Sp.: 'Neil' vs 'Neal' 'dams-l' 'agor-phobia'.įav clues/answers: 'cattle thief' 'ministering' 'mote' 'vanish' 'anon' 'Fandango' 'groomed' 'summer' 'plotters' 'tabs' 'vees' 'muss' 'air lifted' 'Santa' 'Natalie Cole' 'store fronts' 'campy' 'trips' 'damsel' 'eins' 'sore losers' 'teapot' 'mantra' 'fest' 'aqua vitae' 'number ten' 'stilt' 'sages' 'frat'.ĭidn't need 'pine tar' in Little League. Hazy: 'Fandango' 'Number Ten' 'Horatio' 'Marco'. New: 'yews' (as clued) 'Anns' (as clued) 'Greta Gerwig' 'aqua vitae' 'Ept' 'The Congo' (as clued) 'Glendale' (as clued) 'I Got a Name' 'Fagen'. Got a good start in the NW and never looked back. It was a good day.Ħ:29 & thank you both! This was a delightful puzzle and just happened to be right down my alley. I didn't even know there *was* a MARCO, but the 'C' was solid and MARCO was the only name I could make there. I'm glad I already had the 'C' in place by the time I saw the clue for MARCO (45D: One of the racing Andrettis) because I would definitely have dropped in MARIO and it would've felt *very* right. without proper context, I couldn't find my way from the clue to the answer. Only other thing I struggled at all with was CAMPY, actually ( 1D: Absurdly exaggerated). With Love' is actually the name of a Grammy-winning *album*). But then KING started chafing (as wrong answers will), and the 'K' in particular became impossible, and then click, oh yeah, NATALIE! ('Unforgettable. So because he made the song famous, and I had NAT- in place, I just automatically dropped in KING COLE. I know she sang 'Unforgettable' as a duet with her father, who had been dead well over two decades at that point. The one name that did give me trouble was NATALIE COLE, and only because NAT KING COLE fits in the same number of boxes ( 56A: 'Unforgettable. Snow Crash crossing 'Snowbound.' This pleases me. Hey, Stephenson wrote Snow Crash, and Donald FAGEN has a song on Kamakiriad (1993) called 'Snowbound,' so. I also read Snow Crash back in grad school (aka the '90s). So FAGEN's name, easy for me, and NEAL Stephenson, same, as I just read the gigantic and slightly harrowing Fall or Dodge in Hell last summer. And they say Steely Dan is just for dudes. My sister loves Steely Dan and FAGEN's solo albums too. She actually gave me one of my Donald FAGEN albums-his most recent one, Sunken Condos (2012). Me, I own three of Donald FAGEN's solo albums and one of my good friends (mystery writer and former student of mine, Libby Cudmore) is a Steely Dan superfan. Maybe FAGEN crossing NEAL might've roughed some solvers up? I don't know how that box could be anything but an 'N,' but still, when you cross names like that, you gotta make sure the cross is at least inferrable. Best of all, the proper names gave me almost no trouble-it is a little name-heavy, which is the only (admittedly mild) criticism I have. grownup age) so I'm not too surprised that I was right on this puzzle's cultural wavelength, right from the beginning.

Patti and Doug are both roughly my age (uh. Anyway, they are delightful and this puzzle was delightful. area (hence, I assume, the little GLENDALE wink in this puzzle) ( 36D: Los Angeles suburb bordering Griffith Park). They are both veteran puzzle-makers (and editors), and they both live in the L.A.

These two! I know and love them both, and know they are friends, but I don't think I've ever seen them on the same byline, which seems bizarre.

Snow crash author crossword clue