One-seat carriages / SAT 12-29-12 / Supporter of Heller decision / Bygone theory of astronomy / 1959 doo-wop classic / Idylls of King stylistically

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Constructor: Joe Krozel

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging



THEME: none

Word of the Day: ADIGE (36D: Verona's river) —

The Adige (Italian: Adige Italian pronunciation: [ˈaːdidʒe]; Venetian: Àdexe; German: Etsch; Ladin: Adesc; Latin: Athesis) is a river with its source in the Alpine province of South Tyrol near the Italian border with Austria and Switzerland. At 410 kilometres (250 mi) in length, it is the second longest river in Italy, after the River Po with 652 kilometres (405 mi). (wikipedia)

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Pretty typical Saturday puzzle. A little on the hard side, maybe, but not painfully so. My biggest problem, by far, was having JUST ONE SEC instead of WAIT ONE SEC (31D: "I'll be right with you"). As you can see, there's a lot of overlap there. I just couldn't get -JS (at 30A: Bugs) to work with any letter of the alphabet. Eventually I got the OFFICIAL part of ELECTED OFFICIAL, which got me WAIT, which got me VWS as the [Bugs] in question. Was not aware that REPULSER was a word (22A: Hideous one), so that took some patience. I thought maybe it was some strange word I'd never seen before, like, oh I don't know, REPUGNIK or something. But no, just a REPULSER. I like how he (or she) joins the crowd of SELF-PITIERS at 25D: "Woe is me!" types. If you weren't such REPULSERS, maybe you wouldn't be so miserable—you ever think of that, SELF-PITIERS!? I thought not.


Top and bottom parts were fairly easy. Most of the trouble came toward the center, for some reason. Would've helped if I'd had any idea how to spell LIECHTENSTEIN(ER) (42A: Alpine native). I did not want that first "E" to be there at all, so I kept coming up short, even after I had the answer figured out. A friend of mine actually predicted that "A TEENAGER IN LOVE" would be in this puzzle (true story), so I exclaimed triumphantly on his behalf when I figured that one out (41A: 1959 doo-wop classic). I taught "Idylls of the King" just over a month ago, so I knew the answer to 40A: "Idylls of the King," stylistically had to be ... what? I tried VICTORIAN POETRY. It fit! It was wrong! "VICTORIAN" describes period, not style. NARRATIVE POETRY is indisputably correct, though I'd say that's a genre designation, not a stylistic one. If you hate the answer ONE REED, I have info that may (may) make you hate it less (27D: Clarinet need). It's not (just) that a clarinet uses one, single reed (as opposed to an oboe, which is a double-reed instrument). It's also that reeds carry designations on a scale from one (soft) to five (hard). So a ONE REED is an actual thing. See here.


Bullets:

• 1A: Urban contemporary (TRITT) — Keith Urban. Travis TRITT. 
• 11A: Sports org. of 1967-76 (ABA) — They had red, white & blue balls. And Dr. J.
• 17A: Bygone theory of astronomy (PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM) — Got "PTOLEM..." and then realized I didn't really know the phrase that would follow. Still had trouble even after getting all of PTOLEMAIC. 
• 33A: "Ugly Betty" actress (VANESSA WILLIAMS) — I wanted America Ferrera or Amerigo Vespucci or whatever her name is (pretty sure it's the former, or something like it). 
• 19D: Ones to whom an organization's messages are sent (SERVICE LIST) — did not know this term. Had the -LIST part and needed crosses to get the rest. 
• 26D: Land visited by Paul in the New Testament (GALATIA) — I got this rather easily for one whose biblical knowledge sucks much more than it ought to. Didn't he write a letter to them there GALATIAns?
• 49D: Supporter of the Heller decision, 2008: Abbr. (NRA) — looking up Heller decision now ... per wikipedia (and I Really should've known this): District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that theSecond Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home and within federal enclaves. The decision did not address the question of whether the Second Amendment extends beyond federal enclaves to the states, which was addressed later by McDonald v. Chicago (2010). It was the first Supreme Court case in United States history to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.
• 34D: One-seat carriages (STANHOPES) — never heard of these, but this is a pretty elegant little word. It's surprising to me how many different types of carriages there were. Surreys and hansoms and bears, oh my. But given how much we obsess about and categorize and subdivide automobile types, I really shouldn't be surprised. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld