It was fortunate for Alex Silverman that the Beatles recorded so many songs with 15-letter titles. He included five in today's Daily News crossword. YELLOW SUBMARINE filled the second row and SHESLEAVINGHOME was directly beneath. Row 13 was PAPERBACK WRITER and directly beneath was HERECOMESTHESUN. WHENIMSIXTYFOUR was in the center. I can never figure out how crossword creators can stack 15-letter phrases in such a way that 15 intersecting words are possible. Saturday's crossword had a central stack of four 15-letter phrases. If I tried to stack three or four 15-letter phrases, the words that appear vertically would probably not be real words at all: GTRE, XDIJ, DWIB, SCAY, ULIL, PIWL, etc. Anyway, today's crossword not only included five Beatles songs, it also included seven shaded squares which contained FABFOUR.
The Los Angeles Times crossword by Tom Uttormark and C.C. Burnikel included six "either/or" clues. Each of the six theme answers could be separated into two words which fit the second part of each clue. Examples:
Soviet military force...or two ants: REDARMY
Whole-grain food...or two universities: BROWNRICE
Immigrant's document...or two rooms: GREENCARD
Also in the crossword: OORT. It sounds like a word the Swedish Chef muppet would say but it is actually the name of a 20th-century Dutch astronomer. The clue: "___ cloud: remote solar system region."
C.C. Burnikel would have been proud of today's Universal crossword: The theme answers were CATTLECALLS, CHINACLOSET, CROSSCHECKS and CUCKOOCLOCK. I could say that the answers went "from C to shining C." I could say it...and then everyone else could tell me what a bad pun that is. I know.
As for the NEA crossword, the only thing I can say about it is that there is never anything to say about it. The 13x13 grid today included only two eight-letter words. All the other words were six letters or fewer and there was the usual high number of over-used words: ACHE, AGO, EIRE, EMU, ERASE, IRA, MET, ORCA, URN and USE.
