Monday February 23, 2009 Adele Mann

Theme: Down-load

20A: Not readily apparent: BELOW THE SURFACE

40A: Feeling poorly: UNDER THE WEATHER

54A: Lower than low: BENEATH CONTEMPT

This is the 4th Adele Mann puzzle we've solved in Feb. Ms. Mann, if you are reading this blog, please email me or visit us at the Comments section. We'd like to know more about you. Is Adele your real name?

No "Speak Persians?" cute clue today. No obscure name or imaginative word either. Feels quite smooth to me.

I don't think TERSE (64A) is "Short and sweet". Short, yes. Sweet, no. To me, TERSE connotes a sense of being "curt"and "rude".

Can you give me an example of TAWNY (30D: Brownish orange) color? Is this night owl TAWNY?

Across:

10A: Actress Blanchett: CATE. Very talented Aussi. I liked her the most in "The Good German". Her bone structure does have a Katharine Hepburn chiseled look. Her performance in "The Aviator" seems a bit rigid though.

15A: Pestiferous insect: ROACH. "Pestiferous" is a new word to me. What a contrast with melliferous.

43A: Cartoonist Drucker: MORT. Yawner. Just had him yesterday. Dictionary says MORT is also a 3-year-old salmon. What is a 2-year old salmon then? SMOLT? How about 1-year old? Will they be called adult salmon when they are 4-year old?

44A: Reddish-orange dye: HENNAS. Like this man's beard. I was thinking of SENNA (the medicinal herb), confusing it with SIENNA, which is a yellow-brown pigment or the beautiful SIENNA Miller. She looks like the current Ukraine Prime Minister, doesn't she?

46A: King of Troy: PRIAM. Father of Paris, Hector and Cassandra. Nouriel Roubini predicted this crazy housing bubble several years ago. He was dismissed as Cassandra/Dr. Doom.

49A: Two-masted sailboats: YAWLS. I thought of YOWLS first, and I was not wholly wrong. Dictionary says YOWL is a variant of YAWL the boat. I don't know a fig about sailing. Is three-masted sailboard quicker? Slower? Bigger? Smaller? More expensive? Cheaper?

71A: Collar stiffener: STAY. I've never seen a collar STAY in person.

Down:

1D: Sepulcher: TOMB. Now there is a word with very similar spelling as "Sepulcher" , but it means orifice or some other body part. What is it? I vaguely remember Dennis has a comment about that word a few months ago.

9D: Doubtful gesture: SHRUG. Don't think the French SHRUG indicates such gesture. "So what?", yes.

10D: Open clash: CONFLICT. Hey, my old obsession Netanyahu is back. With his hardline attitude, the CONFLICT there will go on forever. I've moved on anyway.

21D: More ironic: WRYER. Or wrier.

25D: Losing streak: SLUMP. Tim Geithner should be thankful for this clue. Isn't ironic that two years ago Bush did not even acknowlege the existance of recession? Now we are talking about depression.

27D: Arboreal lemur: INDRI. The Madagascar short-tailed lemur. Literally "Look" due to the misunderstanding of the local language.

34D: Feudal peons: SERFS. Sometimes the answer is ESNES. I don't know the difference.

37D: Highest degree: NTH. I wonder if anyone thought of Ph.D. It's the highest degree you can achieve academically, right?

41D: Bric-a-brac stands: ETAGERES

53D: Demonstrate subservience: KNEEL. Not always a sign of "subservience".

54D: Very dry, as champagne: BRUT

58D: Projecting rock: CRAG. The name Craig is derived from CRAG, right, Mr. Bond (Daniel Craig)?

59D: Peak on Thessaly: OSSA. Holy moley, do you know that OS is a stand-alone Latin word for bone? And OSSA is its plural form. I always thought it's a prefix like "osteo".

62D: Bridge team: THEY. I presume the other team is WE. I am a dummy. Will never understand this game. See this photo. We/THEY are on written on the top.

C.C.

Sunday February 22, 2009 Michael T. Williams

Theme: Canine Collection

32A: Simpson's pooch: SANTA'S LITTLE HELPER

50A: Disney pooch: OLD YELLER

82A: Comic strip pooch: MARMADUKE

103A: Roy Rogers' pooch: BULLET THE WONDER DOG

7D: Cartoon pooch: DOGGIE DADDY

24D: Silver screen pooch: RIN TIN TIN

69D: Cartoon pooch: AUGIE DOGGIE

71D: Animated pooch: SCOOBY- DOO

Scroll down the first page to read Argyle's post on Barry's special puzzle for us.

Our TMS crossword superstars ASTA and LASSIE are missing.

I had never heard of DOGGIE DADDY or AUGIE DOGGIE or MARMADUKE. But they were quite inferable. The upper right corner where CALX /HRA/GORE-TEX intersect was impossible for me.

I also went through huge trouble filling in CROTON. I wonder why the constructor did not pick up Peggy NOONAN for clue 110A ("Gentleman prefer Blondes" co-star). Is Tommy NOONAN a very famous name? All I could think of is Marilyn Monroe. I like Peggy NOONAN. Bush's former speech writer Michael Gerson also writes very well-reasoned piece, though I often disagree with what they say.

I think "Ancient" needs to be added to the EDOM clue (55A: Dead Sea kingdom). I also disliked the clue for DIA (101A: Dist. across). It should be "Dist. across a circle".

Across:

15A: Shamus: TEC. Did not know "Shamus" is a slang for detective.

21A: Old-time actress Menken: ADAH. She was in our puzzle yesterday. Dumas' love interest.

22A: Govt. med. grp.: HRA (Health Reimbursement Accounts). Not a familiar grp. to me. I wanted HMO.

23A: Pat who shot Billy: GARRETT. Unknown figure. A real photo of Billy the Kid with gun is probably very valuable now.

31A: Waterproof fabric: GORE-TEX. I forgot. It appeared in our puzzle before. Used in raincoat I suppose.

28A: Xmas honcho: ST. NICK

35A: Sahl and Drucker: MORTS. MORT Drucker is the MAD cartoonist.

38A: Laura of LPGA: DAVIES. Here is Laura Davies with John Daly. Funny pair. I've seen her several times in person. She never uses tee. She just kicks in the ground with her shoes and forms a little bulge to put her ball on. There is another Laura in LPGA, Laura Diaz. She used to be very good.

44A: Lower layer of Earth's outer crust: SIMA. Silica and Magnesium. I forgot of course.

46A: McKellen and McShane: IANS. Did not know the English actor IAN McShane.

48A: Strasbourg's region: ALSACE. The pink area: ALSACE-Lorraine. I think the food there is very German.

57A: Shinto gateway: TORII. TORII gate. I finally remember this name because of Angels' TORII Hunter (ex-Twin).

60A: Violin-maker Amati: ANDREA. Good to know. AMATI if often clued as "Valuable violin".

68A: __ buena: YERBA. Not a familiar herb to me. Kind of mint.

73A: Comic Crosby: NORM. I wanted BING. Have never heard of NORM Crosby.

77A: Come to pass: OCCUR

96A: Lay it on thick: BEDAUB. Besmear. What a waste of two letter BE.

99A: Danube tributary: ISAR. OK, see here. Click on it, the map will enlarge. The river flows through Munich.

102A: Floral clusters: CYMES. No idea. My goodness, so many names for flower clusters.

107A: Skip like a stone: SKITTER. Did not like the SKI repetition.

112A: Long-haired felines: PERSIANS

114A: Space juice?: TANG

115A: __ de Saint-Exupery: ANTOINE. No idea. He was a French author. His image was on France's 50-franc note before Euro.

117A: Noninvasive med. exams: MRIS

118A: 2501: MMDI

120A: "Born on the Bayou" grp.: CCR (Credence Clearwater Rivival). Here is the song.

125A: J. J. Pershing's troops: AEF (American Expeditionary Force). Was this a gimme to you? I've never heard of General Pershing or his WWI troops.

Down:

2D: Reaches base after a bunt: BEATS OUT. Nick Punto needs to learn how to bunt. He is just awful.

3D: O'Higgins of Chile: BERNARDO. Another google. His position sounds like that of our second President John Adams, right?

5D: Alaska city on Baranof Island: SITKA. This has become a gimme. Largest city in the US by area.

11D: Brits. flyboys: RAF (Royal Air Force). Churchill had a famous saying about RAF: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." History has really been made by a few.

13D: Macmillan or Wilson: HAROLD. Both served as Prime Minister of the UK.

14D: Everest guide: SHERPA

15D: Franz Kafka novel: THE TRIAL. Know the book. Have never read it though.

16D: First name in mysteries: ERLE. ERLE Stanley Gardner.

17D: Crumbly metal residue: CALX. Struggled mightily with this weird word. It just looks so wrong, with LX together.

27D: Granary pests: WEEVILS

29D: Indians' third baseman of the 1950's: AL ROSEN. I have this card (reprint). He once said: "The greatest thrill in the world is to end the game with a home run and watch everybody else walk off the field while you're running the bases on air. "

34D: Lincoln's V.P.: HAMLIN. No idea. I thought it's Andrew Johnson. Why did President Lincoln ditch him after the first term then?

51D: Noted drama school: YALE. Easily inferable. Who are the famous YALE drama graduates?

52D: Catcher Howard: ELSTON. First African-American to play for the Yankees.

54D: Brown shade: SIENNA

60D: Agamemnon's father: ATREUS. Had to google again. Agamemnon is the brother-in- law of Helen of Troy. Obviously he played a huge role in the Trojan War. When he returned home, he and his concubine Cassandra were killed by his wife, who was then murdered by their son, who was being pursued by Erinyes (the three Furies) in this picture I linked a few months ago.

63D: Def. mil.grp.: TAC (Tactical Air Command). SAC is Strategic Air Command. Both are unfamiliar abbreviations to me.

76D: Group fund: TONTINE. No idea. What is it?

78D: Two dots over vowels: UMLAUTS. Like the two dots above Häagen-Dazs.

84D: Cardinals: RED BIRDS

86D: Mortarboard tosser: GRAD. These guys.

88D: Daryle of gridiron: LAMONICA. Sigh. Maybe Daryle LAMONICA can send me his autographed card. Then I will remember him. La Monica, what a strange name.

93D: Gandhi's title: MAHATMA. The title was given to him by Tagore.

97D: Last syllable of a word: ULTIMA. The next to last syllable is penultima.

98D: Vaguely outlined: BLEARY

100D: Make over: REVAMP

102D: New York reservoir: CROTON. This word gave me the most trouble. I stared at ?R??ON there forever. Have never heard of the CROTON Reservoir.

104D: Banks of Wrigley: ERNIE. This is his rookie card. He is a HOFer of course. 1954 is also Hank Aaron's rookie season.

108D: Berry and Norton: KENS. Easy guess. KEN Norton is multi-time world champion heavyweight boxer. Ex-Marine. Three KEN Berry's here, I don't know which one the constructor was thinking.

C.C.