| Soccer coach who said "I do swear a lot, but the advantage is that having played abroad, I can choose a different language from the referee's." | 157 |
| He answered "Yes" when Oprah asked him "In all seven of your Tour de France victories, did you ever take banned substances or blood-dope?" | 158 |
| Trains, in a way, and the key to 18 of this puzzle's black squares. (Ones that begin with the keyword are asterisked. The others are for you to discover.) | 158 |
| Size that's usually perfect for printing crosswords, but often not for mine because I tend to write really long clues and you might need more space, for short | 162 |
| TV jargon term for Seinfeld's "The Chinese Restaurant" and others, in which all of the action takes place on a single set with only a few characters | 162 |
| "Ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood" according to a New York Sun editorial of September 21, 1897 | 163 |
| #1 song between Phil Collins's "Groovy Kind of Love" and The Escape Club's "Wild Wild West" (1988 wasn't good for music, apparently) | 164 |
| "All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me - so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with ___": Homer Simpson | 165 |
| "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so ___ advanced": Gettysburg Address | 165 |
| Host: "Welcome to 'Celebrity Food Fight'! Tonight it's reigning champ Bobby Flay vs. Alton Brown. Needless to say, they both have that ___ ..." | 165 |
| Trial for a car [NOTE: My online solve-at-home crossword contest is TODAY AT 3 P.M. ET (Sunday, 9/30/12). First prize is $2,500. For details, visit www.alzfdn.org.] | 165 |
| Actress/singer Helen with the CD "Crossword" (the title track starts "I found my true love today doing the crossword on the back of the 6 train") | 165 |
| Number of times this puzzle's theme word appears diagonally in the grid (to complete the puzzle, shade those words plus the Down answers that begin where they meet) | 168 |
| King Missile novelty hit with the lyrics "I can leave it home, when I think it's gonna get me in trouble / or I can rent it out, when I don't need it" | 168 |
| Name of the first level of Special World in "Super Mario World" for the SNES, right before "Tubular" and "Way Cool" (how '90s is that?) | 169 |
| Casey who said, "I want a goddamn concerted effort to come out of a record that isn't a fucking uptempo record every time I do a goddamn death dedication!" | 169 |
| Gingrich who said "females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections and they don't have upper body strength" | 169 |
| 2005 Black Eyed Peas hit that Pitchfork called "so monumentally vacuous, slapped together and tossed-off that it truly tests the definition of 'song.'" | 169 |
| Start of an open letter from the puzzle constructor: "Dear ___, you seem a bit confused about what the V. P. does every day, so here are some helpful hints ..." | 170 |
| Oscar-winning star of "Tropic Blunder: The True Story Behind the Making of the Most Expensive Fake True War Story Ever" in 2008's "Tropic Thunder" | 170 |
| Sci-fi swords (that my older brother actually got to use one time at this place but he had to sign a contract saying he wouldn't tell anyone where they're located) | 171 |
| Nirvana "Sit and drink pennyroyal __" © 2010 Todd Santos Written By: Todd Santos | 172 |
| "Emollit mores nec sinit ___ feros" (motto of the University of South Carolina meaning "Learning humanizes character and does not permit it to be cruel") | 173 |
| He won 26 Oscars, including an Academy Honorary Award (consisting of one full-sized and seven miniature statuettes) for the film depicted in this puzzle's starred answers | 174 |
| "I knew ___ Carroll, was over a barrel/When 'Tarantula' took to the hills." (line from "Science Fiction/Double Feature" in "Rocky Horror") | 176 |
| Rocker Case who tweeted "If a dude called me a 'cougar' I'd be more likely to kill him bare-handed and shit him out in front of his parents than fuck him" | 176 |
| This, for example: "Some traffic jam, huh?" "Yeah." "How long we been here?" "Too long!" " 'Rush hour' ... go figure." | 176 |
| Subject of an annual March 14 celebration and of this puzzle, celebrated in both a literal and a numerical way in the first square of the starred answers, reading left to right | 177 |
| All-in-one breakfast foods popularized by a song from "Adventure Time" (having it instantly get stuck in your head will be your punishment for cheating and Googling it) | 178 |
| "___ Paradise" ("Weird Al" Yankovic song with the lyric "I never wear buttons but I got a cool hat, and my homies agree I really look good in black") | 179 |
| NTSC alternati...oh wait, no one else cares about analog television protocols and their effect on the framerates of classic video games. Let's just go with [Bud] for this clue | 179 |
| Nevada city, the one place "Phil the Weatherman," at the beginning of "Groundhog Day," says he would like to be if he could choose; have you made the arrangments? | 182 |
| "A Prairie Home Companion" director; "it" game; performer Marilyn; PC key; ear part; mama's boy; grown boy; "Notes On 'Camp'" essayist; blue shade | 188 |
| Suggestion uttered by Nate Dogg at the end of Dr. Dre's "The Next Episode" (The views and opinions expressed in this answer are not necessarily shared by The Cross Nerd Inc.) | 188 |
| Award won by lead actors in this puzzle's starred films: the winners' names are hidden "word search"-style in the grid (across, down or diagonally, and forward or backward) | 190 |
| Slang term for the Canadian equivalent of a 750 mL bottle of liquor, based on the number of ounces in it (which makes no sense because we use metric here but I never like to argue with drunks) | 192 |
| Each circled pair is an abbreviation for one; all 13 are arranged in the roughly north-to-south order in which their representatives (except for John Hancock) signed the Declaration of Independence | 197 |
| Nickname of the man (born 2/12/1809) who gave the address at 18A, issued the 28A/45A, was the first elected president of the 60A Party, and whose name can be found in this puzzle's main diagonal | 198 |
| Valley girl's "yeah, right" [IMPORTANT: SEE THE 'NOTE' (above) for key info about this week's puzzle and SEE THE LAST CLUE DOWN for the explanation of last week's puzzle.] | 201 |
| Former UN leader Hammarskjöld [Note: The circled letters comprise a three-word instruction that, when applied to one square in the completed grid, reveals a group who might follow a code of silence] | 201 |
| Superlative qualifier added to a childish argument in hopes of eliminating any potential for a further retort (of course, anyone who's been involved in a childish argument knows that you can just add | 203 |
| First word across in the first-ever crossword (1913) and the first of a dozen appearances of the word in this puzzle's grid, written word search-style (left, right, down, and diagonally) ... Can you f | 204 |
| Asset-freezing org. (CONTEST ALERT! My new all-skill, solve-at-home crossword contest benefiting the Alzheimer's Foundation of America is Sept. 30. First prize, $2,500. For details visit www.alzfdn. | 204 |
| Tiny bit (NOTE: The hidden generals in last week's puzzle were: (North) Grant, Sher-idan, Meade, Cus-ter, Burns-ide, Sherman, and Hook-er; and (South) For-rest, Early, Pic-kett, Stu-art, Longs-treet, | 204 |
| "For his contributions to jazz, ___ should be smeared with bacon grease, placed in a cage with three underfed Kodiak grizzly bears, and whatever happens, happens." ("Genius Guide to Jazz") | 208 |
| Intrepid [Editor's note: This clue appears in heavier type (without the asterisks) in the print version of the puzzle. AcrossLite can't handle that, so just imaging that it's written in darker type.] | 211 |
| What the five actors in this puzzle did in "Catwoman," "Leonard, Part 6," "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery," "Gigli," and "Freddy Got Fingered," respectively | 211 |
| Warning sign at a train station's food court? (NOTE: The original sign, without my additions, actually exists. It's in Grand Central Terminal in NYC, on the lower level — the food court level. The sig | 215 |
| Where GIs fought Charlie[LAST WEEK: "Lady X" was Ingrid Bergman, whose first name is revealed in the circled squares (IN + GRID). Seven of her one-word movie titles can be seen "straddling" black squa | 220 |
| Baffles (ABOUT THIS PUZZLE: If you saw the headline "Fiend Found!" you might instantly notice that, between the two words, only the vowels change — the consonants stay put. Okay, if you were me, you' | 221 |
| "I have this dream where I'm a kid delivering donuts to the Three Stooges. I'm in their office setting up (and listening) and Moe says to Larry, 'Hey, porcupine! Does this new script seem ___?' ..." | 224 |
| "... card, ___ card" (Last week: The two diagonally hidden 18-letter titles were "Up the Down Staircase" and "Upstairs, Downstairs." The latter answer turned downward at the D of "Downstairs.") | 235 |
| Host: "Well, that's because it's an anagram of your name. I guess it gives new meaning to the phrase '___'!" Flay: "Wait ... what?" Host: (Ding!) "And there's the timer! Tune in tomorrow for another t | 245 |