Root word?

Dr. Pangram is back. Four of Barry C. Silk's previous five puzzles have used every letter. Even more impressive, four of the previous five pangrams that anyone has constructed are by Mr. Silk.

Back on July 26, he started 1 Across with MR WIZARD which I thought described him pretty well. Today's Saturday, September 6 puzzle (answers) starts with "Westinghouse/Intel award winner". The answer is WHIZ KID. Indeed.

There is so much I love about this puzzle I'm not sure where to start. It's amazingly fresh according to my formula despite including OLE, but look how brilliant that clue is: "Root word?" A question mark on a Saturday means something very special is going on. Should I ever find myself watching a blood sport in Spain, it's a word I'll be sure to employ should I choose to root for the matador. Frankly, I'm more drawn to the underbull.

"Sounded like a bufflehead" made me laugh but it turns out a bufflehead is a duck, and probably one who is tired of being laughed at. You can hear one here for a very precise answer to that clue.

"Alert while driving" is another outstanding clue. Alert is a verb, not an adjective. I like to think that when other drivers HONK AT me, they're merely alerting me, not suggesting I do something obscene.

I had to look up Sal MAGLIE, the losing pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956. Don Larsen of the Yankees pitched a perfect game and won the game 2-0 and the World Series at the same time. This seems obscure but I suppose it's legit. It's the only post-season perfect game in history. In fact, it's the only post-season no-hitter. Baseball fans care about these things even more than they care about pangrams, probably.

Hitchcock's Notorious was an RKO film, as was King Kong, Citizen Kane, and so many great movies of the 30s and 40s. Such brave filmmaking for the time, and it holds up well today. That's Ingrid Bergman with Cary Grant in the photo. Would you send her off to sleep with the Nazis to help win the war?

Comments

[PhillySolver]

I knew the trivia piece on Sal 'the Barber,' but not how to spell his name (I tried maglee). I did not know either QUAALUDE with two As nor OOCYTE with two Os, but I left them because the crosses worked. I thought TOCCATA had one C, so I was suspecting some tricks. When I finished and looked this up, they were all legit. Another struggle was thinking the word was 'forment' (must be the way I heard it growing up.) I agree this was a very fine puzzle. Biggest problem was only knowing CAMAY as a beauty product, but had enough Latin to know DUM. I spent some time in that section.

[Myles Callum]

Wow, when I saw all those X's and Z's I thought maybe this would be a double pangram or heaven forfend a triple, but I guess it's a mere
[ :-) ] single. Got a lot of kixx out of this one, and it's a purty grid. Nice puzzle, Barry!

[ArtLvr]

Like Philly I knew the Latin tag "DUM Spiro, Spero" = While I breathe, I hope... So I started there and was very pleased to zip along through the entire lower half like a charm, and then the NE too. OOCYTE was a gimme, so clever -- but pride goeth before the fall.

Came a cropper in the NW, where I had DERANGED, XRAYLAB and LANG and no good way from there into the corner. At 1D I wanted "Spools" for [Reels] and at 3D had "I'm fine" rather than IMDONE, thus could not see RKO, etc. Quel let-down after such a jolly start! It all hangs together beautifully, though. A REAL tour de force! Bravissimo, Barry...

[KarmaSartre]

The bottom half was a typical, difficult, exquisite Barry Silk solve. The top half was Barry Burlap, for me. I did so poorly, I am going to spend a few hours this morning solving anagrams of one-letter words to regain my mojo.

It is time for our states to translate their mottoes to English and leave them there.

[KarmaSartre]

And, I'd like to add, just for the joy of typing it: bufflehead!

[TR]

I thought "Comeuppance" would be "desserts" as in getting your Just Desserts". Maybe it is "deserts". I'm no expert, but I did solve the whole puzzle w/o cheating.
BTW, a hockey player does not go to the penalty box for icing the puck.

[JimH]

TR is quite right. When I solved this puzzle I tried to think of some way that ICERS could end up in a penalty box. What I settled on was that icers must be some nickname for hockey players that, despite growing up in a hockey town, I had never heard of, and some hockey players do indeed end up in the penalty box.

On further reflection, though, it's just wrong.

When I was young, there was a popular TV commercial that ran in Canada. Henri "Rocket" Richard was a legendary player for the Montreal Canadiens for many years and after he retired he did spots for Grecian Formula, a hair dye for men. The tag line was, "Hey, Henri, two minutes for looking so good."

You're exactly as likely to go to the penalty box for icing as for being handsome.

[JimH]

Barry Silk mentioned on Rex's blog that the Box Team at The Times changed his original more accurate clue for ICERS. That must be the toughest moment for a Crossword Editor. It's bad enough if you let a mistake slip through. It's worse if you change a correct clue to an incorrect one.

Apparently the JimH Crossword Blog makes errors too. Shiftless joon pahk reminded me that The Rocket is actually Maurice Richard. Henri, who also played for Les Canadiens was Maurice's younger and smaller brother known, of course, as the Pocket Rocket.

The JimH Crossword Blog regrets the error.

I suppose I should mention as well that the phrase is "just deserts", meaning getting the reward or punishment that is deserved. It has nothing to do with ice cream, unless that's what in particular you have coming.

[PondGirl]

When "I'm Feeling Lucky," I use, instead of Google, a Saturday solving partner - we knocked this one off quickly without any knocking of heads against the wall.

I especially liked the image of someone shouting "Hurry up!" to a snail. I'd say that would have exactly no effect.