Wednesday, February 7, 2018, Stu Ockman

0:16:16

Well, Dear Reader, it's Wednesday, and we are given an odd duck of a puzzle. The fill is divided into three completely separate areas - the top and bottom are connected to the middle via circles highlighting four things that can be imagined as THETIESTHATBIND the whole thing together; "Rope," "lace," "cord," and "wire." The top grid-spanner, MAKECONNECTIONS, is telling us what we need to do. Hmm... I'm not completely convinced. Especially as the strange construction seems to have forced a lot of less-than-desirable material in the center. PULLA, WIS, RADII, YOS, and ALTAI. Not great. On the upside, I did like the OWL clue - "32D: Fly by night sort?"

Has anyone else ever heard the expression "A miss is as good as a MILE?" I never have, and I don't like it one bit. The two sides aren't equal! It's been around a good long while, though, it appears, and I like the earlier "An ynche in a misse is as good as an ell." (An ell being an old measurement of about 45 inches.) There, at least, you're comparing two measures, not a verb and a noun. Sheesh!

Furthermore, who the hell is this LENE Russo (16A: Actress Russo)? The first two hits when I Google "Lene Russo actress" (not in quotes) are Lene Lovich and Giuni Russo. Neither of whom seems to go by the alternate name LENE Russo. Just for kicks, I Googled "russo lene actress" and got Rene Russo. So I'm not really sure what's going on there. Hmm... I may be crazy, but it seems that this may indeed have been an error, because now the 10D clue, which I swore was "Plumbers tool" (or something very similar) this morning, is now "Town officials of old" which would maybe work with "prior," but that's still got problems. Well, I don't know what to tell you.

** After reading Diary of a Crossword Fiend, I am reminded that the original clue for LENE was "Voiceless consonant, like 'b' [actually voiced] or 'p.'" This seems to prove that there has been an effort to change this puzzle after distribution. Also, I remember wanting "plosive" to fit in those four squares. I've taken linguistics, and I've never, ever, heard the word LENE before. Not that I'm a good example. I'm just saying.

Anyway, this gets a YECH (and even that's not spelled the way I think it should be!) from me.

- Horace

Tuesday, February 6, 2018, Bruce Haight

0:05:24

A DEVIOUS, or "D - V - ous," set of theme answers today, all two words, the first starting with D, the second with V. If I had taken the time to understand this while solving, I might not have had so much trouble figuring out DEMOVERSION (59A: Prototype, maybe). I think I had "Pond" for 57D: Common fishing spot (PIER), and for some reason I had "SAVEsUP" for 40D: Put some money away (SAVEDUP), so sEMOVERSoON did not look very good. And another thing that slowed me down was guessing "DacapO" for 53A: From the beginning: Lat. (DENOVO). I would argue that DENOVO means "anew," whereas "da capo" means "from the top," or "again." It's a small distinction, and one that I probably wouldn't argue too strongly. Ah well... it all got sorted out eventually. And in the end, I enjoyed the theme, especially the amusing revealer.

The conversational SAYWHEN (13D: Pourer's instruction), ILLBITE (11D: "O.K., tell me more"), and especially NOCANDO (3D: "Sorry, Charlie!"), and the slangy RAD, DOPE, GAG, and ADORBS (49D: Cute, in modern slang), give the puzzle a nice contemporary feel. And then we have a few uncommon, interesting words like BLEAR (65A: Dim with tears) and MUM (66A: Closemouthed) to balance it all out.

Overall, I enjoyed it.

- Horace

Monday, February 5, 2018, Alan Arbesfeld

0:03:35

OK, let's get this out of the way right away - the Eagles played a great game yesterday. The coaching was gutsy, there were some great catches, and things generally went their way. Congratulations to Philadelphia fans everywhere.

Now, we're on to Cincinnati... er, I mean the puzzle. The answer that sticks out the most to me today is CONTAC (4D: Popular cold and flu medicine), because as I type I am at home, sick with a cold. It came on during the day yesterday, but really took off, as they always seem to do, during the night. Anyway, I wish I had some CONTAC right now!

I like the theme today, because who doesn't like the MOON? And when you finally get to the revealer, the puzzle really lights up! At least when solving online, where thematic answers are highlighted automatically when your cursor (or whatever) is on the revealer answer. It's a little too bad, if we want to get picky, that the phases don't go in perfect order, but I don't think that's a big problem, especially since we don't have a complete sequence. I mean, wouldn't we have to have "gibbous" in there somehow to balance out "crescent?" But I'm already making too much of this... let's move on.

I like SLEUTHS (40A: Detectives) in the middle there, and FACET, STRUT, and MEWL are all good. The two long Down answers, SIDCAESAR and EVICTIONS are both fine. Sure, SIDCAESAR is a little old fashioned, but I think he's still pretty well-known. Interesting that we've got a lot of animals in the grid - LAMB, HART, CLAM, ELKS, NEMO, and STUART Little. Might have been fun to have one or two that howl at the MOON, but one mustn't ask for too much. A good general rule. Five Superbowls, for instance, are enough. For now.

- Horace

Sunday, February 4, 2018, David Levinson Wilk

CRACKING WISE

This sort of theme AMUSES me (mini-theme entry there). I figured it out very early. 23A: "Stop! You're killing me!" (THATSHYSTERICAL) was fairly obvious, and then 24D: Poison ivy, e.g. became an issue when I had YNE. Then I saw that you could imagine the Y as a VI going down. Thus the title of the puzzle, "Cracking Y's". All of the theme answers have to do with comedy (although I'm sure you could cavil at YOMAMAJOKE), so there's a tightness to the theme. In addition, there is no Y in the grid which is not cracked, which I appreciate.

I also appreciate the nod to New England at 1A: 52-story Boston skyscraper, familiarly (THEPRU) and at 80D: Patriots' org. (AFC). I see no similar acknowledgement of Philadelphia, opening up the NYT xword to attacks of favoritism.

I will now turn the blog over to my esteemed colleague, Mr. Horace Fawley.

Greetings from New England! A scant three hours remain before kickoff, so I've got to get this taken care of right quick. No time for grandiloquence! (Local pre-game TV began at 5:30am today. Why??)

I sussed the theme later than my colleague, but the sussing was related to discussions I have had with his wife, who is wont to quote the line, "Fortune and love favor the brave." Good ol' Publius Oydius Naso. A contemporary of Yrgil. ... ok, that's just silly. HAHA (mini-themelert!) EVERYBODYSACOMEDIAN, eh?

And speaking of Latin, did anyone else find the clue "Latin for "womb" (UTERUS) a little weird? I mean, we use the word UTERUS. Womb isn't so much a translation of Latin than it is an alternate English word for the same thing. It's like cluing "cranium" with "Latin for skull." I mean, it's fine, but still odd. At least to me. Especially when they just toss out answers like PERINATAL with no mention of Latin at all!

These theme answers are all fine, but they're not particularly exciting.

Interesting about Novo-Ogaryovo being the official DACHA for the Russian president. I feel that will eventually be useful information when the clue/answer is reversed someday in the future, so I'll try to sock it away somewhere. And I kind of enjoyed the inclusion of VAR as an answer instead of as a signal that you'd have to soon be putting something like "iglu" into the grid. Heh. It's the little things, right? Like the news that Marie Curie's LABNOTES are still radioactive. How cool is that?

I post the photo I do today because I watched it for the first time maybe ten years ago, and it was way better than I expected it would be, but as I post, I notice that they have, indeed, included at least one reference to Philadelphia. Still, I'm hoping it's outweighed by the two Colum mentioned, and other New England-y things like Lobster POTS and, hopefully, VICTOR. 

- Horace

p.s. I'm not even going to mention ARGOSIES. 

Saturday, Febraury 3, 2018, Sam Ezersky and Byron Walden

DNF

Everything was going along fine until the end in that SW corner. I came up against TOR_I and KU_U crossing A_R_AM. Both of those crossings were completely opaque to me. And I've never heard the term AIRDAM before. So I stared for a while, before realizing that anything would be a complete guess, and looked them up. I have to add KUDU to my list of crossword gazelles and antelopes.

Wow, though. This is a challenging puzzle! I broke in at 57A: Like many people on January 1 (HUNGOVER). That's how long it took for me to feel comfortable with an answer. I was able to work up the E side of the grid with the excellent TRAVELBLOG and SPICERACK.

I call another foul though with 9A: Having many openings (GAPPY). Huh? Has anyone ever said this? I think not. But I very much liked GOASKANYONE and SOBSISTERS. When you have such nice long answers and such a low word count, I suppose you have to have some compromises.

At this point, I was able to break open the NW corner. 1A: Toilet paper? (HALLPASS) is very nice, and deserves an A- for clue and answer. PIBBXTRA is a beautiful answer. I don't think it's sold in markets around my home, though. That answer crossing LGBTRIGHTS is worth the price of entry by themselves.

The middle section of the W side of the grid I was very proud to figure out. I had put SOFIA in as the only Balkan capital of 5 letters I could recall. Then I guessed the first part of WESTCORK, figured ALICEFAYE had to be correct, and finally NATGEO became clear.

Clearly this puzzle is supported by the beautiful long answers. I feel those two crossings I mentioned at the start made the whole thing suspect in my book, but I'm sure others will disagree.

- Colum

Friday, February 2, 2018, Randolph Ross

9:31

If I had been solving this at the ACPT, I would have turned my grid in with a serious lack of confidence. That SW corner, with several names and unclear television show titles. I knew about the thesaurus, but was unsure about his full name (PETERROGET). Doesn't it feel like he should have a French name? Even though he made a thesaurus in English?

A quick Wikipedia search reveals that he was a British physician in the 19th century who seemed to have either OCD or some form of autism, as he started making lists by the time he was 8 years old. Interesting. And his name is pronounced roGETT, not roZHAY.

But the answer that had me most confused was 56A: Long-running pop culture show (ENEWS). Oh, wait. I get it. E! News, as in the news show on the Entertainment Network. I was stuck thinking it was like those annoying e-words, implying electronic. Well, it's certainly a thing, but without that exclamation point, I just don't know.

Outside of that area, there was much to enjoy. 1A: Biased investigation (WITCHHUNT) is a nice entry, even if it smacks too much of our current bloviator-in-chief. But better is its symmetric counterpart, 57A: Pointing of fingers (BLAMEGAME). These two gave the puzzle as a whole a political bent.

My favorite clue is 30D: Brown family member (EARTHTONE). Not at all what I was expecting. I also enjoyed 35A: Well-known speaker (BOSE). That's some nice misdirection.

Well, okay. So there's also 48D: Spoiler of a perfect report card (ONEB). Why not "one C," or God forbid, "one D?" I won't linger on AGASP or abbrev. NCAR. For that matter, TATAS is just begging for a Huygens level clue.

Milo has never been in any of those DOGSPAS.

- Colum

Thursday, February 1, 2018, Damon Gulczynski

9:06

I am not SCHMO blown away by this theme. It is certainly clever, but I was able to enter ROGEREBERT without fully understanding why by looking at the clue. The revealer, INITIALLY was not an aha moment (or even an Omaha moment) for me, more of an "ohhhhh. Oh, well" moment.

The best part is the way the first word of each clue re-reads on getting the trick. "Regent" turning into "R.E. gent." "Malady" turning into "M.A. lady," and so on. But all four names are old crossword standbys (and very old in some cases).

Anyway, it was a PAIN to get started, even though EMMA was a lovely reference (14A: Literary matchmaker - how nice it's not Yente from Fiddler on the Roof). I also was stuck by DOHA, even though I've seen it plenty of times. I tried to convince myself that it was an alternate spelling of Sanaa (Yemen, not Qatar). I really got going in the SW corner, moving down from OTS and CPAS, and then ECHELONS.

Clues I liked:

8D: Digital communication, for short? (ASL)
49A: Get blubbery (CRY)

I'm not sure what to make of the recent pair of clues like 48D: Beat it! (BONGO). Yesterday it was "Hit it!" (PINATA). What do people think? IMALLEARS!

Overall, I'm left flat. This felt like a Wednesday. Not enough of a fun trick for a Thursday. Let's hope the rest of the turn picks up the pace!

- Colum