.png)
Wilt Chamberneezy more familiarly - SATURDAY, Jun. 13 2009 — Neighbor of Kaliningrad / Papuan port in W.W. II fighting / Dogpatch possessive
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Constructor: Barry C. Silk
Relative difficulty: Challenging
THEME: none
Word of the Day: MAGNETIC EQUATOR (35A: Line on which a dip needle is horizontal) — (also called "Aclinic Line")
n.
an imaginary line on the surface of the earth, close and approximately parallel to the equator, connecting all those points over which a magnetic needle shows no inclination from the horizontal.
I can't lie — this puzzle smacked me around pretty badly. Had trouble getting started at all, and then solved in what felt like alternating flashes of ALERTNESS (64A: Opposite of torpor) and torpor. Can you have a flash of torpor? I'd hit dead zones, and years would go by, and then all of a sudden something would click and an entire quadrant would be done. Then another dead zone. The biggest, deadest zone of all was the NW, where I essentially hanged myself with more wrong guesses than I've ever ventured in an entire puzzle, let alone in one little quadrant. Read 3D: When 58-Across occurs, then read 58A: Crowing cue, and immediately got SUN UP. Then I thought, "OK, when does SUN UP occur?" Problem — by this point I already had deadly mistakes in place. Misread 4D: Bond analysts' field?: Abbr. as [Body analysts' field] and wrote in ANAT. Then crossed it with what I felt was a perfectly good answer to 19A: Fashionable meeting place? — TENT. This left me with only one possible answer for [When SUN UP occurs]: MORNIN'! Oh, man, just misreading that stupid bond clue had a horrific domino effect that cost me untold minutes. Never mind that I thought Louisiana State won the first FINAL FOUR, then later SUGAR BOWL (it's PEACH BOWL) (1A: Louisiana State won the first one in 1968). And I thought I remembered charcoal wood coming from a LARCH TREE (it's ALDER) (17A: Source of charcoal wood). Actually considered FLAT TV as a possible answers for 1D: High-definition video display (plasma). Never heard of Kaliningrad, and since it sounded like a city, I didn't consider that its "neighbor" would be a country, LITHUANIA (15A: Neighbor of Kaliningrad).
Kaliningrad is an exclave, used here as an example in this definition of "exclave":
.JPG)
My grid progression went: center - NE - center - SW - center - NW ..... time passed ..... and finally SE, which went down quickest of all (just as my errors in the NW had a bad domino effect, so having that "Z" in place in the SE had a good domino effect — threw EZIO PINZA across at 59A: 1950 Tony winner for Best Actor in a Musical and that was pretty much that). Started with the merciful gimme Mies van der ROHE (whom I coincidentally cited by name yesterday in my write-up of the L.A. Times puzzle), which gave me the hilariously clued SHAQ (33A: Wilt Chamberneezy, more familiarly) and FAQS (29D: Newbies are often directed to them). From this little nexus of words, I was able to make out both EQUATOR and SQUARE without knowing the rest of either answer (MAGIC SQUARE — 10D: Recreational mathematics construct — isn't very familiar to me, MAGNETIC EQUATOR even less so).
After polishing off the NE, I struggled to open anything up. My big break came when (with nothing in place) I got PTUI (32D: Spittoon sound), YEP (31A: "I reckon so") and AYN (27D: First name in objectivism) in quick succession. Then, with just one "E" and one "P" in place, I got KNEE-SLAPPER (23D: Good one). I would say that that was my biggest break in the whole puzzle. The tipping point from "o man I'm so dead" to "OK, I can do this" (even though the epic struggle in the NW still lay ahead).
Overall, the puzzle felt very solidly built, with only I'LL TREAT hurting my ears at all (12D: "This one's on me"). The phrase is "MY TREAT." A good clue for ILL TREAT would have been [Def candy]. No, not really.
Bullets:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
I can't lie — this puzzle smacked me around pretty badly. Had trouble getting started at all, and then solved in what felt like alternating flashes of ALERTNESS (64A: Opposite of torpor) and torpor. Can you have a flash of torpor? I'd hit dead zones, and years would go by, and then all of a sudden something would click and an entire quadrant would be done. Then another dead zone. The biggest, deadest zone of all was the NW, where I essentially hanged myself with more wrong guesses than I've ever ventured in an entire puzzle, let alone in one little quadrant. Read 3D: When 58-Across occurs, then read 58A: Crowing cue, and immediately got SUN UP. Then I thought, "OK, when does SUN UP occur?" Problem — by this point I already had deadly mistakes in place. Misread 4D: Bond analysts' field?: Abbr. as [Body analysts' field] and wrote in ANAT. Then crossed it with what I felt was a perfectly good answer to 19A: Fashionable meeting place? — TENT. This left me with only one possible answer for [When SUN UP occurs]: MORNIN'! Oh, man, just misreading that stupid bond clue had a horrific domino effect that cost me untold minutes. Never mind that I thought Louisiana State won the first FINAL FOUR, then later SUGAR BOWL (it's PEACH BOWL) (1A: Louisiana State won the first one in 1968). And I thought I remembered charcoal wood coming from a LARCH TREE (it's ALDER) (17A: Source of charcoal wood). Actually considered FLAT TV as a possible answers for 1D: High-definition video display (plasma). Never heard of Kaliningrad, and since it sounded like a city, I didn't consider that its "neighbor" would be a country, LITHUANIA (15A: Neighbor of Kaliningrad).Kaliningrad is an exclave, used here as an example in this definition of "exclave":
An exclave is strip of land that belongs to a political entity (like a country or a region) but that is not connected to it by land (excluding islands). The strip of land is surrounded by other political entities. A good example is Kaliningrad Oblast (the region around the Russian city Kaliningrad). It belongs to the Russian Federation, but is separated from the rest of that country by territory belonging to Lithuania and Poland. (wikipedia)Anyway, back to the NW. No, on second thought, that's about enough of that.
.JPG)
My grid progression went: center - NE - center - SW - center - NW ..... time passed ..... and finally SE, which went down quickest of all (just as my errors in the NW had a bad domino effect, so having that "Z" in place in the SE had a good domino effect — threw EZIO PINZA across at 59A: 1950 Tony winner for Best Actor in a Musical and that was pretty much that). Started with the merciful gimme Mies van der ROHE (whom I coincidentally cited by name yesterday in my write-up of the L.A. Times puzzle), which gave me the hilariously clued SHAQ (33A: Wilt Chamberneezy, more familiarly) and FAQS (29D: Newbies are often directed to them). From this little nexus of words, I was able to make out both EQUATOR and SQUARE without knowing the rest of either answer (MAGIC SQUARE — 10D: Recreational mathematics construct — isn't very familiar to me, MAGNETIC EQUATOR even less so).After polishing off the NE, I struggled to open anything up. My big break came when (with nothing in place) I got PTUI (32D: Spittoon sound), YEP (31A: "I reckon so") and AYN (27D: First name in objectivism) in quick succession. Then, with just one "E" and one "P" in place, I got KNEE-SLAPPER (23D: Good one). I would say that that was my biggest break in the whole puzzle. The tipping point from "o man I'm so dead" to "OK, I can do this" (even though the epic struggle in the NW still lay ahead).
Overall, the puzzle felt very solidly built, with only I'LL TREAT hurting my ears at all (12D: "This one's on me"). The phrase is "MY TREAT." A good clue for ILL TREAT would have been [Def candy]. No, not really.
Bullets:
- 16A: Recipient of much praise (Allah) — "recipient" sounds so much less grand than the answer it clues. Nice.
- 18A: Mondavi competitor (Gallo) —Martini Rossi Mondavi Gallo .... random wine names I learned in childhood. I briefly thought Mondavi was a watch brand.
22A: Abyssinian language? (mew) — I can't even remember all the ways I imagined this was supposed to be tricky. CATness of "Abyssinian" never occurred to me. I think I considered "SSS" because it's a hissing sound and that's the sound the fallen angels in hell (the abyss?) make in Milton.- 23A: Like the Angkor ruins (Khmer) — K--ER = ???? for several seconds, and then AHA.
- 28A: Indy Jones and others (profs) — Indy Jones and me (for now). Indiana Jones is a professor of archaeology, I believe.
- 30A: Dungeons & Dragons player option (elf) — HA ha. Sadly, a gimme.
- 34A: Olympic sprinter _____ Boldon (Ato) — really? Holy moly, he and this ALANA person (11D: "Law & Order" actresss _____ de la Garza) can take a slow boat to LAE, as far as I'm concerned (9D: Papuan port in W.W. II fighting).
- 52A: Splinter, to Woody Woodpecker (niece) — got it off the terminal "E," but have Never heard of her.
- 57A: City name part that's Dutch for "hedge" (Haag) — I just gaped at the phrase "city name part" for a while... I don't know any cities with that name part.
- 2D: Astronaut Collins (Eileen) — another reason the NW was a disaster. Don't know her.
- 5D: Family name in a Lew Wallace novel (Hur) — more NW trouble; forgot entirely who Lew Wallace was.
- 8D: Dish akin to cotoletta alla milanese (Wienerschnitzel) — solved it from grouping of letters in the middle.
- 57D: Dogpatch possessive (his'n) — and the puzzle dominance of "Li'l Abner" continues unabated...
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
