Saturday March 19, 2011 Frederick J. Healy

Theme: None

Total words: 72

Total blocks: 27

This puzzle is anchored by a pair of triple stacks of 10s on the upper right and lower left corners:

5A. 32 ounces at Long John Silver's, e.g. : MEDIUM SIZE. I've never been to the restaurant.

16A. Good time for criticism? : OPEN SEASON. Great clue.

18A. Brains : MASTERMIND

50A. Starts an operation : SETS UP SHOP

54A. One who gives things away : TATTLETALE. Informer.

56A. Half-awake : SLEEPY-EYED

All the above 10s are intersected by four 7s, including a stacked triple column. Lots of 7s in this puzzle.

Some excellent clues today. I really liked the below consecutive clechos:

12D. "Did we get the nod?" : IS IT A GO

13D. Nodding, with "out" : ZONKING

14D. Give the nod : ENDORSE

How was your solving? Tough fight for me. Again, the names gave me trouble.

Across:

1. Jags of the past : XKES. Jaguars sports cars.

17. "__ of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world": Emerson : A RAY. Of no hope to me, this kind of quote clue.

15. Actress Thompson : SADA. Here she is. I wanted EMMA.

19. Merrimack River city : NASHUA. In New Hampshire. Wiki said it's twice named "Best Place to Live in America" in annual surveys by Money magazine. Who knows?

21. __-Z: Camaro model : IROC. I rock. Nailed it.

22. Ref's ruling : TKO (Technical Knock-Out). Boxing ref.

23. "Singin' in the Rain" co-director : DONEN (Stanley). Liked the movie. Never paid attention to who directed it.

24. Caspian country : IRAN

25. Refuge : LAIR

26. "Works for me" : OKEY-DOKEY

28. They may be held up by fans : SIGNS

29. Wkly. message : SER (Sermon)

30. Lea ladies : EWES

31. Easy mark : STOOGE. Patsy.

32. "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" screenwriter : URIS (Leon). "Exodus" & "Trinity" are all I know about him.

33. Kinkajou cousin : COON. Dictionary says Kinkajou is related to raccoon and coati.

34. Color on the Irish flag : ORANGE. A gimme after Sallie's green & orange comment.

37. Group that offers free memberships to spouses : AARP. Unaware of this fact.

38. Mauna __ : LOA

41. Baccarat call : BANCO. I've never played Baccarat.

42. Trying to be quiet : TIPTOEING

44. Dominates : OWNS

45. Villain named Julius : DR NO. Title character from the first James Bond movie. I only know him as Dr. No.

46. Bubblegum pioneer : FLEER. Known for its baseball cards. Went bankrupt a few years ago.

47. Chemical ending : IDE. As in chloride.

48. San Francisco's __ Tower : COIT. Wiki said it's "a monument to the firefighters of San Francisco". Paid by a guy named Coit, "a wealthy socialite who loved to chase fires in the early days of the city's history". Oddball.

49. Eminent : OF NOTE

53. Jazz singer Anderson : IVIE. No idea. She sang with Duke Ellington's orchestra. Died in 1949.

55. Marlin's lost son : NEMO. In "Finding Nemo".

57. Opera conductor Daniel : OREN. Who?

Down:

1. Romantic writing? : X'S AND O'S. Oh, romantic letters.

2. Bar staple : KARAOKE

3. He won comedy and drama Emmys for the same role : ED ASNER. As Lou Grant, I presume.

4. Nickname for an athletic "kid" : SAY HEY. Willie Mays. Cold guy.

5. Home of A. Warhol's "Campbell's Soup Cans" : MoMA

6. 1972 DDT banner : EPA

7. They may be fond : DESIRES. I only know fond memory.

8. Work basket : IN TRAY

9. Apply to : USE ON

10. Cougar, e.g., for short : MERC. Car again. Mercury Cougar.

11. Rick's pianist : SAM. "Casablanca". "Play it again, Sam".

20. Have : UNDERGO

24. Clanton and a "South Park" sibling : IKES. Wiki said Ike Clanton was a pivotal player in "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral". Completely stranger to me.

25. Royal Arms of England symbol : LION

27. Scrape, to a tot : OWIE

28. Rest, as at an inn : STOP OFF

31. Database command : SORT

32. Family nicknames : UNCs

33. Pitching device? : CAPO. I only know it's a guitar gadget. No idea on its pitch-adjusting function.

34. Some winds : OBOISTS

35. Unfair treatment : RAW DEAL. Opened 6 boxes of Heritage baseball cards so far, no autograph. Unfair!

36. Warren's "Bugsy" co-star : ANNETTE (Bening)

37. Bears no resemblance to peanuts? : AIN'T HAY. Slang. That ain't hay.

38. Be postponed : LIE OVER

39. Previous : ONE TIME

40. Get together about : AGREE ON

42. Sad, on the Seine : TRISTE. Je suis triste. I'm sad.

43. Current event around Christmas? : EL NINO. D'oh, ocean current.

45. Stupid : DOPEY

48. Star of TV's "Trackdown" : CULP (Robert). Stumped me last time. Again today.

49. Personal column? : OP ED

51. Abbr. in Québec place names : STE

52. Triumphant cry : OLE

Answer grid.

Happy 51st Wedding anniversary to Jeannie's parents! And a belated Happy Birthday to Warren!

C.C.

Saturday January 16, 2010 Frederick J. Healy

Theme: None

Total blocks: 33

Total words: 70

Man, this constructor Frederick J Healy sure loves multi-word entries. He used more than 20 in his last themeless, then again 20 today.

Very often long single words are easier for me to ferret out. My mind is just not wired to parse multi-word properly. I simply don't use those idioms or slang in my daily conversation. Feel very handicapped by my background.

Favorite clue today is HOLED (29. Rolled into a cup). I was definitely not thinking of rolling the golf ball into the cup. Sigh! I am actually pretty good at reading breaks on the green.

OK, let's tee off with multi-words:

1A. Nut: WHACK JOB. Terrific entry.

16A. Knows about: IS ONTO

17A. Rubbernecked: STARED AT

23A. The way you see it: AS IS. I wanted IMHO.

27A. Title burglar played by Bruce Willis in a 1991 film: HUDSON HAWK. Have never seen this movie.

33A. Note in an E major scale: G-SHARP. Got the SHARP part rather quickly.

35A. 1992 Grammy winner for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance: K. D. LANG. I peeked at the answer sheet. Name with initials is very tricky.

42A. Stock mover: CATTLE PROD. Oh, livestock. I was thinking of those trading shares.

51A. Succeeds completely: ACES IT

53A. Place to learn about cells, briefly: BIO LAB

55A. Improve in small ways: FINE-TUNE

59A. Mr. Right: THE ONE. Have you found yours?

60A. It's the most likely to succeed: BEST SHOT

2D. Ran into trouble: HIT A SNAG. I've learned not to recklessly put ED at the end.

8D. Pleiades components: B STARS. Most stars are classified using the letters O, B, A, F, G, K and M (mnemonic is "Oh, Be a fine girl /guy, kiss me"). O stars are the hottest and the letter sequence indicates successively cooler stars up to the coolest M class. I was stumped.

9D. Minded: LISTENED TO

12D. One after another: IN A ROW

13D. Gift giver, informally: ST. NICK. During Christmas.

37D. Discusses: GOES INTO

43D. 1980s-'90s Tennessee senator: AL GORE. Thought of Bill Frist first.

Across:

9. Apollo, musically: LYRIST. Because Apollo is God of Music/Poetry?

18. Car lot array: SEDANS

19. Texas-Louisiana border river: SABINE (SEY-bahyn). Spanish for "cypress". Wikipedia says it's in reference to the extensive growth of such trees along the lower river. New to me.

20. Sagan's subj.: ASTR (Astronomy). Carl Sagan.

22. Wrestler Flair: RIC. Born Richard Flair. Total stranger to me.

24. Works in una galleria: ARTE. Spanish/Italian for "art".

25. 1951 Emmy winner Imogene: COCA. My entry point today.

26. Feminine name ending: INA. As in Christina, Angelina, etc. Or tsarina, ballerina.

30. Telecom setup: LAN (Local Area Network)

31. Brian who produced some U2 albums: ENO

32. Firm heads, for short: CEOS. Firm = Company.

38. Old shipping allowance: TRET. The container weight is TARE.

39. Nice season?: ETE. The French city Nice.

40. Gut reaction?: OOF. Good clue.

45. A funder of PBS's "American Masters": NEA (National Endowment for the Arts)

46. Crab's sensor: PALP. Same root as "palpable" I think.

47. Some flawed mdse.: IRRS

48. Get-up-and-go: ZEST. Didn't come to me readily.

49. Barbary Coast land: Abbr.: ALG (Algeria). See this map. It spans quite a few countries in north Africa.

50. Zap with a beam: LASE

57. Loll: SPRAWL

58. Beckons: ATTRACTS

Down:

1. Holiday toast: WASSAIL. Have faintly heard of this word.

3. High-spirited horses: ARABIANS. Better than ARABS, isn't it?

4. Former "SNL" regular Farley: CHRIS

5. Insightful: KEEN. Keen can mean "wail" too. Keening.

6. Green hue: JADE

7. Concubine's room: ODA. The Harem room, reserved for women. We also have CASA (25D. Havana home).

10. Important river in WWI: YSER. Battle of the Yser. The Belgian river. Flows to the North Sea.

11. Wand: ROD

14. "Vissi d'arte" singer: TOSCA. Tosca is the title heroine in Puccini opera "Tosca". Too obscure a clue for me. Besides, I don't like the arte/ARTE (24D) repetition.

21. Warehouse workers: STOCKERS

24. Some new parents: ADOPTERS

27. Spirit: HEART. Your heart sank when ...

28. Fly-by-night: UNRELIABLE. Fly-by-night is a new phrase to me.

34. www letters: HTTP. The URL starter.

36. Model of excellence: NONESUCH

41. Most profitable, as a business contract: FATTEST. Like the ones for Erik Prince/Blackwater or whatever the new name is.

42. Islamic leader: CALIPH (KEY-lif). Dictionary defines it as "a spiritual leader of Islam, claiming succession from Muhammad". I could only think of IMAM.

44. Ready-made: PREFAB

46. Brewer Frederick: PABST. Easy guess. I did not really know Pabst founder's given name, the same as today's constructor.

48. Sorority letters: ZETAS

50. Egg-rolling site: LAWN

51. Colony workers: ANTS

52. Like some U.S. mail: CERT (Certified). A special "Thank you" to MJ for mailing me the Dan Naddor obit in LA Times.

54. Thai native: LAO

56. Ore suffix: ITE. Common mineral suffix. Graphite, for example.

Answer grid.

C.C.

Saturday November 14, 2009 Frederick J. Healy

Theme: None

Total blocks: 30

Total words: 72

A quintessential LAT Saturday themeless. Multiple words abound. Some are short (I HAD, I CAN'T, I LOST, HIT AT, IT BE, etc), some are long, such as the triple-stacked 10's in upper left/lower right as well as the four long Downs. Total 20 (excluding the proper nouns), if I counted correctly, a few of them are sports related.

What's your entry point today? Mine was INS (19A), which proved to be quite important in my overall solving. Cheated big and earlier on JIM BACKUS. Had a total mess in that J area.

Across:

1. Hide: KEEP SECRET. Rarely does 1A come to me immediately, today was no exception.

11. Video CD file format: MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group). I can never remembe what it stands for.

15. "Land sakes alive!": I DO DECLARE. Both the clue and the answer are new exclamations to me.

16. Hipbone prefix: ILIO. Filled in the hipbone ILIA first.

17. Overdid it: WENT TOO FAR

18. Woodworking groove: DADO. Like this, the receiving end.

19. Helpful contacts: INS. Helped me nail down the intersecting KIWI (1D. Flightless bird).

20. Hares' tails: SCUTS. New word to me as well. Dictionary says it's also the short tail for deer.

21. Brickell and Falco: EDIES. The former is a singer, latter an actress.

22. "__ no idea!": I HAD

23. Cooperative after-dinner offer: I'LL DRY. Not from my husband.

24. One in a hole: DEBTOR. In a hole = in debt. I kept picturing hole in one and the golf ball.

27. Does over, as an ascot: RETIES

29. Player's lament: I LOST. Toughie for me. Player can lament anything. I wonder if I was the only one who thought of golf Hall-of-Famer Gary Player first.

30. Voice of Mr. Magoo: JIM BACKUS. Did not ring a bell. He looks like a whiner.

33. Island off the Tuscany coast: ELBA. Where Napoleon was exiled.

34. Artificial movie background: MATTE. Not familiar with the film term "matte shot".

35. Old Italian capital: LIRE. The singular is lira. Old capital/bread always refers to money on late weekday puzzles.

36. French capital?: DES MOINES. Capital of Iowa. Literally "of the monks" in French. The clever clue fails to impress me.

38. Jeep in the movie "Cars": SARGE. No idea. Have never seen "Cars".

39. Department store section: LINENS

40. Fit one within another: NESTED. Got the intersecting SEED (32D. Nutmeg or sesame) early on, so I knew fit is past tense here. The E from SEED also prevented me from wobbling between LIRA and LIRE.

41. Rapid river thaw: ICE RUN. Spring is such a long way to go.

43. Lukas of "Witness": HAAS. I simply forgot. Here is a picture of him as a kid.

44. Score settlers?: CODAS. D'oh, musical score. Clever play on "settle the score".

45. Like a cool fall morning: BRISK

47. Rx amt.: TSP. And our old pal TER (10D. Rx specification). Barry G probably still wants TID.

50. "High Voltage" rock band: AC/DC

51. West Coast racing venue: SANTA ANITA. Another unknown to me. Wikipedia says its parent company filed for Chapter 11 in March.

53. Carolers' offering: NOEL

54. Shaq, 15 times: NBA ALL-STAR. Kept thinking of his NBA championship rings.

55. Shipping deduction: TARE. The empty truck's weight. Don't forget the waste allowance TRET.

56. Like Hail Mary passes: LAST- SECOND. I like how a football reference is placed under a basketball fill.

Down:

2. Steinbeck title site: EDEN. "East of Eden". The movie (with James Dean) is pretty good.

3. Hundreds of centuries: EONS

4. Nevada summer hrs.: PDT

5. Basketball two-hander: SET SHOT. Not a basketball fan. Free throw is a "two-hander" too, isn't it?

6. Green vehicle: ECOCAR

7. Sun screen?: CLOUD. Great clue.

8. Pond floater: RAFT. Thought of SCUM. Do you like "On Golden Pond"?

9. Diamond stats: ERAS. I gambled on RBI first.

11. Large group with upper and lower segments: MIDDLE CLASS. Did not come to me readily.

12. Many a kilt, essentially: PLAID SKIRT. Essentially yes.

13. Down source: EIDER. From eider duck.

14. Foolish: GOOSY. New word to me. I felt goosy not knowing the English word for plunger yesterday.

21. "Popular Fallacies" essayist: ELIA. From "Essays of Elia". Unknown to me also.

22. Revival meeting shout: IT'S A MIRACLE. Wish it were a gimme to me.

23. "Never let __ said ...": IT BE. Is this an idiom?

24. Stopped running: DIED

25. That femme: ELLE. French for "her".

26. Winter Olympics competitor: BOB SLEDDER. Just learned that bob sled was invented by an Englishman called Robert Sleigh. Always wondered why it's not called mary or judy sled.

27. Church practices: RITES

28. 9-1-1 respondents, briefly: EMTS

30. Rolling Stone co-founder Wenner: JANN. Unknown figure to me also. Mick Jagger seems to have been on the cover of "Rolling Stone" a lot.

31. Push for: URGE

34. Bearing: MIEN. This word always bring to mind the Marlboro marine. Gritty mien.

37. Unpleasant duty: ONUS

38. Coastal plant with collard-like leaves: SEA KALE. Of mustard family. Looks like real kale. Is it edible?

40. French "gn" sounds, e.g.: NASAL

41. "Out of the question": I CAN'T. I always have trouble with I CAN'T, regardless of how it's clued.

42. Warming drink: COCOA. Sweet!

43. Try to strike: HIT AT. Baseball. I was in the "stop working" direction.

45. Cake with a kick: BABA. The kick comes from the rum.

46. Protein-building polymers: RNAS

47. Longtime Yugoslav president: TITO. Long time indeed. Tito was very well respected in China when I grew up. He was defiant to Stalin.

48. Laurel in films: STAN. Of Laurel and Hardy.

49. Ranch chum: PARD. Bet this makes Melissa groan again.

51. NBC show that began its 35th season in Sep. 2009: SNL

52. Defense advisory gp.: NSC (National Security Council)

Answer grid.

C.C.