TUESDAY, Feb. 19, 2008 - Victor Fleming (FLAGSTON FAMILY PET)

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Golfing - three 15-letter theme answers about golfing, each one clued the same way: [Enjoying an outing, of sorts]

Never golfed in my life, so the enjoyment factor today was a little low. None of the theme phrases have much zing, but I'll have to take the puzzle's word that these are apt golfing phrases. The first one seems OK, though ON THE GOLF COURSE (20A) could describe squirrels as well as golfers. PLAYING EIGHTEEN (39A) was rough for me, because when I first saw it I had no idea golf was the theme and so I wrote in PLAYING EIGHTBALL. Needless to say, that didn't last. HITTING THE LINKS seems like the best of the lot to me, though I had HITTING THE NINES (56A) at first (guessing, wrongly it seems, that such a phrase might be used in reference to playing NINE holes).

I liked two things about this puzzle

• The placement of L. RON (25A: Scientology founder _____ Hubbard) on top of its anagram, LORN (36A: Forsaken).
  
• The pair of long Downs - MY MISTAKE (35D: "I can't blame anyone else") and LOQUACITY (10D: Talkativeness). I imagine someone using the word LOQUACITY incorrectly, then, after getting called on it, saying "MY MISTAKE." I also like that I got LOQUACITY off of just the -CITY part. There's a bad joke waiting there: What city do talkative people live in? Tell that one to your friends and watch them stare at you in horror / disbelief / pity.

I'm most surprised, and disappointed, today in the volume of ultra-common crossword fill. A quick tour around the grid reveals far too many old "favorites":

• GRAF - 18A: _____ Spee (old German warship)
• ARIA - 14A: Oratorio highlight
  
• YIPS - 1A: Puppies' plaints
• SLOE - 49A: Gin flavoring
• EXEC - 65A: One hired by a corp. board
• LEE J - 5A: Cobb of "12 Angry Men"
• IRANI - 2D: Tehran denizen ["denizen!" One of many great clue words today. See also "sloganeer" and "slangily"]
• EBRO - 6D: River of Spain
• EL AL - 7D: Mideast airline
• REAS - 12D: Actor Stephen and kin
• ESTE - 13D: Renaissance family name
• EN LAI - 21D: China's Zhou _____
• STEN - 30D: British W.W. II-era gun
• ELLA - 33D: Former Connecticut governor Grasso [mitigated by interesting, unusual clue]
• EGRET - 50D: Everglades wader
• HIES - 60D: Doesn't dally

Apologies to any stalwarts I happened to leave out.

Curious and / or cool entries:

• 15A: Di or da preceder in a Beatles song ("Ob la") - don't like that it's a partial, but do like that it reminds me of the Beatles' White Album and The Police's "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" simultaneously.
• 17A: "What _____ Did" (classic children's book with a punny title) ("Katy") - get it? Katydid? Here's a pic:

• 23A: "Gets the red out" sloganeer (Visine) - misspelled this at first (Visene). Most recent pitchman for this product is Ben Stein.
• 32A: Sister of Marge Simpson (Selma) - SELMA gets all the love. Poor Patty.
• 47A: Flagston family pet (Dawg) - I have No Idea what this means. Luckily I knew who HEGEL (41D: Georg who wrote "The Philosophy of Right") was, or that "G" would have been lost to me ... actually, I would have guessed "G," but only out of desperation. Oh, it seems, from another clue in today's puzzle, that "Flagston" is the last name of comics' hottest couple, "Hi and Lois" - 63A: Hi Flagston's wife, in the comics (Lois).
  

It's funny because it's true.

• 66A: McCann of country music (Lila) - no idea who this is. Give me good ole Thom McAn any day of the week.
• 67A: Cheated, slangily (hosed) - as in "you got HOSED, dude." Once again, I must exclaim ... slangily! Someday, I hope to see "sloganeer" and "slangily" in the same clue.
• 68A: One of "The Addams Family," informally (Tish) - short for Morticia.
• 1D: Comic Smirnoff (Yakov) - his fifteen minutes ended several hours ago. Nothing brings back Reagan-era ethnic comedy quite like the name of YAKOV. See also the sitcom "Perfect Strangers."
• 3D: Actress ZaSu (Pitts) - you see ZASU from time to time in the grid. PITTS, not as much. Interesting.
• 8D: Port of Israel (Jaffa) - wife and I both entered HAIFA here first. I fought through it. She ... did not.
• 29D: "The _____ Love" (R.E.M. hit) - Mmmm, freshman year of college. My favorite thing about this song (R.E.M.'s first mainstream success) was that some people believe it was a love song (the title says so!). Here are some lyrics:

This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I've left behind
A simple prop to occupy my time
This one goes out to the one I love

Romantic!

• 22D: Trolley sound (clang) - you know what I've had in my head ever since I finished this puzzle? "CLANG TONG YANG went the trolley! Ding ding ding went the bell!"

TONG - 31D: Chinatown gang
YANG - 43A: Yin's counterpart

Floor drain in basement is not ... what's the word? ... oh yeah, draining, so encounter with plumber is on my horizon. Wish luck.

Oh, and the Chronicle of Higher Education article about this blog came out on-line yesterday (should be out in paper soon, I imagine - it's password protected, so not available for general readership; I have a pdf file, but I'm not sure of the legality of posting it for all to see). It features a very professional pic of me. The article itself is fine, except for the claim that my "growing readership has made [me] WEARY of [my] underground celebrity at crossword tournaments." WARY might be right, possibly LEERY. But WEARY, no. First of all, I barely have any "underground celebrity" to be WEARY of. Second, whatever "celebrity" is there, I assure you, I have not grown WEARY of it. You are all free to treat me like a celebrity any time the fancy strikes you.

The article also reveals one of my (actual) celebrity readers, and I apologize to her for that. I thought I had indicated to the interviewer that that information was private, but it's very possible that I didn't make that clear. Anyway, I hope she forgives me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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MONDAY, Feb. 18, 2008 - Lynn Lempel (PITCHER'S FAUX PITCH)

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: LEFT-ists - theme phrases all start with words that are (supposed to be) synonyms for non-conservative political affiliations

Well, for those of you who were expecting a higher-than-166th-place finish from me at the upcoming American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, I have a bad omen to report. That omen is today's puzzle, which I tanked like I have not tanked a Monday puzzle since I began blogging. Lately my times have been in the low 3's. Today, high 6's. I couldn't get serious traction to save my life. None of the long phrases made any kind of sense to me, and the NW ... well, I actually had a mini-free-fall up there, where a Horrible baseball clue threw me off completely. Sometimes, knowing too much about a subject can, it seems, hurt you. So I rated this puzzle "Challenging." And yet I doubt other people had anything like the trouble I did. Times at the NYT site seemed normal enough. And I really like Lynn Lempel's puzzles, generally, and don't want to rip into it just because I sucked as a solver. So I'll just tell you where the wheels came off, and try to whine as little as possible.

My underlying problem was with the theme - not just that I couldn't see it, but that the phrases felt far outside the language. I mean, they are phrases one might use, but they don't seem very strong as self-standing phrases. Not xword-worthy. To my ears. Let's start with 17A: Free health and dental care, and then some (Liberal benefits). Frowny face, I say. So Frowny, in fact, that I had -I-E-ALBENEFITS and couldn't figure out what the hell it was. That's the NW corner that's so bullet-ridden there where LIBERAL is supposed to be - more on that later. Then there's 25A: Math symbol for extraction of a root (radical sign), which is really high-end for a Monday. The SIGN part was, for no clear reason, slow in coming. [symbol] for SIGN = kind of anti-climactic. LEFT HANGING (45A: In limbo), which a crossword blogger who shall remain nameless cited (to me) as the iffiest of the bunch, was actually the theme answer I got most readily. Then there was PROGRESSIVE LENS (57A: Eyeglass option for different distances), which I have never heard of. Or, rather, I think I have heard of, but not as clued. My idea was that PROGRESSIVE LENSes were the kind that got darker in sunlight. So, the whole theme just tortured me. On a Monday, if I stumble, I expect to move a little to one side and pick it up again. Not today.

Another thing about the theme: RADICAL does not belong in here. A RADICAL can be right just as well as he can be left. In fact, "the RADICAL right" feels like a much more in-the-language phrase than anything currently associating that word with the LEFT. Further, the whole idea that politics can be effectively understood in terms of right and left is a Lie that the entire world seems quite content to perpetuate because it suits our outmoded Dem v. Rep binary system so well. But this is not the place for that discussion. Probably.

Then there's the specific problem of the NW, and the answer that is really the linchpin of my catastrophic experience: 1D: Pitcher's faux pitch (balk). I follow baseball. You might say I'm a fan. See my earliest write-ups, where I'm out-of-my-mind excited about the Tigers, or this past fall's write-ups, where I can barely refrain from gushing about the Red Sox (whom I've rooted for since Roger Clemens's rookie season, back when becoming a lying steroids-user was probably the furthest thing from his mind). I know what a BALK is. It is not a pitch, and not a "faux pitch." A BALK is a ruling by an umpire on a pitcher's actions, one of which might be any number of feints. The list of balkable actions is long. This is all to say that faking a pitch is not a balk. Pitchers fake runners out all the time (especially lefties trying to keep a man on first) by pretending to start their pitching motions but then not moving toward home but instead stepping and throwing toward first. That is not a balk. To call a "balk" a pitcher's "faux pitch" is absolutely absurd. Makes it sounds like it's something he's got in his repertoire, whereas it's a ruling *about* the pitcher's actions. Many "faux pitches" are not balks at all - in fact, none of them are inherently balks. They have to be ruled as such. It is not a pitch, and it does not belong to the pitcher, the way the clue suggests. I had PALM here, thinking that maybe the pitcher has PALMED the ball (pretended not to have it) and then somehow used that deceit ... to do something. You can see that I was desperate.

The one mystery of the NW, to me, was why I never wrote in BABY at 3D: One often needing a change. When I read that clue, it's the first thing that pops up (not @#$#$#ing BOBS UP - 1A: Bounce to the suface). Who knows what happens to one's brain mid-solve. I think the frustration over BALK colored the whole puzzle experience for me.

Other Issues:

• 34A: Entree in a bowl with beef or lamb, say (meat stew) - this is a crossword-worthy phrase? Don't most stews have meat? I expect my longish answers to be far less arbitrary-seeming than this. I think the word MEAT is just rubbing me the wrong way. Perhaps something to do with yesterday's beef recall and the infernal treatment of the cattle in those videos (and in general, frankly).
• 39A: "Hey, come back a bit" ("not so far") - the longish counterpart to MEAT STEW. This is terrible. I was befuddled that NOT SO FAST (an actual phrase) would not fit. The arbitrariness of these two important, anchor answers is very disappointing.
• 42A: Enter en masse (pour in) - not sure why, but it feels off. The more I think on it, the more acceptable it seems, though, so I'll just leave it.
• 5D: "Couldn't be better!" ("Perfect!") - file this with "NOT SO FAR" under "Colloquialisms I Could Not Retrieve."
• 7D: Ear or leaf part (lobe) - wrote this in, but the "leaf" part made my answer feel very iffy.
• 8D: Four Corners area Indians (Utes) - this was OTOE, then OTOS. If I'd been thinking about geography very clearly, I wouldn't have made this mistake.
• 6D: Pertaining to a son or daughter (filial) - more idiocy on my part. I teach about FILIAL piety every @#$# year when I teach the Aeneid, and still this word would not budge. I blame FLUB (6A: Botch).
  
• 13D: Move skyward (rise) - SOAR is the much, much better answer here, as it actually has associations with the "sky," whereas RISE is banal and generic and describes the action of bread more aptly than it describes what a plane or bird does.
• 23D: Bygone Italian coins (liras) - wrote it in quickly, while cringing. Is that really the plural?
• 25D: Monsoon occurrences (rains) - I thought RAINS were part of "monsoons." I didn't know RAINS were a separate "occurrence." Well, it appears that a "monsoon" is just a seasonal prevailing wind. So ... there. Now I know.
  
• 42D: Home viewing for a price (pay TV) - completely befuddling. I was trying to imagine a situation where you would pay to have a realtor show you a home. Why would you do that? Terrible phrasing on the clue. Or maybe it's Wednesday or Thursday phrasing, and that's what's bugging me.
• 51D: Cries after being burned (yows) - one more thing to groan at.

There's a nice Russia subtheme here, with LENIN, ASIA, and TSAR. There, I said something vaguely positive. I feel better.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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