Saturday, Sep 22nd, 2012, Doug Peterson & Brad Wilber

Theme: None

Words: 70

Blocks: 30

Hey~!  Three weeks ago, we had the same constructor coupling, and the numerical similarities are uncanny; words, blocks, avg. word length, even the missing letters both number four - this time, we gained the X, but lost the F.  Triple 10-letter entries all around; here's one from each section -

1A. Florida city with an I Dream of Jeannie Lane : COCOA BEACH - Hey, Dennis, does your "office" have a branch in this town, too?

 

 12D. "Doctor Who" subject : TIME TRAVEL - Never watched it (more of a Hitchhiker's Guide fan); he got around time in his phone box

 59A. Titular guys in a 1993 Spin Doctors hit : TWO PRINCES - I liked the song, but I could see which direction music was going, too - and it was away from HeAvY MeTaL - and that's "Titled" for the DF crowd....

 26D. Devious General Mills spokescritter : TRIX RABBIT - This guy;  broke open the SW when I figured it out.   "Silly Splynter, 26 is for kids~!!!" (down, that is)

Onward~!

ACROSS:

11. Ado : STIR

15. An orator's may rise and fall : ADAM'S APPLE - Pondered such things as cadence, volume, enthusiasm, etc.; what if it's a woman speaking?  Is she an oratress?? Let's not get too DF here....

16. Skid row denizen : WINO

17. Where a barrister's questions are answered : WITNESS BOX

18. Matadors of the '70s : AMCs - DAH~! Got me - I was thinking "TORI"?, but now I get it - this car; I had the Hornet wagon when I got my license

19. Alien-hunting org. : SETI - Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

20. Shade-loving plant : HOSTA - we have some green thumbs here on the blog

21. Pope before Hilarius : LEO I - A WAG, but there's a few choices, still; V, X, PIUS....

22. Game pieces : MEN

23. "The Sorrows of Young Werther" author : GOETHE

25. "Birdman of Alcatraz" Robert __ : STROUD - Another WAG

29. Diamond family name : ALOU - Getting to be as frequent as ALOE

31. One curl, say : REP - arm muscle builders, not hair locks

32. Some racing teams : CREWS - Rowers and oar locks

33. "No difference" : I DON'T CARE

35. Fix firmly : RIVET - Funny this should be sitting on top of "WWII propaganda name" because i was trying to squeeze in Rosie (q.v. 14D) the Riveter....

36. Thanksgiving serving : LEG - you know I'll have a "pair" - hi there, Stacey~!

37. Have doubts : WAVER - ah, not Worry

38. WWII propaganda nickname : AXIS SALLY - never heard of her

40. Castle on Broadway : IRENE - Heard of her

41. Eminent leader? : PRE - Almost put TOO much thought into this one; SHORT E?, oh, PRE-eminent

42. De bene __: provisionally : ESSE - Straight Latin

43. "Mask" actor : STOLTZ - I know him as this guy, [drug use & language] or the perverted father from "The Butterfly Effect", not this movie

44. Bow parts with anchor cable openings : HAWSES - I knew what this thing was, but can't remember its name, either - this thing, right Spitzboov??

46. Physical responses : AHs

47. Six-Day War statesman : EBAN

48. Say "cap'n," e.g. : ELIDE - by not saying "cap TEN"

51. "The boy you trained, gone he is" speaker : YODA

55. Chartres cleric : ABBE - Frawnche

56. First ballplayer to hit 50 home runs before the end of August : ROGER MARIS - as always, I defer to our lovely leader for baseball clues; we are getting to October now.... (From C.C.: You've got to watch "61", it's so, so good. There's an annual Roger Maris celebrity golf tournament in Fargo every June. I'll go to watch if Jeter shows up. )

58. Eye-popping profit : PILE

60. Poll closure? : STER - Pollster,  again, too much thought; tried "ELLS" - hey, not a bad clue if I were constructing....

61. Part of a typical Western ending : SETTING SUN - also seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

   

 DOWN:

1. Field calls : CAWS - so I guessed MOOS, BAAS, etc....

2. Veterinary patient of Dr. Liz Wilson : ODIE - Did not know comic strip Garfield's buddy had a vet with a name - I think Jon tired to date her, no?

3. League of Women Voters organizer : CATT - WAG; this lady

4. Magazine that excerpted Stephen King's "Firestarter" : OMNI - WAG again - lots of proper names this week

5. Enzyme ending : ASE - learned from doing crosswords

6. Denounced : BASHED

7. Scanner brand : EPSON

8. Manhunt initiators, briefly : APBs - ah, a thing, not a person; All Points Bulletin

9. Small, tight group : CLOT

10. Its internal angles total 720 degrees : HEXAGON - had to do some math; triangles are 180°, squares 360 ( 4x90° ) - confidently put in OCTAGON, which worked with ALOU; but then the math was wrong; 8 x 45 = 360 again, so I went back and changed it

 

11. Marshland tract : SWALE

13. Hard to follow : INCOHERENT - just good long fill

14. She played Spike Lee's girlfriend in "Do the Right Thing" : ROSIE PEREZ

22. Thing not to miss : MUST SEE - not just NBC, either

24. Gets the jump on : OUTWITS

25. Dumps : SCRAPHEAPS

27. Like home runs nowadays : REVIEWABLE - hey, C.C., I did not know this; once upon a time, there was a sport played with a frozen rubber disc; some of the goals scored there were reviewable....

28. Is short : OWES

29. "Rolling in the Deep" singer : ADELE

30. Lacking pep : LOGY - another word learned doing crosswords

33. Reformers' targets : ILLS

34. "__ nome": "Rigoletto" aria : CARO

39. Maintains : ASSERTS

43. Shepherd of "The View" : SHERRI

45. Twisted look : SNEER

46. Crackerjack : ADEPT

49. Eponymous hardware store founder Lucius : LOWE - Don't shop there unless forced to; I used to work at Home Depot, and so did one of my Ex-GFs; she would say she "bleeds" orange

50. "__ Stripes": Cash song : I GOT - I will leave it to you to link the song....

51. Masculine principle : YANG

 

52. Middle-earth soldiers : ORCS

53. Almighty, to a 55-Across : DIEU

54. The Y, e.g.: Abbr. : ASSN - The YMCA, Young Men's Christian Association - no Village People earworms, please....

57. Short time? : MINute

Answer grid.

Hey~! We are getting close to finishing the church ramp - I figure two more weeks ~!

Splynter

Interview with Neville Fogarty

Look what I found when I googled Neville Fogarty? A 11-year-old Jeopardy! "Back to School Week" (October 3, 2000) contestant with a pet fish named Bob Saget. So don't feel bad if you're stumped by his puzzles.

Neville started constructing puzzles in 2008, and he has been published by the LA Times, NY Times & the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Neville just started a new site and publishes a new puzzle every Friday. Click here and check his offering today.

Tell us a bit about your background. How did you develop an interest in crossword construction?

I started solving crosswords regularly in the summer of 2007 in preparation for an audition for the short-lived game show "Merv Griffin's Crosswords." Later that year, I tried writing one myself just to see if I could make one by hand. My first puzzle wasn't perfect, but it was pretty fun to make, so I spent the next few months reading up on construction online and refining my skills by writing a weekly puzzle for my school newspaper.

You've been making both themed and themeless puzzles (MONEY SHOT!),  which one do you enjoy more and what are the major differences in your approach?

Slipping phrases like MONEY SHOT into a themeless is great fun, but I really love writing a good themed puzzle. There's just something about finding some phrases with a common bond or a neat phrase to riff off of. I'm not giving up on either of them.

When I go to write a themed puzzle, I usually already have a theme in mind. either I've noticed a cool pattern in a word, or a bit of wordplay somewhere. Sometimes I'll have stumbled across a nice "tie-together" entry for a theme, and I'll work backwards from that. Then it's a lot of brainstorming to come up with the best theme entries possible before I go to fill the grid. Since I've been blogging over at the Crossword Fiend, I've become very conscious of what themes we've seen before and what is and isn't fun for the solver. I try to keep this in mind when I'm constructing: What experience am I bringing to the solver? I want them to be able solve a fresh, new puzzle each time, so I have to put my themed puzzles through a lot of internal scrutiny.

With a themeless puzzle, it's a similar story, but I have some more leeway. I don't have to have a new idea tying the puzzle together. Instead, I get to rely on picking out some fun names and phrases to make a puzzle shine. Most of my themelesses feature a pinwheel-type pattern - stacks of 8 to 10-letter entries in each corner. I usually pick out one entry for each corner and then try to fill around it, making each segment of the puzzle as lively as possible.

As a young solver/constructor, what kind of themes/fill fascinate you the most and what kind of themes/fill do you dread seeing in a puzzle?

I love seeing contemporary titles (books, TV shows, etc.), full names of well-known people, and current turns of phrase in crosswords.  I usually don't mind when things push the so-called breakfast test. I don't need a theme to be mindbending to enjoy it; just something that has interesting phrases and clever clues.

I'm not a fan of entries that I can't reason out if I haven't heard of them, especially ones where the crossing is unhelpful. This mainly applies to unfamiliar abbreviations crossing not-so-well-known names that don't even look like names to me.

Which part do you normally spend the most time on in the construction process: theme brainstorming, gridding or cluing?

I really enjoy cluing, and I can bang it out pretty quickly, usually. Even for themed puzzles, I probably spend the most time filling the grid. I tend to write more than one grid just to make sure I'm making as fun a puzzle as possible (or because I've worked myself into an undesirable corner), so the time spent gridding tends to add up.

Which is the best puzzle you've made and why?

Now that's a hard one; it often feels like whichever one I'm working on is my current favorite! I'm quite partial to the most recent themeless puzzle I posted on my new webpage: http://nevillefogarty.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/puzzle-9-themeless-3/. But if you ask me next week, it'll likely change.

Wat puzzles do you solve every day and which constructors do you find most inspiring?

I solve the Los Angeles Times and New York Times puzzle everyday like clockwork. I think my short list of inspirational constructors would include Mike Nothnagel and Doug Peterson, primarily for their awesome themeless puzzles, Brendan Emmett Quigley and Matt Gaffney for their ability to mess with my head, and Merl Reagle for his overall punniness. I wish I could steal some of their abilities!

Besides crossword, what else do you do for fun?

Most of my time away from crosswords is spent working toward a PhD in mathematics - I'm a second-year graduate student at the University of Kentucky. But beyond that, I love playing racquetball, video games and ultimate frisbee.