Virtually silently, in a classic poem / SAT 8-3-24 / 1962 war epic loaded with A-listers, with "The" / M.L.B. team that's played in three different stadiums since its inception in 1962 / Abbr. in French business names

Constructor: RICH NORRIS

Relative difficulty: MEDIUM

                                           

THEME: None - Happy Saturday!

Word of the Day: AMAHL (2D: Title hero of a Menotti opera) —

Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer.^[1] It was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on December 24, 1951, in New York City at NBC Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast live on television from that venue as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It was the first opera specifically composed for television in the United States.^[2]

• • •

Hello Crossworld! Rex is back on vacation so you've got Eli again, today and tomorrow, then more Rexplacements the rest of the week. I'm not sure if it's because I was paying extra attention knowing I had today's blog, but the puzzle played a little harder than usual for me. I fumbled around quite a bit before getting a toehold on this one. Fittingly, that toehold came with ON LITTLE CAT FEET (57D: Virtually silently, in a classic poem). I was able to drop it in off of just a couple of crosses, but I imagine if you're not familiar with Robert Frost's poem Fog, this one will play even harder for you.

Even though I made it my word of the day, AMAHL was pretty much the only thing I was able to put in confidently in the north of the puzzle my first pass through, along with the crossing LYNX (21A: Minnesota W.N.B.A. team). I couldn't remember if a Buckwheat noodle (9D) was UDON or SOBA, so I needed some crosses that just weren't coming. I got a little bit of traction on ST. TROPEZ (31A: French resort town) entirely because of personal history. St. Tropez is the setting for the musical La Cage Aux Folles (which is also the basis of the movie The Birdcage), which I acted in after college. Drag performing was a unique experience for a cisgender straight man, but I had a blast. Drag is not a crime.

Ever lift a grown man on to your shoulders in 3 inch heels? I have.

Thankfully, my poetry brain kicked in and got me 57A and I was off and running. Looking at the grid as a whole, the only long across that doesn't really do much for me is ACCESS TIME (5A: Retrieval speed of a computer). I spend a lot of time on computers, and this wasn't a phrase I knew off-hand. It's legit, but it's a bit of a snooze as answers go. I liked the cluing on PIANO TUNER (16A: Professional pitcher?), and it made me put "AD" (as in "Ad Executive") in for way too long. CARE TO ELABORATE (17A: Request for details) is snappy and very natural language, and both I DON'T GET IT (60A: [shrug]) and LONGEST DAY (62A: 1962 war epic loaded with A-listers, with "The") are both solid entries. 

On the whole, I liked the puzzle. Pretty straightforward, not too flashy, but solid.

Stray thoughts:

• 40A: Home run, informally (DINGER) — If you've been paying attention to my write-ups, it will come as no surprise that the first thing this makes me think of is a Simpsons reference.

• 27D: Sticks figure (YOKEL) — Sigh. Do I have a choice?

• 51D: Drinks mistakenly invented by a Dairy Queen owner in 1958 (ICEES) — I liked this trivia! It's mostly surprising to me because it feels like an Icee, which is just syrup and crushed ice, would pre-date Dairy Queen. I feel like a Blizzard is a modern smartphone to the Icee's fax machine.
• 22A: Cousin voiced by Snoop Dogg in two films (ITT) — The original Addams Family TV show is well before my time, but I don't remember Cousin Itt speaking in it. Didn't he just kind of chirp or something? I guess he talks now, and he apparently talks like Snoop. 

Enjoy your Saturday, and I'll see you all again tomorrow!

Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

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Unfair, to Brits / SAT 4-27-24 / Pistol used by James Bond / NASA rocket name since 1957 / Hybrid shape with straight edges and rounded corners / Modern driving aid / Company logo derived from a state symbol

Constructor: Rich Norris

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Thomas NAST (11A: "Father of the American Cartoon") —

Thomas Nast (/næst/; German: [nast]; September 26, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist often considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon".

He was a sharp critic of "Boss" Tweed and the Tammany Hall Democratic party political machine. He created a modern version of Santa Claus (based on the traditional German figures of Saint Nicholas and Weihnachtsmann) and the political symbol of the elephant for the Republican Party (GOP). Contrary to popular belief, Nast did not create Uncle Sam (the male personification of the United States Federal Government), Columbia (the female personification of American values), or the Democratic donkey, although he did popularize those symbols through his artwork. Nast was associated with the magazine Harper's Weekly from 1859 to 1860 and from 1862 until 1886. Nast's influence was so widespread that Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Thomas Nast was our best teacher." (wikipedia)

• • •

I thought the term was "TIPSHEET" and I thought the term was "DOORMAN" and that pretty much sums up my experience with this one—slightly off my wavelength. Like a radio station I never can quite get to come in clearly. On the other hand, knowing the term "NOT CRICKET" finally came in handy (I'm married to a Kiwi, so some of these Briticisms make their way into my house and brain that way, though I'm not sure how I know this particular Briticism) (53A: Unfair, to Brits). But I didn't have many other solving smiles today, except maybe "SQUEE!" (38A: Excited outburst), which is kind of ADORBS. Most of the longer answers felt a bit bland (LOCAL PAPER, STEP-BY-STEP) or clunky / awkward (AT A PREMIUM, BOOK ON CD), or, like, DOPESHEETS and DOORKEEPER, from some parallel universe where the answers are all slightly off—eerily ... -ISH. Also lots of stuff I just don't know much about—numismatics, regattas, guns. I read a lot of crime fiction and watch a lot of crime films, so the WALTHER PPK is familiar to me (20A: Pistol used by James Bond), but as I was solving, the only part I could get (or remember) was the WALTHER part. "PPK" played like a bunch of random letters that I had to get from crosses. I've never seen the word SQUIRCLE in my life and I hope never to see it again (35D: Hybrid shape with straight edges and rounded corners) (just inferred the SQU- part after changing CLING to CLUMP (41A: Stick together)). I know Thomas NAST well from teaching courses on comics but note I said "comics" and not "cartoons"—when I see "cartoon" out of context, I think animation. So even something familiar (and highly crosswordesey) like NAST didn't come easily for me today. Still, there were enough gimmes to give me the traction I needed to finish this in a pretty normal Saturday time. It was a fitting challenge, but not a fun one. Hard to get excited about advertising logos (TEXACO STAR) and tech from circa 2010 (SIRI, ROKU, WAZE) (SIRI is the youngest of these (2011), that surprised me (WAZE = '06, ROKU = '02 (!?))).

Did you know that DUMBWAITER and DOORKEEPER have the same number of letters and both start with "D"? Well, presumably you knew the "D" part, but I was surprised when I tested DUMBWAITER and it fit and it was "confirmed" by PERK and (I thought) STES (52A: Penthouses, e.g.: Abbr. => APTS). But AKA really wanted to be AKA (39A: Blotter letters), which messed up DUMBWAITER, and finally REEBOK confirmed that no, it wasn't DUMBWAITER. Do upscale buildings even have DUMBWAITERs? Well, yes, if the buildings are older mansion-type things, then they do. I'm semi-satisfied by the aptness of my wrong answer. I don't think I fell into any other holes besides the DUMBWAITER hole. I did try to spell WAZE "WAYZ" (28D: Modern driving aid). I also typo'd Mad LIBS as "Mad LIPS," which had me wondering (for a minute or so!?) what the number PI could have to do with "some coins" (17A: Like some coins => BIMETALLIC). You ever have your own typo hold you up? Maddening.

Other stuff:

• 30A: Regatta leaders (COXES) — made two bad assumptions here—one, that the regatta had to do with sailboats (like most regattas I've ever heard of), and two, that "leaders" meant "the ones who are ahead of everyone else in the race" (as opposed to the person sitting in the boat "leading" the rowers).
• 33A: Things drawn in a group (LOTS) — wanted OXEN, but I think that's just because OXEN might "draw" a plow. 
• 7D: NASA rocket name since 1957 (ATLAS) — this is probably a gimme if you grew up during the Space Race. I don't know how I got this. It's vaguely familiar. Once I got the "T" and "S" it went in. I thought it was going to be something much more esoteric, somehow.
• 38D: Kind of snapper, for short? (SLR) — the snappers are back. Yesterday, they were long-haired (actually, long-tailed) turtles, today, cameras (single-lens reflex).
• 57A: B.C. and others (ERAS) — LOL what? The entire history of time before the putative birth of Christ is just one "era" now? That's like when Phoebe asks Rachel what period the (Pottery Barn) apothecary table is from and Rachel says "uh, it's from Yore ... like, the days of Yore, you know?"

See you Sunday, I hope.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Sister brand of Mazola / FRI 3-31-23 / Diacritic over the 'r' in Dvorak / Show first performed during 1994's Eurovision Song Contest / Joel who once played Wyatt Earp in film / Blended numbers / Classic cars that rivaled the Ford Maverick and Plymouth Duster

Constructor: Rich Norris

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PART SONGS (9D: Blended numbers) —

Strictly any song written for several vocal parts, but in practice, a comp. for male, female, or mixed vv. (usually but not necessarily unacc.) which is not contrapuntal like the madrigal but has the melody in the highest part with accompanying harmonies in the other vv. Either through‐composed (Durchkomponiert) or strophic (verse‐repeating). Is a particularly Eng. genre, developing in popularity with growth of choral socs. in early 19th cent., so there are many examples by Pearsall, Barnby, Stanford, Elgar, Delius, Warlock, and many others. But examples exist by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, etc. (Oxford Reference)

• • •

This was not for me. In the extreme. Felt like being bludgeoned with olde-tymeiness. I was having flashbacks, seeing fill I hadn't seen in two, four, twenty-four years, and for the life of me I could not find more than a wisp of contemporary ... anything. For real, this could've come out in the late '90s, No Problem. '80s, possibly, were it not for NEVE Campbell. How long has it been since there were CHEVY NOVAS? (Not since the '80s). How long has it been since someone tried to use THEPO in a grid? [Just last year!? Wow, I blocked that out] When's the last time someone used the term POOBAHS unironically? I think I learned that term from "Happy Days," which means it was already old-timey 45 years ago. I learned CANTAB from crosswords and then promptly stopped thinking about it because constructors got better at filling grids and also got slightly less Ivy-centric in their thinking (I think of CANTAB like I think of ELIHU Yale, i.e. really, I have to know this?). I love Joel MCCREA (26D: Joel who once played Wyatt Earp in film), but then I watch more old movies than is probably healthy, and anyway, what a borrrrrrring clue for MCCREA—a charming, dreamy leading man who was the star of some of the greatest movies of the '40s, including Sullivan's Travels and one of my five favorite movies of all time, The More the Merrier (with JEAN ARTHUR, my No. 1 all-time movie crush) (OK, maybe tied with Teri Garr). Laura INNES isn't a contemporary reference any more, not since RIVERDANCE was a thing (seriously, has this puzzle been sitting in a drawer since '97?). I really liked "JUST SAY IT!" as that was the one thing that felt like it had a pulse. Puzzles should have broad frames of reference and the cluing should be alive to the language of today. This one fell short on both counts. The good stuff was not nearly good enough, or widespread enough, to offset the overall musty feel of the grid. 

What is Mazola? (10A: Sister brand of Mazola). Is that also bygone? Oh, no, just corn oil. People use that? It's weird that the puzzle wants to make ARGO and EYRE non-literary. Trying to pretend they're not literary just makes them fussier / weirder, not better. DIET PILLS are awful in real life and so awful in the grid. It's GOLDEN AGE not GOLDEN ERA (12D: Prosperous period). I have no idea what PART SONGS are. Never heard the term. Ever, not once. Is that like a round song, like "Frère Jacques"? Oof, I had PART and then no idea. Eventually I just guessed SONGS because I figured well, that's a word that means "numbers," so OK. I just read the definition of PART SONGS and honestly still don't get it. Here, you read it. I'll stipulate that PART SONGS is a *fantastic* answer and that I'm just ignorant. The puzzle really needs a win so ... sure, PART SONGS, great, congratulations. Musically, I'm more familiar with the SCHROEDER REPERTOIRE, i.e. Beethoven and ... well Beethoven. OK, more than that. Choral music was just never ever (ever) really my thing. I listen to classical music precisely so I don't have to deal with the mental clutter of words (i.e. so I can take a break from words, which I love, but omg so many words, writing and lecturing and reading and what not, sometimes I need them to stop). 

Unsurprisingly, given how before (even) my time this puzzle feels, it was a bit of a struggle for me. No idea on ARGO. Absolutely no idea on HACEK (34A: Diacritic over the "r" in "Dvorák). I thought he was an NHLER ... damn, that was Dominik HASEK, who somehow Also Has A HACEK In His Name (over the "S") ... he was big in the '90s, so he'd've fit right in to this grid. I guess EMBASSY Row is what you call the place where embassies ... are? So that's what that clue means ... I think (40D: Row house?). Apple ... INC? Really, that's your INC clue? Yeesh. PSST and AHEM before "LOOK!" (16A: Attention-getting cry). SST before TNT. SERTA before SEALY (klassic kealoa*) (15D: Company for a king or queen). I hope you all found ways to enjoy this. Maybe on a nostalgia level or something, I don't know. But I'm surprised that, with all the sizzling themeless grids that I know are being submitted and rejected, this one was deemed fit for the NYTXW. But if this was your jam, then ... OKEY-DOKEY. I'm happy for you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.

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ARCHAIC IRISH SCRIPT - SUNDAY, Oct. 12, 2008 - Rich Norris (Reagan adviser Nofziger / Lepidopterous movie monster / Fictional clue sniffer)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Change of Heart" - familiar three-word phrases where the middle word has been anagrammed to create a wacky phrase, which is "?"-clued


This one was slightly hard to get rolling - I was looking for a cardiac theme, or maybe the letters h, e, a, r and t. First theme answer would not come, as I do not associate the phrase "low-budget films" with INDIES. Plenty of "INDIES" these days have sizable budgets, and "low-budget" implies "cheap" or "cheap-looking" to me - I was looking for something like B-MOVIE. Anyway, I stumbled into the theme at the next theme answer, but still didn't know if STAR, or a different word each time, was going to be rearranged in the puzzle's middle. Minutes later I'd know the answer. The theme clues could be quite ornate or complex, and so knowing the theme didn't mean that you could roll through them. Is there such thing as "DUTCH STEW"? Sounds odd / unappetizing. IN COOL PARENTIS makes no sense, though it's a great idea - I just like any occurrence of the word "beatnik." The most creative of the theme answers, to my ear, is ONE THING STAND. It's just so sad.

[note: I understand that the original phrase on IN COOL PARENTIS is in loco parentis - my point is that the other theme answers make sense (however absurdly) at a literal level, whereas this one does not. At all. COOL is not Latin, so you're left with nonsense]

Theme answers:

• 23A: Low-budget films about hearty European meals? (Dutch STEW Indies)
• 33A: Where hermit painters retire? (Lone ARTS State)
• 42A: Biography of Odin? (shaggy GOD story)
• 69A: Place to go for kitchenware? (General POTS Office)
• 95A: How beatniks raise kids? (in COOL parentis)
• 103A: Étagère with a single tiny shelf? (one THING stand)
• 116A: Where citrus trees grow in small groups? (Three LIME Island)
  

Two completely new words / phrases for me today. First, OGHAM (103D: Archaic Irish script). Inscriptions in this script can apparently be found on stone monuments around Ireland and Britain. Also called the "tree alphabet," as the letters seem to have the names of various trees. Silly druids. If you like trees, so much, why don't you move to MAPLE GROVE (38D: City NW of Minneapolis) (the other answer in this puzzle I didn't know). Best Segue Ever!

Your crosswordese parade (in case you needed brushing up):

• OSAGE (96D: Missouri feeder) - it's everywhere lately, as a river, tribe, county, etc.
• SADE (1D: Nigerian-born singer with five Top 40 hits) - Nigeria's gift to crosswords (along with, to a much lesser extent, LAGOS).
• AERIE (78D: Raptor's roost) - where the ERNs dwell.
  
• ASTA (31D: Fictional clue sniffer) - this one took me a few beats because I don't usually think of ASTA in his detecting capacity.
• ELI (9D: Skull and Bones meeting attendee) - "Skull and Bones" sounds ominous. "Attendee," not so much.
• ELAND (105D: Kenyan grazer) - it's been a while since I've seen this guy, but he is one of those antelope you need to know (see also ORIBI and ORYX).
• KFC (4D: "Original or crispy" offerer) - first of all, isn't it "Extra Crispy" that is offered by the offerer in question? Second, while the general economy spirals downward, and while my local economy sinks comfortably into decay, I would like to point out that local KFCs are getting face lifts that make them look like mini-palaces. We couldn't support a "Hooters," so I guess we gotta doll up the KFCs to make sure they don't go under too.
• TROI (88A: Picard's counselor on "Star Trek: T.N.G.") - I have a certain fondness for these words and names that get caught in the xword net, never to escape. Thousands of people who have never seen one episode of "Star Trek: T.N.G." know enough to enter TROI reflexively whenever they see the word "Counselor" mentioned in a fictional context.
  

The Rest:

• 22A: Georges who wrote: "Life: A User's Manual" (Perec) - OK, so there were three answers I'd never heard of.
• 29A: Organ repair sites, briefly (ORs) - what an odd way to think of the O.R. Here is the best use of "O.R." in movie dialogue. Ever. (video starts out wonky, but resolves)

• 32A: Hip-hop's _____ Kim (Lil') - She's featured on this video. Tender sensibilities will not want to click this.

• 36A: "Impossible" response to the question "Are you sleeping?" ("I am") - the quotation marks around "impossible" are weird. Is someone being quoted? Are you suggesting that people just say it's "impossible," but it's really not?
• 55A: Bones that support tibiae (tali) - a good anatomical xword word.
• 62A: Eva's half-sister? (Zsa) - your clue better be cute if you're going to try to convince me that ZSA is a stand-alone answer.
• 10D: Rapper with a professional title (Dr. Dre) - HA ha. He's ... not a medical doctor. Or a Ph.D., as far as I know.
  
• 76A: Hardware fastener (T-nut) - more common xwordiness. All kind of alphabet answer in xword land - beams, bombs, and stars get lettered up a lot.
• 121A: Richards : Moore :: Grant : _____ (Asner) - god I love "MTM," but mainly for Betty White, who is my biggest sitcom / "Match Game" love of all time.

• 2D: Grade elevator (plus) - I assign these every semester and still hesitated at this clue.
• 15D: Place to find a long-term companion, maybe (pet store) - no no no. The pound, or maybe a reputable breeder. Pet stores ... ugh, I should stop here.
• 33D: California city where A & W root beer was born (Lodi) - O man, I love it when obscure little towns from the Central Valley (where I grew up) show up in the crossword. Oh, and I love root beer, so this clue's a twofer.
• 40D: Lepidopterous movie monster (Mothra) - mmmm, special effects:

• 35D: Chicago journalist Mike (Royko) - that's a great name for the grid - you got your rarely seen "YKO" combo. Nice.
• 47D: 13-time Gold Glove-winning shortstop (Ozzie Smith) - another amazing entry to the grid. One "Z" was enough to tip me off on the answer here.
• 56D: Something very tough (a bear) - this phrase, with the indefinite article, is superhard to clue well. Insofar as you can swap out these phrases, I suppose this works.
• 60D: Ceylon's capital? (soft C) - A letteral clue - I like these. They keep you on your toes.
• 71D: Banker's worry (panic) - timely!
• 93D: Subject of a 2004 F.D.A. dietary supplement ban (ephedra) - whoa, haven't seen this answer before. Nice.
• 120D: Reagan adviser Nofziger (Lyn) - Knew this! Wrote in LEN! Hurray. Hey, what's TEPEA? (124A: Hardly laid-back - TYPE-A).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS I have added Matt Gaffney's "Weekly Crossword Contest" to my sidebar, under "Crossword Links." I think many of you might enjoy it.

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SATURDAY, Apr. 5, 2008 - Rich Norris (ANCIENT DENIZEN ALONG THE CASPIAN)

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Meeting up in Ithaca in a few hours, so this will be somewhat brief.

I tore through this puzzle at first - the NE corner may be the fastest Saturday corner I've ever experienced - and then I hit snags in about three different places, but none of them lasted very long. I ended up with a stupid error - and this is why you should read All the clues, Across and Down, especially on a Saturday: I was wondering (briefly) why SMILES was plural when the clue indicated a singular: 1D: Joke indicator. I had SDS at 26A and never even looked at the clue for 26A: Meas. of progress, at times because SDS is a perfectly good xword answer, e.g. [Radical '60s student group]. And so ... puzzle incorrect. I discovered the error pretty easily, thank god. Answers are SMILEY and YDS.

This puzzle began with me surmising that perhaps THE GAME was the answer to 36A: Singer whose 2002 song "Foolish" was #1 for 10 weeks (Ashanti). But the first Down cross I checked was the surprisingly easy 37D: Saves, e.g. (stat), and that single "S" jogged my 21st century music memory enough for me to recall (with no great joy) the name of ASHANTI. Back to STAT for a second: this puzzle seemed loaded with easy and (crosswordeasy) answers:

• ARIA - 16A: Da capo _____ (Baroque piece)
• OCALA - 54A: Central Florida Community College site
• OTOE - 50A: Nebraska City's county
• YIP - 47A: Pound sound

I was going to add SDS, but, well, you know. All the Acrosses (and the one short Down) in the SW corner are very basic 4-letter words:

• DANE - 60A: Rosencrantz or Gildenstern
• MATE - 55A: The other shoe, e.g.
• ACID - 58A: Mordant
• MEDE - 52D: Ancient denizen along the Caspian [It Returns!]

SCUM (51A: Cleaning target) was at least colorful and interesting. Anyway, I'm surprised at how much this puzzle relied on simple small answers. PDAS, GPAS, ELLS, etc.

After ASHANTI, the NE simply fell. That terminal "I" in ASHANTI made WATER SKI (14D: It's hard to do barefoot) a total gimme, and the corner fell from there. From there I floated down into the SE, with no hesitation until I reached the very far end of that corner. I had SEP where SPR was supposed to go (44A: When Arbor Day is observed: Abbr.), and while that may seem a small error, when your Down crosses are the absurd-looking POLLEE (45D: Question answerer) and READDS (46D: Checks, as checks), those two wrong letters make a huge difference. Because of the unexpected letter combos in those two answers, I assumed one of my long Acrosses was wrong. So I flailed for a little bit before the simplest of moves (changing SEP to SPR) fixed everything.

The next major snag - which was driving me crazy - was 27D: The Blue Demons of the N.C.A.A.'s Big East. I thought "Yes, gimme!" And then ... couldn't think of a school. Duke is the Blue Devils. Wake Forest is the Demon Deacons. I thought "... Drexel?" I had the final "L" and could think of nothing. This was humiliating to me, as I watch a lot of ESPN and have known the names of the major conference teams in NCAA basketball for well over a quarter century. Unh. Eventually I got the "D" and then the "P" from STRAP IN (33A: Get ready to take off) and there was DEPAUL. SW went down from there, and quickly. Actually, I told this story in the wrong order. I wrestled with the NW first, and then ended in the SW.

The NW (closer to the N, actually) was by far the roughest part of the puzzle for me, primarily because of parallel long science/math answers: TRIVALENT (7D: Like some chromium and arsenic) and RADIXES (8D: Base numbers, in math), the latter of which is horribly grating to me, as it looks like terrible Latin - I would have pluralized RADIX (root) as RADICES. But that's just me. Got the "X" only because I bothered to change THE LAW to TAX LAW (23A: Certain code). And I was done.

Quickly:

• 17A: Band with the 1982 platinum album "The Number of the Beast" (Iron Maiden) - this was Killing me,a s 1982 is Right Over the Plate for me. I had no idea IRON MAIDEN ever had a platinum album. Wow.
• 28A: River past the ruins of Nineveh (Tigris) - didn't know this, but had the -GR-, so what else was it going to be?
• 30A: Martin Luther's crime (heresy) - plus defacement of Church property, I think.
• 38A: Runway topper (tiara) - I associate "runway" more with models than pageant contestants, but I haven't watched a beauty pageant since 1979, so what do I know?
• 39A: Cakes often made with ground nuts (torte) - good example of how this puzzle went: I braced myself for something esoteric and got something basic.
• 56A: Bean product? (brain child) - the only Across in the SE that gave me any trouble. I had BRAIN and wanted BRAIN ... CHART?
• 59A: 10th-century exile from Iceland (Eric the Red) - great long answer. Super easy, since I already had ERI-.
• 61A: Upsetting types (dark horses) - another great answer. Dark Horse is also a publisher of (usually) high quality comics.
• 2D: Bygone New York daily, with "the" (Herald) - wanted WORLD, but it didn't fit.
• 5D: Rolaids alternative (Tums) - again, super super easy. Nearly every English-speaking person in America should have been able to get this instantly.
• 6D: "An' singin there, an' dancin here, / Wi' great and _____": Burns ("sma") - ironically, not a very SMA clue.
• 9D: Experiencing drunkenness (areel) - I like that the xword has so many different ways to refer to drunks and their various sensations (SOTS, TOSSPOTS, LIT, DTS, etc.)
• 23D: Inner tubes, e.g. (tori) - thank you, Mr. Nestler (best friend, mathematician)
• 30D: "Pal Joey" lyricist (Hart) - I wanted O'HARA, who wrote the story.
• 34D: Two-part lake connected by the Strait of Tiquina (Titicaca) - again, piece o' cake, once you get a cross or two (if not sooner).
• 35D: 1996 Emmy-winning role for Alan Rickman (Rasputin) - had no idea, but crosses made it obvious.

Gotta run.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SATURDAY, Dec. 15, 2007 - Rich Norris

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: not really

Found this very very easy, with only the SW giving me any real trouble (and most of that was of my own dumb making). "Easy" does not mean boring or unenjoyable, though, as there were many things to like about this puzzle. Lots of unusual compound phrases that were tricky to parse, and then some interesting pairings or seemingly related answers that played well off each other

• I THINK SO (36D: "Probably")
• I AGREE (16A: Pro's remark) - nice twist on meaning of "Pro"; see also 55A: Pro fighter (anti)

Gotta love complete sentences as answers. Ooh, imperatives like QUIT IT (56A: "Enough!") count as complete sentences too (although then we could say just about any verb is a complete sentence: e.g. FLEE! - 25A: Take off). In certain contexts, GO BACK ON (58A: Fail to keep) could be complete. Then there's EXEUNT (45D: Order to leave - i.e. leave the stage, as in drama). I'll stop now.

• 19A: They're lit (sots)
• 63A: They're fried (tosspots)

This pairing is drunkenly glorious. And it rhymes.

I like the quirkiness of ODDS ARE (31A: Words of expectation) and RAW EGGS (39A: Ingredients in a protein shake), in their central, symmetrical positions. Ditto TEETHE (33A: Raise canines?) and SADIST (35A: Meanie).

Got 1A: They get sore easily (hot heads) instantly. Immediately. One of those fabulous bits of good luck. Opened the NW right up - had that quadrant done in just a minute or two. Didn't pause in my answering until I wandered down to the SW, where I got MEDAL (44A: Get bronze, say), but then was left just hanging out there, with no clue to the Downs. My main problem in solving this quadrant, it turns out, was my unfortunate insistence on writing in -ON for 52A: Paris possessive (ses), figuring the answer would be MON or TON or SON and completely forgetting about the plurals MES, TES, and SES. 46D: 1957 RKO purchaser (Desilu) completely perplexed me - couldn't think of any film studios or bigwigs that started with "D." Further, LOEW (28D: Eponymous theater mogul) appeared to be taunting me from the middle of the puzzle. Eventually (much later, when the rest of the puzzle was done), a complete and utter (though reasonably educated) guess at ETUDES (62A: Liszt's "Paganini _____") gave me the terminal "U" that finally allowed me to see DESILU. And that was the last part of the puzzle to fall.

Assorted observations:

• 9A: 6'5" All-Star relief ace with identical first two initials (J.J. Putz) - baseball haters will just have to suck it today. This one is terribly current - this guy emerged as a phenomenon only this past year. Could have done without the "identical first two initials" part of this clue. Come on! It's Saturday! Let people work for their "J"s.
• 18A: 1970s-'80s Australian P.M. (Fraser) - no idea; but FRASER seems a good, solid Australian last name.
• 22A: _____-Aztecan language (Uto-) - thankfully, I never saw this clue.
• 50A: "A Chapter on Ears" essayist (Elia) - blah blah blah essayist. That's what the clue looked like to me. Four letters, and an essayist? There is only one answer: ELIA, pen name for Charles Lamb.
• 53A: What reindeer do (prance) - in song, maybe. Do they really do this? Anyway, I like the clue. Very seasonal.
• 61A: Dessert of chilled fruit and coconut (ambrosia) - pardon me while I barf. Now I have "The Biggest Part of Me" running through my head! This clue is SADISTic on many levels.
• 5D: Fangorn Forest dweller (ent) - repeat clue alert! Repeat clue alert! We just had this clue/answer pairing not more than a week ago, I feel.
• 3D: Subject to an assessment? (testable) - worst part of this puzzle. Why is the "?" there?
• 7D: Muscle named for its shape (deltoid) - so easy I couldn't believe it was right.
• 8D: Didn't proceed forthrightly (sneaked) - like that this intersects LIED (28A: Wasn't straight).
• 11D: Org. with aces and chips (PGA) - another gimme.
• 12D: Sci-fi author Le Guin (Ursula) - really really wish the answer had been URSULAK. Now that's some crossword fill.
• 34D: "I'm sorry, Dave" speaker of sci-fi (Hal) - more sci-fi, woo hoo! This clue is Great, in that I can hear it in my head and it makes me laugh.
• 38D: Catherine I and others (tsarinas) - one of the dumber words for a ruler.
• 40D: _____ Peterson, lead role in "Bells Are Ringing" (Ella) - I'm doomed to forget this, like, now ... yep, it's already gone.
• 42D: Composer Puccini (Giacomo) - so proud that I was able to piece this together fairly quickly. You know how I feel about opera.
• 50D: "Symphony in Black" and others (Ertes) - More music!? No. This one is a bit vicious. Unless you are a constant crossword solver, this one probably flummoxed you. ERTE is an art deco illustrator who is super-duper common in the grid. Also, his name gets used as a noun, from time to time, to describe the works he made.
• 57D: Rx instruction (TID) - three times a day. Last time we had this clue, the answer was TER (Latin for "three"). Could easily have been BID (my first guess).
• 59D: "_____ sine scientia nihil est" (old Latin motto) ("Ars") - wish I knew whom this motto belonged to. Easy Latin word, but somehow I had trouble shaking ORA out of my head (as in the crossword-common "ORA pro nobis" - "pray for us").

Happy Saturday. East coasters better live it up while you can. Tomorrow, we are getting blitzed again. It'll be me, hot chocolate, the Pats/Jets game, and a whole lot of exams I should already have finished. Crap, I forgot that I have students who read this blog. Er ... I meant to say that I'm all done with my grading, and if your grade isn't posted yet ... it's the registrar's fault. Yeah, that's it. Call them. On Monday. After noon.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS - Friday's Cureton Creation:

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SATURDAY, May 12, 2007 - Rich Norris

Relative difficulty: Hard

THEME: none

Anatomy of a Solution

I blew through the first part of this puzzle, polishing off the NW so quickly that I thought I might be looking at a record Saturday time. Noooooo such luck. After GLUESTICK (1A: Modern arts-and-crafts tool) came to me immediately and the rest of the NW fell quickly, I found myself seriously slowed down. Managed to hack my way down to the middle, miraculously getting OPERA GLASSES (39A: Play things) off of just the double-S. And then I hit my first of what would be three total stalls. Had the AND in 31A: Evasive tactic (song and dance) and could come up with only DUCK AND COVER. Finally I noticed a gimme, ART DECO (40D: Like Manhattan's Chrysler Building), which, along with GALAS (33D: Showy events), allowed me to get POST-IT (48A: Brief attachment to a report, maybe), which allowed me the brilliant guess of PATSY (48D: One easily pushed over) off of just the "P" - then the fabulous "Y" cross KISSY (62A: _____-face), and the SW pretty much fell from there.

[breath]

After inferring the name of a Disney princess I'd either not heard of or not heard of in a while - 28D: Disney's Princess _____ (Oona) - I got SONG AND DANCE and felt sure the NE would open right up. Not so much. Thought 13D: Creator of the Mayfair Witches (Anne Rice) was the guy who wrote "Witches of Eastwick," so racked my brain for his name, to no avail. What the hell is his name? Hang on ... Oh criminy, it's Updike. O well. Anyway ... NE remained very intractable because of multiple wrong answers, including MARTA for 10D: Comedian/actress Wilson, an original cast member on "MADtv" (Debra) - where the hell did I come up with MARTA? - and MATCH for 10A because I thought 56A: With 10-Across, stalemate (cul-de-sac) was TIE MATCH. Even after I got the --SAC in there, it looked horribly wrong. "What word ends -SAC? No word in English!" Well, not originally English, no. All the Acrosses up here were troublesome, including 16A: Ecuador's Santa _____ Peninsula (Elena), 18A: Nonsense (beans), and 21A: Small bay (armlet). BEANS!? The problem here is that there must be two dozen words in English that could mean "nonsense" - and by "two dozen" I mean "so many I couldn't begin to name them all so I made up the number two dozen." [addendum: forgot to add that I was confounded by 11D: I, O or U, but not A or E: Abbr. for what seemed a very long time. Knew the answer was ELEM. before I knew what ELEM. stood for in this instance: ELEMent. Think Periodic Table.]

[breath]

Which brings us to the SE and Rex's Last Stand. With just ART DECO giving me any purchase on the SE, I was in something of a jam. Three answers, for each of which I had lead letters, would have been incredibly helpful, but they wouldn't come. Those answers:

• 43A: Where the Peacock Throne was built (Delhi) - couldn't get DUBAI out of my head even though I Already Had the "E" in Place!
• 49D: Like seconds: Abbr. (irreg.) - wanted IRREG from the get go, but thought "No, that doesn't make any sense." Shouldn't the clue read [Like some seconds...]? Are all "seconds" IRREGular?
• 50D: Lord Byron's "The Lament of _____" (Tasso) - always hate it when I tank a literary clue, but there was no way I was gonna get this without either the final "O" or the first four letters in place.

So, stuck as I was, I desperately threw wee TAD (59D: Smidgen) into the SE as bait, hoping to get a bite from the bigger fish down there. Nothing. Tried DIME and then DROP for 54A: Small amount (dram). Nothing. Briefly entertained the correct MAKO for 55D: Speedy fish, but couldn't do anything with it. The "K" seemed nuts. [Speaking of nutso "K"s, check out POLITICK - 35D: Make campaign stops - in the SE corner. The more I look at that word, the wronger it seems] So I went back and tried to guess at place names for 43A, finally testing DELHI, which instantly made HAULERS (45D: Semi) and IDLERS (46D: "Leave business to _____, and wisdom to fools": Congreve) pop into view. This allowed me access to that beautiful but elusive threesome of VERSATILE (58A: Like character actors) on top of ICE SKATER (61A: One studying camels - brutal!) on top of DO-GOODERS (63A: Naive types, sometimes). Bing, bam, SE is done! Except...

I've got this one word I don't know: LYCITE. The "Y" came from DYAD (clued 51A: Couple), which seemed rock solid ... but the clue for LYCITE was 44D: Classic DuPont brand, and if it was "classic," why had I never heard of it? I'd heard of ... LUCITE, but that would give me DUAD, and yuck, that can't be right. DUAD?! That's a horrible word. Not quite DUD, not quite DAD, not quite DOODAD. Ick. But in the end I decided that LUCITE sounded too right, and DUAD, looking almost like DUAL, was at least plausible. So I went with it. And DUAD was right after all. Happy Pencil. The End.

EPISODE I (36D: Series opener) and CAESURA (8D: Break) are good fill, but I've seen them both recently. It was a good day to know your Renaissance Revenge Tragedies, as the three-letter KYD (9D: "The Spanish Tragedy" dramatist) gave solvers valuable Scrabble letters. I was happy to be reminded of Piper LAURIE's (2D: "The Hustler" Oscar nominee) performance in "The Hustler," a Paul Newman movie I like (and own). 6A: Air part ("tra la") could have been deadly, but the crosses made it obvious. Lastly, MOTS (53D: Cracks) is pretty damned weak, but the SW is redeemed by a great puzzler of a clue - 60A: Dot follower (cents). When COM wouldn't fit, I chewed on other possibilities for a few seconds, and there it was. I know it's a good clue when I actually register and even remark on its quality mid-solve. Yes, sometimes I talk to / at / near the puzzle. Don't judge.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SATURDAY, SUNDAY, MONDAY, Mar. 24-26, 2007 - Rich Norris, Fred Piscop, and Eric Fischer

[updated 5:15 pm]

Solving time: unknown (Sat), unknown (Sun), 6:27 (Mon, ugh)

THEMES:

Saturday, Mar. 24: none
Sunday, Mar. 25: "OOH!" - theme answers have familiar phrases ending in "OOH" sound, where "OOH!" word is respelled to a homonym and then clued, e.g. 122A: Sitting Bull being evasive? (Run-Around Sioux)
Monday, Mar. 26: Fauna - three theme answers have the words CREATURE, BEAST, and ANIMAL in them, respectively

Snap shots of each puzzle:

SATURDAY, MAR. 24

This puzzle, particularly its upper half, was harder than anything I encountered all weekend during the ACPT. Maybe my feeble attempts to solve it on Saturday morning - I didn't stick it out; too distracted by anticipation stress - were part of the reason that I was so off my game for Puzzle 1 on Saturday (one of two puzzles wherein I had a mistake, from what I can gather from my scores). At any rate, Rich Norris's puzzle was brutal. I think I rode in the elevator with him at least once this past weekend. FYI.

58A: Drink mentioned in Rupert Holmes's song "Escape" (pina colada) - if you're like me (and god help you if you are, really) you were as grateful as a potential drowning victim being thrown a life preserver when you got to this clue, one of the puzzle's few true gimmes. I read the clues for the entire first half of the grid and got nothing. Finally I scanned around for SOMETHING I knew, and this was it. Thus the SE corner was the first thing to fall, and my pre-competition morning was not a completely demoralizing disaster. I was also aided significantly in the completion of this puzzle by another fairly obvious alcohol-containing clue: 39A: Some come with twists (martinis) - though I was in such highly-wound tournament mode that my first thought was GANGSTERS (you have to go way down the list of "twist" meanings to make that one make sense).

56D: "_____-in His Lamp" (Bugs Bunny classic) ("A Lad") - Another clue I was very happy to see. Not a total gimme, but close. Didn't know it, but it was inferrable.

32A: Fedora feature (snap brim) - I, ridiculously, entered WIDE BRIM, but that BRIM part really helped me out, so sometimes wrong answers aren't all bad. As long as they're temporary, I guess.

15A: "Pretty fishy, if you ask me" ("I smell a rat") - If your fish smells like rat, I would advise that you not eat it and call the Health Code people immediately. This answer came to me out of nowhere, when I had absolutely nothing in the NW. It didn't help much at first, but the little traction it did give ended up being enough. The most brutal Down cross for me up here was 8D: They're pressed into service (iron-ons). I had IRONERS, and then the fabulously made-up IRONORS. I briefly considered IRON ORE before realizing that the stupid shade of green they wanted at 28A: Shade of green was NILE, putting the "N" where I had had an "R" and giving me a nice, belated, somewhat deflated little "aha" moment.

30A: The Rams of the Atlantic 10 Conf. (URI) - that's University of Rhode Island. They are occasionally in the NCAA Basketball Tournament, but not this year. Not even the NIT for them this year. Did I mention that there was NCAA Women's Basketball action (I think that's what it was) in Stamford at the same time as the ACPT, and so the hotel workers had little referee uniforms on? I thought they were dressed up for us. But no.

21A: Group that included the L.A. Express (USFL) - awesomely dated football reference. I remember this league Very Clearly. The Boston team had some kind of sine wave on its helmet. The Breakers, maybe? Anyway, this league lasted about as long as the much later, much goofier football spinoff, the XFL. Has HE HATE ME been a puzzle answer? Best Jersey Name Ever.

48A: Shakespearean title (thane)
33D: _____ B'rith (B'nai)
49D: Hanger? (noose)
55A: Black on the screen (Karen)

These answers all have something in common. Only tournament attendees will know what it is. I will tell you all later.

Cool New Information for Me

• 43A: Literally, "disciple" (Sikh) - Forget what I had here first, but it sure wasn't SIKH
• 62A: _____ Hilario, Brazilian-born N.B.A. star (Nene) - yet another reason for NENE to be in the Pantheon. I question the use of the word "star" in this clue.
• 54A: Cagney player in the "Cagney & Lacey" pilot film (Swit) - a mystery at first, and then I got the "W" and knew immediately who it was. The Swit-Gless resemblance is undeniable.
• 24D: Parts of perianths (sepals) - I call this clue "The Brutalizer," especially considering it intersected another clue at which I could only stare blankly: 41A: Pier grp. (ILA). Perianths and SEPALS are parts of flowers. I had _EPA_S, then figured the first letter had to be "S" (from 24A: Utah senator who co-sponsored a 1930 tariff act (Smoot). But the "L" could have been anything, as far as I was concerned. Cursed botany.
• 1A: Stock report heading (Most Active) - Wait, let me just walk over here and look at my most recent ... oh wait, that's right, I've never seen one of these in my life. MOST ACTIVE reminds me simultaneously of rapper Mos Def and the band Let's Active, and if you get both those references then I tip my non-existent hat to you indeed. Actually, all tournament solvers probably have some idea who the rapper is, by now...
• 20A: Grandma Moses' first name (Anna) - who knew? Not me.
• 5D: _____-Mints chewable antacid (Alka-) - why oh why did this take me So Long to get. ALKA is the gold standard of antacid prefixes. Rookie mistake. (For a major, major Rookie mistake, read my Stamford write-up later today, wherein I will detail my triumphs and tragedies - more former than latter, though the latter make for better stories).
• 57A: Detroit's _____ Arena (Cobo) - I lived outside of Detroit for many years and could not come up with this for a good long while. If it had been clued [Detroit's _____ Hall], I think I would have got it instantly.

SUNDAY, MAR. 25

Didn't get to this puzzle until this morning (Monday, Mar. 26). Just couldn't bring myself to look at a puzzle right before the Tournament's Puzzle 7 on Sunday morning. Very burnt out. It's worth noting that both my errors this weekend were made on the days' initial puzzles, 1 and 7. I always fancied myself a morning person, but I think that without my morning routine, and my normal sleep patterns, I'm actually a bit worthless in the morning.

So I hacked away at this puzzle this morning. I really loved it despite the theme's not being particularly original. Anyone who got the chance to see the "Wordplay" outtakes on Saturday night really had to love the theme answer at 23A: Cuddly sheep? (embraceable ewe). We got to see more of Jon Stewart solving the puzzle that he solves in the movie - he comes to a clue that is something along the lines of [Like Little Bo-Peep's sheep], and his response is something like "I'm going to go with [CENSORED]!" When some people in the audience asked later what Stewart says (I think it was partially beeped in the footage we saw), Will wouldn't say the word, but said that it "begins with 'F' and ends with 'LE'." The best part was hearing the people behind me wonder out loud what that could be, and hearing one of them say, "Oh, it must be FINDABLE." I couldn't tell if it was a joke. I didn't hear anyone laughing (except me, in my own head, at this person's apparent misunderstanding - at least she got the suffix right).

1D: French port (Brest)
2D: Debussy opus (La Mer)
30A: 16th-century council city (Trent)

It's very European up in the NW of the grid. LA MER looks funny in the grid - looks like a comparative adjective, as in TENNIS SHOO (62A: Expulsion from a court?) is a LAMER answer than MOUNTAIN DO (77A: Hillbillies' coif), which is pure gold.

The rest of those theme answers, by the way:

46A: Conservatives waiting in line? (right on queue)
94A: What van Gogh said regarding ears? ("I don't have two")

11D: Cub leader (Akela) - this is from Jungle Book, apparently. I had NO idea what this meant when I had all the squares filled in. I thought AKELA might be the chick from who attended a BEE in a recent movie, but she spells her name differently.

29A: Operatic prince (Igor) - which opera? Was Frankenstein made into an opera?

17D: Calling the author of "In Cold Blood"? (ringing Tru) - I'm just putting this in here because In Cold Blood is one of the greatest books ever written. Capote's writing in that book is unbelievably subtle and gorgeous. One paragraph of Capote is worth a bookful of MAEVE Binchy (77D: Novelist Binchy), I say. My publishers once forced me to include her in an Encyclopedia of Popular and Contemporary Writers that I was editing. Meanwhile, they excluded Art Spiegelman on grounds I still don't understand. Clearly I have never forgiven them.

15D: Kin of -kin (-ule)
117A: Edible spherule (green pea) - A cute pair, these two. Are there other colors of peas?

110D: Alums do it (reune)
125A: Downsize without layoffs (attrite) - these two win the "Wrongest-Looking Words" prize for the day

54A: Pilot's vision problem (red out) - never heard of this before. All Googles of the phrase direct me to Visine-related pages.

86A: Biographer Leon (Edel)
82D: Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt (Alice) - people I don't know (I have heard of EDEL before, vaguely - he has a crossword-friendly name)

25A: Simple digs (lean-to) - Euphemistic clue. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no one who ever lived in a LEAN-TO ever referred to it as "digs." Well ... maybe some hippie trying some alternative living experiment circa 1971. But that's it.

58A: Blood: Prefix (hemo-)
90D: Verne skipper (Nemo)
100A: Action film hero Williams (Remo)

Scrooge McDuck's other, illegitimate nephews. Introduced in an ill-conceived comic book venture in 1964, these characters were instantly reviled by the public. In 1965, Disney had them quietly killed off.

Pop Culture Alley

• 75A: Carnaby Street types (mods) - didn't know it. Before my time. Seems like it was once an interesting place that has had everything distinctive and interesting sucked out of it by the disease that is chain-store culture.
• 47D: 2001 Sean Penn movie ("I Am Sam") - of all the Sean Penn movies in the world, this is the one you foist on me on a bleary Monday morning? I will say that the soundtrack is pretty great - some of the best Beatles covers I've ever heard, including stellar versions of "Two of Us" by Aimee Mann and Michael Penn and "Across the Universe" by Rufus Wainwright.
• 107D: Prince Valiant's son (Arn) - this guy! Learn his name. He will return. As will 8D: Clerical garment (alb). I don't think ARN ever wore an ALB, but I would like to see these two words in a sentence together, somehow.
• 119A: Oscar-winning director of 2005 (Ang Lee) - I like that in the grid his name looks like it could also be clued [Option on a multiple-choice geometry quiz?]
• 104A: Monokini's lack (bra) - What the hell is a monokini? If the diagrams here are any indication, then no one should ever, Ever wear a monokini. Ever. Why not try a nice SERAPE (114A: Taxco wrap) instead.

I'll leave you with 35D: Stays for another hitch (re-ups) because it is suffused with nostalgia for me. As I may have mentioned before, the very first time I completed a NYT Sunday puzzle (1991, I think), the very last answer I got was RE-UP, a word which, at the time, seemed quite obscure. I remember that feeling, knowing I had it right and the puzzle was done: total self-satisfied triumph. I had defeated Maleska. From then on, I was hooked.

MONDAY, MAR. 26

Man my time sucked. This one felt like Puzzle 1 felt during the Tournament - seems like it should be easy ... so why am I flapping around like a fish in a bucket? I'm going to blame tiredness, though I see other tournament solvers didn't seem to have many problems.

First, the theme: you call this a theme? CREATURE, BEAST, and ANIMAL make a theme?! If this is all I had to go with, I'd at least have reversed the order in which the theme answers appear, so that I'd have a nice A, B, C progression in my synonyms. Or I'd have made my ANIMAL answer alliterate like the others. Something!

Monday Latin!

32A: Daily allowance (per diem)
46D: Where originally found (in situ)

I was not expecting this. Tricky Monday fare, especially the latter. I gotta stop selling the Monday puzzle short - low expectations always gets me into all kinds of trouble. IN SITU made the SE a bit thorny, accompanied as it was down there by GRAMME (48D: British weight), which is not a word I've seen before (I assume it's just GRAM with extra letters for extra Britishness, like the "U" in "colour," e.g.).

Alligator Wrestling!

43D: Alligatorlike reptile (caiman)
41A: Worker in a stable (hostler)
31D: Photographic film coating (emulsion)

These answers were horribly slippery, especially the last one, which took me forever to get, even with half the letters in place. I don't think I could tell you what a HOSTLER does, or how a CAIMAN is different from an alligator, or a crocodile for that matter.

"Could"

Have I ever told you about the word "could?" How it is the wrongest-looking word in the world to me. I use it all the time, like all English-speaking folk, but if I look at it too long, it starts to creep me out. It looks Nothing like how it sounds. Why "would" and "should" don't bother me, I don't know. But "could" ... it has an inexplicably sinister quality when taken in isolation and really placed under scrutiny. "Could" is my best example of a perfectly ordinary word that just looks wrong. Today's "could" word is DESTINE, which even now is freaking me out. It wants to be DESTINY ... but also DESITIN. And possibly DENTINE. I had a very hard time seeing it as the correct answer for 30A: Preordain. Crossing EMULSION isn't help me come to peace with it. I'm not crazy about UPRISE (2D: Revolt) either - without its -ing suffix, its a pretty ungainly little word.

5D: Day of the wk. ... or an exam usually taken on that day (Sat.) - if you are going to double-clue like this, I'd prefer that the answer make sense for both clues when spoken aloud. "Sat." does not equal "S.A.T.," neither when spoken nor when written. I'm glad I didn't see this clue at all while trying to solve the puzzle.

53A: Four-alarm fire (inferno)

Ah, hell. I realize this isn't clued by reference to Dante, but INFERNO will always mean "hell" to me, which is appropriate in a grid filled with ANGST (51D: Uneasy feeling), DEFECT (10D: Flaw), and, above all, DOOM (33D: Inevitable destruction).

62A: _____ quilt (modern memorial)

I realize that there are technically many A.I.D.S. "quilts" out there, but still, I think of the quilt as one unit, and a proper noun: THE A.I.D.S. Memorial Quilt.

42A: Humor that's often lost in an e-mail (sarcasm) - also often lost in blogs. Believe me.

Thus concludes my 3-day write-up. Quite an OLIO (15A: Hodgepodge) of information and reaction. One more break, and then I'll try to get my Stamford commentary done before bedtime.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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