Ryan and Brian do Crosswords

So much for my no-Google week. Had to look up one stupid square. 1A. Garden bloom, informally is a GLAD. A what? I don’t know this term, and knowing me, I’m not likely to remember it. What bothered me more was that I couldn’t see -RAHAM being anything at all. My brain kept telling me it was a B or a D, and as I went through the alphabet guessing, I just told myself — you’re guessing. You have no idea. Turns out I actually have heard of the word graham. In fact, in a previous podcast, Ryan and I discussed graham crackers, and our friend Adam wrote in to tell us his take on the history of the graham cracker. What? You don’t remember that episode? Get ye back to your iTunes, and downloadde. Now.

The theme to this William Frank Macreery offering is what I could call Sets. Simple term, yes, but what I mean is that we’re looking at a set of, in this case, four things that are all similar in their clever way. In this case, it’s names better known as foreign cities, but here there are in America.

• 18A. Host city of golf’s Memorial Tournament : DUBLIN, OHIO. Sports I know nothing about. New York Times 1, Brian 0.
• 30A. Hometown to college football’s Vandals : MOSCOW, IDAHO. More sports I know nothing about. NYT 2, Brian 0.
• 36A. Where rock’s R.E.M. was formed : ATHENS, GEORGIA. I know about R.E.M., but where they’re from? NYT 3, Brian 0.
• 44A. Paul Revere founded a brass and copper works here : ROME, NEW YORK. 4-0.
• 59A. Birthplace of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin : PARIS, MAINE. Seriously. Could we have come up with five less well-known facts? Dan Feyer, you write to me this instant and tell me which of these five you knew, if any. And also, how you manage to slow down time and do a freakin’ Wednesday puzzle in two minutes and change. I used 6:15 to solve, and another 45 seconds to figure out the G in graham.

Lots of same letters near each other in strange combinations of words. BAHRAINI (11D. Native of one of the Gulf States) next to ANIMALIA (12D. Lion’s kingdom — very clever clue); OLIVIA (47D. “Twelfth Night” countess) next to RIVERA (48D. Muralist Diego); and FALANA (8D. Lola of “Golden Boy”) and SHILOH (9D. Name we all know now that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the two most important people in America) gave us two sets of AH — not including 29A. Sound from a masseur’s client (AAH).

I’m not sure about having both ENE and ESE in the same grid on the same line, but one of them wasn’t clued directionally (52A. Language suffix; the other was one of those almost completely useless clues: 51A. St. Louis-to-Indianapolis direction). I know a decent amount about geography, but these clues never quite work for me.

And now, the things I didn’t know (other than GLAD):

• 6D. Tulsa sch. : ORU. I think this was in a puzzle I did recently, and I didn’t know it then either. Why isn’t it OSU? Because this clue is about Oral Roberts.
• 19D. “Quo Vadis” role : NERO
• 35A. Geraint’s lady : ENID. Okay. Now, as I’m writing this blog, I realize that this clue asks for a woman’s name. Why, then, while I was solving the puzzle, did I wonder aloud (yes) how ENID could be the name of a man?
• 43A. ___-rock (music genre) : EMO. Haha! Just kidding! It’s ALT, although Emo was what I thought of first.
• 46D. Growl at, say : MENACE. As a verb? Okay.

Seemed pretty standard and decent for a Wednesday. I give William Frank Macreery a big thumbs up.

See you Thursday!

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One of these days, I will have to assemble a List Of Theme Types. It’s probably out there, but don’t stop me — I’m going to do it anyway. This theme falls into the category I will call “What This Start With.” That’s a mildly clumsy name, but I sometimes find it a mildly clumsy experience figuring out the theme. At least, it is for me. Yesterday’s theme had only three entries, but I saw them as they came together — meet, meat, mete. Today’s theme had a similar structure (essentially three entries, explained by a fourth), but what are they?

• 17A. They’re hard to believe : TALL STORIES. Right off, I’m a little cranky. Tall tales, right? Do we use “tall” to describe other outlandish things? I thought it was a specific adjective for tales only.
• 28A. 1939 Bette Davis drama : DARK VICTORY. I’ve never seen this, although people used to tell my sister that her eyes were similar to Bette Davis’s. I don’t know if anyone ever told Bette that someday, there would be a young actress whose brother did crossword puzzles poorly, and that actress would have similar eyes. If someone were to tell me that they had done such a thing, I would consider that recount to be a rather tall story. (No, I don’t think it works, either.)
• 45A. Big pile of cash : HANDSOME SUM

and then 60A. Figure described by the first words of 17-, 28- and 45-Across is, of course, a MATINEE IDOL. You know, before earning my living writing three paragraphs a day about crossword puzzles, I was on the fast track to becoming a matinee idol. Okay, okay. Which story seems taller, the one about someone telling Bette Davis that someday my sister would look like her, or that I could ever earn a living writing about crossword puzzles?

(I will give demerits to anyone who thinks that me being a matinee idol is taller than either of those. I’m tall. And that’s 33% more than Bette Davis had going for her.)

The clumsy aspect of this sort of theme (to me) is that as it’s going along, I don’t catch on to the point. As a result, the solving process (until I discover the explaining clue — which is always late on the list) feels more like solving a themeless puzzle. Maybe it’s Pavlovian, and that since themeless puzzles (for the Times, anyway) are on Fridays and Saturdays, and I generally suck at doing Fridays and Saturdays, then I get frustrated when a Tuesday (which has a theme) has me wondering what I’m doing wrong… And I have rambled myself into an ellipsis.

Anyway, some entries I didn’t know:

• 23. Source of orange-red light : NEON LAMP. Very specific clue for what appears to be a very generic answer. That’s like saying “place to find 18-year old balsamic vinegar from the southern regions of Italy” and the answer is “a store.” Neon comes in lots of colors, doesn’t it? Or is the light always orange-red, but the glass is tinted? I’ll be the first (and probably the third, sixth and eleventh) to admit that I don’t know anything.
• 29D. Swedish currency : KRONOR. Why, in my head, does this always get scrambled up with KRONE or KRONA, either of which might not even be a word? Also, KRONON. I think that one is definitely not a word. I need to learn money. And four-letter geography (see below).
• 30D. Black mamba’s secretion: VENOM. I figured venom, and I think a black mamba is some kind of spider, perhaps. But I wanted to bring up the candy Mambas. My friend Jason likes them an awful lot. I think they’re like eating expired wax blocks that once were waved in the general vicinity of a fruity aroma.
• 57D. Sicilian city : ENNA. I had E-N-, and the only thing I know about Sicily is the volcano, Etna. There’s a city called Enna, too?

No pictures today, because I’m on my way to feed Ryan’s cats. That’s not a euphemism for anything. He’s away, and I’m nice.

See you Wednesday!

Current no-Google streak: 2.

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I love looking at puzzle bylines now, and not only recognizing the constructor’s name, but feeling a personal connection! Ryan and I did a podcast interview with today’s constructor, Andrea Carla Michaels, and it remains one of my favorite interviews. She is a delight, and her expertise in crafting a Monday style puzzle remains unmatched.

Today’s grid features exactly a Monday theme. Three long answers with words that sound alike but are spelled differently. We call those types of words “something-o-phones,” or “words we misspell all the time because other words sound just like them and our brains just don’t work that well all the time.”

• 23A. 2000 De Niro/Stiller comedy : MEET THE PARENTS. I didn’t love this movie. A lot of the humor in it seems to work around making someone feel like a jackass for no good reason other than because the opportunity arises. This is bullying, and while I do it to Ryan all the time on the podcast, that doesn’t count, because I actually like him in real life. Okay, maybe it counts, and Not Bullying Ryan on the show should be a New Year’s resolution. Anyway — this movie also featured actress Teri POLO whose name is clued this time as 25D. Explorer Marco, despite crossing with the film’s title. I think the movie would have been less successful had Marco Polo played the role of Ben Stiller’s fiancee. Or maybe it would have been a very different film.
• 35A. Basic, as issues : MEAT AND POTATOES. This answer simply makes me hungry.
• 47A. What judges do in court : METE OUT JUSTICE. I have to admit, I’ve never heard this term used before. Sure, I understand that it’s what they do, but is this an “in the language” phrase? Maybe if Andrea reads this, she can enlighten us as to the origins of this phrase.

Some other points of interest:

47D. Spouses is MATES, and it sits near a potential pair of mates, which would make for a strange story. We have 48D. Singer EDITH Piaf crossing with 52A. First name in W.W. II infamy (ADOLF Hitler — I presume; I suppose it could have been Adolf Jones, but his story isn’t as well known). What would a Piaf/Hitler relationship have been like? Seems destined for disaster, what with his incessant drive toward hating everyone through strains of xenophobia and her warbling vibrato. Plus they didn’t speak the same language. But who knows. Maybe she could have brought music into his life, and calmed him down some. Also crossing in this area is 49D. The Lone Ranger’s faithful friend TONTO. He could have been paired up with Edith, too. Or maybe with Adolf. Or perhaps all three could have a little fun together.

39D. Actress TORI Spelling crosses with “potatoes” of the central theme clue, which I find appropriate, since she is a bit of a potato face. I’m not a fan. My father calls certain actresses “potato faces.” I think it’s a combination of when they have very little talent, a great deal of exposure, and their greatest asset seems to be a rather fleshy visage that looks relatively cute at 19, a bit sad at 29, and unusable at 39.

Speaking of my father, there are just seven shopping days left until his birthday. He’s not a big fan of acknowledging his birthday, so I’ll do it for him. It’s seven days away. Wish him well!

And see you Tuesday!

Current no-Google streak: 1.

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You’d think that with half the title of this blog in my name I wouldn’t be a “fill-in” host, but that’s the case. Ryan is away on a vacation with his wife, so I’m left to do the puzzles — and write about them! — for a whole week. If you’re lucky, Ryan will check in and add his own commentary to these posts… Otherwise, I’m afraid I will lead to a steady decline in our viewership. Oh, dear.

I was hoping to kick off my Ryanless week with a no-Google Sunday, but that’s just not my thing. I’m far more likely to take an hour less to complete the puzzle and get five things wrong. And that’s more or less what happened here — five wrong squares. But first, our very cute theme by Daniel A. Finan. With the title “When In Rome,” we take phrases we all know (sort of), and replace the numbers in the phrase with their Roman numeral equivalents:

• 23A. Many a fish story : THE I THAT GOT AWAY. I = one, of course. I have absolutely no fish stories, except stories involving me eating fish. And those aren’t all that interesting. Ryan and I are both hooked on a Facebook game called Fish Wrangler, though. I have no idea what the allure is about it. You just click a thing once every fifteen minutes. It’s sort of like entering the numbers on the hatch computer in “Lost.” Meaningless and addictive. Maybe I should move to an island.
• 30A. Stubble : V O’CLOCK SHADOW (V=5). I have never had this. My beard doesn’t grow in very thick, and it takes me about three days of not shaving before anyone would even notice. Ryan, on the other hand, somehow lives in a perpetual state of V o’clock shadow. Here’s a picture of him and his wife doing “Who’s On First?” in Spanish at my wedding. This was at about 12:30 in the afternoon — and the shadow was already present.
• 47A. Last film directed by Cecil B. DeMille : THE X COMMANDMENTS (X=10). If only DeMille lasted long enough to direct THE X FILES as well.
• 63A. 1976 #1 hit whose title follows the words “There must be…” : L WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR LOVER (L=50). Although most people associate the song with Paul Simon, I’d rather share with you the illegally on-the-web video of one of my favorite bands, The Electric Mayhem, doing their take on it:

• 84A. Gabriel Garcia Marquez best seller : C YEARS OF SOLITUDE (C=100). I didn’t know this one. So far, it’s been XXXV years of not reading this book for me.
• 98A. Event first won by a Marmon Wasp : INDIANAPOLIS D (D=500). I had INDIAN in place, and was trying to sort out Cleveland baseball and Utah-based religions in my mind. Yes, I thought it said “Mormon Wasp,” and I had no idea what that was. But crosswords are full of things I’ve never heard of, so why not this? (I haven’t heard of a “Marmon” anything before, but here’s a picture.)
• 111A. Salad bar option : M ISLAND DRESSING (M=1000). Does anyone else ever make fake 1,000 Island at home by mixing ketchup and mayonnaise? Why would we have done this at my house when I was a kid?

The things I didn’t know:

• 1A. Emmy-winning actor Powers ___ : BOOTHE
• 7D. Renaissance family name : ESTE. This word has been used 130 times in the New York Times puzzles, and I usually know it when it’s clued as “Villa d’___.”
• 9D. Music genre derived from punk rock : EMO. On September 13, 2008, I wondered (blog-style) what Emo was. I now quote my own post:

45A. Genre of rock’s Fall Out Boy : EMO. Apparently, the genre of ROCK’s Fall Out Boy isn’t ROCK. What is EMO? Apparently, it’s derivitave of punk, and originated in Washington, D.C. Since my web browser’s fonts are set very small, I don’t have the patience to read the whole Wiklqpedia page, but the two pictures they offer demonstrate the importance of horrible haircuts.

• 44A. Nickelodeon’s “Kenan & ___” and 44D. Russian ballet company : KEL and KIROV. That first letter could have been anything.
• 69D. University of Missouri campus site : ROLLA
• 78D. Latin 101 verb : ESSE. I was sure it was ECCE. I don’t know why. This led to complications with the Marquez theme answer (I figured “colitude” must be something I don’t know about) and 90A. Wisconsin city on Lake Michigan (KENOSHA), which I didn’t know either.
• 106A. Clear brandy : EAU DE VIE. Water of life? I don’t know. Sure.

Favorite answer of the day, as it honors (silently) our friend the Unparalleled Parallel Verse Engineer:

• 73A. ___ Blake, player of Miss Kitty on “Gunsmoke” : AMANDA

That’s it for today. I’ll be around all week. Sorry about that. See you Monday.

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• A SHOT (1D. Give ___ in the arm)
  
• TE AMO (2D. “I love you” in Spanish)
  
• REVET (3D. Support with stone, as an embankment)
  
• AN ERA (4D. “It’s the end of ___”)
• AT LAST (18D. “Finally!”)
  
• ABBACY (5D. Monastic jurisdiction)

What do these six words have in common? Well, these four partials (one of which is Spanish), along with two words that my spell checker doesn’t know all cross through the word OMERTA (20A. Gangster’s code of silence). Not a normal word in the bunch — and this made up the northwest corner of today’s grid by Tim Wescott.

As it turns out, this corner is not what we’re supposed to wow over. Rather, it’s the circled letters in the grid, which asymmetrically spell out HTTP, COM, NET, EDU and GOV — and there’s a WWW (40A. Letters after two slashes) in the middle. I tried to find more depth to this theme, but the closest I could do was that some of the black squares vaguely make up some very pixellated slashes.

No offense, Mr. Wescott, but as themes go, this one left me a little empty. Maybe that’s because it’s 2:15 in the morning, and my last meal was eight hours ago. But I want there to be more. This theme isn’t clued, and it isn’t clever. I suppose it’s clever-ish, in that the long answers have the domain name endings hidden within them, but that doesn’t excite me. Yes, I see that the long answers also start with the letters H, T, T and P. Still, I’m not delighted by it, and there was really no aha! moment in this grid. Perhaps including EXPLORER, NETSCAPE, FIREFOX or SAFARI would have livened it up. Perhaps more circled letters that spelled out N-Y-T-I-M-E-S-D-O-T-C-O-M or something.

Or, quite possibly, perhaps there’s more going on here, but I can’t find it. If someone else sees a deeper theme here, please share it in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

It’s late, so I have no energy to go hunting for pictures. Let’s make it through tomorrow (yikes, I have to be near Times Square at about 5pm), and I’m going to start of 2009 with a No-Google Thursday.

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Welcome to the glory of Episode 36. This is Fill Me In, your favorite crossword blurbhouse. Today’s thirty-one minutes of fun includes:

• Viewer mail
• Two (2) downloads: Barry C. Silk (FACODPCGAMAT)’s puzzle about us and Dan Feyer (WOTCD)’s musical masterpiece.
• Puzzle of the week: December 23 (Joe Krozel)
• Ryan begs Brian to play music. Brian refuses.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all four of you for being loyal listeners throughout 2008. We hope to increase our viewership by around 20% in 2009, so if each of you tells five friends, and most of your friends are completely disinterested, we have an outside chance.

 

 Fill Me In #036: Rhymes with puzzle. [31:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Zambezi and oatcake.

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I had to go to two other blogs before I was able to locate the theme to this Monday puzzle. What on earth do a RUMMY HAND (18A. It might include a 10, jack, queen and king of hearts), a BASEBALL GAME (26A. Yankees/Red Sox matchup, e.g.), a BROADWAY PLAY (42A. Candidate for a Tony) and PANTY HOSE (51A. L’eggs product) have in common?

Apparently, there’s a clue at 54D. Something 18-, 26-, 42- and 51-Across might have which I never saw. The answer is, of course, a RUN.

I was pleased to see that my score of 3:20 (applet clock be damned) was only marginally higher than that of the Amazing Amy Reynaldo. If only there were a junior version of the ACPT where they only did Monday puzzles! And if such a thing existed, I’d have to make sure that Amy Reynaldo and Dan Feyer (winner of the C Division) were banned for steroids or something like that.

It’s funny that Ryan should have mentioned UHURA yesterday, as she appears here at 48A. “Star Trek” lieutenant. Do we need a picture? Sure. I saw a trailer for the new Star Trek movie, and wow does it look terrible. It occurred to me that there is absolutely no need to re-create the original Star Trek series — especially not with a weird combination of updated technology and outdated fashion. And if you need pre-existing characters as a vehicle for your sci-fi story, then your sci-fi story simply isn’t interesting enough.

This puzzle went very quickly for me, in spite of having no clue on the theme. I’m behind on the week though, having not even glanced at Saturday’s. Apparently it’s very difficult (says Ryan). Since even the easiest of Saturdays confound the hell out of me lately, I think I’ll skip it.

Coming tomorrow, Fill Me In #36. Who knows what those 30 minutes have in store? Or even if it’ll be 30? Maybe 32… 37… 49…? You’ll just have to tune in and see.

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Maybe if I had looked at the byline before solving, I’d have seen Joe Krozel’s name, and been more prepared for the oddity of this puzzle. As it was, I was just baffled by too many things in the grid (no No-Google streak for me), and had no idea what the gimmick was until I had finished everything.

Of course, if I had understood the gimmick earlier, I could have done the puzzle in Dan Feyer time.

All standard crosswords have 180-degree rotational symmetry. That is — the entire grid can be rotated 180 degrees and all the black squares will appear in the same locations. Apparently, this sort of thing wasn’t enough for Joe Krozel who took on the daunting task of creating a fill for the puzzle that also satisfied 180-degree rotational symmetry.

So this puzzle breaks the mold by not having a standard theme, per se, but rather having a constructional gimmick that must have been quite difficult to create. Every entry in the grid has a mirror image on the other side — DIAPER/REPAID, MINED/DENIM, etc.

The result is a handful of words that are very awkward (and even though this is a Tuesday, the clues are a bit Wednesday/Thursday-ish at times), but ultimately forgivable — if you think this construction masterpiece is worth the trouble.

I applaud the concept, but I was left with a couple of squares that I had no clue about — and I hadn’t caught onto the gimmick. My trouble spots seem rather immaterial now — they would all have been completely gettable if I had noticed Mr. Krozel’s trick. But my two Trivia Boxes were the crossings of:

• 54D. Ancient Roman magistrate (EDILE) and 66A. Game with matchsticks (NIM) — the I could have been any vowel and made equal sense to me.
• 38A. Thin layer (LAMINA) and 38D. City in California or New Jersey (LODI) — The L was a mystery to me, but I also had an incorrect entry for 31D. Not final, at law (NISI), which I had as NOSI. That entry at 31D meant nothing to me, and -AMONA and -ODI were blobs of letters with absolutely no meaning either.

Joe Krozel has been breaking the mold a lot lately. His recent puzzles have all done things that no one else seems to be doing. It’s a refreshing change of pace, so I will vote in favor of more Joe Krozel puzzles in the future. Please, keep it up!

If you haven’t checked out Fill Me In (our crossword podcast), our latest episode features an interview with Onion crossword editor Ben Tausig. Check it out.

And… see you Wednesday!

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Welcome back to everyone’s favorite podcast of cruciverbalist interviews! In today’s episode, we discuss appropriate and not-so-apprioriate topics with the editor of The Onion’s crossword, Ben Tausig.

 

 Fill Me In #035: Slice this open and cry! [49:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You can find more about Ben at http://groups.google.com/group/inkwell. In conjuction with this episode, I (Brian) have done two recent Onion puzzles, and I’m offering a little of my blog stylings to them. If you want to do the puzzles yourself, you can access them (and many other dailies) at Ephraim’s Crossword Puzzle Pointers. There are probably other places that link to them as well, but this is where I go to get my daily fix.

December 3, 2008 (solved in 18:48)

The theme of this grid seems to be Things George W. Bush Is Leaving Behind At The White House For Barack Obama. We have:

• 1A. and 20A. White House item #1, bequeathed from 43 to 44 : BIN LADEN DARTBOARD
• 33A. Item #2 : NAILIN PAYLIN TAPE. Did this ever get made? Or was Palin’s quick exit from the political spotlight just cause to terminate production?
• 41A. Item #3 : CAN OF SPAGHETTI-WS. I had hoped this was a real product. If it is, the grande olde internette cannot find me a picture.
• 52A. Item #4 : EAR WARMER. I totally don’t understand this one at all. Can anyone explain it to me?
• 67A. Item #5 : PRETZELS

While these are a good poke of fun at outgoing President Bush, I’m not sure I follow them all. Then again, I haven’t followed much of what Mr. Bush has done these past eight years as most of it makes me sick to my stomach. If Spaghetti-Ws taste like their O brethren, then I’d be happy to eat them. Incidentally, that was the first of the theme answers to fall for me, which led me to (incorrectly) believe that we were doing a W-for-O swap on the theme (trading George’s popular initial for Barack’s). That not being the case had me a little confused. Nonetheless, an enjoyable, perhaps somewhat NYT-Wednesday-ish style puzzle.

December 10, 2008 (7:50)

Very clever wordplay at work here in the theme to this puzzle. I understood the premise of the theme before finishing the grid, but only after I was done could I look back at the theme answers and fully understand what was happening. The whole thing was clued at:

• 61A. What presidential term limits mercifully ensure, and what each of this puzzle’s theme answers “receives” : NEW BLOOD

And in each of the theme answers, a normal phrase had either an A, B or AB replaced with an O (serving as both an initial representative of the new blood and a blood type).

• 17A. Film part shot at the dairy farm? : MOO SCENE (Presumably it was MOB SCENE, with the B replaced)
• 18A. Move around the rowboat? : OARHOP (BARHOP)
• 30A. Rejected spreadable soda variety? : CHEESECOKE (CHEESECAKE, which I have never thought of as “spreadable.”)
• 36A. Numismatist’s affliction? : COIN FEVER (CABIN FEVER). I can never remember fast enough whether numismatism is coins or stamps. What is the word for stamps?
• 49A. Right-leaning R&B act? : THE GOP BAND (Was this THE GAP BAND? I don’t know… I think of FILL ME IN as the best R&B act around, to tell you the truth.)
• 59A. Broadcast with updates about Disneyland? : OC NEWS (ABC NEWS). I was a bit confused here. Aren’t Disney and ABC affiliated? What does OC have to do with anything?

Good puzzle, and just from these two, we get a mild sense that The Onion has no feelings whatsoever about politics.

So our thanks to Ben Tausig, and to The Onion for their delightful contribution to the puzzle community!

Zambezi and oat.

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As the holiday season surrounds us, it is no surprise that a cute and clever Christmas puzzle would appear. And who better to put together such a grid than Elizabeth C. Gorski? Ms. Gorski has designed more Sunday puzzles in the Will Shortz Era than anyone else (43), and has done many holiday- (or at least, winter-) themed puzzles in the past, including these: Dec. 30, 2007, Dec. 14, 2003 (which is totally worth doing, just for the amazing trick involved), Dec. 31, 2001 (which was featured in the Wordplay book, and another worth solving just for the great theme work, even though it’s New Year’s and not Christmas), Dec, 31, 2000 (another New Year’s puzzle), not to mention countless others. The links go to www.xwordinfo.com, which is completed solutions with clues — you need to have access somehow to the New York Times puzzle archive to get empty versions to solve.

In today’s puzzle, she has given us a handful of moderately theme-ish clues and answers:

• 69. Cry when a surprise guest arrives : LOOK WHO’S HERE!
• 3D. December 25 answer to 69-Across : KRIS KRINGLE
• 74D. December 25 answer to 69-Across : JOLLY ST. NICK. Even though it doesn’t fit, I thought it was Jolly OLD St. Nick. But what do I know?
• 17D. Song who’s subject is encouraged to “hurry down the chimney tonight” : SANTA BABY. Here’s the requisite video of Eartha Kitt singing this classic:

• 84D. Father ___ : CHRISTMAS
  

However, the main gimmick of the puzzle is a single down entry, located at:

• 10D. Greeting from 74-Down : HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO

And to make it great, each HO gets a square of its own — meaning every across clue that meets it has one fewer squares than it ought to (for example, 7A. Cheesy snack is NACHO, but in four squares).

As I was solving, I found it very peculiar that I got the left side and I got the right side but the center, from top to bottom, remained curiously empty. I noticed the long clue going down, but it took me a bit to get it. Once it fell, I had few problems, and got through the rest in what was, for me, relatively good Sunday time (under 20 minutes).

The things I didn’t know (and will likely forget before tomorrow):

• 7D. Basketry palm : NIPA
• 28D. Apollo’s birthplace : DELOS
• 51D. ___ cit. (footnote abbr.) : LOC
• 55D. “Burma Looks Ahead” author : UNU
• 64A. Pacific salmon : COHOS (with the HO in one square) — I got a little hung up here at the very end since I had made “salmon” a singular in my mind, and tried COHOE as the answer. The down made no sense to me (65D. C.I.S. members, once : SSRS), and ESRS seemed as reasonable an acronym for something I didn’t know.
• 75D. Anoint with sacred oil, old-style : ANELE – Old or new, I know nothing about anointment.
• 87A. Egypt’s Mubarak : HOSNI (HO in one square) — Sometimes I think crossword constructors collect phone books from foreign countries, and then make up clues like this to justify random assortments of letters.
• 94A. Answered the phone : SAID HELLO – Yes, I knew this one. But I wanted to talk about my grandmother, who always answered the phone with “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” or “Good evening,” never with “Hello.” I don’t know if I ever asked her about it, but it was a rather classy thing to do, and she was a wonderfully classy lady. Although part of me wishes she was around now to watch me struggle with the puzzles, part of me does not, in that she might be disappointed that a descendant of hers would have such horrible trouble with Saturday grids.
• 113D. Phoebe of “Gremlins” : CATES – I knew this one, too. And I wonder if Phoebe of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” fails the breakfast test.
• 115D. Single-named supermodel : EMME – Why isn’t this ever IMAN anymore? And why can’t I ever remember if it’s EMME or EMMA? Someone tell me that the supermodel and the Bronte book are not the same thing.
  
• 129A. Throat soother : TROCHE – No way to make TEA into a six-letter word.

And my favorite clue of the day:

• 86D. Succeeded at musical chairs : SAT

Fill Me In: Episode 35 will be out sometime on Monday, featuring an interview with The Onion’s Ben Tausig. Check us out here, and see you Monday!

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