Thursday, August 16, 2018

Thursday, August 16, 2018, Alan Arbesfeld

0:09:22

Today's puzzle is dedicated to one ROBERT DENIRO, who turns 75 tomorrow. I quickly realized that many answers were movies, and I also realized that they were DENIRO movies, but the first thing I tried to put in at the bottom was "Martin Scorsese." Idiot. "Martin" fit, and I actually left that in for a hot minute thinking that maybe they'd somehow squeeze his last name into the other space...


Anywho... it wasn't Scorsese.

I've grown up with DENIRO movies, and I am one of the many of my generation who think of him as one of the greats. So am I going to raise a fuss about a few things that CLOG the grid? Like ABIE (48A: Title lover in a 1922 Broadway hit) (from that classic "Abie's Irish Rose"), SADR (51D: Baghdad's ____ City), ARNE (35D: Obama education secretary Duncan), BIER, ISIN, ATIT, OISE, PROSY, ENTR, APER, BRRR, EDD, ALMAY, and AMMETER (37A: Current measurer)? (YOW!) No! I'm going to be happy for the good trivia in the clues for OBERLIN (17A: First coeducational college in the U.S.) (since 1837), and DOUGLAS (62A: Justice with the longest Supreme Court tenure) (36 years!), and about having dropped in ORLANDO (16A: "As You Like It" hero) as my first answer thanks to having seen my brother play the part in a college production many years ago. Ahh... memories.

It's a tribute puzzle, and sometimes one just has to sit back and enjoy the theme density that comes with STARDOM.

- Horace

2 comments:

  1. Spot on review. The joy here is reflecting on the "work" as the puzzle filled in.

    3 things:
    - I, too, thought first of directors.
    - I have no recollection of "The Fan" coming out and actually watched the trailer after finishing the puzzle. It looked like an awfully predictable plot and a money grab movie. Maybe because of Snipes's well documented tax problems..?. Are he and DeNiro buddies?
    - First thing I put in was CLOG, having spent a lot of time with that type of snake lately at the rentals (good times!), and then LEOPOLD off the L.

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  2. This was going to be tough for me (although the film titles are familiar, wouldn't have any idea which ones DeNiro is in). But I did mostly make it without googling. Hadn't heard of Time TRAX so I had TRek there and TAkeDRIVER which.... well by that time I was kind of losing steam so I was willing to take finished with 3 errors over trying to fix it.

    Agreed that the fill suffered from all those themers. On the plus side, was having lunch today with a fellow OBERLIN graduate today and he was like "did you see what college was in the NY Times crossword today?" Fortunately I already had that answer by then so I didn't need to have a moral dilemma about whether it was more important to be nice to a friend or Do Something About People Who Thoughtlessly Emit Spoilers.

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