THURSDAY, Mar. 26, 2009 - E Safran (Chinese porcelain with a pale green glaze / Shipping mainstay of the 1600s / 1899 gold rush locale)

Relative difficulty: Easy/Medium

THEME:

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown –
Who ponders this tremendous scene –
This whole Experiment of Green –
As if it were his own!

-Emily Dickinson

(20A: Start of a poem by Emily Dickinson that continues "But God be with the Clown, / Who ponders this tremendous scene")

Word of the Day: CELADON - n.

1. A pale to very pale green.
2. A type of pottery having a pale green glaze, originally produced in China.

Difficulty level today is hard for me to gauge, as I'm guessing it's going to be all over the map. I first thought "Aargh, I don't know this poem," but I have some familiarity with Dickinson's sound and style (my sister wrote her senior thesis on Dickinson), so the quotation ended up being remarkably easy for me to unravel. Thank god it rhymed I can easily imagine the poem slowing people down a bit, especially in that northern section, which I escaped with very little damage but which looks daunting in retrospect. I had no idea what was meant by the phrase "Shipping mainstay" in 5D: Shipping mainstay of the 1600s (galleon). Actually, it was just the "mainstay" part that was confusing me. "Mainstay" is a nautical term, so I had no idea if it was being used metaphorically or literally. And I think I thought GALLEON was a coin. I entertained GALLEYS for a while. But a GALLEY is just a part of a ship, right? No, man, it's got two meanings too - it's a kind of ship and a ship's kitchen. Again, I'm just glad I didn't get pulled under up there. Also glad that I was reading a comic called GOLEM (5A: Dimwit, in Yiddish slang) at the time I solved this puzzle. As for LLOYD and OSLER ... no.

Let's play "Did He or Didn't He Know It - 'Celebrity' Edition"

• 4D: Funnyman Don (Knotts) - Yes he did
• 6D: Physician William (Osler) - No he did not
• 18A: David _____ George, British P.M., 1916-22 (Lloyd) - No he did not
• 8D: Singer with the 2008 gold record "And Winter Came ..." (Enya) - Yes he did (though not as clued). I guess I'll have to listen to the song to find out what happened next. (Just kidding - I'd be bleeding from my ears inside of a minute)
  
• 39A: Former Nebraska senator James (Exon) - No he didn't
• 31D: 1985 Meg Tilly title role (Agnes) - Yes he did (movie title = "AGNES of God")
• 58D: Warren who founded a rental car company (Avis) = Yes he did
• 24A: Barker of the Cleveland Indians who pitched a perfect game in 1981 (Len) - Yes he Guessed and was Right (I must have had his baseball card at some point, otherwise I don't know how I know him)

While the north should have slowed me down but didn't, there were two places where I fumbled around. I have probably seen CELADON before (46A: Chinese porcelain with a pale green glaze), but it did not come back to me at all today. Sounds like an island or a sea monster or something impressive and possibly nautical. Hey, CELADON KNOTTS. There's a puzzle theme there somewhere. The other part where I struggled a bit was in the far south, where the "V" was the last letter I put in the puzzle. I had ADAPT for RIVET at one point (62A: Fix), and I kept expecting it to fall into place with every new letter I fixed - and yet I ended up needing every letter to see it. TROVE (50D: Antique dealer's happy discovery) seems weirdly clued to me. A TROVE of what? Letters from George Washington to a brassy young dominatrix? (That would be good.) Or is a TROVE some valuable piece of antique furniture?

Bullet me:

• 10A: International company with the slogan "Home away from home" (El Al) - I've seen this exact clue before and it still took me several crosses to get
• 14A: North African city captured by the Allies in 1942 (Oran) - also the setting of Camus's "The Plague"
• 28A: Refuge for David, in the Bible (Dead Sea) - almost 1400 ft below sea level.
• 38A: Radio geek (ham) - reclued, this answer could have been paired with EMOTE (59A: Chew the scenery)
• 21D: South American monkey (Titi) - TATI, TATA, DATA, DANA, DANE, DAVE etc. Sorry, got distracted there thinking of amusing ways to connect actor Jacques TATI and the TITI (in family-friendly fashion)
• 25D: Monkeyshine (antic) - more monkey! In the ... singular? O ... K.

• 29D: Philly hoopster (Sixer) - gigantic gimme. [Dr. J was one] might have been slightly tougher.
• 30D: Extremely large, old-style (enorm) - this word shows up more often than you'd think, and is usually clued via its alleged "poetic" quality.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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WEDNESDAY, Sep. 17, 2008 - Edward Safran (Like paper vis-à-vis electronic / Hokkaido seaport / Holocaust hero Wallenberg)

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "The Man Who _____" - six theme answers complete movie titles that begin "The Man Who..."

Thought this puzzle was a blast, despite the fact that my reasonably well pop-cultured brain could come up with only two of the titles right off the bat ("WOULD BE KING," "FELL TO EARTH"). This is a fresh and entertaining theme idea, and the intersecting theme answers in the NE and SW make it especially impressive. The northern part of the puzzle was the only part I struggled with, and if my first hack at this puzzle had been this version (as opposed to the version I test-solved), I think that part of the puzzle might have taken me even longer - DEAD TREE was a noun in the test-solved version (8D: Nesting site for bees), and I objected, having no idea what my objection (and that of others, I believe) would lead to; here the answer has been turned into an adjective (8D: Like paper vis-à-vis electronic) I've never heard used before. It's easy to infer its meaning - but ... is there another kind of "DEAD-TREE" product besides paper? I mean, I know other stuff is made from trees, but do tables and houses get referred to as "DEAD-TREE" products. The few examples I can find on-line all refer to documents. "DEAD-TREE" doesn't save you on syllables ... Further, it has this ominous sound to it, like "KILLING PUPPIES" or "YOU'RE A HORRIBLE BASTARD." Not all killing of trees is bad. But who am I to stand in the way of the language development? That would be like trying to stop the (LEE) TIDE (26A: It flows with the wind). Furthermore, Sierras.

Theme answers:

• 21A: Sean Connery: "The Man Who _____" (1975) ("... Would Be King")
• 51A: David Bowie: "The Man Who _____" (1976) ("... Fell to Earth")
• 3D: Boris Karloff: "The Man Who _____" (1936) ("... Lived Again")
• 28D: Lloyd Nolan: "The Man Who _____" (1942) ("... Wouldn't Die") - possibly the most obscure of the bunch, but I love how well it goes with the Karloff title
• 30D: Billy Bob Thornton: "The Man Who _____" ("... Wasn't There")
• 9D: Burt Reynolds: "The Man Who _____" (1983) ("... Loved Women") - the genius of this answer is that it reunites with LONI (53D: Anderson of "Stroker Ace"). [I wanted to say that the puzzle "REUNES" (42A: Attends homecoming, say) Burt and LONI, but I just couldn't do it ... god I hate that word. DECOCTS!]

The Rest:

• 9D: Neither-here-nor-there state (limbo) - well, since the puzzle keeps insisting that I quote Dante... Virgil, describing the first ring of hell (LIMBO):
  

"Those who preceded Christianity
did not worship God according to his law,
and I myself am of this company.
For this defect, and for no other flaw,
we are lost, with this one punishment laid on,
that without hope we feel desire gnaw." (IV.37-42) (tr. Palma)

Yeah, it's a pretty ruthless poem.

• 33A: Rubber hamburger, e.g. (dog toy) - good clue. Despite having DOG TOYs all over my house, I needed several passes to get this one.
• 4D: Gridder Manning (Eli) - "Gridder" - love the "Seen Only in Xword Clues" vocab
  
• 54D: Cheat, slangily (hose) - "Slangily" [kisses tips of fingers]
  
• 37A: Hokkaido seaport (Otaru) - never heard of it. Sounds like a gaming system or an ear disease or a crew member of the Starship Enterprise.
• 39A: Climber of Mount Sinai (Moses) - easy; I just like the cluing of MOSES as a hiker, an outdoorsman.
• 60A: Maui veranda (lanai) - "veranda" and LANAI are among my most favorite words. I think the Golden Girls had a LANAI.
• 64A: Ernie on the links (Els) - Yay. No elevated trains today.
• 7D: Sicilia e Sardegna (isole) - One of the main reasons the north was so tough for me - crazy Italian plural.
• 36D: Vuitton of fashion (Louis) - gimme, unlike his equally consecutively voweled counterpart RAOUL (47D: Holocaust hero Wallenberg), whom I'd never heard of.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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