Family name in Frank Miller's Sin City series / SUN 4-4-10 / Cursed alchemist / 1986 rock autobiography / Chartres shout / Epithet for Elizabeth I

Constructor: Bob Klahn

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: "AFTER WORD" — "BOARD" answers the question in the parenthetical addendum to the puzzle's title: What word can follow each half of the answer to each starred clue?


Word of the Day: Project Blue Book (42A: Project Blue Book subj. => UFO) —

Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (U.S.A.F.). Started in 1952, it was the second revival of such a study. A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices ceased in January 1970.

Project Blue Book had two goals:

1. to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and
2. to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.

[...] By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been changed. (wikipedia)

• • •

The hardest Sunday puzzle I've done in a long, long time. Normally, Sundays are just longish Wednesdays for me. If the theme is imaginative and well executed, great; otherwise, it's a bit of a slog. I think God intended for crosswords to be 15x15. It's a magical size. At any rate, this puzzle was tough, but I would not call it a slog. I loved the challenge, and the quality of the fill is superb. I've seen this type of theme before ("both words can follow/precede..."), but 12 viable theme answers! That's astonishing. Also, usually in this type of puzzle, the phrases can seem forced (words that go together kinda sorta, but not easily). Today, most of the phrases are perfectly ordinary, and often interesting, with very little Frankenstein's monster effect. Clunkiest for me were FLOOR LEADER and DRAWING CARD. That FLOOR LEADER section took me forever. Everything around FLOOR stayed invisible for a good while. Had an easier time with DRAWING CARD because of MERYL (110A: Actress Streep), which I was sure was not MERYL because that would be too easy, and this puzzle is not easy. I actually considered other Streeps before tentatively entering the obvious MERYL. Klahn enjoys the devilish cluing, and it's on display all over the place here. So, overall, theme idea itself doesn't sound so great on paper, but the execution, coupled with the overall grid quality and tougher-than-average cluing, made this one a winner for me.

One interesting note about the awkwardness of the title + "bonus question" — Bob had written me on Friday saying that if I wanted to know why a certain word was missing from the grid on Sunday, I should just ask him once I'd finished. So I did. Turns out the puzzle was originally submitted with the simple title "BOARD MEETINGS." Will thought that not enough people would "get it." Here's how Bob put it:

The reason that BOARD is not in the grid is that it was part of my title, "Board Meetings." I submitted that along with a lot of potential theme entries for Will to choose from, he marked the ones he liked most, I built and submitted the grid, and at that point he decided that the significance of my title would be lost on enough of his audience that it needed to be replaced. Hence the current title and the "bonus question." (To insert BOARD in this grid would really have meant a substantial rework, and Will wasn't going to ask me to do that.)

While I think "BOARD MEETINGS" is the superior titling option, I think both Bob and I understand that WS knows his audience a *lot* better than we do, and so giving it this more explicit, if less elegant, title was probably the right thing to do.

Theme answers:

• 23A: *Either that ___ goes, or I do" (Oscar Wilde's reputed last words) (WALLPAPER) — possibly the best "WALLPAPER" clue of all time.
  
• 25A: *Legislative V.I.P. (FLOOR LEADER)
  
• 34A: *Object of superstition (BLACK CAT) — whoa ... don't know what a CAT BOARD is ... best I can tell, it's a board for a cat to scratch, perhaps to give it something to scratch other than your furniture.
  
• 39A: *Annual N.F.L. event (COLLEGE DRAFT)
  
• 54A: *Zigzag trail up a mountain (SWITCHBACK) — the first theme answer I got, and one of the earliest answers I got, PERIOD (52D: Stop sign?)
  
• 72A: *Green Bay Packers fan (CHEESE HEAD) — amazing that this answer works for the theme. Good stuff.
  
• 84A: *Tally (RUNNING SCORE)
  
• 90A: *Lamp holder (END TABLE)
  
• 98A: *Lure (DRAWING CARD)
  
• 102A: *Cover-up (WHITEWASH)
  
• 32D: *Wonder product (SANDWICH BREAD) — had the BREAD part and then was left wondering how to make WHITE stretch to 8 letters...
  
• 35D: *Risking detention (CUTTING SCHOOL)
  

So I got off to another typically slow start (my starts have been terrible lately). A smattering of answers here, a smattering there, but no real hold. Even getting SWITCHBACK relative early only got me a scraggly handful of crosses. Then I hit 64D: "Open ___" (SESAME) and, aptly, the puzzle opened right up. That whole section went down in a matter of seconds. This got me up to CLUTCH (33D: Critical situation), which gave me the "H" I needed for HORDE (59A: Big band), and I was finally able to get out of the center and down into the bottom part of the puzzle.

I knew the puzzle was going to be brutal (for a Sunday) when I hit ROARK (15D: Family name in Frank Miller's "Sin City" series). I knew it, but could Not believe the puzzle was asking for it. Seemed like *such* a niche, comic book nerd kind of clue. "Who's going to know this?" Well, I did. But I doubt the majority of solvers did at first blush. ROARK was probably as obvious to most solvers as "THE ACT" was to me (i.e. not at all) (14D: 1977 Liza Minnelli musical). Or ADA (20A: "Cold Mountain" heroine). Or CARL (80A: Real first name of Alfalfa of the Little Rascals). Or IRENE (94D: Galsworthy's Mrs. Forsyte). Speaking of Forsyte, John Forsythe of "Dynasty" fame just died at the age of 92. He was quite the silver fox, and the cause of much cat-fighting between Krystle and Alexis.

[45A: German unity – EINS]

Bullets:

• 29A: Dentiform : tooth :: pyriform : ___ (PEAR) — well, that took a while. "Tooth" had me thinking anatomically for too long.
  
• 60A: Navigator William with a sea named after him (BARENTS)
  
• 61A: Jazzy Chick (COREA) — This had me thinking about possible wacky theme answers like CHICK KOREA or CHICK CORNEA...
  
• 66A: Something that might be hard to drink? (CIDER) — a great, Klahnish clue.
  
• 74A: Chartres shout (CRI) — First thought: "What's the French equivalent of OLE?"
  
• 92A: "The Flying Dutchman" tenor (ERIK) — been in puzzles before. Not sure if it'll ever stick. I was able to get it off the -IK, so I guess that's ... something.
  
• 95A: Exotic berry in some fruit juices (AÇAÍ) — was wondering why I hadn't seen this berry in puzzles before (maybe I have and just forgot). Highly touted as a "superfood" by Oprah, among others.
  
• 106A: 1986 rock autobiography ("I, TINA") — if clue involves 1986, autobiography, and music, it's "I, TINA," a very common crossword answer.
  
• 112A: Interjection added to the O.E.D. in 2001 ("D'OH!") — [Homeric interjection] might have been more accurate:
  

• 113A: Land called Mizraim in the Bible (EGYPT) — er, uh, no. Needed several crosses before this familiar country came into view.
  
• 2D: Suffix with boff (-OLA) — seems a variation of "Boffo," which is some kind of hybrid of "Big Box Office," i.e. "a huge hit."
  
• 4D: Birthplace of William Thackeray and Satyajit Ray (CALCUTTA) — "Somewhere in India" was the only guess I had 'til crosses made it evident. I get Thackeray and Trollope confused, as they are both 19c. British novelists I haven't read.
  
• 9D: June "honoree," briefly (U.S. FLAG) — for a while, just had the "G," and had *no* idea what the scare quotes around "honoree" could mean. Then somehow the answer just came to me, and really helped solve that damned "FLOOR" area of the grid (FLAG proved the "F" in "FLOOR," for instance).
  
• 28D: Gregg Allman's wife who filed for divorce after nine days (CHER) — took me way longer than it should have. Thought it was going to be some lady I'd never heard of.
  
• 37D: Major party (TORIES) — only long after I'd finished did I get that "Major" was John Major, former P.M. of the U.K.
  
• 49D: Cursed alchemist (MIDAS) — Tricky. Being an alchemist (i.e. changing whatever he touched to gold) *was* his curse. Also, what he asked for. Irony!

• 56D: Coat named for a British lord (RAGLAN) — strangely, this was my first guess, with very little to go on. I cannot wear a coat or anything with a RAGLAN sleeve as I do not have the shoulders to pull it off. RAGLAN lost his arm in the Battle of Waterloo.
  
• 69D: Epithet for Elizabeth I (ORIANA) — I teach Renaissance literature and it still took me a while to come up with this.
  
• 70D: Sassy lassies (MINXES) — This clue has "ass" in it. Twice.
• 76D: Half-circle window over a door (FAN LIGHT) — another complete mystery to me. Was looking for, I don't know, TRANSOM?
  
• 80D: Resident of Daiquirí (CUBAN) — I know it as a drink, not a place. Last night I had something called a "French 76," I think, with gin and champagne and something else and all I could taste was champagne. Wife had a "Wimbley," which has Pimm's No. 5 (we don't know what that is) and ginger ale and is served with a cucumber wedge. Wife insisted that her cucumber was a "slice," not a "wedge." Discussion of specific properties of "wedge"-ness ensued. We could have been on an episode of "Nerd Date," if that were a show.
  

And now your Tweets of the Week — crossword chatter from the Twitterverse:

• @sidspid Feet up, slippers on, Radio 4, the crossword, and a huge crack pipe. Sorry, cup of tea, that's it. Cup of tea.
• @sassydotnet When I first looked at today's @nytimes crossword I thought I was having a stroke.
• @bovinepublic Gaaaahhh, my pen exploded all over my hand while I was doing a crossword puzzle. Not cool, pen. Not cool.
• @KylesBeard my nascent crossword addiction has alerted me to the alarming yeti fixation of crossword constructors. maybe they're on to something.
• @UncouthGentlman NYT crossword clue: food for regular folks? Answer: Bran. Seriously, Will Shortz? A poop joke?
• @bobdively Unusual Monday NYT xword puzzle fail due to insufficient hair style lore. (Why would anyone under 55 know Mamie Eisenhower had bangs?)

• @atwong Why do I bother with the pretext of reading the paper when, truthfully, all I really care about is the crossword.
• @krystalite Mom's doing a crossword puzzle in Rachel Ray's magazine. With every answer obtained, Mom's respect for Rachel Ray diminishes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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SATURDAY, Nov. 7 2009 — Dancer in a suite / Damn Yankees chorister / Cheyenne Kid portrayer / Lead female role in TV's Peter Gunn

Constructor: Bob Klahn

Relative difficulty: Challenging +

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Flagitious (51D: Flagitious) — adj.

1. Characterized by extremely brutal or cruel crimes; vicious.
2. Infamous; scandalous: "That remorseless government persisted in its flagitious project" (Robert Southey).

[Middle English flagicious, wicked, from Latin flāgitiōsus, from flāgitium, shameful act, protest, from flāgitāre, to importune, to demand vehemently.]

-----

Flagitious. Yes. That sounds about right.

This is the hardest NYT puzzle I've done since late 2007, when Bob Klahn unleashed another, even more flagitious beast on the unsuspecting solving public. I still remember words from that puzzle, so traumatic was the experience (GOLCONDA! OCHLOCRACY!). Today's puzzle, I actually managed to finish. With no mistakes. In something under a half an hour. There was a point early on in the solving experience where none of those things seemed possible. Got 1A: Peter who wrote "Underboss" (Maas) right off the bat, so things were looking rosy for about ... 3 seconds. Then I went begging. Wanted DION (17A: "Little Diane" singer, 1962) but couldn't confirm it. Everything else up there was a bust. Same thing in the far north. Had HMM and SAY at 9D: "Oh, I don't know" ("Gee") and then abandoned that section for the NE. Finally, finally, traction. ETON was a gimme (16A: Where Aldous Huxley taught George Orwell), and the "E" let me get ME FIRST (10D: Selfish), which was confirmed by FAST (19A: Like some friends). Even though I couldn't remember what "Doughty" meant (INTREPID), the NE actually fell and my penetration into the puzzle's interior extended as far west as the front end of UNION SHOP (27A: Local operation?) and the bottom end of NANCY DREW (22D: "The Bungalow Mystery" solver). And then ... oh man, Nothing. Just the sound of wind. An occasional tumbleweed. The menacing ticking of the clock on the wall (I don't have a clock on my wall, but you get the idea).



A few things I kicked myself for after I was done. One, not looking at or even seeing 14A: "Down _____" (1967 Janis Joplin song) ("On Me") the first time I was up there — that might have allowed me to connect MAAS and DION and pull Something out of my, er, hat. Two, not seeing MODIFY (1D: Reshape) early on (see "One," above). Three, taking longer than I had any right to coming up with LUCIFER (39D: "Doctor Faustus" character) and EL DORADO (32D: The first complete navigation of the Amazon was in search of this). Both feel like they should have been gimmes, but neither one showed up at first. Mephistopholes ... is the main flagitious character in "Doctor Faustus." I teach that damned play from time to time, and I can't even remember LUCIFER's part (actually, he's in there, but it's not a big part ... kind of like God's part in "Paradise Lost" — now *that* had a LUCIFER in it). And I'm sure I just heard some book reviewed about exploring the Amazon ... ugh. But back to the stuff that was legitimately brutal.

Lucky to have practiced Tai Chi, because when that didn't work as an answer for 42D: Chinese meditative practice I had something else to got to: QI GONG! Which gave me that "Q," which I really, really needed. Turns out I've heard of / seen ODALISQUE before (41A: Harem slave), but I couldn't retrieve it at all. That "Q" made it a lot easier to find the answer, eventually. SKA was a gimme (53D: Music genre of the English Beat and the Specials), but virtually nothing else in the S or SE was easy. Had REAMS for RAFTS (43A: A slew). Didn't know 48D: Artist Rembrandt (Peale). Couldn't see any of the other stuff until two things happened. The word SALABLE occurred to me for 40D: Ready to move). Seemed worth a stab. Then at 54A: Remark from draft-dodger? with the initial "B" in place I knew "draft" would not be a beer (first suspicion) but a breeze, and the answer "BRRR!" Goodnight S, Goodnight SE. Onto the SW...

Two words: EDIE and HART (55A: With 52-Across, lead female role in TV's "Peter Gunn"). W(ho) T(he) F(lagitious) is that? Know *of* "Peter Gunn," but never seen an episode (before my time) and certainly don't know secondary or tertiary characters. The fact that this utter unknown was camped out in not one but two of my short answers down there made that corner painful. I was eventually saved by knowing the definition of "flivver" (a former Word of the Day on this blog, I think). Once I got SCORCHER (31D: Hard-hit line drive), and then (eventually) TIA MARIA (33D: Liqueur reputedly named for a noblewoman's chambermaid), I managed to put in CRATE for 49A: Flivver. Then EL DORADO decided to show up, everything fell into place, and I rode the wave of happiness up to the NW / N for my final stand.



YAZOO??? (26A: Mississippi river named by La Salle). Not on my radar. To me, YAZOO is a synthpop band from the early 80s. I think the NW was the hardest corner by far. OK, MAAS and DION and ON ME are pretty gettable, but ANITRA? AMOS OZ? YAZOO? I guessed SENATOR at 4D: "Damn Yankees" chorister only because I had the S-N and I knew "Damn Yankees" involved baseball. Finally threw IT'S A STEAL across and moved in for the kill in the N. But not so fast. Standing SPANG in my way was ... SPANG! SPANG (5A: Squarely). That's not a word, that's a comic book sound effect (and a good one). That "P" was the last thing that went in. SPANG looked so weird that I worried a bit about SLATY (5D: Dull blue-gray), which I'd never heard of before. But I left it all as I had it. Turned out to be 100% correct. So, the verdict: LOVED IT. Exceedingly hard puzzles should have a (rare) place in this world, and *this* is how they're done. They give you a whiff of hope, then they crush your soul, but if you're persistent and patient ... eventually, you can stab them with your SLATY knives and, in fact, kill the beasts.

Bullets:

• 10A: Landlocked Muslim land (Mali) — wanted CHAD.
• 15A: Cheyenne Kid portrayer (Larue) — Like MAAS, Lash LARUE is crosswordese.
• 22A: West Coast N.F.L.'er ('Niner) — another reason the NE was the most gettable of the four corners. CHARGER, RAIDER, SEAHAWK ... none of them fit.
• 24A: Appeal from a diplomat (démarche) — wanted IMMUNITY. No idea what DEMARCHE is. Let's see: "a diplomatic representation or protest." OK, now I know.
• 28A: En _____ (by the rules: Fr.) (règle) — thank god for 7 years of French.
• 47A: Don Quixote type (romantic) — really wanted to write QUIXOTIC in here.
• 53A: World capital at the foot of Mount Vitosha (Sofia) — Bulgaria. Inferred it from "SO-..."
• 2D: Dancer in a suite (Anitra) — had trouble finding out what this meant even after I was finished. Turns out it's from Grieg's "Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, Op. 46 — Anitra's Dance," which, now that I hear it, is very very familiar.

• 3D: "A Tale of Love and Darkness" author, 2003 (Amos Oz) — What a great entry. Never read anything by him, but I know the name. Didn't *see* the name, however, until the very last letter. Me: "It ... kind of looks like ASIMOV..."
• 7D: Strauss heroine from classical myth (Ariadne) — she's in both Ovid's "Heroides" and Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women," so I managed to pick her up. I also remembered that Strauss wrote something called "Ariadne auf Naxos."
• 21D: Low finish? (shoe shine) — niiiice. First wanted a really really long suffix for "low," then thought "low" might refer to what cows do...
• 27D: 1805 Napoleonic victory site (Ulm) — got it off the "U"; not many three-letter Euro place names starting with "U."
• 45D: Four-note chord (tetrad) — with "-RAD" in place, the TET part (TETR = Gr. "four) was easy.

Off to listen to 39A: The Who's "Live at LEEDS," 1970 double-platinum album. See you tomorrow.



Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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SATURDAY, Jan. 10, 2009 - B. Klahn (Oil-rich South American basin / Nero's homeland / Morgiana's storied master / Literally, "roof lizard")

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the day: ECOTONE - A transitional zone between two communities containing the characteristic species of each.

Early appt. tomorrow, so even though it's late, I gotta blog this thing tonight. PuzzleGirl wrote me a message before I'd done the puzzle saying "Did you see the constructor's name!?" I had this feeling of dread. Then I saw the name in question - the legendary Bob Klahn - and felt not dread but elation. So we meet again, Klahn. Many of you will remember Klahn (if you have not suppressed the memory) from the Dec. 29 puzzle of 2007, the one with ARGALI and XANTIPPE and some other stuff that absolutely krushed me (and a few others out there). His puzzles are known for being meticulous, artful, and very, very difficult. Today's was difficult, but on the easy side for a Klahn puzzle. I had much more luck early on with this one than I did with yesterday's actually, though objectively I think this puzzle is harder. Happily, I got through this puzzle in very good time (for a Klahn). Sadly, I had a letter I didn't know and just had to guess - this made me very, very sad. Having to guess a vowel, ugh! Left a bad taste in my mouth. I'd heard of MARACAIBO (54A: Oil-rich South American basin), but that second "A" ... let's just say TANKA is not a word that confirms Anything for me (50D: Poem of 31 syllables in five lines). So I stared (stared!) at T-NKA / MAR-CAIBO. But staring, in this case, did nothing. So though I had an "A" to start, I changed it to "O" on the basis that I'd heard of TONKA (maybe the trucks are named after poems!?). Bad idea. So I go down in defeat. But I have never felt so good about a defeat in my life. Klahn got in a lucky punch. In all other respects, I pwn3d this puzzle. I'm coming for you, Klahn. KLAHHHHHHHN! [shakes fist at sky]

I had the NW corner done so fast that I got a little freaked out. Have you ever been playing so far above your head at something - anything - that it starts to make you nervous and self-conscious. I had it happen during tennis once. And again while playing Donkey Kong. Anyway, that's how I felt when the NW corner was done in something like a minute or two. LENO was a guess, but a good one (22A: Dyslexic TV host with a college degree in speech therapy). Went LENO -> OCTANT -> LETS GO (actual answer = LETS BE) -> APPALL -> ADAGE -> PEE DEE (2D: River with an alphabetical-sounding name) -> PECTORAL -> APOSTATE -> STEGOSAUR (4D: Literally, "roof lizard") ... and basically every other cross in @#$#ing PETERMEN (17A: Safecrackers, slangily). What in the World? YEGGS, I know. PETERMEN!? Wow. It's apparently British. Here are a list of etymological hypotheses. I still don't know why ARM is the answer for 6D: Magazine article (don't write me - someone will tell me in the Comments section). Who cares? Just apply a little TAE BO (7D: Regimen with "cardio bursts") to Lena HORNE (23A: Cotton Club standout of the '30s) and I'm all done up there.

Spilled down to the SW, where I dropped 34D: Brilliantly colored food fish that changes hues when removed from the water (mahi mahi), 35D: Hank Williams or Nat King Cole (Alabaman), and 36D: No-names (generics) - all off their first two letters. Seriously, it was like going too high on the swing set - euphoria bordering on nausea. This is about the time I hit the MARACAIBO impasse (South America's version of KENOSHA or NATICK). Grumbled and huffed, then regrouped and promptly torched the rest of the puzzle. The NE took some prodding. I had PRESSURE where REASSURE was supposed to go (14D: Calm, say), but I knew that 16A: Person at home had to be UMPIRE. The big break for me up here was having my loopy guess of BOOT TREES (which I refused to write in forEver) be right (20A: Foot-long stretchers)! That's what was weird today - it was as if that really annoyingly hard-to-get radio station just decided to come in crystal clear for a few minutes. Klahn frequency! That's right, Klahn. I'm in your head. Get used to it.

Lists:

• 24A: 252-gallon measures (tuns) - here's where having your own crossword blog comes in handy. I blogged nearly this exact clue eight months or so ago. Answer didn't come to me, but I knew I knew it, so I just waited it out. Other answers that constant solvers should have wrangled without too much problem include ADAM'S ALE (63A: Water) and B-STAR (32A: Rigel, for one).
• 9A: Main engagement? (sea war) - as in "the bounding main"? OK. I nearly wrote in SEA AIR (an answer from earlier in the week).
• 27A: Computer prefix meaning 2 to the 40th power (tera-) - had the "TE-" and guessed.
• 29A: "_____ che penso" (Handel aria) ("Piu") - the man with the moustache and leather jacket standing in front of the tree would like to sing for you now:

• 34A: "The Good German" actor, 2006 (Maguire) - didn't know it, but had the -UIRE. I hope that those who routinely struggle with Friday and Saturday are noting how little I actually know. Good solvers are good inferrers (if that's a word, which I'm pretty sure it's not - wait ... nope, I'm wrong. It is, in fact, a word; seriously, add "-ER" to any verb and stir).
• 37A: Area between forest and prairie, e.g. (ecotone) - this sounds like the next step in the evolution of stereo sound. Or a brand of glove.
• 40A: Nero's homeland (patria) - Latin! Patria means "homeland" (or, more precisely, "fatherland").
• 57A: C relative (A minor) - even the music I guessed right - helped having the AMI- already in place.
• 60A: Manage (hack it) - cool. Made me doubt my "C" from GENERICS because I figured the answer must be HANDLE.
• 61A: Style of envelope for greeting cards (baronial) - W+T+F. Envelopes have styles now?
• 8D: The United States, to some prospective immigrants (El Norte) - Love that EL NORTE points due NORTH.
• 9D: Early South Carolina senator Thomas (Sumter) - he of the Fort, I assume.
• 13D: Member of the first state to adopt Christianity as its religion (Armenian) - Klahn clues are long. Or else very, very short.
• 31D: Asian language with 14+ million speakers (Nepali) - OK that number is staggering to me. Had no idea that Himalayan country had that many people.
• 41D: Morgiana's storied master (Ali Baba) - easy to get from crosses. "Storied" helped give it away, somehow.
• 56D: _____ Bones of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (Brom) - indelible memory of an animated version of this story from when I was a kid. "Sleepy Hollow" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" were yearly viewing for a while during my childhood. "I got a rock." Priceless.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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MONDAY, Jul. 7, 2008 - Bob Klahn (RECURRING MELODIC PHRASE / PLAYFUL KNUCKLE-RUB)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Skosh, smidge, tad - theme answers contain words (signified by circled squares) that mean "a tiny amount."

Once again, there's a Tuesday puzzle where my Monday puzzle should be. Today, however, I didn't really mind - every Monday should be this clever / challenging. Required just the right level of effort (i.e. some). I was a bit disappointed in OSTINATO (9D: Recurring melodic phrase), not just because I'd never heard of it, but because it felt painfully, egregiously un-Mondayish, especially compared to the rest of the puzzle, where the challenge was all in the clever cluing. If you play music, you know what OSTINATO is, I guess. If you don't, it's a mystery, and a long one. I've never seen it in a puzzle. In a late-week puzzle, I'd probably find it beautiful. Here, it's a sore thumb. On the up side, despite a preponderance of crosswordese (EROS, ST LO, IN A and ULA, ELIA, ERSE, OTTO, etc.), this puzzle felt fresh and entertaining. Some very Klahn-y moments at 16A: Genesis son (Enos), where ABEL (the more common Genesis son) fits so nicely, and 48D: It'll bring a tear to your eye (duct) undoubtedly led about half of you to fill in DUST at first. The puzzle has DUCT and PORE (10A: Sweat opening), which is a nice if highly bodily theme, and then there's a blast of Biblical stuff to go with ENOS, including IS IT I? (5D: "Lord, _____?" (Last Supper query)), ON HIGH (11D: Like angels we have heard?), and ISAIAH (47D: Book after Song of Solomon). I'm going to guess that the toughest part of the puzzle for most people (if they encountered any difficulty at all) was at the bottom of OSTINATO, where HIT AT (33A: Try to strike) seems completely counterintuitive, as "HIT" of course means "strike," so how can trying to do something and doing something be the same thing (they can, but this clue / answer pairing hurts my brain a little, nonetheless). And SHARP (28D: On the ball or on the dot), despite being an important word in my life, completely eluded me for a very long time (measured in Monday-puzzle time). Finished in just over 4 minutes, and was surprised I'd gone that quickly, considering all the snags I seemed to hit. Kind of clunky for a Klahn puzzle ... which is to say that it was a very, very good puzzle (this is what happens when you set the standard so high, Bob?)

Theme answers:

• 17A: Antiterrorism legislation of 2001 (Patriot Act)
• 20A: Proverbial saver of nine, with "a" (stitch in time)
• 35A: "My Cousin Vinny" Oscar winner (Marisa Tomei)
• 54A: Classic battles between the Giants and Dodgers, e.g. (pennant races)
• 58A: 1986 world champion American figure skater (Debi Thomas)

Other answers:

• 6A: Normandy invasion town (St. Lo) - one of the crosswordiest places in the world
• 45D: Airline with a kangaroo logo (Qantas) - one of the crosswordiest airlines in the world. EL AL and SAS are more common, but you are going to run into QANTAS many times a year. How could anyone resist a U-less "Q" word for very long?
• 25A: Playful knuckle-rub (noogie) - fabulous colloquial answer. If you have a ROOMIE (12D: Dormmate), you should give him/her a NOOGIE right now, if only because those two words go so well together.
• 4D: Wind tunnel wind (air stream) - lots o' trouble here, mainly because I wasn't reading the clue correctly. Couldn't this answer have been clued simply [Wind]?
• 34D: Pavarotti performance (tenor solo) - had TENOR PART for a BIT.

• 51D: Equivalent of 10 sawbucks (C-note) - 100 bucks. Much more than a SOU (37D: Trivial amount) - for most people, anyway.
• 41D: Diminutive suffix (-ula) - wife had horrible time with this, and I was no help explaining, as I couldn't think of a good example of its use. The only -ULA words coming to me are FORMULA and SCROFULA (!?). Oh, and HULA. Having OLLA in the cross didn't help my wife any (49A: Earthen pot). Another super-crosswordy answer. Enough to make you feel STUPID (46A: "Keep it simple, _____") on a Monday, if you aren't up on all the inside xword vocab...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SATURDAY, Apr. 19, 2008 - Bob Klahn (BIRTHPLACE OF SERT AND MIRO)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

I realized this morning why Saturday puzzles stress me out a bit - it's not because they can be brutally hard. I enjoy that. It's because I have a time crunch. I usually go to bed before doing the puzzle on Th and F nights, and so I have to complete the puzzle in the morning. Saturday is the one day of the week that can still send me into free fall, which I cannot afford to be in when the clock is ticking (blog-wise). If only the puzzle would come out at 9pm the night before instead of 10pm (nudge nudge, wink wink ... Santa, are you listening?). Anyway, I saw Bob Klahn's name on the puzzle and visibly slumped in my chair. I love Klahn's puzzles, but you may remember a late-2007 puzzle by Klahn that was a Complete Destroyer (it had XANTIPPE in it - see sidebar, "The Wrath of Klahn," under "Important Posts"). So imagine my surprise when the second clue I look at is not only a total gimme, but a long total gimme that provided the first letters to ten Down clues: MONTEVERDI (5A: "L'Orfeo" composer). "L'Orfeo" is about the only opera I actually own. I forget why. Who really cares!? I'm off to a flying start. Had lots of problems in this puzzle from Missouri all the way to New Mexico, and Florida was largely vacant until the very end. But as Klahn puzzles go, this was easy, which is to say, tough by normal standards: Medium-Challenging.

Rather than blather on, I'm going right to the clues - so much good stuff to discuss:

• 1A: Lock combination? (coif) - Real trouble here in the final letter. COIN and COIL both seemed reasonable to me at some point. I wondered briefly if LISTIC was a word, before running into the more obviously correct FISTIC for 4D: Boxing-related.
• 16A: Compulsive shopper (oniomaniac) - normally words or phrases that return only 1490 total hits on a Google search will make me irate, but this did not. It's a perfectly good, if rare, word, and it looks fabulous in the grid. Took me a while to put in the M (from EMOTE - 9D: Engage in cabotinage) because I thought anything beginning ONIO- would have to be about ONIONs. ONIONATOR? ONION LOVER? Didn't help that I had the clearly wrong RHODESIA at 12D: Western Sahara region (Rio de Oro). Once I got the erroneous "H" out of the way, the -MANIAC part of ONIOMANIAC became obvious, and I just took it on faith that it was a word. All the crosses seemed strong.
• 22A: List on a society calendar (dos) - goes nicely with COIF.
• 24A: Product once advertised as "Ice-cold sunshine" (Coke) - easy, or at least easily inferrable. There were many answers like this today - way more than is usual in a Klahn puzzle. See also BARCELONA (26A: Birthplace of Sert and Miro), which was easy to get with the -ONA in place; BABA (48A: Spongelike cake); LETS (21A: Court calls); EMPHASIS (31D: What "!" provides); and, my favorite gimme of the day, HICS (44A: Lush sounds). Love those dipsomaniacal answers. Haven't seen DTS in a while... why not? Bring it back!
• 25A: Bicycle pack (deck) - stared at this one for many seconds, trying to imagine a bicycle and all its component parts. Then "pack" cued "pack of cards" and voila, DECK. Bicycle's a big maker of playing cards (unlike COOPER, which is apparently a 40D: Big maker of tires - I breifly thought the puzzle was going to get cute and try to go with GOOD YR).
• 29A: "A Clockwork Orange" instrument (moog) - I was thinking "what do you call the instrument they used to hold his eyelids open while forcing him to watch those horrid movies..."
• 30A: "La Boheme" setting (garret) - I actually had TURRET in the grid for a few seconds until I remembered that the opera had something to do with people living a "bohemian" lifestyle ... in a GARRET. I have never seen "La Boheme," but I have seen the modern Broadway musical based on "La Boheme," which is also in today's puzzle: RENT (57A: Check for letters).
• 31A: "Casablanca" screenwriter Julius or Philip (Epstein) - and not, as I originally guessed, EINSTEIN.
• 36A: Dawn observance (matins) - here I was, imagining some kind of pagan ritual involving the sun, and the answer ends up being simply one part of the canonical hours.
• 37A: Like a raspberry bush stem (cany) - had BONY for a good long time, because I had POSE for 35D: Something well-placed? (pail - great clue, by the way).
• 39A: Giant perissodactyls (rhinoceri) - wow, Klahn's big on the high-end words of Greek derivation today! I can't believe it took me so long to get this after I already had RHINO in place ... "RHINO CATS? RHINO ... MICE?" I'm not sure I knew that RHINOCEROS pluralized this way. Maybe that's because it really doesn't. Normally, the plural is simply RHINOCEROS or RHINOCEROSES. RHINOCERI is "nonstandard or jocular" according to Wiktionary. Let's see what my giganto-dictionary (Websters' 3rd New International) says - well, it says RHINOCERI is an acceptable plural (third one listed). Did you know that RHINOCERICAL = "full of money: RICH"? It's "archaic," but it really, really shouldn't be. I want to bring it back.
• 46A: Like M, L or XL (Roman) - oddly easy. After SIZED or SIZES, it was the first answer I thought of.
• 53A: Council of _____, 1409 (Pisa) - My "Council of" knowledge ends with TRENT.
• 55A: Lassie creator Knight (Eric) - #76 on the World's Top 100 ERICs list, behind Cartman, Idle, Bana, The Red, etc.
• 1D: Network seen in many homes, and not proudly (cobweb) - guessed WRETCH at 19A: Poor devil, which gave me ---W-B here. Briefly thought THE WEB before settling on the correct answer.
• 2D: "The Last Don" sequel ("Omerta") - a great xword word. Learn it, know it, love it.
• 5D: Phototropic flier (moth) - It's a "flier," it's four letters, it starts with "M," it's MOTH.
• 7D: "Love Jones" actress, 1997 (Nia Long) - how in the World did I know this?
• 8D: City whose name is Siouan for "a good place to grow potatoes" (Topeka) - actually pretty easy to guess if you've got the "T" in place.
• 13D: Flattering courtier who changed places with the tyrant Dionysius, in Greek legend (Damocles) - he of the Sword.
• 14D: Blade holder (ice skate) - again, surprisingly untough for Klahn. I feel like I'm taunting the tiger here ... and the next Klahn puzzle I see is going to shred me into fine little pieces. Or DICE me, perhaps (49D: Cut to bits).
• 20D: Only starting pitcher since 1971 to win a league M.V.P. award (Clemens) - my childhood / teenhood idol. Not so much anymore.
• 24D: Cousin of a kinkajou (coon) - was this a sop thrown to longtime Saturday solvers? Because we Just Had (a version of) this clue, not more than a couple months ago.
• 25D: Hamlet (dorp) - HA ha. Funniest word ever. Like a typo for DROP mixed with DORF (of "Dorf on Golf" "fame"). DORP must derive from THORP. Eths and thorns both make the "th" sound, but eths kinda look like D's ... and that is my "Uninformed Etymology Lesson of the Day." Thank you.
• 27D: "Such Good Friends" novelist Gould (Lois) - no idea. None. Zero.
• 28D: Writer of the story upon which "All About Eve" is based (Mary Orr) - I just rewatched the first part of this (great) movie the other day. Didn't catch MARY ORR's name, sadly, but I pieced it together eventually (obviously).
• 30D: "Treasure Island" character (Gunn) - quarter century, at least, since I read this. GUNN was an educated guess.
• 32D: Defensive structure (palisade) - the only PALISADE I know is Pacific PALISADES, and I didn't know the word had anything to do with defense of any sort.
• 33D: Person not easily budged (stickler) - not sure about this clue. Hmm. I had STICK- and was inventing suffixes: "He's a real STICK-FER. . . he's a real STICK TO'T ... These aren't working."
• 37D: It could end up in a fiasco (chianti) - "Fiasco" here = Italian for "flask." This is my favorite Fiasco of the moment (warning, that link goes to a rap song that contains profanity, though it's a song largely about how stupid / offensive much commercial rap music is).
• 42D: Dark purplish blue (raisin) - yuck, really? BRUISE is a more appealing color name than RAISIN.
• 45D: Dickens's "merry old gentleman" (Fagin) - really really wish I knew my Dickens better. Not sure I'm willing to invest the time it would take to make that happen.
• 51D: Relief provider, maybe (map) - I had NAP. You had NAP. We all had NAP. Didn't we?

SALMAGUNDI! (50A: Mixture)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SATURDAY, Dec. 29, 2007 - Bob Klahn

Relative difficulty: Infernal

THEME: Greek ... me in misery ... or none

Today is the day you get to feel quite superior to me (unless you feel that way all the time, in which case it's just Saturday) - I tanked this puzzle like I haven't tanked one all year. I gaped in complete dumbfoundedness at this puzzle for what felt like hours. Two quadrants undone and patchily filled in. Today was the first time all year where I didn't finish unassisted. My crutch: I looked up the word "gasconade." This hurt in more ways than you know. After this, the puzzle fell astonishingly quickly. The most horrible part of the experience was figuring out that despite the puzzle's legitimate difficulty, I'd have solved it if I hadn't made one stupid, stupid error.

53A: Grant's position in presidential history (eighteenth)

I had NINETEENTH. I even sat there and counted up from sixteenth (Lincoln) to be sure that no other numbers fit there. Turns out what I was really doing was counting from 6 to 9, looking for four-letter numbers. If someone had told me that EIGHTEENTH and NINETEENTH had the same number of letters, I'd have said "no way," thought about it a second, and then realized "o yeah." This is the dumb dumb dumb stuff you can do to yourself when solving. The puzzle difficulty is one thing. The hole you dig yourself: quite another.

Other serious, horrible problem - I dropped COTERIE into the puzzle like a gimme. I had the CO- and the final E, none of the letters clashed horribly with MOPPET (which I'd also just triumphantly thrown down (39D: Rug rat)), so I was golden. Only I wasn't. COTERIE was wrong. Actual answer:

36D: Retinue (cortege)

Here are some other fun facts about my failure:

• There are at least three words in the clues that I couldn't define.
• I have a Ph.D. in English and couldn't have defined PERIPETEIA (48A: Unexpected turn of events, as in a literary work) to save my life.
• I noticed but managed to avoid an even worse slip-up than COTERIE. How about the trifecta of

1. MISLABEL (for MISTITLE - 33D: Handle incorrectly?)
2. WALL (for FORT - 41A: Siege site)
3. POSTBELLUM (for EIGHTEENTH - 53A: Grant's position in presidential history)

NW and NE look like child's play now, but I was so happy to work through them in reasonable time. The NE was handed to me on a silver platter. Chaka Khan (16A: "_____ Nobody" (1983 Chaka Khan hit)) crossing TAI CHI (11D: Meditative exercise)? Now we're talking. So when I dropped MOPPET and (ugh) COTERIE down into the SE, I was feeling cautiously optimistic.

There were any number of places where if I'd just seen something / thought of something / reconsidered something, the dominoes would have fallen. As it was, my wife looked over my shoulder at one point and gave me BOOTLEGGER (26D: One running for work?), which was sweet of her, and which she did in a very tentative way. The tutee becomes the tutor! I suppose it was bound to happen.

I'm not even bothering with the upper part of the puzzle, except to say that BUBBLE BATH (1A: Modesty preserver, in some films) is a Great answer, and I kicked OPERA SERIA's ass with only a crossing or two (15A: Old form of Italian musical drama). Oh, also, ESCORT (6D: Squire) was, strangely, the first thing I wrote in the grid.

Trouble starts ... here:

• 4D: Uniform armband (brassard) - well, bras is French for arm, but that's all the help I got. Latter part of this answer went unsolved for a while.
• 24A: McKinley's first vice president (Hobart) - had the -RT ... eventually got the H ... could think only of HUBERT.
• 28A: Cupule's contents (acorn) - clue word I didn't know #2 ("gasconade" being #1). Wanted ACORN so bad but wouldn't commit because ... an ACORN is the outside ... it's not in anything. Right? Wrong.
  
• 25D: Mob rule (ochlocracy) - I've had the non-word COCKBLOCKRACY in my head all night and morning. OCHLOCRACY is a word I've heard before ... maybe once, in like 1986, when we were learning all the dumb-ass -OCRACIES and -ARCHIES in History class.
• 40A: Margay cousins (ocelots) - clue word #3 I didn't know. To my immense credit, I got OCELOTS with very few crossings. They have one of my favorite animal names, and I've seen them in puzzles before.
• 37A: Rich mine or other source of great wealth (golconda) - I have nothing to say here. Just ... no. Nothing. I'll just say that the fact that this kinda sounds like GOLGOTHA is fitting.
• 42A: Mountain sheep (argali) - typing in the grid this morning, I was laughing out loud at the number of words that seemed to me to come from outer-space. This is one of them. I wanted only IBEXES here.
• 38D: Top-of-the-line (class A) - got it early, but it weirds me out because CLASS A ball is the lowest rung in baseball's minor leagues.
• 35D: Price-manipulating group (pool) - the 2007th definition of "pool," I assure you.
• 32D: Scolding wife: Var. (Xantippe) - OK, if I'd had EIGHTEENTH instead of NINETEENTH, I'd have remembered this sooner. I'd really have remembered it sooner if I'd known that XERES (32A: Spanish city that gave sherry its name) was an actual place. Xanthippe was the wife of Socrates who was conventionally portrayed as a total shrew.
• 44D: Name equivalent to Hans or Ivan (Sean) - wife wanted JOHN, but that "J" just wouldn't go. I wanted IAIN. Etc.
• 21D: Catawampus (awry) - I had no trouble here; I just wanted to type "Catawampus."
• 43D: Gasconade (brag)
• 51A: See-through sheets (plate glass) - I suppose.
• 41D: It may be blind (faith) - SO easy ... if I hadn't had NINETEENTH already firmly in place. Only word I could get to work here was FARCE.
• 27A: It has a smaller degree of loft than a mashie (four iron) - wanted BANGER, then wanted to know what British people were doing playing with their food.
• 34A: Rocket datum: Abbr. (alt) - wanted ANG. (for angle?). Also wanted ETHNOCRACY, though, so ...
  
• 52A: Banks of note (Tyra) - Oh, TYRA, my precious little gimme. Little did I know you would be the foundation for so much evil.

I hope you enjoy sharing in my misery or lording your astonishing success over me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS - I would like to recommend the Newsday "Saturday Stumper" to people looking for a little trial by fire - a little training for your late-week NYT battles. If you go to either "Ephraim's Crossword Puzzle Pointers" or plain old "Puzzle Pointer's" (Will Johnston's) in my sidebar, you can access a world of decent-to-great free daily and weekly puzzles. Newsdays are quite easy all week long, until Saturday, when they are Not. Today's took me an eternity (20+), but after the NYT debacle, it was nice to get a hard puzzle under my belt once again. I highly recommend all the puzzles accessible from either of the aforementioned Puzzle Pointer pages. NYT and NY Sun are still the best puzzles out there, but the other featured puzzles are consistently entertaining and often as good as anything you'll find in the Big Two.

[drawing by Emily Cureton]

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SUNDAY, Nov. 4, 2007 - Bob Klahn

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: "Common Ends" - theme answers begin and end with same three-letter combination

[updated 10:05 a.m.]

I saw Bob Klahn's name and knew I was in for trouble. This puzzle was So Hard for a Sunday. There were precisely NO parts of it where I felt like I sailed through. Every new clue felt like a slog. On the whole I enjoyed the experience, but I tend to resent the puzzles that seem like they are trying deliberately to be super-difficult. Clever and fun beat difficult. I love a challenge, but challenge without joy ... just sucks. This puzzle did not suck, though parts of it were borderline. I had an error in what I consider a deeply unfair crossing up near the top. But for every moment of teeth-gnashing, I had some fun or otherwise revelatory experience. So ... all in all, a bracing challenge. The theme itself is nothing to write home about, but some of the answers are.

Theme answers:

• 23A: Best Picture of 1954 ("ON The WaterfrONT")
• 33A: In addition to (OVEr and abOVE)
• 59A: High-end version of a product (DELuxe moDEL)
• 80A: Singer with the 1996 #1 hit "You're Makin' Me High" (TONi BraxTON) - now here's where (I'm guessing) your typical puzzler and I part ways. I'm going to guess that this clue gave a number of people fits, or otherwise made them think "???" Whereas this was the Very First Answer I put in the grid. Despite singing some crap R&B pop now and again, this woman can sing. Love her.
• 106A: Role for Alec Guiness and Ewan McGregor (OBI-Wan KenOBI) - genius answer; best of the lot by far. I'm still surprised that I spelled it correctly the first time out.
  
• 116A: Broadcast with Baba Booey, with "The" ("HOWard Stern SHOW") - Perhaps you are thinking "This is a bit of pop culture that Rex will surely enjoy." If so, you are incorrect. I did, however, see that movie based on Howard Stern's life ("Private Parts?") and strangely liked it.
• 16D: Where to find the Windward and Leeward Islands (LESser AntilLES)
• 50D: Fancy salad ingredient (ARTichoke heART) - you'd normally pluralize this when talking about what you want on your salad, but still, a nice, yummy answer.

Off to drink coffee and eat sourdough french toast, which my wife is graciously preparing in the kitchen right now. More in an hour or so.

RP

And I'm back.

I was done in by the following crossing:

• 12D: With Altair and Vega, it forms the Summer Triangle (Deneb)
• 29A: Olympic troublemaker (Eris)

Though I know ERIS as a sower of discord, it was Never a name I considered there. I thought ARES, then I thought IRIS (messenger and goddess of the rainbow). Threw out ARES because I thought IVAN was a much better answer than EVAN for 30D: One of the Brothers Karamazov - and I was right. So I went with IRIS / DENIB. DENEB is the strangest looking word I've ever seen and I've never ever heard of it ever in my life (unlike Altair and Vega). I should have known IRIS was wrong, as it appears in another (deadly) answer in today's puzzle (see below).

There was one other area where I nearly became completely derailed. It extends from TOULA (44D: Bride in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding") in the "Wyoming" section of the puzzle to GEL (87A: Lose liquidity) in the "Missori" section. Problem started when I wrote in NAG AT where ANGST was supposed to go (70A: Worry). Thus I had 71D: Boodle (swag) beginning with "A," which caused me to forget completely what the hell "boodle" meant. Further, I had SET for GEL for a while. So even though I had a very solid EDGAR (61D: Annual literary prize since 1946) going straight through the heart of this section, it didn't much matter.

Smiley faces:

• 4A: State secrets (blab) - "state" as a verb; nice
• 28A: Half-Betazoid on "Star Trek: T.N.G." (Troi) - this woman is quickly becoming crosswordese, but this clue is loopy enough to make me not care
• 66A: Ring Lardner title character (Alibi Ike) - Love this name - took a while to come to me, but since I've seen him once before in the puzzle, he didn't scare me too much
• 84A: Lovers' plight (troth) - as with [State secrets], above, a nice play on words
• 99A: Master of the double take? (Noah) - Whoever wrote this is surely proud of himself, and he has a right to be
• 111A: Transcontinental bridge, e.g. (isth.) - 7th grade geography words RULE (86A: Reign)!

Frowny faces:

• 45D: Nursery nappy (didy) - on SO many levels, this answer gets a frowny face. Double frowny face. Ugh.
• 91D: Snap (foto) - what? Apparently "snap" became a noun when I wasn't looking, and then people started actually writing FOTO (perhaps because of the time it saves them to write one less letter...?)
• 97D: Block buster? (ice man) - like ... the guy who delivers ice ... in 1910? I have an image of a caveman bursting free of the ice in which he's been encased for thousands of years. ICEMAN also means "a hired killer." Why not go that route?
  
• 57D: Common baseball count (one and O) - why don't I like this!? I think it's the combining of number and letter in the same answer; something's rubbing me the wrong way

Mystery clues (look how many!):

• 14A: "The Perfect Fool" composer (Holst) - as far as HOLST goes, I know "The Planets" ... that is all.
• 20A: Anise-flavored aperitif popular in Turkey and the Balkans (raki) - My favorite in the series: "RAKI III"
• 47A: Doll in "A Doll's House" (Nora) - more literary blind spots
• 48A: Biblical name meaning "laughter" (Isaac)
• 63A: Berenstain of kid lit's Berenstain Bears (Stan) - long way to go for STAN. I just had to type "Berenstain" twice. It's a Horrible name. Why oh why couldn't it just be "Berenstein?"
• 68A: "Sweet _____" (1937 Oscar song) ("Leilani") - I got nothing here
• 73A: "Anne of Green Gables" setting (Avon Lea) - looks soooo wrong
• 96A: French mime (Pierrot) - again, got nothing
• 101A: Showy climber (clematis) - I've baaaarely heard of this. Botany!
• 112A: City near Carson National Forest (Taos) - "Carson" sounds like it's in Nevada. Guess not.
• 121A: Champagne department (Marne)
• 122A: French "White House" (Elysée) - so wanted MAISON BLANCHE
• 128A: Key of cartooning (Ted) - I SAID I GOT NOTHING. "UNCLE," already, sheesh.
• 13D: Colt .45s, today (Astros) - so embarrassed not to have known this
• 59D: Oscar winner as Mr. Chips (Donat) - insert generic actor man's face here
• 81D: Moviedom's Massey (Ilona) - if you're counting at home, that's now ... oh, I don't know, at least five film clues I have not known. Ugh.
• 42D: In film, gradual appearance of an image through an expanding circle (iris in) - holy crap this is just the purest of pure insanity. I guess Klahn gets some special pass for super-marginal words because he is such a puzzling bad-ass. I will call it the "RAKI pass." You get one of these on Friday, two on Saturday, one on Sunday. Clearly Klahn had some saved up.

I feel compelled to give a shout-out to Laurence STERNE (17D: "A Sentimental Journey" author), for reasons I don't quite understand. Perhaps it's in honor of my best friend and erstwhile 18th-century scholar Ms. Strohmer. Who can say?

Happy End of Daylight Saving Time,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SUNDAY, Jun. 10, 2007 - Bob Klahn

Relative difficulty: Hard

THEME: "All About National Public Radio"

I liked almost nothing about this puzzle. I disliked it so much, in fact, that I'm barely going to write about it [again, this ends up being a lie]. I'll let you all have at it. I do, however, have to detail some stuff that I think is terrible.

But first: It was just HARD for me. Fully three places in the puzzle had me utterly stuck, sometimes because of Terrible cluing, other times because of my ignorance.

Place I got stuck #1

93D: Capital of Valais canton (Sion)
92A: World's biggest city built on continuous permafrost (Yakutsk)

These intersect at the "S." By any standards, these are both geographical obscurities. It's bad enough when obscurities intersect, but obscurities from the same area of knowledge? Bad form. I guessed correctly, somehow.


Place I got stuck #2

16D: Words of endorsement ("sign here")

Now, my rage at this clue is offset somewhat by my own sloppiness. I had SIGN and wrote in SIGN ME UP, because, well, it's not a good answer, but it implies that the speaker "endorses" something ... unlike the actual answer, which are words encouraging another party to endorse something. You have to torture that clue to make it cough up SIGN HERE. I had a huge gap around the bottom of this answer for a Long period of time because of my error.

And #3, The Biggest Problem: The Montana region of the puzzle...

• 5A: K.G.B. predecessor (OGPU) - never heard of it
• 6D: "Just a _____" (Marlene Dietrich's last film) ("Gigolo") - know it only as a David Lee Roth song
• 7D: 1914 Booth Tarkington novel ("Penrod") - barely barely barely heard of it. Of all the Booth Tarkington novels ... look, if you can name one Booth Tarkington novel, that novel is "The Magnificent Ambersons." If you can name another, maybe you can name this one. I sure couldn't.
• 34A: Doc's wife in "Come Back, Little Sheba" (Lola) - no idea. Just ... none.
• 8D: Disentangle (unpile) - this is the mud icing on this trash heap of a cake. Not aware that UNPILE was a word, and certainly not aware that it meant anything approaching "disentangle"

So my ignorance plus super-iffy cluing = unpleasant time. I also Hated the fact that the title of the puzzle tells you the theme. I actually got the "NPR" aspect of the theme answers before I ever looked at the title - and then when I did, felt totally deflated, as it took all the fun out of figuring the gimmick out myself.


Theme answers:

• 23A: Tax relief, e.g. (campaigNPRomise)
• 39A: Mary Shelley subtitle, with "The" ("ModerNPRometheus")
• 58A: TV star who directed the 1999 documentary "Barenaked in America" (JasoNPRiestley)
• 83A: Fall event, usually (seasoNPRemiere)
• 101A: Matter of W.W. II secrecy (ManhattaNPRoject)
• 121A: Serigraph (silkscreeNPRint)
• 3D: Contortionist (humaNPRetzel) - best of 'em all, and I somehow got it off of just the "H"
• 66D: Russian literary award established in 1881 (PushkiNPRize)

Here are some (more) ridiculous "words"

• 52A: Free, in a way (unpeg) - ugh - well, it's a step up from UNPILE, I'll give it that
• 63A: Consume piggishly (englut) - well now you're just making words up. What's next, monkeys banging on a keyboard?
• 76A: Answers, for short (sols) - short for "solutions," I get it. Just ugly.
• 88A: Palatable (sapid) - got it off just the final "D" and groaned as I typed it in
• 111A: Permanently (in pen) - horrible. Some pens erase now. Maybe you've heard. And just because something's "in pen" doesn't mean it's "permanent."
• 128A: _____ cards (ESP testers) (Zener) - aha, there we go! Monkeys typing!

More unknowns:

• 43D: Flag raiser (halyard) - never seen the word in my life
• 40D: World's smallest island nation (Nauru) - I'm including this, even though it was in the puzzle just a day or so ago, because, well, it would have stumped me last Sunday.
• 105D: Second-highest mountain in the lower 48 states (Elbert) - how the hell can I Never have heard of the second-highest US mountain not in Alaska!?
• 100D: The whale in "Pinocchio" (Monstro) - Haven't seen the movie in forever, had no idea. It's a nice, colorful answer, but with so many things killing me today, I didn't need one more, however fair.
• 48A: Big letter (epistle) - not a requirement that it be "big"!!! Formal, yes. Big? Sometimes ... but not always. Many classical epistles aren't that long. I had EPSILON here for a while. Not sure why it would be "big" either ... but it is a letter.
  
• 9A: Crookspeak (argot) - now I know what ARGOT means, but ... it doesn't mean this! Or, rather, it doesn't mean only this. Any kind of specialized language might be called an ARGOT. Here's a definition of ARGOT I lifted from Wikipedia, attributed to Bruce Sterling, that I think is way way more accurate:

"the deliberately hermetic language of a small knowledge clique.... a super-specialized geek cult language that has no traction in the real world."

I live among academics. I know of where I speak.

Now I'll tell you the stuff I liked. I've already mentioned HUMAN PRETZEL - beautiful. Also really loved 59D: Initial sounds of a relief effort? ("Plop plop") - "... fizz fizz, oh, what a relief it is" - I'll take advertising jingles any day of the week, Alex. Lastly, the cluing on PEC is superb: 14D: Lifter's rippler. I'm off to try to forget this puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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