French actress Saint-Cyr / SAT 3-26-11 / Constellation next to Pavo / Creature revered by Mayans / Quarry boss of cartoons / Film villain sings Daisy

Constructor: Brad Wilber

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none


Word of the Day: QUETZAL (42D: Creature revered by the Mayans) —

Quetzals are strikingly colored birds in the trogon family (Trogonidae). They are found in forests and woodlands, especially in humid highlands, with the five species from the genus Pharomachrus being exclusively Neotropical, while the single Euptilotis species is almost entirely restricted to western Mexico (marginally also in adjacent U.S. states). They are fairly large (all over 32 cm or 13 inches), slightly bigger than other trogon species. Trogons have iridescent green or golden-green wing coverts, back, chest and head, and a red belly. They are strongly sexually dimorphic, and parts of the females' plumage is brown or grey. These largely solitary birds feed on fruits, berries, insects and small vertebrates (e.g. frogs), and can, despite the bright plumage, be surprisingly difficult to see in their wooded habitats. (wikipedia)

• • •

Too lazy to get off the couch, go upstairs, print out puzzle, and solve it on paper, so I just grabbed my laptop and solved while lying on the couch, with college basketball blaring nearby and with various bedtime preparations happening around me. Even with the distractions, and the utter lack of speed urgency on my part, I still finished in just a shade over 9—fast for me, for a Saturday, and wicked fast for me for a Brad Wilber Saturday. If only I'd remembered stupid CHÈVRE more quickly (1A: Goat cheese), I'd have been even faster. Very little resistance today. Biggest issues—figuring out what [Gone con] was after ("oh ... a con who has gone ... gotcha") (ESCAPEE); trying to remember which HENRY I was after (IV) (2D: John of Gaunt's son); convincing myself QUETZAL could stand on its own, without COATL; getting to HOGTIE from HOBBLE (65A: Render helpless) ... and that's pretty much it. Really like this grid—lots of Scrabbly letters and interesting words/phrases, not a lot of dreck. You can keep your stunt grids with the stacked 15s and big white spaces and what not. I'll take a modest-looking 70-72-word grid with tough clues and bouncy, in-the-language, original fill (BYE WEEK!) (45D: Idle stretch for an N.F.L. team) any day.

There were a few things I just didn't know—RENEE Saint-Cyr, for instance (36D: French actress Saint-Cyr). I know Lili St. Cyr (grrr...), but not RENEE. Knew QUEEN MAB and HESIOD, but their clues didn't make them easy to pick up (42A: She "gallops o'er a courtier's nose," in Shakespeare + 15A: Ancient "Works and Days" poet). Know SHREK, of course, but not as a musical (13D: 2009 Best Musical nominee). No idea that ARA was next to Pavo, but constellation in three letters = ARA until I'm shown otherwise. Prince HAL was the son of HENRY IV, but today the clue on HAL is much more modern and creepy (32A: Film villain who sings "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!"). The "Daisy" scene in "2001" is amazingly sad, almost touching. I've never thought of HAL as a proper "villain." I sort of like him.



Bullets:

• 23A: Cagney's employer (NYPD) — I'm assuming this is the Cagney of "Cagney & Lacey," a show any disco-era kid (or 80s teenager) (or X'ER) would have at least a passing familiarity with.
  
• 38A: First man featured on the cover of the U.S. edition of Vogue (GERE) — apparently it's "Mildly Obscure Clues for Richard GERE" week at the NYT (see 46A, yesterday)
  
• 49A: Biden's successor on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (KERRY) — that clue, like KERRY, makes me want to sleep.
  
• 64A: So-called "wand of heaven" (ALOE VERA) — anyone so-calling it that has never been anywhere around me. Luckily, this answer was easy to pick up from crosses.
  
• 8D: They may evoke tristesse (ADIEUX) — GERE twice in two days, not that weird. ADIEUX *and* GERE twice in two days, a little weird.
  
• 26D: Brave protector (TEPEE) — I can see how this clue might have been misleading, but I had all the Es in place before I ever saw the clue.
  
• 43D: Quarry boss of cartoons (MRS. LATE) — really mean lady. Also, kind of a night owl.
  
• 56D: Beatle George studied under him (RAVI) — Shankar. "Beatle George" sounds really weird. Like Beetlejuice meets Curious George.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

#36

Je tiens ce blog, mais également un blog que j'ai l'habitude d'appeler "l'officieux" sur lequel je poste mes inspirations.

En général, des images, trouvées en parcourant le net qui font du bien à mes pupilles, me donnent envie de voyager et me mettent de bonne humeur.

Finalement, j'ai décidé de poster ces photos, ici-même, de temps en temps, car j'ai remarqué qu'en les postant sur l'autre blog, je privais la plupart d'entre vous d'en bénéficier !

Je ne supprime pas le blog Les Inspirations de Kenza pour que l'on puisse avoir accès aux archives mais, vous l'avez compris, ça se passera ici dès maintenant !

Qu'est ce-que vous en pensez ? On fait comme ça ?

Ps : C'est le dernier jour des votes pour élire votre pochette préférée concoctée pour la marque Ekyog (référence à cet article).

Dernière ligne droit, je compte sur vous les gars ! A vos votes :

http://pourlongtemps.ekyog.com/bloggeuse/kenza.aspx

Le nouveau clip de SebastiAn "Embody", réalisé par So Me.
L'album sera dispo le 30 mai.

Rush drummer/lyricist Neil / FRI 3-25-11 / Blue-backed Dr. Seuss character / One-named rock star 1990s-2000s / Wild flowers in Sara Teasdale poem

Constructor: Mike Nothnagel

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none


Word of the Day: The TYMES (47A: Group with the 1963 #1 hit "So Much in Love") —

The Tymes are an American soul vocal group, who enjoyed equal success in the United Kingdom as their homeland. They share the distinction of being one of the few acts to have one and only one chart-topper in both the U.S. and UK with different titles [...] Their song "So Much in Love" was elected to the Songs of the Century in 2001. In 2005 The Tymes were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. As of 2006^[update], they are still performing, with three of the original five group members; they appeared on the PBS special, My Music: Love Songs of the 50s and 60s. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very, very slow start for me. Couldn't get a foothold anywhere. Had a *very* tentative ARE WE in the NW (4D: "___ ready?"), a somewhat less tentative but still not rock solid ORECK in the SW (37A: Hoover rival), and not much else. Kept circling the grid, looking at short stuff, trying to get in, when I finally made some headway in the unlikeliest of places: ILA (42A: Pier grp.). I can barely tell ILA apart from ILO, and the only reason I know either is because of crosswords, but for some reason, that initialism felt Right, and I plunked LEANER (43D: "Almost" in horseshoes) and I'M DONE (42D: "All finished!") down shortly thereafter. Used those and gimmes LANG (52D: Filmmaker Fritz) and ATEE (53D: Exactly, after "to") to wrangle the SE, and I was off, building continuously (though sometimes slowly) on what I had until I finished the puzzle.



Lots of this stuff ended up falling into my wheelhouse (ironic, given the Ugly start I had): ALEPPO (39D: Largest city in Syria) is in "Othello" and a Nabokov short story whose title cites "Othello" ("That in ALEPPO Once..."). GEN X'ER ... well, I am one (41D: Millennial's parent). That was easy. NSF I know from having academic scientist friends (36D: Univ. research grantor). Neil PEART (31A: Rush drummer/lyricist Neil) ... well, see GEN X'ER, above. That guy was legendary, esp. among a certain kind of boy in the 80s (not me, but kids I knew, for sure). I quite enjoy BECK (30D: One-named rock star of the 1990s-2000s). As a onetime medievalist, I'm amused by the presence of JOUSTS at a "Renaissance" fair (8A: Renaissance fair sights). TREF is one of my most memorable of all crossword words (22A: Not allowed on certain diets), as I thought I had made it up during my first tournament puzzle experience—come to find out, it's a very common word in some sets (not to this California GEN X'ER, that's for sure). With the exception of ECK (45A: Opponent of Luther during the Protestant Reformation), PEART, and TYMES, this puzzle had little in the way obscurities, getting all its difficulty from rough cluing (that ION clue, yikes—25A: ___ drive (engine in "Star Wars")). Hard for me to dislike a puzzle with TIME WARP (12D: Dance in which "you bring your knees in tight"), ERIC IDLE (33D: "And Now for Something Completely Different" co-star) and STEAMY SLEAZE (18A: R-rated, maybe + 56A: Schlock). All in all, a suitably tough and entertaining romp from Mr. Nothnagel (constructor of the Finals puzzle at this year's ACPT)



Bullets:

• 59A: Where some jets originate (GEYSERS) — this was *not* one of yesterday's options!
  
• 30A: She "espied their tails side by side / All hung on a tree to dry" (BO-PEEP) — not a part of the rhyme I know, but I had that terminal "P" and figured it out almost immediately by context.
  
• 55A: Onetime General Motors spokesman (PAT BOONE) — Had forgotten or else never knew this.
  

• 10D: Uintah and Ouray Reservation tribe (UTES) — UINTA mts. (a must-know bit of crossword fill) are in Utah, so ... that was a clue, though it doesn't take much prodding for a solver to get from nothing to UTES. Tribe in four = UTES or OTOS / OTOE and then a host of other less common possibilities like, say, CREE.
  
• 13D: Those involved in cutting class at school? (STYLISTS) — well this one gave me fits. Had ST--ISTS and still needed help from the crosses (another beanball of a clue at 20A: Digs for peanuts? => HOSTEL).
  
• 15D: Blue-backed Dr. Seuss character (YERTLE) — the Turtle. I was at a loss until eventually I had the -TLE. Not on heavy rotation when I was a child. (Dr. Seuss Dictionary and "Green Eggs and Ham" and "One Fish, Two Fish" were the Seuss books of my childhood)
  
• "Wild" flowers in a Sara Teasdale poem (ASTERS) — not a poem I know. A very tough ASTERS clue (though as with UTES, it's not hard for a constant solver to get to ASTERS with minimal clue prodding: "Flower ... starts with "A" ... sure."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. nice (loooong) write-up of the ACPT over at PuzzleGirl's "L.A. Crossword Confidential"

Rock bassist Weymouth / THU 3-24-11 / Muckraker Tarbell / Camp historic Mormon expedition / Ruth chaser 1961 / TMZ twosome

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: JETS — single circle opens each of 4 long theme answers; these four circles spell out JETS, which, in turn, is the clue for every long theme answer (all of which are clued [See circles])

• JACUZZI FEATURES
• ENGINES ON A PLANE
• TEAM FROM NEW YORK
• SHARKS' RIVAL GANG

Word of the Day: TINA Weymouth (55D: Rock bassist Weymouth) —

Martina Michèle "Tina" Weymouth (born November 22, 1950, Coronado, California) is an American musician, best known as a founding member and bassist of the New Wave group Talking Heads and its side project Tom Tom Club (co-founded with husband and Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz). (wikipedia)

• • •

Circles, clueless answers, and answers that are really clues (here, with the "answer" in every case being JETS) are all things I tend Not to like in my puzzles. The last category especially bugs me, as the resulting fill is usually somewhat forced and not totally natural-sounding. That said, this puzzle was executed about as well as a puzzle of this type can be. Circles actually add an interesting twist (and an interesting limitation on the theme answers). All theme answers are exactly 15 letters long, and, with the slight exception of ENGINES ON A PLANE, feel like very believable crossword clues for JETS. DANO was a mystery to me (36A: Paul of "There Will Be Blood"), but everything else felt very familiar, with only the clues providing difficulty (this is a good thing). So, despite moments of exasperation, I liked it fine.



Had no idea how to get to YEAGER from the clue: 48D: Flier of the X-1—no idea what an "-1" is. Also no idea (until I had just one letter left) what [Keen] could possibly be if not SHARP (my first answer). SWELL? So it's dated slang, like NEATO. Argh. That little region roughed me up a bit. Clue on TRAPS was good but vicious (19D: Green surroundings?). I had no idea. TRACT? TRAIL? Weirdly, I wanted SAHIB (35A: Title of respect) from the get-go, but wouldn't put it in because TRA-S didn't seem plausible as a potential answer for 19D. Thought clues on LUTE (16A: Subject of a lesson for Katharina in "The Taming of the Shrew"), SHAW (65A: The 1999 comedy "She's All That" is based on his work), and ZION'S (18D: ___ Camp, historic Mormon expedition led by Joseph Smith) were all pretty hard. On the other hand, I had good luck with ATELIERS and PIE PLATE (39D: Makeshift frisbee), putting both of them in right away (once I got a cross or two to confirm them). West gave me perhaps most trouble of all. END AT just sounded wrong as answer for [Finish on], and ALOHA shirt (41A: ___ shirt (colorful short-sleeved attire))??? In America, we call them "Hawaiian shirts" (I feel as if I've written that exact sentence before). And DANO, as I say, is no one to me.



I almost made a stupid mistake at 66A: Unveiled, writing in BORE as if it were the past tense of "bare," when of course it's the past tense of "bear." Luckily, I love Talking Heads and knew TINA Weymouth, who gave me the "A" that showed me that [Unveiled] was an adjective, not a verb=>BARE.

Bullets:

• 23A: Muckraker Tarbell (IDA) — pretty much the top of the IDA list.
  
• 43A: Ruth chaser in 1961 (MARIS) — one of the few very easy clues in the puzzle.
  
• 32D: Kindle download (E-BOOK) — got slightly confused here, as I thought that EBOOK was a specific format that Kindle did not, in fact, handle. . . but E-BOOK is just a general term for electronic book, and in that sense, this clue is fine. I mostly use my Kindle to read the NYT (I pay for the privilege, so all this new paywall stuff is just noise to me right now). Read a bit more of "Count of Monte Cristo" on my Kindle today, in fact. It was a snow day (lousy Smarch!) and family was home, so not a lot of work happened. Mainly, this happened:

And a little bit of this:




Could've been worse.

See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. though she won't see this today, probably, all my love and best wishes to my good friend (and fellow crossword junkie) who underwent major surgery yesterday. Just got notified that all went well. Can't wait to have you back, sweetheart.

Une tenue en vidéo ! Merci Walldress !

Un dimanche, dans le froid (vous remarquerez la couleur de mon nez... Hum), j'ai retrouvé l'équipe de Waldress.

Un agréable moment passé en leur compagnie pendant lequel j'ai présenté ma tenue en vidéo.

Waldress ?

C'est un tout nouveau site assez bien foutu, dans lequel nous pouvons partager nos looks, tagguer nos tenues, et on nous indique où acheter les articles qui constituent les tenues.

En gros, vous pouvez même faire un shopping en ligne en vous inspirant directement des silhouettes proposées. Coolos, non ?

Jean - Rehnsen

Pull - Vintage

Boucles d'oreilles - achetées au Maroc

Trench - H&M

Chapeau - H&M

Boots - Jonak

Sac - Vintage

Ca se passe en vidéos, en photos juste ici !

Bandmate of Johnny Rotten / WED 3-23-11 / Ancient land in modern Jordan / Onetime exam in British schools / Home to Da Vinci's L'Ultima Cena

Constructor: Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: JULIUS CAESAR (54A: Speaker of the Latin quote hidden in the answers to the starred clues ... and the English language-quote hidden in the answers to the double-starred clues) — "VENI VIDI VICI" and "THE DIE IS CAST," respectively

Word of the Day: AKIO Morita (57D: Sony co-founder Morita) —

Akio Morita KBE (盛田 昭夫 Morita Akio, January 26, 1921, Tokoname, Aichi – October 3, 1999, Tokyo) was a Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony Corporation along with Masaru Ibuka. (wikipedia)

• • •

Solved on paper, in preparation for my run at next year's B Finals (ACPT 2012) (all puzzles are done on paper at the ACPT). I tend to solve on-screen because it's so much more convenient, but the mechanics of on-paper solving are completely different, and something I need to get much more used to. I learned to solve crosswords on paper, but that was long before I got very good, and well before I'd even heard of software that allowed for on-screen solving. At any rate, I'm moving back to paper for my NYT-solving now, for the most part, which means having to get used to a whole new set of difficulty norms (on-paper times are inevitably slower). This is all to say that I don't really know how difficult this was. I had moments of sputtering, but overall it felt very doable—perhaps even a bit moreso than an average Wednesday. Hardest part was figuring out the second part of the theme, i.e. seeing THE DIE IS CAST "hidden" in the answers to those four double-starred clues (I'd have been more impressed with a hidden ALEA IACTA EST). I'm ambivalent about the theme—the double-star, double-language aspect is interesting, but those words aren't exactly hard to "hide," and the quotes are unrelated, and only one of the "hidden" words actually touches more than one word in its answer. So ... I'm on the fence. Neither up nor down for me. I came, I saw, I shrugged.

Theme answers:

• EVENINGDRESS VIVIDIMAGE SIDVICIOUS (Soiree attire / Indelible picture in the mind / Bandmate of Johnny Rotten)
  
• THEIR ADIEU VISIT CASTE ("His/her" alternative / Parting word / Sojourn / Social grouping)
  

Pencil-solving allows me to see quite vividly where I struggled. I rarely take the time to erase, choosing instead to scrawl new letters on top of old, leaving a strange palimpsest for the judges/computers to interpret (no problems so far). Today, the place de resistance was the NE, where failure to come up with the RX-8 carmaker (HONDA? ACURA? No, MAZDA) and failure to guess quickly what followed EVENING (DRESS, it turns out), meant that that corner gave me minor fits. I think I got TEES (12D: Concert souvenirs), and then DRESS, and then tried HONDA, and when that didn't work, MAZDA, and it went down from there. Tournament experience has taught me that in speed-solving, you are in your own world where time runs differently—what feels like epic struggle might only be 10-15 seconds. I thought I was really getting beaten up by Puzzle 5 as I was solving it at the tourney ... but I ended up with the 11th best score on that puzzle (out of 650 or so solvers). Of course on the easiest puzzle (Puzzle 1), I got so caught up in speed that I left a square blank—a horribly costly error (I'd have been close to the Top 20 overall if I'd simply filled that stupid little square in—it's not like the cross was tough; I just missed it).

Two other hiccups today: LIMO for SEMI (7D: Hard-to-park vehicle) and E'ER for O'ER (63D: Poetic contraction). Otherwise, pretty smooth sailing.

Bullets:

• 34A: Onetime exam in British schools (O LEVEL) — did not know the O LEVELs were "onetime." I've seen A LEVEL and O LEVEL several times in recent puzzles, after (or so it seems) never having seen them before. Weird.
  
• 50A: Ancient land in modern Jordan (EDOM) — one of many four-letter Mediterraneanish geographical clues I can't keep straight. See also ELEA, which I also confuse with ALEA, which, given today's theme, is interestingly coincidental.
  
• 11D: y= 3x + 5 representation, e.g. (LINE) — true enough, though I couldn't see it. Technically, y = x is a LINE, right?
  
• 23D: Home to da Vinci's "L'Ultima Cena" (MILANO) — I was just wondering what it was about this clue that indicated the Italian spelling, when I realized that the "L'Ultima Cena" is Italian for "The Last Supper." Aha.
  
• 33D: Danish city where Hans Christian Andersen was born (ODENSE) — vaguely rings a bell. Got most if not all of it from crosses.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Moments

Oh un souvenir de Milan. Addict à mon téléphone ? Oui.

Voici Flume (on prononce Floume, j'y tiens !), bébé Maine Coon, qui a rejoint notre appartement.

Fin de journée, je m'éclate avec l'application Hipstamatic pour Iphone.

India & Diego, sur leur trente-et-un.

Salomée, pourtant hyper allergique aux chats, a fini par craquer.

Martin en shooting.

Photo mal cadrée !

Les étapes de l'illustration que Melissa, jeune brésilienne installée au Canada, a réalisé de moi.

(Son site et son blog )