New York Times – 6:41
Los Angeles Times – 7:44
New York Times
constructed by Gary J. Whitehead; edited by Will Shortz

I learned from reading Ryan’s post below that this puzzle is about Delaware. I had absolutely no idea. Somehow, I got through all the clues without ever coming across 70-Across (DOVER). I didn’t get the theme, and I didn’t get several of the answers for too long.

First of all: ETO. How on earth is it possible for me to remember a thousand different people’s phone numbers, but not to remember ETO? Maybe it’s because I have no idea what it is. I know it’s something to do with Eisenhower, but I need to look it up. Hold on a second… And although it’s all the same to you, I’m now back after a lengthy study of Eisenhower. Apparently, ETO is short for European Theater of Operations. Fortunately for me and my crossword solving prowess, Eisenhower was also in charge of several other acronyms that have little meaning to me. My one hope is that I’ve spent enough time here thinking about ETO that I will remember ETO, and I’ll be able to freely enter ETO into any other ETO-sized answer spaces when the ETO-based clue is something about DDE or Ike or WW2 or whatever leads up to E-to-the-T-to-the-O.

Like Ryan, I also fell for CIGAR instead of SUGAR (54D. Cuban export), but fixed it when I saw AESOP coming in at 53A. “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” author. I continued to have trouble in the lower right, with no knowledge of UPSALA or ALES, and compounded this by thinking 46D. Britney Spears, for one was a POP IDOL instead of POP STAR. Another answer in this zone was 68A. “Rule, Britannia” composer, which for all I know, might be ETO. I can never remember this guy. Let me look him up… And I’m back. Apparently, Thomas ARNE was known for very little, but writing “Rule, Britannia” was enough to get him into crossword puzzles.

I found this puzzle sadly dissatisfying, and among my Tuesday-puzzle practicing, it snapped a streak of several consecutive sub-five-minute solves for me. How long does it take to get smarter? I’m a little smarter than I was before (and now after this blog — ETO and ARNE — a little smarter still), but I don’t know… Is this all futile?

Yes, probably.

Los Angeles Times
constructed by Donna S. Levin; edited by Rich Norris

This was a disaster. I could not find a groove. I could not get more than two answers side by side without having to skip several clues. Nothing seemed to fit. And having finished, I continue to wonder if I was just lucky last week with my speedy Los Angeles times (no pun intended), and only now wonder if I’m actually getting dumberer instead of smarterer.

Thematically, it was four meanings for “deck”:

• 17A. KNOCK TO THE FLOOR
• 27A. FIFTY-TWO CARDS
• 47A. ELEVATED PATIO
• 63A. CRUISE SHIP LEVEL

None of these came quickly, and that was due to a lot of wrong guesses in the other direction:

• 2D. Gossip first name : RONA – Who is Rona? I know nothing about gossip.
• 8D. Sharing a common culture : ETHNIC – Whether correct or not, “ethnic” always seems to be a term used to describe people or places that do not share common ground. Or rather, not sharing common ground with me. The “ethnic” communities are those that are different from my own social circle. The “ethnic” foods are those that are rooted in cultures other than my own. I found this clue rather misleading, although a fair definition of the word.
• 18D. “K-K-K-___”: 1918 song : KATY – This song was apparently popular during a time when it was cool to make fun of stutterers.
• 19D. Icelandic epic : EDDA – Are you kidding me?

Some other clues that baffle me:

• 59A. Random House co-founder Bennett : CERF – Not only do I not know whether “Cerf” is his first name or his last name, but this clue might just as well have read “Random Sequence of Four Letters.”
• 50D. Kvetch : PILL – I have always used “kvetch” as a verb, not a noun, so this had me going in the wrong direction completely.
• 54A. Telepathy term : PSI – Huh? I’m sure they don’t mean pounds per square inch, but what does “psi” even mean?
• 69A. One who probably knows Gregg : STENO – I have no earthly idea what this means. Who is Gregg?

This was just chock full of confusion for me, and served as a reminder that no matter how many puzzles I do, I’m still just the same old idiot.

New York Times – 3:21
Los Angeles Times – 4:09
CrosSynergy – 3:24
New York Sun – 6:50
New York Times
constructed by Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke; edited by Will Shortz

I was very pleased with myself here, only coming in a scant thirteen seconds longer than crossword genius, Orange. I got the things that rhymed with -ACKET fairly fast, and I find that when I can whiz through the theme answers right away, I save myself a good thirty seconds (or more) on my time.

Since Ryan has detailed the answers below, I’ll use this space to point out that I have never heard the song for which SAL is famous. What is this song? I will have to get it from the iTunes Store. Speaking of the iTunes Store, you can access our podcast there. It’s quite funny, even if the latest episode has lousy sound quality. We’re still learning.

Los Angeles Times
constructed by Gail Grabowski; edited by Rich Norris

After joyously racing through most of last week’s L.A. Times puzzles at record paces, I found myself floundering somewhat here. Apparently, 60-Across was supposed to clue me into the puzzle’s theme. The answer there is PASTA SHAPES, which four theme answers start with:

• 17A. Like some notebooks : SPIRAL BOUND
• 38A. Sailor’s knot : BOWLINE
• 11D. Athletic hosiery : TUBE SOCKS
• 31D. Sleight-of-hand scam : SHELL GAME

I struggled with 11-Down, because I was sure that 11A. Huck’s raftmate was JIM, not TOM. I couldn’t make any sense of the JUBESO___ I had at 11-Down for the longest time… Grr. Also, I wonder if TUBE is a bit of a cop-out for pasta shapes… Maybe not, but there are so many tubes (penne, ziti, rigatoni, etc.) and only one bowtie (farfalle). I don’t know… Maybe that’s just my four-minute frustration talking.

34A. Yr.-end consultant troubled me, as the answer was CPA – a consultant I don’t ever consider until at least April 12th each year. Maybe I’m late on the game, but what normal people (i.e. Monday-style-clue people) think of anything outside of tax season when it comes to CPAs? And I wonder if I’ll ever retain the differences between NITRO and NITRE, between OCHER and OCHRE, etc. And never ever ever can I recall what D.D.E.’s something-or-other in the war was. It didn’t appear in this puzzle, but I just read it in the New York Times puzzle and have already forgotten it. I am way not smarter enough.

CrosSynergy: End Zone
constructed by Martin Ashwood-Smith

Someday, I’ll also retain the information about what puzzles have what difficulty levels on what days… I really am so clueless about so much.

This puzzle had three long answers that covered the theme of the puzzle — “ending” words:

• 17A. Lawyer’s conclusion : CLOSING ARGUMENT
• 39A. Flying disc sport : ULTIMATE FRISBEE
• 61A. Bruce Willis movie of 1996 : LAST MAN STANDING

The fill was generally fun, although three tricky answers packed together in the center, with 27D. I.D. TAG, 28D. THERM and 29D. SOFT C – not a normal word in the bunch. Plus, they crossed with the center theme answer, a two-word phrase (RED HOT) and an acronym (GMC), so no smooth sailing in that zone.

New York Sun: Fish Sandwich
constructed by Alan Arbesfeld; edited by Peter Gordon

Late in the day, brains running out… Too many wrong choices that I forgot I had made left me useless… Spent three minutes just looking for my errant squares. The theme was hidden fish, which is not a fun game to play in your own kitchen, by the way.

• 20A. The Senate, e.g. : UPPER CHAMBER (perch)
• 28A. Scoop shop option : SWISS ALMONDS (salmon) — Seriously? Swiss almonds? I can’t remember ever seeing any almonds in an ice cream parlor, let alone some specific kind.
• 35A. Panzer battler : SHERMAN TANK (manta)
• 42A. One doing the hustle : DISCO DANCER (cod)
• 53A. Xenon, for example, in the atmosphere : TRACE ELEMENT (eel)

Cute. Got too stuck too often, so am still not smarter. Time for bed.

New York Times – 9:12
Los Angeles Times – 3:19 (I’m beginning to like this better than the New York puzzles…)
New York Sun – 5:16

New York Times
constructed by Will Nediger; edited by Will Shortz

I thought I was going to have it easy in this puzzle, because I worked out the theme (”From A to Z”) very quickly, I knew all the theme answers very quickly, and… well, it still took me a Tuesday eon/era/age to complete the fill. Brains still not smarterer enough.

Earlier today, my wife and Ryan and I were all talking about the film ALL THAT JAZZ, so it was a delight to find it as the first theme entry (located at 17-Across, naturally: Semiautobiographical Bob Fosse film). I will be watching ALEX RODRIGUEZ (38A. A.L. M.V.P. in 2003, 2005 and 2007 — all the abbreviations in the clue, none in the answer, hmm?) tomorrow night, as I attend a Yankee game (weather permitting) with my Yankee-loving mother. As my t-shirt says, I root for two teams: the Red Sox and whoever’s playing the Yankees. I also knew 60A. 1970s joint U.S./Soviet space project (APOLLO-SOYUZ) from a science project I did in the fifth grade. The two downward contributions were 12D. Namesake of a branch of Judaism (ASHKENAZ), which took some time to spell properly (you never know how to transliterate Hebrew) and 38D. The Rock (ALCATRAZ).

The fill was enjoyable enough as well, but a few too many variant forms of words… OSAKAN, JACOBITE, SERUMS (too many SERA in past puzzled had me doubting this answer)… But these were offset by the assortment of fun answers like ALEXEI, SYZYGY (a Will Shortz era first, I believe), WALRUS, KAL KAN, SKI BUM, RETINA and EWOK. My only real struggle came at the crossing of 46A. Certain NCO (I never know these acronyms/abbreviations) and 47D. Punishing rod. With SFC and FERULE nowhere to be found in my own mental index, I needed help on that one square. Damn you, square!

For the first time, I’m trying to do an Amazon Store link. Did it work?

Los Angeles Times
constructed by Andrea Carla Michaels & Michael Blake; edited by Rich Norris

For the second day in a row, I did relatively well on the Los Angeles offering. Are these easier than the New York counterparts? Or am I just living on the wrong coast?

Here we have three titles revised to change gender from male to female: 20A. 1970 Dustina Hoffman saga? is LITTLE BIG WOMAN, 40A. 1939 Roberta Donat film? is GOODBYE, MRS. CHIPS and 57A. 1957 Cindy Poitier film? is TO MA’AM WITH LOVE. The rest of the fill went very quickly, but included a favorite answer: 16A. Munch is (hello, TheDentist) CHOMP!

New York Sun: To The Nth Degree
constructed by Kevin George and Bonnie L. Gentry; edited by Peter Gordon

A cute puzzle with a simple theme — take some basic things, add an N to the end, and poof! you have a new turn of phrase. 17A. Aw-inspiring source of dietary fiber? turns a Wonderbra into WONDER BRAN; 27A. Part of a prison yard? makes criminal law into CRIMINAL LAWN; 49A. Item raised on a Yukon farm? is a KLONDIKE BARN; and 64A. Tailored for prom night wear? is something that FIT TO A TEEN.

And yes, a short blog entry for a night of little respiratory success. Lungs, be less cloggier!

And then I took a crack at today’s New York Times puzzle. Five minutes, forty-one seconds. I totally suck.

New York Times – 5:41
New York Sun – 3:40
Los Angeles Times – 3:50
CrosSynergy – gave up after ten minutes with only ten answers filled.

New York Times: 17- and 64-Across and 11- and 34-Down each conceals an article of clothing.
constructed by Gary Disch; edited by Will Shortz

The longest title in the history of the New York Times crossword puzzle. Thankfully, I didn’t see the title (Monday’s don’t usually have them), so I didn’t spend an extra hour or two trying to figure the theme out.
Instead, I was plenty moronic without cause, unable to find most of the lower left. On a Monday, 49D. À la mode (CHIC) really ought to be about pie. Never heard of PERGOLA (pictured at right), THRALL or LOIRE, so there was really no solving the corner without assistance. Assistance on a Monday. I should be taken out back and shot.

In the meantime, 34D. Daytona 500 enthusiast is not RACER FAN, RACING FAN, RACE CAR FAN… Grr. It’s NASCAR FAN, of course. But I had a bear of time making that come out. And crossing it — conundrums have PUNS in them (32A)? According to Merriam Webster, yes they do. According to me, that’s a couple laundry LOADS short of insane.

Fortunately, I didn’t try to do this puzzle IN PEN, as I was stuck in one too many a TANGLE, barely able to EKE out completion, let alone a decent time. I’d like RELAX about it, but PERGOLA PREVUE NEPALI CAPOS TEA. Yuck.

(On a side note, I just read Orange’s blog on this puzzle, and was relieved to see that she agrees on the Monday-ness of some of these words. Thank you, Orange!)

New York Sun: Punchy Language
constructed by Mark Feldman; edited by Peter Gordon

Who would have thought that the Sun would be my best time of the morning. No one, probably — but that’s because no one’s reading this, or cares much for how quickly I do anything.

Nonetheless, I’m typing away, typing away… Only after I’ve finished the puzzle do I see the theme. HOOKED ON PHONICS, JABBERWOCKY and CROSSWORD SOLVER. Each one contains a kind of punch. At least, I think “cross” is a kind of punch. I don’t know much about… well, I was going to say boxing, but “everything” is a fine end to that sentence, too.

Los Angeles Times
constructed by Dan Naddor; edited by Rich Norris

This was a reasonably fun puzzle (especially on the heels of my New York Times failure), although at a quick glance, I don’t get the theme: 40A. Dewar’s alternative, and this puzzle’s theme (J AND B). What is that? I suppose thematically, it’s that the letters J and B will be used in the grid. But what beverage is J and B? Jim Beam? I’m not very clear on this…

On with the grid, though, I’m still not sure how the theme applies. It seems that there’s much more evidence of high-scoring scrabble tiles, than of anything specific to the letters J and B. I mean — there are five Zs! Two Xs! In fact, it’s not until I finish the whole thing and look back that I realize all the long answers (i.e. the theme answers) are initialed with J and B. But the first two I got were JOY BUZZER (3D. Prankster’s handshake gismo — a tribute to the “var.” spelling, perhaps?) and JAZZ BAND (54A. Swing era ensemble) which gave me much more Z than anything else, and led me down the wrong thematic track. The other theme answers were JUST BECAUSE, JEWEL BOX, JINGLE BELLS and JUNK BOND.

CrosSynergy: “Finger Exercise”
constructed by Bob Klahn

Huh? Ten minutes, very little of this thing filled, and I gave up. I asked Across Lite to show me the answers, and I’m still stumped. What is a “finger exercise,” and how do PRINT JOURNALISM, TIP OF THE ICEBERG, PAINT THE TOWN RED and SANDWICH ISLANDS have that in common?

Full confusion on other clues and answers. 35A. Rice a.k.a. Rampling. What does that mean? ANNE Rice was once named Anne Rampling? 9A. Hot spot in Vermont when it’s cold. STOWE. The town of Stowe. How is Stowe hot when it’s cold? And don’t tell me because there’s a ski lodge there or something. There are ski lodges (and more to the point, indoors) in tons of places. What makes Stowe the specific answer here?

I realize that CrosSynergy doesn’t follow the Monday-Saturday difficulty pattern of the New York Times, but I had been told it was similar. Not so much today, Mr. CrosSynergy. Not so much today.

Podcast: here. Email: here. Facebook: here.

I also want to say, before starting in with the puzzles, that we’re getting lots of positive feedback on our podcast. If you haven’t checked it out, try the links to the right. iTunes has it, and you can also listen straight from this site. We’ve done six episodes so far (the next one will be this coming weekend), and we’re having a blast. Email us your thoughts and comments at rbxblog@gmail.com.

Finally — we have a group on Facebook. I don’t know if this links there successfully, but if not, get on your Facebook, and search the groups for one called “Ryan and Brian do Crosswords.”

Anyway. It’s Tuesday. Yesterday kicked my ass, but today, I’m trying again. Here we go…

New York Times – 6:30
New York Sun – 6:45
Los Angeles Times – 6:40

New York Times
constructed by Nancy Salomon; edited by Will Shortz

I think I’m just struggling to come up with words that might actually exist in the world… The theme answers were cute enough — money-related terms clued with non-monetary concepts:

• 17A. Fishing trawler’s haul? : NET EARNINGS — Incidentally, the first theme answer always (or often, at least) seems to fall at 17-Across. Good spot for themes, I guess.
• 28A. Seat of government’s acquisitions? : CAPITAL GAINS — Never actually got this because of the clue. Had a bunch of crossings and eventually decided that it had to be what it was based on absolutely no concrete evidence.
• 44A. Publisher’s windfall? : PAPER PROFITS
• 59A. Salary for selling insects as food? : GROSS INCOME — Didn’t care for this one… yes, insects as food seem gross to me (although there are cultures where the chocolate-covered grasshopper seems like a reasonable snack), but the clue was far more specific than the answer. It’s like how verbs and nouns have to agree in person and tense, it seems that clues and answers ought to as well.

I think I’m not a fan of the ___ UP type of answers. This puzzle had two of them: 53A. Getting slick during winter (ICING UP) and 39D. Add some meat to the bones (FATTEN UP). Don’t know why it bothers me. I should edit this post tomorrow, and see if it still bothers me then.

New York Sun: I Before E, As In Movie
constructed by Michael Langwald; edited by Peter Gordon

If I had looked at the darned title, I might have shaved a few seconds off this time, but even so, I was stuck on some basic trivia that I just didn’t know. The themes were fun:

• 17A. Movie about an amp-hauler’s African journey? : ROADIE TO MOROCCO
• 38A. Movie about a terrier subplot? : WESTIE SIDE STORY — Apparently, “King of the Hill” did an episode with this title. I don’t watch this show much (except when I’m staying in a hotel and have no TiVo to help me decide what’s good), but the weird thing is that I’ve seen this episode. It’s the one where the Souphanousinphones move in next door, Bobby gets a new friend in Connie, and Hank thinks that these new neighbors made burgers out the Hills’ dog.
• 58A. Movie about a Unification Church member’s Southern flight? : MOONIE OVER MIAMI — Why is “Southern” capitalized? Is that the airline that takes you to Miami? Is that the only airline that takes you to Miami?

This puzzle also featured a crossword favorite in ATARI – the other day, my four-year-old nephew learned how to play Ms. Pac-Man at my house. Every time he would narrowly escape an oncoming ghost, he would turn around to tell everyone how close he came, and then inevitably be eaten immediately.

[NOTE: I know that Atari didn't manufacture Ms. Pac-Man... But video games are video games... Roll with me.]

Los Angeles Times
constructed by Norm Guggenbiller; edited by Rich Norris

The first theme answer is again at 17A. Goings-on at the precinct (POLICE WORK). The other two:

• 10D. Post-9/11 concern : AIR SECURITY
• 25D. Wildcatters’ action : LABOR STRIKE

And they are summarized with 59A. Combine efforts, and puzzle title reflected in 17-Across, 10-Down and 25-Down, which is JOIN FORCES.

I like it just fine, but nothing clever here. Just very blunt. 67A. “Jes’ imagine, Jeb…” makes me think of the Governor of Florida, which makes me want to puke, which makes it difficult to come up with any answers (although that one was SPOSE). I need to look at a map, because I’m seeing a lot of YEMEN lately, which according to 26A is an Oman neighbor. And apparently I’m not up on my Inventory evaluation meth. (56A), because LIFO means nothing to me. Seeing the answer did little clarify what “meth.” was short for (method, I’m guessing?). And 54A. Shrub with pink or white flowers was not a demeaning way to describe the short fat kid at the prom, but rather a SPIREA, which might just as easily have been clued as Label on the first steeple.

New York Times – 19:35
Los Angeles Times – 13:10
New York Times
constructed by Byron Walden; edited by Will Shortz

As with Wednesday’s puzzle, I got going very quickly, solving the entire top eight or nine rows almost immediately. In fact, the only hole I had up there was the second half of the theme throughline — I had CHARLTON, but for some reason assumed that the six-letter neighbor (18A, the other half of the theme) was someone else, not his last name. Duh.

The bottom right was my problem area. I never saw his 1971 movie OMEGA MAN (the first M was one of my cheats), and I had another sports brain malfunction as I suddenly possessed zero ability to understand what “throw the flag on” meant. I realize now that it was the “on” that hurt me — all they do is throw the flag on the field, not onto something in particular. The clue is very misleading in that regard — to PENALIZE is to “throw the flag,” not to “throw the flag on.” What kind of football foul is designed to end in a preposition? Come on…

Still in that area, even finally getting OMEGA MAN and PENALIZE and a bunch of the downs, I was guessing on everything else and couldn’t figure out the last across clue, 66A. Textbook offerings. With absolutely no idea what they were looking for, I just started completing down answers with words that exist, even if they didn’t fit the clues: AMEN instead of AMEX (I play the “Amen” card when I need to get out of church in a hurry?), GAL instead of GAM (on the right track here, I think, in that cheesecake is slang for a female pin-up [even if it specifically means the legs, I know]), ALI instead of ALP (”jungfrau” could be German for anything, as far as I can see, and definitely seems more likely to mean “little girl” than “mountain,” and finally, I had Laila Ali on the brain for whatever reason, and there you have it, be more smarter next time), and ONER instead of ONES (I’m out of excuses). Don’t ask me what ENALILES are, though — I think they appear in textbooks. (And yes, fixing this last answer was my other cheat — I was useless at this point.)

Los Angeles Times
constructed by Dan Naddor; edited by Rich Norris

In today’s Los Angeles offering, a different COMPASS PT. (36A) is hidden in each of eight starred clues: DO[WNW]IND, CAN OP[ENE]R, NE[WS W]IRES, RY[E SE]EDS, A[NN W]ILSON, VO[NNE]GUT, CU[SS W]ORDS, and OPPRE[SSE]D. Sadly, the central down answer, DAN RATHER, was not part of the theme. Go figure.

The other day on the subway, my mother and I were working on an old New York Times Sunday puzzle that had a theme similar to this one — except it took it one step trickier. The compass points in question each only took up one square in that grid. My mother had made a relatively poor choice to not bother to write out the full three letters in the theme squares, but rather just indicate the gimmick with a dot. Of course, when returning to the puzzle much later, a dot in a completed across answer left a confusion in the crossing downward. From this, I learned to always try to write in something appropriate in rebus-style puzzles, not just a personal symbol that says “this is a gimmick.”

After that, I tried to to Wednesday’s puzzles.

New York Times – 12:54 (worst Wednesday for me in what feels like centuries — except I’ve only been doing crosswords since early February)
Los Angeles Times – 8:59
New York Sun – 9:55
The Onion – 8:56

New York Times
constructed by Edward Sessa; edited by Will Shortz

I got off to a hot start here, filling about 80% of the grid in the first three minutes. I got three of the long answers:

• 17A. INK – This is the one I didn’t have at first.
• 25A. IN : SOCIAL ADVANTAGE
• 43A. I : PERSONAL PRONOUN
• 57A. : DISAPPEARING INK

Very clever, lots of fun. (And by the way, I’ve switched to maroon highlights for the answers to go better with Ryan’s re-design for the site!)

I was also flying along brilliantly with lots of words I never thought I’d find: DADA, DECO, KWAI, KAYO, SCAMP, GINSU, MASSE, ITALY (if you asked me to name two countries affiliated with G8, I don’t even think Italy would be one of them, and yet — here it is!), BRAVO, GOP, etc… All great. I had a little trouble in the top of the grid, as I’ve never heard of MARL (pictured at left), and spent too long trying to decide whether I approved of “clayey” as a legitimate word. I got hung up also with the crossing at 39A/39D, as I tried GATE for a tollbooth’s access and GUNK for what gets caught in a trap (correct choices: LANE and LINT, respectively). Further complications arose when I couldn’t understand what kind of hound deserved its own quarry, and what that would even mean (48A). Oddly enough, Merriam-Webster, suggests the “one that is sought or pursued” definition (in the case of 48A, a HARE) before the one about an excavation site. Go figure.

And finally, the top center was my downfall. I doubted everything I thought I knew (5D. FILIAL, 7D. TAPE and 8D. ANOS) in favor of things that seemed less likely (21A. NULLS instead of NIXES) and apparently a bunch of random letters instead of either 5A. FATAL or 15A. INANE. To my own fault, I didn’t know the word ANOXIA, and Merriam-Webster isn’t much help here: “Hypoxia, especially of such severity as to result in permanent damage.” Okay, I’ll look up HYPOXIA: “A deficiency of oxygen reaching the tissues of the body.” Hm. Whatever.

And what ended up putting me into a crossword coma was my complete inability to locate the term CEPHALOPOD despite haveing CEPHAL—DSB-AY staring me in the face. (Yes, I later learned that 10D. was ALPERT not ALBERT, but even that combined with the knowledge of creatures who spew ink in defense was not enough.)

Los Angeles Times
constructed by Alan Olschwang; edited by Rich Norris

Like the New York Times puzzle, I was off to the races at first, and then spent a good four minutes on seven squares, most of which I had to cheat to get. The long answers were easy enough:

• 17A. Space shuttle supply : ROCKET FUEL
• 26A. 80s title sitcom role for Soleil Moon Frye : PUNKY BREWSTER
• 43A. Quick action in an emergency : RAPID RESPONSE
• 57A. Roll toppers : POPPY SEEDS

But then the “theme” clue: 22A. With 48-Across, what 17-, 26-, 43- and 57-Across each begins with. My head is still spinning from trying to understand what they want here… 48A has the oh-so-useful clue of See 22-Across. I have GEN-E, so I’m thinking it’s either GENIE or GENRE. And 22A so far has M—C, which immediately suggests MUSIC, although I’m sure there are other ideas out there. My brain is still swimming in the filth that was Night At The Museum (at least it was in Blu-Ray), and I can’t figure out what the hell they’re looking for. ROCKET, PUNKY, RAPID and POPPY — what are these things? R-P-R-P… I decide that 22A is MUSIC, but fail to understand that while each long answer is a two-word thing, it’s not the first word they’re looking for, its the first syllable: ROCK, PUNK, RAP and POP. Four MUSIC GENREs.

Sigh. Now onto the New York Sun, and I’ll see if I actually can give myself ANOXIA.

New York Sun
constructed by Lee Glickstein; edited by Peter Gordon

I’m getting more exhausted as the night progresses, and my Chinese food is talking back to me. The Sun puzzle was cute, taking normal phrases or titles, and using a homonym-like swap, changed one of the words in said title or phrase to a person’s name:

• 17A. Educator Horace alongside a comic book hero? : MANN AND SUPERMAN
• 35A. Leave the infant of “In Treatment” star Gabriel in the sun too long? : BURN, BABY BYRNE — This clue had too many “in”s in it for me… Infant, In Treatment, in the sun… In in in.
• 53A. Discussion between a former Colorado senator and a ’70s to ’90s rock band? : HART TO HEART TALK

Fun and nice, even if I got stuck for a while with answers I ought to have known (BMOC was in two puzzles today!) but didn’t. I need to go to sleep…

New York Times: How Insulting!
by Cathy Millhauser; edited by Will Shortz

I am supposed to be cleaning my office right now, and instead, I took forty minutes to do a puzzle. I am an idiot. But I was able to do this puzzle with limited help from the outside world. Fun little gimmick here, based on the title, “How Insulting!” — the three letter slang “DIS” appears in all the theme answers, changing them from normal phrases to cute new phrases:

• 22A. Foul weather condition? : [DIS]GUSTING WINDS
• 30A. Some moralizing about getting off a balance beam? : SERMON ON THE [DIS]MOUNT
• 38A. “Do your thing, Jack the Ripper”? : GO [DIS]FIGURE
• 59A. Sophistication of clubs like Sam’s and BJ’s? : [DIS]COUNTER CULTURE — Something doesn’t sit right with this one. Sam’s and BJ’s are known for their discounts, not their discounters. I don’t even know what a discounter is, except maybe a person who applies the savings to my purchase.
• 68A. Concerns of someone who’s choking? : FOOD AND [DIS]LODGING — Again, I’m not wholly satisfied with this answer. I got it very quickly, so that wasn’t the problem. It’s just that the altered phrase doesn’t really feel comfortable on its own, whereas most of the others do. “Food and specifically the dislodging of it” is the sentiment here. But specifically, I don’t think that someone choking is concerned for the food. I choked on a jelly bean last year, and was scared out of my mind. I only thought of the jelly bean after I had coughed it up — and then, only to find out what color and flavor it had been so I could avoid those specific enemies for the remainder of my days.
• 88A. Her Royal Daunter? [DIS]MAY QUEEN — I don’t understand this one at all. What is a May Queen? (I asked Wikipedia, and in case you don’t like to click on links, they told me this [and I paraphrase]: The May Queen is also known as the goddess of spring and the Queen of Elves. She embodies purity and the potential for growth. She personifies the energy of the earth.) Now that I’ve read that… I still don’t know what a “dismay queen” is. A queen who is dismayed? Is daunt a synonym for dismay? I had the answer in place, and doubted it the whole time, until the applet told me it was all okay.
• 96A. Coleslaw-loving children? : CABBAGE [DIS]PATCH KIDS — Okay, sure. To dispatch, though, is to send out or possibly to kill, right? So these children are either sending the cabbage to… the cole slaw factory? Or they are killing the cabbage by either chopping it up (working in the factory) or eating it. Or do we think that they are sending it off to its mortal coil by eating it?
• 111A. Find chewing gum under a desk, perhaps? : DUCK AND [DIS]COVER

The rest of the grid posed a few challenges to me that required some research — crossings for which I knew neither bit of trivia. Do you really care which trivia I knew and didn’t know? Probably not, so I won’t bother.

Los Angeles Times: “Tax Audit: The Musical”
by Nora Pearlstone; edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

If Friday’s New York Sun puzzle (with musical theater themed clues) was up my Shubert alley, this puzzle was a one-night flop. All the theme clues were set up as dialogue in a script, but they were titles of songs sung by pop stars.

Rather than go into what the clues and answers were (you’re solving this in Across Lite, which has the answers built in — you don’t need me for that), I’ll instead discuss how much I hate the kind of musical that this alleges to be. Please note: I don’t hate this puzzle; rather, it was quite delightful. Despite the crossings of imaginary words that you all made up just for this puzzle, like G-SUIT/DIGRAM, ARRAU/OAS, ADENI/DSO — I think it should be a law that you don’t get to cross random acronyms with words or names based in other languages. There’s just no way to figure it out, if you don’t happen to simply know everything in the universe — I had a good time.

No, if this was actually a musical, and the songs were all by different pop artists (The Beatles, Frankie Avalon, Elvis, etc.), it would be what we call a jukebox musical. And a jukebox musical is where someone takes a bunch of songs they like and makes up some convoluted story to attempt to string some characters through a concert of hits. Sometimes, it seems to work (”Movin’ Out” with the songs of Billy Joel or “Mamma Mia” with the songs of ABBA), and often it fails miserably (”All Shook Up,” “Good Vibrations” or “Lennon,” to name a few).

Why does it fail? Because although it seems that hit songs are enough to engage an audience, we are still a culture that likes stories. Right now, we seem to like imaginary stories about famous people (do you think People magazine really has the authoritative answer on why Britney has gone insane?) or imaginary stories about normal people put onto television (Survivor, Dancing With My Mother, Who Wants To Be A Surgeon, etc.). These are engaging because they involve people actually doing things, usually things we can’t (or don’t want to) do. In “Good Vibrations,” it was a bunch of people going to the beach and being in love with each other. So what? Where’s the magic? Where’s the mystery? Where’s the journey that I need a play for, because I can’t do it myself?

[NOTE: My apologies to anyone from "Good Vibrations" who reads this. Feel free to write to me and complain at rbxblog@gmail.com.]

Sigh. Maybe I’ll write a humongous crossword puzzle musical, where the entire grid turns out to be the score or something. And right after that, I’ll file my taxes.

Also, I’m trying to use different colors for clue answers… Brown yesterday, purple today. We’ll see what I eventually like.

Scores
New York Times 18:55
Los Angeles Times 9:30
CrosSynergy 8:09
New York Sun 21:56 (with one gimme)
Wall Street Journal 29:52

New York Times
by David J. Kahn; edited by Will Shortz

Loved this. Absolutely loved this. The only bad part is that I took too much time looking for the gimmicks, I think it added minutes to my (already pathetic) time:

• 64A. What you can find in the grid after completing this puzzle, looking up, down, left, right and diagonally, word search-style : A DOZEN ROSES

And lo and behold, there are a dozen “ROSE” sequences hidden throughout the grid. Oh, such joy. The long center answer at 38A. Classic 1911 children’s novel… with a hint to this puzzle’s theme was THE SECRET GARDEN, which sadly I learned as a musical before I learned it as a book.

I had some trouble with a handful of things in the left area… 38D. One way to get to the top is always always something clever, and never something logical. I have probably missed cutesy clues for T-BAR on more occasions than I can count. A life in Maine apparently did not provide me with enough skiing jargon. And I went with the opposite guess on 39D. “Too great a burden to bear”: Martin Luther King, Jr. by trying to make HOPE work when he was talking about HATE. Up in the top right, my errant choices of ANOL, HARDWOOD and INK for 10D, 11D and 12D led me into all kinds of trouble. If only I knew that ALEPPO was a city in Syria, I might have avoided what felt like hours of cluelessness. (Can one suffer from cluelessness in a crossword puzzle, where one is inundated with clues?)

My Excel spreadsheet is getting out of hand. I’ve included a screen shot here. I think you can right-click and View image… to see it at it’s full resolution.

Los Angeles Times
by Gary Steinmehl; edited by Rich Norris

Did it in half the time as the New York puzzle, but had about half the fun. It got off to a great start as the 1D. Sound of sawing wood was ZZZ. Initially, I hoped that triple letters or grouped consonants or something would be the trick. Alas, no. Instead, the trick was saved for the last of the down clues, 67D. Word that can precede the first word in the answers to starred clues (SKY). A little boring, and with it as the only throughline for the puzzle, left me wanting more. Maybe this was because of the absolute utter joy I had with the New York Times puzzle. I mean — a dozen roses! So cool!Because I’m more interested in the New York Times than the L.A. puzzle, I’ll just list the long answers here and be done with it:

• 18A. Doing the macarena, e.g. : LINE DANCING
• 23A. Stationery : WRITING PAPER
• 53A. Carefree : LIGHT HEARTED
• 61A. Cannonball origination spot : DIVING BOARD

There you have it.

CrosSynergy: “Ster-linguistics”
by Randolph Ross

Cute puzzle, if a little generic. The title was the most confusing part to me. Is the title a play on some long word I don’t know? Or a phrase I don’t know? Or is it just a random made up hyphenated word to explain that the long answers within the grid will get STER added to them somewhere?

• 17A. Physicians who treat unmarried women? : SPIN[STER] DOCTORS
• 25A. Dictionary reader, at times? : WEB[STER] BROWSER — I think this would have been better clued as “Online dictionary reader” or “Electronic dictionary reader.” The “at times” thing is a clue trick I really don’t care for that much.
• 42A. Those with affection for cool cats? : HIP[STER] HUGGERS
• 55A. Rodent in the rye? : HAM[STER] SANDWICH

Otherwise, there was one little gem within the grid: 36D. Pupil in the 70s? (C STUDENT)… Other than that, fairly straightforward. I was distracted in the middle (and paused the clock) while my wife killed a bumblebee in our foyer. I am deathly afraid of flying insects, and this guy was huge. I am still having a mild coronary, and it’s been twenty minutes.

New York Sun: Themeless Thursday
by Doug Peterson; edited by Peter Gordon

I tried. I let Across Lite show me a few mistakes (not answers, just where squares were wrong), and then I asked for one free answer at 8D. Rose’s home (PBS), which I still don’t understand. I assume there’s someone named Rose who has a show on PBS. Or lives at the station. I don’t know.

I think the Sun puzzles are like an insider game… You have to be brilliant to do them, to enjoy them. It’s like a secret society. If you have fun doing the Sun puzzles, you are part of the Crossword Society of the World. I am not a worthy pledge to such an organization. I need to be more smarter. Maybe next year…

New York Times 9:37
Los Angeles Times 6:24
The Onion 12:02

New York Times
by Daniel Kantor and Jay Kaskel; edited by Will Shortz

After spending most of yesterday on the go, I only got to Tuesday’s puzzle this morning. As Ryan blogged about it (see below), I won’t bother. Instead, I’m getting up to speed on Wednesday, and took care of this little New York Times grid in just under ten minutes. As I check my nerdy spreadsheet, I see that my average Wednesday time has dropped from 11:30 to 11:23 with this recent accomplishment. Yay me! (And P.S. — Boo me for having a nerdy spreadsheet… Perhaps I will link to it from here, and you can all see that I’m actually more of a dork than blogs and podcasts show!)

While the dailies don’t have titles per se, this puzzle did give us one as something of a wrap-up to the theme clues. The first three of the theme:

• 20A. “I asked for tomato bisque, not gazpacho!” (complaint #1) : MY SOUP IS COLD — Incidentally, I only just noticed now that this is not just a reference to generic soup complaints (of which there may be several), but also that gazpacho is a cold soup. Duh. Come on, Brian — be more smarter!
• 28A. “Has our waiter even made eye contact?” (complaint #2) : ARE WE INVISIBLE?
• 47A. “What, are they growing the food?” (complaint #3) : WHERE’S OUR ORDER?

and all summarized with 54A. Title of this puzzle : WHINE AND DINE.

The rest seemed to flow smoothly. I was pleased to see myself with about 75% of the grid filled at just under five minutes. That it took another five to get the rest was frustrating, especially since I had errors that I didn’t know I had. Apparently, I thought it was ALAN Robert, not Robert ALDA who won a Tony for “Guys and Dolls” (56A), and that somehow Mitt ROMNEY was the German commander at the invasion of Normandy (29A), and not Erwin ROMMEL. Whoops.

Because it was easy to find, I’ve included a picture of 32A. “South Park” boy (IKE).

Los Angeles Times
by Donna S. Levin; edited by Rich Norris

I’m quickly skimming through the clue list, and can’t seem to find anything to explain the nature of this puzzle’s theme. The four long answers all rhyme with “Alice,” but aside from that — there’s little else to say. I seem to run the L.A. Times quicklier than the New York puzzles, so maybe I’m on the wrong coast.

So you’re looking for MARIA CALLAS, BLENHEIM PALACE, WYNTON MARSALIS and HOLY CHALICE. That’s what you’re here for, right? There you go.

The Onion

This is the second Onion puzzle I’ve tried to do, and I just don’t seem to wrap my head around them very well. The whole bottom left was full of things that I either didn’t consider or didn’t know:

• 51D. False flattery : SMARM – I had S—M, and was sure it was STEAM. I realize now that the phrase I was thinking of was “blowing smoke,” but no phrase I ever thought of was “blowing smarm.” I always just described generally icky people as being smarmy, never thinking that it meant something more specific. Oops. Thanks Onion, for helping my vocabulary!
• 55A. Vaccine mixture, for short : MMS – what is that even short for?
• 61A. Speedily : APACE – I don’t even know if I knew “apace” was a word, let alone what it meant.
• 66A. Scout’s mission : RECON – Part of my issue here was that I had STEAM back at 51D, so I was looking for something beginning with an A. The other part was that I was thinking about boy scouts and girl scouts and Thin Mint cookies, and nothing about actual military scouts ever entered my mind.
• 62D. Country’s David Allen : COE – I am now assuming that’s his last name.

This blog has taken me fourteen hours to actually publish, so I’ll stop here without doing the New York Sun. Besides, I ain’t smarter enough yet for that one…

New York Times
by Barry C. Silk, edited by Will Shortz

Let me take a moment to acknowledge a few sites that have linked to us: Madness… Crossword and Otherwise and Crossword in Gothic have both help support our fledgling efforts. Thank you!

Today was a rough day. I had eight hours of auditions, which got rather tedious by mid-afternoon. At these auditions, people come in and sing a song or two. We’ve asked that if people want to sing two songs, that each one be no more than sixteen measures long. SIXTEEN. That’s a number, and if you count upwards by integers starting at one, it’s the sixteenth number. It’s amazing how many people say to me, “Well, this is about twenty or so. Close enough, right?” The truth is that sometimes it’s close enough, and sometimes when you say “it’s about twenty” and you mean “it’s more like forty” because the truth is that it’s actually fifty-three — come on. When we say “sixteen bars,” it’s not because we don’t like watching you perform. It’s because we’re not looking for a full performance, we’re looking for a simple representation of your talent.

And in much more serious news (although not life-shatteringly serious news), my wife jammed up her knee pretty bad today. She’s in rehearsal for a show (she’s a singer/actress), and was scheduled to fly out to Raleigh, NC on Monday. Now with a strained tendon (?), she’s on crutches for at least a week, and embarking on a combination of physical therapy and pain medication with the hopes that she’ll be able to get back into the show around mid-April. If you send good thoughts my way, forget about trying to vibe me toward solving Saturday’s puzzle (I may not even attempt it), and instead hope for my wife’s swift recovery.

Sigh.

Okay, enough ranting. The Friday puzzle was, in typical fashion, impossible. I read the entire list of across clues, and the first one I was able to enter correctly was the last one: 63A. Brandy holder (SNIFTER). Okay, truth be told, I entered a lot of other answers, too, but they all turned out to be wrong. But this last one somehow opened up my eyes to a bunch of the downs in the lower right, and before long, I had that whole quadrant filled. Being the sports fan that I am, I was pleased to see 28D. His #13 was retired in 2000 by the Miami Dolphins (MARINO) and 38D. Best substitute on the court (SIXTH MAN). I initially tried SPORTS GEAR for 31D. Gym shoes, e.g., and as it turned out, the errant G was the last square I needed to correct before my puzzle was complete. (SPORTS WEAR, of course, is the correct answer.) And on a side note, the “e.g.” did not flummox me as it has been known to do.

I had more trouble with both the lower left and the upper right, as I was combining shot-in-the-dark guesses with answers that had too many options. 11D. Its scores range from 120 to 180: Abbr. seemed like it could be MCAT or GMAT, as well as the correct LSAT. 57A. Six bells, nautically was clearly not going to make sense numerically, but was it THREE, SEVEN or EIGHT and was it A.M. or P.M.? (THREE P.M.) I don’t know where my brain found EPPIE as the answer to 48D. “Silas Marner” girl, since the truth is that I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of Silas Marner (or Eppie Marner, if that’s even her name). Also, no matter that it was right, I didn’t like WHELP as the answer to 47D. Whippersnapper, because the words were too similar to one another. And sadly, 13D. Major conclusion? (ETTE, which I did guess correctly) led me in the wrong direction for 53D. Major start? (apparently not DRUM, which is what I insisted was part of a cute pair — I should have known better, and gone with URSA from the start).

Back to the top right… I struggled with 14D. Coin on the Spanish Main (REAL) because while I had no idea what the Spanish Main was, I deduced it was going to be some random spelling of that four-letter R coin… REAL, RIAL, RIEL, RYAL RYEL, RYUH, RJEW, RAQT, RXCP, R&@!… And for some reason, I decided that 12D. Capital of Upper Austria was BENZ, not LINZ. This led to major confusion over everything else before I focused on 16A. A mouse may help you get there (WEBSITE, and I knew all the while what kind of mouse was in play here) and sorted everything else out from there.

But then I got to the left side, which had me lost. I got the top three rows (ACQUIRE, TOURNEY and T-MOBILE), and knew that 2D. Follows was going to be either COMES LATER or COMES AFTER (the first, as it were). 1D. Where it’s happening had me sitting at my desk saying aloud, “Where it’s happening… what is ‘it’? Where is ‘it’?” I figured out AT THE to start, but the rest eluded me. I also had a big mistake at 23D. Be glued (to), where I put ATTACH. This, of course, was the one clue I felt secure about. So I had the -TER at the end of 2D and the incorrect ATTACH at 23D. Oh, and I also started with SANE instead of SANO for 26D. Not loco, despite recognizing that I was not looking for an English word. This all led to a big goat rodeo of wrongness in the 32A/37A/40A/43A zone. And as all four of those clues were specific things in categories that will always stump me (Foreign airlines? Gases that aren’t INERT or NEON? Psychological problems? Four-lettered anythings?), there was little I could do except stare at it forever — or look it up.

Using our friends at XWord Info, I snuck a peek at 23D (ADHERE) and 1D (AT THE SCENE), which cleared the way for everything else. (Seriously — 3D. W.W. II shelter: QUONSET HUT? Wow.)

In related news, I have designed a puzzle. It’s my first effort, but I think it’s not too bad. Maybe I’ll post it here for people, and get some feedback on it…

Los Angeles Times
by Lee Glickstein, edited by Will Shortz

Not much time to write about it, but I got up too early this morning so I did the Los Angeles Times puzzle. Or, most of it. The theme was fun, and a trick often used in cryptic crosswords (which I like better than normal crosswords). 62A. Reverend honored in this puzzle — well, any regular solver of cryptics (if not of other puzzles, too) would know SPOONER. So then it was just a matter of recognizing the spoonerisms in the theme answers:

• 1A. Reverend turns game stick into neat church area? (COOL PEW) — I spent too long trying to make sense of either “bat” or “apse” as one half of the pre-spoonerized answer.
• 20A. Reverend turns utility pipe into service improvement? (MASS GAIN)
• 30A. Reverend turns wage issuer into Mother’s Day minister? (MAY PASTOR) — I’m not familiar with this term. And also, I found both “wage issuer” and it’s original term, “pay master” both rather obscure, even relative to this puzzle’s clues.
• 38A. Reverend turns fighter planes into proper chapel towers? (FIT SPIRES) — like with 1A, I focused too much on a wrong idea; in this case, it was something to do with “jet” something.
• 50A. Reverend turns quiet waters into a hymn setting? (PSALM KEY) — I liked this one a lot, although I’m not much for “key” as the right word for a musical setting. From a composer’s standpoint, I see “setting” as something more to do with style and arrangement, not the key signature.

I had a little trouble with the lower left, because I wanted DETENTE, not ENTENTE to be the answer to 59A. International alliance, even though I don’t know what either word means. And on the subject of words I don’t know, EGESTED was a new one at 61A. Expelled, and is also apparently new to this blog editor’s spell check.

The last clue that required some Across Lite help was 46A. Fortune (MINT). I had -IN-, but didn’t know 29D. Muslim judge (HAKIM – which is a word I sadly only know from the musical Oklahoma!) or 43D. Loud speaker (STENTOR – which is another word that my spell checker apparently doesn’t know either). Since every option I put into that crossing at STENTOR looked wrong, I never was able to find the proper answer at 46A. Thank you, Across Lite, for cleaning up my mess.

Now off to work…

New York Times
by Steve Salmon, edited by Will Shortz

I am very unhappy with my time. I got the left and center of the grid done in about four minutes. While this is no howardb_42 time, it was certainly lovely by my own standards. But then I hit 37D. A key passage? which I decided was AISLE ISLE. It solved the bottom right for me just fine, but of course screwed up everything else. I’m looking at 42A. Exam for a future Atty. and 45A. “Lohengrin” lass, and I’m thinking they have to be LSAT and ELSA. But my second letters are I and S… What have I done wrong? (In case you read too quickly and missed my error — the answer to 37D is ISLE AISLE, not AISLE ISLE.) (Of course, if you’re reading this at all, you have way too much time on your hands, and you have no business reading anything “too quickly.” RELAX.)

I was also baffled by the top right, where for 10A. Tortilla sandwich, I was stubbornly certain it was TACO. And I know it’s not a sandwich, but technically, neither is a WRAP:

	Main Entry: 1sand·wich
	Pronunciation: \?san(d)-?wich, ?sam-; dialect ?sa?-\
	Function: noun
	Etymology: John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich died
		1792 English diplomat
	Date: 1762

	1a:  two or more slices of bread or a split roll
	     having a filling in between;
	b:   one slice of bread covered with food

	2:   something resembling a sandwich; especially:
	     composite structural material consisting of
	     layers often of high-strength facings bonded
	     to a low strength central core

16A. Breezy greeting also tricked me, as I thought it would be WAVE — far more clever than anything else available. Somehow, this led to a plethora of wrong answers and empty spaces, and I really should have just erased everything and started over. Which I did not. Instead I stared at it for a while. And then a while longer. And then suddenly, I was nearing the ten-minute mark (my current Tuesday average is about 8:30), and I was getting pissed off. WAVE was later replaced with HEYA before finally the correct answer, HIYA.

Ryan has given all the good answers, and included fun pictures from a trip he took. I have no photos, and only a cranky insistence that a wrap isn’t a sandwich. Now I have to take my cat to the vet. I’ll do the rest of the Tuesdays (as many as I can stomach) when I return.

Los Angeles Times
by Michael Langwald, edited by Rich Norris

Not that you can tell, but I have returned.

This was all very straightforward until the left section of the grid, which totally baffled me. In part, this was due to my incorrect answer to 48A. Fuss (TO-DO). In the crossing at 26D. *Fall guy in films?, I had –U-T-OUBLE. I wrongly assumed an R in that last blank to make something-TROUBLE. Hence my incorrect TORO (not much of a fuss, unless you’re the matador), and my complete inability to discover STUNT DOUBLE for 26D.

The rest of the theme had to do with 63D. Casino game, and hint to the theme in last words of answers to starred clues. I was hoping the clue could be a little longer. This wasn’t awkward enough for me.

COME ON. Starred clues? Lots of question marks on long answers? Where was this puzzle published, Los Angeles? Oh, right, it was. Hee hee. Anyway, the answer to 63D was BLACK JACK, of course. And the other themed answers were:

• 17A. *Where hacks wait? (TAXI STAND)
• 39A. *Batter’s success (BASE HIT)
• 11D. *Fruity ice cream treat? (BANANA SPLIT)

The theme was painless, but the execution was rough. Asterisks? And using question marks for non-cryptic clues was lame. I had TAXIST–D for a while for 17A, and reluctantly filled in the correct answer, looking for a play on words that didn’t exist.

Maybe I’ll try the Sun puzzle next… Stay tuned.

New York Sun
by Lee Glickstein, edited by Peter Gordon

Nothing like a crossword puzzle to show me that I have a complete lack of knowledge on just about every subject.

New York Times
by David J. Kahn, edited by Will Shortz

Meh.

I don’t know very much about The King. I don’t know what movies he did, I don’t know where his life took him. I appreciate what he did in music history and American pop culture history, but I’m just not that interested.

That said, it took me too long to do this Monday. It wasn’t that satisfying. I took more time than I should have on both the left and right sides because I did all the across clues instead of the few downs. Plus, I still suck at maneuvering around the grid on the NY Times website (in Across Lite I can TAB from one clue to another; is there a way to do that on the NY Times site? If you know how — please tell me!). Plus I still suck at crosswords in general.

I am not interested enough in Elvis to post any answers here. Use the links to the right to find someone else’s blog of answers today…

Los Angeles Times
by Mike Peluso, edited by Will Shortz

I’m just tired. The long answers here seemed like they could have been from any of the dozens of other puzzles I did today. Nothing standout.

I’m in a bad mood.

Okay, the long answers here were:

• 20A. Graveside service phrase (ASHES TO ASHES)
• 33A. From Maine to California (COAST TO COAST)
• 41A. How a book is usually read (COVER TO COVER)
• 56A. Very sincere, as a conversation (HEART TO HEART)

Fine. Very nicely done, Mike Peluso. I’m just tired and hungry, so nothing is satisfying me. I have to work in the morning, and that annoys me. Grr.

CrosSynergy: Exit Poles
by Sarah Keller

This time, I actually looked at the title. And then saw that it would do nothing to help me fill in the squares.

I’m falling into a bad routine here, with the Across Lite puzzles. I don’t check my answers. I make guesses and leave them there. If I were re-entering the ACPT, I’d lose tons of points for my errors (not to mention that I still suck for times).

Anyway… The theme here was answers that ended with kinds of poles:

• 17A. Vegetable used in a traditional Thanksgiving dinner casserole (GREEN BEANS) — Did the clue need to be this long? Aren’t there smarter ways to clue GREEN BEANS? How about “Jolly Giant’s fare” or even “___ casserole.”
• 37A. “A New Leaf” actress/director (ELAINE MAY)
• 42A. Surrender symbol (WHITE FLAG)
• 62A. Navigator’s director (TRUE NORTH) — I didn’t like this clue either, even though I got it. Something about “navigator” made me dislike it.

A couple of stumpers for me, though:

• 36D. Hindu deity (SHIVA) — Really? This word means more than Jews mourning a death?
• 43D. Asmara’s republic (ERITREA) — Asmara is a… person? City? School? No idea.

Fine, I suppose… I seem to have settled into the 5-6 minute range for most Monday-level puzzles. In terms of the ACPT, that’s already a three-minute improvement over my Puzzle #1 time.

And now, off to work…

New York Times
by Stephen Edward Anderson, edited by Will Shortz

Six minutes and fourteen seconds to get all but four squares yesterday. Twenty-eight minutes and 19 seconds to get all but four squares today. What a difference an added T-H-U-R and a deleted W-E-D-N-E makes.

So first of all, I have to admit a slight cheat at the beginning. Seeing that the gimmick clues were “portmanteaux,” I felt it was important that I find out what that word meant.

THE FREE DICTIONARY

1. (n.) A large leather suitcase that opens
   into two hinged compartments.

Yes, thank you, useless Free Dictionary. I was quite sure that this was not going to be the gimmick. Let’s try Merriam-Webster.

MERRIAM-WEBSTER

1. (n.) A large suitcase.

Are you kidding me?

2. (n.) A word or morpheme whose form and
   meaning are derived from a blending of
   two or more distinct forms (as smog
   from smoke and fog).

Well, that seems a little more reasonable. At this time, I acknowledged that the word was French in origin, but hoped to everything in my office that the clues, which seemed geographic in nature, would not ask me about places in France.

I very quickly get everything in the northwest, which is wonderful. And from this, I determine that the first long clue, 20A. South-of-the-border border town portmanteau, will somehow involve Mexico. And if I had a peso for every time I involved Mexico in my Thursday activities, well…

I hit a bit of a slow patch by not knowing the next 276,801 clues. I throw a few words down, believing that there’s no chance any more than 25% of them could be right. But now, with 47A. South-central border town portmanteau ending in -EXA-, I decide that the answer will end with TEXAS. I’ve got MEXICO in place to open 20A and TEXAS to close 47A. Okay, maybe I don’t really understand portmanteau. After all, 67% of the definitions I found for it were about luggage.

Okay, forget the long clues. Back to the little guys. Do I know… anything? 25D. Holmes of “Dawson’s Creek” (KATIE). Thank the lord for unemployment. That sets up 33A. Downed and 36A. Each state, symbolically (EATEN and STAR, respectively), which gets me the rest of the left-center section. Now I think that 42A. Mid-Atlantic border town portmanteau is going to be DELAWARE-something… Except the stuff I have at 25A. Plains border town portmanteau does not spell Kansas (which is the preeminent plains-y state). It starts with KANORA, which means that either I’ve got three adjacent down clues wrong or my idea of Kansas is wrong.

Turns out that the answer is C) neither. I just don’t know what to do with the portmanteaux yet.

I move down south. I get the southwest corner (thank you, Phoenix, for leaving me alone) — and thank you, answers, for including the word TEAT (61A. Milk dispenser) after yesterday’s ATE AT (which led to giggling on some of the blogs). I struggle with south-center in that I think 59A. Two bells, in a sailor’s middle watch has more to do with Paul Revere (yes, I try BY SEA) than with the time of day (ONE A.M.); and 56A. “The Big Trail” or “The Big Stampede” is meaningless to me, so I guess some poets’ names — KEATS, YEATS, OATES… Wait, who is OATES? It sort of fits. Okay, maybe a stab in the dark gets me somewhere…

Now things are coming into play. I figure out the two bells clue, and I get 37D. Campus digs (DORM ROOM), which helps open up the Texas portmantea — it’s TEXARKANA, TEXAS. Aha, so the answer in its entirety is not a portmanteau (or a suitcase), but it includes one. TEXAS + ARKANSAS * (squished together) = TEXARKANA. I get it now.

With my new found grasp on the world around me, I find the other three long answers: MEXICALI, MEXICO; KANORADO, KANSAS and DELMAR, DELAWARE. And I have never been to any of these places. They may as well be in France after all.

So what’s left? Oh, the four squares that stumped me. 8D. Run (out of) is one of those clues I can’t quite work in my head. I understand that the parenthetical is there to help me understand the more specific definition of, in this case, “run.” I have to keep saying it out loud, though… And finally I come up with PLUM. As in, “Oh, we’re plum out of that, sir.” In it goes. I’ve got the rest up there, except 6D. Jump and a twist. Earlier, I wanted it to be TURN, but that meant there was a town called MEXICANI, which isn’t the case. Then I had the E from LEMUR (18A. Animal in the 2005 film “Madagascar”) and the L from MEXICALI, and thought 6D could be REEL (like an old dance). But that left me with BRRPS for 5A. Burns and Cowper and EEELT for 15A. Apply. I was inventing language.

Meanwhile, 46A. Switzerland’s ___ Leman looked like -AC. I know my three-letter geography as well as my four-letter geography, and I thought I was looking for a person’s first name. I don’t know any Swiss names, so I’m imagining all kinds of ideas… BAC, DAC, GAC, TAC, ZAC… And each of these is giving me no help with 44D. Bells and whistles, say, which currently looks like A-ASMS.

And those were my four squares.

Finally, it occurred to me that maybe there was a lake in Switzerland… In goes the L. I still don’t know what ALASMS are, but I don’t know a lot of things, so this is nothing new. Up top, I get AXEL for 6D — giving me BARPS and EXELT for my two mysterious across counterparts. Clearly not right, but I’ve never heard of Burns (except Ed or Ken) or Cowper (?). The word BARDS pops into my head, so I wonder about PLUM… DLUM? DAUM? DOUM? I don’t know…

I submit the puzzle with wrong answers — I go with BARPS (maybe it’s something) and EXELT. Down south, I go with ALASMS. I don’t know which squares are wrong, only that something is wrong. I check over at Xwordinfo.com, scan the screen, and find my errors: DRUM for 8D. How do you drum something out of something else? Of course that gives me EXERT. Duh. And at the bottom, I was not looking for a poet by the name of OATES, but rather a word I still don’t understand, OATER — which meant that the bells were, of course, ALARMS.

A half hour seems reasonable for me for a Thursday.

Los Angeles Times
by Stephen Ernie Lampert, edited by Rich Norris

Apparently, my theme of the day is “four squares.” Well, that’s being generous. I had four squares that absolutely baffled me — and even now that they’re filled in, I still don’t understand the answers. In fact, there are a lot of clues for which the answers are either things I’ve never heard of or things that I’ve now heard of (as of mere minutes ago) and still don’t know what they are:

• 7D. Surfer wannabe (HODAD) — According to the Urban Dictionary, a HODAD is “One who drives to the beach with a board on the car, stickshis board in the sand and tans and picks up betties (See Betty).” I’d like to see Betty solve this puzzle for me. Particularly if she’s so stupid as to troll the beach for phony surfers. But seriously, I debated for at least a minute as to whether this clue was about water-style surfing or internet-style surfing. And with each letter revealed, I was given absolutely no support in either direction.
• 9D. William III follower (ORANGE MAN) — At first, I thought I was looking for the name of Billy-3’s successor. Not that I’d have any idea who that was (it was Queen Anne, which would have fit the grid and pissed me off to no end, I’m sure).
• 36A. Grays (REBS) — Apparently this is for “Graycoats,” which doesn’t go at all with the assorted other meanings of “grays” I was working on.

And then we get to the southeast, where I knew almost nothing. I couldn’t figure out the theme clue in 50A, I had no idea where Christ stopped at (according to Levi, whoever he is), I was stuck on thinking that 67A. It may be raw was DIET for some reason… And the downs in that area didn’t help — 53D. Bk after Amos (OBAD. – I had to look this up; I don’t even know what comes after Genesis, for crying out loud); 54D. Bounders (ROUES – I had ABUTS here for a long time); 55D. “___ Dream”: Wagner Aria (ELSA’S — I eventually guessed this, but really had no clue); 56D. Cambodian currency (RIELS).

My cheating squares were the H at 4A/7D. BAYH/HODAD, the S at 36A/38D. REBS/SISAL, the B at 53D/60A. OBAD./EBOLI and the I at 56D/60A. RIELS/EBOLI.

The gimmick answers were all for the same clue, “Hand.” They were:

• 17A. MINUTE INDICATOR
• 23A. POKER HOLDING — Even with everything but the D from HODAD, I was still unsold… POKER HOLTING? POKER HOLYING?
• 40A. BIT OF ASSISTANCE
• 50A. HIRED LABORER
• 61A. ROUND OF APPLAUSE — Got this one early on, with just a few letters in place from the downs.

In other news — Ryan and I may be trying to do a podcast on Sunday. Check back here on Monday, perhaps, for an update and possibly a link to our sonorous voices!

New York Times
by Gary Whitehead, edited by Will Shortz

I looked at the clock with about four empty squares on my grid. SIX MINUTES AND FOURTEEN SECONDS. Yes, I had all but four squares filled in just over six minutes. That is amazing.

Almost.

What would have been amazing was if I could have taken less than four more minutes to do four more squares.

And without cheating.

The southwest killed me. It’s like San Diego, Phoenix, Albuquerque and something in northern Mexico all teamed up and beat me to a pulp. For the life of me, I had absolutely no idea on 56A. Deceptive talker or 64A. Chocolatier’s gear, and specifically the squares crossing with 58D. M.p.h., e.g. and the explanation-of-the-theme clue, 56D. What 20-, 37- and 53-Across may do.

(more of this and the other puzzles below… click the link for more!)

Of course 58D killed me. I’ve explained enough how I hate the use of e.g. in a clue. And I’ve been told again and again that it doesn’t imply abbreviations. Of course — I can’t get my mind away from non-abbreviated words in spite of the rest of the clue, which most certainly is an abbreviation. The answer — which I had to stare at for another minute or so before understanding — is VEL (short, I assume, for velocity). Ugly clue, and ugly answer.

56A made me stare at my computer keyboard, working out -I-ER words until my frontal lobe simply overheated and shut down (like my HP laptop does four times a day — but that’s another rant). TILER, MILER, FILER, BIKER, HIKER, DICER, RICER, LIFER… Never did any word beginning with a J come to mind. Never did any word using a V come along. And never did a word that isn’t really much of a word to begin with — JIVER — come along.

64A also gave me no release, since -O-DS didn’t look like it had any options. I kept putting TODDS into it, wondering if a todd was actually anything. The answer, MOLDS, only became clear when I looked at http://www.xwordinfo.com for help, and copied his work.

The theme answers:

• 20A. Desktop publisher’s need (LASER PRINTER)
• 37A. Commuter’s woe (RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC)
• 53A. Def Leppard, for one (HARD ROCK BAND — since BIG HAIR BAND didn’t fit)

all led to my final question mark of the night, clue 56A. I couldn’t see what LASER, RUSH and HARD had to do with one another. Then I thought — maybe they’re all tourist places. The Hard Rock Cafe, for one. Maybe there was a Rush Hour Restaurant and a Laser Lounge or something like that… And even after cheating and putting JIVER and MOLDS in their proper places, and reading the answer (JAM), I wasn’t happy.

Four minutes for four squares. Wednesday, you have beaten me again.

The Onion

Maybe I need to read The Onion to understand why they chose safe sex as the central, uh, concept for this week’s puzzle. The theme answers were:

• 17A & 21A. Family planning success? (TRIUMPH OF THE PILL)
• 29A. Catchphrase of a contraceptive device’s mascot? (MY NAME IS IUD)
• 45A. Personal choice the morning after? (PRIVATE PLAN B)
• 52A & 61A. Vacation filled with safe sex? (SIX DAYS OF THE CONDOM)

I got a bit stumped once again by New Mexico and Arizona (i.e., the Southwest corner). I didn’t see the theme answer yet, and I was guessing on everything I put in. 47D. Reebok competitor was five letters, and try as I might, I can’t make NIKE or ADIDAS fit. Somehow, my brain found ASICS, and so I guessed it. Furthermore, I would not accept that a BIDET is a Fixture near a toilet (48D), since I’ve peed in lots of places and never seen one. And although I like the Rolling Stones, I was unaware they had a 1972 double-album called EXILE On Main St. (49D).

Los Angeles Times
by Robert E. Lee Morris, edited by Rich Norris

Today is my day to die in the South Pacific. Again (and I stress this because it is the third of three puzzles today), I failed to secure anything in the bottom left corner of the grid. The clues I could not wrap my head around were:

• 51D. Rhyme guy with three fiddlers (COLE) — I still have no clue what this means.
• 45D. Mary Hartman portrayer Louise (LASSER) — My lack of knowledge on this subject has left me completely unable to discern if Mary Hartman is the actor or the character.
• 50A. Folk singer Phil (OCHS) and the corresponding 50D. City near Moscow (OREL) — There are approximately 179 million four-letter places or rivers or mountains all over parts of the world that I have never seen that escape my brain on a regular basis. I need to get a list of these and their definitions and read it every night.

And then on the left edge, 27D. Anklebone just stumped me. I tried TARSI and TALON both, and I don’t know what a TALUS is. According to Wikipedia, it’s Latin for ankle bone. LATIN. That means NOT ENGLISH, you stupid clue writers.

There was a theme, I think, although even with a “what is the theme” clue in the puzzle, I still don’t understand it. Herewith:

• 17A. Head honcho (TOP BANANA)
• 61A. Elegant table setting (BONE CHINA)
• 11D. Fair transaction (SQUARE DEAL)
• 29D. Winnebago, for one (MOBILE HOME)

And the piece de resistance:

• 38A. Be the perfect size, and what the first words of 17A, 61A, 11D and 29D can do.

Can you figure it out? The answer is, of course, FIT TO A T. I understand the first part of the 38A clue, but how do TOP, BONE, SQUARE and MOBILE fit anything to a T? I will have to read someone else’s blogs to make sense of it.

EDIT: I have since read someone else’s explanation (thank you, Orange) which is this: Each of the four words can be preceded by a T to form something else we’ve heard of — T-TOP, T-BONE, T-SQUARE and T-MOBILE. [And to that, I say, "What the hell is a T-Top?"]

CrosSynergy
by Mel Rosen

I felt pretty good about this rather non-descript grid from CrosSynergy. Got it in under ten minutes, didn’t need to cheat or guess.

I had a little trouble in the southeast (although I did know that 9A. City northwest of Orlando was OCALA — hello to my friend Amy who is from there [she'll never read this page, never]), as I tried both PIER and PORT for 71A. Berth place (DOCK), leading me to a number of wrong ideas in the whole corner. 68A. Lake where Perry prevailed in 1813 was chock full of things I didn’t know. Ask me about 1813? Not a clue. Ask me who Perry is? Not a clue. Ask me for yet another four-letter geographical thing that’s not in my own backyard? Not a clue. Okay, a bit of a clue. But the list of things I know about Lake ERIE does not include anything about this battle that O.H. Perry fought.

49A. Doctors on the cutting edge? confused me… I had most of the letters in place, and SURGEONS (the right answer) seemed to fit the grid, but why the question mark? What’s clever about this clue? Doctors = surgeons. How are they on the cutting edge? Is it because surgeons physically cut things? That’s not clever, that’s lame.

And now I’m off my soapbox of abbreviations and on my soapbox of foreignerity. Like in the L.A. Times puzzle (Hello, California? TALUS is still Latin!), I didn’t like that 41D. Gathering after hitting the slopes led me to a French answer. This, aside from the fact that I didn’t like the use of two -ing words in the same clue. But really — English clue, French answer? Maybe if the French answer was a colloquialism here in America… Oh, who am I kidding? Maybe it is. I don’t ski. I don’t speak French. The one time I tried skiing, I sprained my talus, and I was enjoying the apres-ski with a bit of cocoa…

New York Sun
by Ogden Porter, edited by Peter Gordon

First of all — is Ogden Porter a pseudonym for Peter Gordon? Or is it merely a magical coincidence that they are anagrammatic of one another?

I’m going to start with the three-letter answer for 37A. It can help you find your balance. For reasons I don’t understand, the first thing I put in was EAR. I thought scientifically, that’s a clever answer. But after I got 30D. 2007 title role for Dustin Hoffman (MR. MAGORIUM), I had an M in the last space. Aha! I thought of SUM — very clever! Add it up, you find your monetary balance! Cute. Then I noticed that the clue didn’t have a question mark. Oops. Can’t be that clever without the question mark — unless we’re talking about surgeons. So I went back to normal concepts of balance, and chose ARM for the answer. And then, of course, 29D. Game-ending announcement seemed to have no options… I went through the whole alphabet with -ARE in place, wondering if anyone ever shouted “YARE!” for the end of a game. Maybe back when Dinka Yare played for the Nets. He was a scrub player who never got off the bench much. At the end of the games, the crowds might be screaming to put him in. “Yare! Yare!” Okay, that was clearly not going to be it. Since I had never heard of a 28A. Device for measuring current (AMMETER — or A.M. METER? or AM-METER?), I was lost as to the initial letter for 29D, which would keep me from ever understanding 37A. I was dismayed to find out (eventually, thanks to Across Lite’s help) that the answers at that crossing were MATE and ATM.

Abbreviations. In the answer. Not in the clue.

Clever answer. No question mark in the clue.

The clue may as well have read: 37A. Three random letters I plucked from a bag of Scrabble tiles.

Meanwhile, 39D. Sea of ___ (setting of the Gulf of Taganrog) could have been in Swahili for all the information I gleaned from it (AZOV – another &!*@# four-letter place). And apparently John Philip SOUSA was not 53D. “You’re A Grand Old Flag” songwriter, George M. COHAN was. Incidentally, I once co-wrote a play (about a baseball team) in which Mr. Cohan walked on stage in the middle of the first act and said, “I’m George M. Cohan, the great song and dance man!” He had maybe two more lines, and then was never seen again.

This puzzle took too long to solve. I was so pleased with my (relatively) quick CrosSynergy time, only to be embarrassed by this poor showing. Thankfully, the weekend puzzles are coming soon, and I have absolutely no hope whatsoever of even completing one of them.

Universal
by Emmet Coffie

This wasn’t so much fun… I even left it alone for a minute to read an email (without stopping the clock), that’s how into it I wasn’t.

I don’t like quotes in crosswords. It makes for a very long paragraph or sentence, and I don’t usually see it at all. Gimmicky turns of phrase are more fun for me. This was worse than a quote — it was a quip, which I believe translates as follows:

• QU, short for “quote”
• I, as in “idiot”
• P, which rhymes with T and that stands for Take this dumb clue and…

The three-part quip, beginning at 13A. Start of a buyer’s quip, and continuing with 37A and 64A is I SHOP LIKE A BULL; I CHARGE EVERYTHING. Not clever. Not funny. Not pertinent to anything. Not of interest to me. Really, it wasn’t much more than an obstacle to me solving the rest of the puzzle.

(my stories come after the link… read on!)

New York Times
by David Pringle, edited by Will Shortz

Pretty simple and enjoyable. And as I play on the New York Times website, this was one of those few times where I clicked “done” and actually had no errors. Yay for me.

The long answers were of fairly basic premise, the homonym set of sent/cent/scent/sense:

• 17A. Providential (HEAVEN SENT)
• 27A. Nary a penny (NOT ONE RED CENT)
• 45A. In close pursuit (HOT ON THE SCENT)
• 60A. Adds up … like this puzzle’s theme? (MAKES SENSE)

No worries. Couldn’t do the super fast times like some people do, but that’s mostly because I’m normal.

Los Angeles Times
by Dan Naddor, edited by Rich Norris

Not too bad, considering I had a major goat rodeo in the northwest. Even knowing that 1D. Actor Cobb was LEE J., I kept mis-reading 14A. Only country whose capital starts with Q: Abbr. as if I was looking for a country name beginning with Q. I know, it says plainly that I’m supposed to abbreviate the country name, but looking for a capital city (and really — I don’t know biscuits about capitals of the world), well, it just addled this simple mind. And even after I stabbed at the random idea that it might be Ecuador (ECUA, for those wondering), I couldn’t make sense of 2D. Height: Pref. (ACRO, despite my apparently brainless efforts for ACIO and AXIO), 3D. Sierra Club Founder (MUIR — and if you’d asked me “True or False: The Sierra Club exists,” I’d have had no idea) or 17A. Emerald Isle (ERIN — Dude, it’s the 18th of March now, so enough with the emeralds).

New York Sun
by Patrick Blindauer, edited by Peter Gordon

Feh. I shouldn’t be trying to do puzzles when I’m already too tired to stay awake for my daily episode of Pardon the Interruption.

Northwest corner seem to be my trouble spot. In this one, I didn’t know my North Carolina geography nor my salad greens:

• 1A. Fort ___, North Carolina (BRAGG)
• 1D. Boston lettuce alternative (BIBB) — And incidentally, I don’t like BIBB and GIBB in the same puzzle, let alone just a few squares from each other. Similarly, DIXIE/MOXIE (39A/32D) was less than pleasing.

Nor did I know

• 14A. Ancient region where Phocaea was (IONIA)

The gimmicky answers were cute — doubling a three-letter word to turn one basic phrase into a cutesy play on words.

• 20A. Journey for a chocolate? (BON BON VOYAGE) — this might have been “Journey for a confection?” as a bon bon is what it is based more on its center filling than its outer shell. Furthermore, Bon Bons are a now obsolete American snack in which the center is ice cream. Pictured here is a Spanish drink called cafe Bon Bon in which a shot of espresso is poured over condensed milk. Sounds vile.
• 36A. Jazz player with a drum? (TOM-TOM CAT) — maybe because I was tracking the Celtics/Spurs game tonight, I had the Utah Jazz (that’s a pro basketball team) on my mind, and didn’t even consider the idea of musicians.
• 41A. Place to dip really big fish sticks? (TARTAR PIT) — …and now I’m hungry.
• 50A. First number of a high-kicking show? (CAN-CAN OPENER)

CrosSynergy
by Thomas W. SchierI had a little trouble with the northern middle section, as I stupidly imagined that Rebekah somehow fathered one of the Israeli tribes (rather than the oh-so-common ESAU). I also didn’t care for the first of the long answers, which made it more difficult for my already stubborn brain to give in to reality.

• 20A. Reserves a single hotel room? (BOOKS FOR THE ONE) — “books for one” would be a more sensible term, even though it doesn’t satisfy the gimmick of the puzzle. The other long answers seemed like more reasonable phrases.
• 25A. Maliciously burn a complimentary ticket? (TORCH THE PASS)
• 42A. Shape an opening pool shot? (MOLD THE BREAK)
• 47A. Enjoy boxercise? (PUNCH TO THE BEAT) — This was my favorite of the themed answers, even if I don’t agree that “boxercise” is a word.

New York Times 7:38 (or 6:06 with one square wrong)
New York Sun 6:02
LA Times 4:31
CrosSynergy 13:21
USA Today 18:19
Universal 13:17

(my stories come after the link… read on!)

New York Times
by C.W. Stewart, edited by Will Shortz

Generally easy, with the gimmick answers being exclamations somehow linked to historical figures:

• 17A. What President Washington said upon winning the lottery? (BY GEORGE)
• 23A. What flagmaker Ross said …? (HEAVENS TO BETSY)
• 33A. What Miss Molly said …? (GOOD GOLLY)
• 42A. What Galileo said …? (OH MY STARS)
• 47A. What the Big Bad Wolf said …? (WELL, BLOW ME DOWN)
• 62A. What Noah Webster said …? (OH MY WORD)

First — are we supposed to assume that this is what all of them said upon winning the lottery? Maybe, although I certainly didn’t see that connection between clues when solving. And second, and this is bigger — why do two of the answers start with “Oh my”? In fact, I was only solving in one direction to start, and I had (and was certain of) ON MY WORD for Noah Webster. It ended up being the one square I spent another 90 seconds finding… Seems weak to have two theme answers start with the same two words like that.

New York Sun
by Francis Heaney, edited by Peter Gordon

Fairly straightforward, I suppose. I didn’t get the trick to the long answers (excepting noticing that IRISH SETTER was… uh, Irish), and had to seek out another blog to inform me that the opening words of each of the four long answers complete the phrase KISS ME I’M IRISH. That is precisely what my wife told me this morning, and I plan to continue obeying her wishes throughout the day.

Los Angeles Times
by David W. Cromer, edited by Rich Norris

I was going to keep a spreadsheet of my times and such, and see how I did over the course of this next year, but now I haven’t started. I’m so weirdly OCD about some things that since I started blogging without tracking times, I can’t start tracking times now without revisiting puzzles, and that’s not fair because I already did some of the puzzles, and oh hell, what will I do?

CrosSynergy
by Rich Norris

A stupid math error was my biggest obstacle to this one. Math. Me! MMXX divided by X does not equal CCXX, for those wondering (it’s actually CCII, duh). Therefore, there is no such television show as Dr. Uxidare or Dr. Exodare or anything else like it (enjoy DR. KILDARE reruns, if you can find them). Nor is there a letter of the Arabic alphabet known as alxf (ALIF), as fun as that sounds. Also of note is that chefs do not salt things totally, they salt them TO TASTE.

The theme didn’t really help, as I think I know less about Ireland than I did yesterday. My friend Dan says that CrosSynergy puzzles are similar to New York Times Wednesdays. I will combine that with my time of 13:21, salt it to taste, and eat it for breakfast.

USA Today: Saints For A Day
by John Underwood

I don’t know if USA Today operates on the same difficulty scale as the New York Times, but eighteen minutes is too long for a Monday. If this is a trend, and it gets harder from here, I now question who the USA Today is marketing their paper to.

From the title, I was looking for the names of saints, either in the clues or the answers. There were two “Patrick” clues, but either nothing else, or nothing else I noticed.

Universal: Where?
by Steven L. Zisser

Boring, and generally unsatisfying. If more of the Universal series are like this, I’ll skip them.
I’m tired, and have to go to work. Goodbye.

New York Times: Getting A Little R And R
by Elizabeth C. Gorski, edited by Will Shortz

I understood what the gimmick was going to be just from the title, “Getting A Little R And R” — obviously, we’re adding two Rs to something to complete the theme answers. I’m a slow solver, so while my time of 43:15 is never going to win me any competitions, it seemed fairly steady for me. The long answers came in bits and pieces — I saw parts of them early (…FARCES, CROW…, PRETTY CRASH…), but needed more help in the crossings to finish them off.

It was 89A. A Simpson without access to his volume of the “Odyssey”? (HOME[R] AWAY FROM HOME[R]) that really opened things up for me. I was able to move fairly quickly both up and down from that long answer, and quickly found all but one of the other theme clues:

• 34A. Beautifully illustrated report of a computer failure? (P[R]ETTY C[R]ASH ACCOUNT)
• 61A. French director’s comment about his submission to a film festival? (I GAVE IT MY B[R]EST SHO[R]T) — I actually had I GAVE IT MY BEST SHOT in my head early on, but wasn’t sure where to put the extra Rs to make sense of it. I’m still not sure who Brest is — www.imdb.com tells me that Martin Brest (director of Gigli, Scent of a Woman and everyone’s favorite, Hot Dogs for Gauguin [starring Danny DeVito]) was born in the Bronx; Annette Brest’s only credit, Erotic Day Dream, went straight to video in 2000 (and her homeland is unknown); and the only directorial effort on the otherwise blank resume of Jurgen Brest is 1982’s Tollwut, about which I know nothing except that none of the characters seem to have first names.
• 106A. Former Tennessee senator’s Halloween costumes? (F[R]IST F[R]IGHTS)
• 15D. Opening remarks at a coffee makers’ convention? (D[R]IP INT[R]O) — This one took a bit. I had DRIP in place quickly, but couldn’t think of what phrase I was playing with. I needed to complete 33A. Bookcase lineup (SPINES), 41A. “It’ll ___ you” (COST) and 55A. Not badgering, say (SOFT ON) before I got it.
• 71D. Where a dope unloads a ship? (MO[R]ON PIE[R])

The first of the theme answers was the last one I solved — 23A. Broad comedies involving hogs?. I had FARCES in place, but couldn’t seem to think of what kind of “faces” were at play here. Also, while words like pig, boar, sty and swine were coming to mind, I couldn’t seem to complete the answer. It didn’t help much that I thought 20A. Kia sedan was ULTIMA (instead of OPTIMA), that 1A. Place for bluegrass had more to do with music than terrain (MEADOW) and while I’m a sports fan, I know nothing about hockey or 26A. N.H.L.’s Tikkanen (ESA). On the down side, I didn’t know what an EPOS was (2D. Narrative writing), and mixed up 4D. Cartoonist Browne (DIK) with the other oddly-spelled cartoonist I know, Bil Keane (of The Family Circus), and the most baffling mental block of the day, thinking somehow that 5D. Breakfast menu heading couldn’t possibly be OMELETS because OMELETS is an eight-letter word. (HINT: It is not.)

On a whim, I stuck OPTIMA in place, leading me to 1D. Be down (MOPE) and 6D. Brave words? (WAR CRY). I found my way around to MEADOW, and then racked my brain for other breakfast foods beginning with O — before finally rolling my eyes at myself and writing OMELETS in the perfect number of squares allowed. Finally, the eureka moment, and I saw that 23A was PO[R]KER FA[R]CES. Very cute. I had to guess-submit-reguess-resubmit a couple times before the S in EPOS/ESA, but completed the whole thing with no Googling.

Newsday: First Of All: They’re #1
by Fred Piscop, edited by Stanley Newman

This was my first Newsday puzzle, and it was very easy. The theme was quite clear from the title, First of All: They’re #1 — the long answers were:

• 23A. Home-state candidate (FAVORITE SON)
• 29A. One to hang out with (BEST FRIEND)
• 53A. John Roberts’ title (CHIEF JUSTICE) — Why, for a brief moment, did I think he was the Attorney General?
• 74A. Title shot hopeful (TOP CONTENDER) — I would have preferred a clue indicating a TOP BANANA, but it wouldn’t be long enough, and this puzzle didn’t have anything particularly cute or clever in it.
• 95A. Restaurant honcho (HEAD WAITER)
• 109A. Sort of star (LEADING LADY) — Here, I didn’t like “sort of” in the clue. A leading lady is a star, just not like stars in the sky. Maybe “Kind of star” or “Type of star” would have suited me more than “Sort of star.”
• 36D. Steady date (MAIN SQUEEZE)
• 41D. Trial VIP (STAR WITNESS) — Yes, “VIP” is more common as an acronym than as the words Very Important Person, but I still maintain that if you use an abbreviated form in a clue, you use it in the answer.

CrosSynergy: Sunday Challenge
by Patrick Jordan

This was my first CrosSynergy puzzle, and I’m not sure I liked it that much. No gimmick, no particularly pleasurable answers. 58A. Walter of “Funny Girl” (PIDGEON) was a hang-up for me (as far as the crossword world goes, wasn’t Omar Sharif the only actor in “Funny Girl”?), and I still don’t understand 53D. Leather-lunged (LOUD). The southwest was the challenge spot for me, combining these two question marks with 59D. Fed. Agcy. since 1949 (GSA – I had NSA in there for a while, which blocked me from finding the non-Sharif name) and 52A. Lesage hero (BLAS).

Los Angeles Times: Irish Eyes Are Smiling
by Donna S. Levin, edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

I think this was my first L.A. Times Sunday puzzle, though not my first overall. I don’t know that much about Ireland, so the title made me leery. In the end, I needed Across Lite to help me find a few answers. The theme answers in play (with the Irish-ism underlined) were:

• 23A. Irish weather forecast? (CLARE BLUE SKY)
• 33A. Irish comedian’s audience? (GAELS OF LAUGHTER) — I had various spellings of PEALS in place of GAELS for a while; I’m not sure I know what the standard English answer would be… does laughter come in gales?
• 50A. Section in an Irish guidebook? (KERRY-ON LUGGAGE)
• 69A. Rubik’s Irish toy? (DUBLIN CUBE) — Honestly, I don’t understand this one. Is a Rubik’s cube known as a “doubling” cube or something? The only doubling cube I’m aware of is the one in Backgammon.
• 73A. Ancient Irish kings’ enforcers? (TARA MUSCLE) — I don’t actually know what this means. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and I still don’t understand. Here’s what they said:

The title King of Tara represented a very old ideal of
sacred kingship in Ireland, imbued with mythical aura
stretching back deep into the long-forgotten past, even
from the perspective of its earliest historical holders.

• 93A. Irish course of study? (CORK CURRICULUM)
• 106A. Irishman’s home goods store? (PADDY O’ FURNITURE)
• 123A. Canine-friendly Irish area? (EIRE OF THE DOG)

I didn’t care for the theme’s execution. Four of these are word swaps where an Irish city is used in place of standard English: CLARE, KERRY, DUBLIN and CORK. The last one, EIRE, is technically Irish for Ireland, so it’s kind of related. GAELS refers to a clan of people, and TARA to some ancient hills. The worst of the bunch is, of course, PADDY O’ FURNITURE, which sounds like the punch line to a joke. I’d almost have preferred all the answers to be ___ O’___ (box o’crayons, bucket o’fish, etc.), which would be much more whimsical and fun.

Also, I don’t think that the relationship of the answer to the clue (in original standard English) is consistent. Obviously, “clear blue sky,” “core curriculum” or “carry-on luggage” makes sense as normal answers to their clues, but “tear a muscle” and “hair of the dog” have nothing to do with their clues. It seems the clues should either have led me to the Irish wordplay (e.g. Tara or Eire) or the original English terms, but not a mixture of the two.

Washington Post: Get-Togethers
by Robert A. Doll, edited by Fred Piscop

Maybe because I did this one last (of the five I tried), or maybe because I’m tired, or maybe because I just didn’t know anything — I had to cheat a lot on this one. Forty-two minutes doesn’t really take into account the vast number of squares I let Across Lite show me.

The theme made sense, but my brain decided not to know anything. Herewith, the theme answers:

• 23A. Butchers’ get-together? (MEAT SMOKERS)
• 28A. Physicists’ get-together? (ATOMIC BLASTS)
• 37A. Doctors’ get-together? (MEDICINE BALL) — I don’t know this term. Apparently it’s an exercise toy.
• 63A. Awful get-together? (BAD RECEPTION)
• 79A. Astronomers’ get-together? (METEOR SHOWER)
• 101A. Permissive get-together? (LIBERAL PARTY)
• 114A. Masons’ get-together? (CEMENT MIXER)
• 125A. Tennis players’ get-together? (LOVE AFFAIR)

Of course, this is all well and good if I know all the other clues… which I don’t. I got off to a horrible start, thinking that 1A. “See ya!” was CIAO, which led me to think that 1D. Pyramids, essentially was CONES and 2D. Really bothered was IRATE. (The correct choices would have been TATA, TOMBS and ATEAT, the last one of which I am completely confused by).

My other trouble spot was the southeast, where after looking up the definition of 109A. Cozen in the dictionary, I still had no idea what to put there. Also, the trusty internet failed me, when I turned to Google to find out what a “sniggler” was for 133A. Snigglers’ prey. The first answer Google provides is from the Urban Dictionary. And for anyone reading this who already knows what a sniggler actually is, you’re probably sure that the Urban Dictionary is not the place to go.

I had to use the “reveal” feature in Across Lite for way too many squares to feel at all settled by this puzzle. I’ll try better next week.

I’m working on expanding my daily puzzling from just the New York Times to others available online. I’ve used both Will Johnston’s Puzzle Pointers and Ephraim Vishniac’s very similar (and self-acclaimed rip-off) page.