Many a Justin Bieber fan / WED 12-22-10 / Kirk's foe in a "Star Trek" sequel / General played by Fonda (in 1976), Peck (1977) and Olivier (1981)

Constructor: Michael Sharp (a k a Rex Parker)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Difficult

Theme: Going All In — Six answers are phrases which usually include "All In" at the beginning with "All In" omitted. Theme revealer at 63-Across.


Word of the Day: VALOR (3D: Bravery) —

valor (uncountable)

1. Value; worth.
2. Strength of mind in regard to danger; that quality which enables a person to encounter danger with firmness; personal bravery; courage; prowess; intrepidity.

(wiktionary.org)

• • •

What’s up, CrossWorld. Caleb Madison and Natan Last here, Sock 'Em Boppers a-ready, throwing down in Round 3 of our CrossFeud. We're guest-blogging today for Rex Parker, who, Renaissance Man that he is, has put on his constructing hat today.… And try as we might, we just can't find out who this Bennet CERF (33-A, Bennett of "What's My Line?") or Toots SHOR (54-D, Restauranteur Toots) is, with the Google Machine, or the Lady Gaga. Once we saw Justin Bieber and Biggie SMALLS in the puzzle, however, we knew we’d get … at least two answers.

We've decided to bury the hatchet, for Rex's sake. Fight indefinitely postponed. Bookies, calculate your odds. Michael Vick, place your bets. Screaming ladies, hold onto your underthings. For the course of this blog post, Caleb and Natan have merged into... Catan. Catan: like Brangelina, but cuter, and with fewer Cambodian children. It also saves us from having to use the personal pronoun "we" all the time.

On to the puzzle. As we solved this, in the same room, yelling obscenities at each other when we couldn’t get something ("*$^@!# TOOTS SHOR?!" "WAIT A SEC IS THIS A &$#!@*ING REBUS?!?"), we also commented on the solidness of the theme. It’s very clever, of course, and not only are the six phrases Rex has chosen all lively, but the omitted answer is also a tight phrase:

Theme answers:

• 1A: Cry at the start of a vote [ALL IN] FAVOR
• 20A: "Soon enough, my friend" [ALL IN] GOOD TIME
• 36A: As a package [ALL IN] ONE
• 52A: Completely imagined [ALL IN] YOUR HEAD
• 11D: Top-rated TV series of 1971-76 [ALL IN] THE FAMILY
• 32D: To be expected [ALL IN] A DAY'S WORK

Don’t get too excited, Michael/Rex, but these are all pretty colloquial and altogether awesome answers. We especially liked the clue for [ALL IN] GOOD TIME (“Soon enough, my friend”); the two phrases are perfect substitutes for one another, and equally colloquial. Now onto the fill, which was stellar in some places, awkward in others, but which overall contained a good mix of the highbrow and the low, the savory and the un.

Interestingly, as I (Catan) write this, I'm in a house on Duane Street, a block away from Reade street, home to the original Duane READE store (14-A: Duane ___ (New York City pharmacy chain)). Coincidentally, I'm also playing PACMAN (6-D: Iconic chomper) (great clue, that), listening to OTIS (10-A: Soulful Redding), acting FERAL (48-D: Untamed), and swaying to and FRO (48-A: One way to sway). What can I say. We're just two TWEENs chilling out to some Bieber (51-A: Many a Justin Bieber fan).


The extra dose of Star Trek clues were all gimmes for Caleb, but Natan, who's more of a Star Wars kid, had trouble with 'em. Both of us were happy to see Eero Saarinen, with all his crazy vowels, not as an answer but as a clue (28-A: Eero Saarinen, for one). Similarly, cool to see PRO RATA (42-D: How some wages are calculated) in full as well.


An interesting facet of this puzzle, and the submission process in general, is the stuff that Will lets FLY (28-D: Pass muster), and the stuff that gets nixed. We have it on good information that 34-Across was, in a past life, I AM, which made (27-D: Block) DE MER (clued as "Mal ___, sea sickness") instead of DETER. Hard to say which is the lesser of the evils, but DE MER has, at least, appeared in crosswords before, though never in the Times; I AT (34-A: "Am ___ risk?"), for its meager part, has appeared nonce. Constructors ourselves (down, Screaming Ladies, down!), we woulda gone with IAJ (clued as "Am ___ Burnett?: Existential crisis from a Yankees pitcher") and DE JER (Mal ___ [sickness gotten from watching too much "Seinfeld").


So appropriate.

Bullets:

• Go from site to site? (SURF) — Nice misdirective clue.
• Biggie _____ (rapper a k a Notorious B.I.G.) (SMALLS) — An example of something that could have gotten a lame plural clue (T-shirt sizes) but instead becomes lively and current. And awesome.

Teenagers that we are, our minds did not immediately go to the land of verbs when we saw Madden in the clue for 12-Down; needless to say, the actual answer was much less exciting: INFURIATE.

Also, our constructor seems to be a bit of projecting at 37-Across (Old Man: Ger.). Oh, Michael Sharpenschnitzel, you’ll always be young at heart.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter] or [Caleb Madison]

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Gaucho's plain / TUE 12-21-10 / Windblown soil / Keatsian Pindaric / Composition of Jack Haley's Oz character

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: 3 steps back — "L" is moved back three spaces in familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily


Word of the Day: LOESS (25D: Windblown soil) —

Loess (pronounced /ˈloʊ.əs/, /ˈlʌs/, or /ˈlɛs/) is an aeolian sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown silt and lesser and variable amounts of sand and clay that are loosely cemented by calcium carbonate. It is usually homogeneous and highly porous and is traversed by vertical capillaries that permit the sediment to fracture and form vertical bluffs. // The word loess, with connotations of origin by wind-deposited accumulation, is of German origin and means “loose.” It was first applied to Rhine River valley loess about 1821 (wikipedia)

• • •

Very strange theme. Not sure there is any rhyme or reason to the movement of the "L"—some turn of phrase that is being visually illustrated, for instance—but if there is, I can't see it. Just looks like a "move-the-L" puzzle to me, and that seems as good an excuse for a Tuesday theme as any. Can't say I'm that fond of any of the resulting theme answers, except possibly CHRISTMAS CLAROS (37A: Holiday smokes?). PLANE BOARDS is dull (17A: F.A.A. supervisors?), MIND BLOGGING comes out awkward as a verb phrase (24A: Object to online commentary?), BLOTTED WATER is not much less dull than PLANE BOARDS (48A: Cleaned up after a spill?), and ADAM SLANDER ... that's pretty good, I guess (58A: Defamation in the Garden of Eden?). Luckily, there are other answers to spice up this grid, like THE KINKS (!) (5D: "Lola" band) and LACERATE (39D: Cut jaggedly) and CARRY-ON BAG (29D: Allotment of one, usually, for an airline passenger). All of those are lovely, and go a long way to making up for ODIC (26D: Keatsian or Pindaric) and LOESS (25D: Windblown soil) and AMIR (40D: Mideast potentate: Var.) and LLANO (15A: Gaucho's plain) and ISM (19A: Belief suffix) (all less-than-desirable crosswordese), as well as the EREIMANIASET Partial Experience.



I think I would have liked MIND BLOGGING better if it had been clued as MIND-BLOGGING ... maybe something like [Psychokinetic online commentary].

Really wish I had more to say about this one, but I don't. So, rather than blather to fill space—straight to Bullets.

Bullets:

• 3D: Shepard in space (ALAN) — constructor signature. Nice.
  
• 15A: Gaucho's plain (LLANO) — Are there LLAMA on the LLANO? Or are they just in the Andes?
  
• 30A: "Waiting for Lefty" playwright (ODETS) — What are we up to now: ALBEE, INGE, ... ODETS. Oh, and IBSEN (12D: "The Wild Duck" playwright Henrik). Weird: I'd consider IBSEN the more famous playwright, and yet the clue provides IBSEN's first name, but doesn't provide ODETS' (Clifford).
  
• 64A: Playing pieces in Rummikub (TILES) — No idea what "Rummikub" is. Sounds Finnish. Is it Finnish? ... nope, Israeli. No matter: "playing pieces" was enough to make this easy.
  
• 11A: Composition of Jack Haley's Oz character (TIN) — no idea what to make of this at first because I was thinking of "Oz" the TV show ... ERST on HBO (56D: Once, old-style + 16A: "Six Feet Under" network)
  

Did you see the TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE last night? Me either.

Happy Winter Solstice.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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