Awesome! Endicott!

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Friday, Feb. 2, 2007 - David J. Kahn

Solving time: untimed, but slow, then fast (!)

THEME: RAINING / [CAT]S AND [DOG]S - rebus puzzle where words CAT and DOG fit into squares throughout the puzzle, e.g. 54A: Place of disgrace ([DOG]house)

First - Happy birthday to my father, Dr. Rex, Sr.! I don't know what he has to do, directly, with my puzzle-solving passion, but he has Everything to do with whatever sense of humor I have. Please see Night Shift and Elephant Parts and Serial, definitive comedy experiences I would never have had without dad.

Today's puzzle is the first non-themeless Friday puzzle since I began my blog lo these 4+ months ago. Needless to say I was Not expecting it. And a rebus puzzle to boot - yikes! At first this puzzle stomped me - I had literally every square filled in in the NW and N except the DOG/CAT ones. But when the two squares in the far NW wouldn't come together (oh "Seattle," why won't you ever behave!?), two thoughts crossed my mind nearly simultaneously.

1. Something is wrong with this grid - it's not Nearly as wide open as most Fridays. It's fussy, with lots of nooks and crannies, and looks more like a Thursday grid ...
2. There's no Way I should be This stuck, This early on a Friday ... something is going on ...

I remained stuck for a tiny bit, but once I changed the very wrong PRIMAL to ANIMAL (3D: Inner selves, to Jung), I then had _ON for 14A: Start of a Tennessee Williams title, and once I started running Tennessee Williams's plays through my head, that missing CAT showed up - a @#$#-ing rebus!? - and THEN the puzzle got very easy. Far NW has two rebus squares abutting one another, with 1D: Lowly post ([DOG][CAT]cher) intersecting both the Tennessee Williams clue and 1A: Basic teaching ([DOG]ma). Wicked. But cool. Once I adjusted my expectations for this puzzle, I got very, very good traction. For a brief moment, I had the fanciful hope that the rebus squares would have rotational symmetry. Uh, no. It is Friday, after all. The NW had one other tricky clue: 17A: _____ de guerre - "tricky" in the sense that it is in three letters and therefore wants to be NOM as much, if not more, than it wants to be the (in this case) correct answer, CRI. Oh, and eventually I caught on that the "Jung" answer wasn't ANIMAL at all, but ANIMAS.

Home with my little girl today - her hippie school has all kinds of weird days off - so I can't write much without being neglectful, and you wouldn't want that ... would you? Sahra has already made a list (complete with boxes to check) of the things we are going to do today - with an "M" next to items that are a "Maybe," e.g. "Buy the cats collars" (!?!?!). I told her the cats might not like a bell following them everywhere they go, 24/7. She seemed to agree, but wasn't ready to give the idea up completely. Hence, "M" for Maybe. We will, however, be going to Pizzeria Uno for lunch and Barnes & Noble for hot chocolate. But first I'm supposed to convert a bookmark-sized calendar into a full-sized, wall-hanging calendar by scanning it into my computer, blowing up the images of the individual months, printing them out, and then stapling them together. The fact that we have no fewer than three wall calendars hanging in the house already means nothing to Sahra. "Your point...?" She's industrious, this kid. Allow me to share with you the birthday card she made for my dad ("Pappy") this morning:

I'm told that's a cake on a table being shared by my dad and stepmom. Hope my dad doesn't mind that you all now know how old he is.

Hot Fill

• 35A: Hotter than hot (torrid) - this fill is literally hot. Hotter than hot.
• 5D: Apollo 13 astronauts, e.g. (aborters)
• 50A: Drug used to treat poisoning (ipecac) - these last two really push the breakfast-table-test envelope, as far as I'm concerned. Do I really want to contemplate abortions and barfing over my morning eggs and ham or whatever it is you people eat? Still, as fill, goes, eeeeexcellent.
• 18A: Whip on the high seas ([CAT] o' nine tails) - my weapon of choice! Man, this answer had me stymied for way, WAY longer than it should have because of a little, little error I had in one of the crosses; I had STA for 8D: Stop: Abbr., and while that was the right idea, it was the wrong abbreviation - "I'm sorry, we were looking for STN." So I had [CAT]ONIAE----- and thought, "whoa, there's some two word nautical term that starts with the word CATONIA, and I don't even know what CATONIA means... what will I do?" I'm not kidding when I say I contemplated CATONIA ENSIGN. "That could be ... something. Maybe he's the ENSIGN who whips ... the crew ... into shape?"
• 53D: Mathematical groups (cosets) - a little math shout-out to my boyyeeee in Santa Monica (and any other West Coast Mathematicians that might be out there: Represent!)
• 42D: Ones going home after dinner? ([DOG]gie bags) - most of the rebus answers weren't terribly sparkly, but I really liked this one, mainly for the clue. Oh, and I also liked ...
• 62A: Unplanned ([CAT]ch as [CAT]ch can) - double-CAT, plus the letters C-A-T are used in a non-feline expression. Nice.

There was very little that was new to me in this puzzle. I had never heard the expression [CAT]'S PAW for 37A: Stooge before, but (peeking at another blog) I see that I am not alone in this. I don't eat meat (unless I'm in NZ, where the world is upside-down and I become exclusively carnivorous) so I didn't really "know" ROULADE (45D: Meat dish with a filling), but it's a French word I've heard before so it was easy enough to piece together. Considering the only "fillings" that are coming to mind at the moment are those of the Hostess Fruit Pie variety, ROULADE sounds like it's about the grossest comestible on the planet. I assume that AAU (32A: Org. with the annual Junior Olympic games) stands for something like the Assoc. of American Universities... hmmm, yes and no. It does stand for that, in another context, but as far as this clue is concerned, it stands for the Amateur Athletic Union. I want to thank Ken Jennings for his awesome beatdown of rude know-it-alls at his blog a couple months back - first, because it was a great and necessary piece of writing, and second, because the bit of trivia he discussed in that posting was the history of the name of O'HARE airport, making 44A: Orchard Field, today a virtual gimme for me. Lastly, I was grateful for the answer [CAT]SUP (37D: Burger topper) because the word inevitably makes me think of a befuddled Mr. Burns, shopping in a supermarket for the first time in his life. Standing in the condiments aisle, he holds two bottles, and, in agonizing over which one to buy, repeatedly reads their labels out loud, slowly: "Ketchup ... Catsup ... Ketchup ... Catsup." I can't remember if this is before or after he somehow gets himself "locked" in one of the large freezers in the frozen foods aisle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SUNDAY, Dec. 17, 2006 - Joe DiPietro

Solving time: just under an hour (in pen)

THEME: "Lay of the Land" - rebus puzzle where postal codes for states are entered in various spaces according to the region in which that state would be found if the grid were in fact a map of the U.S.A.

Pretty brutal for a Sunday. I am embarrassed to say that it took me over half an hour to understand what, precisely, the theme of the puzzle was. I had 114A: This puzzle's southern border? (Mexico) well before I had any other theme-related answer. So ... there was about 30 minutes of puzzle-solving without a Single Rebus Square's getting filled in. The MEXICO answer has a nice symmetrical counterpart in CANADA (21A: This puzzle's northern border) near the top of the grid, but because I had multiple wrong crosses up there - ERST for PAST (14D: Onetime), for example, and BUG for CAR (12D: Beetle, e.g.) - I didn't even enter CANADA for a long time, even though the answer really couldn't have been anything else. I was literally forced, bludgeoned, into seeing the rebus at 105A, where I had _EWAT for Attacked in a rage. I plugged in Every Letter in the Alphabet, and nothing worked. "This should be FLEW AT... FL ... oh, that's a state. Oh ... OH." With the rebus in mind, the rest of the (up to that point brutal) puzzle started to fall, though not as quickly as I would have liked. Frankly, I'm still not sure there isn't an error somewhere in my grid. But it got done. There's some rough fill in here, but it's a pretty masterful feat of puzzle architecture, so I'm not inclined to gripe too much.

I would like to cry PLAGIARISM! But I can't. See, I have made a habit at this site of talking about regions of the grid as if they were the relative places on a U.S. map - usually I do cities, not states, but still. Just yesterday I talked about the "Albuquerque" section of the puzzle. So, were it not for the fact that this puzzle was surely submitted well before I started blogging, I would demand recognition and satisfaction. As it is, I'll just be happy that my habit of describing the puzzle grid as a U.S. map has been confirmed as reasonable if not brilliant by greater puzzling minds than mine.


Can't write much today. It's Very late, and I've done Nothing - actually, I've eaten breakfast, finished watching Wordplay, finally, taken the dog for a walk in the woods, and made coffee. But nothing that one could call "productive." Watching Wordplay was surreal, as all these people who had been only names suddenly had faces and voices and what not. It was a bit like watching family, in one sense: I kept alternating between thinking "oh my god, there's no Way I could be related to these people!" and "oh my god, these nerds are Just Like Me." So Stamford will be odd, but fun. Think I'll go incognito - you know, get into the pool on My terms rather than have others splash water all over me. That metaphor went nowhere, but it made sense to me.

Last thing before (brief) commentary. Local paper ran very locally story on what kids want for Christmas. One child stood out. I don't know why, but I really feel that you can tell she's got ... something. Beauty, yes, but there's a fiery brilliance there too. Again, I have No Idea who she is, but you can tell there's something special there. Here's the picture the paper ran, along with the brief Q&A.

Best thing about Christmas: "You get lots of presents and toys."
What she'd like to see under the tree: "Barbies and a horse."
Naughty or nice?: "I've been a little bit of both."
How was she naughty?: "I tell people something over and over again."
How was she nice?: "I'm good at solving problems and helping people."

Telling people something over and over again. Well who doesn't do that from time to time? And solving problems and helping people - really, what else is there? This kid's clearly going places.

42A: Kind (s[OR]t)
2D: Crater creators, e.g. (impact[OR]s)

Good scary and bad scary. The good scary is the total fakeout on "Kind." Any solver worth his salt is going to see three letters, enter ILK, and move on. But hiding SORT inside a rebus, ugh. UGH. Good one. Bad scary = IMPACTORS. Even typing that word hurts. Bad enough that you have an -OR word in the clue, you gotta double the misery with an -OR word in the answer - and buried in a rebus, no less. Just mean. Brutalizing me is one thing - brutalizing the language in order to brutalize me is quite another. BTW I love PIE PLATE up here in the NW corner (3D: Makeshift Frisbee). Grrrreat fill. I think the Frisbee was in fact invented with the pie plate as a model. I do not have the energy to look this up. Oh, and 32A: Key-signature preceder (G Clef) really f-ed me up because I thought the clue had something to do with punching in security codes. Nice that G CLEF intersects 4D: One taking a big bow (bass fiddle).

53D: Hater (loather)
95A: Eye openers? (di[LA]tors)

More Odd Jobs. Add IMPACTORS (above) and you have a three-part set, with two of these clunky contraptions masked by rebuses! I mean, they're all words, and so fair, whatever. I just ... I mean, think about how often I am doing Odd Jobs segments on this commentary. Feels like every other day now. I realize how useful the -ER / -OR ending can be for constructors, but I am Taking Points Off for over-reliance. You're on notice. Criminy, I didn't even mention 87A: Receiver's counterpart (passer). Rein it in!

40D: Ancient Roman financial officer: Var. (questor)

Back-to-back days where long arcana have been gimmes for me. First ASTARTE, now QUESTOR - and a "Var." no less. I think QUAESTOR might be the more conventional spelling, although they Google with almost equal success.

49D: Discuss business at a social occasion (tal[KS]hop)
67A: Vulnerable point (wea[KS]pot)

Right where you'd expect Kansas to be: the dead center of the puzzle. Good job. I also like that both crosses are fresh, everyday two-word phrases. My WEAK SPOT - in that it annoys me no end - is when people TALK SHOP at parties. This is a Pervasive problem with academics, who seem particularly challenged when it comes to discussing anything besides a. their research, or b. departmental or university politics. As Paula Abdul once said, "Shut Up and Dance."

62D: Satellite of 1962 (Telstar)
75A: Restaurateur Toots (Shor)


Whoa, intersecting prehistoric clues ("prehistoric" meaning "before 1969" - the year I was born). TELSTAR was, I'm told, the "first active communications satellite." In this picture, it looks like a remarkably close relative of R2-D2. Toots SHOR ran a famous restaurant in NYC in the 30s-40s that had some famous clientele, including many members of the New York Yankees (that's right, booooo!). Speaking of the Yankees, it's time to introduce the next big thing in crossword fill:

His name is Daisuke Matsuzaka, but you can call him "DICE," as that is what he will be doing to your vaunted but ultimately anemic line-up.

STUFF I DIDN'T KNOW

Where to begin? I'll start with 4A: Center of emotions (bosom) and 9A: Mountain top? (ski cap) not because they are unknown words, but because holy crap I could not seem them until they were Right On Top of me. I didn't even know I had a BOSOM. And I'm wearing a SKI CAP right Now, but because I don't live on a mountain, I never thought of it as particularly mountainy. Speaking of made-up -Y adjectives, I sort of choked on 35D: Like baba (rais[IN]y) - I barely know what "baba" is, and I hate raisins in my desserts (though I love them on their own). Again, hard fill + rebus = unnecessary roughness. 10D: Unstable subatomic particle (kaon) is new to me, as is 91D: It's used to check septic systems (dye test), although the latter is easy enough to puzzle out. 115A: Antarctica's _____ Coast (Adelie) also puzzled me - have you ever looked at a map of Antarctica? For how few things live there, it's shocking how many parts of it have names. Always seems weird to think of Antarctica's having "coast," as the "coastline" must shift constantly, what with the freezing and unfreezing of surrounding waters. Speaking of Antarctica - Do see: March of the Penguins. Do not, under any circumstances, see Happy Feet. Lastly, I did not know 73A: Mosaic flooring (terr[AZ]o), and once Again a relative obscurity has its pain quotient compounded by being rebusized. Thankfully I was familiar with the rebus cross, 66D: Strong women (Am[AZ]ons), both from my recent Xmas gift orders from amazon.com and from my multiple readings of Chaucer's Knight's Tale, which begins with Theseus's conquering the Amazons and marrying their queen, Hippolyta.

OK, really really last thing: in scanning the puzzle just now for anything I might have missed or messed up, I saw 15D: Spots for some shirts, which I have filled as POLOADS, and I thought to myself, of course, "what the hell is a POLOAD? Is it like a Po' Boy? Did I screw up a cross?" Googled POLOAD to no avail. Then, THEN, I imagined a space between "O" and "A" - that's some good cluin'. OTAY! (63D: Approval on "The Little Rascals")

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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TUESDAY, Dec. 5, 2006 - Kenneth J. Berniker

Solving time: 7:36

THEME: "Initial reaction" (7D) - theme answers begin with three letter initials, e.g. 17A: Where the Washington Nationals play (RFK Stadium)

A terrible time for a Tuesday - there's this one person at the applet who is my solving barometer. We'll call this person ... Chuck. I expect to beat Chuck. If I beat Chuck, I feel like I did OK. I did not beat Chuck last night. I don't know anything about Chuck, but he is my nemesis, and I shall have my revenge.

Are there detailed instructions on the NYT website concerning how to work the applet? I know "Return" will move me one answer forward, but what about one answer backward? Or up or down? I spent so much time using the arrow keys to place myself that I lost a lot of time (I feel). This puzzle was much easier than my time would indicate, so I blame my poor time on applet incompetence. Again, I will work on this, and Chuck will feel my puzzling Wrath.

I am listening to Dolly Parton this morning. This is not that unusual, as I love her. But this morning, I am listening to her as a way of honoring her in the wake of the embarrassing "Tribute" she was forced to endure yesterday at the Kennedy Center Honors (which apparently will be broadcast Dec. 26 at 9pm on CBS). Somebody thought it would be a good idea to get Jessica Simpson (by far my least favorite Simpson) to sing "9 to 5" - this would have been insult enough, as on her best day, that ignorant skank is a barely competent singer (see also a tribute to Gladys Knight I saw a couple years back, where the pathetic Simpson shared the stage with the magnificent honoree and was absolutely blown off the stage). But, if hiring Jessica Simpson to warble her way through "9 to 5" was injury ... well, brace yourself for the insult (from the Columbus Dispatch):

Monday, December 4, 2006
WASHINGTON — Singer-actress Jessica Simpson was in tears last night after flubbing a song she was performing during the Kennedy Center Honors.

Simpson was on stage to sing Nine to Five as part of the tribute to Dolly Parton, one of the evening's five honorees. Simpson ended her performance abrupt[l]y with the words "so nervous" and quickly exited the stage. The stunned audience remained silent, giving her no applause.

While normally this kind of meltdown gives me nothing but glee, the fact that it happened as part of an evening designed to honor one of my heroes just leaves me feeling sad. Why can't Ms. Simpson be more like her sister and save her pathetic implosions for SNL.

This puzzle was pretty uninspired, themewise. Maybe if the INITIALs had all been anagrams of one another or something wacky like that, I would have liked it better.

1A: Soprano Lehmann (Lilli)
56A: Basketry fiber (raffia)

Never heard of 'em. I mean, Never. Have I not said that I do not like non-pop, non-blues, non-jazz singing? Well, it's true. I'm sure Ms. Lehmann is well known in her world, but she is not terribly welcome in mine, especially on a Tuesday. As for RAFFIA; I'll just say that OSIER is less obscure, and even that is more of a Wednesday+ answer. RAFFIA ... I'd almost rather the answer were just plain RAFFI. (Sahra is, to our great amusement, an official member of the Raffi Fan Club, though I don't think she remembers and we're certainly not going to remind her ... until she's 13)

24A: Approach at a clip (dash to)

Something about this pairing feels So Clunky to me. "I'm going to DASH TO the store," does not mean, "I'm going to approach the store at a clip." The TO part implies that you GET THERE. "We're approaching the store..." What is it, the moon's surface? "Approach," ugh. I'm sure there is a defense of this clue, fine. It's just highly inelegant.

9D: Metric feet (iambi)

Seriously, how many ways are you going to torture this word? We've seen three different variations in recent weeks. If I balked at the unnecessarily long and somewhat dated IAMBUS, you can bet that I'm going to complain about the horrible liberties taken here. That pretentious Latinate plural, come on! Nobody would say this nowhere ever never, not even your most tweeded and elbow-patched professor. IAMBI is about as far out there as, well, IAMBI. See for yourself:Seriously, you have to go to central Tanzania to find it. Good luck. I had the more reasonable IAMBS, which only changed to IAMBI when forced to by the upstart cross ICIER (26A: Not so genial), who is showing up in grids an awful lot lately.

43A: Forearm bones (radii)
53D: Neighbors of 43-Across (ulnas)

Is there not some limit on bone density in puzzles? Don't think you can get around this excessive bonage by cutely cluing one bone entry to the other. Too many bones. Further, why do you pull out the Latinized plural for the first bones, but not for their neighbors? Capricious and inconsistent. Shouldn't it be ULNAE? My Latin is quite rusty, but if ULNA is the feminine noun of the first declension that I think it is ... if these bones are indeed "neighbors," then surely they share similar conventions of pluralization (as all good neighbors do).

31D: Guitarist Lofgren (Nils)
40D: Gaynor of "South Pacific" (Mitzi)

OK, these I knew, but I don't know why. I think I know Mr. Lofgren only from puzzles. Born June 21, 1951, NILS Lofgren is an incredibly prolific musical artist, with many solo albums to his credit. He once played with Neil Young and more recently (in the 80s and the late 90s) played on tour with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Two best factoids about him, from this writer's perspective are a. that he did some FOX Christmas ads with Bart Simpson in the early 90s, and b. he had something (as yet undetermined by me) to do with the FOX mega-cheesy, half-season disaster of a 1992 show called "The Heights," the only show in recent memory on which a fictional band (called "The Heights," after the name of the suburb they lived in ...) ended up having a hit song in the so-called real world ("How Do You Talk to an Angel," which hit #1 in 1992, one week before the show was canceled, HA ha).

I believe that Ms. Gaynor washed that man right out of her hair, but I'm going to double check. Yes, Mitzi Gaynor sang "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair" in South Pacific. She, it seems, was hot. Like a sexy Doris Day. In searching "MITZI Gaynor," I got a lot of Google hits, but none so interesting as SeniorBachelor, the website of a rich old guy looking for love. He currently seems to be screening applicants for some kind of invitation-only tour of Italy, wherein you can have the privilege of paying to be a part of his traveling harem. I may be a little fuzzy on the details. Have at him, ladies!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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TUESDAY, Nov. 7, 2006 - Bruce P. Douglas

Solving time: 8:39 (details below)

THEME: Red State / Blue State - 6 theme answers, 3 clued "Red state," 3 clued "Blue state"

Before I begin my response to today's election-day, election-themed puzzle, I'd like to take some time to answer Viewer Mail. Our first letter comes from "Catherine" at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. After lavishing much-deserved praise on yours truly, she writes:

As both a crossword nerd and a plant nerd, I feel that I have to point out an error [in the Sunday, Nov. 5 puzzle commentary]. The picture of a “pawpaw” you have on your Sunday entry is actually a papaya. Although people in other countries call papayas pawpaws, the American use of the word applies to the native tree species Asimina triloba. The clue in the puzzle refers to an old children’s song believed to be written in Kentucky.

I am grateful for the correction, and I want to apologize to the many readers I quite unintentionally misled. But I mean, come on. Can you blame me? Believe me, if you were doing a Google Image search of "pawpaw" and you were lucky enough to get THIS picture as a hit:you would not ask questions. You would just take the picture and run with it, because that picture is money. Sadly, though, it's misleading, and so I'm forced to correct myself and, as part of my atonement, show you this perfectly accurate but far less entertaining picture of the American pawpaw (the one actually referred to in the crossword clue in question):
PS, I am happy to be corrected, but only by professionals. As many of you know, I don't take correction easy, and often enjoy persisting in my wrongness; but when the Brooklyn Botanic Garden says you're wrong about a plant, you'd probably better listen.

PPS seriously, though, if you see an obvious typo, help me out ASAP with a gentle private email nudge. Thanks.

Solved this puzzle on the Applet (is that what you call it? when you play against the clock at the NYT site and then your time is posted against everyone else's?) for the first time last night, and it was a bit ugly. There's only one answer on the entire grid that was unknown to me, and yet I was still slow. I type very fast, but this is actually a drawback for someone like me whose mouse-keyboard dexterity is not yet refined, because if my cursor is in the wrong place, or I'm oriented Across instead of Down or vice versa, I can $#@$ up a lot of grid in a split second. Blog-wise, doing the puzzle on the Applet is not convenient, as I can't print the puzzle out in its scanner-friendly completeness (and I can't see where I had wrong answers - those are usually half the fodder for my commentary!). Today, after I'd finished the puzzle on-line, I just printed out a clean grid and filled it in, which is a joyless experience, let me tell you...

...Unlike the puzzle itself, which is actually quite nice, if a bit theme-crazy ("election" language is all over the grid and clues, more like an occupying army than a theme). In addition to the six Red state / Blue state clues, there are, let me count, six clues that directly reference elections, and then a handful of others that are explicitly or implicitly political. Now they say that the NY Times has a liberal bias, and while I generally discount such suggestions as just so much conspiracy-theory nonsense, this puzzle makes me wonder. On the day after Daniel Ortega (apparently) gets elected in Nicaragua, the puzzle just happens to have LEFTS (5A) and COMMUNISM (34D) as answers, while Uncle SAM (46A), the paragon of American patriotism, is dragged through the mud, defiled by close contact with not only COMMUNISM but PIGS (32D)! Of course the puzzle's also got GORE standing shoulder-to-shoulder with EVIL in the SW corner, but that's probably just because the pinkos at the Times are trying to exorcise Gore's bloated political corpse because they know he's a liability and they don't want him #$$%-ing up today's election. The puzzle seems to want to stir OUTRAGE (24D) against the DESPOTS (23A) - liberals' histrionic word for the current administration - but I think proper outrage should be reserved for the real liberal agenda hiding in this puzzle: BAWDINESS and rap music (RHYMERS) and GANGS and ... let's see, is there anything gay in here? ... SPAS? OK, yeah, those are almost like bathhouses. Anyway, I can't prove any of this. I'm just sayin'... oh, and they even trot out Christopher REEVE (65A) to try to play on your heartstrings and get you to support the "science" of stem-cell research (another ungodly, liberal pet project). I'm telling you, this is the best puzzle-related evidence of liberal bias in the Times since the infamous 1996 puzzle that installed Clinton as president before all the votes had been cast and counted.

[Taking a break to walk down the street to the local middle school, where I vote].

I'm back. I just voted for a Republican for office for what I believe is the first time in my life. So did my wife. Of course we voted for a Socialist and a Green Party candidate too. We like to mix it up.

22A: Intentionally vague statement (hedge)

I harangue my students on a regular basis for HEDGING in their papers. Commit to your ideas. If you believe in something, sell it! Don't be afraid of your own authority, you cowards! (OK, I don't call them "cowards"). Another good way to clue HEDGE would have been by way of reference to the recent movie Over the HEDGE, which Sahra saw many times this past summer, once with me in tow. It's supposed to be a parody of America's mindless consumption of material goods. That, or a warning that the furry animals of the world are on the verge of hatching a violent plot to interfere with our God-given way of life. Because they hate Freedom. To its credit, the movie had a great Ben Folds soundtrack, on which he redoes his song "Rockin' the Suburbs," minus the profanity. I almost want to buy it. I can claim it's for Sahra. Yes. That will make a good Xmas present. For her.

45A: Nasty vipers (asps)

Jeez, the ASPS are like Norm on Cheers. They practically live here. "Ssss, don't tread on us! Hey, you guys seen ASTA anywhere?"

43A: Former Saudi king (Faisal)

This one is new to me. Holy crap, he looks scary. Is FAISAL here to remind us of the importance of having a reasonably stable democratic process and peaceful transition of power? Because his story is pretty gruesome. In 1973, he withdrew Saudi oil from the world market, quadrupling the price of gas and helping cause the massive "energy crisis" of 1974. Gas lines like we haven't seen since (post-Katrina Louisiana excepted). He was assassinated shortly thereafter. Here are the details, from Wikipedia:

On March 25, 1975, Faisal was shot point blank and killed by his half brother's son Faisal bin Musad, who had just come back from the United States. The murder occurred at a Majlis, an event where the king or leader opens up his residence to the citizens to enter and ask him questions.

Prince Faisal Bin Musad was captured directly after the attack and declared officially insane. He was later found guilty of regicide and in June 1975 he was beheaded in the public square in Riyadh.

Mmm, you can almost taste the Justice. Just whetting your appetite for the coming Saddam execution.

61A: "Metamorphoses" author (Ovid)

If I had to be any author, this is who I'd be. He's like my best friend (uh, when regular people and my dog aren't around). I learned Latin largely by immersing myself in his Amores and Ars amatoria, which are beautiful, hilarious, tongue-in-cheek (mostly) treatises on how to score with women. The opening of Amores is one of the cleverest openings in literary history: Ovid states that he set out to write an epic (in the dactylic hexameter proper to epics), but then Cupid came down and stole a foot from the second line, turning his poetry from noble dactylic hexameter to the lesser elegiac couplets more proper to love poetry. So it begins with aspirations to grandeur, which are then immediately deflated. Ovid likes to make fun of himself. And others. Sometimes powerful others. Did I mention he died in exile on the Black Sea? Not clear why, but it seems to have involved "a song and a crime" (carmen et crimen) of a sexual nature. Lesson: Don't #$@# with female relatives of the Emperor.

6D: Rob Roy and kin (Scotsmen)

I have nothing to say here. I just wanted occasion to put up a picture of my favorite Scotsman:
44D: Chicago-based food giant (Sara Lee)

Growing up, I always thought that the jingle went "Nobody does it like Sara Lee!" But apparently it's the more grammatically tortured "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee!" Which makes me (guess what) NOT LIKE SARA LEE. Their prepackaged treats are too sweet and full of preservatives anyway (he said, fresh off an excursion to Dunkin' Donuts). Apparently I'm not the only one to mishear the jingle. Sara Lee even addresses this ... controversy? ... in its website's FAQ (who is checking that!? I mean, besides me).

62D: "_____ Doubtfire" (Mrs.)

If you doubted the liberal agenda of this puzzle in the beginning, I give you this (horrifying) answer as final proof. As I understand it, this movie is about a complete loser who decides to become a drag queen in order to pose as a nanny and thereby violate the restraining order against him. The Democrats want you to buy into their cross-dressing, child-stalking agenda. Democrats: Soft on Queers, Soft on Crime. They also apparently don't want you to laugh. Ever.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SUNDAY, Nov. 5, 2006 - Derrick Niederman

Solving time: 45:36

THEME: "Missing Links" - Theme answers are clued with familiar two-word phrases with a "_____" in between; answers are a chain of words linking one word in the clue with the other. E.g. 59A: Orange _____ Bowl (JuliusCaesarSalad) => Orange Julius, Julius Caesar, Caesar Salad, Salad Bowl.

Don't like fussy grids, and this one is very fussy. Too many little words, too many nooks and crannies, corners with little narrow one-square-width openings that are hard to work your way into. I did, however, like this theme, which is odd because usually I don't like theme answers that are, well, fussy, like this one, where middles of long answers are dependent not on the clue itself but on words in the grid that are built off the clue. I do wish the theme had been more elegantly expressed. I thought at first the answers were all going to be two-word phrases, like 25A: White ____ House (Christmas Tree), and would thus look like ordinary fill in many ways [also loved that the White House has a Christmas tree, the ceremonial lighting of which is a TV staple every year]. Many answers were like this, but others, like the "Orange ____ Bowl" example above, were longer. That's fine, I guess, but then there's 98A: e ____ Bay (G-Strings UpSet Back), which has two problems, or at least inconsistencies. First, eBay is not a two-word phrase (neither, by the way, is 106D: Buck ____ eye (Private), the answer to which, by the way, should have been NAKED). Second, UP functions as a single word in the phrase STRINGS UP but as the first syllable in a compound word in UPSET. They aren't terrible, these anomalies. In fact, I guess they aren't anomalies. The theme just involves linking parts of phrases with other phrases, and "part" is broadly construed. OK. Not sure why I wanted greater elegance and a higher degree of constructor difficulty, but I did. Still, as I said, I really enjoyed the process of figuring out the theme answers (though it was slower going than I would have liked).

Saw Flushed Away yesterday with Sahra after her karate practice. The movie was recommended to me recently by Someone I Know, and it turned out to be a pretty good recommendation. The story was pretty dumb, but everything involving music was seriously entertaining, and the animation was astounding (though I'm getting used to that by now). There are recurrent singing slugs in this movie, which function something like a Greek chorus, and somehow I Never got tired of them. There's also a Tom Jones impersonation, hilarious if cheaply JINGOistic anti-French comedy, and Ian McKellen as a Creepy Toad who keeps his Many tadpole offspring in jars of, er, water, I guess, around his compound (though it felt not paternal but ... more like when Howard Hughes went crazy and began saving his urine in jars around the house). I was somehow a little bit attracted to the female lead in this movie. She was a rat. In my defense, I think my attraction was based largely on her British accent, which reminded me of my lovely wife's pseudo-British Kiwi twang. Yes. Yes, that's a plausible excuse.

27A: Moved to and fro (wigwagged)

Yuck yuck yuck. This gets 10,300 Google hits, where ZIGZAGGED gets over 200,000. For good reason. Nobody says WIGWAGGED. Nobody nowhere notime. A WIGWAG is a railroad crossing signal with pendulum action, which must be where the ridiculous verb comes from. These signals have not been used in new installations for over 60 years (alternating red lights became the new, presumably more effective norm). Now that I know the word is based on an actual piece of machinery, and isn't just rank silliness, I feel a little better. But not much. Is this where the term "To Wig Out" comes from? I lived in a dorm called WIG once. I assume it was some rich donor's name.

39D: Singer Mann (Aimee)

LOVE her. Own many of her albums. She used to be the singer of 'Til Tuesday, which had one major hit in the 80's called "Voices Carry." Her solo work is fantastic. I highly recommend I'm With Stupid and Bachelor No. 2. Mann is married to Michael Penn (at least she was last I checked), who is the brother of the other famous Penns, including the one that died recently of a heart attack at the very early age of 40. If that is depressing, so is Ms. Mann's music. But it's gorgeous and moving and not mopey and annoying. Listening to "I've Had It" right Now. Mmmm, soundtrack-y.

42A (THEME): Double _____ play (CrossWord)

Tee hee! Good one! Very meta.

53A: Ultrapatriot (jingo)

Perhaps it seems obvious to others, but I've never thought of this as a stand-alone word. I know JINGOism and JINGOistic, but I don't know that I've ever heard anyone called a JINGO (sounds like a racial epithet, somehow). Here is the definition from the OED:

3. A nickname for those who supported and lauded the policy of Lord Beaconsfield in sending a British fleet into Turkish waters to resist the advance of Russia in 1878; hence, one who brags of his country's preparedness for fight, and generally advocates or favours a bellicose policy in dealing with foreign powers; a blustering or blatant ‘patriot’; a Chauvinist.

The term "Jingo" seems to have gained its modern meaning from a very specific music-hall song of the late 19th century that supported Britain's going to war vs. Russia. Lyrics: "We don't want to fight, yet by Jingo! if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the money too." No relation to the popular party game JENGA.

69A: Bruin (UCLAn)

I know a number of people who have attended UCLA. I nearly went to grad school there myself. I have not heard a student or grad of that university referred to as a UCLAN (if, as I assume, it is meant to be pronounced "Yoo'-klan" - which makes me think of one of my favorite baseball players, and favorite baseball names: Kevin YOUKILIS!! He is a dead ringer for one of those thick-necked, badly shaven, cigar-chewing construction workers in old Bugs Bunny cartoons, specifically "Homeless Hare"; or one of the cheating, thuggish ball players from "Baseball Bugs"). Maybe it's meant to be pronounced letter by letter. There is a reason that people from UCLA are referred to as Bruins. I mean, you don't call a USC student an USCAN. It's Trojan. Bruin. Wolverine!

76A (THEME): Easter ____ bunny (Seals Off Key Chain Saw Dust)

Very nice - my problem here was that I am apparently exposed to too much contemporary, pseudo-hip-hop slang, and so when I had OFF ___ CHAIN, I thought for sure that the link was THE, as in the expression "OFF THE CHAIN," which succeeded "OFF THE HOOK" as a way of denoting that a party or game or other event was most excellent indeed.

95A: Skater Slutskaya (Irina)

Started with ELANA here and then corrected myself as needed. She has the word SLUT in her name. I just felt like pointing that out. Makes me giggle.

106A: Alternatives (Plan B's)

Though this probably isn't that clever or unusual, I love it ... although it's one of those phrases that sounds odd pluralized, like it should be PLANS B, like COURTS MARTIAL. Speaking of PLAN B, it is the name of an semi-apocalyptic novel by the late, great writer Chester Himes. Himes ditched the US in the 50s to live in Europe where, as a disaffected African-American, he had much more success and experienced much less day-to-day racism than he had in the States. Strangely, his success in France with his crime novels about Harlem detectives Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones ignited his American popularity, and his books came out in mass-market paperback editions here through the 1960s. His final, posthumously-published novel, Plan B, (fore-?) told of a society where racism could be overcome only by (very) violent rebellion. "Can't we all just get along?" Apparently not.

114A: Thickening agent (agar)

Thank god for this solidly Pantheonistic word, because it was about the only way I was going to weasel my way in to that troublesome SW corner, where 114D: Fleet of ships (argosy) was hiding behind the (wrong) ARMADA, and obscure legalese - 116D: One who suspends an action, at law (abator) - intersected numismatics - 134A: Like the 1915 San Francisco Mint $50 gold coin (octagonal). This corner is also about to teach me what a "bola" is: 115D: Bola user (gaucho). Ooh, the definition is cool (from Wikipedia):

Bolas (from Spanish bola, "ball", also known as boleadoras) are a throwing weapon ... made of weights on the ends of interconnected cords, designed to capture animals by entangling their legs... Gauchos use bolas to capture running cattle or game.

Here we see someone lovingly fondling GAUCHOS' bolas. Which one(s) will (s)he choose?
10D: Where streets meet: Abbr. (COR)

Ew, this one stinks. COR, I'm sure. Who abbreviates a street corner "COR?" This answer can only be INT for INTersection. COR is forced horridness.

13D: Contents of some patches (pawpaws)

As far as I know, the PAWPAW patch is a mythical place from some nursery rhyme I can't identify. So let me see what I've been missing... OK, so they are some kind of fruit, and seem particularly popular in Australia. This man, from Perth, seems to love his pawpaws quite a bit - maybe even more than the person pictured above loves his/her bolas.
16D: Darns (sews)

Maybe I would like the Sunday puzzle better if my printer didn't make everything so tiny. Numbers on the grid are hard to read, and lowercase "rn" can Easily look like an "m," which is what happened here. So, because I had ZIGZAGGED instead of WIGWAGGED (see above) I initially had SEZS here, and could not figure out what kind of dams those could be. Were they the kind of dams that held back water? Were they animal mothers of some kind? No, no. I just couldn't read the damned cramped type. "Darns" = SEWS = Monday puzzle stuff.

64D: "The Thin Man" pooch (Asta)

"Arf! I'm back! Arf! I'm everywhere! Arf! You thought you'd take me for a "ride in the country" and that would be the end of me? Arf! Stupid human! You can't kill me! I'm ASTA! Arf!"

126D: U-shaped river bend (Oxbow)

This was tricky, as I had the very reasonable-seeming ELBOW there for a good long time. The only thing I know about OXBOW is that there was an "Incident" there, once, I think, in a novel or movie.

127D: Civvies (mufti)

This makes me laugh because there was a mythical group around the five-college campuses called MUFTI whose sole purpose, it seems, was sticking enigmatic bumper stickers all over campus without being detected. Legend had it that the only way to become a member of MUFTI was to catch a member of MUFTI in the act of MUFTI-zing college property. I never saw the draw. Why natural selection didn't kill them off I'll never know. For all I know they still exist. Or else one very lonely professor continues to propagate the myth of their existence because particle physics or Peloponnesian History has long ceased to give his life its needed sizzle.

131D: When repeated, a top five hit of 1968 or 1987 (Mony)

OK, since you mentioned 1987 (year I graduated from high school), I am required (by my own set of internal laws) to comment. As I understand it, Billy Idol lost his virginity (possibly in the back seat of a car) while this song was on the radio, and that is why he decided to cover it later in his life. It is not my favorite Billy Idol song, but it'll do when no other Billy Idol song is around. "White Wedding" is very nice, but my favorite may be "Dancing With Myself," which, despite the fact that the title may in some way contain a not-so-thinly veiled reference to masturbation, is (coincidentally) the opening musical number in Flushed Away. You may now all admire the fabulous symmetry of this puzzle commentary.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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THURSDAY, Nov. 2, 2006 - John Farmer

Solving time: 7:42

THEME: Math! (rather than explain, I'll just give you the theme clues and answers)

20A: Step One: For every answer in this crossword, count this (Number of letters)
38A: Step Two: Take the figure you get for Step One and do this (Multiply by three)
56A: Step Three: Your Step Two result is the letter count for ...! (Each answer's clue)

And yes, 3x=number of letters in the clue, where x=number of letters in the answer. Wow, that was easier to explain than I'd imagined.

iTunes has seen fit to start me off with the Grease soundtrack this morning, so I'm feeling Very Good. John: "I got chills / They're multiplyin' / And I'm loooooooosin' control / 'Cause the power you're supplyin' / It's Electrifyin'!!!!" Then Olivia, singing to me, not John: "You better shape up / 'Cause I need a man / And my heart is set on you. . ." Whatever you say, Olivia, as long as you wear the poodle skirt and not that street-walker get-up Rizzo somehow convinced you to wear at movie's end.

What is up with the last two days' puzzles? I have absolutely torched them (by Rex standards), breaking Rex records for Wednesday and Thursday puzzles on back-to-back days. I even did today's puzzle on screen, with the Across Lite ap, which normally slows me down - but today I entered the first six Across clues one after the other, all (it turns out) correctly. [iTunes has "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens on now ... do you know it? I LOVE it. Soundtrack-worthy. A kind of shout-out to my Chicago reader(s)]. Plus, this puzzle was math-tacular, and the second theme answer came very easily and intuitively after I'd solved the first. Nice that this math-related puzzle also has 1A: Pre-calc class (Trig) and 61A: SAT component (Math) in the grid, in addition to the three long theme answers. Oh, and it's got 59D: P's, to Pericles (rhos), which I'm sure must be mathematical symbols of some sort... anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

This morning, I got to read the gigantic Halloween story that Sahra's class (collectively) had written earlier in the week. It was hanging on several gigantic pieces of yellow lined paper tacked up to the wall (12 sq. ft. of story!). The story was awesomely structure-free with monsters chasing kids chasing monsters into homes and out of homes and down to Spooky River (!) and then it was all a dream but then it wasn't but then the mummies and vampires and witches all died and the kids slept well because they were full of candy. The End.

10A: Dandy fellows (fops)

A great, under-utilized word, perhaps because FOPS seem to be a time period-specific (and British) phenomenon. The word originally referred to socially aspirant men who aped the dress and manners of the aristocracy in very showy, flowery, excessive ways. Wigs and ruffles and rouge and lisping and what not. I just now learned (from Wikipedia) that there was an early 80s phenomenon known as "Fop-Rock," which included the likes of Adam Ant and Falco. I own(ed) albums by both of them. I did not know that their anachronistic love of castles, stagecoaches, and Vienna made them "foppish." Although, looking back at the "Goody Two-Shoes" video ... I mean, he's chasing a hot chick, but he is quite pretty and ruffly and made-up himself. But those early-80s New Wave, New Romantic pop stars - they all loved their hair and make-up and flouncy clothing. Girly guys chasing girls. I could dig it.

14A: Old VCR format (Beta)

HA ha, this is rich. It reminds me of my dad, who would always buy the latest electronic gadgets. He was especially drawn to those gadgets that cost monstrous sums of money and then became obsolete two years later, and BETA was one of them. The Gigantic Laser Disc (album-sized) was another. He has scores of (not cheap) movies on Laser Disc that he will never be able to watch again unless he dusts off that old player, which was the size of a small spaceship. I joke about it, but that Laser Disc player made my adolescence a blast. I will always remember it fondly, because it was how I watched great movies like Night Shift and Michael Nesmith's Elephant Parts and The Making of Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Why my dad thought it was cool for a 12- and 9-year old to watch (Repeatedly) a comedy about the organization of a hookers' union is beyond me, but thank god he did. I mean, come on - this is how I knew Shelley Long (before I ever saw a single episode of Cheers):OK, I'm going to stop reliving the psycho-sexual dynamics of my adolescence now. Adam Ant and Shelley Long are enough for one day.

41A: Footnote abbr. (ibid.)

The one place I stumbled in the puzzle. I had ET AL. In fact, so much do I want this to be ET AL., I even just now entered it as the correct answer in the bold heading of this entry. ET AL. gave me NUTS for 33D: Central parts (Nubs), which seemed fine to me. Eventually I realized that one does not FLAP A COIN (34D: Decide by calling heads or tails), and the problem was fixed.

42A: A foot wide? (EEE)

This, like OOOO (as exclamation), SSSS (as a hissing sound), AAA, and the like, always seems slightly cheap to me. I mean, why not go to EEEEE. That's a foot width, too (I think). My wide feet make foot-width clues quite obvious to me. I have been a bit foot-obsessed lately, as I pronate like crazy, and I now have to wear orthotic inserts in my shoes. More information on my feet in coming episodes, I'm sure.

4D: Star of "Ninotchka" (Garbo)

OK, I'm off to find the hottest head-shot in the history of movie-dom. Hang on... Oh, yeah, I want this for my birthday. I saw this hanging in my local frame shop and I believe I just stood and stared at it for many minutes. I don't think I've ever seen a Garbo movie, but I intend to.

6D: Put away, crypt-ically? (entomb)

And the Halloween fun continues. See also (sort of) 16A: Peek follower (a-BOO!).

9D: "Garfield" foil (Odie)

"Foil," that's awesome. Like he's a secondary character in a Shakespearean tragedy. Rich. Have I mentioned Sahra's absurd passion for Garfield, particularly the recent Bill Murray movies? Oh yeah. You have a kid, and you want it to have good taste, so you expose it to the things you love, hoping some of it will take. And then a bloated, computer-generated, 20-years-past-his-prime cartoon cat comes along. And then all of your best-laid plans go pffft as you watch your child double-over in tearful laughter while trying to tell you about Garfield's encounter with a bidet. To her credit, however, Sahra loves all things Looney Tunes and knows the name of Wile E. Coyote's favorite mail-order catalog (given here in the plural): 52D: Ultimate heights (Acmes).

55A: Joy of the morning? (Behar)

QUESTION MARK, indeed. The irony runs deep, as she brings Joy to no one.

56D: Actor Morales (Esai)

"Mr. Morales, it's the Pantheon on line 1. They want to know if you'll be able to attend the induction ceremony ... I don't know, something about your freakishly vowel-ridden name."

57D: "I get it," jokily (Ah, so)

Is "racistly" an adverb? Because I'm pretty sure you have to say "AH, SO" with your eyes squinted, while bowing slightly. It's something Richard Dawson not only would, but did say, from time to time, on Match Game. You might want to follow up AH, SO with "Confucius say..." or "Ancient Chinese secret." Then start saying your R's as L's, and you're ready to take your Asian-baiting show on the road! "Ah, So" was a catch phrase of Mr. Moto in old films. Moto was played, yellow-facedly, by the otherwise amazing Peter Lorre. He was supposed to be Japanese, for the record. I much prefer Lorre as the child murderer in M, or, better yet, as the decidedly FOPPISH Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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