Today's
Daily News crossword by Kevin Christian and Brad Wilber includes the name SEUSS and the titles of five Dr. Seuss books: HOPONPOP, THELORAX, GREENEGGSANDHAM, HORTONHEARSAWHO and IFIRANTHECIRCUS. It was awfully nice of Dr. Seuss (born Theodor Seuss Giesel) to write three books with fifteen-letter titles which would conveniently fit in a crossword puzzle.
C.C. Burnikel's
Los Angeles Times crossword includes POLARBEAR, AGARAGAR, HEARHEAR, SOLARYEAR, PEARNECTAR and SUGARSUGAR. "Unpaid debts...or, read differently, what both parts of those phrases have" is ARREARS. Get it? The "rear" of each word ends with AR. By the way,
Sugar Sugar was written by Jeff Barry and Andy Kim and was a number-one hit for the fictional band The Archies in 1969. The vocals were done by Andy Kim, Ron Dante and Toni Wine. The song was first offered to the Monkees but they were trying to get away from their "bubblegum" image and turned it down. Dummies!
"Postal motto word" was NOR. As a longtime employee of the United States Postal Service, I have to disagree. Carved in granite above the entrance to the James Farley Post Office building in New York City are these words: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Most people assume that is our motto. It is not. We do not have an official motto.
The 13x13 NEA crossword, as usual, contains several overused three- and four-letter words: ABC, ABLE, AID, CON, ENE, ESA, ICE, IRA, IRK, OAK, SAW and STAR.
The Universal crossword includes the names of four famous people: LADYGODIVA, PAULREVERE, GENERALCUSTER and THELONERANGER. The Lone Ranger, of course, is fictional.....and Lady Godiva would likely be unknown today if it were not for the erroneous story that she rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to get her husband to cut taxes. Such an incident never happened, nor was there a "Peeping Tom" who disobeyed an order to not look at her. The story was created two centuries after her death and now the story itself will never die.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Godiva
