Friday August 6, 2010 Charles Barasch

Theme: Oh, K! - K is added to the end of C (in one-syllable word), which is preceded by five different vowels (O, U, A, E & I), with pronunciation unchanged.

17A. Pre-1991 Russian veto? : SOVIET BLOCK. Soviet Bloc. Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

29A. West Florida currency? : TAMPA BAY BUCK. Tampa Bay Buc. Tampa Bay is on the west coast of Florida.

35A. Assault by killer trucks? : BIG MACK ATTACK. Big Mac Attack. Mack Trucks. Here, the middle Mac rather than the end Attack (2-syllables) is in play for the K-addition. Inconsistent with other theme entries. Maybe the constructor can't find a one syllable *AC containing common phrase to play around. Can you?

43A. Construct a microscopic house? : BUILD ON SPECK. Build on Spec.

57A. Jumpy bug? : NERVOUS TICK. Nervous Tic.

Though I am not fond of the odd entry 35A, I did like how the constructor placed it in the middle row (actually, K is in the very center of the grid) and combined the resulting end black squares with those of theme entries 29A and 43A to divide the left and right edges into two rather than our normal weekday three parts, bringing us long paralleled entries in the upper right and lower left corners.

Al mentioned that nearly half of Dan's puzzle yesterday comprises of three- or four-letter entries. This one has 42, out of a total of 74 answers. I am thinking that half of every puzzle is made up these small building units, just like half of every puzzle is consisted of vowels.

Maybe Santa or anyone who is fascinated by grid structure can count the total number of three & four entries and give us a ratio report for a week or two. Then we'll see the pattern.

Across:

1. Like some teeth : GAPPED

7. Recover : HEAL. Comforting word for our sharp-witted shenanigan-maker Lois.

11. WWII Normandy lander : LST (Landing Ship Tank)

14. '60s-'70s San Francisco mayor : ALIOTO (Joseph). Stranger to me. What was he famous for, besides the mayor-ship?

15. Business opening? : AGRI. Agribusiness.

16. National Poetry Mo. : APR.

19. Madre's brother : TIO. Mother's brother = Uncle. In Spanish.

20. Certain cardholder's cry : UNO. Had no idea that the card name is called out during the play.

21. Bit of tryst talk : COO

22. Boot : EJECT

24. Site of some adoptions : PET SHOP

27. Genes responsible for hereditary variations : ALLELES. Also RNA (55. Uracil is one of its basic components ). Both alleles and uracil are new words to me.

31. On __ with : A PAR

33. Reactor safety overseer: Abbr. : NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). Established in 1974. Succeeded AEC (Atomic Energy Commission)

34. Opposing vote : NAY

40. Equi- ending : NOX. Equinox. Latin for "night".

41. Actress Scala : GIA. First encounter with this actress. Looks pretty.

42. He beat Okker to win the 1968 U.S. Open : ASHE. Not familiar with the Dutch Tennis player Tom Okker.

48. Out there : AT LARGE

49. Occupy : INHABIT

53. Developmental step : STAGE

54. E lead-in : BCD. Alphabetically. BCDE.

56. Chickadee relative : TIT. Oh, the bird.

62. __ Zion Church : AME. I forgot. AME = African Methodist Episcopal.

63. Gunk : CRUD

64. Easter Island attraction : STATUE. Wikipedia says Easter Island (an Polynesian island) is widely famous for its 887 extant monumental statues. Has anyone been there?

65. Not the color of money? : RED. Green is the color.

66. Directors' banes : HAMS. Well, all actors ham, don't they? Just that some are good, some are bad.

67. Respected ones : ELDERS

Down:

1. Get ready to travel : GAS UP

2. All by oneself : ALONE

3. Scissors feature : PIVOT. Always associate pivot with a living being.

4. Islands staple : POI

5. Time to tan in Cannes : ETE. Summer.

6. Web outfit : DOT COM. "Outfit" here means "company", correct?

7. Symbol of virtue : HALO. Raja has the same "halo" connotation, correct, Vidwan?

8. Kind of trip taken by oneself? : EGO. Nice clue.

9. Circle part : ARC

10. Plausible : LIKELY

11. Fashionable repast : LATE LUNCH. Needs a question mark, don't you think? Otherwise, why "fashionable"?

12. Tangy dessert : SPICE CAKE. Have never had this dessert. What makes it tangy?

13. One of the original Politburo members : TROTSKY (Leon). Assassinated in 1940 in Mexico.

18. Comet Hale-__ : BOPP. I am sure it's a gimme for Spitzboov.

23. Bush seen in Florida : JEB. He still lives in Florida?

25. Dateless : STAG

26. Hurt : HARM

27. Incantation beginning : ABRA. The beginning of the word Abracadabra.

28. Milk: Pref. : LACT. Literally ''milk''.

30. Singer Paul and family : ANKAS. OK.

31. "Finally!" : ABOUT TIME. Nice clue/answer.

32. Slightly eccentric : PIXILATED. Another new word. It's made of pix(ie) and (tit)illated.

36. Worked up : AGOG

37. Art film theater : CINE

38. Driver's gadget, for short : TACH. Thought of golfer "driver" first.

39. "May I __ favor?" : ASK A. Total 6Ks in the grid.

40. Magic, at one time : NBA STAR. Oh, Magic Johnson.

44. Hang back : LAG

45. Soak : DRENCH

46. Trillionth: Pref. : PICO. I forgot also. Al gave us a list last time.

47. Ultimate purpose : END USE

50. Shiny, in product names : BRITE. Bright.

51. Bring upon oneself : INCUR

52. Directors' units : TAKES. I like this noun clue.

54. Some underwear : BVDS

58. Notable period : ERA

59. Mai tai ingredient : RUM

60. Cardinal's letters : STL. St Louis Cardinals.

61. Pinch : TAD. A pinch/tad of. Not Tinbeni's sunset toast Pinch!

Answer grid.

Here is a recent photo of our irreplaceable and inimitable MOREL guy Dennis, who has been unfailingly supporting & helping me since the start of this blog and has been brightening our mornings with his consistently informative and entertaining comments. Thanks, Dummy!

C.C.

Thursday August 5, 2010 Dan Naddor

Theme: ARREST (48D. Run in, and a hint to the ends of the answers to starred clues) - To "run someone in" is to bring them to the police station. The last word of each of the theme entries means to nab an alleged lawbreaker. Nab is related to kidnap. Arrest is from Latin: ad+re+stare (to-back-stand). Stare comes from the base *sta- "to stand", and also gives us the lovely crosswordese word "STET", an editor's directive to let the text stand (without correction).

18A. *If absolutely necessary: IN A PINCH. If you pinch (steal) something, you get pinched (grabbed as though with pincers).

20A. *Ranger, for one: FORD PICKUP. The first pair of theme answers overlap each other. So do the last pair.

37A. *"Am I missing something here?": WHAT'S THE CATCH.

55A. *Like manual laborers: BLUE COLLAR. Arrest sense is to grab someone by the collar.

59A. *Boisterous frat party: BEER BUST. I wanted BASH here instead of BUST before I figured out the theme. Both mean to smash, like on a drunken spree, which has the "wild party" meaning. Prohibitionists used to bust in to speakeasys and arrest everyone they could catch.

Somewhat related: 3D. Capture: CORRAL. and 7D. Capture: TRAP.

Al here, with a Dan Nador puzzle no less.

Maybe it's just me being on Dan's wavelength most of the time, but I kind of blew through this one. Very doable puzzle, perhaps not as punny or fun as Dan's past puzzles have been though, nearly half the words were three or four letters, though also 24 non-theme entries of six or more letters, half of which are placed in each Down corner, paralleling one another. No J, Q, X, Z, so not very scrabbly.

Across:

1. Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida __": LOCA. The crazy life.

5. Start of many addresses: HTTP. Internet Addresses, otherwise known as URLs: Universal Resource Locators. Hyper Text Transfer Protocol makes it possible for browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer to traverse the World Wide Web. URLs can start with HTTP:// but that is only one example. Many other types of internet transfer protocols are too numerous to list here, but some examples are FTP (file transfer), NNTP (network news), and SMTP (simple mail)

9. Lawyers' org.: ABA. American Bar Association.

12. Schools for Jules: ECOLES. French. And 39D. Lycée attendee: ELEVE. French for student. Lycée is the last three years of education before University.

15. Prefix with sol: AERO. Aerosol

16. Heater: GAT. Slang for a gun, taken from Gatling

17. On the line: AT RISK. Could easily tip one way or another.

22. "It's the real thing" soft drink: COKE. Coca Cola marketing campaign. Good Grief!

23. Govt. watchdog: EPA. Environmental Protection Agency.

24. Not just my: OUR. Plural possessive.

25. Current pioneer: TESLA. Nicola. Has the unit of magnetic force named after him.

26. Quandary: DILEMMA. Latin: DI (two) lemma (premise).

30. One who raised Cain: EVE. Cain and Abel were Adam and Eve's sons.

32. Sea salt?: TAR. A sailor. Could be from the job of applying tar to the bottoms of ships, or from the tarpaulin that they sometimes used in clothing. Also Gob.

33. Spare tire site?: WAIST. Not so easy to deflate.

35. Refuse to budge: INSIST. Latin: In (upon) sistere (take a stand). Related: assist (stand by), and once again STET (let stand).

40. Blacks out: FAINTS.

41. Coeur d'__: ALENE. City in Idaho.

42. Many a CBer's workplace: RIG. Citizen's Band radios. Do they still use those? Seems kind of dated. Big rig = Semi-trailer.

43. Brit. recording giant: EMI. Electric & Musical Industries Ltd.

45. "CHiPs" star: ESTRADA. Erik. California Highway Patrol motorcycle cop. His character name was Ponch. (Poncherello)

49. Kind of alcohol: ETHYL. Ethanol, the kind we drink.

51. Little john?: LAV. Abbreviation (little) for lavatory. A British crossword style of clue.

53. Lady's man: SIR. English Lords are addressed as: Sir.

54. Language that gave us "plaid": ERSE. Scottish Gaelic. The word means: Irish.

61. Lisa's "Friends" role: PHOEBE. Lisa Kudrow/Phoebe Buffay.

62. "Happiness __ Warm Puppy": "Peanuts" book: IS A.

63. Manipulative type: USER.

64. Drives: IMPELS.

65. Relative of -trix: ESS. Feminine suffixes: dominatrix, baroness

66. Place with a pool, informally: THE Y. YMCA. A bit tough to parse, doesn't it?

67. Apt name for a Dalmatian: SPOT.

Down:

1. Flipped (through): LEAFED. Book pages

2. Eight-footers?: OCTOPI. Tentacles count as feet? Or are octopi 8 feet long?

4. "Put __ on it!": A LID.

5. Three-line verse: HAIKU. 5-7-5 syllable meter. Does not need to rhyme: Yesterday it worked. /Today it is not working./ Windows is like that.

6. Professor's goal: TENURE. A guarantee they get to keep the position, usually requires research and publishing credentials, which means that rather than spending their time on students, they might be concentrating their time elsewhere. I had at least one prof like that. Schools need a different reward system IMHO.

8. Appear unexpectedly, with "up": POP. Maybe that's why dads are called pops? No, darn it, from an old French word similar to pappa.

9. Religious doubter: AGNOSTIC. Someone that asserts that it cannot be known whether God exists, compare Atheist, who asserts that there is no God, and Gnostic, who asserts that it is knowable.

10. Political repercussions: BACKLASH. Machinery too. I can see how they're related...

11. Deep down: AT HEART.

13. Sixth sense, for short: ESP. Extra (beyond) Sensory Perception.

14. Schuss, e.g.: SKI. From old Norse: skið "stick of wood".

19. Diamonds, to hoods: ICE.

21. Oregon highlight: COAST. Michigan's freshwater shoreline, at 3,288 miles is the longest in the world. Alaska has the most total coastline of the 50 states though, at 6,640 miles. Oregon only has 296, just sayin'.

25. Letter?: TENANT. One who lets (rents or leases) a room, apartment, or house.

27. McGregor of "The Men Who Stare at Goats": EWAN. Also the young version of Obi Wan Kenobe in Star Wars.

28. Hot Wheels maker: MATTEL. Mattel toys have not been made in the USA since 2002.

29. Midler's "Divine" nickname: MISS M.

31. Bad habits: VICES. If you have any, you should try to clamp down on them...

34. "J to __ L-O!": Lopez remix album: THA. Words fail me.

36. Trick ending?: STER. Suffix: trickster

37. Many a server, in the old days: WAITRESS. Not sure why it was necessary to specify "the old days", but then again, I don't go to restaurants very often. Did I miss something?

38. Boat rocker, to say the least: HIGH SEAS. Nicely done.

40. It's thrown in: FREEBIE. Also a Frisbee.

44. "Gotta think about it": I'LL SEE.

46. Napping: ASLEEP.

47. Don Quixote's devil: DIABLO. Spanish.

50. "__ out!": ump's call: YER. Baseball terseness.

52. "Back in the Saddle Again" autobiographer: AUTRY. Gene. Birth name: Orvon Eugene Autry.

55. Outback: BUSH. See Kazie's pic.

56. Cost-of-living stat: CPI. Consumer Price Index.

57. Electrical unit: OHM. Resistance measurement. Color code mnemonic for reading the values: Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly = Black Brown Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Violet Gray White

58. Cuts off: LOPS.

60. On the other hand: BUT.

Answer Grid.

Al