Competitive lumberjack / SAT 2-26-11 / Gregor's sister in Metamorphosis / Hydra's neighbor / Group worshiping teocalli / Glamorous high profile pair

Constructor: Bob Peoples

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none


Word of the Day: BIRLER (49D: Competitive) —

BIRL

v. birled, birl·ing, birls

v.tr.

To cause (a floating log) to spin rapidly by rotating with the feet.

v.intr.

1. To participate in birling.

2. To spin.

n.

A whirring noise; a hum.

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[Blend of birr and whirl.]

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birler n.

• • •

PFFT (57D: Indication of a dud).

As you can (maybe) see from my grid, I finished with an error. I'll eat my hat, scarf, *and* mittens if I'm the only one who made the error — BUD / DIRLER for BUB / BIRLER. Look, there are lots of things I don't know, and I certainly finish puzzles with errors from time to time, so please understand that it really isn't sour grapes that makes me say that that crossing is horrible. Fatal, even. You have to figure the percentage of the population that's going to know that BIRLER is a thing. I put that percentage at pretty small. There's no way even to infer BIRLER, to pick it over DIRLER (the way I *totally* inferred the godawful ORNIS from the word "ornithological"—52A: Avifauna). Since the cross makes *much* more sense as BUD, not BUB (who says that?) (48A: Pal), this means folks who don't know BIRLER will naturally, understandably, put in the "D." And most will go on with their days having no idea it's wrong. The clue on BUB should not have had BUD as a possible (here, more probable) answer, but I'm not sure how you do that, frankly. This really is a construction failure of the highest order. Nevermind that you ran BIRLER through ORNIS (!?) and alongside the dreaded, never-thought-I'd-see-its-ugly-ass-again SODDY (53D: Like some outfields). The rest of the grid is a toughish Saturday with some good parts and some less-than-good parts, but the middle south? Should've sent the constructor back to the drawing board.

Not a fan of gaining your difficulty through obscurity instead of tough, clever, misdirective cluing. GRETE (29A: Gregor's sister in "The Metamorphosis"), AMTRAC (42A: Amphibious W.W. II vehicle), and non-KEN Burns were all big "???"s for me. Crossing old, bygone, largely forgotten actors in the SW? Not cool. I know ED WYNN only from crosswords (64A: "The Diary of Anne Frank" Oscar nominee) and HENREID? (38D: He played Laszlo in "Casablanca") ... I just saw that damn movie and couldn't remember his name. Wasn't til I was done that I figured out what RENOS stood for (RENOvationS) (47A: Decorating do-overs, for short). Thankfully, crosswords taught me ALEN (56D: Chrysler Building architect William Van ___). Too many odd names in one small place (leaving aside MRS. MALAPROP (55A: "She's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile" speaker), who is pretty famous and just about the loveliest thing in the grid). NW and SE are charming, but the rest was a bit of a chore, except the BUB / BIRLER / ORNIS part, about which, no more.

I had two absolutely deadly mistakes—ELATION for ELYSIUM early on (8D: Perfectly happy state), and FURNACE for RAT RACE toward the end (44D: Exhausting thing to run). Oh, wait, I forgot one: COMPANY for NOT MANY (40D: Two, say).

Important toe-holds USAF in the NW (5D: Ace's setting: Abbr.), ZONE in the NE, ANAT. in the SW, and LAH in the SE (though that last one did very little for me, frankly). The saddest thing about the entire puzzle, for me, was how I was saved from near death by ... MR. MISTER (32A: Band with the 1985 #1 hit "Broken Wings"), a band I once almost got beat up for mocking (true story—that guy *really* liked MR. MISTER...). These sensitive '80s rockers floated down and, like a guardian angel or mystical spirit guide, completely cracked open the upper part of the grid for me. Without MR. MISTER (whispering "Take / These broken wings / And learn to fly again / Learn to live so free..."), I might still be working with ELATION. So, despite finding their music cloying and semi-repulsive, I offer my thanks.


Sticking with '80s pop, here's the RIC (58A: Documentarian Burns) I wish I'd gotten:


Started out with IT COUPLE (1A: Glamorous, high-profile pair)—how lucky was that?—and then quickly ran into my ELATION problem. ZONE helped me get AZTECS (9A: Group worshiping at a teocalli), which made NE not so tough—though it took me many, many crosses to come up with SPENSER (14D: One-named fictional detective), which I always assumed was a last name, not an ENYA-type single name. Guessed ELIS at 25A: Big Red rivals out of crossword reflex. I assume Big Red is Cornell. Crossword reflexes helped again in the SE, where my sense that [Longtime classical music label] must be a "Saturday" way of getting at the ultra-common ERATO helped me get past FURNACE and into RAT RACE.

Lastly, [Inveterate brown-bagger] is perhaps my favorite clue ever for SOT.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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SATURDAY, Feb. 10, 2007 - Bob Peoples

Solving time: untimed

THEME: 6D: With 22-Down, disgruntled remark about a failed partnership? ("He got the mine / I got the shaft")

That's not really a theme, just extensive, symmetrical fill that anchors the puzzle, but it's far closer to a theme than most Saturday puzzles ever get. There are many detectable subthemes in this grid as well (see below). But first:

OK, this is me, in the present, talking to me 20 minutes ago:

Paying attention, past-me? OK. This is a SOREL:

This is a MOREL (18A: It has a cap in the kitchen):


Any questions?

There were two squares I was unsure of when I'd finished this puzzle, and it turns out the one square I had wrong ... was a third, totally different square. What's worse, I have purchased, cooked, and eaten MOREL mushrooms in the not-too-distant past. Why in the world my brain went "CORER ... BORER ... no wait, it's the mushroom, SOREL!" I'll never know. Apropos of nothing: SORREL with two "R"s is a kind of horse, I think. Yes. Also an herb.

1A: Top in a certain contest (wet T-shirt)
39D: Ones doing push-ups? (bra pads)
39A: Brest friends (bons amis)

OK that last one doesn't technically have anything to do with breasts, but the others sure do. I'm almost surprised that this level of boob-action passes muster with the Times. While WET T-SHIRT contests aren't really my scene, I love everything about that clue. Is "Top" a verb? A noun referring to the contestant? No, it's something you wear. Well, probably not you, exactly, but you see what I mean. The "push-ups" clue made me think BRA immediately. I entertained CUPS for a while, but PADS is more apt. Apt! Boobs are one of many subthemes in this puzzle. What's next?

9D: Ancient vessels (triremes)
15A: Reply on a ship ("Aye aye, sir")
21A: Coastal feature (ria)
61A: One of the five major circles of latitude (Antarctic)

No one aboard a TRIREME would ever have said AYE AYE, SIR, not least because TRIREMES were manned by ancient Greeks, not the crew of the Pequod. Still, the sailing theme is pretty strong here (I originally thought 66A: Coasts, say was SAILS, which would have been great, theme-wise; sadly, the answer was SLEDS, which I guess you could do in ANTARCTICa after you sailed there on your TRIREME). RIA is a handy word to know, and I'm surprised I don't see it a lot more often in puzzles. It means a submerged or "drowned" valley, where sea levels have risen or coastal levels have fallen. The South coast of England has a number of RIAs, and apparently the San Francisco Bay is a RIA. If global climate changes continue, expect the word RIA to enter more and more people's vocabularies. I could use a little Global Warming right now, as we (here, where I live) have been in a total Ice Age for three weeks, with only one hour (!) spent above freezing in that time. Last subtheme:

10D: Glen Gray's "Casa _____ Stomp" (Loma)
11D: Rock genre (emo)
57D: "Trionfo di Afrodite" composer (Orff)
49A: Key of Brahms's Fourth (E Minor)
8D: Score abbr. (rit.) - the return of RIT.! I was so proud of getting this
51A: "Peter _____ Greatest Hits" (1974 release) (Nero's)
40D: 1959 Neil Sedaka hit ("Oh, Carol")
36A: "_____ Her Go" (Frankie Laine hit) ("I Let")
27D: With 5-Down, match, in a way (lip / sync)

I just realized that I get Neil Sedaka and Paul Anka confused. Looking at their names, you can see why. If they got married, their kids could have the awesome hyphenated name ANKA-SEDAKA. It's like Abracadabra, only with more "K"s. Anyway ... these answers (just above) are all, disparately, musical. Is it my imagination, or did we not just have a reference to Peter NERO in a puzzle. Something like [Peter and the Wolfe?], where the answer was NEROS? I still have No Idea who Peter NERO is! Oh, he plays piano. I can't quite tell what kind of music he makes. He currently directs the Philly Pops. I also have no idea who Glen Gray is! Hmmm, a jazz saxophonist and the leader of the Casa LOMA Orchestra - well, that would have been nice to know.

(More) Things I Didn't Know

• 24A: _____ Bank (U.S. loan guarantor) (EXIM) - stands for Export-Import Bank of the U.S. Thank god I remembered the name of the "M" cross, 25D: French Impressionist Berthe (Morisot), or who knows what I would have put in that square.
• 34A: Artist on the cover of a 1969 Life magazine (Peter Max) - I thought I would nail this: ROCKWELL came to mind. But I must say that I've barely heard of PETER MAX. I sure know his "style," though. Garish and unfortunate. Fake happy. Drug-addled. Everything that nauseated me about the 70s-80s. The "X" from 14D: Oppressive measure that helped spark the French Revolution (Salt Tax) made PETER MAX much easier to piece together than he would have been otherwise.
• 43A: TV producer Don (Hewitt) - I don't even care enough to look him up
• 63D: Height in feet of the Statue of Liberty, expressed in Roman numerals (CLI) - that's way shorter than I would have guessed.
• 7D: Alpine feeder (Isere) - yet another stupid European river I don't know.
• 52D: 10-century emperor known as "the Great" (Otto I) - inferrable, but ... don't a lot of emperors or tsars or other rulers fit this description?
• 45D: Annuity scheme (tontine) - I know what a TONTINE is (Abraham Simpson was in one once), but I did not know it was an "annuity scheme"
  

I was a little surprised by (and thankful for) a handful of gimmes in this puzzle, including 32A: Georgetown athlete (Hoya), 47A: Prefix with -stat (rheo-), 4D: Inventor's inits. (T.A.E.), and 11D: Rock genre (emo) - EMO should be in the Junior Pantheon, for words that are very hot but relatively new: see also, TERI POLO, Eric BANA, etc. EMO has an equally hip cousin in the grid: IMO (31A: "I think," succinctly) - I tried "I AM" here, but it didn't work. In case you are not up on chatroom abbreviations, IMO = "In my opinion." It's often written (obnoxiously, IMO) as IMHO (the "H" standing for "humble" - which the user of said abbreviation normally is not). Speaking of computer lingo, I have to GO OFFLINE now (65A: Become disconnected) and get my personal and professional life in some kind of order today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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