TUESDAY, Oct. 28, 2008 - Allan E. Parrish (Norman of the Clinton and Bush cabinets / "Collages" novelist / Grant portrayer on TV)

Tuesday, October 28, 2008


Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: DANCING (38A: Activity exemplified in the '60s by the ends of 17-, 28-, 48- and 64-Across) - theme answers end in a kind of dance popular in the '60s

Theme is cool, though DANCING was hard to clue in a way that made sense. Clue originally began ['60's event ...] but that brought to (my) mind only things like Woodstock and Bay of Pigs and Moon Landing, not a generic term like DANCING, so the clue was changed to one I agreed was OK. Thanks to this puzzle, I now have the lyrics from two (thankfully fantastic) songs stuck in my head. Both songs name a litany of '60s dances. The first is Wilson Pickett's "Land of 1000 Dances":



The next is James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" - in this version, Brown gets really fixated on "The Mashed Potato":



I had a little trouble with the last two theme answers. I balked at CLEAN AND JERK because I don't think I ever heard it clearly in all my years of Summer Olympics watching, and I wasn't sure it wasn't CLING AND JERK. They "cling" to the bar ... no scrubbing bubbles involved. So I just waited for that word to come into view from crosses. Lastly there was BRASS MONKEY, which I know not as a [Rum/vodka cocktail], but as ... this (which apparently is all about the drink ... I clearly wasn't paying attention):



Theme answers:

  • 17A: Dickens lad (Oliver TWIST)
  • 28A: Small equine (Shetland PONY)
  • 48A: Weightlifter's lift (clean and JERK)
  • 64A: Rum/vodka cocktail (Brass MONKEY)

The only potentially tricky spot in the puzzle was MINETA (58A: Norman of the Clinton and Bush cabinets), mainly because another member of the Clinton administration sounds a lot like MINETA but isn't: Leon PANETTA, Clinton's mid-late 90s Chief of Staff. So as I was filling this in, I was thinking "I thought that dude's name was PINETTA." No. Different guy. Here is the (awesome) theme from "Baretta":



Lots of xword names today, some basic:

  • HENIE (14A: Skater-turned actress Sonja)
  • UMA (35A: Thurman of "Gattaca")
  • TOMEI (52A: Oscar winner Marisa)
  • ENIAC (3D: Computer that debuted in 1946)
  • RHEE (18D: South Korea's first president Syngman _____)
  • NAN (31D: Bert Bobbsey's twin sister)

And then some other high-end xword words that you should remember, even if you don't see them That often:

  • EOSIN (26A: Red dye)
  • S.P.A.D. (36A: W.W. I fighter plane) - had never seen this 'til a few weeks ago, and here it is again; that type of thing happens All the time. Return of the S.P.A.D.!
  • LOTTE (68A: Singer/actress Lenya) - she's a little ... scary:



Rest:

  • 43A: Caesarean rebuke ("Et tu!") - super common, but always throws me when clued in this medical-sounding way
  • 53A: From one side only, in law (ex parte) - great legal phrase, and one I've never seen in a grid. Having a lawyer mother may or may not have helped with this one. "L.A. Law" could just as easily be responsible for my knowing this.
  • 24D: Mount Carmel's locale: Abbr. (Isr.) - My parents live in the non-Israeli Carmel (-by-the-sea). My stepmom is even a city councilperson. For real.
  • 40D: "Collages" novelist (Nin) - NIN is a frequent grid denizen, but I can't remember having seen this particular novel title before.
  • 60D: N.L.R.B. part: Abbr. (Nat'l) - this is funny for at least one reason.

Signed, Rex Parker King of CrossWorld

62 comments:

Anonymous 9:17 AM  

I just cannot pass the chance of being the first "poster". Too bad I don't know all the dances, otherwise I'd have something witty to say.
I can comment, though, on the fact that I know someone named Eniac (true!) and that is why I always smile when I see his name on the grid.
Good day to all!

Anonymous 9:18 AM  

@rex -- this wasn't easy for me for the very reason you mentioned: MINETA. I also spelled it LOTTA until I got JETSET and only got IROC through crosses. So this little section really tripped me up.

I experienced a malapop today! I wanted TOTEM instead of TORSO for 15A and then up poppped 34D: TOTEMPOLE.

I liked 55D's shoutout to crosscan.

I also liked this puzzle.

Anonymous 9:18 AM  

I agonized over the last couple of squares--MI_ETA and LO_TE could have been anything from my perspective. I went around the puzzle, came back to it, went around, came back, never found an insight to those random-sounding names. Finally, I decided I'd have to try and recall what NLRB was (despite my hatred of acronyms), as I remembered seeing it recently but not anything more about it. I was resigned to google when I realized I had the N to start NATL, and how could that be more obvious? Just goes to show, it pays to face your weaknesses.

Anonymous 9:20 AM  

PS I still don't remember what the LRB stands for.

Rex Parker 9:23 AM  

Forgot to mention - I had the same "malapop"* mentioned by joho.

RP

*malapop = when you want an answer that's wrong (in this case "TOTEM" for "TORSO"), only to find that that wrong answer is actually a right answer elsewhere in the grid.

JannieB 9:24 AM  

National Labor Relations Board! I think this was in a puzzle just last week.

Nice easy Tuesday - lots of familiar faces but nothing too forced. Cute theme. Would have save myself a full 30 seconds (or more) if I could read - could only see "Small Engine" for the first two or three passes at 28A.

Guess it's time for an eye exam!

Anonymous 9:30 AM  

@treedweller

Had similar problem, knew LOTTE, and NAT'L (Labor Relations Board), but not the Camaro so faced M_NETA.

We would have made a good pair on this one.

.../Glitch

Anonymous 9:30 AM  

@rex

Curious as to how NATL '... is funny for at least one reason'. Or is it the clue that is amusing?

RT

Doug 9:37 AM  

Cool puzzle, and pretty easy. Got Mineta and others with the crosses. Still don't remember him. I'm from the theme vintage, but does anybody remember doing the Pony? I remember an R&B song about getting on my pony and riding -- Orlons? Some girl group like that. The dance moves escape me. Probably the locomotion replaced the pony, if history and transportation have inspired dancing at all.

janie 9:45 AM  

lotte lenya was the wife of composer kurt weill -- he of "mack the knife" fame (from "the threepenny opera" -- book and lyrics by bertoldt brecht). mark blitzstein wrote the english translation which was performed (on broadway, but in an off-broadway house from '54 - '61 [lenya performed in it, btw]). bobby darin recorded the very popular single of the song, where, if you listen carefully, you'll hear him sing: "look out, miss lotte lenya -- and ol' lucy brown"... "musicals, schmuicals" indeed... ;-) [any bond fans out there? she's also one of the highlights of from russia with love.]

and put me in the camp that grappled with MINETA/PANETTA. aaarrrggghhh!

;-)

janie

dk 10:00 AM  

@janie, according to Acme I am one of a handful of straight males who enjoy musicals and opera. Thus your treatise on the American Opera is appreciated. I also feel Bobby Darin is not given his due and Miss Lotte Lenya is a clear shout out.

Being of a certain age all the dances were familiar to me, making the puzzle easy peasey. And as a sucker for 60s nostalgia and generally agreeing with anything @joho writes: I liked this puzzle.

Anonymous 10:19 AM  

Big thumbs down for "Jetseters" being "trendy" travelers. In the 1950's maybe!!! Can the NYT please expunge this particular clue/answer was also used very recently???

Doug 10:22 AM  

NLRB stands for National Labor Relations Board. 9th grade civics, ca. 1964.

Anonymous 10:25 AM  

Me too, thinking Panetta and getting it all straight in the end except for leaving an A for Aroc rather than an I for IROC. Did I confuse that with "Arod"?

I rather liked 40D NIN clued with "Collages", which brought to mind the recent literary "Pastiche". And LUCID is a great word too, with ELECTIVES coming up, or something like that.

The theme and fill were both very good overall, but I had no idea who TOMSNYDER or ELYSE were and had to get them with crosses. Delighted to see oldies HENIE and LOTTE, though. Will I remember that IROC-Z is a car next time? Dunno.

∑;(

ArtLvr 10:45 AM  

p.s. I gave up playing in amateur musicals after a highly embarassing goof in the Three Penny Opera, when I skipped a few scenes and let the villain out of jail prematurely! The rest of the cast rescued the situation by immediately dragging him back in, and things went on smoothly from there. A riot in restrospect, but it was the end of my being in the least bit stage-struck...

∑;)

fikink 10:46 AM  

Closely tracked others who were thinking of Leon Panetta, very frustrating.
@janie, yes! I can hear Bobby Darin singing, "Miss Lotte Lenya," and then my head flips to Ella (in Berlin) doing Mack the Knife. (dk, some great SCAT on that album).
Re: Three Penny Opera, Judy Collins later recorded an English version called Pirate Jenny on her 1966 In My Life album.
Obviously, all around, the puzzle was a great way to greet the day. It is too bad Phil Ochs did not live to see this presidential race. I am sure he would have penned something wonderful!

Unknown 10:54 AM  

janie
You are fab. Lotta Lenya! and I wrote elsewhere I didn't know her, but I do...could that someone be Mack the Knife? I started to write in ETE for the Asian Holiday, but stopped myself. Three clue later I am entering it. AS to the dances..na nana na na.

Ulrich 10:55 AM  

I was really good at the twist--lost 16 lbs during the 1959 or 60 mardi gras (Karneval) in Cologne. Never heard of the other dances, but they were gettable. The MINETA/IROC cross was the last square for me also to be filled in, based on a good guess. Good puzzle...

Nobody sang or sings Brecht like Lotte Lenya--she had exactly the right combination of snottiness and grittiness that's needed--she was very musical, too--the fantastic Ballad of the Drowned Girl is nothing for people who cannot carry a tune.

@acme, late-night out-shouter: I'm still shaking my head in wonder--it's been so long that I requited the crunch of a certified glamour girl that I've plain forgotten how to do it.

Anonymous 11:06 AM  

@artlvr: LOL ... what a comedy of errors! Wish I could have seen the cast dragging the villain back into the jail ...too funny.

@dk: I agree with you about Bobby Darin. When Lotte Lenya died I tried to rent her apartment in the prewar building across the street from my "sister" building. Unfortunately due to probate problems the doors to her place were sealed and I gave up trying.

Anonymous 11:09 AM  

Thanks for the Lotte Lenya video! What a treat!

Ulrich 11:29 AM  

Oops--meant "crush", of course--where's that damned trash can?

gotcookies 11:35 AM  

@Jim in Chicago--I agree with you; jetsetters no longer seem trendy.

I enjoyed the puzzle, though I got tripped up with MINETA, as I'd never heard of him, and with CLEAN AND JERK. I also enjoyed the Mt. Carmel clue, like Rex, though I'm from the Carmel-by-the-corn, and not the sea, sadly.

fikink 11:37 AM  

@ulrich, I enjoyed "crunch" - It brought a genuine smile of gemutlichkeit to my face.

HudsonHawk 11:39 AM  

No issues with this puzzle, other than staring at EOSIN for awhile. I know I've seen it before, but it's been awhile. I was surprised to see the cluing for TOTEM POLE referred to as Indian rather than Native American. PC sensibilities are catching up to me.

As for TOM SNYDER, I have a stronger recollection of Dan Aykroyd's impersonations on SNL than the actual host.

dk 11:42 AM  

@acme, @ulrich and I are both honored and ferverent requiters.

@ulrich, I am thinkin we both move to San Francisco open a caberet (ala 1920), have @acme sing, bill her as Carla, bring her flowers and have @jane doh as the star struck newcomer.

@acme, as a licensed psychologist I belive that should cover all the bases.

Anonymous 11:57 AM  

The legal background in the family explains a lot of the attitude!

Anonymous 12:02 PM  

My last square was IROC/MINETA cross also, but I muffed it. International Race of Champions...is that more well known than NLRB? Huh. Any other cars I should know about with that tag? Otherwise an easy puzzle.

SethG 12:10 PM  

And the lack of a name explains the sniping!

I knew Lotte Lenya from Mack, knew the right Mineta, and used to frequent The Brass Monkey.

No issues at all 'til the very end, when I had TESTS instead of TASTE and I wasn't sure how Mrs Keaton was spelled given that it was abnormal...

I can already ride the pony, but I wanna learn to do the monkey.

Anonymous 12:26 PM  

OK puzzle for the tricky Tuesday spot. The two 3*9 stacks in the NE and SW stick more in the mind than the theme.

Thanks for the Pirate Jenny clip. Didn't expect to see so much sprechstimme (rhythmic speaking instead of singing), having accompanied the song in rehearsals for an English-language production here some years ago.

Nice to have 9D:ESSE for a change from the usual AMAS/AMAT that the clue would usually point to. (61D:ESTA surely originates with the same Latin verb ESSE; more Latin in 53A:EXPARTE, whose meaning I did not know.) Mildly amusing to see 42A:ETE followed by 43A:ETTU ("followed" in clue order, though not adjacent in the puzzle). I expected the "article" 45A to be "the", especially with the 29D clue suggesting an -ED ending and the D already in place; but the other crossings made no sense until I guessed the lucky numeral 45A:VII.

I suppose the 58A/59D crossing is between IROC and a hard name...

NDE

P.S. Typo: the 48A clue is "weightlifter's lift", not weight.

Greene 12:28 PM  

I too got caught up in the deep south of the puzzle. I got MINETA without difficulty, but was unfamiliar with IROC. Had IRON for the longest time, but that made 71A ENLAT instead of ECLAT. Well, I knew ENLAT wasn't a word, but I wasn't sure about ECLAT either. Finally went with the latter, but it was a total guess. Googled after the fact to correct my ignorance. The rest if the puzzle went down smooth and sweet.

I'm surprised so many are unfamiliar with the dance crazes which the puzzle celebrates. They are each distinctive in appearance and have been utilized over and over in any number of movies which depict the 60s.

My friends always refer to Lotte Lenya as "The Fabulous Hag," probably because of her rather frightful presence in "From Russia With Love," but also because of her propensity for marrying homosexual men. Agree with all that she was the definitive interpreter of Kurt Weil's musical works. She had that aura of detached irony down cold. She'd just as soon blow smoke in your face than smile at you.

Nobody has yet mentioned her greatest acting triumph. She was absolutely irreplaceable in the original Broadway production of "Cabaret" where she lent just the right touch of Weimar decay to the proceedings. Her renditions of "So What?" and "What Would You Do?" are eerie, creepy, atmospheric and well, just plain definitive. They remain completely unsurpassed 40 years later.

janie 12:33 PM  

philly, dk, fikink, et al. -- thx for the kind words! and artlvr -- that's a classic. so in your production, mack gets reprieved *twice*...very high-concept!

;-)

j.

Anonymous 12:41 PM  

@nde--I believe that the Spanish "está" (the verb estar)comes from "stare," now generally used in English in "stare decisis," a legal term meaning "let the decision stand," or do not overturn that which has already been decided (in other words, if a precedent exists, follow it.) ESSE leads to the verb SER in Spanish: soy, eres, es.

miriam b 12:58 PM  

SCULPTED never sounds right to me. Should be "sculptured" IMO. I liken SCULPTED to "enthused". Too pedantic?

Russian language alert! About Lotte Lenya's rôle in From Russia With Love: The character's name was Colonel Rosa Klebb of SMERSH. The Russian translation of the widely used labor slogan, "bread and roses" is "khleb y rozi". And while I'm at it, SMERSH stands for "death to spies" (smert shpionam."

Thanks a million for that video clip.

Unknown 1:05 PM  

I got lucky today, since even though I wasn't familiar with Mineta or Lotte, I remembered NLRB from its recent appearance, and there were a ton of IROCs around my city when I was a teenager. I can't share the reverse-acronym that was prevalent to explain the initials (ethnically offensive) but it sure stuck in my head and made it a gimme. The other downs fell into place and gave me the rest of the crosses I needed.

And you can add me to the totem malapop-ers. (Sorry about the oddjob.)

chefbea 1:27 PM  

Trouble with mineta and iroc. Also clean and jerk.

Maybe next year on Dancing with the Stars they will do the twist, pony, jerka ,and monkey. Can you picture Cloris Leachman performing those dances!!!

Anonymous 1:51 PM  

Every OG knows that a real brass monkey is made with Colt 45 and orange juice, psshhh, that funky monkey.

Jack 2:06 PM  

Could we forbid certain clues, such as those with multiple answers, like New Deal agencies with three letters? It is fairly useless as a clue as there were so many initialled agencies back then. The clue can only be helpful once you get a cross clue.

NRA; WPA; CCC; AAA, and so on.

RodeoToad 2:09 PM  

Rex, your stepmom lived in Texas and moved? Weird.

This puzzle was easier than yesterday's (I didn't confess yesterday that I had a wrong letter in Andrea's puzzle.) That's not surprising, given that I'm well known for my dancing.

No problem for me with Mineta, whose name always made me think of an REO Speedwagon song, "In Your Letter," off of the album High Infidelity, which was huge when I was in junior high. I thought they were singing "Emuletta," which I thought was a girl's name and later a Clinton cabinet member. Too bad you can't erase some files from your brain and use that space for something else. I'd probably just use it for something else equally stupid, though.

NoamD, "IROC and a hard name"--good one.

Wade (long time poster, first time reader)

Orange 2:22 PM  

Last night, I looked up past clues for NIN and discovered a bunch of Nin book titles I didn't recognize. I think crossword editors are nervous about citing erotica like Little Birds and Delta of Venus, which would probably be more familiar to most solvers (based on the Amazon rankings).

I totally should have rebuked my OB with "Et tu?" after my Caesarean.

Anonymous 2:33 PM  

After reading todday's comments, I feel like it was just my lucky day. My knowledge of literature is very thin. And Latin clues? Useless to me. But today was in my personal strike zone -- politics and technology. Norman Mineta, Eniac, NLRB -- total gimmes for me (for a change).

So today proves once again, one person's unknown is someone else's gimme.
------> Joe in NYC

JoefromMtVernon 2:35 PM  

I guess I was the only one who wrote in opt at 27D (leaving me with tpad, which I figured was some sort of plane, the "t-pad") Otherwise, lots of recycled filler, making this a very eco-crossword-friendly puzzle.

Wasn't NLRB an answer within the last 2 weeks (which, I think Rex commented on then)?

Joe

Doc John 2:41 PM  

Good puzzle for a Tuesday. I can still hear Dan Aykroyd's laugh as he imitated TOM SNYDER. As for IROC-Zs, didn't anyone else watch Wide World of Sports? I always thought the concept of the International Race Of Champions was a good one- every driver had the EXACT SAME car. Let the best one win!

I don't think that TOTEM POLE carvers would appreciate hearing themselves referred to as Indians, though.

And finally, this is what this puzzle's theme reminded me of (from The Beatles' "Revolution No. 9"):
The Watusi, The Twist... Eldorado

Time for me to get out of the sixties, eh?

Anonymous 3:04 PM  

i hate you all! Just kidding .. but to me this was NOT easy. eclat? Mineta? Clean and jerk which I eventually got. Woo hoo. But spad and eosin -- forget it -- which threw off that whole corner. Kind of depressing for a Tuesday puzzle -- and then come on to see that everyone thought it was EASY! What's wrong with me? I guess I am out of my league here, boo hoo! I will keep trying though.

Doc John 3:24 PM  

Of course, there's always the B-52's'
Dance This Mess Around

RodeoToad 3:34 PM  

Tom Snyder was . . . unnerving. He looked like he had bad breath.

Anonymous 4:02 PM  

EOSIN is a red dye which has been used for many many years in histology laboratories along with a blue-purple dye, hematoxylin, to stain tissue specimens. Commonly referred to as H&E stain, it's the most common and the "standard" stain in pathology for preparing biopsies for microscopy. I've never seen the word used outside of the histology lab which leads me to wonder about Allan Parrish's background.

PuzzleGirl 4:33 PM  

@ginger: Don't give up! I know I'm not alone when I say I've gotten A Lot better at crosswords since becoming part of the community here.

My sister made me a themed mix tape once that was entirely songs whose titles don't appear anywhere in the lyrics. It was actually hard for me to grok the theme because I knew the first two titles: "Land of 10,000 Dances" and ... I forget the second one.

I entered PANETA at first and thought "That's not spelled right."

Never seen EOSIN before. ECLAT is an awesome word.

archaeoprof 4:58 PM  

Late afternoon, and just now getting to this blog! Too many students wanting to schedule ELECTIVES for next semester.

Maybe the TWIST is the only one of these dances that anybody does anymore?

Anonymous 5:18 PM  

Have never heard of a cocktail called a 'brass monkey'. In England very cold weather is referred to as 'brass monkey weather' as it is cold enough to freeze the @#%*s off a brass monkey. Guess that would be difficult to clue - and not a dancing theme anyway!!

green mantis 7:15 PM  

Damn I should have checked in on you crazy cats last night. You people and your trashcans. I could just bite you all in the head, leaving you with scratchy marks of love in the shape of backwards Bs.

And I missed an Andrea day too. Congratulations you.

Well here's some Rilke until I think of something relevant to say:

"...we are the branch and the axe
and the nectar of ripening risk."

Can someone pick up some Love's Baby Soft at the Vermont Country Store for me? Over.

Ulrich 7:18 PM  

@dk: Sounds great. I have one precondition (yikes): In any skit that reqires it, I get to play the guy in a top hat and tails speaking with a French or German accent.

To all the Bob Dylan fans here: In vol. 1 of his--eminently readable--(semi-)autobiography, he describes that among the handful of greatest influences on his songwriting was The Ship with 8 Sails (aka Pirate Jenny or Seeräuber-Jenny in German) from the Three-Penny Opera: He says he analyzed and re-analyzed the song again and again to learn how to construct a narrative in song. (BTW the subtitles in the video leave much to be desired i.t. of accuracy)

Orange 8:02 PM  

Green Mantis, insects can't wear Love's Baby Soft, at least not the traditional pink. If you can get Love's Baby Soft Rain scent, though, that would be good. I loved that when I was 15.

green mantis 8:29 PM  

Dude. I must have overlooked the designation, "dream crusher" on your business card.

I can't even process this right now.



--off to skool

fergus 8:37 PM  

Quite by accident I found a way to make a Tuesday puzzle pretty challenging. The copy I grabbed at a coffee shop had about a third of the grid and half the down Clues ripped away, I discovered. Some previous reader must have liked the opposite page, while showing no regard for the puzzle. So, from roughly square 11, all the way down to the bottom of the 61D space, I had really blank space to fill in. This included the lines and the black squares, which I had to assume were symmetrical. Just working with the Acrosses wasn't too hard, except when I could not get Ms. Lenya or the BRASS MONKEY for a while.

I'm not sure this will become a regular practice, yet I could see it providing amusement for those who can't be bothered with early week puzzles. It could also become catching, ripping ever more of the puzzle out until you're left with just a few squares and half a dozen Clues. Nah, that's too much -- even the real aces wouldn't go that far.

fikink 9:39 PM  

@ulrich, interesting about Dylan's perspective on narrative; this, from Tombstone Blues:

John the Maverick, after torturing a thief,
Looks up to his hero, the Commander-in-Chief,
Saying, "Tell me great hero, but please make it brief -
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?"

dk 10:03 PM  

@green M, loves baby soft is on the list, if your insectitude prevents you from wearing it as dream crusher (aka @orange) suggests you can leave it as a clue to your decapitations.

@ulrich, sounds great. I wish to be the world weary waiter.

@fikink, for some real fun look up McSames service record. suffice to say serving with him meant certain death.

1,2,3 means no more of me.

Anonymous 11:50 PM  

Easy puzzle--Tuesday record for me!

Anonymous 12:03 AM  

I was also on the Beastie Boys on BrassMonkey. The Beasties were referring to their favorite malt liquor rather than rum/vodka. more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_Monkey_(cocktail)

Anonymous 3:35 AM  

@rex, joho
I'm so thrilled you've (probably reluctantly) copped to malapop, not only using it, but defining it!!! I could burst! :)

(Altho I don't get why someone would put in TOTEM...oh! "Sculpted...")

I was hoping for a repeat of that fab video with the guys dancing in referee outfits while the go-go girls did the monkey/pony/jerk/twist as those white boys sang "I'm a Man"...I'm still laughing about that weeks (months?) later!

@dk
ah! the money I would save on therapy...however, if I sang, artlvr or someone would probably come out and drag me off to jail!

@ulrich

you can crunch me any time!

@green mantis
you see? you see why I love you?

@ puzzle:
wow, two elevens, two twelves, all of the theme answers are not only dances but of the 60's, DANCING in the middle, plus those 9 letter side stack thingies, so something for everyone to like: from constructors to solvers, esp theme-noticers (an actual occupation!)

Probably the only people disappointed are fans of the FRUG.

(I have WATUSI + one other letter on my rack at least once a game and am always SO frustrated it's no good in Scrabble)

Some toughie new words (for me) EOSIN, VSO, SPAD.

Hate the name IROC for a car...do you say IRAN out of GAS(SY) in my IROC?

Coincidence of the day: My sister is named ELYSE (get it? Family Ties!!??)

@greene
Lotte Lenya, like Liza, was just ahead of her time...marrying homosexuals before it was legal to do so!
;)

Anonymous 4:39 AM  

@doc john
Like Ackroyd's Tom Snyder and his Julia Child, don't you think Tina Fey's imitation of Sarah P will live on and be more real long after the original is a forgotten footnote/punchline?

At this comedy show/50th bday party I went to tonight, one of the comics talked about Sarah's little baby looking around at the GOP convention and realizing he was the smartest guy in the room!

(Yes, people booed in PC Mill Valley, but I thought it was simultaneously horrifying and funny...very DK)

The Big E 8:44 AM  

My father was a lawyer and I have seen "ex parte" before, but for those not familiar with the phrase, I think that the name "Elyse" could also easily be spelled "Alyse," and unless you googled it on IMDB, there was probably never an occurence on the show for you to know exactly how it was spelled, was there? Is there a fairness in asking for potentially ambiguous spellings of TV Character names such as this in crossword clues? Especially when crossed with a latin legal phrase, in a tuesday puzzle! how cruel! :-)

Anonymous 12:11 AM  

just got this in the dallas morning news today 12/2/08. collages author? i agree it was easy, but i never dreamt i'd of foound a blog on the crossword o the net. very cool, kinda deja vu.
CSN&Y!

gthorn

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