Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

Today’s puzzle by Greg Kaiser (making his NYT debut) and Steven Ginzburg (this is 4th NYT puzzle) is fun one full of puns.

36A. Pun-crimes committed by the answers to the six-starred clues (CAPITAL OFFENSES).  The six theme answers are all world capitals that serve as punny answers to their respective clues.  What is it about puns that make people groan or put their head in their hands or roundhouse kick you in the face?  I think most people don’t want to admit how much they like them.  I do though and my wardrobe certainly reflects it.  Just ask Brian.  He can vouch.

15A. *Final resting place for old autos? (KHARTOUM).  We would also have accepted “somewhere extremely inconvenient between Boston and New York City”.  That’s where our stupid, crap car is resting.  Unless they gave it a new paint job and sold it to someone else.  Hey, maybe we’ll buy it again.  Speaking of old cars, here’s Carhenge:

24A. *Father of the Ziploc? (BAGHDAD).  I like how this is worded.  “The Ziploc” as if it’s some ancient Mayan god for whom they built air tight tombs in order to store sacrifices and tuna fish sandwiches.

49A. *Wide shoe specification (TRIPOLI).  I had very wide feet in junior high school.  I wore quad E’s which meant the I could only comfortably fit into nerdlinger shoes.  Once I said the hell with it and got some high tops.  After one day my feet were two red, chafed, blistery masses.  So, not much different looking than the rest of my 13 year old self.

63A. *Recently opened sandwich shop? (NEW DELHI).  I think we all need to take a group crossword trip to the Carnegie Deli.  It’s rare to go to a place with such high quantity and quality.  Last time I was there I got a corn beef sandwich that was as big as my head.  I ate almost half and made the rest into corn beef hash that lasted for three days.  Great stuff.  Here’s my cousin’s Reuben wearing a cheese toupee:

2D. *Multiplyin’ by 2? (DUBLIN).  I think this my favorite one.

48D. *Base of a fragrant tree? (BEIRUT).  Ok, I’m assuming a bay is a tree…yes, it is.  An aromatic evergreen.  Not my favorite pun in the bunch but it’ll do.

Other highlights:

29A. Extreme Atkins diet credo (NO CARBS).  You know what definitely does  have carbs? Bacon Wrapped French Toast Stonehenge.

57A. Long key (SPACE BAR).  Am I the only one who put SKELETON here?

7D. Big print maker (THUMB).  Another great clue.  I had KODAK first.

57D. ___ Digital Short (SNL).  You know you want to see it again.

Great puzzle by Greg and Steven.

Next stop, Friday.

Today’s is the the second puzzle in less than a week by our good friend Barry C. Silk, Friend and Confidante of Doug Peterson, Crossword Gentleman and Man About Town.  And for those of you have listened to Episode #51 of Fill Me In you’ll notice that the puzzle falls in line with our Tip of the Week: Barry loves baseball and his puzzles almost always include some sort of baseball reference.  Today’s reference (2D. How baseball games rarely end: IN A TIE) is much more obvious than last Friday’s (It has top and bottom parts: INNING) but still, it’s there and for one of the few times in recorded history, Brian and I have been proven correct.  We rest our collective cases.

But today’s puzzle doesn’t just feature that one clue.  Oh no, Barry filled the whole grid with answers and wrote many corresponding clues.  Such as 63A. Crossword maker or editor, at times (CLUER).  That is what Barry is, at times.  He is a CLUER.  Not to be confused with EWER even though they rhyme.  Besides showing up in puzzles from time to time ewers have very little to do with crosswords as they are pitchers.  But not baseball pitchers.  Oh no, these type of pitchers don’t deliver curve balls, they deliver tasty items like water, nectar and very thin yogurt.  Which brings me to my point.  Is anybody watching the new MLB channel?  For those who are, have you noticed that when talking about pitchers the announcers will often say, “So and so is out on the bump today.” or “Let’s see how so and so did on the bump.”  See, they’re using the word “bump” instead of the far more correct word “mound”.  Doesn’t that just make you want to rip your face off?  But, I digress.

Today’s puzzle also features a word ladder.  The hint to the ladder is STANDARD WORKDAY and the ladder goes from NINE to FIVE.  As it is currently 4:49am and I am sitting at work this standard clearly does not apply to me.  I once worked this fabled 9 to 5 shift for almost a year. It was alright though I was often disoriented during my commute by a giant yellow orb in the sky.

The ladder went thusly:

NINE

15A. *Small part of a spork (TINE).  I applaud Barry’s use of “spork” here when “fork” would have been sufficient.  It makes me think of two things near and dear to my heart.

1. Taco Bell – one of the few places you can reliably find sporks.
2. I have a great Star Trek-themed t-shirt that features Mr. Spork.  Brian loves it ever so much and is constantly asking me to wear it. 

Wikipedia tells me that the spork has been manufactured since the 1880s and has also been known as a foon (foons are used exclusively for Sunday leakfast) or a runcible spoon (a term invented by Edward Lear).  There is a similar utensil in Finland called a lusikkahaarukka (lusikka meaning “spoon” and haarukka meaning “I can’t pronounce this”).

18A. *Musical quality (TONE).  See Viewer Mail Theme Song.

22A. *Made tracks (TORE).

35A. *Teed off (SORE).

44A. *Put into piles (SORT).

56A. *Locale in a western (FORT).  Wikipedia also tells me a movie version of F Troop is being developed by one Bobby Logan, director of Meatballs 4.  I predict this will end in disaster.

64A. *It may precede a stroke (FORE).

67A. *Ax (FIRE).

FIVE

Barry also includes two completely made up words.  SESSILE which he has decided means “Permanently attached, in zoology” and HEXOSE, Barry’s terms for a “Simple sugar”.  Used in a sentence: The sessile nose jutting from Mary-Theobalda’s face was magically enchanted and sprayed sweet hexose whenever she sneezed.

While we are so recently removed from the subject of baseball I should mention that the Dodgers are currently 0 and 1 when mentioned in the puzzle during the 2009 season.  I will soon create some sort of widget in the sidebar so everyone can track this highly scientific exploration of the synchronicity of crosswords and baseball.

We do have a very primitive draft of the Rogue’s Gallery up.  We will soon be adding pictures and bios.  If you are not mentioned and want to be please write in or comment.

Speaking of commenting, I want to remind everyone that you can now leave video comments.  All you need is a webcam.  We look forward to hearing from you in an A/V manner.

Great puzzle, Barry.

Next stop, Thursday.

Welcome, dear viewers, to a major milestone in Fill Me In history. We never thought we’d reach this very important fifty-first episode, but here we are, here you are, and aren’t we all enjoying ourselves?

In this episode, please find:

• first time Viewer Mail writer-inner
• Wired Magazine
• One Day University
• the Stephen Grant (née Stephen Edwards, a.k.a. Stephen “Grimaldi” Grant) saga continues…
• a new Ryan and Brian themed puzzle from Todd Gross (this link is to a .puz file)
• a lot of questions for Mike Nothnagel, PEACOTFP
• and… The Thunder Round!

All of that and more, jam-packed into exactly thirty minutes. Best of all, it’s absolutely free. Enjoy!

 

 Fill Me In #051: Hooray! It's our milespone episode! [30:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Zambezi and oat.

Fun puzzle today by Matt Ginsberg.  The puzzle was full of SIMILES.  Nineteen theme clues followed the “___ as a [insert thing here]” format.  The sheer number of theme clues reminded me Ginsberg’s sound effects puzzle from last December. 

10A. ___ as a post (DEAF).

20A. ___ as an arrow (STRAIGHT).

The lines are straight as an arrow.

24A. ___ as a pin (NEAT).

25A. ___ as a fox (CUNNING).

I simply can’t stop laughing.

26A. ___ as an ox (STRONG).

37A. ___ as an owl (WISE).

41A. ___ as a dog (SICK).

56A. ___ as an eel (SLIPPERY).

66A. ___ as a judge (SOBER).

67A. ___ as a doornail (DEAD).

Does this one even have a joke?

68A. ___ as a diamond (HARD).

6D. ___ as a drum (TIGHT).

25D. ___ as a whistle (CLEAN).

27D. ___ as a rail (THIN).

29D. ___ as a bell (CLEAR).

34D. ___ as a kite (HIGH).

51D. ___ as a rock (SOLID).

54D. ___ as a bat (BLIND).

And a few other highlights:

15A. “Young Frankenstein” role (INGA).  Of course, I put IGOR here first.  And speaking of Gene Hackman (and I was a few days ago), who remembers him from Young Frankenstein?  He played the blind man who spilled soup in Peter Boyle’s lap.  Apparently, Hackman has always been about 50 years old.

19A. Actress Singer of “Footloose” (LORI).  Back in the days before the internet, LORI was a huge person to know while playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  Of course she was in Footloose but she also had a part in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts which starred just about everybody in the business.

49A. Some chips (NACHOS).  Ok, million dollar idea whose time has come: a breakfast cereal called NACH O’s.  Cripsy corn O’s with a tangy cheese coating.  And the whole thing gets gooey in milk.  Who’s with me?

Next stop, Wednesday.

Joe Krozel’s work has been the subject of many discussions here at the Be More Smarter offices. Ryan and I think he’s terrific, and we’ve talked both on this blog and on Fill Me In about Joe’s stuff. I was surprised, however, to see his name on a Monday byline. Perhaps he was just trying to hit for the crossword cycle (a puzzle for each day of the week — which Joe did with this publication), but I hope to see him more later in the week. His work is so clever and so frequently breaks the mold that while I enjoyed this puzzle, it left me clamoring for more Joe! More Joe!

And by that, I do not mean JOE THE PLUMBER (35A. 2008 campaign personality). Will Shortz has said that a puzzle needs to have a shelf life of at least five years, which usually means losing the flash-in-the-pan cultural references that confuse the hell out of us once the puzzles appear in compilation books (Gentlemen, I offer you Exhibit A: POSSLQ). I would love to believe that JOE THE PLUMBER is no longer in our brains come 2014. I would love that. I really hope so. Let’s all work hard to forget about him, shall we? Okay — maybe not those of you who are republican or liked that element of McCain’s drive toward the presidency. Seriously, though. It was quite gimmicky, wasn’t it? I mean, his name wasn’t Joe (Sam), and he wasn’t a plumber (a plumber’s assistant). I guess this paragraph isn’t doing a lot to get him out of your heads, is it.

This “someone-the-something” theme had two more entries: 24A. Animated TV character whose best friend is Boots is DORA THE EXPLORER (whose name only rhymes in certain heavily-accented parts of the world) and 50A. Norman Rockwell painting subject of W.W. II (ROSIE THE RIVETER).

Okay, now I’m at the point where I think — hey, this is a Joe Krozel puzzle. Is there something else going on? Is there another layer to this puzzle, something that the average Monday-lover doesn’t notice (and doesn’t need to), but the puzzle enthusiasts of the world (all of us in the Be More Smarter family) would like. Is this puzzle like the May issue of Wired, where everything is/might be/might not be a puzzle? Let’s look further.

There are a ton of two-word entries in this grid:

• 1D. High-priority item : MUST DO
• 5D. Top-secret : HUSH HUSH
• 8D. Coming immediately after, as on TV : UP NEXT
• 10A. Get an ___ effort : E FOR. Okay, I thought you got an A for effort. I know “effort” starts with an E, but it’s a grade. You get a C-minus for quality, but an A for effort. Checking the clue history at xwordinfo.com, I see that there are seven times that A FOR was used in this instance, and today’s entry makes it eight times for E. This is obviously a tough battle between the vowels, so check back here frequently for your updates.
• 11D. Something for nothing, as what a hitchhiker seeks : FREE RIDE
• 18A. Refuse a request : SAY NO
• 21D. March 17 honoree, for short : ST. PAT
• 22A. Valentine candy message : BE MINE
• 36D. Minimum pizza order : ONE SLICE. Clearly, this isn’t about me, where the minimum pizza purchase is usually one medium pie, fully consumed during one meal.
• 45D. “Don’t let it get you down!” : CHIN UP
• 47D. Comfortable (with) : AT HOME
• 48D. Go right at it, as work : LEAP IN
• 54A. Fix permanently, as an interest rate : LOCK IN
• 55A. Helmet from W.W. I or W.W. II : TIN HAT
• 56A. “Beauty ___ the eye…” : IS IN

I’m not seeing a pattern yet. What else… There are several instances of UN in answers: UNTO, UNA, UNAPT, HUNG, UNTITLED, CHIN UP (in reverse). There are also four places where three or more Es are connected either side-by-side or at diagonal corners. But still no hidden meaning.

As I’m staring at the solution, I’m playing Boggle in my head, looking for other patterns or words. I can find several words via consecutive squares (a la Boggle)… STONY, FOODIE, AERATE… What does it mean, Joe, what does it mean!

Hey, speaking of what does it mean — HUMUS? Only one past appearance in the New York Times (Sunday, 2/24/08), and this isn’t mashed chick peas we’re talking about. This is some kind of soil something or other.  It might be the part marked “O” on this diagram. To explain in more detail, it’s not just a rich soil component (5A), but it’s the dirt that’s left after whatever it used to be has broken down as much as it ever will. It’s basically pure dirt now.

And now I wonder if I’ve broken down this puzzle as much as I ever will. Joe Krozel, if you’re out there, let us know — is there a secret message? You don’t have to tell us what it is. But if there is one, we’ll keep looking. Otherwise, you gave us a lovely Monday, and thank you very much. Cheers!

What else… Well, Fill Me In #51 will be out Tuesday morning. Watch for that. And for those of you who participate in the blog and not the podcast, you should know that we’re soon to be adding a Rogue’s Gallery to this site, something of a Who’s Who for the Be More Smarter community. If you read, if you listen, if you post, if you want to be included then you are. Send us an email at rbxblog at gmail dot com with your contribution. We’re basically looking to do something along the lines of photos and bios. The photo does not have to be of you. You can submit anything for a photo, and anything for a bio. Whatever you want. Or nothing, if you’d like to submit nothing. (However, if you have had a nickname bestowed upon you, you may get a Gallery mention automatically.)

Okay, that’s enough for now. See you Tuesday!

Just finished up a no-google week with today’s Trip Payne ROUGHLY SPEAKING puzzle.  You’ve got to hand it to Trip.  Two years in a row he’s taken himself out of the ACPT championship by making an error but he still seems to be really good sport about it and genuinely happy for Tyler.  Now, it’s possible back home he has Tyler voodoo dolls and a healthy supply of pins but if that side of him does exist I’ve certainly never seen it.

The puzzle was fun with an easy to figure out yet impressive theme.  It’s a rebus with every ER and UM shoved into its own square.  My favorite theme entry is 62D. 2003 sequel to a popular 1994 comedy (DumB AND DumBerer).  Never seen the film but it fits perfectly into the theme.  I wonder what came first, the theme or the clue.

29A. State animal of Maine (MOOSE).  Has anybody else realized that Gene Hackman has retired?  His last movie was Welcome to Mooseport which came out almost 5 years ago.  Hey, Gene, do you do crosswords?  If so, do you read crossword blogs?  If so, are you reading this crossword blog?  If so, hey, Gene, keep acting.  I think you’re great.

31A. Leonardo’s home (VINCI).  I think I may change my name to Ryan daAnaheim.  Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it though.

44A. Anakin Skywalker flew on in “Star Wars Episode I” (PODRACer).  Hmm, do you fly a podracer?  Seems like they just hover a few feet off the ground.  Does that count as flying?  Does that mean Luke flew his landspeeder?  I guess the important thing to remember is that The Phantom Menace destroyed the memories of my youth.

52A. Greeting you shouldn’t say at an airport (HI JACK).  This made me laugh and is my nominee for most randomly ridiculous clue/answer of the week.

55A. Baseball Hall-of-Famer George (SISLer).  SISLER hit over .400 twice in his career.  .407 in 1920 and .420 in 1922.  Look at what he’s wearing.  How can you do anything athletic in the summer while wearing thick flannel pajamas?  The very thought of it exhausts me.

70A. Salon product for flat hair (VOLumIZer).  Is there a salon product for bald hair?  That’s what I need.

76A. Reading without emotion (INTONING).  This is also the technique Gwenyth Paltrow used to win a Oscar.

47D. Paul Robeson, e.g. (BASS).  When I see the name Paul Robeson I always think he’s Jim Thorpe.  Anybody else have that problem?

65D. Groucho Marx foil Margaret (DumONT).

Dumont: Oh, I’m afraid after we’re married a while a beautiful young girl will come along and you’ll forget all about me.

Groucho: Don’t be silly. I’ll write you twice a week.

71D. Second son of Judah (ONAN).  Oy vey, who is this guy?  Again with the sons and the daughters and the aunts and cousins in the Bible.  I’ll never get it straight.

85D. Rude audience member (BOOer).  Not necessarily.  Ever been to the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm?  They used to put on these great live melodramas where you booed/hissed when the villain came on cheered when the hero entered.  As a kid I called it the Boo/Hiss Show and it was so much fun.  From what I’ve read, they now only use the theater for Halloween and Santa Claus nonsense and the melodramas are no more.  Good move.  Why would you want to subject your children to a live interactive theater experience?

Great puzzle today, Trip.  Tomorrow, Brian and I will be recording our milestone 51st episode of Fill Me In.  Look for that on Tuesday morning.

Next stop, Monday.

Spent the day at work, and then the evening at the new Citi Field with Ryan, Pickles and The Dentist. Since it takes me hours to complete a Saturday, I have only finished about half of this one by Brad Wilber. I feel confident about the top left and bottom right, since they’re now totally full of answers. As our friend Tony “Yes” Orbach riffed back in Episode 43, there’s something missing in the middle.

I can’t for the life of me understand 31A. Desirable trunk feature. Luggage? Elephants? Torsos? I think 21D. “The Impresario” composer is MOZART, but that’s based on two letters, and Saturday composers are usually more unknown (less known?). How about OPAL for 30A. It has a play of colors. I don’t know what a play of colors is. And did Peppermint Patty wear SANDALS (14D)?

I probably won’t read comments on this until I finish the solve, but Ryan likes to have a post even when we haven’t done the puzzle, so here I am. (Ryan, please feel free to edit this, delete this, add to this, whatever, when you inevitably no-Google this thing in the morning.)

And instead of listing answers I don’t know, here are words I don’t know that appear in the clues: petcock, Queen Beatrix, play of colors, Zama, Truffaut, Cesar awards, Orenburg, “Footbridge at Argenteuil,” Cabra (comma battle of).

Enjoy. Someone will get to the bottom of all this.

Hey all, Ryan here.  To the bottom of this I have gotten.  Somehow I no-googled this puzzle.  I have no clue how although I do know my feat wasn’t knowledge-based as I haven’t heard of half the items in this puzzle.

First to answer a few of Brian’s questions:

31A. Desirable trunk feature.  Luggage?  No.  Elephants?  Uh-uh.  Torsos?  Bingo! WASHBOARD ABS.  Here are my WASHBOARD ABS on display in the Caribbean.

You may ask why am I wearing a bright yellow life vest while standing in a foot and a half of water.  The answer is simple.  The store was out of water wings.

MOZART did indeed compose “The Impresario”.  Even with the Z from BIZ this one took me a while as I kept trying to shove LISZT in there.  As I’m sure you all know, LISZT is one stubborn bastard.

An OPAL does have a play of colors.  I didn’t get this one until way late in my solving.  It became clear once I got the P from BUNDT PAN which had the great clue of Thing with a sweet ring to it? 

Peppermint Patty did/does wear SANDALS.

And now to define the words that Brian didn’t know.  I don’t know what any of them mean either but I will attempt to define them without using the Internet.

Ok, Truffaut, I know Truffaut.  He was a French movie director.  His movies were famous because they were populated by characters that spoke almost exclusively in the language of France.  After waiting for hours on a subway platform with nothing to occupy his mind but a book of word search puzzles he conceived the idea for THE LAST METRO, a movie that can be viewed diagonally, up, down, forwards and yes, even backwards.

THE LAST METRO won 10 César Awards, an award show written and choreographed by Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cesar Izturis.

Petcock…petcock…petcock…the word has lost all meaning.

Queen Beatrix hated bunnies.  In order to make their lives miserable she invented a cereal they found irresistable but then did everything in her power to keep them from eating it.  She was kind of a jerk.  Famed dramatist Clifford Odets told her story in his play Queen Beatrix Airport which he inexplicably set in ARUBA.  Although Odets wanted a trio, the score for the play was written by only Peter and Paul, Mary having retired from music in order to pursue a starting position with a minor league White Sox team.  With stunning choreography from Cesar Izturis, The New York Times dubbed the production, quite simply, A Play of Colors.

Zama is the nickname of Alakazama University.  A little known university in a even less known state.  The star of their debate team, Hannibal (by all accounts a master debater) was soundly defeated when he tried to disprove the existence Saran Wrap.  The angry crowd crushed him with a ball peen SCIPIO.

Orenburg is a small town in Kansas named after Ethan Hawke.

Footbridge at Argenteuil.  Remember the last time you were in Argenteuil?  And you thought, man, wouldn’t it be great if I could get to the other side of this river without getting my feet wet?  Well, there still isn’t a way to do it.  Alfred SISLEY is a liar.  He also cheats at Whist.  Take my advice, keep your distance.

The Battle of Cabra.  This is where G.I. Joe was finally defeated.  Even with the shocking win, The Cabra Commander was still depressed, as evidenced from the following picture taken at his Cotillion.  He is sitting dejected in the back left while Zatanna and Nightwing frolic in the foreground despite a very odd arrangement of Nightwing’s groin.

There we go and now I’m going to sleep.  A quick word on Citifield.  It’s a lovely ballpark and we had quite a nice time despite being greeted by a huge pile of bird droppings on my seat.  As we were leaving I took what might be the nicest picture I’ve ever taken that does not feature my wife.

And with that, I bid you good night.

Seeing our friend Barry C. Silk (Friend and Confidante of Doug Peterson, Crossword Gentleman and Man About Town) in the byline tells me two things. One, there will be some kind of baseball reference in the puzzle; and B, there will be a crossing that I cannot get no matter what.

Both were in effect here. 3D. Residents of dry, open country in South America (GUANACOS) and 19A. Kings Peak’s range (UINTA) are both words that never existed until today, and incidentally, cannot be pronounced using our standard repertoire of vowels, consonants and diphthongs. Kudos, Barry, for inventing as you do. (Oh, and the baseball? 8D. It has top and bottom parts – INNING. It’s a little tricky, I think, because it has ONE top part and ONE bottom part, but I guess that means it has parts, plural…)

While I’m thinking of it — Alfred Kinsey’s field is ZOOLOGY (7D)? Since when? There was that movie about him where Liam Neeson and Laura Linney had sex the whole time or something. I didn’t see it. I thought his field was sex. And it’s zoology? Hm. Other things I had no clue about:

• 2D. Hooked, as a nose : AQUILINE. I was going to post a picture of an aquiline nose, but somehow my research gave me this image to freak the hell out of you.
• 25A. Rapper ___-A-Che : RIC. According to his website, “There are certain things rap doesn’t need anymore of. Thugs, drug dealers, playas, and pimps are a few of those MC positions that have all been filled–to the brim.” If you ask me, rap also doesn’t need any more rappers.
• 26A. Texas county named for a Civil War general, with its seat in Longview : Whatever, the clue is a book in itself. The answer is John GREGG. Any of the multiple parts of this clue would have been enough to stump me — Texas county (nope), Civil war (nope), general (nope) or Longview (nope). So why make me feel four times as stupid? Mike Nothnagel — if I feel four times as stupid after reading a clue like this, is that considered basic multiplication? Or is there a constant of some sort that is applied because we’re talking about my feelings? Would it be any different if my feelings weren’t hurt, but rather I was, say, complimented?
  
• 11D. Yard sale? : ALE. Oh, I get it. I once drank a yard of something. It’s quite ridiculous, to be honest. Have you seen these things? Look. (I don’t know who the guy in the picture is.)
• 14D. Daniel Decatur ___, minstrel who wrote “Dixie” : EMMETT
• 23D. Plant problem : ERGOT. I couldn’t decide if this was trying to be deceitful because it was about foliage and wanted me to think it was about factories, or that it was about factories and wanted me to think it was about plants. Turns out, it didn’t matter. I was confused by ERGOT a while back when the clue had something to do with cereal. I’m still confused. Is cereal a plant? Mike Nothnagel — what is cereal? Animal, vegetable or mineral? What about Rice Krispie Treats?
• 38D. Transported : JOYFUL. I’m not sure I get this. Is it like when something wonderful happens, and you say, “Wow, that was so wonderful I was transported,” like transported to heaven or something? I need this used in a sentence in a way I understand.
• 44A. Toadlike : WARTY. I did a musical a few years ago where one of the characters sang the word “warty” about twenty times in a row. It was pretty funny. Try it — it’s trickier than you think.
• 47A. Phenomena associated with some dwarfs : NOVAE. Is this about stars and not about Dopey, Sleepy and Bashful? And doesn’t it seem like most of the clues that I don’t know were extra long?
• 55A. Too punctilious : PRISSY, or what I will call anyone who tries to use “punctilious” in a sentence.

Let’s talk about extra-long clues, shall we? It seems that in this puzzle, all the extra-long clues were for things I didn’t know. And it makes me wonder — are the clues extra long to compensate for the notion that most people won’t know the answers? Maybe they’re giving us (the would-be-solvers) a few hints to help us through an otherwise unknown bit of information. And in my case, it didn’t help. No, not one bit. Sad.

I haven’t posted enough recently for my non-existent no-Google streak to matter, but here is the counter anyway, for those fans desperate to find out how I’m doing:

No-Google streak: 0

See you Saturday!

It’s going to be a quickie post tonight, since Ryan is tied up at work, and I’m tied up at home. And no, neither of us mean that literally.

This Steve Dobis puzzle had four long entry answers all sharing the same clue: See 71-Across. The circular reference at 71-Across was Shade that defines [the four long answers]. The long answers, essentially unclued:

• GODFATHER OF SOUL
• FEDEX COMPETITOR
• CLEVELAND PLAYER
• IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL

I should have had an easier time with this than I did. Except on the first one, I got the GODFATHER part, and started thinking about the movie. On the second, I remembered I was looking for a shade of something, so I began picturing this one cute Fedex employee way back when I was a receptionist in Boston, and how she looked in her… Never mind. I don’t follow much football, but I do know that the Cleveland team moved somewhere (Baltimore?) to become a new franchise, and then another franchise started again in Cleveland with the same name. Oh, and my sister went to Brown. Yes, BROWN. That’s our answer.

The southwest was icky to me, with these entries:

• 62D. Golfer Isao ___ : AOKI. All crosswords. I don’t think he ever actually golfed in his life.
• 63D. Financial writer Marshall : LOEB. Why does the golfer get to indicate whether the entry is his first or last name, but we have no such indication for the financial writer? Would either make a difference, to be honest?
• 64D. Attorney’s degrees : LLDS. What is this? I thought they got JDS.

I made all kinds of errors, too, that took a while to undo:

• 21A. Midcentury year : MDL. I had MIL, forgetting the rules about Roman numerals. The first rule about Roman numerals is you do not use Roman numerals. The second rule about Roman numerals is you do not use Roman numerals.
• 25A. Letters at sea : USS, not SOS.
• 33D. Almost 80 million people visit it yearly : O’HARE, the airport. Not ALAMO, the place in San Antonio.
• 55A. Band lineup : GIGS (not HITS — which led to 57D. Urban sidewalk vendor’s offering being TACO instead of GYRO)

I will complete this post with a photo from the interwebs I discovered while Googling “a collection of brown things.”

See you Friday!

So, something goofy is going on the NYT online.  The applet isn’t working nor is the across lite download.  Orange sent us a pdf of the puzzle which had from the Marbles Crossword Tournament and Jim Horne sent us a link to an Across Lite version.  Since I’m at work and don’t have Across Lite here I worked on the PDF version so I have no idea if I’m 100% correct.  Since some people may be coming here without having had the opportunity to solve the puzzle so I will place my write up on the other side of the handy “Read the rest of this entry” link.

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