Tuesday 8-28-07

SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any further until you've done today's New York Sun Crossword Puzzle. New York Sun puzzles are every bit as fun and challenging as the more well-known New York Times -- No, you know what, they're better. That's right, I said it, the New York Sun's puzzles are better than the New York Times's puzzles, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be Peter Gordon and to keep putting out this superior product and have everybody just blog, blog, blogging and yak, yak, yakking about the Times, Times, Times. Look, if you don't have time for two great puzzles a day, do the better one, do the SUN -- (we now return you to your regularly scheduled spoiler warning) -- and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. If you'd like to read about an unbiased head-to-head competition between the Sun and the Times puzzles check this out. Or if you're ready to decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

"Tripling" by Alan Arbesfeld should probably be called "Triple Ing" cuz that's what each of the themed entries contain -- an ING followed by an ING followed by another ING.

And it looks something like this:

17A: Fred's frequent routine on the way to the set? (DRIVING IN GINGER) This was the last one of the themed entries I got -- mainly because the only Freds I could think of were Flintstone and Mertz, which is weird cuz I love Fred Astaire and Ginger Rigers movies. My favorite is "Flying Down to Rio."

27A: Suggestions for many '90s GOP fundraisers (BRING IN GINGRICH) Provided of course that Newt is not too busy hounding Bill Clinton about his affair with Monica Lewinsky while simultaneously committing adultery with a woman twenty-three years his junior. This was his second wife he was cheating on this time. He served his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital battling cancer. Just another example of Republican hubris and hypocrisy.

46A: Possible variety headline if an "American Beauty" actress agrees to a D.L. Coburn play? (BENING IN GIN GAME) Probably not for a few years however. The Gin Game is about two people in a nursing home playing rummy and Ms. Bening is only 49.

61A: Wagner opera performer's activity? (SINGING IN GERMAN) " Wagner's music is better than it sounds." Mark Twain.

Other entries of interest:

9A: Large piece of cabbage? (C SPOT) C Spot? that sounds more like another part of the female anatomy I'm unfamiliar with. It doesn't sound like money, that's a C-note. I thought it might just be me -- after all, "Driving in Ginger" sounded sexy to me too, so I did a Google image search for C-spot -- 10 pages of some very interesting stuff but no money. Am I missing something?

14A: Pop alternative, in two different ways (DADA) It took me a minute to figure this one out -- Dada as a pop art alternative and a baby-talk alternative to the word "pop".

6D: Mac and cheese lead-in (BIG) Nice little Tuesday misdirection. Thought we were going to have pasta, ended up with a fast-food burger.

7D: Mobile home? (CRIB) Another tricky clue. I was trying to think of a four-letter abbreviation for Alabama. CRIB is a much better answer.

30A: Close up on the silver screen (GLENN) Another great clue.

43D: Nags (VIRAGOS) There's a great old-fashioned word that you hardly ever hear.

That's all for today. Let's do it again on Wednesday.







(You can ignore that "Tomarry-Mortary" stuff; I was working on the Scrabble-grams.)