Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

How is this possible? I did a whole Friday all by myself? Yes, it’s true. But it was a relatively easy Friday, as Fridays go. It was constructed by our recent podcast friend, Barry C. Silk (friend and confidante of Doug Peterson, crossword gentleman and man about town). On our podcast, we asked Barry about his contructing process, and he told us that in this particular puzzle, he didn’t use the long answers as the launching point for the rest of the grid. Which word did he use? We don’t know, but we leave it to you, our gentle viewers, to weigh in with your ideas. (And no fair, if you found out from some other site already!)

For me, I got the bottom half filled in pretty quickly, but struggled with much of the top/middle area. Lots of things I didn’t know at all:

• 1A. Creek Confederacy tribe : ALABAMA. Alabama is better known as a state, and somewhat known as a band. It’s also one of the five states I’ve never visited. These would have been far more acceptable clues.
• 15A. Two-time foreign minister of the U.S.S.R. : MOLOTOV. I can’t tell you how many times I read that clue, and thought it said “two-timed.”
• 16A. Clio maker : RENAULT. I thought a Clio was a kind of PDA. A Renault is a kind of car (or maybe a kind of French person). Clio also sounds a little dirty, even though I know it’s not.
• 17A. Film with the line “By the authority vested in me by Kaiser William II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution” : THE AFRICAN QUEEN. And holy crap, what a long clue! I mean… that’s a long clue!
• 22A. Home of Sault Ste. Marie : Abbr. : ONT. I thought it was in Minnesota. Is part of Ontario in Minnesota?
• 51A. Asian au pair : AMAH. What is “Ayah,” and why do I always think of that word before Amah?
• 5D. Justice Dept. division : ATF. I have no idea what this stands for.
• 8D. Inclination : GRADIENT
• 10D. Govt. probe : INQ. Another random abbreviation. Isn’t anyone’s probe an inquiry? Why in this clue, government?
• 14D. Chain links? : Abbr. : MTNS. This time, “chain” isn’t golf. Mountains come in chains now? I thought they came in ranges.
• 30D. Beards : AWNS. This is some grain thing, isn’t it?
• 40D. Franklin contemporary : REO. Is this another kind of car? I don’t know.

Now, I have a slight problem with 44A. Evidence that one is an alien (ACCENT). That’s not evidence of anything. There’s tons of people here in America who are not aliens, not legal immigrants, nothing but pure citizens — and they have accents. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who might come down from Canada, come over from somewhere — and quickly adapt to the speech patterns here, thus all but completely shedding their accent — and some of these people are aliens. So I can’t even draw a Venn diagram of this. Some people with accents are aliens. Some aliens have accents. From these facts, can you determine if someone is an alien based on their accent? No!

It’s super late, so I’m done for now. Ryan, if you want to add pictures, do your thing. Otherwise, see you Saturday!