Your gimmes are another man's struggles--the only J. Susann novel I can remember is "Valley of the Dolls" which was one letter more than what I needed for that entry! Certainly cool to have all these crossing 15's, but it did make for a personality parade (EERO, INIGO, HENIE, RENEE and NEGRI) that caused this solver a lot of ANGST!
Evad | 08.25.06 - 6:31 am | #

I think your comments, Orange, on both the Times and the Sun were spot on.

After I finished the Sun, it took me several minutes til it dawned on me: VA...MOOSE. Then the rest made sense. Very nice puzzle. I expect a lot of queries regarding how the theme works.

In the Times puzzle, I first scanned the short(er) entries to try and gain a toehold, but there was too much trivia I just didn't know. Then I took a look at the 15-letter entries and they came to me pretty quickly. Odd that the long entries enabled me to fill the short entries, and not vice versa.
Excellent Friday.

Dave
kratsman | 08.25.06 - 8:08 am | #

Was going along smoothly on the Times (other than a couple of the names Evad mentioned), and as I was turning into the last section (top-right), got a phone call from a college friend (who is doing very well, glad to hear). Was worth the call, but I did have to step away from the puzzle mid-applet and finish up a few minutes afterwards. Ah, well - it was nice not to fight the Friday puzzle as much for once. Will have to try my luck with the Sun after work, so I'll dodge the spoilers today.
Howard B | 08.25.06 - 8:12 am | #

I second the brilliance of Patrick Berry's WSJ puzzle -- it's fan-eXpletive-tastic!!
kennedyflair | 08.25.06 - 10:40 am | #

Wow...can you imagine how much poorer the xword solving community would be if Pat Berry stayed in the Insurance field? Man, what a great puzzle!
Evad | 08.25.06 - 3:10 pm | #

Jumping on the WSJ bandwagon here, excellent execution! (I mean, great stuff!)
Howard B | 08.25.06 - 5:40 pm | #

Hi, Amy. As a comic-book geek, I can tell you that Batman has often been billed as "The World's Greatest Detective" and has appeared in almost 800 issues of "Detective Comics" in addition to his own "Batman" title. Of course, there are countless Batman stories that don't play up the detective angle at all, so I can see how casual fans might not be aware of his prowess in that area. But I'm always happy to further the cause of Batman Appreciation! :)
Doug P | 08.25.06 - 7:09 pm | #

Thanks, Doug! I knew there had to be a couple comic-book geeks out there. Sherlock Holmes, Columbo, Sipowicz...Batman? If you say so.
Orange | Homepage | 08.25.06 - 11:49 pm | #