thursday, october 11, 2007
e.j. platt / will shortz
difficulty factor: three outta five band-aids. somebody stop the bleedin'! d-d-d-day-um!
theme: rassa, frassa... (and even more unpleasant and inintelligible grumbling...) this one threw me for a loop, but falling stars it is! the first letters of a celebrity's name start across and the last letters turn the corner and end down.
17A GEORGE CLOO-NEY
16A MEG R-YAN
32A REX HARRIS-ON
44A BEN STILLE-R
60A BRAN-DY
61A FALLING STA-RS
more in a bit...
okay, the theme took me forever to "get". i was expecting some convoluted CRAMALOT (thanks robert!) for the lo-o-o-ongest time! after the smoke cleared, it was easy enough. i'm still not sure wether i'm a bit peeved at cruciverbalist e.j. platt or cruci-bungler me.
well, i've decided i'm a wee bit irked at both of us! i mean, the "turns" didn't even occur at logical breaks - places where one might hyphenate - if one were to do such a silly thing with a person's name at all. c'mon... what's up with that?!
after what must have been twenty minutes, the improbable collusion between meg ryan (say, she's EZONTHEEYE, if y' know what i mean...) and nebraska congressman, three-time presidential candidate (1896, 1900, and 1908), and eventual u.s. secretary of state) william jennings bryan saved the day for me.
before i came to terms with my frustration with the "broken" theme, i fixed myself a cup of 6D COCOA (with milk, of course!)
i liked many of the answers. the 1A GABOR sisters: (magda, zsa zsa, and eva) are semi-famous actresses of hungarian decent. eva was HOT and cutesy on 'green acres' in the latter 60's (and in re-runs still!) only 90-year-old, cop-slapping zsa zsa survives.
i first heard of the 28A GRACIE mansion (the NYC mayor's residence) during the turbulent john vliet(!) lindsay administration... hmmm... about the same time eva was comically vamping around the "old haney place" just down the road a piece from hooterville. 25D ECHOES of "hello, dahling" still fondly ring in the back of my mind.
24A DELTA was cleverly cued. 12D AGLET is one of my favorite words ever - and i don't have a clue as to why. i've probably used it only twenty times in my life (and then only to win bar bets!)
the "father of science fiction" jules 50D VERNE was good to see.
to my knowledge, i've never run across 26A MEW (singular) before.
to me, to '48A SIMPER' is to smile in a silly, even coy manner: most of us chuckled as mary simpered through a series of lame excuse for being late to the meeting. to 'smirk' is to smile in an offensively self-satisfied fashion: mary, hurt deeply, wished she could slap the smirk from bob's face when he said "yeah, yeah, yeah..." as such, i don't find them to be very synoymous at all.
and the clue at 8D "were I TO do it over..." huh? who talks like that?! (not that any other crosswordese or japanese would have been radically better, i suppose.)
30D LIMED and 49D ORBED (wtf, over?!) when did they become verbs?! both offended my senses.
maybe i'm just grumpy cuz i drank too much 37D BEER in the rehearsal studio last night!
keep on keepin' on...
dann
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