Sunday April 5, 2009 Will Nediger

Theme: In the Nonfiction Section (Add HOW to a familiar phrase)

23A: Handbook of euphemisms?: HOW TO PUT IT MILDLY

37A: Manual for talk show guests? HOW TO BE ANNOUNCED

44A: Guide for sore losers?: HOW TO BLAME

62A: Self-help book for compulsive liars?: HOW TO BE PERFECTLY FRANK

78A: Reference work for modelists?: HOW TO SCALE

85A: Vade mecum for neologists?: HOW TO COIN A PHRASE

105A: Therapeutic book for blowhards?: HOW TO SAY THE LEAST

I did not know a modelist is a person who makes models (as of planes). And I also did not know the meaning of "Vade mecum (manual, literally "go with me" in Latin). I think I need a dummy's "How to Read Rich Norris' Mind" crossword guide.

Look at these tricky clues he devised:

56A: Bouncer?: BALL. Sure, BALL bounces. I saw the question mark in his clue. And I know he is trying to play with my mind, yet I was still fixed on the bar bouncers.

13D: Take-out order?: DELE. Once again, the question mark did nothing to prevent me from thinking of food. I am so used to the "Editor's mark" clue.

30D: Notions holder: ETUI. To me, "notions" are just ideas. So I wanted HEAD. I was totally ignorant of the "small articles, such as buttons, thread, ribbon, and other personal items" meaning of "notions".

They are clever and entertaining clues once you understand the rationale. But quite frustrating if you can't think outside the box and see where the editor is trying to mislead you. Anyway, I picked up where I left yesterday. Another round of struggle.

Now looking back at my finished grid, I feel that I know lots of answers. But the cluing is so vastly different from the old Williams style that the puzzle was made so much harder to solve.

Oh, why "Ring site" for EAR (107D)? The "Ring" here is not earring, isn't it?

Across:

1A: Motorists' warnings: HONKS. My husband loses patience easily and HONKS when I don't think he should.

6A: A great deal: GOBS. And A TAD (103D: To a slight extend).

15A: "Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer" musical: CATS. Know the musical. Have never heard of the song. Very intimidating clue.

20A: Nimbus: AURA

21A: Humble home: HOVEL. I like the alliteration.

22A: Where Camus' "The Plague" is set: ORAN. Camus was born here, so was Yves Saint Laurent.

26A: Opening word?: MAMA. I thought of opening word in a letter, so I wanted DEAR.

27A: MD's workplaces: ORS. ERS too.

28A: Film introduction?: MICRO. Microfilm.

29A: Close call: SCARE

30A: Hinder: EMBAR

31A: Thread-spinning Fate: CLOTHO. No idea. Have never heard of the Moirae the Three Fates before. Only knew the three Furies (Erinyes) who are chasing Orestes.

33A: It's commonly twisted: ANKLE. I was thinking of PLOT.

34A: Sight in le ciel: ETOILE. Might be tough for those who don't speak French. "Le ciel" is "the sky". "Star in le ciel" would have been an easier clue.

40A: Large envelope feature: CLASP

43A: Patty Hearst alias: TANIA. Unknown to me. Surprised to learn that Patty Hearst is still alive.

48A: He played Sheldon in "Misery": CAAN (James). Someone mentioned this film at the Comments section a few months ago.

50A: Future elm: SEED. Oh well, I thought there might be a special term for the seed, like ACORN for "Future oak".

54A: Sushi fish: EEL. Or AHI occasionally.

55A: Item stolen in Pope's "The Rape of the Lock": TRESS. Uh-uh, nope. Have never heard of this Pope poem. I was confused by the title, thinking of the door lock.

57A: Bareback rider's lack: SADDLE

59A: Hindu god who rides a bull named Nandi: SHIVA. This detailed clue only makes the answer harder for me to obtain. I know SHIVA the "destroyer". Had no idea that he rides a bull. Why those male gods are pictured as feminine is beyond me.

60A: Programmer's output: CODE

61A: Bronze coatings: PATINAS. Heard this word a lot in Antique Roadshows.

67A: U-Haul rental: TRAILER

68A: Drift gracefully: WAFT. Why "gracefully"?

69A: Hard thing to kick: HABIT. Good clue. What's the one bad HABIT you want to get rid of now?

70A: Penn pal: TELLER. Tough clue for me. I am not familiar with Penn & TELLER . Are they very famous?

71A: Nincompoop: BOZO

72A: Lord's home: MANOR. Thought "Lord" was God.

76A: Facebook user's nudge: POKE. No idea. Not into Facebook or Twitter.

77A: Stand-up comic's need: MIKE. "Karaoke need" too.

80A: "Use your head": THINK. Well, obviously I don't know how to "Use my head". The answer did not come to me readily at all.

84A: Antidote target: TOXIN. What's the difference between antidote and antibody?

93A: Jason's vessel: ARGO. His band mates are called Argonauts. I can't remember the story. Did they find the Golden Fleece in the end?

94A: Melodious: ARIOSE. Need to chew some acorn. I can never remember this word.

95A: Drinks for Radar: NEHIS. Very odd poster. What is she holding on her hands?

96A: Get lovey-dovey: CUDDLE. And NESTLE (88D: Get cozy). So sweet!

98A: "Bingo!": RIGHT

99A: Quaint denial: TISNT. No idea. It isn't?

100A: Fencer's move: LUNGE

101A: Flapper's wrapper: BOA. Love the rhyme in the clues. All these flappers seem to have short hair.

104A: Venetian elder of yore: DOGE. Learned this word from doing Xword. It's like English "duke".

108A: __ Girl: former teen fashion mag: ELLE. Oh, I was unaware the short life of ELLE Girl (August 2001-July 2006).

109A: Colorado senator Mark: UDALL. No idea. He needs to appear on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" often for me to pay attention to him. Last time Wayne Williams clued UDALL as "Morris or Stewart of Arizona". I suppose they are all related somehow.

110A: Court statement: PLEA

111A: Jazzman Hines: FATHA. No, I don't know this Earl Hines nickname. What does it mean? Father?

112A: React in shock: REEL

113A: Ready to ship: BOXED. My first reaction is CRATED.

114A: "Sesame Street" guy with a unibrow: BERT. Learned his name from doing crossword. Who's the guy on the left?

115A: Walk, often lightly: TREAD. Really? If TREAD already means "Walk, often lightly", why do we often say TREAD lightly?

Down:

1D: "The Farmer in the Dell" syllables: HI-HO

2D: Wavy lines, in comics: ODOR. I like this clue.

3D: Scrolling 25-Down feature: NEWS CRAWL. And MSNBC (25D: 24-hr. news source)

5D: Replay technique: SLO-MO

6D: Pampean cowboy: GAUCHO. Does GAUCHO and gauche have the same root?

7D: Beat in a regatta: OUTROW. Holy cow! This is a real word. I thought it's made-up.

8D: Con__: spiritedly: BRIO. I bet it's a gimme for Crockett.

9D: Took a load off: SAT

10D: Actor Alan: THICKE. New actor to me. A Canadian. Wikipedia says he was in "Growing Pains".

11D: "Très chic!": OO LA LA

12D: Blockbuster transaction: DVD RENTAL. The cluster of 4 consonants at the beginning of the fill looks quite cool together.

15D: Utterly ordinary: COMMON AS DIRT

16D: Mauritania's official language: ARABIC. I don't where Mauritania is. Dictionary says it's a former French colony. I am surprised that ARABIC is their official language then.

17D: Food wrapped in a corn husk: TAMALE

18D: Trapped: SNARED

24D: Heart: PITH

32D: Complex ABC drama: LOST

36D: Baffin Bay sighting: FLOE. See this map of Baffin Bay. I need an "Arctic" clue for the answer to leap to me.

38D: Rolaids rival: TUMS

41D: Road problem: POTHOLE

45D: Hush money payer: BRIBER

46D: Obsolescent vote finalizer: LEVER. Unknown to me. Here is a picture of a LEVER voting machine when I googled.

47D: Exec's "Fast": ASAP

48D: Citadel student: CADET. Would have got the answer immediately if the clue were "West Point student". I am not familiar with the military college The Citadel.

52D: Panache: ELAN

53: Student's station: DESK

56D: Big, in Variety: BOFFO. Here are more Variety jargon.

57D: Make a peep: SAY BOO. Why? I don't grok it at all.

58D: To begin with: AT FIRST

59D: Part of a femme fatale's outfit: STILETTO HEEL. Great answer.

60D: Pet rocks, once: CRAZE. We had a wild Twins medallions CRAZE several years ago.

65D: Fighter in the Battle for Endor: EWOK. Once again, the extra information in the clue is useless to me. I am used to the "Furry "Star Wars"creature" clue.

66D: Spring event: THAW

71D: Sunbather's depilatory: BIKINI WAX. Another great fill.

72D: Heath: MOOR

73D: 2008 economic stimulus provision: TAX REBATE. I like this answer also.

74D: Sacha Baron Cohen persona: ALI G. Were you thinking of Borat?

77D: 6, on a phone: MNO

79D: West Virginia resource: COAL. China accounts for almost 4/5 of the total deaths in COAL mine accidents.

81D: Party giver: HOST

82D: Bar stock: ICE

83D: Barely rains: SPITS. Dictionary defines SPIT as "fall in scattered drops or flakes, as rain or snow". New to me also.

85D: Higher on the Mohs scale: HARDER. Good clue. Diamond is 10 in Mohs scale.

86D: Colorful songbird: ORIOLE. Cal Ripken Jr. is an ORIOLE too. The price of his baseball cards really does not reflect his achievements.

87D: Toe movement: WIGGLE

89D: California's governor, facetiously: AHNOLD. Because of his accent? I got the answer. Don't understand the reason.

90D: More intense: ACUTER

91D: Beach topper: SUN HAT

92D: Trim or rim: EDGE. D'oh. Of course! V-8 moment for me.

97D: Jan Vermeer's hometown: DELFT. I like Vermeer's "Milkmaid" and "Girl with a Pearl Earring"(the Scarlett Johansson movie is good too). But I don't know he was born in DELFT, a city noted for its fine blue-and-white pottery.

99D: List heading: TO DO

102D: Wrokplace stds. org.: OSHA

105D: Where spokes meet: HUB

106D: LAPD alert: APB. This is probaly the only LA reference today.

Answer Grid.

C.C.

Saturday April 4, 2009 Robert A. Doll

Theme: None

Total blocks: 30

Total words: 72

Still remember Patrick Berry's trick to count total words in a grid? You add the number of upper-left corners (the numbered squares that form the starts of two entries), and then add that to the grid's highest number. In today's grid, the number of those upper-left corners is 6: MARY JANE/MCI, LADY DI/LIMO, BOBS/BAS, RHYMES/RIOS, PLEASURE/PT BOATS, ANTE/ATTYS. And the grid's highest number is 66 (Across). So we have total 72 words, the maximum allowed for a themeless Saturday puzzle (78 for themed one).

A complete disaster for me this morning. Definitely need more time to get used to Rich Norris' multiple words and tricky clues.

I don't know. Last Saturday I was able to fill in lots of blanks. Not much luck today. Rich Norris is starting to show his true color. "Toto, I've a feeling we are not in Kansas any more." The good news is that most of my fills are correct. So I think I am making progress.

I like how EXTREME MEASURES (8D: "Outside the box" solutions) is positioned in the grid. But I don't understand the rationale for the clue. Why? Is "Outside the box" a movie? Why it's in quotation marks?

Across:

1A: Spider-Man's girl: MARY JANE. Stumped immediately. Could only think of Kirsten Dunst who played MARY JANE in "Spider-Man". I like her in "Marie Antoinette".

2A: "Candle in the Wind" dedicatee: LADY DI. Another stumper. Wanted DIANA, then thought of the original dedicatee Marilyn Monroe. Neither would fit. More familiar with the title Princess Di than LADY DI.

15A: French town at the foot of Mont Blanc: CHAMONIX. Non. Je n'ai aucune idée. See this map. Wikipedia says the first Winter Olympics was held here in 1924.

16A: "That was exhausting!": I'M BEAT. Yeah, that's how I am feeling now.

17A: Red-handed: IN THE ACT

18A: Ltr. opener: MESSRS. This is the old fashioned way, isn't it? (Note from Kazie: MESSRS is actually French, short for Messieurs, plural of Monsieur, because the possessive (mon/ma/mes) changes to agree with the noun (c.f. Madame/Mademoiselle/Mesdames). English simply borrowed yet another French term instead of creating its own.)

19A: "Flowers for __": Daniel Keyes sci-fi classic: ALGERNON. Nope. I've never heard of the book or the author. Wikipedia says it won the Hugo Award for best Short Story in 1960.

22A: Drifts on waves: BOBS. Does this refer to fisherman's bobbers bobbing?

26A: Extended operatic solo: SCENA. New word to me. Dictionary defines SCENA as "an extended operatic vocal solo, usually including an aria and a recitative."

28A: Like: A LA

29A: Wear and tear, e.g.: RHYMES. V-8 moment for me. Great clue.

32A: Gold medals, in Guadalajara: OROS. Not medallas de ORO?

33A: Spaghetti western director Leone: SERGIO. I've heard of these major movies he made. Did not know his name though. Thought SERGIO is a Spanish name, as in golfer SERGIO Garcia. But SERGIO Leone is an Italian.

35A: Completeness: ENTIRETY

37A: "Hawaii Five-O" order: BOOK 'EM DANNO. Someone mentioned this catchprase on the Comments section a few weeks ago. But I blanked this morning.

39A: Hedonist's pursuit: PLEASURE. What's the difference between Hedonism and Epicureanism again?

41A: Bursts: ERUPTS. Reminds me of the SCORIA clue we had last June: "Volcanic rock ejecta". I think that's how we started this "Holy hotwick lava bomb".

44A: U. of Maryland athlete: TERP

45A: One of numerous childhood spots?: MEASLE. I was picturing my childhood playground, not any MEASLE spot. Clever clue.

47A: Goddess of dawn: EOS. Aurora for the Romans. Just mentioned yesterday that George Sand's original name is Aurore. Dennis quoted her "Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age." last time.

48A: Military operations centers: BASES

50A: CBS forensic drama: CSI

51A: Prelude to a deal: ANTES. Poker. Not the business deal I was thinking.

52A: Not in favor: Abbr. OPP. Opposed.

53A: Peevish: PETULANT

57A: Kind of number of clock: ATOMIC. What is ATOMIC clock again? My memory is so bad now.

59A: Communicate well with: RELATE TO. John Daly's swing & his demeanor are so hard to RELATE TO, yet he has so many followers.

63A: Ability: TALENT. Are they really the same?

64A: Competitor's payment: ENTRY FEE. I always associate "Competitor" with "rival" rather than one who competes.

65A: Music provider: STEREO

66A: Hangs around to see: STAYS FOR

Down:

1D: Early 12th century year: MCI. 1101. Easiest fill in the grid.

2D: Philip of "Kung Fu": AHN. I mentioned last time that AHN is Ang in Chinese, as in director Ang Lee. Or simply AN, literally "peace". Korean Hanja uses lots of old Chinese characters.

4D: Jewish Community Center grps: YMHAS (Young Men's Hebrew Associations). New to me.

5D: One of the Coen brothers: JOEL. He is married to Frances McDormand, "Marge" in "Fargo". The Coen brothers were born and grew up here in MN, so our local media follows them very closely.

6D: "I hate to be _ , but ...": complaint opening: A NAG

7D: With grace: NICELY

9D: Prom coach: LIMO. Have never heard of LIMO referred to as a coach.

10D: Words of agreement: AMENS

11D: Sound units, briefly: DBS. Know decibles, not familiar with the abbreviation though.

12D: Post-Katrina retail sign, perhaps: YES WE'RE OPEN. Did not come to me readily.

13D: Are afraid to: DARE NOT

14D: "Piece of cake": IT'S EASY. No sir, this puzzle is hard.

20D: Incessantly: NO END. Like today's multiple words, NO END, so many.

22D: __-relief: BAS. Or low relief. And high relief (alto-relievo) & sunkun relief, the three main types of relief.

24D: Familiar red-white-and-blue symbol: BARBER'S POLE. I was thinking of flag.

27D: Latin horn: CORNU. Oh, is that how we got cornucopia? It's horn-shaped.

29D: Mexico's San Juan and Conchos, e.g.: RIOS. Thought they are just cities. Have never heard of those two Mexican flow-ers.

30D: Nonsense: HOKUM

31D: French-Swiss author Madame de __: STAEL. I tried to connect this lady with Lesley Stahl, as STAEL & Stahl has the same pronunciation. That's a very odd portrait, no earrings, no necklace, no bracelet, not even a flower in her hand.

34D: Lose it: GO APE

36D: Concerning: IN RE. Sometimes the answer is AS TO.

39D: Mosquito Fleet craft: PT BOATS. Knew PT BOATS (Patrol Torpedo Boats) from reading various JFK biographies. Have never heard of the term Mosquito Fleet. See definition #6. Why "Mosquito"?

40D: Was enthusiastic about: LEAPT AT

46D: Like some partners: SILENT. SILENT partner is "One that makes financial investments in a business enterprise but does not participate in its management." It's a new term to me. I was thinking of SAME SEX.

49D: Gumption: SPINE. Thought of SPUNK.

51D: Some partners: Abbr.: ATTYS. Hard one. But I like the clue.

54D: __-1: "Ghostbusters" vehicle: ECTO. No idea. Have never heard of the car ECTO-1 or the movie "Ghostbusters". ECTO is always clued as "Prefix for outside" in our old puzzle.

55D: Resort near Snowbird: ALTA. See this map. I've never heard of the name Snowbird. Is it a city? A county?

56D: Not: NARY. I need " __ a one" for the answer to leap to me immediately.

58D: Debussy subject: MER. Debussy's "La MER".

60D: Reason for a repeat?: EFF. Maybe it's a gimme for all you teachers. But it's a tough clue for me. I was not in the test score direction at all. In China, you pass when your score is 60 (out of 100).

61D: Auto racer Fabi: TEO. Absolutely no idea. Not a racing fan. Know nothing about TEO Fabi or Formula One, except their boss Max Mosley's sensational scandal.

Answer Grid.

C.C.