07.12.07

Brain Damage


Thursday, July 12, 2007

Puzzle by Michael Shteyman, edited by Will Shortz

Here's another one of those first-word-combined-with-this-word-means-something-else crossword puzzles.

BRAIN (65A Word that can precede the starts of 17-, 35- and 54- and 16-Down) combined with the you-know-what of POWERSTEERING (17A It might help you take a turn for the better), WASHCYCLE (35A Ten minutes in a laundry, maybe), TRUSTMEONTHIS (54A "You'll have to take my word for it!"), and STORMCENTER (16D Low pressure area) equals a you-guessed-it result.

The May 14th NYT Puzzle featured as one of its entries NOBRAINER (Super-easy decision), and body-part entries which included bone, muscle, fat and skin, with one of those entries being BONEHEADED (Really, really dumb) -- well, that's what I felt like with this one. It probably didn't help that my temporal and frontal lobes were overheated, as I had decided to solve it in the sauna!

Sweat and strike-overs, futile attempts at turning an S into an X or a D into a J -- all scrawled crudely through fallen beads of moisture! Crumpled and soiled, wrinkled and unintelligible! I'm certain I would have better off in a frozen meat locker!

BROOMS (6A They clear the way) couldn't sweep away my FAUXPAS (14A Wearing white after Labor Day, e.g.) (can anyone tell me why that's a mistake), no REPOSE (15A Rest), REPLAN (12A Think over, in a way), or REDRESS (39D Remedy) could wipe away the DISCORD (62A Strife) or EASE (5D Minimal effort) my sweat -- this is a JUICY (49D Titillating) IHATEIT (38A "Ugh!") puzzle -- FIE (14D Cry of disgust)!...but CREDIT (60A Attribution) the constructor for opening up my pores, because in my OPINION (9D Perspective), a puzzle should puzzle!

Witnessing such a meager scattering of the arts with MAXERNST (32A Early Surrealist), ROSSINI (42D Composer of the opera "Tancredi"), and ITSYOU (64A Song from "The Music Man" with the lyric "What words could be saner or truer or plainer"), I did not want to hear those childhood retorts LIAR (25D Word repeated in a child's taunt) and ISTOO (50D Kindergarten comeback) much less MEEITHER (59A Informal words of concurrence).

Banking, with SANDL (23A Place to get a C.D.) and EXCH (28D Kind of rate in a bank: Abbr.), stole out of its boundaries with ONCD (52D How most computer software is sold), while miscellaneous initials and abbreviations were rampant -- SSE, ISO, VSOP, IST, MED, MDI, ARR, TRIB, THRU, HMO, HST (53A First U.S. pres. to travel in a submarine), along with other half-blurted one-syllable words -- SAY, FIE, LET, NERD, ASH, SUE, and the criss-crossed TAO and YAO. Yet another by-gone ruler OTTOIV (30A Emperor under Pope Innocent III), an obscure building AIRDROME (37A Hangar site), an undesirable cooking method DEEPFAT (2D Frying medium), that odd little ECHIDNA (41D Egg-laying mammal), an anatomical reference HUMERI (40A Upper armbones), all left me to somehow wonder if an OXLIP (8D Yellow spring flower) was related to a cowslip, and who in the world names flowers after animal orifices? LOCOS (47A Nutcases)! Last, but not least, one of my favorite NYT's writers makes a cameo -- DOWD (24D Columnist Maureen).

Well, I'm all dried off now -- ready for the WASHCYCLE!

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