WEDNESDAY, Jan. 31, 2007 - Brendan Emmett Quigley

Solving time: untimed

THEME: Tilt / Lean / Tip - three theme answers, running diagonally from NW to SE, beginning at 1, 7, and 37, and containing the above words, respectively

Loved the theme, especially because the long diag - 1 Diag: Face imaginary enemies (tilt at windmills) - comes from one of my favorite books, Don Quixote. I should say that it's one of my favorite partially-read books, as I never managed to get through the whole damned thing, but the parts I did read were rich. I also like that Quixote and Quigley (puzzle author) both start with Q's. I wanted to find theme-related words in the grid, like SLANT or LIST or ANGLE, but no luck. Started looking at the grid as if it were a Word Search - nothing. There are the ironic entries EVEN (12D: Tied up) and FLAT (4D: Showing no growth), but beyond that, I couldn't find much theme-iness beyond the diags. Oh, wait, there's LSTS (7D: D-Day craft), which is one letter away from LISTS, which would be theme-y. Yes, that'll do.

I'm getting started about an hour later than usual this a.m. - sidetracked by "24" this morning, which somehow managed to sneak in PLOT between episodes: "Previously on "24" ... stuff that was Not On Last Week's episode!" How could I have missed Jack's torturing his brother? I am quite worried about my sanity lately, so anything to help my comprehension of this situation would be greatly appreciated. Was there a second hour that I failed to DVR last week?

1A: Base runner's stats (thefts)

Colorful, but a terrible answer, as THEFT is total slang. No "stat" book anywhere has a listing for THEFTS. They list STEALS, which the puzzle author surely knows, and was surely happy about, given that STEALS, like THEFTS, is six letters long. Cheap trickery. Beneath BEQ. Not that it was too hard to suss out. Just annoying. This represents my only real complaint about this puzzle - other than that I'd rather not be reminded of the existence of "CSI" - one of the most useless shows on TV. CSI is almost recuperated, however, by the complementary DNA TEST elsewhere in the grid (43A: Crime lab job).

3D: Greece, to modern Greeks (Ellas)
19A: Cousin of a raccoon (coati)

OK, I was wrong, I have one other little complaint: this intersection. I am neither a modern Greek, nor a raccoon (which I just wrote as "craccoon," which, I believe, is raccoon's other, drug-addicted cousin), and thus had to guess wildly at the intersecting letter here - an "A," which I had as an "O" - giving me the correct-seeming ELLOS but the silly, schoolyard-sounding COOTI. I figured that was where the concept of COOTIES came from. When I got an "incorrect" message from the applet, I thought the final "I" in COOTI might be wrong, but couldn't think of what could go in the "I"'s place in the cross: TITIAN RED (5D: Brownish orange). TITYAN ... TIT CAN ... TIT MAN ... all answers were coming up absurd, so I changed the second "O" in COOTI to the next most plausible vowel, and voilà, COATI. COATI is the name my sister gave to an article of clothing of mine (I feel as if I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating). COATI can't decide if it's a COAT or a shirt, it's made out of something Highly Synthetic, and it's colored a bright red + black lumberjack plaid. My sister might spell it COATEE - we've never had occasion to write its name down.

Some (more) stuff I didn't know

16A: Manta ray (sea devil) - is this different from a sting ray? Why "devil"? Is this the beast that killed Steve Irwin?
61D: W.W. II inits. (ETO) - OK, I "know" this, but I don't know if I KNOW it - I'm going to guess "European Theater of Operations"??? Oh good, Wikipedia says I'm right, and that's good enough for me. I get ETO confused with EDO, former name of Tokyo.
52D: English Channel port (Poole) - actually, I "knew" this one too, but I don't know how. I think there is some special fund of crossword lore in my brain that is getting better and better stocked over time.
37D: Communications syst. for the deaf (TTY) - as of right now - no idea what this stands for. I'll guess ... Talk To You. Damn, it's "Teletypewriter." TTY looks like a chatroom abbreviation.

Speaking of TTY, there were an Awful lot of abbreviations in this grid. I count twelve. Is that a lot? Or am I just noticing them today for some reason? I'm including ST. LO (48A: Town near Caen), which technically includes an abbreviation (of "Saint"), though you almost never seen it written out fully, so maybe that shouldn't count. ST LO should be in the Pantheon. It is going right on the list of next year's nominees.

Hot Fill

35D: Headline? (totem pole) - Great clue, great answer, and especially great due to its alliterative rotational symmetrical relationship to 5D: Brownish orange (Titian red).
27A: How tuna salad may be served (on toast) - I don't know why I like it ... I just do!
62A: Spray alternative (roll-on) - who doesn't enjoy a good deodorant clue?
47D: Rapper who co-starred in "The Italian Job" (Mos Def) - I can only hope that stodgy solvers everywhere are crying over this one. I hope all the PFUI-lovers choke on MOS DEF.
51D: Two-dimensional world? (atlas) - I just really like the clue

The Rest

I always forget the word PITON (58A: Rock climber's tool), perhaps because they make me think of another climbing device, CRAMPONS, which is far, far too close to TAMPONS for me to want to dwell on. Who decides how to spell sheep sounds and baby sounds? (9D: Cote sound (baa) and 54A: Cry from a crib (waah)) The first seems set in stone, but the second seems completely arbitrary. Where does the "H" come from? And aren't doves, not sheep, more often associated with "cotes." I had COO written in BAA's place at first. Yes, [cote dove] beats [cote sheep] in a Google search by something like 100K hits. So I made a mistake. Oh well ... THEM'S the breaks! (49D: "_____ the breaks").

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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THURSDAY, Dec. 14, 2006 - Ed Early

Solving time: unknown

THEME: "FSH" (69A) - WHAT DOES ONE CALL (17A) A FISH WITH NO EYES (28A)? FOR THE ANSWER SEE (46A) SIXTY-NINE ACROSS (60A). . .

This puzzle has 4 X's. As for the theme - it's not really my style. I especially don't like puzzle fill that is essentially directions, although I have to say, working the instructions for solving the riddle into the grid itself stands out as a remarkable and impressive constructing feat. The little SE corner, site of the "riddle's" answer, was the very last thing to fall - in fact, I was very frustrated, staring at it for a good long while before I changed an answer I'd been sure of and the whole corner fell into place. I've learned good, humbling lessons lately about my own solving certainty. When you've exhausted all other options, change what you "know" to be right.

Here, the answer to the riddle was the obvious FSH. I say obvious because it was the first thing to cross my mind when I saw the whole riddle laid out ... and Yet! Yet! I was "certain" that 58D: A lot of Eurasia, once: Abbr. (SSRS) was USSR, which put an "R" in the second position of the riddle answer (69A), which made me think, "well, good, at least the answer's not as obvious as FSH." Crossing obscurities in this SE corner did Not help me: 56A: Wagner heroine _____ of Brabant (Elsa) runs into 59D: Writer Sholem (Asch) at the "A"- as I'd heard of neither of them, and neither of their names is particularly common, I was in trouble. Didn't help that ELSA had an erroneous "U" in it for a while. Actually, the way I finally got this corner was to rethink 66A: Penciled-in eyebrow, e.g. (arc) from scratch, without the (again, erroneous) "S" in the middle position. Seemed like a clue I should get. Tested ARC, then saw the possibility of SSRS rather than USSR, and ta da.

20A: Diva _____ Te Kanawa (Kiri)
21A: Tic-tac-toe loser (XOO)
22A: Line on which y=0 (X axis)

A very great complete horizontal line of the grid. 3 of the 4 X's, plus the K. Nice. Feels like the puzzle is returning to opera with a vengeance lately, but that may just be coincidence. Crosswords have always loved opera (much to my opera-ignorant chagrin). "Opera" used to be the definitive Rex-Doesn't-Know-It category in any trivia game, esp Jeopardy. I'd see "Opera" and think "well I'm dead." "What is ... the fat lady sings?" KIRI Te Kanawa is a Kiwi, so I have a spousal obligation to mention her. "Tic-tac-toe loser" is pretty much crutch fill, but when you put it in this se-X-y context, it seems quite permissible. X-AXIS returns ... right? We just had this answer in plural (X-AXES) - wait, those might have been Y-AXES. Don't remember. Yes, Y-AXES. I remember someone's comment, somewhere, that he didn't know what a YAX was. Awesome.

23A: Start of Massachusetts' motto (Ense)

This is a new Latin word to me. Means "by the sword," apparently, as Massachusetts's motto reads thusly: "Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem" - (By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty) [not my translation]. Massachusetts remains the hardest state to spell, by far. No matter what you type, it looks wrong.

29D: Page in an account book (folio)

Muffed this one and ruined the "Oregon" portion of the grid for a while. Off of the "L" from 38A: Lena of "Polish Wedding" (Olin), I entered SALES. Two other initially wrong entries in this region held me up. Had TIES TO instead of TIES IN at 18D: Connects, and TEE instead of LIE at 42A: Golfer's concern. Then there was the entry that I flat out didn't know: 28D: _____ von Baeyer, 1905 Chemistry Nobelist (Adolf). Even with the Pantheon-tastic ICIER (30D: More treacherous in the winter) slicing right through this region, it took me some time to work out.

2D: Like some educ. publishing (El-Hi)
9D: Poetic contraction (e'en)
33D: Ed Sullivan, e.g. (emcee)
51D: Attention-getter (psst!)

Speaking of Pantheon-tastic, here we see last-minute bids to get on the ballot from some very worthy entries. Add the aforementioned SSRS and ICIER, and you can really see the density of crosswordese. Yet nothing seems particularly egregious. EL-HI is my least favorite of the bunch, for no particular reason.

3D: Shakespeare's "very foolish fond old man" (Lear)
6D: Anna's lover in "Anna Karenina" (Alexei)

Mmmm, two of the greatest works of literature ever written (no hyperbole). Anna Karenina is probably my favorite novel of all time ... and Still ALEXEI was not a gimme. I was like "Oh, I can see him, he's young and hot ... dammit!" ALEXEI was quite a SMOOTHIE (8D: Glib romancer), back when that word meant a smooth-talker and not, as it does now, a yogurt-and-juice drink. LEAR, like Anna, loses his mind a bit and spirals downward into a kind of madness. I'm trying to reverse the depressing turn this entry has taken, but it's hard to end on an up note when one of the characters you're writing about ends up alone after the death of his beloved daughter, and the other throws herself under a train.

49A: Dugout shelter (abri)

Wow. Really really didn't know this. Sounds like some rare crosswordese that long-time solvers have some familiarity with, but short-time solvers (which I still consider myself) will just stare at blankly. But I think that's the last of the truly troubling fill (beyond what I already mentioned). All the crosses were easy to confirm, so no harm done. I am almost certain to forget this word, ABRI, possibly by the time I finish writing this entry.

55D: Swenson of "Benson" (Inga)

Yes. Yes, this answer I like. I haven't seen or even thought about Inga Swenson, aka Gretchen Kraus, the stern housekeeper in the Governor's mansion on TV's "Benson," for about 20 years, I think. Ever since "Benson" went off the air. This show should be in syndication more. It was a staple of my 80's childhood, in that weird period when the sitcom was kind of dead: "M*A*S*H" and "Happy Days" were aging, "MTM" and "Rhoda" and other great 70s shows were gone, and Cosby hadn't come along and resuscitated the genre yet. Very innocuous stuff, "Benson," but fun. Now that I look at it, "Benson" is basically the primary precursor to Michael J. Fox's 1990s sitcom hit "Spin City," only replace the governor with a mayor and replace Robert Guillaume with Michael J. Fox and then replace the Governor's mansion with city hall. Robert Guillaume is beloved to me for two reasons. First, his work on "Sports Night," which I loved despite its high degree of mockability. Second, he cut a record or two in his youth, one of which I own (a gift from Andrew). Where is a picture... Oh Yeah, here we go. This rules!
Great packaging! You gotta love the little inset of Guillaume as Benson inside the "O" in "BOB" - "BOB," HA ha. Guess that hip moniker, like Bob's music career, didn't really take.

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TUESDAY, Nov. 21, 2006 - Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke

Solving time: 8-ish (on Across Lite)

THEME: "Orchestra" - final words of three long theme entries are BRASS, STRINGS, and WINDS, with the theme ORCHESTRA (58A) also in the grid

First, a correction: at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, competitors solve on paper, not the computer. I misunderstood someone's comment at another site. So sorry for yesterday's misinformation.

Second, I have said before, many times, maybe here, certainly elsewhere, that the non-Jerry "Seinfeld" actors are Not funny. I used to have to point to the string of horrid and / or failed vanity sitcom projects to make my point. Now I can just point to this.

Third, I have a question about the phrase "the fourth of never," which I used last night for some reason, to the surprise of my wife who had just heard the phrase used earlier in the day by one of her students. I don't think it's something I've ever said before, and in fact I'm not sure that the proper phrase isn't "fifth of never" or "twelfth of never." Oh, there's a song called "The Twelfth of Never" by, it looks like, Johnny Mathis, and possibly Keith Urban. Maybe Nina Simone sang it too. Oh ick, here's an online Casio keyboard version of some kind. It's actually written by Paul Francis Weber and Jerry Livingstone. It's pretty sappy. OK, back to puzzle. [late addendum: how's this for irony?: I've barely heard of the song "The Twelfth of Never," and yet Two of my favorite musical artists and biggest celebrity crushes have recorded it - why was I not informed? I prefer Dolly Parton's version to Olivia Newton-John's, but it's a pretty close call. The very best version (from what I could gather from the 30-second snippets @ iTunes) is by Nina Simone, yet Another one of my idols. The song just isn't that strong, but if these women are singing, I'm listening. Seriously, I'm downloading the songs right now.]

Today's theme was very clever, neat, tidy, musical. Nice. Couldn't ask for more from a Tuesday puzzle. I especially like that 20A (THEME): Generals and such (military brass) is crossed at the "Y" by 9D: Certain well-traveled child (army brat). Must move even more quickly today, as I'm on Sahra-patrol (she's out of school for the T-giving week, and she and I are due at Denny's to eat breakfast with mommy's students in about a 1/2 hour!).

4D: Morales of "NYPD Blue" (Esai)
41A: Architect Saarinen (Eero)
63A: Pitcher (ewer)

Gimme an "E"! Who opened the "E" pen at Krosswordese Korner? Pantheon stalwarts are running amok. In addition to these "E" words, we have EDER (15A), ERE (2D), EGO (34D), and EX-MET (43A) (that last one -> ouch). I don't know if I'm annoyed by all the conventional fill or amused by the "E" party. It's a close call. There's an abundance of tired fill that doesn't start with "E" - NTWT (55D), AREA (56D), ARIA (53D) [seriously, AREA and ARIA... and in the same neck of the puzzle woods? OK], ODEA (7D) and the old-school, Maleska-era throwback ABIE (19D). This fairly unimaginative short fill is, I'm happy to say, more than made up for by generous interesting longer fill, including ORGIES (22D) and PENMANSHIP (30D), which are two great tastes that taste great together.

6D: Sonnet part (sestet)

Mmmm, sonnet parts. I like the dark meat! Seriously, I do like that SESTET not only means a SIX-line chunk of poetry, but it has SIX letters in it, AND is positioned here at SIX-Down. 6-6-6. Symmetry! And evil...

The Petrarchan sonnet is typically described as having two parts: the octet and the sestet (first eight and last six lines, respectively). Rhyme scheme would usually change at the octet/sestet break. Here is a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney, the first sonnet from his sonnet sequence Astrophil & Stella. Spelling is modernized, for your pleasure.

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she (dear She) might take some pleasure of my pain:
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain;
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain:
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite--
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."

I love this poem (as Renaissance poems go), mainly for the line "I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe," but also for the weird, urgent pace of the end, which has a crazy masochistic birthing metaphor going on before it settles into the very simple last line. ANYway...

31D: German chancellor Merkel (Angela)

Again. Damn, she gets a lot of puzzle action for a six-letter answer.

49A: One working on the margin, briefly? (Arb)

I am not sure I know what this is short for. Isn't this what Arby's employees proudly call themselves? No, "anonymous" says it's "arbitrager." If it involves money or business in any way, then I am useless. I do not even like managing my own money (much). I have a guy who handles that. Seriously.

51A: Not, to a Scot (Nae!)
45D: Scottish hillside (Brae!)

As in, "NAE! I wilnae go o'er yon BRAE, ye daft wee bairn!" Cue the requisite shot of Willie!:
49D: Playwright Fugard (Athol)

Best name, because it sounds like a lisping guy is shouting profanity. In this picture, we see that ATHOL has a certain unfortunate Manson-ish quality. I know one thing about Athol Fugard. OK, two. One, he is (was?... no, is) South African. Two, he wrote a play called Master Harold and the Boys, which I think was on Broadway starring Matthew Broderick at some point, and which I know I saw at the Ashland, Oregon Shakespeare festival when my entire H.S. English class went on a week-long field-trip there in 1986 (or maybe 1987 - we went both years). It was ... good? I don't remember. I think it's about white guilt over Apartheid. I remember Shakespeare better.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SATURDAY, Nov. 4, 2006 - Rich Norris

Solving time: around 40 min. (tired, in bed)

THEME: none

Very short entry today because I am looking after Sahra by myself and she has karate practice in less than two hours.

I tanked this puzzle. Very unsatisfying. The problem was entirely my fault, though it involves one of those bits of esoterica that tick me off every once in a while. My mistake, which when I realized it made me so angry that I had to go and vent On Another Blog before I even wrote a word here, was as follows: for 45D: Calendrier column (Mardi), I had MERDI. If I were French, I'd have exclaimed MERDE upon realizing my error. I studied French for seven years in high school and college. You'd think I'd know the $@#$-ing word for TUESDAY! But I wrote MERDI and it became locked in. I never questioned it. Since I didn't know the esoteric piece of crap next to it - 49D: Carillon component (bell) - I wrote in CELL, thinking it the only -ELL word that could rightly said to be a "component" of something (I had two shots: biological cell or prison cell). Resulting problem: I had CELD (!?) for 49A: Worn smooth - the correct answer to which turns out to be the very simple BALD. So Saturday leaves a bad taste in my mouth yet again. The rest of the puzzle was OK, I guess. Reasonable Saturday difficulty, nothing spectacular.

What the hell is "Carillon?"

49D: Carillon component (bell)

Time for Google. Well, it's French (duh) and the guy/woman who plays it is called a carilloneur (put that on your business card and see what happens). This site, from the Department of Engineering at the University of Michigan (where I went to graduate school ... not for Engineering), tells me in painful, dizzying detail, exactly what a carillon is, largely, it seems, because they have one installed in a giant tower on their premises:

A carillon is defined as a musical instrument consisting of at least two octaves of cup-shaped carillon bells, arranged in chromatic series, and played from a keyboard that allows variation of touch.

My first thought: what a cumbersome, ungainly, virtually useless instrument. But I'm prejudiced because it tripped me up.

21A: Female donkey (jennet)

This threw me, because I was nearly certain that a JENNET was a very different kind of animal that lived in the jungles of Africa. I feel the need to know why I thought that, and yet have NO TIME. Besides being the name of a female donkey, JENNET is also the name of a hybrid (like a mule) produced by a male horse and female donkey. Also, JENNET is the name of a small Spanish horse. Here is the website for the Spanish Jennet Horse Society, which seems to be claiming that the JENNET can, among other things, travel through time - "The Horse of the Middle Ages Comes to Modern Times" - which I guess is slightly preferable to its obverse: "The Horse of the Modern Ages Comes to Medieval Times" - no horse should have to suffer the indignity of working at a theme restaurant, being gawked at by the likes of These People:
OK I just discovered the JENNET I was thinking of, only it's spelled GENET (like the French guy). GENETs are adorable catlike creatures. They look like this:
And you can find out All about them here. Much prefer them to any of your JENNETS.

60A: Geometric figures (ellipsoids)
25D: Standard deviation symbol (sigma)

The puzzles seem to have gotten quite math-y in recent days. I do not like the look or sound of the word ELLIPSOIDS. It sounds like a condition you don't want to get. It also rhymes with NOID, and I prefer to Avoid the Noid.

11D: Successful (going)

Yeah, I don't agree. Just because something is GOING does not mean it is "successful." Unless the success you are seeking involves the toilet, somehow, then I guess I'd allow it. Really, if GOING is your idea of successful, then no matter what endeavor you're engaged in, your standards for "success" are really too low.

37D: "Drink to me only with thine eyes" dedicatee (Celia)

Wow, this seems a bit obscure. I mean, I teach this poem from time to time, and even I was thinking "dedicatee? Is it dedicated to another poet? Donne, maybe?" Once I got some crossings, then it was clear. Still, tough. Ben Jonson wrote a lot of poems to Celia. Off hand, I'm not sure what she was to him, or if she actually existed at all. As Renaissance dedicatees go, I much prefer Julia. Robert Herrick wrote many fabulous (and some not-so-fabulous) poems about her, at least two of which were addressed specifically to her breasts. He may have written the only poem of the pre-modern era with the word "nipples" In The Title!

34D: Finger _____ (Lakes)

I'll end today on the very first answer I filled in. While FOOD or LICKIN' GOOD would have made great answers, the five-square length told me instantly that the answer was the gorgeous set of lakes just to the north of where I live. Ithaca, one of our favorite weekend destinations, sits at the south end of the Finger Lakes. Good restaurants, beautiful parks, an amazing farmers market ... if you can stand the moderate pretension and the relatively high density of fake hippies and self-righteous rich liberals, it's a really great place to spend some time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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MONDAY, Oct. 30, 2006 - Nancy Salomon

Solving time: 4:34*

THEME: "Comment on bumping into an old friend" (4 of 'em)

Woke up with that beautiful extra hour in my pocket only to find myself taunted by ESPN's "Ultimate Highlight" - not just a highlight, but a sort of sports music video with so much testosterone that you know it can't possibly be gay, man, no way - which featured not only "highlights" from the Cardinals' World Series victory over the Tigers, but accompanying music by a band from my little alma mater (called We Are Scientists - surely the first band from the college ever to receive the "Ultimate Highlight," uh, Honor, I guess). So there I am, forced to watch and listen while my fellow alums are made complicit in this travesty of a World Series celebration, with nothing but my morning cereal and my faithful dog beside me on the couch for consolation. The band is cute, by the way - if the Beastie Boys played pop-punk and had a very telegenic front man, this is what they'd look like.
Finished today's puzzle in Rex-record time, which makes me wonder how those of you who do it in HALF that time do it. I don't think I can write that fast. I love today's theme, maybe because Ms. Salomon has made something beautiful out of a set of exceedingly banal and cliched utterances. The best part is that I can easily imagine someone saying All the theme answers, one on top of the other, in order: "HELLO STRANGER ... [turning to family member(s)] ... LOOK WHO'S HERE ... HOW'VE YOU BEEN? LONG TIME NO SEE." Sweet, sweet, empty filler. Delicious.

Note also the graceful thematic tie-in at 42D: Meet unexpectedly (run into).

[*ERRATUM, which is very sad to me, yet also possibly funny: I had two wrong squares today because I didn't check the crosses. For 39A: "Forget about it!" - well, let's just say I imagined that phrase uttered by some beefy, track-suited, morally suspect New Jersey guy, "Fugettaboudit," or however you spell it - which I always understood as an AFFIRMATIVE: "You need the body hidden? I can take care of that, no problem. Fugettaboudit!" So I had YESIREE, when it turns out the clue was much more literal: "No, seriously FORGET about it because there is no Way I am doing that. NOSIREE!" Ah, I love the smell of wrongness in the morning.]

36A: Pistol, e.g. (hand gun)
25D: Carrying a weapon (armed)
46D: Wanted felon (outlaw)

I detect a subtheme here. A dark and shady subtheme. My kind of subtheme. Underneath the friendly banter of this puzzle lies a hardboiled crime story. Yes, it turns out that the puzzle's real theme is: You RUN INTO an old friend, who is also an OUTLAW to whom you OWE [40D] money. OOPS [51A]! When you notice that he is ARMED with a HANDGUN, you start saying all this trite stuff to try to stall for time while you look for an escape route, or a policeman to flag down, all the while praying to God that this friend from out of the past does not BASH [1D] your ULNAS [61A] until you HOWL [63A]. Fugettaboudit!

34A: Hi-_____ monitor (res)

One of about three places in the puzzle that slowed me down. To me, RES is "thing" in Latin. I do not own a Hi-RES monitor. I don't even own a DVR. I'm like a technology savage, watching shows only during their original air times, and only if I remember they're on. Even my iPod is big and clunky and memory-challenged. It's a wonder this blog gets published every day, frankly, what with my hamster-powered iMac and my decidedly Low-RES scanner. The only digital camera I own is a 12-decapixel piece of junk that lives in my phone, which, coincidentally, I just dropped in a (PUBLIC!) toilet the other day, so it's Dead. My birthday is coming up ... as is Xmas ... anyone?

62A: "Agreed!" (deal)

Even now, writing up this entry, I still wanted to write DONE! for the answer. DEAL is completely acceptable, but I like the more emphatically monosyllabic DONE, with its implication both that the DEAL has been DONE, and that the DEAL involved an action that is as good as DONE. Coincidentally, later today I will be teaching the poetry of John DONNE.

57D: "_____ Beso" (Paul Anka song) [Eso]

Classic crosswordese, as I understand it. It's not a song I've ever heard, but it's handy because you can clue fully four answers off of it: ESO, BESO, PAUL, and ANKA, all very crossword-friendly in their ways. Here, for your Halloween Eve enjoyment, is the floating head of Paul Anka, coming in for the kill, I mean kiss. Duck!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SATURDAY, Oct. 7, 2006 - David Quarfoot

Solving time: Indeterminate

THEME: none

Daughter had a sleepover last night, and for some reason I decided to start the puzzle right during the chaos of teeth-brushing, self-dressing, bunk-bed-climbing, cat-chasing, etc., all of it going on in plain sight not ten feet from my face. So the puzzle ... it looks like this:But I got it done, with just one square wrong (in the NE corner) which isn't horrible for a Saturday, but is far from satisfying, especially when we consider the square in question.

Oh, and another thing: Tigers 6, Yankees 0.

And congratulations (if that's appropriate) to David Quarfoot for this challenging Saturday puzzle, as well as for becoming the first puzzle constructor to have a second puzzle treated on this site. (see my commentary on his last puzzle.)

9A: Fictional N.Y.P.D. cop (Kojak)

I was stuck in NYPD Blue-land until I realized that "Blue" was not part of the clue. Telly Savalas was a minor god to my friend Steve back in the 90s (if not today). So, here, for his enjoyment, is a picture: "Who Loves Ya, Baby!?"
16A: "Good alone is good without _____": Shak. (a name)

I have been teaching Shakespeare's sonnets for the past two weeks, so tanking a Shakespeare clue, even if it is from All's Well That Ends Well and not the sonnets, is particularly galling. Worse, I had "A N A [blank] E" - but the only answers I was considering were ones where A N formed the indefinite article. So I'm like "good without an ace? ... good without an axe? an age?" Honestly, it never occurred to me that "a" and "n" were parts of separate words. Didn't help that I had never heard of 12D: "Entrapment" director Jon (Amiel). Isn't that a horrible Connery / Zeta-Jones vehicle? Yes, yes it is.

Oh, also, why is "Shak." written as an abbreviation in the clue when the answer has nothing abbreviated about it?

33A: Part of a fault line? (mea)

Normally I hate cutesy question-mark clues, but this one is pretty genius. Another phrase to add to "Latin Phrases You Know" - mea culpa.

37A: Awesome, in slang (da bomb)

I would type a longer entry here, but I can't stop laughing. Any hip-hop-derived slang in the NYT crossword is usually a decade old. So here I have the joy of contemplating not only the answer's future obsolescence, but its current near-obsolescence as well. Not that it's not fun to say, or that it's not an ingenious answer, in its way.

Things that are "da bomb" - according to a Google images search:



52A: One subjected to disarmament? (Venus de Milo)

A statue which will forever be associated, in my mind, with the word "gummi." Here's a toy featuring Homer stealing the Gummi Venus:And here is a picture of the Gummi Venus close-up.

5D: Jazzman Saunders (Merl)


I hate the word "Jazzman" almost as much as I hate the Carole King song of the same name. If you look at the scan of my puzzle, you can see I had about nineteen different answers here before "Merl" became the indisputable choice. The only Musical Merle I acknowledge is Merle Haggard, who rules. I'm putting him on iTunes right now.

42D: Some springs (helices)

I have to look this up. I know that the Helicon was a spring sacred to the Muses, said to give poetic inspiration to those who drank from its waters. But the only "helix" I know is a double helix, and has nothing to do with Muses. Oh ... so the helix is shaped like the "springs" of your mattress (or vice versa). OK. Whatever.

50D: Astringent fruit (sloes)

I'm using this occasion to find out what the hell a "sloe" is, as I know the name only from the drink "sloe gin fizz,"" which I have never actually seen or tasted. Sloe berries are the fruit of the blackthorn, and they are infused into gin to make "sloe gin" - a red liqueur. This, from all-knowing Wikipedia: "Folklore has it that when making sloe gin, you shouldn't prick the berries with a metal fork, unless it is made of silver." You know ... to keep the werewolves away. God bless Wikipedia.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SUNDAY, Oct. 1, 2006 - Ashish Vengsarkar

Solving Time: 42:23 (give or take 10 minutes)

Title: "MAKING T H A T SOUND"

Theme: Familiar phrases modified by the change of a "TH" sound to a "T" sound (see 39A and 51D, below)

Today's time is not very accurate. With all the starts and stops (see last posting, "PARENTAL DELAY"), and many of the stops unplanned, my total time is a ballpark figure. Technically, the puzzle took me about 9 hours and 16 minutes to complete, but somewhere between start and finish we drove to Ithaca, walked around Buttermilk Falls State Park, drove to Olivia and had a delicious brunch, then drove to the Spook-tac-ular autumn pumpkin patch livestock zoo corn maze extravaganza on Rte 96B (which my wife just told me is called Iron Kettle Farm), then took my parents back to their hotel. Thus, I have no basis for telling how good / bad this puzzle is. One thing this puzzle is, finally, is done. I believe at least one square is filled incorrectly. Let's see...

21A: It may be said after kissing the tips of one's fingers (ooh la la)

I challenge. I'm sure this is true, somewhere, but "ooh la la" has more of a "aren't you fancy?" or "don't you look nice?" ring to it (I guess this clue imagines a sleazy Italian guy sexually harrassing a woman on the streets, but do we really need that image?). When I imagine someone kissing the tips of his fingers (not often) he is usually saying something Italian like "bellissimo" or "perfecto" or the like (I hope those are actual Italian words?), usually when commenting on something exquisite that he has just eaten - while "ooh la la" sounds like something a midwesterner would say when she saw a $200 pair of boots in a Manhattan storefront window, or a euphemism for sexual intercourse. See, or rather listen to, Cole Porter's "Give Him the Ooh-La-La," preferably the version by Blossom Dearie:


"Say you're fond of fancy things / Diamond clips and emerald rings / And you want your man to come through / Give him the Ooh-La-La"





34A: "All My _____ Live in Texas" (1987 #1 country hit) (exs)

The answer is very easy, and yet ... how to spell it? This spelling is eight kinds of horrible, though I'm sure it's technically correct. Is there an apostrophe in it? Hang on ... it's by George Strait and NO, there's not even an apostrophe. I know it's absurd to be angry about substandard spelling in a country song, but there it is.

39A (THEME): Top Tatar's Tattler? (The Rat of Khan)

Many of this week's themed answers left me cold (especially 81A: Result of a whipping? (welt creation) - "wealth creation" just seems weak as a familiar phrase). THIS answer, however, rules - I did not know what a "Tatar" was, but I sure as hell know my Star Trek II:

"Khan!"

125A: Slimmest election margin (one vote)

So beautifully simple that it actually gave me a lot of trouble. I wanted "sliver" but it wasn't long enough. (Resisting temptation to make reference to the 1993 movie Sliver...)

9D: Dancing girl in "The Return of the Jedi" (Oola)

What the hell kind of fanboy universe has the crossword fallen into this past week? Multiple references to Stars Trek and Wars, and this one is perhaps the most arcane (in case you didn't know - and for your sake I hope you didn't - the character of Oola is made to fall through a trap door to her death after she refuses to pleasure Jabba the Hut sexually, nice). For the record, I had "Leia" here for a long time, as she is the only female Star Wars character I know or care to acknowledge. (just noticed that I have now, in a single entry, let the world know my feelings about both "Oola" and "Ooh-la-la" (see 21A, above) - for which the world is surely better off)

10D: "The ground _____ she trod": Milton (whereon)

I will blog Milton every chance I get. This line comes from Paradise Lost Book IX, the great Seduction of Eve Book, in which Satan works hard to get Eve to break her vow to Adam and God not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Here, he's in the first stages of his plot:

He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed
His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck,
Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod.
His gentle dumb expression turned at length
The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad
Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue
Organick, or impulse of vocal air,
His fraudulent temptation thus began. (Paradise Lost, IX.523-31)

50D: Skeletal support in a sponge (?????)

Here's the entry I think I have wrong. I have "adicule" - which is VERY wrong, it turns out. Just looked it up, and here's what I missed: 49A: Squad leaders: Abbr., which I wanted to be "srgts" and which I changed to "sagts" for reasons of 50D plausibility, is actually "ssgts" - short for STAFF SERGEANTS. Then I somehow missed an Archie Bunker clue, "You're _____!" (Archie Bunker comment), which I had as "a dip," but which is actually "a pip" (was he British?), making the answer to this sponge clue, which I liken in its esotericness to Friday's weevil clue, "spicule" (which sounds more like a racist term for a small hispanic person than anything having to do with a sponge, if you ask me).

51D (THEME): Muppet seller's gender guideline? (give Bert to a boy)

Clever, but the best part of this clue for me was that, because I had never heard of the names of the answers of 110A and 124A ("Rea" and "Ilona", respectively), I had wrong answers for both, which meant that I had this answer ending in "ebay" for a very long time (the "seller" part of the clue only intensified my commitment to my wrongness). An actual recording of my brain upon filling in this answer completely for the first time: "... 'Give Bert to eBay' ... 'Give birth to eBay'? ... is that right? ... that's a terrible answer. What the hell does it even mean?" Etc.

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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