BEQ 8:20
NYT 3:02
LAT 2:26
CS untimed
Holy schnauzer! I see that this is post #2,028 here at Diary of a Crossword Fiend. I meant to mark #2,000 but it snuck by me. Coming soon: A blog contest! Inspired by Brendan Quigley's list of "Ten Bullsh*t Themes," the prizes will include Brendan's new book, Diagramless Crosswords, along with Simon & Schuster Mega Crosswords.
Also coming soon: A new home and a new look for this blog. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Dave Sullivan over this long weekend while I was lolling in Wisconsin and enjoying family time, the new site is almost ready to be unveiled. You can hardly wait, I know.
You know who else slaved away over a hot blogstove all weekend? Crosscan, Joon, PuzzleGirl, Sam, and Janie, that's who. Beaucoup thanks to all of them!
Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword
Quickly, because this puzzle came out hours ago and post-getaway laundry won't dry itself—
The theme is ___ TRAPs: LIGHT SPEED, AS QUIET AS A MOUSE, BLUE-FOOTED BOOBY, and GEORGE SAND suggest speed trap, mousetrap, booby-trap, and sandtrap. Gotta love the BLUE-FOOTED BOOBY—friend of mine took a trip to the Galapagos and took great pix of the boobies with variously colored feet. I'm not sure how the theory of evolution accounts for dull-feathered birds with bright blue or red feet.
Kudos to the editor and/or constructor for cluing NURSED as [Breast-fed]. Man, I hope no bluenoses write offended letters to the Times complaining that breast-feeding violates the breakfast test. Kudos, too, for the PLAYMATE being a [Child's friend] rather than the subject of a Playboy pictorial.
Favorite fill: QUIT IT; the AL DENTE / ZIT line; ROD CAREW's full name; the three-in-a-row Down answers LOO, DOO, and ZOO; and DADDY-O. BIC is clued as an [Inexpensive pen]; anyone else see the magazine ads promoting Bic pens, lighters, and disposable razors with a single cents-off coupon? Less fond of TRAYFUL, E-BONDS, and the doubling up on UPDATE/UPMOST.
Updated Monday morning:
Raymond Hamel's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Knot Now"—Janie's review
Anyone out there read Annie Proulx's The Shipping News? One of the many things I liked about the book were the illustrations of knots that were part of almost every chapter. They were taken from The Ashley Book of Knots which, it just so happens, is available as a free e-book. Today, each of Ray's fresh theme phrases begins with a word that also describes a particular kind of knot. And those'd be:
• 20A. WINDSOR CASTLE [Queen Elizabeth's weekend getaway]. Here's a "how to" in, um, seven easy steps...
• 37A. GRANNY SMITH [Green apple variety]. Here's one kind of granny knot.
• 44A. SQUARE DANCE [Where callers are heard]. Loved this one, because I really didn't understand the clue until the fill became clear. Also, the square knot is just about the only knot I know how to tie: left over right and right over left. Or the opposite.
• 59A. OVERHAND PITCH [It was legalized in baseball in 1884]. Nice little factoid, no? And here's yer basic overhand knot, which bears a striking resemblance to a pretzel. Yeah. I can do this one, too.
While the theme may have been "knotty," the puzzle as a whole was easily and enjoyably solved. Little Jack Horner of English nursery rhyme fame got his day in EL SOL [The sun, in Seville] with not one, but two clue/fill combos: ["...and pulled out] A PLUM" and ["...and said, 'What a good boy] AM I!'" While we're in the nursery, let me not forget to mention CHOO, which has been clued as [Half a toy train?]. Let's just hope that when the child with but half a toy train starts to read, he or she gets an entire primer. Cut-backs are one thing, but Dick without JANE? Next thing ya know that [Double Dutch need] (and knot-tying need...) ROPE will be for—well, is there such a thing as "Single Dutch"? I think not. But look, the National Double Dutch competition is coming up. This may be worth looking into!
In the legal world, the [Burden of proof] ONUS is on the prosecutor, who pleads his or her case before the judge or judges. When the robed ones are hearing a case, they are said to be sitting en BANC. So they're the ones who have a [Seat at the court]. In the world where the "higher law" must be answered to, someone who's been very, very good might be recognizable by his or her HALO [Heavenly ring] (or HARP, perhaps). And a [Heavenly aquarium addition?]? Why, that'd be an ANGEL FISH, of course. (Ray also gives us the WAHOO, a [Dark blue food fish]. This was new to me, and is a nice change from ["Yippee!"].)
Other fill that kept the puzzle lively: CHI-CHI [Hoity-toity] (I like that clue, too) and TOP DOG [One of the highest authority]. We've seen fat cat a couple times in the past few weeks, so I was glad to see a little balance among the species.
Pancho Harrison's Los Angeles Times crossword
Aw, look at 1-Across: [Vikings quarterback Brett] FAVRE. FAVRE turned 40 last month, and would you look at the season he's having with his erstwhile NFC Central/North rivals? My son was OK with his Bears losing yesterday because the Vikings are his second favorite team. If only FAVRE had come to the Bears instead of Jay "Interceptions and Fumbles" Cutler.
The theme is either flawed or fresh: The three longest entries start with synonyms, but one of the synonyms is two words while the others are single words. Is it a nice twist or an unexpected hitch to have TAKE OFF, not TAKE, match up with SPLIT and LEAVE? I'm OK with it. TAKE OFF WEIGHT is clued as [Shed some pounds]; SPLIT THE PROFITS is [Divide earnings equally]; and to LEAVE A MESSAGE is to [Talk to the answering machine].
In the fill, the stars are OLD YELLER (which I haven't seen...I don't want to cry) and AUSTRALIA. Not fond of AGERS and APER. The iBOOK is now dated fill, but it's easier to fit into a puzzle than the MacBook Pro or the AirBook.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
This puzzle kicked my ass. Chess fans may appreciate 1-Across—ZUGZWANG, or [Unpleasant obligation to move, in chess]—but those who've never encountered the term must rely heavily on the crossings. And 1-Down wasn't helping—["Hannah Montana," e.g.] is a teen sitcom but also, apparently, a ZITCOM. Now, my kid watches some of the Disney Channel's sitcoms for tweens and I read Entertainment Weekly religiously, but ZITCOM was not coming to the fore of my brain. Gah.
How are NITS [Small prevarications]? I've never seen the word used to mean lies. I had FIBS there for too long. Plenty of other wrong turns, too. GAINS instead of EARNS and THETAN instead of THEBAN because I was originally thinking CRETAN mucked up the race horse BARBARO, who was looking like TARBUIO or TARBAIO (the A-vs.-U was JANE, [Alec's twin sister in "Twilight"], and I guess Brendan is more caught up in Twilight-mania than I am. Brendan, you didn't seem the type. I also figured [Acting together] would be ***ING UP rather than IN LEAGUE.
["Eek!"] clues DEAR ME, which is goofy but worlds better than OH ME and AH ME, which I suggest nobody has uttered in a century, if ever. Until now! I have begun using AH ME and OH ME, but so far have had no luck getting my husband to join in. Won't you help popularize these words of regret and despair? It's either that, or we have to insist that constructors stop using these entries altogether. Do any of you have an in with Stephenie Meyer or the writers of Hannah Montana? That could break OH/AH ME wide open. I'd tell you I was saying "Oh, me!" in my head while working on this crossword, but that would be a small prevarication.
November 29, 2009
Monday, 11/30/09
August 10, 2009
Tuesday, 8/11
Jonesin' 3:52
LAT 3:25
NYT 3:08 (if you can't access the Across Lite version, you can solve online via applet but can't print from there)
CS 6:17 (J—paper)
Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword
There's a lot I like in this puzzle and a couple things that made me go all frowny. I don't like it when crosswords make me go all frowny. First the theme, then the good stuff, then the frownogenic stuff. The theme is FRENCH (52-Down) things at the beginning of the four longest answers:
The good stuff includes SO SUE ME (the snide ["Well, sorr-r-r-y!"]); the [Source of an oil used in aromatherapy], TEA TREE*; crazy CRIBBAGE, clued mystifyingly as a [Game to 31]; LET SLIP, or [Blurt out, say]; TOP DOG, or [Head honcho]; and SCOTSMAN, or [Tartan wearer]. On Saturday, I got together with Jenni, whom I met via crosswords, when she was in town for a conference. A crazy old man in a tartan kilt and tam was striding briskly around Millennium Park, approaching people and saluting. Is random saluting a Scottish thing?
The frownogenic stuff began with AGRIN. Or A-GRIN? It's clued as [Beaming] but...is this a word? Wikipedia says it is: "Agrin is a large proteoglycan whose best characterised role is in the development of the neuromuscular junction during embryogenesis." There is an unspoken limit of using only one of the OTO/OTOE/UTE category per puzzle, and this one's got both OTO/[Oklahoma Indian] and UTES/[Salt Lake City team]. I know from crosswords that [Crow cousins] are DAWS, but that seems a tad crosswordesey for a Tuesday puzzle; the crossings, at least, are straightforward. As for the [Letter before gee], Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary backs up what a constructor friend once told me: the letter name is ef, not EFF. EFF is the euphemistic substitute for fuck, as in "eff off."
*Public service announcement: If you get pimples and your skin is too old to tolerate the drying of benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid, try Desert Essence's Tea Tree Oil Blemish Touch Stick. It's a little roll-on with a pleasant enough herbal aroma, and you can find it at Whole Foods or Amazon. It's handy for bug bites and other minor skin irritations, too. Stings like hell on irritated skin, so try not to pick at things before applying it.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Paula Gamache's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Sneak Attack"—Janie's review
This is one cunning creation indeed. There are only three theme-phrases, but each one is a double-header. Beginning with a synonym for "sneak" (in the adjectival sense of "surprise"), this word combines with a noun to make a whimsical, if not a quite in-the-language, "new phrase." Then, if you keep only the first syllable of the adjective and combine it with that same noun, you get an honest-to-goodness in-the-language phrase. "Two! Two! Two fills in one!" And they are:
The triple 6-columns in the NW and SE ain't too shabby neither. They BEEF UP those corners quite nicely, thank you. I'm especially partial to [Bring into harmony] for ATTUNE up there in the NW. It's the perfect complement to F-HOLE [Violin feature] in the SW. I also like seeing ADDLED clued as [In a fog] and TORSOS as [Bodies of art?] in the SE. If the NEEDLE on my applause meter were accurate, I could find out how you felt about these entries as well.
CHARISMA contributes to the lively feel of the fill and so do the colloquial phrases I'LL PAY and NO TIPS. From the Old Testament, we have not only ARARAT, a [Genesis peak], but also PLAGUE, a [Biblical torment]. You might want to check out Exodus for that...
A [Pound piece] is not a unit of currency, but a POEM. So's Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat." The town where the slugger earned his immortality (while suffering his great humiliation) was MUDVILLE. If he was not destined to become an AL'ER, I still like to think that the "mighty Casey" recovered himself and later took the "Mudville nine" to unrecounted heights.
Allan Parrish's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme entries end with theatrical things: a CAST acts out a PLAY on a SET constructed on the STAGE.
For more on this puzzle, check out PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post. The first two commenters over there grumbled that the clue for SQUEEZE PLAY includes the word "play": [Baseball play that may be "suicide"]. Sports fans and cluing experts, is there a synonym for "baseball play" that doesn't include "play"? How would you get around this duplication?
The theme is on the subtle/nonobvious side, isn't it? I first pondered whether the first words of SQUEEZE PLAY, CRYSTAL SET ([Homemade radio] from back in the day), PLASTER CAST ([Common autograph site]), and FINAL STAGE ([Last part]) were the theme stars, but no. Hey, is FINAL STAGE a discrete "thing"?
Two crosswordese birds fly around the grid—SMEWS are [Diving ducks] and ERNS are [Seashore fliers]. KEYE is [Actor ___ Luke who played Chan's Number One Son in old films], and I needed all four crossings for that one. Is it just me, or is this whole enterprise distinctly Wednesday/Thursdayish by LAT standards?
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "No Ham for Me, Thanks"
These kosher theme entries have had their HAM deleted:
I could do without the ICE duplication between ICED OVER and ICEMAN, but it is a steamy August and maybe Matt made this puzzle a week or two ago when it was 105° in Portland. (There's also the English/German duplication of ENE, or east-northeast, and OST, "east" in German, clued as [Leipzig-to-Dusseldorf direction]—but I like the trickiness of a 3-letter answer to a direction clue that isn't in the SSE/ENE/NNW family.)
I didn't know O FORTUNA, the [Section of "Carmina Burana" used in "battle to the death" movie trailers]. "O, for tuna." Is this an ode to tuna fish? Lots of nice fill in this puzzle—something like 23 of the non-theme entries are 6+ letters long, and two corners have satiny smooth stacks of 7- and 8-letter answers.
May 16, 2009
Sunday, 5/17
NYT second Sunday "Takeaway Crossword" 13:08
PI 8:42
NYT 8:35
LAT 7:42
BG 7:10
CS 4:40
Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword, "Perfect Jobs"
After I figured out how the theme operated, I kept forgetting again and thinking of famous people or characters with the names in the clues rather than noting what verb the name sounded like. The theme answers are apt occupations for a person with a name that sounds sort of like that worker's task:
Robin is unisex, but I'm disappointed to see the puzzle handed over to the boys. Where is Karen, the home health aide? Or Carolyn, the Christmas concert director? Or Marian, the justice of the peace or clergywoman? Sharon...whose job is it to share?
Clues and answers of note:
Matt Ginsberg's NYT second sunday puzzle, a "Takeaway Crossword"
Ah, that's more like it. Remember when we'd get a crazy, twisted Friday Sun crossword that would push the cruciverbal envelope and strain our brains in a delicious manner? Matt Ginsberg companion to the NYT Sunday crossword is one of those goodies. I opted to solve it without reading the notepad (doing so is definitely more badass, but there's no shame in using the notepad if you must), and I don't think it was all that hard to notice that the asterisks replaced all instances of a single letter within each clue, or to guess that the same letter would be omitted from the answer. The astonishing thing is that dropping the letter from the answer still leaves us with a valid crossword answer. Granted, with straightforward clues, this would be an awfully dull puzzle—but instead we have to work a different spot in our brains to come up with the answers.
Here are some examples. 9A is ["Dani*l Boon*" actor], with two E's replaced by asterisks. The actor in question is Ed Ames. Minus the E's, he turns into the word DAMS, and that's the answer that goes in the grid. 34A is RESIN, which is Kreskin with a couple K's excised—Kreskin is the [Mentalist inspired by "Mandra*e the Magician"]. 27D is ROCA, a Spanish word meaning I-don't-know-what as well as a confection (in fact, Matt has let me sample his wife's delicious almond roca at the last two ACPTs), and if you add four L's you get ROLL CALL, a [*egis*ative routine (Sp.)]. That tag at the end of the clue offers the solver a little help with the grid answer; other tags used in this puzzle include Lat., suffix, Ger., hyph., 2 wds., and Fr.
My favorite discovery was that Stuttgart is just SUGAR with four T's—64A is clued [Sou*hwes* German ci*y]. The hardest factoid I encountered was 40A [Apo*tle known a* "the Zealot"]. I don't know Biblical stuff too well, so I needed to lean on the crossings to get TIMON, which is St. Simon minus the S's. The only clue that led me astray was 52A [Italian po*t?]. I was thinking poEt and missing E's, but no, it turned out to be poRt. And given the question mark, we're not talking about a port city here—port wine. Marsala is a sherry type of Italian wine, and minus the R, it becomes MASALA, an Indian spice mixture.
Okay, Matt, you figured out how to make one of these work smoothly. Now how about constructing some more? I know Will Shortz doesn't have a ton of Sunday slots for variety puzzles like this, but I'd definitely vote to have more Takeaway Crosswords. Many of you adore the Cox & Rathvon acrostics that take up 26 of the 52 second Sunday puzzles, but I wouldn't mind swapping a few of those out for interesting puzzles like this one. (I wouldn't want to lose any of the diagramlesses or cryptics, though.)
Updated Sunday morning:
Kathleen Fay O'Brien's syndicated L.A. Times Sunday crossword, "Quiet Meetings"
See L.A. Crossword Confidential for my full write-up of this puzzle. The theme entries shorten PIANISSIMO to PP, both meaning "very softly" in music, and use the PP as "quiet meetings" between words in assorted two-word phrases (e.g. TOP PRIORITY, SLEEP PHASE). I'm always pleased to see a word like CHUTZPAH in the grid ([Impudence]), but the theme was definitely on the dry side. Bonus points for the liveliness of theme entries STRIP POKER and POP PSYCHOLOGY. The latter takes the "quiet meetings" theme to extremes by having the second P of PP be so soft, it's a silent letter.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "Triple Doubles"
Here's another theme where it's the letters within the phrases that hold sway—in this case, each phrase has three sets of double letters. I'm guessing Merl started with the long title, split into two partially stacked answers at the bottom of the grid, that has two triple doubles, or sextuple doubles. The 1955 comedy is ABBOTT AND COSTELLO / MEET THE MUMMY. The remaining triple doubles are as follows:
The least familiar answer in the grid was MARK J., clued as [Secret Service chief ___ Sullivan]. Ouch.
Henry Hook's maybe-6-weeks-old Boston Globe crossword, "Done to the Nines"
This is my favorite of today's 21x21 puzzles. The theme entries are "done to the nines" by having the Roman numeral IX added to them, radically altering each phrase's meaning. Noncommissioned + IX = NIXON-COMMISSIONED, [Like the Watergate burglars?]. SPECIAL KIX might be a [Breakfast cereal blend?] of Special K and Kix. The Ming dynasty turns into MIXING "DYNASTY," a [Soundtrack job on a 1980s soap?]. A stock quote becomes STOCK QUIXOTE, a [Standard idealist?]. There are four other theme entries, but I liked these ones better.
Favorite clues and answers:
Bob Klahn's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"
Have I cracked The Klahn Code, or is this puzzle a good bit easier than, say, his occasional (and all-too-infrequent) Saturday NYT crosswords? I started out fumbling through the first Across and Down clues and seeing nothing I knew, but then it started rolling. 5A [Huge goof] tends to be the sort of clue we see for BONER (unless it's an Onion crossword), and checking the R's viability against 9D [Speak on the record?], that worked with RAP (great clue!). Toughest clues, for me:
Favorite clues:
April 15, 2009
Thursday, 4/16
Tausig 6:34
NYT 4:37
LAT 3:36
CS 2:27
Oliver Hill's New York Times crossword
I'm feeling torn about this puzzle. On the one hand, the theme idea is clever—EXTRACT parsed as "extra CT" added to certain phrases—and there's some terrific fill. On the other hand, one of the theme answers feels off to me, and some of the fill and clues strike the wrong note. First, let's sum up the theme:
Here are the non-theme answers and clues I admired:
The clue for FURY, [Hurricane's force], felt too specific for its answer. Fill that sort of sticks in my craw:
I imagine I had more to say about the puzzle, but I spent so much time watching neo-Journey clips with my husband, and poking around Facebook...I forgot. I'll be more bloggy again in the morning.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Don Gagliardo's L.A. Times crossword
Wow, what an unusual theme! One of the holy grails of crossword construction is to come up with a cool theme nobody's done before, and I don't recall seeing a puzzle like this before. There's no obvious theme until you get down to 67A: [Letter appearing only in down answers; its opposite appears only in across answers]. That's the HARD G, with two or three soft G's in each of the five Across entries placed where you'd expect to see theme entries. GINGER ROGERS has three soft G sounds, but the Down crossings are OLGA (Korbut, ['70s Olympics name]), GOOD AT, and MI AMIGO (which is an [Address to a pal, in Pamplona]), all with hard G's. I suspect it would take too much effort to tailor a program to construct a puzzle like this, so Mr. Gagliardo presumably handcrafted the crossword. One could argue that there's not much point to this theme, but I liked the impact of the one "aha" moment when it hit me.
Let's take a look at some of the content:
This puzzle contains 21 G's. I don't know of anyone who keeps track of this for non-NYT puzzles, but the record for the most G's in a daily NYT is 19.
PuzzleGirl loved this theme too and has more to say at L.A. Crossword Confidential.
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Dead-End Endings"
The theme here is phrases that end with dead ends, like the title says, with the words used in other contexts:
You can be treed, cornered, or trapped when those final words are converted into verbs.
Assorted clues:
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "You're It!"
Hey, I didn't test-solve this one during vacation, and it darn near killed me today. It was the junction of 3D and 19A that did me in the worst.
The theme's a good one. "Tag, you're it!" means that each theme entry's base phrase has been TAGged (a TAG has been inserted somewhere):
Among the clues I found tough were these ones:
January 13, 2009
Wednesday, 1/14
Sun 5:50
BEQ 4:40
Tausig 4:17
Onion 3:55
NYT 3:53
LAT 3:13
(updated at 1:10 p.m. Wednesday)
Between a condo board meeting and watching the VH1 tribute to The Who (including a rare set from The Who themselves), TiVoed from the Palladia HD channel, it sure has gotten late, so I'll be quick here.
The New York Times crossword by Oliver Hill seems on the hard side for a Wednesday, doesn't it? Still shy of Thursday, though, so I guess that makes it a Wednesday puzzle after all, but a hard Wednesday. The theme entries have homophones for clues, and the answers are phrases that normally wouldn't pass muster as crossword fill—sort of a clue/answer reversal, with the 11- and 14-letter answers being suitable clues for the 3- and 4-letter clues, which are common crossword answers. Here they are:
Fair enough. But good gravy, what on earth is EXEGETE doing here in the middle of the week? That's an [Expert at interpreting a text], apparently. I wonder if anyone's messed up that T by not knowing that OTAY is [Buckwheat's affirmative].
Among the more interesting entries are these:
Peter Wentz's Sun crossword has a strong streak of lunacy to it. Most of the theme spells out what the theme is: 62-Down is THE AVERAGE / SCRABBLE SCORE OF / ALL THE LETTERS IN / THIS PUZZLE, or in other words, TWO. You've got your standard quantity of vowels, plus six Z's, two X's, plus all sorts of other letters, and they somehow all average out to 2 points per letter using Scrabble tile values? I'm thinking that was no mean feat, constructing this puzzle so that the average isn't,say, 1.83 or 2.07 instead. (I'm assuming it works out to a total Scrabble score of twice the number of white squares—no way am I going to check Peter and Peter's work!) The fill includes entries like JUDE LAW, BOHEMIA, and the X PRIZE for added oomph. There's also some weird stuff, like Italy's LA SPEZIA, an OBLIGER, and a HIERARCH, some of which makes this puzzle also feel supra-Wednesdayish. I haven't looked at the Thursday and Friday Sun puzzles yet, but if they're harder than this puzzle, oof! Are we in for a workout.
Updated:
Michael Langwald's LA Times crossword honors the Lizard King (Jim Morrison), sort of, with a puzzle that includes a SALAMANDER ([Amphibian that can regenerate its limbs]). Morrison led THE DOORS, a [1960s-'70s group, and this puzzle's theme], and each of the other theme answers begins with a kind of door:
A few miscellaneous clues and answers:
Speaking of music downloads, I'm digging the iTunes "genius" option. Pick a song that matches your mood, click the genius button, and get a playlist of 25 compatible songs. The only down side is that it can be hard to do crosswords and type blog posts when danceable songs are playing or when you can't help singing along with an '80s Human League song.
Matt Gaffney's Onion A.V. Club crossword plays a quasi-cryptic game, with the cryptic crossword–style clues instructing us to put an actor's name inside another word to create a new made-up phrase. In each case, it's a 2-letter word getting sandwiched around the person's first name, with the last name left as is. Here's how it plays out:
If you enjoyed this theme (as I did) but haven't dared to venture into cryptics, you might want to give them a try. With 70 words and four corners packed with 7-letter answers, this puzzle also has a little of the challenge of a themeless crossword. Two clues that slowed me down: [The NBA's Zydrunas Ilgauskas, e.g.] needed a 3-letter answer. Hmm, LITHUANIAN is too long. I had *AV and of course there are two basketball teams whose nicknames fit that pattern, the CAVs (Cleveland Cavaliers) and Mavs (Dallas Mavericks). Then there's [Take in Tolkien, e.g.], which I was reading with "take" as a noun, and I was at a loss. The One RING? No, "take in" is a verb phrase, and the answer is READ.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "A Turn for the Worse," replaces key words in certain phrases with their opposites, all with negative connotations:
Solid theme, not too tough. Highlights in the non-thematic answers and clues:
It's going to take me all day to do today's Brendan Emmett Quigley crossword. Why? Because instead of looking at the whole puzzle, I'm going the diagramless route and waiting for Brendan to parcel out the clues, one by one, in his Twitter feed. So far he's given the first four Across clues, and I think the grid's just got a standard crossword layout and symmetry, so I think the first six Acrosses are all 7-letter answers stacked beside one another at the top. I can't make fast progress because I won't get the 1- to 14-Down clues until after all the Across clues have been tweeted. I could cheat and Google 1 Across, [With 8-Across, "A Punk" rock band]—but where's the fun in that?
Updated again:
Commenter Squonk actually read Brendan's post today and informed me that the Twitter feed has clues for Friday's puzzle. (You can see the tweets in the sidebar of Brendan's blog if you don't want to sign up for Twitter.) I suspect this is the first instance of a crossword being provided in 160-character (max.) chunks. Anyway, today's puzzle is untweeted, just a regular puzzle, no diagramless option unless you cut out the grid yourself. The "Ow! Aargh!" title hints at the sound change in the theme entries. I don't know how to use the international phonetic alphabet to render the sound change, so I'll let the theme entries demonstrate it instead:
Juicy clues and answers:
September 07, 2008
Monday, 9/8
NYS untimed (whoops)
CS 3:58
Jonesin' 3:28
LAT 2:56
NYT 2:48 (here's the Across Lite version, courtesy of Jim H)
(updated at 1:15 Monday afternoon)
The daily puzzles in this week's New York Times were all constructed by teenagers, the first time the paper has featured such a long run of young constructors. They're all male, which spurs me to ask: Where are the girls? If you're a young woman in high school or college and you're at all interested in making puzzles, I'd love to hear from you.
I hope next week will bring all 40-something constructors who share my cultural references. I wonder if there's ever been a six-day run of 40-somethings, just by chance?
The Monday entrant in the New York Times crossword's youth week is Oliver Hill. His theme is sandwiches—in particular, regional names for submarine sandwiches:
Favorite fill: WINNOW means to [Sift]; KOWTOW means to [Act obsequiously]; BOZO is a [Classic clown]; a GEWGAW is a [Trinket]; and an ELIXIR is a [Panacea]. Is that [Olive oil component], OLEATE, gettable for Monday solvers?
Peter Gordon (a.k.a. Ogden Porter) constructed the day's New York Sun crossword. "Space Balls" reveals its theme in the fourth theme entry, [One can be found in 17-Across and 11- and 28-Down] or DWARF PLANET. [Witches] are SORCERESSES. PLUTOCRACY is [Government by the wealthy]. And [Loose Brie, for example] is a SPOONERISM (spoonerizing Bruce Lee by swapping the initial sounds). I'm thinking for a Monday puzzle, those hidden dwarf planets (recently demoted Pluto, along with Ceres and Eris) might do well to be revealed by circled squares, but then, a Monday Sun is generally more challenging than the NYT or LAT. This one in particular felt tougher—I neglected to start the Across Lite timer, but the clues were definitely slowing me down rather than dishing out gimme after gimme.
Updated:
Gail Grabowski's LA Times crossword takes as its theme things that begin with synonymous words, cultured, refined, and polished:
Patrick Blindauer calls his initials into play in his CrosSynergy puzzle, "PB Sandwich." Each of the five theme entries has a P at the end of the first word beside the B that begins the second word: there's a JUMP BALL and TOP BILLING, a STAMP BOOK and a SOUP BOWL, and the ephemeral [Iridescent sphere] that is a SOAP BUBBLE. Favorite clues:
Updated again:
Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle, "Wear Some Protection," isn't about prophylactics. No, it's about metallic armor:
Plenty of highlights in the fill: ELI MANNING is a quarterback a lot of people don't like, but a great crossword entry. GLUTEN-FREE, [Like some bread for those with dietary restrictions], is a phrase we see more and more these days. COUNT BASIE and a union CLOSED SHOP are the other 10-letter answers in the fill. Lots of pop culture in the clues for JOEL (["The Soup" host McHale]), Corey HAIM, NONA Gaye, fictional teen SLEUTHS, SHAFT, Hugh LAURIE, Hello Kitty's penguin friend Badtz-MARU, child actor Alex ETEL, Rob ESTES, Chili Peppers bassist FLEA, and a "Shoop Shoop Song" lyric.
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].
Updated:
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:
April 26, 2008
Sunday, 4/27
PI 9:13
BG 8:29
NYT 7:55
LAT 7:15
CS 4:07
The Sunday New York Times puzzle by teenaged constructor Oliver Hill captivated me. The "Oops!" theme shines a cruel spotlight on IMPROPERLY SPELLED words. Wow, there are so many words that are so frequently misspelled, it must've been tough to narrow the list down to just 10. (Wait, the clue specifies that these were the top 10 from a 1999 study of the most frequently misspelled words. That'll narrow it down pretty effectively!) The shortest theme answers are 9 letters long, but look down there at 105-Across—WAVERS means [Is undecided], but how often have we seen waiver and waver interchanged? Further mixing things up, TOOTSY, or [Foot, slangily], asked me to spell it TOOTSIE, an accepted alternative. And DOPY, [Half-baked], wanted to be DOPEY. (Either is correct.)
A couple of the misspellings gave me pause. I know how to spell inoculate, but is the misspelling Hill is looking for the one with two Ns or two Cs? Google, after the fact, demonstrates that the two-N spelling that makes it look related to innocuous is the most common booboo, and indeed, INNOCULATE is what's in the puzzle.
Let me spell the theme out for you, and try not to spell those words correctly:
Favorite clues and answers, and things I feel like commenting on:
Updated:
In his Boston Globe puzzle in Across Lite, "What's On?", Henry Hook comes up with workable puns for seven words that mean "clothing." My favorite is the long one in the middle, EVERYBODY LOVES RAIMENT, clued as [Why no one opts to go nude?]. The other ones didn't grab me as much, but look how fancy—at the top and bottom, there are stacked theme entries. The time the theme did take a while to work itself out, but it finally became clear midway through the puzzle. Strangest word in the grid: CAMBS, or [Ely's county in Eng.]. The abbreviated "Eng." must mean the answer is an abbreviation too—indeed, Wikipedia confirms that it's short for Cambridgeshire. Two favorite clues: [Period ending a sentence?] for PAROLE and [Many end with "ite"] for ORES.
Updated again Sunday morning:
I solved Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, "Dressing the Part," last night. Like the Hook puzzle, this one also had a clothing pun theme—this time, with specific parts of a hypothetical outfit included. MY CUFF RUNNETH OVER swaps in a cuff for a cup, and the other theme entries contain a SLEEVE, BODICE, LAPEL, V-NECKS, POCKET, COLLAR, ad BUTTON. THE SLEEVE TRADE fails my breakfast test, as it's punning on the slave trade. (I'd take ENEMA over the slave trade any day, unless the theme is, say, about the history of the abolitionist movement.) I was nodding off whilel I was doing the crossword last night, so I regret that I don't remember any favorite answers or clues. The relatives are coming over today for Ben's familial birthday party, so I'm too short on time to review the puzzle now.
Tyler Hinman's syndicated LA Times crossword, "Foreign Exchange," meets me in my wheelhouse. Geography plus anagramming? Count me in! The 11 theme answers (one in the middle split into two entries) consist of a short country name followed by a one-word anagram of it. For example, [Way to get to Asia?] is NEPAL PLANE, [Red Sea region invader?] is YEMEN ENEMY, [Mideast soap?] is ISRAEL / SERIAL (wow, I spent a long time thinking of 6-letter words that meant "soap you clean with" rather than "soap opera"), and [Dance in Oceania?] is TONGA TANGO. The theme was fun and (at least for a fan of both anagrams and geography) easy. The fill and clues were definitely Hinmanesque—plenty of sports, colloquialisms like "NO BIGGIE" and"NO SHIRT, no shoes, no service," a touch of tech with JPEG, PIXEL, ISPS, and [Phishing, e.g.] for SCAM. Favorite clues: [Toe or two] for DIGIT (isn't that a fantastic clue?); [Phrase in which "of" may be mistakenly inserted?] for "AS YET"; and [Kind of dog?] for SLY.
Randy Ross's CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge" is fairly easy owing to the cluing, which tended to be direct. Direct, but not boring—and linked to some lively fill. Favorite parts: [Red Bull ingredient] for CAFFEINE; [Part of FWIW] for IT'S (FWIW is shorthand for "for what it's worth"); the JAGUAR XKE ([1961 U.K. auto debut]) crossing XTERRA ([Nissan SUV])—both Xs isolated away from vowels; ["Doctor" friend of 29-Across] for Dr. DRE, friend of ICE-T; [Reason for a Hail Mary pass] in football, DESPERATION; LOVED ONE; ELEVEN A.M., the [Time marked on Veterans Day]; and LIMA PERU and SE-RI PAK in their complete incarnations.
