Fri., 9/26 Susan L. Stanislawski

[magus]

THEME:   homonyms in phrases change meanings
   
GOOD ONES:    
Enjoy a TV psychologist?   HAVE ONE'S PHIL   
Sign on a hacker's door?   GONE PHISHIN'   
Issue of MADD   DUI [not the magazine]   
Bottled spirits   GENII [not booze]   
Indiana player   HARRISON [not an athlete]   
Development sites   UTERI [not labs]   
   
BTW:   
CES is not used in our language.   
   
NON-PHAT MILK is fun if you happen to know that phat, for a moment, meant good.   
   
RATING:    
Three grins = Loved it; Two grins = Enjoyed it; One grin = A bit bland for my taste; One teardrop = Not much fun   

[Thomps2525]

Mister magus, may I use your grading system and award four teardrops? Here are my complaints about today's puzzle:

Two prefixes: HEPTA, OENO.
Two suffixes: ERN, OMA.
Two Latinized plurals: GENII, UTERI.
Two contemporary words which are not familiar to everyone: PHAT, PHISH.
Three abbreviations: CGI, DUI, IBM.
Four informal shortened forms of a word: CAPN, EDS, NEG, PROF.
One obscure name: SEAHAG, a nemesis of Popeye.
One obscure brand name: ESSIE nail polish.
One misspelled word: EXED for "Marked, as a ballot"; it should be XED.
Ten foreign words: CES, EIRE, ERAT, ETAT, LATKE, OMERTA, REINA, SENOR (minus the tilde), SNOG, TABULA.

The only thing I liked about this puzzle is that it didn't include  ALE, IRA, IRS or SPA. The answer to 28 across was ICEAGE, which is appropriate...because this puzzle left me cold!

[magus]

Since EX is defined as the letter X, EXED follows the rule of adding -ed to a noun to make it a verb.

The use of obscure words seems part of the game: I solve around the obscurity and watch it appear. 

As for the other "fill," I don't see how it would be possible, with few exceptions, to create a puzzle without them.

Of the foreign words you listed, only CES is not used in English; the others would seem grist for the crossword mill.

You cannot mean that words unfamiliar to everyone (PHISH and PHAT) are not to be used.  That would leave only the Dolch sight word list.

LARADIOREWIND, I think you have to lighten up just a bit.