F R I D A Y November 19, 2010 Daniel A. Finan

Theme: Clueless — Five unclued answers refer to types of people who can be described as "clueless."

Theme answers:

• 17A: - (PEABRAIN).
• 28A: - (DINGBAT).
• 46A: - (AIRHEAD).
• 11D: - (NINCOMPOOP).
• 27D: - (SPACE CADET).
• 61A: Like five answers in this puzzle, literally and figuratively (CLUELESS).

What an awesome theme! So simple and elegant. This is one of those themes where other constructors are going, "Why didn't I think of that?" Five words for people who are clueless and then instead of cluing each one as "Clueless" … don't clue them at all! Brilliant! Of course it helps that calling people clueless results in really funny words.

There were only two things that I just flat-out didn't know:

• 37D: ___ Affair: 1798-1800 France/USA dispute (XYZ).
• 42D: Hindu meditation aid (MANDALA).

But that doesn't mean I didn't have a hard time with some other spots in the puzzle.

I was debating whether to admit this, but I've come this far without lying to you, so I guess I might as well. I couldn't finish this puzzle. Okay, that may not be entirely true. I probably could have finished the puzzle if I had shown a little more patience, but I didn't so I didn't. I haven't decided yet if the part that tripped me up is poorly constructed and/or clued or if my DNF was truly just a consequence of my giving up too soon. But I'm leaning toward the latter because I really like this puzzle and I'd hate for it to be ruined by an unforgivable area. Here's where the trouble started.

I'm not a hockey fan, so I don't know all the team names. I know some of them just from, ya know, being alive, but that's as far as it goes. AVS (5A: Colorado NHLers), therefore, was a mystery to me. Now I can see that the answer is a short form of Avalanche, which I'm sure I've heard of at some point. But while I was solving, I wasn't even sure about that V. The cross, 6D: Sundial number, only confused the matter because I thought the team might just has likely have been the AIM or the AXE. Yes, I'm aware that both of those are hideous names for a professional sports team but who am I to say really?? Seemed possible! But here's where the patience comes in. I should have been able to guess GIO from the clue 15A: Acqua Di __: Armani cologne. I gave up too early because I was all "Wait, you expect to know the name of a cologne? For realz?" But of course I know Armani's first name is Giorgio so if I had thought about it longer, it surely would have come to me.

With all that uncertainty in that area, what really killed me was 7D: One learning about the birds and the bees? What's up with that clue? That seems like a terrible clue to me. What's up with the question mark? Doesn't that mean "the birds and the bees" should be taken literally instead of as a euphemism? Maybe I'm discriminating against this clue/answer because I couldn't finish that section. On the other hand, maybe it's just bad. I'm eager to hear what you all think.

Bullets:

• 8A: They may be surrounded at parties (PIANOS). My first thought? Kegs.
• 24A: Retired New York senator Al D'__ (AMATO). Yesterday we saw Ed Koch and today Al D'AMATO. Both were in office when I lived in New York. Good times.
• 25A: Hi-__ (FIS). Tried "res" first and thought, "Well that's interesting that a 1980 DeLuise film has the same name as a 1969 Dustin Hoffman character."
• 49A: Place for flock members (PEW). I was way too focused on literal sheep here. Totally slipped my mind that a religious congregation can be referred to as a flock.
• 50A: "I __ your long lost pal": Paul Simon lyric (CAN BE). Oh sure, why not.
   
• 54A: Given, as custody (AWARDED). I tried "granted" first.
• 65A: Shell's shell, e.g. (LOGO). Cute clue. Shell Oil's logo is a … shell.
• 3D: Vintage R&B record label (STAX).
   
• 5D: Court star with the autobiography "Open" (AGASSI). Bought it for PuzzleDad sometime in the past year. Christmas? Father's Day? One of those two.

Crosswordese 101 Round-up:

• 22A: Pitts of early cinema (ZASU).
• 39A: "Entourage" agent Gold (ARI).
• 66A: Aquarium denizens (TETRAS).
• 54D: Word in a basic Latin conjugation (AMAT).

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Everything Else — 1A: "When I __ kid ..." (WAS A); 14A: Set up: Abbr. (ESTD.); 16A: Like a maelstrom (ASWIRL); 19A: Cash in Nashville (JOHNNY); 20A: Rolls to the gate (TAXIES); 21A: Colorful cats (CALICOS); 30A: Second degree? (MBA); 33A: In spades (AMPLY); 35A: It's usually four (PAR); 36A: Former 56-Across team (EXPOS); 38A: Cuisine that includes phanaeng (THAI); 40A: English walled city (YORK); 41A: Guard dog command (SIC 'EM); 43A: "__ be a pleasure!" (IT'D); 44A: O3 (OZONE); 45A: Unlock'd (OPE); 52A: Salon sound (SNIP); 56A: Baseball div. (N.L. EAST); 60A: Mel Gibson persona (MAD MAX); 63A: Ring of color (AREOLE); 64A: "Popeye" surname (OYL); 67A: "Bottle Rocket" director Anderson (WES); 68A: Colony workers (ANTS); 1D: Showed relief, in a way (WEPT); 2D: Deported? (ASEA); 4D: Madison Ave. symbolizes it (AD BIZ); 8D: Kind of party (PAJAMA); 9D: Get away from the others (ISOLATE); 10D: In the slightest (A WHIT); 12D: "Yes __?" (OR NO); 13D: Stallone and Stone (SLYS); 18D: Set (READY); 21D: Stand offerings (CAB RIDES); 23D: Odd, as a sock (UNPAIRED); 25D: 1980 DeLuise film (FATSO); 26D: "Can you dig it?" response (I'M HIP); 29D: "Wayne's World" co-host (GARTH); 31D: Shouldered (BORNE); 32D: Out of line (ASKEW); 34D: Golfer's concern (LIE); 44D: "Swan Lake" maiden (ODILE); 47D: Wild goats with recurved horns (IBEXES); 48D: Makes void (ANNULS); 51D: Gladiator's defense (ARMOR); 53D: Window-making giant (PELLA); 55D: Tupper ending (-WARE); 57D: Many millennia (AEON); 58D: Certain NCO (SSGT); 59D: General __ chicken (TSO'S); 61D: Tipping target, so it's said (COW); 62D: Drano component (LYE).

W E D N E S D A Y August 4, 2010 Daniel A. Finan

Theme: Wacky Anagrams — Wacky phrases that consist of "[word] IN [anagram of word]"


Theme answers:

• 20A: Male goose during hunting season? (GANDER IN DANGER).
• 25A: Sought-after former football announcer? (MADDEN IN DEMAND).
• 46A: Fencing implement at the shop? (RAPIER IN REPAIR).
• 51A: Biblical guy who refused to believe the writing on the wall? (DANIEL IN DENIAL)

Fun theme today! Please enjoy this musical interlude while you read about tennis scores.

• 6A: __ Mahal (TAJ).




• 9D: Singer with the Blackhearts (JOAN JETT).

Crosswordese 101: AD IN is shorthand for a particular tennis score. Tennis games are scored in this order: 15-30-40-game. BUT, if both players get to 40, that's called "deuce" and to win the game a player must win the next two points. So let's say I'm serving and the score is deuce. If I win the next point, the score would be (formally) "advantage server" or (informally) "AD IN." If I win the next point, I win the game. If my opponent wins the next point, the score goes back to deuce and we keep going like that until someone wins by two points. In the previous scenario, if my opponent had won the point after deuce, the score would then be "ad out," which also shows up in puzzles occasionally, but not often. AD IN is generally clued as "Server's edge," "Point before 'game,'" "Score just before winning," or 52D: Score after deuce, maybe.

Other crosswordese in the puzzle that we've already covered:

• 30D: Video game trailblazer (ATARI).
• 42D: Shallowest Great Lake (ERIE).
• 57D: Gillette razor (ATRA).

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Everything Else — 1A: Outré (QUEER); 9A: Door parts (JAMBS); 14A: Dictionary note subject (USAGE); 15A: Brandy letters (VSO); 16A: Drools over, in a way (OGLES); 17A: "Call it __": "No winner" (A DRAW); 18A: S or SE (DIR.); 19A: Netizen who might hear "You've got mail!" (AOL'ER); 23A: Novelist Deighton (LEN); 24A: Small, medium, or large: Abbr. (ADJ.); 33A: Le Pew of skunkdom (PEPE); 34A: Like waitresses: Abbr. (FEM.); 35A: Shocking buildup? (STATIC); 36A: Shangri-las (EDENS); 38A: Purple minus blue (RED); 40A: Bingham of "Baywatch" (TRACI); 41A: Get molars, say (TEETHE); 43A: Shiatsu response (AAH); 45A: "Night at the Museum" creature, for short (T-REX); 49A: Free (of) (RID); 50A: __-El: Superman's birth name (KAL); 59A: Part of HDTV, briefly (HI-DEF); 60A: "South Park" brother (IKE); 61A: Main life line? (AORTA); 62A: "Good __!": Charlie Brownism (GRIEF); 63A: Super __: game console (NES); 64A: Cinemax rival (STARZ); 65A: Baby-sits, e.g. (TENDS); 66A: Jetta fuel (GAS); 67A: English class assignment (ESSAY); 1D: Marsh, for short (QUAG); 2D: Meat pkg. letters (USDA); 3D: Take home (EARN); 4D: "Yikes!" ("EGAD!"); 5D: Fix by fusing, as metal (REWELD); 6D: Swanson product (TV DINNER); 7D: B-boy connection (AS IN); 8D: Hoops legend (JORDAN); 10D: With eager anticipation (AGOG); 11D: Fr. miss (MLLE.); 12D: Cold one, so to speak (BEER); 13D: Ukr., once (SSR); 21D: Snorkeling site (REEF); 22D: Chimes in with (ADDS); 25D: Jason's wife (MEDEA); 26D: "Not __ out of you!" (A PEEP); 27D: Driller's prefix? (DENTI-); 28D: "That is ..." ("I MEAN …"); 29D: Rush Limbaugh ex __ Fitzgerald (MARTA); 31D: More agreeable (NICER); 32D: Early seventh-century year (DCIX); 33D: '80s-'90s tennis star Korda (PETR); 37D: Oater lawmen (SHERIFFS); 39D: What a full moon mitigates (DARKNESS); 44D: Cattle unit (HEAD); 47D: Waiting at a light, say (IDLING); 48D: "The magic word" (PLEASE); 51D: Desperate, as straits (DIRE); 53D: Must have (NEED); 54D: Swedish retail giant (IKEA); 55D: Have-__: the less fortunate (NOTS); 56D: S&L offerings (IRA'S); 57D: Gillette razor (ATRA); 58D: Like a shirker (LAZY); 59D: NBA bio stat (HGT.).

WEDNESDAY, January 27, 2010—Daniel A. Finan

Hey, Northern Californians! There's a puzzle event in your area this weekend, the Silicon Valley Puzzle Weekend at the Morgan Hill Library. That link details the weekend's workshops (Saturday) and competitions (Sunday), and you can register here. There are events for both kids and adults, covering crosswords, sudoku, cryptic crosswords, logic puzzles, and word puzzles. Also on the schedule: a constructors panel featuring seasoned crossworders Byron Walden, Tyler Hinman, Andrea Carla Michaels, and Mark Diehl; a talk about crosswordese with Mark Diehl; and more. If you're in the area and you've never attended a puzzle even before, we encourage you to head to Morgan Hill this weekend.

THEME: "Flower Power"—Each of six rhyming word pairs starts with a different category of plant, ergo NURSERY RHYMES or "rhymes for plants grown in a nursery"

It's a well-thought-out seven-piece theme, but it didn't grab me like kudzu tendrils. The large number of (shortish) theme entries fragmented the grid into lots of small sections with 23 three-letter answers. Those include some solid threes (MAR, JIF, AHA, GYM, NUB, RYE) and shortenings (PEC, UKE, BIZ), but also plenty of abbreviations (GED, MSS, plural G.E.'S, LAA, GAO, au courant GPS, SMU), crosswordese (ORT, EKE, FER, Mauna LOA), and foreign words (MER, EAU with a Wisconsin clue, ORO). Stay tuned for highlights after this message from our thematic sponsor.

Theme entries:

• 17A: Longing for a fronded plant? (FERN YEARN). Not crazy about YEARN used as a noun. Yearning is the noun.
  
• 21A: Zinfandel, but not sake? (VINE WINE). Sake is brewed from rice, not grapes, and grapes grow on vines. Sake is apparently not really a wine even though it's sometimes called "rice wine," as it's brewed more like beer rather than made from fermented fruit. (So saith Wikipedia.)
  
• 23A: Oxygen emanating from a lawn? (GRASS GAS). Anyone else have dope and flatulence on their mind now?
  
• 55A: Steep, e.g.? (HERB VERB). Isn't HERB, like GRASS, slang for marijuana? HERB VERB could be clued by the less botanically minded as [Mellow out] or [Have the munchies].
  
• 57A: Like areas above the timberline? (TREE FREE). Tree Brie, tree glee, tree ski...
  
• 61A: Group devoted to small, woody plants? (SHRUB CLUB).
  
• 37A: Mother Goose offerings, or in a different sense, this puzzle's title (NURSERY RHYMES). The meaning of "nursery rhymes" is reinterpreted as rhymes for categories of plants grown in the nursery.
  

Highlights:

• 66A: "I Kissed __": Katy Perry hit (A GIRL). PuzzleGirl said she liked this one. Me, I grouped it with the other two-word partials, HE HAD and ERE WE. I...don't know the song. Yes, I know it was a runaway hit a couple years ago. Don't care. Maybe you will like it. My husband just asked me to turn it off!
  
  
  
  
• 9D: "Riders of the Purple Sage" author (ZANE GREY). My grandma read some Zane Grey. Westerns are not my cup of tea, but you gotta appreciate a full name as a crossword answer, especially one with a Z in it.
  
• 38D: Winter wonderland creator (SNOWFALL). It's a lovely word unless it's January, there's no end in sight to winter, and you are so over snow.
  
• 46D: Bring to a boil? (ENRAGE). Love the clue.
  

How many of you have seen The Big Lebowski? I have a friend who views it as a touchstone in her life, and apparently her kind are legion. "The Dude abides!" they say. I've never seen it. Here's the trailer, and...it doesn't make me want to see this movie, even though I love the cast. 1A is Bridges of "The Big Lebowski" (JEFF), and he just won the Golden Globe for his performance in Crazy Heart...which I also have not seen. I did see Avatar last weekend, though, which is why I chose that other movie poster to accompany FERN YEARN. I think James Cameron totally copied FernGully.



Crosswordese 101: EGESTS is one of those words we hardly ever encounter outside of crosswords. Am I right? When's the last time you used the word? The clue is usually along the lines of 27A: Spews—spews out, casts out, or discharges. You may be thinking that volcanoes egest lava. Guess what? The word seems to specifically apply to discharging or excreting from the body (opposite of ingest). Yes, that's right: DEFECATE would flunk the crossword breakfast test, but EGEST skates right in because most people don't know the bodily substance definition. It can also refer to sweating, peeing, and barfing. Eww!

Everything Else — 1A: Bridges of "The Big Lebowski" (JEFF); 5A: River projects (DAMS); 9A: Ritz cracker alternative (ZESTA); 14A: Swedish furniture giant (IKEA); 15A: Ostrich cousin (RHEA); 16A: Neighborhoods (AREAS); 17A: Longing for a fronded plant? (FERN YEARN); 19A: Connection (NEXUS); 20A: H.S. dropout's test (GED); 21A: Zinfandel, but not sake? (VINE WINE); 23A: Oxygen emanating from a lawn? (GRASS GAS); 27A: Spews (EGESTS); 28A: Bench press target, briefly (PEC); 29A: Côte d'Azur view (MER); 30A: Scratch or dent (MAR); 31A: Ed.'s pile (MSS); 32A: Rural skyline cylinder (SILO); 34A: Rock collection specimens (AGATES); 37A: Mother Goose offerings, or in a different sense, this puzzle's title (NURSERY RHYMES); 42A: Cloverleaf element (ON-RAMP); 43A: Follower of once? (UPON); 45A: Some TVs (GES); 48A: Scrap for Spot (ORT); 49A: Anaheim team, on scoreboards (LAA); 52A: __ Claire, Wisconsin (EAU); 53A: Pair of blows (ONE TWO); 55A: Steep, e.g.? (HERB VERB); 57A: Like areas above the timberline? (TREE FREE); 59A: Govt. auditing gp. (GAO); 60A: Fruit soda brand (FANTA); 61A: Group devoted to small, woody plants? (SHRUB CLUB); 66A: "I Kissed __": Katy Perry hit (A GIRL); 67A: Diggs of "Private Practice" (TAYE); 68A: Golfer Isao (AOKI); 69A: Kidney-related (RENAL); 70A: Fruity drinks (ADES); 71A: Joan at Woodstock (BAEZ); 1D: Choice of "Choosy moms," in ads (JIF); 2D: Squeeze (out) (EKE); 3D: Not agin (FER); 4D: Werewolf's weapons (FANGS); 5D: Channel maintenance machine (DREDGE); 6D: Cry of realization (AHA); 7D: Griffin and others (MERVS); 8D: Cleaning product prefix (SANI-); 9D: "Riders of the Purple Sage" author (ZANE GREY); 10D: "Maid of Athens, __ part": Byron (ERE WE); 11D: Discrimination fought by suffragists (SEXISM); 12D: Talks trash to (TAUNTS); 13D: Size up (ASSESS); 18D: Polite country affirmative (YES'M); 22D: Not o'er ('NEATH); 23D: Modern rental car feature, briefly (GPS); 24D: Hold back (REIN); 25D: Scopes Trial gp. (ACLU); 26D: Turkish mount (ARARAT); 30D: Christie heroine (MARPLE); 33D: Plata counterpart (ORO); 35D: Place where sweaters get fit? (GYM); 36D: The Mustangs of coll. football (SMU); 38D: Winter wonderland creator (SNOWFALL); 39D: Shortstop's boot (ERROR); 40D: Foil alternative (ÉPÉE); 41D: Fly high (SOAR); 44D: Worn-down pencil (NUB); 45D: Was successful (GOT FAR); 46D: Bring to a boil? (ENRAGE); 47D: Shown to a seat (SEEN IN); 50D: Pleads in court (ARGUES); 51D: Simple poetry pattern (ABAB); 54D: Aquarium denizen (TETRA); 55D: "__ it coming": "Serves him right" (HE HAD); 56D: Eng. lesson (VOCAB.); 58D: "¿Cómo __ usted?" (ESTA); 62D: Bakery product (RYE); 63D: Mauna __ (LOA); 64D: Strummed strings (UKE); 65D: Show __ (BIZ).