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May 19, 2008

Monday, May 19, 2008 Allan E. Parrish

Theme: An ODD NUMBER of Songs (Thanks, Crockett1947)

20A: Blondie number: ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

41A: Commodores number: THREE TIMES A LADY

59A: Vogues number: FIVE O'CLOCK WORLD

A couple of things first:

1) For your information, the record for letter S appearing in a 15*15 NY Times' grid is 35, so Michael T. William's Saturday snaky puzzle (28 S's) is not too wild.

2) As you probably already know, besides Josiah Breward, our editor Wayne Robert R. Williams' other alias name is Willy A. Wiseman. It's an anagram of "i.e. Wayne Williams".

Quite a few unknown words/names in today's puzzle. I've never heard of ZEREX, AKIM. GOMER & ACTH. But I am just so smitten with those expensive & scrabbly letters (Z, X, K, Y, and V) in the grid. And I LOVE (15A: Adoration) the "songs with numbers in the title" theme entries. Ravishing!

ACROSS:

14A: Pituitary hormone: ACTH (Adrenocorticotropic Hormone). Too complicated for me to understand.

16A: "The Age of Anxiety" poet: AUDEN (Wystan Hugh Auden). The poem won him a Pulitzer prize in 1948.

17A: Wolf in Oaxaca: LOBO. Spanish for wolf.

23A: Sandberg of baseball: RYNE. He was inducted into Baseball HOF in 2005.

24A: Bobbsey twin: NAN. I am so tired of this clue. If you don't like Indian bread NAN, try Talese NAN then.

28A: Apothecary's amount: DRAM

33A: Astrologer Sydney: OMARR. Got him today.

37A: Tracy Marrow's stage name: ICE T. One of a few rappers that I know of.

46A: Pyle of classic TV: GOMER. A complete stranger to me.

55A: Certain fraternity letters: XIS.

65A: Actor Bridges: LLOYD. I don't know him. Lucky guess.

67A: Comic canine: ODIE. Garfield comic strip.

71A: Hallmark product: CARDS. Wow, I had no idea that the plural form of product is still product.

72A: Miniature race car: KART. I really like the 2 K's in today's puzzle.

73A: Formerly, once: ERST. He is back!!

DOWN:

3D: Swiss rescue breed: ST. BERNARD. Nana (Peter Pan) is one.

4D: Ostentatious: SHOWY

5D: Assassin: SLAYER. Buffy is one.

12D: Prestone rival: ZEREX. What is it?

27D: "As I see it" in chatroom shorthand: IMHO (In My Humble Opinion). JMO next time please!

29D: Actor Tamiroff: AKIM. Nope, not familiar to me. Would've not got it without the across clues.

38D: Portable audio-video device: CAMCORDER

39D: German river: EDER. Or ELBE sometimes. EGER is also a river in Germany, isn't it?

40D: Neophyte: TYRO. Can be spelled as TIRO as well.

48D: Mass departure: EXODUS

50D: Like broken promises: UNKEPT

52D: Company with a spokeduck: AFLAC. Love those Yogi Berra commercials.

53D: Cohort of Jane and Laraine: GILDA. Unknown to me. I got it from across clues.

54D: French auxiliary verb: AVOIR. Only 2 auxiliary verbs in French: AVOIR and ÊTRE.

56D: Loose: SLACK

58D: Boxer Archie: MOORE. Unknown to me. Only know Demi __ , Michael __ and Roger __.

64D: Artful: DEFT

Sorry about my flip-flop on theme summary today. But White Rose Movement's Love is a Number immediately popped into my head after I got all the songs with numbers and spotted LOVE on the upper middle corner.

C.C.