Alphonse's comics partner / WED 12-14-11 / No Such Thing blues rocker / Ring foe of Manolete / Metrosexual's tote

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Add a Q — familiar phrases have Q added, creating wacky phrases, which are clued "?"-style

 Word of the Day: QUM (47D: Holy city of Iran) —

Qom (Persian: قم [ɢom], also known as Q'um or Ghom) is a city in Iran. It lies 156 kilometres (97 mi) by road southwest of Tehran and is the capital of Qom Province. At the 2006 census, its population was 957,496, in 241,827 families. It is situated on the banks of the Qom River. // Qom is considered holy by Shi`a Islam, as it is the site of the shrine of Fatema Mæ'sume, sister of Imam `Ali ibn Musa Rida (Persian Imam Reza, 789–816 AD). The city is the largest center for Shi'a scholarship in the world, and is a significant destination of pilgrimage. (wikipedia)

• • •

This actually played Easy-Medium for me, but I had some freakishly good guesses—got MANBAG (1A: Metrosexual's tote) instantly, got JOHN MAYER (35D: "No Such Thing" blues rocker) off the JO- despite not associating him with blues or rocking, etc. I was done with this before I understood the theme. I knew there were Qs in there, I just didn't know what they were doing. Turns out, nothing. Take them out, and you get ordinary phrases. Alright. Wish the theme answers had been funnier ... or just funny at all. TRADITIONAL IRAQ? If you are going to play on words, the "play" should be amusing or entertaining, not just defensible. UNEVEN BARQ'S is OK, and COUNTY FAQIR is interesting, though the much much much more common spelling of FAKIR is ... thusly ("Q" spelling has occurred exactly one time in the NYT, clued as a "Var."). QATARI COMPUTERS was just MEH for me. Enjoyed a couple of the longer Downs, but a lot of the fill felt rough. Lots of crossword accommodation—jury-rigged stuff like PANDG (39A: Consumer products giant, briefly) and LONGU (27D: "Rude" sound) and TSTOPS (?) (69A: Movie camera settings). Obscurish crosses like AMARNA (14A: Cuneiform discovery site) / GASTON (6D: Alphonse's comics partner) (two words I know *only* from crosswords). I will say that the grid is interesting—not dull, and not filled with complete junk. And it was easy for me, so I should be more delighted, perhaps. But it turns out that just shoving Qs into things doesn't excite me as much as you might expect.



Theme answers:

• 20A: Mesopotamia? (TRADITIONAL IRAQ)
• 28A: Inconsistent brand of root beer? (UNEVEN BARQ'S)
• 45A: Local ascetic? (COUNTY FAQIR)
• 53A: Some Mideast laptops? (QATARI COMPUTERS)

I'm deeply ambivalent about the one non-theme Q. PHYSIQUE is better fill than PHYSICAL under almost any circumstances, but I think I'd have gone with the latter solely for the sake of Q consistency (or Qsistency, as I'm now calling it). There shouldn't be any stray Qs in a Q-themed puzzle like this. Elegance compromised.

Bullets:

• 44A: ___ Quested, woman in Forster's "A Passage to India" (ADELA) — Love the Q-iness of Quested in this Qlue.
• 5D: Barbuda's island partner (ANTIGUA) — Currently trying to memorize all world capitals (inspired by my gorgeous new Oxford Atlas of the World). The capital of ANTIGUA and Barbuda is ... St. John's? ... yes, I'm right! (I'm only part way through the Cs, so the solidity of my knowledge at this point is super-dicey)
• 13D: Hoopster with six rap albums, for short (SHAQ) — Holy what the!? SIX!? How can that be right???? 

• 55D: Ring foe of Manolete (TORO) — I'm guessing this Man guy is a famous toreador ... yes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

My Life autobiographer 1975 / THU 11-10-11 / Explosive roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure / Roman writer grain of salt / In bad company per Ambrose Bierce

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: I to l — Clues on theme letters appear to begin with capital Is, but really begin with lowercase Ls. Revealer = 55A: Feature replaced in four clues in this puzzle (CAPITAL LETTER)

Word of the Day: PLINY (10D: Roman writer who originated the phrase "with a grain of salt") —

Gaius Plinius Secundus (23 AD – August 25, 79 AD), better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian. Spending most of his spare time studying, writing or investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field, he wrote an encyclopedic work, Naturalis Historia, which became a model for all such works written subsequently. Pliny the Younger, his nephew, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus:

For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading; above measure blessed those on whom both gifts have been conferred. In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions.

Pliny is referring to the fact that Tacitus relied on his uncle's now missing work on the History of the German Wars. Pliny the Elder died on August 25, 79 AD, while attempting the rescue by ship of a friend and his family from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that had just destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The prevailing wind would not allow his ship to leave the shore. His companions attributed his collapse and death to toxic fumes; but they were unaffected by the fumes, suggesting natural causes. (wikipedia)

• • •

I am having a terrible solving week. Couldn't get a handle on this one for a long time. Huge chunks of the puzzle filled in and No idea what was going on. Eventually had enough sense to see the common trait shared by all the long Acrosses, and somehow my brain moved IAMB to LAMB in one of the theme clues, and ... I got it. Feeling of "I got it" was more "oh..." (or "AH, ME") than "aha." Never did like these clues-as-answers, answers-as-clues puzzles (e.g. LAKE IN SPANISH is a clue phrase, not a phrase you'd normally see in a grid on its own). For the second day in a row, there is almost no contemporary frame of reference, so it feels very musty. For the second day in a row, the fill is suspect (a ton of short junk). And yet this is a more clever and better executed puzzle than yesterday's. Seems like an original concept, and it definitely provided a challenge. The revealer is weak, though. Too vague—not letter specific enough. It's not just a CAPITAL LETTER that's replaced; it's a specific CAPITAL LETTER, and it's replaced with another specific lowercase letter. Great concepts need execution that is worthy of them. This one felt like it came out of the oven a bit early.

Theme answers:

• 20A: lago (LAKE IN SPANISH)
• 26A: lon (ACTOR CHANEY)
• 35A: lams, say (FLEES FROM PRISON)
• 47A: lamb's place (PASTURELAND)

It's late, and I want to go watch Penn State burn, so I'll make this quick.

Bullets:

• 15A: "Absolut Nicht!" ("NEIN!") — Thought this was a vodka clue. Also thought "nicht" was "night."
• 16A: River to the Arctic Ocean (LENA) — not how I think of the LENA ... insofar as I think of the LENA at all, which I don't. Much.
• 22A: Half of a 1955 merger, for short (CIO) — AFL-CIO. CIO is ... sub-optimal. Not as sub-optimal as -ICAL, but close.
• 64A: "My Life" autobiographer, 1975 (MEIR) — this kind of cluing is depressing. Generic. Colorless. Absurd. 

• 1D: Dollar coin figure before Susan B. Anthony, familiarly (IKE) — I misread this and thought we were looking for the nickname of the coin. "They called those IKEs?" I mean, I knew Eisenhower was the reference.
• 12D: Fills, as black squares (INKS IN) — how the hell do you fill black squares!?!? If they are black, they are full. End of story.
• 19D: Compromise is the best and cheapest LAWYER" (saying attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson) — "attributed to?" Get a real quotation.
• 52D: "Explosive" roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure (NITRO) — my one great guess of the day. I really, really needed it, because that whole SW section was empty for a while (had LETTER, but couldn't come up with CAPITAL because I figured the answer would have to be more specific).
• 41D: "___ Declassified School Survival Guide" ("NED'S") — absolutely no idea what this means. What the hell? A defunct Nickelodeon sitcom?
• 57D: Angle iron (L BAR) — Phrase "angle iron" means zero to me. Thought it might be a golf club. L BAR is junk fill.
• 56D: Mythical ship with a speaking oak beam (ARGO) — clue could've stopped at "Mythical ship"; four letters—everyone knows the answer.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Discobolus sculptor / FRI 10-28-11 / People Its Leaders muralist / Filling yarn / Fictional maker earthquake pills elephant bullets

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: José Clemente OROZCO (2D: "The People and Its Leaders" muralist) —

José Clemente Orozco (November 23, 1883 – September 7, 1949) was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others. Orozco was the most complex of the Mexican muralists, fond of the theme of human suffering, but less realistic and more fascinated by machines than Rivera. Mostly influenced by Symbolism, he was also a genre painter and lithographer. Between 1922 and 1948, Orozco painted murals in Mexico City, Orizaba, Claremont, California, New York City, Hanover, New Hampshire, Guadalajara, Jalisco, and Jiquilpan, Michoacán. His drawings and paintings are exhibited by the Carrillo Gil Museum in Mexico City, and the Orozco Workshop-Museum in Guadalajara. Orozco was known for being a politically committed artist. He promoted the political causes of peasants and workers. (wikipedia)

• • •

I just like the way this grid looks—like some kind of angry monster from a "Space Invaders"-era video game. I'm never as impressed as I probably should be with stacks of very long answers, but as low word-count puzzles go, this one seemed pretty solid. I mean, yeah, lots of -ERs (BEARERS and RANGERS and TEASERs and GENDERs, for example just to name stuff in the middle), but all as part of interesting answers; plus, the short stuff is really not terrible, which is all I ask from these Big White Space puzzles.

I actually found this puzzle very easy (it's not often I can do a Friday under 6). After the obvious -ER to RCAS opening gambit (which went nowhere), I went after those short Downs in the north. After A FIT and DREA and the "S" at the end of 8D, I had TEA SETS, then guessed RHEE, and that gave me more than enough for A RUN FOR THE MONEY (not a phrase that sounds right ... A RUN FOR ONE'S MONEY, or MY MONEY, or YOUR MONEY ... THE MONEY seems strange). And, as is typical with stacked 15s, one is all you need to make short work of the whole lot. Made a good guess at ENO (20A: Composer of "1/1," "1/2," "2/1" and "2/2") and then followed Ginger Rogers IN HEELS straight down the east coast of the grid. Thought BERSERK (23D: Crazy way to go?) was BANANAS, but I knew K-TEL had to be right (39A: "Hooked on Classics" company), so ... yes, BERSERK. Got LANES. Every good solver has ACA and DECOCT in his bag somewhere, so those were no problem, and bam, there I was, clear on the other side of the grid.



Hacked my way from the NW down after that. Just guessed OROZCO (having most of the crosses in place), and then started closing in on those long central answers from the west side of the grid (turns out I ate most of my meals junior and senior year directly in front of a giant OROZCO fresco, "Prometheus"). I once considered putting "GO RANGERS" in a fruit rebus puzzle I made (33A: Winter cry in New York), so that answer didn't seem strange to me at all. Guessed SEAGRAM (which I know better as a wine cooler), and then worked my way into the SW corner. BRAM was a gimme, and I got BAALS from there. Once I finally remembered TRACEY Ullman (how could I forget?—her show is where "The Simpsons" got its start back in the late '80s), then down went SYSTEMS ANALYSTS (which always makes me think of Martin Prince on "The Simpsons"—that's his dream job). And ... poof. Done. I just had to trust that BRAHMAS (34D: Some rodeo bulls) was right (I'm not quite up to speed on my rodeo terminology). Last word in was ANTI-GUN (42A: Pacific, perhaps).





Bullets:

• 50A: Fictional maker of earthquake pills and elephant bullets (ACME CORPORATION) — from whom Wile E. Coyote purchases ... everything, I guess. 
• 53A: Feature of the ideal path (LEAST RESISTANCE) — spent several long seconds trying to make LEAST DISTANCE work.
• 4D: Amsterdam-based financial giant (ING) — had AIG at first, which was right enough to help me get FORGIVE ME FATHER... (17A: Part of many confessions).
• 10D: Filling yarn (WEFT) — Not a word I have occasion to use or see ... ever. I was surprised to see it in my grid when I was done.
• 15D: "Discobolus" sculptor (MYRON) — thought I'd never heard of him, but then remembered saying that before. Pretty sure he's been Word of the Day before.
• 25D: Jerry in the Basketball Hall of Fame (SLOAN) — another former Word of the Day (I think). Longtime coach of the Utah Jazz.
• 43D: Abram of "This Old House" (NORM) — I know lots of NORMs. This isn't one of them. NORM is the new WEFT.
• 51D: Wilfred Owen poem "Dulce et Decorum ___" (EST) — "It is sweet and fitting (to die for one's country)"—as you can see, Owen's not quoting Horace approvingly:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Singer called Jezebel of Jazz / SAT 10-8-11 / Grandpa player Look Who's Talking / Giant brain 1940s / Dream Children author 1822 / Bandleader Three Little Fishies

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Jerry SLOAN (47D: Hoops Hall-of-Famer Jerry) —

Gerald Eugene "Jerry" Sloan (born March 28, 1942), is an American former National Basketball Association (NBA) player and head coach, and a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame.^[1] NBA commissioner David Stern called Sloan "one of the greatest and most respected coaches in NBA history."^[2] Sloan had a career regular-season win–loss record of 1,221–803, placing him third all-time in NBA wins.^[3] Sloan was only the fifth coach in NBA history to reach the 1,000 victory milestone, and he is the only coach in NBA history to record 1,000 wins with one club (the Utah Jazz). He also coached for one team longer than anyone in NBA history. The 2009–10 season was his 22nd season (and 21st full season) as coach of the Jazz. Sloan coached the Jazz to 15 consecutive playoff appearances from 1989–2003. Although he never won a Coach of the Year award, he is one of only three coaches in NBA history with 15-plus consecutive seasons with a winning record (Pat Riley and Phil Jackson are the others).^[3] He led Utah to the NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998, but lost to the Chicago Bulls both times. (wikipedia)

• • •

This must have been pretty easy, as I did it immediately after rolling out of bed, and with the cat intermittently howling for his breakfast, and still finished in well under 10 minutes. There was a kind of false start there at the beginning (where starts usually are ...) when I wrapped up that entire NW section and still had no way to get out. I knew BRASS and AUTOMOBILE and TSAR and couldn't finish any of them off. AUTOMOBILE was a great life line, as it gave me ELAND and then VENT, and then that "V" (combined with AUTOMOBILE's "B") gave me ABE VIGODA (7D: Grandpa player in "Look Who's Talking," 1989), and at that point I was well and truly on my way—from there it was a leisurely stroll to the finish line, with only minor obstacles along the way. You know, little stuff like having IN INK instead of INKED (34A: Permanent, in a way) or failing to remember that horrible Italian partial from Mozart (39D: "___ Pastore" (Mozart opera) => "IL RE").


Bottom half proved Much easier than the top. Wanted PUTS and OPENED before LOCKS and ANSWERED in their respective answers, but I knew both of the names in the SW corner, so unraveling that problem wasn't hard. I think the grid is very nice overall, though there's a slightly off quality to the marquee answers—the central Down and central Across. I hear the phrase DRINK (or DRANK) THE KOOL-AID (15 letters!) a lot. All the time. KOOL-AID DRINKERS (while very inferrable), not so much (37A: Unquestioning adherents). Very rarely. Maybe never. And the "-ED"s on in MIXED AND MATCHED were annoying as well (8D: Like some clothing ensembles). "MIX-AND-MATCH" is a very familiar, in-the-language expression. Put those "-ED"s on there, and the phrase feels clunky. I see, however, that it's used all the time, so I can't get too worked up about it. Never great when you have two answers that are names ending in Roman numerals. Now if there'd been a "III" to go along with LEO I (26A: Predecessor of Pope Hilarius) and TSAR ALEXANDER II (17A: Assassinated leader called "the Liberator"), I'd have found that clever. NOL looks like a negation of LOL, and thus like a perfect expression of how I felt upon uncovering it. NOL-pros? Some legal abbreviation? (yes: nolle prosequi) Terrible.

SØREN was an absolute gimme, as was AT ALL. Those gave me ISLE and KOLN (21A: Largest city in Nordrhein-Westfalen), and thus the NW corner was done. Fast. I thought the [Kind of request in Burns's "To a Mouse"] was going to be a noun, which is stupid, since "kind of" pretty much shouts "adjectival," but my brain works how it works (or doesn't). That ended up being simply SMA, one of many crosswordesey words hidden under somewhat-to-very daunting clues; see also ELIA (31D: "Dream-Children" author, 1822) and ADANO (51D: Fictional Sicilian town in a 1944 novel). ENIAC is crosswordesey, but that clue was daunting in no way (14D: "Giant Brain" of the 1940s). I did not know the Taurus replaced the LTD (11D: The Taurus replaced it). In my head (which is, as we've seen, an unreliable venue) the LTD is longer and boxier, and the Taurus is kind of a fat, rounded version of every four-door sedan on the road. I wouldn't be surprised if at least one person got Naticked by the O'DAY / KYSER crossing (57A: Singer called "The Jezebel of Jazz" / 53D: Bandleader with the hit "Three Little Fishies"). Those are reasonably common crossword names, but crossing two proper nouns, both from old music, seems a little dicey. That "Y" should be inferrable, but ... you never know.


Bullets:

• 6A: It's often popped on a shoulder (AUTOMOBILE TRUNK) — Another grid-spanning answer that seems slightly clunky, if technically correct. You pop (the colloquialism you've chosen) your TRUNK, not your AUTOMOBILE TRUNK. The very phrase is impossible to imagine in normal human speech. "Do you mean pop the elephant trunk? The steamer trunk? Be specific!" I also resent that the answer isn't HOOD. If you're on the shoulder, chances are *that* is what you've popped. I guess people keep their jacks in their TRUNKS, but still, "pop the hood" is the phrase I most associate with automotive problems. "Pop the trunk" is something we mostly say before loading or unloading luggage.
• 12D: "Xena: Warrior Princess" role (ARES) — and here I was trying to remember the name of her special little friend.
• 61D: "Forgot About ___" (2000 Grammy-winning rap) ("DRE") — Feels like it's been a while since I've seen DRE in my grid. Here's the rap in question (all profanity silenced)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Cartoon busman Mann / FRI 9-2-11 / 1968 title role Vanessa Redgrave / Kandahar cash / Cousin of canvasback / Hook accompanier / Dust-laden winds

Constructor: Tim Croce



Relative difficulty: Medium



THEME: none





Word of the Day: Roh TAE-woo (5D: South Korea's Roh ___ Woo) —

Roh Tae-woo (Korean pronunciation: [no tʰɛ.u]; born December 4, 1932 in Daegu, South Korea), is a former ROK Army general and politician. He was the 13th president of South Korea (1988–1993). (wikipedia)

• • •

Felt tougher than it was, perhaps because I thought it would be pretty damned easy when I saw the grid layout. Stacked 15s are red meat for constant solvers. I don't eat actual red meat, but you get my drift—it's the stuff that makes our mouths water. You just need a few short crosses, usually, and the 15s start to fall. And when they fall, they tend to fall fast. Well, that didn't exactly happen here, at first. Had nothing for certain, then went with SILT and LSAT and EURAIL, but then couldn't get anywhere. OTTO and WAS and ILER were too far apart, it seemed to help me much with the 15s. Then I just ignored the crosses and decided to think hard about phrases that could fit 17A: Continue cordially despite differences. PART COMPANY something something? ... no ... AGREE TO DISAGREE. Yes. Bam. That got things moving. Still, tough cluing on things like SMEE and SHORE and OSSO and AFGHANIS (!) kept me from really flying.



Bottom half was a bit easier, though I did not flow smoothly down there. Kept having to reboot. Got a smattering of answers like DANTE, ARFS, ARP, ETC, and TRE, but again they were all too far apart to do me much good. Ended up lucking into AS IT WERE because I had (wrong) NEWER at 55A: Not as experienced. That ended up being RAWER, but the "W" gave me the traction I needed for AS IT WERE. Swung back up to the middle to (finally) get D'ARTAGNAN, which gave me all the traction I needed to start taking apart the bottom stack of 15s. Still (!) clues on stuff like RING and LARD provided enough resistance to keep me from blowing through the grid. Which is fine. It's Friday after all. In the end, my time was pretty normal for a Friday. Last thing into the grid was the fix from NEWER to RAWER.





Bullets:

• 16A: Thing rolled in a classroom (EDUCATIONAL FILM) — cluing feels forced here. I get that one "rolls" a film in some contexts, but this didn't feel like one of them. Feels more newsroomy. I had EDUCATIONAL and could not figure out what could possibly follow.
  
  
• 18A: Cousin of a canvasback (TEAL) — so it's a duck then. Alrighty.
  
  
• 23A: Agricultural Hall of Fame locale: Abbr. (KAN.) — the whole damned state feels too big for the "locale" of what I imagine is a single building.

• 36A: 1968 title role for Vanessa Redgrave (ISADORA) — Duncan, I'm guessing. I have no idea. Yes. Duncan. I had this spelled ISIDORE at first, thanks to the tenacious influence of ISIDORE of Seville.
  
  
• 57A: Earth as organism (GAIA) — I knew this was some kind of "mother earth" name, but "organism?" News to me.
  
  
• 9D: Piquant sandwich base (ONION ROLL) — technically accurate, I guess, but I can't imagine anyone's describing an ONION ROLL as "piquant." Also, I don't think of bread as a "base." You order X *on* [some kind of bread product], thus the "base" / foundation of any sandwich is the stuff *between* the bread. Sandwich judgment has been rendered!
  
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Red giant in Cetus / SAT 8-13-11 / Yardbirds hit of 1965 / Unlike aristos / Ki legendary founder of Korea / Sci-fi writer Frederik

Constructor: Tim Croce



Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium





THEME: none



Word of the Day: MIRA (60D: Red giant in Cetus) —

Mira [...] also known as Omicron Ceti (ο Ceti, ο Cet), is a red giant star estimated 200-400 light years away in the constellation Cetus. Mira is a binary star, consisting of the red giant Mira A along with Mira B. Mira A is also an oscillating variable star and was the first non-supernova variable star discovered, with the possible exception of Algol. Apart from the unusual Eta Carinae, Mira is the brightest periodic variable in the sky that is not visible to the naked eye for part of its cycle. Its distance is uncertain; pre-Hipparcos estimates centered around 220 light-years, while Hipparcos data suggests a distance of 418 light-years, albeit with a margin of error of ~14%. (wikipedia)

• • •

A solid Saturday outing, and a solid minute faster than yesterday's puzzle. What was most remarkable today was how much prior solving (i.e. lots and lots of solving experience) helped today. I mean, it probably helps every day, but today there were some answers that I remember specifically learning from crosswords. After a quick start (OGEE to NEIGH (15A: Trigger-happy sound?) to WHARF, almost instantly), I had a tiny bit of trouble bringing down the first set of long Downs. I had ANACONDA, and so tried out the short crosses, since I had all of their first letters in place. I looked at 26A: Unlike aristos and tried to think of a word for "poor" or "working class" or "common" ... then remembered the nutty four-letter word I'd seen a handful of times in late-week puzzles past: NON-U. Plugged it in and it worked. Had a similar experience at A.M.E. (32A: Letters in some church names)—African Methodist Episcopal, utterly unknown to me until I ran into it (or it me) in a some old crossword. Had some good luck too. Guessed "I'M A MAN" off just the first "I" and the second "A" (24D: Yardbirds hit of 1965); happened to know POHL (58A: Sci-fi writer Frederik); wrote in NOM for 56A: Jacques Cousteau, e.g. without much hesitation. That last one was damn lucky, as that SE corner was the only corner I was in danger of really struggling over (of course I should've guessed EIDER off the damn first "E," but for whatever reason it did not come at first). NOM + A-ONE got me JOAN BAEZ, which was a real corner-opener. Last letter was probably one of the "A"s in SAAB, which I first had as STAT (34D: 9-5, e.g.).





Grid is solid, with very little in the way of forced or wobbly or obscure fill. Grid is also highly forgettable, with the clue on "GET A ROOM!" being, by far, the most original and lively feature (2D: Order to curtail public bussing). TOO TIRED TO THINK is somehow not very exciting. The clue is more vivid than the answer, I think (7D: Mind-numbingly exhausted). I've never heard of Godzilla creator Tomoyuki TANAKA, which is weird since I'm almost certain I recently put the original "Godzilla" movie in my Netflix queue. But TANAKA is the only thing in the grid I'd never heard of before. Oh, I don't know that particular TSE (30A: Ki ___ (legendary founder of Korea)), but that little answer pretty much filled itself in, so no biggie.







Bullets:

• 28A: Allspice and clove's family (MYRTLE) — why aren't ladies named "MYRTLE" any more? It seems the last MYRTLE of note (American actress MYRTLE Vail) died in 1978.
  
  
• 38A: Allowing peeking, perhaps (AJAR) — I like this voyeuristically inclined clue. Other suggestive fill includes COMES ONTO, GET A ROOM, AT IT AGAIN, INTO IT, and ERECT.
  
  
• 61A: Fifth in a series of seven old comedy films ("ROAD TO RIO") — though it might be something Thin Man-esque. . .

• 63A: Her temple was adorned with cows' horns (DIANA) — wanted it to be HERA, who is often described as "cow-eyed," but no. Once I had EIDER, DIANA was pretty easy to figure out.
  
  
• 13D: Its logo features two eighth notes (iTUNES) — I'm very familiar, though lately the logo I've been staring at most days is the Spotify logo. I don't know what it's supposed to represent.
  
  
• 50D: They call their native language "te reo" (MAORIS) — I had almost all this filled in before I saw the clue, which is too bad, as I think I could've got this one. Have a lot of experience with said language from various NZ cryptic crosswords (which I used to solve with my (Kiwi) wife).
  
  
• 58D: Like tailgated drivers, often (POKY) — had SLOW at first. POKY is much nicer.
  
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Ruminant's third stomach / WED 6-22-11 / YM or Us output / Yount had 1406 of them / Online option since 1998 / Moo makers / Unit for chairmaker

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: THE FIRST LETTERS / OF EACH / CLUE GO / FROM A TO Z IN ORDER (21A: Including 38-, 41- and 60-Across, a description of this puzzle's theme) — just what it says, only the clues do that A TO Z cycle three times ...


Word of the Day: OMASUM (6D: Ruminant's third stomach) —

The omasum, also known as the bible, the fardel, the manyplies and the psalterium, is the third compartment of the stomach in ruminants. Though its functions have not been well-studied, it appears to primarily aid in the absorption of water, magnesium, and the volatile fatty acids produced by rumen fermentation, that have not been absorbed into the bloodstream yet. The numerous folds of its mucosa are thought to trap digesta particles so that the maximum amount of nutrients may be absorbed. (wikipedia)

• • •

Feels like something I've done and not liked before. Theme answers = instructions. Puzzle hook is found is first letters of clues (instead of grid itself). Fill is not terribly interesting, and clunky in parts, due in part to the fact that a stunt grid like this imposes certain limits. For example, this puzzle, in addition to accommodating the "description," *had* to be 78 words, i.e. a multiple of 26, to accommodate the A TO Z pattern in the clues. Puzzle felt a bit harder than normal, probably (again) because of pressures of the theme (I mean, why would you go to Robin Yount for an RBIS clue (64D: Yount had 1,406 of them)?? Oh, you require a "Y" clue. Well all right). As a solver, I don't get any pleasure from marveling at the *cluing*. I guess there might be some joy in breaking the code (... DRINK MORE OVALTINE ...), but that part wasn't terribly difficult, or terribly revelatory ... or rather it *was* revelatory, just of something I didn't care about ("huh ... OK ... back to filling in this mediocre grid, then ...").

["... from chimpan A to chimpanzee ..."]
OMASUM is what I'd call a "sore thumb."

EDA and ESA and ERTE all in the same grid! An embarrassment of riches! (42D: LeShan who wrote child-care books) (26D: Conductor ___-Pekka Salonen) (68A: Harper's Bazaar illustrator of the 1910s-'30s). My favorite part of the puzzle was the symmetrical and virtually synonymous END LATE (8D: Take too long) and RUN OVER (45D: Not stay within the allotted time). Considering I ran over my normal Wednesday time, these answers seem appropriate. Hold-ups included OMASUM (the second "M" in particular, since "No Love (But Your Love)" is not in my brain's catalogue of Johnny MATHIS songs (29A: "No Love (But Your Love)" singer, 1958)); RBIS (I had HITS and then RUNS); CREATE (the clue works, but it's hard to see how at first) (53D: Result in); NETZERO (forgot they existed) (46D: Online option since 1998); SEURAT (French artist, German-sounding clue) (24A: Kröller-Müller Museum artist); and ... I think that's it.



Bullets:

• 15A: Domitian's "you love" (AMAS) — here's where I figured out something was fishy. Clue was easy to figure out, but ... Domitian!?
  
• 20A: Historical region of France (ARTOIS) — now probably best known to Americans as part of the Stella-ARTOIS beer name.
  
• 48A: Xavier Cugat film "___ Were Never Lovelier" ("YOU") — I kind of want to clap for this clue. Xavier Cugat wins the "Best X Clue" category today.
  
• 49A: YM or Us output (ISSUES) — Love this clue. Looks like gibberish until you realize you're looking at magazine titles.
  
• 70A: John McCain ranch locale (SEDONA) — a beautiful place, I'm told. SEDONA, I mean. No one I know has been on McCain's ranch ... I don't think.
  
• 4D: "Pshaw!," to a Valley girl ("AS IF!") — Another good clue, mostly because it has me imagining Valley girls actually saying "Pshaw!"
  
• 9D: Unit for a chairmaker (SLAT) — OK, I will give this puzzle one thing—the limits it puts on cluing really encourages some decent inventive thinking. Clues aren't boring, even if the grid kind of is.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Best-selling jogging advocate / SAT 5-7-11 / Bourgeouis to Brit / Blades of song film / Unlike opera Wozzeck / 1963 1996 treaty topic

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: None


Word of the Day: TRAMMEL (38A: Restrain) —

n.

1. A shackle used to teach a horse to amble.
2. Something that restricts activity, expression, or progress; a restraint.
3. A vertically set fishing net of three layers, consisting of a finely meshed net between two nets of coarse mesh.
4. An instrument for describing ellipses.
5. An instrument for gauging and adjusting parts of a machine; a tram.
6. An arrangement of links and a hook in a fireplace for raising and lowering a kettle.

tr.v., -meled, or -melled, -mel·ing, or -mel·ling, -mels, or -mels.

1. To enmesh in or as if in a fishing net. See synonyms at hamper¹.
2. To hinder the activity or free movement of.

[Middle English tramale, a kind of net, from Old French tramail, from Late Latin trēmaculum : Latin trēs, three + Latin macula, mesh.] (answers.com)

• • •

Took me almost twice as long as yesterday's puzzle ... which still puts it in the easy-for-a-Saturday puzzle. Might have set another record, but got held up a tad (A MITE?) in the NE, where TRAMMEL was not a word I knew, and LIESL (8D: Von Trapp girl who's "sixteen going on seventeen") was not a name I knew (though, to my credit, when I got that -SL ending, I persisted rather than scrapping it—first guess: GEISL), and I didn't know if I was dealing with LEVEL I or LEVEL A or maybe, in some odd twist, LEVEL 1 at 8A: Most convenient section of a parking garage, usually, so I sat back and waited for crosses. Also never heard of ANNA SUI (62A: Designer with the Night of Fancy fragrance) and took a while to remember NON-U (54D: Bourgeois, to a Brit) and wanted APIA instead of SUVA (49A: Main campus site of the University of the South Pacific) and had PASTE instead of BASTE (42D: Wallop) which left me with the odd PEAR SALAD at first (instead of BEAN SALAD) (42A: Barbecue side dish). Still, all these obstacles were minor, especially for a Saturday. 1A: Best-selling jogging advocate (JIM FIXX) was a gimme, and those are some pretty auspicious letters to start out with.

I liked the puzzle fine, but I won't remember it tomorrow. Nothing here really stands out. STRAP-ON could have stood out ... but not with that clue (35A: Like scuba tanks, typically).

Bullets:

• 14A: Size of about 16 tennis courts (ONE ACRE) — got it easily enough, but the wording is weird. I thought the clue meant that there were about 16 tennis courts in the world that were that big. Those would be some big courts.
  
• 15A: Green light for un hombre (SI SEÑOR) — never saw the clue, which is weird, considering I actually struggled a tiny bit in that section.
  
• 16A: 1963 and 1996 treaty topic (TEST BAN) — seemed a very militaristic puzzle, with TEST BAN and H-BOMB and ARMS DEAL and ICBM and IRAQ and TRAUMA and LUTIST (just seeing if you're paying attention)
  
• 33A: Unlike the opera "Wozzeck" (TONAL) — I like this clue. Actually, I just like the name "Wozzeck."
  
• 22A: Olympic gold-medal pentathlete Lehtonen (EERO) — "How am I supposed to ... oh, it's just EERO."
  
• 25D: They moved to St. Louis in '95 (L.A. RAMS) — Had the L- and -MS and couldn't come up with a sports team because I kept thinking "The Saint Louis ... what!? BLUES? CARDINALS?"
  
• 32D: Deadly African tree-dwellers (MAMBAS) — my entree into the NE (from below). Couldn't get anything to cross it at first, so I doubted it a bit (A MITE!?), but eventually the answers came.
  
• 34D: High-tech gadgetry suffix (-TRON) — Saturday clue. Any other day, and that's a movie title.
  
• 48D: Blades of song and film (RUBEN) — BLAH-days. Before my time. Never heard him before, to my knowledge—but I kind of like this, esp. the set, and the band:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter or Tumblr]

Santa drawer / SAT 2-19-11 / Controversial color enhancer / Classic novel with biblical parallels / Picasso painting sleeping mistress

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none


Word of the Day: Emma SAMMS (48D: "The Colbys" co-star) —

Emma Samms (born Emma E. W. Samuelson; 28 August 1960) is a British television actress best known for her role as Holly Sutton on the American daytime soap opera General Hospital and for replacing Pamela Sue Martin as Fallon Carrington Colby on the primetime soap opera Dynasty. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was good, but had way too much short stuff to be very interesting. Tons and tons of 4- and 5-letter answers, more (or so it felt) than your average Monday puzzle. I count 14 answers at 9+ letters and 56 (!) 3-, 4-, and 5-letter answers. No mid-range fill. That's weird. Grid is also weird, with a ton of black squares (again, about as many as one might expect to see on a Monday). Not a lot of fun in going into one of these 4x4 nooks. The one in the SW was the toughest for me, and was not, in the end, very tough. I solved this faster than I did yesterday's, which I did in pretty good time. First thing in the grid was JAZZ (11A: What makes cats happy), and from there proceeded to wipe out most of the grid without much resistance. There were so many blind alleys, I kept expecting to get caught short in one of them (esp. the center), but that just didn't happen. Not a bad experience, but not a memorable one either. I'm thrilled to take a Saturday down in under 8 minutes, but somehow doing so today didn't feel like such a big accomplishment.

All the 4s and 5s gave me ample opportunity to slice into those longer answers, and they all went down without a peep. Up top, after getting EAST OF EDEN (20A: Classic novel with biblical parallels) out of the NE, I dropped ODEA, RDAS, and NAST (9D: Santa drawer) in order, which gave me HAD A BAD DAY (15A: Needed to relax and unwind, say), and the whole NW fell from there. Tried LEMON tart at first, but then a fat gimme just fell in my lap at 24D: "Wannabe" hitmakers (SPICE GIRLS), and LEMON became PECAN (35A: Kind of tart) and center went poof. GO WIRELESS (nice answer) was probably the toughest for me to pick up because I solved it from the back end and it looked like an adjective (ending in -LESS) despite the clue's clearly calling for a verb phrase (43A: Eliminate lines of communication?). From SPICE GIRLS, OMAR (54D: Baseball's Minaya), and MMES, I was able to take out the entire SE in about 30 seconds—the easiest Saturday quadrant I've ever solved, probably. Hardest section for me was that pesky 4x4 bit in the SW. Nothing in clue for N.F.L. UNIFORM to signal abbrev., so N.F.L was hard to see (50A: Wear for some guards), but EXES and FLAX were virtual gimmes, and with the exception of an APSE-for-NAVE hiccup (50D: Mass gathering place), that last section wasn't that hard, in the end.


Got interviewed by local NPR station today for some future segment on crosswords. Interviewer had me solve a puzzle in studio, commenting as I solved — the only puzzle she had handy was the Newsday puzzle, which I normally don't do. But I dove in and really enjoyed it. Turned out it was written by my friend, all-star constructor Doug Peterson. So happy to have a decent puzzle to talk my way through.

Bullets:

• 19A: "Wielding ___ Sword" (Piers Anthony novel) ("A RED") — I think I read some of his stuff when I was an adolescent. Never heard of this title, but phrase was very easy to pick up from crosses.
  
• 31A: Language with 44 consonants (THAI) — this clue may as well have said, simply, [Language], though that is an interesting bit of trivia.
  
• 58A: Controversial color enhancer (ALAR) — had SLUR here at first, figuring a SLUR would be controversial and (euphemistically) colorful, language-wise.
  
• 11D: "Death in the Desert" writer, 1930 (JAMES AGEE) — got the JAMES easily, then just guessed the AGEE part a bit later. Never heard of this work.
• 55D: "Le ___," Picasso painting of his sleeping mistress ("RÊVE") — thought it might be "Le DORA" or "Le MAAR," but the masculine "Le" was wrong and anyway the very idea is preposterous. Blew through that corner so fast I never even had to figure it all out. Crosses just took care of it.
  
• 28D: Hissy-prone missy (DIVA) — wanted SNIT, but figured that was gender-neutral. Then wanted some kind of cat ... got DIVA from crosses.

[Why God invented Youtube]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]