SUNDAY, Aug. 23 2009— Transmitter of nagana / US rebellion leader 1842 / Pitcher Reynolds of 1940s-50s Yankees / Author/poet Bates

Constructor: Phil Ruzbarsky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "E.U. Doings" — familiar phrases have an "E" switched to a "U," creating wacky phrases, which are then clued "?"-style

Word of the Day: Nagana (18D: Transmitter of nagana => TSE TSE) — also n.

An often fatal disease of African ungulates caused by various species of trypanosomes and transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. Also called tsetse disease.

[Zulu -nakane.]

-----

An easy and somewhat lackluster Sunday. A single letter change seems an insufficient basis for a Sunday-sized puzzle theme. And just six theme answers? I feel cheated. Plus I just hate the word "DOINGS," and the phrase "E.U. DOINGS" has no currency and thus makes a strange title for a puzzle. Maybe PuzzleGirl will feel differently about the puzzle. She was supposed to do this write-up with me, but when we returned from yesterday's crossword tournament in Queens, she had what she believed was a migraine and went straight to bed. She's still sleeping. The apartment we're staying in gets the NYT delivered, but ... it was some small version with no magazine (!?!?!). What the hell? I'd say someone stole parts of the paper, but there's only one other apt on this floor, and I don't think anyone's home. I was looking forward to some good old-fashioned dead-tree solving, but no. Back on-screen again.

Had next to no problems with this puzzle (despite the usual small assortment of mystery answers). The one part that baffled me was the 5A: Logical beginning? (patho-) / 9D: Native: Suffix (-ote) crossing. I tried and failed to think of a resident of anywhere that ended in -OTE. I could think of tons of -ITES, but no -OTES. So despite the fact that I knew knew knew the prefix had to be PATHO-, not PATHI-, I wavered for a bit at the very end when deciding what vowel to put here as my final answer. What's a good example of an -OTE-suffixed word? All I can think of are COYOTES and PEYOTES.

Theme answers:

• 23A: Used a push-button toilet? (pressed the FLUSH)
• 40A: "I can't drink beer this late"? ("It's past my BUD time)
• 55A: Dairy regulator? (BUTTER business bureau)
• 77A: Baseball official gets revenge? ("The UMPIRE Strikes Back") — cute
• 93A: "The bolt alone is sufficient"? ("works without a NUT")
• 114A: Story of a small Communist barbarian? (The Little Red HUN)

Had a fantastic time at Ryan and Brian's "Lollapuzzoola II" crossword tournament yesterday. There were close to 80 contestants, plus an assortment of prominent constructors and other folks helping run the event. I don't know how well I did, as for some reason I didn't bother to check final results (not sure if they were even posted). Hang on, I'm going to check now ... hey, I came in 12th! That's hot. That is also, without a doubt, as close as you will ever see my name to that of Ellen Ripstein (former ACPT champ who sat next to and embarrassed the hell out of me throughout the day). O man, Poor PuzzleGirl.

She was 5 points (out of over 7000) away from being on stage for the "Local Division" Finals. I was in the "Express Division," which meant I was assured of winning nothing, but I had a blast nonetheless, and the puzzles were of very high quality. Nearly every puzzle had some added dimension (a Boggle dimension, an "act out the theme answer" dimension, etc.) — on the final puzzle, Ryan and Brian actually performed the clues for the theme answers on stage. You had to pay attention, because on paper the clues simply said "Movie 1," "Movie 2," etc. There was a version of "Family Feud" (which PG and I missed because we spent too long at lunch), and an interstitial game of Yahtzee that was won by a former student of mine, Aaron Riccio (whom I was happily surprised to see there). It was great to see some younger contestants there. Had a nice conversation with Aaron and Neville "Don't Call Me Longbottom" Fogarty and Laura Radloff, all of whom were really smart and funny. Lots and lots of familiar names and faces there too. Too many to mention. Will Shortz showed up at the very end for the Finals (I should mention that Dan Feyer was the tourney's big winner). R&B will certainly have their own recap. All in all, a wonderful, well-run, affordable tournament with a pleasantly relaxed and informal vibe. I'll certainly do more to promote it next year.

Bullets:

• 21A: House Republican V.I.P. Cantor (Eric) — House Whip (not quite as good as Reddi-Whip). I was going to post a video here, but for various reasons (not all of them having to do with Cantor himself), they were all unbearable, as most of what passes for political discussion on television is these days.
• 27A: The Jaguars, on scoreboards (JAX) — they really do have the best scoreboard name abbrev. of any team in any sport anywhere.
• 28A: "White trash," e.g. (slur) — this answer is weird to me. Most of what we call "slurs" would Never have been printed in a NYT puzzle clue, and yet "white trash" is OK. Could any other "slur" (particularly a racial slur) have gone here without offending the hell out of a chunk of the puzzle's audience?
• 36A: 12-time Pro Bowl player Junior (Seau) — rhymes with "SAY Ow," not BUTTER BUSINESS BUREAU.
• 39A: Neural network (rete) — never saw this clue, which is nice, because RETE is one of my least favorite bits of desperate crossword fill.
• 50A: Largest city paper in the U.S.: Abbr. (NYT) — Vain much? And "largest" how? By weight? Price? (I know the answer is "circulation")
• 63A: It was destroyed by Godzilla in "Godzilla Raids Again" (Osaka) — I would pay good money to see a western called "Godzilla Rides Again." First step, and biggest challenge: casting Godzilla's horse.

• 73A: Cantilevered window (oriel) — just realized that two of my favorite high-end crossword words have the same vowel pattern: ORIEL and OSIER. This is interesting only to me so I'm not sure why I'm typing it.
• 76A: Extinct relative of the emu (moa) — gigantic NZ birds and occasional prey of the equally extinct HAAST'S EAGLE (still waiting for that one to appear in a grid).
• 83A: _____ Chinmoy (late spiritual leader) (Sri) — total guess.
• 113A: Pitcher Reynolds of the 1940s-'50s Yankees (Allie) — they could've used him last night. That would have been a neat trick. "Now entering the game ... Zombie ALLIE Reynolds!"
• 14D: Sister in Chekhov's "Three Sisters" (Olga) — one of those crossword-common fictional names I always forget, like ANSE and OLAN.
• 15D: Five-time Wimbledon champ (Borg) — went with GRAF. She only won it seven times.
• 16D: 1960s sitcom title role (Jeannie) — obvious in retrospect, but without the "J" from OBJET (14A: Curio) the answer was oddly hard to see.
• 18D: Transmitter of nagana (tse-tse) — whoa ... thought "nagana" was some kind of martial art and was looking for some version of SENSEI.
• 42D: U.S. rebellion leader of 1842 (Dorr) — oh, embarrassment. I have no idea who this is. Although it's possible I've seen DORR in the puzzle before and made the very same comment. Electoral reform. DORR stood up for the little (white) man.
• 58D: P.M. between Netanyahu and Sharon (Barak) — you might know him better in his more crossword-common EHUD form.
• 95D: Curtis of cosmetics (Helene) — wanted ELAINE.

• 94D: Cane accompanier, maybe (top hat) — shouldn't this get-up automatically get some kind of "bygone" or "Fred Astaire" cluing? Does anyone dress this way anymore except at Halloween?
• 100D: Gearshift mechanism, informally (tranny) — this is not the first definition that comes to mind when I hear the word "tranny." The kind I'm thinking of often lacks a gearshift mechanism ...
• 111A: Author/poet Bates (Arlo) — no idea. Seems he was a 19c. newspaper editor and educator who rocked some fantastic facial hair.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Read more...

Saturday, August 22, 2009 -- Muffed on the green / Russian oblast or its capital / Fractions of a gourde

Constructor: Karen M. Tracey

Relative difficulty: Medium-challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Sentime (18A Fractions of a gourde => SENTIME) —

n.

The gourde (French), goud (Creole) is the currency of Haiti. Its ISO 4217 code is HTG and it is divided into 100 centimes (French) or santim (Creole).
(from wikipedia)

[update: just learned in the comments that I got this wrong--it's CBC/CENTIMES. No wonder I had to go through "gourde" to find it --treedweller]

--------

Hi, all. treedweller here, filling in for Rex while he tries to improve his world puzzle ranking. I so wanted to say, "Ha, just kidding about not being able to finish, this was a breeze," but here you have the sum total of my efforts before I resorted to google. Not quite "two right answers and a couple of bad guesses," but almost. I didn't even know how to choose a Word of the Day, since it seems like half the grid was unfamiliar to me. I went with the currency, since we may as well all resign ourselves to learning All The Currencies Of The World (Past And Present). As is often the case, once things started to fall, I realized I should have known a few things and could have figured out a few more, but I'm on a deadline here. Regardless, I have doubts as to whether I could have finished this on my own, no matter how many days I carried it around with me to waiting rooms and bank lines. I chose to rate it Medium-challenging because it was extremely challenging to me, but that's a normal Saturday, so I figure it's maybe medium for those who routinely finish the hard ones. I just hope not to hear "Easy, Easy, Easy" in the comments today.

Google got me the NE, since I was able to find ROSSETTI (14D: "Beata Beatrix" painter) and SENTIMES. The former revealed our old friend, BRIAN ENO (16A: Co-composer of the "Prophecy Theme" in "Dune"), who usually just gets his last name into the grid. He was well disguised today, but when I saw that terminal "O" I had him. I still needed the obscure (to me) currency to finish the corner, but things were starting to roll and I was feeling pretty good. And . . . nothing. Back to google, where I learned about 27D: Home of the annual Gathering of the Nations powwow, the world's largest celebration of Native American Culture, ALBUQUERQUE. Man, just typing out that clue was an ordeal. Is there anyone who didn't get the answer from the first half, but knew it once they got past the comma? I think not. Hello, King Olaf.

Then I immersed myself for the first time in Dancing With the Stars, where I learned there were not one, not two, but three possible answers to 37A: Olympic Gold Medalist who was a "Dancing With the Stars" champion. First hit was Shawn Johnson, who didn't fit. A little farther down was Anton Apolo Ohno, who seemed very puzzleworthy but also did not fit. I went to the Official Site, where you should not go if you don't like auto-playing ads and videos to blare out of your computer unexpectedly. I learned that a new season is upon us, but still could not find KRISTI YAMAGUCHI. She finally turned up when I clicked through google to a site by a fan of the show.

Even with two Q's and a K, I still didn't gain much traction. I was up to this:

Thank God for Orange, who already had the solution and her obscenely fast time posted by the time I finally learned to spell ROSSETTI. Here's the correct answer:












I'll spare you the play-by-play of my stealing of answers, but here's a few
Bullets:

• 19A: Muffed on the green (foozled) -- I almost made this one Word of the Day, but decided I was not willing to admit it even is a word.
• 66A: Was close to failure (tottered) -- Teetered gave me a little traction in the SW, but I had to steal the OT to finish that corner.
• 1A: Spook's break-in (bag job) -- Okay, this a nice phrase that sounds real, I just Did Not Know It.
• 12D: One who may get dispossessed? (demoniac) -- who knew? Not me.
  
• 63A: Plumlike fruit (loquat) -- I can't pass a chance to mention the tree. I got it easily once I googled ALBUQUERQUE.
• 4D: Swingers' get-together? (jazz session) -- As you can see above, I had SESSION pretty early, and considered JAZZ, but I couldn't figure out any crosses to work with the Z's. Okay, I've resisted it long enough, FOOZLED??!! That sounds like what Ms. Tracy did to me with this puzzle. I never had a chance in the NE. It didn't help that I had "enmire" (which I assume I just made up, since google returns no definitions) instead of
• 1D: Cause to be Stuck (baffle) -- Come to think of it, that's really what Ms. Tracy did to me today. But it was a really nice grid, with only MTGES (40D: You can get them on the house: Abbr.) making me wince.
  

I'd better stop, since I just realized how late it is out there on the other coast. Sorry I couldn't figure out how to post any nice videos.

treedweller (writing from San Diego)

Read more...