| GROUNDBREAKING | Book-jacket blurb for Finding Fault--In Search of Earthquakes |
| CRITIC | One finding fault in an armchair perhaps |
| CYNIC | One finding fault in short, saucy nickname (5) |
| ITGREWONME | Book-jacket blurb for The Big Book of Hair |
| RUNOUTANDGRABACOPY | Book-jacket blurb for The Spirit of Taking--Shoplifting in America |
| WELLWORTHIT | Book-jacket blurb for Gusher!--Oil in a Day's Work |
| SENSATIONAL | Book-jacket blurb for The Rise and Rise of Tabloid Journalism |
| ITCOVERSEVERYTHING | Book-jacket blurb for All About Asphalt |
| ITLEFTALASTING | With 122 Across, book-jacket blurb for Written in Concrete-A Pictorial History of Grauman's Chinese Theatre? |
| BETTERTHANPULPFICTION | Book-jacket blurb for Not a Seed in the House-How the Navel Orange Changed L.A.? |
| BIO | Author's book jacket blurb, often |
| PLUG | Bung for a basin or bath; a seedling grown in a cell of a tray; blurb for a book, film etc; or, a volcanic neck (4) |
| RAVES | Book-jacket blurbs |
| BIOS | Book jacket blurbs, sometimes |
| SWARMS | Dense bodies of flying bees, hence clouds of insects, crowds of people, showers of meteors, sequences of earthquakes or other myriads moving en masse (6) |
| SCANNERS | "Their thoughts can kill" ran one blurb for this Cronenberg creation (8) |
| METRO | "Life is a negotiation" ran the blurb for this 1997 Eddie Murphy release (5) |
| CONGO | "Where you are the endangered species" advised the blurb for this 1995 movie (5) |
| SWARM | To climb by gripping with one's hands/feet; a throng of honey bees; a mass of bioluminescent krill, visible from space; a shower of meteors; or, a series of earthquakes (5) |
| POSEIDON | The god of the sea and of earthquakes in Greek mythology |
