Many a Justin Bieber fan / WED 12-22-10 / Kirk's foe in a "Star Trek" sequel / General played by Fonda (in 1976), Peck (1977) and Olivier (1981)

Constructor: Michael Sharp (a k a Rex Parker)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Difficult

Theme: Going All In — Six answers are phrases which usually include "All In" at the beginning with "All In" omitted. Theme revealer at 63-Across.


Word of the Day: VALOR (3D: Bravery) —

valor (uncountable)

1. Value; worth.
2. Strength of mind in regard to danger; that quality which enables a person to encounter danger with firmness; personal bravery; courage; prowess; intrepidity.

(wiktionary.org)

• • •

What’s up, CrossWorld. Caleb Madison and Natan Last here, Sock 'Em Boppers a-ready, throwing down in Round 3 of our CrossFeud. We're guest-blogging today for Rex Parker, who, Renaissance Man that he is, has put on his constructing hat today.… And try as we might, we just can't find out who this Bennet CERF (33-A, Bennett of "What's My Line?") or Toots SHOR (54-D, Restauranteur Toots) is, with the Google Machine, or the Lady Gaga. Once we saw Justin Bieber and Biggie SMALLS in the puzzle, however, we knew we’d get … at least two answers.

We've decided to bury the hatchet, for Rex's sake. Fight indefinitely postponed. Bookies, calculate your odds. Michael Vick, place your bets. Screaming ladies, hold onto your underthings. For the course of this blog post, Caleb and Natan have merged into... Catan. Catan: like Brangelina, but cuter, and with fewer Cambodian children. It also saves us from having to use the personal pronoun "we" all the time.

On to the puzzle. As we solved this, in the same room, yelling obscenities at each other when we couldn’t get something ("*$^@!# TOOTS SHOR?!" "WAIT A SEC IS THIS A &$#!@*ING REBUS?!?"), we also commented on the solidness of the theme. It’s very clever, of course, and not only are the six phrases Rex has chosen all lively, but the omitted answer is also a tight phrase:

Theme answers:

• 1A: Cry at the start of a vote [ALL IN] FAVOR
• 20A: "Soon enough, my friend" [ALL IN] GOOD TIME
• 36A: As a package [ALL IN] ONE
• 52A: Completely imagined [ALL IN] YOUR HEAD
• 11D: Top-rated TV series of 1971-76 [ALL IN] THE FAMILY
• 32D: To be expected [ALL IN] A DAY'S WORK

Don’t get too excited, Michael/Rex, but these are all pretty colloquial and altogether awesome answers. We especially liked the clue for [ALL IN] GOOD TIME (“Soon enough, my friend”); the two phrases are perfect substitutes for one another, and equally colloquial. Now onto the fill, which was stellar in some places, awkward in others, but which overall contained a good mix of the highbrow and the low, the savory and the un.

Interestingly, as I (Catan) write this, I'm in a house on Duane Street, a block away from Reade street, home to the original Duane READE store (14-A: Duane ___ (New York City pharmacy chain)). Coincidentally, I'm also playing PACMAN (6-D: Iconic chomper) (great clue, that), listening to OTIS (10-A: Soulful Redding), acting FERAL (48-D: Untamed), and swaying to and FRO (48-A: One way to sway). What can I say. We're just two TWEENs chilling out to some Bieber (51-A: Many a Justin Bieber fan).


The extra dose of Star Trek clues were all gimmes for Caleb, but Natan, who's more of a Star Wars kid, had trouble with 'em. Both of us were happy to see Eero Saarinen, with all his crazy vowels, not as an answer but as a clue (28-A: Eero Saarinen, for one). Similarly, cool to see PRO RATA (42-D: How some wages are calculated) in full as well.


An interesting facet of this puzzle, and the submission process in general, is the stuff that Will lets FLY (28-D: Pass muster), and the stuff that gets nixed. We have it on good information that 34-Across was, in a past life, I AM, which made (27-D: Block) DE MER (clued as "Mal ___, sea sickness") instead of DETER. Hard to say which is the lesser of the evils, but DE MER has, at least, appeared in crosswords before, though never in the Times; I AT (34-A: "Am ___ risk?"), for its meager part, has appeared nonce. Constructors ourselves (down, Screaming Ladies, down!), we woulda gone with IAJ (clued as "Am ___ Burnett?: Existential crisis from a Yankees pitcher") and DE JER (Mal ___ [sickness gotten from watching too much "Seinfeld").


So appropriate.

Bullets:

• Go from site to site? (SURF) — Nice misdirective clue.
• Biggie _____ (rapper a k a Notorious B.I.G.) (SMALLS) — An example of something that could have gotten a lame plural clue (T-shirt sizes) but instead becomes lively and current. And awesome.

Teenagers that we are, our minds did not immediately go to the land of verbs when we saw Madden in the clue for 12-Down; needless to say, the actual answer was much less exciting: INFURIATE.

Also, our constructor seems to be a bit of projecting at 37-Across (Old Man: Ger.). Oh, Michael Sharpenschnitzel, you’ll always be young at heart.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter] or [Caleb Madison]

Some Strauss compositions / 8-17-10 / 1959 top 10 hit for Ricky Nelson / Confit d'___ (potted goose) / Small cave, poetically

Constructor: Michael Sharp


Hello Rexites, my old friends
I've come to talk with you again
Because a puzzle softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the crossword that was planted in my brain
Still remains

It's the debut of Michael!!!

Wow, special day here. Andrea Carla Michaels blogging some guy named Michael Sharp's NY Times debut! Who wants to be me?! First, may I say “Congratulations”!!!!!! Nice, solid, four-entry, fun-filled theme … with a fifth “reveal” smack in the middle: S.O.S.!

I always know I like a puzzle when I have constructor-envy and find myself saying “I wish I had thought of that!” S.O.S. Seems so simple, yet lends itself to all sorts of fun expressions. When I saw(ed) SAWED-OFF SHOTGUN (17A: Weapon for Clyde Barrow) I thought, this is gonna be a fun theme … Is it kinds of guns? Weird past tenses like “Sawed”? A play on “Sod Off”?

What? What? I mean, coming up with colorful S.O.S. phrases is not as easy as it looks.… Let's see. OK, obviously, Save Our Souls, Son of Sam, … um, Sense of Smell, Sultan of Swat, … then there's Sink or Swim, … Six of Spades. OK. I'm done.

And yet, Michael Sharp has four terrific ones (well, at least three. I'm still on the fence about SLIP-ON SHOES (27A: Loafers, e.g.) … tho perfectly legitimate).

The other nice part of the theme phrases is that the O of S.O.S. could all easily have been “Of,” yet Mr. Sharp has four different Os. There are the coolly balanced OFF/ON plus OLD and only one OF. So attention was paid! What I love is how musical this puzzle is. First of all, SOUNDS OF SILENCE (53A: 1966 album that concludes with "I Am a Rock").



I had to actually get up off the couch to look at Simon and Garfunkel's album cover to verify it was indeed called “SOUNDS OF SILENCE” (n.b. to Caleb and Natan: before there were MP3s and before there were CDs, there were vinyl records with artsy covers) because I would have sworn it was called “The Sound (no s) of Silence.” Could I have been wrong for 35 years? Well, it wouldn't be the first time. But the deal is, it turns out that the song is called “The Sound of Silence” but the album is indeed named “Sounds of Silence.” Confusing.

Then there is, IT'S LATE (22A: 1959 top 10 hit for Ricky Nelson).



And what puzzle would be complete without the Beatles?


OK, technically, LET 'EM IN (33D: 1976 hit that begins "Someone's knockin' at the door") is Paul McCartney with Wings (n.b. to Caleb and Natan: before Paul was Sir Paul, and before Wings, there was this other band …).

Not to mention, SAME OLD SONG.



Actually SAME OLD SONG is not The Four Tops hit, which is actually called “It's the SAME OLD SONG,” thus the less pop culture-y clue 42A: Tired routine, colloquially. This is good bec it makes the theme tighter and more consistent, in that it's not that two out of four are songs, they are each significantly different. One's an object, one's descriptive of footwear, one's a colloquial phrase, and one's an album. Nice. The musicality of this puzzle is apparent in that it literally starts right off with 1A: Some Strauss compositions. But here's where it's weird. GALOPS with that one L is as weird to me as the double N in BANDANNA was last Wednesday. (Maybe the LLAMAS stole the other L?! But that one L right off the bat is a bit freaky … not as freaky as the word “Camelids” but freaky nonetheless) (60A: South American camelids).

So I had trouble getting out the gate, as the colorful 1D: Dogfaces did not immediately lead me to GI'S. (You'd have to be of a different era to immediately equate “Dogfaces = GI'S,” or perhaps more male than female). I mean, I got GI'S, but if I had one criticism of the puzzle, it would be that there was a touch of stodginess in some of the interesting fill: CUSS, STOUTLY, REALTY, GROT and APEAK.

Perhaps, CUSS (51D: Ornery sort) may in fact be a shout-out to Rex, and perhaps STOUTLY is as well.… I mean, isn't Rex Stout someone? A detective or something? …. Aha, just googled and he is the American Crime writer who created Nero Wolfe. How fitting is that?! So as a shout-out to Rex Stout, STOUTLY is way cool. If it's not, then it's just a bit … STOUTLY.

In other original fill, WRAITH (21A: Specter) would have been my Word of the Day, if I did that sort of thing. You gotta love 9D: SCHWINN (9D: Bicycle maker since 1895) … (tho if you change (25D: They might follow bad calls) BOOS to "boas," and (34A: Politico Paul) RON into "rag" … you'd get … SCHWING!!!!!).

And holla to HOGCALLS! Soooooooooooooooey! Damn, that's good! (38D: Noises from a county fair contest) Plus OO LA LA is also super fun, or shall I say 41A: How fa-a-ancy, but I admit I wanted an H in there.

For those less musically inclined and into darker subthemes, I also envisioned a little scenario where a melancholy street urchin IN RAGS is running thru Ho Chi MINH City or SADR City trying to avoid IEDs (22D: Like a street urchin, typically / 13D: Ho Chi ___ City / 37D: Iraq's ___ City / 45A: Weapon for Iraqi insurgents: Abbr.)

And of course I can't see the word FREI without thinking “ARBEIT MACH FREI”; so kudos for defining it as 18D: Independent, in Ingolstadt. Boy, that sure sidesteps a whole discussion. Sort of like a skipping rope rhyme. “I, my name is Inga, and I'm an Independent, and I'm from … Ingolstadt!” (Trip. Splat!)

Now, I'll let the constructor himself explain how the puzzle came about (and, perhaps, a pre-emptive defense of NMI, IED, RFD'S, and REMAP).

Look up (look up)
Is that the moon we see?
Can't be (can't be)
Looks like the sun to me
It's late (it's late)

It IS late, so I'll end with a little mash note:

Dear Michael/Rex,

Congratulations again! Fresh and fun, definitely not the SAME OLD SONG
(with a different meaning since you've been gone) … Thank you for trusting me to blog the blogger … but I'll let you take it from here.

With 50D: XOXO!,

Andrea

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

[Note from RP: Thanks, Andrea. Figured this one would be a Wednesday, but Will thought otherwise. Definitely some rough stuff all around the HOGCALLS area, mainly bec. I refused to give it up. Am surprised to hear "SAME OLD SONG" is unfamiliar to anyone. I made double/triple sure it was in common usage, in headlines of NYT articles, etc. Peter Gordon just sent me a message with no content except a link to his 1994 "SOS"-themed puzzle, which I had no idea existed (that's what I get for relying exclusively on the cruciverb database for my info about recent puzzle history, I guess). And his was a Sunday! Thankfully, he didn't have SAWED-OFF SHOTGUN, so at least I can still cling to that as an original contribution to puzzleworld. Oh, also, I worked really hard to make sure that none of the "O" words in the "S.O.S." phrases were repeated. You can do "OF" phrases all day long...

OK, I don't want to say too much more. There's an interview with me over at "Wordplay," where Jim Horne does a wicked parody of my reviewing style. Check it out here.

Thanks for the good (and bad) feedback everyone.~RP

P.S. Thanks to those of you who have (already!) sent me pictures of yourselves solving or pictures of your completed grid. Really entertaining. Keep 'em coming!

P.P.S. Watch 2010 ACPT Champion Dan Feyer solve this puzzle in real time—keep an ear out for his uncensored audio commentary: made me Laugh Out Loud]