NYT Omnibus

I turned my attention back to the NYT Ultimate Crossword Omnibus, the book with 1,001 puzzles from 1993 to 1997. Some of these puzzles are terrible! And I say that only because Will Shortz has raised everyone's standards so high, plenty of puzzles he accepted a decade ago would be tossed in the dustheap today (by him and many other puzzle editors as well). Fortunately, some of the other puzzles in the book (by known quantities like Trip Payne, Harvey Estes, and Richard Silvestri) are good, and I'm guessing they're from later in the cycle.

The real reason I'm mentioning the book today is that a couple Saturdays ago, I got skunked by director George Pal in a Creators Syndicate puzzle. Never heard of him, didn't much expect to see the name again. And here, in puzzle no. 75 by Silvestri, is the entry GEORGEPAL, clued as "'When Worlds Collide' producer." (He also directed Tom Thumb, you know. And a bunch of cartoons in the 1940s.) Crosswords are so educational...