NYT 16:05
LAT 6:00
CS 3:49
No cut to hide the spoilers for the Saturday post—I haven't figured out yet if Google can really see through the unexpanded post, and I don't have my SiteMeter password saved on my laptop here so I can't check. And this NYT puzzle is one that ought to be just a little more Googleable, don't you think?
I won't be doing the Newsday puzzle for Saturday because there's no printer hooked up to my laptop. Sure, my father-in-law has a computer, but it has Microsoft's Vista on it, and it's like an ugly ripoff of the Mac OS and I can't bring myself to use it.
So. The Saturday New York Times crossword, by Karen Tracey. I'm a big Karen fan in general, but this puzzle? Hated it. Too many icky crossings that relied far too much on lucky guesses or, apparently, slightly broader knowledge than I possess. Was the puzzle impossible? Why, no, of course not. A number of people finished it well ahead of me. Tough for a Saturday puzzle, sure, but not impossible. I'm just not sure it was fair, though, with names crossing names and obscure Indian musical instruments.
All right, so what's got me so cranky? First off, let's take a moment to rant about the applet technology. It's fabulous—but they have got to do something about the messed-up diacriticals. That clue, [Grammy-winning merengue singer Ta??n] is unforgiveable. Will Shortz! Please ask Peter Ritmeester to tend to this! That [___ Tom?] clue (for SAO Tomé) the other week was also unforgiveable. We're paying money to use this applet, and it's not too much to expect diacriticals to show up correctly. Woe to anyone who tries to Google the famous Ta??n—how is that pronounced, anyway?
And now for the cranky-making clues. The [Indian lute] is a SAROD. Raise your hand if you knew that one. Anyone? The D crosses [Cellist who deputed at London's Wigmore Hall at age 16], JACQUELINE DU PRE. Never heard of her. The letter sequence DUPRE is somewhat more plausible as a last name than _UPRE with any other letter, but if there's an Indian lute starting with SARO_, who's to say we're looking at only plausible answers here? I've seen [Cartoonist Segar] in crosswords before—ELZIE is the first name of Popeye cartoonist E.C. Segar. He and the above-mentioned Ta??n merengue musician, OLGA (that's Olga Tañón, I learned by searching Wikipedia for merengue olga), both cross [Shakespearean scholar Edmond], who turns out to be MALONE with the L and O from the crossing semi-obscure names. There are less inaccessible MALONEs and OLGAs out there—would've been nice to make one of them a little easier given ELZIE's relative obscurity. (By the way, if you Google Indian lute, the first hits give you sitar and dotar before you get to sarod. All 5 letters long!)
In the top right corner, we've got a somewhat arbitrary [Size in a lingerie shop], C CUP, which could be A through G, really—and at first I was thinking that lingerie shop had petite sizes like TWO P and SIX P, which didn't do me any favors at all. Below that is [Basse-Normandie department]—who doesn't love those 4-letter French departments? All one can do (barring in-depth French geography knowledge) is wait for the crossings to tell us which one it is. Guess what? There are 11 4-letter departments in France. This time it was ORNE (not OISE or AUBE or AUDE or the others). The next one down is [2004-06 poet laureate Kooser and others]—that'd be TEDS. Below that is [Fluffy, perhaps] for HOUSE PET. Not HOUSECAT. And not an adjective meaning "fluffy." Yes, that corner was also problematic for me. "Surely the long Down clues crossing those were of enormous help?" you ask. Well, the other Acrosses below HOUSE PET also eluded me. There's good old JACQUELINE DU PRE, of course, as well as OZARK the airline, REED clued as [Fen bender] (because, I guess, a reed bends in the breeze and grows in a fen), and the tricky [Holders of shoulders: Abbr.] for RDS (too confusing, what with the C CUP bra and the phrase "over-the-shoulder boulder holder"!).
Getting past the sour taste from those two corners, what did I like? POINDEXTER as the [Stereotypical nerd] is terrific. [Squirts] the noun = TOTS. [Tears] could mean a zillion things other than RACES. PLAN B is a good [Backup] for contraceptive mishaps. [It'll knock you out after you knock it back] is MICKEY FINN (as in "slipped him a Mickey")—easy enough, clever enough. [Cautious people stay on it] = SAFE SIDE—also easy enough. AVAST MATEY is clued [Salt halter]. [Knot] is the vague but dead-on clue for ENIGMA. HE/SHE is the [Inclusive pronoun], differing in only one letter from HESSE, [Where the Fulda flows]. The [Expensive choice for a commuter], GAS GUZZLER, and ["Madame Butterfly," updated], MISS SAIGON, made a great pair of stacked entries—but they didn't help me quite enough with that perfect storm of names. I love SHAZAM, but the '70s kiddie show superhero sort of SHAZAM, not the [Gomer Pyle expletive]. Wrong decade for me, alas. In the corner above SHAZAM, the long entries of COTE D'AZUR, CREPE PAPER on the pi?ata (OK, piñata), and UNDETERRED eventually found their way into the grid, but not soon enough to make the TEDS and ORNE party come together easily.
What's your verdict? Eminently fair but tough, or kinda unfair with the intensity of "you know it or you don't" names mingling together in a mosh pit of empty squares?
Updated:
Ha! There I was, working my way through Robert Wolfe's LA Times puzzle (thanks to Jeff A. for the hook-up), when I encountered the clue [Blogger's entry, maybe], 4 letters. Eventually the crossings revealed it to be RANT. "Wait, that's not fair. I rarely write a post that could be considered a... Never mind." Yes, I ranted above. It's true. This paragraph will be unranty, however. Three 15-letter entries here: the very colloquial STOP YOUR WHINING (["Grow up!"]) and FOR GOODNESS' SAKE (["GEE WHIZ!"]) bracketing the slightly less colloquial but still lovely INESCAPABLE FACT ([Reality that must be faced]). Throw in SLOWPOKES and WOULD-BE and a [Cutie pie] TOOTS (though TOOTS is so retro and sounds like it's meant for an old broad—please do not call me "Toots"), the candidate's WAR CHEST and ALL ALONE. The [Ministerial office] called a PASTORATE is a tad dry. Other clues of note: [It's right before a landing] for the LAST STEP; [Keys on the keys] for pianist ALICIA Keys; [Word with do or to] for HOW; [Common antacid] for BAKING SODA (does anyone use this remedy?); [Flirted with] for the idiomatic MADE EYES AT; [Leeds livers?] for BRITS (those who live in Leeds); [It had the same chassis as a Grand Am] for the Oldsmobile ALERO (a new clue for an extinct car!); [Small hair piece] for LASH; ELISHA [Cook who played Wilmer in "The Maltese Falcon"]; ["Mr. Lonely" singer] for Bobby VINTON ("the Polish prince"!); [Quarreled] for SPATTED (yes, spat is a present-tense verb); and [Damaging sound?] for SOFT G.
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle has a "Cleaning Day" theme with phrases that begin with kinds of cleaning jobs (e.g., VACUUM BOTTLE, MOP-UP DUTY). A number of cute clues: [One for the road?] for CAR; [Level edges] for ELS; [Phone call at 3:00 a.m., sometimes] for BAD NEWS (well, that's not so much cute as accurate); [Went 0 for 50, say] for SLUMPED; and the never-heard-that-one-before ["Holy jumping catfish!"] for EGAD. I'm not up on things like [Computer language iteration], or DO LOOP, which is apparently also called a do while loop.
August 31, 2007
Saturday, 9/1
August 30, 2007
Friday, 8/31
NYT 9:51
NYS 6:32
Jonesin' 4:25
LAT 4:02
CHE 4:01
CS 3:41
WSJ untimed
When I finished Paula Gamache's New York Times themeless, I swear the timer said 9:51—and then nothing happened when I clicked "done," so eventually I clicked it again, and that time it worked. But still: Holy hell! That's about twice as long as a typical Friday puzzle, so either Will has flip-flopped the Friday and Saturday puzzles, or we're just getting an extra dose of challenge today. But Wednesday was an easy Thursdayish puzzle, Thursday was quite Fridayish, so why shouldn't Friday be Saturdayish?
So what took so long? Plenty of wicked-hard clues, clever and twisty clues, clues that mislead you astray. For example: [Shock source, sometimes] is PRICE TAG, as in sticker shock. [Exchange for something you really want?] is a noun, not verb: your RIGHT ARM. An OPENER is a [Handle, e.g.], presumably because a door handle opens things? [Catholic] is the non-religious sense, ECLECTIC interests. [They might just squeak by in a basketball game] are GYM SHOES, rubber treads squeaking on the wood floor. Good ol' ATRA gets a fresh clue, [Grooming brand introduced in 1977]. AUTOS are [Runners with hoods] because cars run and have hoods. I like Poe, but ["Berenice" author, briefly] for E.A. POE is awfully eely; haven't read that one! I had five of the six letters in [Club's cover] and still it took forever to get CHARGE, as in a cover charge at a nightclub. MADAME SPEAKER is the [Parliamentary address?], and I can't believe how long it took me to get beyond the MADAM part. [This, in Thüringen] is from German 101: DIESE. The [Striking figures] are PICKETERS on strike. ["Deal with it!"] for TOUGH isn't so tough, but it is entertainingly colloquial. [Catchers of some ring leaders] looked like it was supposed to be tricky, but it's T-MEN enforcing the Treasury laws. [Hard up] = DIRT POOR. [Void] means the verb, not the noun or adjective: ABROGATE. [Second chance] isn't RE-anything but rather, the colloquial DO-OVER. The [Cardinals' gathering place] refers to neither birds nor baseball: ST. PETER'S Cathedral.
Whew, those were just the tricky or interesting Across clues. Moving along to the dastardly Downs: [Pantheon heads?] for the Latin CAPITA, "heads." THE CRUSADES are [Fights with knights]; no tilting or jousting here. [Cool, in a way] is the verb FAN; how many people had FA and said, "Hmm, must be FAB"? [Hockey player Tverdovsky] is OLEG; I was relieved it wasn't some crazy unfamiliar name or variant spelling. RICHTER is the [Scale developer]. [Skin pics?] and [Skin pic?] are CHEESECAKE and TAT (tattoo). [It has pickup lines] means automaker GMC, which sells pickup trucks. The next clue, [It has many functions], is MATH; you'll note that pickup lines and math have no known association. SPOT REMOVER is the [Cleaning product that might be useful after a party]. A HOSE is a [Spray source] and HESS is an [Amoco alternative]; is Hess defunct like the Amoco name is? I have never ever heard of a HUG-ME-TIGHT jacket, a [Short, close-fitting jacket]. I also slowed myself down by renaming the [Desert Storm reporter] Peter ARNETT (hrm, ARNESS just doesn't help here). [Eyebrow makeup] is a great clue for HAIR, because hair is what eyebrows are made of. Every hair has a ROOT, which is also a [Lexicographic concern]. The noun [Dumps] means PIGPENS, a nice change from crossword regular STY. Did you know there's a RED ELM tree? It's a [Tree with double-toothed leaves and durable wood]. [See, say] is a tough clue for BET—as in "I'll see your blahblah and raise you blehbleh." RIP gets the tough-clue treatment too: [Turbulent water stretch].
Pop culture madness: Wrestler RIC Flair, the Pierce Brosnan volcano movie "DANTE'S Peak" (I saw the Tommy Lee Jones volcano movie, Volcano, instead), young RORY Culkin (older brothers in show biz: Macauley and Kieran), agent ARI Gold from HBO's Entourage (haven't watched it, but I do read my Entertainment Weekly). Speaking of madness, this puzzle groups together SPUTTER, SNARLY, and STORMY; I wonder how many stymied solvers have found themselves sputtering and snarling their way through this delightful (to me) set of hard clues.
I sure do like tough themeless crosswords! They're so crunchy and nutty and chewy and sweet...wow, I want a candy bar right now. A puzzle like this, why, it's almost chocolate-coated. (Mind you, if other applet solvers come along and zip through the puzzle and leave me choking on their dust, then it retrospectively becomes a little less fun. What's that? Why, yes, I am a bit competitive.)
The New York Sun crossword's another joint production of Francis Heaney and Patrick Blindauer. The "Two Against One" title reflects the two different letters that fit into two otherwise identical words in selected phrases. That famous [Boston public works project] at 1-Across, the BIG DIG, is condensed into [B/D]IG, with the crossing answer being actor B.D. WONG. 9-Across, [J/S]ET (jet set) crossing J.S. BACH, also came quickly to mind. The other theme pairs were tougher, though. H.P. LOVECRAFT with [H/P]OCUS (hocus pocus), [P/O]UT (with put out clued as [retire] rather than, say, [douse]) with P.O. BOXES, BREA[K/D] (break bread) with K.D. LANG, [H[I/O]P (hip hop) with I/O ERROR, and [P/M]OWER (power mower) with TEN P.M. Cool twist on the rebus puzzle format! Favorite clues: [Etc., etc.] for ABBRS; [Ruthless] for DOG-EAT-DOG; [Stole], the noun, for SCARF; [Exercise done on a bench] for the piano exercise, ETUDE; [President of the Brooklyn Dodgers a century ago] for EBBETS, presumably the eponym of the Dodgers' old field; [Clicking sounds?] for AHAS; [Knight costar on '70s TV] for Georgia ENGEL; [Five of a kind] for AEIOU; and [2200] for TEN P.M.
Updated:
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword features a quote from Zsa Zsa Gabor: I NEVER HATED A MAN / ENOUGH TO GIVE HIM / HIS DIAMONDS BACK. Highlight: HARRUMPH!
Larry Shearer's 8/17 Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle features historical college trivia—[First American college to win 100 NCAA titles], for example (that one's UCLA). Sheer unknown: [Aztec-___ (American Indian language family)] is TANOAN. Fave clues: [Go from first to second] is SHIFT, as in car gears; it was hard to dislodge thoughts of baseball here.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Bowling for Dollars," has a financial/bowling theme. While one must give props for the double-sided theme, oy, I've had quite enough of bowling themes to last a lifetime. There were some clues I wanted to single out, but I left the laptop to slather the kid in sunscreen, and I've lost my train of thought. There were some good clues, though, including the week's second instance of [Close up on the movie screen] for GLENN. Great minds think alike, apparently.
The Wall Street Journal crossword, "What a Piece of Work," is credited to Marie Kelly, an anagram of "really Mike," a.k.a. Mike Shenk. Each of the theme entries contains a STINT. This puzzle I solved poolside, untimed because I'm interacting with my kid and also, the humidity. And the heat. Good crossword, but the distractions render me unable to discuss the puzzle with any semblance of sentience. So I'll sunscreen up and hop in the pool myself...
Reupdating:
Ah, the pool was refreshing. Last night's storms cooled down the water to a perfect temperature. But then a new round of storms rolled in, so pool time came to an end. And then the storms took a break, but came back again. I'm guessing the water's now a smidgen cooler than I want it, but that will be survivable. It won't actually be cold, in any case.
The LA Times crossword by Jack McInturff pops a PER into the base phrases to create each theme entry. I'll bet the ZIPPER CODE would make for better reading than The Da Vinci Code, and I like the idea of an educational PEPPER TALK. I can't imagine the cops would be able to pull off a BEEPER STING these days—how many people are still carrying pagers in this era of the ubiquitous mobile phone and PDA? A PLUMPER TOMATO sounds tempting, doesn't it? Mmm, tomatoes... An illegal chop shop gets converted into a CHOPPER SHOP—where else would you take your helicopter when it needs a tune-up? I like these theme entries. The P sound is inherently fun anyway, isn't it? Favorite fill entry: ZOMBIE. Fave clue: [Clippers home] for TOOLSHED rather than wherever the Los Angeles Clippers play—this one may have duped many of the local LA Times readers. Not quite sure why MAST is clued as [Spar] when SPAR sits just a few columns to the right.
August 29, 2007
Thursday, 8/30
NYT 5:46
LAT 5:22—late addition to the post
NYS 5:03
CS 4:14
I am going to mentally subtract a little time from my NYT applet solving times while I'm on vacation and using a browser that refuses, no matter how politely I ask, to let me jump to the next entry with the tab key. Am amazed I didn't nod off during the puzzle, considering I've been up since 4 a.m. Eastern time, over 18 hours now. Sure, there's an 18-Hour Bra on the market, but that doesn't mean that an 18-hour day isn't too long. Although what do I know? Maybe that bra makes all the difference. Maybe it infuses caffeine through the skin.
The Thursday New York Times puzzle by Vic Fleming and Bruce Venzke had some heavy-duty Friday vibes, didn't it? Sure, there were four theme entries—interlocked 15-letter entries starting with WHO, WHAT ("WHAT IN TARNATION?!?"), WHEN, and WHERE. (Why? Because crosswords are fun.) But they were interlocked in a themeless puzzle sort of way, and the grid had plenty of wide-open spaces much like a themeless puzzle.
Favorite clues: [Seinfeld's "sworn enemy"] for NEWMAN; [Vicious sorts] for PIRANHAS; [Sterile, in a way] for NEUTER; [Gore follower] for TEX (as in Gore-Tex); and [Gentleman of the court] for Arthur ASHE. I also enjoyed the literary references: VLADIMIR, [One of the men waiting in "Waiting for Godot"]; Bob AMES, [young man in Dreiser's "Sister Carrie"]; ENID, the [Tennyson woman called "the fair"]; and Uriah HEEP, [Mr. Wickfield's clerk, in literature]. I learned a few new things: Debussy wrote an "Air de LIA," which you can listen to here; there's a VEAL Orloff in addition to veal Oscar; there's a children's author/photographer named ARLENE Alda, whose books look fantastic and I want to know why nobody tipped me off to their existence; MURIATIC acid is the old name for hydrochloric acid; and a NIB can also be a [Pointed extremity]. I won't LIVE A LIE: this puzzle also has a bunch of quasi-crosswordese entries that may be most vexatious for newer solvers. But three decades into my puzzling avocation, I am not put off by the AARE and YSER, SRI and DAH, EERO and RHIN, ESSO and NISAN. (And of course, this lover of contemporary pop culture knows who NIA Long is and, in fact, just spotted her last night on an aged rerun of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, portraying Will Smith's girlfriend.)
Steven Ginzburg's New York Sun crossword, "Self-Reflective," bundles a set of phrases made of letters that share a reflective symmetry. The clue for the last of these, OKEECHOBEE, says, [Florida lake in which you could view the unchanged vertical reflections of 18-, 28-, 35-, 45-, and 54-Across]—and indeed, DIXIE CHICK, KICKBOXED, and two others are all composed of letters that look the same right-side-up and upside-down. Favorite clues: [Crawl out of one's skin?] for MOLT; [Put one's foot into someone else's mouth?] for KICKBOXED; [One intimately involved with the spirit world] for SOT; [Pole vault metal?] for the Polish currency unit, GROSZ; [Sign of fall] for SCORPIO; and [Georgia, once] for COLONY (not SSR for a change!).
Speaking of OKEECHOBEE, my husband and I thoroughly amused ourselves today with Florida place names I saw on the map. We aren't too far from the Withlacoochee State Forest, so we're contemplating buying a can of huitlacoche and leaving it in Withlacoochie, while singing 2 Live Crew's "Pop That Coochie." (What can I say? It was a longish drive.)
Updated:
Well, I don't remember my Cruciverb.com password, so I can't get the LA Times puzzle in Across Lite this week. The CrosSynergy puzzle's by Patrick Blindauer today. The "Freudian Slip-ons" theme entries all have an ID tacked on, changing the meaning. Yo-Yo Ma the cellist becomes the YO-YO MAID; Special K cereal, SPECIAL KID; ho-hum, HO HUMID; car bra, CAR BRAID (the iffiest and/or hardest to figure out for me); and the down-South DIXIE CUPID. I surely never knew that [Spock's father] was SAREK. Highlights: ZADORA with Pia in the clue rather than vice versa; [Guy in charge of a spinning wheel] for PAT SAJAK; BABY TALK; and SKITTISH.
Updated again:
Dan Naddor's LA Times puzzle has an Across Lite notepad entry providing the diagonal clues (yes, the diagonal clues). There are four 15-letter theme entries that all criss-cross in the center square, all clued as [Cross-country trip #1], [#2], etc.: ST CLOUD TO AUSTIN going from north to south, SAN JOSE TO DURHAM traveling west to east, SEATTLE TO NAPLES going NW to SE, and ANAHEIM to BOSTON going SW to NE. You might think ST CLOUD TO AUSTIN isn't truly cross-country, but there's no central state north of Minnesota or south of Texas. Yes, there's fill like OOOH (crossing TO in three directions, so three Os in a row were unavoidable) and a Roman numeral, but most of the words in this grid intersect with at least one of the theme entries. There's even room for a quartet of 9-letter entries (the tasty TV ANTENNA and "THAT'S A LIE," plus SIGHTLESS and FLIES SOLO), one FIEND (clued as [Evil sort]—frankly, I'm hurt), ADVERB with a great clue ([Again or anew], absolutely tricking me into trying AFRESH), STYX and NIXON meeting at the X, and the word SILVA, clued as [Trees of a region]. Flora and fauna get all the attention, but who doesn't appreciate these types of words? I do pay attention to the silva when I travel, but never manage to track down a "Trees of England" or "Trees of Florida" book to tell me what those mystery trees are. Anyway, congratulations to Dan Naddor on a cool four-way intricate geography theme! (And thanks to Matt for tipping me off to this crossword.)
August 28, 2007
Wednesday, 8/29
NYS 5:03
NYT 3:30
All righty! Our flight to Florida leaves in less than 10 hours, and we have to finish packing and get some sleep. We're taking a wireless router and a couple laptops, so I ought to be able to keep up with the crosswords and the attendant blogging, but I might skip some puzzles along the way. It'll be a low-key vacation—staying at my in-laws', swimming in the pool, vegging out.
Tony Orbach's New York Sun crossword, "Give It a Whirl," has a diamond in the grid's center in which THE EYE OF THE STORM is spelled out. (The Across Lite notepad gives that spiraling entry a clue, [Safe spot in this puzzle?]. There are two straight-across theme entries, HURRICANE CARTER and a BROOKLYN CYCLONE. I'm dizzy! Favorite clues: [Link letters] for the resolutely non-golf HTTP; [Best alternative?] for the sign-off YOURS; [Fuzzy navel ingredient?] for LINT; [Bug exterminator?] for TECHIE and [Terminal person?] for USER; [Meet] for RISE TO, as expectations; and [Hot spot?] for a spot of TEA. I didn't know the [2002 hit for Cam'ron], but just learned that the lyrics for "HEY MA" are...questionable.
Jayne and Alex Boisvert collaborated on the New York Times puzzle, which surprises us with a rebus a day before Thursday. The four long theme entries contain [THUMB]s, as do their shorter crossing words. A lovely batch of phrases: [THUMB]S ONE'S NOSE, the Rolling Stones' "UNDER MY [THUMB]" (holy cow, that song came out the year I was born??), [THUMB] THROUGH, and OPPOSABLE [THUMB], crossing TOM [THUMB], a [THUMB]NAIL sketch, a SORE [THUMB], and [THUMB]S UP, which has been in the news this week. As a little bonus, there's also a GREEN thumb, or the word GREEN by itself, anyway. The grid gets two more thumbs up for fairly Scrabbly fill (BORAX, FIJI, Q-TIP, ZONED out, TRINKETS) and for the low number of 3-letter answers.
August 27, 2007
Tuesday, 8/28
Onion 6:10
NYS 4:54
Tausig 4:48
LAT 3:12
CS 2:51
NYT 2:48
A few days ago, Rick from the What in the Cornbread Hell blog posted his analogy between stone carving and crosswords. (Sneak preview: The Saturday Times puzzle is fine marble.) Rick may cast mild aspersions on Monday and Tuesday puzzles, but this week's Tuesday Sun puzzle has some clues that are as smooth and hard as marble.
At first I thought Alan Arbesfeld's New York Sun puzzle, "Tripling," had a theme in which each long entry contains GIN twice—but then when all was said (well, not aloud) and done, I saw that it was triple-ING, or ING appearing three times in a row, as in BRING IN GINGRICH. That the constructor compiled four 15-letter phrases that fit this theme is impressive, but I was more pleased with the clues. These four clues were absolutely terrific: [Mac and cheese lead-in] for BIG (Big Mac, big cheese, great clue!); [Mobile home?] for a baby's CRIB; [Hit Fox series since 2000] for CSI, presumably referring to CSI actress Jorja Fox rather than the Fox network, since it's a CBS series; and [Close up on the silver screen] for GLENN Close, with a Saturday-trickery vibe to them. And it's only Tuesday! I don't know what we did to deserve such a treat so early in the week. I also liked [Words before and after "what"] for IT IS (two takes on "it is what it is" here and also here); [Affirmed, e.g.] for a race HORSE; and [Thing purchased before having a ball] for a ball GOWN. Fill highlights: LAVERNE from Laverne and Shirley, VIRAGOS, SUNBURN, and BLURB.
Linda Schechet Tucker's New York Times crossword has an HERB GARDEN theme, with SAGE ADVICE, BASIL RATHBONE, and MINT CONDITION. Plenty of longer fill entries, too. Why don't I know ROGER BACON? At least I do know the OUTER EAR and ASK AROUND and "BOY, OH BOY." There are also a fair amount of those mainly-known-to-crossworders words, like RIANT ([Laughing]); Napoleon's [Isle of exile], ELBA; ADLAI Stevenson; and ENTR'acte. But a savory theme!
Updated:
Ben Tausig pulls double duty this week with both the Onion A.V. Club crossword and his regular Ink Well/Chicago Reader puzzle. It took me far too long to suss out the theme in the Onion puzzle: AN ENDLESS SUMMER hints that END has been removed from each of four theme phrases. BOOST was clued as [Nutritional beverage recently sued for causing priapism]; huh, I hadn't heard about that. Zippy entries: the I.T. GUY, tha SHIZNIT, "SPARE ME."
Ben's Chicago Reader crossword is "Giants of the Interstate"—those crazy oversized replicas of things like an OFFICE CHAIR. Raise your hand if you didn;t know that CSS is a [Language used with HTML].
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy puzzle's easy. "Don't Do That Any More" contains four theme entries that start with words that can follow STOP. I have never heard the term stop street, though.
Jim Holland's LA Times crossword features four verb phrases in which the verb can also mean a noun that's an item of clothing: SLACKS OFF ON, e.g. Fill I liked: COCKSURE, GO TO SEED, CAJUN, KIND OF, LIE LOW.
"Roman Holiday": The Second Sunday puzzle
Last weekend's Second Sunday puzzle in the New York Times is a Mike Shenk creation that was unveiled at last month's National Puzzlers' League convention. There are clues for 25 words or phrases from which all the Roman-numeral letters (M, D, C, L, X, V, I) are removed, with the remaining letters, in order, spelling another word or phrase. The challenge is to figure out what the starting and ending words/phrases are, given the sum of the Roman numerals subtracted in the process.
The example given was:
Deuce, often – 1151 = Military conflict — WILD CARD/WAR (ILDCD = 500x2 + 100 + 50 + 1)
I've got 22 of the answers, but three of them have thus far refused to show themselves to me. Anyone have subtle hints for these?
2. Idleness – 108 = Dapper
3. Motor oil brand – 111 = Steak sauce brand
16. Part of the year during which classes are held – 1150 = Large marble
Wait, I just figured out #16. Still at a loss for #2 and #3, though.
August 26, 2007
Monday, 8/27
CS 5:02
NYS 3:22
NYT 3:16
LAT 2:45
Boy, it's been one of those days. Beautiful day, but the sunny side of that taxi was a tad roasty, and the open window was whooshing my hair around too much, so I asked the driver to turn on the AC (per the passenger's bill of rights, I can ask that). And the cabbie tried to argue that it was plenty cool! I know it's nice out, but I feel too warm in your cab anyway, sir. Then we got to the movie theater, and while my husband and son bought snacks, I went in to find three seats together. Alas, there were no threesomes outside of the front rows of non-stadium seating, and we do like the stadium seating. There was a couple sitting in the first stadium row with two seats open on either side, so I scooched in and quietly asked if they'd mind moving in one seat. "We're watching the movie!" the man hissed in reply—during one of the first trailers, which, technically speaking, are not "the movie." And then at dinner, the waiter was fantastic but didn't ask if we wanted dessert, and does it sound like I could've used the chocolate soufflé cake by then? I tell you, the world was out to get me today.
At least I liked the movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, all right. Not my favorite of the Potters, but pretty good. And who doesn't like a loathsome character whose surname is a homophone for "umbrage"?
Quick! Call the exterminator! Steven Ginzburg's New York Times puzzle has a couple ANTs in each of the three theme entries, along with some NITS near the middle of the grid and the theme-defining word ANTS at the bottom. The middle theme entry, ANTIOXIDANT, is hitched to the top and bottom theme entries by 11-letter fill, ISAAC ASIMOV and CLASS ACTION. (My husband and I were just chatting about the Niketown class action lawsuit recently decided in favor of the employees, including the inspirational pair described in this Trib article.) What do you think of the TWO X TWO entry, clued as [Four]?
The New York Sun puzzle, "Head of the Animals," is by Pancho Harrison. It's got EYES, TEETH, NOSE, EARS, BRAIN, and JAW, so somewhat reminiscent of the Sunday NYT, only they're head parts from certain animals. We've got the piscine lenses called FISHEYES, cervine BUCKTEETH in need of orthodontia, porcine HOG NOSE tools, canine DOG-EARS marking a page, the avian BIRDBRAIN, and the...what's the adjective? Also a cervine thing, the Canadian town of MOOSE JAW (locals are called Moose Javians, Wikipedia tells me).
So both of those puzzles double up on something thematic—two ANTs and not one in the NYT, and animal/head part combos in the Sun. Twice the themed goodness at no extra cost!
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If you like to do battle with Bob Klahn's cluing style, don't miss today's CrosSynergy puzzle. The theme, alas, is a quip, but the clues will give you a Monday workout.
Tracey Snyder skews maternal in the LA Times crossword, with a MA/MOMMIE/MAMMA/MOTHER theme.
Speaking of cluing style, Patrick Merrell has written up a list of crossword clue rules. If you're newish to crossword solving, you'll want to read Pat's post and make about 20 mental notes to remember when solving.
August 25, 2007
Sunday, 8/26
NYT 11:28
BG 10:10
LAT 9:43
PI 8:04
WaPo 7:01
CS 4:18
Strange thing, that. Last night I overimbibed and still finished the Saturday Times puzzle about 15% faster than Byron Walden, my NYT applet benchmark. Today I spent 12 hours with my son, two nephews, and assorted kids (and plenty of grown-ups) at the Museum of Science and Industry, and I finished the Sunday puzzle about 25% slower than Byron. Sheesh, I probably shouldn't drive after spending that much time with young children. Clouds the noggin!
The New York Times puzzle, "Getting Ahead," is credited to two constructors, Andrew Greene and Craig Kasper, but Craig let me know that he and Andrew had two other collaborators, Todd McClary and Jeffrey Harris, who would perhaps be listed as co-constructors if the byline had enough room. This marks Andrew's debut, and if you happen to take any photos of people solving this puzzle, he'd love to get a copy. The theme of the foursome's puzzle is getting a head into the grid: The circled squares spell out facial/head features in the appropriate places. HAIR atop SCALP over the BROWS, a pair of EYES with vertical EARS just past them, a NOSE in the middle, and LIPS and CHIN holding the whole thing up. These 10 body parts are contained within long "theme entries," unrelated but for the inclusion of facial features. And look, over there at 80-Across—somebody's got a TOE dangling from an EAR. (Here are some badger toe bone earrings to complete the puzzle.)
What took me longer than usual? Well, that whole 1-Across corner fought me, for one. The [Toddler's mealtime accessory] is a BOOSTER CHAIR, but somehow having a 7-year-old means I've wiped the slate clean of toddler memories. The cross-referencing of 1-Across to 7-Across, which in turn referenced 1-Across and 61-Across, was kind of a nasty trick. (The EMBLEM of the IMAC is an APPLE.) The [Steve Martin romantic comedy] killed me, too—I thought of ALL OF ME and ROXANNE (but not THE JERK) when the 7-letter movie title needed was L.A. STORY. Ack! Cluing EBB as a noun ([Point of decline]) and sprinkling in BORAXO ([Heavy-duty hand soap]) and MOORAGE ([Dock payment]) didn't help that corner fall easily.
Favorite clues: [Crawl space?] for PUB; [Safari, e.g.] for WEB BROWSER; [Knight time?] for YORE; [___ Rose] for AXL; [Worth trying?] for ACTIONABLE, as in giving cause for legal action (here is an entertaining rant about the word being shanghaied by corporatese types); and [Subj. follower] for PRED. (short for predicate, as learned from Schoolhouse Rock's "The Tale of Mr. Morton"). Why is a KAZOO a [Skiffle instrument]? Skiffle is a "type of folk music with a jazz and blues influence, usually using homemade or improvised instruments."
Unfavorite aspects: ACIDY and RETAG are the kind of words that may appear at the end of a dictionary entry for the main word, in a fat and comprehensive dictionary, but don't get much use in the language. They're thisclose to being "roll your own" words. BLARNEYED ([Persuaded with flattery]) as a verb, also not as common as the noun blarney. That word and HEYERDAHL ([Noted explorer of Polynesia]) contain EYEs and the A of the crossing EARs. [Defense contractor whose stock symbol is the same as its name] is much less fun than Cousin Itt when it comes to ITT clues. I didn't know [Creatio ex ___ (Christian tenet)]; here's a definition of creatio ex NIHILO.
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Henry Hook's onlineBoston Globe puzzle, "Takeout Menu," strips the theme entries of a word in the clue, leaving an incomplete answer. Thus, [Thrill-seeker, out of tune?] is soldier of fortune minus tune, or SOLDIER OF FOR. Most obscure clue/answer, for me: [College basketball's Coach of the Year Award eponym] for Henry IBA, a complete unknown to me. (I wasn't following Oklahoma State hoops action during my toddler years, nor before I was born.) It's a tad surprising that this name doesn't find its way into crosswords more often. Two-thirds vowels?
Harvey Estes' themeless CrosSynergy puzzle, is packed with lots of colloquialisms, so it's a fun solve.
Gail Grabowski's syndicated LA Times puzzle, "In Reverse," adds BACK to the end of each theme entry, since BACK can change the meaning of the second part of each theme entry. I was fooled by the first theme entry, DIAMOND CUTBACK, because diamondback is also a meaningful word, but actually, the theme hinges on diamond cut and cutback. (Unless, that is, chicken back and jelly back are meaningful entities...)
Robert Doll's Washington Post crossword, "I Spy," has seven theme entries starting with spy-type words, like SECRET (INGREDIENT), UNSEEN (DANGER) and CRYPTIC (CROSSWORD). Nice theme, and a super-smooth, easy solve.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer offering, "A Kinder, Gentler Puzzle," puns on nine violent phrases to make them more palatable. For example, Give 'Em Hell, Harry morphs into GIVE 'EM HELP, HARRY, and barroom brawlers no longer have blood on their hands, they have spilled BUD ON THEIR HANDS.
Posting experiment
Okay, I'm not convinced that Google can see the stuff inside my posts now. So let's try this: The Saturday post will not have a jump cut and will already be expanded.
If you want to see some older posts and avoid Saturday spoilers, just cover the left side of your screen as you scroll down to the sidebar listing of archived posts or to an older post.
Here's a little spoiler space for you:
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And if it turns out that Google has forsaken me no matter what I do, then screw 'em.
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There's the Saturday post down there...
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August 24, 2007
Saturday, 8/25
NYT 7:09
LAT 5:32
Newsday 4:58
CS 3:38
My friend Amy (not to be confused with me) took me out to celebrate my birthday tonight. The strawberry margaritas on the rocks were plentiful, and the inebriation remains extant. But I tend to find the wavelength in Myles Callum's crosswords, and this Saturday's New York Times puzzle is no exception. There were just enough complete or partial gimmes ([Comic Boosler] is ELAYNE, [Soap actress Kristen and others] is ILENES, ["What's Going On" singer] wa Marvin GAYE, [Roy Rogers' surname at birth' was Leonard SLYE, the [Money machine mfr.] NCR, and Mary and Rhoda's friend Phyllis was, of course, played by CLORIS Leachman; [Pier grp.] was IL_ {ILA} and [New Wave singer Lovich] was LEN_ {LENE}) to flesh out answers with leading patterns of letters to help (when one sees *****DYAN* and the clue relates to a [Little redhead], can it be anything but RAGGEDY ANN?), and just enough misleading clues that I caught the wavelength for.
Yeah, so, I enjoyed this puzzle, but I may have a headache in the morning, and if so, I will blame the crossword. (Nothing personal). Favorite clues (some of which partner with terrifically colloquial entries): ["That may be true but..."] for "THE THING IS"; [When a procrastinator tends to something] for ANOTHER DAY (world-class procrastinator here); [It's built for a trial] for CASE; [Shot putters' supplies?] for SERUMS; [Title locale of five 1980s films: Abbr.] for ELM ST; [Chic] for A LA MODE (and doesn't ice cream make anything more stylish?]; [No-nonsense cry] for "I MEAN IT!"; Stephen [King's second] for SALEM'S LOT; [Diamond, e.g.] for STONE (as in gemstone); [They're thick] for IDIOTS; [Ones going head to head] for RAMS (started with FOES here); [Part of a rebel name] for Robert E. LEE; [Puppet glue-ons] for the delicious entry, GOOGLY EYES; comedy [Routine responses?] for HAHAS; [Response to "I had no idea!"] for "NOW YOU KNOW"; [Cry "nyah, nyah!"] for RUB IT IN; [Engagement breakers] for CEASEFIRES; [Clammed up] for the short and sweet MUM; [Felix, e.g.] for TOMCAT; the doubling-up of [Like some instruments] for REEDY and SURG (abbr. for surgical).
Nice to see the UTNE READER and ORONO, MAINE promoted beyond the quasi-crosswordese UTNE and ORONO standalones. Who the heck is [Italian tenor ___Schipa]? This guy named TITO, and apparently he could rock a hat. Two biblical clues I didn't know: [Son of Elam whose name means "God the Lord"] for ELIAH and [God commanded him to marry a harlot] for HOSEA. Having never been a Boy Scout, I was totally guessing that the [Arrow of Light earner's program] was WEBELOS. I also had no idea that ESME was the [Saki story whose title character is a hyena].
Updated:
Bonnie Gentry's themeless LA Times crossword was blessed with two wide-open corners hitched to the rest of the grid by 15-letter answers. Phrases I liked in the answer grid: LET IT GO, TOO SOON, WING IT, SHOPS AT, DRANK IN, and LAY INTO. My son Ben doesn't have any K'NEX building toys, but we have quite a collection of Legos lying fallow. Ever since that Seinfeld episode, the Chrysler LEBARON has amused me. Favorite clues: [Demoted, in recent lingo] for the neologism PLUTOED; the misinterpretable [Let off] for PARDON; [Animal, vegetable or mineral] for NOUN (aren't those fun, the clues that call for an answer like VERB or NOUNS by listing two or three examples?); [Starting point] for WOMB; [Fruity quaffs, informally] for ZINS (Zinfandels); and, because I like her, [Emmy-winning comic Sykes] for WANDA.
Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper" has lotsa goodies. Now, ALPHA MALE ([Leader of the pack]) and NERO WOLFE (nice clue: [Stout fellow]) appear in opposite corners of the grid, but I have no idea if they're intended as a minitheme. Is Nero the alpha male of the Wolfe pack? I always like to see Orange variations in the grid (ORANGE SODA here) because, let's face it, I'd have to get far more famous for my last name to make it into a crossword ("Middle name of ex-president of Nauru" is a bit of a stretch). ORONO, MAINE gets classed up with the addition of the state name to a crosswordese college town—just as it did in today's NYT crossword. The last square I figured out here was the crossing of the [Fictional phantom] at 6-Down with the ["Dukes of Hazzard" character]—I opted for DUKE, which, hello, is already in the clue. (Brain freeze!) It was LUKE Duke crossing Jacob MARLEY, of course. Favorite clues: the looks-like-a-verb [Calls to action] for RED ALERTS; [Less windy] for TERSER because, frankly, we had enough wind in Chicago on Thursday, and yes, I know they call it the Windy City, but not because of 70 mph winds; and [Cranium feature] for SINUS, because my kid has a durable sinus infection that seems to be laughing at the antibiotic.
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Tattoo Review," has four theme phrases that start with popular (?) tattoos. My cousin's wife has a small BUTTERFLY on her ankle. And my cousin? A Ralph Lauren polo player logo on his upper arm. Me, if I ever got a tattoo, I'm thinking a 10x10 crossword grid, partly filled in, or maybe a 15x5 grid, easier to play around with the fill.
August 23, 2007
Friday, 8/24
NYS 6:45
LAT 5:32
NYT 5:16
Jonesin' 4:15
CHE 4:32
CS 3:59
WSJ 8:16
Whoo! Nothing like a four-hour-plus power outage to make one appreciate electricity and all the nifty machines that run on it. Chicago and environs got smacked with some ferocious winds this afternoon—70 mph, I heard, and I believe it. Never have I seen so many trees broken or wholly uprooted. Alas, the mulberry tree on my block, a summertime snacking favorite, was yanked out of the earth. At least that one didn't end up in the street like plenty of other trees. A nearby highrise lost the roof over its (roughly) twentieth-floor swimming pool. The roof paid a visit to Lake Shore Drive, which mucked up traffic before and during rush hour. That highrise is next door to Ben's school, which saw two locust trees uprooted in one of its playgrounds. And a small picture window from the ninth floor of the building across the street from me somehow was yoinked out of its frame and dashed to the ground (fortunately missing people and property below). I am astonished that ComEd was able to restore electricity to my neighborhood so soon, given the widespread nature of downed trees and electrical lines.
Patrick Berry's New York Times puzzle is a themeless one with 68 answers. Lots of long phrases and a few long single-word answers (fairly low on the "roll your own" word quotient—UNCONSOLED and INARTISTIC are crafted with prefix action), a meaty chunk of white space in the middle of the grid with long answers radiating out from it, ambitious interlocking of long answers—and good clues for both long and short answers. Two IS_C guys in the grid: ISAAC HAYES, the [Soul singer who is also a coronated king of Ghana], and ISOCRATES, [One of the "10 Attic orators"]. (Quick! Name the other nine!).
Favorite clues: [Drop a few positions, maybe] for AUTOMATE, as in automating grocery store checkout and dropping employees; [Red line?] for ARTERY; [Overprotect] for COSSET, a word I should use more often (along with BEASTLY, clued here as [Very disagreeable]); [It was good for Sartre] is the French BON; [Bad time for a tropical vacation] is RAINY SEASON, though Hawaii, the Caribbean islands, and Mexico all remind us that hurricane season isn't so great for tourism either; the basketballish [Pass under the basket, maybe] for ASSIST; [It may be bid] for ADIEU; [Stocking stuffer] for SANTA
[Mystery author Dexter] is COLIN Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse mysteries, which I've heard of even though I didn't recall the author's name. Did you know [What stare decisis upholds the validity of]? It's CASE LAW. What [Dog in Disney's "Cinderella"] is BRUNO? I don't remember a dog. So, TOP GUN was the [Highest-grossing film of 1986]? That's a shame (never did see the movie); here are the movies it beat out. Two bits of educational trivia: TWEED is a [Fabric with the same name as a Scottish river], and BRIE is a [French district that lent its name to a foodstuff]. I'm not crazy about [Near the bottom of the drawers?] for INARTISTIC, though—it seems to overreach.
Other entries I liked: EAST GERMANY; the phrases HAS NO IDEA and RECONCILED TO; COMPANY MEN who don't necessarily work for SNAPPLE; CHERIE Blair. Not much Scrabbly vocabulary in this grid—as you'll see below, the other Patrick B. hogged up all the uncommon letters.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "The Dr. Is In," plays with that guy whose name is quite crossword-friendly: Dr. Dre. (Anyone else see that '93 movie, Who's the Man? Denis Leary's character, a cop, rags on Dre for calling himself a doctor without having gone to medical school, which...he's got a point. What are Dr. Pepper's credentials, anyway?) The theme entries incorporate an extra DRE, so the S.S. Minnow from Gilligan's Island becomes a DRESS MINNOW, a [Fish to wear to formal events?]. (Cute extra: Another small fish, a GUPPY, is right beneath that entry.) CLASSIFIED DREAD is clued as [Systematically categorized one's anxieties?], and [What people had to repeat to Freud?] is I DREAM, I SAID (playing on a Neil Diamond song.
Two corners contain bricks of 8-letter entries, such as CHIPOTLE, the LOG CABIN Republicans, AL CAPONE, and a SOREHEAD. Favorite clues: [Guy who cuts you off in traffic, e.g.] for A-HOLE; [Big wheels] for SEDAN (though a sedan isn't always big—Ford Focus, anyone?); [Crab in a can?] for OSCAR the Grouch from Sesame Street (the muppet I always identified with the most); [In need of relief, in a way] for GASSY; ["Your fly is open" noise] for AHEM; and [Word repeated after "here"] for KITTY. [Wireless carrier formed in 2005] is HELIO, which I've seen a magazine ad for but know nothing about. I didn't know that Kalpen MODI was Kal Penn's real name; he was one of the stars of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. (Sequel due out next year!) ALAS is clued as ["___, Babylon" (1959 post-apocalyptic novel)]; hey, I read the 1979 edition of that book during my adolescent sci-fi dalliance.
Patrick Blindauer's New York Sun crossword offers anagrams of playing cards in a royal flush, ergo the title, "Shuffled Cards." You don't need to have a clue that anagrams are involved to finish the puzzle, though. ONE-STEP FADS comes from ten of spades; SAFE JOCK PADS, jack of spades; FED OPAQUENESS, queen of spades; FAKES DOPINGS, king of spades; and ESCAPED SOFA, ace of spades. If any of you figured out the anagram angle, do you feel that it sped your journey through the grid? Because while the theme entries are gettable based on the clues and the crossings, they're not remotely "in the language" phrases.
Lots of Scrabbly words in this puzzle (bonus points for that), but I'll have to dock Patrick 10 points for using one of those Xs in a Roman numeral. The construction, in which pairs of theme entries are mostly stacked together (staggered by a few letters), earns back a few bonus points. But then a few points are taken away for the abundance of 3-letter answers.
The only AMOS OZ (1-Down) novel I remember is the dismal epistolary novel, Black Box. I completely missed the existence of grunge band TAD (11-Down).
Favorite clues: [One out of 10?] for ZERO; [You might jump for it] for JOY (with the Y filled in, I first thought SKY...though really, who jumps for the sky? Reach for the sky, jump for the stars?); [Drop back?] for LET (as in droplet); [Noted trio member] for EGO (with id and superego); and [Also, archaically] for EKE (this may be etymologically related to the German auch, meaning "also").
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It took me a while to figure out what Gary Steinmehl had done with the theme entries in his LA Times crossword. The hint at 1-Down was HAIR LOSS, but the theme entries didn't appear to be formed by zapping a HAIR from them. The first theme entry, though, loses an H (Broadway show becomes BROADWAY SOW, a [Performer in the stage version of "Babe"
?]), the second loses an A (weight gain becomes WEIGHT GIN), the third loses an I (street riot, STREET ROT), and the fourth, R (business trip, BUSINESS TIP). Good clues in this one. What's an [Osiris feature]? He's been depicted with a crazy BEARD. I've heard of bluesman Keb' Mo' and rapper Lil' Kim, but didn't know [Hip hop's ___ Mo], LIL' Mo (née Cynthia Loving). I also hadn't heard of the Maui tourist attraction, IAO Valley. Other clues I liked: A [Calculating endeavor] is ADDING; [Ideal enumeration] is WISH LIST (I can't believe nobody cleaned out my Amazon wish list for my birthday!); [Zig instead of zag?] is ERR; the [Kind of binding that allows a book to open flat] is WIRE EDGE, and it appears to be a handcrafting thing rather than an option commercial bookbinders use; [Unlike a picnic?] means HARD; and a [Hospital closing?] is a SUTURE.
In the August 10 Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Conference Program," Leonard Williams plays around with alternate meanings of words in meeting phrases, so an [Arthroplasty conference?], about joint surgery, could be a JOINT DISCUSSION. Classical Greece gets a lot of play in the fill, with ILIAD, the island CHIOS, and ARGUS. ANDROS looks Greek too, but that's an the [Largest island in the Bahamas].
Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy puzzle ("What a Hoot!") embeds an OWL (70-Across) in each of the five theme entries. Plenty of 7-letter answers in the fill, too.
Tracey Snyder's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Pluses and Minuses," pairs red (debt) and black (in the plus column) entities. Two movies, RED DRAGON and MEN IN BLACK; two bands, the BLACK CROWES and SIMPLY RED; two equine books, Steinbeck's THE RED PONY
and BLACK BEAUTY; and two ways to be treated, RED CARPET and BLACKBALL. TRIP UP, or [Expose in a blunder], is a nice entry, isn't it? The last square I filled in here was the A where MACLE, or [Twinned crystal], and DALASI, or [Gambia's unit of currency], crossed. Favorite clues: [Ride in the space shuttle] for SALLY; [Once-popular diet] for ATKINS (It's no longer popular? Good: I don't like people talking smack about my beloved carbs.); [Dish setting, maybe] for HOUSETOP (yesterday I saw one of those DirecTV satellite dishes on the ground—probably used to be atop a house or affixed to a side wall somewhere); [General delivery?] for ORDER; [Cat hangouts] for LAPS (though I do not want a cat on my lap, ever); [Maker of night flights] for BAT (if you'd like to have bats flying safely around you, visit the Twilight Zone at England's Chester Zoo).
August 22, 2007
Thursday, 8/23
NYS 5:50
NYT 5:17
LAT 4:44
CS 3:00
Here's a crossword comedy interlude for you. This guy oughta write a how-to book!
The New York Times crossword by Joe Krozel looks markedly different in the online forms vs. the Thursday paper. The Across Lite Notepad—alluded to in the applet but inaccessible there—says "The clues in the print version of this puzzle appear in a single list, combining Across and Down. Where two answers share a number, the unclued Down answer is a homophone of the corresponding Across answer." In the online versions, the clues are split into standard Across and Down lists, with dashes in lieu of clues for those number-sharing northwest corners of the various grid sections. As a bonus, all of the affected word pairs start with the same letter.
The thematic pairs are (1) BOULDER/BOLDER, (8) BARRED/BARD, (24) BASED/BASTE, (27) BODE/BOWED, (37) BALE/BAIL, (38) BORDER/BOARDER, (54) BEAT/BEET, and (56) BEAR/BARE. They're not laid out symmetrically by virtue of the inherent northwest-cornerocity of the theme/gimmick. I suspect other Western languages couldn't be used to assemble a list of eight pairs of homophonic words starting with one letter—English's orthographical oddities mean the same sounds can be spelled many different ways and, let me tell you, kids just learning to write really don't appreciate that.
Favorite clues: [Party of the first part and party of the second part, e.g.] for LEGALESE; [Tailors] for SEWERS ("ones who sew," as opposed to the storm sewers? C'mon, sewers filled with rainwater pass the Sunday morning breakfast test, don't they?), not far from ALTERS with a misleading tailoring clue, [Lowers the cuffs on, maybe]; and [Country named for its location on the globe] for ECUADOR. I don't care for [Point to] as the clue for BODE; given that each theme clue has to pull double duty, a clearer clue would have helped here. That was the last square I filled in, after contemplating the other options (CODE, MODE, RODE...) that might fit there. And OVA as [Donations at some clinics]—well, that clue makes egg donation sound so much simpler than it really is.
It's been a while since I've seen Frank Longo's byline in a newspaper puzzle, but he constructed the 68-word "Themeless Thursday" in the New York Sun. Pop culture stuff I enjoyed: MURTAUGH, Danny Glover's character in the Lethal Weapon franchise; the fairly entertaining Brad Pitt/Julia Roberts movie, THE MEXICAN; the penguin cartoon, HAPPY FEET; and the comic strip ARLO AND JANIS. I liked the corner where, in an I/T/L party, TITTLE and TRITT cross A LITTLE BIT and a TITLE TRACK, the latter clued as [Biggest cut, often]. [You definitely don't want them to drop by your house] is a creepily surreal clue for ATOM BOMBS; I don't like it. While GLAD-HANDS is a verb I've used, have you ever heard of it used as a noun, as in [Warm welcomes]? WIRE RODS is rather dull, as are ESSENE and EVENER and AGER. I hadn't heard of NO-GO AREAS. I do like BIPARTITE, clued here as [Joint], because I have bipartite sesamoid bones, which is really hard to say out loud without it turning into a tongue twister that mangles the -oid and -ite endings. (If you can say it, my hat is off to you.) Also good: CHEESINESS, which is mostly boring letters but a great word nonetheless; the phrase SWEAR BY; and that glut of consonants in the middle of the TUNGSTEN LAMP.
Updated:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Front Flips," inverts the short first names of the four theme people. [Show no respect to "Show of Shows" star?] is DIS CAESAR (Sid Caesar), for example. Easy enough. The clues had some zip to them—favorites include [Fabulous writer?] for AESOP; [Abba's roots] for SWEDEN (crosswords have trained me to think of Abba Eban from Israel, another 6-letter country); [Hook, line, and sinker?] for GEAR; [Stop sign?] for RED (as in red light); and [Cutting class?] for BIOLOGY (ew, dissection).
The duo of Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke constructed today's LA Times crossword. The theme entries are all clued [DOWN]: DRINK QUICKLY (with CHUG in the same corner), FEELING BLUE (crossing BLAH), SOUTH ON A MAP (below [East ender?], ERN), and FOOTBALL PLAY (well...I don't see anything quasi-related to that, but OPERA and OPRY do intersect elsewhere). Favorite clues: [Respond to cuteness] for MELT; [Not-so-friendly look] for LEER (it's not often enough that clues for OGLE and LEER highlight unwelcomeness rather than lasciviousness); and [It covers all the bases] for TARP.
August 21, 2007
Wednesday, 8/22
NYS 4:42
LAT 3:50
NYT 3:22
CS 2:57
Before moving along to the Wednesday crosswords, let me direct your attention to the sidebar. Under "Amazon links," you'll find a list of book titles. I've added four puzzle books besides How to Conquer [etc.]—we have the Terribly Twisted book by Henry Hook that I recently reviewed; two wee coffee cup–shaped Sit/Sip & Solve books of hard crosswords, one by Byron Walden that I enjoyed thoroughly and reviewed ages ago and one by Matt Gaffney that I'm in the midst of and having fun with; and Carnal Knowledge, an etymology/trivia book about the words for the parts of the human body by Charles Hodgson, the guy with the podictionary.com etymological podcast site. If you like Fridayish and Saturdayish challenging puzzles, check out those puzzle books, and if you get a kick out of etymology, try the last book.
The first theme entry I got in Alan Arbesfeld's New York Sun puzzle, "Greetings From the Front," was HAIKU WAIT, or HAI KUWAIT, which sounds like, "Hi, Kuwait." (The "hai" part puts me in mind of LOLcats who say "oh hai," and that makes me happy.) The other theme entries cleaved into two pieces and squished the first piece up against another "hi" homophone to make a new two-syllable entity. Jack Lord giveth the HIJACK LORD; permissive, a HYPER MISSIVE; a HoJo, HEIGH-HO, JO; ball club, HIGHBALL CLUB; and Denmark, Eric HEIDEN MARK. Hey, I like this theme. Well executed! In the fill, I couldn't place ["Magnet and Steel" singer Walter] EGAN for a while—and then I remembered how much I liked the song (How handy is YouTube? You get to hear the song and see the au courant satin jacket) back in '78. Other favorite clues: [Banks, familiarly] for Ernie Banks, a.k.a. MR CUB; [Companion of a certain fat cat] for ODIE, because the clue tried to keep me from thinking of that odious Garfield as long as it could; and [Light up?] for HALO. Can someone explain how the clue for ALIBI works? I understand the "out" portion of [Stand out?] but not the "stand" bit.
The New York Times crossword's by Patrick Blindauer. The theme is PICK-UP LINES, but not the way you think of them ("Hey, good-lookin', what you got cookin'?"). The fictional cop who's picked up the bad guys says "BOOK 'EM, DANNO." The driver picking up a hitchhiker asks, "NEED A LIFT?" Whoever picked up the phone first hollers, "IT'S FOR YOU." Those abysmal Chevy pickup truck commercials used that abysmal Bob Seger song, "LIKE A ROCK." The fill's livened up by a wealth of 6- and 7-letter answers. Favorite clues: [Father figure?] for PRIEST; [Bugs on a highway] for VWS (not "smudges on the windshield"); and [Hardly a celebrity] for UNKNOWN. I learned that the British have the slang term SLAP-UP, meaning [Top-notch, to a Brit]. That's a bang-up piece of information, isn't it? And have you been wondering what TINA [Yothers of "Family Ties"] has been up to lately? Reality TV and shows like The View, that's what.
Updated:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy crossword, "Yes, Deer," has a quartet of theme entries that start, end, or start and end with words that mean "deer" in other contexts: the TV show HART TO HART, STAG PARTIES, MEET JOHN DOE, and FIFTY BUCKS.
The LA Times puzzle by David Cromer has a theme of the ELEMENTS OF STYLE, redefining "style" from its usage connotations to high style, with accoutrements like a STRETCH LIMO and PRIVATE JET.
August 20, 2007
Tuesday, 8/21
Tausig 4:36
NYS 3:57
Onion 3:50
LAT 3:50
CS 3:07
NYT 2:52
The New York Times crossword's by Tom Heilman, and I suspect this is another constructing debut. The theme entries are the BEES knees, with two phrases starting and two ending with apian words. THE AFRICAN QUEEN and the very colloquial GIVE ME A BUZZ offer those sweet-as-honey Zs and a Q, and STING OPERATIONS and HONEY, I'M HOME (which is also a famous line from The Shining, as seen in this speeded-up clip set to "Yakety Sax"). The clue [Private stash] (for CACHE) put me in mind of this Saturday Night Live skit, "You Put Your Weed in It"—and lo and behold, WEED shows up lower down in this crossword (clued as [Work in the garden]).
The New York Sun puzzle is "Final Offer," by Joe Bower. The theme is TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT, so two phrases take on an extra IT and two others lose IT: THE BIG BANDIT ERA and PULPIT FICTION ([Falsehoods from the preacher?]) vs. CENTER OF GRAVY (ha!) and UNEXPECTED VISOR. Joe's from South Dakota, and there are two clues related to that: [Neighbor of S. Dak.] is NEB (Nebraska), and [Part of S. Dak. is in it] is CST. The other half is in the Mountain time zone. "What? Mountains in South Dakota?" you ask. Yes, indeed. My sister's family just vacationed in the state and visited the Black Hills, home of the tallest peaks east of the Rockies (apparently the Appalachians and Adirondacks are no competition). The clue [Singh rival] stumped me until Ernie ELS revealed himself—ah, golfer Vijay Singh.
This week's Onion A.V. Club puzzle is by Deb Amlen. [A possible title for this puzzle] is ANGER MANAGEMENT, but fortunately the Adam Sandler connection ends there. (For some abysmal writing, see the Wikipedia plot summary of the movie.) The other theme entries contain the letter sequence ANGER embedded within them, as in RANGE ROVER and ORANGE RIND. Tons of pop culture, which makes me happy.
Ben Tausig's latest Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword's called "Jam Session," and the theme is a sweet one: four kinds of BERRY, such as STRAW MAN and BLUE MONDAY (the latter being a song title that I know without knowing why). With answers like JUKEBOX, XEROX, and VIOXX, this puzzle's got tons of Scrabbly freshness. Excellent pop culture tidbits, like cluing R. KELLY as [Indicted musician who said: "Osama Bin Laden is the only one who knows what I'm going through"] and SIX as [Blossom's pal]. The Tausigean sass comes from such clues as [One might be erotic] for CAKE (don't follow that link at work) and [Sponge alternative] for the female condom called the FEMIDOM. I hadn't heard of SHAY Haley, [N*E*R*D*'s Haley] or RARA, the [Haitian party music]). Favorite clues: [Field of flowers?] for BOTANY; [Tasty pockets] for RAVIOLI (tonight's dinner!); ["Get ___, you two!"] for A ROOM; [Weight-loss celebrity, familiarly] for JARED from Subway; [Warped Tour sponsor] for VANS (Vans canvas shoes are available for your puzzling pleasure in crossword and maze prints); and [Marlene Dietrich und Angela Merkel] für FRAUEN. Look! Here's the trusty [Aquatic crustacean], the ISOPOD; isopods can be smallish, land-based like the roly-poly, or giant.
Updated:
The LA Times crossword by John Halverson is about...what is the theme? Let's see. Ah, I see it now. (Took a while.) SEIZE THE DAY, COLLAR STUDS, BUST OF HOMER, and CATCH A FEW Z'S all begin with synonyms for "arrest." My favorite entry: OH ME, OH MY, clued as ["Goodness!"].
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle has a pun theme. In "The Sty's the Limit," four famous people's first or last names get turned into porcine words. What would it sound like if a pig combined an oink with a pun-induced groan?
MP3 of of Will Shortz on the radio
Nancy Shack recorded the long Will Shortz segment of last night's Nick Digilio Show on Chicago's WGN Radio, and her husband Bill converted it into an MP3 format you can listen to. Thanks, Nancy and Bill!
August 19, 2007
Monday, 8/20
NYS 3:33
CS 3:23
LAT 2:32
NYT 2:28
All righty! I was gone most of the day, but in my absence trusty Crossword Fiend webmaster Dave Sullivan toiled away on my behalf. He upgraded the Blogger template, installed the expandable posts hack suggested by Alex Boisvert, and got HaloScan comments incorporated again after Blogger ate them. Sorry that the Blogger comments were a hassle when they were all that was available—I do like HaloScan.
Anyway, the expandable posts should work like magic. Click the "read more" link and boom, the post expands within this window. Click again to shrink it back to "summary" form and the post magically zips back to smallness. The blog archives are now organized better, with an expandable outline format and the latest stuff listed first, not last. After today, I expect that the summary will consist of the newspaper abbreviations and solving times, with all the paragraphs of text available if and when (and only if and when) you want to see 'em.
It's been a while since Lynn Lempel had a Monday New York Times puzzle, and I'm always glad to see her byline early in the week. She's got five famous trios, with the two vertical ones crossing the three BILLY GOATS GRUFF. (I used to read to Ben from this board book edition of the story. It was the first book he could fake-read by reciting from memory.) The other trios are the three LITTLE PIGS, FRENCH HENS, BLIND MICE, and MEN IN A TUB. Not that many 3-letter words, which is a plus. And some interesting longer answers: MALARKEY, which is a wonderful word; the DON'T WALK sign; South America's Lake TITICACA, beloved by '80s fans of Trivial Pursuit; and GLITCHES, another great word. What's its etymology? Let's look it up: possibly Yiddish, possibly from the space program?
Curtis Yee's New York Sun puzzle is called "Slice of Hamlet." Four theme entries that begin with words that can precede play are crossed in the grid by the Hamlet quote, THE PLAY'S / THE THING. POWER BASE gives us power play; HORSERACING, horseplay; SCREENSAVER. screenplay; and WORDSMITH, Wordplay. Like Lynn Lempel, Curtis has packed the grid with interesting longer entries (PRINGLES, the Upper EAST SIDE, SPLATS) and not many 3-letter words.
Updated:
Last night I listened to the Nick Digilio show on Chicago's WGN Radio. The host had Will Shortz on for almost an hour, and they talked about Cheap Trick, crosswords, sudoku, the Jumble (tip from Will: If you're having trouble unscrambling or anagramming some letters, try writing them down in bowling pin/pyramid form, such as 1 letter above 2 letters above 3 letters. Somehow that helps your brain shuffle the letters into a new order more easily. This could come in handy when you're working on a cryptic and know what letters need to be anagrammed, but can't see the answer.), the tournament, self-designed majors. I went to college with a guy who majored in hermeneutics, which is a good deal more arcane than enigmatology. In case you wonder what sort of job that course of study might lead to, it turns out to be president of an artisanal sake importer. Anyway, Nick said my name and the title, How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, approximately a zillion times, which so fun! Nick also said he plans to have me and Tyler Hinman on the show soon—which Tyler and I learned via the radio. I'm thinking Nancy Shack should be our publicist and arrange all this, because she seems to have a knack for it.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle features a quote (bleah). From the comic strip cat, GARFIELD (double bleah). I haven't understood the enduring success of Garfield since I was about 12 and discovered it wasn't funny. Who's still buying the Garfield merchandise and books? I did once come across an X-rated spoof of the strip online, in which the relationship between Jon and his cat took an intimate turn.
In the LA Times puzzle by Don Gagliardo, the theme entries appear to be nothing more than "phrases that start with DW, in alphabetical order." DWEEB, alas, did not make an appearance here. The puzzle's spruced up by the presence of great long fill (e.g., BLOODY MARY and SHENANIGAN). Extra bonus points for keeping the Urals out of the grid but using them to clue both EUROPEAN and ASIA.
August 18, 2007
Sunday, 8/19
NYT 9:46
PI 8:48
LAT 8:33
WaPo 7:58
BG 7:08
CS 4:52
The Chicago Air and Water Show did not disappoint. This afternoon, we watched planes swoop about for an hour and a half in the rain. The rain didn't let up at all, though it may have let down, so we packed up and hopped on a bus. During the one-mile bus ride home, of course, the rain quit, and we stood at the end of our block watching the Air Force Thunderbirds perform their aerobatic marvels. A couple times, one of the jets swooped over our block, which was kinda cool. And when the show ended, why, look! We're just steps from home. Couldn't have planned it better.
In other Chicago news, apparently Will Shortz will be chatting with Nick Digilio on WGN Radio Sunday night at 11:00. (Thanks to Nancy Shack for the tip.)
Usually the nobody on the NYT “Today’s Puzzle” forum talks about the Times puzzle before it launches online. But this afternoon, a print newspaper subscriber (locals get the Magazine with Saturday's paper) raved about this Sunday's New York Times crossword by Liz Gorski. What's the big deal? Well, Liz has a knack for visually arresting gimmicks. In this puzzle with left/right symmetry, the "Buried Treasure" theme involves a rebus. There are 10 squares that contain [AU], the chemical symbol for gold, and if you play connect-the-dots, you get a heart of AU—as in the song BY NEIL YOUNG called HEART OF GOLD. The lyric that's included here is I'VE BEEN A MINER FOR A / HEART OF GOLD—I tried squeezing "keep me searching" in there, but instead, sadly, there's an accidental reminder of the Utah coal mine tragedy. Balancing BY NEIL YOUNG on the other side of the grid is gold's atomic number, SEVENTY-NINE. If you did the puzzle on the applet and you'd like to see where those [AU]s are, see below for an Across Lite screen capture (no guarantee that the rest of the grid's correct—I didn't check my work.)
Before venturing into the nitty-gritty of clues and fill, let me mention that the NYT applet keeps mangling letters with diacritical marks. At least some online solvers saw this: [___ Tom?], 3 letters, S_O. Seo Tom? Soo Tom? No! SAO Tomé. This technical glitch ought to be ironed out by now—it can be vexing.
There are some tough words in this puzzle. Here were my blind spots: 10-Down, [Bill who created the comic strip "Smokey Stover"] (crossing that [___ Tom?] spot, alas). He's Bill HOLMAN, apparently. The ["Baptism of Christ" painter ___ della Francesca] is PIERO. A [1954 Jean Simmons movie] is DESIREE. And who knew that [Mme. Tussaud]'s name was MARIE? BIENNIA, meaning [Two-year periods], was gettable with a few crossings, but it's not a familiar word. I've seen ISTLE, the [Basketry fiber], in other crosswords; but it's pretty darned obscure. Same with the [French department in Picardy], AISNE.
Favorite clues: [Music unlikely to be played at a party] for DIRGE; [Strands in a diner] for SPAGHETTI; [One who keeps a beat?] for PATROLMAN; [Victorians, e.g.] for [AU]SSIES (Victoria being a state in Australia); [It's often proud] for SPONSOR; [Jalapeño feature] for TILDE; [Facilitates] for GREASES; and [Mountain climbers?] for chair LIFTS. I also like the [March of ___] DIMES and IDES [___ of March] flip-flop, and the [Complete flip-flop] clue for U-TURN. And the video game ASTEROIDS: totally old-school! And the [Deep black garnets], MELANITES, which I've never seen but are indeed deep black, as the linked pictures show. (Surely I'm not the only one who loved books about minerals and gems when they were young?)
I like the 10 pairs of words that intersect at the [AU] rebus squares. TABLE[AU] and FR[AU], the writers [AU]STEN and [AU]DEN, the Bahamas capital NASS[AU], DE G[AU]LLE airport.
And? I've always liked that song. Here's a video of Neil Young in concert back in 1971, singing "Heart of Gold."
Updated:
Okay, I went to the gym and the grocery store, and Dave Sullivan's been toiling away at upgrading my Blogger template, and it's taking a little work to get the HaloScan comments back in working order. So the Blogger comments are there now, and I don't like 'em. Don't get used to them. But they may be there until tonight (or longer) because I've got to go to a family party today. Given the time crunch, I'll be doing the crosswords before I go but giving the blogging short shrift.
The Boston Globe puzzle by Emily Cox/Henry Rathvon, "Flower-Filled Phrases"—loved it! I like flower themes, and this one was tasty. Short fill, a 4-letter word, [Like ___ on hot bricks], ending with T. Only one 4-letter word ending with T came to mind, and it was...a four-letter word. That'll be our new meaningless saying around the house. (The answer turned out to be A CAT, which does not make a phrase I know.)
Rich Norris made the themeless CrosSynergy puzzle. Interesting phrases, interesting clues, not too challenging but not too easy either. Hidden secret message: Rich Norris has NORRIS in the grid, as in Chuck Norris, directly opposite...DR RUTH.
James Sajdak's Washington Post puzzle, "Found Money," lists places you might hide your cash stash. Theme's okay, liked the fill and clues.
Liz Gorski's also got the syndicated LA Times crossword, "The Mercury Is Rising," with a summer/heat theme. It would be timely but for the cold and rainy spell we're having here. Hasn't even cracked the 70° mark this weekend! A few tricky crossings (BARR/ASTANA, CASSIE/CARA), but a good puzzle.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle tells a story of a vacation through "The Great Outdoors," in which a family experiences things that sound like the great outdoors but aren't (like the movie GRAND CANYON). Punchline: [But what fun is a trip across America if we have to ___?] GET OUT OF THE SUV?
August 17, 2007
Saturday, 8/18
NYT 5:15
LAT 5:14
Newsday 5:03
CS 3:25
(updated at 9:15 a.m. Saturday)
Last night, my husband and I watched Hot Fuzz, the British cop action/comedy starring the guys who were in Shaun of the Dead, the British zombie action/comedy. It was indeed quite funny. One bit towards the movie's beginning centers on a cryptic crossword. The star cop, Nicholas Angel, has been transferred to a small village. He's checking into a quaint hotel, and the proprietor behind the counter suddenly spits out, "Fascist!" Angel's taken aback, but she explains that it's the answer to 7-Across (or Down?) in the crossword she's doing. He corrects her, that the clue's looking for FASCISM with an M. They continue the check-in transaction, and then he bites out a "Hag!" What? He explains that's the answer she needs for 12-Down. It's a captivating exchange, of course.
Across the Atlantic we have our American crosswords, including Jim Page's New York Times puzzle. This themeless creation has a relatively low 64 words, so we can expect a few "roll your own" words that are seldom used, crafted by tacking on a prefix or suffix. For example, PRECOLOR, PERTER, RECARVE, and the plurals LEIFS and BORONS. This particular puzzle also has an editorial vibe to it, with EDITS, clued as [Applies polish to?]; DELETES, hiding behind the wonderfully easy-to-misinterpret [Strikes]; and STET (raise your hand if you suspected that [Galley countermand] had something to do with oars). And GRAF could have been clued in its newspaper-editing sense rather than [1988 tennis Grand Slam winner] Steffi.
Today's Magical Mystery Answers (i.e., things I didn't know): [Actress Pataky] is ELSA Pataky, the Spanish actress who was in Snakes on a Plane, which nobody I know saw. [Conductor Segerstam and novelist Enger] are LEIFS (hm, I only know Leif Garrett and Leif Ericson). [Some bygone roadsters] smacks of the Roaring Twenties, but the cars in question are just DATSUNS. [Face with stone] is REVET (you can read up on revetments here). [Waite ___, Hall-of-Fame Yankees pitcher] is HOYT; was Waite Hoyt ever white-hot? Why on earth is ALOE clued as a [Fragrant heartwood]? Because of the agarwood tree, also known as aloe wood or, in the Old Testament, aloes. The [Old washday choice] DUZ was before my time.
Favorite clues: [Who's a critic?] for EVERYONE; [Thighs may be displayed in it] for both EROTICA and the icky MEAT CASE; [It rises in the Black Forest] for DANUBE (mmm, Black Forest cake...); [Less like a yo-yo] for SANER; [Writ introduction?] for HABEAS; plain ol' [Out] for OBSOLETE; and the "Huh?" clue of [So as to avoid being shot] for OFF CAMERA. An AEROBAT is a [Blue Angels member], and this weekend is Chicago's big Air and Water Show, featuring the Air Force Thunderbirds (really, is there any difference between the two groups?). I'd like to thank the zillion crosswords of yore that clued MATA or HARI with reference to the Greta Garbo role, since it made the 8-letter [1932 Garbo title role] come to mind quickly. Other answers I liked: CRUSTACEA ([Water fleas, barnacles, etc.]), SAMISEN ([Banjolike Japanese instrument]), Dirty Harry CALLAHAN ([Eastwood played him in five films]). Wait, did someone say CRUSTACEA? That's my cue to provide a giant isopod link. Why? Why not?
Updated:
Bob Peoples made today's themeless LA Times crossword. Plenty of goodies in here. [Banquet offering] is a brand-name TV DINNER, and [Square fare] is RAVIOLI. Speaking of brand names, there's also SUE Bee, a [Big name in honey], the [Hyundai model] ELANTRA, and CONICAL, clued as [Like Hershey's Kisses]. A SLED is a [Follower of dogs], which are also alluded to in [Regulation involving boxers] (LEASH LAW). Educational geography: the ZUIDER ZEE is [Literally, Dutch for "southern sea"]. LIMEADE is clued as [Tart quaff], while [Tart] clues MORDANT; isn't a mordant quaff refreshing? [Minor party candidate, often] is SPOILER (Nader!). [Charm] is about the most innocuous clue possible for FETISH. Who is ["Before You Sleep" novelist Ullmann]? LINN Ullmann is Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman's daughter; she turned out to be a terrible actress so she went into journalism and eventually fiction writing. Favorite entries: THE BLOB, [Film whose tagline ends "Nothing can stop it!"]; DEA AGENT, [Crack operative?]; and IMCLONE, [Drug company whose stock was the subject of Martha Stewart's conviction].
Merle Baker's 68-word themeless puzzle in Newsday wasn't too hard, wasn't too easy. Favorite clues and/or answers: [1 in 21] for UNITS DIGIT; the [Parish officer] called a BEADLE, because it's a silly-sounding title; [They're on stage at the Grammys] for STATUETTES; [Sound sound] (verb + adjective) for TALK SENSE; the verb [Contests] for LITIGATES; HOT SEATS and HOME RUN. [Play up] is the clue for UNDERSCORE. If you play something down, are you overscoring it? Speaking of overscoring, there's a neighborhood restaurant near me that has a front window packed with hand-lettered signs, one of which actually overscores a word for emphasis. (I think it's also painted in italics.) That sign's almost as awe-inspiring as the place that offers a "2 hot dog's with frie's" meal.
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword hides three SEAs with short names (RED, DEAD, ARAL) within the trio of theme entries. The puzzle contains a lot of names: ATLI, King of the Huns; Elvis ARON Presley; ALDEN and MURINE and HALAS and NAST and STEEN. ATLI, I think, is a name I learned via crosswords. I wasn't familiar with one of the theme entries: [Recipient's name and delivery details, on a business letter] is INSIDE ADDRESS? Ah, it's merely the address above "Dear ___" and below your own address or masthead. Never knew that had an official name!
Experiment in posting
I knew a few people wouldn't read this blog if it didn't have the jump cuts hiding spoilers from plain view. If you're a few days behind on the puzzles, it's nice to be able to scroll down to the writeup you want without seeing answers from crosswords you haven't done yet.
However, Google seems to have forgotten how to scan the text that's hidden, which makes it considerably harder for new readers to find their way here. (And this is patently ridiculous, because who owns Blogger and blogspot? That's right: Google.)
I dearly love my regular readers, I do, but it'd be wonderful to have new people join this community, too, wouldn't it?
So I'm going to try eliminating the jump cut and see if it helps. Apologies to those of you who appreciate the jump cut (and please let me know who you are—I don't know if it's five people or a hundred).
August 16, 2007
Friday, 8/17
NYT 5:15
NYS 4:59
Jonesin' 4:17
LAT 3:59
CHE 3:34
CS 3:28
WSJ 8:16
Karen Tracey's on tap for this week's Sun Weekend Warrior, and Roger Barkan's name appears atop the Friday Times puzzle. I thoroughly enjoyed both of their crosswords.
Karen's themeless 70-worder in the New York Sun bears many of the hallmarks I like so much in Karen's puzzles. The marquée entries featuring uncommon letters? Check: JOAQUIN PHOENIX and CZECHOSLOVAKIA rack up a Q, X, Z, J, and K.
Geography? Check: That Scrabbly ex-country, SSRS that have joined the EU, the [Aztec language] NAHUATL, with its unexpected TL ending, and FARSI clued as [Cousin of Kurdish].
Pop culture? Check: That actor, plus ERIC BANA's full name (usually he shows up in the grid as the last name of [Eric of "Munich"], [The second word of "Candle in the Wind"] (NORMA Jean), NORA DUNN from S.N.L., ANN MILLER from Sugar Babies, and ILSA from Casablanca.
Idiomatic or colloquial language? Check: "FLOOR IT," "HOME, JAMES," EL CHEAPO, CRIES WOLF, LOW BLOW.
There's also a little Florida politics, with VERN Buchanan (who replaced Katherine Harris), a hanging CHAD, and voting machine maker [Diebold competitor], NCR. And two fragrances, TABU and ARAMIS (achoo).
My favorite clues: the verb [Stiff] for CHEAT; [Dilettante] for ESTHETE; [GUI piece?] for USER (graphical user interface, pronounced "gooey"—I have a friend with cats named GUI and SCSI); [Addition to a letter] for CEDILLA; [What plomo is transformed into in alquimia] for ORO (gold, made from lead in alchemy); [Bunny bits?] for DUST (as in dust bunnies—did you know there's a guy who collects dust bunnies? It's true!); [Bulb unit] for CLOVE of garlic; and [Encouraging start?] for ATTA (as in "Attagirl!").
Who is ARIE Selinger? He's a 70-year-old who's coached Olympic volleyball. Who is RONA Berg? She wrote a book with 1,000 makeup tips for women. Okay, no woman on this planet needs a thousand "fixes." Why, that's just...insulting.
The New York Times puzzle has 66 answers, and tons of 'em are great (and the grid's groovy, too). Barkan includes geography that resonates for me: the [Caribbean cruise port of call] is CHARLOTTE AMALIE in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and we landed there en route to our honeymoon. APPLETON, Wisconsin, is the [Home of Lawrence University]; we traveled there for my sister-in-law's graduation. Did we drive through [Utah's ___ Mountains], the UINTA Mountains? Possibly. (Did not go to OREM, however.) And I picked up a lot of Indian place names and language names, including the [Language of India with a palindromic name], MALAYALAM, from that college class on Indian history.
However, it's pop culture, not academia, that taught me that [Diwali revelers] are HINDUS, in a cringe-inducing yet funny episode of The Office (American version). More from movies and TV: the TELEVISION PILOT, DOC from Back to the Future, old-time movie actress ZASU Pitts (pronounced ZAY-sue—who knew?), Jean-Claude Van DAMME (so help me, I enjoyed Universal Soldier), and the X-MEN.
The most mystifying partially filled-in answer was 1-Down, [Star performer's reward]. SAN DIEGO with an extra letter stuck in it? A something-INGO? Ah, a STANDING O (vation)! Terrific entry in the way it fought not to be recognized until suddenly, it was.
The absolute best clue here was [Leaves alone, sometimes] for SALAD. Brilliant! Other Down clues I liked: [Got together] for HERDED (I was reading it as an intransitive verb); 9[100, say] for A-PLUS; [Accessories for a secretary] leading you to think plural when the answer's DESK SET; and [Wickiup, for one] means HUT, or wigwam. In the Across direction, [You can sink your feet into them] means SHAG CARPETS; the [Bus line?] is the driver's command, STEP TO THE REAR; EN GARDE is a [Pointed warning?]; and we get a little medical terminology with URIC ACID as a [Major component of kidney stones].
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword this week is called "Let's Have Dessert Outside." The theme entries have other letters filling the CAKE, as in CLAMBAKE and CALLED STRIKE. Newfangledest entries: LAME-ASS, FOOSBALL, and the [Start of some monster B-movie titles], IT CAME. Nice Chinese double-take, with mega-sized YAO Ming and megalomaniac MAO. Two communications clues: [Get hold of, in a way] for EMAIL, and [Phony prefix?] for TELE. I did not at all understand the relationship between [Weed event] and CLAMBAKE; apparently it's drug slang meaning "sitting inside a car or other small, enclosed space and smoking marijuana." Live and learn, eh?
Updated:
The August 3 Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle by Annemarie Brethauer is called "Standing Innovations." The theme entries are those crazy structures—such as the UNISPHERE and the SPACE NEEDLE—built for the WORLD'S FAIR in various years and cities. The puzzle seemed to be fairly easy, but there are plenty of clues that call on broad knowledge. Peru has mountains called the Cordillera BLANCA? Fanny HILL is a John Cleland heroine? ESTO is here as [Word in Idaho's state motto].
Which reminds me: In How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, each crossword has three paragraphs of "Hints and Tips." I think these were originally envisioned as Dummies-style callouts on the puzzle pages, but given th 6x9 trim size, the Hints and Tips moved to the end of the book. But there's a wealth of information there, particularly for the newer solver. One of those quasi-crosswordese words may launch a discussion of related words. For one puzzle with ORO clued as part of Montana's state motto, I wrote this:
Clues for ORO sometimes reference Montana’s motto, “Oro y plata.” Other state mottoes that get play in crosswords include “Ad ASTRA per ASPERA” (Kansas), “ESSE quam videri” (North Carolina, “ENSE petit placidam sub libertate quietem” (Massachusetts), “ESTO perpetua” (Idaho), “Salus populi suprema lex ESTO” (Missouri), “Live free OR DIE” (New Hampshire), “ALIS volat propriis” (Oregon), and “L’étoile du NORD” (Minnesota). MGM’s motto is “Ars gratia artis,” while the Prince of Wales says “Ich dien.”
It took some doing to assemble the theme in Harvey Estes' CrosSynergy crossword, "The West of the Story." It's got an exchange between MAE West and George RAFT, in which he said "GOODNESS / WHAT BEAUTIFUL / DIAMONDS," and she replied, "GOODNESS / HAD NOTHING / TO DO WITH IT." Interesting to have 22-Across's GOODNESS pulling double duty here. Oddly, I encountered 11-Down, [Response to a sneeze], about 10 seconds after I sneezed. Harvey says BLESS YOU; I stick with "Gesundhheit!"
Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword is a tribute to ELMER FUDD, who had twubble saying his Rs. Four phwases have TR or CR words that get twisted into QU or TW words: FALCON QUEST, for example. In the fill, I learned that there's a band called DAMONE, and apparently I might know them if I played video games. Some great fill: FLOTILLA, the [Exclamation from Poirot] "MON DIEU," LAST STOP on the line, a CUE STICK, BLUE LAW, and SUNDRY (which is a word I like).
Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke co-constructed the Wall Street Journal puzzle, playing with the sort of phrases that pop up in "Market Speak." What might happen with guillotine stock? It WENT DOWN SHARPLY. That was my favorite theme entry. And miniskirts GOT SOLD SHORT. There are seven other theme entries, some of them shorter 7-, 8-, or 9-letter words/phrases, but those two were the ones I liked best.
August 15, 2007
How Constructors Try to Trick You
From page 61 of How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, with new annotations in italics:
Early in the week, the New York Times crossword doesn’t strive to lure the solver down blind alleys. But later in the week, particularly on Friday and Saturday, trickery is par for the course.
• Obscured capitalization: Because the first word in a clue is always capitalized, you can’t tell whether that word is a proper name, title, or uncapitalized word. You’ll need to use the crossing letters to be sure you’ve chosen the right interpretation. For example, [Hamlet’s cousin] was a dastardly clue for VILLAGE, lowercase-H hamlet being a synonym for village—but the typical solver likely thought of characters in Shakespeare’s capital-H Hamlet. One-word publication titles are often hidden in this way to clue EDITOR: [Post operative?] and [People person?] refer to a newspaper or magazine employee. Proper names can also be hidden this way: [Frost lines] clues VERSE from Robert Frost. (It seems like I've been seeing more and more of these lately.)
• Phonetics and building blocks: Crosswords are a meaning-rich game of language, but sometimes a clue strips away a word’s meaning and focuses on its individual letters and sounds. [Fan sound] may be the SHORT A in the word fan rather than the roar of a crowd or the whirring of an appliance. [Castle feature?] can be SILENT T, and [Fiddle duet?] could be DEES (the letter D, doubled). This category of crossword entry is relatively new, and may include SOFT and HARD letters, SHORT or LONG vowels, SILENT letters, CAPITAL letters, or the spelled-out names of letters.
• Hidden meanings: Some clues deliberately obscure the intended meaning of a key word. For example, [Refuse visitors] looks like it means “be a hermit,” but in one clue, “refuse” was used as a noun that’s pronounced differently from the verb. Who visits the refuse? RATS. [Hang out] is often taken to mean the intransitive verb, as in “We’re just going to hang out at home tonight.” In another puzzle, the answer was AIR DRY, as in “I’ll hang the clothes out to dry.” (Boy, do I love clues that toy with alternate meanings!)
• Multi-word answers: Unexpected multi-word answers in short entries can be tricky, especially when they include one-letter components (X-RATED, Q-TIP, R AND R), abbreviations (ST PAUL, DR RUTH), or both (MR T). Some short answers are actually three words—A TO Z, SO DO I. (These aren't really tricks so much as possibilities solvers need to be hip to—if you're asking yourself what the heck ATOB means, try adding some spaces.)
• Odd letter combinations: Unusual sequences of letters can make the solver think, “That can’t be right.” If the crossings for [Stylish, square-jawed male model] gave you a *QTY** letter pattern, you might doubt that those letters were correct because that letter sequence isn’t found in any English words. But the entry is actually two words: GQ TYPE, as in GQ magazine, formerly Gentlemen’s Quarterly. (When the letter sequence seems impossible, always check the crossings before you fill in a bunch of squares or erase a bunch of letters.)
• Obscured verb tense: Words like put, set, or read make for ambiguous clues because they could be in either the past tense or the present tense.
• Verb phrases: Because verb phrases can be clued with a one-word verb, solvers need to ba careful about automatically filling in an S at the end of the entry. For example, [Visits] could be STOPS BY, DROPS IN ON, or POPS OVER, none of which end with an S.
• Disguised plurals: Words that look singular can serve as mass nouns, hiding the fact that the answer is a plural. For example, [Raw material] can be ORES; [Hot stuff], TAMALES.
• The two-good-answers trap: Oftentimes two plausible answers share the same number of letters and may even have several letters in common—and some constructors relish in creating these traps. One of my personal favorites in this category is [Georgia neighbor], 7 letters. Starts with an A and ends with an A. Is it ALABAMA or ARMENIA? Don’t be wedded to an answer that seems 100% right but conflicts with most of the crossings—you may be caught in a trap. (Some of these things aren't deliberate traps. Sometimes IRE and IRK or SEETHE and SEE RED would both work, but that's not a clever trap—it's just a pair of related words with some common letters in common. Other times, solvers' minds lead them down the wrong path, through no fault of the puzzle. These wrong turns can be awfully entertaining.)
• The “it” clue: The clue [Put a lid on it] seems to call for a verb like stifle(d) or quash(ed). Occasionally the answer word equates to the “it” in the clue rather than to the clue as a whole—so the answer may be a cooking POT. This is an exception to the usual rule that the clue and answer must be interchangeable in a sentence, with the same meaning both ways. (This kind of clue really bugs some people. I'm on the fence.)
• Hidden -er meanings: Some nouns that end with -ER can be interpreted another way, as a noun made by adding -ER to a verb. For example, [French flower] may be the SEINE River, something that flows in France, a flow-er. [River tower] might be TUG, as in something that tows larger vessels in a river. (This kind of clue infuriates some people. They're not the height of cleverness, these clues, but they're like a little secret handshake for experienced solvers. If you know the "flower" trick already, you don't feel cheated when it comes up. And if you don't know the trick, it just seems unfair.)
Can you think of other constructor tricks that solvers may stumble on?
Thursday, 8/16
NYS 6:04
NYT 3:40
LAT 4:32
CS 2:41
(updated at 8:50 a.m. Thursday)
There's another plus-sized New York Sun grid (15x16 squares) for Pete Mitchell's "Don't Be So Negative!" puzzle. It summons up thoughts of all those words with prefixes that lack non-prefixed opposites. This old New Yorker piece by Jack Winter plays with that quirk of the English language; words and phrases like "sipid," "plussed," and "for some apparent reason" populate Winter's humorous essay. The crossword gives us NOCENT BYSTANDERS, RULY PASSENGERS, MACULATE HEART, and a GRUNTLED EMPLOYEE. Then the puzzle's also jam-packed with crisp and clever clues. [Where one might use a J-stroke] means nothing to me, but it's in a CANOE? Okay. [Cranberries' land] is ERIN, not BOG, because the band called the Cranberries is Irish. Cynophobia is a fear of dogs, so the [Bad choice for a cynophobic cinephile] is CUJO. [Heated competition?] is a MEET, where racers may run in heats. I didn't know the word [Exiguous], which means SPARSE. TASS is the Soviet/Russian news agency, a [Red alert issuer?]. [Fleshy flora] is ALOE, since aloe leaves are thick and fleshy. [Sit in a barrel, maybe] is AGE—if you're wine or whiskey. An AXLE is a Chevy [Suburban bar].
I went through at least half of Alan Arbesfeld's New York Times puzzle, including the theme entries, before I thought to see how FROM / START TO FINISH was borne out in the theme entries. ENDED BART jumped out at me as being a reorganized "bartended" (though it wasn't—it was "tended bar" with just a single letter shifted to the end), but then I didn't bother checking the logic of the theme entries up above until after I was done. "Trust in me" becomes RUST IN MET, "theater of war" turns into HEATER OF WART, and a "Trailways bus" is RAILWAYS BUST. Anyone else solve the puzzle without bothering to parse the theme answers? And did anyone else laugh to see that the [2001 Oscar nominee for the song "May It Be"] was Cruciverbia's favorite songstress, ENYA? I Googled up the YouTube video—yeesh, it's that woeful song from one of the Lord of the Rings movies. (Last Wednesday's Sun puzzle by Kelsey Blakley wowed with a similar theme.)
Updated:
I got partway through Paula Gamache's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Cheers!" and saw a frightfully stodgy quote taking shape. [Start of some advice about resourcefulness], IF LIFE HANDS YOU / LEMONS...ach. Then the rest of it settled into the grid, and the advice ended ASK FOR / TEQUILA AND SALT. (Then you'll have the ingredients for a tequila body slammer.) Oh! That's hardly stodgy.
Nancy Salomon's LA Times crossword has a switcheroo theme highlighting two homophone-rich flip-flop phrases, "all for one and one for all" and MacBeth's "fair is foul, and foul is fair." Her theme entries are FARE IS FOUL and FOWL IS FAIR, and AWL FOR ONE and WON FOR ALL. Neat trick, that.
August 14, 2007
Wednesday, 8/15
NYS 4:04
NYT 3:18
LAT 3:11
CS 3:03
(updated at 10:40 a.m. Wednesday)
Our top story tonight: Guess whose birthday is the 15th? And guess who ate too much at a dinner out tonight (chocolate souffle cake, yum!) and had too great a volume of strawberry margarita?
In other news, Wordplay's broadcast television premiere is slated for October 16 on PBS, as part of the "Independent Lens" series. Check, as they say, your local listings.
The New York Sun crossword, "Animal Pairs," is by Mark Feldman. The theme entries are short—a 9, two 8s, and two 7s, all "animalistic" sound-alikes for words or phrases in which the resulting phrase is a pair of animals. Hair mousse becomes HARE MOOSE; the French wine Bourdeaux becomes BOAR DOE; an old movie I don't know, Dear Heart, becomes DEER HART. My favorite examples were the ones using animals the populate crossword grids: the GNU BEES (newbies) and EWE TERNS (U-turns). As a bonus, NOAH'S ARK is there—although Noah would have gotten in big trouble for pairing a ewe with a tern instead of bringing two of each. I liked [Heathcliff's creator] because it made me think, "Who on earth does that comic strip?" when I really just needed Emily BRONTE. (Wuthering Heights was her only novel—she died of tuberculosis at age 30.) The small theme allows for plenty of longish answers in the fill, though BOTULIN and ARSENITE poisoned the fill a bit with their relative obscurity.
From the New York Times we get Ray Fontenot's crossword. The first part of the quip is clued [Start of a newspaper headline about a workplace mishap], and it turns out to be a play on RECOVERED's double meaning, "healed" and "covered again, as with upholstery." I'm no fan of quip or quote themes, but this puzzle's elevated by the lengthening of the fill—there are fewer 3-letter words than usual. The most obscure word, [Close-fitting tartan pants], crossed the quip and I wonder how many people chose TRETS instead of the correct TREWS (either NOW or NOT could plausibly be part of the quip). What are TREWS? They're form-fitting Scottish men's pants that date back to the time of the Book of Kells—available in knee-length breeches or in, essentially, stirrup pants. Less old is Tycho BRAHE, the Danish astronomer who lost part of his nose in a duel (damn those sharp swords!). Words that may be unfamiliar to crossword newcomers include ESNE ([Feudal serf]); [Soviet news agency] TASS (as in ITAR-TASS); the top crossword neutral color, ECRU; and the old (but current Canadian) gas station, ESSO, with a shiny new clue here: [Brand name that's coincidentally Italian for "it"]. Does anyone much use ELAN, meaning [Panache] or brio, outside of crosswords? "The esne envied how his lord sported his trews with such elan." Favorite clues in this puzzle: [Ignore the alarm?] for OVERSLEEP; [I, in old Rome] for EGO; [Bubble source] for SOAP (and not, say, SPECULATION or POOR LENDING PRACTICES); and ["Go ahead, tell me"] for I GIVE UP.
Updated:
Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle has CAKES and ICING and some '80s nostalgia (parts of the the "songs containing AIR, FIRE, EARTH, and WATER" theme, the BRAT PACK movies) to celebrate my birthday! I don't know about the clue for LATE SHOW, though: [TV program for insomniacs]? How many people are watching Letterman because they have insomnia? I'm thinking people stay up to watch The Late Show and its ilk and haven't even tried to go to sleep yet. Crappy infomercials are what's on tap in the wee hours for insomniacs.
Doug Peterson's LA Times crossword's theme entries are phrases that begin with PURSE, SACK, SATCHEL, and CASE. Hey, if you like cloth bags better than leather, or if you like the idea of choosing your own combination of fabrics for a one-of-a-kind bag, check out 1154 Lill Studio. I get a ton of compliments on my Lill bags, and I'll bet Linda does, too. Twisty clue: [Shot in the arm?] for AMMO, arm meaning a weapon rather than a limb here. One-letter-off trap: [Works like a dog] is MOILS, not TOILS, as a bad actor may HAM IT UP, but to my knowledge nobody has ever been said to HAT IT UP. [Sheen, to the Queen] made me think of Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen, thanks to that capital S; turns out to be the British spelling, LUSTRE.
August 13, 2007
Tuesday, 8/14
NYS 6:19
Tausig 4:02
Onion 3:58
CS 3:07
NYT 3:02
LAT 2:54
(updated at 11:30 am Tuesday)
Cha-ching! Ring up another Patrick Blindauer deposit into my "great puzzles" stash, this time the Tuesday Sun. I'm not sure why it's a Tuesday puzzle, even in the tougher-than-the-Times Sun, but there you have it. It's got a Friday-tough kick to it, plus something extra. So put on your thinking fez and and match wits with Patrick B2 before you read about the puzzle below.
The New York Times crossword by C.W. Stewart hits the thesaurus for a colorful theme of [Doofus] synonyms. I know the NUMSKULL, DUMBBELL, and BIRDBRAIN, the NINCOMPOOP and DINGALING—but NOODLEHEAD? I can't say I've heard that one. If you use your noodle or use your head, you're no doofus, but if you combine the two, somehow your cognitive skills dwindle? Nice swaths of 7-letter Down answers in the grid to show that C.W. Stewart is no noodlehead. The crowning grace of the puzzle is that YOU is clued as [A person who is not a doofus]. Old-school crossword answers for newbies to make note of: ARETES are [Craggy mountain ridges]; ETD is an [Airport stat.], estimated time of departure; an ALB is a [Priestly vestment]; [Wry Bombeck] is ERMA, and while I read her books when I was a kid, I suspect she's not well-known among younger folks; an ERG is a [Work unit] in physics; and ADAR is a [Hebrew month].
Okay, moving along to Patrick B2's New York Sun puzzle: Patrick rarely makes a crossword without some sort of twist to it. His first Sun puzzle had a connect-the-dots star in the grid, and this 15x16 grid contains a WORD SEARCH PUZZLE. The words that are hidden are made up of DOWN CLUE STARTERS, or the first letters of each down clue. Reading down the list of clues, we see "Find these six words: TIME, STORY, TREE, HOT, FOUL, ASSEMBLY." Sure enough, after you fill in the crossword, you can find those words in the grid, word-search style: TIME goes up inside 11-Down, STORY goes up diagonally from the bottom right corner, TREE is inside 30-Across, HOT's in 64-Across, FOUL heads up at an angle from within 69-Across, and ASSEMBLY climbs up from 47-Down. The puzzle's title, "Go to the Head of the Line," ties the word-search words together: assembly line, timeline, etc. (What? No conga or telephone line?) So the gimmick's awfully nifty, and the restrictions on what each down clue could start with produced some interesting clues. [Opposite of bianca] is NERA, Italian for black (as used to describe pope-picking black and white smoke—I heard about this smoke during the last papa go-round but didn't learn the Italian terms for it). CPR is [Hospital administration?]. ["Two Girls at the Piano" and others] = RENOIRS and ["Farewell to Thee" is its translated title] = ALOHA OE. [One involved in match play?] is a PYRO. [Lisa Simpson, to Patty and Selma Bouvier] = NIECE. From th Across clues: George Bernard SHAW won an Oscar for Pygmalion and a Nobel prize for literature. [Eton john] (for LOO) evokes Elton John. I think I've seen [It may bring out the kid in you] before as a clue for CESAREAN, but I still like it.
Updated:
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Q and A," has four Q.A. entries, excluding quality assurance, which is one letter too long. My favorite theme entry is the colloquial, quasi-Brit QUITE ALRIGHT, and I do like the Q action. Favorite clues: [Place to score, if you're not out] for HOME; [Noted krautrock group] for FAUST, a German rock band I've never heard of; [Collective with turf] for GANG (hmm, I suppose the Gangster Disciples might be considered a collective); and [Caesarean section?] for I CAME.
Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword tells a traveler's tale of woe with a whopping five 15-letter entries. His flight was DELAYED TWO HOURS, assorted other indignities transpired, and eventually he said, "Forget flying, I'm HITCHHIKING HOME." There are some very good answers and clues in this puzzle. I like "YOU SWEAR?" and the five-sixths consonants SCHISM, AXE deodorant body spray "cutting through" ODOR, and the assortment of pop culture. Two words that don't usually make it into daily crosswords: ANAL, clued as [Micromanaging, say], and NAUSEA, [Roller coaster upshot, possibly]. My favorite clues: [Bugs, for one] for TOON; [Ball ___] for HOG; [Weird Al's "Yoda" parodies it] for LOLA (that link is a clip of Weird Al performing the song live); and ["You are the ___" (phrase often heard on Maury] for FATHER (Maury Povich's show does big business in paternity testing).
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy theme has probably been done before in some form, but it's done well here. Five theme entries offer methods of "Going Up" that hinge on words that mean "a thing you use to go up": ESCALATOR CLAUSE, ELEVATOR SHOES, SPIRAL STAIRCASE, CAN I GET A LIFT, and CORPORATE LADDER. Granted, the only upward movement involved in getting a lift is stepping from the pavement to the car, and elevator shoes don't hoist you too far, but that's close enough for me. I like the double "Going Up" sense the theme entries offer. Each of the 9-letter Down answers links three theme entries together, too.
Jack McInturff's LA Times crossword groups four 15-letter phrases that end with words that fit into ___way, WAY being the defining entry at 73-Across; e.g., CANDLESTICK PARK and parkway. The other ways are beltway, roadway, and freeway.
Cartoons and crosswords
Have you seen the latest Pixar animated film, Ratatouille? My family and I all loved it. Funny, sweet, and with a heartening take-home message: "Anyone can cook." That was the motto of the late, great toon chef Auguste Gusteau and the title of his fictional cookbook. In the movie (and this is hardly a spoiler for anyone who's seen a single ad for Ratatouille), Remy is a rat who has a gift for cooking.
I think the same philosophy holds true for crossword puzzles. So many people say, "Oh, I can't do those things." They'll skim the list of clues for a crossword, see little that jumps out as something they know, and they'll put it down. But I do believe that anyone who has a modicum of intelligence and takes an interest in crosswords can learn how to kick cruciverbal butt. They may not all be able to triumph at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, but honestly, I think average Janes and Joes can teach themselves the tricks of the trade.
Of course, plenty of people just don't care about crosswords one way or another. But really, a tool like my book can help a new solver crack the code if he or she is motivated to try.
There are so many words and names that are woefully obscure to most Americans, but always on tap for crossword junkies. Sure, we all had a first time. We weren't born knowing that Charlie Chaplin married Eugene O'Neill's much-younger daughter, Oona (that name is the Irish version of her mom's name, Agnes). We didn't know that Uta Hagen taught acting. We didn't know that a seed coat is called an aril or that there's a group of arum plants. My book (like several others) includes lists of common words seen in crosswords. Study that vocabulary list and it won't much enhance your conversational skills, but it'll help you with crosswords.
Paying attention to the letter patterns of words is also helpful. If there's a longish answer lining the bottom or right side of a crossword grid, it probably contains the sort of letters that other words end with, for example. Like S and E and R and D.
Learning how to extract all the information from a clue is also key. Sometimes it's tricky and you can't tell if a noun like fish is plural or singular, or if a verb like put is in the past or present tense. But more often, it's obvious what part of speech the clue represents, and the answer will play the same role. Experienced solvers wil remember this convention, and it will help keep them from falling down the rabbit hole of dead-wrong answers.
The next lesson (a.k.a. book excerpt): The Top 10 Ways Constructors Try to Trick You.
August 12, 2007
Monday, 8/13
CS 4:12
NYS 4:08
NYT 2:48
LAT 2:46
(updated at 10:55 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday)
If you're like me and you wish every book had not only a table of contents but also a finely crafted index, and you have a copy of How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, then feel free to click on this picture to enlarge it, print it out (it should print out in the right size even though it's huge on the screen, but not crystal-clear), and tuck it in the front of your book. (Thanks to Harris for the technical assistance. Unless it doesn't work, of course.)
I may be taking a short vacation and skipping blogging Monday and Tuesday nights, with Al Sanders and John Farmer filling in for me. However, my son's come down with an ill-timed fever, so we may not be going anywhere tomorrow after all. We'll have to reassess his status Monday morning.
The Monday New York Times puzzle is by Andrew Ries. His name is familiar to me—if this is the same Andrew Ries whose name I've seen during my years of editing pulmonary medicine papers and a crossword constructing debut, then congratulations to Dr. Ries. If it's a different guy but still a debut, then congratulations to Mr. Ries. If it's not a debut, then hey, I liked your puzzle, sir. The theme is fairly beefy for a Monday, with four long answers ending with SUN, STAR, POST, and TIMES, all of which can be a DAILY (5-Across) PAPER (72-Across).The fill contains a couple Xs and a Q for extra SPICE. However, what on earth is SEXY doing clued as [Like a Playmate of the Month]? Not everyone finds PhotoShopping and silicone to be sexy. How about a little equal access, e.g., [Like Brangelina]? If you don't like Brad, you might like Angelina. Today's old-school crossword fill: EWER, EDA LeShan, IVOR Novello, AGATE clued as a [Playing marble] (Does anyone still play marbles? Is anyone unfamiliar with the quartz variety called agate?), and the crossword direction ESE (not to be confused with the slang esé).
Updated:
The kid tossed and turned feverishly for hours—in Mom and Dad's bed. Ben awoke refreshed, but his folks are feeling plumb tuckered out. Sure, it's nothing compared with the sleep deprivation attendant on caring for a newborn, but we've grown soft since Ben's baby days and need our sleep.
Hooray! Another CrosSynergy crossword from Bob Klahn. In "Heart Association," the theme entries start with kinds of hearts: ARTIFICIAL, HEAVY, PURPLE, and BROKEN. As I'd expect from Klahn, many terrific clues: [They may get hot under the collar] for NAPES and [It holds its head up] for NECK; [What the Saints come marching in on?] for ARTIFICIAL TURF; [They're barely brown] for ECRUS (a good clue can redeem a lame word); [Result of many a union grievance?] for BROKEN MARRIAGE; [River whose name is Celtic for "river"] for AVON (did you know that? I didn't); [Prepare a dotted line, perhaps] for PERFORATE; and [Joint chief?] for WARDEN. Usually a theme like this would include straightforward clues for the theme entries, but here, two are tricky question-marked clues. EFILE (used here) and e-mail may be the only e- terms I hear people use. Other crosswords recently have given us the EDATE, EZINE, EMAG, ETAIL, and ENOTE, which I don't use (nor do I e-use them). What e-words do you use?
The theme in Fred Jackson III's LA Times puzzle is hard to label. Three-word phrases in which words 1 and 3 start with D and word 2 is short? He includes DULL AS DISHWATER, DEAR OLD DAD, DIME A DOZEN, and DOLLARS TO DONUTS. Dollars to donuts, I'll bet most dads wouldn't like to be tagged as dull or a dime a dozen—not that the crossword is thus slandering them or anything. AFROS is clued as [Big hairdos]; lately, I've been noticing more AFRO clues that reference the hairstyle itself rather than its purported outdatedness. Fros may have vanished in the '90s, but they're back now to a degree.
Update #2:
Jeremy Horwitz's New York Sun puzzle, "Mercury Records," features three songs I've never heard of ("COLD TURKEY," "COOL JERK," and "WARM IT UP") and one for which I have hardcore junior-high nostalgia. Foreigner's "HOT BLOODED" has dreadful lyrics, but hey, it fits the temperature/song continuum. (And no, Ben's fever did not evoke those lyrics because his fever maxed out at 102.9°.) Several standout clues: I like [Post-alpha bits?] for BETAS because it's clever and because I loved-loved-loved Alpha-Bits oaty orthographical breakfast cereal goodness when I was a kid. [It might be filled with pot smoke] is a fun mislead for KILN. The COFFEE BEAN is [Part of the morning grind?]. The Biblical-sounding ["Exodus" scribe] clues novelist Leon URIS. [Nickel and dime] means the COINS and not the adjective or verb. TALL can be defined as [Like Magic?] Johnson. Favorite fill: PB AND J, PAY PHONE, and the words containing those 10 instances of X, Z, J, or K.
August 11, 2007
Sunday, 8/12
LAT 9:21
PI 8:39
NYT 8:33
WaPo 8:28
BG 7:31
CS 3:13
(updated at 10:50 a.m. Sunday)
You know, after I reviewed the galleys of How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle last spring, I figured the publisher would add the table of contents in the next stage. They didn't. I typed one up for myself today—will have to figure out if there's a way to upload a printable version here. In the meantime, if you'd like it in MS Word, feel free to e-mail me (orangexw is my gmail address).
The Sunday New York Times crossword this weekend is by Cathy Millhauser. The "Lightheaded" theme is signaled by TO THE MOON at 52-Down. The other theme entries all begin with words that can fill in the blank in "___ MOON": NEW AGE MOVEMENTS, HARVEST HOME, QUARTERSTAFF, BLUE LAGOON, PAPER TIGER, CRESCENT ROLL, WAXING SALON, FULL METAL JACKET, and (at 38-Down) HALF A LOAF. Hey, look who's down there in the right corner of the grid—EMILE, the ["South Pacific" role] played by Ezio Pinza. (Do remember these names, because you'll be seeing them again if you continue doing crosswords.)
There were a smattering of obscure words lurking in this puzzle (not counting words like ARIL and OONA that are familiar to longtime solvers). The ROWEL, a [Wheel on a spur], and the weapon, the QUARTERSTAFF, both date back to medieval England. Also in England, we have ENFIELD, the [Northernmost borough of London], where the Piccadilly Underground line terminates at Cockfosters and yes, I giggled when the train announcer said the train was going there. I didn't recognize the [Elongated marine fish] known as an EELPOUT—"Oh, don't pout, sweetie. You're not really an eel." The [Capital of France's Aube Department], TROYES, is where Louis the Stammerer received the imperial crown in the year 878. Crossing the Spanish border, there's also LEON, a [Province NW of Madrid].
There's plenty of skiing going on in this puzzle's moonlight: While living on MST (Mountain Standard Time), you and your SKIS might take the ROPE TOW to the top and SLALOM your way down. There's a double hit of Latin, with LATIN clued as [Exempli gratia, e.g.], and the Latin NOMEN ("name") clued as [The "Claudius" in Tiberius Claudius Nero]. Clues I liked: [Break-even enterprise] for WASH; [Root canal, in dentist-speak] for ENDO (always like it when dental and medical terminology pop up here); ["Ta-ta"] for TOODLE-OO; [Attorney William after whom a stadium is named] for SHEA (did not know that!); the groan-inducing [Burn at the end?] for CREMATE; and [Centaur's head?] for SOFT C.
Patrick Blindauer's Washington Post puzzle, "Patron Saints," pretends that various words and phrases that start with ST are saints. So the [Patron of drinking buds] is ST ALE MATE, and [Patron of young rhymers] is ST RAPPING LAD. The unwashed get ST ICKY FINGERS, and the conger catchers turn to ST EEL TRAP. Each theme entry is fun to figure out, and Patrick B2 has also wedged plenty of lively fill into his grid. There's a BIG MAC, some ROTH IRAS, KITSCHY, sweet RIESLING, ALRIGHT, PRIE-DIEU, SUSIE Q and the X-MEN, and a few other words containing a Q, Z, or X. Favorite clues: the great [Toonsmith?] for ANIMATOR; [Column part] for VERTEBRA; [Turkey toucher] for IRAQ; [Mandy's "Princess Bride" role] for INIGO (here's a video clip of Mr. Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, saying his famous line); [Don't sit] for ACT with [Stand] for GET UP; and [A concha tops it] for APSE (the concha is the half-dome seen here). Thanks for an entertaining crossword, Patrick (and editor Fred Piscop)!
Henry Hook's online Boston Globe crossword, "Take the Train," adds EL to certain phrases to generate the theme entries. Vows of silence become [One I and two Es?], or VOWELS OF SILENCE. Woman's Day magazine yields WOMAN'S DELAY, [Result of long restroom lines, traditionally?]. And the [Wearer of half an eagle?] is a SEMICOLONEL. Favorite clues: [My brothel's keeper?] for MADAM; the never-saw-it-before word [Famulus] for SECRETARY; [Pre-Copernican center] for EARTH; [Spot check?] for LEASH; [Cambrian] for WELSH; and [1955 newsmaking passenger] for Rosa PARKS.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword is called "Baseballese." You know what? I've learned plenty of baseball from crosswords over the years, but most of what I've learned are shorter words. Merl's got 11 baseball terms, 10 to 15 letters apiece, and I've only heard of two of them. SHAKES OFF A SIGN is one I picked up from Bull Durham, and SUICIDE SQUEEZE, well, maybe I read that in crossword clues, or maybe I actually gleaned some actual baseball knowledge somewhere. The other nine phrases are a mystery to me. Well, baseball junkies are sure to love this puzzle.
Updated:
Today's Universal puzzle by Ed Early is called "A Question of Love." Reader Kristi tipped me off to it—the theme entries read MY HEART IS YOURS, I'M CRAZY ABOUT YOU, WILL YOU MARRY ME, and SAY YES. Anyone know the story behind this proposal?
Robert Wolfe's syndicated LA Times crossword, "Doubles Match," is tougher than the day's other Sunday-sized puzzles because the eight theme entries have no apparent link when you study their clues, and having eight short answers clued [Word with 15-Down] or [Word with 23-Across], say, doesn't give away any other hints. Eventually, with the help of a zillion crossing answers, the theme emerges: phrases that follow the "___ AND ___" model, teamed with a short word that can go with both halves. Thus, 92-Down, BALL, is paired with 23-Across, HARD AND FAST (hardball, fastball). The other combos are FIRE AND RAIN with STORM; WATCH AND WAIT with LIST; BED AND BOARD with ROOM; NIGHT AND DAY with LIGHT; LAW AND ORDER with BOOK (book order? order book?); WAR AND PEACE with TIME; and BLACK AND BLUE with BIRD. I don't get a couple of the "doubles matches," but I like the intricacy of the theme. Eight longish theme entries linked to eight shorter theme entries, all obeying traditional symmetry rules, surrounded by fill that doesn't feel particularly forced. Favorite clues and entries, in no particular order: [HI his] for ALOHAS; the racehorse BARBARO; [King's realm] for CNN, home of Larry King's show, and [King of the stage] for LEAR; BAWDIER and HEINIE; [Season opener?] for PRE; and the inclusion of the [Goat god] PAN and those [Part-goat creatures], SATYRS, in the same corner.
Thomas Schier's themeless CrosSynergy crossword played like a Wednesday puzzle only without a theme—that is to say, pretty easy. One solitary Scrabbly letter, an X, amid fairly ordinary words. (Play this little game: Look for forms of REASSESS in the bottom row or rightmost column of crosswords. You won't see the word often in other parts of the grid, but all those Ss come in handy for the endings of the crossing words. Here, it's at the far right, but I know I've seen it parked in the bottom of plenty of other grids.) Playful clues: [Holdup man?] for ATLAS and [Curly poker?] for MOE of the Three Stooges.
August 10, 2007
Saturday, 8/11
Newsday 5:11
LAT 5:05
NYT 4:50
CS 3:02
(updated at 10:15 a.m. Saturday)
Rejoice! A Saturday New York Times puzzle by Karen Tracey! And it's so thoroughly enjoyable! Well, I liked it, anyway. Karen's style does appeal to me. What in particular pleased me? First off, there's all the Scrabbly deliciousness: FLORENZ ZIEGFELD ([Biographical subject of the Best Picture of 1936]), EZIO PINZA ([Co-star of Broadway's "Fanny"]), [Mideastern news source] AL-JAZEERA, and [Fictional salesman of '80s ads] JOE ISUZU all have a couple uncommon letters. Then there's the smidgen of world geography, ADDIS ABABA, [Where the African Union is headquartered], and the shoe brand ADIDAS (pardon me, the [Sportswear company whose logo is three parallel stripes]) that sounds related. Adidas Ababa? Then there are great words like SYMBIOSIS ([Mutualism]), WOLFSBANE ([Monkshood]—read up on it and see if you think it will turn you into a werewolf or fend off werewolves), and the nutty SPEEDEE, the [McDonald's mascot before Ronald]. Favorite clues: [Whole ___] for SHEBANG; [What goes around] for ROTATOR; [Gain or loss] for football YARDAGE; the verb [Shrink], not the noun, for COWER; [Place for a clown] for RODEO; [Jambalaya] for both GRAB BAG and OLIO; [Some defenders: Abbr.] for ATTS (lawyers, not athletes); [Number of wives for Enrique VIII] for SEIS (Enrique = Henry, seis = six); [Sex therapist's suggestion] for VIAGRA; [One held in an orbit] for EYE; [Patrick with a Tony] for Patrick MAGEE; and [It may follow convention] for GOER (as in convention-goer). One name I didn't know at all: [Science fiction author Greg] EGAN. And I'd never heard of SPEEDEE, who looks like this:
Well done, Karen (and Will)! A most enjoyable crossword.
Updated:
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle has a "Bar Exam" quip: WHAT BEVERAGE DID / THE ATTORNEY / GET AT THE PUB? Answer: A SUBPOENA COLADA. Does that put you in the mood to listen to "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)"?
Myles Callum's LA Times themeless puzzle includes my tag within ORANGE PEELS...directly opposite WICKED WITCH, clued Ozzishly with [Western villain?]. EMO PHILIPS gets promoted to the first/last name combo, with one of his jokes in the clue: "The other day my nephew's computer beat me at chess. But it was no match for me at kickboxing." DARLING LILI and NO, NO, NANETTE make a nice mini-theme of musicals that end with women's names and include doubled letter pairs (NO NO and LILI).
Daniel Stark's Newsday Saturday Stumper contains plenty of straightforward words with blah clues. INTENTS, ENTAILS, CEREALS, ENDINGS, ENSURED, CONFERS, HOOTING, HINTING, WHITER, SHARPER—what do these words have in common? Very few uncommon letters, lots of -ING, -S, and -ER endings, lots of IN- and EN- prefixes. In a standard themeless puzzle, 72 answers is the upper limit for word count. That means the grid ought to be less difficult to fill than a lower-word-count puzzle is, which should mean there's more flexibility for colloquial phrases, fun words, and words with high-Scrabble-value letters.
One of the most interesting chapters in Matt Gaffney's Gridlock is "Are Humans Necessary?" There, Matt writes about the sort of crossword-entry databases Peter Gordon and Frank Longo have, and the way those constructors will have a computer fill the grid. It's easy to let software fill a grid, but more control and more tweaking are required to make a computer-generated grid include livelier words—and Peter and Frank generally do insist on higher-quality words in the fill. In that chapter, Matt and Byron Walden produce similar crossword grids with interesting and unusual (but not obscure) words, but relying on their brains rather than finely honed databases.
What sorts of entries spice up a crossword? Last week's Stumper by "Anna Stiga" ("Stan again" Newman) had entries like "YES INDEED," TWERP, MASON JAR, and "IS IT ME?"—but not a ton of other zestiness in the grid. The July 21 one by Doug Peterson featured a pair of 15s (including MANDARIN ORANGES), POSTDOC, NANCY DREW, PREPPIES, a GREASY SPOON diner, and TRIX and SNAPPLE brand names—see, now that sort of grid fairly shouts "I started with a couple 15s and then put some fun stuff in there." The July 21 LA Times puzzle by Karen Tracey had SIT BACK AND RELAX crossing MASQUERADE PARTY—that says "Here's where I started, and how fun is it to build a puzzle about phrases with Xs and Qs in them?" Last weekend's CrosSynergy Sunday Challenge by Martin Ashwood-Smith had two triple-stacks of 15s—the obvious starting point for the constructor is those triple-stacks—and the July 29 offering from Bob Klahn (he of the swoon-inducing cluing) threw in DIXIE CUPS, SHE LOVES YOU, and the P-packed PINEAPPLE/PLATYPUS/PARK PLACE corner. Today's Stumper has no obvious seed entries that the constructor thought it'd be fun to see in a grid.
Memo to Stan Newman and his team: More question-marked tricky clues and clever misleads in your themeless puzzles, please! In today's Saturday Stumper, ENDINGS is clued as [Denouements]; why not something like [Parts that may be spoiled]? SNIPE is [Marsh bird] here; why not play around with the verb? For CEREALS, throw in a manufacturer name and clue it [Post boxes?] rather than [Supermarket displays]. Dull words can often be pepped up with oblique clues that bend the solver's brain.
There may be solvers who prefer to contend with more ordinary words and more straightforward clues, but the world of easy crosswords is keyed to that preference already. When it comes to a crossword that is presumably intended to stump the solver, though—and it is called Newsday's "Saturday Stumper"—it'd be nice to see more adventurous grids with zestier fill and more inventive cluing.
August 09, 2007
Friday, 8/10
NYS 7:26
NYT 6:24
Jonesin' 3:55
CHE, LAT, CS, WSJ, and Newsday—all done, but not timed
(updated at 12:30 p.m. Friday)
Ben and I spent the afternoon tanning (him) and freckling (me) in my sister's pool, and drove home as the sun set. We passed downtown Chicago on the way and grooved on the low clouds in the skyline. The top of the Aon Center (formerly the Amoco Building, née the Standard Oil Building) peeked out above the misty scarf of cloud wrapped around at about the 60th to 70th floors. About the top 20 floors of the Hancock building disappeared into the clouds, too.
So, we get home, and eventually I settle in for the evening's crosswords. Oy! Katie Hamill had already plowed through the New York Times puzzle by Patrick Berry in tiptop speed, so I think maybe the puzzle's not so hard...and then pow! The unbearable wrongness of guessing. My cruciverbal instincts lapsed. Let's see: Which of the 64 answers did I initially flub? 1-Across is supposed to be BANANA SPLIT, but I figured the [Oblong dessert], singular, was LADYFINGERS, plural. [Congressional output] was LAWS instead of ACTS. The long one at 6-Down I figured was ALEUTIAN something, crossing UNSALTED ([Suitable for hypertension sufferers]); eventually I realized it was ALASKAN crossing SALT-FREE; still later I removed that N for ALASKA PENINSULA. ["G'bye!"] had to be ADIOS, making 14-Across end in an A, so it be something-something-NBA—nope, it's SEE YA crossing BASKETBALL TEAMS. 25-Across, the [Kind of dish], was a mystery the whole time I thought ALASKAN belonged in the middle column; finally the SOAP dish washed out. Who's the [Early "astronaut"] at 29-Down? Obviously a non-human, LAIKA the dog—whoops, it's supposed to be a CHIMP. For 43-Down, [Highlands weapon], I put down SNEE rather than DIRK. The [Square dance partner] starting with G had to be GIRL...except that it was GENT. 44-Down's [Soft rock?] had to be TALC (or possibly LAVA)—whoops, no, it's SAND. If you managed to avoid all those wrong turns that sunk me, give yourself a cookie and a pat on the back.
My favorite clues tend to be the ones that stymie me the most, so I did enjoy most of those clues. I had recently looked up mushy PEAS, the [Mushy ___ (British dish)], to see if there was more to the goop than just mushed-up peas; apparently yes, there's...something else in there. I forget what. I don't like peas. Other good clues: [It reveals who's on first] for LINEUP; [Long known for playing football] for HOWIE Long; and [White sheets] for ICE FLOES. There's plenty to eat in this puzzle besides the BANANA SPLIT: CAKES AND ALE, GREEN TEA ice cream, SORBET, and BABKA, all close enough to SALT-FREE for the folks watching their blood pressure. Patrick's also assembled a beautiful grid, hasn't he? Sort of a big backwards S with chunky corners of white space firmly fixed to the stacked-up long answers at the top and bottom.
Jim Page's New York Sun puzzle probably isn't all that tough either, but I did it after blogging about the Times puzzle, and apparently freckling is hard work. I "rested my eyes" a few times while working through this crossword, so I haven't got much to say about it. The "Switcheroo" theme switches ER for OO and vice versa, so a tattooed lady is a TATTERED LADY and a herd mentality becomes a HOOD MENTALITY. Many delectable Xs in the grid—five in the top third, in fact.
In Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "The Most Evil" (which I did earlier) the theme entries begin with synonyms: LOW, BASE, WICKED, and ARCH (the latter in the ARCH DELUXE burger). The theme doesn't do much for me, but I like how Matt included eight 9-letter words and phrases in the fill, along with a good smattering of pop culture.
Updated:
My son's done with day camp and doesn't go back to school until after Labor Day, and also is not fond of being neglected for hours while Mommy sits at the computer, solving crosswords and writing about them. So I printed a bunch out and sat on the couch with him.
Patrick Berry is all over the bylines today. The Wall Street Journal and the July 27 Chronicle of Higher Education crosswords are his. The WSJ theme has four pairs of "Name & Name" companies intersecting at the ampersand. They sort of seem like linked pairs, too: BRIGGS & STRATTON and BLACK & DECKER are both hardwarey, and MARKS & SPENCER and LORD & TAYLOR are clothing-heavy retailers. MARTINI & ROSSI and BAUSCH & LOMB both...sell things in bottles? That's pushing it a bit. And BARNES & NOBLE and CRABTREE & EVELYN are both...often found in the same malls? Hmm, maybe all they have in common is being companies named after "Business Partners." There's a [Green cheese in Switzerland] called SAPSAGO, apparently; looks like it's cheaper than Piave, my favorite other mystery cheese. Favorite clue in the WSJ crossword: [Show stopper?] for V-CHIP. My kid is not a fan.
Berry's CHE crossword, "Dubious Honors," features fairly heinous academia puns. Best clue: [Keeper of the children's quarters?] for ARCADE. Best fill: JOE PISCOPO, because it's fun to say, and COSSET, because it's a word I should use more often. Mystery answer: MICMAC, an Algonquian [First Nations tribe] of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Maine. Not to be confused with Melmac, the home planet for the '80s sitcom alien, Alf, the Big Mac, Tic-Tacs, or a mishmash.
Today's CrosSynergy puzzle is "Move Up the S," by Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke. An S moves from the beginning of the second word to the end, so Radio Shack becomes RADIO HACKS, [Cab drivers who love their Sirius?], and [Ambulatory pests?] are WALKING TICKS. Pretty Scrabbly fill, too.
James Sajdak's LA Times crossword plays with the Boston accent, eliding some R sounds to create theme entries like CROSSING GOD and an ANNIVERSARY COD. I didn't feel very wavelengthy while solving this puzzle, and it felt tough. Favorite clues: [Genesis creator] for video game company SEGA, and [It has banks in Switzerland] for the AARE River.
I don't usually write about the Newsday puzzle outside of Saturdays, but Merle Baker's Friday Newsday crossword, "The A List," has a gimmick with a fairly loose theme. It's the kind of gimmick I tend to like, though—letter restriction. The only vowel used is A. Also, every answer has at least one A, so there are no 3-letter abbreviations with only consonants. The theme entries are famous people with A-happy names, but they don't seem to be linked by anything but that orthographical happenstance.
August 08, 2007
Thursday, 8/9
NYS 5:22
LAT 4:15
NYT 3:37
CS 2:43
(updated at 9:15 a.m. Thursday)
This week's Themeless Thursday puzzle in the New York Sun comes from Patrick Berry. It's got a fairly low word count—64 answers—but it is quite low on the "roll-your-own word" front, includes many interesting and lively words and phrases, is moderately Scrabbly, and features four delicious corners of wide-open white space to be filled in. The entries I liked best: tasty TAPAS BAR just across the border from Portugal's AZORES; "WAIT A SECOND"; the ZAPRUDER movie; ODYSSEAN; "Be sure to drink your OVALTINE"; and the abutment of 90210's BRENDA with King SARGON, the [Akkadian king who conquered Mesopotamia]. Favorite clues: [Additions to an account?] for FIBS; [Local growers] for FLORA; [It most definitely is not fast food] for ESCARGOT (my kid, oddly enough, is interested in trying snails, though we keep passing up opportunities to order that when we dine out); [Hexagram] for STAR OF DAVID; [Italian vermouth brand featured in "Breaking Away "] for CINZANO; and [X, for Washington] for ROLE (Malcolm X, Denzel W.). Is [It can be a drag]/BUNT about bunting in baseball? Where does the drag fit in?
Tyler Hinman's New York Times crossword is a delight, too. No Thursday-style gimmick—just three guys whose names rhyme:
A bozo named STEVEN SEAGAL
Was jealous of one MARC CHAGALL
He thought Marc was French
And swung a steel bench
At PrésidentCHARLES DE GAULLE
In this left-right symmetrical puzzle, the finest Scrabbly letters pop up in the top two rows, in QBS, JAX, and SHOW BIZ. Other highlights in the grid: the BAHA MEN of the ubiquitous "Who Let the Dogs Out"; JARGON and the X-FILES crossing that JAX; ARUGULA (because I had an arugula salad for lunch on Monday, after years of thinking I hated arugula—I merely needed to see a plate of it to recognize it as a green I actually do like); the great phrase A BIT MUCH, clued as [Too-too]; and the PAC-TEN athletic conference spelled out in full, rather than as [___-10 conference] cluing PAC. Favorite clues: [Where to see a crown] for PAGEANT; [The Engineers of coll. athletics] for Tyler's alma mater, RPI, and the related [Beer, often] for CHASER; [Blew (through)] for SPED; and ["That's what I'm talking about!"] for AMEN. [Star near Venus?] is a great clue for SERENA Williams, as it sounds astronomical. So do three other clues: [Moon and Starr, for short] for QBS, [Space] for ROOM, and [Rockets' and Suns' organization] for NBA. I can scarcely believe ARUGULA wasn't clued as [Rocket].
Updated:
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "I Think We're in Trouble!" includes a bubbly foursome of synonymous theme entries: a fine KETTLE OF FISH, PANDORA'S BOX, a HORNETS' NEST, and the ever-popular STICKY WICKET. Best clue: [Bring up the rear?] for MOON. That upward hoisting is a key part of car- or bus-based mooning, of course.
Vic Fleming's LA Times crossword slices some TATERs in the theme entries, STATE REVENUE, DAKOTA TERRITORY, and the wee TOYOTA TERCEL. The theme entries are hooked together by some great longer fill: STIR CRAZY and HOT TO TROT.
August 07, 2007
Wednesday, 8/8
NYS 5:26
LAT 3:41
CS 3:36
NYT 3:13
(updated at 9:30 a.m. Thursday—whoops! A day late)
Kelsey Blakley's New York Sun crossword has one of those themes that must've taken a good long while to brainstorm. Sure, the first entry might leap to mind serendipitously, but how on earth did she accumulate four more? In "The First Shall Be Last," each theme entry takes the first letter of a phrase and relocates it to the end. Marc Antony becomes ARC ANTONYM, clued trickily and geometrically as [Straight line?]. An Easter hat lets a vowel in on the action, moving the E for ASTER HATE. {Aftermath of a sausage explosion?] is RAINING BRAT, built on a training bra. Track star becomes the torture-related RACK START, and a number line turns into UMBER LINEN. (That last one seemed off until I remembered the dark brown flannel sheets I own.) I do wish the clue for ATHEISM had been modernized from [Madalyn Murray O'Hair's belief]; what about Richard Dawkins? We can't have the [Leather leggings] called CHAPS without linking to a photo. Favorite clues: [Meter reader?] for POET crossing [Nonpoetic lines that scan well?] for UPC; [Stock quote?] for MOO and [Hog heaven sound?] for OINK; and [...] for ELLIPSIS. Extra bonus points for combining Keith RICHARDS and KARL ROVE in one crossword.
Donna Levin's New York Times puzzle brings some absentee fathers home by adding PA to the beginning of a word in each theme entry. Role reversal becomes PAROLE REVERSAL, rent strike becomes a PARENT STRIKE (is there a union to join?), circus tent gets a CIRCUS PATENT, and Buffalo wings turn into BUFFALO PAWINGS. Great-looking grid, with two wide-open corners and two corners accommodating 8-letter answers. Several terrific answers leapt out at me, too: AFROPOP music (no prior uses indexed in the Cruciverb database—and look at it here! It pops. It crosses two theme entries and three stacked 6-letter answers. You might expect a boring word like RETAINS here, but instead, AFROPOP!), "OH, DARN," DOOGIE Howser, and the horror movie THE FOG. Even SHA and TRA benefit from their close proximity: SHA Na Na and TRA la la harmonize nicely. How about PEDI, the prefix for -cure or -cab, parked aptly beneath AFOOT? A lot of the short 3- and 4-letter answers are blah, but you hardly notice those when they're used to build so many longer and livelier answers.
Updated:
Rich Norris's CrosSynergy puzzle felt like it took me a much longer time to figure out than the clock would indicate. The subject of the puzzle is an actor who celebrated his 70th birthday on August 8, and four of his most critically acclaimed performances are included along with his name. It took a certain letter Z to point me in the right direction, and then the other theme entries all tumbled.
Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's LA Times puzzle has a series of five 15-letter entries that begin with the letter sequences BAN, BEN, BIN, BON, and BUN. That's a lot of theme density—good thing BY NOW, IT'S ALL OVER isn't remotely "in the language" or they might've been tempted to wedge six 15s in there...and that wouldn't have worked so well. It's nice of KABOB and BABAR to lend an assist in the first column with their Bs.
Review: Terribly Twisted Crosswords
Last night I finished Henry Hook's Terribly Twisted Crosswords.
It's got about 20 different varieties of crosswords, none with a single standard crossword grid. This generally serves to make the puzzles more challenging to finish, because the solver often won't know how long an answer is and/or where exactly it belongs, and most puzzles have no theme to give you a leg up. Hook's clues tend to be a little off-kilter, more indirect than the clues in a standard early- to mid-week crossword. The fill in these oddball grids also tends to be zippy—one puzzle included PIRSQUARED, or πR
My least favorite varieties in this book were the type I see elsewhere, such as the "Around & About" spiral, the "Helter-Skelter," and the "Crushword." I see "Marching Bands" puzzles in the Games publications, but I do like them.
"Quadrants" is one of the varieties I enjoyed the most. In these puzzles, the grid's segmented into four quadrants with a center quadrant that interlocks with the other four. All the answers are 6 letters long, but you have to strategize to figure out where they go by noting the letters they have in common and where those letters fall in the words.
Another with consistent answer lengths is "Crazy Eights," all 8-letter entries. The answers circle around the clue number clockwise or counterclockwise, and as with "Quadrants," you work off of the letters in common to deduce the answer placement. "Honeycombs" take a similar form, but with 6-letter answers circling the clue numbers in the grid.
"Jigsaw" puzzles are a bit like "Quadrants," only with nine...ninths (is there a word for a section that's a ninth of a square?) containing 5-letter words held together by four 15-letter entries that span the grid. Similar pattern recognition skills are needed to determine where the answers fit.
The "Maze" puzzles are similar to "Marching Bands"—there are two Across clues for each row, and the letters are checked by words traveling through the grid in maze fashion ("Marching Bands" grids have concentric bands rather than one long "Maze" string of answers).
An easier but fun puzzle type is the "Intersections" puzzle. It looks like a standard 13x13 crossword grid, but the clues are given in pairs. If the number 1 appeared in the top left square, all you would know is that 1-Across and 1-Down had that pair of clues, but figuring out which goes where is your job.
"Crossing Paths" were the hardest variety for me. Four zigzagging paths make a lap around, but answer lengths aren't given so you have to work forward and back from the first and last clues for each path. Each path contains about 10 answers, so good luck finding your way!
Second hardest were the "Angling" variety. You're given the first and last square numbers, but not told where the answer takes a 90° turn or which end the word starts on. There's partial checking of the answers via shaded squares that contain a quote, but it takes a good long while to fill in enough to complete the quote so it can help with the rest of the answers.
There are several more varieties of puzzles, each with its own twist on the crossword format.
If you find that standard crosswords don't stretch your brain enough, crossword folks will often encourage you to "come to the dark side" and delve into cryptic crosswords. If you prefer American-style crossword clues over parsing cryptics' clues, though, this book may be just the ticket. (I also enjoyed the book's 2003 predecessor, Twisted Crosswords.)
August 06, 2007
Tuesday, 8/7
Tausig 4:33
Onion 4:22
NYT 3:47 (minus 45 seconds of typo searching...honest)
NYS 3:32
CS 2:58
LAT 2:41
(updated at 9:20 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Tuesday)
Patrick Blindauer shows off again in the New York Sun, with an unusual grid with left-right symmetry. It's rather obvious when you look at the pattern of black squares that there must be a reason for that extended chunk of black extending upwards from the bottom middle. When you fill in 17-Across, SWORD IN THE STONE, the picture gets its caption. The theme is further expanded with ARTHUR / PENDRAGON, the wizard of his acquaintance named MERLIN, and his sword, EXCALIBUR, which is represented by the black-squares sword-in-the-stone in the grid. (I saw the movie Excalibur in 8th or 9th grade...ah, youth. Things I liked here (besides the inventive white-and-black-squares theme): [Devil, e.g.] for NHLER, as in the New Jersey Devils; [Shot putter?] for SYRINGE; the linked 44- and 35-Across, a [stud's spot], a PIERCED...what?? Oh. Just an EAR. Goodness, I've left the semicoloned list and must return to it; UNSEALS clued with reference to indictments (more often, the word's clued with jars or mail, and who ever talks about unsealing those as opposed to opening them?); [Chocolate factory emissions] for AROMAS (I love the Blommer factory's chocoriffic air pollution); [Plum parts] for PITS, "plum" being the fruit rather than the adjective here; and [Former union members?] for EXES (not SSRS!). I didn't know anything about ADAM "Pacman" Jones of the Tennessee Titans. Go ahead and read the "Legal Troubles" section of that article and tell me if there's any reason he should have been suspended from playing football rather than just plain fired. Would you still have your job if you did what Jones has reportedly done? Hmph.
I have apparently lost the ability to complete a New York Times crossword on the applet without making a typo. This time, it took me 45 seconds to notice that I'd typed OMCE for ONCE. (And yesterday, I didn't mention it here, but yes, another typo. The civil rights march wasn't in SLEMA.) Daniel Kantor provides us with another Sopranos-linked crossword. (Will these continue beyond this year? I wonder.) Raise your hand if you managed to spell FUHGEDABOUDIT on the first pass, without checking a zillion crossing words to confirm the letters. (My hand remains unraised. I started with FUHGEDDA... and ran out of room, then FUHGEDABOUTIT, and eventually the right answer.) That phrase and two others are tied together as part of the MOB SCENE. Interesting clue: [First word of every Robert Ludlum title but one] for THE—here are the titles. And what's the [Army barber's specialty]? Why, it's a BUZZCUT. My son just got his first-ever super-short haircut:
It'll grow in.
Updated:
Cute theme in Jack McInturff's LA Times crossword—you might CALL A DOCTOR who's one of the three famous fictional doctors who being the theme entries. Dr. HOUSE(-SITTER) is Hugh Laurie's TV character; Doctor DETROIT(, MICHIGAN) from the Dan Aykroyd character (not a physician); and NO MORE MR NICE GUY starts with James Bond's foe, Dr. NO. (Was he a physician?) I like the MR in the third theme entry echoing the absent DR.
Harvey Estes' CrosSynergy puzzle, "Where the Children Are Above Average," marks the 65th birthday of a certain writer with a tribute puzzle featuring the writer's name and three of his book titles. Left-right symmetry, rather than 180° symmetry, governs this grid.
And again:
I find that I approach Francis Heaney's crosswords with a degree of trepidation. There's going to be some extra mental effort needed to grasp some sort of unexpected twist. (And yes, there is such a thing as an expected twist in a crosswords, such as a regular Thursday rebus involving a short word.) Here, the twist is that the theme entries are all cross-referenced in the clues, meaning that you've got to figure out what the hell Francis is talking about in the clues in order to make good headway. The theme entries make up the key words in this paragraph: MARCEL DUCHAMP defaced a POSTCARD of the MONA / LISA, adding a MUSTACHE and a GOATEE, and called it L.H.O.O.Q. If you pronounce those individual letters aloud in FRENCH, it sounds kinda like the French equivalent of "SHE HAS A HOT ASS" (Elle a un haut cul?) This discussion of L.H.O.O.Q. has more on the artwork and its name.
I solved Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader puzzle, "Muscling In," after a workout at the gym. (No, not all of my workouts are mental.) Some of the muscles added to theme entries (at or near the beginning of the base phrases) were given due attention at the gym. I didn't do much for my abs, and I also don't understand the base phrase for RABBI BASEBALL. I know RBI means "runs batted in" in baseball, but what's RBI baseball? The king cobra gets a pec (who wouldn't like a kiss on the cheek from a PECKING COBRA?). Scarface beefs up the thighs with SQUAD CAR FACE, and a fine mess works its shoulders into a DELTA FINE MESS. Highlights in this puzzle: the TWERP and TWIT [Ninny] combo; the Scrabbliness of KINKOS, IRAQI, and NIX; O'REILLY clued with reference to the book reviewed here; a refreshing SMALL OJ, an excellent source of vitamin C and potassium; and the quaint freshness of BIBLE BELT and MOPSY Cottontail. Anyone think Canadian pop singer EMM Gryner is a name we'll see in more crosswords?
August 05, 2007
Monday, 8/6
NYS 3:19
CS 3:11
LAT 2:43
NYT 2:37
(updated at 10 a.m. Monday)
If you've ever enjoyed an episode of the The Simpsons and you haven't seen The Simpsons Movie, hie thee to the multiplex! Basically, my husband and I sat there with silly grins on our face (yes, we share but one face) for all 87 minutes, and our 7-year-old had a blast, too.
There was a poster in the multiplex lobby for some upcoming movie with Keri Russell, and I noticed that there's another actor whose name differs from hers by only two letters. You can all figure that out, can't you?
After the movie, we crossed the street to the Evanston Borders store. Worst-organized puzzle book section ever! There were crossword books interspersed with and shelved above the World of Warcraft and Pokemon books, which were on a shelf labeled "Cartridge Games," which WoW is not. So I did a little rearranging, but couldn't save all the victims of disorder. Some crossword books were intermingled with the Jumble and sudoku, and I left them in situ. The craps book and the guide to making your own invitations, though—they simply had to be placed on a non-puzzles table where they might catch the eye of a store employee. And of course, I made sure How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle was shelved at eye level...and in two spots.
There were some small books of old Maleska-edited NYT crosswords. The one puzzle I glanced at had a theme of fat-named people, including maybe Fats Domino or Minnesota Fats and...some guy with the last name Gutman? Whom I'd never heard of? With a couple other little-known people? With inconsistent attention to whether the fat word was a first name, last name, nickname, or merely a syllable? Oy. I do hope that all those people who say they miss the Maleska days actually buy a book of crosswords edited by Maleska and make themselves do every puzzle.
Moving along to New York Times crosswords edited by Will Shortz, the Monday puzzle's by Allan Parrish. I didn't notice any cue pointing me to the theme, so I had to ponder the theme entries to suss out the connection. The four long entries and the 7-letter entries that cross right in the middle all end in bowling words—FRAME, SPLIT, STRIKE, SPARE, PINS, and ALLEY. At first I'd suspected that the theme would have something to do with the letter X, what with the pair of Xs in the upper left corner (near a Z, to boot), but it turned out that the Scrabbly corner stood alone. The fill is notable for more longish answers than most Monday puzzles have—MAMA BEAR, a BOATEL, POPPED, and two types of birds who've flown away from the Sunday puzzle's bird theme (ORIOLES, PARROTS).
The New York Sun puzzle by Will Nediger is in a 15x16 grid to accommodate the theme entries for "Look! Up in the Sky!" The theme answers are THE PAINTED BIRD, SNAKES ON A PLANE, and MAN AND SUPERMAN. In other words, it's a BIRD, it's a PLANE, it's SUPERMAN! The crossword's spiced up a bit with some Scrabbly letters, Kinsey's SEX, the merry WIDOW strapless corset, BICEPS, and SNAPE (well, that's hot for Alan Rickman fans).
Updated:
The LA Times crossword by David Cromer has a theme of epic movies—or rather non-epic movies whose titles start with BIG, GRAND, MIGHTY, and GREAT. This solid puzzle had a fresh feel to it—more words like PECAN and REGATTA and EXACT and fewer like Erie, aria, and Oreo.
In Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword, "Earning a Degree," each theme entry earns a B.A. Thus, a bar exam becomes BABAR EXAM, and a con artist instead sculpts cured meat as a BACON ARTIST. (Which could be an improvement on Damien Hirst's work.)
August 04, 2007
Sunday, 8/5
NYT 10:32 (but go ahead and subtract a couple minutes for the Dreaded Typo Search)
LAT 8:45
BG 7:18
WaPo 7:10
Reagle 6:24
CS 3:22
(updated at 12:20 and 7:40 p.m. Sunday)
The Sunday New York Times crossword this weekend was constructed by Caroline Leong, and I think she's a newcomer. Congrats if this is indeed a debut! I loved the "Winging It" theme, in which each of the six long theme entries takes the form bird/birds/birds—the first bird doubles as a person or character's last name, the second doubles as a verb, and the third doubles as a plural noun. Florence NIGHTINGALE HAWKS LARKS, Steve MARTIN PARROTS COOTS, and Christopher WREN SWALLOWS RAILS. From literature and movies, Atticus FINCH DUCKS CUCKOOS and Captain Jack SPARROW GULLS CARDINALS. The Arthurian magician MERLIN ROOKS BOOBIES. I was familiar with all of these birds but the merlin, a "smallish falcon." I like crosswords that are heavy on geography (hello, ALASKANS!), plants and trees (SYCAMORES), colloquial phrases (ASK FOR ME, GET UGLY), pop culture (ERICA, PETULA, POTSIE)...and birds. I like birds, so this theme was captivating. (My husband has an abiding mistrust of all birds, though.) I found the most mysterious spot in the grid to be CORDED, [Like some tires]. This Business Week article gave me some idea of what that means. My dratted typo involved keying in PERC instead of PARC for 16-Down, and the crossing was an actress's first name, so eyeballing the crossing didn't make me see the typo. [Actress Wood of "Diamonds Are Forever"] is LANA Wood, but there are Lena Woods out there, too, so either name was plausible.
Updated:
We're off to the Simpsons movie this afternoon, so I don't have much puzzle time right now.
The online Boston Globe crossword, "Flare Affair" by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, included a couple unfamiliar words. (There are also two incorrect squares in the solution grid—should be TOLKIEN, not TOLKEIN, to get the correct crossing answers.) NATES = medical terminology for buttocks, but I've never seen the word before. PRATO = town of Tuscany, home base for the slow food movement.
Eric Berlin's LA Times syndicated crossword, "Sing Sing," sparkles. The theme entries begin with one-word TONY-WINNING MUSICALS (not all of which I'm familiar with). I can't put my finger on exactly why I enjoyed the puzzle—just the overall gestalt of the clues and fill, I suppose. One example: [J and No] as a clue for DRS.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's themeless CrosSynergy puzzle's fairly easy. Bonus points for including my screen name in ORANGE MARMALADE, of course.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle is called "No Threes, No Fours," and it's themeless. The Notepad says this: NOTE: I recently overheard a solver complaining about seeing the same three- and four-letter words over and over in his daily puzzle, and I thought, y'know, it's summer ... maybe the threes and fours should take a vacation. So here's a themeless challenger in which every answer is at least five letters long. (By the way, reigning crossword champ Tyler Hinman, who's just 22 years old, solved it in 6 minutes, 32 seconds. Aren't you just thrilled to know THAT.) Yes, Merl. Yes, I am. I edged Tyler out by 8 seconds—though if he did it on paper and not online, then I didn't actually finish faster than Tyler. Hooray for a Sunday-sized themeless crossword! And hooray for a puzzle that's blissfully free of the see-'em-all-the-time short words! (My cousin, a crossword newbie, quickly tired of the Dell Easy Crosswords publications because she realized she was seeing those same words over and over and over again. But now she uses "eke" in conversation, so it wasn't a total loss.)
Gotta run—will get to the Washington Post puzzle later on.
Later on:
Fairly easy Washington Post crossword by John Halverson, called "Face the Music." The theme involves music genres tacked onto the beginning of words that begin with the same sequence of letters; e.g., DISCO DISCORD, RAP RAPACITY, and new crossword stalwart EMO in EMO EMOLLIENT. Favorite entries: FACE TIME, clued as [Business meetings, e.g.]; DOT-TO-DOT puzzles; the horribly bearded ZZ TOP; and the TAB KEY.
New Word Open Mic podcast
Here's where you'll find the 33-minute podcast of June's "New Word Open Mic" event, held during the Dictionary Society of North America meeting.
Hooray for hangry!
Anyone know a good web designer?
I'm planning to revamp Crossword Fiend and looking for a web designer with graphic design savvy, someone who can convey a crisp hipness. If you know anyone like that, would you please leave their links in the comments? Thanks, Dear Readers.
August 03, 2007
Saturday, 8/4
NYT 7:44
LAT 5:20
CS 3:23
Newsday untimed and not done yet—hey, I'm busy
WSJ 8:25
Updated at noon Saturday
When the Friday NYT crossword proved to be tougher than usual, at least one prescient person (hi, Howard!) predicted that Saturday would bring an even tougher Byron Walden creation. Lo and behold, here 'tis.
Byron's New York Times puzzle has triple-stacked 15-letter entries at the top and bottom. I don't know about you, but that whole top section sat there discouragingly blank after I'd figured out the bottom and middle parts. There were a few things up there that I didn't know and couldn't infer without an awful lot of crossing answers helping me out. For example, the word DEMIT, meaning [Relinquish]. (As always, click those hyperlinks for more info if you're interested in reading up on a word or name.) And [Jazz trumpeter/composer Jones] for THAD; ["Over the Rainbow" vocalist Ray] EBERLE; and the song lyric from GIRL FROM IPANEMA. That Ray EBERLE was tricky because I guessed the Hamlet quote at 24-Across was I DIE rather than I LIE (it's Laertes' line). The Biblical [Villain in the book of Esther], HAMAN. [First] was BEFORE THE something, but what that something was, I couldn't see. (BEFORE THE OTHERS, it turns out, which feels a little not-in-the-language to me.) [Dante characters?] was also elusive; here is a look at the ITALIAN ALPHABET, lacking our J, K, W, X, and Y. (Their high-Scrabble value letters are Q, Z, F, and H.)
The other zones of this puzzle were much less bearish. The BEARDED LADY ([Sideshow staple]) anchored the middle, and the bottom was shored up by the [Patch alternative] NICOTINE LOZENGE and KEEP ON KEEPING ON (clued with the verb [Last]). I liked lots of clues here: [50 Cent cover] refers to the DO-RAG on his head rather than a rap cover song. The BUS is [One way to work]. [Drawing of the heart?], 3 letters ending in G...must be EKG, right? Nope—a TUG on the heartstrings. [Afternoon ora] is UNA— is this Italian? It has no J, K, W, X, or Y. [Place for some prospects] is a baseball FARM CLUB. [Hardy one?] is OLLIE, as in Laurel & Hardy, not Thomas Hardy's literary characters. The EAR is a [Place for a stirrup]. [Like some disappearances] clues the word STAGED. [Chihuahua fare] is a BURRITO—I had Mexican for lunch today, in fact. GRAPE as a [Gatorade choice] is one of my son's favorites; Gatorade chooses to amplify the Manliness Factor for this purple beverage by calling it Fierce Grape now. Speaking of my son, last Friday he managed to sink the girl in the DUNK TANK, a [Charity carnival feature]; his greatest sports achievement to date! YODELING up in the mountains is a [Higher calling?]. SUZI Quatro, of course, played Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days.
I am guessing that the EULER clue, [Discoverer of the law of quadratic reciprocity], is unimpeachable from a mathematics standpoint given that Byron teaches math. Magnesium sulfate alone is MgSO4 (and it's effective in cases of preeclampsia but it has insane side effects); magnesium sulfate hexahydrate adds a 7H2O to the MgSO4 and becomes EPSOM SALTS (38- and 55-Across), which you might like to add to the bath when you're achy. BENE is clued as ["Vogliatemi ___" (aria from "Madama Butterfly")]; didn't know that.
Did you notice that the first Across clue is [First] and the last Across clue is [Last]?
Did you find the top of this crossword to be vexatiously difficult, or were the other parts on a par with the top section?
Updated:
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal puzzle by Harvey Estes, "The Little Prints," is a rebus puzzle with a [PIC] in seven long answers and their shorter crossing answers. The [PIC] phrases are a flavorful batch: Dickens' THE PICKWICK PAPERS, EPICUREAN TASTES, Henry Miller's TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, Star Trek: The Next Generation's JEAN-LUC PICARD. The longer non-theme fill is grand, too: HORNS IN ON, HEAD STARTS, CENTERFOLD, WIRE PHOTO. Favorite clues: [Wish list opener] for DEAR SANTA; [Head, in Hebrew] for ROSH (Rosh Hashanah means "head of the year"); the verb [Harbor, say] for ABET; [Forbes rival] for BARRON'S (because I have Irish ancestors named Barron); [Flattop's antithesis] for AFRO (did you think of Dick Tracy?); [Layer of rock?] for MASON; [They have big mouths] for JARS (that JA- looked like it wanted to be JAWS, but that's just wrong); and [Inner ear?] for a corn COB.
Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy crossword posits "Lesser-Known Superheroes" such as GARBAGEMAN, STABLEBOY, and STUNTWOMAN. In the fill, he's got LEGOS clued as [Colorful building blocks]. Did you know that using the trademark-unfriendly plural with an S is an American thing? Ken Jennings heard from an Australian reader that the Aussies don't use "Legos" in the plural. As a word, that is. It would be sad indeed to play with a single Lego brand plastic brick.
It was unexpected to encounter an [NYC transp. line named for two boroughs] in the LA Times crossword by Frederick Healy. BMT is short for Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit. Having that clue slowed me down in guessing [Small municipality, briefly]; I wasn't expecting one clue's "borough" to shorten to BORO in the grid. I didn't know [Relief pitchers] were called FIREMEN. Favorite clues: [They have their orders] for NUNS; [It counteracts closeness] for FRESH AIR (also the name of my favorite public radio show); and [Fictional name literally meaning "almost like"] for QUASIMODO.
August 02, 2007
Friday, 8/3
NYT 7:05
Jonesin' 4:52
LAT 4:25
CHE 4:20
NYS 3:53
CS 3:13
WSJ delayed online
(updated at 11 a.m. Friday)
I fell asleep after the 9:00 crosswording session and alas, I do not find myself quite awake enough now to do any more crossword puzzles. The other puzzles will bide their time until morning.
Was I just tired, or did Charles Barasch's New York Times crossword really feel more like a harder Saturday puzzle? This 70-word crossword contained plenty of good fill, including the intersecting 15s, VOODOO ECONOMICS and FIBONACCI SERIES; the Scrabbly words with letters like Z, Q, X, J, and K; and lots of lively phrases, such as MAZEL TOV, I DUNNO, I NEVER, and the aghast IT'S ALIVE (most of these phrases demand an exclamation point). KOOKY sitting atop JAMMIES and next to XENA the Warrior Princess made for a lovely zone, too.
Tough stuff: [Two-time Nicaraguan president Chamorro] is EMILIANO, who was unknown to me, rather than the more recent leader Violeta Chamorro. The [Celebratory cry] of MAZEL TOV is 8 letters long, but all sorts of shorter options insisted on coming to mind: hurrah, hooray, huzzah, whoo-hoo (which I'd love to see in a grid some day). The ZINNIA is the [Flower named for a German botanist]; the dahlia's named after a Swedish botanist, the fuchsia after another German botanist—so the clue turns out to be less specific than it looks. I don't know the hackberry tree, so [Hackberry relative] and ELM weren't an obvious connection; that Wikipedia article says the hackberry's related to hemp. Never saw the word [Pseudologue] before; apparently it's a particular sort of LIAR. [Breakless, in a way], 6 letters, ending with ACT—must be INTACT, no? No! It's ONE-ACT, which wasn't my first thought. [Superman, for one], starting with ALI—must be Clark Kent's ALIAS, no? No! He was an ALIEN. [Salad bar binful], starting with SP—SPINACH, surely? No! SPROUTS. I don't know if these last three were conscious traps or not, but they proved to be devious for me. [Word before some animal names] is SHE (as in she-wolf, she-bear), but I really needed the crossings to get what was indicated here.
Clues I enjoyed that didn't stump me as much as those ones: [Beaucoup de Louises] for ROIS; [San Francisco mayor Newsom] for GAVIN; [Handicap, say] for EQUALIZE; [Undercover wear?] for JAMMIES; ["Soap" family] for TATES (the poor Campbells—less money, no suave butler, and a name less conducive to appearing in crosswords); [Dwarf], the verb, for MINIMIZE; [They might follow the drill] for FILLINGS; [Wobbly] for INSECURE; and YES WE ["___ have no ..."]. Can anyone explain why the song called "Yes, We Have No Bananas" is filed away in The Brady Bunch lobe of my brain?
Updated:
Seth Abel's New York Sun Weekend Warrior felt much easier than the NYT crossword. One thing that made it flow smoothly was the Scrabbliness throughout—once you figure out that FT DIX NJ is sitting atop QUEER EYE, you can recognize that the constructor may have seeded the rest of the grid with uncommon letters. My favorite clues: [Very salty, say] for RATED R; [Stitch, e.g.] for PAIN; [Butters up?] for BASTES; [Spitball target?] is SUB (this one took me a while to parse properly—not a submarine, nor a sub sandwich, but rather, a substitute teacher!); the noun [Stinks] for FUSSES; [Behind] for PRO (as in "in favor of"); and, of course, [Congress is not allowed in it] for CELIBACY.
I like the vocabulary word clue [Cinereous] for ASHEN. I assumed that cinder was a direct cognate, but the etymology shows that it's a roundabout connection. I just learned from Charles Hodgson's new book, Carnal Knowledge: A Navel Gazer's Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia, that Latinate words came to English in more than one way. Some were yoinked from Latin during the Renaissance (cinereous looks like it could be such a word) while many older words entered Old or Middle English via the French (see etymology for cinder), whose language is rooted in Latin. You can preorder the book, which will be released next week.
The theme in Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle consists of four 15-letter strings of words that fit the "hot ___" mold. Sure, you end up with long entries that look nonsensical, like HOUSE BOX HEAD ROD, but it makes sense while you're solving.
Donna Levin's LA Times crossword seems like it emerged from Pune—the theme entries are puns involving Indian words/names. There's the NEHRU MARGIN by which the politician wins, the DELHI COUNTER bean-counter, the mint's schedule on RUPEE TUESDAY, and AGRA CULTURE for the arts. Plenty of interesting fill and clues. Did you know ULNAE was [Latin for "elbows"]? (The Carnal Knowledge book tells me the "ell" portion of "elbow" is related to ulna.) ISHMAEL's clued via a Moby Dick quote, and elsewhere there's an OP-ED PAGE.
Frank Virzi's July 20 Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle (with a 15x16 grid), "Read Heads," features five past world leaders clued by the books they've written. They're a diverse group: RICHARD NIXON, NELSON MANDELA, MARGARET THATCHER, VLADIMIR LENIN, and JULIUS CAESAR. Lots of musical words here—ADAGIO crossing TACET, as well as an unfamiliar word, TENUTO, [Held to its full value, as a musical note]. I dispute that EDY'S is a [Ben & Jerry's alternative]; I liken Edy's and Breyer's, but Ben & Jerry's ice cream is on a par with Haagen Dazs, Dove, and the other brands sold in smaller containers. I liked [It may be suspended] for DISBELIEF. [There are two in Utah] = AREA CODES—wow, that's a small population. 2.2 million. Chicago and its suburbs are up to nine area codes now, with three more downstate.
Matt Jones' Jonesin' crossword is called "Encyclopedic Knowledge," and the theme entries are phrases that sound like they could be alphabetical-order labels for encyclopedia volumes; e.g., HARD TO HEAR. Favorite clues: [Like some justice] for KARMIC; [Zone named for Dr. Grafenberg] for G-SPOT; [Song with the lyric "she really shows you all she can"] for RIO by Duran Duran; [State lines?] for ACT; and [Jersey jersey wearers] for NETS. I'd never heard of [Jarvis of the Denver Broncos]/MOSS, and no wonder: he was just drafted and his signing deal is brand-new.
August 01, 2007
Thursday, 8/2
NYS 6:02
NYT 5:22
LAT 3:33
CS 2:46
(updated at 10:30 a.m. Thursday)
Crikey, this collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi is highly distracting. I solved the Sun crossword with WCCO's live TV coverage playing in a browser window in the background. (I think a local TV station's website can be a better source than, say, CNN when it comes to a local story.) Anyway, our thoughts go out to anyone who's affected by the bridge disaster or just freaked out about it.
The New York Sun puzzle is Kelsey Blakley's "Serving Spoonerisms," and who doesn't like spoonerisms? The theme entries are—surprise, surprise—spoonerisms in which two words swap initial sounds. A bolt cutter, rabbit-hole, litter box, Citigroup, poster boy, and fruit flies are transformed into the oddly equine COLT BUTTER, which you could spread on a HABIT ROLL and top with some BITTER LOX. Don't miss the GRITTY SOUP course (yum!). And get your carbs with BOASTER POI and FLUTE FRIES. See what they all have in common? The spoonerisms all become foods. This, mesdames et messieurs, is what we call a tight theme. The puzzle's got three Xs in it, which is foxy. Favorite clues: [Coxcomb] for BEAU (love the word coxcomb, and didn't know that beau also means "a dandy; a fop"); [Round dance participant] for BEE; [Series opener] for MINI (as in miniseries); [Character voiced by Justin Timberlake in "Shrek the Third"] for ARTIE (I knew this one!); and [Head cheese?] for EXEC. I learned a new Hawaiian word, mele, in [Dances to a mele] for HULAS; mele has come to mean song. I also enjoyed the flipflopping of 31- and 32-Down: [Golda's successor...] and [Eban's predecessor as Israeli foreign minister] refer to ABBA Eban and Golda MEIR.
Robert Dillman's New York Times crossword substitutes chemical symbols for five metals included in various phrases. We have GET THE PB OUT (lead), GO FOR THE AU (gold), AG BELLS (Silver Bells), SN PAN ALLEY (tin), and CAST-FE ALIBI (iron). I felt like it took me much to long to figure out that there was a cute gimmick at play here, but when I did get the gist of it, I was impressed. Seeing [Minneapolis suburb] in the clues is probably rattling some people not expecting to be reminded of the news while working a crossword (EDINA is on the other side of town, though). Favorite clues: [Target of some testing] for STEROID (I stared at ___ROID blankly, wondering if fibroid, Metroid, or android somehow made sense); [Like old Rome] for IMPERIAL; [Ticks off] for FROSTS; [Uncombed, say] for WILD (My son took his thick bedhead to day camp today, where some wondered if he might've encountered an excess of voltage. Hmm, guess I forgot to wet his hair down. He's due for a haircut.); and [Kitchen coat] for TEFLON. Cribbage is not my bag; here's the definition of NOB.
Updated:
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Sensational Solving," is a fairly easy crossword that has four theme entries that start with words that mean "sensational." The second words are MILE, FOUR, TOWN, and COMPROMISE, so the theme is fully contained within the first words.
Do keep an eye out for crosswords in which the theme doubles up. We've seen a few recently where both halves of each theme entry are involved. For example, Matt Gaffney's Onion puzzle had a BEFORE TAXES theme in which both halves of the theme entries (e.g., LUXURY FLAT) could be teamed with TAXES: luxury tax, flat tax. Other "tight" themes apply a consistent trick to a set of theme entries that cohere in another way, as in today's Sun puzzle: Spoonerisms resulting in food. Spoonerisms alone can make a fun theme, but there's extra elegance when the theme has another layer of consistency.
The theme in Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword is an ordinary one: Four wildly unrelated things (NBA DEFENSE, GARLIC SQUASHER, DRY CLEANER'S AID, and PRINT MEDIA) that all mean [PRESS]. Who doesn't like the word SQUASHER? The fill gets off to a good, Scrabbly start in the upper left corner with JAVA atop IRAQ. Overall, the fill is mainly unexceptional—just the sorts of words one expects to see in a mid-week crossword. But I truly enjoyed this puzzle because the clues were so good. My favorites: [Island that will wake you up?] for JAVA; the geographically educational [Asian country slightly larger than California] for IRAQ; [Opposite of able?] for ELBA (as in the palindrome, "Able was I ere I saw Elba"); [Dandy guy?] for JIM (anyone else leap at FOP despite the clue's question mark?); [Place for quarries] for HIDEOUTS; and [Something in your eye] for both RETINA and GLEAM.
