Relative difficulty:Challenging (solid minute over my normal time)
THEME: OTHELLO (23A: Disc-flipping board game hinted at by a word ladder formed by the answers to the nine starred clues), also known as REVERSI (50A: Another name for 23-Across) — word ladder going from BLACK to WHITE because those are the colors on either side of an OTHELLO piece
Theme answers:
you can figure it out, I'm not even deigning to type the damn steps on the stupid ladder
Word of the Day:DANELAW(42D: Rules in force in England before the Norman Conquest) —
The Danelaw (also known as the Danelagh; Old English: Dena lagunema; Danish: Danelagen), as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. Danelaw contrasts West Saxon law and Mercian law. // Modern historians have extended the term to a geographical designation. The areas that constituted the Danelaw lie in northern and eastern England. // The Danelaw originated from the Viking expansion of the 9th century AD, although the term was not used to describe a geographic area until the 11th century AD. With the increase in population and productivity in Scandinavia, Viking warriors, having sought treasure and glory in the nearby British Isles, "proceeded to plough and support themselves", in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 876. (wikipedia)
• • •
SPECIAL MESSAGEfor the week of January 8-January 15, 2017
Hello, solvers. A new year has begun, and that means it's time for my week-long, once-a-year pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. In making this pitch, I'm pledging that the blog will continue to be here for you to read / enjoy / grimace at for at least another calendar year, with a new post up by 9:00am (usually by 12:01am) every day, as usual. Despite my regular grumbling about puzzle quality, constructor pay, and other things that should be better in the world of crosswords, I still love solving, I still love writing about puzzles, and I love love love the people I meet and interact with because of this blog. Well, most of them. Some I mute on Twitter, but mostly: there is love. The blog turned 10 in September, and despite the day-in, day-out nature of the job, I can't foresee stopping any time soon. The community of friends and fellow enthusiasts are all just too dear to me. You can expect me to be here every day, praising / yelling at the puzzle—independent and ad-free. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):
Second, a mailing address:
Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905
All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions (I. Love. Snail mail!) will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. This year's cards are "Cookery Postcards from Penguin"—beautifully designed covers of vintage cookbooks, with provocative titles like "Cookery For Men Only " (!) or "Good Meals from Tinned Foods" (!?). Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD. As I say in every thank-you card (and email), I'm so grateful for your readership and support.
Now on to the puzzle!
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This was a quintessential Tuesday, i.e. a train wreck. Its wreckiness was worsened (for me) by being far tougher than it ought to have been, for all the wrong reasons (namely LEMAT—??????—and that entire NW corner, ugh). Bad fill, bad clues, and a godawful theme. I thought we agreed the word ladder was dead. Dead. Bye bye. Go away. There is no joy in you, word ladder. "Oooh, look how it goes from WHILE to WHITE!" said no one except LOCOS (which is not a word anyone uses at all, btw). GENL!? What is happening!? The fill is soooo bad. The NW is a disaster all on its own. LEMAT goes straight to the "Let's Not" list, where it will join ... LEK!!? Well, whaddya know? I've had the "Let's Not" list only one week and *already* a banned word has returned. LEK. I mean, LEK. Just ... LEK. Twice in 2017 already. LEK. AGA LEK. NIA LEK. EEO LEK. ERN LEK. ENIAC LEK. TEL LEK. MII LEK. ENT LEK. EPH LEK. ANO LEK. I can keep doing this! And why are we enduring this bad fill avalanche? Well, for one, no one cared to polish this thing. And for two, it's the damned joyless theme, which is dense and therefore taxes the grid tremendously. SLAPDASH, DANELAW, and KISSERS are the only things I would rescue from this thing.
[OMG this video! Macaulay Culkin and George Wendt!?]
But back to that NW for a second. On first pass I had AMASS (17A: Aggregate) and absolutely nothing else. Clue on KGS is absurdly vague (5D: Metric measures: Abbr.). Thought VAST might be RIFE (20A: Widespread). Couldn't come up with BRAVO at all (1D: "Congratulations!"). Wanted CASTE but didn't trust it. And about REBAG(14A: Switch from plastic to paper, say) ... OK, first, it's just bad fill. Second, [Switch from plastic to paper] is a tuh-errible clue. The switch from plastic to paper is a broad switch, a general switch, not a rebagging. Who actually literally removes things from a plastic bag to put them into a paper bag. What is the context of that? That is idiotic. Why did you put *&*%# in the plastic bag in the first place? And what are you gonna do with the empty plastic bag now, ya wastrel? It's nonsense. Like a sane person, I wanted some answer related to being eco-conscious. Also ... wait ... I'm sorry, I just caught plural TSKS (!?!?!) out of the corner of my eye and suddenly realized I can't go on expending energy on this puzzle. Inexcusable, this thing. STALE sits in the center of the grid, as if the puzzle knows. It knows exactly what it is. It knows.
Hi, everybody. It's me! PuzzleGirl! And I'm here to talk you through your Thursday puzzle. If it seems like I'm in a bad mood, it's because I had surgery on my foot three weeks ago and I've been in bed since then. Three weeks! And it wouldn't be so bad if I had been expecting it. Do you know what my doctor said when I asked him back in January about what the recovery time would be like? Of course you don't.
Well, I'll tell you. He said, "You won't be able to drive for a week." What he failed to say was, "And then you won't be able to drive for three weeks after that." And, "There's a good possibility you won't be able to drive for the three weeks after that either." No, he didn't say either of those last two things. And yet, here we are.
So, if I'm in a bad mood, now you know why. If, on the other hand, I say anything crazy, well that's just the Vicodin talking. Got that? Okay, here we go.
Theme: "Ace in the Hole" - the word ACE is presumed to reside in four squares (holes) in the grid.
Theme Answers:
1A: Cel material - [ACE]TATE
13D: Sourness - [ACE]RBITY
24A: Spiritual that lent its name to a 2015 Broadway musical - AMAZING GR[ACE]
12D/30D: Period when dinosaurs became extinct - CRET[ACE]OUS
52A: Hidden advantage that this puzzle employs four times? - [ACE] IN THE HOLE
35D/56D: Neighboring - ADJ[ACE]NT TO
68A: Big name in Italian fashion - VERS[ACE]
51D: Longtime Vegas performer - LIBER[ACE]
This puzzle gave me fits. You should be able to see in the grid above where I made my mistakes. First, I had IRELAND where ICELAND was supposed to go [6D: European country whose telephone directories list people alphabetically by first name]. Then, I had IN OUR instead of IS OUR [65A: "A Mighty Fortress ___ God" (hymn)]. The crosses might have helped me if I had taken the time to think about it. But I didn't. ARRE could be an Israeli port just as well as ACRE to me. And I typically don't pay attention to the cities named in the Random Direction clues, but if I had in this case, I would have seen my mistake.
But that third error? Well, what I think we have here is a living, breathing Natick. Crossing [41D: Charlie Chan's creator Earl ___ Biggers] and [23D: Cubist Fernand] at the last letter is just ... well, that could have been any letter in the alphabet as far as I was concerned. I guess if I'm going to put a positive spin on it, I learned something today. But that's all you're getting.
What else?
21A: TAROT [Holder of The Sun and The World] - I was thinking this was referring to newspapers. Are there any newspapers actually called The World? Now that I think about it, that seems like a fake newspaper name they would use in, like, cartoons.
33A: DEN [TV spot, often] - I had a hard time talking myself out of "spot" meaning "advertisement," which really slowed me down here.
35A: ARIETTA [Short piece at La Scala]
55A: DEMI [Starting half?] - I entered the last three letters and then had to wait to see if the first letter was going to be an H, an S, or a D.
67A: METS [N.L. East team] - Of course, I wanted this to be NATS. Sigh.
8D: SEP [Mo. with Talk Like a Pirate Day] - My favorite line of the Talk Like a Pirate Day origination story is this: "They were playing racquetball, and, as so often happens, they began talking like pirates."
46D: AHL [Sports org. with the Calder Cup] - Darn it! I knew it was a hockey award, but didn't realize it was for only one league.
61D: JAM [Showy basket] - I had to ask Doug Peterson to explain this one to me. He sent me this:
I have two quick things to plug before I let you go.
I contributed a guest puzzle for the American Values Club Crossword this week! If you're not a subscriber, you can subscribe here. Or you can buy single puzzles (including mine!) for the low, low price of $1. I hope you'll try it. And I hope you'll like it!
It's not too late to register for the Indie 500 crossword tournament, which will be held June 4 in Washington, D.C. I attended last year as a competitor and had a blast. This year I'm on the organizing team and, if I do say so myself, it's shaping up to be even better than last year. Don't miss out! Register now!
Thanks, everybody. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.
THEME: LEADBELLY (61A: Legendary guitarist … or a hint to eight answers in this puzzle) — rebus with "PB" (atomic symbol for lead) in the "belly" (very loosely defined) of eight answers (i.e. shoved into four total boxes):
Theme answers:
POP BOTTLES / TOP BID
UPBEAT / LIP BALMS
DEEP BLUE / APBS
RASPBERRY / CUPBOARD
Word of the Day: APULIA (24D: The "high heel" of Italy's "boot") —
A rudimentary rebus that I didn't care for much at all. Conceptually it's OK—"belly" seems a slight stretch when you are implicating just one little square in sometimes very long answers, and when that square is more near the edge than in the "belly" of the answer, but fine: take famous name, literalize it (in a way) in the grid. But it's a one-note trick. Same "belly" every time. It's just a "PB" rebus. Four "PB"s. Not that exciting. I thought I'd get to a peanut butter answer eventually, so LEADBELLY was better than what I was expecting. But still, once you figure out the rebus (took some effort for me), you just hunt the same two-letter square a few more times. Challenging, for sure, given the overall cluing and the odd rebus-square placement. And I do like a challenge. But terrible fill plus one-dimensional trick = shrug. Just OK, at best.
ATTN BELG CRESC is a junk bloc. ETTES is the worst form of fill, i.e. The Plural Suffix. Inexcusable. PSIS APBS USS ASSN, another junk bloc. ESTAB, ouch. Fill is a C-, and that's a gentleman's C-. Also, POP BOTTLES is a horrendous answer. Or, rather, it's got a horrendously misleading and inapt clue. What kind of bottles did Andy Warhol paint? Answer that question honestly. Write it down. OK, did you write down COKE BOTTLES? Because That's The Only Correct Answer. POP BOTTLES, come on. Junk junk junk. Here's me trying to see how many letters I have to type before Google suggests [Andy Warhol pop bottles]:
I got only a couple letters further and then google just gave up trying to figures out what I meant. Out of desperation, it started guessing in Spanish:
Clue accurately. Not *defensibly*. *Accurately*. "APT!" I should want to shout.
Lastly, what is up with the APULIA (?) / PALMA (??) crossing. Only the fact that -ALMA looked like it desperately needed a "P" made me guess correctly. Two northern Mediterranean geographical clues? Crossing at a barely guessable letter? That's no good. If I hadn't heard of an ancient novel called "The APULIAn Ass" or something like that, I wouldn't have trusted APULIA at all. Oh, now that I look it up, it's actually "The *Golden* Ass" by a Roman guy *named* "Apuleius." He was north African. Well. So much for my knowing anything about APULIA. Bad cross. Almost all the makings of a true "Natick" (obscure proper nouns crossing at an uninferable letter) except I guessed the "P," so it must, on some level, have been inferable.
PS I assume ABA = American Book Association??? Nope. American Booksellers' Association (35D: Org. sponsoring a literary fair) Odd. Very odd. Not well known. Giving it a more obscure clue than the obvious legal clue does not improve it. It's still the same crummy little 3-letter abbr. we've been getting for years. Don't get cute w/ your crap fill. It will still be crappy, but now also annoying.
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THEME: CHUCK BERRY (56A: One of the original Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, whose name is a hint to the answers to the four starred clues) — "BERRY" has been "chucked" out of four phrases:
Theme answers:
HUCKLE FINN (17A: *Drifter of literature)
ELDER WINE (28A: *Potent potable in "Arsenic and Old Lace")
STRAW BLONDE (33A: *Nicole Kidman, hairwise)
RASP BERET (43A: *1985 Prince hit)
Word of the Day: HUCKLE —
n.
[Perh. dim. of Prov. E. hucka hook, and so named from its round shape. See Hook.]
1. The hip; the haunch.
2. A bunch or part projecting like the hip.
Huckle bone. (a) The hip bone; the innominate bone. (b) A small bone of the ankle; astragalus. [R.]Udall.
I don't have too much to say about this one except that the theme just doesn't work. I want it to work. I love the revealer—that is, I love the idea of reimagining CHUCK BERRY as a verb phrase. The problem is that when you chuck the berries, nothing interesting happens. You just have meaningless phrases without BERRY in them. There's literally nothing interesting about them, or their clues. If you're going to serve up nonsense, at least give a wacky clue. Something? This manages to take a potentially great concept (turning CHUCK BERRY into a verb phrase) and paint it beige. Also, this puzzle made me look up HUCKLE, because man does that answer seem like an outlier (all the other berry-less theme answers seem to be composed of real words, whereas HUCKLE FINN, what the hell?). And it turns out HUCKLE is an actual word. Ish. Sort of. I mean, it is, but not one you've likely used ever. Or seen outside of berry contexts. But it's kind of a cool word. I'm going to use it now to refer to any orthopedic pain I might have. Hip pain is so pedestrian—I'm gonna tell people I have hucklealgia. To which people will respond either by saying "Uncle who?" or by quietly walking away.
SCHIRRA (1D: Astronaut Wally, the first person to go into space three times) seems like weak fill to me, in that "first person to go into space three times" doesn't feel like a thing. I'm sure it's a tremendous accomplishment—I haven't been into space even once—but lots of people have been into space, and "first to three" doesn't pass the crossworthy test, for me. Overall, the fill is not bad, but not remarkable either. If your grid is this theme-dependent, and the theme clunks this badly, well, that's a problem. But hey, I learned a few things. Beyond the meaning of "huckle," I learned that planes park in APRONs (seriously, did not know this) and that the big TOE is called "hallux" in Latin / medicalese. I'm not sure I'll remember any of that. Well, I'll remember huckle. I'll always have huckle. Don't you (ba dum dum da dum dum) forget about huckle. Etc.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Cornball puns really aren't my thing. The clues on the first couple are pretty funny, but the "humor" here kind of went over, or beside, or in some relation to my head other than the intended one. Plus QUOTER's not really a word. I mean, it is, but it isn't, so that answer really clunks. Also, I did not like the last themer, TUBER PLAYER, at all, because of its inclusion of a -ER word that did *not* conform to the theme … unless the guy on "tuba" is in fact a "playa," in which case, good for him. Seems like this theme might have been as funny, if not funnier, in reverse: -ERs to -As. [Like someone who refuses to root for the Lightning under any conditions?] => TAMPA RESISTANT. Huh? Huh? Well, maybe, maybe not. Maybe that's been done. But this didn't amuse me enough to make the mostly uninteresting trip through the rest of the puzzle seem worth it. Fill was overly common and somewhat tiresome to work through, though the long Downs (FOAM PEANUT + WHAT A LAUGH) are pretty charming (11D: Bit of packaging detritus + 29D: "That is SO stupid!").
Puzzle played hard, mostly because of some tough cluing on some short and relatively arcane stuff like ARCO (From *that* clue? No way. I had ESSO at first) (1D: Oil giant that's part of the Tesoro Corporation), and ZEKE (??) (26D: First name of the wolf in Disney's "The Big Bad Wolf") and all the 3-letter answers in the NE. I know the peanuts in question only as PACKING PEANUTS, so without FOAM up there, those short answers were in danger of not coming at all (especially as I didn't know the FTC answer, and can't remember ever seeing that abbr. in a puzzle, though I must've). In the end, there's just too much SETI ERST ERIN UAR TSAR ACHOO MOR LIU UKE EEGS EEO and not enough fun stuff.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: ACRONYM (50D: Basis of the answer to each starred clue, commonly) — answers are silly sentences that are also homophones of common acronyms (initialisms, actually, but why split hairs?)
Word of the Day: MESNE (10D: Intermediate, at law) —
a.
[Cf. Mean intermediate.] (Law) Middle; intervening; as, a mesne lord, that is, a lord who holds land of a superior, but grants a part of it to another person, in which case he is a tenant to the superior, but lord or superior to the second grantee, and hence is called the mesne lord. // Mesne process, intermediate process; process intervening between the beginning and end of a suit, sometimes understood to be the whole process preceding the execution. Blackstone.Burrill. -- Mesne profits, profits of premises during the time the owner has been wrongfully kept out of the possession of his estate. Burrill. (Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/mesne#ixzz1QioqZXBn)
• • •
This puzzle is ingenious, even if the fill is a little rough around the edges in parts. ROBYN Hitchcock (57D: Rocker Hitchcock) crossing ALAN BALL!? (64A: "Six Feet Under" creator) Yikes. I knew both, but only because a. I was in college when ROBYN Hitchcock was a well known "college rock" (it was a thing) artist, and b. I do puzzles and have stumbled on ALAN BALL before. Lots of names, and with every theme answer relying on your knowing famous names, this seems like an easy puzzle to get stuck in (name-y puzzles tend to be landmines). But the theme is great, even if, as I say, ACRONYMs, technically, can be said as a word, e.g. NOW (the National Organization for Women) or OSHA (the Organization of Senior Hat Artists). These are all initialisms, but I think dictionaries have tired of people screwing up and decided that any initialism can be called an ACRONYM now, so ... here we are.
Theme answers:
16A: *"Got it! You want me to play Dorothy's aunt!" ("I SEE! BE EM!")
25A: *"Get in line, Ms. Gorme!" ("QUEUE, EYDIE!")
40A: *"Ms. Myers, shall I pour?" ("DEE DEE ... TEA?") — this was the first theme answers I stumbled across and I somehow couldn't get the name DOROTHEA out of my head (I had the last two letters). Even later, when I'd filled in ACRONYM, I couldn't figure out what the deal was. Only when I got "QUEUE, EYDIE!" and went "huh?" did it dawn on me what was going on. After that, things were a little easier.
56A: *"Supermodel Macpherson, I presume?" ("YOU ARE ELLE?")
71A: *"Sly insect!" ("CAGEY BEE!")
Got Nothing in the NW and so ended up starting at BALD (33A: Unlocked?) and sliding right down into the SE corner, where I ended up piecing together ACRONYM pretty early, well before I had any theme answer in place. Man, there are Really a lot of names in this puzzle. But I've said that. I also said the fill was a little rough around the edges, but truthfully the only outright ugly thing in the grid is MESNE (which I have seen only once before: when it was running through a stack of four 15s back in March) (10D: Intermediate, at law). Otherwise the puzzle is hampered only by an excessive reliance on odd names. Weird to have FDA and SRO (60A: 1966 gold album by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass) and GMT and PSA in this puzzle, if only because I really want to turn them into theme answers. *"Gosh, it's all gone!" => "GEE, EMPTY!" *"Urinate, my fellow Mexican!" => "PEE, ESE!" I think I've got the hang of it.
Bullets:
15A: Horse-drawn vehicle (LANDAU) — like ALAN BALL, I know LANDAU Only from crosswords.
34A: Cub #21 of 1990s-2000s (SOSA) — "of the Steroid Era" is more like it.
35A: "The Rules of the Game" filmmaker, 1939 (RENOIR) — Jean. Know the name, but have not (to my knowledge) seen any of his films.
53A: Peeler's target, informally (SPUD) — a befuddling clue. "Target" makes potato-peeling sound awfully violent / personal.
55A: Whitman's dooryard bloomer (LILAC) — just finished "To Kill a Mockingbird" today. I'd never read it before. Hey, guess what else I've never read. Go on.
73A: Surfer's handle (USER NAME) — that use of "surf" shouldn't fool anyone at this point.
2D: Newman of early "S.N.L." (LARAINE) — know her name by sound. Written out, it looks Nuts.
6D: Snack cake since 1961 (SUZY Q) — ooh, rough. I haven't seen one of these ... well, since I don't when. Not sure I could pick one out of a snack cake line-up.
58D: Horror movie locale, for short (ELM ST.) — again, pretty hard. I was thinking "locale" in the general sense (i.e. cabin in the woods).
67D: Old NASA vehicle (LEM) — A common enough ACRONYM. I was reminded of it the other day when someone, somewhere mentioned a one-hit wonder band that I'd completely forgotten about. OK, so their name's LEN, not LEM. Just go with it:
P.S. Thanks to everyone who visited the new Facebook page for this website yesterday. I did not expect all the nice comments posted there. Much appreciated. I'll have a "Like" button up on the website soon (or, rather, PuzzleGirl will help me put one up ... she laughs at me when I try to do tech stuff on my own. Literally, laughs). Til then, you can check out the page here. It's a nice place to interact with readers and distribute information and generally goof around.
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THEME: Movie "taglines" — plays on words make for alleged movie taglines ... [honestly, I don't get it]
Word of the Day: AARON Rodgers (21A: Super Bowl XLV M.V.P. Rodgers) —
Aaron Charles Rodgers (born December 2, 1983) is an American footballquarterback for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). Rodgers was selected in the first round (24th overall) of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Packers. Rodgers played college football while attending the University of California, Berkeley, where he set several California Golden Bears records, including lowest interception rate at 1.43%. // Professionally, Rodgers is the NFL's all-time career leader in passer rating during both the regular season (98.4), and in the post-season (112.6) – among passers with at least 1,500 and 150 pass attempts respectively. He also owns the league's lowest career pass interception percentage for quarterbacks during the regular season (1.99%) (wikipedia)
• • •
I'm waiting on an email from a friend, hoping she'll be able to explain this theme to me. So ... theme answers are alleged movie taglines, which are actually puns made out of ... let's see, a movie title, a Shakespeare play, an actual tagline, and a play/movie title. How is this coherent? On an individual basis, any one of the theme answers might be deemed cute (ICY DEAD PEOPLE is particularly nice), but I'm just missing how this one holds together conceptually. Also, the non-theme fill is dry as a bone. Monday-easy, with just about zero answers of interest. Just didn't work for me, Dawg (sorry, just finished watching "American Idol," the first night of which was pretty damn terrible—with a couple of notable exceptions).
Theme answers:
17A: "Taxi Driver" tagline? (A FARE TO REMEMBER)
25A: "Back to the Future" tagline? (A COMEDY OF ERAS) [wince]
42A: "Titanic" tagline? (ICY DEAD PEOPLE) — morbid, but great
56A: "Return of the Jedi" tagline? (LUKE BACK IN ANGER)
I learned a couple of interesting bits of trivia today: that NORM was in every episode of "Cheers" (1A: Only patron on "Cheers" to appear in all 275 episodes) and that the HUMMER was discontinued (10D: G.M. brand discontinued in 2010). Beyond that, honestly, I don't have anything to say. Oh, I didn't see the clue til just now, but I'd never heard of the Aramco oil company (in clue for SAUDI). Maybe I'll remember that. Probably not. Oh, last thing: the clue on EULER is the most incoherent-sounding clue I've ever seen. [Swiss who pioneered in graph theory]??? First of all, though correct, "Swiss" for a Swiss person always sounds horribly wrong to me. Second, can you pioneer "in" something? Or is it "in graph" theory? I tripped on EULER once years ago, and I've had him in my back pocket ever since. Today was no different—brain saw "Swiss" and "[something math]" and I had the "EU-" so ... bam.
THEME: Food clued as money — Geographical place / adjective + food that is also slang for money; clued as if it were about money ("?"-style)
Word of the Day: ELEA (6D: Home of Zeno) —
Velia is the Italian (and Latin) name of the ancient town of Elea located on the territory of the comune of Ascea, Salerno, Campania, Italy in a geographical sub-area named Cilento. Originally founded by the Greeks as Hyele in ancient Magna Graecia around 538–535 BC, it is best known as the home of the philosophers Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, as well as the Eleatic school of which they were a part. The site of the Acropolis of ancient Elea, once a promontory (castello a mare meaning castle on the sea) and now inland, was renamed in the Middle Ages Castellammare della Bruca. (wikipedia)
• • •
Superfast! And I didn't even pick up the theme until I was about halfway through the grid. Here's the thing about Mondays: don't stop. I do not stop to ponder a clue. I know it or I don't, and if I don't, I move. So I sliced clear through the center of the grid, from NW to SE, without getting a single theme answer. Eventually, in course of building other corners, stumbled into CANADIAN BACON and kind of sort of got the theme. CANADIAN and ITALIAN are adjectives, and are related to countries, where MONTEREY and BOSTON are nouns, and are cities, and something about this discrepancy bugs me a bit, but only a bit. Started with MATS (1A: Wrestling surfaces) and got every Down cross instantly (including SANAA! Thanks, xwords of times gone by!—4D: Yemen's capital). SANAA and ELEA and OTERO (68A: New Mexico county whose seat is Alamogordo) all come to me very easily now in a way that they would not have even a couple of years ago.
Theme answers:
20A: Meal money in Manitoba? (CANADIAN BACON)
34A: Meal money in California? (MONTEREY JACK)
41A: Meal money in Tuscany? (ITALIAN BREAD)
56A: Meal money in Massachusetts? (BOSTON LETTUCE)
No real sore spots today. Trouble getting the theme, but "trouble" is an exaggeration. I just decided to ignore the theme and plow ahead, which worked well. GOING FAR did not come easily. It's an odd phrase that I don't hear used much, though I'm sure I've heard it somewhere. Anyway, the GOING FAR (11D: On the path to great success) / GADFLY (32A: Persistent, irritating critic) nexus was about the only place I even had to think at all. Don't know if I remembered ERNESTO straight off (44D: Che Guevara's given name), but I had enough letters to make an educated guess. Was staring at daughter's sheet music yesterday noticing all the Italian tempo cues, among which was almost certainly AGITATO, so that was a nice coincidence (43D: Energetically, in music). Not sure there's anything else of note ...
Bullets:
14A: Pioneering razor with a pivoting head (ATRA) — common razor brand in crossworld, but I didn't know it was "pioneering." La-di-da.
53D: French painter of "Le Pont de Mantes" (COROT) — I recognize the name, but wouldn't have gotten it so quickly if -OROT hadn't already been in place the first time I saw the clue.
50D: Sprite alternative (FRESCA) — this drink exists almost exclusively in the late '70s, as far as I'm concerned. Like Tab. I honestly haven't seen any since 1981, I don't think.
THEME: I'm glad there are only four theme answers — Theme answers are familiar phrases that describe actions beginning with a word that can be related to eating (but isn't in this particular phrase). Hi, everybody. PuzzleGirl here with you today while Rex is traveling back home. Sorry this post is a little late going up. I didn't realize I was on for today and I was out kinda late last night listening to ghost stories at the Stanley Hotel (the big, creepy hotel where they filmed "The Shining"). It's in Estes Park, Colorado, where the PuzzleFamily is on vacation this week. We heard about the ghost story thing and thought the PuzzleKids would really enjoy it. Unfortunately, the Hour And A Half (!) long program could have been boiled down to roughly 20 minutes without losing any of its entertainment value. Oh well. The hotel is pretty cool. We'll try to go back during the day sometime this week to get some pictures. So far we just have pictures of the glorious outdoors (and I mean that sincerely — this place is heaven).
Theme answers:
20A: Accept an inevitable hardship (BITE THE BULLET)
27A: Ham it up (CHEW THE SCENERY)
43A: Fall for a flimflam (SWALLOW THE BAIT)
51A: Understand what's happening (DIGEST THE NEWS)
As is typical with a Monday puzzle, I was rolling through this one fast enough that I didn't fully grasp the theme. I recognized that the phrases were "[x]ing the [x]," but that was as far as my brain could take it while I was busy with the rest of the fill. It was only afterwards that I realized the "[x]ing" words were related. In any case, cute Monday theme idea with solid, colorful phrases. Well, except for DIGEST THE NEWS. I had to think about that one for a minute to understand its common usage, which I believe is "It took me a minute to DIGEST THE NEWS — the elderly couple on the landing were actually Mr. and Mrs. Stanley!"
Bullets:
5A: "Hannah Montana" star Miley (CYRUS) — My daughter is nine so, yeah, this one was no problem.
10A: Height: Prefix (ACRO-) — I actually started with ALTI- so that northeast corner was the last to fall.
48D: Site of many Chicago touchdowns (O'HARE) — I have to admit this one fooled me for a quick second. I'm going to say it's only because I have a friend who writes for NBC Sports in Chicago and she's been tweeting a lot about Da Bears lately.
56A: "How could ___" (I NOT) — Ooh. Clunky.
65A: Alternative to a convertible (SEDAN) — Raise your hand if you started writing in T-TOP but ran out of letters before you ran out of spaces.
3D: Stuffed sole stuffing (CRABMEAT) — This was a total mystery to me. I don't eat seafood so a dish made of seafood stuffed with other seafood isn't exactly on my radar.
44D: Conestogas, e.g. (WAGONS) — Nailed this one. It's been in the LA Times puzzle twice in the past couple of weeks and the first time I ever even Heard the word was at last year's Lollapuzzoola tournament, in what I refer to as the "Conestoga Incident." By the way, I hope you all are coming to Lollapuzzoola next week. It's not too late to register.
55D: Cry made while cracking a whip, maybe (WORK) — Whoa. I'm only coming up with some pretty horrifying circumstances where this clue actually makes sense. I think I might have gone in a different direction here.
That's enough outta me for today. The great outdoors awaits. You all have a great Monday and, with any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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