SUNDAY, Mar. 4, 2007 - Randolph Ross

Solving time: untimed - but like every puzzle this week, it seems, this one was on the easy side
THEME: "You Can Look It Up" - 63A: Dictionary source for each asterisked clue in this puzzle (Random House Unabridged)

I feel as if I am tempting fate by remarking on the easiness of recent puzzles. I'm sure this means that I'll get eaten alive by the Wednesday puzzle this week. Still, things have been pretty smooth sailing lately. Maybe I'm just getting better and the puzzle difficulty doesn't really need tweaking. I should develop a difficulty level rating system, ranging from PWN3D (easiest) to NO MAS (hardest). I guess these are based on things one might exclaim on completing (or, perhaps, in the case of NO MAS, not completing) the puzzle. I need words for levels of difficulty in between. Suggestions appreciated.

This theme ruled, IMOO. Oh, in case it's not clear, all clues have answers that relate to the placement of the clue's word or phrase in the RANDOM HOUSE UNABRIDGED dictionary, and those answers are themselves familiar phrases. The first theme clue sets this up - 23A: *Where to find para in the dictionary (one below par) - and subsequent themed clues just have ellipses, implying an extension of the 23A "para" question to later words, e.g. 46A: *... Hancock ... (beforehand). Just the sight of RANDOM HOUSE UNABRIDGED running across the length of the middle of the puzzle give me happy feelings. It is true that once you got the theme, you could at least get the beginning part of most of the asterisked clues pretty easily - and yet the cleverness of the whole endeavor, complete with 180-degree rotational symmetry for all asterisked answers, made solving the puzzle a pleasure.

[took a two-hour break for pancakes and for showing a couple of first-graders who's the boss of Crazy 8's]

58A: "The Man Who Knew Too Much" actress, 1934 (Edna Best)

This puzzle got a little sticky at the end, and this answer was one of the reasons. I had EDNA B-S-, and thought it could be BUSH or BEST. Even the "S" was tentative because I didn't really like WHISH (43D: Rustling sound) - SWISH or WHOOSH seemed more appropriate answers. Further, if it was BEST, which it was, the E gave me EMS for 60D: Modem termini? which I did not understand, primarily because the clue appeared (on paper) to be [Modern termini?]. In case you don't understand the clue/answer, "termini" are end points, and "modem" begins and ends with the letter "m" - thus "modem termini" are m's, written out here as EMS. To add to my problems in the Utah region of this puzzle, I did not know who 70A: Actress Kimberly of "Close to Home" (Elise) was - I don't even know what "Close to Home" is (a newish TV drama?). All of these problems might have been taken care of sooner than later if I'd only been able to see 44D: Broad, in a way (ear-to-ear)! When you are thinking a one- or two-word answer, EAR-TO-EAR is quite inscrutable, I assure you.

More stuff I didn't know

57D: Mallard cousins (widgeons)

A widget crossed with a pigeon gets you ... these birds! The word "mallard" always makes me think of this guy, so divorced from nature and immersed in the world of comics am I. I had a little trouble in this little puzzle thoroughfare - the one connecting Virginia with western Tennesse - because of both this answer and the parallel 56D: Take _____ (swing hard) [a rip], which I had as A CUT. It took me far too long to put in FRI for 62A: When "Dallas" aired for most of its run: Abbr. because the "C" from A CUT was where the "R" from A RIP should have been. For a while, I thought the "Dallas" clue might be referring to a time of day ... (9pm?).

76A: Volga feeder (Oka)

Aargh, Revenge of the European Rivers!

77A: Fashion designer Saab (Elie)

Memo to self - commit this dude's name to memory, as you have been busted by him before, and his name is so crossword-friendly that is bound to appear again and again.

11A: _____ II razor (Trac)

OK, I shave, with a razor, and I watch TV, so between the two of those activities, why did I not get this instantly. I blithely wrote in MACH. Then when that proved untenable, TECH. Stupid made-up hard-C advertising names.

109D: Kind of lane (HOV)

Heard of these, but we didn't have them in CA when I was growing up, or if we did, I didn't know. We had diamond / carpool lanes. There is a Jay-Z song (perhaps many) wherein he refers to himself as HOV. I can't explain, but this guy can. Officially, the term refers to "High-Occupancy Vehicle." I would like to add to my street cred by name-dropping not only Jay-Z but DRU Hill (78A: _____ Hill, R&B group), which was a gimme for me. I may even have a DRU Hill song on my iTunes, on one of my MTV dance compilations. Perhaps I should stop now before this gets any more embarrassing. OK, I just changed the music on iTunes from the very hip Decembrists to the very rump-shaking DRU Hill, specifically "In My Bed." I believe the chorus references "Goldilocks and the 3 Bears": "Somebody's sleepin' in my bed / Messin' with my head..."

Literary Training Pays Off (somewhat)

47D: Old mythological work (Edda)
53A: Like some Keats works (odic)

OK, that second one is an adjectival groaner, but I like that these answers are both quaintly literary and intersecting. I had EPOS for EDDA at first. That clue in four letters could also accommodate SAGA.

62D: Monastic title (Fra)

Know this only from the Robert Browning poem "Fra Lippo Lippi," which is also the name of a Norwegian synth/pop band.

55A: Rival of Cassio (Iago)

Ooh I sadly tanked this one. I was thinking of watch brands (or keyboard brands), not Shakespeare characters. Turns out that CASIO the electronics brand is spelled, well, like that.

Final Thoughts

"I ain't fer it, I'm AGIN it!" (50D: Votin' no on) - I just like quoting Abraham Simpson any chance I get, even if it means repeating the same quote I used last time AGIN was in the puzzle. Some answers I admire include:

DAS BOOT (84A: 1981 German-language hit film)
CRAP GAME (71A: Shooting match?)
DOOFUS (1D: Pinhead) - I can't see this answer enough; really really love all the words my sister might have called me when I was a teenager (or ... now, I guess)
BRALESS (85D: Without support, in a way) - [!]
LESAGE (24D: Writer of "Gil Blas") - OK, I don't exactly like this, I'm just dead curious about who the hell this guy is, as he's been in many of my puzzles lately; whoa, 18th century! Old School.

OK, must lunch, then walk in woods (as it's FINALLY warm enough to do so without physical pain), then prep for my teaching week.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SUNDAY, Feb. 25, 2007 - David J. Kahn

Solving time: mid-high 20's

THEME: "Comic Relief" - All the long theme answers begin with the last name of an OSCAR (67A: With 56-Down, start of eight answers in this puzzle) EMCEE, e.g. 15D: Birding capital of New Zealand (2006) (Stewart Island) - the parenthetical year(s) after the clue = year(s) that the OSCAR EMCEE in question, in this case STEWART, hosted the OSCARs.

I own a book of David J. Kahn baseball crosswords, which I keep by my bedside and enjoy quite a bit. They are of medium difficulty and every one has a baseball theme and lots of baseball fill. Fun. Today's puzzle: not as fun. Or rather, very fun in parts, dismal in others - the bad parts are only partly blamable on the puzzle, to be fair. I have never been so stuck, with so much of the puzzle left open, on a Sunday before - not in recent memory, anyway; for a host of reasons, the earth was scorched from an epicenter somewhere around the area now occupied by DESSERTS (87A: Display on a tray) and extending out about an inch to two inches in all directions. So the problem had its center somewhere around the "Missouri" region of the puzzle, but ripple effects were felt all over. If I could blame one clue for the entire problem, what would it be? Hmmm, let's see. No, it's really a team effort, so here's the team:

24D: Company that merged with Lockheed in 1995 (2001, 2003) (Martin-Marietta)
88D: Transitional land zone (ecotone)
101A: Court grp. (NBA)

I have never heard of MARTIN-MARIETTA. Lockheed-MARTIN is a major employer in the area of the country where I live, and I know Steve MARTIN hosted the OSCARs, so the MARTIN part, no problem. The MARIETTA part ... ???? Nope, not in my ken at All. So why not just get the crosses? OK, the big problem there was that MARIETTA runs parallel for five letters with 73D: Western capital (1979-82, 1984) (Carson City) - which I swear I only just now realized was a theme answers! - and I couldn't see it at all. First, I didn't know if "Western" meant Western U.S. or "Western" the way most first-world countries are deemed "Western," or what. Second, and more importantly, is the tiny 101A: Court grp., which at three letters I thought was a cinch to be ABA. But no, it's a stupid trick clue (the kind that makes me say "@#$# you" out loud to no one in particular), and the actual answer involves basketball players, not lawyers. That one-letter mistake (A for N) took the N out of CARSON CITY, keeping me in the dark for minutes longer than I should have been. As for ECOTONE ... whatever! It's a word. I looked it up. But it sounds like a synthetic compound, or else a ringtone for your phone that plays sounds of the rainforest or something. Not thrilled about ECO (48A: "Baudolino" novelist) and ECOTONE being in the same puzzle, either. MARIETTA, ECOTONE, and CARSON CITY = a lot of empty neighboring squares = work for me. The little crosses and neighboring parallels were not self-evident, either. Did not know that CRIBs were defined by their mobility (83D: Mobile home?) - Oh, I just got it. You hang a "mobile" over a crib. Nevermind. Ugh. We have a mobile - why? - hanging from our hallway ceiling upstairs. There is no CRIB there. If you have ever watched MTV, then you know that CRIB is just slang for an ordinary, stationary home. So I was confused on many fronts. Then there was 83A: Abbr. after Lincoln or Kennedy (Ctr.), which seems fine when you look at it, but when you've got three blank squares, it's not so easy. Scratch that: when you have ONE blank square, it's not so easy - I had -TR and thought for many moments that the answer might be STR., as in "I live on Lincoln STR." Yeah, it was that bad for me. The worst answer of the night, though ... well, it was close. In second place, we have

9D: Florida's _____ Trail (Tamiami)

So much Florida geography this week! We aren't all retirees!! I've never heard of this so-called "Trail" and the answer reads like a cruel joke, in that it has recognizable Florida fill (MIAMI) inside it. I thought LA MIAMI .... but no. No No No. And the winner for worst answer of the grid:

94A: Code word (dah)

The very last square I filled in was the "D" in this answer, and I did so with absolute uncertainty. Ironically, my first thought was Morse Code, but wouldn't that be DASH? What is DAH?!?!?! The only good part about this answer is that it's one letter off from D'OH, which I know to be an actual word, and was what I found myself saying a lot while trying to solve this puzzle. DAH is how the DASH in Morse Code is written out in English. Because DASH is already taken??? It's a real word. It just Sux. The very worst part - and this wound is entirely self-inflicted, nobody's fault but mine - is that when I went to check my grid at the applet, I kept getting rejected, and I was certain the D in DAH was to blame, and I went over and over ways that I could make it different - then plugged in literally every letter in the alphabet into that slot. When that didn't work, it began to dawn on me that I might have other errors. But a scan of all the Acrosses turned up only valid fill. So I could Not get a grid accepted by the applet forEver. Eventually, instead of just checking all the Acrosses, I checked all the Downs, and found DEAR SSNTA instead of DEAR SANTA (11D: Opening in the North Pole?). Sadly, that wrong "S" gave me an Across of TSE, which is so Pantheonic that I hadn't blinked at it when I'd scanned the Acrosses earlier. The actual, weirder-looking answer is TAE (39A: Inventor's inits.). So I actually had the puzzle filled in correctly on paper, but wasted 20+ minutes trying to get my grid accepted by the applet because of a simple typo.

I'm running on too long this a.m., so just a few more quick observations before I close things out. Here's some stuff I liked:

• 4D: Popular Bach work for keyboard (1994, 1996, 1999, 2002) (Goldberg Variations) - This work sits near the top of my iTunes "Playlists," and it's beautiful - always nice to have a gigantic gimme in the puzzle. How many times does Whoopi have to host the OSCARs before people finally realize it's not a good idea. Four non-consecutive terms, come on! Nobody should get that many chances. To her credit, she made fun of herself very effectively on "30 Rock" lately.
• 29D: Words from Pope's "An Essay on Man" (1940, 1942-43, 1960-62, 1965-68, 1978) ("Hope springs eternal") - "... in the human breast." Another huge gimme, even before I knew the theme of the puzzle. Damn, HOPE hosted a lot!
• 43A: Ecdysiast Blaze and others (Starrs) - I just love the word "ecdysiast!" So much classier than "stripper."
• 23A: First mate's greeting? (Madam, I'm Adam) - easily my favorite answer of the night. Palindrome! I got it right away - one of the few harmonious wavelength moments I had all night.
• 52A: Year Constantine the Great became emperor (CCCVI) - I thought it was CCCIII, but whatever, I knew the century, at least, which really really helped take care of the "Oregon" section of the grid.

More crap I didn't know, or barely knew, or generally said "ugh" to for some reason

• 1A: Stick used to swat flies (fungo) - here I've been calling it a "fly swatter" all these years; what a chump - think of all the syllables I could have saved if I'd only known.
• 32A: Actors Max and Max Jr. (Baers) - pulled this from somewhere, but this last name is like LAHR (of Cowardly Lion fame) in that the only part that's solid in my head is the "R."
• 62A: 1970's HUD secretary Hills and namesakes (Carlas) - man that is a Long way to go for a CARLA.
• 65A: C8H8 (styrene) - ugh, chemistry. Not my strong suit.
• 97A: Old computer (Tandy) - A beloved actress ... and she can do your taxes!? I hate to tell you, though, that she's not just OLD, she's dead.
• 45D: Sirtaki dancer in a 1964 movie (Zorba) - way to hide the fat Greek guy inside a sultry Japanese woman (that's what a "Sirtaki dancer" looked like in my head before reality came crashing in)

And for your and my edification, here is a map showing where the ARAL SEA is (91D: Waters fed by the Amu Darya):


According to this article, the ARAL SEA will kill us all (in fact, should have done so already). Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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THURSDAY, Jan. 11, 2007 - Lee Glickstein and Nancy Salomon

Solving time: 11:08

THEME: "ADD-ICT" - Common expressions have ICT added to them to make odd expressions, which are then clued. 62A tells you the theme: Fiend ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme (addict)

I feel very good this morning, despite an only slightly better-than-average Thursday time (I give myself a B+). After yesterday's debacle, and after doing Several Puzzles in a Row in my Shortz "Greatest Hits" puzzle book wherein I had 1-3 squares wrong in Wednesday and Thursday puzzles, it was nice to complete a puzzle, with no extended struggle, and to have the applet accept my first grid submission. The other reason I'm happy - uh, this puzzle was hard. There were multiple times when I managed to get past a really difficult part and immediately thought "man, that was rough - that's gonna trip someone up" (usually that someone is me). Examples below.

I am still waiting for confirmation from someone that yesterday's Homer quotation was in fact genuine and not an internet myth grown to stellar proportions. I wouldn't want the paper to have print another retraction - as they had to do recently when SARA LEE got clued [Company that owns the brands Playtex, Kiwi and Hillshire Farm] - doesn't own Playtex anymore, apparently - but facts are facts and I want facts. Not factiness. Speaking of "The Colbert Report" (which I just did, whether you knew it or not), I was terrifically happy yesterday when I was flipping through the latest issue of Previews - massive catalogue of upcoming comics releases .... [cough] ... ["Nerd!"] ... -
and I noticed a number of high-profile ads for the upcoming comic book adaptation of Mr. Colbert's unpublished "Tek Jansen" novel. Here is the promotional blurb:

Solar plexus! Bursting out from the hit Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report — it’s Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen! In this stunning continuation of Stephen Colbert’s critically acclaimed, yet unpublished prose novel, everyone’s favorite sci-fi hero must stand against the enemies of freedom, no matter what dark planet they crawl from!

I ordered the series - which won't be in stores for three months. I'll let you know how it is.

THE THORNS

31D: Glimpse (aperçu)

This clue/answer pairing is an ass-pain on many levels. First, APERÇU implies "insight" or "special understanding," where [Glimpse] just suggests "sight." Second, the clue skews more verb-ward than noun-ward, likely causing many mental forays into Useless-ville. Third, holy cow, what the hell ends in -CU??? Without the cedille on that C, that C really really wants to be hard (!). But the U comes from EMU (48A: Noted Australian sprinter), and how could EMU be wrong when it gave me the M that allowed me to get the great and manifestly correct 30D: "Rah!" (Go team!) (where formerly I had HUZZAH, which is making me laugh even as I type it)? In the end, APERÇU was about as palpably physical an "aha" moment as I've had in a while. Exhilarating.

36A (THEME): Order to act one's age? (maturity d-ICT-ate)

Was working on this before I had the theme, and the only thing that second word wanted to be was some form of DIRECT ... DIRECTIVE ... DIRECTION ... ? I had even written in DIRECT, which left me one letter shy of the end of the answer. I figured if I just let DIRECT hang out there for a while, something would happen. Strangely, though it was wrong, its "T" helped me confirm the correct GO TEAM (30D, see above). Now that I look at this whole mid-Atlantic region of the puzzle, it's very very France-circa-WWII. Two French military answers: 35D: 1944 battle site (St. Lo) and 44A: Encamp (bivouac) (the latter apparently comes from the French, via probably Swiss-German). Then APERÇU and Albert Camus, too (that's a rhyme!): 29D: Camus subject (plague). ST. LO is pure crosswordese - a very handy four-letter combo I know only from doing crosswords. I was happy to traipse through this mid-Atlantic region relatively unscathed. I had to work for it, but I could easily have fallen flat on my face, and didn't.

60A: Required (need be)

I can't tell you how befuddled I was by this. Time-wise, I didn't get chewed up too badly, but I ran into an apparent Unstoppable Force / Immovable Object problem when this answer, which I had understandably entered as NEEDED, rammed its final "D" right into the "E" of 58D: Firmed up (set), which, true to its name, would not budge. "NEEDLE? How is a NEEDLE 'Required?'" It was left for me to pick up the "B," which I did only by finally (duh) getting the gist of 57D: "The Office" address? - I had N_C, and I figured the answer was something web-related, or something having to do with business-speak or somebody's title in an office. Of course, if I'd bothered to notice the quotation marks around "The Office," it might have dawned on me sooner that the Office in question was the TV show of that name (which, semi-ironically, is one of only 4 or so shows that I actually watch). So NBC. That's the "address" of the show. OK. NEED BE. Wow. Another thorn that impeded but did not halt my forward progress.

49A: "The Odd Couple," for one (Simon P-ICT-ure)

As of right now, I have no idea what SIMON PURE is. Once you add the ICT, then I get the clue, but what is this expression that is being modified??? OK, I am calling in my resident Restoration and 18th century expert on this one. So, Shaun, when you read this, please respond. Apparently the phrase "The (real) SIMON PURE" dates from the early 18th century and comes from "The name of a Quaker in Mrs. Centlivre's comedy A bold stroke for a wife (1717), who is impersonated by another character during part of the play." So "the real SIMON PURE" is the genuine article, not a fake. At least one on-line dictionary suggests that the phrase might also be used derisively, to mean "superficially or hypocritically virtuous." Do people use this expression nowadays, or even know it? Yes, I'm talking to you.

Speaking of "Odd Couple," Christina ROSSETTI (9D: "Goblin Market" poet Christina), meet Horatio ALGER (41A: Author of "Jed, the Poor House Boy"). She writes wistful sonnets, and he exhorts boys to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

The SW was where I made my last stand, and after my first pass through the Across clues, it was still wide open. But 49D: Chesterfield, e.g. (sofa) - everything I know about furniture I learned from the NYT Crossword - gave me the first letters of all the longish answers down there, 51D: Bleu parts of French maps (mers) [sacré bleu, more French] gave me their third letters, and everything fell from there. Really liked Jackie Robinson's number getting the fully written-out treatment: 59A: Jackie Robinson wore it (forty-two) (which also marks the strange, strange return to the puzzle of the number "42" (see Tuesday's puzzle)).

Wrong Fill

• CALVIN for ARMANI -1A: Big name in menswear and cologne
• REVELLED (?) and then CAVILLED (!?!?!) for CAVORTED - 38D: Made merry

(More) Stuff I Didn't Know

• 12D: Son of Ramses I (Seti) - sure, OK, whatever you say
• 8D: It's to the left of # (Oper.) - this is on a telephone keypad, right? Did not know that. Kept looking at my own computer keyboard and seeing only "@" and "2"
• 37D: Group whose 1946 song "The Gypsy" was #1 for 13 weeks (Ink Spots) - not THE INK SPOTS? Worst band name ever.
• 20D: Harvard's motto (veritas) - I pieced this together easily enough, but didn't know it, exactly. Pretty pompous motto.

Hot Fill

• 16A: Fit of rage (apoplexy) - one of the greatest words to grace the grid in a while
• 5D: Not very potent potable (Near Beer) - great, Jeopardy-esque clue with super-fresh answer

Given that 7A: Sticking points (morasses) crossed with 7D: Kind of nest (mare's) in the NE, I'm really surprised I didn't have trouble there. APOPLEXY is up there too. That corner is all bark and no bite ... and 99 44/00 Awesome.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Note on Today's NY SUN puzzle

Solving time: 14:06

This puzzle warrants mentioning for some fabulous fill, including 1A: Lila Crane portrayer in "Psycho" (Vera Miles), 32D: Alternative to Golden Crinkles (Tater Tots), 38D: She played Prue on "Charmed" (Shannen), and the very very best answer of 'em all, 14: Simpsonian institution (Kwik-E-Mart). Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart!? I dooooooooooooo. This puzzle is also awesome because I got to use my knowledge of the fabulous but rarely seen word "ecdysiast" (41D: Is an ecdysiast (strips)) and because I got to use recently acquired obscure TV knowledge in answering 45D: Ralph of "The Waltons" (Waite). I'm also a big fan of the DIME NOVEL (17A: Early paperback) if not, at all, a big fan of REBA (20A: Sitcom title character with the last name Hart).

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SATURDAY, Dec. 16, 2006 - King Quarfoot

Solving time: Why rush when you're doing a Quarfoot? Slow down and savor the goodness.

THEME: none (although...)

[ERROR: incorrectly transcribed the grid this morning => 64A should be OTRANTO and thus 59D should be ABA (not OTRONTO and ABO, as my posted grid claims)]

Here is how this puzzle went down. Fell asleep last night before even seeing the puzzle. So got up this morning, yoga, breakfast ... and then, hit the puzzle. 1A: Faux finish ... VENEER? No. PATINA? No. PLYWOOD? Ugh, move on. 8A: Ancient fertility goddess. I know one. Her name is ASTARTE. God I love a 7-letter gimme. ASTARTE starts to pan out. 10D: "_____ bon" (très) off the first "T" in ASTARTE forces me to change NECK TIE (18A: Father's Day gift, perhaps) to TIE-something (I had TIE RACK and TIE TACK before eventually getting TIE CLIP). Then, with just the initial "A" and the third letter "T," I nail 8D: Where to work out, maybe (at the gym), which is immediately confirmed by 33A: Composes (typesets), which crosses AT THE GYM at the "Y" (OK, I had TYPES OUT at first, but whatever). I then get 14D: Cable program with team coverage? (ESPNEWS), thereby corralling the entire NE corner in a warm ASTARTE-ESPNEWS-TYPESETS-ATTHEGYM embrace.

At that point I stopped and looked up to see who the hell wrote this awesome puzzle. And I saw DQ's name and stopped in amazement. Yes, this is a Quarfoot puzzle, isn't it? He's some kind of grid-fill genius. I forgot all about timing myself and really just enjoyed the unfolding puzzle, with answer after answer making me shake my head in genuine, disbelieving admiration. It helps that the difficulty level was not Terribly high - and that I just seem to have some weird wavelength connection to the constructor. What I love most about the puzzle is the way really everyday (and long) words and phrases work their way into the grid. DOG FOOD. AT THE GYM. I HOPE SO. It keeps the puzzle from being a pretentious obscurities-and-foreign-words fest, and makes those obscurities and foreign words that do show up really Pop off the Page. Intermingling of words and phrases from entirely different universes - that perversely inclusive spirit makes Quarfoot puzzles fun, unexpected ... revelatory. I mean, come on, where else but in a Quarfoot are you going to see such an unlikely pack of roommates as you find in this puzzle's SE corner: Pretenchy McFrenchy, ETIENNE (63A: French politician _____ de Silhouette, from whom the word "silhouette" comes), gets sandwiched between MR. APRIL (60A: Certain Playgirl centerfold) and SAME SEX (65A: Like some couples), with Corey HAIM (56D: Corey of "The Lost Boys") lying across all three of them! SAME SEX, indeed. (I'll resist the dirty joke that should come from the observation that the SE corner roommates also have PEE (61D) all over them). No one has the highbrow-to-lowbrow range that Quarfoot does. Oh, and that 1A clue I couldn't get at the very beginning - "Faux finish" - yeah, the answer ended up being SILENT X. It was the last answer I filled in. That is what is called "sticking the landing."

MASTER OF THE COLLOQUIAL FILL!

15A: A position of prominence (the fore)

Had THE F___, which caused me to exclaim, "What THE F-!?" Well, not really, but that's what I should have exclaimed. Anyway, I couldn't get it and had to wait and come at the answer backwards from other clues. Following ASTARTE, this answer marks an astonishing run of Across answers - 21, by my count - that don't step in pretension or obscurity even once. All the fun (and challenge) is in the clever cluing. This run of answers starts with a fabulous quartet. Following THE FORE, we get THREE R'S (16A: Fundamental group), DOG FOOD (17A: Pedigree, e.g.) and TIE CLIP (18A). Clues for those middle two are perfect in being both apt and highly misdirectional. "Apt!" And we don't hit recondite fill on an Across clue until we hit 49A: Tundra or rain forest (biome). Seriously, if Quarfoot could have made that answer be BIODOME ("Shore vehicle," perhaps), I would have had to build a little shrine to him in the corner of my office. So, not a god. But a demigod. Per another blogger's suggestion, here is a picture of Adonis, in honor of DQ's demigod status.

26D: Answer to "No, that's not!" (yes, it is)
44D: Last song recorded by the Beatles (I Me Mine)
62A: Trapped (in a bind)
2D: Wishful reply (I hope so)

Again with the colloquial niceness. Here, we see another element of the Quarfootian charm - multiple-word entries, and lots of 'em. Line up these answers and they start to read like dialogue: "In a bind?" "I hope so [wink]" "LEG IRON?" [3D: Shackle] "Yes, it is." OK, it's absurdist dialogue, but dialogue nonetheless.

7D: Struck (X'ed out)
48D: Annual competition since 1995 (X-Games)

X-GAMES could be the title of this puzzle's most prominent subtheme, as we get 4 X's, thus 8 X-answers, two of which, as we see here, START with X (the other 6 all END with X, nice). No cheap tic-tac-toe-related answers. Even the little 3-letter X-word, 47A: General Mills brand (Kix), is fresh and Scrabbly. I especially like the rhyming intersectors, STAX (50A: 1960's soul record label) and FLAT TAX (24D: Recurring economic proposal) // SAME SEX and PERPLEX (45D: Puzzle). That's a radio-friendly rap hit waiting to happen.

51A: Back parts of a keel (skegs)
55A: Headdress wearer (pharaoh)
58A: Home of the Moai statues (Rapa Nui)

These three are stacked unevenly, one atop the other, in the, let's say, "Albuquerque" region of the puzzle (my sister was born there!). SKEGS is the one new word for me in this puzzle. A SKEG is like a rudder, only not one. Here is a page that explains the difference. Between the red ants and all the AIDA action of the past week or so, PHARAOH has been on my mind, and so came easily here. Lastly, we get the return of NUI, yesterday clued as part of a Tahitian airline name, and here clued as a movie nobody saw.

55D: Nabokov novel (Pnin)
64A: Italian city, setting of a Walpole novel (Otranto)

Oh, snap! Just when you think it's all playful, colloquial, everyday fun, Quarfoot busts out the books and gets all literary on your ass. Just in case you doubted DQ's highbrow cred. PNIN is about an odd little professor (my kinda guy) and The Castle of Otranto ... man, what the hell is that about? Shaun, why do I know (of) The Castle of Otranto? Sounds like something you had to read in grad school. One of those marginal curiosities that goes on a Ph.D. exam reading list. This puzzle's only demerits come from bringing @#$#-ing "Will Ampersand Grace" into the puzzle (only a few steps up from "Ally McBeal" in puzzle undesirability). But I can forgive 38D: "Will & Grace" maid (Rosario) first, because Rosario is neither Will nor Grace, and second, because her initial "R" is used to lead off perhaps this puzzle's greatest (which is to say, campiest) answer: 38A: 1988 Burt Reynolds flop (Rent-a-Cop). The clue alone made me laugh, and the fill is just gravy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SATURDAY, Dec. 2, 2006 - Bob Klahn

Solving time: 51:34

THEME: none

I have it on good authority that Bob Klahn is "pretty much the hardest there is," and after last night's 15-round bout with the Saturday puzzle, I'm inclined to agree. I won the bout, in a split decision, but it was something of a Pyrrhic victory. I'm bruised and bloodied, and partially BOWed. It's especially humbling to look at a completed grid that has just slapped you around for something close to an hour and realize "wait a minute ... this doesn't look that hard. What the hell just happened?" I respect a puzzle that can beat me up with minimal esoterica. There are about three answers here that I think are a bit out-there, but that's not very many for a Saturday.

Blogger is fritzing like crazy again - I'm currently composing this entry using two browsers simultaneously. I feel, therefore, that today, I will be brief, if only to keep from smashing my computer (luckily, all humanity besides myself is currently out of the house, so if I do lose it - no witnesses but the animals).

15A: "The Green Hornet" trumpeter (Hirt)

I have got to get my hands on episodes of this show, because between HIRT and KATO (the Hornet's manservant?), it's all up in my puzzle on a routine basis. I was very grateful for this tiny 4-letter gimme (a gimme only because I've seen it twice in other puzzles recently). There were, let's see ... about six true gimmes in the puzzle, all of them sadly short. I got 51A: Actress Petty of "A League of Their Own" (Lori), 45A: Alexander Pope's "Solitude," e.g. (ode), 21A: Battle of Endor fighter (Ewok) ("Nerd!"), 46A: Unlocked? (bald), and 25A: Anita Loos's autobiographical "A _____ Like I" (Girl) with no problem, though I got that last one only through inference, not from any great familiarity with the literary corpus of Ms. Loos. You'd think with six gimmes in a Saturday, you'd be on the road to victory, and not hell.

37A: Saxophonist great, familiarly (Trane)

This is what I'd call a near-gimme, as the first thing I thought was TRANE ... but then I reflected on my appalling ignorance of jazz and hesitated a bit. Finally, as I had almost nothing entered on the entire grid, I put in TRANE, just to feel a sense of accomplishment. Luckily, I was right. I don't have any Coltrane handy, so I'm going to put on Dexter Gordon. . . there we go. Haven't blogged to jazz saxophone before. It's kind of nice. I don't feel nearly as murderous as I have lately.

26A: Lots (a good many)

Straightforward. Eventually I had AGOOD-, so how hard could it be to fill out? Very, when the only phrase your head can possibly imagine going there is AGOODDEAL. Not sure which sounds more priggish and old-fashioned - think I'd call it a tie - but -MANY is at least as common, if not more so, than -DEAL. So I ended up playing my own private, sad (though mercifully Mandel-free) version of Deal or No Deal? The only thing keeping me from writing in DEAL was 27D: Kind of bean: I had a 4-ltr word ending -UNG, and -DEAL would have given me DUNG, which is not a bean I'd eat. I knew it had to be MUNG, and yet ... A GOOD M-, A GOOD M-, A GOOD M-; I said it aloud and still couldn't find the right phrase. So implausible, and yet true.

18A: Roosevelt Island locale (Antarctica)

I had only one thought upon solving this: "Mae West was imprisoned in ANTARCTICA!?!?!" (see 53A here)

19A: Boxer on the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (Liston)

Can you find him? I think he's on the far left there. I love this answer for two reasons. First, I love any time I learn some new piece of pop-culture-y trivia. Really, if you haven't guessed by now, the pop culture references in NYT puzzles are my bread-and-butter, so the more I know the stronger I am. The second reason I love this answer: it crosses with 1D: Name shared by a Grace and a Muse (Thalia). So what? you ask. What's so meaningful about that? Well, let me put it another way: LISTON gets crossed in the head by TH ALI A.

47A: Hybrid women's clothing (skorts)

First thing I thought of was PANTSUIT, for some reason. Then I thought SKORT, but not imagining a plural, I abandoned it for a while. There were two others that I knew and abandoned (34A: Light housecoats (dusters) and 34D: Toaster setting? (dais)) - and somehow all of these answers connect, in my mind, to my friend Shaun (female). How? Well Shaun owned at least one SKORT. I know that I learned the word in the 90's sometime because I probably commented, "What the hell are you wearing? I can see up your skirt, but this time it's just no fun." OK, fine, but where do DUSTERS and DAIS come in? Well, they don't, exactly, but the reason I would not enter either one was because of the evilest clue/answer in the puzzle (for me, a non-card-player): 36A: Third highest trump in card games (basta). I wanted DAIS so bad, but that would have put (rightly, it turns out) an A in the second position of the trump answer, and I knew that there are no five-letter words for a playing card that have an "A" in that position: the only candidates, in my feeble mind, were THREE, SEVEN, EIGHT, and QUEEN. Clearly BASTA was not on my radar, which is why this intersection on the grid, where NE divides into SE and SW (always bad when someone stops in the middle of an intersection!) was the last thing in the puzzle to fall. Oh, right, how does this connect to Shaun? Well, in searching for BASTA after completing the puzzle, I came across a page detailing the game of "Ombre" (card game with trumps, like Spades or Hearts) that is played in Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock." Shaun studied Restoration and 18th-c. literature in grad school, so when I think of Pope (like it or not, Shaun), I think of her.

28A: Musical notation pioneer (Guido)
25D: English composer of the opera "The Perfect Fool" (Gustav Holst)
47D: GE Building muralist (Sert)
12D: One making excuses (Alibi Ike)

Well here's an interesting cast of characters, only one of whom (HOLST) I was familiar with before this puzzle (though I have a nagging suspicion that I have seen SERT lurking in a corner of my crossword before). I will confess now that I did not know HOLST was English. I knew he wrote "The Planets," and that is that. I probably heard GUIDO's name once while listening to lectures on early music (part of a great set of lectures on CD that my mom once gave me). Didn't help me here. My favorite of this little posse of relative obscurities is ALIBI IKE. I Like ALIBI IKE. Holy moses it's the name of a movie about baseball... hang on ... it's a Ring Lardner short story-turned-1935 movie starring Olivia de Havilland! Description, from imdb:

Rookie pitcher Francis "Ike" Farrell comes seemingly out of nowhere to help the Cubs go for the pennant. His idiosyncratic ways, which include excuses and alibis for everything, drive his manager and fiancee crazy in this baseball farce.

And thus the United States survived the Great Depression with a smile. I do think that ALIBI IKE needs to be remade as a modern kid ("this century's Dennis the Menace") who weasels his way out of blame for the increasingly criminal things he does. "That hobo was dead when I got here, ma. Honest!"

52A: Park Avenue retailer? (auto dealer)
50D: Grand finale? (dee)
54A: Not the biggest thoroughfare in town (stop street)

Curse all of these answers! I entered that SW corner (eventually), with the front ends of three of the 10-ltr crosses in place, but only solved one of them. Had the AUTO- in AUTODEALER and the STOP- in STOPSTREET, and thought it looked like some kind of car theme was going on, but damned if I could figure it out. I have never heard the expression "stop street," and as of this second don't know exactly what it means. Turns out to be very banal and obvious: "A street intersection at which a vehicle must come to a complete stop before entering a through street" (freedictionary.com). But even when I had the whole puzzle filled in, I couldn't figure out the logic of AUTODEALER or DEE? There are auto dealers on Park Avenue? And what the hell is a GRANDDEE? Of course a "Park Avenue" is a make of AUTO (a Buick) and DEE is the @#$#-ing last letter, or "finale," of "grand." Doesn't help much to discern the logic After the puzzle is over. That's all; I'm off to smoke an EL ROPO (39D: Cheap cigar, slangily) over a tasty meal of SWISSCHARD (5A: Leaves for dinner), followed by a WINECOOLER (16A: Mixed drink?) and AMARETTO (33D: Alabama slammer ingredient) in quick succession - "sweet liquor eases the pain."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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