(GOOD SIGN ON A LAWN) MONDAY, Jan. 14, 2008 - Robert Dillman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Good signs - theme answers are generally uplifting or otherwise positive phrases one might see on various types of signs

I think there is a play on words here with "sign" referring to the literal, physical, tangible sign, as well as the fact that that sign indicates (i.e. is a "sign" of) something good (positive) is ahead. So a literal and metaphorical meaning of "sign." I mean, would you really say that a box of candy has a "sign" on it? No. If none of the preceding made any sense to you, forgive me. It's early yet. I just think the phrasing on the clues is interesting / odd. The theme never cohered for me while I was solving - and I'm not sure that it had to. In the end, the clues were all pretty literal. I do have to say, though, that PRIZE INSIDE is a "good sign" on a Cracker Jacks box, specifically, not a "candy box" generally. Having the generic "candy box" in the clue seems awfully disingenuous. Are there prizes inside other boxes of "candy?"

Theme answers:

• 17A: Good sign on a highway ("End Road Work")
• 11D: Good sign on a car trunk ("Just Married") - Good for whom?
• 25D: Good sign on a lawn ("Free Kittens") - this one threw me completely. "Good sign on a lawn?" Uh ... "Vote Obama?" "Your kids won't be poisoned by pesticides if they play here?" "Freshly awned?"
• 60A: Good sign on a candy box ("Prize Inside")
• 26D: Good sign at a motel ("Vacancy") - "Under New Management?" "Hourly Rates?" "Free Ice?"

This is a solid Monday puzzle overall, with little of the tedious, common fill that tends to annoy me when it piles up in early-week puzzles. Just look at the NW corner - nothing startling, but UMASS (1A: Bay State sch.) over TENTH (14A: Sophomore's grade) crossed by STRATA (4D: Layers) and SHOVED (5D: Acted rudely while line, perhaps) could be much duller. PLUMS (6A: Juicy fruits) over HOSEA (15A: Old Testament prophet) is nicely contrasting, as is ... well I don't know what ASSENT (12D: Concurrence) / WEENIE (13D: Ineffectual one, slangily) is, exactly, but it's unusual, at any rate. There are a lot of these 6+-letter pairs throughout the puzzle. My favorite is PLUNKS BESSIE (51D: Sets (down) + 52D: Nickname for Elizabeth), as I imagine some 40's-era woman baseball player getting nailed by a high and inside pitch, perhaps thrown by an ornery pitcher named ZOE. "Oh my goodness, ZOE PLUNKED BESSIE. Get the SLEDGE (55A: Heavy hammer), we're rushing the field, ladies." Those were some tough broads.

My geological eras are ... well, they're non-existent, except for JURASSIC, so TRIASSIC (47A: Arizona's Petrified Forest dates from this period), while it rang a bell, did not come to me readily. I hardly ever use a rasp, so ABRADE (29A: Use a rasp on) was tough to conjure as well. WEENIE just seemed ... off, clue-wise. I only just learned who ZOE Caldwell (62D: Actress Caldwell) is, and I still didn't get this except off of crosses. So there were some speed bumps along the way in this one. My favorite moment of the puzzle - which I'm guessing was a speed bump for Someone out there - was SATRAP (49D: Despotic ruler), which I just got through telling you all is one of my favorite words in the English language. It's fun to say, and so exotic. And here it is, in a Monday puzzle. Wonderful.

Other things:

• 21A: Like the season before Easter (Lenten) - a common 6-letter crossword word. It's shorter cousin LENT is of course far more common. I like the word "Lenten" as it seems edible to me - it somehow evokes "leavened" bread and "lentils" at the same time. Can you tell I did not grow up Catholic?
• 40A: Catnip and fennel (herbs) - arbitrary, but exact, clue-wise. Weird to mix your cat herbs and your people herbs, though. Do cats like fennel?
• 1D: Western tribe (Ute) - ha ha, not OTO! UTE is also short for a "Sports UTILITY Vehicle."
• 10D: Hot Japanese drink (sake)
• 45D: Dish often served with 10-Down (sushi) - mmm ... if we weren't trying to get through January spending only $400 total on food, I would Love to go out for SUSHI and SAKE tonight. Fuji-San! Seriously, if you live in the Confluence, NY area, they're great.

Best wishes,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Today's other puzzles:

• LAT 4:31 (C) - Doug Peterson - had GROSS and SPIN where they didn't belong; cost me.
• CS 3:26 (C) - Thomas Schier, "Clean Slate"
• NYS 3:42 (C) - Mark Feldman, "Pushing the Envelope" - no idea who 17A is; didn't matter.
• Newsday 3:45 (C) - Sally R. Stein, "What's Up"
  

[drawing by Emily Cureton]

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WEDNESDAY, Oct. 3, 2007 - Robert Dillman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Gambling lingo

Loved the theme, but the theme answers were the only thing that was even a little challenging about this puzzle. I sailed through it in 5 flat, beating my time for yesterday's allegedly easier Tuesday puzzle. Started at 11A: QB's goals (TDs) - and got all the 6-letter Down crosses instantly - 11D: 1991 Geena Davis title role (Thelma), 12D: "The Sound of Music" hit ("Do Re Mi"), and 13D: "Sophie's Choice" author (Styron) - though I briefly wanted that last one to be STEGNER for some reason. I solved most of the puzzles by getting a single Across answer in a particular section and then rattling off the Down crosses one, two, three (sometimes four). Never even saw the great answer ROSIE (34A: Robot maid on "The Jetsons") because ORD, LOO, ASU, FIB, and ELLA went down in rapid succession. But despite easiness, the puzzle was a joy to do, if only for the unpredictability of the theme answers:

• 17A: Call in roulette ("Fourteen red!") - so arbitrary, so awesome
• 30A: Call in blackjack ("Hit me again!") - would you really say the "again" part? Wouldn't you just repeat "Hit me," or else scrape your cards on the table toward yourself, thus indicating by gesture your desire to be hit? I don't gamble, so I know not.
• 37A: Call in many a betting game ("Double or nothing!") - don't like this clue, in that it doesn't name a game. Name a game!
• 46A: Call in draw poker ("I'll take one") - that seems right
• 66A: Call in craps ("Roll the dice") - who says this? Does the player say this? I like the phrase, but ...

Most of the non-theme fill was run-o'-the-mill, with old chestnuts like EDO (32D: Pre-1868 Tokyo) and ORD (26D: Fort _____ on Monterey Bay) and STEN (9D: Old British gun) and ANSEL (73A: Photographer Adams) providing just a few examples. Yet there were a good handful of fresh clues and answers that I admired. I liked 14A: Amor vincit _____ (omnia) because it was a gimme, because it's Latin, and because it's Chaucerian, in that the Prioress in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" wears a brooch that reads "Amor Vincit OMNIA" on it. There was a time when my life was all about Chaucer, so stuff like this makes me weirdly (very weirdly) nostalgic. Loved the partial answers A DUEL (69A: Challenge to _____) and A NUT (3D: "Sometimes you feel like _____..."), even though I've seen that last one before, and quite recently. I just love my coconut and chocolate candy, what can I say? Always happy to see Mr. MOTO (52A: John P. Marquand detective). Don't know why, but I really liked PATTERS (56A: Sounds of walking in moccasins) - perhaps because it's just so cute. ANTI-TAX (20A: For smaller government, presumably) threw me for a loop, but became very uncoverable once I determined that cosmonaut dude was named ALEXEI (6D: Cosmonaut Leonov, the first human to walk in space), which gave me that terminal "X" (not to be confused with Terminator X, the former DJ of Public Enemy).

Aside from ALEXEI, the only new word to me in this puzzle was LIRI (4D: Italian river valley in W.W. II fighting). I was super-proud of myself for getting SLUE (59D: Pivot) with just the "L" in place - it's a word that was not at all in my vocabulary until I started doing puzzles. Also nailed META (54A: Prefix with carpal) but then had trouble getting the simple ETCH (51D: Write permanently), and was befuddled by 45A: Broadcast portion (audio) for a while. Or what felt like a while. Wrote IMPAIR for IMPEDE at first (46D: Hinder). Lastly, unless you are really in bad with the Mohicans, I don't think even your most "diehard enemy" is actually going to want your SCALP (1A: A diehard enemy might want yours).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Go Red Sox / Cubs / Indians / Phillies!

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THURSDAY, Aug. 2, 2007 - Robert Dillman

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Atomic Phrases - common phrases that contain elements (e.g. iron) have those elements replaced in the grid by their atomic symbols from the Periodic Table of Elements (e.g. FE)

Didn't take me long to figure out the theme, but not knowing the symbols for "tin" and "lead" off the top of my head really killed me - made the N and the W of the puzzle very sloggy. Otherwise, just a few odd names and some slanted cluing - nothing terribly difficult.

Theme answers:

• 17A: "Shake a leg!" ("Get the PB out!") - knew the phrase, but initially thought "rebus," and so had "Get the lead [out]," with out crammed into one square. But that put "out" in the third position of a four-letter word in the cross, which seemed highly doubtful. And was.
• 11D: Try to win (go for the AU) - the final "U" was what tipped me to the theme.
• 24D: Christmas song since the 1950s ("AG Bells")
• 28D: Songwriters' home (SN Pan Alley)
• 59A: Sound out? (cast FE alibi) - this one threw me, mainly because I had no idea what the clue meant. "Sound" = adj. and "out" = n. Rough. Even with "cast FE" in place, I was slow on the uptake. Couldn't make "skillet" fit (or make sense).

The current Barry Bonds mania made STEROID (21A: Target of some testing) easy (once I had a few of the end letters). Bonds could tie Hank Aaron's home run record tonight. In fact, he could be tying it as I type. I hope so. Anything to kill the hype / controversy. I'm bored.

Did not watch "Seinfeld" with any regularity (i.e. I hardly ever watched it), and so SAAB (32A: Car driven by Seinfeld on "Seinfeld") was something I just inferred from crosses. First instinct: YUGO. The "Seinfeld" clue joins a handful of other quirky pop culture clues in today's puzzle. 16A: 1992 U2 top 10 hit ("One") was a gimme - their only hit in three letters, I think. Mary J. Blige and Bono did a duet of this song for Katrina relief a couple years back and it was unfathomably great. Her contribution made the original version sound soporific by comparison. 38A: Ayres who played filmdom's Dr. Kildare (Lew) was a mystery to me, as was 56D: "_____ Baby" ("Hair" song) ("Abie") - original way to clue the old school crosswordese ABIE (of "Abie's Irish Rose"... fame?). And in 19th-century popular culture, we have ELIZA (18D: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" woman), which I also, sadly, didn't know.

Some old to ancient stuff gave me fits, including 26A: Sobriquet for Charles V, with "the" (Wise). I wanted BALD. Was expecting something much more esoteric or shifty from 6D: Like old Rome (imperial). I swear to you that I seriously considered ARTERIAL (as in ... all roads lead to Rome, so ... it makes sense from a Dept. of Transportation perspective). Made a good guess on 5D: Prophet who predicted the destruction of Nineveh (Nahum), not because I'd ever heard that name in a biblical context, but because I had -AH-- and I knew of the name NAHUM from poet / librettist NAHUM Tate (wrote libretto for Purcell's "Dido & Aeneas" - and I said I knew nothing about opera!).

EDINA is probably the most famous suburb in all of CrossWorld, and I like it 'cause it reminds me of my friends who live in St. Paul. I challenge 34D: Some fraternity men (etas); or, rather, I claim that it is stupid to call yourself an "eta." The most unmanly sounding Greek letter I can think of (besides Mu, I mean). After wading through Many pictures of pretentious bars, I finally found an I-BAR (27D: Letter-shaped part of a grate), just to confirm that there is in fact something particularly I-shaped about it. I was thinking "aren't all bars kind of shaped like "I"s?" Lastly, screw cribbage - 7D: Certain jack, in cribbage (nob).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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