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
October 30, 2009
Saturday, 10/31/09
Newsday 8:13 with one blank (bookmark this link for free puzzle access)
NYT 7:18*
LAT 3:05
CS untimed
*Yes, the applet says 7:30. I'm not including the 12 seconds it took to communicate with the server.
My kid's school field trip was to see a Polish movie, "The Magic Tree," at the Chicago International Children's Film Festival. The movie's director, Andrzej Maleszka, was there for a long Q&A with the kids. No, I did not ask him if Eugene Maleska was any relation.
Robert Wolfe's New York Times crossword
This puzzle has run afoul of...something. I enjoyed one answer: 28A: [Johnny Depp title role] clues ED WOOD, and that movie was a hoot. (Okay, two answers: Also TRAVOLTA, 4D: [He played a governor in "Primary Colors"].) But there's a big danger in making 58-word crosswords, and that danger is that the fill's quality will be sorely compromised in order to get the challenging interlock to work. Structurally, this grid is bound to give some solvers fits—if you don't get solid footholds in the NW and SE quadrants, only 26A and 28A are going to feed you any help from the rest of the puzzle.
I have groused before about what I call "roll your own" words: words with tacked-on endings or prefixes providing handy (for the constructor) letters to fill in space. Here, 15 answers have an S added to the end. One of 'em includes an -ER, too: SNEERERS, or 48A: [Disdainful bunch]. It's gettable, sure, but hardly anyone is using this particular form of sneer. There are also a couple -EDs and an -EST, and don't get me started on the -ERs. SERENER is bland but OK, FISHIER is decent, but MARRER? 38D: [Graffitist, e.g.] is a MARRER? The MARRER and his friends the SNEERERS have marred this grid. Then there's TERRENE, or 50A: [Earthly], which my dictionary labels archaic, and the wow-I-can't-believe-it's-in-the-dictionary-as-an-"also"-spelling INDORSED (7D: [Supported: Var.])—this one the dictionary calls dated. Throw in your ESTERS and ORRIS OIL, your DENATURE and AIR MOTOR, and you've got an abundance of fill that doesn't do anything to engage me.
All right, let's roll through some clues and answers:
• 15A. GANTRIES are [Spanning frameworks]. Not a word in my daily vocab.
• 17A. [Upstate New York town where I.B.M. was founded] is ENDICOTT. Does everyone know this tidbit? Am I the only one who didn't?
• 18A. HEAVEN is a [Good resting place?]. I don't care for clues presenting religious tenets, even with the question mark.
• 23A. HUSSARS were [Brilliantly dressed cavalrymen]. Camo is probably a little more practical on the battlefield, no? Dictionary says hussars were 15th-century Hungarian "light horsemen," so the term predates Prussia, which I always pair it with in my head in the category of "old European things with USS in them."
• 41A. [Axial skeleton parts] are STERNA, plural of sternum, your breastbone. "Axial" because it's in the middle of your body? I was first thinking of SPINES with an S plural rather than a word with a Latin plural.
• 46A. An AIR MOTOR is a [Pneumatic power producer]. There are things called air motors?
• 50A. KALES are [Mustard family members]. My family has a long-standing feud with the Mustard family. The feud dates back generations, to when Colonel Mustard shot my great-great-granduncle in the back...in the conservatory.
• 5D. [Like the 2 in "x squared"] seems like a long way to go for SUPERIOR. Do mathy types call it SUPERIOR, what I call superscript?
• 12D. It really is time to retire the fleet of SSTS from the crossword puzzle. [They had adjustable noses] is as good a clue as you're going to get for this answer, but it still doesn't fix the fact that the answer is here. It's in too many puzzles.
• 14D. SENTA is clued as [Wagnerian hero]. Austrian actress Senta Berger needs a better agent so she can get all the SENTA clues. I just Googled her, and she looks great for 68 but was a stunner in her younger days. (I kinda thought she was in the same category as Pola Negri and Perle Mesta, long-dead crosswordese people. But no! Not so old at all.)
• 15D. Ooh, I don't think I like the GEISHA clue. [Companion abroad]? I also have deep reservations about the geisha tradition. Women spending hours to look a certain way and devoting their working hours to entertaining men? Eesh.
• 25D. This one's weird. SHOE STORE is clued as an [Establishment with many horns]. My son and I went to a good indie shoe store with a large staff of experienced salespeople, but there can't have been that many shoehorns in the entire place. (The guy did use one on my son, though.) Most shoe stores these days pretty much leave the work to the customer, and I don't think they make a point of stocking shoehorns for our use.
• 29A. WATER OAK is a [Tree of Southeastern swamplands]. I don't spend much time in Southeastern swamps.
• 37D. I wanted the [Unrequited lover of legend] to be DAPHNE, since the ****NE fit. It's ELAINE. Which legend is this? Whom was she pining for?
• 39D. [It may be under enamel] clues a coat of PRIMER under enamel paint, not the dentin under your tooth enamel.
So often, a low-word-count puzzle just makes me wish the constructor had instead strived for the liveliest, most colorful and interesting fill. I'm sure the 58-worders have their fans, but I'm not one of them. (Exception: Well, Patrick Berry can pull off the holy grail: low word count with lively fill.)
Updated Saturday morning:
Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Witchcraft"—Janie's review
What a happy Halloween Tony has made this. (Wicked) "Witchcraft" is filled with a variety of wordplay in the four theme entries (this would be the "trick" part), plus bonus fill and non-theme fill that is loaded with high-scorin' Scrabble letters (all of which makes for a very nice "treat"). First, the tricks, which take all-things-ordinary and transform them into all-things-occult:
• 16A. Add a letter. [Like cookies at a witch's fundraiser?] which would be not oven-baked, but COVEN-BAKED, a coven being an "assembly of witches." Some definitions specify 13 witches. Think there's any significance in that?...
• 26A. Change a letter. [People who can sniff out a witch's concoction?] are the olfactorily-gifted POTION DETECTORS. Sensors that can register a witch's activity would be motion detectors.
• 43A. "Sounds like." [Announcement at a witch's market?] is "SPELL IN AISLE TWO!" Announcement in your market (in the aftermath of the marinara display's descent to the floor, say...): "Spill in Aisle Two!" (I was also thinking that spell might have been the way the word special sounded over a muffled p.a. system...)
• 59A. Add a letter. Ooh, good—another one, and this time [Witch's mobile sound systems?] yields up BROOM BOXES. No mere boom boxes for our gal!
In addition to the theme-fill itself, the "treats" also include bonus theme-fill: BREW, clued as [Cauldron contents, perhaps] and which harkens back to potion, that "witch's concoction" in the clue at 26A; SKELETON for [Halloween costume]; and how perfect is this?, "BOO!" [Interjection heard on Halloween] as the very last of the Down fill. Nice.
Then there're all those lively words with the scrabbly letters, like:
• JOKE [One-liner], which shares that "J" with, and whose meaning relates to, JAPED [Made fun of]; JEDI ["Star Wars" knight], too;
• ZILCH [Zip], which is synonymous with [Zero] NONE and which shares a "Z" with ZONK [Nod off, with "out"];
• KUMAR (who went to the White Castle with Harold), PECK [Little kiss] sharing its "K" with CLINK [Lockup], and LOCKET [Keepsake holder];
• AVERSION [Strong dislike]; and
• IN-BOX [E-mail receptacle] (though I confess I was surprised to see this word in the same puzzle with broom boxes...).
And just because I enjoyed them in the puzzle, let me also point out "SPLAT!" as the [Sound of dropped ice cream] and [Former U.K. airline] BOAC, British Overseas Airways Corporation (sometimes a/k/a "Better on a Camel"...), which will always be associated in my mind with the opening lyric of the Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R."
Nothin' remotely BLAH [Boring] about a puzzle with this kinda fill. This one has a real [Zing]/KICK to it!
Orange/Amy back on the clock. I've seen the Harold & Kumar movies and yet my first impulse was to have Harold & MAUDE Go to White Castle. Who among us wouldn't want to see that movie?
Sam Donaldson's Los Angeles Times crossword
This easy themeless sat in stark contrast to the NYT today. As I was saying at L.A. Crossword Confidential, I'm partial to grids with four quadrants of stacked, longish answers. This one's got just two such quadrants, but they have quad-stacked 9s rather than the standard triple-stacked fill. The puzzle combines lively and fresh words and phrases with a lot of ordinary fill, which stands in contrast to the Saturday NYT crossword, which had lots of uncommon but not exciting fill. Sure, TESTS and EMOTE are pretty boring words, but I'll take them over this MARRER business. Ideally, of course, a themeless/freestyle puzzle will be packed with juicy stuff, low on the MARRERs, and full of tricky clues for the ordinary words. The L.A. Times puzzle has been laboring under a push for easier clues, so we haven't got the tricky clues today. But soon, maybe!
Highlights:
• 1A: War and more (CARD GAMES). I didn't see that one coming. Even with GAMES in place, I was still thinking of actual war.
• 15A: Strain (OVEREXERT). I like the X, but wish it had been put to better use—the crossing is the partial AXE TO.
• 17A: Place with trays (CAFETERIA). Super-easy clue, no?
• 32A: Cosmetic surgeries (NOSE JOBS). Again, easy clue—but crispy crossword entry.
• 40A: Sherry, often (APERITIF). OK, this is my cue to look up this word, and probably not for the first time. Turning to the dictionary...aperient, "(chiefly of a drug) used to prevent constipation"...wait, just, a little further...here it is. Apéritif is from a French word which draws on the Latin aperire, "to open." You drink it before you eat to whet your appetite. You eat an appetizer for the same reason, purportedly, but the two ap— words are unrelated. Appetite stems from Latin words meaning "desire for/seek after." Not that anyone asked, but I think sherry is gross.
• Here's the nutty Star Wars zone. 47A: Film that's out of order? is a PREQUEL, while 13D: End of a pentamerous serial is PART V. If you're lucky, that is, PART V is the end of the series. Crazy George Lucas went for VI.
• 53A: Seeking advancement at any cost (ON THE MAKE). I almost went with ON THE TAKE, but TAKE has another home in this puzzle.
• 60A: Eastern Canadian province grouping, with "the" (MARITIMES). I'll bet the people near Canada's Pacific coast wish they could be called the Maritimes, too. The Maritime Provinces are Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. How many of you have been to any of those? I've hit Ontario and British Columbia and that's it.
• 62A: Smithsonian collection (AMERICANA). Hey! I went to the National Museum of American History for my first time this summer. A C-3P0 costume is Americana, you know. Don't believe that Tattooine hype. There is no museum of Tattooineana.
• 4D: Cologne crowd? (DREI). "Two's company, but three's a crowd."
• 9D: Child actor's chauffeur? (STAGE MOM). Alternatively, a virtual mother who's going to the party alone is a STAG E-MOM.
• 11D: Tolerates teasing gracefully (TAKES A JOKE). See? This could also have been MAKES A JOKE, though that would be a fairly flat answer, and ON THE MAKE could've been ON THE TAKE. I find that the most of the time when someone says "Can't you take a joke?"—really, that person was being a jerk and the jokee should not be expected to "take a joke."
• 27D: Unwavering (FOUR-SQUARE). Not a term I use. Isn't "four square" also a playground game using a ball?
• 38D: One with immunity (DIPLOMAT). I blew my son's mind when I told him that people with diplomatic plates on their cars can probably get away with parking illegally.
Newsday "Saturday Stumper" by Anna Stiga, a.k.a. Stan Newman
(PDF solution here.)
Don't freak out when Newsday.com invites you to pay for access when you look for this puzzle—just bookmark Stan's site and get the puzzle there. Stan's page loads faster than Newsday's busy site did, too. Win-win.
I had no idea which vowel belonged in the 54A/50D crossing. [Personal-finance guru Dolan] turns out to be DARIA, but for all I knew it was a less common DORIA or something. SAO is clued as [Neptune moon discovered in '02] and I, for one, do not follow the news about small moons orbiting distant planets. There are certainly less esoteric ways of clueing SAO.
Likes:
• The TEMPURA/TEMPERA crossing. Don't care for TEMPURA's clue, [Seafood serving], being reused for BISQUE. TEMPERA's a [Type of paint].
• A LA MODE is clued as [Apple-pie order] but involves actual apple pie and not the idiom "in apple-pie order," meaning "tidy."
• MR. SLATE is [Fred Flintstone's boss]. Took a zillion crossings for me to remember his name. What better to draw a blank on than SLATE?
• TWADDLE, or [Horsefeathers], is a great word.
• ["...the Flying Trapeze" guy] is LEOTARD.
• Who's the best athlete? PELE is [IOC's Athlete of the Century], while Muhammad ALI is [SI's Athlete of the Century]. Did you see the Flip Wilson–as–Geraldine clip with Muhammad Ali that Rex posted at L.A. Crossword Confidential the other day? Funny stuff, and Ali was such a cutie in his younger days.
Dislikes:
• EATEN AT is clued as [Annoyed]. "This puzzle has eaten at me"?
• I like SPATULA, but the clue, [Kitchen blender], feels off to me.
Neutral zone of clues I needed lots of crossings to get:
• [Toon teen in an '89 film] is ARIEL, the Little Mermaid. Never saw it.
• [Five-petal flower] is SEDUM. There are others with five petals, I'm sure.
• [Quarters with buttons] are PUP TENTS. They have buttons? Google tells me the old military pup tents buttoned together...up to World War II. We need to know 1930s tent technology now?
• [Huckleberry's father] is his PAP. Don't be dissing him, now. We don't want any pap smears here.
October 15, 2009
Friday, 10/16/09
BEQ 4:45
NYT 4:33
CHE 3:16
CS untimed
LAT 2:56
WSJ 8:20
For another sort of puzzle, see "Go Away" in the post below this one.
Karen Tracey's New York Times crossword
Another Friday, another freestyle Karen Tracey creation to love. Let's run through the cool, the challenging, and the classically Karenical, shall we?
First, you're going to grapple with some names of people and places:
• 14A. LIVY is the [Writer of the history "Ab Urbe Condita"]. It's a history of ancient Rome.
• 15A. The fictional SETHE is Toni Morrison's ["Beloved" heroine].
• 30A. Geography! [Lusatian ___ (German/Polish border river)] is the NEISSE.
• 44A. Who? RAUL is clued as [1980s Argentine president ___ Alfonsin].
• 53A. Eric UTNE is a [Reader's digest founder of 1984]. Note the lowercase d.
• 58A. RAFE is clued as the [Male protagonist in William Inge's "Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff"]. I've heard of Inge, but that's as far as I got with this one. Yay for crossings.
• 1A. [Film composer Clausen and others] clues ALFS. He's best known for composing The Simpsons theme. Hey, PuzzleGirl—he grew up in North Dakota.
• 36D. TENERIFE is the [Largest of the Canary Islands].
• 39D. HANA is the [Easternmost town on Maui, on one end of 52 miles of twisty highway].
• 43D. Fake geography! NARNIA is the [Setting for C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle"].
Usually Karen provides tons of Scrabbly action in her grids. This one's got TUXEDO JUNCTION (23A: ["Where people go to dance the night away," in song]), but not much else. Here are the answers and clues I liked best:
• 20A. The SILENT T is [Part of Christmas].
• 26A. "Limnological" is a pretty word. [Limnological study] clues LAKE.
• 38A. [What you probably have a head for] is the the SHOWER fixture in your bathroom.
• 47A. BEARNAISE SAUCE is a [Chateaubriand accompaniment, often]. How's BEARNAISE on FLANK STEAK (17A: [London broil, often])?
• 50A. Are the Little Rascals synonymous with OUR GANG? Same kids, different era? I honestly don't know. They're [Kids in funny shorts], as in short films. Tricky having a plural clue for an answer ending with G.
• 6D. GET TO KNOW means [More than merely meet].
• 9D. You can think of a few possibilities for [Toy developed in China], can't you? Such as kites? Think instead of toy dogs, like the PEKINESE.
• 10A. A [Set for a reading] is a TAROT DECK. Really fresh answer, that.
• 11D. [Emperor's relative] is ADELIE. Both are types of penguin.
• 24D. "JEEPERS!" means ["Golly!"]. See also DRAT, or 59A: ["Nuts!"], for another old-timey slang exclamation.
• 40D. [Fractional bit?] is the SLASH punctuation mark you see in "1/3."
Let me grumble a moment over the nearly neighboring USENET (45D: [Early online discussion setting]) and USERS (49D: [Detox population]). At least the USERS aren't clued as computer users. There aren't a ton of other options for 49D, with the U*E** fixed by long answers and an 8-letter answer running alongside it.
Jack McInturff's Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, "Capital Gains"
Who doesn't love games based on world capitals? I relished McInturff's theme, in which the second half of various capital cities sounds like the beginning of another word or phrase. The city and phrase are hooked together à la Wheel of Fortune "Before and After" puzzles, and the resulting answer is clued as if it's about the city:
• 19A. [Building material from Sudan?] is KHARTOUM STONE (tombstone). The tomb aspect is dropped from the clue.
• 26A. [Beverage from Lebanon?] is BEIRUT BEER (root beer). Both beer and root beer are beverages.
• 33A. [Sandwich shop in India?] clues NEW DELHI COUNTER (deli counter). "Counter" sans "deli" doesn't much signal "sandwich shop," so the answer hinges on both Delhi and deli.
• 42A. [Soil in Taiwan?] is TAIPEI DIRT (pay dirt). As with 19A, the pay aspect of the base phrase disappears.
• 52A. [Correspondents form Cambodia?] are PHNOM PENH PALS. Again, as with 33A, the clue hints at the second base phrase.
I sort of wish the theme had been more consistent with the inclusion or exclusion of the "after" phrases' meanings, but I'd still give this one a B+ because the theme entertained me, the word count's low (72), and the fill's pretty solid, with high points like NAPOLEON and TOOK A BOW. Why not an A? It ought to be a more challenging puzzle, and nobody's delighted by TAW, RETE, ESAU, ELIA, DEUT., and "IS IT I." (Why the letter grade? Hey, the puzzle's in a publication for professors.)
Updated Friday morning:
Nancy Salomon's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Missing the Point,"—Janie's review
This is lookin' a bit like a three-peat to me. For the third time this week, we have a puzzle with a "take away" gimmick and once again the stakes have been raised. Paula's puzzle on Tuesday dropped one letter from each base phrase (J); Tony's yesterday dropped two (LL); and today, Nancy drops three. = Those letters, as spelled out at 71A [Compass dir. (and point missing from 18-, 30-, 47-, and 61-Across)], are NNE. Pretty nifty actually. In a former life, the phrase:
• 18A. CAD LAUGHTER [Nasty snickering?] was canned laughter (which can also be pretty nasty, come to think of it...).
• 30A. STAR-SPANGLED BAR [Celebs' watering hole?] was our own national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner."
• 47A. UNREPENTANT SIRS [Gentlemen without remorse?] was unrepentant sinners. I wonder if these guys gave Nancy the idea for cad laughter. Or vice-versa...
• 61A. BAD IN BOSTON [What Bean Town felons have been?] was banned in Boston. If you're not familiar with this phrase and its Puritan ties, this would be a good time to check it out. Love the "bean"/"been" wordplay in the clue, too. And... I wonder if those unrepentant sirs had anything to do with inspiring this entry. Or vice-versa...
Besides that unrepentant-bad-cad sub-theme, the puzzle also boasts a Japanese-inspired mini-theme. There's HAI [Yes, in Yokohama] (yesterday it was [OK, in Okinawa]), OBI [Sapporo sashes] and AKITAS [Curly-tailed Japanese dogs]—which look to be both an adorable and beautiful breed.
If you're a carnivore, you probably have a more vested interest in seeing that juicy PRIME RIB [Pricey beef lover's entrée] in the grid. Need a complement of carbs to go with? UNCLE BEN [Big name in rice] might fill the bill nicely. The [Starchy food made from tubers], SALEP, was completely new to me. Am I alone? It does look to have a fascinating history however, and appears to be something that is prepared as a beverage. Also as an aphrodisiac. Which, come to think of it, means it might be just right for a MOONLIT occasion [Like some romantic evenings].
Did you notice that the grid includes both ORAL [By word of mouth] and OREL [Sportscaster Hershiser]? The former shares the final L with EBERSOL [Longtime sports executive Dick], but better still (because of the sports tie-in) is the way the ...REL of the latter sits atop the EBE... of his professional colleague.
SIREN has been clued as [Warning wail], but a siren is also a temptress. Whether or not either of these alliteratively clued femmes intended to be one, DAISY MAE [Dogpatch damsel] and LOLITA [Nabokov nymphet], both have their siren-like ways. And in her own way, I suppose the same can be said of the equally iconic ROSIE [Archetypical 1940s riveter]. (For a study in the-same-only-different, check out all three links!)
Tony Orbach and Patrick Blindauer's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Cooking 100"
Tony and Patrick's theme interprets "Cooking 100" as an academic course of study, with the theme entries all clued as cooking classes. The title also uses "100" as the Arabic equivalent of Roman numeral C, which is the letter added to the start of a word in each theme entry. My favorites among these C+ cooking classes are:
• 68A. LET'S GET READY TO CRUMBLE, or [Course on preparing coffeecake topping?].
• 97A. [Course on a taboo ham seasoning?] is FORBIDDEN CLOVE. I like the unexpected vowel shift from "love" to CLOVE.
As you'd expect from either of these constructors, there's plenty of lively fill—there's KATE MOSS, who could walk on EGGSHELLS, plus a GHOST SHIP and RABELAIS. And the clues sparkle, too. I was partial to [Oblivious beneficiaries] for INGRATES; hockey's St. Louis [Blues scores] for GOALS; [Bldg. that's not well-attended?] for HOSP., which is attended by the unwell; ["A waking dream," according to Aristotle] for HOPE; and [Common or Juvenile] for RAPPER. Two coin answers work together: U.S. MINT is clued with [It makes cents] and SPECIE means [Coined money]. I never think of the LENTIL as a [Soup seed] but rather as a bean, though I guess the clue is botanically sound.
I'm surprised to see both EATS (27A: [Has wings, say]—a terrific clue even if you don't like hot wings) and ATE IT (123A: [Suffered defeat, slangily]) in the same grid.
The two answers most in need of a lot of crossing answers were ATLI and CAMISE. The latter is a [Loose-fitting shirt]—I just saw BLOUSE clued that way quite recently, and while I know chemise and camisole, CAMISE was not in my vocabulary. ATLI is an old-school crossword answer, but the clue, [Brynhildr's brother, in myth], wasn't helping me one bit.
Dan Naddor's Los Angeles Times crossword
Ven I vas doing zis puzzle, I started talking in my head mit a German accent. The theme changes initial W sounds to Vs in familiar phrases or vords:
• 18A. Wheelchair becomes VEAL CHAIR, or [Seat for eating scaloppine?].
• 23A. [Tool for a dueling snake?] is a VIPRE BLADE (wiper blade).
• 36A. [What Tarzan becomes after years of swinging?] is a VINE (wine) CONNOISSEUR. The trickiest part of that one is remembering how to spell CONNOISSEUR, isn't it? Better than having a VINE TASTING.
• 49A. VAIN NEWTON joins Isaac Newton to Wayne Newton. The clue's [Egotistical describer of laws of motion?].
• 55A. [Paleontologist's ski resort discoveries?] are VAIL BONES. Whalebones are those stiff stays in corsets.
Smooth and easy, a perfect Tuesday puzzle. The grid is gussied up with long fill like NEON TETRA, SLOWPOKE, CELLPHONE, and LAKE ERIE. Not a lot else to say about it.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Dirty Words"
Quick review here.
Theme = GROUCHO quote, WOMEN SHOULD / BE OBSCENE / AND NOT HEARD. Short quote, leaves room in the puzzle for good stuff.
Good fill = The late Captain LOU ALBANO (I knew him from the Cyndi Lauper video), THE STICKS (same length and last 3 letters as BOONDOCKS, whoops), ED HARRIS, Fred WILLARD and FREDDIE Mercury. Not sure if Saddam HUSSEIN in the Idi Amin slot is gutsy fill or terrible. I like LESBIAN as fill, but could do without the male-centric clue, [She's just not that into you (maybe)].
Favorite clues = [Prefix with cache] stumped me until crossings gave me GEO, as in the trendy geocaching. STATUES? [They may be busts]. Not crazy about LAW CASE as an answer, but the clue, [Mason's job], had me thinking of stonemasons and not Perry Mason. [Miller of note] is STEVE Miller, '70s AM radio mainstay; I guess the "of note" hints at his music but I was thinking of more traditionally notable people and getting nowhere. [Robin hood?] is the TREE its nest is in. Oh! And this one: [They're from Mars] clues M AND M'S. Cute.
October 14, 2009
Thursday, 10/15/09
NYT 3:47
LAT 3:25
Tausig untimed
CS untimed
Vic Fleming's New York Times crossword
It looks like a Thursday puzzle—word count of 74, so more white space and longish answers than we expect earlier in the week. But the clues felt a little easy for a Thursday. The theme is straightforwardly HAWAII (43D), and we are spared POI, a UKE, a LEI, and DON HO. Instead, we get assorted Hawaii trivia:
• 17A. BETTE MIDLER is the [Entertainer born 12/1/1945 in 25-Across]. I don't believe it. I'm going to need to see her birth certificate.
• 25A. That's HONOLULU, the [Capital whose name means "sheltered bay"], where Midler was born.
• 34A, 36A. IOLANI / PALACE is the [only official residence of a reigning monarch now in the United States].
• 44A. Geotrivia! [Measured base to peak, the world's tallest mountain] is MAUNA KEA. That base is beneath about 20,000 feet of Pacific Ocean waters.
• 54A. BARACK OBAMA is a noted [Politician born 8/4/61 in 25-Across].
I wonder if Vic hoped for this puzzle to run around August 21, the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood. There doesn't seem to be any particular rhyme or reason for running this theme now, but two months ago? Perfect.
Highlights in the fill: [Seven-time Wimbledon champ] PETE / SAMPRAS gets his full name in the grid too, but split into two entries. CHERUBIC is just a cute word ([Innocent-looking]). The [German warning] ACHTUNG is part of a U2 album title, Achtung Baby. IOWA CITY is clued via [it's west of Davenport]; it's further west from Chicago. DEAR ANN is the [Start of a letter to Landers]; "Dear Abby" feels a little more in the language to me, but that could be because I just saw that phrase in another crossword.
The short stuff in the grid is mostly unremarkable. I wonder how many people wind up Googling the Roman numeral clues—XLI, or 41, is the [Year Caligula was assassinated].
Updated Thursday morning:
Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Take the El Train"—Janie's review
Yet another CS puzzle that's SOLID [Like a rock]. Today's theme involves a sequence (or train) of words (the first one in each of four theme phrases) from which the letter L has been taken out—the double L, to be precise. It took me a while to figure out the gimmick, but I was delighted to have a second puzzle in the same week with a "take away" theme, especially one that builds on its predecessor by removing a letter pair. What the 'ell—let's take a look at the theme fill!
• 17A. MA OF AMERICA [Founding mother?] has its source in Bloomington MN's super-sized (4 million square feet!) Mall of America. O. M. G.
• 33A. CEO CONCERTO [Corporate bigwig's musical composition?]. The base phrase here, of course, is cello concerto. This was the theme fill that triggered the "aha" for me and remains my fave. There's something very natural about the before-and-after feel to it. This link'll get you started with Jacqueline du Pré's performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto.
• 42A. PI DISPENSER [Geometry teacher divulging the secret of a circle?]. Never knew you could do so much with a pill dispenser!
• 57A. SEERS MARKET [Crystal ball store?]. Another really strong entry. As with cello..., the letters to be removed are contained by (and don't lie at the end of) the base word. I think this adds to the delight of realizing the base phrase is seller's market.
I'm pretty much HOG WILD [Enthusiastic to the extreme] for this puzzle. Why? Because the fill is all-over DYNAMIC [Full of life]. From the [Crazy] crossing of LOCO with LOONY [Bats], to the beautiful 10-letter BANANARAMA [Girl group with the 1986 hit "Venus"], there's a fresh feel to the fill. And a clue like [Lusty deity] gives us an attitude about SATYR. Attitude is good in this case.
It comes across as well in all the colloquial/conversational fill:
• ["I'm] ONTO [you!"]
• "MOI?" ["Who, me?"]
• "DITTO" ["Same here"]
• "IN A FEW" ["Any sec"]
• ["Don't] ASK [!"]
• "I BET!" ["Yeah, right!"]
We get a [Toy on a string] not-once-but-twice, with YO-YO and KITE. A [Stand-up's zinger] is a ONE-LINER; but [Puts in stitches] is SEWS. And I also like the way the [La Brea product], TAR is followed in the grid by TARP [Grounds crew's cover]. It's the little things... (And speaking of "little things," let me not overlook FLEA precisely portrayed as a [Minuscule circus creature].)
Finally, a word of warning: if the SCREW CAP [Feature of many wine bottles] on your wine bottle has begun to OXIDATE [Rust], it's probably time to chuck it. It may not have been sold before its time, but its time has come...
Todd Gross's Los Angeles Times crossword
As it happens, the very last answer I filled in—hadn't even seen the clue until the end—is 48D, which ties everything together. [A type of one begins the answers to starred clues] points towards a WRENCH, and I didn't have a clue that's where the theme was heading. What the heck is a CRESCENT (ROLLS) wrench? Time to Google—oh, it's the adjustable wrench I've always had in my toolbox, but I've never heard it called a crescent wrench. The other WRENCHes include PIPE (DREAM), MONKEY (BARS), and ALLEN (GINSBERG). Provided you know the wrench varieties, it's a good theme.
I'm feeling a little bloated and queasy thanks to the northeast corner—SWOLLEN ([Puffed up, as a sprain]) beside NAUSEATE ([Make queasy]) makes this the Misery Corner. Also in that corner is DO SO, clued as ["Take care of it"], but I can't say I've ever heard anyone issue that short command. Next to that is INCL. with an ugly clue, ["Batt. not ___"]—but it Googles up OK. Valid, but ugly.
Highlights in the fill include several phrases and compound words—OPEN MIND, SKYLINE, RED TAPE—as well as MANDARIN, the [Official spoken language of China], and a CARNIVAL, or [Traveling show]. When the answer to ["Way to go!"] starts with an H and is 6 letters long, I'm never quite sure whether I need HOORAY (my preferred spelling and pronunciation), HURRAH (also decent), or HURRAY. Hooray for HOORAY today! I suspect some of the nation's solvers will be Googling [Variously colored flower] today. It's a PANSY here, but...there are a zillion plants with variously colored flowers. Roses. Mums. Tulips. Crabapple blossoms (my favorite scent). Irises. Violets. Lilies. Daisies. See what I mean? And many of those also come in two-tone blooms, like pansies.
Am I just slow this morning, or is this puzzle actually landing square in the Wednesday difficulty slot rather than the Monday/Tuesday of recent weeks? Judging from the other times on the leaderboard this morning, I'm just slow this morning.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Pop Filter"
Do you know what a pop filter is? It's placed between a microphone and a person to dampen the popping sound from aspirated plosives when people say "P" words. So the "Pop Filter" in this puzzle takes out the P sound in the theme entries' base phrases:
• 17A. Movable Type is a blogging platform and movable type is what Gutenberg used with his printing press. MOVABLE TIE is [Unfixed neckwear?]. Hmm, a delivery food order might be movable Thai.
• 25A. [Where Satan's secretary sits?] is HELL DESK (help desk).
• 39A. Presumably there's a Clash album called Give 'Em Enough Rope. GIVE 'EM ENOUGH ROE is the [Clash album about being a generous sushi chef?]. Ideally, the clue wouldn't reference both the base phrase and the theme entry, but Give 'Em Enough Rope is perhaps not familiar enough to serve as un unexplained basis for a play on words.
• 51A. Hope chest turns into HOE CHEST, [Where weed-removing heirlooms might be kept?]. The "heirloom" aspect of the clue again references the base phrase. I should've noticed that when test-solving this puzzle.
• 64A. [What a really exciting yoga instructor provides?] might be CHI THRILLS (cheap thrills). Cute.
I liked the medical terminology crossing just fine, but could see how that might stymie some folks. ATAXIA is [Lack of coordination, clinically] and EXOCRINE is clued as [Like sweat glands]; endocrine glands do their secreting inside the body (endo = in, exo = out). [Trippy M.C.] isn't about trip-hop at all; it's trippy visual artist M.C. ESCHER. The NEVA River, one of the leading crosswordese rivers in Russia, gets a trivia clue, [River into which Rasputin was thrown], to bring it to life. Ben editorials abou American IDOL: [Show that's broken scores of generic, melismatic singers, familiarly]. ZIT is clued via teenagerly texting: ["ZOMG! n RIGHT b4 prom!!!" thing].
October 03, 2009
Sunday, 10/4/09
BG 8:37
Reagle 8:20
NYT 8:00
LAT 6:40
NYT diagramless untimed
CS 3:29
Todd McClary's New York Times crossword, "Initial Offerings"
Terrific theme! The way I progressed through the grid, I got the gist with SAMUEL ADAMS ESSAY, worked out DON KING DECAY, and moved down the grid, filling in the ends of the other theme entries first. I loved getting just enough letters at the end to figure out the sounds-like-initials word and then eyeballing the clue and trying to think of a famous person with the right initials who fit the description. It makes for an entertaining word game, doesn't it? Here are the theme entries:
So, we've established that I'm a big fan of Todd's theme. I also liked the chunks of fill at the top and bottom of the grid—the stacked 8s, 7s, and 6s. A few highlights in the fill:
I had a typo for a while, making 59A: [Saturate] a vaguely plausible EMBUE, crossing the nonsensical MOVEEN. Guess what? While imbed/embed and inure/enure and insure/ensure are valid word pairs, EMBUE is nothing. IMBUE crossing MOVE IN, or [Get closer]? Yeah, that's much better. Also had a misstep at 40D, where I put I HAD for ["If only ___ known..."] instead of the correct and double-apostrophed I'D'VE.
I hope you enjoyed this puzzle as much as I did. It's possibly my favorite Sunday-sized puzzle in the last month or two.
Patrick Blindauer's second Sunday New York Times diagramless crossword
Usually the NYT diagramlesses are limited to the 17x17 size, but this puppy's 19x17. It's not too hard to figure out that if there are 19 squares across and the first two Across answers are each 9 letters long, they both span the top row with a central black square separating them. The Downs dangling from SPACE CAMP (1A: [Getaway for future astronauts]) and "NO COMMENT" (10A: [Response to an investigative reporter, sometimes]) weren't all easy, but with a few in place, it was easier to piece together the other 9-letter answers stacked beautifully below 1A and 10A.
The theme entries are linked by 25D: [Science fiction device...or a chronometer?], or TIME MACHINE. Sure, you wouldn't really call a METRONOME (21A: [25-Down on a piano]) a "time machine," but it's a doodad that keeps time. 22A: [25-Down on a court] is a basketball SHOT CLOCK. Down at 58A, [25-Down on "60 Minutes"] is a STOPWATCH (tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick). And the piece de resistance is 62A, an HOURGLASS, or the [25-Down in this puzzle]. The grid's pattern looks like an hourglass, with a wide top and bottom tapering to a wee 3-letter entry in the midsection.
I do like the diagramlesses that draw a picture—if you do too, pick up a copy of Brendan Quigley's Diagramless Crosswords book. It's coming out this Tuesday. (Also buy it if you like diagramlesses that don't make a picture—Brendan has plenty of both in the book.)
Updated later Saturday evening:
Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword (in Across Lite), "The Ing Crowd"
Henry takes nine phrases that end with -ER words and turns them into -ING words that are scarcely, if at all, related. A left fielder in baseball becomes the verb phrase LEFT FIELDING, with novelist Henry Fielding ([Abandoned the author of "Tom Jones"]). "Look no farther" turns into "LOOK, NO FARTHING," which is clued with ["The British coin has disappeared!"]. My favorite one is "SCREW DRIVING!"—["I'm gonna walk to work from now on!"].
It's a nice Boston touch to have a KENNEDY in the center; the clue is [Half profile?], referring to the face on the half-dollar coin. Never heard of SAITEK, the [PC-game company]—their site shows that they sell video game hardware (joysticks, controllers, etc.) rather than games. Overall, the fill is on the tough side, but only the JUDAEA/SAITEK crossing really gave me pause.
Favorite clue: [Carousel riders?] for LUGGAGE.
Merl Reagle's syndicated crossword, "One More Letter To Write"
Merl's theme is an "add a letter" theme, but rather than adding the same letter each time, or having some underlying rationale for those particular letters being added, Merl adds whatever letter he needs to generate an entertaining wacky phrase:
If you enjoy Merl's sense of humor (as I do), you probably liked this puzzle. Let's run through five clues:
Updated Sunday morning:
Robert Wolfe's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Surprise Endings"
Cute anagram theme—the last word of seven movie titles is anagrammed to change what the movie's about. My favorites were TENDER IS THE THING (Night), a [Film about a soft-hearted creature?]; A FAREWELL TO RAMS (Arms), or [Film about Los Angeles losing its NFL team?]; and LORD OF THE FILES (Flies), [Film about a computer supervisor?]. The fill's pretty smooth, and the clues must be on the easy side because this puzzle was a couple notches lower on the difficulty scale than the other three 21x21s were.
For more on this puzzle, see PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post.
All right, now it's Sunday afternoon:
Tony Orbach's themeless (freestyle!) CrosSynergy/Washington Post "Sunday Challenge"
The clues in this one weren't all that tough, but they had a lot of zip and cleverness, and the fill's got some oomph too. Highlights:
September 09, 2009
Thursday, 9/10/09
NYT 6:37
Onion 4:45
CS untimed (J)/3:09 (A)
LAT 3:01
Tausig untimed
Kevan Choset's New York Times crossword
All righty, I have company over, so let me provide a cursory overview of the Thursday puzzle. Choset's theme is the EIGHT NOTES (4-Down) of the MAJOR SCALE (30-Down). Now, as a musical illiterate, I had no idea what exactly MAJOR SCALE meant, but my musically literate husband explained, "It's that song—'Do, Re, Mi.'" Precisely! DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, TI, and DO occupy rebus squares ascending diagonally from the bottom left corner. They make a nice visual representation that reflects the scale's musical upward mobility.
And look at me! I finally remembered in the midst of a rebus puzzle how to enter multiple letters in a single square on the NYT applet. I typed an invisible + sign and then two letters (or, for SOL, two invisible + signs followed by three letters). It slowed me down a little, but given that the rebus's musicality didn't dawn on me right away, it was helpful to have all the letters in those squares rather than only the first letters.
The four toughest spots I encountered:
And now, a few favorite answers:
I'll be back with more crosswords in the morning.
Updated Thursday morning:
Tony Orbach's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Final Answer"—Janie's review
One thing I can say unequivocally about this puzzle: it sure has MOXIE [Spunk]. Now, Ed Asner as Lou Grant may have said, "I hate spunk!" to Mary Richards (played by Mary Tyler Moore) when she interviewed for her position at WJM-TV, but me—I'm all for it. Especially when it gives so much life to the fill. First of all, we get a grid with lots and lots of edgy, high-scorin' Scrabble letters: four Ks, four Xs, a J and a Z. There's some K action in the cluing as well, with [Keystone character] for KOP and [Keystone State founder] PENN (of course that's William of Pennsylvania...).
Then we get a bunch of explosive/slangy expressions and words: "WHAM!" ["Kapow!"], WIPEOUT (vividly clued as) [Go down when the surf's up?], GONZO [Really out there] and YUCKY [Gross]. Even DORKS [Uncool customers]. These words cut across the solving population to include latter-day surfers and hippies as well as GEN X-ERs [...born in the late '60s or early '70s] and beyond. That's the kind of inclusiveness I like to see.
I also like the mellifluence generated by all those entries ending in -O: MONACO [Riviera principality], GERALDO [Rivera on TV], ["]I'M SO [Tired" (Beatles song)], NINO, OTRO, GONZO, ZERO, OSLO, ST. LÔ, XENO- [Prefix with phobia]. What with Monaco, Oslo, St. Lô and ASIA [Home of the highest and lowest points on earth] (can ya name 'em?) in the mix, clearly this is no place for a xenophobe! Ooh—a place I'd never heard of? (Surprise, surprise...) Scotland's [Royal] TROON [, site of several British Opens].
And then there's that oh-so positive theme, where the "final answer" is the -yes that appears at the end of the theme names and phrases, as in:
18A. POINT REYES [National seashore park North of San Francisco].
28A. TEARFUL GOODBYES [Weepy send-offs].
50A. STARS IN ONE'S EYES [Enchantment, figuratively]. Is that a beautiful phrase or what?
63A. ISAAC HAYES ["Shaft" Oscar winner]. "John Shaft." This one looks so great—almost unpronounceable—in the grid. It all comes down to the parsing...
Finally, there's that EXTRA [Bonus] YES [Fitting final answer for this puzzle?]. All those yeses do put me in mind not only of one Molly Bloom, but also of one Liza Minnelli singing Fred Ebb and John Kander's "Yes," written for the show 70, Girls, 70.
Bruce Venzke's Los Angeles Times crossword
There've been one or two commenters over at L.A. Crossword Confidential who've been clamoring for more quote/quip themes—I think they'd been longtime TMS solvers before their papers changed over to the L.A. Times puzzle. I hope today's puzzle will hush them up for a while, because I don't often enjoy quote/quip themes. Today's "investor's quip" is I BOUGHT STOCK IN A / BLANKET / FACTORY / BUT IT SOON FOLDED. Har, har.
UTES gets an updated clue: [Western team that beat the Crimson Tide in the 2009 Sugar Bowl]. Sure, the clue's specifics are of little help to anyone who doesn't follow college football, but it's a nic change-up from the usual stale UTES clues (Western tribe, Salt Lake City college team).
At 31D, LOOIE is clued as a [Certain NCO, slangily]. It was brought to my attention last night that this clue is flat-out incorrect. LOOIE is short for lieutenant, the lowest rank among commissioned officers, and NCOs are noncommissioned officers. Is this just a slip-up, or is there some roundabout explanation that makes the clue accurate in some circumstances?
Francis Heaney's Onion A.V. Club crossword
The theme entries turn __ED words into __EED words, but that escaped me even after filling in HIPSTER CREED for 20A: ["I will always wear black; even when I enjoy a concert I will never do more than sway disaffectedly," etc.]. Hipster cred just doesn't have enough cred in my circles to jump out as an obvious base phrase. Plus, there was no question mark flagging the clue as not-a-real-phrase. Luckily, LICENSE TO WEED (37A: [Document held by a gardener with a double-0 rating?]) was a good bit more obviously license to wed with a double E. It took longer to piece together the third and funniest of the bunch, 53A: [Nickname for critic Rex who doesn't sexually excite anyone?]. A common road sign turns into NO TURN-ON REED. Awkward phrasing in terms of how people actually talk, but I like TURN's movement from "no turn" to TURN-ON; quite a different meaning there.
Highlights in the fill:
I love PASHA when clued as a historical Turkish officer (the word is so handy around the house), but had no idea that it was also the first name of 40A: ["So You Think You Can Dance" competitor Kovalev]. I also didn't know that a 15A: [Poem-ending stanza] is called an ENVOI. You know who knows poetry? This week's constructor, Francis Heaney. His parodic anthology Holy Tango of Literature is a hoot for literature fans.
Ben Tausig's Ink Well/Chicago Reader crossword, "Puzzle Princess"
What does this crossword's title suggest to you? If it made you think of the queens of crosswordese, then you were on the right track. Yma SUMAC (67A: [Vocally versatile, cruciverbally useful singer Yma who would have turned eighty-seven this week]) gets her first name inserted into three phrases to alter their meaning (circles not in original puzzle):
It bears noting that YMA is AMY backwards, so my name is practically the theme's hinge here. I consider myself more of a Crossword Queen than Puzzle Princess. Or can I be a Puzzle Pasha? Can pashas be gender-neutral?
August 17, 2009
Tuesday, 8/18
Jonesin' 3:39
LAT 2:59
NYT 2:56
CS untimed (J)
Have you been fretting about the trend of puzzles disappearing from various publications? Lewis Grossberger is on the case and suspects an international conspiracy. His blog post made me laugh...and get nervous. (Thanks to Deb Amlen for the link.)
Tony Orbach's New York Times crossword
This delightful crossword from Tony features five sweet comestibles whose names begin with a fruit, and of course he saved the best (ORANGE! CRUSH) for last:
Among the best parts of the fill are more food items. The BROWN COW is a [Root beer float with chocolate ice cream]; with vanilla, it's a black cow. T-BONE STEAKS are [Ribeye alternatives]. Fig Newtons are evoked by ISAAC NEWTON, the [Scientist who experienced a great fall?]. PONIES UP ([Pays what's due]) appears opposite BROWN COW but...that's not edible in the American diet.
Other tasty inedible answers: KOWTOW is [Show deep respect (to)]. The [Robert Ludlum hero searching for his identity] is Jason BOURNE. Work done IN HOUSE is [Not farmed out]. SEA SALT's a [Natural seasoning]. Daedalus's son ICARUS, well, [He flew too close to the sun, in myth]. "MY WORD!" means ["Dear me!"]. Favorite clue: [Things with cups and hooks] sounded mechanical or golf-ish, but it's a BRA.
Updated Tuesday morning:
Patrick Jordan's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Class Act"—Janie's review
This was one of those puzzles whose theme did not become clear to me until I'd finished solving altogether. It's not the flashiest, but it's solid and allows for the inclusion of some fine fill—both themed and un-. Each of the theme phrases begins with a word that is synonymous with the word "class"—as in "ilk." Go to the head of the class—as in "school room"—if you filled in:
Other clues and/or fill I particularly liked or that caught my attention include:
With a "Class Act" comprised of type, sort, kind and variety, the bonus fill would have to be ROGET, the [Surname that synonymous with synonyms]. OHO!
Gail Grabowski's Los Angeles Times crossword
The theme is BABY stuff, and SIT TIGHT, or [Take no action], points to babysit. Which is what I'm doing right now—my son's best friend is here for the day. So in lieu of blogging about this puzzle, I'll point you towards PuzzleGirl's L.A. Crossword Confidential post, which touches on the bowling-related baby split, which is not a phrase I'd ever encountered before. Wait, one thing: I like the ]Must-miss movie rating] NO STARS. I love Anthony Lane's savage movie reviews in the New Yorker, but he doesn't give star ratings. Roger Ebert does, and his reviews of dreadful movies are also entertaining. Ebert's 0- to 1.5-star reviews of recent movies are gathered at the Your Movie Sucks© files. Excerpt from his trashing of this summer's Transformers movie: "If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together."
Updated Tuesday afternoon:
Matt Jones's Jonesin' crossword, "From A to B"
Matt's theme this week involves changing one A in each of four phrases into a B:
Gotta get some work done now before my son's sleepover begins—ciao!
