Wednesday, 10/5/11

Onion 5:38 
NYT 3:46 
LAT 3:17 
CS 6:27 (Sam) 

Hearty congratulations to Joon Pahk on his second straight Jeopardy! win today! If you weren’t already impressed with the breadth of Joon’s knowledge, surely you are now.

Barry Boone’s New York Times crossword

NY Times crossword solution, 10 5 11 1005

Similar to yesterday’s theme by Dan Feyer, this one’s got a bunch of short thematic bits strewn throughout the grid rather than having a handful of long answers. DOUBLE A, which is a more minor minor league than Triple A, is represented by six AA rebus squares. The zippiest AA crossing pairs AFRIK{AA}NS with M{AA}LOX, while IZ{AA}K/S{AA}R hits the nadir. SAL{AA}M is solid, but AN{A A}LICIA of Falcon Crest? I know the name only from crosswords—Wikipedia tells me that she’s only 54 but has largely been out of the public eye for the past couple decades. Meh. C{AA}N/SE{A A}IR, S{AA}B/B{AA}ED, and N{AA}N/TE{A A}CT round out the theme.

There are some long Downs, but ITERATION and SEGREGATE just say “boring long word derived from Latin.” Would’ve been nice to sneak in a sparkly phrase here. X-GAMES is good, though. The big mystery word in the grid is 4d: VARESE, a [City or lake in northern Italy]. The city has only 82,000 people! Am I the only one who would have found record label Varèse Sarabande a more accessible way of cluing this? Because I needed every crossing to get the geography answer.

3.25 stars.

Byron Walden’s Onion A.V. Club crossword

Onion AV Club crossword solution, 10 5 11 Byron Walden

All righty, I solved this puzzle while drinking wine, so please pardon me if I mangle the blogging thereof. There are three theme answers formed by appending NO to the beginning of three entirely unrelated phrases. The NO parasitically attaches itself to the beginning of each phrase’s first word, breaking the word in two:

• 24a. [Statement after Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai’s abdication in 1945?] combines NO and Who’s the Boss? into NOW HO’S THE BOSS. Ho… Ho… Ho Chin Minh, I presume?
• 33a. [“Try this snack – you’ll get smarter!”?] negates a “shit for brains” and gives us NOSH IT FOR BRAINS.
• 45a. [Rock ‘n’ roll legend with innovative pet therapies?] is a NOVEL VET ELVIS.

Kind of a fun and unexpected theme, NO?

The 72-word grid would make the cut for a themeless puzzle, and there are plenty of long answers wedged in here—the CAVENDISH banana, phrasal AVERAGE OUT, EXTRA SAUCE (which is a good thing on pizza), golf’s FEDEX CUP, poppy “RICO SUAVE.”

Five favorite clues:

• 26a. [Mature parties?] are ADULTS. ORGIES AT “THE VILLAGES” IN FLORIDA wouldn’t fit.
• 53a. Our [Beret-topped “What’s Happening!” character] is RERUN. Yay, late ’70s TV! Rerun was much beloved. I do need to point out the typo in that clue. The show’s title is What’s Happening!!, with two exclamation points.
• 5d. [Mail man?] clues KNIGHT, as in someone wearing chain mail.
• 41d. [Message spelled out by punked Harvard fans at the 2004 Harvard-Yale football game] clues WE SUCK. (Did you guess that Byron has a degree from Yale?)
• 52d. [Androgynous-looking kids] are EMOS. I was totally thinking of actual children rather than emo teens with skinny jeans and hair flopping over their eyeliner.

In the “this is the Onion, we can get away with this” vein, we have drugginess (UP IN/SMOKE, NARCS who are [E-tailers?] on the tail of people selling E) and male-oriented lewdness (morning WOOD, a ROD, a RODEOS clue about “staying up”).

Isn’t Mike ROWE of Dirty Jobs more famous than Michael Jackson’s ex, Debbie ROWE? He’s certainly more attractive to me.

Four stars.

Clive Probert’s Los Angeles Times crossword

LA Times crossword solution, 10 5 11

This one’s slightly reminiscent of the recent “air travel woes” theme, isn’t it? The theme entries are vexing things that keep some people (not me) up at night:

• 17a. [Honk … honk … honk …] goes the AUTOMOBILE ALARM. “Car alarm” is more in the language, but an 8-letter theme answer wasn’t going to work here.
• 27a. [Woof … woof … woof …] go the BARKING DOGS.
• 42a. [Drip … drip … drip …] goes a LEAKY FAUCET.
• 54a. And a GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP is [What you’ll get as a result of 17-, 27- or 42-Across? Not!]. Before I read the “not!” part, I put in A BAD NIGHT’S SLEEP, which…does anyone say that? I’m not sure.

This theme might also have considered including neighbors playing their music loud or having a party, but it’s hard to convey that by repeating the same word three times.

The grid’s notable for having a pair of 9’s in the northwest and southeast quadrants. My favorite of the 9’s is 2d: “BLUE BAYOU,” the [Roy Orbison song that was a top ten hit for Linda Ronstadt].

Two Jane Austen references! 10a: EMMA was a [1996 title role for Gwyneth], and 30a: LYDIA is the [Youngest “Pride and Prejudice” Bennet sister]. Heidi KLUM, Doris Day of “Que SERA Sera” fame, MARGE Simpson, STES, and “Ave MARIA” provide the other estrogenic answers today, offsetting ROMEO, LEAR, GUYS, Marcel MARCEAU, Dan’l BOONE, Josh GROBAN, Bret Easton ELLIS, LEON Spinks, Mr. MAGOO, THOR, and Eric UTNE ring in the for the fellas. Dang, the menfolk outnumber the women yet again.

3.5 stars. Fun theme.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Bruce Venzke’s CrosSynergy/Washington Post crossword, “Posturing” – Sam Donaldson’s review

CrosSynergy / Washington Post crossword solution October 5

Here’s a very interesting crossword from Bruce Venzke. The theme is very simple: four expressions, each starting with an adjective that can also be a verb describing one’s posture:

• 21-Across: A [Defenseless target] is a SITTING DUCK.
• 25-Across: The [Start of an ancient Chinese saying] is CROUCHING TIGER. The rest, of course, is “hidden dragon.” Anyone else think of those old Calgon commercials upon seeing the phrase “ancient Chinese?” I don’t think you would see an ad campaign like that today.
• 45-Across: [Permanent rules of military conduct] are known as STANDING ORDERS.
• 51-Across: I didn’t know that a [Mass transit vehicle with adjustable door height] is a KNEELING BUS. I wonder if that was the seed for this particular theme.

This is probably the right level of difficulty, though it could have been spiced up a little if the clues referred to verb forms of the first words. I’m thinking that a clue like [Bench-warmer on the University of Oregon sidelines?] for SITTING DUCK or [“Pop tall!” and “Get up!”, e.g.?] for STANDING ORDERS could add a little more depth albeit at the cost of a little more complexity. I’m not faulting Venzke, as the target demographic for the CS puzzle is the newer solver who likes easier puzzles. I’m just noting that by re-framing the clues you can get a slightly harder puzzle that fans of word-play might like.

There’s also a noticeable mix of sparkly and starchy fill. On the sparkly side there’s the Nintendo GAME BOY, JET LI, RENT-A-WRECK, and the great NILES CRANE (the last two stacked with theme entries, leading me to think at first that they too were theme entries somehow). On the empty-calorie front, there’s OBIS, OTIC, E.LEE, CMDR, and ILE. Eww. I’m not sure what to think of K-TEL and K-CAR in the same grid, but I’m leaning toward liking it.

I liked the intersecting entries with the same [Bounder] clue, CAD and RASCAL. When I toggled between the clues on my computer I thought there must have been an error when the clue did not change. On a related note, check out the [Bounders], ROUES, on the other side of the grid.

My only trouble spot was the answer to 10-Down, the [Johnson & Johnson product]. With BAND- in place, I confidently plunked down BAND-AID. The second A worked to end NORA Ephron, but it left me with TII toward the end of CROUCHING TIGER, to say nothing of the ID- start to the [Republic founded in 1836]. Idaho? No, it had to be TEXAS. Figuring I misspelled the brand name, then, I tried BAND-ADE, even though that didn’t feel right to me. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the answer was BANDAGE, which to me is the generic term for the product. Looking back, I don’t like the clue. With the specific reference to Johnson & Johnson, I feel like the answer should have been to the brand name, BAND-AID. It’s like using [Kimberly-Clark facial product] to clue TISSUES and not KLEENEX. Okay, maybe that’s not the best comparison. But you get the idea.