Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

Hey everyone — or at least the one of you who isn’t already in Brooklyn at the ACPT. It’s both of us here, having just completed Frank Longo’s Saturday puzzle. It’s the wee hours of the morning, and we’re exhausted from all the fan-rushing we’ve experienced here in Brooklyn. No less than two people hooted at us during the panel, and one of them was not Brian’s wife. [Riddle: If one of them was not Brian's wife, who were the two women? Please show your work.]

Okay, first, Frank’s puzzle. (See? We’re calling him “Frank,” like we know him.) This continues Brian’s streak of Saturdays that were not as difficult as Fridays. The theme today was long answers that were rather gettable (as opposed to yesterday, which was almost entirely unsolvable). Some of our favorites:

• 20A. Summer cooler : ITALIAN ICE
• 27A. Hue similar to cyan : ELECTRIC BLUE. We’re not sure if Debbie Gibson had an album called “Electric Blue.” Or maybe she sang a song with that title? We’re not sure. One of us once worked as a pianist for Debbie Gibson (during her “Deborah” phase, which may still be in session). [Riddle: One of the people who worked for Debbie Gibson as a pianist was not Ryan. Who worked for Debbie Gibson as a pianist? Show your work.]
• 38A. Oscar winner for “Bridge on the River Kwai” : ALEC GUINNESS. We don’t care a whole lot for this clue, necessarily, but Alec Guinness in general was awesome.
• 56A. Epithet coined for the 2002 State of the Union address : AXIS OF EVIL. Boooooooooo — we hate George Bush.

Okay, now a few things we did not like:

• 19A. Magnitogorsk’s river : WHATEVER. Okay, fine. It’s URAL. But really. Magnitogorokokotorogkot?
• 45D. Like supermakets : AISLED. How would we use this in a sentence? “Wow, all of these grocery stores are just like supermarkets.” It just isn’t normal.
• 61A. Title aunt in a 1979 best seller : ERMA

We had heard that the Saturday puzzle during the ACPT was particularly difficult. But this one didn’t seem to follow that trend. We talked a bit about a few answers as we went, and Xom tossed out one answer for us (31D. Phil Rizzuto, on the Yankees : TEN), but it was fairly smooth sailing overall.

Now — as for the ACPT… The panel went well, although we might be holding auditions for more groupies (in case either of the wives become unavailable for our future engagements). Many people who knew nothing about us found some comfort in the notion that we are not (we repeat NOT) speed solvers. That is our thing. That is why you like us. We are you. We are Sparta.

Brian finished 38th in the Ken-Ken game, but then finished 1,736,229th in the whatever-the-rest was, and thus won absolutely nothing except some free cheese. Ryan tried to put a seven into a 6×6 Ken-Ken, and was quickly shipped off to Nagano for intensive training. (Currently, Brian is typing this while Ryan is laughing, debilitated by a lack of sleep and not enough Coca-Cola.)

This year, the ACPT has an entirely new flavor to it. Last year (to give you reference), we arrived knowing nothing, no one. We were completely forgettable. Over the course of this past year, we have “met” a number of people in the crossword community, though most of those “meetings” have come via comments, emails, occasional telephone interviews, but rarely face-to-face (the hordes of you at Lollapuzzoola notwithstanding). So this year, we arrived with a brain full of names but no faces, no lives. Ryan put it quite eloquently (WHAT?!) when he said that it was as if we had written a book, and all of the characters we read about were coming to life before our eyes.

That’s exactly what this has been. Today we put real people to names: Andrea Carla Michaels, Barry C. Silk, Doug Peterson, Tyler Hinman, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Amy Reynaldo, Michael Sharp, Jim Horne, Helene Hovanec, Vic Fleming, Anne Erdmann… There are more, and there will be more as the weekend progresses. We had hoped to do some podcasting while we were here, but it looks like we might have some trouble uploading audio on the micro-thin bandwidth offered by the hotel’s internet service. We’ll definitely be doing a big season finale after the tournament, so keep your ears peeled for viewing pleasure come Monday.

Now it’s off to bed, and we have 10+ hours until Puzzle #1. At this point (and for the next 10+ hours), we are all currently tied for first place with Tyler. [Riddle: If we are all tied for first with Tyler, are we all tied for last as well? What does that say about Tyler? What does that say about you? Are you Sparta? Is one of you not Brian's wife? Is any of you a nickel? Show your work.]

See you Sunday!

Here it is.  The last post before ACPT 2009.  Even though we began this blog on March 5th, 2008 I’m treating this weekend as the end of the first year of Ryan and Brian do Crosswords.  It’s been a great, fun and very interesting year at the RBX offices.  We started a blog, recorded 42 podcast episodes, put on a crossword tournament and got know many great crossword people.  Oh, and I went snorkeling but that didn’t have much to do with the blog.

As I look ahead to the upcoming tournament I can honestly say I’m better at crosswords now than I was a year ago.  Does that mean I’ll finish higher up in the standings?  Not necessarily.  Maybe everybody else has improved as well.  But it would be very satisfying if I do a little better this year.  So, whoever finished in 609th place better watch out.  Those footsteps you hear are mine.

On to today’s Joe DiPietro puzzle.  Great puzzle which provided me with my favorite type of puzzle experience: very little entered after my first pass through the clues, extreme doubt that I’ll ever get more than 4 answers, a foothold here, a foothold there and about an hour later a finished, no-googled puzzle.

After my first pass I had exactly two answers written in:

39D. 1997 Demi Moore flick (GI JANE).  This is not a good movie.  This was made during her prime years of popularity which she completely wasted by making crappy films.

48A. Actress Mazar (DEBI).  All I know is she was in Married to the Mob, a movie I’ve never seen.

The puzzle was made up of a triple stack on the top, a triple stack on the bottom and a canal of incoherence through the middle.

The canal of incoherence gave me the most trouble.

24D. Emulates Eve (RAPS).  I’m old and out of it.  I have no clue who this is.  I thought the answer was EATS as in EATS the forbidden apple.

23A. Before the races (PREMEET).  Is PREMEET actually something in real life?

34D. Things that open and close yearly? (WYES).  I was on to this pretty quickly but wasn’t sure how to spell the letter Y.  Who comes up with the spellings of letters?  Outside of crosswords is there any practical application of spelled out letters?

There are actually quite a few entries throughout the puzzle that I’d never heard of before.  The Insect Play was written by Karel and Josef CAPEK, a first name in conducting is SEIJI (that would be SEIJI Ozawa), chambermaid’s are in charge of LINEN (what does that mean?), LEM was a touchdown maker (this, not surprisingly, has nothing to do with football and stands for Lunar Excursion Module), you can get a bunch of LEPTAs together to make up a drachma, REBURN is clued in a complete incomprehensible manner and Walvis Bay is in NAMIBIA.  And the list goes on.  The fact that I was still able to solve the puzzle tells me it’s very well constructed.

Well, unless they’ve added a category of “Longest time it takes to successfully solve a puzzle” it looks like I’m going to walk away empty handed again.  But that’s ok, it still should be a lot of fun.  I hope you all can be there and I look forward to meeting everybody.  I’m not sure what the blogging situation will be like.  I think Brian is bringing his laptop but who knows what the internet will be like.  I do know we’ll be doing some recording for a special on site podcast.

Good luck to everybody in Brooklyn.  Have fun.  Come up and say hi.

Next stop, Saturday.

Mere hours from the ACPT, and I was all excited by the arrival of this week’s Thursday puzzle. To me, Thursday is the average line for the tournament puzzles. Maybe I got too excited, though, because this Thursday seemed like a practically themeless, not-quite-as-hard-as-a-Friday puzzle. I guess that’s all good, but it left me wanting more. On the other hand, it’s by Brendan Emmett Quigley, who makes some of the most wonderful puzzles. As a long-time fan of his work, I found enough of this grid enjoyable to overcome my early frustration. You should check out his website at www.brendanemmettquigley.com.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but the theme seemed merely to be a bit self-referential, in that four clues contained Q words:

• 20A. Residence : LIVING QUARTERS
• 25A. It has to be asked : BURNING QUESTION
• 43A. Alumni weekend V.I.P. : HOMECOMING QUEEN
• 48A. Many Haydn compositions : STRING QUARTETS

[Revision: I've since checked a couple other sites for thoughts on the theme. Orange thinks it's that they all contain "IN GQ," or perhaps just "GQ." I see that, of course, but I'm not sure what's so notable about GQ. It's a magazine, sure, but why a theme? Seems the Q is just as logical to me.]

A handful of things I didn’t know showed up here:

• 1D. Wandering ___ : JEW. I guess some of them wander. I never heard this term before.
• 3D. ___ Davis, “A Girl Like Me” documentarian : KIRI. Bette, Ossie, Geena, Sammy. All Davises have five letters in their name. Who does this Kiri think he/she is?
• 17A. Delft, e.g. : WARE. Because I didn’t know 1D or 3D, I had a lot of trouble with this. I still don’t quite know what it is.
• 26D. “In ___” (1993 #1 album) : UTERO. I must not have listened to any popular music ever.
• 30D. Old hwy. from Detroit to Seattle : U.S. TEN. I believe that now, U.S. Ten is somewhere much further south than either Detroit or Seattle. This must confuse the hell out of the commuters.
• 36A. Middle year of Nero’s reign : LXI. Sure, but an alternate clue could be “random year sometime with letters instead of numbers.”
• 40A. ___ de couer : CRI. Apparently, this word doesn’t always follow “dernier.”
• 46A. 1961 Top 10 hit “Hello Mary ___” : LOU
• 49D. Lacking depth : TWO-D. Mike Nothnagel, take note. I actually knew this one this time.
• 50D. Opposite of pobre : RICO. I assume this is “rich”?
• 61A. Finnish architect Alvar ___ : AALTO. This crosses with 53D. Certain castrato (ALTO), which is kind of cute.

The tournament is fast upon us. Tomorrow (Friday), there is a panel presentation at 8:00pm. Ryan and I will be talking about something, although we don’t know quite what. Maybe it’s about how much we like blogging. Most likely, Ryan will mumble incoherently about something, and I’ll shake my head is sincere embarrassment. Hopefully, no one in the audience will ask us anything to which we don’t know the answer. If you are there, and want to ask us something, make it easy. Remember — we are the lowliest of bloggers. We know far less than the others. Be kind.

Saturday will begin the puzzles. We may try to get someone like Tyler or Dan to blog for us, since they’ll have tons of free time after they solve the tourney puzzles in about fourteen seconds. Ryan and I are likely to use all the time allotted to break our pencils, leaving little time to blog a freakin’ Saturday puzzle, let alone Day One or Day Two of the tournament. But we’ll see.

See you Friday. And if you’re in Brooklyn this weekend, we might really see you Friday!

Ok, super fast post today.  I’m leaving work in 13 minutes and need to take advantage of the warm air here in the office.  First, a note about yesterday’s puzzle.  I had no idea the theme was about birds.  I thought the theme was BLANK ONES BLANK and didn’t notice all three phrases started with a bird: CRANE, SWALLOW and HAWK.  I needed read Jim’s Wordplay post to discover I completely missed the whole point of the puzzle.

On to today’s Kelly Browder puzzle.

The theme:

48D. What 21- and 52-Across and 3- and 31-Down might be (SPIKED).

There are two theme entries I understand and two I don’t.

21A. Pulitzer Prize entries (NEWS STORIES).  I don’t understand this.  I’ve never worked at a newspaper.  How can a NEWS STORY by spiked?

52A. They may be served at the beach (VOLLEYBALLS).  I understand this and it’s a great clue.

3D. Some ornamental barriers (IRON FENCES).  I understand this.

31D. Party servers (PUNCHBOWLS).  I don’t understand this.  Isn’t it the punch that’s spiked?  The PUNCHBOWL is just a bowl.  This makes no sense.

Other highlights:

11D. Place for a thimble (ETUI).  Still remember this from last year’s ACPT.  Will Shortz held up an ETUI for all to see not realizing the very next puzzle featured the word.

41A. Burgers on the hoof (STEER).  Is this a saying?  Or is it just a creative way to turn me off of burgers?

Ok, I’ve got to get going.  In lieu of more commentary about this crossword here’s a funny clip of Louis CK on Conan.  This has absolutely nothing to do with the puzzle so don’t hurt your brain trying to make a connection.

Next stop, Thursday.

Welcome to Episode 42 of the world-renowned podcast, Fill Me In. This episode is 58 minutes full of laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, and mostly Tyler Hinman narrating his mental genius as he tackles a difficult puzzle.

Also within:

• Viewer mail
• Anticipation for the upcoming ACPT
• One minute of material inserted well after the rest of the episode was recorded. See if you can determine where that minute is, using any of the following complex audio analysis techniques:
  • Ryan is waaaay too loud
  • Brian is suddenly playing the piano
  • Tyler stops talking for about a minute — and later, makes absolutely no indication that anything weird had been going on
  • It happens at about the 25-minute mark

As of this post, the 32nd Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament begins in three days. We hope to see you there!

 

 Fill Me In #042: [Insert kickass title here.] [58:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Zambezi and oat.

Today’s Stephen Edward Anderson puzzle gave me a lot of trouble.  My solve time was almost 14 minutes which, even for me, is pretty long for a Tuesday.  The top left was totally confusing to me.

1D. 1 on the Mohs scale (TALC).  I was attempting to use applied knowledge here.  I thought the Mohs scale was that wind measurement scale that I’ve learned from crosswords.  So I figured this was GUST.  The Mohs scale actually measures mineral hardness.  So I was completely wrong.  I’m not sure if WIND has an opposite but if it does I’m betting that it’s MINERALS.  Minerals just kind of lie there while wind travels through my apartment, dropping my core temperature to yeti-like levels.

Lower down in the puzzle:

28D. G.P.S. offering (MAP).  I assumed this would be an abbreviation so I put RTE.  Shouldn’t this be an abbreviation?  Unless MAP is an abbreviation.  Macrame Area Paper?

Those two errors cost me a lot of time and are exactly the kind of MISHAPs that will prevent me from beating Tyler in the upcoming ACPT.

The theme dealt with different ways to use your possessions.  Specifically, your NECK, your PRIDE and your WARES.

21A. Strain to see over the top (CRANE ONES NECK).

41A. Eat humble pie (SWALLOW ONES PRIDE).

59A. Be a street peddler (HAWK ONES WARES).

A few other highlights (have to keep this short because, as I alluded to before, my computer room is absolutely, flipping freezing.  We are completely at a loss of what to do.  I think we’re going to have to take our landlord to court.):

6A. Sir’s complement (MAAM).  Remember how Webster would call his caretakers MAAM and George?  And Katherine Calder-Young Papadapolis finally asked why he called her MAAM instead of her real name?  And Webster said because MAAM sounds so much like Mom?  And it was so cheeseball you just wanted to rip your face off?  Webster ran 150 episodes.  Arrested Development ran 53.  Someone should be ashamed.

14D. 1989 Bond girl Bouvier (PAM).  Bit of an obscure clue for a Tuesday considering License to Kill is one of the least popular Bond movies.

Ok, that’s it for today.  It’s just too cold to keep typing.  Episode 42 of Fill Me In featuring and interview with Tyler Hinman will be out soon.

Next stop, Wednesday.

But first of all, the Oscars. Worst show ever. Just dreadful. Best host moment in the whole show was Steve Martin saying to Tina Fey, “Don’t fall in love with me.” (Honorable mention to Ben Stiller’s portrayal of Joaquin Phoenix.) Best acceptance speech moment was Kate Winslet’s dad whistling at her. (Weirdest acceptance speech moment was Kate Winslet’s dad making that strange “you are my little pagoda” gesture.) But the musical numbers? Hugh Jackman’s first song? What a mess! And that bizarre Singing With The Stars-style thing with Beyonce? Oh, god.

And furthermore — Pizza Hut doesn’t understand how to cook pizza. “Well done” apparently means “Wave the prepared pie near the oven until the cheese is mildly melted, but the dough is still raw. Then deliver.” In the end, my favorite snack of the night was the fruit and cream cheese dipping sauce that my mother brought. Thanks, Xom.

Who wants to meet Xop and Xom at the tourney this weekend? They’ll be there. My mother will be the adorable sexagenarian finishing puzzles in a relatively timely manner. My father will be the one sitting next to her who looks up whenever someone leaves the room, and spends more of the clock time grumbling about how he’ll never finish than he does writing on the puzzle. Should be a joy.

As for today’s puzzle, it’s by Alan Arbesfeld. It’s a fine Monday theme — in Ryan-speak, it is five things that end with -ND and have a B somewhere in the middle, but the vowels seem to be different, when they appear between the B and the -ND. What he would have meant, had he said that, would have been:

• 17A. Stretchable holder : RUBBER BAND
• 23A. Loony : AROUND THE BEND
• 35A. Strong family connections, idiomatically : THE TIES THAT BIND
• 47A. Tax-free investment : MUNICIPAL BOND
• 57A. Tux go-with : CUMMERBUND

I was curious about the word “cummerbund,” so I looked up the etymology. Apparently, it dates back to 1616, from the Hindi kamarband “loin band,” from the Persian kamar “waist” and band “something that ties,” and from the Avestan banda- “bond, fetter.” Who knew? Also, I never know how to wear it — do the pleats go up or down? Someone once told me some trick about that pleats go so could tuck things into the folds, and the example he gave was an usher with ticket stubs. Not only do I think that example is weird and arbitrary, but I still don’t know if the stubs are to be tucked in so that when I look down I can easily count them, or if they would be underneath the folds, and out of my view. Finally, who would ever notice and tell me that my cummerbund was upside down?

Some of the fill in the puzzle was a little too Tuesday for my taste, especially with my mind marinated in manure for the last four hours (the Oscar telecast).

• 4D. Heart : NUB
• 28D. Wry comic Mort : SAHL, crossing with 40A. Camera choice, in brief : SLR
• 32A. Get a move on : HIE
• 37D. For grades 1-12 : ELHI, a word I know only from crosswords.
• 52A. “___ 18″ (Leon Uris novel) : MILA
• 56A. Basis of a lawsuit : TORT
• 62A. Country singer Tennessee ___ Ford : ERNIE

All in all, a fine Monday offering.

In other news, I am becoming immune to caffeine. This is not good. I need to wean myself off it, I think, and then start again. Isn’t that how to make it effective once more? Any ideas, please email us.

See you Tuesday!

Very nice puzzle by our friends Barry C. Silk, Friend and Confidante to Doug Peterson, Crossword Gentleman and Man About Town and Doug Peterson, Crossword Gentleman and Man About Town.  The next time Will Shortz puts out a book of Lazy Sunday Puzzles or Puzzles To Do on the Beach or Puzzles That Won’t Make You Feel Like a Flipping Idiot this puzzle should definitely be in there.  Nothing all that hard about it but excellently constructed and a lot of fun to do.

The theme of The Cruciverbalist (which sound like it should be a TV show starring a Robert Urich-like actor) has to do with the steps of constructing and submitting a puzzle.

BRAINSTORM THEME IDEAS

DEVELOP BEST ENTRIES

RESEARCH AND WRITE CLUES

SEND PUZZLE TO EDITOR

SEE BYLINE IN NEWSPAPER

And that’s really all there is to it.  Maybe I’ll bang out one now.

This also marks our first Oscar prediction post here at the Ryan and Brian offices.  Up for Best Picture:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

1A. Put to sleep (BORE).  What a snooze this was.  Almost 3 hours of Forest Gump-lite.  And the ending was such a cop out.  Ugh.

Frost/Nixon

5D. Dwindles (EBBS).  This is what my interest did by the end of this movie.  Really interesting material done in a not very interesting way.  I have a theory about Ron Howard.  He makes movies about human experiences that people should be able to relate to but Ron Howard has been a huge star since he was a little kid.  What does he know about experiences that everyday people can relate to?  For me, all his movies fall just a little short of enjoyable.  Plus, Frank Langella seems like a total pain in the ass.  He didn’t become Nixon, he was doing an impression but you can tell he thinks he’s the best actor ever.  Having said that, I thought Michael Sheen was great and the scenes with his team of researchers were the best in the movie.

Milk

54D. Better (OUT DO).  As one of my friends put it, Sean Penn was monumental in this movie.  Best performance I’ve seen in a long time.  He absolutely became Harvey Milk.  Watch that scene when he celebrates winning the election.  So simple but so good.  He should not only win the Best Actor award this year but he should win next year also.  The movie was fine, not great by itself but elevated to greatness by Penn.

The Reader

20D. Jacuzzi (HOT TUB).  Most of the first half of this movie took place in a bathtub.  Most of the first half of this movie had me rolling my eyes.  To be honest, though, I liked this movie a lot more than I thought I would.  It is way too melodramatic.  The unrelenting love scenes are laughable but the last 45 minutes really grabbed me.  The material was better than the romance novel treatment it received by director Steven Daldry.

Slumdog Millionaire

93D. Zip (OOMPH).  Most energetic and exciting 2008 movie I saw.  Also the most original.  It certainly has its faults.  The story is wafer thin.  But the direction, soundtrack, energy and EARNESTness make up for what it lacks in plot.  Unlike any other movie I’ve seen in a long while.

Who I think should win:

Best supporting actress: Viola Davis
Best supporting actor: Robert Downey, Jr.
Best actress: Meryl Streep
Best actor: Sean Penn
Best director: Danny Boyle
Best movie: Slumdog Milionaire

Who I think will win:

Best supporting actress: Viola Davis
Best supporting actor: Heath Ledger
Best actress: Anne Hathaway
Best actor: Mickey Rourke
Best director: Danny Boyle
Best movie: Slumdog Milionaire

Overall, a relatively weak year for movies.  Hopefully Hugh Jackman and his sexiest man alive aura will make up for that.

Next stop, Monday.

Okay, who has gone and switched around Fridays and Saturdays on me? This is the third time in the last four weeks that I’ve been able to complete the Saturday and not the Friday puzzle. Confounding this further, today’s puzzle was co-created by Mike Nothnagel, Penpal Extraordinaire and Constructor of the Friday Puzzle (along with Byron Walden, who has not yet been given a nickname). I credit Mike’s nickname with all the clues I was able to get easily.

Oh, yeah — no-Google, baby. No-Google.

The big obstacle for me, and the last part to fall, was the top left. I had four clues (three downs and one across) that all collaborated at keeping me at bay:

• 1D. Hindu musician’s source material for improvisation : RAGAS
• 2D. Methyl orange or Congo red : AZODYE
• 3D. Woman’s name meaning “peace” : ZULEMA. Okay, this is ridiculous. Who the hello is Zulema? I have 978 friends on Facebook (most of whom I haven’t spoken to in years), and none of them is named Zulema, as far as I know. Perhaps I would know more if I spoke to my friends occasionally.
• 17A. “Haw” : GO LEFT. I’m going to use this on Ryan. Just wait.

The big standout feature of this grid is that it does not have crossword’s standard 180-degree rotational symmetry. Instead, it has a self-referential design, mildly clued as follows:

• 5D. They may be seen on a lake’s surface : REFLECTED IMAGES
• 23A. Rectangular array that’s identical when its rows and columns are transposed, as this puzzle’s grid : SYMMETRIC MATRIX

This only confirms for us that Mike Nothnagel knows everything about all levels of math, pie-thagorean squares be damned.

It’s late, and I’m tired. But I finished the damn thing. And my no-Google streak is now back at one. Hooray.

Go register for the ACPT. Come see me and Ryan on a panel. We’ll say something witty. Just for you. Also, even sooner than that, episode 42 of Fill Me In will happen in the next couple days, featuring an interview with four-time ACPT champion, Tyler Hinman [insert kickass nickname here].

See you Sunday!

I’m annoyed at the fact that my brand new dishwasher came out of the box not working. What is the point of buying something new if I have to pay the same amount over again to get it fixed before it’s even been used?

In the meantime, I was unable to solve this puzzle. What a surprise. Here is a lengthy list of things that either I don’t know or don’t actually exist.

• 1A. Aids in artful deception : WEASELWORDS. Also acceptable : HOME DEPOT, since they tricked me into thinking that my brand new dishwasher would actually wash dishes.
• 3D. Part if 16-Across: Abbr. : AGCY. Yucky abbreviation.
• 6D. Square, in 1950s slang, indicated visually by a two-hand gesture : LSEVEN. Is this one word? Hyphenated? Honestly, I thought the two-hand gesture was to indicate SQUARE. Must be a different two-hand gesture.
• 12D. Pet with short legs and a hard coat, informally : SCOTTIE DOG. Is this for a Scottish Terrier? Scotty, Scottie, Scotch — so many ways to randomly shorten a name. And really, those little dogs? Those are for people who are embarrassed to be cat lovers. Just get a cat.
• 14D. Reviews repeatedly : HASHES OVER. Doesn’t this just mean “reviews”? I mean, to do it repeatedly would be RE-hashing. So one hash = one review. I disagree with this clue/answer team.
• 19A. “The Daughter of Time” novelist : TEY
• 20A. Big Daddy player on 1950s Broadway : IVES
• 21A. Gabfest : KLATCH. I feel like both clue and answer here are imaginary words.
• 24A. Sink : SCUTTLE. All my dirty dishes are now in the scuttle.
• 25D. Measure of a newborn’s health, named for its developer : APGAR’S CORE or APGAR SCORE (I don’t know). Clearly I either have never had a child or I have never paid attention. I’ll let you figure out which it is.
• 26D. Extension of the terms of a marine insurance policy : SHORE COVER
• 29A. ___ of Galadriel (gift to Frodo Baggins) : PHIAL. Is this another word for VIAL? I have watched all the Lord of the Rings movies twice, and I still can not tell you more about what happens than “a bunch of short people with big feet wander for about a hundred years to throw away a piece of jewelry that everyone hates.”
• 33A. Antigen attacker : TCELL
• 33D. Wealthy Cayman Islands resident, maybe : TAX EXILE. I don’t know what this is at all.
• 34A. Year of the last blah blah blah who cares, it’s a Roman numeral : CDIV
• 36A. Street show : RAREE
• 37A. 2003 memoir of a TV executive : ROONE
• 40D. Private detective Mike of Brett Halliday novels : SHAYNE
• 44A. Switch : BEAT. I don’t understand this at all.
• 45D. ___ Rivera, Calif. : PICO
• 48A. Duct opening? : OVI. Not VIA.
• 49A. 1970s-’80s sitcom putdown/catchphrase : KISS MY GRITS. I have never heard this before. I’m sure it was very popular. But I never watched much television until the 1990s, and I’ve never had that many friends (Facebook notwithstanding), so I clearly missed this very important element of our culture. Is this grits like food?
• 52A. Loch ___, on the River Shannon : REE. What am I calling it when the clue is an arcane mystery that just makes me feel stupid? I need a name for this kind of clue. The River Shannon? Whatever.

So the difference between Thursday and Friday is that Thursday had one square I didn’t know (which, to be fair, was pointed out on all of the other blogs as a trouble square), and Friday had 1,762,991 squares I didn’t know. Thanks for playing. I’ll see you in last place at the ACPT.

Current no-Google streak: DEAD.