THEME: COLD / WAR — KENNEDY (7D: 1961 leader) and the SOVIETS (34D: Adversaries of 7-Down) were opposing sides in the conflict, which has something to do with 1961 (the date formed by the black squares in the grid) ... not sure why 1961 is important here; it's the year the Berlin Wall went up (see 27D: The Berlin Wall started as one in 1961), but that was on Aug. 13 ...
Word of the Day: John Charles DALY (30A: Original "What's My Line?" host John) —
John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly (generally known by John Charles Daly or simply John Daly (Irish: Seán Searlás Ó Dálaigh; February 20, 1914 – February 24, 1991) was an Americanjournalist, game show host and radio personality, probably best known for hosting the panel show What's My Line?. He was the vice president of ABC during the 1950s. On December 22, 1960, he became the son-in-law of Chief JusticeEarl Warren, by marrying Virginia Warren. (wikipedia)
• • •
I feel like this puzzle isn't quite sure what it's commemorating. I think it's commemorating the fact that 1961 can (sort of) be portrayed as a figure with rotational symmetry in the grid. I actually didn't see the "1961" at first, though knew something had to be up, what with the insane grid architecture. Those are a pretty squatty and weird 9 and 6. Don't like KENNEDY(person) paired with (group) SOVIETS. Went looking for "Khrushchev" and couldn't find him. COLD WAR is much bigger than 1961. Berlin Wall goes up that year, but nothing else about the grid is very wally. Bay of Pigs was '61. Kennedy met with Khrushchev in '61. So ... it's a COLD WAR year for sure, but so were many other years. Seems like a look-at-me grid with a weakish theme invented to justify it. Result was a pretty decent puzzle in many respects, though there were far too many black squares and too much short stuff for my taste. To the puzzle's credit, the long Downs are remarkably smooth all around.
Preponderance of short stuff made this puzzle pretty easy to crack. Wanted NEBS (1A: Beaks) and ALAP (8A: Gain ___ on) straight off, but both looked so wrong / stupid that I took them out (?). Ended up starting by going OHM, SMILE, NEST, CCS, DULCET (12D: Sweet to the ears), COLD! Then WAR was easy, and KENNEDY and SOVIETS just needed a cross or two to become visible. Other helpful gimmes included STOWE/"DRED" (31A: 1856 antislavery novel) and KEN Follet (17A: Thriller author Follet).
Apparently, on this date in 1961, John F. KENNEDY met Helen Keller:
Bullets:
11D: English Midlands city that is home to the largest outdoor covered market in Europe (LEICESTER) — somehow able to get this off the "-IC-S-"
37A: Seven-time Rose Bowl winner, in brief (OSU) — THE Ohio State University. This team (particularly its coach, Jim Tressel) is in a lot of hot water right now for NCAA rules violations.
33A: It's just wrong (VICE) — true enough, on a literal level, but somehow I don't think of VICEs as absolutely "wrong." SIN, yes. VICE ... people happily admit to VICEs all the time.
[French, from Old French, ultimately from Latin inciēns, pregnant.]
also, FYI:
n.
An encircling fortification around a fort, castle, or town.
A structure or an area protected by an encircling fortification.
[French, from Late Latin incīncta, from feminine past participle of incingere, to surround closely : Latin in-, in; see in- + Latin cingere, to gird.]
• • •
This was very hard when I was trying to do it while watching the end of "American Idol." I had most of the middle but only the wispiest bits of correctness in the top and bottom. Once the show was over, I concentrated on the puzzle, and it got a lot easier (though it remained tough). Once I got a long answer to fall, the bottom (and later the top) went down in reasonable time, but getting that first one to fall was Rough. Even with AAHS and FLAT going straight in the grid (i.e. even with the first two letters of every long Across down south in place), I didn't go anywhere. AFRICAN-AMERICAN *never* occurred to me, as I just assumed that was some general term, not a Jacksonism (46A: Term popularized by Jesse Jackson). Wanted something like RAINBOW COALITION (one letter too long). I think the first long answer I got was A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE (seen that one before). Tried to make 56A: City on the Niagara Escarpment "something, OHIO." Then considered NOVA SCOTIA... (I forget why), then gave up and came back and got HAMILTON, ONTARIO after more of the crosses were in place. I've been to HAMILTON. Presented my first professional paper there, actually. Good times (well, OK times). Anyway, the double ONE'S down there is ugly, and MESNE is possibly the ugliest answer I've seen this year (45D: Intervening, in law), but whatever: I was just glad to get out alive.
Up top, I had ENCEINTE but had no faith it was right since I know it only as a French word. Why in the world would English need it? It's just as long (syllable-wise) as "pregnant" and it reeks of Frenchitude. Had -LION at 5D: Casanova and considered LOVE LION and STUD LION before eventually hitting on STALLION. Strangely, the first long answer I got up there was PITCAIRN'S ISLAND (17A: Last of Nordhoff and Hall's "Bounty Trilogy")—this despite having no idea where PITCAIRN'S ISLAND is, or who Nordhoff and Hall are (!?), or what the "Bounty Trilogy" is. PI-C ... -ND just gave it to me. All kinds of trouble in the NW, where I had WITCH'S HAT for WIZARD HAT (23A: What may be put on before spelling?), ATM for HEN (20A: Source of collectible deposits), ALSO for ELSE (9D: Further) and HURT for NEAT (13D: Smart). Never heard of ELISHA (10D: Wonder-working biblical figure)—the phrase "wonder-working" is something I've only ever heard George W. Bush say, and whoever was discussing the clip in which he said it was talking about the way Bush's speeches were loaded with a kind of coded language of particular significance to evangelicals. Odd that that phrase evokes that memory so clearly. No idea how I remembered 3/4 of GERI's name (7D: "The Facts of Life" actress Jewell). I wanted TERI. I think Jewell has cerebral palsy. Hey, I'm right. Again, strange what my brain will retain. Thought GERI DON'T FEEL LIKE IT was I DON'T WANT TO DO IT at first. I'm guessing LOTT succeeded DOLE as Senate Majority leader, because he sure wasn't a senator from Kansas.
Gimmes were few, though, in retrospect, more than I'd imagined: ADIA (2D: #3 hit from 1997 album "Surfacing"), LOEW, TINE, STDS, A TIE, AAHS, FLAT, AVA, IVIES, WANDA, APSOS, NEOS, DOE, ANNO
Bullets:
36A: Philanthropist/art collector Broad (ELI) — Nope. No idea. But surrounding answers were easy so no problem. Broad (rhymes with "road") is a big figure in L.A., apparently.
37A: "Fabien ___ Franchi" (Oscar Wilde poem) ("DEI") — more obscurity. All crosses. Between this and the MESNE / MEA cross ... a little much, Latin-wise.
38A: ColorQube maker (XEROX) — had "FEAR Factor" at first instead of "THE X Factor," but once I fixed that, XEROX was easy. No idea what a ColorQube is. That is some gratuitous Q-action right there.
12D: Bond girl player in "The Girl With the Golden Gun" (EKLAND) — Britt. Heard of her, but can't picture her. Keep getting picture of Brett Somers from "Match Game" stuck in my head.
21D: They're straddled in pits (CELLI) — This reminds me: I did not like the clue on CAN I? There is nothing in "Please?" to suggest ungrammaticality or child-talk. If you're asking permission, it's MAY I?
51D: "Turnin ___" (2009 Keri Hilson hit) ("ME ON") — Now seems as good a time as any to remind you to remember the name Keri Hilson, because that KERI will come back to bite you, eventually.
Hi, Andrea Carla Michaels here, along with PuzzleGirl, filling in for Rex. He finally got on his plane to Florida after a two-day snow delay. If you are freaking out about the delay in the blog’s posting time, it’s bec I’m holding down the fort on the West Coast, PuzzleGirl is back East, while Rex goes South. While Rex has a travel day, I’ll write this up overnight, and PG’ll do her best to make sense out of it first thing in the morning. Relax, it’s New Year’s Eve’s eve. The fact you are even reading this means you may have bigger issues than posting times!
I love getting the chance to sub for Rex, but today he left one big airline seat to fill. Was totally up for subbing, practically begged, and then pleased Rex handed the reins to PuzzleGirl and me. But when I saw it was Joe Krozel and that half the clues were blank spaces, I panicked. I felt like a cross between Arnold Horshack ("Ooh, ooh, pick me, Mr. Kotter, pick me!") and Eminem in his so-last-year’s "Careful what you wish for":
So be careful what you wish for 'Cause you just might get it And if you get it then you just might not know What to do wit' it, 'cause it might just Come back on you ten-fold
What can I say? This was one tough puzzle, as most Joe K’s are…took me almost an hour and I’m no SLO bunny. He’s tricky and not always my fave as a solver, tho I have enormous respect for him as a constructor and innovator. I remember loving his last one, both as a constructor and a solver, so I tiptoed in. In the end, I think it was worth it. That is to say, it was more than just OTAY. Actually, OTAY (41A: “Our Gang” approval) was my first entry and I sort of cringed, as I tend to be to the left of PC (when it suits me). I worried that it seemed mildly retroactively borderline racist, as anything having to do with Buckwheat does. Plus, I’m a gal who likes to start at 1A and go across, and do my little areas, which wasn’t helpful today since 1D was "Rent-___." I incorrectly filled in A-Car. My mistake became clear immediately by 2D: SHULS, as I was confident, as a Jew from (but not in) Minnesota, that I knew the Yiddish for "Synagogues." But "RL" as the first two letters of 20A would have been ugly… so I erased A-Car (for A-COP) and began to skip around.
So, a little STEVIE here, some Suze ORMAN there, a correct guess on KWAI (58D: River in a 1957 hit film). Yet the theme didn’t hit me till more than half way through…got it at 59/61A: NOTRE SPAS SING = NO TRESPASSING (59A: "Warning to intruders").
Ok, the theme (there are seven entries!!!!) is to take a phrase and split it up into three words, forming totally different words than are in the phrase, but cluing it as a whole. Got that?
Yet the theme didn’t hit me till more than half way through … got it at 59/61A.
Ok, the theme (there are seven entries!!!!) is to take a phrase and split it up into three words, forming totally different words than are in the phrase, but cluing it as a whole. Got that?
12A: One in on the founding of a company (CHARTER MEMBER) [chart term ember]
20A: Production site chief (PLANT MANAGER) [plant t-man ager]
27A: One getting a bouquet? (WINE TASTER) [win etas ter]
37A: Workplace where there are many openings (OPERATING ROOM) [opera tin groom]
43A: Song played at the dance in "Back to the Future" (EARTH ANGEL) [ear than gel]
50A: Officially (FOR THE RECORD) [fort here cord]
59A: Warning to intruders (NO TRESPASSING) [notre spas sing]
I will suspend with the Word of the Day, but mine would have been my last fill: APIA, which turns out to be the capital of Samoa. APIA shares three of its four letters with AsIA … so not a ridiculous guess for 33A: Headquarters for Polynesian Airlines.
APIA/AsIA … I can almost feel hands going up on that one. And I can also almost hear SethG (coincidentally a Jew in, but not from, Minnesota) screaming about the NOTRE/FRERE crossing! While dk (a decidedly non-Jew in, but not from, Minnesota) is tittering over TITTER (44D: Nervous laugh).
If I may get even more insider-y for a moment … If it were not for the regulars on this blog, I would not have been able to get the whole Northeast corner! For example, Retired_chemist (religion and state unknown to me) wrote about IMAGO being his favorite wrong answer of the day for that GHOTI puzzle last week … and here it malapopped into this one today! (8D: “Big bug”) And easily my favorite right answer of the day was CALEB at 19A: Spy sent by Moses into Canaan which I’d NE’ER have gotten otherwise because of that crazy 10D: "Thomas Moore's "___ Ask the Hour" … and I was determined not to Google.
Every constructor male and female, young and old, Monday thru Sunday seems to have a little crush on young Caleb … even my friend Laura Levine who took this cute photo of him as he searched for a gift for Will Shortz in her Mystery Spot shop in Upstate, NY.
OK, back to the puzzle. The theme is super clever, splitting up words in an uber-parsed manner. Perhaps Joe Krozel’s inspiration was Rex’s creation of OOXTEPLERNON, which came into being by reading one line of another puzzle straight across.
The only one of the six theme entries that did not work for me 100% was WIN ETAS TER. I liked the definition a lot (27A: One getting a bouquet?) but both TER and ETAS are a bit of a stretch to begin with. Neither entry barely stands on its own when it has a definition, much less when it does not. TER is either "Thrice, medically" or "Gerard ___ Borch." ETAS is defined either as an awkward plural of a Greek letter or maybe (more appropriately given the national weather scene) as airline board abbreviations. But the bigger iffy-ness to this entry is that both WIN and NO-WIN are in the grid. A classic WIN/NO WIN situation.
As long as I’m at it, I wasn’t crazy about ARNO/ORNO and TNT/NTS, but I’ll let others scream about OUSE, EMPT and KIAS Sorento. (As a professional namer, I object. It’s one thing to add a letter to a name to coin it, but to drop a letter of a real word just looks illiterate and careless). Enough of what I didn’t like, as it is minor in the overall picture. There was a lot more to like.
I liked that there was a lot of bodies-of-water imagery: ARNO, OUSE, KWAI, EVIAN (on Lake Geneva) plus young fish from the Sargasso Sea, not to mention a "sea menace" ORCA swimming by. Loved piecing together and learning that OOLONG was Chinese for "black dragon"! (I plan to slip that into a conversation (over tea!) before oolong.)
Lots of music: OPERA, SING, STEVIE Wonder, EARTH ANGEL, PIANO, OHS, Schubert’s NONET (my first try: etude) … and as a major Beatles lover I closed my eyes (ORBs?) trying to envision 18A Record label for "Ain’t She Sweet." (…but eventually had to open them wide to get all the crossings. ATCO?!! ATCO??!)
The biggest kick out of the puzzle is looking back across and seeing how every line starts to look like it could be a theme. FIS COOL ONG. ASH SLOP IAN O. Hmmm. Maybe not.
Alright, I’ll give it one last try … How about STEVIE OR NO?
So, well done, Joe Krozel … and Happy New Year, everybody!
THEME: Doubled clues — on nine different Across lines, two seven-letter answers share same clue
Word of the Day: GOLGI body (52D: ___ body (cell part)) —
The Golgi apparatus (also Golgi body or the Golgi complex) is an organelle found in most eukaryoticcells. It was identified in 1897 by the Italian physician Camillo Golgi, whom the Golgi apparatus is named after. // The Golgi apparatus processes and packages macromolecules, such as proteins and lipids, after their synthesis and before they make their way to their destination; it is particularly important in the processing of proteins for secretion. The Golgi apparatus forms a part of the cellular endomembrane system. (wikipedia)
• • •
Really feels like I've seen this theme before, but I guess not. Not much to enjoy here. The construction is interesting, in a way, but the whole thing was kind of tedious to solve. Also very uneven, in that the SE corner was (for me) a billion times harder than the rest of the thing, which was pretty easy to piece together even when the vocab got odd (e.g. WOTAN, ARTEL) (28D: Odin, to the Germans, 31D: Old Russian co-op). I didn't know NYASA (50D: Lake bordered by Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania) or GOLGI and forgot AGFA (58D: Fuji rival) completely (a phenomenally unmemorable name, for me, for some reason), and so ARISTAS was tough to uncover. In fact, I was so stuck, and so didn't care about the puzzle, that I just stopped and watched basketball for a while. Later, figured out that HEES (!?!) must be HEYS (59D: Startled cries), and that "Y" got me SIGNIFY and then the rest of the puzzle.
Theme answers:
1A / 8A: Orient (FAR EAST / SITUATE)
15A / 16A: Ace (AVIATOR / ONE SPOT)
17A / 18A: Lower in stature (DEGRADE / BENEATH)
34A / 38A: I, for one (PRONOUN / NUMERAL)
40A / 41A: Understanding (ENTENTE / EMPATHY)
42A / 43A: Tire (WEAR OUT / RETREAD)
60A / 61A: Loose (LIBERAL / AT LARGE)
65A / 66A: Mean (AVERAGE / SIGNIFY)
67A / 68A: Bristles (GETS MAD / ARISTAS)
Look, I get that it probably took a lot of thought and ingenuity and careful planning to get this grid to work out. But as a solver, I don't care about that. I care about solving enjoyment. And there just wasn't much here.
Bullets:
22A: Runnin' ___, 1944 N.C.A.A. basketball champs (UTES) — that's a long way to go to get an original clue for UTES, but enjoyed the journey. Grew up watching the Runnin' Rebs of UNLV play my hometown Fresno State Bulldogs on a regular basis.
32D: Religion with an apostrophe in its name (BAHAI) — where does it go? BA'HAI. That's my guess. Dang! It's BAHA'I. BAH.
57D: Person under the Union Jack (BRIT) — got it off the "R," though initially wanted something like REB.
THEME: ONE'S — this word appears three times ... probably not a theme, but I'm covering one's bases just the same ...
Word of the Day: CRORE (48D: 10 million rupees) —
A crore (Hindi: करोड़, Nepali: करोड, Urdu: کروڑ) (often abbreviated cr) is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to ten million (10,000,000; 107), or 100 lakh. It is widely used in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. It was 500,000 in the now-obsolete Persian number system. // Large money amounts in India are often written in the form "Rs/ 23 cr", that is, 23,00,00,000 rupees (230,000,000 in Western notation). Although lakhs are used in Sri Lanka, most Sri Lankans do not use the term crore when referring to money. // The word is used in the Indian title of the popular Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? game show Kaun Banega Crorepati, literally Who will become the owner of ten million? (wikipedia)
• • •
Not my fastest Saturday ever, but within 30 seconds or so. Seems an easy puzzle, assuming you remember and can spell Banda ACEH (47A: Banda ___ (2004 tsunami site)), because if you can't, lord help you with that "C," because CRORE looks like a word someone magically willed into existence to get the grid to work (sorry, 1 billion Indian people, but come on) (48D: 10 million rupees). I was still in grad school the last time this word appeared in the NYT (1998). Anyway, dodged the bullet by being 95% sure that ACEH was spelled with a "C." The rest of the puzzle, especially the top and bottom, were a cakewalk. 15s always look daunting, and almost always aren't. Throw a few short answers across them, and they break like balsa. Now, some of those short answers were utterly unhelpful (ITEA? Do they sell kettles that you have to put together yourself?) (54D: Willow variety). But a lot of the others came without much effort, and all the 15s are familiar phrases (though OARS is not the word I'd put at the end of that expression if I had to say it—makes me want to say "Uh, I think you misheard. It's REST ON ONE'S LAURELS." But I'm sure OARS is valid) (18A: Stops striving).
Really love OCTOBER SURPRISE (49A: Bombshell revealed shortly before Election Day), and think the batch of 15s at the bottom is pretty lovely overall. Sadly, I am forced to believe that Olive OYL had a family of OYLS (52D: Olive kin), that CLARinet (50D: Woodwind instr.) is too long for someone to write out, and, yeah, ITEA and CRORE you've met. Sacrifices must be made. To be fair, I have only five answers singled out for "WTF?" status— ITEA, BHA (45A: Food preservative, briefly), CLAR, OYLS, and CRORE. Oh, I really should add DEONS (7D: Actor Richmond and singer Jackson), as I was convinced that no single human could have such a name. Two people? "Famous" people? DEION and DION and DIONNE want to know what their parents were smoking.
Got started with the easy ESTS. (3D: Rough figs.), and another gimme, ELROY (6D: Football Hall-of-Famer Hirsch) (I used him as a clue in a puzzle I made last year; his nickname is "Crazy Legs"). This meant 19A: With 12-Down, turns down had to be SAYS something ... but I didn't know what. Big break came when I put down AVIA (another gimme; 13D: Reebok rival) and ERNS (15D: Kite relatives) (three-letter raptor = only ERN, as far as I know). From the "V" and "R" I got HOSTILE TAKEOVER and was off to the races (16A: Merger alternative).
Had a moment of panic when I couldn't remember the consonant that started DNIESTER (27A: Ukraine/Moldova border river) and had no idea what 27D: Tony Randall title role could be getting at (DR. LAO). No idea how I know that latter answer, but it was lurking around the recesses of my brain somewhere. Managed to guess ARFED straight off (46D: Issued pound notes?), and with the "F" from ARFED and the "V" from (easy) Coq AU VIN, PLAYED FAVORITES (57A: Didn't judge a group fairly) couldn't hide for long. So the grid looks, from where I'm sitting, like a pretty easy romp with two possibly lethal intersections: ACEH/CRORE and DNIESTER/DR.LAO — odd names intersecting at not easily inferrable consonants.
Bullets:
39A: Pizza joint in "Do the Right Thing" (SAL'S) — gimme. Really important movie-going experience of my young adult life. Pretty sure the movie is responsible for my beginning to listen to rap, to think about movies as (potentially) art, etc.
24D: "___ your hearts faint": Deuteronomy 20:3 ("LET NOT") — partials are not normally more than five letters.
31D: Symbol of St. Barnabas, whose saint day comes at hay harvesting time (RAKE) — my first answer: BALE.
43D: 1677 Racine tragedy ("PHÈDRE") — read it in high school. Thanks, Mr. Cardella.
53D: Japanese Peace Nobelist of 1974 (SATO) — one of those 4-letter names it's Really useful to commit to memory, and yet somehow I never do.
Word of the Day: TRANSMIGRATIONS (12D: Souls' post-death passages) —
Reincarnation is believed to occur when the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, comes back to Earth in a newborn body. This phenomenon is also known as transmigration of the soul.
• • •
The very first answer Rex filled in was SERAPES (7D: Ranchero dressing?)I know this because, after checking in with me by email to see if I was all set to fill the Saturday slot, he told me. Then he listed the rest of his gimmes (AMES, KID IS, ENYA), and would no doubt have gone on to further dissect the puzzle had I not told him to stop the backseat blogging and get some rest. (He has a cold.)
I do agree with him, though, that the puzzle was a relatively easy one. It would have been easier still if I hadn't jumped straight in with "macho" where I should have put MANLY (28D: Oozing testosterone). But even with the middle all messed up, I was able to blow through the right half of the puzzle just working from BITMAP (26A: GIF or JPEG alternative, which seems like it might not be entirely fairly clued) and KASEM (23A: Big name in top 40 countdowns.) The left side was another story.
I felt certain that AGE MATES (24A: Contemporaries) could not be a real word; according to Google, it's really only academic journals that think it is. It didn't help that it crossed with EREMITES (6D: Many ascetics), which is, by contrast, a beautiful word--only I'd never heard it before. I didn't know who Veronica HAMEL (22D: Five-time "Hill Street Blues" Emmy nominee) was, either, and my Aramaic must be getting rusty, because TEKEL (31A: Bit of Biblical "writing on the wall") also escaped me. In a dramatic reversal of the way I usually get through these things, it was defeating the 15-letter words that helped me through the shorter crosses.
From a technical perspective, I was tremendously impressed by this grid. But the thing about packing eight 15-letter words into a single puzzle--I say this like I do it all the time, which is a dirty lie--is that there are bound to be some compromises. (The answer ACCUSAL [1D: Charge] springs to mind.) And while all of the compromises were, strictly speaking, above board, some of the answers felt a little tenuous: ONE REEL (34D: Length of some shorts), for example, is perfectly good English, but it's not exactly a phrase.
Still, what the fill lacked in verve, it made up for in sabor Latino. (In case you don't speak Spanish, which you would really have had to if you were going to come up with ESTAMPA [14D: Imprint: Sp.], that means "Latin flavor.") We're talking Mario Vargas LLOSA sipping on MADEIRA on a MARTES (37D: Tuesday in Tijuana), watching the ladies swish by in their aforementioned SERAPES.
36A: They're often screened ( CALLS ) — While I still thought MANLY was "macho," I managed to convince myself that the answer to this clue was "baths." Wishful crossword thinking is a powerful force.
37A: Jazz flutist Herbie ( MANN ) — Makes a change from Thomas, Horace and Aimee.
39A: ___ column (concrete-filled steel cylinder) ( LALLY ) — Had anybody heard of this? I certainly hadn't.
41A: "This one's incredible!"( IT'S A LULU ) — A strangely imprecise clue for an already obscure answer.
44A: Aid in understanding some old pictures( THE ROSETTA STONE ) — There's something unintentionally hilarious about this clue; it sounds like something a jaded archaeologist might say. The definite article is a bit naughty, though.
2D: One making a special delivery? ( SURROGATE MOTHER ) — Cute and easy. This was my lifeline in the left half of the puzzle.
3D: Host's invitation ( PLEASE TAKE A SEAT ) — The phrasing of this clue all but guaranteed that the first word of the answer would be "please."
13D: It's better than life (TEN YEAR SENTENCE) — It's better than death by GAROTTE, too--Spain's official method of execution until 1978, and a morbidly amusing cross.
31D: "Bewitched" Spinoff ( TABITHA ) — Began airing the same year the garotte was abolished, and didn't last long. Spinoffs never seem to survive past the first season, and yet TV producers keep making them.
And now for the obligatory Billie Jean video, but not as you know it.
Signed, Michele Humes, One-Night Monarch of Crossworld
Lots of white—daunting at first blush. But as with any long-answer-heavy grid, just a little headway can break things wide open. Slight traction, big results. You know, with some luck. My point is that you can't get cornered in this grid. Lots of ways to come at whatever it is you don't know—not one of those late-week puzzles where every quadrant is sequestered from all the others. For all today's whiteness, the only thing I'm going to remember about the puzzle are the plurals, specifically the awkward plurals like DRY ROTS (15D: Some building weakeners) and BILES, the abbr. plurals like DIRS. and ALTS., and the name plurals, dear lord: ERNIES (27A: Keebler's head elf and others) and NEALES (45A: Tennis's Fraser and others) and ARLOS (25D: Jimmy Johnson title comics character and others), oh my. Big white grids will force you to pay the piper somewhere along the line, and the spate of plurals is today's fare. Else, with the exception of DAEMORNOP, the puzzle is solid and forgettable, with more interest in the clues than in the grid itself — which, by the way, is 16 wide. Why? Because IN ALL PROBABILITY (18A: Most likely) and UNIVERSAL STUDIOS (47A: "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" producer) were answers we just needed to see.
Nice bunch of gimmes clustered around the NW section helped me get going on this one. ISLA (5D: Gran Bretaña, e.g.) seemed obvious, but I wanted LAPAZ and/or SUCRE at 20A: Capital 7,200 feet above sea level (SANA'A! who knew Yemen got that high?), so I balked. Eventually the obvious "IT I" led me to "AS I SAID..." and things started coming together. But what really got me going was POLLED (24A: Sought the opinions of, in a way). Wrote it in with no crosses and answers spilled southwestward from there. Cruised along and turned the corner down there and hit obscure bird (MERLS => 42D: Blackbirds) and obscurer bird (ALALA => 35D: Brown-tinged Hawaiian crow). Handled the first, but got attacked by the second, which I had to take down Entirely from crosses. As with ALALA, so with ALIOTH, the last thing to go in the grid.
Bullets:
29A: Levels with sticks? (DYNAMITES) — excellent clue, with the nice verb-for-noun switcheroo in the clue
31A: Sitcom sports agent Michaels (ARLI$$) — I count six flat-out gimmes in the grid. This is one of them.
35A: Sowing pioneer (APPLESEED) — off the first "P"; might not have needed even that.
41A: Italian novelist Morante (ELSA) — yikes. No clue. She wrote ... La Storia (trans "History: A Novel"), about wartime and post-war Rome. She also liked to hang out at the beach with Alberto Moravia, apparently.
46A: High-profile defendant of 1992 (GOTTI) — 1992 makes me think of the L.A. riots, so I was trying to remember the names of the accused cops in the Rodney King case. Clearly I was way off base.
50A: Clio maker (RENAULT) — she's a muse, she's an advertising award, she's ... a RENAULT. And now you know.
2D: Opposing team's turndown ("PENALTY DECLINED") — this is inventive but a little wobbly. Teams decline penalties ... but refs say "PENALTY DECLINED," don't they?
11D: Participants in the annual Safety Dance (ELIS) — i.e. Yalies, and not guys who happen to be named ELI, I'm guessing. Acc. to wikipedia, "Each fall, Silliman [Residential College] hosts a Yale-wide 80s theme party called the Safety Dance, the largest dance at Yale." Get your own music, Generation Why. I assure you that when I was in college (the actual 80s), our biggest dance was not a 60s theme party.
[I love Martha Davis!]
19D: They were black and yellow in old medicine (BILES) — humors!
34D: Bard's break (CAESURA) — another gimme. I teach this concept via Old English poetry (e.g. "Beowulf"), where CAESURAE are a feature of virtually every line.
44A: Screened city dweller (SIM) — I *think* this has something to do with the popular computer game "The SIMs." I think.
45D: ___ Zürcher Zeitung (leading Swiss daily) (NEUE) — having recently, grudgingly, put NEU in a grid I was working on, this non-English word was fresh on my mind.
47A: Undergarments that show a little chest (V-NECK T-SHIRTS)
58A: Messages on an Apple device (iPHONE E-MAIL)
Word of the Day: NOUSE (24A: "It's ___!" ("I give up!")) —
Nouse is a student newspaper and website at the University of York. It is a registered society of, and funded by the University of York Students' Union. Founded in 1964 by student Nigel Fountain, some twenty years before its rival York Vision. Nouse is printed three times a term and has an estimated readership of 10,000 with frequent website updates in between print runs.
• • •
Theme=approved, but ... I'm wondering how much of the lame (if not LAMEBRAIN—33D: Knucklehead) fill could have been avoided if this puzzle had been 76 instead of 74 words.* This would have made the grid much easier to fill cleanly and interestingly. Are (wrong verb tense) DID NO HARM (17A: Followed the Hippocratic oath, in a way) and EXIT POLLS (63A: Some Election Day surveys) really worth it? The latter answer is just fine, but what's not just fine is ... where to begin? Let's take *only* the NW corner, which had me not liking this puzzle from the jump. Random Roman Numerals (or RRNs) are weak but acceptable at 3, grating at 4, and virtually unbearable at 5+ letters. That MCDVI is your 1-Down (Early 15th-century year)!? The first thing (or nearly so) that I encounter? Ugh. At the same time, I'm asked to recall a one-hit wonder who hasn't been heard from (on a major scale) since he won the cursed Best New Artist Grammy (MARCCohn, 1991 Grammy winner for Best New Artist), and then (much worse), asked to accept that REDIG is, in fact, a word (3D: Make even deeper). If I make it "even deeper," I just *continue* digging. I don't fill the hole back in and then REDIG! Lordy. Then I hit the (again, wrong verb tense) DID NO HARM and thought "so it's like that, is it?" And it was. To be fair, the rest of the puzzle isn't nearly as bad as that patch of land, but I'm not sure that's a bar you want to measure anything by.
[this is not the original version of the song, btw]
Theme is cute, though. Pretty solid. I mean, all the answers feel forced except V-NECK T-SHIRTS, but maybe that's part of the theme's charm — you wouldn't say these phrases, but they describe real things, and they're playful-sounding. Some of the cluing was cool, e.g. 15A: Khrushchev's impromptu gavel (SHOE); 5D: Common car door fixtures, once (ASHTRAYS); 32D: Scissors, for "cut," on a PC (ICON). But what the hell is up with 8D: Send a tickler (REMIND). Well, it seems that it's simply my ignorance about what the hell "tickler" means. I inferred that it had something to do with "tickling" one's memory, but before that assumed a "tickler" must be a joke, and that the clue had something to do with forwarded emails that are supposed to be funny (but almost always aren't). "Tickler." Even after looking it up: "a file of memoranda or notices that remind of things to be done" I'm having trouble picturing it as an object in physical space (or even virtual space). How is it different from a simple to-do list or, I don't know, appointment book? The clue is using "tickler" in the sense of ANY aid to memory, it seems. The very word "tickler" feels quaint and cloying. I realize that this is a highly personal and idiosyncratic response and one I might not be having (as strongly) were the rest of the puzzle up to SNIFF (38A: Check for freshness, in a way).
ANOD, ACAR, ACAD, AORB
DID NO HARM, OH NO, NO USE
etc.
Bullets:
19A: Either of two peaks in Greek myth (MT. IDA) — IDA is important crosswordese, even in with the MT affixed to the beginning. Other important Greek peak = OSSA (or MTOSSA), the namesake of which can be found on Tasman as well.
61A: Youngest-ever French Open winner Michael ___ (CHANG) — a very memorable tournament run in 1989, during which he beat Ivan Lendl in an epic 5-setter (he came back from two sets down). Was this the match where he was cramping up and actually (sneak-) served underhand one time? Yes, it was.
65A: Word on a biblical wall (MENE) — Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin —the mysterious riddle written by a hand on the wall at Belshazzar's feast. (answers.com)
50D: Margaret Mead interviewee (SAMOAN) — she wrote "Coming of Age in SAMOA" (1928). Apparently, 50+ years later, there were some questions raised about the validity / credibility of her findings. You can read about the controversy here.
*by which I mean 1. turn the "O" in DID NO HARM into a black square, 2. turn the "P" in EXIT POLLS into a black square, and 3. take *everything* but the theme answers out and rebuild. Actually, your E/NE and W/SW could remain largely unchanged, as the seriously sub-optimal parts of this puzzle are only in the vicinity of the squares in question.
I mostly enjoyed solving this, though looking back over the puzzle, it's hard to see why, exactly. None of the answers are particularly scintillating, but some of the cluing is fantastic. Really enjoyed the struggle involved in getting TEAR GAS (60A: Demonstrating control?), PIRATE (25D: Take the wrong way?), and NATALIE (23D: Merchant selling records). NATALIE Merchant is a singer and songwriter who was a huge pop star in the '90s — former singer of the band 10,000 Maniacs, a band I enjoyed (and saw in concert, in Edinburgh) in college. I teach Crime Fiction, so even though I'm not a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, it was fun to run into "A STUDY IN SCARLET" (3D: Seminal mystery of 1887). Anna Karenina is possibly my favorite novel of all time (neck and neck with The Long Goodbye), so I was happy to see ALEXEI. But these are all pretty idiosyncratic reasons for liking a puzzle, I'll admit.
If I look at the grid somewhat more objectively, there are problems. Two answers contain the word SET, and they intersect (?) — NULL SET (39D: It has zero measure, in math) and SET SHOT (61A: Alternative to jumper). Two answer contain ONE, and they intersect ... that is, the ONEs themselves intersect (!?!) — PART ONE (38D: Succession starter) and ONE LANE (59A: Narrow, in a way) — in the same section that the SET answers intersect. How these doublings weren't noticed, and why they weren't eliminated, I have no idea. You aren't supposed to double up words at all, but especially when repeated instances of a word are right on top of each other. Mystifying. Further, the grid is not (as advertised) an OPTICAL ILLUSION (17A: Thing that may appear to be symmetrical but isn't ... like this puzzle's grid). If you're going to wink and do a little showing off, your cluing should at least be exact. The grid simply *isn't* symmetrical. Optically, I can see that it's not symmetrical. The issue here is whether you're looking for it or not. Something has to genuinely appear to be something that it's not in order to be an optical illusion. This grid doesn't cut it. THESE are optical illusions. If you part your hair on the other side of your head, and I don't notice, this does not mean that you have created an OPTICAL ILLUSION.
ONION RINGS are always FRIED, in my experience, so that answer seems redundant (12D: Burger accompaniment). That answer originates in what is, by far, the weakest quadrant in the puzzle. From (gag) INDORSE to EDUCE to CHELA down to the multiple ARLENES (33A: TV's Francis and others) and the exceedingly vowely prefix AERI-, there's a lot not to like up there. Luckily for this puzzle, that quadrant was where I started — with a random guess at KILAUEA (8D: World's most active volcano) that was immediately backed up by KEEP FIT (8A: Stay in shape) — so my clockwise trajectory took me on a journey from bad to good, leaving me feeling pretty good about the puzzle in the end, despite its problems.
Bullets:
30A: 19th-century women's rights advocate (MOTT) — I wonder if this MOTT / MERL (30D: European black thrush) crossing will flatten anyone today. Lucretia MOTT is pretty famous, but I'm pretty sure MERL Reagle is more famous than this avian MERL (which I somehow knew — from crosswords, of course).
56A: Considered financially (DOLLARS AND CENTS) — I'm sure this clue works, but my brain can't yet figure out how. Is it adjectival?
2D: One of 13 religious leaders (POPE LEO) — On the one hand, I like this variation on the crossword stalwart LEO (LEOI, LEOIX, etc). On the other hand, the use of the title feels a bit awkward without the Roman numeral following.
14D: Flat population (TENANTS) — transparent, but still clever.
34D: Results of "Unsolved Mysteries" airings (LEADS) — another very good clue. "America's Most Wanted" would have worked here too, I think.
I feel like this puzzle isn't quite sure what it's commemorating. I think it's commemorating the fact that 1961 can (sort of) be portrayed as a figure with rotational symmetry in the grid. I actually didn't see the "1961" at first, though knew something had to be up, what with the insane grid architecture. Those are a pretty squatty and weird 9 and 6. Don't like KENNEDY (person) paired with (group) SOVIETS. Went looking for "Khrushchev" and couldn't find him. COLD WAR is much bigger than 1961. Berlin Wall goes up that year, but nothing else about the grid is very wally. Bay of Pigs was '61. Kennedy met with Khrushchev in '61. So ... it's a COLD WAR year for sure, but so were many other years. Seems like a look-at-me grid with a weakish theme invented to justify it. Result was a pretty decent puzzle in many respects, though there were far too many black squares and too much short stuff for my taste. To the puzzle's credit, the long Downs are remarkably smooth all around.
37A: Seven-time Rose Bowl winner, in brief (OSU) — THE Ohio State University. This team (particularly its coach, Jim Tressel) is in a lot of hot water right now for NCAA rules violations.
