Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008 - Harriet Clifton (MRS. DITHERS OF "BLONDIE" / ONE OF THE SAARINENS OF FINLAND)

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Bad cell-phone reception

• 20A: “Huh?” (“YOU’RE BREAKING UP”)
• 25A: Comment after 20-Across (“CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”)
• 44A: Comment after 25-Across (“I DIDN’T CATCH THAT”)
• 50A: Comment after 44-Across (“I’LL TRY REDIALING”)

Hi, it’s me, Andrea Carla Michaels (not to be confused with 38A Andrea Bocelli), I will be delivering the blog, not ARIAS (altho feel free to sing this column out loud ... in the shower, a capella ... which means without a shower cap). Rex is out at the ball game … the Twins [by "Twins" she means "RED SOX." RED SOX 6, ORIOLES 3, thanks for asking - RP], by coincidence, my hometeam growing up, sort of, if I followed sports, but I don’t SO he asked me and PuzzleGirl to fill in and I couldn’t be more excited, having never blogged, only posted responses. But I’m touched he wanted me to give it a whirl. And when I read Rex, I always think he’s reading my mind word for word, joke for joke (’cept the sports stuff), so I’ll see later if he had the same experience with me.

I do by hand, in pen, blah blah blah … and Tuesdays take me about 6 or 7 minutes, as did this, even if I don’t stop at all, I can’t do it any faster. This took me exactly that long, so I guess I would rate it easy. But I’m not about speed, I’m all about the theme, baby.

I start at 1A and do all the Acrosses for a while and then do the Downs if I get stuck. I got stuck at 1A bec I didn’t understand who Beauty was … I thought the horse Black Beauty and then thought it might be some ref to Keats, so I came back after I did the first few.

I’ll start with my mistakes … I put ESAU in for ABEL (10A: “Genesis victim”) thinking it was that whole Jacob/Esau twin thing … maybe having on my mind that Rex is at the Twins [RED SOX] game and my mom is an identical twin (Carol Frances and Frances Carol … I kid you not … but they are from the era where identical twins dressed alike and they wanted to and were best friends and even had a double wedding! Single divorce (my folks), but more on that later. Shout out to Uncle Lenny and Aunt Fran, tho, who just had their 50th anniversary!) For the record, I didn’t know if ESAU killed Jacob or if he just cheated him out of his inheritance or if it’s the other way around, but it’s moot, as the answer was ABEL, which I then proceeded to enter in as ABLE. As in “ABLE WAS I …” from my last puzzle.

Second (and last) mistake was thinking 15A: Mrs. Dithers in “Blondie” was DORA, tho an “SD” start for 6D did not look promising, but I kept in mind it might be SDAK and proceeded…

And for a moment when I saw 43D: Opera, ballet and so on (THE ARTS) and I had already filled everything in on the crosses, I thought I had misspelled THEATRE, which was fun to realize that THE ARTS and THEATRE are almost an anagram.

Then of course I hit 16A: 1950s-’70s Yugoslav leader TITO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Could it be? Third time in, like, two weeks? Would I have a chance to trot out my Venn Diagram yet again????? If I knew how to google/cut and paste, I would indeed put in the cartoon with the circles of Jackson 5 and Yugoslavian dictators, with the overlap being TITO but I don’t know how to do that … PuzzleGirl? [Note from PuzzleGirl: Your wish is my command.]

BTU was in Monday’s puzzle, yet again reinforcing my theory (and I don’t care if there is hard evidence against it), that there is at least one entry that is the same from day to day. And today’s is not only BTU (21D: Abbr. on an appliance sticker) but there is even a second reference at 63A: The “U” in 21-Down (UNIT).

There was a lot of those “With 8-Down…,” “When 12-Down was uttered…,” etc. which I both can’t stand, since I like to do in order more or less … and yet admire that it tenuously holds the puzzle together and someone was paying attention. Cf 8D: See 58-Down (AREA) and 58D: With 8-Down, source of an ethical dilemma (GRAY). With a minor hesitation always if it’s Grey or Gray. I think with an “e” it’s English, like “Old Grey Mare.”

It felt like there was a lot of cross references bec the theme itself referred back to each of the last one. I think the theme is tons of fun … four fifteen-letter acrosses is no easy task. The last, didn’t completely “ring” true … I think there is more of repeating HOW ABOUT NOW? And SHOULD I HANG UP? I’LL TRY CALLING YOU BACK, etc. but it seems 90% legitimate, in the scheme of things, saying I’LL TRY REDIALING.

(I’m not going to get into a whole discussion that we say DIALING when there is no longer a dial, etc. I’ll leave that to the young ’uns and the oldsters to discuss on the blog, in between discussions of the where-to-buy-beets-in-Portland-even-tho-it’s- sunny-in-Connecticut crowd and Rex begging them to take it offline!)

Young Seth has just sent me a clipping that Harriet had her first puzzle published in 2005 at the age of 83! So that makes her at least 86 by now ... so I will NOT be inserting any tasteless “Can You Hear Me Now?” jokes here! All I can say to Harriet, is “Brava!” (Can you read me now, Harriet?) Of course I hope too to be writing crosswords at her age, with at least a $50 increase by the then-93-year-old Will (his bday is next Tuesday for those of you keeping track!) if this blog hasn’t put an end to all things crosswords by 2009.

So it was cool for me that you had an entire phone conversation in one puzzle, it felt innovative and less annoying than a quote … although the downs-only solvers might have it tougher today.

I was happy to get the two baseball clues “right off the bat” (see, I’m trying) what with 3D: Baseball’s Moises (ALOU) and 5D: Bases loaded (THREE ON), I’m guessing they were easy enough for the basebally-challenged as it was written by a gal.

OK, may I go off on a Minnesota tangent here? I grew up across the street from Lake Harriet. And in 1969, when I was in about 6th grade, Kevin Baglien, the class jock, threatened to beat up me and my best friend Donia Prince if we couldn’t name five players on the Twins. TO THIS DAY I can remember Harmon Killebrew, Craig Nettles (he was a rookie on the Twins before he joined the Yankees, discuss), Vida Blue (I think … they were trying to get him to change his name to True), Tony Oliva (and Dawn?)


and … and … uh oh … who was a fifth? Was Rod Carew playing then???!!! [PuzzleGirl: Yes, he was!!!!!] Kevin is going to beat me up (40 years later and I’m still afraid … Kevin, if you are reading this from prison, I don’t really live in San Francisco).

Other notes … not a million of AMYS or whatever that Sondheim clue was from the other day, only one, 36A: Etiquette maven Vanderbilt (AMY). That clue was a little moldy, I would have liked to see my oldest friend from college, the fabulously under-used Amy Aquino who has been on every show ever made. She was the mean Girl Scout leader on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” the tough guidance counselor on “Felicity,” Cher’s hairdresser in “Moonstruck,” and people remember her best as Melanie Griffith’s secretary at the very, very end of “Working Girl,” the ONLY film I’ve ever been able to bear Melanie Griffith in … or as my other oldest pal from college, Chris Carmody, would say “The eerily teenaged voiced Melanie Griffith.” Actually she was good in that “Something Wild” and I’m sure the boys will chime in about her in “Body Double.”

I assume I'm obligated to include this.


Nope! Gotcha! I’m not going to even mention 29D: Minneapolis suburb EDINA!

(P.S. I am eternally and heavily indebted to the wonderful PuzzleGirl who did ALL the heavy-lifting on this: all editing, clip inserting, EVERYTHING technical ... after midnight AND with a sick, fictitious PuzzleDog!)

[from RP - my cat came back in the middle of the night last night; I know, you didn't know he was lost, but he was - escaped from my house when I let the dog out two nights ago. He's old and an indoor cat, so I thought for sure he was a goner, but my phone buzzed at 12:30 am last night here in Baltimore, and the text read simply "Wiley came back" ... so I'm super happy today. Off to Fell's Point, then a water taxi back to the Inner Harbor, then crab cakes at Lexington Market, then the Red Sox/Orioles game. Baltimore is Gorgeous, by the way. NO TRAFFIC (comparatively). How is that possible? We drove straight into the heart of downtown and right to our apartment without encountering even the most minor of slowdowns, and we did it in the middle of what should have been rush hour ... do people even know Baltimore exists, all tucked away down here? You should come here and enjoy it before people discover it and it becomes real famous and overcrowded. You heard it here first ...]

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MONDAY, Jun. 11, 2007 - Harriet Clifton

Relative difficulty: Medium (this means average for a Monday)

THEME: "Short on dough" - this is the clue for five themed answers ... so lots of words and phrases meaning "broke" (including FLAT BROKE)

This is a nice Monday puzzle, and the theme allows for the inclusion of a lot of great idiomatic phrases, which are never unwelcome, particularly in an early-week grid. Started out fast, tripped around a bit - couldn't pull out VICAR (34D: Church official) off just the "V," which broke my rhythm, then couldn't spell LOOIE right (45A: Sarge's superior); I had LOUIE; then couldn't (and still can't) figure out how CUE IN works for 27D: Give hints to; wanted CLUE IN - but still ended up with right around my typical Monday time (low 4's). There's some good multi-word phrases, at least one answer I didn't know at all, and a very interesting BRA mini-theme going on in the NW. But first, your (maxi-)theme answers (all of them clued [Short on dough])

• 17A: FLAT BROKE
• 21A: STRAPPED
• 41A: FEELING THE PINCH
• 56A: IN THE RED
• 66A: TAPPED OUT

All good. I especially like TAPPED OUT, even though it makes me think more of a keg than a wallet. But let's get straight to the BRAS, shall we?

3D: Garments that usually clasp at the back (bras)

I always like BRAS in my puzzle. BRAS yes, toilets no. That's pretty much a constructing rule to live by, right there. But today's BRAS are unlike any other day's BRAS because of the fabulous intersecting and surrounding fill ("fill," HA ha - BRAS is giving every other word I type a new meaning...). I love how BRAS intersects both FLAT (from FLAT BROKE) and TISSUE (20A: Kind of paper for gift-wrapping). Because, you know, if you're FLAT, you might wanna stuff your BRA with TISSUE. After all (and here comes the nearby parallel fill), you want your breasts to appear nice and SOFT (1D: Downy), and not at all UGLI (2D: Wrinkly fruit, HA ha). I love also how the first three theme answers can all be read in BRA-related ways: FLAT ... STRAPPED ... FEELING THE PINCH. If this is a coincidence, it's a glorious one.

4D: Takes off on a cruise (sets sail)
43D: "Enough already!" ("I've had it")

I love when the long non-theme fill is multi-word and vibrant like these symmetrical answers. A very weird thing happened when I read the clue ["Enough already!"] - immediately, even before I looked at the grid, a song popped into my head: an Aimee Mann song called (luckily, eerily) "I've Had It." Have I raved about her before? Well, she deserves it. Love her.

24D: Ballet's Fonteyn (Margot)

Absolutely no clue who this is. Who will be the first jackass to write in expressing shock and dismay at my appalling ignorance? It could be you! Hurry!

42D: Polite refusal ("No, sir")
57D: "Uh-uh" ("Nope")
35D: Prefix with -centric (ethno-)

At first I was a bit irked to see "NO SIR" and "NOPE" in the grid together. But then ETHNO came along and gave a new spin to the whole "NO" theme, and somehow I'm no longer irked.

MAPPED (50D: In an atlas) pairs nicely with TAPPED (in TAPPED OUT), which it intersects. Other nice pairings include ROSIE and PEREZ (22D: With 71-Across, "White Men Can't Jump" co-star), and AUDIO (36A: The "A" in A/V) followed immediately by RADIO (38A: Howard Stern's medium). Speaking of nice pairings ... I refer you to BRAS, above.

Thank you. Good night. Tip your waitress. Etc.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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MONDAY, Jan. 8, 2007 - Harriet Clifton

Solving time: 5:27

THEME: Doubting Thomas (20A) - and the things he might say: I'M NOT BUYING IT (25A), YOU CAN'T FOOL ME (43A), and WHO'S KIDDING WHO? (49A)

Should be "Who's kidding whom," but I'll let grammar slide today. Everything about this puzzle was average: difficulty level, my solving time, the cleverness of the theme, the amount of crosswordese, etc. So I don't have a lot to say (for once). I'll focus on my trip-ups and failings (as usual) and observe some odd entries and then maybe go see Casino Royale later today.

1A: Heartbeat (pulse)

I had THROB. I don't know why. I'm all for entering answers as they come to you and fixing them later on, but this does take some time, not to mention the manual dexterity not to accidentally f-up your grid. Sometimes I forget how the cursor moves in relation to already solved squares, skipping over them if you are starting from a blank square, staying on them if you are re-entering an already solved square. When I read that sentence, it doesn't really make sense, but I swear that's how the system works. So when you are (I am) typing quickly, I often botch whole words because I've misjudged the cursor. Not sure if that really happened here. PULSE is so obvious that I'm not sure what I was thinking with THROB. Of the first nine Across clues, I got 2/3 of them instantly, missing only here and at 18A: Not so much (less) - where I had A TAD (!?), and 10A: Heavy, durable furniture wood (teak), where I had nothing. See also the lamely repeated 6D: Heavy, durable furniture wood (walnut).

15A: Jai _____ (alai)
24A: "Little" girl of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (Eva)
11D: Humorist Bombeck (Erma)
16A: Folkie Guthrie (Arlo)
7D: Designer Cassini (Oleg)
34A: Just managed, with "out" (eked)
46D: Sash in Sapporo (obi)
58A: Jacob's twin (Esau)

You can see why I have called this puzzle "average" - I mean, look at this glut of tired crossword standards. How many years must Bombeck be dead before she becomes unfamiliar enough to be interesting again? I didn't know "Little EVA" until very, very recently - Sandy (wife) has read Uncle Tom's Cabin, while English Ph.D. Rex has not (he is trying to remedy his literary ignorances with a trip through the Modern Library's 100 Greatest Novels of all time - to be read in one calendar year, a "journey" which will no doubt find its way into this commentary with some frequency). Thanks to Sandy's coaching, "Little EVA" is a sweet gimme for me (and, as with most new words that I learn, I see her Everywhere now). I would have thrown 28D: Instrument making HI notes? (uke) into the mix here, too, but that clue is too good.

Speaking of Sandy, did you see "You're The One That I Want," the "reality" show where America votes to cast the parts of Sandy and Danny in the next Broadway production of "Grease"? Well, if you didn't, consider yourself lucky, as it was Terrible. The talent pool appears wading-pool-shallow, and the whole production had the feel of a very, very low-rent "American Idol" ("American Idol" being a show that I luuuuhhhhhve, for many of the wrong reasons - but mostly because, for all the cheese and hyperbole and product-placement, it's a show where you sing, and you can either sing or you can't, and it's Live, and its Live-ness matters: real National Spectacle, ranking in grandeur somewhere between watching the moon-landing and watching lions eat gladiators).

62A: Turn inside out (evert)

Welcome to the Bizarro World of crosswords, where words No One Ever Uses metamorphosize into Monday gimmes. I swear that I saw this clue and wrote in EVERT immediately despite the fact that I had no confirming crosses. I suspect hundreds of crossword veterans across the country did the same. I ask you all to think about the utter weirdness of this phenomenon.

37D: Nicknames (monikers)

This word I like. Notice how many words for nicknames are just good words. First, NICKNAME, that's good. MONIKER. NOM DE PLUME, SOBRIQUET (hot!), etc. MONIKER is a great K-in-an-odd-place (K-between-two-vowels) word. Almost as sweet as the rare double-K word ... none of which I can think of right now. I do think that TRICKKNEE would be great fill, though.

40A: Snoring sound (zzz)

OK, that's kind of cheating, getting your "Z"s in in such an easy way (like EEE for [Shoe width], OOO for [Victory on paper]), but as this is Monday, I guess such crutch-reliance is OK, since you get some spicy crosses out of it, most notably 25D: Maker of Rodeo (Isuzu) - which I blanked on for many second (not yet having the Z cross) - and the potentially delicious 33D: Ricelike pasta (orzo), which is "ricelike" only in its basic shape and general starchy quality. I like ORZO in interesting colors like red and green. I'm like a child that way.

9D: Unfriendly looks (fish eyes)

I really don't like this. First of all, if you make FISH EYES at someone (an expression I have never used or heard used by people I actually know, in real life), then that is a look. One look, singular. You have two eyes, but together they give just one look. Not "looks." This lame answer (or botched clue, however you want to look at it) is offset by the seldom-used but springy and appealing TAXMAN (10D: I.R.S. worker), which, strangely, I have heard more in musical contexts than tax-collecting contexts in my life. Most people are aware of the fine Beatles tune "Tax Man," the opening song of Revolver, but I'm guessing fewer of you are familiar with the Billy Bragg album Talking with the Tax Man about Poetry, which is my strongest association with TAX MAN. That's what happens when you enter college in the late 80s and Everything On The Radio Sucks (I'll exempt Madonna from this claim, just so my best friend doesn't blow a gasket ... again) - you discover cool, off-the-beaten-path music. The album opens with the amazing song "Greetings to the New Brunette," which I believe is a song about a working-class romance, but it's pretty enigmatic (like many Bragg songs). It's also lyrically lovely (and funny). My favorite lines are

I'm celebrating my love for you
With a pint of beer and a new tattoo.

and

The people from your church agree
It's not much of a career
Trying the handles of parked cars
Whoops, there goes another year
Whoops, there goes another pint of beer.

So it's a lot about beer. It's a very sweet song, though, really. Have a nice Monday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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