THURSDAY, March 11, 2010 — Scott Atkinson

Theme: Turn, Turn, Turn — Theme answers have the letters STILE hidden in them, consecutively but not in the same order reach time.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Mah-jongg pieces, e.g. (GAME TILES).
• 28A: Notable achievement (MILESTONE).
• 34A: Site of the Beatles' last commercial concert (CANDLESTICK PARK).
• 43A: Likely to spread disease (PESTILENT).
• 57A: Metro access, and a hint to the circled letters in 17-, 28-, 34- and 43-Across (TURNSTILE).

Fun puzzle today! I really the love the Scrabbliness of it. The theme is fine — nothing super exciting but it also doesn't suck. But it's the fill that made the puzzle enjoyable for me. I didn't love TNTS in the plural (27A: Demolition supplies) or LOGISTIC in the singular (1D: Like a wedding planner's skills — yes, yes, I know it's an adjective and not a singular noun, but you're all smart enough to get my point). But those slight eyebrow raises were offset by Paul LYNDE (19A: Paul in the center square — check out a compilation of some of his funny lines here), KVETCH (22D: Whine — which just might be the coolest word ever), and "I CAN SEE!" (20A: Cry to a faith healer, maybe).

I'm one of those people who loves names from popular culture in their puzzles, so Paul LYNDE and REDD Foxx (64A: Funny Foxx) were fun to see. Even though Arthur ASHE is crosswordese (41A: "A Hard Road to Glory" author), he was such an awesome guy that I enjoy seeing him regularly. (Funny story about this clue. There's a book about high school wrestling in Iowa that came out a few years ago called "Four Days to Glory" — sort of a "Friday Night Lights" for wrestling — and whenever I see the Ashe book, I always think of the wrestling book and feel a jolt of surprise that the wrestling book made it into a puzzle. Which, of course, it didn't and never will. Along the same lines, I spent quite a bit of time at the ACPT trying to convince Peter Gordon of Dan Gable's crossworthiness and … didn't get very far.)

But it was the Ks, Qs and Zs I liked the most.

Scrabble!

• 48A: Film in which Woody Allen voices Z (ANTZ). I either forgot or never knew he was even in that.
• 55A: Hose problems (KINKS). First entered snags. Wrong kind of hose, obviously. Oh yeah, you know what's coming.
  



• 59A: 1944 Italian beachhead (ANZIO). Huh?
• 11D: "Macbeth" ghost (BANQUO).
• 26D: Swab brand (Q-TIP). No other brand will do!
• 35D: Scatterbrain (DITZ). By the time I got down to this part of the puzzle, I had figured out there were lots of Zs in the grid, so this answer went straight in with no hesitation at all.
• 45D: Song section (STANZA).

Crosswordese 101: There are two common ways to clue ELS: (1) like today's 51D: High trains and (2) South African golfer Ernie ELS (whose nickname is "The Big Easy" — try to remember that).