Theme and Variations - May 2014

Welcome to spring, Dear Readers! Love, above-freezing temperatures are in the air!

The Theme

1A and 3D are related, yielding three theme words with two variations each. 1A turns out to be TRIATHLON and 3D IRON MAN und dann the theme words are the three legs of a triathlon:

• 43A) SWIMMING
  variation: kindsa swimming strokes
  • 11D) DOG PADDLE
  • 12D) BREASTSTROKE
• 38A) BIKING
  variation: definition of component word parts
  • 6D) HERMAPHRODITIC (bi)*
  • 21D) MONARCH (king)
• 13A) MARATHON
  variation: other famous battles
  • 29A) WATERLOO
  • 25D) HASTINGS

*we shall explore why this is tacky at the und

Highlights!

• 12A) Good going in underwear worn before 50? (5)
  (underwear = BRA) + (50 = (5 = V) + (0 = O)) = BRAVO

Always with the brar always brar brar. And very much dislike this style of breaking up quantities into components, treating them as concatenated strings. It feels bad, and it is bad.

But forgiven for the mature underwear dance party this clue intimates! YUSSS!

Needtit be said? This month's Nerd Hot Guy: Bryan Cranston.

Sweet portrait via Fast Company

• 17A) Opening, except for the third word that goes on the next line (5)
  (Opening = WINDOW) * (except for the third [letter]) = WIDOW

Typography nerds! Stand on the next line and rejoice!

• 18A) Seafood ring served in concessions (8)
  (ring = CALL) in (concessions = SOPS) = SCALLOPS

Scallops used to be our favorite seafood. Yum. And favorite line from the translation of Ulysses we read in seventh grade: “Blast and damn / must I be a milksop all my life?”

O TELEMACHUS
YES
THE ANSWR IS

• 23A) Pedantic gossip carries on—one's heart follows (7)
  (gossip = DISH) + ON + (one's heart = N) = DONNISH

don•nish [don-ish]
adjective

resembling or characteristic of a university don; bookish; pedantic.

Source: Dictionary dut com

Got this one and was like, “ ... do they ever make donnish puns in Mad Men?”

• 24A) Heads off a ghost (5)
  HEADS * anagram = SHADE

Mmmm1!!!! Now this is what we love. Pure. Tight. Clean. Narrative.

Also very much enjoy when a likely indicator instead serves as anagrind. Delightful.

• 31A) Turned up, I rutted in depravity (9)
  UP I RUTTED * anagram = TURPITUDE

Mwa! Anagramas! We loves! Always appreciate sex-positive references to perversions and depravity. TURNT UP!

• 35A) Loaded in electric heater (4)
  electRIC Heater = RICH

Nice wordspanner.

• 45A) Profligacy in various sexes describing Second Coming? (8)
  (SEXES * anagram) + (SEC * reverse) = EXCESSES

Liked this one, as usual, for 1) anagram 2) narrative. What always love. What love every time. Same always. “what good” is “what like.” You know.

• 1D) Why water isn't hard? What's wrong? (4)
  WHAT * anagram = THAW

Oh very sweet, very nice play on “hard” water, very nice use of idiom. Mwa.

• 14D) Gussied-up den, set like some tables (6)
  DEN SET * anagram = NESTED

BAHAHA YUSssSS!! Nested tables! If you want to code an email to look the same in every client, like exACTly the same, your choices are to either make the whole thing one giant jpeg and hope ever'body has images turned on, OR nest tables within tables within tables. Web 1.0 didn't go anywhere. Because the people who still use Eudora 1.0 didn't go anywhere. They're not all dead (yet).

Not sure what nested tables mean to a non-coder. Or what they would have meant to us ten years ago. Sure as heyk know what they mean to us now. O the painstaking! O the meticulous!

• 27D) Miso soup is full of energy—it affects the cells (7)
  (MISO IS + (energy = E)) * anagram = MEIOSIS

Oh HAYLE yes! Ninth grade biology. Much love.

• 39D) Cows members of flock in Episcopalianism (4)
  floK IN Episcopaliamism = KINE

Ohhhhhh YUS in yet another highly specific and not particularly interesting memory from Erica's past: we know the word “kine” because it comes up in some crowd work on Buy Me Bring Me Take Me Don't Mess My Hair ... Life According to Four Bitchin' Babes, V. 1. Megan McDonough sings a song about kine, and explains, at length what “kine” is.

This is the songbook cover for the second line-up of the Four Bitchin' Babes.

Notable line-up change was swapping in Julie Gold for Patti Larkin. Yes, From a Distance is great. But also yes, Patti Larkin is way better and funnier then alla dem bitches put together. We said it. This paragraph is for the nonexistant Dear Readers who love the Harper's cryptic AND '90s folk music.

Lowlights!

• 9A) Spoken in the past tense, this would make a planet spin (5)
  ((planet = WORLD) * homophone = WHIRLED) - past tense = WHIRL

Ew! Ohhhhhhh so torturous. Bleh.

• 15A) New or otherwise, it's a second crop of hay (5)
  NEW OR * anagram = ROWEN

row•en
/'rouən
noun

a second growth of grass or hay in one season.

Source: Goog

This one was called out in the instructs as uncommon. Yah. Twas uncommon. Meh!

• 20A) Point of an instant message? (3)
  AIM (double syn.)

Wowee wowee wowee!! 1998 has come to join us in our world.

• 2D) Before, I never disputed small state of a flower! (8)
  (I NEVER + (small state = RI)) * anagram = RIVERINE

Riverine? Riverine? These uncommons are uncommonly bucolically bluh.

• 28D) Illness in the ear—took a powder for it (3)
  (took a powder = FLEW) * homophone = FLU

We first learned the phrase “take a powder” by reading IT at a much too young age. “too young” as in “not personally able to absorb without being disturbed, perceiving monsters in the dark, etc.” Another 11-year-old might have been fine. We were not. Anyway the character who grows up to be a driver (Eddie?) talks about taking a powder from his job when he gets the call that the monster resurfaced in his rural Maine hometown. At the time we assumed “a powder” meant “cocaine.”

There's a nice narrative quality to the clue, but “take a powder” = “flew” is weak. Appreciate the (accidental?) association with floo powder, tho.

• 36D) First to last, what's thrown around by gamblers? Getting murdered (4)
  (what's thrown around by gamblers = DICE) * (first [letter] to last) = ICED

Indicator is heavy-handed for a single-translation anagram of a word which is, like, one of the top three most common puzzle words. #PuzzleComplaints

The Tacky!

One and a half this month! And the “half” is us being sensitive ... or perhaps too sensitive? Which is it? Dear Readers can decide!!

• 22A) Mobile home tethered, at first, to a piece of fencing (5)
  (tethered * at first = T) + (piece of fencing = EPEE) = TEPEE

Callin' this half-tacky because of the class associations between mobile homes and poverty, and the reality of rampant poverty on American Indian reservations. So dire such poverty, it has its own Wikipedia page. Would prefer that references to tepees also mention “stolen land” “colonialism” &c.


Und, from up top:

• 6D) HERMAPHRODITIC (= bi)

“Intersex” qua “bi” is quite the stretch. “bi” commonly abbrevs “bisexual,” and without qualification, bisexual ≠ intersex. Altho, likely, non-zero intersex folks are bisexual. Altho, more likely, when you already occupy such a non-normative sex then what's the point of clinging to the gender binary anyway such that “bisexual” even holds meaning, and why not just call yourself “queer” and do whatever the fuck you want? Fuck whoever the do you want? Exactly.

Why don't we all just do that? Exactly.

Source: FuckYeahHardFemme.tumblr.com (our favourite)

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