortars and pestles. Mine are ceramic.
  
• [Milton and More wrote in it] clues NEO-LATIN.
  
• SYDNEY is a [City named for a British home secretary].
  
• [Union suit?] is a TUX, the tuxedo a man might wear when embarking on a marital union.
  
• The [Largest arboreal animals] are ORANGS. Arboreal animals hang out in trees.
  
• [Rossini's forte] doesn't mean his personal strength. It means the English equivalent of the Italian/music word forte—LOUD.
  
• Did you know that LP'S were a [Musical innovation of '48]?
  

Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy crossword, "What's in a Name?"

I wasn't quite firing on all cylinders when I did battle with this crossword. I misread the verb tense in one of the theme clues, and the Anagram Center of my brain was dialed way down. Each theme entry has a verb followed by a famous person's surname that's an anagram of the verb. The verbs alternate between no-final-S and final-S:

• [Make a Chicago bigwig late?] is DELAY DALEY. I don't know how Mayor Daley does it—all around him, people get indicted and sentenced for corruption within Daley's administration, and yet somehow the evidence never seems to point all the way to the top. Rod Blagojevich should have knelt down and kissed Daley's ring to ask for pointers on not getting nailed by a federal investigation. Daley is the king of eeliness.
  
• [Goes easy on a pop singer?] is SPARES SPEARS. I blanked on the anagram name here. Who calls her SPEARS? She's Britney. Alas, "trybine" and "bintery" are not verbs.
  
• [Annoy an Oscar-winning actress?] clues PESTER STREEP. I misread the tense here and put PEEVES in for the first half, which impeded my progress in the lower midsection of the puzzle.
  
• [Stops a newswoman from going on the air?] is HALTS STAHL. I had the STAHL part but my mind got stuck on LATHS for the anagram. Oy!
  

LEVEE ([Embankment to ward off floods]) and N. DAK. ([One of Saskatchewan's U.S. neighbors]) are topical. OLD FLAMES makes for a great crossword answer; it's clued as [Long-ago loves].

I also like TRADES UP, or [Exchanges for a better model]. I'm thinking of trading up to a new Ford Fusion Hybrid—41 mpg in the city! Any car geeks out there who can give me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on this idea?

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Saturday, 3/21

NYT 6:18
Newsday (not timed, but on the easy side)
LAT 3:29
CS 3:24

I'm getting to the New York Times crossword late because I was at one of those indoor family amusement park/arcade joints. Frankly, I'm astonished my brain still worked at all after five hours of unceasing kid noise. The Saturday puzzle is by Robert Wolfe. It mostly didn't grab me, but then, I'm tired. The things I liked most were these:

• The colloquial trio: ["Whatever"] clues I DON'T CARE, and ["Don't even bother!"] translates to both FORGET IT and IT'S NO USE. Apathy and despair: a winning combination.
  
• Puppeteer SHARI LEWIS of Lambchop fame is the [Kids' entertainer who won 12 Emmys]. First and last name combos are always cool in a crossword.
  
• [What things might be written in] is STONE. Yeah, I tried PROSE first. STONE makes the clue so much better.
  
• [The Brady boys or girls] form a TRIO, three brothers or three sisters.
  
• Who are ESTHETES? [They appreciate 59-Down]. What is 59-Down? ART.
  
• Occasionally I reap the reward of reading articles in Entertainment Weekly about TV shows I don't watch. [Two-time "Dancing With the Stars" co-winner Julianne]'s last name is HOUGH. I remembered the *OU*H part right off the bat. Pretty good for her being famous only for a show I've never seen, eh?
  

Among the least familiar answers and clues were these ones:

• [The Minotaur was fed seven of these annually] clues MAIDENS. If I ever knew that piece of mythology, I forgot it.
  
• Also from ancient Greek stories: [She gave Odysseus a magic veil] refers to INO.
  
• A [Glider-towing plane] is an AIR TRAIN. Nope, I've never heard of such a thing, even though my dad took glider lessons when I was a kid.
  
• ["A Footnote to History" author's inits.] are RLS. Robert Louis Stevenson, I presume, but I don't know the written work.
  
• [State in Elysium] is not a place, but a state of BLISS.
  
• INK ERASER is an [Adjunct to some pens]. Did you know that old-fashioned ink erasers could be deadly weapons? There are also things called gum erasers, which I thought of when I encountered DEGUM, clued as [Free of sticky stuff]. Is that an actual word? Why, yes, it is: "Most commercial silk yarns are sold fully degummed, but some dyers still prefer to degum it again to make sure before dyeing." 
  
• Joining INK ERASER in the handy-gadget category: [Blood flow measurers] are RHEOMETERS, and ASHBINS are [Garbage collectors].
  
• LYS is a [City in Arthur C. Clarke's "The City and the Stars"].
  
• I didn't know that hurrah came in a verb form, but here's HURRAHED, or [Cheered].
  
• I know the name RENÉ well, but I needed all the crossings in order to fill that in for [Francois-___ de Chateaubriand].
  
• [Last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty, informally] is CLEO, as in Cleopatra.
  
• [Buddhist monastery] clues WAT, as in Angkor Wat.
  

Updated:

Doug Peterson's themeless L.A. Times crossword has an abundance of interesting answers and clues, and yet the whole shebang tumbled like a house of cards. It's a fun puzzle, but I wish it had made me work harder for the payoff of finishing it. Highlights in the fill:

• J.M. BARRIE was the [Creator of the Lost Boys] affiliated with Peter Pan. Johnny DEPP [received a Best Actor nomination for playing 1-Across in 2004].
  
• CRUSADED AGAINST is clued as [Fought vigorously to abolish].
  
• BIT PARTS are called [Cameos].
  
• MRS. O'LEARY! She was a [Noted 19th century scapegoat].
  
• So, people say ["Here's mud in your eye!"] before taking a drink? This clues "BOTTOMS UP!"
  
• ELIA KAZAN doesn't usually get his full name in the grid. He's clued as ["A Face in the Crowd" director], and no, I haven't heard of that movie.
  
• BISCOTTI are [Italian bakery items].
  
• C STUDENTS? [They're about average].
  

My favorite clues:

• [Cowboys and Indians] are PRO TEAMS if you're talking about Dallas football and Cleveland baseball. See also a Detroit PISTON, or [Engine component].
  
• In idiom, a DOORMAT is a [Milquetoast].
  
• [Record, nowadays] is the verb TIVO.
  
• [Some toys] means [Some toy dogs], as the answer is POODLES.
  
• [Checker's determination] is FACT. Did you read that recent New Yorker article about fact checking at the magazine? I did, and I still thought this clue was about a supermarket cashier or the game of checkers.
  

Other bits:

• ["The Bridges at Toko-Ri" setting] is KOREA.
  
• [Ancient Anahuac residents] were AZTECS.
  
• [Chaucerian estate manager] is a REEVE. If you're in the mood to read some Chaucer, here are The Reeve's Prologue and The Reeve's Tale.
  
• [Like a dogfight missile] is AIR-TO-AIR.
  

I didn't time myself on Raymond Hamel's Newsday "Saturday Stumper", but it felt almost as easy as Doug's L.A. Times puzzle. (PDF solution here.) Here are some of the clues in the realm of pop culture (more than the usual Newsday Saturday allotment of it):

• An animated [Sitcom spouse] is WILMA FLINTSTONE. It bears noting that Fred Flintstone is also a sitcom spouse.
  
• A Michael J. [Fox film of '89] is CASUALTIES OF WAR.
  
• SELA WARD is an [Emmy winner of 1994 and 2000].
  
• [It's seen on the monkey in "Aladdin"] clues a FEZ.
  
• One ["Tommy" tune] is "I'M FREE."
  
• On the big screen, Cary ELWES was a [Robin Hood portrayer in '93].
  
• "M.T.A." is the ["No he never returned" tune of '48].
  

There's a two-clue evocation of pop culture here, too. Corey Haim was in Lost Boys—the vampire movie, not J.M. Barrie's Lost Boys. HAIM is a [Hebrew name that means "life"], and STARE is clued as [Emulate vampires].

This puzzle has a little geography:

• PAU is a [Pyrenees city] in France. In my day, Carleton College had a Pau program. It's pronounced "po."
  
• [Ringling Boulevard locale] is SARASOTA, Florida, "Home of the American Circus."
  
• The EDER is a [German river]. How do you like the vagueness of that clue? Heck, that's about as specific as the 4-letter European river clues need to be. Narrow it down to a country, skip taunting us with mentions of cities on the banks of those rivers. Those often are of no help unless the solver's interested in Googling for the answer.
  

Tougher clues:

• ["Enveloppe" letters] clues both MME and MLLE.
  
• [They're held in a Dutch kiss] clues the EARS. Really? There's a good reason that French kissing is more popular than Dutch kissing.
  
• [WWII weapons] clues BRENS. The more common crosswordese WWII weapons are STENS.
  
• [Dan-dan noodles ingredient] is TAHINI, a sesame paste.
  
• The [Densest natural element] is OSMIUM.
  
• [America's film capital c. 1910] is FT. LEE. Not Kodak-type film—Fort Lee, N.J., was this country's motion picture capital before Hollywood took over. I don't know what Bollywood would be called if Fort Lee had held onto its dominant position in moviedom.
  
• URSULA was a [British saint]. That's a rather vague clue too, isn't it? Reminds me of the EDER clue.
  

Today's themed crossword is Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy puzzle, "RE-Verse." In each theme answer, a word that starts with RE- sees those letters reversed in order and location such that the word instead ends with -ER:

• Report cards turn into PORTER CARDS, or [Hallmark greetings for a baggage handler?].
  
• Reform school mutates into FORMER SCHOOL, a [Previous place of learning?].
  
• A return ticket becomes TURNER TICKET, or [Proof of purchase to see Tina perform?].
  
• A recent event turns into CENTER EVENT, such as [Hiking the football?].
  

I'm not crazy about the theme entries themselves—they're not goofy or outrageous or zany—but I love the concept of flipping the RE in two ways. Patrick, have you tried doing this theme in the opposite way, changing an -ER ending into a RE- start? I wonder if that would amp up the crazy; I'm having a hard time thinking of -ER words that would lend themselves to such a theme without creating a bunch of dreadful RE- verbs that nobody wants to see in a crossword.

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Saturday, 2/14

Newsday 6:04
NYT 5:15
LAT 4:59

Happy Valentine's Day, all! May the love of a good crossword keep you warm on this midwinter night.

Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword has a bizarre-looking grid—the black squares mostly snake inward from the edges, and those snakes cut off two corners that connect to the rest of the puzzle via a single answer. Avert your eyes from the black squares, though, and focus on the white squares: triple-stacked 15-letter entries criss-crossing in the middle of the grid, with additional 9- and 10-letter answers extending from the triple stacks into the four corners. Here are the 15s:

• MAN-TO-MAN DEFENSE is an [Aggressive guarding option] in basketball and perhaps other sports.
  
• ONCOMING TRAFFIC is indeed a very [Bad thing to drive into].
  
• ROLL ON THE GROUND is [What some dogs and flaming daredevils do].
  
• RELUCTANT DRAGON was new to me. It's a [1941 Disney film based on a Kenneth Grahame story, with "The"].
  
• [They're sold in oversize rolls] clues FOOT-LONG HOT DOGS. Was the roll/dog clue/answer flip-flop between 38-Across and 6-Down intentional, do you think? Both duplications are customarily frowned upon, but perhaps the use of various meanings of "roll and "dog" is meant to mislead.
  
• [Bygone emporium] is a FIVE-AND-TEN STORE. My neighborhood had a Woolworth's-type store 15+ years ago, one of the last of a dying breed, but now it's a Gap.
  

Among the more difficult clues are the following:

• [Unpleasant face covering] is EGG on your face. If someone hurls an egg in your face, that may qualify as [Battery, e.g.], which is a TORT, legally speaking.
  
• I needed all the crossings to get IRENE for the [1973 musical for which George S. Irving won a Tony for Best Actor]. Also in the category of "Broadway musical titles and songs I don't know" is I LOVE PARIS, a ["Can-Can" song].
  
• LETT, an old-school word meaning a Latvian, is clued as [Member of a NATO land since 2004].
  
• [A long one is 12% "longer" than a short one] clues a TON. North Americans use the short ton, 2,000 lbs. The Brits cling to some of their old imperial system units of measure, and the long ton is 2,240 lbs. There's also the metric ton, which is 1,000 kg and very close to the long ton.
  
• [Plasma alternatives, briefly] are CRTS or cathode ray tubes. Fewer and fewer TVs are being made with CRTs these days.
  
• ["Tell me more..."] clues PLEASE GO ON. Everyone likes to parse this as "Please, goon."
  
• [Fee-faw-fum] clues OGRE. Well, giants are reputed to say "fee fi fo fum," so I suppose this clue is related to that somehow.
  
• [Tusks, e.g.] clues the verb GORES. Did you know tusk could be a verb? I didn't.
  
• Crossword-friendly OLIO isn't just a mixture, it can also be a variety act. Is a [Number between scenes] likely to be a variety act?
  
• Fill-in-the-blank Bible fun! AN OX completes ["He eateth grass as ___": Job 40:15]. That's one way to get your allotment of roughage, I guess. Speaking of religious texts, does anyone like the Book of Mormon clues? ALMA is [Book of Mormon's longest book].
  
• The duck called a TEAL is [Cousin of a greenwing].
  
• The ["Currently serving" military designation] of ONE-C was completely unfamiliar to me.
  

Stuff I liked: [Added power, in slang] is SOUP. I haven't seen this noun sense before, but a car or computer can be "souped up." [It's often filtered] refers to E-MAIL. The people who developed spam filters should get some sort of Nobel Prize, shouldn't they? How about a Hallmark holiday where we all send them thank-you cards? [Lionel to Drew Barrymore] is her GREAT UNCLE. They're both in the Barrymore CLAN ([It's all relatives]). [Away, in a way] clues ON FURLOUGH. Last but not least, there's ROAR. "I am woman, hear me roar" is the classic line from the '70s Helen Reddy song, so [Emulate a woman, in "I Am Woman"] clues the word ROAR. This is especially apt if you are a lioness.

Updated:

Aargh! Blogger or my browser froze up on me just as I was doing the last formatting on my write-up of Robert Wolfe's LA Times crossword. The only way to save those next-day puzzle write-ups in progress would be to do "save as draft," which would remove the existing post from the internet. Can't have that, and I'm not about to routinely copy/paste these things just because 1 in 300 times there may be a problem. Anyway, what was I saying about the LAT puzzle? It's got three colloquial 15-letter phrases:

• YOU AND WHOSE ARMY, or [Skeptical response to a threat].
  
• I DIDN'T CATCH THAT, or ["What?"].
  
• SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW, or ["Tell me something I haven't heard"].
  

Entries I liked:

• FAST TALK, or [Disingenuous persuasion].
  
• EAGLE SCOUT, or [Honor earned by only one president (Ford)].
  
• ALL THE RAGE, or [Really hot].
  
• [At first, say] sounds like it clues INITIALLY but it's about baseball: ON BASE.
  
• BONE UP ON, or [Study intensely].
  

Things that were not so fun:

• Old-school crossword answer OSIER is [Flexible wood] used for willow basketry.
  
• ROOTCAP is [Underground protection]. I haven't a clue what this is.
  
• SAGO, or [Papuan food staple], is also classic crosswordese.
  
• NOT IN TIME, or [Late], doesn't feel like a distinct concept in and of itself. Is this just NOT + {miscellaneous phrase that can be negated}?
  
• STERES is another of those words that seems to live mainly in crosswords, but appears less often than it used to. It means [Cubic meters]. 
  
• There aren't any really famous people named ROS, so we get [Children's author Asquith]. In an Onion puzzle, it'd be clued by way of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós.
  
• I've never heard of PASTO, a [Colombian city]. The native art form is barniz de Pasto. 
  

SCRATCH is clued [Square one]. Which of you astute readers can explain how this clue and answer go together?

Sandy Fein's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" is a mid-range Stumper—not too evilly oblique, not too straightforward. (Solution here.) As with today's NYT puzzle, there are two corner sections connected to the rest of the grid by only a single answer. I've got a question about 24-Across. The clue is [It's over your head], which suggests a singular answer, but the answer is HEAVENS. Doesn't "the heavens" take a plural verb? There's also a typo in the clue for 8-Down; it should be sandpiper and not [Sandipiper relatives]. And now, some assorted clues and answers:

• SMALL OJ is a [Breakfast order].
  
• PAPEETE is a [Windward Islands capital]. I had the eastern Caribbean in my mind rather than Tahiti.
  
• [Andorra's official language] is CATALAN.
  
• [Puck, for one] is a Shakespearean SPRITE. With the SP***E in place, I tried SPHERE and figured there might be a non–ice hockey puck somewhere that's spherical.
  
• [Broadway's first Sweeney] Todd was LEN Cariou.
  
• [Bond nickname] is MUNI. Not James Bond, not Paul Muni—municipal bonds are called munis.
  

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