Brian solves Thursday, 4-23-09
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!
