Foster girl / FRI 12-31-10 / Serbian city Constantine Great / Gentille one of song / Humbugs of world author 1865 / Boxer who wrote Reach

Constructor: Caleb Madison

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: None

Hi, everybody. PuzzleGirl here with your very last puzzle of the year. What an honor! And it's only because Rex is off drunk somewhere. Allegedly. I mean, that's what I heard, but there really hasn't been any confirmation, so I probably shouldn't say anything. You know what? Let's just forget I said anything. I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason that Rex isn't here today and I'm relatively certain it has nothing to do with alcohol. So let's just move on. Sorry about that.

Hey, look everybody! It's Caleb! Remember how yesterday Andrea was talking about how everybody has a crush on Caleb? Well that's the truth. And if you met him, you'd know why. He's completely adorable. Now, he's got a filthy mouth on him, that's for sure. But other than that? Completely. Adorable. Oh and then there was that one time he used RECARVE in a puzzle. Boy, that was ghastly! But did I mention he's completely adorable? Would you like to see a picture? I know you would.

So here's the thing about this puzzle. There is some awesome, awesome stuff in here. Then there's some stuff that really stinks. So let's just really quickly get this out of the way: NIS is the 25A: Serbian city where Constantine the Great was born. Huh. Interesting? Memorable? Fun? No. ACTA is clued as 32D: Court proceedings. Whatever. S-STARS? IPSA? (Don't try to act like you didn't try "ipso" first.) QUA? ORRS? AITCH? I could definitely do without any of that stuff. Actually QUA wasn't that bad for me because it tricked me: I tried both "per" and "ala" before it finally clicked into place. But that's all I'm going to say about the bad stuff because there's a lot more good stuff to talk about. Like …

STICK IT TO THE MAN (35A: Be revolting). Is that awesome or what? And BROMANCE? Will let's the young kids get away with all that hip slang. And that's a good thing! Plus, how crazy does LAILA ALI look in the grid with all her Ls and As and whatnot (3D: Boxer who wrote "Reach!")? I also like the dueling melt downs of WIGS (10D: Freaks (out)) and LOSE IT (34D: Freak). Everybody chill! Let's just run some bullets and get out of here.

Bullets:

• 1A: One likely to die on the road? (JALOPY). I know Rex was just talking about the Archie comics here the other day. Did someone in the Archie Gang drive a JALOPY? Because I always associate the word JALOPY with Archie. Or I bet it was Jughead. He seems like he would drive a JALOPY, right?

• 7A: What something may go down to (THE WIRE). I've heard so many great things about this show. (Yes, I know it's not clued as the show, but I'm just going off on a tangent, try to keep up.) But I've never seen it! Then all of a sudden one day, I'm looking at something on the Internet machine about it and I realize that the brother of a friend of mine was actually on the show. Now I definitely need to see it. Good thing we finally signed up for Netflix last week. What year is it again?
• 14A: Foster girl (JEANIE). This is a reference to Stephen Foster's famous song "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair." But you knew that.

• 15A: Poster girl (TEEN IDOL). The most popular poster girl here at the PuzzleHouse is Taylor Swift. In fact, when I got home from work today, PuzzleDaughter and her friend immediately started explaining to me about how they had just been discussing how cool it would be if Taylor Swift came to PuzzleDaughter's birthday party because then maybe they could cut off a little piece of her hair and keep it as a souvenir. Also if she went to sleep, they could take a video of her sleeping. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.
• 41A: San Francisco's Museo ___ Americano (ITALO). Thought we were looking for Spanish here, but I couldn't get Latino, Chicano, OR Mexicano to fit.
• 47A: Big hit (POW).



• 57A: "The Humbugs of the World" author, 1865 (P. T. BARNUM). Oh yeah, I liked the two guys with the two initials. J. J. ABRAMS (1D: Creator of TV's "Alias") looks especially cool in the grid with that J collision that seems like it should be totally wrong until you realize what's going on.
• 63A: 1974 hit with Spanish lyrics (ERES TU). I really wanted this to be "Oye Como Va" for some reason. Oh right, because it's a kick-ass song.



• 65A: The Allman Brothers Band, e.g. (SEXTET). Okay, one more video, but that's it.



• 38D: "Gentille" one of song (ALOUETTE). Does this song make anyone else think of Ginger on Gilligan's Island? Just me? Fair enough.

That's it for me for now. I might be back in a couple days. You just really never know who's gonna show up when Rex is … indisposed.

Love, PuzzleGirl

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter] [or PuzzleGirl]

Panda pas géant

Aujourd'hui, je vous propose une tenue très relax.

Déjeuner chez le paternel, on ne va pas sortir l'artillerie lourde hein.

Jean, gilet, bonnet et... Ugg. Oui criez ! Moi qui ai tant craché sur ces pantoufles de rue, je dois avouer que je me suis attachée à celles-ci. Et pourtant qu'est-ce que c'est laid. Nous y reviendrons dans un prochain billet...

Ah et il vous a plus ce petit bonnet panda !

Moi aussi.
Ben oui, je l'avais repéré, je le mettais dans mon panier et j'hésitais à valider.

Puis finalement, je me suis dit "Allez on tente et si on ne l'assume pas, on le refilera aux petites soeurs !".

Quelques jours après je recevais mon petit animal, je sortais avec dans la rue et j'assumais.

Quant au gilet, je l'ai chopé au showroom de la marque Axara.
Axara, marque que je n'avais jamais vraiment envisagé jusqu'à présent mais après avoir entendu de bonnes rumeurs courant sur les collections, je me suis dit qu'il fallait quand même que j'aille y jeter un oeil.

Et je n'ai pas été déçue ! En effet, ce n'est plus la marque de notre adolescence, tout a changé et je suis repartie avec quelques pièces canons.

Le truc, lorsque tu portes une tenue pépère c'est de l'accessoiriser. On n'a pas dit "empouffiasser".

Ajouter quelques bijoux discrets peut faire l'affaire.

Je ne me suis pas contentée de mes bijoux en or tout fins, j'ai tapé dans le "bling-bling" et la bague un peu plus épaisse !

Jean - Urban Outffiters

Gilet - Axara

Bonnet - Asos

Bottes - UGG

Bracelet dimants - Swarovski

Bague fine - Monsieur Paris

Bague épaisse - Code Jewels

Headquarters for Polynesian Airlines / THU 12-30 / Thomas Moore’s "___Ask the Hour" / Record label for "Ain’t She Sweet" / Town on Lake Geneva opposi

Constructor: Joe Krozel

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: Parse a phrase into three separate words.

Hi, Andrea Carla Michaels here, along with PuzzleGirl, filling in for Rex. He finally got on his plane to Florida after a two-day snow delay. If you are freaking out about the delay in the blog’s posting time, it’s bec I’m holding down the fort on the West Coast, PuzzleGirl is back East, while Rex goes South. While Rex has a travel day, I’ll write this up overnight, and PG’ll do her best to make sense out of it first thing in the morning. Relax, it’s New Year’s Eve’s eve. The fact you are even reading this means you may have bigger issues than posting times!

I love getting the chance to sub for Rex, but today he left one big airline seat to fill. Was totally up for subbing, practically begged, and then pleased Rex handed the reins to PuzzleGirl and me. But when I saw it was Joe Krozel and that half the clues were blank spaces, I panicked. I felt like a cross between Arnold Horshack ("Ooh, ooh, pick me, Mr. Kotter, pick me!") and Eminem in his so-last-year’s "Careful what you wish for":

So be careful what you wish for
'Cause you just might get it
And if you get it then you just might not know
What to do wit' it, 'cause it might just
Come back on you ten-fold

What can I say? This was one tough puzzle, as most Joe K’s are…took me almost an hour and I’m no SLO bunny. He’s tricky and not always my fave as a solver, tho I have enormous respect for him as a constructor and innovator. I remember loving his last one, both as a constructor and a solver, so I tiptoed in. In the end, I think it was worth it. That is to say, it was more than just OTAY. Actually, OTAY (41A: “Our Gang” approval) was my first entry and I sort of cringed, as I tend to be to the left of PC (when it suits me). I worried that it seemed mildly retroactively borderline racist, as anything having to do with Buckwheat does. Plus, I’m a gal who likes to start at 1A and go across, and do my little areas, which wasn’t helpful today since 1D was "Rent-___." I incorrectly filled in A-Car. My mistake became clear immediately by 2D: SHULS, as I was confident, as a Jew from (but not in) Minnesota, that I knew the Yiddish for "Synagogues." But "RL" as the first two letters of 20A would have been ugly… so I erased A-Car (for A-COP) and began to skip around.

So, a little STEVIE here, some Suze ORMAN there, a correct guess on KWAI (58D: River in a 1957 hit film). Yet the theme didn’t hit me till more than half way through…got it at 59/61A:
NOTRE SPAS SING = NO TRESPASSING (59A: "Warning to intruders").

Ok, the theme (there are seven entries!!!!) is to take a phrase and split it up into three words, forming totally different words than are in the phrase, but cluing it as a whole. Got that?

Yet the theme didn’t hit me till more than half way through … got it at 59/61A.

Ok, the theme (there are seven entries!!!!) is to take a phrase and split it up into three words, forming totally different words than are in the phrase, but cluing it as a whole. Got that?

• 12A: One in on the founding of a company (CHARTER MEMBER) [chart term ember]
• 20A: Production site chief (PLANT MANAGER) [plant t-man ager]
• 27A: One getting a bouquet? (WINE TASTER) [win etas ter]
• 37A: Workplace where there are many openings (OPERATING ROOM) [opera tin groom]
• 43A: Song played at the dance in "Back to the Future" (EARTH ANGEL) [ear than gel]
• 50A: Officially (FOR THE RECORD) [fort here cord]
• 59A: Warning to intruders (NO TRESPASSING) [notre spas sing]

I will suspend with the Word of the Day, but mine would have been my last fill: APIA, which turns out to be the capital of Samoa. APIA shares three of its four letters with AsIA … so not a ridiculous guess for 33A: Headquarters for Polynesian Airlines.

APIA/AsIA … I can almost feel hands going up on that one. And I can also almost hear SethG (coincidentally a Jew in, but not from, Minnesota) screaming about the NOTRE/FRERE crossing! While dk (a decidedly non-Jew in, but not from, Minnesota) is tittering over TITTER (44D: Nervous laugh).

If I may get even more insider-y for a moment … If it were not for the regulars on this blog, I would not have been able to get the whole Northeast corner! For example, Retired_chemist (religion and state unknown to me) wrote about IMAGO being his favorite wrong answer of the day for that GHOTI puzzle last week … and here it malapopped into this one today! (8D: “Big bug”) And easily my favorite right answer of the day was CALEB at 19A: Spy sent by Moses into Canaan which I’d NE’ER have gotten otherwise because of that crazy 10D: "Thomas Moore's "___ Ask the Hour" … and I was determined not to Google.

Every constructor male and female, young and old, Monday thru Sunday seems to have a little crush on young Caleb … even my friend Laura Levine who took this cute photo of him as he searched for a gift for Will Shortz in her Mystery Spot shop in Upstate, NY.

OK, back to the puzzle. The theme is super clever, splitting up words in an uber-parsed manner. Perhaps Joe Krozel’s inspiration was Rex’s creation of OOXTEPLERNON, which came into being by reading one line of another puzzle straight across.

The only one of the six theme entries that did not work for me 100% was WIN ETAS TER. I liked the definition a lot (27A: One getting a bouquet?) but both TER and ETAS are a bit of a stretch to begin with. Neither entry barely stands on its own when it has a definition, much less when it does not. TER is either "Thrice, medically" or "Gerard ___ Borch." ETAS is defined either as an awkward plural of a Greek letter or maybe (more appropriately given the national weather scene) as airline board abbreviations. But the bigger iffy-ness to this entry is that both WIN and NO-WIN are in the grid. A classic WIN/NO WIN situation.

As long as I’m at it, I wasn’t crazy about ARNO/ORNO and TNT/NTS, but I’ll let others scream about OUSE, EMPT and KIAS Sorento. (As a professional namer, I object. It’s one thing to add a letter to a name to coin it, but to drop a letter of a real word just looks illiterate and careless). Enough of what I didn’t like, as it is minor in the overall picture. There was a lot more to like.

I liked that there was a lot of bodies-of-water imagery: ARNO, OUSE, KWAI, EVIAN (on Lake Geneva) plus young fish from the Sargasso Sea, not to mention a "sea menace" ORCA swimming by. Loved piecing together and learning that OOLONG was Chinese for "black dragon"! (I plan to slip that into a conversation (over tea!) before oolong.)

Lots of music: OPERA, SING, STEVIE Wonder, EARTH ANGEL, PIANO, OHS, Schubert’s NONET (my first try: etude) … and as a major Beatles lover I closed my eyes (ORBs?) trying to envision 18A Record label for "Ain’t She Sweet." (…but eventually had to open them wide to get all the crossings. ATCO?!! ATCO??!)

The biggest kick out of the puzzle is looking back across and seeing how every line starts to look like it could be a theme. FIS COOL ONG. ASH SLOP IAN O. Hmmm. Maybe not.

Alright, I’ll give it one last try … How about STEVIE OR NO?


So, well done, Joe Krozel … and Happy New Year, everybody!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Two-handled vase / WED 12-29-10 / Card game Spanish origin / Cook Island carving / Evergreen with edible nuts / Syrian presidential family

Constructor: Patrick Merrell

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: TILDE (58D: Mark used four times in this puzzle's solution) — three theme answers contain a total of four Ñs (which work in the crosses as well)


Word of the Day: OMBRE (36A: Card game of Spanish origin) —

Ombre, English corruption of the Spanish word Hombre, arising from the muting of the H in Spanish, is a fast-moving seventeenth-century trick-taking card game with an illustrious history which began in Spain around the end of the 16th Century as a four person game. It is one of the earliest card games known in Europe and by far the most classic game of its type, directly ancestral to Euchre, Boston and Solo Whist. Despite its difficult rules, complicated point score and strange foreign terms, it swept Europe in the last quarter of the 17th century, becoming Lomber in Germany, Lumbur in Austria and Ombre in England, occupying a position of prestige similar to Bridge today. (wikipedia)

• • •

Don't remember why this took me longer than usual, but it did. Oh wait, now I remember. I don't know who PABLO is (1D: "Tortilla Flat" character), I had Big TEN instead of Big BEN (17A: Big ___), and I still haven't gotten around to accepting ONE-EAR as a thing (23A: Like telemarketing headsets). That's probably the majority of the above-average difficulty right there. I like the basic idea behind this puzzle—it deals with a phenomenon that people gripe about from time to time: a "Ñ" crossing an "N" in the grid, as if they were the same letter. In fact, I'm pretty sure people have wondered out loud in my comments section if anyone had ever tried to construct a puzzle where "Ñ"s crossed other "Ñ"s. Well, now we can definitively answer that question. I'm not sure how much better off we are for it, but there it is. As I said, I like the idea, but there's nowhere much for it to go in a 15x15 execution. Just doesn't feel like much of a theme, and MAÑANA, SEÑOR is a forced answer if ever there was one. It's a phrase someone might say, but so is "MOM, I'M HUNGRY," and I doubt that's puzzle-worthy. Rest of the grid is just fine, I think. The value-added stuff—like ANGLO (43A: Barrio outsider) and OMBRE (36A: Card game of Spanish origin) and AMIGOS (59A: Baja buddies) and (apparently) DAHLIA (22A: Mexican bloom) add a bit of Latin flavor... Oh, so *that*'s what PABLO is doing up there. Providing some kind of tenuous rotationally symmetrical support for TILDE. Innnnteresting.



The TILDEs:

• 18A: Margarita alternatives (PIÑA COLADAS) / 6D: One of a 15th-century trio (NIÑA)
  
• 40A: Salsa verde ingredient (JALAPEÑO PEPPERS) / 28D: It requires one who's blind with a bat (PIÑATA)
  
• 63A: Procrastinating words south of the border (MAÑANA, SEÑOR)
  / 52D: Evergreen with edible nuts (PIÑON) + 62D: Yucatán years (AÑOS)

Had several missteps throughout the grid. OH, YES for AH, YES (57D: "But of course") hurt because I couldn't see THREAT for the life of me (55A: Reason for evacuation). Clue on THIRDS was devilish, in that I assumed the hungry person was needy, not just ravished (49D: Helping for the very hungry, maybe). I thought the Obamas were maybe having ceremonies on the EAST LAWN, but no—they're in the EAST ROOM (42D: White House ceremony site). So far, it seems the S/SE was as bad as the NW for me. Yes, there was also the matter of DONATE for DO GOOD (67A: Be altruistic). One stray puzzler—what the hell is "The Gift" (39D: Gift in "The Gift"=>ESP). I wanted "FOB" or "TRESS," but clearly I was thinking of the wrong story (story?). Uh, nope ... "The Gift" is some 10-yr-old Sam Raimi film I've never heard of.

Bullets:

• 10A: Noise in a comic book gun fight (BLAM!) — I read comics regularly, including ones with gun fights, and I had nothing here. Then I had BANG! Then I had BOOM! :(
  
• 29A: Screen role for Skippy the dog (ASTA) — is "the dog" his last name?
  
• 68A: Mustachioed "Simpsons" character (NED) — Hens love roosters, geese love ganders ...

• 21D: Virgins of ancient Rome (VESTALS) — I've heard them called "Vestal Virgins" (mostly in "Whiter Shade of Pale"), but not just VESTALS. Interesting fact—the school where I teach is technically located in VESTAL, NY.
  
• 30D: Two-handled vase (AMPHORA) — what's an AMPHERE? 'Cause I had AMPHERE. I think it's some kind of electrified AMPHORA. Or what a really drunk guy calls an "Amphitheater." Or a pan floutist...

• 47D: Syrian presidential family (ASSADS) — it's a very crossword-friendly name for some reason.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Alors, les vacances ?

Un déjeuner chez Madame Shawn...

Une soirée avec Margaux...

Les pandas étaient de sortie....

Un petit message...

Company behind game Battlezone / TUE 12-28-10 / Mentalist Geller / Four-lap runners / Distance runner's skirt / Military sandwich

Constructor: Robert A. Doll

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Unprefixed — familiar words have their prefixes moved to the end, creating wacky phrases, which are clued "?"-style


Word of the Day: CANAPE (29D: Cocktail hour nibble) —

n.
A cracker or a small, thin piece of bread or toast spread with cheese, meat, or relish and served as an appetizer.

[French, from canapé, couch, from Medieval Latin canāpēum, mosquito net. See canopy.] (answers.com)

• • •

Supremely easy. The theme was utterly nonsensical to me until many seconds after I had finished. I was trying to figure out what the starts or ends of the theme answers had to do with one another, and then noticed that MARINESUB was just SUBMARINE flipped. Then noticed that the others were similarly flipped. Ta ... da? Theme is very thin (compare yesterday's six theme answers), and MINI doesn't stand alone very well, and two of these started out as nouns and two as adjectives ... and this theme seems like it could be spun out ad infinitum; or, rather, that virtually any word with these suffixes might have sufficed. Why not a LARGE EXTRA or GOLF MINI or etc.? The basic idea is kind of cute, but somehow the execution feels slightly SUB par.



Theme answers:

• 20A: Distance runner's skirt? (MARATHON MINI)
  
• 34A: Military sandwich? (MARINE SUB)
  
• 45A: Outstanding crowd scene actor? (FINE EXTRA)
  
• 55A: Valuable truck? (PRECIOUS SEMI)
  

Did this one in under three, but there were a few slight sticking points. Tried SLUR for SLAM (1D: Verbal assault). Blanked on CANAPE at first, though it's a perfectly familiar word—I get very impatient with my brain on Mon. and Tues. sometimes. Luckily nearby ARCHIE made that section a cinch — daughter has a Massive ARCHIE Comics collection that she's amassed over the past few years, so I know more about the Riverdale gang than I could ever have imagined (30D: Jughead's buddy). Went with TINTS over TONES in the NE (16A: Color variations), which probably created the most trouble given the 3/5 rightness of the wrong answer. But "trouble" is a relative concept, and today, there really wasn't much of any. Only real question was: EBAN or EBEN (it's the former) (32D: Abba of Israel).



Not much to Bullet today, so I'll just sign off. My flight isn't until Wednesday evening, so I'll be here again tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. this will hurt your soul if you have one...

Eskimo boat / MON 12-27-10 / 1986 Keanu Reeves film / Newspaper columnist Kupcinet / Car in Playmates 1958 Beep Beep

Constructor: C. W. Stewart

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "HERE'S JOHNNY!" (60A: Classic TV intro ... or a hint to the starts of 16-, 22-, 30-, 42- and 47-Across) — words that start theme answers are also the last names of famous guys named JOHNNY (I say "famous" despite the fact that I didn't know 60% of the JOHNNYs in question)


Word of the Day: PLINTH (28D: Base of a column) —

In architecture, a plinth is the base or platform upon which a column, pedestal, statue, monument or structure rests. Gottfried Semper's The Four Elements of Architecture (1851) posited that the plinth, the hearth, the roof, and the wall make up all of architectural theory. The plinth usually rests directly on the ground, or "stylobate". According to Semper, the plinth exists to negotiate between a structure and the ground. Semper's theory has been very influential in the subsequent development of architecture. In its most basic form, a plinth is a plain, rectangular block of stone (curved plinths are relatively rare). (wikipedia)

• • •

["I shot a man in Reno / Just to watch him die" — one of the most hard-boiled lines ever written]
Super-fast solve for me—not at all atypical for a Monday. Struggled briefly to come up with PLINTH, and briefly again to come up with "RIVER'S EDGE," which must be somewhat obscure to a good chunk of you. I mean, it's a movie about teenagers, and I saw it in the theater as a teenager, and I still couldn't come up with the name quickly. What's weirder to me about this theme is the quality of the JOHNNYs. Two are flat-out famous: CASH and BENCH. Country music legend and Hall-of-Fame catcher for the Big Red Machine. The others... didn't know any of them. Scratch that. I *thought* I didn't know any of them, but then posited (to myself?) that JOHNNY NASH was the guy who sang "I Can See Clearly Now the Rain Is Gone" or whatever that song is called. But JOHNNY MILLER (a '70s golfer) and JOHNNY RIVERS (a '60s singer)—not ringing bells. Thankfully, knowing them was completely immaterial to the solving process. Done in 2:36.

Theme answers:

• 16A: Second-stringer (BENCH WARMER)
  
• 22A: Compensation in bills and coins (CASH PAYMENT)
  
• 30A: "Great taste ... less filling!" sloganeer (MILLER LITE)
  
• 42A: 1986 Keanu Reeves film ("RIVER'S EDGE") — I know it's picky, but I'm not thrilled with the apostrophe in the title; presumably there is no apostrophe in Mr. RIVERS' name
  
• 47A: Car in the Playmates' 1958 hit "Beep Beep" (NASH RAMBLER)
  

I hope no one takes offense when I say that this puzzle seems aimed at somewhat older folks (Keanu Reeves movie aside). It's simply a descriptive statement—I think the general quality of the grid is quite good, especially considering the very high theme density. Hard to keep things Monday-appropriate (predominantly easy, familiar answers) and cram that many theme answers in there. Generally, the more space the theme takes up, the harder it is to keep the fill simple. Ms. Stewart knows what she's doing on these early-week puzzles.

Bullets:

• 40A: Eskimo boat (UMIAK) — along with PLINTH, one of two decidedly non-Mondayish answers in the grid. Longtime solvers and Inuit culture aficionados will know UMIAK, but that's a roughie for people trying to break into the solving game.
  
• 32D: Newspaper columnist Kupcinet (IRV) — Again, don't know him. I'm guessing this is another answer that will be more familiar to older than to younger solvers (and I don't qualify as "younger" any more, btw). IRV Kupcinet wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times for six decades ('40s-'2000s).
  
• 24D: Fish-tailed males (MERMEN) — that's sort of a sassy little answer for a Monday. And under the Eskimo boat and alongside the MORAYS (9D: Some eels)—aquatically appropriate
  

You were supposed to get a sub tomorrow, but my flight to Philly has already been canceled, so it's very likely I'll still be with you on Tuesday. Happy travels or leftovers or whatever you've got going on.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]