Pie and bourbon (Sunday brunch: November 30, 2014)

We had Thanksgiving dinner, as we often do, with an old friend of ours who taught biochemistry when The Other Doctor Mitchell and I were in college, and later became TODM’s post-doc boss. Academically speaking, Eileen is my aunt, as she and my graduate boss were both Mildred Cohn’s students.  It’s a testament to Mildred’s talent and mentoring that her scientific descendents can be found in so many different places.  (I did some NMR work for her while I was in grad school and she was an emeritus; I also taught her how to use a Macintosh computer.)

This time, Eileen hosted since her daughter was going to be back from New Jersey.  Liz made the appetizer, The Other Doctor Mitchell made dessert, and I selected the beverages.  Recalling that Eileen appreciated a cocktail on her last visit to our house, I decided to pack a bottle of nice bourbon to go with dessert, which was a deep dish apple pie.  How deep?  Very deep (to recall a favorite phrase of another chem prof).

Eileen took the occasion to get out a tiny little cordial glass for her bourbon, while I went for my usual small glass with one ice cube.  It was a perfect choice: the sour mash aroma slicing the sweet/tart of the pie.  You hardly needed to drink any, just pick up the glass and savor.  I wouldn’t recommend it with pie for breakfast though.

Breakfast or nightcap, these puzzles will go well with your pie.

Kevin Wald composed a Thanksgiving cryptic.  I got through the grid in a flash, but the theme answer was really tough.

Hex have a laddergram cryptic in the Wall Street Journal, their regular straight cryptic in the National Post, and an acrostic in the Times.

The Globe and Mail cryptic is a hard one this week: I've barely scratched the surface.  The Stickler was tough too.

What? He drinks on the job? Intoxicated Braze can’t define ln (Puzzle No. 3,323)

I normally avoid buying a bottle of wine just because there’s a cute animal, a bad pun, or some other attraction on the label, but sometimes you have to make an exception.  With a name like Cryptic Red, I had to check this out.  However, the contents looked interesting as well.  I’m partial to traditional (think Bordeaux) and non-traditional blends, both red and white: they’re a lot like combining different types of wordplay in a clue for a more complex and challenging solve.

Tasting notes: Nice medium garnet color,  off-clear (which is good: not excessively filtered), leggy.  Tart cherry aromas getting broader with more time in the glass.  Big mouthfilling start continues with the cherry flavors giving way to blackberry peppery zinfandel in the middle.  Medium-full body, substantive.  Pleasant medium-length finish with clean raspberry fruit and light tannins, a little warm (14.3%).  Very impressive: excellent winemaking and blending, a serious wine to accompany good food.  The only disappointment with this wine was the lame anagramming on the back label identifying the contents as a cabernet sauvignon/zinfandel/petite sirah blend.  (score 8/10).

Here’s this week’s puzzle

Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/article/179481/puzzle-no-3323 

Degree of difficulty (by standards of this weekly puzzle): easy to moderate

Hozom’s comment: And the Lits Keep on Coming! in which Hot and Trazom crow over some of their favorite exclamation point clues.  Now there’s something for an intrepid crossword statistician to analyze: what constructors come up with the most and lits, and who can keep up the longest batting streak of including one in each regularly scheduled puzzle?

Weekly cluing challenge over at Word Salad: LITERAL