Both ELEANOR RIGBY and MR. WIZARD make their NYT puzzle debuts in today's Saturday, July 26 puzzle (answers) by Barry C. Silk. Mr. Silk seems to be a crossword machine. This is his ninth puzzle this year. The last one was less than a week ago — last Sunday's chess problem.
The Beatles clue worked perfectly for me: "title woman of song who lives in a dream." I read the clue, saw the word song, and by they time I got to "lives in a dream," four musical notes floated through my head. After a few moments of da-da-da-DA-ing the title hit me. It's so satisfying when a puzzle pulls a dormant factoid out of your memory like that.
This crossword is appropriately Saturday tough. So, for example, how familiar are you with your sub-Saharan antelopes? Sure, you got your oribis and your dik-diks, but what's that one in the picture again? Oh, right, a RHEBOK. There's a shoe company that got its name from a variation of that spelling.
MOUE is an odd word. It means a pouting or, I suppose, an "unhappy face." Pronounce it moo. I've already whined that B MOVIES aren't necessarily bad, but I accept that I’m on the losing side of this battle against current usage.
The 1966 Pulitzer-winning poet is Richard EBERHART. His experience with the horrors of Word War II made him wonder, "Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?" At the other end of the cultural scale, VANNA apparently holds the record for TV clapping. What an honor.
Since this is Saturday, "ready to be put to bed" didn't even have a question mark and we had to figure out it was TYPESET. So when I got to "players with saving accounts?" and saw that question mark, I knew it had to be an interesting clue. If you've ever sat next to a GOALIE in the bar after a big game, you know they like to relive every blocked shot as they suck back Molson Canadians. It's a great clue. It's an excellent puzzle.
The Silk machine rolls on! Excellent puzzle. Lots of great vocab in the grid, and I'd guess that top row and the long verticals were the seeds to this one.
I'm entirely with you on BMOVIES. I'm a noir fan and would say that the old B movies have held up better than many of the A's. Still, the clue this time was solid.
"Periodicals with unturnable pages" is the clue for EZINES. No argument, but it doesn't account for something like FLYP, which does in fact have turnable pages. Cool magazine that uses web technology to great effect.
Another clue/answer that stood out was "The Guinness book once dubbed her 'television's most frequent clapper'" for VANNA (I tried the surname at first). A question/answer on Jeopardy! tonight (page at the link is still being updated) was nearly identical. A conspiracy I say!
Jim's got a title and picture that actually match. Kind of disorienting, if you ask me.
Posted by: john farmer | July 25, 2008 at 09:18 PM
Yesterday Jack Flash, today a Rolling Stone. Segue to Eleanor and the Beatles. So I wanted Let ITBE, but I had to Let ITGO. Which was followed by OASIS, right above (James) BLUNT.
Forgetting the corporate marketing spelling of QWEST, even though it's plastered all around me, meant that SWEATY was the last word I got in this great puzzle.
Posted by: KarmaSartre | July 25, 2008 at 09:29 PM
I found the Eastern part of this puzzle SURREAL. Halo ma! MAHALO could have been mahalu right? APET? Why? I could go on, but I would be writing a sermon that no one will hear. Oh, I forgot to say Papa was a ROLLINGSTONE.
Posted by: PhillySolver | July 25, 2008 at 09:45 PM
Excellent puzzle. Loved the VANNA clue.
I'm not a Saturday-level solver, but I came close tonight ... STKITTS/ORSK/RPI foiled me.
Sigh. No cigar for me.
Posted by: LindaB | July 25, 2008 at 09:50 PM
Loved this one - and finished it better than twice as fast as yesterday. I thought it very easy for a Saturday - but great new clues and fill. When I filled in 1A without hesitation I was off and running. Wasted about a minute in the SE corner - but that was mostly trying to decided between supreme and surreal. A couple of clues seemed very familiar, especially "ignore it", which may have been in another of the prolific Mr. Silk's puzzles that ran elsewhere this week. No matter - a nice smooth Saturday.
Posted by: jannieb | July 26, 2008 at 05:21 AM
My eyes are giving out. I read the Vanna clue as "dapper," which didn't suggest anything to me. I had to fill her in as "generic TV woman." The SE was last for me, too -- St. Kitts was diabolical. "Advent number" was nice.
Posted by: Wendy Laubach | July 26, 2008 at 06:57 AM
Jim, please note that it's "Players with saving accounts" (not savings) -- which is how I got GOALIES! I got through this with nearly sweaty brow if not damp palms, and still had one wrong'un -- I'd left Omsk in rather than changing it to ORSK. Drat!
I had a friend in college with surname OXNARD and always supposed the Calif. town was named for her family, but maybe it's more common than I supposed at the time.. That and NOOR and SYSTOLES got me started or else I might never have seen a toe-hold!
SURREAL puzzle achivement!
Posted by: ArtLvr | July 26, 2008 at 09:33 AM
Thanks, AL, I corrected my post.
Posted by: JimH | July 26, 2008 at 10:33 AM
I was completely stumped with the clue Children and the answer as Issue. I've never heard of that, but I'll now never forget it.
Posted by: Lynne Wilson | July 29, 2008 at 11:01 PM
Had to sleep on this one and still resort to resource, marking over my pen in the NW -> ibn v. bin.... "Oribis" though led me to your sightly site and I suppose future cites, though it appears I'm untimely, the posts prior are dated in July and Seattle has this puzzle August 30 -- even with the Olympics being here.
Rheboks were a shoe in once I got out Akron.
Posted by: Si | August 31, 2008 at 08:20 AM