Theme: Football Frailties
17A. New Orleans team confused? : SAINTS BEDEVILED
26A. New York team punished? : JETS GROUNDED
46A. Indianapolis team stymied? : COLTS LASSOED
59A. San Diego team upset? : CHARGERS SHOCKED
Yay! It's Superbowl Week! (oops, I should say "Big Game Week" as we at the blog don't pay royalties to the NFL for the use of the word "Superbowl" and we're already in enough trouble with the Blogger Police Department. We don't want Roger Goodell piling on here).
Today we have four theme teams that sadly didn't make it to New Orleans for "The Big Game" for reasons most aptly described by Kurt and Jan-Michele. To add insult to injury, the Bedeviled Saints had to clear out of their own locker room for a couple of weeks to allow temporary lodging for the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers in the Big Easy.
NFL fans can make their own jokes regarding the aforementioned Commissioner, the Saints and "punished", "grounded", and "upset", let alone "confused".
Steve here! This was a corker of a theme for me, I loved it. I got the teams right away, then spent a LOT of time noodling around the rest of each theme answer and needed crosses, more crosses and then some perps to git 'er done.
A couple of nits to be picked, but let's see how the rest played out.
Across:
1. Net help pages, briefly : FAQS. When I was small, my most frequently-asked question was "Are we there yet?". I'm not sure I ever got a reliable answer.
5. County counterpart, in Canterbury : SHIRE. Major nit. I know the alliteration is part of the charm of this clue, but it doesn't really make sense. Canterbury is in Kent, which is a county. "County" and "Shire" are not really synonyms. It would help if if Kent was short for Kentshire, but it's not.
10. Boring : BLAH
14. Longtime Stern rival : IMUS. Howard Stern and Don Imus faced off in a ratings battle in Philadelphia early in Stern's career.
15. Little bits : IOTAS.
16. Baltic capital : RIGA
20. __ Who : THE
21. Little bits : ATOMS. Nice clecho. Yodel-eh-ee-o!
22. Silly : INANE
23. Musical quality : TONE
25. Chooses : ELECTS
31. Fail to mention : OMIT
32. Picky eaters of rhyme : SPRATS. Jack and his wife. Even as a lad I wondered how Jack's wife managed to keep her girlish figure when all she would eat was fat. I guess she had the Jane Fonda Workout Tapes (we're going back a few years here, I don't think pilates was invented yet!).
33. Different : ODD
36. "Network" director : LUMET. Sidney. If you've never seen "Twelve Angry Men" from way back in 1957, you have a treat in store.
38. Old West mil. force : CAV. The Cavalry, a Military Force.
39. Andrea Bocelli, e.g. : TENOR
41. Half a fly : TSE
42. More than a sobber : WAILER
45. Small or large : SIZE
48. Loads to clean : WASHES. I didn't skip a beat with this one, then I've been wondering why; it's not exactly obvious?
51. Person in a sentence, say : NOUN
52. Convention pin-on : ID TAG. I think I've probably got my own weight in these things. One peculiar property of ID tags hanging from a lanyard is that they ALWAYS turn to face the wrong way however you try to arrange things.
53. Heroic poems : EPICS
56. "Homeland" airer, briefly : SHO. Hmmm. Nymmmm. Hmmmmmmm. Could do better if you resort to this fill, methinks.
62. Hardly friendly : COLD
63. Go on and on : PRATE. Is there a rule for using PRATE vs PRATTLE? I'm guessing the root is common.
64. Take on : HIRE
65. Golf rarities : ACES. I've had one. I took a friend out to play for her first time on a "real" golf course and I aced the par-3 third. She didn't understand why I was so excited, she thought that as I'd been playing for 30 years I should be doing that every day. A fair point, in hindsight.
66. Fur fortune-maker : ASTOR
67. Football positions : ENDS. Schoolboy hilarity ensues about "tight" and "defensive" varieties. We were all young and foolish once.
Down:
1. Punch source : FIST
2. Indian nursemaid : AMAH. I think this qualifies as crosswordese. I know it, but ...
3. Being alone with one's thoughts : QUIET TIME
4. IRS ID : S.S.N. I wonder who had 000 00 0001? That's an awesome Social Security Number. There was probably some money in the pot when he or she retired too.
5. TV drama about Alex, Teddy, Georgie and Frankie Reed : SISTERS. Crosses all the way.
6. Vagabond : HOBO
7. News piece : ITEM
8. X-ray units : RADS. I need to stop overthinking four-letter fill, ROENTGEN is simply not going to work, I don't even know if it's got anything whatsoever to do with the clue, but I couldn't move beyond it.
9. Linguistic suffix : ESE.
10. Pickled : BRINED. Oh! Not too much vodka then?
11. Purple __: New Hampshire state flower : LILAC. Very pretty - looks a little like the foxgloves/digitalis from last week to my untrained eye:
(Note to self. - Filling in ILLAC doesn't make the NE quadrant any easier to complete)
12. Word with travel or talent : AGENT. I wanted SCOUT for the longest while, I almost convinced myself that there are professional TRAVEL SCOUTS out there.
13. Underworld : HADES
18. Zippy flavor : TANG
19. Most nasty : VILEST
24. Bone: Pref. : OSTE. Again with the hmmmmmm fill. Not a fan.
25. NH summer hours : E.D.T. The Eastern Time bit is always a given for me, but why can I never remember when it's "Standard" and when it's "Daylight"?
26. Quite a blow : JOLT
27. Tall runners : EMUS. EMUS and IMUS must be related.
28. Footnote ref. : OP. CIT. "Opere Citato" or "in the work cited" to refer to a previously-credited work to avoid needless repetition of the full title.
29. Mount Narodnaya's range : URALS.
30. __ orange : NAVEL. I had NAVAL first, I guess I was going with my own LIMEY nautical citrus theme.
33. Thin paper : ONION SKIN.
34. Nap : DOZE
35. Slave Scott : DRED.
37. Like many omelets : TWO EGG
40. "Mi casa __ casa" : ES SU. Not to be taken toooo literally.
43. Gore and Hirt : ALs
44. Stock market VIP? : RANCHER. Loved this clue/answer.
46. Casual wine choices : CHARDS. There are many nice ones from my home state of California. I had a glass of Sterling tonight - an odd choice considering I'm in South Beach, Miami for the day. I should be drinking rum and channeling Hemingway.
47. Not bad, not good : SO-SO. Related to the above?
48. Modern witch's religion : WICCA
49. For this purpose : AD HOC. A learning moment. If challenged to define "ad hoc" I'd have been offering up variations of "ad lib" or "off the cuff".
50. Old, as a joke : STALE
53. Goofs : ERRS. "To goof is human, to err is Bill Buckner". I just made that up! Almost 30 years too late to make a fortune selling t-shirts in New York, alas.
54. Exam sophs may take : P-SAT
55. Colon, in analogies : IS TO
57. Sheep together : HERD. Another one I got right away then looked back and said "huh"? "Shepherd" makes this work, otherwise you'd look for "FLOCK" as the answer or "Cow Together" as the clue, right?
58. Keats works : ODES
60. Org. concerned with greenhouse gas : E.P.A. The Environmental Protection Agency has a lot to worry about right now.
61. Ally of Fidel : CHE. Castro's amigo Guevara. The dictionary definition of "iconic" should simply cite this image:
That's all, Folks!
"The Superbowl", "Saints", "Jets", "Colts", "Chargers" and related names and indicia are the sole property of the National Football League and may not be used or reproduced without the express written consent of the NFL. "Lilac" image may be subject to copyright. "Jane Fonda Workout", "Emu" and "Imus" copyright their respective owners. "Che" copyright the William Soler Pediatric Cardiology Hospital in Havana, Cuba. I think that's got us covered today :)
