Lynn Lempel's crossword in today's Daily News includes the clue "Design a lav?" The answer is PLANAHEAD. In this case, "plan a head" is a pun. In all other cases, "plan ahead" is a redundancy. "Pre-plan" is also a redundancy. The word "plan" is sufficient all by itself. Obviously no one can plan something after he's done it. In our next class, we'll discuss the redundancy of the phrase "pre-existing condition." If we have time, we'll also cover "ATM machine" and "PIN number."
The theme of Kevin Christian's Los Angeles Times crossword is SCUBADIVING, an "underwater activity that requires the ends of" EMPTYSUIT ("Ineffective executive, metaphorically"), TAILFINS, IRONMASK and THINKTANK. We also got French (MER), Spanish (TIA), Latin (SITU), Hawai'ian (MAHALO), slang (FUTZ), archaic (YORE) and nautical (BOSN).
The Universal crossword includes GRANTSTOMB, NUCLEARBOMB, RATTAILCOMB and WITHAPLOMB. Each phrase ends with a different pronunciation of "OMB." The suffix with the most variations in pronunciation is "-ough": BOUGH, COUGH, DOUGH, HICCOUGH (which is a variant spelling of hiccup and is pronounced "hiccup"), LOUGH, ROUGH, and THROUGH. And in Great Britain, when the name of a town ends with "-borough" (such as Petersborough}, the suffix is pronounced as "burruh." So there are at least eight ways to pronounce "-ough." Some linguists say there are other variations in British English but I'm thinking that such variations are just the result of sloppy enunciation and not necessarily legitimate pronunciations.
The NEA crossword is the same as always: A 13x13 grid, no theme, no long words and a high number of over-used words. Today we get AAH, AMID, APE, ASP, ERA, IDES, IMP, IOTA, LAD, MRS, OKRA, OLEO, OSLO and SPA.
