MGWCC #013 -- Friday, August 29, 2008 -- "Stroker Ace"

As Orange (of "Diary of a Crossword Fiend" fame) said about Matt Gaffney after solving his MGWCC #011 Kaiduko, "Sneaky Bastard!" I'll add to that devious. This puzzle contains a cleverly crafted riddle, and because it winds through five rows of the puzzle (65 squares worth) and is not a quote you can't know what the heck it is like a quote might be and so you have to get it through cross clues. The cross clues are mostly quite difficult.

On Matt's Weekly Crossword Contest web site he said of last week's and this week's puzzle, "Nice guy face off; evil guy face back on -- let's get to this week's contest crossword!" Because of this I am able to say after working this puzzle, what a rapscallion!

Crossing the first line of the riddle are these clues:

• 1D Officer: Lawman
• 2D Really wish one could: AcheTo
• 3D Much of Australia: Heaths
• 4D Q-U link: RST (gimme)
• 5D Braid: Plait (stock clue/answer)
• 6D Delineated: Limned
• 7D "I guess that's ___": ANo
• 8D ___-Isenburg, Germany: Neu
• 9D Language since 1964: Basic

So I got lawman after figuring out that 30A was NOSE [Narrow margin of victory] and [ 20A [Strawberry, once] was MET after texting a friend with a WTFO? on the clue (I'm not a sports trivia buf). This gave me ACES for 14A [Drives into the hole], which gave me 2D's ACHESTO [Really wish one could]. After taking a leap of faith on 1A with LAHR [Much of Australia] I had the NW corner and refocused on the middle-top.

I got PLAIT on 5D and after getting FEE on 18D [Service Money] and EIN on 21A ["Dann singe Ich ___ Lied fur Dich..." (Nena lyric)] I nailed LIMNED on 6D, and ANO for 7D, leaving me with PLAN_ and LINE_ on 5A and 15A [Backup Operations and Tax form phrase, respectively], and I had the first part of the riddle.

But what the hell is this language in 9D that showed up in 1964? I'm thinking that "backup operations" must be plans, and the letter missing in LINE_ must be a vowel, but I am drawing a blank on the language. Finally, I ignored it and did the NE corner, and cross clues around the 2nd line of the riddle, and got the second line of the riddle and realized the language ended in IC.

___IC? What is that? I took a walk. After the walk I had it: BASIC. So it is PLANB for 5A and LINEA for 15A.

The whole puzzle was like this.

Killer clue/answer pairs:

• 20A Strawberry, once: Met
• 44A Calendar abbr.: THU (I hate these kind of clues; they are so open)
• 46A "How about me?": AMI (I still don't understand this one)
• 49A 2003 Comedy co-starring Bob Newhart: ELF (I saw this stupid movie, but did not remember this immediately)
• 51A Language spoken in New Mexico: TAOS (I did not know it was a language as well as a location)
• 60A "You're a conformist": Moo (This took me a while to figure out)
• 68A Order in the court: OYES (I do not understand this one, either)
• 72A Title surname in a 1970's spinoff: Roper (never heard of this)
• Traditional wedding wear for some: Kimono (makes sense, but this was difficult for me to get)
• 13D Dude: CAT (I don't believe I've seen this association before)
• 29D "That's hot!": YEOW (this eluded me for quite a while)
• 34D Strikes up the band: HITSIT (one of my favorite clues)
• 35D Bombers in Britan, for short: IRA (this really had me going initially because I was thinking of airplanes at first. Great clue)
• 40D Dynasty that lasted nine centuries: CHOU (This is more commonly known as Zhou, and my list of Chinese dynasties at home did not have Chou, only Zhou. Ouch)
• 50D XX: FEMALE (this totally eluded me until I got cross clues for this one)

Okay, if you are still with me then let's talk about the riddle. By the time I was done with this puzzle grid my brain was pretty fried. But now I have the riddle:

WHAT FAMOUS

ATHLETE RECENTLY

ACQUIRED FOUR NEW

AU PAIRS YET HASN'T

GOT ANY KIDS

The MGWCC puzzle page says we are to come up with a two-word answer of seven and six letters, respectively. The only clue we have to this is the title of the puzzle: "Stroker Ace".

Well it so happens that I heard a thing on the news several weeks ago about someone who had hired au pairs for each of his several houses so no matter which one he was in there was always someone there. But of course I could not remember who this was. So I decided it was time to Google.

Here is where I can call Matt a rapscallion. Do you have any idea how many hits one comes up with Googling au pairs? It is a ridiculous undertaking. By saying athlete rather than, say, tennis player, there is no way to narrow that scope down, other than saying how many au pairs. I Googled "4 au pairs" then "four au pairs". For these two Googles I got 543 and 511 hits, respectively. Effing ridiculous!

So I considered that Stroker Ace might mean the athlete is a golfer. That got me down to 8 hits, but nothing looked like what I needed. So they I tried tennis. That got me 4 useless hits. Okay, let's try swimming...no--how about swimmer!

"four au pairs" with swimmer got me 22 hits--all useless, and "4 au pairs" with swimmer got me 174 hits. Nothing. Finally, I made a leap of faith and decided that the it must be a swimmer, and the swimmer must be in the news, and that likely from the Olympics, and so I just looked to see who the swimmers were, and that gave me Michael Phelps. This, by the way, is the correct answer! But I tell you, I did not figure it out the way it was meant to be figured out, and now that I know how I was supposed to have figured it out I feel kind of dumb.

Au pairs is a play on words, sort of like when Barry Goldwater ran for office and there were these Au H20 bumper stickers and pins all over the place. The riddle is actually: What Olympic swimmer recently won 8 gold medals (four gold pairs).

Okay, so I solved the puzzle Saturday, decided late Sunday that the answer had to be Michael Phelps, then promised myself I'd email in the answer first thing Tuesday morning at the office, and promptly... forgot on Tuesday. Possibly it was the Labor Day BBQ I went to. I have a headache.

Garrett