West Side Story shout during Dance Gym / TUE 1-12-10 / Bird known for making baskets / Tokyo-based synthesizer maker / Influential moneybags

Constructor: Patrick Blindauer and Rebecca Young

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Find Your Moos — Diphthong "yoo" is changed to "oo" in familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, which are clued "?"-style

Word of the Day: Satchel PAIGE (53A: Pitcher Satchel) —

Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (July 7, 1906 – June 8, 1982) was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend in his own lifetime. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, the first player to be inducted from the Negro leagues. // Paige was a right-handed pitcher and was the oldest rookie to play Major League Baseball at the age of 42. He played with the St. Louis Browns until age 47 and represented them in the Major League All-Star Game in both 1952 and 1953. His professional playing career lasted from 1926 until 1966.

• • •

My time was slightly slower than usual today, in a way that is fairly typical when the theme answers are "wacky" this early in the week. Also, this grid has some pretty wide-open NE and SW corners, which take longer to navigate than more typical 3x4 or 4x4 corners. I didn't notice the theme til I was finished. Knew wackiness was involved, but couldn't quite tell what kind (obviously if I'd stopped to think about it for a second or two, I'd have seen it, but I don't ... "stop," really, on Tuesdays — head down, plowing ahead). Started out very frustrated, as I could not accept that CUTIE PIE (the base phrase for COOTIE PIE) was a [German dessert]. "That is bull&*$^, I've never heard of that," said the back of my mind as I raced forward into the rest of the puzzle. It was not til I was finished and reviewing the puzzle that I saw how badly (yet understandably) I had misread that clue.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Germy dessert, to a five-year-old? (COOTIE pie)
• 30A: Grub consumed around the dinner table? (family FOOD) — "grub," following on the heels of "COOTIE," made me think some kind of insect or larva was going to be involved in the theme.
• 46A: One who's daft about archaeology? (fossil FOOL)
• 64A: X, to a pirate? (BOOTY mark) — I would have gone with [Ass tattoo?], but that's just me. As it is, this clue/answer is still the best of the lot by far.

Liked the puzzle fine, and especially liked the big corners and the parallel and adjacent long Downs in the NW and SE. Since the theme is not at all dense, it's nice to compensate for that by having a less choppy and claustrophobic grid than you often find on early-week puzzles. For the most part, after the German/germy confusion, there wasn't much that gave me trouble here. Took me longer than usual because I needed more crosses than usual to get the themes, but otherwise, all was pretty straightforward, except:

• "MAMBO!" (31D: "West Side Story" shout during "The Dance at the Gym") — never seen it all the way through, and am only vaguely familiar with the music. The "MAMBO" song I know is "MAMBO Italiano," sung by Rosemary Clooney (Dean Martin also did a well known rendition). And then there's this:

• APE (5D: Monkey's uncle?) — ... I'm not sure I'm following this, evolutionarily.
• RFK (25D: ___ Bridge, connecting Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx) — don't live there, don't know. Had MLK at first, which left me with a bird called the LARMY at 24A: Bird known for making baskets. Eventually I worked it out — LARRY Bird was one of my boyhood idols.
• AH-CHOO (52A: Sound before a blessing) — actually, this was a gimme, but this spelling always looks really suspect. Even after I wrote it into the grid, I thought "eh ... I don't know ..."
• ALA. (45D: One of the eight states bordering Tenn) — pretty easy, but I never see this abbrev. I'm familiar only with AL. ALA is a perfectly good French phrase, when clued properly.

Bullets:

• 9A: Restaurant chain whose logo features a western hat (Arby's) — I know I've said this before, but the thought of ARBY'S logo always makes me laugh because my friend Steve once said that he didn't know that the giant neon hat that was the ARBY'S sign was, in fact, a giant hat. He thought it was "two otters kissing." He wasn't high or anything.
• 16A: Long-legged fisher (heron) — got EGRET stuck in my head. Not a condition I recommend.
• 33A: Sasha and Malia's father (Barack) — This is cute, as Obama-clues go.
• 45A: October blooms (asters) — yet another reason autumn is by far the best season around here.
• 69A: Good name for a lingerie salesman? (teddy) — again, cute.
• 3D: Young chickens suitable for dinner (broilers) — why would you have a chicken over for dinner? That's just asking for trouble.
• 34D: Tokyo-based synthesizer maker (Casio) — I think of them as making the earliest, most basic electronic keyboard. I feel like we had a small one in our house in the '80s.
• 46D: Influential moneybags (fat cat) — the name of my comic book store. Shout out.
• 57D: Pop group whose name is coincidentally a rhyme scheme (ABBA) — It would be a "coincidence" if one of their songs *had* this rhyme scheme. I can't think of one.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Read more...

THURSDAY, Oct. 1 2009 — Toymaking center / Place name popular in 1990s / Le Havre honey

Constructors: Patrick Blindauer & Rebecca Young

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: COMPASS / ROSE (!?) (18A: With 55-Across, direction indicator (and what to draw in the center of this puzzle) — four theme answers point in the directions they contain:

• NORTH POLE runs north (as ELOPHTRON — 6D: Toymaking center?)
  
• WEST POINT runs west (as TNIOPTSEW — 27A: Its motto is "Duty, Honor, Country")
  
• SOUTH PARK runs south (as itself — 33D: Long-running TV series set in Colorado)
  
• EAST ENDER runs east (as itself — 45A: Cockney, e.g.)
  

Bland square in middle of grid is where you draw your COMPASS ROSE ("ROSE" comes from 55A, which is not an Across answer at all, but the second part of MELROSE — 54A: Place name popular in the 1990s — from numbered square "55" onward) — never heard of a "COMPASS ROSE" before today, so ...

Word of the Day: COMPASS ROSE — A compass rose is a figure on a map or nautical chart used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions, — north, south, east, and west. It is also the term for the graduated markings found on the traditional magnetic compass. Today, the idea of a compass rose is found on, or featured in, almost all navigation systems, including nautical charts, non-directional beacons (NDB), VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) systems, global-positioning systems (GPS), and similar equipment and devices. (wikipedia)

[note: my computer and the NYT website are not getting on this morning, so I've stolen the grid from Amy Reynaldo at "Diary of a Crossword Fiend"]
-----

Well I don't like being asked to draw on my grid when I'm done, and I really don't like fake Across answers that aren't actually there (i.e. being asked to see a 55-Across that technically doesn't exist), but other than that I enjoyed solving this one. A new twist on the idea of pointing your answers in unexpected directions. I like how the diagonal black squares in the grid kinda look like a compass hand (hand?) pointing NE. Or SW, I can't decide.

SKEETER TEETERS! (63A: Picnic pest, informally + 40D: Could fall either way)

Gotta be quick today, so ... the interesting stuff:

• 1A: Paper carrier (satchel) — this took a weirdly long time to get. Needed almost every cross. If I'd trusted SIC right off the bat at 1D: Attack signal, I might have seen SATCHEL sooner.
• 19A: Women who get high? (sopranos) — even just now I typed [Women who like to get high], which shows you that I was happily led in the (mis)direction the clue was taking me. Contemplated SOARERS at some point, but it's not female-specific. And it's too short.
• 56A: "Mr. Pim Passes By" playwright (A.A. Milne) — not only was this guy prolific, but he was prolific across genres. You got the Pooh stuff, and this play, and "The Red House Mystery" (famously torn apart by my hero Raymond Chandler in "The Simple Art of Murder"). Apparently A.A. MILNE could (or would) do anything.
• 3D: Bit of art on a chest, in slang (tat) — Pecs or boobs, not cedar chest or storage chest or hope chest.
• 9D: Sing like Andy Williams or Russ Columbo (croon) — I had no idea Columbo crooned

[eeeerie ...]

• 23D: Remote ancestor? (knob) — I caught on right away. I wanted DIAL. :(
• 28D: Pat of "Knute Rockne All American" (O'Brien) — I misread, and continue to misread this clue as [PART of "Knute Rockne All American"].
• 38D: One of eight English kings, to a 45-Across ('Enry) — nice bonus use of a theme answer here.
• 52D: Le Havre honey (amie) — not MIEL, for you French-speaking literalists out there.

Congratulations on the NYT debut, Rebecca.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Read more...