Down for the count

I’m on Cape Cod on vacation and the house I’m staying at doesn’t have internet until Tuesday evening.  So apologies in advance for not updating for a few days.

Thursday, June 26 – 26:44

Tough rebus today from David J. Kahn.  I knew there had to be a gimmick, but it took a while to identify it.  It was 31A that gave it away.  7D was “Legendary name in 31-Across”, and I had a bunch of letters there, but not enough to get it.  Then at 31A i had FA_H__N, and I realized it might be FASHION.  That in turn enabled me to see YVESSAINTLAURENT fitting the letters I had at 7D, and the lightbulb immediately went off that YSL was the rebus.  It was used four times – 17A, CIT(YSL)ICKER, 60A, BEAUT(YSL)EEP, 11D, LAD(YSL)IPPER, and 36D, GALLE(YSL)AVE.  And of course at the crossings too – LA(YSL)OW, CHR(YSL)ER, PA(YSL)IPS, and KE(YSL)OT.  The NW corner gave me the most trouble with ISINTO and ATTLEE.

Hey, I’m caught up.  Cool.

Wednesday, June 25 – 8:53

Some good puns from Rob Cook inhabit todays puzzle.  A number of words with the prefix RE get reinterpreted such that the RE is joined with some of the letters following to make a new word, while the rest of the letters form a second word of a two word phrase fitting the clue.  Sounds complicated, so let me give an example.  In 17A, “Talking in one’s sleep?”, the word RESTORATION is interpreted as REST ORATION.  Similarly, 24A, “Building the Berlin Wall?” is REDACTION - RED ACTION.  34A, “Equestrian addiction?” is REIN HABIT, 46A, “Back burner?” is REAR RANGE, and 54A, “Literacy campaign?” is READ MISSION.

Tuesday, June 24 – 7:20

In today’s theme, you can take the first word of each theme answer, and put the answer to 67A, DRAW, in front of the first word, with “a” to form a new phrase.  Those answers are 17A, BATHTOWEL, 21A, CURTAINCALL, 37A, BLANKEXPRESSION, 53A, PICTURESHOW, and 60A, GUNPOWDER.  So you can DRAW a BATH, a CURTAIN, a BLANK, a PICTURE, and a GUN.

Monday, June 23 – 6:00

On the dot.  Not a particularly good time, but what can you do?  The theme is consolation phrases to people who came close but did not win a prize.

Sunday, June 22 – 32:44

This puzzle features word chains.  The theme clues give the first two words and the last two, and the answer is the middle two.  For example, in 23A, “FOOD COURT _____ _____ CIRCUIT BOARD”, the answer is CASECLOSED.  So you have FOOD COURT, COURT CASE, CASE CLOSED, CLOSED CIRCUIT, and CIRCUIT BOARD.  Even knowing the theme, they were hard to get until I had one word of the pair, at which point I could usually figure out the other one.

Other theme answers:

25A: FOOTLOCKER
43A: ROADHAZARD
55A: SCREENDOOR
73A: SPRAYPAINT
82A: WALLSTREET
104A: POOLPLAYER
106A: GRAPHPAPER
36D: MASTERCARD
46D: DOLLARSIGN

Saturday, June 21 – 25:09

I seem to have a knack for doing better on Saturday puzzles than Fridays. Can’t explain it, but I went through this one in a mere 25 minutes. This was a vanity puzzle from Tyler Hinman. Excuse me, Tyler Lewis Hinman, whose initials appear in the grid, made out of black squares. A neat trick that made the puzzle more interesting, not to mention the skillful cluing which I quite enjoyed. There were a couple of obscure answers here and there, but they all had gettable crossings, as they should. All in all, a nice mixture of trivia about sci-fi, tv, movies, history, and geography.

Friday, June 20 – 38:40

This multi-sitting puzzle from Mike Nothnagel was quite hard for me. I put it down maybe six times before I was able to finish it. I got the bottom third fairly quickly (helped by owning the album mentioned at 45A, “Days of Open Hand”, by SUZANNEVEGA). Clues I had particular trouble with are:

- 15A, “1.0″, DAVERAGE
- 27A, “City on the Trans-Canada Highway”, MEDICINEHAT
- 37A, “Farm unit” – I had EAR for a while, then stumped for a while when I had PANSY for 38D, “Member of the aster family”
- 50A, “Crew team” – to the very end I had OARS instead of TARS, the only square I had wrong in this puzzle
- 63A, “Their tails do not wag”, COMETS. Thought it was some kind of stubby-tailed dog
- 4D, “I haven’t got all day!”, I had IMWAITING for a while, instead of SPEEDITUP
- 11D/15D, “A 15-Down might have control over them” and “Underground movement leader?”, for WARLOCKS and DUNGEONMASTER. Really nice pairing, just needed enough letters to get the gist.
- 12D, “Provision for holding certain jobs”, AGELIMIT

Thursday, June 19 – 11:10

What? That’s not…How can….There’s no symmetry!!! That wily Will Shortz, what will he think of next?? Of course, it was Joe Krozel that was the constructor of this very nonstandard puzzle, so thank you Joe for a fun treat! And thanks Will for printing it!

So we have a puzzle in which the black squares spell out the word “LIES“. The clues for 56A is “Number of clues in this puzzle that contain factual inaccuracies”, and the answer, from the downs, is TEN. So what are they?

- 14A, element with the symbol Fe – that’s iron, but the answer is the puzzle is NEON
- 19A, former pharmaceutical giant is GTE (not sure what the correct one might be)
- 24A, father of Jacob is ESAU (really his brother)
- 39A, name for the first decade of the century is OUGHTS (instead of AUGHTS)
- 8D, Golf great Andre is AGASSI (really STOLZ)
- 9D, standard office closing time is NINEAM (rather than FIVEPM)
- 28D, something more than 90 degrees is ACUTEANGLE (rather than OBTUSE)
- 49D, Chinese currency, is YEN rather than YUAN
- 50D, summer hours in NYC is EST (rather than DST)
and I’m guessing in a great final touch, that 56A, number of clues with inaccuracies is really NINE, even though in the puzzle it’s TEN.  Edit: well that doesn’t make sense, since if that answer is inaccurate, then you _do_ get ten, which makes the answer right.  From Orange’s blog I learned that 1A listed OTTO von Bismark as being French, so that’s the last inaccurate one.

Also of note in this puzzle are the three adjacent 15-letter answers on the right side, next to a 10-letter answer.

Wednesday, June 18 – 7:14

I got hung up in the NE corner when “La Giaconda” sounded very familiar but didn’t trigger the MONALISA it should have for some reason.  I had _ONALASA because I has ASA instead of ASI for 27A, “Just ___ thought!”.  I had _INAM for 9A, 1/60 of a fluid dram.  Sounded like an obscure unit I wasn’t familiar with, so I went with D because it sounded pleasing, and DONALASA, um, sounded the least improbable?

I had _INAM because I had 12D wrong – ANON intstead of INON.  I thought it was a poetic expression – I’ll be home anon, as in soon.  Bzzt.  So in the end I had three squares wrong and a sore ass from kicking myself for not being able to complete a Wednesday correctly.

So anyway, the theme, from Adam Fromm, was converting nouns to adverbs by adding an L.  So 24A, “Appetizer, entree, or dessert?” is DINNERPARTLY, 38A, “Bonbon and how it should be divvied up?” is SUGARPLUMFAIRLY, and 51A, “Doubting apostle?  Not by a long shot!” is THOMASHARDLY.