Tuesday, 1/13

Jonesin' 4:25
Sun 4:11
LAT 3:12
NYT 2:39

(updated at 10:30 Tuesday morning)

Dan Kantor and Jay Kaskel's New York Times crossword noshes on some MIXED NUTS for a theme. About a year ago, there was another NYT puzzle with mixed nuts, featuring anagrammed nut names. This time around, NUTS is anagrammed into assorted letter sequences that appear inside longer phrases, in the circled squares:

• I love AUNT SELMA, who is [Marge's sister, to Bart Simpson]. Mind you, I don't know which one is Patty and which one is Selma, but does it matter?
  
• SIGHT UNSEEN is [Not a good way to buy a car]. For a brief geeky moment, seeing TUNS in the circled squares made me hope the theme involved obscure units of measure known best by crossworders.
  
• NO GUTS, NO GLORY is the [Risk-taker's credo]. I'll bet that's not actually true. I bet there are some gutless people who managed to reap some glory anyway.
  
• The MIDNIGHT SUN is a [Seasonal Arctic phenomenon].
  

The theme concept doesn't excite me, but the execution is terrific anyway. "Four phrases with some permutation of the letters NUTS in them" sounds like a lifeless concept, but these four phrases pack a lot of SALSA ([Tortilla chip dip]) in them and make it all work. Assorted other entries:

• That [French river valley with many chateaux] is the LOIRE.
  
• [Shout at a soccer game] can be GOAL or, of course, "Olé, olé, olé, olé." Or south of the border, "gol" or "goooooooooool."
  
• An Old English word for a [Crucifix] or cross is ROOD. Did you ever read "The Dream of the Rood," the Anglo-Saxon poem?
  
• [Outback runner] and [Outback hopper] are EMU and KANGAROO, respectively.
  
• URSI, or [Bears: Lat.], does not show up often in crosswords. Anyone try to plug in URSA at [___ Minor] instead of ASIA despite the other Latin bear?
  

I know a lot of you like to get the jump on the Sun crossword. You may notice a couple blank spots on the Sun calendar page of puzzle downloads. The 1/15 puzzle is available only in PDF form, via the calendar on the right side of the page at Cruciverb. The 1/23 puzzle will be made available that day after the Oscar nominations are out. Returning to the present, the 1/13 puzzle is by editor Peter Gordon (a.k.a. Ogden Porter), and the "Oys of Yiddish" are the groans you may let out when you encounter the puns in the theme. No groans here, though—the "turn S-words into Yiddish SCH-words" theme was fun, and Peter saved the best one for the end. First, you've got your BATTING SCHLUMPS, clued as [Slovenly hitters?]. Sounds like a baseball fan's had too many beers, no? Then there's SCHMEAR CAMPAIGN, a [Set of ads for cream cheese?]. And the all-star, SCHLEPPED AROUND, plays on "slept around" and gets clued as [Carried?].

I'm surprised to learn that there was ever an OREO Fun Barbie doll. Top-notch fill all the way around in this Sun puzzle, from AM RADIO and the SUN BELT to CRAYOLA, "I'M GOOD," and HARLEM.

Updated:

Gail Grabowski's LA Times crossword has a "beautiful" theme—each of the long Across answers begins with a synonym for that word.
An ATTRACTIVE DEAL is a [Temptation for a business exec].
[Getting on in years] is BECOMING OLD.
A good [Chunk of change] is a PRETTY PENNY.
FETCHING STICKS is [Fun for Fido], but British vets say it's dangerous.
I don't think all the theme entries quite make it as stand-alone phrases. For example, playing fetch works better, but in this theme, the beautiful words come at the beginning. EMOTE is clued as a [Director's cry to an underactor?]. I recently read a couple articles that used the word. In one case, emoting was a good thing for a singer to do. In the other, when he felt the actors were going too far, a director cried "Emote! Emote!" to mock them into reeling it in a bit. There are several numbers hanging out in this grid: one [Till compartment] is TENS, which at first I thought would be ONES, but ONE is a few words away, clued as [Ace's value, at times]. There's also a TRIO, or [Small jazz combo], and an [Egg purchase] of a DOZEN. Yesterday, I bought my first half-dozen eggs, which I should've started long ago because I seldom finish a dozen before they're long expired. The nautical content doesn't goad me by skewing obscure, for which I'm grateful; there's just a CHART, or [Marine map], and STERN, or [Back on the ocean?]. The cruise ship I sailed on last month labeled the ends "forward" and "aft"—no bow or STERN in sight.

Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "A New Beginning," rings in 2009 by finding the year (in Roman numerals) strewn throughout four phrases. The letters in MMIX (68-Across) appear in order (but not consecutively) in these answers:

• CEMENT MIXER is a [Construction site turner]. Technically, we're probably supposed to call it a concrete mixer since cement is but one ingredient in concrete, but I think most of us call it a CEMENT MIXER anyway.
  
• METAL MAILBOX is a [Heavy-duty letter holder]. Is this a "thing," a stand-alone concept?
  
• MARIO LEMIEUX is the [NHL Hall-of-Famer who co-owns the Pittsburgh Penguins].
  
• AMENDMENT IX uses the IX to mean 9 this time. It's clued [Part of the Bil of RIghts that addresses the Constitution itself].
  

I took a guess that [Boxer Ingemar Johansson's nickname] was the inferrable INGO because that's the only way I was getting that G. The crossing is ARGUIDOS, the [Portuguese term meaning "suspects," brought up in the 2007 Madeleine McCann disappearance case] that I don't recall seeing before even though I was reading the papers in England for two weeks when that story was fresh. I can easily forgive ARGUIDOS from making me use all eight crossings because of what it's sandwiched between: MAN-BOOBS ([Features of some fat guys, at a pool]) is off to a good start in the contest for my favorite crossword answer of the year, and the colloquial GOT NEXT ([Placed dibs on, as in a street basketball game]) is good, too. Both are unlikely to populate a daily newspaper's crossword, and I appreciate the sassy freshness that the indie puzzles can offer. (Does it ruin it, calling it "sassy freshness"?) Other fill I liked: AM-SCRAY, Gustav KLIMT, the SEX WAX surfwax brand name, and pop-culture names like KUMAR and PEREZ Hilton. Oh, and DITKA clued as ["Bill Swerski's Superfans" idol, on "SNL"]. Here's a video clip of that for you. The psyche of a Chicago sports fan, the Chicago accents, the sausage and heart attacks—it's all rendered in accurate splendor.

Read More...

Summary only...

Wednesday, 4/9

NYS 4:59
NYT 3:42
LAT 3:16
CS 3:09

It's Tuesday, and it's trivia night. A friend of mine will be joining the group tonight for the second time—she felt like she didn't contribute that other time, but having another person way on this side of age 25 has got to help, right? I don't know how much help I'll be, though—I'm all yawny and felt very sleepy while solving the following crossword just now.

Tony Orbach's New York Sun crossword, "Done to a T," felt hard to me, but either it's a bit harder than usual for a Wednesday Sun (for which my average solving time is 4:46) or tiredness is knocking me down a peg. I'm not sure this is the best description of the theme: Phrases starting with __ND words become phrases starting with __NT words, and the clues reflect the new word's meaning. A trendsetter is one thing, but a TRENT SETTER would be an [Engliish water dog?],, and the phrase "...and counting" turns into entomological ANT COUNTING. Who knew that [Lucia's brother in "Lucia di Lammermoor"] was named ENRICO? Or that ALEX HALEY wrote a book called A Different Kind of Christmas? I hadn't made sense out of [Bedroom closet community?], and ended up filling in NARNIA strictly through the crossings—didn't even see the answer until just now. Favorite clue: [Notable two-dimensional performer?] for TV STAR.

Updated Tuesday night:

Huzzah! We won trivia! I'm not quite sure how we won with so few points, but apparently the other teams recalled fewer answers. My key contributions were knowing the name of Perot's '92 running mate (and I swear he also had a '96 running mate who was included in a themeless crossword recently, and I'd never heard of him and have again forgotten his name) and the country where Mother Teresa was born.

The New York Times crossword is a joint production from Daniel Kantor and Jay Kaskel. The very last letter I typed in was supposed to be a D (in DRUM), but I typed an adjacent S instead (and just now, I typed "asjacent" at first). In searching for the typo after getting the "incorrect" message, of course I started scanning the grid at 1-Across. Nothing like a 20-second typo search to enhance one's solving time. But the crossword's theme was kinda funny—WHINE AND DINE describes the kvetchy complaints a dissatisfied restaurant patron might have. For 20- and 47-Across, the snarkiest remarks are in the clues, with the straightforward equivalents in the grid (e.g., MY SOUP IS COLD is direct, where ["I asked for tomato bisque, not gazpacho!"] is the bitchy snipe. 28-Across takes the opposite tack, with ARE WE INVISIBLE being more oblique than ["Has our waiter even made eye contact?"]. Favorite clues and answers: [Language of the Hindustan Express] for URDU; ATM FEE, or [Money for money]; DADDY-O ([Pops]); and [Pal] for both BUB and BRO (MAC must have been busy).

Updated:

Donna Levin's LA Times crossword features four two-word phrases that rhyme with Alice, with four different ways of spelling that cluster of sounds. George Halas, a phallus, and callous are feeling a bit put out that the grid was not able to accommodate more than the other four. The [Renata Tebaldi rival] is MARIA CALLAS, the [Jazz at Lincoln Center director] is WYNTON MARSALIS, [Winston Churchill's ancestral home] was BLENHEIM PALACE, and the [Last Supper wine vessel] was a HOLY CHALICE.

Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy puzzle is called "How Do You Stand?" and "positions" are the theme. Each theme entry is both a word made of a prefix + position and a short word followed by the word position. For example, a [Dining room chair] is a SUP POSITION, and supposition is a word (not alluded to in the clue).

Read More...

Summary only...