Sunday, 3/13/11

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick Berry’s New York Times crossword, “Reverend Spooner, U.S.P.S.”

Okay, I’m beat. Long day out, it’s late, I’m tired, and the sofa/SNL combo is calling to me. Ergo, super-short post on the NYT.

Theme: Spoonerized phrases spell out the missing bits of a tale about Reverend Spooner (the character who brought us Spoonerisms, where two words’ initial sounds are swapped), only he (or she) is working as a postal employee. Not that “filled with cheer” is a specifically postal-related phrase, but here it is anyway, spoonerized into CHILLED WITH FEAR.

The theme didn’t grab me too much, but it may be that I just wasn’t alert enough to care.

I see some lewd interpretations of a couple of the theme entries, but I leave it as an exercise for the reader to ponder that.

Updated Sunday morning:

Lynn Lempel’s CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, “Sunday Challenge”—Evad’s review

I always enjoy Lynn Lempel‘s themeless constructions, since she is able to take her estimable talents in solid early week themed grids and apply them to the more open areas of a themeless. Today was no exception, and I found this one offered very little resistance, except for one particular crossing which I guessed wrong.

Let’s start with the smooth stuff:

 
• You gotta love the confidence of a constructor who puts in THING as the money entry at 1-Across. Can you get any more pedestrian?
• Rare to see an entry of only 7 letters, 5 of which are consonants and one of the other two is a Y: PSYCHED. You onelook fans, are there others? I like shyster.
• THE JIG’S UP is good, I think the non-contraction version of the phrase is more common, though.
• [Presidential candidate who said, “I will offer a choice, not an echo”] was Barry GOLDWATER. A bit before my time; he lost to LBJ in 1964.
• HOF clue for DAN: {Rather good at reports].
• Cute clue for SATAN as well: [One in a hot spot?]. It don’t get any hotter than hell!
• It’s hard to imagine Nick NOLTE being voted as People‘s “Sexiest Man Alive” anytime in the 90’s; in 1992, he was 51, which is what I will be next month, so there’s hope for me yet!
• I haven’t read anything by Joyce Carol Oates (I started The Falls but abandoned it, unable to get into it). Her novel about Marilyn Monroe, BLONDE came out in 2000 and was a finalist for the National Book Award that year. She claims the novel is a work of fiction and shouldn’t be considered a biography of the screen legend.

 

 

 

I found the four triple stacks, other than the entries I mentioned, to be a bit low on the Scrabble point meter, and it was in one of these stacks in which I reached my Waterloo—I had DANG IT ALL for [“Darn!”], crossing a word I was not familiar with TROCDEE at the initial D. Well, there’s a reason I wasn’t familiar with TROCDEE, it’s not a word at all. Instead, a [Metrical foot] is a TROCHEE and the DANG should’ve been HANG. I see here, it’s pronounced TROH-kee and is from the Latin trochaeus (running). Ah well, hang it all!

Merl Reagle’s syndicated/Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, “The Fashion Police” – Jeffrey’s Review

NOTE with puzzle: Today’s cautionary tale involves the Inspector, the Lieutenant, and the Designer.

Theme: A clothing-punned crime story. I have attempted to fill in the missing details. Don’t try this at home; I’m a trained accountant.

Scene one:

(Theme music playing)

Sirens blaring, a police car moves alongside a van filled with new clothing.

INSP: (Shouting) HEY PULL OVER! We’re the Fashion Police!

DESIGNER: (Confused) What’d I do, officers?

LIEUT: You STOLE A PEEK at a competitor’s designs.

DESIGNER: But I’m innocent!

LIEUT: Maybe so, but we have  A MATERIAL WITNESS. He says you’re  PART OF A RING .

DESIGNER: That’s not true!

INSP: Don’t worry. You’ll look good in STRIPES. Okay, lieutenant, SLAP THE BRACELETS ON HIM.

The scene fades out as the handcuffed Designer is led into the back of the police car, which then drives away.

Scene Two

One Week Later. The Lieutenant angrily bursts into the Inspector’s office.

LIEUT: What happened? I thought we had him!

INSP: He gave us THE SLIP. His attorney filed some LEGAL BRIEFS. (Pauses and sighs)  And then his SUIT WAS THROWN OUT.

LIEUT: GOOD COLLAR, though …

INSP: Yeah, even if he was just AN ACCESSORY.

Fade to black. Credits roll.

Other stuff:

• 1A. [Vacation isle] – BALI/59A. [African nation] – MALI. I want to see an all ALI puzzle.76A. [1970s pop-rock grp.] – ELO84A. [Olivia’s leading man, often] – ERROL. I loved them in “Grease“.8D. [Nighttime host] – DAVE. I watch it backwards, so to me it is EVAD.15D. [Catchy item, perhaps] – TUNE. It’s a Small World After All…50D. [Prynne’s symbol] – RED A. Scarlett, you might say.

  79D. [LP player] – HI FI. Ask your parents.

  83D. [Baseball’s Matty] – ALOU. I know what you are thinking. While Felipe was an Expos  manger and his son MOISES played for the Expos, Felipe’s brother Matty was never associated with the team. True, but the third brother Jesus, nearly played for the Expos. He was their 7th pick in the 1968 Expansion draft, but was traded to Houston before the season started.  Rusty “Le Grand Orange” Staub came to the Expos in that deal, where he went on to hit a lot of home runs and give me a now long-lost autograph. And that’s what you were thinking.

  93D. [Uncle Remus’s ___ Fox] – BRER. Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

  107D. [A Cabinet Dept.] – HHS. One of you will tell me what this means.

  121D. [Be over with] – END. And my blogging is at an END for a little while. Next week in Brooklyn!

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon’s Boston Globe crossword, “Talking About the Weather” – Sam Donaldson’s review

It may be close to spring, but this puzzle is still mired in winter.  Cox and Rathvon take five common phrases that relate to talking but clue them as comments related to winter weather, even though the phrases themselves normally have nothing to do with anything meteorological.  Sends chills down your spine just thinking about it, huh?  Here are the theme entries:

• 23-Across: [“All snow is white” and “It covers everything”] are BLANKET STATEMENTS.  That is, they are not only all-encompassing propositions asserting premises without proof (blanket statements) but also statements about blankets of snow.  My favorite blankets are blanket denials, followed closely by slankets.
• 38-Across: [“I’m speaking specifically of ice”] might be one interpretation of LET ME BE CRYSTAL CLEAR.  Speaking specifically is being clear, and here the speaker is being clear about crystals…of ice.
• 61-Across: To [Keep saying “It’s not flurrying” when it is] is to TELL LITTLE WHITE LIES.  Here, the lies are about snow, the white stuff.
• 79-Across: One who says [“Stop guesstimating the temperature!”] might also be saying STICK TO THE COLD FACTS.  I know this expression as “stick to the cold, hard facts.”   I dunno, are cold, soft facts easier to stick to than the hard ones? Regardless, props for using “guesstimates” in the clue–a favorite portmanteau.
• 101-Across: [“And I think you know what I mean about snowblowing”] may be a wintry way of saying IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT.

There’s only five theme entries, but three of them are 19 letters long and the other two are 17 letters long. The typical 21×21 grid might have eight to ten theme entries averaging around 10 letters in length, so in terms of total squares, this grid has average theme density. Still, for some reason this particular grid had a low theme density feel to it.

If you had told me at the start of the solve that I would post a time under 13 minutes, I would have been stoked.  And yet I’m a little disappointed because I was on pace to post a time under ten minutes (a personal best for a 21×21 grid) until I hit my personal train wreck in the southeast corner.  The confluence of COMOROS, the [Madagascar neighbor], [“The Elder” of Roman science] PLINY, and PIANOLAS, those [Self-playing keyboards], spelled disaster for me.  I tried PIANATAS (which turn out to be keyboards filled with candy) and then PIANETAS (which are maybe keyboards used by CIA officials).  It didn’t help that I stuck with AHA as my [Cry of discovery] when this grid wanted OHO.  (I’m thankful that IHI and UHU aren’t also triumphant shouts, as two choices is plenty.)

High Points: My favorite fill included BEAT IT, SCIMITAR, COWGIRL, and ROADEO, the [Truckers’ contest].  Thanks to blogging, this time I had no trouble with ITALO as the [Novel-writer Calvino].   I can also thank increased exposure to crosswords for IBSEN as the instant answer to [“Ghost” playright].  Little known fact: Ibsen wrote the part of Oda Mae Brown specifically with Whoopi Goldberg in mind.

Low Points: If you make me find something unappealing in the grid, I suppose I would point to ELOPEMENT, the [Thwarted lovers’ option]. It’s a perfectly legit word, of course, but almost always one hears the verb form and not the noun form.  The real low point, to be frank (even though my name is Sam), has nothing to do with the grid and everything to do with my own idiocy. I resisted ENG as the [H.S. course] only because I kept saying to myself, “They don’t teach engineering in high school!” Seriously.

Trouble spots: I avoided lots of quagmires through easy crosses. Looking back, though, there were some parts that could have been nasty. For instance, I don’t know FEMTO as a [Prefix for a quadrillionth], even though the prefix aptly states my chances for a trophy at the upcoming ACPT. KILIM is not a chant from an angry mob–it’s a [Turkish rug].  And the clue for BEETLES, [Coleoptera members], means nothing to me–it just looks like a mash-up of Cleopatra, Cole Porter, and opera. Let’s see the “Glee” kids tackle that one!

I did have a hard time (briefly) with SABOT, the [Shoe made of wood]–a pair of which sits to the right.  New to me is HARICOT, clued here as [Kidney bean, say].  My dictionary says the word refers to any edible pod of various beans, and sure enough it uses the kidney bean as its example.  Finally, I don’t get [What some dons do] as a clue for TEACH.  Someone please explain this in the comments so I can go ahead and slap myself on the forehead.

Jack McInturff’s syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, “I Before E’s”

The theme entries take phrases with an I and change it to an EE:

• 23a. [Meek Jolly Roger crewmen?] are PIRATE SHEEP (ship). Minus five points for the unchanged I in PIRATE.
• 42a. [Polish protector?] clues SHEEN (shin) GUARD. Did you notice that it took a dreadful catasatrophe to dislodge Charlie Sheen from the daily news cycle?
• 51a. [Red-costumed actor in “Veggie Tales”?] is a BEET (bit) PLAYER.
• 59a. [Take really short catnaps during a Henny Youngman routine?] clues SLEEP (slip) BETWEEN THE CRACKS.
• 76a. [Tiny nestling’s cry?] is a MICROCHEEP (microchip). Cute! But minus five points for the extra I in MICRO.
• 88a. DEED (did) BATTLE could be an [Ownership dispute?].
• 109a. [Meryl as a coquette?] turns striptease into STREEP TEASE. Hey, did I ever tell you how I feel about the word tease?
• 16d. [Drug money?] clues EVIL GREEN (grin). Oh! Missed opportunity to get an EVIL TWEEN into the puzzle. Minus five for the EVIL I.
• 74d. [Fund for hammer parts?] clues PEEN (pin) MONEY.

While [Pen name] is a decent mislead for 54d: BIC (making us think of pseudonyms rather than ballpoints), it’s too bad that there’s a PEN right nearby at 57d. I’d have clued the PEN as a pigpen or the state pen, or used a boring “ballpoint name” clue for BIC.

95a: VIOLENCE is clued as [R rating cause]. There’s an incredible amount of violence to be found in PG-13 movies, whereas the nonviolent The King’s Speech picked up an R rating because it used the F-word a few times, but not in anger. The MPAA must live in terror of parents who wig out because Junior was exposed to a cuss word (as if the kid doesn’t encounter the same word on the playground!) but really don’t care if Junior sees a slew of people getting gunned down or tortured.

The highlight of the fill is the nice stacked 9s in two corners.

Five clues:

• 61d. [’60s Israeli prime minister] is ESHKOL. This name is not a frequent habitué of crosswords and I needed a lot of confirmatory crossings. Abba Eban, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Ehud Barak—those shorter Israeli leader names get a lot more play in crosswords.
• 11a. [Focus at a boxer’s school?] is OBEDIENCE. The dog, not the pugilist.
• 97d. [Wikipedia policy] is NO ADS.
• 56a. [Swedish city connected by a bridge to Copenhagen] is MALMO. If you don’t know the city name and you don’t know crosswordese STELE, you might not have gotten that L.
• 37a/37d. Nice pairing—[Old strings] are LYRES and a LUTE.

Karen Tracey’s Washington Post crossword, “Post Puzzler No. 49”

Hey! Karen Tracey! I was just talking about you yesterday. I attended my niece’s high-school Group Interpretation theatrical competition, wherein teams provide a dramatic interpretation of literature without sets and props. A rival team performed Hilary and Jackie, so now I know much more about JACQUELINE DU PRE than I did a couple years ago when that answer killed me in one of Karen’s puzzles.

I don’t recall seeing a Karen Tracey grid anchored by 15s before. This one’s got stacked pairs of 15s bolted together by the vertical URSULA K. LEGUIN. There are more blah short answers and abbreviations than I’m used to in Karen’s puzzles, which are typically super-clean. And one of the 15s is kinda blah—ACTIVE INTERESTS doesn’t sing the way CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO and FANTASTIC VOYAGE and LIZA WITH A “Z” do. Overall, lots of Scrabbly fill, as is Karen’s wont.

Ten clues:

• 8a. [Town with a legend about disappearing children] is HAMELIN, of Pied Piper fame.
• 36a. PIKES are [Pole weapons]. Who doesn’t love looking at those fearsome medieval weapons?
• 48a. [Moroccan seaside resort city] is AGADIR. Makes me think of Hank Azaria’s unforgettable Birdcage character, Agador Spartacus.
• 53a. [SVU part] is UNIT, as in “Special Victims Unit.” I had UTIL., having misread it as [SUV part].
• 62a. I’D SAY SO. [“Sounds right to me”]. Terrific colloquial expression.
• 5d. Some AUSSIES are [Victorians, e.g.] in that they live in the Australian state of Victoria.
• 7d. [Cosa Nostra] is a term for THE MOB. Great “the __” answer.
• 13d. ICE-T is/was a [Member of the band Body Count]? I had no idea.
• 26d. FREE AGENTS? Oh, [They can sign with anyone].
• 50d. [Magazine with the slogan “Where travel can take you”] is AFAR. I have never heard of this magazine.