End of the Line (4-17-11)

Good evening, fellow crosswordophiles. We’re afraid this post was written with heavy hearts as we once again had a really poor week even though we enjoyed the theme immensely. Perhaps we can blame it on the hangovers we were dealing with as a result of a birthday blowout honoring John AND Abbie who were born within two weeks of each other. The night can accurately be summed up with these two photos of John in a sombrero and Eric’s shattered phone.

Birthday sombrero!

Birthday fail.

Obviously, we were not quite on our best crosswording game today.

HIGHLIGHTS

• MITCH HEDBERG FOR THE WIN!! Ok so the theme this week was to finish the line of some comedic phrase. We enjoyed most of the phrases and thought, while not terribly inventive, it was a fun theme. But clearly the absolute best was 23A “‘I used to do drugs.               ‘ : Mitch Hedberg” (I STILL DO BUT I USED TO TOO). Officially the best crossword clue/answer ever. We would have also accepted “An escalator can never break” (IT CAN ONLY BECOME STAIRS).
• 120A “‘I have the heart of a small boy. It           ‘: Stephen King” (IS IN A GLASS JAR ON MY DESK) Second best theme answer today. Nooooo idea where Abbie had heard this before but she managed to pull the gist of it out of some deep part of her brain where differential equations and the dates of Millard Fillmore’s presidency also reside.
• 56A “Biblical name meaning ‘hairy'” (ESAU) We had a nice discussion about how sick nasty it is that Jacob could only pass for his brother by wearing a full out animal hide. Like, seriously, Esau. If you lived nowadays, you’d be on some episode of ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’ during a segment about “Wolfmen”
• 112A “Saint’s place” (SUPERDOME) Super cute clue. Props to Eric for picking that one up really quickly.
• 124A “Classic role-playing game for short” (D AND D) Abbie once dated a guy who played a lot of D and D and I guess owned one of those 12-sided die and spoke elfish or something. She did not get this answer though (and she’s really happy about that); Abbie is incapable of understanding any game more complicated than Clue Jr. Seriously, what’s up with Monopoly, y’all? That shit’s hard.
• 12D “1960s doo-wop group with an automotive name, with ‘the'” (EDSELS) We ONLY knew this b/c we bitched about the Edsel flop in an earlier blog post. These bitchy posts are really helping our game! Psh, and who said complaining doesn’t get you anywhere?!

WILL SHORTZ’S MISTAKES

• 4A Solzhenitsyn subject (GULAG) We’re sorry, was any part of that clue/answer in English? What the hell?? Hmm google tells us that Solzfaosghy8isyn is an author and the gulahjgag is some government thing. So I guess we’re just bad at literature/history/Russia; we can live with that.
• 37D “Squirt, eg” (EMIT) Ummmm gross. There have to be a billion better ways to clue EMIT that don’t use the word “squirt.”
• 96D “Garage Opener” (HARD G) Ughhhhh we HATE these clues and no matter how much we hate and bitch about them, we never ever remember them when they pop up again. We’ll start punishing ourselves with pushups or something the next time we miss this clue; corporal punishment is always the best way to rectify bad habits.
• 94D “Doesn’t cut” (ATTENDS) Looked at that answer for a long while. Still don’t get it. (Fast forward 4 hours): OHHHHHHHHH like if you don’t CUT CLASS you ATTEND IT. Yeah ok, we’ll take blame for that one.
• 117D “What you might do after retiring” (DOZE) What? Like, you retire and then just sleep forever? Or, like, you stop sleeping through the night and start taking frequent cat naps instead? PLAY BINGO is a much better and more accurate answer.

Alright kids, we’ve had a rough/fabulous weekend and we hope y’all have too. Expect a late post next week as Abbie will trekking back to Htown from her epic birthday bash in Nawlins.

hearts and stars,

ericandabbie