The Monday Sun

I can see that I have much to learn about crossword blogging. Just when I was about to make the pronouncement that Thursday and Friday puzzles are much easier to blog about as they have longer, more interesting entries than lend themselves better to illustration, along comes this Monday puzzle with opportunities aplenty to illustrate.

And to get in trouble.

The name of this puzzle by Mark Feldman is Spa Treatments for Miss World, and the theme entries all concern health or cosmetic treatments associated with a particular country. 67 per cent of these I have no problem blogging about.

I mean I can show you Spa Treatment #1 (3D) FRENCHMANICURE. Nothing controversial there for even the most fervent Francophobe.

I can explain that Spa treatment #3 (17D) SWEDISHMASSAGE refers to a variety of techniques specifically designed to relax muscles by applying pressure to them against deeper muscles and bones, and rubbing in the same direction as the flow of blood returning to the heart. And that the best masseuse I ever knew was very dismissive of Swedish massage, preferring the deep tissue massage technique, which I can testify (in the words of John Mellencamp) hurts so good.

But what am I supposed to do with Spa treatment #2 (16D) BRAZILIANWAX. I don't want to alienate my audience, who Will Shortz has taught me is always at the breakfast table enjoying a wholesome repast with their family. Nor do I particularly want to explain to my wife what all those pictures of balding Brazilian babes are doing in my browser's history.

Maybe I can get the point across with this caveman cartoon. After all, thanks to Geico, everybody loves cavemen, right?

On second thought, no, that's not quite right either. How about if I let Scott Spiezio, the third baseman of the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals show us all what a Brazilian wax is all about. Scott doesn't have a "bikini area" so he wears his Brazilian on his face.
Scott --


Whew, that's better. But I'm still not out of the woods yet. What am I supposed to do with 59A: Chat room activity for some (CYBERSEX) especially as it's directly beneath 55A: Like some illnesses (NEARFATAL), I know good and well near-fatal cyber sex is not a suitable topic for breakfast table conversation. And even looking for images to accompany something as seemingly innocent as 63A: Musical instruments with pipes (ORGANS) can show you more than you bargained for, as can 1D: Down Under girl (SHEILA).

And I'd strongly advice you to have safe search on if you want an image to accompany 9A: Staff (ROD) or you might get something even more startling than this shot of Rod the Mod Stewart.

6D: Bib moistener (DROOL) is unpleasant to contemplate. And now even 7D: Finishes (ENDS) looks like something it shouldn't.

And from sex the puzzle turns to violence. 16A: Throw to the canvas (BODYSLAM) is a legitimate wrestling move, but directly above 19A: Transversely (CROSSWAYS). If you bodyslam someone crossways, you could break their spine.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Let's look at some of the other entries.

12A: In the saddle (AHORSE) is somewhat unusual but not controversial -- unless, they mean horse as a nickname for heroin. And look right under there, 15A: Night Flight (REDEYE) we all know red eyes is something that happens when you smoke marijuana.

Sex, violence and drugs, oh my!

And isn't DRIP (34D: Tiresome person) a slang term for gonorrhea? How do we know that X in GRANDPRIX (38A: Endurance car race) is really silent? Every TIKI (41A: Carved Polynesian pendant) I've ever seen was naked.

Oh my, I feel faint. Thank goodness for 18A: Eeyore's creator (MILNE) and 49D: Magic word of comic books (SHAZAM). If you'll excuse me I'm going to go curl up with my stuffed Winnie the Pooh and a stack of Captain Marvel comics.

Aloha, Don Ho

I was sorry to see Don Ho go. His signature song "Tiny Bubbles" is so catchy it ought to be illegal, and it is one of three songs I remember my grandfather used to love to sing (the other two were "Moon River" and Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times,") so my memories of Ho and "Tiny Bubbles" are all positive.
Plus, when I wrote and asked Ho for an autographed picture, he was kind enough to send me a color one, which is unusual. Most celebs send out black and white.
So Aloha (in the goodbye sense) to Don Ho, a colorful character who made us happy, made us feel fine.

A toast to Johnny Hart

Johnny Hart, the cartoonist who created B.C., passed away on April 7th. B.C. was a comic strip I enjoyed a great deal as a kid, and some of the paperback collections of B.C. were prized items in my literary collection for a long time. Johnny Hart caught a lot of flak in the last few years over incorporating some of his religious beliefs into his comic creation. I was not offended -- or particularly amused -- by these strips, but being logical, I couldn't figure out why these cavemen were talking about Jesus. I mean the name of the strip was "Before Christ."
Still, I appreciate anybody who makes me laugh. So tonight I raise my glass to Johnny Hart.

The Friday Sun

My respect for Rex Parker, which was already immense, has grown by leaps and bounds during this, my first full week of annotating New York Sun puzzles. Crossword blogging is a lot of work.
It's also a lot of fun and so is this Weekend Warrior (no theme) from Patrick Berry.

I've said before it's always good to get one of the 1's, and I got 1A: Advertising agts. land them (ACCTS) immediately, and I was off to a good start.

Seeing the answer to 3D: Enigmatology topic (CROSSWORDS) took me back for a minute. I'm not sure I've ever seen the word "crossword" in a crossword before. Too many consonants, I guess.

The clue for 17A: Noise heard after someone crashes sent my mind off after cars and computers before it got to cots (SNORE)

19A: His nemesis was Dr. Claw (INSPECTORGADGET) The inspector was a bit after my time, I had SPEC and wanted Dr. Claw's nemesis to be somebody "spectacular"

50A: One of Jon Arbuckle's pets (ODIE) Jon Arbuckle is Garfield's . . . well, not master. . .let's say roommate. Originally Odie belonged to Jon's friend Lyman, but Lyman disappeared in the early 80's, leaving his slobbery, none-too-bright pooch behind.

6D: Tail-wagging animals (RATTLERS) took me a minute. I was thinking cute mammals not deadly reptiles.

11D: Liquid once found in capsules (TANG) Space capsules that is. Being way out in the atmosphere far from sodas and Slurpees or even juice is the only excuse for drinking this vile concoction. Like most kids growing up in the 60's and 70's I wanted to be an astronaut. What changed my mind was not my fear of heights or the Apollo 13 scare, it was the taste of Tang.

49: "Roundball Rock" composer I had __SH and knew it had to be either Johnny CASH or John TESH, and it sounded too corny for Cash. (TESH)

Jane EYRE turns up a lot in crosswords. Not so much her house. 27D: ____ Hall ("Jane Eyre" setting) (THORNFIELD) And no wonder. Thornfield? That doesn't sound very inviting.

Here's one where my longitude helped me. 39A: Restaurants that do less business from May to August (OYSTER BARS) I've lived close to the coast all my life and I know you can only eat oysters in months with an R in them. I don't know why this is so, or why anybody would want to eat anything as disgusting as an oyster at any time of the year, but there you go.

And there I go, off into a weekend. Hope to see you here on Monday.

Kurt Vonnegut

I like a world with Kurt Vonnegut in it a lot better than I like a world without him, so obviously I have some adjusting to do. I don’t think anyone will ever fill Mark Twain’s shoes, but Vonnegut came closer than anybody else in the 20th century. Like Twain, his view of humanity was pretty bleak, but his sense of humor was ever-present.
My favorite book of his is probably “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.”
Here’s a quote from that book, as Mr. Rosewater tells earth’s newcomers what they need to know:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

Would that people like Don Imus had internalized this message when he came to earth. I am so tired of seeing hate passed off as humor. I am so tired of people like Imus being called “shock jocks”. Unfortunately nowadays, being cruel and hateful and narrow-minded is no longer shocking. What shocks me is when someone is kind.
Rest in peace -- and God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.

The Thursday Sun

You'll just have to put up with my handwriting today. This is one of those puzzles where there's more than one letter in some squares, and the Across Lite software, as good as it is, just can't handle that. I think the puzzle loses a lot of its elegance, when at the end you've got (for example) FRENCHRNS (at 10D) instead of the correct and interesting looking pencil version. Sometimes it even changes the meaning of an entry. 49A in Across Lite is HASHUSE (instead of Hash House) and that looks like it refers to drug indulgence rather than eating.

One of my favorite books about Crosswording is Matt Gaffney's Gridlock, a fascinating look at how crosswords are constructed. In one chapter though he talks about how crosswords are getting to the point where they might be played out, all the good themes have been used many many times, et cetera. I don't feel this way, especially when the Sun keeps coming out with great puzzle after great puzzle. Waterlogged is by Alan Olschwang, and don't let the title fool you; it is definitely not all wet.

All the theme entries contain H2O, i.e. two H's and an O. Specifically:



20A: Detectives (SLEUTHHOUNDS) not really a common term for detectives, it's not on Dictionary.com and Wikipedia redirects to bloodhound. Just plain "sleuth" is more common.



49A: Unlikely spot for a gastronome (HASHHOUSE) If you like H's, this is probably one of your favorite phrases.



60A: Province of the Netherlands (SOUTHHOLLAND)


47D: Oscar-winning song of 1959 (HIGHHOPES) This is from the Frank Capra film "A Hole in the Head," which is probably the film all H lovers go see after having dinner at the hash house. Besides the song, it's also notable as one of the few films where Frank Sinatra played a likable character.
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10D: The wolf in "Peter and the Wolf" (FRENCHHORNS)

5D: Gaffs, e.g. (FISHHOOKS) I found this one to be pretty tricky and no wonder. Wikipedia has 9 different definitions for this word, some of which definitely would not pass the Sunday breakfast table test. My favorite: a term used to describe an especially low level of motivation in the workplace. To denote a somewhat purposeful waste of time: "I didn't do anything at work today but sit in my cube and gaff off"



My favorites among the non-watery clues:

16A: With 12-Down, ring in the morning? (FROOT LOOP). Just like Peter Gordon was no doubt hoping, I was thinking alarm clock, traffic circle, not Toucan Sam's favorite breakfast cereal. My oldest son, who is no ornithologist, but is pretty smart nevertheless, once asked me, "What kind of bird is Toucan Sam?" He still hasn't quite lived that one down yet. (For the record, Toucan Sam is a toucan.)

1A: Bunker Hill General (HOWE) a nice change of pace from the usual "Inventor Elias."

14A: One of the girls on "The Waltons" (ERIN) fortunately the only one I remember.

39A: Fanciful snowmen: (YETIS) What a difference a word makes, had it been "legendary snowmen" I'd have gotten it right off. "Fanciful" sent me off after some of those great snowmen Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) used to make.

33D: Peel's partner (STEED). Probably because I hate licking envelopes, I went to "peel and STICK" rather than to Mrs. Peel's avenging partner John Steed.

29A: Will-call acquisition: Abbr. (TKT) I had TIX for a long time, didn't pay enough attention to the singular clue.

27A: Exclamation of disgust: (PAH) I knew it ended in H, and thought it had to be UGH, until 27D: College Major, for short (PSYCH) started looking really scary.

And that's the penultimate Sun puzzle this week. I guess you know what that makes Friday.

The Wednesday Sun

For the second day in a row the New York Sun puzzle takes my breath away. Yesterday because I was awed by the technical proficiency and today because I am laughing so hard. I was looking forward to it just from the title Capital Pun-ishment (by Alex Boisvert), knowing I was probably in for some wordplay -- and boy, was I ever!


14D:MADISONCHEYENNE made me laugh out loud. It's the perfect crossword humor. If you just look at the answer, it looks like two state capitols -- or maybe a President and an Indian tribe -- or maybe even a famous New York avenue and an old TV western (sorry, I mean oater). To get the joke, you need the clue (Comment when interviewer Lauer pulls no punches with a timid princess), and you need to think for a minute until those two capitals become "Matt is on shy Anne." And that's funny.

So is "ANNAPOLISALBANY" for 3D: "Only one Granny Smith for you, Bugs? This one made me chuckle again just now as I was typing it. Maybe it's just me, I mean your funny bone probably needs to be made of mostly maize, but I think most crossworders appreciate wordplay.


9D: What the disappointed fan said after Rome’s first emperor sang “Yesterday.”: AUGUSTASTPAUL took me longer to figure out than the others, but that's okay, it just made the payoff that much more rewarding. "Augustus ain't Paul! Ha ha!" I know the people in the park today must have thought I'd lost my mind, laughing like that over a crossword puzzle.

And my favorite is 7D: “Are you aware that young men dine at our house?”: JUNEAUBOISEDOVER

Less hilarious to my mind is 21D: Gave orders to, then defeated?”: BOSTONCONCORD just because you have to change the accent to make it work, so let's not dwell on that, shall we?

I missed three letters in this puzzle 65A: Bandleader with the Dixie Syncopaters was not something I knew. I had KIN_OLIVER, and I guessed Kinn Oliver rather than the correct King Oliver. BTW, it intersected with 66D: Futbol Score , which I should have guessed was GOL, but I figured a lot of soccer games in a 0-0 tie or NOL. Okay, okay, I missed it. Just like I missed 36D: “Monsoon Wedding” Director Mira. Just didn't know it and got no help from the intersecting clues.

I knew 17A: Novelist Jaffe: RONA however. Rona Jaffe’s first book “The Best of Everything” sold a bajillion copies back in the late 50’s and was made into a movie starring Joan Crawford. It was also about the raciest book my mother owned and so hungry was I for lusty literature that I read the whole thing even though the page-to-sex ratio was extremely disappointing. The book is memorable to me now only as where I first encountered the word “buxom.” I think it was on page one, and that was probably what kept me slogging through. If it had a racy word like "buxom" right there on the first page it had to be pretty sexy, right? None of Rona's other books ever sold as well, and she finally lost whatever credibility she had when she wrote "Mazes and Monsters" in the early days of Dungeons and Dragons, purporting to show how role-playing games make people satanic and psychotic.

I loved the clue for 6D: Piece that moves orthogonally: ROOK, just cuz I love the word "orthogonally."

58A: Creator of Detroit: RUNYON took me longer than I would have liked. I knew nobody created the city in Michigan, but I blanked on "Guys and Dolls" and Nathan Detroit. Too bad cuz I am a big fan of Runyon.

This puzzle also had two 2-word, 3-letter names: 5A: NBA MVP of the 1980-81 season: DRJ and 34D: 1982 costar of Sylvester Stallone: MRT. Boisvert almost ties them together in the same year. Almost.

8D: Treat similar to a s'more: MOONPIE. Well, not really, if s'mores didn't taste any better than moon pies, they never would have caught on around the campfire.

That's it for today. Tune in again tomorrow for the best of everything crosswordy.

The Tuesday Sun

Sometimes I think I could solve a puzzle faster if I wasn't timing myself and trying to go fast. Usually that's because I don't want to take the couple of extra seconds to step back and get the big picture (i.e. the puzzle's theme). That's certainly what happened today with Gary Steinmehl's Upscale Wordplay.
And I have mixed feelings about it. I feel kinda stupid that I didn't catch on to the theme until I was almost done, literally on the last letter -- the X in FAXEDDRINKS. On the other hand I feel the sort of awe that I used to feel years ago when it started to dawn on me that puzzles had themes. I used to sometimes just sit and study a completed puzzle marveling at how the constructors were able to do what they did. It seemed almost like magic and it got me hooked on crosswords for life. I don't often get that blown-away feeling anymore.

But I got it today. Even after I picked up on the theme it was another couple minutes before I realized that there was another level to this puzzle. Steinmehl hadn't just substituted one note for another, he'd gone all the way up the scale from do to do -- just like he said he would in the puzzle's title!

Here we go:

21A: Twirl members of the clergy? (SPINRECTORS) change the "do" in "spin doctors" to "re". I think I might have figured out the theme a little sooner if I'd gotten this entry sooner, instead of working from the bottom up as I did.

33A: Bartender's electronic transmissions? (FAXEDDRINKS) mi to fa. I don't have to keep explaining this theme to you, do I? Everybody probably got the theme way before I did. (My biorhythms must be off. Stupid biorhythms!)

41A: Baffle tennis great Rod? (PUZZLELAVER) and 52A: Capitol desperadoes? (DOMEBANDITS) I had both of these entries and thought, hmm, those are kinda odd, but didn't get any further than that.

Wow, what an elegant puzzle. Either that or a dense laver -- I mean solver.

All right, now I'm going to quit gushing like a schoolgirl about her first crush, and put on my critic hat.

Here are some clues that caught my fancy.

19A: River of Cairo (OHIO) If this had been 1A I might have filled in NILE, but as it was I already had the H and the I and went to Illinois instead of Egypt.

I must be pretty well pop-culturally well-rounded. I knew both the 1950's 11D: Greeting to Steverino (HIHO) and the more recent 1D: British sitcom with the theme song "This Wheel's on Fire," familiarly (ABFAB) as I'm a fan of both Steve Allen and Patsy and Edina.

Linda G's doppelganger makes one of her cameo appearances in 57A: Kate's role opposite Cate's Katharine in "The Aviator" (AVA) (Wow, there's a lot of Kates in that clue.) BTW, Ava Gardner has her own museum in Smithfield, North Carolina. Stop by if you're ever passing through -- and in the meantime check out the website.

13D: Where the wild things are (ZOOS). The word "Zoo" was in yesterday's and today's Sun puzzle. I'll be looking for it tomorrow.

2D: Midwife coworker (DOULA) Can't believe this vowel-ly word doesn't show up in more crosswords.

53D: Birthstone of Autumn (OPAL) Of course, what other birthstones in there (in crosswords)?

4: Swift weapon (PEN) as in Jonathan Swift and the mightier than the sword item.

31D: Prefix with penultimate (ANTE) a change of pace from the usual poker-centric clues for ANTE, and I love the word "antepenultimate". It means next-to-the-next-to-the-last, and I use it in conversation every chance I get which unfortunately, isn't often.

43D: Quod ____ de-mon-stran-dum (ERAT) At the risk of exposing even more of my ignorance, I couldn't figure out the reason for the hyphens. What's wrong with "demonstrandum"?

All right, that's all for today. Let's meet back here tomorrow for the antepenultimate Sun puzzle of the week.

The Monday Sun

Wouldn't you know, the first day of my fulltime New York Sun crossword blogging and the puzzle's late, didn't show up until after 9:00 a.m. (EDT). I suppose it's churlish to complain, since I'm not paying for it, but I might be willing to if I could get it the night before as with the NY Times.

Then my wonky computer at work would let me go everywhere except Blogger.

Oh well, here's hoping that late really is better than never.

This was a pretty cool Monday puzzle, a little botany, a little literature, some geography, some golf. Lots of X's and Z's and J's for those of you who are jaded by the more popular letters and looking for something a little more exotic. One thing that the New York Sun does with its weekday puzzle is give them a name that hints (albeit obliquely) at the puzzle's theme. The name of this puzzle (by John Calvin Williams) is Group Hugs, which didn't help me much until I got the first long entry 17A: Rush hour comment (ITSAZOOOUTTHERE). When I looked at the answer those three O's in a row kinda jumped out at me, and a couple seconds later I made a leap of my own: "Oh yeah, O's are a symbol for hugs as XXOO. Maybe all the long across entries have three O's together like." And they do:

39A: Tropical flowers with reedy stems (BAMBOOORCHIDS) I had never heard of this kind of flower before, but looking it up I learned some flower anatomy. According to Wikipedia: "These flowers, 5 – 8 cm in diameter, are a rosy lilac and white disk with a purple lip." I didn't know flowers had lips -- well, except for those bulbs favored by the Dutch, which of course have two lips. (Hey, I told you I like my jokes corny.)

58A: Senior's complaint (IMTOOOLDFORTHIS) and even an extra triplicate clinch at 26D: Frighten away (SHOOOFF).

Other clues that struck my fancy:

40D: Island that's home to orangutans (BORNEO) Whatever happened to the Wild Man of Borneo? Why has he been exiled from crosswords? (I tried to find a picture of said wild man but came up empty, which is not to say there aren't some goings-on in Borneo.)

23D: Woodcutter who said "Open sesame!" (ALIBABA) When I was a kid I thought Ali was shouting "Open says me!" which makes as much if not more sense than invoking the name of a plant known mostly its seeds. This Ali Baba painting is by the great Maxfield Parrish, who made a guest appearance in last Thursday's Sun puzzle.

13D: Last word of the first verse of "Amazing Grace." (SEE) This kind of clue where you have to mentally sing the whole song as quickly as you can is kind of a pain when you're timing yourself

41D: Driving options: (ONEIRONS) this probably took me longer to get than any other entry, just couldn't stop thinking about leather seats, sun roofs, that kind of "driving" option.

27A: Portugal's capital, to the Portugese (LISBOA) I did not know that, and I do not know why we change other country's names around. If the Portugese call it Lisboa, why do we call it Lisbon. Why do we call Nippon Japan and Helas Greece? That's the kind of stuff I wonder about. That and whether gorilla glands can bring back passionate youth.

All right, see y'all tomorrow.

A couple of passings that should be noted

When I picture Batman, I usually picture him the way Marshall Rogers drew him -- with that impossible cape that just went on for miles. Rogers and Steve Englehart did my absolute favorite run on the Darknight Detective. (This was before Frank Miller got hold of Batman and turned him into a raving psychopath.) Their Batman was driven, of course, but he had heart and a sense of humor. And Rogers' Gotham City was beautiful -- as was his Silver St. Cloud, my favorite of Mr. Wayne's many girlfriends. Marshall Rogers passed away on March 25th at the age of 57.











I spent a lot of my youth reading detective novels, and sad to say, that I find most of the authors I loved as a young man to be just about unreadable. I enjoyed
all 9,000 of Carter Brown's books, but when I try to read him today the adverbs come at a rate of about 4.5 a page (yes, I did the math) and I just want to slowly dig him out the ground and ruthlessly strangle him till he helplessly agrees to stop using those useless parts of speech so relentlessly and so callously. The Shell Scott books by Richard S. Prather, however, are as fun today as they were when I first discovered them back in the days before my literary tastes solidified. Prather's Shell Scott was a man who didn't take himself too seriously and his adventures have none of the misogony that mars so many works of the same time period. A few years before Mr. Prather passed away on February 14th I wrote to him and told him how much I appreciated his work and got him to sign a couple books for me. This is what he wrote in one of them:
And I did enjoy reading it again, and I know I'll enjoy it again the next time I read it. Mister Prather sold over 40 million copies of his books and it's easy to see why.

Now appearing for two nights only!

Today and tomorrow I will be guest blogging at the world famous Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, which means I get to wrestle with the Friday and Saturday puzzles (the hardest of the week.) Come check it out.

Thursday Crossword stuff

Usually on Thursday I take just the NY Times and the NY Sun puzzle with me to the park, cuz getting though those two -- along with one of Amy's Spinach and Feta Pocket Sandwiches and a Diet Pepsi -- will take up my whole lunch hour. But either today's puzzles were easier than usual or those ginkgo biloba tablets are finally starting to kick in, cuz I finished the Times in 6:57 and the Sun in 10:51 and had plenty of time to watch Yankee tourists photograph themselves by the fountain and wish I'd brought another puzzle.

The Times puzzle was one of those punny ones that cracked me up, but my friend Rex Parker can tell you about the Times puzzles better than I can, so I'll concentrate on the Sun.
I had to take a minute before I started solving to appreciate this lovely grid, where all the black squares make up a pair of plus and minus symbols. Evidently there is some controversy in some crossword circles about whether or not crosswords actually have to always be symmetrical, and I actually lean toward relaxing that restriction when necessary, but there's something to be said for a nice symmetrical grid like this, purely aesthetic, yeah, but crossword puzzles are an art, aren't they?

This puzzle was still pretty tricky even after I got 1A: "One of two signs in this puzzle" POSITIVE, and consequently, as a yin-yangy freebie, 61A NEGATIVE.

Some of my favorite clues:
31D: Mad worker, at times: LAMPOONER I actually figured they meant Mad magazine, not disgruntled co-worker, but I was thinking CARTOONER and I'm pretty sure that's not a word.
20A: Lame duck helper: VET You get so used to hearing this as a political phrase, you forget that a maimed mallard might need medical attention.
39A: Like some unwed fathers: PRIESTLY
59A: O. Henry and others IRONISTS. I love this one although it took me forever to figure out, mainly because I had PIG at 56D instead of HOG as was looking for something to fill out I_I_ISTS, once I turned that second I into an O, I got it right away. I loved O. Henry when I was a kid, and even though that style of twist-ending short story is not held in high regard these days, I still love his stuff.
43A: Old Testament book before Esther NEHEMIAH. It was refreshing -- and helpful -- to have this spelled out. It poops up a lot but is usually abbreviated NEH.

Here's some stuff I did not know: I don't think I've ever seen the word Girasols (clue for 2D) before. It's a type of opal but the word looks like it should be an umbrella for a giraffe.
And 37D: Oilman Halliburton is ERLE? Are you kidding me? There's another guy with that first name? Does that mean Perry Mason's creator can finally take a few puzzles off?

EOS, the Greek dawn goddess shows up in both the Times and the Sun puzzles today.
And any puzzle that has both the brilliant American artist Maxfield PARRISH and the world's worst Wacky Racer Dick DASTARDLY is a good one.

Something tells me they don't get much rain

Tomorrow is -- in addition to Good Friday and Merle Haggard's birthday -- "A Drop of Water is a Grain of Gold" Holiday in Turkmenistan.
I'll drink (Dasani) to that!

Final thoughts on the Stamford final

So the letter that cost Al Sanders the ACPT championship was an L that should have been a B, right? The correct crossing was BEVEL ("carpenter's tool") intersecting with REB ("secesh") (an obscure term for secessionist) and Al had LEVEL (which is certainly a carpenter's tool) and REL, which was not what constructor Stanley Newman had in mind and thus marked wrong. But the famous CLINTON - BOBDOLE puzzle proved that sometimes two different answers are equally valid. Couldn't REL be the initials of Robert E. Lee, the most famous secech in American history? Isn't that equally valid?
Just a thought.

Awesome with awesome sauce

Watch Adam Hughes, the King of Boobs do a complete Supergirl sketch, and listen as he tellls you exactly how he weaves his magic.
Amazing.

Monday Crossword Stuff

Great New York Sun puzzle honoring baseball's opening day. Got it done in 5:04, and might could have shaved a few seconds off that time if I hadn't stopped to admire the entries SINGLEUSECAMERA, DOUPLEDIP, TRIPLESEC and HOMERJAYSIMPSON all intersecting with HITFORTHECYCLE. Wow, further proof that a fairly easy Monday puzzle can still be clever and satisfying.
4:23 on the NY Times puzzle today, nothing special, the theme was three latin phrases everyone should be familiar with.
I did the Saturday NY Times puzzle today too -- in 19:21, which made me feel a whole lot better about the fact that Sunday's puzzle took me 51 minutes and Friday's, well, Friday's I don't even want to talk about.

Wedding stuff

Hey, I'm a romantic guy, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why women like weddings so much -- or think they're going to like them. They always turn into a stressfest. This weekend I saw the bride, the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom all cry. Not tears of joy at the ceremony, you understand, but tears of frustration and exhaustion and anger.
Even on those rare occasions when everything goes perfectly, the bride always says the whole thing went by in a blur, with no time to notice the music and all the details that took months to create like how the bridesmaid's toenail polish matches the candles on the wedding cake, et cetera.
Weddings are created by and for the fairer sex. Remember that the next time you think the world would be better off if women were in charge.

Books I've read in 2007,part 13

I'm about to add Runaways to the list of comics I read every month because Joss Whedon is going to be writing it, and I'll read anything he writes. After all, Whedon (along with the great John Cassaday) is the first guy to get to read the X-Men. So anyway, I figured it might be a good idea to have some idea who these characters were and what their deal is. Six kids find out their parents are super-villains, and they run away and start their own super group. The most interesting thing to me was the adults, who are in league with some monsters who are out to wipe out (almost) all life on earth, and they manage to convince themselves that they're doing a good thing.

Friday Crossword Stuff

Today's New York Sun puzzle is Wacky Weekend Warrior by Trip Payne and it took me 30:42 to complete it with no errors. I really enjoyed this themeless puzzle and it gives me a chance to show you what I was talking about when I said crossword puzzles make me laugh, cuz this one cracked me up.
19 Across: Prequel to a Spike Lee Movie? MALCOLMIX (Love those Roman numeral jokes!)
4 Down: Techno version of a Patsy Cline song? IFALLTO PCS
6 Down: Solver's dilemma when faced with the clue "Telecom letters" ITTORATT (if you're a crossworder that is hilariously true.) (If you're not a crossworder, then what it means is "I've got the TT part, but is it ITT or ATT that goes there?")
I'm still chuckling over 23 Down The philosophy behind colatherapy SODASHEAL, cuz I didn't figure out it was "Sodas heal" and not "soda sheal" till after I finished the puzzle and looked up the word "sheal" which means "To take the husks or pods off from; to shell; to empty of its contents, as a husk or a pod. [Obs. or Prov. Eng. & Scot.]" and I knew that couldn't be right. So yeah, I LOLed when I finally figured it out.
I did a lot of erasing here -- I kept wanting Doc Marten to be Doc Scholl (well, the clue does reference "air-cushioned soles" which sounds more Scholly than Marteny to me); I had TWADDLEFREE instead of the correct TWADDLELESS at 44 across for the longest time. My Pushee took me forever to figure out (ONEISHOVE): I had CADRE instead of CORPS for a while and kept trying to make ATEASE fit where only ONLEAVE would work.
I don't know that I've ever solved a Trip Payne puzzle but I'm definitely looking forward to the next one. He's got some entries in here that look pretty incomprehensible but he makes it work with great clues (ISTOOATS is Part of a grain analogy; KENSCD is "Songs of Barbie and me")

I'm not sure I'll have time to do the NY Times puzzle today before I leave for Marion, South Carolina for my brother-in-law's wedding. We're not actually going for a couple of hours, but I probably better have something other a couple Friday puzzles done -- like packing maybe -- before Kim gets back. I don't think I'll have internet access in Marion either, so it'll probably be Sunday night before I get back.

Movies I've seen in 2007, part 1

I don't watch a lot of movies. There's just usually something else I'd rather be doing with what little spare time I have -- reading, writing, crosswording, organizing my comic book collection, tweaking my fantasy baseball teams' lineups, drawing, eBaying, walking in the sunshine -- lots of things seem more appealing than sitting and passively soaking up entertainment through the eyeballs. But I watched "Mrs. Henderson Presents" on the train from Connecticut and I loved it. It's based on the true story of the Windmill Theatre in London, which stayed open during the blitz of World War II, to entertain the troops and keep up morale on the homefront. This theatre was very popular because they exploited a legal loophole and were just about the only place in England that offered nudity -- although the nudes were never allowed to move but had to stand as still as paintings or scultures.
This is definitely the wholesomest movie I've ever seen with full frontal male and female nudity. Beautiful, life-affirming and with a message about war as unfortunately relevant now as it was in 1940.