1976 rescue site / SUN 11-21-10 / View from Catania / German-born tennis star Tommy / Portuguese speaking island off African coast / 1930s film pooch

Constructor: Clive Probert

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Having Aspirations" — familiar phrases have "H" added to beginning of some word in the phrase, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily


Word of the Day: CLANGOR (9D: Loud ringing) —

n.

1. A clang or repeated clanging.
2. A loud racket; a din.

intr.v., -gored, -gor·ing, -gors.
To make a clangor.

[Latin, from clangere, to clang.]

• • •

Any time I come in under 10 on a Sunday, it's gotta be easy. Despite the simple premise and dearth of theme answers (just 6), I sort of liked this one. With the exception of HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE (whose "H"-less version I've never heard of), the theme answers were all pretty cute, and SET ONE'S TEETH ON HEDGE was legitimately funny. I wanted the HERRING to be ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION, but too long. At any rate, the rest of the grid seems mostly neatly filled, especially considering how glutted it is with four-letter words (which are hard to make interesting and easy to make horrible). I didn't catch on to the theme with the first theme answers. Just wondered why REAL MEN DON'T EAT QUICHE wouldn't fit. Truthfully, my first thought was REAL MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, but it didn't really (at all) fit the clue. I THINK THEREFORE I HAM was the answer that revealed the gist of the theme to me, and the rest of the theme answers were remarkably easy to get (even HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE, the latter part of which I inferred easily enough).

The other day there were complaints about OBOLI, a Greek coin given a Latin plural. Greek words often go through Latin to get to English, hence the hybridity. See also, today, SYLLABI, a plural I refuse to use because it's not Latin in origin (4D: Course outlines). Doesn't mean SYLLABI isn't legit. Just means that I hate it. One word I don't hate is CLANGOR, which sounds both onomatopoetic and Klingon. When a bell ("CLANG") creates a CLAMOR, you get a CLANGOR. And of course a small CLANGOR is a CLANGORLING (34D: Diminutive suffix=LING). I wanted my whales to be SPRAYERS (not SPOUTERS, 72A: Whales, at times) and my lock-out league to be NBA or NFL (not NHL, 90D: Org. with a 2004-05 lockout). Also wanted KNOBBY to be KNOTTY (42D: Not smooth) and OOOH to be ... well, something else, preferably (44D: Cry of delight). My cries of delight came from very, very different answers: COKED up (5D: Out of one's mind, in a way, with "up"), which took me many crosses to get, and CHURCHY (21D: Very religious). "COKED Up and CHURCHY" is a tell-all autobiography just waiting to be written, e.g. "COKED Up and CHURCHY: The Mother Teresa Story!"



Theme answers:

• 26A: Macho guys like their pie cold? (REAL MEN DON'T HEAT QUICHE)
  
• 41A: Bad actor's philosophy? (I THINK THEREFORE I HAM)
  
• 63A: Concerns of middle-aged guys in lower Louisiana? (DELTA HAIRLINES)
  
• 73A: Lengthy military sign-up? (SEVEN-YEAR HITCH)
  
• 92A: Put the dentures aside while gardening? (SET ONE'S TEETH ON HEDGE)
  
• 108A: Starboard food fish? (HERRING ON THE RIGHT SIDE
  

Bullets:

• 10A: German-born tennis star Tommy (HAAS) — like the ILSA he sits on, I know his name instinctively from crosswords.
  
• 24A: Signal for a programmer's jump (GOTO) — I remember this command from learning Basic in ninth grade.
  
• 47A: "___ doubt but they were fain o' ither": Burns ("NAE") — from "The Twa Dogs," a poem I'd never heard of until just this second.
  
• 48A: Org. with the motto "For the benefit of all" (NASA) — that's a pretty vague and un-spacey motto for those guys.
  
• 56A: Carrier with a frequent flier program called EuroBonus (SAS) — airline I know only from xwords.
  
• 106A: View from Catania (ETNA) — feels like I've seen this exact clue before. Oh, I have.
  
• 8D: "Were I the Moor, I would not be ___" (IAGO) — big week for IAGO, an olde skool piece of crosswordese whose grown less common in recent years ... until this week.
  
• 12D: 1930s film pooch (ASTA) — ETNA, IAGO, ASTA ... crossword vets, every one.
  
• 13D: Portuguese-speaking island off the African coast (SÃO TOMÉ) — Pres. Obama just returned from Portugal today (or yesterday, I forget). That, and the fact that the capital is Lisbon, is about all I know about Portugal (OK, I know more, but I always feel as if Portugal is the European country that time forgot—from major colonial power to ... whatever it is now. No offense! I'm sure it's wonderful)
  
• 95D: 1976 rescue site (ENTEBBE) — Had only the vaguest sense of what this was until I ran into it in a grid a while back and looked it up. Israeli rescue mission in Uganda. More here.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]