NYT XWord - 7/20/08

Success! Some of the clues seemed a bit too easy, and some a bit too obscure, but after completing the puzzle, I think most of the clues were pretty fair, even though there were still several clues or answers that I had never heard of before. I generally prefer the individual thematic answers to the kind of running quote found in this puzzle (since it takes a lot of cross-words to start to figure out the quote), but this quote was pretty funny. The puzzle was entitled 'Parting Thoughts', with the quote clue as 'Last request': "To die in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like the people in his car."

Proper names I have never heard of:

• John Ciardi ("Lives of X" poet)
• Erica Jong (author of a book entitled Fear of Flying, which would seem to about something I am uninterested in reading about)
• Lambert airport (the St. Louis airport, which I have actually passed through - didn't notice it was named 'Lambert' though)
• Inge (William Motte Inge to be more exact; "Picnic" playwright, which apparently won a Pulitzer; and not to be confused with William Ralph Inge, aka "the Gloomy Dean")

Other unfamiliar words:

• tercel (apparently, a male falcon (not a Toyota) - but this is the British spelling, the American being tiercel - that must explain why I didn't know it!)
• penne (a tasty tube? - Ok, this has other names that I have heard of: ziti or mostaccioli; besides, it's not the pasta that is tasty, it's the sauce!)
• spliff (slang for marijuana, comes from Jamaica, mon! - probably a good sign that I didn't know this one!)