WEDNESDAY, Apr. 2, 2008 - Patrick Merrell (NERVE APPENDAGE)

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Turn the completed grid into a greeting card!" - see below

I don't understand this puzzle. I mean, I completed it, the grid is correct, but I don't get it. I can circle letters to spell out ... anyone's name? Can't I do that in most puzzles? I mean, OK, this puzzle is a pangram (has every letter in the alphabet in it), but I've seen pangrams before, many times. Big deal. That's your theme? If I got this "greeting card" for my birthday, I would be gravely disappointed. "You shouldn't have ... seriously."

The only trouble I had in this puzzle was in the far SW, where I had never heard of CRAY (61A: Big name in supercomputers), and thought the cluing on DOCK (50D: Where to tie one on?) was oddly clued - enough to make me worry that DOCK wasn't right. Do not like the "one" in this clue. Sometimes the play on words is too tempting, I guess. Anyway, I guessed correctly. My wife had real trouble in the west, with ARRIVE staying well out of view for a long time because of a couple of initially wrong answers: ILL for ILA (21A: Wharf workers org.) and, most aggravatingly for her, GUY for GUV (40A: Fellow, in British slang). Now, when I got GUV, I laughed out loud, mainly because GUV'nah is a Britishism that Bart Simpson occasionally uses when he affects his 19th-century Cockney bootblack persona. I'm pretty sure John Oliver has used it in some kind of British parody on "The Daily Show." Wife, however, was unamused, as GUV implies to her not a "fellow," but specifically a social superior. I can't speak to the nuances of meaning in this word, as I am still laughing. "Shine your shoes, GUV'nuh!?"

Theme answers (such as they are):

• 16A: Step 1: Highlight this answer (Happy Birthday to)
• 27A: Step 2: With 43- and 55-Across, do this in the grid (scrambled or not) ... it works for almost anyone [unless your name is ZYZZYVA] (Circle letters to)
• 43A: See 27-Across (spell out the name)
• 55A: See 27-Across (of your recipient)

Wife also had trouble in the NW, where a bevy of semi-common crossword words had her flummoxed. By now, you all should know AJA like the back of your hands. See "Steely Dan" in the clue, think AJA first. To my knowledge, Steely Dan never recorded a RAGA, but Ravi Shankar did - you often see RAVI in puzzles, FYI. Lastly, as far as trouble for wife goes, there is ARPS - ARP being the Dadaist most frequently found in the puzzle (though usually not in the plural). I am an ARP fan, and think he has one of the best names in all of art. It sounds like ART, but also sounds like a dog bark, or a sound a space alien would make.

Assorted flavors:

• 5A: 12-time Pro Bowl pick Junior _____ (Seau) - I'll have all you non-sports fans know that as soon as I wrote this in (a gimme for me) I felt a pang of sympathy for you all. He is very famous if you follow football, not so much if you don't. That's what happens when you are a defensive player without a major shoe deal or related ad campaign.
• 15A: Europe/Asia boundary river (Ural) - Europe and Asia have always seems like the most ill-defined continents. Using the URAL as a boundary puts far western Kazakhstan in Europe and the rest of it in Asia.
• 36A: Diamond of note (Neil) - Oh I love him the way people love comfort food. Everything about his music makes me happy, like a little kid with no worries, even the depressing "Solitary Man." I cut my teeth on the 70s stuff: "Sweet Caroline," "Cracklin' Rose," "Kentucky Woman," etc. I don't care that his hair is insane and his clothes sometimes look like Elvis cast-offs and his lyrics are often sappy and loopy - "I am, I said / To no one there / And no one heard at all not / Even the chair." Genius. (OMG, here you can watch him getting it on with Shirley Bassey - hot / funny)
• 53A: The heart in "I Love New York" signs, e.g. (rebus) - weird that you have to clue this using the word "Love," which is simply not a part of that sign. There should be a heart symbol in this clue.
• 64A: Prime coffee-growing in Hawaii (Kona) - I miss Hawaii. That's the only place I want to be right now. Yesterday was a beautiful, crazy-warm day. Today - snow on the ground. :(
• 66A: North Sea feeder (Elbe) - this is usually YSER. Nobody ever expects ... ELBE!
• 3D: Feature of Alfred E. Neuman's smile (gap) - Alfred E. Neuman, like Neil Diamond, was a major part of my 70s childhood.
• 5D: Feature of many an office chair (swivel) - this will sound weird, but I wasn't aware that a SWIVEL was a thing. I thought it was just a verb. Is there a part of the chair that's the SWIVEL, or the motion itself the thing?
• 9D: Eighth note (quaver) - no idea about this one. Wikipedia says this is "British or 'classical' terminology," where "eighth note" is "American of 'German' terminology" - You'd think you musical types could just get together and decide on a proper name for the thing, for god's sake.
• 17D: End-of-ramp directive (yield) - I like this clue. It's ... precise.
• 31D: Louise's cinematic partner (Thelma) - For reasons I cannot fathom, the first thing "Louise" made me think of was Estelle Parsons in "Bonnie and Clyde" (she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Blanche Barrow). How did I get from Louise to Estelle? Louise ... Estelle ... maybe the old-fashionedness of the names. No idea.
• 37D: Nerve appendage (axon) - had the "X," otherwise would have been lost. Had no idea "appendage" was a word one could use in relation to a nerve.
• 41D: Root who won the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize (Elihu) - one of those names that made me freak out the first time I saw it - it seemed obscure / ridiculous - and now is a total gimme. Other ELIHUs of note include ELIHU Yale, first benefactor of Yale University, and ... nope, that's all my ELIHUs.
• 45D: 1977 James Brolin thriller with the tagline "What EVIL drives ..." ("The Car") - by far the best, most entertaining clue of the day. I have never heard of this movie. Seems to be part of the murderous moving vehicle genre, which includes "Duel" and "Christine" and Stephen King's one and only foray into movie-directing, "Maximum Overdrive."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Here's an added bonus for the "... and that AIN'T HAY" haters / lovers. From my vintage paperback collection (actually, this image is stolen from the internets, but I do own this book):

Such a hot cover... everything about it is amazing, from Charon rowing a fat joint across the Acheron in his coffin-ship, to the come-hither look of the sexy smoke spectre. Fabulous.

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TUESDAY, Apr. 1, 2008 - Manny Nosowsky (VINEGAR: PREFIX)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: FEEL LIKE A FOOL (33A: Regret some stupidity ... with a hint to this puzzle's theme) - common expressions with FEEL or FOOL have their vowels reversed, resulting in ridiculous phrases, which are then clued

This felt much more like a Wednesday than a Tuesday puzzle, but I'm not complaining, as the puzzle is really first-rate. Haven't seen Manny Nosowsky's name on a puzzle for a while - it's good to see Will bring out (one of) the best to handle a special "holiday" puzzle (is April Fool's Day considered a "holiday" if no one gets off work?). I rated the puzzle "Medium-Challenging," but that's more from a speed perspective (at least for me). It's entirely doable - there were just a number of snags that kept me from flying through the puzzle in my normal Tuesday time. The theme phrases themselves tended to be what held me back, as only a couple of them came easily. I had the most trouble with 23D, FOOLING OKAY, as FEELING OKAY does not seem like a strong self-standing phrase. FEELING GOOD or FEELING FINE = much more in-the-language. But no matter. Look at the great effect you get with that OKAY - it's an anagram of its neighbor on the other side of the black squares: KAYO (51D: Bout-ending slug). Nice.

Theme answers:

• 16A: Nitwit's swoon? (fool faint)
• 8D: Vibes not being picked up by anyone? (nobody's feel)
• 23D: Doing credible work as a magician? (fooling okay)
• 54A: Spring in the air? (April feel)

It's especially clever that the E's go to O's as often as the O's go to E's in this puzzle. You also get some exciting long-answer action in the NW and SE, as well as fairly open NE and SW corners (which ups the level of difficulty somewhat). Add to that high-end words like MIASMA (40D: Bad atmosphere) and BILGE (18A: Nonsense, slangily) and QUIRE (5D: Paper quantity), and you have a more-exciting-than-average Tuesday puzzle. Tuesdays are the puzzles I malign most often, so this Manny Nosowsky puzzle is a real treat.

Take note:

• 39D: Belly part (navel)
• 6D: Type of 39-Down (innie) - nice, though INNIE more aptly describes a BELLY BUTTON - NAVEL is a bit formal here.
• 1A: Dress shirt closer (stud) - I stared at this for five seconds or so trying to picture a dress shirt. Then I heard Olivia Newton-John say "Tell me about it, STUD" ("Grease"). She talks to me sometimes.
• 4D: "Excellent!," in slang (def) - I will never stop loving seeing DEF in the puzzle. I especially like how it's clued via "excellent," when I'm pretty sure that the group of people who would say "Excellent!" and the group that would say "Def!" are almost entirely non-overlapping. Perhaps someone can draw a Venn diagram for illustration purposes.
  
• 5A: Four times a day, on an Rx (QID) - Latin helped. I've seen BID and TID, but not QID.
• 25A: Kind of eyes (goo goo) - had GOOGLE and/or GOOGLY in there for a bit.
  
• 14A: Acapulco article (una) - very basic, yet I blanked on it at first ... and second.
• 38A: Watergate hearings chairman Sam (Ervin) - I was too young. Plus, even when I could see it was some kind of ERVIN, I initially opted for the other kind: IRVIN.
• 40A: Univ. where "Good Will Hunting" is set (M.I.T.) - now that I think of it, of course that movie was set in / around Boston, but as I was solving, MIT was the only 3-letter Univ. in my head, so I just threw it down.
• 50A: Vinegar: Prefix (aceto-) - my first clue that the FINE part of FOOLING FINE was wrong. How could a prefix end in "F"?
• 51A: Pre-remote channel changer (knob) - With the exception of a couple years of early-90s cable, the KNOB was my "channel changer" until 1999. Sad.
• 59A: Analyze the composition of (assay) - "Why won't ASSESS fit? ... oh, because it's wrong? I see."
• 16D: Red River city (Fargo) - never saw this clue, thankfully. RED RIVER sounds way more Western (as in Texas / oater western) than it does North Dakotan. Not sure why. Isn't there an OATER called "Red River?" Aha, no wonder. It's a Howard Hawks western, starring John Wayne, set, at least in part, in Texas. I feel better now.
• 17D: Houston hockey player (Aero) - gets more crossword play than any minor league team in any sport, ever. I think.
• 24D: Mozart's "Madamina," e.g. (aria) - one of many basic crossword words dressed up in fancy clothing today. See also ERIE, LEIS, and ATRIA.
• 35D: Push too hard, as an argument (oversell) - really like this. It's risky, but it works. Plus, it rhymes with its parallel neighbor, LIVE WELL (36D: Have it good).
• 52D: Mennen shaving brand (Afta) - AFTA is like fool's gold, in that it looks like what I want (ATRA), but isn't.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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