Merry Christmas, BFFs, Mon 12-24-12, Savanna grazers, South American plains, Spain's longest River, Sycophants

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Greetings from the North Pole!!! Liz and Jenny here, aka Rex Parker's BFFs.  Today, we're not only his BFFs, we're also his little helpers.  Rex is busy wrapping presents for the brilliant daughter and the beautiful wife (a little elf told us that he went to Jared!). Since Hanukkah was so last week, we graciously agreed to be his Christmas Eve elves.
Oh, and also, he wrote the puzzle, and blogging about his own puzzle is totally not kosher.


Constructor: The King of Crosswords, aka Michael Sharp, aka Rex Parker, aka our BFF





Relative difficulty: As Easy as beating the NY Giants last night




Here's the fabulous Rex-written puzzle:




THEME: 



Word of the Day: SYCOPHANTS —

Sycophant^[1] is obsequious flattery.Alternative phrases are often used such as:

• apple-polishing

• ass kissing

• ass licking

• bootlicker

• brown nosing

• crawler

• fawning

• flunky

• groveling

• hanger-on

• kowtowing

• lackey

• lickspittle

• sucking up

• toady

• yes man

In Sunday's blog, Rex said the following:Christmas Eve puzzle is by ... Me! So I won't be here tomorrow. But someone will. One of my sycophants, no doubt. So see you Christmas day! 

Guess he couldn't find any SYCOPHANTS, so as always, we selflessly agreed to do his job.• • •

We loved this puzzle.  It was fun, it was easy, even Liz's 7-year old daughter knew some of the answers (Thursday comes after Wednesday!! (56D) Acorns come from oak trees!! (57D) Ok, maybe she had to recite the days of the week to get to Thursday, and her first guess was a pine tree, but come on.  She's 7.  It's late.  And she gets an A for effort...someone give that kid a trophy!!)
Theme answers:

• 17A Yesterday's joe? (STALE COFFEE)
• 24A Scouring pad material? (STEEL WOOL)
• 36A Bonus for showing panache? (STYLE POINTS)
• 47A What Jackie Robinson did, famously, in the first game of the 1955 World Series? (STOLE HOME)
• 56A Informant? (STOOL PIGEON)

To be honest, we were a little stumped by the theme (see above).  We were looking for the Christmas tie-in.  Or the Festivus reference.  Kwanzaa anyone?  But it was a good solid theme and very fun to solve.


Bullets:

• 14A The ____ State (New York)?  (EMPIRE) — Also known as home to the one and only REX PARKER himself!!!
• 16A Rite ____ (drugstore)?  AID — Also, our new most un-favorite store.  Why?  Because on Tuesday, December 18, Liz went into her local Rite Aid to buy a pair of reading glasses (we know what you're thinking..."no way are the BFFs old enough to need reading glasses!!!"  But alas, it's true, we're older than we look). Anyway, what was on display at Rite Aid on Tuesday, December 18?  VALENTINE'S DAY CANDY!!! That's right. A full 7 days before Christmas.  Can't we just celebrate one holiday at a time???  (Don't ask if she bought any of the aforementioned candy...we have no comment).
• 44D 1986 Tom Cruise Blockbuster? (TOP GUN) —We think that we LOVE this movie.  But, we're in this movie club with our BFF, and we've been watching "all" of the movies that were released in 1987.  There are so many that we thought we remembered loving, but really we hate it ("3 Men and a Baby" anyone?)

We'd like to thank our BFF for allowing us to blog about his puzzle.  Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.  Happy New Year.  Peace on Earth.  And all that sappy crap.  Until next time, we leave you with our favorite Christmas song.  


Signed, Liz and Jenny, aka the Sycophants, er...BFFs!!

One last thing.  In case you were wondering, here's what we'll be doing on Tuesday: