Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

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.