TUESDAY, Dec. 19, 2006 - Sarah Keller

Solving time: 7:46

THEME: N=>KN = very punny - familiar phrases starting with "N" have a "K" tacked on to the beginning and are then clued, e.g. 21A: Sweater selection? (knit-picking)

Further, every new "KN" word has a different vowel sound: KNIT, KNIGHT, KNOT, KNEW. Did you know that in medieval England, the "K" had not yet gone silent and was still pronounced in words like "knight?" It's true. Or so my training taught me. Perhaps my teachers were just making @#$ up. Anyway, one of the joys of reading Chaucer aloud (as I'll do in my classes from time to time) is hitting that hard "K" before the "N." Freaks kids out.

This was a pretty innocuous theme. Clever clues, I suppose, in the theme entries. I got totally flustered / floored / flummoxed by 50A: Was familiar with a summertime allergen? (Knew mown hay), in part because I had the middle and later parts of the answer first and the letter combinations looked insane, and in part because I was looking for POLLEN or RAGWEED or something like that (had just done a puzzle in one of my little Shortz books where the theme was "nothing to sneeze at" or something like that and theme answers involved puns on words like POLLEN and PEPPER and SNUFF and other things that make you sneeze - cute). Who mows hay!?!?! People who do these puzzles don't live on farms or in the 19th century. Hay? Really? OK. Now if the answer had been KNEW MOWN LAWN (1D: Homeowner's pride) - well it wouldn't have fit and I still would have struggled to see it, but at least the end result would have applied to my universe.

WRONG FILL

ANGER for WRATH (17A: Rage)
CLUB for ODDS (6A: What a tout may tout)
TBAR for LBAR (61A: Beam with a 90 degree bend)
NOSTICK for NONOILY (41D: Greaseless)

29D: Singer Lenya (Lotte)
38D: Polish-born author Sholem (Asch)

Blogged 'em before, so I'll blog 'em again. These two both return to the puzzle for the second time this month. I'd never heard of either of them before they showed up in my puzzle, though Ms. Lenya is apparently a puzzle stalwart. Can we get some new blood in the puzzle? Yes - there's Heidi KLUM ("As you know, in fashion, one moment you're in, and the next ... you're out!") (40D: Supermodel Heidi), Carrie Chapman CATT (23D: Women's suffrage leader Carrie Chapman _____) - honey, little help with that one... - Jim BACKUS (10D: Jim of "Gilligan's Island" fame), and ERLE Stanley Gardner (34D: Writer _____ Stanley Gardner), among others. Do constructors know that ERLE wrote a ton of books under the pen name A.A. FAIR? If so, why haven't I seen that answer lately (if ever)? Surely the opening double-A must come in handy sometimes, and when you're tired of A.A. MILNE and AARDVARK, why not try [E.S. Gardner pen name]?

25A: Mal de mer symptom (nausea)
62A: Bacteria in an outbreak (e-coli)

Thanks a lot for the morning (or bedtime) imagery, puzzle. Just what I want to be faced with as I'm winding down my day - disorders of the digestive tract. Breakfast table test! Actually, if these answers hadn't appeared on the same day, I'm sure I wouldn't have stopped to notice the pathology.

5D: Wisconsin city on Lake Winnebago (Oshkosh)

Little shout-out to my cheese-head friends Michelle and Jeff up in Oshkosh, even though they (like many of my friends) don't know of this blog's existence. Go ... UW-Oshkosh mascots! My mom used to love to dress me in OSHKOSH B'gosh overalls, but whose didn't? Every two-year-old looks adorable in those things.

55D: Comics dog (Odie)
42D: Old-fashioned music halls (Odea)

Surely there is some crazy theme entry crying out for construction here. Let's see... [Technological bird?] => A.V. AVIAN. ["Cuban kid off the port bow!"?] => ALEE ELIAN! ["Who wants to see my belly button?"?] => INNIE ANYONE? And [Garfield's least favorite theaters?] => ODIE ODEA. I have no idea what you call that theme, but there it is.

And lastly, I don't think I really knew 48D: Prefix with fluoride (tetra). The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS In keeping with yesterday's theme of CHRISTMAS / HANUKKAH / KWANZAA, I'd like to call your attention to this fantastic holiday music video treat (one of the best musical parodies I've ever seen - thanks, Steve). Andrew says I should warn you, though: it's a little ... blue. No nudity, one "swear" bleeped out (repeatedly), but ... adult content is fairly high.

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MONDAY, Dec. 18, 2006 - Donna Levin

Solving time: 6:36

THEME: The War on Christmas - one week before the birth of Our Lord, the Times decides that Christmas is just another "holiday," along with KWANZAA and HANUKKAH - somebody call Bill O'Reilly! or Stephen Colbert! Where's the outrage!?

Seriously, though, the theme was "Holiday decoration" - a clue used for three different 15-letter theme answers: 17A: CHRISTMAS WREATH, 37A: KWANZAA UNITY CUP (new to me), and 57A: HANUKKAH MENORAH. God knows (really, he does, I'm sure) how to spell HANUKKAH in English. I think there are at least two different spelling conventions, if not more. That, and the mysterious UNITY CUP thing kept me from flying through this the way I like to on a Monday, though I will say I felt like I was flying. I never stopped typing - but I had to correct a lot of wrong fill along the way, and never got a good rhythm going. O well. It's a cute little holiday puzzle.

2D: Liniment target (ache)

Without blinking I wrote ACNE, and so instead of seeing that the long theme answer at 17A began CHR... which would have given me at least five more letters as gimmes, I was presented with the baffling CNR... another rebus, perhaps? Who knows, I'm too busy madly bouncing around the grid and pounding the keyboard to find out ('til very late in the game). I used to think of OCALA (14A: Central Florida city) as a real puzzle player, a Pantheon prospect, but I think this is the first I've seen him in three months of blogging. Where has he been? Injured? Traveling? He should get out more often. Besides ACNE (for ACHE), other fill I got wrong initially included FUSE for WELD (6A: Solder), MALL for MART (53A: Shopping place), IOTA for WISP (46A: Fleeting trace), and, most appropriately, OOPS for OH NO (25A: "This looks bad!") and MUFF for GOOF (35A: Flub).

41A: Memo opener (in re)
60A: Abbr. before a colon (attn)
10D: Shorthand pro (steno)

It's like a generic 1950's office in here, what with STENOs writing memos that read ATTN so-and-so, IN RE: this and that, etc. IN RE is fabulous short fill that I know only from puzzles. Rarely use it (or see it) in real life. My first thought on seeing the clue for 60A was that the answer must be RECTO-, but it doesn't it, and doesn't quite pass the breakfast table test. Plus RECTOCOLON is a very uncommon term, returning only 183 Google hits. 976 if you put a hyphen in there. By the way, doctors recommend that you don't put a hyphen in there.

11D: The "E" in Q.E.D. (erat)
21A: Numbered work of a composer (opus)
42A: Plural of 21-Across (opera)
49D: Famed Roman censor (Cato)

Latinity! First two were gimmes, but o my god my years of Latin training disappeared when I hit 42A. I mean, if you had asked me that in casual conversation, I probably could have told you without thinking, but in the middle of puzzle frenzy, my brain came up empty. Weird feeling, like forgetting your mother-in-law's name or what day of the week it is. Puzzle-solving has made me hyper-attuned to how quickly (or slowly) my brain is able to retrieve information. I feel as though it's all downhill from here - any time I make up through practicing solving puzzles will be lost by the slow but inevitable decline in mental agility and ... my god, even writing this sentence is taxing my knowledge-retrieval abilities. Must move on. I don't think I knew CATO was a "censor." He is the author of a history of Rome, many political speeches, and many maxims, and was a staple of Latin education throughout the Middle Ages - though a group of very popular writings called The Distichs of Cato, which circulated in the Middle Ages, is probably not by Cato at all; but the fact that it was attributed to him tells you what kind of cachet his name had, especially where Latin learning and history were concerned. Hey, did you know that (according to Wikipedia) "In 205 BC, Cato was appointed quaestor?" Woo hoo, "Var." of QUESTOR (see yesterday's puzzle)! ["Why is he so excited?" "I don't know - let's just move on"]

34A: Like a pitcher's perfect game (no-hit)
28D: Hopeless, as a situation (no-win)

These intersect at the "O" - nice. They are not opposites, but they're close. With OH NO (25), we have three appearances of "NO" in this puzzle. NO NO NO. Where's the HO HO HO? I mean, is this a CHRISTMAS puzzle or isn't it?

4D: Business that routinely overcharges (clipjoint)
35D: Ship-to-shore accessway (gangplank)

This may be the most glorious long fill I've ever seen in a Monday puzzle. Makes me think it probably should have been a Tuesday (see my time), but whatever. Will's the boss. I own a fabulous novel by Fredric Brown called The Fabulous Clipjoint (part of my fabulous ginormous vintage paperback collection) - and though I've read the novel and I've stared at its glorious cover a billion times, I don't know that I could have told you what the word "clipjoint" meant before right now. I had the first four letters of that answer and thought "Huh, must have something to do with coupons..." and had to move on and come back to it. GANGPLANK - man, that's a great word, and it creates a nice, big "K" pile-up at the bottom of the puzzle, what with HANUKKAH and its crosses OINK (44D) and KAT (58D: Krazy _____ of the comics) down there. And I haven't even mentioned the pretty great GYPSYMOTH (36D: Insect whose larvae destroy foliage), with its two "Y"'s. All four of the nine-letter non-theme answers cut across two Theme answers. Seriously, this is a Monday puzzle?

56D: Lt. Kojak (Theo)

Who loves ya, baby?! This is some TV obscurity, especially (again) for a Monday. ["Cosby Show" son] might have been more readily gettable. [Sox GM Epstein]? [Cager Ratliff]? But no, go for the lollipop-licking Lieutenant, the bald badass himself. Telly! Is "Kojak" on DVD, because I'm getting a craving.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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THURSDAY, Sep. 28, 2006 - Richard Chisholm

Solving time: 10:55

THEME: Great Danes (both dogs and people)

Solving this puzzle was not a pleasant experience (for which I can't really blame its constructor, Mr. Chisholm). The puzzle itself is actually pretty clever, yet somehow solving it felt like slogging through mud. Lots of foreign words or names and odd spellings - I never have any idea what vowels are involved in the spelling of "Isak Dinesen" (45A: "Babette's Feast" writer) nor how many "s"s or "n"s are supposed to be in there. And then throw "Niels Bohr" and "Victor Borge" in there for good measure ... this puzzle left me on shaky footing, bouncing all over the place trying to get intersecting words. Maybe if I stopped timing myself I'd enjoy the puzzle more.

5A: Some term life insurance offers (spam)

See, I had "scam" written there for much of the puzzle. I think I was thinking "whole life"...

9A: Monroe's co-star in "The Seven Year Itch" (Ewell)

I wanted to write "Gable" here until I realized that I was thinking of a completely different movie. I have no idea who this "Ewell" guy is. I did know a Ewell once. A Troy Ewell. I went to high school with him. He was wealthy. I don't remember much else about him.

23A: Real mess (mare's nest)

My first thought: mares don't make nests. Indeed. Here are the definitions for "mare's nest" from my spiritual leader, the OED:

1. Originally in to have found (also spied) a mare's nest: to imagine that one has discovered something wonderful, which in fact does not exist. Hence: an illusory discovery, esp. one that is much vaunted and betrays foolish credulity.

2. An untidy or confused mess; a muddle; a misconception.

39A: "The Pilgrim's Progress" author (Bunyan)
42A: Milton subject (Paradise)

Back-to-back canonical English Literature clues! Somebody knows what I like...

61A: _____ Hunter a k a Ed McBain (Evan)

I love any opportunity to talk about great crime fiction writers, especially those who got their starts in the Golden Age of the American Paperback. I have a massive paperback collection, nearly all of which dates from 1945-1965. Here is a beautiful 1957 Paperback Original (PBO) of McBain's Killer's Choice, with cover art by the legendary Robert Schulz:
12D: Bloody Mary's daughter in "South Pacific" (Liat) (I'm sure; like that's a name. Come on!)
22D: Actor Fröbe of "Goldfinger" (Gert) (seriously, you're killing me)
25D: Small African antelope (oribi)

These are all good examples of how you don't actually have to know all the answers to complete the puzzle. Here, for your enjoyment is a (so-called) oribi:


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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