Tuesday

Just a cursory post this morning—

I liked Harvey Estes and Nancy Salomon's HO rebus puzzle in the Sunday NYT, but it took me a few minutes longer than I'd have expected since I'm usually on Harvey's wavelength. Was this puzzle on the hard side, or is it just that I'm not at my best when people are shouting over Monopoly while I'm solving?

I liked the better-late-than-never Christmas theme in today's NYS, with FROSTY and RUDOLPH GIULIANI.

And I enjoyed today's NYT by Lee Glickstein and Nancy Salomon. The theme was on the hard side for a Tuesday, since the theme entries were made up and the clues didn't reference the original phrases at all. The theme would perhaps have been a little more intuitive ffor me if all the hard G's rendered into soft G's were followed by vowels (I and E) that can accompany hard or soft G's (get vs. gem, give vs. gin). Are there words starting with GA, GO, or GU that have a soft G sound?

Also, if you can find the January issue of Games World of Puzzles, pick up a copy. The Frank Longo Jumbo Crossword was especially good this time. There's a special cryptic section that has a fun cryptic crossword (with a center containing no black squares, and lively fill) by Harvey Estes. There are a bunch of Patrick Berry puzzles (I always like the Some Assembly Required format; he's also got an ingenious variety cryptic). And there's a contest puzzle by Mike Selinker that is eluding me for the time being.

Sun. NYT 12:45 (on paper)
Sun. CS 3:43

Mon. CS 3:44
Mon. NYT 2:45
Mon. LAT 2:41

Tues. NYT 4:14
Tues. NYS 3:25
Tues. LAT 2:53Tues. CS 3:11