THEME:"Movie Doubles" — movie titles where one letter is doubled creating wacky titles and oh my god I'm getting bored just typing this...
Theme answers:
"AMERICAN SNIPPER" (23A: One working for Supercuts?)
"THE LATTE SHOW" (35A: Barista's big reveal?)
"HOOT PURSUIT" (64A: Search for a really funny person?)
"A STARR IS BORN" (96A: Declaration at Ringo's birth?)
"A SHOOT IN THE DARK" (114A: Photographer's impossible task?)
"SALEM'S LOOT" (38D: Money in Oregon state coffers?)
"HOMME ALONE" (43D: French bachelor?)
Word of the Day:JESSI Colter(80D: Country music's Colter) —
Miriam Johnson, known professionally as Jessi Colter (born May 25, 1943), is an American country music artist who is best known for her collaboration with her husband, country singer and songwriter Waylon Jennings, and for her 1975 country-pop crossover hit "I'm Not Lisa". (wikipedia)
• • •
In times like these (i.e. where entire political parties implode over a weekend), one looks to the NYT crossword to provide some measure of distraction and, yes, solace. But DUDE, I was not ensolaced by this simplistic cutesy nothing of a theme. The movies aren't uniformly famous, the doubling of letters are diverse enough (repeating the "OO" sound, blargh), and generally the clues / wacky answers just weren't funny enough. Weirdly, the only theme answer I really liked was the most insane, most outlyingest of them all—the French one ("HOMME ALONE"). I cannot picture the movies "Hot Pursuit" or "The Late Show" or "A Shot in the Dark" (unless that's the Alan Arkin / Audrey Hepburn movie ... nope, that was "Wait Until Dark"). I know "Salem's Lot" primarily as a book (no memory of movie). Random movie titles, random letter doublings, corny clues ... and then ABHORRENT fill. I stopped solving after filling in only the tiny NW corner, just so I could tweet the following:
LALA LAMAR ALERO PARAS ... If I extrapolate that much mid-to-low-range stuff over the rest of the puzzle, ouch. And the rest of the puzzle didn't improve much. You get nice answers here and there, but mostly you get mash-ups like SSGTS SSR SETI ITSSO INITS. You also get EMALL, which pretty much kills any hopes this puzzle had of success—kinda like bragging on tape about being a serial sex offender pretty much kills any hopes you might have of being president. That analogy was forced, but not as forced as EMALL, I SAY. Oh, and PHAT!? You had several options there (40D) that did not involve "old slang," but ... you go with PHAT, the option that is not only dated but has the narrowest cluing range possible. This "P" choice made me so mad I ran a Twitter poll to see what, objectively, the right choice would be in a _HAT scenario, and I'm happy to say that, thanks to a strong 3rd-party showing by "W," my choice of "C" defeated the loathsome but somehow oddly popular choice of "P." Loathsome but oddly popular ... that sounds ... familiar. Some figure in the news, maybe? Not sure. Anyway, suck it, "P."
Hey, you need to know about *good* puzzles so I'm going to tell you about some. They are by veteran constructor and all-around good guy Patrick Blindauer. Here's the official ink:
"Patrick Blindauer recently launched a Kickstarter campaign called Piece of Cake Crosswords. If successfully funded, it will be a yearlong series of easy-but-fun crossword puzzles, one puzzle per week. These will be daily-sized crosswords that have original themes with no sneaky tricks. The grids will be filled with familiar words, phrases, and names--no ULEEs or ERNEs allowed--and they'll be delivered directly to your inbox every Monday morning. The goal with these is to create a series of puzzles with no obscurities so the focus is on fun and not frustration. Please check out the video and rewards here, pledge if you can, and help spread the word far and wide."
I often hear complaints (mostly from me, true, but I do hear them) that there aren't enough *good* Easy puzzles out there. Liz Gorski's Puzzle Nation puzzles are the main exception. Until now. I am excited to see Patrick's take on well-crafted easy puzzles, so much so that I am getting a subscription for my crossword neophyte daughter (16yo). She can do NYT Mondays much of the time, and Newsday early-weeks as well, but it'll be nice to give her something that isn't characteristically corny, dopey, or (especially) musty. Of course I will also do them myself, both because I know they'll be good, and for speed-training purposes. So support this project. For yourself. For your children. For America. Thank you.
He was regarded by his friends and colleagues as unusual in character. Albert Einstein said of him, "This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful". His mathematical brilliance, however, means he is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. (wikipedia)
• • •
This is just fine. I had no idea what to do with names like BRODY and DIRAC and "THE KINGDOM" (?), and I spaced on WAITE and AMAHL, but I knew OTRANTO from the novel The Castle of OTRANTO and I knew ALAN MOORE from every comics class I've ever taught, so my name non-knowledge didn't set me back too badly. Nothing struck me as particularly great, and a few things seemed either off or incomplete. I AM AMERICA is definitely right, but that's a book I think of as needing its subtitle ("And So Can You!") to be complete. I AM AMERICA sounds earnest and dumb and not funny all by itself. Also, THE MONITOR—I didn't knot know people called The Christian Science Monitor this. Not a shorthand I've seen. Didn't keep me from getting it quickly (how many church-owned newsweekly's are there?), but THE MONITOR has about as much currency in my world as "THE KINGDOM" (still can't picture a single thing about this alleged movie). Wanted FASHION MODEL, got FASHION ICON … less good, I think. I mean, designers are often considered FASHION ICONs, and many of them are somewhat lumpy and ordinary-looking. Not emaciated, anyway. What else? … A lot of the longer answers are plurals … I don't know. It's a totally competent puzzle, but it hasn't got much 'zazz. My computer just autocorrected that to "zzzz." Make of that what you will.
I wasn't STRUCK DUMB by RITA MORENO, but I didn't enjoy seeing her (both those answers, actually). Saying Hulu offers STREAMS is like saying the internet is a series of tubes. OK, maybe it's slightly more defensible, but not really. "Hey, wanna watch some STREAMS?" Uh, no. No thanks. Wait, did you mean TV shows or movies? Oh, then sure. Streaming video is correct. STREAMS needs a better / more accurate / more spot-on clue here. [Watches live, perhaps]. Verb! That's what's happening.
Some of the shorter stuff is unlovely (AWAG and PYLES, I'm looking at you), but the shorter stuff is always the uglier stuff, and nothing stands out as particularly gruesome. Where were my errors? Let's see:
Bullets:
1A: Something running on a cell (MOBILE APP) — pretty good. I solved it from the back end, and at first tried GOOGLE APP.
1D: Start of many records (MOST) — I went with ANNO, which, in retrospect, is a weird answer to enter with the confidence with which I entered it.
22A: Be up (BAT) — I was on the right wavelength here, but tried HIT first.
35A: Out of service? Abbr. (RET'D) — Tried AWOL.
37D: Person's sphere of operation (FIEF) — went with AREA. Can't have been the only one.
16A: Opera title boy (AMAHL) — again, right(ish) wavelength, but his name came to me as AMATI, which, in my defense, is definitely musical.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: "Nascar Rocks!" — "Rock" songs that have been subjected to racing-related puns:
Theme answers:
WON'T GET FUELED AGAIN (27A: "Hey, what did you think when you missed that last pit stop?" [The Who, 1971])
I KISSED A GRILLE (42A: "Did you do anything for luck before today's race?" [Katy Perry, 2008])
MOVES LIKE JAGUAR (65A: "How did that new car handle out there on the track?" [Maroon 5, 2011])
BRAKE ON THROUGH (93A: "What did you try to do after the caution flag came out?" [The Doors, 1967])
LIVIN' LA VEHICLE LOCA (109A: "Are you enjoying your time out on the Nascar circuit?" [Ricky Martin, 1999])
Word of the Day: John LAHR (19A: Drama critic John of The New Yorker) —
John Henry Lahr (born July 12, 1941) is an American theater critic, and the son of actor Bert Lahr. Since 1992, he has been the senior drama critic at The New Yorker magazine. (wikipedia)
• • •
This puzzle had its work cut out for it with me, as few things interest me less than "Nascar." Hunting, Dr. Who, "The Bachelor" … these are also possible Sunday theme topics that would hold no interest for me. But today, Nascar. [Deep breath]. OK, let's do this. And … they're off? Is that right? Or is that horse racing? Start your engines!?
So here's the thing. Well, several things. First, puns. Always an uphill battle there. There *is* a pun sweet spot that I do believe exists, somewhere between "obvious/corny" and "ridiculous/nonsensical," but it's so hard to hit. Today's were a mixed bag, with the first three arguably successful, the fourth way too spot-on to be interesting, and the fourth a total train (or today, car) wreck. "Vida" and VEHICLE sound nothing alike, the resulting phrase makes no sense on any level, etc. Total fail. You're supposed to end with your strongest themer. Maybe there's a subtlety to the theme that I'm missing—like, you know how people (allegedly) watch Nascar because they *want* to see crashes!? Maybe this last answer is so terrible because it's trying to give the people what they want: flames; wreckage; car-nage. It's a theory.
And what's up with there being only five themers!? That's absurd. I've seen (many) daily puzzles with more theme answers. You'd think we'd at least get a fascinating, zippy grid as some kind of payoff for the super-low theme answer count, but no. The fill is probably a bit below par, overall, with some notable exceptions in the longer fill: "THE FLEA" (one of the most brilliant poems ever written, I teach it next month, etc etc, though the "posthumous" part is weird—all of Donne's poems appeared in print only after his death, but circulated relatively widely in manuscripts before that … so "posthumous" is correct only where *print* is concerned, and gives a false impression about the poem's public life and popularity during Donne's lifetime … is what I'm saying) … where was I? Oh right, good long stuff: "RAPPER'S Delight …
… DOGGEREL, and the symmetrical, improbable double feature of "ANIMAL HOUSE" and "CITIZEN KANE." Mostly, though, it's EHS and ERS and NEEDER (!?) and on and on with less-than-great stuff. Also, SCOUT MOTTO is a clue, not an answer. I don't even know what WAGNERIANS are? Fans of Wagner are called that?? I'd've gone with "Wag hags" or something at least slightly catchy. Anyway, the theme has some charm, but is less than expertly executed, and inexplicably slight. Fill is so-so at best. I will give the theme credit, however, for having a wide range of "rock" songs, including a couple from this century. Often, with pop culture, constructors tend to favor their own comfort zones. So hurray for breadth (even if that does mean that I'm kind of half-way hurraying for Katy Perry).
Puzzle of the Week this week is a meta puzzle contest puzzle by Neville Fogarty—the guest constructor this week at Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest. You should go do it. Still plenty of time to enter. The grid is nicely made, but it's the meta part of the puzzle that's truly impressive, at least to me. It's quite a toughie, though, I should warn you. Many people I know are still struggling to figure it out. This is not uncommon with MGWCC—sometimes the metas are a walk in the park, and other times, less walk more crawl, less park more tundra. Still, if you manage to get the meta, I promise you'll have a nice "aha" moment (as well as a pretty sizable feeling of accomplishment).
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Word of the Day: SAC (20A: Eastern Woodlands native) —
[From wikipedia entry for "Sauk People]: The Sacs or Sauks are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture group. Their autonym isoθaakiiwaki, and their exonym is Ozaagii(-wag) in Ojibwe. The latter is the source of their names in French and English. (wikipedia)
• • •
Well it was all downhill from BUTT-DIALED (1A: Made a seat-of-the-pants error?), but it was still pretty good. Though it was going to be the easiest Saturday I've ever done, as I went from NW to SE with almost no resistance at all, but those other corners were much harder, so I ended up coming in fast but not super-fast. This one was easy to start because the 1- and 2-Down (BOTS, UNIT) were both gettable without crosses, setting up the initial BU- in BUTT-DIALED. The main problem here was coming out of that corner into the adjacent NE one. Everything broke down atSAC (20A: Eastern Woodlands native). I had SA- and couldn't imagine what kind of "native" fit the pattern. I thought maybe it was an animal, like a bird, but no letters seemed to fit. I *wanted* CONAN at 21D: TV show headed by a former writer for "S.N.L.," but SAC??? That's an anatomical structure, not a "native." I mean, look, I wouldn't have had any more luck with SAUK (never heard of this Native American tribe, ever), but SAC? People know that? Yikes. Also, what are VASTS (26D: Poetic expanses). I teach poetry—I have never taught of VASTS. VASTS have I encountered not. No VASTS encounterer, I. What the hell? Anyway, I eventually made my way into that corner via ENCOUNTERS (which were CLOSE at first, by the way), and despite JAW for GUM (11D: Where a canine sits?), managed to make the corner behave eventually.
Finished in the SW corner, where I had some friends (OLY, TROY), and some enemies (NANS!? DEBTEEEEEE?). Key to that corner was CAR DEALERS (28D: They use Blue Books), which ended up being a gimme off the CA-. I knew ENID BLYTON (29D: "The Wishing-Chair" series creator) from crosswords and from her depictions of golliwogs, a racist caricature I had never heard of until I looked into Blyton's work.
Enjoy your Saturday. See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Word of the Day: LILA Lee (11D: Lee of silent films) —
Lila Lee (July 25, 1901 – November 13, 1973) was a prominent screen actress of the early silent film era. [...] In 1918, she was chosen for a film contract by Hollywood film mogul Jesse Lasky for Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, which later became Paramount Pictures. Her first feature The Cruise of the Make-Believes garnered the seventeen-year-old starlet much public acclaim and Lasky quickly sent Lee on an arduous publicity campaign. Critics lauded Lila for her wholesome persona and sympathetic character parts. Lee quickly rose to the ranks of leading lady and often starred opposite such matinee heavies as Conrad Nagel, Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, and Rudolph Valentino.
In 1922 Lee was cast as Carmen in the enormously popular film Blood and Sand, opposite matinee idol Rudolph Valentino and silent screen vamp Nita Naldi; Lee subsequently won the first WAMPAS Baby Stars award that year. Lee continued to be a highly popular leading lady throughout the 1920s and made scores of critically praised and widely watched films. (wikipedia)
• • •
Jumped all over this one. The pop culture was mostly in my sweet spot, and the stuff that wasn't (e.g. LILA Lee) I somehow managed to work around. Weirdly, unlike every other time I've encountered him in my solving history, James ARNESS *helped* me today (3D: Marshal Dillon portrayer). I remembered this name, and he solved my E/A problem at RIELS (19A: Cash in Cambodia). Never saw "The Book of Eli," but know very well who MILA KUNIS is (51A: "The Book of Eli" actress). Don't remember much about "Enemy Mine" except that Louis Gossett Jr. is in it. But I did remember it. Thought of about half a dozen names that could go in 1A: Onetime co-host of "The View," but it turns out I'd completely forgotten about STAR JONES. Seems like a decade since I've heard her name. But, once again, her name was in the database (i.e. my brain), and so the "J" from JAMS alone was enough to get her out onto the grid. Only had two moments of struggle in the puzzle, and they were both brief. Got worried that I wouldn't get into the SW corner—having first two letters of those longer Acrosses didn't dislodge anything. Had to reboot deeper in that corner with SKYE and SRTAS, but then it all came together. Had another brief scare up in the NE, where I finished. Did not know ASH CAKES (though I eventually guessed it once I got the "K") (20A: Some cornbreads), and initially botched two of those three longer Downs. Specifically, went with FLIED OUT and READ ONLY instead of the correct SKIED OUT (?) and EYES ONLY. But the "K" from ALL KINDS gave me ASH CAKES gave me BMOCS (10D: Quad standouts). Then OLLIE was kind of a gimme (18A: No-handed skateboarding trick), and I pieced things together from there. All told, just over 6 minutes of work. As I say, Easy.
This is a very clean grid, as it should be—it's the maximum word count for themelesses (72), and generally, the higher the word count, the easier the grid is to fill cleanly. There's nothing here that really blows me away or makes me laugh or otherwise stands out as fantastic, but the net effect is good—bouncy answers from a wide variety of knowledge bases, a contemporary feel, and a bare minimum of junk. My one big stupid error of the day was dropping TASMANIA off the TA- at 33D: Land on the Indian Ocean (TANZANIA). For the record, TASMANIA is not "on the India Ocean," but in the heat of the moment, after having dropped the other two long Downs in that corner off just *their* first two letters, TASMANIA felt right. Ballparkish. Wrong, ultimately. But very fixable.
Bullets:
30A: "Forever Your Girl" singer, 1989 (ABDUL) — as in Paula. You may know her only as a former judge on "American Idol." I know her as the singer whose songs *dominated* the charts when I was in college. I have a soft spot for the "Forever Your Girl" album.
46A: It might be spun around a campfire (TALE) — just finished (re-)reading Charles Burns' "Black Hole," which is a dark comic about adolescence and isolation and contagion. Anyway, there are kids and campfires and an overall slasher-film vibe in many parts of the comic. It is very much worth reading.
57A: "Band" leader of the 1960s (SGT. PEPPER) — should've gotten this much more quickly (given that I had the SG- beginning), but I was thinking the "Band" was in quotes because it wasn't a musical band, but some other metaphorical kind of band. SGT. SNORKEL came to mind. I think that's from "Beetle Bailey." And doesn't fit.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Word of the Day: RUBATO (53A: Not strictly adhering to tempo) —
ru·ba·to
n.pl.ru·ba·tos
Rhythmic flexibility within a phrase or measure; a relaxation of strict time.
adj.
Containing or characterized by rubato. (freedictionary.com)
• • •
Not up to yesterday's standards, but OK. Main issue here was what seemed to me like a tin ear. XTREME GAMES sounds like several things that are things, but does not itself sound like a thing (7D: They might include BMX and wakeboarding, informally). You venture an opinion much more than you hazard one; you hazard a guess much more than you do an opinion. You do HAZARD AN OPINION, but it's just ... eh (38A: Dare to put in ONE'S two cents). There are some nice answers here in there, but mostly this is a bit workmanlike and plodding. STOOD IN LINE kind of sums it up—this puzzle is about that exciting. FOZZIE BEAR is the one true bright spot (27D: Orange children's character). I also somewhat like the preponderance of multi-word answers, like GO ALL IN and IN ON IT. But now I'm noticing SENT IN and AS IN (crossing!), which makes five INs in the grid, which is now sapping what little enthusiasm I had for this thing. Bah.
I started slow on this one, with only INXS, 'NEATH, and HOP sitting solidly in the grid for what felt like ever. Tried EXCITER (yipes) and ERIE early on (4D: ___ Railroad, 1832-1960), but pulled them when I couldn't get anything going. Eventually hopped to NE corner, where a lone "S" (at the end of what would becomes ORES) gave me SENT IN, then AS IN, and from that terminal "I" and a limited number of first letter possibilities (thank you, Roman numerals!), I got MENOTTI (18A: "The Consul" composer). After much hacking about, I got to MOZILLA and thus back to FIREFOX. This is part of that "tin ear" issue I mentioned earlier. If you really want to do this corporate name thing at the top of your grid, at least put the names in the right order (MOZILLA comes first: it's "MOZILLA FIREFOX"). FIREFOX opened that NW right up, and then I tore through this grid until the SW, where I slowed right down again. Well, actually, I didn't slow down so much as botch one answer badly. Off the -UB- I wrote in SUBITO for 53A: Not strictly adhering to tempo (RUBATO). Now ... I'm not sure why I know this "word." I feel like it means "quickly" in Latin. Or something in Latin. Actually, turns out SUBITO is *also* a musical direction—meaning "suddenly or abruptly." So, right universe, wrong answer. Ended up with SMILLA (which is something), but also SAGU (which is nothing). Didn't notice until the applet rejected my grid. Remember folks: Always Check Your Crosses. Ugh. Anyhoo, fixed the errors and still finished under 10.
[Zulu's counterpart] might have frustrated me quite a lot if I hadn't had AGHAS (25D: Eastern generals) and FOZZIE to help me out. AGHAS and FOZZIE also got me the HAZARD part of HAZARD AN OPINION. Everyone knows the Gloria Estefan song "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," but I doubt even people who bought the album remember its name ("LET IT LOOSE"). Thus, not my favorite answer. This Butterfield person is someone I'll have to add to my ASA stockpile (28D: Actor Butterfield of "Hugo"). I assume he's the kid in that movie ... yes. Oh, looks like he'll play Ender Wiggin in the upcoming adaptation of Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game." Card's having a bit of a P.R. problem at the moment. He's on the board of the National Organization for Marriage (probably the best known and most vocal opponents of gay marriage in the country). He's also slated to write an upcoming "Adventures of Superman" story, and many Superman fans (and comic book stores) are, let's say, less than happy.
For those who missed my Thursday announcement: "American Red Crosswords"—a collection of 24 original puzzles that I put together to benefit the Red Cross's Disaster Relief Fund—is available for download now from americanredcrosswords.blogspot.com. Puzzles were edited by Patrick Blindauer. Will Shortz wrote the introduction. And many, many big-time constructors donated their talents. So go donate to the Red Cross, download some puzzles, and enjoy the weekend.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: "CLOSING BELL" — theme answers are familiar phrases with "DING" tacked onto the end. Wacky phrases, "?"-cluing.
Word of the Day: OTRANTO (93D: Town on the SE tip of Italy that's the title setting for a Horace Walpole novel) — Otranto is a town and commune in the province of Lecce (Apulia, Italy), in a fertile region once famous for its breed of horses.
It is located on the east coast of the Salento peninsula. The Strait of Otranto, to which the city gives its name, connects the Adriatic Sea with the Ionian Sea and Italy with Albania. The harbour is small and has little trade.
Basically, you will never see OTRANTO in a puzzle unless it is clued via the Horace Walpole novel "The Castle of OTRANTO," a work (as I've said before) many of my grad school friends had to read. My best friend was a Restoration/18th Century scholar, so I am familiar with scores of names and titles from this period. Whether I've read them or not ... OK, I probably haven't read them.
If Italy were grinding you under her heel, OTRANTO would be doing most of the dirty work. -----
Seven DINGs and and ODIN (doesn't quite ring, but I wouldn't tell him that — 16D: Ruler of th Aesir). Oh, and NYSE, which originates in a DING and is a cute tie-in (43D: Closing bell place). A bit too much of the same thing. Once I copped the theme, and saw that the same word would be added over and over, I meandered through the puzzle, dutifully filling in squares, but not very hopeful of any great surprises. The damn bell just keeps ringing. Couldn't you do different tones? Like BING, DONG, TING. I guess it would be hard to tack DONG (ha ha, DONG) onto the end of a preexisting word and get anything that makes much sense. Still, Sundays should, if anything, have a higher standard than other days for the freshness of its themes. 21x21's a lot of ground to cover. Give me something to look forward to besides a repetitive noise.
Wanna see something weird? Google [Broadway columnist Wilson]. There are a battery of sites with that exact title, in all caps. The whole first page of search results when I checked. DON'T CLICK on any, though; I tried to go the first hit and it tried to show me a "free movie" (same thing's happening with [Ruler of the Aesir] searches). It appears that someone has a bot that can generate page titles that match highly searched terms over a given stretch of time. Can that really be good for business if you are not a. a crossword site or b. a NEAL Wilson / Broadway site? I think about all the porn and self-help bots that spam my Twitter account, or the Chinese bots lately that have been spamming my comments sections with adverts for, among other things, mail-order brides (if the person who helpfully translated that one comment is correct in his translation). You may often wonder, as I do, "Who in this day and age is actually clicking through, let alone responding?" Harper's Index this month offers this stat: Number of spam emails sent for every one that receives a response: 12,414,000. I have to believe at least Some of that 1-in-12 million group is mentally impaired and/or not particularly solvent, with their "responses" yielding nothing for the spammer. Who are these people ordering women and seeking penile enhancement? If you're industrious (and shameless) enough to contact a spammer to ask for assistance, surely you have what it takes to meet a female human on your own.
Theme answers:
23A: Goal of Sun-Maid's marketing department? (Raisin Bran DING)
39A: Salad bar activity? (greens fee DING) — I was going to complain about not knowing what the hell GREEN'S FEED was ("a horse feed company!? Really?"). Then I put the "D" back on the "DING," where it belongs.
52A: Book on how to repair rodent damage? (Of Mice and Men DING)
69A: Reason that nothing's growing on the farm? (long time no see DING)
88A: Question from a campaign committee? (Ain't We Got Fun DING?)
98A: Exercise for beginning yoga students (Gentle Ben DING) — too spot-on. That is, the resulting phrase is a very plausible, real phrase, so the zing of the DING is lost.
Nothing much to hold me up today. I failed to spell OTRANTO correctly (no surprise — I tend to spell it like TORONTO, not MONSANTO). FELDSPAR is utterly unknown to me (91D: Mineral that crystallizes from magma). Sounds like the world's worst production company name. "Look Who's Talking VII ... a FELDSPAR Production." If Marty Feldman and Caspar Weinberger started a production company, that's what it would be called. Got a little worried at the INEZ (42D: Deadly 1966 hurricane) / AMORTIZES (61A: Pays down incrementally) crossing, first because the word AMORTIZES just scares me. Like MULCT or AMERCE, it epitomizes the ugliness of business-speak. Bigger problem was brief suspicion that the "Z" was an "S." But reasoned that I'm not British, so no, zed, I mean "Z." Wondered briefly what EDDERS was until I realized that 105A: Push too hard, maybe wasn't RIDE but RILE, and thus the EDDERS were merely ELDERS (99D: Council members). Proper name mash-up at NEAL (50A: Beat poet Cassady) and RENE (33D: Haitian president Préval) required common sense inference from me, as I don't know either of those guys. FERLINGHETTI, yes, NEAL Cassady, no (though those two knew each other, apparently, and FERLINGHETTI wasn't technically a "beat" poet). Had a student who once wrote to FERLINGHETTI once (part of a class assignment) and he wrote her back: a lovely City Lights postcard telling her he couldn't possibly answer all of her questions. Awesome.
I enjoyed the ARNE / BRITANNIA and the ALI G (25D: Alter ego of Borat and Brüno) / SACHA Baron Cohen tie-ins. And that is all I have to say before ... Bullets:
19A: Gasteyer of stage and screen (Ana) — haven't seen her since SNL. Always liked her.
32A: Willow twigs (osiers) — I always think of OSIERS as the enemy of RAFFIA. Like they're street gangs. I am an OSIER, for sure.
59A: Dwellers on the Strait of Hormuz (Iranis) — first, they're IRANIANS, and second ... I just imagine them all, standing there on the shore ... do they really dwell Right On the Strait? Waving at oil ships to pass the time?
68A: "Drat!" ("Darn!") — wanted "Dang!"
92A: Old Apple laptop (iBook) — I'm about to buy a new Apple laptop (tho' I've been saying that for months ...)
96A: Company founded in 1940 as Standard Games (Sega) — no idea the Hedgehog was that old.
112A: Porous kitchen utensils (colanders) – staring at COLON-DERS made me realize I'd spelled OTRANTO wrong.
118A: Eight-time Canadian skating champion (Orser) — Brian. Right there is most of my knowledge of men's figure skating.
125A: Up time (at bat) — didn't enjoy this.
131A: Lead character in "Pushing Daisies" (Ned) — o come on.
12D: Science fiction author A. E. van _____ (Vogt) — Old skool! I own many of his books — part of my vintage paperback collection. My favorite cover is the one for "SLAN!"
24D: Retailer beginning in 1867 (Saks) — Like SEGA, older than I'd imagined.
49D: End of a ballade (envoi) — a very handy terminal "I" word. Frenchness gets you the "I" instead of the "Y"
54D: Something often thought of as impending (doom) — probably don't want "impending" in your clue and PENDING in your grid.
72D: Sport of a rikishi (sumo) — I've been doing this long enough that some of these once-exotic sounding terms ("rikishi") are starting to feel familiar. Although if the answer here had turned out to be JUDO, I doubt I would have blinked.
74D: San Francisco mayor Newsom (Gavin) — Youngish, handsome, pro gay marriage, somewhat scandal-ridden.
93D: Pulitzer playwright of 1953 (Inge) — also All-Star Tigers' third-baseman Brandon. That's a clue I want to start promoting.
102D: Meaning of the emoticon :-D (grin) — I wrote GASP. Why not just have the emoticon itself as the clue?
109D: Broad style of cuisine (Asian) — dang broads and their Asian cuisine. I just want a hamburger and fries, woman!
Puzzle Tweets of the Week! (xword chatter from the Twitterverse)
LeslieLeonard Happiness is: doing the crossword puzzle with my sister in Chicago via text message. :)
corblimey Crossword that I attempted to do while inebriated at 5am last night makes for interesting reading. It's absolute nonsense.
29accaciaroadaccording to the crossword in the work lunchroom, another word for clairvoyant is "phyicits" ...haha
rebcon1102 crossword puzzles + a blankie + the goonies = best day ever.
michelehumes Today's crossword is a bad joke: 'A horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says, "Go to hell, Will Shortz."'
P.S. all the women up for Best Actress in a Comedy Series at tonight's Emmy Awards are genuinely funny and worthy, but if (crossword enthusiast and all-around sweetheart) Christina Applegate doesn't win there will be much yelling at the screen this evening. It will pain me to boo Tina Fey, but I'll do it.
Read more...
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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