BEQ 5:16
LA 3:16
NYT 2:42
CS untimed
Mark Feldman's New York Times crossword
Today's NYT theme is MAGAZINE READERS, and three familiar phrases (clued straightforwardly) could be reinterpreted to mean "a fan of a particular magazine." Oh, and there's a fourth phrase, markedly less familiar, that plays the same game:
Glancing over the grid to see what else is in the puzzle, I laughed when I noticed the nexus between CARESS and ASS ([Nincompoop]). It's a nice touch that GOES EASY slips right in there too.
Absolute best answer in the fill: AL CAPONE, clued as [Gangster a k a Scarface]. And the worst: TIN ORE, or [Cassiterite]:
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost TIN ORE!'
Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'
Updated Monday morning:
Gail Grabowski's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Full of Flaws"—Janie's review
HUH? Those four theme-phrases may contain an "imperfection" at the end, but truly—this is one polished puzzle. Let me not POSTPONE pointing out its strengths:
If you're traveling around in your MOTOR HOME [Recreational vehicle], it might be a good idea to carry a MAP or two. As a [Tourist's aid] it sure makes a reliable alternative to a gps system... And if you don't have a full-blown (gas-guzzling...) motor home, consider what this enterprising couple did, traveling across country in their Toyota minivan.
I enjoyed seeing HATTER clued as [Mad acquaintance of Alice], especially as it sent me back to the source material. I was hoping there were cakes with ICING at the table. But no... only tea. And bread and butter. If you haven't looked at the Carroll in a while, here's a link to "A Mad Tea-Party" from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. "Mad" only begins to describe its brilliance.
Some word-playful clue/fill combos I especially liked: [Splits to form a bond]/ELOPES, [Duel-purpose equipment]/EPÉES, and [Gp. with brass]/ORCH.
Finally, ORAL is a [Kind of testimony]. Would that include "MEW" [Cry from a litter] or "ARF-ARF!" [Sounds from a Shih Tzu] (or even a SKYE [Kind of terrier], or "MAA" [Cry from a calf]? I suppose that a ROI [Lyon king] could roar as well as a "lion king'; and what does the AMEBA have to say for itself? ("HA-HA-HA!"... ["Ver-r-ry funny!"].) (IMO...)
Mel Rosen's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme entries begin with UP, UP, and AND AWAY:
I really don't know what the clue for 13D is doing there. With all the ways to clue DISK, [Floppy with data] should have been retired several years ago.
The highlights in the fill are ODE TO JOY and ENCUMBER. Then there's PESTY ([Annoying, like a kid brother]), which is a much clunkier word than PESKY. UNSKILLFUL ([Not practiced]) also felt, well, unskillful. Its opposite in the grid is PAIRED WITH ([Assigned as the partner of, as in dance class]), which is on the dry side—when there are 10-letter answers in the fill, I like them to spice up the puzzle, but these ones left me cold. The shorter fill has such E words as ELY, ELKO, ELBA, and ESSO, as well as APER, OLEO, DII, AAA, EQUI-, and partial IT MAY.
At least there's Brendan's "Themeless Monday" to pull me out of the Monday crossword doldrums.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
I love the three showiest answers—SIR MIX-A-LOT, the POPEMOBILE, and GOOGLE MAPS. I love Google Maps, too, except that it's convinced that the driveway by my kid's school is actually a road called U.S. Public Health Hospital—apparently decades ago, before there was a school there, it was the site of a hospital. Sometimes Google wants me to drive on it to take a crazily indirect route to Lake Shore Drive. Why is there no button to click that says "hello, Google, this is crazy"?
Aside from those three fantastic entries, I also liked IRISH ALE and RANGEROVER, but lots of the shorter fill [Rankled] (FESTERED). OROS and OPAH, ISER and OLAV, TARE and E. LEE, and the abbrevs/prefixes ATMO, ANS, SCH, and SYST. Also, I poked around Wikipedia and I don't think IRANIS are [Azeri speakers]; some Iranians are Azeri speakers, but the Iranis appear to be Zoroastrians in India and Pakistan who speak Dari. IRANI ≠ Iranian.
September 20, 2009
Monday, 9/21/09
September 30, 2008
Wednesday, 10/1
Sun 4:36
CS 3:48
NYT 3:12
LAT 3:09
(updated at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday)
Here's the word from Peter Gordon tonight:
The Sun may have set, but not the crossword. I had many puzzles in the pipeline when the paper folded, so I will be publishing them online. Go to cruciverb.com sometime this weekend to find out where to get them. There will be 108 puzzles starting with October 1 and running until February 27. The cost will be $12* for all 108 of them. I'm hoping to get over 2000 subscribers so that I can pay the authors their fees and still make it worth my time. If I don't get that by January, then it will stop on February 27. If I do, then it can go on indefinitely. So spread the word!
For the October 1, 2, and 3 puzzles, they're still online at the Sun's website, so you can get those three the way you've always been getting them. (If that doesn't work, go to www.fleetingimage.com/wij/xyzzy/08-nys-puz.html and click on the appropriate date.)
*Or $12.67 to cover the Paypal transaction fee.
The Sun newspaper didn't publish on holidays, but the newspaper-free crossword will publish five days a week, Monday through Friday.
I liked Barry Boone's New York Times crossword just fine even before I carried out the theme instructions and played CONNECT THE DOTS (and did so ALPHABETICALLY). The central theme entry is NO PLACE LIKE HOME, and the picture you make by connecting A to B to C...and so on through L is of a basic house with a chimney on the side of the roof. Cute! If you ever drew a house in grade school, you can probably visualize this puzzle's house without drawing lines between the letters on a hard copy.The fill didn't seem overly constrained despite the specific letters in specific spots in near proximity to the theme entries. My favorite parts (and random thoughts that have little to do with this crossword):
- [Kind of cuisine in which onions, bell peppers and celery are the "holy trinity"] is CAJUN. I tend to like informative trivia clues.
- I hadn't read the Langston Hughes poem "I, TOO" even though I've seen it in crossword clues before. This time, the clue was [Hughes poem with the line "They send me to eat in the kitchen"], and that teaser sent me in search of the poem. The rest of the lines are here. I think Hughes (d. 1967) would have liked Obama's candidacy.
- [Introductory course, often] is SALAD. Shouldn't all 100-level courses at colleges be called soup or salad courses?
- A new (?) clue for ALOE: [Cleopatra used it as a beauty lotion].
- One [Way to find your way: Abbr.] is by using GPS. I think my husband and I are getting GPS for ourselves this Christmas.
- A [Big name in kitchen gadgets] is OXO. Those clever bastards also make a great shower caddy, which I've had for a week.
- I like the word CAVIL, clued with [Quibble]. Carping, nitpicking—they're all at the same party.
- Euro car corner! [German car] AUDI meets [Russian car] LADA. I saw junky old Ladas in Prague in '97.
- This week, who doesn't appreciate the FDIC? It's a [Bank protector, for short].
- SHOO-IN is a [Sure thing].
- [Gardeners may work on them] refers to their KNEES. Orthopedists may also work on the gardeners' knees.
- Old-school geography! Dhaka used to be transliterated as DACCA. It's [Bangladesh's capital, old-style].
- [Athlete who's not dashing?] is a MILER. The Chicago marathon is October 12—Mr. Fiend and I will be spectating at the finish line for a change. The Olympic gold medalist in the women's marathon will be competing here in Chicago, so it should be another good race.
Dave Tuller's 15x16 Sun crossword, "Genre Artists," adds six musical performers to the playlist because their names ends with a genre of music:- PANIC AT THE DISCO is the ["A Fever You Can't Sweat Out" band].
- KID ROCK is one [Singer once married to Pamela Anderson].
- ["Nights in White Satin" band, with "the"] is MOODY BLUES.
- Scottish nationalist band BIG COUNTRY is clued as [Stuart Adamson's band].
- IGGY POP is called ["The Godfather of Punk"].
- I've never heard of the ["Shattered Dreams" band] JOHNNY HATES JAZZ. Let's see... Their biggest hit came in 1987, when I was ensconced in college and obligated not to listen to top-40 music.
David Soul is heartbroken that there was no room in this theme for him, even though his "Don't Give Up on Us" was a #1 hit in the '70s. DId you know David Soul is now a British citizen and acts on stage in the West End? I sure didn't before I looked up his Wikipedia bio.
Some of the fill in this crossword spins a line of dialogue: "YOU DIG BRUNETS, BATGIRL?" Alas, I can't make any other sentences as good as that one from the fill.
Updated:
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword, "Huh? (Olympics Division)," takes as its theme a quip that splits into three 13-letter pieces: NO ONE HANDS YOU / A GOLD MEDAL ON A / SILVER PLATTER. At the same time, nobody is bronzing your baby shoes, either. I slowed myself down a bit here by trying FEIGNING instead of FEINTING for [Making a false move]. There were a few apt crossings that leapt out at me while solving. AXL Rose crosses an ice-skating AXEL. The akin SPY and PRY cross at the Y. NADIR and FAKIR, with their unusual consonant-I-R endings, intersect at the I, which could have been an E (FAKER, NADER) with a new pair of clues. TO TERM, as in nine months' pregnant, aptly crosses ENORM. I wasn't wild about [Take off] as the clue for AVIATE, especially with a not-so-well-known AVA ([Marilu's "Evening Shade" role]) crossing it.
Mike Peluso's LA Times crossword has a FAIR (71-Across) theme, with the four long answers beginning with kinds of fairs, so to speak:- [Help-wanted listing] is a JOB OPPORTUNITY. (Job fair.)
- VANITY PLATES are clued with [Players on the game show "Bumper Stumpers" had to figure out what they meant]. A friend of mine recently saw a vanity plate that read CNTPRTY and I hope that one wasn't on the game show. (Vanity Fair.)
- One's STATE OF BEING is the [Physical condition]. (State fair.)
- [One with an array of skills] is a RENAISSANCE MAN (or woman). (Renaissance Fair.)
A solid theme for a Wednesday. There's some intra-puzzle synchronicity today. Abel TASMAN was in the CrosSynergy puzzle, while TASM. is in this LAT, clued with [Hobart is its cap.]. FDIC is in the NYT as well as LAT, clued as [S&L guarantor] this time.
September 28, 2008
Monday, 9/29
Jonesin' 3:10
NYS 2:50
CS 2:46
LAT 2:39
NYT 2:30
So, I petted some stingrays today at Brookfield Zoo. Do you know what their backs feel like? The answer may surprise you. ...I'll give you three guesses.
The striking Inca tern (that's it in the photo) dwells in the Humboldt penguin exhibit. So now I'm contemplating a lame crossword theme consisting of phrases made of words that are common crossword fill—but I don't know if the Inca tern has much company in that category. If only there were a famous aria about oleo, or an erne native to the Aral Sea.
Another theme idea came to mind today. Add -er to the classic line from All That Jazz and you get "IT'S SHOWER TIME, FOLKS!" Let's see...what else could that theme have? With an added -r, you get "E.T. phone Homer."
After returning from the zoo, I fired up the ol' New York Times crossword applet—and discovered that three people (deadbydawn Doug, Dan Feyer, and the mysterious zachugly) had cracked the 2:00 barrier. Dang! That's fast. So the pressure was on, and I transposed pairs of letters over and over again in my attempt to be super-fast. I believe this easy Monday puzzle marks Sharon Delorme's constructing debut. What makes this puzzle so easy? Each theme entry consists of the same word twice, so once it's half filled in, you can fill in the rest. Actually, each theme entry contains a pair of heteronyms—spelled the same but pronounced differently (thanks to PhillySolver for the reminder that these are called heteronyms):
I like how this evokes those hard crossword clues in which we're tricked into reading one of these words (or flower) with the wrong pronunciation and meaning—for example, [Prominent tower] for AAA. Speaking of towing, I wonder if TOWIN shouldn't have been clued as TO WIN rather TOW IN, given the TOWER in the theme. It'd probably be a harder clue, though, and it is Monday, after all. I missed seeing the clue [Drug that's smoked in a pipe] as I filled that corner in with the down clues. I wonder how many solvers put in CRACK (marveling that the Gray Lady would put the crack pipe in the crossword puzzle) and mucked things up for themselves, since the answer is the old-school OPIUM.
Mark Feldman's New York Sun crossword may or may not be the final crossword published in that newspaper, which may or may not be facing imminent demise. The "Avian Anatomy" theme groups five phrases that consist of a kind of bird + a part of the body:
This crossword is notable for its unusual wide-open white spaces in what's still a fairly easy crossword. Two corners have heaps of 6-letter answers, and the other two have 7- and 8-letter answers running alongside one another. Thank goodness the [11th-century French saint] THEOBALD has gettable crossings, eh? That answer was assuredly not on the tip of my mental tongue.
Updated:
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Middle Distance," hides a small distance (INCH, or 54-Down) inside three theme entries. An [Important media staffer] is the EDITOR IN CHIEF. A [Language spoken around Beijing] is MANDARIN CHINESE. And [The Andes, for instance] are a MOUNTAIN CHAIN. It's Monday, so it's time for a short tutorial on those words that are far better known to regular crossword solvers than to most others. An ITER is a [Road that led to Rome]; I haven't seen this one lately, but it's not just a Latin word for a road, it's also an anatomical passageway. SERE means [Drought-ridden]; ARID is more accessible and I think it appears in more crosswords, but SERE will always return so you need to know it. A [Small river island] is an AIT. The termly is chiefly British, sure, but it does show up in plenty of American crosswords. (The other little-known 3-letter river geography term is ria, a long, narrow coastal inlet.) An IMARET is the [Istanbul inn]; it's more often clued as a Turkish inn or hostel. And a EWER is a [Washstand jug]. Other common clues for EWER include [Water pitcher], [Decorative pitcher], and [Still-life subject]. Commit these oddball words to memory and you'll have a new batch of instant gimmes to help you out with future crosswords.
Samantha Wine's LA Times crossword invites famous people to a "house" party—the five theme entries are people (one fictional) whose last names are roughly synonymous with "house." There's GREGORY HOUSE, of course, the [TV doctor played by Hugh Laurie]. [Nixon's 1960 running mate] was HENRY CABOT LODGE, which sounds like a relatively stodgy place to vacation. MARY KAY PLACE is ["The Big Chill" actress] who played Meg, the single woman who wanted to get pregnant; before that, she had a key role on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. IRENE CASTLE was [Vernon's dancing partner], Vernon being Vernon Castle. Read about Irene here—not only did she and Vernon popularize ballroom dancing (Dancing With the Stars, anyone?) almost a century ago, but they traveled with a black orchestra, promoted animal rights, and had an openly lesbian manager. The last theme entry is PANCHO VILLA, the [20th century Mexican revolutionary]. In the puzzle's fill, my favorite clue was [Work up a sweater] for KNIT.
Updated again:
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "You Can Look It Up," spotlights eight words and phrases (6 to 9 letters in length) added to the Oxford English Dictionary in the past eight decades—one for each decade. I was surprised to learn that BEER PONG, the [Drinking game involving cups and a table tennis ball] dates back to 1972. The MOTORBIKE, or [Lightweight two-wheeled vehicle], was added to the OED back in 1944. The newest word in the theme is SUDOKU, just added in 2004. (SUDOKU sits atop ITUNES, which I thought was quite new, but Apple introduced iTunes back in 2001.) The oddest-looking entry is ZTOA, or Z TO A, clued with [From ___ (how some descending lists are sorted)].
September 11, 2008
Friday, 9/12
NYT 5:10
NYS 4:48
LAT 4:42
CHE 4:36
CS 3:22
WSJ 6:23
Natan Last may be a teenager, but his themeless New York Times crossword struck me as indistinguishable from those made by some of my favorite grown-up constructors. The fill was reminiscent of the Nothnagel/Quarfoot flavor of themeless:
Favorite clues: [Nooks for books, maybe] for TYPO (the N and B keys are adjacent); [It holds the line] for a REEL; [Winston Churchill's Rufus, for one] for POODLE; [They know the drill] for DENTISTS; [One with fire power?] for BOSS; [Foot of the Appian Way?] for PES, Latin for "foot" the verb [Keen] for MOURN; and [Pattern sometimes called "Persian pickles"] for PAISLEY. These clues taught me two little bits of trivia.
Tougher clues:
Mark Feldman's New York Sun puzzle wasn't as tough as many Friday Suns. The theme in "How Offensive!" is "phrases that start with offensive positions in football:
This wasn't the sort of theme where I could anticipate upcoming theme entries, on accounta I do not keep a mental list of all the football positions. But the theme occupies an impressive amount of space, and it's executed well enough for me to forgive fill like UPOLU, or the [Samoan island where Robert Louis Stevenson died]. That entry may, in fact, have saved the puzzle, because how many other answers fit the pattern **O*U? Opposite that crazy entry is the COACH of the team. Favorite clue: [Ego maniac?] for FREUD.
Updated:
Three cheers for Patrick Berry's Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle! His "Standardized Test" is going straight into my folder of the best gimmick puzzles of the year. The grid has five sets of standardized test answers, ABCDE, already in place. The Across Lite Notepad contains the multiple-choice questions that correspond to them, and the solver is to fill in the circle for the correct answer. Doing so blacks out that letter—which is appropriate because that letter doesn't belong in the Down answer that crosses it. (The other four multiple-choice answers serve as plain ol' letters in their crossings.) I'm not up on my standardized test trivia, but the letter to black out was clear from the crossings. And then! And then, when you reach the end of the quiz in the Notepad, it says BONUS QUESTION: What group has benefited most from standardized testing? (To find the answer, read the Down entries that intersect the correct answers to the five questions above.) Peter SE( )LLERS includes the noun SELLERS, and with the other words that include the blacked-out answer letters we see the following phrase: SELLERS OF NUMBER TWO PENCILS. As crossword "aha" moments go, that one was delightful. The way the various elements of the theme come together is both surprising and elegant. I like it enough to forgive TOILFUL, or [Like drudge work], which is a word almost never used in native English. From "Peanuts," Sally's pet name for Linus, "Sweet BABOO," is cute. "Peanuts" is so well-known, you'd think BABOO would get a little more play in crosswords. I'm fine with PAU, the [Winter resort in France], because Pau was one of the study-abroad programs available at my college.
Bilie Truitt's LA Times crossword is very forthright and refuses to hem and haw by saying "er": Each theme entry is a phrase that's had the -ER lopped off at the end.
I note a new clue for NGO, not referencing a Vietnamese leader of eld, Ngo Dinh Diem, or the abbreviation for nongovernmental organizations: [IHOP '___: takeout food program], "IHOP 'n Go." [City across the river from Buffalo, N.Y.] is abbreviated FT. ERIE. [Sound heard at the end of day?] stymied me for too long—it's the LONG A vowel sound. [Bay window] is old-school crosswordese: ORIEL. (Not to be confused with the crosswordese basketry willow, OSIER.) The [Long-distance initials] WATS were in use when I was in college in the '80s, but I haven't encountered a WATS line since then.
Maybe there was a file naming/dating slip-up over at CrosSynergy—today's CrosSynergy puzzle via the link at Cruciverb.com is a themeless "Sunday Challenge," but today is Friday. Far be it from me to cast aside an unexpected themeless when one presents itself! This one, by Mel Rosen, seemed strikingly easy for a themeless. When 1-Across (MA AND PA, [The Kettles]) and its crosses practically fill themselves in, it's not the experience I expect to have. Favorite entries:
Other Scrabbly entries include BEJEWELED, QUIZ KID, ZINC WHITE ([Pigment used in cosmetic dentistry]—I never learned this in my tenure at a cosmetic dentistry journal), and KLEPTO. The big mystery word for me was LAAGERS, or [Protected encampments]. Here's the definition, and this page says the Old West "circle the wagons" approach is much the same as a laager.
The Wall Street Journal crossword, "Reel Sex Changes," marks the first time (Whoops, make that the second time—but it's Andrea's first venture into Sunday-sized constructing and I love what she does with that much room for the theme!) Andrea Carla Michaels and Patrick Blindauer have shared a byline. I cottoned to the theme quickly, since [Movie about two good ol' gals foiling Boss Hogg?] evoked The Dukes of Hazzard, and the gals and titular "Sex Changes" pointed the way toward THE DUCHESSES OF HAZZARD COUNTY. In the altered movie titles in the other theme entries, Sir becomes MADAM, Mommie becomes DADDY, Daughter becomes SON, Boys become GIRLS, Brothers become SISTERS, and Men become WOMEN. Surely there are far more male movie title characters than female ones, but this theme gives us a peek at what could be. It's an easy Sunday-sized puzzle, to be sure, but with interesting fill, such as Edgar Allen Poe's ORANGUTAN, Robin Hood's LITTLE JOHN, Pope BENEDICT, MAFIOSI, YWCAS, and FASCISM of the order INSECTA.
September 03, 2008
Thursday, 9/4
NYS untimed (forgot to start the Across Lite timer)
LAT 4:37
NYT 4:20*
CS 3:25
(updated at 1 p.m. Thursday)
Ellen Ripstein sent me a link to tomorrow's letter from the editor of the New York Sun. The newspaper's in danger of folding at the end of the month unless it gets rescued financially. I hope we don't lose the Sun as a crossword publisher because (1) I love the Sun puzzles, which are consistently excellent, entertaining, and challenging; (2) constructors appreciate an outlet that pays fairly well, offers speedy accept/reject decisions, and publishes five puzzles a week; (3) the themed Friday Suns are typically the most innovative and tough themed puzzles available to the general public; (4) there's a themeless puzzle nearly every week; and (5) in a year that already saw Fred Piscop lose his Washington Post editing gig, it would be a shame for Peter Gordon to lose his platform too.
The applet lied to me with Matt Ginsberg's New York Times puzzle. The clock showed 0:03 when it opened, 4:23 when I clicked "done," and 4:35 in the applet standings. I'm calling it an honest 4:20, and you can't stop me. The crossword has long answers that are mere fill, while the theme lurks in five divided entries that look like they're 10 cross-referenced answers. I like this theme, and it's perfectly suited to a Thursday NYT.
Two entries don't look familiar to me—TUKTUK is a [Three-wheeled Indian taxi]? You don't say, Matt! INSTIL means [Impart gradually: Var.], and I don't think I've encountered that variant spelling before. Favorite entries and clues:
Justin Smith's New York Sun crossword, "Rid Iron," felt rather Thursdayish in its difficulty, I think. Usually when I open an Across Lite puzzle, the timer starts running automatically, and I didn't notice that this one's timer was off so I have no idea how long it actually took me to solve the puzzle. The title suggests that the theme entries will get "rid" of "iron," whose chemical symbol is Fe. But no, the title actually points to the football gridiron with its first letter lopped off, and each theme entry is an NFL team with its first letter (after an intact city name) deleted:
In the fill, there are a slew of small things: A PORE is a [Sweat spot], ENS are [Typesetting units], DAHS are [Dashes in a code], PIPS are a [Pair of deuces?] (pips being the doohickeys, like hearts and clubs, on a playing card, as well as dots on dice and dominoes), an ATOM is a [Bohr model depiction], and a PHOTON is a [Light quantum]. Here are the fill and clues I most admired:
Updated:
Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's LA Times puzzle takes as its theme phrases with homonymic words for clues: A [Raise] is an EMPLOYEE'S REWARD. [Rays] are UNITS OF SUNSHINE. And to [Raze] is to LEVEL A STRUCTURE. Some less common answers or difficult clues:
Updated again:
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy puzzle, "CD Collection," gathers six phrases with C.D. initials, four long ones and two short ones in the middle:
I could do without the TAPIR, a [Nocturnal ungulate with a long snout]. My last tapir encounter was in the spring of 2007, and please heed this counsel: If a tapir is facing away from you and there's no glass separating you, do keep your distance. They're prodigious pee-ers.
August 25, 2008
Tuesday, 8/26
Tausig 5:26
NYS 4:10
Onion 4:01
CS 3:17
NYT 3:04
LAT 2:43
(last updated at 7:10 p.m. Tuesday)
Nancy Salomon's New York Times crossword parks itself in the Tuesday puzzle sweet spot. The theme is easy enough—three diverse phrases all clued the same way—there's nothing too obscure muddling it for Tuesday solvers, and a dozen 7- and 8-letter answers freshen the non-theme fill. The three [Rose] answers are the AMERICAN BEAUTY rose, as in the flower; baseball player Pete Rose's nickname, CHARLIE HUSTLE; and the past-tense verb meaning TOOK TO ONE'S FEET.
Clues and answers of note:
Alan Arbesfeld constructed the New York Sun puzzle, "Pick-Me-Ups." The theme answers don't contain bracing tonics; rather, each one is a phrase that picks up a ME, changing the meaning. The six (!) theme entries are as follows:
In the fill, Arbesfeld's crossword includes four X's, which pleases me. The BATON, or [Relay race handoff], is back again. Favorite clues and answers: SIGN HERE is [Words on a sticky note attached to a contract; [Marks with subscript dots] mystified me, but I certainly know what STETS look like; [It might have a certain ring to it] means a bath TUB; [It gets put in a sinkhole] refers to DRANO in a household sink drain; PETER is the name of the [Boy in "The Snowy Day"] by Ezra Jack Keats; and [Like soy sauce] sure as hell means SALTY.
Updated:
Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Class Exercise," serves up an exercise in which you fill in five phrases that start with words that can precede class:
Anyone know ["Cavalleria Rusticana" composer Mascagni]'s first name without crossings? I did not; it's PIETRO. [1107, in old Rome] is MCVII—if only the last I hadn't been in a theme entry, it could have been changed to an E for Fleetwood Mac's Christine and John McVie.
Donna Levin's LA Times crossword hides an archery theme:
I'm not sure if the central entry, ENTAILS, is supposed to join the theme. Cursory research suggests that arrows used in archery have fletching (the feathers), not tails, but typographical arrows may have tails.
Beautiful corners in this grid—two quartets of 7-letter answers stand side by side.
Updated again:
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword for the week, "Dropping E," has naught to do with dropping the drug Ecstasy. Nope. In this Friday-tough puzzle, each of the five theme entries jettisons two E's from assorted spots:
Unusual entries abound:
I only have a couple minutes to blog about Brendan Emmett Quigley's Onion A.V. Club puzzle. The middle theme entry is HELL ON EARTH. The two long theme entries contain EARTH divided among the words in those phrases, WEAR THE TROUSERS and the perfect SORRY TO HEAR THAT. "Where's the HELL?" you ask. Why, it's sitting directly on top of the EART portion of EARTH, that's where. HELL is hiding in 14-Across, SHELL, above the top theme entry, and in MITCHELL at 55-Across. I've circled 'em for you in the grid image.
Weird answers I didn't know:
Apple's ICHAT (or iChat) allows for instant messaging. I rarely use it. Have we seen ICHAT in the grid before?
Time! Cool theme structure, Brendan—it's been a while since I've seen one along these lines.
August 09, 2008
Sunday, 8/10
PI 8:35
BG 7:15
LAT 6:58
NYT 6:39
CS 3:50
second Sunday puzzle, a Patrick Blindauer diagramless—untimed
(post updated at 11 Sunday morning)
Will Nediger's New York Times crossword has an "Inside Jokes" theme, but the inside jokes don't happen to be funny. Rather, embedded within each theme entry are some consecutive circled letters that spell out words roughly synonymous with "joke." (In the applet, the bottom theme entry, 109-Across, is missing its circles where PUN appears.) This sort of theme lacks any sort of trick to figuring out the theme entries, which are clued straightforwardly. Five of the theme entries split the circled word among two words, while the other three hide the "inside jokes" within a single word.
This puzzle, perhaps owing to the literalness of the theme clues, is one of the easiest Sunday Times puzzles I've ever done. (Stella Daily and Howard Barkin have clocked in faster than 6 minutes on this one; yup, it's easy.) Spots that might be a bit more troublesome than others include:
Updated:
First up, my favorite puzzle today, Patrick Blindauer's New York Times diagramless crossword. If you haven't done it but enjoy a good diagramless, go get it. Why do I like this puzzle? The completed grid makes a cute picture, but it's not too tough to figure out because it's still got left/right symmetry. The theme is quite accessible. There are 8- and 9-letter Down answers that make it easier to keep figuring out where the Across answers fit. And the bottom of the grid is packed with 6-letter answers. I'll hide the specifics in white text because I want more of you to solve this puzzle more or less spoiler-free: The theme is E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, with STEVEN SPIELBERG, DREW BARRYMORE, "E.T. PHONE HOME," and REESE'S / PIECES in the grid. The completed grid forms a portrait of E.T., too, and it's hard to draw recognizable pictures using the black squares in a crossword grid. There are 13 or so people's names in the grid, which makes it easier for me but not, I hear, for everyone. IRA and SHORE could have been clued as non-people nouns. And did I mention the cuteness factor of the E.T. picture? Love it!
Mel Rosen's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge" has only 62 answers, 44 of them being 7-letter words or phrases. There are eight 6-letter entries, ten 3-letter words, and no 4- or 5-letter words. Those chunky corners dense with interlocked 7's surely are tough to construct, so there's little space for Scrabbly letters to take hold. That's not to say the grid lacks liveliness—I am fond of the SOS PADS ([Kitchen cleaners]) and HOBBITS ([Tolkien creatures])—but the fill is mostly common words. Hey! You know what that means? Mel didn't turn to obscurities in desperation to fill the grid. I needed the crossings for ALCESTE, the [Gluck opera of 1767], but the other names in the grid include Nelson MANDELA, ORESTES, PADUCAH, Kentucky, ANATOLE France, and the BO'S Derek and Diddley. The least familiar words in the grid are perhaps BIREMES ([Some galleys], as in boats), TISANE ([Herbal brew]), and HALYARD ([Sail hoister]), and those are not akin to, say, the Bolivian river in Friday's USA Today puzzle or the Indian food it crossed (mind you, I like Indian food, but sure as heck didn't recognize what that crossword wanted). Returning focus to the CrosSynergy puzzle, the [Sullivan Award org.] is the AAU, which I also needed crossings for; that's the Amateur Athletic Union. Most of the puzzle, though, is filled with quite ordinary and accessible language, like POP STAR and ENDURED, DUSTMOP and OYSTERS. With more oblique clues, it could've been a lot harder, but the clues were mostly pretty straightforward.
Joy Frank's syndicated Los Angeles Times Sunday puzzle, "Emergency Room Arrivals," adds an ER to each theme entry to alter it:
For me, only one answer was a mystery requiring many crossings—BOW OAR, or [Front rower]. Perhaps this term will be bandied about in coverage of Olympic rowing events. I don't recall seeing XWORD in a crossword before; it's clued as [Brief puzzle?], and there are a couple of crossword blogs that use the shortened term in their titles.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe rerun looks like it may have originally been printed on Father's Day, as the "Dad's Day" theme includes 10 phrases with the DAD string of letters used as something other than "father." The Himalayan peak NANDA DEVI, for example. CANADA DRY ginger ale. The song "DA DOO RON RON." SKEDADDLING and DADE County, a famous TRINIDADIAN, a RED ADMIRAL butterfly, SOUND ADVICE, the BAGHDAD HOTEL, and...a NADA DAIQUIRI with no liquor, or [Virgin cocktail]. That NADA phrase is new to me—local menus just call 'em virgin daiquiris.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Minor Modifi-K-tions," changes a C to a CK in a dozen words to make fake words with new meanings. [Really tired of crime-lab shows?], for instance, is FORENSICK. [How birds think?] is DEDUCKTIVELY. [Thinker famous for slugging people who didn't agree with him?] is SOCKRATES. Me, I would've gone with the philosophy of hosiery angle. Lurking in the fill are some of the usual crossword suspects, along with some unfamiliar ones. [Ms. Hagen] is UTA and [Actress Balin] is INA. [Mr. Khachaturian] is ARAM and [Actor Morales] is ESAI. You should be familiar with all of these names, along with the [Nicholas Gage book] ELENI and ISAK, or [Writer Dinesen]. I didn't recognize [Silents star Markey], or ENID, and I don't know that I've ever seen the [Philip K. Dick book] UBIK in a bookstore or a crossword.
August 03, 2008
Monday, 8/4
Jonesin' 4:26
NYT 3:34
CS 3:18
NYS 3:11
LAT 2:52
(post updated at 10:40 Monday morning)
All right, let's get this out of the way right up front. 6-Down in Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword is BARYON, the [Subatomic particle made of three quarks] that I've never heard of and am much surprised to see parked in a Monday puzzle. The theme? It's phrases that end with -anners:
WEEKLY PLANNERS are [Books for jotting down appointments].
CAT SCANNERS are [Hospital imaging devices].
POOR MANNERS include [Burping and slurping in public]. In private? Totally fine. Have at it.
PROTEST BANNERS are [Places for antiwar slogans], among other things. A syndication-delay solver e-mailed me today and mentioned a Bay Area friend had chopped up a fallen tree and put up a sign in the front yard reading FREE FIREWOOD. A neighbor asked who Firewood was and why he'd been imprisoned. *rim shot*
This crossword had some lovely entries, including IWO JIMA ([1945 battle site with a flag-raising]); the CY YOUNG [Award won by Roger Clemens seven times]; and Ralph ELLISON, who wrote "Invisible Man." ONER is a boring only-in-crosswords word, sure, but I like the clue, [Lollapalooza]. The music festival of the same name took place in Chicago this weekend, and I heard about 90 seconds of Kanye West's show while driving by on Lake Shore Drive tonight. That Lollapalooza ties in with the general rock vibe, in FOO Fighters, the Sex Pistols' PUNK, and NEIL Young. DIRK clued as a [Dagger] seems like a bit of a stretch for Monday solvers, but the sooner they learn to associate those two words, the better they'll be at future crosswords. I wasn't crazy about NETSURF, clued as [Cruise around the Web]—not sure who uses that term—or OW OW. At least ["Man, that hurts!"] meshes with OW OW, which at first I thought was going to be yet another NYT usage of OWIE as an interjection rather than a noun meaning "boo-boo."
The New York Sun puzzle by Bill Weber (Debut? If so, good going!) is A-OK. The "Doubly Approved" theme includes three phrases that contain OK twice. BY HOOK OR BY CROOK means [In any way possible]. COOKING THE BOOKS is [Falsifying financial records]. And my personal favorite, the OKEFENOKEE SWAMP, is a [Southeastern wetland]. The non-themed fill is superb. TCHOTCHKE! A spelling test, a fun word to say aloud, and a [Cheap trinket] all rolled up into one. I didn't know what SCOTCH EGGS ([British breakfast foods]) were until I looked it up—a shelled hard-boiled egg enrobed in sausage and bread crumbs and then deep-fried. Cholesterol, yum. MUMBAI is what we call the city of Bombay now. BIOPIC advances from its supporting role in crossword clues to a lead role as an answer. And there's a MOTORDROME, or [Track for a car race].
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Clocking in at roughly a Thursday level in a sea of Mondays is Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle for this week. The answers in the "Size Matters" theme are oversized things that rely on their size for their effect: a NOVELTY CHECK along the lines of the Ed McMahon/Publishers Clearinghouse checks, CLOWN SHOES (which puts me in mind of this Rolling Stone article about speaking in tongues and fictional alcoholic clown fathers), a giant FOAM FINGER as seen at sports stadiums, and a MONSTER TRUCK ("Truckasaurus!"). One thing I like about the Jonesin' puzzles is their openness to language as spoken informally. Here we have POOF UP, clued as [Fluff out, like hair or a sleeve], and YUCKY, or [Full of bad taste?]. There's also pop culture—Michael URIE of Ugly Betty, MONGO from Blazing Saddles. And current events—Nancy PELOSI. And a little bit of naughtiness—MOONED is clued [Made an ass of oneself?].
Doug Peterson's LA Times crossword has an exemplary theme—that is, a theme in which three phrases begin with synonyms for exemplary. PERFECT BINDING is the [Technique used to make paperbacks] and magazines like Vanity Fair; the New Yorker's an example of saddle-stitched binding. IDEAL BODY WEIGHT is a [Goal for many dieters]. And MODEL AIRPLANES [may be flown by hobbyists]. In the fill, ESPRESSO ([Trattoria beverage]) delivers a jolt of caffeine. Also lending pep are the words with letters like X, K, and J—MEXICALI, the [Capital of Baja California]; XENA, [TV heroine with a sidekick named Gabrielle]; more coffee, [Joe in a cup] for JAVA; KAREEM Abdul Jabbar, [Laker teammate of Magic]; and JAWS, [Shark flick]. [Very good grade] is A MINUS, which looks like the mystifying AMINUS in the grid.
The quip in Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword, "And Tomorrow...?", occupies four full rows of the grid (with a single black square in each of those rows). FOREVER IS / A VERY/ LONG TIME INDEED / BUT SHORTER THAN / IT WAS / YESTERDAY. I don't care for the 5-letter chunks split off, because I forgot they existed and read it as "Forever is a very long time indeed but shorter than yesterday," and that made no sense at all. If there are GONNA ([Sondheim song "We're ___ Be All Right"]) be short theme entries, I want more payoff than a quip. Clues that may vex crossword newbies:
July 22, 2008
Wednesday, 7/23
CS 4:38
NYS 4:20
LAT 4:12
NYT 3:55
(post updated at 10:20 a.m. Wednesday)
The theme in the New York Times crossword is an unusual one. Newcomer Henry Quillen stair-steps 11 words that start with A/end with Z or start with Z/end with A along both diagonals in the grid, with A TO Z TO A filling a space in the middle: ZIMA, a [Coors product], meets ARROZ, [Ingrediente en paella], which hooks up with the [Keebler cracker brand] ZESTA, which intersects ARIZONA, [Flagstaff's place], and that state meets up with the AD BIZ, the traditional [Madison Ave. trade], linked to [Ethan Frome's wife] ZEENA, who has nothing to do with ANTZ, the [Animated film hit of 1998]. Running across the other diagonal are Lucille [Ball's comic partner] Desi ARNAZ, [The Rock] called ALCATRAZ, the aforementioned A TO Z TO A, a cubic ZIRCONIA gem, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Frank ZAPPA. The theme includes seven Z's, which could mean lots of compromises in the rest of the fill but doesn't at all. Clues and answers of note:
Pancho Harrison's New York Sun puzzle, "Well, Um...", is a treat too. A quartet of theme entries are modified by the addition of ER (a speech disfluency filler like "um"), which changes the preceding short vowel to a long one. [Burglary under cover of darkness?] is a NIGHT CAPER (nightcap). [Captain of the Yankees after gaining a lot of weight?] is JUMBO JETER (jumbo jet). [Drunk flamingo?] is a TIGHT WADER (tightwad). And to [Cheat a sot?] is to SCREW TOPER (screw-top). The last one is a mite jarring, as the other three are all nouns rather than verb phrases. The Across theme entries are stacked with 9-letter answers and those short stacks cross 8's: Curly the TRAIL BOSS from City Slickers (this is Jack Palance's character) crosses a NO-HITTER, and SYMBOLISM meets ODORLESS (which in turn crosses MEL TORME's full name). Consonant pileups are found in the MCRIB sandwich, NSYNC, MRS C. from Happy Days, the HGTV cable channel, and the Village People song "YMCA." INGA is clued with [Congo River's ___ Falls] rather than a woman of Scandinavian descent—I'm making a mental note for future crossword reference.
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Dan Naddor's LA Times crossword contains four 16-letter theme entries (the puzzle's one column wider than usual—thanks for the correction, Bob!), each beginning with a verb that doubles as something that grows from an animal's skin. Reptile scales, turtle shells, bird feathers, and rhinoceros horns are all made of keratin, as fingernails and hair are. The theme entries are:
I'm not familiar with [Lat strengtheners] being called CHINS—chin-ups, yes. Chins, no. The [Willows used in basketry], OSIERS, are solid crosswordese—if you didn't know this word, make a mental note of it. You're likely to see it again in other crosswords.
I don't know why I had such trouble making sense out of the clues in Mel Rosen's CrosSynergy crossword, "Clueless Crooner." Was this puzzle harder than today's other offerings for you too, or is it just me? The theme is a riddle, meaning that the theme entries didn't offer much help with maneuvering through the rest of the puzzle. WHY DID THE BAD / SINGER BREAK / INTO / SONG? HE WAS UNABLE / TO FIND THE KEY. A bunch of the the fill answers were two-word phrases, which I think made those 7's a bit tougher. The FAR WEST is the [Great Plains-to-Pacific Ocean area]. ALOHA OE is clued with ["Farewell to Thee" is its translated title]. A TIDY SUM is [Hardly chicken feed]. To [Set lofty goals] is to AIM HIGH. The COAL BIN is a [Fuel storage area]. [0-0] is NO SCORE. And AWAKE TO is [Become conscious of].
