WEDNESDAY, Feb. 14, 2007 - Paula Gamache

Solving time: mystery

THEME: WATER - theme answers feature words describing water in its different states, with each theme answer representing its state at a higher heat: main theme clue: 51A: Put more pressure (on) ... or a title for this puzzle? (turn up the heat)

Well, if you were dreaming of a white Valentine's Day, and you live in the midwest or northeast, then congratulations! Whitest Valentine's Day Ever! Maybe someday our street will get plowed and I'll be able to see where it is again. Right now: solid white. Wife is outside shoveling like Sisyphus. Our crazy mortician neighbor was out with snowblower at 4:30am and kindly snowblew about 1/8 of the length of our sidewalk. He's generous that way.

This puzzle would have been So much better if it had SNOW in one of the theme answers, though I realized that SNOW is probably not a technical term for a water's STATE (24D: Cabinet department). I like this theme a lot - seems very inventive to me. I got very slowed down, though, by ICE HOCKEY TEAM (20A: Hurricanes and Lightning) because I had HOCKEY TEAM and had no clue about the theme yet, and so naturally entered NHL HOCKEY TEAM - by the way, I like the use of ironically named teams in this clue, hurricanes and lightning not being phenomena normally associated with ICE. That NHL mistake kept the entire "Seattle" section of the puzzle cordoned off and kind of disordered for a bit. For example:

1A: Own (up to) [fess]
1D: Terrif (fab)

Did anyone else, in his/her haste, read 1D as "Tariff" and enter something like TAX or FEE? Because I entered both of those answers: TAX, and then when it seemed FESS was right, I took the "F" and made FEE. I somehow never corrected this error and noticed it only at the very end. Oh, speaking of "very end," my time is a mystery because when I hit "DONE" at the applet, Nothing Happened. After many, many attempts to get something to happen, I had to reload the puzzle (which took Many tries) and then refill the whole grid. So my "official" time was something in the 13-minute range. I believe the actual time was probably in the 7 minute range, but who knows?

5D: Contents of some hookahs (hashish)
53D: "The _____ Report," 1976 best seller (Hite)

Some spicy fill for your Valentine's Day. Why not TURN UP THE HEAT, get high, and read The Hite Report - just like our pioneer ancestors used to do on Valentine's Day!

29A: "Out of the question" (I can't)
56A: Turner autobiography (I, Tina)

What is: TINA Turner's response to an unreasonable request, if TINA Turner were a caveman?

15A: Old Intellivision rival (Atari)

Now here's a controversy I remember well. The "rivalry" in question is right in my pop culture sweet spot. My father bought me Intellivision when it first came out (1979, I think - if you remember any previous discussions of my dad, you know that he is / was prone to buy new-fangled gadgets the second they debuted, without waiting to see if the market would hold up or the prices would come down). The very first game I ever played: Intellivision Baseball. God I loved that game, with its highly pixelated robot-looking players. In my mind, ATARI was low-class and Intellivision ruled. We played the hell out of that Intellivision set for about 5-6 years, until it just became ridiculously dated. I don't know where it is now.

11D: U.F.O. pilot (alien)

TUT TUT (10D: Expression of annoyance)! ALIEN is an absurd (if obvious) answer. "U.F.O. pilot ... In the movies," maybe, but to claim outright that ALIENs do indeed fly U.F.O.s!!!? I mean, the whole point of U.F.O.s is that they are UNIDENTIFIED, so how the hell do you know who's flying them?

Tricky fill

12D: Charlotte Corday's victim (Marat) - French Revolution! After supporting the French Revolution, Corday got jaded by the subsequent Reign of Terror, blamed Marat for the carnage (he ran a newspaper), and stabbed him. In his bath. I think the death-in-the-tub scene has been painted often. For no good reason, I associate Marat with the painter Corot (Corday - Corot - they sound alike) even though Corot never painted a Marat-death scene. He did paint "Woman with a Pearl." Artists who actually are referenced in this puzzle: Diego Rivera (47D: Diego Rivera work (mural)) and GOYA (57A: "The Naked Maja" artist).

27A: Blasts of the past (N-Tests) - why tricky? See also A-TESTS and H-TESTS. In fact, I'd not seen N-TESTS before.

49D: Mortise's mate (tenon) - Is this something to do with rock-climbing? I hate the vocabulary of rock-climbing. Oh. No. It's a simple joint, from woodworking. See this illustration, for Dummies (like me, I guess).

29D: _____ Walton, author of "The Compleat Angler" (Izaak) - I was proud that I finally got this guy's name right, after seeing this clue so many times in the past and always being befuddled by it. Sadly, I initially spelled his name ISAAC.

52D: Sunroof alternative (T-Top) - My first look at those two "T"s was "??????? - something is wrong."

36A: Periodic table abbr. (At. Wt.) - OK, so it means Atomic Weight, and I know that, but I get that WT on the end and all I want to fill in is NT WT (a far more common abbreviation in puzzles).

I knew 43D: Modern, to Mahler (neue) only because my first serious girlfriend's last name was NEUMAN, and somehow I learned what NEUE meant through conversation with her ... maybe. Actually, that sounds implausible. But it's the first association that came to mind with NEUE, so it must be true. I interviewed with TCU (49A: Horned Frogs' sch.) back in the late '90s. Nothing came of it. Just think: I could have been a Horned Frog, far, far, from this ridiculous snow storm. Speaking of out of the snow, if only I could fly QANTAS (44D: "The Spirit of Australia" sloganeer) to Australia or (better yet) New Zealand now, where the winter of my discontent would be made glorious summer by the sun of (Motel On) York.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Friday, Feb. 2, 2007 - David J. Kahn

Solving time: untimed, but slow, then fast (!)

THEME: RAINING / [CAT]S AND [DOG]S - rebus puzzle where words CAT and DOG fit into squares throughout the puzzle, e.g. 54A: Place of disgrace ([DOG]house)

First - Happy birthday to my father, Dr. Rex, Sr.! I don't know what he has to do, directly, with my puzzle-solving passion, but he has Everything to do with whatever sense of humor I have. Please see Night Shift and Elephant Parts and Serial, definitive comedy experiences I would never have had without dad.

Today's puzzle is the first non-themeless Friday puzzle since I began my blog lo these 4+ months ago. Needless to say I was Not expecting it. And a rebus puzzle to boot - yikes! At first this puzzle stomped me - I had literally every square filled in in the NW and N except the DOG/CAT ones. But when the two squares in the far NW wouldn't come together (oh "Seattle," why won't you ever behave!?), two thoughts crossed my mind nearly simultaneously.

1. Something is wrong with this grid - it's not Nearly as wide open as most Fridays. It's fussy, with lots of nooks and crannies, and looks more like a Thursday grid ...
2. There's no Way I should be This stuck, This early on a Friday ... something is going on ...

I remained stuck for a tiny bit, but once I changed the very wrong PRIMAL to ANIMAL (3D: Inner selves, to Jung), I then had _ON for 14A: Start of a Tennessee Williams title, and once I started running Tennessee Williams's plays through my head, that missing CAT showed up - a @#$#-ing rebus!? - and THEN the puzzle got very easy. Far NW has two rebus squares abutting one another, with 1D: Lowly post ([DOG][CAT]cher) intersecting both the Tennessee Williams clue and 1A: Basic teaching ([DOG]ma). Wicked. But cool. Once I adjusted my expectations for this puzzle, I got very, very good traction. For a brief moment, I had the fanciful hope that the rebus squares would have rotational symmetry. Uh, no. It is Friday, after all. The NW had one other tricky clue: 17A: _____ de guerre - "tricky" in the sense that it is in three letters and therefore wants to be NOM as much, if not more, than it wants to be the (in this case) correct answer, CRI. Oh, and eventually I caught on that the "Jung" answer wasn't ANIMAL at all, but ANIMAS.

Home with my little girl today - her hippie school has all kinds of weird days off - so I can't write much without being neglectful, and you wouldn't want that ... would you? Sahra has already made a list (complete with boxes to check) of the things we are going to do today - with an "M" next to items that are a "Maybe," e.g. "Buy the cats collars" (!?!?!). I told her the cats might not like a bell following them everywhere they go, 24/7. She seemed to agree, but wasn't ready to give the idea up completely. Hence, "M" for Maybe. We will, however, be going to Pizzeria Uno for lunch and Barnes & Noble for hot chocolate. But first I'm supposed to convert a bookmark-sized calendar into a full-sized, wall-hanging calendar by scanning it into my computer, blowing up the images of the individual months, printing them out, and then stapling them together. The fact that we have no fewer than three wall calendars hanging in the house already means nothing to Sahra. "Your point...?" She's industrious, this kid. Allow me to share with you the birthday card she made for my dad ("Pappy") this morning:

I'm told that's a cake on a table being shared by my dad and stepmom. Hope my dad doesn't mind that you all now know how old he is.

Hot Fill

• 35A: Hotter than hot (torrid) - this fill is literally hot. Hotter than hot.
• 5D: Apollo 13 astronauts, e.g. (aborters)
• 50A: Drug used to treat poisoning (ipecac) - these last two really push the breakfast-table-test envelope, as far as I'm concerned. Do I really want to contemplate abortions and barfing over my morning eggs and ham or whatever it is you people eat? Still, as fill, goes, eeeeexcellent.
• 18A: Whip on the high seas ([CAT] o' nine tails) - my weapon of choice! Man, this answer had me stymied for way, WAY longer than it should have because of a little, little error I had in one of the crosses; I had STA for 8D: Stop: Abbr., and while that was the right idea, it was the wrong abbreviation - "I'm sorry, we were looking for STN." So I had [CAT]ONIAE----- and thought, "whoa, there's some two word nautical term that starts with the word CATONIA, and I don't even know what CATONIA means... what will I do?" I'm not kidding when I say I contemplated CATONIA ENSIGN. "That could be ... something. Maybe he's the ENSIGN who whips ... the crew ... into shape?"
• 53D: Mathematical groups (cosets) - a little math shout-out to my boyyeeee in Santa Monica (and any other West Coast Mathematicians that might be out there: Represent!)
• 42D: Ones going home after dinner? ([DOG]gie bags) - most of the rebus answers weren't terribly sparkly, but I really liked this one, mainly for the clue. Oh, and I also liked ...
• 62A: Unplanned ([CAT]ch as [CAT]ch can) - double-CAT, plus the letters C-A-T are used in a non-feline expression. Nice.

There was very little that was new to me in this puzzle. I had never heard the expression [CAT]'S PAW for 37A: Stooge before, but (peeking at another blog) I see that I am not alone in this. I don't eat meat (unless I'm in NZ, where the world is upside-down and I become exclusively carnivorous) so I didn't really "know" ROULADE (45D: Meat dish with a filling), but it's a French word I've heard before so it was easy enough to piece together. Considering the only "fillings" that are coming to mind at the moment are those of the Hostess Fruit Pie variety, ROULADE sounds like it's about the grossest comestible on the planet. I assume that AAU (32A: Org. with the annual Junior Olympic games) stands for something like the Assoc. of American Universities... hmmm, yes and no. It does stand for that, in another context, but as far as this clue is concerned, it stands for the Amateur Athletic Union. I want to thank Ken Jennings for his awesome beatdown of rude know-it-alls at his blog a couple months back - first, because it was a great and necessary piece of writing, and second, because the bit of trivia he discussed in that posting was the history of the name of O'HARE airport, making 44A: Orchard Field, today a virtual gimme for me. Lastly, I was grateful for the answer [CAT]SUP (37D: Burger topper) because the word inevitably makes me think of a befuddled Mr. Burns, shopping in a supermarket for the first time in his life. Standing in the condiments aisle, he holds two bottles, and, in agonizing over which one to buy, repeatedly reads their labels out loud, slowly: "Ketchup ... Catsup ... Ketchup ... Catsup." I can't remember if this is before or after he somehow gets himself "locked" in one of the large freezers in the frozen foods aisle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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TUESDAY, Oct. 3, 2006 - Ed Stein

Solving time: 13:39 (!!!!!!!!!!?)

THEME: Portmanteau words

This puzzle-solving experience was HORRIBLE (for me). I mean, the puzzle was great at its core - loved the theme - but I spent about EIGHT MINUTES of my solving time staring at a mostly blank NW corner (which I'll call "Seattle"). Turns out I am not familiar with FOUR of the terms, which is quite humiliating in a Tuesday puzzle. "Seattle" was not Tuesday material, I contend. I ended up filling in jibberish and then looking up the answers. Failure. Abject failure. O well. Let's look at the problem:

1A: Blast maker, informally (H-bomb)

Fitting opening, as it became a metaphor for my puzzle-solving experience. The clue is fair enough, though solving it took me too long because the clue sounded too informal to be a nuclear bomb reference. "Maker" somehow had this ring of do-it-yourself, like a blast I might make. So I'm thinking TNT (my personal "blast maker" of choice) or ammo or some kind of gun or something. Wrong.
14A: Interstate interchange establishment (motel)

Well, this is obvious when you see it, but I could not for the life of me imagine what this was for a good long while. I was thinking of answers in the commerce field, for some reason. Interstate banking, the word "change" ... it all made me think finance. Once I just settled into a literal reading, I got it, eventually. My struggle is especially odd as I love all things motel, and have a mini collection of postcards and ashtrays from motels (only the ones with the old-timey phone numbers, e.g. KL5-0296).

17A: Former Portuguese territory in China (Macau)

OK, here is where the wheels come off - both my misfilled squares occurred in this one word. First, I did not know that that is how you spell "Portuguese" (2 u's?)!!! Then, I had no idea the Iberians had any real history in Asia. Macau turns out to be the oldest European colony in Asia, dating back to the 16th century. Ignorance, thy name is Rex Parker! I know what a "macaw" is ... but "Macau" is just a name I've heard before, somewhere in the back of my head, with no particular meaning. Also, I just learned, "Macau" and "Macao" are different spellings of the same place, and that place looks like this (see picture of Seattle, above):
3D: Like some stocks, briefly (OTC)

I know about OPP and ODB, but OTC is new to me. Means "over-the-counter," which you likely know if you have any financial savvy.

5D: Prairie grass used for forage (bluestem)

Somehow I got the French word for "wheat" ("blé") in my head, and so that third letter just wouldn't be anything but an "e" - even when any idiot could see that "u" is the only letter that could Possibly go in that position. Clearly I'd never heard of "bluestem," and neither my father nor my stepmother (still here) had ever heard of it either - though my father is a big bluegrass fan.



Portmanteau words tend to be ugly (26A: Bad economic situation (stagflation) and 48A: Seat-of-the-pants figure (guesstimate), for instance, are both answers that make my skin crawl), but the theme itself (portmanteau word), at 38A, runs coast-to-coast across the dead center of the puzzle - and I like that. I like theme puzzles to have structural elegance, symmetry ... some significance in the physical placement of the words.

66A: Big, tough cat (liger)

Really? I thought a "liger" was a nearly mythical animal, almost imaginary, and I had no idea that the liger had a reputation for toughness. For the record: male lion + female tiger = Liger.Female lion + male tiger = Tigon (which sounds like a laundry detergent, poor kitty).
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS this has nothing to do with the puzzle at all, but it needs to be seen. This combination makes "ligers" and "tigons" seem quite natural:

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SUNDAY, Oct. 1, 2006 - Ashish Vengsarkar

Solving Time: 42:23 (give or take 10 minutes)

Title: "MAKING T H A T SOUND"

Theme: Familiar phrases modified by the change of a "TH" sound to a "T" sound (see 39A and 51D, below)

Today's time is not very accurate. With all the starts and stops (see last posting, "PARENTAL DELAY"), and many of the stops unplanned, my total time is a ballpark figure. Technically, the puzzle took me about 9 hours and 16 minutes to complete, but somewhere between start and finish we drove to Ithaca, walked around Buttermilk Falls State Park, drove to Olivia and had a delicious brunch, then drove to the Spook-tac-ular autumn pumpkin patch livestock zoo corn maze extravaganza on Rte 96B (which my wife just told me is called Iron Kettle Farm), then took my parents back to their hotel. Thus, I have no basis for telling how good / bad this puzzle is. One thing this puzzle is, finally, is done. I believe at least one square is filled incorrectly. Let's see...

21A: It may be said after kissing the tips of one's fingers (ooh la la)

I challenge. I'm sure this is true, somewhere, but "ooh la la" has more of a "aren't you fancy?" or "don't you look nice?" ring to it (I guess this clue imagines a sleazy Italian guy sexually harrassing a woman on the streets, but do we really need that image?). When I imagine someone kissing the tips of his fingers (not often) he is usually saying something Italian like "bellissimo" or "perfecto" or the like (I hope those are actual Italian words?), usually when commenting on something exquisite that he has just eaten - while "ooh la la" sounds like something a midwesterner would say when she saw a $200 pair of boots in a Manhattan storefront window, or a euphemism for sexual intercourse. See, or rather listen to, Cole Porter's "Give Him the Ooh-La-La," preferably the version by Blossom Dearie:


"Say you're fond of fancy things / Diamond clips and emerald rings / And you want your man to come through / Give him the Ooh-La-La"





34A: "All My _____ Live in Texas" (1987 #1 country hit) (exs)

The answer is very easy, and yet ... how to spell it? This spelling is eight kinds of horrible, though I'm sure it's technically correct. Is there an apostrophe in it? Hang on ... it's by George Strait and NO, there's not even an apostrophe. I know it's absurd to be angry about substandard spelling in a country song, but there it is.

39A (THEME): Top Tatar's Tattler? (The Rat of Khan)

Many of this week's themed answers left me cold (especially 81A: Result of a whipping? (welt creation) - "wealth creation" just seems weak as a familiar phrase). THIS answer, however, rules - I did not know what a "Tatar" was, but I sure as hell know my Star Trek II:

"Khan!"

125A: Slimmest election margin (one vote)

So beautifully simple that it actually gave me a lot of trouble. I wanted "sliver" but it wasn't long enough. (Resisting temptation to make reference to the 1993 movie Sliver...)

9D: Dancing girl in "The Return of the Jedi" (Oola)

What the hell kind of fanboy universe has the crossword fallen into this past week? Multiple references to Stars Trek and Wars, and this one is perhaps the most arcane (in case you didn't know - and for your sake I hope you didn't - the character of Oola is made to fall through a trap door to her death after she refuses to pleasure Jabba the Hut sexually, nice). For the record, I had "Leia" here for a long time, as she is the only female Star Wars character I know or care to acknowledge. (just noticed that I have now, in a single entry, let the world know my feelings about both "Oola" and "Ooh-la-la" (see 21A, above) - for which the world is surely better off)

10D: "The ground _____ she trod": Milton (whereon)

I will blog Milton every chance I get. This line comes from Paradise Lost Book IX, the great Seduction of Eve Book, in which Satan works hard to get Eve to break her vow to Adam and God not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Here, he's in the first stages of his plot:

He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed
His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck,
Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod.
His gentle dumb expression turned at length
The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad
Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue
Organick, or impulse of vocal air,
His fraudulent temptation thus began. (Paradise Lost, IX.523-31)

50D: Skeletal support in a sponge (?????)

Here's the entry I think I have wrong. I have "adicule" - which is VERY wrong, it turns out. Just looked it up, and here's what I missed: 49A: Squad leaders: Abbr., which I wanted to be "srgts" and which I changed to "sagts" for reasons of 50D plausibility, is actually "ssgts" - short for STAFF SERGEANTS. Then I somehow missed an Archie Bunker clue, "You're _____!" (Archie Bunker comment), which I had as "a dip," but which is actually "a pip" (was he British?), making the answer to this sponge clue, which I liken in its esotericness to Friday's weevil clue, "spicule" (which sounds more like a racist term for a small hispanic person than anything having to do with a sponge, if you ask me).

51D (THEME): Muppet seller's gender guideline? (give Bert to a boy)

Clever, but the best part of this clue for me was that, because I had never heard of the names of the answers of 110A and 124A ("Rea" and "Ilona", respectively), I had wrong answers for both, which meant that I had this answer ending in "ebay" for a very long time (the "seller" part of the clue only intensified my commitment to my wrongness). An actual recording of my brain upon filling in this answer completely for the first time: "... 'Give Bert to eBay' ... 'Give birth to eBay'? ... is that right? ... that's a terrible answer. What the hell does it even mean?" Etc.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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