Rufous ruminant / SUN 2-18-18 / Simple variant of baseball / Rani's raiment / Suggestion of what to do slangily

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "SEE 68-ACROSS" (68A: Supercilious sort ... or the title for this puzzle)  — Across themers are wacky "?"-clued phrases that are really ordinary phrases that have had a common "name" "dropped" from them. The dropped name can be found literally dropped (i.e. hanging, appended) to the Across themer:

Theme answers:

• SPEAKS FLY / SPEAKS FRANKLY
• BING ERROR / BILLING ERROR
• SLUMBER PAY / SLUMBER PARTY
• PRIM COLORS / PRIMARY COLORS
• EARLY AMEN / EARLY AMERICAN
• PHONE MARS / PHONE MANNERS (omg what the hell are "phone manners????")

Word of the Day: TAMMIE Green (37D: Green of the L.P.G.A.) —

Tammie Green (born December 17, 1959) is an American professional golfer. // 
She started her professional career on the Futures Tour, on which she won 11 tournaments and was Player of the Year in 1985 and 1986. In 1986, she qualified for the LPGA Tour by finishing tied for second at the LPGA Final Qualifying Tournament. She was LPGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 1987. She was named Most Improved Player by Golf Digest in 1989. She won seven times on the LPGA Tour, including one major championship, the 1989 du Maurier Classic. Her best placing on the money list was 5th in 1997, which was one of four top ten seasons. She played for the United States in the Solheim Cup in 1994 and 1998. She was a member of the LPGA Tour Player Executive Committee from 1992–94. In 2004, she was inducted into the Ohio Golf Hall of Fame. (wikipedia)

• • •

Puzzle tries to make me hate it from the jump by naming itself after the worst kind of crossword clue: the cross-reference. "SEE 68-ACROSS" is a horrendous title. Horrendous. It's like ... "Uh, I give up, just look at the revealer, here it is, bye." I have no idea why you decide to go with a title so singularly unimaginative, so repulsive in its evocation of the worst that crosswords have to offer. Mind-boggling.* That said, this puzzle, while not terribly enjoyable, was certainly better than most Sunday puzzles have been of late. There's an interesting two-tiered quality to the themers, with both the wackiness and the "name" getting their own clues, and with the "names" literally "dropping" down from the wacky answers. I love the fact that the theme answer with BING in it is clued [Search engine failure?]. So true, so true. I haven't the faintest what "phone manners" are. "Table manners" are a thing. "Phone manners" is from god-knows-when. Before my time, for sure. People don't even talk on the phone much any more, and when they do ... I mean, have you seen people? "Manners"? LOL, no. "Phone manners" is a. not an in-the-language phrase, and b. utterly irrelevant to the times in which we live. But the other themers seems to work just fine. Theme's not too dense, so the grid doesn't get tooooo bogged down in junk, though it could've been a Lot less junky. There's like half a dozen French words alone. DEUX AMIES spent HIER on an ALPE? OUI. This is still a ways from "enjoyable," but by recent standards, it's a definition improvement. So let's just call it even.


I found this one harder than normal because of the way the theme was structured. Was hard for me to get theme footing for a while. But then some of the hardness was of my own making, like when I thought 36D: Left only the exterior of (GUTTED) was PITTED, or when I wrote in the French MES at 70D: Mine, in Milano (MIO). Thank god I grew up in and went to college in California, because TORRANCE?! (25A: City in Los Angeles County) Really, people know that place? People from California barely know that place. URETHANE was not easy for me (21D: Pesticide ingredient). Seems like there's probably a lot of crap in pesticides. AFLERS hurt, as did TAMMIE, and UNLEARN, and ARREAR (just one!?). And there's nothing like that special feeling you get when you discover ONE?CAT in your puzzle and leave that one square blank because who the hell knows if this amazingly bygone game found only in crosswords will be spelled with an "A" or an "O." A special, special feeling.


On the plus side, DEE got a cool and very contemporary clue (101A: "Mudbound" director Rees). Can't believe ["Mudbound" director Rees] made it into the puzzle before ["Mudbound" director Dee]. That's a name that's gonna get good crossword use for some time. My favorite part of Lent is the PIEROGI part (42D: Polish dumpling). Wife picks them up every Friday from St. Michael's. Had our first batch last night. So buttery and oniony and potatoey and glorious. Mmm, Lenten! See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. The WaPo Sunday is the better Sunday puzzle again this week. You can get it easily from their website.

*It occurs to me that perhaps the idea with the puzzle title ("SEE 68-ACROSS") was supposed to be that the NAME of the puzzle was being DROPPED (from its normal place) *into* the grid. There are several problems with this idea: the puzzle hasn't "dropped' its name, but has substituted one name ("SEE 68-ACROSS") for another; further, this new title now simply points to the revealer, which, eliminates the possibility that the solver will have the pleasure of discovering the trick on her own; and lastly, most importantly, cross-reference clues are a joyless void that are never enjoyed, but merely endured, even under the best of circumstances. This is like naming your kid TBD. Actually, no, I take that back. That would at least be interesting.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Anthony's former partner in radio / TUE 2-24-15 / River that flows from Bernese Alps / Element between chromium iron on periodic table / Jay Garage car enthusiast's website / Destructive 2011 East Coast hurricane / Syllable repeated after fiddle / Resembling quiche

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: [Shades of Grey?] — this is the clue for three completely nonsensical answers:

Theme answers:

• EARL'S SUNGLASSES
• LADY JANE'S BLINDS
• ZANE'S LAMP COVERS

Word of the Day: AMBULANT (38D: Able to walk) —

adjective

MEDICINE

1. (of a patient) able to walk around; not confined to bed. (google)

• • •

This is what we in the business call "Tuesday being Tuesday." Actually, I made that up, but that *is* what's happening. This puzzle lost me fast. Had me looking at it sideways before I ever left the NW, and was dead to me almost immediately thereafter—and that was *before* I got to the icky, ridiculous theme. Here's where I parted ways for good with this thing (I actually stopped to take a picture—this never happens on early-week puzzles, but my reaction was so certain and dramatic, I thought, "Why not capture the moment!?"):

[PIELIKE???]

It was bad enough when I had to change ENDOW (a reasonable word that people use) to ENDUE (ew), but then to have to see encounter its near-duplicate (UNDUE) so soon afterward? Ugh. When the next "word" I got was the loathsome, lazy DAN'L, I stopped caring right there. By the time I got the theme, I was just shaking my head wondering how this got accepted. Is it supposed to be topical? Ironic? You know EARL's not his first name, right? Right? I mean, the whole theme is broken, but at least LADY JANE'S BLINDS has "Jane" in it, to make a kind of sense. EARL'S SUNGLASSES!? Earl is a title, not a first name. I … why am I even explaining this? Fill is poor, theme is ridiculous and plays off of pop culture phenomenon that even smirking and irony can't redeem. If you wanna teehee (tehe?) over your socially acceptable fake-porn, go right ahead, but dear lord keep that crap out of my puzzle, please. The fact that I even have to hear about the existence of that stupid movie is enough. More than enough. This puzzle crosses YESES with ESSES. It's also got LENO'S (?) and ABU and ENA and both AROLL and ATIE, as well as AMBULANT (where a normal human would just use AMBULATORY). Come on. I've seen NYT rejects that look like Van Gogh next to this.

OFF. BLAH. RAGE. BLEEP.

At a bare minimum, that central answer should've been JENNIFER'S BLINDS. You already have a titled person in one of your themers. Mix. It. Up.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Old-time actress Meadows / THU 1-16-14 / For whom Alfred Pennyworth is butler / Glass Menagerie woman / Wheel with sloped teeth / Roman rebuke / Cartoonist who said I don't read watch TV to get ideas My work is basically sitting down at drawing table getting silly

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: DOTTED I (36A: Lowercase letter illustrated six times in this puzzle?)— all "I"s have the letter string "DOT" directly above them.

Word of the Day: JAYNE Meadows (48D: Old-time actress Meadows) —

Jayne Meadows (born September 27, 1919 in Wuchang, China) is an American stage, film and television actress, as well as an author and lecturer. // Meadows' most famous movies include: Undercurrent (with Katharine Hepburn), Song of the Thin Man (with William Powell and Myrna Loy), David and Bathsheba (with Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward and Raymond Massey), Lady in the Lake (with Robert Montgomery and Audrey Totter), Enchantment (with David Niven and Teresa Wright), andCity Slickers (as the voice of Billy Crystal's oversolicitous mother). Among her earliest television appearances, Meadows played reporter Helen Brady in a 1953 episode of Suspense opposite Walter Matthau entitled, "F.O.B. Vienna."

She was a regular panelist on the original version of I've Got a Secret and an occasional panelist on What's My Line?, the latter alongside husband Steve Allen. She also appeared on the NBC interview program Here's Hollywood. During the early days of the burgeoning live entertainment scene in Las Vegas, the Allens occasionally worked together as an act. Prior to Allen's death in 2000, the couple made several TV appearances together - in 1998 they played an argumentative elderly couple in an episode of the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street (based on the hypothetical Ronald Opus case) in which Allen's character accidentally shoots a suiciding man as he is plunging from the roof of their building. In 1999 they made their last joint TV appearance (again playing a couple) in the all-star episode of the Dick Van Dyke series Diagnosis: Murder, entitled "The Roast", which marked Allen's final screen appearance during his lifetime. Meadows has also been active in Republican affairs although Steve Allen was a Democrat. She is the recipient of several Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from various universities. (wikipedia)

• • •

Had no idea what was going on—none—until I was finished, and I didn't get the "revealer" until very late in the game. I can see, in retrospect, that this theme is clever, conceptually, but it was not pleasant to solve at all, in large part because of the revealer. DOTTED I … I have to say that it's not a thing. You dot your "i"s, sure, but you say "lowercase i" not DOTTED I. It's just not tight, as a phrase, and when I saw [Lowercase letter…] in the clue, all I could think of was, "What?" A letter is a letter. A lowercase letter is a lowercase letter. What the hell answer could it be? Is DOTTED J a thing? It follows the same logic. What exactly is an "undotted i"? It doesn't exist. So, a DOTTED I is … an I. A lowercase "i." If it is lowercase, then it is dotted—so you would never call it "dotted" because its lowercaseness makes that a given. There's just something about the phrase DOTTED I, and the way it was clued, that sat very poorly with me.


Also, the cluing. It was what I would call Newsday cluing. Now, I love the Newsday "Saturday Stumper," but too often difficulty is achieved in that puzzle via ambiguous one- or two-word phrases. Not imaginative; just vague. There just wasn't much cleverness or playfulness in the cluing here. It was all [Turn], [Lead], [Grasped], [Coll. units], so the puzzle ended up being kind of a drag to work through. ANECDOTE is [Speaker's aid]? That is so forced, it hurts. An ANECDOTE *is* speech. The speaker is speaking when telling an ANECDOTE. I get that it somehow "aids" you in getting your point across, maybe, but that clue seems tenuous. [First of all] should have a question mark for sure. SCH., however, *doesn't* need "Abbr." because the "Tech" in the clue is already an abbreviation (27D: Tech, e.g.). Other difficulties came from stuff I just didn't know, or stuff that looked weird. AMANDA? (16A: "The Glass Menagerie" woman). No. CANOEIST? (17A: Paddle pusher). I'm sure that's right, but spelling-wise, I was having trouble buying it. UNBELT? (42A: Start to take off one's pants, say). I got that easily enough, actually, but until *all* the crosses checked out, I wasn't sure (credit to the clue, though, which is by far the most interesting of the day).  DOT over I is a cute concept, but I think it needed a different revealer, and the cluing overall just needed to be more interesting/better/tighter. Good idea, wobbly execution.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Former Disney head Michael / MON 12-17-12 / Pakistani tongue / James Bond film involving Fabergé egg / Wedge fractions in Trivial Pursuit / Cleveland b-ball team /

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Feline follies — feline names in non-feline answers

• KITTYHAWK (17A: Wright flight site)
• TIGERLILY (11D: Perennial whose flowers are typically orange with black dots)
• CAT SCAN (40A: Hospital diagnostic)
• "OCTOPUSSY" (64A: James Bond film involving Fabergé egg)
• DANDELION (35D: Source of some fluff)

Word of the Day: MUKLUK (8D: Eskimo boot) —

n.

1. A soft boot made of reindeer skin or sealskin and worn by Eskimos.
2. A slipper with a soft sole resembling this boot.

[Yupik maklak, bearded seal.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/mukluk#ixzz2FGOY8JXf

• • •

As far as the overall quality of the grid is concerned, I'd give this a thumbs-up. I mean, MUKLUK, come on. That's great stuff. Really up your typical easy-Monday puzzle. Even the gross words like EXTRUDE and GRISTLE add some welcome color and interest, and I wouldn't mind if every puzzle had "OCTOPUSSY" in it. RECUE made me double-over and dry-heave a bit (52D: Feed the same line), but everything else was solid-to-good. As for the theme, I don't think it works very well. Far, far too loose. You've got two big cats and then ... three generic names for a house cat. The group coheres only at a very broad taxomonic level. Isn't "COUGAR TOWN" still on the air? We really need some more big cats up in here.


Spent the afternoon watching "Full Metal Jacket" and the making-of documentary that accompanies it on the Blu-Ray version. You'd think I'd be too raw from all the child-killing, but somehow I needed to turn *into* the horror, and I needed to do it through art. It's a truly beautiful movie. Unbearably grisly and horrifying in many parts, it's true, but the human cost of war, for both the dead and the living, has rarely been better illustrated.

[Here be profanity]

As for the rest of this puzzle, my two little hiccups in this puzzle both came at the beginning and both involved geography. Took one look at 1A: There is Nothin' Like a ___" ("South Pacific" song) ("DAME") and thought answer was probably GIRL (no musical lover, I), so then tried to confirm it at 1D: Senegal's capital (DAKAR) and realized I couldn't remember what Senegal's capital was. The "G" in GIRL made me think GABON, but of course that's a country, not a capital. Of course this confusion was fixed quickly, but it still felt frustrating. I also had no idea what to do with 6D: It's bordered by three countries with "-stan" in their names (IRAN). If I'd really thought about it, I would've seen that the answer had four letters and there are really only so many four-letter country name options in that part of the world: IRAN, IRAQ ... I'm gonna say that's it. Well, there's OMAN, but that's on the Arabian peninsula. But I was going at Monday speed and so ended up having to build IRAN via crosses. Everything else was highly gettable. I had to read the Trivial Pursuit clue a couple times to figure out what was being asked, but in the end, my time was quite normal for a Monday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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River on Texas/Louisiana border / TUE 1-17-12 / Rodent-eating reptiles / Season-ending events on Bachelor / Sting Ray informally

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: VINCENT / VAN GOGH (48A: With 50-Across, Dutch painter represented by this puzzle's circled letters) — circled letters form the image of and contain the words representing the images of a human face, sans left ear—EYE, EYE, EAR, NOSE, MOUTH

Word of the Day: FLOSSY (43A: Showily stylish) —

adj., -i·er, -i·est.

1. Superficially stylish; slick: wrote flossy articles about the lifestyles of the rich.
2. Of, relating to, or resembling floss.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/flossy#ixzz1jgNGdjoN

• • •

[It's pledge week here at the Rex Parker site (thru Sat.) —read my pitch for donations in the opening paragraphs of Sunday's write-up, here ... and thanks for your faithful readership (and the many kind messages I've received so far)]

• • •

OK, this was kind of adorable, in a grotesque way. The reveal genuinely made me go "Oh! Cool," which is about the best thing that can happen on a Tuesday (you know how Tuesdays are ... always stuck in that awkward phase ... neither here nor there ... I think my friend Wade once referred to them as the red-headed stepchildren of puzzles ... no offense to redheaded stepchildren intended). Would've been cool to have the body parts embedded / hidden inside other answers, but also would probably have been too much to ask. Sometimes keeping it simple works. Interestingly, though self-portraits show VAN GOGH with a bandage on his right ear, it was his left ear that he maimed.



Puzzle felt very easy. I had only a couple minor hiccups—no idea what RATSNAKES are (32D: Rodent-eating reptiles), and had WAVE instead of WAKE at first (58A: Evidence of a ship's passing), *and* couldn't remember the damn Texas/Louisiana border river, so I had a little moment of "uh oh" there in the west for a few seconds. Eventually caught that the reptiles must be RAT SNAKES (and not, as I briefly imagined, RAT KNAVES), and so got out of there without much harm. The only other issue was FLOSSY (43A: Showily stylish), which feels very old-fashioned. Isn't that a horse's name? Why do I think that? I can't recall ever seeing / hearing the word in the wild. I like it a lot. Feels like something a character in a '30s gangster movie would say. I wrote in NEPAL instead of KOREA (57A: It used to be called the Hermit Kingdom), forgot a Sting Ray was a 'VETTE (50D: Sting Ray, e.g., informally), and spelled GREY wrong (67A: "Pardon me, would you have any ___ Poupon?"). Otherwise, I was writing (typing) almost as fast as I could.



Not much more to say today. Hope you enjoyed your long weekend if you had one. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Guest post / THU 12-01-11 / Get excited

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Medium / Challenging

(Screenshot from the excellent XWord program. Seriously, get it.)

THEME: JACK — rebus

Word of the Day: SHADRACH (One of a Jewish biblical trio) —

noun

a companion of Daniel who, with Meshach and Abednego, was thrown into the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar and came out unharmed. Dan. 3:12–30. (dictionary.com)

• • •

(Meshach and Abednego complete the trio. Hey, that's 8/7/8! Make it into a puzzle!)

Speaking of being thrown into a fiery furnace, I, Tyler Hinman, am here to "fill in" (har!) for Rex, who has stepped out on a diplomatic mission. You might know me from my blog and the snark resulting from compulsively solving puzzles I don't necessarily enjoy. But never mind that; what did I think of this one?

Answer: I liked it! With rebuses being such an attractive challenge for constructors and the natural "jack-in-the-box" tie-in, it feels like I should have seen or done this one before, but I don't think I have. Anytime I get a "why didn't I think of that?" feeling from a theme, it's usually a good sign.

Theme answers:

• Table staple, of sorts (BLACK[JACK])
• Eschewer of fat ([JACK]SPRAT)
• You might find one at a sawmill (LUMBER[JACK])
• Stick pulled from a pile ([JACK]STRAW)
• Brandy made from cider (APPLE[JACK])
• One in a corner ([JACK]HORNER)
• British standard (UNION[JACK])
• Figure often mentioned by meteorologists ([JACK]FROST)
• With 39-Across, apt title for this puzzle (JACK IN / THE BOX)

The grid pattern had me suspecting a rebus early on; surely something was going on in that tight middle section. While my overall suspicion was correct, that area contained no oddball squares, and was probably less open in order to accommodate the J and the X. Ms. Long made an interesting constructing decision in ending one word with the J and starting another with the X rather than the other way around; the latter certainly seems easier. I'd be interested to find out how that all fell into place.

The fill around a rebus is sometimes tricky, but it's mostly good here, even with a Z thrown in for good measure. And it comes in at 76 words; rebuses often take advantage of the maximum of 78. I deemed this Medium / Challenging because while the bottom two thirds fell smoothly enough, I actually had quite a bit of trouble at the top. Hey, I like a little challenge; gives me high hopes for some satisfyingly tough brutes tomorrow and Saturday.

Bullets:

• Open (UNSTOP) — Had UNSNAP here; that one hurt for a while.
• Untested (NEW) — Ditto for RAW. Argh!
• Diversion with 81 squares (SUDOKU) — Where do you come down on the sudoku vs. crosswords debate?
• Bounce back and forth quickly (PINGPONG) — I know Will would prefer TABLETENNIS, but that's not really a verb.
• More unctuous (OILIER) — "Unctuous" is fun to say.
• Sch. in Pocatello (ISU) — As a sports fan, I tend to accept schools in puzzles in correlation with how prominent their athletic programs are, so I didn't care for this one. (And before you ask, RPI has two national championships in Division I hockey, thank you very much.)
• 1998 film "Waking ___ Devine" — I lived in England when this came out; it was just called "Waking Ned".

• Addis Ababa is its capital: Abbr. (ETH) — This isn't a great entry regardless, but I'd much rather see it clued as "Old verb ending" or some such than an abbreviation one never really sees.
• Domicile (RESIDE) — This is one of the clues that gave me fits; had no idea this could be a verb.
• Nonlibrary reading (PORN) — Not according to crack investigative reporter Carl Monday! (I'm not linking to that video because I don't want to get this blog flagged again. You can Google it.)

Well, that's an odd note on which to go out. Oh well. Rex will be back tomorrow. OR WILL HE???

Signed, Tyler Hinman, Regent of CrossWorld

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English novelist Bawden / FRI 4-1-11 / Serving in John Betjeman's poem / 2002 Katherine Frank political biography / Hammer accompanier

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Two-way street — Down answers on west side of grid head south (like normal Downs), while Down answers on east side of the grid head north (i.e. they're upside-down). Theme is indicated by three grid-spanning Downs: in the west, ONCOMING TRAFFIC (4D: Passing preventer); in the middle, MIDDLE OF THE ROAD (7D: Conventional); and in the east, NORTH-BOUND LANES (which is to say, SENAL DNUOB-HTRON) (10D: Half of almost any odd-numbered Interstate highway)


Word of the Day: M.I.A. (23A: Hip-hop singer with the 2008 hit "Paper Planes") —

Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam (Tamil: மாதங்கி 'மாயா' அருள்பிரகாசம், Mātaṅki 'Māyā' Aruḷpirakācam ^?; born 18 July 1975), better known by her stage name M.I.A., is a British singer-songwriter, rapper and record producer whose eclectic compositions combine elements of hip-hop, electronica, dance, alternative and world music. // M.I.A. began her career in 2000 as a visual artist and designer in West London. Since rising to prominence in early 2004 for her singles "Galang" and "Sunshowers," she has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Grammy Awards and the Mercury Prize. She released her debut album Arular in 2005 and second album Kala in 2007. Kala went gold in Canada and the United States and silver in the United Kingdom, and the singles "Boyz" and "Paper Planes" became North American top ten chart favourites in 2008. M.I.A.'s third album Maya was released in 2010 soon after the song-film short "Born Free," and reached the top ten in numerous countries worldwide. She has embarked on four global headlining tours and is the founder of her own multimedia label, N.E.E.T.. In 2008, M.I.A. was listed in Esquire magazine's list of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century and in 2009, Time magazine included M.I.A. in its annual Time 100 list of the world's most influential people. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very cool puzzle. I was looking for something tricky today, so the NORTH-BOUND stuff didn't faze me. Much. Did take me a while to uncover the trick. Had great success early when I threw down MIDDLE OF THE ROAD with hardly any effort, after solving only the little northern part of the puzzle. First indication that something was amiss came when I couldn't solve the little southern part of the puzzle with the same rapidity. Acrosses made sense—seemed unimpeachable—but I was getting nonsense in the Downs. So I ended up doing the (very conventional, untricky) west first, and then hitting that MIDDLE OF THE ROAD barrier. Just looking at the two long Downs I had at that point let me know that there was some kind of TRAFFIC theme, and finally I realized that "-C-T Bell" was, in fact, TACO Bell. From that point on, it was just a matter of thinking upside-down. Not a problem. It's a smooth, elegant little puzzle, with hardly an ugly or obscure answer in sight. A one-trick pony, yes, but it's a good trick. Truly AHA.


The only "huh?" moment I had (after grokking ... is that the word? ... the theme) came with the biography "INDIRA," which I had never heard of (27D: 2002 Katherine Frank political biography). That clue is an outlier. It's mildly obscure trivia, where the rest of the grid ... isn't. Still, pretty easy to infer. Crosses were a cinch. Oh, no, wait—37A: English novelist Bawden (NINA) is pretty INDIRA-ish too. Never heard of her. Oh, and never heard of John Betjeman or his poem, "How to Get on in Society" (43A: Serving in John Betjeman's poem "How to get on in Society"=>SCONES). Wow, how did I not have trouble in that section? I guess the clues were written in such a way, and the crosses were reasonable enough, that I could fight through it all without too much pain. LEONAS (SANOEL) was a fat gimme in that section, a sharp contrast to the other names in that section (and a very sharp contrast to NUBILE—46A: Available, in a way).

Bullets:

• 14A: Elvis follower (ARON) — this seemed obvious, unlike some other stuff up there in the NW, which I flubbed: PORE for GAZE, RICE for ZINC, SHOO and SCAT for GO! GO! etc.
  
• 3D: Hammer accompanier (GONG) — probably a lot of people went with NAIL at first.
  
• 5D: They're subject to rapid inflation (AIRBAGS) — ooh, good clue.
  
• 42D: It starts "Tell me, muse, of the man of many resources" ("ODYSSEY") — see also "The wrath of Achilles..." or "Arma virumque cano..." or "Of Man's first Disobedience..." (we talk about epics a lot in my Brit Lit class). Interesting ODYSSEY news: Virgil thinks Odysseus is an asshole for coming up with that whole Trojan Horse thing; Dante concurs, putting Odysseus (Ulysses, actually) way, way down in the 8th ring of hell (Fraud). And then there's Milton's Satan. And then there's Maude!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Since it's a heavy-traffic day, I'll take this opportunity once again to plug the Crosswords L.A. Tournament, which takes place one month from today, 5/1/11, at Loyola-Marymount University. It's always a blast, the puzzles this year are fantastic (I've seen them), and all proceeds go to a wonderful charity ("Reading to Kids"). Go here for details.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. Patrick Blindauer has a new puzzle up at his site this month. It's pretty sweet. You should do it.

P.P.S. You could also do this puzzle. There's a decent likelihood it will annoy the hell out of you, but ... if there's any day to distribute such a puzzle, it's today. (Go here —to Amy Reynaldo's "Island of Lost Puzzles"— to print a .pdf or get a .puz version, or just print the puzzle out from here).

SOLUTION (and puzzle discussion) HERE.
Endless Fun

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Comic actor Dom / MON 11-29-10 / Bouquets-to-order co / Wildflower from which cultivated carrot originated / 1950s Ford flop

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: HEAD / BAND (35A: With 37-Across, hair accessory ... or a literal hint to 19-, 27-, 47- and 56-Across) — First (HEAD) words of four theme answers are all BAND names: QUEEN, KISS, TRAFFIC, CREAM


Word of the Day: Dom DELUISE (2D: Comic actor Dom) —

Dominick "Dom" DeLuise (August 1, 1933 – May 4, 2009) was an American actor, comedian, film director, television producer, chef, and author. He was the husband of actress Carol Arthur from 1965 until his death, and the father of actor, writer, pianist, director Peter DeLuise, actor David DeLuise, and actor Michael DeLuise. He had starred in various Universal Animated Studios films, such as All Dogs Go to Heaven and An American Tail. (wikipedia)

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Felt a bit harder than normal, but I came in at a hair over three, which seems pretty normal after all. Times being registered at the NYT site seem slightly higher than average, so who knows. If it's tougher, it's barely tougher, so Medium. Love the concept, though it took me a while to understand—I had finished the puzzle and was looking over the theme answers to try to make sense of them. "A QUEEN band, A KISS band ... I don't get it ... Oh. OH! Hey, that's pretty good." SHAFTED BY seems a terrible answer to me, but most everything else seems at least acceptable (I don't want to revisit how I feel about PFUI—you can read about it here; I have begun reading Rex Stout, and allegedly this will make me change my mind...). There are lots and lots and LOTS of one-named bands, which makes me wonder "Why these?" But they are all famous and all likely to be heard on Classic Rock stations, so why not these? Still, this could easily be a Sunday theme. BREAD BASKET? RUSH LIMBAUGH? TRAIN WRECK? CHICAGO BEARS? Stop me when you've heard enough ... HEARTACHE? POISON IVY? BOSTON CREAM PIE? JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH ...


Theme answers:

• 19A: Wildflower from which the cultivated carrot originated (QUEEN ANNE'S LACE)
  
• 27A: Something that is ultimately ruinous (KISS OF DEATH) — struggled with this until I uncovered the "K"
  
• 47A: Orange item set out by a highway crew (TRAFFIC CONE)
  
• 56A: Very best (CREAM OF THE CROP)
  

Getting IRAQ WAR (1D: It started in 2003 with the bombing of Baghdad) straight off made QUEEN ANNE'S LACE easy in a way that it really should not have been for me, the botanically challenged one. KISS OF DEATH took a bit of work. Blew through all the big corners *except* the SW, where I couldn't drop either ORACLES (40D: Magic 8 Balls, e.g.) or CARRERA (41D: Classic Porsche model) off their initial letters, and SHAFTED BY (32D: Handed a raw deal from) ... well, it was my first thought, but I couldn't really believe it was real. Finished in one of the least sightly places in the grid (PFUI / HIED). Still, all told, I liked this one.


Bullets:

• 57D: Long-eared equine (ASS) — ooh, that's a good euphemism. "Long-eared equine." I'm gonna use that.
  
• 39D: Bouquets-to-order co. (FTD) — which I will only ever associate with the late great Merlin Olsen (who died in March of this year)
  
• 5A: "Nonsense!" (BOSH) — this clue should've read [One of an overhyped Miami triad]
  
• 64A: German river where American and Soviet forces met in 1945 (ELBE) — I did not know that.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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German border river / WED 2-17-10 / She pined for Narcissus / Slangy business suffix / Onetime Say it with flowers sloganeer

Constructor: Elizabeth A. Long

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "GLOBAL WARMING" — Phrase spelled out by circled letters. Note on the puzzle: "The circled letters, starting in square #27 and reading clockwise, will spell a familiar phrase suggested by 20-, 35- and 52-Across" — the latter are two-word food phrases where one word signifies an act of "warming" and another a geographical (or "global") location.


Theme answers:

• 20A: Beef entree (LONDON BROIL)
  
• 35A: Ice cream dish (BAKED ALASKA)
  
• 52A: Holiday serving (ROAST TURKEY)
  

Word of the Day: Alice B. TOKLAS (42D: Alice B. ___ (Gertrude Stein's partner)) —

Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was the life partner of writer Gertrude Stein. // She was born Alice Babette Toklas in San Francisco, California into a middle-class Jewish family and attended schools in both San Francisco and Seattle. For a short time she also studied music at the University of Washington. She met Stein in Paris on September 8, 1907 on the first day that she arrived. Together they hosted a salon that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, Paul Bowles, Thornton Wilder and Sherwood Anderson, and avant-garde painters, including Picasso, Matisse and Braque. (wikipedia)

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Remember that stomach bug I had yesterday. Well ... wife is down with it today. All last night, in fact. But as I informed friends via Facebook last night, "Wife is *astonishingly* good-humored in the middle of all this. Never seen anyone (literally) laid out by stomach bug take it all so well. I was a mewling, puling, groaning man/animal hybrid by comparison." Good news is, if she follows my pattern (so far, eerily similar) then she will make a full recovery well inside 48 hours. Til then, I'm just going to keep bringing her tiny glasses of water and little pieces of toast and refilling her hot water bottle every several hours.

I will say that today's puzzle foods were all much easier to contemplate (in an environment of general nausea) than yesterday's. I didn't care for the puzzle at all when I first completed it. The theme answers had the place names in inconsistent parts of the answer (one at beginning, two at end), the places were inconsistent (city, state, country), and unlike the other two, TURKEY relied on a change in sense (BAKED ALASKA and LONDON BROIL both being named for the places in their names, although with LONDON BROIL (per wikipedia) "The origin of the name is obscure; the food is unknown in London, England."). There is a London, Ontario. At any rate, unlike TURKEY, LONDON is not a food trying to pretend it's a place. So I thought the theme answers were ungainly. But this is because (I swear this is true) I didn't notice that there were circles, or that there was a note on the puzzle. This is possibly because I did the puzzle in under 4 minutes (blistering for me) and didn't have time to notice much of anything. Anyway, once I noticed the circles, and the fact that they form a globular shape, and give coherence to the theme, I ... warmed to the puzzle (pun noted but disowned). Still don't like it much as a puzzle, but as a concept, it's OK.

Fill-wise, things were fine, if (as I say) terribly easy. Only two sticking points, one minor, one oddly major. You don't see obscure French partials very often, but you saw one today in 29D: Camus's "Lettres à ___ Allemand" ("Un Ami"). I wanted something like "UN JEUNE," then realized I was somehow channeling Dinesh D'Souza!? (who wrote "Letters to a Young Conservative"). In my defense, I kind of thought I was channeling Barry Goldwater, but his big book was "The Conscience of a Conservative." My other, much bigger sticking point came in the NE. I could not see DEVISAL to save my life, and even now that looks like the stupidest word ever. Like it wants to be several different words, but got stuck in a kind of word no-man's-land. DEMISE? REPRISAL? DEVISING? No, DEVISAL. It's like a German guy talking about a wise guy named Al (or maybe a wise owl?). At any rate, I had NE- for 19A: State whose quarter depicts mustangs and sagebrush: Abbr. and could think of no state that started with those letters except the various "NEW" states and ... NEBraska! That, and ISLE for ISLA (30A: Mallorca, e.g.), left me with DEBISEL for 13D: Creation, as of plans. Luckily, that answer looked *so* wrong that I was forced to run state names through my head again — and there was NEVada, hiding there in California's lap. Silly, giant, mostly-empty state.

Bullets:

• 11A: Onetime "Say it with flowers" sloganeer — slogans always provide interesting cluing options. I remember commercials with ... that big football guy ... beard ... "Little House on the Prairie" ... Merlin Olsen?

• 40A: She pined for Narcissus (Echo) — can't believe I hesitated for even a second here, but a wave of jilted classical ladies came pounding on the shores of my mind [#rejectedLeonardCohenlyrics] and for a moment I couldn't decide which one was right.
  
• 5D: Where King Saul consulted a witch (Endor) — "The Witches of ENDOR" feels like a familiar phrase, but I may just be splicing "The Witches of Eastwick" and EWOK homeland "the forest moon of ENDOR."
  
• 46D: Slangy business suffix (o-rama) — I don't think of this as a "business suffix" at all, and yet ... I got it off just the "O". So ... my brain must recognize it as a business suffix, or remember that a puzzle once tried to pass it off as one.
• 49D: With 38-Down, recurring phenomenon lasting a few hours (lunar / eclipse) —Usually cross-references don't inspire happy feelings in me, but I like this one somehow. A rather elegant split that (I'm guessing) occurred just by accident in the construction process. Serendipitous. I hit ECLIPSE first, and *refused* to look at the cross-referenced clue (I'm weird that way). Fought through crosses until I saw it must be ECLIPSE. Got LUNAR later.
  
• 6D: Enmity (bad blood) — easily my favorite answer in the grid. I might have gone a different route with the cluing, though ...

[Neil Sedaka oozes 70s machismo — set Irony to "zero"]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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