Today's Wednesday puzzle (answers) is Stephen Edward Anderson's second at the NYT, this one with an air of equine equanimity. That's Roy and his pal off to the the right and they're pleased as punch that even the taxidermied can be thematically immortalized along with three trusty friends. (Who's Topper? Someone will tell me.) Fitting RIDE 'EM COWBOY balanced nicely in the center was a bonus.
BTW, my favorite cowboy clue of the past was "Headless horseman" in a Jeremy Thomas Paine puzzle eight years ago. Click here for the quarfotic answer.
EAR has appeared as an answer word 187 times but never before clued as "Wave catcher." Nice to see a little physics now and then.
I mentioned in an earlier post that since the Times started publishing puzzles in electronic format there have been three that never came out in Across Lite versions, including one referenced in that earlier entry. I've converted another one so now you can try this clever Joe DiPietro crossword from 2003 called People with Unlisted Numbers available here. That means it's also added to my database and if you just want to read it with the answers you can see it here. The notepad describes the minor discrepancy with the print version.
Update: Seth's comment below reminds me of why crossword blogging is so much fun. Here I was feeling all smug that I nailed the puzzle and I hadn't even noticed that I'd missed a theme clue. HAD A BIT tied it all together right in the center of the puzzle.
Can't help with a horse named Topper, just a '50's TV guy named Cosmo Topper. I had forgotten about the taxidermied bit, thanks. And Happy Trails.
Posted by: KarmaSartre | April 22, 2008 at 11:14 PM
Topper was William "Hoppy" Boyd's horse. That's Hopalong Cassidy.
Mr. Ed would have been fair game--turns out, he's not a zebra after all.
And RIDE 'EM COWBOY crossed HAD A BIT...
Posted by: SethG | April 23, 2008 at 02:59 AM
@Seth, Thanks but now suffering complete devastation as I had two parakeets in the early 50's named Hoppy and Cassy (after Mr. Boyd's character).
Posted by: KarmaSartre | April 23, 2008 at 07:29 AM
Have you noticed that in both yesterday's and today's puzzles, the answers included abbreviations when the clues did not? Today the 55 across clue ("And so on and so forth") had the answer "Etcetc."
And Tuesday the answer to 20 across "Board of directors hiree" was "CEO." Not fair, I say.
Posted by: Rachel | April 23, 2008 at 09:20 AM
Thanks Jim. To be fair, I should note that I noticed HAD A BIT while solving...but RIDE 'EM COWBOY only later.
Posted by: SethG | April 23, 2008 at 10:02 AM
Rachel, abbreviations such as CEO that are spoken as letters don't always get the abbr. tag. Other examples: HMO, ABC, CIA. Abbreviations that don't have a unique pronunciation--e.g., STN, SQFT--get an abbr. indicator in one form or another. ETCETC is an interesting case. In the nine cites in Jim's db, only one clue has "Abbr." in it. The standalone ETC gets the signal more often. I'm speculating here, but I'd guess that the 2xETC is not so much an abbreviation standing for something else as it is an expression that has taken on a life of its own. Even ETC is hardly written in the long form.
Posted by: john farmer | April 23, 2008 at 01:33 PM