MONDAY, Dec. 1, 2008 - Eric J. Platt (Connected on only one side, as a town house / Chemistry Nobelist Otto / Order at the Pig and Whistle)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: TURN ON A DIME (57A: Change abruptly, or what the insides of 17-, 27- and 43-Across do?) - letter string "DIME" appears backward ("EMID") in each of the three theme answers

Cute idea, but turning a DIME is not the same as turning ON a DIME, so the concept feels a bit forced. The buried and backward word is kind of mid-to-late week trick, but it's welcome here, as the answers were odd enough to slow me down considerably (For A Monday). IDEATES is up there among my least favorite words (41D: Has thoughts), but most of the rest of the fill seems just fine. Nothing scintillating, but entirely adequate.

Theme answers:

• 17A: The Divine Miss M (Bett EMID ler)
• 27A: Birth mother's helper (nurs EMID wife)
• 43A: Connected on only one side, as a town house (s EMID etached)

DIME breaks across two words in every case. All the theme answers are unusual and lively and interesting. All in all, not bad work. You RARELY (22A: Hardly ever) see HAHN (46D: Chemistry Nobelist Otto) this early in the week. As wife said, "I know he's crossworde(a)se, but isn't it a little early in the week for HAHN?" Yes, but that's OK.

Do people use CLERGIES in the plural very often? (9D: Religious groups)

The NW is teeming with actresses, with AGNES Moorehead and MELANIE Griffith (both horribly boringly clued) joining Ms. Midler for a rather odd triad. Wait, I guess we can add ADELE Astaire to the mix too (15A: One of the dancing Astaires), as she appears to have developed her vaudeville act with her brother into a successful Broadway career. Speaking of Broadway, KERN (39A: Jerome who composed "The Last Time I Saw Paris") is one of a gaggle of Broadway composer whose names I've had to learn (though I remain largely to completely ignorant of their work).

Wrap-up:

• 20A: John Cougar Mellencamp's "R.O.C.K. in the _____" ("U.S.A.") - long, semi-cheesy way to go for that answer.

• 55A: Order at the Pig and Whistle (ale) - is this place famous? Um ... it seems that yes, if you are Canadian, it is:

The Pig and Whistle was a Canadian musical television series aired on the CTV television network from 1967 to 1977. Filmed in Toronto, Ontario but set in a fictional English pub, the show featured an assortment of Canadian, British and Irish performers

• 1D: The Beatles' "Revolver" or "Help!" (album) - I very stupidly and rashly wrote in A SIDE (neglecting the fact that "Revolver" is no such thing)

• 11D: Not reduced, as some illustrations (life-sized) - I like this answer.

• 28D: "Maria _____," 1941 #1 hit ("Elena") - the only song I know with this title is by The Smithereens. Can't find a youtube version, so here's "A Girl Like You" (from the same album, "11"):

• 31D: _____ Club (discount store) (Sam's) - Normally I don't share the anti-corporate sentiments of many solvers, but on this one, SAM'S could have so easily been changed that I kind of resent having to look at it.
• 58D: Mouse's big cousin (rat) - Watched "Venus" last night (recent movie starring Peter O'Toole) and one of the previews playing in the background while I solved this puzzle was "RATatouille." Great movie.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Nov. 30, 2008 - Richard Silvestri ("Also Sprach Zarathustra" hitmaker, 1973 / Herringlike fish / Darius the Scamp? / Endor inhabitants)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Uh-Oh" - "UH" sound is changed to "OH" sound in several common (or at least vaguely familiar) phrases, resulting in wacky phrases, which are clued with "?" clues



Rough. That is my word for this puzzle. The theme was humdrum. Basic. Bland. Unmemorable. As much bad stuff (LOAM AND ABNER, really? - 52A: Dirty radio sitcom?) as good stuff (PEACH FOES - 47A: Fruit flies?). It's got what feels like a remarkably low theme density. Only seven theme answers, and two of those are remarkably short. "ARE WE HAVING PHONE YET?" is godawful, especially for a central answer - the longest in the puzzle. The other wacky phrases are at least phrases that make a kind of literal sense. OK, maybe not the krappy LOAM AND ABNER, but the others at least seem imaginable, envisionable. "ARE WE HAVING PHONE YET?" has the unfortunate effect of both sounding like something uttered comically by a non-native speaker and evoking the torturous Verizon catchphrase, "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?" Ugh.

But the real story of this puzzle is the Bizarro fill, esp. in the N by NW section of the puzzle. The hardest section for me, by far, was the NW, where I had to endure a phrase no one has used since 1975 ("NO JIVE" - 19A: "Honestly, man" - which I was Sure was "NO JOKE," a much more current and in-the-language phrase) and a word no one has ever used (GNAR - 1D: Sound like an angry dog) . Then there's the seemingly invented ATONIC (23A: Not accented) and the never- before- seen- by- me DECEM (6D: X). If I hadn't known RAMIS (32A: "Stripes" actor, 1981) - and even that one took a second to come to me - I'd still be working on the NW. Never mind that everything else up there besides "Get A JOB" (3D: "Get _____" (doo-wop classic)) is clued in some weird, slightly off way. Not a pleasant experience.



A very close second on the lunacy scale is the MENHADEN (9D: Herringlike fish) / DEODATO (39A: "Also Sprach Zarathustra" hitmaker, 1973) crossing. I've never heard of either. If I hadn't known some Latin, I'd still be staring at a blank space where these words collide. I believe I might have seen DEODATO in a puzzle or clue, maybe once before. I have Never seen MENHADEN Anywhere ever. I'm still shocked that these two obscurities were allowed to collide. OK, not ASEC/PSEC shocked, but shocked nonetheless. The SHAVUOT (62D: Spring Jewish holiday) / LANARK (63D: Historical Scottish county) pairing gave me some grief in the Colorado region of the puzzle. I think I'd heard of the Jewish holiday before, but probably never seen it spelled. LANARK is a book I know, but I don't know what "historical" is supposed to mean in relation to a county. It existed in "history," yes. Lastly, in the gripe department, there's IANA (120A: Suffix for a collection) and CYTE (124A: Cell suffix) involved in some ugly suffix mating ritual down there in Louisiana.

Theme answers:

• 29A: Helpful comment to a judge? ("There's the ROBE")
• 47A: Fruit flies? (peach FOES)
• 52A: Dirty radio sitcom? ("LOAM and Abner")
• 67A: Jokey question to a Verizon technician? ("Are we having PHONE yet?")
• 82A: Darius the scamp? (Persian ROGUE)
• 88A: Pot-smoking cleric? (Friar TOKE) - two pot references this weekend! I had PRIEST ---- here for a bit. That damn "-RI-" suckered me in.
• 105A: Result of excessive rowing (pain in the BOAT) - I really don't want "butt" in my puzzle, however disguised.

Last of the leftovers:

• 7A: Web programmer's medium (HTML) - OK, so now it's a "medium." I can live with that. I remember there was some controversy over labeling a while back.
• 21A: Economist Janeway (Eliot) - ELIOT reminds me of T.S.... or "Phone Home." Haven't heard of this economist.
• 44D: Turkish inns (imarets) - thankfully, I'd seen in before. Otherwise - ouch.
  
• 58A: Polonius's hiding place (arras) - aw yeah. Turns out they are not sword-proof.
• 61A: Do some grapplin' (rassle) - turns out there's one thing I really like about this puzzle: this answer! I try to get my dogs to "RASSLE" every morning. They usually oblige.
• 66A: Weapon in the Charge of the Light Brigade (lance) - ah, the Crimean War. Never goes out of style, somehow.
• 75A: Cowgirl Dale (Evans) - a flat-out gimme. Huzzah! She is in good company. One of my other flat-out gimmes was ... COATI! (91A: Raccoon relative). $100 to anyone who can produce a picture of Dale EVANS with a COATI. No photoshopping!
• 80A: Output of une legislature (loi) - for our Canadian solvers.
• 93A: The story of the aftermath of Oceanic Flight 815 ("Lost") - I just spend several minutes looking for this "story" ... only to realize that the "LOST" in question is the TV show. Until just a few minutes ago, I was thinking that "LOST" was that movie about plane wreck survivors who eat each other. That's "Alive."
• 92A: Endor inhabitants (Ewoks) - Endor is a forest moon. Like Oceanic Flight 815, it is also fictional (part of the "Star Wars" universe)
• 113A: Hairy TV cousin (Itt) - easy enough. Most "cousins" are ITT in the puzzle.
• 115A: _____ Torrence, American sprinter who won three gold medals at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics (Gwen) - came to me instantly, for reasons I don't understand. I don't follow track and field at all.
• 121A: Henry Fielding novel and heroine (Amelia) - never read (or heard of) it, but I have friends who undoubtedly have. They make you do crazy !@#@# in grad school.
• 5D: 1979 Broadway hit with the song "On This Night of a Thousand Stars" ("Evita") - luckily the answer is familiar, because the clue means nothing. In other musical news, I watched "Guys and Dolls" yesterday. Yes, I voluntarily watched a musical. And loved it (but I love hard-boiled fiction, and so the style and lingo and dames and what not were right up my alley). About halfway through, daughter came in the room: "What are you watching?" So she watched the rest with me. Is it wrong that I went back and specifically made her watch "Pet Me, Papa"? I thought she would love the cat suits (and she did).
  

• I'm just hoping the whole ... metaphor of that song was utterly lost on her. We watched "Arsenic and Old Lace" on Friday. She Loved that. "I think those ladies are going to kill him (Cary Grant)" - "Uh, no honey, that's their nephew. He's going to be O.K."
• 8D: Home-run run (trot) - love this. My littlest dog TROTs everywhere she goes. Sometimes we even call her "TROT-TROT."
• 12D: Celebs as a group (A List) - Interesting counterpart to LINE A (123A: Form beginning). You know what word I don't like: "Celebs."
• 18D: Plant circulatory tissue (xylem) - interesting X-cross with SAX (16A: Adolphe _____, musical instrument inventor)
• 36D: "True blue" and gold team (U.C.L.A.) - That's "light blue" to you and me.
• 66D: Poe poem that ends "From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven" ("Lenore") - Also contains the line "Peccavimus; but rave not thus!"
• 89D: Mathematician Turing (Alan) - hey, I remembered his name! Now if I could just remember why he's famous ...
• 90D: Miss Havisham's ward in "Great Expectations" (Estella) - just read this (well, part of this) this past summer. Forgot this was her name.
• 100D: Fossil-yielding rock (shale) - Washington Post TV critic Tom SHALEs had been around a while, but is not yet a fossil.
• 107D: 1982 Disney film ("Tron") - this should be automatic. If it says "Disney" or "1982" and it's in four letters - TRON.
• 111D: War of 1812 battle site (Erie) - ah, my least-understood American war. And yet another way to clue ERIE.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

I'm in my local paper today. Man, my head is huge.

SATURDAY, Nov. 29, 2008 - Barry C. Silk (Defier of Stalin / "Oedipe" opera composer, 1936 / The sculptures "Cloud Shepherd" and "Coquille Crystals")

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Whew. Solid Saturday. Right over the plate. Reasonably smooth, reasonably tough, a flashy answer or two, and even a snazzy construction feat - right in the heart of the puzzle, a SELDOM SEEN (63A: Rare) Z-square formed by the intersections of DIZZY (37A: Swimming) and RAZZ (40A: Heckle) with PIZZA (29D: Kind of oven) and OZZY (34D: "The Osbournes" dad). OZZY was one of a big handful of gimmes in today's puzzles: two more proper nouns in EDY (43D: Last name in ice cream) and NIC (49A: Actor Cage, informally), the oddly easy ROO (21A: Bush jumper, informally), the gut-level guess, DECO (18A: Like the Empire State Building), and the came-to-me-instantly AM I TO BLAME? (25D: Question that may be answered "No, you're not responsible"). I suppose that last one could have been DID I DO THAT? Thankfully, that didn't occur to me.



This puzzle had the typical handful of people I'd never (or barely) heard of. I know I've seen GRISSOM in my puzzle before, but that didn't help today - needed most of the crosses to get it (41D: Second American to fly in space). This AYER guy is totally unknown to me (44A: Philosopher who promoted logical positivism). AYERS, everyone's heard of now. AYER, not so much. And GREER (41A: 20-Across in the Hall of Fame) - 20A: Net rival (Sixer)??? I know Rosey GRIER, but Hal GREER was before my time. His Wikipedia entry contains this curious claim: "Hal Greer is recognized as the only African-American athlete enshrined in a major sports hall of fame from West Virginia." I had heard of TITO (35A: Defier of Stalin), of course, but that doesn't mean his name came to me instantly. A cross or two was enough to do the trick. And I know ARP pretty well, but I am not familiar with the names of either of the sculptures (or ARPS) in question today (11A: The sculptures "Cloud Shepherd" and "Coquille Crystals").

The toughest part of the puzzle for me was the SE, perhaps because that triad of parallel proper nouns (ENESCO, GRISSOM, CHIOS) were all initially unknown to me, which left the whole middle of that section barren. I think that after I guessed the -ER in AYER, I guessed ENESCO from the EN- (45D: "Oedipe" opera composer), but that still left things very sparse down there. It wasn't until I entertained the very sad ICEL (53D: Place to find fjord explorers: Abbr.) that the section finally broke. Seriously, I was saved by ICEL, which is funny for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that I once rewrote an entire section of a puzzle in order to get rid of ICEL. Got ICEL after ruling out SWED and NORW and NZLD as possible abbreviations. CHIOS has an evil ring to it (50D: Greek island in the Aegean).

SW was no piece of cake either. Knowing the Elvis song would have helped - 31A: Elvis's "_____ of Blues" ("A Mess"). As it was, I had to work my way into that section from the east, which was Not easy, especially considering I had DROP for DREG (37D: Small remnant), which meant that neither GOATEE (42A: The devil is often depicted with one) nor ABRIDGE (47A: Cut down) came very quickly. Realizing that no word was likely to end -DPE, I took out the -OP in DROP, got AM I TO BLAME from no crosses, then got ABRIDGE and started to hammer away at things from there. I love the clue on MADAGASCAR (24D: "The eighth continent," to ecologists). Insular cultures evolve in Crazy ways, so I'm sure MADAGASCAR is a biologist's delight. It is also my daughter's delight, when translated into animated film form.

More left-overs:

• 1A: Sole deciding issue (litmus test) - great answer. Unusual, and very in-the-language (comes up most often, in my experience, around Supreme Court appointees).
• 15A: The United States, for one (ocean liner) - don't like this clue. Especially didn't like it when I thought the answer was OCEAN LINED.
• 22A: It might drip from a crack (sarcasm) - clever, but the words "drip" and "crack" are grossing me out, so I can't get too excited.
• 30A: Was vagarious (roamed) - put this answer in right away, but then worried that I might have misremembered my word roots. VAGabond. VAGrant. I was hoping that was the kind of VAG in question (!).
• 36A: Shooter's equipment (dice) - much cooler than the answer I wanted: LENS.

• 46A: Many members of prestigious faculties: Abbr. (Drs.) - uh ... and not-so-prestigious ones too, believe me. Most faculties these days are loaded with Drs. It's hard to get on a faculty without one.
• 52A: What takes a pit crew down? (mine shaft) - doesn't the elevator technically take them down the shaft? Or one of those tram dealies? You enter the MINE SHAFT through the adit, which is a word I want desperately to make a comeback.
• 5D: Remove from the lotus position (uncross) - just a great (perfect, in fact) clue.
• 55D: Au fait (able) - er, uh, um, what? This is English?
• 57D: Arctic _____ (tern) - surprise bird! Always a great way to end a puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

FRIDAY, Nov. 28, 2008 - Joe Krozel (Judah's house, in a Lew Wallace title / Commandant's outfit: Abbr. / It makes pot potent: Abbr.)

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Today's puzzle provides an illustrative contrast to yesterday's puzzle. Yesterday's puzzle was astonishingly smooth from stem to stern. Only a couple of abbreviations, almost no forced fill at all. Magical. The theme, while imaginative, wasn't an excessive burden on the grid, so the constructor could fill it gracefully. But because today's puzzle has a very high degree of architectural difficulty - ten 15-letter answers in one grid! - the non-15-letter fill is severely constrained, often painfully so. When you are locked into an ambitious concept like the one on display today, short answers suffer. I've rarely seen such a large and unappealing group of abbreviations in one place at one time. It's one thing to need a few abbreviations to fill out your grid, quite another to rely on TMI (55D: 1979 nuclear accident site: Abbr.) and IGN (56D: Engine starter: Abbr.) (ugh, side by side) and MEM (19A: Part of a grp.) and VISC (37D: Baron's superior: Abbr.), not to mention the seriously wince-inducing suffixes -IER (46D: Occupational suffix) and, especially, -ATIVE (40A: Talk ender). But perhaps the worst construction offense in the whole puzzle was the inexplicable decision to cross ASEC (23D: "Be there in _____") and PSEC (28A: Tiny fraction of a min.). I don't want those two answers in the same grid together at all, let alone crossing. Just ... no. No. No. In both cases, SEC is an abbrev. of second ("picosecond," "a second"). Therefore ... come on! This obscenity alone practically negates the magnificent achievement of the five up / five down 15-letter answers. Don't even get me started on the proximity of SECY (29A: Dept. head) to this whole mess. Weirdly enough, just last night, right before I solved this puzzle, I threw aside (in disgust) a puzzle that contained both ERA (clued [Elizabethan or Victorian]) and AN ERA (clued [End of _____]). And those answers didn't even intersect. Bah! This is a marquee puzzle - if last year is any indication, more people solve the puzzle today than any day of the year (Black Friday refugees). The puzzle should really put on a better face (though its relative easiness will probably make it appealing to many)

Your 15-letter answers:

• 16A: Cry on a corsair ("Shiver me timbers!") - a fine answer, but one sadly upstaged by the appearance of its identical twin very recently (in the "Talk Like a Pirate" Day puzzle)
• 22A: Something exercised by artists (creative license)
• 34A: It's high in Manhattan (the cost of living)
• 44A: Music theory subject (pentatonic scale) - my favorite long answer
• 52A: Plans to nail suspects (sting operations) - cool that it intersects ...
• 2D: Goal of a neighborhood watch (crime prevention)
• 5D: Island locales (service stations) - not the kind of island you were thinking of ...
• 6D: Coaching cliché ("There's no 'I' in 'team'")
• 8D: Great all-around reviews (critical acclaim)
• 10D: Is totally apathetic (doesn't give a hoot)

Once again, exotic clothing helps me get some of my initial traction in a puzzle. TAM is clued as a "topper" an awful lot, perhaps because of the alliteration (30A: Topper around a loch). I haven't (or haven't much) seen today's clue for SARI (42A: Bollywood cover-up). Gives SARI a nice, modern, pop cultural feel. I was helped along today by two short answers that I first learned as a result of screwing them up early in my blogging career. I was unaware of the existence of GOA (33A: State whose capital is Panaji) until it appeared in a puzzle and I went "?" and some people told me that it's well known as a vacation destination (for whom, I forget). Anyway, I got GOA today pretty easily (three-letter Indian state ... I don't know any but GOA, although I can't say that I knew GOA was a "state" until today). I also got TONI easily (49A: _____ Twins (pair in old ads for home perm kits)), mainly because when it first appeared in a puzzle a while back, I looked it up and ended up posting a picture of the "Twins" in question. Nice to see that some things stick.

Left-overs:

• 6A: It makes pot potent: Abbr. (THC) - an abbrev. I actually liked. Fresh, rarely seen, slightly risqué for the NYT.
• 14A: Judah's house, in a Lew Wallace title (Hur) - I would like to thank Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons" for making a vanity biopic of his life, "A Burns for All Seasons" (directed by Señor Spielbergo), and then entering it in the Springfield Film Festival. A quote from that "movie" is the only reason this answer was a gimme for me. Here is the movie plot (synopsis taken from here):

The first scene opens with Mr. Burns atop a horse wearing a sombrero, rounds of machine gun ammunition draped across his chest. "Simple villagers," he says to a group of people, "I promise you I will close plants in America and bring work here!" Chespirito cries, "Viva Senor Burns!" and the assembled villagers cry, "Viva! Viva!" Burns' horse gallops off, but Burns doesn't manage to stay in the saddle, instead getting dragged back and forth along the ground.

The next scene features Mr. Burns saying, "Remember, Elliot, I'll be right here," on one knee to a child. The tip of his finger lights up briefly; he then enters a spaceship, its door spiraling closed, which takes off into the crimson sky.

The next scene shows a Roman centurion on a horse leading a group of shackled prisoners across the desert. The last prisoner, who bears a striking resemblance to Charlton Heston, collapses from exhaustion. A shadow appears over him: a man kneels in front of him, strokes his hair, and hands him a bottle of spring water. "Drink up, Judah Ben Hur," exhorts Mr. Burns. Ben Hur does so, then looks up gratefully and says, "You truly are the king of kings." A heavenly light shines down upon Burns, and he says "Excellent."

• 21A: St. Anthony's crosses (taus) - it's like the top part of the cross broke off
• 38A: Yom _____ (Tov) - I know Yom Kippur, and I know Mazel Tov. I do not know Yom TOV.
• 39A: Laotian language group (Tai) - one of those Friday/Saturday-level three-letter answers I can never quite remember.
• 57A: Potential lockdown preceder (riot) - there is a hateful show on MSNBC, I think, called "Lockdown" (actually, now that I think about it, it's "Lockup") where you get to gawk at "real life" inside a prison. Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but ... I just don't think suffering shouldn't be a spectator sport. OK, so we don't sell our prisoners' organs on the black market like ... some countries ... but I'm not sure it's a good idea to exploit human misery ... ever.
• 60A: 365 giorni (anno) - a good guess
• 61A: Friend of Frodo (Sam) - is that anything like a "Friend of Dorothy"?
• 1D: Part of O.M.H.S. (On her ...) - Bond. James Bond.
• 13D: Commandant's outfit: Abbr. (USMC) - United States Marine Corps. "Comandant" sounds awfully foreign.
  
• 25D: First name in New World exploration (Leif) - wife liked this. Not sure why. Here's some LEIF for you:

• 26D: River through Mâcon (Saone) - one of the ugliest river names there is. I swear to god that I just typo'd "names" as THAMES. HA ha.
• 27D: Hi-tech read (e-mag) - the internets are no longer "hi-tech"
• 35D: Hawaiian staple (nene)*
• 45D: Fictional faithful friend (Tonto) - unlike SAM, who is, of course, real.
• 47D: Montana who played Luca Brasi in "The Godfather" (Lenny) - news to me. Wife had LINNY, as she could not, for the life of her, figure out 51A: Gents (hes). I told her I understood. Nobody likes / uses / wants to see HES.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*just kidding, it's TARO

THURSDAY, Nov. 27, 2008 - Patrick Berry (Dr. _____, 1990s TV therapist / Naively optimistic muppet / Spicy biscuit served at English teas)

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Recycling" - theme clues end with phrase "with recycling?," which indicates that second half of said answer is simply the first half of said answer "recycled" (i.e. anagrammed)

This theme was very easy to pick up, and must have been inspired by the discovery that the marquee Down answer - STUCK ONE'S NECK OUT - had the same letters in its second half as it did in its first. Notice that the puzzle had to be lengthened by one row in order to accommodate that answer's 16 letters. Very cool little adjustment. Notice also the really elegant symmetry. Since all the theme answers are Downs, and the "recycled" parts all come at the end, the circled squares (they are circled online - perhaps they are shaded in the paper version) do not have rotational symmetry - BUT they occur in rotationally symmetrical answers, and symmetrical pairs of answer each possess the same number of circled (shaded?) squares, e.g. five in 3D and five in 33D, four in 10D and four in 41D, etc. TEAMMATE and BEST BETS were not that inspired, but the others were very interesting revelations. The non-theme fill is virtually wince-free. Patrick Berry remains (in my mind) one of the 5 best constructors walking the planet. Highly imaginative, but also meticulous. Love to see his name on puzzles.

Theme answers:

• 3D: Digestive system parts with recycling? (intes/tines)
• 5D: Most promising options with recycling? (best / bets)
• 7D: Took a risk with recycling? (stuck one / s neck out)
• 10D: Come back with recycling? (reap / PEAR)
• 33D: Livery blacksmith with recycling? (horse / SHOER)
• 41D: Imposition on drinking with recycling? (lega / LAGE)
• 43D: Sporting colleague with recycling? (team / MATE)

Look at the grid. Notice what there isn't much of - abbreviations; partials; tired old fill. You have to care about that @#$# to make it happen, and when it happens, many people aren't likely to notice, but I'm telling you, it's a feat - a feat Way more important to me than any feat of construction. Holy guacamole, does this puzzle have even *one* abbreviation??? I just ... don't see one. Some other answers come close - REV (44A: Accelerate) could have been clued as an abbrev., TWIXT (29A: Between) is a shortened form - but no. I don't see one. [Oh wait, NYSE is one - still, just one, that's impressive] And there's only one partial (IN ON - 31A: Zero _____), and the phrase involved is so colorful that I don't mind it at all. I even like it. It's sure to provide at least a little difficulty for some (right, honey?). And while the fill isn't always scintillating (AXEL, NYSE, ERE, SPAS, ASEA), compared to most other puzzles it relies very little on the available stock of overused fill. Again, I ask would-be constructors to study this grid. You don't always need shock and awe to make your puzzle amazing.

Love the placement of OPALS (22A: Export of 18-Across) directly under AUSTRALIA (18A: Country that has won the most Cricket World Cups). Usually here/there clues are set apart from one another and rarely, very rarely, are they parallel and contiguous. I also love the colorful pairing of ASIA MINOR (61A: Location of two of the classical Seven Wonders) and GINGER NUT (65A: Spicy biscuit served at English teas). I like that the clue sets ASIA MINOR in the past (since I think of it as a dated term). I also like that my eyes kept scanning the clue as "Location of two classics by Stevie Wonder." I told my wife "I've never heard of GINGER NUT." She said "you had GINGER NUT ice cream in New Zealand." She's probably right.

Assorted:

• 23A: Day trader's wish (fast buck) - great, lively phrase. Love that it intersects another great, lively phrase (STICK ONE'S NECK OUT) at the "K"!
• 36A: Dynasty in which Confucianism became dominant (Han) - much more highbrow than the clue I would have used (HAN Solo)
• 45A: Org. with a National Historic Landmark building in lower Manhattan (NYSE) - It's a landmark, alright. It's not marking anything very good at the moment.
• 51A: Danger for small craft (wake) - I call "WAVE" on many of you. Some of you. Admit it! Some of you had WAVE here, at first, if not to the bitter end. The cross, 48D: Kind of run (ski), was so plain and ambiguous that it wasn't necessarily much help. WAVE will seem so right to some people that they'll just be left wondering what the hell SVI can be.
• 52A: Contemporary of Kepler (Brahe) - why his name has stuck in my head, I don't know.
• 54A: Formula formulators (chemists) - I like this answer, in that it is both rare (in the grid) and ordinary (in real life, esp. in Britain). There's something sort of quaint and charming about it.
• 59A: Prince _____, Eddie Murphy's role in "Coming to America" (Akeem) - this May have been the first word I put in the grid...
• 68A: Dr. _____, 1990s TV therapist (Katz) - HA ha. Animated! And likely Obscure to many of you. Late 90s Comedy Central. Squigglevision:

• 1D: Symbol seen on viola music (C clef) - Didn't know this, but like the "CC" opening.
• 2D: 1944 film noir by Preminger ("Laura") - One of the reasons the term "film noir" was invented.
• 9D: Upscale office decor (art) - how about [Any office's decor]? I mean, my dentist has ERTE on the wall, my doctor, some ugly photography and water colors. No Degas or RODIN (28D: "The Age of Bronze" artist), but still, ART.
• 12D: Craft union of old (guild) - craft GUILDs were a big deal in Medieval England. I will spare you the lecture.
• 25D: Victorian gents' accessories (canes) - wife had CAPES, which is a great wrong answer. Unfortunately, "Zero IN OP" is not a known phrase.
• 38D: Naively optimistic Muppet (Ernie) - neither wife nor I think of ERNIE as "naive." "Today, on Sesame Street, Bert has to stop ERNIE from sending money to a 'Nigerian prince.'"
• 52D: So-called "king of herbs" (basil) - "So-called?" By whom, the herb itself? I was imagining some guy named Herb going "Hey, you know what they call me down at the plant? The King of Herbs, that's what they call me? Oh I'm a real big shot down there." Real King of Herbs = Herb Tarlek. He had good sports jackets:

64D: Sports _____ (bra) - well that was unexpected. It's an anagram of the answer I wanted.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Oh, yeah: Happy Thanksgiving

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 26, 2008 - Harvey Estes (Gershwin heroine / Beatnik's "Understood" / Meaning of "one on the city" diner lingo / Prophetess of legend)

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "THE LAST HURRAH" (49A: 1958 Spencer Tracy film ... and a hint to 20-, 30- and 39-Across) - all the theme answers end in the letter string "OLE," which can also be found at 57D: 49-Across, in this puzzle

Technically, for this theme to work well, "THE LAST HURRAH" should be a bull-fighting picture. Let's see ... nope, it's about a corrupt, outmoded, yet semi-beloved politician who loses an election then has a heart attack and dies. Maybe he shouts "OLE!" just before he dies, imagining he's reliving his glory days as a bullfighter in pre-civil war Spain. This theme barely coheres (three answers that have nothing in common but their last three letters); "THE LAST HURRAH" should bring it together, but the unifying effect of the title is offset, if not nullified, by the fact that the movie has nothing to do with the particular HURRAH in question. Also, OLE gets a really awkward clue. And yet, HOLY GUACAMOLE, the puzzle was still reasonably enjoyable. Lots of good mid-range (5 to 7-letter) fill. If Sarah Palin can pardon a turkey, then I can pardon this puzzle's mild incoherence. Such is the privilege I claim on this day, my 39th birthday (actual 39, not the "39" you might call yourself when you are 40, 41, 42, 55, etc.)

Theme answers:

20A: "Zounds!" ("Holy Guacamole!") - 'Zounds = contraction of "By God's wounds," a mild oath. HOLY GUACAMOLE is even milder.
30A: Eight-time Best Actor nominee (Peter O'Toole) - we have his latest movie from Netflix just sitting near our DVD player ... just sitting ... honey, are we ever going to watch that? It's from your queue.
39A: Boneless entree (filet of sole)

The best part of the puzzle, from where I sit, is the BLOOD RED (4D: Vivid valentine color) MASH NOTE (3D: Billet-doux) in the NW corner. Prior uses of "billet-doux" in clues have driven Googlers to my site in droves - apparently this word, meaning "love letter," is not in everyone's vocabulary. With good reason. It's really to be read, not said. Unless you're being ironic. A BLOOD RED MASH NOTE sounds so awesomely gothic, like the premise for a horror/romance novel I might actually want to read. The combination of the two answers, of romance and bloodiness, makes me think of one of the greatest "Simpsons" episodes of all time, "I Love Lisa," a Valentine's Day episode in which Ralph Wiggum interprets a simple valentine from Lisa as a MASH NOTE, and pursues her (like some kind of child Quixote) through the rest of the episode. Oh, and that episode begins and ends with Bill and Marty (radio personalities) trying to play "Valentine's Day"-themed music, and in both cases, mistakenly playing ... "The Monster MASH." Specific "Simpsons" video is Very hard to come by, so you get this:



Wrap it up:

• 23A: "Long Walk to Freedom" writer (Mandela) - just read a semi-scathing piece about him (addressed to him, actually) in Harper's. Worth reading if you can handle hearing about atrocity after atrocity after atrocity.
• 5A: Under, in Umbria (sotto) - news to me. We just had this answer, in a musical context.
• 10A: Gershwin heroine (Bess) - as in "Porgy &"
• 15A: Beatnik's "Understood" ("I'm hip") - wanted only "I DIG," which would not fit no matter how hard I tried.
• 18A: City on the Aar (Berne) - feel as if I haven't seen this city's name since 8th grade geography. Took a few crosses to get it.
• 41A: Meaning of "one on the city," in diner lingo (tap water) - yay, old-timey diner lingo. This one was at least inferrable. Some of the terms get a little loopy.
• 54A: Jetliner name until 1997 (US Air) - someday I'll learn the difference between USAIR and US Airways (which still exists), but the prospect of looking that !@#$ up sounds so dreadfully boring that I can't be bothered at the moment (not how I want to be spending even one second of my birthday)

• 61A: Bristlelike part (seta) - so much better as a plant part than a partial, like [_____ good example].
• 62A: Image crafters (PR men) - love the consonant pile-up answers like this (initials + full word combos) provide
• 5D: Prophetess of legend (Sibyl) - she has a big part in Book VI of the Aeneid.
• 6D: Alphabet ender (omega) - thought this was VWXYZ, and was prepared to be both horrified and exceedingly impressed
• 8D: Funny Fey (Tina) - just read a funny interview with the actor who plays Kenneth on "30 Rock" (the great, Emmy-winning, but pitifully underwatched NBC sitcom). Worth reading if you like the show. Lots of stuff in there about T.F.
• 10D: Mob's money collector (bag man) - great phrase. I imagine a BAG MAN waiting patiently at a diner, too nervous to eat or drink anything but TAP WATER ("One on the city!"), when the attractive woman next to him passes him what he thinks might be a MASH NOTE, but it's blank. Confused, the man looks down and notices his bag is NOT THERE (36D: Missing). He turns to the woman who smiles just before she shoots him three times in the gut, turning his white shirt BLOOD RED. The man's OBIT (31D: Passing notice) mentions none of this.
• 37D: Swiss abstractionist (Klee) - one of the many artists referenced in the fabulous Charles Willeford 1950s noir classic "Pick-Up"
• 44D: Non-head of state who addressed a 1989 joint session of Congress (Walesa) - did not know this, but got it with something like one or two crosses. WALESA went on the following year to become ... a head of state; specifically, head of Poland.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, about to descend the staircase and see what kind of crazy birthday surprise daughter has planned ...

[me, age 1 - thanks for digging this up, honey]

Myrmecologist's box -TUESDAY, Nov. 25, 2008 - Caleb Madison (Sanders, Klink or Mustard: Abbr. / Hoopsters Archibald and Thurmond / "Amerika" novelist)

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: vowel switch - theme answers are two-word phrases where consonants in the second word are in the same sequence and position as in the first word, but the vowels swap places

Well, this isn't much of a theme, concept-wise, but the resulting phrases are kinda catchy and quirky and the non-theme fill is pretty decent too. Happy to see the return of "The Simpsons" to the puzzle today in the form of NED Flanders (46A: _____ Flanders, neighbor of Homer Simpson) - see yesterday's write-up for a picture of this left-handed, mustachioed, Super-Churchy nice-guy. Coincidentally, I have had a NED Flanders mustache now for about 24 hours. I'll be shaving it off tomorrow morning before I get my photo taken by the local paper. It's disturbing to have this mustache, because I don't notice it at all, but every time my wife looks at me, she can barely control her amusement.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Trial jury? (penal panel)
• 23A: Wine telemarketer? (cellar caller)
• 30A: Lone Star State duties? (Texas taxes)
• 40A: Late-night talk show host's principles? (Conan canon)
• 49A: Slyly popping a breath mint, e.g.? (Tic Tac tactic) - the best of them all, although TIC and TAC appear to be separate words, which kind of ruins the consistency of the theme, but I don't care
• 61A: Sammy's backup singers? (Davis divas)

There are several very lovable answers in this puzzle. Love XBOX (34D: GameCube competitor) and QANDA (7D: Session after a lecture, informally) for their improbable letter combinations. Love TRIPLEA (10D: Not quite in the majors) because the stand-alone "A" can make it hard to parse if you don't know baseball - plus it breaks neatly into TRIP and LEA, which is essentially meaningless, yet pleases me nonetheless. Love love Love MRSC (25D: Richie's mom, to the Fonz), because not only does it have the interesting and unusual letter sequence going for it (as all the aforementioned lovable answers do), but ... well, it's all consonants, And it's about MRS. C, whom (as longtime readers of this blog probably know) I have always adored. I have a thing for sitcom moms - Mrs. Brady, Mrs. C., Joanna Kearns from "Growing Pains," etc. Perhaps I've said too much.

Oh, and I love ALL WET (5D: Totally mistaken) - super-dated, but in a cool way.

The hard-boiled fan in me wishes SPADE (22A: Heart beater in bridge bidding) had been clued in relation to Sam, NEAT (42D: "Very cool!") had been clued via whiskey, and CORA (60A: Mrs. Dithers of "Blondie") had been clued via the main female character in "The Postman Always Rings Twice." Very happy to see MR. MOTO (25A: Detective played by Peter Lorre) in the grid, now apparently married to MRS. C (fabulous crossing).

[image from "Modern Drunkard" magazine]

For some reason, with this puzzle, I marked the first and last squares I filled in. Alpha square = "K" in KAFKA (1A: "Amerika" novelist). Omega square = "R" in IGOR (19A: "Young Frankenstein" hunchback).

Olio:

• 66A: Line from the ankle to the waist, say (seam) - had to think about this one, then realized it must be a clothing-related (and not an anatomical) term
• 1D: Hat for a French soldier (kepi) - really a horrid name. How am I supposed to take a soldier seriously when he's wearing a hat that's only a couple letters off from KEWPIE?
• 31D: Stowe heroine (Eva) - very, very handy name to remember
  
• 4D: Sedona maker (Kia) - just had this answer clued as [Sportage maker]. I'd like to advocate that constructors start using KEA in their puzzles - there must be demand for it, what with "E" being more common, generally, than "I," and it's a perfectly good, reasonably common bird. OK, it's common only in NZ, but at least it still exists. Stupid DODO gets into the puzzle and it only ever existed on a tiny island and hasn't been around for centuries.
• 47A: Some charge cards, informally (Amexes) - this feels ... iffy.
  
• 18D: Test for a sitcom (pilot) - I think it's a test for any new (scripted) show.
• 23D: Sanders, Klink or Mustard: Abbr. (Col.) - fantastic clue. I laughed just reading it."Klink," HA ha. "Schultz!"

• 13D: Tool for someone on KP duty (parer) - when I think of someone on KP duty, I think of someone peeling potatoes, not ... paring? Or did the potato peeler pare with a PARER back in the day (i.e. early "Beetle Bailey" era)?
• 8D: Old maker of baseball cards and bubble gum (Fleer) - so this is how I learn that FLEER has gone out of business. I think there was a single year (in my six or so years of baseball card collecting) that I collected FLEER. 1982. Good times.
• 41D: Myrmecologist's box (ant farm) - great clue, great answer. I actually found "box" stranger than "Myrmecologist" before I'd solved the clue.
• 63A: Radioer's word ("over") - "Radioer" is hard to look at
  
• 43D: Atlanta-based federal health org. (CDC) - Centers for Disease Control (and Prevention)
• 44D: Hoopsters Archibald and Thurmond (Nates) - Archibald was nicknamed "Tiny"
• 51D: Grammy-winning pianist Chick (Corea) - familiar name, but his music is unknown to me. I'll let Chick play us out:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Today's LA Times Puzzle (Nov. 24, 2008)

Hey, everybody, PuzzleGirl here. Ya know how I can't stand having other puzzles spoiled in the comments section here? Well, I convinced Rex we needed a separate thread for discussing today's LA Times puzzle, which was co-constructed by our very own acme! She says the puzzle was inspired by the comments on this blog and I think she better pipe up and give us more details on that. If you haven't solved it yet, don't read the comments! There will be spoilers in there!

MONDAY, Nov. 24, 2008 - Billie Truitt (Measure of national economic health / Mr. _____ (Lucy's TV boss) / Rhyming word game)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Digits - five theme answers end with THUMB and the names of the four fingers, respectively




Meh. It was OK. I feel like I've seen this exact theme before, which is no real knock against this puzzle - themes are replicated all the time without the constructor's knowing that it's happening. HINKY PINKY felt awful to me, but that's just because I've never heard of it. Rare for me not to have heard of a theme answer on a Monday. All in all, a very average Monday puzzle.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Gardener's gift (green THUMB)
• 24A: Measure of national economic health (misery INDEX) - that's a nice, timely answer (I think I'm going to be saying that any answer dealing with economic downturn is a "timely" answer for a long, long time)
• 39A: Come to a compromise (meet in the MIDDLE)
• 51A: "Call sometime" ("Give me a RING")
• 64A: Rhyming word game (hinky-PINKY)

I think HINKY PINKY was made more grating by the proximity of EENY (70A: Start of a counting-out rhyme). The whole bottom of the puzzle is threatening to devolve into baby talk. Some random website I found tells me that "A hinky-pinky is a clue, definition, or riddle, the answer to which is a pair of rhyming words." Example given - a Norseman on wheels is a "biking viking." Wow, what ... fun. Speaking of Norway, a double dose today - OSLO (32A: Norway's capital) and V-flavored OLAV (69A: Norway's patron saint). One other thematic pair: AJAR (9A: Not completely shut, as a door) and AGAPE (50D: Yawning or visibly astonished).

Not a big fan of UNPEG, INRE, CLEO, ASEC, or NEEDN'T. Like RAN IN (54D: Arrested), JAWED (10D: Chatted) and ROUE (31A: Don Juan type), though, honestly, I never saw that last one until just this second. That's what happens when you speed. Oh, and I just noticed that a garden decoration (GNOME - 14D: Garden statuette) intersects a gardening answer (GREEN THUMB), so that's nice.

Miscellaneous:

• 1A: Event involving burning and looting (riot) - these often happen on summer days, or HOT ONEs (30D: Definitely a day for air-conditioning), which was reclued (thankfully) from [Real sidesplitter]. RIOTs are always easier to take when there are no MACHETEs (27A: Cane cutter) involved.
• 1D: Toupees, slangily (rugs) - Did Mr. MOONEY wear a toupee? (42D: Mr. _____ (Lucy's TV boss)). I have never seen more than an episode or two of "Here's Lucy" or "The Lucy Show" or whatever incarnation of Lucy sitcom MOONEY was on. No, it looks like Mr. MOONEY just had a somewhat receding hairline, unremarkable on a man his age.

• 22D: First of 12 popes with a religious-sounding name (Pius I) - I wonder if anyone will parse this as one word, PIUSI, and wonder what the hell kind of name that is.
• 18D: Spiral seashell (triton) - again, what are these words I've Never heard of doing in my Monday puzzle. Very weird. This one was easy enough to infer

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Nov. 23, 2008 - David J. Kahn (What Ramona wore in a 1966 Chuck Berry song / Onetime political columnist Joseph / Revolutionary 1930s bomber)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Picture This" - all about Matisse's "Le Bateau" and the fact that it once hung upside-down at a MOMA exhibition for forty-seven days before anyone noticed; circled squares kinda sorta form the outlines of the fluke-like "bateau + reflection" featured in the painting; further, and most impressively, the circled squares spell out SAILBOAT and REFLECTION (so you know which side is up!)





I really liked this puzzle despite the fact that the visual effect is hard to appreciate. Also, partial. There are other elements to the painting (though not many)

I am a big fan of art in general from about the Impressionists to the middle 20th century, but this painting managed to get by me completely. Thought it might be familiar when I looked it up, but no. Another thing that managed to get by me: the term WATER MEDIA (46D: Styles of 25-Across and the like). Will assures me it's a real term, and I believe him, but yikes. Not exactly in common parlance. The rest of the puzzle was a welcome challenge, and a real good time. Impressed by the number and length of the theme answers, and despite some clunker fill here and there, the puzzle is remarkably tight, smooth, and legit overall.

Theme answers:

• 23A: Leader of the Fauvist movement (Henri Matisse)
• 25A: Title of a work by 23-Across ("Le Bateau")
• 120A: 25-Across, e.g. (painting)
• 122A: 23-Across, e.g. (French artist)
• 6D: N.Y.C. cultural event (MOMA exhibition)
• 46D: Styles of 25-Across and the like (water media)
• 41D: How 25-Across appeared at a 6-Down in 1961 (upside-down)
• 55D: How long 25-Across was 41-Down before being noticed and fixed (forty-seven days)

47 is also the atomic number for Ag (silver). Saw a silver ring in "Wired" yesterday that was like a class ring, sort of, only it had the "Ag" periodic table square carved into it. It was cool in a very nerdy way. Nerd bling. SCIENCES bling (47A: Academic area). OK, that "47" was a total coincidence. I'm starting to freak myself out now.

There were two particularly rough patches of this puzzle for me. The first was due North. Here's what I wrote in my initial feedback on the puzzle:

Criminy, this was HARD in places. The North in particular, where I stared at four blanks until guessing on ALSOP (10D: Onetime political columnist Joseph) and NEALE (21A: Football Hall-of-Fame coach Greasy _____) (a brutal crossing) and ANTARES (7D: Brightest star in Scorpius) and EARLAP (33A: Winter protection). Those are all Highly unusual, and their intersecting, I'm telling you, is going to make people cry. I somehow pulled ALSOP out of my brain, probably because he'd been in the puzzle. EARLAP still looks like it's missing a letter (namely, "F")

I also wrote:

You have "user" in 94A: Cushion user? (bank shot) which I really didn't like and then realized I might persuade you to change by pointing out that "USER" is already an answer (in the plural, 60D: Web browsers => USERS).

That is what we call a "dupe," and sadly, my comments got to him too late (or vice versa) for anything to be done about it. Sometimes, all the king's horses and all the king's men still miss stuff. It happens. Which is why most of the "I can't believe Shortz blah blah blah" indignation sounds so self-righteous and hollow to me. People err. Smart people err. ERR, I say! (it's a perfectly cromulent word)

OK, the other rough patch, and my Last Stand, was the NE (sadly, the place where the name of the damned painting resides). Something about the cluing on WEARABLE just puzzled me (12A: Not useless, as clothing), and I think my brain would not allow me to accept the fact of WALLOPER's existence (12D: Cleanup hitter, e.g.) - the puzzle had already used up its one free Odd Job with THRIVERS (90D: Prospering ones). Actually, there is a short story called "Dock WALLOPER" by Benjamin Appel in an excellent hard-boiled fiction anthology I own (called, I believe, "Hard-Boiled"). Late 90s, Oxford UP. Good stuff. I remember liking the story a lot. Wow ... turns out, it's also the name of a newish comic. How'd I miss that? Must've blinked.

But back to the puzzle. EDUC is short for "education," that I know. But WTF is "H.E.W." (19D: Part of H.E.W.: Abbr.)? O crap, this has been in the puzzle before - Health, Education and Welfare was a Cabinet post, a post now called Health & Human Services. Hasn't been H.E.W. since I was 10. BTEN (17D: Revolutionary 1930s bomber) eluded me even after I got all the letters - "man, that dude's got a really really weird name. How do you even pronounce that?" D'oh! LEAR (18D: Duke of Cornwall's father-in-law, in Shakespeare) was a gimme (thank god), everything else up there felt like it took some effort.

Listage:

• 1A: Dr. Seuss character with a red hat (Sam I Am) - me: "Cat in the ... no, that's got 'hat' in it ..."
• 27A: Fictional spread (Tara) - wanted (kinda) OLEO
• 36A: Vegetable with yellow pods (wax bean) - looks pretty cool in the grid. Does someone name these things so they will sound as untasty as possible? We had Adzuki bean soup tonight (delicious). Different kind of "bean," I realize.
• 44A: Somewhat reduced (lowish) - well I don't like that.
• 54A: Flying grp. since 1918 (RAF) - British fliers
• 58A: On&On singer Erykah _____ (Badu) - she has such a cool, crossword-sexy name.

• 67A: First name in spydom (Mata) - "spydom" is a great word
• 70A: Suppliers of greetings (card stores) - I should hate this, but do not. Not at all. It's creative.
• 73A: What Ramona wore in a 1966 Chuck Berry song (tight dress) - don't know the song, but I sure want to now. Dang, can't find a single youtube performance. Here's "Maybelline" instead:

• 86A: Stone in a 2008 Olympic medal (jade) - interesting. My Tai Chi instructor (sifu) spent a chunk of the lesson today talking about the opening ceremonies and how her teacher was one of the masters who planned and designed the Tai Chi portion (I missed the ceremonies completely, so have no idea what she was talking about, but maybe some of you saw it).
• 107A: Musical for which Ben Vereen won a Tony ("Pippin") - I know squat about musicals, and yet I knew this. Why? Never saw it. It's just ... in my mind. A bit of trivia. Strange.
• 116A: Big D player (Mav) - nice clue for this common abbreviation of the Dallas basketball team's name
• 117A: Visiting the U.S. capital (in D.C.) - again, creative. I may be IN D.C. in January. Or I may be scared off by the masses.
• 119A: Sportage maker (Kia) - one of my least favorite car names ("Sportage," I mean)
• 129A: Fiber-yielding plant (sisal) - I think I've seen SISAL rugs in various catalogs that white people like.
• 1D: Old term of respect (sahib) - Something about this term just sounds racist. Not sure why.
• 8D: Tiki bar offering (lei) - I had POI
• 13D: Like the earliest Olympic festivals (Elean) - whoa, whoa, whoa ... what? Come on, ELEAN? Sounds like some kind of virtual meat product. Or that Cuban kid. It seems ELIS is a place ... and ELEAN is its adjective. News to me.
• 42D: Kipling short story, with "The" ("Maltese Cat") - Hey, did you hear the one about the Maltese Cat? No, you didn't. The Maltese Falcon ate the Maltese Cat. Avian revenge. This is a roundabout way of saying, "...?"
• 78D: Brad and 86-Down, e.g. (exes) - 86D: See 78-Down (Jen) - this look-here-look-there pair bugged me. Mainly because I could give a @#$#! about tabloid couples (though I do think the "Jen" in question is cute, Way cuter than that other one). I did not, however, have a problem with the here-there pair of VANCE (106D: With 112-Across, Okla. military area) and AFB. Thought that was pretty cool.
• 110D: Bridal path (aisle) - goes nicely with ALTAR (7A: Train stop?)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SATURDAY, Nov. 22,2008 - Frank Longo (Italian port with ruins of an imposing Aragonese castle / Anne Nichols title protagonist / Bog youngster)

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

I have a 9:00am appt. this morning (on a Saturday!?) so this will be brief.

Love the grid shape. Honestly, I thought it was an Obama puzzle when I first saw it. That, or an Oprah puzzle. I rated the puzzle "Challenging" even though it's actually been made slightly easier since I test-solved it a couple weeks ago. Still, I think it's tough. Tough but good. I really enjoyed the struggle, despite running into several words I'd never heard of. Started off so happy and strong when I laid AMERICAN TABLOID in the grid right away. First thing. No crosses. That is one of my favorite books of the last century, which is weird, because the first time I picked it up, I thought "this is annoying as hell - I'm not reading this." Then I persisted. The brain-pounding tabloid style of writing never relents - for 500+ pages - and yet I think the book is Beautiful. Oh, I should add that it is essentially historical fiction (with actual historical figures imagined as characters throughout), which is a genre I typically avoid like beets.

After my AMERICAN TABLOID epiphany, it was slow from there on. Well, the bottom of the puzzle ended up being very tractable, but I was not able to move into the middle easily - you think 35A: A firefighter at work may be in it (immediate danger) is tough, try the original clue: [Peril that's upon one]. Ugh. Eventually I rebooted in the top section, starting with the gimme PTL (27A: Old TV ministry), guessing CATSUPS off of that (1D: Fast-food restaurant packets), and then working W to E from there. But the Center was where I made my Last Stand. Huge open space in the middle was tough to get ahold of, even with STAEL being a gimme for me (though I spelled her name STAHL to begin with - 46A: Author Madame de _____). The real toughies were SPRITES and BOTNETS. Despite currently teaching Shakespeare, I completely repressed the identity of Robin Goodfellow (Puck), as I (unlike many) can't stand that play and don't teach it if I don't have to (42A: Robin Goodfellow and others). And BOTNETS - just unknown to me. I know what BOTS are, I know what NETS are ... but this hybrid, no. I'm pretty sure cracking STRUDEL (25D: Cobbler alternative) was the primary key to finishing this puzzle off.

The 15s:

• 1A: Vis-à-vis (compared against)
• 16A: Age-old retaliation (a tooth for a tooth)
• 17A: Having no inaccuracy whatsoever (true to the letter)

Of those three, only A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH feels very solid. The others feel like phrase where someone meant to say a better known phrase but got confused.

• 31A: Fix things (solve the problem) - straightforward
• 35A: A firefighter at work may be in it (immediate danger) - we covered this; it's good

• 51A: James Ellroy novel that Time magazine named best fiction book of 1995 ("American Tabloid")
• 57A: Suitable for all (General Audience) - Like the movie-oriented adjectival use of this phrase here
• 58A: Idolizes (sets on a pedestal) - well, I had PUTS, initially, of course, but that's OK

The real krusher in this puzzle, as far as I was concerned, came with the THREE CONSECUTIVE OPERA-RELATED DOWNS. All 7 letters, all completely new to me. OK, so MORDENT isn't specifically opera-related - still, it's in the ballpark. Obscurity is one thing, but tightly packed obscurity all from the same field of knowledge. That's a kind of violation I haven't invented a name for. Caused me to have to guess at CEO (41A: First suit?), because that "E" and "O" could have been anything from my perspective, and I didn't have the benefit of [First suit?]. I had [Suit of an outfit]. I was like "well ... it's CIA or SUIT, but either way, I don't get it." Oh, the opera crap in question:

• 36D: Writer whose novella "Carmen" is the basis of Bizet's opera (Merimee)
• 37D: Musical ornament using tow quickly alternating tones (mordent)
• 38D: "La Traviata" lover Alfredo _____ (Germont)

And the rest:

• 43A: "Blood hath been shed _____ now": Macbeth ("ere") - coincidence - this is the play I'm currently teaching in Shakespeare. Not that you need to know the play to get this. This answer should have been a gimme for most of you.
• 2D: Italian port with ruins of an imposing Aragonese castle (Otranto) - Know this place because friends of mine had to read the Gothic "Castle of Otranto" when I was in grad school. And I knew TORONTO wasn't Italian.
• 3D: Longtime Arizona congressman who ran for president in 1976 (Mo Udall) - I think two more UDALLs were just elected to the Senate. Yes, in New Mexico and Colorado.
• 4D: People who deal with stress successfully? (poets) - clever
• 5D: Quintillionth: Prefix (atto-) - mystery to me; don't use quintillionths very often.
• 6D: Pythagorean character (rho) - it's a Greek letter, and it fit
• 7D: Bog youngster (eft) - little newt
• 11D: Amenhotep IV's god (Aten) - having seen this in a recent puzzle Really helped
• 15D: Time for an emergency phone call? (three a.m.) - LOVE this answer.
• 33D: TV bear (Ben) - love this answer too. This goes out to Serena. Rest in peace, kitty:

• 50D: Anne Nichols title protagonist (Abie) - hard to recognize this piece of crosswordese without "Rose" or "Broadway" nearby.
• 55D: Shrovetide concluder: Abbr. (Tue.) - Ah, "concluder." That's the stuff.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Serena, c. 1999-2008

Well, my cat just died. Which is to say I put her down. Yesterday she was fine, this afternoon, paralyzed and in severe pain with a blood clot near the spine. Just got back from the vet. Just now. At least it was all quite fast, relatively speaking.

I found her in a tree in Philadelphia in the summer of 2000. She was in the tree when I went on a walk at night, and she was still in the tree when I went on a walk the next morning. My then-girlfriend borrowed someone's ladder and got her down. What to do? I took her to Binghamton to live with me and my insane, cranky Original Cat, Wiley. Serena was a sociopath and a user who liked people primarily if not exclusively because they were warm in the winter and they fed her. Still, she had personality, and she was easy, and I loved her.


~RP

FRIDAY, Nov. 21, 2008 - Patrick Berry (King who had an audience with Pope Leo I / Symbol of dissent against British rule)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

A remarkably wide-open and free-wheeling grid from Mr. Berry today. Huge white center in the middle of this one, including a 5x5 in the dead center and sizable chunks of white extending away from it in all directions. Five contiguous parallel Downs and an equal number of contiguous parallel Acrosses anchor this puzzle's astonishing center, while the corners become little alcoves for pesky answers to hide in. A tough puzzle, light on obscurity, with answers drawn from a wide variety of fields. Only two answers I'd truly never heard of - both people: THEA (40A: Singer/songwriter Gilmore) and HERNDON (24D: William _____, law partner of Abraham Lincoln). One cringe-inducing answer: DEPILATING (6D: Removing hair from, as the body) - I took "removing" adjectivally and had DEPILATORY for a good long while. And wait, one more answer I hadn't heard of - not a person (I hope) but a thing: LIBERTY POLE (16D: Symbol of dissent against British rule). Historian wife, when asked what (the !@#) a LIBERTY POLE was, answered: "I dunno ... is that the thing the LIBERTY BELL hangs from?" No, I don't think so. Side note: Google returns 2.27 million hits for "DEPILATORY" and 21.5 thousand for "DEPILATING." Also, creepily, the third hit returned on a search of "DEPILATE" is a site entitled, "Should ten-year-olds depilate?" Thankfully, the answer appears to be 'no.'

A word about PANTYGIRDLE. What the hell is it? Sculpting underwear? Wife didn't really know. "How is it different from a regular girdle?" I asked. No help. I told Will it seemed awfully dated and I therefore wasn't sure that the original clue, [Victoria's secret purchase], was entirely (or even partially) accurate. But I wouldn't know. Clearly. Anyway, I LOVE the new clue, 33A: Unmentionable, because it's insanely misdirective *and* suggests the old-fashioned status of the answer - which is to say PANTYGIRDLEs were likely far more popular when people referred to women's undergarments unironically as "unmentionables." If there is something off in my history of women's undergarments ... well, no one should be shocked. Maybe PANTYGIRDLEs are all the rage. Who knows?

More love, this time for ONE HORSE and its terribly innocuous-seeming clue, 47A: Small and insignificant. The only phrase I can think of wherein one would use "ONE HORSE" is "ONE HORSE town," but that doesn't diminish my love for this answer one bit.

And the rest...

• 7A: Garden pests in Harry Potter books (gnomes) - man, I don't remember this well at all, and thought the answer was something way more Potteresque. Mandrakes, maybe, or squibs or squabs or shrikes or skrewts or whatever those things are that are plant-like and make a racket. GNOMES? Those are ornaments.
• 15A: 1950 #1 hit for the Ames Brothers ("Rag Mop") - I guess we'll have to hear it. I will, anyway, since I can't get Frankie Valli's "Rag Doll" out of my damned head. Here's the Ames Brothers' version:

And here it is, Chipmunked:



And here's a version ... I don't know who's doing it or what is going on ... but this version kicks the Ames Brothers' version's ass all up and down the block. Watch the piano player's legs, esp. from about 1:45 on. Insane:

• 26A: They affect one's constitution (amendments) - they sure do. I haven't heard a proposed amendment in recent years that I'd want anywhere near my constitution.
• 38A: Word of dismay (oops) - "dismay" is not what I would have said. The word seems more an acknowledment of a slip up, like "my bad." I rarely hear anyone say it with "dismay."
• 41A: Table game with paddles, slangily (pong) - well, Will would know, but this still sounds off to me. PONG is an early Atari game. PING PONG is already short enough, why would anyone abbrev. it?
• 49A: King who had an audience with Pope Leo I (Attila) - don't normally think of him as a "king." He's mainly just a Hun in my head. This is one of a series of historical curiosities in the puzzle. See also QUEEN REGENT (14D: Title assumed by Margaret Tudor in 1513), HERNDON, LIBERTY POLE, ONASSIS (2D: Billionaire who bought the Greek island Skorpios), and, of course, TIE fighter (50D: _____ fighter ("Star Wars" ship)).
• 3D: "Madame Butterfly" setting (Nagasaki) - had no idea NAGASAKI was known internationally for anything more than getting blown up.
• 22D: State capital with just 42,000 people (Olympia) - drove through it many, many times during the summers of my youth. Have absolutely no memories of ever having stopped there. See also SALEM, OR.
• 28D: Russian-born Israeli leader (Meir) - Israeli leader in four letters - you have one fairly safe bet.
• 34D: Electromotive force symbol (epsilon) - really just a fancy "E"
• 37D: Label on an amplifier knob (reverb) - cool answer. Requisite "Spinal Tap" video:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

THURSDAY, Nov. 20, 2008 - Pete Muller (One who believes humans descended from extraterrestrials / Tribe speaking Chiwere / Volga feeder)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Quotation by economist Allan Meltzer (20A, 23A, 47A, 54A): "CAPITALISM / WITHOUT FAILURE / IS LIKE RELIGION / WITHOUT SIN"

Interesting quote, though I don't buy it. The analogy seems very faulty. But it's catchy. Succinct. Bumper-stickeresque. I'm not a quote-puzzle fan, in general. This one was fine, I suppose. Timely ... ish. Can you feel the lukewarmness suffusing this write-up? I can. There's just not a lot to say about quote puzzles. There's the quote. It's a quote, alright. The End. This one did have the ultra-current BEAR / STEARNS as an added thematic bonus (BEAR STEARNS being a good example of FAILURE) (59A: With 27-Across, it collapsed in 2008). What's the shelf life on BEAR STEARNS as an answer? Will it fade away, or will it enter the permanent record because its collapse comes to be seen as the official start of the Great Depression II?

And so, on to the rest of the grid. Many proper noun gimmes helped me get traction all over the puzzle, from WOLFF in the NW (1A: Tobias _____, author of "This Boy's Life") to ALTHEA in the South (44D: 1950s tennis champion Gibson) to LOMBARDI in the North (9D: Winning coach of the first two Super Bowls) to ITT in the SE (57D: Cousin _____ of "The Addams Family"). Both RITA (26D: Singer Coolidge) and IRABU (47D: Pitcher Hideki) were also no-hesitation entries.



There were only two places where I got significantly held up - the NE and SW. In the NE, I had INTO instead of ONTO at 19A: Come _____. This meant that SHOALS (10D: Bars of a sort). never really came into view, which meant that nothing north of INTO (ONTO) really came into view. Well, of course, it did, eventually, but it took effort. Who the hell knows enough about SHAD to answer 10A: Fish that can detect ultrasound confidently? DIODE also remained hidden for a while, as I contemplated the myriad possibilities for an answer to 13D: Device originally called a rectifier. My original thoughts were ... not about electronics.

In the SW, one word: RAELIAN (51A: One who believes humans descended from extraterrestrials). What ... The ... BEEEEEEEEEEEEP?! Here is an explanation of who/what they are. Did they have their big moment in the sun once? Some event? Some reason people might know who they are? If so, how did I miss it. The group seems to have come into being after 1973. I was alive then. I remember Jonestown, for god's sake, why don't I know about these nutjobs (no offense to any RAELIAN readers I may have)? Yowza. RAELIAN. OK.

The Rest:

• 16A: Spinner for the Spinners (hi-fi) - I love this clue, as it dates the equipment to the right period (60s/70s).

• 20A: First mate's superior, informally (Cap'n) - Very informally. [First mate's superior, cereally]
• 34A: Like most Olympic gymnasts (teenage) - sadly, this clue was changed from [Like a typical CW viewer], which has all kinds of misdirection possibilities built in and could have caused a pop culture wipe-out that I would have enjoyed watching. I think there's a huge segment of the population that does not realize that "The CW" is a TV network. I'm guessing there's Very little overlap in the Venn diagram of "NYT solvers" and "CW watchers."
• 37A: Dressy accessories (tie pins) - had TIETACS, a word which, however ridiculous, has more grid cred than today's answer.
• 39A: "Either plagiarism or revolution," according to Gauguin (art) - one of the most memorable and interesting quotations I've ever seen in the puzzle.

• 53A: Image in the Notre Dame de Paris (ange) - didn't note the Frenchiness of the clue and so struggled a bit. The RAELIANs are clearly anti-Catholic, as that damn answer kept me from getting at ANGE via crosses for a while.
• 60A: Tribe speaking Chiwere (Otoe) - clue looks so daunting, but it's just OTOE, one of the puzzle's most prevalent tribes.
• 63A: Constellation between Cygnus and Hercules (Lyra) - has been in puzzle lately. Otherwise, might have slowed me down more.
• 2D: Volga feeder (Oka) - say "Oprah's Oka Okra" ten times fast. It's hard. I can't stop trying.
• 5D: Palestinian group (Fatah) - I learned this name only in the past couple years and (unfortunately) still have it a bit mixed up with FATWA.
• 7D: Noted ring leader (Ali) - ALI has an amazing closetful of clues. [Clay, after a while] yesterday, this one today. He's so common that they have to keep inventing disguises for him.
• 32D: 2005 documentary subtitled "The Smartest Guys in the Room" (Enron) - hey, another FAILURE. Cool.
• 38D: Commonwealth member beginning in 1947 (Pakistan) - hey another FAI...
• 45D: Chinese dynasty a thousand years ago (Liao) - those damned dynasties are hard to keep straight. I typically wait for crosses and pray that the consonant and vowel combo I have assembled is actually a thing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 19, 2008 - Peter A. Collins (Where to find a vaquero / Eisner successor at Disney / Ancient Dead Sea sect / Classic batting game)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Mixed-up athletes - five theme answers are anagrams of college sports team names; wacky clues end in "?"' and contain the phrase "mixed-up [college name] athlete"

Good day to know your major college sports teams. I did. Otherwise, I'm not sure how good a day it was. A very inventive theme is marred by some hard-to-overlook nonsense in the non-theme fill. And the theme itself covers only 33 squares - normally I'm not a square-counter, but the theme depth here feels particularly shallow. This means there's a lot of non-theme ground to cover, and there are fewer excuses for why non-theme answers could or should go so horribly wrong. I'll start with HEDONICS (21D: Study of pleasure) - undoubtedly a word, but yikes, what the hell? Is this a scientific study? Anthropological study? If you mean "study" in terms of "practice," then surely the correct / better / non-insane word is HEDONISM. That's the word actual people actually know and might actually use, anyway. Then there are the partials, ON A (33A: _____ high) and AN O (48A: What makes God good?). Anagrammatic partials? I don't know whether to groan or applaud. If there were no more odd partials, I would tilt toward applause, but then A CAB comes careening along and it's partial bloodshed. ACAB (61A: Hail _____)! For an answer that absurd, why not get a clue to match, like [End of a 1981 Genesis album]? [1981 Genesis finale?]?. A CAB hurts, especially after the ONA ANO twins. Oh god, they're palindromes too. [Oh god, I temporarily forgot what "palindrome" means! If you squoosh them together, they're a palindrome] Now they just seem evil.


GOO is bad enough in the singular - GOOS seems a joke (19A: Nursery sounds). "What's the noise coming from the baby's room, honey?" "Those are just GOOS - go back to sleep." It's a hard word to use in a sentence (with a straight face). My biggest issues with this puzzle, however, are back in ACABIA, which is what I have renamed the SW corner (for today only). Aside from the aforementioned ACAB, I get the variant spelling of a "batting game" that is already super-dated and unknown to most people born after 1960. I "know" this "batting game" as ONE *O* CAT. A quick look at the cruciverb database shows that this is how the puzzle generally knows the game as well. Today's ONE *A* CAT (41D: Classic batting game) is an outlier. The NYT, for the past decade, has something like one instance of using the "A"-spelling, and then only in a partial (ONEA). I kept the "O" there for a long time, thinking "well, I know SOLUT is not a word ... but I know ONEOCAT is right ..." SOLUT was of course SALUT (58A: "Cheers!" abroad). So memo to self - ONEA and ONEO both count even though No One Plays This Game Anymore.

But the killer answer in the puzzle, the one that really murdered me (and my unborn son), was LACI (66A: Peterson of 2003 news). "News?" I don't know what to say here. The best thing I can say is that it's in poor taste. Not mentioning *why* she was in the "news" seems really disingenuous - and yet it's clear that you couldn't very well clue it [2003 murder victim Peterson], could you? Which means you probably should have just left it alone. No other LACIs, you say. Hmmm. Not sure that's a good enough excuse for not rewriting the quadrant. "Gee, we'd like to respect your memory and your privacy, but your name is just too damned convenient to pass up ... sorry, LACI." Using the name while (vainly) sanitizing it of its origin seems very, very wrong.

Theme answers:

• 23A: Jacket material for a mixed-up North Carolina athlete? (leather) - TARHEEL
• 37A: Oenophile, as a mixed-up Michigan athlete? (wine lover) - WOLVERINE
• 56A: Flew by, as a mixed-up Michigan state athlete? (ran past) - SPARTAN
• 10D: Jargon from a mixed-up Florida athlete? (argot) - GATOR
• 55D: Apply to the skin, as on a mixed-up U.C.L.A. athlete? (rub in) - BRUIN

Other parts of this puzzle are much less objectionable ... it's super-Scrabbly for a Wednesday, with the 4-Z PIZZAZZ (3D: Flash) really helping things along (super weird that this answer showed up the day after I wondered aloud about the number of "Z"s in PIZ(Z)AZZ). NAZARENE (6D: Jesus, notably) and LAS VEGAS (26D: Strip site) make for fantastic symmetrical pillars in this puzzle. GOOS aside, the NE corner is gorgeous, with LOONIES (11D: Nuts) and ESSENES (13D: Ancient Dead Sea sect) making unlikely bedfellows, and TWO TONE (12D: Colored like some cars) seeming to describe the ironic proximity of the words that flank it. ELATION (25A: Joy) runs through the whole section, fittingly.

More:

• 6A: Shots for sots (nips) - "sots" is one of my favorite xword words
• 43A: 1962 #1 country hit "_____ Been Everywhere" ("I've") - a song that has been virtually destroyed by the Choice Hotels commercial:

Here, use this to get the taste out of that last version out of your mouth:



This one's even better:

• 44A: "Ma! He's Making Eyes _____" (1940 hit) ("at me") - !?
• 53A: King of the Roman Empire (Rex) - yay! Hey, why is REX preceded by EGO ...? (51A: Sartre's "The Transcendence of the _____")
• 62A: Actress Raines on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Ella) - odd clue. She's famous for being on the Walk of Fame?
• 69A: Egyptian sun god (Aten) - sounds like a highway or a bingo square ... you know, if BINGO contained an "A"
• 1D: Flanders of Springfield (Ned) - awesome that this puzzle's Downs go from one three-letter animated extreme (NED) to another (REN - 65D: Stimpy's TV pal)
• 5D: Where to find a vaquero (rancho) - [_____ Cucamonga] would have made me happy in a way that few fill-in-the-blanks ever could
• 7D: Eisner successor at Disney (Iger) - ILER? IVER? IGOR? This guy's name is hard for me to remember.
• 8D: Grace, for one (prayer) - for some reason, I didn't understand this at first. Then I remembered that one can "Say Grace" before dinner and what not ... I think of "grace" as a concept, not a prayer. But this is a fine clue.
• 22D: Tony winner Patrick (Magee) - unknown to me. Did a lot of Beckett. Was in "A Clockwork Orange."
• 24D: Shogun capital (Edo) - took me a while to sort out ETO and EDO when I first started solving crosswords. I associate both with war.
• 32D: Actress Aulin of "Candy" (Ewa) - Ewwwwwww. Who? What is "Candy?" - whoa: "The erotic journey of a naive schoolgirl!?" Sounds like something I should know. Apparently EWA did something with Ringo Starr, because how else do you explain this?:

• 46D: Mayo, for one (mes) - Spanish. Very nice misdirection.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Happy birthday to longtime reader and frequent commenter "imsdave" (Facebook "friends" tend to get birthday shout-outs, as Facebook remembers birthdays better than I ever could)

TUESDAY, Nov. 18, 2008 - Richard Chisholm (The Cowardly Lion's Kansas counterpart / Ohio political dynasty / Sporty 1980s Pontiac)

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: TWO HOUSES (59A: What 17-, 23-, 34-, 40- and 47-Across are each composed of) - theme answers are each made up of two words, both of which can precede "HOUSE" in a (reasonably) common phrase

Never heard of a BLOCK House. "BLOCK house" appears to have several meanings. It's the name of a specific fort built in Delaware in the 17th century as a defense against the local Indians. It's also "A brokerage whose major concern is finding potential buyers and sellers of block trades" (answers.com). The main meaning appears to be an isolated fort built as a defensive stronghold (like the Delaware "Block House"). Thankfully, I didn't need to know what a BLOCK House was in order to solve the puzzle. It would have been cool if TWO HOUSES were a real phrase ... sooooo close to the opening two words of "Romeo and Juliet":

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

If only there was such a thing as a BRICK WHORE - now there's a theme answer:



Theme answers:

• 17A: Police stop (road block)
• 23A: Remedy for failed courses, maybe (summer school)
• 34A: Cardinal vis-a-vis Illinois, Indiana or Ohio (state bird)
• 40A: Military capability (fire power)
• 47A: Wheeled toy (doll carriage)

I actually found the NW corner a bit tough - which, on a Tuesday, is to say that it wasn't a breeze. The clue on 1A: Touch base again (tag up) sounds like figurative speech meaning "get in touch with again," so I didn't put anything down at first, and I instinctively wanted a RE- word. ADLAI (13A: 1940s-'50s politico Stevenson) was, like ETNA in the SW (54D: 11,000-foot Italian peak), FAY in the W (37A: Wray of "King Kong"), etc.) a gimme, but GLEAM (3D: Glimmer) wanted to be GLINT, and I needed many crosses to get PIONEER (5D: NASA program that explored the outer planets). I haven't seen (or thought about) a Pontiac FIERO since the 80s (16A: Sporty 1980s Pontiac), but it came back from the past without too much effort. The weirdest moment in this corner was seeing 1D: Ohio political dynasty and instantly, half-jokingly, writing in TAFTS (the correct answer, it turns out). I guess my brain has finally hard-wired the TAFT/Ohio connection. Didn't know the TAFTS were a "dynasty," though I would finally subscribe to HBO if they would do a series called "The Tafts" in the style of TV's "Dynasty."

[What is Crystal wearing!?]

Assorted other answers:

• 27A: Lacking pizazz (anemic) - Why oh why is PIZAZZ spellable with either three or four Z's? M-W online has this three-Z version listed as a variant. ANEMIC is a nice, interesting answer as is NO SLOUCH (38D: A pretty capable person), which somehow seems related (opposed) to ANEMIC.
• 67A: Fair Deal president, for short (HST) - "Deal" part had me writing in "FDR" without thinking. "New Deal," "Fair Deal," "Great Society" - conservatives hate (or at least dislike) all of these because they expanded the role of the Federal Government in American life. I just now wondered where the promise of a "chicken in every pot" came from, and found out it was Hoover. I guess these were magical, non-governmental, and possibly invisible chickens he was talking about.
• 12D: The Cowardly Lion's Kansas counterpart (Zeke) - HA ha. I complained about the original clue, and got this - which (to me) is just as obscure. Probably less obscure to others, though. Originally clued as cager Isiah Thomas's nickname.
• 32D: Follower, as in espionage (tail) - great cluing here
• 48D: Old Apple computers (Lisas) - really, one of the worst imaginable computer names. I'm of the belief that you do not give hardware people names. The name "Lisa" is lovely (and Lisa Simpson is my hero), but on a computer? No.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

MONDAY, Nov. 17, 2008 - Paula Gamache (Caveat on a party invitation: Abbr. / Football referees, informally / Place to begin to connect the dots)

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Pleading - theme answers are phrases that begin with synonyms for "plead"

A super-easy puzzle - a nice, conventional transition back into the puzzling week after yesterday's amazing (and televised) feat of construction by Merl Reagle. This is about the most basic, straightforward, no-nonsense, vanilla theme I've seen in the NYT in a good long while. Overall, I don't think the non-theme fill quite compensates for the theme's lacklusterness. GASBAG (36A: Big talker) is kinda nice, as is POINT A (64A: Place to begin to connect the dots), but the rest I could take or leave. But as I say, people gotta come down off that Sunday puzzle somehow, and this one should help people find their footing, regain their bearings, etc.

Theme answers:

• 20A: Demand legal restitution after injury (SUE for damages)
• 33A: Seek compassionate treatment (BEG for mercy)
• 41A: What drought victims might do (PRAY for rain)
• 56A: Take unnecessary risks (ASK for trouble)

I suppose I should give the puzzle a little more credit for having all the theme answers be in the same verb-"for"-noun structure. Done and done.

I squawked at a couple of answers in this puzzle, but not very loudly. IN A SNARL just felt off to me, even when I googled it and saw that it's not terribly uncommon, particularly in relation to traffic. I squawked a bit more at BYO (39D: Caveat on a party invitation: Abbr.), which feels like it's missing a letter, namely "B" (as in "beer"); apparently it's a general term for restaurants that allow you to bring in your own alcohol ... I guess I can accept that.

Two one-named singers in the puzzle today. EMINEM (16A: "8 Mile" rapper) raps more than he sings (though the distinction is not at all clear cut, in that pitch matters much of the time in rap). He should do a duet with SADE (18A: One-named singer of "Smooth Operator") - an odd combination that I might actually like to hear. This is what Sade sounds like:



And this is EMINEM - with (the non-classical) Dido, who, like SADE, is a singer, so maybe a SADE/EMINEM duet is feasible (this is a creepy video about a deeply troubled guy):



The two performers do share one thing: they both appear in crosswords with reasonable frequency. Another frequent grid denizen: AMANA (31A: Kitchenaid alternative). Its commercial-name counterpart in today's puzzle, NIKON (24A: Pentax competitor), on the other hand, hardly ever appears in the puzzle. "K"s are murder on puzzle frequency - unless you are KOS or TKO. Those appear a lot. Lastly, where crosswordese is concerned, we have one from the vaults: EMS (13D: Bad _____ (German spa)). I learned this in the olden days (P.S. - Pre-Shortz). Nowadays, EMS is likely to me clued either as the plural of the letter "M" or as an abbrev. of Emergency Medical Services. Speaking of one from the vault - here's a MONO (22D: Like the earliest Beatles recordings) recording for your Monday enjoyment:



The Rest:

• 69A: They generally run east-west in Manhattan: Abbr. (sts.) - as opposed to AVES.
• 6D: Expense account no-no (padding) - a nice clue/answer pairing, though I was looking for something specific and PADDING seems general. There is no way I'm going to be able to explain exactly what I mean right now, so I'm not even going to try. OK, I'll try. I was thinking a concrete act or thing, like, let's say, HOOKER. I was not thinking the general act of misusing an expense account. There. At least I tried.
• 10D: Almost any part of the Michelin Man (tire) - wow ... first, he's made of TIREs? HA ha, I didn't really pick up on that. Second, why are the TIREs white? Third, how many "parts" does he have, and which *aren't* made of TIREs, and do I even want an answer to that last question?
• 42D: Western gambling mecca (Reno) - ONER, NERO, ORNE, ERNO ... just playin' around. RENO is also known as "The Biggest Little City in the World," which sounds (unfortunately, but perhaps not coincidentally) like "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas."
• 48D: "The Simpsons" storekeeper (Apu) - nowhere to be seen in last night's xword episode, sadly.
• 49D: Football referees, informally (zebras) - a cool clue and a vibrant answer that gives us a nice zingy "Z"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Nov. 16, 2008 - Merl Reagle (Meshed foundation in lace / "Song of the Islands" co-star Jack / Iron Man co-creator Larry / "Loverboy" actress)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Sounds Like Somebody I Know" - puns on the names of famous people

This puzzle will be featured - in some fashion - in tonight's all-new episode of "The Simpsons," which is all about crosswords (FOX, 8pm). Read more about it here. [There's lots of talk of a "hidden message" in the puzzle ... I just learned that there are actually two of them, which almost certainly explains why the puzzle feels so wonky in places ... anyway, watch the show tonight!]



Well, this has Merl Reagle written all over it. Feels like Will really handed over the reins on this one, because there is an insane playfulness that NYT puzzles normally don't have - and as is typical with actual insane playfulness, the results are both exhilarating and disastrous. Nobody can run two long theme answers right alongside each other like Merl Reagle - I feel like this is a signature move of his. His Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday puzzles are often full of long, gutsy, punning answers that stretch the limits of the imagination (and, occasionally, good taste). The man is an artist, and I take the good with the bad happily. I wish more people wrote puzzles with the verve, panache, and some other fancy noun that Merl does. (Which reminds me - be sure to check out today's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle - another Merl creation, and another "Simpsons"-themed puzzle; if you solve with Across Lite software - which you can download for free via the NYT Premium Puzzles site - you can access Merl's puzzle from here)

The punny theme answers are almost uniformly fantastic, and as we all know, I'm not a pun fan. I learned a new word today: PTOMAINE (!?) (from MARISA PTOMAINE) - I could barely bring myself to fill in the letters, so strange does the word look. Botched RAYMOND CHANNELER at first because I thought it was supposed to be CHANDELIER and then because it wouldn't fit I figured I just screwed up the spelling of CHANDELIER. My favorite theme moment is NIKITA CRUISE CHEF over LINDSAY LOW HAND. Painful yet gorgeous. I have not read much of anything about tonight's episode of "The Simpsons," so I'm not sure how all this is supposed to play out. I'll just wait and see. But kudos to Merl for working both D'OH! (35A: Exclamation from a blockhead) and BART (115A: Driving alternative in S.F.) into the puzzle.

Theme answers:

• 17A: "Loverboy" actress who made the cast sick? (Marisa Ptomaine)
• 21A: Seance-loving crime writer? (Raymond Channeler)
• 40A: Hall of Fame golfer who invented the all-plastic club? (Arnold Polymer) - it only just occurred to me that "club" here refers to a golf club. I was thinking "Who or what would belong to an all-plastic club?"
• 53A: All-telling gossip queen who repeats everything she says? (Rona Parrot)
• 72A: Avant-garde composer who sat around a lot? (Erik Settee)
• 82A: Passionate tennis star? (Monica Zealous)
• 105A: Moscow V.I.P. who like to cook on a ship? (Nikita Cruise Chef)
• 111A: "I have no face cards" actress? (Lindsay Low Hand)

There were some moments that made me wince, though, I have to say. First of all, there were just a Lot of words I'd never heard of - I probably should know PTOMAINE, but RESEAU (33A: Meshed foundation in lace)!?!?! That seems arcane and technical beyond belief. Beyond tolerance, even. I read comics, but who the hell is this LIEBER guy (90D: Iron Man co-creator Larry). Besides the co-creator of Iron Man, I mean. How many people besides hardcore comics nerds know that? That (rough) SE corner brings me to another gripe I have: OH HELL (88A: "Rats!")? First, that seems awfully close to profanity for a NYT puzzle. It does not offend my sensibilities at All, but I was Not expecting it and went with OH HECK and stayed with OH HECK for quite some time. I had another good reason for going with OH HECK, besides prudishness: "HELL" is in one of the clues - 106D: Hell _____ handbasket (in a). That makes "HELL" what we call a "dupe" and dupes are NONOS (86A: Some etiquette rules).

More gripes: two horrible crossings. I am four square against crossing foreign words unless one or both are super common. Thus the SEHR (103D: Ilse's "very") / SOTTO (103A: Lower than: It.) crossing irked me. I inferred it from the SOTTO in the phrase SOTTO VOCE, but SEHR I did not know (no German, sorry Ulrich et al.). Not cool. No crossing foreign words. The other crossing that blew (for me) was ROOTED (85D: Rummaged) / ROLL (85A: Yaw relative, on an aircraft). I had LOOTED / LOLL, not knowing what the hell the "Yaw" clue was going for. It never occurred to me that "LOOTED" was not the absolute right answer, though clearly, in retrospect, it's a bit off, given the clue. Stop yaw and roll? And what's with SML (65A: Letters of sizes). That feels awfully made-up. I would have tripped all over the obscure OAKIE (93D: "Song of the Islands" co-star Jack) if I hadn't already tripped all over him earlier this month. ROMANA took forever, but that's my own damned fault (45A: Alla _____ (pasta style)).

Variety Pack:

• 10A: Attorney's favorite sweets? (tortes) - there seemed to be more of these cutesy "?"-clues than we normally see from Will. I'm guessing most of the clues here are Merl's originals. He's a seasoned editor - he knows what he's doing.
• 28A: Abbr. after Ted Kennedy's name (D-Mass) - nice to give the ailing legendary senator a shout-out
• 39A: "O.S.S." star, 1946 (Ladd) - he was just in a puzzle, and that double-D ending can't be many other folks, so I got this easily despite having no idea what "O.S.S." is.
• 48A: Planned site of the Geo. W. Bush Presidential Library (SMU) - I guessed WACO but it wouldn't fit.
• 50A: Young wife (age 18) of Charlie Chaplin (age 54) (Oona) - once a crossword staple, now an odd curiosity, like ADIT. This clue is not typical Shortz stuff - this is a trivia / story clue, giving you way more info than you need for the sole point of dispensing curious information. See also 67A: Yul Brynner died the same day as _____ Welles (odd fact) (Orson) - I cannot recall seeing a Shortz clue like this before, where a non-quotation complete sentence has a fill-in-the-blank answer. It just feels weird. "(odd fact)" is right. I love how we apparently need to be told that it's an odd fact. "Oh, odd fact ... I see ... now."
• 55A: Letters of commerce (GATT) - a treaty. Took me a while.
• 56A: Laying-on of hands? (back rub) - Also took me a while, primarily because of a pair of kooky krosses - BONEMAN (56D: Guy who digs fossils) and ROSE SLUG (57D: American Beauty pest) - both of which took a while to come and felt iffy when they did.
• 69A: Relatives of TV host Tom (Snyders) - another one that took some patience, because of the evasive CHOIR BOY (30D: Tenor, perhaps) - I had CHOIR and then No Idea what came next.
• 81A: Prima donna Norman (Jessye) - at first I was thinking "they call men 'prima donnas?'" Hey look, it's Jessye Norman singing ERIK SETTEE:
  

• 104A: Disney pirate, 1953 (Smee) - thought it was a gimme (and it was) but ran into all kinds of trouble in the SW corner that made me second-guess even this.
• 110A: Eban of Israel (Abba) - ditto
• 6D: Noriega's weapons (armas) - why even bother changing the name for the next Across clue, 7D: Delgado's rivers (rios)? I feel almost the same way about back-to-back foreign words from the same language as I do about intersecting foreign words generally.
• 4D: Hall of Fame coach Ewbank (Weeb) - aargh. I wrote in WEBB, forgetting about this guy's phenomenally weird name.
• 17A: Freeboot (maraud) - OK, that is awesome (see yesterday's puzzle, which featured this clue/answer pair in reverse)
• 29D: Teutonic name part (von) - this puzzle is sure in love with foreign languages. I ridiculously had "SON" here (where was I, Sweden?)
• 18D: Old IBM offering (PC, Jr.) - HA ha, was this a real thing? I love this answer: PCJR looks All Kinds of Krazy in the grid.
• 31D: Enos Slaughter's team for 13 yrs. (STL) - had the "S" and couldn't think of a three-letter abbrev. to save my life.
• 32D: Roo's donkey friend (Eeyore) - I assume this is a gimme for everyone, but you neeeever know.
• 35D: "Wagon Master" actress Joanne (Dru) - no clue. She and OAKIE may have starred in pictures together, for all I know.
• 45D: Patrick Macnee's 1960s TV co-star Diana (Rigg) - funnily enough, wife and I both blanked on her name the other night, and then later both remembered it. So this was a gimme.
• 37D: Assigner of G's and R's: Abbr. (MPAA) - Motion Picture Association of America
• 46D: Opus with singing (oratorio) - Opus reminds me of the cartoon penguin of the same name (that's what happens when you read comics voraciously before you learn Anything about music).
• 70D: Gallantry-in-war medals: Abbr. (DFCs) - no idea. I'm guessing it's way better than a KFC. Let's see ... Distinguished Flying Cross. Looks like this:

• 63D: Old aviation magazine _____ Digest (Aero) - saw the four letters, wrote in AERO on a hunch. Bingo.
• 91D: Mythical piper (pan) - true enough
• 107D: Y.A. Tittle scores (TDs) - His name makes me laugh.
• 77D: Vacation destination for sandwich lovers? (Delhi) - HA ha. Inventive...
  
• 108D: Org. with a five-ring logo (IOC) - International Olympic Committee; wow, in addition to lots of foreign words, there appear to be LOTS of Abbreviations. Price you pay for magical theme answers, I guess.
• 73D: Big name in tea (Tazo) - cool. Corporate, but cool. Fresh. Current.

OK, I think I'm done. This episode of "The Simpsons" better rule. Crossword puzzles and "The Simpsons" ... My two great passions in life ... colliding? O god, the results can only be disappointing ... no, I must keep hope alive. Yes I Can!

See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SATURDAY, Nov. 15, 2008 - Karen M. Tracey (Basseterre locale / Aegis bearer / Venison preparer in the Bible / Great Plains dweller)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

A highly enjoyable Karen Tracey offering. I could have done without DONALD TRUMP in my puzzle, especially given the incredibly banal quotation used to identify him (40A: He said "Everything is luck"). I'm sure many hundreds of thousands of people in the history of world have said that exact phrase. If you're going to use a quotation, make it unique - attributable to a single person. "Everything is luck," pfff. What kind of dumbass !@#% is that? "You're fired!"


Here's one feature I'm semi-obsessed with in puzzles (clues and answers): -ER words. Puzzle clues get around using phrases like [One who eats ...] by using handy -ER words like "eater," e.g. [Eater of ...]. Today's puzzle has a Tuh-on (that's "ton" said as if it had two syllables) of such words in the clues. This is not necessarily bad - in fact, none of these -er words feel particularly horribly made-up. But man, there are a Lot of them:

• 36A: Flier at the Forum (avis)
• 28D: Venison preparer in the Bible (Esau) - one line mentions this ... not a line I remembered
• 51D: Airplane wing supporter (spar)
• 41D: Corp identifiers (TMs)
• 20A: Great Plains dweller (prairie dog)
• 39A: Detector of les odeurs (nez)
• 27A: Aegis bearer (Athena) - this was tough, primarily because I was thinking of some general term like "shield," not a specific [Aegis bearer]
• 60A: Leveler (bulldozer)

I think that's all of them. Honestly, I don't know if eight is a lot, compared to your average puzzle. For some reason, today, it struck me as a lot.

Toughest part of the puzzle for me today was the NW, where SPACE JUNK (1A: Debris around the world?) was a term heretofore unheard of by me. I'm guessing that's not a scientific technical term, but rather a general term for the crap that's floating around in space (dead satellites? Jimmy Hoffa?). PONCA (2D: Standing Bear's tribe) sounds like a party game, one where you shout "PONCA!" when you win. I thought that after years of the doing the puzzle I'd seen every tribal name there was, but apparently there's a bottomless well of them. I might have tripped over CADUCEI (22A: Medical emblems) had Emily Cureton not floated a logo concept for this very website recently that featured a CADUCEUS. The logo was cool - though, as I told her, it looked oddly like a decal I might have on the back of my purple Cadillac were I a crossword-solving pimp.



Had weird gimmes today. Well, FELLA was easy (37A: Hip-hop's Roc-a-_____ Records), as I spent much of today actually listening to Jay-Z (founder of Roc-a-FELLA Records). Have no idea how I did it, I nailed JASPER FFORDE with no crosses (6D: "The Eyre Affair" novelist, 2001). I even remembered that his last name is totally @!##%'ed up, although I may have tried initially to spell it with a "J" ("FJJORD?" "FFJORD?"). I know squat about FARO, and yet it came to me instantly at 38A: Game dealt by Doc Holliday. Had FELIX instead of UNGER at 49D: Noted TV neatnik, but that was easily fixed. Never heard of the airlines in the clue, but the answer to 53D: Alternative to Arkia or Israir (El Al) was easy enough to infer. Knew KRONA instantly (18A: 100 öre), though misspelled it KRONE at first. This made the toughish ST KITTS (10D: Basseterre locale) much easier to get than it might have been otherwise. Even PEARS came to me swiftly, and its clue was weird (50D: Bottom-heavy edibles). Big question mark of the day was 48D: Spacey's co-star in the 1999 revival of "The Iceman Cometh" (Danza). I know nothing about "The Iceman Cometh" except that it's the play that Michael (Dustin Hoffman) fails to get a role in at the beginning of "Tootsie":



Miscellanea:

• 16A: Shape on a potter's wheel (throw) - had No idea a THROW was a "shape." I thought it just referred to whatever hunk of clay a potter happened to be working on at the moment. [Apparently "throw" is a verb - I really should have seen that, especially since I think W.S. himself flat-out told me it was a verb two weeks ago when I first wondered aloud about this clue while test-solving. I think I write more bad and more make mistaks when I late-night blog]
  
• 44A: Grown-up garçon (homme) - gimme
• 57A: Romulus and Remus's legendary birthplace (Alba Longa) - forgot it, but it came back to me. R&R were raised by a wolf. I like wolf stories.
• 59A: Family name in 16th- and 17th-century music (Amati) - a crossword standard, though usually clued specifically in reference to the violin maker
• 1D: Bullet-biting type (stoic) - Aren't you biting a bullet to keep from screaming?
• 12D: Youngest player to join the 500-homer club (A-Rod) - ugh, it's true.
• 26D: Psalms interjection (Selah) - I once had a girlfriend named SHELAH. One of the first things she told was that the name "Shelah" comes from the Bible ... where it belongs to a man.
• 33D: Dudley's "Arthur" co-star (Liza) - since I've already gone back to the early 80s with "Tootsie," why not continue the theme:

• 15A: Immunologist's concern (tolerance) - not as disease-specific a word as I was expecting
  
• 58D: Denom. established in 1830 (LDS) - some very nice young men came by our house the other day looking for my wife. One of her ex-students (LDS) had apparently flagged her as someone whose soul might need saving. Not sure how her meeting with those kids went. I'll have to ask. I'm assuming she didn't convert us without consulting me, but you never know.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Be sure to watch "The Simpsons" this weekend (Sunday, 8pm, FOX) as crosswording legends Will Shortz and Merl Reagle will make guest appearances, and the entire plot will revolve around crossword puzzles. Read more here.

FRIDAY, Nov. 14, 2008-Brad Wilber (Ken McLaughlin's filly / Star of old horse operas / Mercutio speech subject / A&W offering)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

This puzzle is built around four sets of triple eights [correction: two sets of triple eights, two sets of triple nines], each of which (if you start in the NE) increases in loveliness as you move clockwise around the puzzle. The NW corner is the real gem - I love DORSAL FIN (15A: Worrisome sight at a beach) swimming in between CREAM SODA (1A: A&W offering) and COOP BOARD (17A: Screeners of would-be buyers), though I don't find DORSAL FIN "worrisome" - I've seen a DORSAL FIN at the beach before, a couple in fact; they belonged to porpoises. Very, very cool. CREAM SODA was tough to uncover, as its overly general clue could have been virtual any comestible (do drinks count as comestibles, and further, when will I see COMESTIBLE in a puzzle?). COOP BOARD seems quite original, and any answer that can work in an unusual consonant combo (here "PB") is alright by me.

[Worrisome...]

My biggest struggle was definitely in the SW, where I learned a new word ... the hard way. What's the hard way, you ask? Well, that's when you are certain of a completely different word, and then crosses force you to realize that not only were you wrong, but the actual answer is not even in your vocabulary, you moron. In this case, when confronted with the clue 34D: "Lost Horizon" setting, I confidently, swiftly, even cockily (!) wrote in SHANGRI-LA. Why? Because it's right. What I didn't know - that SHANGRI-LA wasn't just some general location. The second sentence of the Wikipedia entry on "Lost Horizon" (novel) reads as follows:

It is best remembered as the origin of Shangri-La, a fictional utopian lamasery high in the mountains of Tibet.

LAMASERY!! It is hard to believe that is a word. It looks like Lame-assery, which is, I suppose, one way you could describe my attempts to fill this portion of the grid correctly. Then again, when I look at MONASTERY, I see the rather obvious correlation. A community of LAMAs, a community of monks. It wasn't all bad for me in this quadrant, however. FLAT IRON (33D: Monopoly token) was a real joy to uncover. Usually, I think of the Monopoly token in question simply as an IRON. But no, not here. Full name, bam. Very cool. The rest of this quadrant was highly doable, except FLICKA, which eluded me even after I had the "K" (33A: Ken McLaughlin's filly).

The SE had its own issues, with the very dated 1960s-70s-era throwback TV CONSOLE (59A: Piece of den furniture). Man, I remember when friends of mine had TVs in their family rooms / dens that were these enormous, self-standing, wooden monstrosities that housed the television (back when there were only 5 or so channels and no cable). Now, it seems, "console" simply refers to whatever piece of furniture you happen to keep your TV on. Anyhow, the CONSOLE option didn't occur to me until I had many crosses in place. And A.E. HOUSMAN (61A: Poet who's the subject of Tom Stoppard's "The Invention of Love")? Forget about it. I had, thankfully, heard of him, but never read him, not the Stoppard play about him. As HOUS(E)MANs go, I'm more of a John man, myself. Had a little trouble uncovering TAILGATER (55A: Menace in the mirror), as 1. I was imagining a hand mirror or floor-length mirror, and 2. the primary meaning of TAILGATER in my mind is "one drinking beer and eating hot dogs in the vicinity of their pick-up's TAILGATE before the beginning of a football game." Oh, and further, I realized that when I originally learned the term as a kid, I must have imagined that "GATER" was "GATOR," because that's the image I see when I think of the word. Two mysterious crosses down here - LOO (56D: Drawing-room game in "Pride and Prejudice") and ANGELA (44D: Pianist Hewitt who recorded the complete keyboard works of Bach) - mad kept this quadrant interesting. I have read "Pride and Prejudice" many times, and I own Bach keyboard works, and yet ... no help today.

The NE had the odd but interesting TRAWL NET (14D: A sole might get caught in it), but was otherwise fairly easy to unravel. I had one huge clue objection in this area, though. How in the world is a LULL a "gift" (26A: Gift to an overworked salesperson)? I can't wrap it? I can't buy it? Is it a "gift" ... from God? Maybe [Boon for an overworked salesperson] or [Relief to an overworked salesperson]. "Gift" does not compute.

Remainder run-down:

• 18A: March site mentioned in "Eve of Destruction" (Selma) - couldn't recall anything but the chorus of this song, but that didn't matter, as SELMA was the site of one of the most famous "marches" in American history.

• 31A: He wrote "Hell is other people" (Sartre) - I'm not generally a quotes kind of guy. You know how some people just love quotes, and like saying quotes to you, and collect them, and put them in the sig files of their emails, etc.? I'm generally not that guy. But I love this quote - it's short, memorable, and neatly encompasses a certain atheistic vision of the world. Not my vision. A vision. One I occasionally sympathize with. The original quote: "L'enfer, c'est les autres" (from the play Huis clos ("No Exit")).
• 36A: "Eden Concert" artist (Seurat) - well, he's an artist, so I got him from crosses. Don't know this painting drawing. It's kind of haunting.

• 37A: Locale for an outdoor party (lanai) - in Hawaii, or on an episode of "The Golden Girls," OK.
• 38A: _____ ripper (Historical romance) (bodice) - one of the great literary coinages of all time
• 50A: Land that's around 16% Muslim: Abbr. (Isr.) - I got this one instantly, knowing next to nothing about the Muslim population of ISR. Just a hunch.
• 52A: Eccles. dignitary (msgr.) - ugh, this one. I read "Eccles." as an abbreviation of Ecclesiastes, so the answer did not compute well. The answer is an abbrev. of "monsignor."
• 4D: Edible mold (aspic) - I'd rather eat mold, thanks.
• 5D: Mercutio speech subject (Mab) - just read "R&J" and still didn't get this right away.
• 26D: Star of old horse operas (Larue) - Lash LARUE. Hurray for Oaters!
• 29D: Legis. introduced into every session of Congress from 1923 to 1970 (E.R.A.) - a gimme. Something about "1970" tipped me off.
• 38D: Big pistol maker (Beretta) - BERETTA: Maker of oversized novelty pistols since 1877. Does BARETTA spell his name that way because the TV show producers were worried about accusations of copyright infringement?
• 51D: Cooper's co-star in "The Wedding Night," 1935 (Sten) - like the BERETTA, STEN is a gun to me.
• 54D: Sino-Japanese War statesman (Ito) - poor Judge ITO, passed over for some actual historical figure.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

THURSDAY, Nov. 13, 2008 - Allan E. Parrish ("Time _____" (bygone sci-fi series) / Supreme Court writ, familiarly / Autobiographical novel of 1847)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "XXX" - three Xs in the puzzle are circled, and together (as "XXX") they form the clue for all three theme answers

I do not approve this message, I mean puzzle. Why are the Xs located where they are? Lots of puzzles have three Xs in them - you couldn't have put them into some kind of interesting arrangement or order? And where are the references to porn or moonshine, or even Vin Diesel (star of "XXX")? That would have at least livened things up a bit around here. The fact that you can make "XXX" into a clue for (at least) three different answers is interesting, but X-placement is so haphazard and lazy that I'm having trouble taking the puzzle seriously. When I see circled squares, I'm looking for a big payoff, a surprise, a .... something. And I get Xs. Yuck.



The NW was a Bear (this is not a criticism, just an observation). I had no idea who that LESTER director guy was (1D: Richard _____, director of "Help!" and "A Hard Day's Night"). To me, LESTER is the guy who recovered from cancer to pitch (and win) the final game of the 2007 World Series. He is now one of the very best pitchers in the Majors. Jon LESTER. Try him next time. Speaking of Boston, reader Doc John sent me a pic of the Awesomest Pair Of Nikes yesterday. They are maptastic, and the one place name I can see on them ... well, look for yourself (pic is blurry, but the word is legible, I think):

Can you make that out? It says "NATICK" - no foolin' (If you have no idea why this is compelling to me, read this). What (the hell) is going on at Nike? And how can I get me a pair of these, like, now? I might have to order some online or go to the (gag) mall tomorrow. Back to the puzzle. I had no idea Mars had ICECAPs (3D: Martian feature). I was looking (like some of you?) for, uh, ANTENNA or BIGEYES or the like. I have never heard of a CERT (4D: Supreme Court writ, familiarly), unless you count the singular form of the semi-popular breathmint ("With Retsin!"). I am still wondering how (non-whale-related) SPERM got into my puzzle (17A: Kind of bank). And B.F.'s damned ALMANACS took forever to come to me (5D: Output from Benjamin Franklin's press). The rest of the puzzle seemed ordinary in its difficulty, even a bit on the easy side for Thursday.

There was some thorniness here and there, not all of it pleasing. NESTS for (the expected) PESTS is decent misdirection (63A: Exterminators' targets). More misdirection at 21D: Bass relative (cello) - "bass" can be a fish, a musical part, or (here) an instrument. Oh, and an ale. And probably other stuff too. I know that during Prohibition, many people wanted to REPEAL the 18th Amendment, but I did not know that the "Movement" to REPEAL was called, simply, REPEAL (I see "Movement" was changed to "Cause" in the final version - 26A: Cause during Prohibition) - so some trouble there. I balked (perhaps pickily) at 19A: One-two connector, because the entire phrase, as I understand it (via Lawrence Welk) is "A one and a two ..." That first "A" seems crucial to me. Never heard of BEL esprit (49A) or "Time TRAX" (56A: "Time _____" (bygone sci-fi series)). I squawked like crazy at @#$#!-ing "O ME" (40A: "_____, what eyes hath Love put in my head": Shak.), but only because I wasn't parsing it right and thought it was a contraction of "HOME" (which, in my defense, I have seen in the puzzle). I still don't like the letter combo as fill, but this is at least slightly more palatable than the Kipling clue a couple weeks back.

For some reason the clue for MCLEAN has been changed from its original [Virginia city where the C.I.A. is headquartered] to the currect 31A: Virginia locale where the C.I.A. is headquartered. Is MCLEAN not a city? Whoa, it's not - it's a "CDP" (Census-Designated Place!). As if the C.I.A. weren't spooky enough, here's the description (from Wikipedia) of where its headquarters are located:

The CIA's headquarters is in the community of Langley in the McLean CDP of Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles west of Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River.

So it's in a community in a place in a county in a state near a district along a river. I see.

Notable otherness:

• 1A: Pioneering 35 mm. camera (Leica) - I get this and the spacedog confused
• 16A: Cannes presentation (cine) - highbrow implications contrast nicely with lowbrow NITE (8D: Time on a marquee).
• 25A: Certain Crimeans (Tatars) - weird how instinctive this answer is becoming for me.
• 30A: Year Michelangelo began "David" (MDI) - at least this random Roman numeral (not THIRTY IN OLD ROME, but 1501) is given some historical heft, some raison d'etre.
• 43A: Supermodel Bundchen (Gisele) - I think she dated / dates Tom Brady (Patriots QB), which is the only reason I know her name. I spelled it GISELA at first.
• 47A: Sound in a Bobby Darin song title (splish) - yay, this clue was changed from [Light water sound] to this far more vibrant option. Bobby Darin did much better work, however. Here is my favorite song of his (with supercool pics of him and Sandra Dee):

• 57A: A sheriff may be seen in it (oater) - great xword word. A sheriff may also be seen in Jim Thompson's "The Killer Inside Me," which I'm teaching this week. It's ... horrifying. Dirty, gruesome, shocking, awesome, hilarious. A noir masterpiece.
• 62A: P.M. known as the Iron Lady (Meir) - I feel like she's having a massive resurgence in puzzle popularity in recent weeks.
• 7D: Autobiographical novel of 1847 (Omoo) - one of the most common of all crossword words, and yet it evaded me for a bit because the clue was so nondescript.
• 11D: Gum choice (cinnamon) - I much preferred the original clue, [Stick in the kitchen?]
• 22D: McKellen who played Gandalf (Ian) - easy. He's a Great actor. If you have not yet seen "Extras" (Ricky Gervais's post-"The Office" sitcom), here is a small taste of why you should:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Happy Birthday to mom, Happy Birthday to mom, Happy Birthday to my mom, Happy Birthday to mom

PPS Happy Birthday also to teen constructing phenom Natan Last. He's still a teen, though at least he's in college now (albeit at a safety school ... "Brown?" Who's ever heard of that? What is that, UPS College?)

Janis's comics husband - WEDNESDAY, Nov. 12, 2008 - Peter A. Collins (Fezzes's lack / Shannon Airport's county / Mule team?)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: THE RAT PACK (56A: Group with members hidden in 17-, 24- and 46-Across) - DAVIS, MARTIN, and SINATRA are embedded, respectively, in three successive theme answers

I would have rated this one easy had it not been for the proper name pile-up I ended up slamming into at full speed somewhere around Medford, OR - in other words, where MOIRA and ARMY meet MARY. The ARMY clue (37A: Mule team?) was oddly tough for me - I could not figure out (immediately) the "R" and "Y" crosses. I don't think anyone's "picked" at ORE (31D: It may be picked) since 1849, but that clue is still very valid and I should have known. As for the MARY clue - 25D: Miraculous Medal figure - I have no idea what that refers to. Some 19th-century Catholic saint lady had a vision of the Virgin and made a medal (!) out of it. OK. Good to know. As for MOIRA (30A: Kelly of "One Tree Hill"), I could not pick her out in a crowd - not even a "crowd" of two random women (unless one of those women was, say, Bea Arthur, or my sister, in which case, process of elimination ...). And yet the name MOIRA came to me rather easily. Either the crosses really narrowed the field, or some pop culture god (whom I please with my writing on a regular basis) whispered it in my ear - a miracle! I think I'll go make a medal now.

As for the theme, it's cute. I feel like I've seen it before, but I'm probably wrong. The only thing that seems off about it is the lack of a "JR" after DAVIS in a PAIDAVISIT. Of course his name is DAVIS, but I've only ever heard him called Sammy DAVIS, Jr. I guess that "JR" would be pretty hard to embed in a phrase. Hmmm ... "MolDAVI S.J. Reynolds?" Yes, perfect.

[Drunk, minus Sammy]

Theme answers:

• 17A: Stopped by (pai DAVIS it)
• 24A: Market-savvy sort (s MARTIN vestor)
• 46A: Hypnotizes (put SINATRA nce)

And now a word on the anthropomorphizing of animals. Generally I like it. Why shouldn't I imagine that squirrels are invested with the same emotions, feelings, anxieties, and drives as I am? It's more fun than admitting that they're simply inscrutable birdseed thieves. I have entire conversations with my dogs that presuppose that they are fluent in English and adore me. Ascribing human feelings to animals is likely an ancient practice, and yet I still find myself narrowing my eyes in disbelief when the crossword engages in such imaginative activity. Is a COBRA really the 1A: Enemy of a mongoose? I admit that the COBRA/Mongoose War would make a great (if disturbingly violent) children's story, but I have a hard time imagining, the mongoose in her ... lair? hut? hole? ... drawing up plans of attack, plotting revenge, etc. A mongoose has gotta eat. It's an eater of COBRAs. You know who else has to eat? Ladybugs. And yet I doubt their day is divided into breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with "snacks" in between (50A: Snacks for ladybugs => APHIDS). Further, I would imagine APHIDS are not just to tide ladybugs over between meals of greater sustenance. The APHIDS *are* the sustenance (though it seems ladybugs will eat all kinds of insect larva if given the chance). I'm just imagining a ladybug mom opening a pack of APHID-O's for her kids and telling them not to eat the whole pack or they'll ruin their dinner.

Notes:

• 15A: Janis's comics husband (Arlo) - despite the fact that this is crosswordese by now, people still have trouble with it. FYI, Arlo and Janis's last name is Flagstone. Their dog is named DAWG. [I was kidding and/or drunk when I wrote this note - "Hi and Lois" are the Flagstones, and they own DAWG]
  
• 28A: Grammy winner Winehouse (Amy) - also my sister's name. My sister has never been in rehab, as far as I know.
• 38A: Shannon Airport's county (Clare) - County CLARE. Why do Irish say "County blank" and we say "Blank County?"
• 43A: Flattened at the poles (oblate) - also, in the Middle Ages, a child given to a monastic house (Benedictine, in particular) by his parents.
• 61A: Bygone Dodge (Omni) - OMNI and ARLO are friends
• 1D: Corrida wear (cape) - bullfighting
• 3D: Fezzes's lack (brims) - I just like saying "Fezzeseseseseses..."
• 10D: "Honor Thy Father" author (Talese) - Gay TALESE has been on my "You Should Read That" list for far too long.
• 11D: Something the U.S. government keeps an eye on (Great Seal) - clever clue of the day
• 33D: Oro y _____ (motto of Montana) (plata) - PLATA and OMNI and ARLO are all friends.
• 38D: Lamont _____, a k a the Shadow (Cranston) - no wonder he became "The Shadow." No one but no one is gonna be scared of a dude name Lamont CRANSTON.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Michigan Pete (a k a Peter Collins, our constructor) has the syndicated puzzle today, too. I love when that happens.

TUESDAY, Nov. 11, 2008 - Nancy Salomon and Larry Shearer (OP's forerunners / 1930s quints' name / Sadat's predecessor)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Direction-related answers ... I think

Well, Tuesday is back to being the freaky black sheep of the family. I haven't disliked a puzzle this much in a long time. The theme does not cohere. It just doesn't. One of the answers does in fact head DUE SOUTH (HEADING DUE SOUTH - 7D: Going straight to Antarctica, say), but the others (the diagonals) have nothing to do with compass directions. SLIP SLIDING AWAY (1Diag: Disappearing) has no clear relation to its placement in the grid. Further, it's a song more than it is a general expression. And RUNNING DOWNHILL (12Diag: Proceeding with little effort) is running backwards ... why? At least "DOWNHILL" has some relation to the answer's grid placement, but still, this is mostly just a mishmosh of direction-related answers that are 15 letters long and that the constructors got to intersect in a common letter at the middle ("D"). Not A Theme. The bar has been set too high when it comes to gimmick puzzles. I've seen diagonal answers before, in puzzles where that conceit was put to compelling (and comprehensible) use. [Pause for pretty music]



As architectural feats go, this one is middling. Further, there are torturous answers along the way, at least one of which is close to unforgivable. I've seen letter strings before - you get in a corner, you get desperate, and only MNO will get you out. Not pleasant, but in an excellent puzzle, completely overlookable. But KLMN (29A: OP's forerunners) has to be the ugliest letter string I have ever seen in a grid. Four letters is Too Long for a letter string (only ABCD and LMNOP can get away with that !@#$ and not look ridiculous). And the poor, poor, beautiful "K" - strung up in this pitiful, degrading manner. Ugh. This is one of those times when I think: "Breakfast Test" be damned. Change it to KLAN and change IGGY to EGGY and bam, you're in business [late addendum: Pete M rightly points out that my suggest emendations would screw up the Diagonals!]. If you can put NAZI in a puzzle (and you can), then you can put KLAN in. KLMN is an abomination, though even it would have been forgotten had this puzzle delivered the goods thematically. I see that "KLMN" has been in a handful of puzzles before. The last time it was in the NYT was in a Manny Nosowsky Thursday puzzle from 8 years ago. That puzzle was fantastic (as most of his are). I'm almost equally annoyed by SCHS (5A: Athletic conference members: Abbr.), but I don't have the energy left to slag on it this morning. I just remember groaning and feeling very depressed when I first entered it into the grid. Abbreviations no one uses and gangly letter strings must serve a higher cause. And I don't see it.

Notes:

• 17A: Almost-sacrificed son in the Bible (Isaac) - rereading Genesis right now, coincidentally. Thank God for that ram (seriously, thank God)
• 22A: 1930s quints' name (Dionne) - I prefer this DION:

And not this DION (although this is, by far, my favorite Christmas Carol):



Another version of this carol (we'll return to the puzzle in a sec)

• 33A: Part of a ship's bow (hawse) - heard of a HAWSER, not a HAWSE
• 60A: Company that introduced NutraSweet (Searle) - this is fast becoming a puzzle staple, sadly
• 2D: Highland pattern (plaid) - Tartan!
• 10D: Bliss before the hard part begins (honeymoon) - this is good ... and timely.
• 11D: Tagged on a diamond (out) - yes, true enough. Well, you can tag a guy who is touching a base, either because your tag is late, or because you're trying to convince the ump that your glove was on him before the guy got there, but that's overthinking it.
• 36D: "Miss Universe" holder (sash) - mmm, "holder," one of the most oft-abused clue words in the lexicon.
• 44D: Certain rec centers (YWCAs) - went with YMCAs at first, not surprisingly
• 49D: Sadat's predecessor (Nasser) - Always want to spell it NASSAR, which looks like NASCAR, which should help me remember that I'm way off base.
• 54D: _____ Gravas, role in "Taxi" (Latka) - Andy Kaufman! Here's a clip to end this otherwise unsatisfying puzzling day

Let the spirited defense of this puzzle begin!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Best Repurposing of a Crossword Grid goes to ...

Like I'm Somebody

The folks at blogs.com have decided that someone, somewhere might want to know what my "10 Favorite Blogs" are. I have accepted this platform as part of my ongoing plans for world domination. In receiving this important honor, I follow in the footsteps of ... well, a lot of people I've never heard of before, but also ... [drumroll] ... Alyssa Milano. Seriously. Woo hoo! I have something in common with Tony Danza's sitcom daughter (also the onetime star of "Melrose Place" and "Charmed")! I want to sing the theme to "Who's the Boss?" but the theme from "Mr. Belvedere" is running interference. Anyway, check out my "10 Favorite Blogs" list (mostly just shout-outs to a bunch of people I like).

Also, check out a long-but-worth-it podcast interview with crossword constructor Andrea Carla Michaels @ the blog "Ryan and Brian do Crosswords." Don't worry, you don't have to be TECH SAVVY to listen to it. You can play it directly off of their site.

'Til Tomorrow,
RP

MONDAY, Nov. 10, 2008 - Gail Grabowski (Open-textured cotton fabric / Jazzy Latin dance site / Gift-giver's urging / Alpine dwelling)

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: TACO TOPPING (64A: The start of 17-Across or 11- or 33-Down)

A very straightforward puzzle. One problem. Tacos have FILLINGs, not TOPPINGs. Ice cream has TOPPINGs. Pizzas have TOPPINGs. My wife tried NACHO TOPPING (a far better answer), but didn't get far before she realized it wouldn't fit. Oddly, the answer I struggled with the most in this puzzle was YIPES (29D: "Holy cow!"). Those expressions are not synonymous in my vocabulary. "Holy cow" expresses amazement or wonder, where YIPES expresses (usually mock) fear. Now, amazement and fear *might* go together, but usually, not. I had YOWEE. Or maybe YOWIE. And possibly YIKES, before I got YIPES. Not that the crosses weren't very easy. You have to imagine all these blunders taking place at a relatively high speed.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Open-textured cotton fabric (cheese cloth) - possibly the toughest answer in the puzzle, though not very tough at all. The main problem for me - seeing "fabric" and thinking "something people wear" or "something people might make drapes out of"
• 33D: Jazzy Latin dance site (salsa club)
• 11D: Russian church feature (onion dome) - we have many of these dotting the landscape of our fair burg. There's a very large Ukrainian population here - so big that the city actually has a Ukrainian Independence Day flag-raising. Ever seen an ONION DOME on a structure that looks like a log cabin? Now you have:

[Sacred Heart Ukrainian Catholic Church, Johnson City, NY]

Notes:

• 1A: Like the air around Niagara Falls (misty) - cool clue, and an unusual opening gambit. The whole NW is actually really lovely. The tough guy MACHO (1D: Like a he-man) and the beatnik I'M HIP (2D: Beatnik's "Got it") make a nice contrasting pair. Both look good in SUEDE (3D: Napped leather), and both AMUSE me (14A: Entertain). I've probably posted this fantastic Blossom Dearie song before, but if so, I love her so much that I'm posting it again:

• 8D: Completely, after "from" (A to Z) - one of those oddities that is likely to make novices blink in disbelief ("What's an 'atoz?'") and make even seasoned vets hesitate.
• 22D: Backyard apparatus for kids (swing set) - "Mom, can we play on the apparatus!?"
• 9D: Shipboard pals (mateys) - this made wife grumble. She questions whether shipmates are all "pals." She also doesn't like the spelling (though I assured her it's correct). She also thinks it's just a silly word, which is true enough. I sort of liked it.
• 41D: Entertain with a tale (read to) - wrote in REGALE without hesitation. This one gave me nearly as much trouble as YIPES.
• 52D: Port-au-Prince's land (Haiti) - site of a horrible school collapse this past weekend. Sometimes life doesn't pass the breakfast test.
• 60D: Dunce cap, geometrically (cone) - how much time has to elapse before the "dunce cap" is no longer a familiar cultural reference? Since its origins appear to date back to Duns Scotus in the 13th century, probably not any time soon. From "The Straight Dope":

[O]ne of the more mystical things Duns [Scotus] accepted was the wearing of conical hats to increase learning. He noted that wizards supposedly wore such things; an apex was considered a symbol of knowledge and the hats were thought to "funnel" knowledge to the wearer. Once humanism gained the upper hand, Duns Scotus's teachings were despised and the "dunce cap" became identified with ignorance rather than learning. Humanists believed learning came from internal motivation rather than special hats, and used the public shame of having to wear a dunce cap to motivate slow learners to try harder.

• 64D: Profs.' helpers (TAs) - I have five! Over the course of the term, they have gotten too cool for school and have moved from the front of the auditorium to the balcony, where they hang out and, I don't know, drink and smoke, probably. Good thing I like them.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Nov. 9, 2008 - Paula Gamache (18th-century Venetian fresco painter / Automotive comeback of 1998 / Fancy shooting marbles)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Sounds Like It's Cold In Here" - B-sounds changed to BR- sounds (or BRRRR- sounds, I guess) in familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, which are "?"-clued


I ugh-ed my way through this. I'm a huge Paula Gamache fan, but this one got me down. Some of my downness stemmed from barely knowing the phrase "Banned in Boston" and not thinking the town of "Medicine Bow" is strong enough to form the basis of a theme answer. Some of it stemmed from SHENZI (57D: "The Lion King" character voiced by Whoopi Goldberg), which is a random accumulation of letters as far as I'm concerned. I don't like the use of "butt" in the clue 97D: Butt abutters (seat). For someone who swears all the time, I'm oddly put off by it. Seems crass. As I told Will, BIENNIA just isn't accurate as clued - 67D: Periods between Winter and Summer Olympics. Real length of time involved is months off (either high or low depending on the particular interval). My largest harrumph came at the far far NW corner, where I honestly couldn't decided between D and T. TIEPOLO is absolutely unknown to me (1A: 18th-century Venetian fresco painter); meanwhile, I knew that both DAWs and TAWs (1D: Fancy shooting marbles) were words, but I forgot which was the marble and which the bird. Turns out DAW is the bird, as I was reminded yesterday while preparing to go teach Othello in prison:

In following him, I follow but myself.
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end,
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In complement extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For DAWS to peck at. I am not what I am.

- Iago (I.i.57-64)

Theme answers:

• 23A: Question to a paralegal? (where's the bRief?)
• 38A: Red Sox franchise? (bRand in Boston)
• 45A: Warning sign outside of Br'er Rabbit's home? (bRier beware!) - "Br'er" and "BRIER" are a little close to each other ... and is this sign supposed to have a comma in it? Is the "BRIER" supposed to beware? Of what? Seems like it should read "Beware of Brier" if it's going to make any sense as a sign. [I know that it's a play on "buyer beware," so no comments/emails please, thanks]
• 63A: Useful advice for a ring referee? (keep your eye on the bRawl)
• 80A: Clinician in the 'hood? (medicine bRo')
• 87A: Silicone implant companies? (bReast sellers)
• 108A: Matzo mover? (flat bRead truck)

Two geographical zingers for me today. I've spent next to no time in London, and so SLOANE Square is new to me (57A: London's _____ Square). And if you're going to go with LANIER, why oh why wouldn't you go with Bob? (instead of 111A: Georgia's Lake _____, behind the Buford Dam) Bob LANIER was the #1 pick in the 1970 draft. On the 1971 All-Rookie team. A 6-time All-Star. His number was retired by both the Pistons and the Bucks. No, I get a lake. Behind some dam. In a state I've never been to. Is this part of the NYT's geographical outreach program? I don't like it. "Buford" - how am I supposed to take that name seriously? The only "Buford" I know is Sheriff Buford T. Justice, the (fictional!) sheriff in the Smokey and the Bandit movies.



Assorted flavors:

• 21A: Site of two ecumenical councils (Nicaea) - was Not aware of that first "A"; held things up a bit
• 30A: "Sugar Lips" trumpeter (Hirt) - trumpeter in four letters = HIRT, w/o fail

• 33A: Figure in an Edmund Spenser poem (Faerie) - as in "The FAERIE Queene," a very, very long poem (planned for 12 books, reached 6+). This one, and the related ALBION (35A: Ancient name for Great Britain) were gimmes, as for the second day in a row I find works I've taught in the grid. Oh, THISBE is a teaching-related gimme as well (106A: Beloved of Pyramus). Chaucer and Ovid both wrote versions of their story.
  
• 41A: Three-time Masters winner Nick (Faldo) - British. Familiar from my youth (not that I've ever followed golf)
• 70A: _____ Davis, first African-American to win a Heisman (Ernie) - I think there was recently a (Dennis Quaid) movie about him. Yes, "The Express"

• 74A: CB radios, once (craze) - you can see them in "Smoky and the Bandit" (see clip, above)
• 86A: Ancient Egyptian kingdom (Nubia) - goes nicely with ASPS (72D: Egyptian symbols of royalty)
• 6D: Boxer nicknamed "The Bear" (Liston) - also the nickname of Norman Schwarzkopf, it turns out
• 8D: Uncommon blood type, informally (A neg) - had the NEG, had to wait for the appropriate letter
• 16D: Overdoes the accolades (gushes) - You can "gush" without overdoing it. Some things / moments / people warrant gushing.
• 32D: Hero of New Orleans (poor boy) - never seen it spelled any way but PO' BOY (incl. in the NYT puzzle)
• 35D: Jet locales: Abbr. (AFBs) - befuddling, for no good reason
• 37D: Sound on classic Pong (blip) - this I like, though I think of a BLIP as primarily visual, not auditory, e.g. "a blip on the screen..."
• 51D: _____ Bing! (go-go bar on "The Sopranos") (Bada) - too easy. So easy I didn't write it in at first, thinking I must be mistaken
• 65D: Die Zeit article (eine) - EINE and DER being the most common German "articles" in puzzledom
• 87D: Automotive comeback of 1998 (Beetle) - honestly wavered over whether to spell this BEETLE or BEATLE ...
• 88D: Cardinal topper (red hat) - well *this* is a coincidence. Wife and I were just (perversely) watching QVC, which is like ... watching Animal Planet, for us. Crazy behavior / customs / appearances. So we were watching some Heinous fashion program with ... sweaters with candy canes and santas on them, sweaters that (literally) light up, appliqué jeans, etc., and the older, portly, oddly head-banded host (me: "Olivia Newton-John has really let herself go...") mentioned something about her clothes appealing to "red hatters" ... which are, I think, sassy older ladies who like to wear RED HATs because of some poem about how when you are old you can wear @#$# that doesn't match. Looking it up ... OK, here's the official site, but I still don't get it. OMG, I forgot there was a "Simpsons" episode about this: "Last of the Red Hat Mamas."

Watch more IFILM videos on AOL Video

• 91D: French engineer Gustave (Eiffel) - he of the Tower (or Tour, I guess)
• 103D: Singing partner of Brooks (Dunn) - More geographical / cultural affirmative action (à la LANIER). I am guessing that the Venn Diagram of NYT puzzle solvers and Brooks and DUNN fans would look very much like two circles abutting one another
• 105D: Old theaters once owned by Howard Hughes (RKOs) - didn't know these were theaters. Know RKO only as a studio.
• 109D: Festoons with Charmin, informally (TPs) - OK, *that* is a great clue

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Happy Birthday Ben Tausig (editor of "The Onion" crossword puzzle)

SATURDAY,Nov. 8,2008-B. Walden (Ostrava tongue / Meshed person / Jaculates / Base off the coast of Brest for France's nuclear submarines)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

This puzzle might actually be "Challenging," but as Byron Walden puzzles go, it's slightly easier than normal. Since it ended up being easier than I expected, I dialed back the difficulty rating a notch. Byron's puzzles are almost always dazzling while also being almost always brutal. They have the kind of difficulty level that can make you cry (inside, if not outside), but the kind of intricacy and beauty and cleverness that make you (or me, anyway) enjoy the pain. I always feel like, "OK, that hurt, but it was worth it." Kind of like childbirth, I'm guessing. (I'm kidding - no angry emails!). I remember trying to do a Byron Walden tree rebus once (where entire tree names, e.g. ELM, ASH, etc., were crammed into individual squares, but in no particular pattern) and practically whimpering in frustration by the end - but I had to find all the trees! They were so pretty. What I'm saying is, I don't mind suffering for a work of art.

The darkest torture chamber of the day was the SW corner, where I just flailed around like a dying fish. I got the lovely Claire MCCASKILL (31D: Missouri senator Claire) right off the bat, but her next door neighbor? Total mystery. Is ILE LONGUE really a place? Sounds like Shangri-La or the Chateau d'If (which I just found out is real ... I thought Dumas made it up!). Crap, that ILE must be really secure. I can barely find any pictures, and Wikipedia doesn't even seem to know if it's a true island or a peninsula (first paragraph says one thing, second another). Anyway, never heard of it, making the SW a bear. Every Across answer south of KNARS (49A: Bumps on a trunk) was befuddling. Don't know what a "chuckwalla" is (54A: Relative of a chuckwalla => IGUANA), don't understand what the "?" is doing on 58A: Fastener that's actually easy to pick up? (lug nut), and LEHIGH is not high on my list of "College sports teams I recognize" (60A: The Mountain Hawks of the Patriot League). I think I broke this corner by guessing that "Meshed" was a place and not an adjective in 44D: Meshed person (Irani). Sadly, "chuckwalla" makes me think of this:



And to my great shame, [Bumps on trunks] makes me think of this:



Yesterday we had the intersecting 15s INSTANT MESSAGES and KARAOKE MACHINES. Today, more technology with CLOSEDCIRCUITTV (36A: Feeding tube?), but then bam, the puzzle goes old school and hits you with the (singular!?) FEDERALIST PAPER (8D: Writing of Publius). I especially like CLOSEDCIRCUITTV. Nice, odd letter string there at the end, with the "V" crossing a double-V in the equally technological TECH SAVVY (14D: Like computer programmers), another fantastic answer.

This puzzle is odd in that it offered me an unusual number of gimmes ... but then turned around and took that advantage completely away by having at least a dozen answers / clue terms that I didn't know at all. I wrote in TRES immediately, as I own that album and listen to it not infrequently (26A: "_____ Hombres," first Top 40 album by ZZ Top). The next gimme was also musical: YIPPY (45A: "_____ Ky Yay" (1998 country song)). Everyone but Everyone should have been able to fill that one in. Unless you have had no exposure to old westerns AND have never seen "Die Hard." What are the odds? Other gimmes for me were perhaps not gimmes for everyone. I wrote in FATHA (52A: Nickname in early jazz piano) with no crosses. FATHA Earl Hines shows up in the puzzle an awful lot, such that his name pretty much lives near the forefront of my mind with the 200-300 other crosswordy answers that are likely to come up in late-week puzzles. EDWARD II (59A: Christopher Marlowe play) I got easily. I teach that play from time to time, so I had an unfair advantage on that one. OWE was clued in a very standard way (57D: Come up short), so I got that with no crosses as well. Good start, right? Well, yes. But then:

• 38A: Used a thurible on? (censed) - uh ... thurible?
• 46D: Many a Carl Czerny composition (etude) - uh ... Carl?
• 34A: Predecessor of Gregory XI (Urban V) - popes, great...
• 39A: 1942 Eleanor Powell musical set at sea ("Ship Ahoy") - the 40s, musicals, the sea ... all non-specialties
• 27A: Side dish popular at New Year's (pea salad) - this is the first I've heard of this
• 61A: Beverages similar to kvass (rye beers) - never heard of either
• 22A: Ostrava tongue (Czech) - no idea where Ostrava is
• 10D: Snow-_____ (winter vehicle brand) (Trac) - But can you hunt moose from it?
• 18A: Tree that yields a chewable resin (mastic) - wow, no way. Very cool word, though. I like that MASTIC is part of MASTICATE, the fancy word for "chew."
• 29D: Plum, for one (drupe) - wow, that's one homely word. Never heard of it, and wish that were still the case.
• 4D: "Politics _____ beanbag" (Mr. Dooley maxim) ("ain't") - have you ever done the really tough cryptic puzzles from another country - say, Britain? I had that same "!?!?!?!?" feeling reading this clue as I do occasionally when doing NZ cryptics with my wife. "Honey, does *any* of that make sense to you?"

So life was tough today. And yet - and this is the fabulous thing about crosswords - even with all that ignorance on my part, I got through the puzzle, no errors. Oh, it just dawned on me - is the LUG NUT clue funny because you don't actually have to "LUG" said NUT? "Easy to pick up"? Wow, that's bad. Not as bad as the word "Jaculates," but bad nonetheless (24A: Jaculates => HURLS).

The Rest:

• 1A: Saw in the dark? (dreamt of) - I was sure - SURE - that this was going to have something to do with snoring.
• 16A: Gimcrack (trifle) - "Gimcrack" and "Jaculates" are pretty much the Alpha and Omega of vocabulary words (with Alpha being best and Omega being nearly unutterable)
• 19A: Laser paper option (matte) - I just stared at the phrase "laser paper" for a while. "So ... it's paper ... made out of ... lasers? How is that ... paper?"
• 20A: Pliny possessive (mea) - see also his close cousin MIA at 30A: Nowhere to be found, for short
• 23A: Innovation of the Paleolithic period (axe) - cool clue for basic word
• 9D: Presenter of bills (ATM) - yucky clue. "Presenter"? "May I present ... Andrew Jackson."
• 21D: With 50-Down, like the children in "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (all / snug) - mixed feelings here. That poem has such a strong childhood resonance for me that I can't help but love it. And yet, I'm painfully aware that they were ALL SNUG IN THEIR BEDS. Feels weird to cut the phrase off at SNUG. And yet, it's perfectly accurate, as clued.
• 24D: Stretch in the salt mines (hard day) - great clue / answer. I was thinking literally at first, but then the metaphorical meaning leapt forth.
• 53D: Israeli city whose citadel was built by the Ottomans (Acre) - important in the history of the Crusades, which is how I know it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

FRIDAY, Nov. 7, 2008 - Kevin G. Der (Doctrine developer of 1823 / Bear cub mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympics / Self-contained music equipment)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "K" - there are 11 K's in the puzzle ... K is the 11th letter of the alphabet ...

OK, so there's not really a theme. I just like K's and tend to notice them. Although I'm not sure how anyone could have missed them today. Three of the answers contain two K's, and two of those answers intersect. Right off the bat we get KAWASAKI (1A: Big name in bikes) smashing into KABUKI (7D: Drama in which male actors play both male and female parts), and then we pick up nine more K's, some of them terminal (i.e. kinda ordinary), but still, that's an impressive array of K's.

On the whole, this was a very Kevin Der-esque puzzle, with lots of contemporary technological references - INSTANT MESSAGES (8D: E-mail alternatives), E-TAIL (39D: What PayPal facilitates), LCD (61D: Laptop feature, for short). I'd even throw KARAOKE MACHINES into that category (36A: Self-contained music equipment). My two favorite answers in the grid were GIRL TALK (60A: It's heard at a slumber party) and WHELK (35D: Snail variety). I doubt very much that I would enjoy actual GIRL TALK, but the phrase is fresh, colloquial, in-the-language, vibrant, etc. And WHELK just sounds beautifully disgusting. It's like the sound you'd hear if someone smacked you in the face with a WHELK. It's WHELP meets ELK meets slime. It's great.

I'm really glad that WHELK was a semi-familiar word to me (not sure how...) because that "L" cross was tough to recover. I have seen the space dog LAIKA in the puzzle before, but it's an unusual name, and if I hadn't seen a very recent graphic novel about this dog, I might have been in real trouble. The first "A" in particular would have been a near complete guess - I had no idea about ROSINA (26D: Almaviva serenades her in "The Barber of Seville"). Continuing with Russian animals we get the completely unknown-to-me MISHA (21D: Bear cub mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympics). I remember 1980, but perhaps because the U.S. did not participate in the summer games (thanks, Carter!), I don't remember the bear cub. Is it the same one that grew up to wrestle Putin? Or did I imagine that in some fevered dream / conflation of images of Russian bears and Putin judo?

There are some problems here and there with this puzzle. I don't like BRAVE MAN (15A: Medal of Honor recipient, say) or ICE SKATE (40A: Half a pair for pairs) as answers. BRAVE MAN doesn't stand alone very well ... or about as well as SAD LADY or SMALL BADGER. And one ICE SKATE. The tricky, clever clue Almost makes up for the sad incompleteness of a single SKATE. The AWAKES / RISER tie-in felt clunky and forced (48D: See 50-Down / 50D: One who 48-Down). "Look at me, I'm a RISER!" Early riser or late riser, OK. Just RISER? Better to clue RISER as a part of a staircase or something else. Besides, just because I AWAKE does not mean that I RISE. Not by a long shot.

Miscellaneous:

• 16A: Doctrine developer of 1823 (Monroe) - The word "doctrine" makes it a gimme. Are there other famous doctrines? The Bush Doctrine? The Powell Doctrine? Man, DOCTRINE is a weird word. If you stare at it too long, it'll start to freak you out.
• 19A: Accessories whose colors may indicate rank (obis) - always nice to learn a quirky fact about crosswordese.
• 10D: Piece of pi? (long I) - Mmm, a "letteral" clue (and a tough one at that). Me: "Three? ... point? ... one ...?"
• 20D: Flavoring in a Tom and Jerry (nutmeg) - never heard of it. Here's Esquire's recipe; at least the "flavoring" in question is not cat or mouse:

Ingredients Tom and Jerry

• 12 egg(s)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 bottle brandy
• Pinch of ground allspice
• Pinch of ground cinnamon
• Pinch of ground cloves
• 1 bottle dark rum
• milk
• nutmeg

Glass Type: mug

Instructions

Separate the eggs. Beat the whites until they form a stiff froth, and the yolks -- to which you have added the sugar -- "until they are as thin as water," as the professor advises, gradually adding 4 ounces brandy (spiceaholics will also add a pinch each of ground allspice, cinnamon, and cloves). Fold the whites into the yolks. When ready to serve, give it another stir and then put 1 tablespoon of this batter in a small mug or tumbler. Now add 1 ounce brandy (although some die-hard Dixiecrats prefer bourbon) and 1 ounce Jamaican rum, stirring constantly to avoid curdling. Fill to the top with hot milk and stir until you get foam. Sprinkle a little grated nutmeg on top. This one may require practice and a certain amount of fiddling, but it's well worth the effort. Note: Some people find the milk too rich and filling, so they use half hot milk, half boiling water.

• 23A: Part of a philosophical dichotomy (yin) - and yang
• 24A: Port on Osaka Bay (Sakai) - never ever heard of it. Glad the crosses were all reasonable.
• 27A: "Contact" author, 1985 (Sagan) - I think he taught at Cornell, just up the road from me. Daughter got chosen for some science program at the local observatory, though I'm not sure how happy she's going to be studying space. Space scares her. "It's dark."
• 29A: Research venue: Abbr. (inst.) - had UNIV.
• 41A: Burns into film (Ken) - also, Burns into crosswords (it's true!)
• 43A: Former news gatherer (Tass) - I always think of TASS in association with ITAR (Information Telegraph Agency of Russia)
• 49A: Grass unit (spear) - boo. Grass comes in BLADES.
• 51A: "Wicked Game" singer, 1991 (Isaak) - gimme. First thing in grid.
• 57A: Anatomical part named after the Latin for "grape" (uvea) - gimme. Second thing in grid.
• 63A: "Spamalot" lyricist (Eric Idle) - gimme. I want to say "third thing in grid." Don't remember if that's true. But ... sure. Why not?
• 64A: Depilatory equipment (lasers) - had RAZORS
• 1D: Retail chain popular with kids (KB Toys) - "popular?" It's a sad little store in the mall here, and I'm sure any self-respecting kid would Much rather be at Toys 'R' Us.
• 4D: Warren of the car rental business (Avis) - AVIS is a person!? Wow.
• 13D: Highly sought shares (hot issue) - sounds gross. Never heard this phrase.
• 24D: Thumbing-the-nose gesture (snook) - almost as good as WHELK. If I ever own a boat (the thought is laughable), I will call her the WHELKSNOOK.
• 33D: Activity in which people are not playing with a full deck (skat) - a game I know only from xwords. Here's some quintessential SCAT to round off the morning:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

THURSDAY, Nov. 6, 2008- Jeremy Newton ("Bad Girl" singer / Winged mammoth / Actor known as the King of Cool)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: SUIT (1A: What the 13 circled things in this puzzle constitute) - rebus puzzle where cards running ACE through KING are inserted into individual circled squares throughout the grid

"Brilliant concept, clunky execution." That is what I have scrawled atop my copy of this puzzle. Got the theme fairly early with IN3D and MP3PLAYERS, which allowed me to uncover the theme-revealing SUIT. The clunkiness comes from the inconsistency with which numbers are used. So "3" is a "3," but "9" is the letter string "NINE" in CANINE, even though there's nothing numerical about the word (though "9" *is* used numerically in the cross, 9 TO 5). Lastly theres the fact that I have to read the "8" and "2" as "eighty" and "twenty," respectively, in the answers "86IT" and WOR[KING]247. There's no pattern to the rebus squares that I can see. . . It's an admirable feat, this puzzle, but something about the looseness of the rebus grated. Then there's the non-theme fill, most of which was fine, but some of which, dear god. LAYSOVER (6D: Breaks up flights). "When United LAYS OVER its customers ..." I'm just having trouble hearing the phrase in my head. I know what a LAYOVER is. I think I have heard people say "I got LAID OVER" ... maybe. But phrased with the airline as the subject of the verb ... no. Or is it intransitive, like "he'll be home after he LAYS OVER in Hong Kong?" Ugh. I was looking for an answer that had to do with stairs.

Rebus answers:

• 3D: Having depth (in3d)
• 16A: Devices for music lovers (mp3players)
• 10A: Pound delivery (ca9) - [groan] - "oh look, a litter of canines!" I doubt it.
• 12D: Like many office jobs (9 to 5)
• 21A: A.L. or N.L. Division Series format (best of 5)
• 25A: Like squads in arena football (8man) - [blank]MAN - thanks for the fair shot at the answer! Nobody cares about arena football!
• 25D: "Scratch that!" ("86 it!")
• 32A: Something that may hold up a train? (6 shooter)
• 38A: Never idle (wor [KING] 247)
• 24D: Spot (par [KING] sp [ACE]) - my favorite theme answer of the lot
• 39D: Juvenile, in horse racing (2 year old)
• 35D: Some engines (V4s)
• 22D: Bargain hunter's lure (sale7t) - by far the hardest of these answers to turn up
• 48A: Full coverage? (surf [ACE] area)
• 54D: "Through the Looking Glass" antagonist (Red [QUEEN])
• 66A: Actor known as the King of Cool (Mc [QUEEN]) - love the king/queen interplay here
• 68A: Barefaced (pa10t)
• 57D: No-good (rot10)
• 62D: Hike ([JACK] up)
• 60A: "Bad Girl" singer (La Toya [JACK]son) - I prefer a different "Bad Girl"...

There were some real zingers in this puzzle - stuff that I knocked me right off track. I had to convince myself that SAML could be an answer (1D: _____ Adams, signature on the Declaration of Independence). Pathological fear of the letter combo "UE"? Oh well, he makes a decent beer, so it's cool. The answer that stumped me more than any other was 46D: Building with walls for a ceiling (A-frame). Before going ahead and getting crosses, I sat there and tried to break the code. Couldn't get myself out of cube-thought. Entertained AVIARY, briefly (?). I was proud to come up with MOSEL (9D: Wine region where Riesling is made), mostly because I'm Terrible at wine regions that aren't ASTI or NAPA. Also happy to decode 8D: Winged mammoth (airbus) - brain of course went to dinosaurs (via woolly mammoth???), but then figured the "mammoth" didn't have to be alive. Minor quibble on 33D: Says "My bad!" (owns up). . . well, OK, not a quibble. Just an observation that "OWNS UP" doesn't do well as a stand-alone phrase. He fessed up. OK. He owned up ... to? What year was it the last time someone called another human being a "yo-yo" (20A: Yo-yo => ASS)? Probably the same year people last TOGged out??? (34D: Deck (out)). Don't you TOG *up*? Lastly in the complaint department, there were theme squares in all the expected long Across answers but one (UNPOPULAR - 23A: Off the charts?), adding to the messy, unbalanced feel of the whole grid.

More:

• 49D: Fill a flat again? (relet) - clever
• 17D: Airline to Chile (LAN) - I can never remember this airline. Apparently there were multiple explanations for what the letters "LAN" stand for, but the airline says it's "no longer" an abbreviation.
• 45A: Dashed figs. (SSNs) - good clue; not obvious
• 56A: U.R.L. ender (org) - always gotta wait for crosses with a clue like this.
• 64A: Actor Hirsch of "Into the Wild" (Emile) - still haven't seen this. I used to see movies. Not sure what happened.
• 36D: Big ring stone, slangily (rock) - slangily! Some more Rock (probably not suitable for work):

• 58D: Airborne irritant (gnat) - another pesky, head-fakey clue. If something flies of its own volition, is it truly "airborne?" I guess so. I just think of allergens and particles of pollution when I see "airborne."
• 27D: Whoops at sea (ahoys) - again with the tricksiness. Not "whoops" as in "my bad," but "whoops" as in "loud noises," I guess.

It's a warm day here, so no need for my SCRAPER this morning (52A: Tool for a driver or painter). Coffee time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 5, 2008 - Doug Peterson (Truman declaration of 9/2/45 / Pink-legged wader / Dickens moniker)

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: LONG DIVISION (55A: Arithmetic exercise ... or what literally occurs in 20-, 33- and 40-Across) - the word LONG is "divided" by intervening letters, resulting in three different phrases

I was up late watching this Awesome fight, so I don't have much gas in the tank this morning. I like that LONG is "divided" three different ways in the three theme answers (with the split after the N, the O, and the L, respectively). I'm not that fond of the answers themselves, as LONE STAR FLAG (20A: Sight at the Texas capital) feels like a poor substitute for LONE STAR STATE, and LOBSTER FISHING (33A: It's done in Maine waters) is more commonly known as LOBSTERING, if my daughter's picture books are to be believed (their reliability is sketchy, I'll admit):



LANCE ARMSTRONG (40A: Athlete with four ESPY awards) is a fine answer, but not exactly scintillating.

I confess to a massive crush on Peggy NOONAN (31A: Political columnist Peggy) and therefore must object to this puzzle's smashing her in the head with the word VIRAGOS (9D: Shrewish sorts). She's a lot of things, but a VIRAGO isn't one of them (not sure about LONI - 22D: Anderson of "WKRP in Cincinnati"). There were just two iffy parts for me in this puzzle. the first was the West, where LHASA - better known to me in its APSO form - remained elusive for a bit (33D: Captial with the Potala Palace), and ASKANT ... well, the "old-style" part of the clue does mitigate the blow a bit, but not much. The word looks and sounds fantastic, but so does SKARDANT ... if you follow (if you don't follow, SKARDANT is not a word). The next iffy part (iffier) was the far SW, where I had to burrow hard to get into that little crevice, where rat-like BOZ (58D: Dickens moniker) was hiding with his pal IPO (59D: N.Y.S.E. event). The only real breeze among those 5-letter Acrosses was OP ART (63A: Dizzying hangings), which was a breeze Only because I am a trained professional and therefore adept at spotting this oddly common answer. BIJOU (58A: Delicate ornament) tricked me because I didn't know being "delicate" was part of the job, and ZOWIE (66A: "Awesome!") ... well, it could have been WOWIE the first time I saw it.

Special notice:

• 15A: Dose deliverer (hypo) - "deliverer" is almost, but not quite, as bad as APER (7D: Simon Says player). "Player" is free to go.
• 9A: Truman declaration of 9/2/45 (VJ Day) - an answer I like for its consonant pile-up. See also the weird consonant combo at the end of P AND G (26D: Consumer products giant, briefly). That's one of your less common ampersandwiches.
• 2D: It can create quite a buzz (kazoo) - always an attractive word in the puzzle. Always an annoying instrument in real life. Here is the "song" that immediately comes to mind when I see KAZOO, or even think of the sound a KAZOO makes. God bless/curse Sid & Marty Croft:

• 1D: Pink-legged wader (stilt) - man, there are a lot of waders. Yesterday AVOCET, today STILT. These are slightly higher-end waders. Normally it's all EGRETs and IBISeseses.
• 5D: Event with a 16-pound ball (shot put) - good clue/answer. And BOWLING fits, dammit.
• 13D: Couturier's monogram (YSL) - among the recently deceased crossword icons. See also YMA SUMAC.
• 29D: Prime minister after Eshkol (Meir) - had the ME-, so no problem. Actually, just seeing that the answer was four letters long would probably have gotten me the right answer. I think I've actually seen ESHKOL in a puzzle before. That's just mean.
• 43D: Morning TV staple since 1997 ("The View") - one of the most merciful things about the end of this campaign season is that I no longer have to suffer the major news networks treating ignorant shouting matches on "The View" as if they are news. "The View" - Bad for Women, Bad for America. Why can't Sarah Vowell, Samantha Bee, Wanda Sykes, and Betty White have a morning show? Come on, Barack. You have magic powers, right? Let's see some Real change.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS "Safety Dance" finished yesterday's Video-as-President voting just two votes ahead of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (out of 202 votes cast). Since neither video got anywhere near 50% of the vote, there will be an early January run-off, which, one can only hope, I will forget all about.

Election Day Voting Special (80s music video edition)

Today's comments section (see puzzle write-up for 11/4, below) has drawn attention to a deep divide in our country - it concerns the relative quality of 80s pop music. Who knew? In the spirit of settling this debate, I offer the following poll.

If Music Videos Were Running For President, I Would Vote For:

A. The Crosscan Party



B. The Orange Party



Or perhaps a third-party candidate-

C. The "Girls Rock Your Boys" Party



or D. The Very Bad Ideas Party



VOTE NOW (in my sidebar poll)

TUESDAY, Nov. 4, 2008 - Peter A. Collins and Joe Krozel (Italian battery pioneer / Kennedy-era launch / Inaugural ball holder)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: CAST A VOTE (36A: What many Americans will do on 17-Across (as hinted at by highlighting all the V's in this puzzles answers)) - V's, which I have changed to check marks, form one larger check mark in the middle of the grid. Election-themed answers abound.



Theme might also be described by either of the two other long Across answers: ELECTION DAY (17A: Early November occasion in the U.S.) or BALLOT BOXES (58A: Sights at polling places)

Even though no one "checks" ballots any more, and I don't know that I've ever even seen an honest-to-god BALLOT BOX, this puzzle has a cute concept, and the occasionally wacky fill that pops up in order to accommodate the theme is actually an asset, not a liability. The "V" words add much coolness to the grid. I'm particularly fond of AVOCET (22D: Long-legged shorebird) - it sounds pretty, and I didn't know it before today. Nice to see something besides the same old puzzle birds, much as I love them (ERN/E, TERN, NENE, etc.). Also loved the absurdly clued VIAND (49D: Article of food). It's hard to imagine using either the answer or the clue in a sentence, but they're accurate enough - and VIAND, like AVOCET, derived from French, unlike "Holding Out for A HERO" (56A: "Holding Out for _____" (1984 Bonnie Tyler hit)), which is derived from cheesy 80s pop opera greatness.

[sound of needle scratching on vinyl, and ...]



Don't know if that song is supposed to be part of the election sub-theme extravaganza, but several other answers add to the timeliness of the puzzle. Let's start with my favorite of these: 11A: Like William Howard Taft (fat) - I like to call him by his anagrammatic street name, T-FAT. "Yo, T-FAT, put down the sandwich. There's a bill you gots to veto" (why isn't VETO in this puzzle?). Never watched / liked "The West Wing," so I don't care for either the TERI (14A: Actress Polo who played a presidential candidate's wife on "The West Wing") or the LOWE (29A: Actor Rob who played a presidential aide on "The West Wing") clue, though at least TERI gets (briefly) to escape to the ignominy of being clued via "Meet the Fockers." Other presidential stuff:

• 35A: Inaugural ball holder (victor) - this one threw me, badly. I was imagining someone/thing holding a giant mirrored disco ball (clearly imagining the only kind of "inaugural ball" I would care to attend)
• 61A: 35 is the minimum one to be U.S. president (age)
• 25A: "_____ Stop" (Bill Clinton theme song) ("Don't) - ugh, my Least favorite song off the very, very famous "Rumours" album, and possibly my least favorite part of the Clinton campaign
• 58D: Bad sound at a campaign rally (boo) - well, it might be a good sound to me, if I agree with the booer (now There's an Odd Job).

And the rest!

• 15A: Wilderness home (lean-to) - learned this word from xwords, and yet I can't recall its ever being associated with the word "wilderness." I was thinking "lair," "den," "aerie," etc.
• 22A: Ribicoff and Lincoln, familiarly (Abes) - or as I like to call this clue "Who? and Oh"
• 31A: Italian battery pioneer (Volta) - the Chevy Volt is due out any year now. And the following movie (the title of which I thought until just now was "Volt") will be at a theater near you very shortly (I see many, many viewings in my future):

• 3D: Religious recluse (eremite) - a beautiful word
• 2D: Samson's undoer (Delilah) - whoa, talk about your Odd Jobs (or weird superhero names): UNDOER!
• 4D: "Attack, Rex!" (sic 'em) - aw, thanks guys. But not today.
• 10D: Nondairy milk source (soy) - I'm about 15 minutes away from enjoying my morning cereal and SOY milk (which I much prefer to dairy milk now).
• 13D: Kennedy-era launch (Telstar) - learned from xwords, though I impulsively wrote in TRISTAR here. I think TRI-STAR is a film production company.
• 34D: Baby buggy? (larva) - the one moment of true bewilderment in this puzzle came while staring at LAR-- and wondering "???"
• 37D: Barn topper (vane) - as in weather. Are there other kinds of VANEs? Windmills and feathers and feather-bearing arrows have them, it seems. But none of those would top a barn.
• 40D: Not yet having gone before an M.P.A.A. board (unrated) - I like this clue. I also would have accepted [Like the alternate versions of many movies released on DVD]
• 42D: It involves reading letters out loud (eye exam) - great clue, and EYEEXAM looks Nuts when you have only a handful of scattered letters in place.
• 60D: "Mom" in a heart, maybe, for short (tat) - Happy Birthday to my mom in ... 9 days. Scorpio!

You should vote now. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Post-voting coffee and Hello Kitty cupcakes]

[Actual BALLOT BOX in use in Egremont, MA - photo forwarded by my favorite Newsweek editor]

MONDAY, Nov. 3, 2008 - Susan Gelfand (Bossy's offspring / Princess who helped Jason / Cousin of the grey wolf / Bobbysoxer's hangout)

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Last name => verb - "S" added to last names of celebrities, turning their names into complete sentences, which are clued as such

Pretty straightforward. What to say? Well, I love that the puzzle takes one of the most regrettable (if often necessary) aspects of many grids - the plural name - and twists it into something big and interesting. The "S" doesn't pluralize - it verbizes.



If only this puzzle didn't go and blow it all by saying something stupid like IDAS (47A: Actress Lupino and others), it would have been scrumptious. Still, it's a fine idea, competently executed. The non-theme fill is uniformly acceptable and even provocative at points. A nice calming Monday after a sizzling Sunday.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Etiquette expert writes messages online? (Emily posts)
• 26A: Singer speculates? (Stevie wonders)
• 42A: Artist clears the bases? (Winslow homers)
• 56A: Actress searches? (Helen hunts)

The inclusion of STEVIE WONDER(s) prompts me to include the greatest, best-produced, most amazing single of all time. It's just perfect. And even on "Sesame Street," STEVIE and his band sound unbelievable. Keep an eye out for head-bopping children / muppets. This version is nearly 7 minutes long and ends with STEVIE incorporating "Sesame Street!" into the song. Otherwise, it's not edited or dumbed-down or nothing. Just pure greatness:



What else is there?:

• 10A: Bossy's offspring (calf) - there were a handful of curious, bouncy clues today. This was one. 44D: Parkgoers with backpacks (hikers) was another. 16A: Zero-shaped (oval), another. My favorite, though, by far, was 36D: Bobbysoxer's hangout (malt shop), for the vibrancy of both clue and answer. But can you drink a MALT with a straw - that's the question (or it was someone's question a couple days back)
• 20A: Thieves' locale (den) - "And [Jesus] said unto [the moneychangers et al], It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a DEN of thieves" (Matthew 21:13). I think "DEN" was a metaphor. Thieves don't actually inhabit a "locale" called a "DEN." Maybe the clue should be qualified, [... in scripture]
• 36A: Princess who helped Jason (Medea) - later, things went south
• 40A: When repeated, a Samoan city (Pago) - not a big fan of the half-city.
• 41A: Ingrid Bergman or Bjorn Borg (Swede) - also, the nickname of Ole Andreson, the apparently doomed ex-boxer in Hemingway's excellent short story, "The Killers." More Swedes:

• 55A: Announcement for the head of a queue (next!) - pip pip, cheerio, what country is this? "Queue," indeed. I was expecting something uniquely British, like "Next, guvnah!"
• 9D: One of the six states of Australia (Tasmania) - where they likely have honest-to-god queues.
• 10D: Cousin of the gray wolf (coyote) - yay, canines! I love the whole canine family, esp. my dogs, one of whom I call "wolfy" or "wolfy wolferson" from time to time. That is possibly the *least* silly thing I call her, just to give you an idea of the conversations I have all day on the days I'm home alone with the dogs.
• 50D: Plow team (oxen) - missed opportunity for a cross-reference at 19A: Device for a plow team (yoke)
• 53D: With 41-Down, nuclear device (atom / smasher) - right up there with MALT SHOP for freshness and originality. Good job.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

SUNDAY, Nov. 2, 2008 - Elizabeth C. Gorski (Geraint's beloved / Pumpkin bomb-throwing enemy of 115-Across / They're hidden in a Hirschfeld sketch)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Web Master" - It's all about "THE AMAZING [[[[=]]]] MAN" [that's my visual representation of a "SPIDER," btw]

[please note that the last square in 25-Down should contain the word "SPIDER" in its entirety - my Across Lite program can't / won't display all the letters ... wait, here's an update:]

Well, the cluing on the theme-revealing answer today has been reclued since the first version I saw, and I like this version MUCH much better. Here, I am told that the picture of a spider descending from his web will, in fact, be a "visual presentation" (25D: Visual presentation of what gave 115-Across special powers). I did not have that information in the original draft, and so I was left to wonder what the "I"s were ... does a spider have a certain number of "eyes" ... what is "THE AMAZING I MAN?" ... etc. Never occurred to me that the "I"'s were supposed to form a (presumably unbroken) strand from which a spider dangled. So bravo to the recluing, which makes the premise much clearer (without, I imagine, giving too much away...?).

Theme answers:

• 24A: Where you might see 115-Across (comic book cover)
• 38A: Pumpkin bomb-throwing enemy of 115-Across, with "the" (Green Goblin)
• 100A: Film star who played 38-Across (Willem Dafoe)
• 12D: 115-Across's day job (photographer)
• 26D: Tentacled enemy of 115-Across (Otto Octavius)
• 47D: Film star who played 26-Down (Alfred Molina)
• 64D: Film star who played 115-Across (Tobey Maguire)

I love comic books, but have never been a fan of Spider-Man (or Marvel Comics in general). Too teenage angsty for me. I'll take my heroes in Bat form, thank you. Honestly, I didn't even know OTTO OCTAVIUS - had to work it out from crosses. I saw the first Spider-Man movie and Hated It. I am told the sequels are better, but I didn't bother finding out.

This puzzle has its share of common stuff you should know, like ENID (79A: Geraint's beloved) and AGRA (33D: Indian fort locale). It also has stuff that threw me for a loop, like EUCHRE (104D: Swindle). I don't know what to say. I thought EUCHRE was an antiquated card game of some kind. That, or the host of "The Newlywed Game." Wait, no, I'm thinking of Bob Eubanks. Bob UECKER was the dad on "Mr. Belvedere" ... ANYway, EUCHRE? Wow, it's a verb, meaning "to cheat." Huh. Interesting. Also never heard of NAYA (113D: Water brand), which appears to be related in some way to NAIADs, the water nymphs. Maybe? SNUGLI (83A: Baby carrier brand) had only a GLIMMER (95D: Dim perception) of familiarity to me. IRMA is bad enough on her own, but in a plural (50A: Food writer Rombauer and others)? - really, do you think you'll ever see more than one IRMA, outside of an IRMA convention? No. I didn't know DAWN could be a "setting" (87D: Setting of the painting "Washington Crossing the Delaware"). Didn't know that GALLOWAY was a 40A: Scottish cattle breed. Didn't know BLUING (2D: Laundry whitener - talk about counterintuitive). Didn't know a 69A: Taliban leader is called an OMAR. Or is it one guy, OMAR? Is he really famous enough to go by one name, and if so, why haven't I heard of him? Yesterday I learned that Venus is hotter than Mercury (!?) and today I learn that it is also called HESPERUS (108A: The planet Venus), which I wanted to be VESPERUS, but that left me with BEE VONEY, which, while only slightly weirder than BEE HONEY (89D: Natural sweetener), was clearly wrong (BEE HONEY? what other kind of HONEY is there? Why am I so full of questions today?). Thanks to frequent puzzle solving, I was not stumped by former stumpers NINAS (27A: They're hidden in a Hirschfeld sketch) and BETAS (44A: Prominent stars in a constellation), the latter of which occurs in my favorite little corner of the puzzle, where EXILES (56A: Royals abroad, maybe) and CATFIGHT (62A: Scratch cause) are crossed by the Shakespearian TITANIA (46D: Largest moon of Uranus). I think CATFIGHT is my favorite answer in the puzzle.



Today's "Who the !@#@ are you?" Award goes to some guy named RENNER (3D: Actor Jeremy of "North Country") - and today's "What the !@#@ is that?" Award goes to ... "North Country"

Sideshows:

• 7A: Amplifier jack letters (mic) - "letters" seems too clever. It's an abbrev., right?
• 29A: Tie followers, briefly (OTs) - overtimes. Sports.
• 31A: Coffee order (one sugar) - I admire this answer. I initially wrote in ONE CREAM.
• 61A: Bandleader Puente (Tito) - I've played his raucous number from "The Simpsons" - what else? Well, here he is with SHEILA E (not a Latin plural):

• 71A: French goose (oie) - this seems awfully hard. I had 7 years of French and would not have known this were it not for the Ravel ballet "Ma Mère l'Oie" ("Mother Goose").
• 97A: Handel opera based on Greek myth (Atalanta) - on Friday a clue, on Sunday an answer. Cool. Here's Kiwi and sometime xword fill Kiri Te Kanawa singing "Care Selve" from the opera in question:

• 8D: Immunity _____ on "Survivor" (Idol) - o my wife will be happy to see this. Finally, her years of watching this show pays off.
• 9D: Monet painting also known as "The Woman in the Green Dress" ("Camille") - no idea. This painting is not familiar to me at all:

• 39D: Drawers in a laundry room (BVDs) - very clever. Do they even make BVDs any more?
• 102D: Girl's name meaning "happy" (Felice) - not a common name in this country at All. Wanted Felicia (as in Rashad, who sadly for me spells her name "Phylicia!"), but couldn't make it fit.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

World's Most Depressing Motivational Poster

[seen on wall of prison schoolhouse, Elmira, NY, 2008]

As samueljohnson.com (!?) says:

It's not "can't" with an apostrophe, but the noun "cant," as in overly expressive, extreme thoughts. Johnson has reminded Boswell to moderate his words. It comes from this exchange in Boswell's Life of Johnson:

Boswell. "Have not they vexed yourself a little, Sir? Have not you been vexed by all the turbulence of this reign, and by that absurd vote of the House of Commons, 'That the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished'?" Johnson. "Sir, I have never slept an hour less, nor eat an ounce less meat. I would have knocked the factious dogs on the head, to be sure; but I was not vexed." Boswell. "I declare, Sir, upon my honour, I did imagine I was vexed, and took a pride in it; but it was, perhaps, cant; for I own I neither ate less, nor slept less." Johnson. "My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, 'Sir, I am your most humble servant. You are not his most humble servant. You may say, 'These are sad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times." You don't mind the times. You tell a man, "I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet." You don't care six-pence whether he was wet or dry. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly."

SATURDAY, Nov. 1, 2008 - Donald K. Willing (Its slogan was once "More bounce to the ounce" / Predecessor of Thornburgh in the cabinet / Rio producer)

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: TWO-WAY STREETS (35A: Many thoroughfares ... or what this puzzle's Across answers consist of? -> STEERTS YAW OWT) - Across answers run forwards and backwards on alternate lines

This is an architectural feat that deserves respect. Not only do you have the alternating back and forth Across answers, you also have not one or two but THREE theme-related answers: the one mentioned in the theme description above, plus 17A: Detours (alternate routes) and 55A: Possible result of an appeal (reverse decision). Superb. If it weren't for the backwardness of half the Across answers, this puzzle would have been on the easy side, but given the gimmick, I had to jack the difficulty level Way up. Once you tumble to the theme, the puzzle is very doable, but even savvy solvers probably had some trouble. I know that when I have complete and utter breakdown, as I did in the first minutes of solving this puzzle, then the puzzle is probably a rebus ... but I couldn't make that work. I had a few moments where I was frustrated because I felt I knew the answer, but it wasn't working ... it was only after the third or so time this happened - with DIA, aka AID (52A: Square on un calendario) - that I finally realized what was up.

The original clue on PEPSI was [Slice maker] (to my mind a much much easier clue than the current 20A: Its slogan was once "More bounce to the ounce"), and so I confidently wrote in PEPSI ... which was confirmed by EARP (5D: Marshal played by Fonda, Costner and Lancaster) - damned central "P" stays put when you reverse the word! So I was stuck there. I had patches of the grid filled in ... but the patch wouldn't bloom. RERAN / NEWEL was an early signal that I failed to pick up on. I knew they must both be true, and yet they couldn't be ... Anyway, as I say, reversed DIA saved the DIA and after much slogging around I was finally able to blaze to the finish.



Reversed Answers:

• 14A: High-altitude home (eirea)
• 15A: Motel freebie (eci)
• 16A: Take on (tpoda)

• 20A: Its slogan was once "More bounce to the ounce" (ispeP)
• 21A: Espouse (dew) - as in "Mountain Dew," which is also made by ispeP
• 22A: Panama, e.g. (tah)

• 28A: Onetime ring master (ilA) - tsetaerG ehT
• 29A: Some blemishes (straw)
• 30A: Showed again (narer)

• 42A: Aid in avoiding the draft? (fracs) - excellent eulc
• 45A: Mass communication? (nitaL)
• 47A: Word Cup cry (!elo)

• 51A: Stowe girl (avE)
• 52A: Square on un calendario (aid)
• 53A: Cousin of a hyacinth (pilut)

• 60A: Rhone feeder (eresI)
• 61A: Rio producer (aiK)
• 62A: Crackerjack (tpeda)

Not much in the way of obscurity. I have absolutely no idea who BEA Lillie is (1D: Comic actress _____ Lillie), though it seems she was once a stage and screen actress of some renown, associated with Noel Coward and Cole Porter. She won a Tony, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and, best of all, from my perspective, she was also known as "Lady Peel," which is officially the best stripper name ever.

Others:

• 6A: Gun-cleaning aid (rod) - very necessary, this one. A big help when it came to figuring out that I had ICE the wrong way around
• 9A: Indian honorific (sahib) - I used the word AMAH in conversation tonight. I'm just sayin'...
• 25A: Calyx component (sepal) - crosswordtastic, this word. Pays to do these things habitually.
• 27A: Beret holder (tête) - ugh, "holder"
• 39A: Illegal match play? (arson) - ah, the cheeky ARSON clue. A crossword standard. I like this one.
• 50A: Sailboat stopper (calm) - "slower" or "staller" would have sat better with me.
• 63A: Spring Air competitor (Serta) - I believe we've had this very clue/answer pair in recent months
• 65A: City in North Rhine-Westphalia (Essen) - one of the crosswordiest place names in the book
• 2D: Start of many rappers' stage names (Lil) - let's take, oh, I don't know, LIL' Wayne:

• 4D: Predecessor of Thornburgh in the cabinet (Meese) - my first guess off the "M" in BLAME (1A: It's often laid on someone else), but non-reversed PEPSI intervened ...
• 6D: Person who's combining (reaper) - interesting use of "combining"
• 10D: Seller of Squishees on "The Simpsons" (Apu) - gimme gimme gimme; voiced by the amazing Hank Azaria:

• 11D: Like Venus vis-a-vis Mercury (hotter) - well, Venus is the goddess of love, so of course she's HOTTER than whoever this Mercury chick is
• 18D: Cranes constructing homes, e.g. (nesters) - ouch. I have a friend whose name kind of sounds like this.
• 23D: "Le _____" (Jules Massenet opera) ("Cid") - wonder what it sounds like:

• 41D: CD follower (ROM) - please tell me you did not enter "EFG."
• 46D: Seat of Shawnee County (Topeka) - TOPEKA is a great city name, and, fill-wise, one of the most exciting entries in the grid (last time TOPEKA and "exciting" were used in same sentence? 1978 - Van Halen was in town)
• 50D: Canine features (cusps) - it's a tooth thing
• 52D: High-culture strains (aria) - cute way to dress up this most banal of crossword answers
• 58D: Stanzaic salute (ode) - ditto
• 59D: Staple of Indian cuisine (nan) - if only you could have tied this to APU somehow, I would have been soooo impressed. Instead: just impressed.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Congratulations to my daughter, who yesterday won the Thomas Jefferson Elementary third-grade spelling bee. Take that, MARSHMALLOW! I gotta start teaching her to trash talk. The best part of her recounting of the story was when she said "I kept telling myself, 'I'm going to win this!'" She didn't get anything for winning, though; no certificate, no trophy, nothing - I told her to go back to school on Monday and demand some hardware (kidding).