Hello CrossWorld!!! I'm Annabel, a Maryland high school senior and total newbie to this whole crosswording thing. You might remember me from this July, when Rex's BFFs were unavailable (read: forgot) to blog and so I had to step in. I loved the whole experience and emailed Rex, letting him know I would be available to blog on any Monday that he needed me. To my surprise, he told me he would be willing to let me blog on a semi-regular basis, because as you may know by now, Rex hates Mondays. So, here I will be on the first Monday of every month! YAY!!!!
Constructor: Robyn Weintraub
Relative difficulty: MEDIUM for me, but like I said, I'm still a newbie.
THEME: MISSIN' G— The five theme clues all were -ING words without the G.
Word of the Day:OAS (13A: Western Hemisphere treaty grp.) —
The Organization of American States (Spanish: Organización de los Estados Americanos, Portuguese: Organização dos Estados Americanos, French: Organisation des États Américains), or the OAS or OEA, is an inter-continental organization founded on 30 April 1948, for the purposes of regional solidarity and cooperation among its member states. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, the OAS's members are the 35 independent states of the Americas.
Since 26 May 2005, the Secretary General of OAS has been José Miguel Insulza.
In the words of Article 1 of the Charter, the goal of the member nations in creating the OAS was "to achieve an order of peace and justice, to promote their solidarity, to strengthen their collaboration, and to defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and their independence".
(Wikipedia)
• • •
(kind of like me driving)
This one took me 20 minutes, and yes, as you can see, I cheated on 14A/4D. (I had GETS and OGE, respectively. No, I don't have any idea what OGE means, but I reasoned, maybe it's a New York thing?) I thought pressing "Check" would just tell me whether I solved the puzzle or not, rather than tell me which squares were wrong, but alas...
Loved loved loved the theme! Anything that can make me hum "Puttin' on the Ritz,""Movin' Out" and then "Singin' in the Rain" is certainly a plus in my eyes...in fact, most of these turned out to be pretty good songs. (I say "most." Sorry Eagles.) To be honest, before I got the answers to the theme clues I assumed that "missing" meant these were actually missing works - IMA (63A: "___ changed man!")bit slow to the uptake, eh? At least once I did get the answers, I figured it out!
Hmmm, wonder how hard it would be to play all these songs on the OBOE (4A: Cousin of a clarinet)?
Theme answers:
- 17A: 1975 Eagles hit about a woman having an affair (LYIN'EYES)
- 24A: Title hit of a 1952 Gene Kelly musical (SINGIN'INTHERAIN)
- 47A: 1930 Harry Richman hit whose title describes ostentatious living (PUTTIN'ONTHERITZ)
- 59A: 1978 Billy Joel hit that gave its name to a 2002 Broadway musical (MOVIN'OUT)
- 36A: Lost...or, in two words, an apt description of 17-, 24-, 47- and 59-Across (MISSIN'G)
Bullets:
- SRS (58D: Class older than jrs.) — YAY CLASS OF 2015!
- AROAR (10D: Loud, as in a crowd)— All I can say is, what a gorgeous word. I'm going to try to use it in a sentence every day this week. "The house was aroar when the Orioles SWEPT the Tigers last night - sorry, Rex."
- REBELS (57A: Antigovernment force) —There are a lot of places this is relevant right now, but this is a crossword blog, not a political blog, so I'm biting my tongue. On that note: LES MIS!
- CHEMISTRY (12D: Element-ary school subject?) — YAY PUNS! Wow, I have been saying "yay" a lot in this writeup. EXCITABLE (31D: Easily enthused) much?
Signed, Annabel, tired high school student