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1974 Sutherland/Gould spoof - THURSDAY, Apr. 9, 2009 - Blindauer and Orbach (English artist John whos buried at St Pauls Cathedral)
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Relative difficulty: Easy/Medium
THEME: Adding "OZ" - 6 theme answers are familiar phrases to which "OZ" has been added, creating wacky phrases which are then clued, "?"-style. Theme tied together by 65A: Contented sighs (and a homophonic hint to this puzzle's theme) (AAHS)
Word of the Day: CAROM - n.
- A collision followed by a rebound.
- A shot in billiards in which the cue ball successively strikes two other balls. Also called billiard.
- A similar shot in a related game, such as pool.
v., -omed, -om·ing, -oms. v.intr.
- To collide and rebound; glance: The car caromed off the guardrail into the ditch.
- To make a carom, as in billiards.
To cause to carom.
[Short for carambole, a stroke at billiards, from French, a billiard ball, from Spanish carambola, a stroke at billiards, perhaps from Portuguese, carambola. See carambola.] (answers.com)
Two great things about this theme - phrases are amusing and Z's are plentiful. The whole letter/sound disparity was throwing me off for a while. The homophone AAHS has nothing to do with the theme answers - that sound is found precisely nowhere in the theme answers. It's a homophone of the abbreviation for Australia (or fictional L. Frank Baum land) OZ, but it's the letters (not the sound made by) "OZ" that are added to the phrases to make the theme answers. That bouncing in and out of the realm of homophony makes the whole thing feel a bit confused, though maybe it was supposed to add difficulty. I see that you've got JUDY Garland up there in the NW (1A: Garland native to Minnesota), symmetrical with AAHS, so clearly (clearly?) the intended reference was to the "Wizard of Oz," a sweet frame of reference which is nicely undercut by the anti-Toto, CUJO (24D: 1981 Stephen King novel), and OZZY Osbourne (52D: Black Sabbath singer, to fans). Two more bonus "OZ"s can be found at A TO Z (25D: Complete), OOZE (61A: Move like molasses).Theme answers:
17A: Nickname for a dwarfish piano player? (mini Mozart) - from "mini-mart"- 19A: Sleeping cave denizen? (dozing bat) - from "dingbat" (intersecting DITZ! 3D: Scatterbrain - perfect)
- 31A: Pickled pub quiz winner? (boozy wonder) - from "Boy Wonder" (another name for Robin)
- 40A: Ships carrying a smelly gas? (ozone liners) - from "one-liners"
- 51A: Comfy kids? (cozy young) - from Red Sox great "Cy Young"
- 57A: Pride of 12? (lion's dozen) - from "lion's den"
I jumped right into this puzzle without even noticing who the constructor was (or in this case, constructors were). This is a good thing, because I might have gotten psyched out - I'm often not on the same level as Blindauer/Orbach creations, primarily because their level appears to be the Broadway Musical level (a weak spot o' mine). Today, the only thing that truly threw me was this OPIE character (13A: English artist John who's buried at St. Paul's Cathedral). He was a Cornish historical and portrait painter who was, coincidentally, marketed at one point in his painting career as "The Cornish Wonder." No idea if he was also a BOOZY WONDER. Nothing else in this puzzle really tested me much. Weird how the NW appears to be my lone sticking point lately.
For some reason, when I opened the puzzle, the cursor (I solve using AcrossLite software - easily downloadable via the NYT puzzle site) was on the clue for NORAS (23A: Comic Dunn and others), which I knew instantly, and so I started the puzzle there. Went up into the NE, and once I uncovered NOVA, immediately jumped to SCOTIA at the bottom of the puzzle and started in there (9A: With 46-Down, site of Cape Breton Island). I had AAHS before I had any other theme answer (hence the sound/letter confusion I spoke of above). If any place in this puzzle is going to bite you, it's probably up top. I thought LUNA was toughly clued (6D: Counterpart of Apollo), if only because no one talks about her and Apollo's such a big deal. CRIB was craftily clued (5D: Mobile home?) - "Mobile" in a "?" clue has me thinking Alabama at first. Even the RUBE clue had potential pitfalls, as "sucker" is a clue word that can skew in a few directions (14A: Potential sucker). Next door, NAZARENE (9D: Early Christian convert) did not come quickly; until I got the "Z," that is. Then, no problem. Z's can be very clarifying.Bullets:
- 21A: "First Blood" hero John (Rambo) - helped me solve my A/O dilemma at 12D: High in the Sierra Madre? (alto)
- 64A: 1974 Sutherland/Gould spoof ("Spys") - never seen it, though I love both actors. Thought briefly it might have a wacky (spoofy?) Z-spelling, i.e. "SPYZ."
- 37D: People with this don't go out for very long (insomnia) - knew I would be in the realm of unconsciousness, but for some reason went looking for a drug.
- 26D: Ashcroft's predecessor (Reno) - Was she any relation to Mike RENO of Loverboy fame? (any excuse to play an early 80s music video):
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Donna Levin has a tacky puzzle in today's LAT. That's not an insult. Do it. You'll see. Write-up here.
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78 comments:
Nice puzzle. Had BROIL in place of BROWN, which made perfect sense to me, since I hadn't heard of the folks clued either in 32D or 41D. Loved JUDY and MINIMOZART.
We had a CAROM board (low rent pool) as kids.
In graduate schools I worked with SPYS.
We have a quaint JUDY Garland museum in Minnesota.
I never saw First Blood.
2 years ago I had DOZINGBAT in my house.
Last year I went to MESA Verde.
My posts are often a CRIME.
This morning my contented AAHS came when I finished this puzzle without being toast.
In short this puzzle is all about me.
Except I thought OPIE was the Mayberry boy?
@DanaJ - I did the same BROIL for BROWN deal for exactly the same reason.
Otherwise, I really enjoyed the puzzle. When I saw that both Mr. Blindauer & Mr. Orbach had collaborated (or worse, conspired) on it, I was a little frightened. But I thought that it turned out just right for a Thursday.
Thanks PB, TO & RP!
I totally missed the "Oz" connection. I felt like the puzzle theme was actually "ooo's" and "ahhh's" since there were some of these in the puzzle (boozy, ooze) but then it didn't feel exactly right. Without reading this blog today I'd have continued to have the unsettled feeling of not-quite-rightness; at least now I know exactly why!
I started with Judy and ended with AAHs - marched straight through. No real hangups at all. Liked the theme and all those z's. Pretty easy for a Thursday, but also fresh and fun.
Am I getting faster or are the puzzles getting easier? Today was the third time in the last six days I set a personal daily best (after Saturday and Wednesday). Let's go with me getting better.
I liked this. A few non-theme OZ's (OZZY, OOZE, ATOZ) mix it up a bit, but no matter.
Nice you added Loverboy to the Canadian content of JONI Mitchell and NOVA SCOTIA.
Liked this puzzle except for the BOOZYWONDER-BOYWONDER. Unlike the other theme answers, these two pairs seemed too similar. In fact, in some places, they mean mean the same thing...
I do the puzzle late at night, which may explain why I didn't see the "base phrases"into which the "ozzes" were placed. I just went with clever wordplay. I like puzzles with clever phrases.
Never go the theme til I got to the write up. Just thought there were lots of z's.
Can some one explain Domingo = dia ?
@ chefbea-
Domingo is Spanish for Sunday, DIA is Spanish for day.
Like JannieB I was able to march through this puzzle from the NW to the SE, from the first OZ reference (JUDY) to the clue(AAHS).
AAHS confirmed what I already knew from the solve. I had a really good time with this one.
@chefbea: Domingo is Sunday in Spanish; i.e., a dia (day) of the week.
No thank you to this one. The wackiness of the OZ inserted into the phrases fell flat for me so that it all felt a bit stretched.
Also, I don't really think of Cy Young as a Red Sox great, more of just a pitching great. Didn't even know - or maybe didn't remember - that he played for the Red Sox until today.
OK, here's what's going on. Obama wants us to feel confident so we'll spend money to spur the economy, so he had his Crossword Czar order the Times to make the puzzles easier.
Rex -- Luna, counterpart of Apollo, is the Soviet space program (if they were after the goddess it would probably be Diana or Artemis).
Great theme today, thanks for keeping up your site.
Brian
A fun puzzle. Easy/medium is spot on.
I'm embarrassed that I went to bed thinking I would come here in the morning to find out who COY YOUNG was - only to be reminded that the theme algorithm actually led to CY YOUNG. D'oh.....
Perhaps there will be a remake of Amadeus involving Mike Myers, who can also play MINI MOZART....
Loved this puzzzzzzzzzzle.
17D: MGM is also the studio that made the Wizard of Oz.
This seemed very original and the perfect difficulty for a Thursday. It OOZES AAHS from me.
Luna is the Roman goddess of the moon. Apollo is the Greek *and* Roman god of the sun, among other things (his name weirdly doesn't change in the shift from Gr. to Rom., though he's also known as "Pheobus," I think). I stand by my explanation (though the space program thing may indeed be correct).
I did this one last night not realizing it was Thursday's puzzle until after I finished and went to check out Rex's write up. "Tough for a Wednesday," I was thinking.
No big deal other than it was a bit of a let down to do Wednesday's today (I like the increasing difficulty throughout the week).
I liked this puzzle. The add-letter(s) theme has been beaten to death, but when the new phrases are really creative, as they were in this puzzle, it still works.
My main gripe was too many damn ?-clues! Two or three is fine, but more than 10 and it's just annoying. Yeah, I know a bunch of those were for the theme answers, but still.
@Crosscan: I'm with you -- also had my third PB since Saturday (though my 3rd was joon's Tuesday, not yesterday's). Let's just say we're both getting faster...
I enjoyed that none of the heavy use of the Y's and Z's felt at all forced. The OZZY/OZYY crossing in particular was brilliant.
I interpreted 47A ("toast") in the slang sense of "all washed up, finished", and answered BROKE. The down answers that intersected K and E were both pop-culture names that could have been absolutely anything, as far as my knowledge base is concerned.
I'd lie to complain--but I just can't. This is a lovely puzzle, just right for a Thursday.
For Apollo counterpart, ["a person or thing having the same function or characteristics as another"] I went first with Luna as they are both space missions with the same goal.
I find the logic of Sun-God to Moon-Goddess a bit too much of a stretch.
But either gets you to the correct answer.
As to Rex's explaination, he may not alway be right, but he is never wrong ;-)
.../Glitch
Doozy of a puzzle. Liked it. Seemed about right for a Thurs. DITZ crossing DINGBAT (minus OZ) was clever. I too had BROIL at first, but ELWES was lurking somewhere in memory so I changed it.
I just remembered why ELWES was lurking - Princess Bride.
When reading the beginning of the PSALM at 45-A ("By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down"), did anyone else think of The Melodians number from the sound track to Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come"? I'd listened to that song on and off for 20+ years before I realized in the last couple of years that it was derived from a psalm.
I tried CRAB for the mobile home. Wasn't there a riddle about the crab carrying its house on its back? Or was that the snail? Anyways, I was staring at MAN__OZA_T for a while.
I kept bouncing around trying to find the theme too...'you change the 'sh' in ocean liner to a 'z' in ozone liner!' was my favorite.
I'm sometimes an example of Organized Chaos, so the CRIME and BRINE crossing didn't leap to mind immediately... Neither did the DUM da DUM, but it was cute along with the DITZ and D(oz)INGBAT.
Loved JUDY, JONI, OZZY and MINI MOZART, the CRIB clued as Mobile home, and all the rest too. Much fun!
∑;)
p.s. I'm not much of a sports buff, but find it very sad about the hit-and-run victim today, a major league pitcher only 22 years old...
I thought that the theme might have something to do with "adding ounces" (oz.), with the theme-revealing answer coming at 57A and being FIVE OUNCES, referring to the previous theme answers.
Agree with Rex on easy-medium. Liked this puzzle a lot. Saw the OZ in the middle of the D--INGBAT right off and sailed through the theme answers. Still, easy-medium for me is 8:18. YMMV
Liked seeing CLAD. You would think it might be more of a crosswordese fill, but don't see it much. Also liked DITZ...just because.
It seems that when the Spanish word can be either masculine or feminine, I almost err to the wrong gender, so originally had RAMBA. Is that Stallone in drag?
My biggest problem was positive affirmation: YESSIR and YESIAM were my first two solutions. YESIDO solve crossword puzzles...as often as I can.
Fun puzzle and I like it a whole lot more now that I see the OZ insertion to create the word play. I thought that maybe, OZONE LINER was word play on Ocean Liner, but didn't get what could be funny about COZY YOUNG, etc. My duh moment :-) Now it feels like a solid Thursday for letters, clues, and fun.
I liked the Z's, the cluing for VERBS (which could have been nouns), and the new word CAROM.
Fun, but just a bit off the mark for me. I could have lived with one non-theme OZ, but there were three. Wish that had been avoided.
I'll be the stick in the mud and say I didn't like the CRIB clue. A crib is not a home, it's a bed. And mobile? Well, yes, you can move them. But you can move a refigerator, too. Are refrigerators now mobile? (Or is there a definition I'm not thinking of? I checked a couple dictionaries!)
Something about the 4 Js did make me smile. Judy, Joad, Joni and Cujo. What a quartet!!
@jeff in chicago: A mobile is one of those dangly things that people hang in cribs to entertain (or soothe) babies. Sorry to spoil your rant!
@Jeff -- I think the "mobile" thing about crib is hanging a mobile above a baby's crib.
I had a small nit I believe with 38across "said with a sneer" = snide Shouldn't that be "remark type said with a sneer" or somesuch... you can't really say a snide, can you? Snide is not a noun, it's an adjective, right? Or am I missing something here?
and I thought the crib thing was about putting a mobile phone in a "crib" for charging... but i they're mostly just plugged in for charging anyway.
Shouldn't we all be rooting for Bemidji State in today's NCAA hockey Frozen Four? What a wonderful word. Needs to be in a crossword soon.
Amusing puzzle, perhaps a bit easy for a Thursday, but fun. I hope Ron Howard isn't too upset by the clue for 13-Across.
"Said with a sneer" is an adjectival phrase.
That remark was said with a sneer
That remark was SNIDE
They switch out perfectly
hmmmm...being psycologically unable to abandon a rant (ha!), I will counter by pointing out that jae notes the mobile is above the crib, not in the crib. I may be able to recall seeing a mobile actually IN a crib, but I'm going to supress that memory as it undermines my rant.
secondary rant: There is a carpet company in Chicago (and elsewhere?) called LUNA, and its commercials include someone singing the phone number. I now cannot get "773-202-LUNA" out of my head. This puzzle is messing with me!!!
Fun puzzle for me. (Most fun was the Aha! of deconstructing COZYYOUNG.)
Like Rex, I was lead by NOVA to SCOTIA, so I had the AAHS very early, followed by the LION part of 57 A, so I briefly thought I should be looking for TINMAN, SCARECROW, and TOTO, but quickly resolved.
Just two write-overs, 4 D, YESIAM for YESIDO, and 58 D, DUE for DOS (oops, wrong language!)
Rex and I are standing in the kitchen saying "aaah" and "oooh" and "OZ" because I couldn't get the homophone thing to sound at all right. "OZ" and "aaah" have quite different vowel sounds in my Kiwi accent, so I was complaining that the theme made no sense whatsoever.
If you were stuck imside of Mobile with the Memphis blues, you would call your home a crib. Or not.
today's washington post puzzle is a blindauer, too!
That's so funny about MOBILE. At first I thought the answer would be CART as in shopping cart for a homeless person. Talk about depressing. So when I got CRIB I was still thinking you can roll a crib, sort of. AHA: MOBILE is what's hanging in the crib. Amazing how our minds get stuck.
I also liked OZ stacked above OZ in the side-by-side words COOP/OZZY.
Oh, it was nice seeing NAZARENE around this Easter time.
I feel ya, Kelly. "Snide" stopped me too, though it was obviously the answer, because I couldn't see it as a noun. Then I thought, maybe it's shifted to noun status, like the word "bad" in "My bad!" Can you apologize for a nasty remark by saying, "My snide?"
This was my first time going over to the LA Times site, and it was actively painful using that app. Navigating with the arrow keys was almost impossible, and since I use the spacebar to blank out letters, it was pretty much a complete disaster all around. Just wasn't worth the aggravation. Ah well.
My bad. I should have said I couldn't see snide as an adjective.
Mobile home = CRIB i.e. You can move it all over and a baby lives there ("calls" it home). D-OH!
I'm dense and/or the puzzle was too obtuse for me, constructors new to me.
Obtuse (simple e.g. ATT(S) rather than ATTYS ), generally not my kind of fun, chacun a son gout. Glad it was well liked.
meh to me mama
Yay, for Tony and Patrick...The two Wizards of OZ!
I was snoOZing and missed the JUDY/MGM connection!
Gotta... pay... more... attention to the men behind the curtain. If I only had a brain!
@Jeff in Chi & others
I found a HOME for my Emmy on the mantle. It's an "Emmy Home".
(It really looks at home there)
Went thru a similar thing with a mobile (you know, the toy with dangles on the ends of strings) on the crib.
.../Glitch
@40A: Oxygen is O2; ozone is O3. We have all smelled it: it's "the peculiar odor in lightning storms".(Wikipedia)
"Z's can be very clarifying."
My favorite sentiment in your writing today, Rex. (She says after awakening.)
@Brian, thanks for the Luna explanation. I was thinking space programs too.
@retired chemist, LOL, Mike Myers as MINI MOZART. :)
@jeff in chicago, thanks to your rant, I now can't get the jingle for Empire out of my head.
@joho, I, too, thought the CRIB was a mobile home because they are usually on casters and also, the sides can move up and down
@Glitch, do you really have an Emmy? Tell!
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end...?
@twangster - seems like it worked. Market is 200+ in the green today.
To my ear, AAHS and OZ are homophones. However, I have lived in many parts of the country where those 2 sounds are not congruent and I can certainly understand the debate whenever homophones appear in the puzzle.
I enjoyed this puzzle because I was able to "see" the homophones. I suppose this debate is why the puzzle was considered Thursday level but I really liked all the misdirection the constructors brought to bear. Did anyone fall into the M*A*S*H trap at 64A? Or misconstrued KT Oslin as KD Laing?
I did along with many others but eventually sorted everything out.
I was content with the CRIB being one of those fold-up, portable things that turned out to be a bit of useless baby paraphernalia.
Bill's homophonic AAHS and OZ may work in Jersey, but I can't even twist them to sound the same. Reminds me of that little quiz that Orange dug up a month or two ago, where with a bit of vowel similarity or differentiation you were told roughly where you came from. Seemed to work surprisingly well in our small, selective sample.
I definitely jumped to Bob Marley before thinking PSALM on the Babylon Clue.
We've been without cell phones and Internet all day in Northern California. I wonder how widespread the problem was?
@fikink,
Yes, "emmy on the mantle" is true.
Details (maybe) next time Emmy is a clue or answer (have to remain on topic or Rex will --- whatever Rex does when you don't).
--- end of shameless bragging, but I think I may have come up with an avitar ---
.../Glitch
re: Mobile -- think Alexander Calder! If you have an original, it's worth a slew of $$$...
∑;)
Vote for your favorite Simpsons stamps.
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Who hangs a Calder in a crib? Think Fisher-Price.
@fergus re:AAHS vs OZ-
Yes quite which is why I made it a point to say that what sounds the same to me may sound different to others and used the word "see" to try and establish a baseline that all folks could use to solve.
Does this make the kind of sense I hoped it would?
@Anon 1:37 -- I hate the applets too, which is why I download the puzzles in AcrossLite from the Cruciverb.com website. Sometimes I do them on the computer and sometimes I print them out and solve with a pencil. There's a link in the sidebar over at the LAT blog (and in Rex's sidebar too).
@Bill, I thought MASH and tried K.T. LAING, too (which I tried to spell LANG)
@twangster: "OK, here's what's going on. Obama wants us to feel confident so we'll spend money to spur the economy," Not so far-fetched, I think. Maureen Dowd's column about Obama on Sunday was entitled, "The First Shrink."
@glitch I'll hold you to it! My eye is on alert for EMMY in the NYT puzzle.
@Andrea Carla Michaels: you snoOZe you lOZe!
@Bill from NJ: I definitely thought M*A*S*h* first.
@fergus: I'm a native Californian and AAHS and OZ = same. Maybe you're from the Latvian part of CA? Just kidding, but really I don't get why you can't hear it. It's not a New Jersey thing for sure.
Three & out ... fun Thursday, hope Friday is, too.
I liked this puzzle a lot, especially when I figured out the theme after I was done! I saw all the ozs, but some of the answers seemed really forced until the aha moment of taking out the ozs. And the other oz references were great.
Count me in with those who thought reggae before psalms for the river of babylon clue.
OK, this is getting curious. AWES and OZ sound like perfect homophones to me. AWWW, the utterance heard in the presence of a cute baby, also rhymes there. On the other hand, AAHS are more like what the tongue-depressing doctor wants you to say. To switch that sound to a homophone of OZ, I would wager would require a greater or more penetrating form of pleasure than mere contentment. A deep tissue massage perhaps, which even entails a bit of pain is what bends the straight short a sound to that of the short o (or maybe more precisely the o with circumflex above it, as in ought or raw).
If you've got the hard mid-western accent, however, my pronunciation biases won't make any sense.
fergus-
You live on the west coast, I live on the east coast and never the twain shall meet.
These puzzles that rely solely on similarity of sounds are, perforce, not going to work for everybody. "Perfect homophones" are a contradiction in terms.
I do hope it's recognized that the pettiness of my argument rests on insouciant subjectivity.
Read recently that regional accents in America are actually becoming more pronounced, contrary to expectations of media-enforced tendencies toward uniformity.
We people who love language like to carve out small slivers of meaning and stake them out for our own.
I don't find your argument petty at all, fergus, I think it worthy of casual discussion.
4 (oops!) and out
The state of Kansas used to have a tourism TV ad that ran in the midwest. The tagline was, Kansas, the land of AAHS. Total homophone in flyover country...
Rex and all you wonderful people,
I know it's late (Rex might be up yet?), but I just had to login and say HI
I've been lurking five-weeks-back for over 2 years and I must say I feel like I know you all (yikes).
I finally signed up for NYT puzzles online (about 10 cents a day compared to 28 cents/day local paper, such a deal!), and I'm overjoyed to read you all nearly real time. Hopefully I'll have the courage to comment tomorrow!
... and I would have to concede that that resolves the issue quite completely.
There's no place (that sounds)like home.
Welcome Lisa. There's always someone around.
But not me the next couple of days so everyone play nice. Have a good trip Rex.
Thanks for the welcome, Crosscan, you're sweet.
Lisa -- I did the same thing a couple of years ago, welcome aboard!
welcome lisa I will welcome u again on todays blog too
5 weeks on and I make exactly the same initial errors as Frances (47A. BROKE) and Bill from NJ (27D. LAING). Else, a really pleasing Thursday puzzler.
Incidentally, the word carom (24A.) was used frequently by classic Montreal Canadiens hockey broadcaster Danny Gallivan as in "Richard shoots, the puck caroms off the boards behind the goalie to Beliveau who shoots and scores".
Other than working in a few Zs and Js, I thought this puzzle was lame. I still don't get the whole 'OZ' thing. The clues and answers don't make any sense except for the "Pride of 12". I've never seen the word "attorneys" abreviated ATTS. Like 10-down? DEM. C'mon! How is being a Democrat like being the only President born in Hawaii? And the only place I can tell anyone refers to a utility vehicle as a UTE is in Australia. So, if that's where you're going, why not just have the clue be "utility vehicle"? What does "adaptable truck" have to do with it? Dum-Da-Dum? Someone please explain that one. The whole NOSH and "Bite" combo is weakly related. OZZY should have been "former Black Sabbath singer". And the clue for SERENE should have been "Calm". "Collected" is way at the bottom of synonyms. Look, if you're going to be clever, then be clever. Don't jack around with half-assed stretches to try to stump people. Comfy kids and Cy Young? Please.
@waxy - If we could only get Danny's "Savardian Spinarama" into a puzzle
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