Feel free to go ahead and forget that acetic acid is a wood distillation product. AFAI(AW*)K it is not.

* AW = and Wikipedia
retired_chemist | Homepage | 11.05.09 - 11:36 pm | #

Consider it forgotten! Thanks, chemist.
Orange | Homepage | 11.06.09 - 12:06 am | #

It is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Pyr...roligneous_acid

This was a major commercial source of acetic acid a hundred years ago. I have a treasured empty Heinz vinegar bottle from the seventies with a large banner reading "Not Made From Petroleum." That has to be the worst tag line for a comestible ever tried. Maybe they switched back to wood.
Martin | 11.06.09 - 12:17 am | #

More than you ever wanted to know about the distillation of wood vinegar. From Thailand's Kasetsart University, the technological center of the acetic-acid-from-wood world.
Martin | 11.06.09 - 12:26 am | #

re ZESTY/CRUSTY -- wanted a FEISTY in there! Yes, that's when I was trying Tibia for TALUS. Lots of zippy clues like PIZ pleased, but I bet the one that got the most Ahas was OJOS...
ArtLvr | 11.06.09 - 4:09 am | #

Not having solved any of this week's, I don't want to read any comments, but when I try to open yesterday's NYT, Thurs. Nov. 5, I get the double whammy--Import file format not recognized' and 'Not an acrosslite puzzle.' Is this a known problem? Did anyone else have it?

Bruce
Bruce Morton | 11.06.09 - 6:32 am | #

Bruce, someone else e-mailed me last night looking for a copy of Thursday's puzzle, so you're not alone. I'll send it to you.
Orange | Homepage | 11.06.09 - 8:06 am | #

i liked this puzzle quite a bit, but the ACETIC ACID clue annoyed the heck out of me. it's one of the most common weak acids, people learn about it in high school chemistry, and it's basically all there is to vinegar, so everybody has some familiarity with it. so why the arcane and out-of-date clue? the only possible effect of this clue is that somebody will eventually fill in enough of the crosses to guess the rest of the answer, and then shrug. last night i did exactly that, and went to bed thinking, "what a random chemical." this morning i woke up and thought, "ACETIC ACID! i know what that is! what a random clue."

practically every other clue in the puzzle was golden, though, and the fill was pretty snappy. nice work, doug!
joon | 11.06.09 - 8:20 am | #

FILE for 48D in the NYT seemed OK to me-- but I was looking for answers in the tool cabinet rather than the file cabinet...
Matt | 11.06.09 - 8:35 am | #

Liked today's NYT mini-theme of "I, Claudius" and "I, Con"...
Evad | 11.06.09 - 9:11 am | #

"Water buffalo?" Cape Buffalo - which also goes by the UNPC scientific name, Synceros caffer (How do I get italics in here?). Awesome clue, BTW.

And generally a fun Friday romp, gotta love the choices on offer in the top-left and bottom-right. The top-right, however, beat me up something offal though. Got OPED & DYED, but then put in the wrong TIBIA (yes - 5 letters, starts with a T) and SASSY @ 32 & 29D. In retrospect the latter is pretty stupid, though. 12D and 37A were beautiful misdirections. Spent about 12/19 minutes trying to unravel that!

And count in me in on the weird clue for ACETIC ACID. It is Friday though.
Gareth Bain | 11.06.09 - 9:47 am | #

Found the little SW corner in the NYT puzzle a headache but finally worked it out. Misled myself by thinking "wins" and "tens" for Best in shows - just kept thinking dogs.

The Koine puzzle was very nice, a bit quicker than usual. For me, that's a complaint, as you know.
Zulema | 11.06.09 - 11:00 am | #

Bruce (and others) -

The problem with the corrupt Across Lite files is with the notepad. I don't know why, but when the NYT includes a notepad it screws up the file checksum. I wrote an app to fix corrupted AL files; just drag and drop a corrupt file and it will magically be fixed. In the Windows version, the notepad will be saved as an external text file. I recommend downloading my app once and keeping it for whenever this happens.

How come this happens to the NYT? Is it a Crossword Compiler thing?
Alex | Homepage | 11.06.09 - 11:31 am | #

Great Friday puzzle, went pretty smoothly for me. I just finished reading "I, Claudius" and watching the BBC miniseries. Both were outstanding. John Hurt was incredibly creepy as Caligula. Derek Jacobi's performance as Claudius must rate as one of the outstanding acting performances of the century.

Paul Hogan was the "Crocodile Dundee" star (who'll put another shrimp on the barbie for ya"). One of those '80's cultural icons best forgotten. It feels wrong for me to even put him in the same post as Hurt and Jacobi!
Al Sanders | 11.06.09 - 12:05 pm | #

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I did eventually figure out how to keep the notepad with the uncorrupted puz, so I updated my app. You can still get it here.

Who do we contact at the NYT about this problem? Because it is a recurring problem.
Alex | Homepage | 11.06.09 - 4:57 pm | #

In the CS puzzle I was bothered that TEAR=drop from a duct. The tears go into the ducts, not out of them.
From the grid I was needlessly worried that BEQ was doing a baseball puzzle.
Karen | 11.06.09 - 8:26 pm | #