1934 novel Maw'id / SUN 1-2-11 / German photographer Bing / 1968 hit song Nazad / 1985 hit song Neung Keun / 2003 film Érase una Vez

Constructor: David Levinson Wilk

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: "Works in Translation" — Easy to understand, but hard to describe. The theme answers are titles with the pattern "Something in Somewhere." The "Something" is translated into the language spoken in "Somewhere" to create the clues. Got it?

Word of the Day: AVEDA (79D: Skin care brand ) —

Aveda (pronounced ah-vay-da) was founded by Horst Rechelbacher in 1978. In 1970, Rechelbacher, on a trip to India, was introduced to the healing properties of Ayurveda (the Hindu science of longevity) and the vision for his company (and the name Aveda) was born. Horst had formulated the first product, a clove shampoo, in his kitchen sink. Today Aveda is part of Estée Lauder Companies, Inc. According to the company's website, "Aveda" is Sanskrit for "all knowledge," but in fact means "no knowledge." (Wikipedia)

• • •

Greetings, Rexites. This is Doug Peterson, in the house with PuzzleGirl, and ready to do some semi-serious crossword blogging. We're filling in for Rex today, but I can assure you that he is not drunk. However, there was a rumor going around that he's been hopped up on goofballs all weekend.

I'm very glad to be talking to you today. You wouldn't believe the hoops I had to jump through to become an official Rex Parker contributor. There was a background check, blood test, retinal scan, and … a couple other things I don't want to talk about right now. But it looks like I've been approved and am good to go. If the RP security goons drag me out of here before we're done, PuzzleGirl can finish up by herself.

The reason we're doing team blogging today is that we usually solve the Sunday puzzle together. Personally, I just got tired of Sunday puzzles several months ago. They're just too big! For some reason I really feel like I'm just slogging my way through a 21x21. So Doug suggested we solve together on the New York Times “Solve with a Friend!” applet and we've done it that way ever since. To make it interesting, one of us solves only the acrosses and the other does only the downs. We try to stay in the same general area as we're making our way around the grid, but sometimes that doesn't work too well. If you look at the grid we posted, you'll see that some of the letters are green (those are the ones I entered) and some are blue (those are Doug's). Sometimes when we're all done, the whole grid is pretty much Doug's color and that's embarrassing. When that happens, I usually come up with some lame excuse about how my kids were bugging me or the smoke alarm went off or something. I'm pretty sure Doug knows I'm lying when I do that, but he's too nice to say anything.

Theme answers:

• 27A: 1934 novel "Maw'id" (APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA).
• 38A: 1968 hit song "Nazad" (BACK IN THE USSR).
• 47A: 1985 hit song "Neung Keun" (ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK).
• 68A: 2003 film "Érase una Vez" (ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO).
• 90A: 1951 film "Une Personne des États-Unis" (AN AMERICAN IN PARIS).
• 99A: 1912 novella "Morte" (DEATH IN VENICE).
• 114A: 1943 novel "Whaddya Tink? A Sapling Stays a Sapling Fuhevah?" (A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN).

(Note: The bulleted list above contains English-alphabet versions of the clues for 27A, 38A, and 47A. The original clues are shown in the image underneath. Thanks to the NY Times and its Wordplay blog for providing the image. We tried to insert those funky foreign letters into our write-up, but it wasn't working at all. Apparently English is the official language of the Rex Parker blog.)

If you're wondering who came up with that wonderfully lame theme explanation up top, it was me, Doug. Some of you may still be confused, so let's look at an example, say, 99 Across. "Morte" is the Italian word for "death," so the word "Morte" is literally "Death in Italian" or specifically "Death in Venice." The rest of them follow the same pattern. "Maw'id" is Arabic for "appointment," "Nazad" is Russian for "back," etc. Very clever! And the last one, written in Brooklynese, is the most awesome of all. I love when the constructor saves a killer punchline for the last theme entry. Well done!

Bullets:

• 31A: Harold's car in "Harold and Maude" (HEARSE). Herman's car in "The Munsters" would have been an easier reference for me. [Claire's car on "Six Feet Under" for me.]
• 64A: Electrophorus electricus, for one (EEL). Really? This reminds me of the pseudo-Latin names they used at the beginnings of Road Runner cartoons. Road Runner would be classified as "Acceleratii incredibus" or "Velocitus delectiblus" and Wile E. Coyote as "Famishus vulgarus" or "Apetitus giganticus."

• 76A: Constellation next to Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (DRACO).
• 85A: Brilliant display (RIOT). Tricky clue. I've heard the phrase a "riot of color," so it works.
• 113A: 90% off? (SENILE). My least favorite clue of the day. I don't need to see a "funny" clue for SENILE. People affected by senility are 90% off? That's just cruel.
• 123A: German photographer ___ Bing (ILSE). Ah, the great Ilse Bing! If you look at the grid, you'll see that this answer, even though it's an Across, is all in green. That means that PuzzleGirl filled in every letter for me.
• 127A: Classic brand of hair remover (NEET). I learned recently (from Orange's blog) that Neet is now known as Veet. Remember the ads for the hair removal product called Nads? Seriously, Nads? If I weren't so mature, I'd find that name hilarious. I could find out more, but there's no way I'm typing www.nads.com into my browser.
• 1D: Bike brand (YAMAHA). I wanted SCHWINN. Totally different kind of bike.
• 4D: It's often visited during a trip (MOTOR INN). Oh yeah ….
• 5D: Failure to communicate? (PHONE TAG). This is an awesome clue. PHONE TAG is one of those terms that used to be totally hilarious and now it's just like a normal thing to say. Isn't that funny how that happens?

• 8D: Daily or weekly (ADVERB). This one stumped me for quite a while. I thought it would have something to do with magazines or newspapers or some other type of publication.
• 11D: Author Steinhauer with the 2009 best seller "The Tourist" (OLEN). No idea. [We already have Robert Olen Butler for our OLEN clues, and that should be sufficient. Now we need to remember another author no one's ever heard of?]

• 41D: "And who ___?" (ISN'T). One of two relatively snippy colloquial phrases in this puzzle. See also, 81D: "Any day now" ("I'M WAITING").
• 52D: Area crossed by Marco Polo (GOBI). Wait, Marco Polo didn't travel across a body of water calling out to his crew members to guide him because he was, I don't know, blind-folded or something? I've really had that wrong all these years.
• 94D: Comic who said "A short summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat" (ALAN KING). Okay, that's funny.

• 101D: Gourd (NOGGIN). Here in the PuzzleHouse we prefer "melon," as in "Can you get this shirt over your big melon or is it time to send it to Goodwill?" (That's me talking to PuzzleSon. The first thing I said when he was born — and I'm not making this up — was "Oh my God, it's huge." The boy has a big head, is what I'm saying.)
• 104D: The Supreme Court, e.g. (ENNEAD). "ENNEA-" means "nine." There are nine Supreme Court justices. Quick — name them! No cheating!

When I found out I was going to be teaming up with PuzzleGirl on today's blog, I told her, "I hope we get a good one!" And today's puzzle was great, so no worries. I thought the theme was fun, clever, and consistent. You can't ask for much more. But I would like to make a request of Will Shortz and future Sunday constructors. Could you please try to make sure you have theme answers running in both the Across and the Down directions? It makes it more fun for those of us who only get to see half the clues every week. I don't have my own cool sign-off yet, so I'll borrow one from Ryan Seacrest: Peterson out!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter] [or PuzzleGirl] [or DougP]

Old Isle of Wight settlers / SAT 12-4-10 / Tony-winning Tessie / Housemate Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat / Capital NE of the Gulf of Trieste

Constructor: Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none


Word of the Day: LJUBLJANA (1A: Capital NE of the Gulf of Trieste) —

Ljubljana (locally: [lʲubˈlʲana]( listen); German: Laibach, Italian: Lubiana, Latin: Labacum) is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants. Throughout its history, it has been influenced by its geographic position at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic cultures. (wikipedia)

• • •

And to think, one of my commenters the other day thought RIGA was beyond the pale. I'd hate to see what happened to his head when / if he figured out today's 1A. I'm mildly embarrassed to say I've neeeeever heard of the place. I know that Slovenia is a place, mainly from Olympics, but the capital. Nuh uh. Took me a while to get out of the NW because the Downs were making sense but 1A, not so much. Finally just decided to give into the absurdity of the letter string and cross my fingers that it made a real place (and it did). From there, found the puzzle mostly easy, until I hit the SQ, where I could not find a way in. Couldn't remember my "Dallas" characters (33A: Victoria's "Dallas" role=>PAMELA). Couldn't remember Mrs. Dalloway's first name (it's CLARISSA). Couldn't figure out what 49A: Dress down like a sailor? was getting at, mainly because I thought the SWEAR AT meaning of "dress down" was the obvious one and that the "?" must be signifying something sartorial. So I was staring at a ton of blank space there until god sat in my lap with 27D: Home of Whitman College. I applied to and was accepted there (in the late '80s), so I knew very well where it was located: WALLA WALLA, WA. That was enough for me to get ILIAD (I sometimes teach it, and somehow remembered the number of books it has) (60A: Collection of 24 books). I then remembered ALMA (again, my educational background helped out, as I went to grad school in Michigan and vaguely recall hearing about ALMA College at some point) (37A: Presbyterian-founded Michigan college), and from there, that quadrant went down as easily as the rest.

If there's a Natick in today's puzzle, it's going to be the LJUBLJANA / JUTES crossing (6D: Old Isle of Wight settlers). As a medievalist (my version of "As a mathematician..."), the JUTES are very familiar to me from various accounts of the settling of Britain by Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, JUTES). But I don't think of JUTES as being terribly well known. I've seen them in puzzles before but ... well, not crossing LJUBLJANA, that's for sure. Elsewhere, there are several relatively obscure names (PABLO and O'SHEA were mysteries to me) (10A: Housemate in Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat" + 52D: Tony-winning Tessie), but they're pretty gettable from crosses. Also, there were several neons today, including 2D: De ___ (by law) (JURE) and 57D: ___ Hari (MATA), which I at first assumed was some kind of trick. All in all, I liked this grid. A bit name-heavy, but with names like WALLA WALLA and LJUBLJANA, I at least can't complain about the grid's being uninteresting.

Bullets:

• 18A: "You're nothing but a pack of cards!" speaker (ALICE) — as in "in Wonderland." Great clue. Great line.
  
• 26A: Easter egg design (SWIRL) — clue did nothing for me. You can put any design you want on an Easter egg.
  
• 56A: Monarchy since the 1740s (OMAN) — not sure how, but guessed this with no crosses (before I even saw clue for MATA). I guess there aren't that many four-letter countries that fit the bill.
  
• 62A: Russian famously played by an Egyptian (DR. ZHIVAGO) — Omar Sharif. Getting this answer helped me get DANZIG (47D: Birthplace of Günter Grass), which I always think of as a band, not a place.

• 67A: It may have you in an awkward position (YOGA) — well that is sure enough true. There's usually at least one pose per class where I feel like an absurdity. "My leg ... doesn't do that."
  
• 34D: Sting in 1980 headlines (ABSCAM) — pretty easy. Another Sting in 1980 headlines: Sting. In March, The Police did their first World Tour.

• 36D: Brie alternative (PATÉ) — So ... not a cheese. Tricky.
  
• 42D: Its highest mtn. is Meron (ISR.) — did not know. Wanted to guess ESP (for ESPAÑA)
  

Happy Birthday, Jay-Z (8 days younger than me)


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Disk-shaped sea creature / TUE 5-4-10 / Poet who originated phrase harmony in discord / Battlefield doc / Horseshoers' tools

Constructor: Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: All About the Washingtons... — theme answers are phrases that end in words for a one-dollar bill


Word of the Day: MARIANAS Trench (39D: ___ Trench (deepest point on Earth's surface)) —

The Mariana Trench is the deepest known part of the world's oceans, and the lowest elevation of the surface of the Earth's crust. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. The trench is about 2,550 kilometres (1,580 mi) long but has a mean width of only 69 kilometres (43 mi). It reaches a maximum depth of about 10,916 metres (35,814 ft) at the Challenger Deep, a small slot-shaped valley in its floor, at its southern end. [One problem: I'm not seeing the "S" on "MARIANAS" anywhere except in some band's name... oh, wait, I'm seeing a few "S"-versions of the actual Trench now ... weird that it is apparently acceptable in "S" and Non-"S" versions]

• • •

Back home in NY and up at my normal ungodly hour so I'm jetlagged as all hell. Thank god I already did this puzzle this past weekend, as the second puzzle at the "Crosswords L.A." tournament — this means that I basically pre-blogged it in my head while I was sitting there in the judges' room, and so don't have to do much original thinking this morning. Plus, I was smart enough to jot down all my notes last night, when I actually (re-)did the puzzle, so I'm about to go onto something like autopilot. Forgive me.

Really liked this one — it's Tuesday-easy, but with a pretty solid five entries and great long, open corners in the NW and SE. I can tell you that the most common errors on this puzzle in the tournament were UHOH instead of OHOH (14A: Anticipatory cry) — an understandable error, but one that a simple checking of crosses should have taken care of. RUSETTA Stone? No (1D: Stone discovery site => ROSETTA). The other sore spot was the far NE, where all kinds of devices got shoved into the grid where CAMS (10A: Video recorders, briefly) was supposed to be. Mainly VCRS, but also some DVDS, I think. VCRS at least gives you a semi-plausible answer at 11D: Pretty good grade (A MINUS) — I guess a C MINUS is "pretty good" if you've, say, spent most of the semester getting high, or never done any of the reading. Otherwise, people mostly finished this one successfully. I don't know what the deal with the "S" in MARIANAS Trench is — no one said a word about it at the tournament, but the more accepted name appears to be just MARIANA TRENCH. Discuss.

Oh, one other issue. SOFT SHELL ... CLAM? Many, many people (including yours truly) had never heard of such a thing and instinctively entered SOFT SHELL CRAB in that slot. However, a simple check of crosses revealed the actual answer in short order. Mercifully, there is no such thing as a thunder CRAP (34D: Sound of thunder => CLAP).

Theme answers:

• 17A: Disk-shaped sea creature (SAND DOLLAR)
  
• 24A: Shift blame to another (PASS THE BUCK)
  
• 35A: Chowder ingredient (SOFT SHELL CLAM)
  
• 49A: Hit that just clears the infield (BLOOP SINGLE) — I had POP-UP SINGLE here at first, as that is what "-P SINGLE" suggested to me. BLOOP is much better.
  
• 58A: Auto-racing designation (FORMULA ONE)
  

Bullets:

• 1A: Dudley Do-Right's org. (RCMP) — Had to stop and think about the particular letters and their order here. RCMP (for "Royal Canadian Mounted Police") doesn't exactly trip off the tongue.
  
• 65A: Horseshoers' tools (RASPS) — honestly, I don't know what these are / do. Apparently, "In farriery, rasps are used to remove excess hoof wall from a horse's hoof." (wikipedia) — I really wish "farriery" had been in the clue (not a Tuesday word, I suppose).
  
• 8D: Union with 3+ million members, in brief (NEA) — would prefer if clue was topic-specific. Easy enough to get, but kinda dull (though, to be fair, I'm not sure how you spice up a clue for NEA).
  
• 45D: Poet who originated the phrase "harmony in discord" (HORACE) — I may just be learning this phrase today. I read HORACE's "Ars poetica" once. It's more famous for giving us the term "in medias res."
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]