Father victim of Oedipus / MON 6-6-11 / 1836 battle site / 1971 Jane Fonda/Donald Sutherland film / Poem with exactly 17 syllables

Constructor: Gary Whitehead

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: WEST POINT (56A: School whose motto consists of the last words of 17-, 25- and 45-Across) — last words of theme answers are, in order, DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY; CADET sits in the middle of the grid (38A: Enrollee at 56-Across); bonus theme answer of USMA (1A: Initials for 56-Across).


Word of the Day: LAIUS (53A: Father and victim of Oedipus) —

In Greek mythology, King Laius, or Laios of Thebes was a divine hero and key personage in the Theban founding myth. Son of Labdacus, he was raised by the regent Lycus after the death of his father. (wikipedia)

• • •

Dull theme with a livelier-than-average grid. There's gotta be a zingier DUTY answer than CIVIC DUTY. I like BACK COUNTRY quite a bit, both because it's interesting / unusual, and because it changes the meaning of COUNTRY, taking it away from the sense it has in the West Point motto. I also ADMIRE the Zs and the Ks and the X, all in a grid that remains solidly Monday-level with one major, glaring, outlying exception: LAIUS (53A: Father and victim of Oedipus). If you lined all today's answers up on a "General Familiarity" scale, from Universally Known to Obscure Beyond Belief, I don't know where this answer would fall, but I do know the other answers wouldn't be anywhere near it. Completely valid answer, a nice bit of mythological trivia, but comparatively arcane in this environment. Not that that's so bad—at least it's a piece of trivia that seems worth knowing. And it's not as if it slowed me down much. I might have lost 5-10 seconds trying to piece it together from crosses. Not sure why I can remember JOCASTA but not LAIUS. I think her name is just more interesting.

I wonder if there was really no possible theme answer that could have symmetrically balanced out USMA. Or if there isn't a thematic way to clue ALTO (65A: Sax type).


Theme answers:

• 17A: Serving on a jury, e.g. (CIVIC DUTY)
  
• 25A: Bride's attendant (MAID OF HONOR)
  
• 45A: Rural area (BACK COUNTRY)
  

I love that CUMIN (18D: Curry ingredient) and ACUMEN (43D: Keenness of mind) are in the same column. My CUMIN ACUMEN is quite high, I think. You don't see the CZ- spelling of TSAR much in puzzles, if only because "TS" are so much more common letters. I'm happy to see the "Z" restored to its rightful place in GIZMO (34D: Thingamajig). I'm reading Tina FEY's book "Bossypants" right now, and it's unsurprisingly fantastic (8D: Tina of "30 Rock"). The chapter about her father is particularly great: simultaneously touching and hilarious.


There's some bonus military answers in the puzzle, which I suppose you could count as thematic were it not for the fact that they are answers that appear in puzzles all the time (NO SIR, SGTS, TROOP). I had TESTY for NASTY (19A: Mean-spirited), but other than that, and the mini-struggle with LAIUS, no trouble anywhere to be found.

Bullets:

• 48D: 1971 Jane Fonda/Donald Sutherland film ("KLUTE") — on my To-Watch list for this summer, my To-Watch list consisting of every crime movie, mystery, and thriller from 1960-1976, i.e. "Psycho" to "Taxi Driver." I've only just started with 1960, but I can already tell you that "Never Let Go" (w/ Peter Sellers in a non-comic role as a sadistic garage owner) is Brilliant. My first great accidental discovery.
  
• 42A: Jug band instrument (KAZOO) — great answer, great clue, though I have to admit that my first thought was "... jug?"
  
• 31D: Poem with exactly 17 syllables (HAIKU) — apparently today's "Bullets" are devoted exclusively to five-letter K-answers. Love them all.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Philatelist George / SUN 6-5-11 / Ancient Cretan writing system / French river department / Biblical breastplate stones / Ike Billy OK Corral

Constructor: Yaakov Bendavid

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Cagey Answers" — Gs (following Ns) in familiar phrases become Ks, resulting in wacky phrases, clued "?"-style


Word of the Day: GUSSET (42A: Reinforcing bracket) —

In sewing, a gusset is a triangular or square piece of fabric inserted into a seam to add breadth or reduce stress from tight-fitting clothing. Gussets were used at the shoulders, underarms, and hems of traditional shirts and chemises made of rectangular lengths of linen to shape the garments to the body. // Gussets are used in manufacturing of modern tights or pantyhose to add breadth at the crotch seam; these gussets are often made of breathable fabrics for hygiene when wearing pantyhose without panties. (wikipedia; perhaps the first WOTD related to not wearing panties—another milestone!)

• • •

I found this one clungy, which really should be a word, perhaps to describe something that is clingy, but in a really unflattering way. But back to the puzzle: the theme is very simple, but there is not a lot of thematic payoff, and the non-theme fill is really subpar in many places. Many, many. A theme this simple needs to be perfectly consistent *and* scintillating. You Must Stick The Landing. And yet only a few of these theme answers strike me as winners; I particularly like LADY SINKS THE BLUES, though I'd have had a woman NHL player scoring a series-ending goal rather than a countess bankrupting the team. A few of the others are cute, but then there's ONE THINK AT A TIME, which is nauseatingly ungrammatical, or at least far far out of the language in its use of "THINK"; and KINK OF THE ROAD, which is just bland. But worst of all is BIG BANK THEORY. It is the one inconsistent theme answer, and its inconsistency is twofold. First, every other theme answer is -ING->-INK. To have *just one* that goes -ANG->-ANK is really annoying. Second, uh, there's a stray "G" there. In "BIG." So your title all of a sudden becomes a false ... false ... falsity (I'm channeling Norman Bates here; god I love that scene, with him and Marion and the *&%^ing stuffed birds everywhere—maybe one of the best scenes in that, or any, movie). Your Gs are Ks or they're not. Maybe, just Maybe, if every answer had been -INK, I could've forgiven that outlier. But that's for some alternative universe to know. In this universe: boo.

Theme answers:

• 24A: How organized philosophers deal with ideas? (ONE THINK AT A TIME)
  
• 30A: Highway S-curve? (KINK OF THE ROAD)
  
• 51A: Countess bankrupts St. Louis N.H.L. team? (LADY SINKS THE BLUES)
  
• 67A: Warning before driving past the town dump? (THIS MAY STINK A LITTLE)
  
• 85A: Wayne Gretzky? (THE LORD OF THE RINKS) — a pun I've seen before, specifically in a WSJ puzzle from earlier this year
  
• 103A: Being too large to fail? (BIG BANK THEORY)
  
• 116A: Singles bar pickup strategy? (A WINK AND A PRAYER)
  

Lots of Jewishish clues today, with Ehud BARAK and "Fiddler"'s YENTE, and the O.T.'s EDOM and SARAH and ONYXES (65D: Biblical breastplate stones). I had no idea about the ONYXES, but they're an important feature of the high priest's breastplate in Exodus, from what I can gather. I also had no idea about CLANTON (49D: Ike or Billy at the O.K. Corral). Not a name I recognize at all. Would've guessed CLAYTON if HEY had made any sense as an answer for 66A: Cackler (HEN). Other things I didn't know included GUSSET—never seen or heard the word before—and the you've-gotta-be-kidding-me answer of the day, LINN (70D: Philatelist George, founder of the largest weekly newspaper for stamp collectors). I was surprised to find that the Oscar-winning Frank today was not CAPRA but LLOYD (71D: Frank ___, two-time Oscar-winning director).


There was some stuff that I loved, including not one but two ampersandwiches (RANDR, XSANDOS), DUKAKIS (4D: Loser of 1988) curled up with a SPY NOVEL, and the not-heard-from-in-25-years PAM DAWBER (110A: Onetime Robin Williams co-star) (I like that the clue doesn't throw you the "Mork & Mindy" bone but forces you to use crosses to go hunting through *all* Williams's co-stars). ASTHMATIC is nice too (29A: Bronchodilator user). But there was just too much little junk. Everywhere, gunking up the system: EAN, ABRA (99D: Incantation opener), LINN, AIN (93A: French river or department), LINEARA (!?) (98A: Ancient Cretan writing system), ASOK (!!!), ADAIR, TMS, NTS, ADE, ISE, EASER (...). Etc. I do like "OH, GEE" crossing OGDEN, as "O" and "G" are the first two letters, and OGDEN seems like a place where an expression like "OH GEE" might still have some currency ("O.G." also stands for "Original Gangster," which I'm guessing there are precisely none of in OGDEN).


Bullets:

• 57A: Actor Wilson (OWEN) — FLIP!? Is it FLIP!? No? Dang.
  
• 114A: So-called Mother of Presidents (OHIO) — "Mother of Presidents" sounds almost like a slur.
  
• 119A: Flying monster of film (RODAN) — always want to spell this guy like the sculptor.
  
• 6D: Animals with black-tipped tails (STOATS) — wanted OKAPIS, which, when you think about it, makes almost zero sense. I knew STOATS were weasels, but black-tipped tails—that, I did not know.
  
• 90D: Wives in São Paulo (SENHORAS) — One of my few Portuguese gimmes.
  
• 100D: Hybrid clothing for women (SKORTS) — one of the great modern portmanteaus.
  
• 102D: Actresses Best and Purviance (EDNAS) — Purviance? Really? Let's see ... what era, what era? I'm gonna guess she was big in the '40s ... [Googling] ... whoa, off by 20 years. She was in a bunch of Chaplin films in the teens and '20s. She would have fit right in in Friday's puzzle ...
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Déplacements

Bye Marrakech, hi Paris ! C'était il y a une semaine...

Après m'être levée à 7h pour prendre l'avion, dans lequel j'ai dormi pendant les 3 heures de vol, arrivée à Paris, le coeur serré.

Heureusement, mon amie Margaux B est venue me rendre visite et me montrer son nouvel achat, une robe sublime dégotée chez Guerrisol... Comme quoi, on peut encore tomber sur des perles là-bas.

Plus jeune, j'y ai passé beaucoup de temps. Je revenais avec des tas de sacs poubelles, et des fringues qui pouvaient être clairement des déguisements. Des fausses fourrures de couleur (j'ai honte en y repensant, elles étaient si vilaines !), des jupons à sequins improbables...

Il faut dire que je n'étais pas le comble de l'élégance mais je ne passais pas inaperçue.

India m'a ensuite rejoint et nous nous sommes préparées pour rejoindre l'équipe Levi's avec qui nous devions dîner.

Les Black Lips se produisaient pour le festival Jalouse Rocks Paris. Normalement, vous avez vu la vidéo dans le post précédent.

Vous le savez, je ne suis pas très branchée rock.

En ce moment, j'écoute souvent les nouveaux albums de Wiz Khalifa et Sebastian : Rolling Papers et Total. (On clique sur les liens pour les écouter !)

Photos : Sisley Roche

Jupe - Zara

Tee-shirt - Asos

Escarpins - Zara

Sac - Urban Outfitters

Chapeau - H&M

A lundi, avec un billet très fleuri... Ce coup-là, je reviens de la campagne, j'en ai profité pour associer looks + photos, vous verrez !

Transkei native / SAT 6-4-11 / Maugham's prostitute / French singer/actor Rossi / Classic film featuring Captain America / Pike lookalikes

Constructor: Frederick J. Healy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none


Word of the Day: TINO Rossi (55A: French singer/actor Rossi) —

Tino Rossi (29 April 1907–26 September 1983) was a singer and film actor. // Born Constantino Rossi in Ajaccio, Corsica, France, he became a tenor of French cabaret and one of the great romantic idols of his time. Gifted with an operatic voice, a "Latin Lover" persona made him a movie star as well. Over his career, Rossi made hundreds of records and appeared in more than 25 films, the most notable of which was the 1953 production, Si Versailles m'était conté directed by Sacha Guitry. His romantic ballads had women swooning and his art-songs by Jules Massenet (1842–1912), Reynaldo Hahn (1875–1947), and other composers helped draw sold out audiences wherever he performed. (wikipedia)

• • •

A solid, enjoyable Saturday puzzle, somewhat easier and far more wide-ranging in its knowledge base than yesterday's spectacularly dated slogfest. Saturday-tough, but in a way that felt rewarding, with answers that were revelations instead of shrugs or ughs. And the only answer in the whole thing that feels at all obscure is some French guy whose four-letter name was easy enough to get from crosses. Initially the toughest part for me was the NW, even though I started there. Went with [Deer TICK] (wrong), then I WAS HAD (2D: Cry after being duped), DDT (29A: Target of a 1972 ban in the U.S.), OSCARS (19A: Walt Disney's record collection), RAREBIT (20D: Dish that often includes ale), and IBIS (32A: Ancient Egyptians revered it) (all right)—so I was halfway down the grid in reasonable time, but with only patchy coverage. The SW was far more accommodating. My only struggle was in trying to figure out 56A: Opposite of duck. MEET THE ... MEET THE ... of course I was misreading it. There's only one "T" in there (MEET HEAD ON). Then I tried to get up and out of the south and failed. Couldn't precisely remember LORENA Ochoa's name (42D: Ochoa who won the 2007 Women's British Open), though that was my initial guess. Never heard of Maugham's prostitute SADIE (45D: Maugham's prostitute), but with -ADIE staring at me, that too was my initial guess. Still, I wasn't sure enough of either, and I also could *not* get over into that SE corner, even with ARACHNE and OK, SHOOT in place. Ended up having to reboot in the NE and then circle back down until I finally had that mid-east section of the grid surrounded. Had to change PEST to PAIN and SEEN OUT to SAW TO IT, but I got there. Thankfully, there was a nice payoff in ending here: the lovely LOAN SHARK (42A: Risky funding source).


Enjoyed the tough but interesting cluing on many of the answers. "?" clues can be dicey, but I particularly liked 5A: Lush performance setting? (KARAOKE BAR) and 12D: Support for cold feet? ("BE BRAVE!"). Some of the clues were bizarre trivia that I found enjoyable rather than irksome, e.g. 50D: He fell in love with a fire hydrant on "Sesame Street" (ARTOO-DETOO) and 53A: Home to some notable cast-iron architecture in N.Y.C. (SOHO). Got befuddled by 46A: Foxes' neighbors (IOWAS), as I completely forgot the Foxes were a tribe. Then when I realized they were a tribe, I thought "INCAS...?" Only after guessing IOWAS did I finally begin to bridge that nettlesome gap (can a gap be nettlesome?) between mid-south and far southwest. I needed the name of a people to finally get into and polish off the NW as well: XHOSA. My first inclination was LHASA, but that seemed far-fetched. Not sure how I pulled XHOSA out of my bag of crossword tricks (I've only ever seen the word in crosswords, memorably attached to Nelson Mandela) ... hmm, wait, I think I backed "EASY RIDER" into there (26A: Classic film featuring Captain America), then got NET COST (3D: It's lowered by REBATES), and the "O" gave me XHOSA. The rest of that section went quickly.


Crossword experience gave me a nice range of answers besides XHOSA. Got SNEE (21A: Sticker of the past) off just the first "E" (I guess it should also be mentioned that I got OARED off just the "D"—9D: Like a galley), and got GARS off the tentative "R" in LORENA (48A: Pike lookalikes). Despite never having seen the article "uma" before, I pieced together SAO pretty easily (38A: One with uma auréola). OSO was a breeze (a common Spanish crossword answer; 52D: ___ pardo (grizzly, in Granada)). I grew up in Fresno, CA but never heard (until today) of LOS Fresnos, Tex. Perhaps my greatest pulled-it-out-of-my-#^$ answer, though, was AVONLEA, which I got off just the "V" and which I initially spelled AVONLEE (13D: Fictional Prince Edward Island community). Such solving success was astonishing and exhilarating since ... I have no idea how I knew it. Absolutely none. Is that where "Anne of Green Gables" is set? [Googling ...] It is. Wow. Just ... wow. I had no business knowing that. I am not kidding when I say that you now know everything I know about "Anne of Green Gables."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

She hid Zeus from Cronus / FRI 6-3-11 / Literally barley / Biblical 912-year-old / Misanthrope We are all born mad / Principal player Grease

Constructor: Jeffrey Wechsler

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none


Word of the Day: WALLY COX (15A: Voicer of Underdog on TV) —

Wallace Maynard Cox (December 6, 1924 – February 15, 1973) was an American comedian and actor, particularly associated with the early years of television in the United States. He appeared in the U.S. TV series Mr. Peepers (1952–55), plus several other popular shows, and as a character actor in over 20 films. Wally Cox was the voice of the popular animated cartoon character Underdog. Although often cast as a meek milquetoast, he was actually strong and athletic. He married three times and was a close friend of Marlon Brando. (wikipedia)

• • •

I got demolished by this puzzle. In fact, I was borderline certain that I would not Ever get the NW corner, which was empty save SIRS (23A: Generic addressees) for something close to ever. I often tease puzzles for feeling "old," which is generational bias on my part, I realize, but holy moly this puzzle reeks of mothballs. Is there anything post-1965 in the whole thing? Jeez louise, check out this litany:

• WALLY COX
• AL OERTER (3D: Winner of gold in four consecutive Olympics, 1956-68)
• EVE ARDEN (37D: Principal player in "Grease") (I guess "Grease" is 1978 in this case, but EVE ARDEN's career has its center of gravity way, way earlier. She was 70 when "Grease" came out; "Grease 2," starring Michelle Pfeiffer, was her last movie (1982). In case it's not clear from the clue, EVE ARDEN played the school principal, not the principal (i.e. main) role.
  
• Peter O'TOOLE (who gets a "Ratatouille" clue, but come on...) (16A: Voicer of Ego in "Ratatouille")
• RICH (bleeping) LITTLE (!?) (51A: Great ape?)
• Nina SIMONE (I do love her) (47D: She had a 1959 hit with "I Loves You, Porgy")
• BATES MOTEL (I do love "Psycho") (24A: Chilly shower setting?)

SPACE AGE is right (1A: Launch time?). I'd have thrown ANTONIO Vivaldi (42D: Composer Vivaldi) and CATO (56D: Foe of Caesar) in to that list to strengthen the point, but you get the idea. This is a puzzle that (912-year-old) SETH would have loved. It's also aggressively high culture (the anti-(current) pop culture folks have their ideal here, I think): ROSS, ESTRAGON, RHEA (29A: "King Richard II" lord; 39A: Misanthrope who says "We are all born mad. Some remain so"; 20A: She hid Zeus from Cronus). Throw in some high-end SAT words like NEMATODE (59A: Wheatworm, e.g.) and PALLIATE and you have a very challenging puzzle. I'd be stunned if this was easier than normal for most folks (esp. those under 50), though I would Not be stunned if the majority of my audience had a far easier time with this than I did. I haven't tanked a puzzle this bad in months.


Spent close to half my (long) solving time in the NW, as I say. The worst part was that I had EXERTED, and that "X" should have been Gold; but it gave me nothing. In the end, I guess I've vaguely heard of WALLY COX, but not such that I could plunk him down without significant help from crosses, which was Not forthcoming. Ironically, the only reason I was able (eventually) to make a dent in that corner At All was AL OERTER, someone I've never seen or heard of outside of crosswords. I learned his name because I had to (it's very vowely, and thus shows up from time to time). This allowed me to get OAT (??? come on!) milk. I must have put UTE in and taken UTE out a million times. A single UTE warrants an entire museum? Interesting. She must be quite impressive. (30A: Subject of a museum in eastern Colorado)

Stupidest thing I did was fail to get HUES (28D: They can be saturated). I looked at HU-S, and then actually ran the alphabet and still only came up with HUTS ("wow, that is lame," I rightly thought). This kept TERSE well hidden for a long time (33A: Without any embroidery). No hope on "ALOUETTE" (17A: Children's song that's based on an old work song melody). Had SWAPS OUT as an early guess (1D: Exchanges), but it yielded little until I got AL OERTER in there. Wanted PLEBS to be the much nicer-looking/sounding PEONS (19A: The unwashed). People juggle CLUBS? (4D: Set for juggling) BALLS, yes. Bowling pins, sure. CLUBS? OK ... looks like those things I thought were bowling pins were actually just CLUBS. Hmm. ACT was brutally clued (6D: More than talk). Figured GAB or YAK would be the answer. GOT was also nearly impossible without crosses (7D: Confounded). And despite knowing what PALLIATE means (2D: Ease), it took me Forever to get there.


Grid as a whole seems just fine, but this one was Way out of both my comfort and pleasure zone. Best part of the puzzle by far, for me, was the clue on BATES MOTEL (24A: Chilly shower setting?).

Bullets:

• 46A: Alternative to being tapped ("PSST!") — again, Saturday-tough. No idea why anyone thought this was a Friday.
  
• 55A: Literally, "barley" (ORZO) — got this easily, but have no idea why. Four letters, small and grain-like ...
  
• 14D: They might provide coverage for racecars (DECALS) — clever, but again, quite tough.
  
• 36D: Spinning device giving the illusion of motion (ZOETROPE) — I know this only as the name of Francis Ford Coppola's studio (American ZOETROPE, actually). Now owned entirely by Coppola's children, Roman and Sofia.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

1976 Pulitzer winner for Air Music / THU 6-2-11 / Pioneering puppetteer Tony / Baccarat alternative / Banned medicine used to treat asthma

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: BORDER / STATES (26D: With 28-Down, theme of this puzzle) — BORDER (or edges) of the puzzle made up entirely of names of STATES


Word of the Day: ISOLATO (38D: Person who's out of step with society) —

noun, plural -toes.

a person who is spiritually isolated from or out of sympathy with his or her times or society. (dictionary.com) (*not* in my Webster's 3rd New International)

Styx - Mr. Roboto

• • •

The grid is nice, but I didn't care for the theme. I kept thinking how are these *BORDER* STATES? I saw that they were on the BORDER of the grid, but ... what was their relation to each other. FLORIDA and ALABAMA BORDER each other, aha! But ... ALASKA and MONTANA do not. Maybe they're on the BORDER of the country. MONTANA and ALASKA, yes! WYOMING and NEVADA? Ugh. Finally realized, very anticlimactically, that the fact that they're on the BORDER of the grid was all the BORDER action I was going to get, and that the pairs or intersecting STATES had precisely nothing to do with each other. Let down.

But as I say, the grid is lovely. Very typically BEQ, in a lot of ways, with tons of proper nouns, many of them quite contemporary. Also, I tend to think of his proper noun clues as being particularly long, like 9D: Doctor whom Nixon called "the most dangerous man in America" (LEARY) or 33D: TV character who said "Him a beauty. Like mountain with snow — silver-white" (TONTO) or 56A: Stephen of Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist of the Young Man" (DEDALUS), which is only long because the title of the book is long, I realize, but still, you get my point. A couple of the names in this puzzle I did not know, most notably ISADORE Freleng (12D: ___ Freleng, creator of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck). Isn't there a FRITZ Freleng? Oh, crud, there is—only it's FRIZ Freleng, and that's actually how ISADORE Freleng is (much) better known. I don't feel so cartoon-stupid after all, now.

Crosswordese knowledge came in very handy today, especially with names. Gimmes included Tony SARG (51D: Pioneering puppeteer Tony), ODILE (5D: "Swan Lake" swan), Ned ROREM (30A: 1976 Pulitzer winner for "Air Music"), and (the first answer I put in the grid) "I, TINA" (52A: 1986 rock autobiography). I was also greatly aided by the Nabokov clue, which was a gimme for me (13D: Actual name of Nabokov's Lolita). The opening of that book features a terse yet lyrical passage in which Humbert catalogues the various incarnations of her name:

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Creepy, right? Such a good book. I bought copies of "Lolita" and "The Road" for my local public library this past weekend. Was very happy to see them on the library's wish list, i.e. was very happy not to have to send yet another James Patterson novel out into the world.

Bullets:

• 15A: Banned medicine used to treat asthma (EPHEDRA) — I know this only as a diet drug. Confusing clue. Was it banned in treatment of asthma too? Wouldn't [Banned asthma medication] have worked?
  
• 18A: Where "Lucrezia Borgia" premiered (LA SCALA) — this is how I figured out that ISADORE was not ISIDORE.
  
• 20A: Baccarat alternative (FARO) — olde-timey card games. I know nothing about either.

• 29A: "Drawing is putting a line round an ___": Henri Matisse ("IDEA") — nice quotation—IDEA is much better than my initial guess, AREA.
  
• 44A: Org. that combats illegal file sharing (RIAA) — rough for me. Had to get every letter from crossings. I'm guessing this stands for Recording Industry Association of America ... and I'm right.
  
• 49A: Approximate year in which Eric the Red was born (CML) — thumbs down to "approximate year" clues.
  
• 8D: Syllables following "Strike the harp and join the chorus" ("FA LA LA") — "... LA LA, LA LA LA LA, DON WE NOW OUR GAYYYYY APPAREL etc."
  
• 41D Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, 1987-95 (SAM NUNN) — I remember him as "that Hawkish Democrat who is going to run for president some day." I'm guessing that ship has sailed.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Jalouse Rocks Festival x Levi's - Les Black Lips

Lundi 30 mai - 20h30

Le festival Jalouse Rocks Paris x Levi's a commencé !

Rendez-vous pris avec India et la team Levi's dans un restaurant italien, histoire de se rassasier avant d'aller à la rencontre des Black Lips.

Arrivés au club...

Cleo Le Tan passe quelques morceaux avant que la guerre le concert démarre...

Interview terminée en backstage, les artistes se préparent à entrer sur scène.

Ils se préparent, c'est bien ça.

Olympia Le Tan prend quelques photos, sûrement pour alimenter le blog du magazine Jalouse.

C'est parti !

Wow, moi qui suis habituée à danser la tête collée à des enceintes, je dois avouer que j'ai sorti mes boules quies.

Je suis peut-être trop vieille finalement, qui sait ?

Jean-Baptiste, notre réalisateur de choc, n'a pas lâché sa caméra durant tout le concert.

On lui dit "respect", vous ne pouvez pas imaginer le pogo infernal qui se déroulait derrière lui !

Je vous en montre plus ?

N'ayez crainte, les Black Lips sont plus doux qu'ils en ont l'air et pour la bonne surprise, ils connaissent l'histoire de la marque Levi's dans les moindre détails !

Si vous voulez remporter des pass (40 pass) pour la soirée du 9 juin, devenez fan de Levi's sur Facebook. Le concours démarre lundi, guettez le !

Programmation du 9 juin

18h30 Le Trianon
Herman Dune (live)
La Femme (live)
The Shining Twins (live)

22h45 Le Lautrec
Jack Of Heart (live)

23h00 Chez Moune
DVNO vs SO-ME
Mary & Robbie (The Big Pink)
Mattias Mimoun
& guests