Happy 40th birthday to my friend Michael Sharp, the man known as Rex Parker! Tomorrow is his birthday as well as Thanksgiving. To celebrate, Andrea Carla Michaels and Doug Peterson made a crossword in Rex's honor. The "King of the Blog" puzzle is posted at the Fiend forum.
You know who else is celebrating a birthday this week? Rex's favorite crossword-solving actress, Christina Applegate. Michael created a crossword for Christina's birthday, spotlighting the foundation she started to fund MRI screening for young women at high risk for breast cancer. This puzzle is called "Star Turns," and it's available in Across Lite and PDF at the forum. You'll also want to read the Rex Parker blog post about the genesis of the puzzle. If you can spare a few bucks, please consider joining Michael and me in donating to the foundation, which I won't name here because it's a spoiler for the puzzle (both links in this paragraph are for pages that include a link to the foundation).
Have a happy Thanksgiving (unless you're Canadian or South African or whatnot), everyone!
November 25, 2009
Rex Parker celebrates birthdays
November 01, 2009
Monday, 11/2/09
NYT 2:59
LAT 2:54
CS untimed
BEQ tba
Blogging will be inattentive and possibly typo-laden—some sort of virus has taken up residence here, and it may not be the flu but it's more than a cold. Now, who will bring me some cocoa and a blanket?
Andrea Carla Michaels and Kent Clayton's New York Times crossword
Monday maven Andrea has partnered up with a newbie, Kent Clayton, for a crossword I can't show my son. As far as I know, he hasn't yet given up belief in the EASTER BUNNY, TOOTH FAIRY, and SANTA CLAUS. He does, however, enjoy those Ripley's BELIEVE IT OR NOT books. Cute theme.
I like the fill too. FLOTSAM and KARACHI and an ACQUITTAL are fancy for Monday, but I don't think they're too hard for Monday. (If you complain that KARACHI is obscure, then I will complain that you ought to spend some more time spinning a globe.) FROTH is a [Possible sign of rabies]—whew! I haven't got that in my constellation of signs and symptoms. [Gobsmack] is a great clue for STUN, isn't it?
All righty, it's back to the couch for me now.
Updated Monday morning:
Randolph Ross's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "String Quintet"—Janie's review
This puzzle is music to my eyes. Not only is the theme fill most satisfying for lovers of wordplay (almost picking up where Tony's Saturday puzzle left off), but once again, Randy has given us a lot of it: 67 squares in two 15s, which overlap two 12s, and a 13 at the center of it all. Concertmaster, an "A," please, as we tune up and tune in:
•17A. [String instruments made in the U.S.A.?]. There's a pun in the fill here, and it conjures up Emily Litella speaking out in impassioned tones to defend "violins on television." The base phrase here is domestic violence; the theme fill, DOMESTIC VIOLINS—all of which sits atop
•20A. [What a cool rapper might listen to in heaven?]. Not hip-hop music, but its vividly punny relative HIP HARP MUSIC. I bet this would pique the interest of a lot of heaven's denizens—from all segments of the population.
•35A. [Beyoncé song about a lovely string instrument?]. Homophone time here as "Beautiful Liar" becomes (harp relative) "Beautiful Lyre."
•53A. [Movie about how an Indian string instrument is made]. Thank you, Randy, for the flat out groaner as A Star is Born gains an "I" and a syllable to become A SITAR IS BORN. Starring Ravi Shankar, no doubt. The sitar, btw, is not traditionally found in Western orchestration, but pieces for sitar and orchestra do exist—and the Beatles' George Harrison was, um, instrumental in bringing its sound to pop music in such songs as "Within You and Without You." And this fill sits atop
•57A. [How to keep some string instruments from being damaged by rain]. Here we have another homophone, as the good idea when trying to hedge one's bets, to cover one's bases, becomes COVER ONE'S BASSES.
If this fill isn't colorful enough for you, Randy has also provided [Cool and colorful summer treat] SNO-CONES—not to mention RED [Stop signal], YELLOW [Coward's color] and PINKY... just kidding. That's been clued as [Place for a ring]. While my dad wore an understated one almost all of his married life (an anniversary gift from my mom), I confess I now tend to associate pinky rings with people who might be involved in some kind of RACKET [Shady business], or someone involved in CASING ("the joint") [Reconnaissance activity for a criminal]. Call it the "Don Corleone/Tony Soprano Effect"...
Other fill that kept things lively include: the adverbial phrase TO DEATH [Words following bored or scared], SINS for [Deadly septad], RAISIN (and not BANANA) for [Cereal fruit], LUSHLY for [In an opulent manner], ASTUTE for [Sharp], UNIVAC for (one very astute [if large...]) [Early computer], CONSUL for [State Department employee], and—a character I'd not thought about in years—PETUNIA [Porky's girlfriend].
While I question WIT—which I associate with the likes of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw—as the [Talent of Leno or Letterman], the presence of Ms. Petunia in combination with all of this puzzle's highlights, gave me a good TEE-HEE [Chuckle].
And if you aren't familiar with Mozart's string quintets, here's a sample of some music to my ears!
Ten hours of sleep helped. Looks to be a garden-variety bug rather than the flu. I am relieved to be merely coughing and achy.
Pancho Harrison's Los Angeles Times crossword
I filled 71-Across via the Downs (hey, look, the RABBI and ISLAM are coexisting peacefully at the CARD TABLE) so I had to look for TIME's unifying clue after I was all done. The long theme entries are phrases in which both words can follow TIME:
• SLOT MACHINE gets you a time slot and a time machine.
• CARD TABLE gives you a timecard and timetable.
• OFF LIMITS gives you some restorative time off within some time limits.
• PERIOD PIECE (which I would have clued with reference to movies rather than novels) provides a certain time period and a timepiece.
Liveliest answer: MRS. PEEL, ["The Avengers" heroine, to Steed]. Least current clue: SNL is the [NBC show with Baba Wawa skits]. I'm sure a lot of people under the age of 40 have never seen those classic skits, since Gilda Radner left SNL in 1980.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Horsing Around"
The theme's famous horses of fiction and non-. I only remembered about three and a half of the eight horses in the grid:
• [Buddha's horse] was KANTAKA. Buddha had a horse? In his leaner days, maybe?
• MARENGO was [Napoleon's horse]. Byron Walden and I once considered a theme with horrifying recipes like MARE MARENGO, using chicken Marengo's sauce on horsemeat. (Also in the theme: YAK YAKITORI and BEAR BEARNAISE. Yum!)
• [Alexander the Great's horse] was BUCEPHALUS. Briefly wanted this to be BOCEPHALUS.
• In fiction, [Don Quixote's horse] is ROSINANTE or Rocinante.
• [Gandalf's horse] is SHADOWFAX, which is also the name of some '80s New Age music I listened to in my Windham Hill phase in college. No, I'm not proud of it.
• COPENHAGEN was [Wellington's horse]. He had a horse? Oh, yeah, it's in the statue.
• [Xerxes' horse] was STRYMON. Never heard of this one.
• [Chief Sitting Bull's horse] was BLACKIE. Never heard of this one, either.
Rapper to remember for future puzzles: EDAN is the ["Echo Party" rapper]. He must not be too famous or he'd be in more puzzles thanks to those common letters in his name.
September 06, 2009
Monday, 9/7/09
BEQ 5:24
LAT 3:12
NYT 2:51
CS 4:57 (J—paper)
Sorry to be late (and brief) with the writeup—am visiting with an old friend. Her brother, by the way, had the best reaction of anyone to seeing my July 5 NYT crossword (co-written with Tony Orbach)—there was exuberance and there were swear words. It was richly rewarding. People should swear aptly more often.
Andrea Carla Michaels and Ashish Vengsarkar's New York Times crossword
Andrea and Ashish's joint byline is so long, what I see on the applet is that the puzzle's editor is "Will Sho." Still, Ashish's previous byline with his friend Narayan Venkatasubramanyan still wins for longest. A&A's theme includes GO FISH, TAKE THE BAIT, OPEN A CAN OF WORMS, GET REELED IN, and [Hook, line and ___] SINKER. I can't quite decide if the long Down answers are definitely thematic or just quasi-thematic: UNDER THE SEA sounds good, but MARINE GREEN as the [Algae color] seems less fishing-centric. (Marine green is a color?) If they are part of the theme, it's a ginormous amount of theme material for a Monday puzzle.
Super-smooth fill and light clues abounded. Favorite bits: [Instill with the three R's] for EDUCATE (my son returns to school on Tuesday); adjacent Simpsons characters APU and NED; and BLAH directly opposite an ETUI (editorializing?). The closest thing to a rough spot is COR as an abbreviation for corner ([Where streets meet: Abbr.]).
That's all for now. Thanks for an entertaining Monday puzzle, A&A.
Updated Monday morning:
Sarah Keller's CrosSynergy/Washington Post puzzle, "Chips Ahoy!"—Janie's review
Can't remember how long it's been since I breezed through a puzzle the way I breezed through this one. Certainly my time was a personal best, but even if it hadn't been, I'd still have had the pleasure of the smooth solve this puzzle provided. Not unlike a Wheel of Fortune "Before and After" puzzle where two phrases may be blended into one, here the word chips follows the last word of each theme phrase, yielding two phrases for the price of one and a fine choice of chips in the process. And so, in the example:
If we DELVE further into the puzzle, we come across some more excellent fill in the descriptive if somewhat disparaging DWEEBISH for [Nerdy]. The SUPERHERO [Captain Marvel or Batman] definitely has the UPPERHAND [Controlling position] here—but what I like best is the way these longer words words INTERACT [Work together].
I semi-question the clue [Brilliantly colored fish] for OPAH. Take a look at that baby. While there're those red-orange fins, that is one shiny, metallic-looking body. It's not a "terrible" clue, but some of the fish on this page (the angelfish or the tigerfish, e.g.) better conform to my idea of being "brilliantly colored."
And in the almost-totally-useless-information department, take a look at the two names in the SW: there's ANNE ["Green Gables" girl] atop TODD [Broadway's "Sweeney ___"]. A search of the internet and IMDb turned up not only Ann Todd, an actress and third wife of director David Lean, but also 1940s child star Ann E. Todd.
Finally, if you're ever at a loss to know just where you are, I can tell you with certainty, ["You are ___] HERE."
Los Angeles Times crossword by "Teri Smalley"
"Teri Smalley" anagrams to "it's really me," a.k.a. editor Rich Norris.
The theme is about things done in the NFL (61D: [Org where you can see the first words of 20-, 38- and 55-Across]). You PASS the ball, RUN with it, and KICK it, and those words begin PASS JUDGMENT ([Give one's verdict]), RUN INTERFERENCE ([Create a distraction]), and KICK UPSTAIRS ([Get rid of by promoting, as an employee]). What's sticking in my craw here is that the word INTERFERENCE is used in football, but it's not part of the theme because JUDGMENT and UPSTAIRS aren't thematic. It would've been good to have a RUN ___ phrase that didn't mix in another football term.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Themeless Monday"
Hey, you've got until midnight Tuesday to enter Brendan's crossword contest.
Lots of Scrabbly stuff (ALEX COMFORT, QUARTZ CLOCK, FUZZIER, BON JOVI, CHEEK BY JOWL, JOB BOARD), but more small pieces of awkward fill than you might expect in a 72-worder (ENLS, SDA, U NU, CERT, plural ORZOS). The last square I filled in was the I in AIGLET (33A: [Decorative bow]) and LOUIS II (2D: [Holy Roman Emperor known "The Younger"]). I know the spelling teasel, but not TEAZLE (21D: [Plant with lavender flowers]); the dictionary tells me teazel is also legit.
August 08, 2009
Sunday, 8/9
BG 8:35
LAT 7:18
NYT 6:35
PI untimed
CS 3:49
Patrick Berry's second Sunday variety puzzle 9:49
Patrick Blindauer and Andrea Carla Michaels' New York Times crossword, "Made for TV-Movies"
The title monkeys with the usual hyphenation of made-for-TV movies because each of the five 21-letter theme entries is a mashup of TV and movie titles (Jeopardy! "Before and After" category style), clued accordingly:
The theme didn't resonate much for me, but I liked a lot of the fill and I wasn't in the mood for a tough puzzle that worked my head so Andrea and Patrick's easy offering was right on target. Before moving along to the highlights, allow me to grumble about 93D: [Something you love to play with]. NEW TOY feels like a contrived phrase rather than a solidly in-the-language term. And now, on with the show:
A couple other comments: 124A: TANAKA is the answer to [Tomoyuki ___, creator of Godzilla]. I'm sure some of you comic/sci fi nerds knew that one, but I didn't. I'm talking about the folks who instantly knew that AQUAMAN was the 14D: [Superhero with an octopus named Topo]. 118D: [Stumblers' sounds] clues ERS, and I just grumbled about that in the Saturday LAT. When is there ever a reason to pluralize "er"? "Wow, that was a lot of ers in your lecture. You should have practced more"? Er, no. Sure, I'm used to this in crosswords, but "ambulances take people to ERs" seems like a more natural plural, doesn't it?
Updated Sunday morning:
Henry Hook's Boston Globe crossword, "Grad Tidings," in Across Lite
The most impressive part of this puzzle—in which 12 recipients of an HONORARY HARVARD DEGREE are presented—is the upper right corner where SEIJI OZAWA is stacked atop VACLAV HAVEL. Can you believe Hook found workable fill that crossed those two answers? Some of the crossings were know-it-or-you-don't stuff, like TRECE (Spanish for "thirteen," or [Unlucky "numero"]) and KAZAN (["On the Waterfront" director]), that won't give much help to solvers who can't spell SEIJI OZAWA or VACLAV HAVEL without blinking.
My toughest crossing was where CANIO meets OH KAY—one ["Pagliacci" role] I don't know crossing a [1926 Gershwins musical] I've never heard of. Second gnarliest crossing was [PCS file suffix] EPS providing the P in RIPSAW, clued with [It cuts with the grain]. I don't know what the EPS file type is.
INCAN is clued as [Vintage Peruvian]. I read at the Library of Congress's Exploring the Early Americas exhibition that the Incan Empire occupied a larger swath of land than any other empire in history, but the map here shows much less territory than the British Empire had in its heyday.
Merl Reagle's Philadelphia Inquirer crossword, "Truly Cheesy Puns"
Merl unleashes his inner punster (and his outer one) with a set of cheese puns:
Favorite clue in the fill: [Life partner?] for LIMB, as in "life and limb."
Edgar Fontaine's syndicated Los Angeles Times crossword, "Initial Exposé"
Fontaine takes seven famous people who use initials in lieu of first and middle names, assigns them familiar phrases that could be expansions of their initials, and clues them accordingly:
Moving beyond the theme, I raised an eyebrow at 6D, ["God Bless America" inning]. That's the SEVENTH, but at Wrigley Field, the seventh-inning stretch is when we sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Is this an L.A. or New York thing? The DIK-DIK (39D) is an [Antelope named for the sound it makes when frightened]. Anyone hit the skids where OTHO the 19A: [Emperor aftr Galba] met SHOGI, which is 3D: [Chess, Japanese-style]? There's a G-STRING at 9D: [It doesn't conceal much]. And in the category of Old-School Crosswordese, we have the THOLE, or 82A: [Pin on a rowboat]. My Mac's dictionary tells me THOLE is also a Scottish or archaic verb meaning "endure (something) with without resistance or complaint; tolerate." I thole crossword fill like THOLE.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's themeless CrosSynergy "Sunday Challenge"
The king of triple-stacks ponies up a pair of triple-stacks in today's relatively easy puzzle, with the following 15-letter answers:
Five quick hits from the rest of the puzzle:
Patrick Berry's variety crossword, "Ringing Endorsement"—the NYT's second Sunday puzzle
I hope the Magazine section made space for this puzzle because it's brilliantly conceived and executed. If the millions of people who get the Sunday Times but wouldn't bother to dig around online for a puzzle miss out, they're...really missing out.
The 15x15 grid has no black squares separating the answers in a given row or column, and sometimes the crossing answers have a conflict because a square needs a different letter in each direction. How clever is it to have those intersections marked by the always-there letter O as a ring around the other letter? And how on earth did Patrick Berry manage to not just fill the grid with workable answers but also get those O-plus-another-letter crossings to fit just so and to get the circled letters to spell something out AND to include theme entries as the first and last Across answers? The mind, she boggles. And then the title is "Ringing Endorsement," a familiar phrase—and the theme is "an endorsement of sorts." This puzzle is so elegantly wrought.
Will Shortz, please beg Patrick Berry to make a bunch more of these and publish them in the Times. Patrick Berry, please get to work on a sequel to Puzzle Masterpieces and include more of these puzzles. I recognize that the "Ringing Endorsement" title wouldn't necessarily be an apt description for other puzzles in this vein, but that's OK—I just want more of these challenges.
The [Speaker of this puzzle's endorsement] is O. HENRY, and [What this puzzle's endorsement refers to] is NEW YORK CITY. The circled squares spell out this: "It'll be a great place if they ever finish it." I found I'd missed a couple of the ringed O crossings when I was reading the circled letters, having not checked every crossing clue, but it all came together in the end, wrapped up in a bow.
March 29, 2009
Monday, 3/30
BEQ 5:12
LAT 3:02
CS 2:50
NYT 2:41
I can't tell you how disheartening it is to look outside at the end of March and see snow on the ground in Chicago. Oh, wait. The people up yonder in the northern Great Plains didn't have a month and a half of bare ground up 'til now, did they? They're still waiting for the snow to leave? I don't know how they live up there, I tell ya.
Andrea Carla Michaels' New York Times crossword
When I turn my attention to the New York Times' online crossword applet, I don't always check the byline right away. I want to read the title for a Sunday puzzle, and it helps to know whose themeless stylings I'm facing on Friday and Saturday. But on a Monday? I get right to the task of doing that puzzle. Part way through this one, I was convinced the puzzle must've been made by a woman so I looked at the byline and sure enough, it's Andrea's puzzle.
I'll get back to the woman's touch in this crossword in a moment. First, let's review the theme, in which multiples progress:
Sixty squares of thematic material? That's mighty fancy puzzlin' for a Monday.
Besides Barbara Stanwyck, who are this puzzle's other women? LEONA is the [Late hotel queen Helmsley]. There's EDIE [Falco of "The Sopranos"] and SELA, or [Actress Ward]. SPENCER is the late [Princess Diana's family name]. SHE is 52-Across, ["___ sells seashells by the seashore" (tongue twister)]. In Shakespeare, CELIA is [Oliver's love in "As You Like It"]. [Author Morrison] is the eminent TONI. [TV's warrior princess] was the ass-kicking XENA. Women have UTERI, or [Wombs] (unless they've had a hysterectomy). I, TINA is [Singer Turner's autobiography]. CLUE is a [Word in many a Nancy Drew title]. (The men chime in with OMAR, EMIL, ESAI, the ALS, AJAX, and KERN.) In comparison, last Monday's puzzle had about twice as many male answers as female answers. Equity is nice, isn't it?
Aside from the Noted Women's Club fill, my favorite answer was BIG BABY, or [Chronic whiner]. Definitely a harsh name to call someone. I'm also partial to the entries with the J's and X's—JAMB and JEST, AJAX and XENA, APEX and NINJA, EXES.
"I PLEDGE," clued as the [Start of a daily school recital], is really a 7-letter partial phrase, but is there any American who couldn't answer this?
There's a lot of Latin (e.g., more than one answer) for a Monday crossword. ANNI are [Years, in Latin]. [Ad ___ per aspera (Kansas' motto)] clues ASTRA. ET TU completes ["___, Brute?"]. If any of these are new to you, make a mental note of them—they are sure to return to the crossword another day.
Updated:
Donna Levin's Los Angeles Times crossword
As with the NYT puzzle, the theme answers follow a four-step progression, this time with words indicating various levels of quality:
Now, one of the long Down answers is SUNDAY BEST ([Church garb]), which halfway fits in as a better-than-great capper to the theme. But BEST isn't the first word in that phrase, and its opposite partner is the obviously-not-part-of-the-theme INTEGRATES, or [Blends together into a whole]. So SUNDAY BEST is just sitting there as a terrific piece of non-theme fill.
The left side of the puzzle skews medical. An L.P.N. is a [Hosp. staffer], PREOP means [Before surg.], and M.D.'s are [Hosp. VIPs]. Another helping profession is BARKEEP, or [Cocktail maker].
For more on this puzzle, see L.A. Crossword Confidential. The post isn't up yet, but should be soon.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's CrosSynergy crossword, "Jam-Packed"
The theme entries here number three, and they all begin with words that mean "jam-packed":
The crossword isn't jam-packed with theme entries, which means there's space to jam-pack it with interesting long fill. EMILY BRONTE is here, opposite the four-word FIT FOR A KING. TEST SITES and a HONEYMOON are stacked alongside the top and bottom theme answers. There's a little APRES-SKI fun and some IDEALISM for good measure.
Brendan Quigley's blog crossword, "Shakespeare at the Bat"
If my reading comprehension skills are solid, then I think Brendan suggested that this puzzle is one of his older ones, but I hadn't seen it before. The theme is phrases from Shakespeare plays that can be applied to baseball, but the lines aren't ones I know. AND WHAT A PITCH is clued [William Shakespeare on the knuckleball ("Henry VI, Part II," II, i, 6)], for example. I care even less about baseball than Brendan does, and I like Shakespeare but random squibs of text I don't recognize don't do much for me. One could also quibble that PART II, which is part of that clue, is also in the fill crossing that answer. I don't like the WINDOW clue: [Internet Explorer or Microsoft Word, say]. Those aren't windows. They're applications that you'd have in a window. Would I have liked it better as [Safari or Mail, say]? I don't know.
Favorite bits: There's a WISH LIST, GAZPACHO clued with [It's a dish best served cold], and GLOM ONTO.
March 25, 2009
2009 ACPT Puzzle #4
Puzzle #4 — 3:06
If you're planning to do this year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament puzzles at home, either by mail or online, don't read on! There will be ACPT SPOILERS in this post. (I highly recommend doing either at-home option. Only $20! And fun! These terrific crosswords won't be showing up in the New York Times, and you can get an idea of how you'd stack up at the ACPT.)
They say Puzzle #1 is the easiest puzzle of each year's tournament, but this year many people felt #4 was a notch easier. Andrea Carla Michaels and Myles Callum teamed up to make "Twice as Nice: You'll have to spell it out for us, please." The theme entries represent the word double by doubling a word that follows double in a familiar phrase:
You know what my favorite bits were? In the fill, the phrase GO AWRY. (Anyone else think the U.S. Army's recruiting website's URL looks poorly chosen? goarmy.com looks for all the world like a mysterious old adjective. "Oh, don't pay him any mind. He's a goarmy old coot." Plus, if you turn the m upside down and have it switch places with the r, goarmy turns into go awry.) The [Err] clue isn't as fun as its answer.
Barry, Maurice, and Robin are the GIBBS who are [The Gees of the Bee Gees]. Boring ol' EDDY gets dressed up a tad with the clue, [It tends to go counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere]. [Adam and Eve's tree?] is a FIG tree, the better to harvest leaves to cover one's nakedness.
One thing that makes this puzzle easy is the inclusion of a bunch of "repeaters," the short words that are the glue that holds crossword grids together. There's a RUER, the EE's (EEN and EELED), the EL's (ELIA and ELBA), and the AL's (ALAI and ALOE). Zip, zip, zip through the puzzle, hopscotching across these familiar companions.
Up next: Patrick Merrell's #5. {Insert movie soundtrack signaling doom.} And to think that we all thought Pat was a super-nice guy who made fun puzzles. Little did we know that he had the heart of a cruciverbal killer...
February 17, 2009
Wednesday, 2/18
BEQ 4:53
Onion 4:50
LAT 3:36
Sun 3:25
NYT 3:14
Tausig —> will be in Thursday post
(post updated at 9:40 Wed. morning)
Susan Gelfand skews automotive in her Wednesday New York Times crossword. The four longest answers are phrases that begin with the P-R-N-D gears in a car:
The northeast and southwest corners of the grid tie these together as [a possible title for this puzzle]: SHIFT / GEARS.
I launched this puzzle with a wrong answer at 1-Down, trying ZILCH instead of ZIPPO. With ADLAI Stevenson, the [First name in 1950s politics], in place, the ZILCH quickly proved its wrongness. Interesting bits:
Andrea Carla Michaels and Patrick Blindauer teamed up for Wednesday's Sun crossword, another Oscar-week special. Their last shared byline was on the January 2 Wall Street Journal puzzle, the one with ant farm tunnels snaking through the grid. Today's puzzle is called "Screenwriting Can Be a Drag," and the theme is "movies that won Best Screenplay Oscars and feature characters in drag." Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire don't make the grade, but THE CRYING GAME, VICTOR/VICTORIA, and SOME LIKE IT HOT all do. This 16-square-high grid makes room for long answers like STEP-BY-STEP, MIRACLE GRO, a CRACKPOT, and DOMINEER—along with not one but two [Old Olds] cars, the ALERO and CIERA. (Fie on both!) NINE P.M. gets a 24-hour-time clue, [2100].
Updated:
Jack McInturff's LA Times crossword has five theme entries bound together by WIND (70-Across), the [Word that can precede the first word of the answers to starred clues]:
In the fill, we have ["SNL" alum Nora] DUNN not cross-referenced to SNL, the [NBC weekend show]. The two most interesting words in this puzzle are KRAALS, or [South African villages]—no relation to jazz singer Diana Krall—and MAENAD, or [Frenzied woman]. In Greek mythology, the Maenads were Bacchanalian female followers of Dionysus (Bacchus being the Roman equivalent of Dionysus). They were said to get into a frenzy and rip raw flesh from living creaturese to devour. You have to wonder what sort of fears the guys who wrote these myths had.
Tyler Hinman's Onion A.V. Club crossword follows up Valentine's Day with five suggestions for the unpartnered. Various options for seeking a date include SPEED DATING, a PERSONAL AD, MATCH DOT COM, a SINGLES BAR, or getting a FIX-UP from a friend. There's also the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, but you tend to meet people who live thousands of miles away from you. (I've heard of at least one or two married couples who first met at the ACPT.)
Among the trickier clues are these:
Brendan Emmett Quigley's puzzle today is called "Stretching Out: Go bust or get busy." The bust/busy pairing explains the theme—in eight phrases, a Y is turned into a T and the resulting new phrase is clued:
I can't say I'm familiar with SAVARIN, a [Folgers alternative]. I like PARKS IT, or [Sits, slangily], as a crossword answer. My first guess for the [Shoulderless shirt] was TANK TOP, but that does have straps over the shoulders, whereas a TUBE TOP does not. METH is clued as [One of the Wu-Tang Clan rappers, for short]; that's Method Man. I could've done without TONGUE being clued as [Kebab meat]; never seen tongue kebabs and hope never to see 'em. [Stamp, as a document] clues the obscure, blah word ENSEAL. I wanted TACTILE for [Touch-related], but the less common TACTUAL insisted on showing up. SWAGGER is a great word; it means [Bravado] and apparently the word has been with us for about 500 years.
January 18, 2009
Monday, 1/19
NYT 4:00*
LAT 3:51*
Sun 3:23*
BEQ ???
*N.O.T.: Not Orange's Time!
[Updated 11:00 a.m. Monday]
Hey, everybody. PuzzleGirl here filling in for the ailing Orange, who has apparently been bitten by a little flu bug. I didn't ask for any more details than that. I'd just really rather not know. Like all of you, I hope she feels better soon, and in the meantime ... you're stuck with me.
Tracey Snyder's New York Times crossword was an easy, breezy Monday solve with fun fill and a basic, well-executed theme that I didn't actually catch onto right away because I filled in the southwest corner with just the acrosses and never saw the reveal. So. It's about CHIPs. We're talking:
So, the puzzle says that [One of 100 in D.C.] is a SENator. I guess that would be the ideal. Are there a hundred there yet this term? I'm embarrassed to say I haven't kept up on the Minnesota situation. Hold on ... Nope, still battling it out in court. Stay classy, Norm!
Have I mentioned that I'm a huge Aerosmith fan? Love those guys! I've seen them in concert, like, ten times. Not entirely thrilled to see one of their lousiest songs in the puzzle though. "CRYIN'." Yep, it really does have the lyric "Love is sweet misery." Actually I'm pretty sure it's "Your love is sweet misery," which makes it even worse. Although not nearly as bad as "Pink when I turn out the light / Pink it's like red but not quite." So it's got that going for it.
The more I look at this puzzle, the more I like it. It's got some great S-words in SIEGE, SCOTSMEN, SNORE, and SPEED TRAP. And what's not to like about FLEECE, PRETTY BOY, and LEWD LECHES? Good stuff. Very smooth. Nice job, Tracey!
And how much happier could I be whenever I see my girl Andrea Carla Michaels's name on a puzzle? None. None happier. Today she graces us with "The Last Hurrah" in the Sun puzzle. The ends of the theme answers give us the classic cheer: SIS BOOM BAH. Awesome theme answers too:
Best word in the puzzle isn't an answer, though, it's a clue: [Buzzkill]. I don't see that word enough. Also love seeing the two wraps — SARI and SARAN — sitting one atop the other. And I'm not saying there's a political thing going on here, but we do have the DEMS winning big in 2008, XED clued in relation to voting, and a reference to Tina Fey's portrayal of SARAH Palin. Also, I'm sure DODO, BLOWHARD, ARROGANCE, SNOOZE, and SMOKED don't mean anything. In a puzzle titled "The Last Hurrah." The day before Inauguration.
Updated:
I'm going to call Jack McIntuff's L.A. Times puzzle "T 'n' T." Theme answers are phrases with two T-words. I was lulled into complacency with TRICK OR TREAT, TWIST-OFF TOPS, and TAKE ONE'S TIME. Then, wham! TRAIL OF TEARS. Pretty heavy entry for this particular set of answers. And I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the phrase always makes me think of this picture, which is symbolic of a serious issue in its own way, but isn't exactly [Native Americans' forced relocation].
I only had two missteps in this puzzle, entering soy, not MSG, for [Stir-fry flavor enhancer] and whiffs, not MISSES, for [Swings without hitting]. But that section worked itself out pretty easily with the crosses.
So, what is THE GAP known as now? Just Gap, it seems. But the company has helpfully set up a redirect for us old people who type in thegap.com when looking for their website. What are us old people doing shopping at the Gap anyway?
Today's Brendan Emmett Quigley puzzle is, well, I'm not sure exactly what to say. I'm waffling between hilarious and just plain mean. See for yourselves.
January 04, 2009
Monday, 1/5
BEQ 5:20
Jonesin' 4:02
Sun 3:01
CS 2:58
LAT 2:56
NYT 2:15
(updated at 11:45 Monday morning)
Yay! Monday is back-to-school day! I am definitely looking forward to getting my son back into the daily routine. Those of you with school-aged kids know what I'm talking about.
The Monday New York Times crossword by Andrea Carla Michaels is an easy one. The theme is a basic one. Three phrases begin with homophones:
As in nearly every Monday crossword, there are some answers that show up in crosswords more than they do in the other parts of the newspaper. If you're new to the world of crosswords, here are some of those words—you will be seeing them again in future puzzles:
This puzzle's got a lot of proper nouns in it, which typically means that I'll whip through it and find it fun but some people will be slowed down by pop-culture trivia they just don't know. It's cool that Andrea included a couple 9-letter answers in the fill. DIXIECRAT is a [Strom Thurmond follower of 1948] (boo, hiss) and HOPSCOTCH is a [Sidewalk game with chalk].
Updated:
Ogden Porter, better known as Peter Gordon, must've been short on easy Sun crosswords suitable for Monday, because his byline's been popping up early in the week more than it used to. Luckily, Peter's skills have always allowed him to whip out smooth puzzles on the easy end of the spectrum. Today's theme is "They Died With Their Birthday Hats On"—famous people who died on their birthday. Yesterday was the anniversary of my grandmother's death and tomorrow is her birthday, and a neighbor recently died two days before his birthday—so clearly, not everyone can pull off this dying-on-their-birthday thing. Trivia crossword themes can be fun—if you asked "What do LEVI P. MORTON, GABBY HARTNETT, MACHINE GUN KELLY, INGRID BERGMAN, and MIKE DOUGLAS have in common?" most people wouldn't know the answer, but could find it by poking around in Wikipedia. The fill tends toward the boyish/sports-nutty, with ESPN, TIP / INS, poker player STU / UNGAR crossing himself, RED Sox, OPEN tournaments, NIL as a soccer score, MLB commissioner Bud SELIG, COMISKEY Park, and thematic baseball player GABBY HARTNETT. I filled the bottom middle of the grid with the Acrosses, so it was only now that I saw [Word before "on a Grecian" in a Keats poem title] and [Word after "on a Grecian" in a Keats poem title] for ODE and URN. Hey, I like that.
Kenneth Berniker's LA Times crossword has a theme that's not particularly inventive—phrases that end with -IPPER—but the theme entries are so damned lively, the theme escapes being a yawner.
Berniker makes room for two X's and two Z's in the fill and peps things up with PAUPER ([Destitute type]) PEPPERONI ([Pizza sausage]). OK, so PAUPER is actually a depressingly timely word, but sandwiching a BODICE-RIPPER with PAUPER and PEPPERONI makes it pop. Having ETTA or KETT alone would be "meh," but here they're clued together as a [comic that started out teaching social graces]; Etta Kett sounds like etiquette. I didn't know this trivia factoid.
Martin Ashwood-Smith's latest CrosSynergy puzzle is called "Not G-Rated," and each theme entry has lost the G that used to begin a phrase:
I like that the central entry is OSTRICH, with the more common giant crossword bird the emu consigned to the clue this time—[Emu's cousin]. Go, OSTRICH! LIANA is here, too—it's the [Tropical vine] that used to show up in crossword puzzles a lot more often than it does now. If you've never heard the word, make a mental note of it—it'll be back in future crosswords.
Brendan Emmett Quigley has transformed himself into the hardest-working man in the crossword construction business, self-publishing three new puzzles each week at his new website (Monday, Wednesday. Friday). Sure, he's not getting paid for it, but he does have a PayPal tip jar for voluntary donations. (Side note: Amazon recently yoinked the "honor box" that many of us bloggers liked as an easy way of channeling blog donations. I am still mad at them.) Today's offering is "Baby It's Cold Outside," and the five theme entries, baby, all have a synonym for cold on their outside, enclosing the rest of the phrase's letters:
My favorite clue is ["No shit, Sherlock!"] as a snarky equivalent for GEE. Freshest fill: a ZITCOM is a [TV comedy aimed at teenagers]. Does this include the shows tweens like, such as iCarly? We see the three-word RANDR in plenty of crosswords, but this is the first time I recall seeing RNR for [Time off, initially]. Does anyone ever take "R and R," pronouncing "and" clearly? I think we take "R 'n R."
I took a few wrong turns along the way. [Faker] tried to be a POSER, but ended up as a PSEUD. [Laughed out loud] is HOWLED, but HOOTED almost worked. And then I had N'DJAMENI for [Chad's capital], when of course it's N'DJAMENA. D'oh!
And the continual updating continues:
I had been blogging about the Jonesin' puzzles on Tuesdays, and the Ben Tausig and Onion A.V. Club puzzles on Wednesdays, but now I think I'm moving them back to Mondays and Tuesdays, respectively. Adding in M/W/F BEQs crowds my blogging schedule, but the regular Monday puzzles are so quick, Monday can accommodate BEQ and Jonesin'. My Tuesday mornings had been otherwise booked last year, but will be free for a couple months now. I might skoosh the Tausig puzzle to Thursdays when my Tuesdays fill up again—poor Thursday has but four puzzles on the roster.
So, Matt Jones's Jonesin' puzzle for this week has a fun theme: "The Worst of 2008" (subtitled "hey, at least I avoided talking about the economy"). If you like the Razzies for crappy movies and Go Fug Yourself for the worst in celebrity fashion choices, you'll like this theme. The MOMENT OF TRUTH was [Entertainment Weekly's pick for worst TV show of 2008]. SELMA BLAIR was tagged as a terrible TV casting choice by the Television Without Pity folks. iVillage.com identified HEIDI AND SPENCER from The Hills as "The Worst Couple of 2008." Never saw the show, but Go Fug Yourself has taught me that HEIDI AND SPENCER are a mockable couple. Business Week noticed that GUNS N ROSES have the 'Worst Music Marketing." Nearly 20 years in the making, and the Chinese Democracy album still didn't live up to the advance hopes? DISASTER MOVIE is the [2008 spoof flick that got a rare 0% rating from the website Rotten Tomatoes]; I love Rotten Tomatoes, which rarely steers me wrong. As newspapers shed film critics, the Tomatometer tells critics their opinions still matter.
Hey, look at how Matt stacked those theme entries at the top and bottom of the puzzle. Every single one of the resulting crossings is A-OK. I think Matt might be second to Merl Reagle in fondness for stacked theme entries and ability to pull 'em off smoothly.
Fun stuff in the grid:
January 01, 2009
Friday, 1/2
Sun 10:01
LAT 5:42
NYT 5:13
CS 3:11
WSJ 7:14
(all done updating at 4:20 p.m. Friday)
I hear that the Friday Sun crossword is one of those rare but exceedingly tough treats—a vowelless puzzle by Frank Longo. This might help tide us over until June, when Frank's entire bk f vwllss crsswrds wll b pblshd. Cn't wt! Except I can wait until morning to do the Sun, as I don't want to start it when I'm already tired because then it will kick my butt.
Speaking of the Sun crossword, if you haven't already subscribed, I encourage you to do so here. Editor Peter Gordon has overseen the development of a number of cruciverbal innovations. The vowelless puzzles, some of Patrick Berry and Patrick Blindauer's crazy twists on the format, some rebus puzzles that are too tough for the New York Times, asymmetrical grids—if you have even the slightest appreciation for puzzle challenges like these, please help keep Peter's crossword factory churning out the goodies.
The New York Times crossword is a themeless by Martin Ashwood-Smith, who's one of the regulars on the CrosSynergy constructors team. He's placed a triple-stack of 15-letter answers at the top and bottom of the grid, and a couple more 15's near the middle. Usually when there are that many 15's, one of them might be a gimme for me, but not this time. Here are the big girls:
It's getting late, so without further ado, other clues and answers I want to include here follow:
Updated:
It's noon, and I've only been up for two hours today. Is that a good thing or a bad one? I think it's good, but it leaves me behind schedule for the day.
The cluing style in Edward Sessa and Nancy Salomon's LA Times crossword clashed with my mindset—there's nothing so inherently challenging about the theme or the fill that accounts for this puzzle taking me longer than the NYT themeless, other than the clues just not resonating with the words in my head. The theme is summed up by TEE-OFF TIME, a golf [Driver's request, and a hint to this puzzle's theme]. The phrase I'm familiar with is "tee time," which gets about 17 times more Google hits than "tee-off time." This answer suggests that the other theme entries have a T taken off a unit of time, but the T is lopped off a set of unrelated words:
In the fill, [Swedish golfer Stenson], or HENRIK, was a stranger to me. [Ford : RESCU :: GM : ___] clued ONSTAR, which I've heard of; I don't think Ford has done such a good job of publicizing their version of. [Creator of Kissy and Pussy] is IAN Fleming of James Bond fame; I don't recall a Kissy. [Reason for weight loss?] clues TARE; with super-dry factual words like TARE, I think I prefer super-dry factual clues. Why is [Jewish star] MOGEN? I don't know. [First name in detection] is NERO, as in Nero Wolfe. [Place at the track] clues LAY, as in "lay a bet" or "place a bet" on a race. GLUON is a [Quark-binding particle]. The units of time in the crossword are a SPAN, or [Some time], and ERA, or [Hunk of history]. [Ale brewer Slosberg] is named PETE; I've never heard this name, but Google tells me he's the founder of Pete's Wicked Ale. BEETS are [Commonly biennial garden plants], but I do not know any gardeners who grow beets; I hear that eating a lot of beets will turn your digestive output purple or red. (Blue frosting or dye gives kids green poop.) [Cyrene's daughter, in a TV drama] is XENA the Warrior Princess. My favorite clue here is [One of them?] for a FOE.
Ray Hamel's CrosSynergy puzzle, "Word of Mouth," gathers four phrases that include parts of the mouth:
BEET is in this puzzle, too, but clued more accessibly as a [Red vegetable] since the puzzle's targeted at more of a Wednesdayish level. Favorite clues: [It makes il mondo go round] for AMORE; [Carnegie foundation?] for STEEL, the foundation of Carnegie's wealth; [Marriage agreement?] for I DO; [Shorts supports] for the HIPS; and [Unlucky number, in ancient Rome?] for XIII or 13. I also like "DO TELL!" clued as ["Please continue!"], though I hear that Southerners who say "Do tell!" really mean "You don't say" and don't want you to say more. (This page explains that it's an expression of surprise. But this Northerner says it to mean "Please continue.")
Andrea Carla Michaels came up with a theme idea about ANTs and Patrick Blindauer crafted a fun-looking grid to embody it. Today's Wall Street Journal crossword, "Down on the Farm," has a bunch of black squares that draw the tunnels in an ant farm, and the ANTs are crawling all over the puzzle (everywhere but in those black tunnels, actually]. There's one explanatory ANT at 6-Down: [Farm creature that can be found 30 more times in this grid]. Though there aren't really any traditional theme entries in this grid—certainly none to be found in symmetrical spots given that this grid is asymmetrical—the ANTs theme was an aid to solving the rest of the puzzle because you knew that a bunch of answers would contain the ANT trigram. For example, there's a [Hairy creature], the TARANTULA, and a VANTAGE [Point with a view] beside INFANT, or [Babies], with the pair crossing a TYRANT, ATALANTA, and RADIANT. GRANT'S TOMB, the [Memorial in New York's Riverside Park], sits atop a praying MANTIS, or [Devout insect?]. Every section of the puzzle has an ANT or three crawling in it. Cute! But I feel like getting some bug spray now, or calling the constructors Antrea and Pantrick.
Updated again, at last, with the Vwllss Crsswrd:
Frank Longo's Sun crossword is both themeless and vowelless. To keep things clear, there aren't any Y's serving as consonants or vowels in this grid. This puzzle felt easier than Frank's past ventures in vowel-free entertainment. Here's what the NSWRS are when you reanimate them with their lost vowels:
1A. JNLC is Jean-Luc Godard.
5A. MTLPLCHCQZ is multiple-choice quiz.
15A. FTSR is footsore. Not a word I've ever used, but I must concede it should have a place in my vocabulary.
16A. LTHLCMBNTN is a lethal combination.
17A. FDST is fades out, I think.
18A. TRVLDSTNTN is travel destination. Use of those -tion/TN noun endings makes these vowelless monsters a little more pliant.
19A. RSNR is a reasoner.
20A. NTRNTNLZNG is internationalizing. There's another -tion lurking in there. Given how common T and N are in English words, the vowelless constructor is probably quite fond of -tion words.
21A. STTC is static.
22A. GRDTNS are graduations.
23A. NTHM is an anthem. They sang "O Canada" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" before the NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley yesterday. If you watched that, did you see those military jets roar overhead? I heard them fly over my house a few seconds before they reached Wrigley.
24A. PCC is ipecac.
25A. GTHSMN is Gethsemane. It's the name of a good garden center a couple miles from me—very little agony and betrayal going on at this Gethsemane.
30A. MSMFFNRTS is a Museum of Fine Arts. Where are the museums of coarse arts, like the rendering of armpit farts and belching the alphabet?
33A. RNMNT is an ornament.
34A. MSPRNTS are misprints, with only two vowels omitted.
35A. I couldn't figure out what CSNGSTR was short for, so I checked Pete Mitchell's Sun Blocks blog—causing a stir. Ah, the deceptive inclusion of an invisible "a" as a word...
37A. RNCTD is reenacted.
38A. SPRNGRLLS is also missing just two vowels so it looks nearly normal: spring rolls.
40A. LTTSNW is "Let It Snow", times three.
42. LLL is lull; this could also have been clued as loll or Lille.
43A. NKNT is in a knot, againn with an "a" that's dissolved away.
44A. DSCCTS is desiccates.
46A. RLSH is relish.
47A. DRSSRHRSLS are dress rehearsals.
51A. VDTP is videotape.
52A. SSTRPBLCTN is a sister publication.
53A. LTTC is lettuce.
54A. NDNPLSCLTS are the Indianapolis Colts.
55A. TMTT is the tomtit.
56A. GDNCCNSLRS are guidance counselors.
57A. NSNR is ensnare.
1D. JFFRSNMMRL is the Jefferson Memorial.
2D. NTDSTTSSNT is the United States Senate.
3D. LSSNTHMPCT is lessen the impact.
4D. CRTRCMFRTS are creature comforts.
5D. MLTNGPT is melting point.
6D. LTRTRCRSS are literature courses.
7D. THVRDCT is The Verdict.
8D. PLLNT is pollinate.
9D. LCDTNG is elucidating.
10D. CMSNSTRNG is comes on strong.
11D. HBTL is habitual—half the word is omitted vowels.
12D. CNNZ is canonize—ditto.
13D. QTTN is quotation—five vowels dropped, four consonants holding steady.
14D. ZNNG is zoning.
26D. HNGRNRVLTN is the Hungarian Revolution.
27D. SMSLKLDTMS is, I suppose, "Seems Like Old Times."
28D. MNTLNSTTTN is a mental institution.
29D. NTRSTHPCTR is enters the picture. Nice lively phrase.
31D. FNDNDRPLC is find and replace—also lively.
32D. SCRLTLTTR is The Scarlet Letter.
36D. SNLSSNSS is sinlessness. It's not a coincidence that four of those S's double as the last letter of the crossings—those S's come in handy here.
39D. PLCSCLL is places a call.
41D. WSHBSN is washbasin.
45D. CRLCS are curlicues—I like this one.
47D. DSNG is dousing. Could just as easily be dosing, but dousing makes for a crisper clue.
48D. RSDD is resided.
49D. STNN is sit in on. As Pete M. noted, "sit in" sounds a tad more right than "sit in on" here.
50D. SRPC is Serpico.
Did you notice that this is a 60-"word" puzzle with just 25 black squares? If this were a standard crossword, this grid would be off-the-hook insane, with quadruple-stacked 10-letter answers in each corner and those 9-letter answers in the middle binding them all together.
