Bullet train type — THURSDAY, Jul. 23 2009 — Neurotic cartoon character / Milo's canine pal / She-foxes / K2 locale

Constructors: Gary & Stephen Kennedy

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT" (7D: Hit song from 2000 ... and a hint to 10 symmetrically arranged Across answers) — 10 different answers have the word "DOG" in them somewhere, but for each one, you have to take the "DOG" out in order to fit the answer in the grid.

Word of the Day: MAGLEV (20A: Bullet train type) — Maglev, or magnetic levitation, is a system of transportation that suspends, guides and propels vehicles, predominantly trains, using magnetic levitation from a very large number of magnets for lift and propulsion. This method has the potential to be faster, quieter and smoother than wheeled mass transit systems. The technology has the potential to exceed 6,400 km/h (4,000 mi/h) if deployed in an evacuated tunnel.^[1] If not deployed in an evacuated tube the power needed for levitation is usually not a particularly large percentage and most of the power needed is used to overcome air drag, as with any other high speed train. (wikipedia)
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Haven't disliked a puzzle this much in a while. Just miserable to solve. I had the main theme answer, "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT," very early, and still couldn't figure out what the hell was going on for a while. There are so many problems here. First, the song. One of the worst, most painful ear worms you can possibly give someone. Second, the lyrics, which undermine the intentions of this puzzle.



See? There are dogs in the song, just as there are dogs in the video. You can hear them. They bark. They also pant. People are asking "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?" not because the dogs have been abducted or have magically disappeared, but because they are *running amok*. Roaming packs, in the streets, up to no good. Dogs Everywhere. So, in making DOGs invisible, this puzzle theme runs directly against the spirit of the song. Further, there are at least two dogs in this damned puzzle, so the puzzle is a lie. A self-contradiction. If there are no dogs, then tell !@#$ing REN and @!#@ing OTIS to get the @#$# off my lawn (17A: Neurotic cartoon character + 31A: Milo's canine pal). Even further still, there are dogs in the clues. Look, either the dogs are out, or they're not. You can't say they're out and then put "pups" or even "animal" in the clues. Well, you can, but it's crap. I get that "DOG" is being interpreted as a letter string today. I just don't like it. AT ALL (69A: One bit).

Further, the cluing overall was just off. Everywhere I turned, tortured stuff like 4D: With "the" and 32-Across, describing an old Matryoshka doll (made in / [the] / U.S.S.R.). This may be my most hated clue of all time. Any time you have to supply a mid-phrase word in your cute tie-in attempt, your cute tie-in is a failure and you need to try something else. "With 'the' and some other answer" is ugly and confusing. The fact that I have never heard of the doll in question didn't help my enjoyment level. Staying in Russia, some Russian guy name Alexander who popularized a chess opening? I'll take your word for it. Crosses were fair enough. I thought the mysterious Russian crap was continuing in the bullet train I'd never heard of, but as you can see from the above description, MAGLEV is short for "magnetic levitation." Leaving the absurd Russian stuff behind, let's take a clue like 45D: Sitcom with the character B.J. ("Reba"). That is a non-clue. That is a horrible, unimaginative, nothing clue. About a quarter step better than if the clue had read [Sitcom with a character named Susan]. "B.J." isn't terribly unusual or distinctive. [Kraft Foods drink] for TANG? Again, what? Do ... something. Make it distinctive. Interesting. Relevant. This puzzle feels like a bad imitation of a clever Thursday puzzle.



Theme answers:

• 1A: Show-off (hot dog)
• 9A: U.S. Marine (devil dog)
• 15A: Leader of the pack (alpha dog)
• 34A: Animal control officer (dog catcher)
• 36A: Folded corner (dog ear)
• 46A: G.I.'s ID (dog tag)
• 47A: Person who raises and sells pups (dog breeder)
• 70A: One falling into good fortune (lucky dog)
• 72A: Old sailor (salty dog)
• 74A: Cutthroat (dog eat dog)

Here's what I liked: VISCERA (25A: Innards) and KASHMIR (23D: K2 locale) and OPEN UP! (60A: Cry that may accompany pounding).

Bullets:

• 49A: City containing a country (Rome) — contains Vatican City, the smallest country in the world.
• 73A: Animal in a lodge (otter) — ???? Acc. to wikipedia, "The collective nouns for otters are bevy, family, lodge or romp." Is this common knowledge? I've spent many a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium looking at the otters, yet somehow missed this bit of information.
• 11D: She-foxes (vixens) — this word is good. I feel like there was a hair band from the 80s with the name "VIXEN" ... oh yeah. Bingo. [best youtube comment seen while searching for this video: "I'm gay, and there are only 5 women I would go straight for: REBA McEntire, and the ladies in Vixen."]

• 21D: Super Bowl of 2023 (LVII) — mmm, arbitrary future events.
• 37D: With 48-Down, for example, south of the border (por / ejemplo) — more cross-referencing confusion. Thought "for example" was a cue, not the meat of the clue.
• 54D: Feature of a pleasant summer day (zephyr) — I'm reading an epic Osamu Tezuka comic from the late 60s called "Swallowing the Earth." The hero/villain is a woman named "Zephyrus." Super-disturbing and highly recommended. Hard to go wrong with Tezuka.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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THURSDAY, Feb. 12, 2009- G & S Kennedy ("Slumdog Millionaire" locale /Old-time gossip queen Maxwell / Bluesman Rush / R&B singer Hilson)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: 200th birthday of ABRAHAM LINCOLN and CHARLES R. (!?) DARWIN - these two are theme answers, and then there are two other theme answers based on stuff those guys are famous for

Word of the Day: TOLE - A lacquered or enameled metalware, usually gilded and elaborately painted (answers.com)

I am not going to be a terribly reliable judge of the puzzle today, as I'm not well. Tried to solve the puzzle last night and it took me over 11 minutes (long for me), and I woke up to find I had the most hilarious, gigantic, crash-and-burn error right in the middle of my grid. I mean - the mistake is so colossal that it's hard to believe it happened. So many things had to go right (i.e. wrong). OK, so here it is - I had KRAFT where SNACK is supposed to go (38A: Cheese and crackers, maybe). That's four, count 'em, four wrong squares. In one answer. An answer that my brain somehow not only computed as plausible, but never ever questioned. Let's start with KRAFT - I printed the puzzle out from AcrossLite, and the clues are laid out in such a way that I (repeatedly) read the SNACK clue as [Brand of Cheese ...] because "brand" is in the preceding clue, 36A: Sony brand (Aiwa). Then there's ALAK, which seemed wrong spelling-wise, but "ALAK the day!" sounded perfectly plausible as a Shakespearean exclamation. "Alas, ALAK (sic!) and Weylaway" is a phrase of despair I've heard/seen before, though I know not where. KERR for KERN (25D: "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" composer)? Please. I could make that error any day of the week. FOIL for COIL (39D: Stamp purchase)? Well, first, though I have a COIL of stamps on my desk in front of me right now, I would never have called it that, so it's not as if COIL was leaping out at me. I figured FOIL was some technical term I hadn't heard of. And then there's TEN-O for KENO (40D: Numbers game). This made me want to punch someone, because I figured TEN-O was one of these "games" from god knows when, like "ONE-O Cat" (which is in puzzles, sadly, from time to time). And yet I never questioned its correctness. Wow. Solving when you are tired and your head is in a vise - not advisable (unless you like spectacular crashes).

As for the merits of the puzzle. I won't say much, as illness may be throwing me off, but I really didn't like it. The "R" in CHARLES R. DARWIN, basically ruined the puzzle for me. Second day in a row in which a theme answer is corrupt and horrible. Usage matters! He's not known as Charles R. Darwin or Charles Robert Darwin. Now, if ABRAHAM LINCOLN had had a middle initial ... well, then his name would have been too long to be paired with CHARLES R. DARWIN. I had no idea what that middle initial was. Tried many things. And the cross was the horrid, ugly, nobody-says-it BESTIR (8D: Rouse), so that was no help. Also, what is up with the other theme answers? I don't know how they are parallel. Darwin wrote one, Lincoln helped create the other. I suppose that they are parallel in that they are both major contributions to culture (in Lincoln's case, American culture), but that doesn't feel like enough to me.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Influential work by 28-Across, familiarly ("Origin of Species")
• 28A: Notable born 2/12/1809 (Charles R. Darwin)
• 47A: Notable born 2/12/1809 (Abraham Lincoln)
• 61A: 47-Across led it (Republican Party)

Making long story shorter: Far north killed me. Nearly every answer up there but ALFA (7D: European sports car, informally) was masked with some tough cluing. In fact, this puzzle was noticeably, deliberately clued in very tough ways throughout. I also went into free fall in the SW. The BRONC clue, ugh (65A: What almost always goes for a buck?) - had the -NC and thought "???" Do Not Like the clue. "Almost always?" That's made up. My Christmas ornaments are rarely ORBS (53D: Christmas ornaments, typically) - and what is it with the damned qualifying adverbs in this puzzle? Informally, familiarly, typically. Bah. No idea who KERI Hilson is (54D: R&B singer Hilson). See her here.

Head hurts, so I will go straight to bullets now ... dang, there are a lot of them.

• 1A: "Slumdog Millionaire" locale (Agra) - I remember thinking "What's that really common crossword answer ... located in India ... Taj Mahal ..."
• 13D: Old-time gossip queen Maxwell (Elsa) - More toughish cluing. Where's my "Born Free" lioness!?
  
• 15A: Scene of classic flooding (Nile) - this killed me. Use of "classic" here is puzzling? It's being used to mean "epic" or "major," or maybe "famous," I think. The NILE floods all the time, doesn't it? Is there a single flooding that is particularly "classic"? "Scene" (as opposed to "site," which should have been used, but was taken by an answer already) and "classic" had me thinking "movie."
  
• 9A: Old auto control (choke) - had REM instead of HOC at first at 10D: Ad _____, so CHOKE resisted me at first.
• 11D: Bluesman Rush (Otis) - another mystery for me, but one I got (guessed) without much trouble

• 20A: Bygone leader with a goatee (Lenin) - he seems to get clued via his goatee not infrequently. Well, he's been clued that way at least once before, I'm sure of it. Sadly, I have no pictures of his penis for you today (if you didn't read Monday/Tuesday's write-up, I apologize for that apparent anatomical non sequitur)

• 34A: Part of a knave's loot, in a rhyme (tart) - no clue. Ugh. More hard cluing.
• 35A: 1970s Big Apple mayor (Beame) - seems like I learned this very recently. Still feels slightly hard. I have no Big Apple mayor memory pre-Koch.
• 51A: Role played by 52-Across in "The Story of Mankind" (Nero) - oh boy, more "go look at another part of the grid, sucker" cluing. And further, "Story of What?"
• 52A: See 51-Across (Lorre) - at least it's a name I recognize.
• 56A: Lake Thun's river (Aare) - this one came easily, possibly because few things start "AA..."
• 68A: Tour stops (sites) - you see the SIGHTS, right? On a tour? I mean, I see that SITES can work too, but "Tours" make me thing of SIGHTS, not SITES.
• 69A: End of a phonetic alphabet (Zulu) - does "phonetic alphabet" mean "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.?" More indirect cluing. Wanted ZETA, despite its non-phoneticness and its not ending any alphabet that I know of.
• 2D: "Runaway Bride" co-star, 1999 (Gere) - a gimme, though I never saw it. Sadly, though I saw "TROY" (66A: 2004 Brad Pitt film), it was not a gimme - that far south section was oddly rough for me, as AOL (63D: Comcast alternative) and NYU (64D: Home of the Stern School of Business: Abbr.) could have been ATT and NEB for all I knew.
• 29D: "60 Minutes" correspondent starting in 1991 (Stahl) - I like her. One of the few news media stars who doesn't seem like a whore to me. Figuratively speaking. And literally speaking, I guess.
• 55D: Descry (spot) - in that black hole in the SW. So vague. Vagueness can kill. SPOT x/w SITES = black hole of banality.
• 57D: Literally, "raw" (ecru) - more tough cluing, though this clue is very interesting. I can't believe I'm ending this write-up with praise for an ECRU clue, but there it is.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Greetings from the future. If you want to compete against me in the ESPN College Basketball NCAA Tournament Challenge, you have approximately 45 minutes from now (11:15am, Thurs, Mar. 19) to sign up. The group name is "Crossword Cagers." ~RP

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