Tausig 5:32
NYS 4:05
NYT 3:22
CS 3:14
LAT 3:08
Another day where I liked both the NYT and Sun puzzles, by David ("Evad") Sullivan and Lee Glickstein, respectively. I completely ignored the "With 66-Across" part at the beginning of the clue for 1-Across, so I was semi-befuddled about the theme until I made my way down to 66-Across with its "See 1-Across" clue and grasped the YARD/SALE theme. Kinda cute to have PASTA a few rows below REDUCED CARBS, isn't it? FATWA crossing CASTOFFS ("'Survivor' losers") provides a reminder that getting kicked off the island is certainly not the worst fate that could befall a reality-show contestant—when will some ayatollahs launch their own reality show? They could call it Fatwa! with an exclamation point, just like Jeopardy! And, because I like Dave, I'll give him a little crap for old-school fill like IRAE and STEN (of course, for all we know, he might have submitted this puzzle last year when he was an unpolished cruciverbal beginner).
Lee Glickstein's Sun puzzle, "Cargo," had a title that led me down the wrong path. (Theme trouble: the theme of the day.) With the first theme entry starting with TON, I was thinking of literal cargo rather than CAR- going. (Anyone else?) I remember last year when Lee said he was giving up crossword construction—I'm glad he's not a man of his word. (I do miss those unpublishable but entertaining puzzles he made for a while that featured snarky quotes from the late-night TV hosts.) I bet it was editor/dad of preschoolers Peter Gordon who clued EZRA as "children's book author ___ Jack Keats (Keats' Snowy Day was one of my favorites when I was small). Anyway, with little bits like MAXES, FEED ME, and HOTTIE, I liked this puzzle.
Updated:
Ben Tausig's Chicago Reader puzzle for the week is "You've Got to Stand for Something." It's fantastic to have a tougher puzzle this early in the week, but this particular theme (invented expansions of words that aren't abbreviations, like moon is short for MURAL OF OUR NIGHT) didn't grab me. However, there's much to commend in this crossword—hipster shout-out to Sonic Youth's THURSTON Moore, learning that PHNOM is Khmer for "hill," getting tipped off to SLASH's famous guitar solo that I'd never heard of (not a GNR fan), SET A DATE, WANT AD, GOT AN F next to G FORCE.
Harvey Estes pays tribute to the late AARON Spelling in the CrosSynergy puzzle, "TV Tycoon." Alas, "Beverly Hills, 90210" wouldn't fit the grid without a rebus, and what on earth crosses [90210]? No "Melrose Place" either—but there are five other Spelling shows, including a few I didn't know had been Spelling productions. Some terrific fill (ASK FOR IT, CELIBATE, TORQUES) and clues (such as "Where to see attractive models?" for AUTO SHOW and "It may bubble out of the mouth" for GUM), to boot.
Huh. Ever heard of a HOSEL? That word was in today's LA Times puzzle by Norm Guggenbiller. Apparently it means the socket in a golf club head into which the shaft is inserted (no jokes, please!) and looks like this. Live and learn, eh?
July 31, 2006
Tuesday
July 30, 2006
Moving on to Monday
NYS 3:20
NYT 2:36
CS 2:59
LAT 2:37
We head into Monday with two excellent puzzles, by Elizabeth Gorski in the NYT and Adam Cohen in the Sun. Elizabeth Gorski's NYT puzzle has only three theme entries, but it felt like more because they comprised such a fresh batch of introductory lines. And the theme was supplemented by six 8- or 10-letter fill entries (such as MAKES A MINT and CHIMNEYS), plus a couple X's and a Z.
Adam's Sun puzzle, "Terms of Endearment," has a solid group of theme entries in a grid seasoned liberally with five Z's plus a Q (in QADDAFI!) and X. The fill also features great entries, like SWERVE, BEEFALO, and FLYOVER.
The DODO hardly seems extinct
Remember last Monday's puzzle by Richard Chisholm, with the *O*O theme? I have a copy of Will Shortz's Favorite Crossword Puzzles before me, and it includes Sarah Keller's puzzle from Monday, January 28, 2002. Theme entries: COCO CHANEL, YOYO CONTEST, NO NO NANETTE, and GO GO DANCER, with TOTO, DODO, SOSO, and HOHO occupying the four corners of the grid.
Everything old is new again...
Sunday
NYT 12:18
WaPo 10:29
LA Times 9:45
LA Weekly 7:45
CS 3:53
Randall Hartman's CrosSynergy Sunday Challenge isn't clued to be that hard, but it's got some fantastic 9- and 10-letter fill entries.
Today is, apparently, Quotepuzzlepalooza, with a George Carlin quip in Vic Fleming and Bonnie Gentry's oversized 23x23 NYT, a safety-conscious Ellen DeGeneres quote in Henry Hook's LA Weekly crossword, and the OLD PERFESSOR (though I'm partial to the more enthusiastically misspelled spelling, "Old Perfesser") Casey Stengel, in Damien Peterson's LA Times quip puzzles. Then there's a non-quote puzzle, Kelsey Blakley's "Ship Shape" Washington Post puzzle with plenty of good fill around a types-of-boats-in-phrases (e.g., COOKIE CUTTER, TUG OF WAR) theme.
Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon's cryptic crossword (the NYT's second Sunday puzzle) was fun. Is it just me, or did it go faster than the average cryptic?
July 29, 2006
Crossword fiends in the movies
And I'm not talking about Wordplay (for a change). The poorly reviewed new M. Night Shyamalan movie, Lady in the Water, includes as a supporting character a crossword fanatic portrayed by Jeffrey Wright. According to Roger Ebert's website editor Jim Emerson's review, in one scene, Wright's character tries to extrapolate clues from a folded newspaper, prompting one of the tenants to exclaim: "Wow! He's hearing the voice of god from a crossword puzzle!"
Words used in various movie reviews to describe this character include fiend, fanatic, whiz, enthusiast, expert, addict, lover, wordsmith, maven, devotee, fan, wizard, buff, sleuth, puzzle master, aficionado, and a plain ol' solver—a man obsessed with crossword puzzles, a man with a penchant, aptitude, and fondness for crosswords. In this article, a critic says, Jeffrey Wright, a brilliant actor, plays a guy who just stepped out of "Wordplay" with his ability to work crosswords but nothing else. (Wordplay as pop-culture referent!)
What were the odds that two movies this summer would feature people who enjoy crosswords at an obsessive level? Ah, the glamor.
One of the upcoming movies in my Netflix queue is Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which I saw last summer but my husband didn't. I no longer remember whether it was Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt who was working a crossword in the movie; I think it was Brad Pitt, maybe using a pen? Must watch DVD to study crossword scene more closely...
July 28, 2006
Saturday
NYT 10:39 (ouch)
Newsday 7:05
LAT 4:58
CS 3:16
Okay, so I didn't find Sherry Blackard's puzzle to be that hard yesterday. Karma caught up with me in the form of Bob Klahn's first Saturday NYT since 2003. Mind you, I got off to a great start, figuring 1-Across ("Supporters of women's athletics") to be SPORTS BRAS, working through the crossings, and filling in the rest of that corner (even baseball announcer MEL ALLEN, who was utterly unfamiliar to me—"Going, going, gone" was one of his catchphrases). But then...I began to slow down. STEP ON IT ("Put the pedal to the metal") was eely; I tend to forget the Greek island of PAROS (factoid: the Winged Victory of Samothrace is made of Parian marble); "Landed" should have yielded REELED IN much faster than it did (oy! nearly mad); and I kept thinking "Fast starter" had to do with fasting, not starting a fire (TINDER). I never knew Will Rogers called himself the POET LARIAT. Those "number" clues for ETHER don't fool me any more, but "Number of people" for ANESTHESIA? I totally fell into that trap. Throw in a couple movies I don't know ("The FALLEN IDOL" and "The LAST MILE") and a pipe tobacco term (DOTTLE) I've never seen—plus one wrong letter that took me a minute to find—and the upshot is a Saturday NYT crossword of a fearsomely Saturdayish kind. (And that's a good thing, as Martha Stewart might say, so kudos to Messrs. Klahn and Shortz.)
Of course, Saturday is not just for mental struggle. It's also for socializing, occasionally of a blog-related nature. Crossword constructor Dave Sullivan (a.k.a. Evad) is visiting the Windy City, and we'll be meeting for a Cuban/Mexican dinner at Café 28, a great neighborhood place. So I'll be tardy (and possibly tipsy) when it comes to doing the Sunday puzzle.
Updated:
The late octogenarian constructor Kendall Twigg (who died just recently) loaded his themeless LA Times puzzle with a lively batch of phrases, and I enjoyed it. I learned a new sports name: Spaniard Manuel ORANTES beat Jimmy Connors in the 1975 U.S. Open for his sole Grand Slam victory. I also got a kick out of the answer to a French fill-in-the-blank place name, Plateau d'ASSY (good place to ski, apparently)—a friend of mine uses "assy" as an apt descriptor of certain fromages.
Merle Baker's Newsday Saturday Stumper is very good, too—neither disappointingly easy or vexingly tough.
Language Log goes medieval on Will Shortz
Really! Read it for yourself. The Puzzle Master's weekly word puzzles apparently disgruntle linguist Geoff Pullum. Go figure.
(It's Language Log's Benjamin Zimmer who wrote about Wordplay a few months back—so the linguists there haven't got a universal fear and loathing of the Shortzian world.)
July 27, 2006
Friday
NYS 7:54
NYT 4:59
LAT 4:45
CS 3:31
Reagle 7:34
WSJ 7:11
Well, it was awfully sweet of Will Shortz to run Sherry O. Blackard's latest puzzle (a 58-worder) on a Friday rather than with hardcore Saturday clues. When I last looked into it a few months ago, Sherry accounted for my longest average solving time for a single constructor; with this solving time, that average may drop a second or two below Byron Walden (if I'm not mistaken, the NYT is sorely overdue for another of his themeless creations). Anyway, Sherry's got a fantastic bunch of entries—she gets a little randy with STRIP POKER and LOVE SCENE, energetic with CONGA LINE and KNEE BENDS, botanical with GOLDENROD, SEDGE, and GRASS STAIN ("You see what you've done here—if I may—the triple S. You think that's cute? That's not cute."—Jon Stewart in Wordplay), metallic IRON and NICKEL (clued otherwise), plus SLEEPER SET and the centerpiece, LOOK MA NO HANDS. The trickiest clues for me (and hence my favorites) were "Number of mari" (SETTE, as in seven seas), "Handle holders" (CBERS), "Make bank withdrawals?" (ERODE), "Qajar dynasty's domain" (PERSIA), "Not on the edge" (INSET), and "They're more than pinches" (CRISES). Excellent production, Sherry and Will!
Patrick Blindauer's 15x16 Sun puzzle, "I's Front," plays on the pronunciation of five phrases that begin with "I." Highlights: LOLLIPOPS; CUSPID clued as "Canine with a white coat"; ELO with the obscure new clue, "Chess player Arpad or the rating system he developed" (hey, it's better than yet another ELO song title...), TOP NOTES, FLEXTIME, LOW LATIN, and FAUX PAS. I get the theme and see what the original phrases are supposed to be, but I don't quite grasp EYES UP HOSE. In the clue ("Leers at leggings?") is "leers" a verb or plural noun? Is "eyes up" an established usage?
Updated:
Liz Gorski's Wall Street Journal puzzle, "Foreign Imports," doesn't toy with accents like Fred Piscop's recent Sunday NYT, but rather enters the world of anagrammed cities. Hey, geography plus anagrams? Win-win!
In the LA Times puzzle by Donna Levin, the theme is phrases with Norwegian cities/words swapped in, e.g., FJORD MUSTANG, OSLO BOAT TO CHINA, BERGEN STOCKS. But what phrase is AMUNDSEN RAISINS playing on? I'm drawing a blank here.
July 26, 2006
Thursday triumphant
NYT 4:05
LAT 3:52
NYS 3:46
CS 3:29
The marquee puzzle for the month [edited from the original "day"] is Ethan Friedman's NYT. Sure, the general concept isn't completely original, but dayumn! Didn't he pull it off nicely? Yes, he did. And it was a particularly fun crossword to solve. (Spoilers comin' right up—don't click below until you've done this puzzle!)
The constructor uses the same general trick that Jeremiah Farrell used in the famous movie-star crossword, the 1996 Election Day CLINTON/BOB DOLE puzzle—which Patrick Berry also played with in his June 30 Chronicle of Higher Ed puzzle. In the current puzzle, Ethan pairs EMPEROR PENGUINS with DAILY NEWSPAPERS (could've also been CROSSWORD PUZZLE, but those Z's might've made filling the grid too hard) and then has two possible answers for 46-Across, BLACK or WHITE, with the crossing clues doing double duty. ("Had on one's back" = WORE or BORE; "Not open" = SHY or SLY; "Skewer" = PIN or PAN; "Home, for one" = PLATE or PLACE; and "Construction site sights" = CRANES or CRANKS.) The gimmick is pointed out with the answer opposite from 46-Across, the word TWICE, clued as "How 46-Across can be answered." Throw in fill like PIT BOSS, MENTOS, and WOULD I LIE, and you've got yourself a helluva puzzle (one that certainly excuses the dull word DESEED). And if you knew SPANDREL but thought to yourself, "What is that exactly"?—here are some pictures.
This week's Themeless Thursday in the Sun is by Patrick Jordan. Great Scrabbly 15's joined by LETTERBOX, plus interesting words like CALUMET (this word for a Native American pipe has a Greek root, implausibly enough), TOM THUMB, and THE NERVE. I found it surprisingly easy, though—not enough wickedly elusive clues for my taste. (I know, I know, it's a Themeless Thursday and not a Weekend Warrior.)
The anatomy of this blog
The left two thirds of this page contains the most recent batch of posts, as you all know (unless, maybe, you're getting posts via the RSS feed—I don't know how that works). New posts used to have the What's on the right side in that long sidebar? Do you ever look at that?
The first item of note in the sidebar is Crossword Links. You've got the NYT forums (I peruse the "Today's Puzzle" forum daily). Next, Will Johnston's indispensable Puzzle Pointers page (where I go for a fix when I'm jonesing for things like the Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle, a week's worth of Sun crosswords, the Hex/Hook Sunday puzzle, and the Sunday Washington Post puzzle. Then there's cruciverb.com, where I'm a paid member so I can access the crossword database (so handy!) as well as downloading the Across Lite version of the LA Times puzzle each day. Barry Haldiman's site is great when I want to know if an NYT constructor is new, when the last time a constructor had a themeless NYT, or the date of someone's previous Sunday puzzle—or if I want to download an old NYT puzzle that my mother's just found in an old newspaper (you have to be a paid NYT crosswords subscriber to do so, I believe). Constructor Patrick Merrell's site has samples of his illustration work—would you believe the back of the Alpha-Bits box?? And at Merl Reagle's site, you can order his books and do sudoku online (if that's your poison). Last, the OneLook site tells you which dictionaries include a given word (complete with links), and also lets you find words/phrases that fit a pattern (handy when constructing and trying to find something to fit a *G***L* space).
Next in the sidebar is a handy box with a button that allows you to help support this website with money. This blog is work, and it costs me money (e.g., SiteMeter fees, prize books) as well as time. I've kept the site ad-free so far, but it would be nice to cover my expenses. If you value having an ad-free space for crossword conversation, you might consider chipping in once a year to help me keep it this way. (Thanks to Dave and Barry for their donations!)
Then we have Blogs of Crossword People. I check in at most of these sites daily, though the bloggers have varying degrees of crossword-related content and varying posting schedules.
The next section is brand new as of today: Amazon links for books I personally recommend. (Those aren't paid ads—Amazon will give me a wee commission if you click on the link and buy the book in question, though. And remember, if you buy a used copy via resellers at Amazon, the hard-working author gets zip, but if you buy a new copy directly from a bookstore or website, the author's royalty account gets a boost.) Henry Hook's Twisted Crosswords is probably the one puzzle book I've enjoyed the most (it has umpteen types of variety puzzles). Matt Gaffney's new nonfiction book, Gridlock, is also warmly recommended. And Francis Heaney's Holy Tango of Literature is laugh-out-loud funny for English majors and other literature fans. From time to time, I plan to rotate other books in and out of this section. I hope you buy these books and enjoy them as much as I did.
Then there's the list of recent posts—blah, blah. And links for monthly archives. If you're trying to find something you remember reading at Crossword Fiend, forget about Blogger's "search this blog" feature up in the blue bar at the top. You're better off using Google or another search engine to track down the post you're looking for.
Any questions?
