Shelf prop / TUE 5-27-14 / Language that gave us guru pundit / Shot for those who have mastered English / Rebuke to eavesdropper for short

Constructor: James Tuttle

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: BOOKEND (37A: Shelf prop … or a hint to both parts of the answers to the sic starred clues) — two-part phrases (or compound words) where both parts can precede "book" in a familiar phrase.

Theme answers:

• OPEN SOURCE (18A: *Like software that can be freely used and altered)
• FLIP PHONE (26A: *Samsung or LG product)
• MATCH PLAY (47A: *Tournament competition)
• SCHOOLWORK (55A: *Class assignments)
• BABY BLUE (3D: *Like many a heartthrob's eyes)
• GOODYEAR (38D: *Company whose logo includes the winged foot of Mercury)

Word of the Day: Buck O'NEIL (7D: Baseball great Buck) —

John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil (November 13, 1911 – October 6, 2006) was a first baseman andmanager in the Negro American League, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. After his playing days, he worked as a scout, and became the first African American coach in Major League Baseball. In his later years he became a popular and renowned speaker and interview subject, helping to renew widespread interest in the Negro leagues, and played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

O'Neil's life was documented in Joe Posnanski's award-winning 2007 book The Soul of Baseball. (wikipedia)

One of those after-the-facters that never interest me that much. Also, revealer should really be BOOKENDS. That would've been much more elegant. Wouldn't've fit in the center of a 15x15 grid, but still: better is better. Top three theme answers are reasonably interesting in their own right, the others, less so, and the overall fill quality is probably a shade below average (INRE OON ATTA ANOSE etc.). At 78 words (the max) your fill should be Squeaky clean, though with this kind of theme density, I guess some allowances have to be made. Grid has a strange feel to it, where it's crammed with unattractive short stuff but also has these interesting somewhat open patches of long answers (parallel Downs in the NW and SE, and the nifty little StaggerStack™ in the middle). Those patches, especially the center, were the only places I met any resistance in this thing. First pass at the middle Acrosses didn't yield much, so I had to pepper them with crosses before they came to heel. Mostly I just flew through this without any clear sense of what was going on. I probably puzzled most over MYOB, an expression I haven't heard / seen in ages (not complaining—I actually like it; it's like proto-textspeak. Textspeak before there was textspeak. Unlike OMG, which had no life that I'm aware of before texts).


I always forget who Buck O'NEIL is, and always want instead either Buck OWENS (uh, not a baseball player) or Buck … the guy who manages the Orioles. Buck … Showalter! Yeah, he doesn't fit. So if this puzzle does nothing else, maybe it ETCHES Buck O'NEIL into my memory forever. One can hope.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld