TUESDAY, Jul. 14 2009 — Oyster eater in Lewis Carroll verse / 109 famously / La Brea goo / Gomer Pyle and platoonmantes by rank

Constructor: Donna S. Levin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Happy Bastille Day — theme answers are all related in some way to the French Revolution

Word of the Day: The TROP (49D: Classic Vegas hotel, with "the") — The Tropicana Resort & Casino Las Vegas is located on the Las Vegas Strip, in the township of Paradise, Nevada. It is owned by Tropicana Las Vegas Hotel and Resort Inc. and operated by Armenco Holdings. It offers 1,871 rooms and is attached to a 61,000 sq ft (5,700 m²) casino. The Tropicana also has 110,000 sq ft (10,000 m²) of convention and exhibit space. (wikipedia)

I guess there was just too much Frenchness in this puzzle already to give TROP its more predictable French clue (TROP in Fr. = excessively, too).
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Hey, I got my Bastille Day puzzle after all. Huzzah. A nice, oversized Bastille Day puzzle (16x15) to accommodate two 16-letter theme answers. I like that the theme answers are so disparate, yet all tie in to the final theme answer (which acts as a kind of exclamation point): FRENCH REVOLUTION. Here's something I didn't know about Bastille Day:

Besides holding a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, the Bastille had been known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the siege in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance. (wik)

On a technical level, the puzzle is cleanly filled, with a number of interesting or unusual answers. My favorite is CHIRAC (10D: Sarkozy's presidential predecessor), both because it's a great string of letters that I rarely see in the puzzle, and also because of its tangential relationship to the theme. I'm also enjoying LAGOON (45D: Middle of an atoll) for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe because it's an ALGAL LAGOON. The Creature From the ALGAL LAGOON would be very scary. Or very silly. At any rate, the proximity of LAGOON makes ALGAL (42D: Like some pond life) almost tolerable, and that's a good thing.



Lively grid for a Tuesday, with a Q and a Z and a couple K's. I blew through this puzzle almost without stopping, handily beating my time from yesterday (despite the oversized grid). I don't really think it's "Easy-Medium," but since times were probably somewhat longer than usual on this one, I gave the difficulty rating a slight nudge up. I think the SW was probably the place most likely to give people a tiny bit of trouble. Three abbreviations are crammed down there — PT BOAT (48A: 109, famously), PFCS (48D: Gomer Pyle and platoonmates, by rank: Abbr.), and the TROP (which I'd never seen clued as a casino before). The SSE might have proved vexing. ALGAL isn't exactly common, and "STAR DUST" was totally unknown to me (39D: Hoagy Carmichael classic), so there's a decent possibility of floundering around down there. [sidenote: STARDUST is a famous Vegas resort and casino — could've made a nice tie-in with the TROP] Or maybe some people hiccuped in the west, where lots of proper nouns are giving a group hug to the WALRUS (33A: Oyster eater in a Lewis Carroll verse). WALRUS runs right through STREAM (24D: Dam site), and now I have "WALRUS in the STREAM" (sung to the tune of "Islands in the Stream") stuck in my head. Great. Nothing's going to get *that* out.

Theme answers:

• 18A: Dickens novel with the 56-Across as its backdrop ("A Tale of Two Cities")
• 27A: Declaration attributed to Marie Antoinette just before the 56-Across ("Let them eat cake")
• 43A: Song of the 56-Across ("La Marseillaise")
• 56A: Even that began in 1789 (French Revolution)

Bullets:

• 15A: Dwelling section whose name comes from the Arabic for "forbidden place" (harem) — trivia! I did not know this, but "place" and "forbidden" and "dwelling section" and "Arabic" ... basically, the clue ... gave it to me. Funny how that works.
• 23A: Features of the Sierras (aretes) — ah, Sierras has its "S" back. I'm happy.
• 35A: Stale Italian bread? (lire) — cuteness.
• 38A: Catch sight of (espy) — I was ruminating on this word just yesterday, for reasons I can't remember. I was thinking about how one might clue it as a sports award and wondering if you couldn't work Samuel L. Jackson into the clue (he's hosting the ESPY Awards this year and has hosted twice before).
• 39A: Miserly Marner (Silas) — it's a good day for 19c. novels. Speaking of, I just checked Trollope's "The Way We Live Now" out of the library yesterday. We'll see how that goes.
• 61A: "Milk's favorite cookie," in commercials (Oreo) — wow, I missed whatever era this slogan is from. Recent? Ancient?
• 58D: "Able was I _____ I saw Elba" ("ere") — unwelcome Frenchness. One of my least favorite clues for "ERE" (or "IERE," or "EREI"). Tiredness.
• 59D: La Brea goo (tar) — sounds like a SoCal punk band.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

MONDAY, Jul. 13 2009 — Comfily ready to sleep / What a serf led / Hillbilly's belt / Hotelier Helmsley / Tidbit for aardvark

Constructor: C.W. Stewart

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: ALL TUCKED IN (59A: Comfily ready to sleep ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 37- and 47-Across) — letter string "ALL" is "TUCKED IN" to the theme answers, spanning four familiar two-word phrases

Word of the Day: ADLER Planetarium (1A: Chicago's _____ Planetarium) — The Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum in Chicago, Illinois was the first planetarium built in the Western Hemisphere and is the oldest in existence today.^[2] The Adler was founded and built in 1930 by the philanthropist Max Adler, with the assistance of the first director of the planetarium, Philip Fox. Located on Northerly Island, it is a part of Chicago's Museum Campus along with the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum of Natural History. (wikipedia)

Weird coincidence — I've been watching Season One of "Family Ties" on DVD (yes, really), and yesterday, only a few hours before doing the puzzle, I watched an episode in which Alex quits his job at ADLER's Grocery to work at a big, 24-hr supermarket where he makes more money and has more opportunities for advancement but hates his overly narrow job (he works in Cat Toys and only Cat Toys) and the fact that no one there talks to each other. So ultimately Alex returns to work at the small, independent ADLER's because Mr. ADLER, the avuncular owner, is so kind, even if he is stuck in a kind of pitiful 50's time warp. Anyway, I'm looking at Alex's apron, which reads ADLER's Grocery, and thinking "ADLER ... that's a good crossword word ... I'm sure I've seen it ... how would I clue it? Is there a Malcolm ADLER? [No, but there's a Mortimer] ... etc." And then I did this puzzle. And got completely stumped by 1A.

People often freak out in disagreement when the world "Challenging" comes anywhere near the difficulty rating for a Monday puzzle ("... but you called Saturday's 'Medium' and that was way harder..."). All I mean in this instance is that for whatever reason, this puzzle took me almost a minute longer than my typical Monday — about the time it takes me to do an easyish Wednesday. Very doable, but I kept tripping everywhere I meant — nothing diastrous, just little missteps, rewrites, etc. Started with a bad NW, where I didn't know the planetarium at all, and then considered PEAK for ACME (1D: Pinnacle), nothing for DRAG (2D: Wet blanket), and VITA for LUNG (3D: Aqua-_____). Not only couldn't I get REAMED right off the bat, I didn't get it until the very, very end, as I kept seeing the "RE-" as a prefix (5D: Cleaned out, as with a pipe cleaner). This sputtering alone was enough to put me off my average Monday time, but other (much smaller) sputterings followed, down to the near-final answer, where ALL TUCKED IN wasn't computing well. My brain still wants ALL TUCKERED OUT. And how am I almost 40 years old and don't know how to spell Joe LOUIS (52D: 1930s-'40s heavyweight champ Joe)?

The theme is interesting, if very familiar. I wish the theme answers sparkled more. Kind of dull.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Ditch digging, e.g. (manu ALL abor)
• 24A: Money borrowed from a friend, e.g. (person ALL oan) — banks make "PERSONAL LOANs" too.
• 37A: The Dalai Lama, e.g. (spiritu ALL eader) — especially dull since (bad luck) this was a theme answer in yesterday's puzzle.
• 47A: Slash symbol, e.g. (diagon ALL ine)

Bullets:

• 21A: City name before Heat or Vice (Miami) — I like how "heat" is used in this clue. It's monosyllabic and has good crime cred (police are the "heat," a gun can be a "heater"), so goes nicely with VICE, even though Heat here refers (non-criminally) to the basketball team.
• 45A: Acid blocker sold over the counter (Zantac) — fell into a brand name vortex here. Don't know my ZANTEC from my Zyrtec from my Xanax.
• 54A: Hotelier Helmsley (Leona) — she was like the Bernie Madoff of her day in terms of loathedness. People Loooved to hate her. A true celbrevillain.
• 65A: Tidbit for an aardvark (ant) — in my mind, there is a New Yorker cartoon half-written. An aardvark is sitting at a table in a fancy restaurant with a napkin tucked into its collar...
• 8D: Harbinger of spring (robin) — another answer that took me several passes. I was looking for a flower.
• 40D: First name of Henry VIII's second (Anne) — only just now noticed that this is paired with 24D: Last name of Henry VIII's last (Parr). Interesting.
• 27D: Hillbilly's belt (rope) — LOL every time I see this clue. Makes me think of Cletus, the Slack-Jawed Yokel.
• 45D: Next-to-last element alphabetically (Zinc) — again, didn't come instantly. Started by looking earlier than "Z" in the alphabet.
• 60D: Thai neighbor (Lao) — LAO is an ethnic group. There are hundreds of thousands of LAO in Thailand. FYI. A native or inhabitant of Laos is a "Laotian."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Science writer Willy —SUNDAY, Jul. 13 2009— Sweet stream in Burns poem / 1950s Hungarian premier Nagy / Literary heroine whose best friend is goatherd

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: "Links to the Past" — "NOTE: When this puzzle is done, interpret the answers to the seven starred clues literally, in order from top to bottom." If you follow the note's directions, you end up with the word HISTORY.


Word of the Day: Willy LEY (121D: Science writer Willy) — (December 2, 1906 - June 24, 1969) was a German-American science writer and space advocate who helped popularize rocketry and spaceflight in both Germany and the United States. The crater Ley on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor. (wikipedia) // Last time I saw him, two years ago, he was clued [Writer Willy who popularized space flight]

The easiest NYT Sunday I've ever solved, and I know I'm not alone on this. Under ten minutes!? Maybe I once did a Newsday or an LAT Sunday that fast, but not a NYT. There were virtually no pockets of resistance in the entire thing. The theme was a total afterthought, as there was no need to know it in order to solve well ... in fact, knowing couldn't really have helped you at all. And why is HISTORY being ... honored? I'm guessing you could use this type of theme to spell out all kinds of words, like PUPPIES or MELLIFLUOUS or something. I see that the middle theme answer is BEGINNING OF TIME, and I guess HISTORY stretches from the BEGINNING OF TIME til now, but ... I'm still left wondering what the point is. Where's my Bastille Day puzzle!?



Theme answers:

• 23A: *Boondocks (middle of nowHere)
• 34A: *Ambulance destination (medIcal center)
• 50A: *Imam or priest (Spiritual leader)
• 69A: *When the heavens and earth were created (beginning of Time) — "created?" Really?
• 87A: *Deputy (second-in-cOmmand)
• 103A: *Week after Christmas (end of DecembeR)
• 118A: *Lights out in New York City (BroadwaY closing)

I like that none of the positional words repeat. That's a nice touch.

Here was the big roadblock of the day: I had ---ID at 99A: Strait-laced and wrote in STAID. The answer was RIGID. STAID seemed so much the better answer (and still does), that I didn't remove it until 81D: Events that are barrels of fun? (beerfests) absolutely forced my hand. BEERFESTS, by the way — nice. Other unusual non-theme answers that I enjoyed included MEDIA BLITZ (3D: Publicity push), LOW GEAR (112A: 1, to a trucker), and GERBIL (100D: Playful rodent), which I don't recall ever seeing in a puzzle before. Cute. Despite the puzzle's intense easiness, there were a number of answers I didn't know. I didn't remember LEY (see "Word of the Day," above). I didn't know this ANNE person (36D: _____ Page, woman in "The Merry Wives of Windsor") — I taught Shakespeare last year, but it's been 20+ years since I've read "Merry Wives." I educatedly guessed at AFTON (76A: "Sweet" stream in a Burns poem). Sounded familiar, and we have a town nearby named AFTON. The TV ad for their golf course tells you that it is NOT FA from this area's major population center. Get it? NOT FA. NOT FAR? ... it's AFTON backwards. We basically call AFTON "NOT FA" now. When we have occasion to refer to AFTON, which is virtually never. I had never heard of AZ before today, but T.I., I know well. He RAPS (48A: Emulates AZ or T.I.). Here's T.I.'s great song "Whatever You Like" ... followed by Weird Al's great parody. If you are offended by references to sex and obscenely conspicuous consumption, you won't want to click on the first one:





Bullets:

• 26A: Former presidential candidate in the Forbes 400 (Perot) — Dana Carvey as PEROT / Phil Hartman as Stockdale .... that duo was one of the few wonderful things about 1992. Besides the election, the only other event I remember was war in Balkans. Perpetual war. CNN's Lynne Russell saying "Bosnia-Herzegovina" over and over and over.
• 37A: Group of genetically related organisms (biotype) — I just inferred this one. Not a word I hear used often / ever.
• 54A: 1986 Indy winner Bobby (Rahal) — practically crosswordese. His prominence can be partially explained by the dearth of R-H-- words in English. Unless you wanna go to REHAB, you're riding with RAHAL.
• 58A: Literary heroine whose best friend is a goatherd (Heidi) — First guess! You sometimes see author's name in the puzzle too: SPYRI!
• 72A: Car driven by James Bond in "Octopussy," for short (Alfa) — as in Romeo. I'm surprised I have not seen connections between this movie and the Octomom used to comic effect.
• 77A: Roadie's armful (amp) — not "groupie"
• 86A: Material with a distinctive diagonal weave (serge) — fabric / pattern terms always baffle me. TUILE and TOILE and TWILL and TWOLL ... and SERGE and whatever. I wait for a few crosses and then just go with my gut.
• 95A: Grandfathers of III's (Srs.) — my brilliant move of the day. I wrote in IVS. That's wrong in at least two ways.
• 4D: Group with the 22x platinum album "Back in Black" (AC/DC) — Iconic.
• 16D: Worrisome sight on the Spanish Main (pirate ship) — great answer. Would a reference to the Somalian coast have been too dark for a Sunday a.m.?
• 17D: Bee's target (clover) — really wanted this to be SPELLING or QUILT.
• 24D: O'Brien's predecessor (Leno) — for about five weeks now. Opening segment of his very first show made me happy beyond belief. I may have posted it before, but I don't care. REDUNDANT! (46D: Pleonastic)

• 30D: Birthplace of James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson: Abbr. (N. Car.) — I did not know that.
• 38D: 1950s Hungarian premier _____ Nagy (Imre) — Thanks to xwords, I *did* know that.
• 66D: Cousin of a raccoon (coati) — so cute.
• 69D: Forehead coverer (bangs) — they're singular ... sort of.
• 49D: Former Swedish P.M. Olof _____ (Palme) — PSST! (42D: "Hey there!") .... PALM is already in the grid (42A: It's within your grasp).

Time now for Tweets of the Week (assorted crossword-related Twitter posts):

• jkru finishing a crossword in a bed that is not inflatable = WIN.
• ostroffj Turns out I still suck at the NYT Sunday crossword. Even when it's written by a Carleton alumna.
• CJCisMe oh my god, I got a snuggie for my birthday. may my slippery blanket, heating bills, and cold crossword puzzle days be over.
• DarthShayan sitting on table tryna do a crossword - and i say - damn this is hard - girl next to me goes - thats what I said. embarresment ensues!
• jenniferweiner My name is a clue and one of my books an answer in today's NYT x-word. Neat! Also: does this count as Times coverage of chick lit? Sort of?
• doctorshaw 70% done with today's #crossword, looking like I might finish... getting nervous like Andy Roddick in his second set tiebreak last week
• jooordan Got called out for cheating on my crossword puzzle by the Starbucks barista, ha ha.
• kristymontee Cheated on the NYT crossword today. I feel cheap and tawdry.
• goatneck having to work is really cutting into my crossword puzzle time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. Hey, if you get the paper version of the NYT, check your Style section. There should be an article on the demise of newspaper/magazine puzzles. Several readers of this blog featured. Be sure to read to the end for the punchline, unwittingly provided by yours truly. Read the article here: http://tinyurl.com/neyway

P.P.S. Morning e-mail from my mom:

Michael,

I worked ten hours yesterday so did not read the comments on your blog until this morning. My son's name in the NYT even if it is a bathroom comment is a great way to start my Sunday.

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

I love you.

Mom

Transcaucasian capital — SATURDAY, Jul. 11 2009 — Nirvana attainer / Pteridologist's specimen / Zulu relative / Rapacious flier

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: XHOSA (54A: Zulu relative) [pronounced 'KO-sa] — also n., pl. Xhosa or -sas also Xosa or -sas.

1. A member of a Bantu people inhabiting the eastern part of Cape Province, South Africa.
2. The Nguni language of this people, closely related to Zulu. (answers.com)
   

So Karen Tracey lives! Hurray! I haven't seen her by-line on a puzzle in what feels like ages, and doing this puzzle made me realize how much I miss her work. Snap, crackle, and pop everywhere I turned. More 3-, 4-, and 5- letter words than I'm used to seeing in her grids, but because Karen's a pro, not too much slippage into tired fill. It was a little weird to see stuff like ST. LO (13D: The Vire River flows through it) and ALAR and ERN and NALA (12D: Simba's mate) in my Saturday puzzle ... but a. that handful of answers is forgettable next to the amazing longer stuff, and b. I'll give myself permission to complain about NALA the second I can @#$#ing remember it. "FALA ... no, that's FDR's dog ..." There are a surprising lot of valid -ALA words. VALIDALA!

Anyway, this puzzle might have been rated a little easier if I hadn't frozen up completely in the NE, where 11D: Response to a ding-dong? held me up longer than anything in the grid. I had -HOCA-IT-E and couldn't process those letters to save my life. At first, because of the "?" and the "ding-dong," I was sure that the first letter would be "C" ... Near the beginning of the puzzle, I actually considered something like CHOCAHOLIC (CHOCAHOLIA?), though that "A" should have warned me off right away. Ding-Dongs are cream-filled chocolate cupcakes produced by Hostess, which brings me to another feature of the clue that should have warned me off the cupcake answer: those "d"s weren't capitalized. Ugh. "WHO CAN IT BE" seems quaintish. The phrase exists in my head only as a 1981 query sung by an Australian and followed by the word "Now":



"IN HER SHOES" (27D: Jennifer Weiner best seller made into a 2005 film) and KATE SPADE (17A: Big name in bags) give this puzzle a more distinctly feminine slant than many puzzles have, though both the book/movie and the designer are mainstream enough to be familiar to anyone. JOHN LARROQUETTE (36A: Winner of four consecutive Emmys for his sitcom role as a prosecutor) would have been a gimme with no crosses, so despite the "Q," I wasn't that excited to see him. I was, however, excited to see SUSQUEHANNA (24D: Three Mile Island is in it), as I practically live on its banks. Five-minute walk to the river. I drive over it nearly every day. I gotta say, it doesn't feel very Three Mile Islandy. I'm sure it's polluted as @#$#, but it's actually one of the nicer features of this town. My geographic good luck continued in this puzzle with NASHUA (23A: Second-largest city in New Hampshire), which I knew, but also had the good fortune of seeing in a BEQ puzzle just yesterday. Geographic good luck ran out completely with HANAUMABAY (39A: Snorkeling spot near Honolulu). I'm really glad those last three letters ended up spelling BAY, because otherwise the entire answer would have been unintuitable gibberish to me. Hit the jackpot in the Shorter Exotic Words and Names category today, as BAKU (1D: Transcaucasian capital), ARHAT (16A: Nirvana attainer), ARRAU (10D: He recorded all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in the 1960s), and XHOSA (54A: Zulu relative) all came to me quite easily (I'd know none of these were it not for crosswords). All in all, an entertaining solve, with the E and NE providing the greatest resistance. NW started out tough, but then I got KATE SPADE, and the "K" fixed everything (as it often does).

Bullets:

• 14A: Trade name of daminozide (Alar) — this is what you do to crosswordese on a Saturday. Hide it. At least DAMINOZIDE wasn't the answer.
• 19A: Internet forum menace (troll) — Reminder: Do Not Feed.
• 21A: Major Côte d'Ivoire export (cacao) — makes me wish 11D had been a CHOCO- answer. Would have made a perfect Chocolate Cross.
• 35A: Early Saint-Laurent employer (Dior) — wasn't sure at first how "employer" was being used here. Or "Saint-Laurent," for that matter (person? brand?).
• 57A: Pteridologist's specimen (fern) — national symbol (or one of them) of NZ. Also, the name of my (Kiwi) nephew. Yes, a handsome, strapping young man named FERN. It's kind of awesome.
• 60A: Org. created by Carter in 1979 (FEMA) — now synonym for "incompetence," sadly. One of the first disasters to which FEMA responded: Three Mile Island. And FEMA crosses SUSQUEHANNA in this grid. Dang, that's nice.
  
• 5D: To whom Stubb and Flask answered, in literature (Captain Ahab) — Flask and Stubb!? I love their music:

• 4D: Peach variety (freestone) — no idea. None. I will eat a FREESTONE peach by HANAUMA BAY one day, in honor of this puzzle.
• 6D: Unlike fairies (real) — this made me laugh out loud. Excellent.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]