Steve Almond autograph

Back to bed on Monday morning

The Monday Sun puzzle is by Larry Shearer and it's titled "Beginning with Z's", but you know that even on Monday it's not going to as simple as every theme word starting with the 26th letter of the alphabet. As a matter of fact, there's not a single z in this puzzle.

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.

The theme of this puzzle is spelled out at 71A: Word that can begin both parts of 17- and 63- Across and 10- and 36-Down (BED).

17A: Chinese resturant appetizer (SPRING ROLL) gives us "bed spring" and "bedroll". You don't usually hear "bed spring" in the singular because it takes more than one to hold us up. It's usually "bed springs" but I won't quibble.

63: First page of a fax (COVER SHEET) Not all faxes have cover sheets. In fact, I don't think I've ever sent a fax with a cover sheet, but I still won't quibble.

10D: Game-ending announcement (CHECKMATE) 36D: Schedule (TIME TABLE)

Other "bed" words that might have showed up -- Bedrock, bed pan, bed spread, bedlam, bed bug, bed tester (no, not a dream job for lazy people, it's another word for canopy), the bedhead hairdo, bedroom, bedsore, bed man (no, not a dream job for casanovas manque, it's the guy who prepares sand beds for pig iron to be cast), bed of roses, bedsde manner and more.

I don't see much else worthy of comment among the other clues. Perfectly serviceable of course, but despite the presence of 16A: Funny reaction (HA HA) and 26A: Said three times, a Three Stooges laugh (NYUK) there's not a lot of humor going on today, as evidenced by the fact that there's not one single question marked clue (signifying wordplay) to be found. I did like 57A: Game with miners, scouts, and spies (STRATEGO) because it's a game I played with my dad when I was a kid and with my kids now that I'm a dad.

That's about it for today, sorry it's shorter than usual but all of a sudden I'm very sleepy.

More books I've read in 2007

I knew this book was going to make me hungry, and I'm been trying to lose weight, so I waited until I went to the beach for a week to read it. I'm hungry at the beach anyway, and it's the one week where I don't worry about calories. As it turned out the book did make me hungry but mostly for regional candy bars that are not available in my neck of the woods. The one candy bar discussed in this book that was native to my South is the Goo Goo Cluster, and Goo Goo Clusters are unspeakably vile.
I also read:
because I think Darwyn Cooke just might be a genius. He's doing the impossible with the Spirit every month -- following ably in Will Eisner's footsteps. "Selina's Big Score" was a straight ahead action adventure yarn, marred only by the fact that we only see Selina in the cat suit on the first couple of pages.

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.

The Thursday Sun Puzzle

"Not Finalized" is by Patrick Blindauer, and it doesn't seem as tough to me as a usual Thursday Sun puzzle. Maybe because I got off to a good start by knowing about a couple of doctors who never went to med school and was able to catch on to the theme very early. And it was the kind of theme that once I figured it out, I was able to go and fill in most of the long themed entries. A big plus. More 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 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.

The theme of this puzzle is harder to explain than it is to understand. Basically, what you have to do is take words than end in -ize (hence the puzzle title, where the themed entries have had their final -ize altered), change that Z to an S, split the word in two, change the spelling and enter the resultant two-word phrase.

Sound complicated? It's not.

17A: Sweet Deceptions? (EQUAL LIES) The word "equalize" becomes a fib whose flavor has been enhanced by the artificial sweetener in the little blue packets.

25A: Prius goes kaput? (HYBRID DIES) This puzzle -- or least this clue -- might not have worked in Great Britain where "hybridize" is spelled with an s instead of a z.

36A: Where Santa goes sledding? (POLAR RISE) And yes I realize that illustration I used at the beginning of this post has an awful lot of trees to be a polar rise, but most of the pictures I could find of Santa in his sled were of him flying -- rising over the Pole, not sledding upon.

51A: Evil spirit approaches? (DEMON NIGHS) "Nigh" is more commonly used as an adverb or adjective. In fact Dictionary.com says "nigh" as a verb is archaic. But I've heard it used that way -- of course I might be a tad archaic myself, but why say "draws nigh" when you could save a syllable by saying "nighs"?

57A: Strings on one's fingers? (DIGIT TIES) Do moms still tie strings on kid's fingers so they won't forget to bring home their homework or meet their sister after school or whatever it might be? I was an absent-minded tyke and my mom used to tie strings around my fingers -- which I either lost or forgot the significance of, and I think I just answered my own question.

Other entries of interest:

1A: Three-time ABA MVP (DRJ) and 1D: Eminem contemporary, familiarly (DRE), ah Doctors J and Dre, the two medicine men that got me started right at the beginning where I like to start. The ABA by the way was the American Basketball Association, a league that merged with the NBA in 1976, and where Julius Erving got his pro start with the Virginia Squires. All I remember about the ABA is that they used a really cool red, white and blue basketball instead of that boring brown NBA one.

4A: "Robot" man? (CAPEK) The word "robot" first appeared in the popular-in-crosswords play R.U.R. (which by the way stand for Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek.

31A: Best foreign film of 2005 (TSOTSI) Whenever they ask you for a six-letter foreign film, the correct answer is usually AMELIE.
Usually but not always.

11D: Author whose initials can anagrammed into the second word of his most famous work (E. B. WHITE) the author of "Charlotte's Web".

25D: One end of a pump (HEEL) Those darn mules and pumps always slow me down a little and I don't even wear them.

61D: It's good to have a low one on the hill (ERA). Said hill being a pitcher's mound, of course.

40D: Like some contractions (UTERINE) You got me there, Patrick. I was thinking grammatical not gynecological.

65A: Cal. col. (FRI) I was just about to say I didn't get this one. I couldn't think of one California college that could be abbreviated FRI -- and it just dawned on me that Cal. col. is calendar column.

That's all for today. Let's do it again tomorrow.

Split Personalities 7/18/07

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 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.

Split Personalities is from Alan Arbesfeld, and it's a simple but entertaining Wednesday puzzle. I always like these puzzles that make you look at a word or a phrase you've seen a thousand times in an entirely new way. Here we do it with celebrities, starting with:

20A: Deface a lightweight metal carriage? (MAR TIN LANDAU) Martin Landau is best known for the TV shows "Mission: Impossible" "Space: 1999" and for his Oscar-winning performance as Bela Lugosi in "Ed Wood." Interestingly, Landau turned down the role of Spock on "Star Trek", and the man who took that role, Leonard Nimoy, later took Landau's place on "Mission: Impossible." A lower-case landau is a four-wheeled, two-seated carriage with a top made in two parts that may be let down or folded back. I don't think many of them are made of tin.


27A: One-up the duchess? (TOP HER GRACE) Topher Grace played Eric Forman on "That 70's Show" and the black-spider-suited Venom in the movie "Spider-Man 3." You do not want to get me started on the subject of "Spider-Man 3". Suffice it to say I never got over my crush on Gwen Stacy and the film did not do her justice.

47A: Gamble successfully in the back of a moving van? (WIN ON A RYDER) My favorite of the themed entries, because it's the most elaborate and it paints the most vivid mental picture.

53A: Reason the sheetrock expert did a sloppy job? (WALL ACE BEERY) I can hear the young people complaining that they've never heard of Wallace Beery. Well, you should, he was in a thousand movies during the 30's and he's always entertaining to watch. He was in "Grand Hotel" with my favorite actress of all time Greta Garbo and "Dinner at Eight" with the great Jean Harlow. Evidently he was kind of beery, and excessive drinking was the cause of his divorce from Gloria Swanson -- who young people have probably never heard of either.

Other entries of interest:

8D: Ariel the mermaid, e.g. (TEEN) This one messed me up for a good while. I had TOON. I've seen "The Little Mermaid" but I didn't know she was a teen.

Crossing Ariel the TEEN was 15A: Ireland's father (ALEC) referring to Alec Baldwin's daughter by Kim Basinger, Ireland and 18A: Lurk (LIE IN WAIT) which gave me a hard time as well, because I had SEE TO and then SET UP at 10D: Ensure instead of the correct SEW UP.

61D: "____ no hooks" (USE) I used to see this phrase a lot when I worked on the waterfront, usually on bales of cotton or similar delicate goods that they didn't want longshoremen manipulating with those cargo hooks they used on everything else.

29D: Party animal (PINATA) That made me chuckle even though pinatas are not always animals.

66A: Father of a huarizo (LLAMA) Putting to use what we learned from Ogden Nash just yesterday. A huarizo is a cross between a male llama and a female alpaca, also known as llapaca.

67A: Pecker (BEAK) Just a test to see if you can get your mind out of the gutter long enough to answer a simple clue.

10A: Car with a griffin in its logo (SAAB) A griffin? I always thought that was a chicken on an ego trip.55D: Ere you can say Jack Robinson? (ANON) Had it been "Before you can say Jack Robinson" the answer would have been SOON.

That's all for today. See ya Thursday.

Help, Jane, stop this crazy thing!

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.

"Space-Age Greetings" is by Ken Stern, and thanks largely to a misspent youth (and adulthood) spant watching cartoons and reading comics I breezed through this puzzle. The theme is laid out immediately at 1D: With 4-6-23- and 26-Down, a TV theme introduction. And it's not just an introduction, it's the entire theme song:

Meet George Jetson,
His boy Elroy,
Daughter Judy,
Jane, his wife

I nailed this right off the bat when 6D: was looking like this HISB. Ordinarily if I have an entry that starts off like that, I assume something's wrong somewhere, but I was sure of all the across entries. And if HISB was correct, HIS BOY made sense (B as in Boy, after all) and if "His Boy" was corrrect and we were looking for a teevee theme song, that boy had to have been named Elroy. And from there I was able to fill in1,4,6,23 and 26 Down. (And by the way, I prefer my themed entries going down rather than the more common Across -- no real reason, I'm just a rebel, I guess.)
















"The Jetsons" were a spinoff (of sorts) of "The Flintstones", which ran on ABC from 1960 to 1966 and was the first show on that network to be broadcast in color. "The Flintstones" were a phenomenon, a stone-age version of "The Honeymooners" that until "The Simpsons" came along were the longest running prime-time cartoon in history. TV programmers being as original as they are, figured if a cartoon about a suburban family in the past was a success, how about a cartoon about a suburban family in the future, with flying cars and robot maids instead of foot-propelled automobiles and records played by dino-bird's beaks. There were some similarities between the shows -- a lot of the same vocal talent, for one; Mel Blanc did the voice of Barney Rubble and Dino in Bedrock and Mr. Spacely (George's cantankerous boss) in the Orbit City; Jean Vander Pyl was Wilma and Pebbles as well as Rosie the Robot and Mrs. Spacely; Don Messick was Bamm-Bamm Rubble and Astro the dog.




















One big difference though was that the Flintstones was a ratings sucess and had a good long run while the Jetsons were canceled after one season. But then something strange happened. Even though you usually have to run for five years or have a hundred episodes or more before you can get your show syndicated, reruns of the original 24 episodes ran for years and were always very popular. So popular that the show was eventually revived after more than 20 years and two more seasons were produced as well as "The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones" feature film and a live-action movie currently in production.


1A: Sign with a double-tailed arrow (MERGE) I was looking for astrological signs, not traffic signs. Virgo might be considered double-tailed.

28A: Beast in an Ogden Nash poem (LLAMA) My man Ogden. Good to see you again. The poem in question (complete with footnote) goes like this:

The one-l lama,

He's a priest.

The two-l llama,

He's a beast.

And I will bet

A silk pajama

There isn't any

Three-l lllama.*

*The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh

(Apologies to Rex Parker)

40D: Stalactite's spot (CAVE) I wish Ogden Nash had written a mnemonic poem to help me remember which is a -tite and which is a -mite.

24A: A perro might chase one (GATO) That's dogs and cats for you gringos.

Two baseball refrences -- 21D: Andruw Jones's team, on scoreboards (ATL) and 25D: Pinstriped hot-corner player (AROD) -- but AARON is clued as Eckhart of "Thank You for Smoking" at 31D rather than the home run king Hammerin' Hank.

27D: Zimbalist Jr. of "Wait Until Dark" Mr. Zimbalist is the son of Alma Gluck (who has appeared in a crossword puzzle or two) and (not surprisingly) Efrem Zimbalist, Senior. He has been an actor, producer and writer. Had he added art to that list of accomplishments he might have been Zimbalist the Symbolist.

I've got to get back to work. See y'all later.

Two passings that should be noted

The cartoon world lost two giants earlier this month. Robert "Buck" Brown passed away at the age of 71. Buck was best known for his Playboy cartoons featuring "Granny" an over-sexed senior citizen (or a senior citizen who wanted to be oversexed might be more accurate) but he sold over 600 cartoons to Playboy and was one of Hugh Hefner's (and my) favorite cartoonists. He also sold cartoons to the New Yorker, Ebony, Jet and Esquire. An African-American, Brown broke into cartooning in the early 60's when most major markets were reluctant (to say the least) to buy work from black cartoonists. The use of color in his cartoons is one of his strongest attributes. He had a unique painterly style. He is survived by his wife, Mary Ellen, and their two grown children.

And Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist Doug Marlette died on June 10th after an automobile accident. He was visiting Mississippi to help some high-school students with the staging of the musical version of his comic strip "Kudzu." He also syndicated editorial cartoons and wrote an ethics column for Esquire magazine. His first novel "The Bridge" was published in 2001 and has been optioned by Paramount. His second novel "Magic Time" was published in June 2006. His work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and he has appeared on NBC's Today Show, CBS's Morning News, ABC's Good Morning America, ABC's Nightline, National Public Radio's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and the Jim Lehrer News-Hour. Marlette, 57, is survived by his wife, Melinda, and an adult son, Jackson.

Sand, Surf and the Sun

I am back from my vacation, and I had a great time. I want to thank my guest bloggers Linda G., Rex Parker and Howard B. Y'all made my vacation time even more enjoyable, knowing that the Green Genius was in such good hands. You all did a great job and I really appreciate it.

I have to confess to a wry chuckle or two when I saw the Wednesday puzzle and its title "An Atrocious Pun" cuz Rex Parker's disdain for puns is well-documented, and that was a doozy there. BTW, I had heard a variation of that joke before only it was a famous fortune-teller in LA who could predict futures by smelling people's bad breath. In other words, and his business card read "Super California mystic, expert halitosis."

Whoa, even I have to groan at stuff like that. So without further ado, here is your 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.

"Flight Manual" is from Byron Walden, and he presents us with four phrases having to do with hands (hence the "manual") that start with a word that rhymes with "flight", like so:

20A: Like pickpockets (LIGHT FINGERED) 35A: Stingy (TIGHT FISTED) 42A: Like "northpaws" (RIGHT HANDED) I guess "northpaws" is in quotation marks because nobody actually ever calls right-handers northpaws. (A Gooogle search for "Southpaw" turns up 2.2 million possibilities, for "northpaw" only nine thousand.) I don't know why we call lefties "South paws." My sense of direction is not that great, but it seems to me that left handers are actually "Westpawed" and that the only way one could be a southpaw was if one pitched with one's foot.

53A: Showing extreme fear (WHITE KNUCKLED)

Other entries of interest:

16A: "Stronger than dirt" sloganeer (AJAX) When I was a kid all the Ajax commercials showed a white knight riding around rescuing suburban moms from the horrors of grass stains. He was "stronger than dirt." This line shows up at the tail end of the Doors' classic "Touch Me" supposedly because Jim Morrison thought it resembled the Ajax music and he was mad at his bandmates for considering selling "Light My Fire" for use in a Buick commercial.

18A: Best Supporting Actor for "Hannah and Her Sisters" (CAINE) which shows once again why it's important to read your clues carefully even on a Monday. Yeah, it says "actor" but it also says "Hannah" and her "sisters" so I was looking for a female thespian not Michael Caine.

10D: Ending for a how-to book title (MADE EASY) I kept trying to squeeze in "FOR DUMMIES" cuz that's what it seems like every how-to book these days ends with.

28D: Shah Jahan's burial city (AGRA) Every crossworder worth his or her salt knows that the Taj Mahal is in Agra, India. But how many knew the name of the guy that built it -- or more accurately, had 20,000 craftsmen and slaves build it for him in honor of his wife Mumtaz-I-Mahal who died in childbirth. Shah Juhan originally planned to build a similar monument for his own tomb, but his son took the throne and threw Dad in jail. When he eventually died he had to share the Mahal mausoleum with Mumtaz.

39D: Public thanks (SHOUT OUT) That's the word. I want to give my guest bloggers a shout out. Thanks again. Now I'm going to go take a nap and try to rest up from my vacation. See y'all tomorrow.

Friday, July 13 - Gary Steinmehl

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 entry will really be a spoiler, so if you have intentions of solving this thing, please read no further today. Seriously.

Last chance to back out.... OK, here goes.

Today we get to travel with Gary Steinmehl on not one, but three cross-country trips. So bring along that luggage, be sure to stuff all your bags in the trunk, tie down the rest to the car roof, and off we go!

Don't make me pull over! We're not stopping until the end of this entry. I mean it.

Since it's a Friday, you know that it's a given that the clues will be anywhere between tricky and downright brutal. That's true, but in addition, you also get the feeling that something's not quite right here. And when you get that feeling during a puzzle, when something just doesn't fit, that's a good time to suspect a rebus.

In this case, we've got three long horizontal answers here. Each contains its own Griswold-family style cross-country trip (sans Walleyworld, unfortunately), with postal abbreviations on each geographically-appropriate end:

Goof off under deadline ([wa]STE PRECIOUS TI[me]) - Here, WA and ME each get to be roomies in the same square. So we start off in Washington(WA) in the west of the grid, and wander all the way to the east coast of Maine(ME).

What the South African province Free State was called a century ago ([or]ANGE RIVER COLO[ny]) - my least favorite of the three, but I presume it fits under the constraints of this tricky theme. A bit of Jeopardy!-style trivia I didn't know, so I guess it's fair game for a Friday. This time, we begin in Oregon(OR), and end up in New York(NY). (I'm not insinuating that people from New York never visit Oregon, I'm just being consistent here).

Lastly, Tells it like it is ([ca]LLS A SPADE A SPA[de]) - In the language, pretty straightforward - this is the one that got the theme for me - I started near the bottom and worked this puzzle upwards. By now you probably get the idea, but I'm stubborn, so I'm going to do this anyway: This time we go from California(CA) to Delaware(DE).

Still with me? Great. Here's some of that Friday cluing - starting with my favorite:

- No alternative (KABUKI) - By now you're either marveling at the wording of this one, or shaking your head in confusion. Both are understandable. No(noh) is another form of Japanese theater. While NOH often appears in puzzles, its other spelling is usually ignored, since two-letter words usually aren't kosher in crosswords. Once I had the -KI ending, I was set here, but that's still some evil stuff - I love it. (Also, I wanted to be the first to reference 'kosher' and 'kabuki' in the same paragraph').

- It shouldn't be tried by people who aren't good at English (MASSE) - You know, one of those cool trick pool shots where there's a ton of spin (aka English) on the ball. For me, this just means ripping the felt off the pool table and being escorted out by management. I don't try this one much, so this clue worked nicely.

And one less deceptive clue, but tough to pry out of memory:
- Eris' former name (XENA) Remember that whole 'dwarf planet' controversy about a year or two ago, before Pluto was demoted? Where they found some other small objects that were not planets in our system, but still larger than Pluto? Yep, here it is again. Xena was its original name before its official classification as a dwarf planet (same as poor Pluto). Read all about it here.

If you didn't remember this or hadn't heard of it, this becomes another roadblock to work around, and that X is especially hairy.

Oh, I just noticed the words AMISH and BOOTY right next to each other in the top-right. That makes me chuckle for some reason, and there's no shame in that. Is there?

There's plenty more in this puzzle, but I have to cut things short tonight.
As always, share your experiences with your fellow puzzlers... the good, the bad, and even the ugly.

Before I run out, a big thanks to Robert, the Green One, for letting me use this space. I hope he doesn't lose his security deposit on account of me. I cleaned the carpet and walls as best I could, and spackled everything else. Adios!

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.

Cruel Joke

Robert, am I supposed to post a spoiler alert here? Why would anyone read your blog who had not already finished the puzzle or did not otherwise want it "spoiled?" Whatever. Hear ye, hear ye, I'm givin' away answers, so get lost if that kind of thing bugs you.

I should probably say that your normal (sort of) host, Green Genius, is gone to ARUBA (66A: It's east of Colombia's northernmost point) or Jamaica or possibly South Carolina, and so I, Rex Parker, am taking over for today. And it's a perfect day for me to take over (he said, ironically) because of my great love of puns! Today's puzzle title:

"AN ATROCIOUS PUN"

So basically the puzzle is telling me it hates me from the get go.

So here's the set-up.

47A: With 23-Down, movie with a song about a great swami in delicate health who has toughened feet and chronic bad breath? (See 1-, 6-, 18-, 24-, 57-, and 65-Across)

The only thing I dislike more than elaborate puns is a puzzle that sends me all over hell and gone ("See this, see that") in order to make sense of the puzzle. I would call solving this puzzle a DANTEAN (40D: Like hell?) experience, only the adjective is DANTESQUE, damn it.

So I figured out right away that HALITOSIS would have to be part of the answer, but the only way I could get HALITOSIS to be a pun for anything movie-related was as part of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and that couldn't be right...

But of course it was right. Perhaps in my deep internal resistance to the very idea of this puzzle's conceit, I semi-misread the clue and thought the pun was on the title of the movie, not the movie song. So I floundered a bit, but it all came out alright in the end. The movie is of course MARY / POPPINS, and that pun?

"SUPER / CALLUSED / FRAGILE / MYSTIC/ HEXED BY / HALITOSIS"

First, I would have spelled CALLUSED with an "O" (as in CALLOUSED), so I learned something. Second, HEXED BY???? VEXED BY, maybe. HEXED BY is, in deed, "atrocious" (gotta give credit to the puzzle's title, though, as it ties in nicely, and subtly, with the theme answer)

Other stuff:

3D: Love of Thisbe (Pyramus) - they fall in love through a crack in the wall separating their properties. They try to run away together but things end very, very badly. Romeo and Juliet badly.

14A: Linguistic roots (etyma) - I have bad memories of this answer from the Stamford tournament. It HEXED / VEXED me on an early puzzle, as I recall.

60A: Mother's whistler? (tea kettle) - cute, but oddly gender-specific. Men drink tea (or otherwise heat water). I drank tea this morning.

2D: IUD part (uterine) - Hey, I'm eatin' breakfast here!

12D: Wax remover (ear pick) - Ugh, DITTO! (though nice doubling up of "wax" here and at 19D: Wax, so to speak (LPS))

1D: Helotry (serfdom) - weird experience - I knew that I knew what "helot" meant, but it wasn't coming to me, so I had to be patient. At first I think I was confusing it with "harlot," then "hoyden." Luckily, I was able to get the -DOM suffix, and then a cross or two later, the answer was obvious.

15A: Two-time achievement for the Chicago Bulls (three-peat) - I love this super-modern, in-the-language stuff. The Sun will go this route a lot more readily than the Times will. It's risky, but sometimes it pays off.

For Green Genius, I'm Rex Parker. Thanks for reading.

Tuesday, July 10 - Tony Orbach

Linda G here again for the vacationing Green Genius. The Tuesday puzzle, by Tony Orbach, was a bit on the tough side. I love themes, but I do better with real words...and we didn't have those for the theme answers.

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.

The theme was Tabloid Twosomes, and some of them were doozies.

It's quite possible that I have some wrong answers in the grid. If that's the case, please feel free to correct me in the comments section. I don't know of any way to check my answers, so I'm counting on readers to let me know.

One more diversion. Every time I see Peter Gordon's email address, I start to giggle. For some reason, I read it (in my mind) as puzz-leed-itor, with the accent on the second syllable. I've always wanted to tell somebody that.

So...here are the theme answers I came up with.

4D: Jen & Ben, or a small candy imperfection? (Pezfleck). This is the one I'm least sure of.

12D: Joan & Douglas, or where birds go to donate throat pouches? (Crawbanks).

21D: Alec & Kim, or a way to describe Moby or Seal? (Baldsinger).

38D: Susan & Tim, or wrap containers? (Saranbins).

46D: Jessica & Hume, or a beach buddy? (Tancrony).

I'm always happy to see some of my favorites in a puzzle. 49A: TV series set on the Ponderosa (Bonanza). If you've read my blog, you know that I was a big Bonanza fan, and I loved Lorne Greene and Michael Landon.

58D: "Hotel Rwanda" costar (Nolte). I love everything about Nick Nolte, but I didn't remember that he was in Hotel Rwanda. That was so intense...I'm not surprised I don't remember details.

I absolutely loved 57A: Abbr. on Manhattan mail (NYNY). Great answer.

25A: Two-syllable foot is a great clue for iamb, which sits atop 30A: Brand found at Petco (Iams).

Another excellent clue at 47A: Woof's counterpart (warp). I wonder how many of you had bark? For those who don't know, warp and woof are terms used in weaving.

72A: Agreeing spouse's words (yes, dear) made me laugh. It's been a joke in our house for almost 30 years. It would take too long to explain it, and it probably wouldn't be funny to anyone else. But it was funny to see it in the puzzle.

I liked the clue for 62D: Flower in a pocketful (posy). It opened up the whole southwest corner. In case you don't remember, it's from Ring Around the Rosie.

I've enjoyed the opportunity to be a Genius. Thanks, Robert, for letting me fill in. Tomorrow's guest blogger is the King of CrossWorld himself, Rex Parker. You won't want to miss it!

Linda G

Monday, July 9 - Dominick Talvacchio

Greetings, fellow Sun solvers. Linda G here, filling in for the vacationing Green Genius while he takes a well-deserved vacation. I'm doing this before I leave for work...my apologies that there will be no pictures with this post. Maybe the next. Note: The finished grid appears in the following post...long story.

Robert always starts his blog this way, so to be consistent...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.

And now...on to today's puzzle, Typewriter Trivia, by Dominick Talvacchio. I've been typing for forty years and have never noticed anything like the four theme clues/answers:

20A: Disposition to credulity (and the longest common word that alternates typing hands) [antiskepticism]. I just had to delete it and type it again, just to make sure that the clue was accurate. It was.

25A: Violet variety (and the longest common word that uses just the right typing hand) [johnny jump-up]. I paid attention the first time around.

42A: Seesaw (and the longest common word that uses just the top typewriter row) [teeter totter].

48A: Knitted farments for women (and the longest common word that uses just the left typing hand) [sweaterdress]. One of my goals in life was to be able to wear a sweaterdress and look good in it. The only time in my life that I was thin enough to pull it off, they weren't in style...not available anywhere. Oh, well. It was a stupid goal...not important in the grand scheme.

One connected clue in the puzzle, and I got it before I even looked at the grid. 15A: With 56-Across, language course final, often (oral/exam).

Some interesting Y-endings. 37A: Full of moxie (gutsy). I love both of those words. And it shares its Y with 22D: Two sheets to the wind? (tipsy). We also have 5D: Cozily warm (toasty), not a word I can get excited about these days. We've been around 100, occasionally getting up to 103, so...not so appealing as it would be in the winter, say.

28D: Day trip, say (jaunt). We took one yesterday, driving 90 miles to Glenwood Springs just to have lunch and do some shopping. There's a really nice hot springs pool there, but we decided to pass on it. Good thing...it was packed. But we had a nice lunch at our favorite brew pub. We didn't get tipsy, though.

Clever clue, albeit somewhat morbid, at 4D: Life or death, e.g. (sentence). I did a double-take at 40A: One who might thank a rubber. I know the Sun is a little more on the edge than the New York Times, but really! Shows where my mind is...the answer (genie) is quite benign!

29D: De-knot (untie) reminds me of the funny t-shirt..."Bad spellers of the world untie."

When I looked over the finished grid, the funniest-looking answer was 46D: Inherently (per se). I saw it as perse and refused to look at the clue until I could figure it out on my own.

I always like to hear what others thought of the puzzle, so feel free to share your thoughts on it...for better or for worse.

I also blog the New York Times at Madness...Crossword and Otherwise and invite you to come check it out.

And I'll be here again tomorrow. Hope to see you then.

Linda G

Oops -- the grid for Monday, July 9

The B. stands for Best

I am on my way out the door as beer and the beach are calling my name, but I wanted to thank Howard B. for stepping up and volunteering to guest blog here. Even though he's in the middle of moving -- the third most stressful thing we humans do -- he has consented to say a few words about the Thursday and (maybe, I hope) Friday puzzle.
Thanks, Howard.

Guest bloggers

There will be Sun puzzle commentary next week even though I will be on vacation at the beach, thanks to the graciousness of Linda G., she of Madness. . . Crossword and Otherwise fame and the legendary Rex Parker. Linda will be here on Monday and Tuesday; Rex will be here on Wednesday.
After that we'll have to wait and see. If I'm all sunburnt by that time or it's raining I may seek out a wi-fi spot and post commentary. Or we may go blank on Thursday and Friday. What I think would be better than either of these options is another guest blogger or two. Don't be intimidated if you're new to blogging; I'll be happy to give you a crash course in the basics. Don't be intimidated because all that's left is the tougher late-week puzzles. Very entertaining blog entries can be made about puzzles that got the better of you. If anyone is interested please contact me by Monday morning.
Thanks.

Friday 7-6-07

Well, tomorrow is supposed to be a lucky day to get married 7-7-07. So if you're not already wed, grab yourself somebody that looks interesting and cut a cake with them. You can't miss.
Or you could just do crossword puzzles.
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
I had a lot of fun with this Weekend Warrior from Patrick Berry even though it contained people I'd never heard of: 16A: Ballerina Riabouchinska (TATIANA) and phrases I was unfamiliar with 17A: In the afternoon, in British military slang (PIP EMMA) which, according to the Word Detective, derives from a British Army manual published in 1913, where it stated "the letters T, A, B, M, S, P and V will be called toc, ack, beer, emma, esses, pip, and vic respectively, so as to distinguish them phonetically from letters of similar sound." So, in this scheme, "pip emma" would translate as "p.m.", and "four pip emma" would mean simply "four o'clock in the afternoon." If we were doing it in America it would be Papa Mike -- except that our military has a 24 hour clock and doesn't need a.m. or p.m. If I was in the British military every time somebody said "Emma" I would think of the letter E (or maybe Jane Austen) but not an M.
My favorite answer was 20A: Factory worker who's paid in cacao beans (OOMPA LOOMPA). Love those guys from "Willy Wonka." If you are wise you'll listen to them. I also liked 23D: They work with numbers (BOOKKEEPERS) This was the answer to a recent Car Talk puzzler, where they asked for the only common English word with 3 consecutive sets of double letters. I also liked 36D: Become fire-proof (QUIT) and the combination of 41D: Song that Tommy sings in "Tommy" (I'M FREE) and 8D: Finally (AT LAST)
REMOULADE and TRAMMELS were a tough side-by-side combo to crack -- the only Trammell I know used to be the shortstop for the Detroit Tigers. It didn't help that I didn't want to give up on the incorrect AERO at 5D: Air: prefix.
That's all for today.

While you're waiting

I'll have the Friday Sun puzzle commentary up soon -- things are a tad insane around here getting ready for vacation. While you're waiting please enjoy my latest column for Country standard Time Magazine:

MAYBE THEY’LL NAME A COUNTY AFTER ME
By
Robert Loy

It may be that I was born to be a music critic. I recently came across my sixth-grade diary, and cringed as I found a series of lovesick entries detailing how I was sure I would die if I couldn’t get Angela W. to marry me (by the way, I had completely forgotten Angela W. and reading about her did little to refresh my memory. I had to go look her up in an old class photo) and some very embarrassing . . . well, fiction, I guess, although I agree with you that fiction doesn’t belong in a diary. And the stories I wrote with me as the hero usually “swooping” down to rescue Angela from a monster or a bully who didn’t respect her “timeless beauty” don’t belong anywhere.
But this volume is not all mooning and swooping. It’s also the repository of my first forays into music criticism. Evidently I loved “Hee-Haw!” thought it was “hilarious” (which tells you everything you need to know about my sense of humor) but not Buck Owens and I complained more than once that they showed him too much – I’m not sure if I realized that he was the host of the show or not.
And I couldn’t figure out if I liked Roger Miller’s new song “Tom Green County Fair” or not:
“WHSL finally played it again. Maybe they’re tired of me calling to request it. I think I like it. Roger Miller to me sings so good he could be the next Hank Williams if he wanted to. But he always has to get ridiculous. I like “Chug-a-lug” even though its kind of bazaar (sic) but “My Uncle Used to Love Me But She Died” makes no sense. The new song is about going to the fair. That’s it, going to the fair. But it’s kinda catchy and not silly even though I can’t believe there’s an actual county anywhere named Tom Green. That’s a person’s name not a county’s.”
Those of you who’ve read the column for any length of time know that my opinions about “bazaar” country music have changed dramatically. I now think Roger Miller should be canonized. Buck Owens too. It’s interesting to me that even though my sentiments today are different than they were back then, one thing that hasn’t changed is what I believe I believe firmly.
In other words I’ve been opinionated for a long time.

Response to my appeal for guest bloggers has been underwhelming and time is running out. I will be on vacation next week and unable to blog. It looks like I have someone for Monday and Tuesday, but I will need help for the rest of the week. If interested please let me know soon.
Thanks.