MONDAY, May 14, 2007 - Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: WATER - final word of all two-word theme phrases can precede WATER to form a familiar phrase. Theme is clued by 59A: Be logical ... or what the last words of the answers to the five starred clues can do? (hold water)

Your theme answers:

17A: *Mock rock band in a 1984 film (Spinal Tap) - best theme answer, by a mile.
25A: *Revealer of vowels, on TV (Vanna White)
35A: *Part of a Valentine's Day bouquet (red rose)
37A: *Seasoned seaman (old salt) - worst-sounding clue ever. Go ahead, say it out loud, you'll see what I mean; I do like the way "Seasoned" plays off of "SALT," though. That's nice.
51A: *Local place for making deposits or getting loans (bank branch) - had to look BRANCH WATER up, as it's the only kind of WATER in the grid that I hadn't heard of.

branch water
n.

Plain water, especially when mixed with a liquor such as whiskey.
Chiefly Southern U.S. Water from a stream.

I really liked this puzzle, but not for its theme, which is (if I'm reading it right) kind of poorly expressed. Why "HOLD?" "WHITE" does not "HOLD" WATER. "SALT" does not "HOLD" WATER. Anyway, who cares? This is a very lively puzzle for a Monday, with great open spaces in the NE and SW, each of which features a bank of four 7-letter Downs.

The best part of the puzzle, for me, was this fabulous stack of answers in the "Oregon" portion of the puzzle:

22A: "Dear" dispenser of advice (Abby)
28A: Hardly trim (flabby)
32A: Hearing-related (aural)

First of all, FLABBY ABBY is a great cruel nickname. I wish I knew someone I could call FLABBY ABBY right now. Second, ABBY and FLABBY rhyme, which gives them an AURAL similarity. For other nice word juxtaposition, see also the following crosses:

OVA (15A: Eggs) / AVA (7D: Gardner of "The Night of the Iguana")
SAY I DO (50A: Tie the knot) / SAYONARA (38D: Tokyo "ta-ta!")

SAYONARA and 4D: Butterfinger or 3 Musketeers (candy bar) are the puzzle's two longest Down answers, and I like them both. They seem to have a lot of letters in common, which is pleasing to me - I especially like the "Y"s.

I'm not so fond of LEEZA Gibbons (33D: Talk show host Gibbons), but I do like her "Z" cross, OZS. (49A: Parts of lbs.). I see that abbreviation all the time on food packaging and what not, and yet in the grid it looks exotic. This puzzle has a nice balance of modern and old, high tech and low tech. You've got IMACS (1A: Some Apple computers) and IMS (1D: Quick online notes, for short) and High-RES monitors (63D), but also the decidedly unelectronic CHESS (42A: The mating game?) and DARTS (69A: Pub projectiles), a LEAN-TO (12D: Crude shelter), and an ABACUS (45D: You can always count on this).

There's also TRON (41D: 1982 sci-fi film) - which stands somewhere in between low- and high-tech. Electronic and futuristic ... but now hilariously dated. The only word in the grid that's maybe a little bit challenging is UVEAS (64A: Parts of eyes), though DATIVE (46D: Latin case) might be tough for people who've never studied Latin. ADROIT (11D: Skillful) is a fine-looking word for a Monday - it is also an anagram of I DO ART, which is neither here nor there, so I think it's time for me to STOP (31A: "Cut it out!")

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld