My subject line, "The buzz on Woody," is for all you Toy Story fans. Now that my daily bad pun is out of the way, I can talk about today's crossword by Jeffrey Wechsler, which commemorates the birth of filmmaker Woody Allen, who was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg on December 1, 1935 in the Bronx and legally changed his name to Heywood Allen when he was 17. Woody is a nickname for Heywood. Today's puzzle, which begins with WOODY and ends with ALLEN, includes the titles of five films which he wrote and directed: BANANAS, SLEEPER, STARDUSTMEMORIES, MIDNIGHTINPARIS and MIGHTYAPHRODITE.
For the "Mister Magus Not-Used-In-English File": ORO, OSA and SEI ("Sardinian six").
Five clues in today's Daily News crossword by Kurt Mueller are "Vampire's bane" numbers 1 through 5. Four of the answers are THEHOLYBIBLE, DIRECTSUNLIGHT, SILVERBULLET, and GARLICNECKLACE. The fifth answer is literal and occupies the center of the grid: HEART is horizontal and is crossed vertically by STAKE. Get it? "Stake through the heart." Very clever!
The "colorful" Universal crossword includes REDWHITEANDBLUE, YELLOWSTONEPARK and BLACKEYEDSUSANS.
The NEA crossword clued EONS with "Zillions of years." Merriam-Webster defines "zillion" as "an indefinitely large number." The word was first used in 1934 and is patterned after "million" and "billion." In 1947, Disney comic-book artist Carl Barks created the character of Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck's wealthy uncle. In the book The Life & Times Of Scrooge McDuck, Scrooge's wealth is said to be "Five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillion dollars and 16 cents." I'm guessing that's considerably more than a zillion.
