Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

The theme for this Andrea Carla Michaels and Patrick Blindauer puzzle was “things you say to losers”. This is a subject I know something about having finished in 610th place in the ACPT. Not to mention the only athletic ribbon I received in school was a second place ribbon in a two team race.

17A. Words to a fourth runner-up (WINSOMELOSESOME)

26A. Words to a third runner-up (YOUDIDYOURBEST)

43A. Words to a second runner-up (WESTILLLOVEYOU)

58A. Words to a first runner-up (CLOSEBUTNOCIGAR)

I enjoyed the long answers. I think the one problem I had with this theme is, unless I’m completely missing something, the phrases have nothing to do with what number runner-up you are. So the answers would be valid for any of the clues. The presence of the ordinal numbers led me to believe the answers would have something to do with them. Am I missing something? Having said that, I still thought it was an enjoyable theme and puzzle.

Here are Monday answers that I still don’t know even though I’ve been doing puzzles constantly.

23A. Its symbol is Sn (TIN). Stannum is Latin for tin.

36A. Pi’s follower (RHO). The 17th letter of the Greek alphabet.

37A. Swiss artist Paul (KLEE). A Swiss painter of German nationality. Here is his Cat and Bird.

62A. Florence’s river (ARNO). Does anybody have a trick for learning these rivers? Why are they all 4 letters? And why do they all start with A?

And a couple other clues I enjoyed:

10. Summit (ACME). They‘ve just come out with a new catalog.

39A. Jack who pioneered late-night talk (PAAR). In searching youtube for a Jack Paar clip I found a great clip of Johnny Carson’s last TV appearance. It has nothing to do with the clue but I remember watching this when it aired and it’s great.

Brian is back in town, Episode #16 of the podcast has been recorded and should be up by Tuesday morning.

Next stop, Tuesday.

I didn’t do very well on this Pamela Amick Klawitter puzzle.  I had maybe 75% of it done before I turned to google.  I enjoyed the Chain Reaction theme but, for me, there were just too many things of which I’d never heard.  Among them:

1A. Third Crusade siege site (ACRE).  Interesting way to clue a standard crossword answer.

10A. Where houses traditionally have no walls (SAMOA).  I don’t get this.  Why don’t the houses have walls?  Is that really traditional?

37A. ___-midi (French time of day) (APRES).  Have I mentioned before that I don’t speak French.

57A. Pet animal of Salvador Dali (OCELOT).  Had the OT and tried to make PARROT work.

65A. Fabric border (SELVAGE).  I have a lot of fabric experience but I’ve never heard of this.

115A. Too: Fr. (TROP).  Non seulement je ne parle pas français, je ne lis pas français. Je n’ai jamais été à la France bien que je faire grand-chose à voir. J’ai entendu qu’ils ont de nombreux lacs de délicieux pour participer. Saviez-vous que dans les rues de Paris, ChapStick est hors la loi? Je vais devoir faire attention à cela. Quand je fais passer en France je suis impatient de manger leur célèbre tacos, courir pieds nus et en prenant un congé sabbatique.

15D. Gulf of Guinea capital (ACCRA)

44D. Soap plant (AMOLE). There’s some sort of guacamole joke here but I can’t figure out what it is.   Any thoughts?

As I said, I did think the theme was fun.  All the theme clues together created a chain of two word phrases that went from FOOD COURT to POST OFFICE.

FOOD COURT CASE CLOSED CIRCUIT BOARD FOOT LOCKER ROOM SERVICE ROAD HAZARD LIGHT TOUCH SCREEN DOOR BELL PEPPER SPRAY PAINT BRUSH FIRE WALL STREET SMART CAR POOL PLAYER PIANO BAR GRAPH PAPER TRAIL HEAD MASTER CARD COUNTER TOP DOLLAR SIGN POST OFFICE

Very cool.  I think it would have been just a touch better if the beginning phrase was somehow related to the ending phrase.  And my other complaint: BOARD FOOT?  What is that?

Ok, I think that’s it for today.  It’s late, this puzzle took me way too long and it made me feel like a bit of an idiot.  I hate to finish on a negative note so instead I’ll leave you with vintage and somewhat scary coke ad.

16D. Alternatives to RCs (COKES).

Brian is back in town tomorrow.  Episode #16 of the podcast will be up sometime on Monday.

Next stop, Monday.

Ooh, a puzzle by Tyler Hinman. I hope he finally gets some recognition in the crossword world. And this puzzle has his initials all over it. Lots of fun, sometimes goofy, fill. I enjoyed it but didn’t no-google it. I had the grid about 80% full before my solving reached a standstill.

Biggest reason why I may need to get my brain checked by a specialist:

24D. Can opener? (TOILETSEAT). I had T_ILETSE_T and couldn’t get it. Seriously? In my defense I had no idea what the answer was to 27A. ___ Center, second-tallest building in Chicago (AON) which would have given me the O but, really? I thought it might be the ARN Center which gave me TRILETSE_T which seemed to be on the right track. I’m just not sure where that track was heading. I simply don’t have a good enough excuse as to why I couldn’t see this.

52A. Pioneering agriculturist Jethro (TULL). Are you like me? Are you an idiot? I thought, well, it certainly can’t be Jethro Tull because that’s a band. There’s no way they named their band after an agriculturist.

8A. Group whose logo has a clock set at 11:00 (ELKS). Does anybody know why this is?

25A. It contains M.S.G. (NYC). Great clue. I got this one pretty early on.

31A. Planet system in several “Star Trek” episodes (RIGEL). Ok, I didn’t get this right off the bat but once I had the G in there it fell quickly.

42A. Cartoon character who fathered octuplets (APU). Great way to clue a pretty standard crossword answer.

51A. Not make it (MISSTHECUT). Just couldn’t come up with this one. I had ___STHECUT and the best I could do was GOESTHECUT. Goes the cut, the phrase has lost all meaning.

58A. “Bill & ___ Bogus Journey,” 1991 comedy (TEDS). Pretty much the only gimmie in the entire puzzle. And I’m not sure if I’m ashamed or proud of this but I’ve never, ever seen either Bill & Ted movies.

7D. Actress O’Connor of TV’s “Xena” (RENEE). Filled in by crosses. Never seen the show.

13D. Moles go behind them (ENEMYLINES). Great clue. Made me think of 24. CTU really needs to work on their background checks.

23D. Ending of many a chase (CARCRASH). Ok, here’s the one problem I had with this puzzle. We also had 44D. Crash pad? (FUTON). I thought you weren’t supposed to do that? I don’t mind breaking the symmetrical rule like they did on Thursday but this bugs me. It made me think that my CARCRASH answer was wrong.

37D. Title role for Greta Garbo (CAMILLE). Somebody’s going to have to explain this one to me. According to the imdb she played Marguerite Gautier in Camille.

And let’s not forget the four 15 letter answers running across and down the grid.

22A. One may have many runners (PRIMARYELECTION)

44A. Something given at a meeting (FIRSTIMPRESSION)

3D. Fourth-quarter strategies (TWOMINUTEDRILLS)

9D. Front-of-magazine pieces (LEADINGARTICLES)

Great puzzle by Tyler.

And for those of you who didn’t watch The Daily Show this week, the truthiness will come out:

Next stop, Sunday.

Are you sure this was a Saturday, Mr. William Wordsworth Shortz? Or were you just running a sneaky no-theme Thursday as part of your inconspicuous summer solstice celebration? (And don’t some of you secretly wish I had a lithp and tried to say all that?)

In all honesty, I have no idea how I managed to complete this grid in under twenty minutes. I’m typically a 45-minute-or-more Saturday solver, and that’s usually with the help of some serious Googling. And to top it off, this puzzle was designed by one Mr. Tyler Lewis Four-Time Champion Hinman. I saw that most of the top solvers (on the New York Times applet) seemed to clock in a bit faster on this puzzle than on yesterday’s Friday grid. I, too, did it in far less time (and with far less help).

The grid was a peculiar design, but something of a self-tribute, it would seem. The black squares make up the initials T.L.H. leaving an unusual structure of answers — four 15-letter monsters (two each, horizontal and vertical), as well as four scattered 10-letters and two 3×7 stacks. The long answers were:

• 22A.One may have many runners : PRIMARY ELECTION
• 44A. Something given at a meeting : FIRST IMPRESSION — This was a bit off for my taste. The specific nature of the first impression only happens at a first meeting. I didn’t like the more generic clue with the more specific answer. Perhaps “Day one acquisition” would fit better.
• 3D. Fourth-quarter strategies : TWO-MINUTE DRILLS — I’m a little disappointed here as well, especially in that I think Tyler Hinman is a bit of a sports fan. The two-minute drill (originally [if not exclusively] specific to football) can actually be an appropriate strategy in both the second and fourth quarters. Football games have a weird system of clock management (when time ticks away, when time doesn’t tick away), and one of the peculiarities is that the clock stops with two minutes left in the half, no matter what’s happening on the field. Subsequently, the team with the ball has a full two minutes to make their last rush toward a score — before either halftime or the end of the game. This particular clue had me initially thinking about endgame strategies — and while a two-minute drill is an endgame strategy, it is not exclusively so. In short(z), I was a bit misled.
• 9D. Front-of-magazine pieces : LEADING ARTICLES – And yet again, I find the clue somewhat disappointing. It made fine sense, and I got it fairly easily, but it just didn’t have the zing I was expecting from a 15-letter answer. Rather mundane, both clue and answer.

Some clues I liked:

• 19A. “The nerve!” : SOME PEOPLE – I am easily irritated by just about anything, so these are both terms in my daily lexicon.
• 42A. Cartoon character who fathered octuplets : APU – Ryan will no doubt want to post a fleet of Apu videos when he solves this clue. I’ll pre-empt that with a single picture.
• 37D. Title role for Greta Garbo : CAMILLE – Great movie. Greta Garbo is my wife’s all-time favorite movie star. I never knew much of her work (Garbo’s, not my wife’s), but have since acquired a complete lifetime film catalog in my marriage/merger.
• 10D. Buzz producer : KAZOO – Just fun and fun.
• 54A. La ___, capital of Buenos Aires province : PLATA – Yesterday, I had no idea what “tanto” was, and I call myself a professional musician. Today, I know what “Plata” is because I can’t seem to purge my brain of the musical Evita. In the song “Buenos Aires,” she sings about a bunch of places she’s going to, and “la Plata” is on that list. Useful? No way.
• 24D. Can opener? : TOILET SEAT — I must not be quite on Tyler’s wavelength here, because this clue also didn’t quite fit for me. I liked it (hence its appearance on this list, and not the next list), but the seat itself isn’t the opener; rather, my hand is the opener. The seat doesn’t do the act of opening on its own.Unless you have one of these things (pictured at right).
• 58A. “Bill & ___ Bogus Journey,” 1991 comedy : TED’S — Certainly didn’t need the year or genre for this one. The sequel didn’t live up to the glory of the original (and I marvel that one man’s career was launched from these films while another man’s career went absolutely nowhere — anyone seen much of Alex Winter lately?).

Clues I did not like at all:

• 1A. Midwest farmers work later on it: Abbr. : CDT – Sure, I understand. But it’s just a weird roundabout way to get to the fact that it’s the time zone thing where I never know whether it’s S or D in the middle. And just to soapbox for a moment here, not only can I never remember which we’re in at any given time (Daylight Saving Time or whatever the opposite of that is), I don’t know if the S stands for “Saving” or the D stands for “Daylight” (or both?), and those clues are always going to be E-T, C-T, M-T and P-T until I get a crossing.
• 4D. Washes : ARROYOS – Huh? So I’ve just learned (since typing “huh”) that arroyo is Spanish for “river,” and these rivers are sometimes called “draws” or “washes.” We can’t come up with a fun way to clue FIRST IMPRESSION, but we have this strange, obscure, non-clever deflection of mind for “washes.” Just odd.
• 33D. Iberia : Spain :: ___ : Chile : LAN – More of my geography intellect coming to the forefront. I don’t even know what this all means. Iberia is the Spain/Portugal peninsula, isn’t it? (I’m not even sure — I have learned what little I know about European geography mostly from failing to remember half of the crossword clues I’ve read.) So if Iberia refers to this jutting land mass consisting of two countries, how is that even applicable to one country that isn’t a peninsula? (To support my point, I refuse to look this one up. Someone set me straight.)
• 47D. Weather may affect them: Abbr. : ETAS – I just got it. As I’m typing this, I just understood what it means. But once again, I’m going to argue. Maybe I’m just in an argumentative mood. It’s after three in the morning, and I need to continue doing my laundry. Anyway — won’t weather more likely affect the estimated time of departure? And yes, due to the laws of physics or something, if you leave an hour later, you’ll arrive an hour later, so indirectly, weather affects the arrival time as well. But once you’re up in the air, weather doesn’t do much to change the time you land. Maybe runway traffic down below means you have to circle a few times. Or maybe I just don’t fly enough to notice that there are sometimes rainstorms that make us fly longer than we should. Seems like the answer again doesn’t quite fit the clue.

All in all, I think I liked this puzzle. Yes, some of the clues annoyed me, but only in retrospect. While solving, I felt good, mostly because I was flying (by my standards) through a Saturday.

I will be hard-pressed to get to Sunday’s puzzle in that I wind up my five-week stint in Maine tomorrow, and have to pack, clean my house, and then drive back to New York on Sunday in time for Podcast Episode #16: The One In Which We Get A Name.

See you Sunday! (Or maybe Monday!)

Gaaaaahhhh! One box away from a no-google Friday. Actually, I’m amazed I got that far on this Friday puzzle constructed by Mike Nothnagel, Pen Pal Extraordinaire and Constructor of the Friday Puzzle. After the first half hour I had exactly one answer entered:

7D. Title role in a 1986 Woody Allen film (HANNAH). I was 90% sure that was right but I couldn’t get any of the crosses to work. I deleted it and typed it back in more than a few times over the course of the night.

But after hours and hours of sneaking peeks at the puzzle in between pretending to work here at the soul-sucking job I eventually filled in the whole grid. With one wrong box. I couldn’t find the error. I even reloaded the page and typed the whole thing in again. Nothing worked. With great shame I headed over to xwordinfo.com to figure out where I’d gone wrong. Sigh.

50A. Crew team? (TARS). I had OARS here. Seemed right. It still seems right. I think I’ve heard of TARS before but it never crossed my mind that OARS was wrong. That turned the down cross of 34D. “___ fini!” (CEST) into CESO which, I don’t know, kinda looked right. I don’t speak French. For the love of god, I don’t speak French!

So that was frustrating. But that shouldn’t take away from the fact that this was a great puzzle. Much harder than last Friday’s. Apparently the Great Howard Barkin, Knower of All Things didn’t get the memo as he finished this in 5:36. WTF?

I tried so many different answers for the clues it bordered on the ridiculous.

1A. Flurries (BURSTS). I had SPATES, BLASTS and RUSHES here.

14A. Head of an alley? (ONEPIN). TINPAN and ONEPAN.

16A. Not forsaking (TRUETO). For some reason, ADORES looked really good here for a while.

2D. Still in development (UNRIPE). UNMADE and UNDONE.

5D. Part of an even exchange (TIT). Now, I had EYE here as in an “eye for an eye”. That, to me, is an even exchange. In “tit for tat” somebody’s getting tit and the other guy’s getting tat. How is that even?

53A. Film role for Russell in 1993 and Costner in 1994 (EARP). This is about as close as I’ve come to my brain exploding. I knew I knew this one but it took hours for me to get it. Kurt Russell definitely wins the mustache war here.

1D. Bench warmer (BOTTOM). I was convinced this was going to be BTEAM or BTEAMER or something like that. I actually had BOTTOM early on but deleted it.

7A. How you might meet someone (HALFWAY). My most ridiculous wrong answer. I had __LF__Y so I put in WOLFCRY and spent the next 15 minutes trying to convince myself that worked. Don’t people greet each other with wolf howls? No? What about that guy on American Gladiators?

15D. Underground movement leader? (DUNGEONMASTER). You know what I miss? Good ol’ pen and paper D&D. I know they still make it and people still play it but I haven’t played since high school. I should really get a group together.

29D. Classless one? (TUTEE). Nice one, Mike.

Ok, work is almost done and my glorious weekend is about to begin. So I’ve gotta get out of here. Great, challenging puzzle by Mr. Nothnagel. And another no-google-week attempt shattered. Ah, well.

Next stop, Saturday.

Wow, this Joe Krozel puzzle was great.  LIES!!  The black squares spelled out LIES which created a very odd looking grid.  I can’t remember the last time I saw a non-symmetrical grid in the NYT.  Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.  The trick to this puzzle was 56A. Number of clues in this puzzle that contain factual inaccuracies (TEN).  And there were 10 lies hidden throughout the grid.

28D. It’s more than 90 degrees (ACUTEANGLE).  LIAR!!  This is the first one I noticed.  It was before I knew there were lies in the grid.  It gave me a slight pause but I thought maybe I’ve got my angles mixed up so I didn’t give it much thought.  Later on it made sense.

1A. France’s ___ von Bismarck (OTTO).  LIAR!!  Good old Otto was from Germany.  This was the first answer I entered and never noticed the inaccuracy.  Not sure if that makes me an idiot or not.  In my defense I probably only saw the von Bismarck part and automatically entered in OTTO.

14A. Chemical element with the symbol Fe (NEON).  LIAR!!  This one confused me to no end.  Iron is one of the few elements I know by its symbol.  But I also knew that 1D. “I’ll be with you shortly…” was (ONESEC) and 4D. Uncommissioned was (ONSPEC) so I decided to come back to it later.

24A. Father of Jacob (ESAU).  LIAR!!  Full disclosure, I went over to Orange’s site to make sure I knew what all the lies were.  PuzzleGirl, the guest blogger today, tells me, “As any crossword puzzler knows, Jacob and Esau are twin brothers.”  [Sheepish grin]  Maybe she should reword that to say, “As any crossword puzzler should know…”  I am still bibilliterate.  Just coined that term, maybe I am a genius.

8D. Golf great Andre (AGASSI).  LIAR!!  By the time I got to this one I understood the whole LIES theme.

9D. Standard office-closing time (NINEAM).  LIAR!! I have never, ever worked in an office that closed at 5pm.  Every office I’ve worked in has been a 24/7 operation.  Right now it’s 6:36am and I have an hour until the day shift comes in.  I dislike my job but until the entertainment community decides to pay me money to act, it looks like I’m stuck.  Does anybody know of a fun and interesting job that pays money and benefits?  Anybody?

47D. Tennis champ Ernie (ELS).  LIAR!!  One of the few golfers, not named Tiger, that I’ve heard of.

49D. Currency of China (YEN).  LIAR!!  I really want to got to Asia.  I think in the next year or two, Pickles and I are going to start some serious traveling.  Europe is probably first on the list but Asia will be soon after.  Any suggestions on where to go?

50D. Summer hrs. in N.Y.C. (EST).  LIAR!!  Good god, I can’t keep these straight in puzzles that aren’t full of lies.

19A. Former pharmaceutical giant (GTE).  LIAR!!  I’ve never really understood the whole breaking up of the Bell telephone system.  Of course, I can’t understand my cellphone bill either so maybe I’m not the guy to talk to about this.

Besides the lies this puzzle was chock full of really fun fill including four 15 letter answers.

26A. Spot (CATCHAGLIMPSEOF)

11D. One who exhibits pack mentality (CIGARETTESMOKER).  Cigarettes showing up two days in a row.  You know who needs to call the quit line?  This guy:

12D. Who quipped “God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way.” (ARTUROTOSCANINI)

13D. Job seeker’s fashion advice (DRESSFORSUCCESS)

Those last three were stacked next to each other on the right side of the grid.  Very impressive.

21A. Flat things? (LEASES).  One day when I see the word “flat” in a puzzle I’ll immediately think of apartments.  Not today but hopefully in the not too distant future.

39A.  Possible names for the first decade of the century (OUGHTS).  Back in the 90s, we were discussing with my mother-in-law what we should call the upcoming decade.  Without thinking it through she suggested with much enthusiasm, “the two-oughts”.  I still tease her about that.  [Say it quickly and out loud.]

Other fill I enjoyed: SECRETCODE, GUESSAGAIN, SEEINGEYE, HIGHTAIL.  It goes on and on.  A really great puzzle.

A quick shout out to our friend, Doug Peterson, Crossword Gentleman and Man About Town.  For the second day in row he’s had a published puzzle .  Today it was in the Sun.  Very fun puzzle that had PRINCETONTIGERS crossing with CARBONFOOTPRINT in the middle of the grid.

Doug, you’re going to have to explain 2D. Botanical angle (AXIL) to me.  And, interestingly, both the Sun and Times had AAA as an answer today.  In the Sun, it was clued as International League letters and the Times had it as One step from the majors.  Both clues had to do with minor league baseball but the Sun’s clue was more difficult for me as it made me think of politics.

Next stop, Friday.

I really enjoyed this Adam Fromm puzzle. It was the perfect difficulty for a Wednesday and had lots of fun fill. The theme added an “L” to in-the-language phrases.

24A. Appetizer, entree or dessert? (DINNERPARTLY)

38A. Bonbon and how it should be divvied up? (SUGARPLUMFAIRLY)

51A. Doubting apostle? Not by a long shot! (THOMASHARDLY)

I thought those were a lot of fun. I had some trouble getting started on this one as I made a mistake on 1A.

1A. “Ishtar” or “Heaven’s Gate,” famously (BOMB). I put FLOP here which screwed up the whole top left for a while. You know, Ishtar is actually not a bad movie. And I’ve never seen Heaven’s Gate but I’ve read the uncut version is also quite good.

18A. Lawrence of the North Dakota Hall of Fame (WELK). My wife and I were in some motel a few years back and the Lawrence Welk show came on around 1am. This is a wonderful show. Totally goofy and weird but very entertaining. I wish they’d show it here in NY.

22A. Dance craze of the mid-’90s (MACARENA). It took me a long time to come up with this. All I could think of was the Lambada, The Forbidden Dance. I think I remember doing the Macarena at a baseball game. Watch the video below only if you want the song bouncing around in your head for the rest of the week.

26A. Reuben server (DELI). I expect to see a picture here on the blog of Brian eating a Reuben.

31A. Role in “Young Frankenstein” (IGOR). Few people on earth have been funnier than Marty Feldman. He was also in a number of bizarre movies that made up a lot of my childhood TV watching time including Silent Movie, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother and Yellowbeard. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother was directed by Gene Wilder and is one of the oddest movies ever. I suggest that everyone should run out and see it.

44A. Painter of “The Naked 56-Down” (GOYA) and 56. See 44-Across (MAJA). Learned from crosswords.

64A. Popular block game requiring nimble fingers (JENGA). We seem to be on an old commercial kick here at the blog so I can’t leave out Jenga! Jenga! Jenga! I especially enjoy the tag line “Once you touch it, you can’t keep your hands off it.”

4D. Old spoofing duo (BOBANDRAY). I’ve never listened to the Bob and Ray show but I am a huge fan of Bob’s son, Chris Elliot. Does anybody recall that bit he did on Letterman when he came on as Brando and did the banana dance?

11D. Fine diving score (NINE). This gets my vote for most random clue of the week.

And here, once again is Dan Feyer, Winner of the C Division solving a Monday NYT puzzle in 1:44.

Straightforward, solid puzzle by Steven Ginzburg. The theme was:

65A. Invitation info … or two alternate endings for the starts of the answers to 18-Across, 10-Down and 24-Down (DATEANDTIME)

18A. Furniture within easy walking distance of the kitchen (DINNERTABLE)

10D. Popular Sony product (PLAYSTATION)

24D. Spy who lives dangerously (DOUBLEAGENT)

Being that this was a Tuesday and I was trying to go as fast as Ryanly possible, I didn’t pay much attention to theme until I was done. An ok theme but not one that added much to the solving experience.

20A. Actor Mos ___ (DEF). For some reason this guy has been on Broadway and continues to be in lots of movies. I don’t know, to me he’s a little whiny and irritating.

40A. Pimpernel or prairie clover (HERB). This one confused me for a bit. I didn’t know who Herb Pimpernel was.

50A. African heavyweight, for short (RHINO). Hmm, I was going to list an organization that accepts donations to help save the rhinos but I’m not sure which one is a good one. Does anybody have a suggestions?

1D. Union general at Gettysburg (MEADE). This one I know purely from past puzzles.

3D. Major muddle (SNAFU). Did anybody play Snafu on the Intellivision? What a great game. Simple and addictive.

64A. Consumed (ATE). Ate at Red Lobster with a couple of friends today. We basically went for the Cheddar Bay Biscuits which were delicious. Although now the biscuits and the rest of my meal continue to sit in my stomach like a rock that forgot how to smile.

So without being the most interesting puzzle in history this was still a lot of fun to solve and I good example of Tuesday-level difficulty.

In other news, here’s a video of Dan Feyer, Winner of the C Division solving an old NYT in 1:44. Go Dan!

[Oops! Brian stepped in here to fix a graphic problem and managed to screw up the video -- Ryan, teach me what I did wrong!]

Next stop, Wednesday

Now that we’ve reached our third long-distance podcast, we may have solved our sound issues (more or less). (Most likely “less.”)

In this week’s episode, we discuss Ryan’s childhood academia, Brian’s willingness to hug, and Dan Feyer’s lightning fast ability to do… something. Also, at least one new nickname is granted, two as-yet-undiscovered members of Brian’s family are referenced, and the whole blasted show clocks in at under thirty-seven minutes for the first time in a month.

Loyal viewers, welcome back. New viewers — hello! Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell anyone! Our voices must be heard!

 

 Episode #015: We remain nameless, and yet we forge ahead. [36:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Zambezi and oat.

Is it just another manic Monday? Not yet, but thanks to the New York Times early release program (that sounds bad), the Monday puzzle becomes available to subscribers six hours before Monday actually begins.

This Ronald J. and Nancy J. Byron (couldn’t they have been Ronald and Nancy J.-Byron, and combine their middle initials?) offering had sort of an Earth, Wind and Fire theme… If by “fire” I mean “sun,” and by “earth” I mean “rain,” and you put them in a different order… Okay, the theme was more likely “Weather Songs.” We had:

• 20A. 1960s weather song by Peter, Paul and Mary : BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND — Honest to Betsy, I had no idea that Peter, Paul and Mary wrote this. I certainly know the song, but I would have bet money that it was a Bob Dylan song. To that end, here’s a link to a video of a young Bobby Zimmerman singing it. (since Ryan still hasn’t taught me how to imbed videos, I can only link them.)
• 36A. 1960s weather song by The Beatles : HERE COMES THE SUN — Obviously. Here comes the sun, doo doo doo doo… How about another video? This time, it’s Bon Jovi doing an acoustic cover (from a 2001 concert, I think).
• 51A. 1960s weather song by The Cascades : RHYTHM OF THE RAIN — I don’t know this song, to be honest. Unlike The Beatles or Peter, Paul and Mary (or even Bob Dylan, for that matter), The Cascades were known almost exclusively for this song (or so the internet has just taught me). In honor of their lack of fame, I will post no videos of this song.

The Trivia Box that stumped me was the R at the crossing of 61A. New Orleans’ Vieux ___ (CARRE) and 50D. Cubic meter (STERE). Lots of letters looked fine in that box, but no “Thank you for playing” comments are allowed for CARTE/STETE or CARLE/STELE or CARDE/STEDE. Oh well.

The grid also offered some other weather at 31D. Cause of some urban coughs (SMOG), although perhaps said coughs could be a result of setting something AFIRE (49D. Burning), which is considered ARSON (46D. Criminal burning). And if that wasn’t enough, more flames appeared at 48D. Combustible funeral structures (PYRES). I didn’t know that ARCANA (25A. Secret matters) was a word, only that many words are arcane, and thus kept secret from me.

Along with the musical theme, we had two vocal ranges in the grid (and two more in the clues), with 17A. Voice below soprano (ALTO) and 28D. Voice below baritone (BASS). I was somewhat slowed at 42A. Encircle (GIRD) and 44A. Animals with brown summer fur (STOATS), but I got 49A. “___ Gavotte,” “My Fair Lady” tune (ASCOT) despite the fact that it might be least tuneful song from that score (Rex Harrison’s song styles notwithstanding).

In other news, the Red Sox trounced the Reds 9-0 today, but the Yankees also won big, 13-0 over Houston. Tonight, the Boston Celtics try to win Game Five of the NBA Finals, which would give them their first title since 1986. I will be at a sports bar somewhere watching, as I have no television in my temporary home in Maine.

See you Tuesday!