1939 Giraudoux play / FRI 8-13-10 / Homo found in 1891 / Chéri novelist 1920 / 1898 Emile Zola letter / Fangorn Forest race / ABC newsman Potter

Constructor: Manny Nosowsky

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none


Word of the Day: "ONDINE" (10D: 1939 Giraudoux play) —

Ondine is a play of Jean Giraudoux , created on 27 April 1939 at the Athenaeum Theatre .

It is the tale Undine (1811) of the German Romantic La Motte Fouqué (1777-1843) that inspired Jean Giraudoux's Ondine. The theme of the water nymph (engineering or water nymph in Germanic mythology) who seeks to incarnate in the human is a typical fairy tale, and is also found in Celtic myth of Melusine . But whereas in these traditions, the mermaid wants to win in this human form more soul or accepts an old curse, Giraudoux's heroine loses its supernatural attributes of love. The playwright found his chance to represent the relations impossible for man and woman, in a theatrical fantasy where fantasy mingles with the rigor of classical tragedy. (hilariously google-translated version of a French wikipedia entry)

• • •

These kinds of grids aren't my favorite—the ones that essentially give you four mini-puzzles, each one a white chunk of intersecting 6-to-7-letter answers. Fill usually isn't too spiffy, and the entertainment value of the puzzle lies in a. the struggle, and b. the clues. Clue quality is Really important in this kind of puzzle. Today's clues are mostly good—heavy on the "?"-type clue, but that's what you should expect for a Friday. Mr. Nosowsky is a Legendary constructor—not as prolific now as he once was, but still much admired (even revered). This one seems to underutilize his talents—could've been by anyone. Hard to show off when you don't have any answers longer than 8 letters, unless your fill is original and remarkably clean. Today's fill is fine, but not memorable—unless you call putting ON on top of ON and doubling UP and doubling ONE memorable. Actually, the NW is kind of beautiful. Literary, anthropological, sporty, with mostly interesting words (ENTS and USENET notwithstanding). The rest of the puzzle is just OK. REWIRE, REDYED. ADOPTER / REAPERS / SMEARER (in one quadrant?!). I don't know. There's just not much to say about this one. It's solid. A nice, toughish diversion. I've seen grids like this done far, far worse.



I somewhat cheated in that I was pondering 1A: Homo found in 1891 out loud, trying to decide between SAPIENS and ERECTUS (both fit!), when I got the "J" and started sounding it out, and my wife (sitting next to me on couch) said "oh yeah, JAVANESE ... JAVA MAN ..." And there it was. Changed terminal "S" to "N" which gave me NAPE which meant I had the corner boxed in. From there to SW, which was tougher. For 45A: Brown, then red, then brown again, maybe (REDYED), I had SEARED (I was imagining a cross-section of meat). Only after I pulled that (very clever, I thought) answer did the DU- at 31D: Entertainer with the gag reply "What elephant?" give me DURANTE. Only mystery down here was 48D: ABC newsman Potter and others (NEDS). Never heard of him. Through the middle to the NE—the easiest section of all, if only because SMEARER (25A: Dirty campaigner) and DID TIME (9D: Was a joint tenant?) went straight in. Took a while to finish the puzzle off in the SE. Wanted BATISTA for KENNEDY (40D: Castro's "enemy to which we had become accustomed"). Still can't really buy POWER ON (49A: Start up, as electronic equipment) as a verb. I might POWER UP my computer, but do I POWER ON it? It must be legit, but yuck. ANY RATE was my anchor down here (38D: Whatever happens, after "at"). Last answer in the grid: MORONIC (36D: Dumb).

Bullets:

• 19A: "Chéri" novelist, 1920 (COLETTE) — Crossing the work of another French writer (1D: 1898 Emile Zola letter=>"J'ACCUSE"). Nice.
  
• 26A: Fangorn Forest race (ENTS) — 9y0 daughter just started reading "The Hobbit." Wife (a total Tolkien dork) is soooo excited.
  
• 2D: 1953 A.L. M.V.P. who played for the Indians (AL ROSEN) — his last name makes him one of the crossworthiest bygone baseball M.V.P.s. Put him in a grid once, and realized that that "1953 A.L. M.V.P." was always going to be in the clue about him. Thanks, brain, for tucking that bit of trivia away for me.
  
• 12D: Clerical clipping (TONSURE) — had almost every letter before I saw the clue, which is too bad, bec. I think I'd have nailed it with no letters in place. Had to think a lot about clerics in grad school, and some details stuck.
• 37D: Company whose logo is a lantern (COLEMAN) — because they make ... lanterns. Actually, all kinds of camping gear. First sentence at their website reads: "It was the first product we created, so it stands to reason that our logo is a lantern." My favorite COLEMAN is Gary.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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Something once bundled with Microsoft products — FRIDAY, Aug. 7 2009 — Dinah's avenger in bible / Businessman/entertainer once mayor Bridgeport Conn

[Due to technical problems (I'm on a computer that is not my own...), I'm stealing crosswordfiend's grid today. Thanks, Amy]

Constructor: Manny Nosowsky

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging 

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Mount PALOMAR (51A: Mount from which people can see far away) — A peak, 1,868.4 m (6,126 ft) high, of southern California northeast of San Diego. It is the site of an observatory with one of the world's largest reflecting telescopes. (answers.com)

Nosowsky puzzles are generally dazzling, but this one felt flat to me. Stacking fifteens certainly makes the grid impressively daunting, but there was no "wow" factor to any of the long answers, or any of the answers in general. In fact, the cluing seems particularly dry and lazy today. Lots of single-word clues. Facts. Lots of facts. Clued as facts. Trivia. It's not a terrible puzzle by a longshot — extremely competent. The grid is very cleanly filled, esp. for a puzzle with such a low word count (Mr. Nosowsky is one of the few people on the planet who can fill low-word-count puzzles in ways that don't make me wince). But there was a dryness to the whole thing that was disappointing.

Bottom half of this went much more quickly than the top. I just flailed around up top at first, with nothing coming for me at all. I finally tried FLIGHTS for 14D: Ascents, which was wrong, but the "T" got me ACETO (27A: Vinegar: Prefix), which got me started. Then I saw the 24A: _____ Fein clue (Sinn) — one of the few outright gimmes in the puzzle — which allowed me to ditch FLIGHTS (for what, I didn't know — didn't come back and get ASCENTS until near the very end). 

Got SUNBURST shortly thereafter (30A: Sudden light seen through the clouds), which, along with 'SCUSE ME? (24D: "Beg pardon," in casual talk), is one of the only answers I really liked. I botched a lot of little answers in this one. I had ABLE for ABLY and NEXT for NEAT. The two 3s flanking ANIMALS (Cracker shapes) up top were the very last answer I got, as I could not make sense of their clues. G.E.D. ended up being a nice little revelation (20A: Substitute acquired by about half a million people a year: Abbr.). I cannot say the same for TOE (18A: Important part for a jig). I tried and tried to make sense of this. Thought it might be nautical but then realized that was JIB. All I can think is that TOE is related to dancing a JIG. If so ... man, that's bad. Say it ain't so.

Bullets:

• 1A: "The loneliest guy in town" (Maytag repairman) — per old commercials. Or maybe he's still a fixture on TV. Maybe I just zap the ads he's in. This seemed lazy cluing to me. See also 39A: "Mother of believers" (Ayesha). Quotation with no context. Prefab clue. 
  

• 26A: City where Einstein developed his special theory of relativity (Bern) — I had BONN. That's a city, right? Yes. Bonn's German. BERN's Swiss.
  
• 34A: 1970s-'80s sitcom setting (Mel's) — pretty much a gimme for me, though again I'm kind of surprised at the lack of context. Clue feels dull and unimaginative.
  
• 35A: Using high-flown language (poetical) — the very word POETICAL is high-flown. We lesser beings tend to use the word POETIC. See also Ironic/Ironical.
  
• 43A: "Bonne _____!" (French cry on January 1) ("Année") — another lonely gimme for me.
  
• 48A: "Say _____" (1940 Glenn Miller hit) ("Si Si") — More like "No! No!" Pre-war "hits" are not my specialty.
  
• 57A: Took flak for something one said, say (got into hot water) — my lone love among today's long answers.
  
• 1D: Maximum, slangily (mostest) — know the word only from the phrase "the hostess with the MOSTEST."
  
• 2D: For whose benefit "the quality of mercy is not strain'd" in Shakespeare (Antonio) — did not understand the clue. Had SHYLOCK.
  
• 3D: Capital of Armenia (Yerevan) — never heard of it or seen it until today. A world capital. Doesn't anything newsworthy happen there?
  
• 6D: Some raiders, informally (G-men) — terminal "s" that I put in here really messed things up. 
  
• 9D: Businessman/entertainer who was once mayor of Bridgeport, Conn. (P.T. Barnum) — wanted JERRY SPRINGER, but that was Cincinnati. 
  
• 12D: Stephen of "Stuck," 2007 (Rea) — a gimme, though I've never even heard of the movie.
  
• 36D: 30.48 centimeters (one foot) — another lazy-feeling clue. Did a robot write these?
  
• 37D: Something once bundled with Microsoft products (Encarta) — once I changed PAID to REC'D (47A: Office stamp), this one came into view. ENCARTA is an encyclopedia.
  
• 48D: 1972 U.S./U.S.S.R. pact (Salt I) — so quoth the robot. [robot voice] "This Clue Is Certified Factual"
  
• 51D: Bank chains hold them (pens) — now here's an attempt at cleverness. Yeah, that works pretty well. And not even the need for a "?" in the clue. Interesting.
  
• 41D: Center of a roast (honoree) — was this supposed to be misdirective. Maybe it's bec. Comedy Central has been flogging their roast of Joan Rivers a lot lately, but I knew what "roast" was meant here instantly.
  
• 42D: "Jeopardy" fodder (answers) — interesting use of word "fodder."  Contestants = livestock. I like it.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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Old swing digger - FRIDAY May 22 2009 - M Nosowsky (Lens grinding Dutch philosopher / Celestial neighbor of Scorpius / 100ths of a krona)

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Words of the Day:

• FWIW (10D: E-mail disclaimer) => "For what it's worth..."
• TMI (49A: "I didn't need to know all that!," informally) => "Too much information!"

An old-fashioned beat-down. I took one look at the puzzle constructor's name and jumped right in, thinking, "this should be fun ... no, wait, I mean hard ... I mean ... oh ... oh, man ... O DEAR (47D: "_____ Cassio!": Othello) ... why is my puzzle so blank?" I probably got a little psyched out, as Manny Nosowsky is not only legendary for wildly inventive and thoughtful and entertaining puzzles, he's also legendary for tough ones. This took me twice as long as last week's Friday, for instance. In fact, after a good handful of minutes, I had the NE corner done, but virtually nothing else. I was literally gawking at the rest of the grid, where all I could muster were sad, thin strands of answers here and there. A wisp of L RON (48A: Hubbard of science fiction), a smattering of ACEY (51D: _____-deucy), a hint of RETAG (26D: Change the price on), a trace of OBIE (that one was wrong - turned out to be TONY -> 46A: Accolade for a great play). I had PHINEAS and CO-STAR locked down in the NW, only a. the answer was PHILEAS ... and b. even with those two answers in place, none of the nearby answers seemed to want to come out of hiding (I just discovered that my wife made the PHINEAS-for-PHILEAS error too - I wonder how common that misconception is). I couldn't even make sense of the clue for 1D: Old swing digger. Yikes. Sounded like it wanted a construction machine, only there was already a construction machine in the SE (43D: LOADER), though I had no idea which kind yet. So ... flailing. Genuine concern. Something like panic.

And then, out of the clear blue sky, a bolt from the Crossword Gods - PILTDOWN MAN came crashing down upon me (4D: Its teeth were actually a chimpanzee's). PILTDOWN MAN is a century-old paleontological hoax that I learned about ... from crosswords. I had to look it up and blog about it once because it was an entirely new concept to me. So I was very pleased to be rescued, today, by something intimately tied to my crossword-solving past - to past ignorance, in fact. Made me feel like a good solver again. The puzzle went down in slow but steady fashion from there. [Old swing digger] = HEPCAT! Wow. "Hey, man, dig that old swing ... it looks pretty rickety. Hey, I dare you to swing on it! Crazy!" And [_____ bread] => RAISIN!?!?! Thanks for the help, clue. Really narrows things down. Yeesh. Rough. The horrible irony about struggling so much in the NW is that the very first word that entered my head upon reading 1A: Magazine since 1850 was HARPER'S! I mean, I'm a @#$#ing subscriber. And yet I didn't / wouldn't write it in. Maybe because I couldn't get any of the short Downs to work off of it. Never heard of the "Port Huron Statement" (7D: Port Huron Statement grp. => SDS), barely know about ELEA (5D: Home of Parmenides) and thought REAR (6D: Can) should be STIR, from the phrase IN STIR, meaning in jail, i.e. in the "can" - not to be confused with INSTR. (8D: Music producer: Abbr.).

Bullets:

• 15A: Accepted PayPal payments, e.g. (e-tailed) - by far the worst thing about this puzzle, in that I didn't actively dislike *anything* else. It's enough that I have to accept the concept of E-TAIL. But the verbing? Oh, the verbing!
• 23D: Ocean, in Mongolian (Dalai) - like HARPER'S, guessed it straight off, but refused to trust my instincts.
• 29D: "Under Two Flags" novelist, 1867 (Ouida) - wouldn't have believed a person with such a name existed had it not been for prior crossword experience with this woman. OUIDA is the pen name of Maria Louise Ramé. "Under Two Flags" is about the British in Algeria.
  
• 18A: Lens-grinding Dutch philosopher (Spinoza) - no idea he ground lenses, but I had the "IN" part of this one, so he was easy to uncover.
• 23A: Scandalmonger's love (dirt) - one of the handful of gimmes in this puzzle.
• 24A: Goal-oriented superstar? (Pele) - it annoys me when something is a gimme but I don't even see it until I have nearly all the letters. Waste of a gimme!
• 25A: Ravel's "Bolero" calls for one (tenor sax) - I don't recall this at all. Must listen ... now.

• 32A: It may be striking (union) - had the -ION and could come up with nothing. The only word I could even think of that fit was SCION. Ugh.
• 37A: Celestial neighbor of Scorpius (Norma) - that's a very uncelestial sounding name. No offense to the NORMAs out there.
• 55A: It's heard before many a face-off ("O, Canada") - that's good.
• 56A: Sluggard's problem (inertia) - the only word that would come to mind here for a while was ENNUI ...
• 11D: Consistently defeat, in slang (own) - the first thing I entered in the NE. I wavered for a moment, thinking the answer might be PWN - just discovered that the Wikipedia entry for "PWN" has been nominated for deletion, and there's a long, occasionally interesting thread where people argue about the merits of "PWN" as an entry. See it here.
• 12D: It was NE of Bechuanaland (Rhodesia) - heard of the answer, Never heard of the place in the clue.
• 20D: Cardinal that looks the same when viewed upside down (sixty-nine) - oh, "cardinal" number ... ok. Man, you really want to make this difficult, don't you?
• 24D: Of fraternities and sororities collectively (pan-Hellenic) - took me way, way too long to get, considering I've spent most of my adult life in close proximity to fraternities and sororities.
  
• 27D: World's first carrier with a transpolar route (SAS) - Scandinavian, so that makes sense.
• 34D: Where pit stops are made to get fuel? (coal mine) - cool clue. I had COAT MINE for a second, as I mistakenly thought that ETON had the sports teams called the Phoenix (45A: ELON).
• 36D: Provider or wearer of some hand-me-downs (sis) - I wrote it in, but only tentatively, mainly because there is nothing in the clue signifying abbrev. Also, thought it could be SIB.
• 40D: Stand-in for unnamed others (et alia) - man, cold. No indication of Latinity or anything.
• 42D: It has a twin city in the Midwest (Urbana) - because of LRON (the "R"), I never even considered ST PAUL, which seems the obvious choice.
• 54D: Questionnaire check box option (Mrs.) - like [_____ bread], this could have been a million things.
• 55D: 100ths of a krona (ore) - KRONE/A was once my Word of the Day. I think I mentioned ORE then. Did it help me here? No.

I realize it's hard to tell from the write-up, but I Loved This Puzzle. Not all agonizing struggles are bad.

Signed, bruised, but happy, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Much easier LAT puzzle today - my write-up is here.

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FRIDAY, Apr. 10, 2009 - M Nosowsky (Subject of "Toots" Bob Considine 1969 / Dries as hay / So-so poker holding / Kitchen device first patented 1921)

Relative difficulty: Medium/Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TED - tr.v. Chiefly New England., ted·ded, ted·ding, teds.

To strew or spread (newly mown grass, for example) for drying.

[Middle English tedden.]

REGIONAL NOTE In 15th-century England the verb ted meant to spread newly cut hay to facilitate its drying. In the mid-19th century an American inventor produced a machine to ted the hay automatically and called it a tedder. Since modern English is inclined to make verbs out of nouns meaning implements or machines, the noun tedder became a verb with the same meaning as the original word ted. Tedder, a New England verb, also turns up in those parts of the Midwest that received settlers from New England. (answers.com)

Wow, a Manny Nosowsky puzzle. Haven't seen one of his in (what feels like ages). He's rightly legendary for lively open grids and tough, tough puzzles. Dude's even got his own Wikipedia page (although I guess I could have my own if I just built it - still, cool). He was once one of the more prolific puzzle constructors published in the NYT. I'm glad he's still constructing. It has been a year, almost to the day (April 11, 2008), since a Nosowsky puzzle's been in the NYT, so it was a great pleasure to see his name at the top of the puzzle today. I knew that what followed might be amusing, might be brutal, but would at least be interesting. And competent.

I've spoken before about 15's making a puzzle easier by virtue of their ability to open up entire regions of the puzzle where you might yet have nothing. Today's 15's were actually very tough for me to get into, for two reasons. First, the way in was through a narrow middle passage, which, even when I crossed it, gave me very little indication of what the 15-letter Acrosses might be. Which brings me to the second reason I had trouble. Every 15 is a four-word phrase! The more words in a phrase, the harder it is to parse correctly. I had to work the west side of the puzzle, off the good but educated guess of IPO (23A: News on the bus. page), in order to get the front ends of those 15's and eventually bring them toppling down. INGAS and POETE ended up being gimmes, and throwing all three 15's across left just WRY (40A: Twisted) and SHISH (27A: Spit for a kebab) to get on the east side. So that's what "SHISH" means. Good to know.

My favorite answer in the puzzle, by a mile, is FAT LOT. It rarely happens that the area that gives me the most trouble and makes me feel the most panic ends up being my favorite, but that was the case here. I finally worked 49A: Not much, with "a" down to FATL, but neither of the missing Downs, ODER (51D: _____-Neisse Line) or TEDS (52D: Dries, as hay) was familiar enough to me to be easy. I knew it was ODER or EDER, but neither vowel seemed to make a recognizable word out of FATL--. Started saying FAT phrases, beginning with FAT LIP (some idiomatic phrase I'd never heard of?) and then hit on FAT LOT and I knew it was right. Also knew that I'd seen both ODER-Neisse Line and even TEDS before. The clue doesn't tip you to the irony of "FAT LOT," and the "F" just kept making me want FEW ... something. Excellent.

Awesome coincidence of the day. You may not have seen my late post last night about In-Flight Crosswords. Even if you did, you may not have read all the comments later that night. Well I read them. And because I read them, the SE region was Way Way easier than it would have been otherwise. See, I know SLOE gin fizz, but I do not (or else forgot I did) know RAMOS gin fizz (42D). But because my write-up was about insane fill I'd seen in an in-flight magazine, commenter SethG chimed in with his own set of crazy fill, which included RAMOSE. I said I knew RAMOSE (means "having many branches"), but I typoed RAMOS in my comment, then corrected it. At that point, commenter dk made a comment that began with one simple line: "RAMOS fizz: yum." As is usual with half of what dk writes, I had no idea what he was talking about :) A few minutes later I did today's puzzle. dk's like Yoda or the Sibyl or something. Sounds insane, but is actually prophetic.

Bullets:

• 8A: So-so poker holding (two pair) - I had no idea TWO PAIR was considered "so-so." I went with ONE PAIR, which is certainly more "so-s0" - at least the PAIR part was right.
• 19A: Swallow (engulf) - went with INGEST. How in the !@#@ am I supposed to know 1D: Wife in "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" (Cate)? That has to be one of the more obscure pop culture clues in recent memory. I bet there are people who actually watched that show who couldn't remember her name. FYI, CATE Hennessy was played by KATEY Segal.
• 26A: Ingredient in many toothpastes (mint) - I had the "M" and promptly entered MICA, which happens to be true in some cases. I just looked it up, thinking it would be hilariously wrong. Instead, it's just wrong for this puzzle.
• 38A: Maestro Koussevitzky (Serge) - no idea, but had the "SER-" and made a reasonable guess. The "G" gave me SMOG (33D: Gray blanket), and then bye-bye 15's.
• 57A: Kitchen device first patented in 1921 (toaster) - seems late for some reason.
• 41A: Court figures (centers) - had Ridiculous trouble here. Actually ended up staring at -ENTERS wondering what the answer was. Ran through alphabet. Oh, *that* court. Had legal court and tennis court stuck in head.
• 3D: Chinese dynasty during which trade with Portugal began (Ming) - guess of the "M"; I don't know my dynasties by chronology (yet? ever?)
• 6D: Like the pop group the Pussycat Dolls (all-female) - sadly, super-easy. So many other, puzzle-worthier things are ALL-FEMALE. The Go-Go's. Sleater-Kinney. What was the name of Pinky Tuscadero's gang? The Pinkettes? See. So many.

• 9D: Where to wear in armilla (wrist) - no idea. Weird (appropriate? coincidental?) that "armilla" has "ARM" in it.
• 10D: Platte River tribe (otos) - total crosswordese, but I went with OTOE, making LESS SALT (20A: Food label for the health-conscious) harder to get than it might have otherwise been.
• 25D: Burrow : rabbit :: holt : _____ (otter) - I know "holt" only from the opening of "Canterbury Tales," but I don't remember OTTERs being involved.
• 27D: Subject of "Toots" by Bob Considine, 1969 (Shor) - a gimme if you do a lot puzzles, but possibly torture if you don't. I learned Toots SHOR from crosswords, and the acquaintance has paid off.
• 41D: Slinkys or Magic 8 Balls, once (craze) - went looking for FAD and got a near equivalent. Tricky thing here is *not* to assume a plural.

I am leaving town today and will be out of the country for about a week. Starting tomorrow, you will have an array of guest bloggers providing your commentary, including a very special (and brand new) guest host on Wednesday. I think there is "internet" where I'm going, so I will probably check in from time to time. PuzzleGirl is basically in charge while I'm gone. Enjoy your puzzles and your spring and I'll talk to you again soon.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS I recently joined Twitter, and I have no idea what possible good use I can put it to besides telling people what my dogs are up to at any given moment, but if you are the kind of person who follows people on Twitter, you can "Follow" me via a link in the sidebar. Thanks.

PPS Today's LAT write-up is here.

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FRIDAY, Apr. 11, 2008 - Manny Nosowsky (Singer Jamie with the 2001 #1 country song "When I Think About Angels")

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Very little joy in this puzzle for me this morning. Too many one-word clues, too many non-sparkling answers, too much fill that felt forced or slightly off. The stacked 15s of course look fabulous, but none of those answers is very inspiring or lively. There are two towns no one has heard of in the grid. A mysterious "country" singer, a marginal Ava Gardner role, the most marginal Jackson ... I don't know. It was just tough. I normally adore Nosowsky puzzles. Not so much today.

My first big "ugh" was for PORK BARREL BILLS (17A: Sources of government waste). Now, the PORK BARREL I get - good stuff. But I've never heard the phrase with BILLS on the end. PORK BARREL SPENDING, yes. PORK BARREL POLITICS, of course. I am not kidding when I say that I had PORK BARREL B-LLS and had to run the vowels through my head to get it - thought the Volkswagen was a GTO, but PORK BARREL BOLLS? I had the sad distinction of having the front ends (first three letters) of Every Single 15-letter answer, and yet knowing None of them without getting more crosses. the IMP- at 16A: Have cosmetic surgery, for example gave me IMPROVE ... something, probably, but who knows what. The HAS at the beginning of 1A: Is blessed with many assets, before "him" or "her" could have been anything as far as I was concerned. The NAT at the front of 52A: Gross domestic product producer [pause to wince at the phrase "product producer"] was likely NATIONAL ... something. 55A: Some bank offerings - TRA .... TRADE? TRADING? 56A: At every point - ALL ... well yes, "every" and ALL go together, now what? So, in short, the answers did not snap. Almost every one of them took some laborious hacking, and almost none of them was worth the effort. I think I like TRADITIONAL IRAS the best, and I know I like IMPROVE ON NATURE the least. Most people who get cosmetic surgery done are not "improved" - they just end up looking like people who've had work done in a desperate attempt to look younger. Very sad, really (Unless you have a cleft palate or other deformity, I suppose). I would put up a picture of Michael Jackson or Joan Rivers, but, you know ... the breakfast test. I think the whole plastic surgery issue bugs me most because I have a little girl, and any industry / magazine / man / peer group who suggests to her that she's less than perfect the way she is can well and truly go @#$# themselves. There are too many girls with eating disorders in the world for me to feel very friendly toward the fashion / cosmetic / plastic surgery industry. Thankfully, this is America, and you are free to disregard my feelings completely and do whatever you like to your body. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Two Turkish titles - 18A: Old Turkish title (Bey) and 47A: Turkish title (Agha) - that was pretty cute, especially since we just had BEY last week and it threw so many people. Lots of obscure pop culture today too, including 37A: 1954 title role for Ava Gardner (Contessa) - "The Barefoot CONTESSA" was probably a big deal 54 years ago, but today ... no - and 41A: Singer Jamie with the 2001 #1 country song "When I Think About Angels" (O'Neal). I am willing to bet that the song "When I Think About Angels" would make me actually, physically gag. No offense to angels - all offense to contemporary country. Oh yeah, I'm gagging a little ... plus, she does this horrible Meg Ryan thing with her nose right near the beginning of this video. Yikes. Whoa ... this song features the mandatory dramatic key change at the 2/3 mark. Generic! Watch at your peril.

One uncrossworthy place name per puzzle should be the outer limit. Today we get not only LORAIN (42D: Ohio city on Lake Erie) (!!!!?!?!?!?!) but GARDENA (24D: California city with a horticultural name), which, I assure you, is nowhere. I wanted POMONA, the Roman goddess of fruit. EILAT (23A: Gulf of Aqaba city) was a total @#$#, but at least it's a place that a. one might actually go (tourist town), and b. has been in xword puzzles before. Fun fact: GARDENA and EILAT are almost exactly the same size, population-wise (mid-50K).

I started this puzzle with everyone's favorite three-letter Bowie collaborator, ENO (48A: Onetime Bowie collaborator), which got me RETOTAL (36D: Double-check, as figures) pretty quickly thereafter. I futzed around the California part of the puzzle for a while until I had the weirdest looking partially-filled grid I've had in a while - the entire first three columns were filled, and very little else. A smattering of filled squares around Utah, but that's about it. Struggled mightily to get POLENTA (34D: Alternative to pasta), because I eat pasta a lot and almost never eat POLENTA, and because I always think POLENTA is Spanish (confusing it with PAELLA). SAHARAS (22D: Vast arid wastes) was rough too, as I put in DESERTS quite early. And then ESTHESIA (29A: Sensitivity) ... I just crossed my fingers on that one. And as for NASAL (25A: Like an "eh," maybe) - let's just say I am currently sitting at my desk saying "eh" in a thousand different ways, trying to figure out what this clue is getting at. I guess I can do it NASALly. I have to say that the puzzle loses style points for the NASAL / ESTHESIA stacking. Sounds unpleasant. Also sounds like a horrible malady.

More:

• 21A: Awards for J.K. Rowling and P.L. Travers: Abbr. (OBEs) - no idea who P.L. Travers is, so I thought the answer would be some abbreviated version of SMARTIES.
• 24A: Traps (gins) - yyyyikes. I actually thought GINS before writing in the more sensible PINS (I was thinking wrestling, as I ... often do?).
• 53D: Home of the Salmon River Mtns. (Ida.) - crucial to my unlocking the bottom of this puzzle. Salmon River = NW = guess a state = IDA.
  
• 27A: Something that shouldn't be left open (fly) - as someone who has had his FLY open in front of a lecture hall full of 250 people, I concur. Nice clue.
  
• 28A: Three-time Masters winner Nick (Faldo) - 80s golf names stick in my head for No Good Reason. The Masters just started this week. Some guy named Trevor is atop the leaderboard, and Tiger Woods is tied for 19th.
• 45A: Heads of a tribe? (totem) - another good clue. Nicely done.
• 49A: Fired pitcher? (ceramic) - hmmm. It's cute, but it's weird to clue a medium with a particular object in that medium, without the "e.g."
• 51A: Void, in Vichy (nul) - see also NIL (54D: No score), which is what I (stupidly) wrote in here first.
• 31A: One of the Jackson 5 (Marlon) - Michael, Tito, Jermaine ... and I'm out.
  
• 1D: Connector in a song (hip bone) - great clue/answer.
• 4D: Ham's place (ark) - As in Noah's. Again, great. This puzzle is way better in its small answers (and clues) than in its long ones.
• 10D: Buzzards Bay, e.g. (inlet) - where is this? Aha, Massachusetts. If Cape Cod is a shoe, Buzzards Bay is right behind its Achilles heel.
• 14D: "As You Like It" romantic (Orlando) - not my favorite play. Thankfully, the name came easily (due, in part, to ORLANDO Bloom, who remind me of a Shakespearean "romantic").
• 39D: Words before "a Brain" and "an Animal" in book title ("So Human...") - this wins the "you're kidding, right?" award for the day. Never heard of this ... series? SO HUMAN? Are there degrees of HUMAN now?
• 46D: Book containing a prediction of the coming of the Messiah (Micah) - didn't know this, but had -CAH, so no problem.
• 50D: Thomas _____, artist of the Hudson River School (Cole) - no idea. Live and learn ... and likely, forget.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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TUESDAY, Apr. 1, 2008 - Manny Nosowsky (VINEGAR: PREFIX)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: FEEL LIKE A FOOL (33A: Regret some stupidity ... with a hint to this puzzle's theme) - common expressions with FEEL or FOOL have their vowels reversed, resulting in ridiculous phrases, which are then clued

This felt much more like a Wednesday than a Tuesday puzzle, but I'm not complaining, as the puzzle is really first-rate. Haven't seen Manny Nosowsky's name on a puzzle for a while - it's good to see Will bring out (one of) the best to handle a special "holiday" puzzle (is April Fool's Day considered a "holiday" if no one gets off work?). I rated the puzzle "Medium-Challenging," but that's more from a speed perspective (at least for me). It's entirely doable - there were just a number of snags that kept me from flying through the puzzle in my normal Tuesday time. The theme phrases themselves tended to be what held me back, as only a couple of them came easily. I had the most trouble with 23D, FOOLING OKAY, as FEELING OKAY does not seem like a strong self-standing phrase. FEELING GOOD or FEELING FINE = much more in-the-language. But no matter. Look at the great effect you get with that OKAY - it's an anagram of its neighbor on the other side of the black squares: KAYO (51D: Bout-ending slug). Nice.

Theme answers:

• 16A: Nitwit's swoon? (fool faint)
• 8D: Vibes not being picked up by anyone? (nobody's feel)
• 23D: Doing credible work as a magician? (fooling okay)
• 54A: Spring in the air? (April feel)

It's especially clever that the E's go to O's as often as the O's go to E's in this puzzle. You also get some exciting long-answer action in the NW and SE, as well as fairly open NE and SW corners (which ups the level of difficulty somewhat). Add to that high-end words like MIASMA (40D: Bad atmosphere) and BILGE (18A: Nonsense, slangily) and QUIRE (5D: Paper quantity), and you have a more-exciting-than-average Tuesday puzzle. Tuesdays are the puzzles I malign most often, so this Manny Nosowsky puzzle is a real treat.

Take note:

• 39D: Belly part (navel)
• 6D: Type of 39-Down (innie) - nice, though INNIE more aptly describes a BELLY BUTTON - NAVEL is a bit formal here.
• 1A: Dress shirt closer (stud) - I stared at this for five seconds or so trying to picture a dress shirt. Then I heard Olivia Newton-John say "Tell me about it, STUD" ("Grease"). She talks to me sometimes.
• 4D: "Excellent!," in slang (def) - I will never stop loving seeing DEF in the puzzle. I especially like how it's clued via "excellent," when I'm pretty sure that the group of people who would say "Excellent!" and the group that would say "Def!" are almost entirely non-overlapping. Perhaps someone can draw a Venn diagram for illustration purposes.
  
• 5A: Four times a day, on an Rx (QID) - Latin helped. I've seen BID and TID, but not QID.
• 25A: Kind of eyes (goo goo) - had GOOGLE and/or GOOGLY in there for a bit.
  
• 14A: Acapulco article (una) - very basic, yet I blanked on it at first ... and second.
• 38A: Watergate hearings chairman Sam (Ervin) - I was too young. Plus, even when I could see it was some kind of ERVIN, I initially opted for the other kind: IRVIN.
• 40A: Univ. where "Good Will Hunting" is set (M.I.T.) - now that I think of it, of course that movie was set in / around Boston, but as I was solving, MIT was the only 3-letter Univ. in my head, so I just threw it down.
• 50A: Vinegar: Prefix (aceto-) - my first clue that the FINE part of FOOLING FINE was wrong. How could a prefix end in "F"?
• 51A: Pre-remote channel changer (knob) - With the exception of a couple years of early-90s cable, the KNOB was my "channel changer" until 1999. Sad.
• 59A: Analyze the composition of (assay) - "Why won't ASSESS fit? ... oh, because it's wrong? I see."
• 16D: Red River city (Fargo) - never saw this clue, thankfully. RED RIVER sounds way more Western (as in Texas / oater western) than it does North Dakotan. Not sure why. Isn't there an OATER called "Red River?" Aha, no wonder. It's a Howard Hawks western, starring John Wayne, set, at least in part, in Texas. I feel better now.
• 17D: Houston hockey player (Aero) - gets more crossword play than any minor league team in any sport, ever. I think.
• 24D: Mozart's "Madamina," e.g. (aria) - one of many basic crossword words dressed up in fancy clothing today. See also ERIE, LEIS, and ATRIA.
• 35D: Push too hard, as an argument (oversell) - really like this. It's risky, but it works. Plus, it rhymes with its parallel neighbor, LIVE WELL (36D: Have it good).
• 52D: Mennen shaving brand (Afta) - AFTA is like fool's gold, in that it looks like what I want (ATRA), but isn't.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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FRIDAY, Dec. 14, 2007 - Manny Nosowsky

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Another Great Manny Nosowsky puzzle - I have very few complaints about this one. There's a host of fresh answers here, including three 15-letter multi-word answers across the middle of the puzzle and one fantastic (if oddly split) two-part answer. My big problem today was the puzzle's geographical provincialism - which is to say, my own geographical ignorance. Let's just say that if I were ever to appear on "Jeopardy!," I would steer very clear of a "New Jersey Geography" category. I was saddened by my complete inability to get 20D: Neighbor of Hoboken, N.J. (Union City) even with the first two letters in place. I felt sure that if I could just get it, the middle part would open right up. I desperately wrote in UNANDILLA at one point, because it sounded like a name of a place I heard of once ... turns out I was thinking of UNADILLA, NY. No help.

15-letter answers are far far harder to get the more words they have. Parsing A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE (38A: Much work to get done) was well nigh impossible for me until I had a huge chunk of the West in place. Another element of parsing difficulty: loads of common letters. CLEARANCE CENTER (39A: Place for good deals) was just a bunch of A's, E's, and N's for a while, and RETURN TO REALITY (35A: Snap out of it) was likewise mostly "Wheel of Fortune" gimme letters for a good chunk of time.

My time on this puzzle was mediocre for me - mid 9's. But I was super-proud to have finished the latter half of the puzzle in about 3 minutes. I just got horribly stuck in the middle, but for some reason, little old ECO (43A: "Baudolino" novelist) was the wee gimme that gave me the momentum I needed, and I tore up the second half of the puzzle from there. ECO to OAKEN (44D: Of a durable wood) to PREBAKE (57A: Cook first, as pie crust) to BRO (58D: Bart, to Maggie) took about 10 seconds, and the SW fell from there, which allowed me finally to get the lovely RORSCHACH (TEST) (36D: With 14-Down, something that can have you seeing things). That gave me enough at the front end of the 15's to pick them off one by one, which led directly into the SE, where only the eely 59A: Cardiff Giant or Piltdown man (big hoax) gave me any trouble. The end.

Magical Mystery Words:

• 16A: Luxembourg grand duke in whose name an annual art prize is awarded (Adolphe) - no way. Got it once I had the -LPHE, but this one is totally off my radar.
• 22A: French city where William the Conqueror is buried (Caen) - very proud of myself for sticking this one out. I threw 4-letter French cities at this answer like they were punches (ST LO, NICE ...) until one of them finally landed.
• 29A: Ba preceder (alif) - Arabic? Had ALEF for a bit. ALIF is also a surgery acronym.
• 62A: University with campuses in New York and Rome (St. John's) - more puzzle provincialism. I know ST JOHN'S from their basketball team, so I got it fast enough, but the "Rome" part of the clue meant zero to me.
• 3D: Guam's _____ Bay (Pago) - PAGO PAGO is in American Samoa. That's what I know about PAGO.
• 6D: Leader of the Alamo siege (Santa Anna) - knew this, but have only ever seen it spelled like the California city / winds: SANTA ANA. Wrote in ANNA but did not feel good about it.
• 33D: Sea _____, denizen of the North Pacific (otter) - took me a while. It's an extraordinarily non-specific clue. Enjoy the cuteness.
  
• 55D: Flow in a coulee (lava) - "coulee" is a new word to me. "Stream of lava" appears to be the fourth definition.

Fun stuff:

• 8A: Watches in astonishment (gapes at) - I had GAZES AT. Just kidding.
• 15A: Went for unhesitatingly (leapt at) - first answer in the grid - I love the ballsiness of following an "AT" phrase with another "AT" phrase.
• 18A: Plant material used for fuel (biomass) - a great, original answer. Sadly, my first attempt here was CORN OIL, which led to AEON instead of SPAN (12D: Period of time), so I was all kinds of messed up in the NE.
• 19A: Brawl-ending cry ("Stop it!") - somehow I doubt that this would end any self-respecting brawl.
• 45A: It may be kept in a boot (tyre) - I had TIRE back when I thought the "boot" in question was the lock a cop will put on your TIRE if you have been parked illegally and are subject to being towed away. But here, of course, "boot" = British for your car trunk.
• 34D: Wayne W. _____, author of "Your Erroneous Zones" (Dyer) - why do I know this!?!?

Miscellaneous:

• 24A: Work an aisle, slangily (ush) - this little bastard is going to force his way into the Pantheon for sure. I don't like him, but he's everywhere.
• 27D: Relatives of the Missouria (Otoes) - when USH arrives at the Pantheon, he will be greeted by a large group of OTOES for some kind of induction ritual I haven't invented yet. The OTOES, as a people, pretty much rule the Pantheon, though the INCAS are not to be underestimated.
• 63A: Zealots have them (agendas) - Chess clubs have them too. Yeesh.
• 10D: Dilapidation (poor shape) - good answer. Sadly, I had POOR STATE.
• 49D: Actor _____ Cobb (Lee J) - Really? Again? I guess if you really need LEEJ as your answer, you don't have a lot of options.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS some more Cureton Creations:

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TUESDAY, Sep. 4, 2007 - Manny Nosowsky

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE" (7D: One, two and three ... or this puzzle's title) - theme answers involve food

I found this puzzle really clunky, themewise. Nosowsky puzzles are usually a blast, but I still can't figure out the organizing principle of this puzzle. First, the theme answers:

• 17A: One ... (tenderloin steak)
• 41A: Two ... (eggs sunny-side up)
• 65A: Three ... (peaches and cream)

Now, am I supposed to believe that someone would actually order this for breakfast? If so, the only part I buy is the two eggs part. Maybe the steak. But not only have I not seen PEACHES AND CREAM on a menu ... that I can remember ... ever, I don't believe you would order "three" PEACHES AND CREAM. You would order PEACHES AND CREAM and you'd get the number of peaches that came with it. Or are "One," "Two," and "Three" supposed to be the numbers of breakfast specials? If so, then you would not have a LOT ON [your] PLATE. You would have a lot on your PLATES. Do really accomplished constructors get away with ragged puzzles like this because of their established reputation?

The rest of the grid was fine, though there was nothing truly amazing, and at least one clue that seemed really badly written. 13D: Tut's kin? (tsks) is bad on a couple of levels, actually. First, a plural? Really? Use it in a sentence. I thought not. Second, "Tut" is singular in the clue, where TSKS (as we've established) is plural. Now I know that "kin" can imply many folks, but still, that's horrible incongruity, especially in a Tuesday puzzle, where I don't expect loopy, intentionally misdirective cluing. My first answer here was TSAR because I had the TS- (obviously) and thought Tut was the King, hence autocrat, hence TSAR. Didn't know 22A: Brenner Pass locale (Alps) - a clue which also does not seem as if its answer would be plural - so my NE corner has lots of scratch marks. Another bad clue (answer, actually), IMOO, was 43D: High school course, for short (Driver Ed.) - I would never ever ever say DRIVER. I would say DRIVER'S. I can't be the only one.

9A: Visual movement popularized in the 1960s (Op art) has gone from being an unknown to being a gimme for me in just the past few months, but there are a number of other clues in the puzzle that either threw me or surprised me (or might have thrown others). And they are:

• 23A: Many a TV clip (promo) - true enough, but it's not the first word that leaps to mind. I like the word, but it's weird, and nothing but "TV" does anything to clue you in that it's an abbreviation.
• 30A: Headed out (went) - you are thinking "what? That was easy." And it was, except I had LEFT, both because the "E" and "T" were right, and because the "F" made the long Down answer at 7D look like it would read A LOT OF ..., which seemed right, phrasing-wise.
• 32A: Averse (loath) - many people misspell this word by putting an "E" on the end.
• 45A: W.W. I German admiral (Spee) - another answer I learned from doing crosswords.
• 46A: Rafael's wrap (serape) - I've had my fill of SERAPES for this month (see Saturday's puzzle).
• 56A: Iolani Palace locale (Oahu) - final "U" made it easy, but I've never heard of said "Palace."
• 69A: Langston Hughes poem ("I Too") - literary embarrassments continue, as I've never heard of this poem (though you'll be happy to know that I have heard of Langston Hughes).
• 11D: 1 1/2 rotation leap (axel) - first, this clue got All Screwed Up in AcrossLite, where the slash showed up as a picture of an apple (!?) on screen, and didn't show up at all in my printed out version, where the clue looked like this: [1 12 rotation leap]. Second, I made the stupid AXLE / AXEL mistake. Yet again.
• 26D: Half of an old comedy duo (Ollie) - Technically, shouldn't this be HARDY? I got OLLIE easy, but when I tried to think of his partner, all I could think of were KUKLA and FRAN.
• 37D: Immigrant from Japan (Issei) - second generation = Nisei. Third generation = Sansei. Good words to know.
• 57D: Sleek, in auto talk (aero) - would you really just call a car "AERO?" Weird.
• 63D: Thomas who wrote "The Magic Mountain" (Mann) - knew it. Never read it. I prefer Aimee MANN. Or maybe Manfred.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of Crossworld

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SATURDAY, Jul. 28, 2007 - Manny Nosowsky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Very simple, elegant grid shape for a reasonably simple, elegant Saturday puzzle. The strangest part about the puzzle, to me, was the quality of its short answers. The ones on the outskirts of each quadrant were astonishingly easy (about half gimmes), while the ones in the center of the puzzle, joining all the quadrants together, were the most challenging part of the puzzle. The quadrants opened up really fast once a few of those four-letter border answers were in place - but I slogged through the center of the puzzle (fitting home of the word BOG) with educated guesses, stepping over odd terms or names I'd never heard of before. I completed the grid very, very quickly (for me - somewhere in the 12 minute range), and then spent over five minutes trying to ROOT OUT (55A: Expose and destroy) my one wrong square. The square in question ... is not that surprising.

• 35A: Red stain in a lab (eosin)
• 35D: Young members of a convocation (eaglets)

EOSIN is a former enemy whom I should have seen hiding there in ambush. I had ROSIN and RESIN here, which gave me RAGLETS for EAGLETS. Since I had No indication that 35D was an avian answer, I figured RAGLETS was just one of those Saturday words that you don't know, but accept as a real world in someone's universe. The center of the puzzle was hard, as I've said, because after the easy NAILS (27A: Aces), and TABOR (24D: Drum accompanying a pipe), I was stuck. I wasn't even That sure of TABOR. I've taught Homer a lot, but had no idea about 28D: Island said to be the home of Homer's tomb (Ios). And BOG (30A: Common site of archaeological remains) just felt a bit unsolid (as BOGs are wont to do). Also never heard of 25D: The _____ Marbles (Elgin). They are a large collection of marble sculptures removed from the Parthenon in the early 19th century and brought to Britain, probably illegally. Nobody beats the western colonial powers for despoiling the world of its art - not to mention its natural resources, happiness, etc.

So happy to see the quick return of ONE O' CAT (15A: Sandlot game) to the grid. Today we learn that this mystery game is played on a "sandlot." What will we learn next? HAD DIBS (1A: Claimed as one's own) was one of those very tentative guesses, where I mentally filled it in and then tested the Downs in my head. And they worked. Lucky. Gimmes up in the NW include 19A: Rock guitarist born David Evans (The Edge) - guitarist of the band U2 - and semi-frequent puzzle denizen 5D: Immobile in winter (iced in).

In the NE, I took a stab with ARBORED (18A: Lined with trees) which gave me the easy SPAS (8D: Bath and others), which gave me PILSNER, which was wrong. But PALE ALE came out eventually (16A: Draft pick). Hurray for Mike Brady as a beautiful clue for STEPDAD (20A: Mike Brady of "The Brady Bunch"). Someone will tell me whether ARLENE (22A: Longtime "What's My Line?" panelist) is a first or last name. I'm guessing the latter, but that seems absurd. I got 13D: "_____ and Franklin," 1976 biopic (Eleanor) simply by thinking of all the Franklins I know. After Franklin from "Peanuts," FDR was the next one my mind went to, which made ELEANOR easy. As for TARTANS (9D: Carnegie Mellon athletes), why would you name yourself after a fabric pattern?

What HAD DIBS was to the NW and ARBORED was to the NE, ON A TEAR (41A: Running wild) was to the SW - tentative but ultimately correct guess that opened the quadrant right up. It's a very multi-wordy, colloquial quadrant, with not only ON A TEAR, but NOW WHAT? (31D: "Again?!"), IN A RUSH (32D: With no time to lose), and THE REST (54A: Others), the last of which has lodged the "Gilligan's Island" theme song in my head this morning (song used to end its list of castaways with "... and THE REST" until the phrase was later changed to "the Professor and Mary Ann").

In the SE, NON-HERO (36D: Melville's Ishmael, e.g.) is insane, and yet because of its Moby Dick-ness, I kind of like it. ARTISTE (53A: Pro performer) also feels pretty forced, but unlike NON-HERO, it has nothing to redeem it. OLOROSO (38D: Bristol Cream ingredient) is a kind of sherry and totally off my radar. I filled in CLAR (49D: Woodwind instrument: Abbr.) instantly, and then came ROOT OUT. With that "U" in place, SILENT U was a piece of cake (39D: Guide feature?). 46A: First name in electrical engineering sounds hard, but once you get a few crosses, it's clear that it's just TESLA's slightly less known first name, NIKOLA.

I'm 85% recovered from illness, and was well enough yesterday to go see "The Simpsons Movie." No spoilers, but I will say it CHEERED (49A: Made happy) me quite a bit.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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FRIDAY, Jul. 13, 2007 - Manny Nosowsky

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Sorry, no full post this morning. Too busy. Here's the grid. I'll give you all a little commentary this afternoon.

Well, maybe I'll at least give you some discussion topics now:

Topic One: TRIPLEX (3D: Certain multiscreen cinema) and MALE SEX (24D: What X + Y signifies) - how far is too far to go for your sexy X-words?

Topic Two: ESSAYER (62A: One who tries) and BEARER (46D: Carrier) - when Odd Jobs intersect in their -ER suffixes, how many tears does Baby Jesus shed?

Topic Three: ENOLA (22A: Town outside Harrisburg) and XENIA (50A: Ohio city whose name means "hospitality" in Greek) - what is the limit on wacky place names of little-to-no fame?

Discuss.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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FRIDAY, May 4, 2007 - Manny Nosowsky

Relative Difficulty: Medium High

THEME: none

This puzzle was maddening. I don't think it's ever taken me as long to ferret out an incorrect square as it did today - this is because the letter change affected the apparent pronunciation of the words in question Not At All. I changed and unchanged several squares before finally going back to square one and submitting every square to potential consideration. But actually I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had one square flat out wrong:

13D: August Wilhelm von _____, leader of German Romanticism (Schlegel)
22A: "Mârouf" baritone (Ali)

I had SCHNEGEL and ANI, thinking SCHNEGEL sounded like a plausible name and knowing that ANI is crosswordese for a kind of blackbird ... so maybe it's the name of some character in an opera? No and no. That's a brutal high-culture crossing that absolutely made my knees buckle. No chance. Had to Google (yes, *I* had to Google - it happens; rarely, but it does).

I also had to go back and change a square that I initially had wrong, but figured out on my own:

40A: Seine feeder (Aube)
42D: Early center of Christianity in Mesopotamia (Edessa)

Had AUBO and ODESSA - I'd guessed on the "O" in ODESSA and never checked the cross (sloppy).

So what was the square that did me in - that had me completely stumped and groping around desperately for minute upon minute? I'll let you guess (answer revealed at very end of today's entry). It's not that hard when you think about it.

For all of the frustration, I really enjoyed the puzzle. The long answers were very easy to uncover, and they were nice, familiar, everyday phrases. The best of these, in terms of cluing, was 8D: Where no one has any business going? (residential area), which I got off the first three letters. Took me far too long to get 21D: Ones who can handle adversity (tough cookies) because after getting -OUGH- I entered an initial "R" instead of "T" - this gave me SEMIRES for 20A: Many Middle Easterners (Semites), which I honestly, albeit briefly, thought was just a name for a people I'd never heard of (surely a large category). Other long fill included:

• 7D: Remark introducer (let me just say...)
• 31A: Ones not getting their deserved acclaim (unsung heroes)
• 34A: Ancient (as old as the hills)
• 37A: Treated fairly (did justice to)

I was brutalized by the NE corner, so let's go there. You've heard about the SCHLEGEL / ALI disaster. What you don't know is about the narrowly averted BRANCA / PROS disaster. See, I completely forgot the baseball name in question - 16A: Dodger who threw the pitch Bobby Thomson hit for the "shot heard 'round the world" (Branca) - and faced with B-ANCA, I didn't know whether "I" or "L" or "R" went in the open space. The down cross, 10D: Some arguments, was not helping. Back when all I had was --OS, I had written in ADOS. Then when I got the "P," I couldn't see how P-OS made any sense. How are arguments "Palestine Liberation Organizations"? How are they "Professionals"? Is "PIOS" a word I should know? The answer is of course simple - PROS, not in the sense of "professionals," but in the sense of "arguments in favor of something" (as opposed to CONS). Ugh.

Love the word OOMPHS (18A: Zips) in the grid, thought the plural makes me cringe a bit. Not sure why 26A: Tommy guns? has a "?" in it. I thought a STEN was a tommygun. Is it the space between "Tommy" and "guns" that makes a difference, somehow. Oh, here we go, Tommy Atkins (or just Tommy) was a common WWI-era name for a soldier in the British army. So British soldier's guns, STENS, got it.

Some awkwardNESS

54A: Maturity (ripeness)
57A: Creepy feeling (eeriness)

Two -NESS words right on top of each other, with the -NESSes matching up, and one other (bad) -NESS word in the grid - 14D: Indifference (easiness). Can't say that I like it. Further, I had problems with the non-lilting quality of the following combo:

52A: With 36-Down, "Very strange..." ("It is an / odd thing...")

I think that the non-contraction - IT IS - is throwing me, because the whole phrase is so colloquial that I have a hard time hearing it with IT IS. Too formal-sounding. I do like that this four-word phrase is broken into two two-word phrases, which then intersect one another.

Got burned by ERGOTS (58A: Grain fungi) many months ago, so I was ready for it this time. Love the splashiness of Sister SOULJAH (24D: Hip-hop's Sister _____) in the grid. My feelings toward REDOS (25A: Makeovers) and REPRO (45D: Magazine proof) are quite tepid - don't know the context in which one would use the former, and have never heard the latter used in relation to proof pages. Are the SOO canals (53D: _____ Canals) in your ears? Oh, no, they are actual canals - formally known as the Sault Sainte Marie Canals, they bypass the rapids on the St. Marys River between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Liked that JEU (29A: Roulette or vingt-et-un) was clued via gambling, especially because the clue is subtle - "Roulette" is the same in English and French; only "vingt-et-un" gives away the Frenchness of the answer. I like ADELAIDE (34D: City of 1.1 million named for the wife of King William IV) because it's Australian, and thus Antipodean, and thus if I squint at it really hard, it reminds me of my Kiwi wife (who lived for a time in Australia, though not ADELAIDE, as far as I remember). Took me a few beats to understand 1A: You can always identify a Republican by one (capital "R"), until I realized that this is how elected Republicans are signified in the media, e.g. "Orrin Hatch (R-UT)."

Let's end with a pop cultural quartet.

Nicky KATT (48D: Nicky of "Boston Public") will always be [Nicky of "Dazed and Confused"] to me. "I only came here to do two things tonight: kick some ass and drink some beer ... looks like we're almost out of beer." God that movie's great.

Zubin MEHTA (30D: Boulez's New York Philharmonic successor) is a very famous conductor whose first name beats his last for crossword-worthiness. For a while in the late 90's, for no reason that I can recall, I would often call my cat "Zubin." It just sounded good. His real name is Wiley (named, in fact, for the actor who plays the lead role in ... "Dazed and Confused").

I own a first edition, dust-jacketed copy of "END AS a Man" (38A: "_____ a Man" (Calder Willingham novel and play)) that is worth hundreds of dollars. I got it for a buck at a university book sale. It's an exposé of life at a southern military college, and its man-on-man action got it in a bit of hot water back in the day (late 40's).

Counselor TROI (27A: Enterprise counselor) - oh how I wish you knew how to spell your own name. Then maybe I wouldn't have lost precious minutes of my life hunting down your stupid "I" when a "Y" would have done just fine. OK, I should have known that 28D: Pakistan's chief river was INDUS, not YNDUS, but ... well, you know rivers. They're spelled every which way ... I mean, look at AUBE, for god's sake.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS I would like to thank Ken Jennings for linking to me in a recent post he wrote about the portrayal of Mormons in the mass media (his Mormonism was the subject of a crossword clue this past Sunday). I want to point out, though, that apparently some of his own readers don't read his blog very closely. Jennings wrote a most excellent entry a while back excoriating people who use trivia to act like smug know-it-alls ... and yet THIS is the message (verbatim, bold text and all) I found in my inbox this afternoon from a proud Jennings reader (responding to my admitted ignorance about the poet Alfred NOYES):

You never read "The Highwayman"?
Shame on you!
It was written by Alfred Noyes

Blame Ken Jennings for all the leters like this you get. He linked yo your blog.

To which I replied:

Do you mean letters wherein people misspell basic words like "letters" and "to?" Yes, I'll be sure to write Ken and thank him.

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