CHE 5:51
NYT 4:17
BEQ 4:15
LAT 3:58
CS untimed
WSJ 7:30
The Oregon/Oregon State football game is on TV right now. Jacquizz Rodgers just had a 14-yard rush. Husband reports that Rodgers is only about 5'8" so he might not make it to the NFL. But I want him to be famous enough to appear in a Karen Tracey crossword!
Martin Ashwood-Smith's New York Times crossword
Martin Ashwood-Smith, a pioneer in triple-stacking 15-letter entries, returns with a smooth sextet of 15s. (Minus two points for having ONE'S in the middle of two answers.) Here are the long ones:
• 1A. AS OLD AS THE HILLS means [Antediluvian].
• 16A. [It's served in parts] clues a THREE-COURSE MEAL.
• 17A. OUT OF ONE'S LEAGUE means [Completely unqualified for competition]. Terrific, in-the-language phrase.
• 50A. [Framing need] isn't about picture frames—it's a TRUMPED-UP CHARGE. I have a slight preference for the plural of this, but the standard crossword isn't 16 squares wide so this will do. Why plural? If you're taking the trouble to frame someone, surely you can come up with multiple trumped-up charges.
• 55A. WATERLOO STATION in London is a [Railway terminus with the Victory Arch].
• 56A. OPENED ONE'S HEART is clued as [Became emotionally receptive].
None of these entries is on the list of the most common 15-letter NYT answers, so the whole triple-stack enterprise feels fresh.
Mystery people! I had three of 'em tonight. 27A: ROSA is ["The Accumulation of Capital" author Luxemburg]. She was a "was a Polish-Jewish-German theorist, philosopher, and activist" who cofounded the Spartacist League in Germany in 1914. 40A: JOSH WHITE is [Singer of the 1940s blues hit "One Meat Ball"]. I have to say, that's one meatball too many for me. 48D: IGOR is [Real-estate tycoon Olenicoff]. He's still a billionaire despite losing a couple hundred million bucks.
Comments on other answers and clues:
• Not crazy about the short two-worders. 29A: "DO IT!" is clued with ["Get cracking!"]. 1D: [Rafts] clues A TON. And 3D: ["... ___ go?"]—what is that, Morse code? The ellipsis replaces "for here" and the blank's filled with the partial OR TO.
• 35A. TASTE BUDS! [They may be excited by dinner]. Lively answer.
• 11D. [Laugh syllable] is HEE. (And 31D: HAHAS is [Music to a comic's ears].) If you are typing "he" as a laugh syllable, I must insist that you stop immediately. "Hee hee" and "ha ha" are laughs, "heh heh" has a less jocular air. "He he" or "hehe"? That's no laugh—that's a pronoun for a gay male couple.
• 15D. SLEETIER is clued as [More like a cold shower?]. I Googled the word and the first 60 hits gave the impression that this is not a word anyone actually uses, but on the seventh page, lo and behold, we find that the word appears in a Ted Hughes poem, "Tractor". I will use the word in a sentence that contains another phrase in the poem: "Sleet is SLEETIER than cast-iron cow-shit."
• 29D. I wanted the [Perilous place] to be AT DEATH'S DOOR, but that doesn't fit. It's a DEATHTRAP.
• 30D. Medieval! [Competition among mail carriers?] is a JOUST—mail as in chain mail.
• 32D. [The second part] is STAGE TWO. That feels arbitrary.
• 37D. Excellent use of the definite article in THE SHAH, a [Leader exiled in 1979].
My nomination for trickiest crossing is the M where 46A and 46D meet. ["___ Fate" (Andre Malraux novel)] crosses an [Unstable particle]. MAN'S and MUON, but if you're thinking the Malraux title will include a proper name or a common noun and you're not up on your atomic particles, DAN'S, FAN'S, JAN'S, and NAN'S don't look completely implausible. Heck, the author's got a French name, so why not "SANS Fate"? (Thank you, puzzles I have done previously, for teaching me the word MUON.)
John Lampkin's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Baroque Embellishments"
Boy, pun themes are hard when you're not that familiar with all the words in the answers, when the base phrases are more oblique, and when the sound changes are a mixed bag. I gather than the theme entries end with two baroque dances and two forms of baroque music:
• 17A. [Baroque dance full of hostility?] is BITTER ALLEMANDE. I think this is a play on "bitter almond," with an added vowel syllable.
• 27A. [Eco-friendly baroque dance?] clues GREEN BOURRÉE. Bourrée? This is not a regular part of my vocabulary. Lovely sound play on "Green Beret," though. The first vowel in the dance shifts from "beret."
• 46A. [Baroque song that's less than a masterpiece?] is THE O.K. CHORALE (the O.K. Corral). Okay, that's kinda funny. Great sound-alike play.
• 61A. [Offering at the Baroque Music Hotel?] is A ROOM WITH A FUGUE. Wait! FUGUE and "view" have markedly different pronunciations. This one doesn't feel close enough for solid punning, especially not with 27A and 46A's closer sounds.
Gotta love a puzzle that includes the [Burp]/ERUCT combo, though. (Still holding out for BORBORYGMUS to make an appearance somewhere.)
Trickiest clue for me: [One that goes to school regularly] for BUS. "That" was a tip-off that we're not looking for a person, which would be "who," but I contemplated fish here.
Updated Friday morning:
Doug Peterson's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Goth Milk?"—Janie's review
Wow. The last time we had a Peterson puzzle was just over a month ago, but I have to say: it was worth the wait. Doug's given us an "add a letter" theme, which we're familiar with. But in contriving an "add an 'H' to a word ending in 'T'" approach, he's managed to come up not only with a very humorous title but also a great variation on this familiar trope. Look what happens as:
• 17A. Vampire bat + h → VAMPIRE BATH [Tub shaped like a coffin]. The visual leap from beginning to end is what gives this one its punch. (And that is one scary lookin' creature—yowzuh.)
• 27A. Slot machines + h → SLOTH MACHINES [Exercise equipment for lazy people]. The perfect complement to "lose weight while you sleep" pills...
• 44A. Wrestling mat + h → WRESTLING MATH [Subject covered in "Geometry for Grapplers"?]. Or: Jane vis à vis higher numbers...
• 59A. Boot polish + h → BOOTH POLISH [Diner owner's spiffer-upper]. Anyone else grow up in a home where every two weeks, for purposes of spiffing up, the furniture got a going over with Jubilee Polish?... Seems it's no longer available, but that's the recollection this clue and fill brought to mind.
Other goodies in the grid:
• [Mad scientist's milieu] LABORATORY and (speaking of mad scientists) ["Young Frankenstein" assistant] IGOR.
• [Its color indicates rank] KARATE BELT.
• Phrases TAGS UP [Touches a base on a fly ball] (oh, great—only four months til opening day...) and "TRY ONE!" ["Have a sample!"].
• THUMP clued as [Soundly defeat] (with the emphasis on sound, no?).
• The colloquial contexts for "UNFAIR!" ["You cheated!"], "I CAN'T!" [Defeatist's cry] and "HEY!" ["What's the big idea?"].
• The group of "heads of state" types: SHAH [Former Iranian monarch], EMPEROR [Nero, for one] and TSAR [Erstwhile Russian sovereign]. (Each was part of a DYNASTY of sorts, though not the [Joan Collins TV series]). I'm guessing that only the tsar (as a child anyway...) may have had a head-covering with an [EAR-FLAP] detail. It gets pretty nippy in Mother Russia—and that can be a nice [Winter cap feature]!
Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword
My son's friend is coming over for a play date (no school today) any moment, so only cursory blogging this a.m. Theme entries have a CK inserted into them. E.g., [Take down by Tinker Bell?] is a FAIRY TACKLE. The theme answers tended to feel a tad strained to me, though, and the little hitches in the fill (SFC, not SGT, for [Army E-7: Abbr.] and CLK for [Court recordkeeper: Abbr.]) were found mainly among the 29 3-letter answers in this grid. Offsetting the 3s are the pairs of 9-letter answers that intersect two of the five theme answers—that's a lot of real estate occupied by the nine longest entries. Favorite clue: [Former pen pal?] for EX-CON.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Tiger Trap"
As I said in a comment at Brendan's blog, this week's easy BEQ puzzles all require an obsessive attention to tabloid-ready names that aren't remotely inferrable if you haven't been following the stories closely. I knew 20A/ELIN NORDEGREN, but the other women? They have weirdly spelled first names and/or uncommon last names (like Wednesday's couple, Michaele and Tar...eq? Salihi). This gives today's puzzle the air of a quote puzzle in which the quote's half in Hungarian. I didn't know if 28A should be parsed as KALI KAMOQUIN (no) or KALIKA MOQUIN (yes). JAIMEE GRUBBS or JAIME E.? RACHEL UCHITEL? Uchitel? Sounds like a Japanese hotel chain.
B'NAI BRITH and QUINTUPLE are lovely, but there weren't enough such entries to grab me today. Thematic SCANDAL is balanced by nonthematic E.B. WHITE, and thematic LIE by nonthematic MIN. With 26 3-letter answers (NEA! KEA! MEA! UBI UZI!) and old crosswordese ISTLE ([Agave fiber]), I say boo to this puzzle. I'm sure I'd have loved it if I were closely following the Tiger Woods scandal, but I'm not, so...half-Hungarian quote puzzle.
Looking forward to a "Themeless Monday"!
Patrick Blindauer's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Scrambled TV Signals"
Hey, this is a fun puzzle. All of the theme entries are TV show titles in which one word's been anagrammed, changing the gist of the show. For example, Arrested Development becomes SERRATED DEVELOPMENT, or [TV show about a breakthrough in knife research]. I had part of DEVELOPMENT and set to work pondering anagrams of ARRESTED that could relate to knives. The game show Deal or No Deal becomes LEAD OR NO LEAD, a [TV show about a filling station choice]. Retro clue—didn't leaded gasoline disappear in the '70s? Also retro: cluing SSR as [Moldova, e.g.: Abbr.]. Moldova hasn't been an SSR since '91.
Favorite clues, answers, and combinations:
• 73A. [Possible reading of a Brannock Device] is EEE. Clue sounds medical, but the Brannock is the metal shoe-size doodad in the shoe store. I like how EEE crosses EERIE.
• 43A/44D. [Foe of Popeye] SEA HAG meets HAGEN, [Golf legend Walter].
• 24A/14D. CLARITIN crosses CLARETS—[Allergy medicine brand] and [Some red wines].
• 83A. A [Cel body] is a TOON, or cartoon character.
• 36A. DO SHOTS! That's to [Toss back some Stoli, say].
• 96A. CHALUPA! A [Taco Bell offering] I've never tried.
• Longer fill that shines includes SOFT SELL, RIFFRAFF, DAME EDNA, and LOSE SLEEP. (Should've clued SLOTHS as something other than [Arboreal sleepers], though.)
• 121A. Au courant clue for TBS: [Home of George Lopez's talk show]. I should watch that.
• 77D. [Ball-bearing creatures] are trained SEALS balancing a rubber ball on their snouts.
• 103D. YELLS is clued as [Makes a long-distance call].
December 03, 2009
Friday, 12/4/09
December 01, 2009
Wednesday, 12/2/09
NYT 4:38
BEQ 4:04
Onion 3:57
LAT 2:59
CS untimed
Jack McInturff's New York Times crossword
I've noted before that Jack McInturff's fill tends to run old-school, and this puzzle is in that vein. The theme involves a letter change from H to W, as in HASTE MAKES WASTE ([Advice to the rash, and a hint to this puzzle's theme]). In the other theme entries, an H in a familiar phrase becomes a W:
• 17A. PICTURE OF WEALTH is clued as [Bill Gates snapshot?]. Base phrase is "picture of health."
• 28A. [Banshees' boast?] is SO PROUDLY WE WAIL. So Proudly We Hail is a 1943 movie, and part of a lyric from "The Star-Spangled Banner.'
• 39A. BASE WIT, playing on base hit, is a [Comedic soldier during training?].
• 47A. [Words to estate attorneys?] is HEAD FOR THE WILLS. "Head for the hills" is familiar, but legal documents are a weird thing to "head for," aren't they?
Among the fill that's reminiscent of '80s crosswords are these words: AGHA, or [Turkish V.I.P.]; N-TEST, or [Mushroom producer, for short]; ARLENE [Francis of "What's My Line?"]; ENOS, [Son of Seth]; OAKIE, or [Jack of "The Great Dictator"]; LADES, or [Does dock work]; ILEA, or [Sections of digestive tracts] ("Let's all put our ILEA together and see if we can't come up with a solution that works for all of us"); RAJA, or [Big Indian]; [Mata ___] HARI; SKAT, the [Game with 32 cards]; and ESSO, the [Old Sinclair rival]. Two or three of these are plenty for any 15x15 crossword. The biggest blast from the past is ASE, [Mother of Peer Gynt]. She says, "You may remember me from such crossword clues as ['___ Death']." Pop culture tidbit from Wikipedia: Extracts from "Åse's Death" are played in a Simpsons while Norwegian workers are leaving their town. This may mark the first time this blog has wielded an Å.
I'm not familiar with O'SHEAS Casino, the [Irish-themed Vegas casino]. Apparently it targets gamblers in their 20s and 30s and features a heavy metal star's tattoo parlor. I'm guessing Celine Dion doesn't sing there and that there's no fancy art gallery. Don't recall seeing [Pikake garland] as a LEI clue, though the only other common 3-letter garland is the boa.
There are two women with Ys in place of Is. LYNDA, [Actress Carter who was once Miss World USA], is best known for portraying Wonder Woman. SYD, usually clued as Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, is clued as the [Lead role on "Providence"]. Remember that show? Ran from '99 to '02? Her dad was played by B.J. Hunnicutt.
Deb Amlen's Onion A.V. Club crossword
In Deb's theme, phrases that begin or end with double-E words turn into double-O words:
• 21A. [Golfer?] is a WOOD WHACKER (weed whacker). Let us not speak of Tiger Woods, whose Escalade whacked a tree.
• 26A. [Stress of being strapped?] is POOR PRESSURE (peer pressure). Topical!
• 43A. [Jerky doctor's office combo?] might be SHOT AND A BOOR (shot and a beer).
• 50A. [Prize for the ultimate sulk?] is BEST IN BROOD (best in breed).
Oniony highlights:
• [Teeny problem?] is ACNE, a problem for teens (among others). A unit of ACNE is a ZIT. Watch out for the kilozit.
• [Buck passers?] clues ATMS. Is this a new clue? It stumped me, so I feel as though it is.
• [His middle name was Milhous] refers to Richard NIXON, not Milhouse Van Houten.
• "YEAH, SURE" is a terrific entry. The clue is ["I bet!"].
• BRAS are [Support systems, of a sort].
• "I'M ON FIRE" is the [Springsteen song that starts, "Hey, little girl, is your daddy home?"]. The "little girl" part sounds creepy.
• Unfamiliar OHIO clue: [Kent State tragedy song].
• The F-BOMB! Another great answer. Clued thus: [One might get dropped, to everyone's shock].
You know, Deb's got a humor book coming out next June: It's Not PMS, It's You.
Updated Wednesday morning:
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "In Position"—Janie's review
Ya gotta think very literally with this one as the first word of each of the theme phrases corresponds to its position in the grid. In today's case, that also mean that those terrific theme phrases are all oriented vertically. And they are:
• 4D. LEFT HEMISPHERE [Brain area]. Yes, this map of the human brain is sexist and wrong but it still makes me laugh. This map is more to the point.
• 7D. MIDDLE-AGE SPREAD [Weight gain, of a sort]. Not a pretty subject, but the fodder for lotso "humor"...
• 16A. RIGHT VENTRICLE [Heart part]. Here's a cutaway view.
As you probably know, I tend to take a lot of enjoyment in (what I perceive to be) mini-themes and connections within the grid—and today's puzzle delivers nicely. Two of the theme fill are anatomical (referencing the brain and the heart), but look: there're also optical allusions with CORNEA [Pupil's cover] and EYED [Gave the once over]; and [Win by ___ ] A NOSE. That's nothin' to sniff about!
There are ethno-geographic connections, too, as the grid contains ASIA [ ___ Minor]; and from Southeast Asia, HANOI [Vietnam's capital] and [Vietnam's] NGO [Dinh Diem] (who was assassinated in 1963). (Have you ever wondered about Asia Major? While it's not a term we ordinarily use, it's east of Turkey and Asia Minor, and refers to the "heartland of the Persian Empire.") From Europe, there's FLORENCE [Italian city on the Arno]; and from Mexico, AZTECS [Montezuma's people]
Another set of connected fill contains exhortations: the JEERS (and not MEOWS) for [Catcalls], the NOES [Refusals] and "EGADS!" the [Edwardian outburst] ("Edwardian" standing in for "quaint"...).
And in "sacred" territory, there's DIES IRAE [Solemn hymn], MITER [Bishop's hat] and even betrayer-Apostle [Judas ___ ] ISCARIOT.
When I saw SAFE SIDE [Cautious people try to stay on it], my first thought was that it was more theme fill. SNOW TIRE [Winter traction provider] proved not to be a symmetrical match, however, so let's chalk up the former to "bonus fill." To be on the safe side, let's also hope that as the inclement weather driving-season approaches, your snow tires have lotso good tread on 'em—especially for any STOP-GO driving you may have to do!
Ed Sessa's Los Angeles Times crossword
Especially in the Monday-to-Wednesday stretch, there are so few crossword themes that feel new, so this one's a delight. The phrase RAIN CATS AND DOGS can be parsed another way in the punctuation-free zone of the crossword grid: as if it's three entities, RAIN, CATS, AND DOGS. Those three entities are clued by the other three theme answers, which are clued straightforwardly. Kind of the multi-level marketing scheme of crosswords.
• 17A: [*Nightly news show segment] is the WEATHER FORECAST. In Seattle, the forecast often includes rain.
• 27A: [*Big Apple show] clues BROADWAY MUSICAL. One musical I've never seen is Cats.
• 49A: [*1955 Disney animated film featuring Darling Dear] is LADY AND THE TRAMP. Lady and Tramp are both dogs.
• 65A: [Come down in buckets; also, when applied in sequence to the answers to starred clues, this puzzle's theme] clues RAIN CATS AND DOGS. RAIN in the forecast, CATS on Broadway, AND DOGS in the cartoon.
For fill highlights and videos featuring the legendary Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald, please hop over to my L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "The In Crowd"
In Brendan's post, he says his test solvers thought this puzzle was super-easy, suitable for solving Downs-only to avoid having the puzzle be merely a speed test. I would have been in a total snit if I'd read and followed the "go Downs only" advice because it wasn't all that easy. Maybe other people are finding this a Monday-level venture, but it hit Thursday medium for me.
Perhaps I'm just slow today, because the 35A clue says "two show up in this grid unannounced," but the only DINNER CRASHERs I can find (TAREQ and MICHAELE) are clearly announced as being 35-Acrosses. Are there other hidden answers the 35A clue is referring to? WHOLESALE PRICES and FAIRBANKS, ALASKA don't seem to contain "dinner crashers." What am I missing? (Edited to add: Brendan explains that the crashers' last name, SALAHI, is hidden in stacked halves in WHOLESALE/WAHINE and FAIRBANKS ALASKA/TAHITIAN. What, we're supposed to know the spelling of their first names and what their last name is? Boo!)
I like the GLAMOR/ENAMOR combo, but not the OKED/I'M OKAY pair. Hey, where are the quotation marks of sarcasms in the FEMA clue? [Hurricane Katrina helpers]? Really? Unless the implication is that the agency helped the hurricane carry out its mission. That would be the Army Corps of Engineers, though.
Plenty of Polynesian action today. The Hawaiian word KAHUNA is clued with [Big ___ Burger (fictional chain of "Pulp Fiction"]. WAHINE is a [Female surfer] or a Polynesian woman/wife (esp. in Hawaii and New Zealand). And TAHITIAN is the [Language that gave us the word "tattoo"].
November 18, 2009
Thursday, 11/19/09
NYT 3:40
LAT 3:17
CS untimed
Tausig untimed
Tyler Hinman and Jeremy Horwitz's New York Times crossword
Here's how I envision this puzzle's development:
Tyler: "Let's make a themeless together."
Jeremy: "No, I want to do a themed puzzle. Something with trivia."
Great cacophony ensues as the chocolate hits the peanut butter, cruciverbally speaking.
Tyler: "Hey, you got a theme in my themeless!"
Jeremy: "What are you talking about? You got your themeless all over my themed puzzle!"
Light bulbs appear over both men's heads.
Together: "Omigod! We made a 70-word themeless puzzle packed with juicy fill and managed to fit three theme entries into it."
I know today's constructors are on the same pub trivia team, so I wonder if A SEED for this puzzle came about from a trivia quiz or if they hit on the trivia trio themselves. It's light as themes go—just 31 squares. But it's thematically solid, bringing together three directors of movies with one-letter titles:
• 17A. ["Z" director, 1969] is known as COSTA-GAVRAS.
• 32A. ["M" director, 1931] is FRITZ LANG.
• 51A. ["W" director, 2008] is OLIVER STONE.
I greatly enjoyed solving this puzzle, though usually I would grumble about a 70-worder that's clued easy enough to hit a Wednesday/Thursday level of difficulty. But I kept getting surprised by answers that were cool, and that was fun.
On the down side, the three UPs distracted me because (a) I hesitated to enter the second and third ones and (b) one of them felt iffy. That one is 8D: [Encircle with a belt] for GIRD UP. I see it in the dictionary entry for gird in the example "gird (up) one's loins," but I don't think that sort of "girding up" involves a belt. If you're belting your loins, I don't wanna hear about it. I wanted UPSIZE to be RESIZE (42D: [Enlarge]) because of 8D, and then UP TO PAR (35D: [Adequate for the job]) showed up and made me wish the other UPs had left this one alone.
Favorite clues and answers:
• 6A. [Symbol in a Riemann sum] is SIGMA. All I know is that SIGMA is used in math for sums of some sort. The clue looked a lot scarier than it turned out to be.
• 16A. MOO [___ juice (milk)]!
• 20A. Scrabbly KLEENEX, a [Kimberly-Clark brand]. KOTEX was too short. (HUGGIES and PULL-UPS would fit, though.)
• 26A. Slangy WHUP means to [Tan] someone's hide, figuratively.
• 31A. "WANT TO?" means ["Are you game?"].
• 34A. Scrabbly JUAREZ is an [El Paso neighbor]. (Hi, Monica!)
• 41A. [Cause of an awakening] sounds metaphysical, but it's the APNEA that might disrupt your sleep.
• 44A. STAR MAPS are [Some Beverly Hills tourist purchases]. There was a recent NYT story about a teenager who's gone into business selling Hamptons star maps.
• 50A. Didn't see this clue while solving: [Google had one in 2004: Abbr.] clues IPO. Tyler, your employer really doesn't need the extra publicity.
• 1D. I hope someone somewhere complains that clueing LUCKIER as [More Irish?] is derogatory to the Irish. And then I hope they're mocked.
• 3D. What is it about the word NOSEGAY that I find so charming? It's a small bouquet or [Posy].
• Anyone think that 6D and 7D would be my entrée into the grid? STAX and rap impresario IRV Gotti, you don't scare me.
• 10D. Oddest clue in the puzzle: [Hearers of Jonah's prophecy] are ASSYRIANS. This may be Biblical, but ASSYRIANS is not short enough to find its way into the puzzle often so it's not Biblical crosswordese.
• 13D. I read a little IONESCO in college—["Le Rhinoceros" playwright Eugene]. I read it in an English translation.
• 18D, 24D. More Scrabbleocity: GEE WHIZ and QUIZNO'S.
• 30D. CREAM SODA is an [A&W beverage] and my favorite Dum-Dum flavor.
• 36D. I like the pairing of [Cousins] and ANALOGS. As in "this is analogous to that/these things are cousins."
• 38D. A WASHOUT is a [Complete failure].
I hereby give my blessing to the cruciverbal union of these two constructors. Jeremy and Tyler, do you have more joint productions in the pipeline?
Updated Thursday morning:
Gail Grabowski's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Case Study"—Janie's review
We know this theme very well: the last word of the theme fill is one that combines with a word in the title. Today that word is "case." The good news is that the theme fill is fresh and the re-configured phrases are pretty lively, too. Today's offerings are:
• 17A. [Wimbledon feature] GRASS COURT → court case.
• 11D. [Delete, for one] COMPUTER KEY → key case.
• 25D. [Healthy all-occasion gift] FRUIT BASKET → basket case (someone who's mentally not-so-healthy. This pair is my fave).
• 63A. [It's said there's no cure for it] COMMON COLD → cold case (followed closely by this pair).
And there's some lively cluing and fill throughout that give this puzzle its [Pizazz] ELAN. I'm fond of the SW corner—the children's corner?—with "BE NICE" ["Don't fight, please"] right next to "ARE NOT!" [Childish denial]. Other exclamations are ["]MAMMA [mia!"] and "TADA!" [Cry of accomplishment]; and one that summons up a variation of "the actor's nightmare": "I'M ON!" for ["That's my cue!"].
Then there's:
• [Smart set] for MENSA;
• [It can cover a lot] for TAR (anyone else start with SOD—and thinking of that "lot" as something more exclusively along the lines of ONE ACRE [4,840 square yards]?);
• [Lasting impression] for SCAR;
• [Pay what's due] for PONY UP (love this expression, even with its apparently unknown etymology);
• [Sketcher's eraser] for ART GUM (because when was the last time I owned one or even thought about art gum?!);
• and in the "good, clean fun" department, [Washer batch] LOAD and COIN-OP [Like some laudromats].
Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword
Jack McInturff mentioned me in his Crossword Corner interview today:"Orange" the puzzle commentator, once said of a puzzle I did "The fill seems old school." It's probably because I'm 79 years old and that's what I remember. It did give me a wake-up call, however, and I'm trying to be more current.
See? That's why crossword bloggers write about crosswords: We want crosswords to be as good and as entertaining as possible, so it's gratifying when we see evidence that a puzzle-maker or editor uses our critiques in a constructive manner to give solvers a better experience.
Today's L.A. Times theme involves phrases that end with sort of synonymous words, JERK, GOOSE, YO-YO, and DOPE. A thesaurus tells me JERK is a synonym for "fool," but I don't use it that way. I guess some people say "I felt like a complete jerk" to mean "doofus" rather than "heel," though. The theme:
• 20A. CLEAN AND JERK is a [Weightlifting event].
• 30A. The CANADA GOOSE (not "Canadian goose") is a [Golf course pest]. Last spring, I saw a goose perched atop a three-story building. Is that not bizarre? The very same week, my mother saw a rooftop goose for the first time in her life. Heads up, people: The geese have plans. Watch your back.
• 39A. A [Spinning toy manipulated with sticks] is a CHINESE YO-YO.
• 49A. The STRAIGHT DOPE is [Honest info]. You know Cecil Adams' "Straight Dope" column in alt-weekly papers? A couple times I have seen a lexicographer citing Cecil's answers. I think that means his research standards are considered good.
The #1 clue people will be Googling today is 32D: [British actor Robert, the original Colonel Pickering in "My Fair Lady"]. Robert COOTE? That doesn't ring a bell for me.
#2 is 5D: [Original primer used to paint the Golden Gate Bridge], or RED LEAD. No idea what RED LEAD is. Dictionary tells me it's a red form of lead oxide used in paint.
Favorite clues:
• The twin old Ford clues. [Early Ford success] is the MODEL A, while EDSEL was an [Ill-fated Ford].
• [Actors, often] are EMOTERS. Note that the clue does not say "overactors."
• [Some heroes] are called HOAGIES. Yes, I was thinking heroically rather than sandwichly.
• [Very big wind], 4 letters. The obvious choice is between GUST and GALE...but it's a TUBA. That's what my nephew plays. My sister has to listen to three horn players practicing at home, and no, she hasn't developed a case of hysterical deafness. (Speaking of HYSTERIA, that's a [Common crowd reaction in monster films].)
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "A Few Words With You"
The puzzle's title should be interpreted as "A Few Words with 'U' Added to The End": [Yogi's house?] might be HINDU QUARTERS. [Cuddly pasta sauce freebie?] is RAGU DOLL. [Ambrosia and nectar selections?] are a MENU OF GOD. "SHAMU, WOW!" is a [Literal cry at Sea World?]. That one's my favorite because it builds on the silly infomercial product name, ShamWow, which in turn plays on chamois. And the last one is FONDU MEMORIES, or ["The melted cheddar...the kitschy pots...ah, youth"?]. Hooray for cheddar! I don't do Swiss.
Given how few English words there are that end with a U, and how few of those would lend themselves to this theme (familiar word/phrase begins with U-less part of -U word), I'm impressed with this theme. The answers had some decent "aha" action. Now, the fill includes BADU, SABU, TUTU, and APU. A.P.-meets-APU has some potential. King Tut doesn't really have familiar phrases that begin with "Tut," though.
Top answers in the fill: KOJAK meets JETSKIS; WASILLA's near another W*S*L word, WEASELS; CECILIA is opposite OPHELIA. I like BAGATELLE, but feel it would best be clued as [A mere ___]. Top three clues:
• KEN is clued as [Sugar's Daddy ___ (controversial new Mattel product)]. Have you seen this guy doll? Sugar is a teeny dog, and KEN is her "daddy." He's dressed ridiculously and his name evokes the non-Mattel term "Sugar Daddy."
• THA is clued as an [Article in Source magazine?]. Not a magazine article, a definite article.
• IRAQ is an [Emancipated Middle Eastern country with no more problems]. Honest!
October 15, 2009
Friday, 10/16/09
BEQ 4:45
NYT 4:33
CHE 3:16
CS untimed
LAT 2:56
WSJ 8:20
For another sort of puzzle, see "Go Away" in the post below this one.
Karen Tracey's New York Times crossword
Another Friday, another freestyle Karen Tracey creation to love. Let's run through the cool, the challenging, and the classically Karenical, shall we?
First, you're going to grapple with some names of people and places:
• 14A. LIVY is the [Writer of the history "Ab Urbe Condita"]. It's a history of ancient Rome.
• 15A. The fictional SETHE is Toni Morrison's ["Beloved" heroine].
• 30A. Geography! [Lusatian ___ (German/Polish border river)] is the NEISSE.
• 44A. Who? RAUL is clued as [1980s Argentine president ___ Alfonsin].
• 53A. Eric UTNE is a [Reader's digest founder of 1984]. Note the lowercase d.
• 58A. RAFE is clued as the [Male protagonist in William Inge's "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff"]. I've heard of Inge, but that's as far as I got with this one. Yay for crossings.
• 1A. [Film composer Clausen and others] clues ALFS. He's best known for composing The Simpsons theme. Hey, PuzzleGirl—he grew up in North Dakota.
• 36D. TENERIFE is the [Largest of the Canary Islands].
• 39D. HANA is the [Easternmost town on Maui, on one end of 52 miles of twisty highway].
• 43D. Fake geography! NARNIA is the [Setting for C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle"].
Usually Karen provides tons of Scrabbly action in her grids. This one's got TUXEDO JUNCTION (23A: ["Where people go to dance the night away," in song]), but not much else. Here are the answers and clues I liked best:
• 20A. The SILENT T is [Part of Christmas].
• 26A. "Limnological" is a pretty word. [Limnological study] clues LAKE.
• 38A. [What you probably have a head for] is the the SHOWER fixture in your bathroom.
• 47A. BEARNAISE SAUCE is a [Chateaubriand accompaniment, often]. How's BEARNAISE on FLANK STEAK (17A: [London broil, often])?
• 50A. Are the Little Rascals synonymous with OUR GANG? Same kids, different era? I honestly don't know. They're [Kids in funny shorts], as in short films. Tricky having a plural clue for an answer ending with G.
• 6D. GET TO KNOW means [More than merely meet].
• 9D. You can think of a few possibilities for [Toy developed in China], can't you? Such as kites? Think instead of toy dogs, like the PEKINESE.
• 10A. A [Set for a reading] is a TAROT DECK. Really fresh answer, that.
• 11D. [Emperor's relative] is ADELIE. Both are types of penguin.
• 24D. "JEEPERS!" means ["Golly!"]. See also DRAT, or 59A: ["Nuts!"], for another old-timey slang exclamation.
• 40D. [Fractional bit?] is the SLASH punctuation mark you see in "1/3."
Let me grumble a moment over the nearly neighboring USENET (45D: [Early online discussion setting]) and USERS (49D: [Detox population]). At least the USERS aren't clued as computer users. There aren't a ton of other options for 49D, with the U*E** fixed by long answers and an 8-letter answer running alongside it.
Jack McInturff's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Capital Gains"
Who doesn't love games based on world capitals? I relished McInturff's theme, in which the second half of various capital cities sounds like the beginning of another word or phrase. The city and phrase are hooked together à la Wheel of Fortune "Before and After" puzzles, and the resulting answer is clued as if it's about the city:
• 19A. [Building material from Sudan?] is KHARTOUM STONE (tombstone). The tomb aspect is dropped from the clue.
• 26A. [Beverage from Lebanon?] is BEIRUT BEER (root beer). Both beer and root beer are beverages.
• 33A. [Sandwich shop in India?] clues NEW DELHI COUNTER (deli counter). "Counter" sans "deli" doesn't much signal "sandwich shop," so the answer hinges on both Delhi and deli.
• 42A. [Soil in Taiwan?] is TAIPEI DIRT (pay dirt). As with 19A, the pay aspect of the base phrase disappears.
• 52A. [Correspondents form Cambodia?] are PHNOM PENH PALS. Again, as with 33A, the clue hints at the second base phrase.
I sort of wish the theme had been more consistent with the inclusion or exclusion of the "after" phrases' meanings, but I'd still give this one a B+ because the theme entertained me, the word count's low (72), and the fill's pretty solid, with high points like NAPOLEON and TOOK A BOW. Why not an A? It ought to be a more challenging puzzle, and nobody's delighted by TAW, RETE, ESAU, ELIA, DEUT., and "IS IT I." (Why the letter grade? Hey, the puzzle's in a publication for professors.)
Updated Friday morning:
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Missing the Point,"—Janie's review
This is lookin' a bit like a three-peat to me. For the third time this week, we have a puzzle with a "take away" gimmick and once again the stakes have been raised. Paula's puzzle on Tuesday dropped one letter from each base phrase (J); Tony's yesterday dropped two (LL); and today, Nancy drops three. = Those letters, as spelled out at 71A [Compass dir. (and point missing from 18-, 30-, 47-, and 61-Across)], are NNE. Pretty nifty actually. In a former life, the phrase:
• 18A. CAD LAUGHTER [Nasty snickering?] was canned laughter (which can also be pretty nasty, come to think of it...).
• 30A. STAR-SPANGLED BAR [Celebs' watering hole?] was our own national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner."
• 47A. UNREPENTANT SIRS [Gentlemen without remorse?] was unrepentant sinners. I wonder if these guys gave Nancy the idea for cad laughter. Or vice-versa...
• 61A. BAD IN BOSTON [What Bean Town felons have been?] was banned in Boston. If you're not familiar with this phrase and its Puritan ties, this would be a good time to check it out. Love the "bean"/"been" wordplay in the clue, too. And... I wonder if those unrepentant sirs had anything to do with inspiring this entry. Or vice-versa...
Besides that unrepentant-bad-cad sub-theme, the puzzle also boasts a Japanese-inspired mini-theme. There's HAI [Yes, in Yokohama] (yesterday it was [OK, in Okinawa]), OBI [Sapporo sashes] and AKITAS [Curly-tailed Japanese dogs]—which look to be both an adorable and beautiful breed.
If you're a carnivore, you probably have a more vested interest in seeing that juicy PRIME RIB [Pricey beef lover's entrée] in the grid. Need a complement of carbs to go with? UNCLE BEN [Big name in rice] might fill the bill nicely. The [Starchy food made from tubers], SALEP, was completely new to me. Am I alone? It does look to have a fascinating history however, and appears to be something that is prepared as a beverage. Also as an aphrodisiac. Which, come to think of it, means it might be just right for a MOONLIT occasion [Like some romantic evenings].
Did you notice that the grid includes both ORAL [By word of mouth] and OREL [Sportscaster Hershiser]? The former shares the final L with EBERSOL [Longtime sports executive Dick], but better still (because of the sports tie-in) is the way the ...REL of the latter sits atop the EBE... of his professional colleague.
SIREN has been clued as [Warning wail], but a siren is also a temptress. Whether or not either of these alliteratively clued femmes intended to be one, DAISY MAE [Dogpatch damsel] and LOLITA [Nabokov nymphet], both have their siren-like ways. And in her own way, I suppose the same can be said of the equally iconic ROSIE [Archetypical 1940s riveter]. (For a study in the-same-only-different, check out all three links!)
Tony Orbach and Patrick Blindauer's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Cooking 100"
Tony and Patrick's theme interprets "Cooking 100" as an academic course of study, with the theme entries all clued as cooking classes. The title also uses "100" as the Arabic equivalent of Roman numeral C, which is the letter added to the start of a word in each theme entry. My favorites among these C+ cooking classes are:
• 68A. LET'S GET READY TO CRUMBLE, or [Course on preparing coffeecake topping?].
• 97A. [Course on a taboo ham seasoning?] is FORBIDDEN CLOVE. I like the unexpected vowel shift from "love" to CLOVE.
As you'd expect from either of these constructors, there's plenty of lively fill—there's KATE MOSS, who could walk on EGGSHELLS, plus a GHOST SHIP and RABELAIS. And the clues sparkle, too. I was partial to [Oblivious beneficiaries] for INGRATES; hockey's St. Louis [Blues scores] for GOALS; [Bldg. that's not well-attended?] for HOSP., which is attended by the unwell; ["A waking dream," according to Aristotle] for HOPE; and [Common or Juvenile] for RAPPER. Two coin answers work together: U.S. MINT is clued with [It makes cents] and SPECIE means [Coined money]. I never think of the LENTIL as a [Soup seed] but rather as a bean, though I guess the clue is botanically sound.
I'm surprised to see both EATS (27A: [Has wings, say]—a terrific clue even if you don't like hot wings) and ATE IT (123A: [Suffered defeat, slangily]) in the same grid.
The two answers most in need of a lot of crossing answers were ATLI and CAMISE. The latter is a [Loose-fitting shirt]—I just saw BLOUSE clued that way quite recently, and while I know chemise and camisole, CAMISE was not in my vocabulary. ATLI is an old-school crossword answer, but the clue, [Brynhildr's brother, in myth], wasn't helping me one bit.
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
Ven I vas doing zis puzzle, I started talking in my head mit a German accent. The theme changes initial W sounds to Vs in familiar phrases or vords:
• 18A. Wheelchair becomes VEAL CHAIR, or [Seat for eating scaloppine?].
• 23A. [Tool for a dueling snake?] is a VIPRE BLADE (wiper blade).
• 36A. [What Tarzan becomes after years of swinging?] is a VINE (wine) CONNOISSEUR. The trickiest part of that one is remembering how to spell CONNOISSEUR, isn't it? Better than having a VINE TASTING.
• 49A. VAIN NEWTON joins Isaac Newton to Wayne Newton. The clue's [Egotistical describer of laws of motion?].
• 55A. [Paleontologist's ski resort discoveries?] are VAIL BONES. Whalebones are those stiff stays in corsets.
Smooth and easy, a perfect Tuesday puzzle. The grid is gussied up with long fill like NEON TETRA, SLOWPOKE, CELLPHONE, and LAKE ERIE. Not a lot else to say about it.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Dirty Words"
Quick review here.
Theme = GROUCHO quote, WOMEN SHOULD / BE OBSCENE / AND NOT HEARD. Short quote, leaves room in the puzzle for good stuff.
Good fill = The late Captain LOU ALBANO (I knew him from the Cyndi Lauper video), THE STICKS (same length and last 3 letters as BOONDOCKS, whoops), ED HARRIS, Fred WILLARD and FREDDIE Mercury. Not sure if Saddam HUSSEIN in the Idi Amin slot is gutsy fill or terrible. I like LESBIAN as fill, but could do without the male-centric clue, [She's just not that into you (maybe)].
Favorite clues = [Prefix with cache] stumped me until crossings gave me GEO, as in the trendy geocaching. STATUES? [They may be busts]. Not crazy about LAW CASE as an answer, but the clue, [Mason's job], had me thinking of stonemasons and not Perry Mason. [Miller of note] is STEVE Miller, '70s AM radio mainstay; I guess the "of note" hints at his music but I was thinking of more traditionally notable people and getting nowhere. [Robin hood?] is the TREE its nest is in. Oh! And this one: [They're from Mars] clues M AND M'S. Cute.
October 01, 2009
Friday, 10/2/09
NYT 5:10
CHE 4:46
LAT 3:17
CS untimed
BEQ it's a long story
WSJ 6:44
Check out the previous post for a link to Patrick Blindauer's new crossword project (and a free puzzle of Fridayish difficulty).
Brad Wilber's New York Times crossword
Brad WIlber's back with a six-pack of 11s and a six-pack of 10s in a smooth crossword. The highlights...in a bit. A thunderstorm's worrying my son at the moment. Back soon.
Okay, then. Favorite fill and clues:
Less familiar things in this puzzle:
Pretty much a standard Friday level of difficulty, no? Just enough challenge without being too easy or too hard.
Updated Friday morning:
Stella Daily & Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle,"Hello Kitty"—Janie's review
I confess. That image at the left is the "Hello Kitty" I was secretly hoping for. Still, Stella and Bruce do a fine job giving us four phrases and one name whose first word can follow "kitty," thus producing a whole new phrase. And there's lots of fine non-theme as well to keep this puzzle lively. First things first:
In the non-theme department, as promised, there are some real beauts, most notably those symmetrical tens: LOVERS' LANE [Place for makeout sessions] and WISECRACKS [Wit-filled words]. It seems to me that another [Place for makeout sessions] might be that divine DIVAN [Place to recline]. And although RED has been clued as [Visibly embarrassed], I was taken with the "D" it shares with DIVAN, and keep seeing the fill as RED DIVAN.
That DIVAN really is a multifunctional piece, too. For anyone who TIRES [Runs out of gas], what could be better? Hopefully SLEEP [Ambien user's goal] will come easily, but if not, well, "better living through chemistry" is a phrase that comes to mind...
Back to WISECRACKS. I usually think of these as being more flip than "wit-filled"—but sometimes flip remarks can also be witty. Someone who cracks wise or even [Delivers a sassy retort] is someone who ZINGS. Cyrano de Bergerac would be a classic example of someone who could deliver the wittiest of zingers. Some of these quotes may serve to illustrate.
On the topic of language, there's also [Colorful language, sometimes] for SLANG (e.g., that [Total bore]/SNOOZE combo)—preceded by its complementary clue [Colorful card game] for UNO and the reminder of its bright, primary(-ish) color-wheel playing cards. Then there's the tricky language we find in some of the cluing: [Plies the needle]? That's SEWS. [Creates a chair, perhaps]? ENDOWS. Clever. I think my favorite clues, though, are [Bride's handful] for NOSEGAY (anyone else first think IN-LAWS?) and the almost redundant sounding [Tiny time unit, for short] for NSEC. Don't ask why, I just find that one "cute."
Janie, NSEC isn't "cute"! It's insistently "meh," in fact.
Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme entries change second words that start with R- into CR- words. The first one I filled in was 27A: PUNK CROCK, or [Small-time hood's pottery?], where "punk rock" and "punk crock" sound quite similar, so I figured the others would also have first words ending with the "k" sound. 'Twas not to be. The others are 20A: MILITARY CRANK ([Grouch in the army?]—I prefer my grouches in trash cans on Sesame Street), 36A: HEAT CRASH ([Accident in a qualifying race?]), 47A: HEAD CREST ([Family insignia for designer Edith?]), and 54A: EXCHANGE CRATE ([Jalopy used as a trade-in?]). I love "jalopy."
An olio of other stuff:
Gary Steinmehl's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Round Table"
Yay! The CHE puzzle bearing today's date is on the Chronicle's website today! (Link at top of post.) Get this: A themed Friday puzzle that made me think. With the New York Sun's disappearance a year ago and the easing up of the L.A. Times crossword, Steinmehl's puzzle was a welcome Friday-morning find.
The theme features people from the Algonquin Round Table—Dorothy PARKER, Robert BENCHLEY, Edna FERBER, and Robert SHERWOOD sit around the edges of the big circle of circled squares, which aptly spell out THE VICIOUS CIRCLE.
Tough fill abounds. HETAERA is a [Courtesan of ancient Greece]. HENAN is the [Chinese province that was the center of the Shang dynasty]. Poet James THOMSON is clued as ["Rule Brittania" lyricist James], but the title is flubbed in the clue—it's punctuated and spelled like this: Rule, Britannia! (That's the work, of course, composed by crosswordese composer ARNE.) Spanish missionary, old-time actress VERNA Bloom, [Sea-lily appendages] with the cloud name CIRRI—there's plenty of challenging fill and clues in this puzzle.
Randolph Ross's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Puzzle 5.O"
Each theme entry has five Os in it (and no other vowels, save Y), but some of them aren't "in the language" phrases that merit their appearance in a crossword grid. HOOK OR CROOK? Without the "by" before each noun, what is this? BOWL OF DOG FOOD? NOT FOOLPROOF? GO ON TOO LONG? I say "no, no, no, no, no" to those four. Much better are SHOOP SHOOP SONG, VOODOO DOLL, DOOR TO DOOR, and the BOOK OF MORMON. I'm torn on "BOY, OH BOY, OH BOY" and "BLOODY GOOD SHOW." The latter Googles up OK, but it makes me think of bloody show and mucus plugs.
The solving experience was further dampened by fill like REWEAR, SHOERS and a FLAYER, NO ONE'S, SNEERY, NON-PROS, and assorted abbreviations. I just didn't find the entertainment I was hoping for. Oh, well.
Updated Friday afternoon:
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Sorry, Wrong Number: Nope, not nouns"
Okay, I've gotta quit trying Brendan's easy puzzles with Down clues only. The combination of fill that isn't the same ol', same ol' and twisty clues means that holy cats, the puzzle is no fun with just the Downs. I ended up using some Acrosses to iron things out. If you don't know JA RULE's oeuvre and MCQ and STIED and WOWIE don't come readily to mind as possibilities, you're probably not going to be happy working off of half the clues.
Yesterday, Brendan gathered theme material via Twitter and Facebook crowdsourcing, asking people to think of verbs that look like violations of irregular plurals. E.g., loaves of bread vs. the verb loafs. But...the theme entries are clued as straightforward verb phrases, so the ties that bind the theme are largely absent from the puzzle itself. The puzzle's subtitle is "Nope, not nouns," but the theme clues have absolutely nothing to do with the nouns. So what we have here is a "huh, these words all share a halfway interesting trait, that they could double as incorrect plurals, except that they're used correctly as verbs so that's beside the point" theme.
Who is this [Feminist Russell] named DORA? Dora Black married Bertrand Russell. She supported birth control back in the 1920s, was polyamorous, and was a peace activist. Good to know.
September 17, 2009
Friday, 9/18/09
BEQ 6:22
NYT 4:20
LAT 3:02
CS untimed
CHE (?) tba
WSJ 7:30
I just got back from a lovely dinner with a few crosswordy friends—Gary Krist, his wife Elizabeth (a recent convert to the Monday NYT puzzle!), and Marty Howard. We ate at the Park Grill in Millennium Park, beneath the Bean—great location, excellent food. I enjoyed a quartino (250 ml) of Grüner Veltliner and arrived home ready for the Friday NYT crossword.
Charles Gersch's New York Times crossword
In this 72-word themeless, the three 15-letter entries all begin with IN-, which ties things together nicely. Not that themeless crosswords need to be wrapped with a bow like that, but it's a nice touch. This is the second-to-last day of Half-Century Puzzlemaker's Week, and Gersch demonstrates that he hasn't lost a step in the 65 (!!) years he's been constructing crosswords. The Notepad tells us he "had his first crossword published on February 21, 1944, when he was 13, in the New York Herald Tribune. He made his Times debut in 1951." The Monday to Thursday puzzles this week all had clear signs that the constructors hailed from an earlier era, but this baby? It was pretty smooth.
Clues and answers of note:
So, this is my favorite NYT puzzle so far this week. I wonder who's in store for us tomorrow.
Updated Friday morningL
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Hoax Folks"—Janie's review
GROANS. They're not only [Haunted house noises]. They're the sound of solvers everywhere in the presence of PUNS [Many Groucho Marx quips]. The day before yesterday, Randy Ross clued pun as [Something that may not be intended]. Patrick's theme fill today has four of 'em, and I can safely say every one was definitely intended. He's taken the first name of each of four celebs and adapted it to his purpose, changing said name into a synonym for "hoax." Besides the shameless constructor (whose AWEsome grid puts PUNS and GROANS in the same column), the guilty parties are:
everybody's favorite indispensable gal-Friday (on The DVD Show) with co-star Morey Amsterdam. And (in those pre-GEL days) that trademark bow in her hair. (A [Respectful bow], on the other hand, is a SALAAM...)
Did you know that a flock of QUAILs is a [...covey]? I didn't. But James (Inside the Actors' Studio) Lipton years ago wrote a book that has just such information. An Exaltation of Larks looks to be a word-lover's delight.
Although I'd read D'Artagnan in high school, I did not remember ATHOS as the [Oldest Musketeer]. But given that Porthos and Aramis have too many letters in their names anyway, it was not too difficult to figure this one out!
And another bit of new information for me was that GAFF is the word for a [Handled hook] such as fishermen use to land large fish, or telephone and electric line workers use as a climbing aid.
With all that I didn't know today, being able suss out such fill as LICENSES [Items in hunters' wallets], BIOLOGIC [Natural medical product, such a s serum] and SQUADRON [Military flight formation], and to make use of such gimmes as STYX [Hades river] or EACH [Every's partner] were [Beneficial surprises] GODSENDS for this solver.
And apropos of nothing else, when you [Make a meal of] something you FEED ON it. If you adhere to a [Vegetarian credo], however, you say "NO MEAT!"
Just got back from the gym and second breakfast (IHOP!), so it's late and there are many puzzles. Forgive the brevity.
Jack McInturff's Los Angeles Times crossword
Let me refer you to Rex's L.A. Crossword Confidential post for a deeper look at today's puzzle. Here's what I said over there in the comments:
I liked the theme better than Rex did. Yep, it was no more than Wednesday difficulty, tops. Liked the intersection of ATHEIST (though I rebut the accuracy of the saying referenced in the clue) of DEISM. Kinda dug the overall European vibe, with German GRAF crossing GRAZ; Italian San REMO and ROME (anagrams!), a Roman road ITER (though ROME + [Roman road] shouldn't be in the same puzzle), and Il DUCE; Ukraine KIEV; and French PIAF.
There was an ALLIS-Chalmers plant a couple miles from where I grew up; my friend's dad worked there 'til he got laid off in the trendy Destruction of American Manufacturing Capacity that picked up speed in the '80s.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Friday"
Yay! A double-themeless week from Brendan! As he notes in his blog post, he broke the rule that limits themelesses to 72 words because an extra pair of black squares provided better fill. Hey, I'm OK with that. A boring themeless with 74 words is not worth it, but this one was pretty good. Favorite answer: TEACHABLE MOMENT, or [Skip Gates incident, e.g.]. Terrific entry, that. Plus JIM PALMER of underwear fame crossing the Beatles' LET IT BE, an exclamatory "YOU WHAT?!?", the WAZOO clued as [Anus] (slangily!), KLEENEX—the runners-up to TEACHABLE MOMENT.
Also nice: The satiny-smooth triple-stacked 15s in the middle are crossed by seven answers of 7 to 9 letters for some lovely interlock.
Upper right corner damn near killed me. I couldn't get anything in it for the longest time and then things finally started to emerge and boom, it's done, and there wasn't anything in it that was unfair. I do like a crossword that makes me feel like I really used my brain.
Daniel Rowe's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Queue & A"
I thought this might be a debut puzzle so I Googled Daniel Rowe's name and found via his Twitter feed that (a) this is indeed his debut and (b) today is his birthday. So, happy birthday and congrats!
The theme takes eight two-word phrases in which the first word can also be synonymous with "series" or "queue," inserts OF between the words, and clues the resulting phrases by way of the series of [second word] things. Like so: 56A is [Kidney, jelly, coffee], a STRING OF BEANS, and string beans is a familiar term. List servers handle those e-mail subscription discussion groups, and a LIST OF SERVERS is [Acolyte, tennis player, waiter]. I kinda like the all-names BLOCK OF BUSTERS, [Brown, Crabbe, Keaton]. And so it goes.
In the fill, highlights include GYM RAT, GROUCHO, LUNCHTIME, and RUNNER-UP. Favorite clue: [Language that gave us "berserk"] for NORSE. That one's my favorite because, well, etymology rocks, plus there's a cashier at my local Walgreens who is overly chatty with customers and once told me he was a berserker.
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: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!
