CS 3:30
LAT 3:02
NYT 2:51
NYS tba
Lynn Lempel remains my favorite Monday constructor. She's not doing anything fancy—just a solid group of theme entries for a standard type of theme, amid a solid fill—but somehow it always seems to feel extra fresh in Lynn's hands, as in the Monday NYT. (More below.)
I like to do both the NYT and the Sun the evening before they're published, but the Sun puzzle's not posted online yet. But you know what? That's okay. I'm flexible. I can wait. I'm very patient...although if the Sun puzzle's still not posted by around 9:00 Monday morning, I will get antsy, and may turn to artificial stimulants to keep me going.
I liked Lynn's theme entries, which didn't cohere in my brain until I worked my way to the lower right corner, where EYES revealed itself to be the tie between the theme entries, since NEEDLEs, HURRICANEs, POTATOes, and FACEs all have 'em. Lynn also dropped a couple X's and 10-letter entries in the grid for added seasoning.
September 10, 2006
Monday the 11th
September 09, 2006
Sunday, 9/10
NYT 9:46
WaPo 8:52
LAT 8:05
CS 4:28
BG tba (MIA)
Joe DiPietro is in fine form with his Sunday NYT, "Two Steps Late." I haven't checked out the other Sunday puzzles (other than Merl Reagle's, which I like to do on Fridays) yet, but I believe it's Hook week for the Boston Globe puzzle.
I bought, started, and finished a new crossword book this week—Byron Walden's Sit & Solve Commuter Hard Crosswords. (As a "commuter" book, it has a disposable coffee cup cover rather than the original Sit & Solve toilet design.) The book contains 42 10x10 puzzles, mostly themeless, but with some mini-themes snuck into the grids. The clues are Waldenesque, as you'd expect. A handful of these puzzles were quite knotty, but most of them took me between 2 and 3 minutes. So a speed-solver might get a solid two hours of entertainment out of this book—at $4.95, that's a much better value than a movie. Now that I've finished the book, though, I'm wishing I hadn't plowed through the puzzles in a couple binge sessions. Buy the book, but savor them like little chocolate truffles instead of gorging on them like a bag of M&Ms. (Congratulations on your first book o' crosswords, Byron!)
And now, the stuff with spoilers:
Loved the theme in DiPietro's puzzle—the first letter of each theme entry's seed gets moved two notches further along in the alphabet, so when a crossing gives you the first letter, you find yourself saying the alphabet backwards to figure out the base phrase so you can fill in the full entry. The twelve theme entries all involve a different first letter. The funniest one is HAIRY GODMOTHER, of course. One could make a case that the fill entry ST JOE is a tad narcissistic... Clues I admired include [Pens and needles] for STYLI, [Rap relative] for SISTA, and [They meet in the middle] for RADII. I couldn't picture "The Laughing Cavalier" by HALS, so I Google-image-searched; note that while the subject's eyes and prodigious mustache are laughing, his mouth is not; so why that title?
Updated:
If sports is your thing, you'll enjoy Ray Hamel's LA Times puzzle (football) and Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's Washington Post crossword (baseball). Will Johnston crafted today's CrosSynergy Sunday Challenge with three triple stacks of 15-letter entries; I like Will's 15s, but most triple-triples lose me with the 3s and 4s crossing the stacks.
September 08, 2006
Saturday the 9th
NYT 7:35
LAT 5:27
Newsday untimed
CS 3:00
The often wicked Bob Klahn constructed this week's Saturday NYT crossword, and as the byline would suggest, many people found it a toughie. There were a lot of words you don't generally see in your average crossword puzzle—like SOIGNÉE, SILICA GEL ([Absorbent component of some cat litter] as well as what's in those little pouches in a box of new shoes, OPEN-TOED or otherwise), Archibald MACLEISH (I thank my high-school teacher for assigning J.B.), NUTCASE, and SHIVAREE. A handful of tricky clues gave up their secrets easily; with one letter, [Makings of a hero, maybe] shouted SALAMI, and [Having digital display?] insisted on OPEN-TOED. The other hard clues put up more of a fight, for me—[Base figure] sounded military, but it's baseball (INFIELDER). [Victorian] was three quarters easy, but adjective PRIM or noun PRIG? (Turned out to be PRIG—sitting right on top of PORN, no less.) There were many wonderfully misleading clues, including [Self-guided "tour"] for EGO TRIP, [Extra boots] for RESTARTS, [Thorny subject] is ROSE, "Remains to be seen?" for RUIN, and the one that duped me the longest, [Hamlet's cousin] for VILLAGE. And SHORT A, the [Fan sound], also eluded me. Young celebrity name alert: KENAN Thompson has mainly shown up in crossword clues for KEL, e.g. [Kenan's comedy partner]. The Nickelodeon show Kenan and Kel only ran from 1996 to 1999, and Kenan's now on Saturday Night Live, so his name may be around for some time. (I don't know if Kel Mitchell, with that handy 3-letter name, will be as lucky.) Last and least, 32-Across is ASS and 35-Across is PAN, and my mind keeps reading them as a unit. However, a cursory Google search hints that there is no such thing as an ass pan.
Updated:
Lynn Lempel's themeless LA Times puzzle has plenty of great clues, among them [Removes a curse, say] for CENSOR and [Ones in pairs] for ELEVENS.
The Newsday Saturday Stumper by Daniel Stark is smooth and easy—definitely easier than the Klahn NYT, and probably easier than Lynn's LAT.
If you're in the mood for an even easier themed puzzle, you've got Harvey Estes' CrosSynergy puzzle.
September 07, 2006
Friday the 8th
NYS 6:57 (sort of)
NYT 5:59
LAT 4:06
CS 4:00
WSJ 8:39
Reagle 6:56
I liked David Bunker's themeless NYT puzzle, and found Patrick Blindauer's Sun puzzle to be a challenge (and also liked it).
Hey, does anyone know why the Chronicle of Higher Education crosswords haven't been available online since August 11? I always feel frightfully clever when I polish off one of the CHE puzzles, so I've been missing them.
The NYT crossword boasts plenty of high-Scrabble-count letters—two per entry, a few times (SQUARE JAW up top, EQUINOXES and ZINC OXIDE at the base). The clues I liked best included [It's frustrating not to get it] for PUNCHLINE, [Stretch for the stars?] for LIMO, [Mars to mars, e.g.] for ANNÉE, [Season openers?] (why the question mark?) for EQUINOXES, and [Were running mates] for ELOPED. I wasn't familiar with CAIRNED as an adjective, but Google shows that hikers mark trails with stone cairns and use the word. Here's a picture of the [Soldier armed with a spear], PIKEMAN, and here is DALI's Lobster Telephone is here (what's the difference between art and schlock?). I did get messed up for a while by the [Cryptozoological topic], plugging in SETI instead of YETI, which completely mucked up the formation of MY LAI.
First up for Patrick Bl.'s Sun puzzle ("Not for Cardinal Fans"), confession time. I stopped the timer when I filled in the grid, and figured Across Lite just didn't like the way I'd entered the rebus entries. No, that was just fine—it was having SCANS instead of SPANS for [Goes over] that was the hitch. (I've never heard of the Mets player Todd PRATT, so for all I knew, he was CRATT...) Anyhoo, Patrick plants five ordinal (not cardinal) numbers into the grid rebus-style, with FIRST, THIRD, and FIFTH placed in long entries and SECOND and FOURTH in short entries near the NE and SW corners of the grid. Good to see BABKA with a "Seinfeld" clue ("Cinnamon takes a back seat to no babka!") and Weird Al Yankovic's EAT IT—it's always nice to be rewarded for pop-culture consumption. Thanks, Patrick!
Updated:
In Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer puzzle, the extra-long clue at 22-Across reads [Paul's crossword credo? (Note: To mark Paul's turning 64 this year, every theme answer in this puzzle is a Beatle song on which Paul sang lead)]. Somehow, Merl included two songs I don't recognize (!). Try not to sing or hum too much while you're doing the puzzle, eh?
Harvey Estes tries something "Somewhat Different" in his fun Wall Street Journal crossword. Looking back over the completed puzzle, I really like the set of theme entries. Elsewhere in the grid, Harvey includes the Mexican city, JALAPA, which I had never heard of; turns out it's also spelled Xalapa, and jalapeño peppers get their name from Jalapa.
I enjoyed the theme in Manny Nosowsky's LA Times puzzle. Presumably most of his solvers won't have already done his April 21 NYT, and they'll delight in the [Refrain from piracy?] clue. Those who have already seen it will find it much easier to figure out the second time!
Thomas Schier's CrosSynergy puzzle has an unusual sort of theme I don't recall seeing before.
September 06, 2006
Thursday the 7th
NYT 5:55
NYS 4:14
LAT 3:57
CS 2:59
I think Lucy Gardner Anderson's fun NYT crossword may be her debut. If so, what a fine debut it is! Both this puzzle and Elizabeth Gorski's Themeless Thursday in the Sun sent me into childhood reminiscences: In the case of the NYT, it was the geeky "look how I can play around with my calculator," while the Sun sent me back to grade-school art class.
The NYT's three 13-letter theme entries explain how eight numerical clues are to be solved: display the numbers on a calculator, turn it upside-down, and read the words. The most famous of these is 0.7734 for hELLO, but kids always knew you could also get hELL and BOOBIES. My old favorite was 71077345, but that link gave me a new fave: 378193771. The number words in the grid aren't in symmetrical locations, and you know what? I like it that way, because overall the fill is quite good; with three 13's plus eight more symmetrically placed entries containing a limited set of letters, this puzzle could have ended up with some terrible fill. Jostle the symmetry a bit, and see if the fill isn't a bit smoother.
Liz Gorski's Themeless Thursday has a perfect pop-culture mini-theme (BEFORE SUNRISE and AFTER MIDNIGHT) and fizzy fill (AVUNCULAR, OH DEAR ME, TACO STAND, the BAD CALLS that so beset John McEnroe, and DEMIGOD). It's also got RAGBAG clued as "Hodgepodge." This spurs a couple thoughts: First, do you ever do a Google search on a word and click definition near the top of the results page? That gets you the Answers.com page for the word, which includes the American Heritage dictionary definition (a bag of rags, or a motley collection, a hodgepodge), along with thesaurus listings, translations, and the relevant Wikipedia article. In this instance, I like the comparison between the Italian translation of ragbag, given as confusione, and one of the German words, the very-literal-sounding Lumpensack. Second thought: Does anyone else remember a brand-name '70s arts and craft substance called Hodgepodge? Some sort of lacquer or glue, maybe used in papier mache? With a deliciously tangy aroma? Anyone?
September 05, 2006
Wednesday the 6th
NYS 5:08
NYT 4:03
LAT 3:40
CS 3:26
Up first, a little game. Give me a headline containing two 8-letter words that are anagrams of each other, to accompany a story about a particularly hassle-filled commute for a driver.
The Sun puzzle by Gary Steinmehl and Manny Nosowsky's NYT are both roughly Thursday level in difficulty. (Of course, they're both Wednesday puzzles.) There's one entry in Manny's puzzle that left me wondering, and perhaps one of you can shed some light on that for me: I understand five of the six theme entries—places for a queen, places in Queens, the place where Queens is—but have no idea what "Queen's place, in fiction" and SPIDER NEST relate to. My Google search was unrevealing.
In the Sun puzzle, "Essex," an S becomes an X in each of five theme entries. I especially liked MARX BAR and PLANET OF THE APEX. My favorite clue was "Liberty, for example" for JEEP.
I'd write more if I weren't so sleepy...
Updated:
Mel Rosen spiffs up his CrosSynergy quip puzzle with plenty of long entries. I have two questions about one clue, though: the answer to "Xena and Charon, as of August 16, 2006" is PLANETS. It was my understanding that they and Pluto are categorized as dwarf planets, and that although the key noun there appears to be planet, dwarf planets fall short of being planets. (1) Am I right or am I confused? (2) Are there any other terms in which a noun is negated by its modifier, but the modifier isn't something innately negative, like non or anti?
Cool link: This is actually not off topic because of the SPIDER NEST mystery and the fact that there's a picture of a the incredible shrinking man battling a spider in this article, "The Biology of B-Movie Monsters," from a University of Chicago professor—a crucial discussion of what would happen, physically and biologically, if people shrank or animals were enlarged to colossal proportions by, say, the effects of B-movie radiation. Issues of mass, surface tension, metabolism, biomechanics, oxygen requirements, and so forth explain why Mothra shouldn't be able to fly, why the giant octopus in It Came from Beneath the Sea surely suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and why King Kong's cranky disposition might derive from achy feet.
September 04, 2006
Tuesday, September 5th, the day I've been waiting for
Tausig 5:29
CS 3:55
NYT 3:38
NYS 3:34
LAT 2:42
(Because my son starts first grade on Tuesday.)
Two excellent Tuesday puzzles in the Sun and NYT, by Joe Bower and Timothy Powell, respectively. Oddly enough, both puzzles use PHONE BILL(S) as a theme entry, in entirely different contexts.
Joe's Sun puzzle is called "Are You Ready for Some Football?" (My answer: Uh, not really.) The theme entries end with NFL team names (here, PHONE BILLS derives from the Buffalo Bills), and the fill is particularly fresh and Scrabbly: there's JET LI, QUIXOTE, BUST A GUT, RAYBAN, MT SINAI, and SEX. (Sure, Joe, you can clue SUE as "Famous South Dakota T. rex," but we all know Sue hightailed it out of SoDak and to Chicago the first chance she got.)
The NYT puzzle has six theme entries, all converting a standard two-word phrase into a personal exhortation. For example, "Clean up, Mr. Stewart" is SHOWER, ROD! PHONE BILL is clued here as "There's a call for you, Mr. Gates." Among the good fill here are CATS EYE and KABOOM.
Updated:
Allan Parrish's LA Times puzzle was easy, but I didn't suss out the theme—TIC TAC TOE, GATEWAY ARCH, LUCILLE BALL, LEMON SOLE, and TARHEEL—until after I finished. D'oh!
Ben Tausig's Ink Well puzzle for this week, "Nine in One," arrived via e-mail with instructions: Each theme answer in this puzzle contains four overlapping six-letter words, which also contain five three-letter words. A list of clues for each set of nine words is provided, though their order is scrambled. If you're solving on the computer with Across Lite, be sure to change the layout set-up so that you can see the long clues without truncation or extreme miniaturization. I like the twist and hope to see more puzzles like this one.
September 03, 2006
Labor Day
CS 3:05
LAT 2:57
NYT 2:52
There should be no New York Sun puzzle because of the holiday (drat!), but the other newspapers don't take a day off. In his NYT puzzle, Mike Nothnagel links the theme entries together with lively 10-letter fill entries, which is a nice touch, especially on a Monday—he spruces up the elitist theme with FEATHER BOA, DIRTY TRICK, and BEER KEGS.
September 02, 2006
Sonntag, 3 September
NYT 11:37
WaPo 9:34
BG 8:23
LAT 8:08
CS 7:51
Lee Glickstein and Ben Tausig teamed up for the Sunday NYT, in which each theme entry is a puzzle unto itself. I suspect that accounts for the challenge most solvers are running into—although the non-theme clues are on the tricky side, too.
Cute theme in the Washington Post crossword by Paula Gamache, "A Losing Proposition"—if you don't ordinarily solve this puzzle each weekend, think about doing this one. I liked it.
In the "Triple Play" theme, each entry's a three-word phrase made of homophones of the words in a common base phrase. One of the entries is recycled from an Ink Well puzzle Ben published last year—CZECH BI MALE, clued here as "Eastern European guy who loves both sexes." An entry that perfect deserves to be reused! My favorite clues were "Salon workers, for short" for EDS, "Results of piercing pain?" for NOSE RINGS, "Prudent time to get to the airport" for EARLYISH, and "Subject of some gossip" for MISTRESS. And of course, it's always fun to see one's own name in a crossword, especially when it's placed in close proximity to a word like POUTIER.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's Boston Globe puzzle (again, the one online is weeks behind what's in the dead-tree edition), "Cracked Cases," makes puns with the names of fictional sleuths. One person's obscurity or knowledge lacuna is another person's "Well, duh, everyone knows that." Here are the lacunae I uncovered in this puzzle: DOPANT ("Electronic impurity"), CORTONA ("Town of Tuscany"), OATCAKE ("Kin to a bannock").
Updated:
Bob Klahn's CrosSynergy Sunday Challenge was a tough one.
Stella Daily and Bruce Venzke's LA Times Syndicate puzzle, "Get a Move On," dispenses plenty of action verbs, and mystified me with ORV (abbreviation for off-road vehicle)—ATV, of course, is a much more commonly seen abbreviation.
September 01, 2006
Saturday, 9/2
NYT 6:34
Newsday 6:05
LAT 5:28
CS 3:06
Part of me hoped that David Quarfoot's Saturday-tough Friday NYT would be followed by an inhuman challenge for the Saturday puzzle, but what do you know? Mel Rosen's crossword is roughly...Saturday level. And I made it harder on myself by not getting enough sleep last night—that only seems to work out when there's enough adrenaline to counteract the sleep loss, as at Stamford. This puzzle combined a few gimmes with a lot more entries I questioned myself on, so it actually felt like more of a struggle than the solving time reflects. NEEDLENOSE pliers came quickly, and I extracted LEAF-EATING out of the root words in "Folivorous," but the rest of the long entries made me work for them, even SPIKE JONZE, whose name I blanked on until enough crossings made it obvious. I sent myself down some crazy wrong paths (deciding the "Devon river" was Ayr rather than the EXE, placing Scheherezade on the Greek Mt. Ida rather than in an ODA), and I also erased ONE for "Not split" because ONE O ("Clock starter?") was already in the grid—duplicated entries don't bother me if I don't notice them, but jeeze, if you notice it mid-solve, it can throw you. There were a few things that eluded me—like SLOWLY for "Larghetto" (a music term unfamiliar to me) and ESSE for "Sum, ___, fui" (some Latin I never knew).
Updated:
Stan Newman (as "Anna Stiga") put together a good Newsday Saturday Stumper. Maybe a few more less-than-smooth word forms (e.g., EXCITERS) than would be ideal, but a fantastic set of clues offsets that.
