Monday August 25, 2008 Josiah Breward

Theme: (Which) Way to GO

17A: Imagined: THOUGHT UP

58A: Duck product: EIDER DOWN

11D: Without guilt: RIGHTEOUS

33D: Soup ingredients, perhaps: LEFTOVERS

Good puzzle. I like the positon of UP, DOWN, LEFT & RIGHT, very well placed. But I just feel that something is missing at the heart of the grid. I want HERE or ICI (Vous êtes ICI) as an anchor.

I dislike how ELITE (16A: Privileged few) due to FEWER (51D: Not so many), visually very jarring. Tell me how you would clue ELITE.

Had some trouble at the lower right corner. Had to google Philosopher Mach (52D: ERNST).

Across:

1A: Not so much: LESS. And FEWER (51D: Not so many)

5A: Trigger-happy: EDGY. This reminds me of Barry's TENTER (cloth stretcher) &"On tenter hooks" connection explanation last month.

9A: Branchlet: SPRIG. "Branchlet" is a new word to me.

15A: Novelist Morrison: TONI. Nobel Literature winner in 1993. I know her only because of her "our first Black President" comment on Clinton. I've never read her books.

19A: Basketball player: CAGER. My favorite CAGER (KG).

21A: I haven't a clue: SEARCH ME. New phrase to me. I've never heard anyone use SEARCH ME to mean "I haven't a clue".

26A: Lizard with sticky feet: GECKO. Here is GEICO's GECHO.

28A: Still: AT REST

31A: Where van Gogh painted like mad: ARLES. Yes, this is the place where he madly painted all those blooming (and withering) sunflowers, and the beautiful "Starry Night Over the Rhone", and of course, the gorgeous "Bedroom at ARLES". Are you happy with the clue?

34A: Dawson or Gide: ANDRE. Hmm, another Nobel Literature winner (Gide). Do you think ANDRE Dawson will make HOF next year?

38A: Poppy extract: OPIUM. I am addicted to OPIUM.

39A: Sushi choice: TUNA. Delicious! Hot, hot wasabi!

41A: Zest: SPICE. Which one, Dennis?

45A: Group psyche: ETHOS. And 5D: Cultural: ETHNIC

47A: Parts of ranges: OVENS. I was in the mountain range direction.

49A: Western state capital: SANTA FE. I've never been to New Mexico. Do you like Georgia O'Keeffe?

53A: Turns back: REVERSES

56A: Pipe cleaner: REAMER. No idea. Always associate REAMER with citrus juice.

60A: Hold contents: CARGO. Ha, the nautical "Hold" got me again. I kept wanting "Hold" to be a verb.

62A: King toppers: ACES. I was thinking of this King and his wig.

63A: Middle of a tassel?: ESSES

65A: Do a postal job: SORT. Of course, I penned in MAIL first.

Down:

1D: Stop gripping: LET GO

2D" "___ Frome": ETHAN. Learned it from doing Xword. Have never touched any of Edith Wharton's books.

3D: Audible expression of contempt: SNORT. I wrote down SNEER first.

7D: Wildebeests: GNUS

8D: Holy cow!: YIPES. Sometimes this kind of simple exclamation stumps me. YIPES, Yipee, Holy mackerel! Have you ever used "Man alive"?

9D: Hide away: SECRETE

10D: Glacial deposit: PLACER. New to me. It's a "surficial mineral deposit formed by the concentration of small particles of heavy minerals, as gold, rutile, or platinum, in gravel or small sands."

18D: Wounds with a tusk: GORES. What, not us?

22D: Cause anxiety: ALARM

24D: Giraffe relative: OKAPI. I would not have got this one without the across fills. Barb B likes the pantaloons.

27D: Preserved for later: ON ICE. Is this also a hockey term?

32D: Sports zebras: REFS. Hmm, some kind of "striped" under-theme in this puzzle.

39D: Tex-Mex menu items: TOSTADAS. Yummy.

42D: Goofy error: BONER. I should really use this word instead of abusing "faux pas" & "screw-up" all the time.

44D: Even the score: AVENGE

46D: Islamic women's quarters: HAREMS. I was wondering if men really are not allowed to enter HAREMS. Will they be punished if they do?

50D: BP merger partner: AMOCO. They merged in 1998.

52D: Philosopher Mach: ERNST. So the the Mach in "Mach topper" (SST) refers to him?

53D: Chop into small pieces: RICE. Really, not DICE?

C.C.

Sunday August 24, 2008 Edgar Fontaine

Theme: Chick Flicks

24A: Diane Keaton title role: ANNIE HALL

46A: Dorothy Dandridge title role: CARMEN JONES

69A: Kirsten Dunst title role: MARIE ANTOINETTE

95A: Barbara Stanwyck title role: ANNIE OAKLEY

118A: Ingrid Bergman title role: ANASTASIA

3D: Rosalind Russell tittle role: AUNTIE MAMA

9D: Cate Blanchett title role: ELIZABETH

15D: Shirley MacLaine title role: IRMA LA DOUCE

69D: Julie Andres title role: MARY POPPINS

78D: Greer Garson title role: MRS. MINIVER

84D: Ingrid Bergman title role: JOAN OF ARC

I like the theme, very ambitious. All the theme entries except ANASTASIA (118A: Ingrid Bergman title role) look great to me.

I am annoyed at ANASTASIA not only because because we already have one Bergman movie (84D), but the crossing of ANASTASIA with RALE (112D: Last breath) corner is extremely irksome. 4 RALE/RALES in one week? Unbelievable!

This is where the editorial creativity is sorely needed, as I am sure the constructor was not aware of the RALE(S) binge we've had. After reading the news clip on Madonna's "Sticky and Sweet" tour this morning, I thought of her title role EVITA, but it's too short. And QUEEN VICTORIA (Judi Dench in "Mrs. Brown") is not a title role, and it's too long. What movie title can you think of? It has to be a 9-letter word.

Crossword constructing is so hard. I really have huge respect for those guys, even if I often criticize their work. But my complaints are "For Love of the Game".

Lots of entertainment names in the grid, fitting the theme nicely. I had fun googling, no time to fully digest what I had read/linked though.

Across:

14A: Zodiac sign: LIBRA. Mine is Cancer. How about your?

19A: Comic Anderson: LOUIE. No, I've never heard of him or his game show "Family Feud".

22A: Bottom deck: ORLOP. I forgot why Clear Ayes mentioned this ORLOP last week.

26A: Stomachs of ruminants: OMASA. Singular is OMASUM. New to me. It's "the third division of the stomach of a ruminant animal". How many stomachs does a ruminant animal have? Three?

30A: Precision machinist: DIE MAKER. Boy, I had DOE MAKER for a long time. I wrote down SOLO instead of SOLI for the intersecting 13D: Arias for one.

40A: Fall off the wagon: IMBIBE

42A: Amin's birthplace: UGANDA. Ha, I already forgot where the capital of UGANDA is. Kampala, Kampala, Kampala.

54A: South Carolina river: SANTEE. It's named after the SANTEE tribe. Here is the map. New river to me.

57A: Womanizer: TOMCAT. I just learned that TOMCAT can be a verb too.

60A: Mother of Apollo: LETO. And the "Swan lover" is LEDA (or the "Mythical queen of Sparta").

64A: Louis and Carrie: NYES. I know neither of them, though I do remember "a NYE/NIDE of peasants".

73A: Fire opal: GIRASOL. New to me.

93A: Intermittently windy: GUSTY. Really? "Intermittenly"? I thought "GUSTY" was continuously blowing hard (This sentence feels weird, correct me if I am wrong).

94A: Ninny: SIMP. So many different words to describe an airhead.

98A: Fed: G-MAN. The FBI guy. Fed can also be T-MAN, the IRS guy.

99A: Egg receptacle: OVISAC. Another new word. It's "a sac or capsule containing an ovum or ova". What a solid made-up word! Reminds me of cruciverbalist.

103A: Patagonia plains: PAMPAS. Look, this lone gaucho seems to enjoy his life on PAMPAS.

114A: Coast of Morocco: RIF. I crossed the River Lethe again on this word. Here is the map. Argyle said "Er RIF" comes from the Berber word arif (The RIF, Er-RIF in Arabic).

115A: Composer Shostakovich: DMITRI. Can you believe I forgot his name again? This is the third time he appeared in our puzzle. Was it a gimmie to you? Do you like his music?

117A: Computer language std.: ASCII. Know the word. Can never remember what the acronym stands for.

124A: Redbone and Russell: LEONS. Interesting. "Stranger on a Stranger's Land". I don't grok what he is singing.

125A: Ancient Chinese poet: LI PO. "Li Bai" in Mandarin Chinese. From the Tang Dynasty (with capital in Xi'An). Here are some lines from his well-known "Drinking Alone by Moonlight": A cup of wine, under the flowering trees; I drink alone, for no friend is near. Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon. For her, with my shadow, will make three men....."

131A: Saint of letters: CYRIL. I've never heard of this saint. Have vaguely heard of the Cyrillic alphabet though.

Down:

4D: Time of Nick?: NITE. "Nick at NITE". I've never seen it.

6D: Kiddie spoilers?: GRANDMAS

8D: Dog's first name: RIN. RIN Tin Tin.

17D: Al of the '50s Indians: ROSEN. Couldn't tell whether this card is a real card or a reprint.

25D: Mammalian epoch: EOCENE. I could not believe this is a real word. It looks so wrong. OK, Eos is Greek goddess of dawn. "cene is " means "new", like "recent" I suppose. ECOCENE is "an epoch in which mammals dominant (50 million years ago)."

28D: Like lofty poetry: ODIC. Very interesting how adjectives are formed. For Pindar, it's Pindaric; For Keats, it's Keatsian, not Keatsic.

31D: German Dadaist: ERNST (Max). A surrealist as well. Here is The Elephant Celebes. I am looking forward to seeing ERNST's buddy Paul KLEE next week.

32D: Papeete's location: TAHITI. Got it from the across fills. I had no idea where Papeete is. FYI, Gauguin painted his "Two Women on the Beach" in TAHITI also.

33D: "A Perfect Peace" author: AMOS OZ. Gimme. He knows "How to Cure a Fanatic".

39D: Central Park S. Landmark: NYAC (New York Athletic Club). No idea. I've never been to NY.

41D: Brown in fat: BRAISE. I don't think this clue is wholly accurate. The process of braising needs some liquid for simmering.

44D: Organisms requiring oxygen: AEROBES. AER(O) is air, Obe is from Microbe. Good to learn this stuff.

53D: Multi-deck game: CANASTA . Not a familiar card game to me. I've never play rummy.

56D: Wild pig: WARTHOG. I forgot. So ugly.

79D: Thick soup: POTAGE. I did not know that some POTAGES are made of thickened liquid with mashed FLOWERS/fruit. Sounds so sweet.

80D: Fred of "The Munsters": GWYNNE. I would not have got his name without the crossing fills. It's so hard for me to grasp the popularity of this show and the wide-range (often expensive) collectibles.

83D: Water-to-wine site: CANA. You can find The Wedding at CANA at Louvre.

91D: Share a book project: CO-EDIT

92D: "The Listeners" writer Walter: DE LA MARE. "Is there anybody there...." This is the first time I heard of this poet.

97D: K2 creature?: YETI. I had no idea that K2 is a mountain peak (Karakoram Range in northern Kashmir). And it's the 2nd highest in the world. I am just so used to the "Abominable Snowman" clue.

100D: Traveling bag: VALISE. This Civil War VALISE is so well preserved.

105D: Georgia city: MACON. I forgot. Dennis mentioned this name when we had the MOON PIE long time ago. MACON is nicknamed "Heart of Georgia". Lovely cherry blossom.

107D: Incendiarism: ARSON

115D: Dist. across: DIAM (Diameter). I don't like this clue. "Dist. across" what? A square? Definitely needs a "circle" in the clue.

116D: Somewhat blue: RACY. Van Gogh' somewhat blue (literally) "Starry Night Over the Rhone popped into my mind immediately. He is such a brilliant yet tragic figure. I really like his various paintings on sunflowers, esp those in full bloom. I am so touched by his bold & daring strokes of yellow color, breathtaking. Indeed, Theo, "The sunflower is mine in a way..."

123D: Lowly NCO: CPL. PFC is the lowest NCO, right?

C.C.