Movie format of old / FRI 4-29-11 / ___ 2.0, Bill Gates's house / Where I-80 crosses I-35 / Provincial capital NW of Madrid / Alto preceder

Constructor: David Quarfoot

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none


Word of the Day: Anapest (41D: "Au revoir," for example) —

An anapaest (also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. This word comes from the Greek ανάπαιστος, anápaistos, literally "struck back" (a dactyl reversed), from 'ana-' + '-paistos', verbal of παίειν, paíein: to strike. (wikipedia)

• • •

Rex is off in LA, so you get a guest blogger today. Which is me, SethG. Hey, everybody!

I haven't been here for a bit. Did you miss me? David Quarfoot hasn't been around for a much longer bit, and I certainly missed him. And I know why.

So much fun stuff! When you start with SNOOKI (1A: TV star who wrote the novel "A Shore Thing", informally), and you end with SEXTING (63A: Got a little dirty, in a way), you know the puzzle's gonna have a current and informal vibe. And I like both of those things. Sure, you've got your standard old literary term, like ANAPEST, but you've also got a new literary term, like REFUDIATE (35D: 2010 coinage meaning "to reject"). For every dry word like OTIOSE (61A: Indolent), you've got a KERFUFFLE (5D: Tizzy) or a CAVEMEN (40D: Troglodytes). (Hi Bob!)

Some of the short stuff isn't exciting, as most 3- or 4-letter words aren't exciting, but there's nothing too bad. And a grid like this lives and dies by its longer, meatier stuff, and much of that stuff is terrific. The concept of a (39A: Hotel amenity) isn't exciting, but you don't see SHOWER CAP in the puzzle every day. I HEART is a 6-letter partial, but the clue (17A: Start of many a bumper sticker) revives it. And, my favorite, THE POSITION, which would be terrible if it weren't clued with (54A: It may be assumed).

Like I seem to do every time I'm gonna guest-blog, I didn't get to the puzzle until way too late. I started fine in the NW, where KENKEN was a gimme (15A: Diversion also called MathDoku) that gave me NEHRU (2D: P.M. who was father of another P.M.) and ONE AM (3D: What the ringing of two bells might signal on a ship). I HEART followed, and then I was on to the oddly literal PRAY FOR RAIN (19A: Devoutly wish a drought to end) and moving to the east.

My momentum slowed, and then slowed to a trickle, and then eventually stopped, with most of the bottom still unfinished, when I was almost too tired to brush my teeth. I successfully brushed, went to sleep, and woke up early to finish the puzzle and not watch The Wedding. And now I'm writing this for you, but I don't have much time before I've got to publish and go to work.

Short short version, I finished, with not too much trouble.

Bullets:

• 38A: Game in which all pieces have four components (TETRIS) — this took me way too long to figure out. I think we've shown the Human Tetris here before, but probably not this version.
  
  
• 45A: ___ 2.0, Bill Gates's house (XANADU) — I actually had a Z here for a while, and DR Z seemed just as possible as DR X for (37D. Bogart's only horror film title role, 1939).
• 53D: Group whose name combines the first letters of its members' names (ABBA) — Of course. Yet my first answer was AC/DC, and I imagined that SECURED was a (57A: Kind of mortgage). I guess my mortgage is secured, but SUB-PRIME makes much more sense here. I wanted some sort of sculptor for (62A: One making a bust, maybe), but it's the straighter-forward DEA AGENT.
  
• 54D: Palin boy (TRIG) — I considered TRYG, but then I refudiated it.
  

Signed, SethG, Royal Vizier of CrossWorld

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