I should wait for Tony to post, but I know about the Swedes coming to America. They settled not far from Philly and established trading centers along the Delaware River. What did they leave as heritage? The Log Cabin...really. Peter Stuyvesant captured their forts and we had Blue Swedes hooked on a feeling of loss.

I am always slower to solve on these quip puzzles. I seldom know the quotation and I slog through the crosses. Knew PASSEL and vaguely recall my mother saying it about a lot of children as in "she had a passel." Does drawing a line from circle to circle give us a shape?
PhillySolver | 07.29.08 - 10:10 pm | #

Wow, there was a 15 second discrepancy between what the applet said I finished in vs. what's posted in the standings. Is that common? Back to my trusty printer tomorrow night.
Al Sanders | 07.29.08 - 10:32 pm | #

I love passel too. According to dictionary.com, the origin is from a alter. of parcel. Not sure that makes sense to me but word origins often don't.
JimH | Homepage | 07.29.08 - 11:01 pm | #

see -- and i find the quip *so* much more amusing than "meh." i get a whole visual with it -- this little (yet mighty powerful) cigar-chomping man from the movie biz at his huge desk, assessing what he sees as screenplays from some guy he calls "billy"...

but then again, i've already admitted to enjoying quip puzzles (and the despised, now rarely-to-never-seen step-quote...). since i ordinarily solve with acrosses first, they force me to pay more attention earlier on to the downs. all-in-all, very tasty brain food for this solver!

;-)

janie
jlsnyc | 07.30.08 - 7:45 am | #

Orange, I agree with you about LOTI being tough for a Wednesday puzzle, but at least the crossings were all obvious. In the NYS, a somewhat obscure (to me, anyway) director crossed a pop song: "I ?RY." How is a solver with little pop music and movie knowledge supposed to know what letter to put there? I figure it's either CRY or TRY, and I'm left wondering why the editor wouldn't choose a dictionary definition over a song in a spot like that.

Fwiw, the football guy you didn't know is Phil Simms of the NY Giants. He led them to two Super Bowls, I think. He's now in broadcasting.
Jim | 07.30.08 - 12:51 pm | #

Full disclosure: I just entered my NYT time, and I meant to click on 14 minutes but got 13. There doesn't seem to be a way to correct such errors, is there?
Nina | 07.30.08 - 5:15 pm | #

George Killian's Irish Red is a lager brewed by Coors.

Irish Red is a type of ale
Aleman | 07.30.08 - 5:59 pm | #

I didn't at first get the LAT theme, then realized the clues are MISSING..., LOST..., and GONE.... Simple, neat theme, I thought. (In the paper, the clues are blanks + date; in AL, long dash + date.)

A teensy quibble about OJAI. I don't think too many locals would say it's "near Santa Barbara." If you're from So Cal, you might say it's near Ventura, which is much closer to Ojai and bigger than Santa Barbara. Otherwise, you might just say it's near L.A. Plus, I'm not sure you'd call it a "resort town" either. But, hey, it's a small town of only 8,000 people and look how many crosswords it's in. Why even quibble?
JJF | 07.30.08 - 6:26 pm | #

orange, i did all the puzzles in almost the same time today, too, but for me, that doesn't mean they were all perfectly keyed to a wednesday--usually, the sun takes me 5-6 minutes on a wednesday, and occasionally much longer. i think it was one of the easiest wednesday sun puzzles i've done. the others seemed pretty typical. practically every CS puzzle* takes me about 3:30, and this was no exception.

* - non-klahn caveat here

i didn't know pierre LOTI until he showed up in the LAT saturday. he went on my list (i take particular note of names with useful-looking letters, and LOTI definitely fit the bill), and lo and behold, here he is again on a wednesday. live and learn.
joon | 07.30.08 - 6:28 pm | #

Nina, your time has been corrected. Sorry there's no way to do that yourself, but we operate on a shoestring budget in the Fiend's department of technical services.
Evad | 07.30.08 - 7:25 pm | #

I guess I am of an age because I knew SADA right away but I think I know her only from Family and nothing much else except for an odd episode of Law and Order.

This one didn't put up much of a struggle and ARHAT was fully gettable from crosses. My mother used the word PASSEL all the time and it is part of what I like to call the Family Vocabulary.

I knew the quote from a biography of someone other than Sam Goldwyn and it was being discredited in the book. {I have a weakness for cheap Hollywood bios and have no idea about the "real truth" of this matter.}.

Looking forward to the end of the week puzzles
Bill from NJ | Homepage | 07.30.08 - 8:15 pm | #