WEDNESDAY, Jan. 31, 2007 - Brendan Emmett Quigley

Solving time: untimed

THEME: Tilt / Lean / Tip - three theme answers, running diagonally from NW to SE, beginning at 1, 7, and 37, and containing the above words, respectively

Loved the theme, especially because the long diag - 1 Diag: Face imaginary enemies (tilt at windmills) - comes from one of my favorite books, Don Quixote. I should say that it's one of my favorite partially-read books, as I never managed to get through the whole damned thing, but the parts I did read were rich. I also like that Quixote and Quigley (puzzle author) both start with Q's. I wanted to find theme-related words in the grid, like SLANT or LIST or ANGLE, but no luck. Started looking at the grid as if it were a Word Search - nothing. There are the ironic entries EVEN (12D: Tied up) and FLAT (4D: Showing no growth), but beyond that, I couldn't find much theme-iness beyond the diags. Oh, wait, there's LSTS (7D: D-Day craft), which is one letter away from LISTS, which would be theme-y. Yes, that'll do.

I'm getting started about an hour later than usual this a.m. - sidetracked by "24" this morning, which somehow managed to sneak in PLOT between episodes: "Previously on "24" ... stuff that was Not On Last Week's episode!" How could I have missed Jack's torturing his brother? I am quite worried about my sanity lately, so anything to help my comprehension of this situation would be greatly appreciated. Was there a second hour that I failed to DVR last week?

1A: Base runner's stats (thefts)

Colorful, but a terrible answer, as THEFT is total slang. No "stat" book anywhere has a listing for THEFTS. They list STEALS, which the puzzle author surely knows, and was surely happy about, given that STEALS, like THEFTS, is six letters long. Cheap trickery. Beneath BEQ. Not that it was too hard to suss out. Just annoying. This represents my only real complaint about this puzzle - other than that I'd rather not be reminded of the existence of "CSI" - one of the most useless shows on TV. CSI is almost recuperated, however, by the complementary DNA TEST elsewhere in the grid (43A: Crime lab job).

3D: Greece, to modern Greeks (Ellas)
19A: Cousin of a raccoon (coati)

OK, I was wrong, I have one other little complaint: this intersection. I am neither a modern Greek, nor a raccoon (which I just wrote as "craccoon," which, I believe, is raccoon's other, drug-addicted cousin), and thus had to guess wildly at the intersecting letter here - an "A," which I had as an "O" - giving me the correct-seeming ELLOS but the silly, schoolyard-sounding COOTI. I figured that was where the concept of COOTIES came from. When I got an "incorrect" message from the applet, I thought the final "I" in COOTI might be wrong, but couldn't think of what could go in the "I"'s place in the cross: TITIAN RED (5D: Brownish orange). TITYAN ... TIT CAN ... TIT MAN ... all answers were coming up absurd, so I changed the second "O" in COOTI to the next most plausible vowel, and voilà, COATI. COATI is the name my sister gave to an article of clothing of mine (I feel as if I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating). COATI can't decide if it's a COAT or a shirt, it's made out of something Highly Synthetic, and it's colored a bright red + black lumberjack plaid. My sister might spell it COATEE - we've never had occasion to write its name down.

Some (more) stuff I didn't know

16A: Manta ray (sea devil) - is this different from a sting ray? Why "devil"? Is this the beast that killed Steve Irwin?
61D: W.W. II inits. (ETO) - OK, I "know" this, but I don't know if I KNOW it - I'm going to guess "European Theater of Operations"??? Oh good, Wikipedia says I'm right, and that's good enough for me. I get ETO confused with EDO, former name of Tokyo.
52D: English Channel port (Poole) - actually, I "knew" this one too, but I don't know how. I think there is some special fund of crossword lore in my brain that is getting better and better stocked over time.
37D: Communications syst. for the deaf (TTY) - as of right now - no idea what this stands for. I'll guess ... Talk To You. Damn, it's "Teletypewriter." TTY looks like a chatroom abbreviation.

Speaking of TTY, there were an Awful lot of abbreviations in this grid. I count twelve. Is that a lot? Or am I just noticing them today for some reason? I'm including ST. LO (48A: Town near Caen), which technically includes an abbreviation (of "Saint"), though you almost never seen it written out fully, so maybe that shouldn't count. ST LO should be in the Pantheon. It is going right on the list of next year's nominees.

Hot Fill

35D: Headline? (totem pole) - Great clue, great answer, and especially great due to its alliterative rotational symmetrical relationship to 5D: Brownish orange (Titian red).
27A: How tuna salad may be served (on toast) - I don't know why I like it ... I just do!
62A: Spray alternative (roll-on) - who doesn't enjoy a good deodorant clue?
47D: Rapper who co-starred in "The Italian Job" (Mos Def) - I can only hope that stodgy solvers everywhere are crying over this one. I hope all the PFUI-lovers choke on MOS DEF.
51D: Two-dimensional world? (atlas) - I just really like the clue

The Rest

I always forget the word PITON (58A: Rock climber's tool), perhaps because they make me think of another climbing device, CRAMPONS, which is far, far too close to TAMPONS for me to want to dwell on. Who decides how to spell sheep sounds and baby sounds? (9D: Cote sound (baa) and 54A: Cry from a crib (waah)) The first seems set in stone, but the second seems completely arbitrary. Where does the "H" come from? And aren't doves, not sheep, more often associated with "cotes." I had COO written in BAA's place at first. Yes, [cote dove] beats [cote sheep] in a Google search by something like 100K hits. So I made a mistake. Oh well ... THEM'S the breaks! (49D: "_____ the breaks").

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

TUESDAY, Jan. 30, 2007 - Nancy Salomon

Solving time: who knows?

THEME: Double-Double-Z - all theme answers are pairs of words with double-Z's in them, e.g. 17A: Bear of children's verse (Fuzzy Wuzzy)

I will keep it short today - very short, and for two reasons. First, I have to teach soon (in three hours from this very second), and, second, because I really really hated this puzzle. I'm sorry, Nancy; I know that part of the reason I hated it (as my fellow blogger was only too happy to point out) was my own inexcusable ignorance - or, as I originally saw it, two "obscure" answers crossing one another at the center of the puzzle. But there was an overall ungainliness to the grid, with some highly dubious cluing. Plus, the theme ... was poorly expressed (in my strong opinion) because two of the answers were just ZZ-words repeated, while the other two were rhyming-but-different double-Z words. The "Z" fetish sort of did this puZZle in - from where I sit, at any rate. Beethoven's Triple Concerto is easing the pain somewhat this morning, but even that can only do so much. Let's start with the part of the puzzle I hated most, then move on to the part that actually, legitimately, completely stumped me - and then a smattering of observations, and I'll be done:

Worst Fill Ever

6D: "Bah, humbug!" ("pfui")

You know your fill sucks when your first Google hit for it is a site reassuring the public that it is, in fact, a legitimate word (in someone's world). This word makes me yearn for ETUI or AQUI or the other beautiful UI-ending words available out there (actually, those are the only ones I can think of, and neither would have worked well, if at all, in this particular grid...). You can tell how desperate PFUI is by looking at all the other very shaky fill around it (although it all looks like gold compared to PFUI). 21A: "_____ Silver, away!" (Hiyo) is, apparently, technically correct, although it's famously misheard / disputed. Dave Barry wrote a whole piece about his search for the correct spelling of the Lone Ranger's cry. I had HIHO, like many red-blooded Americans, I'm guessing. If there were no PFUI in this region of the puzzle, I'd complain a lot more about HIYO [late addition: just got some spam that began HIYA, which I like better than HIYO, except that there is no one or thing I know named PUZA, so it wouldn't work]. Then there's OOZY (7D: Leaking goop), which is fine, in its way, but again, up here with this absurd word-combo orgy, it's just one more thing to hate (I am a little surprised by how much the word "hate" is creeping into this commentary - I'm being a bit histrionic, I realize, and exaggerating, slightly, for effect). This entire puzzle looks like it was constructed by a Scrabble addict on a bender. The Z's end up necessitating (or suckering the constructor into) other absurd letters, til the whole thing looks a mess. Fake-sounding, dated, or otherwise messed-up words include JIVEY (22A: Lively, as dance music) crossing JAUNTILY (22D: In a stylish way) running through the ugh-inducing HUZZAH HUZZAH (27A (THEME): Congratulatory cry). HUZZAH on its own is far more common than the double-HUZZAH - and neither of them should rightfully be anywhere near the word "common." You know who would say HUZZAH HUZZAH? The same guy who would say ZOUNDS (47D: "Holy smokes!"), i.e. a Renaissance courtier or someone else I'd like to punch in the face, perhaps while sporting a BEZEL (3D: Gem holder) - THE THIRD DEFINITION OF "BEZEL" - seriously, come on.

My Ignorance

29D: Ghana's capital (Accra)
39A: ATM maker (NCR)

OK, I should, I guess, know the capital of Ghana, but I kept waiting for it to look like something familiar, and it never did. Plus, with ACURA (2D: Integra maker) already in the grid, I don't think ACCRA has any business here. NCR probably stands for National Cash Register, and I was condescendingly told earlier this morning that that's just something I should know if I really want to call myself a crossword person, which at this point I'm starting to have doubts about.

The Rest

All my seething hatred (that word again) of this puzzle is making me want to ignore its better features, but I'll cave in and throw some bones to this puZZle (I can't even look at the word "puZZle" right now, I'm so annoyed). 33A: "This looks ver-r-ry bad!" (Oh, God) is nice, but should've been clued by way of reference to the George Burns / John Denver film of that name, or its sequel, OH, GOD, You Devil. Right underneath that is the tricky but admirable 38A: Last episode in a Monday-Friday miniseries (Part V) - I had the TV at the end and thought for Sure the answer was something TV, as in HDTV or BAD TV - that the T and V belonged to different parts of the phrase took me a while to figure out. And yet I liked it - see, I don't dislike stuff just because it makes me struggle. MUDVILLE (25D: Joyless town after Casey struck out) was a fun gimme, reminding me of the baseball poem that I surely haven't heard since fifth grade, when I believe Mrs. Flam (Best Teacher Ever) read it aloud to us many times, in between sessions of playing her guitar and teaching us the lyrics to "King of Road" ("... I ain't got no cigarettes!" - because I'm 10 years old, for one). 11D: Like hoped-for-winter temps in the North (above zero) is colorful fill, but kind of vaguely clued. I live in the North (sort of) and it's almost always ABOVE ZERO. In fact, the past two winters (including the early part of this one), it's been downright balmy. KIBITZ (10D: Give unwanted advice) threw me because, while it was my first idea for an answer, I mistakenly thought that it was spelled like KIBBUTZ, i.e., with two B's. 32D: "Bonanaza" brother (Hoss) is fun fill. I didn't know how to spell HARA (34D: _____ - kiri) because like most of dumb America I always think of it as HARI (pronounced HAIRY) KARI. Mmmm, Americanization. ERI (42A: "_____ tu" (Verdi aria) shows his grizzled head again today, but I'm fond of the old guy. Stephen Colbert would hate this grid, as it has not one bear (FUZZY WUZZY), but several: 35D: Scary bears (grizzlies). That's GRIZZLIES, plural. Plus PAW (62D: Hairy hand). And WASPS (69A: Dangerous nestful). And if the bears or insects don't get you, perhaps a winter storm will ICE you IN to your cabin in the woods (14A: Make housebound, say, in the winter) and you will starve to death. ZOUNDS! 101 ways to die in the wilderness! - which is an apt metaphor for my puzzle experience today. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

MONDAY, Jan. 29, 2007 - Fred Piscop

Solving time: 4:46

THEME: words that end -PPER? - all theme clues are two-word phrases that, well, end in -PPER, like I told you, e.g. 17A: Popular grilled fish (red snapper) [addendum: Just found out from Crossword Fiend's blog that the vowel that precedes -PPER changes with each answer, and does so in alphabetical order, no less: -APPER, -EPPER, -IPPER, -OPPER, -UPPER]

It is early in the morning, and I can't remember - was there a clue in this puzzle that refers to the theme and explains it more elegantly than I did? I know what you're thinking: "You have the puzzle in front of you ... right now! Why don't you look for yourself?" Good question. I'm tired. There are a lot of clues. I'm not in the mood to read fine print right now. I just want to glance at the grid, see an answer, and write the first thing that comes to mind. No time or energy for close analysis this a.m. Assuming I haven't missed something, this theme is pretty tepid, though some of the fill is pretty fancy and lively. Favorite theme answer was THE GIPPER (37A: 1940 Ronald Reagan role - I mentioned Reagan in yesterday's commentary, and voilà, here he is today, back from the dead, ready for puzzle action, sir), followed closely by DR PEPPER (24A: Soft drink since 1885). Note that there is no "." (or "period") in the "DR" of DR PEPPER. Why am I telling you this? To spare you the annoyance of having some know-it-all correct you should you ever have occasion to write about DR PEPPER. It's like one, big public service announcement, this blog.

Multiple-Word Phrases

• 15A: Wash gently against, as the shore (lap at) - love it
• 28A: China, Japan, etc. (Far East) - see also TOKYO (57A: City trashed by Rodan); as opposed to the Near East, where you would find the DINAR (23A: Jordanian cash), though probably not in the pocket of an ISRAELI (46D: Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert)
• 66A: Started a cigarette (lit up) - reminds me of when I first solved a Times crossword, back when my diet consisted almost entirely of cigarettes, Diet Coke, and fried burritos; God bless college (and a 20-year-old's metabolism)
  
• 45D: Close to its face value, as a bond (near par)
• 11D: Take some pressure off (let up on)

I [heart] multiple-word phrases in my crossword grid, and these are all fairly vibrant. Why do I love multiple-word phrases in general. Something about the way they exploit the possibilities of the grid in unexpected ways - I think the brain instinctively, for however split a second, takes in the blank row / column as a single unit. My brain likes when that unit has subunits, finding out where the breaks between words are, etc. Plus, multiple-word phrases tend to swing toward the colloquial (as opposed to the dusty dictionary) end of the language, which I appreciate.

Odd Jobs

12D: Opposite of dividers (uniters)
24D: Inventor (deviser)
25D: Speaker with a sore throat, say (rasper)

Every Monday puzzle, it seems, brings with it an assortment of verbs that are tortured into becoming nouns, although these jobs aren't that odd, in the end. Well, the last one is pretty icky, but the first two I can actually imagine someone's using in conversation. Nice UNITER / divider juxtaposition. Timely, without being catty. Toward the President. In case that wasn't obvious. In other made-up word news, REBOLTS (42D: Makes tighter, in a way) is kinda gross, but it does have a certain Frankensteinian aura that makes it vaguely tolerable.

59D: Nile slitherers (asps)
26D: Actress _____ Dawn Chong (Rae)

They're back! Haven't seen either of these Pantheon members for a while (or so it seems). I was just thinking yesterday that I haven't seen ASPS or EERO in a long time, and here I get a visit from ASPS - if they keep their appearance frequency to about once a month, I'll tolerate them quite fine.

7D: PC program, briefly (app)
8D: Al Capp's Daisy _____ (Mae)

One of the weird things about solving a Monday puzzle, for me, is that I never set eyes on a significant number of clues. When you know all the Acrosses, you never see the Downs, and vice versa. So it was in the Far North of this puzzle, where I only just now noticed these two little words - and I'm glad I missed them, because I have a feeling that I would have botched / misspelled them if I'd gone at them in their blank state. I would have looked for some acronym for the first one, and spelled the second one MAY, probably, despite my alleged affection for / knowledge of comics.

41D: Overlay material (acetate)
49A: Sicilian seaport (Palermo)

These seem pretty fancy words for a Monday. I'm not sure I'd know ACETATE if it bit me, or if it were sitting on my desk right now. For all I know, it is. No, it isn't, but you get my point. Was CARLA (40A: "Cheers" waitress) Tortelli from PALERMO? I don't know. I do know that I misspelled her name on my first pass through the grid - spelled it with a "K," which is how my dissertation adviser spelled her own first name. Also botched 44A: "National Velvet" author Bagnold (Enid) - don't remember what I put in, but it was probably something like EDIE. Let's go back to Italy for 4D: Puccini opera (Tosca) and then over to GAM (60D: Pinup's leg), just ... because, and then we'll close it out with my favorite book, the OED (27A: Brit. reference work), which I own in the single-volume edition, the one you are supposed to read with a magnifying glass, but which I read without aid (my eyes are one of a select number of body parts that are Not showing their age ... yet). Sadly, I have deferred getting the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary that I really, really wanted, for financial reasons (i.e. we bled money over the Holidays and are trying to stop the bleeding before we make any large-ish expenditures). Someday my dictionary will come. Til then, I'll make do with my (very) old standby, the OED.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Jan. 28, 2007 - Victor Fleming and Bruce Venzke

Solving time: untimed, but fast

THEME: "Having Pull" - all theme answers are things that may be pulled

Where was A FAST ONE? ONE'S LEG? MY FINGER!? This theme was cute, if awfully simple. The only real puzzler was 81A (THEME): It may be pulled (client's case file), and even that was inferrable with a handful of crosses. Still, discovering what could be pulled next was enjoyable, and after Saturday's puzzle, I was glad to have the level of difficulty lowered considerably. My favorite theme answer was 49A (THEME): One may be pulled (starting pitcher), which reminds me that baseball season is Just over the horizon (when I can begin to erase the memory of last year's abysmal and colossally disappointing World Series). My friend Matt got Red Sox tickets yesterday, so even though the opponent is lowly Kansas City, I'm very psyched. Never been to Fenway, despite having adopted the Red Sox as my team in the early 80's (when I lived in Central California). After the Super Bowl, the only thing worth noting, sportswise, is the NCAA basketball tournament in March. Then it's glorious April, with opening day and springtime and sunny joyous American love for all. I have no idea why I'm writing about sports right now. Oh, themewise, I also liked OLD SWITCHEROO (35D: It may be pulled), though the clue should read [It may be pulled, with "The"]. "Hey, you pulled OLD SWITCHEROO" makes no sense, unless you are imagining the phrase being uttered by an ESL (3D: Immigrant's class: Abbr.) student or Borat or someone else with an aversion to definite articles.

6D: Yellowish shade (ochre)
38A: Neutral shade (linen)

"What are 'The Colors of Nausea?'" The first of these looks like it's spelled wrong, and I had no idea the latter "color" was a color at all. Thought it was just a very, very hard-to-care-for fabric. LINEN is over in the Portland, OR portion of the puzzle, and borders / intersects some iffy fill. Not fond of either 29D: Abbr. of politeness (pls) - seriously, who writes this? Someone who really hates vowels? - or 30D: Gradually slower, in mus. (rit.). Abbr. next to Abbr. = lazy and ugly. I also don't think much of 44A: Cookout staple (steak) - I don't know what kind of "cookouts" you're going to, but that's pretty high-end fare. Hands up if you had the "K" (from SRI LANKA, 5D: Country that styles itself a "democratic socialist republic") and wrote in the far more plausible and democratic FRANK, as in FRANKfurter, Beans and FRANKs, etc.?

45A: _____-mo (slo)

Here is some tired fill that I would really, really like to see go on a long, long vacation. It should be in the Pantheon, but I just hate it too much. Two other, less groan-inducing bits of Pantheonic fill can be found at 107D: Petrol brand (Esso) - although ESSO did sort of make my wife groan, as in 'ugh, not again' - and the very high-end 119A: Grasshopper stage (imago) - "high-end" because it's a fancy word that has managed to become a crossword staple without becoming a crossword whore (see SLO).

71A: Stu of early TV (Erwin)
61D: Pulitzer-winning Sheehan (Neil)

Usually, when names I don't know cross one another, it's bad, bad news. But here, the "I" that joins these two guys was pretty obvious, saving me the "which vowel goes here" heartache that often attends intersecting stumpers. I don't know Stu ERWIN, but I damn sure know the other TV clues in this grid. 87A: Half of a 1980's TV duo (Allie) was one I got right away. I enjoyed that show in a comfort-food kind of way. I think 90% of that show was shot on that one cheap set that seemed to include the entryway, the stairway, the living room, and the kitchen. How did all those people share that tiny space? One of the daughters looked vaguely like Debbie Gibson, and the other was more reminiscent of Tiffany - these are the categories into which one might have divided girls circa 1986. I forget which of the grown-ups was Kate and which one ALLIE, but I have always had something of a crush on Jane Curtin, despite her work on some pretty hateful shows (see "3rd Rock," e.g.). Tina Fey is my new Jane Curtin. But I digress. The other great TV throwback was 39A: Half of a 1970's TV duo (Starsky). I never watched "STARSKY and Hutch" (on too late for 5-year-old me), though I have a strange desire to Netflix the show, since I am a big fan of crime fiction in general, especially that of the period between when Reagan did his last movie (1964's The Killers, hot!) and when Reagan became president. I am currently working my way through "Kojak" - I'm five eps in and he has yet to suck on a lollipop or say "Who Loves Ya, Baby?" - and I've got "The Rockford Files" waiting in the wings. One more campy TV answer: 26D: Linda of soaps (Dano), which, very sadly, I knew instantly.

92A: Fireplace receptacle (ashpan)

Now comes the part of the show where I talk about words I don't know. Had ASHCAN here, 'cause I knew that was something, but ASHPAN feels awfully made up. British? Sandy hadn't heard of it, and she's Kiwi, which is almost British. Speaking of British, went to see The Queen last night, and it was fantastic - one of the best-made films I've seen in a good, long while. And I managed to enjoy it despite the fact that apparently people are raised in barns these days and think chatting with their spouses during quiet moments of the film is OK. Where was I? Oh, words I don't know. How about 118A: Syrian leader (Assad)? Is that a guy's name? Yes, Bashar ASSAD is the leader of Syria, indeed. Why did you all make his name cross FATWAS (95D: Mullahs' calls) and THEISM (96D: Basic belief), and then, worst of all, have it sitting on top of SMOKE (122A: Content of some rings). There's an entire season of "24" plotted out in this one square inch of grid. Try a little sensitivity ... or Try a Little Tenderness, whichever. More trouble: I just told you all (recently) that I get all the ADEN, OMAN, ASSAN, OREN, OREM, ORAN, etc.-type answers confused, constantly. And then today I had to fight my way through not one but two of them: 37D: Gulf of _____, off the Horn of Africa (Aden) and 120A: Arab league member (Oman). If I see "Gulf" or "Horn" or "Cape," I know I'm in trouble. But in today's case, crosses took care of all the vowel ambiguity that normally plagues me with these answers. Speaking of geographical ignorance, a river clue held me up for a bit (one of two minor sticking points in this puzzle): I knew that 53D: Köln's river started with RH-, but to ignorant me, that meant RHINE or RHONE. Didn't know I'd be faced with the German spelling of the former, RHEIN, but pieced it together eventually. I still have no idea how BEEF can be an answer for 70D: Kick. Had to ask my wife what kind of "literary monogram" EAP (113D) was (Poe, duh). If I'd ever heard of LITTLE ME (84D: 1962 musical co-directed by Bob Fosse), it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I wanted to squeeze ORPHAN ANNIE into those last two squares. For all I know, LITTLE ME starred NIA Long (111D: Actress Long), of whom I'd also never heard. I have a vague feeling, though, that I have blogged about never having of heard of this same actress before, which would mean that I've heard of her. My instinct is to say that there's only one actress named Long, and her first name is Shelley, but my instinct also tells me that I have written those very same words before. Weird.

Final thoughts: Didn't know that LBJ was a VIRGO (89A: Lyndon Johnson, by birth), and can't say that I really care. Don't know if it's good or bad to see the "H-added" spelling of SENHOR/A again (34A: Lady from Ipanema) - I'm going to say good, as I got it instantly, and like the song "Girl from Ipanema." Not sure how I feel about ERRATA (9D: Text miscues) and SERRATE (77A: Saw-edged) being in the same grid - little too much ERRAT. As with DANO (above), I am mildly embarrassed that I got TEEN IDOL (106A: Tiger Beat topic) almost instantly (with just the "T" in place). I've never even read that magazine, not once, I swear. I can't see the title Tiger Beat without picturing Leif Garrett, for some reason, although the phrase TEEN IDOL is more apt to make me picture Shaun or David Cassidy. Lastly, I want to give a warm welcome to OSIER (6A: Wicker willow) - one of my favorite "learned-it-from-the-crosswords" words and by far my favorite basket-making material - way better than that cheap RAFFIA crap.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SATURDAY, Jan. 27, 2007 - Karen M. Tracey

Solving time: untimed, but pretty long

THEME: ROAD TESTS (35A) (or, none)

The Return of Karen M. Tracey (see last Friday's puzzle). I got beat around something awful by this puzzle, but I kept my balance and stuck it out, making it well into the later rounds; but then, again, just like yesterday, I hit the SE. There, I was dealt a true knockout blow. I made a mistake (dropped my guard) and got belted in the jaw and fell to the canvas. When I came to and got up, everyone had gone home.

My mistake?: I put in ION instead of VUE for 56A: Saturn S.U.V. I could say a lot more, but that's really the heart of the problem. That made me see bad answers and discount valid ones - most notably OPERATIVE (59A: Key), which ION made impossible. ION!!! If I had put in VUE straightway (it is a model name well within my knowledge), I think I would have sailed through the SE - would have got VENT, for instance (56D: Means of escape), instead of spending what felt like hours trying to think of 4-letter for "means of escape" that starts with "I." My best guess: IPOD. Eventually "discovered" UNMOVED (44D: Dry-eyed) after plugging in VENI then VIDI then VICI then VENI again at 49A: Part of a Latin trio to see if any of those answers (I knew it was one of 'em) could give me a hint to the Down crosses (VENI gave me UNMOVED's "N," which is all I had when I got it). As with VISA yesterday, UNMOVED started the avalanche that (finally) finished off the puzzle. That metaphor would be better if there were actually avalanches in the Southeastern U.S.

This failure in the SE (now becoming a regular feature of my solving experience) was balanced by strange successes in other parts of the puzzle (where I "knew" answers, but did not know how), and my misery in the SE mitigated considerably by genuine pleasure ... elsewhere.

"ROAD TESTS?"

Why would I say that the theme of this puzzle is (or should be) ROAD TESTS? Good question. The whole grid has a very automotive vibe. For example:

35A: Indicators of comfort and handling (road tests) - hence the title of this segment; this answer sits horizontally across the center of the puzzle
36D: Jam ingredients? (autos) - this intersects ROAD TESTS at the "A"
43D: Old Ford model (Festiva) - I was thinking way, way older. Having No letters didn't help. I had BEARCAT written in there at one point. Wasn't that a car model name? YES! Stutz, not Ford, but whatever. Here's a 1930's model:

And here's something more recent - what is that chick doing?


56A: Saturn S.U.V. (Vue) - I've said all I want to about this one. S.U.V. makes me think of "Law & Order: SVU," which I like to call "Law & Order: SUV," which could be about two cops who ride around the city solving crimes ... in an S.U.V. They've spun the original show into so many increasingly useless, stupid, redundant directions that I don't think my S.U.V idea is particularly bad by comparison.

Beyond the automotive world, there are other little subthemes, including fine art (ERNST and Warhol (see below) and Tintoretto) and high fashion (62A: Some gowns (Diors) and 65A: Prada alternative (Kate Spade)) and espionage (34A: Notice (spy) and 59A: Key (operative)).

POP CULTURE

Me like pop culture questions, the more campy and obscure, the better. This puzzle had a host of gimmes, some of them virtually Pantheon material, and all of them pop culture-related. Let's start with ENOS (7D: Short-lived TV spinoff of 1980), which I'm pretty sure I've seen clued with reference to the "Dukes of Hazzard" spinoff before (instead of the more common biblical frame of reference), but my pleasure is not thereby diminished. JOANIE LOVES CHACHI wouldn't fit in the spaces provided, and AFTER M*A*S*H was from several years later - I really wanted to get this answer with no crosses, but alas, ah me, it was not to be. Answers I did get with no help (i.e. gimmes) included 10D: Actress Ryan of "Star Trek: Voyager" (Jeri), which was a gimme for both me and my wife (I should note that for the first time ever I solved with my wife for about half the puzzle - just wanted her to see what Saturdays looked like; evidence of our compatibility includes groaning at the same iffy answers, on which, more below). Another gimme, with Pantheonic leanings: 50A: Eric who played Hector in "Troy," 2004 (Bana). Eric BANA would be "that guy... you know ... brown hair" if it weren't for the NYT puzzle, which has made him the It Boy of Puzzledom. Loved ATOM ANT (3D: Superhero of 1960's TV), but did NOT love JAROD (10A: Main character of TV's "The Pretender"), first because yuck ick gross horrible forgettable 90's TV that no one watched in the first place, and second because the answer makes me think of the Subway guy. Last pop culture gimme: 23A: Boosler of stand-up (Elayne), though I had her name with an "I" and not a "Y" until YEAR (24D: Wine info) forced the issue. Oh, MARILYN (2D: Andy Warhol subject) is good pop culturey fill, and a virtual gimme (got it off just the "Y" in DYNE, 27A: Small force). And now that we've veered into the world of art, I'll throw in the last true gimme: 64A: Contemporary of Arp and Miró (Ernst), who, along with BANA, awaits his place in the Pantheon. By the way, ARP is a worthy candidate as well.

ABSURD FILL

If I ever buy a couple of pet rats, or create a comic about a couple of rats who have crazy (mis-) adventures, I will surely call those rats DITHERY (14D: Highly agitated) and TRICKSY (54A: Mischievous). I was actually pretty proud of getting DITHERY, in that ... well, you know how getting a gimme is useful and all, but it's not exactly satisfying, while unearthing a pesky, TRICKSY, annoyingly hidden answer gives a feeling of accomplishment? Well, I got that feeling from getting DITHERY, which came together slowly, and really started to come into view when I let go of SEE at 34A: Notice and put in the spicier SPY, giving me the terminal "Y" in DITHERY. The only other bit of ridiculous fill I can see in this grid is FACERS for 47D: Stunning slaps, which caused my wife more consternation than it did me, but she's not wrong. It's hard to imagine "stunning slaps" being so common that someone would invent a catchy, colloquial word for them. Was there a slapping craze in the 1890's?

I would also like to note the puzzle redemption of formerly Absurd Fill. So, All hail the return of I GO, this time clued in a non-insane way as 25A: "_____ for That" (1939 hit song) [and not the comically misguided "My turn!"]

ABSOLUTELY UNKNOWN

Oh there are a LOT of these - answers I could not have gotten in a million years without the crosses:

11D: Sour, fermented liquid (alegar) - I know Al's cousin Vin, but I've never met Al
9D: Neighborhood in the Bronx (Throgsneck) - huge props to my wife for knowing this off of just the THR-; I would have had to piece it together, cross by cross
6D: American coot (mudhen) - this clue / answer pairing recalls both "M*A*S*H" and "Dukes of Hazzard"; Klinger was from Toledo, whose minor league team is the MUDHENs. And Cooter (tee hee), like ENOS (who named these people??), was a colorful cast member of "Dukes" - Cooters are apparently some kind of turtle, and there is a Cooter Festival in Florida every year. Why can't the Crossword Tournament be held there?
40D: Eisenhower's Texas birthplace (Denison) - O ... K. I'll take your word for it.
42A: Patriot Putnam (Rufus) - this jerk is almost single-handedly responsible for my failure in the SE. I mean, ION/VUE didn't help, but if I'd known this guy ... all the delicious first letters he would have provided! With the RU- in place, I was certain I was dealing with a RUBEN.
48D: Poinsettia's family (spurge) - gross; worst flora name ever - Sandy, a plant person, did not have the faintest idea what this could be, for the record
63A: Old World pigeons with markings around the neck (ring doves) - inferrable, but without numerous crosses, ungettable
60D: Writer _____ Pera (Pia) - only one way this should be clued: [Aging sexpot Zadora] - best PIA Zadora "trivia" at imdb.com:

In 1984, her song "Rock It Out" earned a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Among her fellow nominees: Lita Ford, Bonnie Tyler, Wendy O. Williams and eventual winner Tina Turner.

That, and her son's godfather is Don King.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge my own solving prowess, as I got OLD NEW YORK (29D: Locale in a classic Frank Sinatra song) off of just the "O" and NON-STARTER (28A: Dud of an idea) off of just the N--S. I'd also like to say that ESPN should get an assist credit on this puzzle, as two more gimmes I failed to mention earlier are straight out of the sports universe: 5D: N.B.A. star Brand (Elton) and 51A: Temple player (Owl).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

FRIDAY, Jan. 26, 2007 - Mike Nothnagel

Solving time: 27:18

THEME: none

Spent easily the last ten minutes of that 27:18 time trying to solve the SE corner. What's truly horrible, in retrospect, is that I took out an answer I thought was very iffy (INT. for 42A: Form 1040 fig.) and I left in an answer I thought was pretty solid (ARISE for 54A: Emerge). If I'd reversed the decision - taken out ARISE and left in INT. - I might have cracked this thing much more quickly. Please allow me to say that ARISE is a way, way better answer than the pathetic ISSUE. I defy you to use a sentence where ISSUE substitutes for EMERGE in a way that doesn't make you wince / giggle. When was the last time anyone used ISSUE as an intransitive verb? I am not too fond of the cluing in this puzzle, especially in this SE corner. Particularly egregious is 47A: Choice for the indecisive (both). You can't have a "Choice for the indecisive," because, by definition, the "indecisive" person cannot choose. Choosing is a decision. BOTH is a decision. MATH TEST is horrible as an answer to 36D: Some problems to solve, which is, itself, a horrible clue. Horrible in its ... banality. 32D: His self-titled book has 24 chapters is preposterous and misleading in the extreme. First of all, the book is not called SAINT LUKE; it's called THE GOSPEL OF SAINT LUKE, or LUKE. There is no situation wherein one would call the book simply "SAINT LUKE." Plus, SAINT status comes well after the "titling" of this BOOK. Come ON! "Hey, I wrote this book, it's called SAINT LUKE, you know, after me, even though I am NOT A SAINT at the moment that I am allegedly self-titling this book..." Etc. The only reason I eventually cracked this corner was because I systematically went through the alphabet trying to get a first letter to 50D: You can get a charge out of it. I had -ASA, and briefly entertained the possibility of NASA, before hitting "V" (at the far end of the alphabet, of course, ugh) and immediately seeing VISA despite the erroneous "A" I had in that second slot. The "V" gave me VAULT (totally invisible to me otherwise), and VAULT's "T" gave me the TEST in what I immediately saw to be MATH TEST. It's actually kind of fascinating to me how I went from completely stalled to completely done in less than a minute, all because of a single letter, precious "V." I want to thank my wife for reminding me the other day what jockeys wear (56A: Derby wear (silks)). We were casually doing a puzzle together the other day and she got the answer (somewhat differently clued) instantly - when she beats me to the punch I notice. I remember. And today it came in handy, as I was sure the clue wanted something having to do with insane hats worn by spectators at the Kentucky Derby, and then I thought "no, it's those things, whatdyacallem, jockeys' uniforms ... GULES!? No, SILKS." I actually did write GULES in there first. Sad.

1A: Multiple-choice choices (a b or c)

ABORC is one of my favorite bits of fill in a long, long while. Normally I do not have any real puzzle-talk interaction with my fellow x-word blogger, Ms. Crossword Fiend, until after I've written my entry for the day, but she informed me via email that, in her opinion, the NW section of this puzzle (home of ABORC) "blows." I say the SE blows. So we have 180-degree rotational symmetry in our dislikes for the day. The NW just feels so ... alive with pleasure. Aside from the lost Latin word / lost Tolkien creature ABORC, there's my beloved Spiro AGNEW (18A: Ford's predecessor) - I feel quite proud to have entered AGNEW as a first guess instead of the more obvious NIXON. All three of the long Downs in the NW are colorful, multiple-word phrases, and together, in order, they form a most interesting sentence: ASK ABOUT BAR GRAPHS ON ONE KNEE (1D: Display interest in, 2D: Frequent USA Today features, and 3D: Like people in the front row of a group photo, often, nice!). The USA Today clue was super tricky, as the answer could very easily have been PIE CHARTS (my first guess). Don't know what a KRONE is (16A: 100 öre) - I'm going to guess that it's South African money? Whoops, nope, it's Danish.

43D: Infomercial cutter (Ginsu)

God bless early infomercials and my TV-saturated adolescence. I needed GINSU something awful, as I had stalled out after my first trip through all the Across clues. GINSU is strategically placed to give me the first letters of five Acrosses - a sweet place for a gimme to be. SW fell quickly after GINSU, as I made my way back up through the middle of the puzzle (through the stupid an sadly recurrent AH ME - 49A: A sigh) back up to the ragged NE. I had THERE'S NO "I" IN TEAM (33A: Exclamation in a locker room talk) and I erased everything after THERE because I decided it couldn't be right. Then it turned out to be right. So there's that entry, and INT. at 42A, and, let's see ... oh 27A: Dating service datum (age), and 6A: "Then again" follower (maybe not) - all of these were answers I entered correctly on first guess but then later second-guessed (I guess that's where that term comes from), wiping them off the grid, only to have them come back as the correct answers. This is either good (my gut instinct is sharp, [wink]) or bad (I cannot discern a good from bad answer and don't trust myself enough to leave well enough alone). My gut says "good," but my time says "bad." Maybe it's BOTH (ugh).

15D: Yellowstone feeder (Bighorn)

As in "Little?" As in sheep? Is that a river? Had the -GHORN and, I swear to god, wrote in FOGHORN. As in LEGHORN. I did this in utter seriousness. Never heard of BIGHORN. Also never heard of 11D: "Eraserhead" star Jack (Nance) or 41A: Tenor Bostridge and others (Ians) or 8D: Rocher of cosmetics (Yves). Otherwise, the answers were reasonably familiar and almost always (with the exception of the frakkin' SE) cleverly clued. I am finding SSTS to be a very tired bit of fill, especially when clued with reference to the sonic "boom" they could create (46A: Old boom makers). "Old" is right. Too old. Put it out to pasture, or put it down.

15A: Something to get sent off with ("Bon voyage!")
51A: Having no match (nonpareil)
45D: Period of douze mois (année)

Alright, Frenchy, that's about enough out of you. Oh, I left out 37A: River of Troyes (Seine) - which I guessed, figuring for sure it was wrong: too obvious. Thankfully, I left that entry in, as it was right. There should be some kind of limit on Euro-words in a puzzle. Quit outsourcing fill to third-world countries like France! Give me good ole American fill, like the fill sitting directly under the pretentious NONPAREIL. I'll take SPEAKEASY (brilliantly clued as 55A: It may be password-protected) and USED CARS (57A: They've been on the road many times) any day of the week over your effete, cheese-eating answers of the NONPAREIL and AH ME variety.

Yours, Patriotically,

Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

THURSDAY, Jan. 25, 2007 - Manny Nosowsky

Solving time: untimed

THEME: ONE TWO THREE FOUR (7D: Start of a march chant ... or a hint to 17-, 27-, 47- and 63-Across) - This answer runs vertically through the middle of the grid, from top to bottom; four theme answers, with the words ONE, TWO, THREE, and FOUR (respectively) hidden inside other words or word combinations, provide horizontal crosses to the vertical answer, with each horizontal answer intersecting the vertical answer at that answer's respective number, e.g. 63A (THEME): Bill Moyers speech on income inequality in America (Fight oF OUR Lives) intersects ONE TWO THREE FOUR at the "O" in FOUR.

Well, that's officially the longest explanation for a theme that I've ever had to offer, but it was worth it, as this puzzle is instantly a candidate for Best Thursday Puzzle of the year. Not just clever, but clever in multiple ways - hidden numbers, intersecting numbers, and then (whether intended or not) a total theme fake-out: the first theme answer had MONEY in it and the next one had SOU, and when I saw that the next one (47A (THEME): Critical stage in a space shuttle's flight (Earth re-entry)) had -REEN in it, I thought for sure that those letters would become GREEN and that the theme would, obviously (MONEY, SOU, GREEN) be words for currency. Wrrrrong. Very wrong. My misunderstanding of the theme thus meant that it took me Forever to see EARTH RE-ENTRY. I thought perhaps there was some technical NASA term that had the phrase GREEN DAY in it, and that, possibly, that was where the band got its name. Yes, I did actually think that, and am not saying it (just) to try to be funny.

Short entries today - Thursday is quite tight for me from now until, oh, mid-May.

17A (THEME): 50% likelihood (even money chance)

I have never heard of this phrase. I have heard the phrase EVEN MONEY, but the CHANCE part is new to me. Not having CHANCE meant that the whole NE corner stayed empty for a while, until a blessed, ubiquitous Genesis clue (10D: Leading man? (Adam)) bailed me out, as it has time and time again. While we're up in the NE, I'll say that 9A: Where some bolts fit (jambs) is a really, really odd clue, despite being, technically, correct. The answer to this could have been Anything. How about NECKS? GATES? DOORS? I do love the look of the word JAMB, I have to say. I am put off by 9D: Head (John), as it does not pass my personal breakfast-table test. [Male Doe?] is a better clue, and has the virtue of not referring to the toilet.

34A: _____ of color (riot)

I'm sorry, what? I could have worked on this answer from here to eternity and Never have guessed this. There are nearly 82K Google hits for this phrase, but yuck. [Zoot Suit pastime] works better for me. My ignorance of this answer made the West very thorny for me, despite the fact that when you look at the words over there, none of them is very troubling. My problems were made worse by my being unable to close the deal with IN---- at 24D: All together (intact). IN SYNC and IN STEP were making a lot more noise in my brain than INTACT was. Besides "RIOT of color," other answers I'd never heard of include:

• 69A: Artful Dodger (Reese) [Oh, Criminy, I JUST got this - you jerky clue-writers! Pee Wee Reese = "artful" at the position of shortstop for baseball's Dodgers = ugh - and here I thought I was missing a Dickens clue, or a cleverly worded clue about Della or Witherspoon]
• 52D: Monte _____ of Cooperstown (Irvin) - another baseball clue I didn't get, though at least this time I could tell that the frame of reference was, in fact, baseball. Other, hidden baseball answer in the puzzle: 30D: Steep-sided gulch (arroyo)

There were other answers that I knew, or knew of, but spaced on, such as 49D: One of the Castros (Raul) and 58D: Microscopic Dr. Seuss characters (Whos) and 60A: German honey (frau) - the last of which I spaced on because I thought they meant "honey" such as Pooh Bear is fond of.

Some potential Pantheoners make a strong showing here, including 39A: Jingle creator (adman) and 57D: Eyeball (ogle) and 13D: Hook hand (Smee).

I have to go prepare for work. I'll update the entry, with a few visuals, in the early afternoon. [I was wrong about this, sorry - by the time I had time to get back to this, it was time to do the next day's puzzle. My apologies]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 24, 2007 - Gary Steinmehl

Solving time: 13:16

THEME: Desserts - all theme answers start with dessert names used in non-dessert contexts, e.g. 45A: Credit of a sort (brownie point)

This was not a good puzzle for me, as you can see my by Thursday- or Friday-like time. Did two Thursday puzzles (out of this book) just before I did this one, and both Thursdays were done in (much) better times than today's 13:16. What makes my slowness truly galling is that I know the answers - it's not like I got thrown by obscurity or ignorance. I got thrown by my inability to see the contours for the phrases - that is, to see where words in multiple-word answers began and ended. I was further thrown by my inability to see PIE as a name, let alone a dessert, despite the fact that not only do I know who PIE TRAYNOR (17A (THEME): Pittsburgh Hall-of-Fame third baseman) is - I can quote a "Simpsons" line with PIE TRAYNOR's name in it! I am currently cuing up "Homer at the Bat" (from Season Three) - nope, the quotation isn't there, though in that episode, PIE TRAYNOR is the third baseman on Mr. Burns's first proposed team of ringers for his Power Plant softball team. Hmmm, I'll try "Dancing Homer" (Season Two, when Homer briefly becomes the mascot for the minor league Springfield Isotopes) - I know the quotation is out there somewhere ... HA, YES! Stupid internet didn't have the quotation, but my beautiful, faithful DVDs and my ridiculous infinite patience have rewarded me with the quotation I was seeking! Homer is sad when Mr. Burns sits right next to him at the Power Plant-sponsored Family Night at the ballpark, figuring his good, beer-drinking time will be ruined. But then he and Burnsie start having fun, drinking, doing the wave, etc. Toward the end of the game, the Isotopes look certain to lose, and after watching a 'tope strike out (the second out of the ninth inning), Burns exclaims:

"Damnation! These banjos couldn't carry PIE TRAYNOR's glove!"


"Banjos," awesome. Burns's ridiculously old-timey speech gives me great pleasure. Now that I have confirmed that my memory is not totally faulty, on to the puzzle.

And back to PIE TRAYNOR. I can't tell you how long I stared at PIETR-YNOR and thought "PIETRO? Was there an Italian baseball player named PIETRO YNOR?" This was at the end of my solving experience, after I (supposedly) had the theme. Didn't see PIE. Instead, thinking it was some dumb-ass, made-up dessert like NAPOLEON (29A (THEME): The man from U.N.C.L.E. (Napoleon Solo)), I thought "PIETRA? PIETRI? PIETRO? Italian dessert?" I couldn't even see PIE, let alone PIE [space] TRAYNOR. All because _IDE_E CAMP (18D: With 53-Down, officer's helper) meant nothing to me. An officer is helped by a CAMP? RIDERE CAMP? SIDELE CAMP? Ugh. I don't even remember how I finally arrived at the correct AIDE DE CAMP. So, baseball and French, two things I know something about ... end up crushing my skull. FOYT (5D: Four-time Indy winner) always breaks me, too; I get the -OYT part, and then can never remember what the @#$#-ing consonant is. FOYT is a stupid, hick name. And the F-cross (5A: Easy mark, in cards (fish)) provided no help - not a term I've heard much, if at all.

30D: Infrequent: Abbr. (occ.)
32A: Turn-of-the-century year (DCC)

I had the final "C" of 32A, but not yet having AIDE DE CAMP - which provides the "D" in DCC - I couldn't decide what "year" the damned clue was talking about. Too vague a clue. Arbitrary, stupid clue. Worse, though, is OCC. I had O-C and just stared at it. When is OCC. used as an Abbr.? I know it's (probably ) short for "OCCasionally," but still, ick. I was starting to think that I'd spelled NAPOLEON wrong, and the first letter might be "A" ... that's how stupidly frustrated I got by this one square. Grrr.

9A: Pale hue (aqua)

I never think of AQUA as "pale," though I suppose it has legitimate claim to that designation. On the count of three, all crossworders everywhere will tell me the four-letter answer I instinctively entered here. One, two, three! ECRU! Is that word in the Pantheon, 'cause it should be. ECRU gave me the "E" in ELM (9D: Workable wood), though sadly the answer was not ELM but ASH. That whole NE corner might have been an utter disaster if TEN (23A: Perfect rating) hadn't bailed me out, giving me the terminal letter combination for the two five-letter Downs, 10D: "Indubitably!" ("Quite!") and 11D: Starving (unfed), both of which were very hard to see with just their final letters in place.

47D: Bewhiskered beast (walrus)
64A: _____ salad (tuna)
54A: California river named for a common sight in it (Eel)

With FISH and AQUA in the far north of the puzzle, these two southern hemisphere-dwellers continue our surprisingly deep nautical theme. We could even stretch it to include a first MATE (63A: Spouse) whose ship has SUNK (16A: Done for) off the coast of ELBA (38D: Site of a notable exile). The MATE ASKS (67A: Sets, as a price) for help via RADIO (65A: Dashboard feature), but in the end he is not SPARED (24A: Let go) from a briny death, and a ONE-WAY (49D: Arrow words) ticket to see PETER (48D: Fizzle out) at the Pearly Gates. Now that that little anecdote is over, I can tell you that I am from California, and I don't know that I ever saw a "river" in the state during my entire 12 years living there. Any "rivers" were usually (if not always) dry. River beds, not actual rivers. The fact that there are EELS anywhere in California comes as a total shock to me. As for ELBA, I like the tie-in with NAPOLEON at 29A. Nice.

Most of the rest of this puzzle was tractable. Liked seeing Rhoda's mom IDA (60D: TV's Mrs. Morgenstern) in the puzzle. Nancy Walker is perhaps best known, of course, as Rosie the waitress from the old "Quicker Picker Upper" Bounty commercials. Or is that the "You're soaking in it!" lady? No, "You're soaking in it" was from Palmolive ads featuring "Madge," played by actress Jan Miner. Commercials used to be so much better, somehow. Throw in Mr. Whipple here, and you have a holy trinity of 70's advertising.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

TUESDAY, Jan. 23, 2007 - Timothy Powell

Solving time: 7:10

THEME: THE - compound words have "THE" inserted between their word-parts, and the new phrase is then clued, e.g. 17A: Supply weapons to a committee head? (arm the chair)

Ah yes, the always dynamic "THE." Really, all themes should involve shoving definite articles into weird places. I was not feeling this theme. In fact, honestly, I didn't get the theme, exactly, until I began typing this entry. The first theme entry I got was 11D (THEME): Criticize a bakery dessert? (pan the cake), which I thought was a play on CAKE PAN, not PANCAKE, and so I thought there was some compound word reversal going on, instead of the far less dynamic "THE" insertion. This may (partially) explain my first major problem solving the puzzle.

63A (THEME): Donate to Eve? (spare the rib)

If you are Adam, yes. Otherwise, no. The phrasing just was not intuitive at all. In fact, it's WEAK (30A: Wimpy). I was busy getting the crosses, hoping a phrase would come into view, but for some reason "THE" was not part of my thinking until very late. Didn't know a crucial Down cross, 50D: Tweed twitter Thomas (Nast). As of this second, I have No Idea what that clue means. I know NAST from Condé-NAST Travel; NAST is also something my sister and I would say about anything disgusting. My NAST knowledge ends there. NAST ran through my second major problem solving the puzzle.

54A: The "magic word" (please)

Yeah, it looks obvious, but I had just the "P" and immediately wrote in PRESTO, a word I finally ditched only after I saw that 55D: Start of the año nuevo was obviously ENERO, not ONERO. I AIN'T (49A: Isn't misused) too proud of this mistake, which resulted in my solving time's being NOT SO HOT (42D: Just O.K.). PLEASE intersected a host of answers I didn't know, not just NAST, but SAL (45D: Erie Canal mule) - still don't know what this means - and ARTIE (35D: Howard Stern sidekick Lange) - the only LANGE I know is LANA, and I don't think her last name has an "E" on the end. While we're in the middle of this puzzle, I would like to say how much I dislike the awkward clue 44A: Magi's origin, with "the" for EAST. If you're going to go the "with 'the'" route, the payoff better be good. Here, it is not. And the third and final stumbling block in today's solve...

31D: Grand _____ (wine designation) (cru)

Not only haven't heard of it (or maybe heard of it, then forgot it somewhere in time), but took far too long to get the "C" - the cross is 31A: Purchase for a beer blast and the only word I could come up with was KEG, and even after I was staring at _ASE, I hesitated many seconds before coming up with the rather banal "C" for CASE. Oh, and I had CRA instead of CRU because I misread the tense of the across clue, 41A: Be delayed, and so had RAN LATE instead of RUN LATE. (Side note: I am already running late this morning)

There were a few other tricky parts of the grid. 59D: Algerian city (Oran) is always tough for me, as I routinely get ORAN and OMAN and ADEN and AMMAN and other Middle Eastern (or Middle-Eastern-sounding) places confused. Speaking of the Middle East, If I hadn't had AQABA (52D: Jordanian port) in a puzzle just last night, I would have taken considerably longer in the SW, since, when you see "Jordan" in the clue, and you have an answer that's five letters, starting with "A," you want AMMAN (if you want anything). Clue from last night said that AQABA was in fact Jordan's only port. Good to know (it's on the Gulf of AQABA, by the way, which is also good to know, and easy to remember). Also had OSKAR (46A: Heroic Schindler) in a puzzle last night (or was it in a recent NYT? I forget), which was lucky, as I don't think I'd known or even thought about the "K" spelling before then. SWAMI (1A: Hindu master) makes me think that there should be an entire subsection of the Pantheon reserved just for Eastern Spiritual Leaders: SWAMI, IMAM, LAMA, GURU. I think that the only reason anyone outside of North Carolina knows about ELON (28D: North Carolina University) is because it appears in crosswords, making it very promising Pantheon material. Speaking of Universities, I start teaching again at one today - and despite the fact that there has been considerable grade inflation nationwide since the time that I graduated from my ALMA (3D: _____ mater) mater, I can assure you that no one in any of my courses gets an EASY A (24D: Expected grade in a gut course). Had never heard of the phrase "gut course" until just now. Thought it might have something to do with biology or anatomy. Something about the ERRATA (10D: Printing after a printing) / TRACTOR (21A: Deere product) crossing is making me happy. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the venerable Pablo CASALS (22D: Cellist Pablo). Jackie Kennedy once invited him to play at the White House. Whereas I think the last people invited to play this century's White House were probably ... oh, let's say, Brooks & Dunn.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

See the job, be the job

I am about to do the puzzle, this second, 8:21 a.m. EST, but I wanted to write this little note to send good vibes out into the universe for my wife, Sandy, who has a day-long interview for a new job today. So starting at 9 a.m., you are all required to visualize my wife impressing the hell out of the search committee (you can decide what that looks like). Not that she needs your help - I just thought it would be a nice gesture. I'm bragging about my wife now, instead of after the committee makes its decision, because, frankly, the committee's decision has zero to do with my wife's worth, which is immeasurable. I mean, she can knit, bake scones, do puzzles, manage the emotional and intellectual lives of about a dozen over-extended and mildly insane high-school seniors, raise a beautiful daughter, and (once the karate really begins to kick in) kick my ass. Plus, she is smoking hot. Good luck, honey. And remember: Wax on, Wax off! And sweep the leg!

RP

MONDAY, Jan. 22, 2007 - C. W. Stewart

Solving time: 4:31

THEME: Road Signs - six theme answers are phrases commonly found on road signs, e.g. 17A: Road sign #1 (Lane Closed), and all of them are tied together by 72A: Whom you might see in your rearview mirror if you ignore the above signs (cop) [WHOM! Hurray for grammar!]

Always good to get in under five minutes on a Monday. It's been a while. This puzzle was easier than most themed puzzles because once you figured out that the theme answers were indeed just phrases on road signs, with no particular logic or wordplay or trickiness involved, you could fill them in pretty quickly with very few crosses. How many such phrases are there? (I did have NO PASSING for NO PARKING, but only for about 8 seconds). There are a few odd-looking or otherwise remarkable entries on the grid, but the puzzle was not MADE WORSE (10D: Degraded) by them, and I never, not once, felt compelled to GNASH (27D: Grind, as teeth) my teeth. Speaking of "Grind," Andrew just sent me a link to the trailer for the upcoming double-feature Grindhouse, featuring sexploitation films by both Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. I'm a little afraid, and a little excited to see this/these. Not for the very squeamish or the sense-of-humor-free.

Before I have at the puzzle, a brief thank-you to "painquale" (whoever you are) for the nice plug - and generally thoughtful writing about solving crosswords - at MetaFilter.com yesterday. I am most grateful for the kind words (and the link - free advertising!).

1A: Poppycock (rot)

A case where the clue is far, far more dated than the answer, which is itself dated. When was the last time anyone used "Poppycock" in anything but an intentionally ironic or prehistoric fashion? Here's something interesting, followed by something gross: WorldWideWords (fascinating if painfully thorough site on words and their origins) tells me that the word is actually American in origin (though it sounds British to most ears) and that it comes from "the Dutch word pappekak for soft faeces." I like the way the British spell FAECES, as the "A" somehow allows me to pretend that I am dealing merely with a typo of FACES.

13A: Daredevil Knievel (Evel)

Ever since I finalized the Pantheon list for this year (see sidebar), I have been reminded almost every day of the long list of worthy candidates who were excluded or (in the case of Mr. EVEL) not even duly considered. Remarkably useful letter combination that NO one else can get you. You can't reclue EVEL. You go through Knievel or you don't get there. Other worthy, excluded candidates here include ELENA (20A: Actress Verdugo of "Marcus Welby, M.D.) - I love the implicit notion that mentioning "Marcus Welby" somehow demystifies things for me - LAMA (16A: Himalayan priest), ELENA's cousin LENA (14D: Horne of "The Lady and Her Music") and EROSE (52D: Jagged, as a leaf's edge), the last of which is not terribly common; but when it does crawl out into the light, it does so almost exclusively in the context of crossword grids.

Despite a pretty high frequency of ordinary-to-downright-tired fill, this grid still manages to sparkle in places. Robert E. Lee is a crossword stalwart, but I always like seeing him in the grid as RELEE (1D: Gen. in the confederacy), because the RE- looks like a prefix, making the whole entry look like some kind of bygone nautical term. It's rare to find a word or expression I've never heard of in a Monday puzzle, but I will admit to having never heard of OLD SOD (8D: Fatherland, affectionately) before today. Sounds like something you'd call a senior citizen, non-affectionately. Would have preferred [Annoy the hell out of urban pedestrians in the 1970s] as a clue for PANTOMIME (33D: Show silently), but this clue has a certain terseness that I admire. DRYADS (54A: Wood nymphs, in myth) is always nice fill - would have been nicer if I had gotten it right away instead of entering NAIADS, which are sea nymphs, you idiot. I'm wondering why "in myth" is appended to "Wood nymphs"... where else am I going to find wood nymphs? Yosemite? and would those wood nymphs go by a different name? RANGY (12D: Slender and long-limbed) is giving me weird vibes this morning. Took a while to come to me last night (when I solved this puzzle) and now it barely looks like a word, for some reason - it looks like TANGY, but does not rhyme with TANGY. Seems wrong. Lastly, since I'm starting teaching again tomorrow, and one of the courses I am teaching is entitled "Comics," I will close by mentioning that "The GOON" (36D: Thug) is a very entertaining horror/comedy comic - a now much-abused genre that is not easy to do well. Eric Powell's art is spectacular, and the title character looks like a cross between a Depression-era strike-breaker and Frankenstein's monster - the best of both worlds. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Jan. 21, 2007 - Patrick Berry

Solving time: a lazy half hour (on paper, in bed)

THEME: "Kareem of the Crop" - familiar phrases that contain words beginning with R-blends (e.g. Pr-, Dr-, Br-, etc.) have those words changed to non-R-blend homynyms, creating odd phrases, which are then clued, e.g. 24A: James Stockdale as running mate? (Perot choice) - so Pro-Choice becomes PEROT CHOICE

[updated 5:15pm]

So nice to have an easy puzzle to meander my way through after suffering through Hard and Hardest on Friday and Saturday. I did not grasp the real complexity of today's theme until well after I had completed the puzzle - as I was doing it, I just thought the theme answers were clever little puns. I was hoping, from the puzzle title, that the theme was going to have something to do with puns on basketball players' names or sports stars who take Muslim names or something, but alas, no. Just the R-blend silliness.

Speaking of basketball players' names (how's that for a segue?), we went to another performance of our local Philharmonic last night and had the genuine privilege of seeing Wu Man play Tan Dun's Pipa Concerto. Tan Dun is best known for writing the score to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (for which he won an Oscar) and for writing and conducting (!) the recent Metropolitan Opera premiere of The First Emperor, starring Placido Domingo. How do basketball stars fit into any of this, you ask? Well, here is an excerpt from the program notes on the Pipa Concerto. After explaining that the Pipa Concerto constitutes a reworking of material from Tan's 1994 Ghost Opera, the program continues:

The Concerto is a thorough reconsideration of the earlier work. It had called upon the string players to perform also on gongs and water bowls and the pipa player to play also on the bowed gong, tam-tam, Tibetan bells, and paper. At various times they also vocalized lines from Shakespeare or a Chinese folk song. It is an overtly theatrical piece of chamber music in five movements.

The Concerto, on the other hand, is cast in four movements (in a slow-fast-slow-fast pattern), playing only their own instruments, though occasionally stamping a foot or shouting "Yao.”

The pipa itself looks like a cross between a banjo and an oar. Then cross that with a cross between a fraternity paddle and a dragonfly. The concerto began with a collective foot stomp from the orchestra. So hot. There was so much string plucking and sliding and note-bending goodness, and the piece managed to achieve this awesome fusion of traditional Chinese (pentatonic ... sound? I think ... Andrew?) and Classical European sound. The string plucking (from all the strings in the orchestra) is so intense that the piece has a collective orhcestral retuning Built In To It, i.e. in the middle of the piece, the principal violinist stands up and briefly retunes the orchestra to the pipa's A (I believe). You can read about this wild concerto here. I have been to three concerts this season, and the two pieces that have most blown me away are not available on any recordings (that I can find): this one, and Golijav's "Night of the Flying Horses." Maybe I should write about puzzle now. GOLIJAV would make good x-word fill, by the way. And if you live in Spokane, you can see the Spokane Symphony play "Night of the Flying Horses" this Friday (along with Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" - how could you not go?).

26A (THEME): Terse account of what happened at the Raptor Petting Zoo? (Falcon caressed)

Ah, 80's TV. Not what immediately came to mind. First thought: "uh ... school field-trip turned bloodbath?" I was thinking Jurassic Park raptors, not your less lethal (to human beings) avian raptors. This NW corner fell pretty quickly despite a couple of missteps: I had WALKMAN for DISCMAN (4D: Sony introduction of 1984) - a stupid mistake, though 1984 seems Awfully early for a DISCMAN - and I had nothing for REDISTILL (19A: Raise the proof?) until it was practically on top of me: RED IS what now?

14D: City on the Seine (Le Havre)

Very proud of myself, getting this off of the "V" alone. Helped that HAVRE was on my mind, having been an answer in a recent puzzle which then became one of the two or three most Googled clues in the history of this website: I won't write it out verbatim here (for fear of drawing Googlers here and not the proper puzzle) but it involved a college town in Montana of that name. Wicked obscure. This answer runs through SEVE (31A: Golfer Ballesteros), which is one of the few sports clues that I know my mom would have gotten. She had something of a crush on Senor Ballesteros back in the day (the day being the 80's). Yes, she was quite a fan of SEVE, and Tom Selleck, but thankfully not, as far as I know, Claude AKINS (39D: Claude who starred in TV's "Lobo").


OK, I have to run to go shopping with my wife. I'll finish this up in the early afternoon.

[I'm back - updating blog]

Wow, four hours at the mall is like 348 hours anywhere else. Drudgery. Luckily, Sandy found what she needed, so it was worth it. We also went grocery shopping. You can see that I am sapped of energy as I am telling your information and yet have nothing snappy to say about it. Back to puzzle.

41A (THEME): Girl who wears hair clips in nonstandard ways? (barrette maverick) - Of all the theme answers, this took me the longest, by far, to get. Got BARRETTE quickly, but not fully understanding the theme, I couldn't figure out how BARRETTE could be a pun on anything. The MAV- made me think the word MAVEN was involved, but no. Right now I am just guessing that BRET MAVERICK was the name of the title character in a Western TV series from the 60's - hang on while I check ... and I'm right. James Garner. I wonder if my mom had a crush on him, too. He's a handsome guy. Never saw him in "Maverick" (little before my time), but I Love him in "The Rockford Files." Just bought the first season on DVD. It's true.

48A: Like a crow or lark (oscine)

The only word in the puzzle that I had never heard of. That's pretty good for a Sunday, when normally there are a handful of words / phrases that throw me. Sandy didn't know this one either, and she's something of a bird person, so I deem this bit of knowledge pretty obscure. Not as good a word as PORCINE, but it's nice in its own way.

50A: Half of a longtime country duo (Naomi Judd)

I had NAO-, and instead of thinking "well, there's only one word in my entire vocabulary that could be" (NAOMI), I thought "Something's wrong." So I left it and came back to it, eventually solving it from the other end. The Judds kind of freak me out - something in the way they look, especially together. I can't say that I have ever heard them sing - my hand is quick to the dial / remote. NAOMI JUDD intersects my most embarrassing flub-up. I thought I'd be cool and try to fill in an answer without looking at the clue. At 41D I had --J-V- and blithely wrote in DEJA VU (Actually I had what I thought was a "B" in the first position, but it was a badly written capital "B" that looked like a "D"). Eventually I looked at the clue: 41D: "Here's a pleasant surprise!" and thought "I ... guess that's equivalent to DEJA VU ... seems like a stretch ..." It was a stretch. Such a stretch, in fact, that it wasn't right at all. The answer was BY JOVE, which is itself kind of weak. BY JOVE is equivalent to "Here's a pleasant surprise!" only if said while wearing a monocle in the conservatory in 1893. BY JOVE, it turns out that OSCINE isn't the only word I didn't know. BY JOVE intersects two more: 47A: Poet/novelist Elinor (Wylie) - an anagram of my cat's name - and 63A: Historic Irish city (Tralee). Why is it any more "historic" than any other Irish city? Is this the place where Puff the Magic Dragon lived (before he moved on up to a land called Honah-Lee)?

77A: Alternative to Rover (Rex)

Never get tired of seeing this baby in the grid. Don't care that the only time my name makes it into the grid is by way of reference to a dog. Still feels good. Might have to nominate REX for the Pantheon next year. Other potential candidates for next year that make an appearance in today's grid include ESAI (49A: Morales of "NYPD Blue") (he demands a recount for this year), ECLAT (43D: Ceremonial splendor) (which here intersects Pantheon member 52A: Impetuous quality (Elan)), TSE TSE (42D: Fly from Africa), ERIN (40A: "_____ go braugh"), and ESTOPS (5D: Impedes legally), inter ALIA (7D: Inter _____).

My best mistake (as opposed to my biggest) came at the bottom of the puzzle. I spent many seconds pondering how DANKE could be an appropriate response to 102A: Jive, e.g. If you think someone's full of it, you ... say Thank You ... in German ... to that person? Something had to be wrong, but all of the crosses checked, except - it turns out you don't spell ERIC Heiden's name with a "K" (88D: Olympians Liddell and Heiden). Problem solved. The fact that I once edited an encyclopedia finally came in handy, as I had 85D: Clavell novel set in Hong Kong (Tai Pan) dead to rights, though I'd never read the book. Had never even heard of the book until I had to proofread the encyclopedia entry. Bring on your Clavell Clues, Puzzle Gods - or clues about 95 other popular contemporary writers. Actually, if I remember correctly, I paid way closer attention to the early-alphabet entries; by the time I got up to John Updike, I was pretty much just phoning it in.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SATURDAY, Jan. 20, 2007 - Harvey Estes

Solving time: something close to an hour

THEME: Lots of crap I've never heard of or "Saved by Suffixes" or none

[updated 1:35 pm]

Not much to say about this one. Felt like the hardest Saturday I'd ever done, but times at the applet suggest otherwise, so who knows. Solved it just before going to sleep - not optimal conditions (warm horizontality). Today I'm going to start with some brief notes on the overall solving experience and then write ONLY about those entries I had Never heard of, which, as you'll see, should give me a healthy-sized entry.

The first thing I entered into the grid was 3D: American painter of sports scenes (Neiman) - nope, wait, the FIRST thing I entered was LOCATION at 20A: Chat room info, but that was immediately negated by the more solid NEIMAN, which had its "A" where LOCATION had its "I". After NEIMAN (which I wasn't even terribly sure of), not much happened for a few minutes as I scanned the Northern clues and Nothing Happened. The only reason I got a toehold on this puzzle - the ONLY reason - was that I inferred suffixes / endings on a few answers, which then allowed me to get one of their major crosses. 8D: Most vile (slimiest) did not come to me right away, but its -EST ending did; same thing with 10D: Producing bullets? (sweating) - couldn't see the full answer for a long time, but wrote that -ING in there. Between -EST and -ING, and then the -S that I wrote in at the end of 7D: Supplements (enlarges), I had --ST-G- for 32A: Put on again, and thus RESTAGE was the first word I put in the grid with anything like certainty. Fifteen minutes later ... the NE quadrant was done. I've done whole Saturday puzzles in fifteen minutes before. So we'll start our world of word mystery in the great NE (where it is currently cold and snowing, by the way).

6D: Radial alternative (bias tire)

To my credit, I managed to infer the TIRE part. But not being especially ... uh, handy, or automotive, or traditionally "masculine," I would not have written BIAS in a million years. Never Heard Of It. Had SNOW there at one point. That was the best I could do. Other words up there that seem weird / odd / wrong / from outer space: 21A: Mournful (triste) - yes, if you're in France, or possibly Canada. When (the #$#@) did this become an English word? - and then there was 19D: Otto's preceder (Sette); SETTE is like the Billy Baldwin of the SET brothers: SET-TO is in the Pantheon (he's the Alec). Then there are SET I (a recent entry) and SETA (a recent entry). I feel as if there is a fifth SET- brother, but as with the names of the rest of the Baldwin brothers, I can't remember it. [Just remembered it - it's SETT, uuuugggggh]

37D: Brazilian beach resort (Olinda)

Nope, never heard of it. Luckily for me, this word appeared in the easiest quadrant of the puzzle, so it didn't really give me trouble. What did give me trouble, at least when I tried to submit my grid to check my answers, was the fact that I apparently did not know how to spell PALOMINO (44A: Trigger, e.g.). My invented spelling of PALAMINO resulted in a crossing, MALDER, that I figured was just another of those words I'd never heard of, the kind one often finds in a Saturday puzzle. Turns out that MALDER really really wanted to be MOLDER (38D: Crumble), and while I could not properly have defined MOLDER (I'd have told you it had something to do with MOLD), it has the virtue of being (unlike MALDER) a word I'd heard of. MALDER makes me think of two great fake food-names from TV sitcoms of the past, oh, 15 years. Name them! (both start with "M")

28D: Water (Adam's Ale)

I would officially like to tell this puzzle to go to hell. Take a few letters out of ADAM'S ALE and it looks like it wants to be a word you know, but it's not quite up to the task. Stared at -DAMSA-E for a long time thinking ... it's not CASCADE ... what is it?" Actually, I had the "L" there in ALE but took it out thinking MAYBE it was wrong - turns out ILIAL (49A: Of a pelvic bone) was one of the few words I had right off the bat, though a. I wasn't sure about it, and b. when I first put it in the grid, it was ILIAC, and I won't even go into how badly that marred my ability to see ERNIE ELS at 31D: The Big Easy - I was convinced the answer had to do with New Orleans ("What other 'Big Easy' is there!?"),
and then the "C" in ILIAC gave me an ending of -ECS and I thought "dear god this is some crazy Cajun crap that I'll never get in a million years." Back to ADAM and his alleged ALE. No, on second thought, no more. Too angry-making. Last square to fall down here in the SW was the "P" intersection of 26A: Part of a pound (piaster) [yeah, a LEBANESE pound you m@#$#@fu##$ers! What am I, a numismatist!?] and 26D: U.N. beachhead during the Korean War (Pusan) [Oh "M*A*S*H," where were you when I needed you?!]. I invented a spelling of SELASSIE (29D: Part of an Ethiopian emperor's title), which turned out to be 7/8 correct! (I started the word SAL...)

I want to give a shout out to myself for getting PAS DE (47A: Deux or trois lead-in) immediately, while having very little idea what the phrases actually mean, beyond being dance-related. I also want to stop, briefly, to admire the odd stacking of STALIN (35A: Political leader from Georgia) on ARMANI (43A: Name in high fashion) on NESSIE (45A: Nickname in tabloids) - for this last one, I was looking at JESSIE, JACKO, and BENNIFER before I ever considered NESSIE. NESSIE makes me think of Scotland. Cue requisite picture of Willie:


12D: Woman in a "Paint Your Wagon" song (Elisa)

Not just a woman in the musical (which I've never seen), but a woman in a song in the musical. COME ON! I feel as if I should have gotten this, however, considering the fabulous musical parody "The Simpsons" did of "Paint Your Wagon" many years back (from "All Singing, All Dancing," a Western musical starring Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin, which Homer rents instead of renting "Waiting to Exhale" (Marge's choice) or "Emma" (Lisa's)).

Gonna paint our wagon
Gonna paint it good
We ain't braggin'
We're gonna coat that wood!

Gonna paint your wagon
Gonna paint it fine
Gonna use oil-based paint
'Cause the wood is pine (PonderOOOOOOSa Pine!)

Nothing about ELISA in there, so it remained / remains unknown to me.

Had SEOUL for KABUL (11D: World captial on a river of the same name) for a while, and the "O" in SEOUL gave me the nearly plausible OLDTIMER for 17A: Pooh-bah (big-timer), which then gave the (wrong) "D," which gave me the lame but desperate BIDES for 13D: Shows no signs of abating (rages). OLDTIMER made thematic sense up there in the NW, where it was the OLD-TIMER's comedy hour, with ALAN KING (15A: He said "Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers") intersecting 4D: Half of an old comedy duo (Anne Meara). Yes, it was a thorny time in the great NW. It's very inky, my actual puzzle. The entirety of USERNAME (20A) (where I originally had LOCATION, as I mention above) and LEGREST (5D: Deck chair part) (where I originally had [something]-SLAT and then ARMREST) - both those answers, which intersect, form solid perpindicular ink smears on my puzzle. Something similar happened in the NE, where the wrong SNOWTIRE gave me a wrong "N" that gave me the wrong NIECE for 14A: One lost through divorce (in-law). That's the benefit / horror of doing the puzzle on paper - you leave a very visible trail of your ridiculous missteps.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS I would like to register my official disapproval of the spelling of LASAGNES (22A: Potluck panfuls). I prefer the Americanized plural LASAGNAS. I'm sure Garfield would agree.

PPS Just got a Comment from a solver working today's syndicated (i.e. 6-weeks-ago) crossword, and he/she said that in his/her paper, the genius clue of 17A: Write seperately, say (misspell) had been "corrected," so that it read Write separately, say, which renders the answer meaningless - wrong, in fact. A proofreading tragedy if there ever was one.

FRIDAY, Jan. 19, 2007 - Karen M. Tracey

Solving time: 22:20

THEME: none

Long story, but I have to keep this Seriously short today. I am blogging from campus, and I am using a crappy version of Safari, and none of my usual shortcuts work, and it all feels very last century, and I feel like something might break, or I might gently tap the wrong key and send my life's work for these past four months into some kind of black hole - or, better yet, into ... what's the name of that floating square in outer space where the Kryptonian felons are sent to spin for eternity at the beginning of Superman? Anyway, things feel precarious, so I'm keeping it short. I'll clearly have to download Firefox to this computer very, very soon. Not now.

Dentist appointment went well yesterday, by the way - thanks for asking. My hygienist took one look at Will Shortz's Greatest Hits and said "I hate crossword puzzles." Then we had a discussion about why that was. Then we had a discussion about her girlfriend who is moving in with this guy who is newly divorced and has three kids, and isn't that likely to end badly? (answer: yes). Then we had a discussion about her recent pregnancy, during which she was sick - not just morning sick, but constantly sick, all the time, couldn't keep anything down, nearly hospitalized sick. Then she put on latex gloves and had at my teeth. I love my hygienist because she's super sweet with my Very sensitive back upper molars and wisdom teeth (never removed) and she compliments my dental hygiene and smells vaguely like fresh strawberries.

Today's puzzle: man it was hard. I didn't quite go into freefall (i.e. staring at blank space with a feeling of helplessness), but I was very, very close. Many parts took some serious machete-hacking to get through. The whole thing felt very old-school Saturday, to me, and the only heartening thing about the experience was seeing how many very competent solvers this puzzle ate alive. My usual competition was scattered: some beat me, but many were way, way back. Given how hard this puzzle was, I can live with my visually icky 20+ minute time. Usually the Sun puzzle takes me longer than the NYT, but today I was nearly ten minutes faster on the Sun (which, by the way, you can get to via "Puzzle Pointers" link in my sidebar).

9A: Expedient (tactic)

Uh, is "Expedient" a noun or is TACTIC an adjective? I'm guessing the former, but either option is pretty gross. The first "C" in TACTIC was the last letter I filled in. No, wait, the last letter might have been the "B" in the Down cross 11D: Trinidadian, e.g. (Carib), which took me ForEver to see, first because of TACTIC (???) and second because of the "B" cross 26A: Whammy (blow). Yeah, it BLOWs alright. The only thing "Whammy" makes me think of is "Big bucks, no Whammies!" (oft-uttered phrase on the long-defunct game show "Press Your Luck"). Other stumpers up here in the NE included the dreaded AMARNA (16A: Modern site of an ancient Egyptian capital) and 9D: _____ particle (tau)). Man, as I look at this corner now, I'm surprised I got through it at all. Even the identifiable fill was clued oddly or puzzlingly, e.g. 10D: Switch letters (AM/FM) and 12D: The Barsetshire novels novelist (Trollope) and 30A: Spawn (ova). OVA is practically Pantheonic, but I always think of "Spawn" as something that has actually hatched, and, quite possibly, is evil. OVA is pretty anticlimactic fill. I had such high hopes for this quadrant, as I got 17A: Fictional character who says "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" (J Alfred Prufrock) right away (although, to be honest, the first thing that went into the grid was ALFRED J PRUFROCK. I think ALFRED E. NEUMAN interfered with the information processing).

3D: Longtime role for Danson (Malone)

The closest thing to a gimme I had in this puzzle - besides PRUFROCK. I watched a lot of "Cheers" in my time, and Sam Malone not only owned the bar where the show was set, he was also a former pitcher for the Red Sox (my favorite team until I instituted my Lame Team Outreach Program last year, which entailed my adopting the Tigers ... who promptly went to the World Series; I feel like I should adopt someone new this year - spread the Rex Magic around). Two great answers up here in the NW - 1A: Plot device in some science fiction (time warp) and 15A: Saint born in Newark, N.J. (Eva Marie) - didn't help (much) with some Ruthless Down crosses, including 1D: Music style that often includes an accordion (tejano) [which I predict many, many people will be Googling six weeks from now when this puzzle comes out in syndication], 2D: "Terrible" czar (Ivan IV) [oh, Ivan FOUR, I see...] and 4D: Generator output: Abbr. (EMF) [also the name of one of the more forgettable, and regrettable, "bands" of the early 90's]. Not sure what this clue / answer means: 22A: Discoveries in Al Hirschfeld drawings (Ninas), but if you don't know it straight off, let's just say that nothing is going to help you. If you could get NINAS by inference, you are a better solver than I by far. Had to change the last letter of TEJANO very, very late in the game - I had TEJANA (and was wondering aloud what AVEN could possibly mean (27A: Rack holder (oven)).

35A: Movie buff: Var. (cinéast)
38A: 1993 Peace co-Nobelist (De Klerk)

These are the Acrosses at the middle of the puzzle. Just brutal (especially considering I didn't have DEKLERK's "K"s for a good while, especially the first one, which crossed with someone I'd never head of, 29D: "Mame" director of stage and screen (Saks)). As for CINEAST - I could hear the collective groan of hundreds of solvers around the world as it finally dawned on them what the hell this answer was. Doesn't help that CINEAST intersects with two of the puzzles most arcane answers: 36D: First opera to premiere at London's Savoy Theatre, 1882 ("Iolanthe") [in case it's not clear, IOLANTHE starts with a capital "i" and not a lower CASE "L" (48A: Word with legal or lower (case)], and 28D: George of old vaudeville (Jessel). Come ON! Could your frame of reference get any Older??? Well, yes, it could: 42A: Homer's home (Hellas) (I wanted SPRINGFIELD), and 62A: One side of the Battle of Thermopylae (Persia) (I had SPARTA here, as I was probably supposed to - the intended trap; sadly, for me, I also had ATHENS here before I ever entertained the possibility of PERSIA). The upcoming movie 300 (an adaptation of Frank Miller's comic of the same name) is about this battle, specifically the 300 Spartans who block the advancing Persian army, ensuring the escape (and eventual triumph) of the outnumbered Greek forces and dealing heavy losses to the Persians, though all 300 knew their deaths were certain. Speaking of Persia, this puzzle also contains SHAHS (51D: Abbas I, II and III).

45D: Store, in a way (ensile)

This answer hurts my eyes. It looks like it needs more letters to make any sense (perhaps a "T-" or "PREH-"). Why isn't the word ENSILO!? "To store in a silo." Perfect. I actually think some of the fill down here in the southern hemisphere is pretty colorful, if difficult to see without a whole bunch of crosses: 40D: Like some consonant stops (plosive) - which, like ENSILE, appears to be missing letters - and 61A: Wagner opera setting (Valhalla), not to mention the highly unusual 63A: Drill command ("Eyes left!"), which must be military, unless it's something out of Drumline or the more recent Stomp the Yard.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

THURSDAY, Jan. 18, 2007 - Randolph Ross

Solving time: untimed

THEME: 59A: SWORD (or a title for this puzzle) => ANAGRAMMED WORDS

I don't know if I knew that ANAGRAM could legally be used as a verb. It's a noun that I would happily verbize in everyday speech, but it's nice to have confirmation here that, yes, one can ANAGRAM something. This puzzle was pretty easy for a Thursday - once you figured out the theme, it was not hard to get very long answers very quickly, providing crosses for every Down clue. I figured out the theme once I got the -NGEOFH- in 26A: EARTH (change of HEART), and the rest came quickly from there. I didn't time myself today because I fell asleep before the puzzle became available last night, and in the mornings ... well, I refuse to time myself when there's a chance I might be interrupted, and in the mornings, that chance is quite high. So I solved it as I walked around the house this morning. Some new words (to me). Some great words. Some weird-ass words I'd never seen before. Let's get to it. Just short entries today, as I have a dentist appointment in ... let's see ... 67 minutes. I GO!

Entertaining / Amusing / Noteworthy Fill

• 1A: Lost it (had a cow) - ahh, 1990! No one has uttered this phrase in earnest since Season 1 of The Simpsons (when it briefly became a kind of catchphrase for Bart Simpson, as in "Don't have a cow, man!") but the expression somehow has legs. I was able to get this off of just the terminal -OW (from 6D: Anthem contraction (o'er) and 7D: Suffix with spy (ware)).
• 34A: "The Big Trail" or "The Big Sombrero," e.g. (oater) - as I check the Pantheon, I notice that OATER is mysteriously not in there. I have to believe that this will be remedied in 2008. What was the committee thinking? This word is a common five-letter answer, and it's totally antiquated, and it gets used in clues as well as answers. I would not know the word were it not for the NYT crossword. Plus, who doesn't love a good OATER? Unlike many of his crossword-common peers, I'm always happy to see OATER.
• 25D: Chain with many links (IHOP) - If only IHOP would agree to sponsor this site / my trip to Stamford, I would be happy to give it a place in the Pantheon. But until I see some payback for all this free advertising / mindless adulation, IHOP will remain a Pantheon outsider.
• 8A: "The Card Players" artist (Cézanne) - my favorite artist. Ever. I think he did a number of "Card Players," actually. There is one ... well, at the Getty, I think. I've seen it recently. I take it back - might be in the Guggenheim. I'm not bothering to look it up right now, as I have to get to the dentist soon.
• 11D: Matter for government approval (arms deal) - is this supposed to be funny? I thought that the whole point of ARMS DEALs was that they were typically covert, deniable, quasi- if not completely il-legal, and more often than not done without the formal "approval" of any government. But then again, I just finished watching four hours of "24," so my view of how the world works may be a bit skewed. I guess the appropriateness of this clue depends on how you define "government." Speaking of ARMS DEALs...
• 31D: Crude group (OPEC)
• 48A: Big man in Oman (emeer)
• 9D: Swallow (engulf) - I detect a subtheme. We used to make ARMS DEALs with certain nations on the Persian [en]GULF, but that led to the concentration of power in the hands of capricious and violent dictators. We have since tried to solicit the help of certain EMEERS in stabilizing the region and making it free for .... well, I'd say democracy, but ha ha, EMEERS are having none of that, so I'll say ... free for OPEC to continue its business unabated, with liberty and justice for all.
• 36D: Exacts satisfaction (revenges) - I am a big, big fan of All Things Revenge, as you may know by now, but I am not a fan of REvenge in anything other than its nominative (noun) state. You AVENGE your father's murder, you don't (or shouldn't, I guess) REVENGE it. Plus, shouldn't this clue be "Exacts satisfaction for"? The way it's clued makes it sound like an intransitive verb. "He hurt me, but I REVENGEd." No. Andrew (rightly) questioned REVENGEful the other day when G.W. Bush proclaimed, in some statement, that REVENGEful was something that he was not (vis-à-vis I'm not sure what - Hussein?). Anyway, to sum up: REVENGE = noun, AVENGE = (transitive) verb. VENGEANCE is also a good noun. Milton, for the record, distinguishes between VENGEANCE and REVENGE by reserving the former for use only in relation the righteous activity of God / Angels (e.g. Divine Vengeance), while everything Satan et al. try to do = REVENGE. I think the RE- prefix somehow debases the word, making it (like Satan's power) a bad imitation of the Real Thing. This theory = copyright me, right now (you know, just in case there are any lurking Milton scholars who have run out of good ideas. Back off).
  

Words I Did Not Know

• 16A: Not using liquid (aneroid) - ugh, science. I feel about science answers the way my wife feels about sports answers, i.e. ugh. See 31A: The Cowboys of the N.C.A.A. (OSU) and 39D: N.F.L. coach Jim (Mora), both of which (esp. the former) were gimmes for me, sorry honey. On the other hand, see also 19A: Author of "Broca's Brain" (Sagan), which I did not get forEver (had SEGAL, as in Erich), and 56D: _____ point (embroidery stitch) (gros), which my wife might have known, but I didn't - GROS means "fat" in French, but that's all I know about GROS.
• 40A: Name meaning "my God is God" (Eliel) - wanted ELIHU (as I always do). Again, if you really want to stump me, you will pack the puzzle with things Hebraic (or, of course, scientific) - a puzzle about ancient Jewish scientists would absolutely destroy me.
• 52D: Hindu hero (rama) - this had my one uncertain square in it: the M, which a good portion of my gut wanted to be a J, but then the cross would have been FT JEADE (62A: Home of the Natl. Cryptologic Museum), and something stronger than my gut told me that was just wrong. MEADE sounded right, and RAMA sounded like something, even if I couldn't define it. It appears that the RAMA of which the clue speaks is the legendary king believed to be an incarnation of Vishnu. I lifted that definition straight out of Wikipedia, for the record.
• 37D: One of the Scraggs in "Li'l Abner" (Clem) - I love that got CLEM with just the C because it was the first and most hillbilliest name that came to mind. I know a lot about comics post-1986, but not as much as I should, clearly, about early newspaper comics (see also my struggles with one Mrs. Cora Dithers). But seriously, do you know how far down the "Li'l Abner" totem pole you have to go to find CLEM Scragg?? So far that I canNOT find him on the official website. Fifteen pictured characters under "Other Li'l Abner characters," and only one of them named Scragg, and it ain't CLEM (it's Romeo ... of course). Looking at this list of characters is making me really, Really wanna read this comic. There's a character called "Moonbeam McSwine," and she is a hot woman wearing some kind of tattered, Hefty (TM) bag dress and chewing on a corncob pipe. What's not to love? Please see the cast of "Central High School Presents: L'il Abner!" - the very, very last person listed, in a very, very large cast, is the kid who plays CLEM Scragg. His name is Cordney and he likes playing XBOX (which, somehow, links this entry back to the world of crosswords)
  
• 15A: Nation born from war in 1993 (Eritrea) - did this country (or country name) really not exist at all before 1993? Weirdly, or maybe not so weirdly, I had it in my head until Just before writing this entry that ERITREA was in the region of Bosnia-Hercegovina, but then just now it dawned on me that there might have been something in Africa in the early 90s that created a new nation. One Google search later: ERITREA, occupying much of the beachfront property on the Red Sea (not sure how Ethiopia feels about this - a long skinny portion of ERITREA is the only thing standing between Ethiopia and sweet, sweet water. Someone else can go into the nuances of the war that led to this country's creation. I'm just glad I'd heard about it enough to be able to fill it into the grid today.

Had one very wrong entry which held me up a tiny bit: 35A: Like some noses (pierced) - an eminently acceptable answer, but ... well, I had the PI and the ED, and in between I wrote NCH, giving me PINCHED. It's a good answer, in some ways. Google says:

Enlarged adenoids can give the voice a "pinched nose" quality

And a PINCHED-nose coupe might look something like this:


But alas, the answer was PIERCED. Shaun used to have a PIERCED nose (he said, unnecessarily).

Oh, one last quick thing. ANAGRAMS were in full force in the SW, where the MEADE (in FTMEADE) intersects not one but two anagrams of itself, both of which (nicely!) intersect the word ANAGRAMMED. MEADE runs through (R)EMADE (44D: Like beds, again and again) and (T)EAMED (45D: Joined (up)), and OK, the initial R and T screw things up, but still, that's a lot of REMADE MEADE.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS, this is the third puzzle author named RANDY I've encountered since starting this blog. There's today's author, Randolph Ross, and then Randall J. Hartman and Randy Sowell. I know those are technically three completely different names, but they're close enough to raise questions. It's like there are only a half dozen names in CrossWorld and people have to share them, like Heather 1, Heather 2, and Heather 3. Surely there is an answer to this mystery of limited names. Someone please figure it out.

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 17, 2007 - Nancy Kavanaugh

Solving time: 19:05

THEME: "Get Cracking" (54A: Order appropriate for [long theme answers])

I must keep this short - I am trying to give myself a strict time limit on writing this thing, in preparation for my return to ... whatdyacall it? ... oh, yeah, work. Plus, if I let myself, I could go on forever about the ways this puzzle dissatisfied me, and that will just bring me down. Much as I resent this puzzle, I consider all puzzle failures my own. I mean, I did eventually solve it, so it's not like it was impossible. I just wasn't fast enough on the uptake. End of story. I hear that the puzzle's problems / challenges have been taken up already on another website (which I never read before I've written my commentary, btw), but I'll add my two cents anyway. She had her turn; now, I GO (27D: "My turn!").

27D: "My turn!" (I GO)

Yeah, I guess, if you are a really impatient and annoying kid on the playground, and are also Korean with little-to-no English-speaking experience. "I GO!" (the voice I imagine in my head is actually a combination of Margaret Cho's mother - if you've seen her act, you know what I'm talking about - and the voice of my friend Steve [if I'm remembering this right] imitating the proprietor of a Thai restaurant where he and Shaun stayed well past closing, causing the staff to start doing things like running the vacuum and turning the lights on and off: "We close at nine!") ANYWAY, I GO is officially not a real phrase, no matter what evidence you provide. I would have been so, so much happier to see MEEGO, which is saying a lot, considering this was the plot of "MEEGO" (1997)

Meego is a 9000 year old alien whose spaceship crashes on Earth and is discovered by Alex, Maggie and Trip Parker. The three children take a liking to Meego and convince their single father to take him in as a nanny. Meego agrees to stay until his ship is fixed, but eventually grows attached to the children and stays.

It ran for ... two episodes. In addition to MEEGO, I would also have accepted MEASO.

That IGO answer is in the "Oregon" part of the puzzle (irony: OREgon is actually in the puzzle, but, comically, in the NE, at 19A: Ida. neighbor, which, dammit, could have been anything). That was the very last part I finished. WHY? Well ... ugh, I have to back up.

The theme is GET CRACKING, and as you see above, that answer was clued as "Order appropriate for ..." all the long theme answers, which are:

• SECRET CODES (20A: Some spy materials) (bad clue, as there is nothing "material" about a code)
• TEXT BOOKS (28A: New school purchases) (is the school new, or are the books new?)
• EGG SHELLS (44A: Breakfast refuse) (this one was the most reasonably clued, and, shocking, easiest to get)

Now what does "Order appropriate for..." mean? Who is ordering what? Do you order the SECRET CODES to do something? Do you "order" someone ELSE to CRACK the SECRET CODES, in which case the ORDER is "for" the CRACKER, not the CRACKEE? I can see how "for" here can mean "for getting someone to deal with something," I suppose, but god that is a horribly inelegant way to tie this all together.

Now, back to the "OREgon" section of the puzzle. There are (I learned this only this morning, from an unsolicited email, which I suppose I appreciate, though normally I like to blog free from outside influence) two "hidden" theme answers, or little words that are unremarkable on their own, but that are designed to fit with the theme; there are two of them, and they are symmetrically arranged, which on any other day I would say was Nice. Anyway, one of them is 25A: Defeats handily (whips), which seems harmless, but I had ROUTS, then ROMPS, and none of the crosses were helping me fix things (see IGO!). There was also 25D: Pugs' org. (WBA), which you are lying if you tell me you didn't write some version of AKC in there first. "Pugs" is a dated word for "pugilists," and as boxing is no longer even a legitimate sport anymore, this answer blows. The other cross of WHIPS was 26D: It may be cured (ham) - an easy one for you fat, sedentary types, but this non-meat-eater was Lost, even though in retrospect HAM probably should have been a gimme. I had LOX, I think. I also had OIL, as in "OIL-cured olives," which I love to eat. But then, the OIL isn't what is cured, is it? I GO!

48D: Former Ecuadoran money (sucres)
49D: Saturated hydrocarbon (alkane)

All I can say is "what the f@#$#?" Lemme get this straight. SUCRE is the capital of Bolivia ... but it's the former currency of Ecuador!? And ALKANE? When you've already got the chemically 42D: Amino acid found in sugar cane (GLYCINE) in the puzzle!? Come on! These two answers - SUCRES and ALKANE - parallel one another, and provide the first two letters in 48A: Hotel amenities (safes), which I had as ROBES, thinking that 38D: Global finance org. (IMF) was IMB, wherein B would somehow stand for "Bank." Trust me, it made sense at the time, even though I knew that IMF actually stood for something (International Monetary Fund), where IMB ... don't know what that is. Typo of IBM. Oh, SAFES is your other "hidden" theme answer (as in you CRACK SAFES, just as you CRACK WHIPS, UGH). I really really wish the word PIPE or WHORE had been somewhere in this grid. Then it all would have made sense, I'm sure.

How I Was Wrong

• 1A: Amorphous creature (ameba) - don't know what I had, but it wasn't this; god I hate this spelling
• 13A: Turns red, perhaps (ripens) - I had ANGERS (for a reason!)
• 14D: Small paving stone (sett) - you're joking, right? Makes me miss SET I (from a few puzzles back)
• 23A: In the previous month (ultimo) - how much of my dwindling hair did I pull out trying to remember this one!? I blogged this damned word not more than a month ago and still couldn't pull it ... out.
• 34A: In the mood (amorous) - "In the mood..." FOR WHAT!? I'm in the mood for some coffee right now, but I am not AMOROUS (though I do have pretty strong feelings for Dunkin' Donuts, it's true)
• 37D: Tough one (poser) - had the P and S but NOTHING would come to me. Words canNot describe how I hate this word. I hated it before today, just for the record. "Hmmm, that's a POSER." No, a model is a POSER.
• 59A: Familiar (old) - seriously, is this puzzle like a dumping ground for terrible clues. "See that OLD man sitting over there?" "Yes." "Is he 'familiar' to you?" "No." The End.
• 32D: 6, written out (June) - killed me. "6" written out is SIX. I have to give this clue props for cleverness though. I'm sure I'll get fooled by this month-related bull@#$# again someday. See also ULTIMO.
• 54D: Highlander (Gael) - more arcanity than I've ever seen in a Wednesday puzzle. I had SCOT. What an idiot I am.

Many, many more clues were perfectly apt, just way way way vague, such that they could have been cluing anything, e.g. 22A: Bombed (lit) or 21D: Names as a source (cites). Yes, they make sense, but they were not easy (for me) to see. You know you're in trouble when MADDOX (7D: Tommy _____, 2001 M.V.P. of the XFL) - an obscure clue about a defunct sports league - is one of your very few sure things. That, and ASP (10A: Egyptian cobra - they're Back!) and (off of ASP) PIETAS (12D: Some religious artworks).

11D: Horror film sound (shriek)

This answer EMBODYs (44D: Personify) my problems with this puzzle. Had the "S," I've seen some movies, I entered SCREAM. There is even a (parody) horror film named SCREAM. Many SCREAMs, actually. Good answer, reasonable answer, wrong answer. Didn't help that they had not one but two letters in common. Didn't know whether to SHRIEK or SCREAM at that point (and many, many other slow parts of the puzzle) so in the end I opted for head-hanging groans of despair.

A final note: if Davids are over-represented among puzzle constructors, so are Nancys. I've got three in my database just since September. I'll allow one more, and then I'm going to enact the Dave Law (quotas - only one new Dave a year).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

TUESDAY, Jan. 16, 2007 - Dave Mackey

Solving time: 5:13

THEME: Family REUNION - three long theme answers (one of which is impossibly good) describe sets of relatives, such as one might find at a REUNION (40A: Celebration that may involve the people in 20-, 42- and 56-Across)

These are your theme answers, listed here, in order, from good to mind-blowing.

• 56A: 2005 Mark Wahlberg movie ("Four Brothers")
• 20A: Chekhov play, with "The" ("Three Sisters")
• 35A: With 42-Across, Lesléa Newman book ("Heather Has / Two Mommies")

I solved this puzzle so quickly (for me), that I didn't not notice HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES as the answer until it was 80% filled in. This book was legendary when I was in college (originally self-published in 1989) for being one of, if not the, first children's books to depict a lesbian household. I have said that everything about pop music, from the years I was in college, sucks. Well, one of the better - or at least more interesting - developments of my time in college was that it was a time of increased visibility of gay people in literature and movies. Or maybe it's just that I finally met some gay people when I was in college and then noticed they were everywhere and, it turns out, as messed up as everybody else I knew. Hurray for equality. Anyway, this book, as well as Annie on My Mind, got talked about (usually jokingly, even among the most politically sympathetic, i.e. gayest, of us) a lot in my latter college years. I won't even tell you the alternative (i.e. totally made-up) titles we had for some of these. Let's just say that "My Mind" was not what Annie was "on."

Yesterday I announced a moratorium on guys named Dave/David authoring puzzles. I then grandfathered a bunch of Davids, but forgot to grandfather Dave Mackey (I did it in Comments). And then voila, here he is. So, he's legal, but seriously, don't push me. Oh, I also forgot to grandfather Dave Tuller. I wonder what the record is for using "grandfather" as a verb in a single day. Single paragraph?

14A: Followers of so (la ti)
2D: Nobel-winning Nelly (Sachs)

How many times will I be suckered in by the damned "notes on a scale" trick, where SO or DO are used in a clue as if they are words, but then it turns out they are part of that damned Sound of Music song!? Do you know any effeminate homosexual men who have won the Nobel prize in anything? I don't. Wait, did Auden win? The only Sachs I know is Oliver, and I don't really know him except by name. LATI looks incredibly stupid and wrong when written into the grid. These two answers, up in the always slippery "Seattle" section of the puzzle, gave me my only real solving challenge of this puzzle. Everything else more or less fell together without much pause (for once).

25D: Actor Milo (O'Shea)

So I posted the new 2007 Pantheon line-up yesterday, and immediately second-guessed myself like crazy. I'm already considering new words for next year, and this puzzle makes a good case for O'SHEA, who comes up a lot for a dead Irishman. O, my bad, he's not dead. He was the friar in Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet (pictured). He was also somehow involved in the Janeane Garofalo movie The MatchMaker. Guy's gotta eat. Actually ... I saw that movie in the theater. What's more, I didn't ... hate it. Might have ... liked it. Enough movie confession. O'SHEA is a worthy Pantheon candidate ... for another year. See also 53D: Home on high (aerie) and 55D: Perfume compound (ester) - which reminds me, I really really want to see Perfume; the novel was amazing, especially at the end when ... well, you'll see.

24A: "Hamlet" setting (Elsinore)
48A: Five Nations tribe (Onondaga)

So much colorful symmetrical goodness here. ONONDAGA live nearby, so I'm familiar with their name. ELSINORE took a little cajoling to come out into the light (DENMARK being the only "setting" that came to mind at first glance), but a couple of crosses made the answer obvious. This is one of the best Tuesday puzzles in a long time - between the beautifully structured and highly original theme, and the super-fresh fill in the non-themed answers. I am putting this one into the "Puzzle Awards 2007" folder I have on my desktop - it'll probably get nominated for best theme answer and best Tuesday. But who knows - there are still 11.5 months to go, and anything can happen.

4D: Musical liabilities (tin ears)
44D: Pizza slices, usually (eighths)

More hot symmetry. These answers are both musical, if you hold them in the right light. I love that EIGHTHS has five consonants in a row (one of the few words in English that can claim that). I also love that apparently I can't spell "consonant" (keeps coming out "consanant").

10D: Pale lager (pilsner)
43D: _____ Mann of 1960's pop (Manfred)

OK, I swear, this is the last pair of symmetrical answers I will shower with adulation. I just love it when these long connectors are something other than workmanlike. PILSNER isn't astounding, but it's sort of jaunty, and MANFRED Mann is a crazy blast from the past. "Blinded by the Light!" - Springsteen did a version of this song, but I prefer MANFRED's. Has the greatest misunderstood (by me) lyric in the history of song. But I am too modest to write it down; the line starts "Wrapped up..." That's all I'll say. Did you know that a PILSNER glass is FOOTED - It's true. How do I know. A little puzzle told me so - about 2-3 months ago.

62A: 1986 Indy winner Bobby (Rahal)

I have yelled at ESPN more times than I can count for its decision to count NASCAR and other auto-racing events as "sports." The machine does the work: NOT A SPORT. And yet, I must have absorbed something while ignoring the screen during the NASCAR coverage, because RAHAL was a gimme. I didn't know my gimmes went beyond Jeff Gordon, but apparently they do. So bring on the NASCAR, if you must. I am no longer afraid.

19A: Sue of "Lolita" (Lyon)

If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now: Kubrick's is the only "Lolita" you want to see. Doesn't matter that Sue LYON is way too old. Peter Sellers is some kind of genius in that movie (as is Shelley Winters), and the Jeremy Irons version is Pitifully lame and unfunny. No Sense of Humor. Nabokov would have retched. If I have performed this tirade before, my apologies.


33D: Steve the late Crocodile Hunter (Irwin)

This clue sounds more like a children's book title than a clue about a recently dead guy. "Steve hunted crocodiles, but he could never seem to get to work on time..." His death is sad, of course, in the way that all unnecessary deaths are sad. Did no one learn anything from Grizzly Man?!?! Let's leave the lethal animals alone, as God intended.

40D: Sonata ending, often (rondo)

I am running out of steam this morning. Andrew, what does this mean? And does anyone else remember a refreshing soft drink from the late-70s that went by the name of "Rondo?" HA ha, the (musical) RONDO entry at Wikipedia begins with an advisory: "For the former U.S. soft drink, please see Rondo (soft drink)." Only when you go there, you just get redirected to a generic "Citrus Drink" page, where RONDO is described very briefly. Answers.com tells me that two of its slogans were:

* "Rondo - The Thirst Crusher!"
* "Lightly carbonated, so you can slam it down fast!"

I want a picture of the can!!!! There don't appear to be any in existence (on the whole internet!? how is that possible?). Free "Rex Parker" T-shirt to the first person who can provide me with a pic. That is, when I actually get around to having the T-Shirts made. Or even designed.

Speaking of which, I received a "scholarship" to Stamford from my Aunt Nancy, which was very thoughtful. I am clearly going to have to set up something in the sidebar that acknowledges my benefactors; something like "Brought to you by ... IHOP ... the Letter 'K' ... and the Nancy McNichols Foundation for Better Blogging."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS I love that OLEO gets elected Pantheon President on a Monday, and then turns around and makes a puzzle appearance on a Tuesday. She's a man of the people.

PANTHEON - NEW for 2007!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to the NYT CrossWorld Pantheon:
A Hall of Fame for Crossword fill

Selection to the Pantheon is determined by a top-secret formula that looks something, but not exactly, like this:

fx/u

Where "F" = the Frequency with which a word appears, x = the number of letters in the word (in singular form), and "U" = likelihood that anyone in the general public would ever Use said word in a sentence.

Membership is a fluid thing - new words are being inducted all the time, and the status of a word's membership is always subject to review, particularly if for some reason a Pantheon Word stops appearing in the grid with any frequency, or develops a currency with the General Public. Membership is divided into FOUR categories: The Security Council (limited to the FIVE highest-ranking members, all of whom have veto power), the A-List, the B-List, and the C-list.

**REVISED for 2007**

The big news is that ASTA has stepped down as Pantheon President, for personal reasons. He was immediately given the Eugene T. Maleska award for formerly Pantheonic fill (joining ADIT, ABIE, AMAH, and the newly recognized ERI TU). In a surprise development, ARIA objected to ASPS's succession to the presidency, claiming that snakes can't be trusted, that a plural should not be allowed to hold such an important office, and that changing the face of the Pantheon from a lovable dog to murderous snakes would be devastating to the Pantheon's image. With the Security Council thus factionalized, the Presidency was put to a popular vote of current members, and dark horse candidate OLEO came out of nowhere to claim victory - the first time a non-Security Council member has made the leap straight to the Presidency in the Pantheon's history.

NEW Members in RED.
PROMOTED or DEMOTED or newly RETIRED Members in PURPLE.

SECURITY COUNCIL:

1. Oleo (President) 2. Asps 3. Eero 4. Aria 5. Epée
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
A-List:

Ewer (Captain), Élan, Etna, SSTS, Apse, STET, Alai, Etui

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
B-List:

Rea (Captain), Sloe, Aloe, Otoe, Dele, Obi, Tiara. Ogee, Eerie, Omoo, Isms, Eno, Ulna, Alee, Rae (from C)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
C-List:

Igor (Captain), Essen, Estes, NTWT, Pei, Eel, Tat, Ulan, Uma, Eli, eBay, iMac, Esai, Olla, Alou, Aioli, Set-to, Estee, Enola, Née, Nene, Olio (from A), Riga (from B), Tarn (from B)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Honorary members (The Eugene T. Maleska Award):

Adit, Abie, Amah, Eri Tu, Elia (retired), Asta (retired)

Kicked out of Pantheon:

Deion (from C) - for excessive celebration in the end zone; and Neon (from C), for being far, far too ordinary a word, as well as for being related, in common parlance, to DEION.

Next year, the 2008 Pantheon Selection Committee will be taking up new bids from worthy eligible crossword fill. Look for strong showings from the anagrammic pair of OATER and ERATO, as well as fan favorites ILSA and OMANI.

Induction to The Pantheon occurs only by the autocratic authority of Rex Parker, who is happy to be advised, but only in a properly deferential manner.

MONDAY, Jan. 15, 2007 - David Pringle

Solving time: 5:21

THEME: TRAFFIC LIGHT (54A) - Three long theme answers contain colors RED, YELLOW, and GREEN (reading from top to bottom, in the same order the colors would appear on a traffic light): 20A: Special occasion (red letter day), 29A: Beatles movie (Yellow Submarine), 44A: Winner of the first Super Bowl (Green Bay Packers)

Ooh, the north of this puzzle was murder on me (I mean, for a Monday ... Monday Murder). I would say it was a Manic Monday and that I wished that it was Sunday, but in fact it was Sunday (evening) when I solved this puzzle, and nobody remembers the Bangles anyway, sadly. RED LETTER DAY is not a phrase I use or hear much, if ever. The other two theme answers were easier and easiest (for me), both answerable immediately without my knowing the theme. There were a lot of Scrabbly letters in here (again, for a Monday), resulting in a lively grid that felt almost Tuesday-ish to me (though my time improved 6 seconds from last week, which was up 5 seconds from the week before: impryooovement!). One objection to this puzzle. It is totally out of season. YULE (7D: Christmastime) was fine, unremarkable; but NOEL (38D: Christmas song) was pushing it - I mean "Christmas" in both clues, come on!; but what really tore it was EGGNOG (47D: Holiday quaff). Oh "Holiday" quaff, eh? Well, at least you didn't say "Christmas quaff," I guess, which would have combined redundancy with cute alliteration to create Angry Rex. Christmas is SO 2006. I give this out-of-season nonsense a CATCALL (43D: Raspberry).

In addition to calling for a halt to Christmas clues, I would like to call a halt to all constructors named DAVID. What the hell, do you guys have some kind of club or union or secret agenda for Daviding the planet? My middle name is David, so I'm a fan, in theory, but there are too many Davids in CrossWorld. I'm calling for quotas. We'll grandfather Benkof, Kahn, Quarfoot, Sullivan, and now Pringle, but the rest of you will have to apply, to me, for special dispensation. Moving on.

1A: Church recess (apse)

Ah, APSE. My beloved APSE. Sweet Pantheon gimme. It is in the Pantheon, right? (This year's new Pantheon line-up will be released later today, in honor, by total coincidence, of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). So the first clue was easy. Second, however, was Not. 5A: Wallop in the boxing ring (kayo). This is all kinds of icky, and especially grating given the nearby presence of 12D: "Thumbs up" (A OK) - I've made my feelings known about words that sound silly when uttered one after the other (side note: I kind of like that there is a "Thumbs up" clue in a puzzle that also features EBERT as an answer - 40A: Film critic Roger). Criminy, if you say KAYO A OK, you have some kind of sonic palindrome. You also have an anagram of OO, KAYAK! This is all to say that I had some reasonable synonym of "punch" in there, and it was wrong, and the odd letters in KAYO for some reason took a (Monday) while to unearth from the crosses. One of these crosses, off the "O," was the great (but hard to see without the "O") OPERA BOX (8D: Area from which to hear an aria). OPERA BOX has puzzle symmetry with LEAP FROG (39D: Spring game?), which pleases me for reasons unknown to me. Maybe because they are very colorful answers from entirely separate universes.

25A: Arctic bird (auk)
39A: Unilever soap brand (Lux)


These two little buggers gave me small fits. Why can't you be more like your three-letter cousin, BOA, i.e. obvious (24A: _____ constrictor)? I have heard of, but could not define, picture, or perform the appropriate bird call of the AUK. I provide a picture here for my edification as well (perhaps) as yours. Like AUK, LUX is another answer I have heard of, but not often. It's from another era, right? Like, my mom used it to wash ... things ... in the 60's, maybe? AUK and LUX are what happens when you try to cram a lot of Scrabbly letters into a Monday puzzle (see also DANKE [19A: German word of appreciation], RUBIK [32D: Hungarian cube maker], WIZ [26A: Oz musical, with "The"], and "Q's - The Good and The Bad," below).

4D: 1928 Oscar winner Jannings (Emil)

Oh, right, 1928. I remember it well. No, wait, I don't. My GRANDMOTHER probably doesn't remember it well. I want to know what EMIL Jannings is doing in my Monday puzzle! It's not like he's there to pick up some tricky, odd letters. He's an anagram of LIME, for god's sake - surely you could have cleaned up this corner and gotten the musty silent movie star off stage - rest up for Thursday, EMIL!

5D: Acts obsequiously (kowtows)
43D: Raspberry (catcall)

Though KOWTOWS took me way too long to get - see my anti-KAYO screed, above - it is a great, colorful word, and has sizzling symmetry with CATCALL. I'm happy with today's puzzle pairings, for the most part. Makes it seem as if some serious thought went into grid construction.

46D: First (primal)

Untrue to its name, this was not anywhere close to the "first" answer I got. In fact, it was nearly last. For some reason it was nearly impossible for me to see it even though I had _R_MAL. Looks very wrong. I seriously entertained AROMAL before PRIMAL ever came into view. PRIMAL, to me, describes an urge, an atavistic craving, not the "first" of anything. I know that it means "first" in some contexts (math contexts?), but not in any contexts in which I find myself on a regular basis.

51A: Dadaist Jean (Arp)

God I love his name. I am a big fan of crazy-ass 20th-century art, esp Dadaism. I have a special Dada edition Swatch watch (Andrew is my wondertwin - we bought our watches together, which is possibly a more romantic purchase than anything my wife and I have ever made, save our wedding rings - and I lost my wedding ring almost two years ago. My Dada Swatch, however ... safe and sound!). Arp did a lot of abstract and blobby paintings and sculptures, many of which I find strangely beautiful. I get him confused with Calder for absolutely no good reason. ARP is his real name, which is great because it sounds just like something absurdly made-up, like he renamed himself in honor of the sound of a dog barking, which is something a Dadaist might do.

Q's: The Good and the Bad

GOOD:

9A: Catcher's position (squat)
10D: Waterfront site (quay)

I especially like the first of these, as I got it instantly, with no crosses. I would have preferred that it be clued 9A: Jack _____, but baseball is a good way to go too. I am indifferent to the word QUAY and include it here only because it's the "Q" crossing.

BAD:

57D: Figs. averaging 100 (IQ's)
62A: Capital of Ecuador (Quito)

Were this a Wednesday+ puzzle, I would be filing this under "GOOD," but that "Q" was blank for more seconds that I care(d) to count. I am very bad on South American capitals, in that I know most of them, but easily forget which countries they belong to. LA PAZ = Bolivia .... and it sort of breaks down from there. I know SUCRE is down there somewhere. Oh, SANTIAGO, that's easy. Is RIO the capital of Brazil? Anyway, QUITO would not quome (cwm?) to mind for many, many seconds. Some might say that this blank-out on my part is at least somewhat ironic, as I slowed down on a clue whose answer involved IQ. I would humbly disagree.

67A: S-shaped molding (ogee)

Again, this puzzle has ingenious symmetry, and this is the ingeiousest of all. Start with APSE (church architecture), end with OGEE (church architecture). Amen. Alpha and Omega. I'm sure God approves. Now if only you could have provided the appropriate symmetrical companion for EBONY (21D: Piano key wood). "EBONY and EXCEL (40D: Do well (at))" isn't nearly as catchy as "EBONY and IVORY."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Jan. 14, 2007 - Harvey Estes

Solving time: 22:57

THEME: "Sounds of Old" - all theme answers are familiar phrases, which originally contained "OLD" but which have had the "OLD" part respelled as a homonym, creating strange phrases which are then reclued, e.g. 37D: Rang true? (tolled it like it is)

Average Sunday for me. Maybe slightly above average - certainly way faster than last week's debacle. My nemesis at the Times applet beat me, though, and has beaten me two days in a row, after I flattened him/her the vast majority of the time over the past two weeks. I'm trying to get that competitive spirit going for Stamford in two months (my competitive spirit, for better or worse, needs very little coaxing to show itself). The theme itself was kind of blah, but much of the non-theme fill was fun and spicy (and tricky). I started out very, very slowly, with hardly anything coming together in the northern climes of the puzzle, and so - for the first time that I can remember, I worked my way through the puzzle diagonally, moving on a nearly perfectly straight NE-to-SW line, so that the whole center region of the puzzle was the first part I substantively finished. I think I really picked up (speed-wise and mood-wise, when I hit the dead center of the puzzle and discovered my newly-beloved DOGLEGS, which has shown up recently and, in conjunction with yesterday's DOGSBODY, caused of lot of DOG-word musing over the past few days by me and other readers (thanks, btw, to the etymology hounds out there, especially the one who provided the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." reference for DOGSBODY: "I wanna be anarchy! / No dogsbody!" Hot.

1A: Eponymous physicist (Tesla)

I wrote in FERMI. That was the wrong foot on which I got off. I thought for sure that FERMI was some kind of eponym, and he's very crossword-friendly, and he fit, so voila. Shmoila. I got the next Across, 6A: Mary Kay rival (Avon), but the crosses would not come. 10A is clued in reference to another clue so I skipped it. Then hit the NW corner where finally things started coming together. 15D: First name in horror (Lon) was a gimme, as was 17D: Small topper (beanie). They gave me crosses to get 14A: Corroborator, maybe (alibi), and then the rest of the NW came together, only even with the entire first part of the 15-letter 16D (THEME) Comment about suddenly thinner mares? filled in, I had NO idea what the clue was going for. I would solve this later, only after FOURTEEN of the squares were filled in: initially had I KNOW THE-D FOALED - which made no sense. Changed KNOW to KNEW (stupid Bambi! - 31A: "Bambi" character (Ena) - not Ona), and then saw the verb tense / contraction the answer wanted. I KNEW THEY'D FOALED. The "Y" came from 57A: "Funny Girl" composer (Styne), which made me reflect on my as-yet terrible dearth of knowledge about popular composers of the 20th century.

77A (THEME): Played tenpins in officers' uniforms (Bowled as brass)

Took me forever, as I was unfamiliar with the phrase (or thought I was). Had BOWLED ADDRESS for a while and wondered what the hell that meant. My life would have been easier had I known 70D: "Serpico author" (Maas), which would have given me the "A" in BRASS. A whole series of words coming off of this theme answer gave me trouble. SICK CALL (80D: Line of soldiers needing medical attention) isn't really a word I know (and my dad was a doctor in the Army!), and I thought I knew my ankhs, having seen so many stupid ankh tattoos on people (especially women, for some reason) in the 90s, but I somehow neglected the LOOP aspect (116A: Ankh feature). LOOP crosses SICK CALL at the second "L" - and this whole Louisiana region of the puzzle was screwed up (for me) by a tiny, tiny, harmless-seeming answer: 108A: Familiar sigh (Ah, me), which I understandably, and far more in-the-language-ly, had as OH MY. This caused me to take an Eternity to see 97D: Clean up, in a way (bleep!), which sat for many precious seconds as BLYED in my grid, the "D" coming from the stupid "Ankh" clue, which I had not as LOOP but as ROOD (as in "Dream of the ROOD," as in an old-fashioned word for cross, which is essentially what an ankh is ... right?). And so, for a while, nothing happened. BLEEP is a great answer, by the way, however much it tripped me up. It is great in part because if my solving experience had been on TV /radio, the FCC would have had to BLEEP a lot of my language at precisely the moment I was entering that answer.

I finished the puzzle in the NW - where I had my oh-so-inauspicious start. How bad was my second stab at the NW. Consider this: here are the clues for 1D, 2D, and 3D, followed not by their correct answers, but by the answers that I entered off the top of my head (all wrong):

1D: Chuck (hurl)
2D: Parrot (copy)
3D: SeaWorld performer (Orca)

These words do not like to be near each other, I assure you. I don't think the NW would ever have come together if I hadn't finally gotten the last (which was actually, on paper, the first) of the theme answers: 27A: Like shoes made in St. Louis and finished in New Orleans? (soled down the river) - an excellent clue that I only just now gave my full attention. So HURL became TOSS and COPY became ECHO and ORCA became SEAL, bam bam bam. Hit "Done" at that point and found out I'd left a square unfilled - the poor little "A" at the 65D: Kazakhstan's _____ Sea (Aral) / 71A: Certain finish (matte) crossing.

Stuff I didn't know

• 23A: Hat with a plume (shako) - this is one of those tall, ridiculous, impractical European military hats. What's the etymology on THIS one? Hang on ... Oh I don't wanna run downstairs and get my barely adequate dictionary. Here's a picture instead:

• 8D: Pearl Buck heroine (Olan) - ugh, Pearl Buck, my most hated of Bucks. She must have a novel on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list, which means I'll have read at least one thing of hers by the end of the year. Nope, nothing by her on there. Guess I'll have to continue to piece together my knowledge of her solely through solving crosswords.

• 60D: "Blame it on the Bossa Nova" singer, 1963 (Gormé) - yep, officially way before my time, but I've at least heard her name before.

• 68A: Moon of Uranus (Ariel) - This is a Sylvia Plath book to me - that, or the sprite or whatever he is in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Or, oh yeah, the little mermaid in The Little Mermaid. RE: Uranus, I won't comment on the fact - I'll just point out - that this grid has ASS, HOLE, and ANNAL (26A: One year's record) in it.
• 9D: Elementary particle (neutrino) - I put this here because I got it with just the "N" in place, but I'd be lying if I suggested I could tell you anything even semi-substantive about a NEUTRINO. I'd heard of it, it fit, there it is.

I am not fond of the convention of cluing AMORAL as 11D: Making no value judgments. This makes non-judgmental-ness sound like soullessness. AMORAL is scary to me, while reserving or withholding judgment seems a decent life skill.

Lastly, congratulations to Harvey ESTES, not only for writing a very entertaining puzzle, but for managing to work his name into the grid - subtle (30D: Opera singer Simon _____). It is a measure of his (no doubt) considerable humility and self-deprecating nature that he made his name cross with both 44A: "Gr-r-ross!" ("Yecch!") and 46A: Got a facial piercing (holed one's nose).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SATURDAY, Jan. 13, 2007 - Patrick Berry

Solving time: 39:54 (ugh, it's true)

THEME: time slipping away ... tumbleweeds rolling past ... (actually, none)

Let's take this in parts. First, well, you can see the completed grid there on the right. It's got its iffy spots, like any Saturday grid, but whatever. With the possible exception of AMENRA (3D: God worshiped in ancient Thebes), all of the answers are at least readily discernible as words or concepts in the language - though #$#@-ing GLACÉ (5D: Frosted) is from another language and stayed hidden Good and Long because you can't see an accent aigu on the grid, and I so badly wanted the answer to be [something] ICE. OK, where was I? Right, not an obscene grid when you see it all filled in. But, for whatever reason (there are many to choose from), I tripped on the NW, left it for the NE, which fell reasonably quickly, swept down the eastern seaboard to the SE, which fell very quickly, and then circled back westward and got totally held up. Went back to the NW, alligator-wrestled it into submission, and then went back to wide open SW. The Grand Canyon - a big hole in the SW that seemed destined to be there for eternity. Everything I threw into it just disappeared. And so I was in total free fall for god knows how long. LONG.

So I'm going to give you a little visual aide, to show you how badly one can get stuck when a wrong answer yields potentially (but not) correct results on the crosses. I'm going to show you the SW grid in two stages of fill (well, two more - you can see the final stage above) - the one with one wrong answer, and then the one with several wrong answers built off that initial wrong answer. The wrong answer in question is LAMP OIL, which I had as the fill for 47A: Kerosene. It's a great wrong answer, even though, technically, "Kerosene" and LAMP OIL are different oils - they are in the same damned family of oils (LAMP OIL being more refined, creating less soot on burning). But I digress - LAMP OIL seemed so right to me. And thus this initial fill for the SW:


So, the major problem for me here was that I could not, for the life of me, get 52A: Some chocolate. This physically hurt me, as I love chocolate something awful and think that I know a little about its chemical make-up and various tasty forms. My love for chocolate will be relevant to why I did not see the answer for a very long time. Anyway, I was thinking it was some French word like PASTILLES, only, you know, shorter, and relevant to chocolate somehow. Perhaps more painful than not knowing the chocolate answer, however, was not immediately getting 31D: Kansas State Athletes. They were a reasonably good football team a few years back and I could see their uniforms, their colors (purple and silver?), but unfortunately (this would be my key to solving it, eventually) I did not focus my mental attention, initially, on their helmets (home of a picture of their mascot!). Worse, WORSE, the "M" in LAMP OIL made me near-certain that whatever the K.S. athletes were, they were some kind of -MEN (see Syracuse Orangemen, U Mass Minutemen, etc.). So, if LAMP OIL was strike 1, hooking my cart to that -MEN ending was strike 2. Here come strikes 3, and, for good measure, 4. While toying around with possible French names that could go into the spaces for 50A: French rococo artist Watteau, the spurious name EVELINE floated into mind - I had considered and even written in ANTOINE (which is Correct), but rejected it because that "T" clashed with the "M" in LAMP OIL / [blank]-MEN. Nice. The genius, the sick, horrible genius of my entertaining EVELINE, is that it got me AV_ as the last three letters in 30D: Exclusive meeting (8 letters total). Sometimes you don't enough words, and sometimes, you know too many - here is what I ended up entering:


CONCLAVE turns out to be the greatest wrong answer I have ever had, because it is actually much better as an answer for the clue, [Exclusive meeting], than the actual answer, ONE-ON-ONE. You can have a ONE-ON-ONE in a cafe, for god's sake, how "Exclusive" is that? It's more basketball term than [Exclusive meeting]. CONCLAVE, however, is defined thusly:

1. a private or secret meeting.
2. an assembly or gathering, esp. one that has special authority, power, or influence: a conclave of political leaders.
3. the assembly or meeting of the cardinals for the election of a pope.
4. the body of cardinals; the College of Cardinals.
5. the place in which the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church meet in private for the election of a pope.

There is NO MORE "EXCLUSIVE" MEETING IN THE WORLD than the damned CONCLAVE to elect a pope. Remember when all the 24-hr. "news" networks staked out the building where it was taking place, waiting for the right-colored smoke to emerge ... what kind of spooky medieval bull@#$ is that, anyway? (No offense to my Catholic readers, [wink]) ANYWAY, CONCLAVE rules as an answer. RULES, I say. But very shortly after I put it in, those "C"s started to do this nails-on-a-chalkboard thing in my brain. Couldn't get any reasonable words to be their crosses, so, with great sadness, I had to abandon CONCLAVE, and then abandon the made-up name EVELINE, and eventually abandon LAMP OIL.

Somewhere along the line I started plugging letters, in alphabetical order, into the fourth place in the Chocolate answer (_ _ _ _ LES). It was only once I let that damned Kansas State answer end in "S" (not the "N" from erroneous "-MEN"), that I got an "S" in the third position of the chocolate answer, and then the "T" slid into the fourth position and the awful NESTLES (as a plural noun? Horrible) came into view, and I knew instantly that it was right. NESTLES = crap chocolate, btw.

Once the -MEN ending was done away with as a possibility for the Kansas State answer, I returned my mental focus to the damned helmets of their football team, which look like this:


And WILDCATS just leaped forth in all its feline glory. This gave me SODS for 42A: Landscaping supplies (which I had written in earlier and discarded because SODS (plural) as "supplies" (plural) seemed way too much of a stretch. I went to tools: HOES, then, strangely, HODS, which I believe are used only in bricklaying, which might, I suppose, be part of a landscaping project...). OK, so I got SODS and INC (____ 500, annual list of the fastest growing private companies), which like HODS was in fact my first guess. Thus, in an alternate universe, I focused my attention on these short words, went with my gut, and solved the SW lickety-split.

But back to reality - having my initial suspicions about these short answers confirmed was no consolation. Further - never heard of a COWBIRD (29A: It lays its eggs in others' nests); I had JAY- and RED- and CAT- and god knows what else in there. NEVER would have put COW in. ONIONS makes far more sense as a 34A: Spanish rice ingredient than PECANS (the only word my brain wanted to put there). As for RELAY (36A: Device that contains an electromagnet) ... muh. Whatever. I have no particular feelings about you. And I just this very second noticed that the stupid 32D: Squeezers clue = BOAS, which is perfectly apt, and yet I don't think I would have gotten it in a million years without the crosses. PS, 29D: Napoleon, e.g. was CORSICAN. I had had him as an EMPEROR, then he was ENISLED, an EXILEE, something about ELBA, then he was a pastry ...


OK, now that I've anatomized the SW so thoroughly, I don't really have much energy for the rest of the very difficult but mostly pleasing puzzle. I'll give the NW a little attention, as it was the second-hardest quadrant. Was, appropriately, blinded by a clue's apparent adjectivity, which caused me to take forever to see its actual verbality: 1A: Blind, in a way (tear gas). TEAR GAS as a verb is somewhat cruel. A.A. MILNE (15A: Children's author who was a regular contributor to Punch) was the very first thing I wrote into the grid, but ... I abandoned it when I couldn't get crosses to work! So many right answers abandoned in this puzzle, ugh. Thankfully, MILNE's cross-grid authorial counterpart, RUDYARD (18A: "Just So Stories" author's first name) held up, allowing my first real toe hold in the puzzle. But back to NW, I lost an absurd amount of time on one tiny word: for 19A: When there's no other option (if necessary), I could not see the IF, and so had AS. But this screwed up TAP-INS (1D: Putts that might be conceded), which I was sure was right (and it was, though my first thought was GIMMES). I let AS hang around far, far longer than I should have. I've already mentioned AMENRA and GLACE up here. Whatever. This quadrant got done.

Where's the joy!? OK, here's some: 14D: Elton John hit that begins "Guess there are times when we all need to share a little pain", which is a long, long (and fairly creative) way to go to get SAD SONGS. I'd have clued it as [Elton John hit with chorus line "Turn 'em on"], but maybe that's too easy. This song is not to be confused with the 1979 #1 song "Sad Eyes," which was in a puzzle a couple of months back and, if hits to this site are any indication, befuddled the hell out of much of the puzzle-solving populace. SAD SONGS helped me get ANDORRA (16A: Nation of 181 square miles), which I initially wanted to be MONACO or SAN MARINO neither of which fit. I misspelled RODAN (26A: 1956 cult film from overseas) as RODIN (you know, French sculptor ... The Thinker ...). It's a great answer, but one I know about only because of Michael Nesmith's "Elephant Parts" - a kind of sketch comedy special that the former Monkee and White-Out heir did in the early 80s that is probably the most formative piece of pop culture in my life in terms of developing whatever comedic sensibility and sense of the absurd that I have. He sings a sweet little song about RODAN - just one verse, actually - as we watch someone in a giant lizard-costume trample and absolutely destroy a very crude model of a city. The whole bit lasts maybe 30 seconds. But it's indelible for some reason, as are most of the segments in that show. Man, I gotta get it on DVD. Seriously, it's some kind of weird early 80's genius, and the best thing that could possibly have happened to me at age 12. I can still quote "Elephant Parts" to my dad and sister, with joyous results. Netflix it today!

Wanted TOWN MOUSE (28D: Aesop character with a country cousin) to be CITY MOUSE, but I just put in the MOUSE part and the rest took care of itself. Had no idea the 33D: National instruments of Guatemala were MARIMBAS. How are those different from MARACAS? Hang on ... oh, they are way, way different, in that they are like vibes, not hand-held at all. 46A: One that picks up the kids? (baby monitor) was very trickily worded, but the rest of the SE was so easy that it didn't take long to solve. MINIMAL ART is a synonym for MINIMALISM (as far as I can tell from Google) that I have not heard before, but which is very inferrable. 8D: Capacitance units (farads) is kind of hard, and I've had about enough physics clues for a while, thanks. Its neighbor INURE was quite hard to see because of (once again) deliberate part-of-speech confusion in the clue, 9D: Condition.

Lastly, here are a couple of grid pairs that I like and dislike, respectively. Let's call them the DO'S (21A: Recommendations) and DON'Ts of answer pairing.

DO: create synergy by juxtaposing words from the same verbal universe, e.g. ASSISTS (51A: Court stat) and SET SHOT (53A: Free throw, e.g.), basketball answers which sit one atop the other in the far SE.

DON'T: feature two words that are just one letter different from one another, especially when those words sound terribly silly when uttered one after the other, e.g. PUNY (35D: Insignificant) and PINY (27D: Like some air fresheners).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS if anyone can tell me why all text after a bulleted list in my entries goes to super-single-spacing, I would love to know. Stupid Blogger coaxed me into "updating" my template, and while navigation to individual entries is now much easier ... I've got this dumb spacing bug to work out. Nothing in HTML code indicates why spacing should be different for one part of the entry vs. the next. Little help! Blogger's "help" is Horrible. Guess that's what I get for using a "free" service. [note: I've figured out the problem - fixing it involves writing extra coding that I Really don't want to write, so...]

PPPPS I have now reverted to my good ole original template until Blogger fixes the line-spacing glitch.

FRIDAY, Jan. 12, 2007 - Sherry O. Blackard

Solving time: 2:31!!! (just kidding - somewhere in the 10-15 minute range?)

THEME: A Night At The Opera (or, none)

I tend not to solve puzzles on the applet on Thursday and Friday nights. In general, I don't function well, mentally, after 10pm, so the whole release-time of the puzzles is a drag (I like to be in bed at 10pm - I would be So Thrilled if the Times could push back the release time even one hour, hint hint, wink wink, elbow elbow, nudge nudge). And since Friday and Saturday puzzles can be terrors, I like to take them to bed and work on them there, mainly because I don't like the idea of gnashing my teeth in my (home) office as time ticks by and my prospective sleep time gets shorter and shorter. It's also a nice way to relax and Enjoy the late-week puzzles, which tend to be worth enjoying. That said, I really really wish I had solved this on the applet, as I think my time would have been superfast (for me). I don't push forward quickly when I solve in bed. If I had been pushing, I'm sure I could have done this puzzle in under 10. It was delightful, but not hard. Very much on the easy side for a Friday. I'm going to type my grid into the applet just to double check that everything's right. So if you see my time there, and it seems super-fast, remember that it's fake. Admittedly fake (actually, I submitted the grid at just under 10 minutes, which may be wishful thinking, but it's not Terribly fake).

This puzzle looks daunting, with its 3 stacks of 3 fifteen-letter answers, and then another 15-letter answer cutting straight down through the grid - so much white space to fill in. But these types of puzzles don't give me nearly as much trouble as the ones with all the nooks and crannies that are hard to work your way into; plus, you can often get a 15-letter answer off of just 3 or 4 consecutive letters, which tends to open the whole grid right up. These kinds of puzzle seem like they are much harder on an a constructing scale than a solving one.

7D: Where "Otello" premiered (Milan)
24A: Verdi's "Un _____ in Maschera" (ballo)
57A: Longtime La Scala conductor (Arturo Toscanini)
49D: Cabriole performer's wear (tutu)


OPERA! OK, that last one is ballet, but still, it's in the musical performance realm. Some interesting things about this set of clues/answers: I was very proud of getting BALLO (not knowing Italian and never having heard of the Verdi work in question) with just one or two letters. The word, which means "dance" or "ball," is memorable to me because I publicly destroyed the Spanish version of the word ("baile") in a crime fiction course I was teaching once by repeatedly pronouncing the word like the English "bale" (it's properly pronounced something like "bye'-yay"). There was a chapter in Dorothy Hughes's Ride the Pink Horse that was titled "Baile," I believe - the whole novel was set in a U.S. border town - and after I had mauled the word a few times, a student politely if vaguely contemptuously corrected me. Memo to would-be teachers and other people who get caught out publicly in a massive error - admit your mistake good-naturedly and then move on. Do not engage in self-flagellation, do not get defensive or flustered. Laugh at your mistake and then plow forward as if your manifest ignorance were in fact no big deal. I've drifted away from the puzzle.

Oh, another thing: I got ARTURO TOSCANINI and one of his long parallel counterparts down there, 61A: Summer resort area famous for recreational boating (Thousand Islands), without ever seeing the clue(s). I was fortunate enough to somehow get 60A: It can take a lot of heat (cast-iron skillet) very quickly, and then I did some Downs (starting with the semi-gimme 43D: Grammy-winning Jones (Norah)), and by the time I looked back at those long crosses, they just sort of filled themselves in. I love that CAST-IRON SKILLET sits right underneath ARTURO TOSCANINI. Why? Well, look closely - ARTURO TOSCANINI is actually an anagram of CAST-IRON ... well, not SKILLET, but ... well, the following:

• CAST-IRON IRON TAU
• CAST-IRON RAIN-OUT
• CAST-IRON RIO TUNA
• IN A CAST-IRON ROUT
• I OUTRAN CAST-IRON
• CAST-IRON I.O.U. RANT
• CAST-IRON OAT RUIN
• AIN'T OUR CAST IRON?
• CAST-IRON U.N. RATIO

... and such-'n'-such.

3D: "Do the Right Thing" pizzeria (Sal's)
18A: Old roadside name (Esso)

Gimme both of these! Especially the first, as I love that movie and have seen it many, many times. "Roadside name" = ESSO. Pure and simple. These answers were my first toehold in the puzzle. Didn't know the Jackie Wilson song (1D: "Am _____ Man" (1960 Jackie Wilson hit) [I the]) - wanted I YER or I HER, but once I got I THE, those 15-letter crosses came very quickly - first to go: 17A: Be in a very advantageous position (hold all the cards) - wanted IN THE CATBIRD SEAT, but it's too long and, well, just wrong. Slowed up a bit in the far NE, where SIRUP (13D: Some cough medicine: Var.) is spelled ridiculously and I forgot that eBay does things on Pacific and not Eastern time (23A: Deadlines on eBay are given in it: Abbr. (PST)).

Ridiculous Fill

OK, my first thought is that architecturally insane puzzles like this are Bound to have some ridiculous fill - how else are you gonna coordinate this many abutting (and intersecting!) 15-letter answers? So, I'm not faulting the puzzle - just pointing out the groaners that went into its making. It was worth it.

• 10D: Hot (ired) - this word is not a word until you add an "F" to its front end
• 31D: Transfuse (endue) - where you don't want to step at the dog park
• 2D: Cramped urban accommodations, for short (SRO's) - SRO is perfectly good, even Pantheonic, fill but this clue is misdirective in a very forced way. TTH! (Trying Too Hard) [I take it all back - I misunderstood meaning of SRO, thinking it short for "Standing Room Only" (theater sign), when here it refers to "Single-Room Occupancies," which are indeed "Cramped urban accommodations"]
  
• 22D: Falling-out (set-to) - ordinary fill, but the clue suggests not speaking to one another, while the answer suggests a rumble à la Jets and Sharks, as in "I SET my knife TO his throat, Maria!"

Is that it? It is - man, that's hardly any iffiness at all. Very, very impressive.

26D: Actor who roared to fame? (Lahr)

What's (not so) hilarious about this is that the last time he showed up in a puzzle, I wrote about how I can never remember his name, how I know it ends in -HR but I always want BEHR or BAHR, etc. And yet I still haven't learned my lesson, clearly, as I blanked on his name again. There is a movie that this used to happen with ALL the time when I was in grad school. I would challenge myself to remember its name, and yet never, NEVER, could I remember it. In fact, I'm only typing right now as a stall to give myself time to remember the name of the movie I'm talking about, because it's gone yet again. Want to say Living in Oblivion, but that's not it. It had Lily Tomlin and Ben Stiller in it and maybe ... what's her name who "stars" in the TV "hit" "Medium" ... nope, had to look it up: Flirting with Disaster. I guarantee you that I will forget this movie's name again by tomorrow. Why is Living in Oblivion so much easier to remember? - maybe because it's both less clichéd as a phrase and a better movie. LAHR, why won't you stay in my head, you lovable lion!

35D: Village, in Würzburg (dorf)
36D: Tennis star _____ (Anke)
37D: It flows in Flanders (Yser)

Behold, Western Europe in the far eastern portion of the puzzle! There is something to love in each of these answers. Dorf. Dorf! I got this only because of Düsseldorf, which I assume is a "village" in Germany or its environs. The only Dorf I know (you can see where this is going, right? ...) is a golf instructor.


Don't know what part of my brain ANKE Huber was hiding in - I initially spelled her ANKA, but that's pretty damned close for a first guess with no crosses. I'm not sure "star" adequately describes Ms. Huber, though her mom might disagree. When I read the clue [It flows in Flanders], I wanted to shout, "The blood of a true Christian!?"

Final Thoughts

You gotta love the NYT puzzle - where else is Verdi gonna rub elbows with "F Troop" (39A: "F Troop" role (Sergeant O'Rourke))? 21A: Physics units (dynes) might be a little tricky / arcane, but its pretty crossword-common and, as I've said before, I got an A+ in Physics in college, so the vocabulary has stuck around a bit, if the actual concepts / definitions / real knowledge hasn't. See also 34D: Kidney secretion (renin), which is from some long, lost bio class. With HONORS (30D: It's good to graduate with them) is an abominable Joe Pesci vehicle (redundant?) that I was stupid enough to watch on a mid-90s plane trip. Andrew can tell you how great its Madonna theme song was, though, I'm sure. Andrew does not live IN L.A. (53D: On Wilshire Blvd., say) but he sure lives near it. DOG LEG (21D: Sharp turn) is a word whose etymology I am totally going to look up later this week (when will my unabridged dictionary finally get here?!). I guess a dog's leg does have that pointy, reverse knee thing going on. I once co-taught a class with a short man, and as I am a tall man, some of the students took (very carefully and with much good humor) to calling us Mario and LUIGI (27D: Brother of Nintendo's Mario). I ... forget which one I was. From this pic, apparently LUIGI. I initially wrote in TNT for 42A: Old cable inits. (TNN), but AT THE LAST SECOND (8D: Almost too late), I realized my error and fixed it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

THURSDAY, Jan. 11, 2007 - Lee Glickstein and Nancy Salomon

Solving time: 11:08

THEME: "ADD-ICT" - Common expressions have ICT added to them to make odd expressions, which are then clued. 62A tells you the theme: Fiend ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme (addict)

I feel very good this morning, despite an only slightly better-than-average Thursday time (I give myself a B+). After yesterday's debacle, and after doing Several Puzzles in a Row in my Shortz "Greatest Hits" puzzle book wherein I had 1-3 squares wrong in Wednesday and Thursday puzzles, it was nice to complete a puzzle, with no extended struggle, and to have the applet accept my first grid submission. The other reason I'm happy - uh, this puzzle was hard. There were multiple times when I managed to get past a really difficult part and immediately thought "man, that was rough - that's gonna trip someone up" (usually that someone is me). Examples below.

I am still waiting for confirmation from someone that yesterday's Homer quotation was in fact genuine and not an internet myth grown to stellar proportions. I wouldn't want the paper to have print another retraction - as they had to do recently when SARA LEE got clued [Company that owns the brands Playtex, Kiwi and Hillshire Farm] - doesn't own Playtex anymore, apparently - but facts are facts and I want facts. Not factiness. Speaking of "The Colbert Report" (which I just did, whether you knew it or not), I was terrifically happy yesterday when I was flipping through the latest issue of Previews - massive catalogue of upcoming comics releases .... [cough] ... ["Nerd!"] ... -
and I noticed a number of high-profile ads for the upcoming comic book adaptation of Mr. Colbert's unpublished "Tek Jansen" novel. Here is the promotional blurb:

Solar plexus! Bursting out from the hit Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report — it’s Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen! In this stunning continuation of Stephen Colbert’s critically acclaimed, yet unpublished prose novel, everyone’s favorite sci-fi hero must stand against the enemies of freedom, no matter what dark planet they crawl from!

I ordered the series - which won't be in stores for three months. I'll let you know how it is.

THE THORNS

31D: Glimpse (aperçu)

This clue/answer pairing is an ass-pain on many levels. First, APERÇU implies "insight" or "special understanding," where [Glimpse] just suggests "sight." Second, the clue skews more verb-ward than noun-ward, likely causing many mental forays into Useless-ville. Third, holy cow, what the hell ends in -CU??? Without the cedille on that C, that C really really wants to be hard (!). But the U comes from EMU (48A: Noted Australian sprinter), and how could EMU be wrong when it gave me the M that allowed me to get the great and manifestly correct 30D: "Rah!" (Go team!) (where formerly I had HUZZAH, which is making me laugh even as I type it)? In the end, APERÇU was about as palpably physical an "aha" moment as I've had in a while. Exhilarating.

36A (THEME): Order to act one's age? (maturity d-ICT-ate)

Was working on this before I had the theme, and the only thing that second word wanted to be was some form of DIRECT ... DIRECTIVE ... DIRECTION ... ? I had even written in DIRECT, which left me one letter shy of the end of the answer. I figured if I just let DIRECT hang out there for a while, something would happen. Strangely, though it was wrong, its "T" helped me confirm the correct GO TEAM (30D, see above). Now that I look at this whole mid-Atlantic region of the puzzle, it's very very France-circa-WWII. Two French military answers: 35D: 1944 battle site (St. Lo) and 44A: Encamp (bivouac) (the latter apparently comes from the French, via probably Swiss-German). Then APERÇU and Albert Camus, too (that's a rhyme!): 29D: Camus subject (plague). ST. LO is pure crosswordese - a very handy four-letter combo I know only from doing crosswords. I was happy to traipse through this mid-Atlantic region relatively unscathed. I had to work for it, but I could easily have fallen flat on my face, and didn't.

60A: Required (need be)

I can't tell you how befuddled I was by this. Time-wise, I didn't get chewed up too badly, but I ran into an apparent Unstoppable Force / Immovable Object problem when this answer, which I had understandably entered as NEEDED, rammed its final "D" right into the "E" of 58D: Firmed up (set), which, true to its name, would not budge. "NEEDLE? How is a NEEDLE 'Required?'" It was left for me to pick up the "B," which I did only by finally (duh) getting the gist of 57D: "The Office" address? - I had N_C, and I figured the answer was something web-related, or something having to do with business-speak or somebody's title in an office. Of course, if I'd bothered to notice the quotation marks around "The Office," it might have dawned on me sooner that the Office in question was the TV show of that name (which, semi-ironically, is one of only 4 or so shows that I actually watch). So NBC. That's the "address" of the show. OK. NEED BE. Wow. Another thorn that impeded but did not halt my forward progress.

49A: "The Odd Couple," for one (Simon P-ICT-ure)

As of right now, I have no idea what SIMON PURE is. Once you add the ICT, then I get the clue, but what is this expression that is being modified??? OK, I am calling in my resident Restoration and 18th century expert on this one. So, Shaun, when you read this, please respond. Apparently the phrase "The (real) SIMON PURE" dates from the early 18th century and comes from "The name of a Quaker in Mrs. Centlivre's comedy A bold stroke for a wife (1717), who is impersonated by another character during part of the play." So "the real SIMON PURE" is the genuine article, not a fake. At least one on-line dictionary suggests that the phrase might also be used derisively, to mean "superficially or hypocritically virtuous." Do people use this expression nowadays, or even know it? Yes, I'm talking to you.

Speaking of "Odd Couple," Christina ROSSETTI (9D: "Goblin Market" poet Christina), meet Horatio ALGER (41A: Author of "Jed, the Poor House Boy"). She writes wistful sonnets, and he exhorts boys to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

The SW was where I made my last stand, and after my first pass through the Across clues, it was still wide open. But 49D: Chesterfield, e.g. (sofa) - everything I know about furniture I learned from the NYT Crossword - gave me the first letters of all the longish answers down there, 51D: Bleu parts of French maps (mers) [sacré bleu, more French] gave me their third letters, and everything fell from there. Really liked Jackie Robinson's number getting the fully written-out treatment: 59A: Jackie Robinson wore it (forty-two) (which also marks the strange, strange return to the puzzle of the number "42" (see Tuesday's puzzle)).

Wrong Fill

• CALVIN for ARMANI -1A: Big name in menswear and cologne
• REVELLED (?) and then CAVILLED (!?!?!) for CAVORTED - 38D: Made merry

(More) Stuff I Didn't Know

• 12D: Son of Ramses I (Seti) - sure, OK, whatever you say
• 8D: It's to the left of # (Oper.) - this is on a telephone keypad, right? Did not know that. Kept looking at my own computer keyboard and seeing only "@" and "2"
• 37D: Group whose 1946 song "The Gypsy" was #1 for 13 weeks (Ink Spots) - not THE INK SPOTS? Worst band name ever.
• 20D: Harvard's motto (veritas) - I pieced this together easily enough, but didn't know it, exactly. Pretty pompous motto.

Hot Fill

• 16A: Fit of rage (apoplexy) - one of the greatest words to grace the grid in a while
• 5D: Not very potent potable (Near Beer) - great, Jeopardy-esque clue with super-fresh answer

Given that 7A: Sticking points (morasses) crossed with 7D: Kind of nest (mare's) in the NE, I'm really surprised I didn't have trouble there. APOPLEXY is up there too. That corner is all bark and no bite ... and 99 44/00 Awesome.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Note on Today's NY SUN puzzle

Solving time: 14:06

This puzzle warrants mentioning for some fabulous fill, including 1A: Lila Crane portrayer in "Psycho" (Vera Miles), 32D: Alternative to Golden Crinkles (Tater Tots), 38D: She played Prue on "Charmed" (Shannen), and the very very best answer of 'em all, 14: Simpsonian institution (Kwik-E-Mart). Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart!? I dooooooooooooo. This puzzle is also awesome because I got to use my knowledge of the fabulous but rarely seen word "ecdysiast" (41D: Is an ecdysiast (strips)) and because I got to use recently acquired obscure TV knowledge in answering 45D: Ralph of "The Waltons" (Waite). I'm also a big fan of the DIME NOVEL (17A: Early paperback) if not, at all, a big fan of REBA (20A: Sitcom title character with the last name Hart).

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 10, 2007 - Curtis Yee

Solving time: 14:43

THEME: HOMER SIMPSON (20A) "quip" - "JUST BECAUSE I / DON'T / CARE / DOESN'T MEAN I'M / NOT LISTENING" (27A, 37A, 42A, 48A, 57A)

You can probably tell that something is wrong. How in the world did it take me that long to solve a HOMER-SIMPSON-THEMED puzzle?? I can't tell you how ecstatic I was when I finally pieced together the [Speaker of the quip] answer - had the -MPSON ending and was thinking "SAMPSON ... EMPSON ... ?" Then saw and / or got (I forget exactly how things went down, so excited was I) the "H" and "M" and presto, HOMER SIMPSON, and then I was off to the races. I had solved pieces of the puzzle to that point, and so I just went to the "quip" clues and started typing my way across, very confident that whatever the "quip" was, it would come to me quickly, and it did. It appears to be from "Lisa's Substitute" (season 2, Way Back When), which is the episode where Lisa develops a massive crush on her substitute teacher, Mr. Bergstrom (voiced by Dustin Hoffman), who fills in for Ms. Hoover when she goes on leave because she thinks she has Lyme's Disease. I'm actually not sure I (or the internet nerds whose sites I just trolled) have the episode right, but I knew this quotation (it's on many, many "Homer Simpson" quotation pages out there). I was even wearing my "I Am So Smrt" Homer Simpson gray hooded sweatshirt (image pictured) while solving this puzzle. Total serendipity.

And yet ... I had my worst Wednesday ever. And yet ... if I had just stopped and thought for a second and been methodical about things, I would have solved it much more quickly. I can tell you that I had the grid filled in and there were fully FOUR answers of which I was unsure, THREE of which interconnected! So of course I spent my time fretting over those three ... when the single letter I had wrong was in that fourth answer (which intersected with a word I thought I had right). So the bad is: I flailed around and basically drowned. The good news: the life preserver was like 6 inches from my hand, and if I'd just turned the right direction, and not panicked (as drowning people tend to do), I would have been saved. Lesson. Stay calm, and focus your attention on the Wrongest-Feeling words, checking crosses that you "know" to make sure you in fact KNOW them. Because for all my frustration and exasperation, I had just a single square wrong, and I actually knew how to fill it correctly, but was too flustered to realize it. Good, if humiliating, practice.

THAT ONE LETTER:

43A: Grain bane (ergot)
38D: Director Browning (Tod)

My wrong letter was the "O" - I had an "E," then an "A," then my brain ran out of options (memo to self - next time, try all the vowels [moron]). If you had given me a multiple choice question and it had looked like this:

Q: Who directed Freaks?

a. Tad Browning
b. Ted Browning
c. Tod Browning
d. Todd Browning
e. Phyllis Diller

I would totally have known the answer. TED was what I put in absolutely unthinkingly (bad way to do anything); man's name = Ted. But TAD!? What was I thinking? He's not a @#$#-ing extra in Beach Blanket Bingo! TAD!? Dear god. ERGOT is infuriating to me, but mostly because I just did not know it. Never heard of it. Gets over a million Google hits, and Sandy knew it (I mean, when I gave her ERG_T she knew it, which is more than I can say for myself, clearly). I found this site of a mycologist who really really really loves his fungi. Did you know there is such a phenomenon as ERGOTISM (looks like a typo of EGOTISM, which is a typo he in fact makes on his own website!), caused by the eating of ergot-affected grain? Causes horrible physical symptoms like diarrhea and vomiting, but also, it seems, hallucinations. He goes on to suggest (apparently others have done so as well) that the victims of the Salem witch hunts were affected with ERGOTISM. He writes:

All of the accused had similar symptoms: manic melancholia, psychosis, delirium, crawling sensations of the skin, vertigo, headaches, vomiting and diarrhea. All of these are symptoms of ergot poisoning, and it is likely that at list [sic] the initial hysteria was started by Claviceps purpurea [a species of ergot] infecting the grains of rye.

I have no idea what kind of scientific or historical validity this claim has, but it made for fun reading. I felt pretty ERGOTISTIC after "completing" this puzzle. Then I breathed it out. I keep that little red Anger book by my bed for a reason.

49D: Home of Lafayette College (Easton)
55A: Writer Santha Rama _____ (Rau)
71A: Barcelona babes (nenes)

Here is the ERGOTIC fill that caused me to freak out (metaphorically speaking ... sort of). Never heard of it, never heard of it, never heard of it. The last one is, I'm sure, very, very obvious to all Spanish speakers / professional solvers. This amateur solver thinks a NENE is a Hawaiian goose ... and he is RIGHT. Irony: I've been listening every day to a podcast called "Coffee Break Spanish" (out of Glasgow, which makes for awesome listening, as I try to decipher Spanish in between trying to decipher Glaswegian). We haven't gotten up to the NENE part of the lesson plan yet, apparently. EASTON is a place I made up to get through this part of the puzzle. "EASTON ... that sounds like it could be a place." It actually sounds like a made up college town, like they have on TV shows where every teen on the show grows up and has to go to college in order for the show to keep running, so at least one of the kids (the smart one) leaves town for college, possibly in a town called EASTON. I shouldn't hate this part of the puzzle as much as I should admire my own Educated (read: blind and desperate) Guessing ability. I got it all right (despite spending minutes and minutes trying to "fix" it after having my grid rejected by the applet). As for RAU, whatever. I'm not even looking you up .... OK I lied, I looked her up. Not sure whether to stress the fact that she was a leader in the Indian women's rights movement, that she was the International President of Planned Parenthood ... or that her name yields just 14,600 Google hits. [Rex Parker] gets 1.7 Million, for god's sake. OBSCURITY, thy name is RAU (actually, RAU Wattles, it seems - how unfortunate)!


23A: Choreographer Twyla (Tharp)

Ah, one of the more famous non-graduates of my alma mater (she left school to become, well, a legend). She wrote a book on creativity and discipline that is truly inspiring. Love her. Go Sagehens! Chirp, chirp!

65D: Charon's tool (oar)
66D: Tussaud's title: Abbr. (Mme)

I got super-claustrophobic in this tiny little SE corner with its single, narrow entryway. And I began to panic when I could get neither of these. Now, how is that possible? I teach Dante's Inferno nearly every year, and Charon is a prominent character in it. And MME Tussaud's? Who hasn't heard of the wax museum bearing her name? For some reason, I thought I was being asked about political figures in both instances - in my mind, "Charon" was an Israeli P.M. and "Tussaud" was a Haitian dictator. I had EMP. for MME. for a short while. And then I realized who Charon was, and everything fell into place.

Other Things I've Never Heard Of:

• 24D: When doubled, a former National Zoo panda (Hsing) - Edumacated Guess
• 72A: Largest lake in Australia (Eyre) - thank god I'd heard of EYRE's Rock ... oh, weird. It's spelled AYER's Rock. HA ha. Well, good thing I didn't know that.

• 35D: "The Sopranos" restaurateur (Artie) - given the puzzle theme I think ["The Simpsons" restaurateur] would have been a better clue - with a different answer:

• 68A: Circular seal (O-ring) - OK, I knew this one, in the end, but ... well, I would say I inferred it more than I knew it, technically. I was picturing all kinds of seals, including circus seals, before this one fell into place
• 53D: Ingrid Bergman's last film "A Woman Called _____" (Golda) - Meir, I presume. NEV-er heard of it.

Sandy and others would officially like to challenge the "common" part of 61A: Common spread (oleo). It may indeed be "common" for people to eat what was FORMERLY called OLEO, but as it is not at all "commonly" called OLEO in this century, well, you know how I feel. I was happy to see another food-word-no-one-ever-says in the upper part of the puzzle, though. Though it is possibly the most obscure word in the Northern part of the puzzle, AGAR (7D: Food thickener) was the only word I got on my first pass through there. God bless crosswordese.

Lastly, a bit of cheating, I think. Can you have NINE (60D: A round of golf, informally) and O'NINE (13D: Cat-_____-tails) in the same puzzle without violating some repetition rule? Always like to be reminded of this hot piece of weaponry, though. You find a Lot of interesting things on a Google Image search of [Cat o nine tails], let me tell you - not all of it suitable for children. My favorite image, though, is this one, which makes a bid for Worst Movie Promotional Art Ever. Enjoy.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

TUESDAY, Jan. 9, 2007 - Ed Early

Solving time: 6:49

THEME: Woody Allen (11D and 55D) - Five Woody Allen movies, plus Woody's full name and the first name of his wife, SOON YI (45D)

Highs and lows. After a slowish start, which involved my having repeated troubles getting 1A: Carson predecessor (Paar) right (LENO ... no, wrong direction; PARR ... no, wrong spelling, etc.), I flew through most of this puzzle very, very quickly. At about 4/5 finished, I had this feeling that my time would be a new record Tuesday low for me. Note to self: keep that part of your mind Muzzled until you are Done. The Gulf Coast and Mexican Border of the puzzle made me stumble a bit, and by the time I worded [awesome typo - I meant "worked"] my way over to Bakersfield, well ... my car had run out of gas crossing the desert and I sputtered and ultimately stalled and had to wait for a tow. Well, not a tow (that would be the equivalent of resorting to Google), but ... well, I had to walk a ways to get gas. 6:49, that's not exactly Slow ... but I'm telling you, I lost something like 1:30 to 2:00 in the SW. It's (almost) all I want to write about.

THE ARID, DRY, MEAN SOUTHWEST

OK, I'm exaggerating how bad it was. It's just ... imagine running a great race and getting toward the end, looking up to wave at your mom/husband/whatever, and tripping and falling headlong onto the pavement, scraping your arms and legs and face. So you stand up, and you're dirty and bleeding, but you're basically OK, and you stagger to the finish, so that your overall time is still pretty good ... but that glorious finish you had in sight: yeah, it never happened.

50D: Oteri of "Saturday Night Live" (Cheri)

Oh, look, a gimme! And it would have been, too, if I had solved 48A: Hunter's lure (decoy) first, because that would have told me that CHERI starts with a "C" - but of course I put in SHERI, which was wrong. And my certainty about its rightness made me bypass the obviously correct DECOY, which was the first answer to pop in my head. "Guess it can't be DECOY..." So there's that.

48D: Neuter (desex) [god even typing that "word" makes me taste bile]
67A: Forum 42 (XLII)

These two cross at the southwestern most point in the grid (San Ysidro!). I had neither for a while. The first, because I could think of nothing plausible to put in, and the second because I had no idea what the hell the clue meant (yes, it's obvious, now). I've heard of Studio 54 and Level 42, but ... what the hell? Way to hide your cheap Roman numerals Mr. Early, you bastard (that's facetious anger, mostly). "We're going to DESEX your dog now, ma'am." "WHAT!?" It's a grim, grim word, and seems to imply not just castration but depenisification. Is it a medical term, DESEX? "Unsex me here!" - that's Lady Macbeth, but she wants to be less woman, more man, which is a totally different operation. Anyway, the fact that an "X" was involved in this fiasco is just icing. Now the real killer...

45D: Wife of [Woody Allen] 11D/55D (Soon Yi)

First it always seems slightly indecorous whenever anyone mentions her name. The very name suggests "not good with children." I'm sure she's a lovely woman, but her name is like an accusation. Anyway, possibly because the whole Mia/Soon Yi situation was So So Ugly, I did not pay attention at the time to the really important question: How The F@##$ Do You Spell SOON YI? I had SUN YEE. It would seem that there aren't many other options, and that once I got some crosses, this would take care of itself. Yes, it would seem. I was so befuddled by all of this southwest grid confusion that I swear I hit "DONE" in desperation when, it turns out, my answer for DECOY still read "DESUY." Actually, my first time hitting "DONE" and getting rejected made me notice XLIE where XLII should have been. THEN after the next "DONE" was rejected, I saw the "DESUY." THEN I got through, with a very very (for me) average Tuesday time. I haven't even mentioned that there was yet another "X" down here (at the 49D: Stand out (excel) and 57A: Give a pep talk (exhort) crossing). Oh, the best thing about the SOON-YI answer is that it has puzzle symmetry with SOON-ER.

If I was going to torch any puzzle, it should have been this one. I quite enjoy Woody Allen movies and have seen most of them ... made before 1993. Sadly (for me), all three 15-letter theme answers were more recent movies from the darker corners of Woody's resume. SCENES FROM A MALL (61A) - really, are you proud to be (likely) the first person to introduce that movie to the puzzle world? Never saw SMALL-TIME CROOKS (17A) or HOLLYWOOD ENDING (38A). My favorite movie of all time - MANHATTAN (51A) - and probably one of the my 20 favorite - ANNIE HALL (23A) - are both here, in supporting roles.

Short Takes

5A: 1970's-80's Renault (Le Car)

Ha ha. Imagine a bread box on wheels. I hadn't thought about these cars in two decades, and yet I some how knew this answer instantly. Can you imagine anyone in the U.S. driving something called LE CAR now, no matter how big, armed, and Hummer-like it were?

16A: A Chaplin (Oona)

That's for Shaun. Apparently OONA is about to stage a puzzle comeback and reclaim her former Pantheon status. Good for her.

2D: Lumberjack (ax man)

Yesterday, TAX MAN, today, AX MAN. When I (finally) got this - it was part of the PAAR debacle in the NW - I audibly exclaimed some kind of profanity. Don't lumberjacks more typically use saws?

5D: Chinese nut (litchi)

Most non-intuitive food-spelling ever. Even after I'd solved the puzzle and Sandy was solving it and she was wondering aloud how to spell it, I looked at the grid and I swear for a while I couldn't remember - and I'd just done the puzzle like 10 minutes earlier. I like, however, that this answer parallels 18D: Wiggle room (leeway), which is another word that somehow looks very weird written down. LITCHI LEEWAY! (see also 25D: Yorkshire city (Leeds))

3D: Actor Delon (Alain)

It's pretty Frenchy up here in the northern part of the grid. Damn Canadian influence! I was happy that I knew this guy's name, as it helped unlock the eternal mystery of how the hell one spells PAAR. ALAIN Delon was a very, very handsome man. He stars in a great movie called Le Samourai. He could have played Bond very easily - you know, if he'd been British. Speaking of Bond, Casino Royale (which I did indeed see yesterday) is very good - at one point, I thought it was Great, but then the movie kept going, and going, and squandered its greatness for reasons I won't give away. Still, this Bond is believably badass. Very unpretty.

Finally, a set of little monsters that dogged me as I tried to close the puzzle out...

54D: Visibly upset (teary)

I think I had four letters of this answer before I saw it. It's not a word I use, and even now as I look at it, it looks like it wants to rhyme with "hairy."

62D: Showman Ziegfeld (Flo)

?????! There is only one FLO, and she has a bouffant hairdo, smacks her gum, and works at Mel's.

63D: Producer: Abbr. (mfr.)

Ugh, I had _FR for a while (until the stupid SCENES FROM A MALL came into view, giving me the "M"). It was only when I was done that I noticed what the puzzle was going for: MFR., short for Manufacturer. When I see _FR, I want to put an "A" in there. Although most of what AFR. is "producing" right now, I don't want any part of, thanks.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

MONDAY, Jan. 8, 2007 - Harriet Clifton

Solving time: 5:27

THEME: Doubting Thomas (20A) - and the things he might say: I'M NOT BUYING IT (25A), YOU CAN'T FOOL ME (43A), and WHO'S KIDDING WHO? (49A)

Should be "Who's kidding whom," but I'll let grammar slide today. Everything about this puzzle was average: difficulty level, my solving time, the cleverness of the theme, the amount of crosswordese, etc. So I don't have a lot to say (for once). I'll focus on my trip-ups and failings (as usual) and observe some odd entries and then maybe go see Casino Royale later today.

1A: Heartbeat (pulse)

I had THROB. I don't know why. I'm all for entering answers as they come to you and fixing them later on, but this does take some time, not to mention the manual dexterity not to accidentally f-up your grid. Sometimes I forget how the cursor moves in relation to already solved squares, skipping over them if you are starting from a blank square, staying on them if you are re-entering an already solved square. When I read that sentence, it doesn't really make sense, but I swear that's how the system works. So when you are (I am) typing quickly, I often botch whole words because I've misjudged the cursor. Not sure if that really happened here. PULSE is so obvious that I'm not sure what I was thinking with THROB. Of the first nine Across clues, I got 2/3 of them instantly, missing only here and at 18A: Not so much (less) - where I had A TAD (!?), and 10A: Heavy, durable furniture wood (teak), where I had nothing. See also the lamely repeated 6D: Heavy, durable furniture wood (walnut).

15A: Jai _____ (alai)
24A: "Little" girl of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (Eva)
11D: Humorist Bombeck (Erma)
16A: Folkie Guthrie (Arlo)
7D: Designer Cassini (Oleg)
34A: Just managed, with "out" (eked)
46D: Sash in Sapporo (obi)
58A: Jacob's twin (Esau)

You can see why I have called this puzzle "average" - I mean, look at this glut of tired crossword standards. How many years must Bombeck be dead before she becomes unfamiliar enough to be interesting again? I didn't know "Little EVA" until very, very recently - Sandy (wife) has read Uncle Tom's Cabin, while English Ph.D. Rex has not (he is trying to remedy his literary ignorances with a trip through the Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels of all time - to be read in one calendar year, a "journey" which will no doubt find its way into this commentary with some frequency). Thanks to Sandy's coaching, "Little EVA" is a sweet gimme for me (and, as with most new words that I learn, I see her Everywhere now). I would have thrown 28D: Instrument making HI notes? (uke) into the mix here, too, but that clue is too good.

Speaking of Sandy, did you see "You're The One That I Want," the "reality" show where America votes to cast the parts of Sandy and Danny in the next Broadway production of "Grease"? Well, if you didn't, consider yourself lucky, as it was Terrible. The talent pool appears wading-pool-shallow, and the whole production had the feel of a very, very low-rent "American Idol" ("American Idol" being a show that I luuuuhhhhhve, for many of the wrong reasons - but mostly because, for all the cheese and hyperbole and product-placement, it's a show where you sing, and you can either sing or you can't, and it's Live, and its Live-ness matters: real National Spectacle, ranking in grandeur somewhere between watching the moon-landing and watching lions eat gladiators).

62A: Turn inside out (evert)

Welcome to the Bizarro World of crosswords, where words No One Ever Uses metamorphosize into Monday gimmes. I swear that I saw this clue and wrote in EVERT immediately despite the fact that I had no confirming crosses. I suspect hundreds of crossword veterans across the country did the same. I ask you all to think about the utter weirdness of this phenomenon.

37D: Nicknames (monikers)

This word I like. Notice how many words for nicknames are just good words. First, NICKNAME, that's good. MONIKER. NOM DE PLUME, SOBRIQUET (hot!), etc. MONIKER is a great K-in-an-odd-place (K-between-two-vowels) word. Almost as sweet as the rare double-K word ... none of which I can think of right now. I do think that TRICKKNEE would be great fill, though.

40A: Snoring sound (zzz)

OK, that's kind of cheating, getting your "Z"s in in such an easy way (like EEE for [Shoe width], OOO for [Victory on paper]), but as this is Monday, I guess such crutch-reliance is OK, since you get some spicy crosses out of it, most notably 25D: Maker of Rodeo (Isuzu) - which I blanked on for many second (not yet having the Z cross) - and the potentially delicious 33D: Ricelike pasta (orzo), which is "ricelike" only in its basic shape and general starchy quality. I like ORZO in interesting colors like red and green. I'm like a child that way.

9D: Unfriendly looks (fish eyes)

I really don't like this. First of all, if you make FISH EYES at someone (an expression I have never used or heard used by people I actually know, in real life), then that is a look. One look, singular. You have two eyes, but together they give just one look. Not "looks." This lame answer (or botched clue, however you want to look at it) is offset by the seldom-used but springy and appealing TAXMAN (10D: I.R.S. worker), which, strangely, I have heard more in musical contexts than tax-collecting contexts in my life. Most people are aware of the fine Beatles tune "Tax Man," the opening song of Revolver, but I'm guessing fewer of you are familiar with the Billy Bragg album Talking with the Tax Man about Poetry, which is my strongest association with TAX MAN. That's what happens when you enter college in the late 80s and Everything On The Radio Sucks (I'll exempt Madonna from this claim, just so my best friend doesn't blow a gasket ... again) - you discover cool, off-the-beaten-path music. The album opens with the amazing song "Greetings to the New Brunette," which I believe is a song about a working-class romance, but it's pretty enigmatic (like many Bragg songs). It's also lyrically lovely (and funny). My favorite lines are

I'm celebrating my love for you
With a pint of beer and a new tattoo.

and

The people from your church agree
It's not much of a career
Trying the handles of parked cars
Whoops, there goes another year
Whoops, there goes another pint of beer.

So it's a lot about beer. It's a very sweet song, though, really. Have a nice Monday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Jan. 7, 2007 - Ashish Vengsarkar

Solving time: long story

THEME: "Spellcheck" - not sure how the title applies, but circled squares in theme entries hold letters that are to be pronounced As Letters in correct solution, e.g. 23A: "Absolutely, ambassador" ("Yes, your X-L-N-C")

This was a solving experience that really, really humbled (if not humiliated) me. I soared through the puzzle pretty well - no record time, but I'd say I had the grid filled around the early 20-minute mark. Lots of words I didn't know and names I'd never heard of, but it was done. "Done!" .... "Your grid is incorrectly filled." Hmmm, OK. Check. Check check check. Now I had several candidates for wrongness, and two that presented themselves rather forcefully. Here are the clue answers I had in place in each case:

Case 1:

60D: Carriage (landau)

crossed at the second "A" with

77A: Cuneiform discovery site (Amarna)

Never heard of either of them, and you gotta hate when that happens. So alarms went off and I started plugging in alternative vowels at the crossing. No effect. So I left the most plausible vowel, the original "A," and headed elsewhere. Turns out that a LANDAU is indeed a horse-drawn "carriage" of some sort (see pic) and that AMARNA is a site on the eastern banks of the Nile between Cairo to the north and Luxor to the south. There is a major excavation site there - best evidence of city planning in the ancient Egyptian world (14c. BCE). To learn more, why not try this site? It features a "clickable mummy"!

Case 2:

41D: Tiny time unit: Abbr. (i-sec)

crossed at the "E" by

53A (THEME): Award-winning TV host (L-N-D Generes)

So you're wondering, "Gee [because that's how the voice in your head speaks], why were you concerned about the 'E' crossing and not the 'I'? Didn't you wonder what the "I" in I-SEC stood for? At least SEC has the virtue of being short for a word you know ... what is up with the 'I'?" Well, you are right to ask these things. But the "E" went through Ms. Degeneres's name at a point where it seemed other vowels (namely "I") might be a candidate, whereas the "I" in I-SEC, well that was (in my brain at the time) Rock Solid, as the cross was the indisputable (again, in my brain ... at the time) 39A (THEME): Like some unpopular leaders (buried in F-E-G). So now you're wondering, "But gee, Rex, isn't the phrase actually...?" Oh shut up. Yes, smartypants, you're right. The phrase is actually BURNED IN [EFFIGY] (though Google gives me several pity hits for "buried"). But man that BURIED was like an immovable object. Didn't know what an I-SEC was, but had no problem accepting it - after all, there are always lots of things I don't know in a Sunday puzzle (see Landau, etc., above). Plus, I had had A SEC there earlier, so I had already changed it once. But after combing over the whole puzzle several times, I finally, finally, went back to the one answer that I could not confirm: I-SEC. And then the "I" morphed into an "N." NSEC, or N-SEC, for "nano-second." And BURNED IN [EFFIGY]. It's just a sick feeling being done and stuck and not sure how to get unstuck. Here's a lesson: don't panic. Patience. And stick with the answers that Just Feel Wrong - after you've scanned the puzzle for obvious errors, that is.

This theme was pretty cool - answers were easy to get (uh, BURNED IN F-E-G aside). My very favorite was the dead center answer, which was ALL circled letters: 70A (THEME): Advantageousness (X-P-D-N-C). Did you know there are 16 letters in "Advantageousness?" That's a damn long word.

I am beginning to get my puzzle sea legs, as many answers, once obscure or unknown to me, are starting to come around again. 66D: "I've _____ Strings" (Pinocchio song) [got no] is obvious to animated movie fans, maybe, and is entirely inferrable, I suppose, but it was nice to just Get this after not knowing it last year. Same goes for 54D: ____ Circus (where St. Peter was crucified) [Nero's]. Had to have 109A: Some Wall St. deals (LBO's) explained to me in an earlier commentary, but this time got it straight off. Leveraged Buyouts. Right on! Don't ask me to define it.

Besides my complete melt-down at the end, there wasn't much drama in this solving experience, so I'll just focus on very clever clues and stuff I didn't know. First ...

The Stuff I Didn't Know
(in addition to stuff I've already mentioned)

57D: Fictional knight named for a bird of prey (Sparhawk)

What is it with medieval-esque clues that I Don't Know? Thanks a lot, University of Michigan! Why didn't you teach me what SPARHAWK was? Oh, perhaps because they didn't waste my time teaching me Crap Fantasy Novels (no offense to readers thereof). For someone who used to play Dungeons & Dragons (from ages 10-13 or so) and who became a medievalist later in life, you'd be surprised how much fantasy lit turns my stomach. My wife enjoys some of it. Is Anne McCaffrey fantasy lit? Anyway, SPARHAWK is a character created by fantasy writer David Eddings. You may read about him here.

75A: St.-Tropez's Place des _____ (Lices)

Though I am told that LICES means "jousting ground" (like "lists"?), I still think a re-naming is in order. Otherwise people might suspect that the place was infested with LICES (you know, from all the MICES).

107D: Paraguay and others (rios)

Shouldn't this clue read [Paraguay y otros] or something perhaps in correct Spanish? This is what I would call a very, very arbitrary clue, as, theoretically, ANY river is a RIO if it's being looked at or discussed by a Spanish guy.

87A: Main international airport of Japan (Narita)

Named after Pat Narita, from the Karate Kid movies (shh, I know it's really "Morita"). I could have used my own Mr. Miagi, my own puzzle sensei here, as this was an answer I know I've had before and I still couldn't get it. In fact, one of my desperate acts, when I was flailing around trying to figure out where the grid was wrong, was to change the "T" in this word to "D" (desperately hoping that maybe the puzzle was going for the spelling DAO as opposed to TAO at the cross). No luck.

33D: Oysters _____ season (R IN)

Uh .. what? O crap, apparently there is some "adage" that says you should eat oysters only in months with "R"s in them!?!?! I do not eat oysters, or live anywhere they are served on a regular basis, i.e. near the ocean. I would almost prefer that this answer have been clued [thousandth of a yen], as it was more than six weeks ago - resulting in hundreds of hits to my blog from desperate solvers.

9D: Shaker leader (Ann Lee)
45A: Computer pioneer Lovelace and others (Adas)

These are pretty damned obscure. "Mother" ANN LEE (1736-84) joined the Shakers (offshoot of the Quakers: "what should we call ourselves?" "Hmmm, what rhymes with 'Quakers'? ... I know!") and persuaded much of her family to emigrate with her (from England, duh) to the Shaker colony in present-day Watervliet, NY. She composed wordless hymns (?) that came to her in visions (awesome), which became an accepted Shaker method of hymn composition, if the random website I just read is to be believed. Never heard of this Lovelace guy ... holy crap it's a woman! "Founder of scientific computing!?!?" "Daughter of romantic poet Lord Byron?!" Is this a hoax? Why do I not know this person? Only Lovelace I know: Linda Lovelace.

95D: Talk on and on, Down Under (yabber)

I need a confirmation on this ... DA? You're the official Aussie of US Crossword-dom. I need a ruling. How is it different from YAMMER (or JABBER), and if not at all different, why in the world would you (yes, you, DA) change it? The closest thing we have to YABBER in the U.S. is "Yabba dabba doo!" Oh, and while you're at it, DA, please confirm the validity of the following: 123A: Nickname for Tasmania (Apple Isle). Again, the only frame of reference we have here in the U.S. comes from cartoons:

Very Clever Clues

119D: Not abroad (pas)

Had the P-- and started to get very angry until I got the "S" and then French 101 kicked in. PAS does in fact mean "not."

90D: Two bags of groceries, say (armload)

Love it. Took me a long time to get it (didn't help that it crossed f-ing NARITA - see above). It's a weird word, but it strikes me as perfectly apt, and perhaps used most often in precisely this context, i.e. hauling groceries (although the bags in question, in this clue, would be paper bags, not the now more common plastic ones, which would result in HANDFULS, as they have handles). You could have clued this by reference to a baby ... or fire wood.

71A: Fair fare (corn dog)

Ooh, I love it and hate it in equal measure and nominate it for Best Misdirective Clue of 2007. You've got potential double-meaning on both of the words in the clues. Is "fair" a noun or adjective? (here, actually, a noun used adjectivally) I thought for sure that "fair" meant "reasonable" and "fare" was what you pay to travel on public transportation. And let me tell you, when you're thinking that way, and staring at, let's see ... CO---OG, your first instinct is "???" and your second is "man, something's wrong." The fact that the answer is of the everyday, lowbrow variety make me very happy, as usual.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SATURDAY, Jan. 6, 2007 - Robert H. Wolfe

Solving time: untimed

THEME: me, wincing

As with yesterday's puzzle, very little fun here. This puzzle does have one of the best clue/answer pairings of all time (see below), but mostly the answers made me wince, cringe, and grimace. My pace felt very odd, like I'd be very stuck, and then I'd solve a whole chunk of the puzzle in one shotgun burst. Was the shotgun RECOILLESS (22A: Having very little kick)? Hmmm, not exactly. RECOILLESS was one of the wince-inducing words, though over 200K Google hits say it is, in fact, a word. It feels terribly made-up. Why not RECOIL-FREE, which is easier to say and doesn't sound like you're mispronouncing a foreign word? In general, I much prefer Saturday puzzles that are hard because of tricky cluing to Saturdays that are hard because they have over-relied on the darkest corners of the dictionary.

TOP FIVE WINCES:

• 47A: Like a string bean (tall and slim) - A string bean cannot be TALL unless we are in some alternate fairy-land veggieverse, which we are not. I understand that the term "string bean" is used colloquially to refer to a TALL AND SLIM person, but this cluing is off. I mean, once I had the TALL- part, I could guess the rest (though I thought LEAN at first instead of SLIM), but still, wince, cringe, grimace.
• 31D: Voiced bits of speech (sonants) - It's like a typo of "sonatas" - again, like RECOILLESS, it's hard to imagine anyone's using it without that person's interlocutor going "... what?" See also the very funny recent bit on "30 Rock" where an actress is starring in a movie called Rural Juror, which no one can pronounce without sounding ridiculous. Just comes out sounding like "RuhhJuhh." SONANTS sounds too much like "sonnets." It must be related to CON-SONANTS. Oh, I guess that's because consonants go "with" (CON) sonants, which are mostly vowel sounds ... although some consonant sounds are voiced: B is, P isn't. Essentially same lip/tongue movement, but B gets voiced. My piecemeal knowledge of linguistics is at an end.
• 7D: Boils down (decocts) - Let me count the ways that this answer blows. No One Would Ever Say It. It appears to be reverse-engineered from CONCOCTS (an actual word with 10 times as many Google hits as DECOCT). Apparently, when you extract the flavor of something by boiling it, you DECOCT it. It's just an ugly, ugly word.
• 43A: Relish (piccalilli) - What is it with long, long words I've never heard of that describe food that looks like vomit!? Yesterday I had to endure NESSELRODE, and today, this ridiculous-sounding condiment. A bit too close to PICKANINNY if you ask me. Wife Sandy says her "Gran" used to make it, a fact which does not abate my distaste for this word (and, in all probability, the "relish" itself - if the picture is any indication). I didn't have the first part of the word right until this morning. In fact, I had DECCALILLI. Like I'm supposed to know 43A: Tom Courtney's [who?] "Doctor Zhivago" role (Pasha). I was super-proud when I flat-out guessed SASHA and it turned out to be mostly right. I wish I had remembered Crossword Fiend's lesson a while back (I forget where she set it forth) about the differences between ELSA and ILSA and which was a lion and which was not. ILSA looks like the lion's name. I think it's the "IL" beginning, which reverses the beginning of LION. At any rate, the SW was not kind to me.
• 53A: Chiselers (stone men) - I have tried many different Google searches to make this clue-answer pairing make sense. I have not heard of a sculptor of rock called a "stone man" (or "stoneman," for that matter). It may be in an unabridged dictionary somewhere (mine's in the mail!) but it's not in any of the on-line variety. STONE MEN are things that one chisels - they don't do the chiseling. If you Google ["stone men"] you get lots of stuff, but nothing about "chiselers," unless what they are "chiseling" is in fact STONE MEN - as in this 1953 Time magazine article about Polish sculptor Fritz Wotruba (now there's some hot fill). My favorite Stone Men are the ones who bailed out of their malfunctioning spaceship, landing on Easter Island, where they put themselves into a state of suspended animation while waiting for their captain to return with the repaired ship to rescue them.

• Honorable Mention: 34A: Vernacular (demotic)

1A: Cranberry center (Cape Cod)

This answer was a humiliating disaster for me. My first thought was - for some reason - that the answer must be somewhere in Maine. So my brain never left Maine. Even when I was staring at CA__CO_, I was still trying to think of Maine cities besides Bangor, Augusta, Orono, and however you spell Kennebunkport. Then I got the "P" from PERSPIRED (3D: Didn't stay dry) and at that point I believe I literally said "D'OH!" out loud. Would have struck my forehead with my palm, but I was holding a sharp writing implement.

PROUDEST MOMENTS:

I was stuck very early in the puzzle. Started getting a toehold only by using the imagined final "S" on clues that looked like plurals, e.g. 6D: Some Siouans - I didn't know it right off the bat, but I figured it ended in "S," so put in the "S" and was able instantly to get the cross, 25A: Not spontaneous (studied). [Eventually got the 6D answer itself: OSAGES] But after I got 20D: Fair selection (ride) off the first "D" in STUDIED, I was pretty stuck and abandoned the midwest for the far southwest of the puzzle. Here's where I had great, lucky success. Again, with the terminal "S" trick, I got the first "S" in 54A: To-do list (tasks). Then, with just the terminal "K" in place, I immediately got the 10-letter 24D: One being counter-productive? (sales clerk), which I confirmed with the oddly but acceptably spelled 23A: Protection (egis), which crossed SALESCLERK at the first "S." The other correct and large leap of faith I was able to make in this puzzle was 50A: Five-time Art Ross Trophy winner (Esposito), which I got with just the "E" in place. O, and I got 29D: Result of a coup (new regime) with just the "IM" in place.

55A: Asses with dorsal stripes (onagers)

A factoid that resides in my brain for reasons unbeknownst to me. This answer reminds me simultaneously of LIGERS, TIGONS, and OKAPIS (my favorite X-Word animal). Here is a good view of the dorsal fin, I mean stripe, in question:


Google image search of [onager] gives back only two kinds of images: asses and catapults (which would make a great title for ... something):


Final notes: Got very very thrown by the -EU- in 33D: Investigator who finds someone's birth mother, say (re-uniter). Until the RE- prefix dawned on me, I was wondering what kind of hellish German word I was dealing with. I have seen the word MARTEN (17A: Valuable fur) before, but as of this second, I have no idea what that animal looks like. O MY GOD it's the Cutest Thing In The World - Why would you kill and wear it? You people are sick. Unless you are Inuit / freezing to death, you have no business wearing MARTEN. Had only one fit of wrong fill in the puzzle - STOCKS for STORES (15A: Inventories) - a mistake I made only because I could "smell the barn" (my friend Michelle's expression for when you are very near the end of your run, and so pick up the pace). Biggest nobody in the puzzle: 28A: Sir Frank _____, historian of Anglo-Saxon England (Stenton). How do I know he's a nobody? Because I was Trained as a Medievalist at a semi-major University and I've Never Heard of Him - OK, so Anglo-Saxon England isn't my personal specialty, but still, you'd think his name would have crossed my field of vision in my 8 years spent buried under all things medieval. My favorite word that sounds made-up but I don't care: DE-RAT (26A: Make more sanitary, in a way). Awesome understated clue! Like someone's going to cut meat on your kitchen counter and you say "wait, let me DE-RAT the counter first." Good idea!

Two weird architectural features of the puzzle.

1. NEWTON SQUARE - the name I'm giving the 3x3 square in the Virginia region of the puzzle, whose sides are made up of only NEW and TON (2 of each). Look. You'll see what I mean.
2. The other, less symmetrical but no less mesmerizing physical feature of the grid is the crazy diagonality that you can get going off of the last 4 letters in 1D: Was logically consistent (cohered). From the first "E" and "R" you can see diagonal runs of the same letter heading NE (4 E's, 4 R's) and off the final "E" and "D" you can see diagonal runs of the same letter heading SE (5 E's, 3 D's). I circled the diagonal runs, as if I were doing a Word Search. Oh, the whole "E" and "D" runs result in a 3-tiered stack of DE- words in the W part of the puzzle: DERAT, DELIS (30A: People often leave them with cuts - nice!), and DEMOTIC. If only DECOCTS had been down here, I might not have hated it ... as much.

Finally, I officially nominate the following for the cleverest clue of 2007:

32A: Toast, after "a" (goner)

I didn't get this until it was Right On Top of me (G__ER) - I had been thinking (as I was supposed to) that "toast" meant something you give at a wedding or special occasion, like "À votre santé!" or the like - and then the gist of the clue hit me, and I had that "wow" feeling you're SUPPOSED to have when a clue has had its way with you. It's like in tennis when someone hits a winner so spectacular that your awe for your opponent actually overcomes your sickness at dropping the point. Head-shaking disbelief. Good job. Game over.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. breaking news - there are many NEWTON SQUARES in America, including one in Reston, VA, origin (coincidentally?) of a great many hits to this website. Hmmm... I feel like there is something cryptic or coded that I'm supposed to understand about this NEWTON SQUARE, which, as I said, is in the VIRGINIA area of the puzzle ...

FRIDAY, Jan. 5, 2007 - Paula Gamache

Solving time: unknown

THEME: none

Fell asleep well before 10pm last night, so did not get to do the puzzle on the applet - solved it instead (and this was a first) at the family breakfast table, while Sandy (my wife's newest and final screen name) and Sahra (alliteration!) worked on a puzzle and read the latest Archie comic, respectively. There was something oddly cute and 50's about the whole scenario. Took me til now (1:25pm EST) to get to blogging because I had to take Sahra to school then I had a long meeting about some curriculum crap, then my car was blocked in by a delivery truck so I stayed where I was and had lunch and read comics. Now I am home. Why am I telling you all this? I have no idea.

I didn't find today's puzzle terribly enjoyable. The fill just wasn't exciting or interesting or funny. In fact, the whole thing felt like it was from another decade, and better suited to more aged solvers. I'm just imagining people who remember what it was like to sit at their dining room tables in the 50's, enjoying a big plate of NESSELRODE (WhatEver That Is!!!!!) (26D: Dessert with candied fruit, nuts and liquer - gross, no wonder I've never heard of it; that combination is like Kryptonite to me - look at that picture and tell me it doesn't look like barf), listening to the wireless, while Martin sings THAT'S AMORE (14D: 1953 hit that mentions "old Napoli") or Harry Belafonte belts out DAY-O (44A: Harry Belafonte cry) while junior hides behind the couch looking at a pin-up calendar featuring GAMS (42A: Pinup's pride) aplenty. Even the movie stars in this puzzle are Old / Dead: Jackie GLEASON (11D: Player of Joe the Bartender) and Sophia LOREN (30D: Oscar winner for "Two Women"). I mean, The Bobbsey Twins!? (34D: Bert Bobbsey's win and others (Nans)) Really? That series was popular 100 years ago! DR. RUTH is quite old (though I just heard her on the radio last week, and I do love her). Anyway, nothing wrong with the Olden Dayes, but could we have something fresh or funny or compelling or eye-popping? Please. This puzzle just kind of lies here.

13D: 1974 David Bowie song ("Rebel Rebel")

Even this is thirty-two years old, but as that is younger than I am, and as Bowie - esp 70's Bowie - is beloved by me, I will count this as a fresh, hip, contemporary, fun reference. [Song with lyrics: "Hot tramp / I love you so!"] would have made a nice clue. I got this whole NE section very quickly, almost at a glance, though ... my first entry for 18A: TV schedule letters (TBA) was TUE. Other than that it was smooth sailing until I got down to the place where NANS (see above) meets 34A: Biblical peak (Nebo). Crossing old obscurities - my most hated of all obscurities. I guessed "N" here and was right. I thought the Bobbsey twin could only realistically be NAN or JAN - I was pretty sure it was a girl. NEBO is not the first peak that comes to mind, biblically. That would be ARARAT, which didn't fit. NEBO is in Jordan, it seems. Sounds like a kid with a cold asking for his favorite animated movie: "Bob, I wanna watch Nebo! NEBO!"

31A: N.F.L. Hall-of-Famer _____ Barney (Lem)

Lemuel Jackson Barney was one of the greatest cornerbacks in the NFL from 1967-1977. I did not know this before today. Played for the Detroit Lions, who are the NFL's version of the Chicago Cubs - storied tradition, no recent championships. They are lovable losers, and I do love them, as much as I love any NFL team save the Seahawks, whom I love because my family is from the Pacific NW and I got to travel to Seattle every summer for my entire adolescence. Good (mostly) times. Lem Barney looks like something of a badass.

WRONG FILL

• SKOW for SLEW - 1D: Raft
• ORION for ARIES - 7D: Northern constellation
• LATE ARRIVEE for LATE ARRIVAL - 15A: One who got held up, maybe
• NUH UNH for UNH UNH - 25A: "Nope"
• RATER for VOTER - 33A: Slate evaluator
• GRASS BLOWER for GLASS BLOWER (just because I finished it without actually Reading The Clue) - 55A: Worker around a furnace [side note: my mom's, uh, partner guy person she lives with ... he used to blow glass professionally. I think he even trained around here, perhaps round about Corning ... Alfred ... somewhere in the midwest NY region]
• CEE for CDE - 52A: The third to the fifth?

That last one took me ForEver to figure out. I was like "well, CEE is the 'third' letter of the alphabet, but ... what the hell is 'fifth?'" If I had ever heard of NESSELRODE, then the "D" part of the answer would have been taken care of without my having to reflect on it too much.

Isn't the phrase DO AS YOU'RE TOLD, as opposed to 44D: _____ told (do as)? And what's with the judgment-call cluing? I'm going to have to object to the accuracy of 1A: Modern, efficient matchmaking process (speed-dating) and 24A: Soothing art (pastels). I'll need to see the data on the so-called "efficiency" of speed-dating's matchmaking. You efficiently MEET people, I suppose, but I'm highly dubious that many long-term "matches" come out of it. Although the clue doesn't say anything about "long term," so... And who says PASTELS are "soothing?" I find them - in many cases - a bit nauseating.

Let's end on a high note (or two):

27D: Top secrets? (hair pieces)
53A: "Miss You Like Crazy" singer, 1989 (Natalie Cole)

I love these two clue/answer pairings, but for Very different reasons. The first clue is everything that the vast majority of the rest of the clues are not: funny, cute, playful. When I just had HAIR and nothing else, at first I was imagining a big bouffant hair-do that you could hide things in, like how Marge hides the big jar with the family Xmas money in her hair in the first ever Simpsons episode, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire." The very presence of "Miss You Like Crazy" in the puzzle makes me giggle, as it is a forgettable (though clearly not forgettable enough) song by a decent singer, who, ironically, sang "Unforgettable" with her dead father, who truly is (unforgettable, that is). Anything from 1989 is inherently funny to me, because of my first belief that my time in college (1987-91) was the Worst Four-Year Period in the past century for pop music - it wasn't so hot for fashion, TV, politics, etc. either. In short, a good time to be in college, as there was nothing but sex, alcohol, and drugs to distract you. Seriously, please look at any Billboard chart from mid-87 to mid-91 and gawk in disbelief at the abundant horror. Two words: Michael Bolton.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

THURSDAY, Jan. 4, 2007 - Alan Olschwang

Solving time: Under Protest

THEME: Punctuation - Rebus (or so I thought) puzzle where punctuation symbols stand in for letters in theme answers and their crosses, e.g. 49A: President (,nder-in-chief - that is [COMMA]nder-in-chief)

Oh, applet. Applet, applet, applet. If it's a rebus, then symbols go where letters normally would. So why, when I put all the right symbols in the right places, would you Not Accept My Grid!? I know, I'm a novice at the applet, and I should have known the rule (is it a rule?) that you just put in the First Letter of whatever symbol or idea or multi-letter entry is supposed to go there. I figured this out very very late. My official time is something over 20 minutes, which is ridiculous. I'm guessing it was closer, much closer, to 10, but I'll never know, as I didn't look at the time when I first pressed "DONE" and I had hidden the clock anyway. So ugh x infinity. Plus one. But seriously, for this puzzle of all puzzles, why not just accept the . and , and : and - ?

I will wait til tomorrow to blog this, as my frustration is too fresh for me to see the puzzle clearly. It has many fine features, and my big big problems were in the N and especially NW, where 14A: Puncture (hole) eluded me til the Very Last Second (or what would have been the Very Last Second if the applet had behaved properly). I had BORE, both because I did not know 3D: Asia's Trans _____ Mountains (Alai) (I had URAL at first), and because I could not see 1D: Tool holder (shed) for the life of me and thought maybe an S-BED was something... that's my favorite preposterous supposition in a good long while. Both the SHED and the HOLE clues are pretty tricky, the former because "holder" somehow suggests a belt or some other implement actually keeping the tools in place or elevated, and the latter because "puncture" immediately suggests verb, not noun (though upon reflection, yes, "puncture" can indeed be a noun). So when the applet rejected my first come-on, I thought my NW corner was still f-ed up. The whole SHED-HOLE struggle had me doubting myself. But after many, many diligent scans of the Entire Grid, I decided no, the grid is right ... there is a technical problem. When I saw that you cannot put more than 4 letters in a single square, I thought "well, COMMA has five letters, so that will never work," and so I remained stumped until I finally read the fine print about the first letter of a symbol being adequate. Even when I changed all the symbols to letters, I was very very dubious that this would have any effect. And yet ... tada!

43D: Pork _____ (loin)
51D: Show eager anticipation (drool)

These words really should not be anywhere near each other, especially with NUDE (21D: Botticelli subject) and CRAVE (52D: Hunger for) so nearby. It's all too disturbing. ABRADES (42D: Rubs) isn't helping.

48A: Having I-strain? (selfish)
9D: Small bag (carry-on)

These words both want to be other words. Every time I look at this grid I keep seeing SHELLFISH - the word sits underneath PAELLA for god's sake (44A: Spanish entree) - and CRAYON. Likewise, REINA (19A: Isabel, for one) looks like its missing a "T" and SHIRR - well that word just looks wrong in any context.

63A: Singular, to Caesar (rara)

Ooh, I don't like this. "Singular" seems to imply, if not outright declare, ONE-ness, where RARA means "rare." I understand that somehow, colloquially, "singular" means exceptional and not necessarily unique, but still, I was looking for some form of one, like UNA or something.

20A: Condescend (deign)
32A: Poured (rained)
19A: Isabel, for one (reina)
58D: Skates (rays)
66A: Uncommon trick taker (trey)

When the REINA would not DEIGN to help her subjects, God sent a plague: it RAINED RAYS for TREY days.

9D: Small bag (carry-on)

Hmmm. "Small" compared to what? A CARRY-ON is huge compared to a toiletries bag (which, incidentally, I no longer CARRY ON airplanes, as officials are sure to confiscate it for its dangerous shampoos and unguents). I really wish this answer had been clued ["_____ My Wayward Son"].

15A: "The Last of the Mohicans" woman (Cora)
68A: _____ Gwyn, mistress of Charles II (Nell)

These two answers were blind spots for me, but gimmes for Polly (my new name for my wife - I've been instructed by Andrew not to refer to her as "Wife" anymore, as it sounds misogynist, bigoted [I wrote "bigtoed" just now, ha ha], and hateful to him. Done and done, sir). This is the second CORA this week that I haven't known. Makes me wish for the return to the puzzle of Irene CARA. My knowledge of Fenimore Cooper's work begins and ends with Twain's evisceration thereof - one of the greatest pieces of humor / literary criticism ever written, especially if you have ever been forced to endure a Cooper novel. NELL Gwyn was somewhere in the back of my mind, as I have a friend / colleague who is deliriously and orgasmically in love with all things Charles II. Seriously. He came [!] dressed as Charles II to a Halloween party last year (I, on the other hand, put on my Batwoman T-shirt, then spent the rest of the night saying "... no, BatWOMAN ... she's a lesbian now, you know...").

25A (THEME): Sprint (hundred yard -)
13D (THEME): Haphazardly (slap -)

SLAP [DASH] gave me the theme in one epiphanic moment early in the solving experience. Or, rather, it clued me into the rebusness. I thought [DASH]es would be everywhere, but then [COMMA]NDER-IN-CHIEF forced a reconsideration of that assumption. The theme answer it somehow took me longest to get was 40A: Without a regular schedule (a[period]ically), first because it's a word you hardly ever hear, and second because in puzzle-rush mode, I was not paying attention to precisely where rebuses should go. The Down cross, 29D: Week or month at the office, usually (pay [period]), was not helping, as I had only the PA- (the "Y" being as yet invisible because SYM (37A: Kind of orch.) is not an abbrev. with which I was familiar, though yes I can see that it stands for "SYMphony"). Where was I? O, the themes. The [colon] was also tricky at first - even after I had figured out 33A: Haiti, once (French [colon]y)), I couldn't get 35D: Wearers of eagle insignias ([colon]els) for way too long. Wanted COLONIALS or COLONISTS. Damn Your Unphonetic Spelling, COLONELS!

Enjoyed seeing 59A: Sci-fi figure ('droid) in the grid. Like the way DIOR (31A: Classic Paris couture house) is sitting in a very neatly centered way right atop the FRENCH in FRENCH [COLON]Y. Somewhere I.M. PEI and Mr. and Mrs. ROPER (from TV's "Three's Company" as well as the short-lived spin-off "The Ropers") are feeling slighted that they were passed up as cluing options in this puzzle (see 44D: Canadian prov. and 22A: Rodeo performer - the latter of which I had initially answered with CLOWN, which, coincidentally, was what I felt like when I kept getting rejected by the applet ... and the commentary has come full circle).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 3, 2007 - Kim Seidl

Solving time: 5:57

THEME: Game Pieces, I think - Theme answers begin with board game pieces: TOKEN (20A), MARBLE (32A), PAWN (41A), DIE (52A)

It took me a long time to figure out this puzzle's theme for some reason, but who cares - I posted my Fastest Time Ever for Wednesday, and am currently at #29 on the leaderboard (out of 219 solvers) at the Times site, which is ... insane, for me. Never happens. I was several minutes ahead of my average for a Wednesday, I crushed my normal competition, and my name now sits among names of people who are Way Better Than I Am. I'm in full Tournament Mode now. Two-and-a-half months to go. I'm expecting my ACPT registration material in the mail any moment now. C Division, here I come (reality: I will get stomped by much better solvers, but I'm enjoying exuding fake bravado at the moment)!

6A: Nascar's Gordon (Jeff)

How well were things going for me last night? Well, for example, the second clue I looked at was a NASCAR clue (ugh) ... and it was a gimme! I believe there are only about three imaginable NASCAR clues in the known universe that are gimmes for me, and this is one of them. In fact, this is the first answer I filled in. Thank you, NASCAR. There was also one real sport referenced in the grid today: 5D: Slalom alternative (downhill).

37A: Nancy of "Access Hollywood" (O'Dell)
40A: Do, for example (note)
43A: It should be low on a diamond (E.R.A.)

These are the answers that cross the Western Plains of this puzzle, and they were all very elusive, for different reasons. In the first place, "Access Hollywood?" Look, there's lowbrow - of which I'm generally a fan - and then there's Nobrow, or Unibrow, or in my case, Furrowedbrow. I knew a Tara and a Bobby O'DELL growing up. I am familiar with the Farmer in the DELL. My old crappy crash-prone computer was A DELL. My DELL knowledge ends there. And my "Access Hollywood" knowledge ends where it begins, which is nowhere. I only just now figured out what 40A was getting at - First thought "Do" was a verb, then thought it was a hairstyle; only now figured out that it is what the answer says it is: a NOTE (e.g. a deer, a female deer). I object to the baseball clue here. "Should" be low? The pitcher would like it to be low, I guess. But it's not an absolute. There's nothing in the rules about its being low. Batters don't want the pitcher's E.R.A. to be low - and there are several pitching stats more important than E.R.A. Cork SHOULD NOT be in your bat, pine tar SHOULD NOT be on your pitching hand, but an E.R.A. can be wherever it wants to be, and the game goes on and there are no rule or propriety violations. "Should" shmould. If it weren't for the fairly easy Down clues here in the West - 32D: "Haystacks" painter (Monet) and 33D: Really go for (adore), I could have stalled very badly. As it was, I just stumbled a bit. It did take me a while, though to figure out the whole first half of the long 34D: Inhibitor (retardant).

1D: Sudden burst (spate)

So tricky for such an innocuous-seeming clue. I had _PA___ and boldly (wrongly) entered SPASM. Only got to SPATE on the clean-up (you know, when you go back into a patch of the puzzle that you've "solved" without looking at the crosses, and fix it). This morning, I noticed that my wife had a very different wrong SPA- answer in the same spot: SPARK. SPATE is the most apt word of all the words in question here, but ... I can't visualize a SPATE, which makes it unlikely to rise to the forefront of my mind. I'm sure SPATE has a physical form, but to me, it's just an abstract term.

26D: Handy (utile)


O my wife did not like this word. Really really didn't like it. She kept repeating it, derisively, as if it were the most contemptible, preposterous word on the planet. In fact, before settling on it, she asked "UTILE's not a word, is it?" I was sorry to inform her that it is, in fact, a word. Not a good one, but a word nonetheless. IKON was similarly dissatisfying to her (30D: Sacred image: Var.). Not sure why that was easy for me. Maybe because I had the -KO- and the spelling seemed familiar, probably from some Greek something I came across somewhere (not that I can read Greek at all). I like the friction of IKON against FATWA (29D: Islamic decree) against CIAO (35D: "Bye"). Lots of good exoticism. Actually, there's French and Italian and Hebrew (EZRA's Hebrew, right?) and Latin all over this puzzle. Oooh, and Brazilian (PAULO, 14A).

53D: The Soup _____ (Nazi)
54D: Shrek, for one (ogre)

Speaking of compelling grid friction, these two stand scarily side-by-side at the very bottom (deepest pit of hell) of the puzzle. I object to the Seinfeldian frame of reference here, and the smug certainty (probably warranted, sadly) that Times solvers will know and enjoy remembering the Soup NAZI. I prefer remembering Michael Richards's racist tirade, but to each his own. Wife - who's getting pretty opinionated about the puzzle, I'm realizing - accused the OGRE clue of being "unimaginative" based solely on the fact that she had seen OGRE clued almost exactly the same way (via Shrek) in her book of NYT puzzles that she's working currently working her way through. My only question: if you decide that the bottom of the puzzle is hell, so bad that you would put a NAZI and and OGRE there, why would you also put the A-TEAM down there (48D: Starters)? Yeah, they blow lots of stuff up, but they're the good guys. Who else is going to rescue your daughter from the lair of a drug kingpin who is secretly being funded by government officials? No one, that's who.

10D: Rosie of "Fearless" (Perez)
49D: Head of costume design (Edith)
36A: Dark genre (noir)

Hot Movie Answers! I never saw Fearless, but I did see and enjoy Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, which features a very memorable opening dance number by Ms. Perez (she's good as Mookie's baby's mama, too).
EDITH Head (great clue by the way) was only the most famous movie costume designer of the middle of the century, nominated for 34 Academy Awards (won 8 times). I don't think a costume designer has ever done more for an actress's image and career than EDITH Head did for Grace Kelly - Head designed costume for Kelly's roles in her two most iconic movies: Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. Man those movies are good. NOIR is my favorite genre of all time. I'm directing a graduate student's Independent Study on Film Noir this coming term, which is more fun than work for me. Speaking of NOIR, Edith HEAD designed costumes for Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's awesome noir flick Notorious (1946). I haven't even mentioned Frances Farmer, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland - the whole elegant look of the mid-century female film star is basically Edith HEAD's doing. God bless her. And God bless America.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

NY SUN Solving time: 8:09 - KETEL ONE eluded me to the very end, which seems impossible, but it's true. Also stared at the single box where LAW and SOWED cross for many, many seconds, finally getting the "W" only after plugging in every previous letter in the alphabet.

TUESDAY, Jan. 2, 2007 - Sarah Keller

Solving time: 7:04

THEME: TEAS - all the theme answers (4) begin with anagrams of TEAS, which itself is featured in the central Across clue 40A: Eight-sixed wares of 1773 (teas in the harbor)

Took me a Long time to "get" this puzzle's "theme," which isn't much of one. Said my wife to me last night as she solved the puzzle in bed: "Did you know Cannery Row has the same number of letters as EAST OF EDEN (17A (THEME): Steinbeck classic)?" Said I: "No. Did you know Grapes of Wrath won't fit in those spaces?" It was not until I had worked my way down to the recalcitrant SE of the puzzle that I realized that the first four letters of all theme answers were anagrams of one another; and I never saw the clue that "hinted" at the puzzle's theme: 45A: "Cómo _____?" (with a hint to this puzzle's theme) [esta]. Wife pointed it out to me while she was solving. Would it have helped ... yeah, maybe.

THE SOUTHEAST

50A (THEME): Indonesian condiment (sate sauce)
50D: Rio dance (samba)

Wife and I made same mistake here at this crossing, with MAMBA instead of SAMBA. How to tell them apart? This was only the beginning of my SSE troubles. I had never heard of 53D: Reo contemporary (Essex), which was a car produced between 1918 and 1922, and, if Wikipedia is to believed, helped usher in the era when closed sedans were to be the norm for automobiles, as opposed to open touring cars of earlier years. I believe there should be a limit of ONE olde-timey car question per grid (for violation of this non-existent rule, see 35A: Sporty wheels (GT cars)) - wait, I'm being told that GT CARS are not olde-timey; stands for "Grand touring" and refers to any number of small, fast cars. Did you know REO stands for Ransom Eli Olds? I did not. Shouldn't the letters in REO be capitalized in the clue? "Ransom" is a Great first name. I'm naming my next child and/or dog "Ransom." Then we can call him "Handsome Ransom."

63A: Come together (mass) was somehow Very Elusive and tricky. I believe there are several words that could realistically go in a four-letter answer clued "Come together." I, for instance, had GELL, which is not only wrong, but in fact a wrong spelling of a wrong answer. The correct wrong answer is JELL. GELL is "a leech," as far as dictionary.com is concerned.

46A: Ambulance letters (EMS)
67A: Champion skater Brian (Orser)

With a name like ORSER, he should have been an OSTLER (see Sunday's puzzle). As my wife aptly noted, "I know only one skater named 'Brian,' and his name doesn't fit here." OK, so fine, Rex, you didn't know ORSER, but what in the world is the problem with EMS? Well, I'll tell you. I had EMT. Simple. A paramedic is often called an EMT, so that's the abbreviation that came to mind. Had the "E," presto whammo, EMT. Only ... with ORSER and SATE SAUCE A.W.O.L. and a T in the first position (where the "S" should have been), I had T_P_E_B for 47D: Four-star, and if that "T" had been ANY OTHER LETTER I would have realized the area of my mistake immediately. But with the lead-off T_P and the clue "Four-star" I OF COURSE thought TOP-something, but what? TOPEBB, TOPEGG? Maybe 70A: Waist-ful (obese) was wrong ... but it couldn't be! Unh! Thus the S and SE added a good minute or more to my time. Oh, the correct answer to "Four-star" is SUPERB. But you knew that.

40A: Eighty-sixed wares of 1773 (teas in the harbor)

Inelegance, thy name is "40A." TEAS IN THE HARBOR is not a phrase. It's just not. How do I know? Kindly Google ["teas in the harbor"]. I'll wait. Well, what did you get? That's right, NOTHING. Zero hits. Surely there should be some kind of Google litmus, where your fill gets at least ONE HIT. The "IN THE HARBOR" part of this answer feels very redundant. Teas in the harbor were not 86'd. TEAS were 86'd. The HARBOR was the means of 86-ing. Have I mentioned hating the term "86" yet? Here's the messy, confusing story of the expression, in case you are interested. I am not. If I were going to "86" something, I would bombard that thing with music by XTC, R.E.M., The Replacements, and Janet Jackson.

1A: Water carrier (pipe)
1D: Song of praise (paean)

Both wife and I entered EWER immediately upon reading the clue to 1A, so conditioned are we to seeing that Pantheon standard in the grid (see also 16A: Banned orchard spray (alar), which we have been seeing everywhere in our puzzles, lately). I decree that PAEAN is a pretty uppity word for a Tuesday puzzle. Whoa, what the hell is 34D: Conductance unit (MHO)? I just now saw it there in my grid for the first time - never saw it during the solving. OK, hang on: can anyone tell me if this is in fact true?:

A unit of electrical conductance. Symbol, symbol of the mho, an inverted Greek letter omega, and sometimes Ω-1. This unit has been renamed the siemens. Conductance in mho being the reciprocal of resistance in ohms, mho is ohm spelled backwards!

Two questions come to mind on reading this. 1. if it's been "renamed," shouldn't the clue here reflect that (say, [Old conductance unit])? 2. Did the SIEMENS corporation buy the rights to rename a fact of nature? Isn't this like renaming clouds MIRACLE WHIP or Mount Everest IPOD?

Did not know that ROE had anything to do with agility - 62A: Agile deer. How would you test for something like that? Run the deer through a battery of field tests? 26D: "Alas" utterer (sigher) is a pretty bad Odd Job. Also, it's not a very accurate clue, as I can utter "Alas" quite nicely without sighing. I'm doing it right now. And what is the difference between ENTENTES (42D: International pacts) and DETENTES - besides the fact that both are crossword mainstays? Well, I can guess, but I'm about to find out for sure.

From m-w online:

Main Entry: en·tente
Pronunciation: än-'tänt
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Old French, intent, understanding -- more at INTENT
1 : an international understanding providing for a common course of action
2 [French entente cordiale] : a coalition of parties to an entente

Main Entry: dé·tente
Variant(s): or de·tente /dA-'tänt/
Function: noun
Etymology: French
1 : the relaxation of strained relations or tensions (as between nations); also : a policy promoting this
2 : a period of détente

Today is a day for remembering President Ford. He was a football star at my grad school alma mater (Michigan), where there is a School of Public Policy named after him. My very first political memory - besides being accosted by some guy dressed in a Nixon jailbird costume on the Mall in D.C. when I was 3 - was the Carter / Ford debate, which I have a very weird memory of watching part of through a sliding glass door in some motel courtyard. I wish I could explain what that means. Apparently, Ford was the first incumbent President to agree to debate his opponent, which set a precedent that continues to this day. That's cool. He was old-skool conservative, and while that isn't my thing, I respect it a hell of lot more than new-skool-nutjob- destroy-the-world conservative. Ford's would-be assassin also has the best name of any would-be (or actual) assassin in world history: "Squeaky" Fromme. That is all.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld