Moab's neighbor in Bible / WED 12-6-17 / Midwife to fairies in Shakespeare / Make bones about something

Constructor: Clive Probert

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Ms — all clues start with "M." Every answer has at least one "M." Because .... "M"?

Theme answers:

• all of them

Word of the Day: MNEME (3D: Muse of memory) —

In Greek mythology, Mneme /ˈniːmi/ (Greek: Μνήμη Mnḗmē) was one of the three original (Boeotian) muses, along with her sisters Aoide and Melete before Arche and Thelxinoë were identified, increasing the number to five. Later, the Nine Olympian Muses were named. She was the muse of memory. (wikipedia)

• • •

Me, last night, upon solving this:

Upon waking, I stand by this. There is no point to this. There is no pleasure that results from this. Only bad things come from this, most notably tortured, terrible clues. Good clues are hard enough to write; when you insist they start with only one letter—especially when there are ZERO OTHER THINGS THAT ARE HAPPENING IN YOUR PUZZLE—you are only spreading misery.

I knew something terrible was afoot when I ran into *&%^ing MNEME at 3D: Muse of memory. She's not even one of the damn nine muses. She's part of some "original" triad along with the equally "famous" AOIDE and MELETE, whom you of course see *all the time* (/sarcasm).

No doubt you found yourself at some point wondering "how does *that* clue fit *that* answer?" My worst case of this came when I encountered the clue on DEMUR (49D: Make bones about something). Nobody makes bones. They make no bones ... about something. And again, all this ridiculousness is happening with absolutely no payoff. There is no other point but the "M"s.

When the "best puzzle in the world" not only continues to pay constructors abysmally (while profiting enormously) but also perpetrates *this* nonsense, I retreat into the world of independent crosswords, where no one hates their solvers this much.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Spotted rodent / WED 4-24-13 / Tourist town of Salerno / Jared of Mr Nobody / Ken Olin series about baby boomers / Comedian with 1972 album Class Clown / Astronomical red giant / Belgian city sometimes mispronounced wipers

Constructor: Clive Probert

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Tennis — first words of theme answers progress through tennis scores in order:

• LOVE BOATS (18A: Some cruise ships, informally)
• FIFTEEN MEN (23A: Start of a song with the cry "Yo-ho-ho")
• "THIRTYSOMETHING" (34A: Ken Olin series about baby boomers)
• FORTY-NINER (50A: One who hoped things would pan out?)
• GAME'S OVER (57A: "You lose!")

Word of the Day: hooley (36D: Partiers at a hooley => IRISHMEN) —

hooley, hoolie [ˈhuːlɪ]

n pl -leys, -lies

Chiefly Irish and NZ a lively party

[of unknown origin] (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

Well the fill is somewhat better today than yesterday, but not by much, and the theme, while conceptually adequate, is broken at the level of execution. First, there is one Love Boat. It is captained by Merrill Stubing and bartended by Isaac Washington. Plural LOVE BOATS is an absurdity. I'm sure there's some attestation for that usage, somewhere, but theme answers should be dead-on in-the-language, and this one just isn't. Further, and more jarringly, "GAME'S OVER" is not an expression. The expression is "GAME OVER!" It comes from video game screens in the '80s, which would give you that message when your last Pac-Man got eaten or whatever. Or maybe it has earlier origins. At any rate, it is a very common expression now, where "GAME'S OVER" .. isn't. Here's the maddening thing: LOVE BOATS and GAME'S OVER are *symmetrical* answers, i.e. if you take the ridiculous "S" out of both of them, they remain the same length and thus still Totally usable as symmetrical theme answers. I have no idea why this clearly superior (and obvious) plan was not pursued (or recommended). I've sent out an inquiry to my constructor friends asking them "why?" I'll let you know what they say, assuming someone replies in the next 20 minutes or so.

Looks like the upcoming Olympics means that SOCHI is here to stay (30A: Russian city, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics). A couple years back, I would've considered that super-obscure. Now, it's just a word you need to know. Olympics sites = valid. Still, many won't know it, and that will make the "C" virtually impossible to get (31D: Astronomical red giant = C-STAR). AMALFI, on the other hand, is in fact pretty obscure. I know a play called "The Duchess of Malfi," but I've never heard of AMALFI. Or ... I probably have, because it doesn't seem completely alien. I've probably heard or seen it, but I don't think of it as a well-known place (2D: Tourist town of Salerno). It's not bad fill. It's actually kind of unusual and interesting, as opposed to most of the rest of the fill, which is pretty dull. Next to AMALFI is PACA, which is a rodent I know about only from crosswords (1D: Spotted rodent). It's not common, but it's common enough that it's worth knowing (see also ELENI, which is not a rodent—just feels like one) (38D: Nicholas Gage memoir). Nothing else in the puzzle seems terribly problematic. I got "FIFTEEN MEN" confused with "Fifteen Tons," which is actually "Sixteen Tons" (sigh). I had no idea what "Mr. Nobody" was, so it took many crosses before I remembered that there was an actor named Jared LETO (16A: Jared of "Mr. Nobody"). Clue on -STAN was unexpected and kind of nifty. Don't normally stand up for a suffix clue when a perfectly good non-suffix one is available, but there was something cleverish about this clue that I liked. I also like the words THRUM (53A: Dull tapping sound) and EPICURES (55A: Food critics, often). So it's not all bad today.

ALLO ALLO is ridiculous but made me laugh (20A: Repetitive French greeting). CARLIN very frequently makes me laugh (3D: Comedian with the 1972 album "Class Clown"). I had not idea bolo ties were *legitimately* popular anywhere—my understanding of ARIZONA is now richer than ever. I've heard YPRES pronounced a number of ways: "wipers" (!?) is not one of them (52D: Belgian city sometimes mispronounced as "wipers").

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Read more...

1976 rescue site / SUN 11-21-10 / View from Catania / German-born tennis star Tommy / Portuguese speaking island off African coast / 1930s film pooch

Constructor: Clive Probert

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Having Aspirations" — familiar phrases have "H" added to beginning of some word in the phrase, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily


Word of the Day: CLANGOR (9D: Loud ringing) —

n.

1. A clang or repeated clanging.
2. A loud racket; a din.

intr.v., -gored, -gor·ing, -gors.
To make a clangor.

[Latin, from clangere, to clang.]

• • •

Any time I come in under 10 on a Sunday, it's gotta be easy. Despite the simple premise and dearth of theme answers (just 6), I sort of liked this one. With the exception of HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE (whose "H"-less version I've never heard of), the theme answers were all pretty cute, and SET ONE'S TEETH ON HEDGE was legitimately funny. I wanted the HERRING to be ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION, but too long. At any rate, the rest of the grid seems mostly neatly filled, especially considering how glutted it is with four-letter words (which are hard to make interesting and easy to make horrible). I didn't catch on to the theme with the first theme answers. Just wondered why REAL MEN DON'T EAT QUICHE wouldn't fit. Truthfully, my first thought was REAL MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, but it didn't really (at all) fit the clue. I THINK THEREFORE I HAM was the answer that revealed the gist of the theme to me, and the rest of the theme answers were remarkably easy to get (even HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE, the latter part of which I inferred easily enough).

The other day there were complaints about OBOLI, a Greek coin given a Latin plural. Greek words often go through Latin to get to English, hence the hybridity. See also, today, SYLLABI, a plural I refuse to use because it's not Latin in origin (4D: Course outlines). Doesn't mean SYLLABI isn't legit. Just means that I hate it. One word I don't hate is CLANGOR, which sounds both onomatopoetic and Klingon. When a bell ("CLANG") creates a CLAMOR, you get a CLANGOR. And of course a small CLANGOR is a CLANGORLING (34D: Diminutive suffix=LING). I wanted my whales to be SPRAYERS (not SPOUTERS, 72A: Whales, at times) and my lock-out league to be NBA or NFL (not NHL, 90D: Org. with a 2004-05 lockout). Also wanted KNOBBY to be KNOTTY (42D: Not smooth) and OOOH to be ... well, something else, preferably (44D: Cry of delight). My cries of delight came from very, very different answers: COKED up (5D: Out of one's mind, in a way, with "up"), which took me many crosses to get, and CHURCHY (21D: Very religious). "COKED Up and CHURCHY" is a tell-all autobiography just waiting to be written, e.g. "COKED Up and CHURCHY: The Mother Teresa Story!"



Theme answers:

• 26A: Macho guys like their pie cold? (REAL MEN DON'T HEAT QUICHE)
  
• 41A: Bad actor's philosophy? (I THINK THEREFORE I HAM)
  
• 63A: Concerns of middle-aged guys in lower Louisiana? (DELTA HAIRLINES)
  
• 73A: Lengthy military sign-up? (SEVEN-YEAR HITCH)
  
• 92A: Put the dentures aside while gardening? (SET ONE'S TEETH ON HEDGE)
  
• 108A: Starboard food fish? (HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE
  

Bullets:

• 10A: German-born tennis star Tommy (HAAS) — like the ILSA he sits on, I know his name instinctively from crosswords.
  
• 24A: Signal for a programmer's jump (GOTO) — I remember this command from learning Basic in ninth grade.
  
• 47A: "___ doubt but they were fain o' ither": Burns ("NAE") — from "The Twa Dogs," a poem I'd never heard of until just this second.
  
• 48A: Org. with the motto "For the benefit of all" (NASA) — that's a pretty vague and un-spacey motto for those guys.
  
• 56A: Carrier with a frequent flier program called EuroBonus (SAS) — airline I know only from xwords.
  
• 106A: View from Catania (ETNA) — feels like I've seen this exact clue before. Oh, I have.
  
• 8D: "Were I the Moor, I would not be ___" (IAGO) — big week for IAGO, an olde skool piece of crosswordese whose grown less common in recent years ... until this week.
  
• 12D: 1930s film pooch (ASTA) — ETNA, IAGO, ASTA ... crossword vets, every one.
  
• 13D: Portuguese-speaking island off the African coast (SÃO TOMÉ) — Pres. Obama just returned from Portugal today (or yesterday, I forget). That, and the fact that the capital is Lisbon, is about all I know about Portugal (OK, I know more, but I always feel as if Portugal is the European country that time forgot—from major colonial power to ... whatever it is now. No offense! I'm sure it's wonderful)
  
• 95D: 1976 rescue site (ENTEBBE) — Had only the vaguest sense of what this was until I ran into it in a grid a while back and looked it up. Israeli rescue mission in Uganda. More here.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Read more...

Capital of former Belgian Congo / WED 8-25-10 / Locale of Britain's first Christian martyr / * City Tampa neighborhood / Rowdies in British slang

Constructor: Clive Probert

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging


THEME: Bs — Note on the puzzle reads: "In this crossword, every answer and every clue contains at least one letter B."

Word of the Day: BOMA (3D: Capital of the former Belgian Congo) —

The port town of Boma in Kongo Central Province was the capital city of the Belgian Congo (the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo) from 1 May 1886 to 1926, when it was moved to Léopoldville (since renamed Kinshasa). It exports tropical timber, bananas, cacao, and palm products. As of 2009 it had an estimated population of 527,725. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not being up on my turn-of-the-last-century African capitals, I found that this one hurt a little. By which I mean, a lot. I knew that the trick had something to do with the fill in general, not any set of "theme" answers, but I kept thinking, as I filled in creaker after clunker, "this better be good." Then the punchline was: Bs. That is not a very good punchline. Seriously, if you're throwing BOMA (!) and YBOR (!?!) (23D: ___ City (Tampa neighborhood)) at me, there better be some sweet sweet payoff, somewhere. Everything I dislike about stunt puzzles is on display here—we can, if we choose, marvel at the constructor's ingenuity and prowess, When We're Done, but getting from A to B is a slog. Not that there was a complete absence of pleasure—I oddly liked BELLLABS, for instance (triple-L!) (56A: Research group associated with many Nobel Prizes in Physics). But with only two 8s and two 7s and the rest 6 or shorter, there is almost nothing that is genuinely interesting. Overly common fill, interrupted every once in a while by a genuine WTF!? Repeated letter strings all Over the place (ALBA, BELL, ABBA, REBE). Aside from the ragtag ye olde concert going on in the middle of the grid (the long-awaited reunion of TABOR & REBEC!) (40A: Its beat may accompany a fife & 45A: Old stringed instrument with a narrow body), there's not much joy in solveville today.

Bullets:

• 20A: Locale of Britain's first Christian martyr (ST. ALBANS) — when I saw this (which I'd somehow heard of) crossing BOMA (not so lucky), I knew something was deeply wrong. Not surprisingly, ST. ALBANS has an ABBEY (29D: Setting for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose"). Appears to have no relationship (besides sharing four consecutive letters) to ALBA Longa (64A: ___ Longa, where Romulus and Remus were born).
  
• 8D: Citadel, in Arabic (CASBAH) — Interesting. I honestly considered writing in CASTLE here. Didn't quite seem "Arabic" enough.
  
• 11D: P.L.O. bigwig Mahmoud (ABBAS) — "Bigwig" being a concession to the theme.
  
• 28D: Sitcom with the character B.J. ("REBA") — really wanted this to have something to do with "B.J. and the Bear" (the romantic story of a man and his ... chimp?)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Read more...

Lovers of luxury / THU 7-1-10 / 15th century pontiff only pope to write autobiography / Dick's partner / One of Western political family

Constructor: Clive Probert

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: OVER / UNDER — "___ over ___" and "___ under ___" phrases are represented with the first and last words in the phrases literally over or under each other (so that "over" and "under" are implied)


Word of the Day: COPRA (43A: Coconut oil source) —

n.
The dried white flesh of the coconut from which coconut oil is extracted.

[Portuguese, from Malayalam koppara.]

• • •

First thought: "Seen it." Don't know where or when, but this gimmick is familiar to me. Not that I picked up on it right away. First couple minutes were spent just hacking around. Eventually stumbled into the central theme answer(s) — by far the best of the lot, by virtue of being playful/interesting — and then went back and picked up the stupid NW (where I was sure I was doomed) and pretty much tore the puzzle apart from there. Phrases are all very, almost too, familiar, except MIND over BODY, which just feels awkward to my ears.

Theme answers:

• 1A: With 14-Across, breakfast order? (EGGS over EASY)
  
• 16A: With 8-Across, world's oldest subway system? (LONDON underGROUND)
  
• 34A: With 42-Across, bogey? (ONE over PAR)
  
• 45A: With 42-Across, birdie? (ONE under PAR)
  
• 70A: With 67-Across, dreaded words from a cop? (YOU ARE under ARREST)
  
• 69A: With 72-Across, motto of a fitness trainer? (MIND over BODY)
  

High- and lowlights: DIVI-what? I had DIVISION and DIVIDEND in that damned answer and didn't get the real answer (DIVIDE UP) til near the very end (21D: Split). Nerdily proud to nail RATITE (48D: Many an Australian bird) and NAURU (52D: Pacific republic) (in the same small SW section), largely by virtue of my having made both words my "Word of the Day" in recent months. KURT crossing RON = huh? crossing who? for me (57D: Mathematician Gödel + 68A: Actor Moody of "Oliver!"). Thankfully, the "R" was completely inferrable. UPRIVER was my favorite answer in the whole grid (31A: Away from the mouth). SYBARITES is laudable, in its way, but too pretentious for me to fully embrace (4D: Lovers of luxury). And what the hell is with the clue on LEI (15A: Romanian "dollars")? That is Not an improvement on the Hawaiian floral wreath answer. Plural of an already obscure / crosswordesey currency (LEU)? Just write a better (Hawaiian) LEI clue!

Bullets:

• 49A: Sickening (NOISOME) — good word. This was probably my worst stumble of the day, as I put in NOXIOUS.
  
• 19A: Pontiac, for one (OTTAWA) — not a model I'm familiar with ... [sit back, wait for mail]
• 51D: Dick's partner (SPIRO) — interesting political clues today in this one (tough) and UDALL (toughish) (11D: One of a Western political family).
  
• 44A: "___ Eyes" (1969 hit) ("THESE") — "LYIN" also fits; wrong year. [correction: LYING fits. LYIN' ... does not]
  

[no Eagles to be found, so ... this'll do]

• 54A: Entry at a hippodrome (TROTTER) — mind briefly confused "hippodrome" and "velodrome"
  
• 59A: 15th-century pontiff who was the only pope to write an autobiography (PIUS II) — random popes with Roman numerals are never a welcome sight.
  
• 61A: Weapon in "The Terminator" (UZI) — from ISR (60D: Neighbor of Syr.). I thought answer would be more ... futuristic/robotic.
  
• 6D: What the Mad Hatter pours on the Dormouse to wake it up (TEA) — well, let's see, they were at the TEA party, so ...
  
• 23D: Stalwart supporter (ADHERENT) — so NBA free agency begins in about 40 minutes from the time I'm typing this. Stalwart supporters of Cleveland and its "King" will be holding their collective breaths waiting to see what the second-best player in basketball decides to do . . . Hope he decides quickly so that ESPN can move on to talking about Anything else.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Read more...