Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

My official entry will have to come around midday today. They kept me busy at work all night and now I’m running off to an audition. So details later but I did have a chance to actually do this Mike Nothnagel puzzle and I came within 2 boxes of a second straight No Google Friday. A little frustrating as I think I just became impatient and bailed too early. I think I might have been able to figure them both out.

The offending boxes were:

The “C” in:

• 18A. Simple inflorescence, as in a lily of the valley (RACEME). This I’ve never head of. I don’t understand the clue or the answer…ok, I’ve looked it up now. Inflorescence has nothing to do with lighting or glowing as I thought but a group of flowers growing from a common stem. And a raceme is an inflorescence having stalked flowers arranged singly along an elongated unbranched axis, as in the lily of the valley. Riiiiight.
• 11D. Need to get hitched: Abbr. (LIC). This I feel I should have figured out. I did cycle through the alphabet but it didn’t trigger anything for me. Pickles and I got married in Vegas. Outside the marriage license office there were tons of people hawking chapels and limos and Elvis and whatnot. Crazy.

And the “X” in”

• 52D. Irene’s Roman counterpart (PAX). Somebody, please explain this one to me.
  
• 57A. Some natural history museum attractions (TREXES). Frustrating. I wasn’t parsing it correctly and thought maybe it was TREMES or TRENES. Durn’t.

But I did get everything else. Ok, I’m off. I’ll flesh out this entry in a few hours. Oh wait, how could I forget to mention it, Adrian Zmed’s debut in the puzzle! He is awesome!

Oh boy, I’m finally home. Loooong night and day. So, the puzzle. I thought it was great. Friday is quickly becoming my favorite puzzle of the week. Hard, but not so hard that I can’t usually figure out at least a large portion. I started out in the middle with a couple of gimmies:

• 24A. Future star athlete who debuted with the Rangers in 1989 (SOSA). I have to say, I didn’t realize Sosa played in the Majors in the 80s.
• 28A. Dr. Seuss book, with “The” (LORAX). Great, heartbreaking book.

And the “X” led me to MAXWELLSMART and the rest fell in from there. Favorite clues:

• 15A. Hombre-to-be (MUCHACHO)
• 56A. Rushing home? (GRIDIRON). A football clue that had me thinking about baseball first. Sneaky.
  
• 34D. Come home more often than? (OUTSCORE). Now a baseball clue that me thinking about college kids.
• 46D. “Shut your pie hole!” (ZIPIT). I will use both of these phrases on the next podcast. Watch out, Brian.

Much like Brian I had never heard of:

• 7D. Long-running Art and Chip Sansom comic strip (THEBORNLOSER). Men and women sure are different. How do we ever get along?

And I am very puzzled by:

• 37D. Gunpowder alternatives (OOLONGS). I thought oolong was tea. Can you shoot somebody with tea?

And all this, of course brings us to the star of the puzzle:

• 46A. “T. J. Hooker” actor Adrian (ZMED). Just look at this resume. T.J. Hooker, Grease 2, Dance Fever, Bachelor Party and Shira: The Vampire Samurai. Don’t you understand? She’s a vampire AND a samurai. So bladey and so fangy. Anyway, Adrian Zmed is awesome and if you don’t believe me check this opening from season 2 of Hooker. Yes, Shatner running through an empty park to nowhere is awesome as is his patented jumping on the hood of a moving car. But Zmed knows how to treat the hood of car in his own way and he can do the half-splits on top of a chain link fence.