Thursday July 30, 2009 Fred Jackson III

Theme: Cover Letters

20A: Photographer of a letter? P(ea) SHOOTER

26A: Letter's rest period?: T(ea) BREAK

49A: Undercover operation to trap a letter?: B(ee) STING

56A: One who can't hold a letter?: I(eye) DROPPER

10D: Letter out for a stroll?: J(ay) WALKING

38D: Official in charge of a letter?: C(sea) CAPTAIN

Hmm, 6 theme entries, quite heavy. Fred must have sifted through a ton of theme candidates. I wonder if he considered any phrase with letter Q (cue) or Y (why).

B STING and J WALKING are so evocative. T BREAK is great too. Hot scone & strawberry jam & tea. Yum!

When I first saw the question mark after each "letter", I actually thought of landlord. You know, the one who lets. Someone asked on the blog last summer why RENT is clued as "Letter amount?".

Lovely puzzle. I still had to cheat, but I fared better than I did with last Thursday's Dan Naddor "Take Action" puzzle.

Across:

1A: [Snore]: HO-HUM. And BLAH (27D: Eliciting a "So what").

6A: Blow hard: HUFF. HUFF and puff.

10A: Singer Joan: JETT. Wrote down BAEZ first.

14A: Ex-TV host Stewart: ALANA. She co-hosted the "George & ALANA" show with her then husband George Hamilton. I only knew her as Rod Stewart's ex.

15A: River to the Mediterranean: EBRO. The Spanish river. ELBE, the Hamburg river, flows into the North Sea.

16A: Guitarist's effect: WAWA. No idea. Dictionary says it's some kind of muted guitar/trumpet effect.

17A: Hear again: RETRY. I don't get this one.

18A: Speed Wagons, e.g.: REOS

19A: Stress, it's said: AGER. Probably only in crossword world. Stress does age us faster.

22A: Flea market figure: SELLER. Wrote down DEALER first. They have 4 letters in common.

24A: Tops with cups: BRAS. Nailed it immediately. Quite a crossing with UNROBE (4D: Strip).

25A: Ready to collapse: RICKETY

29A: Old Mughal Empire capital: DELHI. It's the same place as New DELHI, correct?

30A: suffix with glob: ULE. A diminutive suffix.

31A: Blocks that lock: LEGOS

33A: At the ready: ON TAP

37A: Rash preventer: TALC. Thought of ALOE, which actually treats rather than prevents rash.

39A: Like some checking accounts: NO-FEE

41A: Nuts (over): GAGA

42A: Word before radio or wave: SHOCK. SHOCK radio = Howard Stern.

44A: "I dunno": GOT ME. NO IDEA won't fit.

46A: Mark, as a ballot: X IN. No abbreviation hint? For your information, XIN means "new" in Chinese. New Year is XIN Nian. Nian means "year".

47A: Shady retreat: ARBOR

51A: Crow relatives: MAGPIES

54A: Like Burbank City Hall, for short: DECO. Have never heard of Burbank City Hall before. It's in California.

55A: Respectful gesture: CURTSY

60A: "Bess, You is My Woman," e.g.: ARIA

61A: Muskogee's st.: OKLA. What is Muskogee famous for?

63A: Heavy herbivore: RHINO. Horny, horny. RHINO's horn is more valuable than gold.

64A: Suspense novelist Hoag: TAMI. Unknown figure to me. What does her neck scarf say?

66A: Country singer Tucker: TANYA. Jimbo, happy?

68A: Muchas horas: DIAS. Spanish for DAYS. "Muchas horas" is "Many hours". I pieced the answer together from Down fills.

69A: Rile (up): STEAM

Down:

1D: Dwell (on): HARP

2D: Cheers at some World Cup games: OLES

3D: "Hell __ no fury ...": HATH. "Hell HATH no fury like a woman scorned".

5D: Like some elections: MAYORAL. Wow, there is an adjective for mayor? I only know gubernatorial.

7D: Slangy prefix meaning "super": UBER

8D: One way to sway: FRO. To and FRO.

9D: Dig discovery: FOSSIL

11D: Apollo 11 module: EAGLE

12D: Twitter message: TWEET. Sarah Palin is a Twitterati (the Twitter elite).

13D: Linger: TARRY

21D: Unavailable: TAKEN. Directly above BEYOND (48D: Not within reach of).

23D: Return call?: ECHO. Good clue.

25D: Pedometer button: RESET

28D: Possible result of a job change, for short: RELO

29D: Attend of the needs of: DO FOR. The answer is often SEE TO.

32D: "We Got the Beat" band, with "The": GO-GO'S. Here is the clip. Both the band and the song are unfamiliar to me.

34D: Part of a pickup line?: TAXI. Great clue too.

35D: Opposin': AGIN. Against. Not "fer".

36D: Remorseful feeling: PANG

40D: Cookout remnant: EMBER

43D: Barbra's "A Star is Born" costar: KRIS (Kristofferson)

45D: Accompanists?: ESCORTS. Can you clue ABETTORS as "Accompanists?" also?

50D: Signature wear for Astair: TOP HAT. In his musical TOP HAT.

51D: Future docs' exams: MCATS (Medical College Admission Tests). I forgot.

52D: Surrounding glows: AURAE. The plural of aura can also be AURAS.

53D: Mr. Clean target: GRIME

54D: Times to attack: D-DAYS

56D: "Casablanca" role: ILSA. Hey, "Here's looking at you, kid", welcome back.

57D: Cabinet wood: PINE

58D: "Orinoco Flow" singer: ENYA. Simply beautiful.

59D: Itinerate: ROAM. I only know the noun itinerary. In fact, I misread the clue as "Iterate".

62D: Colorful carp: KOI. Some of the KOI can cost thousands of dollars.

Answer grid.

C.C.

Interview with Jerome Gunderson

Since June 2007, Jerome Gunderson has had 6 puzzles published by LA Times. Had we switched to LAT one week earlier on March 16, 2009, he would be the first LAT constructor we encountered.

Jerome loves anagrams. And he has a terrific sense of Norwegian humor, being a great grandson of an Olaf. Last time when Dennis brought up "Water a Flower Day", Jerome responded with "Baloney! Why would anyone put more water in a river?" - one of my favorite blog Comments.

I also enjoy and value Jerome's analysis of each puzzle. He always brings out the highlight of each grid and helps us to appreciate every constructing effort.

I love imperfection in art/life, and I am really touched by Jerome's "tiny flaw in a Navajo rug" & blemish fill in a perfect puzzle analogy.

How is today's puzzle different from your original submission? Any significant change on the grid?

Today's puzzle is very different from the original submission. The first draft had TEASE hidden in TEA SERVICE. Rich canned that because tease split two words and the other theme words were contained in just one. Big mistake on my part. So tease was out the window and replaced by RAZZLE DAZZLE. That change led to altering, by necessity, a large part of the grid. The constructor is the one responsible for having to deal with that. It's not the editor's job to redo a puzzle. It's the author's responsibility.

Which is the seed word of this puzzle? How did you come up with the set of theme answers?

Tease was the seed word. It simply occurred to me that you could take other words that meant tease and use them in a clever way by hiding them in unrelated phrases. I wanted the solver to have to work a little to catch on even though the theme is staring you in the face, right smack-dab out front.

The theme entries were fairly easy to come up with. How many phrases start with RAZZ, JOSH, KID and RIB? That easiness was pure luck. Not often does it work that way.

What's your background? How did you get involved in crossword solving/constructing?

When I was a lad my heroes were Jack London and Maxim Gorky. I was going to be as adventurous as they. Turns out that I never sailed the seas or walked the breadth of Russia. But I did land a job as a short order cook in a funky little diner. After two days training I was left on my own to handle breakfast and lunch. It became clear really quick why it is said all cooks are drunks. Each morning one of the waitresses would come in early and do the daily puzzle in the San Francisco Chronicle. I got into the habit of helping her. I don't think we ever finished one but it began a lifelong love of crosswords. In 2005 I made one and managed to get Merl Reagle to take a look at it. I thought the puzzle brilliant. A couple of days later he sent me a detailed critique. He pretty much said it might have been the crappiest puzzle he'd ever seen. His honesty (I still owe him for that) compelled me to improve. For two years I did every puzzle I could lay my hands on, and continued to make puzzles. Which I showed no one. I constantly compared the puzzles of the pros against my own stuff with the purpose of discovering the difference between the two. In 2007 I sent Nancy Salomon a few theme ideas and she liked a couple of them. In fact, she co-wrote my first puzzle and it appeared in June of that year in the Los Angeles Times. To this day she's gracious enough to respond when I ask for a helping hand.

As I was trying to be London or Gorky I wandered around a lot from town to town. Mostly in the Southwest and California. I had many jobs in my teen years. From the age of twenty to twenty nine I was an organizer for the United Farm Workers Union and a Teamster. For the last thirty years I've been a union carpenter. I live in a small town called Healdsburg. It's about an hour north of San Francisco. I'm blessed to be married to an extraordinary woman named Roxanna.

What is a perfect puzzle to you? What kind of themes/fills fascinate you?

The perfect puzzle would have Dan Naddor's cleverness, Merl Reagle's zaniness, Cathy Allis's humor, Nancy Salomon's fabulous fill, and the clues written by Bob Klahn.

I was fortunate to have lived on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona for two years. While there I learned that some rug makers purposely weaved a tiny flaw into the rug. The idea being that humans were not perfect, only the gods were. The flaw was simply a statement of humbleness. My puzzle today has the word ETES in it. It's my offering to a higher power. So I don't want to hear about it.

I enjoy any well crafted puzzle regardless of the theme. However, my favorite crosswords to solve are ones with a lot of whacky words and phrases. The whackier the better. I also love the tough Saturday type puzzle. When it comes to fill I'd rather see a phrase than a word.

What kind of references books do you use? And where do you get your puzzle inspirations?

My dictionaries are Random House Unabridged and Merriam Webster's. On line I use Onelook quite a lot. These sources are mostly for cluing and making sure my spelling is correct.

Inspiration and ideas can only come from your mind. There are an infinite amount of puzzle ideas to draw on. You simply have to find a way to tap into the billions of possibilities just sitting there unused. I don't believe that puzzles are an art form or that they take exceptional talent. I certainly don't believe you have to be a brainiac or highly educated to create one. I'm living proof of that. Most people are talented in something and most people have a good imagination. I firmly convinced that almost anybody could learn to make a crossword puzzle. Ultimately, I suppose you have to inspire yourself to accomplish anything. The inspirations of a muse are only you talking to yourself.

If anyone has a question I'd be delighted to respond.