i can explain RUFFS. ruff is the verb used in bridge for trumping in. (following suit when trumps are led is not considered ruffing, but the clue is definitely "good enough.") i cannot explain ICERS. icing is not a penalty for which you'd get time in the box. all that happens is there's a face-off in the opposing team's zone. unless the guys in the box are also decorating cakes while they're in there, the clue seems just plain wrong to me.

i had a bad crossing on this one, which i was pretty much never going to get: ALMAY/DUM. never really had a chance. i tried C, but i don't really know what i was going for. all i knew was that it was a latin word in a phrase i had 0% comprehension of, crossing a brand name i'm quite sure i didn't know. bummer. QUAALUDE is also unfamiliar to me and looked totally crazy, but i was pretty confident about the crossings so i left it in.
joon | 09.05.08 - 10:14 pm | #

Nice puzzle today, not too difficult for a Saturday. I had EREMITE instead of EDOMITE at first and thought UNZIPPER was a bit of a stretch as a verb. Of course, it was UNZIPPED and "open" was an adjective, not a verb. I love clues like that where the word could be more than one part of speech.

I obviously enjoyed having two hockey clues in the NW (Hockey season has started again, Conor made Bantam A this year for those that know what that means :-), but there was a much bigger problem than the dual use of the root ICE. If you ice the puck in hockey, you just bring the puck back to the other end and do a face off. Icing is an infraction, not a penalty, and no one ever goes to the penalty box for icing. Unfortunately, the clue is flat out wrong. That concludes your ice hockey lesson for the day :-)!
Al Sanders | 09.05.08 - 10:18 pm | #

Oops, Joon's post wasn't up when I started typing my comment. Sorry for the duplicate hockey lesson.
Al Sanders | 09.05.08 - 10:20 pm | #

Wow, fun. I did it in 33min, half the time of yesterday's puzzle.

6D ICERS (Some players in penalty boxes)
In hockey icers (players who ice the puck) aren't put in the penalty box. Icing results in a stoppage of play and a face-off in the zone of the team that iced the puck.
obamahockeymama | 09.05.08 - 10:27 pm | #

The first thing that struck me about the NYT puzzle is the unusually high number of double letters 2 AA, 2 OO, XX RR PP FF CC. Can someone spell something with them? There are also repeat combos. I liked it for that factor as well as the several "i get it now" moments.

I no longer follow hockey, but thought the clue was strange, too. I then wondered what the person receiving a penalty for entering the ice before the player he is substituting for has left. I used to see it called and a designated player did enter the penalty box. What is he called?
DERANGED?
PhillySolver | 09.05.08 - 10:39 pm | #

My original clue for 6-Down, ICERS. was "Bakery gizmos." Having had NHL season tickets many years ago, I'm quite familiar with the rules of ice hockey and agree with the above comments. I can only assume that Will thought the clue was too easy for a Saturday and decided to change it.
Barry Silk | 09.05.08 - 10:47 pm | #

Perhaps a penalty box for wrong hockey cluers?
I suggest some Canadian test solvers.
Canadiens Fan | 09.05.08 - 10:47 pm | #

Can't defend the Hockey clue, but watching College Hockey all the way through the Frozen Four, I have seen several teams called the ICERS (e.g. Penn State) and so I have seen some ICERS in the penalty box.
Miguel | 09.05.08 - 11:00 pm | #

Well done Barry S.!
Scott Atkinson | 09.06.08 - 12:00 am | #

I too saw ICERS as dead wrong, but the existence of the Penn State Icers puts it in the realm of plausibility, and the possibility that ICER could be seen as a generic term for a hockey player is also in play. The question is, what does Will know and when did he know it?
Anonymous | 09.06.08 - 1:03 am | #

I just posted on the NYT that there are 34,000+ hits for HOCKEY ICERS, some of which refer to Penn State but most of which refer to hockey players generally. It is not a term I have personally ever used, although frankly, I have never heard the term ICER used to refer to the individual who committed the infraction. "SO AND SO ICED THE PUCK" or more commonly, "THIS WILL BE ICING" are the most common ways it is called. I am willing to give Will the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Steve
Steve Manion | 09.06.08 - 1:40 am | #

I had Kite instead of Kixx, as I don't follow indoor soccer. I thought Philadelphia, Ben Frankin, Kite, why not? This led to indater for librarian (stamps the books on the date returned?)
Gnarbles | 09.06.08 - 3:48 am | #

Just finished the puzzle, and the ICERS clue took me way more time than I care to admit, just because I made the assumption that it had to be wrong, until it had to be right since all the other letters were filled in.
Al said it first, and by now I'm probably just fifthing or sixthing the motion. That one answer threw me off course badly;
I guess the lesson is to keep an open mind for possibilities, even if it's not quite right, and not necessarily rule an answer out immediately. Of course, that would backfire more often than not. I don't know.

Undone by hockey, one of my favorite puzzle subjects. Oh, the irony!

KIXX was the first answer in the grid, and other than the hockey fiasco, this one seemed to give way much easier than the Friday puzzle.
Howard B | 09.06.08 - 6:50 am | #

My first answer was AREAL since "A Real Nice Clambake" is from "Carousel" and I was in a production of it over a decade ago. In our production, one of the chorus guys decided that he was going to be the town drunk. He turned an inane song into an amusing bit of slapstick staggering, and even took to adding a "hic" during the quarter rest in the first line of the chorus. Genius.

Best,
Patrick
pauer | 09.06.08 - 7:02 am | #

Wow, sometimes it helps to be unfamiliar with the rules of hockey! ICERS one made perfect sense to me.

Philly, those doubled letters can be used to spell FOX CRAP twice.
Orange | Homepage | 09.06.08 - 7:47 am | #

I'm glad to see that the Stumper took Orange a while. I got through it but it was a bear!

It helps to know nothing about hockey except that there's something called icing.

No one noticed that the Times grid is an exact mirror image of the Stumper? Wild coincidence!

Enjoy the weekend, everybody. Get outside!
Jim in NYC | 09.06.08 - 11:11 am | #

OKRA/MALLOW was in the Friday NY Sun.
Jim in NYC | 09.06.08 - 11:20 am | #

orange, the symbol for an ohm is indeed a (capital) omega. i think [Service selection] refers to scottish-canadian poet robert service, not a religious service.

anyway, this was definitely harder for me than byron's WW for me, despite the fact that i knew MALLOW from byron's puzzle and guessed LALANNE after having seen it in last week's stumper (and still not really knowing who he is). the only gimme for me was SEOUL--there are only about three corporations in korea anymore due to crazy merger/conglomerations, and LG is one of them. i have an LG phone, too--the shine. it's a nice phone. it was my father's day present (thanks, sam) after i, uh, put my old phone through the washer and drier.

jim, lots of themeless grids look much like this one. in fact, when i'm writing a themeless, i pretty much sit down with this basic idea in mind, and then tweak it if necessary (e.g. by changing the across lengths to 8 and 6 instead of 7 and 7). one of the (many) fresh things about a grid by mike nothnagel or karen m. tracey is their innovative themeless grids.
joon | 09.06.08 - 12:39 pm | #

Surely ICERS here are meant as generic hockey players. Otherwise it would be a totally made-up word. And the wrong consequence for the infraction, as has been pointed out.
Scott Atkinson | 09.06.08 - 5:17 pm | #

The LA Times puzzle sure had a lot of 15-letter entries that I haven't seen before. Kudos to you Michael for digging up some new material. -Joe
Joe Krozel | 09.06.08 - 9:40 pm | #