Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords

Hey, it’s countdown day!  11…10…9…well, that’s the end of the countdown but that’s pretty cool anyway.  I guess we’ll get another one next year on December 11th but that’ll be it for this century.  Speaking of countdowns I’ve been watching some documentaries on the history of NASA space missions.  Fascinating.  They just put these guys on the top of missiles and launched them into space.  And I’m amazed that in the ‘60s they had the technology to communicate with people who were floating beyond our atmosphere.  Did people even have remote controls back then for their TVs?

Today’s puzzle is by Alan Arbesfeld and has a great theme.  Great!

61A. and 63A. Name associated with the starts of 17-, 23-, 36-, 45- and 57-Across (WOODY ALLEN).  My mom is the biggest Woody Allen fan there’s ever been.  We had all his great early films on VHS and we’d watch them over and over and over again.  At the time, my two favorites were Sleeper and TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN.  I think the movies are even better now that I get the jokes I didn’t understand as a kid.

Here’s the first 8 minutes of Take the Money and Run which contain one of my favorite lines ever.

Here’s the rest of the theme answers.

17A. Happen (TAKE PLACE).

23A. First cable series to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama (THE SOPRANOS).

36A. Process involving illegal drug profits, say (MONEY LAUNDERING).

45A. Flip side of the Beatles “If I Fell” (AND I LOVE HER).

57A. Retreat in fear (RUN SCARED).

Other highlights:

28A. “Your Moment of ___” (“The Daily Show” feature) (ZEN).  These are mostly pretty excruciating but I look forward to them every show.  I can’t get the embedding to work properly from The Daily Show website but here’s a link to a good one.

41A. Feelings, informally (VIBES).  Wasn’t this also a terrible movie with Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper?  Checking imdb…yes, it came out in the banner year of 1988.  The tagline was “Put your hands on our hands and feel the… VIBES.”

26D. Catches, as fly balls (SHAGS).  In 8th grade P.E. class all the mean kinds called me Shag because I had long, unruly hair.  When we started softball in the Spring and Ms. Strande told us to go to the outfield and SHAG fly balls that was a bad day for me.

Oh, and my favorite line from the Woody Allen clip?  Cello teacher: “He had no conception of the instrument…he was blowing into it.”

Fun puzzle and great theme today.

Next stop, Wednesday.

It’s gonna be a short post today. I spent the day at Yankee Stadium having a wonderful date with XOM for a twin-bill (Yankees took both games against Tampa Bay). Good times, fun baseball, and we even had a couple head-to-head crossword tournaments during some of the down time. XOM and I are of a fairly similar skill set. She finished about 70 places ahead of me at the ACPT, but we did seven Thursday puzzles today, and I beat her to the finish (just barely) in five of them.

Today’s puzzle is from Alan Arbesfeld, and it’s a “Word That Can Follow” theme. 71-Across points us to six other entries, the ends of which can all be followed by DANCE. Those six entries are:

17A. Borrower’s limit : CREDIT LINE. Below, a Line Dance. Who’s the fool in the front row wearing flip-flops?

21A. Joe Six-Pack’s protrusion : POTBELLY

36A. Harmless-to-humans slitherer : GARTER SNAKE. I think I might be more interested in a Garter Dance than whatever a Snake Dance is. Also, I need to find more opportunities to use the term “harmless-to-humans” in my daily routines.

44A. Typical visitor to Cooperstown : BASEBALL FAN

54A. One cause of deforestation : ACID RAIN

64A. Conflict settled by the Treaty of Paris in 1856 : CRIMEAN WAR

This puzzle also broke a convention, which is that no entry should be longer than a theme entry. Two ten-letter entries out-length the two eight-letter theme entries, unless there’s a Leafs Dance (11D. Canadiens’ rivals : MAPLE LEAFS) or a Light Dance (28D. Go-ahead : GREEN LIGHT).

I’m pooped, so that’s about all I’ve got for now. Wish I was Ryan? Click here.

See you Wednesday!

Yesterday we had our most popular caption contest ever with well over two entries. Using an advanced algorithm designed by the tech team at the Be More Smarter offices we have determined the most popular answer was “That’s not A-Rod, is it?” which was unintentionally submitted by Joon Pahk, Squirrel of Discord. Congratulations, Joon. You’ve won yourself a Scratchy Yahtzee. I’ll either send it to you or, if you’re attending, hand it to you at Lollapuzzoola 2.

Today’s puzzle by Alan Arbesfeld celebrates our Commander in Chief’s birthday by spelling his name backwards 4 times. I believe that’s also how you get Beetlejuice to appear.

17A. Envision in one’s sleep (DRE[AM ABO]UT). I had a horrible dream about the Seinfeld cast last night. It was some sort of combination of their upcoming reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm and that movie, Hostel.

31A. Sleepwear component (PAJ[AMA BO]TTOMS). I like this clue. It makes it seem like pajamas are something you can plug into the computer.

47A. The Chattahoochee River forms part of it (ALAB[AMA BO]RDER).

63A. Arrive on the Enterprise via transporter (BE[AM ABO]ARD). I still have not seen the new Star Trek movie. I’m not sure how that happened.

Other highlights:

14A. Actress Christine of “Chicago Hope” (LAHTI). People who don’t do the Saturday puzzle will never find out that Christine actually has non-Chicago Hope credits.

16A. Its license plates say “Birthplace of Aviation” (OHIO). I’ve done shows in two places significant to the Wright Brothers. I’ve done a couple of shows in Dayton, Ohio where they had their bicycle shop and I spent a summer doing the Lost Colony in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, home of Kitty Hawk. Yet flying still makes me nauseous. Go figure. Here I am in the Smithsonian with the actual plane they flew.

28A. Like some bad film scenes (RESHOT). I’ve often been asked what I think is the absolute worst scene in the history of cinema. The answer is, without a doubt, the Ben Affleck-Liv Tyler animal cracker scene from Armageddon. This scene makes me want to rip my face off like no other. It certainly doesn’t help that Liv’s father is serenading her in the background while Ben plays with cookies on her bare stomach. Here you go, watch it if you dare.

51A. Classic family name in Florence (MEDICI). You know what I realized recently? The Arno River flows through Florence. I’m finally going to see one of these 4-letter rivers that show up in crosswords constantly. This should really help with my solving times.

Fun puzzle today. I thought the theme was a bit odd but I enjoyed it.

Next stop, Wednesday.

On Ryan’s suggestion, I am returning to Live Writer, a piece of software designed to make blogging easier. I’m writing the blog in Live Writer, and then I will import it to our site. If you’re reading this, then I did it correctly. And if I’m the only one reading it, then I did it wrong.

Oh, also – there’s an article in the New York Times (from Friday) about the second Sunday puzzle. Interesting read, I suppose, although it doesn’t get down and dirty on the subject. Read it here.

Today’s puzzle comes to us from Alan Arbesfeld (pictured at right is Alan LEMON [1D. A mechanic might see it a lot]).  His last Sunday offering was back in February, with a Pajama Party theme. This time around, there’s a note at the top of the puzzle: When this puzzle is done, interpret the answers to the seven starred clues literally, in order from top to bottom. Interpret the answers? Good grief, I spend so much time interpreting the clues, I had no idea there’d be more!

But there is. The seven starred entries are as follows:

• 23A. *Boondocks : MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
• 34A. *Ambulance destination : MEDICAL CENTER
• 50A. *Imam or priest : SPIRITUAL LEADER
• 69A. *When the heavens and earth were created : BEGINNING OF TIME
• 87A. *Deputy : SECOND IN COMMAND
• 103A. *Week after Christmas : END OF DECEMBER
• 118A. *Lights out in New York City : BROADWAY CLOSING

And if we follow the instructions within the answers, we get H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. Very clever, Mr. Arbesfeld. Fun little mini-puzzle within the puzzle. If there’s more depth to it than this, I might have missed it, but then again – I solved this in near record Cimmet time at 13:59.

In general, the fill was pretty easy stuff. Lots of Crossword 101 stuff, with not-so-Scrabbly three-letter entries: NEA, NNE, ERN, AMP, CAN, IRE, ALI, LEA – the basics.  A few odd ducks in the three-letter pond, though. VUE (5D. Saturn offering) – I have no idea if this is a car or something shot out from the planet. I assume the car, but you never know (actually, now I know it’s the car – pictured at right). Also SDS (83D. ‘60s radical grp.) is something I don’t know. Let’s file it in that huge, cavernous pit of things I don’t know. It’s down the street from the size 4 shoebox of things I do know.

Other standard stuff, in no particular order: ALINE, LAHTI, OLEO, EDGER, AGRA, MENU, PSST, ARAL…

Things that were news to me:

• 38D. 1950s Hungarian premier ___ Nagy : IMRE. I have friends whose last name is Nagy. I wonder if they’re related.
• 43D. Pacific capital : APIA. Yes, yes. I don’t know my capitals. Or wait, is this about money?
• 66D. Cousin of a raccoon : COATI. Do raccoons make family trees? This coati looks like he’s about to pounce on me.
• 67D. Something to play : OFFENSE. I don’t understand this one. Does this mean to pretend to be offended, or perhaps to emphasize being offended? Xop loves being offended by people pronouncing things wrong. He nearly tore Ryan’s head off last week after Ryan mispronounced “mischievously” on the podcast.
• 76A. “Sweet” stream in a Burns poem : AFTON. No clue. A stream of Afton? Is this a body of water?
• 82A. Wallop : BASTE. Apparently, this word means more than squirting gravy on turkey.
• 98D. Breakdown of social norms : ANOMIE

And to be filed under “Where Is My Brain?” – 101A. Field for a fault-finder? was clearly GEOLOGY from the beginning. Except I looked at seven squares, thought of the word GEOLOGY, and decided it had ten letters in it and wouldn’t fit.

That’s it for me. I’m tired, and going to bed. Let’s hope Live Writer worked! See you Monday!

But first of all, the Oscars. Worst show ever. Just dreadful. Best host moment in the whole show was Steve Martin saying to Tina Fey, “Don’t fall in love with me.” (Honorable mention to Ben Stiller’s portrayal of Joaquin Phoenix.) Best acceptance speech moment was Kate Winslet’s dad whistling at her. (Weirdest acceptance speech moment was Kate Winslet’s dad making that strange “you are my little pagoda” gesture.) But the musical numbers? Hugh Jackman’s first song? What a mess! And that bizarre Singing With The Stars-style thing with Beyonce? Oh, god.

And furthermore — Pizza Hut doesn’t understand how to cook pizza. “Well done” apparently means “Wave the prepared pie near the oven until the cheese is mildly melted, but the dough is still raw. Then deliver.” In the end, my favorite snack of the night was the fruit and cream cheese dipping sauce that my mother brought. Thanks, Xom.

Who wants to meet Xop and Xom at the tourney this weekend? They’ll be there. My mother will be the adorable sexagenarian finishing puzzles in a relatively timely manner. My father will be the one sitting next to her who looks up whenever someone leaves the room, and spends more of the clock time grumbling about how he’ll never finish than he does writing on the puzzle. Should be a joy.

As for today’s puzzle, it’s by Alan Arbesfeld. It’s a fine Monday theme — in Ryan-speak, it is five things that end with -ND and have a B somewhere in the middle, but the vowels seem to be different, when they appear between the B and the -ND. What he would have meant, had he said that, would have been:

• 17A. Stretchable holder : RUBBER BAND
• 23A. Loony : AROUND THE BEND
• 35A. Strong family connections, idiomatically : THE TIES THAT BIND
• 47A. Tax-free investment : MUNICIPAL BOND
• 57A. Tux go-with : CUMMERBUND

I was curious about the word “cummerbund,” so I looked up the etymology. Apparently, it dates back to 1616, from the Hindi kamarband “loin band,” from the Persian kamar “waist” and band “something that ties,” and from the Avestan banda- “bond, fetter.” Who knew? Also, I never know how to wear it — do the pleats go up or down? Someone once told me some trick about that pleats go so could tuck things into the folds, and the example he gave was an usher with ticket stubs. Not only do I think that example is weird and arbitrary, but I still don’t know if the stubs are to be tucked in so that when I look down I can easily count them, or if they would be underneath the folds, and out of my view. Finally, who would ever notice and tell me that my cummerbund was upside down?

Some of the fill in the puzzle was a little too Tuesday for my taste, especially with my mind marinated in manure for the last four hours (the Oscar telecast).

• 4D. Heart : NUB
• 28D. Wry comic Mort : SAHL, crossing with 40A. Camera choice, in brief : SLR
• 32A. Get a move on : HIE
• 37D. For grades 1-12 : ELHI, a word I know only from crosswords.
• 52A. “___ 18″ (Leon Uris novel) : MILA
• 56A. Basis of a lawsuit : TORT
• 62A. Country singer Tennessee ___ Ford : ERNIE

All in all, a fine Monday offering.

In other news, I am becoming immune to caffeine. This is not good. I need to wean myself off it, I think, and then start again. Isn’t that how to make it effective once more? Any ideas, please email us.

See you Tuesday!

And Boom, goes the dynamite!  I just finished up another improbable no-google week.  Clearly, I am in prime solving condition.  I only hope that my unbelievable skills do not start steroid rumors.

I enjoyed today’s Alan Arbesfeld PAJAMA PARTY puzzle.  I don’t think I’ve ever been to a pajama party.  I went to sleep overs when I was a kid.  We did wear pajamas.  Does that count?

The theme was simple but fun.  Two word phrases where the first word starts with a P and the second word starts with a J.

23A. ChapStick alternative (PETROLEUM JELLY).  This is ridiculous.  I am addicted to ChapStick.  I apply it at least 30 times a day.  I keep it in the pockets of all my pants and jackets, one in my backpack and one in every room of the apartment.  But, I would never apply PETROLEUM JELLY to my lips.  It’s thick and viscous as opposed to the smooth, velvety nature of ChapStick.  Does anybody do this?  Does anybody carry around jars of Vaseline to rub on their lips?

33A. Bygone Coney Island attraction (PARACHUTE JUMP).  This ride ceased operation in 1968 so it never had the chance to make me violently nauseous.

52A. Trick (PRACTICAL JOKE).  I really, really enjoyed TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes.  I mean, really.  This is a show I would very much look forward to.  I’ve seen old episodes recently.  It’s terrible.  What was I thinking?  Dick Clark and Ed McMahon could be the worst hosts of anything ever.  I can’t find any clips of their leaden repartee but I cannot believe it didn’t make me cringe as a child.

70A. Deli receptacle (PICKLE JAR).  Anybody ever play the Sweet Pickles board game?  My brother and I did.  Instead of dice it had a spinner with a color wheel which would determine what space you would move to.  The problem was my brother and I are both color blind and the “red” looked exactly like the “brown” to us.  This was a source of much arguing.  Why don’t companies take into account color blindness when designing their games?  Shouldn’t they consult with a rods and cones expert?

90A. One of the former Big Three in news (PETER JENNINGS).  The other two being Peter Scolari and Peter Brady.

105A. Comeuppance (POETIC JUSTICE).  I think POETIC JUSTICE should rhyme.  It almost does.  Can somebody work on that please?

122A. Dole offering (PINEAPPLE JUICE).  How come PINEAPPLE JUICE doesn’t come in cartons like every other juice.  Why does it come in those crazy cans?  I think it’s another attempt by the orange lobby to squelch PINEAPPLE JUICE’s popularity.  PINEAPPLE JUICE is much more delicious and Big Orange knows it.

Great puzzle.

Next stop, Monday.

I think I solved this Alan Arbesfeld puzzle purely by accident.  I hardly knew anything in the bottom left.  NATES? (Rear end, anatomically).  IDENT (Birth cert., e.g.).  Ok, I get now that it’s short for identification but I had the first two letters and was parsing it as I.D. ___.  LENA? (Yakutsk’s river)  I don’t know what a Yakutsk is.  I’m guessing it’s either a meat-filled pastry, a horned mammal or an offensive karate move.  I can’t imagine what any of those three things would need with its own river.  I also didn’t know FLOR, ATOI or LOEW.  Somehow I typed in all the right letters in all the right places and solved the puzzle.

The theme was in-the-language phrases with a Z added to the end.  Kind of an odd choice for the first day of the year but a good theme nonetheless.

20A. Do a marathon in Egypt? (RUN AROUND SUEZ).

37A. Goes all out at an audition for a sax great? (PLAYS HARD TO GETZ).

55A. Top-secret carpentry tool? (CLASSIFIED ADZ).  This is a weird answer as CLASSIFIED ADS is an actual phrase and sounds homophononically just like CLASSIFIED ADZ.  Neither of the other two answers sound homopholonologistically like anything.

Other highlights:

1A. Brisk pace (TROT).  While doing some research on just how fast a TROT is I came across this sentence, “It is always best to learn to sit the trot while on a longe line and with a good instructor.”  This could actually make sense to some people or it could be a random arrangement of words and sounds presented to confuse the non-equestrian.  Who can tell?

61A. Add up (HOLD WATER).  This one was a struggle but I can see how it makes sense.  If you’re questioning some theory you can say, “This doesn’t add up.” or “This doesn’t hold water.”  Whatever it means, it still reminds me of My Cousin Vinny.  “Does the defense’s case hold water?”  Unfortunately, no good clip of it on the net.

66A. Dermatologist’s concern (WART).  I had a wart on my thumb in high school.  The dermatologist burned it off with some acid concoction.  Oddly, none of this made me more popular with the ladies.

8D. Carter who played Wonder Woman (LYNDA).  I list this clue solely for the opportunity to post a video of LYNDA Carter.

11D. Band whose 1994 song “I’ll Make Love to You” was #1 for 14 weeks (BOYSIIMEN).  I really thought this was BOYZ TO MEN and that really had me screwed up for a while.

29D. TV’s “Fawlty Towers”, for one (FARCE).  “Don’t mention the war, I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.”

Great puzzle by Alan.

I want to thank everyone for a wonderful 2008.  Last year at this time I knew nobody in the crossword world.  And, now, because of this goofy project, Brian and I have met and become friends with a whole lot of you.  I’ve really never been involved with a nicer or more generous group of people.  Thanks for all your support.  And on to 2009.

Next stop, Friday.

Did you ever have so much to do that you simply can’t imagine accomplishing all of it, which means you can’t imagine accomplishing any of it, which means there seems to be no way to actually begin, so therefore you just stare at it, thinking, “What other career could a guy in his thirties with a useless music degree do for a living?”

No? Just me? Hm.

As some of you know, I’m trying to poorly host and poorly produce a weekly podcast nowadays, but the salary from that has been a little slim. I’m currently also trying to eat Wint-O-Green Life Savers for a living, but no one seems to be hiring.

So in the meantime, I took a look at Sunday’s puzzle, designed by Alan Arbesfeld. I may not have been able to cut it out and turn it into a paper airplane, but at least I was able to stare at it blankly for a while before determining that I have definitely gotten less smarter in the past week alone. My initial struggle came from the fact that seven of the first eight clues have multi-word answers. Forgive my ignorance with the jargon, but are these what you call “partials”? I’m not sure what that word means or how to use it, except to say “I don’t know what ‘partials’ means.” But this puzzle seemed to have a lot of those multi-word answers. To wit:

• 1A. Pep rally shout: GO TEAM
• 7A. Sics on : LETS AT — It wasn’t SETS AT, which is a popular crosswordese thing. I don’t know that I like this answer much. LETS AT implies (to me) that the dog’s owner (the sic-ing dog, that is) was passive in his decision to allow the dog to attack. But to sic — isn’t that more active? Don’t you have to tell the dog to sic? And what kind of a word is “sic” anyway? Etymology, anyone?
• 13A. More than a favorite : SURE BET
  
• 21A. Digs : IS INTO
• 22A. Single advancement : ONE BASE — Oh, you know how much I love baseball clues that I don’t figure out quickly enough. That was fun.
• 25A. Holding one’s own : NO WORSE – Another clue/answer pair that doesn’t sit right with me. Although I see how “holding one’s own” suggests getting nowhere, but doing it alone, I feel like NO WORSE is another passive answer to an active clue.
• 32A. ___ hole in (corrodes) : EATS A
  
• 70A. Have no accomplices : ACT ALONE
• 71A. Done : AT AN END – AT THE END makes more sense to me.
• 103A. Belong : FIT IN
• 120A. “Hmmm…” : LET’S SEE – LETS and LET’S in the same puzzle. Hmmm indeed. Another reason why I thought SETS AT was better at the top.
• 122A. Manages : GETS BY
• 11D. Yours, in Nemours : A TOI – French, but still two words.
• 49D. Showed hospitality at the door : ASKED IN
  
• 66D. Makes an assertion : SAYS SO
• 90D. What turned-out pants pockets may signify : I’M BROKE

That seems to be quite a lot, if you ask me. And that doesn’t include the theme answers, which were all multi-word phrases. The title of the puzzle, by the way, was “Extra Play,” and the theme was adding OT (overtime) to an existing phrase to make something new. And as I like to say, the clue became clever:

• 23A. Plea made to a chimney sweep? : SAY IT AIN’T SOOT – Did a little boy actually say this to Shoeless Joe Jackson after the Black Sox scandal of 1919? I prefer the reports that label this an urban legend. And although I understand there are plenty of support groups to get people like Tim Raines into the Hall of Fame, Joe Jackson deserves it more. What an amazing player he was. And such a shame that either he was victim to someone else’s shenanigans or he was so desperate for money/fame/something else that he participated in the fix. What a mess. It’s a good thing that sports are clean and wholesome now. This book I’ve linked to is sort of about the story of that scandal, but from the perspective of Sport Sullivan, one of the gamblers in charge of the whole thing. It’s a so-so book, but if you like sports-related historical fiction, this is an interesting read.
• 38A. Distribute equal amounts? : ALLOT THE SAME
• 56A. Vote involved in a 15th wedding anniversary? : CRYSTAL BALLOT
• 76A. Narrow-minded affairs? : BIGOT BUSINESS
• 95A. Teacher’s pet? : SCHOOL MARMOT – Anyone else think that marmots were something else entirely? I first thought it was a kind of monkey. Then maybe like a cat of some sort. Apparently, they’re more like big gophers. Or so they seem.
• 112A. Stop to admire one’s pillaging? : LOOT AND BEHOLD
• 17D. Sexiest bell ringer? : BARDOT OF AVON — I’m confused here. Bell ringer? Brigitte Bardot rang bells? I must have let that one escape my YouTube viewings. I was also stumped here for a while because I read part of the clue as “sexist,” which led me to think that BIGOT was going to be part of this answer instead of the one it was actually part of.
• 62D. Part of a Beckett play? : AN ACT OF GODOT – This is a great play. Samuel Beckett deserves more attention. I know he’s relatively famous, but he should be more so. His plays were weird and cool and he was just marvelous with language. I have actually been working on an orchestral composition for some time now that is loosely based on Beckett’s work. Someday, when I’ve made my millions from this blog, I’ll devote more time to completing that symphony.

And here, a short list (with no clues) of words I don’t know and won’t remember:BESAME, OPA, LINEAL, LIAISE, AESIR, INHUME (opposite of EXHUME, I assume). Perhaps someday, the puzzle will be full of words I know and think of quickly, and I’ll solve the whole thing in about 12 seconds. Until then… See you Monday!

I’ve had a difficult time tearing myself away from a new XBox 360 game this weekend, so my blogs are coming about a little late… What can you do.

New York Times – 3:21
Los Angeles Times – 4:09
CrosSynergy – 3:24
New York Sun – 6:50
(more…)

Wow, I think I’ve hit a new low. 2:29:58 solving time. And that’s with massive internet help. I did not realize there was a “two letters in one box” thing until I was hopelessly stuck and had to peek at Orange’s blog.

Here’s where I should have figured out the double letter thing:

• 11D. Lee Van ___ (spaghetti western actor) (CLeeF). It was one of the first answers I typed in. I know down deep in my soul the guy’s name is CLEEF but I entered in CLEF and figured I had remembered it incorrectly. Pickles and I just watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly a few months ago. I knew, knew, knew his name was Cleef. Unfortunately, this knowledge did not clue me into any kind of theme.

Other places I went wrong:

• 46A. Northeast, on a map (UppErrIGHT). Boy, when I typed in TOPRIGHT here I figured I was very smart. Not so much.
• 37A. “What a ___!” (CONCEPT). C’mon, I can’t be the only one who put COUNTRY in here. No love for Yakoff?
• The entire top left. Okay, I did get 13A. “Cool!” (NEATO) and 1D. About to bloom (INBUD) and 23A. ___ Snider, frontman for rock’s Twisted Sister (DEE) but it ended there. For 14D. Like some oil rigs (OffSHORE) I had ONSHORE and for 17A. “Scram!” (BUzzOff) I typed the very common GETON. And the rest I just didn’t know: REUNE, IRRS and I was so BOggLED by that point I couldn’t think of UNLASH either.

Other theme answers:

• 3D. Half of a showy display? (RAzzLE).
• 18A. Practice area, of a sort (PUttINggReeN)
• 28A. “Black rat” as opposed to “Rattus rattus” (COmmOnnAME)
• 41A. Radical Hoffman (AbbIE), I didn’t realize this was a theme answer until I read Brian’s entry. I just typed in ABIE and figured that was right.
• 33D. Robot in “Forbidden Planet” (RObbY)
• 59A. Directories (AddREssBooKS)
• 38D. Spice holder (PEppERBOX)
• 43D. Misses the mark (ErrS)
• 36A. Biblical patriarch whose name means “he will laugh” (ISaaC)
• 31D. TV’s Jack and kin (PaaRS)
• 62A. Bygone women’s magazine (MccAllS)
• 58D. Stops on a sales rep’s rte. (AccTS)
• 52D. Last place (CEllAR)

I agree with Brian in that it’s confusing that there are some double letters in one box and others in two boxes. It made for a very disjointed, somewhat unsatisfying solving experience. Plus the difficulty level seemed inconsistent throughout with Fri and Sat type terms like SPIKEMEN and FOULARD next to SOUP, FAKE and RUER.