Tuesday, 7/14

Jonesin' 3:15
LAT 3:04
NYT 2:51
CS 7:15 (J—paper)

Donna Levin's New York Times crossword

"Allons enfants de la patrie-ee-ee..." Yes, it's a special Bastille Day mot croisé. Donna's theme entries celebrate the day like so:

• 18A. The [Dickens novel with the 56-Across as its backdrop] is A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
  
• 27A. Before the Revolution, there was that famous [Declaration attributed to Marie Antoinette just before the 56-Across]: LET THEM EAT CAKE.
  
• 43A. The French national anthem is LA MARSEILLAISE, the [Song of the 56-Across].
  
• 56A. And it's the FRENCH REVOLUTION that these other three entries refer to, an [Event that began in 1789].
  

This mot-croisé's difficulty level is keyed perfectly to a Tuesday, but if it took you a smidgen longer than you thought it would, that could be because the grid's 16 columns wide, not 15. Outside of the theme, the only French content I notice is Jacques CHIRAC, [Sarkozy's presidential predecessor].

I'm watching a TV show, so quickly, five other clues:

• 49D. The TROP, or Tropicana, is a [Classic Vegas hotel, with "the"].
  
• 15A. HAREM is a [Dwelling section whose name comes from the Arabic for "forbidden place"].
  
• 10A. [Leftovers from threshing] are CHAFF.
  
• 4D. [___ B or ___ C of the Spice Girls] clues MEL.
  
• 33A. The WALRUS is an [Oyster eater in a Lewis Carroll verse].

Updated Tuesday morning:

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Why? Why?"—Janie's review

Another solid puzzle is ours to enjoy today. The theme entries are strong and the fill throughout benefits from this one's being a pangram. "Why? Why?" refers to the double-Ys that appear in each of the four theme answers. That makes for eight Ys there—and there are two more in the grid as well, for an impressive total of 10. "Why? Why?" "Why not?!" Additionally, three of the four theme phrases (all but 42A) appear to be making their major-puzzle debuts—which (in combination with the full range of high-scorin' Scrabble letters) adds to the overall fresh feeling here.

• 20A. CHERRY YOGURT [Fruity dairy treat]. Yum. One of my fave flavors anyway. Crankin' it up a notch: Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt.
  
• 31A. PAPPY YOKUM [Al Capp character]. Had MAMMY in there at first. Needless to say, the crosses told me otherwise. Here's a link to a site that will tell you all you want to know about who's who in the Yokum family and in Dogpatch, U.S.A.
  
• 42A. BY YOURSELF [Without assistance]. Or [Preferred way to solve the crossword puzzle, perhaps]
• 53A. CANARY YELLOW [Bright color]. This is a color immortalized by Oscar Hammerstein in South Pacific's "Cockeyed Optimist" which begins: "When the sky is a bright canary yellow..."

Because odd associations do tend to POP UP in my mind (and going back to those additional Ys...), it occurs to me that there's another YY in THY YETIS. Something Biblical, perhaps, like "Thou shalt not PIQUE thy Yetis"... Or not...

The bottom half of the puzzle seems to be crawling with insects: we've SLUGS [Garden creepers], a SCARAB [Egyptian beetle] and LARVA [Caterpillar...]. This array must be very pleasing to entomologist solvers (me, I'm lookin' for the Off!)!

Sunday's NYT clued TEXTS as [Tweets, e.g.] and today, Patrick clues TWEETS as [Twitter messages]. It's a new world...but I wonder long it'll take for these techno-speak entries to hit Matt Groening's "Forbidden Words" list.

It took me a while to dredge up (CS first-timer) BABY GAP, having first tried OSHKOSH and KIDS R US... And what a funny complement it is to TINY TIM. I'm so glad Victorian England didn't have this store as I don't believe Bob Cratchit's salary would have gone very far there and I'd have hated for the kids to feel they were missing something. And apropos of just about nothing—well, Cratchit domestic life, perhaps—just want to add that I liked seeing WASH DAYS in the puzzle. This seems to be a major-puzzle debut, too.

Finally, for the classicists, there's LEDA [Zeus seduced her as a swan] and AJAX [Trojan War hero]. Through the magic of the Internet, I found pictures (and an explanation) of the "Achilles and Ajax Amphora." On one side, as noted, Achilles and Ajax; on the other, Leda with Castor and Pollux. For your consideration.

Chuck Deodene's Los Angeles Times crossword

It feels like it's been a while since we last saw a vowel-progression theme. Deodene's theme contains five phrases that end with M*SS words and travel from A through E, I, O, and U:

• 20A. MIDNIGHT MASS is a [Christmas service]. I went to a midnight mass back in the '80s. The priest intoned "...piece of Prince." Prince is only, like, 5'3", so a piece of him would be small indeed. (What's the term for a phrase in which two words are transposed? Like a spoonerism, only for whole words, not sounds.)
  
• 23A. Stacked below the beginning of 20A is our next theme entry, FINE MESS. [With "A," 1986 Ted Danson film]? I think I'd like this better as an 8-letter partial completing the Laurel and Hardy line, "Here's another ___ you've gotten us into!" Does anybody remember this '86 movie? Too bad the MOSS entry isn't 9 or 15 letters long to balance AFINEMESS or ANOTHERFINEMESS. The I'M A partial crossing this is clued ["___ bad boy!": Lou Costello catchphrase], so it would resonate to toss Laurel and Hardy in here.
  
• 38A. [The Rebels of the Southeastern Conference, familiarly] are OLE MISS. Hey, John Grisham went there. A crossword clue told me that recently.
  
• 52A. KATE MOSS is a [Waifish supermodel from Britain]. Helped popularize the "heroin chic" look.
  
• 54A. [Easy to use, in adspeak] clues NO FUSS, NO MUSS. I filled this in, before I saw how the theme worked, as NO MUSS, NO FUSS, which is how I say it. In adspeak.

I love 5D's clue and answer—[Poppycock] is FOLDEROL. They're in my second favorite thesaurus grouping, with words like tommyrot and malarkey. (My most favorite is the hullabaloo, hooha, brouhaha, hubbub category.) 44A is BUMS OUT, or [Saddens, slangily]. Seeing this in the grid after finishing, I read it as including a noun. "BUMS OUT, everyone! Drop those drawers!" 9D TEN-HUT is a cool answer; it's the [Opposite of "At ease!"].

At L.A. Crossword Confidential, PuzzleGirl has more on this crossword.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Yes We Can: An international movement"

Matt takes familiar names, prefaces them with "yes" in other languages, and clues the resulting mashup phrases:

• 17A. Eve Plumb of The Brady Bunch and the Spanish si create SIEVE PLUMB, a [Level draining device, to a Spanish yes-man?].
• 30A. [Selassie's NYC restaurant, to a Japanese yes-man?] is HAILE CIRQUE, building on Japanese hai and Le Cirque. I don't like that there's no good way to repurpose the CIRQUE part of Le Cirque—it's still a restaurant instead of becoming something entirely different.
• 44A. DATED KNIGHT comes from Russian da and Ted Knight of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It's clued with [Went out with the chivalrous type, too a Russian yes-man?].
• 62A. [U.S. uncle's "Friday the 13th" character, to a German yes-man?] is JASON OF SAM. Double gruesomeness for fictional slasher Jason merged with serial killer Son of Sam. We...don't see a lot of gruesomeness and serial killers in the crosswords.

Old-school crosswordese INGLE is here, clued as [Fireplace spot]. I haven't seen DERIVATE before; it's a [Word that comes from another word]. I don't have time to check, but this puzzle's probably a pangram because the main rare letters, ZQXJK, are all represented.

Until tomorrow—

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Monday, 7/13

BEQ 6:54
NYT 3:02 (click here for Jim Horne's link to unlocked Across Lite version)
LAT 2:26
CS 5:16 (J—paper)/2:27(A—Across Lite)

C.W. Stewart's New York Times crossword

I felt a little meandery when doing the NYT puzzle on the applet. Unfocused, distracted. Not really trying to move my fastest. Not really paying much attention to the puzzle. So let me focus my eyeballs here and see what we've got.

Ms. Stewart's theme is Monday-simple, sure, but ambitious—four noun phrases that illustrate 59A ALL TUCKED IN in that ALL is "tucked" inside each phrase, joining two words:

• 17A. MANUAL LABOR is clued as [Ditch digging, e.g.]. Nice touch having a HARD LIFE cross this, clued as [What a serf led].
  
• 24A. [Money borrowed from a friend, e.g.] is a PERSONAL LOAN.
  
• 37A. [The Dalai Lama, e.g.] is a SPIRITUAL LEADER. Hey! This was just in another NYT puzzle...
  
• 47a. [Slash symbol, e.g.] is a DIAGONAL LINE. This was probably the toughest one to clue, no?
  

Let's count the ways this 61-square theme is "tight," or consistent: (1) There are four noun phrases beginning with adjectives, (2) they split AL/L each time, and (3) the theme clues end with "e.g." It's not super-duper tight, because certainly there are other ___AL L__ phrases out there that might also have been used—sacrificial lamb, medical license, etc. But for a Monday, a smooth and uncomplicated theme that's both meaty and consistent is a good thing.

Other pluses:

• 11D, 12D. For [Clog-busting brand], I was thinking of clot-busting drugs. The answer was DRANO—plumbing, not cardiology. And then the very next clue was the AORTA, or [Main artery]. There's my cardiology.
  
• 24D, 40D. Two of Henry VIII's mostly ill-fated wives are included. PARR is the [Last name of Henry VIII's last], Catherine (one of three Catherines). ANNE is the [First name of Henry VIII's second], Anne Boleyn, and the fourth, Anne of Cleves. Henry VIII was rumored to have gout, and I'm a brand-new gouter myself. Foot pain's been distracting me from the puzzles for 10 days now.
  
• 43A, 26D. NITA! You could say that [Silent screen star Naldi] doesn't belong in a Monday puzzle, but she's gonna be back, so we might as well plunk her in a Monday puzzle with easy crossings to introduce her to the crossword newbies. Likewise, APSE. This [Cathedral recess] is a word to learn. To this day, I'm never quite sure if the cathedral part I'm looking for is APSE or NAVE.
  
• 8D. The ROBIN is a [Harbinger of spring]. Except the occasional robin decides to winter over in a cold climate. I saw a robin on my block this winter while there was snow.
  
• 45D. ZINC is the [Next-to-last element, alphabetically], before zirconium.

Updated Monday morning:

Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Starting Ends"—Janie's review

Gee, I had fun solving this. It wasn't very difficult (so my time was pretty speedy—for me...), but more to the point, it's loaded with lively fill of both the thematic and non-thematic variety. Taking a look at the former, the title refers to words that can precede the word end; and these are the starting words of the four theme-phrases:

• 17A. DEAD CENTER [Smack dab in the middle]. The result yields something like this. My one complaint is that this appears to be the fourth time this same clue/fill combo been used in a CS puzzle. A little variety couldn't hurt...
  
• 28A. SPLIT SCREEN [Two images on one television]. Hmmm. Since some TVs give viewers the option of picture-in-picture, wouldn't it be more accurate to clue this as [Two images side-by-side on one television]? Regardless... Looking a great deal like a magnified image of an insect leg, here's the visual to demonstrate the result of the wordplay. Please: don't forget to use conditioner!!
  
• 43A. FRONT LOADER [Certain washing machine type]. While I suspect the intention was to summon up the front end of an automobile, there also a tractor that's a front end loader—so it looks like this (apparent major-puzzle first) fill also gives us a 2-for-1 proposition.
  
• 58A. DEEP FREEZE [Suspended animation]. How can this CS-debut clue/fill not summon up Walt Disney, the man who refined the art of cinematic animation—and all those stories of how he's being maintained cryogenically in a state of suspended animation? Clicking on the link should answer a lotta questions—though it does give a whole new meaning to Disney on Ice. Off the Deep End is Weird Al Yankovic's seventh album—in case Walt wasn't weird enough...

This is terrific stuff, and there's nothing CARELESS about the way Sarah has filled out the rest of the puzzle either. We get a load of names from a cross-section of worlds: from world politics, there's [Mrs.] RAISA [Gorbachev]; from baseball, aphorism (and malaprop) master, Yogi BERRA (I wonder what words of wisdom he'd have for the unhappy METS FAN); pop music's ABBA; broadway and opera's EZIO Pinza; Grimms' and opera's HANSEL, nicely clued as [Crumb dropper of note]; filmdom's Robert de NIRO; and a CLASSY DAME or three from the silver-screen as well—Patricia NEAL, ILONA Massey and GREER Garson (I also love how CLASSY crosses DAME in the grid); ARTIST Jose Maria SERT [Rockefeller Center muralist]. (This last link, btw, includes a fabulous "underlay" of the first-commissioned Diego Rivera work beneath Sert's.)

Unknown to me was AGENA [Rocket stage], so I was very glad to fill it in from the more accessible crosses.

There's a trio fit for the dining table: LASAGNES, STEW and its synonym, OLIO, clued today as the not-food-specific [Mélange]. And back in the 1960's Clairol did all it could to make women believe that they should answer the question "Is it true BLONDES have more fun?" Now, I DON'T KNOW about you, but this brunette was busy enough enjoying herself to ever feel the need to conduct personal research to find out.

Especially charming to me was the trio from the nursery: "IT'S A girl!" followed by (CS-debut) DIAPER, aptly clued as [It's changed on the bottom], followed by TUCK IN [Put to bed, as a child]. And in one of those cases of crossword synchronicity, today's NYT offers up ALL TUCKED IN, clued as [Comfily ready to sleep]. Cool.

James Sajdak's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme nearly eluded me. What unifies:

• 17A. SOCIAL BUTTERFLY, or [One who goes from party to party],
  
• 37A. SECURITY BLANKET, or [Comforting carry-along for kids], and
  
• 58A. NUMBER TWO PENCIL, or [Test taker's writing implement, often]?
  

It's the first words: Social Security number. Kind of an oddball theme, but the three 15-letter answers are fresh and lively terms. I know what you're thinking: Pencils are inherently unfresh and unlively. But NUMBER TWO PENCIL is an eminently familiar phrase, especially to crossworders, and I don't know that I've ever seen it in a puzzle.

Other perky bits: 9D is CITY HALL, clued by way of [You can't fight it, in a saying]. 26A is LABOR DAY, an [Early September observance]—we're already about half way from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Summer, slow down! 51A is SHOELESS, which would feel zingier clued with reference to Shoeless Joe Jackson; instead, it's [In one's bare feet]. For more on the puzzle, see Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"

Hah! Brendan takes Joe Krozel's asymmetrical broken-heart NYT grid from last Friday and makes it harder to fill by removing a bunch of black squares (from 38 down to 31) and lowering the word count from 64 to 62. The fill must be terrible, right? Actually, it isn't. There's no quasi-thematic fill, which Krozel's puzzle had but which hadn't done much for me.

Highlights:

• 1D. [Highest-paid TV actress of all time] is JENNIFER ANISTON. I needed a lot of crossings for this one. Oy.
  
• 9D, 10D. for 9D [Ashura observers], I tried MOONIES. It didn't work with zip-A-DEE. And then I read the next clue, [Unification Church member, slangily]. Oh, hello, MOONIE! There you go.
  
• 7D. A [Show stopper?] is a STANDING OVATION.
  
• 32,33D, 47,49A. This corner's got four verb phrases interlocking, RIDE OUT, YEARN TO, ASKS OUT, and WAS ONTO. I like how the ones that ought to end with -S and -ED end with prepositions instead.
  
• 25D. My god, what a lovely pile-up of consonants TIM MCGRAW has in his name. He's the [Country and Western singer whose backup band is the Dancehall Doctors].
  
• 19A. Computer [Program option] is UNINSTALL. Looks like a horrible "roll your own" crappy prefixing, but it's a solidly in-the-vernacular bit of lingo we all use these days.
  
• 48A. [Squares in a sudoku, e.g.] clues ENNEADS. Yep, those are indeed in groups of nine. Excellent clue.
  

Usually a low-word-count themeless feels unpleasantly clunky to me. When I was doing this puzzle, I didn't notice that it was similar to Krozel's grid and I didn't notice the word count. I gave it a rating of 4 stars (out of 5)—and then read the blog comments that pointed out the similarity to the broken-heart grid. So now I'm more impressed with the caliber of fill Brendan was able to achieve. No, SADIES and AFTA and BROMATE ([Salt of element #35]—I tried BROMIDE first) aren't good fill. But the clunker quotient was low, so in recognition of the 62-word count, let me amend my rating (in Brendan's sidebar leaderboard) to 4.5 starts.

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Sunday, 7/12

PI 8:26
LAT 7:00
NYT 6:02
BG untimed
CS 4:42
NYT diagramless untimed

Don't miss Douglas Quenqua's NYT article, "No Puzzle in the Paper? I’m Blank!". It was posted to the website on Saturday and appears in the Sunday Fashion & Style section. The piece is about puzzles getting the axe in print media—the New York Times Magazine won't always include the second Sunday puzzle, the New York Sun folded, the Washington Post dropped its acrostic, the Atlantic Monthly will no longer even publish the Hex cryptics online...please don't make me go on. I don't want to have to list still more puzzle demises. (Sigh.)

Alan Arbesfeld's New York Times crossword, "Links to the Past"

Wow, if you are a native speaker of Modern High Crosswordese, this puzzle can practically fill itself in. Maybe if the TV had been off and my family not talking, I'd have broken the 6-minute mark on this puzzle, and I don't think I've ever come so close on an NYT Sunday puzzle before. It felt like there were more than the usual allotment of such gimmes (which, of course, are probably not gimmes to those who've not dedicated years of study to Modern High Crosswordese), and while they didn't lend extra entertainment value to the puzzle, the "whoo, this crossword is tumbling like a house of cards" speed thrill has its charms. I'm talking about clues like [Indian tourist locale] AGRA, [Former Swedish P.M. Olof ___] PALME, [Pacific capital] APIA, NETTY [Like mesh], and that [Cousin of a raccoon], the COATI. Things that aren't exactly household words unless someone in the household does a boatload of crosswords.

The theme was not too hard to unravel without peeking at the Notepad. Each of the straightforwardly clued theme entries includes a "placement" word, and if you interpret each phrase hyper-literally (as you might in a cryptic crossword or in those tricky crossword clues for the spelled-out names of letters), you'll extract one letter from each one's key word. Those seven letters spell out HISTORY.

• 23A. The [Boondocks] are the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, and the middle of the word "nowhere" is H.
  
• 34A. [Ambulance destination] is a MEDICAL CENTER. The center of that first word is I.
  
• 50A. An [Imam or priest] is a SPIRITUAL LEADER, and the "leader" of that word is an S.
  
• 69A. The BEGINNING OF TIME—the letter T—is clued by way of [When the heavens and earth were created].
  
• 87A. [Deputy] is the SECOND IN COMMAND, and that second letter is O.
  
• 103A. [Week after Christmas] is the END OF DECEMBER. This is the least satisfactory of the theme entries, because "end of December" feels strikingly arbitrary as times of the year go. Here's the R.
  
• 118A. BROADWAY CLOSING, or [Lights out in New York City], is the letter Y.

I like how the cryptic-style locator signals are all different—two beginning, two middles, two ends, and one second letter.

On Cruciverb-L, there was a recent discussion about entries like CEE and ESS. The legendary Bob Klahn loves the tricky, hyper-literal clues that go with such answers, while the legendary Merl Reagle interjects that nobody ever uses these spelled-out versions so they oughtn't populate our crosswords. This puzzle's theme kinda splits the difference—the letters are themselves and not the little-used three-letter names for them, and we get the tricky clues, only these tricky clues are found in the grid for a change. It's not the meatiest theme around, but I like how it settles into a neutral ground between the Klahn and Reagle camps and lets us play with hyper-literalism without the "ESS? Really?" eye-rolling.

Without further ado, let's run through some clues:

• 35D. COED gets a perfect clue: [Like most dorms nowadays]. My husband and I met when we lived across the hall from each other at Carleton. COED is a perfectly fine adjective, but as a noun it's either (a) outdated or (b) used in porn.
  
• 5A. [Intelligent, creative sort, supposedly] clues a VIRGO, astrologically. You like the gentle hedging of the "supposedly" in the clue? A friend of mine has sworn off dating VIRGO men owing to their supposed moodiness and incompatibility with her Aquarian nature.
  
• 28A. Unusual clue for a VIOLET: [Symbol of modesty]. I approached the answer from the end and had no idea where to go with it. CORSET seemed altogether wrong, and nothing else came to mind. Violets are hardly modest, however—they grow wherever they want to and refuse to leave your garden when instructed.
  
• 37A. [Group of genetically related organisms] is a BIOTYPE. Didn't know this one, not even with **OTYPE in place.
  
• 48A. [Emulates AZ or T.I.] is RAPS. I've heard of T.I., so this clue was 50% helpful to me. AZ has an album and song called "Doe or Die", but it doesn't appear to be about Bambi.
  
• 58A. Man, did I need a lot of crossings to get HEIDI, the [Literary heroine whose best friend is a goatherd].
  
• 76A. The AFTON is the ["Sweet" stream in a Burns poem]. No idea how I knew that off **TO*.
  
• 80A. BEAN BAG is a great entry. It's a [Noisy but comfy chair].
  
• 94A. Ooh, cutting edge! [Tweets, e.g.] clues TEXTS. Most of my tweets are posted from the web, but when I'm out and about, I do text tweets from my phone.
  
• 95A. The awkward SRS is clued as [Grandfathers of III's]. I know a guy whose grandfather was not a Sr. but an XXI. The guy's baby son is XXIV. No kidding. A line of same-named descent stretching back a good five centuries!
  
• 112A. [Bathroom fixture] is a BIDET. I've never tried one. Do you recommend bidets?
  
• 1D. [A mechanic might see it a lot] refers to a real LEMON.
  
• 3D. MEDIA BLITZ is an interesting answer. Clued as [Publicity push].
  
• 11D. [Choler] is IRE. I'm unreasonably fond of the word "choler," and yet I seldom use it. Must remedy that.
  
• 36D. I definitely did not know ANNE [___ Page, woman in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"]. My Shakespeare comedy knowledge involves A Midsummer Night's Dream and maybe one or two others.
  
• 46D. [Pleonastic] means REDUNDANT, as in the phrase "ATM machine," where the M means machine.
  
• 67D. OFFENSE is [Something to play] when the other side's on defense.
  
• 72D. [They may be crunched]? Your ABS. Drop and do 25 crunches, now!
  
• 101D, 102D. Aw, OLEO is [Promise, for one], but GREASE doesn't get the same clue. It really could. Instead, it's [Payola, e.g.]. Not to be confused with Mazola.
  
• 121D. [Science writer Willy] LEY is not someone I've read, but I reckon I've encountered his name...in crosswords.

Updated Sunday morning:

David Levinson Wilk's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword, "Take a Letter"

Alas, I would have enjoyed this theme a lot more if I hadn't just done essentially the same theme—but with an added twist—in the NYT. Here, the hyper-literal theme entries are clued with the letter the answer suggests, rather than the answers being clued straightforwardly and the letters being an add-on. Where Arbesfeld's batch of letters spelled out HISTORY, this one's letters spell out...SACPVEFD. I wish this puzzle had come out a week earlier so I could better appreciate the fun of figuring out these:

• 23A. [S] is the HEAD OF STATE.
  
• 29A. [A] is END OF AN ERA.
  
• 34A. [C] is MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE.
  
• 58A. [P] is LEADER OF THE PACK.
  
• 66A. [V] is CENTER OF GRAVITY.
  
• 85A. [E] is FOREGONE CONCLUSION. This one is terrific—a great phrase to drop into a crossword, and not a tricky/cryptic clue I recall seeing before.
  
• 94A. [F] is FALSE START. I had a false start on this one because FALSE FRONT also fit perfectly.
  
• 104A. [D] is GRAND FINALE. Perfect to save GRAND FINALE for the last theme entry in the puzzle.
  

As with the Arbesfeld puzzle, there's a good assortment of positioning words here. Three beginnings (HEAD, LEADER, START), two middles (MIDDLE, CENTER), three ends (END, CONCLUSION, FINALE). None of the theme entries duplicate those in the NYT—there are a zillion such phrases to choose from, I suppose. And while I admired the NYT's extra level of theme action, I'll give the liveliness edge to Levinson Wilk's set of theme answers.

Another echo between these two puzzles: 107A here is [Energetic risk-taking type, so it's said] for ARIES. Hey, it's ZODIAC (31D [Collection of signs]) day!

As for the rest of the fill, PuzzleGirl singled out many of the same words I would've in her L.A. Crossword Confidential post. So read that, but know that I have been to the [Utah ski resort] ALTA so I knew that one.

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Hit It"

Sometimes I'm in the mood for Merl's trademark overcooked puns and sometimes I'm not. This time, I wasn't feelin' it, dawg. This weekend's batch of "Hit It" puns work various hitting utensils into familiar phrases:

• 23A. ABSENCE OF MALLETS plays on Absence of Malice, a Paul Newman movie. I suppose it was a preexisting phrase before it was a movie title? The clue is [Reason the croquet game was called off?].
  
• 38A. An acoustic guitar, one of which resides in my living room, turns into A CUE STICK GUITAR, or [What the pool player started "playing" when his favorite song came on the radio?]. Merl, hon? Ow. This pun hurt.
  
• 54A. I had trouble figuring out what THE CLUB COMPARTMENT, or [Storage space in a golfer's car?], played on. The glove compartment.
  
• 76A. [Dolls for young tennis players?] are RACQUETY ANN AND ANDY. Ha! Okay, I like this one. It's completely nuts and I like it.
  
• 93A. ["___, but we won the game"] clues WE LOST THE PADDLE (battle). Could've avoided the WE dupe with ["___, but won the game"] without losing anything, I think. No question mark in this clue. Which paddle-related game do you suppose it is?
  
• 111A. [Messiest game at the Sara Lee company picnic?] is BAT-A-CAKE, BAT-A-CAKE, playing on "pat-a-cake." Oh, the carnage, Please do not pummel the desserts. Unless it's a lemon cake. Go ahead and pummel lemon desserts, but please give me first crack at the chocolate cake, and with a fork, not a bat.
  

Most unfamiliar word in the grid: 19D is WELTERED, or [Rolled about, as a pig in mud]. My Mac's dictionary tells me this verb means "lie steeped in blood with no help or care" or "move in a turbulent fashion," like a roiling stream. I like this muddy pig application better. 92D is the [Pink Floyd epic] THE WALL—terrific entry. Overall, though, the fill lacked Merl's usual sparkle. Next week will be more to my taste, I'm sure.

Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Double Ring Ceremony"

Hey, Hubsters—how many weeks back was this puzzle in the newspaper there? Am I still six weeks behind, or have the Across Lite ranks caught up with y'all?

The theme entries are cooked-up two-word phrases in which each word contains RING. For example, 25A's clue is [Caters a fish dinner?] and the answer is BRINGS HERRING. 33D is clued [Outskirts, on "The Simpsons"?]. My kid saw that clue and asked if the answer was SHELBYVILLE. I explained that both words in SPRINGFIELD FRINGE contain a hidden RING. "Huh," he said. "That's confusing." I didn't find it especially confusing, but it also wasn't particularly rewarding. Two theme entries, 27A and 96A, not only are partly stacked with other theme entries, they also cross the Down themers.

Favorite parts: 44A is [Doesn't share], or BOGARTS. I have fond memories of a get-together in Prague at which some "don't bogart that joint, my friend, pass it on over to me" song was playing. Bogarting apparently applies specifically to marijuana cigarettes, but one can certainly request that someone else not bogart the potato chips. 71A's clue, [Some are nothing but air], points towards imaginary GUITARS. I have not witnessed an air guitar competition, but it sounds entertaining.

Weirdest answers: 39A EMESA is an [Ancient Syrian city]. 7D is CABMAN or [Hack], and not a term I ever use for a cabbie/cab driver/taxi driver. 81D is EPERGNE, or [Ornate centerpiece]; I learned this one via crosswords, but it doesn't come up often. At 59A, [Monozygotic] clues ONE-EGG, but I can't say I've seen one-egg used adjectivally at all.

Rich Norris's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

It seemed like this one was a couple notches harder than the typical "Sunday Challenge" (though still easier than a Saturday NYT).

Hot stuff:

• 1A. ["I enjoyed this"] clues IT'S BEEN FUN. Do you think there's an intentional mini-theme linking this with its opposite partner in the grid, 69A [Words of gratitude] for MANY THANKS? One might say both when leaving a party.
  
• 32A. I am fond of the weirdness of BELEAGUER as a word. This [Vex] synonym derives from a Dutch word, belegeren, meaning "camp around." I find it difficult to type beleagueured (see?) correctly. Beleaguerued. Nope, wrong again. Beleagurued. Wrong a third time. This is what happens when I let my hands type away blithely. 99% of words work out just fine, but this one? Not so much. Slowing down, let's go for beleaguered. There. It takes effort.
  
• 63A. APPOMATTOX is a [Historic Civil War town]. I like to pronounce this "uh-POM-uh-tocks" and say "Appomattox o' both your houses!" Yes, I realize that's odd.
  
• 32D. BAD APPLES are [Troublemakers], as in the bad apples that spoil the bunch.
  
• 34D. The clue, [Shooter's protection], pointed me in any number of directions, but not LENS COVER.
  
• 64D. [Pin cushion?] is a solid clue for a wrestling MAT. I've seen the clue before, but it's well worth recycling.
  

RTS and ACLU aren't clued together but could be—sometimes the ACLU is mentioned in clues for RTS, short for "rights."

At 27A, [Stop holding it in], 4 letters ending in T? Uh, the actual answer, VENT, wasn't my first thought here.

Updated again Sunday afternoon:

Jim Hyres' second Sunday NYT puzzle, a diagramless crossword

This one wasn't too hard to find my way through. I grabbed a piece of scratch paper and started jotting down the first few Across answers, working back and forth with the Down clues. By the fifth row, I hit a width of 17 squares and so could deduce that 1-Across began in the very first square. Ahh, it feels good to transfer answers over to the diagramless grid and know that they're going in the right place—it doesn't always work out so well.

When I filled in 36-Across in the middle of the grid—TONGUE TWISTER, or [It's hard to say]—I read the three longest answers aloud to myself and to my mother. What do YOU'LL BE SORRY (["Not a good idea!"]), LARGER THAN LIFE ([Very imposing]), and TONGUE TWISTER have in common?? Suddenly childhood smacked me in the forehead and I noticed the games at the ends of those phrases. Indeed, the remaining theme answers are STIRS UP TROUBLE ([Is a rabble-rouser]) and RUNNING A RISK ([Not playing it safe]). Trouble is the board game with the noisy Pop-o-matic die in the middle. Risk is the geopolitical board game. Twister...I fear I am now too old to be able to play Twister. Here at home, we have the SpongeBob edition of Life (excuse me, but why is Fry Cook the best-paying career??) and enjoy the turmoil of a round of Sorry. The final Across answer, 69A, is GAMES to tie everything together. Cute theme; the theme is probably much more accessible than the diagramless itself, though as NYT diagramlesses go, this one was pretty easy.

Assorted other clues I liked: 10A ["Uh-uh"] clues NO DICE. You can use dice to play many board games, but I don't think the answer's meant to be thematic here. 23A [Symbol of limpness] is a WET RAG, and I can't say that's an image I see used in Cialis and Viagra commercials. [All alternative] pulls double duty as laundry detergent ERA and as quantity SOME. 27D's clue is [You may need to step on it] and I first thought of the GAS pedal, but the answer's a ladder RUNG.

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Saturday, 7/11

Newsday 7:34
NYT 5:31
LAT 4:01
CS 2:55

Karen Tracey's New York Times crossword

Unusual grid, isn't it? I mean, within the confines of standard crossword symmetry, it's not the usual layout we see for a themeless puzzle. Kind of like a sine wave of white space spanning the middle of the grid, and 9-, 10-, and 11-letter Down answers linking the midsection to the other six boxy areas.

Unsurprisingly, I find myself admiring Karen's fill for its balance of pop culture, geography, and Scrabbly action overlapping both of those areas. See what I mean?

• 17A. Handbag designer KATE SPADE is a [Big name in bags]. Those bags are cute, but if I'm dropping $200 on a purse, it had better have handy pockets and compartments inside. Kate, give us compartments!
  
• 19A. The dreaded TROLL is an [Internet forum menace]. I feel fortunate that the commentariat here is so congenial.
  
• 21A. [Major Cote d'Ivoire export] is CACAO. Yum, chocolate. I wonder how many people cleverly guessed IVORY.
  
• 29A. BUY is a small word with a great clue: [Act like a bull?]. Bad timing in that someone was killed by a bull at the running of the bulls in Spain today...but still a good clue.
  
• 33A. [They may call the shots] clues ANNOUNCERS, who do not "call the shots" the way that figure of speech usually means.
  
• 36A. JOHN LARROQUETTE is the [Winner of four consecutive Emmys for his sitcom role as a prosecutor]. Three things: (1) Scrabbly name, J + Q. (2) Why is there a double R in that name? It looks wrong from a French standpoint to me. (3) Wow, did I spend too much time looking to see it SAMWATERSTON or FREDTHOMPSON or STEVENHILL would fit there. Yes, I realize that Law & Order is not a sitcom.
  
• 39A. HANAUMA BAY is a [Snorkeling spot near Honolulu]. I canceled my trip to Maui in 1999 when I got pregnant. Maybe a Christmas trip this year? Why not?
  
• 54A. XHOSA is an African language with clicks. It's a [Zulu relative]. I got it off the A, which was one of the few letters I had
  right in 41D. [Sounds like an old floorboard] clues GROANS, but I had CREAKS. You know what I just noticed this summer? The humidity quiets down my creaky floors.
  
• 57A. New vocabulary word in a clue! [Pteridologist's specimen] is a FERN.
  
• 59A. I like the misinterpretable [Cashiers] as a clue for OUSTS.
  
• 61A. AMPS are clued as [Gear to help you hear]. That may be true for the people in the back of the top balcony at a concert, but in general, AMPS are gear to help kill your hearing. No joke.
  
• 1D. Always a sucker for geography, I even like BAKU, the [Transcaucasian capital] of Azerbaijan. Right next door (not on the map) is ULAN Bator or (also spelled Ulaanbataar), [Half an Asian capital?]. Technically, that's 4/9ths.
  
• 5D. CAPTAIN AHAB! "Hast seen the white whale?" That's [To whom Stubb and Flask answered, in literature].
  
• 11D. [Response to a ding-dong?] is "WHO CAN IT BE?" I like this because I'm hearing Men at Work's "Who Can It Be Now?" in my head. '80s earworm!
  
• 13D. Whoa, unfamiliar clue for a crosswordese place name. ST. LO is clued by way of [The Vire River flows through it]. Wow, V must be hostile to crossword constructors, or else we'd see the dang VIRE in our puzzles a lot.
  
• 18D. More geography with cute cluing: ST. PAUL is a [Minnesota twin?].
  
• 24D. [Three Mile Island is in it] clues the SUSQUEHANNA River. I was largely guessing here—Is there a Pennsylvania river with a Scrabbly name? Because that's what Karen would go for.
  
• 27D. Pop culture—IN HER SHOES is a [Jennifer Weiner best seller made into a 2005 film].
  
• 35D. "DEAR SANTA" is clued as [Words followed by a wish list].

It's noteworthy that this 68-word puzzle has only six 3-letter entries in it, and five of those are regular words (only SER., for sermon, is an abbreviation). The crossword's remarkably devoid of crap, too. I can take some repeaters like ERN, ADEE, and ALAR when overall the fill has oomph and no patently unfair crossings.

Updated Saturday morning:

John Farmer's Los Angeles Times crossword

John's puzzle is a couple notches easier than Karen's NYT, but that doesn't mean it was boring. I did a lot of lauding over at L.A. Crossword Confidential, in fact, so I'll plagiarize myself here.

This puzzle's got three real people's full names—all people whose first or last names pop up singly fairly often in crosswords, but John's classed up the joint by given these folks the full name treatment. There's 17A ["Night" writer], ELIE WIESEL, whose last name is usually consigned to the clues because that delicious 75%-vowels first name is so popular in crosswords. Then we have 14D [1922 physics Nobelist] NIELS BOHR, who also has a grid-friendly first name. And rounding out the trio is 10D ["Naughty Marietta" costar (1935)] NELSON EDDY. I feel like I know him mainly from crosswords, which seems weird because EDDY is a valid small-e noun in its own right.

Other highlights:

• 15A: Comic strip guy with an eye patch (BAZOOKA JOE). One Z, one K, one J? Super-Scrabbly phrase. Evocations of childhood bubblegum? Oh, yes. The sort of thing that we see in lots of crosswords? I wish.
• 32A: Marked by obscenities, say (RATED R). The multi-part answers in which one part is a single letter are tricky. Saturday + tricky = recipe for happiness (or extreme frustration, depending on your mood).
• 37A: "Don't change a thing!" ("I LOVE IT!"). Zippy spoken phrase, makes me think of those TV commercials they had promoting, if memory serves, L.A. tourism. All the people shouting "I love it!" or "We love it!"—remember those?
• 39A: "Composer" of "Fanfare for the Common Cold" (P.D.Q. BACH). Can't say I've ever had any interest in P.D.Q. Bach, but that is an awesome name to drop in a crossword, and the composition's title is funny.
• 60A: Battle fatigue? (RUN ON EMPTY). I kept reading the clue as a noun phrase, but it's the verb phrase. If you're battling fatigue, you're running on empty.
• 65A: Sign of possession (APOSTROPHE). Aaah! Love that clue. I was thinking of demonic possession, not grammatical.
• 12D: Fast-food combo order (VALUE MEAL). In these recessionary times, everyone loves the VALUE MEAL.
• 27D: Have a problem ordering sirloin steak? (LISP). That's a thirloin thteak, then. I'll path.
• 51D: Longstocking of kids' books (PIPPI). I loved the Pippi books and movie(s) when I was a kid. Bought a book for my son but he hasn't been reading much this summer. Not sure how I ended up with a kid who's a great (and fast) reader but who only reads when told to do so.

Off to the Newsday puzzle now—I hope it'll be as smooth and as fun as Karen and John's.

Sandy Fein's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

Aw, I like themelesses to have cool long answers, and this one maxes out with four 8s and a slew of 7s. We've got four foreign lands: (1) LIBERIA is a [Land on the Atlantic] (that should be a Sporcle quiz—name all the countries that border a particular ocean). (2) NIGERIA is an [OPEC member] (that one is a Sporcle quiz). (3) SIBERIA is a [Faraway place, so to speak]. (4) AMNESIA is a great place to vacation sometimes. It's a [Soap-opera plot element].

Then we have the Old South—OLE MISS is the John [Grisham alma mater], and I let the *LEM*** point me errantly to CLEMSON. It crosses SELMA, Alabama, a [Cotton State city].

Two hits from The Simpsons—MONA is the name of [Homer Simpson's mom], and Kwik-E-Mart proprietor APU shares the name of a [Title character of a literary trilogy]. The Apu Trilogy is also available in film form.

Clue roundup:

• [Waterbury Clock, today] is called TIMEX.
• SIENA is a [City for whom a color was named]—sienna. Shouldn't that be [City for which a color was named]? A city is not a "who."
• AQUAVIT is [What Brits call French brandy]. "Water of life"? No, sillies, everyone knows that's Diet Coke.
• [Columbus discovery of 1498] is the ORINOCO River.
• [Coral-reef topper] clues CAY, which is funny because I'd tried to make CAY be the answer to the nearby [Low land] clue. That one turned out to be FEN.

Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "Say 'Cheese'"

The theme's not about cheese, it's about saying "cheese" to smile for the camera:

• 17A. BOOSTER SHOT is a [Follow-up vaccination].
• 31A. [Molasses cookie] is a GINGERSNAP. At Christmas time, my aunt and cousin make these addictive little gingersnaps the size of oyster crackers. Num, num.
• 47A. [Overall perspective] is the BIG PICTURE.
• 63A. [Close race (and a hint to 17-, 31-, and 47-Across] is PHOTO FINISH, as those other three words/phrases end with words meaning "photo.'

Doesn't IBEFOREE look like the name of a Florida swamp? That's the [Start of a spelling mnemonic], "I before E except after C..."

Nikola TESLA, the [Inventor dubbed "the patron saint of modern electricity"], just had a birthday, I hear. His fellow scientist Enrico FERMI, a [Manhattan Project scientist], joins the festivities because TESLA brought the STOLI ([Grey Goose rival, for short]).

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Friday, 7/10

BEQ 8:08
NYT 5:10
LAT 4:04
CHE 3:04
CS 6:05 (J—paper)
WSJ 7:40

Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword

Well, lookee here. The town where my best friend lived before she moved back to Chicagoland is featured in the Friday puzzle: CREVE / COEUR, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. 7/9A are clued as [Missouri city whose name means "broken heart"], and the grid's pattern is that of a broken heart. For those who are curious, I believe the locals pronounce it more like "creeve core" than the French would.

Outside of that answer combo and the diagramless-puzzle-style picture, it's largely a themeless crossword, isn't it? With 64 words (rather low word count), but a standard 38 black squares. My general rule of thumb is this: If it's a 64-worder or less and it's not by Patrick Berry, it probably has a lot of fill that underwhelms me. The rule stands. (See below.)

I was smoking this puzzle (well, not DanFeyeresquely or TylerHinmannishly) and clicked the "Done!" button with 3:57 on the clock...and then spent the remainder of my time trying to root out one errant square. Eventually I found it: I had HAIL in place of HEIL for 19A [Greeting with a salute]. Crikey, we're evoking the famous Hitler salute now, are we? And with no hint that the answer is German? That's weird. If I'd scanned the Down answers first, I'd have spotted SURGA PROTECTORS, but no, I started with the Acrosses. (Should be SURGE PROTECTORS, 6D [They may avert computer damage]). To go along with the unpleasantness of HEIL, we have CRUEL AND UNUSUAL clued as 1D [Torturous, perhaps], connected to TRUE CONFESSIONS, 44A [Story-filled magazine since 1922]. 44A would be utterly fantastic in a puzzle that wasn't seemingly linking torture and confessions. Waterboarding, anyone?

The 64-Word Rule is borne out by an awkward chunk in the upper right and a profusion of prefix action. The chunk is the abbreviation MOLS clued as 4D [Compound fractions: Abbr.]—trying to trick us into thinking about numbers like 4 1/2 when the answer is a chemistry abbreviation is mean. The M crossing, MRS, is clued as a 4A [Form check box option], which is a rather vague clue for a 3-letter abbreviation crossing two other abbreviations. 5D [Old bus maker] is REO, of Speed Wagon, Ransom Eli Olds fame.

I actually used the 64-Word Rule as a solving aid. 10D [Fix, as a shower stall]...hmm, RETILE, crossing another RE-word, REHIRE, or 24A [Bring back on board]. Towards the middle, PREVENTS and PREMARITAL party with RELATE and RELIEF. (Psst: RELATE is beneath PREMARITAL, which is clued with a form of that word, [Like some relations].) EMANANT is one of those words you might never hear uttered; it means 47A [Flowing forth]. Then there's the two-part answer ONE/-A-CAT, 45/41D, a [quaint sandlot game]. If you've done a ton of crosswords, you probably see this rendered as one-o-cat more than one-a-cat. Crosswordese crashes into same where ESSE, a 43D [Forum infinitive], meets ESTOP, or 43D [Bar].

48A would have been a gimme with a pop-culture clue like [Actress Dawson of "Rent"], but with [Argentine port on the Parana]. ROSARIO is Argentina's third largest city. When looking for my wrong square, I gave the stink eye to every answer crossing this unfamiliar city name.

Now, I do have to give props to Joe K. for the four swaths of open space in the grid, the interconnection of the three 15s, and these clues and answers:

• 11A. LAURELS are the [Composition of some crowns]. Thought of royalty and/or dentistry, didn't you?
• 17A. [The Monkeemobile, e.g.] was a GTO. Had no idea, but late-'60s 3-letter car clue usually means GTO.
• 50A. [Housekeeper player on "Benson"] is Inga SWENSON. With that crosswordesey first name, her last name is usually banished to the clues. I like the switcheroo.
• 2D. FERRET OUT is a great phrase. It means [Dig up].
• 3D. When I was a kid, a [Rubber] was an OVERSHOE. "When it rains, Daddy always wears rubbers." The Totes-brand rubbers seemed to fall out of fashion by the time I learned that rubber = condom, too.
• 19D. Geo-trivia: [It has departments named Nord, Sud and Ouest] clues HAITI. I didn't know that, and there are probably some 5-letter African countries with French colonial history, but the crossings led me to the right answer.

Updated Friday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Mail Order"—Janie's review

"Wait, oh yeah, wait a minute, Mr. Postman! Wa-ai-ai-ait, Mr. Postman!. I'd think you'd really enjoy this easy, breezy made-to-order puzzle that celebrates those cancelled items you carry in your delivery bag!"

We don't get lots of theme fill today—only three phrases— but what we do get is "cherce," as is the non-theme fill with its many seven-, eight- and nine-letter words.

But first a look at the theme entries, the last word of which is mail-related:

• 20A. [Aleph, for one] HEBREW LETTER. If you want to communicate with your AMIE, sometimes it's awfully nice to actually write one of these. Here's a link to The Aleph-Bet Song, should you want to learn some more Hebrew letters.
  
• 37A. [Be innovative] PUSH THE ENVELOPE. Now take that letter and put it in one of these. The origin of the phrase in question, btw, is from the field of aviation but once popularized by Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff, it has become the darling of innovators and would-be innovators of all stripes. Read all about it.
  
• 51A. ["The Limey" star] TERENCE STAMP. Put one of these on the envelope with the letter inside and mail it. Snail-mail is something to be treasured! Mr. S., I learned, has been wheat-and-dairy intolerant for most of his adult life. In response to that, he's developed a line of products called "The Stamp Collection," and if you are similarly affected, he's also got a cookbook that might be just what the doctor ordered!

And while it hasn't been clued directly in conjunction with the theme, ENCL [Pkg. insert, e.g.] sure feels like bonus fill to me.

Now, about those "many seven-, eight- and nine-letter words"—let's take a look at 'em. To [Fill with confidence] is to INSPIRE, and when one ATTAINS more self-confidence, one's STATURE [Eminence] may be bolstered as well. (This, of course, is the lesson of Jim, the Gentleman Caller in The Glass Menagerie.) The final seven, REPOSED [Slept], seems to be a CS first. Ditto both of the eights: HIGH-TECH [Advanced, in a way] (so we're lookin' for an adjective here and not a verb) and LAMPPOST [Part of a street light]. The four nines are HIROSHIMA [Enola Gay target of 1945] (it's not always that we get all of that information at once in the puzzles), the homier PIE CRUSTS [They should be flaky], and two more CS debuts: KNOW-IT-ALL with its sassy [Wisenheimer] clue, and LIP-READER with its original-to-Nancy Salomon-and-so-encore-worthy clue [One who can see what you're saying]. This is all really good fill. Imoo...

Other fill and/or clues that caught my fancy:

• [Biblical pronoun] THOU in combination with another word I associate with the Bible, SMITE, here clued as [Clobber, old-style]. Yeah. The Bible's pretty old.
  
• [Casting requirement?] for ROD. As in ROD-and-reel, and fishing. This use of "casting" has nothing to do with the audition process for plays or films...
  
• ["It's c-c-cold!"] for BRR in combo with [Sweltering] for HOT.
  
• [Blood lines] for VEINS followed directly by [Flynn of "Captain Blood'] for ERROL.
  
• I know that TO RIO is the correct way to parse those letters, but couldn't help seeing TORIO, TORUS, TOMEI as some kind of nonsense conjugation or boast to counter Caesar's "VENI [___, vidi, vici!"]...

I hope you'll take a look at/listen to the those marvelous Marvelettes of "Please, Mr. Postman" fame. The quality of the sound on this clip is pretty poor, but the basketball-dribble hand "choreography" is definitely worth the price of admission. So to speak... I'm off to Baltimore for the weekend, so ADIEU for now. Have a great weekend and see ya Monday!

Ken Bessette's Los Angeles Times crossword

In discussing this week's CrosSynergy added-units-of-measure themes, constructor Patrick Blindauer said it's easier for solvers to pick up on add-letter themes than subtraction themes. Today's L.A. Times crossword made its subtraction fairly obvious, I thought, as RANGE BEDFELLOWS is clearly "strange bedfellows" minus the ST. "Bedfellows" gets little use in English without being paired with "strange."

Now, I was thinking the theme's purpose was booting the saints out of the grid, but 64A is STOUT, a [Heavy brew, and a clue to this puzzle's theme]. Take the ST OUT, and there's your theme description. Now, there's an interesting question from "imsdave" over at Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential writeup today—"As a (very) novice constructor, and only for my own edification, is it OK to have STET/STENO/STOWS/STEWARDS/ATLAST in a puzzle with this theme?" Ideally, yes, there wouldn't be other STs left in the grid. I don't think it's a fatal error to include them, as the theme entries are considerably longer than everything else and their clues are all question-marked. But it's perhaps not as elegant as if the fill had meticulously avoided any STs aside from the STOUT entry.

Interesting incidental pairings popped out at me. First, there's Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, a 9D [1963 thriller set in Bodega Bay], and a CROAK isn't just for frogs and raspy voices, it's also 14A [Raven's sound]. Crows, ravens, and blackbirds creep me out. LANAI, clued as 19D [It's part of Maui County], evokes both the Hawaiian LUAU (59A [Outdoor feast]) and the 60% matchy SINAI (61A [Peninsula bordering Israel]). 31A is WAWA, or [Baba ___: Gilda Radner persona], and BAA BAA is a 22A [Sheepish response?]. And then there's the double hit of old-school crosswordese: the ETUI is a 50D [Sewing case] and an ADIT is 55D [Ore seeker's entrance] to a mine.

Michael Ashley's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Old-Time Religion"

I had one of my fastest-ever CHE solves on this one, which is odd because really, a puzzle commemorating the quincentennial birthday of John Calvin isn't remotely in my wheelhouse. There must be a lot of easier clues and straightforward crossings here. CALVINISM anchors the grid and it's clued as the [Religious doctrine whose founder was born July 10, 1509. The HUGUENOTS practiced Calvinism. The BAPTISTS practice a modified version. PRESBYTERIANS (anagram of Britney Spears!) ply an elder-led version. And the PURITANS had their ascetic version. You can learn more about the Puritans in a lighter vein from Sarah Vowell's book, The Wordy Shipmates.

Brendan Quigley and Francis Heaney's Wall Street Journal crossword, "On the Waterfront>"

I spaced out on noticing the tightness of the theme while I was solving. I was moseying along, enjoying the homophone theme just fine without realizing that every homophone in the nine theme entries is "On the Waterfront" (PIER, QUAY, DAM) or a body of water itself (BAYOU, SEA, LOCH, STRAIT, river DELTA, BROOK). For example. COMBINATION LOCH (lock) is a [Scottish body of water that connects to another?]. SEA SECTION, playing on C-section, is clued as [The Bermuda Triangle, e.g.?]. And HOW'S BAYOU goes with the clue ["Where should we catch crawfish"? reply, perhaps?], playing on the intensely colloquial "How's by you?"

My favorites bits of fill include PECCADILLO, GOLDARN, BIG BANDS clued as [Groups of swingers?], the SIERRA CLUB, IRISH PUB ([Place to get stout]), ROMULANS, and the NEWARK/LATIFAH combo—100A NEWARK is [Aaron Burr's birthplace], while 80D is LATIFAH, [Queen born in 100-Across]. [Blue blood vessels?] is a cool clue for YACHTS, too.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Friday"

I can't assess this puzzle on its merits because the solving environment was making me cranky. The workers next door were dismantling some scaffolding and dropping big metal pipe structures into a truck bed. And the streetsweeper rolled by with its nonstop truck-in-reverse beeping. And my foot is throbbing. And I knew how fast other solvers on the leaderboard were, so I wanted to fly through it—but the distractions were totally getting in the way of that. As were the clues. Oy! I slowed myself down with Lucy's brother LINUS (whoops, needed RERUN) and Namath the NFLER (whoops, N.Y. JET). Someone on the internet was just talking about parsing PASYSTEM as "passy stem," and boy, I just couldn't grasp the P.A. SYSTEM clued as a [Rally rental]. I was looking for some sort of truck, and the PASY start killed me.

I liked LIVE ON clued as [Eat exclusively]. I could dispute that [Like someone who had a near-death experience] properly describes LUCKY. If you were lucky, wouldn't you avoid having the near-death experience in the first place? Speaking of death, I know that Jay-Z has a newish "Death of AUTO-TUNE" cut because I read The Assimilated Negro's blog, but I haven't actually clicked any of the links to have a listen. Is that bad? That I can answer [Oft-used computer plug-in used in modern music] without the slightest understanding of what Auto-Tune does?

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Calling all Arkansas crossword fans

Here's a press release about the third annual Arkansas Puzzle Day.

Clinton School to host 3rd Annual Arkansas Puzzle Day Aug. 29
Event to feature solving tips from crossword constructors Fleming and Gentry, editors of “Casual Crosswords”

LITTLE ROCK – The University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service will welcome crossword and Sudoku puzzle enthusiasts for the third annual Arkansas Puzzle Day on August 29 at Sturgis Hall.

Officiated by Vic Fleming of Little Rock and Bonnie Gentry of Scottsdale, Ariz., co-editors of “Random House Casual Crosswords,” the event will feature crossword and Sudoku contests on Saturday, Aug. 29, beginning at 1:00 p.m. The contests will be “casual and less-competitive,” Fleming said.

The Peabody Hotel will offer a special weekend rate for the event, which will include an autograph party and reception Friday afternoon, Aug. 28, at 5:30 p.m. at the hotel and a Saturday morning tour of the Clinton Presidential Library.

As part of the Saturday afternoon festivities, Fleming and Gentry will host a “multi-puzzle fun-and-games hour” before the preliminary crossword and Sudoku competition. The prelims will be followed by an educational session on puzzle history, strategy and tips for solving challenging crosswords. The afternoon will be capped off by a final round of puzzle competition for those with the highest levels of accuracy in the preliminary round.

The Friday reception will serve as an “early release” of the 2009 edition of the Random House book, which is scheduled to go on sale nationwide the following week.

Fleming and Gentry became Random House’s co-editors of “Casual Crosswords,” an annual publication, with the retirement last year of Mel Rosen, who had served as editor for six years.

*All puzzle day events are FREE and open to all puzzle enthusiasts. To RSVP, email publicprograms@clintonschool.uasys.edu or call 501-683-5239.

Contact the Peabody to make reservations for the weekend at 501-905-4000.

Contact Vic Fleming (judgevic@comcast.net) and/or Bonnie L. Gentry (bongentry@cox.net) for further details on the Puzzle Day afternoon activities.

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Thursday, 7/9

LAT 3:46
NYT 3:35
CS 7:46 (J—paper)
Tausig (untimed)

I was just looking up the Hex Atlantic cryptics book on Amazon, and the first thing a haphazard Google delivered was their previous collection...along with this note:

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links
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At first I thought Amazon's bots believed cryptics fans to be quite elderly, but then the crypt/cryptic connection hit.

What I was looking for was this book, The Atlantic Cryptic Crosswords from Sterling's Puzzlewright imprint. My copy arrived today, and I was delighted to see from the intro that this is old material. Sweet! I think it said the book contains Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's favorites from the 1986 to 1997 span of the Atlantic Monthly. Usually I prefer new-new-new puzzles, but I've done a bunch of the Atlantic puzzles from the last couple years so these ones are guaranteed to be new to me.

Buy this book! Do not be afraid. The intro outlines how cryptic clues work, so you can have a little coaching if you want it—and if you don't, just plunge right in and give your brain a gnarly workout. You know who else likes this book? Brendan Quigley, that's who. See? The movers and shakers in the crossword business recommend this book.

(If you're still too afraid of cryptics but like your crosswords challenging, you can't go wrong bending your brain with Patrick Berry's Puzzle Masterpieces, either.


Ashish Vengsarkar's New York Times crossword

Ahhh, that's more like it. This is just the sort of daily crossword I relish. A cool theme that expands the anagram concept into something bigger, plus fill and clues that sing.

Yes, I know some people don't cotton to anagrams, and I know some of the fill isn't as broadly accessible as in yesterday's puzzle—but hey, it's Thursday, and the fill is supposed to be harder.

So. The theme: the clues are all-caps, question-marked words. Anagram them, combine them with another word that could serve as a cryptic signal for anagramming, and marvel at the in-the-language phrases that result. To wit:

♻ 19A. [TROT?] is a TORT REFORM. By the way, I was working the first Hex puzzle in the book touted above just before I did Ashish's puzzle. Half the answers had to be anagrammed before going into the grid. Good practice for this puzzle.
♻ 21A. [HATER?] is a HEART TRANSPLANT.
♻ 36A. [RIFTS?] is a FIRST AMENDMENT.
♻ 52A. [GATES?] is a STAGE ADAPTATION of a sort.
♻ 56A. [HOSE?] is a SHOE REPAIR.

Twitter tells me that the nexus between 6A [Debra of "The Ten Commandments"] and 8D [First senator in space] has vexed some solvers. Nope, I don't know Debra PAGET—but I do know Senator Jake GARN. And why do I know that 58A CERN is the name of the [World's largest particle physics lab]? It might be from crosswords.

What were my favorite non-thematic parts of this puzzle? I liked the three-part common-cold action—40A [Cold shower?] is the RED NOSE that shows that you've got a cold. (Not crazy about the answer in isolation.) 42D [Cold response?] is a SNEEZE. And then a CASHEW is 1D [Snack item whose name suggests a 42-Down?]. Cute. When you're iller (!) than that, you may exhibit 10D [Lethargy], or TORPOR—I've mentioned before my fondness for the -or nouns/-id adjectives (stupor, rigor, turgid, horrid). PATROL CARS looks good in the grid; they're 6D [Cruisers]. Ditto for TENNIS PROS, or 30D [Racket makers?]. There's a tropical party in the lower right corner, with a MAI TAI (44D [Drink at Trader Vic's]) and ALOHAS (45D [Hello and goodbye]) with a MENSCH (46D [Good guy]). RICAN isn't such common fill—that's 39A [San Juan native, slangily]; I read something about Sonia Sotomayor that said she was "New York Rican," but I think they meant "Nuyorican," no? And MAM is cute—44A [Mother, in British dialect]. DONUT gets a cute clue: 38D [Coffee mate?]. Heck, there are two other question-marked clues I haven't even mentioned. The two-word partial A PIP is clued 55D ["You're ___, ya know that?": Archie Bunker]. And there's also a STASH, which is a 51D [Store that's hard to find].

Granted, this puzzle was nowhere near as challenging to construct as yesterday's NYT—but I had more fun with this one.

Updated Thursday morning:

Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Getting a Foothold"—Janie's review

For the second day running, we have a gimmick that requires us to insert a two-letter abbreviation into a well-known phrase—to most amusing effect. It actually took me the entire puzzle to figure out exactly what was going on, and then of course I responded with a resounding "doh!" Because for the second day running, there's no marker in the title to clue us in to the "abbreviation" component, which I like. One of things I actively admire in the CS puzzles is the titles—which are just cryptic enough to pique my interest and which don't completely tip the constructor's hand.

So today's two-letter abbreviation is ft. for foot and here's what Tony's done with it:

• 17A. Lied under oath + ft = LIFTED UNDER OATH [Bench pressed on the witness stand?]. Oh—and did I mention that we also get a series of NIFTY clues in the bargain as well? Because we do.
  
• 23A. Say it ain't so + ft = SAY IT AIN'T SOFT [Hard rock fan's plea?]. While there are any number of X-rated clues that come to mind for this one, there's also the G-rated [Child's plaint about the ice cream after a blackout]... The original phrase (followed by "Joe") has long been associated with the Chicago White Sox scandal of 1919 and if you click on the link, you'll be able to read a 1960 American Heritage article about the scandal and the story of the phrase.
  
• 50A. Lo and behold + ft = LOFT AND BEHOLD [Raise for inspection?]. Notice how LOFT rhymes with SOFT?
  
• 60A. Shied away from + ft = SHIFTED AWAY FROM [Reversed gears?]. Notice now how SHIFTED rhymes with LIFTED? Nice tight construction here.

Other highlights in the fill include: SEE STARS; the (apparent CS-debut) pairing of DR. JEKYLL and (Mme. Sec'y.) MADELEINE (Albright); the rhyming pair (which also appear opposite each other in the grid) of CS first-timer SPOOFED and "I GOOFED!"; the weaponry pair: ARMS and SMART BOMB; and the reminder that the "eyes" have it: UVEA [Eye layer] and RODS [___ and cones (eye parts)].

I hope no one SWOONED to see that this puzzle contains a major movie spoiler. Yes, [Kane's dying word in "Citizen Kane"] is ROSEBUD. Going from the sublime to, well, the uh, less sublime, other large screen references are to be found in "MARS [___ Attacks!" (1996 Tim Burton movie)], "PEE [___-wee's Big Adventure"], everybody's favorite movie lab-assistant IGOR, and in stars MAE [West of "My Little Chickadee"] and the (sadly) over-exposed LOHAN, [Actress Lindsay of "Freaky Friday"]. The small screen gets its due, too, with mention of ERICA ["All My Children" vixen], OPRAH [First name in talk TV] and ["Two and Half ___] MEN." The clue for KOREA, ["M*A*S*H" setting], belongs to both.

Loved seeing CAL [Ripken of the Orioles], PFFT [Sound of something going kaput], and DIAL clued as [Use a rotary phone]. "Does anyone still..." use a rotary phone?

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

I'm having trouble getting back into the crossword swing of things. My IHOP breakfast today was too satisfying and I'd really like to lie down for a bit. But I won't because I'm congenitally indisposed to being able to nap. So on with the puzzle! Dan's theme is realtors' euphemistic lies, trying to spin a piece-of-crap property as something more charming:

• 17A. [Realtor's "lavish landscaping"? Frankly, there are ___] WEEDS EVERYWHERE.
• 24A. [[Realtor's "charming"? Actually, it's ___] REALLY TINY. The most "charming" houses are less than 1,000 square feet.
• 35A. [Realtor's "expansive backyard"? Honestly, there's ___] NO POOL OR SPA. This must be a California/Florida sort of thing. You don't really expect a pool in the Midwest.
• 45A. [Realtor's "needs TLC"? Candidly, ___] IT'S A PIGSTY. A mere coat of paint will not help much here.
• 53A. [Realtor's "quiet setting"? Truthfully, it's ___] IN THE BOONIES. Yeah, I'll have to pass on that. I like city life.

Most of these theme entries aren't stand-alone sentences, but I could envision someone telling a friend about the horrible house they just saw and using these phrases without the "Frankly, there are..." intros.

More on today's puzzle from PuzzleGirl next door at L.A. Crossword Confidential. She really is the PuzzleGirl next door, isn't she?

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Boosting the Base"

That's "Boosting the Base," not "bass"—a higher pH turns something more base, less acidic. Each theme entry has an inserted PH:

• 17A. [Hybrid last name of Liz and Michael's kid?] might be PHAIR-JORDAN, building on the Air Jordan Nike brand name. Liz Phair and Michael Jordan, not Liz Taylor and Michael Jackson. You thought of them first too, didn't you?
• 29A. A one-night stand becomes a PHONE NIGHTSTAND, or a [Place to set your cell while you sleep?].
• 47A. [Pest working for the feds?] is a GOVERNMENT APHID (aid). Cute. I'm picturing a small green bug with Secret Service agent sunglasses and a dark suit.
• 59A. Deli meats are transformed into DELPHI MEATS, [Kebabs and souvlaki sold outside a noted historical site?].

Highlights:

• ASHTRAYS are [Rare sights in bars nowadays]. I saw a "free trivia" sign at a neighborhood bar the other day and my 9-year-old son said, "You don't need a trivia night. You'll come home smelling like cigarettes." And then he remembered that Illinois has a smoking ban. I'm of an age to remember when people smoked in bank waiting lines and the rear of an airplane, and if my kid were just a little younger, he'd have no idea that people could ever smoke in bars. (Whether my son benefits from knowing things about bars is another issue.)
• SAT PREP is a [Junior's course, perhaps]. At my high school, nobody ever thought to spend money studying for standardized tests. What is this, Amy's Nostalgia Tour?
• Gotta love a 1-Across like ORGASM, or [Peak moment]. It boldly announced right off the bat, "This is not your grandma's crossword puzzle."
• The ["Only You" band] is YAZ with Alison Moyet. I loved that song in college. That Z is one of three in this grid, which also has a Scrabbly J and an X.

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Wednesday, 7/8

Onion 4:28
BEQ 4:08
LAT 3:40
NYT 3:30
CS 8:40 (J―paper)

Tim Wescott's New York Times crossword

So, Rex Parker, PuzzleGirl, and I were corresponding tonight, trying to piece together the "unusual feature that appears nine times" in this crossword. Eventually I gave up and consulted Wordplay, where I learned there are nine word squares and that the constructor probably won't be surprised to see my grumbles: "I also realize that the puzzles that are a challenge to construct are not necessarily the same as the puzzles that a lot of people like to solve, as I’ve seen some complaints about these kinds of puzzles elsewhere on the Web." Yeah, I saw a lot of word segments that intersected with their clones, but in 3 1/2 minutes, I did not notice the word squares. So that wasn't an aid in solving. And so many repeated chunks of letters didn't enhance the solving experience for me.

Those word squares are as follows:

ROB CUD WES ROE
OPE USE EVA ONE
BEE DEN SAL EEN

BING CRAM CHAS RUMP
IDEA RUDE HASH UBER
NEWT ADIT ASHE MEGA
GATE METS SHED PRAY

HEART
EMBER
ABOVE
REVUE
TREES

The 5x5 is pretty fancy, but if you don't appreciate it in the midst of doing the puzzle...well...this is a gimmick for the leisurely solver to be blown away by. And I'm sure there are speed solvers in awe of the construction, too. I'm predicting about a 60/40 split between the "Wow!" and "meh" contingents, in favor of the "Wow!" side.

A few clues and answers:

• 3D. BEER GARDEN is as [Place for a pilsner].
• 38A. CAB-OVER is a [Style of truck with a vertical front].
• 31D. WEST MONROE is a [Louisiana city named for the fifth U.S. president].
• 32D. EVAN-PICONE is a [Big name in women's apparel since 1949]. Hooray for the clue not suggesting that there's ever been a person in fashion named Evan Picone.
• 55A. RUM PUNCH is a [Bacardi concoction, perhaps]. Crossword constructors use the term unch as shorthand for "unchecked letter." No idea what a RUMP UNCH might be.
• 22A. EMMETS are [Ants, archaically]. If you know a guy named Emmet, please call him Ant.
• 20A. To IRRIGATE is to [Make arable, perhaps].

Updated Wednesday morning:

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "They'll Take a Mile"―Janie's review

Today we have the titular companion piece (and thematic cousin) to yesterday's Doug Peterson, "Give 'Em an Inch..." And what a lively companion piece it is. The abbreviation for mile is mi.; the four theme phrases take that abbreviation and affix it to the beginning to create a new phrase. Each is also the beneficiary of some mighty crafty cluing.

• 17A. mi + stingray = MISTING RAY [Culinary Rachel using an atomizer?]
  
• 27A. mi + stress test = MISTRESS TEST [Check one's husband's collar for lipstick, e.g.?]. Of course, as Connie Francis reminds us, girlfriends may employ this technique, too...
  
• 49A. mi + me and my gal = MIME AND MY GAL [Story about a fellow's gesturing lady love?] This is really very funny. Yes, it's the only one of the theme entries in which the mi doesn't precede a phrase that starts with the letter s―and as you may have already guessed, I don't love that. But boy is this a great clue/fill combo. So to spare you all, I'll EASE UP this time and just enjoy it for all it's worth.
  
• 66A. mi + sled dogs = MISLED DOGS [Took a canine team off-roading?]. Another goodie, and one that suggests another kind of theme―the kind in which there's a repeated syllable. The fill that comes to mind is misled sled dogs. Okay, just three to go...

Today's mystery product was SO BE, the [Drink company with a lizard logo] as opposed to Geico, the insurance company with a gecko logo, I suppose. Boutique beverages aren't much my thing, but clearly there's a market for 'em. But really―only in America does the South Beach Beverage Company become established in Norwalk CT on an inlet of the Long Island Sound and then get purchased up by PepsiCo. Talk about yer sweet deals...

There's a lot of strong cluing today. I like the alliteration of [Lamp-lugging lad of literature] for ALADDIN, and the ambiguity of [Bars] for SALOONS and [Drops from the sky] for RAIN. In neither case is the clue to be understood as a verb―yet that's what I thought of first. Neither are [Clogs and pumps] to be understood in relation to plumbing issues. They're SHOES.

And how about the [pedal] pair: [Put the pedal to the medal] for FLOORED IT (in what looks to be a CS debut) and [Instrument for pedal pushers?] for ORGAN. Or the matched set of terms of endearment: ["Cutie pie" or "sweetie"] for PET NAME and [Darlin'] for HON.

Among the non-theme fill, gotta give a shout-out to CS-debut OXYMORONS, those figures of speech that pair opposites to ironic effect, as the clue [Deafening silence and bittersweet] demonstrates. You probably have your favorites, but here's a snippet of George Carlin going through a few of his.

A fave cross: ASEA and SEE; and a seriously smile-worthy pair: [iPod...] NANO and NANU (-nanu) [Either half of a classic sitcom sign-off]. Finally, given the tie-in this puzzle had with yesterday's, had a moment of GLEE seeing SKEW once again. (I know, yesterday it was SKEWS, but it's close enuf for jazz in my book!)

Don Gagliardo's Los Angeles Times crossword

I did this puzzle shortly before doing the NYT puzzle last night, and it made me cranky in similar ways. Tour de force construction? Check. (81 theme squares is huge.) Uninteresting fill and clues? Check. There are many who greatly admire a tour de force and focus on the constructor's achievement in building such a puzzle, but I tend to be solidly in the "I want it to be fun and interesting" camp.

It's past 10 a.m. and I have two more puzzles to blog before getting to work on a puzzle consulting gig, so allow me to copy and paste from the theme writeup from my L.A. Crossword Confidential post:

• 41A: Secret get-together, or what occurs literally in each of this puzzle's circled squares (HUSH-HUSH MEETING). The circled letters are hush-hush meetings of two words.
• 5A, 8D: Clever move (COUP)/Prefix with science (PSEUDO-). Silent P from French and Greek.
• 9A, 9D: Bad-mouth (KNOCK)/Hillock (KNOLL). Two words from Old English with now-silent Ks.
• 4D, 28A: Newspaper feature (COLUMN)/Organ numbers (HYMNS). Classical roots for both of these M+silent N words.
• 48A, 48D: Like Letterman lines (WRY)/Eerie apparition (WRAITH). Silent W before an R; one Old English root, one Scots/unknown.
• 40D, 54A: Oppose (REPUGN)/Omen (SIGN). Silent G in a GN combo. Both words are from Middle English by way of Old French taken from Latin. Begging your pardon: REPUGN? I know an awful lot of words, but I haven't run across this one before. Repugnant, sure. Impugn, of course. But not this word.
• 57D, 64A: Prefix with stat (RHEO-)/Like a question that isn't a question (RHETORICAL). Silent H after an R, presumably a Greek rho being transliterated as RH rather than R. It's a bit of a cheat to throw in a prefix here, but RHYME is too long for this spot and havign 81 theme squares gives little flexibility.
• 63D, 73A: Blockbuster, e.g. (BOMB)/Oversimplify, with "down" (DUMB). BOMB has a promiscuous etymology—English from French via Italian, probably from Latin, before that from Greek, "of imitative origin." In other words, everyone agrees it bomb/bombe/bomba/bombus/bombos sounds like "boom." DUMB's a good Old English word of Germanic origin.

I had more fun looking these words up in the dictionary than doing the crossword, honestly. The fill squeezed in around the massive dose of theme was mostly uninspired, hitting a nadir with ILLER (technically legit but nothing I'd say) and a not-a-real-word singular KUDO (which would be OK if the clue acknowledged the joke by playing with "praise" sounding like a plural or something). Does ILLER have hip hop usage? Is it in Nas's Illmatic lyrics anywhere?

Byron Walden's Onion A.V. Club crossword

We are overdue for some more Byron themelesses, aren't we? That was one of the biggest losses when the New York Sun folded—one top-notch themeless puzzle every week, from talents like Byron, Karen Tracey, and Patrick Berry. Seriously, what is wrong with the masses of people who have not signed up to subscribe if the Sun Crossword relaunches? The incredibly innovative tough Friday themes are just as missed as the sparkling themelesses. So if you fancy yourself a lover of the finest crosswords and you rather wish there were more tough puzzles available, sign up!

Now, where were we? Oh, yes. The Onion puzzle. Blogger is in a mood and won't let me upload the grid image, so I'll just tell you about the theme and lay out some clues. The first theme entry began TURNOFFPH- and I couldn't get a "turn off phones" instruction out of my mind, which got in the way of understanding the theme. It's "___ of ___" phrases in which the "of" becomes "off":

★ 20A. TURN-OFF PHRASE is a [Pickup line that backfires badly?].
★ 26A. The jack of clubs becomes JACK-OFF CLUBS, or [Bars for total assholes?]. Don't go there. You won't like the crowd.
★ 40A. I love the "walk of shame" as the basis for a theme entry. WALK-OFF SHAME is a baseball-pitchin' [Reliever's feeling after giving up a game-ending homerun?].
★ 48A. PLAYOFF COLORS are [Jersey options for the postseason?].

Fill highlights include EMILY POST, NBA OWNERS ([The Mavs' Mark Cuban and the Nets' Jay-Z, e.g.]), FANFIC ([Writing genre for creative devotees, briefly]), and aren't-you-glad-you-read-the-NYT [New York Times science reporter Gina] KOLATA.

Favorite clues: Crossword-friendly country OMAN gets the fun-to-say [Country whose sultan is Qaboos bin Said al Said]. The DELETE KEY [can make mean men, but can't make men mean]. NOLTE is clued as [Nick who was People's Sexiest Man Alive in 1992]; his subsequent drunken mug shot made a mockery of that. (What? The Sexiest Man Alive designation is not mockable except in extenuating circumstances like Nolte's.) James T. KIRK is a [Captain based in part on Horatio Hornblower]. KEEP LEFT is a [Progressive's favorite road sign?].

Brendan Quigley's blog puzzle, "Support System"

The theme is STAND BY ME, and the four long answers that include the letter sequence STAND are abutted by something with a ME above or below the STAND. For example, TWIST AND SHOUT has a ME in MENLO PARK above it. Now, it's a little muddled here because the ME of STAND BY ME is underneath TWIST AND SHOUT's STAND, so it appears that the puzzle's ME has a split personality. STAND BY ME's STAND has a ME below it, too.

Juvenile highlights: [Stooge's laugh syllable] is NYUK and [Gas] is FART.

I need to get to work here. Am all crossworded out for the day! Too bad the work that's waiting is...crosswords.

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