Friday February 6, 2009 John Underwood

Theme: KNOT (69A: Tie tie)

20A: Green apple: GRANNY SMITH

31A: Step down: BOW OUT

37A: British royal residence: WINDSOR CASTLE

43A: Get it wrong: SLIP UP

57A: Geometric choreography?: SQUARE DANCE

I was not familiar with either GRANNY KNOT or SQUARE KNOT. So I had difficulty tying, or rather untying, the constructor's knotty knots. Took me a long time to figure out what his theme is.

Always thought the "British royal residence" is Windsor Palace.

Nice, scrabbly puzzle, with expensive letters like X, Q and J. As NCAA is the answer for 35D: Final Four letters, so the clue for ATH (56A: NCAA word) should definitely be changed into "Sports fig." or something else. Come visit the Comments section and tell us how you would clue ATH.

Across:

1A: Cloth belt: SASH. Here is a SASH KNOT.

5A: Man with ladder: JACOB. Faintly remember JACOB's LADDER story. Do you know if Job's Tears have any Biblical reference? They are supposed to be good for your skin. Too insipid for my taste though.

10A: Rue the aerobics: ACHE. Nice change from the old "Sore spot" or "Masseuse's target".

15A: Sunshine State city: OCALA. Is it really the "Horse Capital of the World"? Not Lexington, KY?

19A: Director Gus Van __: SANT. Liked "Good Will Hunting", did not know Gus Van SANT was the director. His recent film is "Milk", which nabbed 8 Oscar nominatons this year, including Best Picture.

23A: Baseball scoreboard trio: RHE. Runs, Hits & Errors.

27A: C.I.A. forerunner: OSS. I mentioned yesterday about my confusion over Michael Hayden still being Obama's CIA Director. Had forgotten all about Leon Panetta until someone emailed me about his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday. Strange to have a guy without any intelligence background as CIA head. Tough guy though. Monica Lewinsky hated him.

31A: Step down: BOW OUT. Brought to mind Tom Daschle's sudden withdrawal of his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Jaw-dropping amount of "consulting" income.

41A: Interferometer instrument: AERI. Got the answer from down fills. Have never heard of Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer. It measures "the absolute infrared spectral radiance (watts per square meter per steradian per wavenumber) of the sky directly above the instrument". Too abstract for me. I doubt this is Underwood's original clue.

46A: Part of R.S.A.: AFR. RSA is Republic of South Africa.

47A: Govt. bookkeepers: GAO. Oh, I always thought it stands for General Accounting Office. Turns out that the name was changed into Government Accountability Office in 2004.

65A: Pathogenic bacteria: ECOLI. The "Deadly African virus" is EBOLA. And Carlo Levi's book is titled "Christ Stopped at EBOLI".

Down:

2D: Oldsmobile models: ALERO. Why did they name the model ALERO? Is it a Greek/Roman god or something?

5D: Young kangaroo: JOEY. Have seen this clue too many times to be stumped.

8D: Acid in soap: OLEIC. Wikipedia says "OLEIC acid makes up 55-80% of olive oil".

11D: Shade of gray: CHARCOAL. Young girls probably like the frayed hem in this CHARCOAL mini-skirt.

38D: Dublin dudes: IRISHMEN. Nice alliteration. And EIRE (66A: Dublin's land). Now our blog needs a Scottish solver. We already have an Irish, a British and a Welsh.

40D: Valuable fiddle: STRAD. OK, here again is Joshua Bell's famous DC Metro rush hour incognito experiment. He and $3.5 million STRAD collected a total of $32 from over 1,000 passers-by.

48D: Famed jockey Eddie: ARCARO. The only guy to have won Triple Crown twice. Amazing. That's a strange photo. According to this list, he was not the jockey of Assault. He rode Whirlaway and Citation.

55D: "R.U.R."playwright: CAPEK (Karel). The inventor of the word "robot" (1921). Often see RUR clued as "Capek play".

C.C.

Thursday February 5, 2009 Alan P. Olschwang

Theme: Irrational Rationale

20A: Start of George Bernard Shaw quote: NOTHING IS EVER

38A: Part 2 of quote: ACCOMPLISHED BY A

56A: End of quote: REASONABLE MAN

Do you consider this as a REASONABLE quote? George Bernard Shaw was an activist, so this quote may be his excuse for any excesses he may commit. Here is a site with more of his quotes (and there are a lot of them).

The quote does encourage audacity and creativity, right? I wasted some valuable time at upper right corner this morning. Wrote down WENT instead of PART for 10A: Split, thinking the clue is a past tense. The down fills today seem to be a bit harder than across ones.

For those whose paper does not carry TMS Sunday puzzle, here is another TMS syndication puzzle. Hope you are interested. Argyle will blog this puzzle on Sunday.

Across:

14A: Kosher: LEGIT. "Not kosher" is TREF.

15A: Aces, sometimes: ONES: When playing Black Jack, ACES may count as one or eleven.

19A: Loan letters: MTGE (Mortgage). Someone mentioned the other day that HMO stands for "Homeowners Insurance" in real estate term. A rare bright spot on the housing market, the pending home sales index is up. The prices might be way down.

23A: Charlotte-to-Raleigh dir.: ENE. Got the answer from down fills. Had no idea of the exact direction.

24A: Nat. interest watchdog: CIA. Wasn't Obama supposed to nominate someone new for the CIA director post? How come the head is still Michael Hayden?

25A: Strauss opera: SALOME. I forgot. Faintly remembered "Dance of the Seven Veils" though. The opera was based on a play by Oscar Wilde. SALOME was the daughter of Herodias and stepdaughter of Herod Antipas and it was she who asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Dictionary says SALOME is Hebrew for "peace". Is it related to "shalom" then?

28A: Painted ponies: PINTOS. I don't understand this clue? Why "Painted"? I adore Michael Learns to Rock's "Paint my Love", though I don't think my love will be "a picture of thousands sunsets".

35A: A.E.C. successor: NRC. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, created in 1975.

37A: Prince Valiant's son: ARN. He is getting old in the comic strip, too. NYTanonimo just blogged this enty at her Barry Silk post. She also mentioned that LETT is an archaic word for Latvian, yet our editor keeps using "Riga resident" for LETT. I don't know. Whatever, I will just LETT it be.

43A: Brit's raincoat: MAC

50A: "Seinfeld" gal: ELAINE

64A: Burnsian hillside: BRAE. I did not know "Burnsian" refers to Robert Burns. Thought it might be a Scottish town. Interesting origin: BRAE is rooted in Old Norse word "Bra" meaning eyebrow. I don't really know what a BRAE is. This picture came up when I googled the word.

66A: Fertilizer ingredient: NITER. "Gunpowder ingredient" as well.

67A: Comic Martin: MULL. Easy answer. But I've never heard of Martin MULL before.

Down:

2D: Detroit dud: LEMON. Poor Detroit, hit so hard by the recession, and the Lions, and an unfaithful mayor.

3D: Striped gem: AGATE. It's not a previous gem, isn't it? I only know marbles are made of AGATE.

5D: Impassivity: STOICISM. Stoic was founded by Zeno, Zeno of Citium. Not the paradox guy Zeno of ELEA, our crossword stalwart.

10D: __ Sue Martin: PAMELA. Not a familiar actress to me. What movie is she famous for?

11D: Old navigation instrument: ASTROLABE. No idea. Looks complicated. The word starts with ASTRO. Has to be related with stars then.

12D: Fix, in a way: RIG

22D: Anatomical duct: VAS. Latin for "vessel". Plural is vasa. Unknown to me. I've never heard of the sperm transporting tube "VAS deferens" either.

26D: Martin and Pickford: MARYS. MARY Martin was an Tony-winning actress. MARY Pickford was an Oscar-winning Canadian actress. Both were strangers to me.

28D: PGA member: PRO. Quite true.

34D: Of an insurance job: ACTUARIAL. Only knew actuary.

36D: Little angel: CHERUB. This is the famous Vanity Fair magazine cover when the author used CHERUB to describe Scarlett Johansson.

40D: Aubergine: EGGPLANT. Nightshade vegetable. I like the purple slim ones on the right.

49D: Irish playwright: O'CASEY (Seán). Another guess. He wrote "The Plough and the Stars".

54D: Actress Claire: DANES. She played Meryl Streep's daughter in "The Hours".

58D: Scottish headland: NESS. Or "Famous T-man Eliot". Kevin Costner is great in "The Untouchables".

C.C & Argyle