Crossword Puzzle Blogging

LA TIMES CROSSWORD PUZZLE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2009  CHARLES BARASCH

Theme:  Them Bones

20A Big Southwestern trombones: TEXAS LONGHORNS.  Cattle, and that's no bull.  Or some football team.  Or these guys.

37A Refined trombones?: POLISHED BRASS.  Decorative and utilitarian metal hardware.
Or those who sound like Kai Winding - my idol as a kid.

54A Continuously playing trombones: SUSTAINED WINDS. The wind speed obtained by averaging the observed values over a one minute period.  I'll bet you didn't know that.   Opinions vary on proper trombone technique.

Hi, gang.  Jazzbumpa here.  Some things are so good, you just can't plan for them: like learning that honey is rich in B vitamines.  Or that, on this, of all nights, the guest blogger would be your humble trombonist.  Do I need to add how much I love this puzzle? Weird, no?  Like, wow!

I worked this in Across Lite in 12:33, which is about my average for this time of the week.  But I seldom have such a silly grin plastered on my embouchre (thats brass musician talk for chops.) while doing so.  And once again, talk about it one day, it shows up the next.  Crockett just asked me about trombone playing.  This is an omen.  Go for it!



ACROSS:

1A Made a disapproving sound: TSKED

6A Witticism: JEST

10A Highlander:  SCOT

14A Cop _______ : bargain in court: A PLEA

15A Healing plant: ALOE

16A Oregon Treaty President: Polk

17A Trembling: SHAKY

18A Having all one's marble: SANE

19A Word processing reversal: UNDO

23A Ending for ranch: ERO.  I'm not in love with the either the clue or the fill, but having it snugged up against Texas helps.  Tfrank - are you out there amigo?

24A Neither Rep nor Dem: IND.  I'll stop now. No politics!

25A Thing: ENTITY

27A Madame in Madrid: SENORA.  Or, more properly, señora, if you want to be persnickety.  I never noticed the custom of alliteration in clues for foreign words until C.C. pointed it out. 

30A Wide shoe size: EEE.

31A Geese flight pattern: VEE.  It's time to start thinking about migration.

32A Actress Greer who recieved five consecutive Oscar nominations: GARSON.  She won the Best Actress Oscar in 1942 for Mrs. Minver.  A bit before my time.

35A At the ready:  ALERT.  Bad JEST ALERT:  Be A LERT - America needs more LERTS!

40A Made on a loom:  WOVEN.  Like Navajo rugs.  If there is a flaw in this fill, I can't find it.

41A Imitation:  ERSATZ.  The word is imported from Germany.  Here it usually means an inferior imitation.

42A Med or law lead in:  PRE.  The eponym for all prefixes.

43A  Command ctrs.: HQS.  Head Quarters.  Or hind quarters, depending on the quality of the commands.  All things considered, I prefer DQS.

45A Musical Beat: RHYTHM.  Or family planning for Catholic trombonists.  Or a reporter's job covering Birdland in the 40's.

49A Well's "The Island of Dr. _______________":  MOREAU.  Never saw the movie.  I read the book when I was about 12, and it scared the hell out of me.  The good Dr. was a vivisectionist whose experiments transformed wild animals into sentient manimals.  For a while.  I still remember, "That is the law.  Are we not men?"  (Shudder.)  And so close to bed time. (It is now 11:40 p.m.)  Here is a better (and apparantly not doctored) Moreau image.

51A Fill with wonder:  AWE.  Hold the shock.

53A Jr.'s son: III,  Eye-yi-yi.  Pretty lame.

58A Clenched weapon: FIST.  A velvet fist in an iron glove.  Or is it the other way around? 

59A Mechanical memorization: ROTE.  Or a quarterback from by-gone days for the Lions, Packers, and Chargers.

60A Remark to the audience: ASIDE.   Or the song people wanted to hear.  Perhaps that is B side the point.

61A To ________: perfectly: A TEE.  Don't ask me.  I gave up golf years ago, and experienced an immediate improvement in my quality of life. (I woudn't TEES about something so serious.)

62A Spory Sunroof: T-TOP.  For a car.  Or on foot.

63A Baseball card brand:  FLEER.  And, to double your pleasure, chewing gum.

64A Wall St's Big Board: NYSE.  New York Stock Exchange.

65A Clownish: Zany.  Like a trombonist.

66A Shore birds: TERNS.  Bad JEST ALERT.  A very determined boy went to the shore to throw rocks at the birds.  He was so thorough, he left no TERN unstoned.

 DOWN

 1D Samples a bit of: TASTES.

2D Ball: SPHERE. A perfectly symmetric round object.  Also, Thelonius Monk's middle name.

3D Loud auto honker of yore: KLAXON.  The poor (pronounced pewer) man's trombone.  Also, this nice march by Henry Fillmore.  A favorite a Summer park conserts.

4D "______ mouse":  EEK.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get Mickey to fit.  But it's a reggae guy.  Who knew?

5D Weekly septet:  DAYS.  Or nights, depending on how you shift it.  If I don't cut back on the links, I'll never get to bed.

6D Argonaut's leader: JASON.  From Greek Mythology.  Also a song that contains the words "manimals" and "buying knives."

7D Large antelope: ELAND.  This guy, a savannah and plains antelope found in East and Southern Africa.

8D Tune: SONG.  A melody, with words.  They can be about the most unlikely subjects.

9D Dainty laugh: TEEHEE.  Or a mini Minnie laugh.

10D Sudden gushing: SPURT.  A drip under pressure.

11D Conspires with: CONNIVES.  From the Latin for closing ones eyes.  I'm getting sleepy.

12D Octogenarians, for example.  OLDSTERS.   My mom and M-I-L are octogenarians.

13D Boxing Ref's decision: TKO.  Technical knock out.  The referee stops the fight, judging that the bout is a mis-match or somebody is about to get hurt.

21D Whopper creators: LIARS.  I wanted Burger King.

22D Lord's Prayer words following "Thy will be done.": ON EARTH, as it is in heaven.  I'll stop now.  No religion!

26D Thus far: YET.  There was a story on the news about a woman who got shot last week and the bullet is in her YET.  I skipped anatomy class the day we were supposed to learn where that is.  Also forgot the bad JEST ALERT.  Lo siento.

28D Eye unsubly: OGLE.  A crossword stalwart.

29D Drizzly day chapeau: RAIN HAT.  An article of practical apparal.

30D Above in poems: O'RE.  Contraction of over.  Never in my poems. (It's Wednesday.)

33D Women: SHES.  Sure.  It's getting too late to argue

36D Slow moving, as a river: LAZY  From the song "Up a Lazy River."

37D Penetrable quality of skin: POROSITY.   The fraction of a surface that is filled with holes.  The unbearable lightness of not-being.

38D Makes a cliche of, say: OVERUSES.  Pretty straight-forward.

39D Exposed: BARED.  I'm done linking.  Use your imagination.

40D Typist's stat.: WPM.  Words per minute.  Mine is in single digits (from typing with just one finger.)

44D Crystalline material: QUARTZ.  Prety much pure silica.  Higher melting than glass.

46D More petite: TINIER.  Like my little Em.

47D Like eggs in an Easter hunt: HIDDEN.  Outa' sight, man!

48D Skinflints: MISERS.  Penny pinching, greedy hoarders, like Ebineezer Scrooge.

50D Big name in Perfumery:  ESTEE.  Lauder, I presume.

51D Dramatist Chekov: ANTON.  Some Russian guy.

52D Tearful: WEEPY.  Rhymes with sleepy.

55D Letter after Theta.  IOTA.  About how much I care, at this point.  Knew it wsn't Alpha.

56D Drift, as an aroma.  WAFT.  What you can experience when walking past a bakery.

57D Shipwreck Site: ISLE.  The Isle of Capri sounds romantic.  Somehow, though, Goat Island doesn't.

58D Air move: FAN.  Also, I'm a fan of this puzzle.

Over and out, kids.  This took me three hours.

Cheers!
JzB

Updated with some corrections, 10/14, 11:00 a.m.

X-posted here, with corrections, enhancements, and comments.