X Marks the Spot

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 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.

This weekend Warrior is from Karen M. Tracey. Two fifteen letter entries intersect at my favorite Scrabble -- the X -- in the center of the puzzle. And they are:

36A: Ogden Nash's "Geographical Reflection" (THE BRONX? NO THONX) Frederic Ogden Nash makes his second appearance in the Sun crosswords this week, dissing New York City's Northernmost borough. This was not his final word on the birthplace of the famous rude cheer. When the Bronx celebrated its golden jubilee in 1964 the dean of Bronx Community College asked Nash if he might reconsider his opinion. Nash wrote back:

Dear Dean Tauber,
I can't seem to escape the
sins of my smart-alec youth;
Here are my amends.

I wrote those lines, "The Bronx?
No thonx";
I shudder to confess them.

Now I'm an older, wiser man
I cry, "The Bronx? God bless
them!"

Contritely yours,
Ogden Nash.

By the way, "Geographical Reflection" is one of the shortest poems ever. It could have been even shorter if Nash had used the correct name of the borough -- just "Bronx" without the "the" -- but even then it wouldn't have been as short as Strickland Gillilan's

"Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes" Adam had 'em.

As a young man under the influence of Ogden Nash and Richard Armour and others, I wrote the following poem:

The Microbes' Revenge (a sequel to the (up to now) shortest poem ever written, which is entitled "Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes" by Strickland Gillilan and goes: "Adam had 'em")

We've Eve!

To my surprise this work did not make me a world famous, wealthy poet. It didn't even sell. It was a few more years before I became a published poet. I'll tell you about that another time.

Intersecting with Ogden at the X is 7D: Tron portrayer (BRUCE BOXLEITNER). I've never seen the movie Tron, though I've seen it come up in a lot of crosswords. I had no idea Bruce Boxleitner was Tron himself. Bruce is probably better know for "Babylon 5" and "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" and for being married to "Little House on the Prairie's Melissa Gilbert.

Other entries of interest:

1A: Paint holder? (STABLE) In the sense of a spotted horse or pony, as in the old trail song, "I Ride an Old Paint."

2D: Chick in the "Maisy" books (TALLULAH) Wow, there's another Tallulah besides Ms. Bankhead?

3D: Garment that combines a bra with a girdle (ALL-IN-ONE) I have an all-in-one, but mine's from Hewlett Packard and instead of a bra and girdle, it's got a printer, scanner and fax.

If this puzzle has a mini-theme, I'd say it's the old West. In addition to STABLE, we have the Indian tribes UTES (31A: 2005 Fiesta Bowl winners), OMAHAS (43D: Nebraska natives) and NEZ PERCE (39D: Language realted to Yakima) as well as 59A: Offer? (HIRED GUN), a couple more horses join the old paint at 23A: War horse (STEED) and 29A: In a position of no escape (AT BAY) and 20A: Trail marker (SCENT) Stretching it just a bit we get a bad place for your wagon wheel (IN A RUT 12D: Trapped by habit) and cow fat (TALLOW 15A: Grease paint ingredient) and star of a bunch of B westerns like "Black Bart" "Frontier Gal" and "Calamity Jane and Sam Bass" YVONNE DeCarlo (30D: She played Lily on "The Munsters."

Sometimes you can have something wrong and still somehow luck onto the right answer. This happened for me at 40D: What Dr. James Xavier had in a 1963 Roger Corman film (X RAY EYES) For some reason I remembered a long long ago Playboy article on the movie "The Immoral Mr. Teas" who had x-ray vision or a good imagination or something that allowed him to see naked women everywhere. I vowed that as soon as I was 18 I was going to find that movie. I have not as yet kept that vow. So, I confused Roger Corman with Russ Meyer and sci-fi with nudie cutie and still got x-ray eyes. (But then the fact that it started with X and x-ray is always the example for that, it wasn't difficult.)

I have a quibble with 49A: Japanese comic book genre (MANGA). Manga isn't a comic book genre -- it is Japanese comic books Comics are ubiquitous in Japanese culture and manga has many genres -- sports, romance, historical drama, comedy, soap operas, fantasy, mystery, sexuality and horror, to name a few. One of the most popular genres is Yaoi, which is all-male romance comics geared to a female audience.

Have a great weekend.

Thursday, July 12 - Karen M. Tracey

First, a few words from the owner:
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 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.

Howard B here. Thanks for letting me crash for a little while. I'm in the process of moving out, watching my place steadily become more and more inundated with boxes. So what do I choose to do when I need to take a break from packing for a few minutes? Of course, do tonight's puzzle, which is chock full of... say it with me.... boxes! Arrrgh!!!

Woohoo! Themeless Thursday is upon us. Today we get to play with one of the Scrabbly masters of the themeless, Karen Tracey. It's a sure bet that somewhere in her puzzles, you're going to get to pick from the following menu:

• Surf & Turf - Name of a geographical location with a Scrabbly sauce (AQABA). If you're allergic to the sauce, there's ABILENE here too.
  
• Chef's Special - An interesting and somewhat obscure word, also with the chef's Scrabbly sauce (CZARDAS, 8-A). Arguably the toughest word in the puzzle.
  What's a Czardas?(it's singular, by the way) Apparently it's the national dance of Hungary. My favorite line from the Wiki article?
  "Its origins can be traced back to the 18th century Hungarian verbunkos, used as a recruiting dance by the Hungarian army". A recruiting dance? Wow, learn something new every day.
  
• Dessert of the Day - assortment of fresh words, names and terms, some with really screwy combinations of letters mixed into the dough (ESPNEWS, SIXPM, ZIPPIEST, singers Kiri TE KANAWA and Lee Ann WOMACK). This is not exactly an OLD SCHOOL(32-A) puzzle.
  

All dishes served with an extra side of Peter Gordon's cluing.
And just for the heck of it, Ms. Tracey electrifies the puzzle a bit more by dropping NIKOLA TESLA right down the center of the whole thing.

Tricky clues:
Current in spot? (ANODE) Sneaky clue for a more common answer... wish I could have asked Mr. Tesla for help.
1800 (SIXPM) Fairly straightforward, and yet stumped me quite a bit. (1800 = 6PM on a 24-hour clock). My mind insisted that this was a year at first.

Even more tricky stuff:
Auto-da-fé victim (HERETIC) The only time I've seen the word "Auto-da-fé" was reading Candide back in college... it's a term for the act of publicly sentencing and/or punishing religious dissenters. Often associated with burning at the stake. Personally, I'd rather s'mores than HERETICs, but that's just me. Real tough term in the clue, which the solver needs to know to get this one, or else depend on a ton of crossings. Ouch.

Disorderly places (RATS NESTS) Ick again. Let's move on.

Also note that both of the long answers here contain more Scrabblicious goodness -
HAZARDANOPINION - Have heard the phrase 'Hazard a guess', but this works too. I like it.
MEXICAN AMERICANS - clued as 'Chicanos'. Out of curiosity, does anyone use that term anymore? I haven't heard it in any context in a long time. Has it just fallen out of favor, or has it been moved into political incorrectness?

Let your fellow puzzlers know what you thought of this one.

Friday 6-22-07

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 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 check this out. Or if you're ready to decide for yourself you can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here

There are some good things about getting older -- wisdom, serenity and a chance at obscure 70's TV show clues that young whippersnappers don't have a chance at. I couldn't get started on this Weekend Warrior by Karen M. Tracy at 1A or 1D like I like to. I couldn't get started at all -- not until I got to the last down 60D: "____ Ramsey" I knew that one, by HEC. And I'll tell you why. When I was growing up there was only one television in the house, one television with only three channels. And Dad was in absolute control of it. So even though I was a romantic comedy-variety show guy, I had to watch westerns and cop shows, cuz that's what my Dad liked. (Well, I didn't have to, I could go read a book, and I usually chose to do that rather than watch "The High Chapparal" or "Cannon") "Hec Ramsey" starred Richard Boone, who is probably best known for "Have Gun, Will Travel" as a former gunfighter now the sheriff in a turn of the twentieth century Oklahoma town, coming to grips with new technology. It only lasted two years and it wasn't even a weekly show. It was part of an experiment where they had four different shows that rotated in and out of that time slot. "Columbo" was one of them, and so was Dennis Weaver's "McCloud." the only one I liked was "McMillan and Wife" with Rock Hudson and Suzanne Pleshette, kind of a romantic comedy with lighthearted-mystery plots. Dad hated it, so I rarely got to see it.

With the C in Hec I was able to get the ultimate across clue 64A: Walkman insert (CASSETTE) and I think it's only because of my boomer status that I knew that. You kids don't remember when Walkmans (Walkmen?) played cassettes, do you? Hell, you probably don't remember walkmans. 56D: Not much (A BIT) 57D: Penitent period (LENT) and 58D: Rim (EDGE) were easy to build off of CASSETTE and then I got 62A: Like some markets (EMERGING) and 60A: Space-saver in a studio (HIDE-A-BED) and I was off and running -- or so I thought. Things would slow up considerably before I finished the puzzle -- and one word, I'll just confess right here, I had to cheat to get. My fault, I fell in love with the wrong answer and refused to let go even though things were obviously not going to work out between us.

After polishing off the Southeast portion of the puzzle, I skipped around a bit, filling in stuff here and there. I knew 61A: "A person's a person, no matter how small" speaker (HORTON) because "Horton Hears a Who" is one of my favorite books by one of my favorite writers -- Dr. Seuss. For my money, "Horton Hatches the Egg" is Seuss's greatest masterpiece -- pretty much all you need to know to live a good life is in those pages -- but ". . Hears a Who" is magnificent too. And I got 26D: Place in the title of Bruce Springsteen's debut album (ASBURY PARK) because his album "Born to Run" changed my life and I had to track down his earlier records -- "Greetings From Asbury Park, New Jersey" and "The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle". They were good, but not as good as "Born to Run." I got 17A: National Institutes of Health headquarters (BETHESDA) because I went to the Small Press Expo there a couple years ago, and evidently Bethesda doesn't have much going on, because every traffic sign directed you to NIH facilities.

The rest of the puzzle proved more difficult, but I was able to piece it together. 52D: Real (ECHT) was not a word I was familiar with. And 12D: Squidlike mollusk (CUTTLEFISH) was tough because the only cuttle I've ever heard of was not a fish but a bone for parakeets to peck on.
Hey, you don't suppose that's where cuttle bone comes from, do you? (I just learned that's exactly where cuttle bone comes from and they're also used (or were used at one time in toothpastes, antacids and in jewelry-making as well as seeing that Tweety gets her calcium.) Grown cuttlefish are ugly by the way, but aren't they cute when they're little babies?

I appreciated 27A: Takes stock (RUSTLES) and 50A: "Good enough" (IT'LL DO). I've never seen the show in question, so I had to piece together ADDISON at 41D: Derek's ex-wife on "Grey's Anatomy". I knew 8D: Inits in 1974 news (SLA) (which stood for Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that kidnapped and brainwashed heiress Patty Hearst) because in 1974 I had not yet given up on the news. I'm not even sure how I knew 21A: Powerful pieces in ajedrez (REINAS) but I pulled it out from somewhere. Ajedrez is chess, by the way, and the reina is the queen.

And still the Northwest portion kept kicking my ass. What word did I have to cheat to get? 15A: Forecasting tool (EXIT POLL) It's a great clue and I'm embarrassed that I had to resort to such measures but I just did not know the intersecting 6D: Bridge that connects Brooklyn and Queen (KOSCIUSZKO) or 5D: Present-day tennis (OPEN ERA) (I completely misunderstood the clue and was trying to think of a game that tennis might have evolved from. But my biggest problem was that I could not mentally let go of Tarzan. I was sure that 2D: Forest swingers was APES and not AXES.

That's all I have for today. Let's do it again on Monday, when maybe I won't have to resort to cheating.

Themeless -- or is it?

Karen M. Tracey's Sun puzzle for May 17th is billed as a Themeless Thursday, but I think it does have a theme.
I'll state my case right after this 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 good as the more well-known New York Times, and they're indisputably better in one way -- they're free. You can download this puzzle and join in on the fun here.

I submit the theme of this themeless puzzle is comic books and comic strips. Just look at these entries:

55A: "Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons" Duo CALVINANDHOBBES. No question about that one. (By the way, "Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons"? Best book title ever.)

33D: "Krazy ___" (George Herriman comic strip) KAT. No question about that one either. As much as I love Pogo, Doonesbury, Peanuts, Li'l Abner, Calvin and Hobbes and Thimble Theatre (Popeye) I would have to say that Krazy Kat is my favorite comic strip. There is just something so timeless and so transcendent about Herriman's adventures of the lovesick Kat, the brick-throwing Ignatz Mouse and Offisa Pupp set in a surreal Arizona landscape.

22D: Mercury QUICKSILVER Quicksilver (AKA Pietro Maximoff) is the son of evil mutant Magneto and brother of the Scarlet Witch, and a longtime member of the Avengers.

And speaking of Magneto and mutants, 18D: He won an Emmmy for hosting the Tonys HUGHJACKMAN. Jackman is probably best known for playing Wolverine in the X-Men movies.

As far as I know TIMECOP (1994 sci-fi film satrring Jean-Claude Van Damme) was never a comic book, but it was a very comic booky movie. Likewise, many of the films of 17A: Creator of Cole Sear (MNIGHTSHYAMALAN) have a strong comic book sensibility particularly "Unbreakable."

And how about 26A: Radiances SHEENS. Sheens is only one letter away from a certain Queen of the Jungle.

Okay, okay, I know I'm reaching here. Let's forget about comics and look at some of the other clues.

1A: Row RHUBARB. It seems to me that the word "rhubarb" meaning a fight or an argument is usually from the world of baseball. This is borne out by the book "Rhubarb" by the nearly-forgotten H. Allen Smith, about a cat who inherits a baseball team. It was made into a movie with Ray Milland and a brief appearance by Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy in only his second silver screen appearance. Rhubarb was also made into a comic book, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.


One of my favorite fictional characters makes an appearance in 45A: "Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with a fox?" asker SAMIAM.

AVA Gardner is here too. The fact that she's clued as author of the 1990 Hollywood autobio subtitled "My Story" rather than the wife of Mickey Rooney or Frank Sinatra will please at least one friend of mine.

Sometimes it helps to have a few years on you. 1D: is 45 and 78, e.g. abbr., and I remember when records were sold by their revolutions per minute (RPMS). The most popular format was 33 1/3 rpms, but maybe Karen thought that would make it too easy. I also remember when people thought Herman Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny" was a modern classic. It's remembered now mostly as a 1954 movie with Humphrey Bogart as Captain QUEEG (22A), the man who loses his mind over strawberries.

If you've never heard of the Yellow Hats and Red Hats, for two (45d) you're probably not a Buddhist.

I really like 38A: Tina Fey's style GeekCHIC and 10D: Disbelieving demand NAMEONE. My only quibble with this puzzle is 30A: Slang, slangily JIVETALK. I don't think jive talk was ever slang for slang. I think it was slang for BS. Unless the Bee Gees misled me.

Have a nice Thursday.