Sunday, September 30, 2018, Natan Last

"Sleep on it"

A real sleeping beauty today! The theme gives the nod to the old Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "Prinsessen paa Ærten" which, according to the Wikipedia, can be literally translated to "The Princess on the Pea," which according to me, has been literally translated into this puzzle. It features the dream team of MATTRESS sizes embedded in longer answers: QUEENOFMEAN, FULLBODIED, TWINSISTER, and KINGSOLOMON. Each bed size has the word PEA - brilliantly lumped together in one square in rebus form - under it and a PRINCESS lying above them both (BELLE, LEIA, XENA, ANNE). Genius.

The puzzle is stuffed with other great material including
Flap (ADO) - Nice to see this old chestnut again. It's been too long.
Admiring words (IMAFAN)
Paroxysm (THROE) - both excellent words
Bunkum (SNAKEOIL)
Tippled (HADAFEW) - how about a variation for a future puzzle: drank a citrus flavored PepsiCo soda (hadadew)
Debunk? (Roust) - reminds me of my youth when I was in charge of getting my little sister up for school in the morning.
He might provide assistance after a crash (ITGUY)
Collapsed red giant? (USSR) - ha!
Parts of Mr. Clean and Lex Luthor costumes (BALDCAPS)
And my favorite on the day: "Discharged matter" (EGESTA). Wonderful.

The section that gave me nightmares was the middle south where too many unknowns lurked. "Home of the ancient Temple of Artemis" (EPHESUS), "Simba's father in a Disney musical" (MUFASA), "N.L. Central player (CUB), "Who wrote 'The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting'" (SUNTZU), New Left org. (SDS) - although I should have this one memorized by now! - and "'Skylarking'" band (XTC) all had me tossing and turning. I should have known SOS ("'Mamma Mia!' song that begins 'Where are those happy days?'") but I blanked on it.

Peas under my personal mattress might be EPIC as a match for "grandiose" and the partial spell out BARBQ (Backyard get-together, briefly) but in such a well-executed puzzle they are really nothing to lose sleep over.

~Frannie.

Saturday, September 29, 2018, David Steinberg

0:11:51

An odd grid shape today, with those four, thick corners and the sides connected by 14-letter answers. I like the water theme apparent in SEAMOSS (21A: Algae touted as a superfood), SNORKEL (22A: Equipment used with goggles), SPINNAKER (9D: Three-cornered sail). Appropriate, as Frannie and I just got out of the Atlantic Ocean minutes ago, where we were punished by ROGUE waves. Well, they weren't true ROGUE waves, but they sure were big! Oh, the PATHOS!

Doesn't DEARSIRORMADAM (16D: Formal opening) immediately make you think of "Paperback Writer?" Well, it does me.

I love the words NONCE (2D: Specific occasion) and COPSE (44D: Thicket), and YODEL and SPANK are fun up in the NE. BOTCH (48D: Screw up), ANOINT (42D; Formally choose), ECHELON (19A: Level), TANDOOR (55A: Indian restaurant fixture)... so much good material. Then you've got the fun conversational stuff like ISTHATALL (3D: Sassy response to a scolding), NOSHADE (14A: "Don't mean any disrespect," in modern lingo). Nice.

One last thing - it took me waaay too long to figure out CHIANTI (57A: Major Tuscan export). I had the "TI" at the end, but there were just more letters than I was expecting in front of that.

- Horace

Friday, September 28, 2018, Kameron Austin Collins

0:12:58

Mr. Collins' name is one I like to see associated with a puzzle. His grids are usually smooth, interesting, and challenging. Luckily, my being "of a certain age" helped me get off to a good start, because 1A: Suzanne Somers's role on "Three's Company" (CHRISSY) was like asking me "What's the color of the sky?" Off of that, however, I dropped in CHEMist for 1D: Place to get solutions, in brief (CHEMLAB), a mistake I like to think was the only reason I was slowed down at all on 30A: 2001 Destiny's Child #1 hit with the lyric "I don't think you ready for this jelly" (BOOTYLICIOUS).

That last, bold answer started off a very nice stair-stepping trio of 12-letter answers ending with TRUSTFUNDBABY (33A: Notoriously spoiled sport) and NORSEDEITIES (36: Figures in the Edda). A solid middle section crossed by RESCUEDOG (20D: Certain adopted pet)- a term that used to evoke a St. Bernard with a barrel around its neck, but now has come to mean a pound-adopted canine. Spay and neuter your pets, people! There are more than enough to go around already, and the fewer that end up in pounds in the first place, the better.

I was not familiar with the term HOECAKE (15A: Cornmeal treat), and I learn from a Slate article that one story has it that American slaves made them using a hoe as a griddle, but a more likely etymology is that griddles were known as "hoes" in parts of England in the 1600s. Whatever the origin, I will definitely be trying to make some soon. I also hadn't heard LUNULAR (16A: Crescent-shaped) much, but it makes sense as a diminutive of the Latin "luna."

Almost nothing to complain about today (maybe CCLASS or ORANGS), a lot of good fill, and a clue that I will add to our favorites list - 34D: Store that really should have a spokesperson (BIKESHOP). Guffawww! :)

I liked it a lot.

- Horace

Thursday, September 27, 2018, Daniel Kantor

0:10:47

Today we have four entries clued by way of decorations within the puzzle itself. I will try to get myself a version of the actual paper so I can see how this looked in print, but on the web, it looked like this:

Not terribly scintillating as a theme, I don't think, but I guess they've got to keep trying new things.

Not much long material in the fill, but I liked SEALEGS (49A: Good standing in the Navy?), and referencing Whitman ("Song of MYSELF") is ok with me. I briefly had "cspan" instead of TOGAS for "16A: Coverage of the Senate?," and "9A: Zombie's domain" (SCIFI) also took me a while. Nice work on those clues. MISERY, too, got quite a clue - "Word that sounds like a state when accented on the second syllable rather than the first." Hah!

Interesting trivia on SEGA (36A: Brand name derived from the phrase "Service Games"), and 65A: Bean sprouts? (IDEAS) was cute. 9D: Card letters (STL) was tricky - that's the St. Louis Cardinals they're talking about - and 50D: Something you might kick after you pick it up (HABIT) was fun.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I liked bits of the fill better than I liked the theme itself. Sometimes that happens, and that's ok.

- Horace

Wednesday, September 26, 2018, Joel Fagliano and Melinda Gates

0:08:25

A fun theme today of doubling up the first initial of many famous things with an initial initial, and then cluing to make the doulbling make sense. Clear enough. We start with XXFACTOR (17A: Part played by women and girls?) which makes sense, I guess, because this puzzle is co-authored by Melinda Gates, the famous XX to Bill's XY. And, not coincidentally, it's a real thing started to help improve the lives of women and girls. The XX Factor.

Not being one who takes a lot of pills, I was only marginally aware of the B-Complex vitamins, so BBCOMPLEX (46A: Group of buildings housing a King?) did not come quickly. They're referencing the late blues guitarist B.B. King there, by the way.

So the theme is fun, but the fill lacked any real zingers. I liked BOXCAR (1D: Freight train part), because I just like thinking about boxcars, and the CYCLADES (39D: Island group in the Aegean Sea) are certainly evocative, but having the double-initial-initialled JMBARRIE as an answer seems to dilute the theme a bit. I guess OKFINE doesn't start with two initials, though, since the Scrabble dictionary just added it as an acceptable word. Is it just me, or has the two-word and Q-word-with-no-U mania kind of taken the fun out of what was once a great game?

Nobody likes a RADARGUN (67A: Speedster's undoing), and nobody who doesn't live in Kentucky knows for sure what a BLUEROAN is, but the clue for FERRIC (7D: Irony?) was hilarious, and I liked the French answers OUTRE (5D: Eccentric), EAU, and FESSES. What's that? You say FESSES wasn't clued as French? Bummer.

- Horace

Tuesday, September 25, 2018, Ross Trudeau

0:07:20

Strange start to the week so far. Yesterday was a tribute to two TV game shows, and today we have an homage to manspreading. When I finished I looked at the circled letters briefly and thought they represented subway lines. The A Train is definitely a thing, and I thought, ok, maybe there's an M train, but N? Anyway, I figured it out soon enough that the word "man" in OMANI spreads out as it slumps down the puzzle, eventually taking up all the horizontal space available. Poor AMYPOEHLER! Forced to EDGEIN right there in the middle. Luckily, I don't have to experience manspreading much, because I commute by bicycle. I have to worry more about car-spreading. I'm not sure which is more annoying. :)

Looking around at the fill today, I am reminded of Amy Reynaldo's phrase "Tuesdays gonna tueze," or something like that. What I think she means is that Tuesday puzzles are often where you find strange things. A manspreading theme, for example, and things like Mount ELBERT, the ROEDEER, and uncommon (to me, anyway) names like Ginobili MANU and MAXWELLANDERSON. That SW corner almost did me in! I sidled up to the OPENBARS (37D: Free drink locales) quickly enough, but I wanted VERTicES, and I didn't know those three other proper nouns referenced above. Finally, I hit upon VERTEXES (38D: Corners in geometry) and everything came together.

Nice that NUDE and BARE are symmetrical (I tried Nsfw in that first slot for a bit), and I also liked VAMOOSED (41D: Skedaddled), and NERVE for "Courage," because it reminded me of Bert Lahr singing the Cowardly Lion's song. "Da Noive..." :)

Overall, I'm just gonna go with Amy on this one. Tuesdays gonna tueze. Tooze? Tues? I'd better head over to Diary of a Crossword Fiend to find out.

- Horace

Monday, September 24, 2108, Michael Black

6:47 (F.W.O.E.)

I was unsure of the spelling of VIJAY Singh's name when I entered VeJAY, but I put it in anyway, and then spent over a minute trying to find the error after I filled everything else in. Ah well... so much for a perfect week.

Today's theme pays tribute, for some reason, to the shows JEOPARDY and WHEELOF/FORTUNE along with their hosts. I'll just go ahead and call VANNAWHITE one of the two hosts of Wheel, even though she doesn't get to say a whole lot, because without her, it just wouldn't be the same show. Me, I actually prefer the show she's on, which in this market airs at an earlier time. The JEOPARDY host has gotten to be almost unwatchable for me. I'm sure he'll love seeing his name in the grid today.

I enjoyed seeing PAPERMOON (6D: Movie for which Tatum O'Neal won an Oscar) in the grid. I prefer thinking of the song from which the movie got its name, but I guess it would be hard to clue it that way... GODPARENT (33D: Aunt or uncle, sometimes) is also good - something you don't see every day in the puzzle. And I kind of like that the answers with initial initials, APTEST and EFILES are symmetrical.

I thought I'd never know "43D: Ditch for cutting lumber," but SAWPIT, when it became clear, made so much sense! :)

ONYXES looks strange, but I suppose it's fine, and I thought "Alcohol that's transparent" was a little odd for GIN, because really, all alcohol is transparent. What they probably meant to say there was "alcoholic beverage that's transparent."

It was fine.

- Horace