Saturday, 7/25

NYT 5:59
Newsday 5:23
LAT 4:00—fantastic themeless, don't miss it (Across Lite at Cruciverb.com, applet at latimes.com)
CS 7:16 (J—paper)

Guess what? When there's an outdated crossword clue about nurses, they notice. And they don't like it. Must reading for crossword constructors and editors.

Edited to add: Writer Dean Olsher (his book, From Square One, is in bookstores now) will be blogging the Sunday puzzles for us.

Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword

Vic's puzzle is anchored by a 15-letter answer running down the middle and criss-crossed by three more 15s as well as two 11s and four 10s. It's an unusual grid layout. The fill isn't very Scrabbly, perhaps because of the constraints of this layout. Overall, the cluing was more lively than the fill, I thought. Highlights:

• 15A. [Cover-up during a shower] is the TARP on a ballfield. Anyone else let that P talk them into SOAP here?
  
• 17A. [Inquire about a union contract?] clues PROPOSE MARRIAGE. I suspected the answer would have something to do with prenuptial agreements, but PROPOSE MARRIAGE is much sweeter.
  
• 28A. [Trumpeter with a prominent neck] is, of course, the most popular trumpet player in crosswords, Al HIRT. He is known for his fabulously prominent neck, which is the secret of his musical success. No, actually, the answer is a SWAN, such as a trumpeter swan.
  
• 35A. [Quarter master?] is sort of a weird clue for NUMISMATIST because I don't know that a coin collector/expert would consider herself a "master." But the clue definitely did its job in getting me to think of entirely different possible meanings for "quarter master."
  
• 46A, 50A. I'll excuse a pesky [Kind of ___] clue if it's part of something bigger. Here, [Certain joe] is DECAF and [Kind of joe] is SLOPPY. Really, 50A should be [___ joe], but then nobody would be misled into thinking about coffee.
  
• 63A. [Something often written under] is a deadline more than, say, the table. But the puzzle's looking for NOM DE PLUME this time.
  
• 7D. The anchor 15 kept me guessing for far too long, because those two razor-aisle clues made me think of peach fuzz whiskers. And then I thought of eluding the police. But no. [Losing the fuzz?] clues COMING INTO FOCUS. Amazing how long it took for that answer to come into focus.
  
• 18D. OFTENER. I don't think I've ever used that word. It's clued as [Not so rarely]. It looks like it's missing an introductor FABRIC S-.
  
• 29D. WISC.! "On, Wisconsin!" The state is clued as [Superior setting: Abbr.] because Superior is a Wisconsin town way up yonder next to Duluth, Minnesota.
  
• 30D. [Hairy clue-sniffer] clues the whodunit dog, ASTA. My god, what a horrid clue! It's grotesque. Hairy + sniffer? Rhymes with "glue-sniffer"? It's almost surreal. And then the answer is just our stalwart detective dog ASTA. When's the last time an ASTA clue made you laugh? +10 points!
  
• 47D. [One working on the side?] is an EATER still working on that side dish. Icky odd-job answer, sure, but the clue and the initial E lured me into entering EXTRA, working on the...side...of a movie set? Yeah, that doesn't make much sense. So sue me.
  
• 49D. Crosswordese ARILS come to life when clued as [Edible pomegranate parts]. Most of us know what ARILS look like if we get a colorful example like this.

What I don't quite get or didn't much care for:

• 39A. VESTED INTERESTS is clued [They benefit personally]. Say what? "Personally" suggests that this is about people who benefit, but people have VESTED INTERESTS rather than being VESTED INTERESTS. Can somebody explain this one to me?
  
• 54A. [Seek change?] clues BEG. Hmm, can we not be jokey about the destitute? Beg pardon, beg for forgiveness, teach a dog to beg—those connotations would be better.
  
• 57A. [Father of Eleazar, in the Bible]? Ouch. It's AARON. He's Moses's brother, right? Can we expect MOSES to be clued as [Eleazar's uncle}? Meh.
  
• 38D. AREOLAS has such handy vowels, so it keeps showing up in crosswords. "Oh! Excuse me! Your dress is so low-cut, I fear your [Biological interstices] are peeking out!" But the word never gets clued with reference to what everyone thinks of when they hear it. The nipples and environs get no love in the crossword puzzle.

Updated Saturday morning:

Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Ow, Ow—That Hurts!"—Janie's review

Nuthin' like a fine array of percussive sounds to generate a headache, is there? BANG! BOOM! KNOCK!—and what's the upshot? "Ow!" Double the cacophony and "Ow, ow!" Randy plays with these sounds in today's puzzle, but I don't imagine you'll need to take two aspirin once you've solved it. Additionally, he's given us three grid-spanning theme fills of the very fresh variety: the first two appear to be major-publication firsts, the third a CS debut:

• 20A. BANG-BANG CHICKEN [Szechuan dish]. Looks veeeery tasty. And unless you use one to prep the chicken itself, it looks like this dish can be made without a WOK [Chinese cooker].
  
• 41A. BOOM BOOM MANCINI [Lightweight boxing champ of the '80s]. Boy, does that fill look good in the grid! The consonant combos make it a little tricky to parse. (And I love that the puzzle includes BOO [Halloween holler] as well, like sort of boom partial...). While I'm not much of a boxing fan, somewhere I knew that as a younger fighter, Mancini, who delivered his share of KO'S [Some boxing victories, briefly] in his day, played a title bout that ultimately resulted in his opponent's death. This was in the days of 14-round title-bouts. Wisely, the tragedy led to the boxing organizations' decisions to reduce by two the number of rounds in a title bout.
  
• 56A. KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES [Gags that usually involve puns]. I know what a p. in the a. the links here are. They don't bring you back to what you've been reading. But please, when you're finished reading, go back for this one. It's an excellent time-capsule look at the form. A more current one can be found by listening to Garrison Keillor's annual "joke show" that's part of A Prairie Home Companion. Segment 3 contains the "Knock-knock Song." Not known so much for punning, but for his well-observed complaints about daily life, ALAN KING did once say of an early Catskills gig that he was fired because he opened by saying: “When you work for Gradus, you work for gratis!” [Rimshot.]

In the STAT department, I loved seeing today's one J, two Vs, three Zs and six Ks. Back to comedy... I'm reminded that in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, funny-man Willy Clark ZINGS:

"Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say "Alka Seltzer" you get a laugh . . . Words with "k" in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland . . . Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny."

We get two references today to the changes we've seen in automobile manufacture over the years: OLDS [Automaker until 2004] and NASH [Bygone auto]. The last of these rolled off the Kenosha, WI line in 1969. [It's a gas] is neither a way of describing a particularly funny experience nor something along the lines of neon or nitrous oxide. No, ARCO is a brand of gasoline to put into your auto of choice. Glad it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, where there's little chance that a leisurely Sunday spin will lead to an encounter with BLACK ICE [Winter driving hazard].

The [First name in mausoleums] is TAJ and two crossword-friendly last names (because of their constructor-friendly vowel sequence] are CAAN and KAEL. (And funny, too!) There's some fine slang in the fill GONZO, here clued as [Eccentric] (but which I think of more often as meaning extreme as in the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson); and SHAG, here clued as [Catch fungoes]. "Fungoes" (great word in itself!) are fly balls "hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat," so in sports jargon, SHAG=catch. In BritSpeak, SHAG=have sex with.

Yesterday, BLONDIE appeared in the puzzle as a [Chic Young creation]. Today, the wife of her husband Dagwood's boss (Mr. Withers) joins the party. Hello, CORA. You're in excellent company with RAVI [Sitarist Shankar] OLEG and IVAN. Glad to see this last one clued in reference to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's ["One Day in the Life of ___ Denisovich"]. It woulda been really easy to clue him as [Tennis great Lendl], partnering him with ILIE [Tennis bad boy Nastase].

Brad Wilber's Los Angeles Times crossword

This one's been short-listed for the annual Oryx honors for the awards panel's favorite themeless crossword. It's got an abundance of fresh fill that really crackles with liveliness, plus Scrabbly letters up the wazoo. Holy frijoles, did I ever like this puzzle. Here's what I like best in a themeless puzzle:

• Lots of long answers, especially in the 9- to 11-letter range and all stacked together like intellectual Oreos.
  
• Surprising phrases, titles, names, and words—things that are decidedly not a dime a dozen in crosswords.
  
• Uncommon letters, which I like to call "Scrabbly" because they earn a lot of points in Scrabble.
  

The edges of Brad's crossword feature a dozen long answers, stacked three deep in each corner. There are all sorts of nutty entries I've never seen in a crossword before. And once I got MALT LIQUOR at 1-Across (clued with a brand of malt liquor, Colt 45, e.g.), I began to suspect there'd be all sorts of Scrabbly goodness lurking throughout.

Favorite answers and clues: I'll pick and choose and leave out some of my favorites, because dangit, there are just too many today.

• 17A: Emmy-winning 1972 TV concert film (LIZA WITH A Z). Wow, this one took me a long time to piece together. I had L*Z*WIT*AZ and was mystified. Two Zs! Total pop culture—but pop culture that is likely familiar to people from a wide range of ages. For a long moment, I wondered who this "A.Z." person was who was in concert with Liza.
  
• 28A: Brief turndown ('FRAID NOT). 100% colloquial spoken English, 100% familiar, less than 1% likely to appear in a crossword. My dad liked to tell the old joke about the piece of string who kept getting thrown out of a bar. He tied himself in a knot and roughed up his ends on the sidewalk and tried ordering a drink again. "Say, aren't you the piece of string I just threw out of here?" asked the bartender. "No, I'm a frayed knot," the string replied.
  
• 37A: Bismarck's realm (PRUSSIA). I think some of my ancestors came to America from what was then labeled Prussia on the map. I should start telling people I'm part Prussian.
  
• 44A: Military brass? (BUGLES). Usually "military brass" means the generals in charge; here it means the brass instruments used to play "Taps."
  
• 61A: Prescription that might give you shakes? (LIQUID DIET). As in the milkshakes, the protein shakes, etc.
  
• 64A: Head turner, at times (REIN). Usually "head turner" means "good-looking person," but here it refers to the REINs that turn a horse's head. Excellent mislead—the sort of misleading clue that's right at home in a Saturday crossword.
  
• 65A: 1988 winner of seven Olympic swimming medals (MATT BIONDI). I'm a sucker for first/last name combos as crossword fill. Poor Matt Biondi, eclipsed by Ian Thorpe and especially Michael Phelps. Speaking of full names, we also have LEW AYRES (5D: "Johnny Belinda" Oscar nominee).
  
• 6D: Where a pupil sits? (IRIS). I'll bet a lot of you wanted to put DESK here, didn't you? Saturday clues like to mess with our heads. Pupil = student, pupil = the black spot in your eye.
  
• 32D: You'll need one for your flat (SPARE TIRE). The clue wants you to think of English apartments and be misled, doesn't it?
  
• 34D: North American Francophone (QUEBECOIS). I like geographical names and I like the letter Q.
  
• 40D: Kipling's "limpin' lump o' brick-dust" (GUNGA DIN). I didn't know the colorful quote, but there aren't many Kipling characters' names that (a) I know and (b) are 8 letters long.
  
• 63D: Semi-colon? (DOT). A colon has two dots (:) so half a colon is one DOT.
  

Overall, this crossword really wasn't too tough, not as themeless Saturday puzzles go. There were a couple short answers that kept me waiting for crossings, though. There's 2D: Hypothetical particle (AXION), which I've never heard of. (Physics is not my forte.) And the abbreviation DAU. was kinda painful; it's clued as 31A: Abbr. in a genealogy volume, so I surmise that it's short for "daughter." You really have to expect to see some things you simply have no way of knowing in a Saturday puzzle, so you really can't call foul on these. And their crossings were rock-solid—it's not as if we had to guess a letter in DAU that crossed an Armenian river, you know? This puzzle is eminently fair in addition to being a sparkly marvel of yumminess.

(Writeup adapted from my post at L.A. Crossword Confidential.)

Adam Cohen's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

I think Adam Cohen's new to Stumper constructing, though his work has been published in the NYT every day from Monday through Saturday. This Stumper was decidedly non-stumpogenic as Stumpers go—I finished in a Friday to easy Saturday NYT amount of time. He's a promising addition to the Saturday Newsday crew.

Things that made me go "ooh":

• 1A. [Piquant hodgepodge] clues JAMBALAYA. First thought was POTPOURRI, but 2D: [Fictional talking lion] had to be ASLAN so POTPOURRI was out.
  
• 17A. PLAYED OUT is a great, colloquial phrase. It means [Exhausted], in a way. "The word ESNE is played out in crosswords."
  
• 43A. [Poorer than poor] clues BAD. We're not talking destitution, we're talking quality.
  
• 50A, 55A. Stacked trade names: AIR CANADA is the [Publisher of "enRoute"] and CLEARASIL was/is an ["American Bandstand" sponsor]
  
• 57A. KANYE WEST is clued as the [2009 Grammy winner for "Swagga Like Us"]. Chicago, represent!
  
• 8D. "YOU'RE ON!" is indeed an [Enthusiastic assent].
  
• 11D. The ROAD is a [Place setting for forks]. Great clue.
  
• 24A. A cathedral APSE is clued as [Where icons may be seen], but crossword clues much more often refer to icons on your computer's screen so it felt like a Saturday-grade mislead.
  
• 40D. BARACK is a [Name from the Swahili for "blessed"]. I looked askance at the clue until I had enough crossings and remembered reading this. Definitely a few cuts above the typical [Name that means "___"] clue because it's been in the news.
  

Things that made me go "huh?" or "meh":

• 9D. ARTELS were [Communal collectives] in prerevolutionary Russia, and it's the second time I've seen this word in a puzzle this week. It is officially PLAYED OUT.
  
• 12D. Is there a doctor or biologist in the house? Can an ANTITOXIN properly be described as a [Germ fighter]? This feels wrong to me. I know some bacteria produce toxins, but is an antitoxin prescribed for that?
  
• 13D. [Careless] clues UNHEEDING. Raise your hand if you have never spoken, written, or heard that word. "Heedless," sure. (Siegfried Sassoon fans, sit down.)
  
• 34D. SARA is clued as ["CSI" character]. Uh, that character left the show a couple years ago. Is there really no zippier way to clue SARA today?

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Friday, 7/24

NYT 5:11
BEQ 4:17
LAT 3:38
CS 8:57 (J—paper)
WSJ 8:51
CHE tba — apparently not posted online yet in site redesign (*grumble*)


Will Shortz has been answering reader questions since July 20 here. Friday's the last day, so I expect there'll be more Qs&As added to the four pages' worth that are there now. It's an engaging read.

Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword

Isn't this a pretty crossword? I almost didn't want to sully it with any letters, but when the byline reads "Patrick Berry," I sullied it right up.

Eleven of the 15 Across rows contain a long (9 to 15 letters) answer, which looks crazy. One of the 15s is SPIRAL STAIRCASE (43A: [It gets you up and around])—which is sort of, a little bit, what the grid looks like.

If you'll pardon me, I've got to tuck my son in now, but I'll publish this much of the post for the nonce. Back soon.

And here I am again. You know what my favorite answers and clues were in this 62-worder? Well, there's NO SUCH THING (1A: [It doesn't exist]), for one. And also these:

• 16A. [Bloomer after whom bloomers are named] is AMELIA. I've known this particular eponym since I was a kid. Did we all learn that one when we were little?
  
• 19A. For [Toy from China], I was thinking of the KITE, but it's a toy dog, the Pekingese, or PEKE.
  
• 24A. [You might grind it out] clues a cigarette BUTT. At first I thought this was some sort of carpentry/workshop thing, or possibly about doing a bump and grind on the dance floor.
  
• 25A. [Fast hits] are LINE DRIVES. Yeah, it's baseball, but if you're gonna make me have a baseball answer, at least make it be a long phrase and not the last name of 1956's leading shortstop or a 2004 Padre.
  
• 30A. BRANDON LEE was the [Actor who debuted in "Kung Fu: The Movie"]. He died before The Crow was finished, which is a shame because Bruce Lee's son had a ton of potential.
  
• 35A. SLAM DANCES are [Activities at punk rock concerts]. Is it proper to pluralize "slam dance"? And what about GARBS (14A: [Outfits])?
  
• 39A. I love the word BARMY, which means [Foolish, in British slang].
  
• 48A. "SEE YOU IN COURT" are [Words from one who won't settle].
  
• 1D. [Whim-wham] is a crazy clue for NOVELTY. Dictionary says: archaic "a quaint and decorative object; a trinket." I gotta work "whim-wham" into my vocabulary.
  
• 2D. [It might contain a filling] could be many things. This time, it's an OMELET.
  
• 10D. NOSEDIVE is a [Calamitous decline].
  
• 15D. What's this? A factoid I didn't know about EELS? They are [Fish that can move equally well forward and backward].
  
• 21D. KEEBLER, the cookie people, is a [Company with a tree in its logo]. Ernie is the head elf, you know.
  
• 30D. [Nullifies, as an oath?] clues BLEEPS. Good clue.
  
• 42D. A PICA is [1/6 of an inch]. Who doesn't love printing terminology? Me, I like it so much more than the nautical and poker clues.

Mildly vexing spots:

• 28A. HASHED OVER is the answer to [Discussed at length]. I would prefer HASHED OUT, which has better support in at least one dictionary. You talk things over when you hash them out.
  
• 18A. RELET, or [Rent to another], is the sort of blah answer we rarely see in a Berrystravaganza. I suppose we have to allow Berry to use an utterly lifeless word once or twice a year, eh? He's earned the forgiveness.
  
• 29A. [Musical direction that means "lyrical" in Italian] is CANTABILE. Note the cognates, chant and cantor and incantations. Much of what I know about "musical directions" I learned from crosswords.
  
• 42A. [Folk singer Tom with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award] is PAXTON. I guess I follow folk singers even less than I thought, because I've never heard of him. It's a shiny new Grammy from 2009.
  
• 3D. SPRIT is a [Diagonally set spar]. Nautical terminology = meh.
  
• 13D. I wonder if Tom PAXTON knows [Pulitzer-winning historian Frederick Jackson ___] TURNER. Nope—TURNER died five years before Paxton was born.
  
• 34D. [Max of video game fame] is Max PAYNE. I learned this from crosswords, I swear.
  
• 35D. SYMS is an East Coast menswear chain, isn't it? It's also part of ["___ by Sinatra" (1982 collaborative jazz album)]. Big question mark for me on this one.

Updated Friday morning:

Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Material for Dessert Recipes"—Janie's review

Foodie (and foodies), take heed: this one's for you! Randy is serving up a cruciverbal confection with a power of suggestion that is bound to please—or possibly send you into the kitchen, or out to the nearest bakery. The trick, though, is that each of the theme desserts contains the name of a kind of fabric. The "material" in the title is material, not ingredients (though you will find plenty of those in the links...). Because there's always room for dessert, today we're offered:

• 18A. LACE COOKIES [Delicate, crumbly dessert]. More about this fill later;
  
• 25A. RED VELVET CAKE [Colorful, layered dessert]. A great, traditional cake from the South;
  
• 46A. FRENCH SILK PIE [Chilled, crusty chocolate dessert]. Though they've long been seen on dessert carts, both this filling fill and its predecessor look to be appearing in a major puzzle for the first time. And finally:
  
• 59A. COTTON CANDY [Sweet, sticky dessert]. This is the only one I had trouble with...as a dessert. At the dinner table. With (CS-first) SILVERWARE. Okay, ya don't need silverware for cookies either, but you know what I mean. I can see cotton candy as a treat at a baseball game, or a carnival or a fair—maybe after a "main course" of a corn dog and fried cheese curd, and in lieu of the deep-fried oreo... But after chicken KIEV and green beans au gratin, off-the-paper-cone or out-of-the-bag? That doesn't really sound like a dessert to me. What does, though, is cotton candy ice-cream or cotton candy cupcakes. With an insulin chaser, of course...

Statistcially speaking, lace cookies looks to be a major-puzzle first and cotton candy a CS-first. But lace cookie appears in another of Randy's puzzles—as does cotton candy. It's an LA Times puzzle called "At the Dress Dinner" and the theme fill is made up of... "foods that include clothing or dress material." As fill, cotton candy has appeared in some seven puzzles, apparently as theme fill on each occasion; four of those occasions being puzzles with a food 'n' fabric theme. All of which is to say, where puzzle themes are concerned, be prepared for "everything old is new again." "Déjà vu all over again" may not the preferred choice, but it does go with the territory.

I was about to say that elsewhere in the puzzle Randy had given us a lot to chew on and then mention I'M ALIVE [Cry from an avalanche survivor] and how this first-time puzzle fill reminded me (as clued) of Alive, the gripping Piers Paul Reid account of the survivors of an air disaster in the Andes. But that would be in very bad taste... (TSK, Jane. Had enough? ME, TOO...) I will add that "I'm Alive" is one of the great numbers in Tony-winners Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's gripping rock musical Next to Normal—about a woman with bi-polar disorder and its effect on her family. Not for the faint of heart.

Because I play so much of it at work, loved seeing PHONE TAG in the grid; and CS first-timer SKY CAM [It provides video from above], which is already passé in the sense that we take it for granted now, the same way we became inured to the miracle of telephone communication. And how nice to see an [Apple product] that's actually the product of an apple: CIDER.

Before I SKIDDOO (oh, if only there'd been a 23D this coulda be attached to...), I do want to point out that sans "material," there is yet another dessert within. The [Chic Young creation] BLONDIE ain't just a comic strip!

David Cromer's Los Angeles Times crossword

Each theme entry picks up an -IC that alters one word into something completely unrelated:

• 18A. [Break from soldiers' training?] is BASIC RELIEF, vs. bas-relief.
  
• 24A. [Clown settlement?] clues an ANTIC COLONY. Aaaah! Clowns! I just saw Bruce Nauman's video exhibit, Clown Torture, at the Art Institute's new Modern Wing. I pity the security guards who have to spend more than one minute within earshot of that exhibit. And no, they can't turn the volume down. (I asked.) I much preferred Sue Williams' painting, It's a New Age (NSFW). I am also fond of Christopher Wool's painting, Trouble—it's vowelless, like that Frank Longo crossword book! Here comes TRBL.
  
• 38A. [International affair?] is a TOPIC OF THE WORLD.
  
• 49A. [O. Henry stories?] are IRONIC WORKS. That's perfect, absolutely perfect.
  
• 60A. [Copperfield's limo?] (MAGIC WHEELS). Magician David Copperfield, not Dickens' David Copperfield. (Each time I typed that name, it came out "Copperfiend.")

I've been listening to a soundtrack of chainsaws and a woodchipper while doing this puzzle and writing about it, and I swear it's giving me a headache. So for details on non-theme fill and clues (and a good idea for a grand unifying entry for the theme), I'll send you to Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Just My Type"

I thought I had enough desktop publishing experience to dig a font theme, but no. The fonts in Brendan's theme aren't all familiar to me, and there's nothing innately entertaining or meaningful about the font names. Okay, so there's a font called Franklin that I don't use. There was a president named FRANKLIN PIERCE. And [Font penetration?] could clue that, except that pierce is a verb, not a noun, and Google shows me that the Franklin font isn't especially pointy, so there's no logical or amusing link to PIERCE. See what I mean? I'm just not feelin' it, dawg. Minor typographical nerd bonus points for the [Font suitcase?] clue for COURIER BAG. Back in the day, I handled font suitcases.

In Wednesday's L.A. Times crossword, SAT was clued as [Met] and this gave some people fits as they could just not accept that the words' equivalency was valid, no matter how many examples and dictionary definitions they saw. So thanks to Brendan for cluing SIT as [Be in session]. Yes! The sit/meet connection is not a sham!

I don't like [Crude object] as a clue for ORE—ore is a material and not a discrete object. I'll bet there's some ore buried within mountains, and Brendan did have some good mountain action here. The [Beatles album whose working title was "Everest"] is ABBEY ROAD, and the second-tallest mountain after Everest is K2 or, in crossword language, K-TWO. K-TWO is clued as ["The savage mountain"], which makes it sound volcanic and my first guess for any 4-letter volcano is ETNA. Whoops; not this time.

FIJI is the [Nation where golfer Vijay Singh is from]. It's a mystery to me: Why isn't "Fiji Vijay" his nickname?

Cathy Allis's Wall Street Journal crossword, "To Open: The Complete Instruction"

Cathy's second National Geographic Geopuzzle crossword is available in PDF form. This month's theme relates to the "Vanishing Venice" article.

The WSJ theme's a good bit more whimsical than any of the finance-related themes that sometimes appear in that paper. Cathy reinterprets packaging opening instructions by adding words onto the end of them. My favorite is 117A: [Cracker box: "Slide finger under flap and loosen gently"...] SO AS TO ENSURE A PAPER CUT. Ouch! I also like 65A: [Individual string cheese: "Safety first! Open with hands, not teeth"...] because SCISSORS ARE FOR WIMPS. I used to work with a woman who tore a neck muscle opening a pack of Twizzlers with her teeth. I am not making this up.

Solid puzzle with a few bits of crosswordese (57A: [Basketry willow] is OSIER and 12D: [Architectural pilaster] is ANTA, for example], nothing too crazy, and overall medium-tough cluing. Favorite clue: 32D: [They improve your balance] refers to CREDITS in your bank or credit card account.

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Thursday, 7/23

NYT 5:23
LAT 4:00
CS 5:47 (J—paper)
Ink Well untimed

Gary & Stephen Kennedy's New York Times crossword

All right, I'm gonna have to piece together this theme while blogging about this 15x16 puzzle. I see that Baha Men's overplayed [Hit song from 2000...and a hint to 10 symmetrically arranged Across answers], WHO LET THE DOGS OUT, pertains to some "___ dog" phrases. I see two of the five pairs of symmetrical entries, and expect to encounter the rest by eyeballing the grid. Oh! I see now. The 10 extra answers need to include the DOG in order to match up with their clue. Give a solver enough wine and she will only notice one of the 10 clues doesn't quite work for the given answer.

• 1A, 74A. If you're a HOT dog, you're a [Show-off]. I had HAM and let the crossings change it to HOT without paying attention to the clue/answer mismatch. 74A is EAT, or [Cutthroat]—dog EAT dog, with two missing dogs that have been let out. The unanswered question, of course, is "Who let the dogs out?" I blame the Kennedys.
  
• 9A, 72A. A [U.S. Marine] is a DEVIL dog, and an [Old sailor] is a SALTY dog.
  
• 34A, 47A. A dog CATCHER is an [Animal control officer], while a dog BREEDER is a [Person who raises and sells pups].
  
• 15A, 70A. [Leader of the pack] is the ALPHA dog, and a LUCKY dog is [One falling into good fortune].
  
• 36A, 46A. [Folded corner] of a page is a dog-EAR, and a DOG tag is a [G.I.'s ID].

Now that's I've scrounged up those 10 answers—nine of which I did not look askance at while solving but certainly ought to have!—I'm ready for bed. What a workout! Before then, 10 clues:

• 42A. [Alexander ___, Russian who popularized a chess opening] is PETROV.
  
• 20a. MAGLEV, short for magnetic levitation, is a [Bullet train type].
  
• 25A. [Innards] are VISCERA! I love both words.
  
• 3D. [Kraft Foods drink] is TANG, which I absolutely loved as a kid. Is this a bonus tie-in to the moon landing anniversary, what with the astronauts supposedly drinking Tang back in the day?
  
• 4D. [With "the" and 32-Across, describing an old Matryoshka doll] clues MADE IN / the USSR.
  
• 10D. [The 31st vis-a-vis the 1st, e.g.] is an EVE, as in New Year's Eve.
  
• 11D. [She-foxes] are called VIXENS.
  
• 21D. [Super Bowl of 2023] will be numbered LVII, or 57.
  
• 23D. Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, and #2 is K2. The [K2 locale] is the KASHMIR, which might also be clued by way of the Led Zeppelin song.
  
• 37D, 48D. [With 48-Down, for example, south of the border] clues POR / EJEMPLO, or literally "for example."

Updated Thursday morning:

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Metal Detection"—Janie's review

Patrick tests our mettle today by filling his puzzle with 60 squares of theme fill―six words and phrases each containing the name of a familiar metal. Ready? There's:

• 18A. MARIGOLDS ["The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon ___" (Pulitzer-winning play)]. No one less than Shelley Winters starred when this played on Broadway in 1978; and Carol Kane was in the cast as well. This play received the Pulitzer mind you. How long did it run? 16 performances! While its Broadway run was seriously truncated, it's had a healthy afterlife in regional theatre and as a film. But can you say "tough business"?! In the grid, notice how the first five letters of MARIGOLDS sit atop the last five letters of
  
• 20A. PHIL SILVERS [Top banana of "Top Banana"]. Well, this one ran for just under a year in the 1951-52 season and won a Tony Award for its leading man. Score was by Johnny Mercer (he of yesterday's "I'm an Old Cowhand..." fame). "Top banana" is a theatrical term that's derived from vaudeville and refers to the starring act in a vaudeville performance.
  
• 38A. REMINGTON STEELE [Pierce Brosnan project of the 1980s] which is crossed at center by 30D. IRONY [Literary device in "The Gift of the Magi"]. Now that's just lovely, the way those two cross.
  
• 58A. COPPERFIELD [David in Dickens]. And here again, this fill's first five letters sit atop the last five letters of
  
• 65A. BRASSERIE [Tavern that serves beer and food].

Not only has Patrick given us a lot of fresh theme-fill (marigolds looks to be a CS debut, and Phil Silvers and Copperfield major-puzzle firsts), but look how he's paired the precious metals gold and silver; the ferrous metals (iron-containing) iron and steel; and the alloy brass with its major component, copper. Additionally, note the bonus fill we get with of RUST [Oxidize]. Those ferrous metals especially are subject to oxidation. All of which is to say, between the quality of the fill and the placement of the fill in the grid, this is one tightly executed theme.

But all metal-work and no play makes Patrick a dull boy. Happily, with Patrick's puzzles, play is usually not far behind. Today's is no exception. In addition to the thematic "...MARIGOLDS," we also get HAMLET [Play set in Denmark] and ["It Might as Well be Spring" musical] STATE FAIR, which came into being as a movie and was later adapted for the stage. Another movie in the mix is ["Cat] BALLOU" [(1965 Fonda/Marvin film); and while the clue doesn't reference this small-screen series, [Top guns] does yield (The) A-TEAM.

Where there are plays, there're gonna be players. Joining PHIL SILVERS in the spotlight are ["Amadeus" star Tom] HULCE, [Actor Milo] O'SHEA, [Raymond ...] BURR, and LON [Chaney of "The Monster"].

You may recall that yesterday's puzzle also featured singer/actor Olivia Newton-John. Now just take a look at the nifty way Patrick's clued that old stand-by SIR: [Title for Olivier, Newton or John]. Love it. (For the uninitiated, that's Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Elton John.)

Btw, our prolific constructor references his own puzzle (yesterday's NYT) not only with OXIDE but in spelling out the first name AES, ADLAI [Ike's opponent, twice]. Of course, that's Ike as in "I LIKE [___ Ike" (campaign slogan)].

And, goin' out on a limb here... ASIAN for [Like some elephants] reminded me of the joke about a particular post-bank robbery exchange:

Detective: Can you describe the robber?
Teller: Like I told you—it was an elephant!!
Detective: Okay. Okay. So—was it an Asian elephant or an African elephant?
Teller: Wuh...?
Detective: Look—the Asian elephant has small ears; the African elephant has big ears. So...?
Teller: How would I know?? He had a stocking over his head!!

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

My full writeup is across town at the other blog. No time this morning for more than a sentence:

The theme is phrases that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see in a crossword grid that can be clued with [Take___], where the blank is filled with in/out, on/off, and up/down; 72 theme squares have, alas, forced some compromises in the fill.

I'll be back this afternoon to talk about Ben Tausig's Ink Well puzzle.

Okay, so I lied. It's Thursday evening, not afternoon. Long day.

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "J Play"

The theme: H changes to J in six phrases. A blanket hog becomes BLANKET JOG, or [Run taken in the extreme cold?]. I'll take the blanket, hold the jog. Playing on Hot or Not, we have JOT OR NOT, [Rating site that asks users whether they would use a given notepad?]. A group hug turns into a GROUP JUG, or [Big wine vessel passed around?]. The funniest-sounding theme entry is JELLO DOLLY, or [Hand truck for carting around a certain no-bake dessert?]. Remember Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!? It was just in the news that Johnny Depp wants to play Channing in a musical biopic, and that she's given her blessing. It's the natural evolution for him, going from Willy Wonka to the Mad Hatter to Carol Channing. Anyway...back to the puzzle. The two Down theme answers are JAIL SATAN, a [Chant from a crowd angry at the Antichrist?], and ICE JOCKEY, [One who plays music at skating parties?].

Ben likes the concept of the word at 12-Down, but boy, that one is tough. I needed all seven crossings and still didn't recognize it as a word. PANEITY is [The state of being bread (!)]. A television has much less PANEITY than a bagel, but does the TV have more PANEITY than air does?

Top answers and clues:

• BEER NUTS are [Bar freebies] and [Rolls at a bar] are SUSHI.
  
• Speaking of edibles, CHAI TEA is widely available in the U.S. now, but it's clued as a [Punjabi breakfast beverage].
  
• Brand spankin' new clue for ETON: [English college with a recent swine flu outbreak].
  
• The [Well-to-do Southern California town] LA JOLLA is near San Diego, I believe. I fervently hope the local high school has a team called the La Jolla Hoyas.
  
• In the category of "infelicitous associations," we've got SUNDAE clued as a [Fudge-drenched treat, often]...right next to POO.

The tough stuff is concentrated in the PANEITY corner. We get the E-less spelling variant ABSINTH for [Wormwood plant product now legal in the U.S.: Var.], [Challenger passenger Judith] RESNIK, arbitrary ABAA for [Simple rhyme scheme], ETHYL [___ alcohol], and Sen. KYL, the [Jon who's junior to John McCain, in Arizona].

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Wednesday, 7/22

BEQ 5:37
Onion 4:03
NYT 3:59
LAT 2:46
CS 5:50 (J—paper)

TV alert! The Dinner Impossible show filmed at the ACPT is reairing on the Food Network tonight. If you missed it this spring, tune in to see Andrea Carla Michaels steal the show. (Thanks to Eric Maddy for the heads-up.)


Patrick Blindauer's New York Times crossword

Patrick's puzzle riffs on SLOPPY JOES (64A: [School cafeteria fare...and a hint to this puzzle's theme]) by taking the other five permutations of the letters JOE and plunking them down as the first names of five famous guys named JOE:

• 17A. EOJ FRAZIER is your [Olympic boxing gold medalist of 1964].
  
• 25A. Broadway JEO NAMATH was the Jets' [Hero of Super Bowl III].
  
• 30A. The [47th U.S. vice president] is OJE BIDEN.
  
• 45A. OEJ PESCI is the [Oscar winner of 1990].
  
• 51A. EJO COCKER is the [Singer on day three of 1969's Woodstock]. Have you seen that "captioned for the clear-headed" video of his Beatles cover? "Hoggify."

We have so many notable Joe achievements! Won a gold medal, won the Super Bowl, won the second highest office in the land, won an Oscar...and won the right to be mocked. This is not the usual sort of theme, so good job coming up with a variant of the anagram theme that's rich in Scrabbly goodness.

Without further ado, today's clue roundup:

• Tying in with Woodstock and the '60s, we have 15A: [Historic San Francisco theater, with "the"] for ROXIE (I knew only of various Roxy theaters) and 10A: illicit ACID, clued with [It was dropped in the '60s]. Make love, not war!
  
• 20A. [For the nonce] is a quaint clue for PRO TEM. I love "nonce."
  
• 38A. LAVA is an [Abrasive soap brand]. Ow. Probably don't want to use this bar soap on your naughty bits.
  
• 47A. [Pockets of dough?] are PITAS, as in pita breads.
  
• 61A. The [Egyptian god with the head of a jackal] is named ANUBIS. Does anyone use this guy in cryptic crosswords? He could be the answer to a container clue.
  
• 67A. Last time I saw ILLER in a crossword, it was icky. Its ickiness is somewhat ameliorated by the tag in the clue, [More sick, in dialect]. Which dialect might this be, I wonder?
  
• 68A. [Bibliophile's suffix] is -IANA, as in, say, Dickensiana.
  
• 1D. The trickiest clue, I thought, was one of the first I wrestled with. [Jewish leader?] isn't the prefix JUDEO, it's not a RABBI, it's not PERES or BEGIN. It's ALEPH, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Is it kosher to use "Jewish" and "Hebrew" interchangeably like this?
  
• 6D. [Cartoonist Chast] is named ROZ. I love her work. The alphabet book she illustrated for Steve Martin is considerably darker than most ABC books, and layered with so many juicy little twists. WACO, by the way, is 22D: [Steve Martin's birthplace].
  
• 11D. CD PLAYERS are [Sound system components].
  
• 44D. ETON is a [Neighbor of Slough]. Slough, the home of the paper company in the original British The Office?

Updated Wednesday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Field Trip"―Janie's review

Sometimes art does seem to imitate life. I'm taking a vacation day today because, thanks to puzzle pal Sara, I'll be at Yankee Stadium this afternoon for the Yankee/Orioles game. So how fitting it is that the "field trip" in the title refers to the national pastime that I'll be enjoying this very day. (And how fitting it is that the constructor's pre-hyphenate last name describes the material of so many of the best baseball bats!) Looking at the "field trip" that's been plotted around that central BASES [Diamond quartet (and this puzzle's theme)] at 37A, we have:

• 17A. FIRST FAMILY [1600 Pennsylvania Avenue residents]. Before I realized this puzzle would take us for a trip around the baseball field, I thought maybe all of the theme fill would relate to things/people one might encounter on a trip to Washington, D. C....
• 11D. SECOND PRIZE [Also-ran's award]. I know it's so, but still―ouch. Sure it's not the top honor, but maybe [Red ribbon award in the States]? (Only because in Canada, second place gets a blue ribbon.)
• 53A. THIRD ESTATE [The common people]. Love this fill. Do you know about the "estates of the realm"? This caste system goes back to the Middle Ages, where the First Estate was made up of the clergy; the Second Estate, nobility; and the Third Estate, commoners. This looks to be first-time fill in a major puzzle (ditto 11D). The Fourth Estate, as you probably know, is the reserved for the press and its usage dates back to the 19th century; the Fifth Estate, everything else―like trade unions, non-mainstream media, organized crime...
• 25D. HOME COUNTRY [Birthplace]. This is another phrase that makes its first appearance in a major puzzle.

Balancing the sports theme is a strong musical sub-theme:

• [Opera opener] is ACT I; you can almost hear the strains of ["Carmen" composer] BIZET;
  
• OLIVIA [Singer Newton-John] made her mark in the pop world, but if she ever recorded standards, she could do worse than to have a go at IT'S MAGIC [Styne/Cahn hit song of 1947] (and another example of "first-time" fill);
  
• [Rappers' improvisations] are RHYMES of course;
  
• WHITE TIE [Formal invitation specification], which seems to be appearing in a CS puzzle for the first time, easily summons up the elegant Irving Berlin song "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails"; and finally,
  
• while it's clued simply as [Herder], I was immediately put in mind of "I'm an Old COWHAND from the Rio Grande," written by Savannah-born Johnny Mercer (for the movie Rhythm on the Range, 1936) about a 20th-century cowboy who has little in common with cowboys of old. The link here will take you to a clip from the movie, as it was performed by Bing Crosby, Martha Raye, Louis Prima and others.

And how large is that [Large African expanse] known as the SAHARA? Pret' darn large―some 3.5 million square miles, which is almost the size of the U.S. or Europe. SAY WHAT? ["Huh?"] Yep―that's seriously large. One can only hope for many OASES [Desert havens] midst all that sand!

Timothy Meaker's Los Angeles Times crossword

I wrote this puppy up last night at L.A. Crossword Confidential. It was one of the weirdest theme encounters I've had in some time, as two thirds of the phrases that begin with a kind of SANDWICH were not kinds of sandwiches in my vocabulary. Further unsettling me, the two 8-letter theme answers were in tasty triple-stacks of 8-letter answers, which meant my eyeballs looked at the other four 8s a little harder to see if they were thematic. "Lemon sandwich? Well, that sounds as plausible as a Western sandwich."

Allow me to plagiarize myself and borrow my theme writeup from LACC: The SANDWICH clue, 70A: [Lunch order that can follow the starts of 1-, 35- and 43-Across], was crystal clear. But the sandwiches! They hit my sweet spot a mere one third of the time.

Theme answers:

• 1A: [Bar mixer] (CLUB SODA). We all know what a club sandwich is, right? Some sort of lunchmeat, maybe turkey, plus bacon, lettuce, and tomato on toast? Cut into cute little triangles?
  
• 35A: [Jerusalem prayer site] (WESTERN WALL). Neither PuzzleGirl nor I had ever heard of the Western sandwich. Professor Google tells me that first of all, a Denver omelet and a Western omelet are pretty much the same thing, and a Denver sandwich or a Western sandwich is that omelet smacked between a couple slices of toast. Ham, green peppers, and onions mixed into the eggs, if I recall correctly. I can't say I've ever seen this concoction on a diner menu in the Midwest. An LACC reader reports seeing this sandwich in Baltimore four to six decades ago.
  
• 43A: [Unrestricted trading areas] (OPEN MARKETS). OPEN MARKETS doesn't feel like a Monday-friendly entry, which helps account for why this is a Wednesday crossword. I hit the skids here, too, as I call 'em open-faced sandwiches rather than open sandwiches.

More on the fill and whatnot over at the other blog.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Three MCs and One DJ"

Paying respect to the Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch, who's just been diagnosed with salivary gland cancer, Brendan works in three MC insertions and one DJ insertion. Do the Beastie Boys have three MCs and one DJ? (Brendan's post includes a video of a song with the same title as the puzzle.) How much crossover is there between an MC and a DJ? These things are beyond my ken. The theme entries insert MC inside "recovery room" (RECOVERY ROM-COM, or romantic comedy), "see ya later" (SEE YMCA LATER—good surprise twist taking "ya" to YMCA), and "suited to a T" (SUITED TO A TOMCAT). The DJ makes Austin Powers into the phrase ADJUSTIN' POWERS, or [Fine-tunin' supernations?], which hurts a bit. How might one adjust a nation, exactly?

I know there are genuine MATH WHIZzes who read this blog. Is [Expert in KenKen, say] a good clue for your kind?

Nuttiest-looking answer: K.C. ROYALS all mashed up in the grid as KCROYALS. They're the [Kauffman Stadium team, for short], and I can't say I've ever heard of that stadium. K.C. keeps it on the D.L.

Not the Quigleyest fill ever—ITERS, HOER, ARETE, GENU, YAP AT? Those make the EELER seem smooth by comparison. But I'll cut Brendan some slack because he loves the Beastie Boys and he clearly just started cooking up this puzzle after hearing Yauch's news on Monday.

Ben Tausig's Onion A.V. Club crossword

This week's Onion theme involves changing -ALE to -AIL in familiar phrases:

• 17A. [Stage show featuring big packages?] is a MAIL REVUE. The clue also works for the base phrase, "male revue."
  
• 31A. [Thing posted at the Vatican City prison?] is CHRISTIAN BAIL, and unless the Pope's prisoners hang posters of Christian Bale, this clue does not work for the base phrase.
  
• 36A. A clearance sale turns into CLEARANCE SAIL, or [Rigging purchased out-of-season?].
  
• 56A. The goofiest thing in the whole puzzle is the image presented by PAIL-FACED, or [Having a bucket for a mouth and a handle for a nose?].

Five clues:

• 9A. PETCO? [They sell grasshoppers as food] for your reptile.
  
• 45A. TETS, or Asian New Years, are annual [Events during which it is inauspicious to eat duck or shrimp]. The other 364 days a year, this remains inauspicious for the duck and the shrimp.
  
• 49A. An ARTEL is a [Soviet co-op]. Crosswordese! Dictionary tells me it predates the Soviet Union and is a historical term for a cooperative of craftsmen living and working together in prerevolutionary Russia. I'll bet they had male revues for entertainment.
  
• 12D. The CAT is the [Animal called "maeow" in Thai]. That makes sense.
  
• 57D. IT'S ["___ Always Sunny in Philadelphia"] is a funny show on TV.

Updated Wednesday afternoon:
Janie here. The O's lost 6-4, but their two home runs at the top of the 9th and the great company more than compensated. A good time was had by all!!

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MGWCC #59

crossword 9:23
puzzle about 20 minutes

hi, everybody! this week's episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "Pick Up Lines," was a challenging crossword with a not-too-tough meta that took me way too long to solve. let's have a look at the theme answers:

• [Lousy Clapton album?] is an ERIC FAILURE, playing on "epic failure." except that everybody calls it "epic fail" nowadays. these kids and their slang. *shakes head*
  
• [Frat boy who chugs Manischewitz?] is a KOSHER DELT. this one took me forever, because i kept thinking the base phrase was "kosher dill," rather than "kosher deli."
  
• [Kellogg's cereal that gets you stoned?] is CRACKLIN' QAT BRAN (cracklin' oat bran). QAT, as scrabble players know, is an evergreen shrub chewed as a stimulant, mostly in yemen.
  
• [What desperate donkeys do?] is BRAY FOR A MIRACLE (pray for a miracle). this was probably the easiest theme answer for me.
  
• [Movie about a guy whose toes can hack websites?] is MY LEET FOOT (my left foot). is this anything like the net? because that movie suuuucked.
  
• finally, [Move closer to the leader, in golf -- and the theme of this puzzle] is GAIN A STROKE.
  

of course, that's exactly the transformation being used in each theme answer. one letter is gaining a stroke (in its capital form, sans serif) to make a new one: P to R in ERIC FAILURE, I to T in KOSHER DELT, O to Q in CRACKLIN' QAT BRAN, P to B in BRAY FOR A MIRACLE, and F to E in MY LEET FOOT.

so about this meta... the contest instructions tell us that This week's contest answer is a famous arcade game of the 1980s. fine. i know my classic arcade games, but even so i pored over the list matt cited from wikipedia. looked for anything that involved "gaining a stroke." looked for anything that might look like a version of an answer in the grid, with one more or one fewer stroke in one of the letters. nothing. thought about a possible moon landing connection, what with the apollo 11 anniversary, but neither moon patrol nor lunar lander seemed to have anything to do with anything.

after all that, i did what i should have done from the very start: look at which letters got changed in the theme answers. the set of removed letters is PIOPF, which doesn't really do much. but look at the new letters: RTQBE. does that spell anything? hell yes! it spells Q*BERT, that's what. i spent hours playing this game as a kid, so i should have known it earlier. anyway.


lots of stuff in the grid gave me trouble. stuff i just plain didn't know:

• [Johnny's role in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"] is RAOUL. i don't even know who johnny is, let alone RAOUL. depp? unitas? tremaine?
  
• ["Survivorman" host Stroud] is LES. what the hell is that? who the hell is that?
  
• ["Whatever Works"] director is ALLEN. okay, never heard of the movie/show, and ... um, marcus allen? ray allen? gracie allen? allen wrench? edited: apparently this is woody allen's new movie. i've heard of him.
  
• ["___ Pablo" (1980's sitcom)] is AKA. never heard of it.
  
• [Eddie ___ (only person to win a gold medal in both the summer and winter Olympics)] is EAGAN. this is the only answer on this list that i was actually interested to learn. in case you're also curious: light heavyweight boxing, 1920 antwerp; 4-man bobsled, 1932 lake placid. he also appears to have earned a harvard law degree, so he must have been punching the right people.
  

clues i liked:

• [Good feller] is an AXE, for felling things. and [It sure looks good] is an EYE if you don't mind "good" as an adverb.
  
• [Schlage rival] is YALE. a buddy of mine always goes to the annual schlage-yale football game, but i went once my freshman year and was underwhelmed.
  
• IT'S and 'TIS are both clued as [Anagram and synonym of] each other. cute, but it means you need to get some crossings before solving them.
  
• [Card kid] is ENDER wiggin, hero of orson scott card sci-fi novels, notably ender's game.
  
• [Tolkien creature], three letters. ORC or ENT? nope, it's ELF. this isn't really related, but my wife got a copy of a terry pratchett book called men at arms for her birthday last week. except that the cover has a weird font that made her think it was called men at ATMs. yeah, there's probably a crossword theme in there.
  
• there's another classic trap at [Mercury or Mazda], three letters. CAR? nope, it's GOD. i guess he's referring to ahura mazda, god of light in zoroastrianism, but does anybody call him just "mazda"? is that, like, his last name? "mazda, party of four—your table is ready." well, i just read up on him at wikipedia and it's still not clear whether he's referred to as ahura, mazda, or both.
  
• [Cyclone-ravaged ___ Island] is just CONEY island, "ravaged" by its popular roller coaster.
  
• matt goes meta with [Last week's MGWCC winner David] STEIN. except that by now, it's two weeks ago.
  

the only thing i didn't like about the grid was the ugly-ass crossing of the odd partial A BUMP with the nasty suffix -ATION.

that's all for me. tune in next week when it gets really hard.

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Tuesday, 7/21

Jonesin' 4:30
LAT 2:54
NYT 2:39
CS 7:10 (J―paper)

Hey, I'm looking for a couple fresh voices to guest-blog the August 3 and 4 puzzles. If you're interested, leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail. Edited to add: I've got three volunteers to cover six puzzles, so we're all set this time. I'm hoping to take some time off again in late December...if not sooner. Thanks!)

Donna Levin's New York Times crossword

Aha, so the Times is going with the 40th anniversary of the next-day Times headline for its moon landing crossword theme:

• 20A. The [New York Times headline of 7/21/69] was MEN WALK ON MOON. This is in counterpoint to the page from the Onion's Our Dumb Century (see photo), in which understandably astonished swear words issue forth from the "newspaper" and the imagined quotes from key players. That was my favorite page in the book, though I feel no need to buy a print of it since I have the book. (Apologies to the more sensitive among you for the rough language.)
  
• 28A. In both the Onion and the NYT, Neil ARMSTRONG is near the headline, the [Subject of a photo beneath 20-Across].
  
• 45A, 55A. The [Message left by 28-Across for future explorers] was WE CAME IN PEACE / FOR ALL MANKIND.

Moving along beyond the timely theme, we have a mix of solidly Tuesdayish fare, high-end and not-often-in-the-puzzle vocabulary, and old-school crosswordese. The first category needs little discussion. Here's the fancy stuff:
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• 59A. Latin! A FORTIORI means [Even more certain: Lat.]. I...did not know that. Have seen the phrase, can spell the phrase, honestly could not have defined it before now.
  
• 6D. We get plenty of SASS in crosswords, but hardly any TALK BACK, or [Sass, with "to"].
  
• 8D. MAGNUM is a [Large wine bottle]. That's the 1.5-liter bottle. Not quite a Galloesque jug.
  
• 36D. Jim ROCKFORD! That's the [1970s James Garner TV title role]. Even when I was a kid, I was prone to having crushes on wry men.
  
• 38D. DOPAMINE is a [Pleasure-associated neurotransmitter]. How many people tried to wedge ENDORPHIN into that slot? Endorphins are more famously pleasure-associated, I think.

In the crosswordese zone, there are a few notable answers:

• 40A. LSTS, or "landing ship, tank" in the plural, are those [D-Day vessels] seen in the long opening battle of Saving Private Ryan, aren't they?
  
• 66A. ESNE! We rarely see the ESNE anymore. That's an [Anglo-Saxon laborer].
  
• 29D. EDINA is the crossword's favorite [Minneapolis suburb]. (Hi, Cinedina!) I knew the name from crosswords long before I went to Minnesota for college.
  
• 39D. Our [Inscribed pillar] is a STELA. This can also be spelled STELE, so I usually leave the last letter blank.

Cute stuff: 34A: [Soprano ___ Te Kanawa], or KIRI, is from New Zealand. So is the KIWI, or 34D: [Fuzzy fruit], that she intersects. I'm partial to the pop culture vibe; ELAINE from Seinfeld, MARLO Thomas (her husband Phil Donahue does the NYT crossword), the XBOX, the movie D.O.A., a Disney ALI, and EMILIO Estevez show up in the grid. If you think that's too much, don't complain—I see a good dozen other answers that could have been clued as pop culture names but weren't. (The DOORS! MAGNUM, P.I.! ABE Vigoda! Growing Up GOTTI! The TOMS Petty and Waits!)

Updated Tuesday morning:

Gail Grabowski's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Beginning at the End"—Janie's review

Last week Sarah Keller gave us "Starting Ends," in which in the starting word of the theme-phrase could be paired with the word end. Though there's something similar in the titles, Gail does go a different route. The end word in each of her theme phrases is a synonym for the word beginning. Sorta...

• 20A. PROMISING START [Favorable approach]. A beautiful phrase and a great way to get the ball rollin'.
  
• 36A. SHUTTLE LAUNCH [Cape Canaveral event]. I'm still with ya, but am sort of wishing for a less direct clue...
  
• 56A. OPENING KICK-OFF [Initial football play]. Um. Department of Redundancy Department... Both words—not merely the one promised in the title—fit the description. Perhaps you view this as a bonus. I might have if the title had been "Beginnings"—but that "...at the End" part gives us the rules of the game, no? I love the fill itself—it's active, it summons up a strong and very specific image—but I'd have preferred something like SEASON PREMIÈRE that kept to the pattern already established. On the positive side, all three phrases are fresh and look to be making making a major-puzzle debut.

Of the non-theme fill, I particularly liked seeing the compounds: STARFISH, COLD FEET and HOLD FAST. And it seems to me that participants in an ARMS DEAL (CS-debut) may be represented by LAW FIRMS (major-puzzle first). Sometimes after the fact... Regardless, you can be sure there's going to be a healthy FEE [Attorney's charge] attached.

I don't have lots more to say about this one, but there's a nice cluster with the crossing of LONG U [The vowel sound in "lute"] with GOOF and TULLE. That double "O" of the former and the "U" of the latter share that long "u" sound as well. Oh―and so does the "U" in the adjacent SNAFU. WOW ["I'm impressed!"]!

Orange here.

Hey, some of you may have noticed that in addition to today's NYT puzzle being made by a woman, there were four women in the NYT crossword bylines last week. This should be unremarkable, unsurprising, an ordinary occurrence. The Times averages about two weeks a year in which at least half the names in the constructor byline belong to women—so absent any changes, it'll probably be months before we see such a thing again. I hope it becomes more common. I also hope:

(1) That Will Shortz encourages talented, experienced female constructors to send him more puzzles.

(2) That those women who've cut back on submitting to the NYT will redouble their efforts.

(3) That Will publishes plenty of puzzles by women. It does make a difference to women to see themselves represented, as seeing two weeks straight of male bylines can subconsciously dampen the sense of possibility for a woman. (My son and I just talked this morning about the message a MEN WORKING sign sends to boys and girls: "This work is for men only." What a slap in the face to women working on a construction crew that sign is.)

(4) That more women will get into crossword construction. Buy Patrick Berry's constructing guide. Join Cruciverb.com, read the many valuable "Sage Advice" essays, and sign up for the Cruciverb-l mailing list to see what issues constructors deal with. And before you submit a crossword to an editor, run it by experienced people who can critique it honestly and help you polish it so it's more likely to get published.

Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword

This theme reminded me of early-week Newsday crosswords, which seem more apt to run the spiraling-four-entries pattern than the other newspapers do. Is it my imagination? Perhaps. The four theme entries are phrases that end with words that also mean "boat"...though in one case, the "boat" word means BOAT, too. WITCHCRAFT was a [Salem trials crime]. BLOOD VESSEL is clued as the [Aorta, for one]. CENSORSHIP is [Press suppression]. And ROCK THE BOAT, which is a figure of speech using words that do indeed have to do with rocking boats, means [Shake things up].

I like BOB DOLE as a crossword answer; he was the [1996 loser to Bill Clinton] and appeared in Wordplay. I was a sucker for those Ripley's Believe It or Not books when I was a kid, but would have also liked an Alien/Sigourney Weaver clue for RIPLEY just as much as ["Believe It or Not" guy]. [Rocker Elvis] COSTELLO has a new album out and I nearly bought the CD for my husband but figure he can buy it from iTunes. SHINDIGS is a great word for [Galas]. SCHLEPS and (the depressing) SKID ROW are also lively entries.

Less likeable: the stuff like plural OLES, Bambi's aunt ENA, ENHALO, ELOI, TATS clues as crosswordese [Makes doilies], OLLA, NEE, OCTAD, ETHANE, and SEAWAY. I should hate the old PASHA, that [Old Turkish VIP], but it's a word we've taken to using around the house.

Matt Jones's themeless Jonesin' crossword, "A Buncha—words, that is"

(Public service announcement: If you want to get the Jonesin' puzzle as soon as it's available, join the Jonesin' Google Group. There are Across Lite and printable jpeg options, and the puzzles are usually sent out on Mondays. If you wait for the puzzles to appear on alt-weekly papers' websites, you'll probably be waiting until Thursday or Friday and won't be in synch with the blogging coverage.)

'Tis a promising start to the week, with Brendan Q's Themeless Monday followed by Matt's themeless today. Jonesin' puzzles usually have themes but I guess Matt sometimes gets a wild hair and gives us a themeless puzzle—I, for one, am glad. I'm short on time, so here's a list of clues and answers:

• 1A. [Fine] can mean SMOKIN' HOT. Super-fresh fill.
  
• 15A. The record TURNTABLE is [Dan the Automator's instrument]. Who? Don't know him.
  
• 34A. [It was big news in 1999] clues the NEW MILLENNIUM. I tried THE MILLENNIUM first.
  
• 37A. EASY BAKE OVEN! Terrific crossword answer! That's a [Toy that originally used a 100-watt light bulb].
  
• 7D. One [Cable network unlikely to air repeats of "The Sopranos"] is HBO FAMILY. I started with ABC FAMILY, which is even more unlikely on account of not being part of HBO.
  
• 33D. PEA GRAVEL is [Small rocks in a walkway]. Nice and rounded little pebbles.
  
• 40D. I don't at all understand why [Cleveland's home] is QUAHOG. My guess turns out to be correct—it's cartoon character Cleveland Brown, from Quahog, Rhode Island. He's getting a spinoff from that show that isn't Family Guy, right? Is it American Dad?
  
• 46D. I will be surprised if more than two people reading this already knew the word CULOT, or [Lamp base, in French, from the French for "ass"].

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Monday, 7/20

BEQ 4:13
LAT 2:43
NYT 2:29
CS 7:22 (J―paper)

Two extra puzzly bits from the New York Times:

(1) Will Shortz will be answering reader questions through July 24. Send your questions to askthetimes@nytimes.com. I wonder how one's odds of getting accepted to Harvard or Yale compare to one's chance of getting a crossword published in the Times. Given that each top high-schooler can't take more than one admission spot and a good number of crosswords are created by repeat offenders, I'll bet the yield is lower for a crossword newbie than an Ivy wannabe.

(2) The Puzzability team (Robert Leighton, Amy Goldstein, and Mike Shenk) has crafted another thematic suite of puzzles for the NYT's op-ed section. This one commemorates the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. The individual puzzles range from easy to extra easy, and I completely skipped the one logic puzzle and had no trouble getting to the final answer. (Hey, Times tech people: You should consider posting a link to a 7-page PDF rather than a bunch of 1-page PDFs so that printing the puzzles out is easier for those of us who support the paper via online page clicks.)

Pancho Harrison's New York Times crossword

Ha! I can't believe Pancho put PANCHO in his puzzle (48A: [Mexican revolutionary ___ Villa]). I recall some grumbling when Frank Longo once put a LONG O sound into one of his crosswords, but I don't quite see the point of the complaint. I'm waiting for a famous-enough REYNALDO to get my last name in the puzzle, and in the meantime say thanks to 13D: ["The Joy Luck Club" writer Tan] for giving AMY continuing literary cred.

A request to our crossword constructors and editors: Can we limit 15x15 puzzles to a maximum of two baseball references? This one's got 32D: [Hall-of-Famer Mel] OTT, 31A: [Ninth-inning pitcher] for CLOSER, and 9D: [Seventh-inning ritual] for STRETCH. Why, that's 50% more baseball content than I want!

Today's theme is tied together by 57A: PLANT MANAGERS, or [Factory supervisors...or a hint to the starts of 20-, 36- and 42-Across]. I'm confused, because those other three answers begin with parts of plants, but I don't get what the MANAGERS part has to do with it. The plant parts begin these phrases:

• 20A. [What the love of money is, they say] clues ROOT OF ALL EVIL. I'd kinda like this better with THE at the beginning, but it's still a lively phrase.
  
• 36A. To [Stop a prevailing trend] is to STEM THE TIDE.
  
• 42A. To LEAF THROUGH something is to [Quickly turn the pages of] it.

Highlights:

• 11D. EXPLOSIVE! That's a material like [Nitroglycerin or dynamite].
  
• 35D. To TRANSPOSE letters is to have them switch places, as demonstrated in [Make lemons into melons, e.g.]. Oranges transpose into onagers, but you probably don't want to eat the latter.
  
• 54A. From the Department of Outdated Slang comes the goofball pairing of MY EYE and ["Oh, bushwa!"].
  
• 45D. [One who mounts and dismounts a horse] is a GYMNAST. A while back, I posted a YouTube video to L.A. Crossword Confidential—a clip from Gymkata of a fight scene between a gymnast with a pommel horse and a horde of angry peasants. Go watch it and mock the ludicrous moviemaking.

Monday Crosswordese Roundup: Now, if you're new to crosswords, this puzzle's got some crosswordese you'll want to learn if it was unfamiliar to you. 17A: [Sicilian spewer] is Mount ETNA—pretty much any mention of a volcano in Europe or spewing in Italy takes us straight to ETNA. 24A: [RR depot] is STA. here, but occasionally it's going to be STN. instead; the abbreviated "RR" for "railroad" is your hint that the answer is an abbreviation for "station." 71A is ESSO, the old ["Put a tiger in your tank" brand] of gasoline; the answer to most gasoline-related clues is ESSO (while NEON accounts for most gaseous references). There's a musical term in the fill-in-the-blank clue 6D: [___ breve (2/2 time in music)] is missing its ALLA. 7D is RIAL, clued as [Iranian money]; Middle Eastern currency clues typically call for RIAL, RIYAL, or DINAR. 22D is a [Low-lying area], or VALE; the word's related to "valley" and starts with the same first three letters but sometimes the answer you need is GLEN.

Updated Monday morning:

William I. Johnston's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Extinguishing Features"—Janie's review

When I saw the title of today's puzzle, I felt for sure this would be one in which letters were dropped from one well-known phrase to create a new one. But no. This is really about the measures you should take to protect yourself in the event of fire: Stop, Drop and Roll, the last of which actually appeared yesterday (in this context) in the Venzke/Daily "Sunday Challenge." Now don't SNIFF if this doesn't sound like the merriest idea for a theme. Will has woven the warning into three active phrases and pulled everything together in the final one. In this way we're instructed to:

• 17A. STOP ON A DIME [Brake quickly];
  
• 28A. DROP ME A LINE ["Don't forget to write!"]; and
  
• 48A. ROLL THE DICE [Take one's chances, metaphorically]. (This one and 28A, btw, look to making their CS debuts.)

The person who pulls it all together and who doesn't want you to take your chances—metaphorically or otherwise—is the:

• 63A. FIRE-FIGHTER [Professional whose safety message is found in the beginnings of 17-, 28-, and 48-Across].

Will appears to have given us two theme-related words in ARSON [Torch job] and CHAR [Burn]. Hey—when yer hot, yer hot, right?

Now, it's not that I don't take the warning seriously, but I do have to share two images I found for the same message. One is an album cover for the (wild 'n' crazy lookin') Foxboro Hot Tubs...; and the other a poster, to all intents and purposes the kind a teacher might place in the classroom—but for one tiny change in the wording: "Stop, Drop and Roll... Will Not Work in HELL"! (And on the subject of Hell... do check out Ian Frazier's amusing piece in last week's New Yorker, "The Temperature of Hell: A Colloquium", featuring Al Gore, Satan and others on the subject of climate-change...)

Both TAILGATES [Joins the pregame party] and GUERRILLA [Tag for low-budget marketing techniques] also appear to be CS firsts. I particularly like that clue for the latter. Ordinarily I think of the word in connection with CHE [Comrade of Fidel], so I find it refreshing to see it as it's clued today—in a way that forces me to think about the range of its meaning/usage.

Looking at some clue/fill combos, I also liked the avian references—one in the clue [Pigeon, to a con artist] for the snappy EASY MARK, the other in the fill CAPON, punnily clued as [Fixed chicken]. (Poor rooster!) Got myself IN A JAM by trying to make IN A RUT work for [Stuck], and was amused to see DRESS emerge in response to [Slip cover?]. And as for that [City with the world's tallest man-made structure], have you seen pix of DUBAI lately??

Haven't seen the remake of ["Taking of] PELHAM [1 2 3..."], but did watch the original a few weeks ago. It has a taut, edgy screenplay by the late Peter Stone and a great jazzy score by David Shire to match. A genre flick, to be sure, but it sure delivers. And if the tension is all too much, you can always chill out with the Four Preps, who immortalized in song Santa CATALINA [Island off California]. It really doesn't get much mellower than that!

Robert Harris's Los Angeles Times crossword

Wouldn't you have expected a splashy Sunday crossword yesterday paying homage to today's 40th anniversary of NASA's moon landing? Instead, we get the celebration in a perfectly timely Monday puzzle. When the first theme clue was [57-Across, 12-Down or 24-Down], it seemed like a mean way to kick off a Monday theme—but it quickly became apparent what the theme was and after the weekend's mentions of the anniversary, it all came together in short order. That first theme answer, 16A, is ASTRONAUT. The rest of the theme plays out like this:

• 35A. TRANQUILITY BASE is the [Landing site of 7/20/1969.
  
• 57A, 12D, 24D. The three ASTRONAUTs are Neil ARMSTRONG, Buzz ALDRIN, and Michael COLLINS.
  
• 42A. Balancing out ALDRIN is APOLLO, clued [___ 11, mission celebrated in this puzzle].
  
• 9D. Outside of thematic symmetry is the MOON, floating high in the grid. [35-Across is on it].

Sometimes the eye and mind play tricks on the solver. For 10D: ABACUS, I misread the clue as [Bearded calculator]. Beaded! Not bearded.

Does anyone here have a SETTEE as [Part of a living room set]? No? It's just one of those words that live mainly in crosswords that you have to learn if you want to do crosswords regularly.

Updated midday Monday:

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"


Brendan billed this one as a hard puzzle but I thought it was easy for a themeless. Because I blew the morning at a retaurant (called Orange!) that neglected to cook our food for an inordinately long amount of time (and the food, when it finally came 45 minutes into our visit, was delicious, but I could really have done without the defensive waitress who didn't do a damned thing to stick up for her hungry customers), I'll move right along to the highlights list:

• 63A. [Dominant feature of the 56-Down skyline], 56D being the [Midwest city that is host to the annual Pitchfork Music Festival: Abbr.], or CHI, is the super-tall WILLIS TOWER. Some British company, in insurance, maybe, bought the naming rights to the Sears Tower, which shall henceforth be known to all Chicagoans as "I'm still calling it the Sears Tower. &%$# those limey bastards changing the name!" The only reason I had a clue about Pitchfork is that I have a Facebook friend who works for the Trib and linked to Greg Kot's reviews. Facebook: A handy tool for learning.
  
• 1A. This word isn't as new as WILLIS TOWER, but it was newer to me, i.e., I'd never seen it before. FUNEMPLOYED is clued as [Now having the opportunity to bike across the country, say]. That probably only works for the unemployed who aren't facing foreclosure, eviction, loss of family health insurance, etc., eh? Related entry: The JOBLESS RATE, a [Number that has gone up since Obama took office] and a great crossword entry, though a bummer.
  
• 17A. I love the word BALLETOMANE, meaning a ["Swan Lake" lover, e.g.]. Are there other -mane words? I'm gonna start using egomane, pyromane, nymphomane.
  
• 52A. [English bowl] clues LOO. Simple, yet oblique. I like it.
  
• 61A. Griots are cool. [Griot's specialty] is ORAL HISTORY.
  
• 40D. To EAT CROW is to [Admit failure].

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