Saturday June 20, 2009 Michael Wiesenberg

Theme: None

Total blocks: 30

Total words: 70

For those who are not aware, our editor Rich Norris has eased up the puzzles to accommodate those who have difficulty adjusting to the late week LAT. In case you think you suddenly became cleverer and outsmarted him in the past several days.

Can you imagine this puzzle without the 4 "helper squares" on each corner? Probably a few obscure words.

Nice stacked-up long fills in Across:

1A: Much sought-after title object, in a 1930 mystery: MALTESE FALCON

14A: 1999 Winona Ryder movie: GIRL, INTERRUPTED

16A: Italian, e.g.: ROMANCE LANGUAGE

34A: Nose nipper in a Christmas song: JACK FROST

55A: Masthead listing: ASSOCIATE EDITOR

60A: Source of much hard wood?: PETRIFIED FOREST

61A: They have their ups and downs: TEETER TOTTERS

My first reaction for the Winona Ryder movie is "Autumn in New York", which also has 15 letters. I had trouble with 60A since I've never heard of petrified wood. I did get the FOREST part easily.

Favorite clue today is SOTS (50A: They're usually lit). So many slang for drunk: lit, stoned, bombed, loaded, etc.

Across:

17A: Desktop array: ICONS

18A: Word seen between surnames: NEE

19A: Partners may form one: Abbr.: LLC (Limited Liability Company). I penned in LTD first. How are those two different?

20A: Barcelona "but": PERO. No idea. It's MAIS in French.

21A: Scholarship-granting mil. program: ROTC

24A: "Got it": ROGER

26A: From Pitts. to Boston: ENE. This clue feels odd. "From ... to..." does not equal ENE grammatically. "Pitts to Boston direction" does.

27A: Catalog section: FOR HER. Had trouble obtaining this answer.

29A: Toons Pixie and Dixie, e.g.: MICE. Easy guess. I am not familiar with the "Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks" cartoon.

30A: Rare sign?: RED. Meat. Nice clue. Demi Moore eats only raw food.

31A: To be, to Brutus: ESSE

32A: Morphine, for one: OPIATE

36A: Altogether: IN TOTO. Learned this Latin phrase from doing Xword.

39A: P &G Pet Care brand: IAMS. Named after the founder Paul IAMS. I got the answer from Down fills. Alpo is all I know.

40A: Flesh-blood link: AND. Flesh AND blood. This refers to one's family, correct?

43A: Biceps toner: CURL. So you are a curler if you CURL?

44A: What you've got to do "if you want my love," in a Temptations song: EARN IT. I had ??RN IT sitting there forever. Thought of BURN IT.

47A: Prufrock's creator: ELIOT. Wiki says Prufrock comes from the German word "Prüfstein", meaning "touchstone". The book cover is so simple.

49A: French friend: AMIE. Female friend.

51A: Largest airport in OH: CLE. Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Unknown to me.

52A: Fuzzy TV E.T.: ALF

54A: Kind of butter: APPLE. I've yet to try APPLE butter. Looks just like jam.

Down:

1D: Epoch in which grazing mammals became widespread: MIOCENE. Mio is from Greek meíōn, meaning "less". Cene is a suffix for "recent".

2D: Well-protected, in a way: ARMORED

3D: Southwestern plain: LLANO

5D: Letter-bottom abbr.: ENC

6D: __-Thérèse, Quebec: STE

7D: Kabayaki fish: EEL. Yummy, yummy, kabayaki simply means "grilled EEL".

8D: Nice location?: FRANCE. The French city Nice.

9D: "Rule, Britannia" composer: ARNE

10D: German semiautomatic: LUGER. Named after its inventor Georg LUGER.

11D: Intel product, briefly: CPU

12D: Earache: OTALGIA. OT(o) is prefix for "ear", and algia is a suffix for "pain". New word to me. Quite close to "nostalgia".

13D: Allow to worsen: NEGLECT

14D: Malcontent: GRIPER. A malcontent person. I was thinking of the adjective.

15D: Fiat: DECREE. A 5-letter answer would be EDICT.

21D: Tanner of '70s-'80s tennis: ROSCOE. No idea. He is left-handed. Dictionary says ROSCOE is from Germanic words meaning “swift” and “horse.”

22D: City on the Ural: ORSK. This has become a gimme.

23D: 1991 Grisham novel: THE FIRM. I've yet to see the movie.

28D: Rent splitter: ROOMIE. Rent is also the past tense of the splitting word "rend".

34D: Island in the Sulu Archipelago: JOLO. See this map. I wanted JAVA.

36D: Polar feature: ICECAP

37D: Group with no members, in math: NULL SET. No idea. This diagram looks very interestingly complicated. Where is love?

38D: Port of NE Italy: TRIESTE. Here is a map. It's on the Adriatic Sea. Only one letter (E) more than the sorrowful word "triste".

41D: Red figure: NET LOSS

42D: Joshua tree habitat: DESERT. The answer revealed itself. Joshua tree sounds biblical.

45D: Erle Stanley Gardner pseudonym: A. A. FAIR. Unknown to me.

48D: Understood: TACIT. Adjective, both mean "implied". I was in the past tense verb direction.

50D: Cathedral topper: SPIRE

53D: Magazine that first published "The Old Man and the Sea": LIFE. This one is in pretty decent condition. Hope it's not musty.

54D: "A line is __ that went for a walk": Klee: A DOT. Easy guess.

56D: Mt. Hood's state: ORE. Ha ha, I could not recall where Mt. Hood is.

57D: Vietnamese festival: TET. Yeah, limit TET to Vietnam. I dislike when it's clued as "Asian holiday". Ours is called Spring Festival. And it has different name in Korea & Japan.

58D: Pre-1868 Tokyo: EDO. 江戸, literally "bay door".

59D: New newt: EFT

Answer grid.

C.C.

Friday June 19, 2009 Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke

Theme: Diamonds Are Forever

17A: Start of a quote: I NEVER HATED A MAN

41A: Quote, part 2: ENOUGH TO GIVE HIM

64A: End of a quote: HIS DIAMONDS BACK

And ZSA ZSA (72A: Speaker of the quote, familiarly). Nice addition to the quote.

Zsa Zsa Gabor also said: I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house. I wonder how many diamonds/houses she has obtained through this strategy.

This is our first Quote/Quip themed puzzle since the LAT switch, correct? I polished it off rather quickly, with a few errors. The quote itself was very familiar, so I was able to fill in plenty of blanks without the normal Titanic Friday struggle.

My favorite clue today is OBI (61A: Band from the East?). I was picturing a music band not the kimono band. I also like the clue for DELETE (69A: Takeout order?). Thought it might have something to do with the takeout food order or gang's order to kill someone.

Across:

1A: Tolkien's Legolas: ELF. Legolas is portrayed by Orlando Bloom in the movie.

10A: Striker's bane: SCAB. Reminds me of the SNAFU (54A: Messy scenarios) during 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident. Many of the SCABS were actually conscientious workers.

16A: __ stick: POGO. I rather like "We have met the enemy and he is us" speaker clue for POGO.

20A: Shivering fit: AGUE. See, English is weird, words ending in AGUE (plague, vague, league, etc), have completely different pronunciations.

21A: State until 1991: Abbr.: SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic). Every time I see this clue, I see the birthmark on Gorbachev's bald head. Do you have birthmark also? Gorbachev's Nobel Peace is probably well-deserved.

22A: Part of a woodlands stash: ACORN. I still can't believe people once drank ACORN coffee.

23A: 1519 Yucatán arrival: CORTEZ. According to Wiki, Hernando CORTEZ's arrival caused the fall of the Aztec empire and started the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. I obtained the answer from Down fills.

26A: Remote function: PAUSE

28A: "Rubáiyát" poet: OMAR. Wow, I just found out the OMAR means "first born son" in Arabic. No wonder so many people are called OMAR.

30A: "Star Trek" weapon: PHASER. Like this. Saw this clue before.

34A: Apple pie go-with?: MOM. Why? I wanted baseball, hot dogs or Chevrolet. None fits.

37A: Alcohol-based solvent: ACETAL. ACET(o) +AL(cohol). Perfume ingredient.

40A: Palestinian city: GAZA. GAZA Strip. Controlled by Hamas.

45A: Arrival: ADVENT

47A: Plane site: HANGAR. I don't think they will find the blackbox of that Air France Airbus. Quite a few conspiracy stories have been swirling around.

51A: Rolls partner: ROYCE. Rolls -ROYCE.

58A: Go furtively: SNEAK

63A: Radius neighbor: ULNA

68A: Mont Blanc, par exemple: ALPE. Mont Blanc is the highest peak of the Alps.

71A: Make (one's way): WEND. New word to me.

73A: Scout units: Abbr.: TPS (Troops). Which one is the eagle scout pin? Awesome collection.

Down:

1D: Pioneering computer: ENIAC. Developed in 1946.

2D: Shop talk: LINGO. Sometimes the answer is ARGOT.

3D: Lilas or tulipe: FLEUR. French for flower. The real flower. Not Rich Norris' fake Seine flow-er.

4D: Miler Sebastian: COE. He headed the London bid for the 2012 Olympics.

5D: Boston Garden legend: ORR (Bobby). Easy guess. I've never heard of Boston Garden.

8D: Violet lead-in: ULTRA. Misread the clue as "Violent lead-in".

9D: Manhattan liquor: RYE. I like Long Island Iced Tea.

10D: Period that started with Sputnik: SPACE AGE. In 1957.

11D: How, in Jerez: COMO. The answer would be "COMMENT" in Paris.

12D: Bio lab gel: AGAR. Food thickener as well. Made from seaweed.

13D: Former European capital: BONN. Capital of West Germany (1949-1990).

18D: Put the kibosh on: VETO. Latin for “I forbid”. The Sicilian ETNA volcano is literally "I burn".

19D: Recipe bit: DASH

24D: Salon or Slate, briefly: E-MAG. Eliot Spitzer is now a columnist for Slate.com. Too bad, he only writes financial stuff.

25D: Millard's predecessor: ZACHARY (Taylor). I can never remember the exact order.

27D: Earth-to-satellite connections: UPLINKS. Data path from earth to satellite. Opposite DOWNLINKS, data path from satellite to earth. Both new words to me.

29D: Like many Ariz. residents: RETD (Retired). More in Florida, right?

31D: Satirical Mort: SAHL. He is still alive.

32D: He played Emile in "South Pacific": EZIO (Pinza). Oh, the Broadway "South Pacific". I kept picturing the Emile in the film "South Pacific". EZIO Pinza won Tony for the role.

35D: __ Day: dietary supplement brand: ONE A. Wish those multivitamin pills are smaller.

36D: Maker of ShowHouse faucets: MOEN

38D: "Mazel __!": TOV. Hebrew for "Congratulations". I should say this to our Elissa for her HOURGLASS FIGURE. Hell will freeze over before I get a 24" waist.

39D: "The African Queen" co-screenwriter: AGEE. Katherine Hepburn has some fun description of the shooting of "The African Queen" in her biography. Amazing amount of alcohol were drunk everyday. The excuse was that the water there was unsafe.

42D: Went for more memory, say: UPGRADED. Computer memory.

43D: Dodge Viper engine: V-TEN. Easy guess. I did not really know the engine for Dodge Viper.

48D: 2004 World Golf Hall of Fame inductee Isao: AOKI. Just look at those highlighted green letters, you should be able to remember his name. One starts with I, one ends with I; One ends with AO, one starts with AO.

50D: Slap on: DAUB

53D: Virus named for an African river: EBOLA. Nice trivia. The river is in Congo.

55D: Bluegrass great Lester: FLATT. What's the technical name for their hats?

56D: Open, in a way: UNCAP

58D: "Arms and the Man" playwright: SHAW. I guessed. Have never heard of this play. I only know SHAW's "Pygmalion".

59D: Shade of green: NILE. Is it somehow related to the river? You would think NILE is "Shade of blue". Thought of LIME.

60D: What many jocks watch: ESPN. I like this clue.

62D: Don Juan's mother: INEZ. Spanish for Agnes, "pure"/"chaste".

65D: Cooper's tool: ADZ. Ha ha, I thought of the handsome Anderson Cooper (CNN) immediately.

66D: Consequence of getting bombed too often?: DTS (Delirum Tremens). "Bombed" is slang for drunk.

67D: Wet expanse: SEA. MER in French and MAR in Spanish.

Answer grid.

C.C.