Sunday January 25, 2009 Norma Steinberg

Theme: Face It

23A: Flirtatious signal: EYE CONTACT

25A: Snoop-for-hire: PRIVATE EYE

54A: Reporter's talent: NOSE FOR NEWS

73A: Meager: HAND-TO-MOUTH

103A: Scarves and such: NECK PIECES

105D: Sweater style: TURTLE NECK

36D: Old hearing devices: EAR TRUMPETS

39D: Performed without a score: PLAYED BY EAR

My theme title would be "Funny Face" because it's twisted and browless. The EYES are facing each other, so are the EARS (symmetrically). The NOSE is sitting above the MOUTH, but not directly.

Interesting to have two NECKS gridded below the MOUTH. But what animal has two NECKS? Guess it's just a wordplay of "NECK and NECK" here.

Clues I disliked:

1D: Took straw: DREW. Bad letter duplication. Besides, why not "Sketched"? It fits today's "Face" theme nicely.

5D: Manuel's hands: MANOS. HAND is already an answer for the puzzle, though it would be tough to clue MANOS without mentioning "hands".

Clue I adored:

65A: Interest free? BORED. Just brilliant.

Easiest Sunday puzzle I've ever solved. No googling. Did get help from my husband on several entries.

Across:

21A: Classic Alan Ladd Western: SHANE. Wikipedia says Edith Head, who won eight Oscars (out of 35 Academy nominations), was the costume designer for SHANE.

32A: Fruits with hard rinds: GOURDS. Cubumbers also belong to the gourd family, they don't have hard rinds though.

43A: Reconnoiter: SCOUT. Garrison Keillor writes a weekly column for our Star Tribune every Sunday. I don't know why he calls himself "The Old SCOUT".

52A: Leafy veggie: KALE. How to cook KALE/mustard green properly? They taste terrible when stir-fried.

53A: River island: AIT. Is there any famous AIT in the US?

58A: Vestibule: FOYER. Here is Degas's "Le FOYER de la Danse" again.

61A: Theater sections: LOGES. Was President Lioncoln sitting inside a LOGE when he was assassinated?

76A: Bellicose deity: ARES. Greek God of War. The Roman equivalent is MARS. The Norse counterpart is THOR, right?

78A: Abominable snowman: YETI. Myth or legend?

83A: Author of "Siddhartha": HESSE (Hermann). See the book cover. Unknown to me. Wikipedia says Hermann won Nobel Literature in 1946. He also wrote Steppenwolf . This name sounds familiar to me somehow. Oh, "Born to be Wild".

85A: Small cooker: GAS RING. Oh, I did not know this is called GAS RING in English. But why "cooker" instead of "burner"?

87A: Georgia University: EMORY. Interesting, I just found out that this university does not have a football team. How strange!

91A: Jargon: PATOIS. The plural is still PATOIS. What is the difference between PATOIS and argot?

95A: Herschel's planet: URANUS. I guessed. Have never heard of this astronomer/composer. He discovered URANUS in 1781.

109A: Related on mother's side: ENATE. AGNATE is "Related on father's side".

110A: Ex-Spice Girl Halliwell: GERI. Ginger Spice, the girl with one knee on the ground.

111A: Pundit's newspaper pg.: OP-ED. Who is your favorite columnist? I like David Brooks.

Down:

15A: Humphrey Bogart film: "High __": SIERRA. Have never seen this movie. The only Bogart movie I've watched is "Casablanca".

16D: Iowa State city: AMES. The Cyclones.

35D: Anatomical networks: RETIA. Singular is RETE.

44D: Mudville batter: CASEY. Ah, baseball, "CASEY at Bat". "... But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out."

55D: Man who portrayed Chan: OLAND (Warner). Got the answer from across fills. Charlie Chan often commented "Ah So", a Japanese expression actually.

56D: Mechanical man: ROBOT. I like the position of ROBOT in this grid.

57D: Marsh of mysteries: NGAIO. Last time MARSH is clued as "Ngaio of mysteries".

62D: Combat mission: SORTIE. Pilot's mission, to be exact.

65D: Fights: BOUTS. Boxing term. The answer did not come to me immediately.

69D: Rhyming verse: POESY. Dictionary says POSY is a variant of POESY, meaning "a brief verse or sentimental phrase, especially one inscribed on a trinket". Sounds romantic.

77D: Boxing proximity: RINGSIDE. New term to me. Boxing is too hard for me to watch.

79D: Awareness of one's position: BEARING. Are you OK with this clue?

81D: Cheesecake picture: PINUP. This is probably the most famous PINUP. Hugh Hefner told NPR that Betty Grable was "his inspiration for founding the Playboy empire".

92D: Designer Simpson: ADELE. Have never heard of this designer name before. I am used to seeing ADELE clued as "Fred's dancing sister".

95D: John Ruskin's "__ This Last": UNTO. No idea. Is this a very well-known essay?

C.C.

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.