Impressionist Claude / MON 5-16 / Former "Meet the Press" host Marvin / Hermes' mother / R&B singer with the hit "It's All About Me" / "___ Dream" (aria from "Lohengrin") / Former All-Star closer Robb

Constructor: Sam Buchbinder

Relative difficulty: Pretty Easy, I Think

THEME: Things that can be "set"

Hi, everybody! It's me -- PuzzleGirl! Excited to be with you today to talk about your Monday puzzle while Rex is traveling. I'm still bedridden after having this stupid surgery on my foot. Well, it's not actually stupid. I imagine when I'm all healed I will more accurately describe it as helpful and will, in fact, be grateful for it. But right now it's just feels -- ARGH! I went back to the doctor this past Thursday to get my cast off. I was hoping I would then get a walking boot or something that would make it easier for me to shower, get around, possibly drive (it's my right foot). You know, since my doctor initially told me that the recovery would consist of one week of no driving and it's already been four weeks. But no. They gave me another cast. So, another three weeks. Sigh. Let's see if this puzzle can take my mind off my troubles for a bit, shall we?

Theme answers:

• 17A: BROKEN BONE (Reason for a cast)
• 25A: VOLLEYBALL (Piece of sports equipment that's spiked)
• 37A: DINNER TABLE (Family gathering place)
• 48A: ALARM CLOCK (Device with a snooze button)
• 59A: "WE'RE ALL SET!" ("Ready to go!" ... or a description of 17-, 25-, 37- and 48-Across?)

HA HA HA. VERY FUNNY, CROSSWORD GODS. Very first theme clue. Thanks a lot.

But the theme is good. It's obviously not the most exciting set of theme answers (see what I did there?) you'll ever see, but perfectly serviceable for a Monday. And each theme answer is "set" in a different way, which is nice. The long downs aren't super sparkly or anything, but Monday's aren't exactly known for their excitement, right? Let's see what else there is to like.

Bullets:

• 6A: TIME (Magazine with a "Person of the Year"). I'm so old I remember when it used to be "Man of the Year." When did they change that? Hmmm ... 1999. So it's been a while. Good.
• 41A: TAKES TO (Starts liking). I first thought WARMS TO, but already had a couple of the crosses to alert me that was wrong.
• 58A: MAIA (Hermes' mother). One of these days I'm going to learn my Gods and Goddesses.
• 67A: AISLE (Choice plane seating). Not according to my kids!
• 1D: "I'M BEAT!" ("Man, what a day!"). I always like seeing the colloquial phrases in the puzzle.
• 2D: "DARE ME" (Comment after "You think I'm chicken?"). Unless they're not really things people are apt to say.
• 3D: IN ON IT (Part of a prank, say). Very tricky clue for me. I was thinking the answer might be ANTIC (33D: Shenanigan) (malapop!). But the "silent words" at the beginning of the clue that make it work are "like one who is."
• 7D: IN OIL (How foods are often fried). Are there other ways of frying food??
• 8D: MEN (All Supreme Court justices until 1981). This is a much better clue for MEN than ... another clue someone might have come up with. Interesting that Sandra Day O'Connor joined the bench in 1981 and yet Time magazine continued with "Man of the Year" for a full 18 years!
• 24D: "NOT IT!" (Cry in a game of tag). So glad this was the answer. I'm pretty sure I've seen I'M IT clued in this way and ... that's just wrong. Nobody says that.

That's about it from me for today. Go ahead in the comments and talk about anything else in the puzzle that strikes you as talk-about-able. I believe you'll have another sub tomorrow but, with any luck, Rex will be back shortly after that.

Love,

PuzzleGirl

[Follow PuzzleGirl on Twitter]

Read more...

L'chaim / THU 5-5-16 / Nonstick pan brand / World's second most translated author / 7 on the Beaufort scale / Sports org. with the Calder Cup

Constructor: David Poole

Relative difficulty: Thursday

Hi, everybody. It's me! PuzzleGirl! And I'm here to talk you through your Thursday puzzle. If it seems like I'm in a bad mood, it's because I had surgery on my foot three weeks ago and I've been in bed since then. Three weeks! And it wouldn't be so bad if I had been expecting it. Do you know what my doctor said when I asked him back in January about what the recovery time would be like? Of course you don't.

Well, I'll tell you. He said, "You won't be able to drive for a week." What he failed to say was, "And then you won't be able to drive for three weeks after that." And, "There's a good possibility you won't be able to drive for the three weeks after that either." No, he didn't say either of those last two things. And yet, here we are.

So, if I'm in a bad mood, now you know why. If, on the other hand, I say anything crazy, well that's just the Vicodin talking. Got that? Okay, here we go.

Theme: "Ace in the Hole" - the word ACE is presumed to reside in four squares (holes) in the grid.

Theme Answers:

• 1A: Cel material - [ACE]TATE
• 13D: Sourness - [ACE]RBITY

• 24A: Spiritual that lent its name to a 2015 Broadway musical - AMAZING GR[ACE]
• 12D/30D: Period when dinosaurs became extinct - CRET[ACE]OUS

• 52A: Hidden advantage that this puzzle employs four times? - [ACE] IN THE HOLE
• 35D/56D: Neighboring - ADJ[ACE]NT TO

• 68A: Big name in Italian fashion - VERS[ACE]
• 51D: Longtime Vegas performer - LIBER[ACE]

This puzzle gave me fits. You should be able to see in the grid above where I made my mistakes. First, I had IRELAND where ICELAND was supposed to go [6D: European country whose telephone directories list people alphabetically by first name]. Then, I had IN OUR instead of IS OUR [65A: "A Mighty Fortress ___ God" (hymn)]. The crosses might have helped me if I had taken the time to think about it. But I didn't. ARRE could be an Israeli port just as well as ACRE to me. And I typically don't pay attention to the cities named in the Random Direction clues, but if I had in this case, I would have seen my mistake.

But that third error? Well, what I think we have here is a living, breathing Natick. Crossing [41D: Charlie Chan's creator Earl ___ Biggers] and [23D: Cubist Fernand] at the last letter is just ... well, that could have been any letter in the alphabet as far as I was concerned. I guess if I'm going to put a positive spin on it, I learned something today. But that's all you're getting.

What else?

• 21A: TAROT [Holder of The Sun and The World] - I was thinking this was referring to newspapers. Are there any newspapers actually called The World? Now that I think about it, that seems like a fake newspaper name they would use in, like, cartoons.
• 33A: DEN [TV spot, often] - I had a hard time talking myself out of "spot" meaning "advertisement," which really slowed me down here.
• 35A: ARIETTA [Short piece at La Scala]
• 55A: DEMI [Starting half?] - I entered the last three letters and then had to wait to see if the first letter was going to be an H, an S, or a D.
• 67A: METS [N.L. East team] - Of course, I wanted this to be NATS. Sigh.
• 8D: SEP [Mo. with Talk Like a Pirate Day] - My favorite line of the Talk Like a Pirate Day origination story is this: "They were playing racquetball, and, as so often happens, they began talking like pirates."
• 46D: AHL [Sports org. with the Calder Cup] - Darn it! I knew it was a hockey award, but didn't realize it was for only one league.
• 61D: JAM [Showy basket] - I had to ask Doug Peterson to explain this one to me. He sent me this:

 

I have two quick things to plug before I let you go.

1. I contributed a guest puzzle for the American Values Club Crossword this week! If you're not a subscriber, you can subscribe here. Or you can buy single puzzles (including mine!) for the low, low price of $1. I hope you'll try it. And I hope you'll like it!


2. It's not too late to register for the Indie 500 crossword tournament, which will be held June 4 in Washington, D.C. I attended last year as a competitor and had a blast. This year I'm on the organizing team and, if I do say so myself, it's shaping up to be even better than last year. Don't miss out! Register now!

Thanks, everybody. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

[Follow PuzzleGirl on Twitter]

Read more...

___ regni / SUN 4-5-15 / Home of Faa'a International Airport / Ayatollah's speech / Point of sharpest vision / Schlemiels / Burns's "To a Louse" / Sony video recorder

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: The Captain Goes Down With the Ship — Theme answers (which are all downs) consist of the names of captains and their ships.

Hey everyone. Happy Sunday to you. PuzzleGirl here with you on this beautiful day. Rex is traveling again so you're stuck with me. Let's just make the best of it, shall we? Today's puzzle is a little weird to me. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it's different. The theme answers aren't real phrases and they're not even made-up phrases. They're just two (or three) words put together for effect. The words are related to each other, but they don't actually make up a phrase. That seems a little weird to me. That's all I'm saying.

Theme answers:

• AHAB PEQUOD (2D: Example from classic American literature)
• KIRK ENTERPRISE (5D: Example from television)
• NEMO NAUTILUS (10D: Example from sci-fi literature)
• BLIGH BOUNTY (14D: Example from 18th-century history)
• HOOK JOLLY ROGER (52D: Example from fantasy literature)
• SMITH TITANIC (60D: Example from 20th-century history)
• CRUNCH GUPPY (63D: Example from advertising)
• LINCOLN USA (75D: Metaphorical example from poetry)

You know what? Let's not talk about what's weird about the puzzle. Let's talk about what's good about the puzzle. But before we do that, I just want to say really quickly and with as little vitriol as possible that I initially thought RESEE (101D: Watch over) was the worst entry in the grid and then I came across FOVEA (69D: Point of sharpest vision). FOVEA. For real. Have any of your ever seen this word in your life? I know I haven't. That is one ugly entry. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Bullets:

• 1A: White's partner (SAJAK) — Raise your hand if, like me, you wanted STRUNK here. Such nerds.
• 22A: Asian wild ass (ONAGER) — I'm just not going to say a thing about that clue. Nope.
• 29A: Book that needs to be read word for word? (ROGET'S) — Cute clue for the thesaurus.
• 42A: 7/11 product? (QUOTIENT) — I got tricked recently by the clue "1/2" for DATE. And I was tricked by this one too. So I'm starting to get the idea that when there are numbers in the clue, I need to take a step back.
• 51A: Word of regret (SHOULDA) — With S**ULDA in place I thought this was going to be a foreign word. But it's just plain old SHOULDA, as in "shoulda, woulda, coulda."
• 65A: Baseball V.I.P.s (G.M.s) — Oh man I am so ready for baseball season. My team's G.M. has made some moves during the off season that I'm not 100% sure about but that's probably why he's the G.M. and I'm not. Well, that's one of the reasons anyway.
• 89A: Best-selling children's series "PERCY Jackson & the Olympians" — PuzzleSon loved these books. Recommended.
• 100A: Claymation dog (GROMIT) — Couldn't remember this guy's name at first and I also didn't know the name of Cap'n Crunch's ship. I had PUPPY at first, which, if you think about it, is a TERRIBLE name for a ship.
• 102A: Helpful household pets (RATTERS) — I don't know. If a ratter would be helpful to you in your house, maybe it's time to think about moving.
• 118A: "No, you really must!" ("I INSIST!") — For some reason this really tickled me. Probably by favorite answer.
• 7D: "ARE you even listening?" — Well? Are you?
• 13D: Big dos (AFROS) — Not a fan of this clue. #NotAllAfros
• 37D: Affix carelessly (SLAP ON) — Another interesting colloquial phrase.
• 44D: Game center? (TAC) — As in the "center" word of "tic tac toe." Took me a minute.
• 48D: "I got it!" ("AHA!") and 50D: "I *finally* got it!" ("DUH!") — Nice pair of clues to jazz up this so-so fill.
• 74D: Told (BLABBED) — BLABBED is a great word. I want to encourage all of you to use the word BLABBED in conversation today.
• 85D: British Invasion band (THEM) — Never heard of them. (See what I did there?)
• 87D: Kind of ceiling (DEBT) — I can't see this kind of clue/answer pair without being slightly annoyed since someone explained to me why it's just not right. You see, "debt" isn't a kind of ceiling. A "debt ceiling" is a kind of ceiling. And now that I've explained it to you, you can spend the rest of your solving years annoyed about it too. You're welcome.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everybody. With any luck Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Read more...

Edmonton six / TUE 3-31-15 / Broadway compose Jule / California county east of Sonoma / Picasso's "Lady With ___" / Singer Bareilles / Source of the line "The Lord is thy keeper" / California county east of Sonoma

Constructor: Gary Cee

Relative difficulty: Just About Right

THEME: VERBAL GYMNASTICS (38A: Fancy, evasive language) — Theme answers are common phrases the second word of which can also be a word for a piece of gymnastics apparatus

Theme answers:

• 18A: ONION RINGS (Deep-fried side dish)
• 26A: LASER BEAM (Metaphor for straightness)
• 54A: HIGH HORSE (Snootiness)
• 65A: COFFEE BARS (Java joints)

Hey you. Yeah, you! What's up? I haven't seen you in a while. Unless you were in Stamford this weekend and then I probably did. Yep, that's right. It's me, PuzzleGirl, filling in for Rex today while he is traveling. I'm going to tell you right upfront that this is not going to be a long, involved blog post. I did not get much sleep over the last few days because I was participating in the best weekend of the year, otherwise known as the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Had a blast, as usual.



Finn Vigeland, Elizabeth Olson White
(PuzzleSister), Sam Donaldson, Vega
Subramaniam, and Doug Peterson
getting froyo in Stamford

I was actually nervous about it moving back to Stamford because I didn't start attending until it was in Brooklyn and I don't like change. Also I'm a pessimist by nature. So I was just sure there were going to be all kinds of things wrong with the whole set-up. But I was pleasantly surprised. The hotel was nice (and way cheaper than Brooklyn), the neighborhood was nice, and it was actually quite a bit easier for me to get to (which I know was not true for everybody). Really the only complaint I have about the weekend is that the room was waaaaay too crowded. 

Me and a couple of weirdos
(Doug Peterson and Jeff Chen)

My thought is that if you're committed to having the event in Stamford then you should set it up so that it can be accommodated in Stamford, which I guess would mean capping the registration or (as I've heard they've done in the past) using two ballrooms. No one I talked to seemed all that excited about the two-ballroom idea (although, frankly, I don't see any particular downside), so why not only accept the number of people that can actually fit in the room? Just a thought.



Me and the champ, Dan Feyer

But hey, we're not here to talk about my desire to be in charge of every damn thing. We're here to talk about the puzzle. What did you think? I thought it was not bad. Two of the theme clues didn't really work for me but that happens sometimes. I can accept that someone somewhere has used the phrase "straight as a laser beam" even though I personally have never heard it. And I guess HIGH HORSE might be the actual snootiness itself even though I think the "metaphor for ..." construction would have worked better here. The phrase us "up on your HIGH HORSE," right? So you're up on your ... snootiness? No, you're up on your HIGH HORSE and that means you're snooty. I don't know. It's not working for me is what I'm saying.



Last meal in Stamford: Kristian House,
Gabe Gonzalez, Vega Subramaniam, Mala
Nagarajan, Alex Jeffrey, Ollie Roeder,
Mike Nothnagel, Doug Peterson, Sam
Donaldson, PuzzleSister

So, as I said, I'm really tired and I think what I'll do here is leave the rest to you all. If you came here looking for answers, I posted the grid for you. If you have questions about a specific clue or answer, go ahead and comment. It'll get answered. Probably several times! I'll see you all back here next time. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Read more...

El Amazonas, e.g. / SUN 3-8-15 / Subject of a prophecy in Genesis / Israeli diet / English author Blyton / One end of the hotline / Betide / Beast imagined in "Beasts of the Southern Wild" / Smith of "Downton Abbey"

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Sunday-ish

THEME: PI DAY — Rebus squares contain the symbol for pi, which reads as the letters "PI" for the down answers and as "TT" (which it kind of looks like) in the across answers.

Hey, everyone. PuzzleGirl here filling in on this glorious weekend. Seriously, it was like in the 40s here in the D.C. area today. A welcome 9-Down from the crazy cold and snow we've been dealing with lately. Rex is at the Finger Lakes puzzle tournament today and asked me to join you with the Sunday puzzle, which, of course, I'm delighted to do. So let's get to it.

Theme answers:

• 23A: RO[TT]EN EGG (The last one in, perhaps)
• 26A: MAD HA[TT]ER ("Why is a raven like a writing desk?" asker)
• 29A: GUIL[T T]RIPS (Shames into action)
• 117A: TA[TT]LE (Snitch)
• 120A: DO[TT]ED (Like two lowercase letters of the alphabet)
• 3D: TY[PI]CALLY (As is usual)
• 9D: RES[PI]TE (Breather)
• 15D: RA[PI]D-FIRE (How questions may be asked)
• 102D: STU[PI]D (Cry exclaimed while facepalming)
• 105D: UTO[PI]A (More work)
• 69A/94A/72A HOW I WISH I COULD CALCULATE PI EASILY (A mnemonic for the first eight digits of [symbol in the middle of the grid])

It took me a while to figure out what the "TT" had to do with anything, then I finally realized that it kind of looks like the pi symbol, so it's all good. At first I thought both "PI" and "TT" were supposed to be crammed into the box and I wondered what the heck Brad Pitt had to do with anything. Then, knowing I'd be blogging later, I was just glad to know I would have an excuse to include a picture of Brad Pitt in the post. You're welcome.

This puzzle wasn't particularly easy for me, but I did finish it eventually. The ETRUSCAN / TOKYO / LICKED / PLAYER (76A: Like much of Italy in 700 B.C. / 81A: ___ Bay, site of a historic Admiral Perry visit of 1853 / 66D: Trounced / 67D: Ladies' man) section was the last to fall. But fall it did and I cried: "Victory is mine! Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land!" Okay, not really. I don't actually get that excited about finishing puzzles, plus it's not breakfast time. But you get the idea.

Bullets:

• 41A: Bully on "The Simpsons" (NELSON) — HAha!
• 43A: "THERE'S no doubt" — This seems really random to me. I mean, I'm sure this is a phrase people say, but it's not really a thing, is it? "___ no 'I' in team" would work for me. Or "___ gold in them thar hills." "___ more where that came from." "___ no place like home." "___ no crying in baseball." "___ one in every crowd." I think I've made my point.
• 46A: 2009 Newbery-winning author Gaiman (NEIL) — I always get Neil Gaiman confused with Neil Postman, who was also a writer. As far as I can tell, the things they wrote about don't overlap At All, so I'm not sure why they live in the same part of my brain. Besides the obvious.
• 71A: XV years before the Battle of Hastings — Now, see, that's just not fair.
• 88A: It never starts with 666 (SSN) — Who knew?
• 103A: Computing pioneer Lovelace (ADA) — I've seen a couple articles recently about a campaign to take Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with a woman. I think Ada Lovelace would be a good choice.
• 107A: It's revolting (MUTINY) — Good clue.
• 108A: One way of learning, it's said (OSMOSIS) — Is this for real? I think when I've heard the phase "learning by osmosis" it's been said in jest. Wikipedia says:

  An example of social osmosis would be knowing a show exists that you have never seen, and yet possessing detailed information concerning aspects of the show without actively acquiring this knowledge ....

  Well that sounds like crossword puzzles to me!
• 113A: Belch (ERUCT) — Pretty sure I've never seen this word before. (Eruct, not belch. I've seen the word belch before.)
• 123: 1/2, for one (DATE) — I like this tricky clue. I read it as "one-half" instead of "January 2," which I assume you did too and that was the whole point.
• 39D: Frat pack member Ben (STILLER) — Others in the frat pack: Jack Black, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Steve Carell. Now you know.

• 58D: Threatens, as a king (CHECKS) — Love me a good chess clue.
• 59D: "HOGAN'S Heroes" — I believe I would be horrified to watch this show today and recall how much it made me laugh back when I was a kid. On a side note, PuzzleDaughter has a teacher named Mr. Klink. Whenever she mentions him I say "You mean, Colonel Klink?" and I laugh hysterically. She rolls her eyes and waits for me to finish. (That last part actually happens a lot around here.)

Hey, it was fun hanging out with you today. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow!

Love, PuzzleGirl

Read more...

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Pretty Mondayish

THEME: Spell It Out — Theme answers are familiar phrases, the first words of which spell the letters "IT OUT."

Theme answers:

• 17A: *What a good speaker maintains with the audience (EYE CONTACT)
• 25A: *Golfers' bookings (TEE TIMES)
• 30A: *"Man!" ("OH BROTHER")
• 45A: *"Wait, wait ... go back" ("YOU LOST ME")
• 51A: *Bit of Boston Harbor debris in 1773 (TEA CHEST)
• 64A: Leave no room for misinterpretation ... or what the first words of the answers to the five starred clues do, literally (SPELL IT OUT)

Hi, everybody. PuzzleGirl here with your Monday puzzle while You-Know-Who is traveling. I hope you all are enjoying the holidays. We had a very low-key Christmas here at the PuzzleHouse. I spent most of Christmas Day backing up computers and phones and upgrading software on various computers and phones. You know, Christmas stuff. PuzzleHusband and I also completely geeked out on a jigsaw puzzle. Can't remember the last time I put one together, but I grabbed one at Target last week thinking the kids might enjoy it. Well, they had no use for it but it got done anyway due do our addictive personalities.

But hey, what about this puzzle? Nice little Monday jaunt, I'd say, until I got down to the Texas area of the grid. I had ELLE for MLLE. (61D: Fr. girl) and SAPPY for SOPPY (53D: Maudlin) so I just couldn't figure out what was wrong. I decided it wasn't worth fretting over so I just had Across Lite tell me the problem. I'm sure I would have eventually figured it out but I knew I needed to blog so didn't want to spend the time. I'm eager to know if that spot caused problems for anyone else.

Bullets:

• 1A: Titanic victim John Jacob ASTOR. Way to start us off on a light note.
• 21A: LITCHI nut (Chinese fruit). Do people know what these are? I'm pretty sure I've never heard of this.
• 
  29A: Fox News anchor Smith (SHEP). Not sure how he can stand to work at Fox News. He doesn't really seem to fit in with the rest of them.
• 69A: Letters between jays and ells (KAYS). I can't decide if I hate this because spelling out letters is lame or if I like it because it kind of matches the theme.
• 3D: October 31 option (TREAT). Tricky. (See what I did there?)
• 6D: Glam rock band MOTT the Hoople. As it turns out I don't know any Mott the Hoople songs. At first I thought I'd use "Flirtin' With Disaster," but that's Molly Hatchet. Totally different band.
• 10D: Thwarts (STYMIES). Both good words.
• 
  13D: Enjoys Joyce, Carroll or Oates (READS). Cute clue. I've read several Joyce Carol Oates books, but gave up on reading her when I tried "Missing Mom" back in 2005. I believe Ms. Oates must have fallen on her head and lost the ability to write a complete sentence. I could not follow (or finish) that book.
• 30D: Like integers of the form 2n + 1 (ODD). So now we need to do math. Great. Just great.
• 37D: Juillet's season (ÉTÉ). French!

And with that, I must take my leave. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Read more...

"Coffee Cantata" composer / SUN 8-10-14 / Baseball's Alvarez / ___ prosequi / French "Inc." / City north of Seattle

Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty: Pretty Easy

THEME: Number-One Friends — Theme answers are familiar phrases, the first words of which are all names of White House dogs.

Hi, everybody. It's PuzzleGirl again and this write-up is going to be super super short. As you probably know, today was a big day. Lollapuzzoola 7! The puzzles were great this year and the day really couldn't have been any more fun. Brian and Patrick have done such a great job with this tournament! Congratulations to the big winners, Jon Delfin (Express Division) and Patti Varol (Local Division). Lots of other trophies and prizes too. Seriously, what other tournament rewards people for cheating (Jonah Wolf), worst handwriting (Joon Pahk), and singing a cheesy 1980s novelty song (Adesina Koiki)? Too much fun!

If you want to get the tournament puzzles (and trust me, you do), surf on over to the LP7 website and order them for $10. Tell them PuzzleGirl sent you.

So let's do a quick recap of this puzzle. Of course, the first thing you want to do with a Liz Gorski puzzle is take a look at the grid and see what awesome thing she has done with it. I thought this one was a teddy bear, but turns out it's a dog, which is also pretty cool.

Theme answers:

• 24A: *What to call a female ambassador [the Johnsons] (HER EXCELLENCY)
• 116A: *Pairing up for safety [the Clintons] (BUDDY SYSTEM)
• 3D: *Cleaning supply [the Bushes 43]
• 15D: *"My Fair Lady" co-star [the Reagans] (REX HARRISON)
• 67D: *Singer with the 1964 #2 hit "My Boy Lollipop" [the Bushes 41] (MILLIE SMALL)
• 70D: *Egg order [the Obamas] (SUNNY SIDE UP)
• 62A: What the answer to each of the six starred clues starts with (WHITE HOUSE DOG)

I had the most trouble in the southwest corner where MILLIE SMALL was completely unknown to me. I vaguely remembered that MILLIE was the name of a White House pet, but I don't recall ever seeing the word MARL (121A: Earthy deposit) and I wasn't 100% sure on RAMA (115A: Any of nine kings of Thailand), so I was a little surprised to see Mr. Happy Pencil.

Other than that, I think I'll just say that I noticed some fun cluing and a bit of Scrabbliness. I don't understand 68-Across at all: Max Peel, for example: Abbr. (ANAG). But I'm sure I'll feel stupid when you explain it to me. Favorite entries for me include TEST RIDES (50A: Motorcycle demos, e.g.) and CYCLOPS (One with an eye for a storyteller?) and favorite clues are probably 100A: What a packing person may pack (PISTOL) and 89A: Modern know-it-all? (SIRI).

And with that, I'm afraid I must leave you. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Read more...

"Damn Yankees" team / THU 6-12-14 / "Well-bred insolence," per Aristotle / Pawel Pawlikowski film / Nevil Shute's "___ Like Alice" / Line 22 on Form 1040

Constructor: Mark Feldman

Relative difficulty: Pretty hard, I think.

THEME — All of it: Theme answers are the last words of familiar phrases that start with "The whole ..."

Theme answers:

• 17A: MEGILLAH (Long, involved story, in slang)
• 18A: BALL OF WAX (Business, informally)
• 30A: SHOOTING MATCH (Competition in marksmanship)
• 51A: ENCHILADA (Queso-topped dish)
• 54A: THE WHOLE (100% ... or words that can precede 17-, 18-, 30- and 51-Across

Knock knock! Who's there? That's right, you're stuck with PuzzleGirl again today. Rex's flight got canceled so I got an SOS text from Detroit. Now I just told you all yesterday about how I was pretty much done with the whole blogging thing for this week, right? That should mean your expectations are sufficiently low. I guess we'll find out.

I had a REALLY hard time with this puzzle. I didn't want to admit it to you earlier this week, but I actually haven't been solving puzzles daily for a couple months now. Things just got busy here and for some reason, puzzling sort of fell off my radar. When Rex asked me to sub for him this week, I thought "Great! An excuse to get back in the habit!" And it really has been great. The problem is that when you don't regularly solve puzzles, a Thursday can kind of throw you for a loop. At least that was my experience today.

I did manage to finish the puzzle, but it was very slow going. It seemed like every clue was opaque and coming up with the answers required WAY more brain cell activity than anything else I did today. And I tell you all that to say that I'm probably not a great judge of this puzzle's difficulty level. And the fact that I've never heard of one of the theme answer, well to me that says I'm probably not a great judge of ANYTHING to do with this puzzle.

THE WHOLE MEGILLAH. Huh. Megillah is, of course, a Hebrew word, so the phrase is basically Jewish (can a phrase be Jewish?). Me? I'm not Jewish. I do know a few things about Judaism though. I've been to a bris. My BFF sends me hamentashen every year at Purim. I know when to say L'shana tovah and understand why some Jews won't use umbrellas on Shabbat. But "The Whole Megillah" is new to me. I wonder if it would make a difference if I lived in New York or even in a neighborhood with a larger Jewish population. I'm curious to know whether you know this phrase or not. (And whether you're Jewish or not.) In any case, it made that corner of the grid very tough for me but I'm happy to have learned something from this puzzle.

Quick Hits:

• 5A: Spencer of "Good Morning America" (LARA) — Never heard of her.
• 12A: Common flavorer in Italian sausage (FENNEL) — Reminds me of one of my favorite "Sports Night" exchanges.

Casey: Hey what do you know about the fennel salad here?
Gordon: What do you need to know?
Casey: Well, like, for instance...what's fennel?

• 20A: Home of "The Gist" and "Political Gabfest" (SLATE) — Expected this to be a TV station, not an "e-mag."
• 27A: Final order (DESSERT) — I've worked in the legal profession basically my whole life, so I could only think of "order" as something a judge would hand down, which made DESSERT pretty tough to see.
• 40A: Modern term for "Roman fever" (MALARIA) — Who knew?
• 47A: In groups (ELITES) — In this clue "in" is an adjective, not a preposition. So. Tricky.
• 48A: Holy SEE. — Raise your hand if you tried COW here.
• 57A: Mark Twain's boyhood home (HANNIBAL) — Thankful for this gimme.
• 5D: Miller character (LOMAN) — I was thinking "A Streetcar Named Desire," not "Death of a Salesman." Two totally different plays written, coincidentally, by two total different playwrights.
• 9D: Lit up (ABLAZE) — Tried AFLAME first.
• 10D: Certain metalworker (PLATER) — I'm sure this is a real thing, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
• 12D: Bone whose name is Latin for "pin" (FIBULA) — Lots of learning going on during this solve.
• 29D: It has four bases (DNA) — I have no idea what this means.
• 36D: What a hygrometer measures (HUMIDITY) — I was just telling someone the other day how when I lived in New Mexico I had to laugh at all the people acting like they were dying when the humidity got all the way up to, say, 14%.
• 46D: Kind of center (REHAB) — No no no.
• 53D: Not be able to say "say," say (LISP) — Like Daffy!

Thanks for stopping by. With any luck, Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl

Read more...