Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

How are you spending your holiday this year? I’m going to work in the afternoon, and then in the evening, have a wonderful dinner of the finest American cuisine New York City has to offer: Chinese food. The wife and I will likely be dining at Joe’s Shanghai, where they make the most delicious soup dumplings. What’s a soup dumpling? It’s like a normal Chinese pork dumpling except with a thinner outer casing to it, and more space inside for soup. Yes, soup. Like a pork-y, broth-y soup. Just amazing. If you don’t believe me, ask my wife.

Today’s puzzle is brought to us by a fabulous team of constructors, Peter A. Collins (left) and Joe Krozel, Rhymes With Puzzle. They’ve worked together on six puzzles now, and really seem to be on a roll. This one wasn’t a typical Saturday, in the there was some themework present, and with a few exceptions, the fill was pretty normal stuff.

Thematically, we had INDEPENDENCE DAY running down the middle (7D. Highest-grossing film on 1996), which was intersected on three lines with THE UNITED STATES (20A. Fastest ocean liner ever in a transatlantic crossing (3 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes)), STARS AND STRIPES (34A. Private reading?) and RED, WHITE AND BLUE (54A. Patriotic display). So my question is — why hasn’t anyone done this before? I mean, we didn’t need the hit movie of 1996 to have “Independence Day” in our lexicon. Why hasn’t anyone else come up with this structure? Three iconic phrases of Americana just happen to cross the name of our most patriotic holiday, and this is the first we hear of it? Constructors, explain yourselves!

For me, the thing that makes a puzzle fully enjoyable is a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment upon solving it. I don’t necessarily mind looking something up, but only if when I find out the answer, I say to myself, “oh, you fool, you should have known that!” Looking up something I didn’t know in the first place is far less fulfilling — and if that’s how I have to complete a puzzle, it’s not as much fun.

Today’s puzzle required no Google, but also didn’t have quite the same satisfaction as others. There were a bunch of things I had to guess at simply because the entries were, to this uneducated hack, almost random strings of letters that just happen to have crossword definitions. When things I don’t know are in the puzzle, I’m excited, because I’m learning something new. But when those things cross other things I don’t know, I’m left to guessing. And finally, when those crossings consist of words or names from other languages, I’m totally hopeless.

So I had mostly a terrific time solving this puzzle. The northeast fell quickly, with ENTENDRE (12D. Double ___) along with NANO (16A. Second start?) and NITA (19A. 1920s leading lady ___ Naldi). Shortly after that, I got the theme entries in place, which led to most of the rest of the grid. But I was stuck at the end in the northwest, certain that 2D. Old Testament God was going to be YAHWEH or YESHUA or something like that. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know gods or God or any of them, and I never read the Bible. I’m horrible. I’m going to Hell, right? Right. But once I dug way down deep into 1982 and found myself remember a word from Hebrew School (ELOHIM), the rest of the corner started to fall… All except the Trivia Box, of course.

Anyway, the tricky stuff… First, the “random” entries that I didn’t know at all, but crossed things I knew, so I could figure them out:

• 39A. Greek war god, to Greeks : ARIS. This sort of confuses me. If it’s “to Greeks,” we are to believe that it is “in Greek.” How can we possibly spell a word that’s in Greek… in English? And if we’re going to do that, isn’t the word already ARES? Fortunately, this crossed with the very clever 26D. Hearing things (EARS), so I was able to work it out.
• 57A. Trans ___ (Kyrgyz/Tajik border range) : ALAI. I got up to the first Y in “Kyrgyz” and couldn’t remember what I was reading. I should try to remember this, because Joe and Peter will likely put KYRGYZ into a puzzle next week.
• 62A. Henry James biographer Leon : EDEL. How can a clue that has three first names and a word I know lead to EDEL, which seems to be a month excised from a Hebrew calendar.

These last two crossed with 50D. Gabardine, e.g., which seemed vaguely familiar as some kind of fabric. I had to guess TWILL because nothing else seemed to fit, but then I think I’ve seen words like TOILE and TULLE before, so maybe there’s another obscure cloth? TWILL turned out to be correct, but I was rather unsure.

Now we get to a crossing of one proper name and one entry where both clue and answer make no sense to me:

• 6D. 1973 Ali jaw-breaker : NORTON. Apparently, this photo isn’t what the clue is referring to — because it seems that here, it’s Ali busting up Norton’s jaw. I guess this one was just a pre-break punch. I don’t care much for boxing. It just seems like it must hurt an awful lot.
• 23A. Catawampus : ALOP. I don’t understand either side of this. The Free Dictionary lists these terms as things ALOP might be an acronym for:Associacion Latinoamericana de Organizaciones de Promocion; Active Learning in Optics and Photonics; Advanced Loss of Profit; Animal Life Organized Protection; Allowable Level of Protection; and Attached Lube Oil Pump. I looked up “catawampus,” too, and found that maybe it meaks “askew.” Is “alop” supposed to be… “lopsided”? Someone please clarify this for me.

Finally, we had my least favorite kind of crossing, and that’s a crossing between two things that are both proper names and foreign: 4D. Azerbaijan’s capital (BAKU) and 14A. Greek goddess Athena ___ (ALEA). Who knew the Greek gods had last names? Was that so they didn’t get themselves confused with all the mortals also named Athena? As for Baku — you know, I read about Azerbaijan in the news from time to time, but I guess I never registered the capital in my mind. So the A that crossed these two words — I figured it was either an A or an I (an O, perhaps, as a long shot). My first guess turned out to be right, but knowing that I just couldn’t be sure, and there was no real way to figure it out left me a little unsettled.

Now, I don’t want this whole post to be all KVETCH (49A. Bellyache) and no PURR (33A. Copy cats), so let me go on about some of the fill that I really liked:

• 9D. Pi and others : CONSTANTS. Awesome. I love math. Mike Nothnagel, tell us some other constants that are out there. How about e? Or i? What about Avocado’s Number? (I know that’s not his name, but I’m being silly.)
• 13D. Maid of honor and best man, e.g. : TOASTERS. I love toasters. I mean the kinds that you put bread into. But this was a fun entry. I did not have standard attendants at my wedding. We had a few toasts given at the reception (the most touching of all was from Toni’s adopted mom, who was just so sweet), and some wonderful acknowledgments from our close friends and family within the ceremony (Ryan and his wife famously performed “Who’s On First?” in Spanish much to my delight and everyone else’s confusion). I’ve never been a best man, either. As all of my closest friends are already married now, it’s unlikely that I ever will be — unless one of my eight nephews runs out of other options.
• 44D. California county : SHASTA. I have a recollection of the soda machine we had at the day camp I attended (circa 1980-1985), and the sodas that were available there. I wasn’t allowed (by Xom and Xop) to drink soda, but they weren’t at camp with me, so I did anyway. Ha! They had Mello Yello, I think. Also Hires root beer. And I think they carried some Shasta products. I watched this YouTube clip and only just now realized that Shasta had lots of flavors. I guess I always thought it was fruit sodas only — orange and lemon-lime. But apparently not. My favorite part of this video is when they pour five different sodas at once, all different colors.

• 34D. It may make people jump to a conclusion : SACK RACE. Awesome clue. Just brilliant. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get it as quickly as I would have liked. I saw “Office Space” recently, and I had the “jump to conclusions” mat stuck in my head. Oops. But really — Joe and Peter, this was BRILLIANT.

ALOP, ALEA, ALAI. I feel like I’m conjugating a Greek verb. Aside from that trio of entries, I enjoyed this one. Joe and Peter — you are fantastic. Please continue to do what you do. It’s a lot of fun to solve your stuff.

See you Sunday!