Round pounder / FRI 9-11-15 / Props for some magic shows / Fliers for a magic show / Like cassette tapes / Onetime big name in cassette tapes / Skier's problem / Elevator used by skiers

Man, I have been loving on the word TORPID since the days of "Nature" on PBS with that handsome George Page-- remember him? Ah. Dormice. They are the poster rodents of torpor. Next time someone tells you to do something just say "No! I'm too TORPID!" 

Hi, it's Lena Webb again; I did this thing that one time. When Rex asked me to fill in for him today I didn't fall back on the old TORPID excuse, but happily blogged in to bloggerspot to share some blogtime with you all. 

As you may have heard from a certain someone, Rex is constructing puzzles of his own! I feel like I'm announcing that he's pregnant, and he is-- pregnant with ideas. One such idea was conceived around the time I was clued in to the existence of the NYT mini puzzle (somehow one full year after it premiered). I was posting "shrinking puzzles" on my blog and had made it down to 5x5 by the time I tried my first NYT mini. Like a lot of people, it seems, I found it to be pretty boring and shared my own mini puzzle with Rex. He started cranking out his own, calling them "Lil High Fives," and now my blog has turned into the Puppy Bowl of Crosssports with all these 5x5s romping about. Erik Agard, Jonathan O'Rourke, and even my poor boyfriend have contributed-- and we have a Peter Broda Sunday on deck for the weekend. Come on, you know you want to submit one of your own!

Now, moving on to the main event. This was a fun Friday puzzle, wasn't it? I'm no speed demon, but STEPPED ON THE GAS I did and slid across the upper half like a SIMONIZEd... DOVE. Nah, how about like slippery little WATERMELON SEEDS. The image of sitting in the backyard munching on melon and spitting out seeds, maybe blasting yourself with the garden hose, goes perfectly with this week's scorching temperatures (at least here in Boston). For such a beautiful marquee entry, though, I wish the clue had been better. "Objects within spitting distance?" is awkward-- like, what, the seeds are somewhere near to you within the distance that you might spit one of them? *mind explodes* It's the "within" that gets me. It seems like whoever wrote the clue was hell bent on making "spitting distance" work no matter what, and slapped on a question mark instead of thinking of other witty/misleading "spitting" options.