Cayenne producer / SAT 3-15-14 / Seaweed used in brining / Wed 2007 Erica Durance movie / Vineyard in Vichy / Staples of Marvel Comics / Velvety pink

Constructor: Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: none

Word of the Day: TAMARIN (10D: Member of the marmoset family) —

n.
Any of various small, long-tailed, arboreal monkeys of the genera Leontideus and Saguinus of Central and South America, closely related to and resembling the marmosets but having a larger body, longer limbs, and lower canines that extend well beyond the incisors.

[French, from Galibi.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/tamarin#ixzz2vzibQ7hE

That's more like it. Much prefer this to yesterday's Dance of the Intersecting 15s. Same amount of time spent solving, twice the enjoyment. Light on the junk, heavy on the real words and interesting expressions. TWITTER JAIL sounds made-up, though. I'm on Twitter every day, never heard of it. I googled it, and it seems you get penalized for too many tweets within a designated period. I guess this is to prevent mass spam-tweeting? Maybe? Anyway, that answer is pretty out-there. But it was inferable, or at least gettable from crosses, so it didn't make me too cross. And anyway, when you've got KISSY FACE, BRAIN FREEZE, and BODACIOUS in your grid, it's easy to forgive the odd wackadoodle answer. I love that there is not much crosswordese in this grid, and that ULEE (which is pure crosswordese) brings with it the much larger, much more interesting BEEKEEPER. Yes, I'll pay one ULEE to get one BEEKEEPER. More than fair.

On Saturdays, the missteps are often plentiful and fun to recount. Went with SHAD before HAKE (1D: Relative of haddock), but OTIS had to be right, which meant SHAD couldn't be. OTIS and MGS gave me AT-A-GLANCE very quickly, and the NW went down pretty quickly. But then I couldn't get south of CENT (despite having TWITTER in place), so I had to jump ship and start over. First traction I got was at HORAS and HAILED, the latter being a desperate guess that panned out. SLEDS and ARPEL went in and things took off from there. Might've gone faster if I could've figured out what the hell 18A: Producer of "whirlybirds" meant. Even with -APLE, I had no idea. I'd heard of a TAMARIN, so finally got that last "M" square, but it wasn't until after I was done that I looked up [maple whirlybirds] to see what the hell the connection was. This is ironic, as the damned things fall all around my house every year—we have two sugar maples out front.


Had HASPS for WARPS (33A: Buckles). MOPED for MIATA (41D: Modern two-seater). What on God's Green Earth is "I ME Wed"???? Further, who is Erica Durance? This answer is the (much shorter) equivalent of yesterday's "THE NOONDAY DEVIL." Never heard of it, and never heard of the person in the clue. Yikes. That "M" was the last thing into the grid.

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. "I ME Wed" was a Lifetime TV movie … massive demerits for not putting "movie" in quotation marks.