Sun 4:12
Jonesin' 4:02
NYT 3:20
LAT 2:59
Lately folks have been saying that "four is the new three"—that themed puzzles usually seem to have four or five thematic entries rather than just three. Stephen Edward Anderson's New York Times crossword, a plus-sized 16x15 puzzle, has three theme answers and a lively pair of non-thematic 10's, and some good bits to the fill. The theme entries are "[bird that's a verb] ONE'S [noun]":
The aforementioned 10's are WIGGLE ROOM, or [Margin to maneuver], and PAPER TIGER, or [Toothless enemy]. OSLO is unexciting fill, but its clue links it to the [Norwegian coast feature], FJORD. Other fill and clues I liked:
Less welcome were the military abbreviations, SSGTS ([U.S.M.C. noncoms]) and PFC ([Low-rank inits.]); the suffixes, ENES ([Hydrocarbon suffixes]) and ITES ([Social finishes?]; the triple-letter EEE ([Wide shoe spec] and SSS ([Sound of bacon frying]); the HIREE who's a [Company newbie]; and the awkward-looking RED A, or [Stigma borne by Hester Prynne]. I've never heard of the PAM in this grid, [1989 Bond girl Bouvier]—that's the character played by Carey Lowell in License to Kill. You know what movie character I'd like to see in a crossword someday? Lars Thorwald, the heavy in Rear Window.
Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle is called "I Don't Got U, Babe" because each theme entry has lost a U:
Two TV-show names I'd never seen appear in the fill. JAIMIE completes ["The Travels of ___ McPheeters" (1960s TV western with Charles Bronson and a teenage Kurt Russell)], and ["For the Love of ___" (2009 VH1 reality show)] is about RAY J. I also don't spend enough time with desktop publishing to recall LOREM [___ ipsum (faux-Latin phrase frequently used by publishers in placeholder text blocks)]. Bonus points for two game-show references, NO DEAL ([Phrase said without hitting the button, on TV]) and Alex TREBEK ([Connery's foil, in "S.N.L." skits]), for swapping out the usual "Garfield" supporting character Odie for NERMAL, the [Overly cute kitten that annoys Garfield]; and for the scholarliness of Abraham MASLOW, the [Psychologist with a hierarchy of human needs].
Peter Gordon's inner esne, Ogden Porter, constructed the Sun crossword entitled "Puzzle of the Week." The theme is people whose first or last names double as a day of the week. Peter reached into fictional characters to fill out his hebdomadal septet:
Did you notice how tall this puzzle is? It's 17 rows high, so we get 30 more squares than usual and at no extra charge. Favorite answer: William WEGMAN, whose art photographs of his Weimaraners are so captivating.
Updated:
Waah, I have a sore throat and I feel a bad cold coming on. Just in time for the crossword tournament!
Today's LA Times crossword is a quip puzzle by Pancho Harrison. The [Start of an editor's quip about verbose writing] clue is perfect—it's specific and gives the solver some guidance for filling in the theme entries, whereas a flat [Start of quip] clue just says "hey, bozo, good luck working the crossings." The quip theme still didn't excite me, but I appreciate the specificity of the clue. IN EVERY FAT BOOK, / THERE IS A / THIN BOOK / TRYING TO GET OUT.
[Tweeters' quarters] does not refer to stereo speakers with woofers and tweeters. Nor does it refer to Twitter users, whose Twitter action is called tweeting. The answer is birds' NESTS. The [Canonized pope known as "The Great"] is ST. LEO (he's called LEO I in more crosswords). [Supreme council of old Rome] is just a SENATE, nothing more obscure than that. [Turner and a general] clues IKES, as in singer Ike Turner and Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower. To [Exercise a 19th Amendment right] is to VOTE, if you're a woman. [Wall St. trading group] clues ASE.
February 23, 2009
Tuesday, 2/24
April 22, 2008
Wednesday, 4/23
NYS 5:17
NYT 4:01
CS 3:34
LAT 2:50
Yep, that's right. I haven't done any of the Wednesday puzzles yet, and it's too late now. Am out the door to trivia in a minute. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves in the comments if you've done the New York Sun and/or New York Times crosswords—I will try to remember not to read those comments before I've done the puzzles. And if I should spoil my solves by reading comments first, I will have no one to blame but myself—unless someone else offers to take the blame.
Late Tuesday night:
I started reading the blog comments after coming home from trivia (we took second place and are positioned well for the new six-week cumulative points total prize chase—$600 for our team if we come out on top after six weeks), and Alex said he would accept the blame for spoiling—and that's as far as I got. Thanks for the save, Alex! I was going to blithely read comments until I regretted it, but you saved me.
Stephen Edward Anderson had his debut puzzle quite recently, and here's his second New York Times crossword already. Way to go, SEA! He's an expat living in Europe (and a semi-regular on the NYT forum), so of course his theme is ur-Americana: cowboys and their horses. QUICKSILVER, CHART TOPPER, HAIR-TRIGGER, and TALENT SCOUT all end with famous horses, and 30- and 27-Down spell out RIDE 'EM / COWBOY. W-w-wait, TOPPER? Wha? Google tells me that's the name of Hopalong Cassidy's horse. SILVER goes with the Lone Ranger, TRIGGER is Roy Rogers, and Scout is...let me look this up...the horse belonging to Tonto, the Lone Ranger's pal. I'm quite fond of an OKAY GUY ([Nice enough fellow]) in the fill.
Robert E. Lee Morris's New York Sun crossword, "Alcohol Containers," has a theme I didn't see while solving. What is it? Let me take a look. Aha! Embedded within the five theme entries are kinds of liquor. RIVER MOUTHS, LAST OUTLAW, NUMERIC KEYPAD, VAPOR TRAIL, and TWIN-ENGINED split some alcohol between two words. (Edited to add: Reader Joon notes that the last theme entry is also serving GIN.) The [2004 Israeli film set during Sukkoth] was a complete mystery to me: USHPIZIN. I am far too sleepy to remark further.
Updated:
Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Spin Doctoring," puts TURN at 63-Down to tie the theme entries together—each phrase's final word can follow "turn." Having actress JULIA STILES among the ordinary nouns in the theme adds a little élan. With actors JOSH Duhamel, ILKA Chase, Lotte LENYA, and Esther ROLLE and L.A. Laker player Lamar ODOM in the fill, this really felt like an LA Times crossword.
The theme in Billie Truitt's LA Times puzzle feels like I've seen it before—a vowel progression running through the beginning of five theme entries—but a quick check of the Cruciverb.com database doesn't turn up anything obvious with these particular theme entries. PAPARAZZI has just three prior uses in the database, all in themelesses. The letter P just plain has a fun sound—peppy and poppy—so the progression through PEPPERONI, PIPSQUEAK, POPPYCOCK, and PUPPY LOVE works beautifully. These words/phrases share a consistent vibe—substituting flat entries like PAPER CUTS and PEPPER BOX and PIPE STEMS wouldn't be nearly as effective. Terrific group of theme entries + solid and Scrabbly fill = good crossword.
March 19, 2008
Thursday, 3/20
LAT 4:58
NYS 4:44
NYT 4:40
CS 3:32
The comeuppance lurks in the offing—as I sit here half wishing the air conditioning were on, I see that there's a winter storm watch in effect for Chicago, with a chance of a 6" snowfall by Friday night. I won't be wearing my sandals home from Florida on Saturday, that's for sure. (But before you gloat, let me mention that I spent an hour in the pool outside this evening, after dark.)
The New York Times crossword by Stephen Edward Anderson skews all crazy for a Thursday—instead of there being some sort of gimmick, there are four theme entries. I like the X-ness of the theme, with four X's. It's not the tightest theme in the world because I'm sure there are other candidates for the theme—though I don't know how many others there are that don't duplicate any of the place names that feed into this set of entries. MEXICALI, MEXICO takes its name from California and Mexico (as does Calexico). KANORADO, KANSAS is presumably at the border with Colorado; haven't heard of this one before. DELMAR, DELAWARE is beside Maryland, I suspect (I knew there was a Delmarva region, but not a border town named DELMAR). And TEXARKANA, TEXAS is a part-Arkansas portmanteau place name. Good fill—Donkey KONG crossing PEACENIK, baseball legend Buck O'NEIL (whom I mentally adopted as an extra grandpa when I saw him in Ken Burns' baseball documentary), a DORM ROOM and a TV DINNER.
Pancho Harrison turns to a classic song for inspiration for his New York Sun puzzle, "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." The theme entries, set apart by highlighted clues, are all words pronounced two ways in the old song: OYSTERS (ersters), BANANA (banahna), EITHER (eye-ther), HAVANA (Havahna), PAJAMAS (pa-jommas), TOMATO and POTATO (...ah-to), LAUGHTER (larfter), and NEITHER (nigh-ther). The theme departs from symmetry twice—EITHER and NEITHER lack partners opposite them in this 15x16 grid.
Updated:
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy crossword, "Where There's a Wheel, There's a Way," has four phrases in which the first word can also precede "wheel." (May I just say that I am so, so tired of this type of theme? It seems like the CrosSynergy and LA Times puzzles rely on the "first or last word can precede or follow X" theme fairly heavily. I wonder if Crasswords has a dirty-words version of this theme variety, such as ___ JOBs?) I love that FERRIS BUELLER is one of the theme entries, though, as Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a memorable and quotable movie. And ERIC IDLE and COP A PLEA look great in the grid, too.
The LA Times puzzle by Ernie Lampert has five theme entries clued as [HAND], one of those reverse themes where the theme entries look like clues for the same 4-letter answer. LON CHANEY and ORANGEMAN ([William III follower]) each lash together three theme entries, an ambitious construction (with 69 theme squares). The thematic density required certain tradeoffs, such as LUNIK ([Soviet moon mission series]), which I've never heard of, and EBOLI crossing OBAD and RIELS. Why did this puzzle take me so long to solve? Was I just wandering around lost in search of the constructor's wavelength, or were the clues and fill tough?
