She bang the drum machine

What amounts to normality may have been resumed, I'm back in North Carolina, I have Chambers, I have Bradfords, I have my scanner and I have working internet. What more could one want (list begins soon).

Beat it was started on a plane much to the bemusement of the person sitting next to me. I was flying on one of the newer commercial jets and they were trialling having a trivia game going on using the headrests of the person in front. Brilliant idea, the person behind you was guaranteed to be thumping on the back of your head for four hours. In my case, I alternated between beating up the hapless passenger in front of me and trying to get a start on Beat It!

A Michael Jackson theme would be too much to hope for, but there's lots of missing letters, some in the wordplay, some in the definitions.

Last year, Lavatch brought us "Key Cutting" which was a beast I eventually tamed, involving finding out a bunch about a literary work that I had no idea existed. So I figured this would also involve a literary work I had never heard of.

So I'm an addict, and had Bradfords with me on the plane. Which helped, since 2 across looked like ----POST and sure enough there's GATE under "lecher" and we're underway. Useful to have on the plane too, since everything crossing GATEPOST was there... a check under "open" gave GIVE (two tenses in the one sentence, woohoo!), 3 down looked like THROB (extra letter B), 4 PLOD (extra letter D), from definition 5 very temptingly OATHS (curSes), but couldn't see wordplay, 6 S,PARER (extra letter R) - the extra letters are coming surprisingly easily. My big rush at the start didn't pan out to the bottom of the grid though, that huge entry at 42 a complete blank, 41 is our old chum AIGLETS (crossword fans, if you have frayed laces, go to a shoe-store and ask if they have any, it's a hoot), and although I can see 28, 21 and 37 are COME,T, PRO,FILE and SAR (with and extra A), they're all too short for the grid so I can't really put them in.

However, this was a pretty good start, and there aren't all that many asterisked clues, so maybe I can work on those titles. I didn't know the answer to 11, but I guessed it was either Brush calculus or Crush calculus making it LITHOsomething. I also didn't know 14, but it was likely to be gOod or goAd, so that made

(B/C),(A/O),T,?,D,?,O,U,?,E,D,?,G,Y,?,?,R,?

CAT AND MOUSE looks likely for the first title (are the words Toms and Jerrys?), so maybe DOG YEARS for the second? Seeing that the extra letters coming from those down answers to 2-6 were close together, I'd been circling them in the grid (didn't want to fall into the same trap as in Elitism). When I had a computer, it was straight to google and word wizards (WW threw up nothing for 11 across, but gave me LEON BLUM, confirmed SENUSSI, ASTELY and my final saving grace - TERGIVERSATES confirming that those three short answers were just written in with the final space blank). Then to Google to find that CAT AND MOUSE and DOG YEARS are both books by Gunter GRASS (who I couldn't find in the grid), but the third in the trilogy was THE TIN DRUM, and those circled letters looked like they could make a drum if I join them up.

The hero is Oskar Matzerath, which if added in the bottom left makes some real words, and GRASS makes the handle of the drum. ISSEN in the top of the drum probably means something. That helped me finish off the last few pesky clues, a double-check that there are 25 clues confirms that there's a stick pointing off the side of the drum (maybe TAAKTAA is a type of drum, since I'd already written a line over them I may not have the letters correct in the words).

And the slump is over! Victory for George and another Lavatch puzzle where I learned something (I'm not in a hurry to go read it though, sorry). 2009 tally: George 14, Listener 5.

I'm editing last week's post to include my pretty pathetic grid which had some nice doodles on it (want to see what ANIL looks like?).

For your viewing pleasure, here's an improv group that I have done some work with, the OxyMorons doing a show for a local TV programme called "The Pleasure Saucer". I wasn't performing that night, but I'm in the audience throwing out suggestions, listen for the random Australian in the crowd.

Pleasure Saucer Epsidoe 28: The OxyMorons


Feel free to leave comments, and see you next week for some de-reduction of overhead, and a lesson in arts and crafts.

Edit: DAMN AND BLAST IT!!!! I had ERRANT instead of ERRING and so what makes more sense, GRASS should be a T inside the drum and isn't a handle.

Revised tally: Listener 6, George 13. Streak: Listener 3!!!!