Monday, 10-1-07

So, it's October and that means one thing at Chez Genius -- postseason baseball, the playoffs, and the World Series. Actually, the regular season is not quite over -- or there's an extra play-off round, depending on how you look at it, since the San Diego Padres and the Colorado Rockies play one game tonight to determine who gets the NL wild card. In New York, the Yankees' run of division titles is at an end but the Evil -- well, you can't call them an empire anymore -- the Evil Group of Overrated Guys Led by the Derek Jeter, the Guy Who is Such a Hot Dog He Should Change His Name to Oscar Meyer are in the playoffs as the AL wild card. And the Mets, well, the Mets will have to be satisfied with going into the history books as one of the biggest chokes of all time.

The point is in Autumn, a young man's fancy turns to baseball, and what do we have in the October 1st crossword from Dominick Talvacchio?

We have hockey. Two New York hockety teams and one from New Jersey.

57D: Org. with members found at the ends of this puzzle's three longest answers (NHL)

And those three answers are:

20A: Silver rider (THE LONE RANGER) I didn't get this one right away. Being more of a comic book fan than an oater afficionado, I thought of the Silver Surfer rather than Tonto's pal.
33A: Hawaiian, e.g. (PACIFIC ISLANDER) A shout-out, perhaps, to New York Times Crossword blogger Linda G. vacationing as we speak in the Aloha State.

50A: 1984 George Burns sequel (OH GOD, YOU DEVIL) The only show of the new TV season I'm excited about is "Reaper" about a 21-year-old slacker who discovers on his 21st birthday that his parents sold his soul to the devil and now he must act as bounty hunter for Lucifer returning escaped damned souls back to hell. It's funny and scary and it reminds me a little of one of my all-time favorites "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and why did I start to tell you this? Oh yeah, because in the premiere episode Satan is talking about how much he loves hockey (and he loves it pretty much for the reasons I hate it) and he challenges the protagonist to guess his favorite team. It's never revealed, but I'm betting it's the New Jersey Devils.

Not a whole lot of interest in the non-themed clues.

My hillbilly roots messed me up on 2D: Partner of haw (HEM) where I had HEE, thinking of course of Buck Owens and Roy Clark and pickin' and grinnin'.

1A: Sonny's "I Got You Babe" singing partner (CHER) Kinda wordy for a gimme. Couldn't they have just said "Sonny's partner"?

49A: Witherspoon of "Election" (REESE) The reason I don't go to many movies nowadays is cuz I don't think we have many actors as good as the ones I can see on Turner Classic Movies at home for free -- Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Katherine Hepburn, William Powell. One of the few modern actresses that can actually act is Reese Witherspoon.

That's all for today. See you Tuesday.