News Clippings - September 2013

Triumphant return, everyone! We hope you all had lovely summers. Welcome back to TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com.

For la Septembre, the theme: symmetrical halves to the grid, except for the two 1As. The puzzle title was “News Clippings” and each clue was a double-threat that read like a headline, preceded by an appropriate(ish) newspaper section which—most incredible puzzle instruction in Harper's ever—was included “just for fun.”

Just for fun!

So had our thinking caps been properly strapped on we would have keyed in on the theme of Ye Old Media Papre of Yestreyeer and potentially nailed the 1As early, as opposed to dead last:

• 1A) Obituary: CREATOR OF PROBITION (“THE MAN WITH THE VITAMIN”) DIED—NAME INVOLVED IN PERJURY SPREAD IN PROMINENT LETTERS (6,8)
  creator of prohibition = BANNER
  (the man = HE) + (vitamin = A) + (died = D) + (perjury = LIE) + (name = N) = HEADLINE

Do you get it? “BANNER HEADLINE” in the puzz right where the banner headline is on a newspaper: By the way, that clueing for HEADLINE is just, like, excruciating.

This puzzle was hard. Since we were such a dodo about 1A and thus couldn't enter any fill until the triumphant end, we brought out the big guns to keep track of which answers jibed together.

Big guns, you ask? That's right. We brought out the Scrabble board and the markers. And, luckily, most of our first answers were in what turned out to be the left half of the puzzle, and we were able to make some wild conjectures that led to accurate inferences that put this one to bed in two days. Not one of the glorious single-sittings of summer 2012, tis true. But still flowing nice and steady, like a river, or a morphine drip.

Highlights!

• 10A) Science Page: ENGINEER GREETED CLEAN ENERGY SOURCE WITH EXHAUST PIPES DECENTRALIZED WHEN IT GETS DARK (7,7)
  GREETED * anagram = DETERGE
  (energy = E) + (exhaust pipes = VENTING) * decentralized = EVENING

An especially nice flow between halves (“clean energy”).

• 14A) Automobile News: BEING INSIDE FIRST-CLASS RETRO CONVERTIBLE (AND IN STATE!) MAKES ME BLURT: PEOPLE CAN LOSE THEIR HEADS AFTER RIDING IN THIS! (7,7)
  ((first-class = A1 = AI) * rev = I A) + (AND IN * anagram) = INDIANA
  ME BLURT * anagram = TUMBREL

From etymonline:

tumbrel (n.) mid-15c., “two-wheeled cart,” ... Notoriously used to take victims to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror.

Dark! “Death Cart: the cart that drives you to your death!”

• 17A) TV Review: DISCOVERED BACK IN POLYVINYL DWELLING WITH A BLUE COLOR, OLDER MAN IN DADA IS DEPICTED IN GREAT TV SERIES (6,6)
  polyvinYL DWELling * rev = LEWDLY
  (man in Dada = RAY) + (great = G) + (TV series = ER) = GRAYER

Mmm that wordspanner reversal in the first half! YES. Blast from the past on that TV reference but we forgive, we forgive.

Also just now, in real time, our lovely boyfriend Sweet V whilst reading over our shoulder asked, “Ray? How is that Dada?” V is from Romania, the same nationality as key inventors of Dada. He speculates that Dada was a Romanian joke about art, right to art's face. Having had close contact with a Romanian for nearly a year we speculate same.

But V'd never heard of Man Ray. Man Ray! His photos were no joke! Man Ray is an automatic Highlight! While we're on the topic of TV series—great TV series —check out Noah Wyle still hitting his marks on that first ER monologue. YES! Love!



Noah Wyle! You are this month's TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com Nerd Hot Guy!

Young and clean cut (cheetah print!)

Older and tastefully grizzled

• 1D) Gossip Column: BREAKING WIDE: I PLACE DOTTY HANGING AROUND WILLIS' EX! SEEING EACH OTHER AGAIN? I'LL BE WRITING IN ANOTHER DAY (10,10)
  I PLACE (Willis' ex = DEMI) * anagram = EPIDEMICAL
  double synonym = BACKDATING

“Back dating” as in “those two? Are they back dating again?” Mmmmmmmmok we'll allow it!

Speaking of Willis's ex, here's Demi Moore and the Kootch deboarding, and oh-so-gently received by TMZ. TMZ, that most generous of media. And also if right now you're like, “uh your blog has a typo, it should be Willis',” dude, no. Possessive singulars ending in s take the apostrophe and s. Get out dat Strunk & White. Open 'er up. What does it say. You're welcome. We know. Yes, everyone does it “Bruce Willis'.” Yes, we know it looks funny the other way. Sometimes the truth is hard.

This clue also reminds us of Jackie Harvey's Gossip column in The Onion. “Item!”

• 6D) Business News: STRIKE SUPPORTS, LEVERAGED OUT, SWAMP INTERNAL WORKING (SHOWN IN HD), WRITES INTERIOR (10,10)
  ((strike = S) + LEVERAGED) * anagram = EVERGLADES
  (INTERNAL * anagram) + HD = HINTERLAND

Two glorious anagrams! Hinterland! Very nice. Always enjoy when an indicator is in fact anagrind material. Fresh take!

• 11D) Fashion News: A FAST-MOVING NUMBER, NIGHTGOWN'S STARTING TO GET FASHIONABLE—YET SHIFTS, OLD MAN, GO RIGHT OVER ALMOST NOTHING (6,6)
  (nightgown's starting = N) + (fashionable = IN) + YET = NINETY
  (go right = GEE) + (almost nothing = ZER) = GEEZER

“Ninety” like driving fast, in miles per hour, on an American highway mmmmmmmmmmmmmmok we'll allow it. “GEE” like in how you get your team of oxen to go left. We learned that from Reading Rainbow probably 25 or 30 years ago in the episode where LeVar Burton goes to an Amish farm.

GEE and HAW. Never know what's gonna resonate, what's gonna stick with you and be of use.

Lowlights!

• 7A) Empoyment Want Ad: A LOW-RENT EX-SERVICEMAN, UNOFFICIALLY I'M PURSUING PUBLIC RELATIONS IN PARTICULAR (4,4)
  A LOW * anagram = AWOL
  (public relations = PR) + I'M = PRIM

Just didn't like. Maybe it was the reference to public relations? Also, we were sooooo certain that the first half would play on VET and thus we built a neurological dead end and brought our sleeping bag and just camped out for a couple days.

When your intuition has you on the right track then sometimes that can work and you say, “mmmm! I'm like Columbo up in here, sniffing it out! Your book smarts will never defeat my qi!” but when it doesn't you're just like, “argh! Why did I let myself be guided by feeling?”

• 12A) Western Hemisphere: A LATIN PRESIDENT SIMILARLY GERMANIC, ENDS UP IN WILD (5,5)
  A + (Latin = L) + (president = IKE) = ALIKE
  GERMANIC ends = MANIC

O mang, took forever thinking up synonyms for “Germanic” and only getting “Teutonic” which is way more than five letters, and didn't break up into neat components as a synonym for “wild.” But then, like the girl next door, the answer we were looking for was right there in front of us. (whispered: right there, the whole time)

• 2D) Police Blotter: CROOKED PUNK WARY OF NOT FINISHING RAN OFF IN VAN WITH ITALIAN FLOWER (4,4)
  WARY * anagram = AWRY
  ((OF * not finishing = O) + RAN) * anagram = ARNO

Every time with that flow-er = river. Every time. Just one time, let's see flow-er mean “menstruater.” Fresh take!

Also, any Dear Readers out there know how to parse “van” here? There is such thing as Van Arno but we doubt that is the reference.

• 3D Sports Page: BALLOONS APPEARING WHEN OPENERS IN DETROIT, DENVER, SEATTLE RUN OVER—MAVERICK'S I, NETS 12—ODDLY MENTION BOXING RING (8,8)
  (D + D + S + I + NETS) * anagram = DISTENDS
  MENTION + (ring = O) * anagram = NOONTIME

More tortured clueing on that first half. Booo!

• 5D) Washington Beat: HOUSE COVERAGE OF OLD REPUBLICAN STANDING UP FIRST ON REVERSING CASES REGARDING MUSICIAN IN HISTORY FIRE! (4,4)
  OF + (old = O) + (Republican = R) = ROOF
  ON * reverse * cases + (regarding = RE) = NERO

Of course the famous musician is Nero. #ofcourse note! Wikipedia tells us that Nero probably wasn't fiddling during the Great Fire. So the next time someone brings it up like at a party or in a Huffington Post comment or something you can say, “ACTually ... !” Then everyone will say, “thank you for letting us know.”

• 13D) International News: RULER OVERTHROWN, SIREN ON CART SOUNDS FOR BRITISH SPY (5,5)
  RULER * anagram = LURER
  (ON + (cart = DRAY)) * homophone = ANDRE

From W'k'p'd'a:

John André was a British Army officer hanged as a spy by the Continental Army during the American War of Independence.

Never hearda. But, there you have him.

The Tacky!

Let's call out what we always call out, and what we always call out is male normativity.

• 16A) Advertising News: PRESS FOR DIRECTIONS—THEN YOU'LL SEE ME NAME STAR'S TREAT TASTIER (7,7)
  (directions = N E W S) + ME + (name = N) = NEWSMEN
  TASTIER * anagram = ARTISTE

Meh. All the Press is All Man? Tell that to Cokie Roberts. To Maura Liason. To Connie Chung. We could go on. To Mi-chele Norris. To Audie Cornish. To what's her face, the mean blonde one. Tip of the tongue. Anne something.

(Googles ... )

Ann Coulter! She was the first hit for “mean blonde republican,” by the way. Not a comment on her politics, just on how she conducts her public persona(e). And w/r/t tackiness qua sloppiness, is the noun “artiste” really symmetric to the possessive modifier “star's”? Mmmmmmmmmmno. It is not.

Also

Did you, Dear Readers, check the specs on some BULLSHEET in the puzzle footer this month?

Beginning with this month's puzzle, the sender of the first correct solution opened at random, rather than the senders of the first three, will receive a one-year subscription blah blah

O RLY. Is Ye Olde Meedia exactly raking it in these days and no, certainly not. Do we begrudge them cutting corners with respect to the puzzling fanbase why YES we most certainly DO.

Anyway. Here's our winning puzzle from April, hanging proudly in the kitchen:

If you feel something, say something. Leave a comment.

Sixes and Sevens (and Twelves) - August 2012

Hello! We skipped last month's puzzle in the blog. The only semi-tacky clue in July 2012 was

• 30D. Unnamed person appearing in Big River? Big mistake.
  (Big = B) + (Unnamed person = ONE) + (River = R) = BONER

... and BONER as a synonym for "big mistake"? We love it. Both in the sense of "oh, that was a real bone-head move. My head doesn't contain brains, just bones. What a boner of an error." But also in the sense of, "I have an erection before a major presentation; this is a big mistake."

<sidenote> In the summer of 2010 we sat in on some calls for an 8-bit video game collective, with the possibility that we might do some art for them. One member of the collective had just gotten his digital hands on a zero-gravity engine, and we brainstormed ways to use it for a game. 

Sidenote to this sidenote: the way this collective talked about the zero-gravity engine was as if they'd acquired plans to the Death Star.

So the guy who'd actually personally acquired the engine, his big idea was to make a game starring a female astronaut who needs to go pee very badly. The longer she's unable to find a bathroom, the more her spacesuit fills with urine.

We bit our tongue from suggesting that we use menstruation instead of urination, and her spacesuit could fill with blood. Jason suggested instead that the character be male and have an increasingly large and embarrassing erection that he had to hide from the other astronauts. Like Frogger but with boners. 

That's the callback to boner. Ok we're done now. </sidenote>

July 2012 also marked yet another puzzle in our hot streak of Harper's cryptics conquered in one session, lying down, with only half our brain present. 

"We've done it!" we thought. "We've mastered the Harper's cryptic. We're like a pylon under a bridge. We're like Juggarnaut in X-Men. We're the unmovable rock. Just try to shake us, irresistible force! Because we would love it!"

But taunt not, lest Richard E. Maltby Jr. send you your reckoning.

August's puzzle killed us! We were in great danger of not even completing it in due time to mail it in and vie for the coveted Harper's cryptic prize of seeing our name in tiny print in the footer of the puzzle two months hence! We haven't used dictionary wildcard search in some time for the Harper's. You better believe we were using it this month.

Highlights!

• 29A) Old king's sackful partially emptied (4)
  SACKFUL - (the middle) = SAUL
  Sweet, elegant, proper. Love it.
• 7D) Half in pain, I stab Montoya in The Princess Bride (5)
  (half in pain = IN) + I + (stab = GO) = INIGO
  Knew immediately it would be INIGO or MANDY. Took a while to parse "stab" as in "have a stab at" or "have a go at." Our old manager used to tell us to "take a stab at" tasks. He knew that he was inviting us to imagine stabbing him. He was testing us. 

• c) Friar has signs of depression, perhaps (6)
  (Friar = FR) + (has = OWNS) = FROWNS
  Kept trying to force TUCK, or ABBE. Loved the simplicity.

• d) Batman's end: after hip replacement, found in South by the Riddler (6)
  (South = S) + (hip replacement = PHI) +  (Batman's end = N) + (by = X) = SPHINX
  Great Batman clue. Great sphinx clue! Great clue. 
• k) Perhaps an Arab's eastern newspaper is to be sent north (6)
  (eastern = E) + (newspaper = TIMES) (is to be sent north = backwards) = SEMITE
  Arab's are Semites! Loved it. A refreshing, literal, historical take. It's so good when Richard E. Maltby Jr. bucks convention for precision like this.
• b) New, raw, sculpted and 50 percent unfinished, it is, in the main, a unicorn (7)
  (New = N) + RAW + (50 percent = HALF (unfinished) = HAL) = NARWHAL
  What an incredible beast of nature! "In the main" for "the ocean." Mm! Love.

• g) Siemens generates opposition that cannot be overcome (7)
  SIEMENS anagram = NEMESIS
  We forced variations on ENEMIES for a couple rounds. NEMESIS! Loved.

Oh, and then all four of the twelvers were majestic:

• a) The Gift of the Magi is open in feel, you might say (12)
  (open = FRANK) + IN + (feel = SENSE homophone = CENSE) = FRANKINCENSE
  Exquisite!
• b) Confusing matter with Keeler? She has a lot of hang-ups! (12)
  MATTER + KEELER anagram = TELEMARKETER
  Yes! She does get hung up on a lot! Much love to our brothers and sisters in the canvassing arts. We know your struggle, and the enmity you face.

• c) Kind of do the whole dictionary, entering before long entry in passage bound for reproduction (12)
  (Kind of do = PERM) + (the whole dictionary = A TO Z) (inside (before long = SOON)) = SPERMATAZOON
  The most majestic of them all! Had to look up the singular of spermatazoa. ZOON. Check the specs on that suffix. Don't see that one so oft. Unless perhaps you play the BAZOON. (*cough*)

• d) Distinctly spoken? (12)
  (double synonym) PRONOUNCEDLY 

Oh, but there were some lows to this puzzle as well. 

Lowlights!

• 23D) He's ... he's soft at heart, pirouetting! (5)
  (he's soft at heart = hE'S SOFt) (pirouetting = backwards) = FOSSE
  Ok but "He's ... " is the synonym for Fosse? Is it? Is it really? Like "Sheeeeee's thhhhhhhhe one!" from "One" from A Chorus Line? Maybe a musical-savvy dear reader can explain this to us. Maybe Richard E. Maltby Jr. can explain this to us. He loves musicals. 

• a) Seniors found in woods (6)
  (double synonym) ELDERS
  Haven't we seen another ELDERS clue in recent memory? I'll look it up. 
• d) Only ego can encompass this creative activity (7)
  ONLY EGO (anagram) = NEOLOGY
  "Neology" is a synonym for "creative activity"? Weak. Such a tiny sliver of the spectrum of creativity. Hardly a synonym. Like "Audrey Hepburn" as a synonym for "collection of atoms."

• f) Here's a liqueur—hugs and kisses—and something to carry it in (7)
  (liqueur = B AND B) + (hugs and kisses = OX) = BANDBOX
  Long suspected that hugs and kisses would sub out to OX, and that there'd be a five-letter liqueur ending in B to yield the suffix BOX. But what five letter words even end in B? PLUMB? PLUMBOX? No ... SCRUB? SCRUBOX? No way! KABOB? KABOBOX? Nopers. Turns out it's B&B, and BANDBOX. Bandbox? It looks like a hatbox to us. Ok cool. Bandbox. Learning.

• c) Crafty about the beginning or end of harassment spelled out in brief (7)
  Um. So we put down USELESS as the answer. Not sure if it's correct. Confirmed cross-letters are _SE_ESS. S'gotta be USELESS, right? But what's the synonym? "in brief"? "crafty"? Hate to finish without knowing. Blame it on poor cluing in the puzzle :)

And now we come to the tacky matter of this month's tacky Harpers cryptic clue. One and a half this month.

First, the halfsy: 

• i) Cats has long New York run back before gender-switching (6)
  (long = L) (New York run back = YN) (gender switching = SEX anagram = XES) = LYNXES
  Ok so getting uptight about confounding sex and gender makes a lot of people, even intelligent, modern people, roll their eyes. G'head and roll them, intelligent modern dear readers of TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com. We know who you are. You're the kind who would rather become vegetarians than ever be accused of being a feminist. Yeah. You. Sex and gender are different. One is biological, one is cultural. And confounding the two has caused real problems for people we love. 

After the correctness of Semite, it was disappointing to see such a predictable, usual, imprecision here. Meh, but this clue was just annoying and picking at one of our old bones. The real tacky clue for the month:

• b) Bush shows extraordinary zeal getting in with a bunch of drunks (6)
  (extraordinary zeal = ZALE) + (bunch of drunks = AA (surrounding)) = AZALEA
  This one only works if the synonym for "bunch of drunks" is "Alcoholics Anonymous." 

And while we appreciate the symmetry of referencing W Bush's chemical history, found it tacky to dismiss the organization as a "bunch of drunks."

S'like, "well ... they're not drunk anymore!" Or maybe that's exactly what Maltby means: there'll never be transcendence. Sigh. 

Here's what we think of when we think "bunch of drunks":

further insight into why this resonates in a bad way

Our two guys (in the sense of "he's my guy!") are Marc Maron and Mike Doughty, both of whom have recovered from addiction and logged time in the meetings. Are they a "bunch of drunks"? 

And in between Maron and Doughty, our guy was also the late David Foster Wallace as manifest in Infinite Jest, where Alcoholics Anonymous is an important setting and character. Would you say "you're a bunch of drunks!" to the face of any of IJ's Crocodiles? Would you say it to any real human in recovery? Would you?

We have to believe: that you would not.

And, gratifyingly, we now imagine Richard E. Maltby Jr. settling down tonight with his favorite RSS feed reader, and sighing at yet another taking-to-task by TackyHarpersCrypticClues.blogspot.com. A short glass filled tall with scotch, neat. A leather armchair. A living room in a Manhattan loft carefully cluttered with the tchochkes of money and taste. An antique toy piano. A useless glass sculpture that sits on a glass shelf in a glass cabinet. WQXR quietly playing from a Bose stereo. Maltby at his iPad 2, reading this blog, sometimes smiling, sometimes murmuring. 

A car alarm from far below startles the small dog at his feet. Maltby barely hears its klaxon. Pets the dog the way you turn a housekey. He contemplates. "What clue shall I drop next month?" Considers referencing poop and rejects it. No, he takes pride in his full maturation to the genital stage of Freudian development. 

Pets the dog again. 

Sip of whiskey. 

PAN AROUND to the giant empty living room. ZOOM OUT through the window to the lonely treetops of Manhattan's skyscrapers.

Turn up to the lonely moon, and Venus nearby. FADE TO BLACK.

Sixes and Sevens - July 2011

July was a juicy puzzle and much good clean fun, up until this month's humdinger tacky-attack. And no, I'm not talking about 17A's EBOOKS ("Modern Library edition of So Be OK (hyphenated)" = SO BE OK&nsbp;anagram).

Which, side note, that was really pushing it, Richard E. Maltby Jr! This isn't the New York Times crossword. You can't just ETAIL and ERATE your way through the grid. This is why we come to the cryptic. We come for real words, even obscure words (29A NEPHRIC, "Degenerate pincher of a kidney (7)" = PINCHER anagram). But these e- prefixes in a cryptic? Too soon, Maltby! Too soon. And thanks for indicating that it's a hyphenated word. Nobody cares!

This month's extra puzzling twist was that the six- and seven-letter answers were unnumbered. Straightforward. Knocked this out with steady progress at my usual casual three day pace.

Particular favorites included 16A's glorious DOPPELGANGER from "I can see myself here, having gone and grappled with intermarriage (12)" = GONE + GRAPPLED anagram (pulled that one down right away) (anagrams are my strongest suit) and 1D's INFIDEL from "I don't believe it's an infield foul!" = INFIELD anagram.

And then we come to the unpleasant matter of This Month's Tacky Harper's Cryptic Clue. This month it was what turned out to be 34A: "Chastity maintains these holy songs get placed around the start of Easter." Tried building off AVES a couple times before I remembered that there's a special word for what we sang in church. Special thanks to my mom for the assist on: HYMNS. Toss in an E for start of Easter and we're left with HYMENS as a synonym for "chastity maintains." Hrm.



I logged a lot of hours with Our Bodies Ourselves during adolescence. I also had The What's Happening to My Body Book for Girls. I also had and still have a female body. So I'm well-equipped to offer insight on this point. Carol Roye sums it up nicely:

As nurse practitioner it is not so easy to tell whether a girl is a virgin, because hymens are so varied. If there is not much of a hymen I have no way of knowing what happened to it. Was it a boyfriend or a bicycle? Or, perhaps, this girl did not have much tissue there to begin with.

Wikipedia says it better:

Virginity testing [inspection of the hymen] is a very controversial practice, both because of its implications for tested girls and because it is not accurate.[1] It is degrading and considered a violation of human rights by Amnesty International[2] and is illegal in many countries.

This clue resonates with bad "bloody sheet" notions of female purity and women as property. Stoning is still a legal sentence for women convicted of adultery in countries that enforce Islamic Sharia law. "Honor killing" is still a very real repercussion for women who, oh, say, get married without an intact hymen.

My rejoinder, matching tacky for tacky: "Jewish bodily impurity before head was cut off by thin film (8)"