2001 best seller about competitive Scrabble / WED 6-18-14 / One-named singer who married Heidi Klum / Bindle toters / Wonderland cake message / Newport Beach isle

Constructor: Amy Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium 

THEME: BLANK TILE (58A: What you'd need to play 26-, 29-, 43- or 45-Across) — A Scrabble-related theme, where all the theme answers contain two of a letter for which there is only one tile in Scrabble (hence the need for the BLANK TILE to play the word—BLANK TILEs can be any letter you want them to be, or so I understand; I don't play)

Theme answers:

• JUJITSU (26A: Japanese "soft art" (max opening score of 92 points))
• TSKTSKS (29A: Sounds of censure (max opening score of 80 points))
• SPAZZES (43A: Totally inept sorts (max opening score of 104 points))
• XEROXED (45A: Ran off, in a way (max opening score of 94 points))

Word of the Day: SEAL (7D: One-named singer who married Heidi Klum) —

Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel (born 19 February 1963), known by his mononym Seal, is a British soul and R&B singer-songwriter. He has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide and is known for his numerous international hits, including "Kiss from a Rose", which appeared on the soundtrack to the 1995 film Batman Forever. He was a coach on The Voice Australia in 2012 and 2013.

Seal has won numerous music awards throughout his career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1992, four Grammy Awards, and an MTV Video Music Award. As a songwriter, he received the Ivor Novello award, for Best Song Musically and Lyrically, in consecutive years for "Killer" (1990)and "Crazy" (1991). [ed.: IVOR!] [wikipedia]

• • •

This puzzle had a tough hill to climb with me from the get-go, as I can't stand Scrabble. I won't go into detail, but, yeah, joyless game for insufferably competitive word-list memorizers (except you—you're not like that at all; I wasn't talking about you). Yuck. I think I read some of WORD FREAK a decade or so ago—whenever it came out. But I couldn't finish; nothing to do with the writing, everything to do with the culture being documented. So, as I say, I was not predisposed to like this. Adjusting for that prejudice, this seems a decent enough puzzle. It doesn't seem any great shakes to get these particular words into the grid. Lots of words have two "K"s, or two "Z"s, so the word choices seem quite arbitrary. Also, TSKTSKS is possibly the worst word ever invented—no joy seeing that in the grid. But the puzzle has a consistent core concept, and WORD FREAK is a good, reasonably contemporary tie-in, and the fill is no worse than average, so I'll give this a passing grade. If nothing else, the Scrabbly letters get you some colorful crosses.


I was under the impression that SPAZ(ZES) was pejorative / offensive, and several dictionaries say "yes," but other sites say that the word lost whatever offensiveness it used to have, or that, at any rate, offensiveness is contextual. To me this word is like "retard," in the sense that I used it all the time when I was a kid to refer to, say, my sister, but I would never use it now (having acquired a somewhat larger vocabulary and a somewhat greater desire not to offend people unnecessarily). I found the word jarring, however Scrabble-legal. But I can't get too mad at a puzzle that contains EAT ME, PRICK!


Bullets:

• 1D: Mini-metro (TOWN) — I had no idea what this was getting at. To me, a "metro" is a form of public transportation. I think I wrote in TRAM.
• 6D: 1974 Mocedades hit whose English version is titled "Touch the Wind" ("ERES TU") — the only (and I mean only) thing that redeems this lengthy piece of pure crosswordese is its symmetrically with Yet Another U-ending word (XANADU).
• 65A: Guinness word (MOST) — it only occurred to me just now that this answer has nothing to do with beer.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Read more...

1978 hit by Journey / MON 10-7-13 / 1959 hit by Drifters / 1970 hit by Eric Clapton / Magazine with annual 500 list / Bygone Kremlin resident / Collaborative web project

Constructor: Amy Johnson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging 

THEME: "SINGING THE BLUES" (63A: What the artists of 16-, 27- and 49-Across are doing (in reference to the last words of their hits)?) — theme answers are song titles wherein the last words may also be a variety of the color blue.

Theme answers:

• 16A: 1959 hit by the Drifters ("THERE GOES MY BABY")
• 27A: 1970 hit by Eric Clapton ("AFTER MIDNIGHT")
• 49A: 1978 hit by Journey ("WHEEL IN THE SKY")

Word of the Day: Johnny HART (30D: "B.C." creator Johnny) —

Johnny Hart (February 18, 1931 – April 7, 2007) was an American cartoonist noted as the creator of the comic strip B.C.and co-creator of the strip The Wizard of Id. Hart was recognized with several awards, including the Swedish Adamson Award and five from the National Cartoonists Society. In his later years, he sparked controversy by incorporating overtly Christian themes and messages into the strips. [...] Hart was an active member of his local community — the area of Greater Binghamton in Broome County, New York, which shares a common abbreviation of "B.C." Hart donated B.C.-based drawings and logos free of charge to many entities and organizations found in the Broome County area, including logos for:

• B.C. Transit — Caveman on Wheel
• Broome County Parks — Dinosaur
• Broome County Meals on Wheels — Caveman on Wheel with Food
• Southern Tier Red Cross — Caveman building Red Cross with Bricks
• Broome County Celtic Kazoos — Irish Caveman with Kazoo
• B.C. Open PGA Tour Event (1971 – 2006) — Caveman golfing
• Broome Dusters NAHL Hockey Club — Caveman with hockey stick
• B.C. Icemen UHL Hockey Club — Brute Cavemen playing hockey
• Southern Tier Independence Center — Caveman in stone wheelchair stuck in cave doorway, "Wiley" character navigating a landscape full of holes (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a weird little Monday. It looks like it has about a thousand answers in it. This is due to the odd combination of a highly segmented grid (all chopped up) *and* a preponderance of longish Downs. You don't usually see both together. Actually, the grid has just the fairly normal 78 words.  But—perhaps in part because of the odd cheater squares in the NW and SE corners—the thing looks intricate and fussy. The core theme, though, is textbook Monday stuff—your standard "last words can also be"-type theme. You get the revealer is nice. The types of blue, though, seem arbitrary. Why these? Because these three (just three) have songs that fit the theme and work symmetrically. Fair enough. But the songs—they're not what I'd call Monday fare. This is what will make this puzzle play somewhat harder than average for many people. More iconic songs would've been nice, more blues would've been nice, but we got what we got. And it's OK. I'm mostly super-bummed that this didn't find its way into the puzzle:


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Read more...