SUNDAY, Mar. 4, 2007 - Randolph Ross

Solving time: untimed - but like every puzzle this week, it seems, this one was on the easy side
THEME: "You Can Look It Up" - 63A: Dictionary source for each asterisked clue in this puzzle (Random House Unabridged)

I feel as if I am tempting fate by remarking on the easiness of recent puzzles. I'm sure this means that I'll get eaten alive by the Wednesday puzzle this week. Still, things have been pretty smooth sailing lately. Maybe I'm just getting better and the puzzle difficulty doesn't really need tweaking. I should develop a difficulty level rating system, ranging from PWN3D (easiest) to NO MAS (hardest). I guess these are based on things one might exclaim on completing (or, perhaps, in the case of NO MAS, not completing) the puzzle. I need words for levels of difficulty in between. Suggestions appreciated.

This theme ruled, IMOO. Oh, in case it's not clear, all clues have answers that relate to the placement of the clue's word or phrase in the RANDOM HOUSE UNABRIDGED dictionary, and those answers are themselves familiar phrases. The first theme clue sets this up - 23A: *Where to find para in the dictionary (one below par) - and subsequent themed clues just have ellipses, implying an extension of the 23A "para" question to later words, e.g. 46A: *... Hancock ... (beforehand). Just the sight of RANDOM HOUSE UNABRIDGED running across the length of the middle of the puzzle give me happy feelings. It is true that once you got the theme, you could at least get the beginning part of most of the asterisked clues pretty easily - and yet the cleverness of the whole endeavor, complete with 180-degree rotational symmetry for all asterisked answers, made solving the puzzle a pleasure.

[took a two-hour break for pancakes and for showing a couple of first-graders who's the boss of Crazy 8's]

58A: "The Man Who Knew Too Much" actress, 1934 (Edna Best)

This puzzle got a little sticky at the end, and this answer was one of the reasons. I had EDNA B-S-, and thought it could be BUSH or BEST. Even the "S" was tentative because I didn't really like WHISH (43D: Rustling sound) - SWISH or WHOOSH seemed more appropriate answers. Further, if it was BEST, which it was, the E gave me EMS for 60D: Modem termini? which I did not understand, primarily because the clue appeared (on paper) to be [Modern termini?]. In case you don't understand the clue/answer, "termini" are end points, and "modem" begins and ends with the letter "m" - thus "modem termini" are m's, written out here as EMS. To add to my problems in the Utah region of this puzzle, I did not know who 70A: Actress Kimberly of "Close to Home" (Elise) was - I don't even know what "Close to Home" is (a newish TV drama?). All of these problems might have been taken care of sooner than later if I'd only been able to see 44D: Broad, in a way (ear-to-ear)! When you are thinking a one- or two-word answer, EAR-TO-EAR is quite inscrutable, I assure you.

More stuff I didn't know

57D: Mallard cousins (widgeons)

A widget crossed with a pigeon gets you ... these birds! The word "mallard" always makes me think of this guy, so divorced from nature and immersed in the world of comics am I. I had a little trouble in this little puzzle thoroughfare - the one connecting Virginia with western Tennesse - because of both this answer and the parallel 56D: Take _____ (swing hard) [a rip], which I had as A CUT. It took me far too long to put in FRI for 62A: When "Dallas" aired for most of its run: Abbr. because the "C" from A CUT was where the "R" from A RIP should have been. For a while, I thought the "Dallas" clue might be referring to a time of day ... (9pm?).

76A: Volga feeder (Oka)

Aargh, Revenge of the European Rivers!

77A: Fashion designer Saab (Elie)

Memo to self - commit this dude's name to memory, as you have been busted by him before, and his name is so crossword-friendly that is bound to appear again and again.

11A: _____ II razor (Trac)

OK, I shave, with a razor, and I watch TV, so between the two of those activities, why did I not get this instantly. I blithely wrote in MACH. Then when that proved untenable, TECH. Stupid made-up hard-C advertising names.

109D: Kind of lane (HOV)

Heard of these, but we didn't have them in CA when I was growing up, or if we did, I didn't know. We had diamond / carpool lanes. There is a Jay-Z song (perhaps many) wherein he refers to himself as HOV. I can't explain, but this guy can. Officially, the term refers to "High-Occupancy Vehicle." I would like to add to my street cred by name-dropping not only Jay-Z but DRU Hill (78A: _____ Hill, R&B group), which was a gimme for me. I may even have a DRU Hill song on my iTunes, on one of my MTV dance compilations. Perhaps I should stop now before this gets any more embarrassing. OK, I just changed the music on iTunes from the very hip Decembrists to the very rump-shaking DRU Hill, specifically "In My Bed." I believe the chorus references "Goldilocks and the 3 Bears": "Somebody's sleepin' in my bed / Messin' with my head..."

Literary Training Pays Off (somewhat)

47D: Old mythological work (Edda)
53A: Like some Keats works (odic)

OK, that second one is an adjectival groaner, but I like that these answers are both quaintly literary and intersecting. I had EPOS for EDDA at first. That clue in four letters could also accommodate SAGA.

62D: Monastic title (Fra)

Know this only from the Robert Browning poem "Fra Lippo Lippi," which is also the name of a Norwegian synth/pop band.

55A: Rival of Cassio (Iago)

Ooh I sadly tanked this one. I was thinking of watch brands (or keyboard brands), not Shakespeare characters. Turns out that CASIO the electronics brand is spelled, well, like that.

Final Thoughts

"I ain't fer it, I'm AGIN it!" (50D: Votin' no on) - I just like quoting Abraham Simpson any chance I get, even if it means repeating the same quote I used last time AGIN was in the puzzle. Some answers I admire include:

DAS BOOT (84A: 1981 German-language hit film)
CRAP GAME (71A: Shooting match?)
DOOFUS (1D: Pinhead) - I can't see this answer enough; really really love all the words my sister might have called me when I was a teenager (or ... now, I guess)
BRALESS (85D: Without support, in a way) - [!]
LESAGE (24D: Writer of "Gil Blas") - OK, I don't exactly like this, I'm just dead curious about who the hell this guy is, as he's been in many of my puzzles lately; whoa, 18th century! Old School.

OK, must lunch, then walk in woods (as it's FINALLY warm enough to do so without physical pain), then prep for my teaching week.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Read more...

FRIDAY, Feb. 9, 2007 - Eric Berlin

Solving time: 16:50

THEME: none

What a horrible, horrible feeling. I ran through this puzzle like a hot knife through butter ... until I hit the NW, and then I went into what felt like an eternal free-fall. Nothing. I couldn't get a damn thing. Well, that's not true. I would get something, and then it wouldn't work, so I'd erase it - over and over and over. There were two major problems that prevented my getting into that NW quadrant (besides an ignorance of "country" music - who the !@#@ is Joe ELY? (1D: Country rocker Joe and others (ELYS)). And those problems were:

9D: Masters topics (sex lives) - I had the LIVES part and had no idea what this could be. Didn't know if LIVES was its own word, or part of a longer word, or what. Knew that the "Masters" in question wasn't "Master's exams" - that has an apostrophe in it - but the only other Masters I could think of was the golf tournament. What ends in -LIVES and concerns championship golf? Answer: NOTHING. Turns out the question refers to ancient sexperts Masters & Johnson. Here is something I didn't know (from "Discovery Health" website):

Masters and Johnson initiated a project that ultimately included direct laboratory observation and measurement of 700 men and women while they were having intercourse or masturbating.

Wow. Who volunteered for that? Maybe they paid well. Did they ever consider that people doing it at home, or wherever, might be quite different from people doing it in a lab, knowing they're being watched. This is like having cameras in the courtroom (which I'm against) - no one can be completely unselfconscious with a camera trained on him. Then there's the inevitable probes or cathodes or who knows what other Clockwork Orange-type gadgets. Maybe their interest was more purely physiological than sociological. This is way too much space to devote to this damn answer, which thwarted my entry (!) to the great Northwest. Oh, and the other roadblock?

22A: A, B or C, often: Abbr. (Ans.) - such a little answer! How could it possibly cause any harm? Well, I'll tell you. I did not have ANS. I had the good, perhaps better, ANSwer: APT. That's right APT! As in "Apartment," not the word APT, though my ANSwer was, in fact, APT, dammit. APT! And then that gave me a "P" at the end of 5D: Admit, which I was sure would have to be OWN UP, despite the fact that OWN UP was very discordant with its parallel neighbor, AVE MARIAS (4D: Parts of some services). So what did I do? Naturally, I erased AVE MARIAS (or, more precisely, I erased the AVE M- part). In the end, though, I have to give ANS. all the credit for my being able to solve this puzzle at all. After many, many minutes spent completely blanking out on everything in the NW, I finally saw that APT. could be ANS., I changed it, and the puzzle, including the very APT answer AH YES (6D: "I understand now"), was done inside of a minute. Oh, so 5D: Admit was not OWN UP, but LET IN (which, for the record, I botched again before getting it right, thinking the answer was SEE IN, ugh). In the end, if I only could have remembered the name of the very memorable tune, YAKETY SAX (17A: Polka heard frequently on "The Benny Hill Show"), all those Scrabbly letters would have helped me knock the NW out quite quickly (see 20A: 1950's political slogan ("I Like Ike"), which has the Scrabbly "K"s and which I got right away). But no. No no no.

Gimme gimme gimme

God bless the following answers, for giving me precious life when all the other answers were playing hard to get:

18A: Part of a chronicle (annal) - I've dated more than one historian in my lifetime. Well, no, just the one, actually. Anyway, this is a fairly common term, especially in medieval and early modern history. I also once read a dreadfully boring book called Annals of the Parish when I was in Scotland. It was written by a man named John Galt (1821). When I returned to the states, I would occasionally see these bumper stickers that read "Who is John Galt?" and I couldn't figure out why people wanted to know about a 19th-century Scottish novelist. Turns out the question is from Atlas Shrugged, which I have never read, but which my mother owns a signed copy of, for some reason. Who is John Galt? Here is John Galt.
27A: Hunter of literature (Evan) - second time he's been in the puzzle since September. I know because he's a name I remember. He is better known as the best-selling crime writer Ed McBain. Here is one of his 50's paperbacks (I've shown this before, but it's been over four months, so who's gonna remember?):
30D: Actress Sobieski (Leelee) - this girl is giving TERI POLO a run for her money as the (so-called) Actress clue of the 21st century. She was in another puzzle I did in just the past couple of days. Expect to see more of her. Coincidence: the last message I received in my email inbox was from a former student named, I kid you not, Li Li.
58A: "He seemed like such ____ boy" (a nice) - super-gimme for all! And right on top of another gimme: 60A: When to see la luna (noche)!
53D: Cartoonist Walker (Mort) - "Are you the creator of 'Hi & Lois,' because you are making me laugh." - Comic Book Guy, "The Simpsons" [note: this quote must be uttered with deadpan sarcasm]. See also: "If you are waiting for the 'Hi and Lois' signing, you are too late. It has been moved to the Springfield Colosseum."
36A: Doesn't puff idly (inhales) - piece of cake! Thanks, Clinton (god I irrationally love that man)
37D: TV witch (Samantha) - are you kidding? My cat is named for her evil cousin! Hey, somebody stole my idea!

What I Didn't Know

• 38A: Subject of the biography "All or Nothing at All" (Sinatra) - well, I know who SINATRA is, just not in reference to this particular book. Is the title a lyric from "My Way"? No, it's an actual song title. Sadly (very sadly) "All or Nothing at All" makes me think not of Sinatra but of O-Town. Have they been crossword fill? Because OTOWN looks like it could come in quite handy in a pinch.
• 29D: Bearer of catkins (alder tree) - first of all, I have NO idea what a "catkin" is. Is it anything like a kitten? No, they're just these sort of cone-y, fuzzy, probably seed-bearing thingamajigs. Isn't the addition of TREE here a bit ... superflous. I mean, I've seen the answer ALDER a few times, I'm pretty sure. Of course it's an ALDER TREE. Is there an ALDER FOX? ALDER DOLPHIN? ALDER BUS? What other kinds of ALDER are there?
• 49D: Like some stocks (no par) - again, if you need financial advice, please look elsewhere. Business and commerce-related fill stumps me almost as much as the damned Bible (although, today, I owned the Bible! Take that, ENOCH (47D: Methuselah's father)!
• 45D: Heavens: Prefix (Urano-) - inferrable, in a way, but outside my ken (not my CATKIN).
• 46D: Nervine, for one (tonic) - once again, inferred, not known. TONIC is also a terrible, terrible band. One of those generic white guy bands from the 90s whose name you know and whose songs are bland but very, very familiar, in a generic kind of way. Warning: you will find yourself humming and / or tapping your feet if you are not very careful. Infectious, in the way that pernicious diseases are infectious.

I like that OUTEREAR (44A: One end of a canal) and FRONT END (50A: Frequent area of auto damage) sit one atop the other, as it gives your REAR and FRONT in close proximity to one another. My favorite fill from this puzzle is all kind of negative, if not outright morbid. 21D: How a snake may be caught? had me thinking IN A PIT (too literal), but the real answer, IN A LIE, was so much better. I did not know what "anacusis" was in 39A: Develops anacusis, but with the last three letters in place I was pleasantly (?) surprised to see that the answer was GOES DEAF. ("Anacusis" reminds me of "ailurophobia" for some reason - perhaps because they are both disorders that start with "A," and I learned them both from crosswords: "ailurophobia" = fear of cats, which I do not have. See Serena, above). Lastly I enjoyed the frankness of 40D: A bad way to be left (for dead), which is how the puzzle nearly left me. But I had an AWAKENING (10D: Realization) and persevered.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Read more...

THURSDAY, Jan. 4, 2007 - Alan Olschwang

Solving time: Under Protest

THEME: Punctuation - Rebus (or so I thought) puzzle where punctuation symbols stand in for letters in theme answers and their crosses, e.g. 49A: President (,nder-in-chief - that is [COMMA]nder-in-chief)

Oh, applet. Applet, applet, applet. If it's a rebus, then symbols go where letters normally would. So why, when I put all the right symbols in the right places, would you Not Accept My Grid!? I know, I'm a novice at the applet, and I should have known the rule (is it a rule?) that you just put in the First Letter of whatever symbol or idea or multi-letter entry is supposed to go there. I figured this out very very late. My official time is something over 20 minutes, which is ridiculous. I'm guessing it was closer, much closer, to 10, but I'll never know, as I didn't look at the time when I first pressed "DONE" and I had hidden the clock anyway. So ugh x infinity. Plus one. But seriously, for this puzzle of all puzzles, why not just accept the . and , and : and - ?

I will wait til tomorrow to blog this, as my frustration is too fresh for me to see the puzzle clearly. It has many fine features, and my big big problems were in the N and especially NW, where 14A: Puncture (hole) eluded me til the Very Last Second (or what would have been the Very Last Second if the applet had behaved properly). I had BORE, both because I did not know 3D: Asia's Trans _____ Mountains (Alai) (I had URAL at first), and because I could not see 1D: Tool holder (shed) for the life of me and thought maybe an S-BED was something... that's my favorite preposterous supposition in a good long while. Both the SHED and the HOLE clues are pretty tricky, the former because "holder" somehow suggests a belt or some other implement actually keeping the tools in place or elevated, and the latter because "puncture" immediately suggests verb, not noun (though upon reflection, yes, "puncture" can indeed be a noun). So when the applet rejected my first come-on, I thought my NW corner was still f-ed up. The whole SHED-HOLE struggle had me doubting myself. But after many, many diligent scans of the Entire Grid, I decided no, the grid is right ... there is a technical problem. When I saw that you cannot put more than 4 letters in a single square, I thought "well, COMMA has five letters, so that will never work," and so I remained stumped until I finally read the fine print about the first letter of a symbol being adequate. Even when I changed all the symbols to letters, I was very very dubious that this would have any effect. And yet ... tada!

43D: Pork _____ (loin)
51D: Show eager anticipation (drool)

These words really should not be anywhere near each other, especially with NUDE (21D: Botticelli subject) and CRAVE (52D: Hunger for) so nearby. It's all too disturbing. ABRADES (42D: Rubs) isn't helping.

48A: Having I-strain? (selfish)
9D: Small bag (carry-on)

These words both want to be other words. Every time I look at this grid I keep seeing SHELLFISH - the word sits underneath PAELLA for god's sake (44A: Spanish entree) - and CRAYON. Likewise, REINA (19A: Isabel, for one) looks like its missing a "T" and SHIRR - well that word just looks wrong in any context.

63A: Singular, to Caesar (rara)

Ooh, I don't like this. "Singular" seems to imply, if not outright declare, ONE-ness, where RARA means "rare." I understand that somehow, colloquially, "singular" means exceptional and not necessarily unique, but still, I was looking for some form of one, like UNA or something.

20A: Condescend (deign)
32A: Poured (rained)
19A: Isabel, for one (reina)
58D: Skates (rays)
66A: Uncommon trick taker (trey)

When the REINA would not DEIGN to help her subjects, God sent a plague: it RAINED RAYS for TREY days.

9D: Small bag (carry-on)

Hmmm. "Small" compared to what? A CARRY-ON is huge compared to a toiletries bag (which, incidentally, I no longer CARRY ON airplanes, as officials are sure to confiscate it for its dangerous shampoos and unguents). I really wish this answer had been clued ["_____ My Wayward Son"].

15A: "The Last of the Mohicans" woman (Cora)
68A: _____ Gwyn, mistress of Charles II (Nell)

These two answers were blind spots for me, but gimmes for Polly (my new name for my wife - I've been instructed by Andrew not to refer to her as "Wife" anymore, as it sounds misogynist, bigoted [I wrote "bigtoed" just now, ha ha], and hateful to him. Done and done, sir). This is the second CORA this week that I haven't known. Makes me wish for the return to the puzzle of Irene CARA. My knowledge of Fenimore Cooper's work begins and ends with Twain's evisceration thereof - one of the greatest pieces of humor / literary criticism ever written, especially if you have ever been forced to endure a Cooper novel. NELL Gwyn was somewhere in the back of my mind, as I have a friend / colleague who is deliriously and orgasmically in love with all things Charles II. Seriously. He came [!] dressed as Charles II to a Halloween party last year (I, on the other hand, put on my Batwoman T-shirt, then spent the rest of the night saying "... no, BatWOMAN ... she's a lesbian now, you know...").

25A (THEME): Sprint (hundred yard -)
13D (THEME): Haphazardly (slap -)

SLAP [DASH] gave me the theme in one epiphanic moment early in the solving experience. Or, rather, it clued me into the rebusness. I thought [DASH]es would be everywhere, but then [COMMA]NDER-IN-CHIEF forced a reconsideration of that assumption. The theme answer it somehow took me longest to get was 40A: Without a regular schedule (a[period]ically), first because it's a word you hardly ever hear, and second because in puzzle-rush mode, I was not paying attention to precisely where rebuses should go. The Down cross, 29D: Week or month at the office, usually (pay [period]), was not helping, as I had only the PA- (the "Y" being as yet invisible because SYM (37A: Kind of orch.) is not an abbrev. with which I was familiar, though yes I can see that it stands for "SYMphony"). Where was I? O, the themes. The [colon] was also tricky at first - even after I had figured out 33A: Haiti, once (French [colon]y)), I couldn't get 35D: Wearers of eagle insignias ([colon]els) for way too long. Wanted COLONIALS or COLONISTS. Damn Your Unphonetic Spelling, COLONELS!

Enjoyed seeing 59A: Sci-fi figure ('droid) in the grid. Like the way DIOR (31A: Classic Paris couture house) is sitting in a very neatly centered way right atop the FRENCH in FRENCH [COLON]Y. Somewhere I.M. PEI and Mr. and Mrs. ROPER (from TV's "Three's Company" as well as the short-lived spin-off "The Ropers") are feeling slighted that they were passed up as cluing options in this puzzle (see 44D: Canadian prov. and 22A: Rodeo performer - the latter of which I had initially answered with CLOWN, which, coincidentally, was what I felt like when I kept getting rejected by the applet ... and the commentary has come full circle).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Read more...