Monday February 9, 2009 Ed Voile

Theme: Location, Location, Location

17A: Past it: OVER THE HILL

36A: Focuses: CENTERS

56A: Pressurized: UNDER THE GUN

11D: Precedence: RIGHT OF WAY

27D: Like a southpaw: LEFT-HANDED

Nice puzzle. Simple theme. Perfectly executed. Every theme answer is gridded in its proper position. I would prefer a singular CENTER, but the grid rule dictates an odd-number word in the middle, so CENTERS has to be in plural form.

Disliked the clues for YENS (63A: Yearnings) and OCTET (12D: Octopus arms, e.g.) due to letter duplication. The stale "Group of eight" is just fine for OCTET. As for YENS, I would use a simple "Desires".

Liked the fresh clue for ENTS (54D: Adjective-forming suffixes, as in different). "Tolkien's trees" clue bores me. Happy to see our editor dumped "Poet's dusk" for EEN (37D: Ending for car or cant). But the clue was rather bland. Why not "Car tail?"

Across:

5A: Edouard's paintings: MANETS. Here is "Olympia" again. My favorite MANET. I love those daring eyes, so confronting.

14A: Porto-__, Benin: NOVO. See the bottom. Literally "New port" in Portuguese. I strung the answer together from down clues.

15A: Painter Modigliani: AMEDEO. The Italian painter. Like van Gogh, he died penniless.

21A: Slide, like a snake: SLITHER

24A: Market protests: BOYCOTTS. Named after Charles BOYCOTT, a British land agent who refused to lower rent for his tenant farmers in Ireland.

28A: $5 bill: FIN. Half a sawbuck.

29A: U.N. agcy.: ILO. Nobel Peace winner 1969. I did not know they belong to the UN.

31A: Eur. carrier: SAS. Sometimes the answer is KLM.

35A: One-time female mil. grp.: WAF. Women in the Air Force (1948-1976). New abbreviation to me.

38A: Female GI, once: WAC. Women's Army Corps (1943-1978). Saw this clue before.

39A: Compromise: SETTLE. Litigation-wise?

41A: Stephen or Chris: REA. Know Stephen REA ("Michael Collins" & "The Crying Game"). Have never heard of the British singer Chris REA.

42A: Polanki's Sharon: TATE. Was aware of the murder story, did not know her name. I am accustomed to the TATE Museum clue.

45A: Point NW of San Francisco: REYES. See the map. REYES is the plural form of REY, Spanish for king. Vs the Spanish Queen REINA.

50A: Made to join a mortise: TENONED. Did not know TENON can be a verb.

59A: Carolina river: PEE DEE. New river to me. Named after a Native American tribe.

62A: Lost sheep: STRAYS. Kept reading the clue as "Lost sleep".

Down:

5D: Olympic skier Phil: MAHRE. Foreign to me. British spelling to Maher (Bill Maher)? He does not look as cool as Bode Miller.

7D: Bk. after Ezra: NEH. Before Esth.

9D: Actor Savalas: TELLY. Have never heard of this actor. Wikipedia says he is the godfather to Jennifer Aniston, who is also of Greek root. I thought he has British blood, with this name TELLY.

10D: Importunes: SOLICITS

18D: Sales rep's domain: TERR

22D: Enameled metalware: TOLE. French for "Sheet metal". Most of the TOLE trays seem to have flowers painted on.

24D: Small bars: BISTROS. Some of the BISTROS are quite big.

26D: Winglike parts: ALAE. ALA is singular for Latin "wing". I wonder why the plural is not ALAS.

32D: Monterrey Mrs.: SRA. Alliteration again.

33D: Lot: FATE. The answer did not come to me easily. I was not in the "destiny" direction.

40D: Ex-Yankee Martinez: TINO. Yankees' ex-first base. Was replaced by Jason Giambi in 2001.

46D: One Barrymore: ETHEL. Dennis quoted her last Monday: "You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more things you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens."

47D: Jerry Stiller's Anne: MEARA. Ben Stiller's mother. I obtained her name from across fills.

52D: "The Night of the Hunters" screenwriter: AGEE. Also the screenwriter of "The African Queen". He drank a lot a lot.

53D: Actor Moses: GUNN. Completely unknown to me. Wikipedia says Moses GUNN was in "Roots". I don't remember seeing him though.

C.C.

Sunday February 8, 2009 Alan P. Olschwang

Theme: Triple Letter Score

23A: Most probably: IN ALL LIKELIHOOD

35A: Particle that's not bonded: FREE ELECTRON

108A: Hilo's location: HAWAII ISLAND

128A: City near Kitchener: WATERLOO ONTARIO

16D: Rustproof metal: STAINLESS STEEL

34D: "Burden of Proof" author: SCOTT TUROW

51D: Worker's parties: STAFF FUNCTIONS

53D: Small rudimentary timers: EGG GLASSES

With a little bit Jazz creativity, ZZZ could be structured in a grid I suppose. Would be very hard if not impossible to put in the expensive QQQ, XXX or YYY though.

My favorite theme entry is SCOTT TUROW. I think this is the first time his full name appears in our TMS puzzle. Often see his book "One L"as an answer.

A bit jarring to see END (114A: Denouement) and ON END (98A: In an upright position) so close by. Love the clue for EXIST (37D: Take up space?). Was confused by 45A: Socal airport: LAX. Letter c should be capitalized, SoCal.

What's your answer for 29D: Digital display letters? Right now I have LED, which does not make sense. Should be LCD. But I am certain of the intersecting ASTERN (33A: To the rear). (Addendum: LED is a sold answer. It stands for Light Emitting Diodes.)

Please scroll down for Argyle's blog about TMS Sunday "Anatomy" puzzle.

Across:

1A: Splits: SCHISMS. I was thinking of a verb answer.

15A: Pretentious individual: PSEUD. Mine was PHONY.

22A: Declaration of truth: IT'S SO

32A: Carbohydrate ending: OSE. Often clued as "Sugar suffix". Carb is complex sugar I think.

41A: Marks under some C's: CEDILLAS. As in garçon, indicating a soft C.

49A: Victor at Gettysburg: MEADE (George). Forgot his name. Could only think of the crossword stalwart R. E. Lee, whose name also has 5 letters.

64A: Pasolini picture: SALO. Got the answer. Clueless about Pasolini or the film. Wikipedia mentions that the movie is based on Marquis de Sade's "The 120 Days of Sodom". Sounds sadistic.

71A: St. with keys: FLA. "Street" always jumps into my brain whenever I see the abbreviation St.

76A: Narcissus: DAFFODIL. My instinctive thought was a self-absorbed Blago style Nascissus rather than the flower.

86A: First Arabic letter: ALIF. The second Arabic letter is Ba. The first Hebrew letter is Aleph, followed by Beth.

92A: Japanese ship name: MARU. No idea. But I recognize the kanji 丸, literally "ball". Testicles would be 睾丸 in Japanese. Wikpidia says MARU is a suffix, often "applied to words representing something that is beloved, and sailors applied this suffix to their ships."

97A: Latvian coins: LATI. Had zero familiarity with the coin. The singular form is strangely LATS.

116A: Leafstalk: PETIOLE. New word to me. I simply call the stalk stalk or stem.

127A: Blood of gods: ICHOR. Blood of "Greek gods" to be exact. And they drink nectar and eat ambroisa.

131A: Sch. in the Nutmeg State: UCONN. Did not know Connecticut is known as "the Nutmeg State". Their sports teams are called the Huskies.

132A: Act of avoiding capture: ELUSION. Thought of evasion.

134A: Children's doctor?: SEUSS. I like his "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch".

Down:

1D: Ado: STIR

12D: "Shrek" princess: FIONA. Unknown to me. She is ugly.

17D: First family of Ferrara: ESTE

40D: Never in Berlin: NIE. Interesting all the negative responses seem to start with letter N: NAE for the Scots, NYET for the Russians and NON for those who have "tete" above their shoulders.

42D: Oahu porch: LANAI. Oh, let me be in this LANAI with a man I love, I will ask for no other heaven.

44D: Certain lilies: SEGOS. Why do I always think of carla lilies? They are definitely prettier. SEGO lily is Utah's state flower.

48D: In medias __: RES. Latin for "Into the middle of things". "Ab ovo" is "From the beginning". Both derived from Horace's "Ars Poetic".

54D: 1982 Disney flick: TRON

62D: Hebrew month: ELUL. The 12th month in Jewish calendar. Have not seen ADAR for a long time.

76D: Friend of Pythias: DAMON. I was totally unaware of this Greek myth. And I mixed Pythias with Porthos, so I was thinking of Athos/Aramis, The Three Musketeers.

79D: Tiriac of tennis: ION. Haver never heard of this guy before. He looks like a mafia don. I wonder why ION is not clued as "Charged particle" to match ANIONS (109D: Negative particles".

90D: Lapland native: SAMI. Also known as Lapps. Got it from the across fills. Totally forgot about these nomad natives.

99D: Disarms, as a bull: DEHORNS. Mine was UNHORN.

106D: Bubkes: NIL. "Bubkes" means nothing to me. I've never heard of this Yiddish word before.

107D: Embroidery yarn: CREWEL. Another new word for me. Interesting, it has the same pronunciation as "cruel".

110D: Logical beginning?: IDEO. Ideological.

111D: "Gil Blas" writer: LESAGE. I googled this French writer. Wonderful name, LE SAGE. Wikipedia had 2 quotes from him: "Pride and conceit were the original sins of man" and "Facts are stubborn things".

113D: Book before Philemon: TITUS. Would not have obtained this answer without crossing fills.

116D: Name of 12 popes: PIUS. That's a lot. How many LEO's then?

120D: Base meal?: MESS. Military base.

130D: Where the Phillies play, briefly: NLE. National League East. Of course I was thinking of the ballpark Phillies are playing (Citizens Bank Park). Was misguided many times during today's solving.

C.C.