Rapper/actor Woolard / FRI 6-18-10 / Tubism artist / Poland Spring rival / Baba Looey was his deputy / Bushrope / Cubs bears crias

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none


Word of the Day: JAMAL Woolard (39A: Rapper/actor Woolard who starred in "Notorious," 2009) —

Jamal Woolard (born July 8, 1975) is an American rapper and actor who portrayed The Notorious B.I.G. in the biopic Notorious. // Woolard, like Christopher Wallace (The Notorious B.I.G.), is from Brooklyn, specifically L.G., Lafayette Gardens. In real life he raps under the name "Gravy". He is featured in the song "Untouchable" by Tupac Shakur on the Pac's Life album. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one destroyed me. Name after name after name I simply didn't know. It was just painful. I can look at the grid now and admire it — esp. the 15s that cross in the middle, QUICK DRAW MCGRAW (34A: Baba Looey was his deputy) and NAKED AS A JAYBIRD (8D: Like all new deliveries?), neither of which I got for a Long time — but I actually found the whole solving experience unpleasant, which I almost Never say about a Karen Tracey puzzle. In fact, I generally tend to be, happily, right on her wavelength. Today, I wasn't anywhere close. Difficulty was all in the barrage of names (and only somewhat in the cluing).

Beyond me:

• INNER EAR — no idea how that's a [Labyrinth]
• ZOT — rings a bell, kinda, but not really. And I live in Johnny Hart country (you frequently see Broome County stuff with "B.C." characters on it) (21D: Sound from the anteater in "B.C.")
• BAOBOB — never saw that movie, barely recognize the tree name (9A: Tree that's home to Rafiki in "The Lion King")
• HONORÉ — no way (33A: French caricaturist Daumier)
• JAMAL — no way
• CAL — if I knew it, I forgot it (41A: "East of Eden" twin)
• EDA — uh uh (32D: Soprano Christiane ___-Pierre)
• ROYKO — know him, of course, but couldn't see him at all from that clue (47A: Author of the best seller "Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago")
• HEX BOLT — "common?" Yikes. It may be. But that name isn't (to me) (51A: Common metal fastener)

• OLETA — never even heard of it (48D: River that drains the Everglades into Biscayne Bay)
• QUINELLA — never even heard of it (34D: Track betting option)
• LÉGER — know him well, but couldn't see him from that clue, or from -GER (42A: "Tubism" artist)
• IRENE — guessed it from -ENE, but no no no. (40A: Chemistry Nobelist Joliot-Curie)
• PAL — [Alter ego] metaphorically? Don't get it.
• BORER — just ... in general? Anything that "bores?" Is it a specific kind of pest? (9D: Uninvited cornfield guest)
• GEENA — know her, but, of course, BETTE fits. And OSSIE fits ... (27A: Davis in Hollywood)
• WALK OVER — probably seen it before, but not a phrase I use or hear a lot. You can win "in a walk." You "roll over" an opponent. I'm sure WALK OVER's legit, just outside my field of usage. (37D: Rout)

Some painful plurals in INTS and ONEAS.

ROSCOE was about the only specialty word that was right up my alley today (18A: Gangster's piece). Not sure what I would have done in NW if my crosswordesey guesses of EFTS (5D: Bog youngsters) and LIANA (6D: Bushrope) hadn't helped me get AQUAFINA (15A: Poland Spring rival). Kept wanting COX but wasn't able to get any confirmation (until the Very end) (41D: Stroking coordinator). After the first several minutes, all I had was the lower SW, with ICE SKATE just sticking up out of there all by itself (36D: Devil's wear?). After that, I honestly don't know what happened. Just lots of stumbling around, here and there. No order. No system. If I hadn't just blindly hit on RETICENT (59A: Opposite of garrulous) — with no crosses except maybe the "N" from the other blind guess of ERMINE (44D: Regal trim) — I might still be doing this puzzle. Besides RETICENT and ROSCOE, virtually nothing else rolled my way today. Oh, the humility!

Bullets:

• 1A: Early 20th-century mode of transportation (ZEPPELIN) — Insert Hindenburg analogy here. Or just repeat "Oh, the humility!"
  
• 38A: Longtime drink nickname, with "the" (UNCOLA) — brain wanted *only* a mixed drink. Didn't see this 7Up nickname forEver.

• 10D: Parts of décadas (AÑOS) — one of maybe 4-5 gimmes in the whole puzzle. And this one did Nothing for me.
  
• 16A: Less steep (ON SALE) — nope, doesn't end in "-ER"
• 45D: John of Broadway and his Grammy-winning daughter (RAITTS) — a simple "Bonnie" in this clue would've helped a lot ...
• 26D: Flapper feature (RINGLET) — could think only of BOB haircuts. BOBCUTS?

I'm off to pretend this never happened.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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He starred as himself in Cuban Pete 1946 / SAT 1-23-10 / Grunting slimy-skinned swimmer / Fielding Menotti title heroines / Nagasaki noodle

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TOADFISH (9D: Grunting, slimy-skinned swimmer) —

The toadfish comprise the family Batrachoididae, the only family in the ray-finned fish order Batrachoidiformes. Both the English common name and scientific name refer to their toad-like appearance (batrakhos is Greek for frog). // Toadfish are benthic ambush predators that favor sandy or muddy substrates where their cryptic coloration helps them avoid detection by their prey. Toadfish are well known for their ability to "sing", males in particular using the swim bladder as a sound-production device used to attract mates.

• • •

Fast ... slow ... fast ... slow ... more slow ... and then a kind of swift shuffle at the end. And voilà! Nope, wait, POLITBIRO? SIVA? ... Hmmm. SIVA's a Hindu goddess, right? POLITBURO / SUVA (33A: Capital on the island of Viti Levu). Oh yeah, that's much better. OK, *now* ... voilà! I think this is how a Saturday is supposed to feel. You should struggle harder than on any other day. You should have at least a brief sensation of "Holy &$%! I'm not going to be able to do this." Ideally you have at least one moment of "Aha, I'm in! Woo hoo! Do a little dance!" Etc. Then more despair. It's like a good novel, just (if you're lucky) shorter. LEAPT out of the box with LEAPT (1A: Acted impulsively) and "L.A. LAW" (1D: "ER" replaced it on NBC's schedule), which has been clued exactly this way before. Then ... I just poked at things for a bit. That damned [Gyro sauce]! Now that I see it, and say it out loud, it seems familiar, but it sure didn't feel that way as I was Getting Every Letter From Crosses (TZATZIKI)! Got the WALTZES, but the OFFWITH came much, much later (23A: Wins easily). In fact, I followed WALTZES down into the middle and eventually western part of the grid, where ...

I (re-)started fast, again. After limping out of the NW and stalling somewhere in the middle, I (for no good reason) decided to test OZARK at 28A: ___ Plateau (U.S. region). Well, one good reason — Karen Tracey likes to Scrabble it up. And OZARK fit. So two reasons. Huge payoff: immediately got ZETA-JONES off OZARK's "Z" (29D: "Chicago" Oscar winner) *and* ANGLICAN off its "A" (30D: Book of Common Prayer readers). Two long Downs inside five seconds off of just two letters — that's a grand slam. I was able to ride that momentum around to the SE, where, once again, I sat a bit. No ... I moved, just, slowly. Took a while to get (the gorgeous) SNAKE PIT (38D: Scene of horror and confusion). Had Zero idea what Jill Eikenberry's character's name was (!?) on "L.A. LAW," so needed every cross for KELSEY (56A: 1-Down counselor). Made up the word ACCREDE for 45D: Block until crosses suggested that might not be right (OCCLUDE! Of course...).

Then I was left staring with a rather large, empty space in the NW. Couldn't remember the name of the POLITBURO (11D: Lenin's body) —which I thought was spelled POLITBUREAU, as well as, possibly, POLITBIRO :( — which was bugging me no end. Finally, once I changed TEN TO to TEN OF, I got WALTZES OFF WITH. Eventually tried PANATELLA (which I thought had just one "L") (18A: Smoke with straight sides) and that corner came together in an ugly, halting fashion. Whatever. I finished. Last letter was the "M" in AMELIAS (10D: Fielding and Menotti heroines).

Bullets:

• 6A: Unofficial "Main Street" of New York's Chinatown (Mott) — here's how I know this street:

• 14A: He starred as himself in "Cuban Pete," 1946 (Arnaz) — jeez, "Cuban" should have given me this straight off. It didn't.

• 15A: Treat with a "Golden" variety (Oreo) — off the "E" in "TEN OF" — this "treat" sounds heinous. God made Oreos black and white. Any variations are abominations.
• 26A: Archer of literature (Isabel) — uh ... she's a protagonist in ... something? Maybe ... a Henry James novel? HA, yes, "Portrait of a Lady"! Ah, my superficial education knows no bounds.
• 50A: Old song with the lyric "When he would ride in the afternoon / I'd follow him with my hickory broom" ("Jimmy Crack Corn") — got it off the "JIM-" but couldn't tell you any lyrics beyond "I don't care" ...
• 61A: River with historic flooding in 1966 (Arno) — don't know anything about any flooding, but ARNO is crossword gold, so that was easy.
• 2D: "Traffic" actress Christenen (Erika) — third actress of the puzzle, and the second one (along with TESSA Allen — 32D: Actress Allen) that I couldn't pick out of a line-up.
• 36D: Kid with no hometown, often (army brat) — solved this puzzle *just* after watching the New Hope For Haiti benefit, so the clue was just depressing. [Scene of horror and confusion] didn't help lighten the mood.
• 41D: Instrument played with a spatula (samisen) — seen it before in crosswords (or crossword, singular, I should say), but still needed help with all the crosses.
• 55D: Nagasaki noodle (soba) — might have thought "noodle" here meant "head," but I had the "-BA" in place already, so it was a cinch.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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Literally little towns —SATURDAY Dec. 12 2009— Moniker for fictional baseballer Roy Hobbs / Darkness personified / Historic base pirates Caribbean

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: EREBUS (22A: Darkness personified) — In Greek mythology, Erebus (pronounced /ˈɛrəbəs/), also Erebos or Erebes (Ancient Greek: Ἔρεβος, "deep darkness or shadow"), was the son of a primordial god, Chaos, and represented the personification of darkness and shadow, which filled in all the corners and crannies of the world. His name is used interchangeably with Tartarus and Hades since Erebus is often thought of as part of the underworld. Erebus married his sister Nyx (goddess of the night) and their children included Aether, Hemera, Nemesis, and Charon. (wikipedia)

-----

Always happy to see a Karen Tracey byline, though today's offering was not as exciting as most of her stuff usually is to me. This is what happens when you set the bar ridiculously high. It's a really good puzzle, but doesn't pop and sizzle and generally wow me like her puzzles often do. VELAZQUEZ (28A: 17th-century painter of "Lady With a Fan") through ZACH BRAFF (29D: "Scrubs" Emmy nominee) into BRIDEZILLA (12D: Hard-to-please wedding participant) is pretty awesome, I admit, but the rest if just solid. Good solid (exc. that SW corner, which really seems sub-Tracey somehow — and the SHTETLS-over-RYAS, which seems like pretty dense (if high-end) crosswordese for a Saturday (41A: Literally, "little towns" + 45A: Scandinavian area rugs). As is typical with Ms. Tracey's puzzles, I cut through this in better-than-avg. time. EREBUS was the only real puzzler, and even that felt familiar (22A: Darkness personified). Didn't know what to make of the clue for COAL BIN but pieced it together easily enough from crosses (30A: A scuttle might scoop from it). Still don't understand clue on ACRO- (which signifies "height" as far as I know) (16A: Tip end: Prefix). Oh ... I see now. As in ACRONYM, i.e. you just take the "tip end" of the words involved and make a new word out of them, e.g. NAFTA. I was thinking ACROphobia (obviously). No memory of "BEL AMI" (31D: Guy de Maupassant novel), but it's basic French with fair crosses, so gettable. Thought the PEQUOT were PEQUOD, the ship in "Moby-Dick," which, it turns out is (ostensibly) name for the PEQUOT tribe, which were annihilated during the (horrible) PEQUOT War of the 17th century. Let's see ... any other problems? ... nope. Smoothish sailing overall.

Got a great break right off the bat when I guessed ATNO at 1D: Bit of elementary knowledge?: Abbr. I could feel the wheels in my brain turning as I tried to understand what she was doing with that damned "?" of a clue. "Elementary, eh? Well, it's not elementary school, too easy. Something to do with ... elements. An abbr. Aha, AT. NO.!" OK, so it was AT. WT. The AT part was enough for me to get ASPIC (1A: Stuff in a meat can) and start tearing through the Downs, 1, 2, 3, 4. Made another great four-letter guess at 25A: General Motors acquisition of 1929 (Opel). Four-letter car make I know of only from crosswords. These good early guesses made the west pretty easy overall. Sticking points were, first, the NE, where I figured VELAZQUEZ would open things right up — while the "Q" helped a lot, the first "Z" was only helpful for Mr. BRAFF's first name, and the second "Z" seemed wrong. Changed it to an "S" at one point. Then nearly went with BRIDESMAID at 12D, which seems not appropriate to the clue. Then I remembered the abandoned "Z" and the horrible TV show "BRIDEZILLAs" and bam, there was the puzzle's most original answer.

Not knowing BRAFF kept the SE interesting for a bit, though those long Acrosses down there were easy to piece together from the very gettable short Downs. Moving into the SW was a little rough, as MYCENAE did not come readily to mind (40D: Agamemnon's domain). Neither did DEMS, actually (50D: House party, briefly). I think I actually just dove into the SW and then came back and picked up DEMS and MYCENAE later, after I got L.A. RAIDER (49A: '84 Super Bowl celebrant). If I remember correctly, the last letter in the grid was (appropriately) the "C" in CLOSE (46D: Wind up).

Bullets:

• 14A: Moniker for fictional baseballer Roy Hobbs (The Natural) — from the famous book (Bernard Malamud) and famous movie (Robert Redford) of the same name.
• 47A: Alternative to culottes (capris) — somehow, names for ladies' pants styles that were big in the 80s are well known to me. I think I should thank my sister for that.

• 59A: Data center workhorses (mainframes) — so ... not actually horses. OK.
• 2D: Old Manhattan restaurateur (Shor) — more high-end crosswordese. I've written about this guy before, mostly because I had Never heard of him before I started doing puzzles. Now he's a big fat gimme. Look out for his first name too: TOOTS.
• 4D: Quaint stationery store stock (inkwells) — unless you are traveling back in time to save the Declaration of Independence, what's the point?
• 5D: Remoulade bit (caper) — couldn't define "remoulade" for you beyond "... some kind of sauce?" but CAPER was easy to infer.
• 10D: Historic base for pirates of the Caribbean (Nassau) — having the -AU in place before I ever saw the clue made this one a cinch.
• 33A: Turn down (dip) — ooh, I almost forgot. Total disaster here. Finished the grid completely but was really unhappy with my original (and, frankly, much more appropriate) answer here: DIM. What the hell is "MASS UP" supposed to mean, I wondered. "UP MASS?" "Maybe it's COPULE and MESS UP??? But how is that any better? Grrrrr ... oh. D'oh. It's DIP. And PASS UP. Yeah. That makes sense."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Talk to Me singer 1985 — SATURDAY, Nov. 28 2009 — Borscht flavorer / Singer/songwriter Sands / Pathology pioneer Sir James

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: PTARMIGAN (29D: Fully feather-footed flier) — n., pl., ptarmigan, or -gans.

Any of various grouses of the genus Lagopus, inhabiting arctic, subarctic, and alpine regions of the Northern Hemisphere and having feathered legs and feet and plumage that is brown or gray in summer and white in winter.

[Alteration (influenced by the spelling in Greek words like pteron, wing) of Scottish Gaelic tarmachan.]

-----

Fell asleep before 10pm last night! Two days of near-constant tryptophan intake finally took its toll. Dinner last night were fried patties made of turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and stuffing, topped with wife's astonishingly good gravy (we calculated that we each had about a cup of that stuff yesterday, all told). I'm getting tired just writing about it. So today I awoke just after 5am, refreshed and ready to hit the puzzle. I do Not like doing the puzzle in the morning, esp. on a Saturday. Nighttime is solving / annotating time, morning is writing time. Solving in the morning can make me feel anxious and rushed. But today, no such problem. Pure joy from stem to stern — Karen Tracey is about as on-my-wavelength as any constructor; I find her puzzles not only highly doable, but highly entertaining. A good chunk of the proper nouns were Right in my wheelhouse, esp. STEVIE NICKS (5D: "Talk to Me" singer, 1985). That song is "hello, high school!" I could hear Mike Myers's voice in the clue for SHREK (4D: Title film character who says "Donkey, two things, O.K.? Shut ... up!"), so no problem there. That "K" in "SHREK" was absolute gold, as it made RIKKI TIKKI TAVI a piece of cake to figure out. And when you give away that many "K"s on a Saturday, the puzzle's going to open right up. "K-T" was all I needed to get KATE WINSLET (25D: Six-time Oscar nominee with a 2008 win), and all of a sudden I've got action going in nearly every part of the grid. That SW was about the only part that looked like it might be daunting, but then high school French came to the rescue once again at 51A: _____ froid (be cold: Fr.), and I was done. Faster than yesterday.



NW went down instantly with ERRS to SHREK to ETCH to TACH etc. Only HOVE (20A: Hoisted, as a sail) was at all mysterious to me, and crosses took care of it. RIKKI TIKKI TAVI made the N (via BROOKLET, 8D: A little running water?) and NW (via NEGEV, 12D: It comprises the southern half of Israel) easy to untangle. As I made my way down the grid, I noticed and liked the clues on SCOTTIE (35A: One with a hard, weather-resistant coat) and TEE SHOT (37A: Round opening). Ambiguous, yet accurate. (Speaking of TEE SHOT ... what the hell is going on with Tiger Woods?)

29D: Fully feather-footed flier (ptarmigan) presented the first real problem for me, as I did not know that I knew any words or phrases that started PTA- beside, say, PTA BOARD, PTA MEETING, PTA BAKE SALE, etc. Apparently I thought PTARMIGAN was spelled TERMAGANT, but a TERMAGANT is a "quarrelsome, scolding woman; a shrew." Anyway, I had to abort my downward progress at the "A" in PTARMIGAN and enter the lower portion via KATE WINSLET. Had URCHIN for GOBLIN (45D: Little mischief maker), but OTBS (52A: Some parlors, for short) set that right and the south went down quickly. SE was a little harder, as I went with TOLL BOOTH at first, and then HA HA (and later HO HO) at 63A: No mere chuckle. Once I entertained the "O" in HOHO and guessed "M" as the first letter in MLX (46A: When France's Philip I took the throne), I had THE M----O for 32D: "Pooh-Bah" source, and "THE MIKADO" seemed (and was) the only possible answer. Who knew that OKLA had the redbud as one of its symbols (53A: The redbud is one of its symbols: Abbr.)? Who knew what a "redbud" was? Who kept reading the damned word as "rebud" and wondering what the @#@! that could be? Not me, not me, and me, respectively.

Biggest hitch in the whole puzzle ended up being two little adjacent letters — the "S" in EINS (38D: One abroad) and the "L" in LOBAR (50D: Kind of pneumonia). Had EINE for the first and had never heard of the second. This made seeing PERMISSION SLIP difficult, bordering on impossible. -----SSIONE-IP for 47A: What a student might not go without? Curious. Anyway, I had to work the SW in order to get the front end of PERMISSION, which then allowed me to change E-IP to SLIP. Done and done.

Bullets:

• 27A: Outdoor signage option (neon lamp) — got the NEON part fine. Wanted only SIGN for the second part.
• 56A: Borscht flavorer (dill) — Blogger is underlining "flavorer" in red. I haven't had borscht, to my knowledge.
• 57A: Deity worshiped with much sensuality (Baal) — "Post-Exilic allusions to the cult of Ba'al Pe'or suggest that orgies prevailed" (wikipedia)
• 58A: 18-season Mariner Martinez (Edgar) — another name that was right in my wheelhouse. He was a prominent ALER in his day (54D: Any pro designated hitter, briefly).
• 59A: Singer/songwriter Sands (Evie) — Neeeever heard of her. Let's see ... seems to have had Far more success as a songwriter than as a performer. Here she is on the Johnny Cash show ...

• 47D: Pathology pioneer Sir James _____ (Paget) — Didn't know him. This "G" was the last thing to go in the grid.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Thanksgiving Weekend Bonus Puzzles:

• For those of you who have been away for the past couple days, I want to draw your attention to a puzzle I wrote to benefit the breast cancer foundation of Christina Applegate (whose birthday was Wednesday). Please go HERE to read about it and download it or print it out, and please share it with anyone you know who likes puzzles (or breasts). I'm going to be promoting this puzzle for the rest of the weekend. Check it out, and then go here to get the completed grid and commentary (and to leave comments).

• Also, Doug Peterson and Andrea Carla Michaels wrote a birthday puzzle for me — a verrrrry insidery puzzle all about this blog and the community of people who comment on it frequently. Really lovely work. Get it here.

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Limnological study — FRIDAY, Oct. 16 2009 — Chateaubriand accompaniment / Floppy headgear / 1997 Bell Atlantic acquisition

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: LIMNOLOGY (from 26A: Limnological study => LAKE) — n.

The scientific study of the life and phenomena of fresh water, especially lakes and ponds.

[Greek limnē, lake + -LOGY.]

-----

I got wrecked by this puzzle. How bad? How bad was it? Well, I've decided that this is the symbol for my performance on this puzzle:


That, my friends, is the finished, showroom quality version of the birthday cake I made my wife. Yes, I love her that much. Started out great, but getting the cakes out of the pans proved almost comically impossible, and then what did get out, and then eventually stacked, kept falling apart — chunks of cake falling down the sides, like icebergs breaking away from glaciers. Frosting it was like ... well, imagine trying to frost a zombie. Or a leper. Most every time I touched the cake, it seemed I pulled more cake away than I left icing behind. And yet I managed to make an almost cake-like shape out of the whole mess. One major upside: It tastes @#$!ing awesome. My grandma's cake is something I would happily eat even if it were just a large pile of crumbs.

Now ... where were we? Oh right, puzzle. FAIL. You could have given me the softest of softball clues on much of this fill and I still would have struggled. TUXEDO JUNCTION (23A: "Where people go to dance the night away," in song) is a vaguely familiar phrase now that I look at it, but it means nothing to me as a song, esp. as a song with lyrics, and since NYNEX (4D: 1997 Bell Atlantic acquisition) also means nothing to me ... completely hidden "X." I still can't believe BEARNAISE SAUCE (47A: Chateaubriand accompaniment, often) is spelled like something the BE(A)Renstain BEARs would eat, but there it is. Yikes. And that's an answer I *didn't* have much trouble with. "Limnological study??" Needed every single cross to get LAKE. NEISSE (30A: Lusatian_____ (German/Polish border river))? It's been in some puzzle somewhere before, but no. Not in my Top 20 Euro Rivers (yes, such a list exists). SETHE (15A: "Beloved" heroine) was forgotten by me — 20 years since I read "Beloved," which I never liked as much as many others. If I have to read a Toni Morrison novel, I'll take "Song of Solomon," thanks. ADELIE (11D: Emperor's relative)? No. I mean, looking at it now, I can see it's some type of penguin the name of which has likely been before my eyes at some time in my life, but even the easiest clue wouldn't have helped much here. HANA? HANA (39D: Easternmost town on Maui, on one end of 52 miles of twisty highway)? You could have made your gigantic clue infinitely more gigantic and it never would have contained enough information for me to get HANA, a place I've never heard of. HANA is an 80s tennis player to me.



Let's keep going — I didn't know jewelry was made out of RED CORAL (35D: Its skeleton may be used to make jewelry), and couldn't make sense of the answer anyway for a long time because LESSORS was about seventeen different, related words before it was LESSORS. I got the gimmick in the clue Right Away (51A: Recipients of dollars for quarters?). I put in LEASERS. Later, LETTERS. LETTORS? LESSEES? Ugh. Also had CLASH for SLASH at some point (40D: Fractional bit?), and thus CANOE (?) for SKEET (40A: Summer Olympics event). Final square was a NATICK for me, though not a true one, as TENERIFE (36D: Largest of the Canary Islands) had a ring of rightness that allowed me to plunk down the "F." RAFE? (58A: Male protagonist in William Inge's "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff") — Some guy from an Inge play? This puzzle has Zero that is contemporary about it, and not a lot of Scrabble letters, which leaves only viciousness as a Karen Tracey trademark feature. Usually her grids are fun and playful and modern. This one (solid as it is) was just groin-kicking for me.

Oh, and I had an error. After all that. An error. BUD / DTEN for BUB (25D: Sonny) / BTEN (32A: 1930s bomber). The Down was obviously ambiguous, and I guess I don't really know my 1930s bombers as well as I should. As I said, FAIL.

Bullets:

• 10A: Floppy headgear (tams) — oh, it's a disguised plural. Thanks. Puzzle wasn't hard enough already. Me: "KEPI? Is that floppy?"
• 14A: Writer of the history "Ab Urbe Condita" (Livy) — a gimme. Who takes LIVY as a gimme and then falls on his ass over LAKE?!
• 38A: What you probably have a head for (shower) — ugh, man, hard. And good. I mean, in addition to answers I just would never have gotten no matter what the clue (w/o serious help from crosses), there was stuff like this, which is just good, solid, late-week brutality.
• 50A: Kids in funny shorts (Our Gang) — got this quickly, back when I thought the clue meant "funny shorts" in a sartorial sense. I'm pretty sure "shorts" here refers to "short films," but the clue works either way.
• 53A: Reader's digest founder of 1984 (Utne) — the lowercase "d" on "digest" was the tip-off here.
• 6D: More than merely meet (get to know) — had the GET T... part and then most of what was below that was a mysterious disaster for much of my solve. Things got so bad that eventually, when I knew the last two letters were "OW," I considered scrapping the top and going with " .... something POW WOW?"
• 8D: Popular aquatic performer (Shamu) — proof that frustration can lead to idiocy / blindness: this answer took me a while to come up with. This very familiar, common answer kept eluding me. Initial answer was OTTER ... later, I had AGAPE at 5A: Stunned (agasp) and so answer appeared to start "PH..." PHISH? Seriously, how I finished this puzzle given all the incompetent stumbling is beyond me.
• 9D: Toy developed in China (Pekinese) — dang, she's not giving Anything away today. Have always hated the G-lessness of this (toy) dog breed.
• 31D: Old covenant keeper (Israelite) — wanted ABRAHAM. Or NOAH. Finally saved by the -ITE.
• 13D: Typical taxis (sedans) — how bad was my brain fried? I thought "taxis" was a Greek word. Singular. Like praxis. Or ... I don't know, parataxis. I'm not kidding.
• 43D: Setting for C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle" (Narnia) — another glorious gimme. Entire west coast of puzzle was actually quite easy. Once I got to the Rockies, however ... well, by now you know.
• 45D: Early online discussion setting (usenet) — easy, but should USENET and USERS (49D: Detox population) be in puzzle together? USENET is, acc. to Wikipedia, portmanteau of "USER" and "NETWORK."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Saturday, August 22, 2009 -- Muffed on the green / Russian oblast or its capital / Fractions of a gourde

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Medium-challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Sentime (18A Fractions of a gourde => SENTIME) —

n.

The gourde (French), goud (Creole) is the currency of Haiti. Its ISO 4217 code is HTG and it is divided into 100 centimes (French) or santim (Creole).
(from wikipedia)

[update: just learned in the comments that I got this wrong--it's CBC/CENTIMES. No wonder I had to go through "gourde" to find it --treedweller]

--------

Hi, all. treedweller here, filling in for Rex while he tries to improve his world puzzle ranking. I so wanted to say, "Ha, just kidding about not being able to finish, this was a breeze," but here you have the sum total of my efforts before I resorted to google. Not quite "two right answers and a couple of bad guesses," but almost. I didn't even know how to choose a Word of the Day, since it seems like half the grid was unfamiliar to me. I went with the currency, since we may as well all resign ourselves to learning All The Currencies Of The World (Past And Present). As is often the case, once things started to fall, I realized I should have known a few things and could have figured out a few more, but I'm on a deadline here. Regardless, I have doubts as to whether I could have finished this on my own, no matter how many days I carried it around with me to waiting rooms and bank lines. I chose to rate it Medium-challenging because it was extremely challenging to me, but that's a normal Saturday, so I figure it's maybe medium for those who routinely finish the hard ones. I just hope not to hear "Easy, Easy, Easy" in the comments today.

Google got me the NE, since I was able to find ROSSETTI (14D: "Beata Beatrix" painter) and SENTIMES. The former revealed our old friend, BRIAN ENO (16A: Co-composer of the "Prophecy Theme" in "Dune"), who usually just gets his last name into the grid. He was well disguised today, but when I saw that terminal "O" I had him. I still needed the obscure (to me) currency to finish the corner, but things were starting to roll and I was feeling pretty good. And . . . nothing. Back to google, where I learned about 27D: Home of the annual Gathering of the Nations powwow, the world's largest celebration of Native American Culture, ALBUQUERQUE. Man, just typing out that clue was an ordeal. Is there anyone who didn't get the answer from the first half, but knew it once they got past the comma? I think not. Hello, King Olaf.

Then I immersed myself for the first time in Dancing With the Stars, where I learned there were not one, not two, but three possible answers to 37A: Olympic Gold Medalist who was a "Dancing With the Stars" champion. First hit was Shawn Johnson, who didn't fit. A little farther down was Anton Apolo Ohno, who seemed very puzzleworthy but also did not fit. I went to the Official Site, where you should not go if you don't like auto-playing ads and videos to blare out of your computer unexpectedly. I learned that a new season is upon us, but still could not find KRISTI YAMAGUCHI. She finally turned up when I clicked through google to a site by a fan of the show.

Even with two Q's and a K, I still didn't gain much traction. I was up to this:

Thank God for Orange, who already had the solution and her obscenely fast time posted by the time I finally learned to spell ROSSETTI. Here's the correct answer:












I'll spare you the play-by-play of my stealing of answers, but here's a few
Bullets:

• 19A: Muffed on the green (foozled) -- I almost made this one Word of the Day, but decided I was not willing to admit it even is a word.
• 66A: Was close to failure (tottered) -- Teetered gave me a little traction in the SW, but I had to steal the OT to finish that corner.
• 1A: Spook's break-in (bag job) -- Okay, this a nice phrase that sounds real, I just Did Not Know It.
• 12D: One who may get dispossessed? (demoniac) -- who knew? Not me.
  
• 63A: Plumlike fruit (loquat) -- I can't pass a chance to mention the tree. I got it easily once I googled ALBUQUERQUE.
• 4D: Swingers' get-together? (jazz session) -- As you can see above, I had SESSION pretty early, and considered JAZZ, but I couldn't figure out any crosses to work with the Z's. Okay, I've resisted it long enough, FOOZLED??!! That sounds like what Ms. Tracy did to me with this puzzle. I never had a chance in the NE. It didn't help that I had "enmire" (which I assume I just made up, since google returns no definitions) instead of
• 1D: Cause to be Stuck (baffle) -- Come to think of it, that's really what Ms. Tracy did to me today. But it was a really nice grid, with only MTGES (40D: You can get them on the house: Abbr.) making me wince.
  

I'd better stop, since I just realized how late it is out there on the other coast. Sorry I couldn't figure out how to post any nice videos.

treedweller (writing from San Diego)

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Little auk — SATURDAY, Aug. 8 2009— Folklorist/musicologist Alan / Title girl of 1906 L. Frank Baum novel / 1989 Broadway monodrama

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: DOVEKIE (25A: Little auk) — A small black-and-white sea bird (Alle alle) of the Arctic and northern Atlantic oceans, having a short bill and a stout body. Also called little auk.

More than almost any other constructor, Karen Tracey speaks my puzzle language. For whatever reasons, even when a puzzle is reasonably tough (as today's was), I feel like I'm on her wavelength. Despite a few nutso words, this puzzle was expertly filled. Wildly inventive and a joy to solve. Easily the best puzzle of the week (admittedly, the competition hasn't been too tough). Speaking of PUZZLES (49A: Stumps) — Z Square! That's hot. That corner was the last to fall, and part of the reason it didn't fall quickly was that I couldn't believe there'd be Even More Scrabbly letters. Just seemed like piling on. So instead of NUZZLES (my first thought for 36D: Is an affectionate pooch) I went with NESTLES. Lesson: committing to wrong answers is about the most confounding thing you can do as a solver. Paradox: on tough puzzles, you often have to commit to answers you aren't sure about if you want anything to budge. Just be careful about how *hard* you commit. Since NESTLES didn't do much for me, I had no real trouble getting rid of it. Really, really wish I could have understood the chronological (not geographical) meaning of "setting" in 46A: "The Great Gatsby" setting (Jazz Age) much earlier than I did.

Two answers that were so crazy-looking I had to look them up when I was done to confirm that they were real. First, DOVEKIE. If all the crosses hadn't been unimpeachable, I'd have been worried here. I wondered briefly if I'd spelled MAZURKA right (5D: One of 58 Chopin compositions). Then across the pond we've got ULAN-UDE, which looks like a random collection of letters to me. I've heard of ULAN BATOR, but this one was very, very new to me (24A: Capital of the Buryat Republic). Didn't recognize and couldn't place "Buryat," so I was pretty much a dead man on this answer. Bring in the crosses! Luckily, all gettable (hallmark of a well-constructed puzzle — crazy-ass words have rock solid, reasonably easily identifiable crosses). LOMAX (41D: Folklorist/musicologist Alan) and KLEIN (18D: German mathematician who lent his name to a "bottle") round out my "???" answers for the day.

Bunch of gimmes helped me get traction. Among them, FRAG is my favorite (10A: Wound, in a way, as a fellow G.I.). BRET Easton Ellis wrote "American Psycho," among other things. Super easy. EL DUQUE (21A: Pitcher Orlando Hernandez's nickname) looks great in the grid, but there's hardly any way to clue it that diminishes its gimmeness, and it's a fat, fat gimme, i.e. it gives you a "Q" (which made QUARTET easy ... the RAJ part came later, 11D: "The Jewel in the Crown" begins it, with "The"). The weirdest, most mysterious gimme of the puzzle has to be PREJEAN (40D: Real-life death penalty opponent played by Sarandon in "Dead Man Walking"). I pulled that one out of Thin Air, with no crosses. As I was saying to myself, "oh, that's Sister somebody," PREJEAN leapt to mind. "No ... is that it?" Tested it and immediately confirmed the "J" off of JARHEAD (50A: 2003 Anthony Swofford Gulf war memoir made into a 2005 film). Amazing luck that allowed me to tear down the SE corner lickety-split.

Bullets:

• 14A: Patterson who played the title role on TV's "Private Benjamin" (Lorna) — OK, that seems too obscure pop culturey even for me.
• 16A: Four-time Grammy winner Schifrin (Lalo) — I think I read somewhere that "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening was a fan. For whatever reason, LALO makes me think of Groening. The more I think on this connection, the thinner it seems. Whatever. I got the answer easily enough, so whatever my brain was thinking, it seems to have worked.
• 17A: He said "You are free and that is why you are lost" (Franz Kafka) — paradoxically depressing!
• 19A: Spanish seers? (ojos) — "?" made it a gimme.
• 28A: Cousin of an Omaha (Ponca) — learned it from crosswords. One of my favorite tribe names. Fun to say / shout.
• 29A: Home of the Knockmealdown Mountains (Ireland) — would be soooo much better if they were called the Knockmedown Mountains, and esp. if people who lived near there were known for getting fall-down drunk a lot.
• 34A: 1989 Broadway monodrama (Tru) — "monodrama" is a new to me. Is that a play with only one actor? Must be. Is.
• 57A: With 44-Across, Champion rider (Gene / Autry) — finally giving in to NUZZLES made this answer, finally, come into view.
• 58A: Old royal residence in 29-Across (Tara) — helped me change ICELAND to IRELAND at 29A.
• 59A: Pianist with 15 Grammys (Corea) — Chick COREA, a not uncommon name in xwords.
• 60A: Cramped urban dwellings, briefly (SROs) — Single-Room Occupancy. A def. of "SRO" I learned from crosswords and have seen nowhere else.
• 4D: Title girl of a 1906 L. Frank Baum novel (Annabel) — didn't know this, though "ANNABEL" was easy to guess from just a few crosses.
• 22D: Zealand resident (Dane) — wife is from New Zealand, but I completely blanked on where old Zealand was. Stared at D-N- for a bit before exclaiming, "oh, duh."
• 27D: Explorer of North America's eastern coast in 1524 (Verrazzano) — eponymous NYC bridge guy.
• 31D: Player of Det. Eames on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (Erbe) — one of my most disliked names in CrossWorld. 3rd rate crosswordese. [to be clear, I don't dislike Ms. ERBE personally. I don't know her. I do know that she appears in xwords all out of proportion to her fame. It's just hard for constructors to resist the sweet, weird letter combo her last name provides.]
• 53D: Cannon shot on a set? (Dyan) — honestly, when was the last time DYAN Cannon was shot anywhere but at a Lakers game? 1982?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Transcaucasian capital — SATURDAY, Jul. 11 2009 — Nirvana attainer / Pteridologist's specimen / Zulu relative / Rapacious flier

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: XHOSA (54A: Zulu relative) [pronounced 'KO-sa] — also n., pl. Xhosa or -sas also Xosa or -sas.

1. A member of a Bantu people inhabiting the eastern part of Cape Province, South Africa.
2. The Nguni language of this people, closely related to Zulu. (answers.com)
   

So Karen Tracey lives! Hurray! I haven't seen her by-line on a puzzle in what feels like ages, and doing this puzzle made me realize how much I miss her work. Snap, crackle, and pop everywhere I turned. More 3-, 4-, and 5- letter words than I'm used to seeing in her grids, but because Karen's a pro, not too much slippage into tired fill. It was a little weird to see stuff like ST. LO (13D: The Vire River flows through it) and ALAR and ERN and NALA (12D: Simba's mate) in my Saturday puzzle ... but a. that handful of answers is forgettable next to the amazing longer stuff, and b. I'll give myself permission to complain about NALA the second I can @#$#ing remember it. "FALA ... no, that's FDR's dog ..." There are a surprising lot of valid -ALA words. VALIDALA!

Anyway, this puzzle might have been rated a little easier if I hadn't frozen up completely in the NE, where 11D: Response to a ding-dong? held me up longer than anything in the grid. I had -HOCA-IT-E and couldn't process those letters to save my life. At first, because of the "?" and the "ding-dong," I was sure that the first letter would be "C" ... Near the beginning of the puzzle, I actually considered something like CHOCAHOLIC (CHOCAHOLIA?), though that "A" should have warned me off right away. Ding-Dongs are cream-filled chocolate cupcakes produced by Hostess, which brings me to another feature of the clue that should have warned me off the cupcake answer: those "d"s weren't capitalized. Ugh. "WHO CAN IT BE" seems quaintish. The phrase exists in my head only as a 1981 query sung by an Australian and followed by the word "Now":



"IN HER SHOES" (27D: Jennifer Weiner best seller made into a 2005 film) and KATE SPADE (17A: Big name in bags) give this puzzle a more distinctly feminine slant than many puzzles have, though both the book/movie and the designer are mainstream enough to be familiar to anyone. JOHN LARROQUETTE (36A: Winner of four consecutive Emmys for his sitcom role as a prosecutor) would have been a gimme with no crosses, so despite the "Q," I wasn't that excited to see him. I was, however, excited to see SUSQUEHANNA (24D: Three Mile Island is in it), as I practically live on its banks. Five-minute walk to the river. I drive over it nearly every day. I gotta say, it doesn't feel very Three Mile Islandy. I'm sure it's polluted as @#$#, but it's actually one of the nicer features of this town. My geographic good luck continued in this puzzle with NASHUA (23A: Second-largest city in New Hampshire), which I knew, but also had the good fortune of seeing in a BEQ puzzle just yesterday. Geographic good luck ran out completely with HANAUMABAY (39A: Snorkeling spot near Honolulu). I'm really glad those last three letters ended up spelling BAY, because otherwise the entire answer would have been unintuitable gibberish to me. Hit the jackpot in the Shorter Exotic Words and Names category today, as BAKU (1D: Transcaucasian capital), ARHAT (16A: Nirvana attainer), ARRAU (10D: He recorded all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas in the 1960s), and XHOSA (54A: Zulu relative) all came to me quite easily (I'd know none of these were it not for crosswords). All in all, an entertaining solve, with the E and NE providing the greatest resistance. NW started out tough, but then I got KATE SPADE, and the "K" fixed everything (as it often does).

Bullets:

• 14A: Trade name of daminozide (Alar) — this is what you do to crosswordese on a Saturday. Hide it. At least DAMINOZIDE wasn't the answer.
• 19A: Internet forum menace (troll) — Reminder: Do Not Feed.
• 21A: Major Côte d'Ivoire export (cacao) — makes me wish 11D had been a CHOCO- answer. Would have made a perfect Chocolate Cross.
• 35A: Early Saint-Laurent employer (Dior) — wasn't sure at first how "employer" was being used here. Or "Saint-Laurent," for that matter (person? brand?).
• 57A: Pteridologist's specimen (fern) — national symbol (or one of them) of NZ. Also, the name of my (Kiwi) nephew. Yes, a handsome, strapping young man named FERN. It's kind of awesome.
• 60A: Org. created by Carter in 1979 (FEMA) — now synonym for "incompetence," sadly. One of the first disasters to which FEMA responded: Three Mile Island. And FEMA crosses SUSQUEHANNA in this grid. Dang, that's nice.
  
• 5D: To whom Stubb and Flask answered, in literature (Captain Ahab) — Flask and Stubb!? I love their music:

• 4D: Peach variety (freestone) — no idea. None. I will eat a FREESTONE peach by HANAUMA BAY one day, in honor of this puzzle.
• 6D: Unlike fairies (real) — this made me laugh out loud. Excellent.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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1920s-'60s Tennessee congressman B. Carroll - SATURDAY, April 11 - K.M. Tracey (Feature of 1925 opera Wozzeck / Historical decorum disdainer)

Theme: None

Word of the Day: ROSE APPLE, Syzygium is a genus of flowering plants that belongs to the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. The genus comprises about 1100 species, and has a native range that extends from Africa and Madagascar through southern Asia east through the Pacific. Its highest levels of diversity occur from Malaysia to northeastern Australia, where many species are very poorly known and many more have not been described taxonomically. ... [A] few [species] produce edible fruit that are eaten fresh or used in jams and jellies.... (Wikipedia)

Hey, everybody. PuzzleGirl here trying to keep things rolling while Rex is off in a tropical paradise. Actually, right now he's probably in an airport somewhere and if it's in Miami, chances are he just went through a door that took him out of the secure part of the airport and is right now, at this minute, trying to figure out how to get back through and wondering how the heck that happened. Not that that's ever happened to me.

So the kids are on Spring Break this week and it's been a loooong week. PuzzleHusband has a big thing going on at work so he's been leaving in the morning before I wake up and not coming home until after I'm already asleep, which means I've been single-parenting it this week. I honestly don't know how single parents do it. So the weather was kind of yucky today and PuzzleSon's neck has been hurting him so he didn't want to go swimming again, so we just hung around the house all day. The kids have decided that they want to learn to sing so they can audition for "American Idol" when they're old enough. PuzzleSon is particularly interested in the fact that there's a 16-year-old girl on the show right now who "must be missing a lot of school!" So they spent the whole day — and I mean the whoooole day — singing along to our Tivo'd episode of the "Top 9" doing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." They promised to keep practicing tomorrow. There's no way that song will find its way back out of my head until, I'd say, 2011. Luckily for me, it's a pretty good song (and the "Idol" contestants did a nice job with it). Hey, you know what? I'm going to let you judge for yourself:

Okay, okay, the puzzle. Have you done today's L.A. Times puzzle yet? The first thing I noticed about this grid was how cool it looked — and how similar to the LAT grid!


Speaking of the L.A. Times puzzle, you know there's a new blog about it, right? Check it out!

The second thing I noticed was Karen Tracey's name — yay! I think of Karen's puzzles, in general, as really smooth. What some commenters here call "tough but fair." And that's exactly what you want your late-week NYT, right? I blew through most of the left side of this puzzle and then came to a screeching halt. I say "most of" the left side, because that NW corner gave me a lot of trouble, despite the gimmes at 14A: SACAJAWEA (Her face began to circulate in 2000), 21A: ARNAZ ("Holiday in Havana" star, 1949), 1D: ASADA (Carne ___ (roasted beef dish)), and 3D: U. CONN. (Big East b-ball powerhouse). Seems like that should have been enough to make it fall, right? Wrong. For the longest time I thought Babar might be Mongolian for "hero" — you know, maybe that's why the elephant was given that name? I know. I was reaching there. But that kept ATONALITY (17A: Feature of the 1925 opera "Wozzeck") completely hidden from me for a long time. I actually had to Google both 6D: Child actor Carl who played Alfalfa (SWITZER) and 19A: "Lucrezia Borgia" composer (DONIZETTI) before I could make that corner fall. I'd like to believe I would have cracked it on my own had I let it sit overnight, but with the pressure to blog, I just didn't have that luxury.

What Else?

• 5A: Equal measures?: Abbr. (TSPS). This one also contributed to my problems in the NW corner. At first I had nths, thinking that it just meant ... well, I don't know. I can't even make sense of it now. Because of the word "measures" in the clue, I did keep thinking teaspoons but couldn't figure out what that had to do with "equal." D'oh!
  
• 9A: Undercroft (CRYPT). Never heard this word before. Undercroft, that is. I've heard of crypt.
  
• 20A: 1920s-'60s Tennessee congressman B. Carroll ___ (REECE). I looked him up to see if there's any reason I would/should know him and ... nothing. Okay, he served in the House longer than anyone else in Tennessee history, but I'm guessing if you're not from Tennessee that's not a piece of knowledge that easily retainable. (And definitely not inferable. I mean if it was someone named Jackson or Gore or, I don't know, Parton or Presley — something you might associate with Tennessee.)
  

• 22A: A Buddhist might be found in one (ZEN STATE). My first thoughts were temple and ashram. Once I got the -EN, I was hoping it would be ZEN-something, but it still took a while to appear.
  
• 28A: Clip (SCISSOR). Ooh, that one hurts a little.
  
• 32A: Enters gradually (SEEPS IN). I had slips in at first, but realized that would be more like entering unobtrusively, not gradually.
  

• 36A: Historical decorum disdainer (FLAPPER). Okay, this is funny. First I had slapper, thinking someone who disdained decorum would slap an offending party, then realized, no, in that case the decorum disdainer would be the slappee, so I changed it to that. Eventually found my way to FLAPPER.
  
• 38A: Outdated communications (TELEXES). Way back in the old days....
  
• 39A: Dramatic exhalation (SIGH). PuzzleDad and I used to have a kind of contest to see who could make the longest, most pathetic sounding sigh. He usually won.
  
• 44A: "Something to Talk About" Grammy winner, 1991 (RAITT). That's a great one, but here's my favorite Bonnie Raitt song:



• 49A: Bum (MOOCH). Both words mean "to borrow."
  
• 52A: Gut flora (ECOLI). I'm not going to say anything about this one.
  
• 53A: Gut reaction? (DIGESTION). Or this one. Hello! Breakfast test!
  
• 57A: Gershwin title character (BESS). As in "Porgy & ..."
  
• 58A: Musical score abbr. (CRES.). Crescendo.
  

• 4D: "Lost" actress Raymonde (TANIA). She plays Alex, the daughter of that nutty French woman and Ben Linus. Wait? Was she really his daughter? I watch that show religiously, and after every single episode I go, "What just happened?" It's very confusing is what I'm saying.
  
• 5D: Related thing (TALE). Ooh, this one was tough for me to get too. I was thinking it meant "a thing that's related to something else," but it really means, "a thing that you would relate to (i.e., tell) someone else." Tricky!
  
• 11D: Musical accompaniment to many a comedic chase scene (YAKETY SAX). Oh sure, why not?



• 13D: River near Hadrian's Wall (TYNE). Again with the rivers!
  
• 15D: Adds spice to (JAZZES UP). Nice jazzy entry.
  
• 25D: Some a cappella music (MOTETS). I had notet at first, which isn't actually, ya know, a word. I was thinking nonet but already had that first T in there. Oops.
  
• 30D: On one's game (IN A GROOVE). And a nice groovy entry!



• 37D: Drumbeat (RUBADUB). I don't really know what this means. I put it on my list to look up so I could talk about in this write-up but now it's late and I'm exhausted. If you know what this means, please enlighten us in the comments!
  
• 51D: Bucolic backdrops (LEAS). Bucolic is one of those words that doesn't sound like what it means. I think it's too close to colic to make me put it in the "pleasant" category.
  

Okay, I'm outta here for now. I'll probably be back tomorrow and then you'll get a break from me — for a few days anyway.

Love, PuzzleGirl

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