SATURDAY, May 24, 2008 - Charles Barasch (BEER BRAND SINCE 1842)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

This puzzle had the "-Challenging" part appended to its rating based on my harrowing experience in the SW corner, where, despite an abundance of E's and R's, I couldn't get four different answers to work. Neither of the Downs, and two of the Acrosses. Two primary problems. Well three. First, I'd never heard of SCHAEFER (32D: Beer brand since 1842), so that didn't help. But I didn't know Lots of stuff in this puzzle, so in and of itself, not knowing SCHAEFER = no big deal. Second, the "with" in the clue 33D: One with a duty (taxpayer). I had TAX-A-ER and wanted only TAX-TAKER (the opposite of TAXPAYER), even though it didn't seem like a very good word. This brings us to my main problem - 52A: Long gone. Had the ---ORE and wanted only NO MORE ... only I had IT'S LOVE for 35D: Song from Bernstein's "Wonderful Town" (a guess, but a correct one, it turns out), which made NO MORE impossible. Instead, I was faced with O--ORE. And I ran through the alphabet a few times and then tried ON phrases. OF phrases seemed really unlikely, so I didn't even run through those til very very late in the game. And Y is very near the end of the alphabet. OF YORE. It's actually a pretty good clue, [Long gone]. Sure fooled me.

I should say that I liked this puzzle a lot, much more than yesterday's. It was tough and interesting and full of lively and clever answers. I liked it despite never having heard of five different answers (all Downs, strangely):

• OSTINATO (10D: Repeated musical phrase)
• UNIATE (2D: Certain Christian)
• SCHAEFER
• BLAS (48D: Gulf of San _____ (Caribbean Sea inlet))
• LOME (49D: West African capital)

OK, I might have heard of those last two, but I certainly couldn't call them up - they were just floating bits of lost trivia in my brain.

The only iffy thing about the puzzle is an over-reliance on odd jobs and comparative suffixes ... just ER (or IOR) words in general:

• IOR (19D: Super finish?)
• DEWIER (14D: More innocent)
• WISER (29A: More likely to be fresh)
• SLASHER (12D: Horror movie character) - not that I don't love this answer. Early in the puzzle, when I had FASSAD where FAISAL belongs (15A: Mideast royal name), the only answer that seemed to fit here was ED ASNER.
• LATTER (30A: Second)
• GUESSER (1A: One taking a shot)
• SCHAEFER
• TAXPAYER

Then of course there's the bottom of the puzzle - I don't think I've seen R's and E's and S's and D's in such high concentration in a late-week puzzle. SEERESS (57A: Girl with a future?) is almost as bad a crutchword as REASSESSES (despite being a perfectly good word). Thankfully, the puzzle was strong enough that its strong reliance on E's and R's didn't feel cheap. The overall pay-off was worth it.

Bonus material:

• 17A: Second in court? (Asst. D.A.) - a real lifeline in the NW, and helped confirm one of my favorite answers in the puzzle: FAT WALLET (15D: It's stuffed with dough).
• 18A: Like a family man (married with kids) - great answer, and somehow pairs nicely with LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE (46A: Be like Clark Kent). Throw in FAT WALLET and ERRED (56A: Went off) and GUN MAN (1D: One taking a shot) and MAFIAS (41D: They have family units) and you have a great crime story on your hands.
• 20A: First volume heading starter (A to) - despite having seen this kind of cluing before, it took me Forever to understand what the clue wanted.
• 21A: "To you, Antonio, _____ the most": Shak. ("I owe") - total guess. What else could it be?
• 23A: Pitch between columns (newspaper ad) - briefly thought this had something to do with cricket, then remembered the age-old use of "pitch" as a misdirection on clues related to advertising.
• 32A: Cy Young had a record 815 (starts) - this is where I started. I put in LOSSES and then thought "you know, 815 seems awfully high ..."
• 34A: One of the Blues Brothers (Elwood) - great answers. Loved the "Blues Brothers" movie as a kid. One of the first R-rated movies I saw in the theater.
• 37A: Counterpart of "pls" ("thx") - online shorthand for "thanks" - I'd be surprised if this didn't throw a number of people today.
• 38A: What most couples try to have together (quality time) - a phrase normally used for time with your kids ... and a stupid concept in general (but that's a discussion for someone else's blog)
• 43A: Slow runner in the woods (sap) - really hard for me to get because of the whole TAXTAKER brouhaha.
• 45A: '60s theater ('Nam) - theater of war.
• 55A: Deli sandwich material (ham salad) - the last "salad" I would consider for my sandwich.
• 4D: Restaurant business bigwig (Shor) - Should have made those of you who learned his name only two days ago very happy.
• 6D: Real estate agent on "Desperate Housewives" (Edie) - "Desperate Housewives" is the new "Ally McBeal" and it must die, at least in my puzzle.
• 25D: Area of interest to Archimedes (pi r squared) - brazen! I was thinking "did Archimedes care about AIR? ... FIR? ... FIRST something? ..."
• 27D: Zoologist's foot (pes) - Latin. See also ESSE (50D: Ovidian infinitive)
• 39D: Tzimmes (ado) - HA ha. Hilariously, this was a gimme for me.
• 47D: Illustrator of "Paradise Lost" and "The Divine Comedy" (Dore) - about as far up my alley as you can go.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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FRIDAY, Aug. 3, 2007 - Charles Barasch

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Well I NEVER (46D: "How dare you!") heard of the FIBONACCI SERIES (35A: "The Da Vinci Code" sequence). That basically tells you all you need to know about my solving experience. I wouldn't touch "The Da Vinci Code" (book or movie) with a ten foot pole. Oh, and the GAELS (30D: Iona College athletes) is the stupidest name for a college team ever. GAELS is barely a word. I had GAULS for the longest time, making SERIES invisible to me. In fact, I kept getting frustrated that I couldn't make ANYTHING out of the crosses I had for FIBONACCI SERIES. Wanted ACCESSORIES to be involved somehow. So bad was all this that I second-guessed MALRAUX (26D: France's first minister of culture, 1959-69), kept changing INSECURE (36D: Wobbly) to UNSECURE and back again, and repeatedly cursed the downright stupidity of the clue for B NATURAL (37D: Note offering good advice for life?). Speaking of B NATURAL, if you have never seen this short film from "Mystery Science Theater 3000," you really should. Oh, and here's Part II, if you really want more.

The rest of the puzzle was tough, but fair. The other 15-letter answer in the puzzle, VOODOO ECONOMICS (8D: Derogatory term popularized by George H.W. Bush) was s-h-h-h-ooooo much better than that "Da Vinci" code crap. I was thinking TAX-AND-SPENDER or some such dreck, but the actual answer is great (used by Bush against Reagan and his "supply-side economics," back when he and Reagan were both running for the Republican presidential nomination). I'd forgotten about that phrase. Had PANTIES for JAMMIES (53A: Undercover wear?), so that screwed things up a bit. Really like the way KOOKY (49A: Out there) looks over JAMMIES, btw. SKI TOW (43D: Help in getting up) is a weird term. It's called a T-BAR where I come from.

I don't think I ever knew Chamorro's first name - 15A: Two-time Nicaraguan president Chamorro (Emiliano). Was lucky to remember SAHL (54D: "Look Forward in Anger" comedian) from a puzzle not too long ago. I thought XENA had a sidekick. Didn't know she was one (51A: Gabrielle's sidekick, in a TV series). No idea how I remembered (almost instantly) the name of the family on "Soap" - 6D: "Soap family" (Tates). If I hadn't lived my early life in California, and had relatives in the Bay Area, I might still be puzzling over SAN MATEO (17A: County whose seat is Redwood City). Wanted 23A: Beaucoup de Louises (rois) to be ELLES, so feminine does that plural look. Had I'VE GOT IT for 1A: Celebratory cry (Mazel Tov), and even after I knew the answer, the spelling ... was another story. Other tough bits (for me) included

• 44A: _____ Bay (South China Sea inlet) (Subic) (!?);
• 10D: Head makeup (suds) (which I only just now got);
• 2D: Stuff in a bomb (amatol);
• 4D: Hackberry relative (elm);
• 5D: Pseudologue (liar); and
• 55A: Prescription notation (ter) - TER means "three" in Latin, but this could have been anything; I had B.I.D.

Oh, and I don't think I've ever seen JEAN in the singular (53D: Sturdy, twilled cotton fabric). Oh, and further, 56A: Bottle (nurser)!?!?! Yuck. [Sipper] or [Mother, perhaps]. The bottle can't actually "nurse" anything without the agency of a human (oh, unless it's one of those upside-down bottles that hang in animal cages, I guess, ugh). This answer does tie in semi-nicely, however, with 42A: Temp takers (RNs) and 52A: Place for 42-Across (ICU). Two other parts I liked - appropriately, I find the word ANODYNES soothing (14D: Soothing things); and 58A: Horror cry ("It's alive!") is easily the best answer in this grid.

In case you ever wondered what Billy GRAHAM (60A: Religious leader who wrote "Peace With God") would look like on top of SELENA (62A: Jennifer Lopez title role) - now you know.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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FRIDAY, Feb. 16, 2007 - Charles Barasch

Solving time: unknown

THEME: none

Home with Sahra today, so a very, very short entry, comprised entirely of things I didn't know.

• 1A: Bristly (setose)
• 4D: 1937 Oscar role for Luise Rainer (Olan)

My one screw-up: had an "A" where the "O" should have been in these intersecting words. My gut told me the word was SETOSE, but then OLAN seemed ridiculous, and ALAN - well, that's at least a recognizable name. Everything about 4D is absolutely nuts. Super arcane. Just 'cause someone won an Oscar doesn't make him/her memorable or interesting. This puzzle was KRAMMED with pop culture arcana. For instance:

• 40D: Brian of "Juarez," 1939 (Aherne) - again, what? Never heard of him, never heard of the movie, nothing. Sadly (for me), AHERNE sat right next to another answer I didn't know: 39D: The "blood" in bloodstone (jasper) - I know a JASPER. One JASPER. And he looks like this:

• 54A: Classic 1894 swashbuckler, with "The" ("Prisoner of Zenda") - a familiar title - I own an early paperback version (buried somewhere in my collection) - but it took me a while to piece together. Why? First, its first two letters intersected 39D and 40D, respectively (see above). Second, I thought the Spanish word for "bears" was OROS, then ORAS - that stupid, wrong "R" was where the "S" should have been in "PRISONER."
• 12A: Henry Clay's estate in Lexington, Ky. (Ashland) - ASHLAND, OR, yes. Every other ASHLAND, no.
• 43A: 18-Across feeder (Aube) - well, I got 18A: Quai d'Orsay setting (Seine), but when we get down to feeders ... well, you know my feelings about European rivers: too many, and too ridiculously-named. Can't keep 'em straight. Must do some river research before tournament.
• 45A: Footballer Haynes (Abner) - an AFL running back from the 1960's who played eight seasons with five different teams! Tell me more! [yes, that was sarcasm]
• 3D: HBO showing of 1975 (Thrilla in Manila) - I didn't know HBO existed back then. I had THRILL and thought briefly that it had something to do with the making of Michael Jackson's video for "Thriller," but that was 8 years later.
• 9D: Epic achievement? (Cast of thousands) - a good clue, but I spent way too long trying to think of an epic that started CAST OF THE ... CART OF THE ...
• 25: Two-time A.L. home run champ Tony (Armas) - another sports obscurity. Well, not really. He was a pretty good player in the 80's, but for the life of me I can't remember him, anything about him, his baseball card, nothing. And his career was in my baseball-card collecting sweet spot. His son (Jr.) is a big league player today, currently for the Washington Senators. I mean Nationals.
• 14D: Carroll creatures (Toves) - I'm embarrassed to say I did not know this, though I recognize it now that I see it. Vaguely.
• 51D: Glass finish (-ine) - what is glassINE? I guessed this answer, but I don't think I know what entity it refers to. Answers.com says:

A nearly transparent, resilient glazed paper resistant to the passage of air and grease.

When would I use this?

Must go be a decent father (figure).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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