Tuesday, 12/7/10

Jonesin’ 3:31
NYT 3:18
LAT 3:51 (Jeffrey)
CS 4:29 (Evad)

If you haven’t seen the NYT video of David Kwong constructing a crossword and doing a magic trick at the same time, scroll down to the next post.

Andrea Carla Michaels and Kent Clayton’s New York Times crossword

We’re heading into the home stretch of the NFL season and Monday Night Football is on TV now, so Andrea and Kent’s theme is a timely one: Four theme entries could be described as FOOTBALL MATCH-UPs, as each one pairs players from two NFL teams and turns them into a phrase. You’ve got your (Kansas City) CHIEF (Houston) TEXAN, clued as the [Governor in Austin?] without any reference to secession. A New York Giant is converted into an adjective in GIANT (Buffalo) BILL. A JET PACKER combines players from New York and Green Bay, and L.A. St. Louis butts heads with San Diego for RAM CHARGER. I like the theme. Do you like having the explanatory FOOTBALL MATCH-UP in there? I kinda think I’d like the theme better if that had been left out, though that might make it a Wednesday puzzle rather than an easy Tuesday. Then again, it took me as long as a Wednesday puzzle, so maybe I’m just blowing hot air here.

Oh! According to urlai.com‘s automated analysis, this blog reads like it’s written by a woman who’s happy…and is in the 66-to-100 age group. In order to make that more accurate, I’m afraid I’ll have to start skewing my phrasing so that I come off as younger. Ergo:

This theme is sick!

(That means “very good.”)

I kept filling things in wrong. I put OMAN next to Kuwait instead of IRAQ. And them OMAN showed up later! (Andrea would call that a malapop.) I turned [“Black gold”] into “Spanish gold” and filled in ORO instead of OIL. And I don’t know what happened to the cursor when I tried to enter QUEEG, but Walt Disney ended up having some involvement with UNIMATION. I let the K in Galifianakis lure me to the ZACK spelling, which had to be ZACH in order to do the HULA. Gah!

Mark Bickham’s Los Angeles Times crossword – Jeffrey’s Review

Theme: What’s Up, Doc?  68A. [Critter that can follow the ends of this puzzle’s five longest answers] – BUNNY

Theme answers:

• 18A. [Procter & Gamble laundry product] – IVORY SNOW
• 27A. [Keep America Beautiful concerns] – LITTER BUGS
• 35A. [New England storm] – NOR EASTER. Neither Christmas NOR EASTER do I celebrate.
• 49A. [Space particles] – COSMIC DUST. What is cuter than a DUST BUNNY?
• 59A. [Beach Boys album with bees and flowers on the cover] – WILD HONEY

One-line review for those in a hurry:  Nice hopped-up execution of a cute cotton-tailed theme.

Other stuff:

• 14A. [Speed skater __ Anton Ohno] – APOLO/15A. [Get-up-and-go] – OOMPH. O, what a line!!
• 17A. [What cats and bats do] – RHYME. So do hats and rats. Where else do you get this level of insight?
• 21A. [“The loneliest number,” in a song] – ONE
• 55A. [9-Down adviser] – CPA/9D. [30-day mo.] – APR. Only a CPA can advise you about the months of the year.
• 6D. [Destination in a two-part route] – POINT B. Your GPS may want something a little more specific.
• 7D. [“Many-splendored thing” of song] – LOVE
• 13D. [Like anarchy] – LAWLESS. Lucy Anarchy starred in Xena, Synonym Princess.
• 39D. [Lake Superior natives] – OJIBWAS. Shania is an Ojibwa word which means “on my way.” Eilleen is an Ojibwa word meaning “stuck in Timmons, Ontario.”
• 50D. [Villainous literary alter ego] – MR HYDE
• 53D. [Little laugh] – TEHEE/57D. [Golfer’s pocketful] – TEES. Making fun of a golfer’s pocketful:  TEES TEASE. TEHEE.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Randolph Ross’s CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, “Put It There”—Evad’s review

Pretty easy CS today, with four phrases that follow the {body part} IN THE {location} model. (And, no, “pain” is not a body part, although the other side of that phrase is.) Once you recognize the pattern, you can slap those middle two words in the long across entries when you see one of those five letters from a crossing entry.

• “Flighty in a way” is to have one’s HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
• “Initial introduction” is to put one’s FOOT IN THE DOOR
• “Evidence of stealing” is a HAND IN THE TILL. As we move to a cashless society, tills will become anachronistic.
• Finally, “Temporary avoidance of disaster” is a FINGER IN THE DIKE. For some reason, I think of a thumb in particular as the finger of choice for this work; let me check the Legend of Hans Brinker, from whence I believe this reference originates. Seems the reference to “his chubby little finger” is ambiguous.

My preference would have been to have the entries sorted from head-to-toe,
so to speak, although FINGER and HAND would be a toss-up from that perspective. I did enjoy the ZEST of the zed-action with ZIGZAGS, Paula ZAHN (where is she now that she left CNN? The picture at right is of her playing the cello in Carnegie Hall in 1992.) and ZYDECO. Other entries of interest:

• An unusual abbreviation for S. DAKOTA. It’s either SDAK in my book or the whole darn thing. FT. MEADE is a similar entry, but at least there is no common abbreviation for “Meade.”
• Never have been to Japan, but NARITA Airport is now forever etched into my crossword memory banks due to its friendly alternating consonant-vowel pattern.
• “Not give ___” leads us to A FIG, but isn’t that fig usually flying?
• “Bellow in a bookstore” doesn’t lead to calls to “Shhhhh!” but instead to Nobel laureate SAUL.
• Always prefer to see full names over just last names; no stranger to crosswords YOKO ONO joins us today with both her first and last names. I wonder if she is getting any of the royalties from Apple now that iTunes offers Beatles tunes?

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ crossword, “Getting Hotter”

Matt taunts us with the heat that has departed from the Northern Hemisphere: The theme entries progress from frozen ICE into ethereal hot STEAM. It’s not a plain ICE/WATER/STEAM theme, though:

• 17a. [Hoth, in the “Star Wars” universe] is an ICE PLANET. I’m proud to say that I needed tons of crossings to get this one.
• 20a. [Item in a famous Dali painting] is a MELTING WATCH. Anyone else try CLOCK first? Couldn’t remember which timepiece it was. Either way, it’s not a lexical chunk, this phrase.
• 38a. A SLUSH FUND is an [Account that could be abused].
• 58a. [Plane used for short commuter flights, slangily] is a PUDDLE-JUMPER. Lively fill.
• 64a. [Sci-fi subgenre featuring Victorian Era technology] is STEAMPUNK. Terrific answer. I don’t really get the appeal of the steampunk aesthetic, though.

I have some reservations about the theme. Ice melts into water, not slush; you need snow to get slush. MELTING is not a phase of water. PUDDLE and water aren’t exactly synonymous, but PUDDLE-JUMPER is fun to say so I’ll overlook that. Unless you’re boiling your former ice, you’re not going to get STEAM—you may have some fog, mist, or invisible water vapor. Though the “Getting Hotter” title doesn’t suggest that the laws of nature and climate rule here, so scratch the last gripe.

A few more clues:

• 7d. [Three, in Trier] is DREI in German. I forgot Trier was deutsch and thought it was French, so I tried to get TRES to work here. (I also forgot that in French, three is trois.)
• 9d. RENAL means [Kidney-related]. Yes, indeed! Some of us have an appointment with our nephrologist today. A little medical etymology for you: The hormone adrenaline is secreted by the adrenal glands, which are ad+renal, meaning “next to the kidneys.” The more scientifically accepted name of the hormone is epinephrine, using the Greek roots for “above + the kidneys.” Renal uses the Latin root for kidneys.
• 40d. [Palindromic Burmese leader] is U NU.
• 46d. [Finnish rock band with a “heartagram” logo] is HIM. Who?
• 67d. [Chain dangler] clues a KEY.