Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

Hello, Monday! Hello, Day Off! Hello full day of activities on a day off. Later today, I’ll be taking in a baseball game at Yankee Stadium with my mother, provided the weather is nice. After that, dinner with the family, and finally, I’ll end the evening by recording Episode 61 of Fill Me In with this blog’s long lost co-host, Ryan Hecht.

But in the meanwhile — it’s still me. Today’s puzzle is from Fred Piscop, who I have to give a personal shout-out to. Fred, you were very helpful in rectifying a scoring error at the ACPT this past year, and had that error gone unnoticed, I would have finished second in the E division, and this lovely trophy wouldn’t be somewhere in my apartment, I can’t remember where.

Fred has designed a few puzzles over the years for the New York Times. This one has a political bent to it — or rather, it has several. Perhaps this is a response to the recent political nonsense in the news. First, we had the conclusion of nonsense when Minnesota Democrat Al Franken was finally awarded the senate seat he won eight months ago. And then more recently, we got to hear about the awkward departure of Sarah Palin from the Governor’s Office of Alaska. Apparently, she didn’t want to run for a second term — two years from now. Her argument for quitting now, rather than when her term was up, was that she didn’t want to waste Alaska’s money on a lame duck governor who wasn’t going to make the most of her time in office. I wonder if, rather than quit, she didn’t just… I don’t know… make the most of her time.

Anyway, despite not really understanding what the theme was until I was finished with the whole puzzle, I got it sovled in 3:21 on the applet. About 15%-ish longer than it took Byron “Mike Nothnagel Knows My Middle Name” Walden and Amy “Panda” Reynaldo. That’s fine by me. The political theme entries:

• 17A. Company-paid medical and dental coverage, college tuition, etc. : LIBERAL BENEFITS. I don’t know this term. Probably because I don’t have any company-paid anything, except a paycheck. Do real jobs provide this kind of thing? And where can I sign up for such a job?
• 37A. A sot he’s not : MODERATE DRINKER
• 59A. Bit of attire for a business interview, maybe : CONSERVATIVE TIE. Is this a thing? I’ve heard of power ties. But not conservative ties. Are those like generic ties? Blue and red ones that have nothing interesting about them? I used to have a ton of awesome ties back in the 1980s… Then again, I used to be a teenager, too, so what the hell did I know?

I get it, liberal – moderate – conservative. But I got something of a blah feeling from this. The theme entries didn’t flow at all for me — I needed just about every crossing to get the first one. The rest of the grid was fine, although the southwest gave me a bit of trouble. OVOID is a word I’ve seen before and never know how to use. I tried OVATE first. Is that a word? And if it is, what does it mean?

I’m going to continue on the baseball soapbox (yesterday was whether Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame — currently, the vote stands at one against [joon pahk] and one on the fence [me]). 20A. Controversial substance in baseball news is STEROID. I don’t like seeing this word as a singular. What constitutes ONE steroid? Certainly a substance (which feels like a general collection of… something) isn’t a singular thing. And while steroids in baseball suck bigtime, the idea of using the singular form of that word in a puzzle leaves me a bit unsatisfied.

The one entry I didn’t know was 7D. Wall St. whiz (ARB). Is this an acronym? An abbreviation? Hm… Let’s see. XWordInfo has seen it used a bunch of times, but the only one that I understand is from an Elizabeth Gorski puzzle from 1996, when it was clued as “Mediator: Abbr.” So what is it? Short for… arbiter? Arbitrator? Someone help me!

Off to see some baseball. See you all Tuesday!