NYT 10:18
LAT 8:50
BG 7:32
Reagle 6:51
CS 3:06*
Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword, "Double Break Point"
Theme: At the break point between two words, the first word's final letter gets doubled and scoots over to the second word. A few examples:
There are nine theme entries in all. That long central Down answer, LIBERAL-MINDED (29D: [Tolerant of other opinions]), is not part of the theme, though it does intersect three theme answers.
Weirdest (i.e., least familiar) answer: RAHAB, or 91A: [Prostitute who protected Israelite spies, in Joshua].
Notable clues and answers in the fill:
That's all for tonight. See you Sunday morning!
Updated Sunday morning:
Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "Fashion Plate"
Merl's theme this week is "food items that contain words that are related to clothing (items of apparel, fabrics, clothing fasteners, parts of clothing), clued with the word fashionable." For example:
This theme feels too sprawlingly loose to me. FRENCH SILK needs to be followed by the word "pie" to be a food. BLUEBONNET isn't food, it's a brand name of margarine. The vague "things you can wear/things that are used to make things you wear/things that are used as fasteners on things you wear/a pocket" concept doesn't have much punch.
No hitches in the fill. I did not know that 13D: ARBOGAST was the name of [The detective in "Psycho"], but the crossings were more familiar. I could see people getting snagged by the B, which crosses 23A: Victor BORGE, [Great Dane by the piano].
Weird ones: 117A: [999 follower, perhaps] is OOO (but really 000, with zeroes), if you're looking at a three-digit dial that's going to flip back to 000 after it reaches 999. 103D: E NOTE usually gets clued as the not-in-my-parlance "e-note," an electronic note. Here, it's [Part of a C major chord]. Do music people call the musical note E the "E note"?
Dan Naddor's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Subliminal Messages"
The theme is fake advertising slogans in which the name of an apt company is embedded"
The cross-referencing made the puzzle a little slower to unravel, I thought. There are some tough answers (obscure ARTEL, 21D: [Soviet cooperative]) and clues (80D: [Lesser of two evils, metaphorically] for FRYING PAN, as in "out of the frying pan and into the fire"), but no real trouble zones.
Interesting way to massage the "embedded word" gimmick into a sensible theme with a purpose. The idea of "subliminal advertising" ties the company names to appropriate slogans, so there's no randomness to the embeds. I did a little Googling afterwards to see if these were actual slogans—if ad agencies had actually persuaded corporations to go with the embedded-name approach—but the two I looked up weren't real slogans used by those firms.
Tyler Hinman's CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"
Yay! Tyler made this puzzle a couple years ago but Will Shortz wasn't keen on 1-Across. I liked the puzzle then (the * is because my solving time was assisted by the previous go-round) so I'm glad to see it's been published now. 1-Across had been completely unfamiliar to me, but I enjoyed learning it. [LSU cheer that includes a punny French spelling] is "GEAUX TIGERS," playing on "go." What's not to love about a bilingual sports pun? Kudos to the Louisianans who came up with that one.
The grid's chockablock with interesting fill. Such as:
Surprised to see the double A grades in EASY A'S and [An A often boosts it (abbr.)] as the clue for GPA. Never heard of AL RITZ, 3D: [Part of an old comedy trio, with his brothers Harry and Jimmy].
Gotta run now—hope to find time for the Boston Globe puzzle this afternoon.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe crossword, "U and U Alone"
The theme entries—five grid-spanning 21-letter fake headlines—all contain no vowel other than U:
I like the intersecting Simpson clues. 86A: ITO is [Simpson judge] and 78D: [Sax-honking Simpson] is LISA. 65D goes with trivia, [World found by Herschel], to clue URANUS. My kid gets a kick out of inquiring, "How big is Uranus?" When I answer that it's surprisingly light considering that it's larger than Neptune (but less dense), he collapses into giggles.
December 05, 2009
Sunday, 12/6/09
November 05, 2009
Friday, 11/6/09
NYT 6:01
BEQ 4:32
CHE 3:42
LAT 3:24
CS untimed
WSJ 8:05
Doug Peterson's New York Times crossword
Aargh! Don't you hate it when you click "done" with 4:46 on the clock but you have a typo in a Down answer and begin scanning all the Across answers so it takes a good long while to see JULEETTE BINOCHE sitting in reproach? Hell, for all I knew, 19A: ["The Ballad of ___," 1967 comedy western] was spelled JOSEE rather than JOSIE because hey, there's The Outlaw Josey Wales. Wales was a '76 movie, whereas The Ballad of Josie "attempted to humorously tackle 1960s themes of feminism in a traditional western setting." The plot: "A young woman living in fictional Arapahoe County, Wyoming accidentally kills her very abusive husband. She is put on trial but acquitted. She then incurs the annoyance of her male neighbors by farming sheep instead of cattle and setting up a woman's suffrage movement." Anyone ever hear of this Doris Day flick?
Okay, the puzzle: 68 words. Two 15s, four 10s, eight 9s, some intermediate-length answers, and only six 3s, which is nice. The highlights:
• Why not cross ALPHA MALE with UN-P.C.? It's a natural pairing. 16A: [Leader of the pack], 3D: [Sexist, say]. Right beside that is OGLE, or [Regard impolitely].
• 1A. I filled in MOUNT FUJI via the crossings, as I was thinking I needed an East Asian equivalent of Mecca for the [Far Eastern pilgrimage destination]. Another mountain: 28A: PIZ [___ Bernina (highest peak in the Eastern Alps]. I like to say PIZ.
• 14A. Love the word IGNORAMUS. [Dull type] doesn't begin to capture it.
• 36A. The title doesn't ring a bell, but [Subject of the 2005 biography "iCon"] is STEVE JOBS. Is that "ooh, he's an icon" or "he'll con you with his iWhatnots"? I'm reading the title as a hatchet-job "I Con."
• 37A. If you [Spotted] me $40, you LENT it to me. Thanks. I'll totally pay you back.
• 46A. [Hamburger's acknowledgment] is DANKE, a Hamburger being someone from Hamburg, Germany.
• 52A. I, CLAUDIUS is a great entry. [John Hurt played Caligula in it].
• 57A. The SERENGETI is [Where some buffalo roam]. Water buffalo?
• 1D. M.I.A.'S are clued with [They're officially honored on the third Friday in Sept. Veterans Day is next Wednesday, Nov. 11—my kid's off school then...and tomorrow too.
• 8D. JULIETTE BINOCHE, ["The English Patient" Oscar winner]. See? Sometimes I can type the right letters.
• 12D. [It often has controls] refers to an EXPERIMENT. I was in a medical study once—I think I was in the control group and man, did that stink. (Though it turns out the active-treatment group didn't fare much better.)
• 25D. [Its bulb is small]—my little Book Owl LED light? That too. But GREEN ONION is what Doug was going for here.
• 29D, 40A. ZESTY, meet CRUSTY. Is this about saltine crackers? Wait, those are crispy Zestas. [Vivacious], [Gruff].
• 31D. [Baseball nickname that's a portmanteau] is A-ROD, short for Alex Rodriguez. No baseball talk here, please. Not 'til opening day, 2010.
• 32D. [Fibula neighbor] down below is the TALUS, the big ankle bone. Did you want it to be TIBIA, 5 letters, starts with T?
OK, I like question-marked clues usually, but [Cabinet member?] for 48D: FILE doesn't do it for me. Your files are in no way "members" of your file cabinet.
Arcane factoids I am likely to forget by morning: PAUL V was the [Pope who met with Galileo], and ACETIC ACID is a [Wood distillation product].
Patrick Berry's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Koined Terms"
From my Mac's widget dictionary: koine means "the common language of the Greeks from the close of the classical period to the Byzantine era; a common language shared by various peoples; a lingua franca." Our "Koined Terms" here begin with adjectives based on Greek names and are phrases of varying familiarity:
• HIPPOCRATIC OATH, check. [What doctors are expected to follow].
• SOCRATIC METHOD, check. [Teaching technique that involves asking questions].
• PYRRHIC VICTORY, check. [Win that wasn't worth it].
• HOMERIC LAUGHTER—huh? [What hilarious jokes induce] but also very bad news, medically: "Uncontrolled spasmodic laughter induced by mirthless stimuli, a symptom of organic brain disease that indicates a poor prognosis; HL may be seen in multiple sclerosis, pseudobulbar palsy, epilepsy, intracranial hemorrhage, frontal lobotomy, and kuru, which causes 'laughing death.'" My goodness.
I like the inclusion of Greek mythology's Athena (in a clue for MINERVA) and THESEUS, the MOHS/OHM'S echo, the SCUM clue ([Dirty film]—no, not that kind of film), and learning a new word in the CELTIC clue ([Like the festival of Beltane]). Beltane ushers in the summery half of the year on May 1 and Samhain closes it out on November 1. Have I seen the name HAUER before, or is [Austrian composer Josef Matthias ___] new to me? I think he's new to me. A 20th-century composer.
Sharon Petersen's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme centers on words that sound like plurals of letter names:
• 17A. [Nursery rhyme dish?] with a question mark is PP PORRIDGE, with PP pronounced as two "Ps" standing in for "pease."
• 25A. CC THE DAY represents "seize the day," the ["Time is fleeting" philosophy?].
• 38A. "Whys and wherefores" becomes YY AND WHEREFORES, or [Reasons?].
• 49A. ["Good grief!"?] has got too much punctuation. GG LOUISE represents "jeez Louise."
• 61A. Remember that [1999 Kidman/Cruise film?] before she married Keith Urban and he married Katie Holmes? Eyes Wide Shut gives us II WIDE SHUT.
Favorite clues and answers:
• [Brest milk]! Ha! LAIT is milk in French, and Brest is a French city.
• ROSEY [Grier of the Fearsome Foursome] once sang a song, "It's All Right to Cry." He's right, you know.
• DAPPER DAN is a [Well-groomed guy].
• A [Website that users can edit] is a WIKI. If you've never fixed a typo in Wikipedia, you should try it sometime.
• [Verminophobe's fear] is GERMS. Yeesh! Maybe I'll be all better come Monday and can get the H1N1 vaccine with my kid.
Updated Friday morning:
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Natural Defenses"—Janie's review
Yesterday, Ray Hamel's puzzle gave us five man-made items that are worn "for your protection," or man-made defenses. Today, Patrick gives us four of nature's own defenses, each of which appears as the first word of a well-known phrase having nothing to do with defenses—man-made or natural. You may want to don some protection, however, if you find yourself anywhere near these sometimes lethal weapons:
•17A. STINGER COCKTAIL [Brandy concoction]. I suppose drinking too many of these could be mighty dangerous, too, but the defense in question here is the stinger of the apian sort. On the subject of bee stings, all I can say is "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!!"
•26A. SCALE MODEL [Proportionate reproduction]. Fish, reptiles, even butterflies have scales. They're not likely to harm you (in the way a stinger might), but they do help keep the species safe from their predators.
•48A. CLAW HAMMER [Carpentry staple] and, depending who's wielding it in a non-functional way..., quite capable of doing a lot of damage/providing a lot of protection. But let's focus instead on the claw component of the avian and ursine variety. Again: OUCH!!! (I feel certain you know this but the claws of the former may also be called "talons.")
•61A. POISON-PEN LETTER [Malicious message]. And you'll find poison everywhere: in spiders, snakes, fruit, plants, mushrooms. What can I tell you? Mother Nature looks out for her own, so be very careful!
If this puzzle isn't a knock-out, a solver could still WARM TO [Grow fond of] it. There's some fun in the cluing: [Result of baby's first spaghetti dinner] for MESS is particularly vivid; ditto [Cluelessness gesture] for SHRUG. Yesterday, we saw verdant and schnoz as fill. Today, [Became verdant] clues GREENED and [Jimmy known as "The Schnoz"] clues DURANTE, whose proboscis was famously immortalized in Cole Porter's "You're the Top":You're a rose,
*Also in yesterday's puzzle. Patrick, were you and Ray in communication when you were constructing these puzzles?
You're Inferno's Dante*,
You're the nose
On the great Durante.
I'm just in the way,
As the French would say, "de trop."
But if, baby, I'm the bottom,
You're the top!
[Beetle Bailey's outfit] is not his UNIFORM but THE ARMY (his meta-outfit, so to speak). Did you know: "Beetle Bailey" was introduced by Mort Walker in 1950, and Walker is still producing the comic strip? Or that Lois, of Walker's "Hi and Lois," is Beetle's sister? I'm just wondering if Otto, Sarge's anthropomorphic dog, has ever said "ARF!" [Comic strip bark].
Myles Callum's Wall Street Journal crossword, "I'm a PC"
For my money, "I'm a PC" is among the more annoying, jejune commerical catchphrases out there. You may use a Windows machine, but it doesn't mean you are one. That's just insipid. The theme phrases have P.C. initials, but they're livened up via the clueing. Each clue defines the P.C. phrase in two ways, one straight and one jokey. For example, PRINCE CHARMING is [Fairy tale guys? Hexing a pop musician? Whatever! I'm a PC], and the really-not-so-familiar phrase PRIVY COUNCILS is clued as [Royal advisers? Outhouse committees? Whatever! I'm a PC]. If you have to do a "phrases with the same initials" theme, you're best off having some fun with the clues to add some pep to the puzzle.
A couple relative obscurities in the fill—CRESSETS are [Metal baskets for burning oil]. I know PONIARD, or [Slim dagger], but it's an old word. I was also stumped, weirdly, by 4D: ["Major Dundee" star] is HESTON, but I started out with the [Hormel product] being SPAM rather than HASH and thinking I needed the name of the Crocodile Dundee star, which I'm still blanking on.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Circular Reasoning"
Am I missing something here? The circled letters spell out IT IS ALL COMING BACK TO ME NOW. (Wouldn't "it's" sound more natural?) One of the long answers is WEDDING BAND, which is a circle, but the other is the WAITING GAME of vultures, which touches on the circle of life tangentially. There's an ORBITER in the middle of the grid. The three-way checking of squares nudges the constructor towards some compromises in fill—TLAs, partials, foreign words (Latin IN REM, French ANNEE), REMOP, not much in the way of juicy answers. Is there a theme beyond "look, the circled letters spell out something"?
Hmm. I'll probably like Monday's BEQ better.
Gotta run—busy day!
September 26, 2009
Sunday, 9/27/09
NYT 41:31 (paper)
Seattle Times 23:35 (paper)
LAT 16:12 (paper)
CS 11:10 (paper)
BG 25:29 (paper)
Happy Sunday, everyone. Sam Donaldson here, spelling Orange and spilling on the Sunday crosswords. I am honored that Orange gave me another shot at guest blogging--I feel like a young stand-up who gets called over to the guest chair by Johnny Carson after a set! "Just don't screw this up...."
It's just now "back to school" time at my place of employment (the University of Washington in Seattle). We use a trimester system with three ten-week terms, meaning fall classes finally start this week. Even though everyone else has been in school for a month or so already, I need to get back into the groove. Accordingly, I'm going to assign grades to today's puzzles. As in real life, final grades will be completely arbitrary and capricious.
Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword, "That is Two Say" (Final Grade = A)
Apologies off the top for the crappy picture of the completed grid. My version of Across Lite (downloaded circa 1620) does not support multiple letters in one box. Not a problem for me since my custom is to print the puzzle and solve by pencil anyway. But since you don't want to decipher my handwriting, I planned to type my solution into the empty grid and snap that picture. Works just fine if there's no rebus. Oops. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just download the updated version of Across Lite and I'll be off to the races." Naturally, for some reason, my computer won't let me download the newer version. So I went MacGyver on y'all and snapped a pdf version of the completed grid. You'll see my chicken-scratch in the rebus squares, but I keyed in all the other letters.
Last month I finally got around to purchasing "Crossword Puzzle Challenges for Dummies," Patrick's guide to crossword construction. Oh, how I wish I would have followed the advice of others and purchased this sooner. Patrick explains the ins and outs of construction so lucidly, I admire his prose almost as much as his puzzles (high praise indeed). If I remember correctly, Patrick endured the frustration of many solvers on the crossword blogs for his last NYT Sunday-sized puzzle, the fraternity rebus. In my view, today's rebus should garner more compliments than scorn. It was a toughie (for me), but a goodie.
The gimmick here was to squeeze two letters into 13 assorted boxes. Read in one direction, the two letters were simply two letters--no big deal. In the other direction, however, they were to be read aloud. It's now been fifteen minutes since I first typed that lame explanation and I still can't do better. Let's look at the entries using the rebus squares so it all makes sense:
The grid offered plenty of toeholds, with easy fill-ins like Jai ALAI, Sierra LEONE, RUBIK'S Cube, SINO-Japanese War, and From A TO Z. Of the 12(!) clues formatted as fill-ins, only one gave me pause, the Abbott and Costello film, "Here Come the CO-EDS." But the extra hint in the clue (that it was set at a girl's school) and the crossings made it easily gettable. Despite the many fair starting points, however, the rebus had me a little on edge and I found it hard to get traction. This being Patrick Berry, I suspected the two letter combinations in the rebus squares would form a secret message when read in some order. So, ever on the lookout for the meta-theme, I lost some time. Please tell me there isn't a secret message in the grid. How embarrassing would that be!
In discussing how to fill grids with familiar terms in his book, Patrick says he knows a lot about movies but little about television, politics, and opera. Save for television, I'm right there with him. But even I can get AIDA, the [Opera set in Egypt]. I like seeing LIAM NEESON, the [Ethan Frome portrayer, 1993], in the grid, and for some reason I like that TART abuts TROLLOPE, even though the latter has an "E" on the end so it refers to the [Author of the Barsetshire novels].
Here are some confessions from solving this puzzle (abridged since this has to be posted before Tuesday): (1) still don't know how [Leopard's home?] clues IMAC; (2) needed lots of crossings to tease out COSTA BRAVA, the [Resort region near Barcelona]; (3) never knew GRAHAM as a [Car make of the 1930s]; (4) am blushing a little that I could throw TATIANA Romanova, the ["From Russia With Love" Bond girl], into the grid with only one letter crossing; (5) never heard of a TULIP TREE, the [Yellow poplar]; (6) thought I was better in science than I really am, for both MARKER GENE (a [Key sequence in a chromosome]) and MIDRIB (the [Leaf vein]) were new to me; and (7) while I normally have an allergic reaction to variant spellings in crosswords, somehow I was fine with two of them in this grid (PATINES for [Surface films] and IKON for a [Venerated image]). Oddly, I'm significantly more freaked out about Jacob RIIS, the ["How the Other Half Lives"] writer.
So this proved to be a workout for me, but I enjoyed it. I feel smarter for having solved this puzzle (and dumber for confessing all of my ignorance here). So it gets an "A." As does "Crossword Puzzle Challenges for Dummies." And, for that matter, so does "Puzzle Masterpieces."
Merl Reagle’s Seattle Times crossword, "O Punnish Me” (Final Grade = B+)
Once again I'm re-branding Merl's syndicated crossword--you know it on this blog as the "Philadelphia Inquirer" crossword. And to celebrate the re-branding, it looks like Merl's trying something entirely new for him: puns. I thought about listing the theme entries in order of "groaniness," but check it out: the puns actually get groanier from top to bottom!
Do you agree that the puns get better (or worse, if you're a pun-hater) as you progress down the grid? I know Merl likes to save his best "punch line" for the bottom, and in my view he chose wisely here. The order of the theme entries here is just perfect, even if serendipitous.
Sure, there are only seven puns in the grid, but two of them are long enough to span two lines, so I feel there is plenty of theme here to enjoy. We're treated to a couple of Qs and Xs in the grid, and some clever clues to boot: [It's witnessed by seconds] for DUEL and [Sushi candidates] for EELS.
I liked that the clues for two consecutive down entries were related: John Henry EATON was the [Secretary of War, 1829] and William Howard TAFT was the [Secretary of War, 1904]. At last, the payoff for memorizing the list of former War Secretaries back in fifth grade!
I breezed through the solve until I came to a screeching halt in the far east. I was befuddled by Hosni MUBARAK, the [Cairo VIP], since I kept thinking I was supposed to come up with a term like "pharaoh." I had ROW A for the [Good seat site], but alas it was ROW I (I take it the I is for "one" and not the letter "I"). Kept wanting ADAM'S as the [Rib adjective] when it was PRIME, and that precluded me from getting EPH, the [Galatians follower: abbr.] (short for Ephesians), for a long time. Didn't help that SASHA being a [Nickname for "Alexandra"] was new to me. Getting stuck on this many entries in such close proximity created the perfect storm, so my relatively slow time comes as no surprise.
So why just a B+ and not a higher mark? Well, there were a few sour notes. Case in point: NARR, short for "narration," or [Voice-over]. Odd to see WSW and SSE (both clued as a [Compass pt.]) in the same grid. Also odd to see QE-II, the [Noted liner, briefly] together with the aforementioned ROW I. But I guess two odds make it even, so all is well. I'm sure more than a handful of solvers got stumped with the [Gary Cooper film, "They Came to ___"] CORDURA. Cordura's a nylon fabric originally made by DuPont so sayeth the Holder of All Truth). So they came to Cordura ... after trying burlap? Because cotton was bad and wool was even "worsted?" OK, we need to move on....
Alan Arbesfeld’s Los Angeles Times crossword, "Put the Finger On” (Final Grade = CREDIT)
We interrupt this blog for some late-breaking news:
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Publishers of the Los Angeles Times announced today that the newspaper will be renamed the Los Angeles Plus. "Multiplication proved too difficult for our readers," said one editor who wished to remain anonymous. "We felt that having the 'Times' in our name dissuaded potential readers. The 'Plus' tells readers they won't have to do anything harder than addition."
Now back to your regularly scheduled blog post.
Well, in light of this news, the increasing ease of the LA Times puzzles makes sense! If you haven't noticed, this and other crossword blogs (there are other crossword blogs?) have bemoaned the easy puzzles of late. Word on the street is that papers still relatively new in carrying the syndicated puzzle have put pressure on the editors to ease up on the puzzles. So instead of a Monday-to-Friday progression of difficulty, we get a Monday-to-soft-Tuesday progression. I can join the chorus in disliking the effect this has on the puzzles, but I can't take it out on the editors or the constructors. When a student in class submits a late paper because of extenuating circumstances, I usually grade the paper on a pass-fail basis instead of assigning a letter grade. I think it's right to do the same thing here, too. If the clues had been a little more challenging, this would have been a really enjoyable solve. As it was, it was a pleasant (albeit brief), breezy stroll. We have established that I'm not a competitive speed solver, but when I finish a 21x grid in under 17 minutes, it's easy.
Oh, the theme? Pretty conventional, but it had a fun feel to it. Alan takes eight phrases and adds an "ID" to end of one of the words, then gives the resulting wacky phrase a suitable clue:
Six of the eight theme entries were in the top six and bottom six rows, so those sections are relatively dense with theme. The middle nine rows have only two theme entries, and neither is impressively long for a 21x grid. Consequently, the midsection feels a little thin to me. Still, I liked a lot of the long downs, including BAR AND GRILL, QUIT COLD, ACT NOW, and SUPERPOWER. The rest of the fill may not have blinded me with sparkle, but I felt it was solid. Yes, I muttered a little when I saw STR, the [Orch. section], and SER, the [Rev.'s talk]. In fact, I'll go on record that SER may be my least favorite abbreviation in crosswords. If I ever have to use that entry, I'm cluing it as the Spanish verb (and then watching the editor change it to the abbreviation, probably). Of course, if I have to use that entry in the first place, editors will likely pass on the puzzle anyway. But the point is that the puzzle was quite solid overall. Just think how much better it could have been if the constructor and editors were free to make it a normal Sunday puzzle. Sigh.
William I. Johnston's CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge" (Final Grade = B)
Accountants will like this 70-word themeless puzzle because its assets evenly match its liabilities. Consider first the assets: the best entry in the grid, NUDIST CAMP, gets matched with the puzzle's best clue, [Place where nothing is going on?]. The grid features four 15-letter entries, and two of them are lively: LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG, clued as ["Fido is part of the package"], and SNAKE IN THE GRASS, a [Backstabber]. The clue [Like Vera Wang and Anna Sui] rescues the third 15-letter entry, CHINESE-AMERICAN, from mediocrity. Sure enough, I took the bait, trying to see where "DESIGNER" would fit in the answer. ARMENIAN may be a ho-hum entry, but it's jazzed up through a celebrity reference in the clue, [Cher's heritage, in part]. In the northwest, MINT TEAS looks nice atop I'VE HAD IT.
But there are also some liabilities. The ugliest is TCHR, the [N.E.A. member]. I might have to rethink the hatred for SER. Then the [Glamorous Gardner], AVA, crosses the [Old greeting], AVE, right in the center of the grid. AIR PASSAGE feels clunky, and the clue, [Ventilation duct], does little to make it dance. I know RAPID TRANSIT MAP isn't forced, and yet it still looks and feels that way to me. It cried for some zip, but the clue, [Guide for commuters], offered no help. The proper number of European rivers to appear in any one grid is 0.6; this one has two, the NEVA and the ARNO. There were some missed cluing opportunities, as ABSTRACT ART seemed to deserve better than [Nonfigurative creation], and BRAIN TEASER appeared underserved by [Poser]. I get that "poser" can serve as misdirection, but what about something like ["How many times can you take away 2 from 21?," e.g.]? Finally, consider the following four consecutive down entries in the southeast: ARNO, MAIS, ESAI, SSNS. Show that corner to your non-solver partner or friends and watch them shake their heads. They'd have a point--it's probably too much concentrated crosswordese.
Every asset in the puzzle is offset by a liability. Perfect balance for the accountant, but hard to grade for me. In the end, I chose a "B" on the strength of the NUDIST CAMP.
I broke into the grid with STOLI, the [Vodka brand], not because I really know the brand but because I noticed that 1-Across was a plural. That meant the answer to 8-Down likely started with an "S," and Stoli's the only vodka brand I know starting with "S." Then came Mauna LOA, good ol' Max VON Sydow, and from there LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG came immediately. TAMABLE, something [Subject to breaking?], took me way too long because I kept seeing "tam," as in the hat. Sometimes Scottish ancestry works against you (it also works against you when you try to get a tan). The northeast came next, then down to the southeast and then the southwest. I kept wanting BINDI for BONDI, the [Popular beach near Sydney]. I know Bindi is the name of the late Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin's daughter (she wasn't the one who, as an infant, was held perilously close to a gator by her dad in a ballyhooed incident--that was her brother). I figured maybe she was named for the beach, but PIS was not working as a [Terminal abbr.].
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe Crossword, "Doubleheaders" (Final Grade = B-)
THE THEME entries here consist of wacky two-word phrases where the first word is repeated at the start of the second word (just like the first two words in this sentence):
Look, I was absolutely 100% sure-fire confident that MISS MISSOURI had to be MISS MISSOULA. For one thing, I love Missoula, Montana. It's home to the University of Montana (Go Griz!), breathtaking scenery (especially now as it stretches into fall), and some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. But more importantly, all of the other theme entries are contrived phrases (unless "stag stage" is in the language and I'm just too sheltered). There may be "cat catalogs" peddling trinkets or pet-care supplies to felinophiles, but I don't think the phrase could be considered common or real. Miss Missouri, on the other hand, is real--a real title held by a real person (currently Tara Osseck, an absolute sweetheart, based on her blog). We're not supposed to see a real phrase mixed in with nine other wacky ones. (Peter Gordon taught me that lesson when I submitted a theme query to the New York Sun in my very early days of constructing.) Even if we can let the inconsistency slip, the clue should not have signaled wackiness with the "?" at the end. The puzzle was fun overall, but this bugged me enough to affect the final grade. Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm missing something here, but that often happens in grading exams too.
My refusal to let go of MISSOULA really slowed me down. But there were other little bits of knotty fill. I had no idea that CHORINE, clued as [Rockette, for one], was an informal name for a woman in a chorus line. And I was lucky to get ARDEN, [The Bard's wood], through crossings. Apparently, it's prominent in "As You Like It," but I haven't read (the Cliff's Notes for) that one yet.
I was surprised to see TEA at 108-Down when ALICE is clued at 110-Across as "Girl at a tea party." Ditto with MENS, a [Clothing store line], given that "men" appears in the clue to STAG STAGE. I feel that I should have finished this puzzle about 4 or 5 minutes faster than I did, as most of the fill and the clues were sufficiently straight-forward.
Oh, and the [Canadian skating great], Brian ORSER, makes yet another appearance in our crosswords this week. Orser's been a trendy entry of late. I'm pretty sure Crosscan is to blame for this, but I'm not sure how.
August 20, 2009
Friday, 8/21
NYT 5:25
LAT 4:23
BEQ 4:04
CS 9:25 (J—paper)
CHE awol
WSJ 8:34
Patrick Berry's New York Times crossword
Patrick Berry's slacking off with a ridiculously high word count of 66 in this puzzle. A 66 is actually quite low by anyone else's standards, but Berry has spoilt us with his smooth 64-and-under creations. This one's got only two 3-letter answers, and while there are some tacked-on word endings (OPENEST, REMOTEST, CRASSER), they don't overshadow the livelier fill.
I got myself mired in the upper right quadrant, where I opted for OCEANIA for 12D: ["1984" superstate dominated by Neo-Bolshevism]—I needed EURASIA there. That E made me assign 17A: [Cuban-born jazz great Sandoval] a wrong first name of MIGUEL (he's ARTURO). Then the two-word HAUL UP for 15A: [Call on the carpet] just wasn't happening. HAUL UP? That sounds off to me. I also wanted 13D: [Like some pinto beans] to be REFRIED rather than SPOTTED; tonight's bean tacos from Taco Bell were yummy.
Favorite answers and clues:
Mystery word of the day: [Premonish], the clue for 9D: WARN. I know admonish, sure, but never knew there was a premonish dating back to 1526. The word's wordnik.com page tells me it anagrams to morphines.
Updated Friday morning:
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Throwbacks"—Janie's review
Boy, did I feel DENSE [Slow on the uptake] in the course of solving Nancy's puzzle and trying to put the theme together. But once I stepped away from the puzzle, I got a true appreciation of this wordplay-rich creation. It's SUPER.
I'm not sure how succinctly I can do this, but bear with me. Each of the four theme-phrases ends with a word that is a synonym for "throw"; it's at the "back" of the phrase—whence "throwbacks"... Each theme-phrase has a meaning that has nothing to do with throwing anything but has a self-contained meaning of its own. Each of the theme-phrases is both really fresh in its conventional meaning and really visual in its themed meaning. The cluing of each theme-phrase begins with the words [Hurl of a ...]. So how does this play out? The [Hurl of a...]
Other strong fill includes FANFARES [Trumpeted flourishes], MINI-DRESS [Outfit that shows a lot of leg] and ARMCHAIRS [Places to take a load off]. I also like the musical E-G-B-D-F for [Lines of the treble clef] and the way the mention of LAURA [Otto Preminger film noir classic] automatically starts this song on the juke-box in my head. Back to the former: is "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" (or "...Favor") still the mnemonic-of-choice among music teachers or has it been given some sort of 21st century spin?
There's more music to be found in HARPO [The silent Marx brother] who...played the harp (when he wasn't honking his horn), ["Rigoletto" composer] Giuseppe VERDI (a/k/a Joe Green), "HE'S [ ___ got the whole world..."], and ["When will they] EVER [learn?"], a line from Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (I don't think we can legitimately include the kinda kitschy [Lady of Spain], since the correct fill is DONA—but, hey, here it is anyway.)
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme is doubling an N to change the entire meaning of a phrase. Dan's got six theme entries, two of them stacked in the middle, and the only way to stack two answers in the middle is to have a grid with an even number of rows—this puzzle's 15x16. I wasn't quite as fond of the puzzle as Rex was, and I've got a migraine, so I'll let his L.A. Crossword Confidential post do the heavy lifting for me today.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Questions for the Death Panel"
This theme is not about killing Grandma. Rather, it's death-related idioms that might be used innocuously by "death panels" to answer innocuous questions. For example, if you're looking to move to Iowa, you might consider trying to BUY THE FARM. And you'd PULL THE PLUG on your alarm clock if the alarm won't turn off.
What, no KICK THE BUCKET, Brendan? ["I want to water my garden, but that pail's too heavy to lift. What should I do?"]
Favorite answer/clue: [Completely insufferable] clues UNGODLY.
Dan Fisher's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Over-the-Counter Investments"
Various phrases become invested with OTC: the letters OTC are inserted within them, changing the gist of the phrase. For example, freak shows become FREAK SHOT COWS, clued as [Mutant wielded his ray gun in the pasture?]. There are six other theme entries throughout the puzzle.
Favorite clues: [Work from a folder] is ORIGAMI. Usually I'm not a big fan of cross-referenced clues, but I enjoyed the three-part 105D: [Famous final question], ET TU, spoken by 17D: CAESAR, the [105-Down utterer], of OLD ROME ([49D: [Where 17-Down ruled].
August 08, 2009
Sunday, 8/9
BG 8:35
LAT 7:18
NYT 6:35
PI untimed
CS 3:49
Patrick Berry's second Sunday variety puzzle 9:49
Patrick Blindauer and Andrea Carla Michaels' New York Times crossword, "Made for TV-Movies"
The title monkeys with the usual hyphenation of made-for-TV movies because each of the five 21-letter theme entries is a mashup of TV and movie titles (Jeopardy! "Before and After" category style), clued accordingly:
The theme didn't resonate much for me, but I liked a lot of the fill and I wasn't in the mood for a tough puzzle that worked my head so Andrea and Patrick's easy offering was right on target. Before moving along to the highlights, allow me to grumble about 93D: [Something you love to play with]. NEW TOY feels like a contrived phrase rather than a solidly in-the-language term. And now, on with the show:
A couple other comments: 124A: TANAKA is the answer to [Tomoyuki ___, creator of Godzilla]. I'm sure some of you comic/sci fi nerds knew that one, but I didn't. I'm talking about the folks who instantly knew that AQUAMAN was the 14D: [Superhero with an octopus named Topo]. 118D: [Stumblers' sounds] clues ERS, and I just grumbled about that in the Saturday LAT. When is there ever a reason to pluralize "er"? "Wow, that was a lot of ers in your lecture. You should have practced more"? Er, no. Sure, I'm used to this in crosswords, but "ambulances take people to ERs" seems like a more natural plural, doesn't it?
Updated Sunday morning:
Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Grad Tidings," in Across Lite
The most impressive part of this puzzle—in which 12 recipients of an HONORARY HARVARD DEGREE are presented—is the upper right corner where SEIJI OZAWA is stacked atop VACLAV HAVEL. Can you believe Hook found workable fill that crossed those two answers? Some of the crossings were know-it-or-you-don't stuff, like TRECE (Spanish for "thirteen," or [Unlucky "numero"]) and KAZAN (["On the Waterfront" director]), that won't give much help to solvers who can't spell SEIJI OZAWA or VACLAV HAVEL without blinking.
My toughest crossing was where CANIO meets OH KAY—one ["Pagliacci" role] I don't know crossing a [1926 Gershwins musical] I've never heard of. Second gnarliest crossing was [PCS file suffix] EPS providing the P in RIPSAW, clued with [It cuts with the grain]. I don't know what the EPS file type is.
INCAN is clued as [Vintage Peruvian]. I read at the Library of Congress's Exploring the Early Americas exhibition that the Incan Empire occupied a larger swath of land than any other empire in history, but the map here shows much less territory than the British Empire had in its heyday.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "Truly Cheesy Puns"
Merl unleashes his inner punster (and his outer one) with a set of cheese puns:
Favorite clue in the fill: [Life partner?] for LIMB, as in "life and limb."
Edgar Fontaine's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Initial Exposé"
Fontaine takes seven famous people who use initials in lieu of first and middle names, assigns them familiar phrases that could be expansions of their initials, and clues them accordingly:
Moving beyond the theme, I raised an eyebrow at 6D, ["God Bless America" inning]. That's the SEVENTH, but at Wrigley Field, the seventh-inning stretch is when we sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Is this an L.A. or New York thing? The DIK-DIK (39D) is an [Antelope named for the sound it makes when frightened]. Anyone hit the skids where OTHO the 19A: [Emperor aftr Galba] met SHOGI, which is 3D: [Chess, Japanese-style]? There's a G-STRING at 9D: [It doesn't conceal much]. And in the category of Old-School Crosswordese, we have the THOLE, or 82A: [Pin on a rowboat]. My Mac's dictionary tells me THOLE is also a Scottish or archaic verb meaning "endure (something) with without resistance or complaint; tolerate." I thole crossword fill like THOLE.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"
The king of triple-stacks ponies up a pair of triple-stacks in today's relatively easy puzzle, with the following 15-letter answers:
Five quick hits from the rest of the puzzle:
Patrick Berry's variety crossword, "Ringing Endorsement"—the NYT's second Sunday puzzle
I hope the Magazine section made space for this puzzle because it's brilliantly conceived and executed. If the millions of people who get the Sunday Times but wouldn't bother to dig around online for a puzzle miss out, they're...really missing out.
The 15x15 grid has no black squares separating the answers in a given row or column, and sometimes the crossing answers have a conflict because a square needs a different letter in each direction. How clever is it to have those intersections marked by the always-there letter O as a ring around the other letter? And how on earth did Patrick Berry manage to not just fill the grid with workable answers but also get those O-plus-another-letter crossings to fit just so and to get the circled letters to spell something out AND to include theme entries as the first and last Across answers? The mind, she boggles. And then the title is "Ringing Endorsement," a familiar phrase—and the theme is "an endorsement of sorts." This puzzle is so elegantly wrought.
Will Shortz, please beg Patrick Berry to make a bunch more of these and publish them in the Times. Patrick Berry, please get to work on a sequel to Puzzle Masterpieces and include more of these puzzles. I recognize that the "Ringing Endorsement" title wouldn't necessarily be an apt description for other puzzles in this vein, but that's OK—I just want more of these challenges.
The [Speaker of this puzzle's endorsement] is O. HENRY, and [What this puzzle's endorsement refers to] is NEW YORK CITY. The circled squares spell out this: "It'll be a great place if they ever finish it." I found I'd missed a couple of the ringed O crossings when I was reading the circled letters, having not checked every crossing clue, but it all came together in the end, wrapped up in a bow.
August 07, 2009
Friday, 8/7
NYT 33:32 (PG)
LAT untimed (PG)
CS 7:20 (J—paper)
WSJ 10:54 (JK)
BEQ 4:52 (JP)
CHE 3:36 (JP) download the puzzle here
Okay, one more day and you won't have old PuzzleGirl to kick around any more! Until, ya know, the next time I fill in for Orange. But anyway. I was debating whether to write this up tonight or to try to get some sleep first and blog in the morning. I'm still dragging from my road-trip/concert/autograph-seeking experience last night. Like I said yesterday, I'm definitely too old for that stuff. But ya know what? At least this time I only lost my sunglasses. Back in the old days I used to lose my car.
Manny Nosowsky graces us with a beautiful grid in today's New York Times puzzle. We've got 3x15 stacks top and bottom with not a clunker crossing in sight. Super smooth, is what I'm saying. The 15s:
But look at the crosses! I'm sure YEREVAN isn't universally known, but it's totally fair. I thought A-OKAY looked funny spelled out but it gets an awful lot of Google hits and I'm thinking maybe I've seen it shortened to AOK so many times in puzzles that the actual standard way of spelling it seems foreign to me. And, come on ... P. T. BARNUM? That's an awesome entry! And the PAVILION / LESOTHO / SIMEON pile-up is a thing of beauty.
I liked the cute clues for DEANS, [Ones in control of their faculties?], and HONOREE, [Center of a roast]. Really the only trouble I had was spelling [Mother of the believers] AYESHA. I have a friend with that name who spells it Aeesha, so I had to think about whether able works for [Well]. Answer: It doesn't, but ABLY does.
Updated Friday morning:
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Obstacle Course"—Janie's review
Interesting title for this humorous quip-puzzle. The goal of the "course" is related to a trim physical appearance; the "obstacle" along the way: temptation! Behold how it all adds up:
Yes, for most of us, there's always a price to be paid for enjoying anything but the "Thanks, I'll just have fruit cup" dessert option. Whether you're dining at The Grocery, Brooklyn's trendy and terrific bistro, or someplace even more "down home"—like [1970s sitcom diner] MEL'S or your favorite real diner—finishing one's meal with a healthy dessert is part of the fun of eating out. And by "healthy dessert" I do not mean two scoops of [Vegan protein source] TOFU "ice-cream"....
I was about to say that if you [Yielded to a deadly sin] and LUSTED for dessert, that might be problematic—but nah, no such thing as lusting for dessert being a sin. Now if the indulgence verges on gluttony... Well—that's between you and your comfort zone! While it may not be the best source for theological discourse, this Wiki backgrounder on the seven deadly sins is quite good and to the point—especially for the information it provides on their 4th century origins as "eight evil thoughts" (delineated by monk Evagrius Ponticus) and their 6th century revision by Pope Gregory I into the sins we know and love.
On the theme subject of personal appearance, vanity is not a sin, but please be careful if you opt for BOTOX as your [Anti-wrinkle treatment]. The side effects are legend—and I leave it to you to find your own pictures of cosmetic injections gone wrong...
What I do like about BOTOX is that "X" at the end. If you take a careful look around the grid, you'll also see that Patrick's given us a pangram today. Every letter of the alphabet makes at least one appearance. With a nod to the way children learn to chant the alphabet, we even get XYZ clued as [Grade school recital's finale]. The sense of the word "recital" made the clue hard to parse—and I think that was intended. We're looking for something that's recited, and not a musical presentation. Btw, this puzzle contains two Xs, four Ys and three Zs. Let's hear it for the end of the alphabet!
And to wrap things up, let me mention just a few favorite pairings in the grid (unrelated to the previous discussion or to each other): the identity-rhymed crossing of TOFU with [Egg] FOO [yung]; the sparkly crossing of SHOW BIZ and TOPAZ; and the pairing for lovers of ancient history—PRIAM [King in "The Iliad"] and TROY, his kingdom, here clued as [Brad Pitt historical drama]. My suggestion? Yes, Pitt shows off his good body, but really—read the book...
Brendan Emmett Quigley's blog puzzle, "Superhero Rejects"
joon here with a couple of quick hits, pinch-pinch-hitting for the very busy puzzlegirl. brendan's got a hilarious theme today: six common expressions reinterpreted as improbable superhero names. it's slightly reminiscent of a horrible ben stiller movie from about 10 years back, "mystery men." did anybody see that one? no? just me, then. and no, i can't tell you why i would have gone to see it. back to the puzzle...
according to brendan's blog, one of these is also going to be a theme answer in matt gaffney's contest puzzle today (which hasn't come out yet), as the result of a crossword constructor smackdown between BEQ and MG. i happen to know which one, but i'm not telling...
stuff i loved from the fill: science! the [First Law of motion subject] is INERTIA. my summer physics students are taking their final exam as we speak. [Jupiter feature] is the great RED SPOT. not sure how wonderful this is without "great," but ... i'm an easy guy to please. i love the colloquialism "SPOT-ON!" (["Exactly!"]). [Action flick that takes place in the Nakatomi Plaza] was an utter gimme for me: DIE HARD. my wife and i were just talking about how amazingly well that movie has held up. alan rickman is just brilliant as hans grüber, and i think this was when hollywood realized that great acting from the bad guy could actually carry an action flick. and brendan's got a funny self-referential clue at 1a, [Like me in a couple years]: BALD. say it ain't so, bro.
Annemarie Brethauer's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Lines Man"
the chronicle recently changed their site layout, and although the crossword is finally back on their website, it's in a different place. most places where people get their puzzles (like cruciverb and ephraim's puzzle pointers and wij's puzzle pointers) haven't changed their links. well, here's the crossword page, and you can download today's puzzle there. it's a tribute puzzle to the "lines man" of the title, alfred lord TENNYSON, the [Man who penned this puzzle's lines, born August 6, 1809]. that's 200 years ago. same year as darwin and lincoln (remember that?), though not on the same day. so what are those lines?
so, a nice tribute. the only thing that could have made it better would have been the inclusion of Ulysses, my favorite tennyson poem. but i understand that it didn't fit into the grid as an unpaired 7.
the fill was pretty smooth. i did like the mythological bent (i can hear you all gasp in surprise): in addition to THE LOTOS EATERS (which is tennyson's riff on a section from the odyssey), ATLAS is clued very cleverly as [Strong supporter?], and ODIN puts in an appearance as well. unfamiliar greek word: EPHEBE, clued as [Youth of ancient Greece]. is this a singular or plural noun? common or proper? i can't really tell.
Wall Street Journal by Patrick Berry
Surprise! I’m baaaack. It’s Jeffrey Krasnick filling in for PuzzleGirl filling in for Orange. Yes, finally an accountant blogging the Wall Street journal puzzle. But we’re in the marketing department, not accounting today. This one by Patrick Berry is called “Product claims (Disproved)” or perhaps, Famous Last Words.
Theme entries:
Cool puzzle. Nice eight-letter stacking of two sets of theme answers.
Other cool stuff:
Gareth Bain's Los Angeles Times crossword
puzzlegirl had to run off to her doctor/airport/what-have-you, so she asked me to post the grid and link to her writeup at LA crossword confidential. i refused, of course. what am i, some kind of lackey?
