NYT 10:50 (joon—paper)
BG tba
PI tba
CS tba
LAT tba
Robert W. Harris's Sunday New York Times crossword, "Colonization"
hi folks. joon here, subbing in for amy, who's at her *cough*25th*cough* high school reunion. she'll be in later tonight and will be blogging the rest of the puzzles tomorrow, but here i am with the sunday NYT puzzle. it's a good one. it's a letter insertion theme involving ANT:
what else did i like about this puzzle? well, the fill was reasonably smooth. not much really jumped out at me as being particularly eye-catching, though i did enjoy the ZEBU [Indian bovine] sighting at 10d. we like to visit the ZEBU at the local zoo; it's got a crazy-looking hump/shield/shoulder thingy going for it. the notable exception to the smoothness of the fill was in the "midatlantic" region, which featured the following less-than-ideal fill:
a sunday NYT is usually good for at least two or three really great clues, but this one was fairly dry. the only tricky clue was [Cause of star wars?] for EGOS. oh, i guess [Part of a book ... or something to book] for PASSAGE had a nice "aha" moment. some others that i enjoyed, even if they weren't exactly uproarious:
two clues i could have done without: [Brand with a pyramid on the package] for CAMEL and [Back-room cigar smokers, say] for CRONIES. smoking = yuck. more humped beasts of burden, please.
that's all for me, at least until the MGWCC blog post on tuesday. i'll see you in the comment box.
November 07, 2009
Sunday, 11/8/09
November 06, 2009
Saturday, 11/7/09
Newsday 8:26
NYT 7:02
LAT 4:05
CS untimed (J)/ 3:57 (A)
Bob Klahn's New York Times crossword
I had just finished drafting my L.A. Crossword Confidential post for Saturday when I checked Twitter and saw this from Rex Parker: "Sat. puzzle = KLAHN! Holy crap. I'd forgotten what it feels like to be brutalized by a puzzle." Bob Klahn does tend to brutalize his NYT solvers. The skewed clues you see in his CrosSynergy puzzles get sharpened to a razor's edge in the Times, and the fill's packed with not-your-usual-stuff, so you get material like this:
• 5D. SPANG means [Squarely], as in "I looked 'im spang in the eye."
• 10A. [Landlocked Muslim land], 4 letters...Iran, Iraq? No, MALI, over in Africa.
• 15A. Only-in-crosswords-now old-time movie cowboy Lash LARUE is clued as [Cheyenne Kid portrayer]. Anyone get this off the clue by knowing it rather than thinking "that sounds like an old Western thing, maybe it's that LARUE guy"?
• 23A. FROTHY like whipped cream? No, [Insubstantial]. You gotta eat a lot of whipped cream for the frothiness to reach the level of substantial.
• 24A. [Appeal from a diplomat] is DÉMARCHE. I have to look this one up in the dictionary..."a political step or initiative." Didn't know that. Also Frenchy: 28A: REGLE, [En ___ (by the rules: Fr.)].
• 26A. The YAZOO is a [Mississippi river named by La Salle]. I tried YAHOO first.
• 27A. [Local operation?] clues UNION SHOP, as in the union local.
• 34A. [Base of a column] isn't architectural, it's the SUM at the bottom of a column of numbers being added. I totally grasped what the clue wanted.
• 37A. [As different as night and day, e.g.] is a CLICHÉ. Hope you didn't spend much time trying to think of a 6-letter word for "opposite."
• 41A. I'd rather have ODALISQUE clued via the Ingres painting than as [Harem slave].
• 43A. [A slew] sounds singular but clues the plural RAFTS.
• 53A. SOFIA, Bulgaria, is the [World capital at the foot of Mount Vitosha]. Never heard of Mount Vitosha before.
• 52A/55A. Good gravy, two entries given over to [lead female role in TV's "Peter Gunn"], which was before my time/aside from my inclination: EDIE HART.
• 2D. [Dancer in a suite] is crosswordese ANITRA. I'll assume this relates to Grieg's Peer Gynt. In a similar category, we have 7D: ARIADNE, [Strauss heroine from classical myth].
• 3D. Israeli writer AMOS OZ wrote Black Box and My Michael years ago. More recently, he's ["A Tale of Love and Darkness" author, 2003].
• 4D. Of all the ways to clue SENATOR, they go with ["Damn Yankees" chorister]?
• 5D. SLATY is an adjective derived from slate. [Dull blue-gray]. Wouldn't you rather call it slate blue than SLATY? Of course you would.
• 6D. PALE is clued as [Cadaverous]. Hey! That's my complexion you're talking about here.
• 8D. [Cores] are NUCLEI. When I had the CLE in place, I was at a loss for what **CLES word meant cores.
• 11D. [Not likely to go with the flow], quite literally: AT ANCHOR.
• 13D. [Doughty] means INTREPID. Got this off the I near the end.
• 21D. [Low finish?] is SHOESHINE. Got this off the first two or three letters. Did anyone watch Parks & Recreation last night, with the shoeshine love triangle?
• 22D. NANCY DREW! She looks terrific in the grid. ["The Bungalow Mystery" solver] is your clue.
• 32D. I briefly wondered if this was about amazon.com: [The first complete navigation of the Amazon was in search of this]. EL DORADO.
• 33D. Trivia! TIA MARIA is a [Liqueur reputedly named for a noblewoman's chambermaid].
• 39D. Why did it take me that long to tease out LUCIFER for ["Doctor Faustus" character]?
• 42A. Wanted TAI CHI and I CHING before the crossings coaxed out QI GONG, the [Chinese meditative practice].
• 44D. [Casting option] in flyfishing is FLY ROD.
• 45D. I totally guessed on the [Four-note chord]. I know there's a triad, so I gambled on TETRAD for four.
• 51D. Holy schnikes, [Flagitious]? It means VILE, criminal, villainous. The word dates back to Late Middle English.
Klahn's puzzles do tend to make solvers gnash their teeth, pull their hair, rend their garments, and curse his name. How was it for you? Was it spang flagitious? I liked it and my teeth, hair, and garments are intact.
Updated Saturday morning (and no, you're not seeing double—yet...):
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Y Not"—Janie's review
This is a great puzzle to end the solving week with. The familiar drop-a-letter theme (you won't find the letter "Y" where you're used to seeing it) yields fill and cluing of the first order, and the remainder of the grid delights in equal measure. As regular solvers of the CS puzzle know (and regular puzzle-solvers as a group know), our constructor is NO SLOUCH, a far more than [Fairly capable one]. As a result, the SHINE [Twinkle] factor today couldn't be higher. Starting with the theme fill, there's:
• 17A. "ISN'T IT A PIT?" [Guess when asked what one calls where the orchestra plays?]. Whether your taste runs to Gershwin, a non-SITAR-playing Harrison or Clapton (covering Harrison), there's an "Isn't It a Pity?" for you.
• 21A. STAG PART [Antler?]. Did you catch The Hangover? If you think that was an outrageous depiction of the stag party rite, do check out some of the traditions in other parts of the world.
• 33A and 35A. THREE TO / GET READ [...the fine print, the riot act, ad your palm?]. Elvis—whose [...early...albums] appeared in MONO)—explains it all in "Blue Suede Shoes"... Love this one, because of the specificity of the clue and for the way the fill-pair crosses the grid at center.
• 51A. DUCK DECO [Design scheme on display at Donald's domicile?]. That's one very funny concept, but with those "V"-like flight formations, maybe it's not such a stretch. The FAQs of this duck decoy site should clarify your "'why-a-duck-' decoy?" questions.
• 55A. PEACE TREAT [Reward for ending the war?]. While this one doesn't go as amusingly far afield as its theme-mates, a peace treaty really is a peace treat.
A word (or three) about construction elements in the grid before looking at the rest of the puzzle. Note: the way 17A overlaps 21A with three letters (ditto 51A and 55A); the triple columns of eight in the NW and SE corners, and the triples of six in the NE and SW; and the complete absence of the letter "Y" in the grid as a whole. "Y Not" indeed, and in this way, a kissin' cousin to Patrick Blindauer's 10/26 "What's Eating U?"
Bob has also unified the puzzle in his inimitable cluing style. There are some 15 alliterative clues which raise the "wit" level of both lively and everyday fill. Some faves include:
• [Cauldron concoction contributor] for NEWT ( think of "the Scottish play"...);
• [Role for Reeve or Reeves] for KENT (a/k/a "Superman," so that'd be George Reeve or Christopher Reeves);
• [Show shamelessly] for FLAUNT;
• [Priggish pronouncements] for TUTS (which might be heard in response to something RIBALD [Bawdy]); and
• [Banshee's bailiwick] for EIRE, whose first "E" was the last letter to go as I solved. That crossing with EOCENE [Epoch in which modern mammals emerged] was tough for me.
Then, Bob has included seven "sequential" clue pairs—where there's a word in the first that's repeated (usually to different effect) in the second. Again, this tends to up the ante on even familiar three- and four-letter fill. Among the best are:
• [Friendly start?] for the oft-seen ECO- and [Big start?] for BANG. No, not exactly as in the "Big Bang theory," but as in the idiomatic expression "start with a bang." When you want to grab the attention of your audience, it's a good idea to give 'em something they'll remember, so start with a bang. That's the kind of "big start" this clue is talking about. This one's twisty, and I like it!
• [Diamond clubs] for BATS (so that's the baseball "diamond") and [Its birthstone is the diamond (abbr.)] for APR (where "diamond" is literally the gem).
• ["One Piece] AT A [Time" (1976 Johnny Cash hit)] and [50 Cent piece] for RAP SONG. The Cash song makes me laugh; the 50 Cent material doesn't...
Finally, some random fill and clues that are more than pleasing:
• the cross of TRIP [Junket] and TREK [Space odyssey];
• [Drawing room session?]/ART CLASS;
• [Cold Italian coneful]/GELATO;
• [Capital place to talk Turkey]/ANKARA;
• [Blow the suds off (your suds)]/BEHEAD (one superb combo!); and, because it's that time of the year, the colorful
• [Pyramid-shaped ornamentals that turn bright red in autumn]/PIN OAKS (at left...).
See how much more playful Klahn's clues are in a CrosSynergy puzzle?
Weird but true: Last night I had a wee spoonful taste of some sweet corn/honey GELATO with NUBS ([Kernels]) of corn in it. Vegetables in ice cream is...not where I'm at.
Bob Peoples' Los Angeles Times crossword
Full write-up over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. Excerpts:
This puzzle mostly left me cold, though I enjoyed the retro '90s oomph of 42D: EUROPOP clued as [Ace of Base genre]. A few of the answers crossing it are just insane, though:
• 41A: [Tiny white ovum] (ANT EGG). Uh, ick.
• 48A: [Iberian river] (DOURO). Okay, I have been paying attention to our Crosswordese Rivers of Europe my whole life, and this one? Is not ringing a bell.
• 52A: [Noilly __: vermouth brand] (PRAT). Pratfall, yes. Noilly Prat? Not ringing a bell.
Other unusual inclusions:
• 15A: [Bridge bid, briefly] (THREE NO). Three? No. What? I've seen ONENO as desperation fill in other crosswords, but now THREENO is taking up even more space. Is this totally legit bridge-speak or desperation fill?
• 17A: [Old Meccan governors] (SHARIFS). If you're in my generation, you know SHARIF from The Clash's "Rock the Casbah" perhaps even more than via Omar Sharif. Omar would know THREE NO, wouldn't he?
• 32A: [Shrub with clusters of blue flowers] (HYSSOP). A much prettier word than anything that sounds like "hiccup" has a right to be.
• 4D: [Three times, in Rx's] (TER). Meh. Doctors never write this on a prescription. They'll write tid, short for ter in die, Latin for "three times a day." But they're just not going to spell out TER.
Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"
(PDF solution here.)
Anyone else find this one tougher than the Klahn NYT? My main trouble spots:
• 36D. [Road debut of 1908] is the Ford MODEL T.
• 1A. [Minor mistakes] aren't SLIPUPS or BOOBOOS but BOBBLES.
• 16A. [Screenwriter?] clues E-MAILER. Don't care for E-MAILER as fill. E-MAILED, yes. (See also 14D: TRYSTER, [Romeo or Juliet].)
• 17A. [Rectangular cell] is a NINE-VOLT BATTERY.
• 31A. [Hang over] is MENACE. Not EXTEND, nope. Not even close.
• 32A. [Expedient course] clues POLICY. Not every POLICY is expedient. Some are convoluted or ill-advised or require a tremendous waste of effort.
• 36A. [Makes fast] clues MOORS, as in mooring a boat. Took forever to piece together, even with most of the crossings,
• 41A. ["Canale" crosser] is an Italian bridge, or PONTE.
• 44A. [Western star] is the sheriff's BADGE.
• 8D. [Cats' beats] are BEBOPS. That can be pluralized? I thought of ALLEYS first, and then STOOPS with a few crossings.
• 10D. [Palm product] is a DATE, the fruit from a palm tree. Not the Palm TREO.
• 13D. [Ben Affleck's birthplace] is BERKELEY, California, and not Boston? Who knew?
Daily Beast, 11/6/09
Time - 8:46
Hello possums!
You’re late!
You should have been here an hour ago. Didn’t you remember to fall back on November 1? Matt Gaffney remembered, and that’s the 50D: [Crossword puzzle feature] – THEME of this week’s Daily Beast puzzle, "Daylight Savings”.
All the theme answers had to be pushed back one hour. Isn’t that 53D: [Underhanded] – SNEAKY? Not so much to me as I got this on the title and 1 Across, so a very fast solve. Nevertheless, some fun clues and answers as we have come to expect from Marvellous Matt.
1A & 5A: [Gary Cooper Western, as of 11/01/09?] – High Noon gets pushed back to HIGH ELEVEN.
23A: [Facial growth, as of 11/01/09?] – (Five) FOUR O’CLOCK SHADOW.
54A: [Dolly Parton movie, as of 11/01/09?] – Double switch from Nine to Five to EIGHT TO FOUR
71A: [1933 John Barrymore movie, as of 11/01/09?] – DINNER AT SEVEN (Eight).
89A: [Pot smoker’s favourite time, as of 11/01/09?] – (Four) THREE TWENTY. This one needs some explaining. Mr Wiki?
420, 4:20 or 4/20 (pronounced four-twenty) refers to consumption of cannabis and, by extension, a way to identify oneself with cannabis drug subculture. The term originated from a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in California in 1971. The teens would meet after school at 4:20 p.m. to smoke marijuana. April 20 (4/20) has evolved into a counterculture where people gather to celebrate and consume cannabis.
It is held in Victoria in a park right by my bus stop home from work. Since I usually leave around four, I arrived last April 20 at the stop to a gathering crowd that clearly didn’t include many crossword solving accountants. I walked to the next bus stop.
122A: [Count Basie classic, as of 11/01/09?] – (One) TWELVE O’CLOCK JUMP.
16D: [1961 #1 hit for Gary “U.S.” Bonds, as of 11/01/09?] – QUARTER TO TWO (Three).
65D: [Best Picture of 1969, as of 11/01/09?] – (Midnight) ELEVEN COWBOY.
Other cool stuff:
21A: [Dame] EDNA. Here “she” is performing in Montreal.
44A: [Whiz] – ACE. Wrong. PEE. There goes Matt again.
60A: [One-third of a WWII movie] – TORA. The other thirds are tora and tora, respectively.
75A: [Moo goo gai pan pan] – WOK. Three-letter word madness!
88A: [Olympic great Ray] – EWRY. Who? Raymond "Ray" Clarence Ewry was an American track and field athlete who won 8 gold medals at the Olympic Games This puts him among the most successful Olympians of all time. This guy could Jump!
95A: STEELY [Dan]
110A: [Constellation component] – B STAR . Also known as random letter star.
128A: [Belgian beer, for short] – STELLA Artois. Marlon Brando was ordering a beer in “A Streetcar Named Desire"?
129A: [Maker of the Ektorp chair] – IKEA. Four letters, furniture, IKEA.
2D: [“Young Frankenstein” role] – IGOR. What hump?
10D: [Cup Noodles company] – NISSIN. I don’t think we have this in Canada.
41D: [“Into the GROOVE” (Madonna hit].
66D: [Toronto landmark] – CN TOWER. Popular in puzzles lately.
84D: [This clue has four] – SYLLABLES. Were you thinking, “words” won’t fit?
106D: [Fiona’s guy] – SHREK. As in green ogre.
107D: [“A Confederacy of Dunces” author John Kennedy TOOLE].
115D: [“Africa” band] – TOTO.
120D: [Expectorated] – SPAT.
124A: [“Bravissimo!”] – OLE, Matt!
See you next week, possums.
November 05, 2009
Friday, 11/6/09
NYT 6:01
BEQ 4:32
CHE 3:42
LAT 3:24
CS untimed
WSJ 8:05
Doug Peterson's New York Times crossword
Aargh! Don't you hate it when you click "done" with 4:46 on the clock but you have a typo in a Down answer and begin scanning all the Across answers so it takes a good long while to see JULEETTE BINOCHE sitting in reproach? Hell, for all I knew, 19A: ["The Ballad of ___," 1967 comedy western] was spelled JOSEE rather than JOSIE because hey, there's The Outlaw Josey Wales. Wales was a '76 movie, whereas The Ballad of Josie "attempted to humorously tackle 1960s themes of feminism in a traditional western setting." The plot: "A young woman living in fictional Arapahoe County, Wyoming accidentally kills her very abusive husband. She is put on trial but acquitted. She then incurs the annoyance of her male neighbors by farming sheep instead of cattle and setting up a woman's suffrage movement." Anyone ever hear of this Doris Day flick?
Okay, the puzzle: 68 words. Two 15s, four 10s, eight 9s, some intermediate-length answers, and only six 3s, which is nice. The highlights:
• Why not cross ALPHA MALE with UN-P.C.? It's a natural pairing. 16A: [Leader of the pack], 3D: [Sexist, say]. Right beside that is OGLE, or [Regard impolitely].
• 1A. I filled in MOUNT FUJI via the crossings, as I was thinking I needed an East Asian equivalent of Mecca for the [Far Eastern pilgrimage destination]. Another mountain: 28A: PIZ [___ Bernina (highest peak in the Eastern Alps]. I like to say PIZ.
• 14A. Love the word IGNORAMUS. [Dull type] doesn't begin to capture it.
• 36A. The title doesn't ring a bell, but [Subject of the 2005 biography "iCon"] is STEVE JOBS. Is that "ooh, he's an icon" or "he'll con you with his iWhatnots"? I'm reading the title as a hatchet-job "I Con."
• 37A. If you [Spotted] me $40, you LENT it to me. Thanks. I'll totally pay you back.
• 46A. [Hamburger's acknowledgment] is DANKE, a Hamburger being someone from Hamburg, Germany.
• 52A. I, CLAUDIUS is a great entry. [John Hurt played Caligula in it].
• 57A. The SERENGETI is [Where some buffalo roam]. Water buffalo?
• 1D. M.I.A.'S are clued with [They're officially honored on the third Friday in Sept. Veterans Day is next Wednesday, Nov. 11—my kid's off school then...and tomorrow too.
• 8D. JULIETTE BINOCHE, ["The English Patient" Oscar winner]. See? Sometimes I can type the right letters.
• 12D. [It often has controls] refers to an EXPERIMENT. I was in a medical study once—I think I was in the control group and man, did that stink. (Though it turns out the active-treatment group didn't fare much better.)
• 25D. [Its bulb is small]—my little Book Owl LED light? That too. But GREEN ONION is what Doug was going for here.
• 29D, 40A. ZESTY, meet CRUSTY. Is this about saltine crackers? Wait, those are crispy Zestas. [Vivacious], [Gruff].
• 31D. [Baseball nickname that's a portmanteau] is A-ROD, short for Alex Rodriguez. No baseball talk here, please. Not 'til opening day, 2010.
• 32D. [Fibula neighbor] down below is the TALUS, the big ankle bone. Did you want it to be TIBIA, 5 letters, starts with T?
OK, I like question-marked clues usually, but [Cabinet member?] for 48D: FILE doesn't do it for me. Your files are in no way "members" of your file cabinet.
Arcane factoids I am likely to forget by morning: PAUL V was the [Pope who met with Galileo], and ACETIC ACID is a [Wood distillation product].
Patrick Berry's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Koined Terms"
From my Mac's widget dictionary: koine means "the common language of the Greeks from the close of the classical period to the Byzantine era; a common language shared by various peoples; a lingua franca." Our "Koined Terms" here begin with adjectives based on Greek names and are phrases of varying familiarity:
• HIPPOCRATIC OATH, check. [What doctors are expected to follow].
• SOCRATIC METHOD, check. [Teaching technique that involves asking questions].
• PYRRHIC VICTORY, check. [Win that wasn't worth it].
• HOMERIC LAUGHTER—huh? [What hilarious jokes induce] but also very bad news, medically: "Uncontrolled spasmodic laughter induced by mirthless stimuli, a symptom of organic brain disease that indicates a poor prognosis; HL may be seen in multiple sclerosis, pseudobulbar palsy, epilepsy, intracranial hemorrhage, frontal lobotomy, and kuru, which causes 'laughing death.'" My goodness.
I like the inclusion of Greek mythology's Athena (in a clue for MINERVA) and THESEUS, the MOHS/OHM'S echo, the SCUM clue ([Dirty film]—no, not that kind of film), and learning a new word in the CELTIC clue ([Like the festival of Beltane]). Beltane ushers in the summery half of the year on May 1 and Samhain closes it out on November 1. Have I seen the name HAUER before, or is [Austrian composer Josef Matthias ___] new to me? I think he's new to me. A 20th-century composer.
Sharon Petersen's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme centers on words that sound like plurals of letter names:
• 17A. [Nursery rhyme dish?] with a question mark is PP PORRIDGE, with PP pronounced as two "Ps" standing in for "pease."
• 25A. CC THE DAY represents "seize the day," the ["Time is fleeting" philosophy?].
• 38A. "Whys and wherefores" becomes YY AND WHEREFORES, or [Reasons?].
• 49A. ["Good grief!"?] has got too much punctuation. GG LOUISE represents "jeez Louise."
• 61A. Remember that [1999 Kidman/Cruise film?] before she married Keith Urban and he married Katie Holmes? Eyes Wide Shut gives us II WIDE SHUT.
Favorite clues and answers:
• [Brest milk]! Ha! LAIT is milk in French, and Brest is a French city.
• ROSEY [Grier of the Fearsome Foursome] once sang a song, "It's All Right to Cry." He's right, you know.
• DAPPER DAN is a [Well-groomed guy].
• A [Website that users can edit] is a WIKI. If you've never fixed a typo in Wikipedia, you should try it sometime.
• [Verminophobe's fear] is GERMS. Yeesh! Maybe I'll be all better come Monday and can get the H1N1 vaccine with my kid.
Updated Friday morning:
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Natural Defenses"—Janie's review
Yesterday, Ray Hamel's puzzle gave us five man-made items that are worn "for your protection," or man-made defenses. Today, Patrick gives us four of nature's own defenses, each of which appears as the first word of a well-known phrase having nothing to do with defenses—man-made or natural. You may want to don some protection, however, if you find yourself anywhere near these sometimes lethal weapons:
•17A. STINGER COCKTAIL [Brandy concoction]. I suppose drinking too many of these could be mighty dangerous, too, but the defense in question here is the stinger of the apian sort. On the subject of bee stings, all I can say is "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!!"
•26A. SCALE MODEL [Proportionate reproduction]. Fish, reptiles, even butterflies have scales. They're not likely to harm you (in the way a stinger might), but they do help keep the species safe from their predators.
•48A. CLAW HAMMER [Carpentry staple] and, depending who's wielding it in a non-functional way..., quite capable of doing a lot of damage/providing a lot of protection. But let's focus instead on the claw component of the avian and ursine variety. Again: OUCH!!! (I feel certain you know this but the claws of the former may also be called "talons.")
•61A. POISON-PEN LETTER [Malicious message]. And you'll find poison everywhere: in spiders, snakes, fruit, plants, mushrooms. What can I tell you? Mother Nature looks out for her own, so be very careful!
If this puzzle isn't a knock-out, a solver could still WARM TO [Grow fond of] it. There's some fun in the cluing: [Result of baby's first spaghetti dinner] for MESS is particularly vivid; ditto [Cluelessness gesture] for SHRUG. Yesterday, we saw verdant and schnoz as fill. Today, [Became verdant] clues GREENED and [Jimmy known as "The Schnoz"] clues DURANTE, whose proboscis was famously immortalized in Cole Porter's "You're the Top":You're a rose,
*Also in yesterday's puzzle. Patrick, were you and Ray in communication when you were constructing these puzzles?
You're Inferno's Dante*,
You're the nose
On the great Durante.
I'm just in the way,
As the French would say, "de trop."
But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!
[Beetle Bailey's outfit] is not his UNIFORM but THE ARMY (his meta-outfit, so to speak). Did you know: "Beetle Bailey" was introduced by Mort Walker in 1950, and Walker is still producing the comic strip? Or that Lois, of Walker's "Hi and Lois," is Beetle's sister? I'm just wondering if Otto, Sarge's anthropomorphic dog, has ever said "ARF!" [Comic strip bark].
Myles Callum's Wall Street Journal crossword, "I'm a PC"
For my money, "I'm a PC" is among the more annoying, jejune commerical catchphrases out there. You may use a Windows machine, but it doesn't mean you are one. That's just insipid. The theme phrases have P.C. initials, but they're livened up via the clueing. Each clue defines the P.C. phrase in two ways, one straight and one jokey. For example, PRINCE CHARMING is [Fairy tale guys? Hexing a pop musician? Whatever! I'm a PC], and the really-not-so-familiar phrase PRIVY COUNCILS is clued as [Royal advisers? Outhouse committees? Whatever! I'm a PC]. If you have to do a "phrases with the same initials" theme, you're best off having some fun with the clues to add some pep to the puzzle.
A couple relative obscurities in the fill—CRESSETS are [Metal baskets for burning oil]. I know PONIARD, or [Slim dagger], but it's an old word. I was also stumped, weirdly, by 4D: ["Major Dundee" star] is HESTON, but I started out with the [Hormel product] being SPAM rather than HASH and thinking I needed the name of the Crocodile Dundee star, which I'm still blanking on.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Circular Reasoning"
Am I missing something here? The circled letters spell out IT IS ALL COMING BACK TO ME NOW. (Wouldn't "it's" sound more natural?) One of the long answers is WEDDING BAND, which is a circle, but the other is the WAITING GAME of vultures, which touches on the circle of life tangentially. There's an ORBITER in the middle of the grid. The three-way checking of squares nudges the constructor towards some compromises in fill—TLAs, partials, foreign words (Latin IN REM, French ANNEE), REMOP, not much in the way of juicy answers. Is there a theme beyond "look, the circled letters spell out something"?
Hmm. I'll probably like Monday's BEQ better.
Gotta run—busy day!
November 04, 2009
Thursday, 11/5/09
NYT 3:41
LAT 2:58
Tausig untimed
CS untimed
Patrick Blindauer's New York Times crossword
I didn't read the Notepad entry for this puzzle, and it's just as well or I would have been sidetracked from the task of answering the clues. I finished the puzzle, then read this: "When this puzzle is completed, one letter of the alphabet will appear 22 times. Shade in its square everywhere it appears. The result will be an image suggested by 36-Across." 36A is INVISIBLE MAN, so there's a hidden drawing somewhere...and look, his torso is at 25D: SSSSSSS, the [1973 horror flick about a doctor who turns his assistant into a cobra]. I should've known SSSSSSS was there for a grander purpose! This now-visible man seems to have a freakishly long torse relative to his limbs. Poor guy. Must be impossible to find jackets that fit.
I'm tired and distracted, so let me resort to a scarcely annotated list:
• 16A. [Canine care grp.?] is ADA, canines being teeth and the ADA being the American Dental Association. I used to freelance for them, you know.
• 18A. ROSES ARE RED is the [Start of a lover's quatrain]. ...Irises are purple. If you're ill-bred, you call it a nurple. Is that how it goes? Looks like a theme entry because it's long, but no. All that's thematic are those symmetrical-in-the-grid Ss.
• 33A. Why isn't this clue [___ wazoo]? UP THE [___ ante] is boring.
• 34A. OSTIA, [Port of ancient Rome], crosswordese, an S where Patrick needed one for the drawing.
• 55A. MONKEES was the [#1 album for 13 weeks in 1966-67, with "The"]. I had BEATLES. Seriously.
• 60A. [Eliminates undesirable parts]...hmm...CIRCUMCISES fits. So does CLEANS HOUSE. "Parts" is a dangerous word.
• 64A. Are you kidding me? [Panties, old-style] were called STEP-INS? Never heard that term before. The Ss are the man's feet.
• 65A. LAE is the [Pacific port where Amelia Earhart was last seen]. I hear Amelia is a boring movie. LAE I know from Kevin Der's record-breaking grid, where it was perhaps the ugliest answer.
• 2D. Robert Randolph and the Family Band miss out here. RANDOLPH is clued as [Air Force base near San Antonio].
• 6D. [19th-century James] is vague. First name? No, last. JESSE James. He should've known better than to rob the Northfield, Minnesota, bank.
• 8D. [Filly] clues LASS. Gag me. "Filly"?
• 21D. RISHI is a [Hindu sage], and the S is the man's hand.
• 38D. ENATE means [Maternally related]. Hoary crosswordese.
• 45D. Showtime at the APOLLO! [New York theater on the National Register of Historic Places, with "the"].
• 51D. MENSA, [Indicator of brightness]. Is there a reason it's not clued [Indicator of social skills]? I don't get Mensa. I liked the newsletter when my mom was a member for a few years in the '70s, but since then? Nah.
Okay, so I lied. That was more than scarce annotation.
Good night!
Updated Thursday morning:
Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "For Your Protection"—Janie's review
For a puzzle that yields theme-fill of a highly industrial nature, this puppy sure has a lot to recommend it. Each of the five theme-phrases is clued identically: [It's worn for your protection]. The five theme-answers are:
•4D. WELDER'S MASK
•18A. HAZMAT SUIT
•25D. KNEE PAD
•27D. CRASH HELMET
•60A. FLAK JACKET
But look how nice and scrabbly the fill is. And there's a lovely assonance thing going when you say the words aloud: mask, hazmat, pad, crash, flak jacket. You can also hear it as well in such non-theme fill as CACKLE [Witch's outburst], AT LAW [Words on a shingle] and the cleverly clued CLARA [Bow on the screen] (so that's a long "o" in "Bow").
I think this may be the first time we've seen E-BOOK clued as a [Kindle download] in a CS puzzle. And it looks like this is the first time ROZ has been clued as [Cartoonist Chast] here. Love Roz Chast's observations on the details of everyday life.
Also love such lively fill as SCHNOZ (with it's lively [Honker] clue), which shares that "Z" with TABRIZ [City in Iran]. Tabriz is Iran's fourth largest city, and Iran sits right across the Persian Gulf from SAUDI Arabia (though today Saudi comes to us by way of the clue [Arabian leader]). Lotta desert land in that part of the world, so thank goodness for the OASES [Places for camels to drink].
Then there's VERDANT [Green] (to keep things fresh) and POOL TOY [Inflatable raft, say] (though I'm not sure a floating raft qualifies as a toy...). When you (or your raft) are [Drifting on the briny], you're ASEA, where "AVAST!" is a [Gob's stopper]. In addition to those two clues, I enjoyed [Not dis] for DAT, [Do a do] for PERM and [All you need, according to the Beatles] for LOVE. (And remember, they're the ones who declared "money can't buy me love!" For guys who sang that they "don't care too much for money," they sure managed to amass quite a bit of it. Ah, well, it was a dirty job and somebody had to do it...)
Xan Vongsathorn's Los Angeles Times crossword
Xan Vongsathorn's debut puzzle was in the New York Times, while his second puzzle (that I know of) comes to us from the West Coast. The theme hovers around four [Non-speaking line?]s, tied together by SILENCE IS GOLDEN, the [Apt adage for this puzzle]. The other four phrases are MY LIPS ARE SEALED, I'M ALL EARS, WORDS ESCAPE ME, and NO COMMENT. Now, they don't all mean exactly the same thing—I won't blab, I'm listening, I can't describe it, I refuse to answer—but they loosely fall under the SILENCE IS GOLDEN rubric. You'll note that although there's a MY, I'M, and ME, there are no repeated words in the theme answers.
TATTLE, or 21A: [Spill the beans], is practically the opposite of MY LIPS ARE SEALED. Any other talking answers in the fill? MEOW is a [Cat call], not a human word. "DUH" and "I'M GONE" are spoken language for people. And OBAMA is clued as [President with a Grammy], for his Spoken Word Book.
Ice cream! [Country where Haagen-Dazs H.Q. is] is, of course, the USA.
I guess we're still in the holding pattern waiting for Thursday L.A. Times puzzles to inch up in difficulty. Or maybe Thursdays will remain Tuesdays and only Friday and Saturday will be tougher? I'm not sure. I'm not finding much to talk about in this puzzle. Well, you know what they say—silence is golden.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Silent Treatment"
Ben puts a different spin on silence, adding a silent letter to each of five phrases to change the meaning but not the pronunciation:
• 17A. [Totally sweet depth-checking gadget?] is a SUGAR PLUMB. Have any of you ever had a sugar plum? I have not.
• 26A. [Architectural piece in "Where the Wild Things Are"?] clues MONSTER JAMB. What is Monster Jam, you may wonder. Monster truck derbies. I always call such events "Truckasaurus" after The Simpsons.
• 39A. Freestyle rap yields FREESTYLE WRAP, or [Improvise with some ribbons and bows?].
• 52A. [Olfactory reward for leading a good life?] is HEAVEN SCENT.
• 62A. A latex dental dam becomes DENTAL DAMN, or [The curse of the orthodontist?].
Miscellaneous fill and clues:
• AREPAS are [Some Spanish small-plate items]. I've never had arepas, but Chowhound knows a few places I might try in Chicago. More South American than Spanish, apparently.
• You gotta know your political figures to nail all of Ben Tausig's puzzles. Don NICKLES of Oklahoma was the [Senate Majority Whip before Reid] and after Lott. How would he fare in a battle with Don Rickles?
• [Soul backing band named for their singer] is the JBS, after James Brown. I did not know this one.
• [Bygone TV award] is the CABLE ACE Award. Didn't people joke about those during the Emmys this fall?
• [Macedonian city where Mother Teresa was born] is SKOPJE, Macedonia's capital. It wasn't called Macedonia when she was born. Ben's original clue, [Mother Teresa's birthplace, today] was impossible for me, so if you got this one, you can thank me. I was guessing KOSOVO based on the old clue. Wikipedia tells me that when she was born, it was called Üsküb, Ottoman Empire. Her family was Albanian, and modern-day Albania and Macedonia share a border.
• [Discount travel agency for students] is called STA. I don't think this existed when I was a student.
• [Tries to look bigger than one is, in a way] clues BSS, short for "bullshits."
• [Due times cinquanta] is CENTI. I gather cinquanta is Italian for 50?
November 03, 2009
Wednesday, 11/4
BEQ 5:30
NYT 10:15 (PG)/4:11 (A)
Onion 4:09
LAT 2:43
CS untimed
Hi, everyone. PuzzleGirl here covering for Orange who is not feeling well At All. Poor thing! I'll check in with her in the morning and see how she's doing, but you might be stuck with me all day. Hey, it could be worse. I'm just going to do a quick write-up to get things started and then you all can have at it in the comments.
Ricky Ini Liu's New York Times crossword
I haven't had to work this hard to figure out a theme in a loooong time. I had No Idea what was going on. I solved in AcrossLite and when I was done, I opened up a text document and typed each theme answer out so I could look at all of them together. I noticed the Os, but thought maybe they needed to be dropped? TRI-CEREAL? Is that a thing? MEN COMICS? Maybe you need to add a W to the beginning to make WOMEN COMICS? ??? I also noticed what felt like a ton of Zs in the grid and wondered if that had something to do with the theme. I was really confused is what I'm saying. Turns out the manipulating that needs to be done is for one of the Os in each theme answer to be changed to an X. So TRIO CEREAL in the grid is a nod to that silly rabbit with his Trix Cereal. OENOPHOBIC was changed from xenophobic. (That seems kind of random.) Other theme answers include:
It all seems so simple now. Sigh.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Will Johnston's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Yard Work—Janie's review
It's autumn. If you live in a northern climate zone, it's time to get your yard ready for winter. If you live in a southern zone, you probably do this all year long. In today's puzzle, Will comes up with four activities to put on your "to do" list (no matter where you live), each of which appears as the first word in the four theme-phrases. Ready to do some work? You're going to:
•17A. Cut the grass, by way of CUT AND DRIED [Formulaic]. Hmm. We just saw this phrase as theme-fill last Wednesday in Paula Gamache's "He's No Gentleman"...
•11D. Trim the hedges, courtesy of TRIM THE TREE [Prepare for Santa, in a way]. This one's confusing. It's the only verbal theme-phrase and the base meaning needs the Christmas context so that we read "trim" as decorate and not tidy/cut. The word tree in the fill is also problematic as there may be trees in the yard. Why not TRIM AND TONE [Popular health-club workout?] or something nautical rather than botanical like "TRIM THE SAIL" [Request of Michael?]? Something that isn't UNCLEAR [Hazy], please.
•25D. Edge the lawn, via EDGE OF NIGHT [Soap opera with 7,420 episodes, with "The"]. Last seen on 12/28/84, it aired for 29 years...
•53A. Prune the bushes, compliments of PRUNE DANISH.
"EGAD!" [Quaint outburst], after all that work, you might want to MUNCH [Chew (on)] something. You might even want a prune danish. Or, depending on the weather, I s'pose, GELATI [Italian desserts] or FLANS [Caramel-topped desserts], and maybe some MINT JULEPS [Derby Day quaffs] to wash 'em all down. Or not...
As was the case with yesterday's puzzle, I found that I enjoyed the non-theme fill considerably more than the theme-fill. To borrow from the puzzle (but not to be SASSY [Impertinent]), it's simply less cut and dried.
Using the fill, I like that I can tie together the idiomatic BAD RAPS [Unjust judgments, slangily] with reasons some folks earn 'em. "She's the SPOTTIEST [Most erratic] employee when it comes to clocking in. Sure, she's always around at TEN A.M. [Coffee break time, for some], but when she goes back to the selling floor, face it: she's [Unambitious to the max] SHIFTLESS! Except for the paycheck, she probably RUES [Regrets] the day she ever walked in here..." I also like the way [...to the max] does not deliver an adjective ending in "-est." Sneaky. Good.
I like the crossing of EGG [It can be scrambled] and EGGAR [Actress Samantha of "Walk, don't Run"]. The "alphabet soup" fill is also nice with T-BARS [Ski tows], MR. T ["I Pity the Fool" star] and B-GIRL [Female hip-hopper]. I almost added A-BEAM to the list, but that word's ABEAM [At right angles to the keel]. Oops... Among today's SIDE ISSUES [Incidental topics] is the B-Girl Scholarship available at St. Paul, MN's McNally Smith College of Music. For some aspiring performer or musicologist, this is very cool and probably GODSENT news [Very timely, as an unexpected blessing].
I'm willing to bet that [Skater Sonja] HENIE wore a LEOTARD [Acrobat's attire] on more than one occasion; and even that a RUSTLER [Range thief] might dare to show up at a RODEO [Cowpoke competition]. Do you suppose there are many yoga-practitioners among the cowboy population? And if so, what are their MANTRAS [Meditation intonations]? Can't say for sure, but I do imagine their favorite song of these yoga-practicing cowpokes would be "Om, Om on the Range"...
Did somebody say "yoga"? I just read this on Twitter: "i've been doing some reading. turns out, the bhagavad gita never mentions yoga pants."
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
I refer you to my L.A. Crossword Confidential post for my thoughts on this puzzle.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Wednesday"
The last square to fall was the D in MONARDA, [Perennial family that includes bee balm and horsemint]. Say what?
Top fill, top clues:
• BABY FAT is [Children's coat?]. Lively entry.
• USED CAR is a Ford [Focus that might be a little off]. My mom bought a Focus about 8 or 9 years ago when there was a new model and regretted it—now she drives a tried-and-true Toyota Corolla with fewer repair needs.
• "RIUNITE on ice, that's nice." Is ["America's All-Time Favorite Italian Wine"] still available, or did it vanish by the '80s?
• ROSIE the Robot? [She works for Mr. J], J for Jetson.
• WOWED 'EM is nice.
• [Cabbage from the Far East] is YEN, "cabbage" being slang for "money."
• "THE TWIST," good song, good fill.
• [Run off] clues XEROX. Wasn't expecting that. Erased ESSEX, in fact, because I figured the beginning X was impossibly wrong for [Run off].
• If you type *headdesk* in an online setting, your readers gather that you're beating your head against your desk, expressing stupidity or, more often, futility. HEADDESK is clued as an [Expression of frustration, in modern day slang]. Just last week, Brendan had FACEPALM in another themeless, and I asked why it wasn't mini-themed with HEADDESK. So here the answer is, a few days later.
Francis Heaney's Onion A.V. Club crossword
Ooh, I love this theme. 63D: ONE is the [Distance forward in the alphabet that each changed letter in the theme entries has moved]. Francis has four pairs of 6-letter words/phrases and two pairs of 5s:
• 18A. [Revealing photos of an old movie actress?] are Fay WRAY'S X-RAYS. One possessive, one hyphenated plural. The X is ONE letter past W.
• 23A. If you ANGLED ANG LEE, you [Set an Oscar-winning director at a slant]. One verb, one full name.
• 32A. [Roasting a blues legend?] clues BAKING B.B. KING, following the structure of the ANG LEE answer. Before I saw that the changed letter was only ONE off, I had BBQING B.B. KING here. (No, I hadn't looked at the crossings.)
• 41A. [Cotton fabric for chadors?] is MUSLIM MUSLIN. Adjective, noun. Muslin takes its name from the French mousseline in turn derived from Mosul, Iraq, where the fabric was made. This pairing may be more apt than I first thought.
• 51A. [Problem for superpowered pickup artists?] is HEROES' HERPES. The square daily newspaper puzzles never seem to have HERPES, do they?
• 60A. BOSOX BOTOX is clued as a [Treatment to keep a ball club looking youthful?]. I wonder if this was the seed entry.
Favorite clues:
• [Gay prostitute customer Haggard] is named TED.
• The [Family name in ___ history] is CURIE for science, FOYT for racing.
• [Trenchcoated antiheroes] are P.I.'S. Wait, antiheroes shouldn't be in a clue when HEROES' HERPES is in the grid.
• [It might require Java] clues an APPLET. Yup.
• [Fought-over leftovers] are an ESTATE.
Miscellaneous points:
• OXO isn't just an [Ergonomic kitchenware brand] anymore—they make office supplies. I have their clipboard.
• ["The world's local bank"] clues HSBC. I have never heard of this.
• [Hip-hop's Das ___] EFX? Never heard of him/her/them. I don't suppose Das EFX is/are German?
• [Matador, e.g.] is a LABEL? Never heard of it.
• XKE is clued as a [Jaguar make]. I think someone recently was saying that nobody ever really referred to it as the XKE, but I just heard Click or Clack, one of the Tappet brothers, invoking the XKE last weekend.
• KAREN O is the vocalist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wikipedia tells me. She's also a ["Where the Wild Things Are" soundtrack artist]. Kosher to have Things in this clue and THINGY as the very next answer?
MGWCC #74
crossword 16:08
puzzle 1:15
hell month is over at matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, and i won't say it ended with a whimper, because this was a very cool puzzle, but it was nowhere near as tough a meta as last week's. the puzzle, "65 to Stay Alive" (a reference to speed limits, no?), asks us to find a five-letter common halloween costume. let's have a look at the theme answers:
pretty nifty, eh? all four of this month's earlier contest answers, in order, are theme answers in the grid this week. now what's this about UNLUCKY ALL MONTH? lest you fear that only solvers who have gotten every meta wrong so far are eligible this week (now that would be a dastardly way of making sure nobody got all five right, eh?), it's a relatively straightforward reference to triskaidekaphobia, the belief that the number 13 is somehow unlucky. so all we need to do is go look at the letter in square 13 from all five of this month's crosswords:
well, this is definitely the most meta of any of the metas, what with referencing both contest answers and crossword answers in four previous puzzles (and itself). but it wasn't so hard, was it? there it is, spelled out in order: SHREK. i can't say i've ever seen anybody dressed up as shrek for halloween, but i could certainly imagine it. my son sam dressed up as a cowboy; his friend grace (also going on 2) was a fairy; and we saw a buzz lightyear in their building. but no shrek.
so how about the crossword? it was tough, all right, but i think not quite as tough as last week's. i did have to guess/google two squares, and went 1 for 2:
what else?
okay, that's all for me. i hope everybody else enjoyed hell month as much as i did...
November 02, 2009
Tuesday, 11/3/09
NYT 4:00
Jonesin' 3:40
LAT 3:04
CS untimed
Barry Boone's New York Times crossword
Chills + malaise + quote theme = "meh." I guess it's a timely electoral theme for New Yorkers, but nobody's going to the polls in Chicago so politics are not much on my mind. It's a quote by MARIO / CUOMO: "YOU CAMPAIGN IN / POETRY. YOU / GOVERN IN PROSE."
One clue really jumped out at me. A couple weeks ago on the Cruciverb-L list, there was a heated discussion regarding nurses, their roles, the way they're clued in crosswords, and whether they have a valid complaint when they don't like a NURSE clue. Well! NURSE is clued as [Surgeon's assistant]. I guess that puts Will Shortz squarely in the camp of nurses = assistants to doctors, though a couple doctors I talked to accord nurses a considerably higher standing.
Lots of longer fill here, balanced by lots of 3-letter answers. Highlights:
• KWANZAA is a [December celebration] that jacks up the grid's interest level with a K, Z, and final double A.
• SNEEZED gets a trivia clue: [What Fred Ott did in the first movie to be copyrighted].
Was 2D: [Flu fighters: Abbr.] supposed to be a tricky clue leading you to enter the incorrect (but technically far more correct) answer, CDC? The AMA's members may treat people with the flu, but the AMA itself, is it doing much on this issue? I haven't heard of anything.
I feel like I haven't seen RAREE in a puzzle in years, though it used to be more commonplace. The clue is [___ show (carnival attraction)]. Dictionary says archaic: "a form of entertainment, esp. one carried in a box, such as a peep show."
Updated Tuesday morning:
Doug Peterson's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Search Party"—Janie's review
The theme of Doug's puzzle today is a pretty straightforward event. The last part of each theme-name or -phrase is also a word that's synonymous with the word search. A choice was apparently made to clue each of the theme entries in a straightforward way as well. Nuthin' twisty goin' on there–which does make this a good puzzle for newbies, or even solvers with more experience who need a "comfort solve" from a master-constructor. What can I say? There's a lot of terrific non-theme fill/cluing, so (as an example) "I'LL BUY THAT" ["Sounds good to me"]. To get the ball rolling, the theme-fill consists of:
•17A. BONNIE HUNT [Daytime talk show host]. Since 2008.
•27A. TRIVIAL PURSUIT [Game in which players collect wedges]. Never played the game, never knew about the wedges. That's a piece of trivia to tuck away.
•47A. CUTS TO THE CHASE [Makes one's points without delay]. This is my fave of the theme fill as it's both active and concise.
•61A. JONNY QUEST [Animated TV adventure series of the '60s]. Nupe. Never heard of it. But with both a "J" and a "Q," what's not to love? And yes, another piece of trivia to tuck away.
More interesting (for my money...) is the aforementioned non-theme fill/cluing. There's the sequential "Down" pair, for starters, opposites GET WORSE [Take a downturn] and SHORE UP [Bolster]. Then, there are those KOPS or ["Keystone" lawmen], who could always be counted on to be part of a MELEE [Free for all]—especially when on a hunt, in pursuit, on a chase or a quest. Did they ever use HOUNDS [Hunting dogs] when trying to nab the PERP [Criminal in copspeak]? I kan't rekall... STEALTH [Cat burglar's asset], however, was never their strong suit. Oh, and from the same early era of film-making, there's The Little Tramp and his CANE [Prop for Chaplin] (who made his first appearance in a Keystone comedy).
[Soup can artist] Andy WARHOL also spoke of everyone's having their "15 minutes of fame." Happily, SARAH [Jazz singer Vaughan] shared considerably more than that with us. I suppose it's all a matter of taste (which is so very subjective) and even context as to whether that's too much time or not enough where the excellent "slacker" actor SETH [Rogen of "Knocked Up"], ARLO [Folk's Guthrie] or [Rock band Mötley ___ ] CRUE are concerned...
HIGH SIERRA [Bogart/Lupino film of 1941] is the one in which Bogart spoke the line: "I wouldn't give you two cents for a dame without a temper." Why does that make me smile so?
But to end on a genuinely "sweet" note, we get "chocolate x 2" today with Roald DAHL [Wonka's creator] (Willie Wonka being the candy-maker in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and (bane of mothers/delight of dentists everywhere) [Count] CHOCULA [(Cereal brand)], making every day Halloween.
David Cromer's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme is THE OUTER LIMITS, and the other three theme entries have outer "limits": BORDER TERRIERS, MARGIN ACCOUNTS, and FRINGE BENEFITS. I think. Or they just begin with words that mean "limit." Usually an "outer" theme will break up a word more than just plunking an S at the end.
For more on this puzzle, I refer you to PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Uh-Oh, It's Magic"
I don't quite get this theme. 1A/17A spell out ANY / CARD FROM THE DECK—[what you're instructed to pick]. What magician is going to use those words, "Pick any card from the deck"? It's "Pick a card, any card" in standard parlance. SHUFFLE SHUFFLE is the [Sound effect now heard after putting it back]. Wait, SHUFFLE isn't a sound at all. "IS THIS YOUR CARD?" is the [Question I hope to be correct]. Wait, it's not that the question should be correct. The answer to the question should be affirmative. "HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!?" is the [Response I'm really hoping to get], but "BOO!" is the [Response that, odds are, I'm probably going to get]. Wait, who boos someone if they successfully pull out the right card? Or is the implication that the person doing the card trick has completely failed to pull it off? Hmph.
Time to do some editing before the virus returns me to the sofa.
November 01, 2009
Monday, 11/2/09
NYT 2:59
LAT 2:54
CS untimed
BEQ tba
Blogging will be inattentive and possibly typo-laden—some sort of virus has taken up residence here, and it may not be the flu but it's more than a cold. Now, who will bring me some cocoa and a blanket?
Andrea Carla Michaels and Kent Clayton's New York Times crossword
Monday maven Andrea has partnered up with a newbie, Kent Clayton, for a crossword I can't show my son. As far as I know, he hasn't yet given up belief in the EASTER BUNNY, TOOTH FAIRY, and SANTA CLAUS. He does, however, enjoy those Ripley's BELIEVE IT OR NOT books. Cute theme.
I like the fill too. FLOTSAM and KARACHI and an ACQUITTAL are fancy for Monday, but I don't think they're too hard for Monday. (If you complain that KARACHI is obscure, then I will complain that you ought to spend some more time spinning a globe.) FROTH is a [Possible sign of rabies]—whew! I haven't got that in my constellation of signs and symptoms. [Gobsmack] is a great clue for STUN, isn't it?
All righty, it's back to the couch for me now.
Updated Monday morning:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "String Quintet"—Janie's review
This puzzle is music to my eyes. Not only is the theme fill most satisfying for lovers of wordplay (almost picking up where Tony's Saturday puzzle left off), but once again, Randy has given us a lot of it: 67 squares in two 15s, which overlap two 12s, and a 13 at the center of it all. Concertmaster, an "A," please, as we tune up and tune in:
•17A. [String instruments made in the U.S.A.?]. There's a pun in the fill here, and it conjures up Emily Litella speaking out in impassioned tones to defend "violins on television." The base phrase here is domestic violence; the theme fill, DOMESTIC VIOLINS—all of which sits atop
•20A. [What a cool rapper might listen to in heaven?]. Not hip-hop music, but its vividly punny relative HIP HARP MUSIC. I bet this would pique the interest of a lot of heaven's denizens—from all segments of the population.
•35A. [Beyoncé song about a lovely string instrument?]. Homophone time here as "Beautiful Liar" becomes (harp relative) "Beautiful Lyre."
•53A. [Movie about how an Indian string instrument is made]. Thank you, Randy, for the flat out groaner as A Star is Born gains an "I" and a syllable to become A SITAR IS BORN. Starring Ravi Shankar, no doubt. The sitar, btw, is not traditionally found in Western orchestration, but pieces for sitar and orchestra do exist—and the Beatles' George Harrison was, um, instrumental in bringing its sound to pop music in such songs as "Within You and Without You." And this fill sits atop
•57A. [How to keep some string instruments from being damaged by rain]. Here we have another homophone, as the good idea when trying to hedge one's bets, to cover one's bases, becomes COVER ONE'S BASSES.
If this fill isn't colorful enough for you, Randy has also provided [Cool and colorful summer treat] SNO-CONES—not to mention RED [Stop signal], YELLOW [Coward's color] and PINKY... just kidding. That's been clued as [Place for a ring]. While my dad wore an understated one almost all of his married life (an anniversary gift from my mom), I confess I now tend to associate pinky rings with people who might be involved in some kind of RACKET [Shady business], or someone involved in CASING ("the joint") [Reconnaissance activity for a criminal]. Call it the "Don Corleone/Tony Soprano Effect"...
Other fill that kept things lively include: the adverbial phrase TO DEATH [Words following bored or scared], SINS for [Deadly septad], RAISIN (and not BANANA) for [Cereal fruit], LUSHLY for [In an opulent manner], ASTUTE for [Sharp], UNIVAC for (one very astute [if large...]) [Early computer], CONSUL for [State Department employee], and—a character I'd not thought about in years—PETUNIA [Porky's girlfriend].
While I question WIT—which I associate with the likes of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw—as the [Talent of Leno or Letterman], the presence of Ms. Petunia in combination with all of this puzzle's highlights, gave me a good TEE-HEE [Chuckle].
And if you aren't familiar with Mozart's string quintets, here's a sample of some music to my ears!
Ten hours of sleep helped. Looks to be a garden-variety bug rather than the flu. I am relieved to be merely coughing and achy.
Pancho Harrison's Los Angeles Times crossword
I filled 71-Across via the Downs (hey, look, the RABBI and ISLAM are coexisting peacefully at the CARD TABLE) so I had to look for TIME's unifying clue after I was all done. The long theme entries are phrases in which both words can follow TIME:
• SLOT MACHINE gets you a time slot and a time machine.
• CARD TABLE gives you a timecard and timetable.
• OFF LIMITS gives you some restorative time off within some time limits.
• PERIOD PIECE (which I would have clued with reference to movies rather than novels) provides a certain time period and a timepiece.
Liveliest answer: MRS. PEEL, ["The Avengers" heroine, to Steed]. Least current clue: SNL is the [NBC show with Baba Wawa skits]. I'm sure a lot of people under the age of 40 have never seen those classic skits, since Gilda Radner left SNL in 1980.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Horsing Around"
The theme's famous horses of fiction and non-. I only remembered about three and a half of the eight horses in the grid:
• [Buddha's horse] was KANTAKA. Buddha had a horse? In his leaner days, maybe?
• MARENGO was [Napoleon's horse]. Byron Walden and I once considered a theme with horrifying recipes like MARE MARENGO, using chicken Marengo's sauce on horsemeat. (Also in the theme: YAK YAKITORI and BEAR BEARNAISE. Yum!)
• [Alexander the Great's horse] was BUCEPHALUS. Briefly wanted this to be BOCEPHALUS.
• In fiction, [Don Quixote's horse] is ROSINANTE or Rocinante.
• [Gandalf's horse] is SHADOWFAX, which is also the name of some '80s New Age music I listened to in my Windham Hill phase in college. No, I'm not proud of it.
• COPENHAGEN was [Wellington's horse]. He had a horse? Oh, yeah, it's in the statue.
• [Xerxes' horse] was STRYMON. Never heard of this one.
• [Chief Sitting Bull's horse] was BLACKIE. Never heard of this one, either.
Rapper to remember for future puzzles: EDAN is the ["Echo Party" rapper]. He must not be too famous or he'd be in more puzzles thanks to those common letters in his name.
October 31, 2009
Sunday, 11/1/09
NYT 9:46
BG 9:37
Reagle 7:53
LAT 7:50
CS 4:09
Big thanks to Crosscan for stepping in to review the Wall Street Journal puzzle on Friday, in addition to his weekly Gaffney/Daily Beast gig. (I haven't had time to look at either puzzle yet. Moving on!) And big thanks to Joon, too, for writing about the Friday BEQ, in addition to his weekly MGWCC post.
I'll be out trick-or-treating with Jango Fett and his friends when the New York Times puzzle comes out, so that part of my post will be hours late and sugar-fueled. In the meantime, there are other puzzles available earlier on Saturday, including this one:
Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "Puzzle of the Month"
Given the title, it didn't take much work to notice that there's a NOV (November) hidden in that first theme entry, CONVECTION OVEN. "Oh, yay," I said to myself. "A boring trigram hidden in the theme answers." But then the further I got into the puzzle, the more and more of these theme entries I uncovered, and the theme grew on me. Look at all the NOVs in there! I circled 16 of 'em, and 12 of them appear as adjoining pairs. To fit in a whopping 16 themers (even if they're not terribly long) without marring the fill is an accomplishment. The whole puzzle has Merl's light touch, too. The only real "Huh?" answer I encountered was 30A: TANI, [Japanese actress Yoko or U.S. astronaut Daniel], but all its crossings were solid.
My list of favorites among the regular clues:
• 84D. [Words after home, not hone] clues IN ON. Yes! The phrase is "home in on."
• 62A. [Part of a closing act?] is a SUTURE.
• 2D. [Hi, in HI] is ALOHA.
• 69D. [Misers, in Milan] are AVARI. I absolutely did not know this Italian word, but I'm guessing it's closely related to avarice.
And now, the theme entries, clued straight except for the last two Across ones:
• 20A. TERRA NOVA is [Capt. Scott's ice ship that means "Newfoundland" in Latin]. Didn't know this one at all aside from putting together the Latin.
• 23A. [It really cooks] clues a CONVECTION OVEN. This one runs under the preceding answer.
• 42A. PORTO NOVO is [Benin's capital]. Geography!
• 53A. [Real-life don Vito] is mobster Vito GENOVESE. The end hooks up with the beginning of...
• 60A. CASANOVA, [Lover-boy], who is stacked together with...
• 63A. BORIS BADENOV, the cartoon [Spy from Pottsylvania].
• 75A. [Singer whose "I Just Wanna Stop" was a Top Ten hit in 1978] is GINO VANELLI. He's partnered with...
• 83A. KIM NOVAK, who was, among other things, a ["Picnic" co-star]. Her AK is atop the RE of...
• 88A. RENOVATE, or [Give a new face]. This answer, TERRA NOVA, and PORTO NOVO all use the NOV in the service of a word root meaning "new." This sort of duplication would normally not be kosher.
• 96A. DIME NOVEL is an [Early paperback]. If you're a buff of vintage paperbacks, you'll enjoy Rex Parker's "Pop Sensation" blog, spotlighting the lurid covers.
Moving along to the Downs before ending with Merl's grand finale pair:
• 16D. RHINOVIRUS is the common [Cold culprit]. Multiple Facebook/blog friends have reported that their kids are sick with H1N1 flu right now. It hasn't hit my son's school—yet. It's coming, isn't it? I'm waiting for vaccination to not entail standing in line for three hours. Hmm.
• 17D. Right beside RHINOVIRUS is NO VISITORS, a [Quarantine order]. Speaking of the flu...
• 72D. [Father Guido Sarducci of "SNL" reruns] is DON NOVELLO. He stands beside...
• 73D. JUDY CANOVA, a [1940s actress known for her yodeling hillbilly roles]. What a claim to fame. This takes us back to the bottom for the closing...
• 120A. [How I hope you don't feel right about now] is IN OVER YOUR HEAD. Hooray for YOUR instead of the standoffish ONE'S. I declare this to be the SethG Tribute Answer.
• 125A. [What I hope you don't need right about now] is NOVOCAINE.
No local anesthetic needed here! Fun puzzle with the discovery of an inordinately large number of theme answers. The theme also helped point me in the right direction a few times, since knowing there would be a NOV somewhere narrowed things down.
Updated Saturday night:
Matt Ginsberg and Pete Muller's New York Times crossword, "Compound Fractures"
All right, guys, now you're just showing off. Intricately wrought theme in which each pair of words overlap by 5 letters to form a fake portmanteau word and you came up with 12 of them and you have the two Down ones somehow intersecting with three Acrosses each? Good one.
I'm not sure if the slowness of the solve relates to theme difficulty or if the rest of the puzzle is also unusually hard. What say you? I had wine and candy for dinner while trick-or-treating, so I can't say.
Here's how the theme plays out:
• 22A. [Eyewear providing hindsight?] are RETROSPECTACLES. The overlapping letters are in bold. I do not need a pair of retrospectacles, as my hindsight is better than 20/20.
• 29A. This clue kept me pondering for a while. [Peanut-loving ghost?] clues an ELEPHANTOM. The pink ones are most common.
• 32A. [Intermittent revolutionary?] is a SPORADICAL. This word applies to plenty of people during their college years.
• 43A. [Rare mushroom?] might be a PSYCHEDELICACY. I was looking for the first component to be a mushroomy noun, but the clue's nouniness is embodied by the second component.
• 56A. [Give up smuggled goods?] clues CONTRABANDON.
• 71A. I bought myself all sorts of trouble by spelling 61D: [Mad man?] as Alfred E. NEWMAN rather than the correct NEUMAN. That impeded my ability to see that [High-school athletic star at a casino?] is ROULETTERMAN.
• 81A. The late, great Les Paul appears as [Noble Les Paul?], a GUITARISTOCRAT. If anyone's a guitaristocrat, this is.
• 99A. This one's almost poetic. PERHAPSODY is ["Maybe" music?].
• 101A. {Dreams that don't die?] are the lovely FOREVERIES.
• 108A. [Bug that never takes a ride?] is a CENTIPEDESTRIAN. This one feels a hair off because the only way to get 5 letters of overlap is to have the plural critters that vanish in the final combo clue.
• 21D. [Like online medical advice for kids?] is WIKIPEDIATRIC.
• 44D. [Vegetable that gives you an emotional release?] is the surreal CATHARTICHOKE.
There's only time and energy for five from the fill:
• 69A. [1989 Madonna hit] is "OH, FATHER" and I have never heard of it.
• 26A. [Game in which a player may be schneidered] clues SKAT, a card game which is now played primarily within crosswords. I know "schneidered" from sheepshead, a card game popular in Wisconsin (birthplace of Les Paul!).
• 16D. [Mettle or metal] clues STEEL, figuratively and literally.
• 90A. [Man's name meaning "young man"] is SVEN.
• 63D. [Opposite of plus] is PETITE in terms of women's apparel sizing. I would have been flummoxed by the clue but I've seen similar ones once or twice recently in other puzzles I've done. (Same with 36A: [Hearing aids, briefly] for PAS, meaning public address systems.)
Nice to see Martin YAN make an appearance. Did you watch 34A: ["___ Can Cook" (onetime PBS show)]? I'd think we'd see him in the puzzle more often, but no. YIN/YEN/YON hog the glory.
Updated Sunday morning:
Robert Harris's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "That Hurts!"
The theme here involves inserting an OW to change the meaning of various words or phrases. For instance, [Rollerblading partner of movie camera pioneer Bell?] is HOWELL ON WHEELS, "hell on wheels" with an extra OW. (Is Bell & Howell really the go-to HOWELL? Not Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island?) [Borders for oval paintings?] clues BOWED FRAMES but lacks any real humor. The base phrase, "bed frame," is flat and so is the concept of a curved picture frame. There were no horrible crossings or anything like that, but nothing in this puzzle really captivated me, and a couple entries (e.g., SEEMER, or [Pretender]) were off-putting. I know for a fact that I'm not in a good mood so it might be more me than the puzzle.
The biggest surprise was at 1A: [Illinois-based brewery], 5 letters? What on earth could that be? Turns out to be PABST. The Wikipedia article about Pabst Brewing Company tells me that it's a holding company that has bought up a bunch of defunct brands and kept them going—Stroh, Schaefer, Schlitz, Lone Star, Old Style, and more. I had no idea.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"
I solved this one upside down, not knowing what the three 15s at the top were from their clues. I tackled the middle and bottom and eventually remembered that I'd get the top 15s much more quickly if I used the crossing clues. Duh! Favorite 15s:
• 17A. JONATHAN WINTERS is great. He's 83 now so no, we don't see too much of him anymore. The clue, ["Viva Max!" actor], refers to a 1969 movie I'd never heard of.
• 36A. The Britney [Spears album of 2000], OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN, is a somewhat dated reference but it's such a goofy title that I think it will remain in the lexicon.
Other clues:
• 34D. [Millionths of a meter] clues MICRA. I thought the plural of micron was microns, but the dictionary accepts both. Scientists use micrometer, abbreviated µm, rather than micron.
• 28A. [Like Mitch Miller, e.g.] is GOATEED. Mitch is 98 years old now, and I'm surprised to learn that he's still alive. His heyday was before I was born, but the Grammy folks gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. I needed a lot of crossings to get GOATEED.
• 58A. [Private meeting] clues ONE-ON-ONE SESSION. If that were a legitimate Scrabble entry, it would get you a mere 15 points.
• 44D. [Heads overseas?] aren't toilets, they're TETES, "heads" in France.
• 54D. [Spain's Victoria Eugenia, familiarly] was called ENA. This is often clued as Bambi's aunt.
Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Travel On"
Like the L.A. Times puzzle, this crossword has an add-2-letters theme—GO this time. Like Merl's puzzle, this one has some stacked pairs of theme entries. And like the other puzzles this morning, nothing grabbed me. Could be me and not the puzzle.
Favorite theme entry: SINGAPORE GOSLINGS, or [Not exactly Peking ducks?].
Less savory answers: OTARU, OSCAN, TWO-D, ABOHMS, U CANT, Heidi BOHAY.
Vocabulary word for the day: EDACITY is [Voraciousness].
Mystery question mark: The clue for MONTANE is [Range-dwelling?]. Because it's mountain ranges as opposed to wide-open ranges? Okay.
