There's a lot to love in this tough Friday May 2 puzzle by Barry C. Silk (answers.) If you completed it in seven minutes that's the same amount of time it takes to listen to LAYLA, apparently. HERSHEY, Pennsylvania has sticky sweet streets. Speaking of sticky, CHEEZWHIZ makes its NYT debut. And for some reason I hope one of my readers explains, "one with a lot of workers" is apparently PAVER? Maybe I have that one wrong.
Favorite clues include "famous finger-pointer's declaration" for I WANT YOU, "unrevivable" for STONE DEAD, and "contest with many missions" for SPACE RACE. We forget that was fundamentally a contest. Seems hard to believe that it's been 36 years since a human walked on the moon.
I wondered for a minute about PAVER, but a parking lot can be laid with carved stones called PAVERS or maybe some other substance like asphalt, but I still think it is called paving, therefore one who paves is a PAVER, I guess. I have to admit though I didn't catch the USA vs USSR for Space Race, I assumed it was some video game. Do I recall you once posted a picture of Edward R. Murrow of See It Now? Which reminds me, I was going down my list of Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, John Daily and Dorothy Kilgallon for What's My Line? I watched that show so often and can say I learned about the tantalizing NYC lifestyle from my humble suburban home and it called me to big city life.
Posted by: PhillySolver | May 01, 2008 at 09:55 PM
A PAVER, I presume, is the contractor in charge of paving parking lots, and she has a whole parking lot full of workers. Though if the job is paving a street, then I don't know what happens.
P.S. You added an extra E [fixed -- JH] in an attempt to make CHEEZ WHIZ more closely approximate actual cheese. It's so uncheesy, they should call it Chiezz Whiz.
Posted by: Orange | May 01, 2008 at 09:58 PM
I hope there is a better explanation out there for Paver, as everything else worked so well for me. Just took a long time. Very long.
@Philly, If memory serves, the moderator was John Daly (no eye).
Posted by: KarmaSartre | May 01, 2008 at 11:32 PM
I thought of that line from the Joni Mitchell song "They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot" to get PAVER.
Both Phillysolver and Orange nailed it, though
Posted by: Bill from NJ | May 02, 2008 at 12:32 AM
...and each of the individual workers in the lot can be a PAVER, as the clue was "one of a lot of workers", not with. Still just horrible.
Could the clue have maybe originally referred to the brick, then they changed it to be the worker?
Posted by: SethG | May 02, 2008 at 05:51 AM
an ugly clue, but the problem is that it's an ugly answer. it merited a clue like [One who paves]. the incredibly stretched pun may have been an attempt to distract us from the awkwardness of the answer.
Posted by: joon | May 02, 2008 at 07:50 PM
I think the miserable pun with Paver is 'lot' as in parking lot.
Posted by: Miles | June 14, 2008 at 05:02 AM