SATURDAY, Mar. 3, 2007 - Karen M. Tracey

Solving time: untimed, but quick - something around 15 minutes

THEME: Celebrity names aplenty (or, none)

I always feel good when I am able to have my way with a Saturday puzzle, so maybe that is skewing my feelings about this puzzle - but, that said, I loved it. Loved it! Heavy on the fun pop culture, light on learned obscurities. Even the long clue involving flora, which I was certain I would end up strangling me, came out smelling sweet - 22A: Woodbine or twinberry (honeysuckle). Once I got that "Y," I think I literally said "aha!" and the NNW, which had remained a bit sticky to that point, finally tumbled. Let's take this puzzle in five parts, each part represented by the celebrity who helped me (or in the case of the NW, didn't help me) unravel it.

Part the First: The Land of Manuel de Falla (Center)

33A: Manuel de Falla opera "La _____ Breve" ("Vida")

OK, so Manuel de Falla is not exactly a "celebrity," and his name's not actually in the grid, but ... he'll have to do. This was the very first answer I entered on the grid. And then it just sat there, as I tried, with no success, to get crosses. But it's important that it was sitting there, because eventually (three corners later) I built back toward it, and it not only opened up the middle, but gave me entree to the NW. So, an important little answer for having so little initial impact. I knew the phrase implied "Life is Short" - from the ancient aphorism ars longa, vita brevis (Hippocrates, apparently) - but wanted VITA there at first. Then, knowing that de Falla was Spanish I thought "what's the Spanish word for 'life?'" Then I remembered the Ricky Martin song "Living La Vida Loca," and I was set. Thanks, Ricky. I probably would have clued VIDA as [Pitcher Blue] or something slightly more clever, but having recently heard a performance of de Falla's excellent "El Amor Brujo," I'm very happy to see him name-dropped in this way. VIDA intersects DELISH (20D: Finger-lickin' good), which pairs nicely with the other creatively spelled entry in the grid, PAREE (40A: "Since Marie Has Left _____" (Sinatra song)). Not sure how I feel about [Finger-lickin' good] as a clue - technically, it's pretty good, but since it is (or was) KFC's (or Kentucky Fried Chicken's) catchphrase for the longest time, it's giving me bad vibes of creepy old plantation owners and chickens being absolutely tortured under modern poultry-processing conditions.

Part the Second: The Land of Norah Jones (The Southwest)

26D: Her "Don't Know Why" was 2002's Record of the Year (Norah Jones)

An outright gimme - seriously, if you got any answer in this puzzle, you probably got this one, as this chick was @#$#-ing ubiquitous several years back. I'm guessing you not only like NORAH JONES a little, you probably even own one of her albums. Admit it, Times readers. Somebody's propping up her career, and you all are my prime suspects. One of the first controversial stances I ever took on This Here Blog was that NORAH JONES was inferior in every way to Merle Haggard (yes, the comparison may seem arbitrary, but it was related to their both being in the puzzle around the same time). I stand by that comment to this day. However - while normally I'm not happy to encounter NORAH JONES, she really, really helped me get this puzzle started, so maybe I should give her a break. I had the entire SW section done inside of a few minutes thanks to her. Other great features of NORAH JONES-land:

36A: Items in many a still life (oranges)
25D: They offer hot links (IHOPs)

As I was writing in ORANGES, I exclaimed "Dammit, how come she keeps getting her name in the puzzle while I continue to be snubbed!?" ("She" being my fellow crossword blogger whose handle is ORANGE). Then, the very next entry I filled in was IHOPS (Plural! Just like in heaven!) and it was as if the puzzling gods were saying "We have not forgotten thee, Rex." Since IHOP is my oft-declared official religion, I take all IHOP references as a tip of the hat to me, whether so intended or not. Apparently the idea that the ORANGES / IHOPS intersection is a dual crossword blog reference has already been put forth at the NYT Forum - the fact that anyone besides me noticed makes me happier than you'll ever know.

49A: Singer who wrote the poetry collection "The Lords and the New Creatures" (Jim Morrison)

As he is a bigger musical legend than NORAH JONES, perhaps it seems unfair that he should be relegated to secondary status in this SW quadrant. But, first of all, to be fair, NORAH JONES handed me a ton of answers with no effort on my part, where JIM MORRISON came to the party late. And second, as he is clued in relation to his poetry-writing (!?) I can't in good conscience give him priority status. When I first read the clue, I swear to you that my first guess (before looking at the number of spaces involved) was JEWEL. Singers who write (crappy) poetry ... first thought = Jewel. And since the answer did indeed start with "J," I thought maybe JEWEL had a last name ... but no, the answer is not JEWEL. It's the Lizard King.

58A: Baja California port (Ensenada)

My family went here on an infamous road trip in, let's say, 1985. I have a picture, which I could scan and post ... maybe some other time. I bought many a comical stuffed frog, and a leather wallet which I used well into the late 90's. Speaking of family trips to Mexico, we'll be doing it all again in April, only this time, Destination: Club Med Cancun. I'm totally serious. Can you blog from there? We'll find out.

45D: Liszt wrote only one (sonata)

Just a neat little factoid, to go with the other musical factoid I learned yesterday, which is that Debussy wrote only one opera: Pelléas et Mélisande. Reader Ultra Vi is surely happy with today's multiple music clues: De Falla, Liszt ... and ... let's see ... ooh, also DALE EVANS (28A: With 8-Down, "Happy Trails" songwriter), Gene KRUPA (24D: He had a 1941 hit with "Drum Boogie"), and one other which I'm holding off on 'til ... well, 'til right now, as he is the celebrity who rules our next puzzle section.

Part the Third: The Land of Xzibit (The Northwest)

1A: Rapper with an MTV show ... whose name sounds like a word meaning "show" (Xzibit)

Best Crossword Fill Ever. Look at his name! This was a gimme for me, though I couldn't figure out at first how "Pimp My Ride" "sounds like a word meaning show.'" Then I realized that the clue is just badly written, and that "whose" refers back to "Rapper" (not the more proximate "show"). . . [cough] . . . ["Nerd!"] .... yes, anyway. Xzibit is a very charismatic man, and I have watched his show several times - in fact, it might be the only MTV show I have watched more than once since Daria went off the air. The "X" in XZIBIT helped me get 1D: Marvel Comics comic (X-Men), which you'd think would be easy for me - I teach comics, for god's sake - and yet I swear to you that my first thought was not the wildly popular X-MEN, but the wildly silly THOR.


Love the intersecting colloquial fill 15A: Defiant dare ("Make me!") and 5D: "Nothing for me, thanks" ("I'm good"). And it's always good to see the handsome, campy Billy ZANE (2D: "The Phantom" star Billy) in the puzzle. "The Phantom," like X-MEN (in a way) is a comic - see the ridiculous, modern, ongoing version in my sidebar (if you dare).

Part the Fourth: The Land of Margaret Atwood (The Southeast)

60A: "Oryx and Crake" novelist, 2003 (Atwood)

Thanks to my sister, who has a massive assortment of ATWOOD novels, including this one, which I feel as if my mother bought for her a couple years back, maybe for Xmas. Or maybe I'm making that up. Anyway, the title "Oryx and Crake" is super-memorable, as both proper nouns look like horrible typos - "'Oryx and Crake' ... that can't be right. She must mean 'Onyx and Cake,' right?" "Yes, because that makes Much more sense."

54A: Pioneer in the development of nuclear power (Fermi)

Crossword solving rule #182: When in doubt, vote FERMI!

Please note the rarely seen phenomenon of the "four-square" here in the SE section of the puzzle. This is the name I am giving to when four squares, all holding the same letter, form a larger square. This one is an "O" four-square, with ATWOOD and RETOOL (62A: Modernize, as a factory) (one of my favorite words, especially when used in relation to sitcoms) intersecting ROOT (55D: Etymologist's concern) and MOOT (56D: Kind of point). Two things about ROOT. My first thought: "What part of an insect is the ROOT?" Second: "A perfectly good opportunity to reference Elihu ROOT, squandered."

Part the Fifth: The Land of Ian Fleming (The Northeast)

12D: "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" author (Ian Fleming)

Like the HONEYSUCKLE clue (with which I opened today's ridiculously long blog entry), I psyched myself out here, figuring it would be some strange British woman I'd never or barely heard of. Little did I suspect that the author of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was also the creator of James Bond.

10D: Something that has long needed settling (old score)

Such a great great clue / answer pairing. The "needed" part was throwing me - seemed a rather subjective, qualitative judgment for the puzzle to be making. I was halfway hoping the answer would be WEST BANK if only to see the giant controversy that would stir up. But no, OLD SCORE. Perfect. I do love vengeance. If you wanted to settle an OLD SCORE, why not MARAUD (9D: Freeboot) ... you know, DEMOLISH (7A: Total) a few buildings ... it's fun!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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MONDAY, Jan. 29, 2007 - Fred Piscop

Solving time: 4:46

THEME: words that end -PPER? - all theme clues are two-word phrases that, well, end in -PPER, like I told you, e.g. 17A: Popular grilled fish (red snapper) [addendum: Just found out from Crossword Fiend's blog that the vowel that precedes -PPER changes with each answer, and does so in alphabetical order, no less: -APPER, -EPPER, -IPPER, -OPPER, -UPPER]

It is early in the morning, and I can't remember - was there a clue in this puzzle that refers to the theme and explains it more elegantly than I did? I know what you're thinking: "You have the puzzle in front of you ... right now! Why don't you look for yourself?" Good question. I'm tired. There are a lot of clues. I'm not in the mood to read fine print right now. I just want to glance at the grid, see an answer, and write the first thing that comes to mind. No time or energy for close analysis this a.m. Assuming I haven't missed something, this theme is pretty tepid, though some of the fill is pretty fancy and lively. Favorite theme answer was THE GIPPER (37A: 1940 Ronald Reagan role - I mentioned Reagan in yesterday's commentary, and voilà, here he is today, back from the dead, ready for puzzle action, sir), followed closely by DR PEPPER (24A: Soft drink since 1885). Note that there is no "." (or "period") in the "DR" of DR PEPPER. Why am I telling you this? To spare you the annoyance of having some know-it-all correct you should you ever have occasion to write about DR PEPPER. It's like one, big public service announcement, this blog.

Multiple-Word Phrases

• 15A: Wash gently against, as the shore (lap at) - love it
• 28A: China, Japan, etc. (Far East) - see also TOKYO (57A: City trashed by Rodan); as opposed to the Near East, where you would find the DINAR (23A: Jordanian cash), though probably not in the pocket of an ISRAELI (46D: Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert)
• 66A: Started a cigarette (lit up) - reminds me of when I first solved a Times crossword, back when my diet consisted almost entirely of cigarettes, Diet Coke, and fried burritos; God bless college (and a 20-year-old's metabolism)
  
• 45D: Close to its face value, as a bond (near par)
• 11D: Take some pressure off (let up on)

I [heart] multiple-word phrases in my crossword grid, and these are all fairly vibrant. Why do I love multiple-word phrases in general. Something about the way they exploit the possibilities of the grid in unexpected ways - I think the brain instinctively, for however split a second, takes in the blank row / column as a single unit. My brain likes when that unit has subunits, finding out where the breaks between words are, etc. Plus, multiple-word phrases tend to swing toward the colloquial (as opposed to the dusty dictionary) end of the language, which I appreciate.

Odd Jobs

12D: Opposite of dividers (uniters)
24D: Inventor (deviser)
25D: Speaker with a sore throat, say (rasper)

Every Monday puzzle, it seems, brings with it an assortment of verbs that are tortured into becoming nouns, although these jobs aren't that odd, in the end. Well, the last one is pretty icky, but the first two I can actually imagine someone's using in conversation. Nice UNITER / divider juxtaposition. Timely, without being catty. Toward the President. In case that wasn't obvious. In other made-up word news, REBOLTS (42D: Makes tighter, in a way) is kinda gross, but it does have a certain Frankensteinian aura that makes it vaguely tolerable.

59D: Nile slitherers (asps)
26D: Actress _____ Dawn Chong (Rae)

They're back! Haven't seen either of these Pantheon members for a while (or so it seems). I was just thinking yesterday that I haven't seen ASPS or EERO in a long time, and here I get a visit from ASPS - if they keep their appearance frequency to about once a month, I'll tolerate them quite fine.

7D: PC program, briefly (app)
8D: Al Capp's Daisy _____ (Mae)

One of the weird things about solving a Monday puzzle, for me, is that I never set eyes on a significant number of clues. When you know all the Acrosses, you never see the Downs, and vice versa. So it was in the Far North of this puzzle, where I only just now noticed these two little words - and I'm glad I missed them, because I have a feeling that I would have botched / misspelled them if I'd gone at them in their blank state. I would have looked for some acronym for the first one, and spelled the second one MAY, probably, despite my alleged affection for / knowledge of comics.

41D: Overlay material (acetate)
49A: Sicilian seaport (Palermo)

These seem pretty fancy words for a Monday. I'm not sure I'd know ACETATE if it bit me, or if it were sitting on my desk right now. For all I know, it is. No, it isn't, but you get my point. Was CARLA (40A: "Cheers" waitress) Tortelli from PALERMO? I don't know. I do know that I misspelled her name on my first pass through the grid - spelled it with a "K," which is how my dissertation adviser spelled her own first name. Also botched 44A: "National Velvet" author Bagnold (Enid) - don't remember what I put in, but it was probably something like EDIE. Let's go back to Italy for 4D: Puccini opera (Tosca) and then over to GAM (60D: Pinup's leg), just ... because, and then we'll close it out with my favorite book, the OED (27A: Brit. reference work), which I own in the single-volume edition, the one you are supposed to read with a magnifying glass, but which I read without aid (my eyes are one of a select number of body parts that are Not showing their age ... yet). Sadly, I have deferred getting the Webster's Unabridged Dictionary that I really, really wanted, for financial reasons (i.e. we bled money over the Holidays and are trying to stop the bleeding before we make any large-ish expenditures). Someday my dictionary will come. Til then, I'll make do with my (very) old standby, the OED.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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MONDAY, Jan. 22, 2007 - C. W. Stewart

Solving time: 4:31

THEME: Road Signs - six theme answers are phrases commonly found on road signs, e.g. 17A: Road sign #1 (Lane Closed), and all of them are tied together by 72A: Whom you might see in your rearview mirror if you ignore the above signs (cop) [WHOM! Hurray for grammar!]

Always good to get in under five minutes on a Monday. It's been a while. This puzzle was easier than most themed puzzles because once you figured out that the theme answers were indeed just phrases on road signs, with no particular logic or wordplay or trickiness involved, you could fill them in pretty quickly with very few crosses. How many such phrases are there? (I did have NO PASSING for NO PARKING, but only for about 8 seconds). There are a few odd-looking or otherwise remarkable entries on the grid, but the puzzle was not MADE WORSE (10D: Degraded) by them, and I never, not once, felt compelled to GNASH (27D: Grind, as teeth) my teeth. Speaking of "Grind," Andrew just sent me a link to the trailer for the upcoming double-feature Grindhouse, featuring sexploitation films by both Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. I'm a little afraid, and a little excited to see this/these. Not for the very squeamish or the sense-of-humor-free.

Before I have at the puzzle, a brief thank-you to "painquale" (whoever you are) for the nice plug - and generally thoughtful writing about solving crosswords - at MetaFilter.com yesterday. I am most grateful for the kind words (and the link - free advertising!).

1A: Poppycock (rot)

A case where the clue is far, far more dated than the answer, which is itself dated. When was the last time anyone used "Poppycock" in anything but an intentionally ironic or prehistoric fashion? Here's something interesting, followed by something gross: WorldWideWords (fascinating if painfully thorough site on words and their origins) tells me that the word is actually American in origin (though it sounds British to most ears) and that it comes from "the Dutch word pappekak for soft faeces." I like the way the British spell FAECES, as the "A" somehow allows me to pretend that I am dealing merely with a typo of FACES.

13A: Daredevil Knievel (Evel)

Ever since I finalized the Pantheon list for this year (see sidebar), I have been reminded almost every day of the long list of worthy candidates who were excluded or (in the case of Mr. EVEL) not even duly considered. Remarkably useful letter combination that NO one else can get you. You can't reclue EVEL. You go through Knievel or you don't get there. Other worthy, excluded candidates here include ELENA (20A: Actress Verdugo of "Marcus Welby, M.D.) - I love the implicit notion that mentioning "Marcus Welby" somehow demystifies things for me - LAMA (16A: Himalayan priest), ELENA's cousin LENA (14D: Horne of "The Lady and Her Music") and EROSE (52D: Jagged, as a leaf's edge), the last of which is not terribly common; but when it does crawl out into the light, it does so almost exclusively in the context of crossword grids.

Despite a pretty high frequency of ordinary-to-downright-tired fill, this grid still manages to sparkle in places. Robert E. Lee is a crossword stalwart, but I always like seeing him in the grid as RELEE (1D: Gen. in the confederacy), because the RE- looks like a prefix, making the whole entry look like some kind of bygone nautical term. It's rare to find a word or expression I've never heard of in a Monday puzzle, but I will admit to having never heard of OLD SOD (8D: Fatherland, affectionately) before today. Sounds like something you'd call a senior citizen, non-affectionately. Would have preferred [Annoy the hell out of urban pedestrians in the 1970s] as a clue for PANTOMIME (33D: Show silently), but this clue has a certain terseness that I admire. DRYADS (54A: Wood nymphs, in myth) is always nice fill - would have been nicer if I had gotten it right away instead of entering NAIADS, which are sea nymphs, you idiot. I'm wondering why "in myth" is appended to "Wood nymphs"... where else am I going to find wood nymphs? Yosemite? and would those wood nymphs go by a different name? RANGY (12D: Slender and long-limbed) is giving me weird vibes this morning. Took a while to come to me last night (when I solved this puzzle) and now it barely looks like a word, for some reason - it looks like TANGY, but does not rhyme with TANGY. Seems wrong. Lastly, since I'm starting teaching again tomorrow, and one of the courses I am teaching is entitled "Comics," I will close by mentioning that "The GOON" (36D: Thug) is a very entertaining horror/comedy comic - a now much-abused genre that is not easy to do well. Eric Powell's art is spectacular, and the title character looks like a cross between a Depression-era strike-breaker and Frankenstein's monster - the best of both worlds. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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THURSDAY, Jan. 11, 2007 - Lee Glickstein and Nancy Salomon

Solving time: 11:08

THEME: "ADD-ICT" - Common expressions have ICT added to them to make odd expressions, which are then clued. 62A tells you the theme: Fiend ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme (addict)

I feel very good this morning, despite an only slightly better-than-average Thursday time (I give myself a B+). After yesterday's debacle, and after doing Several Puzzles in a Row in my Shortz "Greatest Hits" puzzle book wherein I had 1-3 squares wrong in Wednesday and Thursday puzzles, it was nice to complete a puzzle, with no extended struggle, and to have the applet accept my first grid submission. The other reason I'm happy - uh, this puzzle was hard. There were multiple times when I managed to get past a really difficult part and immediately thought "man, that was rough - that's gonna trip someone up" (usually that someone is me). Examples below.

I am still waiting for confirmation from someone that yesterday's Homer quotation was in fact genuine and not an internet myth grown to stellar proportions. I wouldn't want the paper to have print another retraction - as they had to do recently when SARA LEE got clued [Company that owns the brands Playtex, Kiwi and Hillshire Farm] - doesn't own Playtex anymore, apparently - but facts are facts and I want facts. Not factiness. Speaking of "The Colbert Report" (which I just did, whether you knew it or not), I was terrifically happy yesterday when I was flipping through the latest issue of Previews - massive catalogue of upcoming comics releases .... [cough] ... ["Nerd!"] ... -
and I noticed a number of high-profile ads for the upcoming comic book adaptation of Mr. Colbert's unpublished "Tek Jansen" novel. Here is the promotional blurb:

Solar plexus! Bursting out from the hit Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report — it’s Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen! In this stunning continuation of Stephen Colbert’s critically acclaimed, yet unpublished prose novel, everyone’s favorite sci-fi hero must stand against the enemies of freedom, no matter what dark planet they crawl from!

I ordered the series - which won't be in stores for three months. I'll let you know how it is.

THE THORNS

31D: Glimpse (aperçu)

This clue/answer pairing is an ass-pain on many levels. First, APERÇU implies "insight" or "special understanding," where [Glimpse] just suggests "sight." Second, the clue skews more verb-ward than noun-ward, likely causing many mental forays into Useless-ville. Third, holy cow, what the hell ends in -CU??? Without the cedille on that C, that C really really wants to be hard (!). But the U comes from EMU (48A: Noted Australian sprinter), and how could EMU be wrong when it gave me the M that allowed me to get the great and manifestly correct 30D: "Rah!" (Go team!) (where formerly I had HUZZAH, which is making me laugh even as I type it)? In the end, APERÇU was about as palpably physical an "aha" moment as I've had in a while. Exhilarating.

36A (THEME): Order to act one's age? (maturity d-ICT-ate)

Was working on this before I had the theme, and the only thing that second word wanted to be was some form of DIRECT ... DIRECTIVE ... DIRECTION ... ? I had even written in DIRECT, which left me one letter shy of the end of the answer. I figured if I just let DIRECT hang out there for a while, something would happen. Strangely, though it was wrong, its "T" helped me confirm the correct GO TEAM (30D, see above). Now that I look at this whole mid-Atlantic region of the puzzle, it's very very France-circa-WWII. Two French military answers: 35D: 1944 battle site (St. Lo) and 44A: Encamp (bivouac) (the latter apparently comes from the French, via probably Swiss-German). Then APERÇU and Albert Camus, too (that's a rhyme!): 29D: Camus subject (plague). ST. LO is pure crosswordese - a very handy four-letter combo I know only from doing crosswords. I was happy to traipse through this mid-Atlantic region relatively unscathed. I had to work for it, but I could easily have fallen flat on my face, and didn't.

60A: Required (need be)

I can't tell you how befuddled I was by this. Time-wise, I didn't get chewed up too badly, but I ran into an apparent Unstoppable Force / Immovable Object problem when this answer, which I had understandably entered as NEEDED, rammed its final "D" right into the "E" of 58D: Firmed up (set), which, true to its name, would not budge. "NEEDLE? How is a NEEDLE 'Required?'" It was left for me to pick up the "B," which I did only by finally (duh) getting the gist of 57D: "The Office" address? - I had N_C, and I figured the answer was something web-related, or something having to do with business-speak or somebody's title in an office. Of course, if I'd bothered to notice the quotation marks around "The Office," it might have dawned on me sooner that the Office in question was the TV show of that name (which, semi-ironically, is one of only 4 or so shows that I actually watch). So NBC. That's the "address" of the show. OK. NEED BE. Wow. Another thorn that impeded but did not halt my forward progress.

49A: "The Odd Couple," for one (Simon P-ICT-ure)

As of right now, I have no idea what SIMON PURE is. Once you add the ICT, then I get the clue, but what is this expression that is being modified??? OK, I am calling in my resident Restoration and 18th century expert on this one. So, Shaun, when you read this, please respond. Apparently the phrase "The (real) SIMON PURE" dates from the early 18th century and comes from "The name of a Quaker in Mrs. Centlivre's comedy A bold stroke for a wife (1717), who is impersonated by another character during part of the play." So "the real SIMON PURE" is the genuine article, not a fake. At least one on-line dictionary suggests that the phrase might also be used derisively, to mean "superficially or hypocritically virtuous." Do people use this expression nowadays, or even know it? Yes, I'm talking to you.

Speaking of "Odd Couple," Christina ROSSETTI (9D: "Goblin Market" poet Christina), meet Horatio ALGER (41A: Author of "Jed, the Poor House Boy"). She writes wistful sonnets, and he exhorts boys to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

The SW was where I made my last stand, and after my first pass through the Across clues, it was still wide open. But 49D: Chesterfield, e.g. (sofa) - everything I know about furniture I learned from the NYT Crossword - gave me the first letters of all the longish answers down there, 51D: Bleu parts of French maps (mers) [sacré bleu, more French] gave me their third letters, and everything fell from there. Really liked Jackie Robinson's number getting the fully written-out treatment: 59A: Jackie Robinson wore it (forty-two) (which also marks the strange, strange return to the puzzle of the number "42" (see Tuesday's puzzle)).

Wrong Fill

• CALVIN for ARMANI -1A: Big name in menswear and cologne
• REVELLED (?) and then CAVILLED (!?!?!) for CAVORTED - 38D: Made merry

(More) Stuff I Didn't Know

• 12D: Son of Ramses I (Seti) - sure, OK, whatever you say
• 8D: It's to the left of # (Oper.) - this is on a telephone keypad, right? Did not know that. Kept looking at my own computer keyboard and seeing only "@" and "2"
• 37D: Group whose 1946 song "The Gypsy" was #1 for 13 weeks (Ink Spots) - not THE INK SPOTS? Worst band name ever.
• 20D: Harvard's motto (veritas) - I pieced this together easily enough, but didn't know it, exactly. Pretty pompous motto.

Hot Fill

• 16A: Fit of rage (apoplexy) - one of the greatest words to grace the grid in a while
• 5D: Not very potent potable (Near Beer) - great, Jeopardy-esque clue with super-fresh answer

Given that 7A: Sticking points (morasses) crossed with 7D: Kind of nest (mare's) in the NE, I'm really surprised I didn't have trouble there. APOPLEXY is up there too. That corner is all bark and no bite ... and 99 44/00 Awesome.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Note on Today's NY SUN puzzle

Solving time: 14:06

This puzzle warrants mentioning for some fabulous fill, including 1A: Lila Crane portrayer in "Psycho" (Vera Miles), 32D: Alternative to Golden Crinkles (Tater Tots), 38D: She played Prue on "Charmed" (Shannen), and the very very best answer of 'em all, 14: Simpsonian institution (Kwik-E-Mart). Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart!? I dooooooooooooo. This puzzle is also awesome because I got to use my knowledge of the fabulous but rarely seen word "ecdysiast" (41D: Is an ecdysiast (strips)) and because I got to use recently acquired obscure TV knowledge in answering 45D: Ralph of "The Waltons" (Waite). I'm also a big fan of the DIME NOVEL (17A: Early paperback) if not, at all, a big fan of REBA (20A: Sitcom title character with the last name Hart).

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SATURDAY, Jan. 6, 2007 - Robert H. Wolfe

Solving time: untimed

THEME: me, wincing

As with yesterday's puzzle, very little fun here. This puzzle does have one of the best clue/answer pairings of all time (see below), but mostly the answers made me wince, cringe, and grimace. My pace felt very odd, like I'd be very stuck, and then I'd solve a whole chunk of the puzzle in one shotgun burst. Was the shotgun RECOILLESS (22A: Having very little kick)? Hmmm, not exactly. RECOILLESS was one of the wince-inducing words, though over 200K Google hits say it is, in fact, a word. It feels terribly made-up. Why not RECOIL-FREE, which is easier to say and doesn't sound like you're mispronouncing a foreign word? In general, I much prefer Saturday puzzles that are hard because of tricky cluing to Saturdays that are hard because they have over-relied on the darkest corners of the dictionary.

TOP FIVE WINCES:

• 47A: Like a string bean (tall and slim) - A string bean cannot be TALL unless we are in some alternate fairy-land veggieverse, which we are not. I understand that the term "string bean" is used colloquially to refer to a TALL AND SLIM person, but this cluing is off. I mean, once I had the TALL- part, I could guess the rest (though I thought LEAN at first instead of SLIM), but still, wince, cringe, grimace.
• 31D: Voiced bits of speech (sonants) - It's like a typo of "sonatas" - again, like RECOILLESS, it's hard to imagine anyone's using it without that person's interlocutor going "... what?" See also the very funny recent bit on "30 Rock" where an actress is starring in a movie called Rural Juror, which no one can pronounce without sounding ridiculous. Just comes out sounding like "RuhhJuhh." SONANTS sounds too much like "sonnets." It must be related to CON-SONANTS. Oh, I guess that's because consonants go "with" (CON) sonants, which are mostly vowel sounds ... although some consonant sounds are voiced: B is, P isn't. Essentially same lip/tongue movement, but B gets voiced. My piecemeal knowledge of linguistics is at an end.
• 7D: Boils down (decocts) - Let me count the ways that this answer blows. No One Would Ever Say It. It appears to be reverse-engineered from CONCOCTS (an actual word with 10 times as many Google hits as DECOCT). Apparently, when you extract the flavor of something by boiling it, you DECOCT it. It's just an ugly, ugly word.
• 43A: Relish (piccalilli) - What is it with long, long words I've never heard of that describe food that looks like vomit!? Yesterday I had to endure NESSELRODE, and today, this ridiculous-sounding condiment. A bit too close to PICKANINNY if you ask me. Wife Sandy says her "Gran" used to make it, a fact which does not abate my distaste for this word (and, in all probability, the "relish" itself - if the picture is any indication). I didn't have the first part of the word right until this morning. In fact, I had DECCALILLI. Like I'm supposed to know 43A: Tom Courtney's [who?] "Doctor Zhivago" role (Pasha). I was super-proud when I flat-out guessed SASHA and it turned out to be mostly right. I wish I had remembered Crossword Fiend's lesson a while back (I forget where she set it forth) about the differences between ELSA and ILSA and which was a lion and which was not. ILSA looks like the lion's name. I think it's the "IL" beginning, which reverses the beginning of LION. At any rate, the SW was not kind to me.
• 53A: Chiselers (stone men) - I have tried many different Google searches to make this clue-answer pairing make sense. I have not heard of a sculptor of rock called a "stone man" (or "stoneman," for that matter). It may be in an unabridged dictionary somewhere (mine's in the mail!) but it's not in any of the on-line variety. STONE MEN are things that one chisels - they don't do the chiseling. If you Google ["stone men"] you get lots of stuff, but nothing about "chiselers," unless what they are "chiseling" is in fact STONE MEN - as in this 1953 Time magazine article about Polish sculptor Fritz Wotruba (now there's some hot fill). My favorite Stone Men are the ones who bailed out of their malfunctioning spaceship, landing on Easter Island, where they put themselves into a state of suspended animation while waiting for their captain to return with the repaired ship to rescue them.

• Honorable Mention: 34A: Vernacular (demotic)

1A: Cranberry center (Cape Cod)

This answer was a humiliating disaster for me. My first thought was - for some reason - that the answer must be somewhere in Maine. So my brain never left Maine. Even when I was staring at CA__CO_, I was still trying to think of Maine cities besides Bangor, Augusta, Orono, and however you spell Kennebunkport. Then I got the "P" from PERSPIRED (3D: Didn't stay dry) and at that point I believe I literally said "D'OH!" out loud. Would have struck my forehead with my palm, but I was holding a sharp writing implement.

PROUDEST MOMENTS:

I was stuck very early in the puzzle. Started getting a toehold only by using the imagined final "S" on clues that looked like plurals, e.g. 6D: Some Siouans - I didn't know it right off the bat, but I figured it ended in "S," so put in the "S" and was able instantly to get the cross, 25A: Not spontaneous (studied). [Eventually got the 6D answer itself: OSAGES] But after I got 20D: Fair selection (ride) off the first "D" in STUDIED, I was pretty stuck and abandoned the midwest for the far southwest of the puzzle. Here's where I had great, lucky success. Again, with the terminal "S" trick, I got the first "S" in 54A: To-do list (tasks). Then, with just the terminal "K" in place, I immediately got the 10-letter 24D: One being counter-productive? (sales clerk), which I confirmed with the oddly but acceptably spelled 23A: Protection (egis), which crossed SALESCLERK at the first "S." The other correct and large leap of faith I was able to make in this puzzle was 50A: Five-time Art Ross Trophy winner (Esposito), which I got with just the "E" in place. O, and I got 29D: Result of a coup (new regime) with just the "IM" in place.

55A: Asses with dorsal stripes (onagers)

A factoid that resides in my brain for reasons unbeknownst to me. This answer reminds me simultaneously of LIGERS, TIGONS, and OKAPIS (my favorite X-Word animal). Here is a good view of the dorsal fin, I mean stripe, in question:


Google image search of [onager] gives back only two kinds of images: asses and catapults (which would make a great title for ... something):


Final notes: Got very very thrown by the -EU- in 33D: Investigator who finds someone's birth mother, say (re-uniter). Until the RE- prefix dawned on me, I was wondering what kind of hellish German word I was dealing with. I have seen the word MARTEN (17A: Valuable fur) before, but as of this second, I have no idea what that animal looks like. O MY GOD it's the Cutest Thing In The World - Why would you kill and wear it? You people are sick. Unless you are Inuit / freezing to death, you have no business wearing MARTEN. Had only one fit of wrong fill in the puzzle - STOCKS for STORES (15A: Inventories) - a mistake I made only because I could "smell the barn" (my friend Michelle's expression for when you are very near the end of your run, and so pick up the pace). Biggest nobody in the puzzle: 28A: Sir Frank _____, historian of Anglo-Saxon England (Stenton). How do I know he's a nobody? Because I was Trained as a Medievalist at a semi-major University and I've Never Heard of Him - OK, so Anglo-Saxon England isn't my personal specialty, but still, you'd think his name would have crossed my field of vision in my 8 years spent buried under all things medieval. My favorite word that sounds made-up but I don't care: DE-RAT (26A: Make more sanitary, in a way). Awesome understated clue! Like someone's going to cut meat on your kitchen counter and you say "wait, let me DE-RAT the counter first." Good idea!

Two weird architectural features of the puzzle.

1. NEWTON SQUARE - the name I'm giving the 3x3 square in the Virginia region of the puzzle, whose sides are made up of only NEW and TON (2 of each). Look. You'll see what I mean.
2. The other, less symmetrical but no less mesmerizing physical feature of the grid is the crazy diagonality that you can get going off of the last 4 letters in 1D: Was logically consistent (cohered). From the first "E" and "R" you can see diagonal runs of the same letter heading NE (4 E's, 4 R's) and off the final "E" and "D" you can see diagonal runs of the same letter heading SE (5 E's, 3 D's). I circled the diagonal runs, as if I were doing a Word Search. Oh, the whole "E" and "D" runs result in a 3-tiered stack of DE- words in the W part of the puzzle: DERAT, DELIS (30A: People often leave them with cuts - nice!), and DEMOTIC. If only DECOCTS had been down here, I might not have hated it ... as much.

Finally, I officially nominate the following for the cleverest clue of 2007:

32A: Toast, after "a" (goner)

I didn't get this until it was Right On Top of me (G__ER) - I had been thinking (as I was supposed to) that "toast" meant something you give at a wedding or special occasion, like "À votre santé!" or the like - and then the gist of the clue hit me, and I had that "wow" feeling you're SUPPOSED to have when a clue has had its way with you. It's like in tennis when someone hits a winner so spectacular that your awe for your opponent actually overcomes your sickness at dropping the point. Head-shaking disbelief. Good job. Game over.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. breaking news - there are many NEWTON SQUARES in America, including one in Reston, VA, origin (coincidentally?) of a great many hits to this website. Hmmm... I feel like there is something cryptic or coded that I'm supposed to understand about this NEWTON SQUARE, which, as I said, is in the VIRGINIA area of the puzzle ...

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MONDAY, Jan. 1, 2007 - Randy Sowell

Solving time: 5:32

THEME: BOWLS (39A) - four theme entries are all two-word phrases, the first word of which is also the title of a College Football Bowl Game: ROSE GARDEN (3D), ORANGE CRUSH (53A), COTTON CANDY (21A), and SUGAR SHACK (30D)

I just spent an hour tearing up my house trying to find a stupid little piece of paper - I was unsuccessful. So I feel like I am losing my mind, which is always a good way to start the New Year. In order to mellow out, I decided I'd do the puzzle (somehow it always surprises me when Monday's puzzle appears so early on Sunday evening - you'd think I'd be used to it by now). And I can't say doing the puzzle relaxed me (I'm never happy if I'm over 5 minutes), but it sure took my mind off my early-onset dementia. The piece of paper itself is totally replaceable - it's just the idea that I would lose something that drives me Crazy. There are few things I hate more than losing things. I thought Crosswords were supposed to Sharpen your mental faculties. Where is the payoff!?

1A: Mrs. Dithers of the comics (Cora)

Man, not knowing 1A on a Monday is just a horrible feeling. And I'm supposed to Know Something about comics. Ugh. Um, this woman is Dagwood Bumstead's boss's wife, which I deem obscure, thereby eliminating my state of self-loathing for blanking on this answer. For future reference, [Red Sox infielder] will do the job for CORA. Or did they trade him? Nope, he's signed through 2008, despite his crappy batting statistics.

9A: County, in Britain (shire)

Why didn't I know this right off the bat? Probably because I try to put all Hobbit / LOTR-related things far, far out of my mind whenever possible. Again, a better clue (for my sensibilities) would be [Actress Talia].

25A: "It's not easy _____ green" (bein')

No "g," eh? OK. I nearly went past this one, thinking "BEING is five letters," but then the thought of clipping the word, hick-style, occurred to me, and I decided, rightly, to risk it. The greenness here is synesthetically echoed in the SW by 59A: Cape _____ Islands (Verde). I like that VERDE is sitting just under the ORANGE in ORANGE CRUSH, as ORANGE is my favorite color, while VERDE is my wife's.

33D: President before Taylor (Polk)

Everything I know about James K. Polk can be found right here.

53D: "Metamorphoses" poet (Ovid)

I don't have anything particular to say about Ovid (whom I love, as you know), but since he's here, I thought, why not add a little light to your lives, and this new year, by giving you a little taste of his genius. One of the great things about "Metamorphoses" is the opening Creation story, which has many many Biblical parallels, including God (Jove) going all Wrath and Vengeance on the stupid, wicked human beings. Like Lycaon (whom Jove has just turned into a wolf, the poem's first metamorphosis), humankind is greedy and self-worshiping and needs to be taken down. Or out. So like the Hebrew God, Jove, after toying with the idea of fire, brings down a world-destroying flood. "So now Jove set his mind to the deletion / Of these living generations" The translation is from Ted Hughes, and I love Hughes's modern phrasing, as well as his wickedly effective capacity for understatement. "Deletion," like Jove is going to wipe out humanity with his keyboard. His rendering of the final lives of Ovid's flood story are (like all good poetry) truly horrifying:

Birds grow tired of the air.
The ocean, with nowhere else to go,
Makes its bed in the hills,
Pulling its coverlet over bare summits.

While starvation picks off the survivors.

Drowned mankind, imploring limbs outspread,
Floats like a plague of dead frogs.

5D: Like many evangelicals (reborn)

Hmmm, I guess this is right. "Born again" is the more common phrase, but the gist of the meaning is the same. According to Wikipedia, there are Lots of different meanings for REBORN. Here is my favorite.

14A: Breakfast chain (IHOP)
2D: "Gone With the Wind" surname (O'Hara)

IHOP wants into the Pantheon. What a coincidence - I want into IHOP, nearly every day of my life. I'm not sure why I didn't kick off the New Year this morning by eating my way under the table at IHOP. Maybe this weekend. I like that my favorite restaurant chain intersects with one of my very favorite authors - two of my favorite authors, actually. I know it's clued to GWTW, but O'HARA to me means John (novelist) and Frank (poet), unrelated except in their greatness. John wrote novel after novel about the habits, mores, and rituals of Eastern Pennsylvanians - I know that doesn't sound hot, but the guy has the sharpest eye for detail and the sharpest ear for dialogue and I could open nearly any one of his novels at random and start reading, with pleasure. Frank O'HARA was a major mid-century poet who was very very involved in the modern art scene in Manhattan (friends with De Kooning, among others). He died in a freak dune buggy accident on Fire Island. It's true. Like you'd want that on your obit. Anyway, his poems are gorgeous, if often hard to make sense of. Best of all, he was obsessed with and wrote many poems about the color ORANGE:

Frank O'Hara, "Having A Coke With You" (1960)

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

Happy 2007, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SATURDAY, Dec. 30, 2006 - Rich Norris

Solving time: untimed (fastish)

THEME: none

Still jetlagged. Watched two full hours of TLC's "What Not To Wear" last night, and I'm still not sure why. Inertia? Got up at ridiculously late hour, and am just now getting around to blogging today's puzzle, which I did in bed last night. Puzzle was slightly easy for a Saturday, with no real killer areas. In fact, nothing stalled my forward progress until I hit the NE, where a couple of the longish down clues eluded me and I had to wait patiently for answers to reveal themselves. All in all, a very enjoyable experience, with some fantastic fill that I've never seen before. We'll start in the southeast, which I finished first, and in as fast a time as I've Ever completed a quadrant of a Saturday puzzle. For posterity's sake, I need to mention the weird death trinity that's all over the news in these final hours of 2006: Gerald Ford, James Brown, and (newly added) Saddam Hussein. I have nothing to say, except that, as far as these particular contestants are concerned, in the categories of "Ways I'd like to die" and "People I wish I'd known," Hussein places Dead Last.

42A: "_____ Bayou" (1997 Samuel L. Jackson film) [Eve's]

Just the sight of the year "1997" freaks me out, both because it was a horrible year in my life for reasons too horribly personal to get into, and because in 36 hours it will be 2007, making 1997 seem like ancient history. I remember when decades seemed like huge swatches of time, but I submit that there has been hardly any substantial change in taste / fashion in the past decade. Everyone has a cell phone now, and iPods are insanely popular, but other than that ... styles are only slightly different. It's like we're asymptotically approaching the End of History. I demand more historical change. Where's my jetpack!?

Where was I? Oh, right, Samuel Jackson. I - like most of the world - never saw this movie, but I remembered the title, which made this answer a gimme and provided a massive gateway into the SE - as big a gateway as a four-letter answer can open. The "V" helped. I believe that I filled in the entirety of the SE quadrant, including all three 9-letter Acrosses, in about 30 seconds. Many nice things about this quadrant, including the stacked business-speak of 49A: Business letter abbr. (enc.) and 53A: Subject preceder (in re:), and the double-z goodness of 56A: Last N.L. pitcher to win 30 games in a season (1934) [Dizzy Dean], the clue to which functions as a nice mini-lecture. I doubted the rightness of DIZZY DEAN a few times, when I couldn't make the Down cross at the first "Z" (37D: Financially struggling) form any kind of reasonable answer. With just -EZED at the end of an 8-letter entry, I started thinking that the answer must be IN THE RED (which would have fit and been an awesome answer, frankly), but that conflicted with the "Z," which sent me searching for DIZZY's brother's name, which my brain couldn't turn up (Paul, nicknamed "Daffy"). Eventually worked my way through -EEZED words to get SQUEEZED, which is a wicked long one-syllable word.

Lastly, re: the SE quadrant, I like that 59A: Didn't stir at the right time? (overslept) is counter-echoed (yes, that's a word ... now) in the NW by 17A: Revelation (eye-opener), a phrase I hear every week on one of my yoga DVDs, at the point when I "sit back on your heels, coming into a toe stretch ... if this is an EYE-OPENER for you," you can wuss out and point your toes straight back behind you and Then sit down on your heels. I do not wuss out. OK, seriously, where was I?

34D: Cry while shaking (It's a deal)
28D: Childish retort (Does too!)
13D: Surfing mecca (Internet)

I want to call attention to a few trends in cluing and filling, trends that are starting to become a bit well-worn and tired. I love the cluing on IT'S A DEAL, but that phrase has shown up, either exactly in this form or slightly modified (or partial), at least a couple of times since I began this blog. Long answer, lots of common letters, so I see the appeal. And the misdirective cluing helps, but still, I'm putting that phrase on notice. It seems that every week brings some new variation on the "childish retort" clue / answer (ME TOO, AM SO, DO NOT, DOES SO, etc.). I don't dislike this convention, but it's becoming a bit ... common. Speaking of common, I want to suggest a moratorium (which I just learned how to spell properly) on allegedly cute or wannabe tricky "surfing" clues for INTERNET or other web-based answers. No one is fooled anymore. "Surfing mecca" : "INTERNET" :: "Pig's digs" : "STY" - that is all.

54A: Seat of County Clare (Ennis)
58A: Nonplus (addle)
60A: One who doesn't go past a semi? (loser)

These three answers, neatly stacked at the bottom of the SW quadrant, were squirmy and elusive ... eely, even. I had crossword stalwart YSER (51D: North Sea feeder) anchoring them all in their final positions, and I was pretty sure about 55D: Québec's _____ d'Anticosti (Ile), which gave me their penultimate letters, and still I couldn't polish them off. The LOSER answer dawned on me, but seemed awfully lame. "One who doesn't go past a semi" is someone who has WON a good deal more than she has lost. But the "O" in LOSER gave me a terminal "O" for 35D: Console maker, and NINTENDO presented itself almost immediately. ADDLE was difficult for me, as "Nonplus" is so often used to mean "not affect at all," when it really means to perplex of befuddle such that one is at a loss for words (non-plus = Nothing More to say). ADDLE suggests mental fog, not just a lack of things to say. But whatever ... the biggest problem for me down here in the SW was ENNIS, which I simply inferred; it's the name of one of the best known and prolific comics writers at the moment, Garth ENNIS. He wrote a recent Ghost Rider mini-series, which I thought was OK.

1A: Gross measure? (ick factor)

This answer makes up for the rather banal answer right underneath it (15A: Modern conversation starter (cell phone)). Of course I Googled "ick factor" immediately, wondering how in-the-language it was. Seven of the ten hits on the first page of the search involved sitcoms: specifically, either "Friends" or "Sex and the City" (ugh). Here is an interesting write-up about the phrase from ABC NewsRadio (NOT the sitcom "NewsRadio," strangely, but rather a division of ABC - Australia):

Ick factor

Presented by Kel Richards ["Kel," HA ha - please see fabulous Australian sitcom "Kath & Kim" to find out why I am laughing]

William Safire, in The New York Times, recently reported on the rise of the expression “the ick factor”.

He quotes a film reviewer as saying that ordinary movie-goers are put off by the ick factor in some Hollywood products. While the The Wall Street Journal says that for home-screening colon cancer testing packs to become widely used, customers have to overcome the ick factor. The word ick is first recorded in 1935 – although the variation icky seems to go back to at least 1920. It seems to be related to mean words such as “sick” and “sticky”. At first the ick and icky group of words seemed to that which is overly sweet and sentimental. But over time this meaning broadened until these words came to mean, simply, “in bad taste” or possibly “gross” or even stomach wrenching. And now it seems that the ick factor has become the new way of naming that which we don’t like.

The crazy first four letters of ICK FACTOR spawn a bunch of interest crosses, with the former Sri Lanka (2D: Orange pekoe source, formerly (Ceylon)) and slang for a thief (3D: One to watch for in a pinch? (klepto)) bookended by a pair of Icy Answers: 1D: Cold spell (Ice Age) and 4D: Weddell Sea phenomenon (floe).

22A: "_____ Ramsey" (1970's western) [Hec]
14D: Refuses to deal with (boycotts)

These two cross at the "C," which was, I believe, the very last square I filled in. "HEC Ramsey" is about as obscure a movie title as I have ever seen in the puzzle. Perhaps that's because it's NOT a movie, but a TV ... let's call it a "series," though it ran irregularly, in episodes ranging in length from 90 minutes to 2 hours, for a total of only 10 "episodes." HEC is short for HECtor. Apparently the show was a mystery / western hybrid, with a special focus on early forensics (fingerprinting and the like). The show starred Richard Boone as HEC, with Harry Morgan as "Doc" Amos Coogan - just before he got the role of a lifetime as a different kind of "Doc" on "M*A*S*H."

As for BOYCOTTS - I was kicking myself at the end of it all, because I thought the idea of a word starting "BOY" - that was not a compound word or phrase like "BOY Scout" or "BOY band" - was absurd. Can't think of Any word that starts BOY... oh right, that. BOY disturbed me so much that I started thinking 18A: Ridiculous (nutty) was wrong - I've had trouble with variations on this word before, most notably in the great NUTSY debacle of Nov. 3, 2006. Maybe NUTSO was right. Or NUTTO. Criminy, you could make up any random suffix and attach it to NUT and it might be in the language ... somewhere. But no, NUTTY was right. And in the end, with the exception of the tricky and somewhat dated TABSET (33A: It makes stops along a line), the NE was in the end little more than a sheep in wolf's clothing. Speaking of wolves, our Frontier flight from Denver back to Philadelphia had "Lobo," the grey wolf, on the tail fin (and on the .... ailons? What do you call the little fins on the ends of the wings?). Sahra got me a wolves calendar for Xmas. She knows how much I love wolves, especially those of the were- variety. "Lobo" helped us escape Denver Just ahead of the second snow storm in less than a week. I better call my snowbound family and make sure they're OK.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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TUESDAY, Dec. 26, 2006 - C.W. Stewart

Solving time: 6:47

THEME: Cartoon homonyms, e.g. 19A: Bullwinkle's salon application? (moose mousse)

Today's puzzle was so easy I hardly know what to say about it. There were only a couple of slow parts, and those were the result of technical problems or general methodological idiocy on my part. I often find myself in a rut, where I'm getting the answers easily enough, but not eating up the grid in big chunks. One longish cross will be elusive and so I will solve a lot of its Down crosses, but that might result in just one letter at a time being added to the grid. So I'm blowing past clues, but my solved letter total just creeps along. I hope this makes sense somehow.

I am about to promote REA (40A: _____ Irvin, classic cartoonist) to A-level Pantheon status since every new puzzle lately seems to bring with it yet Another way to clue Rea. The fact that it's both a first and a last name makes it all the more appealing to the Pantheon Promotion Committee. Meanwhile, a search committee has been sent in search of ASPS, who haven't been seen for weeks.

Nice touch including a non-themed cartoon answer in a cartoon-themed puzzle, even though REA Irvin's cartoon's have zero to do with the worlds of Disney or Hanna-Barbera. According to one website I just looked at, "Between 1925 and 1958, Irvin's work appeared on 169 covers of The New Yorker." If I were at my home computer, where all is set up for optimal blogging efficiency, I would of course have a link to that website, along with a picture of one of REA Irvin's New Yorker covers. Alas.

65A: Indigent one (needer)

Ick and yuck and no. Please show me a NEEDER, anywhere, and I will retract my disgust. It's nowhere in the language. Hang on ... yep, when I Google NEEDER, Google thinks I've made a mistake: "Did you mean NEEDED?" No, you stupid engine, NEEDER, not NEEDED. NEEDED gets me 580 MILLION hits. NEEDER gets me only 52,900 hits, and the third one that comes up is an obscure 1938 movie called "The Mind NEEDER." Needless to say, I had BEGGAR here, much to my chagrin, dismay, and slightly hindered solving time.

Happy December 26. I'm off to gain more weight.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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TUESDAY, Dec. 19, 2006 - Sarah Keller

Solving time: 7:46

THEME: N=>KN = very punny - familiar phrases starting with "N" have a "K" tacked on to the beginning and are then clued, e.g. 21A: Sweater selection? (knit-picking)

Further, every new "KN" word has a different vowel sound: KNIT, KNIGHT, KNOT, KNEW. Did you know that in medieval England, the "K" had not yet gone silent and was still pronounced in words like "knight?" It's true. Or so my training taught me. Perhaps my teachers were just making @#$ up. Anyway, one of the joys of reading Chaucer aloud (as I'll do in my classes from time to time) is hitting that hard "K" before the "N." Freaks kids out.

This was a pretty innocuous theme. Clever clues, I suppose, in the theme entries. I got totally flustered / floored / flummoxed by 50A: Was familiar with a summertime allergen? (Knew mown hay), in part because I had the middle and later parts of the answer first and the letter combinations looked insane, and in part because I was looking for POLLEN or RAGWEED or something like that (had just done a puzzle in one of my little Shortz books where the theme was "nothing to sneeze at" or something like that and theme answers involved puns on words like POLLEN and PEPPER and SNUFF and other things that make you sneeze - cute). Who mows hay!?!?! People who do these puzzles don't live on farms or in the 19th century. Hay? Really? OK. Now if the answer had been KNEW MOWN LAWN (1D: Homeowner's pride) - well it wouldn't have fit and I still would have struggled to see it, but at least the end result would have applied to my universe.

WRONG FILL

ANGER for WRATH (17A: Rage)
CLUB for ODDS (6A: What a tout may tout)
TBAR for LBAR (61A: Beam with a 90 degree bend)
NOSTICK for NONOILY (41D: Greaseless)

29D: Singer Lenya (Lotte)
38D: Polish-born author Sholem (Asch)

Blogged 'em before, so I'll blog 'em again. These two both return to the puzzle for the second time this month. I'd never heard of either of them before they showed up in my puzzle, though Ms. Lenya is apparently a puzzle stalwart. Can we get some new blood in the puzzle? Yes - there's Heidi KLUM ("As you know, in fashion, one moment you're in, and the next ... you're out!") (40D: Supermodel Heidi), Carrie Chapman CATT (23D: Women's suffrage leader Carrie Chapman _____) - honey, little help with that one... - Jim BACKUS (10D: Jim of "Gilligan's Island" fame), and ERLE Stanley Gardner (34D: Writer _____ Stanley Gardner), among others. Do constructors know that ERLE wrote a ton of books under the pen name A.A. FAIR? If so, why haven't I seen that answer lately (if ever)? Surely the opening double-A must come in handy sometimes, and when you're tired of A.A. MILNE and AARDVARK, why not try [E.S. Gardner pen name]?

25A: Mal de mer symptom (nausea)
62A: Bacteria in an outbreak (e-coli)

Thanks a lot for the morning (or bedtime) imagery, puzzle. Just what I want to be faced with as I'm winding down my day - disorders of the digestive tract. Breakfast table test! Actually, if these answers hadn't appeared on the same day, I'm sure I wouldn't have stopped to notice the pathology.

5D: Wisconsin city on Lake Winnebago (Oshkosh)

Little shout-out to my cheese-head friends Michelle and Jeff up in Oshkosh, even though they (like many of my friends) don't know of this blog's existence. Go ... UW-Oshkosh mascots! My mom used to love to dress me in OSHKOSH B'gosh overalls, but whose didn't? Every two-year-old looks adorable in those things.

55D: Comics dog (Odie)
42D: Old-fashioned music halls (Odea)

Surely there is some crazy theme entry crying out for construction here. Let's see... [Technological bird?] => A.V. AVIAN. ["Cuban kid off the port bow!"?] => ALEE ELIAN! ["Who wants to see my belly button?"?] => INNIE ANYONE? And [Garfield's least favorite theaters?] => ODIE ODEA. I have no idea what you call that theme, but there it is.

And lastly, I don't think I really knew 48D: Prefix with fluoride (tetra). The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS In keeping with yesterday's theme of CHRISTMAS / HANUKKAH / KWANZAA, I'd like to call your attention to this fantastic holiday music video treat (one of the best musical parodies I've ever seen - thanks, Steve). Andrew says I should warn you, though: it's a little ... blue. No nudity, one "swear" bleeped out (repeatedly), but ... adult content is fairly high.

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WEDNESDAY, Dec. 13, 2006 - David Sullivan

Solving time: roughly 10 min.

THEME: "... in Tijuana?" - familiar phrases have "O" added to end of word in the phrase to create a Spanish word, creating an odd phrase that is then clued, e.g. 17A: Sign above a Tijuana A.T.M.? (Late-night dinero)

Not sure what was up with my time, as I felt like I moved pretty fast. Got hung up only in the SW corner (second day in a row I've had trouble down there). I enjoyed this little theme - little in that there were only four theme answers, and little in that the whole trick involved the adding of only a single letter. Thought 46A: Tijuana air freshener? (Bano deodorant) was the worst of the four, both because the "N" in BAN (the deodorant brand) changes to an "Ñ" in the Spanish word BAÑO, and because in all the other theme answers, "O"s are added to the key noun in the phrase, which changes the phrase's meaning in a dramatic way, whereas here, well, one kind of DEODORANT becomes another. Plus the word DEODORANT is just unseemly, somehow. But three out of four is pretty good.

11D: Jim Carrey title role (Ace Ventura)
20A: 2004 Will Smith thriller (I, Robot)

Double bill in the upper half of the puzzle, only half of which I would (and did) pay to see. I'll let you guess which half. No, I won't let you guess, as I have to comment, which will give the answer away. ACE VENTURA is great ... crossword fill. Jim Carrey has a good and an evil side, and the AV side is pure evil. For Good, see The Truman Show or Dumb and Dumber. That's right, I said Dumb and Dumber. Don't believe me? Ask my friend Shaun - her husband and I bet her that she would laugh out loud at least five times during that movie, a bet she foolishly took and lost. I don't remember what the stakes were, but the point is that Dumb and Dumber was surprisingly funny given how stupid it was. Other great movie-watching experiences I shared with Shaun and Steve include seeing Before Sunrise on the weekend I wrote my Ph.D. exams (30+ pages in 72 hrs.) and watching Dazed and Confused on video over and over and over (30+ times in less than two years). Bad movie experiences include the colossally ill-conceived video rentals of The Scent of Green Papaya - we were all asleep inside of ten minutes - and Clifford - not the Big Red Dog, but the small ... well, Marin Short played a kid, OK? A creepy, annoying kid. It was horrifying (The "User Comment" @ imdb.com is perfect: "Martin Short is funny ... Isn't He?"). In other news, I, Robot was pretty good, as Will Smith movies go.

5D: Point out the pluses and minuses of (critique)

I point out this clue only because I CRITIQUE student papers for a (sort of) living and yet I could not get this for many, many seconds, even with the CRIT- opening! I obstinately thought "well, CRITICIZE won't fit, so what else could it be?" I don't use CRITIQUE as a verb. If I use it (rarely), it's a noun. CRITIQUE sounds too fluffy, like BOUTIQUE, and I can assure you that when I get a hold of a student paper, well ... that student ... will not feel as if he or she is shopping ... in a boutique ... that's for sure. CRITIQUE has the virtue of being more economical, syllable-wise, but it's far too polite for my tastes. What I do to student papers really requires the "Z" that only CRITICIZE (and possibly TERRORIZE) can give (in America - in the UK, I don't know what you do).

4D: Plant yielding a fragrant oil (bee balm)

I'm including this only because I didn't know BEE BALM was a plant. I thought it was just a high-end version of ChapStick. Here is some BEE BALM I found with Google (by the way, why has Google's logo been a picture of Munch's "The Scream" these past two days?):
[reader Jeremy tells me that yesterday was Munch's birthday ... guess someone just forgot to take the Scream logo down. Or is it still yesterday somewhere in the world?]

12D: Emoticon element, for short (paren.)

I like the contemporary, computer-related clues and answers. In this puzzle, see also 25A: One listed on MySpace (friend). I wanted to use this appearance of the word "emoticon" in a puzzle to call attention to my favorite new comics characters, whose name is, in fact, Emoticon. He appears in the debut issue of Welcome to Tranquility, a comic about a town where old (WWII-era) heroes and reformed villains come to live out their retirement years in, well, tranquility. The whole town is very small-town America circa 1950. So this upstart young kid named Emoticon comes into the diner and starts making trouble. His schtick => his face (or mask) shows only emoticons, and he speaks partially in chatroom-speak, saying things like "LOL" and "All Caps" out loud. Here's a picture, which I love primarily for the gigantic EMO chain around his neck:
He's in the Chick'N Go!! restaurant, hence the enigmatic coinage "chickensluts" (i.e. waitresses). Just realized that this would segue nicely into 27A (THEME): "Why did the chicken cross the road?," e.g., in Tijuana (pollo question) - that is, if I had anything to say about it, which I don't, except "Why Tijuana?" Is it just the funniest-sounding Spanish-speaking city the writer could think of? It's a pretty dismal tourist town, hardly indicative of Mexico writ large. In fact, there is probably more English spoken in Tijuana (given all the gringos) than in any other Mexican city, making it the Least apt town for these clues. I'm just sayin'...

41A: Israel's Dayan (Moshe)

Very versatile name, this one. We've seen first and last name as answers in just the past week or so. I'm not sure I could have told you who he was before last week's DAYAN answer, which was clued something like "6-Day War hero." Until recently, his name was like ANGKOR WAT to me ... a familiar grouping of sounds floating around somewhere in my brain, the meaning of which I do not know. Recent Sun (it was Sun, right?) puzzle taught me what ANGKOR WAT is, by featuring it as an awesome long answer. And now I know who MOSHE Dayan is. Hurray for the superficial knowledge that only solving the puzzle (and reading my blog) can provide.

49D: Davis of "The Matrix Reloaded" (Essie)

"Ossie Davis was in Matrix Reloaded? ... but O-LEVEN (49A) is not a "Morning hour" ... is it?" Tricky tricky tricky. Never ever ever heard of ESSIE Davis, pictured here. Of course, I put the entirety of this movie right out of my mind the second it was over, so the fact that I can't place her should not be surprising.

29D: "Gimme a break" ("Let's be fair")

I just don't think these phrases are synonymous. I had LET'S BE REAL ... LET'S BE FAIR is too straightforward, uncolloquial, and unsarcastic-sounding to be a good stand-in for "Gimme a break." My problems with the end of this answer led to my only significant problem in the puzzle: the SW (home of ESSIE Davis and the oddly-spelled ISIAH (62A) Thomas). I had no, I mean No, idea that Jose Canseco was HAVANAN (42D: Baseball's Jose Canseco, by birth). Also, I had no idea you could adjectivize Havana that way. Or is he a (noun) HAVANAN? That's a little better. Though LET'S BE FAIR kind of stinks, some of the other longish fill was pretty good. I especially liked RAN RIOT (10D: Went wild) and YEAH YOU (44D: "Me?" response).

30D: A Tolkien Dark Lord (Sauron)

Absolutely spaced on this one. Couldn't remember his name at all. Never read the books and found all the movies dreadfully plodding and painfully sincere. Can't remember anything about them except that they were filmed in and around Otago on the South Island of New Zealand, one of the most beautiful places in the world, and, coincidentally, where my wife grew up. Interesting fact: all hobbits were exterminated in the late 60's after they were declared a nuisance to the local agricultural economy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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