Wednesday, 2/17/10

Onion 6:07
BEQ 5:03
Fireball 4:51
LAT 4:01
NYT 3:14
CS untimed

Elizabeth Long’s New York Times crossword

The theme doesn’t quite cohere for me. GLOBAL WARMING appears in the ring of circled squares, with the G pulling double duty. The Notepad tells us that this phrase is “suggested by” the three theme answers, which are food dishes with a cooking term in their names. LONDON BROIL, BAKED ALASKA, and ROAST TURKEY do not at all evoke GLOBAL WARMING for me. Now, if the theme entries had been MELTING ICECAP, CLIMATE CHANGE, and BLIZZARDS IN D.C., that would make sense. I’m also not thrilled with the inconsistent placement and part of speech for the cooking terms. (Edited to add: Ohhh, I see. London, Alaska, and Turkey are places on the globe, and those cooking words also signal warming.)

Favorite fill:

• 6D. BAD BLOOD is [Enmity] and a Neil Sedaka song in the ’70s.
• 11D. FANTASIA is the artsy [1940 Disney film].
• 33D. [“Shoot!”] clues “DANG IT!” The clue also points to 34D: ASK.
• 35D. A [Nassau native] is a BAHAMIAN. Also a Long Islander, no?

Less familiar business:

• 29D. [Camus’s “Lettres a ___ Allemand”] clues UN AMI: “Letters to a German Friend.”
• 47D. DORIC columns, sure. But [Column with a simple capital] seems more Fridayish to me.

Crosswordese in the plural:

• 62A. ACERS are clued as [Ones who try to put things past you?]. Aw, the question mark in the clue got my hopes up that we were in for something good here.

Byron Walden’s Onion A.V. Club crossword

Quickly, because there are too many puzzles to get through before my ACPT vacation—The theme is “familiar phrases reinterpreted as if common nouns were the famous people whose nicknames are those nouns.”

• 23A. [Puts on a Jayceon Taylor hip-hop CD?] clues PLAY THE GAME. I presume rapper The Game’s given name is Jayceon Taylor?
• 26A. [Dwayne Johnson’s oversized head?] is DOME OF THE ROCK. He is, of course, The Rock. DOME OF THE ROCK is an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem.
• 44A, 47A. Apparently the real name of Jersey Shore‘s “The Situation” is Mike Sorrentino? [Capitalize on Mike Sorrentino’s reality TV celebrity?] clues MAKE THE MOST OF/ THE SITUATION.

I had to ask Across Lite to pretty please tell me that one last square, the J in:

• 34A. [Rapper with “The Shining”], J-DILLA.
• 30D. [Nicole Richie’s ill-fated ex], DJ A.M. With the D*AM in place, I wasn’t thinking of spelling out all four letters individually. And here I thought I should get credit for knowing that Nicole and Joel Madden just got engaged, but are already parents together. Now I need to know her deceased exes?

Updated Wednesday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith’s CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, “DNA Land”—Janie’s review

Martin got me but good with this one. Oh, I completed the puzzle without too much difficulty, but darned if I could figure out how the the title related to the theme fill or what I was even to make of the theme fill. Quirky phrases—but what was it all supposed to mean? And then… and then… and then at last the light dawned. Major head-slap. How about you? Did you catch on to the gimmick as you were solving? Or like me, did you look at:

• 20A. “RISE TO VOTE, SIR!” [Get up and enter the booth, man!”];
• 39A. O.J. NABS BOB’S BANJO [Dole’s instrument swiped by Simpson?] First of all, HOMER and BART came to mind long before O.J. And second of all, is there nothing that man won’t try to make his own?! And
• 58A. WE PANIC IN A PEW [Our reaction to pastor’s scary sermon]

and say, “Wtf?” I wanted to contact the NSA [Code-cracking org.] (was that the “DNA” connection?) to help me make sense of everything. And then… and then… (!!) palindromes!! Ni-i-i-ice.

And terrific non-theme fill to boot. What a lovely start to the puzzle with AGNUS [“___ Dei”]. This translates from the Latin as “Lamb of God.” The very next word, thank you very much, is LAMB or [Gentle one]. Initially I thought that the answer to [Hightails it] was going to be LAMS…, but this turned out to be RUNS.

The longer entries are especially fresh and rangy: CAT’S CRADLE [Children’s string game], TERRAPINS [Diamondback reptiles], IN THE WIND [Imminent] and VENERATION [Profound respect]. The shorter ones ain’t so shabby neither: MENSCH [Good guy] and SPIEL [Sales talk] being two faves. Those are two words you’re likely to hear in the vicinity of the EDER [River of central Germany]. Ooh—and HAMPER Picnic basket]. Looks tempting, no? That sumptuous spread and the SEA AIR [Beach atmosphere]…

OB’S are [Delivery room docs]. And while I’d not known that the word BREECH means [Rear], I did know that a breech birth (simply put) is one in which the baby’s position is reversed in the womb, so that the baby is delivered “rear” first. Not the happiest kinda way for mom to deliver…

We spend a little time on the west coast of Africa by way of ACCRA [Capital of Ghana] and [Sierra ___] LEONE. Across the Mediterranean from North Africa lies Italy, where [Caesar’s subjects] were ROMANS and [Ovid’s 52] was LII. Am still searching for a map of the [Perfect world] known as UTOPIA…

I know Martin wasn’t intentionally APING [Mimicking] his CS colleagues, but we do have some more fill-recycling here today, with the recently-seen ALOE, LALO and EASE. Yesterday we had the clue [___ Ste. Marie], so today’s [Sault ___ Marie] shoulda been a slam dunk.

Where Martin truly distinguishes himself, though, is in the inclusion of one seriously inspired piece of bonus fill. Thank you ever so for the palindromic [“The] ABA [Daba Honeymoon“]. Now that’s just perfect.

Peter Gordon’s Fireball Crossword #7, “Themeless 5”

Easiest Fireball themeless to date, no? I find myself with not much to say about it.

Favorite answer: Sesame Street‘s MR. SNUFFLEUPAGUS, though the MR. part isn’t ringing a bell. Runner-up: The GREAT WHITE NORTH, which is Canada’s nickname and the name of that Bob and Doug McKenzie comedy sketch. ‘Take off, eh?”

The three spaced-out Across 15s are bolted together by the vertical 15 in the middle. There are six other answers in the 8- to 10-letter range, but no swaths of stacked long fill. I like to bundle the long fill together in the corners, personally.

Least familiar answer: THE D.I., or a [1957 film in which Jack Webb plays a marine sergeant]. Anyone ever hear of this movie, or see it?

Pete Mitchell’s Los Angeles Times crossword

(Excerpted from my L.A. Crossword Confidential post.)

THEME: “Play (Volley)ball!”—Three phrases start with words that are also volleyball hits

Theme entries:

• 20A: [How some scary things go] (BUMP IN THE NIGHT). I’m not wild about BUMP IN THE NIGHT dangling out there without its prefatory GO. BUMP is the standard underhand volleyball move, isn’t it?
• 29A: [Not subject to change] (SET IN STONE). That’s rock-solid. A volleyball player SETs by hitting the ball upwards with both hands up high.
• 47A: [Some stilettos] (SPIKE HEELS). Jump up and smash the volleyball over the net for a SPIKE.
• 54A: [Activity that involves the first words of 20-, 29- and 47-Across] (VOLLEYBALL GAME).

What all is in this puzzle? This:

• 23A. [Nous minus moi?] (TOI). That’s French for “us minus me = you.” Speaking of French arithmetic, there’s also 8D: [Quatre + sept] = ONZE. That’s 4 + 7 = 11.
• 46A. [More work] (UTOPIA). That’s Utopia, written by Thomas More in 1516.
• 52A. [Not quite oneself] (OFF). I fear I will be a little OFF this weekend. Am not feeling that competitive fire in the crossword belly.
• 63A. [Tobacco unit] (LEAF). Not at all an expected clue for LEAF. The clue had me thinking of CHAW.
• 25D. [Leans, as a ship] (LISTS). Anyone else use this word when your own body is leaning to one side? I do. I tend to LIST as I walk down the hallway to my kitchen.
• Aw, man! 45D. [“Star Trek” defenses] (SHIELDS) duped me. I know that PHASERS are offense, not defense, but still. The PHASERS messed me up here.
• 53D. [Canine woes] (FLEAS). Your canines are your eyeteeth, of course. And you go to the dentist when your eyeteeth have FLEAS.

Brendan Quigley’s blog crossword, “Do or Die Time”

This one’s my favorite of today’s puzzles. The title, it turns out, gives away the rebus theme: In exactly symmetrical spots, five rebus squares contain DO in their Across answers and DIE in their Downs. “Do or die” is 100% in the language, and it’s timely because this week’s ACPT is “do or die time” for participants. There’s no arcane alternative rock fill, no deadly crossings, no lame or forced fill. I don’t give the 5-star rating to many of Brendan’s puzzles (on the leaderboard at his site), but this one is deft and has a delightful theme gimmick.

The rebus answer pairs are: KING{DO}M COME crossing IN{DIE} FILM, ALL {DO}NE crossing SAN {DIE}GO ZOO, SU{DO}KU crossing TI{DIE}ST, AB{DO}MEN crossing INGRE{DIE}NTS, and IN GOO{D O}RDER crossing the terrific entry YO-YO {DIE}TS.