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MONDAY, May 5, 2008 - Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke (EXXON COMPETITOR)
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: Rhymes with "Buddy Hackett"
Pretty ordinary Monday. Only thing that slowed me down was typos, the best of which was BLOG for BLOB (61D: Unidentifiable mass). Blanked for a moment on STOWE (1D: Vermont ski town), had to hack at CITGO (19A: Exxon competitor) a little, hesitated over BRIAR/BRIER (the "A" is correct - 43A: Kind of patch for a rabbit), went for TAKE HOLD instead of 
It first appeared in print in American English about 1951. Word researchers think American servicemen based in Japan brought it back at the time of the Korean War, though several subscribers have mentioned it was common among American servicemen in Japan in the years immediately following World War Two. It is a member of a group of words imported from Japanese in that period, others being origami, teriyaki, shiatsu, and karate. Skosh is a close imitation of the way that Japanese speakers themselves would say sukoshi in rapid conversation, suggesting that it was primarily communicated orally.It usually turns up as an noun meaning a little bit, a jot, a small amount (“he solved the problem in a skosh more than 13 days”). One of its earlier appearances in print was in advertisements for Levi’s jeans that offered a fuller fitting for the middle-aged under the slogan “Just a skosh more room”.
My favorite part of looking up SKOSH in my dictionary was finding, directly underneath it, "skunk works":[fr. Big Barnsmell's Skonk Works, illicit distillery in the comic strip Li'l Abner, by Al Capp †1979 Am cartoonist]: a usu. small and often isolated department or facility (as for engineering research and development) that functions with minimal supervision within a company or corporation.
I will be searching desperately for ways to use this term in the coming weeks.
Theme answers:
- 20A: Tourism bureau's offering (welcome packet)
- 28A: It's swung at Wimbledon (tennis racket)
- 48A: Pesky wasp (yellow jacket)
- 58A: It helps determine how much tax you owe the I.R.S. (income bracket)
Leftovers:
- 1A: Meat featured in a Monty Python musical title (Spam) - as in "Spam-a-Lot," the Broadway version of the great movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
9A: Popeye's creator E.C. _____ (Segar) - a gimme, and a frequent grid denizen. I'm so behind on my reading ... I've had a gorgeous volume of SEGAR's sitting on my shelves for over a year and still haven't done much more than peek at it. Soon ... yes, soon all the unread books on my shelves will magically get read.
- 23A: The matador's opponent (el toro) - nice the / EL correspondence.
- 36A: 1983 Barbra Streisand title role ("Yentl") - "Uncle," I cry. "Uncle!" Enough with this movie already.
- 66A: Airs, in Latin (aurae) - mildly painful.
- 71A: Guitarist Atkins (Chet) - try this out.
- 3D: Like blue movies (adult) - "blue" = my favorite word for "risqué" or "indecent."
- 30D: Classic toothpaste brand (Ipana) - I've said this before, but the only way I know this toothpaste is from a single scene in the movie "Grease."
- 32D: Muammar el-Qaddafi's land (Libya) - big in the news when I was in high school. We bombed them.
Good day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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71 comments:
I was going to add the link to SKOSH (55D) in worldwidewords but you beat me to it. I’ve heard it, but I’d venture that it’s mainly a West-coast-ism and I would have had no idea how to spell it.
I disagree with the clue for MAD MONEY (5D). Money saved for emergencies is not mad; it’s practical, serious and essential. “Mad money” is extra money that can be spent on the spur of the moment for something casual or frivolous. If anyone can find a published definition referring to "emergencies" (Googling is difficult because of movies and TV shows with that phrase) I'd be surprised to see it.
Rex, your post is stamped "8:11 a.m.," but I'm reading it at 7:30 a.m. Never a dull moment.
My father was part of occupation forces in Tachikawa, Japan from 1954-58. We were part of the first group of families to join these GIs at their posts.
My father went over by himself and that left my mother, who was 27, to drive from Dover, Delaware to Seattle, Washington with 3 children, ages 7 (me), 5 and almost 3. She had never been more than 100 miles from home before this trip and, looking back, it was quite the most impressive thing I've ever been a part of. We sailed on the USS Gaffey from Seattle to Yokahama to join my father.
This is a pretty long-winded way of saying I have first hand knowledge of the word SKOSH.
Fairly easy puzzle, a typical Monday product. I also had TAKEHOLD at first but made the change.
Ipana toothpaste. I remember two other products from that time:
Wildroot Cream Oil and Brylcreem.
IPANA and SKOSH. Two blasts from the past!
Crying "Uncle" will not help you with your "Yentl" woes, Rex. Try crying "Papa."
I'm so disappointed! Not a single reference to Cinco de Mayo...
7:58 - a PR for me!
Daddy always had me take some Mad Money with me on dates in case I got mad at my date and needed some money to get home.
All those "K"s should have made your day, Rex!
Nice to see your commentary so early, Rex! And yes, the solving went just as you described.
The briar/brier confusion is a pain! One is said to be a variant of the other, except that "briar" is the more common in most usage (briar pipe, briar patch,). "Brier" is mainly the plant itself, or the thorn on the stem. Older biblical translations use "brier", while more modern translations tend to use "briar".
Briar -- a tobacco pipe made from the root or stem of a brier
Brier -- a heath (Erica arborea) of southern Europe whose roots and knotted stems are used for making briar tobacco pipes.
etc. You need the old "IPANA Smile" for this...
∑;)
p.s. I have a wild bramble patch in one corner of the back yard -- makes great blackberry jam!
For those of us of an age before the movie Grease, we prefer to remember Ipana as a sponsor of the original Bozo the Clown show.
As Buckey Beaver would say, brush-a, brush-a, brush-a, ...
.../Glitch
"Cinco de Mayo" makes me think of the last line of the excellent John Sayles movie "Lone Star":
"Forget the Alamo."
If you like Chet Atikins, who really cool guitar playing in general, make sure to check out the simply awesome duet CD with Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler (yes, of Dire Straights fame). It is a great great album of two fine guitarists!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neck_and_Neck
Using the Google search engine to find information about MAD MONEY I found several definitions that mention emergencies.
ArtLvr, don't forget that Brer Rabbit hangs out at the BRIAR patch...
I've used Ipana toothpaste this year--Procter & Gamble sells it in Turkey. I've also received WELCOME PACKETs, used and strung TENNIS RACKETs, been stung by YELLOW JACKETs, and set a PR today even though INCOME tax BRACKET didn't fit.
Unusually for a Monday, the theme saved my hide.
I didn't know the creator of Popeye, or the singer Cara and was blanking on the Exxon competitor. Making the NE look pretty empty. But, with so much else incomplete, that made HOLIDAY a perfectly good answer for the day off work with pay. And, I didn't get WELCOMEPACKET until I saw the "acket" theme. It was only with that K in place that I realized that HOLIDAY was incorrect. Put in the K from PACKET and then got SICKDAY and then guessed my way though the rest of New England.
I agreee that "mad money" is poorly clued.
OK, SethG, although I don't like the M-W and Encarta defs. of "mad money" as "emergency money," they do exist in print.
I'd be wary of that Urban Dictionary. Check out a few defs. It looks as if it's been written by any-old-body. I hope the NYT would not rely on that thing.
Happy Spring! Condolences to my fellow tree-pollen targets.
Did anyone else have SHAKES for 54A: Clears an Etch A Sketch, e.g.?
If you are Anonymous who just left the lengthy criticism of *Sunday's* puzzle, your comment has been moved to (shockingly) Sunday's puzzle, where it belonged in the first place.
rp
Interesting about Skunk Works. I knew the term only from its use for Lockheed Martin's facility where secret weapon systems such as stealth aircraft were developed. Obviously it comes from this strip. Amazing the number of words and concepts that this particular strip has left behind long after it died. Sadie Hawkins Dance/Day etc. comes from Al Capp.
Here's an idea. If a strip is able to continue past the death/retirement of its founder (Blondie, Dennis the Menace) it wasn't really good in the first place. Pogo, Lil' Abner, Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side are the great stips that we have no more.
I initially agreed about the clue for MAD MONEY being outright right (and pretty much the opposite of the actual definition). But looking it up agreed with what the clue suggests (a woman keeping some money so that if she gets mad on a date she has fare to get home on her own).
So I did a poll among my friends on LiveJournal and it was pretty much split. About half only knew the puzzle's definition of the phrase (mostly women) and the other half knew it as money available for frivolous uses (mostly men).
If you love the term "skunk works" you should look for the book with that title by Ben Rich about the skunkworks at Lockheed. Makes you wish you'd been an engineer...
Agree with anonymous in texas (8:10): When I was a teenager in the 50/60's, the girls always brought along MAD MONEY on dates, just in case. Maybe this could be considered an emergency.
“he solved the problem in a skosh more than 13 days” Sounds like a Klahn puzzle to me.
After ALLITERATE yesterday we continue our lesson in poetic construction with a theme of consonance.
2 a: correspondence or recurrence of sounds especially in words; specifically : recurrence or repetition of consonants especially at the end of stressed syllables without the similar correspondence of vowels (as in the final sounds of “stroke” and “luck”) Assonance tomorrow.
I read an article referring to a Dick Cheney think-tank as a skonk. I now find that to be very funny and a good place for you to start using it in your vocabulary.
Pretty good Monday. Lite on the crosswordese. Thanks for research on SKOSH. I always thought it was a yiddish expression.
"Skosh" is common? Never heard it in my life. And the clue for Mad Money makes no sense that I can tell.
This is how I see the connection between the theme words: This summer, I'm looking for a resort
where the WELCOME PACKET
contains a TENNIS RACKET
and a YELLOW JACKET (of the nylon kind)
too fancy for my INCOME BRACKET.
A very sound idea since both my serve and backhand could improve--unfortunately, I have other plans already.
I noticed an unusually large number of anagram pairs--on top of the clued ERIE/EIRE: SAL/ASL; CAM/MAC(s); OUI/IOU(s)
I'm with Sandy on Skosh -- never heard of it. Although knowing it is from Japanese makes me like it better. I think I remember hearing that the word Boondocks ("Down in the__") is a Filipino / Tagalog brought back from WWII.
Favorite word: Juilliard. I guess I've never written it b/c I only realized today that it has 2 i's.
Mad money made sense to me.
My trouble came with the etch-a-sketch since, like Texas Mom, I thought SHAKES an etch-a-sketch was exactly how someone would clear it. Nice little sandy sound, and sweet clue, but alas.
Laramie, WYO
Heh, I've been using the word "skosh" for years but didn't know the etymology or even the spelling. I probably would have guessed it was of French origin and was spelled "scoche." But I got every letter from the crosses. Anyway, you can use it interchangeably with "tad" or "smidgen."
Anyway... I thought this was the easiest puzzle in many weeks; even the few clues that didn't jump out right away were solved quickly enough by the crosses.
@seth g - re Brer Rabbit: it's not the boys in the briar patch here so much as the Mom Rabbit, who sits placidly in the sun admiring her girth and her surroundings, matriarch of all she surveys. She's bigger than the cat, and was a bit twitchy last year trying teaching the kid to hold absolutely still when being observed since they never got chased! Now she's in her element...
∑;)
this was the fastest I ever solved a puzzle. I had "Shakes", instead of "Erases" for (54A Clears an Etch a Sketch, eg) but I quickly resolved that.
I also thought this was one of the easiest puzzles in weeks and that skosh was yiddish. As in "I'll just take a shosh so I have something to nosh on."
I also thought this was one of the easiest puzzles in weeks and that skosh was yiddish. As in "I'll just take a shosh so I have something to nosh on."
another personal record here. i zipped through this puzzle so fast, there were about a bunch of clues i never saw: SOC, ASL, SAL, CEL, NEE, AHA, EIRE, BLOB, SKOSH (?! good thing).
i can't complain about a puzzle that treated me so well, but jae's comment that today was "lite on the crosswordese" seems like something i disagree with. i mean, look at the list of words i didn't see. NEE? CEL? EIRE (and ERIE and EERIE)? -EROO? ALOE? REO? ONUS? it seems very, very hard to make an easy puzzle that doesn't have a handful of our old favorites. i will say this, though: rhyming themes are really, really easy on the solver. i had WELCOMEP_____ and as soon as i saw the clue for TENNISRACKET, i figured out the theme and scribbled them all in.
i can weigh in on neither the SKOSH discussion nor the MADMONEY debate, having heard of neither expression until today.
@Larry, I agree on the comic strips you listed. But what about Shoe? It was great when Jeff McNelly was alive, but is pretty much awful now.
Never heard of skosh. And mad money to me, a Midwestern female, is cab money on a bad date or money put aside for frivolous purposes.
@Anon 8:37, you beat me to the jingle. Perhaps we should hum it together.
I'm 65 years old and have been doing crossword puzzles all my life - plus having a doctorate (in music) - and I've NEVER heard the word skosh! Must definitely be West Coast.
I thought this was one of the more easy puzzles. I think my only real struggle was with "briar", which I figured out relatively quickly. I also agree that mad money was flat out incorrectly clued. That clue was more befitting of "rainy day fund".
Also, I've used skosh before. It's rather commonly used here in CT.
I remember a long discussion on the NYT Forum years ago about the term PIN MONEY (which is what I haplessly entered before I got MAD)...which I think is closer to the concept one of your commenters had about money a woman is given for incidental purposes (buying a pin, e.g.)
So glad that term is no longer in the colloquial lexicon.
To add little or no value to the skosh discussion: While in school I worked with a construction crew from Chicago who used the phrase "skoshy bit" to refer to a small amount of something. Thus I think the word and its usage may be broader than we think.
I love it that when I come to this blog I am able to see references to Lone Star (a great movie and I also recommend the Tony Hillerman movies on PBS). Yes I am fixated on the Southwest. And, I also get to read the Buckey Beaver song. Life is good.
And, life will be better if we lose YENTL for a while.
My lovely wife (new to xwords) found this puzzle easy after our fun with SPLITPS and HONEYBS. That said she loves to do the Sherman march through the clues.
Easy-Medium? No, definitely an "Easy". (And I'm a novice solver who doesn't generally make it past tue/wed...)
Re: MADMONEY
Two distinct ideas have emerged:
1. Money saved for frivolous purchases - mostly used by men.
2. Money to be used in emergencies, like a bad date - mostly used by women.
I'm wondering if this is a concept that is regionally based but also breaks down on male/female lines.
Argggh. I was commenter #1today and I can't even tell a.m. from p.m. Sorry.
@ anon 11:49, re SKOSH -- good thought! It doesn't rhyme with "nosh" though, in my experience, but with "gauche" -- long O! And it's not just a west coast expression, but also turns up in NY and DC.
∑;)
Is anyone familiar with the expression Inside man at the skunk works?
I've heard it used as an insider's insider and it must be related to this discussion.
I also found this puzzle easy and got my best time ever- just a SKOSH under 6 minutes! I did it in pencil and am sure that helped the speed factor. Also, this is the first time ever where I didn't see all the clues.
And speaking of SKOSH, I seem to remember first hearing it when Michael Keaton said it in some movie (probably either "Mr. Mom" or "Night Shift"). I had no idea how it was spelled, though.
I think the cluing for MAD MONEY isn't perfect but it doesn't bother me like it has some other people. :)
Fave fill- EL TORO, only because it's the name of a great rollercoaster (at Six Flags Great Adventure).
@bill from nj re MAD MONEY:
"'I'm wondering if this is a concept that is regionally based but also breaks down on male/female lines."
Maybe it's also an age thing, too.
Rex, where's the weekly roundup?
@ yet another anonymous,
You say "Easy" and I say "Easy-Medium" ... Man, I can't believe we're so far apart on this one. How could two solvers have such vastly different experiences? It's quite shocking, really. I hope we can have a long and healthy debate on this clearly very important topic.
rp
I, too, thought the clue for MAD MONEY was inaccurate, but now that I know there's a whole mess of people who have known MAD MONEY to mean exactly what the clue says, well, I'm not going tell them all they're wrong. I'm just going to consider myself educated. Awesome.
I'll second (or third) the recommendation for "Lone Star." Great, great flick. So Many Things going on in that movie. It really stayed with me for a while after I saw it. (In a good way.)
I'm also in the SHAKES camp. That's a much better answer for that clue!
I didn't even realize it was Cinco de Mayo today, but when I saw VENUS DE MILO it made me think of the Liz Phair song "Cinco de Mayo." It doesn't rhyme, exactly, but it's close enough to a rhyme for me.
What is it with people wanting to start shit with Rex? I really don't get it. If you disagree with something, say you disagree. There's no reason to be an ass about it. (Wow. That's way more cussing than I usually do.)
Since the Relative Difficulty marker is explained in the FAQs link, I suggest a new link and you can tell certain people to go FUQ (Frequently Unasked Questions). But mom, Puzzlegirl started it!
@ phillysolver- ROTFL with that one!
From old radio days: "IPANA for the smile of beauty; Sal Hepatica for the smile of health."
I never heard SKOSH until that Levis ad appeared.
Now that the World's Foremost Authority (now relegated to the Sunday comments) has unburdened himself, I hope he won't find it necessary to launch another attack on hoi polloi. I read that message early today and it did violence to any anticipated enjoyment of my breakfast.
For the record, I grew up in NJ and thought MAD MONEY was what a girl carried on a date in case she got MAD at me, er, her crummy boyfriend, and thus could get out of my, er, his car and find her own way home. I knew SKOSH from the jeans ad but never considered its written form; stared at it a long time as it looks like it rhymes with OshKOSH. When I was a kid, our front stoop looked out across the newly-constructed Garden State Parkway. Miles down the road in the next town there was a Bristol-Meyers plant. They had a huge neon sign (which we could see day and night with the naked eye) on which shone the names of their products. The second item was IPANA. The first? Sal Hepatica! Miriam, I can't believe you (or anyone else) remembers it! Eventually what was to become my constant companion, Pepto Bismol, was added to the roster.
The Lockheed "Skunk Works" took on somewhat of an Area 51 mystique in the late 20th century. Some U-2s sported a Pepe LePew look-alike and the same logo was used as a patch as Kelly Johnson's shop got a bit more cocky and less secret.
@anonymous 11:49 - I always thought SKOSH was Yiddish too, though I have a friend who uses it regularly and she is a non-Jewish lifelong Canadian (Winnipeg).
MAD MONEY. I was among the many who thought that "mad" meant frivolous, but apparently it originally meant "angry" (the girl dumping the rude boy on a date) and changed over the years. George Javor's article "Mad Money" traces the transition. (I found it in JStor after following sethg's links to definitions.)
@Bill D: The reason I remember Sal Hepatica is that I'm older than dirt.
I also remember a radio jingle about Pepsodent toothpaste, which contained an ingredient dubbed Irium by the intrepid hucksters. They were evidently oblivious to the existence of the transition metal iridium. Anyway, the jingle concerned a young woman named Miriam who, though otherwise attractive, repelled men because of her dingy teeth. When she began to use Pepsodent, her social life did a UIE (sorry, everyone).
John from ct - I live in Ct and have never heard of skosh. What part of ct are you from?
As a computer programmer, I've heard "skunk works" used a few times to describe projects that are worked on while you're supposed to be working on other things. Like an internal program you want to write that isn't seen as valuable by your boss, so you siphon time off the projects you're supposed to be working on to write it anyway.
Obviously a bastardization of the original meaning, of which I was not formerly aware.
Is everyone going to have spam for dinner tonight???
As for comic strips - our paper just started carrying the strip "Rhymes with Orange" anyone else read it. Its teriffic.
good monday puzzle but my typo was citCo.
am not having spam for dinner - going to Cinco de Mayo party to make some blat and I'll make sure to bring some Mad Money.
ps (from misstrish) also need to order some PICO de gallo
@joon -- I meant lite relatively speaking for a Mon. Some of the 3 letter fill seemed fresher e.g. CAM, LBJ, RAD, SOC.
Agreeing with Wendy L. about the quality of "Lone Star." Certainly one of the best examples of screen-writing ever. The amazingly well interlaced plot lines and themes, traversing the full spectrum of pettiness to the historical and political, all the way to the grand imponderables, summed up with humorous and sonorous quip. Pure brilliance, including Kris Kristoffersen as the crusty sheriff.
Blog (blog) n. unidentifiable mass
I hope this makes it into a dictionary.
Whoohoo! I'm travelling today, in the USA and I bought a real New York Times in order to do the crossword puzzle. The ink from the dark picture on the page behind bled through, making it hard to read, but there it was, my first non-syndicated puzzle. Sad that today is a Monday, because it was so easy; I didn't get to savour it long. It's all filled in with neat block letters, the only slips being briefly DUES instead of DEBT and HOLIDAY for 9D. I didn't know any of the NE proper names, but then I remembered the gas station with the Delta Airlines-like logo by the airport and it all came together.
...acket, couldn't work the great one's name into the puzzle due to spelling. One of the great story tellers of all time, maybe someday a puzzle of his own.
I'm in Connecticut, and my husband and his family have been in CT most of their lives, and several of them are English majors, and he and I have never, ever heard the word skosh. It's too ugly to be word anyway.
I confidently put in ADJUSTED GROSS rather than INCOME BRACKET at the start (it fits!) -- boy was I wrong.
Bill from NJ-we almost had a chance to meet all those years ago at Tachikawa. My Mom and I drove from Florida to Seattle in 1952, and sailed to Yokohama on the USS Bucknerto join my Dad when he was transferred from Korea to Japan. Your post awoke great memories.
Did you also pick up the word "nooky"? Sounds a bit risque, but it refers to those pointed things (church keys?) used to open beer in the old (pre can-tab) days.
And if you really want to go back, Ipana/Sal Hepatica used to sponsor the Eddie Cantor radio show on Wednesdays. Those were the great days of radio: The Railroad Hour on Monday, Bob Hope on Tuesday, Bob Burns on Thursday-through to Jack Benny on Sunday-every day a treat-and, as I recall, no reruns!
Skosh seems to be the word of the day. I first heard in in the early seventies and then figured it out when I went to Japan and learned a bit of conversational Japanese.
And how many of you knew that honcho was also of Japanese origin? Han = squadron, cho = leader roughly. I can envision POWs in WW II hearing the enlisted men among the Japanese soldiers speaking with awe and perhaps with (verbal) obeisance about the hancho.
@Mexican Girl - if you thought honcho was derived from Spanish (the usual assumption) I apologize for this comment coming on Cinco de Mayo. In my defense, it isn't CdM out here in Syn(dication) City.
This is getting to be too much fun - I may need to pay up for NYT online to escape Syn City.
Oops - I read the first few posts and immediately chimed in with the "mad money" I knew from my dating youth, only to find that I'm the 6000th member to do so - sorry about that, chief!
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