Diary of a Crossword Fiend : Daily Commentary on Crossword Puzzles

July 31, 2009

Saturday, 8/1

Newsday just under 11 minutes
NYT 6:30
LAT 4:11
CS 12:27 (J—paper)/3:47 (A—Across Lite)

Martin Ashwood-Smith's New York Times crossword

Remember Roberto Duran's famous plea, "¡No mas!"? Based on the early returns (i.e., the applet times posted thus far), I suspect more than a few people have been feeling rather "¡No mas, M.A.S.!" about this puzzle. Interesting and tough fill, a hearty batch of challenging clues, several easy traps to fall into, and some crazy crossings? That's a recipe for an arduous solving experience. What a great-looking grid, though, eh? Look at that diagonal swath of white space sprawling across the middle of the puzzle.

First up, the Tar Pits of Traps and Tricky Crossings:

Square 41. Where 41D: [Stately old court dance] meets 41A: [Tank type]. I started out with one of those dances I know from crosswords, the GAVOT, which made GUNNER seem plausible. But no. The dance is a different 5-letter dance with an AV in it, the PAVAN, crossing a PANZER tank.
26A. [Sentences may end with them], P*R***S. Oh, that's an easy tricky clue! It's not PERIODS at all, no sir. It's PAROLES. Whoops, no, it's PARDONS. I wasn't getting much help with that from 9-10-11D. 9D is JAMES DEAN, the ["Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world" speaker]. (Aw, sad.) 10D is EVICTORS, clued with [They remove letters], as in renters. And 11D is SICKENS, which, yes, means [Repulses].
Stacked people you may or may not know—I knew 22A: ["Far From Heaven" director Todd] HAYNES. Great melodrama in the style of Douglas Sirk, I think they said; stars Julianne Moore, who's married to Haynes. Right below is 25A: [Patron saint of hermits], or GILES. Hmm, had no idea about that one. Crossings all the way. Douglas Sirk is not to be confused, mind you, with 38A: [British Columbia's ___ Mountains], or SELKIRK. Yeah, I'll bet Crosscan got that one right away. Oh, wait—you know what crosses HAYNES/GILES? Good lord, Martin and Will. [Satirist Ward] is named NED? Who is satirist Ned Ward? Oh, for pete's sake: he was doing his satirizing three centuries ago.

That was some hardcore Saturday stickiness, wasn't it?

Moving along to regular ol' tough Saturday clues without, perhaps, that extra touch of evil the aforementioned bits had, we have these:

16A. [Demonstrate banking skill] is about banking planes: AVIATE. I thought of finance and then of a banked car or bike racetrack.
18A. Hang on, this is right below 16A. Maybe these ones belong in the Tar Pits discussion, too. The [Distance light travels in 3.3. femtoseconds] is one MICRON. That's a millionth of a meter, or "a very teeny length" in technical terms.
15A. [Hole that's not filled] is an OPEN DATE. The phrase feels not-so-familiar to me. Open dates on a calendar, yes?
Royalty confusion! 24A: [Queens or soldiers] are a CASTE of ants, while 13D: [Royal educator] is ETON, the school of princes.
29A. This one's' super-easy, right? Everyone loves "Calvin & Hobbes" and knows how to spell Bill WATTERSON's name? He's the [Creator of a comic strip named after a theologian and a philosopher].
32A. [Desert rodents] are JERBOAS. I hope you didn't let the ERB part take to to GERBILS.
37A. [So, in Salerno] is COSI. I'm sure one of you will translate "Cosi fan tutte" for me, and perhaps also explain why Cosi is the name of a sandwich chain.
3D. [Big name in slapstick] could be so many people, couldn't it? With the J in place, my first thought was JACKIE CHAN, but it's JERRY LEWIS.
27D. [1947 western serial film] is...not very specific. What's the series? Who knows? Answer is SON OF ZORRO. NOSFERATU, the 30D: [Title vampire of film], is a much more familiar title to me.
34D. [Diphthong dividers] are diaereses or, the crosswords seem to prefer, DIERESES. Those are the umlauty things you sometimes see in "naïve" or "coöperate" (I'm not sure which O takes the dots there, actually). Here's another accented character option I just found on the character map, and it looks like an emoticon: ȫ
42D. [Get the best of] clues CULL. When you snag the best of what's available, you CULL it. Sort of.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention a few other things I liked:

PARTOOK! It's fun to say and it starts to look utterly foreign the more you look at it. It's clued as 21D: [Had some].
39A. ["Class Reunion" novelist, 1979] is Rona JAFFE. I read this when I was about 14. Thank you, Rona JAFFE, for being a gimme. I needed the help today.
1A. TAJ MAHAL gets a longer clue than usual: [Final resting place built in the 17th century]. And a SARI is 12D: [Attire around the 1-Across]. Maybe Christo could wrap the Taj Mahal itself in a sari.
1D. TOUGH GUY! A real [Bruiser], eh?
How about the double K in WEAK-KNEED, or 29D: [Cowardly]? It's k-k-kool.

You know, looking back at this grid, I see that the northwest and southeast corners don't have much interplay with the rest of the puzzle. If you aren't hitting a couple quick gimmes in each corner, that could make it an arduous task to work your way into those sections. I didn't personally feel attacked by that, but I recognize that it's the sort of grid that can frustrate too many people. But it's still pretty...

Updated Saturday morning:

Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Cool Bin"—Janie's review

If you don't enjoy a good pun (or three), this puzzle is not for you. On the other hand, if you're like me and take high pleasure in this low form of humor, this one's for you! Bob has given us three phrases, each containing a word that has the letter sequence "oa" in it, and changed it to a word with the "oo" phoneme in its place. The "cool bin" in the title, was once a "coal bin." Get it? Good. Then get a load of the great clue/fill combos we get with:

20A. [Device that makes ghosts not quite as scary?] BOO CONSTRICTOR. In its pre-pun life, this was a boa constrictor. This particular fill is the only one where the "oa" of the word that gets altered is sounded in two syllables. Not a hundred percent sure how I feel about that inconsistency, but am quite sure about how much I like the result.
36A. [Bird that few are crazy about?] Why that would be the rare LOW-INTEREST LOON. Take a bow, low-interest loan—the joke's on you.
55A. [Longing to see Italy again?] Yes, I am. So as I look at it on the map, it can be said that I'm MISSING THE BOOT. The only time I visited (omg, 22 years ago...), I flew over, so wasn't faced with the prospect (literally or figuratively) of missing the boat.

How else did I love this puzzle? Let me count some of the more outstanding ways. For starters, there's the particular range of names, including: actors JOHN HURT, Robin WILLIAMS, Christina RICCI, and Lash LA RUE; conductor Seiji OZAWA; author ENID Blyton; athletes OLGA Korbut, OTTO Graham and Jim THORPE; Old and New Testament reps ISAIAH and JUDAS; distiller HIRAM Walker; and Emperor HIROHITO.

One of my favorite crosses is HIROHITO with MOJITO [Rum-and-mint cocktail...]. Because it's an almond-flavored liqueur, I'd always thought AMARETTO meant "almond." In fact the word for "almond" in Italian is mandoria (which gets me thinking of mandelbrot...), though Amaretto may be distilled from bitter almonds—whence the clue [Liqueur that's Italian for "rather bitter"]. All of which is a PROLIX [Long-winded] way of getting to my point, which is that I also love seeing potable AMARETTO by HIROHITO's side also being crossed by potable MOJITO.

And since I've mentioned it, let me add that the SE column made by PROLIX, APOGEE and PETARD is a beauty. Nice, too, the way ARMY sits atop BASE in the SW—and the way that crossing herpetological pair SNAKY and SLITHERY falls in between.

Some fave clues include:

The triple-rhyming [Speedy steed breed] for ARAB;
[Height of fashion?] for HEM (the link will take you to an article about hemlines, hair-dos and the economy);
the wordplay-rich [Source of a drop in the bucket, perhaps] for LEAK;
[Grant and Grant's foe] for LEES (i.e., Lee Grant and Robert E. Lee);
[Being shot] for ON CAMERA; and that anatomical duo,
the almost too graphic (and very funny) [Butt out?] for MOON and [Nose lengtheners] for LIES (think Pinocchio, folks).

No doubt, I've excluded your fave(s). SUNLIT, anyone? In that case, do speak up. I think we can agree, though, that once again, Bob has made something EPIC of this compact 15x15 form.

Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Anna Stiga, a.k.a. "Stan again," a.k.a. Stanley Newman

(PDF solution here.)

Nothing too deadly, but nothing too delightful either. I didn't push to go as fast as I could this time. Here are some answers that did not come quite as readily as the others:

15A. [Home of Georgian Technical University] is TBILISI. Can you name another city in Georgia? At the moment, I can't. I like to think the school has sports teams nicknamed "the Rambling Wreck."
16A. [City on the Reuss River] is LUCERNE, Switzerland. Could've easily been German or Austrian, too. The 52A: [Sight from 16 Across] is the ALPS.
26A. [Make an appointment] clues HIRE, as in appointing someone to a paid position. Tricky clue; I liked it.
32A. [100 cents may equal one] 4-letter unit of currency. EURO? No, RAND.
38A. I didn't know FRAPPE was [Literally, "iced"], but words like frio and frigid made that a little more gettable.
43A. ABE is [Daisy Mae's boy], and I'm not sure where Daisy Mae is from. Al Capp?
51A. I let the crossings give me CXC for [Multiple of XXXVIII] and then did the math to check. 38 times 5 = 190.
61A. The TERMITE is [One on a high-fiber diet].
3D. VITAMIN B COMPLEX is an [Important group in cell metabolism].
5D. [E, as in Western Union] clues DIT, which is Morse code-ese for "dot," and the letter E is a dot in Morse code.
9D. OUR GANG isn't just the Little Rascals, it's also a [Philip Roth novel].
11D. RED SHIRT is a [Garibaldi follower]. His followers wore red shirts, which are also called garibaldis.

Barry Silk's Los Angeles Times crossword

My full writeup, including a LEIF Garrett video, is over at L.A. Crossword Confidential.

I don't know about this puzzle. Usually I enjoy Barry's puzzles quite a bit, but this one didn't do it for me. Maybe I was just tired yesterday when I did it. Or maybe it's that crosswords with this sort of grid—tons of seven-letter answers but not much in the Really Cool Long Answers department—seldom delight me. When Saturday rolls around, dang it, I want Really Cool Long Answers. I want a JOE BAZOOKA more than BETTERS, PETTIER, and AIRIEST, y'know? The fill was pretty Scrabbly (a pangram to boot), but outside of REYKJAVIK and SPECIAL K, the Scrabbly letters weren't put to splashy use. A Z and an X in close proximity sounds awesome, but the TAX-FREE CZARINA? Eh.

I will almost certainly like Barry's next creation much more. He's got the chops to do cool stuff, but this wasn't among my Silken favorites.

July 30, 2009

Friday, 7/31

NYT 5:38
LAT 5:26
BEQ 5:18
CS 7:49 (J—paper)
WSJ 10:44

Mike Nothnagel's New York Times crossword

Now, you could look at Mike's puzzle and say, "Wow, 72 words? That's the most he's allowed to have in a themeless. He should've been more ambitious." But the ambition is in the zing—zingy fill and some twisty Friday clues. Here are 15 favorites:

17A. SALMA HAYEK is the [Oscar-nominated portrayer of Frida Kahlo] on the silver screen. Like business magnate Carlos Slim, Hayek is a Mexican of Lebanese descent. She's funny, talented, and a passionate advocate of various causes. They say she looks nice, too.
22A. Being WITHIN EARSHOT is one way of being [Relatively close].
35A. Do you like to order the SPECIAL when dining out? That's [Something not on the menu].
37A. If your "roll" is a bagel, [Roll top?] is s SCHMEAR of cream cheese.
43A. [Heads up] with a hyphen is a noun and adjective about advance warning. As a verb, it can mean CHAIRS.
46A. [Where a fouled player might go] is TO THE POTTY. No, actually, it's to the FREE THROW LINE.
56A. BAZOOKA JOE is a bubblegum [Comics character with a "gang"]. Do you know the gang sign?
60A. "OPEN, SESAME" is a [Passage enabler] that gets you through a door. And 51A: [Passage blockers] are NOES, as in no votes in the legislature.
3D. If something [Wasn't full of holes] literally or metaphorically, it HELD WATER.
5D. DEAD TO RIGHTS is a colorful way of saying [Red-handed].
21D. In Ireland, County [Mayo sauce?] is IRISH WHISKEY.
24D, 32D. The electric charge pair! [They might store electric charges] clues EELS and [It might store an electric charge] refers to a LEYDEN JAR. Cool answer, that.
44D. SWOON is a favorite word of mine. Means [Become rapturous].
49D. LEOS are [Independent, noble types, it's said]. Am I not independent? And noble?
56D. Take a BOW. In a concert, [It comes after the last number].

Among the tougher spots for me, there's a quote clue for the good ol' ASP: 58D: ["My baby at my breast," in Shakespeare]. That's not the same baby/breast combo mentioned in the Salma Hayek writeup. And what about 1A? A fill-in-the-blank like ["___ better be!"] looks so easy, but it took me a bit to get IT HAD. Partial at 1-Across = meh. Patrick SWAYZE is a familiar name, sure, but who is this SWAYZE that's 42A: an [Early TV news commentator famous for doing Timex ads]? John Cameron Swayze, Google tells me. Ooh, this clue's a good one: 52A: [Stars participate in it: Abbr.] clues the NHL, as in the Dallas Stars' league. How about the TORAH? 10D: [It contains 613 mitzvot]. [Vultures were sacred to him] clues ARES, and [Fast Eddie's girlfriend in "The Hustler"] is SARAH.

Overall, a really fun themeless with enough tricky clues to keep me happy and an abundance of sparkle in the fill.

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

Is it just me or is this the toughest L.A. Times puzzle in a good long while? Dan's last crossword made me grumble, but Brendan Quigley predicted the next go-round would be more satisfying—and so it is. Why? Let us count the ways:

1. The theme is straightforward and yet it took me a while to figure out what was going on. (Perhaps you cottoned to the theme faster than I did. It's words with an SK sound that gets flipped to become a KS sound, better known as X.)

2. There are six theme entries, but they're on the shorter side (56 theme squares in all), so...

3. There's room for plenty of lively fill, made all the more so by...

4. A relatively low word count (72), which translates to longer answers on average, with plenty of 6- to 8-letter entries.

The theme runs like this:

17A. [Paul Bunyan's admission in therapy?] is I HATE TO AX, playing on "I hate to ask..."
27A. [Formal attire for Dumbo?] is an ELEPHANT TUX (tusk).
43A. [Plant fiber used by moonshiners?] is WHISKEY FLAX (flask). Part of me wants this to be WHIXEY FLAX.
56A. [Diver's tank capacity?] is OXYGEN MAX (mask). Part of me wants the original phrase to be oskygen mask.
11D. [Catchall source of revenue?] might be a MULTI-TAX (multitask). Here, the original phrase is better than the change-a-sound theme answer.
36D. [Keep a Northeastern fort under surveillance?] clues VIDEO DIX (disk).

Highlights:

The braids zone up top. A [Cornrow, e.g.] is a braid, or PLAIT. And a [Dreads wearer] may be a RASTA.
The egg zone to the right. A [Fertilized item] is an OVULE, more or less a plant's egg. An [Italian omelet served open-faced] is a FRITTATA. And if you [Bomb big-time], you LAY AN EGG.
The SELIG/HALF-MAN zone puts me in mind of a description of NBA commissioner David Stern: "Every year, he looks more and more like Emperor Palpatine's offspring if the mother was a frog." I get Stern and [Baseball commissioner Bud] SELIG mixed up. Are they not, in fact, the same person? HALF-MAN is a bizarre answer, clued as [Not a whole person?]. Half-frog qualifies.
Random trivia! NYU is [Ex-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan's alma mater].
Knotty clues. [Jack's place] doesn't refer to a person, nor to a playing card—you should store a jack in the TRUNK of your car. [Like many Woody Allen characters], 8 letters? Come on! A gimme. Gotta be NEUROTIC, right? Except it's INSECURE. [You can get it from a blast]...hmm, I was thinking of nuclear fallout, but the answer is PLEASURE and the blast is just a good time. And how about that [Hockey lineup, e.g.]. Five letters, ending with a D...SQUAD! But no. It's a HEXAD, or group of six.

Updated Friday morning:

Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Foodie Workout"—Janie's review

Gosh, I love this puzzle. Each compound-word theme answer (an entity unto itself) names both something that may be ingested and an exercise move, so there's a three-for-one thing going on that is a treat. Though the remaining fill is all of the seven-letter-and-under variety, there are some nifty connections to be made between several of them that add to the liveliness of an already lively construction. With Ray's culinary-themed regimen you'll savor/execute a:

20A. SAUSAGE CURL [Thick lock of hair] And at the turn of the previous century, not just for girls...
34A. FISH LIFT [Salmon's way around a dam] (Oh, for a picture of a weightlifting fish—still, love this fill!)
46A. SODA JERK [Ice cream sundae maker]. Are there still "soda fountains"? Is there still such a job as a "soda jerk"?
61A. GARLIC PRESS [Mincing tool]. The blog page that the garlic press pic comes from bears the caption, "You could hand-mince garlic. But why?" I've used my handy garlic press only to, well, press pieces of garlic, which kind of releases the juices in them in the process. Who knew there were presses that could mince, too? Live and learn!

All save one of the themed entries appear to be major-publication firsts, and the one exception—our friend the soda jerk—looks to be a CS first. Fresh fill of the sort we see today is always an ASSET in my book.

If the fill described so far has not piqued your appetite, perhaps the SWISS [Variety of cheese] and/or STILTON [Rich British cheese] will. I envision an INERT HOMER [Abe Simpson's boy] ensconced on the sofa, snarfing down PIZZA, STEIN [Beer mug] in hand. (Okay—Homer's more of a right outta the can kinda guy, but I'm tryin' to work with what I got here!) Nice, too, how those last three words stack up in the NE.

There are two particularly good clue/fill combos today: [A lot of sassafrass] for ESSES—there are five of 'em, in fact; and the charming [Course for Crusoe?] for ANAGRAM. Anyone need that one spelled out? I like, too, how SLAVS is right next to SERBIA in the grid, because even though the former has been clued [Poles, e.g.], it could have been clued in connection with the population from that [Balkan country].

The assonance of ANAGRAM, ANAPEST and NIAGARA is most appealing. And I like seeing ANT [Insect in "High Hopes"] right after UPSIDE [Optimist's focus]. If any creature was optimistic, it was definitely that ant. I also like seeing the high-scoring Scrabble letters—those Xs and Ks, the Vs, J and Zs.

Getting back to the "workout" component of today's theme, should you undertake it and find that your muscles start to TIRE and your body ache, Ray has provided a fitting bonus right there in the grid. Just pull out the ol' ICE BAG!

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Fighting Words"

I'm not generally a fan of quote themes, but I am a fan of comedian Sarah Haskins, and she's a fan of Brendan's crosswords, as am I, so a puzzle that features a Haskins quote is OK by me. The quip is I'M A FEMINIST. IT IS / AN EXTENSION OF MY / LIFELONG WAR / AGAINST / PANTYHOSE. I follow sarah_haskins on Twitter (I'm OrangeXW) and like her "Target Woman" videos (which are not about Target, the store).

What's that? What about the puzzle? Oh. 15x16 grid, lots of tough stuff, lots of long answers sprawling across and beside one another. Good crossword. Am short on time thanks to two-hour (!) doctor visit.

Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Egotism"

The theme is all about ME, as in the two ME rebus squares that appear in each otherwise unrelated long theme entry. It didn't take me that long to figure out that there was a rebus involved, but it still wound up being a tough puzzle for me. Ten double-rebus answers in all, with the middle one, [ME]DIA NA[ME], sharing its rebus squares with two Down theme answers, one of which shared another ME with another Across theme entry, so instead of an egotistical 20 MEs, we have a humble 17 MEs.

A couple tough names from long ago—TILDEN was the [Popular vote winner of 1876], and [ME]LLON was the [Treasury secretary under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover].

Time to work now!

July 29, 2009

Thursday, 7/30

NYT 4:55
LAT 3:38
CS 7:37 (J—paper)
Tausig untimed

Ashish Vengsarkar's New York Times crossword

Ashish repurposes the term FOUR-LETTER WORDS by representing eight words with four identical letters that sound alike if pronounced in the plural. Oh, dear. That doesn't make a lick of sense, does it? Demonstration will help:

1A. [Facility] is ease, represented as EEEE, which you could describe as "Es," as in "the letter E, in plural," which sounds like "ease."
8A. [Signals] is a verb synonymous with cues, shown as QQQQ. Sure, you get three ugly abbreviations among the four Q crossings, but the space beneath couldn't very well be filled with CUUUU.
19A. [Peer group?] are things that peer: your eyes, or IIII.
20A. To [Razz] is to tease, or TTTT.
47A. [Garden sights] is pretty vague, but what we're going for here is bees, or BBBB.
49A. [Is behind] on paying means owes, or OOOO.
61A. ["Man oh man!"] clues jeeze, or GGGG.
63A. If you're [Hip] to something, you're wise to it—or YYYY.

What, no seize/CCCC, use/UUUU, or pees/PPPP?

Having a stretch of consecutive vowels or consecutive consonants can make it harder to fill a grid. So can planting a couple 15s in the grid—FOUR-LETTER WORDS are [Profanities (and a hint to this puzzle's anomalies)], and REPEAT OFFENDERS are [Record holders? (and a punny hint to this puzzle's anomalies)]. The eight short theme entries, the anomalies, are 4-letter repeat offenders...and they are offenders in that things like GGGG and OOOO make for ugly fill and can't be clued in ordinary fashion. I hereby sentence the constructor to five years of hard labor...making more Thursday through Sunday crosswords.

Highlights in the fill and clues:

In the Across column, 5. [<-- What this is, on a calendar] is the fifth month, MAY.
33A. To [Do what Jell-O does] is to JIGGLE.
45A. [Wasn't straight] clues ARCED.
60A. ["American Idol" judge], 5 letters...hmm, is it PAULA or SIMON or RANDY? None of the above. It's ABDUL, Paula's last name.
4D. It's not fun to have to come up with a clue for a superlative form of a word, and those words don't make the best fill, either. EERIEST is salvaged somewhat by the clue, [Like H.P. Lovecraft among all popular writers?].
9D. A quarter, or QTR., is [12 or 15 min.]. It's what, college basketball games where quarters last 12 minutes? Or football? Some sport.
10D. At last, an [Rx abbr.] that doctors may actually use, unlike TER. QID means four times a day.
39D. I thought [Big chip off the old block?] was an ICE CUBE, but that's not a big enough chip. The answer is ICEBERG. I just bought a Titanic-ships-and-icebergs ice tray.
54D. I love the word FEY. It's clued as [Hardly macho], though the Mac's dictionary defines it as "giving an impression of vague unworldliness; having supernatural powers of clairvoyance; [chiefly Scottish] fated to die or at the point of death." American Heritage Dictionary largely agrees. Merriam-Webster expands it to include "excessively refined (precious); quaintly unconventional (campy)." Is it just that the word sounds like a blend of "gay" and "fairy" that accounts for the use of "fey" to mean things not at all listed in some reputable dictionaries?
55D. Say what? [Actress Williams of the 1960s-'70s] clues EDY, which more often is clued as the ice cream brand's namesake. I wonder what percentage of NYT crossword solvers know the name Edy Garcia Schaffer. Her crossword dictionary's the top-selling one on Amazon at the moment.

Updated Thursday morning:

Donna S. Levin's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "I Love a Parade!"—Janie's review

And really, don't a lot of us? Whether it's something ginormous, like the Macy's Thanksgiving affair or something on a smaller, more human scale, like your local Memorial Day or Independence Day tribute, there's usually something in the event itself and/or its effect on you that's made it memorable. At least that's the hope!! In her puzzle, Donna has given us four theme-phrases, each of which begins with a word that is also something you're likely to see at a parade. All but the last look to be making major-puzzle bows, and that last one looks to be a CS-first. Nice to have the fresh 'n' lively theme-fill!

20A. BALLOON PAYMENT [It may be required when a mortgage matures]. Sure wish this parade had more than one balloon, but (unlike phrases ending in the word) there is a decided dearth of phrases beginning with balloons...
26A. FLOAT ONE'S BOAT [Be stimulating, slangily]. Terrific fill, though once again, a parade with but one float?... Here's what I learned from Absolute Astronomy about floats: "Parade floats were first introduced in the Middle Ages when churches used pageant wagons as movable scenery for passion plays...The name is derived from the first floats, which were decorated barges that were towed along canals with ropes held by parade marchers on the shore." Aha! (No, I can't vouch for the reliability of the site, but it sure sound feasible / reasonable.)
48A. MARSHAL DILLON ["Gunsmoke" lawman]. A parade's Grand Marshal is the dignitary who's usually right up there at the front, glad-handing and waving and lending the force of his or her personality to the event. Check out the list of Grand Marshals from the Parade of Roses. Then check out that "Gunsmoke" link. The show was on tv from 1955-1975 and besides the leading players, oh boy, did a lot of actors pay their dues there, including Burt Reynolds, Pat Hingle and crossword-staple Jack ELAM.
56A. BAND OF BROTHERS [Spielberg's WWII miniseries]. No parade is complete without at least one!

To complement the stirring theme-fill, Donna has filled the grid with little that is SO-SO [Middling] and much that is A-OK [Hunky dory]. There's first-timer OPEN-MINDED; and PAPER TRAIL, ODD LOTS, HYBRID and LEEWAY. Did you know that a [Journey in Swahili] is a SAFARI? I love getting tidbits like that from the puzzles. Ditto [Maximum number of marbles at play in a Chinese checkers game] for SIXTY or [Sheep species originating in Siberia] for BIG HORN or being reminded that the [Sides of a pie slice, geometrically] are RADII.

Some nicely related clue/fill pairs: a [Seer] is a SIBYL, someone who may have [Peered, as at a crystal ball] GAZED; [Like the 1890s, supposedly], the GAY '90s was a specific [Period of time], just after the Gilded AGE (1878-1889); and make sure everything's in order with your ERISA [Pension legislation acronym] or you may have the T-MAN [Revenuer, for short] after you!

And to bring it all back to the beginning, here's a link to picture of a Willy WONKA theme-FLOAT. YEOW!

Fred Jackson's Los Angeles Times crossword

The LAT puzzle pokes around the same region as the NYT puzzle: the Land of Letters Replacing Words That Sound Alike. This time, it's the beginning of a compound word or phrase that's changed from a short word to the single letter it sounds like. And then it's clued as if it has nothing to do with the original phrase. To wit: A pea-shooter becomes P SHOOTER, or [Photographer of a letter?]. An eyedropper turns into I DROPPER, or [One who can't hold a letter?]. The [Letter out for a stroll?] is a J WALKING (jaywalking). "Tea break" is the least in-the-language base phrase; it transforms into T BREAK, or [Letter's rest period?]. The [Undercover operation to trap a letter?] is the dreaded B STING (bee sting). And a sea captain becomes C CAPTAIN, or [Official in charge of a letter?].

I have to dock Jackson a couple points for including D-DAYS ([Times to attack]) in the fill—it looks like another of the theme entries, but "dee-days" means nothing. Maybe dee-days could be like months with an R—the rest of you maybe eat oysters only in the months that have an R, and I won't eat oysters on any day that has a D.

For more on today's crossword, see PuzzleGirl's L.A.C.C. post. She's got a photo that proves Scottish men are way better at the CURTSY ([Respectful gesture]) than I am.

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

Pronounce that title as "add a nine," convert into Roman numerals, and that's your theme: an added IX inserted into four familiar words or phrases to change 'em completely. Here are the theme entries:

20A. DORSAL FIXIN'S are [Garnish for the tail?], building on "dorsal fins."
30A. [Like some second-tier animation?] is SUB-PIXAR (subpar).
47A. Potpie adds IX to become a POT PIXIE, or [Drug-dealing sprite?].
57A. To STOCK QUIXOTE (stock quote) is to [Keep some essential Spanish fiction on the shelf?].

Favorite clues and answers:

24A. COED is clued [Like some imaginary naked sporting events, on dumb old t-shirts].
Cute QDOBA/Q-TIPS qrossing. The latter are clued as [Cleaners that ought not to hit the drum, if you can help it]. Ear drum, that is.
5D. MS. PACMAN is a [Maze classic].
41D. JOYRIDES is a terrific crossword word. They're [Some pseudo-thefts].
54D. TOOTS! After all these years of crossword clues that suggest this is a synonym for "sweetums" or "honey pie" or "darlin'," at last, a straight-up accurate clue: [Sexist address]. Thanks, Ben!

MGWCC #60

crossword 8:50
meta about 15 minutes, with a break for ice cream

hi, folks. the 60th episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "Can't Get There From Here," was a challenging but not killer crossword combined with a cool meta. let's take a look at the "theme" answers (the four 11-letter entries in the grid):

[What wild goose chases do] is LEAD NOWHERE.
[Misstep in a labyrinth] is HIT A DEAD END. tricky use of "misstep" as a verb.
[Join] is PUT TOGETHER.
and [Straight crusher] is FOUR OF A KIND. i nailed this one with a couple of well-placed crossings. "straight" is a noun here—the poker hand. and yes, FOUR OF A KIND crushes a straight.

i stared at these theme answers for a while. the first two tie in pretty clearly to the puzzle's title, but what are PUT TOGETHER and FOUR OF A KIND trying to tell us? the puzzle's instructions are, at first blush, pretty unhelpful: This week's contest answer is of no specific length. hmm. and, oddly, there's no across lite file this week (matt says, "I'll tell you why in next week's post"). why is that? there's nothing particularly unusual about the grid that across lite wouldn't be able to handle. could it be that there are multiple correct solutions, like in the famous NYT clinton-dole election puzzle? across lite wouldn't be able to handle that, and it could explain why there's no specific length for the answer to the meta. but everything seemed pretty straightforward, so that line of thinking was ... yep, a dead end.

the other big possibility i thought of for something across lite can't handle is futzing with clue numbering. could that be it? so i went through the clue lists and looked for anything fishy. lo and behold, there are four clues that don't correspond to any answer in the grid: 33- and 45-across, and 28- and 47-down. solving a puzzle on paper, it's easy to miss an extraneous clue in the clue list. (this one time, patrick merrell ... yeah, you know what i'm talking about. and if you don't, i'm not going to spoil it for you.) you might even say that those clues LEAD NOWHERE, or that starting at one of those squares and going in the indicated direction, you'd HIT A DEAD END. what happens when we PUT TOGETHER those FOUR OF A KIND?

33a: [Enter (by)]. the 33 is the L in 32a, ALI [Lindsay Lohan's sister].
45a: [Submitting]. the 45 is the K in 44a, SKEWERS [Kebab shop supply].
28d: [Any]. the 28 is the E in 23d, HEDGE [Fence alternative]. this one is almost interesting in its own right, as you might interpret "23-down" as the EDGE of HEDGE. but that's not where this is going.
47d: [Large island]. the 47 is the W in 44d, SWANK [Oscar winner whose surname is also the name of a pornographic magazine]. and no, i'm not going to say anything about pornography, or even bring attention to the fact that "47-down" could be interpreted as WANK. i've got a squeaky-clean image to maintain, you know.

it's spelled out for you right there in the clues: enter by submitting any large island. so that's why there's no specific answer length! well, you can pick whichever your favorite large island is. me, i went with sumatra, because it's got a cool name that reminds me of star control II. it's also big (the 6th largest in the world, if you don't count australia).

i thought it was a really cool meta. i'm not sure the "clue" meta will ever be topped, but this is up there with any of the others. but what can i say: i'm a sucker for meta anything. this was a very meta meta, and i appreciated that.

okay, the crossword. it wasn't all that tough: 9 minutes on paper is actually reasonably fast for me. i haven't timed myself on a paper crossword in quite some time, so maybe the fact that i've gotten faster overall is coloring my perception of things, but last week's crossword was certainly tougher. but there was, as usual, a smattering of tricky clues, outright traps, and things i just plain didn't know:

right out of the gate, i face-planted at 1a: ["Lili" actress, 1953]. isn't that leslie CARON? yeah, it is... but not this time. apparently zsa zsa GABOR is also in it. at least the two vowels were right, and the others weren't too hard to fix.
there was only one totally unfamiliar name in the grid: [Longtime NBC News correspondent] is KUR. any idea who this guy is? i was able to figure out by googling that his first name is bob. that's about it.
wait, make that two. [U.S.S. John C. ___ (one of America's 12 active aircraft carriers)] is STENNIS, which i actually thought might be ST. ENNIS but isn't. apparently this guy was a mississippi senator for 40 years.
high-end latin: [In ___ (submerged in water)] is AQUAM. sure, it had to be AQU__, but damned if i know the declensions. or even if "declensions" is the right word.
["Your Code Name Is ___" (classic Choose Your Own Adventure book)] is JONAH. um, yeah. i read some of those books when i was 8 or 10, but i certainly don't remember any of their titles. still, i liked this clue because it reminded me of my name is jonas, a great track from weezer's blue album. ==W==!
speaking of ==W==, matt indulges his penchant for somewhat pejorative clues for EMO by cluing it this time as [Given to brooding]. i guess that's fair.
fun pair of cross-referenced clues: 45d is [54-down, in reality--but what is reality?], and 54d is [45-down, in fantasy -- or is it reality?]. the answers are KEANU (reeves) and NEO (anderson) of the matrix (and i'm exercising my right to pretend the sequels never happened).
great clue for a crosswordese repeater: [Upright, so to speak: abbr.] is NNE. i love it.
an odd pair of crossing answers: [You and me and no one else] is WE TWO. shouldn't it be "you and i"? i tried US TWO first. but i changed that when i noticed that one of the crossing answers was ONE OF US, clued as [Not with the enemy]. tangentially, "enemy" is an anagram of YEMEN. i was flipping through a book of will shortz's NPR puzzlers, and there was a fun one with words that anagram to countries. the best find in the bunch was ANEURISM/SURINAME. how awesome is that?

and on that note (is it really a tangent if we never get back to the main thread?), i'll stop. see you next week; i don't know if it will count as the fifth week of july or the first of august. if it's the fifth week of july, gird your loins for a titanic struggle.

July 28, 2009

Wednesday, 7/29

Onion 4:55
BEQ 4:11
NYT 3:40
LAT 3:17
CS 7:44 (J—paper)

Tim Wescott's New York Times crossword

Themes with circled letters aren't too tough to figure out. This time, the circled letters spell out various MLB team members. And despite the constraints of having (1) six theme entries (2) occupying 70 squares (3) with each Down theme entry intersecting two Across theme answers, the fill's pretty smooth. Here's the theme:

17A. To MAKE A STRONG CASE is to [Argue forcibly]. The Astros play in Houston.
28A. The Tampa Bay Rays figure into the [Pesticide spreader, e.g.], or CROP SPRAYER.
48A. SHORT-WINDED is clued as [Terse]. My dictionary says "short-winded" means out of breath or apt to be out of breath rather than being the opposite of a long-winded speaker. Does anyone really love the Minnesota Twins?
61A. Okay, NORWEGIAN THRONE doesn't feel so "in the language" to me. Then again, I've never been Norwegian. It's [Where Olaf I or Olaf II sat]. San Francisco Giants play baseball, New York Giants prefer football, Andre the Giant liked wrestling.
11D. ORANGE RINDS are [Juicer remnants]. Hey, look! A bonus baseball reference in the clue! See also 10A: SOSA, [Baseball star in Senate steroid hearings]. I often forget the Texas Rangers exist.
24D. To COME TO TERMS is to [Shake hands] and agree. There's a New York Met in the phrase's midst.

I gotta dock Mr. Wescott a couple points for one of the six theme players (RAY) being embedded inside a single word when the other five are split between two words. The only other baseball reference I noticed was 71A: [Like Yogi Berra, physically] for SQUAT. SHORT and STOUT were my first two guesses. Oh, wait, there's also 22A: SAC [___ fly (run producer)].

Football interjects itself. Talk about your manly-man sports-nut puzzles, eh? There's an ONSIDE kick, a Denver BRONCO (...clued as the horse, [It's most useful when it's broken]), and SCHULZ, the [Charles who created Peppermint Patty], who was fond of Charlie Brown, who could never quite manage to kick the football. There's also a DEKE fakeout from hockey.

Assorted crosswordese repeaters rear their ungainly heads here. The ERNE, or [Fish-eating raptor], crosses EIRE and NÉE. NORA of The Thin Man meets IRMA la Douce. Better are the longer fill answers, such as ONE-SIDED [Like a Mobius strip] and a slew of 6s. Does ONE-SIDED duplicate ONSIDE too much? I know that tie the knot is 100% "in the language, but to literally take a rope or shoelace and [Finish lacing up] by deciding to TIE A KNOT...I'm not sure TIE A KNOT is a lexical entity unto itself.

Updated Wednesday morning:

Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Direct Overhead"—Janie's review

"Direct overhead" is a business term that refers to the "expense directly associated with the production of goods of services," such as the cost of electricity, maintenance or rent. As a kid, I had no idea what it meant, but I think I first became aware of the word "overhead" in the commercials that used to run for Robert Hall clothing stores:

When the values go up, up, up
And the prices go down, down, down.
Robert Hall this season
Will show you the reason
Low overhead! Low overhead!

Sarah Keller's "direct overhead," however, has no association with matters financial, though (broadly speaking) there is a sartorial connection. Here we're dealing literally with items that go on (or in one case, over) your head. I like the way none of the cluing tips Sarah's thematic hand and the fill itself is quite nice. In this way:

17A. [Palace display] gives us CROWN JEWELS; and
27A. [Jaguar on a Jaguar, e.g.] yields HOOD ORNAMENT. Credit for this particular combo probably belongs to Paula Gamache, who used it years ago in a similarly themed puzzle (for another publication). But a great clue is a great clue is a great clue and this seems to be the only other time the fill has made a puzzle appearance.
46A. [Stuffed animals that were a '90s fad] renders BEANIE BABIES. Yesterday it was Furbies, Beanie Babies today. Both have earned a rightful place in The Bad Fads Museum.
61A. [Mine that Bird, in 2009] produces DERBY WINNER . This fill, too, is making its CS debut.

I don't have lots and lots to add today. The remainder of the fill is perfectly fine, mind you, just not particularly sparkly. There's nothing wrong with PETER OUT, NADIR, LESSENS, RESIDUE, and ABSENCE individually—but seeing all of them in one puzzle weights it down some.

We do get an array of names: AGNES [Choreographer de Mille] (niece of Cecil B., too!); AMOS ["Famous" cookie maven]; ELSAS [Martinelli and Lanchester] (the former was a model before enjoying a small screen career, the latter a first-rate character actress); EMIL ["The Last Command" Oscar winner Jannings] (and Marlene Dietrich's co-star in "The Blue Angel"); and CLARA [Barton or Bow]. But AMOS aside, there's something dated in the feel here that, once again, grounds the fill.

Where we do get some lovely leavening is in the cluing: [Good, in the 'hood] for BAD; [Musical firsts] for DO'S; [Left on a map] for WEST. Now that's more like it!

Jerome Gunderson's Los Angeles Times crossword

My longer L.A. Crossword Confidential writeup is over there. The theme, in 25 words or less: Synonyms for "tease" are embedded at the start of four phrases, within longer words. JOSH, RAZZ, RIB, KID. Highlight: RAZZLE-DAZZLE!

Brendan Quigley's Onion A.V. Club crossword

Brendan's muse this week is the abbreviated phrase, "WTF?" That's clued as ["Huh?"...and the theme of this puzzle]. The five theme entries do not include the standard WTF with the F-bomb in it, but rather, are phrases with W.T.F. initials:

21A. [1997 classic rap double album] is WU TANG FOREVER.
29A. "WHAT'S THIS FOR?" is a common [Question on encountering an unfamiliar object].
39A. If you [Made fun of someone's mother, say], you probably WENT TOO FAR.
52A. [Defends with zeal] clues WAVES THE FLAG. I don't quite get this one. Is flag-waving about defense or about rah-rah jingoism?
59A. "All right, buddy, WHERE'S THE FIRE?" is a [Question to a speeder].

Too bad 11D isn't clued as the singer/poet JEWEL (rather than [Ring binder?], which doesn't quite work for me—the ring binds the jewel, the jewel doesn't bind the ring). Then the upper right corner could be filled wall to wall with famous people in the Down direction. OLIVIER! COLETTE! KID ROCK! Is this KID ROCK's crossword debut? Certainly it must be WIIWARE's debut—that's a [Nintendo download service].

I hear the A.V. Club constructors peer-edit their puzzles. Wouldn't you think that with eight smart people checking over this puzzle, JOCK wouldn't be clued as [High school type with cache, often]? A one-syllable cache is a stash. The two-syllable cachet is the word that connotes prestige.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Wednesday"

Yay! Themeless Monday is followed by Themeless Wednesday! This one's got 20 long answers (7 to 15 letters), including five 15s. HENRY LOUIS GATES, sans the "Jr.," is a perfect 15. He's clued as the [Educator who once famously compared the lyrics of 2 Live Crew to Shakespeare's (sic) "O my luve's like a red, red rose"].

INFOMANIA is clued as a [Continual and excessive quest for knowledge]. This has got to be a shout-out to Brendan's demi-celeb fan, Sarah Haskins. She's a comedian who makes incisive and funny videos about the crap the media and advertisers put out there for women. Click that link for access to Haskins' "Target Women" videos as well as a bunch of InfoMania videos that...I never watch. But do watch the "Target Women" clips. My personal favorite is the one about the sexification of cleaning product commercials.

Least familiar answers: URIM is clued [___ and Thummin (Judaic objects)]. [Longtime Beatles "road manager" Evans] was named MAL. CARA is the [Oldest daughter on "Jon & Kate Plus 8"]. I know about A-1 steak sauce, sure, but AONES clued as [Some steak sauces] had an unfamiliar feel to it. [___ prole (without offspring)] clues SINE.

Today's "Ask a Medical Editor" science lesson: BACILLI are rod-shaped bacteria. Viruses are not bacteria at all. Thus, [Virologist's subject] is not a good clue for BACILLI. [Antibiotic targets, sometimes], sure. [Troublesome rods], sure. But [Virologist's subject], 7 letters, wants to be VACCINE.

Crossword pen/pencil/stylus

I love the Uncommon Goods catalog. Lots of decorative or useful products made with recycled/reclaimed glass, rubber, textiles, etc.; corrugated cardboard deer and moose heads to mount on your wall; cute and quirky stuff aplenty.

This four-in-one crossword pen caught my eye. It's a ballpoint, a mechanical pencil, an orange (!) highlighter, and a PDA stylus. Alas, the crossword grid on the pen has U.K.-style unchecked squares. But you can fill in answers you're sure of with the pen, the iffy ones with pencil. Circle trouble spots with the highlighter. And use the stylus for solving on a phone.

July 27, 2009

Tuesday, 7/28

Jonesin' 4:18
July 24 CHE 4:02 (available here)
NYT 3:51
LAT 3:09
CS 7:44 (J—paper)

Tony Orbach's New York Times crossword

I was zipping through this puzzle, feeling frightfully clever, when I hit the skids in the Balkans corner of the grid. I put GAPERS instead of OGLERS for 48D: [Gawking sorts], which made NEAR perfect for 52A: [Close by]—but that was supposed to be NIGH. My second straight day of having a Wednesday experience on a pre-Wednesday puzzle. Um, I'm tired. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Now that I've got my whinging out of the way—This crossword really has remarkably smooth fill for a puzzle with 75 theme squares. Those five 15-letter entries are locked into that order, too—the phrases progress from the greatest to the lowest probability. Like so:

17A. ["Sure thing"] clues WITHOUT QUESTION. Definitely yes.
28A. IN ALL LIKELIHOOD means ["Chances are good"]. Probably yes.
35A. ["It could go either way"] is the utterly equivocal MAYBE YES, MAYBE NO.
43A. ["Doubtful"] clues NOT LOOKING SO HOT. Probably not.
56A. ["Forget it!"] means AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN. Plain and simple, no.

There's a slight evocation of the Magic 8-Ball, but more direct.

Yeah, the fill has a lot of short answers that aren't particularly exciting. But there are high points. I like the one-two punch of 1D and 3D, MOWGLI and MOTHRA—["The Jungle Book" hero] and [Insect monster of Japanese film]. Favorite clues: 8A: [Seven-up and crazy eights] are GAMES; 21A: [Word before sheet or music] is RAP; 41A: [Like dessert wines] means SWEET (yum!); 54A: [Counselor's clients, perhaps] is a plural clue for COUPLE; 66A: [Had a bawl] clues WEPT; and ["Stat!"] clues three answers, 7D: PDQ crossing 4A: ASAP and also 60D: NOW. Two neighboring answers transported me to my salad days. There's 46D: ["Movin' ___" ("The Jeffersons" theme)] for ON UP beside 47D: [Cheech or Chong persona] for HIPPIE. Mind you, STONER is also 6 letters long.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Flip It"

The theme entries take 5-letter words, split 'em into two parts that can be words, and make a cockamamie sentence or phrase with the full and split words:

17A. GOT IN INGOT is clued as [Boarded a gold bar-shaped vehicle?].
58A. [Bans all alcoves?] is OKS NO NOOKS. A one-syllable word turns into two one-syllable words.
11D. [Really tiny amt. of a form of oxygen?] is ONE OZ. OZONE.
29D. SUE IS ISSUE is a complete sentence provided that you don't mind leaving out an article. [The debate topic: Grafton, the author?] is the clue.

JIM CROCE (38D: ["Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" singer]) is a good first/last name combo. I loved that song when I was a kid. You know why? Because we said "damn" when we sang along. It was a hit the summer I turned 7.

I especially liked CAYMAN, or 10D: [___ Islands (British territory near Cuba)] because earlier this evening I found a Cayman Islands nickel on the floor by my desk. Why don't I remember getting any Cayman cash during the cruise stopover last December? The dime-sized nickel surprised me.

9D: [Flat, messy do on a hot day, perhaps] is HAT HAIR. Around these parts, HAT HAIR is a much bigger issue in the winter.

At 47A, QUINOA ("keen-wa") is a ["Supergrain" used in some gluten-free recipes]. Try it if you haven't; it's tasty.

Updated Tuesday morning:

Lynn Lempel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Just Getting By"—Janie's review

Imitation, it's said, is the sincerest form of flattery. In which case, fellow CSer Bob Klahn should feel mightly flattered indeed. He published CS a puzzle titled "Getting By" with the exact same gimmick (adding "BY" to well-known names and phrases) in November of 2003. Borrowing one of Bob's theme phrases, Lynn has made this rendition all her own and for me, the smile-factor ran high. It's hard to resist theme fill the likes of:

17A. TABBY HUNTER [One looking for a lost pet?]. Though for years he was closeted in Hollywood, Tab Hunter (born Andrew Arthur Kelm...) managed to get a lot of hearts beating more rapidly, carve out a more than decent career for himself, even to out himself proudly—and keep on working. (Sometimes confused with the late Troy Donahue.)
27A. AIRLINE HUBBY [Spouse of a Delta or United worker?] The spouse or the worker himself? Or is the male spouse an airline hubby in the way that come Superbowl Sunday, many a woman is said to be a "football widow"? Regardless... did you know that while Atlanta is still the busiest passenger hub, Dubai is looking to become the world's busiest hub? Anywhere?
44A. PERSIAN RUGBY [Sport played in Iran?]. This is the one example of repeat fill, but Lynn's provided an entirely different clue.
58A. FURBY TRADER [Merchant dealing in an old toy?]. Another winner. The Furby first appeared in 1998, and by 2005, this electronic toy had been programmed with voice recognition capability. Its native tongue is, uh, Furbish..., but the more you interact with it, the more English it uses in response. Really.

If you're more attracted to reading than to playing with Furbies, you're in luck. Lynn has given us two high-profile characters from different ends of the "classic" spectrum: GLINDA [Good Witch of Oz] and AENEAS [Virgil's hero]. We also get two classic-type authors: J.M. BARRIE ["Peter Pan" penner] and Edgar Allen POE ["The Tell-Tale Heart" writer].

Two opera heroines find their way into the puzzle as well: AIDA from the [Opera featuring a captured princess] and GRETEL [Girl enticed by an edible house]. No, Gretel isn't clued in relation to the opera, but Humperdinck made her a star in seasonal favorite Hänsel und Gretel. Even if you hate opera, I'm going to bet you're familiar with (and like...) the "Evening Prayer" from H&G (starts at about 4:20).

In the fresh-fill department, DAY-SHIFT and its opposite in the grid, our friend J.M BARRIE, both look to be making CS debuts, and PARTY BOSS and ANGRY LOOK (also grid opposites) major-publication debuts. CAN IT BE? Yes, it can (in another CS first). I love the word GENERIC in this mix, and will close out with a look at what seems to be a very first-timer: CRABBER, that [Net wielder on the Chesapeake, maybe]. The life of a Chesapeake waterman is rich in lore, but oh, by no means is it an easy one!

Scott Atkinson's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme is "things you might say after WAIT" (49D: [Bide one's time, and a word that may precede the answers to starred clues]). Here are those expressions:

17A. IT ISN'T OVER yet. ["We aren't finished here"].
53A. I'M NOT READY! ["Give me another sec!"]
11D. Like the public radio quiz show, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me says, wait, DON'T TELL ME. ["It's on the tip of my tongue"].
28D. But wait, THERE'S MORE! ["I haven't told you everything yet!"] Not only do you get the ShamWow, we'll throw in four mini-ShamWows at no extra charge. But that's not all. You also get the handy Ginsu knife.

Highlights in the fill include GO SOUTH ([Deteriorate, slangily]), LUMP IN ([Group together]), [Puerto Rico's capital] SAN JUAN, and BEATNIKS ([Bongo-playing '50s-'60s stereotypes]).

Is it just me, or did this one feel more like a Wednesday puzzle too? Maybe I'm in the summer crossword-solving doldrums this week.

Joon Pahk's July 24 Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Mythaphorically Speaking"

The Chronicle's crossword didn't make it onto the publication's redesigned website last week but there was, in fact, a CHE crossword. It's par for the CHE course, with a literary-minded theme and plenty of literary and artsy clues in the fill. The fill answers with clues from literature, music, and theater include UDAY, LISA, IAN, RACE, ART SONG, EDDA, ADANO, KYD, LESSON, OJIBWA, CLAIR, LES, ADA, SON, STANDS, EDGARS, and KEY—that's 17 answers. The five theme entries are metaphors derived from Greek (all Greek, yes?) mythology:

18A. PANDORA'S BOX is the [Source of many troubles].
23A. A [Small cause of a major conflict] is the APPLE OF DISCORD. Eris, the goddess of discord, caused all sorts of trouble with that golden apple.
38A. The SWORD OF DAMOCLES hanging over your head is [Disaster waiting to happen].
54A. The PROCRUSTEAN BED is an [Arbitrary standard that everyone must conform to]. Hmm, I don't think I knew this phrase. Sounds like the No Child Left Behind–mandated standardized testing to me.
61A. A [Seemingly insoluble conundrum] is a GORDIAN KNOT. Gordius, the king of Gordium, tied an intricate knot and said whoever could untie it would become the ruler of Asia. Alexander the Great apparently had little patience for knotwork and slashed the knot with a sword. That's totally cheating, man.

What I liked: Including both LARVAL, or [Premetamorphic], and PUPAE, or [Chrysalides]. The AFL-CIO, a [Gp. created by a 1955 merger]. More mythology: [Mars's Olympus Mons, for one] is a VOLCANO. Oh, wait. That's astronomy and not myth, isn't it? The first name that came to mind when I saw the ****P* pattern for [Beijing Games superstar] was pre-Beijing swimming star Ian THORPE; did you notice that PHELPS shares the H and P in the same spots?

July 26, 2009

Monday, 7/27

BEQ 5:03
NYT 3:34
LAT 2:35
CS 7:09 (J—paper)

Warm thanks to Dean Olsher for filling in on the Sunday puzzles. I like Dean's writing (have you read From Square One? It's unlike any other crossword nonfiction book you've read—thoughtful divagations plus interviews plus memoir, all in all an engaging read) and his turn here at Crossword Fiend was funny.

Over at his own blog, Dean wants to hear about your favorite crossword clues now. Go pay him a visit and tell him why you love that particular clue.

Here's what I did instead of blogging yesterday: I went on a Wendella boat tour up the Chicago River and out through the locks into Lake Michigan on a perfect afternoon, the warm July sun and cool lake breeze hitting the sweet spot. Then the local relatives, out-of-town relatives, my son, and I walked up the Magnificent Mile to the Hancock building. We spent three hours on the observation level, the 94th floor, enjoying the views as the sun dropped lower in the sky. The sun did one of those West Coast/oceanside things, a red ball dipping below the horizon. The city lights twinkle after dark, and usually I get to see that for only as long as it takes a jet to descend to the tarmac. And then! Yesterday was Chicago's annual Venetian Night, when a parade of lighted boats heads across a stretch of Lake Michigan before the fireworks show. Have you seen fireworks from above? It's cool.

Allan Parrish's New York Times crossword

Hey! Spoiler in the byline! That's kinda funny, that Allan Parrish made a PERISH/PARRISH/PARISH theme. It took me a Wednesday amount of time to piece this puzzle together, as my clue reading comprehension plummeted. The [Highly collectible illustrator] MAXFIELD PARRISH is familiar to me only from crossworder Nancy Shack's tale of recognizing a Parrish picture that had been donated to a white elephant shop; the hospital sold it outside of the shop for thousands of dollars. Alas, in my head, the clue was looking for a kind of illustration that's highly collectible, or the collector herself. See? Not reading properly. I skipped right past the [College professor's mantra] so I ended up getting PUBLISH OR PERISH after MAXFIELD. And [Lafayette or Orleans] is a LOUISIANA PARISH, or county, but I blanked on needing anything other than a 6-letter word for "city." I did a little better reading the non-theme clues, but sheesh. My first thought for [One of the Wise Men] was NESTOR from Greek mythology rather than the Biblical CASPAR, whom I wanted to be GASPAR.

Things that seemed to be supra-Monday to me:

6A. [Sword handles] are HAFTS. I always want HILTS first.
30A. [As, chemically] is the symbol for ARSENIC. "As," of course, is also a word, so I continued with my misreading-of-clues thing here and needed lots of crossings.
52A. [Gird oneself] sounds more like steel oneself, brace oneself, prepare for an onslaught. To me, GET SET just means "get ready."
5D. [Rum and lime juice drink] is a DAIQUIRI, which is a familiar enough word but I'll bet trying to spell it gives a lot of people fits.
24D. [1944 Jean-Paul Sartre play], 6 letters starting with N? Easy! That's NAUSEA. Except when it's NO EXIT. Totally mucked up the left side of the puzzle with NAUSEA.
39D. [Nancy's 56-Down in the comics], 6 letters? Oh, she knew SLUGGO. Alas, it was her AUNT / FRITZI. Getting a few crossings reminded me of the name, but I have to wonder how many people under 40 know this.

Updated Monday morning:

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post Puzzle, "Seating for Eating"—Janie's review

At the CAFÉS [Informal restaurants] you frequent (bonus-fill), what's your seating preference? At a table? In a booth? On a stool at the counter? You can't fully appreciate it in this picture, but NYC's Café Edison a/k/a the Polish Tea Room, offers you all three. Come on down to West 47th Street and give it a try! If you're not in the area, you can appreciate your options as Patrick presents them in today's theme fill:

17A. TABLE OF CONTENTS [Book list]. Not a list of books, but a list that appears in a book. I like this clue.
35A. STOOL PIGEON [Snitch]. So often this clue leads to a three-letter answer: rat. I like this a lot better. My American Heritage Dictionary tells me that a stool pigeon is "a person acting as a decoy or as an informer, especially one who is a spy for the police" and that this slang term came into being "from the practice of tying pigeons to a stool to attract other pigeons."
52A. BOOTH TARKINGTON ["The Magnificent Ambersons" author]. Put that one on your "book list"—or Penrod or Seventeen or Pulitzer Prize-winner Alice Adams. Not to be confused with Fran Tarkenton...

If the Cruciverb Database is correct, today is the ninth time stool pigeon has appeared in a mainstream-newspaper puzzle. And the fifth time in connection with a "seating" theme—but a first for a CS theme. EVEN SO, there was nothing OLD HAT about the solving experience. There's fine fill in CS first-timer HELIPORT, the ominous MIASMAS [Foreboding atmospheres], MÉNAGE [Household to Henri] , and the shout out to IRON MAN [2008 Robert Downey Jr. hit] (a movie I had great fun watching). JOINING UP is now joining databases. Let's hear a "RAH!" [Quaint cheer].

Ramblings:

The humble EGG is a not only a [Custard ingredient] but also goes into making eggnog. So don't forget the NUTMEG [Eggnog sprinkle].
Harry Potter might want to try some ALOE on that SCAR...
And [Handel contemporary] (J.S) BACH wrote many concerti that featured an OBOIST [Woodwind section member]. Here's the 1st movement of the Oboe and Violin Concerto.

Oh—and I'll take a booth, please!

Updated Monday afternoon:

Samuel Donaldson's Los Angeles Times crossword

I slept too late to do the puzzles this morning, and went straight from taking my kid to day camp, to seeing one of those 69A: [Salon colorists] (DYERS), to snarfing down a quick lunch and heading to the gym. TCB! That's 25A: [Getting the job done, briefly], or "taking care of business." More B remains to be T C of, so I'd best be quick with the blogging.

The theme goes halfsies, dropping by half with each step:

20A. That TWENTY MULE TEAM serves as [Borax haulers, in classic ads]. I opened up a fresh box of that brand of borax yesterday, it just so happens. Helps keep towels fresh, they say.
31A. [Cowboy's topper] is a TEN-GALLON HAT.
FIVE CARD DRAW is a [Poker game where one might stand pat].
The surprising part of the theme is where it ends up, with a mixed number (a fourth-grader should be able to tell you what that is if you've forgotten the math lingo). TWO AND A HALF MEN has been a [CBS sitcom since 2003].

Highlights beyond the theme: (1) Down at 46-Down, CATNAP is clued as [Forty winks]. Half of forty, of course, is twenty, where today's theme began. (2) Compound words and phrases in the grid include DOG FOOD, the SLOW LANE, the OPEN SEA, EYELASH, and "ETC., ETC." They liven things up, don't they? On the "meh" side, it felt like there were a lot of partials (A SLIP, IN A, ERE I) and clunky abbrevs/plurals (APBS, OOFS, NEGS, ONS).

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"

The last word I filled in was 38D. [It'll keep you up] is not, I don't think, a medically sound clue for APNEA. The clue probably works fine for anyone who isn't, say, a doctor or medical editor who's familiar with sleep medicine. Grr. The crossings were nutty, too: CAMASH? A [Lily plant with edible bulbs]? Never heard of it. [1968 Turtles hit] ELENORE?

Loved CHILLAX, which is clued as [Calm down], but my friends and I use it more along the lines of "What are you doing this weekend?" "Oh, just chillaxing."

Loved the up-to-the-minute clue for White Sox pitcher MARK BUEHRLE, who threw a perfect game last Thursday. I'm not a Sox fan, and this morning by son told me he'd dreamt that a baboon was attacking him because he was a Cubs fan while the baboon liked the Sox. But there were other non-attacking baboons who were Cubs fans.

Loved GHIRARDELLI chocolate. Oh, I can spell that all right. And I can eat it. Num.

Loved TIME SINK—[Overly engaging websites with little value, say] are collectively a huge TIME SINK. You ever lose an hour of your day looking at LOLcats or Go Fug Yourself? Yeah. I'm not sure if Facebook counts as a TIME SINK. Does social networking have more than "little value"?

I like Brendan's Themeless Monday puzzles. They always seem to be labeled "hard," but often take me less time than the "medium" themed puzzles. I do so enjoy a good themeless crossword.

July 25, 2009

Sunday, 7/26

NYT 99:59

LAT 99:59

PI 99:59

[updated to include:]

CS 99:59
BG 99:59

by guest blogger Dean Olsher

Amy always has something to teach me, and therefore I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I’m making my debut in her chair on a Sunday. She is no doubt teaching me a lesson for writing, in FROM SQUARE ONE, that I haven’t done a Sunday crossword in years, because it feels more like work than fun. (Of course I made an exception when Amy made her debut as a constructor three Sundays ago, with Tony Orbach, and I’m not brown-nosing when I say that it was a fun puzzle.)

In any event, this was a good excuse to reacquaint myself with other editing styles and challenge my belief that the New York Times puzzle really is superior. (It’s like my preference in dogs. I would like to identify with something edgy and unusual, but the sad truth is that I love Golden Retrievers, the most vanilla of breeds. I wish I could claim something more obscure, but there you have it.)

Kevin G. Der’s New York Times Sunday crossword, “Story Circle”

There’s a moment that occurs when solving a rebus puzzle that satisfies in its own way. You think to yourself, “Wait a minute, something is not right.... Saaaaay! I know what’s going on here.” The rebus in question is SIR, which goes in five circled squares slightly north of center. The theme is rounded out with the titles of six films and one book inspired by the story of King Arthur and his Round Table. There are circles for five knights here, leading to left-right symmetry rather than the usual 90-degree sort. I’m not sure of the thinking behind five circles. According to various tellings of the legend, there were at least twenty-five knights, if not more. I feel I must be missing something, and if I am, I’m sure someone will point it out.

Among the theme answers, the 1889 Twain novel that makes up both 4D and and its symmetrically located 12D is A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT. Wow, that was exhilarating! Wow!

Another twofer takes place at both 14D and 76D: 1953 Ava Gardner film ... as depicted elsewhere in this puzzle? The answer is KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE. Also wow! Something about taking up a whole line, interrupted, seems virtuosic.

Less wow among the theme clues:

The 1981 film in which Helen Mirren plays a sorcress is EXCALIBUR (2D).
Seventeen years later, you get the 1998 animated film featuring the voice of Pierce Brosnan, QUEST FOR CAMELOT (143A).
71D, MISTS OF AVALON is clued as 2001 Anjelica Huston miniseries, with “The.” I don’t love the The (or the missing hyphen in miniseries; spelled this way, as the writer Sarah Thyre has rightly pointed out, you’re left with “such small sad little things”).
137A, SWORD IN THE STONE is clued as a 1963 animated film with the song “Higitus Figitus,” with “The.” Again with the The! Not a lovely clue.

Lots to love:

10D, Subtlety = NUANCE, which is just a good word, plain and simple.
SYNOD (39D, Bishop’s group) is a great word, especially when it’s so close to 62A, Blissful: BEATIFIC.
62D, Winnie ____ Pu yields ILLE. That’s the title of A.A. Milne’s beloved children’s tale translated into Living Latin, which is exactly the kind of quixotic endeavor that wins my undying admiration.
103A, Prefix with sphere for IONO was not meant as a shout-out to radio, but I’ll take it as one anyway.
81D, Soap box? TVSET. Nice.
Drilling grp. appears twice. At 44D, I thought it was going to be OPEC, but it turned out to be ROTC. Then at 86D, it’s ADA. (My father was a dentist in the army when I was born. He didn’t go through ROTC but he did undergo basic training. On the day they made everyone crawl under live machine-gun fire, he lost his lunch, which consisted of chili. He has never eaten it since.)

Et alii, so as not to gush too much.

Boo on them: 19D, Red alert. FIRE SIREN? Nah.
Boo on me: I got impatient (see above, “more work than fun”) and tried to look up 78D, Supreme Egyptian deity (spelled here as AMEN RA) by typing in crosswordfiend.blogspot.com. Oops.

I think of myself as post-ideological, but there are a couple of areas in which I maintain a hard line. For example, I hope to remain forever closed-minded in my opposition to puppy mills. And although people tell me they can still appreciate a crossword’s literary qualities while solving it as fast as they can, Lord, I do not want to be in that number. As Will Shortz wrote in the most recent Talk to the Times (which, he says, received more questions than any previous installment of this feature), “Rushing to solve a crossword is like stuffing a fine four-course meal down your throat as fast as you can.” I share all of this to explain my solving times, which are posted in solidarity with the yet-to-be-formed Crossword Fiends’ Auxiliary Chapter of the Slow Food movement.

Paula Gamache’s CrosSynergy “Sunday Challenge”

I am in solidarity with our usual host here: I always look forward to a Paula Gamache puzzle in the New York Times. Gamache is super smart and witty and I wish more puzzles were like hers. In fact, I wish this puzzle were more like hers. It lacked her special touch. Surely all the sparkle in her New York Times offerings can’t be due exclusively to Will Shortz’s editing of the clues. Did CrosSynergy dumb her down?

25D is a good ’un: They may stand for something is the clue for LATECOMERS. But 34A, Sheep shelter (COTE) is - meh.

44A, Auto service department offerings are LOANERS. I remember this as a common practice from childhood, but does anyone still do that?

Many of the folks I met while losing 15% of myself might quibble with 27D, Not a sore loser for DIETER. The people who went to my meetings complained bitterly.

I was Greeted, as a villain this week (49A, HISSED AT) when I gave the first performance of FROM SQUARE ONE: THE LIVE SHOW. I was asking for it. What prompted the hissing was this: “Brooklyn always felt like the Chicago of New York: parochial, boosterish, oddly proud to be the second city within the city.” It may have had something to do with the fact that I delivered this line steps from the epicenter of the Bobo universe. And of course this now has to get past a gatekeeper who loves living in Chicago. I hope the brown-nosing worked.

I couldn’t help but notice that Juicy fruit appears as a clue not only in this puzzle (56A, BERRY) but also Merl Reagle’s (35D, MELON). Now that's crossynergy.

Which brings us to:

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, “A Tense-Sounding Situation”

I used to do Merl’s puzzle every week when I was a reader of the New York Observer, which I gave up because his crossword was the one good thing about it. Now that they’re under new management I should check them out again. In any event, I was glad for the reminder of what makes him so great.

Right away, with 1A, he initiates what appears to be an unintentional subtheme with “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” author LOOS. (Five years ago America passed up an opportunity to obsess over Rebecca Loos - no relation, as far as anyone has pointed out - who was alleged to have caused David Beckham to stray from Posh Spice.) He then proceeds to include a trio of Movie Stars I Have Had Crushes On: “In the Bedroom” actress (56D, SPACEK); Diana of “The Avengers” (80A, RIGG); and Nora, opposite Nick (15D, MYRNA). I wish to offer this list as Exhibit A to everyone who, when trying to fix me up on blind dates, has disbelieved me when I say I don’t have a “type.” (Although, considering how much I wish Claudette Colbert and Carole Lombard would make it into puzzles more often, maybe I do have a type. Colbert was said to be mean to Clark Gable, but he was madly in love with Lombard. And now that I think of how young she was when she was killed in a plane crash and made him a widower, I’m glad it didn’t work out with me after all.) Don’t need a Facebook quiz to know that the 1940s would have been my decade.

Sadly, I am a child of the seventies, which is why 73A, He leaked the Pentagon papers got me to ELLSBERG in no time. Maybe because I'm Generation Jones, this tickled my “Gee!” spot.

I am on record as saying there is no difference between a good pun and a bad pun. That doesn’t mean I can't give props to Merl Reagle for his mastery of paronomasia, which forms the basis of his intended theme. And in fact the puzzle does demonstrate that some puns are more equal than others. As an example of a tired pun, we have 81A, Redundant library sign? for NO TALKING ALOUD. We know that one. But then, by contrast, there’s 25A, New batch of chicks? for FRESH BROOD, which pushes us to hear the language anew. Even better than the AHA MOMENT (Gamache, 1A: Instant when the light goes on) is the Ah! moment, and Merl’s always good for a bunch of them.

The rest of his theme clues:

23A, Result of an Oreck-Bissell summit? = VACUUM PACT
25A, Vestal virgins? = CHASTE WOMEN
38A, Q: “What were you doing at the lumber yard, Tarzan?” A: “_____” = GETTING BOARD
50A, Customer-service reps for a certain condiment? = MUSTARD SUPPORT
65A, Soft and smooth on top? = BALD LIKE A BABY
93A, Get a little sloppy with the stickum? = PASTE ONESELF
103A, Beach-access route? = ROAD TO SHORE
109A, Headline about escaped lions? = PRIDE LOOSE
112A, Where the teetotaler walked? = PAST THE BAR

Merl’s puzzle did not change my mind about puns (for a lovely sorting-through of what I find so distasteful about them, read this op-ed piece). Still, solving it was a satisfying way to spend 99 minutes and 59 seconds.

Some obscurities are boring (89D, Butter dye = ANNATTO) while others (48D, Cross = ROOD) make me curious to find out more. And then there’s the nifty BEADLE (67D, English church official) which really doesn’t deserve to be in crosswords more than it is, but its appearance today made me smile for some reason.

I do quibble with 64A, Many mag pages for ADS. In fact lately there have been not so many, which is why at least one longtime mainstay of American culture may vanish in the weeks ahead. You heard it here first.

Our little daisy chain continues. BPOE appears both here (91D, Lodge letters) and also in the Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword (30A), clued as Fraternal org.

Allemande left and promenade!

Nora Pearlstone’s Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword, “Midafternoons”

[The blogger-in-chief suggests I point out that “Nora Pearlstone” is an anagram of not a real person and is the puzzle-making alter ego of editor Rich Norris.]

The theme is PM: two-word answers, the first word ending in P, the second word beginning with M. This yields the following theme clues:

23A, Temporary solution = STOPGAP MEASURE
54A, Controversial excavation method = STRIP MINING
94A, Key equivalent to B-flat = A-SHARP MAJOR
130A, It can help you organize windows and wallpaper = DESKTOP MANAGER
17D, Startling Stories, e.g. = PULP MAGAZINE
66D, Maker of Marlboro = PHILIP MORRIS

Ho hum. Time for a mid-afternoon nap.

It was interesting to see 25A, APOLLO, clued as Harlem theater. Maybe the editors were sick of all the 40th-anniversary hoo ha surrounding the moon landing. Or maybe it’s how they’re responding to pressure from newspapers to make the L.A. Times puzzle more national.

Regarding NACRES (Mollusk shell materials): plural? Really, right there at the top? If I were to be forced to include a tortured pluralization of an uncountable noun I’d want to hide it somewhere other than 1A.

A rare sports clue pops up at 64A: apparently, an Old Boston Garden nickname is ESPO. I can’t be bothered to find out who or why.

Boston, come in, please!

Boston Globe Sunday crossword

Hello, Boston, you’re on the air!

[Dead air.]

While we’re waiting for the Globe puzzle to come online, I want to say that I’m no Alice Hoffman. I can take criticism. While poking around online for the endangered newspaper’s crossword I stumbled upon this review of my book by Amanda Heller, who seems to have to have neither liked it nor read it. To set the record straight, the crossword in FROM SQUARE ONE is not of my devising. Readers of the book, and now Ms. Heller, know that all credit goes to the multitalented Francis Heaney. I’m sure stuff like this has nothing to do with the fact that the paper is going under. [SNAP!]

[This just in: still no Boston Globe crossword. But Cox and Rathvon are quoted, as am I, in this article that appears today in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, which is bucking the trend by adding puzzles to the paper. Now the bad news: the puzzles they’re adding are sudoku and KenKen®.]

Stand by, please.

It’s confirmed. The Eagle has landed.

Henry Hook’s Boston Globe Sunday crossword, “Take My Word For It”

A nicely made puzzle, worth waiting for. His theme is truth, illustrated as follows:

22A, Oath opening = I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR

33A, Oddities column = BELIEVE IT OR NOT

63A and 71A, “It’s gotta be true” = YOU CANT MAKE THIS STUFF UP

95A, Rerun in the GSN lineup = TO TELL THE TRUTH

111A, Friday’s request = JUST THE FACTS MAAM

15D, George’s affirmation = I CANNOT TELL A LIE

43D, Old Coke slogan = ITS THE REAL THING

with a Lagniappe at 96D, the Lionel Richie hit TRULY.

Once again a secondary theme emerges. Hook is going to Lahaina in his mind with:

115A, 50th state bird = NENE (someday I hope to see their state fish in a crossword)

116a, Pacific greetings = ALOHAS

98D, Guitar’s kin = UKE

In case 47D, the Suzanne Vega hit LUKA turns out to be so catchy that you just can’t get it out of your head, we here at the Diary wish to offer this earworm replacement service. You may want to consider, instead, TROIKA (56A, Three-horse carriage) or maybe even MOOCHER (85D, Sponge).

More pleasure:

9A, Old war story? is ILIAD, and then, in the opposite corner (119A) you have Jason’s ship, the ARGO.

26A, My brothel’s keeper is MADAM. Nice!

Not so nice:

45A, Bleating sound is MAA?

58D, Illicit affair for AMOUR. Illicit? Always?

64D, Homesteads, in Hampshire appear to be TOFTS. Filing that one away.

I had to look up 34D, Greg of “B.J. and the Bear,” which turns out to be EVIGAN. I didn’t feel too bad about it, since I got no help from 39A, Kin of (alt. sp.) for VAR. Huh? Still have no idea what that’s all about. Anyone? Anyone?

16D, Strands for MAROONS reminds me of a recent conversation with my NYU colleague, Adam Penenberg, who I admire very much (and not just because Steve Zahn played him in the movie Shattered Glass). Adam told me his all-time favorite Eugene Maleska clue was, “After a blue ship collides with a red ship. Answer: Marooned.” This gave me an idea as I develop FROM SQUARE ONE: THE LIVE SHOW. Send me your favorite clues, and tell me why they’re your favorites, and offer any interesting stories behind them, over at my blog. And when I say “interesting” I do not mean fabricated.

July 24, 2009

Saturday, 7/25

NYT 5:59
Newsday 5:23
LAT 4:00—fantastic themeless, don't miss it (Across Lite at Cruciverb.com, applet at latimes.com)
CS 7:16 (J—paper)

Guess what? When there's an outdated crossword clue about nurses, they notice. And they don't like it. Must reading for crossword constructors and editors.

Edited to add: Writer Dean Olsher (his book, From Square One, is in bookstores now) will be blogging the Sunday puzzles for us.

Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword

Vic's puzzle is anchored by a 15-letter answer running down the middle and criss-crossed by three more 15s as well as two 11s and four 10s. It's an unusual grid layout. The fill isn't very Scrabbly, perhaps because of the constraints of this layout. Overall, the cluing was more lively than the fill, I thought. Highlights:

15A. [Cover-up during a shower] is the TARP on a ballfield. Anyone else let that P talk them into SOAP here?
17A. [Inquire about a union contract?] clues PROPOSE MARRIAGE. I suspected the answer would have something to do with prenuptial agreements, but PROPOSE MARRIAGE is much sweeter.
28A. [Trumpeter with a prominent neck] is, of course, the most popular trumpet player in crosswords, Al HIRT. He is known for his fabulously prominent neck, which is the secret of his musical success. No, actually, the answer is a SWAN, such as a trumpeter swan.
35A. [Quarter master?] is sort of a weird clue for NUMISMATIST because I don't know that a coin collector/expert would consider herself a "master." But the clue definitely did its job in getting me to think of entirely different possible meanings for "quarter master."
46A, 50A. I'll excuse a pesky [Kind of ___] clue if it's part of something bigger. Here, [Certain joe] is DECAF and [Kind of joe] is SLOPPY. Really, 50A should be [___ joe], but then nobody would be misled into thinking about coffee.
63A. [Something often written under] is a deadline more than, say, the table. But the puzzle's looking for NOM DE PLUME this time.
7D. The anchor 15 kept me guessing for far too long, because those two razor-aisle clues made me think of peach fuzz whiskers. And then I thought of eluding the police. But no. [Losing the fuzz?] clues COMING INTO FOCUS. Amazing how long it took for that answer to come into focus.
18D. OFTENER. I don't think I've ever used that word. It's clued as [Not so rarely]. It looks like it's missing an introductor FABRIC S-.
29D. WISC.! "On, Wisconsin!" The state is clued as [Superior setting: Abbr.] because Superior is a Wisconsin town way up yonder next to Duluth, Minnesota.
30D. [Hairy clue-sniffer] clues the whodunit dog, ASTA. My god, what a horrid clue! It's grotesque. Hairy + sniffer? Rhymes with "glue-sniffer"? It's almost surreal. And then the answer is just our stalwart detective dog ASTA. When's the last time an ASTA clue made you laugh? +10 points!
47D. [One working on the side?] is an EATER still working on that side dish. Icky odd-job answer, sure, but the clue and the initial E lured me into entering EXTRA, working on the...side...of a movie set? Yeah, that doesn't make much sense. So sue me.
49D. Crosswordese ARILS come to life when clued as [Edible pomegranate parts]. Most of us know what ARILS look like if we get a colorful example like this.

What I don't quite get or didn't much care for:

39A. VESTED INTERESTS is clued [They benefit personally]. Say what? "Personally" suggests that this is about people who benefit, but people have VESTED INTERESTS rather than being VESTED INTERESTS. Can somebody explain this one to me?
54A. [Seek change?] clues BEG. Hmm, can we not be jokey about the destitute? Beg pardon, beg for forgiveness, teach a dog to beg—those connotations would be better.
57A. [Father of Eleazar, in the Bible]? Ouch. It's AARON. He's Moses's brother, right? Can we expect MOSES to be clued as [Eleazar's uncle}? Meh.
38D. AREOLAS has such handy vowels, so it keeps showing up in crosswords. "Oh! Excuse me! Your dress is so low-cut, I fear your [Biological interstices] are peeking out!" But the word never gets clued with reference to what everyone thinks of when they hear it. The nipples and environs get no love in the crossword puzzle.

Updated Saturday morning:

Randall J. Hartman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Ow, Ow—That Hurts!"—Janie's review

Nuthin' like a fine array of percussive sounds to generate a headache, is there? BANG! BOOM! KNOCK!—and what's the upshot? "Ow!" Double the cacophony and "Ow, ow!" Randy plays with these sounds in today's puzzle, but I don't imagine you'll need to take two aspirin once you've solved it. Additionally, he's given us three grid-spanning theme fills of the very fresh variety: the first two appear to be major-publication firsts, the third a CS debut:

20A. BANG-BANG CHICKEN [Szechuan dish]. Looks veeeery tasty. And unless you use one to prep the chicken itself, it looks like this dish can be made without a WOK [Chinese cooker].
41A. BOOM BOOM MANCINI [Lightweight boxing champ of the '80s]. Boy, does that fill look good in the grid! The consonant combos make it a little tricky to parse. (And I love that the puzzle includes BOO [Halloween holler] as well, like sort of boom partial...). While I'm not much of a boxing fan, somewhere I knew that as a younger fighter, Mancini, who delivered his share of KO'S [Some boxing victories, briefly] in his day, played a title bout that ultimately resulted in his opponent's death. This was in the days of 14-round title-bouts. Wisely, the tragedy led to the boxing organizations' decisions to reduce by two the number of rounds in a title bout.
56A. KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES [Gags that usually involve puns]. I know what a p. in the a. the links here are. They don't bring you back to what you've been reading. But please, when you're finished reading, go back for this one. It's an excellent time-capsule look at the form. A more current one can be found by listening to Garrison Keillor's annual "joke show" that's part of A Prairie Home Companion. Segment 3 contains the "Knock-knock Song." Not known so much for punning, but for his well-observed complaints about daily life, ALAN KING did once say of an early Catskills gig that he was fired because he opened by saying: “When you work for Gradus, you work for gratis!” [Rimshot.]

In the STAT department, I loved seeing today's one J, two Vs, three Zs and six Ks. Back to comedy... I'm reminded that in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, funny-man Willy Clark ZINGS:

"Fifty-seven years in this business, you learn a few things. You know what words are funny and which words are not funny. Alka Seltzer is funny. You say "Alka Seltzer" you get a laugh . . . Words with "k" in them are funny. Casey Stengel, that's a funny name. Robert Taylor is not funny. Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland . . . Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny."

We get two references today to the changes we've seen in automobile manufacture over the years: OLDS [Automaker until 2004] and NASH [Bygone auto]. The last of these rolled off the Kenosha, WI line in 1969. [It's a gas] is neither a way of describing a particularly funny experience nor something along the lines of neon or nitrous oxide. No, ARCO is a brand of gasoline to put into your auto of choice. Glad it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere, where there's little chance that a leisurely Sunday spin will lead to an encounter with BLACK ICE [Winter driving hazard].

The [First name in mausoleums] is TAJ and two crossword-friendly last names (because of their constructor-friendly vowel sequence] are CAAN and KAEL. (And funny, too!) There's some fine slang in the fill GONZO, here clued as [Eccentric] (but which I think of more often as meaning extreme as in the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson); and SHAG, here clued as [Catch fungoes]. "Fungoes" (great word in itself!) are fly balls "hit for fielding practice by a player who tosses the ball up and hits it on its way down with a long, thin, light bat," so in sports jargon, SHAG=catch. In BritSpeak, SHAG=have sex with.

Yesterday, BLONDIE appeared in the puzzle as a [Chic Young creation]. Today, the wife of her husband Dagwood's boss (Mr. Withers) joins the party. Hello, CORA. You're in excellent company with RAVI [Sitarist Shankar] OLEG and IVAN. Glad to see this last one clued in reference to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's ["One Day in the Life of ___ Denisovich"]. It woulda been really easy to clue him as [Tennis great Lendl], partnering him with ILIE [Tennis bad boy Nastase].

Brad Wilber's Los Angeles Times crossword

This one's been short-listed for the annual Oryx honors for the awards panel's favorite themeless crossword. It's got an abundance of fresh fill that really crackles with liveliness, plus Scrabbly letters up the wazoo. Holy frijoles, did I ever like this puzzle. Here's what I like best in a themeless puzzle:

Lots of long answers, especially in the 9- to 11-letter range and all stacked together like intellectual Oreos.
Surprising phrases, titles, names, and words—things that are decidedly not a dime a dozen in crosswords.
Uncommon letters, which I like to call "Scrabbly" because they earn a lot of points in Scrabble.

The edges of Brad's crossword feature a dozen long answers, stacked three deep in each corner. There are all sorts of nutty entries I've never seen in a crossword before. And once I got MALT LIQUOR at 1-Across (clued with a brand of malt liquor, Colt 45, e.g.), I began to suspect there'd be all sorts of Scrabbly goodness lurking throughout.

Favorite answers and clues: I'll pick and choose and leave out some of my favorites, because dangit, there are just too many today.

17A: Emmy-winning 1972 TV concert film (LIZA WITH A Z). Wow, this one took me a long time to piece together. I had L*Z*WIT*AZ and was mystified. Two Zs! Total pop culture—but pop culture that is likely familiar to people from a wide range of ages. For a long moment, I wondered who this "A.Z." person was who was in concert with Liza.
28A: Brief turndown ('FRAID NOT). 100% colloquial spoken English, 100% familiar, less than 1% likely to appear in a crossword. My dad liked to tell the old joke about the piece of string who kept getting thrown out of a bar. He tied himself in a knot and roughed up his ends on the sidewalk and tried ordering a drink again. "Say, aren't you the piece of string I just threw out of here?" asked the bartender. "No, I'm a frayed knot," the string replied.
37A: Bismarck's realm (PRUSSIA). I think some of my ancestors came to America from what was then labeled Prussia on the map. I should start telling people I'm part Prussian.
44A: Military brass? (BUGLES). Usually "military brass" means the generals in charge; here it means the brass instruments used to play "Taps."
61A: Prescription that might give you shakes? (LIQUID DIET). As in the milkshakes, the protein shakes, etc.
64A: Head turner, at times (REIN). Usually "head turner" means "good-looking person," but here it refers to the REINs that turn a horse's head. Excellent mislead—the sort of misleading clue that's right at home in a Saturday crossword.
65A: 1988 winner of seven Olympic swimming medals (MATT BIONDI). I'm a sucker for first/last name combos as crossword fill. Poor Matt Biondi, eclipsed by Ian Thorpe and especially Michael Phelps. Speaking of full names, we also have LEW AYRES (5D: "Johnny Belinda" Oscar nominee).
6D: Where a pupil sits? (IRIS). I'll bet a lot of you wanted to put DESK here, didn't you? Saturday clues like to mess with our heads. Pupil = student, pupil = the black spot in your eye.
32D: You'll need one for your flat (SPARE TIRE). The clue wants you to think of English apartments and be misled, doesn't it?
34D: North American Francophone (QUEBECOIS). I like geographical names and I like the letter Q.
40D: Kipling's "limpin' lump o' brick-dust" (GUNGA DIN). I didn't know the colorful quote, but there aren't many Kipling characters' names that (a) I know and (b) are 8 letters long.
63D: Semi-colon? (DOT). A colon has two dots (:) so half a colon is one DOT.

Overall, this crossword really wasn't too tough, not as themeless Saturday puzzles go. There were a couple short answers that kept me waiting for crossings, though. There's 2D: Hypothetical particle (AXION), which I've never heard of. (Physics is not my forte.) And the abbreviation DAU. was kinda painful; it's clued as 31A: Abbr. in a genealogy volume, so I surmise that it's short for "daughter." You really have to expect to see some things you simply have no way of knowing in a Saturday puzzle, so you really can't call foul on these. And their crossings were rock-solid—it's not as if we had to guess a letter in DAU that crossed an Armenian river, you know? This puzzle is eminently fair in addition to being a sparkly marvel of yumminess.

(Writeup adapted from my post at L.A. Crossword Confidential.)

Adam Cohen's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

I think Adam Cohen's new to Stumper constructing, though his work has been published in the NYT every day from Monday through Saturday. This Stumper was decidedly non-stumpogenic as Stumpers go—I finished in a Friday to easy Saturday NYT amount of time. He's a promising addition to the Saturday Newsday crew.

Things that made me go "ooh":

1A. [Piquant hodgepodge] clues JAMBALAYA. First thought was POTPOURRI, but 2D: [Fictional talking lion] had to be ASLAN so POTPOURRI was out.
17A. PLAYED OUT is a great, colloquial phrase. It means [Exhausted], in a way. "The word ESNE is played out in crosswords."
43A. [Poorer than poor] clues BAD. We're not talking destitution, we're talking quality.
50A, 55A. Stacked trade names: AIR CANADA is the [Publisher of "enRoute"] and CLEARASIL was/is an ["American Bandstand" sponsor]
57A. KANYE WEST is clued as the [2009 Grammy winner for "Swagga Like Us"]. Chicago, represent!
8D. "YOU'RE ON!" is indeed an [Enthusiastic assent].
11D. The ROAD is a [Place setting for forks]. Great clue.
24A. A cathedral APSE is clued as [Where icons may be seen], but crossword clues much more often refer to icons on your computer's screen so it felt like a Saturday-grade mislead.
40D. BARACK is a [Name from the Swahili for "blessed"]. I looked askance at the clue until I had enough crossings and remembered reading this. Definitely a few cuts above the typical [Name that means "___"] clue because it's been in the news.

Things that made me go "huh?" or "meh":

9D. ARTELS were [Communal collectives] in prerevolutionary Russia, and it's the second time I've seen this word in a puzzle this week. It is officially PLAYED OUT.
12D. Is there a doctor or biologist in the house? Can an ANTITOXIN properly be described as a [Germ fighter]? This feels wrong to me. I know some bacteria produce toxins, but is an antitoxin prescribed for that?
13D. [Careless] clues UNHEEDING. Raise your hand if you have never spoken, written, or heard that word. "Heedless," sure. (Siegfried Sassoon fans, sit down.)
34D. SARA is clued as ["CSI" character]. Uh, that character left the show a couple years ago. Is there really no zippier way to clue SARA today?

July 23, 2009

Friday, 7/24

NYT 5:11
BEQ 4:17
LAT 3:38
CS 8:57 (J—paper)
WSJ 8:51
CHE tba — apparently not posted online yet in site redesign (*grumble*)

Will Shortz has been answering reader questions since July 20 here. Friday's the last day, so I expect there'll be more Qs&As added to the four pages' worth that are there now. It's an engaging read.

Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword

Isn't this a pretty crossword? I almost didn't want to sully it with any letters, but when the byline reads "Patrick Berry," I sullied it right up.

Eleven of the 15 Across rows contain a long (9 to 15 letters) answer, which looks crazy. One of the 15s is SPIRAL STAIRCASE (43A: [It gets you up and around])—which is sort of, a little bit, what the grid looks like.

If you'll pardon me, I've got to tuck my son in now, but I'll publish this much of the post for the nonce. Back soon.

And here I am again. You know what my favorite answers and clues were in this 62-worder? Well, there's NO SUCH THING (1A: [It doesn't exist]), for one. And also these:

16A. [Bloomer after whom bloomers are named] is AMELIA. I've known this particular eponym since I was a kid. Did we all learn that one when we were little?
19A. For [Toy from China], I was thinking of the KITE, but it's a toy dog, the Pekingese, or PEKE.
24A. [You might grind it out] clues a cigarette BUTT. At first I thought this was some sort of carpentry/workshop thing, or possibly about doing a bump and grind on the dance floor.
25A. [Fast hits] are LINE DRIVES. Yeah, it's baseball, but if you're gonna make me have a baseball answer, at least make it be a long phrase and not the last name of 1956's leading shortstop or a 2004 Padre.
30A. BRANDON LEE was the [Actor who debuted in "Kung Fu: The Movie"]. He died before The Crow was finished, which is a shame because Bruce Lee's son had a ton of potential.
35A. SLAM DANCES are [Activities at punk rock concerts]. Is it proper to pluralize "slam dance"? And what about GARBS (14A: [Outfits])?
39A. I love the word BARMY, which means [Foolish, in British slang].
48A. "SEE YOU IN COURT" are [Words from one who won't settle].
1D. [Whim-wham] is a crazy clue for NOVELTY. Dictionary says: archaic "a quaint and decorative object; a trinket." I gotta work "whim-wham" into my vocabulary.
2D. [It might contain a filling] could be many things. This time, it's an OMELET.
10D. NOSEDIVE is a [Calamitous decline].
15D. What's this? A factoid I didn't know about EELS? They are [Fish that can move equally well forward and backward].
21D. KEEBLER, the cookie people, is a [Company with a tree in its logo]. Ernie is the head elf, you know.
30D. [Nullifies, as an oath?] clues BLEEPS. Good clue.
42D. A PICA is [1/6 of an inch]. Who doesn't love printing terminology? Me, I like it so much more than the nautical and poker clues.

Mildly vexing spots:

28A. HASHED OVER is the answer to [Discussed at length]. I would prefer HASHED OUT, which has better support in at least one dictionary. You talk things over when you hash them out.
18A. RELET, or [Rent to another], is the sort of blah answer we rarely see in a Berrystravaganza. I suppose we have to allow Berry to use an utterly lifeless word once or twice a year, eh? He's earned the forgiveness.
29A. [Musical direction that means "lyrical" in Italian] is CANTABILE. Note the cognates, chant and cantor and incantations. Much of what I know about "musical directions" I learned from crosswords.
42A. [Folk singer Tom with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award] is PAXTON. I guess I follow folk singers even less than I thought, because I've never heard of him. It's a shiny new Grammy from 2009.
3D. SPRIT is a [Diagonally set spar]. Nautical terminology = meh.
13D. I wonder if Tom PAXTON knows [Pulitzer-winning historian Frederick Jackson ___] TURNER. Nope—TURNER died five years before Paxton was born.
34D. [Max of video game fame] is Max PAYNE. I learned this from crosswords, I swear.
35D. SYMS is an East Coast menswear chain, isn't it? It's also part of ["___ by Sinatra" (1982 collaborative jazz album)]. Big question mark for me on this one.

Updated Friday morning:

Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Material for Dessert Recipes"—Janie's review

Foodie (and foodies), take heed: this one's for you! Randy is serving up a cruciverbal confection with a power of suggestion that is bound to please—or possibly send you into the kitchen, or out to the nearest bakery. The trick, though, is that each of the theme desserts contains the name of a kind of fabric. The "material" in the title is material, not ingredients (though you will find plenty of those in the links...). Because there's always room for dessert, today we're offered:

18A. LACE COOKIES [Delicate, crumbly dessert]. More about this fill later;
25A. RED VELVET CAKE [Colorful, layered dessert]. A great, traditional cake from the South;
46A. FRENCH SILK PIE [Chilled, crusty chocolate dessert]. Though they've long been seen on dessert carts, both this filling fill and its predecessor look to be appearing in a major puzzle for the first time. And finally:
59A. COTTON CANDY [Sweet, sticky dessert]. This is the only one I had trouble with...as a dessert. At the dinner table. With (CS-first) SILVERWARE. Okay, ya don't need silverware for cookies either, but you know what I mean. I can see cotton candy as a treat at a baseball game, or a carnival or a fair—maybe after a "main course" of a corn dog and fried cheese curd, and in lieu of the deep-fried oreo... But after chicken KIEV and green beans au gratin, off-the-paper-cone or out-of-the-bag? That doesn't really sound like a dessert to me. What does, though, is cotton candy ice-cream or cotton candy cupcakes. With an insulin chaser, of course...

Statistcially speaking, lace cookies looks to be a major-puzzle first and cotton candy a CS-first. But lace cookie appears in another of Randy's puzzles—as does cotton candy. It's an LA Times puzzle called "At the Dress Dinner" and the theme fill is made up of... "foods that include clothing or dress material." As fill, cotton candy has appeared in some seven puzzles, apparently as theme fill on each occasion; four of those occasions being puzzles with a food 'n' fabric theme. All of which is to say, where puzzle themes are concerned, be prepared for "everything old is new again." "Déjà vu all over again" may not the preferred choice, but it does go with the territory.

I was about to say that elsewhere in the puzzle Randy had given us a lot to chew on and then mention I'M ALIVE [Cry from an avalanche survivor] and how this first-time puzzle fill reminded me (as clued) of Alive, the gripping Piers Paul Reid account of the survivors of an air disaster in the Andes. But that would be in very bad taste... (TSK, Jane. Had enough? ME, TOO...) I will add that "I'm Alive" is one of the great numbers in Tony-winners Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's gripping rock musical Next to Normal—about a woman with bi-polar disorder and its effect on her family. Not for the faint of heart.

Because I play so much of it at work, loved seeing PHONE TAG in the grid; and CS first-timer SKY CAM [It provides video from above], which is already passé in the sense that we take it for granted now, the same way we became inured to the miracle of telephone communication. And how nice to see an [Apple product] that's actually the product of an apple: CIDER.

Before I SKIDDOO (oh, if only there'd been a 23D this coulda be attached to...), I do want to point out that sans "material," there is yet another dessert within. The [Chic Young creation] BLONDIE ain't just a comic strip!

David Cromer's Los Angeles Times crossword

Each theme entry picks up an -IC that alters one word into something completely unrelated:

18A. [Break from soldiers' training?] is BASIC RELIEF, vs. bas-relief.
24A. [Clown settlement?] clues an ANTIC COLONY. Aaaah! Clowns! I just saw Bruce Nauman's video exhibit, Clown Torture, at the Art Institute's new Modern Wing. I pity the security guards who have to spend more than one minute within earshot of that exhibit. And no, they can't turn the volume down. (I asked.) I much preferred Sue Williams' painting, It's a New Age (NSFW). I am also fond of Christopher Wool's painting, Trouble—it's vowelless, like that Frank Longo crossword book! Here comes TRBL.
38A. [International affair?] is a TOPIC OF THE WORLD.
49A. [O. Henry stories?] are IRONIC WORKS. That's perfect, absolutely perfect.
60A. [Copperfield's limo?] (MAGIC WHEELS). Magician David Copperfield, not Dickens' David Copperfield. (Each time I typed that name, it came out "Copperfiend.")

I've been listening to a soundtrack of chainsaws and a woodchipper while doing this puzzle and writing about it, and I swear it's giving me a headache. So for details on non-theme fill and clues (and a good idea for a grand unifying entry for the theme), I'll send you to Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Just My Type"

I thought I had enough desktop publishing experience to dig a font theme, but no. The fonts in Brendan's theme aren't all familiar to me, and there's nothing innately entertaining or meaningful about the font names. Okay, so there's a font called Franklin that I don't use. There was a president named FRANKLIN PIERCE. And [Font penetration?] could clue that, except that pierce is a verb, not a noun, and Google shows me that the Franklin font isn't especially pointy, so there's no logical or amusing link to PIERCE. See what I mean? I'm just not feelin' it, dawg. Minor typographical nerd bonus points for the [Font suitcase?] clue for COURIER BAG. Back in the day, I handled font suitcases.

In Wednesday's L.A. Times crossword, SAT was clued as [Met] and this gave some people fits as they could just not accept that the words' equivalency was valid, no matter how many examples and dictionary definitions they saw. So thanks to Brendan for cluing SIT as [Be in session]. Yes! The sit/meet connection is not a sham!

I don't like [Crude object] as a clue for ORE—ore is a material and not a discrete object. I'll bet there's some ore buried within mountains, and Brendan did have some good mountain action here. The [Beatles album whose working title was "Everest"] is ABBEY ROAD, and the second-tallest mountain after Everest is K2 or, in crossword language, K-TWO. K-TWO is clued as ["The savage mountain"], which makes it sound volcanic and my first guess for any 4-letter volcano is ETNA. Whoops; not this time.

FIJI is the [Nation where golfer Vijay Singh is from]. It's a mystery to me: Why isn't "Fiji Vijay" his nickname?

Cathy Allis's Wall Street Journal crossword, "To Open: The Complete Instruction"

Cathy's second National Geographic Geopuzzle crossword is available in PDF form. This month's theme relates to the "Vanishing Venice" article.

The WSJ theme's a good bit more whimsical than any of the finance-related themes that sometimes appear in that paper. Cathy reinterprets packaging opening instructions by adding words onto the end of them. My favorite is 117A: [Cracker box: "Slide finger under flap and loosen gently"...] SO AS TO ENSURE A PAPER CUT. Ouch! I also like 65A: [Individual string cheese: "Safety first! Open with hands, not teeth"...] because SCISSORS ARE FOR WIMPS. I used to work with a woman who tore a neck muscle opening a pack of Twizzlers with her teeth. I am not making this up.

Solid puzzle with a few bits of crosswordese (57A: [Basketry willow] is OSIER and 12D: [Architectural pilaster] is ANTA, for example], nothing too crazy, and overall medium-tough cluing. Favorite clue: 32D: [They improve your balance] refers to CREDITS in your bank or credit card account.

July 22, 2009

Thursday, 7/23

NYT 5:23
LAT 4:00
CS 5:47 (J—paper)
Ink Well untimed

Gary & Stephen Kennedy's New York Times crossword

All right, I'm gonna have to piece together this theme while blogging about this 15x16 puzzle. I see that Baha Men's overplayed [Hit song from 2000...and a hint to 10 symmetrically arranged Across answers], WHO LET THE DOGS OUT, pertains to some "___ dog" phrases. I see two of the five pairs of symmetrical entries, and expect to encounter the rest by eyeballing the grid. Oh! I see now. The 10 extra answers need to include the DOG in order to match up with their clue. Give a solver enough wine and she will only notice one of the 10 clues doesn't quite work for the given answer.

1A, 74A. If you're a HOT dog, you're a [Show-off]. I had HAM and let the crossings change it to HOT without paying attention to the clue/answer mismatch. 74A is EAT, or [Cutthroat]—dog EAT dog, with two missing dogs that have been let out. The unanswered question, of course, is "Who let the dogs out?" I blame the Kennedys.
9A, 72A. A [U.S. Marine] is a DEVIL dog, and an [Old sailor] is a SALTY dog.
34A, 47A. A dog CATCHER is an [Animal control officer], while a dog BREEDER is a [Person who raises and sells pups].
15A, 70A. [Leader of the pack] is the ALPHA dog, and a LUCKY dog is [One falling into good fortune].
36A, 46A. [Folded corner] of a page is a dog-EAR, and a DOG tag is a [G.I.'s ID].

Now that's I've scrounged up those 10 answers—nine of which I did not look askance at while solving but certainly ought to have!—I'm ready for bed. What a workout! Before then, 10 clues:

42A. [Alexander ___, Russian who popularized a chess opening] is PETROV.
20a. MAGLEV, short for magnetic levitation, is a [Bullet train type].
25A. [Innards] are VISCERA! I love both words.
3D. [Kraft Foods drink] is TANG, which I absolutely loved as a kid. Is this a bonus tie-in to the moon landing anniversary, what with the astronauts supposedly drinking Tang back in the day?
4D. [With "the" and 32-Across, describing an old Matryoshka doll] clues MADE IN / the USSR.
10D. [The 31st vis-a-vis the 1st, e.g.] is an EVE, as in New Year's Eve.
11D. [She-foxes] are called VIXENS.
21D. [Super Bowl of 2023] will be numbered LVII, or 57.
23D. Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, and #2 is K2. The [K2 locale] is the KASHMIR, which might also be clued by way of the Led Zeppelin song.
37D, 48D. [With 48-Down, for example, south of the border] clues POR / EJEMPLO, or literally "for example."

Updated Thursday morning:

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Metal Detection"—Janie's review

Patrick tests our mettle today by filling his puzzle with 60 squares of theme fill―six words and phrases each containing the name of a familiar metal. Ready? There's:

18A. MARIGOLDS ["The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon ___" (Pulitzer-winning play)]. No one less than Shelley Winters starred when this played on Broadway in 1978; and Carol Kane was in the cast as well. This play received the Pulitzer mind you. How long did it run? 16 performances! While its Broadway run was seriously truncated, it's had a healthy afterlife in regional theatre and as a film. But can you say "tough business"?! In the grid, notice how the first five letters of MARIGOLDS sit atop the last five letters of
20A. PHIL SILVERS [Top banana of "Top Banana"]. Well, this one ran for just under a year in the 1951-52 season and won a Tony Award for its leading man. Score was by Johnny Mercer (he of yesterday's "I'm an Old Cowhand..." fame). "Top banana" is a theatrical term that's derived from vaudeville and refers to the starring act in a vaudeville performance.
38A. REMINGTON STEELE [Pierce Brosnan project of the 1980s] which is crossed at center by 30D. IRONY [Literary device in "The Gift of the Magi"]. Now that's just lovely, the way those two cross.
58A. COPPERFIELD [David in Dickens]. And here again, this fill's first five letters sit atop the last five letters of
65A. BRASSERIE [Tavern that serves beer and food].

Not only has Patrick given us a lot of fresh theme-fill (marigolds looks to be a CS debut, and Phil Silvers and Copperfield major-puzzle firsts), but look how he's paired the precious metals gold and silver; the ferrous metals (iron-containing) iron and steel; and the alloy brass with its major component, copper. Additionally, note the bonus fill we get with of RUST [Oxidize]. Those ferrous metals especially are subject to oxidation. All of which is to say, between the quality of the fill and the placement of the fill in the grid, this is one tightly executed theme.

But all metal-work and no play makes Patrick a dull boy. Happily, with Patrick's puzzles, play is usually not far behind. Today's is no exception. In addition to the thematic "...MARIGOLDS," we also get HAMLET [Play set in Denmark] and ["It Might as Well be Spring" musical] STATE FAIR, which came into being as a movie and was later adapted for the stage. Another movie in the mix is ["Cat] BALLOU" [(1965 Fonda/Marvin film); and while the clue doesn't reference this small-screen series, [Top guns] does yield (The) A-TEAM.

Where there are plays, there're gonna be players. Joining PHIL SILVERS in the spotlight are ["Amadeus" star Tom] HULCE, [Actor Milo] O'SHEA, [Raymond ...] BURR, and LON [Chaney of "The Monster"].

You may recall that yesterday's puzzle also featured singer/actor Olivia Newton-John. Now just take a look at the nifty way Patrick's clued that old stand-by SIR: [Title for Olivier, Newton or John]. Love it. (For the uninitiated, that's Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Elton John.)

Btw, our prolific constructor references his own puzzle (yesterday's NYT) not only with OXIDE but in spelling out the first name AES, ADLAI [Ike's opponent, twice]. Of course, that's Ike as in "I LIKE [___ Ike" (campaign slogan)].

And, goin' out on a limb here... ASIAN for [Like some elephants] reminded me of the joke about a particular post-bank robbery exchange:

Detective: Can you describe the robber?
Teller: Like I told you—it was an elephant!!
Detective: Okay. Okay. So—was it an Asian elephant or an African elephant?
Teller: Wuh...?
Detective: Look—the Asian elephant has small ears; the African elephant has big ears. So...?
Teller: How would I know?? He had a stocking over his head!!

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

My full writeup is across town at the other blog. No time this morning for more than a sentence:

The theme is phrases that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see in a crossword grid that can be clued with [Take___], where the blank is filled with in/out, on/off, and up/down; 72 theme squares have, alas, forced some compromises in the fill.

I'll be back this afternoon to talk about Ben Tausig's Ink Well puzzle.

Okay, so I lied. It's Thursday evening, not afternoon. Long day.

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "J Play"

The theme: H changes to J in six phrases. A blanket hog becomes BLANKET JOG, or [Run taken in the extreme cold?]. I'll take the blanket, hold the jog. Playing on Hot or Not, we have JOT OR NOT, [Rating site that asks users whether they would use a given notepad?]. A group hug turns into a GROUP JUG, or [Big wine vessel passed around?]. The funniest-sounding theme entry is JELLO DOLLY, or [Hand truck for carting around a certain no-bake dessert?]. Remember Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly!? It was just in the news that Johnny Depp wants to play Channing in a musical biopic, and that she's given her blessing. It's the natural evolution for him, going from Willy Wonka to the Mad Hatter to Carol Channing. Anyway...back to the puzzle. The two Down theme answers are JAIL SATAN, a [Chant from a crowd angry at the Antichrist?], and ICE JOCKEY, [One who plays music at skating parties?].

Ben likes the concept of the word at 12-Down, but boy, that one is tough. I needed all seven crossings and still didn't recognize it as a word. PANEITY is [The state of being bread (!)]. A television has much less PANEITY than a bagel, but does the TV have more PANEITY than air does?

Top answers and clues:

BEER NUTS are [Bar freebies] and [Rolls at a bar] are SUSHI.
Speaking of edibles, CHAI TEA is widely available in the U.S. now, but it's clued as a [Punjabi breakfast beverage].
Brand spankin' new clue for ETON: [English college with a recent swine flu outbreak].
The [Well-to-do Southern California town] LA JOLLA is near San Diego, I believe. I fervently hope the local high school has a team called the La Jolla Hoyas.
In the category of "infelicitous associations," we've got SUNDAE clued as a [Fudge-drenched treat, often]...right next to POO.

The tough stuff is concentrated in the PANEITY corner. We get the E-less spelling variant ABSINTH for [Wormwood plant product now legal in the U.S.: Var.], [Challenger passenger Judith] RESNIK, arbitrary ABAA for [Simple rhyme scheme], ETHYL [___ alcohol], and Sen. KYL, the [Jon who's junior to John McCain, in Arizona].

July 21, 2009

Wednesday, 7/22

BEQ 5:37
Onion 4:03
NYT 3:59
LAT 2:46
CS 5:50 (J—paper)

TV alert! The Dinner Impossible show filmed at the ACPT is reairing on the Food Network tonight. If you missed it this spring, tune in to see Andrea Carla Michaels steal the show. (Thanks to Eric Maddy for the heads-up.)

Patrick Blindauer's New York Times crossword

Patrick's puzzle riffs on SLOPPY JOES (64A: [School cafeteria fare...and a hint to this puzzle's theme]) by taking the other five permutations of the letters JOE and plunking them down as the first names of five famous guys named JOE:

17A. EOJ FRAZIER is your [Olympic boxing gold medalist of 1964].
25A. Broadway JEO NAMATH was the Jets' [Hero of Super Bowl III].
30A. The [47th U.S. vice president] is OJE BIDEN.
45A. OEJ PESCI is the [Oscar winner of 1990].
51A. EJO COCKER is the [Singer on day three of 1969's Woodstock]. Have you seen that "captioned for the clear-headed" video of his Beatles cover? "Hoggify."

We have so many notable Joe achievements! Won a gold medal, won the Super Bowl, won the second highest office in the land, won an Oscar...and won the right to be mocked. This is not the usual sort of theme, so good job coming up with a variant of the anagram theme that's rich in Scrabbly goodness.

Without further ado, today's clue roundup:

Tying in with Woodstock and the '60s, we have 15A: [Historic San Francisco theater, with "the"] for ROXIE (I knew only of various Roxy theaters) and 10A: illicit ACID, clued with [It was dropped in the '60s]. Make love, not war!
20A. [For the nonce] is a quaint clue for PRO TEM. I love "nonce."
38A. LAVA is an [Abrasive soap brand]. Ow. Probably don't want to use this bar soap on your naughty bits.
47A. [Pockets of dough?] are PITAS, as in pita breads.
61A. The [Egyptian god with the head of a jackal] is named ANUBIS. Does anyone use this guy in cryptic crosswords? He could be the answer to a container clue.
67A. Last time I saw ILLER in a crossword, it was icky. Its ickiness is somewhat ameliorated by the tag in the clue, [More sick, in dialect]. Which dialect might this be, I wonder?
68A. [Bibliophile's suffix] is -IANA, as in, say, Dickensiana.
1D. The trickiest clue, I thought, was one of the first I wrestled with. [Jewish leader?] isn't the prefix JUDEO, it's not a RABBI, it's not PERES or BEGIN. It's ALEPH, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Is it kosher to use "Jewish" and "Hebrew" interchangeably like this?
6D. [Cartoonist Chast] is named ROZ. I love her work. The alphabet book she illustrated for Steve Martin is considerably darker than most ABC books, and layered with so many juicy little twists. WACO, by the way, is 22D: [Steve Martin's birthplace].
11D. CD PLAYERS are [Sound system components].
44D. ETON is a [Neighbor of Slough]. Slough, the home of the paper company in the original British The Office?

Updated Wednesday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Field Trip"―Janie's review

Sometimes art does seem to imitate life. I'm taking a vacation day today because, thanks to puzzle pal Sara, I'll be at Yankee Stadium this afternoon for the Yankee/Orioles game. So how fitting it is that the "field trip" in the title refers to the national pastime that I'll be enjoying this very day. (And how fitting it is that the constructor's pre-hyphenate last name describes the material of so many of the best baseball bats!) Looking at the "field trip" that's been plotted around that central BASES [Diamond quartet (and this puzzle's theme)] at 37A, we have:

17A. FIRST FAMILY [1600 Pennsylvania Avenue residents]. Before I realized this puzzle would take us for a trip around the baseball field, I thought maybe all of the theme fill would relate to things/people one might encounter on a trip to Washington, D. C....
11D. SECOND PRIZE [Also-ran's award]. I know it's so, but still―ouch. Sure it's not the top honor, but maybe [Red ribbon award in the States]? (Only because in Canada, second place gets a blue ribbon.)
53A. THIRD ESTATE [The common people]. Love this fill. Do you know about the "estates of the realm"? This caste system goes back to the Middle Ages, where the First Estate was made up of the clergy; the Second Estate, nobility; and the Third Estate, commoners. This looks to be first-time fill in a major puzzle (ditto 11D). The Fourth Estate, as you probably know, is the reserved for the press and its usage dates back to the 19th century; the Fifth Estate, everything else―like trade unions, non-mainstream media, organized crime...
25D. HOME COUNTRY [Birthplace]. This is another phrase that makes its first appearance in a major puzzle.

Balancing the sports theme is a strong musical sub-theme:

[Opera opener] is ACT I; you can almost hear the strains of ["Carmen" composer] BIZET;
OLIVIA [Singer Newton-John] made her mark in the pop world, but if she ever recorded standards, she could do worse than to have a go at IT'S MAGIC [Styne/Cahn hit song of 1947] (and another example of "first-time" fill);
[Rappers' improvisations] are RHYMES of course;
WHITE TIE [Formal invitation specification], which seems to be appearing in a CS puzzle for the first time, easily summons up the elegant Irving Berlin song "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails"; and finally,
while it's clued simply as [Herder], I was immediately put in mind of "I'm an Old COWHAND from the Rio Grande," written by Savannah-born Johnny Mercer (for the movie Rhythm on the Range, 1936) about a 20th-century cowboy who has little in common with cowboys of old. The link here will take you to a clip from the movie, as it was performed by Bing Crosby, Martha Raye, Louis Prima and others.

And how large is that [Large African expanse] known as the SAHARA? Pret' darn large―some 3.5 million square miles, which is almost the size of the U.S. or Europe. SAY WHAT? ["Huh?"] Yep―that's seriously large. One can only hope for many OASES [Desert havens] midst all that sand!

Timothy Meaker's Los Angeles Times crossword

I wrote this puppy up last night at L.A. Crossword Confidential. It was one of the weirdest theme encounters I've had in some time, as two thirds of the phrases that begin with a kind of SANDWICH were not kinds of sandwiches in my vocabulary. Further unsettling me, the two 8-letter theme answers were in tasty triple-stacks of 8-letter answers, which meant my eyeballs looked at the other four 8s a little harder to see if they were thematic. "Lemon sandwich? Well, that sounds as plausible as a Western sandwich."

Allow me to plagiarize myself and borrow my theme writeup from LACC: The SANDWICH clue, 70A: [Lunch order that can follow the starts of 1-, 35- and 43-Across], was crystal clear. But the sandwiches! They hit my sweet spot a mere one third of the time.

Theme answers:

1A: [Bar mixer] (CLUB SODA). We all know what a club sandwich is, right? Some sort of lunchmeat, maybe turkey, plus bacon, lettuce, and tomato on toast? Cut into cute little triangles?
35A: [Jerusalem prayer site] (WESTERN WALL). Neither PuzzleGirl nor I had ever heard of the Western sandwich. Professor Google tells me that first of all, a Denver omelet and a Western omelet are pretty much the same thing, and a Denver sandwich or a Western sandwich is that omelet smacked between a couple slices of toast. Ham, green peppers, and onions mixed into the eggs, if I recall correctly. I can't say I've ever seen this concoction on a diner menu in the Midwest. An LACC reader reports seeing this sandwich in Baltimore four to six decades ago.
43A: [Unrestricted trading areas] (OPEN MARKETS). OPEN MARKETS doesn't feel like a Monday-friendly entry, which helps account for why this is a Wednesday crossword. I hit the skids here, too, as I call 'em open-faced sandwiches rather than open sandwiches.

More on the fill and whatnot over at the other blog.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Three MCs and One DJ"

Paying respect to the Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch, who's just been diagnosed with salivary gland cancer, Brendan works in three MC insertions and one DJ insertion. Do the Beastie Boys have three MCs and one DJ? (Brendan's post includes a video of a song with the same title as the puzzle.) How much crossover is there between an MC and a DJ? These things are beyond my ken. The theme entries insert MC inside "recovery room" (RECOVERY ROM-COM, or romantic comedy), "see ya later" (SEE YMCA LATER—good surprise twist taking "ya" to YMCA), and "suited to a T" (SUITED TO A TOMCAT). The DJ makes Austin Powers into the phrase ADJUSTIN' POWERS, or [Fine-tunin' supernations?], which hurts a bit. How might one adjust a nation, exactly?

I know there are genuine MATH WHIZzes who read this blog. Is [Expert in KenKen, say] a good clue for your kind?

Nuttiest-looking answer: K.C. ROYALS all mashed up in the grid as KCROYALS. They're the [Kauffman Stadium team, for short], and I can't say I've ever heard of that stadium. K.C. keeps it on the D.L.

Not the Quigleyest fill ever—ITERS, HOER, ARETE, GENU, YAP AT? Those make the EELER seem smooth by comparison. But I'll cut Brendan some slack because he loves the Beastie Boys and he clearly just started cooking up this puzzle after hearing Yauch's news on Monday.

Ben Tausig's Onion A.V. Club crossword

This week's Onion theme involves changing -ALE to -AIL in familiar phrases:

17A. [Stage show featuring big packages?] is a MAIL REVUE. The clue also works for the base phrase, "male revue."
31A. [Thing posted at the Vatican City prison?] is CHRISTIAN BAIL, and unless the Pope's prisoners hang posters of Christian Bale, this clue does not work for the base phrase.
36A. A clearance sale turns into CLEARANCE SAIL, or [Rigging purchased out-of-season?].
56A. The goofiest thing in the whole puzzle is the image presented by PAIL-FACED, or [Having a bucket for a mouth and a handle for a nose?].

Five clues:

9A. PETCO? [They sell grasshoppers as food] for your reptile.
45A. TETS, or Asian New Years, are annual [Events during which it is inauspicious to eat duck or shrimp]. The other 364 days a year, this remains inauspicious for the duck and the shrimp.
49A. An ARTEL is a [Soviet co-op]. Crosswordese! Dictionary tells me it predates the Soviet Union and is a historical term for a cooperative of craftsmen living and working together in prerevolutionary Russia. I'll bet they had male revues for entertainment.
12D. The CAT is the [Animal called "maeow" in Thai]. That makes sense.
57D. IT'S ["___ Always Sunny in Philadelphia"] is a funny show on TV.

Updated Wednesday afternoon:
Janie here. The O's lost 6-4, but their two home runs at the top of the 9th and the great company more than compensated. A good time was had by all!!

MGWCC #59

crossword 9:23
puzzle about 20 minutes

hi, everybody! this week's episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "Pick Up Lines," was a challenging crossword with a not-too-tough meta that took me way too long to solve. let's have a look at the theme answers:

[Lousy Clapton album?] is an ERIC FAILURE, playing on "epic failure." except that everybody calls it "epic fail" nowadays. these kids and their slang. *shakes head*
[Frat boy who chugs Manischewitz?] is a KOSHER DELT. this one took me forever, because i kept thinking the base phrase was "kosher dill," rather than "kosher deli."
[Kellogg's cereal that gets you stoned?] is CRACKLIN' QAT BRAN (cracklin' oat bran). QAT, as scrabble players know, is an evergreen shrub chewed as a stimulant, mostly in yemen.
[What desperate donkeys do?] is BRAY FOR A MIRACLE (pray for a miracle). this was probably the easiest theme answer for me.
[Movie about a guy whose toes can hack websites?] is MY LEET FOOT (my left foot). is this anything like the net? because that movie suuuucked.
finally, [Move closer to the leader, in golf -- and the theme of this puzzle] is GAIN A STROKE.

of course, that's exactly the transformation being used in each theme answer. one letter is gaining a stroke (in its capital form, sans serif) to make a new one: P to R in ERIC FAILURE, I to T in KOSHER DELT, O to Q in CRACKLIN' QAT BRAN, P to B in BRAY FOR A MIRACLE, and F to E in MY LEET FOOT.

so about this meta... the contest instructions tell us that This week's contest answer is a famous arcade game of the 1980s. fine. i know my classic arcade games, but even so i pored over the list matt cited from wikipedia. looked for anything that involved "gaining a stroke." looked for anything that might look like a version of an answer in the grid, with one more or one fewer stroke in one of the letters. nothing. thought about a possible moon landing connection, what with the apollo 11 anniversary, but neither moon patrol nor lunar lander seemed to have anything to do with anything.

after all that, i did what i should have done from the very start: look at which letters got changed in the theme answers. the set of removed letters is PIOPF, which doesn't really do much. but look at the new letters: RTQBE. does that spell anything? hell yes! it spells Q*BERT, that's what. i spent hours playing this game as a kid, so i should have known it earlier. anyway.

lots of stuff in the grid gave me trouble. stuff i just plain didn't know:

[Johnny's role in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"] is RAOUL. i don't even know who johnny is, let alone RAOUL. depp? unitas? tremaine?
["Survivorman" host Stroud] is LES. what the hell is that? who the hell is that?
["Whatever Works"] director is ALLEN. okay, never heard of the movie/show, and ... um, marcus allen? ray allen? gracie allen? allen wrench? edited: apparently this is woody allen's new movie. i've heard of him.
["___ Pablo" (1980's sitcom)] is AKA. never heard of it.
[Eddie ___ (only person to win a gold medal in both the summer and winter Olympics)] is EAGAN. this is the only answer on this list that i was actually interested to learn. in case you're also curious: light heavyweight boxing, 1920 antwerp; 4-man bobsled, 1932 lake placid. he also appears to have earned a harvard law degree, so he must have been punching the right people.

clues i liked:

[Good feller] is an AXE, for felling things. and [It sure looks good] is an EYE if you don't mind "good" as an adverb.
[Schlage rival] is YALE. a buddy of mine always goes to the annual schlage-yale football game, but i went once my freshman year and was underwhelmed.
IT'S and 'TIS are both clued as [Anagram and synonym of] each other. cute, but it means you need to get some crossings before solving them.
[Card kid] is ENDER wiggin, hero of orson scott card sci-fi novels, notably ender's game.
[Tolkien creature], three letters. ORC or ENT? nope, it's ELF. this isn't really related, but my wife got a copy of a terry pratchett book called men at arms for her birthday last week. except that the cover has a weird font that made her think it was called men at ATMs. yeah, there's probably a crossword theme in there.
there's another classic trap at [Mercury or Mazda], three letters. CAR? nope, it's GOD. i guess he's referring to ahura mazda, god of light in zoroastrianism, but does anybody call him just "mazda"? is that, like, his last name? "mazda, party of four—your table is ready." well, i just read up on him at wikipedia and it's still not clear whether he's referred to as ahura, mazda, or both.
[Cyclone-ravaged ___ Island] is just CONEY island, "ravaged" by its popular roller coaster.
matt goes meta with [Last week's MGWCC winner David] STEIN. except that by now, it's two weeks ago.

the only thing i didn't like about the grid was the ugly-ass crossing of the odd partial A BUMP with the nasty suffix -ATION.

that's all for me. tune in next week when it gets really hard.

July 20, 2009

Tuesday, 7/21

Jonesin' 4:30
LAT 2:54
NYT 2:39
CS 7:10 (J―paper)

Hey, I'm looking for a couple fresh voices to guest-blog the August 3 and 4 puzzles. If you're interested, leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail. Edited to add: I've got three volunteers to cover six puzzles, so we're all set this time. I'm hoping to take some time off again in late December...if not sooner. Thanks!)

Donna Levin's New York Times crossword

Aha, so the Times is going with the 40th anniversary of the next-day Times headline for its moon landing crossword theme:

20A. The [New York Times headline of 7/21/69] was MEN WALK ON MOON. This is in counterpoint to the page from the Onion's Our Dumb Century (see photo), in which understandably astonished swear words issue forth from the "newspaper" and the imagined quotes from key players. That was my favorite page in the book, though I feel no need to buy a print of it since I have the book. (Apologies to the more sensitive among you for the rough language.)
28A. In both the Onion and the NYT, Neil ARMSTRONG is near the headline, the [Subject of a photo beneath 20-Across].
45A, 55A. The [Message left by 28-Across for future explorers] was WE CAME IN PEACE / FOR ALL MANKIND.

Moving along beyond the timely theme, we have a mix of solidly Tuesdayish fare, high-end and not-often-in-the-puzzle vocabulary, and old-school crosswordese. The first category needs little discussion. Here's the fancy stuff:
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59A. Latin! A FORTIORI means [Even more certain: Lat.]. I...did not know that. Have seen the phrase, can spell the phrase, honestly could not have defined it before now.
6D. We get plenty of SASS in crosswords, but hardly any TALK BACK, or [Sass, with "to"].
8D. MAGNUM is a [Large wine bottle]. That's the 1.5-liter bottle. Not quite a Galloesque jug.
36D. Jim ROCKFORD! That's the [1970s James Garner TV title role]. Even when I was a kid, I was prone to having crushes on wry men.
38D. DOPAMINE is a [Pleasure-associated neurotransmitter]. How many people tried to wedge ENDORPHIN into that slot? Endorphins are more famously pleasure-associated, I think.

In the crosswordese zone, there are a few notable answers:

40A. LSTS, or "landing ship, tank" in the plural, are those [D-Day vessels] seen in the long opening battle of Saving Private Ryan, aren't they?
66A. ESNE! We rarely see the ESNE anymore. That's an [Anglo-Saxon laborer].
29D. EDINA is the crossword's favorite [Minneapolis suburb]. (Hi, Cinedina!) I knew the name from crosswords long before I went to Minnesota for college.
39D. Our [Inscribed pillar] is a STELA. This can also be spelled STELE, so I usually leave the last letter blank.

Cute stuff: 34A: [Soprano ___ Te Kanawa], or KIRI, is from New Zealand. So is the KIWI, or 34D: [Fuzzy fruit], that she intersects. I'm partial to the pop culture vibe; ELAINE from Seinfeld, MARLO Thomas (her husband Phil Donahue does the NYT crossword), the XBOX, the movie D.O.A., a Disney ALI, and EMILIO Estevez show up in the grid. If you think that's too much, don't complain—I see a good dozen other answers that could have been clued as pop culture names but weren't. (The DOORS! MAGNUM, P.I.! ABE Vigoda! Growing Up GOTTI! The TOMS Petty and Waits!)

Updated Tuesday morning:

Gail Grabowski's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Beginning at the End"—Janie's review

Last week Sarah Keller gave us "Starting Ends," in which in the starting word of the theme-phrase could be paired with the word end. Though there's something similar in the titles, Gail does go a different route. The end word in each of her theme phrases is a synonym for the word beginning. Sorta...

20A. PROMISING START [Favorable approach]. A beautiful phrase and a great way to get the ball rollin'.
36A. SHUTTLE LAUNCH [Cape Canaveral event]. I'm still with ya, but am sort of wishing for a less direct clue...
56A. OPENING KICK-OFF [Initial football play]. Um. Department of Redundancy Department... Both words—not merely the one promised in the title—fit the description. Perhaps you view this as a bonus. I might have if the title had been "Beginnings"—but that "...at the End" part gives us the rules of the game, no? I love the fill itself—it's active, it summons up a strong and very specific image—but I'd have preferred something like SEASON PREMIÈRE that kept to the pattern already established. On the positive side, all three phrases are fresh and look to be making making a major-puzzle debut.

Of the non-theme fill, I particularly liked seeing the compounds: STARFISH, COLD FEET and HOLD FAST. And it seems to me that participants in an ARMS DEAL (CS-debut) may be represented by LAW FIRMS (major-puzzle first). Sometimes after the fact... Regardless, you can be sure there's going to be a healthy FEE [Attorney's charge] attached.

I don't have lots more to say about this one, but there's a nice cluster with the crossing of LONG U [The vowel sound in "lute"] with GOOF and TULLE. That double "O" of the former and the "U" of the latter share that long "u" sound as well. Oh―and so does the "U" in the adjacent SNAFU. WOW ["I'm impressed!"]!

Orange here.

Hey, some of you may have noticed that in addition to today's NYT puzzle being made by a woman, there were four women in the NYT crossword bylines last week. This should be unremarkable, unsurprising, an ordinary occurrence. The Times averages about two weeks a year in which at least half the names in the constructor byline belong to women—so absent any changes, it'll probably be months before we see such a thing again. I hope it becomes more common. I also hope:

(1) That Will Shortz encourages talented, experienced female constructors to send him more puzzles.

(2) That those women who've cut back on submitting to the NYT will redouble their efforts.

(3) That Will publishes plenty of puzzles by women. It does make a difference to women to see themselves represented, as seeing two weeks straight of male bylines can subconsciously dampen the sense of possibility for a woman. (My son and I just talked this morning about the message a MEN WORKING sign sends to boys and girls: "This work is for men only." What a slap in the face to women working on a construction crew that sign is.)

(4) That more women will get into crossword construction. Buy Patrick Berry's constructing guide. Join Cruciverb.com, read the many valuable "Sage Advice" essays, and sign up for the Cruciverb-l mailing list to see what issues constructors deal with. And before you submit a crossword to an editor, run it by experienced people who can critique it honestly and help you polish it so it's more likely to get published.

Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword

This theme reminded me of early-week Newsday crosswords, which seem more apt to run the spiraling-four-entries pattern than the other newspapers do. Is it my imagination? Perhaps. The four theme entries are phrases that end with words that also mean "boat"...though in one case, the "boat" word means BOAT, too. WITCHCRAFT was a [Salem trials crime]. BLOOD VESSEL is clued as the [Aorta, for one]. CENSORSHIP is [Press suppression]. And ROCK THE BOAT, which is a figure of speech using words that do indeed have to do with rocking boats, means [Shake things up].

I like BOB DOLE as a crossword answer; he was the [1996 loser to Bill Clinton] and appeared in Wordplay. I was a sucker for those Ripley's Believe It or Not books when I was a kid, but would have also liked an Alien/Sigourney Weaver clue for RIPLEY just as much as ["Believe It or Not" guy]. [Rocker Elvis] COSTELLO has a new album out and I nearly bought the CD for my husband but figure he can buy it from iTunes. SHINDIGS is a great word for [Galas]. SCHLEPS and (the depressing) SKID ROW are also lively entries.

Less likeable: the stuff like plural OLES, Bambi's aunt ENA, ENHALO, ELOI, TATS clues as crosswordese [Makes doilies], OLLA, NEE, OCTAD, ETHANE, and SEAWAY. I should hate the old PASHA, that [Old Turkish VIP], but it's a word we've taken to using around the house.

Matt Jones's themeless Jonesin' crossword, "A Buncha—words, that is"

(Public service announcement: If you want to get the Jonesin' puzzle as soon as it's available, join the Jonesin' Google Group. There are Across Lite and printable jpeg options, and the puzzles are usually sent out on Mondays. If you wait for the puzzles to appear on alt-weekly papers' websites, you'll probably be waiting until Thursday or Friday and won't be in synch with the blogging coverage.)

'Tis a promising start to the week, with Brendan Q's Themeless Monday followed by Matt's themeless today. Jonesin' puzzles usually have themes but I guess Matt sometimes gets a wild hair and gives us a themeless puzzle—I, for one, am glad. I'm short on time, so here's a list of clues and answers:

1A. [Fine] can mean SMOKIN' HOT. Super-fresh fill.
15A. The record TURNTABLE is [Dan the Automator's instrument]. Who? Don't know him.
34A. [It was big news in 1999] clues the NEW MILLENNIUM. I tried THE MILLENNIUM first.
37A. EASY BAKE OVEN! Terrific crossword answer! That's a [Toy that originally used a 100-watt light bulb].
7D. One [Cable network unlikely to air repeats of "The Sopranos"] is HBO FAMILY. I started with ABC FAMILY, which is even more unlikely on account of not being part of HBO.
33D. PEA GRAVEL is [Small rocks in a walkway]. Nice and rounded little pebbles.
40D. I don't at all understand why [Cleveland's home] is QUAHOG. My guess turns out to be correct—it's cartoon character Cleveland Brown, from Quahog, Rhode Island. He's getting a spinoff from that show that isn't Family Guy, right? Is it American Dad?
46D. I will be surprised if more than two people reading this already knew the word CULOT, or [Lamp base, in French, from the French for "ass"].

July 19, 2009

Monday, 7/20

BEQ 4:13
LAT 2:43
NYT 2:29
CS 7:22 (J―paper)

Two extra puzzly bits from the New York Times:

(1) Will Shortz will be answering reader questions through July 24. Send your questions to askthetimes@nytimes.com. I wonder how one's odds of getting accepted to Harvard or Yale compare to one's chance of getting a crossword published in the Times. Given that each top high-schooler can't take more than one admission spot and a good number of crosswords are created by repeat offenders, I'll bet the yield is lower for a crossword newbie than an Ivy wannabe.

(2) The Puzzability team (Robert Leighton, Amy Goldstein, and Mike Shenk) has crafted another thematic suite of puzzles for the NYT's op-ed section. This one commemorates the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. The individual puzzles range from easy to extra easy, and I completely skipped the one logic puzzle and had no trouble getting to the final answer. (Hey, Times tech people: You should consider posting a link to a 7-page PDF rather than a bunch of 1-page PDFs so that printing the puzzles out is easier for those of us who support the paper via online page clicks.)

Pancho Harrison's New York Times crossword

Ha! I can't believe Pancho put PANCHO in his puzzle (48A: [Mexican revolutionary ___ Villa]). I recall some grumbling when Frank Longo once put a LONG O sound into one of his crosswords, but I don't quite see the point of the complaint. I'm waiting for a famous-enough REYNALDO to get my last name in the puzzle, and in the meantime say thanks to 13D: ["The Joy Luck Club" writer Tan] for giving AMY continuing literary cred.

A request to our crossword constructors and editors: Can we limit 15x15 puzzles to a maximum of two baseball references? This one's got 32D: [Hall-of-Famer Mel] OTT, 31A: [Ninth-inning pitcher] for CLOSER, and 9D: [Seventh-inning ritual] for STRETCH. Why, that's 50% more baseball content than I want!

Today's theme is tied together by 57A: PLANT MANAGERS, or [Factory supervisors...or a hint to the starts of 20-, 36- and 42-Across]. I'm confused, because those other three answers begin with parts of plants, but I don't get what the MANAGERS part has to do with it. The plant parts begin these phrases:

20A. [What the love of money is, they say] clues ROOT OF ALL EVIL. I'd kinda like this better with THE at the beginning, but it's still a lively phrase.
36A. To [Stop a prevailing trend] is to STEM THE TIDE.
42A. To LEAF THROUGH something is to [Quickly turn the pages of] it.

Highlights:

11D. EXPLOSIVE! That's a material like [Nitroglycerin or dynamite].
35D. To TRANSPOSE letters is to have them switch places, as demonstrated in [Make lemons into melons, e.g.]. Oranges transpose into onagers, but you probably don't want to eat the latter.
54A. From the Department of Outdated Slang comes the goofball pairing of MY EYE and ["Oh, bushwa!"].
45D. [One who mounts and dismounts a horse] is a GYMNAST. A while back, I posted a YouTube video to L.A. Crossword Confidential—a clip from Gymkata of a fight scene between a gymnast with a pommel horse and a horde of angry peasants. Go watch it and mock the ludicrous moviemaking.

Monday Crosswordese Roundup: Now, if you're new to crosswords, this puzzle's got some crosswordese you'll want to learn if it was unfamiliar to you. 17A: [Sicilian spewer] is Mount ETNA—pretty much any mention of a volcano in Europe or spewing in Italy takes us straight to ETNA. 24A: [RR depot] is STA. here, but occasionally it's going to be STN. instead; the abbreviated "RR" for "railroad" is your hint that the answer is an abbreviation for "station." 71A is ESSO, the old ["Put a tiger in your tank" brand] of gasoline; the answer to most gasoline-related clues is ESSO (while NEON accounts for most gaseous references). There's a musical term in the fill-in-the-blank clue 6D: [___ breve (2/2 time in music)] is missing its ALLA. 7D is RIAL, clued as [Iranian money]; Middle Eastern currency clues typically call for RIAL, RIYAL, or DINAR. 22D is a [Low-lying area], or VALE; the word's related to "valley" and starts with the same first three letters but sometimes the answer you need is GLEN.

Updated Monday morning:

William I. Johnston's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Extinguishing Features"—Janie's review

When I saw the title of today's puzzle, I felt for sure this would be one in which letters were dropped from one well-known phrase to create a new one. But no. This is really about the measures you should take to protect yourself in the event of fire: Stop, Drop and Roll, the last of which actually appeared yesterday (in this context) in the Venzke/Daily "Sunday Challenge." Now don't SNIFF if this doesn't sound like the merriest idea for a theme. Will has woven the warning into three active phrases and pulled everything together in the final one. In this way we're instructed to:

17A. STOP ON A DIME [Brake quickly];
28A. DROP ME A LINE ["Don't forget to write!"]; and
48A. ROLL THE DICE [Take one's chances, metaphorically]. (This one and 28A, btw, look to making their CS debuts.)

The person who pulls it all together and who doesn't want you to take your chances—metaphorically or otherwise—is the:

63A. FIRE-FIGHTER [Professional whose safety message is found in the beginnings of 17-, 28-, and 48-Across].

Will appears to have given us two theme-related words in ARSON [Torch job] and CHAR [Burn]. Hey—when yer hot, yer hot, right?

Now, it's not that I don't take the warning seriously, but I do have to share two images I found for the same message. One is an album cover for the (wild 'n' crazy lookin') Foxboro Hot Tubs...; and the other a poster, to all intents and purposes the kind a teacher might place in the classroom—but for one tiny change in the wording: "Stop, Drop and Roll... Will Not Work in HELL"! (And on the subject of Hell... do check out Ian Frazier's amusing piece in last week's New Yorker, "The Temperature of Hell: A Colloquium", featuring Al Gore, Satan and others on the subject of climate-change...)

Both TAILGATES [Joins the pregame party] and GUERRILLA [Tag for low-budget marketing techniques] also appear to be CS firsts. I particularly like that clue for the latter. Ordinarily I think of the word in connection with CHE [Comrade of Fidel], so I find it refreshing to see it as it's clued today—in a way that forces me to think about the range of its meaning/usage.

Looking at some clue/fill combos, I also liked the avian references—one in the clue [Pigeon, to a con artist] for the snappy EASY MARK, the other in the fill CAPON, punnily clued as [Fixed chicken]. (Poor rooster!) Got myself IN A JAM by trying to make IN A RUT work for [Stuck], and was amused to see DRESS emerge in response to [Slip cover?]. And as for that [City with the world's tallest man-made structure], have you seen pix of DUBAI lately??

Haven't seen the remake of ["Taking of] PELHAM [1 2 3..."], but did watch the original a few weeks ago. It has a taut, edgy screenplay by the late Peter Stone and a great jazzy score by David Shire to match. A genre flick, to be sure, but it sure delivers. And if the tension is all too much, you can always chill out with the Four Preps, who immortalized in song Santa CATALINA [Island off California]. It really doesn't get much mellower than that!

Robert Harris's Los Angeles Times crossword

Wouldn't you have expected a splashy Sunday crossword yesterday paying homage to today's 40th anniversary of NASA's moon landing? Instead, we get the celebration in a perfectly timely Monday puzzle. When the first theme clue was [57-Across, 12-Down or 24-Down], it seemed like a mean way to kick off a Monday theme—but it quickly became apparent what the theme was and after the weekend's mentions of the anniversary, it all came together in short order. That first theme answer, 16A, is ASTRONAUT. The rest of the theme plays out like this:

35A. TRANQUILITY BASE is the [Landing site of 7/20/1969.
57A, 12D, 24D. The three ASTRONAUTs are Neil ARMSTRONG, Buzz ALDRIN, and Michael COLLINS.
42A. Balancing out ALDRIN is APOLLO, clued [___ 11, mission celebrated in this puzzle].
9D. Outside of thematic symmetry is the MOON, floating high in the grid. [35-Across is on it].

Sometimes the eye and mind play tricks on the solver. For 10D: ABACUS, I misread the clue as [Bearded calculator]. Beaded! Not bearded.

Does anyone here have a SETTEE as [Part of a living room set]? No? It's just one of those words that live mainly in crosswords that you have to learn if you want to do crosswords regularly.

Updated midday Monday:

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"

Brendan billed this one as a hard puzzle but I thought it was easy for a themeless. Because I blew the morning at a retaurant (called Orange!) that neglected to cook our food for an inordinately long amount of time (and the food, when it finally came 45 minutes into our visit, was delicious, but I could really have done without the defensive waitress who didn't do a damned thing to stick up for her hungry customers), I'll move right along to the highlights list:

63A. [Dominant feature of the 56-Down skyline], 56D being the [Midwest city that is host to the annual Pitchfork Music Festival: Abbr.], or CHI, is the super-tall WILLIS TOWER. Some British company, in insurance, maybe, bought the naming rights to the Sears Tower, which shall henceforth be known to all Chicagoans as "I'm still calling it the Sears Tower. &%$# those limey bastards changing the name!" The only reason I had a clue about Pitchfork is that I have a Facebook friend who works for the Trib and linked to Greg Kot's reviews. Facebook: A handy tool for learning.
1A. This word isn't as new as WILLIS TOWER, but it was newer to me, i.e., I'd never seen it before. FUNEMPLOYED is clued as [Now having the opportunity to bike across the country, say]. That probably only works for the unemployed who aren't facing foreclosure, eviction, loss of family health insurance, etc., eh? Related entry: The JOBLESS RATE, a [Number that has gone up since Obama took office] and a great crossword entry, though a bummer.
17A. I love the word BALLETOMANE, meaning a ["Swan Lake" lover, e.g.]. Are there other -mane words? I'm gonna start using egomane, pyromane, nymphomane.
52A. [English bowl] clues LOO. Simple, yet oblique. I like it.
61A. Griots are cool. [Griot's specialty] is ORAL HISTORY.
40D. To EAT CROW is to [Admit failure].

July 18, 2009

Sunday, 7/19

NYT 9:38
PI untimed
BG 6:54
LAT 6:36
CS 4:23

Many of you commented a couple weeks ago that the July 5 New York Times puzzle that Tony Orbach and I cooked up was on the easy side, as Sunday NYTs go. Well, folks, my husband gave up on it with a few answers jotted in. I think my mom is still working on it. And my aunt is still doing the puzzle, too. So those of you who found it easy, give yourself a pat on the back for your excellent solving skills!

Lynn Lempel's New York Times crossword, "You Are There"

Brief summary of what's in this puzzle:

1. Nine theme entries, some of 'em long, most of 'em crossing other theme entries. Wow!

2. Smart "insert U R there" theme that seemed to take forever to reveal itself, but had some excellent "aha" payoffs.

3. Smooth fill with challenging spots but nothing unfair or overly clunky.

4. Plenty of interesting clues to work the brain a bit.

5. A tougher-than-usual difficulty level, so don't fret if it slowed you down more than you were expecting. Tough is welcome—but it helps salve the ego if you're not disappointed by having more of an uphill climb than usual.

Can you tell I really relished this puzzle? Because I did. More Sunday puzzles, please, Lynn Lempel!

Let's get down to the nitty-gritty—which is not to say I've got nits to pick here, because I don't. First up, the cool theme:

24A. [Corrupt financier's command?] is BURY ALL ACCOUNTS, playing on the familiar phrase "by all accounts." Mr. Madoff, you made the puzzle! Congrats.
30A. [Mama Bear at the stove?] is a FURRY COOK. SpongeBob SquarePants is the world's most famous fry cook, real or fictional.
54A. I found this one tricky to piece together. [Alpo or Purina One?] could be CUR RATIONS, which is UR inserted into military C-rations.
72A. [Greeting from Smokey the Bear] is an URSINE WAVE. Hey, humorlesstwit, here's the sine wave you were looking for, only it's in a straight line.
92A. Ah, this one is my favorite, and it's where I finally understood what was happening in the theme entries. Yes, I worked my way to 1-Across's opposite corner before I figured that out. "OH, MY GOURD!" is a [Pumpkin grower's cry of surprise?].
101A. HOURLY MATRIMONY could be a [Scheduled activity at a Vegas chapel?]. Cute. Probably not accurate—I'll bet the ceremonies are shorter than that. Anyone know from experience?
3D. I'm used to "Canary in a Coalmine," the Police song, so the coal-less, the-having version of the phrase threw me a bit. CANARY IN THE MURINE, or [Songbird at an eye drops factory?], really should prevent the FDA from clearing the product for sale.
34D. [Sodom or Gomorrah?] might be a TOWN WITHOUT PURITY, which plays on "Town Without Pity," which is...I forget what. Old movie? Play?
40D. This one's my other favorite theme entry, with a cute clue: CURRIED WOLF is a [Triumphant spicy meal for the Three Little Pigs?]. Yum, curry.

Alrighty, what else did I like? What else was challenging? Let's have a look:

The cross-references were tricky because two of 'em crossed. 25D is [Part of 85-Down] and 32A is [Part of 5-Across: Abbr.]? Yeowch. 85D turns out to be CCNY, so its part is CITY, and 5A is the USDA, linking to DEPT.
20A. STEM CELLS! Good ol' [Versatile body builders], they are.
38A. Hockey's Bobby Orr has the day off, as does The Cars' Ben Orr. Today, ORR is clued as the ["Catch-22" bomber pilot]. Can't complain about classic American lit, can you?
47A. I halfway wanted droopy BASSETS for the [Pets with dewlaps]. I just don't know anyone with pet IGUANAS.
50A. MENTORS are [Coaches]. Hey, if you're a young woman in high school or college (or grad school) and you're interested in learning to construct crosswords, get in touch with me! I know MENTORS who would love to coach you.
53A. ESTRUS is [Heat], as in when a female animal is in heat.
58A. A simple POT is a [Percussion instrument in Off Broadway's "Stomp"]. Terrific clue, branching out beyond the kitchen and drugs.
Check out the LIMP/LIMPID crossing. One is [Droopy] and the other means [Clear], and the words are completely unrelated from an etymological standpoint.
74A, 17D. [Happy shouts]/[Happy shout] = WAHOOS/YES. I'll give you a dollar if you can honestly report saying "Wahoo!" when you finished this puzzle.
81A. PRINE is [Singer John with the album "Bruised Orange"]. Ouch.
97A. BOOZE is [Something made in the still of the night?], or in a still during the daytime.
109A. An AMBULANCE is [What drives you to get better?] at the E.R.
113A. Yay! An up-to-date clue for NEET: [Bygone depilatory]. Nair won the battle in the marketplace.
14D. As a modifier, SOUTH SEA means [From Polynesia and environs].
35D. The TREE BOA is a [Snake with "lightning bolts" on its back]. Gah! I am creeped out by snakes in trees and snakes in the water. I'd like them to stay at ground level where I can see them, thank you very much.
61D. The word VICEROY is cool. A ruler, a butterfly, an old cigarette brand (which apparently still exists). [Christopher Columbus, in the Indies] was VICEROY.
75. OVERRATED is clued as [Not as good as claimed]. I claim this puzzle is excellent, and I hope you don't think it's overrated. Over-hard, sure, but not overrated.

And that's the puzzle for tonight. Good stuff! As I said, Lynn, keep 'em coming!

Updated beginning late Sunday morning because I slept 'til 9:30 and have had a lazy morning:

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "The Big Bailout"

I started this one last night on paper and left a couple trailing pen marks across the clue list when nodding off. Back in the day, I used to draw much longer sleepy lines, and right across the grid. So this is an improvement—but still a sign to put down the puzzle.

The clues in the upper left didn't feel too pliable, so I browsed the clue list (in a way I seldom do when solving in Across Lite or on the clock). Would you believe my first answer was 102A: ["Cross Creek" author's monogram]? Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, is that her name? MJK. I worked my way outward and upward from there and finished the puzzle this morning. The theme tells the story of Sid the Skydiver who becomes Sid the Stockbroker, using skydiving-related phrases to convey a rags-to-riches-to-prison business tale. I don't want to talk about that, though—instead, let's look at some unusual clues and answers:

115A. [Boston's loc.] clues E. MASS. Short for Eastern Massachusetts? Is "E. Mass." a term people use in that region? I've never heard of it, and it feels like a horribly ungainly crossword answer.
18D. [Internet industry catchphrase] clues GET WIRED. Whose catchphrase is this? It doesn't ring a bell at all.
31D. [Long-time National Enquirer chief Calder] is named IAIN. That second I was the very last square I filled in, because (a) I've never heard of this guy and (b) the 41A crossing is the [Vaquero's rope] of crosswordese fame, which can alternately be spelled as RIATA or REATA. Ouch on that crossing.
47D. Merl goes playful and nonstandard with [VeGAS?] to clue NEON, as in the inert gas in Vegas signage.
52D. Ditto for this clue. Merl clues ONUS/ON US as both one and two words with [Obligation (or where it might fall?)]. Nobody publishes clues like this, really, not even Merl most of the time. Kinda fun surprise.
64A. Ditto for this one, taking the crosswordese ONER that we always groan at and turning it into a partial, ["Previously ___..." (TV show intro)], "ON E.R." It took me way too long to figure out what 2-letter TV show starting with E could possibly fit there.
108A. IVA is clued by way of [Tokyo Rose, ___ Toguri]. I didn't remember the name and needed all three crossings. I would've guessed that tennis player IVA Majoli had a bigger Google presence than IVA Toguri, but that's a wrong guess.

Alan Arbesfeld's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday "Daily Crossword," "Den of Thieves"

In the interest of time—since it's now afternoon here—let me point you to PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post for more coverage of this puzzle. She said figuring out the theme right away helped in her solve—but it took me far too much of the puzzle to see what the theme was and it still fell quickly. Easy puzzle, as these things go.

My favorite of the "add-a-CON" theme entries is the CONDESCENDING COLON at 34A, [Patronizing part of the digestive tract?]. Sure, the clue could have repurposed the COLON as a punctuation mark (...somehow), but no, we still get intestines. It's always a little surprising to find poop-related organs in the crosswords—and as PuzzleGirl pointed out, that clued for 5D: DEAD, [Pooped out], gives another little echo of that.

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe puzzle (in Across Lite), "Writer's Block"

Well, there's not much to say about a quote theme, is there? The surrounding fill and clues were pretty easy, so piecing together the quote wasn't as onerous as it could have been. The [Quip's author] is ROBERT FROST and his quote is THE BRAIN IS A / WONDERFUL / ORGAN. IT STARTS TO / WORK THE MOMENT YOU GET UP / IN THE / MORNING AND DOES NOT STOP / UNTIL YOU GET INTO / THE OFFICE. I did hit the skids at 51A: [Many a microbrew]. The answer is ALES. ALES are many a microbrew? The plural felt off to me. Am I wrong? I'm not sure.

Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

Yeesh, I didn't enjoy this puzzle. Two of the four 15s feel too contrived, too much of a stretch as crossword entries. [What the magician might pull] is A RABBIT FROM A HAT? Ouch. I thought magicians pulled rabbits out of a hat. And below it is [I] cluing ROMAN NUMERAL ONE, which doesn't feel like a stand-alone phrase to me. There are some odd-jobbers—CHEWERS, a SMIRKER, and STARERS. The CLEANER could be a cool job rather than [Pine-Sol, for one]—I'm thinking here of Harvey Keitel's Pulp Fiction character's job. Also in the Department of Clunky: the "dated" (according to my dictionary) noun TENSITY, RESTUDY clued as [Cram anew], and "I SEE NOW" clued as ["At last it's clear!"].

The brightest spot: SLIDERS, meaning mini-burgers, are clued as [Snacks at the bar]. That's pretty much the only lively way to clue this, and it's nice that it wasn't, say, [Base runners, at times] or [Kids at a playground, at times].

July 17, 2009

Saturday, 7/18

Newsday 14:14
NYT 7:23
LAT 4:04
CS 9:52 (J—paper)

Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword

This crossword's pretty much three puzzles for the price of one: The two small puzzles in the upper left and lower right corners, and the bigger one connecting the other two corners. If you don't get a couple answers quickly in those almost-cut-off quadrants, the task of filling them becomes much more of a challenge. Indeed, those partitions are where I spent the most time.

This is smooth fill as 58-worders go—there's not much leeway for including really showy phrases with uncommon letters and there's no room at all for answers over 8 letters in length. But the 20 8-letter answers are the sorts of entries that, owing to their length, are not common in crosswords, so the puzzle rates high on the Freshness Factor numerical scale.

The spots that gave me the most trouble:

6A. [Jurist who wrote "A Matter of Interpretation," 1997] is Antonin SCALIA. I saw the 6 letters and plugged in THOMAS. Whoops.
12A. [Like theater seating] clues IN ROWS. I'm not sure that's really quite kosher as far as meeting the criteria for crosswordability. What do you think?
23A. I guess I'm not up on my tennis nicknames because I thought [The Bucharest Buffoon of the court] was hinting at a member of Romania's royal court. It's Ilie NASTASE, whose first name gets way more play in crosswords than his surname.
24A. [Partition] is a verb here, not a noun: to SEVER.
41A. I was looking for a sprinter's name for [Breaker of the 400-meter freestyle world record at the 2000 Olympics]. That's Aussie Ian THORPE. What sort of track event would the 400-meter freestyle be? I like to think some athletes would skip and others would hop. Or maybe they could roll over—like an ENGINE, of which they say [It turns over before it runs] (49A).
45A. I don't think I recalled [Baseballer Fernando Valenzuela's nickname], but figured EL something, and TORO seemed like a good 4-letter nickname for a stocky Mexican jock.
51A. For [They branch off], I started with TWIGS. At least the S was right—but the T let me put in EVENS OUT for 29D [Levels] instead of the correct ECHELONS, and that took some time to unravel. The branching things are SECTS here.
1D. With several crossings in place, I decided that if you [Get into] a situation, you DISRUPT it. Whoops—if you get into a topic, you DISCUSS it.
4D. For [Like a foundling], I had BEREAVED, which shares 3 letters with the correct FORSAKEN.
7D. I like the two-word phrase CUSS AT for [Verbally run down]. Too bad I started out having HARASS and HASSLE here when I thought the jurist was THOMAS. Again, lengthy unraveling required.
10D. I thought of cantilevers rather than chanting, so I wasn't getting INTONE for [Cantillate] until I had about 4 letters filled in.
31D. I really wasn't sure what direction [Consonant] was going. Turns out it's HARMONIC. Consonant can mean "in harmony or agreement," and my dictionary informs me it's also a musical term.
36D. [Serape sporters] can be SENORES, sure. They could also be SENORAS, which is what I had for a while. That mucked up 49A, the ENGINE, which wanted to end in an A.
37A. [Charlie of swing] clues BARNET. Guess he's the most famous BARNET out there. Not as familiar as Woody HERMAN, who was the 43A [Bandleader with the #1 hit "Blues in the Night"]. According to Wikipedia, there have been many popular recordings of this Arlen & Mercer tune. Would you believe five different versions by different artists charted in a single 4-month period in 1941-42? And that a few weeks before that period, Charlie BARNET released his version? True story. I read it on Wikipedia.

Things I liked:

28A. I just learned this name in a clue in some other puzzle! AYESHA is the name of [Muhammad's favorite wife]. If you didn't know this one, oy, it must've made it just that much harder to make headway in that quadrant.
I like the Gaul/GALL combo (etymologically unrelated). 33A [Boldness to a fault] is GALL, while it was CAESAR who was the [Writer of "Commentarii de Bello Gallico"].
44A. [Indications that things have changed?] in your handwritten crossword answers are ERASURES.
15D. PRENATAL gets a cute clue, [Before coming out?].
27D. [Star treks?] are EGO TRIPS.
There are zero 3-letter entries, just two 4-letter answers, and six 5-letter entries. Everything else lands in the 6- to 8-letter range.

Updated Saturday morning:

Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Shot Selection"—Janie's review

When the puzzle has a Klahn by-line, you can be sure there will be nothing ERRATIC [Spotty] in the construction or TAME [Dull] in the fill or the cluing. The title of today's puzzle refers not to an athletic endeavor like basketball or racquetball or golf, where "shot selection" is part of the game-playing strategy, but to a variety of words to which "shot" may be attached as a suffix—here, the first word in each of the four bright theme-phrases.

Hotshot derives from 19A's HOT BUTTON [Passion elicitor]. This is "an impressively successful or skillful and often vain person." The name Donald Trump springs to mind.
Sling shot (weapon-of-choice for "little David" who played on his HARP) comes from SLINGBLADE [Billy Bob Thornton's 1997 Oscar vehicle]. I missed this in first run and found that (when it showed up on some free Showtime offer) the story was too disturbing for me. Not that I'm such a delicate thang. I just had a lot of trouble with the victimization component and didn't make it through to the end to see if/how anything would change. (And I hadn't paid to see it...)
Grapeshot, ammuntion associated mostly with 18th and 19th century weaponry, comes to us by way of GRAPE JUICE and its terrifically twisty clue [Crushing outcome, perhaps]. If you still don't quite get, think of Lucille Ball in her wine-making efforts.
Buckshot is yet another type of ammunition brought to us this time by CS-debut BUCK-NAKED [Completely exposed]. I was a tad let down that there were two kinds of ammo in theme results and not a different sort of shot altogether, but that was before I learned of the rapper named Buckshot. Surely that's where Bob was going with this one...

So we have these very strong theme phrases and then, just look at the fill in the corners. The SW and NE have triple stacks of lively eights: FILING IN, ANACONDA (obliquely clued as [One could put the squeeze on you]) and REVENUER; and SCORSESE, ALLELUIA and BAD GIRLS, respectively. And the triple stacks of sixes in the NW and SE ain't too shabby neither: MASCOT (clued as [Yale's Handsome Dan, e.g.]), fave word ARCANA, and campfire fave SMORES; and FAMINE, OTITIS and RED ANT or [Bolshevik bug?], respectively.

Alliteration abounds in the cluing: [Podded plant for Paul Prudhomme] for OKRA (referring to the New Orleans chef of note), [Kin of culottes] for SKORT, [Saucy and sassy] for PERT, to cite a few. But perhaps just as clever are some of those clues that make you question your instincts and force you to think, like: [It may be squirreled away] for ACORN, which plays on the word "squirrel"; [Kind of pie?] for SWEETIE (sweet!); [Cover of knight?] for ARMOR; and [Wizard of ___? (masseur)] for AAHS.

All in all, a fine Saturday concoction by the "Wizard of 'aha's"!

Orange again. Aw, I missed a Klahn and saw Janie's writeup with all the spoilers before I knew it was his puzzle. I always like a chance to unravel his clues and put that puzzle in its place (which is "solved without too much trouble but with some brain work").

Doug Peterson's Los Angeles Times crossword

My full writeup of this puzzle is over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. Here's an excerpt:

My goodness, does the upper left corner of this puzzle ever stink. I'm surprised some pungent garlic or garbage dump phrases didn't find their way in, amid HOG HEAVEN (1A: [Blissful state, slangily]) and an ONION DOME (15A: [Russian Orthodox church feature]). Pee-yoo! Nothing else made me hold my nose, though. And much of it had a pleasant aroma—figuratively speaking.

Favorite answers and clues: We've got 14 long answers of 8 to 15 letters apiece, and many of them rock. So do some of the short answers.

18A: [Bullock's "Miss Congeniality" costar] is Benjamin BRATT. He was hot in Law & Order, though his character's main purpose was not to be eye candy for me. No, he was there to be the foil for Lennie Briscoe's wry one-liners. Lennie, the guy in the YouTube freeze frame below, is my all-time favorite L&O character (and he was played by Jerry Orbach, the father of my 7/5 NYT crossword co-constructor, Tony Orbach).
35A: [Control tower concerns] (TRAFFIC PATTERNS). A solid 15.
46A: [Coconut's place] (GROVE). Isn't that a Van Halen cover song?
60A: [Surfing equipment?] (DSL MODEMS). I guessed this one off the S at the end of 8-Down.
2D: [Handling the task] (ON IT). This looks like a horrible little two-word answer, but I like it. "Who's blogging the puzzle today?" "I'm ON IT."
8D: [Antarctic denizens] (EMPEROR PENGUINS). Who doesn't love penguins? Except for the evil penguin in the Wallace and Gromit short, The Wrong Trousers. Jeeze, that penguin creeps me out.
10D: [First "America's Funniest Home Videos" host] (BOB SAGET). I don't know any family with kids that doesn't love this show—but with Tom Bergeron as host. Bob Saget stinks worse than hogs and onions.
12D: [Critical 1942-43 battle site] (STALINGRAD). Wow, that takes nerve, doesn't it? Josef Stalin ascended to power in the Soviet Union in 1922, and within three years he had renamed Tsaritsyn after himself. "Orangeburg." "Reynaldo City." "Amystadt."
25D: [Jotting medium] (SCRAP PAPER). You know what else fits this clue and the first three letters? SCRATCH PAD. Anyone else start out with that wrong answer? No? Just me?
26D: [Dean Martin classic] (THAT'S AMORE). "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore...

Doug Peterson's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

Wow. This puzzle worked me over. (PDF solution here.) Tough—very tough—but fair. You can't ask for more than that, right? You could also ask for some amazingly fresh fill, and Doug's got that. Most of the short and mid-length fill is fairly ordinary—smooth, workable, but not so splashy. But look at thes five of the six longest answers:

17A. [Raspberry products?] are WHOOPEE CUSHIONS, which are products that produce "raspberry" sounds. WHOOPEE CUSHIONS! A great 15, with a wickedly hard clue.
35A. [Fall falls, perhaps] are COLD SNAPS. When temperatures fall in the autumn, you get COLD SNAPS. Took me forever to understand the clue.
59A. "KATIE, BAR THE DOOR" means ["Here comes trouble!"] I forget the origin of the phrase, but it's familiar enough and a mighty lively 15.
7D. Our [Fictional rodent] is not, as you might first suspect, a mouse or a rat. It's ROCKET J. SQUIRREL, the more formal way to refer to Rocky of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame.
31D. The MCMANSION is an [Out-of-place place]. Anyone else let a few crossings take them to out of COMMISSION? I went there.

These are all fantastic.

Lots of other clues to talk about—for example, the two carpeting answers that hid from me for the longest time. 1A: [Down] is PILE, somehow. I'm not sure why. Is this about carpeting? And 58D: [Long nap] isn't about sleep, it's about SHAG rugs. My living room rug has SHAG whose PILE has 3" yarns. Cushy! And also:

16A. [Seneca, for one] is a STOIC. I tried ODIST and considered something to do with upstate New York.
21A. For [Emulate a monarch], I started to put down RULE and quickly changed to FLIT like a butterfly. I'm onto you, Peterson and Newman!
24A. [___ bean]...hmm...could be a NAVY bean but I'm thinking it ends with an A, LIMA or SOYA. I was close—turned out to be FAVA. At least the A gave me ECSTASY for 13D; [Delight].
30A. [Flute feature] is a STEM, a champagne flute being a kind of stemware.
46A, 36D. I began typing random letters at this crossing, which was the last square for me. [Mosaic items] aren't "items on a mosaic," they're "items related to Moses, because Mosaic is an adjective for things relating to Moses." TORAHS! That hidden-capital-letter-at-the-beginning-of-a-clue is a classic Saturday trick. 36D: [City in Kyrgyzstan] was no help. OSH? If you say so.
58A. SCALIA is the [Reagan choice of '86]. Damn, SCALIA foisting himself on two different puzzles in one day? Talk about your judicial activism. Too much SCALIA!
66A. [Enjoy London] means "enjoy Jack London," or READ.
4D, 10D. This cross-reference pair really slowed me down. ETONS, or Eton collars, are [Part of some school uniforms], and STIFFNESS is a [Characteristic of 4 Down]. Anyone else go with SCUFFLESS SHOES?
5D. [Was appealing] clues PLED, as in making an appeal = pleading.
11D. KOOL-AID is a [Mixed drink] but not a cocktail. Well, not unless you replace some of the water with vodka, like the college kids do. Or maybe gin, with lime KOOL-AID.
18D. [Frankfurter topping] is SALZ, which is "salt" in Frankfurt, Germany. Super-tough clue, no?
43D. One [Sushi-bar selection] is ABALONE. Hey, I just learned about abalone farming on Dirty Jobs. The stuff's expensive because the workers spend tons of time harvesting kelp, which...they feed to the abalone? Which they have to clear out of the water so the abalone have space? I wasn't really paying attention. All I know is those water plants grow something like a foot a day, which is nuts.
44D. I love the demonym CARIOCA, meaning a [Rio de Janeiro native]. It sounds like an ice cream flavor to me. "I'll have a double scoop of carioca, please." It's like almond Roca, caramel, mocha, and karaoke.
60D. [African athlete], 3 letters? What on earth could that be?? Oh, yes: Ernie ELS, the golfer. I'll bet South African solver Gareth got that one right away.

I've got a question for Doug, who of course may plead the 5th and decline to answer. Doug, you're a rarity in that we see your themelesses in the New York Times, the L.A. Times, CrosSynergy/Washington Post, and Newsday. There may be others who've had themelesses in all four, but perhaps not with your frequency. What I'm wondering is this: How do you decide what to submit to which venue? (Is it "send everything to the NYT and shoot for the biggest paycheck and divvy up Will's rejects among the other venues"? Or "Ah, this one's definitely a Stumper" or "This feels like a good one for CrosSynergy"?) What do you see as the substantive differences in prevailing themeless styles for the four papers, from a constructor's standpoint?

July 16, 2009

Friday, 7/17

NYT 6:33
BEQ 5:17 (not including meta)
LAT 4:52
CS 7:13 (J—paper)
WSJ 8:54

Doug Peterson and Barry Silk's New York Times crossword

Yeah, so earlier on Thursday, I chided Rex Parker about his brain wanting to shut down at the sight of all the multiple cross-reference clues in the Gorski puzzle. And then I waded into Doug and Barry's themeless, and I'll be darned if those cross-reference clues weren't awfully vexing. Really, 4D and 15A intersect and both send you across the puzzle to other clues? Fie on that!

Then there's the utterly unfamiliar KENTUCKY COLONEL (with no reference to fried chicken!) at 8D, clued as the [Honorary title bestowed on Bill Clinton, Muhammad Ali and Mae West]. Beside it is the short ERTE with an unfamiliar clue: ["Manhattan Mary V" artist].

The cross-refs line up like so:

63A. OLD SCHOOL is the [Opposite of avant-garde]. In one of the earliest Bernie Mac Show episodes, Bernie's fourth-wall speech included this: "Don't touch my old school, my new school, my slow jams, my party jams, my happy rap, and you bet not touch my James Brown...or somebody is really going to get hurt." As I recall, he held up a Kid & Play album to illustrate "happy rap." I miss Bernie Mac.
15A. I don't recall seeing the cross-referenced question-marked clue before. [63-Across?] is one's ALMA MATER.
24A, 54D. [With 54-Down, approach with a line]/[See 24-Across] clues COME / ONTO.
4D. [62-Across offerings] are RAPS, and yes, I finished up in that corner thanks to the assorted x-refs.
62A. And who produces those RAPS? It's DR. DRE, [Artist with the 1999 6x platinum album "2001"].

Favorite entries:

1A. I would like FAIR SHAKE ([Reasonable treatment]) better if preceded by the article A. How awkward to place PEENS right after that FAIR SHAKE.
17A. I like the word CORPULENT because it's so similar to the Simpsons coinage "cromulent." It's clued as [Having a lot to lose?].
36A. SLIPPERY WHEN WET is clued as a [Highway caution]. Sounds more like a custodian's sign than a highway sign to me, but it looks good in the crossword.
41A. STEELE! [Michael of the G.O.P.]! I just had a good laugh at this parsing of his recent remarks. Seems to be a tad off with his timeline. 12D EISENHOWER made more sense: [He said "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both"].
51A. [Lucy and Ricky Ricardo's residence, e.g.] was a BROWNSTONE.
53A. BOHO! Slang for Bohemian, an [Eschewer of convention, in slang].
13D. NE'ER-DO-WELL is clued as a [Bum].
22D. [Some Cherokees]...hmm, what tribe fits that clue? Whoops, vehicles: JEEPS. (But 44A OTOS are [People of the Platte, once].)
25D. The OUIJA BOARD is a [Means of getting some answers?]. This toy is now available in an all-pink edition. You know—because it was such a total boy toy, and it needed to be pinkified in order for girls to feel comfortable using it. /snark
53D. [Some like it hot] clues a BATH.

Boo on 6D, [Berry with juicy parts?] for actress HALLE. Have her acting parts really been all that juicy? Or are the fellas talking about her body parts? This clue had better be an overestimation of the roles she's gotten.

I had some trouble spots. I decided the PSAT had [180 is its max. score], which made the [Kind of door or window] into a POUVER—they're actually LSAT and LOUVER. I was willing to consider POUVER because I'd just done a 2007 Games 21x21 with eight completely unfamiliar answers. These were the wickets and mallets game ROQUE; LAKE SUCCESS, the UN headquarters in '46-'51; [Merengue singer Crespo] for ELVIS; IGY for [Jul. 1, 1957 to Dec. 31, 1958]; BANON, everyone's favorite [French goat cheese dipped in brandy]; SPLATS clued as [Chair pieces]; [Early American philanthropist Stephen] GIRARD; and my personal favorite (though it's hard to top IGY!), TELPHER, or [Cable car]. I am not making this up. (And the page before had legalese MESNE and CERAM, one of the Molucca Islands!)

Looking back at the NYT, a 43D [Crash site sight] is a TOW CAR? What is a TOW CAR? I know tow trucks. 60A LORAL is a [Big maker of communications satellites], and I should try to remember this one because it's been in crosswords before. COLD HARBOR sounds very Long Island/New England to me. Why is it the [Site of Robert E. Lee's last victory]? Am I thinking of Cold Spring Harbor? 3D [Hungarian writer Madach]...hmm, if you're looking for a Hungarian 4-letter name, try Bela, Erno, or IMRE. (IMRE Nagy is the usual crossword IMRE.) Ryan and Brian say Barry's puzzles always have at least two baseball references; I was stumped by one of 'em, 52D [Outfielder Francona], or TITO. I wouldn't call any of these things unfair, but I would say the puzzle's more Saturdayish than Fridayish. One can only hope this means there's a super-duper killer crossword in store for Saturday!

Updated Friday morning:

Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Birds of Prey"—Janie's review

This is a muscular, lean and terrific puzzle whose four theme-phrases all name different sharp-taloned, strongly hook-beaked, swooping flyers that feed on the weaker of their species—and other species as well... Today's birds of a feather are represented in the following:

20A. FALCON CREST [Prime time soap that starred Jane Wyman]. I don't think I ever saw a complete episode... The fill looks to be a CS first.
11D. EAGLE SCOUT [Boy with many badges].
28D. KITE-FLYING [Skill never mastered by Charlie Brown]. For the purpose of the puzzle, a kite is a type of hawk.
53A. VULTURE FUND (oh, boy, do I love this one!) [Concern that invests in distressed companies]. Highly controversial subject and worth reading about. In the "fresh-fill department," both this phrase and the preceding one look to be making major puzzle debuts, btw.

For good measure, Ray disguises some bonus fill with the clue [Rent-a-car option] for AVIS—but let's not forget, that word is Latin for bird.

Elsewhere in the puzzle, Ray does lots to [Invigorate] PEP UP the solving experience. Did you have trouble coming up with the answer for [GPA booster]? I sure did. It's EASY A, but failure to come up with SWABS for [Cotton bunches] and the decision to enter PUTS IN instead of BUYS IN for [Joins a poker game] definitely threw me off the track. Ditto the RR start to "R" RATING for the teasingly suggestive [What nudity may lead to]. RR? Ohhhhh. Now I get it. (And back to BUYS IN for a second—notice the nice complement it has in ANTE [Build the pot].)

I do own an iMac, but not an IPOD [Apple product]. I do know, though, that the iPod runs on battery power and more specifically, the nickel-cadmium variety—or NICAD [Battery type]. Nice how IPOD and NICAD sit next to each other in the grid too.

A [High point] is a VERTEX—not to be confused with a VORTEX, which is another word for whirlpool. A [Thin pancake] is a CRÊPE, a food we get from France. And while we're over there, I was surprised to see LOUVRE clued as [Parisian art gallery, with "The"]. The Louvre is a "gallery"? Yes, it's a place where art is exhibited and in that sense a "gallery," but doesn't the word "gallery" kinda diminish the Louvre, which is one of the western world's consummate museums? Just sayin'...

The delicacy of that TUTU [Frilly little skirt] is offset not only by the theme creatures, but by the likes of such brawny fill as ALL-PRO [Like an excellent NFL player]; ODIN, Norse god of art, culture and war and [Father of Thor], god of thunder, war and strength; ORCA [Killer whale]; and [Formula] ONE [racing].

That [Kind of mirror] is REAR-VIEW; and I know that TREFOIL describes a [Clover shape]—but it's also one of a variety of Girl Scout cookies. I rather doubt that [Alice B.] TOKLAS [, companion of Gertrude Stein] enjoyed them. No, her non-liquid TONICS [Pick-me-ups] were more of the WEEDY sort...(and I'm not talkin' [Overgrown, as a garden]).

Finally, perhaps it was seeing [Killer whale] and ["Monty Python and the Holy ___"] GRAIL so close in the list of clues to [Wool from a rabbit] (for ANGORA), but really—all I could think of was that killer rabbit....

GROAN. And TGIF, all!

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

Crikey, this puzzle took me longer than the Saturday LATs have been taking me. It didn't take me all that long to understand the theme, but knowing the theme didn't make it all that easy to fill in the other theme entries. And overall, I think the cluing was on the tough side. The theme entries have a TT changed to a DD:

17A. I don't use the phrase "put on the dog" (meaning to put on ostentatious airs), so PUDDING ON THE DOG was slow to develop. That's [Evidence of a spilled dessert?] and an almost surreal image.
22A. [Nervous ticks?] plays on "nervous tics" and clues SHUDDER BUGS, which plays on "shutterbugs." I like the dual levels of wordplay here.
35A. With the RAC part in it, I wanted RACE or RACING to be a component in the answer, but it isn't. OFF-TRACK BEDDING is clued as [Linens for jockeys?].
51A. Notting Hill is a London neighborhood and the title of a Julia Roberts/Hugh Grant movie. NODDING HILL is a [Slope where sycophants hang out]. I'm glad the clue didn't use the "drowse off" meaning of nod, because I'm picturing bobble-headed people on a hill.
57A. [What a yenta exam does?] is TEST ONE'S MEDDLE. "Meddle" isn't a noun outside this crossword, but this theme answer's a cuter concept than testing metals or medals would be.

Spots that snagged me:

1A. [Per se] means IN ITSELF. When do you ever see IN ITSELF in a crossword? I wasn't expecting it.
16A. [When some shifts start]? Why, that's AT NOON, of course. In Amyland. The rest of you probably live where AT NINE makes more sense.
32A. [They're usually rolled out] clues TARPS. With several letters in place, I went with HARPS. What? You don't hoist a harp on your shoulder and carry it, do you? That messed up 29D, [Suffix which may be 24-Down (UN-PC)]. I wanted ENNE, which made me ponder whether NARCS are rolled out. Eventually the ETTE/TARPS combo found its way into my puzzle, but sheesh.
41A. [Miss equivalent?] with a question mark...hmm. I contemplated putting MLLE here, but it's MILE, as in "a miss is as good as a mile."
38D. [Site of the active volcano Mount Agung] is BALI. Strictly from the crossings, this one.

My favorite fill includes STAR TREK, AMY TAN, L.A. LAKER, and potato LATKES. Least loved: RESEEK, or [Look for again], with an extra demerit for duplicating the word in LOOK UP.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Character Study"

Brendan's having a crossword contest along the lines of Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest. Solve the puzzle, then solve the meta-puzzle within it, and send your answer to Brendan. Five randomly chosen correct respondents will win a prize—and anyone who has plugged Brendan's site gets put in the pot 10 times. Whoo hoo! I have established my link-to-Brendan's-blog and post-to-Twitter-and-Facebook credentials.

No answer solution here, no chitchat about clues and answers. You're on your own, folks.

I filled in the puzzle but...I am still pondering the meta. Maybe the answer will come to me in a dramatic epiphany later.

Tony Orbach's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Moonlighting Serenaders"

Ah, this is a theme I have been waiting years for without knowing it. The Mariah Carey/pariah and Beyonce Knowles/fiancé(e) rhymes have been crying out to be used together, and Tony figured out how to make a "nouns that rhyme with singers' first names" theme for them. The title is perfect, as it plays on "Moonlight Serenade" and aptly describes a unifying concept for the theme:

23A. [Shuttle buses from Houston?] are WHITNEY'S JITNEYS. Man, I thought this was about Houston, Texas, for the longest time.
37A. Mandy Moore figures into MANDY'S CANDIES, or [Moore's confectionery?].
48A. An American Idol singer, Jordin Sparks, plays into JORDIN'S WARDENS, [Sparks's placement service for prison personnel?].
66A. [Parton-sponsored theatrical revue?] is DOLLY'S FOLLIES. It's completely plausible that they'd have this at Dollywood.
87A. This one's a stretch as far as moonlighting occupations go, but as I said, the Mariah/pariah rhyme is a must. MARIAH'S PARIAHS are [Carey's wedding band service made of outcasts from her band?].
96A. NELLY'S JELLIES are [Furtado's plastic footwear line?]. Fruit spreads would also work okay.
117A. Tony saved the best for last: [Yenta services from Knowles?] are BEYONCE'S FIANCES.

Highlights in the fill, things that stymied me, and other items of note:

19A. ["Antigone" playwright Jean] ANOUILH has the trickiest spelling of all the French writers, no? We read Antigone in high school. It's short!
The one-two golf punch stopped me cold. 1A [Driving reminders] are DIVOTS and 26A GOLF TEES are clued [Use of them may prevent 1-Across].
84A. LESE is [Literally, "injured"]. Lèse-majesté means "the insulting of a monarch or other ruler; treason" and I can't believe that all these years I've been filling in LESE [___-majesté] in crosswords, I never looked up the definition.
101A. ROSARIO is [Karen's maid on "Will & Grace"]. It's also the name of the third largest city in Argentina, an inland port on a river. Everyone knows that, right??
125A. [Frist's predecessor in the Senate] is SASSER? Who? This doesn't ring a bell at all.
10D. SINBAD is a [Fabulous sailor] in that he's a sailor in fables. Cute!
Last but not least, I love the double-double rock action at 15D and 73D. "REBEL, REBEL" is a [1974 David Bowie song] and DURAN DURAN is the ["Hungry Like the Wolf" band] whose album Rio was in the July 5 NYT puzzle Tony and I made. (I wrote the RIO clue, and I loved that album when I was 16 or 17.)

July 15, 2009

Thursday, 7/16

NYT 4:47
LAT 3:28
CS 5:53 (J—paper)
Tausig untimed

Liz Gorski's New York Times crossword

I love the theme but I can't say I'm wild about the rest of the puzzle. The theme presents an ANAGRAM (35A [See 17- and 57-Across] of two arithmetic problems that total THIRTEEN (12D [Either 17- or 57-Across]. 17A is ELEVEN + TWO ([35-Across of 57-Across that equals 12-Down]) and 57A is TWELVE + ONE ([35-Across of 17-Across that equals 12-Down]). Huh! I don't recall learning that those two number pairs were anagrams of each other. Partnering with THIRTEEN in the opposite corner is IT ADDS UP, a 33A [Possible title for this puzzle]. Those two plus signs (rendered as P for "plus" in my answer grid) work in their crossings, too. 15D is a B+ AVERAGE, or [3.3. in a transcript, maybe?], and 46D is NON{PLUS}ED, or [Puzzled]. I guess really the plus signs are {PLUS} rebus squares, as the word PLUS works in all of them, and + does not work for NON+ED.

There's plenty of tough stuff here:

• 14A. [Ships whose rudders don't touch water] are the airships called DIRIGIBLES. Not being nautically inclined, I started out here with CATAMARANS.
• 19A. [Bobsled challenges] are ESSES, meaning S-curves in the bobsled chute. Bet you thought about bobsleds when you saw 23A's clue, [They travel through tubes]. Those are the OVA that traverse the Fallopian tubes. Bet you also pondered bobsleds at 44D, [Bob at the Olympics]. That's perky Mr. COSTAS.
• 29A. The big "Who??" clue is [French novelist Robert ___, upon whose work the 1973 thriller "The Day of the Dolphin" is based]. The usual crossword MERLEs are actress Merle Oberon and country singer Merle Haggard.
• 39A. [Container for folding scissors] is either a newish or very old clue for the good ol' ETUI. I have taken to calling the little zippered case inside my purse an ETUI. I don't have any sewing gear in it, but you can find a nail file and narcotics.
• 53A. DAMASCUS is the capital of Syria as well as the [Destination of Saul when he had his conversion, in the Bible].
• 60A. AT EYE LEVEL is clued as [Neither high nor low].
• 61A. What? The APSE isn't clued as a recess in a cathedral? Why, I hardly recognized it in [Half-dome construction].
• 2D. I don't care for anything labeled [Swiss cheese]. Does TILSIT taste like holey Swiss cheese?
• 11D. CASE FILE doesn't feel so familiar to me. It's a [Detective's work record].
• 36D. AERO gets a new clue, [Britain's Royal ___ Club, for plane enthusiasts]. Never heard of it, though the AERO part is rather inferrable.
• 54D. [100-lb. units] are hundredweights, abbreviated as CWTS. I know this strictly from crosswords. Not sure if the plural is kosher.

In the Department of Cute Clues, we've got these:

• 16A. The clue [Sounds heard in a bowl] has nothing to do with toilet bowls. They're the RAHS heard in a stadium/arena type of bowl.
• 13D, 55D. Well, if a [Snake's warning] is the hissing SSS, then a [Bear's warning] must be GRRR, right? Naw. It's SELL, as in a Wall Street bear.
• 41A. GAVEL is [Something a chair may hold]. I realize there are traditionalists who cannot abide "chair" being used to refer to a gender-neutral chairperson, but those traditionalists are probably best advised to get a grip.
• 3D. The magician's [Cry just before a rabbit appears?] is PRESTO.
• 4D. [Dwells in the past?] clues LIVETH.
• 8D. Honestly, I don't know anything about the [Red-spotted ___] NEWT, but it felt so right that it pushed CATAMARANS out of my grid. Look how cute!
• 52D. SPELT is a grain of some sort, isn't it? It's also the British past tense of "spell," so the clue is [Like L-O-N-D-O-N].

Updated Thursday morning:

Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme, which contains two 14s, two 10s, and a 15 (63 squares in all, a fairly substantial theme), is explained by 58A: WHAT'S THE SPREAD, or a [Bettor's question, and a hint to this puzzle's theme]. The other four themers begin with various edible spreads:

• 16A. MUSTARD PLASTER is an [Old-fashioned remedy for chest colds].
• 26A. [Rochester medical center] is the famous MAYO CLINIC. Did you read that recent(ish) New Yorker article about health care overspending in McAllen, Texas? Atul Gawande wrote about the fabulously efficient methods used for patient care at Mayo. The doctors have much less chance of making a fortune, but the quality of care is phenomenal and the costs are kept in line. More Mayo, please.
• 36A. JELLY ROLL MORTON was the '20s New Orleans Jazz musician clued as ["Black Bottom Stomp" jazz pianist].
• 43A. BUTTERBEAN is a [Lima variety]. I'm not one for lima beans, but I was eating buttered toast before sunrise this morning. Yum, butter.

Shiniest entry in the fill: PAGLIACCI, the [1892 Leoncavallo opera]. Funniest clue: [He "used to be the next president"], for Al GORE.

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

Ben's puzzle this week partners up well with today's LAT, as both puzzles have some messy stuff. In Ben's theme, phrases that contain solid substances are edited to include a liquid phase of that those substances:

• 17A, 21A. What's liquid rock? It's lava. So Rock, Paper, Scissors turns into LAVA, PAPER, / SCISSORS is a [totally unfair twist on a random selection game]. It mystifies me that there are Rock, Paper, Scissors tournaments. Why not have coin-toss tournaments? Or really, juice things up a bit with molten lava, which both combusts the paper and melts the scissors.
• 37A. Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, melts into GREASE TUESDAY, a [Midweek occasion for catching a Broadway revival?].
• 56A, 61A. ["Verily shall Evian be here soon"?] clues THE WATER / MAN COMETH, with ice turning to water.

And now, the highlight reel. I loved the surprise of 28A. Seven letters, starting with M, [Late singer Jackson with multiple Grammys]...what else could it be but MICHAEL? Well, there's also MAHALIA Jackson. 47A CARL'S JR. is the odd name of a [West Coast burger chain] and a cool crossword answer. The clue for 3D, NEVAEH, is written with the words in the correct order, but with each word spelled backwards: [ybaB eman taht yltnecer emaceb yrev ralupop, yllaicepse htiw lacilegnave snaitsirhC], or Baby name that recently became very popular, especially with evangelical Christians. And no, Lleh has not caught on yet. Isn't it mean to give a kid a name that's the opposite of Heaven? [Like Beethoven and Rush Limbaugh] clues DEAF at 4D. The lively PUH-LEASE at 18D is clued ["You think I'm gonna swallow that?"]. 31D is a CASTRATO, or [Male singer for whom the Italians used to go nuts]. Actually, "for whom the nuts used to go missing" works too. 37D GOT THE AX is a solid phrase; [Was victim to some rightsizing] feels a little retro as a clue because these days, nobody's daring to call it "rightsizing," are they?

Paula Gamache's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Confidentially Speaking"—Janie's review

Come close because I have to say this very quietly: Paula has given us a perfectly wonderful puzzle, but it's filled with—sshh!—unmentionables. The first word of each of the four (lively) theme phrases relates to the idea of confidentiality, and all but the first phrase seem to be making their first appearances in a CS puzzle. Because I gotta, I'll now break the confidence and reveal the phrases in question:

17A. INTIMATE APPAREL [Thongs and things]. Saucy clue, too.
26A. SECRET ADMIRER [Sender of an anonymous valentine, perhaps].
44A. PRIVATE SCHOOL [Many an academy]. This is the only fill that feels a tad out of sync. The others may or may not be visible to the eye (or known) and in that sense, actually relate to the idea of secrecy. But there's nothing hidden about a private school. The public may not be allowed in, but the building is there for all to see. The others, too, are related by involving human beings. Even those inanimate [Thongs and things] are worn by someone. I love the word private in the context of the puzzle, just not school so much. "Private Dancer" perhaps? Of course this involves a major re-write, but (as I see it) is more "of a kind" with the other entries.
58A. PERSONAL HYGIENE [Practices performed for one's health and well-being]. And practice makes perfect!

I found this to be a smooth 'n' easy solve and also found much to admire along the way with connected clues/fill. A [Meter master], for example is a POET, and one of the great ones in the English language is Shakespeare. The [Middle of a Shakespearian play] (so many of which are written in iambic pentameter)? ACT III, of course. And to complete Acts IV and V, I imagine even the Bard of Avon occasionally had to call on ERATO [Muse of bards]. Like most writers, Bill no doubt preferred it when his players would READ his words [Follow a script] and may have said, "I cringe at the AD LIBS of the player who [Skips the script]." Actually, he had Hamlet say something about delivery in ACT III, ii, when he instructs the travelling actors to:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you—trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I has as lief the town-crier had spoke my lines.

I'm not sure if there was a CAMEO [Bit part for a big player] in that theatrical entertainment staged at Elsinore...

There's the European connection, from the [Twelve months in Toulouse] for ANNÉE, to [River through Florence] for ARNO, to [Neighbor of Montenegro] for SERBIA. And a (probably inadvertent) baseball connection in the crossing of HURL [What pitchers do] and ["Three strikes and you're out," e.g.] for RULE. (And what a polite clue for HURL, no? Also, it took me a while to realize that the pitchers in the clue were not ewers...) I also have to express my delight in seeing ["There's] NO 'I' [in team"] right next to [Bit of wisdom] ADAGE.

A few more mentions, and then I'm gone:

["Atonement" author McEwan] for IAN reminded me that, while I've not read this book (did see the film), I did read (and recommend) Saturday a slender volume about a harrowing day in the life of a London surgeon and his family. It sneaks up and packs a wallop.
[Cut in a column] for EDIT. I had trouble with this one because I wouldn't let go of the idea of architectural columns.
[Quiet moment for a nanny] for NAP-TIME. Love the clue, love the fill.
[Michigan city mentioned in Paul Simon's "America"] for SAGINAW. For reasons I'll never know, that's the song that was going through my head for much of the last two days. Maybe because Paul Simon was on Jimmy Fallon's show recently? Anyway, I was glad to encounter it directly in the puzzle!

July 14, 2009

Wednesday, 7/15

BEQ 4:58
Onion 4:48
NYT 3:15
LAT 3:10
CS 6:38 (J—paper)

Joon Pahk's New York Times crossword

Joon interprets the concept IT MAY BE TAKEN OUT by listing four things that fit that categorization:

17A. A [Feeling of nonfulfillment] is FRUSTRATION. You don't take frustration out without taking it out on someone/-thing.
24A. [Frequent home acquisition] is a MORTGAGE. Hey, Joon, did you just take out a mortgage for your new abode?
49A. [Burgers and fries, often] constitute FAST FOOD. They're "take-out," yes, but I don't think of it as "taking out fast food."
59A. Take out a LIBRARY BOOK, an [Item that may have a date stamp].

Tons of lively fill here, particularly the longest Down answers. TEMPTS FATE (with five consonants in a row) is clued as [Maybe takes one risk too many]. An [Internal memo?] that's so internal, it doesn't leave your brain, is a MENTAL NOTE. There's THE / X-FILES, the ["Trust No One" series]. ON THE SLY means [Surreptitiously]. I can't say I really know that a FUNGO is a [Bat used for fielding practice], but it's clearly the coolest word in all of baseball. MUSTARD gets clued by way of Clue, the board game: [Colonel suspected of murder]. (I hope some people put SANDERS here.)

Favorite clues: [It may be hand-picked- refers to a BANJO. MUM's ["The word"]. MRS. is clued with the Virginia Woolf book, ["___ Dalloway"]. The most important MELINDA in the world is Melinda Gates of the [Bill & ___ Gates Foundation], which does tremendously useful work in battling disease in Africa. [Whites or darks] make up a laundry LOAD. And OCT. is the [Mo. of Indigenous Peoples Day], offsetting Columbus Day.

I gotta dock Joon a few points for a couple dupes. IT MAY BE TAKEN OUT echoes MAY I, or [Polite request for permission]. And two cognates pop up: REX is a [Kingly title in Latin], and EL REY is a [Kingly title in Spanish].

edited to add: joon here with a couple of "behind the music" notes (but no actual musical notes). i wrote this one with thursday in mind, and as such there was a fairly mild theme gimmick: all four theme answers were clued merely as [See 38-across]. i liked the idea of putting the clue in the grid, the way mike nothnagel did in his IT GOES UP AND DOWN puzzle from last year, but in a somewhat easier way. the editorial change to clue the answers straightforwardly is a good decision given the wednesday context, although that MORTGAGE clue is rather non-specific, isn't it? it could as easily describe a DESK LAMP or NINTENDO WII. anyway, i must take responsibility for the mild awkwardness of FRUSTRATION not having its "on" attached, and the two unnoticed-by-me dupes. i could easily have changed the X at REX/HEX (to D, F, M, N, P, S, T, W). or just clued REX via harrison or stout. instead i went for the matching pair, and for some reason it didn't even occur to me that they were cognates. MAY I would have been harder to grid out, but it looks doable. most of my tricky clues were kept, but my favorite that didn't make the cut was [Not just] for UNFAIR. it's subtle, but just misleading enough... i thought. the similar [Another time] clue for AGAIN and [Not express] for LOCAL did make it, though, so that made me happy.

Updated Wednesday morning

Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "U and Me"— Janie's review

The only thing that gently surprised me today was the title of the puzzle itself. Yes, the first word in each of the two-word theme phrases begins with U and the second with ME, but each of the first words also begins UN. Now nobody asked me, but I think there's more mileage to be had here with the title "U 'n' Me"... That said, nice goin', Randy, on giving us four 15-letter phrases, each of which appears to be making its major-puzzle debut. That's 60 squares of fresh theme-fill. Bravo! And those phrases are:

17A. UNIVERSITY MEDAL [College graduation award]. While the clue and the fill don't entirely match (is this a college honor, a university honor or is the "mixed metaphor" a cluing necessity?...), I never heard of this award. Did my small college confer this medal on a classmate? I don't remember. Still, I always like picking up new information through the puzzles.
28A. UNION MEMBERSHIP [Closed shop requirement]. Aha. As a card-carrying member of three performers unions, this one I know.
44A. UNITED METHODIST [Protestant church]. As a Jewess... Well, I'd be a pretty provincial kinda gal if I said I'd never heard of this Protestant sect. But I have, so I won't!
58A. UNCHAINED MELODY [Hit for the Righteous Brothers]. A hit for just about anyone who recorded it, starting in 1955. Today's version, though, was the "theme song" for my high school class's Senior Prom (well before Demi, Patrick and Ghost re-popularized it, yet again...).

In the non-theme fill, there are several dynamic duos throughout the puzzle, too:

[Celtic rival] PACER and [Magic's teammate] KAREEM for basketball fans;
[Three-time Masters winner Nick] FALDO (new to me...) and [Repair a fairway] RE-SOD for golf enthusiasts;
IDEALLY [Just the way it should be] and EDEN [Idyllic place] for utopians...;
ERIC (sometimes ERIK...) [___ the Red] and SWEDES [ABBA, e.g.] for lovers of all things Scandinavian; then
[ABBA, e.g.] SWEDES and [Barry, Maurice, or Robin] GIBB for pop fans (sorry, no match for the TECHNO crowd); and saving the best for last, the pair that's also a crossing,
[Guessing game question] WHO AM I? and "I'M AN [___ Old Cowhand"]. Sweet.

There's also a cluster of related words: if you're a ROUÉ [Casanova], you may [Look like a wolf] and OGLE. If you do, don't be surprised if the object of your attentions [Looked back in anger] (great clue!) and GLARED. The unwanted attention might even cause the recipient to JEER [Hiss and boo]...

Finally, because they take some thought and/or bring a visual to mind, here are some fave clues: [Penn name] for SEAN (a pun on "pen name"); [Wise guy?] for SAGE (like Solomon the wise...); [Revolutionary time] for YEAR (since it takes the earth a year to revolve around the sun); [Do a double take?] for RE-FILM; and [Hustle to first base] for SPRINT.

George Fitzgerald's Los Angeles Times crossword

I've already written about this puzzle over at L.A. Crossword Confidential. In the interest of having plenty of time for medical editing or crossword cluing today, let me simply refer you there rather than writing about it here. In 25 words: Theme is "___ level" phrases, fill includes wildly unfamiliar BITT ([Ship's post that secures cables]). New constructor? Congrats! Like to see smoother fill in subsequent puzzles.

Francis Heaney's Onion A.V. Club crossword

Francis includes two spelled-out letter names for the purpose of explaining the theme. ESS is the [First of a pair of letters swapped six times in this puzzle's theme entries], and TEE is the other. The six swaps appear in five answers:

20A. THIS FOR BRAINS plays on "shit for brains" and is clued ["Here's what I'll give you if you'll feed my pet zombie"?]. The clue doesn't quite add up for me, but I like the play on the original phrase.
28A. [Description of a balloon race lost due to lack of wind?] is NO GUST, NO GLORY. Solid. ("No guts, no glory.)
36A. LAST TSAR-FIGHTER is a [Holdout against the Romanovs?]. One point off for the unswapped S and T in LAST. If only the L.A. Times were commonly called the L.A.T. and had a proud history of fighting Russian despotism. (The Last Starfighter was a cheesy '80s movie that my son would probably love.)
45A. Hah! DON'T SATE ME, BRO is clued ["Dude, I hate feeling full"]. Funny answer, funny clue, funny (but painful) original "Don't tase me, bro" line.
56A. [What high-priced strippers who cater to dweebs see a lot of?] clues TWITS AND THOUS, playing on "Twist and Shout."

Five favorite clues: (1) OLAF is clued as [Norwegian king who...oh, as if you know anything about Norwegian kings]. Gotta love a clue where the constructor breaks the fourth wall (in a TV show or movie, an ASIDE is a [Remark that breaks the fourth wall]) and talks to the solver. Crosscan tweeted about this clue last night, calling it "the clue of the year." (2) [Scandal-ridden preacher Haggard] is named TED. One of my Facebook friends thought of that TED when I posted this photo. (3) Mighty long clue for a 4-letter answer: [Country that recently certified its election results, thus forever ending any doubt about the legitimacy thereof, totally] is IRAN. (4) [Crabs, e.g.], hmm, crustaceans? Grumpy people? Complains? No, an STD. (5) UHS are [Sounds from someone not good with, you know, word things].

Good fill, entertaining but mildly uneven theme, and terrific clues? Chalk this one up as a win for Francis.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Keeping It Short"

What he's "keeping short" is an I sound: the original phrases for the theme entries have a LONG I sound, and Brendan changes it to a short I, adjusting the spelling as needed.

A biker gang becomes the BICKER GANG, or [Quarrel crew]. (I'm skipping bullets because that dratted Safari 4 makes me add all sorts of other code to make the posts display properly for Safari 4 users, and then everything gets mucked up until I add still more extraneous bits of code, and it's driving me nuts.) That [Guy who exaggerates how much he can bench press?] is a MUSCLE FIBBER (muscle fiber). The [Grim Reaper's prop?] is a VICIOUS SICKLE indeed (vicious cycle). Brighton Beach turns into BRITAIN BEACH, or [Place where blokes and birds sun?]. And [Disease one gets from a watering hole?] is a DIPPER RASH (diaper rash). Cute theme, particularly the VICIOUS SICKLE.

Favorite clues/fill: (1) SNL is the [Show from which Adrien Brody and Martin Lawrence are banned for life]. (2) IGGY POP is the ["Lust for Life" singer]. (3) ZAGREB is the [Croatian capital] city.

Most-likely-to-vex-solvers clues: (1) [Cheap cigar, slangily] is EL ROPO. You know what? STOGIE is also 6 letters long. (2) [Bandleader Skinnay] ENNIS is someone I know about only from crosswords. (3) AIN is the [Department of Bourg, France]. (4) [Medallion makeup] is VEAL, not GOLD.

STLO!

Karen R. recently vacationed in France. She passed through Normandy, it appears, and sent this photo. The motorist's options here: stay on the highway and continue towards CAEN, or take the Cherbourg Saint-Lô (STLO!) exit. St. Lô, you may recall from recent crossword clues, is on the Vire River, which rarely shows up in crosswords despite having a 4-letter, 50%-vowels name. Nice bonus having Vire on the sign, too.

MGWCC #58

crossword 4:20
puzzle about 30 hours

hey everybody. the 58th episode of matt gaffney's weekly crossword contest, "A Couple Coupled Couples," was a fun little puzzle that plays on the fact that crossword answers have had their spaces removed. the theme answers each take an expression including a pair of two-letter words and fuse them into a four-letter word:

[The language of pitcher Mario?] is SOTO-SPEAK, playing on "so to speak." as somebody who didn't follow baseball until the late '90s, i'd like to politely request that future SOTO references be claimed by cubs catcher geovany (the reigning NL rookie of the year).
[Cessation of ear-pounding dance music?] is BEAT PEACE (be at peace).
[Make a thug happy?] is PLEASE GOON ("please go on"). this answer feels slightly awkward, as it seems to want an article in the middle.
[Chinese dish you can write with?] is PENCIL MEIN ("pencil me in"). last year when i was constructing a puzzle (back when i had time for that sort of thing!), i once spent the better part of an hour deciding how to clue MEIN: german for "mine" (as in mein kampf, although that's rather an unpleasant association), half of a phrase for a noodle dish (lo mein or chow mein), or the two-word partial "me in." i ... don't even remember what i did now.
and finally, the unclued central theme entry was DOOR DIE (do-or-die).

a nice little theme. there was a jonesin' some time ago that had the same theme, including DOOR DIE clued as [Yell directed at a much-hated portal?], and (my favorite) YOU HAD MEAT? HELLO? clued as [Vegetarian's "Duh!" response to why they hate their formerly vegan pal?]. but i enjoyed this one, too.

so... about that meta. the contest instructions were straightforward enough: This week's contest answer phrase consists of two symmetrically-placed grid entries that, taken together, form the clue for the theme answer at 38-across. what could clue DOOR DIE? well, right off the bat, 1a is JAMB, a [Deadbolt's resting place], which is part of a door. i should have had this one solved in 5 seconds. i checked the last across answer: CUBE, clued as [More than square] (great clue, btw). "nope, doesn't fit." i moved on. i looked at every pair of symmetrically-placed answers. twice. thrice. fice. backwards and forwards. acrosses and downs. even the theme answers. i found some compelling combinations:

NHL TEAMS, COMMONLY? that's a very normal-looking wording for a crossword clue, isn't it? unfortunately, i'm not sure what would be the answer to the clue (TOOTHLESS CANADIANS?), but it sure as hell wouldn't be DOOR DIE.
MCING LULLS? there's maybe some dead time between ... lines? guests? jokes?
REPAY SPOOK? you know, if you'd borrowed money from one of those faceless agents from the x-files.
ONE MAN'S EUTERPE is another man's ... terpsichore?
even BE AT PEACE, SO TO SPEAK is also a normal-looking wording for a clue. and you might imagine it's got something to do with DIE, but ... no, doesn't really work.

and so forth. anyway, you all figured this out, right? a lot faster than me? the answer is indeed JAMB CUBE, using the sense of DIE as "one of a pair of dice." sigh. i eventually had to put the meta down and came back to it the next day. the very first thing i looked at, of course, was JAMB CUBE. it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. and it makes perfect sense—everything in the middle of the grid crosses (or is very close to) another theme answer, so the "bonus" theme answers would be easiest to place in the corners.

fill/clues i enjoyed:

["The Science of Logic" philosopher] is georg wilhelm friedrich HEGEL. count me as a fan.
[Howard or Paul]? that's just RON. and those guys have too many first names.
[Education secretary ___ Duncan] is don't-call-me-thomas ARNE. ah, new life for old crosswordese. luckily, somebody (... rex?) warned me about this last week on one of the blogs, so i knew it even though i'm not really up on the new obama cabinet. other than clinton, my mother-in-law's college friend kathleen sibelius, and my former quantum mechanics professor steve chu, i don't really know anybody.
the recently-deceased farrah fawcett and michael jackson (what? you hadn't heard?) both get nods here. [Fawcett's beau] is ryan O'NEAL (spelled like shaquille, but not buck or tip/eugene). and [Michael Jackson once did ads for them] is PEPSI. i guess i dimly recall that tidbit.
speaking of MJ, [Beat it, just beat it] is kind of an odd clue for EXIT. ah, yes. now i remember. i wanted EXIT to be part of the meta answer (in relation to DOOR, or maybe also even DIE), but its symmetric partner, ["Jesus] WEPT," was not helping me at all. boo and hiss.
[Europe's longest river], the VOLGA, gets far less crossword play than shorter (in both senses) rivers like the AAR(E), ODER, EBRO, and YSER. this always trips me up because ... well, let's face it, the danube is pretty darn long, and who thinks of russia as part of europe, anyway?
ok, am i the only one who had A.N. KHAN instead of A.Q. KHAN for [Father of Pakistan's nuclear program]? yeah, I'LL BET, A.Q. KHAN! but of course, the [Home to 150,000 U.S. troops] is IRAQ, not IRAN.

OVER and out. or should i say, EXIT WEPT?

July 13, 2009

Tuesday, 7/14

Jonesin' 3:15
LAT 3:04
NYT 2:51
CS 7:15 (J—paper)

Donna Levin's New York Times crossword

"Allons enfants de la patrie-ee-ee..." Yes, it's a special Bastille Day mot croisé. Donna's theme entries celebrate the day like so:

18A. The [Dickens novel with the 56-Across as its backdrop] is A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
27A. Before the Revolution, there was that famous [Declaration attributed to Marie Antoinette just before the 56-Across]: LET THEM EAT CAKE.
43A. The French national anthem is LA MARSEILLAISE, the [Song of the 56-Across].
56A. And it's the FRENCH REVOLUTION that these other three entries refer to, an [Event that began in 1789].

This mot-croisé's difficulty level is keyed perfectly to a Tuesday, but if it took you a smidgen longer than you thought it would, that could be because the grid's 16 columns wide, not 15. Outside of the theme, the only French content I notice is Jacques CHIRAC, [Sarkozy's presidential predecessor].

I'm watching a TV show, so quickly, five other clues:

49D. The TROP, or Tropicana, is a [Classic Vegas hotel, with "the"].
15A. HAREM is a [Dwelling section whose name comes from the Arabic for "forbidden place"].
10A. [Leftovers from threshing] are CHAFF.
4D. [___ B or ___ C of the Spice Girls] clues MEL.
33A. The WALRUS is an [Oyster eater in a Lewis Carroll verse].

Updated Tuesday morning:

Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Why? Why?"—Janie's review

Another solid puzzle is ours to enjoy today. The theme entries are strong and the fill throughout benefits from this one's being a pangram. "Why? Why?" refers to the double-Ys that appear in each of the four theme answers. That makes for eight Ys there—and there are two more in the grid as well, for an impressive total of 10. "Why? Why?" "Why not?!" Additionally, three of the four theme phrases (all but 42A) appear to be making their major-puzzle debuts—which (in combination with the full range of high-scorin' Scrabble letters) adds to the overall fresh feeling here.

20A. CHERRY YOGURT [Fruity dairy treat]. Yum. One of my fave flavors anyway. Crankin' it up a notch: Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt.
31A. PAPPY YOKUM [Al Capp character]. Had MAMMY in there at first. Needless to say, the crosses told me otherwise. Here's a link to a site that will tell you all you want to know about who's who in the Yokum family and in Dogpatch, U.S.A.
42A. BY YOURSELF [Without assistance]. Or [Preferred way to solve the crossword puzzle, perhaps]
53A. CANARY YELLOW [Bright color]. This is a color immortalized by Oscar Hammerstein in South Pacific's "Cockeyed Optimist" which begins: "When the sky is a bright canary yellow..."

Because odd associations do tend to POP UP in my mind (and going back to those additional Ys...), it occurs to me that there's another YY in THY YETIS. Something Biblical, perhaps, like "Thou shalt not PIQUE thy Yetis"... Or not...

The bottom half of the puzzle seems to be crawling with insects: we've SLUGS [Garden creepers], a SCARAB [Egyptian beetle] and LARVA [Caterpillar...]. This array must be very pleasing to entomologist solvers (me, I'm lookin' for the Off!)!

Sunday's NYT clued TEXTS as [Tweets, e.g.] and today, Patrick clues TWEETS as [Twitter messages]. It's a new world...but I wonder long it'll take for these techno-speak entries to hit Matt Groening's "Forbidden Words" list.

It took me a while to dredge up (CS first-timer) BABY GAP, having first tried OSHKOSH and KIDS R US... And what a funny complement it is to TINY TIM. I'm so glad Victorian England didn't have this store as I don't believe Bob Cratchit's salary would have gone very far there and I'd have hated for the kids to feel they were missing something. And apropos of just about nothing—well, Cratchit domestic life, perhaps—just want to add that I liked seeing WASH DAYS in the puzzle. This seems to be a major-puzzle debut, too.

Finally, for the classicists, there's LEDA [Zeus seduced her as a swan] and AJAX [Trojan War hero]. Through the magic of the Internet, I found pictures (and an explanation) of the "Achilles and Ajax Amphora." On one side, as noted, Achilles and Ajax; on the other, Leda with Castor and Pollux. For your consideration.

Chuck Deodene's Los Angeles Times crossword

It feels like it's been a while since we last saw a vowel-progression theme. Deodene's theme contains five phrases that end with M*SS words and travel from A through E, I, O, and U:

20A. MIDNIGHT MASS is a [Christmas service]. I went to a midnight mass back in the '80s. The priest intoned "...piece of Prince." Prince is only, like, 5'3", so a piece of him would be small indeed. (What's the term for a phrase in which two words are transposed? Like a spoonerism, only for whole words, not sounds.)
23A. Stacked below the beginning of 20A is our next theme entry, FINE MESS. [With "A," 1986 Ted Danson film]? I think I'd like this better as an 8-letter partial completing the Laurel and Hardy line, "Here's another ___ you've gotten us into!" Does anybody remember this '86 movie? Too bad the MOSS entry isn't 9 or 15 letters long to balance AFINEMESS or ANOTHERFINEMESS. The I'M A partial crossing this is clued ["___ bad boy!": Lou Costello catchphrase], so it would resonate to toss Laurel and Hardy in here.
38A. [The Rebels of the Southeastern Conference, familiarly] are OLE MISS. Hey, John Grisham went there. A crossword clue told me that recently.
52A. KATE MOSS is a [Waifish supermodel from Britain]. Helped popularize the "heroin chic" look.
54A. [Easy to use, in adspeak] clues NO FUSS, NO MUSS. I filled this in, before I saw how the theme worked, as NO MUSS, NO FUSS, which is how I say it. In adspeak.

I love 5D's clue and answer—[Poppycock] is FOLDEROL. They're in my second favorite thesaurus grouping, with words like tommyrot and malarkey. (My most favorite is the hullabaloo, hooha, brouhaha, hubbub category.) 44A is BUMS OUT, or [Saddens, slangily]. Seeing this in the grid after finishing, I read it as including a noun. "BUMS OUT, everyone! Drop those drawers!" 9D TEN-HUT is a cool answer; it's the [Opposite of "At ease!"].

At L.A. Crossword Confidential, PuzzleGirl has more on this crossword.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "Yes We Can: An international movement"

Matt takes familiar names, prefaces them with "yes" in other languages, and clues the resulting mashup phrases:

• 17A. Eve Plumb of The Brady Bunch and the Spanish si create SIEVE PLUMB, a [Level draining device, to a Spanish yes-man?].
• 30A. [Selassie's NYC restaurant, to a Japanese yes-man?] is HAILE CIRQUE, building on Japanese hai and Le Cirque. I don't like that there's no good way to repurpose the CIRQUE part of Le Cirque—it's still a restaurant instead of becoming something entirely different.
• 44A. DATED KNIGHT comes from Russian da and Ted Knight of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It's clued with [Went out with the chivalrous type, too a Russian yes-man?].
• 62A. [U.S. uncle's "Friday the 13th" character, to a German yes-man?] is JASON OF SAM. Double gruesomeness for fictional slasher Jason merged with serial killer Son of Sam. We...don't see a lot of gruesomeness and serial killers in the crosswords.

Old-school crosswordese INGLE is here, clued as [Fireplace spot]. I haven't seen DERIVATE before; it's a [Word that comes from another word]. I don't have time to check, but this puzzle's probably a pangram because the main rare letters, ZQXJK, are all represented.

Until tomorrow—

July 12, 2009

Monday, 7/13

BEQ 6:54
NYT 3:02 (click here for Jim Horne's link to unlocked Across Lite version)
LAT 2:26
CS 5:16 (J—paper)/2:27(A—Across Lite)

C.W. Stewart's New York Times crossword

I felt a little meandery when doing the NYT puzzle on the applet. Unfocused, distracted. Not really trying to move my fastest. Not really paying much attention to the puzzle. So let me focus my eyeballs here and see what we've got.

Ms. Stewart's theme is Monday-simple, sure, but ambitious—four noun phrases that illustrate 59A ALL TUCKED IN in that ALL is "tucked" inside each phrase, joining two words:

17A. MANUAL LABOR is clued as [Ditch digging, e.g.]. Nice touch having a HARD LIFE cross this, clued as [What a serf led].
24A. [Money borrowed from a friend, e.g.] is a PERSONAL LOAN.
37A. [The Dalai Lama, e.g.] is a SPIRITUAL LEADER. Hey! This was just in another NYT puzzle...
47a. [Slash symbol, e.g.] is a DIAGONAL LINE. This was probably the toughest one to clue, no?

Let's count the ways this 61-square theme is "tight," or consistent: (1) There are four noun phrases beginning with adjectives, (2) they split AL/L each time, and (3) the theme clues end with "e.g." It's not super-duper tight, because certainly there are other ___AL L__ phrases out there that might also have been used—sacrificial lamb, medical license, etc. But for a Monday, a smooth and uncomplicated theme that's both meaty and consistent is a good thing.

Other pluses:

11D, 12D. For [Clog-busting brand], I was thinking of clot-busting drugs. The answer was DRANO—plumbing, not cardiology. And then the very next clue was the AORTA, or [Main artery]. There's my cardiology.
24D, 40D. Two of Henry VIII's mostly ill-fated wives are included. PARR is the [Last name of Henry VIII's last], Catherine (one of three Catherines). ANNE is the [First name of Henry VIII's second], Anne Boleyn, and the fourth, Anne of Cleves. Henry VIII was rumored to have gout, and I'm a brand-new gouter myself. Foot pain's been distracting me from the puzzles for 10 days now.
43A, 26D. NITA! You could say that [Silent screen star Naldi] doesn't belong in a Monday puzzle, but she's gonna be back, so we might as well plunk her in a Monday puzzle with easy crossings to introduce her to the crossword newbies. Likewise, APSE. This [Cathedral recess] is a word to learn. To this day, I'm never quite sure if the cathedral part I'm looking for is APSE or NAVE.
8D. The ROBIN is a [Harbinger of spring]. Except the occasional robin decides to winter over in a cold climate. I saw a robin on my block this winter while there was snow.
45D. ZINC is the [Next-to-last element, alphabetically], before zirconium.

Updated Monday morning:

Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Starting Ends"—Janie's review

Gee, I had fun solving this. It wasn't very difficult (so my time was pretty speedy—for me...), but more to the point, it's loaded with lively fill of both the thematic and non-thematic variety. Taking a look at the former, the title refers to words that can precede the word end; and these are the starting words of the four theme-phrases:

17A. DEAD CENTER [Smack dab in the middle]. The result yields something like this. My one complaint is that this appears to be the fourth time this same clue/fill combo been used in a CS puzzle. A little variety couldn't hurt...
28A. SPLIT SCREEN [Two images on one television]. Hmmm. Since some TVs give viewers the option of picture-in-picture, wouldn't it be more accurate to clue this as [Two images side-by-side on one television]? Regardless... Looking a great deal like a magnified image of an insect leg, here's the visual to demonstrate the result of the wordplay. Please: don't forget to use conditioner!!
43A. FRONT LOADER [Certain washing machine type]. While I suspect the intention was to summon up the front end of an automobile, there also a tractor that's a front end loader—so it looks like this (apparent major-puzzle first) fill also gives us a 2-for-1 proposition.
58A. DEEP FREEZE [Suspended animation]. How can this CS-debut clue/fill not summon up Walt Disney, the man who refined the art of cinematic animation—and all those stories of how he's being maintained cryogenically in a state of suspended animation? Clicking on the link should answer a lotta questions—though it does give a whole new meaning to Disney on Ice. Off the Deep End is Weird Al Yankovic's seventh album—in case Walt wasn't weird enough...

This is terrific stuff, and there's nothing CARELESS about the way Sarah has filled out the rest of the puzzle either. We get a load of names from a cross-section of worlds: from world politics, there's [Mrs.] RAISA [Gorbachev]; from baseball, aphorism (and malaprop) master, Yogi BERRA (I wonder what words of wisdom he'd have for the unhappy METS FAN); pop music's ABBA; broadway and opera's EZIO Pinza; Grimms' and opera's HANSEL, nicely clued as [Crumb dropper of note]; filmdom's Robert de NIRO; and a CLASSY DAME or three from the silver-screen as well—Patricia NEAL, ILONA Massey and GREER Garson (I also love how CLASSY crosses DAME in the grid); ARTIST Jose Maria SERT [Rockefeller Center muralist]. (This last link, btw, includes a fabulous "underlay" of the first-commissioned Diego Rivera work beneath Sert's.)

Unknown to me was AGENA [Rocket stage], so I was very glad to fill it in from the more accessible crosses.

There's a trio fit for the dining table: LASAGNES, STEW and its synonym, OLIO, clued today as the not-food-specific [Mélange]. And back in the 1960's Clairol did all it could to make women believe that they should answer the question "Is it true BLONDES have more fun?" Now, I DON'T KNOW about you, but this brunette was busy enough enjoying herself to ever feel the need to conduct personal research to find out.

Especially charming to me was the trio from the nursery: "IT'S A girl!" followed by (CS-debut) DIAPER, aptly clued as [It's changed on the bottom], followed by TUCK IN [Put to bed, as a child]. And in one of those cases of crossword synchronicity, today's NYT offers up ALL TUCKED IN, clued as [Comfily ready to sleep]. Cool.

James Sajdak's Los Angeles Times crossword

The theme nearly eluded me. What unifies:

17A. SOCIAL BUTTERFLY, or [One who goes from party to party],
37A. SECURITY BLANKET, or [Comforting carry-along for kids], and
58A. NUMBER TWO PENCIL, or [Test taker's writing implement, often]?

It's the first words: Social Security number. Kind of an oddball theme, but the three 15-letter answers are fresh and lively terms. I know what you're thinking: Pencils are inherently unfresh and unlively. But NUMBER TWO PENCIL is an eminently familiar phrase, especially to crossworders, and I don't know that I've ever seen it in a puzzle.

Other perky bits: 9D is CITY HALL, clued by way of [You can't fight it, in a saying]. 26A is LABOR DAY, an [Early September observance]—we're already about half way from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Summer, slow down! 51A is SHOELESS, which would feel zingier clued with reference to Shoeless Joe Jackson; instead, it's [In one's bare feet]. For more on the puzzle, see Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"

Hah! Brendan takes Joe Krozel's asymmetrical broken-heart NYT grid from last Friday and makes it harder to fill by removing a bunch of black squares (from 38 down to 31) and lowering the word count from 64 to 62. The fill must be terrible, right? Actually, it isn't. There's no quasi-thematic fill, which Krozel's puzzle had but which hadn't done much for me.

Highlights:

1D. [Highest-paid TV actress of all time] is JENNIFER ANISTON. I needed a lot of crossings for this one. Oy.
9D, 10D. for 9D [Ashura observers], I tried MOONIES. It didn't work with zip-A-DEE. And then I read the next clue, [Unification Church member, slangily]. Oh, hello, MOONIE! There you go.
7D. A [Show stopper?] is a STANDING OVATION.
32,33D, 47,49A. This corner's got four verb phrases interlocking, RIDE OUT, YEARN TO, ASKS OUT, and WAS ONTO. I like how the ones that ought to end with -S and -ED end with prepositions instead.
25D. My god, what a lovely pile-up of consonants TIM MCGRAW has in his name. He's the [Country and Western singer whose backup band is the Dancehall Doctors].
19A. Computer [Program option] is UNINSTALL. Looks like a horrible "roll your own" crappy prefixing, but it's a solidly in-the-vernacular bit of lingo we all use these days.
48A. [Squares in a sudoku, e.g.] clues ENNEADS. Yep, those are indeed in groups of nine. Excellent clue.

Usually a low-word-count themeless feels unpleasantly clunky to me. When I was doing this puzzle, I didn't notice that it was similar to Krozel's grid and I didn't notice the word count. I gave it a rating of 4 stars (out of 5)—and then read the blog comments that pointed out the similarity to the broken-heart grid. So now I'm more impressed with the caliber of fill Brendan was able to achieve. No, SADIES and AFTA and BROMATE ([Salt of element #35]—I tried BROMIDE first) aren't good fill. But the clunker quotient was low, so in recognition of the 62-word count, let me amend my rating (in Brendan's sidebar leaderboard) to 4.5 starts.

July 11, 2009

Sunday, 7/12

PI 8:26
LAT 7:00
NYT 6:02
BG untimed
CS 4:42
NYT diagramless untimed

Don't miss Douglas Quenqua's NYT article, "No Puzzle in the Paper? I’m Blank!". It was posted to the website on Saturday and appears in the Sunday Fashion & Style section. The piece is about puzzles getting the axe in print media—the New York Times Magazine won't always include the second Sunday puzzle, the New York Sun folded, the Washington Post dropped its acrostic, the Atlantic Monthly will no longer even publish the Hex cryptics online...please don't make me go on. I don't want to have to list still more puzzle demises. (Sigh.)

Alan Arbesfeld's New York Times crossword, "Links to the Past"

Wow, if you are a native speaker of Modern High Crosswordese, this puzzle can practically fill itself in. Maybe if the TV had been off and my family not talking, I'd have broken the 6-minute mark on this puzzle, and I don't think I've ever come so close on an NYT Sunday puzzle before. It felt like there were more than the usual allotment of such gimmes (which, of course, are probably not gimmes to those who've not dedicated years of study to Modern High Crosswordese), and while they didn't lend extra entertainment value to the puzzle, the "whoo, this crossword is tumbling like a house of cards" speed thrill has its charms. I'm talking about clues like [Indian tourist locale] AGRA, [Former Swedish P.M. Olof ___] PALME, [Pacific capital] APIA, NETTY [Like mesh], and that [Cousin of a raccoon], the COATI. Things that aren't exactly household words unless someone in the household does a boatload of crosswords.

The theme was not too hard to unravel without peeking at the Notepad. Each of the straightforwardly clued theme entries includes a "placement" word, and if you interpret each phrase hyper-literally (as you might in a cryptic crossword or in those tricky crossword clues for the spelled-out names of letters), you'll extract one letter from each one's key word. Those seven letters spell out HISTORY.

23A. The [Boondocks] are the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, and the middle of the word "nowhere" is H.
34A. [Ambulance destination] is a MEDICAL CENTER. The center of that first word is I.
50A. An [Imam or priest] is a SPIRITUAL LEADER, and the "leader" of that word is an S.
69A. The BEGINNING OF TIME—the letter T—is clued by way of [When the heavens and earth were created].
87A. [Deputy] is the SECOND IN COMMAND, and that second letter is O.
103A. [Week after Christmas] is the END OF DECEMBER. This is the least satisfactory of the theme entries, because "end of December" feels strikingly arbitrary as times of the year go. Here's the R.
118A. BROADWAY CLOSING, or [Lights out in New York City], is the letter Y.

I like how the cryptic-style locator signals are all different—two beginning, two middles, two ends, and one second letter.

On Cruciverb-L, there was a recent discussion about entries like CEE and ESS. The legendary Bob Klahn loves the tricky, hyper-literal clues that go with such answers, while the legendary Merl Reagle interjects that nobody ever uses these spelled-out versions so they oughtn't populate our crosswords. This puzzle's theme kinda splits the difference—the letters are themselves and not the little-used three-letter names for them, and we get the tricky clues, only these tricky clues are found in the grid for a change. It's not the meatiest theme around, but I like how it settles into a neutral ground between the Klahn and Reagle camps and lets us play with hyper-literalism without the "ESS? Really?" eye-rolling.

Without further ado, let's run through some clues:

35D. COED gets a perfect clue: [Like most dorms nowadays]. My husband and I met when we lived across the hall from each other at Carleton. COED is a perfectly fine adjective, but as a noun it's either (a) outdated or (b) used in porn.
5A. [Intelligent, creative sort, supposedly] clues a VIRGO, astrologically. You like the gentle hedging of the "supposedly" in the clue? A friend of mine has sworn off dating VIRGO men owing to their supposed moodiness and incompatibility with her Aquarian nature.
28A. Unusual clue for a VIOLET: [Symbol of modesty]. I approached the answer from the end and had no idea where to go with it. CORSET seemed altogether wrong, and nothing else came to mind. Violets are hardly modest, however—they grow wherever they want to and refuse to leave your garden when instructed.
37A. [Group of genetically related organisms] is a BIOTYPE. Didn't know this one, not even with **OTYPE in place.
48A. [Emulates AZ or T.I.] is RAPS. I've heard of T.I., so this clue was 50% helpful to me. AZ has an album and song called "Doe or Die", but it doesn't appear to be about Bambi.
58A. Man, did I need a lot of crossings to get HEIDI, the [Literary heroine whose best friend is a goatherd].
76A. The AFTON is the ["Sweet" stream in a Burns poem]. No idea how I knew that off **TO*.
80A. BEAN BAG is a great entry. It's a [Noisy but comfy chair].
94A. Ooh, cutting edge! [Tweets, e.g.] clues TEXTS. Most of my tweets are posted from the web, but when I'm out and about, I do text tweets from my phone.
95A. The awkward SRS is clued as [Grandfathers of III's]. I know a guy whose grandfather was not a Sr. but an XXI. The guy's baby son is XXIV. No kidding. A line of same-named descent stretching back a good five centuries!
112A. [Bathroom fixture] is a BIDET. I've never tried one. Do you recommend bidets?
1D. [A mechanic might see it a lot] refers to a real LEMON.
3D. MEDIA BLITZ is an interesting answer. Clued as [Publicity push].
11D. [Choler] is IRE. I'm unreasonably fond of the word "choler," and yet I seldom use it. Must remedy that.
36D. I definitely did not know ANNE [___ Page, woman in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"]. My Shakespeare comedy knowledge involves A Midsummer Night's Dream and maybe one or two others.
46D. [Pleonastic] means REDUNDANT, as in the phrase "ATM machine," where the M means machine.
67D. OFFENSE is [Something to play] when the other side's on defense.
72D. [They may be crunched]? Your ABS. Drop and do 25 crunches, now!
101D, 102D. Aw, OLEO is [Promise, for one], but GREASE doesn't get the same clue. It really could. Instead, it's [Payola, e.g.]. Not to be confused with Mazola.
121D. [Science writer Willy] LEY is not someone I've read, but I reckon I've encountered his name...in crosswords.

Updated Sunday morning:

David Levinson Wilk's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword, "Take a Letter"

Alas, I would have enjoyed this theme a lot more if I hadn't just done essentially the same theme—but with an added twist—in the NYT. Here, the hyper-literal theme entries are clued with the letter the answer suggests, rather than the answers being clued straightforwardly and the letters being an add-on. Where Arbesfeld's batch of letters spelled out HISTORY, this one's letters spell out...SACPVEFD. I wish this puzzle had come out a week earlier so I could better appreciate the fun of figuring out these:

23A. [S] is the HEAD OF STATE.
29A. [A] is END OF AN ERA.
34A. [C] is MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE.
58A. [P] is LEADER OF THE PACK.
66A. [V] is CENTER OF GRAVITY.
85A. [E] is FOREGONE CONCLUSION. This one is terrific—a great phrase to drop into a crossword, and not a tricky/cryptic clue I recall seeing before.
94A. [F] is FALSE START. I had a false start on this one because FALSE FRONT also fit perfectly.
104A. [D] is GRAND FINALE. Perfect to save GRAND FINALE for the last theme entry in the puzzle.

As with the Arbesfeld puzzle, there's a good assortment of positioning words here. Three beginnings (HEAD, LEADER, START), two middles (MIDDLE, CENTER), three ends (END, CONCLUSION, FINALE). None of the theme entries duplicate those in the NYT—there are a zillion such phrases to choose from, I suppose. And while I admired the NYT's extra level of theme action, I'll give the liveliness edge to Levinson Wilk's set of theme answers.

Another echo between these two puzzles: 107A here is [Energetic risk-taking type, so it's said] for ARIES. Hey, it's ZODIAC (31D [Collection of signs]) day!

As for the rest of the fill, PuzzleGirl singled out many of the same words I would've in her L.A. Crossword Confidential post. So read that, but know that I have been to the [Utah ski resort] ALTA so I knew that one.

Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Hit It"

Sometimes I'm in the mood for Merl's trademark overcooked puns and sometimes I'm not. This time, I wasn't feelin' it, dawg. This weekend's batch of "Hit It" puns work various hitting utensils into familiar phrases:

23A. ABSENCE OF MALLETS plays on Absence of Malice, a Paul Newman movie. I suppose it was a preexisting phrase before it was a movie title? The clue is [Reason the croquet game was called off?].
38A. An acoustic guitar, one of which resides in my living room, turns into A CUE STICK GUITAR, or [What the pool player started "playing" when his favorite song came on the radio?]. Merl, hon? Ow. This pun hurt.
54A. I had trouble figuring out what THE CLUB COMPARTMENT, or [Storage space in a golfer's car?], played on. The glove compartment.
76A. [Dolls for young tennis players?] are RACQUETY ANN AND ANDY. Ha! Okay, I like this one. It's completely nuts and I like it.
93A. ["___, but we won the game"] clues WE LOST THE PADDLE (battle). Could've avoided the WE dupe with ["___, but won the game"] without losing anything, I think. No question mark in this clue. Which paddle-related game do you suppose it is?
111A. [Messiest game at the Sara Lee company picnic?] is BAT-A-CAKE, BAT-A-CAKE, playing on "pat-a-cake." Oh, the carnage, Please do not pummel the desserts. Unless it's a lemon cake. Go ahead and pummel lemon desserts, but please give me first crack at the chocolate cake, and with a fork, not a bat.

Most unfamiliar word in the grid: 19D is WELTERED, or [Rolled about, as a pig in mud]. My Mac's dictionary tells me this verb means "lie steeped in blood with no help or care" or "move in a turbulent fashion," like a roiling stream. I like this muddy pig application better. 92D is the [Pink Floyd epic] THE WALL—terrific entry. Overall, though, the fill lacked Merl's usual sparkle. Next week will be more to my taste, I'm sure.

Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Double Ring Ceremony"

Hey, Hubsters—how many weeks back was this puzzle in the newspaper there? Am I still six weeks behind, or have the Across Lite ranks caught up with y'all?

The theme entries are cooked-up two-word phrases in which each word contains RING. For example, 25A's clue is [Caters a fish dinner?] and the answer is BRINGS HERRING. 33D is clued [Outskirts, on "The Simpsons"?]. My kid saw that clue and asked if the answer was SHELBYVILLE. I explained that both words in SPRINGFIELD FRINGE contain a hidden RING. "Huh," he said. "That's confusing." I didn't find it especially confusing, but it also wasn't particularly rewarding. Two theme entries, 27A and 96A, not only are partly stacked with other theme entries, they also cross the Down themers.

Favorite parts: 44A is [Doesn't share], or BOGARTS. I have fond memories of a get-together in Prague at which some "don't bogart that joint, my friend, pass it on over to me" song was playing. Bogarting apparently applies specifically to marijuana cigarettes, but one can certainly request that someone else not bogart the potato chips. 71A's clue, [Some are nothing but air], points towards imaginary GUITARS. I have not witnessed an air guitar competition, but it sounds entertaining.

Weirdest answers: 39A EMESA is an [Ancient Syrian city]. 7D is CABMAN or [Hack], and not a term I ever use for a cabbie/cab driver/taxi driver. 81D is EPERGNE, or [Ornate centerpiece]; I learned this one via crosswords, but it doesn't come up often. At 59A, [Monozygotic] clues ONE-EGG, but I can't say I've seen one-egg used adjectivally at all.

Rich Norris's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"

It seemed like this one was a couple notches harder than the typical "Sunday Challenge" (though still easier than a Saturday NYT).

Hot stuff:

1A. ["I enjoyed this"] clues IT'S BEEN FUN. Do you think there's an intentional mini-theme linking this with its opposite partner in the grid, 69A [Words of gratitude] for MANY THANKS? One might say both when leaving a party.
32A. I am fond of the weirdness of BELEAGUER as a word. This [Vex] synonym derives from a Dutch word, belegeren, meaning "camp around." I find it difficult to type beleagueured (see?) correctly. Beleaguerued. Nope, wrong again. Beleagurued. Wrong a third time. This is what happens when I let my hands type away blithely. 99% of words work out just fine, but this one? Not so much. Slowing down, let's go for beleaguered. There. It takes effort.
63A. APPOMATTOX is a [Historic Civil War town]. I like to pronounce this "uh-POM-uh-tocks" and say "Appomattox o' both your houses!" Yes, I realize that's odd.
32D. BAD APPLES are [Troublemakers], as in the bad apples that spoil the bunch.
34D. The clue, [Shooter's protection], pointed me in any number of directions, but not LENS COVER.
64D. [Pin cushion?] is a solid clue for a wrestling MAT. I've seen the clue before, but it's well worth recycling.

RTS and ACLU aren't clued together but could be—sometimes the ACLU is mentioned in clues for RTS, short for "rights."

At 27A, [Stop holding it in], 4 letters ending in T? Uh, the actual answer, VENT, wasn't my first thought here.

Updated again Sunday afternoon:

Jim Hyres' second Sunday NYT puzzle, a diagramless crossword

This one wasn't too hard to find my way through. I grabbed a piece of scratch paper and started jotting down the first few Across answers, working back and forth with the Down clues. By the fifth row, I hit a width of 17 squares and so could deduce that 1-Across began in the very first square. Ahh, it feels good to transfer answers over to the diagramless grid and know that they're going in the right place—it doesn't always work out so well.

When I filled in 36-Across in the middle of the grid—TONGUE TWISTER, or [It's hard to say]—I read the three longest answers aloud to myself and to my mother. What do YOU'LL BE SORRY (["Not a good idea!"]), LARGER THAN LIFE ([Very imposing]), and TONGUE TWISTER have in common?? Suddenly childhood smacked me in the forehead and I noticed the games at the ends of those phrases. Indeed, the remaining theme answers are STIRS UP TROUBLE ([Is a rabble-rouser]) and RUNNING A RISK ([Not playing it safe]). Trouble is the board game with the noisy Pop-o-matic die in the middle. Risk is the geopolitical board game. Twister...I fear I am now too old to be able to play Twister. Here at home, we have the SpongeBob edition of Life (excuse me, but why is Fry Cook the best-paying career??) and enjoy the turmoil of a round of Sorry. The final Across answer, 69A, is GAMES to tie everything together. Cute theme; the theme is probably much more accessible than the diagramless itself, though as NYT diagramlesses go, this one was pretty easy.

Assorted other clues I liked: 10A ["Uh-uh"] clues NO DICE. You can use dice to play many board games, but I don't think the answer's meant to be thematic here. 23A [Symbol of limpness] is a WET RAG, and I can't say that's an image I see used in Cialis and Viagra commercials. [All alternative] pulls double duty as laundry detergent ERA and as quantity SOME. 27D's clue is [You may need to step on it] and I first thought of the GAS pedal, but the answer's a ladder RUNG.

July 10, 2009

Saturday, 7/11

Newsday 7:34
NYT 5:31
LAT 4:01
CS 2:55

Karen Tracey's New York Times crossword

Unusual grid, isn't it? I mean, within the confines of standard crossword symmetry, it's not the usual layout we see for a themeless puzzle. Kind of like a sine wave of white space spanning the middle of the grid, and 9-, 10-, and 11-letter Down answers linking the midsection to the other six boxy areas.

Unsurprisingly, I find myself admiring Karen's fill for its balance of pop culture, geography, and Scrabbly action overlapping both of those areas. See what I mean?

17A. Handbag designer KATE SPADE is a [Big name in bags]. Those bags are cute, but if I'm dropping $200 on a purse, it had better have handy pockets and compartments inside. Kate, give us compartments!
19A. The dreaded TROLL is an [Internet forum menace]. I feel fortunate that the commentariat here is so congenial.
21A. [Major Cote d'Ivoire export] is CACAO. Yum, chocolate. I wonder how many people cleverly guessed IVORY.
29A. BUY is a small word with a great clue: [Act like a bull?]. Bad timing in that someone was killed by a bull at the running of the bulls in Spain today...but still a good clue.
33A. [They may call the shots] clues ANNOUNCERS, who do not "call the shots" the way that figure of speech usually means.
36A. JOHN LARROQUETTE is the [Winner of four consecutive Emmys for his sitcom role as a prosecutor]. Three things: (1) Scrabbly name, J + Q. (2) Why is there a double R in that name? It looks wrong from a French standpoint to me. (3) Wow, did I spend too much time looking to see it SAMWATERSTON or FREDTHOMPSON or STEVENHILL would fit there. Yes, I realize that Law & Order is not a sitcom.
39A. HANAUMA BAY is a [Snorkeling spot near Honolulu]. I canceled my trip to Maui in 1999 when I got pregnant. Maybe a Christmas trip this year? Why not?
54A. XHOSA is an African language with clicks. It's a [Zulu relative]. I got it off the A, which was one of the few letters I had
right in 41D. [Sounds like an old floorboard] clues GROANS, but I had CREAKS. You know what I just noticed this summer? The humidity quiets down my creaky floors.
57A. New vocabulary word in a clue! [Pteridologist's specimen] is a FERN.
59A. I like the misinterpretable [Cashiers] as a clue for OUSTS.
61A. AMPS are clued as [Gear to help you hear]. That may be true for the people in the back of the top balcony at a concert, but in general, AMPS are gear to help kill your hearing. No joke.
1D. Always a sucker for geography, I even like BAKU, the [Transcaucasian capital] of Azerbaijan. Right next door (not on the map) is ULAN Bator or (also spelled Ulaanbataar), [Half an Asian capital?]. Technically, that's 4/9ths.
5D. CAPTAIN AHAB! "Hast seen the white whale?" That's [To whom Stubb and Flask answered, in literature].
11D. [Response to a ding-dong?] is "WHO CAN IT BE?" I like this because I'm hearing Men at Work's "Who Can It Be Now?" in my head. '80s earworm!
13D. Whoa, unfamiliar clue for a crosswordese place name. ST. LO is clued by way of [The Vire River flows through it]. Wow, V must be hostile to crossword constructors, or else we'd see the dang VIRE in our puzzles a lot.
18D. More geography with cute cluing: ST. PAUL is a [Minnesota twin?].
24D. [Three Mile Island is in it] clues the SUSQUEHANNA River. I was largely guessing here—Is there a Pennsylvania river with a Scrabbly name? Because that's what Karen would go for.
27D. Pop culture—IN HER SHOES is a [Jennifer Weiner best seller made into a 2005 film].
35D. "DEAR SANTA" is clued as [Words followed by a wish list].

It's noteworthy that this 68-word puzzle has only six 3-letter entries in it, and five of those are regular words (only SER., for sermon, is an abbreviation). The crossword's remarkably devoid of crap, too. I can take some repeaters like ERN, ADEE, and ALAR when overall the fill has oomph and no patently unfair crossings.

Updated Saturday morning:

John Farmer's Los Angeles Times crossword

John's puzzle is a couple notches easier than Karen's NYT, but that doesn't mean it was boring. I did a lot of lauding over at L.A. Crossword Confidential, in fact, so I'll plagiarize myself here.

This puzzle's got three real people's full names—all people whose first or last names pop up singly fairly often in crosswords, but John's classed up the joint by given these folks the full name treatment. There's 17A ["Night" writer], ELIE WIESEL, whose last name is usually consigned to the clues because that delicious 75%-vowels first name is so popular in crosswords. Then we have 14D [1922 physics Nobelist] NIELS BOHR, who also has a grid-friendly first name. And rounding out the trio is 10D ["Naughty Marietta" costar (1935)] NELSON EDDY. I feel like I know him mainly from crosswords, which seems weird because EDDY is a valid small-e noun in its own right.

Other highlights:

• 15A: Comic strip guy with an eye patch (BAZOOKA JOE). One Z, one K, one J? Super-Scrabbly phrase. Evocations of childhood bubblegum? Oh, yes. The sort of thing that we see in lots of crosswords? I wish.
• 32A: Marked by obscenities, say (RATED R). The multi-part answers in which one part is a single letter are tricky. Saturday + tricky = recipe for happiness (or extreme frustration, depending on your mood).
• 37A: "Don't change a thing!" ("I LOVE IT!"). Zippy spoken phrase, makes me think of those TV commercials they had promoting, if memory serves, L.A. tourism. All the people shouting "I love it!" or "We love it!"—remember those?
• 39A: "Composer" of "Fanfare for the Common Cold" (P.D.Q. BACH). Can't say I've ever had any interest in P.D.Q. Bach, but that is an awesome name to drop in a crossword, and the composition's title is funny.
• 60A: Battle fatigue? (RUN ON EMPTY). I kept reading the clue as a noun phrase, but it's the verb phrase. If you're battling fatigue, you're running on empty.
• 65A: Sign of possession (APOSTROPHE). Aaah! Love that clue. I was thinking of demonic possession, not grammatical.
• 12D: Fast-food combo order (VALUE MEAL). In these recessionary times, everyone loves the VALUE MEAL.
• 27D: Have a problem ordering sirloin steak? (LISP). That's a thirloin thteak, then. I'll path.
• 51D: Longstocking of kids' books (PIPPI). I loved the Pippi books and movie(s) when I was a kid. Bought a book for my son but he hasn't been reading much this summer. Not sure how I ended up with a kid who's a great (and fast) reader but who only reads when told to do so.

Off to the Newsday puzzle now—I hope it'll be as smooth and as fun as Karen and John's.

Sandy Fein's Newsday "Saturday Stumper"

(PDF solution here.)

Aw, I like themelesses to have cool long answers, and this one maxes out with four 8s and a slew of 7s. We've got four foreign lands: (1) LIBERIA is a [Land on the Atlantic] (that should be a Sporcle quiz—name all the countries that border a particular ocean). (2) NIGERIA is an [OPEC member] (that one is a Sporcle quiz). (3) SIBERIA is a [Faraway place, so to speak]. (4) AMNESIA is a great place to vacation sometimes. It's a [Soap-opera plot element].

Then we have the Old South—OLE MISS is the John [Grisham alma mater], and I let the *LEM*** point me errantly to CLEMSON. It crosses SELMA, Alabama, a [Cotton State city].

Two hits from The Simpsons—MONA is the name of [Homer Simpson's mom], and Kwik-E-Mart proprietor APU shares the name of a [Title character of a literary trilogy]. The Apu Trilogy is also available in film form.

Clue roundup:

• [Waterbury Clock, today] is called TIMEX.
• SIENA is a [City for whom a color was named]—sienna. Shouldn't that be [City for which a color was named]? A city is not a "who."
• AQUAVIT is [What Brits call French brandy]. "Water of life"? No, sillies, everyone knows that's Diet Coke.
• [Columbus discovery of 1498] is the ORINOCO River.
• [Coral-reef topper] clues CAY, which is funny because I'd tried to make CAY be the answer to the nearby [Low land] clue. That one turned out to be FEN.

Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "Say 'Cheese'"

The theme's not about cheese, it's about saying "cheese" to smile for the camera:

• 17A. BOOSTER SHOT is a [Follow-up vaccination].
• 31A. [Molasses cookie] is a GINGERSNAP. At Christmas time, my aunt and cousin make these addictive little gingersnaps the size of oyster crackers. Num, num.
• 47A. [Overall perspective] is the BIG PICTURE.
• 63A. [Close race (and a hint to 17-, 31-, and 47-Across] is PHOTO FINISH, as those other three words/phrases end with words meaning "photo.'

Doesn't IBEFOREE look like the name of a Florida swamp? That's the [Start of a spelling mnemonic], "I before E except after C..."

Nikola TESLA, the [Inventor dubbed "the patron saint of modern electricity"], just had a birthday, I hear. His fellow scientist Enrico FERMI, a [Manhattan Project scientist], joins the festivities because TESLA brought the STOLI ([Grey Goose rival, for short]).

July 09, 2009

Friday, 7/10

BEQ 8:08
NYT 5:10
LAT 4:04
CHE 3:04
CS 6:05 (J—paper)
WSJ 7:40

Joe Krozel's New York Times crossword

Well, lookee here. The town where my best friend lived before she moved back to Chicagoland is featured in the Friday puzzle: CREVE / COEUR, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. 7/9A are clued as [Missouri city whose name means "broken heart"], and the grid's pattern is that of a broken heart. For those who are curious, I believe the locals pronounce it more like "creeve core" than the French would.

Outside of that answer combo and the diagramless-puzzle-style picture, it's largely a themeless crossword, isn't it? With 64 words (rather low word count), but a standard 38 black squares. My general rule of thumb is this: If it's a 64-worder or less and it's not by Patrick Berry, it probably has a lot of fill that underwhelms me. The rule stands. (See below.)

I was smoking this puzzle (well, not DanFeyeresquely or TylerHinmannishly) and clicked the "Done!" button with 3:57 on the clock...and then spent the remainder of my time trying to root out one errant square. Eventually I found it: I had HAIL in place of HEIL for 19A [Greeting with a salute]. Crikey, we're evoking the famous Hitler salute now, are we? And with no hint that the answer is German? That's weird. If I'd scanned the Down answers first, I'd have spotted SURGA PROTECTORS, but no, I started with the Acrosses. (Should be SURGE PROTECTORS, 6D [They may avert computer damage]). To go along with the unpleasantness of HEIL, we have CRUEL AND UNUSUAL clued as 1D [Torturous, perhaps], connected to TRUE CONFESSIONS, 44A [Story-filled magazine since 1922]. 44A would be utterly fantastic in a puzzle that wasn't seemingly linking torture and confessions. Waterboarding, anyone?

The 64-Word Rule is borne out by an awkward chunk in the upper right and a profusion of prefix action. The chunk is the abbreviation MOLS clued as 4D [Compound fractions: Abbr.]—trying to trick us into thinking about numbers like 4 1/2 when the answer is a chemistry abbreviation is mean. The M crossing, MRS, is clued as a 4A [Form check box option], which is a rather vague clue for a 3-letter abbreviation crossing two other abbreviations. 5D [Old bus maker] is REO, of Speed Wagon, Ransom Eli Olds fame.

I actually used the 64-Word Rule as a solving aid. 10D [Fix, as a shower stall]...hmm, RETILE, crossing another RE-word, REHIRE, or 24A [Bring back on board]. Towards the middle, PREVENTS and PREMARITAL party with RELATE and RELIEF. (Psst: RELATE is beneath PREMARITAL, which is clued with a form of that word, [Like some relations].) EMANANT is one of those words you might never hear uttered; it means 47A [Flowing forth]. Then there's the two-part answer ONE/-A-CAT, 45/41D, a [quaint sandlot game]. If you've done a ton of crosswords, you probably see this rendered as one-o-cat more than one-a-cat. Crosswordese crashes into same where ESSE, a 43D [Forum infinitive], meets ESTOP, or 43D [Bar].

48A would have been a gimme with a pop-culture clue like [Actress Dawson of "Rent"], but with [Argentine port on the Parana]. ROSARIO is Argentina's third largest city. When looking for my wrong square, I gave the stink eye to every answer crossing this unfamiliar city name.

Now, I do have to give props to Joe K. for the four swaths of open space in the grid, the interconnection of the three 15s, and these clues and answers:

• 11A. LAURELS are the [Composition of some crowns]. Thought of royalty and/or dentistry, didn't you?
• 17A. [The Monkeemobile, e.g.] was a GTO. Had no idea, but late-'60s 3-letter car clue usually means GTO.
• 50A. [Housekeeper player on "Benson"] is Inga SWENSON. With that crosswordesey first name, her last name is usually banished to the clues. I like the switcheroo.
• 2D. FERRET OUT is a great phrase. It means [Dig up].
• 3D. When I was a kid, a [Rubber] was an OVERSHOE. "When it rains, Daddy always wears rubbers." The Totes-brand rubbers seemed to fall out of fashion by the time I learned that rubber = condom, too.
• 19D. Geo-trivia: [It has departments named Nord, Sud and Ouest] clues HAITI. I didn't know that, and there are probably some 5-letter African countries with French colonial history, but the crossings led me to the right answer.

Updated Friday morning:

Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Mail Order"—Janie's review

"Wait, oh yeah, wait a minute, Mr. Postman! Wa-ai-ai-ait, Mr. Postman!. I'd think you'd really enjoy this easy, breezy made-to-order puzzle that celebrates those cancelled items you carry in your delivery bag!"

We don't get lots of theme fill today—only three phrases— but what we do get is "cherce," as is the non-theme fill with its many seven-, eight- and nine-letter words.

But first a look at the theme entries, the last word of which is mail-related:

20A. [Aleph, for one] HEBREW LETTER. If you want to communicate with your AMIE, sometimes it's awfully nice to actually write one of these. Here's a link to The Aleph-Bet Song, should you want to learn some more Hebrew letters.
37A. [Be innovative] PUSH THE ENVELOPE. Now take that letter and put it in one of these. The origin of the phrase in question, btw, is from the field of aviation but once popularized by Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff, it has become the darling of innovators and would-be innovators of all stripes. Read all about it.
51A. ["The Limey" star] TERENCE STAMP. Put one of these on the envelope with the letter inside and mail it. Snail-mail is something to be treasured! Mr. S., I learned, has been wheat-and-dairy intolerant for most of his adult life. In response to that, he's developed a line of products called "The Stamp Collection," and if you are similarly affected, he's also got a cookbook that might be just what the doctor ordered!

And while it hasn't been clued directly in conjunction with the theme, ENCL [Pkg. insert, e.g.] sure feels like bonus fill to me.

Now, about those "many seven-, eight- and nine-letter words"—let's take a look at 'em. To [Fill with confidence] is to INSPIRE, and when one ATTAINS more self-confidence, one's STATURE [Eminence] may be bolstered as well. (This, of course, is the lesson of Jim, the Gentleman Caller in The Glass Menagerie.) The final seven, REPOSED [Slept], seems to be a CS first. Ditto both of the eights: HIGH-TECH [Advanced, in a way] (so we're lookin' for an adjective here and not a verb) and LAMPPOST [Part of a street light]. The four nines are HIROSHIMA [Enola Gay target of 1945] (it's not always that we get all of that information at once in the puzzles), the homier PIE CRUSTS [They should be flaky], and two more CS debuts: KNOW-IT-ALL with its sassy [Wisenheimer] clue, and LIP-READER with its original-to-Nancy Salomon-and-so-encore-worthy clue [One who can see what you're saying]. This is all really good fill. Imoo...

Other fill and/or clues that caught my fancy:

[Biblical pronoun] THOU in combination with another word I associate with the Bible, SMITE, here clued as [Clobber, old-style]. Yeah. The Bible's pretty old.
[Casting requirement?] for ROD. As in ROD-and-reel, and fishing. This use of "casting" has nothing to do with the audition process for plays or films...
["It's c-c-cold!"] for BRR in combo with [Sweltering] for HOT.
[Blood lines] for VEINS followed directly by [Flynn of "Captain Blood'] for ERROL.
I know that TO RIO is the correct way to parse those letters, but couldn't help seeing TORIO, TORUS, TOMEI as some kind of nonsense conjugation or boast to counter Caesar's "VENI [___, vidi, vici!"]...

I hope you'll take a look at/listen to the those marvelous Marvelettes of "Please, Mr. Postman" fame. The quality of the sound on this clip is pretty poor, but the basketball-dribble hand "choreography" is definitely worth the price of admission. So to speak... I'm off to Baltimore for the weekend, so ADIEU for now. Have a great weekend and see ya Monday!

Ken Bessette's Los Angeles Times crossword

In discussing this week's CrosSynergy added-units-of-measure themes, constructor Patrick Blindauer said it's easier for solvers to pick up on add-letter themes than subtraction themes. Today's L.A. Times crossword made its subtraction fairly obvious, I thought, as RANGE BEDFELLOWS is clearly "strange bedfellows" minus the ST. "Bedfellows" gets little use in English without being paired with "strange."

Now, I was thinking the theme's purpose was booting the saints out of the grid, but 64A is STOUT, a [Heavy brew, and a clue to this puzzle's theme]. Take the ST OUT, and there's your theme description. Now, there's an interesting question from "imsdave" over at Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential writeup today—"As a (very) novice constructor, and only for my own edification, is it OK to have STET/STENO/STOWS/STEWARDS/ATLAST in a puzzle with this theme?" Ideally, yes, there wouldn't be other STs left in the grid. I don't think it's a fatal error to include them, as the theme entries are considerably longer than everything else and their clues are all question-marked. But it's perhaps not as elegant as if the fill had meticulously avoided any STs aside from the STOUT entry.

Interesting incidental pairings popped out at me. First, there's Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, a 9D [1963 thriller set in Bodega Bay], and a CROAK isn't just for frogs and raspy voices, it's also 14A [Raven's sound]. Crows, ravens, and blackbirds creep me out. LANAI, clued as 19D [It's part of Maui County], evokes both the Hawaiian LUAU (59A [Outdoor feast]) and the 60% matchy SINAI (61A [Peninsula bordering Israel]). 31A is WAWA, or [Baba ___: Gilda Radner persona], and BAA BAA is a 22A [Sheepish response?]. And then there's the double hit of old-school crosswordese: the ETUI is a 50D [Sewing case] and an ADIT is 55D [Ore seeker's entrance] to a mine.

Michael Ashley's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Old-Time Religion"

I had one of my fastest-ever CHE solves on this one, which is odd because really, a puzzle commemorating the quincentennial birthday of John Calvin isn't remotely in my wheelhouse. There must be a lot of easier clues and straightforward crossings here. CALVINISM anchors the grid and it's clued as the [Religious doctrine whose founder was born July 10, 1509. The HUGUENOTS practiced Calvinism. The BAPTISTS practice a modified version. PRESBYTERIANS (anagram of Britney Spears!) ply an elder-led version. And the PURITANS had their ascetic version. You can learn more about the Puritans in a lighter vein from Sarah Vowell's book, The Wordy Shipmates.

Brendan Quigley and Francis Heaney's Wall Street Journal crossword, "On the Waterfront>"

I spaced out on noticing the tightness of the theme while I was solving. I was moseying along, enjoying the homophone theme just fine without realizing that every homophone in the nine theme entries is "On the Waterfront" (PIER, QUAY, DAM) or a body of water itself (BAYOU, SEA, LOCH, STRAIT, river DELTA, BROOK). For example. COMBINATION LOCH (lock) is a [Scottish body of water that connects to another?]. SEA SECTION, playing on C-section, is clued as [The Bermuda Triangle, e.g.?]. And HOW'S BAYOU goes with the clue ["Where should we catch crawfish"? reply, perhaps?], playing on the intensely colloquial "How's by you?"

My favorites bits of fill include PECCADILLO, GOLDARN, BIG BANDS clued as [Groups of swingers?], the SIERRA CLUB, IRISH PUB ([Place to get stout]), ROMULANS, and the NEWARK/LATIFAH combo—100A NEWARK is [Aaron Burr's birthplace], while 80D is LATIFAH, [Queen born in 100-Across]. [Blue blood vessels?] is a cool clue for YACHTS, too.

Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Friday"

I can't assess this puzzle on its merits because the solving environment was making me cranky. The workers next door were dismantling some scaffolding and dropping big metal pipe structures into a truck bed. And the streetsweeper rolled by with its nonstop truck-in-reverse beeping. And my foot is throbbing. And I knew how fast other solvers on the leaderboard were, so I wanted to fly through it—but the distractions were totally getting in the way of that. As were the clues. Oy! I slowed myself down with Lucy's brother LINUS (whoops, needed RERUN) and Namath the NFLER (whoops, N.Y. JET). Someone on the internet was just talking about parsing PASYSTEM as "passy stem," and boy, I just couldn't grasp the P.A. SYSTEM clued as a [Rally rental]. I was looking for some sort of truck, and the PASY start killed me.

I liked LIVE ON clued as [Eat exclusively]. I could dispute that [Like someone who had a near-death experience] properly describes LUCKY. If you were lucky, wouldn't you avoid having the near-death experience in the first place? Speaking of death, I know that Jay-Z has a newish "Death of AUTO-TUNE" cut because I read The Assimilated Negro's blog, but I haven't actually clicked any of the links to have a listen. Is that bad? That I can answer [Oft-used computer plug-in used in modern music] without the slightest understanding of what Auto-Tune does?

Calling all Arkansas crossword fans

Here's a press release about the third annual Arkansas Puzzle Day.

Clinton School to host 3rd Annual Arkansas Puzzle Day Aug. 29
Event to feature solving tips from crossword constructors Fleming and Gentry, editors of “Casual Crosswords”

LITTLE ROCK – The University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service will welcome crossword and Sudoku puzzle enthusiasts for the third annual Arkansas Puzzle Day on August 29 at Sturgis Hall.

Officiated by Vic Fleming of Little Rock and Bonnie Gentry of Scottsdale, Ariz., co-editors of “Random House Casual Crosswords,” the event will feature crossword and Sudoku contests on Saturday, Aug. 29, beginning at 1:00 p.m. The contests will be “casual and less-competitive,” Fleming said.

The Peabody Hotel will offer a special weekend rate for the event, which will include an autograph party and reception Friday afternoon, Aug. 28, at 5:30 p.m. at the hotel and a Saturday morning tour of the Clinton Presidential Library.

As part of the Saturday afternoon festivities, Fleming and Gentry will host a “multi-puzzle fun-and-games hour” before the preliminary crossword and Sudoku competition. The prelims will be followed by an educational session on puzzle history, strategy and tips for solving challenging crosswords. The afternoon will be capped off by a final round of puzzle competition for those with the highest levels of accuracy in the preliminary round.

The Friday reception will serve as an “early release” of the 2009 edition of the Random House book, which is scheduled to go on sale nationwide the following week.

Fleming and Gentry became Random House’s co-editors of “Casual Crosswords,” an annual publication, with the retirement last year of Mel Rosen, who had served as editor for six years.

*All puzzle day events are FREE and open to all puzzle enthusiasts. To RSVP, email publicprograms@clintonschool.uasys.edu or call 501-683-5239.

Contact the Peabody to make reservations for the weekend at 501-905-4000.

Contact Vic Fleming (judgevic@comcast.net) and/or Bonnie L. Gentry (bongentry@cox.net) for further details on the Puzzle Day afternoon activities.

July 08, 2009

Thursday, 7/9

LAT 3:46
NYT 3:35
CS 7:46 (J—paper)
Tausig (untimed)

I was just looking up the Hex Atlantic cryptics book on Amazon, and the first thing a haphazard Google delivered was their previous collection...along with this note:

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links
Cemetery Mausoleums www.monuments.cc Factory Direct Mausoleums Save over 25% from Retail Price

At first I thought Amazon's bots believed cryptics fans to be quite elderly, but then the crypt/cryptic connection hit.

What I was looking for was this book, The Atlantic Cryptic Crosswords from Sterling's Puzzlewright imprint. My copy arrived today, and I was delighted to see from the intro that this is old material. Sweet! I think it said the book contains Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's favorites from the 1986 to 1997 span of the Atlantic Monthly. Usually I prefer new-new-new puzzles, but I've done a bunch of the Atlantic puzzles from the last couple years so these ones are guaranteed to be new to me.

Buy this book! Do not be afraid. The intro outlines how cryptic clues work, so you can have a little coaching if you want it—and if you don't, just plunge right in and give your brain a gnarly workout. You know who else likes this book? Brendan Quigley, that's who. See? The movers and shakers in the crossword business recommend this book.

(If you're still too afraid of cryptics but like your crosswords challenging, you can't go wrong bending your brain with Patrick Berry's Puzzle Masterpieces, either.

Ashish Vengsarkar's New York Times crossword

Ahhh, that's more like it. This is just the sort of daily crossword I relish. A cool theme that expands the anagram concept into something bigger, plus fill and clues that sing.

Yes, I know some people don't cotton to anagrams, and I know some of the fill isn't as broadly accessible as in yesterday's puzzle—but hey, it's Thursday, and the fill is supposed to be harder.

So. The theme: the clues are all-caps, question-marked words. Anagram them, combine them with another word that could serve as a cryptic signal for anagramming, and marvel at the in-the-language phrases that result. To wit:

♻ 19A. [TROT?] is a TORT REFORM. By the way, I was working the first Hex puzzle in the book touted above just before I did Ashish's puzzle. Half the answers had to be anagrammed before going into the grid. Good practice for this puzzle.
♻ 21A. [HATER?] is a HEART TRANSPLANT.
♻ 36A. [RIFTS?] is a FIRST AMENDMENT.
♻ 52A. [GATES?] is a STAGE ADAPTATION of a sort.
♻ 56A. [HOSE?] is a SHOE REPAIR.

Twitter tells me that the nexus between 6A [Debra of "The Ten Commandments"] and 8D [First senator in space] has vexed some solvers. Nope, I don't know Debra PAGET—but I do know Senator Jake GARN. And why do I know that 58A CERN is the name of the [World's largest particle physics lab]? It might be from crosswords.

What were my favorite non-thematic parts of this puzzle? I liked the three-part common-cold action—40A [Cold shower?] is the RED NOSE that shows that you've got a cold. (Not crazy about the answer in isolation.) 42D [Cold response?] is a SNEEZE. And then a CASHEW is 1D [Snack item whose name suggests a 42-Down?]. Cute. When you're iller (!) than that, you may exhibit 10D [Lethargy], or TORPOR—I've mentioned before my fondness for the -or nouns/-id adjectives (stupor, rigor, turgid, horrid). PATROL CARS looks good in the grid; they're 6D [Cruisers]. Ditto for TENNIS PROS, or 30D [Racket makers?]. There's a tropical party in the lower right corner, with a MAI TAI (44D [Drink at Trader Vic's]) and ALOHAS (45D [Hello and goodbye]) with a MENSCH (46D [Good guy]). RICAN isn't such common fill—that's 39A [San Juan native, slangily]; I read something about Sonia Sotomayor that said she was "New York Rican," but I think they meant "Nuyorican," no? And MAM is cute—44A [Mother, in British dialect]. DONUT gets a cute clue: 38D [Coffee mate?]. Heck, there are two other question-marked clues I haven't even mentioned. The two-word partial A PIP is clued 55D ["You're ___, ya know that?": Archie Bunker]. And there's also a STASH, which is a 51D [Store that's hard to find].

Granted, this puzzle was nowhere near as challenging to construct as yesterday's NYT—but I had more fun with this one.

Updated Thursday morning:

Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Getting a Foothold"—Janie's review

For the second day running, we have a gimmick that requires us to insert a two-letter abbreviation into a well-known phrase—to most amusing effect. It actually took me the entire puzzle to figure out exactly what was going on, and then of course I responded with a resounding "doh!" Because for the second day running, there's no marker in the title to clue us in to the "abbreviation" component, which I like. One of things I actively admire in the CS puzzles is the titles—which are just cryptic enough to pique my interest and which don't completely tip the constructor's hand.

So today's two-letter abbreviation is ft. for foot and here's what Tony's done with it:

17A. Lied under oath + ft = LIFTED UNDER OATH [Bench pressed on the witness stand?]. Oh—and did I mention that we also get a series of NIFTY clues in the bargain as well? Because we do.
23A. Say it ain't so + ft = SAY IT AIN'T SOFT [Hard rock fan's plea?]. While there are any number of X-rated clues that come to mind for this one, there's also the G-rated [Child's plaint about the ice cream after a blackout]... The original phrase (followed by "Joe") has long been associated with the Chicago White Sox scandal of 1919 and if you click on the link, you'll be able to read a 1960 American Heritage article about the scandal and the story of the phrase.
50A. Lo and behold + ft = LOFT AND BEHOLD [Raise for inspection?]. Notice how LOFT rhymes with SOFT?
60A. Shied away from + ft = SHIFTED AWAY FROM [Reversed gears?]. Notice now how SHIFTED rhymes with LIFTED? Nice tight construction here.

Other highlights in the fill include: SEE STARS; the (apparent CS-debut) pairing of DR. JEKYLL and (Mme. Sec'y.) MADELEINE (Albright); the rhyming pair (which also appear opposite each other in the grid) of CS first-timer SPOOFED and "I GOOFED!"; the weaponry pair: ARMS and SMART BOMB; and the reminder that the "eyes" have it: UVEA [Eye layer] and RODS [___ and cones (eye parts)].

I hope no one SWOONED to see that this puzzle contains a major movie spoiler. Yes, [Kane's dying word in "Citizen Kane"] is ROSEBUD. Going from the sublime to, well, the uh, less sublime, other large screen references are to be found in "MARS [___ Attacks!" (1996 Tim Burton movie)], "PEE [___-wee's Big Adventure"], everybody's favorite movie lab-assistant IGOR, and in stars MAE [West of "My Little Chickadee"] and the (sadly) over-exposed LOHAN, [Actress Lindsay of "Freaky Friday"]. The small screen gets its due, too, with mention of ERICA ["All My Children" vixen], OPRAH [First name in talk TV] and ["Two and Half ___] MEN." The clue for KOREA, ["M*A*S*H" setting], belongs to both.

Loved seeing CAL [Ripken of the Orioles], PFFT [Sound of something going kaput], and DIAL clued as [Use a rotary phone]. "Does anyone still..." use a rotary phone?

Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword

I'm having trouble getting back into the crossword swing of things. My IHOP breakfast today was too satisfying and I'd really like to lie down for a bit. But I won't because I'm congenitally indisposed to being able to nap. So on with the puzzle! Dan's theme is realtors' euphemistic lies, trying to spin a piece-of-crap property as something more charming:

• 17A. [Realtor's "lavish landscaping"? Frankly, there are ___] WEEDS EVERYWHERE.
• 24A. [[Realtor's "charming"? Actually, it's ___] REALLY TINY. The most "charming" houses are less than 1,000 square feet.
• 35A. [Realtor's "expansive backyard"? Honestly, there's ___] NO POOL OR SPA. This must be a California/Florida sort of thing. You don't really expect a pool in the Midwest.
• 45A. [Realtor's "needs TLC"? Candidly, ___] IT'S A PIGSTY. A mere coat of paint will not help much here.
• 53A. [Realtor's "quiet setting"? Truthfully, it's ___] IN THE BOONIES. Yeah, I'll have to pass on that. I like city life.

Most of these theme entries aren't stand-alone sentences, but I could envision someone telling a friend about the horrible house they just saw and using these phrases without the "Frankly, there are..." intros.

More on today's puzzle from PuzzleGirl next door at L.A. Crossword Confidential. She really is the PuzzleGirl next door, isn't she?

Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Boosting the Base"

That's "Boosting the Base," not "bass"—a higher pH turns something more base, less acidic. Each theme entry has an inserted PH:

• 17A. [Hybrid last name of Liz and Michael's kid?] might be PHAIR-JORDAN, building on the Air Jordan Nike brand name. Liz Phair and Michael Jordan, not Liz Taylor and Michael Jackson. You thought of them first too, didn't you?
• 29A. A one-night stand becomes a PHONE NIGHTSTAND, or a [Place to set your cell while you sleep?].
• 47A. [Pest working for the feds?] is a GOVERNMENT APHID (aid). Cute. I'm picturing a small green bug with Secret Service agent sunglasses and a dark suit.
• 59A. Deli meats are transformed into DELPHI MEATS, [Kebabs and souvlaki sold outside a noted historical site?].

Highlights:

• ASHTRAYS are [Rare sights in bars nowadays]. I saw a "free trivia" sign at a neighborhood bar the other day and my 9-year-old son said, "You don't need a trivia night. You'll come home smelling like cigarettes." And then he remembered that Illinois has a smoking ban. I'm of an age to remember when people smoked in bank waiting lines and the rear of an airplane, and if my kid were just a little younger, he'd have no idea that people could ever smoke in bars. (Whether my son benefits from knowing things about bars is another issue.)
• SAT PREP is a [Junior's course, perhaps]. At my high school, nobody ever thought to spend money studying for standardized tests. What is this, Amy's Nostalgia Tour?
• Gotta love a 1-Across like ORGASM, or [Peak moment]. It boldly announced right off the bat, "This is not your grandma's crossword puzzle."
• The ["Only You" band] is YAZ with Alison Moyet. I loved that song in college. That Z is one of three in this grid, which also has a Scrabbly J and an X.

July 07, 2009

Wednesday, 7/8

Onion 4:28
BEQ 4:08
LAT 3:40
NYT 3:30
CS 8:40 (J―paper)

Tim Wescott's New York Times crossword

So, Rex Parker, PuzzleGirl, and I were corresponding tonight, trying to piece together the "unusual feature that appears nine times" in this crossword. Eventually I gave up and consulted Wordplay, where I learned there are nine word squares and that the constructor probably won't be surprised to see my grumbles: "I also realize that the puzzles that are a challenge to construct are not necessarily the same as the puzzles that a lot of people like to solve, as I’ve seen some complaints about these kinds of puzzles elsewhere on the Web." Yeah, I saw a lot of word segments that intersected with their clones, but in 3 1/2 minutes, I did not notice the word squares. So that wasn't an aid in solving. And so many repeated chunks of letters didn't enhance the solving experience for me.

Those word squares are as follows:

ROB CUD WES ROE
OPE USE EVA ONE
BEE DEN SAL EEN

BING CRAM CHAS RUMP
IDEA RUDE HASH UBER
NEWT ADIT ASHE MEGA
GATE METS SHED PRAY

HEART
EMBER
ABOVE
REVUE
TREES

The 5x5 is pretty fancy, but if you don't appreciate it in the midst of doing the puzzle...well...this is a gimmick for the leisurely solver to be blown away by. And I'm sure there are speed solvers in awe of the construction, too. I'm predicting about a 60/40 split between the "Wow!" and "meh" contingents, in favor of the "Wow!" side.

A few clues and answers:

• 3D. BEER GARDEN is as [Place for a pilsner].
• 38A. CAB-OVER is a [Style of truck with a vertical front].
• 31D. WEST MONROE is a [Louisiana city named for the fifth U.S. president].
• 32D. EVAN-PICONE is a [Big name in women's apparel since 1949]. Hooray for the clue not suggesting that there's ever been a person in fashion named Evan Picone.
• 55A. RUM PUNCH is a [Bacardi concoction, perhaps]. Crossword constructors use the term unch as shorthand for "unchecked letter." No idea what a RUMP UNCH might be.
• 22A. EMMETS are [Ants, archaically]. If you know a guy named Emmet, please call him Ant.
• 20A. To IRRIGATE is to [Make arable, perhaps].

Updated Wednesday morning:

Patrick Blindauer's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "They'll Take a Mile"―Janie's review

Today we have the titular companion piece (and thematic cousin) to yesterday's Doug Peterson, "Give 'Em an Inch..." And what a lively companion piece it is. The abbreviation for mile is mi.; the four theme phrases take that abbreviation and affix it to the beginning to create a new phrase. Each is also the beneficiary of some mighty crafty cluing.

17A. mi + stingray = MISTING RAY [Culinary Rachel using an atomizer?]
27A. mi + stress test = MISTRESS TEST [Check one's husband's collar for lipstick, e.g.?]. Of course, as Connie Francis reminds us, girlfriends may employ this technique, too...
49A. mi + me and my gal = MIME AND MY GAL [Story about a fellow's gesturing lady love?] This is really very funny. Yes, it's the only one of the theme entries in which the mi doesn't precede a phrase that starts with the letter s―and as you may have already guessed, I don't love that. But boy is this a great clue/fill combo. So to spare you all, I'll EASE UP this time and just enjoy it for all it's worth.
66A. mi + sled dogs = MISLED DOGS [Took a canine team off-roading?]. Another goodie, and one that suggests another kind of theme―the kind in which there's a repeated syllable. The fill that comes to mind is misled sled dogs. Okay, just three to go...

Today's mystery product was SO BE, the [Drink company with a lizard logo] as opposed to Geico, the insurance company with a gecko logo, I suppose. Boutique beverages aren't much my thing, but clearly there's a market for 'em. But really―only in America does the South Beach Beverage Company become established in Norwalk CT on an inlet of the Long Island Sound and then get purchased up by PepsiCo. Talk about yer sweet deals...

There's a lot of strong cluing today. I like the alliteration of [Lamp-lugging lad of literature] for ALADDIN, and the ambigu