SUNDAY, Mar. 18, 2007 - Craig Kasper

Solving time - mid 20's, on paper
THEME: "Initial Substitutions" - X + Y phrases are crossed at an ampersand (&) by the initials of X and Y, e.g.

18A: Tenant's desire (room & board)
4D: Music category (R & B) - "R" for "room," "B" for "board"

I was quite stunned to see that many people apparently did not grasp the theme, even once they'd finished the puzzle. Few themes have made themselves known to me more clearly than this one. First thought: rebus (ampersand where a letter should go). Check the ampersand cross, and there it is. My first reaction to discovering the theme was: "wow ... cool." Usually in rebus puzzles the answers that intersect at the rebus don't have anything to do with each other, but here they are intimately connected. Plus the ampersands have rotational symmetry, so ... sweet! Theme was very easy. All the phrases are well within the language and once you know the theme, all the ampersand crosses are gimmes. To make up for this easiness, the non-theme fill was harder than your average Sunday - I genuinely struggled in three different regions of the puzzle. But, while architectural feats like this one often involve compromises in the elegance of the non-theme parts of the grid, all things considered, the trade-off here was worth it. A truly clever Sunday puzzle idea. The Ampersand Pairings:

20A: Really rough (down & dirty)
13D: Game with orcs and half-elves (D&D) - the nerds also get 90A: 1999 "Star Wars" release ("Episode I") today

9D: First two (Adam & Eve)
32A: "American Justice" network (A&E)

48D: Sign at a store clothing bin (mix & match)
66A: Candy treat (M&M)

67A: Basic infirmities (aches & pains)
62D: Store chain since 1859 (A&P)

41D: Equal alternative (Sweet & Low)
70A: Cousin of a credit union (S&L)

86D: Fishing gear (rod & reel)
102A: It's typically off base (R&R) - rest & relaxation

119A: Bruised (black & blue)
114D: Offerer of cozy accommodations (B&B) - bed & breakfast

120A: Nursery rhyme dish (curds & whey)
118D: Musical genre (C&W) - Country & Western

The hard parts

The "ARIZONA" portion:

BERET (109A: Round top) was at the epicenter of problems I was having ... down there. Had the -ERE- part and still couldn't see it. Had to guess (correctly) at 110D: "The ability to describe others as they see themselves": Lincoln (tact) in order to get the final "T" which then allowed me to see the initial "B" - which led me to my next big problem ... down there. With the "B" in place, I figured that 109D: Shy must be BALK (where "Shy" is a verb), but that gave me the odd-looking BIKEL for 122A: Theodore of "The Defiant Ones." BIKEL ended up being correct, thank god. BIKEL's career in film spans 50 years. Neeeeeeeeeever heard of him.

The "COLORADO" portion:

Teeny answers screwed me up royally over here. First, the requisite arbitrary Latin date, in this case 68D: Year in the reign of Antoninus Pius (CLV) was unknown to me in its last latter for a long time because I could not see 79A: Major player in the movie biz? (VCR) [a clue I do Not like, for reasons not least of which is the VCR's near obsolescence]. I just had -C- for a while, because of the aforementioned Latin and because 80D: Hi-_____ (Res) wanted only to be Hi-FIS. I really really hate the phrase Hi-RES, for irrational reasons. It just rubs me wrong. RES crossed the word that baffled me for far too many seconds, a word I was forced to write out at the puzzle margins just get a better view of it: H-RAL-S. My brain couldn't put it together. Even without the clue, you can see that only one word (I think), and it's common, can go there. But even with the clue - 85A: Proclaims - I drew blanks. Once I wrote it out in big letters on paper, the answer came quickly. Sometimes the cramped feel of the Sunday puzzle (printed out in Across Lite) can do bad things to my puzzle vision.

The "INDIANA" portion:

The trouble here stems from one particular intersection: 44A: Noisy celebration (shivaree) crossed with random German answer 34D: German port (Kiel). If I've ever seen the first word, it was while studying for the SAT. Never ever ever heard it used. KIEL could be anywhere, Germany. They intersect at the last "E" in SHIVAREE. All along I wanted SHIVAREE to be something like SHIVARI or SHIVARTI or something ending in "I." I think I was thinking of the cheese called HAVARTI. Anyway, I guessed the "E" there, just as I'd guessed the "K" in BIKEL, and it all worked out.

Freak trivia

92D: English royal known as the Empress Maud (Matilda)
98A: Fairy queen, in Shakespeare (Mab)

Way way too much English royalty beginning with "M."

113A: Building support (cross brace)

Unknown to me, but inferrable. See also ENARM (104D: Gird for battle)

61A: Locale for a vision of the Apostle Paul (Troas)

This falls under the "crap I'm willing to tolerate in exchange for a fantastic theme" category.

69D: Like Longfellow's Evangeline (Acadian)

This word always looks to me like it's missing an "R." I have never read Longfellow. I believe I have said that before. And so I iterate it here. First medieval royalty, then the Bible, then poetry ... I feel my credibility as a Ph.D. in medieval English literature slowly eroding...

14D: Like the labyrinth of Knossos (Minoan)

Whatever you say! Actually, if the answer had been CRETAN, I would have got it. MINOAN civilization originated on Crete. Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur (so THAT's where he gets his name!), I know them well. Did you know Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly was in Labyrinth (1986), with David Bowie! It's true. Lots of ancient stuff in the grid, actually. TROAS, MINOAN ... also MEDE (92A: Subject of Cyrus the Great).

123A: Subject of una sinfonia (tema)

Not sure whom to thank here, but somehow I knew this, where even one year ago I don't think I would have. By default, I will thank Andrew (as cellist, as opposed to Andrew as mathematician or Andrew as TiVo whore).

76D: Photographer Richard (Avedon)

His name is familiar, but I can't picture his, uh, pictures. He did a lot of stunning, sexy-ish portraits of celebrities in the 60s and 70s (as well as a lot of cool non-celebrity-oriented work, pictures of ordinary / odd-looking people, etc.) Here is a picture I like:


2D: Cream-filled pastry (cornet)

I know this as a musical instrument, and only as a musical instrument

23A: Acquirers of lost property (abandonees)

A legal term that makes No sense. Dumpster babies are ABANDONEES. Ariadne (see above) was an ABANDONEE. She did not acquire lost property.

39A: Desert attribute (aridness)

Easy enough, but Google say: ARIDNESS (ca. 26K hits), ARIDITY (725K)

Wrong Fill

TALLY UP for TOTAL UP (5D: Calculate, as the bill)
RANGES for RENEWS (88A: Extends)
AT ANY COSTS for AT ALL COSTS (116A: No matter what)
ANY MOMENT for ANY MINUTE (49D: Imminently)

Stuff I liked

1A: Home of the Natl. Hollerin' Contest (N. Car.) - excellent 1A clue! Didn't know it, but I could eventually guess it. HOLLERIN'! That should be a rap anthem.
1D: "You're doing it all wrong!" ("No, no, no!") - hotly colloquial. Always appreciated.
10D: Old "Romper Room" character (Do-Bee) - before my time, but HOT (35A: Stolen) answer nonetheless. Actually, maybe "Romper Room" was in my time, but I hardly remember the show. If I ever watched it, I didn't watch it much.
6D: Kind of yoga (Hatha) - Know it. Love it. Would be a knotty, angry mess without it. Moreso.
38D: E Street Band's leader, informally (The Boss) - Always like to see phrases with definite articles in them. Scratches my brain in a pleasing way.

Lastly, there is a mini-wordladder with MAB, NAB (60D: Snare) and NIB (55A: Tip for a calligrapher)!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS the finished grid today was provided by Orange (Crossword Fiend, link in sidebar), so if there are any errors, she is to blame. I mean, thanks Orange!

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SATURDAY, Mar. 17, 2007 - John Farmer

Solving time: long-ish
THEME: none

One of the hardest puzzles in recent memory. When I'd finished, I had four squares circled as possible mistakes. Irony: I had one mistake, and it was Not a square I'd circled. Ugh. Even Saturdays should not have to go to morbid obscurity for more than a couple answers, at most. This puzzle went there a Lot. A very Maleskan grid, with very little post-Carter administration fill. It may sound like I had no fun, but that's not true. The whole thing was a nice mixture of struggle and success - I'm just not used to finishing a puzzle with So Much grid uncertainty. So I'll start with the stealth square that did me in, and then work through other thorny bits, ending with what was freshest and coolest.

10D: Aviation entrepreneur Sir Freddie _____ (Laker)
18A: Olympic skating champion between Kristi and Tara (Oksana)

The latter was a near-gimme. I had the "A"s in place and I knew the answer. Sadly, I apparently did not know how to spell the answer. I was certain that OKSANA had an "X" in her name, and so I didn't blink at all at the spelling OXSANA. I just thought "Yes, the "S" is redundant, but ... it's foreign, so spelling / schmelling." As for Mr. LAKER, the clue itself basically screamed "HA ha, you do NOT know this." The very phrase "Sir Freddie" makes me laugh. I had LAXER for his last name. Since LAX is the airport code for L.A. Int's Airport, I had at least a very thin connection to aviation there.

49A: Packhorse or mule (sumpter)
40D: Strong Greek wine (retsina)

Flat-out cruelty. I mean, this is Saturday crotch-kicking at its purest. I am strangely not furious, mainly because they are both words in the dictionary, and they aren't clued badly. Plus I guessed that "T" at their intersection correctly, so how mad can I be? I did have "S" there for a good long while, because RESSINA sounded So Much More Reasonable. But SUMPSER ... I could not take that "word" seriously, so eventually I took the risk on RETSINA and it paid off. I always thought that when Certs breath mints advertised that their special ingredient was "RETSIN," they were just yanking my chain. Sounded completely made-up. But now I know that RETSIN is derived from a semi-obscure Greek wine. Live and learn. (It's actually spelled RETSYN, I guess, and its ingredients can be found here)

35A: One of four in mythology: Abbr. (syl.)
37D: French astronomer who wrote the seminal "Celestial Mechanics" (Laplace)

This intersection pretty much had to be an "L," but o my god what the hell??? I have a little experience with mythology, but as of right now, SYL = a mystery to me. SYLPHS? SYLVANS? OK, it just dawned on me that it's short for SYLLABLE (as in "the word 'mythology' has four syllables"), and I am going to Super-Challenge. First, go here, and see that that is not listed as an option for that abbreviation. I can see from various sites that it has some currency in linguistics. The one "L" seems wrong wrong wrong. Just grating and annoying, this clue. Way worse than SUMPTER / RETSINA, in that it's cheap. Oh, I almost forgot: Pierre-Simon LAPLACE. Uh, yeah. He's a French mathematician and astronomer. Andrew or maybe Byron can explain why I should care.

24A: Plays out (unreels)

The "R" made me uneasy. I am imagining reel-to-reel tape or film of some kind. I don't think I've ever seen this word or could use it in a sentence. The "R" was the part of Freddie LAXER's name that I thought I might have wrong. Turns out it was the "X."

OK, that's all the negative stuff I have to say about this puzzle. The good stuff:

47A: "Hair of the dog" alternative (aspirin) - the answer's kinda blah, but the clue rules

45A: Tolstoy's "Voyna i _____" (Mir) - I don't know Russian, but figured this had to be the Russian equivalent of "War and _____." If it weren't for the very famous Space Station, this clue would be totally unfair.

2D: Magazine of the National Space Society (Ad Astra) - I swear to you that, despite never having heard of it, I got this answer with just the "D" in place. Seriously, one of the most amazing, out-of-body, where-the-hell-did-that-come-from serendipitous moments in my history of solving. I hadn't even seen the companion clue 4D: Like 2-Down: Abbr. (Lat.) yet! The NW would have been a Lot harder, I think, were it not for this bit of good fortune. I was also substantially aided by my mother's bookshelf, which is the only reason that 15A: Masters of verse (Edgar Lee) was a gimme for me. I can still see that cheap paperback, for some reason. Of course, I never read it, but now I can almost feel as if I have. The NW actually has two sets of companion clues in the NW: the aforementioned Latin stuff, and then 17A: Bars on bases (canteens) paired with 19A: Operator of 17-Across, for short (USO). CANTEENS took me too long (I was playing episodes of "M*A*S*H" in my head over and over trying to see if any character would just say the damned word!), but USO helped me confirm my miraculous guess of AD ASTRA, for which I thank it. Lastly for the NW, I have never heard of, and like, the term RAILBIRD (1A: Racetrack habitué). If it's obscure, it should at least be inferrable or make sense, and this answer does. 28A: Sophia Loren/Paul Newman comedy, 1965 (Lady L) was a cheap shot - as far as I was concerned, that "L" could have been Any Letter - but the very gettable cross, 5D: Line delivered before lines are delivered ("break a leg") made everything OK.

The NE was mostly uneventful (except for the OXSANA / OKSANA debacle), but it is the home of my first correct answer - ALBUMS (9A: They have many cuts, typically - a nice clue). This made a lot of the Down crosses in the NE quite easy. In retrospect, I was surprised how long it took for me to get 16A: "The Night Listener" novelist (Maupin). If this guy had been clued as "Tales of the City" novelist, I would have made short work of him. The "Tales of the City" novels were super popular among many of my friends in college, back in "the day." Back when I used to actually read from time to time (now I just fake it).

50A: Seniors (golden-agers)
20A: An old secretary might sit in one (antique shop)

Like the rotational symmetry of this geriatric and faux-geriatric clue pairing!

Normally not exceedingly fond of the "?" clues, but this grid had some choice ones, including

• 42D: Potter's field (sorcery) - Harry Potter clues on back-to-back days. This isn't part of some promotional campaign for the upcoming release of the 7th and final book in the series, is it?
• 58A: Critic with an opposable thumb? (Roeper) - this guy's kind of a tool, but nice cluing anyway
• 32A: Result of running off? (xerox copy) - I was fortunate in that the first time I ever looked at this clue, I already had the two "X"s in place!
• 26D: One working on a canvas? (boxer)
• 57A: Roast ingredient? (one-liner) - the worst of them, and yet still pretty good

"BOLERO is not an opera... is it?" No, it's not, but the clue is misleading, as the "Opera" of 46A: Paris Opera debut of 1928 refers simply to the building - the Paris Opera House. I don't care how cliché it is or how mucked up its legacy is by association with Bo Derek: I Love "Bolero." I am not a big fan of Alfred MOLINA (29D: Actor Alfred of stage and screen) - bit of a ham - but I was super-pleased with myself to get his name very quickly. Lastly, as three-E words go, I much prefer REESE (48D: Her "Don't You Know" was a #1 R & B hit) to the odd-looking GELEE (38A: Pomade alternative). Della REESE was an accomplished singer and actress who went on to wider ... uh, fame? ... in TV's "Touched by an Angel." My favorite Della REESE moment (and everyone has one ... am I right?) is her cameo appearance in the abominable yet hilarious 1975 revenge non-thriller Psychic Killer. She gives an equally marginal character - a racist butcher! - quite a tongue-lashing. It is, By Far, the best part of that movie, and lasts all of two minutes, tops.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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