Reagle 7:47
BG 7:38
NYT 7:17
LAT 6:55
CS 4:27
If you haven't done Caleb Madison's Bard Bulletin crossword in Across Lite (posted at the Crossword Fiend forum), now you can also solve it online at the Bard High School Early College's student paper site.
Patrick Merrell's New York Times crossword, "Career Day Speaker Schedule"
Did you know that Patrick Merrell has two blogs? At Pat Tricks, where he writes on an occasional basis, his latest post features a cartoon in honor of Will Shortz's 16th anniversary as the New York Times crossword editor. (Congrats, Will! And no, we're not giving you a convertible for your sweet sixteen.) Pat writes more regularly at the NYT's Wordplay blog, where he alternates weeks with Jim Horne now. Hey, look! Patrick blogs his own puzzle today. He mentions that many of his past puzzles have been one-of-a-kind innovations, but that this one is more ordinary. Indeed it is. The theme didn't especially grab me, but there were some shining stars in the fill and clues.
First, the theme. The clues are playful redefinitions of various job titles. For example, a DRIVING INSTRUCTOR might be thought to be a good label for 38A: Career Day Speaker [#3: Golf pro?]. At 70A, the FILE CLERK is billed as a [#5: Manicurist?] on the Career Day schedule. 111A: [#8 Disc jockey?] is billed as a RECORD KEEPER. Who was responsible for all these misconstrued job titles? You might say that the 119A: [Career of the parent who typed up the Career Day schedule?] is a NOVEL WRITER, in that...he or she writes things in a novel manner? That doesn't feel quite as apt as I'd like a theme's capstone to be.
Here are the highlights in the clues and non-theme answers:
• 19A. [Literary work in which Paris is featured] is the ILIAD. Paris, the Trojan, not Paris, the city in France.
• 57A. [Suffix with pant or aunt] clues -IES. So help me, I laughed at this one. A good friend of mine and her sisters just became aunties for the first time this week when their little sister had a baby. (Rowan, a baby girl. As in Rowan Atkinson?)
• 68A. IRAN is the [First landfall north of Oman]. If you have a good sense of what the first landfalls are in various directions from various countries, try this Sporcle quiz.
• 90A. An author's PEN NAME is one sort of [Literary creation].
• 118A. BROWBEATS means [Bullies]. Is the bully beating you with her brow or beating your brow?
• 126A. A [Bay, for one] is a type of INLET. My son's been toiling all day, drawing pictures of geographical terms including bay and inlet (and dune, isthmus, glacier, coastal plain, marsh...38 terms in all). His picture dictionary is due Monday and it will damn near kill the entire household to get it finished by Sunday night. But it's a cool project, and one he's had three weeks to work on. Hmm, fondness for procrastination? I'm sure I couldn't tell you where he gets that from.
• 17D. GRUELS are [Meager bowlfuls]. Even a giant bowlful is meager, no?
• 30D. Fresh clue for EDSEL: [It debuted on "E Day"].
• 55D. ERST is boring crossword fill in English (archaic word, portion of "erstwhile), but if you know German, it's a common word: [First, in Frankfurt].
• 99D. ACTI, ACTII, ACTIII, ACTIV, and ACTV are entries that don't thrill me. ACT FIVE, however, seems cooler. Why is that? It's [When Juliet says "O happy dagger!"].
• 123D. The EAR is a [Human body part with vestigial muscles]. Holy anatomy, Batman! Can this be true? Wikipedia clarifies: They're the muscles that some people can use to wiggle their ears. I am a non-wiggler, but my son can do it.
• 124D. [Hosp. V.I.P.'s] clues R.N.'S. Yay! If hospitals didn't have nurses on staff, the patients would not do too well at all. This clue is a lovely nod to the nursing profession's importance.
Entries that aren't highlights, but that may be found at a fabric store: CIRE is a 29D: [Glazed fabric] and NACRES are 67A: [Button materials]. The latter is solid old crosswordese, but CIRE is markedly less familiar to me.
While the theme didn't wow me, I'm delighted by Patrick's return to the NYT puzzle page. His creativity and humor have led to many memorable puzzles over the years, and I look forward to seeing more of his twists on the conventions of crossword puzzles.
Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "Mr. H and Mr. L"
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed. The same day, two famous writers also died: Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis. They are the Mr. H and Mr. L mentioned in the theme clues. I figured out who they were via two of the answers, but for the remaining theme entries I leaned heavily on the crossings. I'm surprised the puzzle didn't take me longer because of that—I suspect Merl made a point of keeping the clues for the themers' crossings as gettable as he could. Hang on a second—does every single Down answer cross at least one theme answer? I think so, and I think Merrell's NYT puzzle is the same. I swear I never noticed that many Sunday puzzles with all-Across themes are like that, too. Moving on, here's the Huxley/Lewis trivia theme:
• 20A. THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS is a ["Devilish" work by Mr. L]. Don't know it.
• 39A. BRAVE NEW WORLD, which I read in high-school English, is the [Classic work by Mr. H]. This was the only Mr. H clue that told me H = Huxley.
• 43A. [Space novel by Mr. L] is PERELANDRA. This is only very faintly familiar.
• 48A. [Mr. H co-wrote a few, including "Jane Eyre"] clues FILM SCRIPTS. Who knew?
• 65A. This one was my only L = Lewis clue. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA is a [Seven-book series by Mr. L].
• 80A. SHADOWLANDS is a [Film starring Anthony Hopkins as Mr. L]. Really? Didn't know that. Haven't seen the movie.
• 89A. SGT. PEPPER'S is the [Classic album featuring Mr. H on its cover (and lots of other folks, too)].
• 92A. HEAVEN AND HELL is a [Philosophical work by Mr. H]. Don't know this one, either.
• 107A. The rationale for the theme is explained here. [Interesting factoid about Mr. H and Mr. L] is that BOTH DIED ON NOV. 22, 1963.
That last answer is insane, isn't it? With six numerals? They're numerals in the intersecting Down answers, too:
• 106D. [Rockets deployed in Germany's second wave of missile attacks in WWII] are V-2'S. I would not have guessed the 2 if not for the November 22 date that appears with the puzzle's title.
• 78D. GREASE 2 is the [1982 sequel to a high school musical]. Whatever happened to Maxwell Caulfield?
• 86D. APRIL 1ST is the [Fool's day].
• 111D. The [Three-digit number denoting a charge call (as for puzzle answers] is 900. Except that the zeroes are letter Os in 117A and 121A, so in Across Lite, 9OO works.
• 112D. [Time that's exactly halfway between midnight and noon] is 6 A.M.
• 113D. [Elementary school basics] are the 3 R'S.
Favorite clue: [They tell you how to fix things] for RECIPES. I'm planning to make pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Want the recipe? Follow the one on a bottle of Karo dark corn syrup, only use at least double the amount of pecans so you have pecans throughout the pie rather than floating atop goo. I haven't decided if I want to make a butter crust from scratch or buy frozen crust.
Weirdest answer: 29D is LARIATED, clued as [Lassoed]. Is lariat a verb, or just a noun? The Dictionary of American Regional English, or DARE, says it's also a verb.
I do prefer it when Merl's themes have a lot of humor built in, which this one does not. Next week's probably will, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it—the pies and I will be out of town, and an all-star team of guest bloggers will hold down the fort here.
Updated later Saturday night:
Ken Bessette's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Literal Translations"
Ooh, I loved this theme! It was heaps o' fun for my inner anagrammer. Each theme clue is an anagram of a word in its corresponding answer, and the answer explains how the anagramming was accomplished. At the same time, each theme answer is a familiar phrase. To wit:
• 23A. [TOG?] is GOT TURNED AROUND.
• 38A. [GLIBNESS?] is MIXED BLESSING. This entry reminds me of a 4/8/07 NYT puzzle by Byron Walden in which the entry BLESSING IN DISGUISE was linked to both GLIBNESS and B SINGLES.
• 51A. [FELT?] clues LEFT IN DISARRAY. LEFT could also be used to clue FELT CONFUSED.
• 66A. [GOES?] is ALTER EGOS. This one's a bit weaker because the word EGOS is alterED. With a different letter count, ALTERED STATE could be paired with TASTE.
• 69A. [RAGE?] is a GEAR SHIFT of a sort.
• 89A. An OUT-OF-ORDER SIGN is [SING?].
• 97A. [EARTH?] clues CHANGE OF HEART.
• 118A. [STOP?] evokes the POST-REFORMATION era.
Fun, isn't it? My favorite fill:
• 28A. An ARGONAUT is [One of Jason's men].
• 55A. "TAXMAN" is a [Song on the Beatles' "Revolver" album].
• 104A. The INNER EAR is a [Canal locale].
• 110A. "IS THAT SO?" sounds like a challenge, as does ["Says who?"].
• 2D. Hey! Not the usual ORONO clue. [Maine town named for a Penobscot chief].
• 16D. I misinterpreted [Curling gadget] as referring to the sport of curling and figured IRON was just a term I didn't know. Whoops. Curling IRON, used to curl hair.
• 91D. Leonardo DI CAPRIO is the ["Catch Me If You Can" star]. I meant to see that movie.
46D's clue is [Riding for ___: acting overconfidently], for A FALL. I feel as though "heading for a fall" is the more familiar phrase, but "ride for a fall"/"be riding for a fall" has more solid dictionary support.
Less desirable are 68D: REASCENT, or [Second time to the top], and 14D: REDRILL, or [Put through one's paces again]. (RESELL is A-OK, though.) Is it just me, or does New York have more than its share of 5-letter towns with 3 vowels? 73D: TIOGA is a [New York town on the Susquehanna], and then there's UTICA and...maybe there are just the two.
Who is this 114D: [Disney duck princess] named OONA? This cavewoman duck princess (yes, that's right: a cavewoman duck) is possibly not known to more than a teeny fraction of Americans: Wikipedia says "The adventures of Princess Oona have appeared in Disney publications in many countries including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Brazil, and Russia." Had you ever heard of Princess Oona?
Updated Sunday morning:
Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"
This is a terrific themeless crossword. Zesty fill, fun clues, minimal junk. Let's take a stroll through the grid.
Multi-word phrases:
• 1A is IN A FLASH, or [Pronto].
• 18A. There's also the BAD END [A villain might come to...].
• I like to say AS IT WERE (61A: [So to speak])
• 14D is AND SO ON, or [Et cetera].
• 34D, the [Words said with an exasperated flourish], clues "UP TO HERE." This one feels like an 8-letter partial, though, doesn't it? Does anyone say it in isolation, along the lines of a Honeymooners "Straight to the moon!"?
The freshest fill includes:
• The LETTER C—22A: [Embroidery on a Cubs cap, e.g.]. Go, Cubs! (Poor, woebegone Cubs.)
• 33A is [Quarterback Daunte] CULPEPPER of the Detroit Lions. (Poor, woebegone Lions.)
• 7D: SHAG CARPETS are [Lush, plush furnishings], which is not to say furniture.
• I like the zippy TABLE-HOPS at 9D, or [Makes the rounds at a restaurant].
• 10D is OVALTINE, the [Malt drink pitched by Joe Namath], and yes, I was thinking malt liquor. 'Tis the season to watch A Christmas Story and see the kid disgusted by the naked mercenariness of the Ovaltine people.
• 24D: JASPER JOHNS, the ["Numbers" abstract expressionist artist], works two Js in to the grid.
• 31D. I'm fond of PLEONASMS, which means [Redundancies], because it's a spoonerism of neoplasm. "Tuna fish" and "safe haven" are neoplasms—is there a tuna that's not a fish, or an unsafe haven?
Hottest clues:
• 59A. A [Termite's terminus?] might be the ANTEATER that scarfs it up.
• 5D. Good clue for LEERED: [Didn't make proper eye contact] but was instead most improper.
• 9A. TOYOTA is the [Tundra producer].
• 31A. [The time there might be five to ten] clues prison. Not "five minutes to 10," but "five to 10 years."
• 28D. [An addled brain might be likened to one] clues SIEVE.
Answer for which I needed all the crossings: 23D: [Producer of early multi-track recorders] is TEAC. I've seen the brand name before, but the clue wasn't summoning up that answer in my SIEVE of a mind.
Cute shout-out: 51A is MARTHA ["___ My Dear" (Beatles song)]. Three guesses what Tony's wife is named.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe crossword, "Animal Quackery"
The theme is rough puns on health-care specialties with animal names affixed at the beginning. For example, RODENTISTRY is clued as a [Branch of medicine for gnawers?] (rodent + dentistry). BOAFEEDBACK is [Self-help for snakes?] (boa + biofeedback). SOCKEYEATRY is a [Fishy shrink's practice?] (sockeye salmon + psychiatry]. The puns are a mixed bag of added consonants, changed consonants, vowel changes, added syllables, etc. I wasn't crazy about this theme—pun themes straddle the fine line between "ha ha" and "uh-uh."
Favorite word in the grid: 89D: BOLLIX, or [Completely bungled]. OONA is here, but clued as [Mrs. Chaplin] rather than the cavewoman duck very few of us know.
I suspect the grid got changed along the way but an old clue remained in error. At 58A, the answer is STOOP, but the clue is [Dive like a hawk]. Now, that sounds exactly like a clue for SWOOP. But with those theme entries above and below, the W would've been O*W*P, which doesn't look feasible at all. Hmm. Is there a swooping-like-a-hawk usage of STOOP that I'm not aware of?
November 21, 2009
Sunday, 11/22/09
June 08, 2008
Monday, 6/9
NYS 3:14
CS 2:56
LAT 2:48
NYT 2:47
Time's up for the crossword rivers poll! The Swiss Aare (or Aar, if you prefer) was the winner, with 14% of the vote. Just a few votes behind was the Italian Arno (12%). Tied for third place were my favorite, the Spanish Ebro (which Matt Gaffney spiffed up in the theme entry DON'T TASE ME, BRO last year) and classic French Seine. The Ubangi, Ural, Nile, Loire, Yser and Isere were also strong contenders. Nobody picked the Aire, even though it connotes wealth when you use it as a suffix. The word ladder trio of the Eger, Eder, and Oder garnered just a single vote apiece. I recognize that this was a completely pointless poll—but perhaps seeing that list of river names in the sidebar for the last week helped lodge those words in the crossword lobe of your brain. Many of them have some overlapping letters (SeiNE and SaoNE, RHiNE and RHoNE, OiSE and OuSE, AaRE and AiRE, lEnA and nEvA, oDER and eDER, EgER and EdER), so it's good to have the list of possibilities in your head.
Paula Gamache's New York Times crossword is pretty much a quintessential Monday puzzle. It's got six theme entries, so it's reaching a little further than many Monday crosswords, and the theme entries themselves have zip, so you won't fall asleep from boredom. The fill also has some flavor to it. The [Warning cry] "IT'S A TRAP" ties the other five theme entries together. Each of those begin with a "trap":
Highlights in the fill included the pair of Ivy League eponyms' first names beginning with E, EZRA Cornell and ELIHU Yale (the parallel clues rescue these from being blah); ST. CROIX, [One of the U.S. Virgin Islands] and the site of my honeymoon; SANGRIA, the tasty and fruit-filled [Spanish wine beverage]; SHUTS UP, or [Quits yapping]; KARATE, or [Sport in which belts are awarded]; IN DOUBT, or [Iffy]; and NOT YET, or ["Maybe later"]. Oh, and POOP, clued as [Inside info]. Favorite clue: [Beam in a bar?] for JIM Beam bourbon.
Updated:
Patrick Merrell posted a 2004 LA Times puzzle of his on his website, with a rather convoluted theme. It was originally published early in the week, but it felt more like a Wednesday puzzle (3:55 for me). After you've solved it, see Pat's comments on it at his blog. I always appreciate a "VH1 Behind the Music" peek at how a constructor developed a particular crossword.
In his New York Sun puzzle, "Citizens of the World," Mark Feldman combines two of my favorite sorts of entries—names from culture (pop and otherwise) and geography. The theme entries' placement is unusual—four of the five names are split by a black square between the first and last names. But all five people have a country for a first name: novelist JAMAICA / KINCAID, singer INDIA / ARIE (or India.Arie, with the artist's preferred punctuation), actor CUBA GOODING JR., Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer CHAD / SMITH, and artist GEORGIA / O'KEEFFE. The first three happen to be African-American. I think the theme exhausts all the famous country-named Americans. There's Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger's daughter Ireland, but she's not famous in her own right. And the famous-enough Jordans use that as a last name. The presence of thematic paired 7s in the top and bottom rows gives us four triple-stacked bricks of 7-letter answers in the grid; AGE SPOT is my favorite just because I don't feel like that ever shows up in crosswords.
Mike Peluso's LA Times crossword follows a "B__ B__ER" template for the theme entries. A BARN BURNER is an [Impressive event], BABY BOOMER is a [Gen Xer's mom, maybe], BRONX BOMBER is [Any N.Y. Yankee], and a BROWN BAGGER is a [Worker with his own lunch]. My favorite entry: OMG, or [Chat room "Holy cow!"]. (I await ZOMG in a future puzzle.) I'm glad EYEBALLS is clued as the verb, [Has a close look at], because I don't much want to contemplate the actual eyeball. Best misstep: With the final KE in place, I entered SPIKE for [Buffy's weapon] instead of STAKE. If you watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you know how wrong that is.
The theme in Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "Cross Word Puzzle," eluded me until after I'd finished the whole thing. "Herring word?" I pondered. Eventually it dawned on me that each theme entry begins with a word that can precede cross: [Outing for a foursome] is a DOUBLE DATE (double-cross), [Misleading clue] is a RED HERRING (the Red Cross), [Heavy metal band named after a torture device] is IRON MAIDEN (Iron Cross), and ["Great Caesar's ghost!"] is "HOLY SMOKES!" (Holy Cross). Highlights in the fill: full names of two film directors, SPIKE LEE and JOHN FORD; THE MOB with its definite article; a SAWBONES or surgeon; and OIL RIG pepped up with a movie clue ([Device seen in "There Will Be Blood"]).
April 01, 2008
Wednesday, 4/2
NYT 4:42
CS 4:28
NYS 3:54
LAT 3:40
Pub quiz is tonight, so NYT crossword blogging will wait until midnight or Wednesday morning.
Do you have any speed-solving tips? Which is to say, meticulous bits of technique that you swear by for finishing a crossword as fast as you can—which clues do you tackle first? Where do you move from there? Do you follow a certain path through the grid? Do you write your letters a certain way? What advice have you gotten from faster solvers? When solving online, do you mostly leave the mouse alone (as I do), navigating with tab/return/arrow keys? Don't tell me your tips here—take them over to Jerry's blog, where he's compiling a set of communal speed-solving tips.
After taking an April Fool's Day break, baseball week continues in the New York Sun crossword. Mark Feldman's 15x16 "Baseball in Vegas" assembles four phrases that pertain to gambling but begin with words that are key to baseball: CATCH, HIT, THROW, and RUN. Hooray! A baseball puzzle in which only minimal knowledge of baseball is required to grasp the theme! One completely unfamiliar bit of fill: TIK-TOK, the [Mechanical man from Oz]. If you're from Oz but you weren't in the movie, The Wizard of Oz, then I don't know you.
Updated:
Well, I had to go download the Across Lite version of the New York Times crossword to discover who the constructor was—the applet showed only "Patrick." Turns out it's Patrick Merrell whose puzzle's title field reads, "Turn the completed puzzle into a greeting card!" The theme entries (four 15s) read HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO—plus the instructions to CIRCLE LETTERS TO / SPELL OUT THE NAME / OF YOUR RECIPIENT. I believe every letter appears in the grid at least twice to facilitate your finding nearly any first name in the grid. But with only one Q and X, it's not quite universal. For example, poor Xixa Basha's first name cannot be circled in the grid. Is that the point of the theme, that you could assemble practically any first name from the letters included in the grid? If that's the deal, then I'm not so excited by that. But then, it is quite late, and I am barely sentient right now. I like that Pat (...or Will) has GAP clued as [Feature of Alfred E. Neuman's smile]; Pat has some involvement with Mad magazine. The [1977 James Brolin thriller with the tagline "What evil DRIVES..."] is called THE CAR (the car is possessed).
Updated:
Sean Smith's LA Times crossword tries a little ANGER MANAGEMENT, with theme entries that begin with synonyms for "angry." CROSS THE RUBICON uses the verb, but CROSS also means "angry." TICKED OFF POINTS has a verb phrase means "checked off," but can also fit the theme with another meaning. STEAMED DUMPLINGS also use a non-anger sense. Somehow I really like it that one of the theme entries includes a two-word phrase rather than limiting the theme action to the first word of each theme entry. Johnny DEPP is here, clued as ["Pirates of the Caribbean" star]. Johnny Depp is also here, meaning in Chicago, filming the John Dillinger biopic, Public Enemies. I passed a corner where they were shooting the movie on my way to trivia last night. So add another violent movie filmed in the neighborhood that I'll probably take my kid to, just because the neighborhood's going to be in the movie. (Dark Knight, this July's Batman sequel, is the other.)
Will write about Klahn's CrosSynergy puzzle when I get back from the gym—
And now I'm back, and boy, do I love Trader Joe's:
While I was out, Joon left a comment saying "This is the first time i can remember saying this, but am i the only one who thought the CrosSynergy puzzle was the best one of the day? Cute theme, excellent cluing, solid fill." Precisely! Gotta love Bob Klahn's style. "Bag Ladies and Gentlemen" are those four people in the grid (one fictional) whose surnames pull double duty as "___ bags." EDDIE MONEY is a moneybags (maybe there's a singular, but I like the nickname Moneybags), LEARNED HAND carries a handbag, MURPHY BROWN has to brown-bag it, and GEORGE SAND is toting a sandbag. With 22 6- to 9-letter entries in the fill, we get treated to a ton that's not the same ol' same ol'. Favorite clues: [Hardly a striking individual?] for a SCAB crossing the picket line; [Receive willingly?] for INHERIT; [Band or musical follower] for SAW (a musical saw is a handsaw used as a musical instrument); [One of three who walk into many bars?] for RABBI ("A priest, a rabbi, and a leprechaun walk into a bar"); and [Where "We have met the enemy..."] for ERIE. Yes! Really! Not Pogo. Oliver Hazard Perry said it during a battle at/in/near Lake Erie. And did you know that the [Group that evolved from Johnny & the Moondogs] was the BEATLES?
November 15, 2007
Scientific American crosswords
Patrick Merrell is one of those crossword innovators who likes to devise insane twists on the crossword format. If you missed his Scientific American puzzles from last year and the year before, Pat's posted links here. (One of the puzzles has a wormhole gimmick to it. See? Insane.) I can't wait for this year's offering!
July 10, 2007
Wednesday, 7/11
NYS 6:22
LAT 3:22
NYT 3:11
CS 3:01
(updated at 11:20 a.m. Wednesday)
In case you like to solve the New York Sun crossword on your computer and you're wondering what the terrifically long clue for 47-Across says, it's [With 23-Down, movie with a song about a great swami in delicate health who has toughened feet and chronic bad breath? (See 1-, 6-, 18-, 24-, 57-, and 65-Across)]. And look! A serial comma! Huzzah.
The New York Times crossword halts the harder-than-expected trend from Monday and Tuesday with a kinda-easy-for-Wednesday puzzle by Patrick Merrell. The theme is two-word names of sports in which the first word is where the sport's played: TABLE TENNIS (Will Shortz's non-puzzle hobby, as it happens), ARENA FOOTBALL, and FIELD HOCKEY. It's rather small as themes go, which leaves plenty of room for other goodies. Such as KOOL-AID MAN, clued a bit misleadingly as [Pitcher who says "Oh yeaahh!"], making me think the answer was some baseball player. Instead, it's a commercial spokescharacter, as seen in this '70s commercial. Joining KOOL-AID MAN in childhood nostalgia are two answers it intersects, BUBBLE GUM and TRIKE. The upper left and lower right corners of the grid have open expanses of 5- and 6-letter words. THE MOB, PSHAW, and the Scrabbly QUAIL are other fill highlights. Favorite clues: the KOOL-AID MAN one, [50 Cent piece] for RAP, [Say "uncle"] for GIVE, and [Some hikers' targets, for short] for QBS. Bonus goodwill points for evoking the Simpsons character Duffman (spokesman for Duff Beer), whose own "Oh yeah!" I always think of when I hear the Kool-Aid Man's version.
Matt Ginsberg's Sun crossword, "An Atrocious Pun," answers that clue with MARY / POPPINS and the string of words, SUPER, CALLUSED, FRAGILE, MYSTIC, HEXED BY, HALITOSIS—as billed, an atrocious pun on Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. They don't fit into the grid in symmetrical chunks, but editor Peter Gordon can be flexible about symmetry. (Speaking of which: Still waiting for the first of the promised asymmetrical themeless Sun puzzles. Soon, maybe?) Highlights: Not the pun theme! Rather, assorted clues and answers, such as ETYMA, plural of etymon (What's the etymology of etymon? Comes from the Greek for the true sense of a word.); THREE-PEAT; NOT UP TO IT; [One of the singers of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight"] for NALA (a cartoon lion in The Lion King); [Part of some cages] for RIB; [It might be out on a limb] for TREEHOUSE; YORKIE; [Like hell?] for DANTEAN; and all those 7- to 9-letter fill entries (17 of 'em!).
Updated:
In his CrosSynergy puzzle, Martin Ashwood-Smith combines a LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION theme with stacked 9-letter entries in two corners. The LA Times puzzle by Timothy Meaker has theme entries that could be clues for the sound-alike clues, [RAIN], [REIN], and [REIGN]. Am I the only one who looks at TIME ON THE THRONE and thinks of this sort of throne rather than this kind?
May 23, 2007
Thursday, 5/24
NYT 5:54
NYS 5:05
LAT 4:01
CS 3:25
(updated at 6:40 a.m. Thursday, a time I'd ordinarily be sleeping—See? I told you I had some jet lag)
I am on a streak! Another sleepy evening, another NYT crossword, yet another eely typo! This one took less than a minute to identify, though. Where I intended to have TUTEE crossing ETAT, I had RUTEE and ERAT. (Makes me think of RuPaul.) The puzzle's by Patrick Merrell, and the twist involves counting. 3-D becomes DDD, for example, and the last theme entry is KKKKKKKKKK RACES (10k races). The theme didn't take me that long to figure out, but some things were slower to dawn on me. [Western moniker] is KID (not the most obvious clue for that answer), I'd never heard of avant-garde composer EARLE Brown, [Almost bound] didn't quickly parse as APT, and the very literal [Goes out to sea] should've quickly hollered EBBS to me but it didn't. High points: the Scrabbliness of the aforementioned 10 Ks, [Attention-getting haircut]/MOHAWK, [Mike's partner in candy] for IKE, [Jefferson site] for NICKEL (wow, that should've been easy), those bricks of 7-letter entries at the left and right (including POOHBAH, [Two-piece suits?]/BIKINIS, and the wrestler's SINGLET, a most unfortunate garment), [Runner of an experiment?] for RAT, and the grammatically incorrect but completely comprehensible NOT ME. I am a charter member of the Pat Merrell Fan Club, but there were plenty of blah entries in this one (ISE, OSE, ENE, III, KTS, ERTES, etc.) that dampened my enthusiasm. (Props to Pat for finding LAFAYETTE to work below nine of those Ks, though.)
Updated:
Tony Orbach constructed today's Sun crossword, "Elision Day." The theme entries reflect what you hear when the speaker elides the "it" in "it's" at the beginning of a sentence: ""It's no problem" becomes SNOW PROBLEM (clued here as [Whiteout, e.g?]). Sfun, but you can't make a theme entry out of "sfun." It took me a while to puzzle through SIN THERE for [Rejected Las Vegas motto?]: Where's the answer? Oh, 'sin there. Love the inclusion of CUNEIFORM; in high school, we had to read about the Babylonian tablets in They Wrote on Clay, which has stuck with me all these years as a bizarre book title. Plenty of tough clues breathe new life into familiar crossword answers; for example, REOS is clued with [Runabouts, e.g.]; ISAK Dinesen is [Creator of Babette]; and IDES is [Middle March?]. And apparently Kool and the Gang's KOOL was bassist Robert Bell. Good puzzle with plenty for the solver to chew on.
Today's CrosSynergy puzzle marks Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's debut in that venue, unless that already happened while I was away. (Patrick Blindauer is the other pint of fresh blood now coursing through the CrosSynergy veins.) Stella and Bruce's fun puzzle is called "Oh, You Beautiful Doll!" and it features toy dolls from four different eras (though the RAGGEDY ANN is a classic, still sold after nearly a century). The section from 10- to 13-Down reads STONER / TOOK /LAZE / ODED. A compelling vignette, and I believe I have ODed on laze myself. STONER, alas, is clued as [One administering a Biblical punishment]. Given the recent "honor killing" of a teenage girl in Iraq, captured on cell-phone video, it'd be much less unsavory to clue it as [Pothead]. (Bruce and Stella also teamed up on today's LA Times puzzle, which wasn't as fun as this toystore crossword.)
February 22, 2007
Friday, 2/23
NYS 7:37
LAT 4:45
2/9 CHE 4:41
NYT 3:37
CS 3:23
WSJ 8:05
Reagle 7:23
(post udpated at 10:25 a.m. Friday)
Whoo-hoo! I think that's the fastest I've ever done a Friday NYT. Yessiree, I liked this puzzle by Patrick Merrell. (Whom I owe five bucks to, and I actually wrote out a check last May but I haven't mailed it, even though it sits on my desk. Because, apparently, I am a deadbeat. There. I said it. May as well hand over cash—with interest—next month at Stamford, eh?)
I was getting a little Oscar-fatigued by all the Oscar-themed puzzles in the Sun this week, so I was prepared to grumble about Frank Longo's Friday offering, but then the clues kicked my butt and made me like it.
Going back to the NYT, Pat's puzzle almost had a theme: long entries that are wonderfully fresh nuggets of in-the-language goodness. I mean, WHAT THE HECK? (I opted for HELL first. Whoops.) SEE HERE, phrases like BEATS ME and IT'S A LONG STORY are hardly BROKEN ENGLISH (although a TEXT MESSAGE often is exactly that). This puzzle really shines for its fill (and I'm not just saying that to make sure that Pat's enforcers don't break my kneecaps at Stamford). Favorite clues: [Standard jacket feature] for BLURB, [26 on a table] for IRON, [Poet/cartoonist Silverstein] for SHEL (because I've got another of his books on reserve for my son's birthday gifts), [Smithereens] for ATOMS, and [Do 80, say] for TEAR. RENEE is clued as [Girl's name meaning "born again"]—so when will RENE be clued as a boy's name in that vein? (Guys named René are ill-served by René Russo clues.) I'm grateful for traffic in the Orlando area to be so hideous that I've had plenty of time to peruse the map in the passenger seat, making ALTAMONTE Springs a gimme.
In the Sun, the theme of "Oscar MC-Jobs" is Oscar telecast hosts, whose last names double as ordinary nouns (hence, no Whoopi Goldberg). Billy feeds into LIQUID CRYSTAL displays; Chris is ROLLING ROCK beer; Bob's a RAY OF HOPE; Steve's a HOUSE MARTIN; and Chevy has to CUT TO THE CHASE. Educational aspects: I hadn't known that boondocks comes from TAGALOG; very specifically my mother-in-law, then, could be said to be from the boondocks. An ALIQUOT isn't just from chemistry—it's mathematical, too. There's a UKRainian river named Bug. I also learned that Popeye (and OLIVE) creator E.C. Segar's full name is Elzie Crisler Segar (yeah, I'd go with the initials, too). Some of the clues I liked and/or was stumped by: [Spud, e.g.] for VEGGIE, [Play presentation] for OBIE, [Not one of the big dogs] for TOY, [What you might do while running away from home] for TAG UP, [One who never gets out] for LIFER, [Pilot, for example] for EPISODE, and [Square meal part?] for MATZOH. (Too bad YOU TOO wasn't clued with "Et tu," though.)
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Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle for this Sunday is called "Lesser-Known One-Named People of History." In it, Merl wrenches sound-similar puns out of 14 names from history, philosophy, and art. I won't spoil them, but the funniest ones were 43-Across and 123-Across.
You know all those clever clues for ED or EDS or EDITOR that you see, especially in late-week crosswords? (Hypothetical example: [New York leader] for EDITOR.) Well, Randolph Ross has flipped them. In his Wall Street Journal crossword, "Editorial Board," the clues all specify what sort of magazine's editor(s) he means, and most of the theme entries are phrases I've seen used as clues elsewhere. I actually had looked up some of those EDITORial clues when I was working on my book a few months ago, so that was a giant (but not unwelcome) spoiler for this puzzle.
Jim Leeds' Chronicle of Higher Ed puzzle, "Class Openings," imagines geeky valentine lines (this was published before Valentine's Day) for various academic pursuits. Cute! My favorite was the classics student's YOU'RE ALL AENEID.
The theme entries in Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Body Building," are Picassoesque. The STOMACH's in the middle, but the MOUTH and HEAD are below it while the NECK and FINGER are up top.
In his LA Times puzzle, Richard Chisholm swaps -NCE for -NTS endings. Elsewhere in the puzzle, I like the evocation of [Carving figureheads] as a LOST ART. Too bad today's ships aren't bedecked with figureheads like these—though would it have killed the artisans of old to be a little more inclusive? The pirate, warrior, and Viking are the only male figurines, and they're not remotely beefcaky.
