SATURDAY, Feb. 3, 2007 - Rich Norris

Solving time: untimed, but quite fast for a Saturday - circa 15 min.?

THEME: none

I am starting to feel like the puzzle-solving practice is beginning to pay off - Saturdays do not usually come together in one rolling, uninterrupted flow the way this puzzle did today. At no point did I have my very common Saturday experience of being Stopped - absolutely hung up, biting my pencil, trying and retrying answers in my head (and on the page) to get a section to fall. My success results partly from the fact that the puzzle is, in fact, easy (-ish) in parts - see especially the SE, with the Nabokov gimme PNIN (54A: Nabokov novel) - this was in a very recent Fri or Sat puzzle - which led easily to LENTIL 44D: Protein source - another common clue/answer pairing - followed by ERN (49A: Seaside flier) - "They're back!" - then TRISTE (45D: Sad) - also in a recent puzzle - then, if you didn't have it already, ALTA (43A: Banff Natl. Park locale), and from there the whole SE just topples, with those longer crosses at the bottom being very easy to pick up (though I at first thought tigers had TENACITY and not the proper FEROCITY (59A: Tiger's quality)). But besides easiness, another reason this puzzle went down in short order was my weird, seemingly uncanny ability to pick answers out of thin air. The two most notable examples are KEENED (60A: Wailed), which isn't a hard word, per se, but with an empty grid, it's a killer first guess: gave me the "K" that allowed me to see that FOOTNOTE was not FOOTNOTE but in fact ASTERISK (33D: Indication to look down), which gave me the first letters for all the SW Acrosses. The other word that came to me out of the blue was OSAKAN (3D: One of 2.7 million Japanese), again, with no letters (except possibly the final "N" from 26A: Whips (tans), which at that point I was Not sure about). I know squat about Japan, but I knew that the answer, given the odd clue, must be the name of a particular city dweller, and OSAKAN was the first thing that popped into my head; and like KEENED, it gave me a helpful "K" and I was off and running in the NW - the last part of the puzzle to fall. For some reason I was also able to get the two 11-letter answers, 7D: Bow-making time (curtain call) and 24D: Knot (brain teaser) - with only a small handful of crosses in each case. CURTAIN CALL was made slightly easier by the fact that we watched the conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales make several of them at the end of last night's concert (which was recorded and will be featured on NPR's "Performance Today" ... someday ... probably not "today"). During one of the CURTAIN CALLs, a grown woman dressed as what we imagined to be a girl in "traditional" Welsh costume presented the conductor with flowers, and I turned around to notice that in the center of a far back row, spectators had unfurled a Welsh flag and were waving it proudly, getting waves in return from some of the orchestra members. It was like a soccer match in there. Very cute, actually. The pianist for Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3 looked like ... who was George Jefferson's neighbor? The British guy? Huge jaw, kind of slow-looking? Winston? No BENTLEY! Yes. Well, this guy looked a bit like him, and he listed like I've never seen a pianist list - to his right, constantly, as if he couldn't stand to be too close to the orchestra. He was just fine, but the Bartók was probably the least exciting of the four pieces. Night ended on Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" from the opera Peter Grimes. The program notes told the story of the opera, which is Horrendously depressing, and ends with a fisherman taking his boat out to sea and sinking his boat, with himself in it, after having not one but two young boys die while in apprenticeship to him, thus incurring the wrath of the townsfolk. The music was genuinely sad and moving, which is good because, with an angry mob and a very tragic figure named Grimes, it seemed dangerously close to becoming an episode of "The Simpsons."

Stuff I Didn't Know

• 1A: Faucet with a rotating plug (stopcock) - I'm just gonna let that one sit there
• 2D: Ballerina Karsavina (Tamara) - if you say so...
• 14D: Conjoined area (tristate) - pieced this together letter by letter - Holy @#$#, I just this second realized that there is a hyphen in this word: TRI-STATE. HA ha. I thought perhaps this was a medical term. Wow. OK, good thing it didn't matter. Side note: not that thrilled about having TRISTATE and TRISTE in the puzzle together. I have this weird thing about repeated letter combinations of five or more letters.
• 29A: Rig-_____, Hindu sacred book (Veda) - VEDA just sounded right, but I could very easily have botched this, as the "A" here intersects with the formerly mysterious TRISTATE, which I briefly considered making TRISTITE.
• 29D: Actress Bloom of "High Plains Drifter" (Verna) - I was close: I had VELMA at first; I did, however, get Richard CRENNA (30A: "The Sand Pebbles" actor, 1966) almost immediately, with very few crosses.
• 39A: Embryonic sac (amnion) - thankfully, this was highly inferrable since I am familiar with the phrase "amniotic fluid."
• 41A: Air _____, discount carrier (Tran) - again, inferrable, but Never heard of it.
• 33A: Lacking light (aphotic) - thank god I knew PHOT = light or I don't know what I'd have done. Never heard or seen this word before, that I can recall.
• 58A: Form of boxing using both the hands and feet (savate) - the one answer I was most unsure about, given that it crossed a Hebrew name at a vowel, ugh: I was very unsure about the "A" in 51D: "Voice of Israel" author (Eban), thinking it might be EBEN, but SAVATE just looked / sounded better than SAVETE, and so I went with my gut, and my gut was right. No errors on this puzzle! Woo hoo!
• 9D: Angle symbols, in geometry (thetas) - didn't know, but it's easy enough to piece together. I feel as if Andrew has used this term in conversation with me. How is that possible?
• 8D: Gas in fluorescent lamps (krypton) - always surprises me that this is a real substance. Sahra is a regular reader of the comic book KRYPTO, about Superman's dog. She is currently in the middle of producing a special KRYPTO comic just for me. I will surely share it with you as it becomes available, assuming I can clear copyrights.

Best Fill

A raft of fabulous colloquial answers, all of them starting with the letter "I":

36A: "Speaking personally ..." ("I for one...")
56A: "Really?!" ("Is that so?!")
12D: Enthusiastic response ("I'd love to!")
55A: Soon (in a bit)

And next, a veritable triumvirate of fresh fill clogging up the NW. In addition to the aforementioned STOPCOCK ("tehee!"), we have:


15A: Convenient, in a way (easy pour) - may be my favorite answer of the day
17A: Kids (small fry) - way to hide the plural in a singular!

I like TALONS (21A: Curved nails) because it's what the ERN (49A: Seaside flier) will use to SET AT you (10D: Go after), especially if you are a paraglider in New Zealand ("Where's your SAVATE now, human!?").

Lastly, MIDRIFF (40D: Area under a halter) just looks very cool in the grid. I'm not really a fan of the exposed MIDRIFF, but here: very nice. Not cheap-looking at all.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS - after reading and commenting on Crossword Fiend's blog entry for today (see sidebar for link, as always), I was reminded (or reminded myself, more accurately) of three more answers that warrant comment. The first is EST (47A: It's in the neighborhood), which, like TRISTATE, I got but did not understand - I was thinking it stood for ESTABLISHMENT, but of course it's short for ESTIMATE. Duh. Next we have T-SHIRT (9A: Top with a quip, maybe), which came to me instantly and was my entrée to the grid. TSHIRT is commonish fill that you can dress up or down in so many ways, and this clue is great. Next, FISTED (42D: Two-_____ (strong)). That's right, FISTED. See also STOPCOCK. Throw in the very great OOFS (6D: Punch lines?) and you are a heartbeat away from a gay porn script. The presence of Oscar WILDE (48A: He wrote "A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies") isn't helping. Notice that I haven't even mentioned GOO (32D: "Ick!" evoker) ... or TRAN ... I have to stop now.

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SUNDAY, Jan. 21, 2007 - Patrick Berry

Solving time: a lazy half hour (on paper, in bed)

THEME: "Kareem of the Crop" - familiar phrases that contain words beginning with R-blends (e.g. Pr-, Dr-, Br-, etc.) have those words changed to non-R-blend homynyms, creating odd phrases, which are then clued, e.g. 24A: James Stockdale as running mate? (Perot choice) - so Pro-Choice becomes PEROT CHOICE

[updated 5:15pm]

So nice to have an easy puzzle to meander my way through after suffering through Hard and Hardest on Friday and Saturday. I did not grasp the real complexity of today's theme until well after I had completed the puzzle - as I was doing it, I just thought the theme answers were clever little puns. I was hoping, from the puzzle title, that the theme was going to have something to do with puns on basketball players' names or sports stars who take Muslim names or something, but alas, no. Just the R-blend silliness.

Speaking of basketball players' names (how's that for a segue?), we went to another performance of our local Philharmonic last night and had the genuine privilege of seeing Wu Man play Tan Dun's Pipa Concerto. Tan Dun is best known for writing the score to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (for which he won an Oscar) and for writing and conducting (!) the recent Metropolitan Opera premiere of The First Emperor, starring Placido Domingo. How do basketball stars fit into any of this, you ask? Well, here is an excerpt from the program notes on the Pipa Concerto. After explaining that the Pipa Concerto constitutes a reworking of material from Tan's 1994 Ghost Opera, the program continues:

The Concerto is a thorough reconsideration of the earlier work. It had called upon the string players to perform also on gongs and water bowls and the pipa player to play also on the bowed gong, tam-tam, Tibetan bells, and paper. At various times they also vocalized lines from Shakespeare or a Chinese folk song. It is an overtly theatrical piece of chamber music in five movements.

The Concerto, on the other hand, is cast in four movements (in a slow-fast-slow-fast pattern), playing only their own instruments, though occasionally stamping a foot or shouting "Yao.”

The pipa itself looks like a cross between a banjo and an oar. Then cross that with a cross between a fraternity paddle and a dragonfly. The concerto began with a collective foot stomp from the orchestra. So hot. There was so much string plucking and sliding and note-bending goodness, and the piece managed to achieve this awesome fusion of traditional Chinese (pentatonic ... sound? I think ... Andrew?) and Classical European sound. The string plucking (from all the strings in the orchestra) is so intense that the piece has a collective orhcestral retuning Built In To It, i.e. in the middle of the piece, the principal violinist stands up and briefly retunes the orchestra to the pipa's A (I believe). You can read about this wild concerto here. I have been to three concerts this season, and the two pieces that have most blown me away are not available on any recordings (that I can find): this one, and Golijav's "Night of the Flying Horses." Maybe I should write about puzzle now. GOLIJAV would make good x-word fill, by the way. And if you live in Spokane, you can see the Spokane Symphony play "Night of the Flying Horses" this Friday (along with Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" - how could you not go?).

26A (THEME): Terse account of what happened at the Raptor Petting Zoo? (Falcon caressed)

Ah, 80's TV. Not what immediately came to mind. First thought: "uh ... school field-trip turned bloodbath?" I was thinking Jurassic Park raptors, not your less lethal (to human beings) avian raptors. This NW corner fell pretty quickly despite a couple of missteps: I had WALKMAN for DISCMAN (4D: Sony introduction of 1984) - a stupid mistake, though 1984 seems Awfully early for a DISCMAN - and I had nothing for REDISTILL (19A: Raise the proof?) until it was practically on top of me: RED IS what now?

14D: City on the Seine (Le Havre)

Very proud of myself, getting this off of the "V" alone. Helped that HAVRE was on my mind, having been an answer in a recent puzzle which then became one of the two or three most Googled clues in the history of this website: I won't write it out verbatim here (for fear of drawing Googlers here and not the proper puzzle) but it involved a college town in Montana of that name. Wicked obscure. This answer runs through SEVE (31A: Golfer Ballesteros), which is one of the few sports clues that I know my mom would have gotten. She had something of a crush on Senor Ballesteros back in the day (the day being the 80's). Yes, she was quite a fan of SEVE, and Tom Selleck, but thankfully not, as far as I know, Claude AKINS (39D: Claude who starred in TV's "Lobo").


OK, I have to run to go shopping with my wife. I'll finish this up in the early afternoon.

[I'm back - updating blog]

Wow, four hours at the mall is like 348 hours anywhere else. Drudgery. Luckily, Sandy found what she needed, so it was worth it. We also went grocery shopping. You can see that I am sapped of energy as I am telling your information and yet have nothing snappy to say about it. Back to puzzle.

41A (THEME): Girl who wears hair clips in nonstandard ways? (barrette maverick) - Of all the theme answers, this took me the longest, by far, to get. Got BARRETTE quickly, but not fully understanding the theme, I couldn't figure out how BARRETTE could be a pun on anything. The MAV- made me think the word MAVEN was involved, but no. Right now I am just guessing that BRET MAVERICK was the name of the title character in a Western TV series from the 60's - hang on while I check ... and I'm right. James Garner. I wonder if my mom had a crush on him, too. He's a handsome guy. Never saw him in "Maverick" (little before my time), but I Love him in "The Rockford Files." Just bought the first season on DVD. It's true.

48A: Like a crow or lark (oscine)

The only word in the puzzle that I had never heard of. That's pretty good for a Sunday, when normally there are a handful of words / phrases that throw me. Sandy didn't know this one either, and she's something of a bird person, so I deem this bit of knowledge pretty obscure. Not as good a word as PORCINE, but it's nice in its own way.

50A: Half of a longtime country duo (Naomi Judd)

I had NAO-, and instead of thinking "well, there's only one word in my entire vocabulary that could be" (NAOMI), I thought "Something's wrong." So I left it and came back to it, eventually solving it from the other end. The Judds kind of freak me out - something in the way they look, especially together. I can't say that I have ever heard them sing - my hand is quick to the dial / remote. NAOMI JUDD intersects my most embarrassing flub-up. I thought I'd be cool and try to fill in an answer without looking at the clue. At 41D I had --J-V- and blithely wrote in DEJA VU (Actually I had what I thought was a "B" in the first position, but it was a badly written capital "B" that looked like a "D"). Eventually I looked at the clue: 41D: "Here's a pleasant surprise!" and thought "I ... guess that's equivalent to DEJA VU ... seems like a stretch ..." It was a stretch. Such a stretch, in fact, that it wasn't right at all. The answer was BY JOVE, which is itself kind of weak. BY JOVE is equivalent to "Here's a pleasant surprise!" only if said while wearing a monocle in the conservatory in 1893. BY JOVE, it turns out that OSCINE isn't the only word I didn't know. BY JOVE intersects two more: 47A: Poet/novelist Elinor (Wylie) - an anagram of my cat's name - and 63A: Historic Irish city (Tralee). Why is it any more "historic" than any other Irish city? Is this the place where Puff the Magic Dragon lived (before he moved on up to a land called Honah-Lee)?

77A: Alternative to Rover (Rex)

Never get tired of seeing this baby in the grid. Don't care that the only time my name makes it into the grid is by way of reference to a dog. Still feels good. Might have to nominate REX for the Pantheon next year. Other potential candidates for next year that make an appearance in today's grid include ESAI (49A: Morales of "NYPD Blue") (he demands a recount for this year), ECLAT (43D: Ceremonial splendor) (which here intersects Pantheon member 52A: Impetuous quality (Elan)), TSE TSE (42D: Fly from Africa), ERIN (40A: "_____ go braugh"), and ESTOPS (5D: Impedes legally), inter ALIA (7D: Inter _____).

My best mistake (as opposed to my biggest) came at the bottom of the puzzle. I spent many seconds pondering how DANKE could be an appropriate response to 102A: Jive, e.g. If you think someone's full of it, you ... say Thank You ... in German ... to that person? Something had to be wrong, but all of the crosses checked, except - it turns out you don't spell ERIC Heiden's name with a "K" (88D: Olympians Liddell and Heiden). Problem solved. The fact that I once edited an encyclopedia finally came in handy, as I had 85D: Clavell novel set in Hong Kong (Tai Pan) dead to rights, though I'd never read the book. Had never even heard of the book until I had to proofread the encyclopedia entry. Bring on your Clavell Clues, Puzzle Gods - or clues about 95 other popular contemporary writers. Actually, if I remember correctly, I paid way closer attention to the early-alphabet entries; by the time I got up to John Updike, I was pretty much just phoning it in.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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TUESDAY, Oct. 10, 2006 - Tyler Hinman

Solving time: 7:20

THEME: Long clues all homonyms: OAR, OR, O'ER, ORR, ORE

This puzzle was hot, because the answers are pretty damned clever (see especially 39A, below). I nearly wrote that there was no theme, because there is none visible on the solved grid. NOTE: I am bound to make mistakes on This Here Blog, so please correct me when you see them, okay? Sweet.

Went to see David Sedaris last night. First story was cutesy and unamusing to me (and my wife ... let's just say he used the word "cockatoo" as a pun), but after that he read a couple that were blisteringly funny, one about buying pot in rural NC with his redneck brother, and another (a partial story, actually) about the time he spent "researching" an article on daily life in a morgue. His morbidity went from creepy and disquieting to flat-out hilarious. He talked about buying a book when he was young that was meant for forensic pathologists; the book contained numerous pictures of people who had died in the most gruesome ways. The captions of the photos read like titles of poems, he said. His first example, "Extensive Mildew on the Face of a Recluse," for some reason made me laugh like a howler monkey. I was his from there on. By turns snarky, vulnerable, deadpan, stuttering ... he was completely charming. He has an astonishing ear when it comes to the subtleties of the language and the amazing inner life of ordinary words. You should see him if you can. Onto Mr. Hinman's delicious puzzle:

1A: Auto amenities, for short (acs)

My first thought: "cds." Good thing I decided to start the puzzle elsewhere.

4A: Baseball and football star Sanders (Deion)

I just watched Mr. Sanders doing football commentary this morning on ESPN. Or was that Michael Irvin? Actually, I think it was Irvin. Anyway, Deion has a great crossword name - so many contiguous vowels. If I ever open up the Pantheon to 5-letter words, DEION will be in there (along with ESTES - see yesterday's puzzle). I also like that DEION sits atop 15A: _____ -Detoo (Artoo). Deion Sanders riding R2D2 = a very satisfying mental image for me.
39A (THEME): O'er (Opposite of 'neath)

Some kind of genius. I was over on the right side of this answer thinking "'...ofneath,' what the hell is that?" I had already had to change one of the intersecting answers (10D: Start of a David Letterman countdown (Number Ten) - I had "Number One" initially) so I was already a little shaky, and seeing the "fn" combo made me frown in consternation. Until I glanced at the clue again (always useful) and realized immediately the answer and its pristine logic. Love those old-skool poetic contractions!

60A: Friend of Morpheus in "The Matrix" (Neo)
13D: Warring Tolkien creatures (ents)
19D: Luke's sister, in "Star Wars" (Leia)

ARTOO is one thing - every puzzle is allowed one Star Wars clue by law. But double-dipping with LEIA and then dragging out Tolkien AND The Matrix? I have to call an Excessive Nerdiness violation (hereby known as the CBG). Ten yards, loss of down (I have to use the sports metaphor to counteract the sedentary pull of NerdWorld). I mean, we're all nerds at heart, but let's show a little restraint. There's no need to wallow.

3D: Rats' milieu (sewer)

You know, if crossword puzzles were to be believed, you'd think rats lived nowhere else. So many potential ways to clue SEWER ("One with thread and needle," perhaps), but no, it always comes back to rats. Not all rats live in sewers. Some live on the subway tracks. Or in barns with cute pigs. So yes, some rats live in sewers, but do we have to focus on the negative? E.B. White saw the potential decency that lies at the heart of the rat. Let's try to focus on that, and give the rats a break.

55D: Grammy winner Jones (Norah)

Hating as I do the music of Norah Jones - yawn-inspiring Barnes-&-Noble pseudo-jazz for whitefolks, I say - I desperately wanted the answer here to be "Davy Jones." Two problems: 1. DAVY is only four letters long, and 2. Davy Jones never won a Grammy (to his credit, I should think). He did, however, get to kiss Marsha, the lucky bastard.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS in case you don't read Crosswordfiend's blog (which you should), I wanted to tell you about the new Onion AV Club Crossword. I did the first one today and thought it was f-ing brilliant. Puzzlers under 30 (which I am sadly not) should especially love it, as the clues and answers skew teenward while remaining sufficiently brainy. Go here to subscribe for email delivery. Yes, now.

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