Richard Nixon's birthplace / FRI 7-20-12 / Black Bears' home / Marlon Brando's "I Remember Mama" role / Rikishi's specialty / Bailout button

Constructor: Martin Ashwood-Smith

Relative difficulty: Medium-hard

THEME: None

Word of the Day: ERTE (56A: "Athena" artist) —

I'm sure some of you are tired of this time-tested piece of fill (Wikipedia bio), but I always like to see him turn up. When I visitied Taipei many years ago, I was lucky enough to stay at the Landis Hotel, which is decorated in gorgeous, sumptuous Art Deco. The photo below is a view of the lobby, with an original Erté sculpture on the table and other works throughout the building. My suite, appointed in black and white, made me want to rouge my knees, roll my stockings down, and head out in my flapper's dress to dance the night away.

• • •

Hello again. You might be thinking ITSDEJAVU but don't be silly -- that was last Friday. Buoyed by your very warm welcome, I jumped in to sub today on short notice, and look at my reward: a crossed triple-stack from Martin Ashwood-Smith to geek out about. I stopped doing puzzles for a few years when I couldn't squeeze them into my life, and so I no longer recognize most of the authors in a week. However, Mr. Ashwood-Smith is definitely an old favorite. I enjoy his distractors and wordplay in the clues, so that instead of reading "Not a single person" (6A), it has to be "Not a single person" to get WIFE. Or that the IMAX option is for a big-movie fan, not a big fan of movies. This kind of puzzling feels especially satisfying.

I found today to be an enjoyable workout. For a while, I wasn't finding a foothold, and you know that feeling when that happens, sort of a pleasant panic at what might be some tough going? Well, it's not so pleasant when you have to blog about it, and resembles plain old panic a little more. But with some patience and a big assist from WILMAFLINTSTONE, it started coming together. There's a howling black hole of ignorance at the intersection of MORRO and BOWE, but at least that "O" was easy enough to guess.

Extra credit to Martin for wrangling four 10-letter answers into place with the stacks and not choking us with overly painful fill as a result. It's always fun to see very familiar answers clued in inventive ways that make me forgive their inclusion, like EELS (59A: Some nonkosher fish), APO (Major mail handler?: Abbr.), and especially the darling BOA (19A: Camp accessory), my second-favorite clue of the puzzle.

Grandpa??

Bullets:

• 30A: It fosters bilingualism (ESL) — As someone whose master's studies and work experience are in TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages, the more accurate but less popular term), I enjoyed seeing ESL clued as one of its positive benefits!
• 17A: Scapegoat's query (AMITOBLAME) — It turns out WHATDIDIDO also fits. Both answers make me a little sad for the poor goat, especially given what used to happen to the actual animal.

• 21A: Klutz (NIMROD) — Only in the widest sense is NIMROD a synonym, I think. I've never seen or heard it used to mean "clumsy," the specific meaning of "klutz," and my extremely extensive search of the literature backs me up. I suppose "klutz" could be used more generally to mean foolish, but why go there when Yiddish already has so many wonderful words for that? (NSFW language at that link.)
• 12D: Snooty? (NASAL) — Winning clue. By a nose.
• 20A: Certain losing line (XOX) — It took me a while to realize that this wasn't "kisses and hugs," which didn't seem like much of a losing line to me. 
• 38A: Film for which Judi Dench was nominated for Best Actress (NOTESONASCANDAL) — Even though I knew she won Best Supporting Actress for this, I couldn't get SHAKESPEAREINLOVE out of my head. Then I decided I must not have seen the movie. Then when I finally got the answer, I realized not only had I seen the movie, I own and love the Philip Glass score. Did someone say ASSTUPIDASCANBE?

Okay, that was pretty, but I think we need something a little more rockin' to start off the weekend. So here's My Chemical Romance with FAMOUSLASTWORDS.

Signed, Joey Haban, Double Agent of CrossWorld

Read more...

"Foolish" singer, 2002 / FRI 7-13-12 / Sir Trevor of the Royal Shakespeare Company / Neil Armstrong's middle name / Logical conjunctions, in mathematics / Chero-Cola, after a name change

Constructor: Jim Horne and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-medium

THEME: None

Word of the Day: FABIAN (30A: 1950s heartthrob)

Fabiano Anthony Forte (born February 6, 1943, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), known as Fabian, is an American teen idol of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He rose to national prominence after performing several times on American Bandstand. Eleven of his songs reached the Billboard Hot 100 listing. Fabian was contracted to 20th Century-Fox; in his screen test he appeared in the same outfit that Elvis Presley wore in Love Me Tender. He appeared in more than 30 films, many of which were comedies and cast him as a restless teenager with a penchant for singing. (Wikipedia) According to his website, he is still rockin'.

It says here I'm supposed to start rambling, so here I go. Hi! My name is Joey, I'm a married geeky gal living in Southern California with a husband in the gaming industry and two freeloading cats. I'm here every day, but only lurking.

I love reading everyone's insights. Especially yours, that one time. But I usually come here right after doing the puzzle, and I'm too tired to comment. If that sounds ridiculous, you're right. It is. It's a truly annoying symptom of myalgic encephalopathy (ME), a chronic illness that nerfed me from a happily newlywed college instructor of English for deaf students down to a happily married disabled lump on the sofa. Any exertion, even mental or emotional, can knock me out for hours or even put me in bed for days.

The good news is that one highly recommended way to combat the cognitive difficulties, or "brain fog" (as a gamer I prefer "fog of brain"), that comes with ME is to do puzzles, which means my favorite hobby is also my daily medicine. I'm fond of shilling for the NYT to fellow patients.

I'm afraid the puzzle titled itself today with the very first across clue. I enjoyed the kooky grid, but was disappointed that the contents were not, on the whole, as enjoyable or kooky. The workaday cluing was parked squarely on the nose and the answers definitely "sparkled a little less" than they ought to for a Friday. Someone like Rex might even make note of the intersections of STIFLEAYAWN, BUSINESSASUSUAL, and ARUT.

The part that stymied me for a while was the name mash-up of ASHANTI, ALDEN, TAJ, and [Home of the Aztec Ruins Natl. Monument], none of which I knew. Well, I guessed TAJ but for all I knew it could have been RAJ. Let's start the bullets with the bright spots:

Bullets:

• 38D: Like Bourne in "The Bourne Identity" (AMNESIC) — This filled in easily, but I had to stop and think afterwards. I can't recall the last time, if ever, I've seen the adjectival form of "amnesia" used. Perhaps I'm amnesic on the subject.
• 50A: Trick or treat, e.g. (NOUN) — This clue was a trick, and a bit of a treat today.
• 21A: "Don't Look Now" diretcor (ROEG) & 22A: Feature of the previous clue (TYPO) — Can you imagine my initial excitement to be blogging on the day there was a mistake in the puzzle? Can you imagine my sheepish facepalm when I reached the very next clue? A good joke and the star of the puzzle for me.
• 23D: The heel of a geographical boot (YEMEN) — I had the Y from the above TYPO and mindlessly chucked in YALTA because geography and sports are usually where the puzzle zooms over my head. The misdirection of the "boot," which invokes Italy at first, seems more in line with a Friday NYT than the rest of the cluing.

About 37A: Some modern subscriptions (PODCASTS): I liked this one because I don't remember seeing it before, not recently anyway, and because I keep thinking about the NYT and technology. I wonder when words like FLOPPY, MODEM, and CBER will make Shortz puzzles start to seem as obscure to young solvers as a Maleska or Farrar seems to me now. Currently the NYT spans the timeline from DOS to Tuesday's AOLER, which drove Mr. Grosz into an entirely justified rage, to APPSTORE. Is it true that obsolete fill is never erased, but just fades away?

And now some bad news:

• 55D: Target of fans' scorn (REF) — On a Friday I'd expect to see something more like "1994 Denis Leary movie". This is a Monday or Tuesday clue.
• 56A: Lab figure who might cackle in glee (EVILSCIENTIST) — I really want this to be MADSCIENTIST. Somehow gleeful cackles seem more MAD than necessarily EVIL. Is it just me?
• 36A: Sounds off? (HUSHES) — I often try the SAT analogies trick of imagining a sentence and seeing whether both clue and answer can respectively fit into it. With HUSHES as a plural noun or as a verb, I get the sense of the clue but I think it's semantically confused. Again, just me? It also happens to cross the second-worst offender...  
• 27D: This bud's for you (SOULMATE) — Saying a bud is like a SOULMATE is like saying Rick Perry is just a teensy bit on the conservative side.  
• 13D: Young, alluring sort (DATEBAIT) — This is the first time I can remember that a NYT clue has actually creeped me out. I had to Google the phrase to see what it's supposed to mean. It seems to be most commonly used in the sense of something desirable, such as sports tickets or jewelry, that will attract someone to go on a date. But the way it's clued here feels uncomfortably closer to JAILBAIT to me. Perhaps I'm missing a reference? Or maybe it's a throwback to the FABIAN era (which it happens to cross):

Thanks to Rex for trusting a total stranger with this incredibly fun gig, and thanks to a great community for inspiring me to ask for it! This post was made possible by my mother, a NYT crossword addict who used to yell at me for playing lazy words in Scrabble, and my husband Paul, who makes everything possible for me. Have a perfectly normal Friday the 13th, and a perfectly fabulous weekend.

Signed, Joey Haban, Secret Agent of CrossWorld

[Hey, everybody! PuzzleGirl here checking in with a quick announcement. You all know about Lollapuzzoola, right? It's a really fun annual tournament held in New York. This year it will take place on August 4 (that's a Saturday in August). If you can't make it to the tournament, you might be interested in the "compete from home" division. You can find all the info you need at the Lollapuzzoola 5 website, including how to register, some details on prizes, and the list of really unbelievably top-notch constructors who are contributing puzzles to this adventure. Go check it out right now!]

Read more...