Porcine paramour / FRI 8-12-16 / Foe of Big Boy Little Face / Hoist on ship / Founder of Rhyme $yndicate Records / Pacific dietary staple / Leaves Navels artist

Constructor: Kelly Clark

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DAVIT (43D: Hoist on a ship) —

noun

noun: davit; plural noun: davits

1. a small crane on board a ship, especially one of a pair for suspending or lowering a lifeboat. (google)

• • •

Very clean, very easy. Almost too much, on both counts. Only SICK AS A DOG, AGENT ORANGE, and maybe SOFT PRETZEL made me think "hey, nice," but never, not once, did I think "ew, gross," so on balance, I'm very pleased. There aren't any big traps, but there are several little ones. I guessed wrong two times, falling into the PLOTS / PLOYS trap (14D: Schemes) *and* the SCAN / SPAN trap (24D: Go over). Managed not to fall into the POLE / POPE trap (25D: John Paul II, e.g.), largely because POPE seemed way too easy, but also because I got the "L" from ALOT pretty quickly (33A: Tremendously). I had GENIE instead of PIXIE at first, and really struggled to come up with DAVIT (just forgot the word) and TEN (wanted NYG) (52D: Eli Manning, on the field). But when your 1-Across is a fat gimme like PETUNIA PIG (1A: Porcine paramour), as I've said in the past, chances are you're in for a fast ride. Not untrue again today. (No offense, Petunia, but you are a fat gimme)


I actually came to a hard stop coming out of the NW because SPROUT (24A: Little 'un) is not a word I'd use unless the context was Green Giant commercials. That's when I jumped to SCAN (whoops) and therefore had real trouble with 29A: Disappearing exclamations (POOFS). I couldn't make sense of the clue on any kind of level, and eventually I had COO-S (?) and then COOFS (??). Thankfully, I didn't accept that as a real thing and double-checked my crosses. Had to do the cross-check thing for PLOTS/PLOYS too. Why is [Comic's nightmare?] (BOO) question-marked? Is the "scariness" of a nightmare supposed to be connoted by "BOO!?" No one has ever said BOO! in my nightmares. They tend to be scary for other, less childish reasons. [Comic's nightmare] seems fine on its own, as a thing a comic dreads. I'm not getting the "?". Do VETS still "ALTER"—I thought "spay" and "neuter" were universal terms now. I only know ALTER from ... I don't even know. Seems dated. Or maybe it's progressive, as it's sex-neutral? All's I know is Bob Barker did not say "Have you pets altered." So there.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Nicholas Gage memoir / MON 3-10-14 / Lacking key musically / Handyman's tote

Constructor: Kelly Clark

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (*for a Monday*) 

THEME: TOOL BOX (40A: Handyman's tote) — last words of four theme answers might be found in a TOOL BOX

Theme answers:

• SINGLE FILE (17A: One-by-one formation, as in walking)
• MIKE HAMMER (11D: Spillane detective)
• ON THE LEVEL (29D: Honest)
• FINGERNAIL (64A: Manicurist's target)

Word of the Day: "ELENI" (14A: Nicholas Gage memoir) —

Gage was born in the village of Lia in Filiates, Thesprotia, Epirus, Greece. He is most famous for two books of autobiographical memoirs, the best selling Eleni (1983) and A Place for Us (1989). Eleni describes the life of his family in Greece during the Second World War and Greek Civil War. Gage’s mother, Eleni, was executed for arranging the escape of her children from their Communist-occupied village. Decades later, as an adult, Gage sought out those responsible for her death. A Place for Us relates the Gage family’s experiences as immigrants in 1950s America in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1964, Gage earned a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

In 1985, Eleni was made into a feature film starring John Malkovich as Gage. In 1987, Eleni was cited by Ronald Reagan as an inspiration for his summit meetings to end the arms race with the Soviet Union. (wikipedia)

• • •

What a depressing puzzle to return home to. I had such a great time at the ACPT this weekend, where I was privileged to solve a number of top-notch puzzles. There was only one tourney puzzle I disliked—the rest were good-to-great. Creative, occasionally torturous, but almost always thoughtful, humorous, and (above all) carefully, artfully constructed. The quality here, today, on this Monday puzzle, is objectively substandard. I don't even feel I need to rehearse the litany of answers that just Do Not Belong in an easy-to-fill, early-week puzzle. ELENI? Why? That completely unnecessary bit of dated crosswordese is the poster child for everything wrong with this puzzle, and lazily filled easy puzzles. Crossing ILIE and FESS, relatively near SEAEEL and ARNE. Please, believe me, I am telling you the truth when I say I know two dozen people who could make that corner so much better, tighter, leaner, etc., Inside Of Two Minutes. And the junk continues. It's everywhere. Just stale stuff that old hands (like me) will know from decades of (over-) exposure. But it's the stuff that gives crosswords a bad name. OH OH crossing HA HAS? Plural? EKED and STEN? AMICI and TENKS? STENOS with OBIS on an ISLET? Everyone Has To Do Better than this. Constructors, editors, solvers … this lazy, hackneyed fill, in such copious, unnecessary quantities, is simply beneath the dignity of the self-professed Gold Standard of crossword publications.


The theme is off too. Three tools … and a nail. A nail is not a tool. Now, it gets out of jail free, I guess, for being, defensibly, in a TOOLBOX. But nail is out of place. Maybe FIXIT is up at 1A because it thinks it's a theme answer? But there's no symmetrical theme answers, and FIXIT seems at least partially responsible for the *terrible* NW corner, *and* it's a partial, *so* the puzzle is improved how? This clearly should've been rejected with suggestions for improvement *or* the grid should've been quietly improved by one of the in-house fixers (whose names you never hear). TOP THIS? Yeah, pretty sure I can.

I got slowed a bit at TOP THIS because the clue should've been ["Try and do better!"]. What the hell is "Yeah?" doing in there? (25A: "Yeah? Try and do better!") Was there a prior conversation? It's totally superfluous, and it threw me. Other things that threw me. TOOL KIT and TOOL BAG, both of which made appearances. This made PROXY impossible (for me) to see. Wait, I'm sorry, is that TEN in the grid? In the grid that also has TEN Ks?!? Did that really happen? OK, we're done here.

[Added note: one of the puzzles from this weekend's ACPT was made by today's constructor, Kelly Clark. I just redid that puzzle. It's solid. Perfectly good work. No idea what the hell happened with today's puzzle.]

The Puzzle of the Week for last week (which I didn't get a chance to announce yesterday) was Erik Agard's "All or Nothing" (Fireball Crosswords). I solved it, saw the trick, thought, "hmmm, that's interesting … but he's done better work, I think." Then 24 hours later realized that the trick had a dimension I Completely Missed, namely that it worked in All The Relevant Downs (as well as the three Acrossese where I'd noticed it). It's fantastic. Subscribe to Fireball to get it (and other great puzzles like it, once a week), or just read about the puzzle in detail here.

Photos from the tourney tomorrow. . . well, OK, I'll give you one today, since it makes me so happy. This is me with my friend Jen (from CT) and her service dog, Justice, the sweetest, most beautiful dog I've ever met (my own dogs excepted, of course).

Jen let Justice off-duty for a bit so she could play with me. The. Best. Thing. Dogplay! Hard to be tense about anything when lab wants to lick your face and sit in your lap and play tug-of-war etc. It was really cool to then see Justice go back on-duty: total calm, total focus. Just an amazing animal.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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THURSDAY, Dec. 7, 2006 - Kelly Clark

Solving time: 11:20

THEME: Ups and Downs - 4 long vertical theme answers clued with two-word phrases ending "up" or "down," the "up" answers running up and the down answers ... that's right. Example: 13D: Line up? (ngisruoystahw - or "what's your sign" standing on its head)

I like the fact that this grid is unusually shaped, and that all four theme answers are vertical - uncommon. I like also that the four theme answers are all consecutively clued, i.e. 11D, 12D, 13D, and 14D - also uncommon. Nice palindromic (or chiastic) structure to the four theme answers, which run, in order, down-up-up-down. But most of all, I like that this puzzle was written by KELLY CLARKSON! Woo hoo! I saw her in concert, and it was awesome. Perhaps you've seen the photo of me (and my giant hand) adoring her, but it's worth showing again:

Look, I know the author's name is Kelly Clark. I'm just going to consider it a not-so-clever pseudonym. I love you, Kelly!

The fill for the theme answers is not particularly striking, though I do like the idea of upside-down MORTIMERSNERD 12D: Dummy up?. Which is to say, DRENSREMITROM. I got slowed DOWN (slow on the UPtake) by IREMEMBERMAMA (11D: Play down?), because I couldn't figure out what was theme-y about it, especially after I had DRENSREMITROM. I took out all of IREMEMBERMAMA, figuring it was wrong and must really be something upside-down. Then I saw all the theme clues, noticed the "up" / "down" theme, and, uh, got it. Lost some time there. Not a good time. My nemesis at the NYT puzzle site, whom I have dubbed "Chuck," beat me today (after I had thrashed him the day before). O well. Tomorrow is another day, Chuck. Watch your back.

Speaking of Olivia Newton-John ... no fewer than two of my readers sent me this bit of Olivia News. She is apparently suing Universal for back royalties from the sale of the Grease soundtrack. Here is the brief AP article:

LOS ANGELES — Lawsuit is the word [heh, cute]: Olivia Newton-John is suing Universal Music Group Inc. for allegedly failing to pay more than $1 million in royalties on sales of the "Grease" soundtrack album.

Newton-John starred with John Travolta in the 1978 movie version of the Broadway hit.

The breach-of-contract suit was filed Friday in Los Angeles County Superior court. It contends that while Universal did pay some royalties on the album, it failed to make a range of other contractual payments, said John Mason, an attorney for Newton-John.

According to the suit, a recent audit showed Universal owes more than $1 million to Newton-John's company, ON-J Productions [good thing you got that "N" in there...], Ltd.

"The lawsuit is without merit and, at the appropriate time, we expect that the court will dismiss it," Universal said in a statement Tuesday.

Now I'm no lawyer, but my gut tells me Olivia should win this suit and be awarded not only what she's asking for, but massive punitive damages, which she could the use to bring her dreamy, peaceful, sexy vibe to all the people of the world who have never been mellow. I mean, she's like a million years old, and look how cute:
Clearly she has something wonderful to teach us all.

1A: Sounds in a coffee ad (ahs)
4A: Sight in a coffee ad (cup)

Coffee, coffee, bam bam! Nice. I have coffee every morning and yet could not see either of these answers at first glance. I guess if you're going to clue "ah's" and you want the clue to pass the dinner-table test, then yes, go with coffee ads, where people respond in ridiculously sexual ways to their mediocre morning brew. I always loved the ads where the poor, beleaguered housewife watches her husband guzzle coffee at a neighbor's house and then tells us (through the power of ESP) that her husband never asks for a second cup at home. That's because you don't know how to take care of your man, you stupid, selfish cow! You know what else? Your husband's sleeping with your neighbor, too. That's right. I guess you should've put a little more effort into your coffee-making, and a little less into shopping, watching soaps, doing your nails, and sneaking snorts from the flask you keep under the seat cushion of the Barcalounger, you sorry specimen of American wifery. Etc.

I would like to add that I am not fond of 7A: Clothe (tog). TOG is a verb, now? When did that happen?

18A: Studs (breeders)

I believe STUD was a recent answer, and now it is a clue. It is a good, versatile word. I don't like that this clue/answer pairing forces me to visualize horse sex, but I'm all for the word STUD, in theory. I would especially like to see it clued thusly: "'Tell me about it, _____'": last spoken words of Grease."

WORDS I DIDN'T KNOW:

2A: Montana college town named after a French port (Havre)
32A: Semidry American white wine (sauterne)
53A: Spinachlike plant (orach)
42D: Depth charge, slangily (ashcan)

I can tell you that my Blogger text editor does not like "semidry," "sauterne," "spinachlike," "orach," or "slangily" (all underlined in red by the editor-bot). I've heard of Le Havre, but not the Montana college town. Which college? O my god, Montana State University - Northern, a satellite campus, I guess, in the farthest northern regions of the state. That's a long way to go for this answer. SAUTERNE is surely some pretentious thing that a lot of hardcore solvers will know, but not me. Hmm, actually, it's pretentious in name only. From answers.com:

SAUTERNE

[soh-TERN; saw-TERN] A generic name used in the United States for inexpensive white wines ranging from dry to semisweet. Such wines aren't anything like the famous French sauternes (spelled with a final s) and are often simply jug wines made from a variety of mediocre grapes.

I would not willingly eat anything called ORACH. Unless I were in LVOV, where it's probably a staple. All I know about ASHCAN is that it's the name given to a school of realist painters working in New York City around the turn of last century. They did not paint submarines or the destruction thereof, as far as I know.

56A: Spanish "she" (ella)

Ella is also a beautiful name. Of someone I know. [wink]. And a great jazz singer.

7D: Kind of shell (taco)

Mmmm, timely.

26D: Huey, Dewey and Louie, e.g. (trio)

Jeez, I gotta deal with these ducks nearly every week when Sahra and I go to the comic store, and still this answer gave me trouble (made the rookie mistake of assuming the word was a plural ending in "s"). Lately, Sahra is more into all manner of Archie comics than she is into her earlier comics love, Uncle Scrooge. Yesterday she discovered Richie Rich in a back-issues box, and much as that pampered little jerk Richie and the aristocratic values he represents make the bile rise in my throat, I cannot bring myself to stifle Sahra's curiosity. So I bought her a Richie Rich comic. On the plus side, it was only a dollar, and thus a third of what I'd been paying for, say, Uncle Scrooge (who, like Richie, is tremendously wealthy, but has the decency not to sicken us with pretensions to virtue).

55A: Pot over a fire (olla)
61A: Literary inits. (T.S.E.)

Add 'em to the list of Pantheon nominees. OLLA in particular should rank pretty high in the Pantheon, with an insane crossword-frequency-to-language-frequency ratio. UZIS (5D) and SACS (51D) both aspire to Pantheon status, but are currently banned for reasons of violence and grossing me out, respectively.

47D: Part of a bowling game (frame)

Out of respect for my Kiwi wife ("Kiwife!" ... hey, it's better than "fishwife!") and her lovely home town of Dunedin, NZ, I humbly suggest that in the future FRAME be clued like this: "Dunedin-born writer Janet."

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