WEDNESDAY, 08/05/09— Booth Tarkington title tween / Longtime CBS boss William / Affleck/Lopez as tabloid twosome / Y.A. known for well thrown pigskins

Constructor: Donna S. Levin

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Exclamation of PERRY WHITE (57A: Character known for exclaiming the first words of 20-, 28- and 46-Across); those first words are "GREAT / CAESAR'S / GHOST!"

Word of the Day: PERRY WHITE — Perry White is a fictional character who appears in the Superman comics. White is the Editor-in-Chief of the Metropolis newspaper the Daily Planet.
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I had no idea PERRY WHITE and this exclamation were famous enough in this century to carry a puzzle. As catch phrases go, GREAT CAESAR'S GHOST's general recognizability (especially as a specifically PERRY WHITE expression) faded a long time ago, and as tertiary characters in comics go ... well, among *tertiary* characters, PERRY WHITE has a pretty solid standing. I just don't think I've seen a puzzle built around a tertiary character before, is all. I read comics, and my first answer for PERRY WHITE was MERRY WIDOW. The phrase just didn't register for me. My time on the puzzle overall was still average for a Wednesday. I suspect there will be a generation gap in today's solving experience. We'll see.

The grid is amazing, in that those NE and SW corners are huge, wide-open spaces more characteristic of Friday and Saturday grids than Wednesdays. I can't remember seeing blocks of 8s like that in a Wednesday. If I have, it's been a while. Felt like the main body of the puzzle ran diagonally from NW to SE, and then oh, by the way, here are these bonus mini-puzzles in the NE and SW. Very cool. The long Downs were relatively easy, so they didn't add a lot of difficulty to the puzzle, but I liked them nonetheless.



Theme answers:

• 20A: America's so-called Third Coast (GREAT Lakes)
• 28A: One who must be above suspicion, in a saying (CAESAR'S wife) — never heard the saying. I think CAESAR expressions in general were just Way bigger half a century ago.
• 46A: Many an autobiographer's need (GHOST writer) — something about the phrasing threw me. I think of an "autobiographer" as a writer (the "graph" part), so I didn't think the writer would need a writer. But I'm not sure how I would have rephrased it.

Two answers I flat-out didn't know today. First was SHOJI (30D: Japanese sliding screen), which started as SCRIM, and then eventually went to SHOJO, even though I know perfectly well that SHOJO describes a variety of Japanese manga (aimed at girls) and was therefore unlikely also to mean "sliding screen." The wrong final "O" made me try "[something] NOTES" at first for the autobiographer theme answer at 46A. As a transition answer from the top to the bottom half of the grid, SHOJI caused a lot of trouble. Final Across was also a mystery to me. Never heard of William PALEY (68A: Longtime CBS boss William). His heyday appears to be right in this puzzle's temporal sweet spot: smack dab in the middle of the 20th century. Wonder if PALEY was a fan of Y.A. TITTLE (also big in 1950 — 49D: Y.A. known for well-thrown pigskins). TITTLE intersecting PERRY WHITE and PALEY says everything about what year this puzzle is living in — R. KELLY (47D: Singer with the 1994 #1 hit "Bump N' Grind") and BENNIFER (12D: Affleck/Lopez as a tabloid twosome) notwithstanding.

Bullets:

• 6A: _____-Ball (game on an incline) — would not have thought this needed the parenthetical explanation.
• 18A: Mrs. Dithers in the comics (Cora) — from "Blondie"; I'm telling you, this puzzle is some kind of time warp (yes, "Blondie" still runs in papers, but ... come on, that strip still has its feet still firmly planted in the '50s). Like PERRY WHITE, CORA Dithers is a tertiary comics character.
• 54D: Mattel's Princess of Power (She-Ra) — there is a song about SHE-RA on an album by a group called "Two Nice Girls." I listened to their album "Chloe Liked Olivia" a Lot in college.
• 32A: Ex-governor Palin (Sarah) — ouch. That was fast.
• 51A: Original Luddite _____ Ludd (Ned) — I forgot about this NED. Needed all the crosses.
• 2D: Booth Tarkington title tween (Penrod) — learned it from xwords ... and then apparently forgot it. Needed many crosses to get it back. Common reading in English classes ... when Y.A. TITTLE was a boy.
• 13D: Important plant in alternative medicine (aloe vera) — got it easily, but I think of it more as a common plant used in lotions. Had no idea it was so important in so-called "alternative medicine."
• 42D: Out of order, in a way (swapped) — pretty devilish a clue for a Wednesday. Not understanding this one led me to try SWAMPED, which led to my initial MERRY WIDOW-for-PERRY WHITE mistake.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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Even more certain: Lat. — TUESDAY, Jul. 21 2009 — Anglo-Saxon laborer / Diacritical squiggle / Old-time Norwegian skating sensation

Constructor: Donna Levin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: The day after the moon landing ...

Word of the Day: A FORTIORI (59A: Even more certain: Lat.) — adv.

For a still stronger reason; all the more.

[Latin : ā, ab, from + fortiōrī, ablative of fortior, stronger.]

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This one feels a day late and a dollar short — moon landing anniversary was yesterday, and L.A. Times ran its own somewhat more elaborate tribute puzzle yesterday — but I guess it's not terribly surprising to see the NYT engaging in a bit of self-love, building the puzzle around its own headline rather than the event itself. What's odd is that the first two theme answers relate to the Times coverage, but the third and fourth (the message left on the moon) don't. But since today is the anniverary of the day the astronauts left the moon, I guess the left-behind message ties in that way. It's a very straight tribute; no tricks or bells or whistles. It's well constructed enough, but pretty blah for an NYT puzzle.

I would have rated this straight-up EASY, but A FORTIORI is so not-Tuesday that I figured many people would wrestle with it at least a tiny bit, and so I jacked up the difficult rating a notch. No real trouble in this puzzle except not knowing the moon message straight away. Needed several crosses to start in on it, and then I wrote WE COME IN PEACE. Knew EDINO was not a word, so I worked it out. Also had MENKIND at first because I opted for the STELE spelling of the inscribed pillar (39D). Valid, but (in this case) wrong.

Moon message should have read: WE GOT HERE FIRST. SUCK IT, RUSSIA.

Theme answers:

• 20A: New York Times headline of 7/21/69 ("Men Walk On Moon")
• 28A: Subject of a photo beneath 20-Across (Neil Armstrong)
• 45A: With 55-Across, message left by 28-Across for future explorers ("We Came in Peace / For All Mankind")

The spice in this puzzle was the long Downs. TALK BACK has the lovely pair of "K"s, and DOPAMINE adds to the pleasures of the lower half (38D: Pleasure-associated neurotransmitter). Those pleasures include ORGY (56D: Bacchanalian revelry) and Jim ROCKFORD (36D: 1970s James Garner title role). I have been engaged in many a ROCKFORD ORGY, as I enjoy putting on my Season 1 DVDs and watching old eps two and three at a time. He's my TV detective hero. The SE corner gave me less pleasure, not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I couldn't round the corner off of TAINTED very easily. Wanted to run through the T-, E-, and D- Acrosses, 1-2-3, but couldn't come up with anything for T---- at 61A: Diacritical mark (tilde) or D---- at 67A: Opportunities, metaphorically (doors). Went to the Down crosses and worked it out. These little hesitations (and horrendous typing) are what separate me from the real speed solvers.



Bullets:

• 1A: Almost half of U.S. immigrants in 1840 (Irish) — what do you call it when you look at a clue, think "I don't know that," move on to next clue, and in the middle of reading, the answer to the previous clue suddenly comes to you. Well, that happened here.
• 5D: Whom Hamlet calls "A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards / Hast ta'en with equal thanks" (Horatio) — Nothing sadder than an elided "K."
  
• 16A: Console used with the game Halo (XBOX) — You can play on PCs/Macs as well. Halo is a massively popular first-person shooter game, a trilogy that has sold around 25 million copies and spawned spin-off games, comics, novels, etc. Really, it's huge. I feel like Halo (and gaming in general) also might mark the very dark cultural dividing line between me (Gen X) and the generations behind me. I have no purchase on modern gaming. At all. By the time it became big business, I was already an adult who had learned to waste his free time on other things. I know enough about playing video games as a kid to know that they are a rabbit hole from which I would Never, Ever emerge. A time evaporator of the highest order. I don't think I can touch the stuff, because I'm pretty sure I would never get anything done or see my family ever again. Part of me is curious ... but part of me is curious about heroin, too.
• 22A: Letters that please angels (SRO) — "angels" back shows with $$$. Thus, they like seeing Standing Room Only signs, bec. they equal success. I learned this meaning of "angels" from xwords.
• 33D: Old-time Norwegian skating sensation (Henie) — lots of vowels make her very common.
• 10D: _____ 67 (onetime Montreal event) (Expo) — I went to EXPO '86 in Vancouver. I bought a commemorative Swatch watch there. That was the week Andrew and Fergie got married. Both the watch and that marriage are no more.
• 13D: Stores for G.I.'s (PXs) — I like this. Can't remember seeing it in a puzzle before.
• 58D: D.E.A. seizure, maybe (kilo) — DEA is what I entered first at 25A: 1988 Dennis Quaid/Meg Ryan movie ("D.O.A.").

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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TUESDAY, Jul. 14 2009 — Oyster eater in Lewis Carroll verse / 109 famously / La Brea goo / Gomer Pyle and platoonmantes by rank

Constructor: Donna S. Levin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Happy Bastille Day — theme answers are all related in some way to the French Revolution

Word of the Day: The TROP (49D: Classic Vegas hotel, with "the") — The Tropicana Resort & Casino Las Vegas is located on the Las Vegas Strip, in the township of Paradise, Nevada. It is owned by Tropicana Las Vegas Hotel and Resort Inc. and operated by Armenco Holdings. It offers 1,871 rooms and is attached to a 61,000 sq ft (5,700 m²) casino. The Tropicana also has 110,000 sq ft (10,000 m²) of convention and exhibit space. (wikipedia)

I guess there was just too much Frenchness in this puzzle already to give TROP its more predictable French clue (TROP in Fr. = excessively, too).
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Hey, I got my Bastille Day puzzle after all. Huzzah. A nice, oversized Bastille Day puzzle (16x15) to accommodate two 16-letter theme answers. I like that the theme answers are so disparate, yet all tie in to the final theme answer (which acts as a kind of exclamation point): FRENCH REVOLUTION. Here's something I didn't know about Bastille Day:

Besides holding a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, the Bastille had been known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the siege in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance. (wik)

On a technical level, the puzzle is cleanly filled, with a number of interesting or unusual answers. My favorite is CHIRAC (10D: Sarkozy's presidential predecessor), both because it's a great string of letters that I rarely see in the puzzle, and also because of its tangential relationship to the theme. I'm also enjoying LAGOON (45D: Middle of an atoll) for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe because it's an ALGAL LAGOON. The Creature From the ALGAL LAGOON would be very scary. Or very silly. At any rate, the proximity of LAGOON makes ALGAL (42D: Like some pond life) almost tolerable, and that's a good thing.



Lively grid for a Tuesday, with a Q and a Z and a couple K's. I blew through this puzzle almost without stopping, handily beating my time from yesterday (despite the oversized grid). I don't really think it's "Easy-Medium," but since times were probably somewhat longer than usual on this one, I gave the difficulty rating a slight nudge up. I think the SW was probably the place most likely to give people a tiny bit of trouble. Three abbreviations are crammed down there — PT BOAT (48A: 109, famously), PFCS (48D: Gomer Pyle and platoonmates, by rank: Abbr.), and the TROP (which I'd never seen clued as a casino before). The SSE might have proved vexing. ALGAL isn't exactly common, and "STAR DUST" was totally unknown to me (39D: Hoagy Carmichael classic), so there's a decent possibility of floundering around down there. [sidenote: STARDUST is a famous Vegas resort and casino — could've made a nice tie-in with the TROP] Or maybe some people hiccuped in the west, where lots of proper nouns are giving a group hug to the WALRUS (33A: Oyster eater in a Lewis Carroll verse). WALRUS runs right through STREAM (24D: Dam site), and now I have "WALRUS in the STREAM" (sung to the tune of "Islands in the Stream") stuck in my head. Great. Nothing's going to get *that* out.

Theme answers:

• 18A: Dickens novel with the 56-Across as its backdrop ("A Tale of Two Cities")
• 27A: Declaration attributed to Marie Antoinette just before the 56-Across ("Let them eat cake")
• 43A: Song of the 56-Across ("La Marseillaise")
• 56A: Even that began in 1789 (French Revolution)

Bullets:

• 15A: Dwelling section whose name comes from the Arabic for "forbidden place" (harem) — trivia! I did not know this, but "place" and "forbidden" and "dwelling section" and "Arabic" ... basically, the clue ... gave it to me. Funny how that works.
• 23A: Features of the Sierras (aretes) — ah, Sierras has its "S" back. I'm happy.
• 35A: Stale Italian bread? (lire) — cuteness.
• 38A: Catch sight of (espy) — I was ruminating on this word just yesterday, for reasons I can't remember. I was thinking about how one might clue it as a sports award and wondering if you couldn't work Samuel L. Jackson into the clue (he's hosting the ESPY Awards this year and has hosted twice before).
• 39A: Miserly Marner (Silas) — it's a good day for 19c. novels. Speaking of, I just checked Trollope's "The Way We Live Now" out of the library yesterday. We'll see how that goes.
• 61A: "Milk's favorite cookie," in commercials (Oreo) — wow, I missed whatever era this slogan is from. Recent? Ancient?
• 58D: "Able was I _____ I saw Elba" ("ere") — unwelcome Frenchness. One of my least favorite clues for "ERE" (or "IERE," or "EREI"). Tiredness.
• 59D: La Brea goo (tar) — sounds like a SoCal punk band.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 8, 2007 - Donna S. Levin

Relative difficulty: Easy

Theme: Daddy's Home - or, Raising Pennsylvania - "PA" is added to familiar phrases to create new phrases, which are clued

Did this one rather quickly, finishing around 6 minutes ... but I had a wrong square and had to go back and check my crosses, which took me a while. Finally found out that I had entered EONS for 61A: Poetic times (e'ens), which gave me the obviously wrong WAGOR, instead of WAGER (51D: It might be placed at a window), in the cross.

It's a pretty simple theme, but so what? Sometimes simple is nice. No need to fuss around too much or get overcomplicated. Nothing here is that memorable, but it's a pleasant diversion nonetheless.

Theme answers:

• 20A: Back-to-the-slammer order? (PA-role reversal) - speaking of "Back-to-the-slammer," it looks like I might be teaching in prison starting next month; much more on that later...
• 30A: Reason the kids were left alone? (PA-rent strike)
• 40A: Reward for a Ringling invention? (circus PA-tent)
• 54A: Scuff marks on the prairie? (Buffalo PA-wings) - this one is the weakest; I don't get it - what's a PAWING? Is it just the act of putting one's PAWs on something?

There were no real stumpers in today's puzzle. Some entertaining pop culture clues, though. ADO ANNIE (11D: "Oklahoma!" gal) is a funny, horribly awkward name, though perhaps no funnier than DOOGIE (59A: TV's Howser). DOOGIE is better known these days as a character on "How I Met Your Mother" - can't tell you his character's name, as I don't watch that show, or any live-action sitcom, for that matter. The genre is dead, and I'm waiting for the Resurrection. Wait, I take it back. I like "The Office" and "30 Rock." Like "DOOGIE Howser," they have no laff trak. And I am quite sure that I am now the first person in the history of TV commentary to compare "The Office" and "30 Rock" to "DOOGIE Howser." Other pop culture clues include three movies - "LIFE BOAT" (35D: 1944 Hitchcock classic), which I've never seen, but which stars Tallulah Bankhead, whose autobiography I own (part of my vintage paperback collection); "THE FOG" (14A: 1980 John Carpenter chiller); and "Norma RAE" (60A: "Norma _____") - a musical genre that I've never seen in the grid before: AFRO-POP (4D: Music from across the Atlantic - pretty vague clue, considering how many countries lie across the Atlantic from us) - and a "Saturday Night Live" throwback answer: 51A: Baba _____, Gilda Radner "S.N.L." character (Wawa).

I failed my first test of my newly acquired Biblical knowledge. In desperation, wrote in EBAN for ONAN (25A: Son of Judah), but I figured out my mistake quickly. I mean, really, who can keep all the names in Genesis straight (aside from the really major ones, I mean)? Please don't answer that. It's a hypothetical question.

My wife, currently working the puzzle in the next room, will surely be as annoyed by AL'ER (46A: Devil Ray or Blue Jay, for short) as she was by yesterday's NHL'ER. The Mets, who play at SHEA (33D: 1969 and 2000 World Series venue) are NL'ERs, and their Double-A team plays here in town. I do love a minor league baseball game. I am not a TAPIOCA (43D: Starchy dessert) fan, and rarely come into contact with the stuff, so I have no idea why I nailed that answer off of just the first letter, but I did.

It is weird to me that there is a "Toyota Camry model" (1A), since I always thought "Camry" was the model. Thus SOLARA, a familiar enough name, never readily pops to mind (though I've seen it several times before). Can't really picture a T-STRAP (32D: Woman's shoe style), but with "TS" as the lead letters, I got it pretty quickly anyway. Gertrude EDERLE (17A: Channel swimmer Gertrude) is known to me only from crosswords, and while I know RONA Barrett, RONA Jaffe (18A: Novelist Jaffe) is a bit of a mystery to me. Lastly, have you ever noticed how many letters Paul Anka and SRI LANKA (12D: Ceylon, now) have in common? Now you have.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Check out my non-biological progeny working the grid. I can't tell you how happy these pictures make me.

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MONDAY, Dec. 18, 2006 - Donna Levin

Solving time: 6:36

THEME: The War on Christmas - one week before the birth of Our Lord, the Times decides that Christmas is just another "holiday," along with KWANZAA and HANUKKAH - somebody call Bill O'Reilly! or Stephen Colbert! Where's the outrage!?

Seriously, though, the theme was "Holiday decoration" - a clue used for three different 15-letter theme answers: 17A: CHRISTMAS WREATH, 37A: KWANZAA UNITY CUP (new to me), and 57A: HANUKKAH MENORAH. God knows (really, he does, I'm sure) how to spell HANUKKAH in English. I think there are at least two different spelling conventions, if not more. That, and the mysterious UNITY CUP thing kept me from flying through this the way I like to on a Monday, though I will say I felt like I was flying. I never stopped typing - but I had to correct a lot of wrong fill along the way, and never got a good rhythm going. O well. It's a cute little holiday puzzle.

2D: Liniment target (ache)

Without blinking I wrote ACNE, and so instead of seeing that the long theme answer at 17A began CHR... which would have given me at least five more letters as gimmes, I was presented with the baffling CNR... another rebus, perhaps? Who knows, I'm too busy madly bouncing around the grid and pounding the keyboard to find out ('til very late in the game). I used to think of OCALA (14A: Central Florida city) as a real puzzle player, a Pantheon prospect, but I think this is the first I've seen him in three months of blogging. Where has he been? Injured? Traveling? He should get out more often. Besides ACNE (for ACHE), other fill I got wrong initially included FUSE for WELD (6A: Solder), MALL for MART (53A: Shopping place), IOTA for WISP (46A: Fleeting trace), and, most appropriately, OOPS for OH NO (25A: "This looks bad!") and MUFF for GOOF (35A: Flub).

41A: Memo opener (in re)
60A: Abbr. before a colon (attn)
10D: Shorthand pro (steno)

It's like a generic 1950's office in here, what with STENOs writing memos that read ATTN so-and-so, IN RE: this and that, etc. IN RE is fabulous short fill that I know only from puzzles. Rarely use it (or see it) in real life. My first thought on seeing the clue for 60A was that the answer must be RECTO-, but it doesn't it, and doesn't quite pass the breakfast table test. Plus RECTOCOLON is a very uncommon term, returning only 183 Google hits. 976 if you put a hyphen in there. By the way, doctors recommend that you don't put a hyphen in there.

11D: The "E" in Q.E.D. (erat)
21A: Numbered work of a composer (opus)
42A: Plural of 21-Across (opera)
49D: Famed Roman censor (Cato)

Latinity! First two were gimmes, but o my god my years of Latin training disappeared when I hit 42A. I mean, if you had asked me that in casual conversation, I probably could have told you without thinking, but in the middle of puzzle frenzy, my brain came up empty. Weird feeling, like forgetting your mother-in-law's name or what day of the week it is. Puzzle-solving has made me hyper-attuned to how quickly (or slowly) my brain is able to retrieve information. I feel as though it's all downhill from here - any time I make up through practicing solving puzzles will be lost by the slow but inevitable decline in mental agility and ... my god, even writing this sentence is taxing my knowledge-retrieval abilities. Must move on. I don't think I knew CATO was a "censor." He is the author of a history of Rome, many political speeches, and many maxims, and was a staple of Latin education throughout the Middle Ages - though a group of very popular writings called The Distichs of Cato, which circulated in the Middle Ages, is probably not by Cato at all; but the fact that it was attributed to him tells you what kind of cachet his name had, especially where Latin learning and history were concerned. Hey, did you know that (according to Wikipedia) "In 205 BC, Cato was appointed quaestor?" Woo hoo, "Var." of QUESTOR (see yesterday's puzzle)! ["Why is he so excited?" "I don't know - let's just move on"]

34A: Like a pitcher's perfect game (no-hit)
28D: Hopeless, as a situation (no-win)

These intersect at the "O" - nice. They are not opposites, but they're close. With OH NO (25), we have three appearances of "NO" in this puzzle. NO NO NO. Where's the HO HO HO? I mean, is this a CHRISTMAS puzzle or isn't it?

4D: Business that routinely overcharges (clipjoint)
35D: Ship-to-shore accessway (gangplank)

This may be the most glorious long fill I've ever seen in a Monday puzzle. Makes me think it probably should have been a Tuesday (see my time), but whatever. Will's the boss. I own a fabulous novel by Fredric Brown called The Fabulous Clipjoint (part of my fabulous ginormous vintage paperback collection) - and though I've read the novel and I've stared at its glorious cover a billion times, I don't know that I could have told you what the word "clipjoint" meant before right now. I had the first four letters of that answer and thought "Huh, must have something to do with coupons..." and had to move on and come back to it. GANGPLANK - man, that's a great word, and it creates a nice, big "K" pile-up at the bottom of the puzzle, what with HANUKKAH and its crosses OINK (44D) and KAT (58D: Krazy _____ of the comics) down there. And I haven't even mentioned the pretty great GYPSYMOTH (36D: Insect whose larvae destroy foliage), with its two "Y"'s. All four of the nine-letter non-theme answers cut across two Theme answers. Seriously, this is a Monday puzzle?

56D: Lt. Kojak (Theo)

Who loves ya, baby?! This is some TV obscurity, especially (again) for a Monday. ["Cosby Show" son] might have been more readily gettable. [Sox GM Epstein]? [Cager Ratliff]? But no, go for the lollipop-licking Lieutenant, the bald badass himself. Telly! Is "Kojak" on DVD, because I'm getting a craving.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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