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Dancer Jeanmaire / SUN 7-4-10 / Actor/comic Brad / Play featuring Mrs Malaprop / Dahl Southern Yankee / Love surfeits not * like glutton dies
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Constructor: Patrick Blindauer & Tony Orbach
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: "Making Ends Meet" — Words that share the last two and first two letters, respctively, are mushed together, forming one big non-word.
Word of the Day: RENÉE Jeanmaire (104D: Dancer Jeanmaire) —
Zizi Jeanmaire (born April 29, 1924), is a ballet dancer and wife of renowned dancer and choreographer Roland Petit. She became famous in the 1950s because of her title role in the ballet Carmen, produced in London in 1949. // Born in Paris, France, as Renée Marcelle Jeanmaire, she met her future husband and long-time collaborator Roland Petit at the Paris Opera Ballet at the age of nine. In 1954 they married, and their successful shows put her on the road to stardom. By this time she was the prima ballerina at Les Ballets des Champs-Elysées. She became noted for her energy and passion. // This led to a brief stint in Hollywood (where she was credited as Jeanmaire), appearing in the musicals Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and Anything Goes (1956). After that, she concentrated on ballet, producing more than 60 shows with Petit. (wikipedia) — [the fact that she's not breaking into puzzles as ZIZI — the name by which she's better known, it seems — is a tragedy]
[...whoa...]
• • •
This is a solid idea, but has little of the cleverness and playfulness and sense of humor that I have come to expect from these guys (esp. the wily Mr. B). The theme answers are just mushed words, and while there's an elegance there — every pair of words is linked by precisely two letters —
there are no laughs, no ahas, not even smiles. Not in the theme answers, at any rate. Elsewhere, there was some good stuff. I mean, how do you not like a clue like 5D: Gift from the well-endowed (STUD...ENTAID)? Lots of theatery stuff today (dance/Broadway/movies), which is not surprising. If you see these guys' names on your puzzle, you should expect it. Nothing but RENÉE threw me too much today. I know ARLENE Dahl as prime 6-letter crosswordese, one of the "What's My Line" ARLENE duo (the other=Francis) (95D: Dahl of "A Southern Yankee," 1948). Thought I didn't know 113D: 1950 Anne Baxter title role, but it turns out I just forgot who Anne Baxter was—not surprising, given the star wattage around her in "All About EVE." See also the (apparently) Swedish born Ms. OLIN (28D: Swedish-born "Chocolat" actress) and Mrs. Malaprop's star turn in "The RIVALS" (39D: Play featuring Mrs. Malaprop, with "The"). Lena OLIN co-starred in "Chocolat" with Johnny Depp, who is also in the puzzle, in one of his less famous roles—Donnie BRASCO (54D: Depp title role). Not much more to say in the way of general comments. I've had a (strong) mint julep earlier in the evening, so I should probably keep my commenting ambition to a minimum. I'm already concerned I'll wake up tomorrow morning and find my write-up rife with typos and errors, if not profanity. Coincidentally, nobody is more diligent about rooting out my mistakes than Mr. Blindauer. Every morning, when I check my email, I scan the Inbox ... any message from Patrick = 95% likelihood I have f'd up somehow.Theme answers:
- 23A: Technical trouble (COMPUTERROR) — sounds awesomely sinister
32A: Helper in herding (ENGLISHEEPDOG)- 42A: Collectible book (LIMITEDITION) — really hung up here early on, as I plunked down FIRST EDITION with no hesitation, and it worked quite well. The EDITION part, anyway.
- 57A: Line in London (PRIMERIDIAN)
- 66A: Like many an online password (CASENSITIVE)
- 76A: It might have a theater and planetarium (SCIENCENTER)
- 87A: Singer who played Cyrano in "Cyrano de Bergerac" (PLACIDOMINGO)
- 100A: Introvert or extrovert (PERSONALITYPE) — found this one roughish, for some reason. Came at it from the front, and kept thinking "PERSON WHO... PERSON OF ... ?"
- 111A: Protector (GUARDIANGEL)
6A: 1961 Charlton Heston/Sophia Loren film ("EL CID") — I have a movie tie-in paperback with them on the cover, so that helped.- 30A: Actor/comic Brad (GARRETT) — giant of "Everybody Loves Raymond" fame. Took me a while to see. Kept thinking PITT, despite the inaptness / shortness ... and then those two Ts showed up, taunting me.
- 48A: Cassette knob abbr. (VOL.) — Cassettes have knobs? Does "cassette" stand for "cassette *deck*?" What year is it?
- 71A: Rose who rose to fame in the 1980s (AXL) — he sure did. My first year of college. I still have a huge soft spot for "Appetite For Destruction," esp. "Sweet Child of Mine."
- 80A: "Love surfeits not, ___ like a glutton dies": Shak. ("LUST") — really wanted a conjunction, specifically "BUT."
'Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies...' (Adonis, from "Venus and Adonis," 1593)
- 81A: Show expanded to our hours in 2007 ("TODAY") — and the world is sooo much better for it. I'm sure.
- 103A: Grenache, for one (VIN ROSÉ) — at least I *think* I'm parsing that right. It's not VINROSE, is it? Seems a very odd phrase to have in French. Grenache is a ROSÉ. But here, sometime in the '70s (?), "VIN ROSÉ" is clearly in-the-language; at least it's in this guy's language.
- 116A: Future platypi (EGGS) — thought I'd be getting something Much more technical here.
- 8D: What a mummy might have (CURSE) — what a mummy might be *said* to have, yes.
- 11: "Bam!" man in the kitchen (EMERIL) — In the bedroom, who knows?
- 17D: Composer of "The Miraculous Mandarin" (BARTÓK) — My favorite composer not named "Beethoven."
- 44D: Demoiselle's dressing (TOILETTE) — not ROQUEFORT!? Damn.
- 91D: T.S. Eliot's "Theatre Cat" (GUS) — never seen the musical. The very thought of singing cats makes my skin crawl. Seriously, in my nightmares, costumed cats sing and prance about me, doing some kind of Cirque-de-Soleil-esque jumpings and gyrations, and I am helpless to escape.
- @JamesDunphy In a pub doing the xword and watching tennis (which I don't understand). Commentators tell me Murray does xwords too.
- @crystaleyesd Andy's been doing crosswords and playing wiff-waff! AND YOU SAY HE DOESN'T REPRESENT ENGLAND!
- @byPetaL Plaid shirt guy has been working on the crossword since we got stuck. It's been forever...he has one word done...it's wrong.
- @alisoncarey Thank you,Tuesday Crossword for making me google "polecat" and find Nelson Eddy singing The Owl and The Polecat: http://tinyurl.com/3azsjux
@jenunislawski Addicted to the Shortyz app for Android. Holy crosswords.- @mikeorren I fiddle with my phone while driving. But before you decry me as modern scourge, consider car just passed: driver working paper crossword.
- @jaymohr37 Monday NY TIMES Crossword. 50 Down answer: jewfro. Will Shortz anti semite?
- @theaurelian "Jewfro" was one of the answers in Monday's NYT crossword. Am I anti-Semitic if I think that's fucking awesome?
- @nataliarana mum,the whole point of a crossword isn't to make me look up every answer on google
- @dblue23 Guy who plays angel behind me doing a crossword puzzle
- @hellobuglers England manager Capello defends his team's inept defeat to Germany. "They'd been up all night trying to finish a very difficult crossword."
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
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51 comments:
Really delightful puzzle and a nice compliment to Patrick's other giant puzzle in the WSJ this past Friday. I was strangely dense in discovering the theme here, but once uncovered, the solving proceeded rapidly.
Of course, I love the showbizzy qualities of this puzzle. Anytime I see the name of one of these constructors on a puzzle, my Broadway radar automatically goes up. So when I saw both names together? YeeHAW!
@Rex: Your nightmare description of attending a performance of Cats is strangely accurate and got me giggling. I've only been dragged to see Cats twice, but each time I felt completely trapped.
@Fikink: How proud you must be to see your lab honored in the puzzle. Not sure how he feels being named after "The Theatre Cat."
Who knew Jeanmarie had a first name? I've always known her as Zizi Jeanmarie, so I was flummoxed to find the answer had five letters. I know her mostly from her film work Hans Christian Andersen and Anything Goes, as well as her one Broadway appearance in The Girl In Pink Tights (not old enough to have actually seen this, but I've got the cast album where Zizi sings with a delicious rasp). She was a terrific ballerina and always seemed perfectly matched with her husband Roland Petit. Here they are in something just a bit more classical than Rex's example above.
Thanks Patrick and Tony for this wonderful puzzle. Hope to meet up with you guys again on my next jaunt into the city.
I liked the idea for the theme, but I also missed some kind of payoff. Nothing that made me chuckle, nothing that even made me go "aha." It ended up feeling kind of sterile.
Picked up the theme with LIMITEDITION. Had the L from GEL in place, so that diverted me from making the "first" error I suspect I would have otherwise. Picked this up early in the puzzle, so I flew through it notably quicker than I typically do Sundays.
Spent way too much time snickering over "Gift from the well-endowed." I guess it's nice to know that my inner 13-year-old is alive and well. (It also reminds me of a headline I saw in the Bloomington, Ind. newspaper a dozen or so years ago: "IU class of [whatever year at least 40 years prior] presents endowment." It was not an image I needed in my head.)
I'm glad I was too young in the 1970s to really be aware of the Carlo Rossi commercials (although it does like vaguely familiar) or of correct pronunciation of French. It would have grated on me to keep hearing him pronounce "vin rosé" like it was short for "Vincent Rosé." (Incidentally, there's nothing odd about "vin rosé" in French; translates literally to "pink wine," and it is indeed what they call pink wines.)
It seemed like it took me waaaay too long to crack the theme, finally got it at Englisheepdog, after that it was pretty smooth sailing but it took forever to wrap this puppy up. I never really had a AH HA moment either, maybe that's way it was a little bit of a let down.
I have seen CATS about 5 or 6 times and have loved it every time, cried every time too over many of the songs, then again, I cry easily.
COME ON! future platypi!!! you guys are just too jaded if you didn't love this little gem!!And i can't believe rex didn't give a nod to John Dickson Carr-gottbe right up his alley-even if they weren't printed as comic books. I do have one little** don't think of caesar as an orator-sometimes his laughs weren't intended
LOVED this puzzle! My two favorite constructors!!!!!!!
Super clever, love the smushed theme, esp if you don't try and read the theme answers out loud...
Got it at PERSONALITYTYPE (just bec I had *TYPE and as I started writing in PESONALITY ran out of space...Ding!
PLACIDOMINGO extra cool...I mean how did they even think of this or come up with this idea?
Loved reading down: SMASH, SWERVES, DIVIDED...LOST STEAM, IN VAIN, seemed like mini-novellas.
AND I could almost "hear" the constructors:
ANYHOO, "Just AMO!"
Gotta love the NE:
FREAKS crossing ESCAPEPOD
Only a couple of writeovers:
MIT before RPI (Sorry, Tyler!);
SnAP for SLAP (got me!;
VINtagE/VINROSE
Plus I didn't know how to spell the AENEID
Oh! And a malapop...I put in EFT for the 116A Future platypi... only to have it pop up at 35D!
(@Syndy, totally agree, gem of a clue...think about it!)
(I found the Roman numeral MCXC sort of kicky instead of randomly annoying)
ANYHOO, loved this, thought it super clever and love these guys!
(And as mentioned on Friday, check out Patrick's hat trick/opuses: Thursday's CrossSynergy puzzle, Friday's Wall St. Journal and today's NYT!)
PLUS: It's his birthday!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PATRICK!!!!!!
Did this one at the beach yesterday, so I will blame heatstroke for one of my write-overs: Put in ENGLISHEPHERD (heat stroke, remember?) before ENGLISHEEPDOG. Also put in 50 A as FLEER on the first go-round, before TOPPS, but that seems a reasonable error.
Where is the credit for Matt Gaffney? As I put in 12 D, LOSTSTEAM, I said to myself, "OK, there's 'The entry in today's grid which would have made another theme answer.'"
I usually just give give certificates.
Wow--I'm happy and proud to say I'm Andrea "Noodges" Michaels today! If only in that I couldn't spell AENEID, either.
Got the theme at ENGLISHEEPDOG, and, BTW, thanks to Rex for that adorable photo of one. As everyone in the entire world has already noted, how the heck do they see?? My next favorite theme answers were CASENSITIVE and GUARDIANGEL.
I love seeing answers that may not be all that unusual in themselves but that I don't often see in crosswords, like PALLET and SPRIGS.
Fun easy sunday puzzle - although I was hoping for a Holiday theme.
I always put a sprig of parsley on my rotini!!
Happy b-day Patrick and also Rube Goldberg...(see Google)
bredbx...my mother always had one in the kitchen
Liked the theme and the puzzle generally. But who is Emperor Frederick I and who gives a ratzazz what Roman numeral year he croaked?
Happy Independence Day.
A good number of years ago, as I remember, there was a puzzle (probably a Thursday puzzle) whose theme clues all described a person. Each description was appended with "for short." It seems to me, one of the clues was "Great opera singer, for short." Of course, placidomingo was the answer, so this answer is a repeat and the theme is a repeat of the theme of that puzzle.
I remember one particular striking thing about that puzzle. The last of the theme clues was something like "Famous puzzlemaker, for short." After completing the puzzle, I had no idea who this person was. Until I looked at that puzzle's constructor's name (which I usually pay no attention to). The answer to the clue was that puzzle constructor's name! (Does anyone remember who it was? For some reason the name Newman sticks in my memory but not the first name.) That was the only time I know of that the constructor was clever enough to get his/her name into the grid.
@Sometimes a Good Memory -- Darn good memory, I would say! The puzzle you are referring to is March 25, 1998!
(I didn't remember it, but I do use the Xword Info website.)
There's an interview with Patrick Blindauer on the Wordplay blog where he acknowledges the previous use of PLACIDOMINGO but as something they only learned of after they had made (or were well into) the puzzle. There's a link to the older puzzle too. It was by GENEWMAN which isn't familiar to me among current puzzlemakers. Good memory, indeed!
I've stood (with one food in each hemisphere) on the Prime Meridian and it is not in London. Took a longish boat ride to Greenwich to see the museum there. It is east of London.
Otherwise liked this puzzle although I have never heard of Axl Rose.
Really enjoyed this, though my grid looked pretty sparsely filled after my first pass. The theme took a while to get, but certainly helped quite a bit once I cracked it.
@Sometimes a Good Memory - No, my friend, I think that's an amazing memory! Unless.....unless you're really Gene Newman!
Got hurt in the east, where I put FIRST instead of TRUST for the longest time - maybe I just don't trust financial institutions that much any more. I also had LOSESTEAM, and couldn't figure out how they allowed ORE and ORES in the same grid.
Happy Birthday to Patrick, Rube, and Malia Obama - no doubt coming soon to a crossword near you! Her uncle, Bob Obama, would have been perfect for this puzzle!
64A annoyed me, because the French word for key as I have always learned and used it is CLEF. I googled this morning to discover it can also be spelled CLE.
Didn't do well with the crossing of CLE/PICOTS. And most of the Grenache I drink is VIN ROUGE, but okay. I'm a big fan of P.B. and T.O., but this was a bit of a slog.
Count me on the loved-it side A nice break from the usual more-isn't-necessarily-better Sundays.
I got the theme when I couldn't picture an ENGLISHSETTER herding sheep.
Like Rex, I looked for the down answers to be crunched
(Is ENTAID a word?)
Rather a slog but OK for the most part. Had GOL for ages instead of OLE. I've never heard anyone shout OLE at a football (soccer) match and I live in a Spanish-speaking country.
I agree with @Hobbyist: the Prime Meridian is at Greenwich, which is East of London. Accuracy was sacrificed in the cause of alliteration. Also, is DRYROTS legitimate or can we just add an S to anything at all?
Oops, apologies for the DRYROTS comment above. I did Saturday and Sunday together and got the wrong one. I still don't like it though :-)
Got the theme at PLACIDOMINGO, although it took a while.
I don't get 28A:ORTS - anyone?
Just could not see TREADMILL, even with many of the letters!
1A:HAHAS was one of the last to fall.
Also had FIRSTEDITION before getting LIMITEDITION.
I thought the theme was cute; hard to know which answers were theme answers, though - wanted LOSTSTEAM to be LOSTEAM, for example.
Happy 4th!
"white grenache" is as bad as "white zinfandel" or even "white merlot." cloying and cheap, it is wine meant for people who don't like wine to drink. grenache is a grape of the rhone region and is also found (as "garnacha" in spain). in it's solo form (it's usually found along side syrah and mouvedre...aka GSM) it is light and dry like a beaujolais or a sangiovese, but a little fruitier. "vin rose" does not accurately describe grenache but it is "white grenache."
"VOL" for a knob on a cassette deck was silly too. most of the early cassette decks had those "wheel" thingies on the side. "hi-fis" had knobs, perhaps. again, too much of a stretch at misdirection.
i also wonder why 12D (LOST STEAM) wasn't included as a theme answer...kinda confusing that this one was slipped in there under the radar.
just a question about our english language: why don't words like "opuses" and "yeses" have two consonants in them? add "buses" to that list. should be "opusses," "yesses," and "busses" if i had anything to say about it. (oh and i would also say nothing should be capitalized...)
:)
@JenCT - Ort - a morsel left at a meal, scrap. [Usually heard nowadays in "orts and scraps.]
@rolin mains - "Busses" are kisses.
Cute theme made for a fun Sunday morning. It took me longer than usual to get it which is always good.
Thanks, PB & TO! Also congratulations Patrick for triple hits, very impressive indeed. My fave was the WSJ ... which brings to mind Happy Birthday to you and the USA!
Was distracted during most of my solving by two feuding children, and never really got my mojo going. Still finished with no major hangups, although a lot of fill I wasn't sure of (AMO, DAI, GUS, CLE). Got the theme at ENGLISHEEPDOG, which helped in solving the rest of the puzzle. STUDENTAID was amazingly tough to get, even when I had all but two of the letters by crosses. Sometimes you get a mental block that is hard to shake.
captcha - singers - the first one I've seen that is an English word (and was also part of the sub-theme today).
Fun puzzle. No one in the history of mankind has ever said, "Just a mo!" Not once. Never.
@Harleypeyton: Don't know about the actual phrase "Just a mo," but the abbreviation for moment is common enough. Here's a lyric from Stephen Sondheim's Follies that utilizes it:
Hello, folks, we're into the Follies!
First, though, folks, we'll pause for a mo'.
No, no, folks, you'll still get your jollies--
It's just I got a problem that I think you should know...
@Hobbyist,
Greenwich (pronounced /ˈɡrɛnɪtʃ/ ( listen) gren-itch, /ˈɡrɛnɪdʒ/ gren-idge, or /ˈɡrɪnɪdʒ/ grin-idge)[1][2] is a district of South London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.
I've taken that boat trip too and it wasn't as long as a subway ride from Far Rockaway to Van Cortlandt Park.
@poc: OLE has moved into crosswordese with that particularly cluing, imo. I believe (emphasis on the speculative nature of the phrase) that it results from a mishearing of the song from the 1998 World Cup, which was held in France (the refrain was "Allez, allez, allez," which means "let's go" and sounds like "ole" to a lot of Anglophone ears, I guess). The song did stick around as a chant after the 1998 WC, though, so there is some legitimacy to it. It's just the wrong word.
@rolin mains: Any grapes typically used in red wines can be made into a rosé. And while many of them do indeed suck, in the hands of a skilled winemaker, they can be quite good, especially on a hot summer day. I don't recall what grapes the French typically use for rosés, however. I don't seem to remember many of them coming from the Rhône, however, which may rule out grenache.
Also, "buses" doesn't get two S's so as not to confuse it with "busses" (unless you really want multiple kisses instead of a multiple mass transit vehicles). Reminds me of a road sign I saw in New Orleans about 10 years ago that instructed cars to go in one lane and people wanting kisses to go into another.
(Also, the technical reason those words don't get a double-s is because even with its wildly inconsistent spelling, English does have some conventions, and a double consonant typically (although far from always) indicates a change in the vowel's pronunciation, usually to a "short" form of the vowel. These words don't change the vowel when made plural, so no double-s.)
@JenCT: I like the theme, too. All the phrases are in the language, but I had never noticed the repetition of the letters before.
Maybe a holiday theme would have been nice, though. Perhaps words and phrases from the Declaration, like "unalienable" (or is it "inalienable"?), "self-evident", "usurpations" and so on.
Grenache is the basis of the Rhone rosé wines of Tavel and Lirac, among others. A Tavel rosé, bone dry and containing 13.5% alcohol, is not your mother's wine. At least if she's like my mother. If it is her wine, accept my congratulations on coming out as well as you have.
Bandol rosé always has grenache although the AOC laws require 50% mourvèdre.
Many California vinters make excellent grenache rosés, including Phelps and Bonny Doon. There's nothing better for a picnic on a hot day.
Was all set to ramble on about my puzzy deja-vuscosity feelin', but thanx to Sometimes and Bob K., nope.
Traipsed right in the front door with HAHAS/HIC, and just kept trompin' on through. Only real tough spot was at the popular 103-A: V?N?O?E. Closed out by makin' my semi-educated, semi-nat-tick guesses there, and ended up OK.
Liked AMO, HAW and ANYHOO a lot, but can't be a good sign when the puz is startin' to talk like me. If it starts leavin' off it's G's a lot, the end is near. MCXC and VINROSE kinda evened things out this time; don't never ever talk like that.
Tip #4 for beginners: Don't light more than two cherry bombs on the same match. Three tops. Always chuck the one bomb, afore lightin' the next one. And save one for the high school john, next fall. Hi-yo, EAU*DER*ILO*LES*DAI*REC, away!!
A busboy busses a table without kissing it (I hope :-).
And the spell-checker gripes about "busses." :-(
Tipsy Rex = hilarious write-up.
I'm going to buy some Rhone valley rose. Awesome juice for a summer afternoon.
Happy 4th to y'all!
Even though I got the theme right away, I found this a slog. Thank goodness others did too!
Almost forgot dept.
@44: You left out an E in the opening theme statement, you winocerous!
upon further review, tavel wines are dry roses that use primarily grenache.
i still think "tavel" would have been a better clue for VIN ROSE than "grenache," but that is just my opinion.
i stand corrected.
If you take all the doubled letters (ER SH ED ME SE CE DO TY AN) they form
CASHOREDYE ENDS MEET
Uhm, CASH-SHORE-REDYE
or the BP themed SHORE DECAY MEETS END
A teeny bit on the slog side for me, especially with a silly hang-up in the NE till near the end. I had an English Shepherd for ENGLISHEEPDOG, analogous to German Shepherd, I suppose. Was it the heat? ANYHOO, looking at Protic rather than EROTIC for Hot finally led me to the correct solution.
As for the musing over busing and buses, I agree that I'd have preferred a double ess to keep the u short. Fusses over busses won't get one far at this point though... too late! The problem originated when the Latinate omnibus was shortened to bus long ago!
∑;(
@Steve J, that is exactly why I always have to think about the proper spelling of "dessert" and "desert."
Thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, although Sundays do seem too big for good-weather days.
@harleypeyton: "Just a mo" is fine. I've heard people use it on occasion. It may be more British than American but it definitely exists.
@fikink dessert=you want more..therefore 2 esses
Hmmmm, July 4th, Holiday is the same day every year.
I guess a theme in that ilk would have been too much.
@Chefbea
Thanks for the emailed article.
I stay with the Avatar.
Coming in late because I've been to the beach (ala Bob K). Fun puzzle because of the weirdness of the 'smushed theme' (to parrot Andrea) and lots of little surprises like 'Future platypi' (one of my favorite clue/answers ever).
Appreciated the "Sweet Child of Mine" video. Tempted to say "the best power-ballad, ever."
Anon 2:55: A busboy buses the table. I've been one (a busboy, not a table).
Enjoyed Patrick and Tony's puzzle! Did two Patricks today, and another two days ago. Congratulations and happy birthday!
With the "platypi" clue of course I wanted ovae.... Had MIT before RPI as well, and vintage before vin rose. Cle messed me up because I knew clef, and we've had the "picot" discussion before, it is really a crochet thing rather than an embroidery one.
Ole? It's about soccer. Even in Holland we have a song we sing in the stadium that starts with many ole's. We may hear some on Tuesday.
I'm not Mrs. Blindauer, so I hope you won't mind my pointing out a missing 'e' in 'respectively' in your description of this puzzle's theme :-)
I actually liked the theme, and enjoyed the puzzle. Like others who've already chimed in, I, too, wanted ENGLISHEPHERD and goofed up with VINTAGE instead of VINROSE. And regarding AMO... "Just a mo!" - who says that? And why have I never heard it?
I liked several things about this puzzle, but two comments:
(1) isn't opera the plural of opus?
(2) more seriously, I started at the bottom for some reason and got the theme with PERSONALITYPE, except I didn't get the theme. From the title I thought all the theme clues would be two words where the last two letters of EACH word are equal to the first two letters of the OTHER word, so you could write it in a circle and overlap two letters twice. (I.e. PErsonality tyPE). Spent a long time looking for more of these, which I thought would have been a fantastic theme, and was largely disappointed by the rest of the theme clues.
syndicated puzzler here... not sure the time delay merits posting, but I thought I would throw in a link to the OLÉ song (which I can hear in my head when I think soccer) World Cup final is today, but the vuvuzelas are too dominant to hear any singing. I foresee that word in a puzzle some day soon...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKDfoaol4o
ps. thanks for adding to the enjoyment of Sunday puzzles by providing such a cool place to reflect and correct.
Somebody correct if I'm wrong ...........but the four down words STUDENTAID....ELEMENARY-EASTSIDER-AND ESCAPEPOD don't seem to be part of the clues of this puzzle, as so many have commented. Rex said STUD ENTAID ????, however I could be wrong. I only saw across words in the clue snswers.,,,,moondad
@Anon:
I believe Rex was simply referring to the irony of the word STUD being part of the answer for a clue with WELL-ENDOWED in it. Otherwise, I believe everyone agrees that the Down clues were not part of the theme.
And since I'm back here, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the clue about "Chess intro" (or something like that) with the answer being CEE. *groan* & grr
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