Monday, 11/28/11

NYT 3:16 (pannonica) 
LAT 3:38 
CS 7:33 (Sam) 
BEQ 7:23 

Andrea Carla Michaels’ New York Times crossword — pannonica’s review

NYT 11/28/11 • Michaels • Mon • solution • 1128

Super-smooth Monday puzzle, providing a very fast solve time for me (even with the still-unfamiliar new keyboard). As 1-across indirectly proclaims, this crossword has a lot of FLOW.  The theme here is adjectives to describe comparative aesthetic appeal, associated with people’s names.

• 20a. [Notorious 1920s–’30s bank robber] PRETTY BOY FLOYD.
• 33a. [America Ferrera’s Emmy-winning role] UGLY BETTY.
• 44a. [Hardly a beauty queen] PLAIN JANE.
• 54a. [1940s–’50s wrestler with golden locks] GORGEOUS GEORGE.

Not in order, we see the transition from disparaging UGLY to the neutral PLAIN to the merely PRETTY and finally to the apotheosistic GORGEOUS. I kind of like the similar clue construction—with the decade ranges—of the first and last clues; provides a bit of a bookend effect. Good too is the balance of boys and girls. [edit: It would have been better, though, if  the allocation of epithets had been more egalitarian among the genders. –p.] Unsurprisingly, and reflective of society in general, the whole thing skews slightly toward the visually pleasing.

Other things:

• Perhaps subconsciously primed by the theme, I notice that OBESE directly follows SARA Lee Cakes in Row 2. GALUMPH (25a) is a deliberately ungainly portmanteau word, meaning to [Walk clumsily], courtesy of Lewis Carroll.
• Speaking of clumsiness, the crosswordese REUNE makes an appearance at 64a. That’s about the worst offender in this fluid puzzle.
• Some appealing mid-length fill, with ISOTOPES (clued somewhat freshly with a Simpsons reference), PILSENER (with the middle-e unelided), and SLOE GIN appearing in full,  for a change.
• 13d. [Nettled, with “off”] is TEED. This clue took an errant path in the pachinko of my brain, so I thought the answer was TIED. Until just now, I assumed it was an unfamiliar golf term. Being so far off really steams me!

This pleaser of a puzzle should garner plenty of 35d YEAS [Approving votes].

Jeff Chen’s Los Angeles Times crossword

LA Times crossword answers, 11 28 11

Hot on the heels of his triumphant Sunday New York Times puzzle, Jeff pops in here with a Monday puzzle that felt like a Wednesday to me (but maybe it’s just past my peak cognitive hour). The theme goes to college to earn a B.A.:

• 55a. [Common college degree, whose abbreviation is a hint to 20-, 28-, 39- and 48-Across] is a BACHELOR OF ARTS. The other four theme answers have B.A. initials.
• 20a. [Ted Williams had a .344 lifetime one] refers to a BATTING AVERAGE. This answer tricked me into reading 23a: [Stat start] as being about baseball, so I took the R and ran with it for RUNS (although runs/hits/errors isn’t technically a statistic)—the answer is the prefix RHEO-. And then when I had ERA via the crossings, I looked to see if it had a baseball clue; luckily, it’s [Disco ___]. Mind you, I didn’t want everything to focus on baseball—it’s just that so many crosswords have trained me to think that way.
• 28a. [Site of many a shady transaction] clues BACK ALLEY.
• 39a. [Boo-boo protector] is a brand-name BAND-AID.
• 48a. [Bullet-proof vest, e.g.] is BODY ARMOR.

Five more clues:

• 63a. [With 67-Across, innovative or experimental artists’ group] clues AVANT and GARDE, centered and stacked together nicely.
• 71a. DIPS are [Chip enhancers]. What’s your favorite dip?
• 4d. [Dance that precedes “golf” in the NATO phonetic alphabet] is FOXTROT. Lovely clue.
• 5d. [Wheelchair guy on “Glee”] is ARTIE. I don’t watch the show so this one was all crossings for me.
• 15d. [St. for gamblers] is NEV., short for Nevada. State, not street or saint.

Highlights: DREADLOCKS, EGG ROLLS, FRAIDY CATS, FOXTROT, and HOBNOB are all terrific. And I like seeing 11d: YANG, [Yin’s counterpart], given Jeff’s other work. Four stars.

Updated Monday morning:

Sarah Keller’s CrosSynergy/Washington Post crossword, “Closing the Gap” – Sam Donaldson’s review

CrosSynergy/Washington Post crossword solution, November 28

The four theme entries are three-word phrases with the letter pattern ___G A P___, and since we don’t enter spaces into the grid, solvers effectively “close the G-A-P.” It’s a fine theme idea, but look at how some of the theme entries appear to have even more in common, suggesting an added layer that’s not quite fully developed:

• 20-Across: [Being superpowerful] is PACKING A PUNCH.
• 28-Across: [Promoting something] is MAKING A PITCH. That looks an awful lot like PACKING A PUNCH, right? Doesn’t that suggest the theme is more along the lines of __KING A P__CH? That’s what I was thinking until I got to…
  
• 46-Across: COPPING A PLEA, clued as [Bargaining for lesser charges]. So much for that idea! But then we get…
  
• 57-Across: TAKING A POWDER, clued as [Disappearing with no notice]. The __KING part is back, but not the P__CH. So while the theme entries are perfectly consistent, something feels a bit irregular to me.

I got a little lost in trying to suss out the exact parameters of the theme, but my slower-than-average time is more attributable to my grappling with lots of unknowns in the fill. Among the more confounding parts: (1) TITI as the [Small monkey found in the Amazon]; (2) ARNE as the [“Rule, Brittania” composer]; (3) PICT, not an abbreviation for PICTURE but an [Ancient Briton]; (4) U.A.R., short for “United Arab Republic,” clued as [Egypt and Syria, at one time (abbr.)]; (5) RHODY as the [Aunt from a children’s song] (don’t know her, don’t know the song); and (6) PET PIG as the answer to [It may be potbellied]. I had the PIG but had to play guess-a-letter twice over to find the first word (since it intersected both ARNE and PICT–yeesh!

That’s a half-dozen “huh?”s, which is two or three times my normal quota. It wasn’t all frustrating, though. I liked ONE POTATO, the [First words of a choosing rhyme], LI’L KIM, UNCANNY, and BARGE IN. It’s a little cliche to say that solving crosswords helps one in constructing them, but my experience to day was the opposite: this time my work in construction paid off during the solve. I used to struggle with the spelling of GANDHI, the [Indira of India]. But now I remember that the correct spelling contains three consecutive postal abbreviations: Georgia + North Dakota + Hawaii = GANDHI.

Brendan Quigley’s blog crossword, “Themeless Monday”

BEQ 388 answers

I just plain didn’t enjoy this puzzle. The clues didn’t deliver any of the 15s to me easily, and then none of the first 15 Down clues were 100% obvious either. And when I did start piecing things together, from the middle on outwards, there were a lot of weird things that didn’t make me happy.

ELIS with a clue that I had no clue about.. SID with a clue that meant nothing to me. DIT with…I don’t even remember the clue there. IRED as a letdown for a clue that promised more, ENOLA as a trite answer with a new clue, the AHSO/STERE/STOAS grouping…those things just weren’t working for me. And the insulting reference for BAM—and here I thought the anti-Obama crowd preferred “BHO,” “Obambi,” or “Barack HUSSEIN Obama.” Guess I don’t keep up with the anti-Obama internets.

I did like NEVER HEARD OF HIM, POSTSEASON GAMES, BANANA PEEL, ISRAELI COUSCOUS balls, Calvin & Hobbes cartoonist Bill WATTERSON, TRIBECA with a car clue, and the etymology clue for HAMAS.

Three stars.