Tuesday February 24, 2009 Willy A. Wiseman

Theme: Double O

17A: Kenny Loggins hit: FOOT LOOSE

22A: Handyman's space: TOOL ROOM

33A: Alternative to a T-top: MOON ROOF

40A: Chef's reading: COOKBOOK

49A: Make light of: POOH-POOH

59A: Handsomeness: GOOD LOOK

11D: Cereal brand: FROOT LOOPS

27D: Expectorant source: BLOODROOTS

I have never heard of BLOODROOTS before. They look so clean and innocent. I think I am more of a "Double O" CHOO-CHOO solver rather than a BLOODROOTS one. The clue "Expectorant" is too sophisticated for me to understand.

Too bad GOODEN (45D: Former Mets pitcher), the rotational partner for BOOBOO (5D: Child's injury), is not called GOO GOO, otherwise, We would have one more pair of theme answers.

Dwight GOODEN ruined his career with drug abuse. His rookie season is 1985, the same as Kirby Puckett's and Roger Clemens'. Now Kirby is dead, Clemens is implicated in steroid scandal.

Structurally this is an outstanding puzzle, with total 38 Os in the grid, easily smashed NY Time's 34 Os record created on Dec 16, 1993.

Also, there are 68 theme squares, that's about 35% of the total fills (Total: 191. And 34 blocks). I think that's the most I've encountered in a TMS puzzle.

But I was not excited about this puzzle at all. Too many Os confused me. I like daily puzzles with no more than 5 theme entries.

Across:

5A: A/C figures: BTUS (British Thermal Units). Memorized from doing the Xword. I don't really know what the heck BTU measures.

9A: To the most extreme degree: BY FAR. Really? I've never used "BY FAR" this way. Maybe I confuse BY FAR with SO FAR.

15A: Birthplace of Camembert: ORNE. No idea. ORNE is a department in the northwest of France, named named after the ORNE River. Every time I see Camembert, Dali's "Melting Clock"("The Persistence of Memory") pops into my head. He was inspired by the leftover Camembert cheese dissolving on a hot summer's day.

19A: Feel rapture: SWOON. Its rotational symmetrical partner is BROOD (58A: Hatch eggs). I would prefer BROOD clued as "Feel moody" to contrast "Feel rapture".

20A: Deprive of strength: ENFEEBLE. Thought of ENERVATE, which has 8 letters also.

21A: Fit in: BELONG. Embien, why "You BELONG with me" instead of "You BELONG to me"?

25A: Queen of the fairies: MAB. Coined by Shakespeare. MAB is supposedly "a tiny fairy who comes to people when they sleep. Then she haunts their dreams by making the person dream of what they want and cannot have." Sounds very cruel, doesn't it? Reminds me of Odin's wife Frigg. She has the prophecy power yet she never reveals to others what she knows.

37A: Le Mans lasses: abbr.: MLLES. Got the answer. Did not know where Le Mans is. Quite close to Paris. Host to the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans car race, whatever it is. Know nothing about Grand Prix or Formula One racing. Doubt I will ever be interested. What a mess! You, sir, should have resigned a year ago.

42A: Newton's fruit?: APPLE. Good clue. Could be FIG too.

47A: Shortened bk: ABR (Abridged)

52A: Freetown moola: LEONES. See these banknotes. Had no idea that Freetown is the capital of Sierra Leone. Now, there is word describing a Middle East sheik or some big potatoe. It spells similiar to moola. What is that word? This is really bothering me. It's not moula.

54A: Formal written defense: APOLOGIA. New word to me. Any famous one in history?

60A: MetLife rival: AETNA. Named after the Sicilian vocano I suppose.

63A: Stuffy-sounding: NASAL

Down:

2D: Carolina university: ELON. See this Phoenix Rising statue at ELON University. Their sports teams are called the Phoenix. Learned from doing Xword.

4D: Church coral work: MOTET. I forgot this word. It's "a composition based on a sacred text and usually sung without accompaniment". Rooted in French word "mot".

6D: Ogre associates: TROLLS. I once had a beautifully ugly Norwegian TROLL similar to this one. The real deal.

7D: Family of Indy winners: UNSER

9D: First, second or third infielder: BASEMAN. My favorite BASEMAN.

10D: Mournful wail: YOWL. In Chinese countryside, those villagers really YOWL at the funerals, as if the loudness of their YOWL is the measurement of their love for the deceased.

12D: Egyptian symbols: ATONS. Or ATENS. I am used to the "Egyptian sun god" clue. I have a question JD: If the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs contained only consonants and involved no vowels, why did the moderan interpreation become ATON/ATEN instead of ATIN/ATUN?

18D: Spinks and Ames: LEONS. Bill mentioned the boxer LEON Spinks last time, but I forgot. I also did not know the actor LEON Ames.

21D: Julius or Guy of golf: BOROS. Julius is in Golf HOF. Nothing extraordinary about his son Guy. I've never heard of their names before. Too obscure.

25D: 1700 in letters: MDCC

26D: Saab model: AERO. More often see AERO clued as "Prefix for dynamics".

41D: Two-footed: BIPEDAL. Only know BIPED.

44D: Place side by side: APPOSE. How is it different from juxtapose?

47D: Composer Berg: ALBAN. Why do keep I forgetting this Austrian composer?

48D: Suburb of Cleveland: BEREA. Bloody blue murder! No idea. What's so special about this suburb?

50D: Hawaiian word for foreign: HAOLE. Just learned this word a few days ago. It actually only refers to white people.

53D: Nine: pref.: NONA. As in nonagon. New to me. I only know NONET, the composition for group of nine. Our editor clued ENNEA as "Nine: pref: " before.

55D: Wound from a bullfight: GORE. Come on, this is really "The Assault on Reason", Mr. Editor. Why "Wound" when you have a Nobel Peace/Oscar winner as clue?

C.C.

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.