Diary of a Crossword Fiend : Daily Commentary on Crossword Puzzles

June 30, 2009

Wednesday, 7/1

BEQ 5:11
Onion 4:57
NYT 3:48
LAT 2:50
CS 6:19 (J―paper)

David Kahn's New York Times crossword

David Kahn is the King of Tribute Crosswords, and today he pays tribute to the late MICHAEL / JACKSON. This ["Farewell"]/BYE puzzle is being published online just five days after Jackson's death, whereas it took a few days more for the NYT to publish Vic Fleming's POPE BENEDICT XVI puzzle. Here's the content of the tribute theme:

10D, 25D. [This puzzle's honoree] is MICHAEL / JACKSON.
3D. [Classic part of a 10-/25-Down stage act] is MOONWALKING.
15A. [1982 blockbuster by 10-/25-Down] is the album and song THRILLER, and yes, I remember watching the video on MTV. That was appointment TV at its best.
32A. DANGEROUS is the [1991 hit album by 10-/25-Down]. The only song I know from that is "Black or White," the video for which featured faces morphing back when CGI didn't appear in laundry detergent commercials.
47A. The KING OF POP is the [Nickname for 10-/25-Down].
67A. FALSETTO was the [Vocal style of 10-/25-Down, at times]. "Hoooo!"
27D. "GONE TOO SOON" is a [Song on 32-Across], Dangerous. I don't know it, but it's suitably elegiac for the occasion.
68A. MOTOWN was the [First record label of 10-/25-Down].
14A. LIONEL [Richie who wrote "We Are the World" with 10-/25-Down] doesn't belong in this puzzle.
11A. SHE is the [First word of 10-/25-Down's "Billie Jean"]. Really? Not sure if the opposite answer at 69A, BYE/["Farewell"] is strictly thematic.
42A. [First song on 32-Across], Dangerous, is JAM. I don't know it. I really don't know the lyrics to that song, but 40A is ["Don't you ___ for no favors" (42-Down lyric on 32-Across)], or ASK ME. That seems out of place here as it's neither mournful or from one of Jackson's more memorable songs.
44D. [With 10-Down, 1975 album by 10-/25-Down] is FOREVER Michael. Elegiac, yes, but incomplete as a title.

What, no "ABC"? No "Rock with You"? With 13 solo #1 hits, it feels weird to have "JAM" (which peaked at #26) and ASK ME" in the puzzle.

Nonthematic highlights in this crossword: It's horrible to singularize a plural trade name, but I can't resist even a single SNO-CAP, or [Moviegoer's chocolate bite]; hell, I buy a box at Walgreens and eat Sno-Caps at home. [Zero] pulls double duty as AUGHT and NULL. If you posit that Romeo speaks Italian, [Romeo's love?] is AMORE. [Juan's uncle?] is how our hypothetical Juan cries "uncle": NO MAS, or "no more." [Greek leader?] is the letter ALPHA. There are a slew of these tricky clues—also the noun [Flies over Africa?] for TSETSES, [Jean Valjean, e.g.] for a NOM (French for "name"), and [Rose family member] for PETE Rose.

In the "No, no" department: No, NACHO is not a [Kind of cheese]. It's a kind of chip. And then there's an [Old fast-food chain], the Wednesday-unfriendly NEDICKS. If you're not a New Yorker (or a resident of certain other East Coast cities several decades ago), you are not likely to have heard of the Nedick's chain. On the plus side, they had an orange and green color scheme, much like this blog. 1-Across was a dead end for me, as [City SW of Syracuse] required plenty of crossings before ELMIRA emerged. If you're like me, your brain shuts down with a clue like [Middle of the second century]; first I ignore the clue and work on the crossings, trying to make sense out of the clue only if absolutely needed. With NEDICK'S, oh yeah, I had to work for CLI, or 151.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Paula Gamache's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Quiet, Please"―Janie's review

If silence is golden, Paula is a very wealthy woman. Today she's given us a puzzle with four lovely and lively "quiet" phrases:

20A. SILENT MOVIE [Talkie's predecessor]. This is also the title of a high-concept, very wonderful Mel Brooks COMEDY. (And isn't it nice how SILENT MOVIE and COMEDY cross.)
11D. DUMBWAITER [Food-service elevator]. For a time, I lived in a six-story NYC apartment building that had been constructed in 1913. Although it was no longer operative when I moved in, a kitchen closet had been outfitted with a dumbwaiter that used to go down to the basement. The floor had long since been boarded over, but some of the pulley hardware was still in place.
29A. MUTE BUTTON [It may be pressed during a conference call]. First of all, this looks to be the major-puzzle debut for this fill. Second of all, I flat out love this one. Much of my day at work is spent on the phone, and believe me―the handy mute button AIN'T just fer conference calls! It is a godsend for the call that feels like it won't end but must be endured anyway. Put the caller on mute, listen to/for the salient points, comment on the call to my colleagues, mimic shooting myself, release mute button, respond politely (having just blown off some steam...). The mute button: marvel of modern technology!
59A. STILL WATERS [They may run deep]. That's what The Four Tops say―and who am I to argue with them or this CS debut?

Simply put, I had a good time solving this one. Some standout clues: [Electrically flexible] for AC-DC, [Lamb or Rice] for AUTHOR (i.e., essayist Charles or novelist Anne); [Young scientist of old teen fiction] for TOM SWIFT; and the best: [Letters from one who's shy?] for the oft-seen IOU―so that's "shy" as in "short of money" as opposed to "faint of heart."

And there's little that's BLAH about the non-theme fill. We get the fizzy COLA and CLUB SODA pair, the latter well-clued as [Splash at a bar]; or you could sip some CHAI [Spiced tea beverage]; an Independence Day reminder with RAMPARTS [Fortifications in "The Star-Spangled Banner"]; and a shout out to the CONGA [Follow-the-leader dance]. Do take a look at this clip of Rosalind Russell as Ruth Sherwood, aspiring reporter in Wonderful Town, in her comical (losing battle) to interview members of the Brazilian navy who would rather Conga! than answer her questions. Oh―and best of all: ARMY BRAT [Child on a base]―and not the kind MLB's DIMAG [Joltin' Joe] was famous for rounding.

Happily, this puzzle doesn't have lots of abbreviations. Yes, that was MLB as in Major League Baseball; and among a few others, there was also PACS, or political action committees; and OTOH―[...chatroom shorthand] for on the other hand. I do like the way OTOH sits above SOHO.

Finally, while no one has given me a SHOVE or theatened to have me SENT AWAY, I am going to take this opportunity to ["Make like a tree and leave!"]. Cheers, all!

Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword

My kid's staying home from camp today (cough, cough, sniffle, sneeze) so allow me to copy, paste, and edit material from my other blog. Today's theme is five phrases begin with words that can follow GLASS:

17A. [Paintings and such] are WORKS OF ART. Glassworks are factories where glass or glass things are made. I have a small collection of glass paperweights, so I do like the output of certain glassworks.
26A. If something's [Causing heads to turn], it's EYE-CATCHING. Glass eye! Let's get some Sammy Davis Jr. in here:
38A. BLOWING OFF STEAM means [Releasing stress, in a way]. There may well be a lot of glassblowing going on at the glassworks.
52A. JAR JAR BINKS was a [Gungan general of "Star Wars" films]? Apparently he did get promoted in Episode 1. I had a college boyfriend named Binks. Oh—glass jars are handy for storing spaghetti sauce.
61A. Yes, a JAWBREAKER is a [Very hard candy]. A boxer with a weak, easily broken jaw who is particularly susceptible to being whomped by an opponent's blows is said to have a glass jaw.
72A. [Dinnerware item that can precede the start of 17-, 26-, 38-, 52- or 61-Across] is GLASS.

For a rundown of a few of my favorite things in this puzzle, see L.A. Crossword Confidential.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Animal Collective"

As the title suggests, the theme has to do with collective terms for animals. Alas, most of the terms are not so familiar, and the phrases that result from combining two collective terms are merely familiar phrases without much zing. So this one left me cold. The theme:

3D. [Some crickets and some snakes] are an ORCHESTRA PIT. "Orchestra of crickets," "pit of snakes."
9. [Some racehorses and some gorillas] are a STRING BAND. "String of racehorses"? "Band of gorillas." What the heck is a STRING BAND?
15D. [Some ferrets and some sharks] make up BUSINESS SCHOOL. "Business of ferrets," "school of sharks."
24D. [Some ducks and some hares] are DROPPING DOWN. "Dropping of ducks" sounds like one of those trumped-up collective words that nobody actually uses. "Down of hares" must relate to Watership Down, but I don't see that as a definition of "down" in the American Heritage Dictionary.
34D. [Some moles and some jays] make up a LABOR PARTY. "Labor of moles" and "party of jays"? If you say so.

Collective terms for groups of animals are like phobias—you can find massive lists of crazy words, but there might not be a strong case that anyone actually uses those words in that way. Not a satisfying basis for a crossword theme, in my opinion.

AMIDOL is a [Photo-developing compound] I've never heard of. It links VAMOOSE (a non–Michael Jackson ["Beat it!"]) and a PB AND J, but...feh. Yesterday on Cruciverb-L, Merl Reagle spoke out against the inclusion of a crappy word between two cool words in the corner of a crossword:

sometimes they're absolutely unavoidable, as in wide-open puzzles, or when theme answers get thick and close and you've already restarted the puzzle five times -- but i've been seeing these words way too much in corners and sections that have a ton of other options, and each time it looks like the reason is just to get in a word like WIFI or XBOX. a turd between two slices of homemade tuscany bread is still a turd sandwich. we can do better than this.

The corners of Brendan's puzzle are fairly wide-open, but now I'm thinking about dreadful sandwiches instead of tasty PB AND Js. "Turd sandwich": new crossword jargon!

Matt Gaffney's Onion A.V. Club crossword

U.N. INTERVENTIONS are the [Global efforts to which this puzzle's theme is dedicated], and the other five theme entries have UN added to negate a word, changing its meaning:

17A. ["Justice can't be found anywhere!"] clues THE WORLD'S UNFAIR, which builds on the World's Fair.
22A. The dance called the Twist turns into DO THE UNTWIST, or [Open a cheap bottle of beer?]. Now, the dance clearly relates to the verb, whereas the other theme pairs use unrelated words.
31A. Actor William Hurt spins off WILLIAM UNHURT, a [Relieved U.K. headline after a royal family accident?].
42A. The noun "wishing well" transforms into a verb phrase with the addition of UN. WISHING UNWELL is clued with [Usign a voodoo doll?].
49A. County Cork in Ireland becomes COUNTY UNCORK, a [Champagne-loving municipal division?].

Five favorites:

[Plagues] are POXES. A pox on bad themes! I'm not saying Matt's theme is bad. It's quite good, actually, with a built-in "aha" moment for each theme answer. I'm just saying I want to use the word "pox" more.
["___ dat" ("agreed")] clues TRU. Tru dat! I always make sure to fix people's spelling when they write "true that."
[Sue, notably] is a T. REX—in particular, the T. rex skeleton from South Dakota that's on display at Chicago's Field Museum.
[Sample stuff?] is URINE. You haven't lived 'til you've handed over a 24-hour urine sample in a plastic jug.
BONE is clued with this factoid: [It's softer than tooth, believe it or not]. I was going to say that I didn't know that, but then, didn't we all learn in grade school that tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body?

MGWCC #56

kaidoku about 10 minutes

i'm not sure how to blog matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest this week. it was a kaidoku, and i did crack it, but ... once you've done these things, there's not that much to say, is there? and the meta wasn't hard at all. he gave us the letters corresponding to the answer, and the point is merely to anagram them once you figure out what letters they are. the letters were represented by 5, 7, 8, 15, 22, 23 and 24, which corresponded to O, E, K, R, W, Y, and D. the answer? KEYWORD, appropriately enough.

the solution grid is above. you can safely ignore the numbers in it; i took a screenshot of across lite. there's no actual across lite file for the puzzle, but i just created a blank grid with black squares in the appropriate places and used it to noodle around. the key for me was noticing the overlap of MILLIPEDE and CEDE, and guessing that 7 = E due to its placement at the end of so many words. once i put that in, there are very few words that fit the MILLIPEDE pattern... in fact, MILLIPEDE and CIRRIPEDE are the only ones in my dictionary. (what's a CIRRIPEDE? no clue.) then _EDE pretty much had to be CEDE, L_L_ had to be LULU, and there were so many Cs (and a few helpful Us) all over the grid that the whole thing fell in short order from there.

i thought this one was a lot easier than the previous kaidoku, in which there was a nasty trap: PIZZAZZ in a place where it seemed to be much more likely to be POSSESS (and many other Zs in the grid to perpetuate the deception). did this one have a trap that i didn't fall into? how did you all tackle it? let's hear about it in the comment box.

June 29, 2009

Tuesday, 6/30

LAT 3:02
NYT 2:50
CS 7:35 (J―paper)
Jonesin' tba

Steve Dobis's New York Times crossword

So I Googled the term "ELOCUTION PHRASE" and got a minuscule 85 hits, including pages where those words were separated by a comma. Is this a familiar phrase to you? It's an [Exercise in pronunciation...like the first words of the answers to the starred clues]. Those first words make the phrase "How now, brown cow?" Now, the latter phrase was a theme entry in Nancy Salomon and Harvey Estes' 9/14/04 NYT puzzle, also a Tuesday, and the clue was [Traditional elocution exercise]. "Elocution phrase" feels much more clueish than answerish.

The other four theme answers are:

17A. [Informal greeting] is the lively "HOW GOES IT?"
30A. [At times] clues NOW AND AGAIN, which is just as idiomatic as 17A.
47A. BROWN-BAGGER is [One not using the company cafeteria, maybe].
64A. [Bay Area concert venue] is COW PALACE.

Favorite fill and clues:

5A. FIJI is the [Island neighbor of Tonga and Tuvalu]. Okay, that gives you 3 of the 14 answers in the Oceania Sporcle quiz.
23A. [It may be stacked or cut] refers to a DECK of cards and not anything else you might've been thinking of.
1D. [Ottoman Empire V.I.P.] is the AGHA. I always like an AGHA, AGA, PASHA, or BEY. Not so much an EMIR.
3D. The [Elevator direction half the time] is DOWN.
9D. Who doesn't appreciate a BIRDBATH, or [Small pool site in a yard]? I mean, other than the person who has to clean it out and refill it.
27D. ACERB means [Sharp-tongued].
55D. Actress JERI [Ryan of "Boston Public"]—what has she been up to lately? This former National Merit Scholar will be appearing on Leverage on TNT starting in a couple weeks, according to the news of June 26.
63D. [1978 Diana Ross musical, with "The"] is The WIZ. The clue relates to the movie adaptation, not the Broadway show. The late Michael Jackson played the Scarecrow in the movie.

What else is RUNNY besides undercooked eggs? Because that clue has eggs in it and EGGED is also in the grid, clued as [Prodded, with "on"]. Did you know that egg-the-verb comes from a Middle English word stemming from Old Norse, meaning "incite," whereas egg-the-noun follows the same language path but has a different root word? Wow. I never knew "egged on" had nothing to do etymologically with eggs.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Have a C.O.W., Man!"―Janie's review

With this directive in mind, Randy has given us four three-word phrases; the first letter of each word in the phrase being C, O and then W. In this way, our bovine bounty includes:

17A. CASUALTIES OF WAR [1989 Sean Penn film]. Also Michael J. Fox, John Leguizamo and John C. Reilly among many others. This title did not come easily. Especially since I was trying to make Casual Ties Oscar make sense... Today is the first time this title/phrase has appeared in a major puzzle.
25A. CORD OF WOOD [Winter purchase]. Coat of wool, anyone? Where this CS debut is concerned, was so glad I was so wrong here.
44A. CAN OF WORMS [Pandora's box]. Only difference being that there was hope to be found at the bottom of Pandora's box. At the the bottom of a can of worms? More worms―or to continue the analogy, more ills... I know this clue has been used before for this fill, but I'm not sure that's a strong enough argument for continuing to use it.
57A. CHOICE OF WEAPONS [Decision in a duel]. And here we have another major puzzle first-timer.

This theme, if solid, is also somewhat stolid. The theme-fill is all perfectly fine by way of fulfulling the assignment, but to my eye/ear doesn't sparkle, and is beleaguered with negative connotations: weapons, war, casualties, worms. The cluing is very straight-forward and there's something less than fully satisfying about the concept. Perhaps if there were an actual tie-in―in the puzzle―to cows (and not simply the phrases that can be abbreviated "C. O. W.") it would have been more fun. Bottom line: enjoyment of a theme is a terrifically subjective experience.

This doesn't mean the puzzle isn't without its TREATS. SHALLOT, TWO PAIR and JACK WEBB are all appearing for the first time in a CS puzzle. And I also enjoyed seeing MASTODON in there. ACT NOW! DO IT! I like these two "up-and-at-'em" phrases, side-by-side in the grid, both clued as ["What are you waiting for?"].

We have a few real leaders in the mix, too: ALLAH, OBAMA, OBIWAN... ROB ROY, too, if you change the clue.

"PIMP [___ My Ride"] is a phrase I'd heard, but until I looked it up, had no idea of its origin. Ditto ECHO in the context of [Project Genesis model]. The former is an MTV auto makeover show; the latter an actual automobile. And here I was thinking "runway model" for some show called Project Genesis...

JASON of Friday the 13th fame is the [First name in slashers]―so this would not be Mr. Priestley, who factored into yesterday's puzzle. Thanks to (poster) Jangler for reminding me and constructor Patrick Blindauer of the "e" that belongs in the last name of 90210's Jason. Thank you, Patrick, for taking responsibility for the goof and for graciously apologizing twice. That was above and beyond. I didn't catch it either. Things happen. This does not signal the end of life as we know it and happily, in this scenario, no one dies!

Timothy Meaker's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme is four B's:

20A. BE MY VALENTINE is a [February greeting card request]. Anyone else try HONOR PAST PRESIDENTS here? No?
30A. [Utah's nickname] is the BEEHIVE STATE. I suspect this relates to hairstyling, because the only Utah bug that's really famous is the Mormon cricket, a plague of which was eaten by seagulls.
39A. One ["Petticoat Junction" star] is BEA BENADERET. I learned this name from some crossword several years back. The name wasn't remotely familiar to me then, and I suspect Ms. Benaderet lacks Tuesday-level household nameness.
51A. B IS FOR BURGLAR is [Sue Grafton's second Kinsey Millhone novel]. Is "Millhone" a real surname?

PuzzleGirl and Rex and I had an e-mail roundtable last night about 25A. ["Mamma Mia!" trio?] clues EMS, the letters, but there are four M's in "Mamma Mia." Too bad the clue didn't say "quartet," because ABBA has 4 letters and seeing the 3-letter space would have been vexing for many a solver. But ABBA's elsewhere in the grid, 23D [Palindromic pop group].

I gotta run my son to day camp, so check out PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post for more nitty-gritty in this puzzle.

June 28, 2009

Monday, 6/29

BEQ 5:32
LAT 3:11
NYT 2:51
CS 6:49 (J―paper)/2:45 (A—Across Lite)

I tried waiting out the migraine, but it's not going anywhere. So let's blog this puzzle, people.

Paula Gamache's New York Times crossword

The theme is as simple as can be, and yet I had a little trouble finding it. The three 15-letter terms begin with GOOD, BETTER, and BEST:

17A. GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP is [Seven or eight hours, typically].
35A. To build a BETTER MOUSETRAP is an [Inventor's goal].
52A. BEST-KEPT SECRETS [rarely see the light of day].

That's fairly basic as themes go, but did you get a load of the fill? Look at everything that makes Paula's puzzle really shine. SOUSE is a great old word (Middle English, in fact) meaning [Drunkard]. The dictionary tells me that sot dates back to Old English, which makes me love that word a little more. (TIPSY is just [A little drunk], and the word's only been around since the 1600s.) ON THE SLY is an absolutely terrific crossword entry, and it means [Furtively].

An [Early delivery in the delivery room] is a PREEMIE; my son was 8 1/2 weeks early. ["Hey, way to go!"] clued "NOT BAD." In the "nothing doing" category are LOLL, or [Do nothing and like it], and SAT HOME, or [Did nothing] and probably didn't like it so much. GENIUSES make up a [Brainy bunch]—"Here's the story / Of a lovely lady / Who was heading up three very lovely labs..."

MOOT, or [Not worth debating, as a point], resembles MOTT, clued as [Rock's ___ the Hoople]. Moot the Hopple, anyone? OLD HABITS are those [Things that die hard]. [Prepares to streak] clues STRIPS. "NO BUTS" is a colloquial phrase conveying ["Forget the excuses!"]. My grandmother's version was "But me no buts." STAR TURNS are [Bravura performances]; this puzzle is Paula Gamache's star turn as a top-notch Monday constructor. LOW-KEY joins all those other phrases in the category of "great fill"; it's clued as [Hardly ostentatious].

I can't say I remembered that E-TYPES were [Classic Jaguars]. I did, however, remember that an ETUI is a [Decorative needle case]. The latter is today's Hardcore Crosswordese Word New Solvers Need To Learn.

Updated Monday morning:

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Yadda Yadda Yadda"―Janie's review

Before this phrase became popularized by its use in a segment of Seinfeld (then in its eighth season), it had been uttered (decades before) by the likes of the equally well-known (but decidedly less "popular") Lenny Bruce. It's used in place of details―on the assumption that the listener knows how to fill in the blanks. It's the 20th century version of "et cetera," or ETC [List abbr. (and what's hidden in the answers to this puzzle's four starred clues)]. And what is hidden therein? Let's take a look:

16A. [*Part of a homemade harmonica] POCKET COMB, making its major-puzzle debut.
27A. [*Fiscal crisis] BUDGET CRUNCH. I could stand not being reminded that we're still in the throes of one here... Will the members of the New York State Legislature please go back to work and do what they were elected to do?
44A. [*"If They Could See Me Now" musical"] SWEET CHARITY. Before this was a Shirley MacLaine movie, it was a big ol' Broadway hit. Another big ol' Broadway hit? ["Mamma ___!"] MIA. And even the alluded-to The King and I, in which the King learns from Anna Leonowens ("I")―and uses, sometimes to comic effect―the phrase "et cetera," as in "When I sit, you sit. When I kneel, you kneel. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!"
55A. [*CQN ZDRLT KAXFW OXG SDVYB XENA CQN UJIH MXP, e.g.] SECRET CODE. Anybody figure it out?! The fill, btw, is a CS-first. And I'm bettin' the clue is, too.

The remainder of the fill is loaded with pop-culture references, which keeps things breezin' along quite nicely. From the silver screen (large and small) we get: SETHS [Actors Green and Rogen]; PRIESTLY [Jason on "Beverly Hills, 90210"], a CS debut and the first time priestly has been clued as a name and not as an adverb; WALSTON [Ray of "My Favorite Martian" and "Picket Fences"]; RAES [...and performer Charlotte]; ERIC [Idle...]; WENDT [George of "Cheers"], who has been seen on Broadway as well in Art and as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray; and shows Kate and ALLIE and even (if indirectly)―since it's the equivalent to the clue for EARTH―3rd Rock from the Sun.

From the world of baseball there are two kinds of heros: one ya love to love, STAN [Musial of the Cards] a/k/a "Stan the Man"; and one ya love to hate, [Dominican slugger Sammy] SOSA.

From the music world, there's: ["A Whole New World" singer Bryson] PEABO; [Hall's singing partner] OATES; and [...Clapton], the other ERIC, whose Unplugged album I was listening to just yesterday.

Other fill that felt fresh and that caught my fancy: RUSTIC, TREACLE, GEISHA, BOBBIN, CARLOADS. Also love the pairing in the grid of GEAR and ENVY, though I suspect it was unintentional. Gear envy: what men (and probably not a few women) who are jealous of their friends' cell phone/stereo/computer/home improvement equipment suffer.

Samantha Wine's Los Angeles Times crossword

I never found my Monday groove in this puzzle. It felt more like a Wednesday crossword. It felt a little old-fashioned, too, like an '80s crossword. I mean, answers like DIY and IN N.Y.C. and IAMS pet food probably wouldn't have shown up in an older puzzle (and IMHO definitely wouldn't have), but somehow there was an old-puzzle vibe for me.

The theme is "___ in the [dirt]":

21A. [Overtaken and easily surpassed] clued LEFT IN THE DUST.
38A. GIANTS IN THE EARTH is the [Classic 1924 novel by Ole Rolvaag].
56A. An [Old fogy] is a STICK-IN-THE-MUD.

I like "DON'T RUSH ME" (["I'll finish it when I finish it!"], ["Play It As It Lays" author Joan] DIDION, and THE FBI ([J. Edgar Hoover's org.]). And check out the dueling James Earl Jones evocations—there's DARTH, the [Evil Vader] voiced by Jones, and Othello the MOOR, whom Jones has portrayed on stage. Sure, MOOR is clued as a [Heath-covered wasteland], but don't let that throw you.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"

Via Twitter and Facebook, Brendan asked people to send him the words and phrases they'd love to see in a themeless. One of my suggestions, SONY PLAYSTATION, crisscrosses the other 15, AS THE SAYING GOES. (The clues are [Genesis challenger] and ["You know what it means"], respectively). The TWITTERATI shine at 1-Across, clued with [They've got many followers]. PETA gets the timely clue, [Org. that wasn't too pleased with Obama's fly-swatting skills]. HOODWINKED is a great word, meaning [Duped]. FLESH is a [Skinemax showing]. And ELBA gets a fresh clue: [Island whose population triples in the summer due to tourism]. The same factoid probably holds true for hundreds and hundreds of islands, but when's the last time you learned anything new about ELBA? People like to vacation there, but I hadn't known that/

Neither a lifetime of crosswords nor an adult career as a medical editor has taught me about ORA [___ serrata (retina part)]. Boo, hiss. Suffixes are bad enough in the singular, but reach a new level of irksomeness in the plural—ENES are [Organic suffixes]. At least the [Glandular prefix] ADRENO is (a) more familiar and (b) not plural.

Music clues stymied me throughout. Who calls the [Tuba] a BASS HORN? Not I. KID A is a Radiohead album that has been in other alt-crosswords, so at least I'd seen that one before. Never heard of EDAN, the "alternative hip hop artist" clued as ["Beauty and the Beat" rapper]. I know MGMT as the abbreviation for "management," sure, but not as the [Band with the 2008 single "Time to Pretend"]. A [Quick chord] is a STAB? I'll take your word for it, BEQ.

June 27, 2009

Sunday, 6/28

NYT 7:38
PI 7:29
BG 7:19
LAT 6:46
CS 3:34

Barry Silk's New York Times crossword, "Secret Ingredients"

I'm heading out for the evening, so I've only got a couple minutes to talk about the puzzle. The theme is hidden (in circled squares) herbs and spices within non-food phrases. Since when is JASMINE a food ingredient?? That mystified me.

2-Down is also a mystery: the last name of [Cesar ___, five-time Gold Glove winner, 1972-76] is CEDENO. He is not famous among non-baseball fans, nor among crossword solvers in general. I also had no idea about one of the theme entries: 124-Across, [Tiny friend of Dumbo], is TIMOTHY Q. MOUSE. And I blanked on the JASMINE guy's middle initial—JAMES A. MICHENER? (["The World Is My Home" memoirist, 1991].) All righty then.

There's plenty of lively fill PEPPERed with a couple clunkers like DRAWEE—which makes me want MANATEE to be part of a family of words like manater, manating, etc.

Back for more on Saturday night:

Let's run down some clues in Barry's NYT puzzle, shall we?

1A. [Blade for blades] is a sharp SCYTHE that cuts blades of tall grass.
7A. BEDLAM! I love that word. It can mean [Pandemonium].
13A. LORD JIM is an interesting and unusual crossword answer. This [1965 title role for Peter O'Toole] was written by Joseph Conrad, who was born in Poland, like 96A's [1983 Peace Nobelist], Lech WALESA.
25A. [Last king of a united Israel, in the Bible] is SOLOMON. Thanks to the OVO, or [Egg: Prefix], that I wanted to be OVI, DROWN, or [Be covered with, with "in"], that I wanted to be DRAPE, and I WON, or [Cry of glee], which looked to be I WIN, I started out with the very wrong SILAMIN here.
38A. Theme entry COARSE-GRAINED WOOD is clued as [Oak or ash] and it contains a hidden OREGANO. "Coarse-grained wood" isn't such a familiar phrase in my household.
64A. [It was flown by James Bond in "Dr. No"] clues the airline PAN AM.
80A. There's a WENDY who's a [Title girl of a 1964 Beach Boys song]? Never heard the song. Am grumbling that the clue says "girl" rather than "woman." The lyrics don't seem to call her a "girl."
83A. PAY THE PIPER is a great phrase to have as a crossword entry. It means [Suffer for acting unwisely], and it's hiding some PEPPER.
101A. There's a PRINCETON SEMINARY that's a [New Jersey ecumenical institution]? Did not know that.
12D. A restaurant MENU? [It may be written on a blackboard].
34D. I like the Dutch double-A HAARLEM, a [Tulip-exporting city].
59D. GAZELLE is as pleasing to me as BEDLAM. It's a [Swift runner] of the antelope variety.
72D. PAISANO or paisan means [Buddy], particularly among Italians and Spaniards.
76D. [It has 1,366 seats: Abbr.] clues the NYSE, my husband's company. Yes, we live in Chicago.
116D. [Location for Apfelstrudel and Sachertorte] is WIEN, or Vienna in German. Mmm, cake.

Updated Sunday morning:

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "But That's a Whole Other Animal"

I would've included an N in this puzzle's title—I like "a whole 'nother." I also like this theme, even though on the surface it sounds rather flat: animals whose names suggest they're entirely different creatures. I hadn't realized the list of such animals was so long:

23A. [It's actually a rodent]: PRAIRIE DOG.
25A. [It's actually a lizard]: HORNED TOAD.
40A. [It's actually an insect]: GLOWWORM. It's a beetle, specifically.
42A. [It's actually a marsupial]: KOALA BEAR.
58A. [It's actually a rodent]: GUINEA PIG.
62A. [It's actually a seal]: SEA LION.
23A. [It's actually a shark]: PORBEAGLE. The word is from Cornish dialect, possibly meaning port + shepherd.
86A. [It's actually a clam]: GEODUCK. The "geo" part is pronounced "gooey." It's from the Salish language of the Pacific Northwest.
91A. [It's actually a rodent]: GROUNDHOG. This is the third inaptly named rodent—a dog, a pig, and a hog?
105A. [It's actually a bat]: FLYING FOX.
107A. [It's actually a bird]: TITMOUSE.
123A. [It's actually a lizard]: GLASS SNAKE. Why do I find these creepier than snakes?
127A. [It's actually an insect]: SILVERFISH. Wikipedia informs me "they have no direct effect on human health beyond psychological distress to those who are frightened or disgusted by their appearance."
55D. [It's actually a weasel]: POLECAT. Also called a skunk.

This was a fun theme to puzzle out, despite the discomfiture of glass snakes and silverfish. Here are a few clues and answers that jumped out at me: 79A [Emulates a famous Christian] is MUTINIES, the famous Christian being Fletcher Christian of the Bounty. 15D GEORGE III was the [British king in 1776]. 21A THANX is clued as [Postcard gratitude]. And 97D [Slangy denial] clues 'TAIN'T SO.

David Cromer's syndicated Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword, "End of the Road"

This puzzle seemed a good bit easier than the standard Sunday puzzle, though probably harder than Sylvia Bursztyn's L.A. Times Calendar puzzles. The theme is phrases that begin with words that can follow the "road" in the puzzle's title. For example, you get a road atlas out of ATLAS SHRUGGED, or [1957 novel with the working title "The Strike"]. A HOUSE OF CARDS is a [Plan likely to fail], and a road house is a bar or a Patrick Swayze movie. TRIP THE LIGHT FANTASTIC is a fantastic phrase; it's clued as [Dance, facetiously].

For more on today's LAT puzzle, check out PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.

Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Don't Try To Stop Me"

This puzzle's theme is phrases that start with "forever" words, except for one of the 21's in which INFINITE's in the middle: A FELLOW OF INFINITE JEST is how [Yorick] was described. If you've been thinking of reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, you can join the Infinite Summer folks who are reading it this summer.

The other theme entries begin with the words PERMANENT, CONSTANT, ENDLESS, EVERLASTING, PERPETUAL, and ETERNALLY. Highlights: (1) The top and bottom pairs of entries are stacked together. (2) Two of the answers run all the way across the grid, 21 letters, and EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPER is a ridiculously cool entry. (3) CONSTANT CRAVING is a [k.d. lang hit]. I'm partial to her All You Can Eat album, but there's almost nothing from that in the first few pages of YouTube lang videos. (4) In the fill are lively answers like SPLIT HAIRS, TRENTON NJ, KATHY BATES, and (one I know only because I've visited Prague) JAN HUS, or [Czech martyr executed in 1415]. (5) [Ladies and gentlemen] is a great clue for BIPEDS.

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

The main originator of triple stacks is back with top and bottom triple-stacked 15's in a 66-word puzzle. What's in the crossword? This:

1A. You never know if [Fancy spreads] is leaning the canapé way or the grand estate way. This time it's the former, PATÉS DE FOIE GRAS.
11D, 44A. [Tolkien creature], 3 letters, could be ENT or ORC. This time, they're both here.
47A, 1D. [Rain, e.g.] is a WEATHER FORECAST and a [March event?] is a PARADE. Luckily, today's parade in Chicago gets a forecast of sunny skies, a breeze, and low humidity.
7D. Is EPHEDRINE really a [Common decongestant ingredient]? Pseudoephedrine and phenylephrine, sure.
23D. T.S. ELIOT is the ["Murder in the Cathedral" author].
42D. [Ship's guidance system] is LORAN. The word comes from lo(ng)-ra(nge) n(avigation) and the system involves radio signals.

Fourth Bloggiversary Contest: Chock-full of badness

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the Crossword Fiend Fourth Bloggiversary contest! I had a blast reading all your submissions. Some were actually good, many were bad, and a select few were really quite terrible indeed.

Before we announce the winner of a signed copy of Dean Olsher's From Square One, let's lay out the case for (or against) each of our three finalists, Jangler, Joon, and SethG:

Jangler's contribution is, he reports, one that has been rejected by multiple editors:

"Counting Carbs"

Stanislavski's innovation (1)--METHODACTING
"There's No Business Like Show Business" singer (2)--ETHELMERMAN
They're usually capitalized (3)--PROPERNOUNS
Candy flavor (4)--BUTTERSCOTCH
Suffix that can follow the starts of x-, y-, z-, and w-across--ANE.

My god! It's a theme built around not just a terrible little suffix that is a minor blight upon each puzzle it appears in—but also around the chemical compounds methane, ethane, propane, and butane. Those of us who've not studied much chemistry are unlikely to take enjoyment in a theme that spotlights these things.

Joon amplified the badness of Roman numerals as fill by making long Roman numerals into the theme:

DCCLXXXII (9) Year in the papacy of Adrian I
DCCCLXXIV (9) Year in the papacy of John VIII
MDCCCLXXXVIII (13) Year in the papacy of Leo XIII
MCCLXXXVI (9) Year in the papacy of Honorius IV
MCCCXXVII (9) Year in the papacy of John XXII

"Year of the pope" clues are useless to most solvers who aren't scholars of Catholic history, and it's difficult to deduce which numerals appear where. Sure, the MDCLXVI set narrows down the choices from 26 letters to 7, but that's not so helpful.

SethG's submission plays the "embedded word" game with a set of unfamiliar embeds parked in a disparate group of phrases:

Mustachioed Hawaiian? (15): FU MANCHU UKULELE
Show albino eyelash tattoos? (14): EXPO HNPE IN ROME
Throws lizards at alien believers? (14): GECKOS RAELIANS
Paris's "strong" preference? (15): MIGHTY APHRODITE
With "The", what part of Micronesia can be found in the answers to w, x, y, and z across? (15): FEDERATED STATES

Not only are Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and Yap likely to be unrecognizable to most non-Micronesian people, but the theme clangs with discordance thanks to one actual phrase (title of a Woody Allen movie) following three completely contrived phrases.

So, which one is the very worst? Read on...

After much deliberation, I've selected SethG's theme as the very worst one. HNPE is real, but probably even less familiar than the lesser-known of the Federated States. He's verbed a noun (GECKOS). He's anthropomorphized a musical instrument. As much as I love geography themes, this one is pretty awful. Congratulations, Seth! It can't have been easy to pull this theme together. It's one thing to create a lame theme out of laziness, but this? This smacks of hard work for a suboptimal outcome.

Congratulations, Seth! I'll put you and Dean in touch with each other so you can let him know who to inscribe the book to. ("My 12-year-old niece is a huge fan...")

Several of the contest entries were themes I'd like to see. They're mostly not daily newspaper crossword material, but I loved them. Take Donna Levin's menstrual euphemisms theme, "Varsity Rag":

VISITOR PARKING (14) = Space for patrons
THE RING CYCLE (12) = Wagnerian epic
CURSE THE GODS (12) = Rail against one's fate
JURASSIC PERIOD (14) = Time of the dinosaurs

The theme entries' key words alternate between the beginning and end: monthly VISITOR, your CYCLE, the CURSE, and a PERIOD. Too bad Deb Amlen is the exclusive crossword creator for Bust magazine, because this could be right at home there.

Janie's "None for Me, Thanks" is horrifying in the clues, but entertaining in the answers:

CHITTERLINGS (12) -- Pig's large intestine often seen on the dining table
SWEETBREADS (11) -- Pancreas or thymus, often broiled
HEAD CHEESE (10) -- Meat and tissue from pig's skull cooked, chilled and set in gelatin
THAT SOUNDS OFFAL (15) -- Alternate title for this puzzle
CRIADILLAS (10) -- Bull testicles and Spanish delicacy
LAMPREDOTTO (11) -- Fourth stomach of the cow, boiled in broth and seasoned with parsley sauce and chili; Italian favorite
LIVER SAUSAGE (12) -- Sheep stomach stuffed with ground lamb's liver, rolled oats and bits of cut up sheep

I would be laughing my way through a puzzle with a theme like this. Probably would be able to skip a meal afterwards, too!

KarmaSartre's grouping of "Famous SNL Quotes" has dreadful (and funny) clues, but the payoff is remembering the assorted SNL skits that presented these phrases:

CHEESEBURGER (12) -- Instructions from photographer to one-time Chief Justice after "Say"
MORECOWBELL (11) -- Alexander Graham's obviously boviner brother
CHOPPINBROCCOLI (15) -- Extremely creative person's sick euphemism for pleasuring oneself
NOCOKEPEPSI (11) -- First line of the twelfth verse of "How Dry I Am"
PEOPLELIKEME (12) -- What people secretly think when asked whom they would like for friends

It's a little bit of a cheat to have both CHEESEBURGER and NOCOKEPEPSI, as they're both from the same series of Belushi skits. But those skits are classics!

"Anonymous coward" (really someone who'd already submitted two themes) went with a smooth, more modestly sized theme that is unsuitable for the newspaper owing to the F-bomb that ties everything together:

UP WITH PEOPLE (12) Worldwide motivational organization
OFF THE CUFF (10) Impromptu
IT TAKES TWO (10) 1995 movie starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
YOU NEVER KNOW (12) "There is one word in America that says it all, and that one word is ___" (Famous quote by former pitcher Joaquin Andujar)
F*** (4) Word that can precede the starts of ___, ___, ___, or ___-across

It's potty-mouthed, sure, but solid as themes go.

This was an educational contest, wasn't it? It's good to delve into the development of bad themes to elucidate what makes a good theme. Thanks again for playing, everyone!

June 26, 2009

Saturday, 6/27

NYT 6:06
Newsday 5:09
LAT 5:05
CS 9:05 (J―paper)

I'm not quite sure where the day went, but it's now dark out and I didn't even start the Fourth Bloggiversary bad theme contest wrap-up. Saturday? Maybe.

Trip Payne's New York Times crossword

Have you ever noticed that SEMICONSCIOUS and SELF-CONSCIOUS differ by only two letters? I did, when I let the crossings guide me to the former to answer 31A, [Uncomfortable, in a way]. Why, that would make no sense at all! Eventually I unraveled that. Later, at 52A, [Uncomfortable] clues ILL AT EASE, which I think was in one of last Saturday's puzzles.

Looking at the finished grid just now, for a moment I wondered, who is TOM BRAIDER? That one, of course, is TOMB RAIDER, an [Influential 1996 video game] (43A). Has anyone worked Lara Croft plaiting a turkey or cat's hair into a cryptic clue yet? (Yes, I realize turkeys lack hair.)

Let's run down my favorite answers and clues in this puzzle. There's a lot of cool stuff:

58A. [Contents of a certain household box] aren't fuses or circuit breakers or tools, but CAT LITTER.
10A. GNASH means [Rub together], but not in a nice way. If you and your sweetie are gnashing, you're doing it wrong.
46A. POST-ITS are clued as [Yellow squares, often]. The clue is completely accurate and yet I still needed plenty of crossings to see where this was going.
48A. [Receiver of some contributions] is a ROTH IRA. Am I the only one who sees ROTHIRA and thinks of Vampira?
60A. SPRITZERS, made with white wine, are [Cocktails lacking hard liquor], but not lacking the softer liquor. Is that the other end of the spectrum, soft liquor? Or easy?
11D. [Spring's opposite] is the NEAP tide. Somebody at L.A. Crossword Confidential, I think, or maybe at the Rex Parker blog, was just saying you gotta know your tides for crosswords.
12D. Maya ANGELOU is the ["Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie" poet]. I don't know the poem.

One of the Friday puzzles had a very similar clue and also sat wrong with me. DO-RAGS are clued here (1D) as [Rappers' wrappers]. Yes, it would be gauche to clue them as [Some black folks' head coverings], but the vast majority of people sporting do-rags aren't rappers.

I have to take a break now and put my kid to bed. Back with more later, provided I don't conk out.

—I'm back after a Frank Longo Vowelless Crosswords nap. I recommend the book, but I can't say I advise touching it when sleepy.

Returning to the list of highlights:

That Maya Angelou title belongs to an early (1971) collection of her poems. Anyone know if there's a poem by that name within the book?
13D. [They're often playing at home] is a great clue for STEREOS.
21D. [It begins with an E (in two ways)] refers to an EYE CHART, with forwards and backwards E's.
23D. [Throws up] isn't about puking, nope. It's LOFTS, as in tossing something up in the air.
24D, 26D. [They have connections] looks like a clue for INS, but it's actually talking about KIN. You know—like an ANCESTOR, who's a [Genealogical discovery].
29D. Sleet is [Some pellets] of ice. Ouch. Those smart.
32D, 54D. [Is in Athens?] opts not to use an apostrophe in a plural. This usage resource says "Apostrophes are used to form plurals of letters that appear in lowercase. There is no need for apostrophes indicating a plural on capitalized letters, numbers, and symbols (though keep in mind that some editors, teachers, and professors still prefer them)." Here, the Is or I's are the Greek letters called IOTAS. Then you hit [Delta, for one: Abbr.]—and that's another Greek LTR., or letter. Were you fooled? I sure was. Airline, mouth of a river...wasn't thinking of the letter.
35D. [French bread] isn't trying to trick you. It's not really about French currency. It's yummy BRIOCHE.
1A. Hey, I forgot to mention the first clue: [Rock samples] are DEMO TAPES, samples of a rock band's work.

Other bits and pieces that were more straightforward, but not necessarily any easier:

50A. The [Year that Acre fell in the First Crusade] was MCIV, or 1104.
5D. [Hero of "Boys N the Hood"] clues TRE. Never did see that movie. I should Netflix it.
36D. [Milky] is LACTEAL. And no, I've never used that word in a sentence, with the possible exception of crossword blog posts.
39D. Did you know it was the FBI who would be the [RICO Act enforcer]? I didn't pay close enough attention to The Sopranos.
42D. CHRIST is the [Word that first appears in Matthew 1:1].
50D. METZ, France, was the [Birthplace of the poet Paul Verlaine]. He was a French symbolist poet.
56D. [Black-throated ___ (Asian bird)] is a TIT.

Updated Saturday morning:

Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy/Washington Post Puzzle, "Four Steps to a Perfect Wedding" ―Janie's review

If you're romantically predisposed to love the idea of a June wedding, by all means, fire up the Lohengrin. With only three days left to "enjoy" that particular rite, Stella and Bruce give us a humorous glimpse of the other side of the coin. In four 15-letter theme answers (that's a very healthy 60 letters of theme fill), they take us through the (reality-based?) stages of planning a wedding:

17A. [...step 1] PROPOSE MARRIAGE. "...A very good place to start."
27A. [...step 2] CHOOSE GUEST LIST. Sure. Though this might directly fuel:
46A. [...step 3] ARGUE WITH FAMILY. Which (when love conquers all) undoubtedly fuels:
60A. [...step 4] ELOPE TO LAS VEGAS. Does Bride's Magazine publish this list annually?! (Hmmm. Somehow I don't imagine their AD-MEN [or -women] would take kindly to that...)

I love that we get a bonus clue/fill right from the get-go with [Come together, as in matrimony] for UNITE, off-setting any MISERY generated by that pre-nup planning. I also smiled to see RENO in the puzzle and wondered if at some time it had been clued as the the country's one-time capital of the quickie divorce (rather than the neutral [It's near Carson City]).

While I didn't complete this one with the greatest of EASE, neither did it entirely WHUP me. In puzzles such as this, where the four major answers are minimally and similarly clued, it's almost a necessity to solve the puzzle using the "down" clues, if you want to get any real traction. I did throw myself off, though, entering IAMBS instead of IAMBI, and right next to it, hastily (unthinkingly...) scrawling STEET instead of STEEL. Looking at the whole of 46A [...step 3], what word ends with the letters MSTY?! (I didn't really need the Cruciverb database to tell me, "Sorry, no results for *msty.") I somewhere, somehow knew the phrase Damascus steel, but reading this gave me a better idea of what it actually is.

Had never heard of [Lefty Grove, for one]―a SOUTHPAW, though that "lefty" part shoulda tipped me off. I like, though, how this fill is right below [Elvis's birthplace] TUPELO, a Mississippi town that lies in the South. (And this may be amusing to me alone, but I just remembered that one of the King's movies was Viva Las Vegas...)

And since that brings us back to the Southwest, hello to CS-debut WHITTLED, as in [Created a kachina]. Authentic kachina "dolls" are actually religious icons and they are made only by Hopi artists. And in an attempt to pull everything together, here's a link to a (kinda scary) picture of a kachina doll-head wedding cake. Really!!

Orange clocking in again—with wedding congratulations for Stella Daily, who's celebrating her birthday today by marrying her sweetheart, Dave. (Not in Vegas.) It is ridiculously cute that Stella and Bruce's wedding-themed puzzle is running today.

Barry Silk's Los Angeles Times crossword

Usually I write my Saturday L.A. Crossword Confidential post on Friday night, but I wasn't feeling too hot last night so I went to bed post-NYT instead and blogged this morning. I'm feeling all blogged out about this puzzle now. But I liked it, and I was glad it felt 25% tougher than the last two Saturday LATs did. Mind you, I can't be sure it really was harder because I came it with a couple glasses of wine in me. (Not to worry! I did the crossword last night, not this morning.)

Am I the only one who sees EDAMES in the grid—["My Cup Runneth Over" singer]—and thinks of edamame? Here's a bad cryptic clue: ["My Cup Runneth Over" singer abandons South, hugs mother for a soybean snack] (7).

27D is SHARK, clued as [Whiz]. As I hinted at the other blog, I'd love to be known as a crossword shark. Go ahead and promulgate that, will you? Thanks. Now, I might just be a tiger shark and not a great white shark, but don't underestimate tiger sharks. We're voracious and deadly, too.

Check out L.A. Crossword Confidential for the rest of my thoughts on this puzzle.

Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

The Stumper takes another week off from being a real killer. (PDF solution here.) Let's break it down. First up, favorites:

17A. LET 'ER RIP is clued with ["Go for it!"]. Good stuff, that. Looks French in the grid, though: le terrip means nothing in French, I imagine.
42A. A day PLANNER is clued by way of [It's days are numbered].
3D. [Ford feature, often] isn't about cars at all. John Ford directed many an OATER.
4D. THE LION IN WINTER is a Katherine Hepburn/Peter O'Toole movie as well as [Rosemary Harris' Tony play].
21D. [Colon follower: Abbr.] is MIN., as in minutes, as in 6:30.
45D. A movie SCENE is a [Trailer segment].

Next, tough stuff:

19A. ["Green Mansions" hero] is ABEL. 1904 book + 1959 movie = old pop culture unknown to most people my age. I just read the plot summary and it sounds horrible. On rare occasions, the character RIMA shows up in a crossword, even though terza rima (Dante's rhyme scheme in The Divine Comedy) has got to be more broadly familiar.
13D. [Skimmer relative] is a TERN. Who knew a skimmer was a bird? I bought something called skimmers, essentially long, lean shorts or short capri pants.

And finally, random musings:

1A. [Sole treatment] is a FOOT BATH. Now, that sounds relaxing, but it still looks off-putting in the marquee position in the puzzle. I'm glad I finished that corner last, not first.
28A. ["Sputnik" booster], 4 letters? Hmm, is that USSR or CCCP? Neither: it's an ICBM, or intercontinental ballistic missile.
39A. PEENS are [Workshop heads], as in heads of hammers. Could we not use "head" in a clue for PEEN? It's bringing out my inner snickering 14-year-old.
7D. TRICOLOR, [Like some pasta], duplicates part of the clue for 48D TINCT, or [Coloring].
30D. [Salome portrayer of 1918] is Theda BARA. Yet another member of the class of actresses famous 90 years ago who remain popular primarily in crosswords.

June 25, 2009

Friday, 6/26

BEQ 6:53
NYT 5:44
LAT 4:24
CHE 4:04
CS >6 (J―paper)
WSJ 7:07

I haven't forgotten the Crossword Fiend Fourth Bloggiversary contest seeking the worst crossword themes. I've winnowed the submissions down to my favorite exemplars of badness—just a few contenders. You know what? Some of these supposedly bad themes strike me as being quite solid and entertaining—not suitable for the daily newspaper's crossword, perhaps, but not bad at all. I'll try to post the contest wrap-up during the day on Friday.

Lynn Lempel's New York Times crossword

I love the answer GEEK SQUAD: I see those logo-bedecked VW Beetles around town. The GEEK SQUAD is made up of [Techies affiliated with a major electronics chain]. Far less familiar is [Libya's second-largest city, BENGHAZI. Wow. What's that one doing in the puzzle? About 2,500 years ago, the Greeks founded a town there.

What I liked most:

14A. LIVED A LIE means [Was perpetually dishonest]. Paging Governor Sanford.
19A. An idiomatic way of saying [To the extreme] is IN SPADES.
22A. [Made a claim]...past tense verb...ends with ED. Right? Wrong. It's SAID SO.
24A. Fancy word! COLLOQUY is a [Formal discussion]. Isn't it odd that COLLOQUY connotes formality while colloquial is more informal?
32A. [Like drag shows] clues CAMPY. There will be a few moving drag shows in this Sunday's Pride Parade in Chicago. It's my neighborhood's biggest event of the year.
34A. [Recalling org.] is the FDA. That reminds me—I need to throw out that brand-new, unopened tub of Toll House cookie dough thanks to the potential E. coli contamination. Thanks for the heads-up, FDA!'
46A. Usually in crosswords, a [Cry of reproof] is a little three-letter dealio like TUT or TSK or FIE. This time it's FOR SHAME. (See 14-Across.) Looking at the next two clues, now I'm laughing. There's a LAPSE, clued as a [Concentration problem], and MARRIAGES, [Occasions that begin with misses?]. Gotta love an accidentally topical puzzle!
50A. GREEN ZONE is just about as terrific an answer as GEEK SQUAD, though markedly less fun. It's that {Walled-off enclave in Iraq] for Americans.
20D and 24D. A [Guy who needs no 24-Down] is a BALDY. And what are 24-Down? [Dopp kit items]. Say what? Never heard of Dopp kits, which are basically toiletry cases for the fellas (big etuis), in which a travelin' man might carry COMBS. Hang on a sec—who's taking more than one comb on a trip? Anyone?

Less elegant bits:

9A. [Bygone magistrates] were DOGES in Venice or Genoa. I know of DOGES and LOGES only from crosswords.
13D. The STEN is an [Antique gun] and a morsel of crosswordese.
51A. PEENS are [Tool parts for bending and shaping]. What has a peen other than a ball-peen hammer?
2D. LIANA is a vine that's a [Tropical climber]. Ah, familiar crosswordese gimme—how helpful you are to the long-time crossword buff.
45A. FUMIER is clued as [More vaporous]. Have you ever used this in a sentence? "In cold weather, a hot tub looks much fumier." "That Windex with real ammonia in it is definitely fumier than the other stuff."

BENGHAZI! "Don't forget to pack your Dopp kit for your trip to Benghazi."

Updated Friday morning:

Gail Grabowski's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Stuff It"―Janie's review

So I clicked the "start" button of my stop-watch puzzle, focused on the solving―which went pretty smoothly―didn't look up ’til I'd finished and that's when I learned that in fact the stopwatch hadn't been running at all. Durn... I'm gonna guess that my time was in the low 6-minute vicinity. But I guess we'll never know. Life as we know it will go on however!

And we'll all be well-fed, if Gail has her way. Today she's served up an array of phrases whose first word is also the name of a food that can be prepared by being stuffed. Or, to put it another way, the word "stuffed" can precede the first word of the theme fill to name a culinary treat. On the menu today:

20A. PEPPER GRINDER [Salt shaker kin]―which gives us school-cafeteria staple, the hearty stuffed pepper. I like that this fill actually gives us a two-for-one option. A grinder is also a sandwich not unlike the submarine or the hoagie―depending on your region. And a little research led me to a recipe for a "Mozzarella, Olives and Red Pepper Grinder." Sounds pretty tasty.
32A. CHICKEN WIRE [Light-gauge fencing material]―for stuffed chicken. This, I imagine, can be the the whole bird with, say, a cornbread stuffing, or something like chicken cordon bleu. Had to check this clue carefully as I first thought it was referring to the foils used in the sport of fencing...
40A. SOLE CUSTODY [Legal guardianship decree] yields stuffed sole. With spinach. Or crab meat. Either way is fine by me! And
53A. MUSHROOM CLOUD [Nuclear explosion aftermath] gives us the stuffed mushroom, which is often a preparation of mushroom caps stuffed with finely chopped-and-seasoned mushroom stems and breadcrumbs. Or cheese, or bacon, or ham. Lotso possibilities here.

All of the theme fill (except for the last) is appearing for the first time in a major puzzle, so the "freshness factor" is good here. Still, something about SOLE CUSTODY and MUSHROOM CLOUD feels very sobering, nor do I have lots of positive associations for either of them. And that's just how it is sometimes!

I do love the "snap" of SNAP BRIM [Fedora feature]. It's making a CS debut, and shares that distinction today with TADPOLE [Future frog]. TONE DOWN [Moderate, as sound] is making its first major-puzzle appearance and presents us a tiny (and welcome) solving dilemma. Is moderate to be understood as a verb or an adjective? And it was nice to see NO SALE [key on an old cash register], appearing today like the Ghost of Simpler-Business-Machines Past.

I didn't understand why JEANS was clued as [Casual wear] sans "?" and ROBE as [Lounge wear?] avec... Anyone care to hazard a guess? Is it that lounge might be understood to be a bar as OPPOSED to another word for casual? I'm gonna go with "yes"―but there's no serious misdirection here, so I'm still not convinced the "?" was genuinely required.

There's a good bit of familiar fill today, too: APSE, ELON, ALDA, ERRS, ILSA, IONE... Those last two always force me to slow down a bit. Is the correct fill ILSA or ELSA or even ILSE? IONE or IONA or even IOLA? The crosses ultimately confirmed my choices―otherwise this solving-thing could turn into an ALL-DAY affair!

Updated late Friday morning, because I had to go to IHOP for breakfast and it took three tries before the pancakes weren't gooey inside:

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

All right, I'm gonna take the expedient way out here and send you to Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential post with just a few words from me first. Took me too long to latch onto the theme—five phrases in which an L is inserted before a D sound in a word, and the spelling's changed to make the LD word into a real word. Favorite theme entry: PIE A LA MOLD, or [Dessert that's been left out for too long?]. Hah! Also liked the eight-pack of 8-letter answers in the fill—it can't have been easy to include those in a puzzle with five theme entries. WORSE OFF is a great phrase for a crossword, EYEBALLS is so much better as a verb (as here) than a noun, TRANQUIL is a lovely word, and FROM A TO Z promotes the junky little partial A TO or A TO Z into a real phrase.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Box Seats"

What an absolutely perfect title for this puzzle! Your "seat" is your ASS, and ASS rebuses fit into crossword boxes here.

Tough puzzle with some tough fill, tough clues, and tough-to-find rebus squares. Favorite five:

The cheek-to-cheek double-rebus [ASS][ASS]INS, or ["The Ballad of Czolgosz" musical].
The clue [Red serge wearers], starting with MO, had me thinking of MOroccans (no relation to Mo Rocca) with red fezzes rather than Canadian MOUNTIES. There's a joke here about mounting and the rebus, but I'm not going to make it.
One 3-letter [Starchy foodstuff], like OCA, is lame. Why not go for broke and throw in another? POI is a starchy [Maui menu item]. ACPT legend Al Sanders was just in Maui, where he saw no nenes—I want to know if he ate POI.
SIROCCOS are [Mediterranean winds]. You know where they get SIROCCOS? In Benghazi, Libya. No lie! I just read that last night.
My final fave is...all the Down answers with the [ASS]es in them. I kept finding myself a little surprised by them, and it's a good feeling when a "Huh?" turns into an "Aha!"

Robert Fisher's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Weaponyms"

Is it just me or is this the most male-oriented crossword in ages? The theme is weapons named after people, and so much of the fill and the clues just said "man, man, man" to me. MA'AM is clued as [Repairman-to-housewife address]? Ouch. What, a female repairperson wouldn't use the same word? What, a woman staying home to let a contractor in is a "housewife" and not, say, just taking the day off for the plumber's visit? Or retired? Or someone who works nights or as a freelancer? That clue rubbed me wrong in every way possible. And no, having MOM and OVA in the bottom corner doesn't offset that. Hunting! War! Ships! Boot camp! Beer drinking! HERCULES! The NFL!

I never knew that shrapnel was named after a person. The SHRAPNEL SHELL is a [Fragmenting weapon named for a British Army officer]. First, I never encounter anyone with that last name. And second, "shrapnel" sounds like "shred" and "shard" and "scrap," so I would've suspected the word's etymology harked back to another Old or Middle English word like those.

Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Electronic Commerce"

The title's a little off because while "e-commerce" is a familiar phrase, the eight theme entries are commerce-related phrases that include electrical terms. Not electronic ones. There's a difference.

Among the theme answers are a FACTORY OUTLET, or [Bargain hunter's destination]; BAIT AND SWITCH, or [Seller's scam]; and SALES RESISTANCE, or [Buyer's balkiness]. The clues and answers themselves are utterly straightforward—it's the words' double meaning as electricity-related terms that embodies the theme. More fun is the presence of a couple dozen-plus 7- or 8-letter answers in the fill. Before I started the puzzle, I paused to admire the empty grid, with those corner and belly sections of white space.

June 24, 2009

Thursday, 6/25

LAT 4:14
NYT 3:57
CS 8:54 (J―paper)
Tausig untimed

I dipped into Frank Longo's Vowelless Crosswords again tonight. Puzzle #11 took easily twice as long as those that preceded it. Anyone else tracking how long these puzzles are taking them? I had a dickens of a time figuring out a bunch of answers. And I was sleepy, which surely wasn't helping matters.

Bill Zais's New York Times crossword

Wow, this is a cool theme—unlike any I've seen before. The five theme vertical entries are actually much longer than what shows up in the grid, as the clue number would be the beginning of the answer:

3D. [<--- Plastered] clues three SHEETS TO THE WIND.
5D. [<--- Gambling game] is five CARD STUD.
7D. [<--- Sherlock Holmes novel, with "The"] clues The Seven PERCENT SOLUTION.
20D. [<--- One starting a career, perhaps] is a twenty-SOMETHING.
40D. [<--- Work period] is the forty-HOUR WEEK.

Let's walk through some clues and answers, shall we? 13A [Some arts and crafts] clues POTTERY, but I had trouble finding that thanks to trying ONE A.M. instead of TWO A.M. for the [Wee hour]. ["Follow me"] clues "DO AS I DO," which I can't help noticing is do-si-do with an A inserted into it. Our [Apple pie companion] is not ice cream, but MOM. (C'est très américain.) DIPTYCH, or [Hinged pair of pictures], rhymes nicely with dipstick. [Start of a Chinese game] is the dangling fragment MAH, as in mah-jongg. HAWAII is [Where "wikiwiki" means "to hurry"]. [Philemon, e.g.] is an EPISTLE in the Bible; any connection to the Philemon of Greek mythology? Or make that GRECIAN—[Like the Trojan horse]. For [Race before a race], I could only think of prelims in track and field—whoops, that's a PRIMARY election we want here.

Crosswordese classics! An [Archaeological find] is a STELE. An ARETE is a [Craggy crest]. That [Crumb] of food is my personal favorite, an ORT.

The constructor had little wiggle room for moving the theme entries around—he needed a symmetrical batch of theme entries that began with specific numbers. The upshot is that the innovative theme is swimming in clunky little answers. There are abbreviations (ASSOC, SRTA, STE, NNE, ORD, STA, SYSTS, OED, OTB, OTS, CPI), prefixes and suffixes (ETTES, ULE, TRI), and fragments (MAH, HOO, HEE) up the wazoo.

How did the balance work for you? A vexing slog, an enticing challenge? A "wow" or a "meh"? I'm clocking in at 75% wow, 25% meh, so I liked it.

Updated Thursday morning:

Rich Norris's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Two-Car Garage―Janie's review

Thank goodness for television and print ads extolling the virtues of various makes of automobiles. Otherwise I'd probably have spent twice as much time solving this puzzle which felt at times like a [Knock-down...] DRAG-OUT. But a fair and fun one? Oh, yes, saith the non-car-owning city-dweller. And how does this puzzle work? Each theme-phrase is comprised of the names of two car-models. The joy is that each sounds like it could be an in-the-language phrase.

17A. NAVIGATOR LEGACY [Inheritance from one on a ship's bridge?]. This is a Lincoln-Subaru combo.
24A. RABBIT ACCORD [Treaty with Bugs?]. The pair, VW-Honda; the fill―funny!
42A. MUSTANG QUEST [Search for a horse?]. Here we have a Ford-Nissan duo.
55A. SUBURBAN ECLIPSE [Astronomical phenomenon seen outside the city?]. And thank you, Chevrolet-Mitsubishi.

D'ya suppose Detroit will venture into some of these pairings? D'ya think it'd help?... (Btw, if today's theme seemed familiar, Rich published a similar CS puzzle on 2/25/03.)

Making its bow today in a major puzzle is SLUGGISH [Lacking energy]. This word would also describe my time (okay, my times...). What took me so long? Model-names aside, one reason I didn't speed right through was because there was some fill I simply didn't know. ASGARD? [Where Valhalla is, in myth]. D'oh. And I recently spent some 17 hours at the Met soaking in The Ring Cycle...

CS-debut MOP-UPS for [Post-invasion military procedures]? Got me again. The crossing didn't help either, because I balked with that [Skewered meal]: KABOB (yes) or kabab (no)? Something I wouldn't care for on either, thank-you-very-much, is EMU, clued in a way that left me clueless―[Low-fat meat choice]. Well, now we know.

[Lose on purpose] took me quite a while to sort out. It's THROW―as in the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 and "Say it ain't so, Joe." I had the same parsing/sense problem with [Put the tiara on] for CROWN. This kind of cluing makes for a more challenging puzzle and I enjoy that. I REPEAT, this is a good thing.

So, those are some of low-lights in my solving process. Highlights? We got those, too. There's the presence of VOICE BOX and ELLA [First name in scat] Fitzgerald―who had one of the great ones, whether performing a jazz standard or BE-BOP, a [Style that evolved from swing]. There's Italy's scenic TUSCANY clued as [Chianti's region]; if you choose to order some north of the Alps in Paris, you'll have to summon the GARÇON. There's POISE [Grace under fire]; FANATIC, the [Wild-eyed type] who lacks it; and RAJA, humorously clued as [Big Indian].

Speaking of humor, I was seriously amused by the [Swine swill] [Antacid dose...] sequence. Nothin' better than a BROMO after too much SLOP, right?

We're also lookin' at a pangram today, so here's a special thank you to JINX and KISSY (with its [___-face...] clue) and EQUAL and AVION and ZEST.

Finally, we get a lot in the way of bonus fill. Should any one of the theme-fill vehicles break down, the garage also holds ATVS, a LORRY, a MIATA and, hey―even a [Rolls's partner] ROYCE. Not too shabby. I'll also confess, I thought there might be yet another theme-realted answer in [Got ready to drive], but no. That's our golf pal: TEED.

John Lampkin's Los Angeles Times crossword

This seven-piece theme takes up a good bit of real estate in the grid. Given that it launches at 1-Across with a clue you can't get without first knowing some of the long answers, and given that the second long theme answer is not easy, and given the inclusion of two pairs of cross-referenced clues in the fill, this puzzle wasn't easy. There were also some unfamiliar answers lurking to further turn the puzzle into a veritable TAR PIT ([La Brea attraction]). Alrighty, here's the theme:

1A. [With 71-Across, extracurricular group concerned with the starts of the answers to starred clues] clues the two-part SWIM / TEAM.
18A. The SIDEWINDER is a [Dangerous snake of the Southwest]. You can swim sidestroke, and the beginning of each theme answer is also a swimming stroke.
24A. [Fortification about four feet high] clues the word BREASTWORK, which is not in my daily vernacular. Poultry BREAST MEAT would have been easier.
39A. The BUTTERFLY EFFECT is a [Chaos theory principle]. I was just talking about this the other day. If Sammy Sosa had not used performance-enhancing drugs in '03, maybe the Cubs wouldn't have made the playoffs and the game in which Steve Bartman caught that ball would never have taken place, so Bartman's life would not have taken a detour. When a steroid-pumped butterfly flaps its ridiculously bulked-up wings...
53A. The [Road less traveled] is not just an M. Scott Peck book, it's also a BACKSTREET. Who uses that term? I know "back roads," but never realized the Backstreet Boys used a dictionary word in their name.
61A. [Area where electricians can't stand to work?] is a CRAWL SPACE. Ceiling's too low to stand there. My sister keeps some space clear in her crawl space as a tornado shelter. I've been living near Chicago's lakefront for 19 years, and I've yet to hear a tornado siren here.

Raise your hand if you've never heard of ["Riverdance" fiddler Eileen] IVERS. Keep your hand up. Now raise your hand if you weren't aware that [Altair, for one] is an A-STAR. If you have any hands down, raise one if you didn't know ['80s-'90s Toronto pitcher Dave] STIEB. And raise another hand if your [Fairy tale meany] instinct was OGRE rather than WOLF. I have four hands raised now, and it's making it hard to type this post. I wonder if the constructor was shooting for a pangram (which he achieved) and it was getting those JQKXZ answers in place that led to the pesky abbreviations (ETO crossing REO, DBA beside JUN) and whatnot, the gnarly little bits.

Did you notice the "split" clues? To [Split up] is to END IT. To [Split (up)] is to DIVVY up. And further down in the puzzle, [Split] clues FLEE. Nice! I don't love building an entire theme around "things that mean ___," but having such a trio dropped into the puzzle as a bonus is sweet.

Updated Thursday evening:

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword. "Status Symbols"

Whoa, where did the day go? Without further ado, let's explain the theme. In the IM world, one sets one's status. I'm not a big user of instant messaging, so the theme entries came to me thanks to their straight clues, not based on any keen familiarity with IM status designations.

[Imaginative child's companion, perhaps] is an INVISIBLE FRIEND. I prefer "imaginary friend," but if you set your IM status to "imaginary," I'm not sure anyone could contact you.
In sports, an AWAY GAME is an [Occasion for facing a hostile crowd].
The [Devil's tools, it's said] are IDLE HANDS.
[Reshining the pencils, e.g.] would indeed be BUSYWORK, which is defined as "work that keeps a person busy but has little value in itself." Hmm, shining pencils again does indeed have little value.
AVAILABLE CREDIT is the [Amount left on a card].

Nice corners in this grid—look at all those 6's, 7's, and 8's. Two popular websites are in the puzzle: FLICKR is the photo site, a [Picasa alternative], and TWITTER is the [Site with the tagline "What are you doing?"]. I'm OrangeXW on Twitter. Very rarely do my tweets actually say what I'm doing at that moment. I think people like Maureen Dowd who disdain Twitter tend to think that's all it is—that people are giving pointless and dull rundowns of their daily routine. But no. There's sharing of links and information, wiseacre observations, interesting musings and epiphanies. It's not at all an "I had oatmeal this morning" thing.

June 23, 2009

Wednesday, 6/24

BEQ cryptic 9:57
Onion 4:45
NYT 3:53
LAT 3:01
CS 5:57 (J―paper)

Wow, I had my low-key Wednesday all planned out. Rush-rush puzzle books all done, at last! Time to enjoy a day of medical editing in air-conditioned comfort. And then...the car's "check engine" light dinged on during the drive home from dinner. Who doesn't love taking the car to the shop and hailing a cab when it's 92° out? I know I do—not love that, that is. I expect my bilious mood to follow a sine-wave pattern. Right now it's in a dip, but I predict a rise by 9 a.m.

Oh! Maybe if I remind myself of this, I can keep the crankies at bay: Next Sunday, July 5, the crossword that Tony Orbach and I constructed will appear in the New York Times. Now I'm nervous. What if the other bloggers find things to complain about? What if they're underwhelmed by the theme? What if outraged blog commenters try to eviscerate Tony and me? How do constructors handle criticism with equanimity?

And another thing—Dean Olsher's book, From Square One, was officially published yesterday. Buy it now! I read it in galleys and found it most engaging, and I'm not just saying that because Dean says nice things about me in the book. Honest. (More info about the book and Dean's public appearances here.)

Corey Rubin's New York Times crossword

The phrase TAKE OUT AN AD inspires this theme, in which the letter pair AD is taken out of each theme entry:

16A. Drug addiction turns into DRUG DICTION, or [Talking like a junkie?]. Unfortunately, this one makes me sad because an acquaintance just lost a nephew to an overdose.
23A. [Agnostic's display?] is a SHOW OF A DOUBT, which is an AD-less SHADOW OF A DOUBT. Yes, there's another AD in the remaining answer, but that's fine, isn't it? Nobody said you had to take out two ADs in order to [Promote one's business, maybe...].
30A. [Sunbathing at Ipanema, e.g.?] is a RIO ACTIVITY, and coincidentally there's a single UV RAY ([Tanning element]) elsewhere in the puzzle. Sunbathing is only a little healthier than radioactivity.
41A. Skating [Rink jewelry?] is ROLLER BLING (rollerblading).
47A. MAILING DRESS is a [Letter carrier's uniform?]. Actually, I envision a MAILING DRESS as the outfit Ellen Ripstein wears when she goes to the post office to mail back the at-home ACPT puzzles. (If you've never attended the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, you should definitely try this year's puzzles via the solve-at-home-by-mail route.)

Favorite clues and answers:

ROTH probably gets clued more as novelist Philip or the Roth IRA than as [Rock's David Lee ___]. Is anything more quintessentially '80s than the "Jump" video?
["The Hot Zone" virus] is EBOLA. I read that book. There was another infectious disease epidemiology book I read around the same time that was much better. I wonder what it was.
I could do without the clue [Vanessa Williams/Brian McKnight duet] because I don't know the song at all. What a missed opportunity for a shout-out to the horrible "LOVE IS" comic strip! You know the one—the tubby naked couple delivering hackneyed platitudes about love?
The EYES were [Targets of a Moe Howard poke] in many a Three Stooges episode.
To ROISTER is to [Whoop it up]. I learned the word from a seafood restaurant that had an annual oyster-related Roister.
The ELKS are a [Group with a Grand Lodge in Chicago]. Yep, that's the building with a dome you can see here. The Elks put up a black fence around the building to keep skateboarders off the grand staircase, so it's kinda ugly now. Oh! Fences! That reminds me—[Fence supplier] is a THIEF, but at first I thought this would be some horrible answer like GATER.

When do you encounter the plural MODI [___ operandi (methods)]? Not often, not often at all. Remember MABEL [Normand of old movies]? Me neither, other than from crosswords. We have a variant spelling of tyro: TIRO is a [Newbie: Var.]. And rounding out the category of "answers that I wasn't so fond of," we have [Chantilly's department], OISE.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Short Stuff"―Janie's review

Oh, boy―is this one lovely LEAN-machine of a puzzle; the solving is swift and the fill is fresh as can be. Today, the word short can precede the first word in each of the theme phrases. In this way:

17A. COMING OF AGE [Getting past puberty] yields short-coming;
11D. HAND-IN-GLOVE [Intimately associated], shorthand;
25D. WAVE GOODBYE [Signal sayonara], shortwave (as in radio); and
63A. STOP ON A DIME [Halt hastily] gives us shortstop.

Coming of age appears for the first time in a major puzzle, and both hand-in-glove and stop-on-a-dime are appearing for the first time in a CS puzzle, all of which makes for some really good stuff.

And so does the remainder of the fill―with the likes of EVIL EYE, LOOPHOLE, (CS-debut) STAMP TAX, JANE DOE, McJOBS and MUD BATH especially. I keep thinking of those cagey colonists who, in response to the stamp tax imposed by the Stamp Act, spoke up and won the right to for "no taxation without representation." What a loophole that turned out to be!

Where else but in the puzzles will you find T. S. ELIOT of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" fame in the company of COSMO [Mag famous for sex quizzes]? Hmmm. Maybe next April, for National Poetry Month, Cosmo will create "The Love Quiz of J. Alfred..." And where else but in the puzzles have most of us ever seen an OKAPI [Relative of a giraffe]? Here's an illustration of the two of them together from J. Arthur Thomson's 1922 tome, The Outline of Science. (Though it might be more fun to see an illustration of a ZANY YENTA...)

Anyone out there ever sing madrigals? That's where I first learned the word TABOR, as in Thomas Weelkes's:

Strike it up Tabor and pipe us a favour,
thou shalt be well paid for thy labour:
I mean to spend my shoesole to dance about the Maypole,
I will be blithe and brisk, leap and skip, hop and trip,
turn about in the rout,
until very weary joints can scarce frisk.

I like [Start of something big?] for MEGA―and its placement beside ONE TON in the grid. That's fairly mega! I also like [Months and months] as the clue for YEARS; [Head line?] for PART; and the reminder that [Tangles or disentangles] are synonymous for RAVELS.

If the constructor has OUTDONE herself, well, that seems to be a pretty regular occurrence. I wonder about the theme-fill that didn't make it in this time: breadbasket, change of heart, division of labor, order in the court, etc., etc., etc. This is not to find fault! This is a lively theme and it makes me think about it―beyond what I see in the grid on the page. ["Well done!"], Nancy, BRAVO!

Sharon Petersen's Los Angeles Times crossword

My full write-up of this puzzle is over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. The theme is a David Bowie-less LET'S DANCE, with four phrases ending with the names of dances. It felt a little hit-or-miss as the theme phrases weren't all familiar and one of the dances was unknown to me (according to L.A.C.C. reader Carol, I'm just not old enough to remember the Pony). Here's what I said about the theme over there:

18A: [Good horse for a kid] is a WELSH PONY. There's a dance called the Pony? There's an equine called the Welsh pony? Both are news to me.
23A: [Fiery chip dip] clues RED HOT SALSA. Hmm, I can't say I've seen RED HOT SALSA. Mild, medium, and hot salsa, yes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, yes. Have you seen those "literal video versions" on YouTube? They've got one for the Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" and it gave me the giggles.
37A: CHARLIE HUSTLE is the famous [Pete Rose nickname]. Ah, the Hustle! That takes me back to my '70s childhood. I'll do you a favor and not post anything that will implant that horrid little tune in your head. It's there anyway, isn't it? I know it wormed its way into my head in the middle of doing this crossword. DOO-doo, DOO-doo, DOO-doo-doo DOO-doo...you can fill in the rest, can't you?
51A: I had a couple answers in mind for [Dickens orphan]. Is Tiny Tim an orphan? No, and his name is too short. Pip? Definitely not 11 letters. It's OLIVER TWIST, and I wonder how many people have ever thrown out their back by doing the Twist.
58A: Tying everything together is the [Ball offer, and a hint to this puzzle's theme], LET'S DANCE. That "ball offer" probably didn't make many of us instantly think of the answer.

Invariably I misspell this constructor's last name with an -son ending. I did so in my L.A.C.C. post (since corrected). Thanks to Doug Peterson-with-an-O for correcting me all the other times so that I could finally get it right today.

Matt Jones's Onion A.V. Club crossword

Aha! While working this puzzle, I was feeling as though some of the numbers were arbitrary, but now I see that they follow the familiar 2-4-6-8 pattern, so I can better appreciate the construction. Here's the theme:

23A. [How to designate that your order is for bomber planes?] is to MARK IT WITH A B-2. This plays on the "patty-cake" game for young kids. Now, I don't pay much attention to military jet names and numbers, and the 2's crossing, [Clapperboard operator's cry], could have included any number. "TAKE 2," sure, but if the movie director wants a lot of takes, it could be TAKE 17 for all I know. This is where seeing the 2-4-6-8 pattern helps. That, or knowing your military plane names. Aren't there other B-_ planes? Or are those other numbers for the B vitamins?
29A. The number that's added here is 4. I don't really know my explosives any better than military jets, but the 4 crossing was easy. [Highly explosive science fiction author?] is ARTHUR C4 CLARKE, crossing the 4TH of July, [Occasion for fireworks, briefly, with "the"].
40A. [Located a place to park one's Pontiac?] clues FOUND THE G6 SPOT. I kinda forgot there was such a thing as the Pontiac G6—that's the car Oprah gave away a bunch of. [Key breakdancing moves] are 6-STEPS, but I do not recall learning this in Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. My 6 confusion temporarily got in the way of my appreciation of the "found the G-spot" base phrase. Nice one, Matt!
47A. The comic book and movie V for Vendetta fed V8 FOR VENDETTA, or [Tomato drink used in retaliation?]. I don't like tomato juice or V8, so I can easily imagine a scenario in which it's part of a revenge plot. The 8 crossing here was much easier for me—["Magic" toy that uses a die in blue dye] is the 8-BALL.

This crossword had all sorts of small bits of weirdness that I didn't know. [Georgia State's conf.] is the CAA. [Ookla the ___ ("Thundarr the Barbarian" character)] is MOK. JAM IT and DIG ON were unfamiliar verb phrases—the former completes ["I wanna ___ with you" (Bob Marley lyric)] and the latter means [Enjoy, slangily].

I did know the [L'Oreal hair color line] FERIA and the [Japanese poetry similar to haiku], or SENRYU—if you've written or read haiku that's funny, it might actually be senryu. I also liked the MAXI clue—[Absorbent pad]. No, references to menstruation in crosswords don't alarm me. MAXI dresses are back in style now, so constructors can once again clue this word with reference to fashion without looking outdated.

Brendan Quigley's blog puzzle, "Cryptic Wednesday"

Dang, I forgot about Brendan's puzzle and thought I was done blogging. Will be quick about it and just list a few of my favorite clues. Be sure to read the comments at Brendan's post—British cryptics guy Peter Biddlecombe gives an educated critique of Brendan's first cryptic, and he says it all so much better than I could.

23A. [Subway mascot shows a container to Mad man] (5). I was thinking that "subway mascot" was part of the wordplay, but that's the straight definition for JARED, the guy from the Subway restaurant ads. The container is a JAR and a man at Mad magazine might be an editor, or ED.

3D. [Desires sexual attraction for losers, probably] (4,5). "Desires sexual attraction" is redundant (and so, as I learn the lingo from Biddlecombe, maybe the surface reading of the clue suffers a bit), but it's split into two distinct parts. Desires = LONGS and sexual attraction = the HOTS. LONG SHOTS are probably going to lose a contest.

16D. [Dope! Callas is lying about Peron] (9). MARIA Callas is "lying about" JUAN Peron to make MARIJUANA, or dope.

MGWCC #55

crossword 6:22
puzzle 0:28

greetings, fellow solvers. the 55th episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "The Milky Way," featured a friday-esque crossword with a not-too-tough meta. the puzzle instructs us that This week's contest answer is a type of drink with two words and a total of eleven letters in its name. let's look at the theme answers, which somewhat resemble a recipe for this mystery drink:

17a: [Crybaby--and the ingredients of the drink] is a TATTLE-TALE.
25a: [Like the answer to 43-across] is SOMEWHAT CRYPTIC.
43a: [What you must do to the ingredients in 17-across to identify the drink] is SHAKE VIGOROUSLY.
57a: [Where you'd buy the drink] is a COFFEE SHOP.

so if we take the "ingredients" and "shake them vigorously" according to the "somewhat cryptic" instructions, that means we'll take the letters of TATTLE-TALE and anagram them. (those of you who solve cryptic crosswords will surely recognize "shake" as an anagram keyword.) the only catch is that TATTLE-TALE is 10 letters, and the drink is 11 letters, according to the instructions. also, you can't spell much with those letters, with only A, E, L, and T repeated. but you can spell LATTE (a drink you can certainly get at a coffee shop). that's the first thing i noticed. the second thing i noticed is that if you take those letters out, you get ... LATTE again. how about that? indeed, a "somewhat cryptic" interpretation is that you can "shake" TATTLE-TALE to arrive at a double latte, which is the answer to the contest.

what about the fill?

[One of a pair in cyberspace] is the SOFT C in both the first and ninth positions of the word "cyberspace." tricky, tricky!
[Paul, Leo, or Benedict]? those are NAMEs. (groan.) did you put POPE here? me too, but i knew it was too obvious to be right.
OMAR Torrijos is apparently the [Panamanian leader assassinated by the CIA in 1981]. never heard of him.
[Chunk of China] isn't the GOBI desert. it's merely TOFU, and to be honest, i don't even think of it as chinese. but i guess it is, at least in origin.
[Watson-Crick base pair location] is RNA. really? i had no idea they studied RNA. i was quite surprised when this turned out not to be DNA.
[Drew on TV] isn't a verb; it's comedian drew CAREY. five points for the clever clue, but minus one for duplicating the TV from TV STARS.
i was trying to figure out how the heck to get some form of the UEFA EUROPEAN FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP to fit into eight letters for [Spain won it in 2008]. nope, it's the DAVIS CUP of tennis. i knew that, actually. even though rafael nadal didn't play, spain got good performances from fernando verdasco and feliciano lopez to win the title.
[Businessman Henry Ross ___] would have been much easier if it had been [H. Ross ___], wouldn't it? yeah, it's just PEROT. odd how including the full first name obscured the answer for a while. CLEVERLY [How the sly operate] done, matt.
last week i had to guess the vowel on MALA/MALO. this time matt specified the gender: [Chica ___ (bad girl)]. it's MALA. of course, this time the vowel was pretty easy to get from the cross, unlike last week when it was part of some almost-famous japanese name.
chess clue of the week: [Chess's "boa constrictor] is anatoly KARPOV, known for squeezing the life out of his opponents.
totally unfamiliar abbreviation: FTTP, clued as [Broadband letters]. i know HTTP, i know FTP... this isn't either one of those. is this it? really?
i'm not sure why [Fail to overlook] is my favorite clue, but it did amuse me.

that's all for this week. tune in next time for the killer 4th-of-the-month puzzle.

June 22, 2009

Tuesday, 6/23

Jonesin' 3:32
NYT 3:11
LAT 3:04
CS 7:16 (J―paper)

At long last, we have reached the time of year when "cooler near the lake" is a splendid thing. Hot, muggy days are much improved by a lake breeze knocking off 10° from the temperature. I hope you Northeasterners who've had the same overlong wet, cool spring as Chicago are now getting some genuine June weather too.

I did some proofreading on six (!) different books today (Brendan Quigley's NFL-team word searches). Is it just me, or is looking at word search puzzles more exhausting than, say, medical editing?

Caleb Madison's New York Times crossword

Caleb's theme contains four phrases that begin with synonyms for "wallop":

20A. PUNCH AND JUDY is a [Slapstick puppet show].
33A. ["I'm ready for anything!"] clues SOCK IT TO ME. This one's a little off because the SOCK here kinda, sorta means "hit," whereas the synonyms in the other theme entries definitely take alternate meanings.
44A. HIT THE SACK is clued as [Go get some shuteye]. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when a non-native English speaker hears that phrase for the first time. What sort of sack is this? Why are you going to hit it? How come people always want to hit sacks late in the evening?
DECK THE HALLS is a [Yuletide tune].

Where this puzzle shines is in the longer Down answers. Why, here's GROUCHO MARX—[He said, "Here's to our wives and girlfriends...may they never meet!"]. Ah, adulterous deception is always a reliable source of hilarity. (Maybe the retro ADMEN, [Some Madison Ave. workers], are living the Groucho lifestyle.) One type of [Magazine staffer] is the FACT-CHECKER. STAN LEE is perhaps one of the more common 7-letter first-and-last-name people in crosswords; he's [Co-creator of the Fantastic Four]. REAL LIFE probably gets discussed more now than ever, thanks to how much time people spend in the virtual world discussing [Actuality]. Also nice: the Scrabblicious ZZ TOP, the ["Sharp Dressed Man" band], and an ELIXIR, a [Drink said to prolong life]. Is Diet Coke an elixir? I say yes. Favorite clue: [da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM] presents examples of IAMBS.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Donna S. Levin's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Early Bird's Reward"—Janie's review

The "early bird's reward" is of course the WORM, double-clued here as [Computer malady (and what can follow the starts of the four longest puzzle answers)]. May all of our computers be free of that first kind of worm―but what great fill Donna has provided in those four longest answers to clue the other kinds:

17A. EARTHMOTHER [Fertility archtype], for earthworm. I think of this answer as the NEXUS to the feminine vibe of today's puzzle, too—what with AMIGA, WOMEN and [Handmaid, for one] cluing SERVANT.
23A. SILK STOCKINGS [Astaire's "Ninotchka" remake], for silk worm. This remake (which appears to be a CS debut, btw), has a score by Cole Porter and comes to you in "(Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and) Stereophonic Sound." As for GLOSSY silk stockings, they have a long history as a fashion item and, expensive as they are, are still considered to be a lingerie luxury. And a sexy one at that.
47A. GLOW IN THE DARK [What light sticks do], for glowworm. This utter beauty of a phrase is making its major-puzzle debut.
57A. BOOK ’EM, DANNO ["Hawaii Five-O" catchphrase], for bookworm. Hmmm. I somehow imagine Hawaii Five-O as the bookworm's guilty pleasure...

This is all top-notch fill in its own right that does double duty as it livens up a tried-(sometimes "tired-")and-true crossword theme.

Other terrific fill includes three CS-firsts: the poetically clued LOST LOVE [Theme of Poe's "Annabel Lee"], the colorful RED-NOSED [Like Rudolph, in a song title], and NTH POWER [Ultimate degree]. These phrases are well-met with IN RESERVE [Set aside] and SNEAK INTO [Crash]. Did you have trouble with either of these? I sure did. A little nosing around the Cruciverb database, however, reveals that both of these phrases with these exact clues have appeared in puzzles by Rich Norris―and in both cases, in Saturday NY Times puzzles. Aha―so that explains it. Glad I finally GOT WISE [Woke up and smelled the coffee] (another great combo)!

Knew PRESLEY [Graceland name] but was at a complete loss for WEIR [Bob ____ (Grateful Dead co-founder). Today is first time this name has been clued in conjunction with the Dead. More often than not it's clued in association with director Peter or as a "small dam."

All of which comes down to this: congrats to Donna for breathing so much fresh air into the cluing and the fill today!

Gary Lowe and Nancy Salomon's Los Angeles Times crossword

Newcomer Gary Lowe, a regular (and often hilarious) commenter over at L.A. Crossword Confidential, partnered up with constructing mentor extraordinaire Nancy Salomon for today's L.A. Times puzzle. The theme is things you COUNT (54D, [Tally, and what to do with the last word of 18-, 26-, 45- or 60-Across]:

18A. [Informal polls] are STRAW VOTES. Oh! I was just pondering what votes I've ever counted and remembered the Fourth Bloggiversary Bad Theme Contest. I need to take a look at the badness and see which badness I marvel at the most.
26A. EMPTY CALORIES—a beautifully lively crossword answer—are a [Cause of unhealthful weight gain]. Mmm, empty calories... I don't count calories, but I do count milligrams of sodium and potassium.
45A. [Rockies grazers] are MOUNTAIN SHEEP. I started out with MOUNTAIN GOATS. What, doesn't everyone count goats at bedtime? Actually, I've taken to counting backwards by 3's from 100. It really does work. I don't make it past 50.
60A. ROMAN NOSES are [Prominent schnozzes]. I personally prefer counting heads to counting noses, but that's just me.

Highlights in the fill: ADVICE GURU, MOLIERE, SLUMDOG Millionaire (though it remains to be seen whether "Slumdog" still resonates a few years from now), and EN MASSE.

I answered a question about 2D via Twitter today. Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn tweeted that he didn't understand how [Totaled] and RAN TO fit together. Totaled, as a restaurant bill, not totaled, as a car. Most of my tweets aren't about crosswords, but you're welcome to follow OrangeXW anyway.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword,"We've Got a Monopoly"

Cute theme—in each of the six theme entries, Matt changes a single letter in the name of a Monopoly space, giving it a new spin:

Park Place becomes DARK PLACE, a [Space found in Who-Turned-Out-the-Lights-opoly?
[Space that ought to be in ZZ Topoly?] is BEARDWALK, playing on Boardwalk. Kudos for the "ZZ Topoly" formation, Matt.
The last letter of Atlantic changes to create ATLANTIS AVENUE, a [Space in Underwater-opoly?]. Is there a SpongeBob version of Monopoly? I bet there is. We have the SpongeBob Life board game, where the best-paying career you can pick is Fry Cook. I forget if it's one of the ones you need a college education for.
Community Chest becomes COMMUNITY CHEAT, a [Space in Affair-opoly?].
Nobody likes having to pay $200 or 10% of their holdings in Income Tax. Oh, wait. That's actually a sweet deal. Why isn't Congress embracing the Monopoly tax code? INCOME TEX is [The space who's also the mascot of Cowboy-opoly?].
[Space in Snuff-opoly?] is SNORT LINE, based on the Short Line railroad. Aw, shouldn't this be in Swine-opoly or Cocaine-opoly?

WORK WITH ME is stone-cold terrific, in-the-language fill. Its clue is ["C'mon, I need your help here, so stop resisting"]. FORD SUV is...is that terrific or contrived? I'm not sure. That's a [Bronco, Explorer, or Excursion, e.g.]. A trickier clue would've included only the Excursion and the Expedition.

I'm out of time for the morning, so I'll sign off here. Toodles!

June 21, 2009

Monday, 6/22

BEQ 3:54
LAT 2:40
NYT 2:20
CS 7:23 (J—paper)

Wow, is it relaxing to have a blogless weekend! Vielen Dank to PuzzleGirl for holding down the fort with her inimitable 4-letter words (brio and élan).

Fred Piscop's New York Times crossword

In Fred's easy Monday puzzle, I only knew 3 and 5/11ths theme entries, but the theme (phrases beginning with "cee" sound-alikes) gave me another 1/11th:

17A. "SI, SI, SEÑOR" is an [Emphatic south-of-the-border assent]. That one was easy enough, as it's basic Spanish and a mainstay in crosswords. Hey, how come these entries never get stretched out by one more letter? Does no one ever say "si, si, señora"?
26A. The [Beginning piano student's exercise] is the C MAJOR SCALE. I knew SCALE, C fit the theme, and I guessed wrong on MINOR vs. MAJOR. Can you tell I've never been a beginning piano student?
45A. "SEE YOU LATER!" are common [Parting words]. Perfectly smooth phrase for a lively Monday outing.
62A. That cocktail with cranberry juice and vodka is also a [Wind that cools a beach], or SEA BREEZE.

Your DEBIT CARD is indeed a [Quick, cashless way to pay for things]. Don't take it to RENO, the [Nevada gambling mecca], if you are prone to gambling away all your money. In a few more decades, I suspect a concept like [Leisure suit fabric] will vanish from our POLYESTER associations. The top two clues I liked: ARAMIS is a [Fragrance named for a Musketeer] and FALSE is a [Test answer you have a 50/50 chance of guessing right].

Here are some crosswordy things that may be unfamiliar to newer solvers. If you didn't know these ones, commit them to memory. Really, what else are you doing with all that memory? Go ahead and fill it up with common crossword answers.

ESSEN is a [Ruhr Valley city] in Germany.
The first name of [Outfielder Slaughter in the Baseball Hall of Fame] is ENOS. It's also a biblical name.
The first name of [Nobelist Wiesel] is ELIE. There are also a couple fashion designers named ELIE, Messrs. Saab and Tahari.
The OBIE is an off-Broadway (Obie sounds like "O.B.") award given by a New York alt-weekly—a [Village Voice award]. Broadway shows get Tony awards.
ALIT means "landed" or [Touched down].

Updated Monday morning:Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Inside Job"—Janie's review

Embezzlement? A bank heist? Embedding the letters J, O and B in phrases like HOJO BURGER? Nupe. None of the above. Instead, a pert 4-part quip (doled out in 2 15s and 2 10s) about people in radiology. The words of wisdom being:

17A. NEVER LIE TO [Start of some bogus medical advice]. Love the clue-as-disclaimer. Do you suppose some folks think what follows is anything other than wordplay? I guess the answer is yes and the CrosSynergy folks don't want any suits filed against 'em for providing misleading information...
27A. X-RAY TECHNICIANS [Advice, part 2]
44A. THEY CAN SEE RIGHT [Advice, part 3]
59A. THROUGH YOU [End of the advice]

Kinda makes me wanna cue up this Beatles tune from Rubber Soul.

I enjoyed the quip and don't have lots to say about it or the non-theme fill. Still, the inclusion of the oft-seen FTD did make me question exactly what those letters stand for. I knew it had to do with Flower Deliveries, but in this day and age, I wasn't sure about that "T." It's an acronym with some 44 definitions, but the answer in the context of [Blooming bus.?] is Florists' Transworld Delivery, a service that has been delivering flowers—and saving the butts of procrastinating gift-givers—for nearly a century now.

I do like that clue, too—as well as [Ring toss item?] for HAT (as in,"I've decided to toss my HAT into the ring and run for office"); and [Shed item] for TOOL. This one had me stymied for a while. I kept thinking of the way a snake sheds its SKIN, but that wasn't working and I couldn't come up with anything else along those lines. Got me! Perhaps if I'd paid more attention to those AWLS [Hole-punching tools], I'd not have gone so far down the path of misdirection.

Good morning from Amy! Good gravy, where did this summertime come from? Chicago had three months of April and then suddenly—boom!—it's warm and too muggy.

Donna Levin's Los Angeles Times crossword

Donna's tennis theme felt familiar—three phrases ending in GAME, SET, and MATCH, held together by a timely mention of WIMBLEDON—and a search of the Cruciverb database finds that "game, set, match" has been fertile ground for crossword constructors. This isn't remotely intended as criticism of today's puzzle—Monday themes often tread familiar ground, and the English language has a lot of phrases that end with those three words. What Donna adds is WIMBLEDON, which doesn't appear in the Cruciverb database at all. Here's today's theme:

18A. [Grand Theft Auto, e.g.] is a VIDEO GAME.
27A. [Sterling afternoon serving pieces] make up a SILVER TEA SET.
44A. One's [Ideal mate] is a PERFECT MATCH.
55A. WIMBLEDON is the [Annual English sports event that begins today, and this puzzle's theme]. Rafael Nadal is missing the tournament because of tendinitis, so the most gripping competition may be in the women's tournament.

It's interesting to take a look at the other ways constructors have riffed on the same core idea:

Wed. 5/26/99 CrosSynergy, Dave Tuller: Three phrases ending with GAME, SET, and MATCH.
Wed. 7/18/01 NYT, Liz Gorski: Three phrases ending with GAME, SET, and MATCH.
Tues. 5/3/05 NYT, Gary Steinmehl: Four phrases ending with POINT, GAME, SET, and MATCH, plus TENNIS / ANYONE.
Wed. 8/17/05 NYT, Kyle Mahowald: Three phrases ending with GAME, SET, and MATCH, plus TENNIS / ANYONE.

I fully expect to see a September puzzle one of these years with GAME, SET, MATCH, and THE U.S. OPEN.

For more on today's LAT and a giggly Carol Burnett Show clip, see PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Second Life"

Brendan's still polishing his first cryptic, so we have a quote theme today instead of the cryptic he promised. "A quote theme? Ugh," you may find yourself groaning. Brendan's had a couple quote themes that I've actually liked, though. I think his success rate in making quote puzzles I like is in the 80% to 100% range, whereas the other constructors in the field average about 10%. What sets Brendan's quote themes apart from the rest? As I just commented at Brendan's blog, if he gave a class on the proper construction of quote themes, I think the main lessons would be:

(1) Find a quote with some edge to it. Today's quote is egotistical. Previous BEQ quote themes have had funny lines from current comedians like David Cross and Patton Oswalt.

(2) My god, don't use an old quote. Sure, Mae West and Yogi Berra got off some good lines, but by 2009 they're likely to feel stale.

(3) Shoot for a shorter quote to avoid a large volume of "gotta work the crossings" stuff. Today's quote is 27 letters long, with the theme supplemented by the speaker and the team he owns.

(4) Elevate the fill with more interesting stuff and a lower word count. This one's a 74-worder in which 27 of the fill answers are 6 to 8 letters long.

The quote is "WHEN I DIE, / I WANT TO COME / BACK AS ME." Spoken by MARK CUBAN, owner of the Dallas MAVERICKS.

Brendan rated this one as "easy." I like it that Brendan's easy puzzles settle in at Wednesday-plus level. I don't think Brendan likes making Monday-caliber puzzles much. Hey, that's fine by me!

June 20, 2009

Sunday, 6/21

NYT*
LAT*
PI*
BG*
CS*

*You don't really care; it's just PuzzleGirl.

[Updated at 9:45am with the LAT]
[Updated at 10:10am with the PI]
[Updated at 10:30 with the BG]
[Updated 12:00 noon with the CS — Whew!]

Hey, everyone, PuzzleGirl here with your Sunday puzzles. Someone remind me again why I told Orange I'd blog for her today? Oh yeah, I'm completely nuts. Sunday puzzles! They're just too big! Well, we might as well get started. I know it's a big drag when Orange is gone but let's just make the best of it!

Today's New York Times crossword by Matt Ginsberg and Pete Muller chewed me up and spit me out. I had to Google a couple times ("The horror!") and then when I thought I was all done, I had a mistake at [92A: Some pitcherfuls]. I had ALES instead of ADES and, I tell you what, for some reason mistakes on the downs are a lot harder for me to see than mistakes on the acrosses. BO DIDLLEY looked just fine to me the first ten times I scanned by it. Ugh!

The theme of this puzzle is "Famous Last Words," and theme answers are—you guessed it—last words of famous people. I'll be honest, I don't believe I've heard any of these quotations before. Have you? With a couple crosses in place, I could figure out most of them and they're pretty interesting!

Theme answers:

1A/13A: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go" (OSCAR WILDE)
27A: "Die, my dear? Why, that's the last thing I'll do!" (GROUCHO MARX)
32A: "That was the best ice cream soda I ever tasted" (LOU COSTELLO)
53A: "Where is my clock?" (SALVADOR DALI)
71A: "Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub" (CONRAD HILTON)
87A: "I've had 18 straight whiskeys. I think that's a record" (DYLAN THOMAS)
94A: "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something" (PANCHO VILLA)
110A/113A: "I've had a hell of a lot of fun and I've enjoyed every minute of it" (ERROL FLYNN)
20D: "I have not told half of what I saw" (MARCO POLO)
46D: "I live!" (CALIGULA)
48D: "Eva is leaving" (EVA PERON)
68D: "I'm going to heaven!" (BO DIDDLEY)

I liked seeing AKC [42A: Huskies' org.] so close to DOGGONE IT [50A: Words of disappointment] and DESPOT [60A: Kim Jong-il, e.g.] crossing DEPOT [60D: Points on some lines]. I wasn't crazy about seeing ILLEGALS in the grid [104A: Raid targets]. That seems like a fairly derogatory term to me. And HANOI clued as [10D: McCain residence for 5-1/2 years]?? Ouch.

Fred Piscop's L.A. Times crossword, with its wordplay theme, was closer to my comfort zone. Theme answers are familiar phrases with an X tacked onto the end, resulting in new wacky phrases clued "?"-style.

Theme answers:

23A: Rodriguez upset with negative publicity? (BITTER ALEX).
25A: Film timepiece seen briefly? (CAMEO ROLEX).
43A: Instability of stereotypical BMW drivers? (YUPPIE FLUX).
64A: World's most perplexing problem? (GRAND CRUX).
87A: Buckingham Palace add-on? (QUEEN ANNEX).
107A: Rubber bedsheets? (SLEEP LATEX).
109A: Cat on steroids? (MUSCLE MANX).
36D: Encrypted Scriptures? (SECRET CODEX).
39D: Highest point in North Africa? (BARBARY APEX).

You can see my full write-up of this puzzle at our other blog, L.A. Crossword Confidential.

Hey! A Father's Day theme! Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there! Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle lets us in on "What Dad Stands For" — theme answers are three-word phrases with the first letters D.A.D.

Wanna know DAD's favorite comedy? It's "Dumb and Dumber," of course. Favorite game? "Dungeons and Dragons," natch. I've never heard of "Duel at Diablo," but it came pretty easy through crosses, unlike "Dick and Dee Dee," which took a while to figure out because I also wasn't sure of the Carmen Miranda tune "Tico Tico." I am sure that I love her hat though. Other than that, it was a pretty smooth and steady solve, which is typical for me with Merl's puzzles.

The rest of the theme answers:

39A: What DAD might do to irrigate the backyard? (DIG A DITCH).
51A: DAD's favorite code? (DOTS AND DASHES).
71A: How DAD may like his sports and politics? (DOWN AND DIRTY).
96A: Like DAD's lectures? (DRY AS DUST).
102A: What DAD never was in his army days (so he says)? (DRUNK AND DISORDERLY).
117A: Words from Mom when DAD says no? (DON'T ARGUE DEAR).

I did have to laugh at myself at 1A. I saw [Moscow headgear] and though, "What do they call those FUR HATs?" ["My pretty," in a 1939 film] for DOROTHY is a truly inspired clue. And what would my guest-blogging stint be without me telling you something really dumb I tried to fit into the grid. For [68A: When metal-casting started] instead of the correct IRON AGE, I literally — literally — started writing in Stone Age until it was obvious it wouldn't fit. The clue for NELSONS [81A: Mandela and others] made me wonder if it would be kosher to clue this answer with, say, Mandela and Ozzie. One with the NELSON as a first name and the other with NELSON as a last name. I'm thinking that's probably not cool.

I thought I was going to strike out in the SW — I didn't know any of the downs on my first pass! Luckily, my parents are big horse-racing fans and HIALEAH [115A: Racetrack near Miami] was a gimme. Also [109A: Mary's TV friend] RHODA who I love, love, love. Isn't it hilarious that NO ONE said "Play it again, Sam" in "Casablanca"? How in the world do those kind of errors take hold and become part of our popular culture? 119D reminded me that I'm going in for my first ACUpuncture treatment on Friday. Can't think of a better way to spend a Friday morning than having someone stick needles in my body. Wish me luck!

Oh, I really struggled through Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe crossword, "Trainspotting." For some reason the BG puzzles are always hard for me. I think it's because I'm only exposed to these constructors (Emily and Henry, and Henry Hook) once a week. I did eventually finish this one, but it was rough. It's so chock full of theme and then there's all the "Look here! Look there!" — made me dizzy! Kinda like motion sickness. Heh. None of the train names came easy — although once they were in, they all looked familiar enough. Here are the trains found in this puzzle:

23A: Train of folk song (CITY OF NEW ORLEANS).
34A: Chunnel train (EUROSTAR).
40A/65A: Mystery train (ORIENT EXPRESS).
56A/52D: Blues train (MIDNIGHT SPECIAL).
81A/50D: NY-Chicago train (BROADWAY LIMITED).
103A: Chattanooga train (CHOO-CHOO).
3D: 16 Down predecessor (METROLINER).
5D/50D: Train to LA (SUNSET LIMITED).
9D/65A: Kids' train (POLAR EXPRESS).
14D: 2008 film set on a train (TRANS-SIBERIAN).
16D/65A: Speedy train (ACELA EXPRESS).
55D/52D: Fiddler's train (ORANGE BLOSSOM SPECIAL).
77D: "Train of the Stars," once (SUPER CHIEF).

Wow! Question: Could there be any more theme stuffed into this puzzle? Answer: No. No, there could not. This is like an industrial sized tub full of theme here. Amazing. And even though I had a lot of trouble with the puzzle, it was totally my fault and not because of bad fill. In fact, they even managed to sneak some theme-ish fill in with TRAY clued as [Passenger's prop], and TOWNS clued as [Whistle stops, maybe]. Also:

20A: State seen from the California Zephyr (UTAH).
71A: Rapid __ (urban trains) (TRANSIT).
95A: Put the brakes on (EASE UP).
109A: [SUNSET LIMITED] stop (HOUSTON).
11D: Train depot (abbr.) (STA).

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure "Broken Arrow" (which shows up at 3D: Michael of "Broken Arrow" (ANSARA)) is the movie where the nukes are on the train. John Travolta and Christian Slater? Right? Anyone?

As I expected, Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy crossword was rough going but ultimately beautiful. The only gimmes I had the first time through were LEGS [11A: Trio for grand pianos], ALP [19A: High point of "The Sound of Music"?], PIÑON [36A: State tree of Nevada and New Mexico], and Robin WILLIAMS [33D: Star of "One Hour Photo"] (never saw it, but it looks really, really creepy). That's not much to build on! With some perseverance, though, things came into focus. I've never heard the word ORISON before [21A: Prayer]. ELASTOMERS [12D: Synthetic rubber compounds] was new to me too, but gettable through crosses. Well, eventually anyway. I had the most trouble in the SW where I had ensure for ASSURE [25A: Warrant] and had no idea about [41A: "The Fantasticks" narrator] (it's EL GALLO). Just looked it up and, guess what. I bet Tony Orbach didn't have any trouble with that one. But my downfall was my stunning lack of military knowledge. For [32A: USMC E-4s] I first had guns, then subs, then cols (making my way to the ballpark!), and finally, the correct CPLS. Yikes!

I also suffer from that particular brand of dyslexia where I fill in wrong letters even when I know the right answer if I've already got most of the crosses entered. In this case, I had smokeatter instead of SMOKE-EATER at 55A [Firefighter, slangily]. That means I was looking at -ILDARA for the [Horse-breeding county west of Dublin] and both C and K looked reasonable to me, so I went with the C. If I'd had the proper last letter in there, I'm sure I would have seen KILDARE. Of course, by that time I was feeling a little pressure to be done already so I could write this up and get on with my day! As always, I choose to believe that had I taken a little more time, I would have ended up with a perfect solution.

With any luck, Orange will be back tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

June 19, 2009

Saturday, 6/20

Newsday 7:37
NYT 6:19
LAT 4:00
CS 6:55 (J—paper)

Before getting around to the Saturday NYT crossword, I did a few Vowelless Crosswords by Frank Longo. Man, I just flew through one of those puzzles! It only took me 8 minutes, or a third longer than the NYT. Then the next crsswrd took me 26 minutes. Ouch. I'm enjoying the format tremendously but you know what? The fun won't last. Before you know it, I'll have finished the entire book and then what? Then I have to wait until fall for Brendan Quigley's diagramless book, but I test-solved a bunch of the puzzles so those ones will be reruns for me.

Brilliant constructors, please make more tough puzzle books. Publishers, please publish said books. Thank you.

Brad Wilber's New York Times crossword

Tons of cool fill in this puppy, eh? This may be one of the most enjoyable Wilber creations to date. Let's run through some clues:

14A. ROGER EBERT is a [Writer on pictures]. I've been a huge admirer of Ebert's since I was a kid reading his reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times.
17A. If you are [Going bonkers for the British?], you have a touch of ANGLOMANIA.
20A. I was thinking of elbowing on a crowded sidewalk for the clue [Response to being elbowed, maybe]. "WAS I SNORING?" is the answer so no, not the sidewalk at all.
22A. ASOK is the ["Dilbert" character who was reincarnated as his own clone]. Does anyone still read "Dilbert"?
25A. [Kind of question] clues TRIVIA. This is a better "kind of ___" clue than the usual.
28A. I waited for the crossings to tell me if the [Companion for Pan] was one of Peter Pan's friends or a DRYAD from classical mythology. For more mythology, we have 15D's TANTALUS, [Victim of terrible teasing]—and the root of the word tantalize.
37A. [Kachina doll makers] are the ZUNI. Not the HOPI, which is what I initially had there.
38A. MACHISMO is a [Bruiser's display]. I could do without.
55A. Have I heard of a MERRY-ANDREW before? It's an archaic word in lowercase meaning [Clown].
64A. Uriah HEEP is your [Blackmailer in an 1850 novel].
2D. There are a few theater references today—an OBIE award, THEATRICAL, and ["The Bald Soprano" playwright, 1950], Eugene IONESCO.
8D. Good gravy, who are these guys? TENIERS is the [Surname of three generations of Flemish old masters]. The Flemish are from Belgium. So, they say, are Belgian waffles. And [Waffling] (32D) means HESITANT.
27D. FT. RILEY is a [Kansas mil. reservation with the U.S. Cavalry Museum].
38D. [Bigger than big] clues the adjective MAMMOTH, which is also an extinct Pleistocene furry elephant. Did mammoths coexist with the [Prehistoric stone tool] called an EOLITH (from the Greek for dawn + stone)?
45D. ["Drop City" novelist, 2003] is T.C. BOYLE. He started out with T. Coraghessan Boyle on his book covers. Why did he change it? I don't know. Apparently he was 17 when he changed his middle name to Coraghessan. Maybe he quit wanting to be who he wanted to be at age 17?

Michael Wiesenberg's Los Angeles Times crossword

I'm leaving town early in the morning (PuzzleGirl will be here to cover the Sunday puzzles in my absence), so let me excerpt what I've written up for L.A. Crossword Confidential.

Just like last Saturday's L.A. Times crossword, this puzzle felt like an easy Friday NYT puzzle—and I had a bottle of Stella Artois before I began the puzzle.

The grid is unusual—if it weren't for the black squares in each corner, this puzzle would have triple stacks of 15-letter answers at the top and bottom. Instead, it's got pairs of 15's with single 13's. I love that last Across answer, TEETER-TOTTERS (61A: They have their ups and downs). It's got the most boring letters in the English language, the sort of letters that often populate the bottom row of a crossword, but we don't see too many 13's in themeless puzzles, and TEETER-TOTTERS have that playground nostalgia cachet.

Clues? Answers? We got 'em:

14A: 1999 Winona Ryder movie (GIRL, INTERRUPTED). Sure, Winona had the lead role but it was Angelina Jolie who went home with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
19A: Partners may form one: Abbr. (LLC). That's a limited liability corporation.
27A: Catalog section (FOR HER). Ooh, I do not care for this answer at all. It might work better as a transgressive six-letter partial answer filling in the blank in the condom tag line, "ribbed ___ pleasure."
30A: RED is a Rare sign? as in a sign of rareness in a slab of beef. (Ick.)
34A: JACK FROST (Nose nipper in a Christmas song) is a terrific answer. The clue seems a little boring, but it's worlds better than cluing this name with reference to that dreadful Michael Keaton movie in which a creepy-looking snowman comes to life.
50A: Double drunk crosswordese! They're usually lit clues SOTS, and I never hear anyone use "lit" to mean drunk or call anyone a "sot."
54A: Kind of butter (APPLE). This is a common cluing convention, this "kind of ___" clue. But APPLE is not any kind of butter. Apple butter is a butter of a sort.There are those who would much rather see a straight-up fill-in-the-blank clue or an entirely different cluing direction than have yet another "kind of ___" clue. Among the old NYT crossword forum crowd, these are called "sea anemone" clues, inspired by SEA clued as "Kind of anemone."
60A: Source of much hard wood? is the PETRIFIED FOREST. Of course, it's not wood anymore. It's mineral deposits that have replaced the wood over the ages. Speaking of geological ages, can you guess 1D: the Epoch in which grazing mammals became widespread? Why, it's the MIOCENE, of course, or, as I like to call it, "that less familiar epoch you get through the crossings."
7D: Kabayaki fish is EEL. (Japanese + fish)/3 letters = EEL. Unless, of course, it's AHI tuna.
21D: Tanner of '70s-'80s tennis (ROSCOE). I can't keep him straight in my head because The Dukes of Hazzard's Rosco P. Coltrane occupies the same mental real estate.
22D: ORSK is a City on the Ural. I always start with OMSK, another Russian city that is four times the size of ORSK.
34D: Island in the Sulu Archipelago clues JOLO. Wow. I like geography and I've been doing crosswords for three decades, but I needed every single crossing to figure this one out. I was thinking Indonesia, but it's the Philippines. It's the site of much unrest, both volcanic and political.

Sandy Fein's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

7:37? All right, not too much harder than the NYT puzzle today. I'll take it as a victory.

I like the mislead of [Early riser] as a clue for an UPSTART, and I like the word SWAGGER ([Bluster]). PIUS VII, the [Adversary of Napoleon], is a Roman-numeraled person I don't recall seeing in a crossword before. Bowling [Lane marks] are STRIKES, if you're lucky. Interesting clue for AVARICE: It's [One of Spinoza's "species of madness"]. In hockey, you might get a PENALTY and [It may be served in a box]; so can some lunches. The NEWBERY Medal is bestowed on authors of American literature for kids; the clue is [Medal won by Lofting], referring to (I had to look this up) Hugh Lofting, author of The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle.

Lotsa weird fill here. The GRAYLAG goose is a [European goose]. Seven-letter partial HENRI DE [___ Toulouse-Lautrec] pushes beyond the usual 5-letter limit but with no great payoff in amusement value or in facilitating great fill in its neighborhood. There are some odd-jobbers in the grid: a TWEEZER, a DWELLER, and some TILTERS ([Quixote wannabes]).

I suspected that [Name to make up with] had to do with making up stories, but ALIAS didn't work with the crossings. The answr turned out to be cosmetics brand ESTEE Lauder. But...you don't make up with the name. You make up with the makeup. Unfamiliar place name of the day: HALLE is [Handel's birthplace].

Updated Saturday morning:

Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Fly Apart"—Janie's review

I'm beginning to thing that Randy is out to give lie to the notion that "breaking up is hard to do," for in today's puzzle we have yet another example of what happens when you choose a word—FLY, say—and break it up, or take it "apart," so that its letters bookend (and belong to) the theme fill. Last week we were happily "covered in MUD"; about a month ago the theme answers were found "in a NUT shell." Today the tried-and-true theme (a pun itself) plays out even more playfully than in puzzles past—and is especially well-met with its non-theme complement. Behold:

17A. FEEL SILLY [Turn red, perhaps]. While one might not aspire to being embarrassed, it can be fun to feel silly and let one's inner-child have his/her day. Hey, this puzzle features Dr. SEUSS [Creator of Sneetches]. I rest my case.
28A. FRED FRIENDLY [George Clooney role in "Good Night, and Good Luck"]. You haven't seen it?! Put it on your Netflix list now! For many years, Friendly was the president of CBS News and was an esteemed colleague/collaborator of radio- and tv-journalist Edward R. Murrow. But now my inner-child has to admit that the name "Fred Friendly" kinda makes me giggle and reminds me of the man who used to host Baltimore's local Our Gang program: "Officer Happy." Really. I feel silly saying it, but it's true.
49A. FULTON'S FOLLY [Steamboat of 1807]. That would be Robert Fulton's craft, The Clermont—which took a mere 30 hours to make its NYC-Albany journey. OMG. Love the alliteration here—and in the previous fill.
66A. FREE WILLY [1993 film about an orca]. And I can't help but noticing (and enjoying) how Willy rhymes with silly. For my money, the rhyming and alliteration go a long way not only in strengthening the theme-fill as a set, but also in creating an agreeable lightness to it. Nice.

There look to be a few sub-themes here today, too. Baseball for one. We get Mel OTT, ERNIE Banks, the METS, EARNED RUN average, and I'm even going to go out on a limb and include LEGGINGS. Was really thrown by [Giant nicknamed "Master Melvin"]. In vain I tried to think of some long-forgotten fairytale character... In other words, terrific clue.

"Things people say" would have to include YES'M ["Okay" for Tom Sawyer] and PAY UP [Shylock's threat]. Didn't help myself any by trying to make this PAY ME...

Then there's the television sub-theme, with hosts OPRAH Winfrey, Tom SNYDER, Jay LENO—and of course, the aforementioned FRED FRIENDLY. And a trio of working types: the ECOLOGIST, and the symmetrically placed odd-couple of PAINTERS and SOLDIERS. That last one can also be associated with NAM, then USAF, then A-TEST. (I'm afraid the more I see this one clued along the lines of [Big blast, briefly], the less amused by it I become.)

Our music today? DOOWOP. But the clue [Style of Randy and the Rainbows] was zero help. Turns out their claim to fame was "Denise," a song I do remember, and that this quintet included two sibling pairs—the Safutos and the Zeros (truly)—and a lone Arcipowski. (This clip is not of the original group, but does feature one Safuto and one Zero for some "doowop reunion" special...)

Finally—how SASSY is that HOT PANTS clue, ["Cheeky" style of clothing]? A fashion trend best suited for the long of limb and firm of flesh, I imagine that hot pants have long been a staple of the Glamour "Don't" list.

Rex's Father's Day gift ideas

Check out
Rex Parker's gift ideas, mostly of the puzzle-related ilk. These items don't just make good gifts for Dad—they'd be appreciated by any discerning puzzle person. Go ahead and buy 'em for yourself if you want.

June 18, 2009

Friday, 6/19

NYT 8:51
BEQ 7:07
LAT 3:56
CS 5:35 (J—paper)
WSJ tba

It would be hard for me to be any crankier than I am right now. The freelance assignments are piling up around my head, time is short, and every so many minutes, a malfunctioning car alarm right across the street goes off. Mind you, it's the first day in a couple weeks that the lakeside temperature topped 70°, so I'd love to have the window open but the car alarm just might drive me mad.

David Levinson Wilk's New York Times crossword

So that's the mood I was in when I started this puzzle and I was still in that mood when I finished. If you adored David's puzzle, you are probably quite right. I have no reason to think my negativity is a reflection of the puzzle's quality. Did it beat you up like a Saturday puzzle, or was that just me? Here are the bits that didn't sit with me:

15A. ["Babette's Feast" author, 1950] is ISAK DINESEN. Why, that's a great answer. Full name, not clued with the too-easy usual suspect book title. I had French writers on the mind and so struggled here.
52A. Can [Direct deposits, e.g.] really be considered E-CASH? Let's check the dictionary. Horrible word, sure, but there it is in my dictionary, defined as "electronic financial transactions conducted in cyberspace via computer networks." The "cyberspace" tells me that definition was written some years back, but it seems to mean the clue is spot on.
55A. Hey, I know all sorts of things about the NIH. Alas, the clue, [Fed. agency with an annual almanac], was meaningless to me. The National Institutes of Health issue a great many publications, but I've never run into this almanac. Is it a different NIH?
57A. Like 15A, this is a terrific entry, this ALL ABOUT EVE. But the musical-theater clue was as meaningless as the NIH almanac to me. [1950 movie on which the musical "Applause" is based] is probably a warmly received clue among those of you who dig musicals and '50s showbiz.
61A. NEI? Nay. Do not want. It completes [Verdi's "___ giardin del bello"] and is not one of the Italian words I can bandy about comfortably.
64A. This clue is just plain wrong from a Chicago expressway perspective. An EXPRESS LANE is not [Something to pass in] here. You pass in the left lane (or whichever lane is open and gets you around a slowpoke), but the express lanes are set apart from the main highway. Granted, the NYT crossword is not designed around a Chicago driver's frame of reference.
1D. An [Engaging sort] sounds like a lovely person, but a HIRER is just one of those -ER words you rarely hear anyone use. I can be ill-tempered about this one, can't I?
3D. Aargh. I wanted the [South Carolina river to the Atlantic] to be PEEDEE, because that would have pleased my friend P.D. Then I figured it had to be the SWANEE, but no. It's the SANTEE, and it doesn't get a ton of play in crosswords. Or in my life.
12D. Then I was mad at myself for blanking on the [Jewish parchment scrolls put out on doorposts]. Wasn't there a recent legal ruling saying that a condo building couldn't refuse to let residents post MEZUZAHS? I think it was a Chicago case. The word only dawned on me when I got ZOO for [Where the wild things are?].
13D. [She has a personal trainer] should be REYNALDO, but no, it's the generic PROTEGEE.
22D. I thought I was outwitting [Contents of a cylindrical case]. "Ooh, it's some kind of olf computer DISK, isn't it?" I asked myself. That S and D did me no favors. Turns out to be LIPSTICK, which is a great answer for a tricky but accurate clue.
35D. OLD JEANS are clued with [They may be patched]. Does OLD JEANS pass muster as an in-the-language entity?
59D. [Provider of PC support] made zero sense to me until right this moment. It's a LAP if the PC in question is a laptop. Don't people usually reserve "PC" for desktop computers, and of the Windows ilk?
60D. Holy moly, here's some Spanish I do not know at all. ["Que ___?" (Jose's "How's it going?"] clues TAL. "Qué tal"? Huh. "Qué pasa," sure. Tal, German for "valley," sure. Gap in knowledge, meet crossword. Crossword, meet gap.
I'd be fonder of [Out, in a way] as the ON LOAN clue and [Stuck (out)] for JUTTED if OUTSET ([Origin]) weren't so near in the grid. Out, out!

And what parts of this puzzle could make me forget about stray car alarms? This stuff:

1A. HASTA MAÑANA is a [South-of-the-border sign-off] meaning, I think, "until tomorrow." I didn't take Spanish. (Did you figure that out already?)
17A. [Carry on] clues RANT AND RAVE. Hello! *waving from the ranting-and-raving box*
48A. JAMES DEAN was the [Actor who said "Only the gentle are ever really strong"].
62A. PEARLY GATES is a fun answer. The clue, [Setting of many New Yorker cartoons], could be so many things. Executive office with old white man behind desk. Living room. Cocktail party.
4D. [Conductor's request: Abbr.] had me thinking of the person with the baton leading the orchestra, but it's the train conductor who wants your TKT.
8D. NEREUS is a [Mythical Aegean Sea dweller]. I sure didn't get this without a bunch of crossings, but one likes a hint of classical mythology every now and then.
9D. ASA is clued as [Civil-rights leader ___ Philip Randolph]. Here, go read up on Mr. Randolph. He founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which secured better terms for the Pullman Company's workers. His civil rights activism helped prod Truman to desegregate the armed forces, and he continued to fight for civil rights through the '60s. Did I know this ASA before today? Nope. But I liked learning about him.
24D. [What "you can't hide" per a 1975 Eagles hit] is your LYIN' EYES.
40D. OLÉ is clued as a [Shout to someone in danger of getting stuck] in a bullfight. I do suspect, though, that "Olé!" is shouted far more often in fútbol these days than at a bullfight.

Oh, that car alarm? It went off at 10:02, 10:09, 10:14, and 10:18. It's been quiet for 9 minutes now. I grow worried when it doesn't check in regularly.

Updated Friday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Middle Ears"—Janie's review

You remember your rudimentary introduction to the miraculous workings of the middle ear, don't you? The hammer, the anvil, the stirrup? Well, this puzzle has nothing to do with that. This puzzle has to do with the placement of the letters E, A and R in the middle of three 15-letter phrases—but literally, right smack-dab in the middle, occupying blocks 7, 8 and 9 of the entertaining fill. Take a look:

17A. IF I WERE A RICH MAN ["Fiddler on the Roof" song]. This is the strongest of the three phrases for two reasons. First, it's making its major-puzzle debut; and second, it's the only one in which the word EAR is not contained exclusively in one word. It spans the phrase and it lies directly at center. Nice.
36A. DISAPPEARING ACT [Magician's feat]. A vivid phrase that conjures up conjurers along the lines of David Copperfield and the late Doug Henning.
54A. IN THE NEAR FUTURE [Very soon]. Here we have a graceful, four-word adverbial phrase that's a CS debut to boot.

The clues for the theme fill are very direct—as is most of the cluing in this puzzle. This makes for a fairly easy kind of solve. Still, the grid throughout is embroidered with fine fill. At center is a column of 7s: TIBETAN (CS debut), AREA RUG and CORRODE; then we get two 8s, each of which is appearing in a CS puzzle for the first time: ATTACHÉS and another adverbial phrase, IN HIDING; and two CS-debut 10s: SCIENTISTS and the fabulous ROAD TO RUIN. In this case, the Triple A will probably not be able to provide you with a TripTik for the best RTE to follow. This is strictly a "make your own adventure" venture!

There's some eclectic music-related fill with two portions of the Requiem Mass: the Dies IRAE and the Agnus DEI; ["Lulu" composer], modernist Alban BERG; pop's Paul ANKA and the Beatles' "I ME [Mine"]. We also get weaponry fill: STEN and SABER (and a summoning of the NRA, cleverly clued as [Gp. that sticks to their guns]); and a trio of words that take us inside the boxing ring: champs Mohammed ALI, Leon SPINKS and the [Pugilist's weapon], his/her FIST.

The architectural term FASCIA board was new to me, but easily attainable through the crosses. (Pronounced with a long "a.") More familiar to me is anatomical connective-tissue fascia. (Pronounced with a short "a.") Many years ago I suffered a fascia tear in my calf. Major "ow" and definitely not recommended.

Other fill I fancied: HADJI, GNOME, JETTY, BRASS, AVENGE, LAUDE and SET IN clued almost poetically as [Arrive, as darkness]. Did I [Really enjoy] this puzzle? Yep, like a tasty ENTREE, this was one to EAT UP.

Orange here again—am pressed for time, so the blogging will be cursory. The Wall Street Journal puzzle wasn't posted yet, so I'll check back later.

Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme is a quote I've seen before: I NEVER HATED A MAN / ENOUGH TO GIVE HIM / HIS DIAMONDS BACK, uttered by ZSA ZSA Gabor, [Speaker of the quote, familiarly]. In the fill, SPACE AGE ([Period that started with Sputnik]) crosses PHASER (["Star Trek" weapon]). I'll bet at least a few girls got their first period coincident with Sputnik's launch, and I like to think one of them's doing this puzzle and filled in THE CURSE for 10D.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Friday"

There's time only for mentions of a few favorite bits:

22A. GROMMETS! Those are metal [Eyelets] and I love the word. Why? I just do.
48A. GODWIN'S LAW gets evoked plenty in the blogosphere, not just in Usenet discussions. In my circles, one generally is deemed to have blown one's argument completely once one uses a Nazi analogy. It's usually lazy rhetoric, no? See the xkcd cartoon below for a riff on Godwin's law.
53A. [Summer month to some] is so vague! Which "some"? I figured it'd be JUIN or AOUT but it turned out to be the Jewish month ELUL.
7D. RIOT GRRL is a [Young woman into the punk rock lifestyle]. I am a crossword grrl.
8D. DOTARDS! Those are [Some old folks], the senile ones. I like that old word almost as much as GROMMETS.

More crosswords!

Cathy Allis (who used to use the Millhauser name) has a new gig at National Geographic. Her first "Geopuzzle," for the July 2009 issue, is right here (you can print out a PDF). I haven't done the puzzle yet—the theme entries relate to a NatGeo article about telescopes but I don't get the magazine, so I'll be working the crossings big time. (Or I could read the article online.) Cathy is known for her light touch, so it should be a fun puzzle—and I'm delighted we'll be seeing her byline on a monthly basis. Cathy and the crossword feature are introduced at this National Geographic blog; feel free to share your reactions to the puzzle with the NatGeo folks.

Todd McClary has posted a new puzzle here. I just did the one called "Minitheme 1," and it's themeless-with-a-minitheme. (That means two long entries form a minitheme, but don't take up enough real estate to count as a full theme.) This puppy took me 7:19, so I'd call it Saturday-NYT/Stumper-tough. I'd never heard of the song in the minitheme clues, and the northwest corner took me the longest to unravel. Great fill, great clues, good balance between erudition and pop-culture fun. Keep 'em coming, Todd.

Starting in July, Trip Payne and Patrick Berry will take turns constructing crosswords with politics/current affairs/history themes for the new digital magazine put out by the U.S. News and World Report folks. You'll have to subscribe to U.S. News Weekly ($19.95 a year—or free if you subscribe to the print magazine) to get the puzzles. If you're a news junkie, these puzzles'll probably be right up your alley, and for twice the cost of a book of crosswords, you'll get a year of news too.

Trip also has free* puzzles at Triple Play Puzzles. (*You're welcome to donate via his PayPal link. But don't get me started on PayPal, which I loathe with the heat of a thousand suns.)

And speaking of Patrick Berry, I just got an interview request from an Athens, Georgia, journalism student who's writing an article on Patrick for a local arts paper. Hmm, I think I can come up with a few salient things to say about him.

June 17, 2009

Thursday, 6/18

NYT 4:16
LAT 3:50
CS 6:43 (J—paper)
Tausig untimed

PuzzleGirl tipped me off Wednesday afternoon that someone following American Idol finalist Anoop Desai's Twitter feed sent him a link to this here blog:

Anoop! Tell your friends! And work Diary of a Crossword Fiend into your patter when you perform on the Idol tour. I wish you great success in your career because once you're famous beyond Idol, you could achieve crossword immortality. Your first and last name are both 60% vowels and would be a boon to crossword makers. I'm tired of ANODE and "thrown for A LOOP" and I am ready for some ANOOP. And DESAI! Esai Morales is in crosswords all the time. Mr. Desai, you could dominate.

(Thanks for the tip, PuzzleGirl.)

Patrick Blindauer's New York Times crossword

My initial reaction to Patrick's puzzle is that it's a fresh and delightful creation perfectly keyed to the expected Thursday difficulty level, with lively fill, some crunchy clues, and an entertaining theme. The theme answers are familiar phrases whose final words end with a silent E, but the E's have been changed to A's:

17A. [Hospital employee's role as an opera girl?] is NURSE'S AIDA. I first had NURSE'S AIDE in there, paying no mind to the "opera girl" part of the clue and not thinking about whether SEA or SEE is the [Last word of "America the Beautiful"]. (It's "from sea to shining SEA.")
26A. [What Starkist decided to do for "Charlie"?] is NAME THAT TUNA. I would be terrible at the game show Name That Tune.
43A. Your furniture order might have a delivery date, and DELIVERY DATA could be [A girl, born 8:48 a.m., weighing 6 pounds 13 ounces, e.g.?].
58A. RUBIK'S CUBA is [Where a Hungarian toy inventor vacations in the Caribbean?]. It's good to see this guy used for a higher purpose than having ERNO bail the constructor out of a tight spot, no?

I like the theme's multiple surprises/punchlines. Somehow TUNA and CUBA strike me as inherently amusing tonight. In the non-theme fill, LEX LUTHOR ([Villain from DC] Comics) and his DELISH ["Yum!"] PIE CRUSTS ([Cobbler bottoms]) are the stars. How about that PIE CRUSTS clue, eh? [Cobbler bottoms] could also be shoe bottoms used by a cobbler. Two "court" clues hinge on different meanings; TAPES are [Hard-to-refute evidence in court], while MVPS in basketball are [Court stars, maybe, in brief].

Assorted other clues and answers:

20A. [Swear words?] clue "I DO."
34A. IONS gets an unfamiliar clue: [Carbonium and others]. Lucky guess there.
47A. [You might be safe with them] clues baseball UMPS.
54A. The SALON is [Where some dye for a living].
56A. [Band from Japan] is an OBI. Ah! Great clue. Band of fabric, not musical group. I don't recall seeing that clue before.
8D. My young son Ben always knows the answers to the Star Wars clues. [His planet of exile is Dagobah]? That's YODA. Where was he before exile? My son tells me no one knows Yoda's home planet.
18A. Things aren't as ["...bad as they ___"] SEEM. Strange fill-in-the-blank phrase fragment in the clue. Anyone else think of the Dennis Rodman autobiography, Bad As I Wanna Be? No? Just me?
25D. [Most of the Ten Commandments, basically] are BANS. Started out with SINS here, but that didn't work with ~~Bob~~ William BARR, [Attorney general before Reno].
27D. TIPSY is clued as [A little stiff?]. Has anyone used "stiff" to mean "drunk" in the last 40 years? "Pour me a stiff drink," sure, but not "I sure am stiff." Speaking of which, we had dinner in Wrigleyville tonight. Sure, the game had ended four hours earlier, but that didn't mean people weren't still reeling down the sidewalk.
46D. I love the word AMOK. It means [Every which way], which makes me wonder why I never saw that Clint Eastwood/orangutan movie.
52D. Say what? Who? PETE is [Black ___, archnemesis of Mickey Mouse]. Any relation to the Dutch tradition of Zwarte Piet, Santa's helper in blackface? No, apparently Mickey's enemy is a ginormous anthropomorphized cat or bear. Pete's first appearance was as a "collector of rare cross word puzzles" in a 1925 short, "Alice Solves the Puzzle":

I love the serendipity of finding things like these in the process of Googling something unfamiliar. A '20s crossword cartoon! I had no idea such a thing existed. Thanks, Patrick and Will, for sending me down that route with the PETE clue.

Updated Thursday morning:

Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "I Need a Plumber"—Janie's review

Context is everything. Today we get five familar phrases (two major-puzzle debuts, three CS) whose last word is something that might be a [Plumber's concern...]

17A. [...at the think tank?] BRAIN DRAIN. Second time this week we've seen that phrase, but here in a whole new environment (and minus the LAME- prefix).
19A. [...at the Defense Department?] SECURITY LEAK—or [...at Watergate?] for that matter. Think E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, John Erlichman, and The White House Special Investigation Unit—a/k/a the "Plumbers." Good times, huh? (Major-puzzle debut #1.)
37A. [...at the allergist's office?] POST-NASAL DRIP. Eew. And perfect. (And major-puzzle debut #2.)
55A. [...in the honeymoon suite] BRIDAL SHOWER. Three's a crowd. Make sure everything's in working order before the big night...
58A. [...at Buckingham Palace?] ROYAL FLUSH. Just lol good, this one. According to the Cruciverb database (which goes back to 1997), in the half-dozen times this fill has appeared in the puzzles, this is the first time it has not been clued in relation to poker. Hear! Hear!

Not only are we treated to this lively array of theme-related phrases, but both the first two and the last two have a seven-letter overlap in the grid. The NW and SE corners are lovely, too, with their triple-6 columns. Highlight fill here includes ORIENT, SANCTA and PEEVED. There are six more 6s, two 7s (including CS debut GESTURE), and two 8s: CS first-timer MORTICIA Addams (neé Frump [!]) and AL JOLSON. That NW corner has a bit of a Latin/ROMAN thing going, too. In addition to SANCTA (plural form of sanctum), we get the meeting of ERAT (as in quod erat demonstrandum) and ET TU, those [Famous last words].

While I'm always game for puns, I'm less enamored with names. Or names in quantity at any rate—and today we do have a passel of 'em, with upwards of twenty! I won't list 'em all, but will point out: Puccini heroines MIMI and TOSCA; Glinda portrayer Billie BURKE in the movie The Wizard of Oz, based on the books by author Frank L. BAUM (and how nice that these two meet at the "B"; [Bonnie's beau] CLYDE Barrow; and [World traveler Nellie] BLY.

Some clue considerations: I was thrown by the term [Pasta pattern] for BOW-TIE, though my Roget's does confirm that "pattern" and "shape" are in the same lexical category; I enjoyed seeing OSE clued as [Verb ending]—as in verbOSE—rather than [Sugar suffix]; and I liked seeing Beatles drummer Ringo STARR clued as [He played behind Harrison]. As in George Harrison...

Some thoughts on the non-theme fill before bidding you good day: The word MEWL will forever be associated in my mind with Jacques's "Seven Ages of Man" moment in As You Like It. (Check out the link if you can. It includes a limerick that pulls things together most succintly.) And though the word ODDISH is more than [Sort of strange] to my ear, with luck it will resemble its mirror word in the puzzle and appear only as a RARITY. Finally, a [1950s Cincinnati major-leaguer] is a RED LEG. I wonder how many of 'em got their start as little boys playing that [Game for future Little Leaguers] T-BALL.

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

The NYT record for the most X's is 13, so it is indeed impressive that Dan included 14 X's in this puzzle. Each theme entry has two X's, and there are seven (!) theme answers; one crossing pair shares an X, but there's a spare X in the fill at 27D/35A. XX marks the spot:

17A. [On some roads, it might be several miles after the last one] clues the promised NEXT EXIT. Nobody likes the foreboding of a sign warning that the NEXT EXIT isn't for another 80 miles.
20A. [Like interest on some bonds] means TAX-EXEMPT.
36A. The EXECUTRIX? [She may oversee an estate]. Does anyone still use the utterly unnecessary -trix ending? I mean, aside from a dominatrix, because that word sounds cooler than the gender-neutral "dominator."
57A. [Halo 2 and Project Gotham Racing, notably] are XBOX GAMES. We have Wii and PlayStation 3. When the Project Natal motion capture technology is incorporated into Xbox, though, I think we're going to have to get that, too, because look how cool it is:
63A. The [Route on which to "get your kicks," in a pop standard] is Route SIXTY-SIX.
8D. [Fajitas, for one] are a TEX-MEX DISH. I had a partial wrong turn with TEX-MEX FOOD.
29D. The [Product of a major 1999 merger] is EXXON MOBIL.

Highlights in the fill include a zillion X words as well as THE ROCK, or ([Alcatraz, familiarly]; we would also have appreciated a Dwayne Johnson clue.

For more on this puzzle, check out PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential WRITE-UP (which is clued here as [News article]).

Updated again Thursday afternoon and good gravy, where did the day go??

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Zero Point Zero"

0.0 is the grade point average for a student with straight F's. And this puzzle—both the answers in the grid and every clue but one—lacks A's, B's, C's, and D's. Five of the longer Across entries (11, 7, 13, 7, and 11, but not the Across 8's) are more or less theme entries: They are phrases or compound words in which both parts begin with F. But really, every single answer is a theme entry that doesn't contain A, B, C, or D. EFS (75-Across) ties it all together: [The only grading letters that appear anywhere in this puzzle (other than the present clue)]. Test-solving this baby took focus to confirm that no clue contained the forbidden letters. Let me tell you, it's not easy to write a clue for ORU, or Oral Roberts University, that doesn't include any version of "university" (since that's what the answer's U stands for) nor words like sChool, College, ACADemiC, TulsA, OklAhomA, or evAngeliCal.

My favorite answer here is JONGLEURS, or [Juggling minstrels]. Who doesn't love old French-root words relating to juggling? The clue I liked best is for MISSPELL: [Write relevently, e.g.]—the misspelling takes away a taboo A. Insanest clue: [MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMLXXX/XX] is MLIV, or 21,080/20 = 1,054. Yes, I know, the Roman numeral system uses a bar over certain numbers to represent larger numbers. But 21 M's in a row is insane, and insanity has its place in crosswords. Some solvers get their knickers in a twist over duplications of fill and for these people, allow me to say that EFS and EFF OFF do not duplicate one another. Ef is the spelled-out name of the letter F, whereas eff is a curtailment of the F-word that is substantively different. It's not the letter eff and "ef off" at all. I think Byron Walden taught me that.

Did the clues feel weird to you before you discovered the constraints under which they were written? I find I have a great capacity for overlooking clue weirdness and needing another cue to recognize cluing constraints.

June 16, 2009

Wednesday, 6/17

BEQ 4:45
Onion 3:41
NYT 3:21
LAT 3:21
CS 6:57 (J—paper)

Peter A. Collins and Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword

That's a cool visual twist, sketching a tree with its parts labeled descriptively in the grid. Running straight down the middle of the puzzle are a central LIMB ([Life's partner]), the TRUNK (a [Magician's prop]), and one ROOT ([Cheer (for)]). Extending out from the TRUNK are four more LIMBs, running across and diagonally, and two more diagonal ROOTS. All of the letters in these tree pieces are circled for the solver's convenience, as not everybody wants to play word search after finishing a crossword. Rounding out the theme, there's the word TREE clued as the [Thing depicted by this puzzle's circled letters] and, rather beside the point, the NESTS that might be found in a tree.

The constructors filled the corners with two 6x4 chunks and pairs of 8-letter answers crossed by single 8's. Highlights in the fill:

17A. ["Rikki-___-Tavi"] is completed by TIKKI. My son just watched Rikki-Tikki-Tavi on DVD for his first time. I suspect it was not as memorable for him as my childhood TV viewings of it had been for me.
27A. My, the BALLADE, or [24-line verse form], is quite literary for a mid-week puzzle.
60A. OLD AGE gets a good clue: [It beats the alternative, in a saying].
63A. TANGO is the [Radio letter after sierra]. I can't think what U is. Upsilon?
3D. "TAKE CARE" is a horribly trite way of saying "Bye, now." And I am guilty of saying it.
4D. ALKALINE means [High-pH]. It's also the closed-up name of an old baseball player, Al Kaline.
10D. Ah, ILOILO, [Philippine seaport] of crossword fame. There once was an art supply store in my neighborhood called Ilo-Ilo, so the name sticks in my head.
13D. EASTER is [Egg roll time]. So is ANY DAY WE ORDER CHINESE.
29D. [One might pass for these, briefly] clues TDS, or touchdowns.
47D. The combination of WETTED and [Licked, e.g.] is grossing me out. I'm trying hard to think of envelopes or old postage stamps.
55D. RAN BY is clued as [Told in order to get a quick opinion]. I'm feeling like there's a prepositional or object non-parallelism here. You can run it by someone, but you have to tell it to someone. Do we want to in the clue?

Updated Wednesday morning:

Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Body Language"—Janie's review

I know I must sound like the world's crankiest solver, but once again I feel that the talented Mr. H. has delivered a "close-but-no-cigar" theme. And because the CrosSynergy puzzles receive peer review, responsibility for that falls on the peers-in-question as well. The idea of the theme is friendly if not "brilliant," and perfectly fine: four figurative (and familiar) phrases that also name body parts. The problem is that we don't use these phrases in the form we receive them in the puzzle. The only way I can get them to sort of work is if I take the clue/fill combo as infinitives. But there's nothing to clarify that in the cluing.

20A. SOAK TO THE SKIN [Drench]. This can actually be a literal phrase, and in common usage we'd say, "It was raining so hard I got soaked to the skin." We get drenched, or we drench ourselves in something. We don't ordinarily "drench" sans object. And in my experience, we don't soak [anything] to the skin.
27A. CHILL TO THE BONE [Make very cold]. "I was so drenched I got chilled to the bone." Again, we get chilled, but we don't chill [something] to the bone.
43A. STICK TO THE RIBS [Be substantial, as a meal]. This one is better, but more often than not we say that this substantial meal is so hearty it'll stick to your ribs...
51A. ARM TO THE TEETH [Provide many weapons]. Hmmm. Sadly, it's primarily in conjunction with suicide bombers that I can hear someone say, "You must arm yourself to the teeth" but ya gotta have that direct object in there for the phrase to make sense; otherwise the sentence we're more likely to hear is "The madman was armed to the teeth." (What I do like in this particular phrase is the bonus body part: ARM...)

Three of the four phrases make the most sense in their passive-voice forms; and the result is that the promise of a solid theme is skewed. If you think I'm on the wrong track here or am being hyper-critical, please speak up and set me straight!

Elsewhere in the grid I'm a happier camper. From the art world: Salvador DALI is clued in reference to "Eggs on a Plate Without a Plate" which I'm quite certain will not stick to the ribs...; and RODIN in conjunction to "The Kiss". Seeing OYL ["Thimble Theatre" family name] so close to Rodin made me laugh. If any sculptor were to render Ms. Olive as a statue, it would not be Rodin, whose healthy figures represent well-nourished bodies. Giacometti on the other hand...

I also like the punchiness of the ONE-TWO [Ring combo]; and if boxing's not your thing, perhaps you'd be happier to see Kobe Bryant score, make a BASKET or three (and a very timely clue/fill pair that is). After last Sunday's championship game, I imagine the[Sports-team execs], the Lakers' GMS, are still a pretty happy group.

We get three authors, two well-known to me, the third not. In the former category are Harper LEE of To Kill A Mockingbird fame and thus [Atticus Finch's creator...], and [Nancy Drew writer Carolyn] KEENE. You may know this but "Carolyn Keene" is really a succession of several writers. If you care to delve further into the mystery, Melanie Rehak has written a wonderful book on the subject aptly called Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her. The name I needed the crosses for was ["The Pilot's Wife" author] SHREVE. Anita Shreve actually, though not to be confused with ["West Side Story" role created by Chita Rivera] ANITA.

There's a sweet crossing of two kinds of rides: SEMIS and the LIMO—and two kinds of vocal styles: you can CHANT text or you can INTONE it. We also get two shades of questionable activity: DICEY [Doubtful] and TABOO [Forbidden]; two internet references: AOL and URLS; and an assortment of names: actor LEW Ayres, the silver-screen's first Dr. Kildare, TESS Trueheart [Dick Tracy's wife], ANAKIN Skywalker [Luke and Leia's father], and [Soccer great] PELE.

I hope/trust that Ray and his esteemed colleagues will take my SNIT in STRIDE. But I also hope it's something they might take to heart!

Hello, Orange here again. I slept in. I love summertime! (If only the climate would recognize that meteorological summer began June 1, because it still feels like April.)

I haven't done today's CrosSynergy puzzle, but in reading Janie's write-up, I laughed when I encountered ARM TO THE TEETH. It sounds like a modification of the slangy "Hell to the naw!"

Mike Peluso's Los Angeles Times crossword

I pre-blogged this puzzle last night at L.A. Crossword Confidential and I must say, I suspect it was easier than my relative solving times suggest. I had this bizarre experience in which I kept reading entirely wrong clues and filling in answers in the wrong places. Really wrong. Like putting ALMS (10A, [Donations to the needy]) at 58A, which is LEVY ([Assess], as taxes). And putting 1A, [Rock concert equipment], into 1D; the singular AMP works with the clue just as well as the correct plural AMPS. Usually one solitary beer has no such effect on me as a solver. Weird.

The theme didn't do much for me. All three phrases have the same clue: [Angel]. This theme type is #6 on Brendan Quigley's list of 10 bullshit themes that do not represent the apotheosis of thematic creativity. But still, it's only Wednesday, and plenty of staid themes are always going to find their way into the Monday-to-Wednesday slots. Today's three [Angel]s are a HEAVENLY SPIRIT, an AMERICAN LEAGUER, and a BROADWAY BACKER—you know, the sort of Broadway-show-backing angel whose favorite sign is "SRO" in crosswords.

PETE ROSE and UNCLE SAM make a nice symmetrical pairing here, and their vertical neighbors LEER AT and GROVEL make a disturbing pair.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Teenspeak"

Brendan rated this one "medium" but I dunno, I thought it was kinda hard. I didn't even understand what was happening with the theme entries until after I finished the puzzle—and it wasn't a case of racing through the puzzle too fast to bother with the theme. I pondered the theme while solving and didn't grasp it. But now I do:

19A. [Compared with Sorry! and Simon?] clues LIKENED GAMES. This is teenspeak "like" appended to the beginning of "end games." The phrase LIKENED GAMES doesn't do anything for me, though.
36A. The [Hopeful answer to "How will you fund that study?"] LIKELY GRANT. Which nobody would say. Maybe "likely a grant," but not LIKELY GRANT. Is that short for "a likely grant"? Because that's just as stilted as LIKENED GAMES. This theme entry is built from "like" + actress Lee Grant.
54A. [In addition to the thing over there?] clues LIKEWISE, THAT. Oh, look, Brendan's three for three with weird, stilted phrases. Do not like. The base phrase here is "Why's that?"

I took a wrong turn at 63A [Doesn't dwell on]—it's SEES PAST, but putting in GETS OVER mucked up that corner for me. I got the final R from USSR, a [Cold War side], but alas, the actual answer was the WEST.

Let's eyeball the best and the worst in this puzzle. First, the worst:

17A. RECOIN is [Define again, as a phrase]. Wouldn't that be redefining an already-coined phrase? I don't think you can RECOIN a phrase.
18A. ALAMANCE is the [County of Burlington, NC]. This is not a famous county.
39A. I take plenty of taxis, being a city dweller, and I have never encountered the word CAB-MEN. On the plus side, [Guys with medallions] made me think of men wearing disco medallions.

And now, the best:

There's the DOW JONES average, a [Wall Street average].
I like O. HENRY, ["The Gift of the Magi" author].
TWO is clued as ["___ Buck Chuck" (Charles Shaw)]. Did you read the recent New Yorker article about the Franzia wine business and their Two Buck Chuck? Good read.
A [Home body?] is an UMPIRE at home plate.
The [2003 World Series champs] were the Florida MARLINS, who destroyed the Cubs en route to the Series. Now, if Sammy Sosa hadn't been taking performance-enhancing drugs that season, there's a good chance the Cubs wouldn't have made it to the post-season, and Steve Bartman would never have caught the ball that ruined his life and sent him into hiding. I think Bartman should sue Sosa.
ROCKY BALBOA is a terrific entry. [His statue is just outside of the Philadelphia Museum of Art].
JAMES IHA! I bought the solo album by this [Longtime guitarist for The Smashing Pumpkins]. It had a mellow '70s singer-songwriter vibe.
The clue for HEY references itself twice, as "Hey, hey, hey!" was Fat Albert's catchphrase.

Deb Amlen's Onion A.V. Club crossword

The theme entries this week tell a timely story, and each of those theme answers is made by adding a G to the front of a word in a familiar phrase:

20A. [Title for an (as-yet) unmade show about being duped into buying unaffordable real estate] is THIS GOLD HOUSE. This Old House was that Bob Vila show on PBS.
36A. [Name of the bank on 20-Across where buyers would get their mortgages] is CAPITAL GONE. CapitalOne is one of those credit card issuers that advertises heavily on the TV.
54A. [Sewer entrance through which buyers would throw their money] is the INTEREST GRATE.

Aww, look at the Wordplay shout-outs in this puzzle: CAKE is the [Band whose "Shadow Stabbing" is featured in "Wordplay"]. Here's a homemade video for the song:

And then there's EELS, clued as [Band whose "Saturday Morning" is featured in "Wordplay"]. In their officia; video, pancakes are made:

Favorite clue: [Delighted condition?] for a power OUTAGE in which the lights are de-lit. Favorite fill: EITHER/OR, clued as ["Whatevs"].

MGWCC #54

crossword 4:10
puzzle 5:35

quick write-up this week, as i'm running a little behind schedule. the 54th episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "Achy Breaky Heart," was a not-too-tough crossword whose five longest answers (the only overt theme answers) were:

[Old issues of Playboy you can bid on?] clues E-BAY EROTICA.
[Give pitcher Ryan a makeover?] is STYLE NOLAN. this is a particularly apt theme entry, as we'll see.
[Cheech & Chong movies, for example?] constitute MARIJUANA CINEMA. you know, i don't think i actually knew anything about cheech & chong movies until there was a NYT daily last month with UP IN SMOKE and STONED, both clued in reference to cheech & chong. apparently, these movies are about smoking pot, and actually, MARIJUANA CINEMA may be almost an actual genre. i do have a VHS copy of reefer madness that i won at a quizbowl tournament over a decade ago, but i've never seen it.
[Illegal squirrel-smuggling operation?] is a MARMOT RING. this one is my favorite.
[Where some amphibians live?] is the pleasant burg of TOAD VILLAGE.

it took me a bit of effort to see what these apparently random theme entries have in common. the title is, as usual, the most useful clue. i was trying to do something with anagrams of "heart," but that went nowhere even though EROTICA is almost an anagram of the CAROTID artery. eventually i noticed that STYLE NOLAN contains TYLENOL. hey, how about that? there's your theme for you: made-up phrases that contain painkiller brands: EBAY EROTICA, MARIJUANA CINEMA, MARMOT RING, and TOAD VILLAGE are the others. (ADVIL, by the way, is the one that used nolan ryan in an ad campaign. i wonder how he would feel about being part of the TYLENOL theme answer?) i've circled the hidden analgesics in the screenshot above.

so what's the contest answer? the instructions this week tell us: It may look like this crossword has only five theme entries, but there's a sixth one hidden somewhere in the grid. This sixth theme entry is this week's contest answer. unsurprisingly, it's in one of the long (8-letter) fill words, SEA LEVEL, clued as [Death Valley is below it]. and SEA LEVEL is the answer to the contest. while it's not quite as mind-blowing as some of the metapuzzles we've seen in the past, it's a pretty remarkable crossword, with six long theme answers stuffed into a 76-word grid with no forced or awkward fill.

what else? the puzzle wasn't too tough, but i had a guess-the-vowel experience at the crossing of MALA [Bad: Sp] and MIYAZAKI ["Princess Mononoke" director Hayao ___]. i don't speak spanish, so both MALO and MALA seemed plausible, and likewise for the japanese name. and i did fall into matt's trap when i plugged in FOOL instead of TOOL for [Person often taken advantage of].

can anybody explain to me why i knew OLIE [the Goalie (hockey nickname)]? i think it's a reference to former captials goalie olaf kolzig, but i don't even follow hockey.

June 15, 2009

Tuesday, 6/16

Jonesin' 3:41
NYT 2:50
LAT 2:50
CS 6:14 (J—paper)

Paula Gamache's New York Times crossword

At last! A woman in the NYT crossword byline!

Paula's puzzle has a bunch of PERPS ([Those "walking" through the answers to the starred clues]) doing a perp walk in the theme entries:

17A. TAMPER-PROOF means [Impervious to picking, as a lock]. Not "as a nose."
25A. An [Engraver's surface] is COPPERPLATE.
36A. SEMPER PARATUS is the [Motto of the U.S. Coast Guard]. Is that Latin for "always prepared"?
47A. [Routine-bound bureaucrat] is a PAPER-PUSHER.
57A. SUPERPOWERS are [Countries with big militaries].

Yep, that's four 11's and a 13 plus the 5-letter PERPS to tie them together. Good job, Paula. Smooth and simple for a Tuesday, but with extra theme content and, just for the hell of it, a new record—this puzzle has 19 P's, while the old record was 17.

What else is in the puzzle? There's some hugging and kissing with BUSSING, or [Playful kissing], brushing up against CUDDLES, or [Nestles]. "IT'S YOU" is perfectly clued as a [Compliment heard in the dress department]. COMMAS get the weirdest little clue: [,,,,,]. That looks like a surreal emoticon there, doesn't it? Did you notice that there are 20 answers ranging from 6 to 8 letters long? That lends the venture an extra dollop or two of freshness.

P.S. I meant to mention something else when I first wrote about this puzzle, and that is the lack of movement of the walking PERPs. Patrick Blindauer has had one or two (or more?) crosswords in which an embedded word marches through the theme entries, progressing from the beginning of the word to the end. Along these lines: the words ANTENNA, PANTENE, PLANTER, PICANTE, and BLATANT have an ANT "walking through" them. Too bad this NYT puzzle didn't begin with PERPENDICULAR and walk the PERP to the right with each theme answer.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "I Before E" —Janie's review

Serving up a pun-lover's delight, Patrick has altered the spelling of the "long e" sound in four words that can be found in familiar settings: a phrase, a frozen food product, an epithet for a late real estate magnate and tax-evader, and a band that has been together since the early '80s. Where once the sound was spelled "EA," now it's "I [before] E." In this way:

Keeps the peace becomes KEEPS THE PIECE [Holds an arm?]—a firearm, that is. Nice (um, if a little chilling) how these two relate, too, as the former is sometimes accomplished when the latter is in effect.
Lean Cuisine becomes LIEN CUISINE [Mortgaged meal?]. I love this one. It's silly and makes me laugh. And if you look at its intersecting and adjacent neighbors in the grid, you'll see that someone DINES on FRIED RICE and an ICEE. (Yes, SATAY is on the menu as well, if not in the immediate proximity.)
"Queen of Mean" (remember the charming Leona Helmsley?...) becomes QUEEN OF MIEN [Royal carriage consultant?]. Not "carriage" as in "vehicle" but "carriage" as in "demeanor" or "bearing." Beautiful.
Tears for Fears (of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" fame) becomes TIERS FOR FEARS [Levels of a haunted house?]. Exactly.

I know, not everyone loves a pun—no matter how low, no matter how high—but I find all of these to be exemplary and sussing them out made for a most enjoyable solve.

The remainder of the fill gives us many, many names: [Hoopster] NATE Archibald; the music world's CHAKA Khan (never remember if it's CHAKA or SHAKA...), Bobby DARIN, DION DiMucci, The Oak RIDGE Boys; [Pop star] ANDY [Warhol]; (tv and/or stage and/or) filmdom's Bert LAHR (who, with his clued costars, appeared in The Wizard of Oz), ESAI Morales (see how constructor Tony Orbach clues him in Orange's Bloggiversary Contest), TINA Fey, PAT Sajak, Kukla, Fran and OLLIE, ARTOO Detoo, Professor SNAPE (from the Harry Potter books/movies); mythology's ARES; the Bible's LEAH and LOT. As I said—a LOT of names!

Fill from south of the border gives us the crossing of SRAS [Married mujeres (abbr.)] and SIESTAS, cleverly clued as [Rest of the afternoon?]; techno-fill gives us PAYPAL [Big name in e-commerce], E-FILE [Submit paperless taxes] and USER [Cybercafe patron].

Finally, [Hammerlock or full nelson] for HOLD summoned up a tart Larry Hart lyric:

I've a powerful anesthesia in my fist,
And the perfect wrist to give your neck a twist.
There are hammerlock holds,
I've mastered a few,
And ev'rything I've got belongs to you.

To enjoy the entire funny un-valentine, check out this site.
Updated again Tuesday afternoon:

Whoops, sorry about the delay here, folks. My kid woke me up at 9:05 this morning and wow, did I feel great waking up then. Bright-eyed and energetic, but with a 10:15 appointment downtown. Then I met my husband for lunch and did a little shopping and next thing you know, it's mid-afternoon and I'm feeling ready for a nap. Crosswords? Onward!

Betty Keller's Los Angeles Times crossword

Did you give up on me and head over to L.A. Crossword Confidential hours ago? Alrighty, the theme today is LUNCH things, and there's an HOURGLASS FIGURE (lunch hour), MONEY TO BURN (lunch money), ROOM FOR RENT (lunchroom), and BOX OF CHOCOLATES (lunchbox). That's as solid as a turkey sandwich, I tell you. Not a particularly exciting theme, but solid.

Doesn't the grid look crazy? The pattern of black squares looks more abstract than usual, but there's some good stuff in here, some lively resonances. The yummy BOX OF CHOCOLATES is echoed by CAROB, clued as [Poor substitute for 62-Across]. Yes! A lousy substitute. I always grumble when CAROB is clued as a chocolate substitute. As if. Then there's the Z zone, where ZINGS and GONZO cross but not at a Z. Another edible cross-reference pairing is ICE TEA (I prefer to call it ICED TEA but will take either wording when I'm thirsty...or doing a crossword) with LEMON. I prefer my iced tea plain, thanks. Fruit flavors a plus, but no sweeteners, please. Don't recall seeing ENERO, Spanish for January, clued this way before: [Año Nuevo month]. Happy New Year!

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "They Were in That?"

Matt does pop culture themes well, and this puzzle's no exception. The theme is six popular actors (all male, hmph), clued with the trivia of what their debut movies were:

[His film debut was "Donnie Darko" (2001)] clues SETH ROGEN. SETH GREEN has the same number of letters, but he's less of a movie star and I suspect he was around well before 2001. That didn't stop me from putting him in the puzzle, mind you.
Layered under Seth is JAKE GYLLENHAAL. He was the star of Donnie Darko, wasn't he? [His film debut was as Billy Crystal's son in "City Slickers" (1991)].
STEVE CARELL's [film debut was in "Curly Sue" (1991) as a sort of villain out to get the title girl]. You'll note that he did not get typecast as a villain type.
KEVIN SPACEY, star of screen and stage, is here too. [His film debut was as a subway thief in "Heartburn" (1986), with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson]. You think Streep and Jack had any idea that bit actor was going to wind up winning a coupla Oscars?
BENICIO DEL TORO—wait, does that translate to "Benny the Bull"?—had [his film debut as the Dog-Faced Boy in "Big Top Pee-wee" (1988). From Pee-wee Herman's TV show, we had early glimpses of S. Epatha Merkerson, then-Larry Fishburne, Jimmy Smits, and the great Phil Hartman.
Scrubs/Garden State star ZACH BRAFF is the final theme entry. [His film debut was as Woody Allen's college-aged son in "Manhattan Murder Mystery" (1990)].

Hooray for cluing RAJ as the ["What's Happening!!" character]—and yes, the show did use twice as many exclamation points as Jeopardy! Also taking me back to my televisual childhood is RHODA, ["The Mary Tyler Moore Show" spinoff] (there were also Phyllis and Lou Grant). And FRED! [Mister Rogers] was awesome.

No, I did not know that NAJIB was the answer to [Malaysia's current prime minister ___ Tun Razak]. I got the J from A.J. Foyt but not the other person in the AJS clue, [Racecar driver Foyt and CNN host Hammer]. Hammer, don't hurt 'em. I got all the letters in BURJ from the crossings; that's the first word of [___ Dubai (world's tallest skyscraper, as of 2009)].

June 14, 2009

Monday, 6/15

BEQ 3:58
LAT 2:39
NYT 2:27
CS 7:06 (J—paper)

Hey! It's Sunday night and school's out, so I can sleep in tomorrow morning rather than getting my kid ready for school. I'm gonna stay up late on purpose.

John Dunn's New York Times crossword

As you can see from this month's grid thumbnails at Jim Horne's XWord Info, the first 15 days of June are all colored blue for boys. Hey, that's a handy tool. I just bookmarked the page.

Newcomer John Dunn's puzzle tipped its hand pretty quickly. After I had both PHILIP ROTH, the ["Portnoy's Complaint" author], and PAT ROBERTSON, the [Founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network], I surmised that the theme was P.R. MEN, an all-too-common crossword answer. And there it is, summing up the theme at 38A in the middle of the puzzle, cross-referenced by IMAGE, a [Concern of 38-Across]. The other P.R. MEN in this puzzle are ["Le Dejeuner des Canotiers" painter] PIERRE RENOIR and PAUL REVERE, who [didn't really cry "The British are coming!"]. I tend to frown when PRMEN shows up in the puzzle because 70% of public relations professionals are women. "P.R. men" is such a dated term. However, in this puzzle, it's applied to men whose initials are P.R., so it's a repurposing of a lame crossword answer. I do appreciate a good repurposing of stale crossword fill.

Now, the typical Monday NYT includes answers that will almost all be familiar to even a beginning solver—but there's always at least one piece of crosswordese for a newbie to learn. Today, that's OSIER, or [Willow for wicker]. And maybe EBON, or [Deep black]—do non-crossworders encounter that word? SMEE is the ["Peter Pan" pirate], which I learned from crosswords but perhaps everyone else picked it up from Peter Pan.

This puzzle's also got some terrific fill. ROLE-PLAY is clued with [Be a wizard or an elf, say, in Dungeons & Dragons]. The FINISH LINE is [Where winners are often photographed]. The spoken phrase "IT'S A SECRET" is here too, clued with its equivalent, ["Mum's the word!"]. Clues I liked include [Russian revolutionary with a goatee] for LENIN; [Actress Stapleton of "All in the Family"] for JEAN (she played Edith Bunker); [Italian and French bread?] for EUROS, the currency; and [The works] for ALL.

Updated Monday morning:

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Nitwit Bit"—Janie's review

Remember doing Venn diagrams in math class, when you'd create a graphic image of what two seemingly different groups had in common? Well, Patrick's puzzle gives us the verbal equivalent. Each of the (very peppy) theme-fill answers is a (new) two-word phrase created by melding a synonym for "nitwit" with a two-word phrase that begins with the last syllable of that "nitwit" synonym. Confused? Allow me to clarify.

Numskull + skull session = NUMSKULL SESSION [Meeting of nitwits?], 17A. I wasn't familiar with the term "skull session," and was surprised to see that it can be applied to describe strategy sessions in the board room or the locker room. I also imagine skull sessions are the bread-and-butter of think-tanks.
Nincompoop + poop deck = NINCOMPOOP DECK [Where to find a nitwit on a ship?], 27A. What can I say? "Nincompoop" is just a great, silly word. The etymology of the word is uncertain, but you will also find in the dictionary: nincompoopery, nincompoopISM (one of the most [Distinctive theories] indeed) and (really) nincompoopiana, the forerunner to 19th century Aestheticism.
Lamebrain + brain drain = LAMEBRAIN DRAIN [Mass exodus of nitwits?], 44A. I guess [Post-electoral transition at the White House?] wouldn't be a very gracious or pc clue, huh?
Knucklehead + head trip = KNUCKLEHEAD TRIP [Nitwit's vacation?] And how timely could this post-Laker-victory report be?

The remainder of the fill is just fine if not as innately witty as the theme fill. There are four good eights (in order of preference): LUSTROUS, MUSTACHE, BURRITOS and HARSHEST. Brand new to me was TONY clued as [Skateboarding star Hawk]; and I was pleased for the (quiet) shout-out to late mime, MARCEL Marceau. Just a few weeks ago, the effects of his estate were sold at auction—which led me to wonder: silent auction?

In the cluing, I was very fond of [Buffalo puck pusher]. Were we looking for an environmentalist speaking out on the buffalo puck? Or an upstate New York ice-hockey player? Yes, the latter, better known as a SABRE. I also liked [Place with anchor stores] for MALL and enjoyed as well seeing I'M ALL in the grid just a bit above it. Note, too: not only do we have I'M ALL ["____ ears!" ("Do tell!")], we're also told to zip it because MUM'S ["____ the word!"].

Finally, there's that bonus fill in the SE corner. It's been clued as [Braying beasts], but what do the numskull, the nincompoop, the lamebrain and the knucklehead have in common? They're all ASSES!

David Cromer's Los Angeles Times crossword

This is one of those puzzles I finished without having the faintest idea what the theme was, having not taken the time to look at the quartet of theme entries until after I was done. Those answers start with radio communication words:

18A. ROGER RABBIT is the ["Framed" toon in a 1988 film], Who Framed Roger Rabbit? "Roger that."
27A. A [Xerox product] is a COPY MACHINE. "Do you copy?"
47A. One phrase meaning [In an awkward position] is OVER A BARREL. "Blah, blah, blah. Over."
61A. [Like oysters in summer months]—those months that lack an R—is OUT OF SEASON. "Over and out."

My favorite clues: [Seaman's pronoun] is SHE; this one confused me and I was thinking of a pronoun applied to, not by, sailors, who call boats "she." [Kids' book connectibles] are DOTS, as in connect-the-dots books. Hey, look, [Abe of "Barney Miller"] VIGODA gets his last name in the grid—we usually see his last name in a clue for ABE (though last July, the rare VIGODA appeared in two consecutive CrosSynergy puzzles).

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword #82, "Themeless Monday"

I had to laugh when I saw Brendan's marquee answer, the 15 running down the middle. The [Band with the 2009 album "Bitte Orca"] is DIRTY PROJECTORS, and that's a brand-new album. In Brendan's acknowledgments for his Go Harvard Crimson football crossword book (which I just proofread last week), he thanked the band for that album and said he listened to it nonstop while making the book. Bitte means "please" in German, but I have no idea if Dirty Projectors feel gratitude to killer whales. Anyway, I appreciated the gimme.

Fancypants entries in this puzzle include LIL BOW WOW, WII FIT, EAT, PRAY, LOVE, and FLOWER CHILD. Really, having just one or two of those would be splashy. ST. PAT'S, the [Cathedral in NYC, familiarly], feels more "in the language" than the more common crossword answer ST. PAT.

I'm accustomed to the broccoli rabe spelling, so [Broccoli ___] RAAB looked odd. NEW DO looks nutty, too, but this [Result of changing your locks] does have an "in the language" feel to it. You get a NEW DO but nobody talks about their "old do" or a "good do," so I think "new do" is a discrete unit of meaning.

June 13, 2009

Sunday, 6/14

NYT 8:12
Reagle LAT Calendar 8:02
LAT 7:48
Reagle 6/7 Philadelphia Inquirer 7:17
Reagle 6/14 Philadelphia Inquirer 7:00
BG whoops, forgot to note my time; 7:something, I think
CS 4:04
NYT cryptic 13:42

Brendan Quigley's New York Times crossword, "D-Plus"

Pop quiz: Among the NYT crosswords published from June 1 to June 14, how many were constructed by women? The answer—can I get a drum roll, please?—is zero. That's right. We are now on day 14 of Female Constructor Obliteration Watch.

No aspersions on Brendan, of course, as his puzzle today is a fine specimen. I grade the "D-Plus" theme as considerably better than a D+. Each theme entry begins with a familiar phrase; Brendan adds a D sound, which compels a spelling change to result in an actual word. The trumped-up phrase is then clued more or less plausibly, and I like how most of the theme played out:

23A. "Do penance" becomes DO PENDANTS, or [Make necklace baubles?].
25A. [Hip lineages?] are COOL BREEDS, arising from a "cool breeze."
39A. [Tonto's pep?] is SIDEKICK ENERGY. Wow, that's a helluva change for an add-a-letter theme, going from "psychic" to SIDEKICK.
50A. PASSED MUSTARD builds on "passed muster," and is clued [Gave Grey Poupon to the head of the table?].
66A. Hah! The Amityville Horror yields AMITYVILLE HOARDER, or the [Greediest person in a Long Island locality?].
85A. There's a "leper colony" at the root of LEOPARD COLONY, or [Spotted feline's home?].
94A. This one took me the longest to figure out. HOUSE-ADDRESSED is [Like residential mail?] and plays on "house arrest" with a D sound inserted.
114A. A "bowler hat" + D = BOULDER HAT, or [Certain Colorado headgear?].
116A. [Bamboozle Eisenhower?] clues SNOW DWIGHT, from "Snow White." Took me a while to shake Mamie loose from my head.

The least familiar fill, if you ask me, is MAOTAI, or this [Strong Chinese liquor], and KAKA, or [One-named Brazilian soccer star in the 2008 Time 100]. Both of these answers are in the same section of the grid, and MAOTAI's crossing with NARA, [Japan's first capital], might prove a gnarly spot for some solvers.

The best fill begins right off the bat with 1-Across: [1982 best seller subtitled "And Other Discoveries About Human Sexuality," with "The"] clues the G-SPOT. I have no problem with that as crossword fill. Among the other clues and answers I liked, we have [Many keys]/IVORIES and KOOL-AID/[Drink made from a mix]. And the NARTHEX! That's a [Way to the nave] but not, I guess, to the apse. ("I'll take Cathedral Parts for $800, please, Alex." Speaking of cathedrals, apparently the [Curved high-back bench] called an EXEDRA is etymologically related to "cathedral," with hedra meaning "seat.") PAPER LOSS is an [Unrealized hit taken on an investment. [One of the Planeten] is ERDE; that's German for "planets" and "Earth." DOTS is a [Classic pencil-and-paper game] that I ought to teach my kid. DOTH is an [Obsolete auxiliary] word; the primary auxiliaries, the dictionary tells me, are be, do, and have, while the modal auxiliaries include can, could, may, might, must, should, shall, will, and would. [How cringe-making humor might go] is TOO FAR; with the last four letters in place, I was expecting a SHOFAR clue here. Love the word APERÇU, or [Quick look]. ALGER HISS, the [Suspected spy in a celebrated 1949 trial], gets the full-name treatment. Interesting clue for ROAD SIGNS: [They often start with "No"].

Daniel Raymon's NYT second Sunday puzzle, a cryptic crossword

I think Raymon is new to the ranks of NYT cryptic setters, and I felt like I had a harder time than usual sussing out the clues. Or maybe I'm coming down with a bug—I have that foreboding. Does the common cold interfere with anagramming capabilities? Is there research on this? Or did you find the various anagram clues to be less obvious than usual?

Anyway, big thanks go to Will Johnston, who has posted his parsed solution online. Not that I relied on it to finish the puzzle, but hey, I like to encourage you all to do cryptics, and having a thorough explanation of how each clue yields its answer is a good way to learn the ropes. Saves me the trouble of writing it all down!

As Will notes, 16D is a good find in the anagram category. 22A is an anagram that took me forever to figure out, thanks to some unusual letter combos in the answer. Among the two 15-letter answers, 2D is terrific, but I could do without dull words like 7D. That's one thing I like about Harvey Estes' cryptics in Games/Games World of Puzzles—really lively and entertaining phrases in the answer grid.

CHOCOLATE!

Yeah, it's time for a chocolate break from crosswords. We were at Water Tower Place today and the Lindt store is going out of business. 50% off! We probably bought 4 or 5 lbs. of Swiss chocolate, and for only $26. Yum. If you live in Chicago and like Lindt, head on over before the candy's all gone.

Merl Reagle's 6/7 Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "I Haven't the Vegas Idea"

I just got word from Lloyd Mazer that the Merl Reagle puzzles last Sunday and this Sunday in the L.A. Times Calendar section (filling in during Sylvia Bursztyn's hiatus) are puzzles specifically for that publication, even though they bear the "PI" filenames via the Puzzle Pointers and Cruciverb links. The crosswords Merl published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, and other papers for June 7 and June 14 are different. You can find today's PI/WaPo puzzle at Merl's website, Sunday Crosswords.

The theme, as you might guess from the title and Merl's propensity for punning, is Vegas/gambling-related puns:

[Really swell in Vegas?] clues PEACHY KENO, adding the game of chance to "peachy keen."
Cheapskates turn into CHIPSKATES, or [Misers, in Vegas?].
My favorite entry is the literary pun PAIR OF DICE LOST—["Your throw didn't win," in Vegas?]—riffing on Milton's Paradise Lost.
Campbell's becomes GAMBLE SOUP COMPANY, or [Big food supplier, in Vegas?].
[First native American to own a gaming parlor?] doesn't mention Vegas in the clue, unlike all the other theme clues. POKER-HONTAS replaces Pocahontas here.
[What gaming fans have, in Vegas?] is SLOTS TO THINK ABOUT (sub "lots" for SLOTS).
[Put off playing a certain game, in Vegas?] is PROCRAPSTINATE. This alteration of "procrastinate" puts me in mind of certain potty talk.
"See no evil" turns into CASINO EVIL, or [Being addicted to gaming, perhaps?].
[Vegas, in a way] is a BETTING ZOO, playing on "petting zoo."

A couple unusual answers in the fill—S. NEV., short for Southern Nevada, is [Where Vegas is, in gazetteer shorthand]. Wow, "gazetteer shorthand"! I don't think I need that much. This answer crosses NEAME, or [Ronald who directed "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie"]—never heard of the guy.

Oh, dang. I meant to do the 6/14 PI puzzle and blog it, skipping last week's—and here I did the 6/7 puzzle. I think the 6/14 isn't posted at Merl's blog yet and I assumed it was this weekend's; I was using Lloyd's Across Lite file. Got to add another puzzle to my to-do list...

Updated Sunday morning:

Will Nediger's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword,"Watch the Birdie"

In golf, a birdie is ONE UNDER PAR, and that's the unifying answer at 69-Across. In 10 precisely symmetrical spots in the grid (I circled those squares for clarity and was astonished to see the perfect symmetry), ONE appears right under PAR. The coolest part of this is ONE UNDER PAR itself, with a PAR (in PARD) above the ONE and a ONE (in IONE) below the PAR. Often, the explanatory answer describing the theme doesn't exemplify the rule it sets forth, but this one does—twice.

You'd think the fill with PAR and ONE in it would lead to some tortured fill, but some of my favorite entries are in the ONE-under-PAR sections. There's J.R. EWING, the [TV shooting victim on 3/21/1980]; MR. PEANUT, the [Monocled food mascot]; APOLLO IX, or [Lunar Module test mission]; and a BEANPOLE who is, physiologically speaking, an [Ectomorph]. Right beside the PAR/ONE chunks are a bunch of great longish multi-word answers, including IT'S A BOY, or [Delivery notice?]; LEFT HOME, or [Moved out]; a SKI MASK, or [Holdup cover-up; OPENED UP, or [Bared one's soul]; and LIBEL LAW, or [Attorney's specialty]. And PALINDROMIC is a great word to put in the exact middle of a puzzle with heightened symmetry; it means [The same either way].

Favorite clue: TAN is [One of two Crayola colors with the shortest name]; the other is red. ZISSOU, BENELUX, CZECHS, and PLAIN JANE add to the Scrabble score here.

Much more on the puzzle from L.A. Crossword Confidential's PuzzleGirl, who absolutely loved this theme. (It inspired the use of many exclamation points, in fact.)

Merl Reagle's L.A. Times Calendar puzzle, "This Bud's for You"

I think this is the puzzle that's appearing in the L.A. Times Calendar section today. Let me know if it's not.

The theme answers are all flower puns, and I like flowers so this theme was right up my alley. Merl has a whopping 12 theme entries spelling out 11 puns:

18A. ASTER OUT puns on "asked her out" and is clued [Invited a lady to the Flower Ball?].
23A. Violet and violent are just a letter apart. VIOLET TENDENCIES are [What people with Flower Power exhibit?].
30A. Trilliums are three-petaled wildflowers that sound like "trillions." ONE TRILLIUM DOLLARS is [What you might win in the FTD Sweepstakes?].
50A. [Flowery adventure film?] is BACK TO THE FUCHSIA (Back to the Future). Given the American pronunciation of this flower/color, hardly anybody spells it right. They go with "fuschia," completely disregarding the flower's eponym, German botanist Leonhard Fuchs.
57A. [Flowery courtroom remark?] is IRIS MY CASE ("I rest my case").
62A. [With 74 Across, parent's flowery warning about video games and comic books?] is THAT JONQUIL / ROT YOUR MIND. ("That junk'll...")
81A. SAVE A PEONY is clued as [What a Southern flower-grower can hardly do nowadays?]. She can hardly save a penny nowadays? Is that the original phrase?
86A. [Flower shop come-on?] is AZALEA CAN'T RESIST ("a sale you can't resist").
104A. An Enemy of the People turns into ANEMONE OF THE PEOPLE, or [Ibsen play with the most flowery language?].
118A. "Thanks for being a pal" becomes THANKS VERBENA PAL, or [Response to someone who sent you flowers?].
125A. The last theme entry is my favorite for sheer weirdness. GERANIUM is a [Parachuting florist's cry as he leaves the plane?]. Why say "Geronimo!" when you can say "Geranium!"?

A few other clues and answers:

63D. [Alexander and Addams] are JANES, the actress and the famous reformer. A similar clue is 51D, [Burt or Hurt, e.g.], for ACTOR. William Hurt and...Burt Reynolds?
61A. [Basic cable, basically] is PAY TV. If you don't have cable, a dish, or a digital TV, did your TV go away this weekend?
96D. [How to "carry moonbeams home"] is IN A JAR.
55D. This one's the very worst answer in the weekend puzzles I've done so far, but it's still easily gettable. IEIO is clued as [E followers in a farm tune], "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

Merl Reagle's June 14 Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Tri-V-ial Pursuit"

Each theme entry has some tri-V trivia, where the answer phrase contains the letter V three times. With nine theme answers, that's 27 V's in the puzzle.

My goodness, I've been blogging a lot of puzzles. It's almost time for an IHOP pancake break. But first, the tri-V-ia theme includes these answers:

62A. [Famed victory speech] is Julius Caesar's VENI, VIDI, VICI, or "I came, I saw, I conquered." What an ass. Am I right?
72A. One of many schools that could be called the [Wildcats' home] is VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY.
84A. [1964 musical about a race car driver named Lucky Jackson] is VIVA LAS VEGAS. When I see "musical" I think of the stage, but some musicals really demand cinema, don't they?
119A/129A. The VELVET DIVORCE is the [Term for Czechoslovakia's peaceful breakup in 1993] into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Velvet Revolution (also three V's) was the peaceful end of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Writer VACLAV HAVEL was [Czechoslovakia's leader before its breakup]. Havel visited the White House during the Sosa/McGwire home run derby, and referred to "Sammy Soser."

Five assorted clues: [What RNA has that DNA lacks] is URACIL. Ivan PAVLOV was a noted [Dog studier] (6D). Why is 48D SKID ROW [No place to be somebody]? Is that from a song? To [Yield to desire] is 54D INDULGE, as in "indulge yourself with some Lindt dark chocolate/raspberry truffles." 79A/80A are the two-part answer AIR BALL, [With 80 Across, a court gaffe].

Updated Sunday afternoon:

Aw, pancake break was cancelled.

Henry Hook's Boston Globe puzzle in Across Lite, "Essay Questions"

This puzzle had a lot of "meh" fill around the entertaining theme (in which SA, which sounds like "essay," is added to phrases to alter their meaning), but I'll give Henry props for the gutsiness of stacking all the theme entries. Really, who does that? The eight theme entries appear in stacked pairs in each corner of the grid:

POPULAR SAUSAGE began as "popular usage." The punny clue is [Best of the wurst?]. This answer sits atop SATRAP SHOOTING, or [Ruthless ruler's assassination?]. I'm just nerdy enough to appreciate a bit of wordplay that produces a crosswordese sort of word, SATRAP.
Moving to the upper right corner, we start with SAVANNA WHITE, or [Snow on a tropical grassland?]. Good play on Vanna White! The AB negative blood type becomes SAAB NEGATIVE< a [Point in Volvo's favor?].
Continuing clockwise to the Florida corner, we have a [Chapter in lettuce's autobio?], WHEN I WAS A SALAD, and the double +SA play of SALINE OF SAFIRE, or [Columnist William's lens cleaner?]. If you're gonna have just one theme entry that goes beyond what the other ones do, the last one in the grid is the place to put it, so score one for Hook.
The last pair includes EERIE SAMOANS, or [Polynesians who scare you?]. "Eerie moans" isn't remotely an in-the-language singular unit of meaning, but I do rather like EERIE SAMOANS. A turn signal becomes SATURN SIGNAL, or [Extraterrestrial communication?].

What did I mean about "meh" fill? Things like prefix ANEMO, AMAIN, STOA, EMAG, TIU (that's a [Germanic war god] who seldom appears in crosswords), and an unfamiliar MOORHEN. The clue for NETH. is given as [Du. land] and boy, I've never seen "Dutch" abbreviated that way. Maybe in the etymology note in a dictionary definition or something. I'd have gone with [Dutch land: Abbr.], personally. Fancier fill: KEY WEST, the "VOLSUNGA Saga" of Icelandic legend, documentarian Morgan SPURLOCK (whom a bunch of us met at Sundance), Beatrix Potter's squirrel NUTKIN, and ACADIAN clued as the [Word that gave us "Cajun"].

Will Johnston's CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

Crazy-looking grid, isn't it? I don't remember ever seeing one like this. Between the triple stacks at the top and bottom is a roiling midsection that zigs and zags. The difficulty level seemed about usual for a themeless CrosSynergy puzzle, didn't it? Some clues and answers of note:

[Advertiser who may be on a lot?] is a USED CAR SALESMAN.
[Naval battle of 1571 in which the Ottomans were defeated as a sea power] is LEPANTO. Say what? The Battle of LEPANTO is not in my ken. With the ANTO in place, I wanted LECANTO (a Florida town near my in-laws' place) or OTRANTO (an Italian place I know from crosswords).
[Binge] is the verb, not the noun, cluing GO ON A BENDER.
In Latin, [In the meantime] is AD INTERIM.
[Hector, in Italian] is ETTORE.
The RIGHT LANE is the [Way to an off-ramp, usually]. Chicago's Eisenhower Expressway has some left lane exits that throw me off.
KAOLINITE is a [Clay mineral used in glossy paper]. I know kaolin, the clay, but not KAOLINITE.
"GUN IT!" is clued ["Put the pedal to the metal!"]. I'll bet you could Google up a slew of misspellings. "Put the petal to the medal." "Put the peddle to the meddle."
Never heard of this IRINA: [Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Shayk].

June 12, 2009

Saturday, 6/13

Newsday 6:14
NYT 5:44
LAT 4:03
CS 2:57

Don't miss the Crossword Fiend Fourth Bloggiversary dreadful-theme contest! (That's the post right below this one.)

Barry Silk's New York Times crossword

You know what I like about this puzzle? I mean, aside from the interesting answers with Q's and Z's in them. And the central 15's. And the stacks of 8's and 9's in the four corners. I like the overall geographic slant to the crossword. Look at all the places:

15A. LITHUANIA is the [Neighbor of Kaliningrad], Kaliningrad being that little land-island of Russia that's cut off from the rest of Russia. I'm an eighth Lithuanian, so I'm pleased to see the country in the crossword.
22A. [Abyssinian language?] sounds like it's geographical, but it's the Abyssinian cat's MEW.
23A. KHMER is clued [Like the Angkor ruins].
35A. The MAGNETIC EQUATOR is the [Line on which a dip needle is horizontal]. What's a dip line, people?
43A. NEV., or Nevada, is the [36th of 50: Abbr.]
57A. The Hague is Den HAAG in Dutch, so HAAG is a [City name part that's Dutch for "hedge"]. If only we Anglophone types called it "The Hedge."
9D. LAE is the [Papuan port in W.W. II fighting] that was also in Kevin Der's record-breaking 8/22/08 NYT puzzle, the one with only 18 black squares. LAE! That's "lame" without the M. Thank you, Kevin, for including that answer. I thought it stunk then, but now I'm glad that I learned it. Isn't that how it always goes? "Horrible, terrible answer. So obscure. ...Oh, hey, here's that answer again!"
35D. MANASSAS was a [Civil War battlefield].
48D. The BRAZOS is a [River to the Gulf of Mexico].

If these answers stumped you, well, then you ought to learn more geography, oughtn't you?

These ones were my favorite answers and clues:

1A. The PEACH BOWL sounds like a yummy dessert rather than a college football game. [Louisiana State won the first one in 1968].
28A. [Indy Jones and others] are PROFS. The "Indy" shortening of Indiana signals the shortening of professors. Speaking of that—SHORT FOR is clued as [A contraction of].
33A. SHAQ O'Neal is clued as [Wilt Chamberneezy, more familiarly]. Dang, that's a nutty clue if you've never, ever heard that long nickname for Shaquille O'Neal. The next answer is another athlete, [Olympic sprinter ___ Boldon], or ATO—a cooler entry than the two-word partial A TO.
46A. The [Male stereotype] of RAMBO probably shouldn't have "male" in the clue, but it's a nice contrast with the [Countertenor], or MALE ALTO, above it. Anyone else try FALSETTO there?
52A. Cartoons! I'll bet Joe Cabrera and Dave Mackey knew instantly that [Splinter, to Woody Woodpecker] was NIECE, but I needed the crossings.
59A. I think we've seen EZIO PINZA's full name in the puzzle before. Two Z's! This crosswordese fella was the [1950 Tony winner for Best Actor in a Musical], South Pacific, I think.
4D. [Bond analysts' field?: Abbr.] is CHEM. Bonds between atoms forming molecules in chemistry, yo.
8D. WIENERSCHNITZEL! Now that's a 15 for you. It happens to be a [Dish akin to cotoletta alla milanese]. Cotoletta looks to be an Italian cognate of "cutlet." I didn't know the answer based on the clue, but with the first couple letters from crossings and a familiarity with Barry Silk's fondness for Scrabbly letters (and the ability to spell German words), WIENERSCHNITZEL came together.
10D. The MAGIC SQUARE is a [Recreational mathematics construct]. All the rows, columns, and diagonals add up to the same total.
23D. A [Good one] is a real KNEE-SLAPPER when one = joke.
32D. Say it with me: PTUI is a [Spittoon sound]. Not to be confused with pfui.
37D. [Person in a mansion] is the GOVERNOR. Wow, I couldn't figure this one out until I had a bunch of the letters filled in. Seems so obvious in retrospect.
38D. [Recycle bin, for one] is a computer ICON.

A special shout-out to 49D. [Much-needed donations] are ORGANS. Yes! Sign the organ donor line on your driver's license, and let your family know that you want to be an organ donor. My Facebook friends include a woman who recently received her second life-saving kidney transplant (and in exchange, her husband donated a kidney to someone else via a matching program), as well as a man who donated one of his kidneys. Live kidney donors are even more heroic than those of us who are willing to donate as cadavers. Three cheers for live donors! And hooray for Barry and Will Shortz for a socially beneficial clue for ORGANS.

Updated Saturday morning:

I'm woefully short on time this morning because I'm meeting my mother at the Apple Store to help buy her first computer. She sets great store by Consumer Reports, and they always rave about the Mac's superior reliability and customer service. Gotta get in before the crowds show up for the new iPhone, right?

Brad Wilber's Los Angeles Times crossword

This puppy's got some colorful fill in every corner, plus RED SONJA (["She-devil with a sword" of comics]) and DOS EQUIS cerveza ([Mexican beer with XX on its label]) in the middle. For the rest of what I've got to say about this puzzle, please divert your attention to L.A. Crossword Confidential. Trust me, I was much perkier when writing that post last night than I am this morning after five hours of sleep.

Paula Gamache's CrosSynergy puzzle, "It's a Gift"

Once a month, our Janie heads to her beloved Baltimore and I return to blogging about the Saturday CS crossword. Paula's theme is FREE, [Like a gift, and word that can precede the last parts of 17- and 57-Across and 11- and 25-Down]. [Statement of means to the end?] is a LIVING WILL (free will). Public service announcement: You should have a living will. I don't, no, but I should. POWER LUNCH is a [Meal for wheelers and dealers]. Who doesn't love a free lunch? STUMP SPEECH is clued as [Campaigner's delivery]. Free speech is good too, but less filling than a free lunch. FLOOR SAMPLE is a [Showroom sale item]; free samples are as beloved as free lunches. The theme is none too thrilling, but the fill includes "I GUESS SO" and "YEAH, MAN," SHOT UP clued as [Grew like crazy], OB-GYNS ([Docs who deliver]), and an ODD JOB ([Task for a handyman]). Geography brings us ZAMBIAN, or [Neighbor of a Tanzanian] (I defy anyone to say they filled this one in with no crossings at all), and old crosswordese AINU, a [Japanese aborigine].

Updated Saturday afternoon:

Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

Once again, Doug Peterson demonstrates why he has become my favorite Stumper-maker. Now, last week's Stumper had its charms—I heard through the grapevine that Dan and Ellen finished Stan Newman's killer puzzle in the range of 9 to 10 minutes, another top solver took 17 minutes, and several other top solvers just plain didn't finish or finished with more than one wrong square. The Stumper is like a Gumpian box of chocolates—you never know what you're gonna get. Maybe a solid semisweet chocolate piece, not a wishy-washy milk chocolate one; that's today's puzzle by Doug. Maybe a chocolate with a hard nut inside; that'd be a puzzle that takes maybe 40% more effort than this one. Then there's the one with the cyanide in it, and depending on your personal constitution it may or may not be survivable; that was last weekend's.

Here's the solution grid for today's offering. Stuff I was fond of:

1A. [Boarder's need] is BUSFARE. Yes, indeed. I also contemplated room and board and snowboarding.
28A. EEYORE is the [Pessimist of kiddie lit]. Total gimme.
32A. YEARLY is clued [Like a world revolution]. The world revolves around the sun YEARLY.
35A. ["Slumdog Millionaire," e.g.] is a CINDERELLA STORY. Fantastic answer, that.
39A/13D. [Famous last words] are AU REVOIR and [Another way to say] that is ADIOS.
51A. ["Cave," in ancient Rome] is BEWARE, as in cave canem or "beware of dog."
63A. [Ring things] is a vague clue for CAR KEYS, which I had trouble parsing when it was filled in. NO, CARKEYS isn't one word.
35D. [Bores] is one of those classically oblique Stumper clues. Drills a hole? Is dreadfully dull? Dull people? It's CALIBERS, as in the diameter of the hollow part inside a gun barrel.

Did you know a CUTLER is a [Grindstone user]? Did you know that CUTLER was a word? Cutlery, I know, but CUTLER was new to me. I don't know [Novelist Amelia] BARR. Looking at her Wikipedia write-up...no, nope, none of those book titles ring a bell. I didn't know the [Name in the Cartoon Hall of Fame] based on the clue, but the crossings gave me DIK Browne of "Hägar the Horrible" and "Hi and Lois" fame.

Crossword Fiend's Fourth Bloggiversary Contest

Can you believe this blog got its start four whole years ago? That's eight half-years, if you're keeping track. And sixteen consecutive quarters. How many crosswords have I reviewed here? A ballpark figure is 7,000. Holy Maleska, Batman! That is a heckuva lot of puzzles.

At the beginning, I was the only daily crossword blogger in America. But in a country with 300 million people, a good 15% or 20% of whom do crosswords, there was room for more. So now there are a few more blogs that focus on the New York Times puzzle: Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle, Ryan and Brian Do Crosswords, and the Times' own Wordplay blog written by Jim Horne. In the past year, two of my favorite constructors have launched their own blogs and create new puzzles for their readers—Brendan Quigley asks Can I Have a Word with You? and Matt Gaffney runs his Weekly Crossword Contest. And just this spring, Rex, regular pinch-hitter PuzzleGirl, and I began a new blog devoted to the L.A. Times puzzle, L.A. Crossword Confidential. Wow! Crossword fans can now spend an inordinate amount of time online with like-minded people. I love it.

So, how best to celebrate one's fourth bloggiversary? A contest! When former agency FSLIC was in a recent crossword, I mused that a "Hidden Former Agencies" theme could be truly abysmal. COAT OF SLICK OIL has FSLIC embedded in it, and the OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity!) hides in DAY SAYS HELLO, EOS (Eos being the goddess of dawn).

Now, one of those phrases is a 14 and the other's a 15, and I didn't dream up any other theme entries to fill out the set, much less write clues. But it made me want to see more horrible theme ideas. So that's the contest: Concoct a dreadful crossword theme with at least three entries (ideally with word lengths that follow traditional crossword theme symmetry), write clues for those entries, and include a brief explanatory statement or title.

"What's the prize, Reynaldo?" you demand to know. "We're not doing any stinkin' thinking unless we might win something." The writer of the best worst theme (as determined by my personal whims—whatever makes me laugh the most will be in strong contention) will win this:

A signed copy of Dean Olsher's upcoming hardcover book, From Square One: A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords. Dean'll write an inscription for the winner. (Thanks to Dean and Scribner for the prize.)

Oh—if you're wondering what to get me for my bloggiversary, the traditional gift for a fourth anniversary is fruit (!) or flowers, and the modern alternative is...appliances.

Leave your contest submissions (limit two per person) in a comment on this post. The deadline is Sunday, June 21, at noon Central time. Have fun and remember: Be bad. Be really bad.

June 11, 2009

Friday, 6/12

BEQ 4:55
CHE 4:07
Tausig (untimed)
NYT 3:42
LAT 3:24
CS 6:25 (J—paper)
WSJ 7:44

Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword

Just before doing this puzzle, I did two Berry puzzles from an '06 Games World of Puzzles—my goodness, how did I leave both a Rows Garden and a Ringside puzzle unfilled?!? Berry's variety grids are always terrific—if you like challenging crosswords and you're not wedded to themes, buy his Puzzle Masterpieces book immediately. And don't be put off by the introduction's claim that the book's puzzles are of Wednesday difficulty—only the snake-grid ones are easyish, and some are beyond Saturday-level. My favorite variety might be Some Assembly Required, which work the jigsaw and crossword parts of your brain in tandem, and the Rows Gardens, in which Across answers intersect with answers that travel hexagonally. The book's an attractive hardcover, which may make you hesitate to write in it—but go ahead and do it. Once the book is in your hands, your pencil will not be able to resist its pull. Shall I give it an Amazon-style rating? Yes: ★★★★★. Crossword books don't get any better than this.

Berry is, of course, also a master at the wide-open themeless grid. His Friday NYT crossword has just 64 words, and holy cow, would you look at that midsection? That fat swath of 7's and 8's marching up the stairs from left to right? That's impressive. I suppose there's some advantage to the easier cluing—why not make such a grid more accessible to a broader cross-section of solvers? But you know me, I like the gnarly clues best. Here are the answers and clues that were right up my alley:

23A and 25A rhyme. SINGSONG is an [Uninteresting voice], while ["Don't give up!"] clues BE STRONG. In my circles, "be strong" is used mainly in jest.
26A. Tricky clue—[Manufacturer of boxy cars] is OTIS, for elevator cars. With the O in place, I tried OPEL. I also thought of SAAB and FIAT as other 4-letter automakers.
33A. [Frequent subject on "Desperate Housewives"] is ADULTERY, which I got off the Y alone. If you know anything at all about the show, that shouldn't be too tough to guess.
35A. Didn't see this clue while solving. TOPE is clued with the verb phrase [Empty bottles]. No, that's not a plural noun today.
39A. BANZAI always sparkles in the grid. It means ["Char-r-rge!"], more or less.
41A. [Lousy driver, say] clues DUFFER. A duffer is a bad golfer.
42A. GEOID is an [Imaginary surface coinciding with earth's sea level], and while I don't quite understand the clue, I like the pile-up of vowels in the answer.
3D. ELECTRICAL STORM, or [Potential blackout cause], is one of two 15's in this puzzle. (PRISONER OF ZENDA, an [1894 adventure novel, with "The"], is the other 15.) Only three of its 15 crossings are 3- or 4-letter words. How on earth does Berry get everything to interlock like this? Have I heard that he hand-crafts his puzzles, or does he use technology to make the magic happen?
4D. DEMOTES is clued as [Puts in a bad position?]. See also AXING, or [Giving a pink slip]. Recessionary crosswording!
8D. LESS IS MORE is the [Central concept of minimalism] and of themeless puzzles—64 is a low word count, but not ridiculously low. You get into the 50s and you really start to see clunky or obscure words.
10D. "SOUP'S ON!" means ["Come and get it!"].
23D. SERPENT gets an arcane (to me) clue: [Midgard ___ (monster of Norse myth)]. Norse mythology has a lot of cool stuff.
25D. The [Top dog] at the Westminster dog show is BEST IN SHOW.
36D. [Musical O'Connor] is SINEAD. What a nice change to have this Irish singer in lieu of crosswordese ENYA.
39D. [Very well done]—hmm, this must be an accolade such as one might apply to Berry's Masterpieces, right? Nope—it's BURNT. Burnt cookies are a keen disappointment.

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "If I Could Turn Back Time"

In the six theme entries, Ben has turned back time by flipping an AM or PM into MA or MP:

17/62A. [With 62-Across, a senior racer?] clues PONTIAC / GRANDMA. Perfect play on the Pontiac Grand Am with the delicious GRANDMA payoff.
18A. [Keep an antioxidant-heavy juice in check?] is STEM POM, Pom being a brand of pomegranate juice and stepmom being a phrase with a reversible PM in it.
32A. The past-tense [Put actress Amanda in the freestyle?] clues SWAM PEET. Swap meet, Amanda Peet.
38A. MAPLE EVIDENCE (ample evidence) is [Syrup presented to the jury?].
46A. RAM PETAL plays on the rap-metal music genre, and the clue is now [Pretty sheep decoration?]. The original clue cited a nonspecific farm animal and man, did I have a hard time figuring out the answer.
58A. BASS MAP might be a [Rhythm instrument guide?]. I can't say I know what "bass amp" means. An amp that produces low-frequency sounds? A bass player's amp? A rockin' smallmouth bass's accessory?

My favorite clues and fill include [Adjective for some past-their-prime musicians] for BLOATED; the [Fighting words] "oh, IT'S ON"; [Golfer Ernie with his own wine company] provides a bit of trivia for Mr. ELS; [Mark of wit] clues writer TWAIN; [They're usually No. 2's] clues PENCILS, not vice presidents; and [Alexander the Grape, e.g.] is an example of a PUN. This week's Ink Well mystery word is RATINE, or [Rough, loose fabric]. Wow, I don't even recall that one from the heyday of Eugene Maleska. [Banned MLB substance] is the general abbreviation PED, or performance-enhancing drug, rather than a specific steroid or hormone. I didn't know that abbreviation before doing this puzzle.

Ed Sessa's Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle,"Storied Institutions"

Greetings, academics! Last week, there wasn't a CHE crossword and this week, there is. What's the deal with the Chronicle's summer publishing schedule? Is it every other week and then a few weeks off in August, something like that? Ah, here's the scoop from chronicle.com: "The Chronicle appears weekly in print except for every other week during June, July, and August, and the last three weeks in December (a total of 42 issues a year)."

The theme this week is fictional schools, and wow, I sure haven't read many of these books set in fictional schools:

[Fictional school in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"] is BROOKFIELD.
[Fictional school in the Harry Potter books] is HOGWARTS. Hey! I knew this one.
[Fictional school in "Nicholas Nickleby"] is...dang, I'm probably parsing this wrong. Dickens wouldn't have had a DO THE BOYS HALL. Wikipedia to the rescue: it's Dotheboys Hall.
[Fictional school in "To Serve Them All My Days"] is BAMFYLDE. Non-intuitive spelling and it's from a book I've scarcely even heard of? Ouch. The Y crosses SYD, [Charlie Chaplin's half-brother], so BAMFILDE looked equally plausible.
[Fictional school in "The Catcher in the Rye"] is PENCEY PREP.

In the fill, PECK is clued as [What a bird in the hand might do?]. I beseech you: guard your eyes. [Makes a botch of] clues BLOOPS; while "blooper" is common and there's a baseball usage of this word, I can't say BLOOPS came to me easily. I like the echo between AT BAT and KEPT AT BAY—that T and Y are right next to each other on the keyboard, so it'd be easy to mangle these two. Did you know that the STAR FRUIT, or carambola, is an [Edible Malaysian export]?

Updated Friday morning:

Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Covered with Mud"—Janie's review

Back in May, Randy brought us a puzzle whose theme fill was literally to be found "in a NUT shell," where the first two letters of the theme-phrase were NU and the last was T. Today, we're "covered with MUD," as MU and D surround ("cover") the letters of the theme-phrase. As anyone who enjoys being pampered on occasion can tell you, MUD treatments are not only relaxing, they're refreshing. Ditto this puzzle. Behold:

17A. [Score keeper?] MUSIC STAND. Great clue; great CS-debut fill.
10D. ["Not a peep!"] MUM'S THE WORD. Shhh—it's a secret. But not that this is another CS first-timer.
24D. [Kingdom of heaven comparison, in the New Testament] MUSTARD SEED. Hmmm. While this was easy enough to solve by way of the crosses, the clue here helped me not one iota as I have almost no familiarity with the NT. To me, MUSTARD SEED is one of Titania's fairy servants in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Or the stuff you crush up and add vinegar to to make a savory condiment...
55A. [Part of a 401(k) plan, often] MUTUAL FUND. The slightly dry MUTUAL FUND (you will SURELY be ELATEd to know) is making its first appearance in a major puzzle; and—after the turn in the economy last fall, I have some friends who wryly refer to their 401(k)'s as 201(k)'s...

This puzzle is but one letter shy of a pangram ("J"), and it was really nice to encounter the scrabbly end of the alphabet in its entirety in such lively (and in some cases "street-smart") fill as: BAD VIBES, MEOW clued as [Copy cats?], EXERT, YOU DA MAN (YIKES!), and ZIPPO (which I filled in first with ZILCH).

Other fine fill and/or clues:

LA BOHÈME [Opera by Puccini] (whose score might be found on that MUSIC STAND...)
NO 'COUNT [Good-for-nothing] and DODO [Knucklehead]
[Swimming center] for EMS (the letter M appears twice in the center of the word. This kind of clue appears with some regularity and maybe you're already alert to it. If not—pay heed! It will show up again.)
[Tub or tug] for VESSEL
[Victoria and Albert] for LAKES. Perfect.

Got myself off on the wrong foot by confidently entering SANTA for SATAN (hello again...). Now I know that [OLD NICK] and Beelzebub are one and the same. Ditto the Deuce, the Dickens, Old Harry, Old Ned, Old Scratch, Old Horny, Old Poker, the Old Gentleman and a slew of others. Thus spake Roget.

The reminder of iconic newsman Chet HUNTLEY and the HUNTLEY-Brinkley Report stirred memories of a time when getting the nightly news from unimpeachable sources still mattered (also memories of their classic "Goodnight, Chet," "Goodnight, David," sign-off). And while we're looking at journalism, the puzzle also makes a nod to the dead-tree sort with OP-ED.

One little grid-bit and then ('til Monday) I'm history: the crossing of IRMA and FIRMA.

Happy weekend!

Robin Stears' Los Angeles Times crossword

A constructing debut for Stears? I think so. Congratulations! I loved unraveling the theme and I admire the theme's execution. Each theme entry has TRY tacked onto the end to completely change the gist of a phrase, and since it's a Friday puzzle, there's no give-away hint anywhere that explains it all. Here are the fun theme answers:

17A. [Where Jerry Garcia kept food for the band?] is the (DEAD PANTRY). Grateful Dead, deadpan.
28A. BLANK TAPESTRY would be a truly [Minimalist wall hanging?]. I probably still have some blank tapes around here even though I'm not using tapes anymore. You know how 20-somethings might use a bedsheet as a makeshift window covering? They could class that up by calling it a BLANK TAPESTRY and expounding on its artistic value.
47A. [Small clergy group?] could be a MICRO MINISTRY. A micro mini is, I believe, this thing that Daryl Hannah wore recently.
64A. Playing on faux pas, we get FAUX PASTRY as a [Wedding cake mock-up?]. You know how some bakeries keep faux pastry on display in the window? This could almost be a real phrase.

In the fill, I like the French vowel trifecta combo of EAU (51A [__-de-vie: brandy]) and BEAUT (36A [Doozy]). Geography brings us TONGA—5A [Kingdom called the Friendly Islands]—and both ELON and ASHE from North Carolina. The people in the puzzle are mostly familiar to regular solvers, except for 23A [1990s speed skating gold medalist], somebody named KOSS. No relation to the headphones company, I presume, Wikipedia tells me that "Johann Olav Koss (born 29 October 1968) is a former speed skater from Norway, considered to be one of the best in history." There's also an oddball fictional character whose name I learned from crosswords: GORT is clued as 8D ["The Day the Earth Stood Still" robot].

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Getting Extra C-R-E-D-I-T: Let me spell it all out"

Brendan's added a new feature, a difficulty-meter for the puzzle. This one's rated hard, and I'd say it's at least Friday-level but with a theme that might take Saturday effort to glom onto. The theme entries sort of sound like familiar phrases, and HARD ICHOR looked like "hard liquor" without the L. But what's going on here is that each of the six theme entries has a letter added to a phrase, and the spelling's changed to make a real word out of the word that adopts the extra letter. Those extra letters are, in order, C, R, E, D, I, T. Straightforward enough, right? This is an instance of a puzzle where the title really helps pull the theme together and make it more fun for the solver, less mystifying. The theme:

Harriet Lane was a big name in pediatric philanthropy, but I don't think I'd know her name if I hadn't worked for the publisher of The Harriet Lane Handbook. Add a C and you get CHARIOT LANE, or an [Appian Way section?] in ancient Rome.
Eiderdown turns into RYDER DOWN with an R. That's a [Phrase describing a rental truck with a flat tire?]. Seeing the rhyme with eiderdown is what finally tipped me off to the theme.
[Simple partnership?] is an EASY AXIS. Sounds like "easy access" but that's irrelevant. There's an E added to...I don't know what. Help!
"Kind of" + D = KIND DOVE, or [Considerate peacenik?]. I like this one best.
[Blood of the gods with that extra kick?] is HARD ICHOR, "hardcore" + I.
[Effect of a serious earthquake on the Golden Gate?] is a BRIDGE TWIST. Uh, just a guess that there's a card game called bridge whist. Apparently its heyday was a century ago.

Favorite clue: Maple SYRUP is a [Silver dollar covering] if you're talking about silver dollar pancakes. Mmm, pancakes... Second favorite: [Goes from prenatal to parental, e.g.] clues ANAGRAMS.

That's all the time I have right now, as it's just about time to pick up my kid from school. In Chicago, they get out at 9:30 a.m. on the last day! Will be back later on with the Wall Street Journal puzzle.

Updated again Friday evening:

Wall Street Journal crossword, "Speaker Boxes," by Mike Shenk a.k.a. "Alice Long"

Mike Shenk is known in the puzzle business for being an innovator, for devising cool new types of puzzles. Mike can even bring innovation to the fusty concept of the quote theme: here, the words in the quote are hidden within longer phrases or words, which are clued straightforwardly. So the hideousness of the standard quote theme—the "sure hope you can get the Downs because you're not getting much help with the long Across entries" thing—is eliminated. You're not getting a ton of thematic material, it's true, but you do get a 21x21 with 29 answers of at least 7 letters, and you're getting Shenk-grade fill. The Matthew Prior quote that's spelled out in the circled squares, one word per long answer, is THEY TALK MOST WHO HAVE THE LEAST TO SAY. Hey, that's only 32 letters of quote in a Sunday-sized puzzle. This I find much more palatable than a 50-letter quote in a 15x15 grid.

Highlights in the fill include a COON'S AGE (which is a more familiar phrase than the DOG'S AGE that was in another recent puzzle), LIP BALM, a PANAMA HAT, a comfy OLD SHOE, NO-DOZ, RENT-A-COP, STEPMOM, and some of the entries hiding the quote words—THE YANKEES, MORTAL KOMBAT, FIFTH AVENUE, and crossword-ready ADELE ASTAIRE graduating to full-name status.

June 10, 2009

Thursday, 6/11

NYT 4:00—don't believe the applet, because it took me 39 seconds to get the dang grid enlarged and then the browser hung for a few seconds mid-solve—Click that "Enlarge grid" option before pressing start if you're using the applet
LAT 3:34
Tausig tba
CS 6:48 (J—paper)

Alex Boisvert's New York Times crossword

Aargh. Surprises are fun except when they cost you time and you're racing the clock. I know a lot of you can't relate. You use Across Lite. You print out the puzzle. You do the puzzle in the newspaper. I know.

So! I had to resize the grid because it's 19 squares wide and 13 squares high. Why is it rectangular? Because the finished crossword turns into a coloring project to make a rough facsimile of the United States flag. In the upper left corner of the grid, you're to color the circled squares blue, leaving the other 13 squares in that 5x5 block white, like the white stars on the flag. And every Across answer that contains an "R"—that'd be every single Across answer in alternating rows—is to be colored red, forming 7 red stripes alternating with 6 white stripes, as on the flag. Of course, back when the flag had 13 stars, those stars appeared in a ring and not in staggered rows as in the current flag. Didn't they? Apparently Alex's star layout was in use on the U.S. flag from 1777 to 1795. Why have I never seen that flag?

In addition to the R-containing answers that make up 7/13ths of the Across entries, there are three long theme entries:

30A. MOUNT RUSHMORE is clued as ["Heads for the hills" locale?]. Giant stony president heads in the Black Hills?
36A. The song "AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL" is [Whence "Thine alabaster cities gleam" lyric].
49A. The [1775 flag motto] was DON'T TREAD ON ME.

All righty, what else is in this puzzle? In the Across dimension, there's this: A [Track branch] is a SPUR, and I'm not sure what kind of track we're talking about here. TONTO was a [Film character played by a full-blooded Cherokee] rather than Hollywood's standard dark-haired white guy with a tan. [It may be fired] refers to a ceramic TILE—I think. The adjective [Stock] means USUAL. [Bikers may have them] is about bike LANES, which Chicago has plenty of now. [Pupil, in Picardie] clues ELEVE, which used to be Franco-crosswordese but doesn't show up quite so much in the puzzle these days.

Moving to the Downs: ATLANTA is a [Hawk's home] if you're talking about the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. [Lined up the cross hairs] clues the good verb phrase TOOK AIM. To GO SOUTH is to [Turn bad]; is that what happens to all the snowbirds who head to Florida, they turn bad? I've heard stories. KILAUEA is a [Hawaiian tourist attraction] and, at 7 letters, it's not our standard Hawaiian crosswordese (LOA, KEA, UKE, LEI, ALOHA). A [Rugby scuffle] is a SCRUM—have you watched rugby in person? REESE gets a current pop-culture clue that I had no idea about—["The Terminator" man Kyle ___]. I've heard of NUEVO [___ Leon (Mexican state bordering Texas)]. [Oil production site?] is where oil paintings are made—the artist's ATELIER. [Operator's need] is a weird clue for BANDAGE—"operator" as in surgeon? I kinda don't think the surgeon handles the bandaging afterwards. [Like Bar-Ilan University] clues ISRAELI—if this school had an American campus, do you know how often we'd see ILAN in our crosswords?? [Rodeo rings?] are LASSOES and not, as I first thought, LARIATS.

Updated Thursday morning:

Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Me First!"—Janie's review

Take the personal pronoun "I," put it "first"—in front of four in-the-language phrases—and four new and very freshly-rendered phrases result. Complete the remainder of the puzzle with strong fill and you've got the makings of another fine Lempel opus. Let's look at the theme fill first.

17A. I + con artists = ICON ARTISTS [Some graphic designers?] This one is so good because the new phrase really exists. There are people who design icons and there are some 16,600 Google hits for "icon artists."
28A. I + ran out of gas = IRAN OUT OF GAS. Journalists have used this provocative headline, though you won't find lots of Google hits for it. This is the only one of the theme answers that starts with a verb phrase—a small BLEMISH—and in my heart of hearts, I wish Lynn had found a mate for it or another entry altogether. Or four entirely different kinds of base-phrases, because a consistent theme is just about a puzzle's best friend.
44A. I + deal breaker = IDEAL BREAKER [Surfer's dream wave?] Poetry, this one. Sure, you can find the phrase in electronics catalogs, but like the search for the perfect wave in the movie The Endless Summer, this is finer fodder for the imagination.
59A. I + rate-setter = IRATE SETTER [Furious dog?] Good luck finding one in this lot! Lots of talk of rate-setters in the last nine months or so, btw. These are the folks within the financial community whose job it is to talk to one another and then determine what a bank's interest rate should be.

Highlights of the non-theme fill include TIME FLIES, with its wistful plaint, ["The days just whiz by!"]; (CS debut) WORK LATE [Burn the midnight oil]; PEKING MAN, debuting in a major puzzle and clued as [Set of human fossils from China]; IT'S A BOY (and not IT'S A JOB as I kept foolishly insisting...) for [Words often heard after hard labor?]; REDHEAD [Lucille Ball, for one] (and [Country crooner] REBA [McEntire] for another!).

There's a bevy of bad-/odd-guy types: the ASS [Utter idiot], the HEELS [Cads], the FREAK [Ardent fan, slangily], the [Shakespearean scoundrel] IAGO, SATAN.........; and two athletic titans [..."Sportsman of the Century"] ALI and FLO-JO [...Olympic sprinter...], the late Florence Griffith Joyner, known not only for her speed, but for her distinctive style—in the fingerNAIL department especially. In the synchronicity department, I like that these two appear so soon after boxer TYSON (6/10) and track star GAIL Devers (6/8).

And wouldn't you love the 6/6 "Boston Accent" treatment for a reading of [Bobber in a harbor]? BUOY oh boy...

["Hasta mañana"], all—ADIOS!

James Sajdak's Los Angeles Times crossword

I spent the morning proofreading after sleeping in, so I'm late getting to the puzzles. Sajdak's theme is comic book "oofs": each theme entry begins with a hidden comic book sound effect you'll see after someone's been HIT ([Smite, and a hint to this puzzle's theme]).

POWERBALL WINNER is an [Overnight millionaire, probably].
[One-time East Asian barrier] is the BAMBOO CURTAIN.
One [Pacific swimmer] is the SOCKEYE SALMON.
The BOOMERANG EFFECT is an [Unintended upshot].

I like this theme—it was just sitting there quietly, waiting for me to notice it, when suddenly POW! BAM! SOCK! BOOM! it hit me.

Weirdest answer in the grid: LAY FOR, clued as [Wait to attack]. I can't say I've ever encountered this verb phrase.

There's more from PuzzleGirl at L.A. Crossword Confidential.

June 09, 2009

Wednesday, 6/10

BEQ 5:14
Onion 4:49
LAT 3:24
NYT 3:16
CS 6:01 (J—paper)/2:47 (A—Across Lite)

A link to J. Zou's "Ode to Shortz" arrived yesterday in Sergio Ximenes' cruciverb-L post. J. Zou, do not despair! We can help you! Try reading How to Conquer the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. (P.S. Sunday's really not so scary—it's like a Thursday on steroids. But have you looked at Saturday?)

Richard Silvestri's New York Times crossword

Isn't it a shame that in a puzzle with a FORTY-FOUR theme, 44-Across is the nonmellifluous TEABAG ([Earl Grey holder])? FORTY-FOUR is at 55-Across (were it at 44-Across, the theme clues would all contain spoilers), and it relates to the other four theme answers:

18A. [Element number 55-Across] is RUTHENIUM, lucky #44 on the periodic table. There. Now you've got one gimme for the Sporcle quiz in which you have to name all the elements.
23A. HANK AARON is the [Atlanta Brave who wore the number 55-Across].
35A. [President number 55-Across] is BARACK OBAMA.
49A. SUPER BOWL is clued with [Feb. 7, 2010, the date of this event's number 55-Across]. Awkward to have to phrase it that way, with the date first. Why does the clue begin with the date? Why not focus on the noun: [This event's number 55-Across is set for Feb. 7, 2010].

Answers I liked:

BACTERIA! They're the subject of [Study of Louis Pasteur].
MANILA is the [Capital founded by Spanish invaders, 1571]. My aunts-in-law live there. Hello, Tita Dolly and Tita Geny!
I've been on the BORMAN, [Apollo astronaut Frank] BORMAN. Indiana named an expressway after him that's just east of Chicago.
GUANACO is the South American [Cousin of a camel]. Aww, cute! The llama is a much closer cousin than the camel.

What didn't quite sit right with me:

CHINA SEA is clued as a [Sight from Taiwan]. Taiwan's between the East China Sea and the South China Sea. Which sea, pray tell, is the CHINA SEA?
ROSEATE is clued as [Promising]. Now, I know this adjective as it applies to birds, but I've not seen the metaphorical application of the word. Do y'all use this word? Would it enhance my vocabulary to use it that way, or would I just attract birders?
LINE A is the [Top of some forms]—the forms that label the lines with letters rather than with numbers or just with fields like "name" and "street address." The linea alba is the fibrous strip running down the middle of one's abdominal muscles. I don't suppose that's more Wednesday-friendly than LINE A?
[Start of the 13th century] is MCCI, or 1201. Nobody loves Roman numeral crossword answers, but at least this one doesn't have a pope/emperor year clue.
ACER is clued as a [Stellar server]. Nobody loves Maleska-type fill (well, except for the folks who decry the fun-ification of the NYT crossword under Will Shortz), but man, I wish we could go back to [Maple genus]. I just Googled Federer acer and found a bunch of web pages in which tennis legend Roger Federer and Acer brand computers are both mentioned. Hitting aces doesn't make you an ACER!

Updated Wednesday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Time Pieces"—Janie's review

This well-made puzzle does not deal with hour- glasses or wrist-watches or sundials, but with what those solid objects measure: time itself. The three theme phrases each contain a unit of time. The first two phrases are making their CS debuts, the third is appearing for the third time and, for the third time, in a puzzle of Martin's own making. Without wasting any more time, those theme phrases are:

17A. RIGHT THIS SECOND [Pronto]
31A. UP TO THE MINUTE [Very latest]
49A. THE ELEVENTH HOUR [Final moment]

Primarily because of the cluing, this was a far more straightforward solve than yesterday's, but no less enjoyable. Once again the tight theme fill is complemented by a fine array of non-theme entries.

Let's start with the musical mini-theme which gives us the brilliant and controversial [Conductor Herbert von] KARAJAN (appearing for the first time ever in a major puzzle]; ["William Tell" composer] Gioacchino ROSSINI; [TAJ] MAHAL (well, there's nothing in the clue to say it couldn't be...); and [John Lennon's lady] and wife and collaborator YOKO ONO—appearing with her whole name, thank-you-very-much, and doesn't it look great in the grid?

UP ANCHOR [Prepare to set sail] also looks good in the grid, but took me a while to parse. I had trouble seeing that the correct answer was a phrase and not a single word with PANCHO as its core...

Whether by plan or pure chance, PETTIEST [Most small-minded] and MOODIEST [Most temperamental] mirror each other in the grid—and both are CS firsts. Talk about two ways no one would aspire to be described... Still—fun to see 'em both in the puzzle. Also fun to see the pairing of [Boxer Mike] TYSON and FISTS [Boxers' weapons]—though I prefer not to have a close encounter with either! (Anyone see The Hangover? Iron Mike is almost adorable in his plot-critical cameo.)

Other colorful fill: SPECTRA [Rainbows], which is the plural of "spectrum" (of color); KERMIT; ANNOTATE; MUSTANGS, clued as [Sporty Ford models]. (Am reading Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass and detective Kinsey Milhone's current set of wheels is a 1970 Mustang.)

[Take the wrong way?] has nothing to do with misperception, but does remind us that it's not a good idea to STEAL; and [One with a supporting role?] is a less-than-direct way to clue LEG.

The one word I'd be happy never to encounter again in a puzzle is GREATEN [Become more important]. It's an archaic word also meaning to "increase the size of," and not a word we encounter in contemporary/everyday usage. Writing months after the Great Fire of London, Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary: "14 June 1667, Every thing concurred to greaten the fire." But that was then, and this is now.

Still, in a puzzle this good, this is also small potatoes!

And here's Orange again. Janie's right—nobody uses the word GREATEN any more. "Embiggen" is a far more cromulent word. How odd, though, to have a 70-word themed puzzle that falls in a Mondayish amount of time. All those 7's and 8's looked fearsome, but had easy CrosSynergy clues.

Donna Levin's Los Angeles Times crossword

My longer write-up of this puzzle is over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. A while back, Jim Horne of Wordplay asked what I thought about an e-mail he'd received from a woman who wanted more stereotypically female content in the NYT puzzle and bristled at the sports and automotive content that she felt was anathema to her. I hope she's also doing the L.A. Times crossword, because today's knitting theme would be right up her alley.

I'll agree that there's too damn much baseball in crosswords, but I don't know that knitting and other handicrafts are the solution—my XX chromosomes do not include a handicrafts gene.

Here's the theme:

20A. [Tingly feeling] is PINS AND NEEDLES. Ooh, I hate that.
33A. DYED IN THE WOOL means [Through and through].
42A. At the airport, the FLIGHT PATTERN is a [Control tower concern].
57A. [Directions appropriate for the activity suggested by the last words of 20-, 33- and 42-Across] are KNIT ONE, PURL ONE.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Bag Lunch"

Today's quip theme relays a joke: EVERY TIME YOU EAT / A STEAK, A / HIPPIE'S / HACKYSACK / GOES IN THE GUTTER. It's from comedian PATTON / OSWALT.

Assorted not-so-easy clues:

["___ Tahiti" (1962 James Mason comedy)] is the most out-there TIARA clue I've ever seen. Has anyone seen this movie?
A [Load-carrying animal] is the archaic word SUMPTER. Archaic!
[G squared?] is a MIL, a G being 1,000 and 1,000 squared being a million. I like this one.
EWOK is clued as a [Sci-fi creature whose language is based on the Chinese dialect Kalmyk]. I didn't know that, but I'll bet I can mildly impress my son by telling him this. You know what? It's probably in his Star Wars illustrated encyclopedia.
[Barrio hooligans] are CHOLOS. Did I learn this word from NYPD Blue or what?
I never heard of CHET [___ Helms, "Father" of San Francisco's "Summer of Love"].
THOR is the [Mjolnir-carrying god]. Wikipedia gives three other spellings—Mjǫllnir or Mjöllnir or Mjölner—but not this one. It's Thor's mighty hammer. I need to get me one of those.
The [Malayan isthmus] that connects the Malay Peninsula to mainland Asia is the KRA Isthmus, and Thailand and Myanmar share it. Is it just me, or has KRA been appearing in a surprising number of puzzles lately? I could swear this is the third or fourth time I've come across it in recent weeks.
OILSEED is pretty darned dry as fill even though [It's grown for lubricating purposes].
[Cavaradossi's love] is TOSCA. It was only recently that I found out that Tosca was a female character.
[City on the Vire]? The Vire?? That brownish, turbid waterway is not a crosswordese river. But ST. LO, which is about 1,500 years old and originally called Briovere after the river, is definitely crosswordese.

Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword

Smooth puzzle, Tyler. 1-Across is a cross-referenced theme answer—[Things at the beginning of 20-, 36-, and 54-Across]—so it looked like a rough start but then it wasn't. 20A is a [Setting for "The Real Housewives"], and I just read the Entertainment Weekly article about the best and worst reality shows. ORANGE COUNTY fit, while New Jersey, New York City, and Atlanta didn't. So 1-Across is...FRUITS or COLORS? CROSSWORD BLOGGERS won't fit there. Then 36A is [Electoral battleground, in modern parlance], or a PURPLE STATE. COLORS it is! I still needed lots of crossings for 54A, [Show on which Alfonso Ribeiro played Alfonso Spears]. He was on something before Fresh Prince? Yeah, it was SILVER SPOONS, which I never watched. Big deal, three COLORS—but wait, there's more! 67A is clued [What the first words of 20-, 36-, and 54-Across lack], and that's RHYMES. Lovely theme with a little surprise lurking at the bottom of the puzzle.

And now, 10 clues:

[Friend of Sheldon and Leonard, on "The Big Bang Theory"] is RAJ. My heart belongs to Raj from What's Happening!!. (Yes, that's a period after two exclamation points. So sue me.)
[Pro wrestler John who released a rap album] is CENA. Did you know this? And are you male?
The SOL was a [Former WNBA team from Miami]. Is that El Sol or La Sol?
SENTRA is a [Nissan brand whose name is not used in Japan]. You know what the VW Jetta is outside the U.S.? The Bora—and bora is a wind, just like the scirocco. What, no Volkswagen Föhn?
[Comedian Sean known for "The Man Song"] is unknown to me. MOREY? My heart belongs to Morey Amsterdam of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
The FRANC is a [Liechtensteiner's currency].
[Sinks it] in golf is equivalent to HOLES OUT.
[The forty in a forty: Abbr.] are OZS. Bring on the malt liquor!
[Internet gamer's complaint] is LAG. Yes! I am vexed by browser lag when I play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook.
MEAN STREETS is indeed a [Scorsese classic], and a terrific crossword answer to boot.
This list goes to eleven. Or thirteen. There's a goal-sport trio: OLE is the [Primera Liga cry] at a futbol game, and [Presents with a red card, perhaps] means EJECTS in soccer. [Like some hockey shots] means ON GOAL.

MGWCC #53

crossword 4:16
puzzle 0:12

oh hi. this week's episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "Doctor My Eyes," was a breezy solve with an easy but still nifty metapuzzle. let's look at the theme answers:

[#1 hit for Destiny's Child in 1999] is BILLS BILLS BILLS.
[#6 Huey Lewis & the News hit of 1984] is IF THIS IS IT.
[#9 Bon Jovi hit of 1989] is LIVING IN SIN. not LIVIN' ON A PRAYER, which wouldn't fit, and probably was a #1 hit anyway, and probably in an earlier year. (i'm too lazy to look it up.)
[Only Commodores hit without Lionel Richie] is NIGHT SHIFT.
[#1 country hit of 2005 for FAITH HILL] is MISSISSIPPI GIRL. okay, this is officially the only one of these songs i'd ever heard of. and of course, the only reason i'd heard of it was that it was a theme answer in a previous MGWCC, from six weeks ago. back then, the theme was single vowels. but that was then...

... and this is now. guess what? the more things change, the more they stay the same. these hit songs all contain no vowel other than I. so what's the answer? the contest instructions are straightforward: This week's contest answer is the grid entry that best describes this puzzle's five theme entries. i'm not sure exactly what the puzzle's title, "Doctor My Eyes," refers to (other than I's, homophonically), but surely the contest answer is ITUNES, or "I"-TUNES, clued at 47a as [Digital record store].

despite the fact that this was a pretty easy crossword, it still took me over 4 minutes, which is typical for a thursday time. why? well, part of it was certainly the fact that i'd never heard of four of the five theme answers. but there were also these knotty bits. [1990s Apple CEO Gil ___] is apparently AMELIO, and he's the only answer in the fill i'd absolutely never heard of. but there were some other knotty spots:

did you try MINI for [___ golf]? yeah, me too... but this time, it was DISC golf, which is like golf with frisbees. matt strikes again.
[Okapi, opossum, or ocelot] clues ANIMAL, simply enough. but i tried the more-specific MAMMAL. luckily, i knew that 43a, ["___ Adore" (Smashing Pumpkins song about a girl with a palindromic first name)], was AVA. that's the second track from their album adore... and also the second time matt has clued a not-all-that-famous song about a girl with a palindromic first name. weirdly, i knew them both.
[Word whose first letter is sometimes seen in parentheses] is (S)HE. fun clue, but not very easy to think through unless you have a crossing letter or two.
[Hank voices him] clues APU nahasapeemapetilon, voiced by hank azaria on the simpsons. unfortunately, azaria also voices dozens of other characters, including MOE szyslak (which is what i tried here first).

there are a couple of clunkers crossing in the southeast. [Almost a week into September, when written out], is NINE FIVE, as in 9/5. it crosses [Parking garage section, perhaps], which is A LEVEL. i would have been fine with this answer clued as a set of british exams, but this seemed arbitrary to me (though not as arbitrary as NINE FIVE).

my favorite clues:

[Where some people miss their marks: Abbr.] is GER, or germany. are there people there nostalgic for the deutschmark? surely yes, but in any event, this made me chuckle.
[1994 comedy whose promotional posters featured a huge question mark] is IT'S PAT, the SNL-spinoff movie with an ambiguously-gendered protagonist.

June 08, 2009

Tuesday, 6/9

Jonesin' 4:31
LAT 3:31
NYT 2:59
CS Forever... (J—paper)/4:30 (A—Across Lite)

Word nerd alert! Lexicographers Erin McKean and Grant Barrett, who've attended the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, are part of the team that's just launched Wordnik.com, which is sort of the next generation in dictionaries. It's online and feeds you up-to-the-minute information about a word—not just a dictionary definition but examples of how the word's being used now, Flickr photos that illustrate it, recent Twitter posts including the word, a chart showing how the word's frequency has changed, and so on.

I looked up Will Shortz's favorite word, ucalegon. There's no definition given, but the Twitter post made me laugh: nnelson415: A "Ucalegon" is a neighbor whose house is on fire. It took me an hour to remember this and call 911.

Steve Dobis's New York Times crossword

Those "word that can precede the starts of the theme answers" themes tend to be a little prosaic. One enhancement is to have both parts of the theme entries pair up with the unifying word. Another approach is to beef up the theme by sheer numbers, as Dobis does with this nine-piece theme:

39A. SHORT is the [Word that can precede the starts of the answers to the eight starred clues].
17A. HAIRSPRAY is a John Waters movie starring Divine that was remade into a [Movie starring a cross-dressing John Travolta]. My son does not have short hair, but that's not quite a phrase in and of itself. A shorthair, however, is a cat with short hair.
21A. [Big writing assignment] is a TERM PAPER. Short-term is a term...that's sort of short.
58A. CAKEWALKS are [Very easy tasks]. Shortcake is all right with fresh berries, but poundcake is better.
64A. The [Electric Slide, for one] is a LINE DANCE. The Short Line is one of the railroads in Monopoly.
4D. [Nonbinding vote] is a STRAW POLL. I'm not sure that "short straw" is a phrase when separated from the verb "draw/drew."
9D. STOPGAP means [Like a band-aid solution]. Shortstop is a position in baseball.
37D. [Heels-over-head feat] is a HANDSTAND. Shorthand is both a specific method of fast writing and a general term for referring to something simply.
44D. [Defeats mentally] clues OUTWITS. To short out is to short-circuit, electrically speaking.

I find myself wishing to take short walks, maybe have a short dance, do my best with my short wits.

Tougher words in the fill:

TUTEE is one of those words that purists may bristle at. (I once had to leave "mentee" in situ when editing. It pained me.) It's [One getting one-on-one help].
[Carillon sounds] are the peals of church bells. Are those DONGS? My husband can think of a better clue for that word, he says.
[Is on deck] clues GOES NEXT. "Is up next" sounds better to me, but the answer won't duplicate the "is" in the clue.
[Temperance supporters] back in the day were called DRYS, as in the plural of "dry." DRIES is also an accepted plural, but that's more likely to get clued as a verb.
A clue like [Lone Star State sch.] as often as not is UTEP, the University of Texas at El Paso.
[Dis and dis] are DESE ("this" and "these" in Brooklynese).
[Rack purchases, briefly] are MAGS, as in magazines on the magazine rack.
Do you know where [Close watchers] are EYERS? Pretty much only in crosswords. I can't think of a plausible sentence in which EYERS is used. "The factory hired a team of eyers to handle quality inspection"? No.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Talking Heads"—Janie's review

For those solvers who like their themed puzzles to be served up with a heavy helping of wordplay, I think you'll find that this to be one of the GEMS of the genre. The titled "talking heads" are... titled heads. Of state. So our four theme entries conclude with a SHAH, a RAJAH, a KING and a CZAR. But those four exalted ones anchor longer puns as well, clued (and I know you'll be shocked to hear this...) alliteratively. Let's take a look:

17A. [Supportive sovereign?] BOOSTER SHAH—a play-on-words of booster shot. Have you had yours?
27A. [Cheerful chief?] JOLLY RAJAH—kind of a "Boston Accent" approach to Jolly Roger. (Do I hear a "yo-ho" anywhere?)
42A. [Bang-up boss?] PEACHY KING—as opposed to peachy keen. We get a cheeky little cluster of "-y" words here, too: PEACHY..., ROCKY, INKY, GUSHY and JETTY.
55A. [Resplendent ruler] SHINING CZAR—and not shining star.

My major complaint about the puzzle is that it took me too durned long to get goin' (and finish...)—and the critical cross of KEEP and KIGALI eluded me altogether. I knew neither the capital of Rwanda I'm embarrassed to say, nor had I ever heard of the KISS principle (which, as you may have guessed, has nothing to do with these guys). Aaaarrrggghhh. Well, now I know (and hope I won't quickly forget). That said, I got nuthin' but good to say of it.

The grid gives us triple columns of 6s and 8s at either side, pairs of 6s stacked at center and accommodates four 7s as well. Better yet is the fill, which is fresh 'n' lively 'n' well-balanced. REPRISES and PAPERJAM are making first-time major-puzzle appearances; and DIRECTV and LESS THAN, CS debuts. BANZAI, UTOPIA, ADAM'S ALE [Water, wittily], BLACK BOX (resonating sadly indeed with the recent Air France disaster), ROSETTA—all terrific stuff. We also get a spicy mini-theme with EROTIC, SEX and OOLALA; and a pair of names with decidely G-rated "riddle" clues: ROB [Good name for a thief?] and OTTO [Good name for a mechanic?] (as in "Otto, the auto mechanic").

There are some other strong riddle-like clues that bear mentioning: [Punchless punch] is ADE; [Queens diamond that wasn't forever], SHEA (stadium...); [Perfect place that's "not a place"], UTOPIA; [London home of Constables and Sargents, with "the"], TATE (Gallery—and not YARD [as in "Scotland"]); [Shocking color], PINK; [Ant. ant.], SYN (i.e., "antonym"'s antonym [opposite], or "synonym"...just to be very literal...).

And take a look at these clue pairs, as they too, with their repeated words, are wordplay-packed:

25 and 26A. [Bottom-of-the-barrel] and [Bottom] for WORST (not DREGS) and SEAT;
35 and 36A. [Salt Lake City cager] and [Salt (away)] for UTE and PUT;
18 and 22D. [Kicker's prop] and [Kicker's target] for TEE and GOAL; and the best—
53 and 55D. [Sound of a break] and [Sound barrier breaker] for SNAP and SST.

Other strong clue/fill combos include:

[Foursome followed by Acts] for GOSPELS. This clue immediately put me in mind of Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts.
[Modern dish purveyor] for DIRECTV—as in "tv-reception dish" and not some contemporary kitchen accoutrement (or "kitchen porn" as a colleague calls such items as ice-cream makers and multiple-multiple-speed blenders).
[Once-worshipped white wader] for IBIS—and a great tongue-twister, too!
[Wail wildly] for SOB and [Squeaky shriek] for EEK.

If I haven't mentioned your fave(s), do tell. In the meantime, that's all she WROTE!

Joan Buell's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme here is people of some note whose last names are European capital cities:

17A. HAROLD ROME is the ["Fanny" composer and lyricist]. Who? Given that much of my musical theater knowledge comes from crosswords and given that there are much more accessible ways to clue ROME than by citing this guy, I've enver heard of him.
26A. JEREMY LONDON is a ["Mallrats" costar]. Looking at his IMDb filmography, it's possible I've seen him on a couple TV shows but don't remember. His Wikipedia bio reports that he was stoned while making Mallrats and couldn't memorize his lines, and thus has never appeared in another Kevin Smith movie.
43A. IRVING BERLIN! He's honest-to-goodness famous! He's the ["God Bless America" writer], among other accomplishments.
58A. JERRY PARIS apparently was a [Frequent "Happy Days" director], but I gotta say, if directing '70s TV episodes is your most salient claim to fame, maybe you're not quite a big enough deal to be a theme entry in a crossword. Messrs. London and Rome, meet Mr. Paris.

MR. GOODBAR, the [Hershey's product], may not be a top-selling candy bar (kept alive, no doubt, solely by its inclusion in the bags of Hershey milk chocolate bars, Special Dark, Krackel, and Mr. Goodbar), but it's a great crossword answer. Bonus points for echoes of Looking for Mr. Goodbar. I also like the MINIMART, clued as [Many a gas station store].

I had trouble tuning into Buell's wavelength on the clues. How about you? Did it take you as long as the typical Wednesday/Thursday LAT?

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Enjoy the Silence"

Matt made the theme entries by adding a "SH" to familiar phrases:

17A. [Where the siblings from "Beverly Hills, 90210" shop?] is WALSH-MART. That's Brenda and...crap, what's his name? The one played by Jason Priestley? Brenda and Brandon Walsh, who would have been more likely to visit Wal-Mart before leaving Minnesota for 90210.
23A. The Inca empire turns into IN-CASH EMPIRE, a [Kingdom that doesn't accept credit cards?].
36A. [Barn-raising and butter-churning all out of whack?] clues AMISH GOING CRAZY.
44A. [Part of being red in the face?] is a FLUSH SYMPTOM. I guess "flush symptoms" might include the burning sensation that goes with the flush.
56A. POLISH SCI is a [Class with a shoe-shining lab?]. Talk about your vocational education.

It's a solid theme, with a terrific batch of phrases gathered together before the SH's were inserted.

I had no idea that GABE was the name of [Tycho's friend, in the webcomic "Penny Arcade"], nor that the comic had a Tycho in it. GABE Kaplan remains my go-to reference in the famous Gabes category. These are a few of my favorite things in this puzzle:

[Three-way, e.g.] clues a light BULB. Was your mind in the gutter? Come clean.
[Hidden meat?] is SALAMI, as in "play hide-the-salami." If your mind is not in the gutter, you'll need to crass yourself up big time.
[Sound necessary to get "high"?] is the LONG I sound in the word "high."
DAMNED is the [Status if you do or don't?].
[Ready to do it] returns to the gutter for HORNY.
[Vampire-like female] is the LAMIA. Read up on her here. Eating children! Seducing young men! And playing a role in the new Sam Raimi horror movie, Drag Me to Hell, that I've heard such raves about.

Matt's kids are just wee toddlers, and yet he already knows that STEVE was the [First "Blue's Clues" host]. I cannot accept Joe as the host. I also have issues with the cartoon Barnyard, a spinoff of a movie. The UDDER is indeed a [Feature mistakenly added to some male cartoon bovines]. Yes, the boy cows in Barnyard all have udders. It wouldn't be so terrible if they were just for show, but they use them. Can anything be more horrifying than the sight of a cartoon bull firing gushes of white liquid from his nether regions? Seriously. And this show is for children!

Speaking of kids, my son is 9 but we haven't played Go Fish yet. (THREES are a [Go Fish request, perhaps].) Must remedy that! The answer to [Montana handle] is HANNAH, as in the Disney TV character Hannah Montana. I'm so proud of myself that I didn't get that without all six crossings. I was thinking of Joe Montana and the state, but Hannah Montana has not found a way into my head.

June 07, 2009

Monday, 6/8

BEQ 4:35
NYT 2:35
LAT 2:35
CS 6:69 (J—paper)

Randy Sowell's New York Times crossword

Boy, how dim do you have to be to miss the theme in this one? I finished Randy Sowell's puzzle and then it took me a minute to see what unified the theme entries:

21A. [Thick growth of trees] clues a DENSE FOREST.
49A. [It's more than 90 degrees] refers to an OBTUSE ANGLE in geometry.
3D. A [Crockpot], not to be confused with a crackpot, is a SLOW COOKER.
29D. And a DUMB WAITER is a [Tray transporter] of sorts.

Each term begins with a synonym for "stupid." A DENSE FOREST is more of an adjective+noun phrase than a stand-alone phrase or concept, while each of the other three theme entries does feel like "a thing" unto itself. It's still an easy puzzle perfectly calibrated to a Monday, though.

There are some crosswordese people on the rampage here. BARA is clued as [Theda of early films], and SILENT is cross-referenced to her via the clue [Like 33-Down's films]. [Writer ___ Stanley Gardner]'s first name is ERLE. He wrote the Perry Mason stories, and [Perry Mason's secretary ___ Street] is named DELLA. Other habitués of the grid include [Despot Idi] AMIN; [Designer Cassini], or OLEG; [Author Ayn], or RAND; OPIE, ["The Andy Griffith Show" boy] played by Ron Howard; and [1997 Indy 500 winner ___ Luyendyk], or ARIE.

Updated Monday morning:

Bruce Venzke & Stella Daily's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Political Flip-Flop"—Janie's review

This puzzle did lots to ENDEAR itself to me. For starters, there's a pithy, 4-part quip, each in a 14-letter SEG(ment) [Part of a line (abbr.)] that is "political" in nature and which does a neat "flip-flop."

17A. UNDER DEMOCRACY
24A. YOUR VOTE COUNTS
46A. UNDER FEUDALISM
52A. YOUR COUNT VOTES

I don't know who said it first, but a little Googling shows that there's a guy out there who uses this quip as part of his posting signature...

There's also a lot of solid fill and cluing in here to keep things lively:

From the world of musical theatre, (CS debut) ADO ANNIE ["Oklahoma!" flirt] (she's the one who "cain't say 'no'") and OPERETTAS [Gilbert and Sullivan's oeuvre]. I'm not sure if anyone in The Pirates of Penzance ever said YO-HO, but those are [Pirate syllables].
REGROUP [Respond to a setback, in a way]. This immediately made me think of GM. Have you seen their latest ad? They're talkin' the talk; sure do hope they can walk the walk... It'll certainly take a HEROIC effort!
[They're hardly revolutionary] gives us (major-puzzle first) OLD GUARD. Made life difficult for myself in the SW by entering an S in anticipation of a conventional plural. Nupe. And while they can (of necessity) be the "forward-thinkers," that's not always a quality I associate with SUITS [Corporate bigwigs]...
I'm wondering how many of our cities' SKIDROWS (in a major-puzzle bow) are populated with SOULS who've had too much HARD CIDER. Or is Thunderbird still the quaff they CRAVE? A SIDE TRIP down to the Bowery might be in order for some first-hand investigation. (Did you know that "souls" was the word used in Tsarist Russia for "slaves"? Rather a chilling euphemism, no?)

While I didn't have tremendous difficulty solving this one, neither was it a SNAP. Here's what held me up:

Entering BELT for SASH; OSAKA for OTARU; I WANT for I DARE.
Never remembering (in a timely way...) our friend FARAD, that [Unit of Capacitance]; or that the [Drug company dept.] isn't RESCH but R AND D (Resch. & Dvlpmt...)
Blanking on the inspirational GAIL [Devers on the track]; also RIC Ocasek and NENA—though all fell into place by virtue of the crosses.

I'll put in a plug for "GRAN Torino," the [2008 Clint Eastwood film] which was just released on DVD. It says lots about culture clash in contemporary America and has more to recommend it than not. Imoo.

And though it appears often enough in puzzles, the sight in the grid of UCLAN [Certain West Coast scholar (abbr.)] still makes me think of these guys...

Finally, enjoyed LORD [Manor's ruler] as bonus fill, tying in nicely as it does to the "feudal" component of the quip.

David Poole's Los Angeles Times crossword

"Lock, stock, and barrel" means everything, the WHOLE ENCHILADA, and the three preceding theme entries end with those words:

20A. [Auto door safety feature] is a CHILD-PROOF LOCK.
34A. PENNY STOCK is a [Cheap per-share buy].
42A. [Brewery container] is a BEER BARREL.

This puzzle's a good Monday introduction to crosswords for newer solvers, as it includes a number of words that they'll see over and over in other crosswords but not so often in daily life. FETES are [Big parties] (the crossword is also fond of GALAS). [Bird on some Australian coins] is the large EMU. TSETSES are the [Scary African flies] that transmit sleeping sickness. ARIE is three-quarters vowels, so it's handy in a crossword—here it's [R&B singer India.___] ARIE, but it was a race car driver in the NYT crossword. ATRAS are [Gillette Trac II successors]—if the clue is about brand-name razors, the answer will surely involve ATRA or TRAC. To ABET is to [Help with a heist]. ASTIR, or [Up and about], is one of many A-words (AFOOT, APACE, ABED) you'll see in crosswords. [Pigpens] are STIES; STIES and STY are regular visitors to the crossword. OPELS are [Autobahn autos]; until very recently, General Motors owned OPEL. To AVER is to [Affirm confidently]; to assert openly is to AVOW, and I still usually don't know which of those answers a clue is asking for.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"

I like this "Themeless Monday" kick Brendan's been on—it breaks up the easy-puzzle monotony that normally blankets Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Which is not to say that every easy themed puzzle is dull, but they are easy.

Favorite fill and things that made me grumble:

[Spots to get gambas or pulpo] clues TAPA BARS. Here in Chicago, we call 'em tapas bars—a much more common label than the singular "tapa" establishment.
JETSAM? [It's tossed away]. JETSAM is deliberately jettisoned, or thrown overboard; flotsam is floating wreckage. I love those -sam words.
THE DEFENSES RESTS is a great phrase filled with E's. It's a [Case conclusion].
I like the clue [Refrain from kindergarten?] for EIEIO. The double meaning of "refrain" as the abstaining verb and the singing noun lends itself to tricky clues. Remember Manny Nosowsky's [Refrain from piracy]? That one was YO HO HO.
Two short names rang absolutely no bells for me. There's TITO ["___ the Builder" (2008 political pawn)] and then there's ARAS [Baskauskas ("Survivor: Exile Island" winner)].
[Message from the heart?] is the "BE MINE" on a candy heart.
ANI DIFRANCO gets promoted to full-name treatment in the grid.
GUM RESIN is a [Sticky plant exudation]. And it crosses the TINAMOU, a [Ratite bird that lays glossy colored eggs]. Neither answer is the sort that lends pizzazz to a crossword, but with this amount of white space in the grid, you're going to have some tough or unfamiliar answers. Did you notice that the grid has diagonal symmetry? And a really low word count of 62? Brendan reports that he strove to make an asymmetrical, wide-open themeless puzzle along the lines of Frank Longo's cranium crushers. Alas, he did not go with crusher-level clues, which could've been fun. For some of us, anyway. With the non-crushing clues, the puzzle settled in at Friday NYT level, but with some Saturday-grade tough fill.

June 06, 2009

Sunday, 6/7

NYT 11:26
BG 7:55
PI 7:50
LAT 7:20
CS 3:30

Jeremy Newton's New York Times crossword, "Shifty Business"

I'm pressed for time, as I have 6:00 dinner plans involving IHOP. The evening meal at IHOP always puts me in a quandary: breakfast for dinner or dinner for dinner? If only they still sold the corn cakes that I loved so.

Jeremy Newton's theme is, I believe, gears that might be found in a car. Now, my gearshift has park, reverse, drive, and neutral, with a couple more "you really need to bother with this?" options off to the side. My car doesn't advertise first, second, third, fourth, or fifth gear—but those are rebus entries in this puzzle, along with reverse and neutral, but no ordinary drive. It's quite possible that car/crossword buffs will be knocked out by the locations of the rebus squares. Are those circled rebus squares laid out like they are in the sort of car that goes to fifth gear? I have no idea. It is hard to marvel at something if you don't know whether it's marvelable.

Without further ado, the theme entries (which can be entered in the puzzle most quickly by just using the first letter of the rebused word):

33A/5D. FIRST: [Teacher's question at the start of show-and-tell] is WHO'S {FIRST}? [Witnessed] clues SEEN {FIRST}HAND.
35A/10D. THIRD: [Anticipate heading home] is GO TO {THIRD} BASE, and [Finish last on "Jeopardy!"] is COME {THIRD}.
38A/15D. FIFTH: [Endings for Shakespeare] are {FIFTH} ACTS. SAKS {FIFTH} AVENUE is clued with the trivia, [It opened in Manhattan in 1924].
67A/48D. NEUTRAL, right in the middle: [Doesn't care either way] clues TAKES A {NEUTRAL} STANCE. [It freshens the air] points you towards an ODOR {NEUTRAL}IZER.
98A/67D. SECOND: [At once] means right THIS {SECOND}, and a THIRTY-{SECOND} SPOT is a [TV advertising staple.
101A/102D. FOURTH: [Some summer feasts in the U.S.] are JULY {FOURTH} BBQS. [Hardly commendable] clues {FOURTH}-RATE.
103A/84D. REVERSE: This spot held me up for a solid minute. BACK side and BACK play? FLIP side and FLIP play? Nope, it's the gear REVERSE. [Where to sign a credit card, e.g.] is the {REVERSE} SIDE, and to [Trick the defensive line, maybe] is to RUN A {REVERSE} PLAY. The latter clue sounds footballish, but I don't know what a reverse play is at all.

A handful of non-theme clues before I sign off:

[Direction from Hannover to Berlin] is OST, German for "east." Great twist on the usual blah NNE, SSE, etc., direction answers.
[Practice requirement?] is the BAR EXAM you must pass in order to practice law.
Who knew there's a SABINE that's a [Texas/Louisiana border river]?
Right below SABINE is HYMNAL with a clever clue: [It's bound to be used in a service], as in hardbound book, church service.
[Where an M.I.A. might be] is a P.O.W. CAMP. If any of you have got M.I.A. loved ones who never made it back from a war zone, you have my sympathy.
"OK, THEN" and ["Alrighty"] are both things I say. Perfect pairing of clue and answer.
[___ Reuters, media giant] clues THOMSON, which my husband used to work for about a decade ago. Wow, does publishing pay small salaries to a lot of people.
I have seen many a [Donation receptacle], but I've never called anything an ALMS BOX.
[Place for matches at home] is the GAME ROOM. I nearly attempted to coin FIRE ROOM.
The N.Y. TIMES is a [Big Apple daily, in brief].

Updated Sunday morning:

Yikes, I've blown most of the morning and have four puzzles to blog about? Yeah, I'll be giving short shrift to them all.

Mike Peluso's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword, "Taking the Bite out of the Dog"

The dog says "GR" and that's what's been taken out of assorted phrases to create each theme entry. I liked this theme a lot, particularly these answers:

23A. OVER CLEVELAND is president Grover C. minus his GR. [About to land in northern Ohio?] is the clue.
106A. I know the CIA's precursor, the OSS, from crosswords. So I liked OSS NEGLIGENCE, or [WWII intelligence oversights?], for rewarding that crossword knowledge.
37D. APES OF WRATH are [Angry gorillas?].
76A. EEK MYTHOLOGY is clued as [Traditional ghost stories?].

Highlights in the nonthematic parts of the puzzle:

85A. "GET A ROOM!" is a [Facetious suggestion to public kissers]. Terrific, colorful answer!
88A. RONDO is clued with [Mozart's "___ Alla Turca"]. You know how I know that music? From the Baby Mozart video when my son was wee. Here's a 6-year-old girl playing it on piano.
91A. I should read "Jabberwocky" sometime, shouldn't I? TOVES are [Badgers, in "Jabberwocky"].
104A. A [Qom inhabitant] is an IRANIAN. Not an IRANI! Yay for correctness!
42D. Crosswordese stalwart STELE gets a trivia clue I haven't seen: ["O Rare Ben Johnson" is engraved (in error) on one]. Should be spelled "Jonson," hence the error.
44D. [Brother in a hood?] is a FRIAR. Hah!
84D. HOLSTERS are [Piece keepers?].

I do want to take issue with 60A. [Dentist's number?] as a clue for OPIATE. Dentists typically use local anesthetics (which are not OPIATEs) to numb you up. For more involved procedures, you might be sedated, but I don't think that involves OPIATEs either. Now, if they prescribe Vicodin for postop pain, that's an OPIATE, but that's for pain relief, not for numbing.

(PuzzleGirl wrote about this puzzle at L.A. Crossword Confidential too.)

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "Woof Gang"

The theme is "Merl's grab bag of dog-breed puns":

22A. [Exercised one's doggies?] clues WORKED OUT THE PUGS. That's a pun on what, exactly? Oh, I see: "worked out the bugs."
46A. [Doggie races?] might be DACHSHUND DASHES. This must bea pun on the "dots and dashes" of Morse code, but that doesn't feel ike an "in the language" basis for wordplay, does it?
73A. LOX AND BEAGLES, playing on "lox and bagels," could be a [Name for a doggie deli?]. Would this be a doggie deli for cannibalistic dogs? "Food & Customers" is not the customary way to name a deli. "Pizza and Boys," "Ribs and Women"—see, that wouldn't work at all.
97A. Bernard Malamud ponies up BERNARD MALAMUTE as a [Doggie author?]. This one's my favorite because we read a Malamud novel in high-school English.
122A. AFGHAN WILL TRAVEL plays on "have gun, will travel." The clue is [Ad placed by a restless doggie?].
32D. "A holy terror" turns into A HOLY TERRIER, or [What the priest's doggie was?].
43D. Melancholy, baby? That generates MELANDCOLLIE, or MEL Brooks AND a COLLIE—[Photo of Brooks with his doggie?].

The fill included some unfamilar names. 4D is [Entertainer Theodore] BIKEL, which rings a faint bell. 94D is ["The Group" co-star Joanna] PETTET not only doesn't ring a bell, it denies that bells ever existed. Same with 113D CRAIN, [Actress Jeanne of "A Letter to Three Wives"]—and both PETTET and CRAIN cross the [Grandpa Walton portrayer], Will GEER. If you don't know him, you're kinda stuck Googling these people, aren't you? There's also 55D AKBAR, an [Indian emperor of 1600], crossing OLEA, the [Olive genus].

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe puzzle, "Rhyming Game" (delayed Across Lite edition)

Each theme entry takes a two-part, four-syllable rhyme and adds another word that rhymes, creating made-up phrases that are clued accordingly. For example, [Research into bores?] might be FUDDY-DUDDY STUDY, and [Not much of a hat?] is a TEENY-WEENY BEANIE.

In the fill, I learned a new word: [Nuque] is the French word for the NAPE of the neck. There's a cognate in the anatomical term nuchal, which means "of or relating to the nape of the neck." Now, that doesn't explain why an unfamiliar French word is used to clue an English word in this puzzle.

I filled in ALIEN for [Little green man] before I made it over to [Men in green], so I still had Martians on the mind and needed all the crossings to get CELTS. [Supersonics site] is an anachronism now—the SEATTLE Sonics moved to Oklahoma and were renamed the Thunder.

Rich Norris's themeless CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"

Easy clues overall meant that I finished this puzzle quickly, which is a shame because so many of the 9- and 10-letter answers are so fabulous—the puzzle has just the sort of fill you hope to find in a themeless puzzle. Among the best:

FLASH DRIVE is a [Compact storage device]. I like the tech answers that didn't even exist a few short years ago, but now are common parlance.
"EASY DOES IT" is a [Reminder to stay cool] and not stress out too much.
The DUST JACKET of a book is a [Synopsis site].
DAYS OF YORE were [Knight times]. I like the day/(k)night echo.
I love MENTAL NOTE. [It's not written down].
In your car, a [Dash alert] is an IDIOT LIGHT, an indicator light that tells you when something is amiss or empty.
A [Bit of reality?] is a great clue for DOSE—as in "the newspaper delivered a dose of reality."
DAISY DUCK is a [Love interest of Gladstone Gander]. Now, is he a duck or a goose?
STAY TUNED is an exhortation to ["Keep it where it is"], "it" being the TV channel setting.

June 05, 2009

Saturday, 6/6

NYT 5:00
LAT 4:57
Newsday endless
CS 6:55 (J—paper)

Doug Peterson's New York Times crossword

Oho! Doug Peterson is busting out all over—you'll be seeing his byline on the L.A. Times puzzle too, and I warmly recommend both of these themelesses. The NYT one is s 72-worder with three and a half fantastic 15-letter answers. I gotta dock half a fantasticness unit for the colorful baseball term I've never heard of, but the other three 15's are beauts:

15A. [This and Sputnik 1 were launched on the same day]...hmm, did the U.S. space program get rolling at the same time as the Soviet Union's? Nope. What launched was the TV show LEAVE IT TO BEAVER. Great answer, great clue. Quite possibly my favorite clue this year.
17A. SEEING EYE SINGLE is a [Soft ground ball that finds its way between infielders]. Not a phrase I've encountered before.
59A. The [Nitty-gritty] is the MEAT AND POTATOES of something. The MEAT AND POTATOES of this puzzle is rock-solid fill, cool long answers (like this one), some fun clues, and a soupçon of Scrabbly action.
63A. [Determined one in a kid's song] is the ITSY-BITSY SPIDER, who climbs up the waterspout, is washed out, and climbs back up in a cheerful version of Sisyphean hell.

Let us take a gander at the Scrabbly pieces of this puzzle. The Q answres double-dip in the Scrabble pond—POP QUIZ is a [Classroom groan elicitor], while QUIXOTIC means [Not at all practical]. The QUIZ's Z is also in DOZY, which is clued as [On the way out?], and QUIXOTIC's X is shared by [Swim cap material] LATEX. There's another Z in ZLOTYS, which has an awesome clue: [Poles work for them]. Did you think of magnets here? Me, too. PENZANCE is a [Cornwall resort port], home of fictional pirates if not real ones.

Did you know that CCI, or 201, was the [Year the emperor Decius was born]? Me, too! (Just kidding.) My favorite clues and answers in the rest of this puzzle include these ones:

1A. AL CAPP was the [Creator of Stupefyin' Jones], which would be a great baby name. Stupefyin' Reynaldo! Does that sound like a offensive lineman or what? You'd be TROUNCED ([Mopped the floor with]) by him.
21A. [Sticker by a hospital bed?] is not a medical instrument but the NURSE who wields the needle. The nurse might also use STYLETS, which have medical applications as well as being [Nematodes' piercing mouthparts]. Bleah.
41A. I had no idea that a HADRON was a [Subatomic particle in a collider]. What of this Hadron Collider? I figured Hadron was a person or place it was being named after. D'oh.
65A. PECANS are one sort of [Ice cream shop supply]. Yum, pecans.
2D. LEER is a [Satyric expression], as in the expression of a lecherous satyr and not as in satire.
5D and 11D are two-word phrases that feel quite natural but don't show up in crosswords much. PENT UP means [Kept inside], as in feelings or demand. To [Wish to join] is to WANT IN.
29D. CHUGS means [Downs without a break]. When I was a kid, I could chug 16 oz. of water without stopping. Turned out that was good practice for college.
37D. I've seen the Isthmus of Kra in a couple recent puzzles, and I rather thought it was Malaysian but THAI fit for [Resident near the Isthmus of Kra], 4 letters. I like world geography learning more when it doesn't hinge on 4-letter rivers or little-known ports.
50D. [Main call] is AHOY, as in a call aboard a ship sailing on the bounding main.
54D. [Cutting-edge set]...ooh, I know, must be a word for a brand of knives. Guess again! It's an HDTV set. I'm glad to know my 1.5-year-old TV remains on the cutting edge.
62D. [Shortening in recipes] isn't about vegetable shortening, it's about abbreviations. Specifically TSP, short for teaspoon.

Tougher stuff, for me:

32A. [Killer ___ (green-skinned "Batman" villain)] is Killer CROC. Surely the inspiration for those woeful rubber shoes called Crocs.
40A. [Rice-Eccles Stadium athlete] is a UTE. Thinking of Rice University, I tried OWL here first.
1D. [Therewithal] is an archaic word meaning "besides; together with that." It clues ALSO.
26D. I wanted an English place name for [Edward IV's birthplace], but he came from ROUEN.

Updated Saturday morning:

Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Boston Accent"—Janie's review

Before I knew exactly how the theme of yesterday's "Across Beantown" puzzle was going to play out, I thought it might have to do with the city for which "Beantown" is the nickname: Boston. Today we really do get Boston—or rather, we get the sound of the city, as in "I pocked my cah in the Hahvahd Yahd." Like other constructors before him who have used this gimmick (and no doubt like many who will follow...), Randy has created a puzzle with phrases and names that swap out one telling sound for another—in this case, "ark" for "ock"—with some highly successful (and highly amusing) results. In this way:

"Mark Twain" becomes MOCK TWAIN at 17A, and the twist is that the new phrase now means [Make fun of Shania].
"Loan shark"? Now LOAN SHOCK, 25A for [Bad reaction to a very high interest rate?] Going to a loan shark? Then be prepared for...
"Afraid of the dark" goes in a new direction now as AFRAID OF THE DOCK, 38A [Scared to go fishing off a pier?] Silly and funny—and probably something any supplier to these guys should not be.
"Spark plug" gets a completely new life as SPOCK PLUG, 50A [Promo by the author of "Baby and Child Care"?] That's Dr. Benjamin Spock and not this guy—although it did amuse me to see ["Star TREK"] in such close proximity to SPOCK PLUG in the grid.
"Clark Kent" brilliantly turns on himself to CLOCK KENT, 61A [Knock out Superman?]. I mean really—picture it!

As I mentioned, "Boston Accent" puzzles have been appearing for years. Under those circumstances it's even more impressive that four of the five theme phrases are appearing for the first time in a major puzzle and AFRAID OF THE DOCK is making its first CS showing.

Elsewhere in the puzzle, I love how (CS debut) ROCK OPERA cuts a swath through TORI, IROC and MOCK...; and how we get a mini-math theme (overlapping and) running from top to bottom with ONE-THIRD [Ratio of a foot to a yard] and (CS debut) COTANGENT [Adjacent-over-opposite in right angles].

We also get a quintet of famed (if not all equally talented or deservedly famous...) females by way of their first names: ISAK (Dinesen), SONIA (Braga), TAMA (Janowitz), ENYA (yes-she-has-a-last-name Brennan), and TORI ([Spelling in Hollywood]).

Fave non-theme clue: [Site of many Spanish hangings] for EL PRADO. I let myself get completely misdirected by this one and was trying to come up with something Inquisition-related. Wrong.

And some words that I simply loved seeing in the grid—for their own sakes: DORIC, SWANK, PATIO, ICKIER, WOWS. And FOIST. Maybe we'll see this clued as [Initial ordinal] in a puzzle called "Brooklyn Accent"...

TADA!

Doug Peterson's Los Angeles Times crossword

Well, I slept in until 9 this morning and need to get on with my day, so I will mostly plagiarize from L.A. Crossword Confidential post. I really enjoyed this puzzle, which took me three seconds less time than Doug's NYT puzzle. The two triple-stacks of 15's were terrific, and 8 of each stack's 15 crossings were 6- to 8-letter words. That makes for a much livelier solve than having a tremendous expanse of 3's and 4's, doesn't it? The fill was smooth, workable, and familiar, except for those three "huh?" answers in the southwest corner, where I had to work, work, work the crossings to assemble those answers:

30D. [Highest rank in sumo] IS YOKOZUNA. Do you know this word? I sure didn't.
31D. ["The __ of Confucius"] clues ANALECTS. Hmm? Analects (or analecta) are "a collection of short literary or philosophical extracts." Is it too late to call this blog "Analects About the L.A. Times Crossword Puzzle"?
33D. [Patron saint of astronomers] is DOMINIC. I know there was a Dominic West on The Wire, and Dominic Monaghan played Charlie on Lost and Meriadoc Brandybuck in Lord of the Rings. Turns out this St. DOMINIC is the one the Dominican order is named after.

And here are the six terrific 15's:

1A. [Winner of 49 Pulitzer Prizes] is the ASSOCIATED PRESS. Did you notice that THENEWYORKTIMES is also 15 letters long?
16A. [Diner order] is a SPANISH OMELETTE. Does anyone prepare Spanish or Denver omelets (the spelling I prefer) at home. or do you just order them at restaurants?
17A. [200-mph swooper] is the PEREGRINE FALCON. I know darn well that trains do not swoop, but I still wanted this to be some sort of bullet train, like the ones in Europe and Japan. Wow! A 200-mph bird? If you are a mouse hoping to avoid being the falcon's next meal, I'm sorry, but you don't stand a chance.
46A. [Two-generation groups] clues NUCLEAR FAMILIES. Some of them tend to have atomic interpersonal relationships, but that has nothing to do with the phrase's origin, I'm sure.
50A. [State collections] make up INTERNAL REVENUE. I just got my IRS refund this week. That money could buy a lot of crossword books...if only I weren't still trying to work through a backlog of puzzle publications.
51A. [Some decks] are CASSETTE PLAYERS. Tape decks! Not boat decks.

Thanks for the double-dip cruciverbal treat, Doug!

S.N./Stan Newman's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

Most constructors are happiest when solvers may have to struggle with their puzzles, but can eventually finish. Stan Newman, it is rumored, lives to frustrate solvers and is happiest when someone can't finish his puzzle. Well, congrats, Stan, you got me on this one. But I'll explain why I didn't like the experience and we'll call it even. (Here's the solution.)

First problem: The grid's pretty much lopped into two separate puzzles. Only squares 24 and 44 connect the two halves of the grid, so all you're getting to lead you into the other half is a single D or S. Second problem: The southwest corner is anchored by [Steel product], which clues DROP SAFE. Say what? Apparently a drop safe is a safe that a business can drop money into and avoid having said money stolen throughout the day. Never heard of it—I think many convenience stores use these, but their "employees can't open safe" signs don't call 'em "drop safes." Then there are all sorts of vague clues. [Line of descent] is that SIDE of your family, ["Macbeth" excerpt] is apparently an opera ARIA (there's an opera by that name?), [Bauhaus course] is OP ART (didn't know Bauhaus and op art were connected, nor that there are classes in op art), and [Back online] is REPAIRED (but could easily be RESTORED, REBOOTED, or RE-other things-ED. Third problem: I'm simply too young for this puzzle. ["Divided We Fail" org.] is the AARP? I didn't know that. ["The Guns of Navarone" setting] is GREECE? Never saw it. A POLTROON is a [Big baby], a.k.a. a coward, in archaic language, and yet the clue is quite contemporary—alas, I was born after archaic language had already become archaic. Sure, 50D CAFE is a [Meeting place], but saying that the way one [Works at a 50 Down, perhaps] is that one SURFS is clunky. Nobody says they're "surfing the net" to work anymore. That usage is now archaic.

The northeast corner is where POLTROON held court with ANNO [___ Hegirae (Moslem reckoning)]. [At or I] is a HALOGEN element, but the atomic symbols are essentially abbreviations and HALOGEN is not abbreviated. Erik SATIE gets clued as a Jean [Cocteau collaborator]. The flower the DAHLIA is clued as an [Aztec food staple], which seems to be minor piece of trivia. Likewise, EDWARD VIII is the [Bahamas' wartime governor, previously].

Favorite clues/fill:

KINDA SORTA is [More or less].
[It's a little bigger than Alaska] clues LIBYA. I was thinking CHINA or INDIA first, but (a) they're too big and (b) India's mentioned in a crossing clue.
["Chopin of the North"] clues Edvard GRIEG. Chopin was Polish, so my first thought was a Finnish composer north of Poland. Couldn't think of a 5-letter name that fit there, so I moved on to Norway and Sweden and came up with GRIEG.
Did you know DR. SEUSS was a [Devotee of anapestic tetrameter]?
At the Cru Crossword Fiend forum, folks were just talking about cyan, colors, and the differences between the color blends made by pigments vs. colored lights. So I was prepared to believe that
[Cyan + magenta] made ORANGE if lights were involved, but it turned out to be INDIGO, basically blue with a touch of violet.
[Flight-safety instrument] is a stairway RAILING. Ha! Good one. Perfect mislead.
I didn't recall that KERMIT the Frog was a [TV character with 3,265 siblings], but I love Kermit so I was happy when the crossings delivered him to me.

Friday, 6/5

NYT 8:33
BEQ "Anything Goes" 8:08
LAT 4:17
CS 6:42 (J—paper)
WSJ 7:20

Martin Ashwood-Smith's New York Times crossword

Well, it's midnight and I was out for margaritas this evening, so I'm delighted to have finished Martin Ashwood-Smith's crossword without errors. And I need to get to bed, so if I have a lick of sense in my head, I'll keep the blogging short.

This 66-word puzzle is fairly low on the word count scale, but lacks MAS's trademark triple stacks. Instead, the center of this all-the-way-symmetrical grid features 15's bracketing 9's criss-crossing in a big blotch of white space. ("Blotch of white space" = good.) Let's take a look at some of the answers and clues:

1A. An [Important church] is a MINSTER, as in Westminster Cathedral.
15A. The [Bob Marley classic] that fits into a 7 is "ONE LOVE." NOWOMANNOCRY would be a kick-ass 12-letter answer, wouldn't it?
18A. For [Fictional psychiatrist], with an R in square two, I wanted it to start with DR. But it's TV's FRASIER Crane.
32A. [Poorhouse bedding] is a STRAW MATTRESS. In which decade/century/country?
42A. SALT? [It's often pinched]. None on my margarita glass rim, please.
43A. [Act rudely, in a way] clues STARE. I started with SLURP and contemplated other bodily function words.
50A. You like an ORATION? [It may begin with an exordium].
56A. [Got high gradually] is CREPT UP. Wouldn't that be great drug slang?
1D. MOTHERS? [They deliver] babies. Well, unless they adopt, or become mothers via marrying someone with a kid, or use a gestational surrogate, But in general, yeah.
8D. [Billy the Kid used one for his nickname] is a great clue for DEFINITE ARTICLE.
10D. [Half of a Disney duo, with "the"] is Beauty's compadre, the BEAST. Not Lady's fellow dog, the Tramp.
11D. AHS are clued [They often mean "I see"]. Ah, yes.
21D. [One between two cardinals?] is NORTHEAST, which is between the cardinal directions of north and east.
27D. The RASSLER is [Part of a backwoods mix-up]. I started with RASSLIN'.
34D. EDA LeShan gets the boot: [___ Reiss Merin, babysitter player in "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead"]. Who? She also played Older Woman on Plane in 1996's The Pompatus of Love. I'll bet that was a seminal role.
39D. Wiley [Post, for one] was an AVIATOR.
40D. Is MISTUNE a real word? It's clued with [Make a B instead of an A?].
57D. [Peruvian capital?] isn't a city or a currency—it's the letter PEE. Which reminds me of my El ride home tonight. One never expects to see a pair of tighty whities left behind on a seat, but one does expect a certain aroma in the end of the train car.

Hey, it's only 12:22. That was quick. Good night, all!

Updated Friday morning:

Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Across Beantown"―Janie's review

Ray Hamel is one highly accomplished and prolific constructor, who has been dazzling us with his puzzles for years. I'm a relatively new crossword addict who loves just about any puzzle that comes her way and who's not overly sensitive to issues of "quality of fill" per se. But I've come to understand that a first-rate puzzle needs a theme that delivers in a consistent, all-of-a-kind way. Given Ray's expertise, I have to say that the obvious inconsistencies in today's theme left me scratching my head. A lot.

"Across Beantown" gives us five phrases, the first word of which is also the name of a kind of bean. The premise is just fine. Here are the five:

20A. COFFEE SHOP [Stereotypical cops' hangout]
25A. SNAP BACK [Recover quickly] (Also part of the slogan for Stanback, an aspirin powder that's been around for almost a century. Couldn't find an audio clip but can still hear, "Snap back—wiiiiiith Stanback!")
40A. STRING ORCHESTRA [Group with members of the violin family only] Beautiful fill.
52A. NAVY PIER [Chicago landmark] I've never been there but it looks spectacular in these pix.
59A. GREEN THUMB [Gardening talent]

So we have COFFEE bean, SNAP bean, STRING bean, NAVY bean, and GREEN bean. But... unlike its theme-mates, I've yet to enjoy steamed or baked COFFEE beans as a side dish to an entrée. How did this one make the cut? Additionally (but not critically in the right context), it seems that, botanically speaking, the COFFEE bean isn't a bean at all...

This leave us with SNAP bean, STRING bean, NAVY bean, and GREEN bean. Leaving "NAVY bean" alone (the sole legume here), the remaining three are all names for the same exact vegetable. If the goal as stated was to take us "Across Beantown," why not really mix it up, not only by keeping STRING ORCHESTRA and NAVY PIER and COFFEE SHOP, but also by giving us, say, JELLY FISH or MISTER AMERICA or VANILLA SKY? But however you decide, please, please stay consistent within the theme. If my expectations are high, it's that I've been spoiled with the good stuff, so to encounter this less-than-air-tight theme really was a let down.

What wasn't a let down and should also be noted is the way the theme fill overlaps in the grid—both 20 and 25A, and 52 and 59A—to create "split-level," grid-spanning theme fill (in addition to the 15 at 40A).

In the non-theme fill, I also liked (a lot) UNDERDOG (a CS debut) with its [Cinderella team] clue, and IN MY ROOM (in its major-puzzle debut)—and even CS-debut HANGNAIL, because it surprised me so.

There are several nice clue pairs: [Where to see stars] for ONTV and then "CATCH [a Falling Star"...]; [Deeply asleep] for OUT, followed by [Listening to Muzak, perhaps] for ON HOLD (since I tend to equate the mind-numbing effect of "listening to Muzak" to being "deeply asleep"...); and that bi-polar pairing, in the list and in the grid, of [Hysterical] for MANIC with [Cheerless] for BLEAK.

Completely new to me and therefore [Not a walk in the park] HARD were the Indy 500's Bobby RAHAL, Pulitzer poet MONA Van Duyn, and, um, the [Org. that listens for alien signals] SETI. Where have I been?!

Gareth Bain's Los Angeles Times crossword

Gareth's placed six theme entries into his grid, with 19- and 58-Across intersecting the Down theme entries and partly stacked with the other Across ones. I was thinking the theme would be described as "et cetera" or "et alii," but then I came upon 59-Down, ET TU: [Famous last words (and homophonically, a hint to this puzzle's theme)]. Each theme phrase as an "ET too" as ET has been added to the end of the first syllable to change the meaning:

19A. [Genetic coding for an official legislative trip?] is JUNKET DNA. Mind you, legislative trips are not organic beings and have no DNA—but junk DNA is a familiar concept.
23A. [NASA scrapheap?] is a ROCKET PILE. I misread that as [NBA scrapheap?] and wondered at the editorializing about the Houston Rockets' skills.
51A. BASSET SOLO is a [Long-eared dog's performance?].
58A. [Young hen's bar bill?] is a PULLET TAB.
2D. A section of the [Horn section?] might be called CORNET ROW.
34D. SOCKET HOP is clued as a [Dance after getting a shock from an outlet?]. Don't try this at home, folks.

I misled myself at 12D, [Davis of "The Little Foxes"]. First I went with OSSIE, who must be the most common Davis in crosswords. Then I conflated this movie with Little Darlings and wondered if a younger GEENA Davis had been in that. Then I thought about Tatum O'Neal being in that movie—and oh, look, there she is, incognito in 17A as [Jazz great Art] TATUM in the next section I turned to in the puzzle.

A few clues:

The LAB is a [Place to wear a coat].
ALOHA is a [Parting of the Pacific?].
[It's shaken out]...hmm, a rug? A picnic blanket in the [Great area?] of the OUTDOORS? No, table SALT.
APR. is the [Mo. in which the Civil War began].
[Hercules' neighbor] is LYRA. They're constellations. Anyone else sort of want XENA the Warrior Princess here?
To [Shoot with a moving camera] is to PAN.
[Oft-donated cells] clues OVA. Well, really, eggs aren't donated all that often. But the better answer, SPERMATOZOA, just won't fit into three squares. Speaking of egg donation, Gareth, if you hear of anyone in South Africa looking to give or receive donor eggs, send them to my pal Tertia's program, Nurture.

Rex's post at L.A. Crossword Confidential will be up shortly for more on this puzzle.

Pancho Harrison's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Capital Gains"

The title evoked a disappointed sigh: Another theme involving finance vocabulary? Oh. But then I got into the puzzle and discovered a fun and well-crafted theme in which world capitals precede a common word or phrase, and the city's last syllable partners with the first syllable of the second part to create another familiar phrase/word. That middle part is a lovely solving bonus, as the clues only point the way to the capital and its partner. Here's how the theme answers play out:

23A. [Pants popular in 1970s Russia?] are MOSCOW BELL-BOTTOMS. If you've never seen the catchphrase-spawning SNL skit in which Christopher Walken calls for "more cowbell," you can watch a low-res version here.
35A. WARSAW BUCKSHOT is [Ammo made in Poland?]. A sawbuck is a sawhorse or a $10 bill.
52A. [Ball-handling hoopster from Serbia?] is PREDRAG STOJAKOVIC. No, wait, that's one letter too short. It's BELGRADE POINT GUARD, with grade point wedding the two.
73A. [Seller of Chilean sea bass?] is a SANTIAGO FISHERMAN, with the kids' card game Go Fish in the middle.
88A. A [Private eye from Iraq?] might be a BAGHDAD GUMSHOE, with the colorful bowdlerized Southern oath dadgum inside.
105A. BUCHAREST ROOMMATE is [One who shares digs in Romania?]. I do find that I don't get a lot of rest in any restroom. How come "I need to get some rest" never became a euphemism for "I gotta go"?

It felt like a lot of theme even though there are only six theme entries—probably because they're long and multifaceted and entertaining. The fill's good too, with answers like NEIL SIMON, POSEIDON, The BIG SLEEP, INSIGHTS, and an AFTERLIFE. NICE GOING, Pancho!

Least familiar answer: The KIANG, or [Donkey's Asian cousin]. This cutie is the world's largest wild ass, and it's native to the Tibetan Plateau.

Brendan Quigley's blog puzzle, a wacky "Anything Goes" crossword

What fun! I always enjoyed Trip Payne's "Wacky Weekend Warrior" N.Y. Sun puzzles around April Fools Day, and now Brendan has tried his hand at the format. This 60-word grid with 18 black squares is well nigh unfillable with the sort of entries that pass muster in a standard crossword, but here, the expanses of white space can be filled by such answers as CURDS AND WHEY FLU, QUISLING SCUFFLE, B.M. SPECS, the NAFTA OPEN, CLASSIC U.N., I, BLEDSOE, and an APT SARI. Yes, many of the short answers are standard crossword fill, but there's still room in a 3 for insanity: GEV, which is VEG backwards, is clued [Tuo llihc], and YULE loses its first letter and becomes an [Og to burn on Christmas]—ah, yes, the traditional ule og. Brendan managed to include three Q's, a Z, and an X in the puzzle, too. Fun stuff, all of it!

June 03, 2009

Thursday, 6/4

Tausig 4:32
NYT 4:19
LAT 3:18
CS 6:18 (J―paper)/2:56 (A—Across Lite)

Peter A. Collins and Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword

Oh, these constructor-showing-off puzzles are so polarizing. Maybe three quarters of the people say "Wow, that's so cool! What a feat of crossword engineering!" while the remainder are off grumbling in the corner, "What's the point? It wasn't even fun." Yesterday, I was in the camp that responded to Samuel Donaldson's NYT with a "wow," while questioned why the theme was made at all. And today, we have a constructing tour de force, from a structural standpoint, that leaves me cool. In the middle is PETE / ROSE, the [one who has done the circled things, combined, more often than any other major-league player]. Pete Rose? Who gambled on his own sport? That's strike one, devoting a puzzle to him. The circled answers on the diagonals spell out, along the basepath, SINGLED, DOUBLED, TRIPLED, and HOMERED. Obviously it's tremendously challenging to make that many answers work with three-way checking of squares (across, down, and diagonal answers intermesh). Is it customary to talk about Pete Rose's RECORD number of hits as the number of times he singled, doubled, tripled, and homered? I'm no baseball nut, but I'm thinking no. Maybe that's ball one—it's not a hit. That thematic RECORD isn't part of the symmetry—strike two. (Are TRIS Speaker, LUIS Tiant, HITS AT, or LEGEND thematic? They need to tie in more strongly and symmetrically or get out.) Then the fill necessitated by the diagonals includes too many clunkers—strike three, you're out. Heck, I think we can get three outs with nine strikes of answers that made me scowl:

16A. [Dressed for a white-tie affair] is IN TAILS. Are IN A GOWN and IN PANTS fair game?
21A. ABBIE Hoffman, most of us have heard of. [Old Al Capp strip "___ an' Slats"], I daresay fewer than 5% of solvers know. Capp quit writing the strip in '45 while others continued it through '71, but this strip never ran in the Chicago papers we got.
23A. FSLIC was a [Former org. protecting depositors]. I like to pronounce it "fizz-lick," and I do not like to see it parked in my crossword grid.
27A. The grid-friendly ALIENOR and its cousin ALIENEE show up in some puzzles but don't bring much joy to Mudville. ALIENOR is [One who is no longer entitled].
39A. "I'll take Obscure Small Towns for $200, please, Alex": The [Georgia birthplace of Erskine Caldwell], MORELAND, has 393 people. Bzzzz!
50A. ALAE is hardcore crosswordese, clued here as [Latin wings]. It coordinates nicely with fellow crosswordese TAW, from the game of marbles, which is clued as [Shooter on the playground]—which is a terrible clue. There was a famous case about 20 years ago in suburban Wilmette, where a deranged woman shot children on the playground. Enough with the "playful" evocations of gun violence, hmm?
62A. [Classic brand of liniment], 6 letters...well, that's got to be BENGAY, right? Wrong. It's SLOANS. If Pete Rose wasn't a celebrity spokesperson for this liniment, then it's a definite blot on the puzzle.
10D, 37D, and 51A. It's time for chemistry class: SORBS means [Gathers on a surface, chemically]. IODIDES are iodized [Salt add-ins]. And a PIPET is a [Lab tube]—we spelled it pipette in my chemistry class.
33D. Of all the ways GEL could be clued, we get [Breast enlargement material]? Oy. Silicone's a gel, but saline is just a fluid, so the answer seems both overly specific and overly broad. And making the clue about breast augmentation fairly shouts "Men wrote and edited this crossword," doesn't it?
36D. HEAPED is a perfectly good past-tense verb, but the clue, [Like some spoonfuls], feels out of the language. The phrase I've always heard is "a heaping teaspoonful." It's never "a heaped spoonful." Maybe a lovin' one, but not heaped.

So those ones grated on me, and that's an awful lot of grating in one 15x15 puzzle. If I loved baseball stats or Pete Rose, maybe this puzzle would've knocked my socks off.

There absolutely were things I liked a lot, though. Such as these: [Whence Elaine, in Arthurian lore] is ASTOLAT. That's just a cool word to look at. ROBOTICS and TEMPURA are good—though I wish Japanese restaurants would batter and fry up the foods I want in TEMPURA. Nice clue echo, with that being [Japanese restaurant offering] and then a MENU being a plain ol' [Restaurant offering]. [Bank controll