FRIDAY, Dec. 15, 2006 - Levi Denham

Solving time: not sure; too long

THEME: none

Many colorful long answers make this an impressive puzzle in some ways, but the puzzle gets many points off for cluing an answer with reference to the horrid "Ally McBeal." Not just any answer, either, but a totally obscure answer, especially given how common the answer (RENEE) is. I mean, 4A: Ally's roommate on "Ally McBeal"? Her roommate?! I mean, you'd have to actually watch the show to know that. If "Soprano Fleming" is too easy a clue here, there must be a dozen other RENEEs out there who were Not part of a show that defines everything that was wrong with the 90's. Zellweger? Russo? "Don't Walk Away, _____"? Here are the two things for which "Ally McBeal" will be remembered. A. Callista Flockhart's anorexia, B. Callista Flockhart's improbable marriage to Harrison Ford, C. the creepy dancing baby. OK, that's three things, only one of which actually has to do with the show itself. Remember when FOX aired half-hour recap versions of "Ally McBeal" simply called "Ally?" No, of course you don't. Let us never speak of this show again. Oh, I should add that I misspelled PRIE (22A: "Je vous en _____" ("You're welcome": Fr.)), with a final "S" instead of "E," and thus was left to wonder what kind of idiotic name RENES was - only on "Ally McBeal"! Interesting coincidence: in the Nov. 1 puzzle I posted a grid that also had an error in the answer RENEE. I had ZED instead of ZEE as a cross, and thus ended up with RENDE. A Commenter called my attention to it just today (he, like many of you, from the land-of-six-weeks-behind). Clearly I have a problem with this name.


"STILL SCREAMING!" - these were the words, scrawled in ALL CAPS at the top of a school bus report form that I saw sitting on my daughter's teacher's desk this morning. Apparently one of Sahra's classmates has a ... screaming problem. I've not witnessed this, but if the bus driver's handwriting is any indication, it's serious. Sahra goes to one of these alterna-hippy-no-rules schools that get an interesting mix of brilliant and, er, colorful kids. Sahra thrives there, and the student body is really diverse, especially for a private school in these parts, but you sometimes see behavior there that wouldn't be tolerated for one second in "normal" educational environments. Not often, but sometimes. And nothing dangerous. Just ... yeah, quirky. Of course Sahra once whacked a girl with scissors, so she's not above occasional bad behavior herself (that sounded worse than it was - perhaps "whacked" is an exaggeration - the "with scissors" part, however, is not). The bus driver's report just reminded me of how the school must look to people from the outside. We're used to certain ... quirks in the kids that would annoy if not alarm the outside world. "STILL SCREAMING!" - "Yeah. He'll do that."

12A: Portrayer of Clouseau's superior, in film (Lom)
16A: She played Eloise in "Mogambo" (Ava)
18A: Tapping target (keg)
12D: Like some resorts (lakeside)

Had a massive problem in the "Bangor" region of the puzzle due to two very plausible wrong answers that I had. Nailed AVA (!) right off the bat (my former Grace Kelly obsession helped here, as there is no other way I would have known what a Mogambo was, let alone who was in it), but I had CAPESIDE instead of LAKESIDE. LAKESIDE is by far the more Google-friendly kind of resort, but CAPESIDE is not without its connections to resorts as well. This gave me COM instead of LOM, which, really, COM, LOM, whatever. Did anyone really know that answer without the crosses. COM and LOM both sound made-up. I also had PEG instead of KEG. Tapping a PEG ... I thought, "sure, that's some kind of construction term ... or something." There appear to be PEGs involved in the tapping of KEGs, which is an odd coincidence. If I'd just played the alphabet game a little more diligently, I would have seen the superior "K" - but I was tired and CAPESIDE seemed so right. Trivia - CAPESIDE is the setting for TV's "Dawson's Creek."

23A: "Take _____," 1985 #1 hit (On Me)

Super Gimme! Along with AVA and (I thought) PRIS (which ended up being PRIE), this was one of the very few gimmes I had in the puzzle. This song, and especially video, was hugely influential on my budding teenage musical sensibilities. I'm going to put it on iTunes right now (yeah, I own it). In fact, this song is the video to me. Can't hear it without thinking about the awesome, black+white, comic-book style video. The sweeping, plaintive, romantic pop song was Very appealing to me. For some reason, this synth-pop band from the frozen climes of ... what was it, Norway? Finland? Anyway, they spoke to my tortured teenage soul. Sad, yes, but no less true. A-Ha = "The most successful musical property to arise from Norway," according to their official website. Which begs the question - what's the second most successful musical property to arise from Norway? I think it might be this chick: If so, she really, Really needs a new haircut if she wants to pass the likes of A-Ha. Has anyone told her her name sounds like a carpet fiber? P.S. look at her name and explain to me why she has not appeared in the grid before. I mean, I've not really heard of her, but Google says lots of folks have.

33A: Prominent Quebec City daily, with "Le" (Soleil)

It was a bad day for my French. SOLEIL is a basic, French I word meaning "sun," but for some reason, not only could I not see it, but for a time I actually wanted SOMEIL here - first of all, it's a misspelling of SOMMEIL, and second, SOMMEIL means "sleep," and what kind of paper would name itself "The Sleep?" Seriously, I tried to justify it by telling myself it must be an evening paper, like many cities used to have. Old-fashioned + quaint = Canadian.

37A: It turns out looies: Abbr. (OCS)

Speaking of Canada ... oh you'll love this. I thought "Looie ... that's a Canadian coin, right? So ... what do Canadians call their treasury?" And when I ended up with OCS, I just assumed it was an abbreviation where the "C" stood for "Canada" or "Canadian," like, let's see, "Office of Canadian Spending" or "Organization of Canadian States" or something. Looking up OCS, though, I got Officer Candidacy School. Puzzled by the apparent abbreviation coincidence, I Googled "looie" and got ... not much. Then it occurred to me that the coin might actually be called a "loonie," so I Googled it and bingo. A weird, dark alley that I and I alone wandered into - and did not come out of until about ten minutes ago. Oh, I should probably add that "looie" is short for Lieutenant.

46A: Air Tahiti _____ (carrier to Papeete) [nui]

Oh, carrier to Papeete, you say. Thanks for the hint! Now if you could only tell me Where Papeete Is and How That Narrows Things Down For Me ... I would still be uncertain about the rightness of this answer if I hadn't seen it before, as a component of a sign-off in e-mails my wife used to send me when we were a-courtin'. AROHANUI is a Maori word meaning, literally, "big love," but used as the equivalent of "all my love" or "love you" ... that is what you were saying, right honey?

39D: Convention roll call (states)
47A: Soon to be heard (on the docket)

This is the unlikely location of my first real toehold in this puzzle. After I'd entered my gimmes and gotten nowhere, I tentatively printed STATES in for 39D. The second "T" in states is the terminal letter in 47A, and for some reason, even though I had no other letters and the answer is 11 letters long, I knew it instantly with an eerie certainty that panned out. I think 1A: Threatening to sue, maybe (scare tactic), which I could not get initially, put the court system in my mind, so that when I saw saw "soon to be heard," its legal context was readily apparent to me. Since we're down here in the SE, I want to know why SEA SERPENTS (52A) are "Mysterious swimmers." What's mysterious about them? I guess sailors have reported seeing such things, but they ... don't exist? Like the Loch Ness Monster? Two more questions: did you have to make the LIOTTA clue as obscure as @#$#-ing possible ("No Escape" star, 1994)? "Hey, remember 'No Escape'?!" "uh ... no." That's one of the worst, most banal and forgettable movie titles in all of movie history - although if you Google "No Escape," the movie is the first thing to come up. This, disturbingly, is the second thing. Was the LIOTTA movie about prison rape? I forget. Or rather, I don't know, because I, like the rest of the world, Never Saw It. Last question: are there really applications that have a line marked "SIGN HERE" (32D: Line on an application)? I've seen little SIGN HERE post-it notes that accountants and what not affix to contracts and other paperwork. But don't applications usually just say SIGNATURE?

THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW

Lots. 3D: Charlotte _____ (Amalie) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. Virgin Islands. I, of course, wanted RAE. 44D: Gonitis target (knee) was new to me. The answer was totally inferrable, but Gonitis ... let's just say that I was happy the answer was KNEE, because it sounds like it afflicts a more sensitive region of the body. Insert AD after the N and you'll see what I mean. 21A: Adder's-tongue or Venus's-hair (fern) is also new to me, as is virtually every botanical clue / answer I come across, as I know squat about things that grow out of the earth. I do know something about Milton, but it still took me a bit to get 20A: "Where _____ was thickest fight": Milton (erst), mainly because the answer is pretty ordinary and uneventful. Knew it was one syllable (god bless Milton's reasonably regular meter) but thought it was ONCE. I was close, in sense if not in actual letters.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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WEDNESDAY, Dec. 6, 2006 - Levi Denham

Solving time: 9:43

THEME: "Land bridge" - theme answers are all two-word phrases, wherein the words in the phrase are spanned or "bridged" by the word TERRA, Latin for "land," e.g. 41A: Intruder in Mr. McGregor's garden (PeTERRAbbit)

Felt like I flailed around inside this puzzle quite a bit, but it got done somehow. Once again, I did not see the theme until I was finished. Not only that, I thought for sure, as I was solving the puzzle, that the theme had something to do with double letters. The double letters in the two long Down answers (HUBBA HUBBA and INTERMEZZO) caused me mistakenly to believe that they were somehow theme answers as well - throw in the double letters in ESTELLE, MATT, ABAA, WHIRRS, RAZZ, DO OVER, etc. and you can (sort of) see the basis of my misapprehension. In fact the theme description, LANDBRIDGE, was about the last answer to fall, first, because I just could not think of what the clue, "Continental connection," could be getting at, and second, because I had ROAD TAR as a cross coming down (instead of the correct 43D: Track foundation (road bed)), putting "T" where the "B" should be in LANDBRIDGE, so I lost time somewhere in there pondering what LANDT- could be. Also, for a time, had OUTERBANKS where OUTERRANKS (17A) should have been, bogging me down a bit in the NW. "Land bridge" is a very cute theme, with which I have one major quibble (discussed below). Plus the grid in general is fun and lively: I especially like how PEORIA (14A: Illinois River city) stands in 180-degree rotational symmetrical relationship to EAST L.A. (64A: Calif. barrio locale). Nice geographical dissonance.

15D: "_____ tu," aria sung by Renato (Eri)

I just got through saying, in a very recent commentary, that ERI TU (and its component parts) is klassic krosswordese that I haven't seen much of since the Maleska era. And yet here it is again. Can we put this one back in the vault for a while. Otherwise it will get a taste for freedom and start talking about "rights" and demanding representation and what not. Back in the Pantheon basement with you, ERI TU. If I had my way, you'd have lots of opera company (see LOTTE, LILLI, etc.). Glad to see 32D: Perfume name (Estée) back in the grid, if only because she is on my short list of Pantheon nominees (which I will publish shortly) and I was beginning to get a little worried that my faith in her was ill-founded. She couldn't have timed her appearance any better. Not that thrilled that she was made to run parallel to the similar-sounding 42D: English-born centenarian actress Winwood (Estelle), but whatever. I was also not so thrilled to see ESTEE's perfume counterpart, 3D: Perfume name (Coty), in the puzzle. In general, I don't like repeat clues. It's as if construction inelegance (two very similar items in same puzzle, e.g. ULNAS and RADII) is trying to pass itself off as intentional trickery. Feels cheap. Cheap like COTY perfume.

31A (THEME): Hip-hop subgenre (gangsTERRAp)

Here is the one part of the puzzle that bothers me. The proper term is GANGSTA RAP. Now, there is no question that GANGSTER RAP is, technically, legitimate fill, as I find many sources that list that term as a variant, but GANGSTER RAP is basically what white people who don't like, don't listen to, and don't respect rap in general will call any rap that scares them (which is to say, most rap). This is one of the reasons that the -ER bugs me. It smacks of white condescension. Not that much so-called "gangsta rap" isn't total crap and worthy of all kinds of criticism ... and not that you can't find the term "gangstER rap" on t-shirts, albums, and what not, if you look. But if you Google ["gangsta rap"], you get 1.52 million hits. Do the same for ["gangster rap"], and not only do you get just 243K hits, but many of those mention "gangster" only by way of conceding it as a variant. I know you need the -ER for your theme, so fine. But most people who actually listen to rap would not refer to this "subgenre" as "gangstER." There is at least one other word I can think of where the difference between an -ER and an -A ending can make a substantive difference in terms of meaning, but it's not a word this white man is inclined to put anywhere in his blog.

39A: Simple rhyme scheme (abaa)

It's simple alright. So simple that I Never See it. What is in ABAA? I had ABAB and ABBA here before the Down cross 35D: Of the flock (laic) forced me to concede this weird-looking scheme. The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, the Air Barrier [?] Association of America, and the Australian Business Aircraft Association all want to know what's wrong with them? What are they, chopped liver?

40A: Arctic explorer John (Rae)

First: wow, there's another way to clue RAE!? That's great news for RAE, which could find its Pantheon status bumped up if this new (to me) clue leads to more grid appearances. Second: Who? RAE was a Scottish physician who explored Canada's arctic in the mid-19th century. He made contact with the Inuit. Not sure how that went. Whoa - he was investigating the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin Expedition, and discovered evidence that members of that expedition had, in desperation, resorted to cannibalism. This was not news anyone wanted to hear. Best factoid about RAE: he at one point in his life accepted a position as surgeon in the best-named place on earth: Moose Factory, Ontario.

Two other very modern answers are gunning for Pantheon status here as well: 44A: Singer DiFranco (Ani) and 54D: Part of a home entertainment system (HDTV) are increasingly common fill, or seem to be, to this solver. Ending in "I" is a big help for ANI (about a quarter of the words on my soon-to-be-released nominees list end in "I") and HDTV gets you that great cavalcade of consonants. [late addendum: in this discussion of potentially Pantheonic words, I totally neglected to mention poor AGAR over there at 27D. Good ol' reliable AGAR. So common, so overlooked. I wouldn't know an AGAR if it bit me. To me, a "thickening agent" would be ... well, if Roger Moore had let himself go by the time he made "Octopussy," he could have been a thickening agent. But he was a well-appointed hunk of suave manhood in that movie, as in all his movies, so the term doesn't apply.]

60D: 1990's Indian P.M. (Rao)

Another stumper. I really should get out and / or read more. A "statesman, scholar, and polyglot" (wicked good word for an epitaph), PV Narasimha Rao took over India's Congress following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May of 1991. He died in late 2004. I have nowhere to go with this entry. It's more of a public service announcement to the informationally-challenged solvers of the world, such as myself. John RAE and Prime Minister RAO - tuck them away in your puzzling ruck sack for limited but possibly significant future use.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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