Fri. 7/31 Kurt Krauss

[magus]

THEME:   entries spelled either left or right, up or down depending on meaning
   
GOOD ONES:     
Ring punch   SSORCTFEL [left cross kind of "crosses" one up since it is written from right to left]   
Level-headed   DOWN TO EARTH [literally, one reads down to the word earth]   
Ness, for one   LOCH [I thought Eliot]   
Pepper, for one: Abbr.   SGT [I thought food]   
Brest friend   AMI [I read it "Best"]   
Canon offering, briefly   SLR [cameras, but I thought church law]   
Animal house   ZOO [I thought the movie]   
   (That's five clues that misdirected me suggesting either I am rather a dupe or Kurt is rather clever --- or both.)
   
BTW:   
Chooses the window instead of the aisle?   ELOPES [in old comedies the window is the means by which the woman gets out of her house to marry on the sly --- I guess]   
   
Neither juillet nor ete is used in our language.   
   
Govt. group that began in 1908   FBI [I thought there was a mistake so I looked it up ---turns out it had undergone only a name change under Hoover in the mid-Thirties --- that's what comes from getting one's "history" from Hollywood]   
   
   
RATING:    
Three grins = Loved it; Two grins = Enjoyed it; One grin = A bit bland for my taste; One teardrop = Not much fun   

[Thomps2525]

The 13x13 NEA crossword never has a theme and seldom has any words of more than seven letters. Each puzzle includes a large number of over-used three- and four-letter words. Today's includes ABET, ERA, ICE, IRA, OLE, PEA and SOS and the names ANN, EARL, ERIC, LAO, LARA, NINA, RENEE, ROD, TINA, VAN and VERA. Eleven first names in a single crossword and my name was not among them. I feel slighted.

[magus]

Ira is a name.

[Thomps2525]

I thought of IRA more as an over-used word than as a name but you are right: I should have included it among those other names. Actually, I fudged a little.....and you all know I'm not the fudger I used to be. Those eleven (now twelve) words are names but they were not all clued as names. I just thought it was odd to see so many could-be names in a crossword.