Tuesday, October 13th LAT Crossword

Theme: Gone fishing

Martin here. Surprised? Me too. I think C.C. is letting me blog today provided I 1) don't make (or link to) any off colour jokes, 2) don't link to any erotic pictures or videos and 3) don't add fuel to any fires. In other words, it's just like any day posting to this blog: we all have to second guess ourselves before we post. :)

Anyway...

16A: "Window treatment support" CURTAIN ROD

22A: "Proceed cautiously" WALK A FINE LINE

46A: "Sports show staple" HIGHLIGHT REEL

56A: "No longer in trouble" OFF THE HOOK

I didn't need perp help to get HIGHLIGHT REEL because I already had CURTAIN ROD and WALK A FINE LINE: the expression "ROD and REEL" came to mind and I expected to find REEL after getting ROD and LINE. If you solve a puzzle from starting at the bottom and working up then you probably had a different experience: HOOK and REEL would have made WALK A FINE LINE a gimme because you would be expecting HOOK to be followed by LINE and perhaps sinker.

A lot of strightforward clues today. Personally I think this is a good thing, a very good thing in fact, because not only did it mean I got to finish this in about twenty minutes without googling but, as I've said before, cryptic clues often tend to be a cheat designed to make the puzzle harder than it really need be. I'll talk about this more as we go over the clues and fills.

Warning: some pictures below are pictures of animals wearing no clothing and are therefore naked. :)

Across:

1A: "Magic amulet": MOJO. I originally wrote MORO which is a word that refers to the people of Mindinao. There's an old terrorist group in the Philippines that called themselves the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF. They are now called the Abu Sayaf. Can't imagine why they'd want to change their name.

5A: "With 13-Across "Lonely Boy" singer" PAUL and 13A: "See 5-Across" ANKA. PAUL ANKA was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. There's a Paul Anka Drive in the south-eastern part of the city, obviously named after him.

9A: "UPS deliveries requiring payment" C.O.D.S. Cash on Delivery. UPS is United Parcel Service. I'm surprised that it wasn't clued as a kind of fish.

14A: "Ship to remember" MAINE. The USS MAINE "exploded and sank on February 15, 1898 in an event that precipitated the Spanish–American War and also popularized the phrase Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!" Again, the obvious clue "Fish producing state" was apparently deliberately avoided so as to not hint at the theme too early.

15A: "Related" AKIN. Straightforward clue.

18A: "Christmas trio" MAGI. The three wise men. As in the O'Henry Christmas story The Gift of the MAGI.

19A: "__ Beso (That Kiss!): 5- & 13- Across hit" ESO. Spanish for "that". Sorry, no video.

20A: "Prefix with China" INDO. Straightforward clue.

21A: "Lukewarm" TEPID. Straightforward clue.

26A: "The flu, for one" ILLNESS. Straightforward clue. C.C. can correct me if I am wrong but my students tell me that the word for cold/flu in Chinese is 感冒 (gan3mao4) but there's also the word 流感 (liu3gan3) that means simply flu (as opposed to cold, I presume). This would seem to imply that Chinese people consider the flu to be a type of cold as opposed to a separate disease. Several years ago, the big scare here was SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Symdrome) which was caused by a mutated coronavirus. Coronaviruses along with rhinoviruses pretty much account for the common cold. Nowadays, people are worried about H1N1 or swine flu which is a form of influenza. The good news is that if you've been exposed to a specific virus in the past then you are less likely to get sick again: you'd be considered "immune". The bad news is that colds and flus can kill you. Good luck this winter, everybody. :)

28A: "Dynamic start?" AERO. Also a delicious chocolate bar.

29A: "God" DEITY. Extremely straightforward clue.

30A: "Most intelligent" SMARTEST. Straightforward clue.

34A: "Looooong time" EON. Fairly straightforward clue. "Long time" could have been ERA.

35A: "Blocker of offensive TV material" VCHIP. Aren't people more concerned about internet porn than what appears on TV? Back in the late seventies people used to complain about Charlie's Angels.

37A: "Penn & Teller, e.g." DUO. Why not Batman & Robin?

38A: "Put your John Hancock on this line" SIGN HERE. Straightforward clue.

41A: "Desert rest stops" OASES. Plural of OASIS. Straightforward clue.

43A: "Chaplin's fourth wife" OONA.

44A: "Weepy people" SOBBERS. Straightforward clue.

50A: "Orderly display" ARRAY. Straightforward clue.

51A: "Has a meal" EATS. Straightforward clue.

52A: "Repair" FIX. Very straightforward clue.

55A: "Reddish horse" ROAN. I knew ROAN was a horse colour but I didn't know it was also a breed of horse.

59A: "Oklahoma city" ENID.

60A: "Numerical relationship" RATIO. Fairly straightforward. My first thought was SERIES but it was too many letters.

61A: "One-named Deco artist" ERTE. I think we've had this clue before.

62A: "Personal dept. IDs" SSNS. Social Security NumberS. In Canada, we have SINS, Social Insurance NumberS.

63A: "Greenish-yellow pear" BOSC. If you don't remember this fill from previous puzzles then you might have been stumped but I imagine most of us here go this one.

64A: "Treos and iPhones, briefly" PDA. Easy guess. In Taiwan, the most popular feature on one of these things is the ability to translate English to Chinese. That and games.

Down:

1D: "Riot squad spray" MACE. I was surprised to learn that mace and pepper spray are not the same thing: the confusion arises because the Mace Security International company that used to supply tear gas to the police now manufactures pepper spray for personal protection.

2D: "Weighty obligation" ONUS. Fairly straightforward clue.

3D: "Harry Potter's creator" J. K. ROWLING.

4D: "Bit of granola" OAT. And 48D: "Smidgen of sand" GRAIN.

5D: "Bamboo-eating critters" PANDAS.

6D: "___ superiority: obvious confidence" AIR OF. When you go overseas to teach English it is very easy to assume an AIR OF superiority because you speak English and they don't. You have to keep in mind that you can't speak their language. Of course, once you do manage to learn their language that AIR OF superiority returns. :)

7D: "Juan's one" UNO. Spanish for "one".

8D: "Was in first place" LED. Fairly straightforward clue.

9D: "King Arthur's realm" CAMELOT. A lot of the King Arthur legend may have been myth. The 2004 movie portrayed him as a Roman.

10D: "Giraffe relative" OKAPI.

11D: "Let's eat!" DIG IN. Straightforward clue.

12D: "Like a catty remark" SNIDE. Very straightforward clue.

14D: "Expensive furs" MINKS. Straightforward clue.

17D: "Dance company founder Alvin" AILEY.

21D: "La. on old U.S. maps" TERR. Territory.

23D: "Bug in a colony" ANT. Fairly straighforward clue. "Bug in a hive" would be BEE.

24D: "__ Said: Neil Diamond hit" I AM...I.: See this clip.

25D: "Minimum-range tide" NEAP.

26D: "March 15th, e.g." IDES. In the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar, Caesar was told to "beware the ides of March". This foreshadowed his assassination by the senate.

27D: "First of 13 Popes" LEO I. "Last of 13 Popes" would be LEO XIII.

30D: "___ Believes in Me: Kenny Rogers hit" SHE.

31D: "His name wound up on a lemon" EDSEL FORD. Easy guess.

32D: "Plaintiff" SUER. Fairly straightforward. In criminal law the plaintiff is the level government whose law you broke but in civil law the plaintiff is filing a lawsuit.

33D: "Partner of turn" TOSS. You TOSS and turn when you can't sleep. I found the clues and fills starting to get a bit trickier at this point, which is fine.

35D: "___, vidi, vici: Caesar's boast" VENI. Another Julius Caesar reference.

36D: "Mountain goat's perch" CRAG.

39D: "Words after Look, Ma" NO HANDS. Also, words before "Ow ow! My arm!"

40D: "Sanctified" HOLY. Very straightforward clue.

41D: "Way beyond pleasantly plump" OBESE. No comment.

42D: "Prez on a penny" ABE. President Abraham Lincoln.

44D: "Kind of electricity" STATIC. As opposed to electricity that flows in a current.

45D: "Big name in garden care" ORTHO. Manufactured by the Scott's Miracle Gro Company. From the Greek word meaning "straight" or "correct".

46D: "Rabbit look alikes" HARES. Rabbit. HARE. Frog. Toad. Turtle. Tortoise. Alligator. Crocodile.

47D: "Smooths, as hair" IRONS. Also for getting wrinkles out of clothes.

49D: "Tests by lifting": HEFTS. We've had that clue before.

53D: "Greek i" IOTA.

54D: "Vintage jaguars" XKES.

56D: "Planet" ORB.

57D: "Toy magnate ___ Schwarz" FAO.

58D: "Like cool cats" HEP.

Okay, so a lot of clues were fairly to very straightforward but, as far as I am concerned, that's a good thing. As a teacher, especially a teacher of English as a foreign language, I can't help but feel sympathetic to people non-native speakers of English, for example, who might find these clues hard enough to endure. I can pretty much guarantee that none of my students here would find this as easy as I did. Besides, there were words and names like ENID, OKAPI, AILEY, ORTHO and FAO that definitely needed perp help as well as words and names like ERTE, BOSC, NEAP and CRAG that are easy to us because we've seen them before in crossword puzzles. All in all then, I would consider this a fair test of one's Tuesday crossword puzzle solving ability.

Martin