Saturday January 24, 2009 Josiah Breward

Theme: None

Total blocks: 31

Total words: 70

Do you know the shortcut to calculate the total words? You add the number of upper-left corners (the numbered squares that form the starts of two entries), and then add that to the grid's highest number. So, in today's grid, the number of those upper-left corners is 7: BRIGADES/BLACKLIST, RIBALD/RESPECTERS, WEBER/WOODSHED, RSO/RATIONALES, SAUK/SOLAN, CGI/CEDER and CMDR/COOGAN. And the grid's highest number is 63 (Across). Therefore, the total word count is 70. Learned this trick from Patrick Berry.

I struggled with this puzzle. Felt like a snowflake falling into Hades. So many abbreviations. I would prefer "Gesture of obeisance" over "Gesture of respect" for CURTSY (19A), as RESPECTERS (9D: Those showing deferential esteem) is an answer in the grid. But is RESPECTER even a word?

I think I've had enough Josiah Breward/Willy A Wiseman (aka Wayne Williams, our editor) puzzles.

Across:

1A: Military units: BRIGADES. So their commanders are called Brigadier Generals, I presume?

17A: Suffered anguish: AGONIZED. And ATE CROW (33A: Suffered humiliation). One painful puzzle.

23A: Beer buys: KEGS. I wrote down ALES, which are not really beer, right? I've never had ale before.

24A: Unit of magnetic flux: WEBER. Named after German physicist Wilhelm Eduard WEBER, a total stranger to me. I was thinking of TESLA, which is surprisingly related to WEBER. It equals to one WEBER per square meter.

25A: Sides of a cube: SIX. OK, a cube does have SIX sides. Why did I think it should have eight sides?

27A: Brit. quartermaster: RSO. Regimental Signals Officer? Not sure of this answer. (Addendum: RSO stands for Regimental Supply Officer).

29A: B.C. fuzz: RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). I did not know that "fuzz" is slang for cop.

32A: Letters on a GI's letter: APO

37A: Like peekaboo fashions: SLITTED. Like this ?

39A: Source of hyoscyamine: HENBANE. No idea. Maybe hens know. Dictionary says HENBANE is of the nightshade family, having sticky, hairy fetid foliage and greenish-yellow flowers, and possessing narcotic and poisonous properties esp. destructive to domestic fowls." This word 'hyoscyamine" does sound very toxic.

40A: Computer mavens: TECHIES. I was shocked to see Microsoft/Intel laying off such a high percentage of their employees, very spooky.

43A: Hebrew letter: YODH. No idea. It's the 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. I only know the first letter Aleph. The first letter of Arabic alphabet is Alif.

44A: Pub. submissions: MSS (Manuscripts)

45A: Karachi's nat.: PAK. Have never seen Pakistan abbreviated this way before. She is my favorite PAK, a young LPGA Hall of Famer. Her name is acturally (Se Ri) PARK, a very common Korean surname meaning "simple". Baseball fans probably know Chan Ho PARK, a new Philly.

46A: PC pic: CGI. Computer-Generated Imagery? I got this from the down fills.

53A: Singer Gibb: ANDY. Here is his "I Just Wanna Be Your Everything". Not a familiar ANDY to me. I like him.

54A: "The Kid" star Jackie: COOGAN. I googled this kid. He looks intelligent.

58A: Canonical hour: COMPLINE. Stumper. It's "the last of the seven canonical hours, or the service for it, originally occurring after the evening meal but now usually following immediately upon vespers."

Down:

1D: Exclude: BLACKLIST. Ostracize has 9-letter as well.

2D: Household novel: ROGUE MALE. Here is the book cover. I've never heard of the book or the author. I thought "Household" is just a "household", and ROMANCE does not fit.

3D: Like noncarbon-based compounds: INORGANIC. I found the best organic whole cashew (raw) in a SuperTarget store a couple of months ago. So sweet and fresh. Much better than the Trader Joe's ones.

7D: Suffix in linguistics: EME. As in morpheme. I misread the clue as "Suffix in language", so my answer was ESE.

8D: Grasslike plant: SEDGE. I can never commit this swamp SEDGE into my memory. I think my brain is full.

13D: The king of France: LE ROI. Louis XIV is called LE ROI Soleil. Why would he want to dress that way?

14D: Start of a rehab program: DETOX. "Start"? I thought the whole process is called DETOX.

27D: Fundamental grounds: RATIONALES. I was thinking of PRINCIPALS (I always confuse principal with principle), which also has 10 letters.

28D: Haste: SPEEDINESS. They are not the same to me. Haste has a negative understone.

30D:Dangerous insulation mtl.: PCB. Learned from doing Xword. I don't know why they are "Dangerous".

34D: Out of control: RAMPAGING. Reminds me of those RAMPAGING looters in Baghdad after the invasion. I wonder how many valuable piceces are missing from their National Museum.

35D: All in all: ON BALANCE

36D: About to swoon: WEAK-KNEED. When? When you see this?

47D: Gannet goose: SOLAN. SOLAN goose, yes, but not "Gannet goose".

50D: Spandex brand: LYCRA. I wonder why DuPont named it LYCRA. It's not a Greek/Roman/Egyptian goddess or anything, right?

54D: Letters for Spock or Riker: CMDR (Commander). Not a familiar abbreviation to me.

55D: Eye defect: suff.: OPIA. As in myopia. New suffix to me also.

C.C.

Friday January 23, 2009 Willy A. Wiseman

Theme: Heady Stuff

20A: Calming look?: TRANQUIL EYES (Tranquilize)

39A: Organs purchased on the sly?: BLACKMARKET EARS (Blackmarketeers)

55A: Kenny Loggins' rhinoplasty?: SOMEBODY NOSE (Somebody Knows)

"Blackmarketeer" is a new verb to me. I also have never heard of the song "Somebody Knows", so the PUN (63D: Play on words") for SOMEBODY NOSE did not come to me readily.

I was going to complain that EYES and EARS are plural while NOSE is singular, then it dawned on me that I only have one NOSE on my face.

Very bad clue for LUG (61D: Earlike part), as EARS are part of the theme entries. A simple "Pull/Drag" would be just fine. Is the brown colored section LUG? I have never heard of it before.

Across:

15A: Samoan port: APIA

19A: Toss about, as ideas: BANDY. Learned this word a couple of months ago.

23A: Taiwan currency: YUAN. I thought it's called 台幣 (Taiwan dollar) there. YUAN is the currency in Mainland China. Literally, "round".

24A: Florida raptor: OSPREY. Ah, the fish hawk.

28A: Boxer's stats: KOS (Knockouts)

38A: Small barracuda: SPET. New fish to me. I did not know the meaning of "barracuda" either. Looks menacing.

40A: Slick: OILY. I though of WILY first.

44A: Chemical suffix: INE. Could be ANE and ENE too. Williams likes to clue INE as "Serpent ending".

45A: Beethoven dedicatee: ELISE. "Fur ELISE".

46A: PAT value: ONE. No idea. Why? What is PAT?

47A: Perk up: ANIMATE. Intransitive?

50A: Silver or Leibman: RON. Learned RON Silver's name from doing Xword. Have never heard of RON Leibman. He looks familiar. I must have seen him somewhere before.

51A: Noble Italian family: MEDICI. Absolutely no idea. I only know ESTE (of Ferrara). Wikipedia says the MEDICI family were "a powerful and influential Florentine family from the 13th to 17th century. The family produced three popes (Leo X, Clement VII and Leo XI)."

53A: Chinese secret society: TONG. Not true. "Chinatown's secret society", yes.

64A: Actress Washbourne: MONA. Alien to me. The only MONA I know is her (or she?). Wikipedia says MONA Washbourne played Higgins' housekeeper Mrs. Pearce in "My Fair Lady" (1964). Oh, I forgot. I also know MONA Charen, the Neocon columnist.

67A: Any part of EAP: INIT. It took me a while to realize EAP is Edgar Allen Poe.

69A: Tierney and Tunney: GENES. Is GENE Tunney very famous? I've never heard of him.

Down:

2D: Professional golfers' circuit: TOUR. Meet Ryo Ishikawa, the sensational Japanese golfer, the youngest ever (born in 1991) to reach the top 100 of the Official World Golf Rankings. He was invited to play at 2009 Masters.

4D: Wet out: RAINY. "Wet out"? Isn't it a verbal phrase? "Wet" is enough for me.

5D: New Guinea language: PAPUAN

6D: Man-Lion figure: SPHINX. How an Egyptian figure became part of Greek mythology is beyond me.

7D: Continental crust: SIAL. Obtained the answer from across fills. Do not know what SIAL is.

8D: Grain-field weed: TARE. The Biblical weed? I am more familiar with the "Truck weight allowance" clue.

9D: Convent head: ABBESS. I only know ABBOT, the "Monastery head".

22D: "__ Got Mail": YOU'VE. Very romantic. Meg Ryan's "Courage Under Fire" is very confusing to me though. I still don't know who is telling the truth and who is lying.

27D: China's Sun__: YAT-SEN. "Father of Modern China". He was Chiang Kai Shek brother-in-law. His name is spelled as Sun Zhong-Shan in Mandarin Chinese.

32D: Legal phrase: IN REM. Latin for "In a thing". Here is the explanation. Unknown to me. But isn't "thing" RES in Latin?

33D: __ Ridge Boys: OAK. No idea. Easy guess though. Here is a clip.

38D: Poivre companion: SEL. French for "salt". Poivre is "pepper".

40D: Small portion: MINIM. Another new word to me. Dictionary says MINIM is roughly one drop of liquid. "Small portion" indeed then.

41D: Colonial blackbird: ANI. Here is the picture again. Why "Colonial"?

48D: Not accented: ATONIC. Was this a gimme to you? This is my first meeting with ATONIC.

52D: Val d'___, Fr.: ISERE. The ski resort in France. Our editor clued ISERE as "Grenoble's river" last time.

58D: Hautboy: OBOE. "Hautboy"/hautbois is French for OBOE.

59D: Very dry: SERE. Probably the same word origin as the verb SEAR.

C.C.