Monday March 2, 2009 Jo Vita

Theme: Put on a Hat!

17A: Fish farms: HATCHERIES

25A: Three consecutive goals: HAT TRICK

53A: Carolina cape: HATTERAS

62A: Female pharaoh: HATSHEPSUT

11D: Location of Southern Miss: HATTIESBURG

24D: Sharp-featured visage: HATCHET FACE

Luckily we had HAT TRICK in our puzzle last week. Otherwise, I would have struck out six straight times. HATSHEPSUT looks insanely wrong to me. Wikipedia says this lady was the fifth pharaoh of Egypt, and is generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful ones.

Took me a while to realize CIT (3D: U. S. voter) stands for citizen. Is it a common abbreviation? I was not familiar with it at all. I love America and American politics, but I don't have the right to vote. I don't have the patience and courage to go through INS application again. They screwed up my green card big last time. Obviously my Chinese name Zhouqin needs a "u" to make sense to others.

I'd like to have a survey today. If you read this blog every day, can you pop into the Comments section and introduce yourself? Tell me which city/state you are from. Maybe your favorite breakfast too.

Here is the detailed instruction on how to post a comment. I look forward to hearing from you. (Note: Please post your comment on today's Comments section rather than the instruction Comments part).

Across:

1A: Chocolate coffee: MOCHA. Named after the Yemen port city MOCHA, from which the coffee was exported. Yemen is the birthplace of coffee cultivation. But Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee itself.

10A: Cartoonist Addams: CHAS. No idea. Nickname for Charles? The creator of "The Addams Family".

30A: Nearby things: THESE. Oh, "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)". I always thought they are made of THESE.

35A: Full of worthless stuff: DROSSY. Only know DROSS.

38A: Golfer Mediate: ROCCO. Gimme. ROCCO Mediate finished second at US Open last year. I don't know. I can never warm up to this guy. Maybe he needs to change his glasses.

40A: A-Team guy: MR. T

42A: Pianist Blake: EUBIE. Ah, EUBIE, why did you pick up this nickname? So hard for me to remember.

43A: In heaven: ON HIGH

47A: Chinawood oil: TUNG. Glory be! Have never heard of TUNG oil before. It's used as varnish ingredient for furniture. I recognized the Chinese character for TUNG tree (油桐) when I googled. Did not know it's also called China wood-oil tree.

56A: Martina of tennis: HINGIS. Shocked to learn she used cocaine. Maybe she should not have broken up with Sergio Garcia. They were cute together. Sergio is a close amigo of Rafael Nadal. And Tiger Woods is of course rooting for his pal Roger Federer. Now you know Tiger and Sergio are no real buddies. Hope US Open (Bethpage Black) this year is as entertaining as the 2002 one.

59A: Caspian sturgeon: BELUGA. This looks dangerous. I did not know BELUGA is that huge. What is the average size of BELUGA caviar then?

66A: 750 in letters: DCCL

67A: Cinema pooch: ASTA. And ASTRO (22D: "The Jetsons").

68A: TV journalist Frank: SESNO. I know how he looks like, but would not have got his name without the down fills. He used to appear on Wolf Blitzer's "The Situation Room" often.

71A: Hebrew letter: TSADI. Nope. Can also be spelled as TSADE or SADHE. 18th of the 22 Hebrew letter. I only know the first one ALEF.

Down:

2D: Can or cup ending: OLA. I cook with canola oil. Oliver oil is too strong for me.

4D: One hundred : pref.: HECTO. As in hectogram. I know this prefix when I see it. But I can't spell it out without adjecent help.

12D: "Toys in the __": ATTIC. Easy guess. Not familiar with this Aerosmith album. Hmmm, Aerosmith sounds like a great name to play for an AERO clue. "Smith intro/head?".

23D: Eating utensil: SPOON. Bet Dennis wanted FORK. I really really like this Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture. That SPOON weighs about 5,800 pounds. Walker Arts Center just removed the cherry (1,200 pounds) to give it a fresh paint.

26D: Religious deg.: TH. D. (Theologicae Doctor). Doctor of Theology. Not a familiar abbreviation to me. Know SEM (29D: Theol. sch.) though.

32D: Minute trace: SCINTILLA

34D: Altar constellation: ARA. See this diagram. Latin for "Altar".

37D: Safecrackers: YEGGS. I wonder what's the origin of YEGG. It sounds Hebrew to me.

46D: Yep: UH-HUH

49D: "__ Cannonball": WABASH. Is this a very well-known song? I've never heard of it before. Very strange song title.

51D: Abridged version: DIGEST

55D: Fracas: SET-TO. Reminds me of the slangy & obscure squabble word RHUBARB we had last time.

65D: You, to Yves: TOI. "... C'est TOI pour moi. Moi pour TOI...."

C.C.

Sunday March 1, 2009 Willy A Wiseman

Theme: Verbatim

23A: Bankruptcy reorganization: CHAPTER ELEVEN

39A: Felon's full term: LIFE SENTENCE

61A: Annual muscleman contest: MR. UNIVERSE

85A: Repeat, but not verbatim: PARAPHRASE

104A: Japanese compact model: NISSAN STANZA

125A: Product for contemporary penners: MICROSOFT WORD

17D: Tim Allen film: THE SANTA CLAUSE

50D: NYC talk show host: DAVID LETTERMAN

I am confused by the theme title. All the above theme answers feel like part of a virtual epic poem. I don't know how they are connected to "Verbatim". Maybe I don't fully understand the meaning of "Verbatim".

Not a very tough puzzle. Some of the obscure answers are gettable from crossing fills. Still, I had to rely on Google for some thorny sticklers. But it's just such a bothering solving experience. I was/am clueless about the theme.

Some quibbles:

13A: Device for tossing empties: EJECTOR. It intersects OUSTED (18D), which is clued as "Ejected". Why not "Forced out"? Rod Blagojevich style!

41D: Dead Sea kingdom: EDOM. "Ancient" is needed for the clue.

79D: Crosses: SPANS. Intersects EONS (92D: Geologic span).

Is Barry Silk's "The Cruciverbalist" (NY Times syndication) puzzle in your paper today? Feel free to post your comments here. I am interested in what you have to say. Here is Dr. Dad's blog post on Barry Silk's LA Times themeless. Click here for Argyle's post on "Over and Over".

Across:

1A: Gloomy gus: SOURPUSS. Good clue alliteration.

9A: Lacking zip: SLOW. I interpreted "zip" as "oomph" rather than "speed". So the answer did not jump to me immediately.

20A: Irrationality: UNREASON. Did not know this is a word. It can also be a verb.

21A: Small and weak: PUNY. Mine was TINY initially.

28A: Handlelike parts: ANSAE. I can never remember this loopy word ANSA. Besides, I thought the plural form is ANSAS.

31A: Parts of bird wings: ALULAE. No idea. ALULAE is also called "Bastard Wing" or "Spurious Wing". Ala is Latin for "wing". The answer reminds me of "Spaces between leaf veins" AREOLES. Weird looking words.

38A: Radicals of the '60s: SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). Not a familiar group. I was thinking of SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) which is often clued as "Radical group". But they are of '70s. Wikipedia says Tom Hayden is one of the founders of SDS. I presume all their activities are related to Vietnam War protests.

44A: In force: VALID

45A: Willie Wonka creator: DAHL (Roald). Another PETR style odd looking name. Maybe his mom did not know how to spell Ronald, as Mark said the other day. (Note: DAHL means "valley" in Norwegian language.)

48A: South of France: MIDI. Need Kazie's help here. I wanted SUD (106D: Nord's opposite). To me, MIDI is "noon". The best explanation I could find is that "Midday is synonymous with the direction of south because in France the Sun is in the south at noon".

68A: In an irregularly notched fashion: EROSELY. Like these EROSE lips.

84A: Part of AST: ATL. I blanked on this one. AST is Atlantic Standard Time.

90A: Satellite of Jupiter: ELARA. This small moon escaped me long time ago. It's named after the mother by Zeus of the giant Tityus, who, according to Wikipedia, was phallic being who grew so vast that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia herself. Tityos attempted to rape Leto at the behest of Hera and was slain by Apollo and Artemis. As a punishment, he was stretched out in Hades and and tortured by two vultures who fed on his liver. This punishment is extremely similar to that of the Titan Promeheus, whose liver was eaten by a huge eagle every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day. Kind of like the dripping venom over Loki's face, right? Are you still reading? OK, what is phallic being?

96A: Racing org.: NHRA

102A: Dugout stack: BATS. Awesome bat. Every baseball bat I've seen seems to be made by Louisville Slugger. Why?

111A: Calais summers: ETES. See this map. Calais is French port nearest England. It's on the Strait of Dover.

112A: Soviet mil. intelligence: GRU. Absolutely no idea. I wrote down KGB. GRU stands for Glavnoe Razvedyvatel'noe Uupravlenie (Chief Intelligence Directorate). Founded in 1920 as a complement to the KGB.

123A: Homo sapiens: HOMINID. New word to me. Are we all HOMINID?

130A: Dimensions: abbr. MEAS. Measurement I presume.

131A: Island in the Baltic Sea: SAAREMAA. Nope! Lots of those words end with MAA? I suppose it means "land" in local language.

132A: Linear distances: LENGTHS

133A: Comic Johnson: ARTE. His name is tailor-made for crossword.

134A: In a stupid manner: OBTUSELY. I felt dense. The answer did not come to me easily.

Down:

1D: For example: SUCH AS

3D: Seventh planet: URANUS. Fun trivia. It has 27 known moons. all of which are named after characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

7D: Alphabetize: SORT. Mine was LIST.

8D: Macbeth's dagger: SNEE. Thought of dirk. Never know when to put which.

9D: Relieved: SPELLED. Forgot this definition.

10D: Jack Lemmon film: LUV. I guessed. Is it romantic?

12D: Keenan or Ed: WYNN. Ed WYNN is a comedian. Keenan the actor is his son. They were strangers to me.

13D: Of Icelandic tales: EDDAIC. Only know EDDA.

14D: "The Joker is Wild" subject: JOE E LEWIS. I googled this one. Played by Frank Sinatra. I like this Joe Lewis quote: "I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in 14 days I lost two weeks."

33D: Brennan and Heckart: EILEENS. I guessed. Don't know who they are.

42D: French student: ELEVE. Have not seen ECOLE in our puzzle for a long time.

47D: Fish for fertilizer: ALEWIFE. No idea. Why "fertilizer"? Are they not edible? Strange name. I can't find a fish that's named ALE HUSBAND.

55D: Indo-European: ARYAN. Why do I associate this word with Hitler?

57D: Distance measure: ROD. Unknown to me. "Distance" of what? And how long?

58D: Goddess of dawn: EOS. Aurora for the Romans. That's a perfect body. I want to have it.

63D: Slugger Garciaparra: NOMAR. He is married to Mia Hamm.

64D: Luigi's island: ISOLA. Is Luigi a common Italian name? Somehow I thought of the "Dracula" actor Bela Lugosi and started to imagine an island in Transylvania. My mind is not well constructed.

67D: Missionary Junipero: SERRA. The answer revealed itself. Have never heard of this guy.

75D: "Magnificent" Medici: LORENZO. Would not have got his name without the crossing fills. According to Wikipedia, this dude was the de factor ruler of the Florence Republic during the Italian Renaissance.

97D: More accessible: HANDIER

102D: Town near Jerusalem: BETHEL. A bit north of Jerusalem. Hebrew for "house of god". I only know Bethlehem.

105D: Sultan's decrees: IRADES. Arab for "Will/wish". I was only aware of FATWA, which is often issued by those terrorists.

107D: Over distance: pref.: TELO. As in Telodynamic, "pertaining to the transmission of mechanical power over considerable distances, as by means of endless cables on pulleys". I don't understand what I just wrote.

108D: DNA code: GENOME. Forgot. It's a combination of Gene & (chromos)om.

109D: Of religious rites: SACRAL. Another new word.

115D: "Love Boat" co-star: TEWES (Lauren). Well, the only "Love Boat" I was aware of is our Vikings' Love Boat Sex Scandale. But Daunte Culpepper won't fit. Lauren TEWES looks pretty, very fine facial LINEAMENTS.

121D: Utah city: MOAB. Was this city a gimme to you? I was stumped. The 4-letter answer for "Utah city" is always OREM.

C.C.